Epoch Times - This is How The Mainstream Media Twists the Truth (Part 2)| Larry Elder
Aired: 2021-01-14
Duration: 17:59


=== The Rich Pay More Taxes (07:21) ===

[00:00:03]  Now, when we talk about media bias, we're normally talking about stories that the media just screws up.
[00:00:08]  Stories that typically hurt Republicans, but they get their facts wrong.
[00:00:11]  I wish it were that simple.
[00:00:13]  It is cultural.
[00:00:15]  It is deeper.
[00:00:16]  It is a mindset.
[00:00:17]  Now, we've given you five outstanding examples of media bias.
[00:00:21]  Here are five more outstanding examples of media bias.
[00:00:24]  Number one, the rich don't pay their fair share in taxes.
[00:00:30]  What percent of all federal income taxes is paid by the top 1%?
[00:00:35]  I was at a party once, met a woman named Irene.
[00:00:38]  Irene was complaining about how she felt rich people didn't pay their fair share in taxes.
[00:00:42]  I said, I don't know if you qualify me as rich, but I do okay.
[00:00:45]  I got a question for you.
[00:00:47]  Of all federal income taxes, what percentage is paid by the top 1%?
[00:00:53]  These are people that are making about $350,000 or more, I told her.
[00:00:57]  She says, oh, I don't think very much.
[00:00:59]  I said, ballpark it.
[00:01:00]  She said, maybe 1%, maybe 2%.
[00:01:04]  I said, you think the top 1%, those Americans making about $350,000 or more, contribute only 1% or 2% to all the federal income tax revenues?
[00:01:15]  She said, yeah, I think so.
[00:01:17]  They all have fancy lawyers.
[00:01:19]  I kept waiting for her to say, Larry, what's the answer?
[00:01:22]  She never answered it.
[00:01:24]  Do you know why she didn't answer it?
[00:01:26]  She didn't want to know.
[00:01:28]  She wanted to keep the mindset that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, the rich don't pay their fair share in taxes, yada, blah, etc.
[00:01:34]  Do you know what the answer is?
[00:01:36]  Here are the facts.
[00:01:38]  The top 5%, those making more than $150,000, pay 60% of all federal income taxes.
[00:01:45]  The top 1%, those making more than $380,000 a year, according to the IRS, pay 40% of all federal income taxes End of quote.
[00:01:56]  Like Irene, most Americans are completely ignorant about the taxes paid by the top 1%.
[00:02:02]  Investor's Business Daily, the business publication, did a poll to find out how many Americans actually knew the top 1% pay about 40% of the income taxes.
[00:02:11]  It's what they found out.
[00:02:13]  The poll found 36% of Americans thought the rich paid 10% or less of all federal income taxes.
[00:02:20]  15% thought the rich paid between 10% and 20%.
[00:02:24]  10% thought the rich share was between 20% and 30%.
[00:02:28]  Only 12% of those polled thought the rich paid 40% or more of taxes.
[00:02:34]  End of quote.
[00:02:36]  Economist Thomas Sowell cites several examples in which presidents, including a Democrat, cut taxes and it generated revenue.
[00:02:42]  And the disastrous wealth tax enacted by French President Francois Hollande should have been a warning.
[00:02:50]  Republican Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon argued for lower tax rates in the 20s.
[00:02:54]  Democratic President John Kennedy argues for cuts in the tax rates in the 1960s.
[00:03:01]  Republican President Ronald Reagan, lower tax rates in the 80s.
[00:03:04]  And then George W. Bush lowers tax rates once again in the 2000s.
[00:03:09]  Four experiments, as it were, won by a Democrat.
[00:03:14]  In each of those four cases, what was the effect on the economy?
[00:03:18]  The effect on the economy was to increase the rate of growth, increase the revenue received by the government.
[00:03:24]  The rich not only paid more taxes after the tax cuts for the rich, as they call it, they paid a higher percentage of all taxes.
[00:03:31]  And this started back in the 1920s.
[00:03:33]  In the early 20s, the tax rate on the top income was 73%.
[00:03:41]  And the people making over $100,000 paid something like 30% of all taxes.
[00:03:46]  By the end of the decade, the tax rate on the top had been cut to 24%.
[00:03:49]  People making over $100,000 now paid 65% of all taxes.
[00:03:54]  And the reason is quite simple, that when you have the tax rate at 73%, people simply don't pay it.
[00:04:00]  They put their money into tax-exempt securities and arranged their financial affairs.
[00:04:04]  So what we're really talking about, do you want a symbolic high tax rate on the high-income people to win votes politically, which the rich themselves are not going to pay?
[00:04:15]  Or do you really want more tax revenue coming into the government?
[00:04:19]  Number two, the rich are greedy and selfish.
[00:04:23]  The rich are greedy, the rich are selfish.
[00:04:26]  I was getting my hair cut in a beauty shop once.
[00:04:30]  A woman next to me is complaining about how rich people are selfish and greedy.
[00:04:35]  And I said, really?
[00:04:37]  Let me ask you something.
[00:04:38]  As between liberals and conservatives, who gives more of their time?
[00:04:42]  Who gives more of their money?
[00:04:43]  She said, no liberals.
[00:04:45]  I said, actually, it's been studied, and it turns out conservatives give way more money and donate way more time than do liberals.
[00:04:53]  And she promptly said, well, that's because they have more money.
[00:04:57]  I said, actually, the average household income and net worth of a liberal is slightly higher than the average net worth of a conservative.
[00:05:05]  And then she changed the subject.
[00:05:08]  Another woman walked in.
[00:05:09]  I said, excuse me, I'm just having a conversation with this young lady here.
[00:05:13]  I want to get your opinion.
[00:05:14]  As between liberals and conservatives, which group do you think gives more money and more time to charity?
[00:05:19]  And she said, well, liberals.
[00:05:21]  I said, actually, conservatives give more time and more money than do liberals.
[00:05:26]  And she said, well, that's probably because they have more money.
[00:05:28]  The same thing the other woman said.
[00:05:30]  And I told her it wasn't true.
[00:05:32]  The average net worth of a liberal is slightly higher than the average net worth of a conservative.
[00:05:37]  She changed the subject.
[00:05:39]  Arthur C. Brooks wrote a book called Who Really Cares?
[00:05:42]  He was a public policy professor at Syracuse University.
[00:05:45]  Decided to do a study to find out whether or not liberals are more generous than conservatives, he assumed they would be, was shocked when his results came back.
[00:05:53]  And it turns out, conservatives give far more money than do liberals, And donate far more time than do liberals.
[00:06:00]  Why?
[00:06:01]  Well, conservatives believe that government should tend to its initial responsibilities and leave dealing with the needy to individuals.
[00:06:09]  So they talk the talk and walk the walk.
[00:06:11]  The other big reason that Brooks found is that conservatives were far more religious than liberals.
[00:06:18]  Religious liberals gave just as much money and time as did conservatives, but there were just far few religious liberals.
[00:06:25]  Look at the data.
[00:06:27]  Charity differences between religious and secular people persist.
[00:06:31]  The average annual giving among the religious is $2,210, whereas it is $642 among the secular.
[00:06:41]  Similarly, religious people volunteer an average of 12 times per year, while secular people volunteer an average of 5.8 times.
[00:06:52]  To put this in perspective, religious people are just 33% of the population, but make up 52% of donations and 45% of the times volunteered.
[00:07:02]  Secular people are 26% of the population, but contribute 13% of the dollars and 17% of the times volunteered.

=== 15,000 Lives Lost (03:44) ===

[00:07:11]  End of quote.
[00:07:13]  Number three, the media...
[00:07:15]  And guns.
[00:07:16]  The media routinely tells us that every year, roughly 30,000 Americans die because of gun violence.
[00:07:22]  Half of those, by the way, are suicides.
[00:07:24]  And I maintain that a determined suicide, and I think studies prove this, will find a means to kill himself or herself if he or she is sufficiently motivated.
[00:07:33]  So let's concentrate on the 15,000, shall we?
[00:07:37]  15,000 Americans die every year because of firearms.
[00:07:41]  How many Americans are alive every year because of firearms?
[00:07:45]  How many Americans use guns to defend themselves and feel that but for the firearm, they would have been dead or suffered serious bodily injury?
[00:07:53]  After the horrible Sandy Hook shooting, Barack Obama authorized the CDC to look at existing research to find out how often Americans use guns to defend themselves.
[00:08:02]  Here's what the CDC said.
[00:08:04]  Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals.
[00:08:15]  with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year." Now, I did a documentary called Michael and Me to address some of the misleading stuff in Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine.
[00:08:31]  Michael Moore said publicly, I'll debate any Republican on guns.
[00:08:36]  We contacted him.
[00:08:37]  He said he'd debate me.
[00:08:38]  And then we couldn't contact him.
[00:08:40]  We couldn't reach him.
[00:08:41]  He wouldn't come.
[00:08:42]  So I found out he was giving us a speech at a local bookstore in Santa Monica.
[00:08:48]  So I decided to ambush him the way he ambushed other people.
[00:08:52]  And here's what happened.
[00:08:53]  Let me tell you a story.
[00:08:55]  In January 2003, Ivan Thompson, a career criminal with 19 prior convictions, broke into the Brooklyn home of Ron Dixon.
[00:09:07]  Ron found him in his two-year-old son's bedroom, rifling through the drawers.
[00:09:12]  So I quickly called 911.
[00:09:14]  I have a trust officer.
[00:09:15]  What fellow?
[00:09:16]  Brooklyn.
[00:09:17]  No!
[00:09:19]  I fired at him twice.
[00:09:23]  He fell down the stairs and he laid at the bottom of the stairs.
[00:09:27]  Thompson survived the shooting and was sent to prison.
[00:09:31]  Ron is a Wall Street worker and Navy veteran and has never been in trouble with the law.
[00:09:36]  But he was convicted of criminal possession of a firearm.
[00:09:39]  He also went to prison.
[00:09:41]  Jail?
[00:09:42]  You gotta be crazy.
[00:09:43]  He should never be going to jail.
[00:09:45]  Never.
[00:09:46]  He was protecting his family and his house.
[00:09:48]  It's not fair.
[00:09:50]  It's not fair at all.
[00:09:52]  To have to go to jail for the price of defending your family, you know, it's...
[00:09:56]  It just really scares me a lot.
[00:10:04]  Mr.
[00:10:04]  Moore, you know this kid?
[00:10:06]  His name is Kyle.
[00:10:07]  His father, Ron, used a firearm to defend him because someone was trying to break into the home.
[00:10:12]  This happens hundreds of thousands of times a year, wondering whether or not she might owe Mr.
[00:10:16]  Kesson an apology.
[00:10:17]  You know, actually what happens is there's hundreds of thousands of kids.
[00:10:21]  Who are in jeopardy every day because there's hundreds of thousands of guns in people's homes.
[00:10:26]  My question is, how many people a year do you think are alive?
[00:10:29]  Larry Elder.
[00:10:30]  How many people do you think are alive in America because of family or loved ones?
[00:10:34]  He didn't know.
[00:10:35]  He didn't care.
[00:10:37]  It didn't matter.
[00:10:38]  It ruins the narrative.

=== Black America's Political Awakening (07:19) ===

[00:10:40]  Number four, the left is more tolerant.
[00:10:43]  The left is more open-minded.
[00:10:46]  Let's test this theme and see if it holds up.
[00:10:49]  Three-quarters of single Democrats won't date Trump voters' survey fines.
[00:10:55]  71% of single Democrat Party voters said they were very unlikely even to consider dating a person who voted for Donald Trump in 2016.
[00:11:07]  By contrast, three-quarters of GOP-leaning voters said they would either consider dating a Democrat or they already have in the past.
[00:11:19]  End of quote.
[00:11:20]  Really?
[00:11:21]  Check out some of these stories.
[00:11:23]  This one's from Campus Reform.
[00:11:25]  Nearly half of Dartmouth Democrats don't want a conservative roommate.
[00:11:30]  45% of Democrats said they would be uncomfortable sharing a room with someone who holds opposing political views.
[00:11:38]  69% of Republicans said they would be completely comfortable With that arrangement.
[00:11:43]  How about this one?
[00:11:45]  Did you know if you're in academia and you are conservative, at least in the philosophy field, according to a new study, you're going to be discriminated against by your fellow liberal philosophy professors.
[00:11:56]  Look at this.
[00:11:57]  In papers, grants, and hiring, conservatives face discrimination in philosophy departments, study fines.
[00:12:04]  The study shows nearly 75 percent of philosophy professors are left-leaning.
[00:12:09]  A majority, 56 percent of the left-leaning philosophers, expressed a willingness to discriminate against their right-leaning peers in hiring decisions, at least occasionally.
[00:12:19]  They said they were willing to discriminate against their conservative colleagues in the review of papers, assessment of grant applications, symposia invitations, and hiring decisions." End of quote.
[00:12:31]  And what about employers who refuse to hire Trump supporters?
[00:12:36]  Quote, end of quote.
[00:12:54]  And how does the typical liberal feel about the typical Republican politician?
[00:13:00]  And how does the typical Republican conservative feel about the typical liberal Democrat politician?
[00:13:06]  University of Michigan uses a scale from 0 to 100.
[00:13:09]  0 meaning bad, 100 meaning they're a saint.
[00:13:13]  Extreme liberals gave President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney in 2004 an average of 15 and 16 on a scale from 0 to 100.
[00:13:24]  Sixty percent of these extreme liberals gave Bush and Cheney a zero.
[00:13:29]  For perspective, the then-still-alive Saddam Hussein got an average score of eight from all Americans, which means that extreme liberals only rated Bush and Cheney a little bit higher than Saddam Hussein.
[00:13:45]  But extreme conservatives rated Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1998 with an average reading of 45.
[00:13:52]  Much higher than the average reading that extreme liberals gave of Messrs Bush and Cheney.
[00:13:58]  How tolerant is that?
[00:14:00]  Number five.
[00:14:01]  What is up with this term African-American?
[00:14:05]  Who started it?
[00:14:06]  When did it start?
[00:14:07]  My suspicion is it started when Jesse Jackson decided that black people were too insecure to be called black.
[00:14:13]  And now we're called African-Americans.
[00:14:16]  What is that?
[00:14:18]  Remember what Teddy Roosevelt said about hyphenated Americans?
[00:14:22]  There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans.
[00:14:26]  I do not refer to naturalized Americans.
[00:14:29]  Some of the best I've ever known were naturalized Americans.
[00:14:32]  But a hyphenated American is not an American at all.
[00:14:35]  Our allegiance must be purely to the United States.
[00:14:39]  We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance.
[00:14:44]  The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.
[00:14:58]  The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic.
[00:15:11]  He has no place here, and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart allegiance, the better it will be for every good American." I once interviewed a reporter with the LA Times, and I asked him, under what circumstances do you use the term black and do you use the term African American?
[00:15:30]  And he was white and he said, well, we asked the individual how he wants to be referred.
[00:15:35]  I said, I've been interviewed a number of times by papers.
[00:15:37]  No one's ever said you want to be called black or African-American.
[00:15:40]  So I don't think he was telling the truth, but let's assume he were.
[00:15:43]  I said, what is your ethnic background?
[00:15:46]  He said, well, my great-grandparents came from Russia.
[00:15:49]  I said, so you're a Russian-American.
[00:15:51]  I said, do you ever call yourself that?
[00:15:53]  He said, well, no.
[00:15:54]  I said, I assure you, my people have been in this country longer than your people have.
[00:15:59]  Why do I have a dash, but you don't?
[00:16:01]  He didn't have a particularly good answer.
[00:16:03]  Now, I double-dog dare you to call Smokey Robinson an Uncle Tom.
[00:16:10]  Watch this.
[00:16:11]  God knows we've earned the right to be called American Americans and be free at last.
[00:16:16]  And rather than you moving forward with progress, you're dwelling in the past.
[00:16:19]  We've struggled too long.
[00:16:20]  We've come too far.
[00:16:21]  Instead of focusing on who we were, let's be proud of who we are.
[00:16:24]  We're the only people whose name is always a trend.
[00:16:27]  When is this shit going to end?
[00:16:29]  Look at all the different colors of our skin.
[00:16:31]  Black is not our color.
[00:16:32]  It's our core.
[00:16:33]  It's what we've been living and fighting and dying for.
[00:16:36]  But if you choose to be called African American, and that's your preference, then I give you that reference.
[00:16:41]  But I know on this issue I don't stand alone on my own.
[00:16:44]  And if I do, then let me be me.
[00:16:46]  And I'd appreciate it if when you see me, you say, there goes a man who says it loud.
[00:16:50]  I'm black.
[00:16:51]  I'm black.
[00:16:52]  I'm a black American, and I'm proud.
[00:16:53]  Because I love being an American.
[00:16:55]  And I love being black.
[00:16:57]  I love being called black.
[00:16:59]  Yeah, I said it.
[00:17:00]  And I don't take it back.
[00:17:02]  Now, speaking of Uncle Tom, ta-da!
[00:17:07]  My new documentary, Uncle Tom, comes out on June 19th.
[00:17:11]  Check out UncleTom.com.
[00:17:13]  We have three trailers up there.
[00:17:15]  Here's one.
[00:17:15]  I don't remember the actual day, but I remember the emotion that I felt when it happened.
[00:17:23]  I'm often asked, was there an epiphany?
[00:17:25]  I started asking questions.
[00:17:26]  As I became more politically aware.
[00:17:28]  A lot of the way that I saw things began to change.
[00:17:32]  All of this information I've been taking in for several years.
[00:17:34]  A continuation of these kind of contradictions.
[00:17:38]  I had bought into all of these lies.
[00:17:41]  You begin to see what the real agenda is.
[00:17:43]  That's usually how that red pilling process begins.
[00:17:46]  Black America is starting to get it.
[00:17:48]  People are starting to realize what's going on.
[00:17:53]  Coming to a theater near you.
[00:17:56]  I'm Larry Elder, and we've got a country to save.