Fiscal Reality: Who Pays What in Taxes?

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WALTER E. WILLIAMS
Politicians exploit public ignorance. Few areas of public ignorance provide as many opportunities for political demagoguery as taxation. Today some politicians argue that the rich must pay their fair share and label the proposed changes in tax law as tax cuts for the rich. Let's look at who pays what, with an eye toward attempting to answer this question: Are the rich paying their fair share? According to the latest IRS data, the payment of income taxes is as follows. The top 1 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted annual gross income of $480,930 or higher, pay about 39 percent of federal income taxes. That means about 892,000 Americans are stuck with paying 39 percent of all federal taxes. The top 10 percent of income earners, those having an adjusted gross income over $138,031, pay...
Trump Exposes the Fake Math of Obamacare
FRANK MIELE
When Congress runs into a problem, it has one solution: Throw money at it. The Affordable Care Act had one big problem: It was unaffordable. So Congress did what it always does, and threw money at it — other people's money.
Obama Holdovers Sowing Seeds for Another Subprime Collapse
PAUL SPERRY
A pair of top Obama-appointed bank regulators still serving in the Trump administration could spark another mortgage meltdown by lowering credit standards and encouraging risky lending practices.
Weinstein's Victims: Collateral Damage in the Left's Culture War
DANIEL GREENFIELD
In the spring of his final year as a movie mogul, Harvey Weinstein was doing what he always did. Or rather what he always did in public view: as opposed to what he has been accused of doing in hotel rooms and deserted office storage rooms. He was fighting a ratings war over a movie with adult content.
Socialism: Killing America with Kindness
LINDA GOUDSMIT
The Humanitarian Hoax is a deliberate and deceitful tactic of presenting a destructive policy as altruistic. The humanitarian huckster presents himself as a compassionate advocate when in fact he is the disguised enemy.
Trump & Obamacare
ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
Late last week, President Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretaries of the Treasury and Health & Human Services to cease making payments to health care insurance companies in behalf of the more than 6 million Americans who qualify for these payments under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act...
If You Can Pay for Aspirin, You Can Pay for Birth Control
JEFF JACOBY
It has been 52 years since the Supreme Court ruled that government may not ban anyone from using contraceptives. The freedom to use birth control is protected by the Constitution's "fundamental right" to privacy. That freedom is a matter of settled law, and hasn't been challenged in the slightest by Pres. Trump or his administration...
In Defense of 'The Generals'
VICTOR DAVIS HANSON
Recently there have been a number of quite different critiques from all political sides of Trump's generals, and also from a variety of angles. While it is hard to know who exactly is to be praised or faulted for Trump's foreign policy, the record is so far pretty clear — and pretty good.
The Quality of Thinking About Climate & Economics at Pravda
FRANCIS MENTON
On Monday the NY Times gave over its full unsigned editorial space to a single item, titled "5 Climate Truths Mr. Trump Doesn't Get." In the full-page-length piece dripping with scorn, Pravda informs us how our ignoramus President just "doesn't get it"...
The RNC's Anti-Trump Agenda Survey
GREG LEWIS
The title of a recent RNC questionnaire sent by snail mail to Republican Party members is the "Trump Agenda Survey." Is the RNC aware that with that title they're making it clear they are completely divorced from and non-supportive of the agenda of President Donald Trump?
The Hate-America Death Squad
JOAN SWIRSKY
Those opposed to and threatened by America's Founding Fathers' noble aspirations of freedom for all and a government in which citizens and not kings or dictators decide who will represent them have waged fierce resistance.
What Your Moral Superiors Are Up To
FRANCIS MENTON
You probably think that the main thing that people claiming to be your moral superiors have been up to for the past few decades is covering up the story of Harvey Weinstein's sexual predation. And you are right...

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"History teaches us that men and nations only behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives." ~ Abba Eben
It's a Great Thing That Clinton Lost!
The American people -- and the people of the free world -- dodged a bullet in the last General Election when Hillary Clinton lost. Would she have won it's clear we would be looking at an explosion of nuclear weapons capability across the Middle East. Clinton, in only the way an American-hating globalist can, has somehow twisted the negation of the hideously inequitable Iran nuclear deal made under the Obama administration with United States credibility around the world.... READ MORE

EDITORIAL

The Tunnel-Vision of
​Identity Politics Activism
FRANK SALVATO
Let's set aside, for a moment, the actions of Antifa and Black Lives Matter, two groups whose ideological agendas could find something to protest in Nirvana. They are perpetually aggrieved, and that's not going to change. No, let's look at the identity politics activists for a moment and the issue of the toppling of historical monuments and the missed teachable moment. For definition's sake, identity politics activists are those people who have been misled by political opportunists to self-Balkanize. They have sectioned themselves off from national community by race, religion, gender, etc. and identify, first and foremost, with that tunnel-visioned caricature of themselves...

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