Democrats Back to Tax & Spend Policies: Democrats at the national and state level are trying to jam through MORE debt, MORE spending, MORE taxes and OPEN borders…and Americans are starting to see through the “moderate” spin the Biden Democrats tried to sell the American voter.
The Progressive Left of the Democrat Party is running the agenda and they are looking to spend TRILLIONS of taxpayer’s dollars through deficit financing while leaving the debt to our children and grandchildren. Their policies are way out of the mainstream and polling is starting to reflect that.
Democrats are in COMPLETE control of the Federal Government and they are pushing policies from Critical Race Theory to Open Borders, not to mention partisan political pork to their friends at every level. Horrible public policy and voters are starting to pay attention.
Voters are looking for a “check” on the Progressive Liberals & voting Republican to have a divided government to force compromise makes sense for most.
Michigan Republican Mackinac Leadership Conference: Once again, thousands of Republicans, primarily from Michigan but also from around the country, gathered on Mackinac Island. Speakers included Senator Ted Cruz (TX), Governor Kristi Noem (SD), Governor Pete Rickets (NE), Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, Congresswoman Nacy Mace, as well as Michigan’s own RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel and many others.
The bi-annual conference always fires up the troops, is normally attended by presidential want-to-be’s, and kicks off the Michigan election cycle to win the Governor’s Mansion. This year did not disappoint.
Friday night’s keynote speech by Senator Ted Cruz fired up the troops and had folks on their feet several different times. He spoke the truth and promised a “revival” was on its way!
With Biden’s disastrous polling numbers, particularly in Michigan, Republicans are excited to win back the Governorship and potentially increase our Congressional delegation (pending reapportionment).
I attended my first Republican Mackinac Leadership Conference in 1979 and find each and every one exciting, invigorating, and a great networking experience with old friends and new!
Open Borders: Biden’s Open Border policy is a disaster. Democrats are ignoring the crisis they are creating by allowing anyone and everyone to come through their open boarder. No vaccines, no COVID tests, no terrorist checks…how can they…there is no plan, no effort, no wall.
The economic impact on local schools, communities, and our own unemployed and/or poor will have MORE resources diverted away for a border policy that is out of control.
From the Tax Foundation: Under the House Democrat’s reconciliation plan, the top tax rate on pass-through business income would exceed 50% in most states:
61.2% NY
59.7% CA
58.2% NJ
57.4% HI
57.1% DC
57.0% OR
56.3% MN
55.4% MD
55.2% VT
54.6% KS
54.1% OH
54.1% WI
53.9% KY
53.6% IA
53.6% ME
53.4% CT
53.3% PA
See the article below…and their friends will still get enough tax breaks to pay very little. This is more bad public policy the average American will have to pay for.
Arizona Audit is Done: The preliminary report is done and the audit shows Biden actually gained a few more votes from Maricopa County audit. However, the audit also pointed out a number of discrepancies and procedural violations that need to be fixed going forward to ensure accurate and fair elections. Read the report for yourselves…a link is provided below.
–Saul Anuzis
60 Plus Weekly Video Rewind
Democrats split on massive spending bills, former Senator Bob Torricelli warns his Party on the way they are governing, and Ted Cruz torches AOC on the border crisis!
Links to the articles discussed in the video:
https://nypost.com/2021/09/22/manchin-sinema-and-the-squad-might-just-stop-the-3-5t-monstrosity/
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Biden, Blinken failing – weak, feckless leadership creating series of disasters, hurting US
These catastrophes are not acts of God; they are horrors resulting from foolish policies badly enacted.
The Biden White House is in free fall. The president’s approval ratings continue to slide and will likely get worse as Americans digest the disasters of recent days and put the blame squarely where it belongs – on Joe Biden.
When we piece together the killing of innocents in Afghanistan, the tens of thousands of unvaccinated Haitians illegally entering our country, the insulting treatment of France, this country’s first ally, and the FDA’s smackdown of the president’s coronavirus booster plan, we conclude that our country is being run by an arrogant man of modest capabilities who has surrounded himself with mediocre talent.
These catastrophes are not lightning strikes or other acts of God; these are horrors resulting from foolish policies badly enacted. Joe Biden has brought every one of these mishaps on himself.
Biden hopes it will all blow over, allowing him to get back to the more important business of “transforming” our country, but putting Afghanistan in the rear-view mirror will be difficult. Weekly if not daily reports of Taliban atrocities will remind us of Biden’s feckless determination, against the advice of his military, to hastily exit the country.
What will certainly not blow over is the growing awareness of Biden’s weakness. The president knows he is not a smart man.
The truth behind the Texas bridge migrants
While the president took a long weekend relaxing at the beach in Delaware, another self-imposed crisis blew up in his face.
The migrant shantytown under a concrete overpass in Del Rio, Texas, had ballooned to 15,000 souls, mainly Haitians. They were running out of food and water amid dangerously unsanitary conditions. With a pipeline of hundreds more flooding across the Rio Grande from Mexico every day, a humanitarian disaster was unfolding and the media were starting to pay attention.
On Wednesday, 9,000 had arrived. By Saturday, 6,000 more had crossed the river with no impediment. The border was wide open. There wasn’t even a sign to stop them.
They set up camp in the shade under the International Bridge and soon had overwhelmed the port-a-potties provided by authorities. They were sleeping on the ground under rough tents fashioned from sticks and trash bags, washing their clothes in the river.
Vote ‘no’ on infrastructure
As the House Republicans consider their next step concerning the “infrastructure” legislation on which they may be voting next week (depending on the whims of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), they need to keep a few things in mind.
Less than 10% of ‘bipartisan’ bill dedicated to roads and bridges
As the House Republicans consider their next step concerning the “infrastructure” legislation on which they may be voting next week (depending on the whims of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi), they need to keep a few things in mind.
There are plenty of reasons not to like the non-infrastructure legislation. The primary reason is that it is not about infrastructure. Less than 10% of its spending is dedicated to roads and bridges. That may seem crazy in a world where everything is infrastructure, but it’s true.
The legislation creates a foundation for a tax on miles driven. Such a tax will eventually be enforced by onboard computers automatically reporting to the government how many miles you’ve driven and probably where you’ve gone. It’s possible that at some point, the government may simply be able to shut down your car for whatever reason.
McCarthy opposes infrastructure bill despite Senate GOP support: ‘Different situation now’
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy justified pushing his caucus to oppose a $1.2 trillion infrastructure proposal that passed the Senate.
“People have differences of opinion, but the one thing, I think, everybody now sees is what the bill passed in the Senate is a different situation now that it came to the House,” McCarthy said in a press conference on Thursday. “It’s one bill. So you’re not voting for a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill, you’re voting for a $5 trillion bill.”
House Republican leaders announced on Tuesday that they will whip votes against the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, which was crafted by a bipartisan group of senators and passed with support from 19 Senate Republicans, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, last month.
Democratic leaders, though, have put the bill on a two-track path alongside a sweeping social programs spending bill of up to $3.5 trillion that can pass without Republican support in the Senate.
Top Tax Rate on Pass-through Business Income Would Exceed 50 Percent in Most States Under House Dems’ Plan
Under the House Democrats’ reconciliation plan, the top tax rate on pass-through business income would exceed 50 percent in most states.
Pass-through businesses, such as sole proprietorships, S corporations, and partnerships, make up a majority of businesses and majority of private sector employment in the United States. The owners of these firms pay individual income tax on income derived from these businesses. The marginal tax rates vary for pass-through firms depending on the state where they operate, as states tax individual income differently.
The House Democrats reconciliation plan would raise the top marginal tax rate on ordinary income from 37 percent to 39.6 percent. Additionally, high-income taxpayers would face a 3 percent surcharge on their modified adjusted gross income (adjusted gross income minus any investment interest expense) in excess of $5 million.
The plan would make additional adjustments to business taxation. Currently, qualifying pass-through firms may use Section 199A, commonly known as the pass-through deduction, to deduct 20 percent of their qualified business income from federal income tax. However, the pass-through deduction is subject to limitations for firms earning above certain income limits that operate in a “specified service trade or business” (SSTB) and other guardrails that limit the size of the deduction. The plan would further limit the deduction by setting the maximum allowable deduction to $500,000 for joint filers and $400,000 for single filers.
Congress Is Back to Serving Pork
Pork is being served in Washington again. Big juicy slices to the lobbyists with the deepest wallets and the campaign contributors who write the biggest campaign reelection checks. It is the way of the swamp. It is the currency of the Washington Beltway. It explains how people get so rich in politics.
The two massive spending bills now circulating through Congress with a combined price tag north of $5 trillion are filled with earmarks and thank-you gifts to big donors and the Gucci Gulch lobbyists. That’s why the bills have thousands of pages — to bring home the bacon.
We still don’t know even half of what is in this bill because, as Rep. Richard Neal, the head of the House Ways and Means Committee, admits, he wants to “hold off on the (details of the bill) until we are at the altar.”
By this, he means pretty much what then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said before the vote on the Affordable Care Act some 10 years ago: We will read the bill after we pass it.
But here’s what we do know so far about some of the gems inserted into the bill.
Biden’s big union bailout
A generation ago, labor unions actually tried to represent the financial interests of workers. For all their other faults, they at least focused on higher wages, better working conditions, and tight labor markets for their members.
That era is long gone. Now, labor unions’ top issues include “racial justice,” “climate change,” and “immigration reform.” This is one reason why the percentage of workers in unions has dropped from a high of 33% to a low of 10.5% today. Unions have become just another institution captured by progressive elites who are completely out of touch with what working families actually want.
Desperate to restore big labor’s depleted coffers, President Joe Biden is attempting to stuff something Democrats call the “Protecting the Right to Organize,” also known as the PRO Act, into his $3.5 trillion spending bill. This legislation would force millions of unsuspecting workers into unions that don’t care about them or their financial well-being, and it will steal money out of their hard-earned paychecks in the process.
Democrats say this legislation only protects workers’ rights, but nothing could be further from the truth. For starters, the legislation violates worker privacy by forcing employers to give every scrap of information they have about employees to liberal activists. Don’t want Black Lives Matters protesters to know where you live? What your cellphone number is? Or your personal email address? Too bad. The PRO Act forces your employer to give activists all of this info.
Senate Rules Didn’t Dash Dems’ Mass Amnesty. They Did It Themselves
The sweeping change would grant permanent status and legal residency to an estimated 8 million people at a cost estimated at $140 billion.
he Senate’s parliamentarian appeared to dash Democrats’ mass amnesty dreams Sunday, issuing an opinion that the rules for a budget reconciliation bill — a privileged legislative vehicle that can be passed with a simple majority — don’t encompass providing permanent legal status to millions of illegal migrants.
Democratic leadership claimed they “are deeply disappointed,” but they know decision doesn’t matter, at least not as much as they’d like to pretend.
Why not? At the moment, they don’t have the votes for it regardless, but would love to blame the decision for their inability to push the whole conference behind a left-wing immigration overhaul.
That, however, doesn’t mean they won’t get anything at all for their efforts: The parliamentarian left the door wide open for more than a few left-wing wins on the immigration front.
The office of the Senate’s parliamentarian generally flies under the radar. That is, until one party needs to blame them or use them as a handy foil for why something can’t be done. It’s cynical, but also cyclical: Both parties use the parliamentarian as a cudgel or a shield, depending on the circumstances.
In this instance, the Democrats are using Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, to obscure the fact that they very likely don’t have the votes to pass this kind of amnesty. They have neither the 51 votes necessary to pass it in reconciliation, nor the 60 votes to waive the Byrd rule and add it to the bill (nor the 60 votes to overcome a filibuster as part of the Senate’s routine legislative process).
Rather than reveal that to their voters in the form of an actual vote and putting vulnerable Democratic senators in the uncomfortable position of actually voting for controversial measures in public, it’s far easier to feign helplessness and blame MacDonough. “Our hands are tied!”
Republicans pleaded the same impotency to conservative members and their voters in 2017, claiming the parliamentarian wouldn’t let them use an Obamacare repeal attempt to stop federal subsidies from going toward buying plans that pay for abortion or to cut Planned Parenthood funding for even a single year.
Democrats’ 2022 midterms map is rapidly dwindling
Democrats are trying to unseat only about half as many Republican House members next year as they did in 2020, trimming their target list from 39 to 21.
Why it matters: The narrowing map — which reflects where Democrats see their best chance of flipping seats — is the latest datapoint showing the challenging political landscape the party faces in the crucial 2022 midterms.
The once-a-decade redistricting process, Donald Trump’s exit from the White House and a razor-thin House majority that requires more focus on protecting incumbents are among the factors at work.
A smaller map makes candidate recruitment even more important.
What they’re saying: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told Axios his party must be “flexible and nimble” and that the districts in play remain subject to change — based on redistricting and the extent of Republican overreach.
The Taliban Are Hunting Down Any Afghan Tied to Western Organizations
On the menu today: The Taliban are methodically collecting as much information about the Afghan population as possible, looking for anyone who has, in their eyes, been tainted or corrupted by Western influences or values. Hiding Afghan allies of the U.S. are now wondering if it is worth it to try making the dangerous journey to sneak into Pakistan — although that option offers a separate plethora of deadly risks.
Americans who are trying to get Afghan allies out of the country continue to hear horrific stories from those they’re trying to rescue. These stories are difficult to verify, but bit by bit, similar accounts from different sources start to align.
A Wednesday press conference by Qari Fasihuddin, the acting army chief in the Taliban regime, barely caused a ripple in the U.S. news media. Fasihuddin was one of three top deputies on the Taliban military commission, the commander of nine northern provinces, and apparently earned the nicknames “Qari the Conqueror” or “Conqueror of the Five Lions.” He was considered the “shadow governor” of the region, and in 2015, the Afghan government erroneously reported he had been killed in battle.
But Fasihuddin’s comments set off reactions ranging from deep concern to panic among the Afghans in hiding, as the new acting army chief pledged that “those who defend democracy in Afghanistan” and oppose the Taliban would be suppressed, and that a new, regular, strong Taliban army would be taking control and defending the borders.
Many hiding Afghan allies of the coalition and members of the former government interpreted that as an order to execute anyone associated with the old government, the U.S. military or the coalition, Western NGOs, or Western contractors.
Arizona election audit confirms Biden victory over Trump
A review of the 2020 election results in Arizona’s most populous county confirmed that Democrat Joe Biden won the Grand Canyon State’s 11 electoral votes legitimately and without the aid of fraud, the CEO of the cybersecurity firm that ran the audit indicated Friday.
Cyber Ninjas chief executive Doug Logan told state senators that his company’s review of the results in Maricopa County showed that Biden gained 99 votes over the official results. Trump lost 261 votes from the official total — which showed him losing the county to Biden by more than 45,000 votes.
“These are all very small numbers when we’re talking about 2.1 million ballots [cast],” Logan said. “These are very small discrepancies. We can say that the ballots that were provided to us to count … very accurately correlate with the official canvas numbers.”
Former President Donald Trump has implied to his supporters for months that the audit would turn up malfeasance that would prove he was removed from office through widespread election fraud. Though witnesses at the hearing where the audit report was presented raised questions about Maricopa County’s ballot-collecting and security procedures, no proof of such fraud was forthcoming.
Wailing And Gnashing Of Teeth: Trumpers React To Draft ‘Audit’ Report Showing Biden Win
Trump supporters — particularly those with large platforms and, often, something to sell — spent months hyping up the sham “audit” of Maricopa County, Arizona’s election results as the first domino to fall: First Arizona, then Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and so on would acknowledge that Trump, in fact, had been robbed of a second term in office. Perhaps, they mused, the audit would even result in a “decertification” of the election.
But, according to drafts of the final audit tally circulating Friday, the report offered little comfort: Biden won, according to the inexperienced and politically biased auditors’ work, by more votes than the official count.
That left the most fervent election truthers in a difficult position: What to say?
Arizona Senate Audit Report
Read the actual report and supporting documentation here.
