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May 1, 2017 - The Ben Shapiro Show
21:55
Ep. 293 - Fascists Win In Berkeley
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In the wake of President Trump's release of a tax reform outline, CNN's Sally Cohen took to Twitter to explain her take on the prospective legislation.
She tweeted translated Trump's tax plan for you into a picture of Trump's tax plan and written over it in pink pen.
It says, take dollars from the people, give it to the super rich.
This is not how taxes work.
There is a basic inconsistency here for Cohn.
She's correct that higher taxes on a relatively small percentage of the middle class via reduction of tax deductions would involve government taking more money from those affected.
But she then suggests that rich Americans paying less taxes somehow amounts to reallocation of resources from the middle class to those in the top tax bracket.
So in other words, taxation is theft when it's applied to those who aren't in the top quintile of income earners, but for those rich folks, taxation is an expected tribute to be paid to the government.
Here is the question.
At what income cutoff does taxation become good?
Cohn doesn't say.
But this is pure illogical class warfare.
When told this on Twitter, Cohn responded that she didn't appreciate mansplaining.
She wrote, "Mansplaining is caring, am I right?" "Sally, it's called economic-splaining, and we wouldn't have to do it if you would logic understand." Cohn also ignores the fact that the rich pay the overwhelming majority of net taxes in the United States.
According to the Tax Foundation, in 2014, 35% of Americans paid no income tax.
Those earning more than $250,000 paid 55% of the entire income tax burden.
paid 55% of the entire income tax burden.
The top 20% of earners paid 84% of all income tax, according to the Tax Policy Center.
According to the CBO, the Congressional Budget Office report on distribution of taxes in 2013, the top 1% of households paid 34% of their income to federal taxes, The middle 20% paid just 12.8%.
The top quintile of income households paid an average of $57,700 into federal tax coffers in 2013 when you include any wealth transfers they were paid by the federal government.
The fourth highest quintile paid $2,600.
The middle quintile actually made $7,800 from the feds.
And the second lowest quintile made $12,000.
The lowest quintile made $8,800.
Bottom line, according to the American Enterprise Institute, the highest income quintile is financing 96% of the entire system of transfer payments to the bottom 60% and funding the operation of the federal government.
So no.
The rich aren't undertaxed.
They're paying for the whole operation.
We actually have the most progressive federal tax system among all OECD 24 countries.
But keep banging that drum, Sally.
I'm Ben Shapiro.
This is The Ben Shapiro Show.
So after that auspicious start, we'll jump right in in just a second talking about what's going on with Ann Coulter and the rise of fascism in the United States.
I feel like I have a particularly good window on this since I've actually been at the center of some of these camp-it-riot-type events.
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Okay, so the big issue of the day, obviously, Is what's been happening in Berkeley.
So, a couple of points you made about this right off the bat.
First off, Ann does not have any obligation to go to Berkeley.
So if I were Ann Coulter, would I go to Berkeley?
Maybe, I would seriously consider it, but I would also consider the possibility that I wouldn't actually want to be shot in the face.
And that's the problem here, is that, you know, I've been at the center of some of these incidents, but Antifa, which is now Prominent in Berkeley.
They actually engage in physical violence.
We had on two guests in the last week talking about the sort of violence they engage in.
We had on Bay Stickman and we had on Lauren Southern talking about the violence that is now occurring in Berkeley with Antifa at the head of it.
That is a different thing than a lot of these students.
So we had a lot of students who made trouble when I was at Cal State Los Angeles.
There was a near riot there.
Some people got beat up in the crowd.
But it wasn't anything like what you're seeing at Berkeley with the blood flowing and people throwing sticks of dynamite and such into the crowd.
That's a new thing.
And I don't blame Anne for not wanting to die in the middle of Berkeley.
You know, I think that there's a strong case that she should go anyway with a bullhorn, but it's totally up to her and I'm not gonna rip her for that.
By the same token...
I am certainly not going to rip Young America's foundation.
Full disclosure, I work with them all the time.
I'm not going to rip Young America's foundation for doing what they're supposed to do in this situation, which is protect their students.
It is not Young America's foundation's fault that the police are refusing to defend the free speech rights of people participating at University of California, Berkeley.
YAF has legal liability.
If YAF were to go there and then some of their students were to get hurt, There's a possibility that Yaf gets sued, and Yaf can't have that because they're a 501c3 organization.
They have an obligation to protect their students.
Yaf was not anti the event, Yaf was pro the event.
It was Yaf backing the event all the way down the line until it was made clear that the police were going to let Antifa run roughshod over the people who were going to show up.
I know that Yaf stands by its people because Yaf stood by me when DePaul threatened to arrest me.
Yaf stood by me when CSULA threatened to cancel my event.
We walked right into it anyway.
So this idea that's being promulgated by some sort of anti-YAF folks on Twitter, that YAF is weak on this stuff, it's just not true.
YAF filed a lawsuit alongside me against Cal State LA.
They filed a lawsuit alongside Ann Coulter against the University of Berkeley system.
The idea that they have some sort of obligation to push their students to go to an event where the students are going to get hurt, that seems to me foolish.
If the students want to go, the students are free to go.
They're adults.
But, you know, putting it on YAF is silly.
There's really only one group to blame here.
Two groups to blame.
Antifa, obviously, because they are fascists, and they are fascists who engage in violence for political reasons.
But the bigger problem here is bigger than Antifa.
It's a bigger problem than Antifa.
In the 1960s, when rioters basically took over University of California at Berkeley, the governor was Ronald Reagan, and Ronald Reagan sent in the National Guard.
He called in the National Guard, and they literally marched into Berkeley, took over the place, and tamped down whatever violence was taking place.
They kicked people out of the public buildings they had occupied.
Where the hell is Jerry Brown, the governor of the state of California?
What is the mayor of Berkeley doing?
And the answer is that they are all standing by and letting their brown shirts do the work.
This is a common thing in fascist tyrannies.
You let the sort of wild men go and do the violent stuff, and then you have your police stand by.
The comparison is not full, but it is just a demonstration of how fascism works.
During Kristallnacht in Germany, it was not actually the police forces overall that were going out and burning down synagogues and beating up Jews.
For the most part, it was members of the Brownshirts, which is a sort of paramilitary organization, who were going around doing all this stuff and the police were told to back off and let it happen.
This is what fascist dictatorships do.
They don't want to have all of the violence on their own head.
They don't want to be blamed for all the violence.
So instead what they do is they activate people like Antifa.
They let Antifa go out there and burn things and threaten people and hit people with sticks and club people.
And stab people, and throw dynamite at people, and then they tell the cops back off and let them do it.
Okay, that is just as fascist as the fascists who are actually participating in this nonsense.
And it is really quite frightening.
It's very frightening.
It's very scary, and it is totally inappropriate, obviously, and it is violative of the First Amendment.
Again, this idea that Berkeley is putting out there that we can't guarantee safety, let me ask a question.
If Ta-Nehisi Coates, this left-wing radical who's become a public intellectual on the left, if Ta-Nehisi Coates were to speak at Berkeley, and a bunch of white supremacists were to show up, you know, the phantom Trump supporters who are all the neo-Nazi Trump supporters the media worries about, supposedly, Let's say they were all to show up at once, and they were going to protest Ta-Nehisi Coates in a violent way.
Do you think Berkeley would tell the cops to stand down, or do you think they tell them to charge in there, batons waving, and do you think that Jerry Brown would call out the National Guard?
Obviously Jerry Brown would call out the National Guard.
Of course he would.
But that's not what the university is doing.
Instead, the university says, quote, this university's Nicholas Dirks, who's the university's chancellor, he says, this university has two non-negotiable commitments.
One to free speech, the other to the safety of our campus, community members, their guests, and the public.
In that context, we cannot ignore or deny what is a new reality.
Groups and individuals from the extreme ends of the political spectrum have made it clear their readiness and intention to utilize violent tactics in support or in protest of certain speakers at UC Berkeley.
We cannot wish away or pretend these threats do not exist.
Okay, no one is saying that you should wish away or pretend the threats don't exist.
We're saying you should counter the threats.
That is your job.
You are the- as the university chancellor.
You have a UCPD.
I know, I went to UCLA.
You have a UCPD.
Use the UCPD.
Coordinate with the Berkeley police.
The cops who are there, I guarantee you, are not sympathetic to Antifa.
They're not sitting there going, oh well, I'm just going to sit here and let Antifa do what they're doing.
This is a political move by people at the top to allow all of this crap to happen.
And this has become a trend across the country in violent situations and non-violent situations.
At Middlebury College, not one student, not one, has been suspended or expelled for physically assaulting a professor, a left-wing professor who ended up with a concussion.
Not one.
When I was at University of Wisconsin, a bunch of protesters took over the front of the stage.
Nonviolent protesters.
I thought it was ridiculous and funny, but they held up the entire thing for like 20 minutes.
And I said to the cops, why don't you just move them out?
They don't have a right to do this.
Why don't you just move them on out?
And they said, well, we've been told by the administration that if we move these people out, we will also have to shut down the event.
In other words, it is up to the protesters to be nice people, and if they're not nice people, the cops won't do anything about it.
This has become common across the country.
University administrators who are too cowardly, who are too pathetic, who are too fascistic, to shut down people who want to destroy free speech.
And it is not equivalent when you say a protester doesn't have the right to shut down a full free speech event.
That is not the equivalent of shutting down a free speech event.
These two things are not equal.
When I say a protester who tries to take over an event, assault people, Prevent people from hearing speech?
That is not the same as the speaker themselves.
I'm fine with protesters who want to protest and not disturb the events.
I'm fine with protesters yelling at me every so often.
I don't care.
That's First Amendment stuff.
But when you have people who shut down events, when you have people who threaten violence like Antifa, it is your obligation as a police force, it is your obligation as governor of the state of California or mayor of Berkeley or...
P.D.
chief.
It is your obligation to protect the liberty of people.
Okay?
The police are not just there to protect your life.
The police are also there to protect your liberty.
And this idea that the university gets a violent threat and all of a sudden they're going to shut down the right.
Again, they're just using the violent protesters as a proxy for they don't want this event to go forward.
This is political bias.
They should be sued and they should lose.
And the university said it was impossible for the police department to simply step in and stop violent confrontations.
They said this is a university, not a battlefield.
Well, if you want it to be not a battlefield, then perhaps you should actually have defense.
This idea that you can just declare it's a university, not a battlefield, that's not what Antifa thinks.
They've already made it a battlefield.
In fact, there's a map going around that Antifa has put out of various sites.
I guess that Gavin McInnes and Lauren Southern are supposed to speak in place of Anne today or tomorrow.
And the Antifa people have put out like a full military map of the area.
It is not up to Berkeley whether this place is a battlefield.
It is a battlefield because Antifa has made it a battlefield.
If you want it to be a free and open place of learning, it is your job with my taxpayer dollars, I'm a California taxpayer, it is your job with my taxpayer dollars to defend freedom.
And the fact that they're not doing it is ridiculous.
The police chief, Andrew Greenwood, he told the Berkeley City Council, I believe that's the same city council that voted to impeach Donald Trump because this is how crazy they are.
He said, intervention requires a major commitment of resources, a significant use of force, and carries with it the strong likelihood of harming those who are not committing a crime.
Why does it carry with it the strong likelihood of harming those who are not committing a crime?
Why?
I hope that it requires a major commitment of resources and a significant use of force.
I hope that you clobber these Antifa people who are actual fascists who are participating in violence.
Police have an obligation to maintain law and order.
And we've seen all over the United States that left-wingers do not care about violence so long as it springs from the left.
We saw the mayor of Baltimore say that she wanted to provide safe spaces for people to riot in Baltimore.
They're burning down businesses and she was talking about safe spaces.
Now we see the same thing at Berkeley.
Have you ever seen, not in my lifetime at least, have you ever seen a right-wing mayor say that he's fine with violence in the streets so long as it promotes right-wing causes?
Have you seen that?
I haven't seen that.
Certainly not in modern history.
And yet the left is doing this on a routine basis.
The left is doing it over and over and over again.
This is an assault on free speech, and everybody, right, left, and center, should be calling it an assault on free speech.
It doesn't matter what you think of Ann Coulter.
That's completely irrelevant.
But according to the left, all that matters is that they don't like Ann Coulter.
So Bob Beckel, the living troll on Fox News's The Five, he came out and he was ripping on Ann Coulter as though it was Coulter's fault that all this was happening.
Why can't the university protect Ann Coulter?
I mean, they have the money, they have the manpower.
Why can't they do it, Bob?
Well, first of all, let me just say how disappointed I am in all of you suggesting that this is something to do with the Democrats and liberals.
These are anarchists who are coming in from around the country who have nothing to do with the Democratic Party.
Howard Dean is an anarchist in himself.
Oh, really?
He was the former head of the Democratic National Committee.
I know, I know.
It was a short-lived situation.
The reason I'm for Ann Coulter speaking is she has a right to speak, number one, and every time she opens her mouth, it drives away more people.
She's becoming more and more irrelevant, so she does something like this to get a lot of attention.
This is the woman who said, America has been graced by a Christian God that Donald Trump is president.
That wasn't all.
She called Marco Rubio a rapist.
At least Beckel is standing up for Coulter's right to speak, but there are people on the left who haven't been.
The ACLU is even standing up for a right to speak, but the people in power aren't, and that's the only thing that matters.
So, I guess good for Bob Beckel in one sense, but it is just ridiculous, it is ridiculous that so many members of the administration, the mayor of Berkeley, that they are going to allow this to go ahead.
It's really disgusting.
Apparently Berkeley's mayor, he called out, I love this, he called out Ann Coulter for stoking possible violence.
So Mayor Jesse Ereguin, I don't know how to pronounce his name, he said, Berkeley's about the free exchange of ideas, but that's not what's happening.
So I think going forward, we are going to need to have a more visible police presence at these incidents and intervene.
Ya think?
Ya think, you idiot?
But he blamed Ann Coulter for all of this.
He said that it's Ann Coulter and Milo who are causing this.
Again, this is the same argument as her skirt was short, therefore she was asking to be raped.
It's the exact same argument, and it is truly disgusting, and this had better come under control, or people are gonna pay the price with their lives.
People are going to get killed.
And I hope it's not me, because I'm the one speaking on campus more often than not.
So, it's really disturbing to me personally.
Now, before I go on on this, I want to talk about ESPN.
I want to talk about Obamacare repeal.
I want to talk about taxes and trade, and there's a lot to get to today before we get to the mailbag.
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So before we have to go...
Exclusively to dailywire.com for the rest of the show.
I want to talk a little bit about what's going on at ESPN.
So ESPN fired a hundred people yesterday.
And there's a lot of big names they fired yesterday.
They fired a bunch of people who I enjoy watching.
NFL reporter Ed Werder was fired.
NFL analyst Trent Dilfer was fired.
MLB writer Jason Stark was fired.
The entire NHL reporting team was fired.
And yet, and yet, total buffoons like Max Kellerman still on the air.
All the guests from around the horn still on the air.
We definitely need Kevin Blackistone telling us how the National Anthem is a war anthem.
He actually said that on Around the Horn.
We still need him to opine on the virtues of Caitlyn Jenner, who hasn't been athletically relevant for my entire lifetime.
But we have to get rid of, you know, the actual people who report sports.
This is because ESPN has made a conscious decision, it's the same decision the Democrats made in 2012, that they are going for a new demographic.
That's really what this is about, and no one wants to talk about it, so I'm going to tell you the truth about what ESPN is doing.
ESPN has made a conscious decision that they are going to program leftist politics Because they believe that their growing demographic base, the people who are watching sports more, particularly sports like the NBA, are black and Hispanic.
And so they think that if they put on more hosts who are black and Hispanic and left, then they are going to gain more black and Hispanic viewership, and they don't seem to care that they are losing a lot of viewers who are conservative in the process.
This is why the NHL is going, right?
The overwhelming majority of people who watch the NHL are white.
The disproportionate percentage of people who watch the NBA is black, according to the Nielsen statistics, and they've decided the NBA is more important than the NHL.
The NBA is a lot bigger than the NHL, but you could do both.
I mean, if you're a sports network, you just cover the highlights, and you tell me what I need to know in the news.
That's why I used to watch SportsCenter, because it was clever, and it was witty, and because people were funny.
It was back in the day when Keith Olbermann didn't feel the need to talk politics and it was just it was interesting and fun to watch.
I used to get up at six o'clock in the morning when I was a kid to watch SportsCenter every morning.
Every morning I'd get up at 6 a.m.
to watch SportsCenter because that's how much I loved ESPN and that's how much I loved SportsCenter and they've decided to absolutely destroy it.
They've decided it's more important to hire Jameel Hill and Michael Smith for a million bucks a year in order to babble about Donald Trump than it is to actually have reporters Like, as I say, Jason Stark, who's a fantastic reporter for Major League Baseball.
It's really terrible.
ESPN's public editor said that the network would continue to push politics.
They said, the desire to throw a boundary between sports culture and politics is a fool's errand.
The volume of non-sports content within ESPN's empire has increased significantly in recent years.
Some of that has been driven by the athletes ESPN covers who have, in recent years, begun to speak more forcefully about societal and political issues.
You wanna know why they're doing that?
Because ESPN covers them when they do it.
So to pretend that it's the athletes who just suddenly decided to speak politically is nonsense.
Athletes were speaking politically 30 years ago.
As this guy, as he acknowledges, the difference is that ESPN has now decided to make socially active athletes the heroes of their little morality plays.
And there are those of us, like me, who just want to watch the baseball.
All I want to do is watch MLB Network now.
I'd rather watch MLB Network and watch Kevin Millar talk about nonsense about baseball.
If I want to watch politics, I'll watch politics.
If I want to watch baseball, I'll watch baseball.
I don't need your take on Caitlyn Jenner's heroism and transgenderism in the Olympics.
I don't need it.
And this idea that ESPN is just going to keep preaching politics?
Good.
I hope everyone keeps cutting the cable.
I hope that people keep tuning out.
There are two ways that ESPN makes money.
One way is from cable subscription fees.
The other way is from advertising.
Their ratings have been plummeting.
They should plummet.
People are cutting the cord because the technology is changing and no one feels the need to subscribe to cable anymore.
I used to subscribe to cable specifically for ESPN.
And I'm going to unsubscribe from cable this week because there's nothing for me to watch on ESPN anymore because I have nothing to watch on ESPN.
On the day before, they cut 100 of these reporters.
On the day before they did that, they ran a piece on ESPN.com titled, Five Poets on the New Feminism.
On ESPN.com, you think I want to read five poets on the new feminism?
I won't even read it if it appears at Jezebel.
I'm not going to read it if it appears at Everyday Feminism.
And I love Everyday Feminism because it's hilarious.
But I'm certainly not going to read it if it appears at ESPN.com.
Again, the left has infused every aspect of culture with politics, and they shouldn't be surprised when the backlash is to infuse politics with culture, which is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is the President of the United States.
Well, I want to talk a little bit more about all of that, and then I want to get to the politics of the day.
Obamacare repeal, and taxes, and trade, and the border.
I want to get to all of that, plus the mailbag, but you have to go over to dailywire.com for that.
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