Ep 479 The War on Trump and the American Voter Continues
In this episode I address the Democrats' total failure to advance the Trump/Russia hoax. I also address their next steps. I also discuss the California push for government-run healthcare and the destructive economics of their proposal. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-single-payer-test-drive-1497215019 Finally, I address the tricks Democrats use to advance a tax-hiking agenda. https://www.cato.org/blog/corp-tax-jct-revenue-estimate-bad-cbo-analysis-good?utm_source=Cato+Institute+Emails&utm_campaign=e4465b85d3-Cato_at_Liberty_RSS&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_395878584c-e4465b85d3-143016961&goal=0_395878584c-e4465b85d3-143016961&mc_cid=e4465b85d3&mc_eid=3fd7404a34
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Dan Bongino. I owe you, who owes who? You owe me, I owe you, there's no money!
The Dan Bongino Show. Anything run by liberals will be run into the ground,
burned, stepped on, gasoline poured on it and burned again.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
They're arguing about things and debating how quickly they can deconstruct the greatest country in the history of mankind and all of the ideas and norms that have gotten us here.
On a show that's not immune to the facts, with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Always good to be with you, Dan.
Doing well.
Yeah.
Oh man, another phenomenal news weekend.
Folks, I told ya!
I told you.
In a show about two weeks ago, I had said to you, and who cares who said what?
I mean, I'm not trying to be right here.
Sometimes I wish I was wrong with these destructive Democrats.
But I said to you, Joe, if you remember, I said, watch what's going to happen.
The, quote, collusion narrative, Trump-Russia narrative, fairy tale, conspiracy theory that Trump somehow colluded with the Russians to swing the election, which is so It's just so ridiculous, absurd, stupid.
I said to you a couple weeks ago, if you binge listen to the show, you probably just listened to it a couple hours ago.
I said, it's going to fall apart, folks.
It's a fairy tale.
It's a myth.
It's a conspiracy theory.
It is a lie that the Democrats are telling their voters.
I said, watch what happens when this falls apart.
They're eventually going to have to produce the goods.
And when they can't produce the goods on Trump-Russia collusion, which they can't because there's zero evidence, there's nothing there.
I said, they're going to move on to the obstruction narrative, which is fascinating because obstructing what?
If there's no evidence of a base crime of collusion, how can you obstruct, quote, justice into an investigation where there's no evidence that a crime even happened?
Joe, that's like... Yeah.
Like, Joe, you kidnapped, you know, this child down the block.
We find out that it was actually Joe Pharmacost, not Joe Armacost.
But then we find out later, like, Joe obstructed justice into a crime because Joe hoped that he would be cleared?
You're like, wait, wait, hold on.
Time out.
Rewind the tape.
Police officer speaks to Joe Armacost.
Joe goes, hey, I don't know what you're talking about.
I don't know this child.
I've never kidnapped anybody in my life.
I'm the producer for the renegade Republican WCBM.
That's right.
I hope this goes away, guys.
I got you.
Wait, what?
You hope it goes away?
Obstruction of justice!
Move on!
Right.
We're not going to charge him with kidnapping now.
Thank you.
Now we're going to charge Joe Armacost for the Joe Pharmacost kidnapping on obstruction of justice because he helped the investigation.
Even worse, let me add another wrinkle to the Democrats.
You are so dumb if you believe this.
It is unbelievable.
It's really unbelievable.
I thought you were smart people.
I'm starting to change my mind.
Even worse, Joe doesn't say, I hope the investigation into me goes away.
Let's say they interview Joe on a friend of his, Joey Bag of Donuts, who was accused of a kidnapping.
Yeah, Joey.
And it's really Joey Bag of Bagels that did it, not Joey Bag of Donuts.
Joe knows Joey Bag of Donuts did not commit the kidnapping because he was with Joey Bag of Donuts the night of the alleged kidnapping.
Joe tells a cop, hey, Joey Bag of Donuts didn't do it.
I hope this goes away.
Now we need to arrest Joey Bagadonis for a crime he didn't commit, like they wanted to push for impeachment for Trump for collusion that never happened.
Not only that, Joe, but now let's get Joe Armacost for obstructing justice into Joey Bagadonis because he hoped an investigation would go away, even though Joey Bagadonis didn't do anything.
Folks, if you're... I'm serious here.
I'm literally begging you, Democrats.
I'm giving you a piece of advice, and I shouldn't do this because there's that old I don't know if it's Sun Tzu or whatever, but when your
enemy's destroying itself, don't get in the way, right?
Right.
I'm telling you right now, I did a hit on Fox this weekend and just this morning, just got back.
Joe's like, "How'd you get back so fast?"
The studio's only like 20 minutes from my house.
A lot of people ask me how you do that, by the way.
There's a remote studio in Palm Beach Gardens.
Oh, is that right?
You literally just walk.
Yeah, you walk in an office 15 minutes before, a guy's name is Kurt.
Hey Kurt, how you doing?
You go there every day.
It's good, buddy.
They click on the thing.
But folks, there's no there there.
There's nothing there.
The whole thing.
I said the Democrat Party has no message.
They are imploding.
They're exploding.
They have no message.
Joe, they have all of their eggs into the Trump-Russia basket.
The collusion narrative fell apart because there's nothing there.
The only evidence of collusion is Hillary Clinton's campaign taking lobbying funds from the Russians to lobby for the Russians.
So they want that to go away.
So now they're moving on to obstruction.
Now, I've got a couple of quick things on this.
I also want to talk about, there's some really, really good, there's some juicy stuff I have for today's show.
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All right, a couple quick points of this before we move on about the narrative shift.
I told you it was going to happen again.
I'm not trying to be Captain Know-It-All here, folks.
I'm just, I'm encouraged, this is why I encourage you to listen to the show.
I get this information, I'm on a lot of email groups, I get a lot of sources that contact me, and I heard a long time ago from a source, I haven't even told you this, Joe, that behind the scenes the Democrats were panicking.
Some media outlets reported it, the Washington Post and the New York Times did not, that they were panicking because the Trump-Russia fairytale was falling apart.
They were looking for a new angle, and the obstruction angle is their new angle.
It's the only thing they have, ladies and gentlemen.
They don't have anything.
But here's the thing about the obstruction thing.
I want to make a couple of quick points here.
Folks, the case for obstruction they're trying to build around is this conversation President Trump had with former FBI Director Comey, where he hoped the investigation would go away.
Now, I've told you a thousand times that how you make a case for obstruction there is just Fantastical.
And I don't mean that in a qualitative way.
I mean like in a, in like you're writing a fairy tale and you're like, man, that's a fantastic story.
Like fantastic.
Like it's got all these crazy things going on.
This is just a nonsense story.
You can hope all you want that an investigation goes away.
You can hope a traffic ticket goes away.
I promise you, if you get pulled over by a cop and you say, gosh, you know, I hope you don't give me a ticket.
He is not going to arrest you for, for resisting arrest or obstructing a traffic ticket.
Now, if you bribe him, you're in a lot of trouble.
If you threaten him, you're in even more trouble.
Yes.
But if you say, gosh, you know, I feel really bad about this.
You know, I hope you don't give me a ticket.
He's not going to say, get out of the car.
He's not going to do it, folks.
No one has ever been arrested for hoping something bad didn't happen to them.
That's the first case.
The obstruction case is garbage.
It's a made up narrative.
But secondly, folks, I want you to understand for your liberal friends, and I know this may make some of you uncomfortable, but I'm not here to lie to you, and I'm not here to spin your wheels.
I'm here to tell you the truth.
I was a former federal agent.
I dealt with the White House.
I'm not patting myself on the back, just quickly establishing bona fides here.
The FBI, the Secret Service, the DEA, the ATF, whatever alphabet soup agency you want to discuss, ladies and gentlemen, these are not independent agencies.
I know I brought this up before, but you have to understand this to understand the depth of the argument if you want to be intellectually superior to your liberal friends who live only on talking points.
The FBI is not independent.
Now, we hope, we pray, that in a constitutional republic like the one we have, they make independent decisions.
But Joe, that's far different from saying the agency is independent.
We don't want an independent FBI.
You may say, Dan, that's crazy.
Is it?
Folks, do you want an entity out there that exists by itself, outside of the- we have three branches of government, ladies and gentlemen, that's it, at the federal level.
Judiciary, the legislative, and the executive branch.
There is not another branch.
There is not an FBI branch.
There is not a Secret Service branch.
There is not an independent investigator branch.
There are three branches of government.
And the reason the FBI falls under the executive branch of the Department of Justice is because of this, Joe.
We want them to be politically accountable.
You may say to yourself, what?
What do you mean by that?
Folks, if the FBI was totally independent and answered to no one, that's Joe is a serious question for you, pal.
Isn't that what independent means?
You answer to no one.
That's correct.
You're all, yes, you are not in a chain of command.
You are independent.
If you had an independent FBI and the FBI director decided that, you know what?
I don't like radio producers, and I definitely don't like podcast producers at Conservative Review.
So I'm going to go nail this clown Joe Armacost, and there was no oversight at all to that.
All of a sudden, you have a bunch of jackbooted thugs, which the FBI is not.
I'm not suggesting that.
I've worked with them often.
They have highly qualified special agents.
Folks, they are not an independent agency.
They work under the president.
Circle back.
Why am I bringing this up?
They respond and, excuse me, they work for the President of the United States and they advance the President of the United States' authority.
Ladies and gentlemen, that may make you uncomfortable, but the Constitution has them politically accountable to the President.
I've got news for you.
I'm not suggesting this happened.
Matter of fact, I'm strongly convinced that the conversation is accurate, that Trump just hoped the investigation would go away against Flynn Joe.
But reword the conversation.
Even if, and I'm not saying he did this, but even if Trump said, I'm demanding you drop this investigation against Flynn.
Folks, there's no case there.
That is Trump's prerogative.
Folks, please let me be clear on this.
I'm not suggesting one that happened.
Matter of fact, I'm suggesting strongly that did not happen.
Secondly, it would be morally ridiculous, ethically dumber, and politically the dumbest move of all time.
But it's not illegal.
There's a difference.
It is not illegal.
Now, here's where it gets... You know what?
I thought of another point.
Just quick.
There you go.
Good job.
Dan Bongino light bulb moment.
Okay?
Folks, the president has almost universal power to pardon.
Even if, he said to the FBI director, I want this investigation to go away.
And Jim Comey had said to him, no, I've demanded, he didn't say hope, say President Trump said, I demand the investigation against Flynn be dropped.
And Comey flips him two middle fingers and says, you know what has two thumbs, gives the middle finger and says no to your demands.
This guy, Jim Comey, and he goes ahead and arrests Mike Flynn and they prosecute him.
Trump can pardon him immediately.
Right.
With zero constitutional consequences at all, folks.
And they think about what I just said.
Now you're suggesting that even though the president could pardon a guy who, let's say, was arrested and prosecuted for whatever, for felonious mopery on the open seas or whatever they're trying to get Mike Flynn for, that just makes disorderly conduct, who knows, they'll make something up, right?
The president has the power to pardon him immediately.
What, are you going to arrest the president for obstruction?
He can pardon himself!
Folks, you're just making it up.
Politically not savvy to hope the investigation went away?
Talking to a political actor like Jim Comey?
I'll give you that.
Tactically not very smart?
I'll give you that too because I don't think there is a case against Flynn at all.
But illegal obstruction of justice, ladies and gentlemen, it's a fairy tale.
It's completely, totally made up.
Ain't happening, babe.
Ain't happening, babe.
By the way, the babe thing is like out of control.
It's taken on a life of, oh my God, it's everywhere.
Facebook, Twitter, email.
I mean, it's like, you know, Doc Thompson is a podcast.
They use hashtag like what I learned today.
I thought if you hashtag things, babe, like we would take over Twitter tomorrow.
I'm telling you, I get like, 50 or 60 emails, Facebook traffic, Twitter, things I get each day about shows.
Sometimes more.
Like the Universal Basic Income, I got like 100, 150 a day.
Wow.
Everything had a babe in it.
It was unbelievable.
And I only said that as a joke on there because that's how Joe is.
Yeah, thanks, babe.
Joe's a babe guy.
Hey, babe.
That's his thing.
He's an old musician.
Hey, babe.
We're shaking, man.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, I got a lot more to talk about, so I want to move on here.
So the California single-payer story has taken on a just geometrically more important place in American society, because what's going on in California is usually a harbinger for where the liberals are going in the future.
Folks, I warned you about this in my second book, The Fight, when I wrote a chapter about red states versus blue states and how the Republican Party is making a real mistake not pouring money into blue states.
Now, Joe living in Maryland and doing politics every day in his morning show for, what, 100 years now?
Yeah, 25.
Yeah, 25 years.
And me having run in a blue state, Maryland, and having lived in New York, I am intimately familiar with the politics of deeply blue states, both Maryland and New York.
I live in Florida now.
One of the arguments I made why Republicans should be fighting in blue states despite the really long odds, and I don't want to say poor money in there, but definitely invest in those blue states, is because these states, Joe, become incubators for policies in the future that go nationwide and become national policies.
Ladies and gentlemen, you think I'm messing with you about this?
You think I'm making this up?
Go Google Maryland bathroom bill.
Right, Joe?
This all started in Maryland and California, and then all of a sudden, you know, as I wrote my conservative review piece about things liberals taught me, you blink for a second on a liberal.
Next thing you know, you're like, wait, wait, wait, let me get this straight.
Men in the women's room is a thing now?
Like, that's a thing.
Oh, you crazy.
Like, 20 years ago, you would have been laughed at.
Ladies and gentlemen, it started in blue states.
If you don't shut that down right away, it becomes a national issue.
So you have to fight it at the state and local level.
Now, segueing into what's going on in California.
The state of California, with its near 40 million residents, I almost did an Austin Powers there, 40 quadrillion residents, 40 million residents, is now advancing, it passed the Senate, a single-payer bill.
Single-payer meaning government-run healthcare.
I know most of you, I don't want to insult your intelligence, but if you haven't heard of what single-payer means, it means Everybody in the state of California who's a California resident, legal or illegal, can go to the doctor and hospital, Joe, for free!
For free!
Isn't it great?
Free!
Everything's free!
The money fairy, it's free!
The money fairy comes down, sprinkles money on doctors, you're free!
Hospitals, you're free too!
Surgeons, free!
Flu shots, free!
It's all free!
Pharmacists, free!
Medicine, Free!
It's all free.
Isn't this great?
This is amazing how they figured that out.
It's incredible.
I mean, I went to the movies for like the first time ever.
I've been like boycotting Hollywood.
I saw that Alien.
I love those Alien movies.
And they go to this planet that, and they think it's, I'm not going to ruin the plot, but they think it's like really terrific.
They're like, oh, look at this planet we found.
It looks just like Earth.
This is it.
The liberals have found another planet that looks just like Earth, except everything's free.
It's amazing.
Keep in mind, The doctors are demanding a salary.
The hospitals are demanding a salary.
The people who own the building that the hospital rents are demanding rent.
I mean, the administrative assistant in the doctor's office needs to be paid.
But don't worry, Joe.
It's all free.
I mean, it boggles my mind.
Folks, this single-payer thing in California is a disaster of epic proportions.
To be fair and a bit self-deprecating, there was a selfish side of me when I was... because I've been talking about this for a while.
We brought this up like two weeks ago.
That said, and I may have even said this to you, Joe, like, hey, you know what, let California do it, man, because it's going to collapse.
You did, I remember, yes.
I want to apologize to my audience for that.
Really, I mean it, because it's not, you know, you can't be a Christian and really care about the betterment of, listen, I'm a sinner, folks, like everyone, I make mistakes, but I got, it really was a stupid idea.
You can't wish bad on 40 million people.
By the way, probably 20 million of which you know this is a bad idea to make a political point.
That's what liberals do.
It's just dumb.
But there are a lot of Republicans out there who I've kind of heard and even the Wall Street Journal intimates this morning like, hey, let them do it.
Let it collapse and let the rest of the country see how bad this is, because Vermont tried this.
It was a total disaster.
It never got out of the starting block because the costs were so expensive.
Now, just to give you an idea of how much this is going to cost, and this is by conservative projections, ladies and gentlemen, They're talking about $107 billion in new taxes that have to be generated and a 15% payroll tax.
Think about that.
In addition to what you're paying now in California, which is always top five, depending on what kind of business you own in tax states in the entire country.
You are talking about a massive, unprecedented tax hike.
Now, there are some liberal groups throwing out some studies to try to defend this thing, and I want to debunk this thing immediately because you're going to hear it from your liberal friends.
And it just ignores incentives completely.
The California Nurses Association, which is a left-leaning group that's trying to advance a single payer.
Put out a study, and this is almost comical, Joe.
I mean, it's not almost, it is kind of funny.
Like I laughed when I saw it because I thought, this can't be right.
And this is in the journal article today, which I will include in the show notes.
It said that if they implement single payer, that healthcare spending overall is going to go down, I didn't say that wrong, down by $37.5 billion.
And I thought, well, I have a note here, literally it says that's insane.
It's the craziest thing I've ever heard.
And also, it says a couple other things too, but it's underestimating the effective incentives.
Now, I find this interesting.
Their reasoning here, Joe, is that, oh, we're going to cut administrative costs and bloat and bureaucracy.
Folks, will you please stop talking to us like we're idiots?
When has the government ever taken over any economic sphere?
Anywhere?
Health care, education, and shrunken the bureaucracy.
When you look at education spending for the United States government since 1974, it's up 400% in inflation-adjusted terms, state, federal, and local.
You know where that money's gone, Joe?
It's gone to education administrators, not teachers.
Administrative bloat grows under government.
It never shrinks.
You're talking about overriding human psychology.
When it's, Joe, free money from the taxpayer, you say, hey, it's free?
Well, I'm going to work less and I'm going to hire a couple administrative assistants to do the administrative work that I was doing beforehand.
You're seeing it on college campuses.
You're seeing it everywhere.
Whenever you want to find administrative bloat, go look for the government and you will find it dutifully toting along behind.
So the fact that the California Nurses Association, in complete contradiction to any real world information at all, thinks you're going to reduce administrative bloat is quite hilarious.
They will throw out a lot of these Medicaid numbers and say, well, look, Medicaid spends less in administrative costs for, and every time I hear this, Joe, I want to throw up, than a commensurate or a dissimilar sized private insurance.
Folks, that's a scam.
I always like exposing the tricks and debunking the nonsense.
That's a scam.
The way they do this scam, that when liberals will tell you, well, there's some studies have shown that Medicaid is more efficient bureaucratically than private insurance.
This is total garbage.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's a simple sleight of hand here.
Medicaid is an older, sicker population.
So when you look at a private insurance plan, Joe, that covers anyone from a two-year-old infant or one-year-old infant to a hundred-year-old senior citizen, you're going to have a wide spectrum of health care needs.
Sure.
You know, listen, let's be honest.
A 13-year-old might not go to the doctor for five years.
I promise you, if you're 100 years old, you're probably going to be at the doctor once a month.
So Joe, a little common sense here.
A 100-year-old probably costs a lot more than the 13-year-old, right?
I'm not crazy, right?
No, no.
That sounds good.
Yeah.
So the trick the left uses to sell single payer when they talk about these Medicaid studies is they compare apples to oranges.
So Medicaid is an older, sicker population.
Or Medicare, I should say.
They'll talk about Medicare.
Let me scratch that, folks.
Talk about Medicare.
They'll talk about administrative costs.
But they're not comparing apples to apples.
It's an older, sicker population.
So what they'll do is they'll compare 65 or whatever, the people in their 60s and older, to the general private insurance pool.
And what happens is because those costs are more, it's a fraction problem.
So if they, let's say a private insurance company spends $100 on insurance, right?
And of that, you know, they spend $100 on insurance, the administrative cost is $10, okay?
Okay.
So the administrative costs, let's say, are the same, $10.
Right.
So 10 over 100 is 10%.
Yes, it is.
Right, Joe?
That's for the private company.
But... Oh, there I am on Fox again.
Look at that.
This is funny.
I love when they play the tape.
I gotta shave.
I'm keeping it.
So let's go to Medicaid.
So Medicaid's not going to spend $100 on insurance costs, Joe, because they have an older, sicker population.
They're going to spend $1,000.
Right.
So 10% over $1,000, I mean $10 over $1,000, same administrative costs, $10.
Medicaid, they have the same administrative costs.
That would be 1% of their cost.
But it's not because they're more efficient, folks, administratively.
It's only because they spend more money on healthcare.
Do you see the scam?
Sleight of hand, yeah.
Of course it's sleight of hand when you look at the per-person administrative cost, which is the correct way to calculate the administrative cost per beneficiary for private insurance and for Medicare, or even Medicaid to some extent.
To a large extent, actually.
You'll see that the government wastes a ridiculous amount of money on administrative costs.
Don't fall for that scam.
This is the nonsense they use.
Folks, I promise you, I will stand corrected if there's ever an ounce of data that proves the economics of this show wrong.
It's a made-up scam.
They're lying to you.
The government is not more inefficient.
It is grotesquely inefficient when it comes to monitoring healthcare.
Please, take my word for it.
You know what?
Don't take my word.
Go research it yourself.
I'm going to find some links.
I'll get them for you on that because there's some really interesting pieces totally debunking that nonsense that Medicaid and Medicare are somehow more expensive.
But here's another thing I wanted to discuss.
Gosh, so much going on here.
I'm sorry, folks.
I feel like I have so much to tell you in 35 minutes.
I always appreciate you tuning in.
This completely ignores incentives.
The California Nurses Study is saying that if California implements free healthcare, Joe, that use of healthcare services is not going to go up dramatically.
Wait, hold on.
It's like, time out, rewind the tape for those older folks like me.
Get the pencil out, put it in the tape, and spin that sucker around because you don't want to waste the battery in your tape recorder.
For the younger kids, you're like, what the heck is he talking about?
You know what I'm talking about.
Rewind this tape for a minute.
So you're offering a service now, free by the way, which is total nonsense, but you're telling people you can now go to the doctor or hospital with no cost to you at all outside of the ridiculous taxes you're paying, and some people not paying taxes at all.
Now, What I always find fascinating is the left will only ignore incentives like this when it benefits them economically, but they'll promote incentives when they can make a political case.
What do I mean?
Folks, if you live in a blue state, you are probably paying sin taxes that are off the charts.
What are sin taxes?
They're taxes on cigarettes, they're taxes on alcohol, taxes on gambling, whatever they may be.
They're called sin, S-I-N, sin taxes, right?
Not S-Y-N-T-A-X.
Now, in Maryland, they have really high sin taxes, and it was fascinating.
When they were arguing, Joe, for an increase in the sin taxes in Maryland when I was there, what was the argument they made?
You're probably in on some of these things.
They said, Joe, well, if we increase the taxes on alcohol and cigarettes, we'll decrease consumption of the cigarettes and the alcohol, and this is a good thing for society, because cigarettes are causing taxpayers a lot of costs and sickness, and these people go to the hospital, and I thought, Okay, I agree.
You increase the price of anything, you decrease the incentive for people to buy it.
Okay.
Folks, that works in reverse as well.
If you increase the price of something, you will decrease the incentive for someone to buy it because fewer people will have the money to purchase it.
If you only make $100 a week in income and the cigarette tax goes up to $105, ladies and gentlemen, you just don't have the money.
The consumer base has shrunken.
This is simple supply-demand economics.
But the reverse happens too, Joe.
If you make medicine and healthcare, quote, free, which is garbage, nothing's free.
If you make it free, what did P.J.
O'Rourke say?
You think healthcare's expensive now?
Wait till it's free?
That's a PJ O'Rourke-ism, and it's a great one.
When you make it free, you increase the incentive for people to seek service.
There are people out there, ladies and gentlemen, who don't have the money for healthcare now, and listen, I'm not saying this is right, they shouldn't seek healthcare, but I'm just giving you the economics of it.
You can make the judgment for yourself, because this report ignores it.
That if you make it free, there are people who say Joe had a cold, who, let's say they don't have a lot of money.
They don't want to go to the hospital.
You may have a cold and you may now all of a sudden go to the hospital or the emergency room because it doesn't cost you anything.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is going to happen.
How do I know this?
Because with Obamacare, they had a thing where they said, oh gosh, Obamacare.
You know, we implement Obamacare and give people insurance, you know, for free in some cases through the Obamacare exchanges, Joe.
They said, no one, people are going to get out of the ER and they're now going to go to the doctor because Obamacare gave them free insurance.
Remember we discussed this?
Yes, we did.
Well, what happened in the studies?
ER usage went up.
It went up because people felt like they had, you know, free health care.
And they were like, you know what, I'm just going to go to the insurance, the emergency room, because it's convenient.
It didn't go down.
Guys, common sense here, okay?
You can't ignore incentives.
All right, I got a couple of quickies on this, too.
I wanted to get this.
I could talk about this all day.
I love this problem.
Even have some notes here.
ER use syntaxes.
Oh, can't create more time.
Hey, before I get to that, We talked about preparedness with Birchgold and preparing your income stream for a little bit of safety.
But folks, one more thing you really need to ensure your income stream, your retirement, is you need to ensure your food supply.
It is literally crazy.
I want to thank a lady on Facebook, by the way, who just picked up her month's supply of emergency food.
She got the website a little bit wrong but corrected herself.
I'm a big fan of MyPatriotSupply.
You should have your weapons.
You should have them clean.
You should have your ammunition.
Listen, is anything going to happen?
I hope not.
We live in the most prosperous country in the world.
Am I recommending you all go out and start an armory in your house?
Of course not, folks.
But if you have a wife and kids, you should learn how to operate a firearm safely, but you should also ensure your food supply.
It's crazy not to.
It's insane.
We ensure everything that matters.
The North Koreans put out last week a drudge.
They're looking at turning the lights out with an EMP attack.
I'm not making this up.
Look this up yourself.
There is no harm in being prepared.
Go insure your food supply.
Go to preparewithdan.com.
That's preparewithdan.com.
My name, obviously.
Go there and you get a month's supply of emergency food for just $99.
That's it.
$99 for 140 servings of emergency food, breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
Comes in a super slim plastic case.
I have it in my closet.
You never even know it's there.
You slide it right underneath your shoe thing or whatever, on top of a cabinet.
You will never see it, but you will, God forbid, you need it, right?
And don't have it.
Better to have it, not need it, than need it, not have it.
Go to preparewithdan.com today.
Pick it up today.
It's only $99.
Buy yourself some security there, some food security.
All right.
On the incentives note, I keep discussing the Cato piece last week.
I'm going to finally just hit on this quick because it fits into this conversation.
There was a study that came out by the CBO talking about this corporate tax thing.
You know, Trump wants to cut corporate tax.
And I just want to talk about this, not in real deep economic wonkery, but to show you how the left, ladies and gentlemen, is always making it up.
They're always making stuff up and they always use the CBO, even when the CBO doesn't use the CBO.
I'm serious.
So, Trump wants to cut the corporate tax rate.
We currently have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, hovering around 40%, even higher when you factor in state and local taxes.
Folks, that's ridiculous, okay?
Now, it's not the effective rate, because there's a lot of deductions, but it is the nominal one.
There are some businesses, I assure you, paying 40% of their income to the government in taxes, which is absurd.
A couple of moderate Republicans and liberals and Democrats have joined together and said, well, the CBO report came out and said, look, if we cut the corporate tax rate one point, it's going to cost $100 billion.
Cost, Joe, this is funny.
Cost the government.
What do you mean cost the government?
They didn't take our money?
What are you kidding me?
But they said it's going to cost the government $100 billion over 10 years, a one percentage point cut in the corporate tax rate.
And I thought to myself, because this is what I'm here for, folks.
I'm here to debunk the scams for you so you don't have to waste your time.
So I did a little homework and I found a great piece by Cato on this.
Cato, C-A-T-O, that's not the author's name.
Forgive me, I don't have the author's name in front of me, but I'll put it in the show notes at Conservative Review under the podcast tab.
You can read it yourself.
Little wonky, but super good piece.
And the guy says, here's the scam.
Joe, this is what we do.
Yeah?
We get paid to uncover the scam.
The CBO report, which by the way debunks itself later on, but I'll get to that in a second.
The CBO report doesn't say anything about cutting the corporate tax rate one point.
The CBO report says if you were to raise the tax rate one point, that you would raise $100 billion over 10 years.
Now, that's not the same thing, folks, as saying if you cut the corporate tax rate at one point, you're going to cost the government $100 billion over 10.
You may think it is, but it's not.
It's not the same argument.
It's a completely different set of incentives.
It's not the same argument.
The report does not say that.
It does not say if the government is going to, quote, lose $100 billion over 10 years.
It says they would have gained $100 billion more, but then it even debunks that.
So two critiques of this.
It does not say in the report a one-point corporate tax rate cut is going to cost the government money.
It doesn't say that at all.
It says if you raised it one point, you would raise $100 billion.
But there's always a but.
B-U-T, not two T's.
Just one of those two sometimes.
And my butt's been killing me since I got back into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Thanks for all the emails on that, by the way.
Here's what it does say.
This is the CBO, Brent, and the Cato piece quotes this perfectly, right?
The CBO admits its own analysis is flawed.
It says, hey, by the way, if we raise that corporate tax rate, we may not raise that $100 billion because, number one, people will probably reorganize into S-Corps.
Number two, a lot of companies would just take on more debt for a tax deduction to wipe out the additional one point they'd be paying in taxes because debt, you know, like your mortgage interest deduction, corporate debt, you can write off to a degree on your taxes.
Joe, this is a doozy.
This is from the CBO's own report, folks.
This is why you always have to look past the liberal talking points.
There's always a damn scam.
Just look for it.
It says, well, if we raise the corporate tax by one point, it may discourage investment, shift investment to low-tax countries, and it may really hurt economic efficiency.
Whoa, man!
But Joe, other than that, it's a great idea.
So let me get this straight.
The CBO's own report acknowledges that this $100 billion in additional government revenue, which they're going to steal from you, may not materialize because investment might be discouraged.
It may shift that investment out of the country to other countries, to low-tax countries, and economic efficiency goes right in the garbage can.
Hey, folks, this sounds like a great idea.
Let's rock and roll with this.
But again, You will listen to a liberal knucklehead, I'm telling you, if you get into the advanced economic discussions with them, who will post in a message board somewhere that the government is somehow losing revenue, even though the CBO report about them gaining revenue acknowledges that it's likely to lose revenue if they do the hike in taxes.
It's unbelievable!
You cannot win with these buffoons.
They will always find an angle.
All right.
I wanted to get to another story about the social security disability insurance and steel tariffs and folks is important stuff.
I just really, really, I will get to it at some point this week.
And I want to talk about this, but disability insurance thing, because folks, there's something happening right now in the country right now with 25 to 50 year old men not working.
