Ep. 524 Liberal Double Standards are Making Me Sick
In this episode: Liberal double standards are sickening. After the horrific attack in Charlottesville, America deserves better than cheap partisan attacks. The Philadelphia soda tax is another sad example of the liberals commitment to failed economic policies. https://www.wsj.com/articles/philadelphias-soda-tax-bust-1502661280 Is your home's value going to be impacted by tax reform? http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tax-individual-idUSKCN1AU15I
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker.
The Dan Bongino Show.
Everywhere big government gets bigger, corruption grows bigger, and these liberals just keep going on and on and on about how great big government is, and they can't prove to you any examples of how wonderful big government is almost anywhere.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Young kids, you are too stupid to figure out your health insurance needs, so we're gonna hammer your cabooses to death until you figure out that the government knows what's best in here in Italy.
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?
Man, I'm doing good.
I'm in sunny Florida.
Yes, Producer Joe in studio today.
I'm looking at his Elvis look in Maine right now.
A little bit of gray in there, but that's okay.
I'm graying myself a little bit up in the right-hand corner of my skull from all the beatings I've been giving my body lately, which I really have to calm down.
Poor Joe was like, gosh, you look terrible when you walked in the door.
Moving around like a really old guy these days.
All right, as always, Joe, a very busy news weekend.
You've been here with me tinkering around with the studio for most of it, so let's dig right into it.
You know this Charlottesville tragedy that occurred down there.
We had an attack down there on a group of people by a guy in a car.
There's a bunch of accounts about what happened, but there's some pretty clear video about what happened, and I wanted to put a few things out about this and clear this up if we can.
You know, what I find really amazing about this is this is clearly the act of someone who was deranged and intent on doing harm.
I mean, Joe, does anyone dispute that?
No.
I mean, the video is pretty clear as day.
I've gotten a lot of emails on this about what happened in Charlottesville.
For those of you who missed the story, because I get some complaints about this once in a while about not giving the background there.
There was a rally by some guy, Spencer, no, excuse me, the groups associated with a bunch of white nationalist groups down in Charlottesville over a Robert E. Lee statue that was going to be removed.
And some Antifa people showed up.
There's some dispute about what the police response was.
All of a sudden, you know, the violence broke out.
And then a guy drove down the street in a gray Dodge Challenger, ran over some people and killed You know, killed and seriously injured a number of others, killed a woman at this rally.
Now, obviously an event worthy of condemnation.
I don't think this is mysterious by any stretch, but what's really incredible about this entire thing is, again, as I've complained about repeatedly, is instead of liberals in the media, and I'm not blaming all Democrats, Allowing the nation to grieve about this thing because it was a really horrendous incident.
What does it become, Joe?
It automatically becomes a partisan tool to bludgeon conservatives, which causes conservatives to go on the defensive.
This happens all the time.
We've had when there has been Shootings in the name, mass shooting incidents.
Instead of the nation being allowed to grieve about it and say, my gosh, what happened, liberals automatically want to pick up the partisan helm and run with it.
Now, someone came after me this weekend and said, well, don't you do the same thing when you attack Democrats for instances like the Alexandria, Virginia shooting on the baseball field of Steve Scalise, a Republican by a noted Bernie Sanders supporter.
And the answer is, you don't listen to my show then, Joe, if you say that.
Because how many times, Joe, on this show have we had to say, I'm not blaming all Democrats for this and you know this and anyone listening to my show can go back and play the library.
It's all there.
It's not like terrestrial radio.
This is all on tape for you to hear.
After that incident in Alexandria where the Bernie Sanders supporters shot a Republican congressman and clearly stated he was aiming for Republicans, I was clear as day that Bernie Sanders is not responsible for this guy's actions.
I think that's Evident to anyone who's rational.
I'm not a fan of Bernie Sanders ideology, but Bernie said a maniac goes out and shoots up a baseball field.
It's not Bernie Sanders problem.
Bernie Sanders didn't do that.
The maniac did and the blame falls on him.
Now, where the guy who went after me, because I made some appearances on Fox talking about this, where he's wrong, is I do pin the blame on people who call for violence.
If you are a leftist who shows up at a rally and starts swinging a stick and throwing bottles of urine at people, which by the way happened at the Charlottesville thing, or if you are a Black Lives Matter affiliate, person, member, whatever, and you're calling for pigs in a blanket, fry them like bacon, what do I want?
Dead cops, when do I want them now?
Violence is what you want and violence is what you got.
Yep.
Joe, are you not to blame?
If you want violence and you get violence, the blame is yours.
Right, absolutely.
But that, I'm not suggesting, and I never did, and if you listen to the library you know that, that Bernie Sanders was responsible.
Now, getting away from that for a minute, because I am, I'm confident that I've been ideologically consistent, whereas the left, again in another horrific incident, we have had a fatality, we had people run over, we've had people attacked.
What does the left do?
They automatically want to blame Donald Trump.
Now, what's ridiculous, absurd, and really offensive to 99.9% of Americans who are thinking about this reasonably Is David Duke, who is a Ku Klux Klan member and has been a stain on American politics for a long time, David Duke showed up at this rally.
Now, David Duke, interestingly enough, went after Trump on Twitter.
These two have no relationship at all.
And yet the media is still trying to associate Trump with the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, despite the fact that, again, conservatives, libertarians, responsible Republicans all over the place were rushing to say, hey, Bernie Sanders is not responsible for the act of this maniac in Alexandria, Virginia, who shot up the baseball field.
Liberals do the exact opposite because they're the worst.
They are the absolute worst.
They are so committed to identity politics and tearing the nation apart that their first response is not to say, wow, this was a tragedy.
How does the nation kind of come together and really see what happened there?
What went wrong?
Their first response, Joe, Trump did it.
Trump's associated with David Duke.
You don't believe me?
Go to my Facebook page and you know what?
I'll read it.
This is a, here's a, um, Wow, my phone's down to 97%.
I got up really early.
I mean, excuse me, 37%.
I got up really early this morning to put this show together because there was so much to talk about.
This is a tweet by Maggie Haberman.
Gosh, these auto things drive me crazy.
These little pop-down things on the phone drive me absolutely nuts.
I know, because if you touch in the wrong spot, the phone goes all over the place.
Okay.
Maggie Haberman from the New York Times tweeting about Trump and David Duke.
POTUS chafed at getting asked about David Duke during the campaign.
Today, Duke marches in POTUS's name.
Uh, Maggie Haberman, you have as much of a connection to the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke as Trump does, which is to say absolutely none.
Now, Maggie Haberman is trying to make the connection between Trump and David Duke.
Unlike everyone else you're going to hear on the radio from the kook liberal fringe, I'm going to play you a cut here of Trump actually talking about the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, disavowing these people, and the media still trying to make the connection despite the fact that there's no connection at all.
Play that cut, Joe.
When you say the party is self-destructive, what do you see as the biggest problem with the Reform Party right now?
Well, you've got David Duke just joined.
A bigot, a racist, a problem.
I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We've heard this week that David Duke has come out, former leader of the Grand Dragon Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan,
come out and said he's supportive of your candidacy.
So, my first question is, why do people like that, like Donald Trump?
And second, how do you feel about the David Duke quasi-endorsement?
I don't know the answer to the first, who knows why, but I don't need his endorsement.
I certainly wouldn't want his endorsement.
I don't need anybody's endorsement.
Would you repudiate David Duke?
Sure!
Mr. Trump, how do you feel about the recent endorsement from David Duke?
I didn't even know he endorsed me.
David Duke endorsement?
Okay, alright.
I disavow, okay?
Okay, um Where are we going?
I don't understand Maggie Haberman.
Where are we going with this?
Maggie Haberman from the New York Times is in a rush to connect Donald Trump to David Duke.
Did you just not hear that audio?
Joe, did we fabricate any of that?
Did we make that up?
Is that your Joe Armacost voice imitating Donald Trump or is that actually Donald Trump calling?
Let me just go through this because you heard the same clip I did, Joe.
Calling David Duke a bigot?
Yeah.
These are quotes, by the way.
A racist?
Yeah.
Asked about the endorsement?
I don't want it.
Do you repudiate David Duke?
Yes.
Do you disavow David Duke?
Yes, I disavow David Duke, okay?
Okay.
What?
I don't understand this.
So let me get this straight.
Trump is now responsible for the actions of a maniac who ran people over, a Nazi sympathizer.
Trump is responsible for this.
Meanwhile, he's repudiated everything to do with these guys.
He said at the press conference afterwards, he strongly condemns in the strongest possible terms, which again, if you understand basic English, I mean how can you screw this up in the strongest possible terms?
He condemns it.
Yeah, why speak?
Why speak?
You know what?
It doesn't matter.
You're right.
I get it.
It's a good point.
Like, what's the point?
I see where you're going with this.
The point is, what's the point?
No matter what Trump says.
Trump says could be David.
He could say David Duke is Damien from The Omen.
And it doesn't matter.
There's nothing he can say.
The media are hacks.
They are total loons.
They will do anything to paint the GOP As this white, nationalist, racist party that can't stand minorities, because folks, they don't have anything else!
There's nothing there!
By the way, having Joe in studio has been a fascinating experience.
We're working on a lot of good stuff down here, so stay tuned to the podcast.
But just kind of going with this for a minute.
Do you understand, ladies and gentlemen, how everything with the left, everything boils down to identity politics.
It's been an ongoing theme of my show here, that the left has forfeited the arena of ideas a long time ago.
They know their ideas suck.
They don't have anything.
Transgender bathrooms, there's no consensus for that at all, for allowing men in the women's room and women in the men's room.
There is no consensus for them whatsoever on hiking people's taxes.
Folks, just look at the polling on this stuff.
I'm not asking you to make a huge leap of faith.
Look at the polling.
Ask how many Americans care about men in the women's room.
Ask how many Americans think they pay taxes that are high enough already.
Majorities support the Republican positions.
Ask Americans if they think parents should be able to pick what school their kids go to.
Ask Americans the right way about Obamacare and the cost, not the phony polling that liberal outlets do.
Ask about it.
We win all the time.
Conservative ideology wins.
The left has forfeited the arena of ideas.
And in forfeiting the arena of ideas, they have married themselves exclusively to identity politics.
Meaning this, folks.
This is the takeaway for today's show.
The left has given up trying to get you to vote for them.
You may say, what?
That's crazy.
What are you talking about?
You're like, damn, of course the left wants votes.
No, no, they want votes, but they don't want you to vote for them.
They want you to vote against the other guy.
They have only become an American politics show, the default option.
That's it.
In other words, let's make Republicans so evil and hate-filled and racist and misogynistic and xenophobic.
And Islamophobic.
Let's paint them as anything phobe and ist at the end.
That they become so unpalatable of an option that we are the default option in American politics, even though people hate our policies.
That's all they have, folks.
That's all they have.
They have nothing else.
They have abandoned any kind of a legislative agenda-driven policy forward.
They don't have anything.
Even their ridiculous Papa John's slogan, their new slogan, like, what a better way, whatever it was, or better pizza, go to Papa John's.
Whatever their slogan they revealed a few weeks ago, It fell on deaf ears.
Have you heard anything about that since, Joe?
Not a peep.
Lipstick on a pizza.
Lipstick on a pizza.
That's perfect.
We'll add that to our repertoire of items there.
Folks, they have nothing else.
They have married themselves to identity politics.
That's why Maggie Haberman, who is a devout leftist, okay?
If you read some of the... Remember Maggie Haberman in that journalism scandal?
She was one of the people in the scandal for some emails she had sent.
These people are committed leftists.
They are not journalists.
They're not committed to telling you the truth.
They're committed to painting the Republican Party as a bunch of racists, so that the Democrats, however horrible the legislative agenda is, becomes the default option.
They don't have anything else.
Now, just one final note on this, because there's a couple other things I want to get to here.
It's been a heavy news weekend.
And this is a kind of a positive note for you, for those of you listening who are sane.
And when I say sane, I mean Republicans, sane Democrats, Libertarians, even, you know, people who are environmentalists, who, you know, if you're a sane, rational actor, open to reason, take some solace in this.
This strategy has been an abysmal, incredible, colossal, apocalyptic failure for the Democrats.
They are at a valley in power, while Republicans are at a peak.
Now, I'm not a huge fan of what the Republicans have done lately.
They have forfeited the ideological high ground by not repealing Obamacare.
I get that.
But what does it say about American politics, Joe, with the general pathetic nature of the Republican Party today?
That there's only one thing worse.
And what is that thing?
Democrats.
There's only one thing worse than Republicans in politics, and it's Democrats.
If you're worse than the Republicans, you really suck.
They are at a low point in American politics.
Governorship, state legislators, congressional seats, Senate seats.
A story I saw today in The Hill, which I'll put in the show notes.
Federal judges.
Trump's got five more confirmed.
He's got 30 pending and 123 seats to fill.
Remember, 99% of all federal cases end at the trial or appeal level.
We got a Supreme Court justice.
The courts are being restacked.
Regulations are falling away.
This tax cut looks like it's going to happen, I hope.
I got something on that in a minute too.
But folks, the good news is this identity politics, this marrying with any group you can find that you can get to believe Republicans hate them.
Transgenders.
People who are gay, people who are black, people who are Hispanic, people who are Islamic, whatever, unions, whatever category you can stick people in and you can get them to believe Republicans hate you, that's what the Democrats will do and the strategy has been an apocalyptic failure and they, folks, they have done this for a generation.
I'm sorry to beat this to death but they have done this for a generation.
They cannot, do you think they don't know this has been a failure?
They're looking at the ebb and flow of democratic power and they're seeing the valley they're in now.
They're not dumb.
Do you think they don't know this has been a failure?
But folks, they have been indoctrinated for so long by so many people in academia and the media.
That this is a strategy that they would need to hate, hate, hate Republicans.
Hate is all they care about.
They are married to hate for conservative ideas that they simply, despite the epic failure, cannot separate from this strategy.
It doesn't matter what Trump said.
You heard his repudiation.
David Duke is a bigot, a racist.
He doesn't want his endorsement.
He repudiates him.
He disavows him.
As Joe said, it doesn't matter.
No.
Because the left is married to this idea that they are going to paint Republicans as hating X.
Transgender, gay, black, city dwellers, union members, women, it doesn't matter.
They have nothing else.
So the good news in this strategy for Democrats is it's really a winning strategy for Republicans.
And the winning strategy for Republicans is doing nothing.
Just let the Democrats do this.
Let them do it because middle America is tired of it.
They're tired of being called racist.
They're tired of being told they hate women.
You're talking about parents.
You're talking about men with children and wives they love and families they adore being lectured by the Democrats about they hate women.
You think this is a winning strategy?
Joe, do the Democrats really think that the actions of some maniac who drives down the street, by the way, if you see the pictures of this guy, I don't want to, please don't send me any emails like justifying.
I'm dead serious.
They will be deleted immediately.
I don't want to hear it.
I really, I had one email, oh you don't understand, you know, this guy, his car was being battered, fine.
That, listen, I'm not saying there weren't Antifa savages there.
I have, Joe, we have done more than enough exposing the Antifa animals.
Yeah.
And they are animals.
But I'm sorry, there is not a scintilla of an excuse to run people down and then flee the scene.
None!
If you're listening to the wrong show, and I don't care, I sent a guy, the guy sent me a Facebook message this week, he said, you lost a supporter.
Hey bud, I'm sorry, I'm not your guy then.
You're gonna justify that?
And don't mistake me calling this guy out for justifying battering people with bats like Antifa.
We've done our homework on that.
But it's time to be crystal clear as Americans that we are going to disavow harsh identity politics by the left, and that encompasses all identity politics.
Whatever it is, Joe, whether it's calling Republicans, you know, calling out a war against women, or whether it's white nationalism on the other side, that identity politics is no different.
How is that any different?
That's what the left does.
They associate an indelible characteristic you have no control over with character.
What does my whiteness have anything to do with my intellectual, moral, or ethical responsibilities or capabilities in the intellectual sense?
What does that have to do with anything?
The answer is nothing.
That's what the left does.
And thank God, conservatives have been calling this out for a long time now.
And that's why people like me get really pissed off, frankly, when hacks like Maggie Haberman and the rest of the leftist establishment liberal media start trying to associate this kind of savagery with Republicans.
We're doing the hard work, Joe, calling this stuff out.
Really pisses me off, man, to no end.
Gosh.
Gosh, I wish we could go back and even... I don't like to play clips of my own show because it's dumb.
Like, you listen to your own show.
It's like, hey, look at me here.
It's just, you know what I'm saying?
I'm not really crazy about that.
You know, Joe and I don't have the time to be redoing old shows, but I do clearly remember saying that even though I firmly believe that Bernie Sanders is not in any way responsible for the actions of a supporter who decided to shoot up a baseball field... Joe, I know you remember the show.
I do remember the show.
Do you remember me also saying at the end of it, I'm expecting no like moral or ethical points from the left either?
Remember me saying that?
Like, I'm expecting... I'm not expecting the left to go, oh well, at least conservatives are honest, they didn't blame Bernie Sanders, so we should probably do the right thing and not blame Donald Trump.
Do you remember me saying that in the show?
I think I do.
Well, I was right.
I mean, I was right.
I expected nothing, and you'll get nothing from the left, because they're animals.
They're animals.
They are committed to destroying the country.
They just don't care.
Do you think these people really believe Donald Trump has any allegiance whatsoever to David Duke?
Hell no.
Idiots.
My God, these people are stupid.
They are just... they really, really...
Alright, moving on.
Because this, I could go on for...
I wanted to spend ten minutes on this, and I've gone on and on about it, because it's
just the left.
They just, they endlessly, endlessly piss me off.
But I'm telling you, leave that, smile on your face that their pathetic strategy is
failing miserably.
You can only call 40% of America racist, homophobes, and whatever, for so long, before they all say, you know what, we're done with you, you're a bunch of idiots.
Wonder why you lost Pennsylvania?
Keep up with this strategy, Dems.
Idiots.
Not all Dems, I don't want to do what they do to us, but the ones who are doing this, the elected ones.
Alright, on a different note, changing course a little bit.
So we had discussed a while ago the Philadelphia soda tax.
I found this story funny in the Wall Street Journal.
You know, again, from the file drawer for liberal policies that don't only not do what they're supposed to do but blow up in the left's face.
So Philadelphia levied a huge tax on soda.
Joe, the idea was that we're going to raise all this money and at the same time we're going to combat obesity with the money.
And this is just terrific.
It's a great idea.
Yeah, exactly.
Here's an update from the Wall Street Journal today.
The actual soda tax collections in the first six months were already $6.9 million below the city's estimate of $46.2 million.
Again, shocking to no one that the revenue came in lower than expected.
It says, this is no surprise to anyone who knows the iron economic law that when you tax something, you get less of it.
How many times have we said this on the show?
A couple thousand?
Ad nauseum.
But here's the kicker, Joe.
In this case, that means fewer soda sales.
Ah, shocker.
Daniel Grace, Secretary-Treasurer of the Teamsters Local 830.
By the way, Teamsters, who overwhelmingly support, not at the rank-and-file level, but at the management level, Democrats.
So the Teamsters Local 830 Secretary-Treasurer estimates that soft drink sales within the city are down by as much as 45%.
Nice job, Philly.
Whoa.
His truck drivers earn money based in part on how many cases of soda they deliver.
And he says the tax has halved their income.
At bodegas, supermarkets and gas stations are struggling to make up the lost sale of a core item.
165 of his members are now out of work, the Teamster guy.
Again, folks, don't let stupid liberal ideas get in the way of reality and what happens on the ground.
My fascination with liberalism is their complete divorce from reality every time.
They will move the goalposts, they will say things that are untrue, they turn out on the ground to be factually reality-based incorrect, it blows up in their face, and they double down on stupid.
Philly tax, Joe.
We will raise this amount of revenue, economists say.
It doesn't raise that amount of revenue.
Not only does it not raise the revenue, it puts the drivers out of work and it hurts the local businesses.
But keep in mind, local business owners, if you are voting Democrat, I say this with all due respect, and I'm not trying to insult you, but if you're voting Democrat and you're a union member, you brought this on yourself.
You literally brought this on yourself.
You voted for people who legislated this nonsense.
The legislative nonsense impact your wallet.
In 165 cases, it cost you your job, and you will continue to vote Democrat despite the fact that they have violated what they call in the piece, and they are absolutely correct, the iron law of economics.
When you increase the price of something, you will get less of it.
That is an immutable law.
Now, where Democrats don't, where liberals primarily go wrong on this, Joe, is they'll say things like, remember that Huffington Post piece last week we dismantled by that liberal woman who was just like, I'll pay a dollar more for a burger to finance me.
The point is, no you won't, because you don't pay a dollar extra burger.
The liberals had the same thinking that was in that piece with this soda tax, Joe.
This is very important.
The idea was that, well, if we're going to increase a case of soda by a six pack of soda by a dollar, say it was six dollars, whatever, and we're going to increase it, but those aren't the exact numbers.
We'll play the game for a minute because this will make sense to those of you who have a brain, which is most of my audience, thankfully.
We're going to increase the six pack of Coke cans from five dollars to six dollars.
We're going to increase it by a dollar, and that dollar is going to be a tax.
Liberals, because they're simpletons, will say, well, of course everybody can afford a dollar.
That's not the point!
The point is, not everybody can afford a dollar.
And those dollars accumulate and are sucked out of the economy from bodegas and drivers and handed over to the government that has no idea what to do with them because the government, when it spends money for other people, doesn't care about cost or quality because it's not buying anything for itself.
Therefore it doesn't care about the quality, and it's not, it's money.
They're spending other people's money, as Friedman used to say all the time, so they don't care about cost either.
That's point number one.
Point number two, when you say, oh, well surely people can afford another dollar.
No!
Some people can't!
Because that dollar has to come from somewhere.
That dollar adds up to people.
And when people come home with their grocery bill, and their grocery bill, and they're on a tight budget show, was $120 a week, and they're stocking up on soda, and now it's $130 a week because they bought a case instead of a six-pack, they don't have that extra $10.
So what happens, Joe?
What do they do?
They can either engage in what we would call the substitution effect, And economics, which is buying a product that's cheaper, or they can just stop buying it at all.
Now, none of those options are palatable because the tax was on the soda designed to raise money from the tax.
So if you don't buy the soda, Joe, the city doesn't get the dollar for the tax.
So now, ironically, with the substitution effect, what happened?
Sales of a very specific and certain product are going up in the Philly area.
Brewskis!
People are buying more beer!
Because the tax on beer is actually less than the tax on soda.
So, now, totally dismantling the left's theory.
Your theory was what?
That first we're going to get people healthier because we're going to make soda more expensive.
No, because now people are just buying more beer.
I'm not saying beer is necessarily going to hurt you if you drink responsibly, but I'm saying I don't think anyone would associate alcohol with a protein drink.
You know what I'm saying, Joe?
It's not exactly health food when consumed in bigger quantities, right?
Not knocking the beer industry, okay?
Just saying.
You get my point.
So they were supposed to make people healthier and raise money.
None of that's happened, but don't let any of that get in the way of a good argument by the left.
They will continue to say things that aren't true and the left will defend it because they're just that stupid.
Folks, they really are.
They are just that naive.
The ones that vote this, the ones who are doing this, my premise has always been that they know it's not going to work.
They're just interested in economic control.
Okay, but I get to another story, and it kind of segues nicely from the Philly soda tax story, because economists in Philly predicted this with pretty high confidence that they were going to raise a bunch of money from this, and again, it collapsed.
So I'm going to explain that in a second, but hey, have you signed up for CRTV yet?
Hey, we got a lot of great product over there.
When it comes to conservative media, you're paying a lot for your cable bill.
Ours is a fraction of that, CRTV.com.
And the nice part about CRTV.com is you can watch it on your computer, you can watch it on your smartphone, you can watch it on your iPad, you can watch it on your tablet, there's ways to sling it to your TV.
The content out there far surpasses anything you're going to see on cable or anywhere else.
It's available for a fraction of the cost of cable.
Go to CRTV.com.
I'll give you a promo code to make it even cheaper for you.
Go to CRTV.com today, put in promo code Bongino, my last name, B-O-N-G-I-N-O, and you'll get $10 off.
Once you start watching, it's like the old school cable days before they started to unlink now.
Back then when you hooked up, you never got off cable.
CRTV is the way to go in the future.
We don't have any advertiser pressure from people.
We do our own thing.
We're fueled by your subscriptions and our subscriber base, and we cater to conservatives.
Go to CRTV.com and sign up today.
Promo code Bongino for $10 off.
All right.
Another interesting story I saw in the journal today by Andy Kessler.
He was talking about the This has been a real problem in the field of social sciences.
Now, I know you may be like, ah, where are you going with this?
But I promise you, this is relevant to your everyday life, because many of you get into arguments on college campuses or in your workplace.
I know because I get the emails with your liberal friends all the time.
And your liberal friends, I guarantee you, will always quote some nonsensical study about Martians in the 22nd century.
And they'll say, well, that backs up my point that minimum wage helps people make, you know, Rob, you know, make more money and put more money in their wallets, and you're like, that just doesn't make sense, okay?
The fact that the minimum wage, you know, the money has to come from somewhere usually comes from the employees themselves as they get fired doesn't bother the left because the left is a hard time with basic math.
Now, There is a problem going on in the social sciences field with reproducibility.
Meaning, Joe, they'll do a study.
And when I say social sciences, I'm talking about psychology, sociology, economics.
These are not hard sciences.
Not biology, chemistry, physics.
You know what I'm saying?
Here's a quote from Kessler about this.
I want to show you how this relates to the Philly tax story, but how it relates to liberalism in general.
He says, many of the studies quoted in newspaper articles and pop psychology books are one-offs anyway.
In August 2015, the Center for Open Science published a study in which, this is crazy, published a study in which 270 researchers spent four years trying to reproduce 100 leading psychology experiments.
I'm not talking about fringe stuff, folks.
Leading psychology experiments.
They successfully replicated only 39.
Yes, I see the irony of a study debunking a study.
This is Kessler talking.
But add this to a nature survey of 1,576 scientists published last year.
More than 70% of researchers have tried and failed, Joe, to reproduce another scientist's experiments, the survey report concludes.
And more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments.
Now, I bring this up today.
Russ Roberts has a podcast called Econ Talk, which is very good.
He did an episode on this a while ago, that there is a huge crisis in social science research, especially economic research, and liberals rely on this stuff to make you believe the unbelievable.
Now, some liberal researcher clearly did the research on a Philly soda tax and found some data set that would show that it was going to raise all this money.
Now, the fact that there's a reproducibility crisis and most of these studies could never be reproduced, in other words, when you do it again you get a different result, should probably be a clue that the iron laws of economics should stick and rules of thumb.
Should matter but that's not what happens.
People rely on these studies and they go to the Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce and they go and lobby Philadelphia City Council and they say look if we raise the tax on soda it's going to raise all this money and it almost never happens.
Just like it didn't happen with Obamacare when they said well if you like your plan you can keep your plan or just like they said the Reagan tax cuts were going to cost the government money and they didn't.
All of this stuff is based on a lot of nonsensical research Which 60% of the time, at least according to that one thing, can't be replicated.
And sometimes researchers can't even replicate their own data.
Folks, be very careful.
I'm going to leave it with this and move on because I've got a couple other things to get through.
Be very, very careful.
When some liberal says something to you that just doesn't make sense and seems to violate a common sense rule of thumb, and then them quoting a study.
Because I assure you, whatever study they're quoting, you can go and find the study that says the exact opposite because they had a tough time reproducing that.
And if their study and your study conflicts, Joe, don't you think common sense would win the day?
That's why I get so upset arguing about things like minimum wage and soda taxes.
It's obvious to anyone who understands economics that when you increase the price of something, you decrease the demand for it.
If the price isn't increasing because of an increase in demand.
In other words, sometimes a price just increases, like the price for gold, because more people try to buy gold.
And there's a limited supply.
But If the price is increasing on something because the government artificially increases the price vis-a-vis a tax, then demand goes down because the number of people who can afford it as each, you know, percentage increase on the tax goes up and makes it more expensive, goes down.
If you have people willing to spend $40 a month on soda, Joe, Say you have a crowd of 10,000 people.
Then you increase it to 50.
Then it decreases to 9,000 people.
Then it increases to 60.
It decreases to, say, 5,000 people.
As you increase the price of soda to $100 a month, you have about 1,000 people willing to buy it.
You are losing your audience.
But again, this is only complicated to the left because they point out these ridiculous studies.
But I'll put the piece in the...
Show notes today about the reproducibility crisis.
You can read it yourself and it should make you very skeptical.
Anytime a liberal quotes a scientific study to you, that sounds like complete garbage and complete junk.
Hey, one story we've been following on the show for a while now, it's kind of creeping up again with the new Since the failure of Obamacare, people have kind of lifted and shifted and moving on to the tax code, the tax cuts, which I think are going to happen.
But folks, there's been a huge backlash by home builders and realtors here, and I explained this to you in an earlier episode, so I'm just going to touch on it again because there's an interesting piece in Reuters about it today, which again, I'll put in the show notes at bongito.com and conservativereview.com if you want to go there.
They're considering doubling the standard deduction.
The standard deduction meaning the deduction everybody can take.
You don't have to itemize.
You're not going to have to worry about lining out individual things, Joe.
And the realtors and the, uh, and home builders hate this because right now 30 million Americans are claiming the mortgage deduction.
And it's worth $70 billion, $70 billion worth of deductions for mortgage interest.
So what the mortgage industry is saying, just to be clear, and the realtors and the home builders and the entire home sales industry here is, and they're not wrong, Is that this is really going to hurt people who are first-time homebuyers and people like me who are early on in their mortgage.
Because what's going to happen, Joe, is you get a deduction for the interest on your mortgage.
So if you're in the early years of a mortgage like I am down here in Florida, you're paying a lot of interest because the principal's still high.
You know, it's pretty common-sense finance.
Over time, as you pay down the principal, the interest is less and less and less.
But as the interest becomes less and less and less on any loan, Joe, as you're paying down principal over time, that interest, the deduction becomes less and less as well.
Make sense?
I mean, if I'm paying $10,000 a year in mortgage interest now, you know, it's a lot.
Well, and then in five years, I'm paying $2,000 because I paid down most of my principal.
Then I only have a $2,000 deduction versus a $10,000 deduction on my taxes.
So people who are earlier in their mortgage would benefit from the home interest mortgage deduction.
And the idea is if they double the standard deduction, That a lot of people are not going to claim the mortgage interest deduction anymore or have no use for it because they'll fall under a larger standard deduction.
Make sense, Joe?
Yeah.
So the charity industries, the charitable organizations, I should say, I don't mean to insult my corner of an industry, but charitable organizations are worried about this too because there's $13 billion in deductions claimed for charity.
Folks, I'm going to say what I've said over and over again.
Love and respect everybody who builds homes and in the real estate industry.
And I don't speak with forked tongue here because this deduction benefits me directly.
But we are all going to have to take it on the chin a bit, folks.
You know, we had an expression in the Secret Service called, get big.
You know, when the round started and the hot lead started flying your way, you know, the natural human instinct is to duck.
But the Secret Service used to say, no, no, obviously no ducking.
You got to get big.
You know, put your arms and legs out, make a big target for yourself so that you get hit and not the president or your protectee.
I can't argue to you enough that it's time for us all to get big.
This is not a bad thing.
Now, I would suggest we do it slowly over time as to not dramatically decrease home values, because home values will decrease as that mortgage interest deduction goes away because they lose a portion of the deduction which they would have had for owning a home, which you're not going to get anymore.
You get what I'm saying, Joe?
I think the better way to do it is to phase this out over time.
But folks, this affects me directly.
Significantly.
And I can't speak for everyone.
It's a constitutional republic.
You all get to vote.
If you don't like it, I respect your opinion.
I totally understand your opinion.
But there's no way we are going to fix our broken tax code if every time we try to do it, every single interest group comes up and says, well, I don't want my deduction to go away and I don't want mine.
We have to sweep it clean, start over, and we can phase it out over time so that the impact would be minimal.
But I'll put the article in Reuters today because it talks about the backlash, how a lot of people are really worried about what's going to happen with the tax code.
I get you're worried.
I totally understand.
Again, I respect your point of view on this, but I'm absolutely sure over time, a cleaner, more modified, streamlined tax code, the economic benefits will so far surpass what I see to be a small decrease in home values if we phase this out over time, that your wallet is going to grow no matter what.
I think it's really critical we keep the, you know, We keep the prize in mind here.
Prize is simpler fare code, tax code, so we're not spending, you know, billions and billions of dollars a year on compliance costs.
I think it's important.
Okay.
Hey, one last story because the North Korea thing has kind of been taken off, and I know I don't do a lot of foreign policy, but there's been an interesting angle over the weekend.
China is now shutting down trade with North Korea.
Now, China is one of their biggest trade partners.
There's a lot of illicit activity that goes along the border, but North Korean coal, it's become a big industry.
China basically keeps the North Koreans afloat through trade and economic activity, both above the table and under the table, Joe.
Now, I want to give Trump a bit of a pat on the back here.
Again, I know this is tough for liberals to take because they, you know, especially people like Keith Ellison, who's the crazy rep from Minnesota who said that, you hear this, that Trump was acting less rationally than the North Korean dictator, which is really insane.
He has since tried to retract that.
But Trump, what he did was really interesting here.
He is opening a trade investigation into China.
Folks, that is not insignificant.
The Chinese do not want that.
They do not want publicized a lot of their policies.
What they do is they incentivize state industries to incorporate, to steal intellectual property.
Stay of state sponsored businesses.
They have intellectual property rights agreements where if you come into the country to do business you have to forfeit all of your intellectual property.
This has become very expensive for people to do business in China for anyone outside of China not owned or partially owned by a Chinese state industry.
They don't want that exposed to Chinese.
Where am I going with this?
Trump announced last week and into the weekend an investigation into Chinese trade practices, which conveniently over the weekend China just said, oh, you know what, we're going to stop trade now with North Korea.
You know what, folks, sometimes you have to, that big stick matters, you know?
That matters.
The North Koreans are in a bit of a panic here because the North Koreans do not, they absolutely do not want to break ties with China.
They have no economic viability at all.
The Chinese are terrified that this is going to turn into nuclear war.
They're terrified of exposing their trade practices.
So what did they do?
They all of a sudden shut that down to comply with American interests.
So Trump is actually doing a pretty darn good job behind the scenes of navigating what's unquestionably an international crisis.
And one more thing on this.
The North Koreans do not want a nuclear Japan.
Excuse me, the Chinese do not want a nuclear Japan.
They understand that a nuclear Japan would rebalance power in the region significantly.
Japan now falls under our nuclear umbrella.
So I think the Chinese are starting to wake up real quick and say this, Joe, gosh, if we don't unload this North Korean garbage quick, then what's going to happen?
There's going to be a trade war with the United States, which is going to devastate our economy.
We're going to have a nuclear Japan, which will entirely rebalance power in the region.
This really isn't working out well for us.
I think they're starting to realize that an allegiance with the short, fat guy over in North Korea is not working out.
This has become a total disaster for them.
So, all right, a lot going on today, and I just, you know, I'm sorry for the extended monologue in the beginning there about the identity politics issue, but it's just really frustrating, folks.
You know, anytime your liberal friends want to get into these debates with you and it starts out with you're a racist, homophobe, I would just shut them down.
Just shut him down.
I'm not even doing it.
I'm not, sorry guys, not doing it.
You want to talk like a rational, you know, sane human being?
Happy to debate issues with you.
You want to call people names, demonize them?
Stick with your losing strategy you've tried for the last eight years.
Because remember, Barack Obama was only good at one thing, getting Barack Obama elected.
Everybody else under Barack Obama got crushed at the state, local, and federal level.
All right, thanks again for tuning in, folks.
I'll see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
You can also get Dan's podcasts on iTunes or SoundCloud.
