Ep. 560 The Democrats Never Let a Crisis go to Waste
In this episode - The truth about “gun control” and crime. http://dailysignal.com/2017/10/02/heres-truth-gun-control-crime?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=MorningBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiTkRneU5UbGpNRGd6TkdObCIsInQiOiJXTm9zYlwvenlWckc0c3l6MHRIdm1YT1dUNWRhQUhVR3R3ZUFhUnZIeWs3NmNGTFp6ZktON0NJS09memtzN1IybTI3N0xBUUh1M2NVWGZUWnA3eW0xNDVRZFVSNDhESUYzMEVUUkVBM0lwUDAwZ1wvNndqa3BmaDNWd3FRWVFpXC8yNyJ9 Jimmy Kimmel is at it again. This time he is using propaganda to lecture Americans about firearms. http://www.breitbart.com/big-hollywood/2017/10/03/jimmy-kimmel-vegas-republicans-praying-god-forgive/ The Las Vegas attacker may not have had an automatic weapon. He may have been using this device instead. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/las-vegas-shooter-had-a-bump-stock-attached-to-two-weapons/article/2636350 Are the Republicans sabotaging their own tax cut plan? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-03/white-house-accused-of-softness-as-tax-plan-hits-early-bumps Budweiser wants your opinion about its relationship with the NFL. http://www.theblaze.com/news/2017/10/01/budweiser-considers-ending-their-nfl-sponsorship-over-protests-and-they-want-to-hear-from-you/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=090517-news&utm_campaign=dwreciprocal How the Jones Act costs you money. https://www.cato.org/blog/dubious-defense-jones-act
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Dan Bongino. I owe you, who owes who? You owe me, I owe you, there's no money!
The Dan Bongino Show. Anything run by liberals will be run into the ground,
burned, stepped on, gasoline poured on it and burned again.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
They're arguing about things and debating how quickly they can deconstruct the greatest country in the history of mankind and all of the ideas and norms that have gotten us here.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
Alright, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Hey, Dan, doing well.
Thanks, man.
You know, it didn't, as I said on yesterday's show, it didn't take but two minutes for liberals to politicize this tragedy in Las Vegas.
Folks, they just can't help themselves.
They cannot help themselves.
And you have to understand why this is, right?
When you're obsessed with power, the obtaining of power, the use of power to control other people, that's what liberalism is, okay?
Conservatism is a near obsession with individual rights, with God-given big R rights, with limited government, and the growth of the individual, right?
That's what we believe in passionately.
The opposite of that is a diminished individual in the power of the state.
When you are obsessed with the power of the state, your morals and ethics go out the window and a lot of times you live in a moral or ethical vacuum.
When you live in a moral or ethical vacuum, right?
You see a mass shooting you don't think sympathy and empathy for the victims you think how can I use this shooting to strategically leverage it to gain power over other people because that's all you believe in that's all you care.
Never let a crisis go to waste.
Never let a crisis go to waste and liberals never do so I've got a lot to discuss about this Jimmy Kimmel at it again this guy I you know I have been very I think empathetic to his situation with his child on the health care issue.
I do that deliberately.
I think he has earned the right to speak about issues he wants to speak about on health care if he believes it will affect his kid.
My criticism of Jimmy Kimmel was on the Obamacare issue, of course the late nice host I'm talking about, is he doesn't do his homework and he's propagandizing you because he's got has emotions invested into it granted because of his child and I understand that.
I understand, but that does not give you the right to say things that are categorically untrue.
You may have the illegal right to say them, but it doesn't give you the moral right to lie to people.
Right.
And what's happening now is he's at it again on the gun control thing.
Liberals are losing their minds on this.
The story yesterday is taken a number of different turns, and this is why I'm always very cautious of putting out information.
I was very careful on a lot of my media hits yesterday, especially about when it came to the reporting about automatic weapons.
There's a number of different reports out there today.
That a couple of the weapons were not, in fact, automatic weapons.
They were semi-automatic weapons, which liberals still... I can't believe how many liberals still don't understand the distinction.
With bump triggers on them.
Now, let me just one more time go through this, because Rich Lowry and Adrienne Elrod just had an interesting debate on Fox News about the new push for gun control.
There's no such thing as gun control, remember that.
There's only people control.
There's almost nothing governments can do.
To control guns.
They can try, but if criminals want them bad enough, they will get them, as we've seen in Paris, as we've seen in strict gun control countries, in strict gun control cities.
When criminals want to get guns, when you outlaw guns, what does the bumper sticker say?
Only outlaws will have guns.
Yeah, we're not the bumper sticker party, but that is in fact correct.
When you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.
That's what happens.
Semi-automatic, one depression of the trigger, one round.
Automatic, one depression of the trigger, multiple rounds until you release the trigger.
That's the difference.
This guy, it appears from some recent reports, and I'll put this in the show notes today, available at Bongino.com.
Please subscribe to my email list.
I'll send you the show notes.
There's an interesting story about here from, it was in Paul Bedard's Washington Secrets, and he may have had a bump trigger.
A bump trigger is a trigger that is a semi-automatic trigger, And it's got a piece on it that works using the recoil of the weapon.
The recoil of the weapon almost forces your finger to pull the trigger as it recoils after each round.
So it gives a cycle rate of basically an automatic weapon, but it is not an automatic weapon.
Folks, these are important distinctions!
These are facts we need to know, because insisting he had an automatic weapon, if you're a liberal, saying, we had an automatic weapon, we need to ban them, ignores the fact that it's extremely difficult to get an automatic weapon now, and in fact, since the mid-1980s, it's been almost impossible to get your hands on an automatic weapon, even me, being a former Secret Service agent.
So just, Libs, can you please just stick to the truth now?
What's bothering me about this, and the rage out there, this CBS News executive, Oh, man.
Yeah, you saw this story.
The CBS News executive who basically said she didn't have a lot of sympathy because a lot of the people at this concert who were shot were Trump victims.
This is epidemic of what I'm seeing.
So just to sum up quickly what I'm trying to get at here.
Number one, liberals refuse to engage in this debate on the merits.
And I'm going to give you some examples in a minute.
That's our first topic I want to address.
Liberals are not talking about, quote, gun control, which is a fictitious idea.
It's people control, based on the merits.
They're just making things up, and they're making up talking points.
But secondly, I want to address just quickly, folks, the reason we have this divide with liberals is, in large, liberals view conservatives as bad people attached to ideas.
I've tried to make this point over and over on Media Hits, and I will today, because it's very important you understand this.
Liberals see us as bad people attached to ideas.
We see liberals as bad ideas attached to people.
That's a very critical distinction that will explain, I think, a lot of why the CBS executive and all of these liberals, why they are so angry.
Listen, I've had my moments of anger.
I still get angry at liberals all the time.
But I don't live an angry life.
Liberals are angry at everyone all the time because they see conservatives as bad idea, as bad people attached to ideas that are interfering with their state power agenda.
And they believe in the ends justify the means that anything we have to do to get rid of these people, uh, you know, we'll do.
And that's not all liberals, but the radical portion, many of them certainly feel that way.
And when you see this with this lady at CBS, who basically believes that Trump voters, that Trump people in the crowd who were shot deserve no sympathy.
This is just another example of liberals thinking these are bad people attached to ideas.
And therefore Joe, they had it coming.
Now, Getting back to my original point on this, how liberals are just making stuff up at this point.
Folks, I brought up the idea, excuse me, the talking point that they've been throwing out there about automatic weapons.
It is already extremely difficult to get an automatic weapon.
There's a class three firearms license that you have to transfer these.
The ATF monitors every transaction.
They are all registered.
There's a tax stamp involved.
I think it's $200.
This is a very complicated process.
It is not the same as buying a semi-automatic weapon.
Now, Adrienne Elrod was just on.
She is a liberal.
She was debating Rich Lowry on Fox, and she again confused the two.
She said she didn't, but she did.
She said something that I was getting ready for the show, so I used to keep the volume down.
I had to turn it up because I thought I heard it kind of lightly, Joe, and I'm like, did I just hear that right?
So I rewinded, I listened again, and I did hear it right.
She said semi-automatic weapons are used for one thing and one thing only.
To kill people.
I thought, wow, that's incredible.
They're not used for sport, they're not used for hunting.
Again, she's confusing the two.
She's confusing semi-automatic weapons with automatic weapons, and either way...
Both of those premises are not true either.
There are people who have automatic weapons who use them for sporting competitions and other things as well.
Now, if the only purpose to owning an automatic weapon, Joe, was to go and kill people, how come every person with an automatic weapon hasn't killed someone?
No, I mean, it's a serious question.
I'm just using their own logic.
Like, if automatic weapons are sole purpose and everybody possessing them are bad people who are looking to kill people, then how come everyone who owns an automatic weapon in the United States hasn't killed someone?
Matter of fact, we haven't seen an incident like this in decades.
How come there's not a massive number of these events out there right now with automatic weapons being used to mow people down left and right every day?
Because Adrienne Aurore does not know what she's talking about.
Now, she confused the two.
She said semi-automatic weapons are only used to kill people and that's the only purpose of them, which of course is not true.
It's a Democrat talking point.
But Rich Lowry made a great point because he was arguing for universal background checks, which is another Another talking point brought up by the left.
Folks, background checks are nearly universal when you purchase, they are universal when you get it from a federal firearms dealer, okay?
There is no gun show loophole, right?
We all understand that, right?
The gun show loophole, because that was brought up yesterday by Kimmel as well, who doesn't, again, this guy is constantly, I mean, you know, folks, it's just disturbing.
The guy has no need.
Personally, I mean, I have a platform here, not nearly the size of Jimmy Kimmel's, but a good one, and I always appreciate it.
And when I say something, I always feel the need to back it up with the data and the homework, and if I'm proven wrong, I'll correct it.
Matter of fact, I got an interesting email from a guy yesterday on the Jones Act that we'll talk about in a minute, but...
Kimmel feels no need to do that, Joe, with an audience probably more than 10, 20 times the size.
He goes on the air and he says things about the gun show loophole.
There's no gun show loophole to buy a weapon.
When you buy a weapon at a gun show from a federally licensed firearm dealer, folks, I promise you, you will go do a background check.
If you doubt me, go to Steven Crowder's videos.
Yeah, it's at CRTV, louderwithcrowder.com.
And put in gun show loophole.
And watch his videos where he goes into the gun shows and asks them about the gun show loophole.
And they all look at him like he's crazy.
Do you understand this is a myth?
This is not a fact-based talking point.
The liberals are just making this up.
If you believe in it, you are embracing stupidity.
Yeah, and when you hear people applaud for this stuff and you think, you gotta be kidding me, the whole place is just applauding.
Well, listen, that's brought on with, you know, producers with the applause and starting them up and all.
Somebody in there is going, are you kidding me?
I gotta listen to this ear of poop?
I know because I get emails from Hollywood people all the time who tell me, you'd be surprised how many conservatives are in the industry here and have to listen to this crap every day.
And the audience, yeah!
They eat it up.
But it's not fact-based.
Right.
And Lowry brought up a great point today to Adrian Elrod.
I'm sorry if I'm all, I'm just really upset about this topic because I'm a passionate believer in the Second Amendment and I'm tired every time a lunatic goes out there and does something insane and criminal Homicidal, assaults someone, shoots someone, engages in crime.
All of a sudden my rights are in jeopardy because of someone else's actions.
Because of liberals who have a control agenda.
They want your weapons.
Larry says to Elrod, he says, listen, it's interesting you're bringing up this universal background check thing because this guy had no criminal background to speak of and would have passed the background check.
And her answer was really telling.
She's like, well, we should try this stuff and try other stuff.
This is the Democrats agenda.
They have no evidence that anything they're going to do is going to work.
They just want to try things that infringe on you, not the actual criminals.
I mean, that's your, folks, that's your theory of governing.
Your theory of governing is that we should just randomly pass new laws like we're throwing like jello on a wall to see what'll stick, right?
We should randomly pass new laws and hope that stuff works regardless of the impact on every other American.
Joe, you see the point I'm making here?
Yeah!
That this is the new, this is, that's not the new, this is the, at least in messaging it's new, but this is the liberal way of thinking.
Something happens, it's a crisis.
Leverage the crisis to pass new laws.
Produce no evidence whatsoever these laws will work, but understanding the entire time these new laws will infringe upon the rights of every other American who's done nothing wrong.
This is the new liberalitos.
So Rich Lowry says to her, you can't have it both ways.
You can't say on one hand that you want to pass a bunch of laws that you can't tell me would make any kind of a difference and then on the other hand tell us basically you don't want to confiscate guns because that's what they want folks.
They want to confiscate guns.
You see what the point of Larry's making?
Larry's point is this from the National Review and it was a good one.
Just be honest Joe.
Just tell the American people you want to confiscate their guns because you already admitted the new laws you're proposing are not going to do anything.
The liberals are in this debate now, which they always bring, because they cannot control themselves.
They have absolutely no legislative self-control at all.
They have no ability to empathize, sympathize.
They saw a political moment yesterday in tragedy and they're running with it.
The woman admitted, Elrod, on the Fox News interview, that she has nothing.
She has no legislative proposal that would have fixed what happened yesterday, or stopped it, I should say.
And yet she won't admit that their real agenda is to confiscate guns.
Well, we should replicate the Australian model.
What?
The confiscation of guns?
Just be honest.
They have no capacity to do that.
That's why I'm proud of this show.
We're honest.
We tell you the truth.
Now, dispelling a couple myths yesterday, again, about the automatic weapons yesterday.
It looks like now it was a bump trigger.
There may have been an automatic weapon.
And there may have been one of these duplex triggers as well, which again, if you, I don't know if I mentioned this, but these duplex triggers you have, you ever heard of these Joe?
No.
You pull the trigger, a round goes off.
You release the trigger, a round goes off.
So those are out there as well.
I actually got an email about it.
Yes, someone called it a binary trigger.
I've heard it called a few different things.
But that may have been one of the weapons as well.
But this is the importance right now of getting the facts about these stories before we do what liberals do and jump out in front of them.
We need to ban automatic weapons.
He had an automatic weapon.
Well, you find out later on, well, it may not have been automatic.
It may have been a bump stock.
Oh, OK.
Well, you're talking about very serious legislative proposals based on facts you don't have.
And now facts that may not be facts at all may have been totally incorrect.
So getting rid of that, there's no gun show loophole, folks.
If you buy a weapon from a federally licensed firearm dealer at a gun show, you have to go through a background check.
What liberals are referring to with their propaganda tactic of the gun show loophole, which has nothing to do with gun shows at all, they are referring to the ability of private-to-private gun sales, which can happen at a gun show.
But it's usually more commonly with people passing guns down through generations or family members giving them to other family members.
There's no reason the government should have to monitor every single transaction that involves a fire-up.
You want to buy one from a dealer?
Fine.
We have background checks for that.
But stop making this up, okay?
There's no gun show loophole.
If you're using that talking point, you're being completely disingenuous.
A gun show loophole, what's defining the loophole is the gun show.
But there is nothing about a gun show that is unique that gives, there's no loophole.
It's just made up.
It is a private to private sale.
It has nothing to do with gun shows.
You're just making that talking point up.
Now, a couple other things on this.
I got other stuff I want to get to as well.
Hillary Clinton yesterday puts out a tweet, typical Democrat garbage spewing from their mouths, hot smoking garbage every time there's a tragedy about Congress is getting ready to pass a law about silencers.
Folks, here we go.
Listen, there is no such thing as a silencer, okay?
This is another stupid liberal talking point where they assume the entire time that you will not do your homework.
I don't know what a silencer is.
I don't know anyone with any experience with firearms.
Who knows what a silencer is?
I know what liberals want you to think it is, but there is no such thing as a silencer.
This isn't the movies.
This isn't Chow Yun-Fat in that movie with Mia Sorvino.
This is not a Jackie Chan flick, okay?
This is the real world.
There is no such thing as a silencer.
Now, there are suppressors.
There are suppressors which I firmly believe should be legal because it's very difficult, especially if you have a home defense weapon, to defend yourself, especially in the middle of the night when they're really loud.
If you can suppress the sound a little bit and be able to operate and defend yourself, then yes, I think you should be able to buy those because we're a free people.
But there is no such thing as a silencer.
Again, understand if you're listening.
This is a stupid Democrat focus group tested word they use knowing it's not the appropriate technical term and understanding the entire time that it sounds more like a silencer.
Gosh, we're going to have silent weapons now?
No, trust me, you're not going to have silent weapons.
They've seen him on James Bond, you know?
So it's got to be real.
It's got to be real, Joe.
That's right.
They saw Roger Moore, who was like the worst James Bond ever.
Roger Moore had it, so therefore it has to be real.
You're right, Joe.
It's a good point.
If it was in James Bond, it was totally legit.
Her with the silencers, again, just making it up.
Now, folks, on the gun control issue, just finally, because this is important, Daily Signal has a really good piece I'll put up in the show notes today.
I strongly encourage you to read it.
I just want to read quickly from the piece because this is important.
This is from the National, what is it, the Association for Legal Action noted that As gun ownership has risen to an all-time high, the nation's total violent crime rate has fallen to a 44-year low, and the murder rate has fallen to an all-time low.
Basically, Americans have acquired over 170 million new guns, doubling the number of privately owned guns in America.
So folks, how many times have I had to explain to liberals on this show the idea of science, which they have a tough time with, and the idea of research and statistical analysis?
When you do a statistical analysis, excuse me, and you're trying to make a correlation if A then B. A and B are somehow related.
The idea is to get the largest number of people or exemplars you can in that study so that you can generalize the results, not the smallest.
If I want to understand the effects of medicine X, On a group of people?
I need to get a representative sample of said group of people.
I cannot run Medicine X on a one-person trial, Joe, because that one person may be, he may be allergic to it!
He may die!
You can't conclude then that Medicine X is going to kill everybody in the population.
You can't!
So we want to pick a random sample, that way what they call confounding variables, allergies, you know, people who are just non-responders, they're randomized over the whole population.
The point I'm trying to make here, folks, is when you use the population of the entire United States and you say, does increased gun ownership lead to increased crime or gun crime?
The answer is no!
Matter of fact, the answer is the opposite!
So all of these people out there telling you in cherry-picking examples, well if you look here you'll find this and if you look at Australia you'll find this, the answer I want to know about is in the United States.
And the biggest and most robust example you can use that would be most scientifically valid in a correlational example if A then B is the entire United States.
And in the entire United States gun ownership has gone up dramatically and crime and violent crime has gone down.
That's not refutable!
Folks, just remember that one number.
They can throw out any other statistic they want to you.
All of it's cherry-picking.
It is the equivalent of saying in that medicine study, if you were to run Medicine X and run it across, say, a hundred million people in the United States, and you get a beneficial effect, whatever, low blood pressure goes down and It's the equivalent of saying, I say, hey, Medicine X works.
You know, we did a study on a hundred randomized or whatever, a hundred million randomized subjects.
That's a lot.
And we had a decrease of 10% in blood pressure.
And it's like them come back and, no, no, that's not right.
Johnny Bag of Donuts in New York died when he took it.
Oh, okay, so we should throw it out?
Johnny Bag of Donuts may have been allergic to it.
Joe, do you see where I'm going with this?
Yeah, sure.
The only example you should be concerned about is the one with the biggest number of subjects.
The liberals are cherry picking.
Oh, well, in this part of the country, we've seen this happen.
Folks, this is what they're doing.
They're cherry picking the Joey Bag of Donuts case because that's all they have.
They have nothing else.
It's really disturbing.
And just a quick, to quote Kimmel accurately, because Kimmel's just, he's not helping here, he's just causing chaos.
Talking about how, if we should politicize this debate immediately, which is a big resounding no on my end of course, but you know, liberals don't care about that.
He said, well, I disagree with that intensely, the idea that we shouldn't bring it up now.
Kimmel said, because of course there's something we can do about it.
Now notice what he tells you.
Which is almost nothing.
This is what Jimmy Kimmel suggests we can do about gun control.
There are a lot of things we could do about it, but we don't, he continued.
Which is interesting, because when someone with a beard attacks us, we tap phones, we invoke travel bans, we build walls, we take every possible precaution to make sure it doesn't happen again.
But when an American buys a gun and kills other Americans, there's nothing we can do about that.
Notice how he offers nothing!
He doesn't actually... This is interesting!
He actually refutes his own point, Joe.
He says when there's a terrorist attack that Trump actually does stuff.
We talk about a travel ban.
You heard my quote, you can rewind.
He says conservatives, when something happens, conservatives take legislative action that actually matters.
And then he proposes, he goes, well, and now we had this killing and we should do something because there's something we can do.
That's like triple circular reasoning, okay?
We can do something because there's something we can do.
But then he talks about things we can't do.
Like the gun show loophole!
We can't change the gun show loophole!
Why, Joe?
Because there's no Gun Show Lupo!
There's nothing to change!
This is what fascinates me.
This guy has millions of viewers.
Isn't he remotely concerned, even a little bit, a teensy-weensy little bit, about fact-checking?
Doesn't it bother him that people are gonna read and analyze what he said and say, Jimmy, that's just not right.
You're saying we should do something about a something that's not a something.
Apparently he doesn't care.
I just don't get it.
All right.
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Okay, so yesterday I talked about the Jones Act.
I'm not gonna get too wonky with this or dig into it, but someone sent me an email, nice guy, very nice email, and I always appreciate it, and brought up a point that I should have brought up yesterday.
The Jones Act is under fire right now because of what's happening in Puerto Rico.
The Jones Act demands that American flagged vessels traveling from American territory to American territory, that products and goods are transported on American flagged vessels.
Now that's a nuance I should have put in there yesterday, so my fault.
Like I said, I always...
Always try to give you the full story.
I was trying to get through the story rather quickly.
The problem with that, folks, is not allowing foreign competition in that arena is upping the price of products.
And in Puerto Rico, which is obviously an island surrounded by water, this is causing a big problem.
I appreciate the email, but it doesn't change my view on this at all.
He makes a good case.
He thinks in the email, I'm not going to read the whole thing, but the author of the email defends it saying, listen, you know, this is a national security issue.
We really should have our American ships transporting goods from American territory to American territory and also he makes the point that the, you know, foreign governments subsidize their shipping industry so governments are... really it's unfair competition.
Folks, I get it and to the writer I totally understand, but the answer to foreign subsidization of their industries, whatever it may be, airlines or other ones, is not to make products for the American consumer more expensive.
And I'm sorry, but there is no refuting the fact that the Jones Act makes products more expensive.
So I just looked up some quick data from a Cato piece I'll put in the show notes.
Oil transported from Texas to the Northeast, it costs three times as more to do that than it does to ship it to Europe.
Think about what I just told you.
Take U.S.
oil from Texas to the Northeast.
It costs three times more to do that than to ship the same oil to Europe.
Folks, that's just one example.
I'm not using a single subject design.
The Cato piece has a number of examples about how the Jones Act, by really eliminating foreign competition altogether, when it comes to Sorry, something like chewing on my leg there.
I thought it was my mother-in-law's dogs had jumped in or something.
The Jones Act, it decreases competition and increases prices.
The Jones Act is ultimately hurting you.
Listen, folks, I wanted to bring this email up today, not to redo the Jones Act yesterday, But because this is something that bothers me a little bit, and I say this with all due respect to the guy who wrote me the email.
It's a really nice email.
I appreciate your listenership.
You know, if I lose listeners because I don't support their causes, I'm fine, I'm okay with it.
He didn't suggest that, but that's okay.
I mean, I have to stand for something, and I just believe it's wrong.
And how many times have I discussed on the show the idea of getting big?
Often.
You know, when I was in the Secret Service, we had this idea, we used to instill into our students and imbue in them the idea that you have to get big, get big.
When the gunshots start firing and they're coming downrange there, and we used to use these simunition rounds, it really hurts, like these plastic bullets, they hurt like hell, especially in the winter when they're frozen.
We used to tell the students in the AOP exercises, Assault on Principle, Where, you know, we'd walk a mock protectee around, a guy pretending to be the president.
You guys gotta get big.
When the gunshots go off, you can't duck.
You have to eat that round for the protectee.
You have to learn to get big.
You have to train students that.
You have to train them to get big.
It's not instinct, Joe.
It's instinct to duck.
Yeah.
Again, I'm not trying to be a philosopher or preacher here, folks, but I say to the author of that email, who happens to work in the industry, and I think he admitted he benefits from the Jones Act, Folks, how do you expect to fix anything if we're not willing to take it on the chin a little bit?
How?
Now, why do I bring that up?
Because, one, I got the email, but secondly, Trump's tax plan, in conjunction with the GOP Congress, is already running up against significant opposition.
I mean, unsurprisingly, from... Republicans!
I say unsurprisingly because you... Listen, you expect Democrats.
You expect Democrats to object to anything that puts more of your money in your pocket because they want your money.
They have a control agenda.
That doesn't surprise anyone.
What's surprising me now is that Republicans I shouldn't say it surprised me, what surprised me is the level of opposition emanating from the Republicans after their epic failure on Obamacare.
And why are they doing this?
Let me read you a quote from a Bloomberg piece, which again I'll put in the show notes, and it's about the opposition by Republicans to the Trump tax plan out there now.
Here's a quote.
Wait, before I get into that, these are all lobbyists, and they're all fighting.
None of them want to get big.
They all want to fight for their little piece of the pie, knowing that the pie is being slowly whittled away and thrown down the drain.
All right, I quote, the real estate industry opposes doubling the standard deduction, arguing that it would lead to fewer people itemizing deductions and therefore diminish the value of the mortgage interest deduction.
This is crazy, Joe.
Charities also oppose it, saying it lessens the use of the deduction for charitable giving.
They're also concerned about the prospect of ending the estate tax, which they argue drives millions of dollars in charitable contributions.
Folks, this is amazing.
In a bad way.
And again, I say to the author of the piece about the Jones Act, I get it that you benefit from it and that certain industries do.
I'm not indicting you here.
I'm not making any moral judgments.
I get it.
What I'm telling you is the Jones Act is bad for business and bad for the economy in general because it violates every single law of economics.
There is no law of economics that indicates that a decrease in competition is good for price levels.
None.
These are iron laws of economics.
And a national security argument about the Jones Act that these should be U.S.
vessels, I think it's silly.
I have to be candid with you, folks.
If foreign competitors want to transport goods from U.S.
port to U.S.
port, And there's some World War III breaks out tomorrow.
As I said, making an argument about foreigners buying U.S.
land assets.
Joe, do you remember this one where I said people are concerned about all the Chinese money coming into U.S.
real estate?
They're buying up the United States.
Folks, this is the greatest deal ever!
Like what do you mean that they're buying us up?
Folks, seriously?
World War III breaks out tomorrow.
Do you actually think we would allow Chinese say military officials who had maybe shuttled their money into U.S.
real estate to infiltrate the United States and take oh hey guys come take your houses over here.
Now we not only have their money but their money's invested in U.S.
assets which we can confiscate because We live here.
This is ours.
This is our land.
That is just a nominal deed.
If World War III broke out, we could say tomorrow, all right, we're taking back these assets.
We need them for national security.
And I'll make the same point to you about the Jones Act.
Even better, we have their foreign vessels.
Hey, we need that boat.
Thanks.
See you later.
And we don't have to use ours.
Even better.
These are not simplistic arguments, folks.
I think you're making a simplistic argument.
You say something like, well, it's a threat to national security when the Chinese buy land here, as if we're going to give it to them in World War III.
Same thing with boats.
We're not going to let foreign flag vessels infiltrate U.S.
ports in the middle of wartime.
We'll probably confiscate them if the national security situation was that great.
So it's not true.
So you got to get big.
And what's happening now is the tax plan due to the doubling of the standard deduction.
And just to be clear what this is, for those of you who may have missed it when I've discussed it before, standard deduction is a deduction everybody can take.
It's going to be about $24,000 for married couples under this Trump tax plan out there with the GOP Congress.
It's a joint effort.
That standard deduction means pretty much everybody gets it.
Which means if you don't have deductions from your income worth more than that, you won't claim them.
Does this make sense, Joe?
I have to make this really simple because I think the get big argument doesn't work any other way.
Here's the point I'm trying to make here, folks.
If Trump doubles The standard deduction from $12,000 to $24,000, that is going to give an overwhelming number of Americans in the middle class a really heavy deduction from their income.
If your family makes $90,000, you are now only going to be taxed on $90,000 minus the $24,000 deduction.
Make sense?
Yep.
But you can't deduct anything else at that point.
Folks, this is a good thing.
It's simple.
It's less complicated.
But the real estate industry is going nuts.
Well, why?
Because they don't want you to have that standard deduction.
They want you to have a deduction for your house instead.
Joe, that ironically may be worth less to you in some cases.
Yeah.
In some limited case that over and then certainly less because I'm talking about the effect on the economy and the allocation of resources.
But they want to have because it benefits them.
Guys, ladies, I'm sorry.
We're all going to have to get big and take it on the chin.
Charities are opposing the estate tax?
I didn't read that to you wrong from Bloomberg.
Charities don't want the standard deduction to go up because they don't want you to have more money because they want to make sure that the charitable deductions... Does that totally defeat the purpose of a charity or what?
Now Joe, charities, the reason, this is disturbing, it really is.
Charities, if you donate money to charity, and you don't meet that $24,000 threshold, You are not going to benefit from that because you already have the standard deduction, the $24,000.
Okay.
So if you're a charity and you have the, let's say, you know, you have people who are at $13,000, say the deduction now for families is $12,000.
Let's say someone gives $13,000 to charity.
They can now use that $13,000 charitable deduction over the $12,000 standard deduction now, because it's more.
You want to deduct more income, right?
You want to deduct more income because it's less money you're going to pay taxes on.
So if the deductions double to $24,000, the person making that $13,000 charitable donation now has no need to claim it on his taxes because the standard deduction doubled.
This is complicated.
I'm very, very sorry.
I'm trying to make it simple.
If you made the $13,000 deduction while the standard deduction was $12,000, you can use that charitable deduction to deduct the $13,000 from your income and lower your tax bill.
If the standard deduction doubles to $24,000, that $13,000 deduction is useless because you can't claim it because you've already claimed the standard deduction, which is more!
So now it doesn't benefit you tax-wise!
Tax-wise, Joe, to make that $13,000 charitable deduction.
Does that make sense?
Yeah.
But the whole point of charity is not to do it for your taxes, that's nice, but to do it because you want to do it.
So the fact that charities are fighting this is outrageous.
Joe, another thing.
Yeah.
They're fighting the estate tax.
Now why?
Now this defeats the entire liberal narrative out there.
Because what happens with the estate tax, which I believe is $5 million in assets, when you die, If you have above a certain threshold in assets, I think it's about five million dollars or so, at the federal level, and some states have these as well.
You'll get a tax bill before you pay, well you'll be dead, but in order to transfer those assets to someone else, you'll have to pay a tax on the estate.
That's why they call it the death tax, because it's paid upon your death out of your estate.
Now the irony of this is it causes such a tax bill that if you don't have liquid assets, So let's say you have a farm, Joe, and you don't have $100,000, and the tax bill to transfer the farm to your kids is $100,000.
Well, what the hell are you gonna do?
You gotta sell your dad's farm!
You can't, you owe $100,000, you don't have it!
So charities love this because why?
Oh people got to give it away to charity which by the way totally defeats the liberal argument that there's generational wealth but the irony of this is in addition to that charitable donation where some people have to give it away to charity because they can't afford the tax bill what winds up happening Joe is a lot of people just sell it And liquidate the assets to bigger companies like big agriculture and things like that and making quote big ag grow bigger which defeats the purpose of not using the attack on generational wealth to not consolidate assets.
You're actually consolidating assets amongst bigger companies each time as landowners sell off their land prior to dying so that they're not responsible for the taxes.
Again, the great irony of the left, it's not that they don't help you, it's that they actively hurt you all the time.
It's just astounding what they get away with.
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Okay.
Uh, let's see.
So Budweiser's thinking about boycotting the NFL now.
I've got that story from the Blaze.
They opened up a hotline.
I don't know if you saw this.
They opened up a hotline to receive complaints about their sponsorship of the NFL.
So I will put that article from the Blaze in the show notes.
It has a number in there.
Please call it and complain.
Uh, let's see.
Okay.
Here's the story I wanted to get to.
I had a few more, but this one's important.
There's a Supreme Court case coming up this week that's really critical.
The Democrats, again, are trying to usurp power into the judicial branch.
Now, this is an internal quiz for all my longtime listeners.
Why are Democrats in love with the court system?
Because Democrats love discretionary power, and discretionary power is best exercised in the court system.
When you have a judge in a black robe who can say what's constitutional and not, and just basically fabricate rights out of thin air, Democrats love this.
They enjoy this.
So they like to push everything into the court system because it can override the executive branch and it can override the legislative branch.
Now, what they're trying to do now, Joe, is they're trying to override the constitutional limits on redistricting.
Redistricting was left to the states.
When I talk about redistricting, I mean the drawing up of congressional districts.
Congressional districts all over the country, all 435 of them, have about 700,000 residents in each one.
The states dictate what the borders are of those congressional districts in each of the states.
Also, obviously, there's states and their legislative districts as well.
The Democrats are now in court in a case, Whitford v. Gales, being heard by the Supreme Court.
It's an absolutely critical case, folks.
Here's a quote from this.
The Democrats are trying to say right now that the Republicans are packing districts and basically redistricting to redistrict Democrats out of power.
But here's a quote from the piece.
In 2016, only 303 of the country's 3,113 counties were decided by a single percentage point margin compared to 1,096 in 1992.
The point they're trying to make to Democrats in the lawsuit is a lot of these districts right now, whether they're state, local, or federal, are uncompetitive because of Republicans.
And they're using this thing Called the efficiency gap.
Now, this is another one of those liberal kind of claptrap nonsensical terms that they bring up to scare you into believing that there's some kind of, you know, science or reason behind the premise.
The efficiency gap is measured on the idea of wasted votes.
In other words, that if you pack a district full of Democrats, and let's say they vote 90% for Hillary Clinton, right?
And the rest of the district surrounding there, the Republican candidates, say Donald Trump, won, you know, 52-48.
The idea with the efficiency gap is that basically 40% of those votes in a district that won 90% for Clinton were wasted.
Why were they wasted?
Because they're not efficient.
Because all she needed was 51 votes out of 100, Joe, and she got 90.
So they didn't need all those votes.
They did, you know, 40 or so were wasted there.
So we could have spread them around and been more competitive in other districts, and the Democrats are saying this is what the Republicans are doing.
But folks, I don't want to spend a lot of time on it because I've discussed this before, but it's important to... The Democrats are basing it on proportionality.
They're saying, well, given the amount of Democrats in the country, look, we won the popular vote, we should have more seats.
That's not the way the Constitution works, folks.
We are based on a system of federalism.
We are not based on a proportionality system or a parliamentary system.
That is not the way a republic works.
And by the way, so that's point number one.
That proportionality, that's a European idea.
That's not an American idea.
We're a republic.
We're a republic where regional interests are represented.
We did not want California and New York.
California and New York, two rather large states, two of the top four there.
We didn't want them to be able to dictate policies for Wisconsin and Texas.
That's not what they wanted.
They wanted regional representation as well.
That's why we're a system of federalism and we're not a populist society.
We don't do that here.
So it's not constitutional.
But number two, the efficiency gap, Joe.
In other words, wasted votes in districts where Democrats rout Republicans.
That's not our fault.
Democrats move to cities.
Conservatives stay in a lot of urban and rural areas.
What do you want to do?
You want to forcefully relocate Democrats out to the suburbs?
That's not our problem.
The fact that 90% of New York City votes for Republicans because Democrats and, you know, hipsters and urban types like to vote Democrat, that's not our issue.
You want to affect the process?
Go move to the countryside.
It's not the court's job now because you don't like the outcome of you being concentrated in urban areas.
That's your problem.
That's not ours.
But again, the Democrats, they constantly want to go into the court system and use the discretion of men in black robes and women to overturn what they can't win at the ballot box or through advances in legislation or the executive branch and executive power.
They do this all the time.
It's an important case to watch.
I'll update you when I hear the results.
But Whitford v. Gill, I'll put an article about the show notes today, in the show notes about it.
But read up on it.
It's important because it goes to show you the lengths to which Democrats will go.
To use judges in black robes to overturn what they can't do anywhere else.
It's really depressing.
All right, folks.
Thanks again for tuning in.
I appreciate it.
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All right, folks.
I'll talk to you all tomorrow.
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