Category: Taxes

The terrible tax bill

In 1909, President William Howard Taft, a Republican, proposed an income tax on corporations. Such a tax required the passage of the 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and when the amendment gained the required state support, a permanent federal income tax was born. It’s nigh impossible to imagine a sitting Republican president mounting such…
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Working-class whites get conned

On Tuesday (Oct. 24), Sen. Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, delivered a stunning rebuke of President Donald J. Trump, excoriating his isolationism, his divisiveness, his disregard for truth, his debasement of democracy, his “reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior.” The speech by Flake, a longtime critic of Trump, added to the catalog of recent denunciations of…
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GOP hypocrisy on deficits

“Deficits don’t matter.” — Dick Cheney, 2002 For more than a year, I’ve watched in sheer amazement as Republicans — fueled by the Tea Party — bludgeoned Democrats, especially President Obama, for blowing a hole in the federal budget. I’m amazed because it was the administration of George W. Bush, assisted by a GOP-dominated Congress,…
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A journey through the rabbit hole

  WASHINGTON — Once upon a time, taxes were higher and unemployment was lower. People prospered. The federal treasury overflowed. The deficit disappeared. Perhaps Americans have forgotten that era since it was so long ago — the Clinton years. Way back in the mid-1990s, the national jobless rate hovered around five percent. By 1999, only…
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Create your own opinion, not your own facts.

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” — Daniel Patrick Moynihan WASHINGTON — Once upon a time, taxes were higher and unemployment was lower. People prospered. The federal treasury overflowed. The deficit disappeared. Perhaps Americans have forgotten that era since it was so long ago — the Clinton years. Way…
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