In this episode - Churches are uniquely vulnerable locations for targeted violence. I address some solutions in today’s show. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/11/05/mass-shooting-reported-at-texas-sutherland-springs-church.html Yes, there is a hidden “bubble tax rate” in the tax bill. Here’s how it works. http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanellis/2017/11/04/there-isnt-a-stealth-tax-bracket-in-house-tax-reform-bill/ Here’s a must-read piece on the lasting impacts of Communism. https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-communist-century-1509726265 Here’s an unhinged liberal response to yesterday’s horrific attack in Texas. https://buff.ly/2zzagJF Another fascinating piece about quantum computing. https://futurism.com/future-quantum-computer/ Is this the beginning of the end of the iPhone? http://fortune.com/2017/11/02/apple-iphone-x-ai-google-amazon/?utm_campaign=fortunemagazine&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&xid=soc_socialflow_facebook_FORTUNE
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Get ready to hear the truth about America with your host, Dan Bongino.
All right, welcome to the Dan Bongino Show.
Producer Joe, how are you today?
Man, man, what can I say?
I know.
Yeah, I know.
I mean, it's incredible.
It's like, like I said, folks, you can't turn away for two seconds.
It's just, the world has seemingly gone mad.
It's just crazy.
Uh, we have another, uh, attack in, uh, Sutherland Springs, Texas.
And, you know, let me just get right to the point here.
I've been doing a lot of media on this and I got an email yesterday from a nice enough guy, a gentleman, and he said to me, I did a hit.
Well, let me, let me just give you what happened in case you missed it.
I mean, I'm, of course, I always assume you understand, but there was a, Shooting in a church in Sutherland Springs.
About 20 people shot, multiple victims, another tragedy.
Now, I want to get into some stuff here I think is going to help you.
I wouldn't do it otherwise, folks.
And I did that yesterday on a cable news hit on Fox, I did, where I was discussing the shooting and how churches are uniquely vulnerable.
And I got an email, again, nice guy.
I'm not being critical of him anyway.
He was very nice too, Joe.
And he said to me in the email, he's a security professional himself, not Secret Service, but something else, I didn't exactly get to check his bio, but he laid out some of his credentials, seemed impressive enough, and he said, I don't think we should be putting this stuff out there on cable news, because again, the same criticism I felt would be levied on my book about the Secret Service, you're giving the bad guys ideas.
Folks, I can't say this to you enough, The bad guys already have these ideas.
The only question is what are we going to do about it to stop and mitigate the threat from said bad guys?
I'm sorry, sir, email me.
I appreciate your email greatly.
I mean that.
But you are categorically wrong on this.
Churches are uniquely vulnerable institutions as soft targets, folks.
And the fact that a lot of these churches don't have this info and don't even know this, Is the reason I go on the air and talk about how vulnerable they are so at least they can do something.
You see where I'm going with this Joe?
Oh yeah, yeah.
Folks, I would never, listen, I don't need to be on the, I'm not, this is not, I'm not in any way trying to be pretentious.
Please don't take this the wrong way.
I don't need to be on the air.
I have more than enough work.
Joe, can you vouch for me on this one?
Please, as my friend.
I have more than enough work, if I never did another Cable News it again, to carry me through an eon.
Really.
I only go on the air if I feel like I have something to say.
I have said no to multiple cable news hits repeatedly if I feel like I have nothing to add to a conversation.
Believe me, I'd print you the emails if it was ethical.
Yes, I'll vouch for you on that one as well, yes.
You know it, right?
No, I don't.
I said no to the hit Joe Joel said, what are you doing?
He asked me to do this, I won't do it because I don't feel like I have anything to add.
I feel like on this church shooting yesterday, I have a lot to add.
Now, getting right to it.
I understand your concerns, but here's why churches are uniquely vulnerable, and if you go to a church, if you are a parishioner in a church, if you are a pastor at a church, a deacon at a church, whatever you may do, catechist, whatever, you need to understand that there are people out there casing your locations already.
Why?
Why are churches vulnerable?
Number one, ingress and egress, folks.
This is all we did in the Secret Service's design security plans, and one of the first things you look at at any location you're going to secure is what is the entrance and exit point.
Now, why would a church be a uniquely vulnerable target when it comes to ingress and egress?
Joe, when you're in church, which I know you go often, Do people come in from the back of the church?
When I mean the back of the church I mean where the people are seated.
Generally the front.
Or do people come in behind the pastor while he's speaking?
No, the people come in the front of the church I go to and out the same way.
Right!
When I say the back of the church I mean they come in the back, right?
They don't come in across the pulpit, right?
Right, yeah.
The back so yeah I know what you're saying that's why I tried to uh but they come in the back of the church it's the same in every church everywhere there are a couple of maybe side entrances but people who enter a church generally come in Joe correct through the same spot which is we'll call it the back which is where the the the seat the seating is.
Behind all the seating yeah.
Yeah you don't come in behind the pastor.
Right.
A church, folks, is a performance.
It is a, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, it is a, it is a, it's the equivalent of a performance.
I mean that in a strategic way.
Like a concert where the, the attention is all in one direction, up front.
Right.
And when the attention, Joe, is up front, The entrance has to be in the back because the people doing the performance or engaging in leading the mass, the priest or a rabbi or an imam or whoever it is, Joe, does not want to be disrupted by people walking across the pulpit behind them.
Now what does that mean?
That means everybody is coming in and out in one direction.
Right.
That means if you want to target people, they are all going to be coming out in that same direction.
Meaning you have a shooting spree.
Churches are uniquely vulnerable.
Second, why churches are uniquely vulnerable.
And trust me, people already know this.
Why do you think this maniac From the adjoining town there, went over there and you get engaged in it.
Do you think he didn't know this?
We would call it a choke point.
It doesn't matter what he called it.
He understood likely that people were going to be coming in and out in one direction.
Now a church, being that there is a ceremony going, I don't want to call it a performance, performance is a bad, it's not what I mean to say.
I'm just trying to give you the strategy of it here.
This is important.
You have a celebration going on in this case.
In my case, where I go to church, you have a celebration of the Last Supper of Christ.
Do this in memory of me.
Where is everybody's attention?
Up front.
Up front!
Where is the shooter coming in?
The back!
Where is everybody looking?
The front!
Folks, churches are uniquely vulnerable.
Third, what do you not have in a church?
You don't have cover or concealment.
What is the difference?
Cover is a relatively bullet resistant material wall obstruction that can stop or slow down a bullet so that you can hide behind it.
Why does church not have that?
Because a church is, by its very nature, an open congregation so that people, Joe, can see the performance, the celebration that is up front.
You don't put a wall ahead of the parishioners or else they can't see the priest or the rabbi.
This is not complicated.
There's no cover.
Now, There is limited concealment.
What is the difference?
It's critical you understand this.
Maybe I'll cover it on a Rough Cuts episode.
Concealment conceals you, but provides almost... Now, cover can be concealment.
If you're behind a brick wall, that is cover and concealment.
Strictly concealment, Joe, that is not cover, okay?
Concealment that is not cover will conceal you, but will not stop around.
A bullet.
A pew, nine out of ten times, is made of wood.
Or you may be in some kind of plastic seating.
I assure you, 999 out of a thousand times you are not in bullet-resistant seating in a church.
So you may have some form of concealment if you get low, but that concealment is limited as well, is limited as well because it's an open room where an active shooter can just walk between the aisles and see you.
It's not a closet.
It is not a hard room.
It is just a bench.
If you get behind it and a shooter is walking around in there, a murderer, he can see you as he looks over.
It's not hard.
So it's not even good concealment.
Folks, let me go over this again so you understand this.
And please don't email me that we're giving the... We're not giving bad guys bad info.
These people already know this.
I'm going to give you a second, things you can do if you work in a church or anything like that, to stop this stuff.
These guys and women already know this, these bad guys.
You have ingress and egress problems.
Everybody's going in and out of one location, the back of the church.
Therefore, when everybody starts to flee, you have another guy who can pick them off.
They're not going out of multiple locations.
Where's everyone looking?
Their attention's up front.
Where's the shooter gonna come in?
He's gonna come in the back.
And nobody's gonna see it till it's too late.
Third, there's almost no cover and there's extremely limited concealment for anyone to be able to hide.
It's, you know, it's horrible we have to talk about this, folks, but I feel like I owe you Some amount of my prior expertise that was passed on to me.
I didn't invent this stuff.
I was taught it like anyone else when I went to the Rowley Training Center for the Secret Service and we had to understand this.
This was our lives.
This is what we did every day.
I feel an obligation to tell you that there are people already out there planning this stuff.
Do you want to know what's wrong or do you not?
That's the only question.
Now, how do you fix it?
Folks, if you're in a church, you've got to get some closed circuit cameras and someone should be watching those cameras every time there's a mass going on.
There's no excuse anymore to not do it.
We're living in a different time.
I wish we weren't.
There's no reason to panic.
Thank God, the likelihood of you being involved in a terrorist attack or an incident like this, a mass attack like this, thank God, the chances are very slim.
There is no reason to panic.
There's nobody's going to, we're Americans.
We're all tough.
We get through everything.
This was a horrible, I mean, the pastor's daughter, kids, adult.
I mean, it's just, the story's just, I don't want to get choked up here in the air, so I'm going to avoid the gory details for you.
But closed circuit cameras, a high-definition camera monitoring system that should be watched in a camera room, or by the firebox, or whatever it may be, should be mandatory in every church.
Also, at this point, To not have some form of armed guards.
We're not talking about guys in ninja suits here and BDUs at the door.
I don't care how you dress.
A sport coat and a pair of khakis.
There has to be some form of an armed guard.
I'm sorry, folks.
It's just irresponsible at this point with everything going on.
And between the maniacs out there and ISIS and the growing use of soft target terror, closed circuit TVs and armed security are just a must.
I mean, I'm sure, I'm absolutely sure.
I volunteer at my church.
I don't say this to pat myself on the back.
I say this to make a point.
If they asked me to volunteer as security, I would do it.
You don't have to pay people, but tonight's just irresponsible at this point.
Now, secondly, you have to get some form of a hard room in your church.
There has to be some room somewhere that has a door, no windows and three hardened walls so that someone can get in there and at least call the police and do something.
The people on the stage, the only people on the, on the, um, The people up on the altar are the only people who can really see what's going on.
They should be able to flee to a hard room so that someone can communicate with the police so they at least have some idea.
You see what I'm saying Joe?
If you're a priest, if you're a deacon, if you're a musical performer up on that stage and that god forbid there's a shooting you should be able to flee to a hard room, a hardened room, usually a bathroom that can't be shot into that you're not you can stay safe for a moment there should be some kind of a phone or you have a cell phone on you should be able to communicate with the police from that room and be able to describe immediately what's going on.
You have to have a hard room.
The Secret Service, Newsflash, this isn't private information.
We don't go anywhere without a hard room.
Ever.
For any reason.
Also, you need to make big things small.
If there's a section of your church, if there's a section of your church that can be closed off, You should have an emergency response plan where people can do it.
In other words, if there's five or six side entrances into your church, and people can flee out of those entrances into kind of a hallway, you should have some kind of a roll-down gate so that people can't follow you, notably killers and shooters and terrorists.
I know in the church I go to, there is a hall they use afterwards, right next to it, where they do coffee and donuts afterwards, which is very nice.
They do drives there, food drives and things of the sort.
People should be able to flee into there and they should be able to close the access to that behind them.
A sealed door, a rolled down gate, or something.
I call it making big things small.
Make big things small.
Make a big church a small safe area so that some people can get out.
It's really sick that on a Monday morning we have to talk about this stuff, folks.
It's kind of depressing.
Not kind of depressing, it is depressing.
But I was taught these things.
I'm a smart guy, but I'm no smarter than you.
I figured it out.
This is all I did my entire life.
It's time that all of us have to become like mini Secret Service agents ourselves and start thinking, are we in danger too?
Sorry, but this is just where we are.
All right, I got a lot more to talk about, so we're going to move on from that.
I got an unbelievable story.
This is not a subscriber-only piece, by the way.
I'll put it in the show notes at the Wall Street Journal show, but there was a piece about Communism.
It's long, but it's about a thousand words.
You can read it in 10 minutes.
But there's a piece in the Wall Street Journal you have to read.
I will put it in the show notes today.
Bongino.com.
If you go there, you can read the show notes or you can subscribe to my email list there, as most of you know and have done.
Thank you.
Our email list has exploded, by the way.
I will email the story right to you, to your inbox today.
It's a brief history of communism, but it is an amazing piece.
And I have some quotes from this, and they are eerie, Joe.
Straight up eerie as to what's going on right now with liberal identity politics.
Before we get to that though, we have to pay for the show.
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You didn't, right?
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Okay, good.
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So there was this, here's some, uh, some info from this piece I was telling you about, which was really blew my mind.
You know, it's on the weekend.
I try not, folks, I know this is a little bit disappointing to me, but I try not to read too much politics on the weekend because, uh, I just have to get away from it because it's infuriating most of the time.
But there's this piece, which is incredible again on communism.
It talks about the, you know what the body count from communism Joe is?
Give you a rough guesstimate.
How many million do you think died?
Oh, uh, 300.
65 million.
I mean, once you're at 65 million, right?
I mean, it's like, what did Stalin say?
Was it Stalin who said, you know, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic?
And your answer there is evidence of that, that 65, 100, 200.
I mean, we're recounting in millions.
Think about the epic scale of the tragedy.
But the similarity to what's going on right now is absolutely eerie.
Let me read to you this first.
This is from the piece, right?
And think about what's going on today.
Pay attention now to what liberal Democrats are doing now with Identity Politics, Joe.
Union employees, minorities, immigrants, everybody's a victim somehow when it comes to liberal identity politics.
Now listen to this quote from the piece and think about where they got the idea from.
From the piece.
In urban areas, the Soviet regime was able to draw upon armed factory workers, eager recruits to the party, and secret police and on young people impatient to build a new world.
In the countryside, however, the peasantry, some 120 million souls, had carried out their own revolution, deposing the gentry and establishing de facto peasant land ownership.
So who did they target?
The early communists.
They targeted factory workers and young people.
Now, preying on factory workers, Joe, this is gonna sound familiar?
Based on class warfare rhetoric.
Here's another quote from the piece.
Talking about Stalin, Joe.
He incited class warfare against Kulaks, better off peasants.
That's what the Kulaks were.
And anyone who defended them.
Listen to this one.
Imposing quotas for mass arrests and internal deportations of those evil, well-off Kulaks.
Those better off peasants.
Sound familiar?
Yeah.
Those evil rich people.
Fair share.
Pay your fair share.
Folks, you wonder where this stuff comes from?
You think I'm making this up?
You think I'm like a total psycho when you listen to this show?
I'm reading this piece thinking this is what's going on now.
So they target the factory workers using class warfare rhetoric and they target young people knowing, and I don't mean this as a blanket insult.
Don't take this the wrong way.
Knowing that their youth comes with it, a certain lack of knowledge about how the world works.
Strictly as a matter of chronological time.
Joe, does anybody disagree with that?
The longer you're alive, the more you learn?
Yeah, that's pretty much true.
No matter how smart, I mean, I'm not trying to confuse anyone about a trick question, but the longer you're alive through pure experience alone, you just learn more.
If you go to school and enhance that learning, great.
But if you are alive longer, all things given equal, you will generally know more than someone who's not alive as long as you've been.
Just through experience alone.
So they took advantage, the Soviets, of younger people.
Impatient, as this piece says, for the revolution.
Sound familiar, Joe?
With these young birdie bros now?
And these suckers in college?
These liberal suckers who believe in this socialist revolution despite 65 million dead?
Folks, class warfare and identity politics has been a staple of the far left for eons.
Don't be a sucker.
Gosh, I mean, do you think these tactics are new?
I'm going to put the piece in there.
I strongly encourage you to read it because none of this stuff is new, folks.
These ideas are not original.
They've been doing this forever.
They got this from the Soviets.
Folks, they needed to create victim groups.
And what I like about the piece is it talks about an idea I've been discussing for a while now.
It's not my idea.
It's not original to me.
It's not proprietary.
Matter of fact, I got it from David Horowitz.
Not Dan Horwitz, a conservative of you, David Horwitz, who wrote a book called Unholy Alliance.
Folks, liberals understood a long time ago what the Soviets did.
And in the piece, they talk about how the Soviets never knew, Joe, where this was going to wind up.
Now, why?
Why would the Soviets not know the endgame of communism?
Because it had never been tried successfully, Joe!
Right, yeah.
They never, nowhere, it never worked!
The Soviets didn't have a utopia to point to.
Joe, am I making sense here?
Yeah.
In other words, they couldn't point to like, look at East Tunafish over here and this is the Soviet, this is what it's going to look like.
They didn't have that.
Now, there were failed societies and then there were failing societies and then there were societies that were on their road to bigger and better things that were generally free market capitalist societies.
Had problems, nobody disputes that nonetheless.
The early industrial revolution, we had problems in the United States, but we were on the way to big and better things.
Where we are now and still moving in that better direction.
The Soviets didn't have that!
They didn't know where any of this was going to end up.
So what they did is they relied on what David Horowitz called the anti-anti-communist approach.
Meaning, Joe, they never tried to sell people, in the know at least, on the benefits of their communist society by pointing to anything real.
Why?
Because they didn't have it!
So what did they do, Joe?
They just attacked their enemies.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, just made stuff up.
So we're the anti- you're damn right.
So we're the anti-communists.
What were they?
They were the anti-anti-communists.
That's what liberals are now.
They can't point to their perfect society, so they're anti-anti-communists.
They just go after people like us that know their idea of a perfect world vis-a-vis socialism sucks.
Is this making sense?
They're sitting in a room.
Imagine a bunch of dopey communists.
They have nothing to point to, to say to people, Hey guys, vote for us.
Or there's no voting, obviously in communism.
It's the very opposite of a, of a, of a, of a free market and a free electoral market as well.
But they can't point to people and say, Hey, support us.
Here's where we're going to get you.
We're going to get you paradise.
And here's what paradise looks like because it exists.
They don't have that.
So all they do is point to the existing system now, Joe, which we have, we can see right.
Capitalism here.
And they say, gosh, look at the United States!
Look what it's doing to immigrants!
Look what it's doing to black people!
Look what it's doing to Muslims!
Look what it's doing to union workers!
Look what it's doing to the poor!
Look what it's doing to the middle class!
But they can't point to anything themselves other than death and destruction on their side.
That is why they are the anti-anti-communists.
That is why they hate us so much.
Because they don't have anything.
All they have is hate and identity politics.
Do you understand?
They don't have anything else.
Oh jeez, why do they side with... How come they don't go after people in the Muslim world who are attacking gay people?
How come?
Because they're anti-anti-communist.
They see the Muslim world attacking free markets and capitalism in America and they're on the team.
There you go.
They don't have anything else.
All they have is aligning with people who hate freedom.
That's it.
They don't have anything else.
Folks, please read the piece.
I know I, obviously it's my website.
I get it.
And obviously joining my email list benefits us.
It's not gonna smoke you up.
It does.
I mean, I'm happy to have it.
We're happy to have so many names.
But please, read the piece.
Just go to my website and read it.
It'll take you 15 minutes.
And everything I've told you in the show about how liberals don't have anything they stand for other than hating us, because they don't, there's nothing there, will all make sense.
They are the anti-anti-communist, and when you understand that, and the genesis of their hatred, and the genesis of their use of victimology, everything falls into line.
Is that okay, Joe?
Yeah, it was good, Dan.
You are the audience out loud.
Yeah, it was very good.
I mean, you know, the parallels are pretty self-evident.
This is definitely time for a Trading Places thing.
It ain't safe bein' no jive turkey this close to Thanksgiving.
Yeah!
That's because I know someone's gonna say, Joe always agrees with you.
He doesn't always agree with me.
You know, that's a Trading Places thing we bring up on the show.
Remember that guy from the movie?
Yeah!
They think Joe's the yeah guy.
He totally isn't.
It ain't safe be a no jive.
I love that.
It's close to Thanksgiving.
Wait, what?
Yeah!
There we go.
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Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.
So, man, have I been getting emails about this topic.
Do you know the tax bill we talked about at length last week?
I'm not going to readdress the whole tax bill.
You can listen to the shows from last week.
But, I missed something last week.
Not in the bill.
I'm not trying to pat myself on the back.
I saw it, but I didn't understand the implications of it.
Shame on me.
But over the weekend, I got bombarded with emails.
Did you see the bubble tax rate?
Now, I am going to include an article.
It's in Forbes.
The guy disagrees with me, but it's a good piece and explains how the bubble tax rate works that you really, really need to read at the show notes, okay?
Go check it out.
It's from Forbes.
People are saying, Dan, there's a hidden tax rate in there for high earners.
Yes, there is.
There is.
And I'm going to explain to you quickly, one, why it's a horrible idea.
But first up, actually that's two.
Number one, how it works.
And secondly, why it's a horrible idea.
Now the author of the Forbes piece disagrees.
He doesn't think it's a bad idea.
It's okay.
But he explains it well, and I still think it's worth reading.
So I'll put that in the show notes.
There is a hidden tax rate in the tax bill.
A lot of you picked it up.
Story kind of broke this weekend.
There's been, My buddy Mark Levin has been going nuclear about this, as he should.
It is an absolutely horrendous idea, but I'm going to tell you why it's in there and how it works.
First, why it's in there.
It is a hidden tax rate for people who are making over, I think it's married couples, over 1.2 million or so, and it is a higher tax rate, contrary to what people are going to tell you, than the highest rate we have now.
Now, this is class warfare nonsense at its worst, but why is it in there?
It is in there because the Republicans only had $1.5 trillion, based on the rules they're using to pass the bill, they only had $1.5 trillion, Joe, to work with.
So they needed somehow to, I'm trying to think of a way to explain this, buy down lower rates?
Does that make sense?
Like, how to keep some high tax rates on high earners to give lower tax rates to low earners because they had to fit in that $1.5 trillion window.
Make sense?
Okay.
To buy down that lower rate, they put in a bubble rate.
Now, here's how it's technically described.
Don't freak out.
I'll explain it.
Don't worry about it.
But how it's described in the four-piece piece by Ryan Ellis.
That was me at your bike.
Goatee a little bit.
Did you hear that?
Um, no.
Yeah.
See, he says no.
Yeah.
Once in a while.
We don't need no job interviews.
All right.
It is a calibrated 6% phase-out wedge on incomes exceeding $1.2 million for married couples and $1 million for everyone else.
You're like, wow, what the hell does that mean?
Okay, folks.
Once you make 1.2 million dollars or more, and you're married, let's just say married for a moment because then you gotta go do both for married and single, it's just most of us at that age would be married anyway, especially at that income ratio.
Once you exceed 1.2 million, Joe, remember I was explaining to you how marginal tax rates work?
Yeah.
The bill now has a 12, 25, 35, and 39.6% tax rate.
You pay those tax rates on the income in those ranges no matter what you earn.
those tax rates on the income in those ranges no matter what you earn. In other
words, Joe, let's just for the sake of round numbers say your first $10,000 was
taxed at the 12% rate, okay?
I think it's the 90% in the bill, but let's just for the sake of making it easy, let's
just say your first $10,000 was at the 12% rate, $10,000 to $20,000 was at the 25% rate,
$20,000 to $30,000 was at the 35% rate, and $30,000 of income and above was at the 39.6% rate.
The way it works is you only pay that tax on the income in that range.
So if you only make $10,000, you would only pay the 12% rate.
If you make $20,000, you would pay the 12% rate on the first $10,000 in income, the first six months of your earning year.
Right, Joe?
Okay.
And the last six months, when you made $10,000 to $20,000, you would pay the 25% rate.
Make sense?
Yeah.
That's how marginal rates work.
You only pay the tax rate on the income you made in that bracket.
I hope this is making sense.
Yeah, we've done it a number of times.
The way they wanted to buy back some money, which is absurd by the way, to be able to cut rates for the middle class, Is what they did is they phased out, that's what he says, a calibrated 6% phase out wage.
What that means is once you hit that 1.2 million Joe in income as a married couple, you get a 6% basically like a levy on your 39.6% rate you're paying now.
Now you're saying, wait, Dan, Dan, Dan, I don't get it.
How is that phasing out a 12% rate if it's a 6% phase out?
Because folks, the 12% rate now applies on up to $90,000 in income.
Okay?
If you're paying just half, if you're getting a 6% kind of surcharge levy on $1.2 million or more, that wipes out what 12% on $90,000 would have been.
Simple math.
You see what I'm saying, Joe?
12% of $90,000 or 6% of $1.2 million.
You get what I'm saying?
That wipes out your earlier rate.
So it's a slick little trick they did.
I know that math wasn't terribly complicated, but I know it confused a couple of people.
You don't need as high a percentage at higher incomes because it's a higher amount of money.
Makes sense, Joe?
Okay, that makes perfect sense, yes.
You don't need it because 12% of 90,000, you do the math yourself, folks, and 6% of 1.2 million, you start wiping out any cash benefits of that 12% rate.
So it was designed to wipe out the 12% rate for people who make 1.2 million on their first zero to 90,000 because they get a surcharge later on.
In other words, hey, yeah, you're gonna pay 12% of that zero to 90,000, Joe, but we're gonna throw a little levy later on over 1.2 million.
Folks, it's a crap idea.
It's a horrible idea.
And we definitely don't need no jive turkeys on this one right now.
This is too important of a... It is too important of a time!
Why are we playing class warfare politics?
This is simply a clawback.
And he, by the way, the author of the piece who likes the idea, I hate the idea, he says it's a good piece though.
He says it's a clawback of the 12% rate.
He doesn't try to hide it.
Why is it a clawback?
Why should people who make 1.2 million dollars, why should they have to give back the benefits of a 12% rate?
Folks, I dispute strongly by the way, and the reason I said this with a note of skepticism when we opened up, that it was going to buy back anything, Is we've shown as on this show you're probably tired of hearing it over time that the Reagan tax cuts which by the way Joe yes there was a bubble rate in the Reagan tax cuts but they lowered the top rate to 28 percent.
What's the top rate now Joe?
39.6 so don't cite me the Reagan bubble rates and under the Reagan tax cuts by the way from 70 to 28 percent that was the top rate Joe before Reagan got into office 70 percent.
The rich, I've said to you repeatedly, they got a tax cut from 70% on the margin at their top rate to 28%.
The rich not only paid more in taxes, they paid a greater percentage of GDP of the taxes as well than they did before.
Liberals, what part of that is difficult to understand?
The point I'm trying to make is I don't think this bubble rate is going to do a darn thing to raise any money.
And I think it's being scored improperly.
And you can't compare it to the Reagan tax cuts because the rates were different.
It was a different time.
Interest rates were different.
I think it's just a messy.
In other words, he says that and I say that because Ellis and the piece as well, you know, there was a bubble rate in the Reagan tax cuts.
Well, he's right.
He does the homework.
He's not wrong.
But I think the comparison is a false one.
You see where I'm going with this show?
They cut the top tax rate from 70 to 28 percent!
It was a different time!
And not to mention the rich wound up paying more anyway.
Folks, once we fall prey to this ridiculous class warfare garbage, this extensive smelly hot garbage, that the rich should pay more.
Why should the rich pay more?
Why?
What have you done with the money?
You've pissed it away!
Why should we give you more?
I want, you know what I want rich people to do?
I want rich people to go out and invest in their darn businesses.
I don't want them giving the money to the government.
It's a cesspool.
I want them to invest in the businesses where we work, a lot of us.
You know why, Joe?
So we could be rich one day too.
This isn't hard.
Oh my gosh.
All right, a couple just quick stories I thought were fascinating I want to put out there, but please read the piece about the bubble raid.
It does exist.
Don't let anybody tell you it doesn't.
And it's, um, it said that the author of the piece I put in there at Forbes explains it well.
I read a really interesting piece about, uh, the, is this the end of the iPhone?
It's on my show notes today.
I'll put it in the show notes as well.
Check that out.
But you know, with the iPhone X, right?
Coming out, Joe?
Yeah.
This thing's been getting rave reviews.
I want to get one, as a matter of fact.
The iPhone X is, like, everybody's going crazy over this thing.
Love the iPhone, love the iPhone.
I'm not a huge fan of Apple's politics, but I do like their products.
I have an iPhone myself.
I have a 6 Plus.
And the headline of the piece is, this is basically the beginning of the end of Apple.
And I thought, what the hell?
Like, this is going to be one of their crowning achievements, the iPhone X. But the author makes a really, really, really good point.
And I hadn't really thought this one through, especially in context of the quantum computing I discussed last week and what I think is the burgeoning growth of artificial intelligence.
He says, listen, I'm going to sum it up for you.
He's like, these things are going to be dumb screens soon.
He said it's not about, he said Apple's addition to the market show, their value added, was not just the fact that you could play music on a phone.
It was the fact that they integrated a whole app technology, right?
Everything's apps now.
I use apps to work out, I use apps to listen to, I use apps to listen to Joe in the morning on WCBM as an app.
I listen to Joe when Joe comes on sometimes in the morning at his morning show.
Everything's an app now.
Everything's an app.
Conservative Review has an app.
You can listen on a podcast.
That was one of, and not the only thing, but it was one of Apple's signature value-added moves into the market.
You tracking me, Joe?
Now, the iPhone X is the, you know, the coup de grace.
This is it, man.
They made it.
This is like the best phone ever.
Better screen technology, cameras.
The guy who writes the piece says, no, it's not.
This is the end of it.
You know why?
It's not about apps anymore.
It's about skills.
And he's right.
It's going to be about AI computing in the future, and it's not going to be about what an app you have on your phone can do.
It's going to be about what the technology in your house, what skills they can provide, and these things are going to... He doesn't say this part of it, but this is me summing it up for you in my own way.
That thing in your pocket we call Smartphone Joe is going to be a dumb screen soon.
There's going to be some transportable AI-based technology chip or whatever it is coming in the future, not very long into the future, Remember who figured BlackBerry was ever going to go away?
Remember BlackBerry?
That was it, Joe.
If you had a BlackBerry, you had made it.
Now BlackBerry's been relegated to the dustbin of history.
This guy thinks with the advent of artificial intelligence, chip technology, quantum computing, all of this stuff, that this thing is going to be a dumb box soon.
It's going to be nothing but a screen.
It'll all be a chip, it'll be a chip in your Amazon Echo in your house, or whatever it'll be.
You know, say you used to go to your phone.
Play the Renegade Republican on iHeartRadio, right?
Now, Joe, you're just gonna go to, you're gonna go to Amazon, Alexa, you're gonna say, the Renegade Republican, play the Dan Bongino, see, I'm still using it, right?
You're gonna go to Amazon or whatever, this smart chip technology, hey, play Dan Bongino's show.
Oh, where do you want me to play it on?
Play it on my speakers.
You're not gonna have to use your phone anymore.
You want to say, hey, I want to watch CRTV, our network, which is a convenient plug for our network, but unintended, but nonetheless.
I want to watch the Mark Levin Show.
I want to watch the Steve Day Show.
I want to watch Gavin McGinnis Show, Phil Robertson Show.
Where would you like to see it?
Play it on my TV.
The TV's gonna be a dumb screen.
So is the little TV in your pocket, the smartphone.
And I thought it was an ingenious piece, Joe, that this may be, and the reason, oh, by the way, you may say, well, why is that such a danger to Apple?
AI and dumb boxes and all this stuff.
And the point he's trying to make is that Google and other companies, Joe, are way ahead of Apple.
I own Apple stock, by the way, so it's not, you know, again, it's not in my benefit to tell you this, and I think Apple will catch up.
They only have $500 trillion in cash on their books, right?
But you see the point he's trying to make, Joe, is that Google and a lot of these other companies like Amazon are moving ahead of Apple quicker on the AI front while they're investing in hardware.
And to sum it up, the point is not going to be about the hardware in the future, Joe.
It's going to be about the software and the skills things can do, not necessarily the piece of plastic and silicone and stuff in your pocket.
You get what I'm saying?
Yeah, that's pretty interesting.
Yeah, really super cool piece.
Go check it out.
It'll be at the show notes today.
All right, folks, thanks again for tuning in.
I really appreciate it.
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