Ep. 520 Unbelievable Examples of Far-Left Hypocrisy!
SPONSOR LINKS: www.BrickhouseNutrition.com/Dan www.PrepareWithDan.com Show Notes: In this episode I address: Why are liberal Democrats fighting a corporate tax rate cut that will benefit American workers? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/gop-is-said-to-discuss-a-mix-of-temporary-permanent-tax-changes Liberals are losing their minds over a leaked Google memo about "diversity." http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/07/google-engineer-writes-common-sense-memo-workplace-diversity-pc-mob-erupts/ Why are Obamacare supporters still advocating for insurance company bailouts, despite their record revenues? https://www.conservativereview.com/articles/insurance-cartel-making-record-profit-why-more-illegal-bailouts An interesting piece about both sides of the immigration debate. https://www.wsj.com/articles/immigration-anxieties-then-and-now-1502144233
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All the Sanders supporters love throwing bombs at me and I throw them right back.
I'm not here to pull any punches, right?
The Dan Bongino Show.
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On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Bruce and Joe, how are you today?
I'm doing well, Dan.
Oh, I'm doing well.
Yeah, another big news day.
Listen, the tax debate is heating up, as I predicted yesterday with our show about that ridiculous liberal piece.
And thanks for the feedback.
Yesterday's show did phenomenal.
Very big numbers for us on a Monday.
I really appreciate it.
We deconstructed liberal ideology on yesterday's show.
If you missed it, go back and check it out.
It's a really stupid article.
You know, tried to point out how conservatives just don't care about people so we're not even worthy of being spoken to.
We should be put in a corner with a dunce cap on and people should throw darts at us.
So yeah, just annihilated that piece yesterday.
So thanks again for all the feedback.
I appreciate it.
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All right.
So the tax argument on fire.
Our laugher was on Fox News this morning.
Right.
Did you see that?
No, I was working.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're always working.
I know, Joe.
So Art Laffer, founder of the eponymously named Laffer Curve, L-A-F-F-E-R, was on Fox, and there's a big to-do going on about taxes, Joe, because here's the politics.
I'll give you the politics first, the strategy, and we'll talk about the economics in a second, but the politics of it are very simple.
The GOP, the heat is on.
They blew it on healthcare.
Everybody knows it.
People are really upset about what happened on Obamacare.
People are really upset that they elected these people, Joe, that they knocked on doors, that they donated money, that they supported them, that they advanced what they thought were GOP candidates backing them up on the repeal of Obamacare, and they flopped.
So the political pressure is on due to the upcoming midterm 2018 elections where every member of Congress is up and one-third of the Senate, as happens every two years, And the political pressure is on to get something done because they're starting to see the polling.
And Joe, what matters more than anything to elected officials?
Re-election.
Yep.
That's it.
Everything else is secondary, folks.
Make absolutely no mistake.
They're seeing the polls.
They're seeing the generic polls.
Who do you want in charge, Democrats or Republicans?
And Democrats are leading.
It is a frightening scenario.
Now, some good news for you is, even if the Democrats clean up with every seat that Trump won by three points or less in every congressional district, the Republicans will likely still hold the House majority.
Now, again, given the fecklessness of the Republicans, I don't even know what a House majority means anymore.
But as I've always said, although the Republicans are terrible, the Democrats would be far worse.
So don't ever mistake my show for advocating for voting for Democrats.
The Republicans can't get anything done, the Democrats will get something done, which is the immediate destruction of the country.
So the tax argument is heating up, and I was reading a piece in the Wall Street Journal today, and a follow-up piece in Bloomberg, about the proposal to cut the corporate tax rate, which you think would have universal support, folks.
I mean, this is the kind of idea that even if you're a die-hard, tax-and-spend, big government, you know, monopolistic government-ruled Democrat, that you would say, okay, our corporate tax rate is the highest in the world.
A lot of Democrats who are not die-hard, died-in-the-wool liberals have even admitted that this is really hurting business development in the United States.
We have We have to look at doing something with the corporate tax code.
Our business tax is the highest in the world at 35%, our corporate tax rate.
It's just too much, Joe.
We don't need to be the gold medal winner of corporate taxation across the entire known universe and alternate universes as well if you're one of those M-string theory guys or whatever they call that stuff.
All right, so what I found interesting about the journal piece, which I'll put in the show notes today, and I'll email to your email if you want to join my email list at bongino.com.
Thank you for all the new subscribers, by the way.
The email list is blowing up, so I'm getting a lot of good feedback on it.
I will send the stories to your inbox every day.
It's just fascinating.
The Democrats have seemingly come to the conclusion, Joe, based on some economic data on the corporate tax.
And this is how I wrote it out.
I said, well, you may benefit, but we really have to screw over the businesses and the rich guys, so we don't care.
I mean, that's the only way to sum up their opposition.
They don't have any opposition right here.
They don't.
They have nothing.
So I'm just going to quickly cover this, move on to a couple other stories, because it is a very busy news day.
There's other things I want to talk about.
But the Joint Committee, this is a quote, by the way, from this piece that discusses the potential cut in the corporate tax rate and how the Democrats are really reluctant to do this because, you know, corporate taxes, we got to hammer those businesses, Joe.
We got to get those evil rich people.
Il bastardo!
We gotta get them!
We need them!
We need to get them, like pirates on the open seas.
We need to go and hijack those boats.
So here's a quote from the piece about...
A study which I found interesting, and after the quote you may say, well what's your point?
What are you making the case the Democrats are making?
This is going to benefit big business?
Hold on.
So listen to the quote first and then I'll explain.
This is from the journal piece.
The Joint Committee on Taxation, which will evaluate any tax bill that moves through Congress, estimated that capital bears 75% of the long-run corporate tax burden, with labor paying the rest.
What does that mean?
It basically says the corporate tax rate, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, corporate taxes are paid basically by holders of capital.
The evil rich people.
Terrible rich people.
And that labor employees, the rest of us, the middle class, Pays about 25% of the corporate tax rate.
Now that's a study in the Joint Committee on Taxation.
You may say, well, wow, what's the problem, Dan?
That fits perfectly into the left's narrative that evil rich people should pay all the taxes and that workers shouldn't pay much of it.
Folks, That is one limited study.
There is a foundation, a library of other studies showing the exact opposite.
Some models, Joe, show the exact opposite number, that 70% of it is born by labor and 30% is born the other way, is born by capital.
Now, the fact that the evil rich people and the holders of capital stocks and bonds and business owners are paying the tax doesn't make the tax good.
I'm not even making that case.
I'm just trying to give you two different scenarios about what's going on, and I'm trying to show to you, and I will do some other quotes here, that the Democrats' case is essentially this.
We don't care about the economy, we just want to hammer rich people.
Now, here's another quote from the piece.
And this is now defying that 75-25 breakdown and saying that, hey, this may not be right.
You know, the holders of capital may not be bearing the entire corporate tax burden.
It may be more on labor than we think.
Here's the quote.
It says, the nature of a global economy complicates a situation as corporations are taxed differently depending on their locations as capital flows easily across the border.
Now, here's another quote.
The Treasury Department under Mr. Mnuchin pointed to a 2015 study by Asimar and Hubbard that estimated that a $1 increase in the corporate tax rate leads to a $0.60 decline in wages.
So here's my point, the point I'm trying to make, and I'm going to use another quote.
I don't like to go too quote heavy on the show because I don't want to bore you to death, but it's important you understand the economics of this.
Point number one, we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world, nobody disagrees with that.
Right.
Point number two, corporations are exiting the United States for more corporate tax-friendly environments like Ireland and other places in the world where the corporate taxes are lower because they don't have the money to compete on a global stage while paying 35% of that money to the United States government.
Third, yes, the effective tax rate is a little lower because there are some corporate tax deductions, okay?
I get that.
But that's still not an argument for keeping the tax rate high.
That's just an argument for crony carve-outs.
Third, Fourth, the data models and the studies go both ways.
One model shows that labor, you, the middle class, most of the listeners out there, based on just the percentage of the population, some studies show you're paying about 25% of the corporate tax.
So yes, you're getting screwed.
The fact that you're getting screwed a little less in one study doesn't matter to me.
Other studies show you're paying up to 70% of the corporate tax.
So the corporate tax, although Joe, it's a tax on business, there are studies out there that show you're paying up to 70% of it.
Here's a quote from a Bloomberg piece.
And again, I'll put the show notes.
A separate study from the Tax Foundation found that lowering the corporate rate to 15% for just 10 years would initially boost growth, but it then would be slower in the seventh year if there hadn't been a cut at all as companies braced for a higher rate of return.
A temporary cut.
This is the line.
Folks, remember this one.
And I'll explain it in a second.
A temporary cut would be more likely to benefit shareholders, according to that June report, while a permanent cut's benefits would trickle down to workers.
Gosh, I hate that term, trickle down.
Because someone's going to say, trickle down economics, which is no such thing.
What's the point of that?
Again, showing how Democrats, even though the data goes in both directions, and the common sense data would dictate that you pay the corporate tax, most of the corporate tax, because a corporation show are just tax collectors for the government.
You pass a tax on a corporation, it doesn't invent new money, it just adds that into the price of the product.
That's all it does.
So the data goes both ways, showing that either way, labor and middle class workers are paying a good portion, Joe, of the corporate tax rate.
If you work, if you're an employee for a company, and the corporate taxes go up in that company, nobody disputes you're paying a good chunk of that.
The only thing in question is how much of it you're actually paying.
The irony of the second quote I just gave you is, the Democrats want any tax cut to sunset after 10 years, even though the data As evidenced by that quote I just told you from the Tax Foundation, is that if it sunsets, it will not benefit labor as much as it would benefit businesses.
Because after seven years, Joe, businesses would start to anticipate a tax hike again.
So let's say that, does that make sense?
The Democrats are fighting for a 10-year sunset.
In other words, corporate tax cut and it'll disappear after 10 years.
The Republicans want it to be permanent.
Even though the data shows that if you sunset the tax cut and make it go away after 10 years, it will not benefit workers.
It'll benefit the companies more because they'll start to stockpile after about seven years to store up money for the increase in taxes after 10 years that's going to come after it sunsets.
So basically, a permanent tax cut helps workers and Democrats still don't want it, because again, as I opened up with, you may benefit, but we really have to screw over the businesses.
This is just so upsetting, folks.
It's just amazing what Democrats will do to advance this sick, deranged ideology, that they just have to hurt people no matter what, despite the fact that all of the data points in the opposite direction.
All right, I'll put those stories in the show notes today.
I just found them fascinating.
Another example of how we just can't get things done in DC because the Democrats are committed to class warfare and really deranged income inequality arguments.
All right, did you see the, I don't even know how to describe it, the hullabaloo developing over this Google email?
Have you heard about this?
I don't know if you guys covered this in the morning show.
We didn't cover this this morning, no.
Yeah, so a memo, an internal memo that was sent out by a Google engineer.
Internally in Google has blown up and become, I kid you not, Joseph, an international, what do you call it, front page story.
So, here's what happened.
An employee, he works for Google, he's an engineer, he wrote this memo, he sent it around, it leaked to the press, and in the memo, he talks about Google's efforts to, and this is the lefty buzz term, Google's diversity, Joe, efforts, how they're actually hurting the company, and hurting people within the company, because they're incentivizing, specifically, he mentions things, not things, he mentions diversity efforts, such as having more female engineers, How they're pushing women into fields they may not be comfortable with, and how it's hurting men who would otherwise get jobs in the engineering field, and how that's, you know, this is hurting Google's overall efforts.
Oh my gosh, the left, I have a piece by the Federalist, in the Federalist, I always pronounce the same way, David Hirsanya, I think it is, but I'll put it in the show notes, it's a really good piece, and the left is melting down over this memo Because the case the guy makes is apparently... How do you describe this after yesterday's show?
Remember we discussed in yesterday's show how the left, they have to characterize people as evil, therefore not worthy of a conversation in order to shut down facts and data?
I think the problem the left is having with this piece is the guy who wrote the memo inside of Google.
makes a pretty clear-cut case that this isn't helping anyone, their so-called diversity efforts.
And the left, of course, Joe, doesn't want to have a debate about this.
Now, here's a great quote from this.
This is the author of the internal memo in Google.
He writes in his update to the memo, because he's now been fired and it's causing this big, big stink.
He says, psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance.
But unfortunately, our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber.
Now, if that doesn't hammer home what we were talking about yesterday, how you're not even allowed to bring certain topics up, and if you do, you will be, quote, shamed and misrepresented, then I don't know what else does.
It's the left's effort to control the dialogue by stopping it.
They don't want a dialogue about this.
Now, a couple of points I wanted to bring up on this piece.
Guys, ladies, this is a big deal.
My wife is brilliant.
She's the smartest woman I know.
And my wife has computer capabilities, technical capabilities, using a computer, software.
I mean, even though she's more of an internet and web developer and a database developer, she can figure out anything.
I remember in college when I was finishing up my graduate degree, I had to do a Statistical analysis for a project I was working on with one of the professors in the psychology department, and the statistical analysis used kind of an outdated statistical program, you know, on a disk that, I mean, it was even hard to find anything that could run this program.
But my wife, I remember coming home and saying, can you help me out with this?
She figured it out in like two minutes, even though she had almost zero experience with the statistics, and I was so impressed.
So my wife is brilliant when it comes to this kind of information.
Now, she's not an engineer per se, But the interesting part of the memo, the internal Google memo, is the guy is not saying in the piece that women are stupid and can't be engineers.
Right.
He's simply making the point, and let me read you a quote.
This is from his actual memo.
He says, I'm not saying that we should restrict people to certain gender roles.
I'm advocating for quite the opposite.
Treat people as individuals, not just another member of their quote group.
Folks, what's controversial about that?
I don't understand.
He's simply saying that if women don't want to be engineers and don't have a skill set to become engineers, that's probably not because they're women.
Maybe they just didn't like it.
Why are we pushing people into the careers they don't want or aren't suited for?
It's kind of like conservative values, isn't it?
Well, you would think, but this is causing a big uproar with the left because the left is convinced that we should have equal outcomes no matter what.
Now, I wanted to bring this up because this is important.
If you read Hayek and The Road to Serfdom, and a lot of Hayek's work, Friedrich Hayek, which is a great book by the way, Road to Serfdom, it's a, I mean, you have to read it.
It's a quick read, it's a brilliant book, it's just an amazing piece.
You know, he writes, and I'm not quoting him exactly, but in the book he writes about how the only way to enforce equal outcomes on a society, Joe, is to treat people unequally.
There is no other way.
Now, I'll use a simpler example rather than the Google engineer example that we're supposed to force women into engineering careers.
So in other words, Joe, with Google's diversification efforts, this isn't their exact number or anything, but we need 50% women and 50% men.
Well, what if 50% of the women don't want to be engineers?
So the only way to enforce these equal outcomes is to treat people unequally.
Now, I'll give you a simpler example.
And Hayek kind of alludes to this in the book.
If you were to enforce equal outcomes in income, in other words, income equality, you know, kind of hark back to what I just said, the Democrats focus on income equality when it comes to corporate taxation.
You know, they're convinced they have to hurt businesses to help the middle class, even though what they're doing is actually hurting the middle class, too.
The only argument is what percentage of the middle class and how much extra money they're going to pay.
That's the only argument.
Nobody disagrees a corporate tax hike hurts the middle class worker.
It's just a matter of how much.
But the Dems are so committed to hurting businesses, they want to hurt the middle class, too.
They're just arguing over the degree of hurt, the degree of ass whooping they're going to give them.
That's the only argument.
You're tracking me here?
Yeah, we're all with you.
Their income equality arguments Requires so income, everybody should have income that's equal or relatively equal.
The whole basis of income equality and their argument against income inequality is that people should have equal income, but the only way to do that is to treat people unequally, Joe.
Sure.
What do I mean by that?
There are going to be different levels of output, different levels of commitment to work, different levels of work in general.
There are some people who just refuse to work.
Sure.
Do you deny that?
I mean, even if you're a die-hard, dyed-in-the-wool, radical, Antifa, you know, black scarf over your face, beating up conservatives, Bernie Sanders liberal, do you argue the basic premise that different people will work at different levels of intensity or at all?
So what you're saying then is, if you're arguing for income equality, is that even though there are different levels of output and commitment to work, that if, say, Joey Bag of Donuts works 10 hours a week, and could work 40 but just chooses not to, and makes, say, $200 a week for his 10 hours, You know, that Johnny Rottenapples, who works 40 hours a week and makes $500, what you're essentially saying, Joe, is you should take money from Johnny Rottenapples, even though he works 40 hours a week and puts out more of an effort, you should take money and transfer that money to Joey Bagadonuts,
Because... Why?
Because they should have equal outcomes and income?
Yeah.
But what's... I don't understand what your premise is for that.
I actually do understand.
The liberal's premise for the entire thing is that, oh, Joey Bagatonis just isn't working hard because society and capitalism failed him, which is absolutely asinine, but that's their anti-anti-communist approach.
So what they're saying is that you should treat people unequally.
In other words, Johnny Rotten's 40 hours of output Should be treated differently than Joey Bagadona's 10 hours of output simply because Johnny Rotten Apples works harder.
Now, folks, do you get how that can't possibly make sense?
Like, this was Hayek's larger point, was that your efforts to create an equal outcome requires you to treat people unequally, so it's ideologically antithetical to what you're saying.
You're saying, Joe, that people should all be treated equally as you treat people unequally to treat people equally.
Sure.
Now, that is what this memo was all about.
That's why the left is going wild.
Because in this memo to Google, he's basically saying that, wait, shouldn't we be treating people as individuals?
And shouldn't Google be treating people for engineering positions based on the quality of their work and their productivity?
And basically, Google's response is, no, we should be meeting a quota first and worry about the skill second.
Folks, do you understand how that actually hurts people?
The point I'm trying to make, and I hope I'm clear on this Joe.
Yeah.
If I'm not, you're always the audience on BuzzFeed.
No, you're good.
Is that this is not a pain-free policy.
A commitment to quote buzzwords like income equality, equality, and diversity are not pain-free.
They require you to absolutely treat people unequally.
When you give a job to someone in Google or something, there's gonna be a story in a second that's gonna disturb you, but when you give a job to Google and Facebook and the Secret Service, the NYPD, the United Nations, whatever it may be, when you give a job to someone based not on their skill sets, but on a commitment to their biological reproductive parts, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation or something else, The person with the skill set who worked to get that job is eliminated.
This is a zero sum game.
Right.
I don't mean eliminated like killed like Terminator style.
I mean, they were eliminated from the position.
This is not pain free.
Stop insisting that your commitment to diversity is painless and doesn't hurt anyone.
Your commitment to diversity at its very basic level, Joe, requires you to treat people unequally and to discriminate against others.
Your justification for the discrimination that oh well you know white white privilege and you've you know the male patriarchal power structure has gotten ahead for years does not justify further discrimination to battle discrimination.
Do you understand that that's why this memo the left is going wild?
Because if people start to expose what's going on in companies and within the government with commitments to quote diversity that are not pain-free that are hurting real people in real time The left is afraid their entire victim agenda will fall apart.
Because Joe, their entire agenda is based on the fact that the white patriarchal power structure, you know, remember critical theory we talked about?
Yeah.
How if you are a white man that the society's benefited you for so long that you need to be kept out of the conversation.
Yeah.
Folks, that is not going to help advance a more Prosperous, economically prosperous, and more beneficial, more cohesive society.
Enhancing a reverse discrimination to battle past discrimination.
That's not going to help.
You have to get to the root of the problem.
The root of the problem, you know, why are certain people in certain ethnic groups doing better than other people in certain ethnic groups?
Well, Joe, a common-sense person would say, well, what are people in certain cultural, racial, and ethnic groups doing to lead to that success?
What are they doing?
A. They're going to school.
B. There's stable families.
Maybe we should start to look at policies and incentivizing people to follow that path.
That's not what they're doing.
And this is why the left is absolutely losing their minds over this.
Quick story about this in case you think again that these commitments to quote diversity are pain-free and income equality.
They're not pain-free.
They require the absolute unequal treatment of other people.
When I was a secret service agent, and I'm not... I know some people get upset when I plug my stuff on my own podcast, which I understand.
My book's coming out on September 19th, and I've been very, very scarce with the promotion because I don't want to beat you guys up and ladies out there.
I'm not trying to get money from y'all all the time.
I always hated that.
It's kind of annoying, actually.
But I do have a book coming out September 19th.
I'd appreciate it if you'd go pick it up.
It's on Amazon now.
It's called Protecting the President.
But there is a chapter in the book where I discuss the Secret Service's commitment to diversity as well.
And I get it, folks.
I know that sounds great.
It's a buzzword.
But I talk about the real-world ramifications of what that commitment to diversity over the equal treatment of people.
Because remember, a commitment to diversity means you have to treat people unequally.
What the real-world ramifications of that were for the Secret Service.
I was there in the Secret Service.
I was an instructor in the Academy and I saw what happened.
Folks, I saw some really disturbing things.
I describe them in a chapter of the book and I think they're really going to freak you out because you would think something with such bipartisan unanimous agreement, Joe, such as protection of the president.
I mean, we could all agree, right?
The president of the United States, regardless of who he is or his ideological leanings, that he needs to be protected to conduct the business of the office.
We all agree, right?
There's nothing dramatic about that, right?
You would think with something like that, people would understand that the best people, the best of the best of the best, the cream of the crop, should be put around the president to secure his life or maybe her life in the future.
Folks, that's not what's happening.
What happened in the Secret Service is their commitment to diversity.
And again, it's just a buzzword.
I watched this happen.
They'll argue this till kingdom come, and I'm telling you it's true.
There would be quotas.
We have to have a certain amount of women on the detail.
We have to have a certain amount of Hispanic agents, a certain amount of black agents, a certain amount of Asian agents.
We can't have this many white agents.
Folks, this is the kind of stuff that's destroying America right now.
When we don't have a system based on merit, and you're putting people in front of the President of the United States or other protectees, some of which who are not qualified, And I go over some examples in the book.
People who are not qualified to do the job.
You are literally, not figuratively, putting the country at risk.
And other countries as well, as you put some of these people on foreign dignitary details, who are protecting them, who don't have the physical capability or the skill set to actually do the job.
I hear you.
I think our listeners do too.
Joe, that is not only...
Treating qualified agents who deserve those positions who were locked out of them because it's zero-sum.
If there's one pin, personnel identification number, one spot in the Secret Service on the Presidential Protection Division, and you give it to a person unqualified based on a diversity quota, From a person who is qualified?
You are now unfairly discriminating against a qualified person and you're unfairly treating the country who is entitled to top-tier protection for the President of the United States and other protectees.
I know that's going to be controversial.
I didn't write the book to be controversial.
Again, I don't need the money.
I don't say that in a pretentious, jerk kind of way.
I just, I wrote the book because I think it's important.
I think it's important right now to discuss what's going on within the federal government given the Trump administration's focus on cleaning out the swamp.
I think what cleaning out the swamp also means cleaning out the old ways of doing things, Joe.
And if the old way of doing things is enforced discrimination, using buzz terms like diversity, which don't mean anything, rather than the meritocracy, which means employing and promoting people who actually have the skill set to get the job done.
I think it's time, despite the fact that the left is going to lose their minds and go wild, to start the fight back against that as well.
And this Google memo is an example of how viciously the left will fight back.
Remember, people get hurt when you commit to treating people unfairly.
This is hysterical as we're talking about this.
Look, I have Fox on in the background.
Google fires engineer who vote viral memo.
I'm telling you, this thing has gone nuclear.
So I'll put this, there's a really good piece by, again, I say his name wrong all the time, David Hirsanya.
It's in the Federalist.
I will put it up in the show notes today.
And if you want it, I can email it to your inbox.
Just sign up for my email list.
All right, a couple more really good stories to get to today.
Really busy news day.
Before we get to that, today's show also brought to you by our buddies at My Patriot Supply.
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Okay.
Great, great piece by our buddy Dan Horowitz at Conservative Review today.
This guy really brings it sometimes when he writes his pieces on healthcare.
I know you do his podcast too over at Conservative Review, so you guys can check that out too.
But he wrote a really fantastic piece at CR.
About this just abomination, this bailout we've been discussing repeatedly, these cost-sharing subsidies, the bailout of the health insurance industry by the American taxpayer.
Folks, this is outrageous what's happening.
Now just to be clear again for those of you who missed my last week's show what this is, these are monthly payments.
Monthly payments from the United States government being made to health insurance companies By the way, stipulated under Obamacare.
I thought the left hated health insurance companies.
Now they want the government to pay them off.
Monthly payments.
And these monthly payments are being made to health insurance companies to offset high deductibles for lower income folks who basically can't afford deductibles and co-pays and things like that.
So there's subsidy payments made to the health insurance companies to cover some of those folks.
Now, forgetting for a moment why those deductibles are high precisely because of Obamacare, why the cost of health care is high precisely because of government involvement.
I can't go over that again, but the third-party payer effects have discussed it repeatedly.
Health care is expensive because of the government, not in spite of it.
What's really amazing about these cost-sharing subsidies is it fits in with the entire narrative of the show today.
The narrative of the show today has been how liberals will hurt other people.
Just to advance a narrative that fits into their limited worldview.
First, I brought up the corporate tax.
How, again, nobody, no one disputes the fact that a business tax hurts employees.
The only question, Joe, is the degree.
Liberals don't care.
Secondly, the liberal commitment to diversity.
The buzzword.
Again, no reasonable person disputes that other people are discriminated against and treated unfairly when you commit to diversity over skills and merit.
Nobody disputes that.
Liberals don't care.
Third, liberals.
Oh, these health insurance companies are ruining American healthcare.
There should be no profits in healthcare.
Well, why are you paying them off with our tax money?
What am I missing here?
This is a liberal idea.
Now, to be fair, And so critique here against the Trump administration, to be fair here, they're still paying these cost-sharing subsidies.
And there are Republicans out there, feckless Republicans, who still support paying them.
Taxpayer money to health insurance companies.
Now Dan Horowitz makes an unbelievable facts and database case as to how big of an economic abomination and how unfair this really is.
A couple of takeaways from the piece which I'll put in the show notes again today.
Insurance companies are privy To a $275 billion tax deduction.
Oh.
Joe, now that tax deduction, you get health insurance from CBM, right?
Yes, I do, Dan.
So WCBM and Joe, they get a tax deduction for the value of Joe's health care plan, meaning that he gets to take that off his income.
That deduction, you all get it, it's not just Joe, it's not like some special CBM carve-out, but that deduction, believe it or not, Joe, $275 billion is twice the value of the mortgage interest deduction.
That's a staggering number.
Credit to Harvard.
I didn't have this number in the back of my head.
I knew it was worth a lot.
I didn't know the number.
Twice the value of the mortgage interest deduction, or I should say more than the value of the mortgage interest deduction.
That is just staggering.
So the health insurance companies that the liberals hate get a $275 billion tax deduction.
We should still pay them off monthly.
Here's another one.
This one is going to blow your mind.
I'm going to take a note on something quick and I don't want to forget this.
The big six healthcare companies, Joe.
But remember, they need a payoff from the government.
Made six billion in combined revenue the last quarter.
Up 29% from the same quarter a year ago.
Yeah!
Listen, folks, I'm a capitalist.
Don't get me wrong.
And I'm a capitalist because I believe in freedom.
Not because I believe in, you know, the unending accumulation of wealth and income inequality.
I just believe in freedom.
That's it.
And freedom comes with a consequence, and the consequence of freedom is you're free, and some people are free to work, and some people are free not to.
Okay?
That's kind of the funny thing about freedom.
You're free to not do anything if you don't want to do anything.
But what I'm not for is capitalism, crony capitalism, and really crony socialism in this case.
Because what we've done here, Joe, is we've privatized the revenue, and we've made public the risk.
What do I mean by that?
I mean, the public, the taxpayers, now monthly, are paying off insurance companies who, let me get this straight, made $6 billion in combined revenue last quarter, up 29% from the same quarter a year ago.
Again, these numbers are in Horowitz's piece.
You can check them out yourself.
What?
I mean, I'm asking a very serious question to liberals.
No screaming and yelling.
Very calmly, rationally and reasonably.
Let's pretend we're in court for a second.
You know, we're in that few good men moment before the, you can't handle the truth!
You're damn right I ordered the code red!
I love that movie, even though it's like a big lib movie that loves to, you know, they shamefully attack the Marines.
There's some good acting in the movie.
They do.
The Marines are great.
Like it's meant to paint Marines in a bad light, but Jack Nicholson was good in the movie.
But what I find amazing is a very serious question for liberals.
How do you justify supporting Obamacare?
Knowing that Obamacare initiated these cost-sharing payments, which are taxpayer-subsidized payouts to an insurance industry that at least in some cases is raking in unbelievable revenue right now.
How do you justify that?
Again, I'm a capitalist.
I'm not attacking these health insurance companies.
They are simply working around the legislation that some of them lobbied to get, to be fair.
But the government caused the problem.
The government is the one making these rules, not the insurance company.
Now, you could argue they're lobbying.
Yes, of course.
Definitely tilt to the playing field.
I'm not in any way suggesting otherwise.
But even if that's your argument, Libs, right?
Joe, say your comeback is, well, they lobbied us through Obamacare to do this.
Well, why did you do it?
I don't understand.
Not one Republican voted for this.
So what you're saying is health insurance money lobbied Obama and the Democrat Congress and Senate to write into the Obamacare bill a subsidy paid by the taxpayers to insurance companies making near-record revenue And you're blaming the health insurance companies for what?
Forcing you to eat your oatmeal?
Just don't eat the oatmeal!
Do you understand they have no argument, Joe?
Yeah.
And I read this and I'm like, I can't get over it.
I cannot believe what's going on right now.
The Democrat Party, which is supposed to be in it, you know, for the quote, little guy, The whole idea of the Democrat Party was they were going to fight for the everyday working man has completely collapsed.
That's why you see the South, you see the West Virginia governor, you see all of these people moving into the under the Republican tent because they're starting to realize slowly but surely that the Democrat Party is not in it for the little guy.
They're in it for big government and big business that supports big government.
There's a reason a lot of health care money and lobby money flows to Democrat lawmakers, because Democrat lawmakers ensure that money flows back to them!
This isn't complicated, folks.
These are devastating numbers.
All right, read the Horowitz piece.
I just, it's a serious question of liberals, and if I have, you know, I get some emails from liberalists.
There's one particularly angry one, Joe, yesterday.
Man, he was, it was all caps, too, and like exclamation points, you know.
This is one of those.
I get that from, remember the Sylvester Stallone Sharon Stone movie where he's a bomb maker and the father, they kill the father at the end.
Those are his last words.
I always remember that.
This guy was pissed yesterday.
He was really upset.
But it's a serious question, Philips.
How do you justify that?
How do you justify taxpayer payoffs to health insurance companies you rail against every day?
I'd like to know your answer because I'm really unsure as to how this fits in with your worldview.
Hey, thanks to the one listener yesterday who emailed me about ISDN.
Remember, Joe, a week ago or so, or two weeks ago, we talked about how talk radio folks used to be done over ISDN lines.
Remember those internet connections?
All the time.
You bet I do.
Yeah, I mean, a lot of talk radio hosts, by the way, still have ISDN hookups.
A lot of the ones you know, I'm not going to say who.
And I said, well, ATMs are the only ones left using ISDNs.
I had a listener.
It goes to show you, we have listeners who do everything.
Guys like, hey, Dan, love your show, but I service ATMs and they don't use ISDN anymore either.
Oh, is that right?
Yeah, so you and I both were kind of like, really?
Because I had heard that, that that was the only other industry that still used it.
So thank you to the listener who corrected that.
I heard that from an engineer, yeah.
Yeah, so did I. I heard it from a guy in a bank that, yeah, I think we still use ISDNs.
But he said no.
He said even the ones in gas stations, the ATMs, go over either like a cellular network or the internet connection there.
They don't use ISDNs.
So thank you for the correction.
And you know on the show, if we say something wrong, call us out, man.
We will always correct it.
I had heard that from someone, and I should have fact checked it before I put it out there.
But I appreciate it nonetheless.
Hey, one last topic I wanted to bring up.
I read a piece in the In the journal today, a very fair piece on immigration policy in the United States.
And I am a realist on immigration.
I am not a restrictionist, but I am a realist.
I think, having lived through immigration personally in my household, my wife is an immigrant to the country.
We went through the process.
It's a tough, arduous, and sometimes ridiculous process.
Maybe one day I'll discuss it in more depth.
But I get it.
I see both sides of the equation.
And my stance, just so we're clear on where we're operating from, is I have no problem with this RAISE Act out right now.
I think it is time to maybe put a cap on legal immigration for a little while, for simply, folks at this point, for assimilation purposes.
We can't endlessly take in millions of new people each year and expect them to acclimate to our culture in the United States.
It's just very difficult.
Ebbs and flows should be natural.
We should allow people who are here to acclimate to basically a different culture and a different lifestyle in the United States.
I get it.
I'm not one of these people who doesn't understand the economic consequences of that.
There are some damaging economic consequences to restricting and capping legal immigration.
I get that.
But I do think the assimilation effects and allowing people to assimilate into the United States and develop one cohesive country far outweigh some of the economic effects.
Now, I am absolutely against illegal immigration.
Period.
Full stop.
There are laws in the country.
You don't like them?
Change them.
You don't get to pick what laws you enforce.
But there's a really good piece in the Journal today.
It is subscriber only, so, you know, I'll put it in the show notes, but you're on your own with that.
I didn't want to get into the piece too much, but he talks about...
How unskilled labor, how, listen, you know, we have to be really careful, though, about unskilled labor.
So he's given point-counterpoint.
He says, you know, immigration can be good because we can bring ideas and people and new energy and new taxpayers to the country.
But unskilled labor, you know, there's a problem here as well.
How much unskilled labor are we going to need?
And I thought, gosh, I got to bring this up in light of a conversation we've already had.
And I thought, again, it points out liberal hypocrisy, fitting with our corporate tax argument, our argument about the Google memo, our argument about taxpayer subsidies to healthcare companies liberals say they hate.
Here's another one.
Liberals advocate, Joe, right?
I mean, the liberal position is basically open borders.
Can we all agree on that?
They won't say that, but you and I know it's true, right?
I'm not talking about the Democrat position, to be clear.
I'm not knocking Democrats.
There are a lot of Democrats, especially moderate Democrats, who are absolutely for a border wall and controlling the influx of people into the country.
But I don't think a reasonable person would argue that the far-left position, the liberal position on immigration, is essentially open borders.
Yeah, come on in.
Yeah, come on in.
Anybody, anytime, don't even worry about it.
That's their position.
If you're advocating for that, but then you're also advocating, which liberals also support, a good majority of them at least, this universal basic income idea, how can those two mesh at the same time?
Think about what I'm telling you, Joe.
If your argument for a universal basic income is illiberal, in other words, the idea that the government should give people, literally, a universal basic income.
The government should give people, let's say, $30,000 a year.
Taken from other people, obviously.
That's where the government gets its money.
Of course.
But liberals like Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook and other people are arguing that yes, you know, that people aren't going to have anything to do in the future.
See where I'm going with this?
The argument for the UBI, the Universal Basic Income, is that automation, robotics, and technology are going to eliminate people from traditionally manual labor jobs that didn't require a lot of skills.
Robots will do them, Joe.
People aren't going to have anything to do, they're going to be bored, so therefore the government should pay people a universal basic income to compensate for the increase in technology because that lower level of skills is not going to be necessary anymore because a robot's going to do your job.
Well, where will these unskilled laborers work?
Ah!
Thank you!
There you go!
You picked up what I was putting down and you can't make the same case!
You cannot say on one hand, right, this is why I was at one of Johnson's economic advisors, Lyndon Johnson said once, you know, go find me a one-armed economist because they were always saying on one hand and on the other hand, just give me a hand!
Give me one hand!
On one hand they're saying this, they're saying, listen, We need open borders.
Everybody has a right to come to the United States.
It's the land of the free, home of the brave.
You had Jim Acosta at CNN.
The Statue of Liberty saying a poem somehow on the Statue of Liberty was legislative and or executive policy, which is absurd.
They give us everybody!
But then on the other hand, Joe, they're arguing that we should have a universal basic income because in the future nobody's going to have anything to do because unskilled laborers will have nothing to do.
So I don't get it.
Bring in unskilled labor even though unskilled labor is going to have nothing to do and therefore we should pay the unskilled labor to come to the United States.
These arguments just don't correspond.
It takes a level of psychological disconnect only possible with laborers.
I mean, it really does.
You know, one quick thing on this topic, because I tweeted out something.
You should never say your own stuff is funny.
That's like the worst thing ever.
Never ever say your own stuff.
But I did tweet out something last night I thought was a little bit funny.
There was a report on Drudge that if you sleep less than six hours a night, it can cause brain damage.
So I tweeted out subsequently, I said, and in other news, breaking research reports, liberals have a really tough time staying asleep at night.
I think liberals have, as far left liberals must have, they're not sleeping six hours a night.
The brain damage is kicking in.
Bring in unskilled labor, but they're not going to have anything to do when they get here.
Pay higher corporate tax, even though it screws the middle class.
Yeah, but we're just arguing how much we should screw them.
Obamacare subsidies.
Health insurance companies suck, but we should pay them off every single month and add to their record profits.
The Google memo.
We got to have diversity, but what if it screws other people?
Screw those other people.
Don't have to treat them fairly.
We're just talking about treating those people fairly.
