Category Archives: Uncategorized
Tax Day Deadline
The government is here to help. But IRS missed the tax day deadline. Its website crashed.
Celebrity Billionaire Presidency
It looks like we might not have corrupt campaign funding to kick around anymore. The 2020 presidential field is filling up with billionaire celebrities who can fund their own campaign corruption. And that’s not to mention the free publicity they’ll get.
Oprah gave a speech at the Golden Globes setting off speculation she wants to be president. Her celebrity colleagues went wild. Presumably she’ll run as a Democrat.
Celebrity Billionaire Presidency
And Mark Cuban, the celebrity billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks, has long been considering throwing his NBA championship ring in the ring. If he does so, he says he’ll run as a Republican. Though, as of November he said there’s only a 10% chance he’ll do it.
Maybe Oprah will inspire him.
Vanity Fair Hillary Shots
Vanity Fair had a little fun with Hillary Clinton last week. But it didn’t last long.
Hillary Shots
The mag produce this video for its on-line site The Hive. The sketch featured staffers proposing toasts to Hillary. And each toast offered a New Year’s resolution urging her to abstain from running for office again.
One recommended she teach Yoga, another counseled alternate nostril breathing and another advised her to take up knitting.
Naturally the Hillary Faithful charged sexism. So Vanity Fair apologized and pulled the video.
Undocumented Felon Sanctuary
It was tough to prove that the gunshot ricochet that killed Kate Steinle was intentional. But the prosecutor went for a murder one charge and came away with nothing.
So Ines Garcia Zarate is unlikely to spend any time in a state prison according to the San Jose Mercury News. But he’s not out of the woods entirely. He now faces federal charges.
Undocumented Felon Sanctuary
Zarate was deported five times before Kate’s killing and was wanted for a sixth deportation on drug-related felonies, according to CNN.
Sean Hannity says San Francisco’s Sanctuary policies killed Kate Steinle.
I’m a Taxpayer – Not
President Trump introduced his tax reform plan last week. Critics in the media labeled it “tax cuts for the rich.”
But there’s a reason for that. The rich pay most of the federal income tax.
Democrats are running against income inequality. And they’ve got a point. According to the Tax Foundation the top one percent earn twenty percent of all the income in America..
But they also pay forty percent of all the federal income taxes in the country.
Taxpayer
Half the working population can’t protest against Washington by demanding “I’m a taxpayer and ..!” That’s because they don’t pay federal income taxes. Though they do pay social security and medicare taxes.
Here’s a link to a Tax Foundation chart breaking down who pays what by percentile:
The data demonstrates that the U.S. individual income tax continues to be very progressive, borne mainly by the highest income earners.
- In 2014, 139.6 million taxpayers reported earning $9.71 trillion in adjusted gross income and paid $1.37 trillion in individual income taxes.
- The share of income earned by the top 1 percent of taxpayers rose to 20.6 percent in 2014. Their share of federal individual income taxes also rose, to 39.5 percent.
- In 2014, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.3 percent of all individual income taxes while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.7 percent.
- The top 1 percent paid a greater share of individual income taxes (39.5 percent) than the bottom 90 percent combined (29.1 percent).
- The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid a 27.1 percent individual income tax rate, which is more than seven times higher than taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent (3.5 percent).
