In this episode - Incredibly ironic that the “Trump-Russia” investigation is evolving into a “Democrats-Russia” investigation. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/byron-york-is-tone-of-trump-russia-probe-changing/article/2638309 Big government healthcare is collapsing in Massachusetts but the Left still thinks it’s a model of success. http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/massachusetts-shows-rationing-is-inevitable-when-government-is-in-charge-of-healthcare/article/2638176 Why are Americans dying sooner? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-23/americans-are-retiring-later-dying-sooner-and-sicker-in-between Scientists discover a chemical in blood that drives predators mad. https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-blood-molecule-attracts-wolves-repels-humans-115020698.html Democrats are fighting this tax cut for small businesses because they think your money is theirs. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-23/this-big-tax-cut-for-high-fliers-shows-why-an-overhaul-is-hard
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They've been tweeting to me, Bongino's a nut, Bongino's a blanker, blanker.
The Dan Bongino Show.
Everywhere big government gets bigger, corruption grows bigger, and these liberals just keep going on and on and on about how great big government is, and they can't prove to you any examples of how wonderful big government is almost anywhere.
Get ready to hear the truth about America.
Young kids, you are too stupid to figure out your health insurance needs, so we're gonna hammer your cabooses to death until you figure out that the government knows what's best and you're an idiot.
On a show that's not immune to the facts with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to The Renegade Republican with Dan Bongino.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Happy Monday, everybody!
Yeah, man.
Dude, I am itching to get back on the mats with the grappling.
I'm dying here, folks.
I'm dying here.
I mean, obviously not actually dying.
Well, we're all actually dying at some point.
But, uh, you know, I hurt my shoulder and I, I, it's not bad, nothing dramatic, but I, I've had to stay off the match for a little while.
And I love this grappling and the thing about grappling and ground fighting and Brazilian jujitsu and like ultimate fighting type stuff is you gotta get, you have to grapple.
You have to actually like grapple, spar, like roll around, throw each other around and do stuff.
And that's my thing.
I don't, I, you know, I haven't told that my jujitsu instructor guy this year, but I, I hate drilling stuff.
I hate it.
I just like to spar.
That's it!
All the- because you figure it out!
When you got some big dude on top of you, he's like 300 pounds, or 200 pounds and super strong, and he's- you're in like a half guard on the bottom, and he's smashing you, and you're like, and your head is sideways, you can't breathe because this gi top is- you're sucking it into your mouth every time because it's falling over your face and you're like, You know what happens?
You learn super quick how to get the hell out of that because it sucks and I just love it so much.
I've been telling this doctor I've been seeing how much I love it.
He's going now too.
I mean it's just a passion.
That's right.
It is killing me, killing me, eating me alive inside not being on the mats because I was just starting to get Really good.
Like, I know self-praise things, but now I see things I never saw before.
Oh, it's eating me up.
All right, a lot to talk about.
Enough about me.
Let's get to the show here.
You know, this Mueller investigation is just exploding.
The special investigation that was allegedly started for Russian collusion, I'd argue that's been focused more on Trump.
But interesting development over the weekend, folks.
This thing is starting to take a really nasty turn for the Democrats.
What we would refer to as the Trump-Russia investigation, even though there is no Trump-Russia collusion scandal.
Now it's been leaked that the Mueller investigation, the special counsel, is looking into the activities of the Podesta group, which was run by John Podesta's brother.
For those of you who forgot who Podesta was, he was Hillary Clinton's consigliere, big-time campaign consultant.
He was the chief of staff at the White House.
This is a guy who's been around Democrat politics forever.
His brother has been intimately involved with lobbying on behalf of foreign governments and now it looks like the special counsel is going to be looking into Podesta as well.
Folks, it doesn't make me a fan of the special counsel investigation.
I'm not going to be a hypocrite.
Oh, Joe, now that you're looking at Democrats, this is just a great idea.
I think special counsels are universally a bad idea.
We already have a Department of Justice that was in no way prohibited from looking into Russian collusion, whether with Democrats or anybody else.
A special counsel is nothing other than giving a title special.
There's nothing new about it, okay?
So I think it's a waste of time, but I bring this up, I don't want to get into that, you know, this is an old story already, but folks, our government is for sale.
And this has really bothered me, and I have a couple of stories I'm going to tie into a larger narrative here, and I'm going to give you a solution at the end to not leave you all hanging.
But the Podesta story, and to be fair, an angle they're taking on Manafort as well, Paul Manafort, who was Trump's campaign manager for a little while, who was fired by the way, and believe me, I fully understand the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.
It's garbage.
It's nonsense.
We all get that?
So please don't email me and say, what are you saying?
The Trump-Russia thing is garbage.
It's completely fabricated.
But Manafort did do some lobbying on behalf of Ukraine as well, a foreign government.
The Podesta thing is equally, though, frightening.
And when you see what happened with the Uranium One deal and the scandal that's been breaking over the weeks, and I know, I know Peter Schweitzer wrote about this in this book, about the sale of uranium assets to the Russians while the Obama administration was in office and while Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation was taking millions of dollars in speaker fees from a company intimately involved in the purchasing of nuclear fuel assets from the United States by the Russians!
Folks, the government is for sale.
The government has been for sale for a long time.
Now, I read that story and I was in the gym this morning working out and I'm like, well, I don't really want to cover the Trump-Russia story again, but I do want to cover what the problems are that we're having right now with the unnecessary influence of government against, allied against the taxpayers.
We saw it with Uranium One.
We saw it with some, you know, Russian interference trying to get involved in our election, which nobody disputes.
I'm only telling you that it had nothing to do with benefiting the Trump campaign, at least with Trump's knowledge.
That's nonsense.
So I show a few stories.
Here's the first one.
You know, I've been talking about this, the tax code and the Trump tax plan, the Trump tax cuts, tax rate cuts.
And one of the things that's bothering me is the interest groups now coming out against it.
And again, these are interest interest groups that lobby. They lobby the government in no
differently than John Podesta did or Manafort did or anyone else who's
taking money from an entity to advance that entity's cause. Now I'm not
suggesting we should stop free speech I'm just telling you that there are ways to
stop this unnecessary influence in the government that doesn't infringe on free
speech. I'll get to that at the end but here's another example of this.
This is driving me nuts.
I read a letter from the National Association of Realtors this morning.
It's in the Wall Street Journal, Joe, about this mortgage interest deduction they're trying to hold on to.
This has become a big deal on the tax rates cuts.
Now, folks, yes, this is going to impact many of you.
What is the mortgage interest rate deduction?
I've described it before.
You get to deduct from your income the interest you pay on your mortgage.
Not necessarily the principal, but the interest.
Obviously the principal's involved because you're paying interest on the principal.
But if you pay a $3,000 a month mortgage, granted that's a lot of money, but it's a pretty big mortgage, and $2,000 of that is interest, you get to deduct a solid portion of that interest from your income.
Therefore not paying taxes on a portion of your mortgage.
The mortgage interest lobby wants to preserve that, and they are passionately fighting to hold on to this thing.
And they wrote a letter in the Wall Street Journal this morning, it appeared in today's Wall Street Journal, responding to calls by many Republicans and some Democrats as well to get rid of this mortgage interest deduction.
And to just have a flatter, fairer tax code.
And they say two things, Joe.
They say, well, you know, potentially home values will go down because it's gonna cost more then for people to own homes.
For the obvious reason, Joe, if you were getting a tax deduction for the interest portion of your mortgage you're paying, and you don't get that anymore, then that's more money at the end of the year you're going to have to pay towards housing because you're not getting any of it, quote, back from the government.
Because you're not getting the deduction.
Make sense?
So they're saying, well, home values would go down Because right now, that deduction's factored into the price, which depresses the cost a little bit and makes it more affordable.
Folks, that is total, complete...
Junk, okay?
I get it that in one or two or three years maybe afterwards while the market readjusts there may be some correction in the pricing towards the actual market price but over time this is far better for the economy.
Now they make another point in there that social safety nets in other countries because I had said last week during the show and it which is accurate by the way that Other countries don't allow this and have higher rates of home ownership.
So saying that, oh, we should allow people to deduct the interest on the mortgage show will lead to higher rates of home ownership doesn't comport with what's happening in foreign countries.
That's not accurate.
They say, well, other countries have different social safety nets.
Yeah, the countries we're talking about have bigger social safety nets, have bigger government spending loads, I don't see how that's an example of a positive thing, you know, we're supposed to emulate or not emulate.
They're different scenarios.
They're not related to each other at all other than the tax rates that are paid to finance them.
So, they're losing their minds, the real estate lobby, because they don't want to lose this benefit.
Another story, how the government's being bought off.
Now why do I say that?
Because the real estate lobby's not a knock on real estate agents.
I'm just saying that instead of fighting for a fairer, flatter tax code, which I'll get to in a second, they're fighting for their carve-out too.
Just like Podesta was fighting for a carve-out for the people he was lobbying for, and Manafort was fighting for a carve-out for the people they were lobbying for.
The EPA this week.
Another one, caved on this biofuels quota.
What was the biofuels quota, folks?
We have to blend a certain amount of ethanol into gasoline.
This decision is...
I get it.
I totally get it that people who are farmers who produce the agricultural products that go into ethanol, that this benefits them.
Just like, I get it, the mortgage interest deduction may temporarily benefit people in the real estate industry through higher home prices and greater commissions.
But just like this distorted tax code in the real estate industry, I don't think benefits society at large because it leads to higher home prices, which sucks more money out of the economy.
The same thing's going on with this ethanol.
The EPA caved on this, which is stunning to me.
They allowed this to continue, this biofuels quota, forcing more ethanol into our gasoline, despite very little evidence over the long term that this is going to benefit us.
It benefits ethanol!
I get it.
I understand that there are farmers that profit from that.
I'm not knocking you for making a living.
I'm just saying that this is another example of how all of us are going to have to get big and give up something.
So we're not willing to give up the mortgage interest deduction, but which benefits me.
I'm not, don't email me and be like, oh yeah, real brave.
It doesn't hurt you.
No, it hurts me directly.
I will potentially lose money on that.
But I know it's better, and I'll get to the solution in a minute, if we do X, which I'll talk about in a minute.
Just like I know it's better in the long run to find the highest and best use for our corn supply other than sticking it in the gas tank of a car that doesn't need it.
Third article, Joe, right out of your, I'm on a couple email lists still from Maryland when I was running for office up there.
I saw an article this morning, again, I'm having a hard time believing this, that this is the kind of stuff that Americans aren't starting to see through right now as we're all going collectively broke.
There's a governor's race in Maryland.
Re-election race.
There's a Republican governor by the name of Larry Hogan up there.
He's got a lot of Democrats eyeing his seat.
He won in an upset.
I think he's gonna have a really tough time getting re-elected.
I hope he does.
He's generally okay on some issues.
He's been a bit of a disappointment on others.
I hope he gets re-elected for the purposes of redistricting.
Joe knows.
I've met him.
I know him pretty well as well.
And there was a conference out in, I think it was in Ocean City, with the Maryland Teachers Union.
So they had, of course, all the Democrat candidates running out there to lobby for their endorsement.
Here's a piece, here's a quote from the Baltimore Sun, folks.
Again, how your government is entirely for sale.
It says, one by one, over the course of two days, the eight Democrats running for governor climbed the convention center stage here, courting one of the most coveted endorsements in Maryland.
The support of the sprawling and powerful teachers union.
Listen to this, Joe.
This is a kicker.
The candidates offered big promises to increase funding for public schools, sometimes by more than $2 billion a year!
This is incredible!
This is amazing!
Now, it goes on to say later in the piece that the benefits of these Democrat candidates for governor offering the Teachers Union all this free stuff that you're paying for, by the way, $2 billion a year!
$2 billion a year, by the way.
The benefits of all this is that the Teachers Union gives out roughly $2 million in donations a year and provides 2,000 volunteers.
How is your government not for sale?
Hey, how is that not like legalized bribery?
We are the teachers union.
We get paid by the taxpayers.
The taxpayers will then elect the governor.
The governor will then take more of the taxpayer money to give to a teachers union that will in turn give money and volunteers to have said governor elected or re-elected.
Folks, your government is for sale.
Now, Not to beat this topic up, I spent 12 minutes on it, but these were frustrating stories.
I read them and I'm like, I keep talking about getting big.
Folks, I get emails all the time from people whenever I discuss anything that someone's going to take it on the chin, but do you understand that we are all going to sink together if something doesn't change soon?
There is no possible way to continue on as a society with 20 trillion dollars in debt to suck money out of the free market economy into the annals of government to dish out to ethanol, to dish out in real estate deductions, to dish out in expanded benefits for teachers unions.
Folks, we don't have the money!
We don't have them, there's no money!
I mean the show about social security people want, I got 20, 30 people want Looney Tunes on me.
And keep in mind I wasn't even suggesting people now, despite I know I'll get emails, it doesn't matter what I say, people still hear what they want to hear.
I wasn't suggesting people even on social security now lose their benefits.
But people 55 and younger, there's no money!
There is just no money.
I don't know why.
What makes you think there's money?
Oh, it's in a lockbox.
Yeah, where's the lockbox?
I don't know.
Someone told me that once.
There's no money!
It's not our fault the government spent it.
The government did it.
Bureaucrats did it.
Elected politicians did it.
But that doesn't absolve us of the reality that there's simply no money.
Again, I get that the real estate lobby wants to keep that for higher home prices.
I get that the ethanol lobby wants to keep it for people who produce farm products that lead to ethanol.
I get that the teachers union wants more money.
But when are we all going to say collectively that it's time for something a little more reasonable?
Oh, this is another quote, by the way, from that piece about the teachers' union.
This is a kicker, Joe.
This is from the teachers' union representative at the meeting.
We're ready to be all in and to be the biggest player on the progressive side of Maryland politics.
Progressive.
Not the taxpayer side.
Joe, there's nothing in there about the taxpayer financing this large ass.
Nothing.
They're interested in being a big player on the progressive side of politics.
They're lobbying against you.
They're lobbying against you.
It's your money.
Folks, we are all going to have to give something up.
Now, here's the solution.
Folks, we need a flat tax.
And we should have no more public unions.
I'm sorry.
I was an employee.
I know I've been there.
I was a public employee in the police department in New York City.
I was a public employee with the Secret Service.
We had no union with the Secret Service.
We got paid just fine.
You know why?
The Secret Service had to attract people with the skills necessary to accomplish the job and the only people with those skills demanded a certain amount of money to get hired.
The Secret Service is a very complicated position.
You needed a four-year degree.
Practically speaking, you needed a graduate degree.
I mean, on paper, you need a four-year degree, but I don't remember that many people getting hired without a four-year degree and some significant work experience afterwards.
People with those kind of skills are not going to accept less than a certain amount of money.
Why do you want a public union to do what?
To lobby against the public?
This is taxpayer money.
Get rid of public unions.
That's it.
Full stop.
Now, secondly, we need a flap tax because these distortions in the tax code... Now, I do understand the real estate lobby and their argument here.
And remember, this doesn't... Did I lose money on this?
I understand their point, Joe.
Their point is like, well, why should we give it up?
Our deduction and nobody else.
I totally get it.
And that is an absolutely 100% reasonable response.
You shouldn't.
If the tax code is going to be a bunch of crap crony handouts, and we're not going to wipe it clean at the same time, Joe, and take it and just do a flat tax.
And when I say a flat tax, I mean 15, 20% tax rate across the board.
Everybody pays the same amount.
Nobody gets a crony deduction.
That's it.
That's the only way to do it!
But nobody has the guts to say that.
Why?
Because, just going back to my initial point I opened up with, our government's for sale.
These are the same lobbyists who go up to Capitol Hill, they make $2,600, $5,200 donations to re-election campaigns for members of Congress, to local, state, federal officials, to United States Senators, everywhere.
And they buy off our government and our government is for sale basically to the highest bidder.
Oh, the real estate lobby?
We can't upset them.
The teachers lobby?
We can't upset them.
The ethanol lobby?
We can't upset them.
What about the American taxpayer lobby?
Do we get a say in this?
Folks, I am not benefiting from, I'm losing on this and I'm telling you the best thing for the United States economy is to stop the distortions through the tax code and the misallocations of potentially trillions of dollars in assets over decades towards crony businesses where prices are not reflecting reality and let's start doing a flat tax where people have to actually compete on value.
It's frustrating, man.
I'm reading these stories this morning in the gym.
Maryland teachers, EPA, John Podesta's under investigation.
Now the mortgage interest deduction.
And I'm like, gosh, when do we get a say in this?
Holy Moses, seriously, when do we get to sit down and be like, hey, do we have a seat at the table?
Or are we just the ones constantly getting screwed?
It's frustrating.
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All right.
More breaking news over the weekend.
I got a couple of emails from people about the deduction for your 401k contributions potentially going down to $2,400.
Joe, people were Pissed.
I mean, like, emails like, what the hell?
I mean, caps, exclamation points, asterisks, you know, covering up for the curses in there.
I mean, I had stuff that was sent to spam because people put everything in caps.
They were fired up.
Here, let me just sum this up for you in a nutshell.
One, it's not going to happen.
So for those of you who heard that the Trump tax plan is going to eliminate the deduction we have now for 401k not eliminate it reduce it significantly to up to 2400 to down excuse me to 2400 a year uh trump put out a tweet this morning said not gonna happen forget it
Okay, so forget it.
I think it's a horrible idea.
If it ever comes up again, call your legislators immediately.
Folks, the issue I have with this, in addition to the other solution I just put out about a flat tax and the elimination of public unions, another one is I would like to see A almost quadrupling of the deductibility of 401k.
I mean, I'd like to see up to $50,000 a year.
Why would I say that?
Folks, the economics of this are very simple.
The capital stock matters.
Not to use wonky economic terms, I don't want to bore you to death, but the capital stock matters.
The things that enable us to produce t-shirts, computers, iPhones, everything.
Trees.
I mean, we have a tree farm, Becker Tree Farm down the road on 95.
I'm always impressed with the amount of capital.
They have a ton of land to produce a tree farm.
All of this stuff was created and the capital stock was created through savings.
Through American and international savings.
People save up, they buy the land, they buy the equipment to produce t-shirts, they buy the equipment to produce iPhones, they buy the equipment to produce computers.
This is all accumulated through savings, whether ours or others.
Remember, you can say, well, I took a loan.
I didn't save it.
No, no.
Someone else saved and gave you the loan.
To build the capital stock and to build more stuff cheaply, which is what matters, productivity matters, to build stuff cheaply, we need to build the capital stock and we need savings.
401ks are a significant source of that.
Cutting that, and again, it's not going to happen, but I got a lot of emails so I want to be sure I address it.
Cutting that, or the ability for you to deduct only $2,400 rather than, what is it, like $15,000 now?
It would be, I mean seriously folks, one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard in American history.
I'm not kidding.
So people ask me my opinion, that's my opinion.
One, it's economically incredibly stupid.
You would destroy the capital stock of the United States and destroy our capacity to produce stuff in the future.
And secondly, you would up your tax bill significantly because now you'd be paying taxes on $10,000 to $12,000 in income you weren't paying taxes on in the past, which could mean $3,000, $4,000 in tax bills, depending on what your tax rate is, Joe.
Horrible idea, but Trump tweeted out this morning, which I deeply appreciate, It's not going to happen.
So don't worry about it.
Got a lot of emails on it.
Wanted to cover it, but don't worry about it.
All right.
A couple other stories I saw this morning, which I found interesting.
Here's one kind of unrelated.
I probably should cover this on Rough Cuts, but it's a... We'll do another one of those too, by the way.
People have asked me.
I just haven't decided when.
Scientists, this was on Drudge this morning, and I think I saw it on Zero Hedge, too.
Scientists, this is kind of creepy, Joe.
They discovered this chemical in blood called E2D, right?
E2D.
E2D, like R2D2, E2D2, right?
E2D.
And it's a chemical in blood that gives it a metallic-type smell, and apparently, even in minute quantities, It drives predators crazy, like they start salivating and the wolves start going nuts.
If you're a predator like a wolf, that even the smallest scent of this chemical will make you go nuts.
It's in blood.
Well, that part makes sense, right?
I mean, if you're a predator like a wolf and you, you know, you sense a wounded animal bleeding, the wolf wants to go and wants lunch.
So he's going to go eat the damn animal.
So I don't think that's surprising.
But what was surprising about the story, what I found interesting was This E2D, in even minute quantities, it says in the article, one part per trillion, which is very unusual for human beings, we're not necessarily olfactory creatures like other animals, that human beings are repelled by this smell.
That they did this study where they put it in front of your sniffer and people back away.
You've got to read the piece in Bloomberg.
I'll put it in the show notes at Bongino.com.
Of course, if you subscribe to my email list, I'll email you the stories every day, but it's a really cool story.
And you may say, well, why is that?
And the answer, as I read on, I was a little surprised because I thought we were predators, right?
We were the ones hunting the woolly mammoth, and we were the ones hunting for our meat.
And they said, no, not really.
We were really insect eaters and gatherers.
The hunting of the woolly mammoth or whatever is only a recent phenomenon in our revolutionary history.
And the truth is, we're the prey most of the time.
So human beings evolved to smell this chemical, this E2D.
And get the hell away from there because it usually means there's some blood feast going on somewhere with wolves and you better get out of there before you're, you know, you're the, you're the dessert to this seven course wolf feast coming up.
The wolves look at it like, eat today.
Yeah, eat today.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Eat today.
We should put that one on a mug too, right?
Yeah, no, it was pretty good.
I thought I read that story and I was like, gosh, man, one part per trillion in human beings will get away.
The anti-pheromone.
Yeah.
Anti-pheromone.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay, a couple other things I saw this weekend.
This Frederica Wilson lady is losing her mind.
She's the Republican congresswoman.
Yeah, she accused the chief of staff of being a racist.
This is one of those dudes.
You know, we talked about the 52,000 ways to say, dude, you know, when you're scared, dude, you know, when you're excited, dude, when you see Frederica Wilson's name come up in Twitter, you're like, dude, dude, you're just like, you can't take it.
So she tweeted out something I found interesting this weekend, because it goes to show you how powerful far left narratives are, folks.
How they pervade the society and they're accepted as the moderate default position.
You know, I mean, think about the NFL.
The NFL played again this weekend to multiple stadiums with thousands upon thousands of empty seats.
This is not open for dispute.
What I'm telling you is not hyperbolic.
It is not factually incorrect.
Go look at the photos.
If you take any of this, if you're saying, no, that's not true.
He's just making that up.
Go look at IJR, IJ Review.
They have these pictures up, Breitbart pictures up of empty NFL stadiums.
The NFL is playing to empty stadiums because they accepted as the default position, the narrative, that the left is the dominant political force in the country.
The far left, anti-American left, we hate America, the national anthem sucks, Americans an imperialist empire.
The NFL decided to accept that and to allow that thinking they were going to appeal to a massive number of people and what happened?
They got screwed big time because that is a that is a fringe wackadoodle position.
Now that's because of the power of the media academia.
And Hollywood out there.
Now, you see it again with this, with this, with a tweet I saw from Frederica Wilson this weekend.
She tweeted out, she said, oh, this, this thing that happened in Niger with the four heroes, these four US servicemen who were killed in a counter-terror operation in Niger, they said that Frederica Wilson tweeted out, oh, but this is going to be Trump's Benghazi.
And I thought, wait, wait, hold on, timeout.
I thought the entire narrative of the media and the left, because they're the same thing the entire time, was that Benghazi was nothing, there was nothing to see there!
Joe, wasn't that the narrative?
There's nothing to see here folks.
We did everything we could do.
Nothing controversial.
Everybody move on.
Right.
That was the far left narrative the whole time.
Now, this is hysterical.
This is supposed to show you how sick these people are.
This Frederica Wilson, a loony tune wacko on the left, who has gone to war with the White House over a condolence call, Made to a a widow where she was in the car and and it was put on speaker.
Who attacks the president over a condolence call?
You have to be a sicko.
But this wacky Wilson out there now tweets that oh this is going to be Trump's Benghazi.
Meaning what?
There's nothing to see here?
Do you understand how you can't have it both ways?
You can't say on one end that Benghazi was just a Uh was a was a loss but there was nothing untoward about it and then tweet out this is going to be Trump's Benghazi as you try to insinuate that something untoward happened in Niger.
Right.
It says to you folks that these people are liars that this Frederica Wilson and all these other leftist hacks including their media buddies they understood Joe the entire time that Benghazi was a disaster.
That it wasn't this, they know that.
And it's just interesting how they slip at the worst possible moments and nobody picks up on it.
Now, just to be clear on this, by the way, comparing what happened in Niger, which was a military operation in an African country where they were battling, it was a counter-terror operation, to a diplomatic mission and the loss of an ambassador in Benghazi is really the height of stupidity.
But that's what the left does.
So keep that in mind, folks, the next time your leftist friends tell you, oh, Benghazi, you guys are all conspiracy theorists, your immediate response should be, is Frederica Wilson too?
No, no, she's a democrat by the way.
No, no, she's not a conspiracy theorist.
What do you mean?
She's the one insinuating that there was something wrong in Benghazi.
She's doing it now.
It just upsets me because the default position, the left always, always seems to win the cultural narrative here and it's up to us to constantly put it out there to fight back, folks.
It's really frustrating.
Hey, a couple of notes.
I'll be on Outnumbered this week, by the way, on Thursday, flying up to New York, so make sure you tune in for that.
That'll be fun.
I'll be the hashtag OneLuckyGuy, so check that out.
I'll be on Fox & Friends that morning, too.
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All right, a couple of other things I saw today.
You know, one of the arguments that's constantly resurfacing in the seemingly ever-present battle with the left over single-payer and government-run healthcare, because they're not always the same thing, I mean single-payer means the government runs it completely, government-run means the majority of the time government has some involvement in the healthcare industry, and Distorts prices.
I would suggest in the country we're already involved right now with government-run health care because the United States government, actually if you factor in state, federal, local, the governments pay about 40 to 50 percent of health care as is right now.
So we're already involved in some form of a government-run health care system.
But one of the arguments I'll hear our leftist friends, and I use that term loosely make all the time, is they'll say, well look at what happened in Massachusetts!
They had a single-payer type healthcare system in Massachusetts and look what happened there.
It was so great.
I mean that was a Republican idea.
Mitt Romney signed the bill and the Heritage Foundation was involved in it.
Folks, um, don't care.
I don't know why I should care that a guy who put a Republican label in front of his name signed a bill that was bad.
Oh, don't worry, Joe.
Mitt Romney signed it.
Therefore, it requires no additional critical analysis at all.
I'm here to talk about ideas.
You want to talk about party labels and your obsession with the D versus the R?
Knock yourself out.
I don't do that on this show.
That's why the show's called The Renegade Republican, okay?
It was a bad idea.
I don't care if Mitt Romney signed it or hit Tomney.
It doesn't matter to me.
I don't care who signed it.
It was a bad idea.
Now...
I'm bringing this up because there's a great article in the Washington Examiner.
Please read it.
Hadley Heath Manning wrote it.
It'll be in the show notes today.
It's a spectacular article about what's happening right now in Massachusetts.
Folks, there's a collapse going on right now in Massachusetts.
Which MassHealth, which is their Medicaid program, that this is, by the way, Joe, keep in mind, this is an example by the left of their success program, okay?
So MassHealth, which is their Medicaid type program in Massachusetts, Joe, added 400,000 more people to their rolls since 2014.
400,000.
Now one in four people in the state of Massachusetts are covered and it's sucking up by this program 40 cents of every tax dollar spent.
So what's happening?
There's no money!
Just like with the real estate people in the beginning, there's no more money for this!
Just like with the ethanol folks, there's no more money for this!
Just like with the teachers union, there's no more money for this!
We're all gonna have to wake up to these realities and lift and shift!
We're all gonna have to do that!
Now with mass health, what's happening?
Folks, if you're a liberal and you're listening, you're not interested in the facts, tune out, I don't care.
This is for, really, I'm serious.
This is for intelligent folks who want to... We want to evaluate pros, we want to analyze cons, and we want to say in the best... What's the best in the end?
Are the pros bigger than the cons?
Are the cons bigger than the pros?
What's going to benefit us all?
Now, Joe, there's rationing going on in Massachusetts.
Surprising?
Absolutely no one, because they're running out of other people's money, as Margaret Thatcher said so many times, with the problem with socialism.
So what are they doing now, Joe?
They're going to closed formulary systems.
Long and short of it is, it's a way to shut down choice in prescription drugs for people on this Medicaid program in Massachusetts because the money's drying up.
So they're going to offer people basically one option.
So you have disease X, you're going to take drug Y. Well, I don't want to take drug Y. I want to take drug Z. Well, you can't take drug Z. You're going to take drug Y. Well, why?
Because we said so, because we're out of money.
Folks, This is what I've been warning you about the entire time.
There are only two ways to effectively allocate resources in society.
Medicine, drugs, a doctor's time.
You can price it.
Which will encourage more providers to get in the market as the price goes up.
Or you can ration it.
That's what's happening now.
They're rationing it.
Because the price signal is so screwed up because the government's paying.
Therefore disconnecting you and the doctor.
Nobody has any idea what the prices are.
You pay your tax money, some government bureaucrat pays for you.
You have no idea.
So this closed formulary system is another form of rationing by telling you what you can and can't have.
I know they'll ignore this, Joe.
I know it doesn't matter.
And that's the frustrating part about this whole thing, arguing with liberals.
But folks, they use this as an example of a success story.
That's the most disturbing part of this entire thing.
They don't even think anything of it, that this thing, the rationing's occurring.
Remember Obama, when he said that line, they were asking about Obamacare, and they were talking about the grandmother with the hip problem.
And he's like, well, if you're 90 years old and your grandma with the hip problem, maybe you just need to take that pain pill.
This is how the left thinks.
I mean, next thing you know, they'll be prescribing cyanide pills!
You know, again, it just irks me, folks.
Now, also, another thing they argued about Obamacare was this was going to improve the status of the American healthcare system.
Another piece out today, it was either Reuters or Bloomberg, either way, I'll put it in the show notes, another good piece out.
Joe, U.S.
age adjusted the mortality rate.
Rose 1.2 percent from 2014 to 2015.
The first rise since 2005.
Meaning more people are dying.
We're not healthier.
Now there are a number of reasons for this.
I would argue Obamacare is probably one of them because of the and I'll make it let me just make a quick case for this.
So just to be clear this article and I think I'm pretty sure it's Bloomberg.
It'll be in the show notes.
I read this This ties into the Massachusetts piece.
Massachusetts took over the healthcare system.
Look how great it's been.
They're rationing.
It's not working.
Secondly, the second argument for Obamacare.
Americans are going to be so much healthier.
They're all going to have access to healthcare.
It's not happening, folks.
More people are dying.
Now, there are a number of reasons for that.
I don't want to create a direct A to B causal inference here, okay?
But there are reasons that are related to Obamacare, I'm absolutely convinced.
Deductibles have skyrocketed and gone through the roof along with premiums.
Forcing people who don't have liquid cash assets to go to the doctor to avoid going to the doctor when they're sick, which is not a healthy activity to engage in.
If you have emphysema, if you have HIV, if you have cancer and you have to delay treatments because you can't afford your deductibles, you are probably going to die sooner.
Now the article conveniently leaves that part out, Joe, because God forbid, you know, what is it, the Bloomberg or Reuters, either one of them.
You know, God forbid they actually tell the truth about far-left policies.
But one of the reasons at the end that they cite in the piece is they cite, you know, the rising drug use in America, alcohol use, and obesity.
And I think they're right about the drug use and obesity.
I think alcohol use, especially amongst teens, has kind of gone down a little bit.
But I think obesity, obviously, has been a big epidemic in the country for a long time.
We are the richest country on earth, and with that comes a supply of food, obviously large enough that we can eat when we want.
you know, some eat literally when they want and eat all the time and it doesn't work out if you
don't work out. So I think that does have a lot to do with it. But ignoring the fact that Obamacare
has actually, I think, decreased access to people when it comes to trips to the doctor because they
don't have the liquid assets, the cash to actually go and see the doctor and pay the bills.
I think that has to have something to do with it.
So that refutes another silly argument that the left's been making from the beginning about how great Obamacare is, including the dopey Massachusetts example.
Oh, you support rationing?
I don't support rationing.
Well, that's what's happening in Massachusetts.
Closed formulas.
All right, one more quick thing.
There's a lot of posturing going on right now.
With the tax bill.
Now I know I said in the beginning and I opened up the show, kind of tie it back together, about how I support the flat tax and no public unions.
That's where I stand.
Flat tax, I actually support a fair tax, but I think sadly right now there's very few ways to get there.
But a flat tax I will take.
It's worked in a lot of the Bells, the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania.
It's done very well in some of those states.
There's a lot of posturing going on right now over the pass-through rate, Joe.
The pass-through rate is if you own a small business and you're not incorporated, so whatever, you're Joe Armacost and you get paid by... Well, you do.
Joe does own a small pass-through.
You get paid by Conservative Review, right?
Yeah.
Joe's an employee somewhere else, but he gets paid pass-through.
So Joe has to pay the tax rate for that on his income.
He doesn't pay the corporate rate.
So there's talk with Trump of cutting the corporate rate to 20%.
That's what he wants in the tax plan.
But they also want to cut the pass-through rate, which is, again, it would be people who just declare Payments to themselves as personal income.
They don't incorporate, they're not paying the corporate rate.
There's talk of cutting the pass-through rate to 25%, which would be for some a pretty big tax cut because the top marginal rate, income tax rate now, remember you're paying it as income if it's a pass-through.
You're not incorporating.
You're just paying it as Joe Armacost under your social security number.
The top rate now is 39.6.
So there's a big fear on the left about, oh my gosh, these rich people that own small businesses, they'll pay less taxes.
What the hell are we arguing with these people for?
And the Republicans are like, the Republicans are taking up the, by the way, as I said before, the default leftist narrative that the rich should pay taxes, extra taxes, for no good economic reason at all, Joe, just because they hate rich people.
Why are we even arguing this?
My suggestion to any Republican listening is you turn around and go, listen, when you can make a case to me, That successful wealthy Americans who own small businesses, their money would be better spent by government bureaucrats.
I'll listen to you.
Until then, shut up!
It's their money.
They earned it.
They're paying a good amount of money.
You're talking about paying a quarter of their money.
Stop telling me that you're entitled to their money.
It's their money.
They know what to do with it.
You don't.
That's why you're in government and they're in business.
Thank you.
Have a nice day.
All right, folks, I appreciate you tuning in.
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