In this episode - The NFL “take a knee” fiasco is a devastating blow to the media’s echo chamber. Here’s why. https://libertyunyielding.com/2017/10/10/nfl-meltdown-blows-dam-msms-centralized-media-model/ Is CBS losing money because of the anti-American NFL protests? https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/16/cbs-earnings-to-disappoint-due-to-weak-nfl-ratings-credit-suisse-says.html These pictures of empty NFL stadiums are additional proof that the boycotts are working. http://ijr.com/the-declaration/2017/10/998358-nfl-boycott-full-force-empty-seats-show-just-powerful/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social Yes, corporate tax cuts do benefit American workers. Here’s how. https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-to-make-a-good-tax-reform-plan-even-better-1508194497 How Obamacare price controls are spiking your premiums. https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-executive-order-could-save-millions-obamacare
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
I have an obligation to come on the air with data and material and research.
I can't just say, trade stinks!
Thanks for tuning in to Dan Bongino Show.
Let's jump right in because we have no time for nonsense.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
When I was a young man, I don't remember it being sexy to want to allow a nanny state to control my life.
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 man, doing well, doing well, thanks.
I'm not obviously a big Hollywood fan, but is it Matthew McConaughey, the actor who goes, all right, all right, all right?
I don't know.
I think that's him who does that.
So let me know.
Daniel at Bongino.com.
Shoot me a name.
I've always heard that.
I think it's him who does it.
All right.
A lot to talk about.
Let's dig right in.
But first, I want to take a quick audience poll.
You all are great at emailing me about stuff.
My email is Daniel at Bongino.com for the show.
So I'm thinking about doing a mug.
I'm thinking of the mug should be.
Who is Jay Zabikus?
Does that interest you?
Because if it does, folks, it's a lot of work to set this stuff up.
I'm only going to do it if you want it.
So if you want it, let me know.
Shoot me an email.
Shoot me a tweet.
Say if you think that's something you'd be interested in, I will certainly set it up, the Who is Jay Zabikus mug.
But let me know if that's what you're interested in before me and my wife take on another endeavor, because it's only for you.
I like it.
You like it?
I'll send you a freebie.
I like it.
Yeah, I just don't want to give myself another job if the audience isn't interested.
All right, folks, I read a really fascinating piece I'm going to put in the show notes today.
It is by a guy named, what is it, J.E.
Dyer.
You know what?
I should have had this up beforehand.
I'm sorry.
I just want to make sure.
It's at libertyunyielding.com.
Yes, J.E.
Dyer.
The title of the piece is NFL Meltdown Blows the Dam.
Ugh, figures.
My thing resets, which it always does on my wireless.
NFL Meltdown Blows the Dam on Minstry Media's Centralized Media Model.
Folks, this is an amazing piece.
It's long.
I'm not gonna, you know, fake the funk on this one.
This is a long piece, but you absolutely need to read it.
Because in the piece, he breaks down why the collapse of the NFL, and just to be clear, in case you think I'm making any of this up, I'll put another article up at the show notes, always available at Bongino.com, or if you subscribe to my email list, I will send you these articles every day.
The link is right at the homepage at Bongino.com.
CBS, Joe.
The network.
Their Sunday NFL ratings are down 17% year over year.
Now I know the liberals remember how I discussed in a show a couple weeks ago how the liberals have to defend the idea that crapping on America by kneeling for the flag is a popular position because that's what liberals do.
Liberals, they can't have you believe America is a wonderful place because they're afraid you're going to ask, well, why?
Oh, liberty and freedom and a constitutional republic and a generally limited government?
We can't have any of that!
We need people to believe socialism and an all-powerful state is wonderful, so America sucks, we're an imperial empire scarred by our history, we will never recover, forget it.
That's all they believe.
They need you to believe that other people believe that too.
That's why they are so desperately clinging to this NFL narrative.
Desperately.
Now, as I've told you, this is not a popular position.
The ratings are down 17%.
And again, in case you're saying to yourself, well, you know, what's the financial impact of that?
Is that nothing?
Oh, yeah.
We do facts.
We do data on this show.
You want to do stupid?
Go find a liberal show.
They do stupid all the time.
And I'll get into that later with a Paul Krugman op-ed.
That is the pinnacle of stupid.
CBS stock, Joe, was expected earnings per share at $1, $1.12 earnings per share.
Their earnings per share came out at $1.08.
So there is a real, that's a big difference, folks.
That is a serious financial impact for CBS.
They are being hurt, and a little bit of good news for you all out there.
A lot of good news.
Some guy emailed me yesterday, said, I like to listen to your show because, you know, you throw out there when we're winning a little bit.
We are winning.
We are winning huge on this NFL thing.
This is a resounding victory in the culture wars that I think is going to have a lasting impact and the piece I'm telling you about by this J.E.
Dyer confirms it and here's why.
The echo chamber, Joe.
The echo chamber sponsored by the mainstream media has existed for decades.
You all know what I'm talking about.
A narrative goes out there.
Trump colluded with the Russians.
That's a narrative.
It's a false narrative, but it's a narrative.
It is a theme.
Yes.
It's a talking point that the left wants out there in the media.
Yes.
So an insider, maybe from a PAC, and then you go through this in the piece, but none of this is mysterious to any of you in the NFL piece I'm telling you about.
They go through how Ben Rhodes kind of gave up the game when he talked about the old Obama administration official, when he talked about how the media people were stupid and they could force feed them narratives.
They'll basically go out there in some left-wing pack or whatever it'll be, you'll start up some talking point, you know, they'll get some op-ed stuff and they'll put it out there and then the media will pick up this Trump-Russia narrative and the echo chamber will run with it.
The echo chamber, so we're talking about real things and not these fanciful otherworldly ideas, R-CBS News, ABC News, MSNBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Washington Post.
And when they're all talking about it, folks, it seems real.
It seems like it actually exists.
Despite the fact that the Trump-Russia narrative was in fact false.
Right.
It is now like, you said that, right?
Right.
Right.
You said that so seriously for all those people who like gentle talkers out there.
Right.
Except the fact that it's wrong!
Trump-Russia collusion is a false story!
But people still believe it's real through the echo chamber.
I promise I'm going to tie this because this is important.
Folks, the dam is breaking.
This is an overwhelming, resounding victory because the ability of that echo chamber, the Washington Post, the New York Times, CBS, ABC, NBC Nightly News, the only way financially those entities are able to survive, one of the few ways, was through the NFL.
You may say, oh man, come on, that's crazy.
Is it?
Is it crazy?
Read the piece.
When the guy goes through in the piece, the author... I don't even know if it's a guy.
J.E.
J.E.
could be Julianne for all I know.
I never met the guy.
J.E.
Dyer.
The author in the piece goes through line by line.
How deeply revenue from the NFL model, Joe, is embedded into all of these major network echo chamber news outlets.
How deeply the revenue supports their continuance.
How they're losing money almost everywhere else except for live sports.
With the NFL, he calls the core of the core.
Meaning, Joe, the ability of ABC, NBC, and CBS to stay relatively profitable so they can echo chamber false narratives.
is based on a core of live sports because people are tuning out of almost everything else.
Cord cutters, people are going to the internet for their information, people are going to CRTV, people are going to Breitbart, people are going to other places.
NPR if you're on the left.
They're just not going to the echo chamber anymore.
The only way they're staying financially viable is that core of live sports and the core of the core is the NFL.
Now, The destruction of the NFL revenue model this season, not completely, let's not be, let's not engage in far leftist hyperbolic talk, but there's no question it's being destroyed.
The slow destruction of the NFL revenue model this season is breaking down and causing real financial consequences to these media companies that have to exist for the echo chamber to continue.
So I took a note here, but the NFL is a vehicle, Joe, to fund the echo chamber and the vehicle is stalling.
So the author, this dire gentleman or woman, I don't know, I didn't even look him or her up, makes an unbelievably profound point that I want to add on here for this show because I enjoy doing that.
I enjoy taking people's work that's really good, you know, replicate genius, right?
Don't copy mediocrity.
I don't know who said that, but it's really cool.
This organization used to do some volunteer work, used to use that line too.
But I think to add on to this, to layer on to this, in these massive cultural war victories we're having right now, layer on to this the horrific Weinstein scandal in Hollywood right now, and you're seeing two of the three evil musketeers collapse right now in front of your very eyes.
The evil musketeers, right?
Hollywood, the media, and academia.
I'm not talking about everyone in those entities, but I'm talking about a significant swath of them that are interested in narrative fulfillment and not facts.
People like Paul Krugman, who came from academia and is now in the media.
Paul Krugman is not interested in the truth.
He's a far-left economist.
He unbelievably won the Nobel Prize.
He's just a political hack now.
Paul Krugman is interested in only the advancement of narratives.
He's not interested in the truth anymore, as evidenced by an op-ed he wrote, which I'm going to get to in a minute.
Which is going nuclear among the left.
And ironically, Joe, the op-ed is called Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies.
No, really, that's what it's called.
It's got like six or seven lines.
That's the title of the op-ed.
I'm not putting it in the show notes.
You can look it up.
Just Google Paul Krugman, Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies.
He's got some onions, man.
Yeah, he does got some onions.
I'm not giving this idiot any clicks.
I'm sorry.
You're free to read it, I'll cover the point.
And ironically, it's lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.
There's a couple things he says in there, because I'll be fair to him, like he's not fair to conservatives, where he does say a couple things that are factually correct, but very few.
He tries to debunk the Trump tax plan, and it's just a massive misdirection effort.
But the two of the three Academia, the media, and Hollywood are in the midst of a catastrophic collapse.
The nice part about this, folks, and I don't want to, I shouldn't use the word nice, because I was thinking of a story yesterday, and I wanted to get this across, and one of the reasons I don't like boycotts, but I think ultimately they're necessary right now because of the culture war the left is engaging on us folks, is I bought my Raptor from a car dealer.
I'm not going to say where, I don't want to put them on the spot, but the dealer's owned by a very liberal person, according to a number of people who told me that.
A very liberal person.
But the people in the dealership that I dealt with were really good, hardworking people.
They were really nice.
I only spent a few hours there.
I mean, I'm not going to claim to know them, you know, like I would know my kids.
But I had enough of a conversation to know that these were hardworking people, and they shared some of our values.
The problem with boycotts, and even the problem with the boycott of the NFL, is 90% of the people who work there and live there are really good folks.
And you have 10% who want to crap all over the flag and root it for everybody else.
The problem is the left has taken this strategy to us repeatedly by boycotting Fox News, attempting to boycott personalities, you know, boycotting anybody who's a conservative that's used as a spokesman for a company.
The only way for us to win is to fight back and unfortunately we have to use their tactics or there's no other way.
We're just going to be steamrolled.
But let me be clear, Joe.
I'm not suggesting that these are good tactics.
Right.
Do you understand?
I'm suggesting they're less bad.
There are bad options.
The less bad option right now is to fight back.
The worse option is to sit back and do nothing and let them steamroll us entirely.
Now, we are winning this.
We are winning significantly because once we dry up in any significant way, the revenue model for the NFL, this echo chamber can't exist as this dire author points out in the piece.
It can't!
The echo chamber will collapse in front of our very eyes.
You're seeing it with the collapse of the stock price now.
We are winning.
So I'll wrap this up by saying keep it up.
Please keep it up.
Do not, do not let up until this policy is completely changed.
Now we have to give them an escape.
You know, we don't want to have an endless battle here.
I mean, that's to be fair to them.
We want to give them an escape.
But our list of demands are, you will not allow this behavior on a platform that's yours.
You want to protest?
Fine.
You have the absolute First Amendment right to do that.
Nobody's questioning that.
I'm certainly not.
You do not have the First Amendment right to protest on company time.
Who is it?
Huckabee was on Fox this morning and said to Sandra Smith, who was hosting the show, the Fox show, that if you were to go on Fox with a t-shirt saying, you know, F the police or something... Right.
You have the right to say that.
You're kind of an idiot for doing it, and she would never do that, obviously, but you would be fired by Fox instantly because you're not allowed to use their platform to do it.
There's a difference, okay?
And it's ironic because the New York Times, as was pointed out in a William McGurn op-ed today in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times has just put out an edict that their reporters who try to do journalism, which is almost funny at the New York Times show, that they're not allowed anymore to tweet partisan opinions.
So let me get this straight.
The New York Times, which is arguing that the NFL, this is a First Amendment issue, when it's not, nobody's questioning their right to say it.
We're questioning their right to say it on the company's time and the fans' time who are paying to finance it.
The New York Times says, not on our time, no partisan opinions on our time, but the NFL, partisan opinions on their time.
Do you see how these people, it's collapsing.
We are winning, folks.
But keep it up and give them the out, and I would suggest the out is that.
I'll tell you what, Dan.
Yeah.
There was about 15,000 empty seats here in Baltimore this weekend.
That's a big, I put it out, I tweeted it out yesterday, Breitbart article.
Actual photos, in case you think we're making any of this up.
It's not just in Baltimore, Joe.
It was down in Miami, it's been all over.
Los Angeles Rams can't seem to sell a seat.
It is a deep impact on them.
And our outclause is that.
You will stand and you will salute the flag while you are on NFL company time because our fans are largely patriotic people and they don't want to be offended.
You want to go out after hours and be a social justice warrior?
Knock yourself out.
You're not doing it on our time.
Once they institute that as a league-wide policy, I'll be back.
Till then, I'm gone.
See ya.
I'm with you.
Have a nice day.
I'm with you.
Glad to have you with me.
All right.
Today's show brought to you by our buddies at BrickHouse Nutrition.
Big fan of these guys.
Today I'm going to talk about their first product they advertised with us, Foundation.
Great product.
Love it.
Listen, all I can recommend, I got the greatest email about Foundation.
These are real emails.
Everybody who's sponsored my show knows I don't make stuff up to sell you stuff.
But a guy sent me an email the other day, Joe.
He's taking Foundation, which is a creatine ATP blend.
It allows you to perform in the gym at a much higher level than you can now, because it's like having two extra gas tanks.
It basically fuels that anaerobic system.
And I always say, take a note on a couple exercises, how many you do, and then load this stuff for seven days and come back and watch your performance increase.
Also, Take the mirror test.
Buy a bottle of foundation, give it about seven days to load, and then look in the mirror seven days later.
Now, I'm not making this up, get an email from a guy, he says, the best thing I can tell you is that I was gonna, he bought a product, he bought it, he loved it.
He goes, I wasn't so sure about the next month buying it.
He goes, until my wife said, you better get that stuff again.
Now, I'm not kidding.
That's a real email I sent to Miles.
I go, Miles, you better put that on the website.
Because the wife said he looks so much better.
I'm telling you, it's a great product.
Give it a shot.
It's called Foundation.
It's available at BrickHouseNutrition.com slash Dan.
That's BrickHouseNutrition.com slash Dan.
All I ask, take one exercise, take some notes on it, how many you did, what the weight was.
Seven days later, look again and then look in the mirror.
Stuff is fantastic.
BrickHouseNutrition.com slash Dan.
Give it a shot.
It's called Foundation.
All right.
You know, Joe, on the show I talk about community rating a lot with Obamacare.
Understanding the collapse of Obamacare is very simple.
All you need to do, folks, is understand community rating and guaranteed issue.
Obamacare set prices through price controls, which never work.
Set price controls for insurance plans, and then basically said to insurance companies, and you'll have to sell these policies at any time, even to people who are sick.
Now, that may sound great in theory, but the economics of that are foolish.
You know, price controls lead to the same thing every time.
Price controls, just so we're clear, meaning the government telling a private entity what it can charge for a product.
What it can charge for a product is based on demand for the product and supply of the product.
It's not based on what the government says.
But it leads to the same thing every time.
It leads to increased demand, because if you set a price lower than what the market price is, then more people are going to want it, so you get increased demand.
It typically leads to decreased supply as well, because if you're forced to sell a product show at a government price lower than the actual price, newsflash!
You're losing money!
So you usually dry up the supply.
It usually leads to quality problems because if you're forced to sell a product at below what the product is worth, you're going to make the product cheaper because you need to make money.
And you also get black markets because people can sell the product at the market price, not the government price, on a black market.
So price controls lead to those four things every time.
Now, Obamacare was a price control.
Community rating was a price control.
It said that you can't sell an insurance policy to an older, sicker person at any higher than this price, which was a ratio from the price you were giving to younger people.
Just know this.
It set a ceiling on what you could charge older, sicker people.
Again, sounds great in theory.
In the real world, of course, those costs don't go anywhere.
They go to other people.
Now, Community rating, I discussed it a lot, but I haven't given you the exact data.
So I went and researched the piece, just to be clear on this, based on the current news of Trump setting up this system now, where you're now allowed to buy short-term insurance policies and band together as associations, and the left is going nuts.
And I described it on yesterday's show, the reason they're going nuts is because if enough people get together and form associations, they're allowed to escape the Obamacare rules.
They're going to.
And Obamacare is going to collapse all on its own.
But one of the other things Trump did which is upsetting the left...
And I'll get to the community rating numbers in a minute to show you just how bad price controls have impacted your premiums.
But one of the other things Trump has done, which is really hurting the liberals now when they're in a panic, and I'll put this in a Cato piece, which will be in the show notes today.
Again, it's a little long, but it's really, really good.
It's not too wonky if you're interested in the real hardcore numbers as to why this thing is collapsing and the liberals are in a panic.
So first, the Trump executive order allowed associations to band together.
So Joe, whatever it may be, the Association of Sound Engineers, like Joe, where you get together with 50 other people and you buy insurance and you get group rates, that's got them in a panic because you wouldn't be subjected to Obamacare and they know people are looking for a way out.
But the other thing it did is, Obamacare hated short-term insurance.
It hated it.
It hated short-term insurance because it wanted people to be subjected to heavy regulations and taxes and short-term insurance plans didn't do that.
What short-term insurance plans would do, Joe, is they would allow people in like mini-med type plans to buy catastrophic insurance and buy it for periods of maybe a year.
And they wouldn't renew it but it would maybe get them through jobs.
So let's say, you know, you left CR and renegade Republican and for a year you wanted to take a vacation in Europe, right Joe?
You could buy just a catastrophic plan.
You don't want the gold-plated plan.
You just want, God forbid, in that year you would have come down with some deadly disease, right?
Cancer, God forbid, or something like that.
You just want coverage for that year.
So pre-Obamacare, these plans were available to you.
Well, Obama hated those.
Because why?
Because they weren't a big revenue source for the government.
And secondly, these plans were not subjected to Obamacare regulations.
In other words, didn't force insurance companies to cover a lot of stuff they wanted insured.
Now, why would they want that stuff insured?
Because the Democrats love lobbyists and lobbyists want their product insured.
You give, uh, whatever, you give hair transplants?
You want to make sure your hair transplant lobbyist is buying off Democrats to make sure Obamacare demands that insurance companies cover hair transplants?
Well, why?
Because you want the money!
That simple as that.
If insurance doesn't cover it, a lot of people aren't going to do it.
So you lobby a bunch of Democrats, and to be candid, some Republicans do.
And you say, I demand Obamacare cover hair transplants.
That's the way the government controls you and controls the health insurance market.
Through lobbyists' money and getting things included in Obamacare's essential health benefits.
Essential, like hair transplants, right?
These short-term insurance plans didn't cover that, so Obama hated them, and so did the Democrats, because they don't control them.
So what they said, Joe, which was very clever, these guys are unbelievable, man.
I'm telling you, they're so devious.
They said, ah, they said any insurance plan, right, that exceeded, that didn't exceed, that exceeded three months, that did exceed three months, is no good.
What?
And that's, that doesn't qualify anymore.
And so basically you had to get a plan for three months or less, which, who's going to want that?
I mean, if Joe's leaving a job, you know, he wants six months, a year.
If it exceeded three months, no good.
And you couldn't get any more, you had to buy an Obamacare compliant plan.
It was just a simple way, folks, again, of getting you to buy stuff you don't need so the government could get lobbied and control the insurance business.
The hair transplant industry... I shouldn't use them.
It's a bad example.
I don't want to single them out.
You get where I'm going with this.
You know, I'll insert any insurance, you know, any procedure.
It doesn't matter, vasectomies, whatever it may be.
I just don't want to single them out.
Fingernail health.
Yeah.
Fingernail health industry wants fingernail checkups every year.
The fingernail health industry is lobbying Democrats.
They don't want these short-term plans to exist.
Democrats love it because, you know, instituting things like this because then they control the fingernail industry and the fingernail checkup industry.
They get money and they love control.
They crave control.
They want you to have to come to them, to the government, to get your fingernails checked.
And the only way you can do that is if the government regulates it through putting it in Obamacare.
So Obamacare said, oh, three months or...
Three months or more, no good.
So it's got to be a three month or less plan or you have to go buy an Obamacare compliant plan and get fingernail insurance, okay?
Yeah.
It was a scam.
So Trump wiped that clean.
And he said, no, you know, plans that are generally more than three months now are eligible, you're eligible to buy them.
The Democrats are in a panic because they love control and they don't want to lose the lobbyist money.
Folks, that's what's at the heart of all of this.
So they're panicking now.
So they're making up stories as to why they should defend Obamacare.
That's in the Cato piece.
I want you to check it out if you can.
It's a little long, but it describes how the essential health, the gist of that, where I was going with that, by the way, Is that the essential health benefits, the mandating that people buy fingernail health insurance, Joe, is one component of the massive premium hikes you're seeing under Obamacare.
The second component, which I've discussed on the show often, is community rating.
Now, here are some numbers in case you think I was making any of that up.
I went out and searched today for a piece to back this up, and the piece, as Cato always does, they provide really delicious links in there that you can, if you're really into the wonkery, you can check out yourself.
So the essential health benefits portion is thought to have upped premiums by 23% for males 40 years and older.
So that's that portion of it.
The second portion, community rating, what we talked about, government price controls, which basically put a ceiling on what you can charge older, sicker people, which just defrayed the cost of their care to you.
That's all that did.
The cost didn't go anywhere, folks.
They didn't disappear.
There's no money fairy.
Community rating, Joe, this is crazy.
So essential health benefits, 23% over four years.
Increase in premiums due to making you buy fingernail stuff.
Community rating up to your premiums between 98 and 274% since 2013.
Wait, what?
Wait, what is right?
Now, again, in case you think I'm making this up, the piece will be in the show notes.
The piece, well, what are they citing?
They are citing a report by McKinsey & Company, a very good consulting company.
I think I applied for a job there one time.
McKinsey and Company report sanctioned by, wait for it, wait for it, the Department of Health and Human Services that then subsequently squashed the report.
So, just to walk through this, Department of Health and Human Services, for liberals out there who don't know what that is, that is a cabinet-level branch of the United States government, sanctioned a study by a world-renowned consulting company, McKinsey and Company, to go find out the price effects on health insurance of essential health benefits, fingernail insurance basically, and community rating government price controls.
The report subsequently finds out essential health benefits up premiums by 23 percent over four years for 40 year old males and community rating government price controls up the premiums by 98 to 274 percent since 2013 and boom!
What happens?
The study goes away magically but is conveniently linked in the Cato piece.
Folks, I don't make it up, okay?
You wonder why I wake up every morning and I want to pull the remaining strands of hair in my head out dealing with liberals?
Because they can't do common sense facts and data.
They just can't.
This is the government's own sanction survey saying what we did in Obamacare, instituting price controls and an essential health benefits portfolio of crap you've got to buy but don't need, basically blew your premiums through the roof and liberals will still argue that they did you a favor.
Joe, nothing will... they just don't stop.
The bulge never ends.
Excuse me, I'm supposed to say.
It never ends.
Gosh, and really, you wonder why I wake up every morning like...
My wife thought it was funny yesterday and I said you know liberals like facts are they're like garlic to a vampire for liberal.
They just are it's just it's and it's not even Joe it's not even hard it's not even complicated you just have to like google stuff it's I mean you don't need to go to a law library or an economics institution to figure this out just go look it up Just look it up!
It is right there for you to find.
My entire life is like a battle against liberal stupid and the stupid is strong with them lately.
Okay, today's show also brought to you by my buddies at My Patriot Supply.
Big fan of these guys because I appreciate being prepared.
You know, I was talking to a friend last night, by the way, on Obamacare.
He showed me his thing last night.
I'm not gonna say who he is, he knows who he is, but I was chatting with him last night.
He got a fine, I took a picture of it, he got a fine for not having Obamacare for his wife of $1,400, Joe.
No, this guy does okay.
He's not rich, but he does okay.
He got a 14 Israel fine and I love it.
You know how they, this is an old story I covered a while ago, but I love how they define, he gets a letter from the IRS by the way, they call it a, is this not Orwellian?
A shared responsibility payment.
Keep in mind, this dude's been paying taxes at a pretty high rate forever.
He's probably financed the Medicaid benefits of countless Americans.
The IRS is now fining him $1,400, claiming he has to have insurance for his wife.
Keep in mind, he may want it, he may not, but he's obviously not a free man anymore.
That's what I objected to about Obamacare.
And it's a shared responsibility payment despite the fact that this guy's shared responsibility for others for decades now.
But that's a whole other point.
But the reason I bring the guy up is he's into preparedness too.
He's a very smart guy.
Folks, you gotta have emergency food.
We ensure everything in our lives that matters, okay?
We ensure our health.
We insure our teeth, we insure our cars, our homes.
Insurance is a smart thing to have.
Not having food insurance is crazy, especially in these times with the North Koreans threatening EMP attacks.
You really want to take that chance if they were to wipe out the food grid?
I mean, what would you do, seriously, after four weeks when your pantry's empty?
I hate that term.
Gosh, I hate that term.
Your food closet in the kitchen.
I can't stand that term.
It's the worst.
And my five-year-old used it.
I'm like, stop calling it a pantry.
I hate that word.
Don't call it a pantry.
Maybe we should put that on a mug, too.
But when your food closet and your refrigerator, what are you going to do?
You going to hunt squirrels like my buddy who emails me all the time?
Maybe!
I don't know.
I'm not a particularly big fan of squirrel.
You need to ensure your food supply.
Go to preparewithdan.com.
That's the website.
Preparewithdan.com.
For just $99, they'll sell you a one month supply of emergency food.
Just $99.
It comes in a box to your house.
You can store it.
Hopefully you'll have it and never need it rather than need it and not have it.
Go pick it up today.
I have quite a few boxes of this stuff because I have four people in my household.
It's preparewithdan.com.
All right.
Gosh, what do I talk about next?
You know, there's a good piece in the journal today.
I'm just going to read this quickly because I don't know if I explained this, but let's see.
Here we go.
There was a good piece by a Hoover Institution economist about why they think that corporate tax cuts can lead to a raise for you and the reason i'm bringing this up is the trump administration is pushing this out there about the trump tax plan and i think based on very sound competent research that if this tax plan goes through folks we could not everyone but on average americans could see up to upwards of a four thousand dollar raise so you know you could get a raise from i believe the research is solid but
You know, I've talked about productivity a lot, how when you give corporate tax cuts to businesses, the money has to go somewhere.
And this is when I'll get to Krugman in a minute, but they can either invest it, they can spend it.
I mean, there's only so many who consume it.
I mean, they can invest in other companies, they can spend it on dividends, or they can consume it on themselves, and basically buy capital or equipment, and then that equipment is going to lead to greater production, and that productivity typically leads to wages down the line, because that greater productivity makes workers more productive.
But the author of the piece summed it up pretty quickly about corporate tax.
I just want to read this.
I'm going to move on to another story.
He says, first, corporate rate cuts attract more foreign capital and domestic investment.
Well, why would that be, Joe?
I mean, think about it.
If you're a company, right, that's global, you know, Joe's International Conglomerate of Communications Professionals, and Joe can locate anywhere, which Joe could.
Joe can do this from anywhere.
Joe does it from Maryland.
Do you want to locate a high-tax or a low-tax country?
This is not a trick question.
A low-tax.
Okay!
Thank you, Joe.
Joe, you are not a Stanford-trained doctor of philosophy and economics, correct?
Correct.
You just don't want to pay higher taxes, right?
Right.
Okay.
Now, thank you, Joe, for clearing that up for us, okay?
You're welcome.
So this opening statement is not controversial in any way.
First, corporate rate cuts attract more foreign capital and domestic investment, which increases demand for labor and hence wages.
Meaning if corporations find out that the United States has lower corporate tax rates than they do around the world, which we don't right now, we have one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, they will invest here, investment here will lead to increased productivity, which will increase wages.
This is only complicated to liberals.
He says, second, the growth effects are primarily associated with increased productivity, something we've talked about on this show a thousand times, as opposed to more hours of work.
What is he saying there?
He's saying that there's a difference between producing more widgets because you are working harder at the same wage or producing more widgets in your job because you have better equipment.
In other words, Joe, any company, if you make widgets, any company can make more widgets.
You could basically beat your workers to death and force them to work 20 hours a day and say, make more widgets by servitude.
Again, that's not complicated.
Now it's morally and ethically, of course, wrong to do.
But I'm just trying to create a foil effect here by how that's not how we grow an economy.
By forcing people to work harder for less wages is not the way to productively grow an economy.
The way to productively grow an economy is to get employees better capital.
In other words, they're working outside with a rake, get them a piece of John Deere equipment, they become far more productive and can charge more homes to get rid of their leaves.
You get what I'm saying?
Yeah, there you go.
So that's why investment in the economy and the buying of more John Deere equipment, better assembly line equipment, allows workers to produce more, not do more hours worked, but do more production during the hours they're working now.
It's pretty simple stuff.
He says productivity means greater output per worker, which produces higher average wages.
He estimates this would work out to be between $1,800 and $2,400 annually per household once the full growth effects are realized.
A substantial share of this increase would be enjoyed by middle class households.
Folks, this is a big deal, okay?
That's a lot of money.
You may say, well, where'd the $4,000 number come from?
Well, we're just talking about the corporate rate tax cuts.
Corporate rate tax cuts benefit on the middle class, not the income tax cuts as well.
So the $4,000 is a cumulative effect of the multiple tax cuts built into the Trump tax plan for the middle class.
See what I'm saying?
But these corporate rate tax cuts alone will filter down, folks.
It's not trickle-down economics.
There's no such thing.
This is just productivity economics, which is the way the economy has worked forever.
It's why wages in the United States are higher than almost any place else on Earth.
Because we have a very productive economy, despite Barack Obama.
But he summed it up nicely in the piece, so I just thought I'd put that out there.
All right.
Let's see, where did I get to Krugman?
Oh, one more quick thing before I get to Krugman.
Be careful, very careful, as far-left narrative folks about these Facebook ads that have allegedly changed the course of the election for Hillary Clinton.
Hillary's a phony.
She's a fake.
She's a fraud.
She's not a good person.
I can't say this enough.
She's lying to you right now.
She's lied to you since she's been a politician.
Very few things she ever says are motivated by any sense of goodwill, but they're typically motivated by a sense of political opportunism.
So Hillary now is trying to make excuses for her loss, so her new narrative is that the Russians bought $100,000 in Facebook ads and that these Facebook ads somehow swung the election.
Now, her own pollster, the guy referenced yesterday, Joe, Mark Penn, Hillary's pollster, Hillary's, not Trump's, own pollster was on Fox this morning saying how that's a bunch of hooey, how it's garbage, how it's crap, that out of this $100,000 that the Russians bought, This is just some facts for the left, by the way, and there's a reason I'm bringing this up.
56% of those ads aired after the election.
So how exactly ads that aired after the election influenced the election is beyond me.
I mean, I'm waiting for Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future to show up as Marty McFly and convince us somehow that ads that ran after the election somehow influenced the election.
But okay, so let's say it was 50,000, so half of the ads aired before.
Surely those aired in swing states changed the election.
I find it interesting that very few people can actually cite those ads.
That they change people's minds, but they don't know what the ads were.
Secondly, Joe, he mentions the fact that of those ads, roughly about 20,000 of those ads aired in the states she's claiming they aired in.
And in addition to that, 20,000 of those ads was, by any reasonable account, overwhelmed by the 6 million, 7 million, 8 million dollar ad buys she did in those states beforehand.
So you're telling me $20,000 in ads that no one can even cite changed the course of an election despite Hillary running millions of dollars in ads in those states?
It's just stupid.
Why am I bringing this up?
Not to, you know, cite Mark Penn and talk about Hillary's dopey excuses.
But because liberals, because they always have an agenda, the why matters, folks.
Always, always dig out the why.
The liberals are now using this as an excuse to regulate the Internet.
That's political speech.
They're adding this to their legion of reasons they think the government should be responsible, you know, net neutrality, Title II regulation.
They're using this as another reason why the government should have a heavy footprint on the Internet.
Folks, it never ends.
There is always a scam with the left.
You just have to find it.
So it's very important you're able to debunk this $2 billion, I think it was $1.4 billion total was spent in the presidential election.
If you could convince me that of $1.4 billion total spent on advertising in the presidential election, that $20,000 in Russian ads, however pernicious, and I agree the Russians should stay the hell out of our elections, You can convince me $20,000 changed the election.
I demand to know your focus group of people who saw those ads, who remember those ads, and who changed their minds according to those ads.
Because you'll never do it.
Because you'll never find those people.
Because it's a mystery.
You're just making it up, and they're using it as a vehicle to regulate the internet.
Be very careful.
Alright, so Krugman.
Man, is this guy out of his mind?
He is a looney tune, man, seriously.
This guy won a Nobel Prize for economics, and I'm wondering, like, were the people awarding the Nobel Prize...
Were, I mean, were they eating, like, edibles that day?
When I say edibles, I'm talking about illegal, like, pot brownies or something?
Were they high?
This guy is out of his mind.
So he has this piece out there that's been going viral.
Someone sent it to me, but I've seen it on Twitter, making the rounds.
And the gist of it, Joe, is that the Trump's tax plan is full of lies, lies, lies, lies, lies.
That's the title of the piece, right?
I'm just going to hit a few things.
First, to be fair to him, again, because he's not fair to us, he does say one thing that is correct.
Trump keeps stating that the U.S.
is the highest taxed nation in the world.
Now, it's not that that's not true, it's that there are multiple ways that that's not an easy thing to say.
It's kind of like saying, you know, baseball's the best sport.
Well, how?
By what measure?
I mean, fans?
Money?
I mean, you get what I'm saying, Joe?
It's hard to refute, so I'm not saying Trump's lying, and I'm not trying to cover for him either, because I'll give you his reason in a minute.
I'm just trying to say that that's not an easy thing.
So Krugman basically says, well Trump's lying about this because, and he's right, he's not making up the numbers, he says if you measure taxes as a percentage of overall GDP, the U.S.
is actually below the average.
Now, his chart is not incorrect, if you watch the piece.
Now, there's a lot of things to take into account there as well.
I mean, are we talking about state, federal, local?
He avoids all these thorny questions.
What Trump says he's referring to, and he is correct, is he's talking about the corporate tax rate, which is 35%, which is the highest in the OECD world.
You see what I'm saying, Joe?
Yeah.
But to be fair to Krugman, you know, he'll never give this to us.
He's not lying when he says, well, you know, Trump is overstating the case about saying we're the highest taxed nation in the world.
It depends on how you look at the data is where I'm going with this, OK?
State, federal, local, just federal, state and local.
Are we looking at regional?
Are we looking at payroll taxes?
Are we looking at income taxes?
There's just too many ways to parse that.
So leaving that aside, because Krugman obviously gets into it in such a way to make Trump look like an idiot.
And, you know, Krugman comes off like a buffoon himself.
Especially with this absurd title.
Amazingly, he has these ten bullets.
One of them, he tries to claim that the estate tax, this is incredible, the point he tries to make, because he refutes his own point by making a point.
He tries to say that the estate tax, the effects of it are being exaggerated.
While at the same time, clamoring to continue the estate tax.
Let me sum this up in non-gobbly gook Krugmanomics and in normal speak here.
Thank you.
The estate tax is a tax that affects inherited estates at the federal level.
Some states have them, Maryland has one, but he's talking about the federal one.
Trump wants to wipe most of that out.
So if you were to, say, give your family farm, and I'm using farms because that's the example, Krugman decides to attack.
If you have a family farm worth say 10 million dollars and you are through a will or to give that to your kids your kids are going to have to pay some taxes on that estate despite the fact Joe that the estate was basically purchased and financed using money that was already taxed.
Yeah.
In other words the farmer had to make money to buy the estate and he already paid taxes on his income.
So now, by already taxed income, he accumulates assets.
He now, when he dies, that's why people call it the death tax, he has to pay taxes again on already taxed assets.
That's what happened.
So what Krugman makes the point in the piece that the Republicans don't have any example.
Now folks you have my email.
Please email me if this has affected you because I've received probably 20 or 30 emails.
This is the most ridiculous Krugman statement I've ever heard.
He goes, This is state tax, Joe.
The Republicans can't find any examples of farmers that were not able to afford this tax and therefore had to liquidate their assets.
That's just a lie.
That's just a Krugman lie.
I've gotten emails from people.
I mean, did I visit them personally?
But why would someone out of the blue email me the details of their personal story if they were just making it up?
But what's ironic, Joe, so you see where I'm going with this?
Krugman says there are no examples of this.
Right.
This is state tax forcing people who can't afford the tax bill to liquidate their assets before they die.
Yeah.
That's the Republican argument that people can't afford the tax bill.
They know they're going to die.
They want to give their property to their kids.
So what do they have to do, Joe?
They have to sell the property and liquidate it to pay the tax bill.
And they can't give their stuff to their kids, which is amazing because the assets were already taxed.
Krugman goes, that doesn't exist.
And then he goes down further in the piece and he's like, we can't find any examples, and a matter of fact, there are only very few people who pay this estate tax.
Okay!
Okay, one, he's lying.
That's not true.
Because again, I have email examples of people who are telling me that they've had to liquidate assets because they can't afford the tax bill.
Joe, play his game for a minute.
Let's play stupid for a minute.
Let's fit the stupid rule.
Let's jump into the stupid skin for a minute and think like Krugman.
So let me be clear.
Krugman's arguing that nobody pays the estate tax.
There are no examples of this.
The government never gets money from it and nobody is hurt by it but let's continue it anyway because it's such great policy and nobody calls him on this?
Wait, what?
It's a cholera outbreak.
Yes!
That was him, right!
He's the guy who reported the cholera outbreak in Puerto Rico despite no evidence of actual cholera.
Good point, I totally forgot about that.
We talked about that a week ago.
Paul Krugman, of the famous Puerto Rico cholera outbreak with no cholera.
The guy's a nut!
Even taking him at face value, which is not true by the way, that no one's affected by this.
He literally says like there are no examples of this.
Taking him at face value, if there are no examples of it, then why do you care?
If this doesn't affect anyone, and nobody's making any money off it, then why do you care if the tax goes away?
Because he's a maniac.
Okay, point number two, he says, this one's a laugher, because he again, he refutes, this is a PhD economist, folks.
He refutes his own point in one of his other bullets about how Trump is lying.
He goes, hey, a cutting of the corporate tax, which we just discussed, and the reason it benefits workers, and that's the reason I threw that nugget in there before we got to this, again, trying to tie things together for you.
So we talked about why the corporate tax does work.
Krugman says, a cut in the corporate tax rate, which now we have the highest tax rate in the world, corporate tax, of OECD countries, right?
He says that's not going to help Joe because profits from basically corporate tax cuts aren't always a return on capital.
Now let me just kind of, I don't want to say dumb that down, but when you're talking about Krugman you must have to dumb stuff down because he tries to use wonkery to confuse you.
He basically says if we cut a business's tax rate and they buy more capital and equipment that those Some of that's not necessarily going to go down to the employees.
It'll basically be, you know, distributed to shareholders.
Yeah.
Okay, number one, who are the shareholders?
Oh, like pension funds, you mean?
Like CalPERS?
And like middle class employees who are invested in stocks in their 401ks?
So, number one, I just told you before how it does go down to workers to increase productivity, but then he makes the point, he goes on to say, So corporate taxes, it's not going to lead to this because capital doesn't necessarily give workers, a boost in capital doesn't give workers a raise.
But then he goes on to cite companies where this is an example.
He goes, look at places like Google.
A lot of their growth has come from technological advancement.
Wait, wait, wait, wait.
Hold on, I had to move away from the microphone.
Let me get this straight.
You just refuted your point again just like you did on the estate tax.
So you're saying that don't cut corporate taxes because look what happened with Google.
Where Google employees, Joe, by the way, are some of the highest paid employees in the world in one of the highest paid fields in the world and then you're citing those high salaries because of technological advancement which comes about because of capital investment while you're arguing against capital investment.
Folks, I'm trying not to get wonky with this stuff, but I read this piece thinking, if liberals had a brain...
Like the Scarecrow, right?
Is that the Scarecrow that wanted a brain?
Yeah, yeah, the lion wanted courage, right?
Yeah, that's it.
Man, me and pop culture are a mess, right?
I gotta start watching more movies.
But if they only had a brain, if they only had a brain here, it would be... I mean, it's...
Reading this!
Don't do this!
It'll lead to capital investment which won't accrue to workers.
Look at what happened with Google.
What, where the workers are paid a lot because of capital investment?
Has anyone called this guy out?
So, all right, folks, I just wanted to debunk that.
I know the show went a little long today, so I hope you enjoyed it.
All right, give us a look at Bongino.com, and please subscribe to my email list.
I always appreciate it, and I will see you all tomorrow.
You just heard the Dan Bongino Show.
Get more of Dan online anytime at conservativereview.com.
