Free Republic

The highest earners paid a greater share of income taxes after the Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts than they paid after the Democrats’ 2013 tax increase.In a speech last week introducing his proposed $6 trillion 2022 budget, President Biden claimed that the benefits of the Republican Party’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act “went to the wealthiest 1% of America.” It’s not the first time he’s made this claim. In his first speech to a joint session of Congress, Biden described the TCJA as a “huge windfall” for “those at the very top.” To right that wrong, he proposes getting rid of...

Former Obama housing secretary Shaun Donovan says he’d be “the climate mayor,” but his multimillionaire dad, who’s funding his long-shot City Hall bid, is the opposite of an environmental steward. Michael Donovan — who has given $6.8 million through a super PAC, making him the single largest donor in the entire mayoral race — owns three homes, a gas-guzzling private jet, and once destroyed wetlands in front of his $18 million Bridgehampton estate. “If candidates are taking money from polluters, they are making a big mistake because people suffer,” said Maritza Silva-Farrell, head of the New York umbrella environmental group...

Wealthy people who fled major cities like New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago last year moved to 'hidden gem' locations like San Antonio, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah, according to a new report. Real estate company Coldwell Banker has released a 132-page report detailing insights into the luxury market including where and why people moved in 2020 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Reasons included fleeing taxes and 'restrictive COVID-19 mandates.' The report used market data to identify a number of distinct locations where wealthy bought homes where they had not been expected to if not for the pandemic redefining...

In a Thursday interview on MSNBC’s “Stephanie Ruhle Reports,” Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg discussed President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan. Host Stephanie Ruhle asked Buttigieg if he is “prepared” for Republicans to run against the tax hike being necessary to pay for the massive plan.

The California legislature proposes scheme after scheme to tax the wealthy. You Can Check Out But Never Leave California's proposed wealth tax, Bill 2028, would apply for a DECADE to anyone who spends 60 days in the state in a single year.Here are the details. • A 0.4% tax on residents with a worldwide net worth in excess of $30,000,000 ($15,000,000 for a married taxpayer filing separately). • The proposed tax would apply to residents, part-year residents, and temporary residents. • Temporary residents are defined as those who stay in the state more than 60 days during the calendar year....

Video report @ the link. Watch out Nevada, Arizona and Idaho.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren has spent her campaign railing against the donor class, making it known she doesn't want their help. She has publicly bashed millionaires, has sworn off high dollar fundraisers and has refused large checks from Democratic bundlers. But behind the scenes in recent months, former President Obama has gone to bat for Warren (Mass.) when speaking to donors reluctant to support her given her knocks on Wall Street and the wealthy. And if Warren becomes the nominee, Obama has said they must throw the entirety of their support behind her. The former president has stopped short of an...

The proposals by Democratic presidential hopefuls to tax the wealth of billionaires have received a lot of attention. But it is their plans to hike payroll taxes that would have the biggest impact on voters. Elizabeth Warren and other leading Democrats have said that they would impose a stiff payroll tax hike on higher-income families. In Warren’s proposal, she would impose a 14.8 percent payroll tax on workers with incomes above $250,000.

Multiple forms of socialism, from hard Stalinism to European redistribution, continue to fail. Russia and China are still struggling with the legacy of genocidal communism. Eastern Europe still suffers after decades of Soviet-imposed socialist chaos. Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea, and Venezuela are unfree, poor, and failed states. Baathism—a synonym for pan-Arabic socialism—ruined the postwar Middle East. The soft-socialist European Union countries are stagnant and mostly dependent on the U.S. military for their protection. In contrast, current American deregulation, tax cuts, and incentives, and record energy production have given the United States the strongest economy in the world. So why, then,...

Senator Bernie Sanders believes that the super-rich and large corporations are actively working against working class Americans and in an interview with CBS News compared some of the ultra-wealthy to drug addicts. Ending corporate greed was the theme of a five-stop, two-day swing through Iowa this week - marking his return to a first in the nation state since suffering a heart attack 25 days ago. "There's always been greed in this country - no question about it. But I think 40, 50 years ago, the big money interest in this country made a decision that they were going to...

Ever since the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, Democrats and a few Republicans have decried how the law’s $10,000 cap of the state and local tax deduction harms schools, local communities, home values, first responders, and middle-class families. Fast forward almost two years later and these false claims are not going away. House Democrats recently announced a hearing scheduled for Tuesday where many of the common myths are likely to be repeated. Here are a few of the most common misconceptions. Myth #1: The Cap Hurts Middle-Class Taxpayers Before the 2017 tax cut capped the state...

**SNIP** Across the Democratic field, candidates are embracing the big donors they distanced themselves from early on - a sign of increasing doubt that the small online donations the campaigns have been chasing will be sufficient to sustain two-dozen primary contenders. **SNIP** One of those donors is Robert Wolf, a former investment banker and Obama supporter. He said he has met with about a dozen candidates, which included a recent one-on-one confab with O'Rourke, and has given money to 10 presidential contenders. "We are more interested in beating President Trump than we are in getting the candidate we like and/or...

Two points about today’s political economy – and then a prediction involving Illinois: Point One: What’s coming is poetic justice for the aristocracy.  The wave of populism/socialism/proto-fascism that’s sweeping the US and Europe is a direct result of the breathtaking hubris of a ruling class that didn’t know when to quit stealing. While it is possible for societies dominated by a small group of rich/connected people to endure and even thrive, they can do so only if the 99% enjoys a rising standard of living and a certain amount of upward mobility. In other words, people will accept the existence...

“Through Her Eyes” is a new weekly half-hour show hosted by humanitarian and women’s rights activist Zainab Salbi that aims to explore a hot button news issue through the lens of a female newsmaker. You can watch “Through Her Eyes” every Tuesday at 8 p.m. on the Roku channel, and see full episodes at yahoonews.com. Weeks after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made headlines by calling for a top marginal income tax rate of 70 percent in an interview with “60 Minutes,” her fellow freshman congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., suggested that the rich could pay even more. “There are a...

A former top Hillary Clinton aide and her husband just bought their second unit at the Four Seasons Residences at the Surf Club for $19 million. Beth and Ronald Dozoretz purchased unit S1001 at the south tower of the 150-unit luxury condo development at 9001 Collins Avenue in Surfside. The purchase comes just a year after the Dozoretz’s bought a unit in the north tower for $7.4 million. Their new condo totals 6,429 square feet, which equates to a price of $2,955 per square foot. The unit has four bedrooms and six-and-a-half bathrooms. Beth Dozoretz was formerly the finance chair...

Even as Democrats publicly and loudly decry corporatist political “dark money,” billionaire Democrats and other donors funnel hundreds of millions to radical and violent causes.   Barely a week had passed after Donald Trump’s historic upset in the November 8 presidential election, but some of the world’s richest individuals were already launching a counteroffensive. George Soros and his fellow deep-pocket funders of the Democratic Party and left-wing causes gathered with a lineup of party activists and luminaries from Hollywood, K Street, and Wall Street for a three-day “investment conference” (November 15-17) at the luxurious Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C....

The Republican-backed federal tax bill flipped the tables on a never-ending question for California politicians: Will high taxes lead the state’s wealthiest residents to flee the Golden State for the comparable tax havens of Florida, Nevada and Texas? Republicans reliably raise that alarm when Democrats advocate for tax increases, like the 2012 and 2016 ballot initiatives that levied a new income tax on very high-earning residents. But now, with the federal tax bill cutting off deductions that benefited well-off Californians, the state’s Democrats suddenly are singing the GOP song about a potential millionaire exodus. “People with higher incomes pay a...

Before we get into the real estate ramifications portion of the GOP tax bill, let us recall and reiterate the fact that zero Democrats voted for a tax plan that cuts the corporate tax rate to 21% from 35% to make American corporations more competitive and bring more taxable income home, simplifies the tax code and eliminates some deductions, trims other deductions, and does away with a personal exemption, all of which would result in around 48% of U.S. households receiving tax relief of at least $500, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. The GOP tax bill has now...

**SNIP** For the first time, many wealthy Manhattanites will finally feel the full burden that their state legislators and city leadership have put on them. De Blasio is actually trying to increase millionaire New York City taxpayers’ loads as Republicans put the finishing touches on their bill. The mayor is trying to levy a 14 percent tax increase on the city’s millionaires to pay for improvements to the city’s subway system. The governor-elect of New Jersey is looking to pull a similar tactic to raise money for public schools in the state.

On Oct. 1, a 64-year-old Nevada man opened fire on a crowd of concertgoers from a high-rise hotel in Las Vegas, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds. If you don't know his name, you can easily find it online, in print or on TV. But you won't learn it from this column. Notoriety may have been what he was after in methodically plotting the slaughter. He may have intended to outdo other mass shooters. He may have hoped his name would gain a sinister immortality. University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford has explained the repetition of such incidents as a...