Clinton Democrats, the FBI, & the Justice Department Caught in the Biggest Political Scandal in American History

By all appearances now, Hillary Clinton and the Democrat Party and their corrupt high-level operatives in the FBI and the Justice Department funded a pack of lies about Donald Trump’s supposed ties with Russia and dressed them up in an official-looking “dossier.”  They then used those lies to secure legal justification to spy on Trump and Republicans and promoted those lies through the liberal media to smear Trump during the 2016 election campaign.  Moreover, all indications are that the same senior FBI and Justice Department people who worked so hard to frame Trump were the same ones who colluded with the Clinton people to wrongly clear her of grossly illegal activity.  

This is the biggest political scandal in American history, all the more remarkable because many of the corrupt conspirators to this very day remain in senior positions in the FBI and the Justice Department.  Even now, they are allowed to obstruct justice by their Republican boss, the seemingly dazed and spineless Jeff Sessions, and his boss the Republican Donald Trump, remarkably the very object of the conspiracy.  What are Sessions and Trump thinking – that the FBI and the Justice Department don't report to them, and that they can do nothing about the Obama and Clinton partisan lawbreakers still apparently running those two federal organizations that are very much under their control?  I'm sure that never before in American history have such corrupt, subversive high-ranking federal officials been allowed to remain in office and continue their conspiracy by the very President who has been the object of their vicious malfeasance.  Breathtakingly remarkable.

R Balsamo

Republican Tax Reform – Three and a Half Points

The Republican Congress and President Trump just passed a sweeping new tax reform law that significantly changes the American financial landscape.  This new law will strengthen American business competitiveness in world markets and will result in income tax reductions not just for companies but also for about 80% of taxpayers.

Three important points about this new tax reform law.

First, by lowering the United States corporate tax rate from one of the highest in the world to a competitive one, tax reform significantly improves American business competitiveness on the world markets.  This will result in higher corporate profits that will be passed along to shareholders and workers.  Already officials in other parts of the world are expressing deep concern about this substantially-improved American competitiveness, warning their countrymen that they must also now act to counter the American move lest they lose business and jobs to American companies.

Secondly, by greatly expanding the standard deduction tax reform will mean an estimated 80% of tax filers will be able to use the simple and quick easy form.  This really is tax simplification for a lot more people.

Finally, the tax reform bill substantially limits the deductibility of state and local income taxes on the federal tax calculation.  The ability to deduct state and local income taxes on the federal return amounts to a direct and grossly unfair subsidy to taxpayers in higher-tax states from taxpayers in lower-tax states.  The amount someone pays in federal income tax should not depend upon the state in which he or she lives.  Although some Republicans wanted the subsidy eliminated altogether, a compromise was reached that caps the state and local tax deduction to $10,000 per year.  Thus, a huge bump in tax fairness across America.

Of course, the disgraceful and outrageous special tax break specifically for hedge fund managers, the so-called "carried interest" loophole, was left untouched.  One can only imagine all the dollars those financiers drop into politicians' coffers.  But hey, nobody's perfect, and there's always next time. 

R Balsamo

Allenby and Trump Enter Jerusalem

One hundred years ago today the British World War One Near East offensive against the Ottoman Turks reached Jerusalem on its way north.  General Edmund Allenby famously dismounted and with his officers modestly entered the holy city on foot through the Jaffa Gate, the entry way of the pilgrims of past centuries.  During this military campaign Allenby commanded T. E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”), who was the British liaison to and motivator of the Arab desert fighters against their common enemy, the Turks.    

Allenby Entering Jerusalem on December 11, 1917

In one of those small but telling coincidences of history, President Donald Trump has just announced that the United States is formally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, which it is in fact, and will move the US embassy there.  This move comports with the previously-stated positions of Presidents William Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, and also of the United States Senate, which in 1995 passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act by massive majorities in the Senate (93-5) and House (374-37) and which just this past June passed a resolution 90-0 reaffirming the American position that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.  President Trump continues to move forward, in a show of strength that will improve the chances of peace, in stark contrast to his recent predecessors who were all talk and no action, and whose fecklessness only led to more strife in a part of the world where, in the end, one can only gain peace through strength.

R Balsamo

The National Football League Doubles Down on Its Ultraliberal, Social Justice Warrior Boss Goodell

There’s a rule that I’ll paraphrase:  all organizations not explicitly conservative or politically neutral, and not continually reinforced to be so, become liberal over time.  The National Football League is a case in point.

Last year, in a story on which I commented (link below), NFL Commissioner Roger Goddell slammed then-candidate Donald Trump over his alleged past behavior toward women.  Goodell was, at the same time, a supporter of candidate Hillary Clinton who for many years was the vicious smearer-in-chief of any and all women who came forward to credibly and contemporaneously accuse her husband of sexual assault and rape, accusations almost every honest person now believes.  In addition, Goodell presided over a group of football teams made up of a shocking number of players who had raped, assaulted, or otherwise terrorized women, and many of those players had received slap-on-the-wrist penalties from Goodell for such behavior.  In defending the NFL players who had beaten women, Goodell said “people do not understand the complexity of domestic violence.”  Perhaps in Goodell’s mind getting beaten up from time to time is just an occupational hazard of becoming a domestic partner of an NFL player that every women accepts going in.  Goodell seems to think that NFL players are very important people and deserve special allowances.  For their women, pay-to-play, so to speak.

Finally, last year Goodell supported the anti-police demonstrations instigated by now former player Colin Kaepernick, who, among other affronts, wore socks with cartoons depicting police as pigs.  This current NFL season, the widespread police-hating protests by NFL players during the pre-game national anthem has caused many fans to boycott the games.  Some stadiums have been half-empty this year. 

To appease the anti-police protesting players, particularly the many black players at the core of the movement, Goodell’s NFL has agreed to spend almost $100 million on “causes important to black communities.”  Read “Black Lives Matters,” the movement based on a lie that, by causing police to step back from aggressive enforcement, has directly caused the spike in deaths in the black neighborhoods of cities such as Chicago and Baltimore.  Reportedly this NFL money is coming out of funds previously earmarked for breast cancer and military veterans’ causes. 

Nevertheless, in the face of Goodell’s politicization of the NFL, his disastrous handling of the anti-police protesting, and his alienation of a large segment of the fan base, the NFL owners have just extended his contract.  The NFL owners want more Roger Goodell.  They are doubling down on the left-wing politicization of the league and anti-police protests, thinking fans won’t mind paying exorbitant ticket prices knowing they are helping to fund the anti-police Black Lives Matters protestors.  I cannot fathom the thinking of the NFL owners. 

My thoughts.  From now on, no more public funding, which was never right or sensible to begin with, of stadiums that are a huge free gift to already-rich team owners, enabling them to have all the more cash to donate to anti-police activists.  And high-time to revoke the unfair special exemption the NFL has long had from the nation’s anti-trust laws.  And now that everyone knows of the widespread tragedy of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among football players, it may be time for former players to sue the NFL owners out of existence.  They’ve known for a long time about the problem and have looked the other way.    

The NFL owners and players have sown the wind, and it’s now time they reaped the whirlwind. 

R Balsamo

Related link:

NFL Head Roger Goodell Tolerates the Thug, Domestic-Violence Prone Football Culture and Supports Anti-American Protests But Slams Trump