Ep. 77 - Cultural Death and Taxes
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
176.30794
Summary
Today's show is all about death and taxes. Republicans have come to an agreement on the final tax reform bill, and there is a ton of fake news spreading about it so much, we will separate fact from fiction and go through the bill. Then, on cultural death, we ll talk about racists, the ones who are still on Twitter, and a glimmer of hope on identity politics from flamboyantly gay Italian fashion designers.
Transcript
00:00:03.520
Republicans have come to an agreement on the final tax reform bill,
00:00:07.020
and there is a ton of fake news spreading about it.
00:00:09.540
So much, we will separate fact from fiction and go through the bill.
00:00:12.820
Then, on cultural death, we'll talk about racists,
00:00:16.060
the ones who are still on Twitter, the ones who are purged from Twitter,
00:00:21.380
from flamboyantly gay Italian fashion designers.
00:00:30.000
I'm Michael Knowles, and this is The Michael Knowles Show.
00:00:39.180
There is so much fake news about this tax plan.
00:00:48.920
But what everyone else is hearing, if they're on Facebook or whatever,
00:00:56.200
Why are Republicans raising taxes on millions of Americans?
00:01:00.780
That's Washington Post, Democracy Dies in Darkness.
00:01:07.040
Senate Republicans' tax plan raises taxes on families earning less than $75,000.
00:01:16.620
Matt Iglesias, who wrote that piece for Vox, said,
00:01:19.900
For those of more modest means, the news is not so good.
00:01:24.200
By 2027, after most of the individual cuts in the bill expire and the corporate cuts remain,
00:01:29.340
households earning between $75,000 and $100,000 will see, on average, no tax cut.
00:01:35.680
And households earning less than $75,000 will see, on average, a tax increase.
00:01:43.380
Most people are paying higher taxes, and the rich are paying less.
00:01:56.120
After the tax plan goes into effect, and then in 2027, this will change.
00:02:00.100
In 2027, he's predicting 10 years out, but he leaves that out of the headline.
00:02:04.060
You don't want to include that in the headline.
00:02:05.180
So he's saying that once we cut taxes now, and then if those cuts expire in 10 years, taxes will go up.
00:02:12.200
When you cut taxes, and then if 10 years later, they don't make those tax cuts permanent,
00:02:25.320
We could say that any tax cut is really a tax raise.
00:02:29.100
Any declaration of war is really a declaration of armistice.
00:02:39.360
Now, ironically, my taxes may increase slightly.
00:02:42.980
This is very frustrating, but it's because I do well enough.
00:02:46.080
For some reason, Shapiro keeps paying me, and I live in la-la land where the marginal state
00:02:54.340
So lefties have been saying that the tax plan is unpopular.
00:03:00.620
In another article, also on CNN, of course, only 29% of Americans approve of the GOP tax
00:03:11.060
Now, what they forget to mention is that an even lower percentage of Americans supported
00:03:15.580
Ronald Reagan's 1986 tax plan, which led to an uninterrupted quarter century of prosperity.
00:03:23.900
Fewer people supported it before that was passed.
00:03:29.660
When all Americans have to go on is mainstream media reporting, they oppose Republican tax
00:03:36.620
But then when the reforms become reality, the people like them because it made them richer.
00:03:44.080
It's almost like saying there's a difference between the mainstream media reporting and reality
00:03:48.300
and further that that difference is intended to damage Republicans.
00:04:00.300
Well, most importantly, basically everybody gets a tax cut.
00:04:04.200
I might even get a tax cut depending on how things shake out.
00:04:08.680
The final version of the plan maintains seven individual income brackets instead of the
00:04:13.680
four as the House proposed, instead of consolidating it to four.
00:04:24.940
It would be better if we could consolidate these tax brackets, but c'est la vie.
00:04:30.120
Everybody's basically getting a tax cut anyway.
00:04:32.520
It just doesn't make it quite as simple as we had been promised by consolidating the brackets.
00:04:38.340
The final bill scraps the personal exemption, but it just about doubles the standard deduction.
00:04:50.040
The Republicans had trouble repealing Obamacare on their own.
00:04:53.440
There was too much squishiness in the House and in the Senate.
00:04:57.020
The President Trump pushed for it, but it didn't quite come out.
00:04:59.900
We'll repeal the Obamacare mandate in the tax bill.
00:05:03.460
This will almost necessarily lead to major reform, if not outright repeal of Obamacare,
00:05:08.760
because we've now removed the funding mechanism for it.
00:05:12.620
And also, this is a matter of personal liberty, an important matter of liberty.
00:05:16.760
That Obamacare mandate is the first time in American history the federal government has said that every single citizen
00:05:21.880
has to purchase a product from a private company, or there will be a penalty, or a tax, or a penalty tax,
00:05:28.120
or whatever you want to call it to get this thing through judicial review.
00:05:34.360
This is very good news for American liberty, very good news for returning to a constitutional framework for our country.
00:05:41.340
Now, the final bill doesn't eliminate the death tax, that's too bad, but it does double the exemption to it.
00:05:46.980
So I think now it's around $12 million or exempt before you have to pay the death tax.
00:05:52.360
All of that wealth has already been taxed at the income, the corporate level, the capital gains level, wherever.
00:06:05.660
This is also not a great idea, but I understand these people are working in the Senate.
00:06:14.780
They want a little insurance if this is painted by the Democrats as just a big tax break to the rich.
00:06:20.260
Very easy for me to talk into a microphone, harder to face your constituents.
00:06:28.520
So in the final bill, it allows a deduction of up to $10,000 in state and local sales, income, and property taxes.
00:06:39.640
This is very good for the country because under the current tax regime, there is no incentive for state and local governments to lower their taxes because it just comes out of the federal government.
00:06:51.100
It's basically a federal subsidy for high state and local taxes.
00:06:55.240
What this does is slowly take away that perverse incentive.
00:06:59.580
So hopefully over time, la-la land, my state of California, will get its act together and stop taxing us into oblivion.
00:07:06.160
The final bill maintains the mortgage interest deduction for existing homeowners.
00:07:14.980
They said if you're going to lose the mortgage interest deduction, it's going to kill homeowners.
00:07:18.180
They've allowed it to remain whatever, not a big deal.
00:07:21.420
Going forward, for people who are now buying homes, they can still deduct interest on up to $750,000 in mortgage debt.
00:07:34.340
Basically maintains the status quo, although it's a little bit better, I guess.
00:07:39.420
Tax breaks for charitable contributions and retirement savings plans remain.
00:07:44.740
Again, bad for simplifying taxes, but probably good incentives all in all.
00:07:50.200
I would much rather give my money to charities that do what I want them to do, that are doing the good as I see the good,
00:07:57.660
than give it to the federal government, regardless of what they're doing, just to waste, because there's so, so much waste and inefficiency.
00:08:04.540
The final bill maintains medical expenses deduction.
00:08:07.000
We were told, we're constantly harping on how people with chronic illnesses would be bankrupted by this.
00:08:14.600
This does not tax graduate student tuition as income.
00:08:18.600
So that was one thing we were promised, is it was going to put all of these little graduate students protesting, you know,
00:08:24.220
when they're on lunch break from their gender studies class to protest President Trump or whatever thing they know nothing about.
00:08:31.000
It was going to tax them into oblivion, which I think is pretty good.
00:08:35.120
Basically, what we have done so far is to subsidize a very bad university system in this country, and that's no good.
00:08:50.000
They're not going to make that into the final bill.
00:08:54.700
I was hoping we could maybe try to fix the universities and the crisis of higher education in the country through this tax bill,
00:09:05.120
Now, there's no change to the student loan interest deduction.
00:09:10.300
There's no change to the graduate student taxation.
00:09:12.740
There's no change to classroom expenses deduction.
00:09:18.780
On the individual level, this tax plan is fine.
00:09:22.000
But what this tax reform really focuses on is business.
00:09:25.780
So the chief business of the American people is business.
00:09:28.720
That means the deduction for pass-through income remains.
00:09:31.980
The corporate tax rates drop hugely, hugely, bigly from 35% to 21%.
00:09:39.340
Even Democrats have gotten on board with this before it was President Trump doing it.
00:09:43.860
It eliminates the corporate alternative minimum tax.
00:09:47.780
The alternative minimum tax is what happens where, because of the tax code, if in one year the U.S. business has major losses or something,
00:09:55.100
or they're writing off losses, they have to pay a certain amount of tax.
00:10:01.940
But that's very nice that we're getting rid of it.
00:10:03.840
U.S. businesses holding assets overseas will now be allowed to repatriate that money at 8% or 15.5% for liquid assets.
00:10:14.340
Currently, U.S. businesses have $2.5 trillion overseas because the U.S. had the highest marginal and effective corporate tax rate in the world, practically.
00:10:26.460
It would be a huge boon for the economy, and all of the incentives are there to do it.
00:10:30.320
This is pretty different from the last administration.
00:10:32.900
Let's flash back to Barack Obama's attitude toward business.
00:10:36.420
If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own.
00:10:51.160
It must be because I worked harder than everybody else.
00:10:54.760
There are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.
00:11:02.020
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
00:11:08.140
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life.
00:11:10.260
Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we had that allowed you to thrive.
00:11:21.420
If you've got a business, you didn't build that.
00:11:29.760
Didn't you know if you have a business, you didn't build that.
00:11:33.600
I didn't know that, but that's the major shift.
00:11:38.900
So right now, taxpayers spend nearly 7 billion hours just to comply with the current tax code,
00:11:51.400
30% of people filing their taxes itemize them, so they break down the little things they're going to deduct.
00:11:59.120
With this now higher standard deduction, that number of people who itemize their taxes will drop to under 8% by most analysis.
00:12:12.520
The National Taxpayers Union Foundation estimates that the drop in itemizing alone,
00:12:17.900
just that, will save 210 million hours in compliance burdens.
00:12:27.920
Sadly, it could be a way bigger win on individual taxation, but all in all, great stuff.
00:12:33.920
This is really, really good stuff all around, despite the constant negative press.
00:12:40.740
But before we get to cultural death, let's talk about the thing that resembles death,
00:12:45.300
but it isn't death because you get to wake up in the morning.
00:12:49.740
As you can tell, I haven't slept in days because I flew back to New York over the weekend.
00:12:57.960
I moved from New York up to Connecticut and then back to New York over to L.A.
00:13:08.740
There are a ton of online mattress retailers popping up these days.
00:13:12.220
They all offer a one-size-fits-all solution to a better sleep.
00:13:15.960
So, I would always go into the stores to get a mattress.
00:13:22.980
If you look online, they just have this one-size-fits-all.
00:13:28.000
Helix Sleep offers something that does not exist anywhere else.
00:13:31.060
It is a mattress personalized to your unique preferences and sleeping style that will not set you back thousands of dollars.
00:13:37.960
Go to helixsleep.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
00:13:43.820
Take their simple two-to-three-minute sleep quiz and they will build a custom mattress that will be the best thing that you've ever slept on.
00:13:49.440
Now, two-to-three minutes, that is the maximum amount of time that I will do anything.
00:14:00.260
I can't focus on anything for more than three minutes.
00:14:04.140
For couples, they'll even personalize each side of the mattress.
00:14:07.760
And this is very important because for me and my fiancée, sweet little Lisa, we have a particular sleep pattern.
00:14:13.560
I prefer to sleep on a mattress that is hard and she prefers to sleep on a mattress that I am not on.
00:14:20.260
It's very important because those are incompatible sleep references.
00:14:24.120
Everyone from GQ to Cosmopolitan to the New York Times are all talking about Helix.
00:14:30.200
So, your custom mattress arrives direct to your door in a week.
00:14:36.840
If you don't love it, they will pick it up and refund you in full.
00:14:42.560
Go to helixsleep.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, like Beyonce.
00:14:47.240
Right now, you will get $50 towards your custom mattress.
00:14:57.800
You're going to spend a third of your life on it.
00:15:03.940
Helixsleep.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S, for $50 off your first order.
00:15:14.820
We've got to wake up, people, to our terrible culture.
00:15:17.660
So, there's actually some good news and there's bad news on our cultural death, death and decay.
00:15:22.520
Let's start with the bad news and then we'll end happy.
00:15:26.500
You might have seen, if you were tweeting yesterday, Twitter is further clamping down on free speech.
00:15:38.140
But it's only those specific racists that's very bad again.
00:15:41.620
First of all, if we're going to purge Twitter users and purge Twitter of anything, how about we focus on, I don't know, ISIS.
00:15:50.360
It'd be slightly more urgent than some dummies in their basement tweeting out articles about IQ as if that means anything to society or to culture.
00:15:58.020
Now, I was blocked recently by a verified user.
00:16:02.080
That's where you get the little blue checkmark.
00:16:18.860
They haven't purged any of the anti-white racists, of course.
00:16:22.800
So people who are of other ethnic backgrounds, they get to say whatever they want about white people and there's no backlash.
00:16:34.220
If Democrats didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
00:16:36.820
What is surprising is that there is apparently no rhyme or reason even among the pro-white racists as to who stays and who goes.
00:16:44.580
So they let Richard Spencer, he's the famous one who has the fascist-looking haircut and got punched in the face on the street.
00:16:53.440
David Duke is one of the most virulent racists in the country.
00:16:59.540
He basically comes off as Bill Buckley without the wit or wisdom.
00:17:14.740
They're letting these other guys stay on but not him.
00:17:17.100
Now, if you're going to clamp down on racism, if Twitter's going to have a policy that it won't tolerate race-mongering, race-baiting language,
00:17:23.520
it should apply that rule fairly to all racists of all varieties, all ages, and all races.
00:17:29.660
Jared Taylor, perhaps unwittingly, puts this issue into stark relief.
00:17:39.260
I think in a way we are mirror images in that you are fighting for your people.
00:17:47.020
He's talking to Univision host Jorge Ramos, and he is exactly right.
00:17:56.920
These race-baiters on the left and these white race-baiters on the right, on the alt-right or whatever, they're mirror images.
00:18:06.400
I wouldn't write home and boast and say, ah, yes, I'm a mirror image of Jorge Ramos.
00:18:11.060
If I looked in the mirror and I saw Jorge Ramos, I would smash the mirror.
00:18:18.920
This is why the alternative right is in many ways much more like the left.
00:18:23.220
They have a lot of premises, and a lot of them ground themselves in post-Christianity.
00:18:33.920
I know it seems sort of edgy right now, and it seems taboo because Twitter is banning white racists.
00:18:46.040
Richard Spencer wrote in his alt-right manifesto, quote, race is real.
00:19:06.680
That's the sort of thing that adolescents think.
00:19:10.780
You remember in high school when you're like 13 or 14, you try on all of these personalities.
00:19:15.100
So you paint your nails black and you're really gothic, and then you're a skateboarder, and then you're wearing popped polo shirts or whatever.
00:19:26.040
But there is an answer to this, and in the West there's an answer, and it's explicitly not race.
00:19:32.180
For everybody that's true, but especially for the West because in the West we ground our identity in Christianity.
00:19:39.740
In Christianity they give us the exact answer, the animating force of the West.
00:19:44.580
And that answer is, we see it in Moses when he talks to God.
00:19:52.220
And we see it when Christ is speaking to the Pharisees.
00:19:55.160
The Pharisees say, you're not even 50 years old.
00:19:59.260
How could you possibly be older than our father Abraham?
00:20:05.160
When you lose your grounding of identity, when you disconnect it from the I am, the essence, the metaphysical, the divine logos from the I am, then you're left with a pathetic question, which is, who am I?
00:20:39.340
Unfortunately, these guys like Taylor and Richard Spencer and David Duke, they never got past that adolescence.
00:20:46.060
They never matured into adulthood to answer that question as a serious person does, which is the essence of my identity has to be greater.
00:20:57.100
It can't be a trivial and physical aspect of my own body or my own being.
00:21:03.760
Now, on the bright side of culture, there is a glimmer of hope here.
00:21:10.460
So Gabbana recently said in an interview basically just this.
00:21:14.060
He was doing an interview with the Italian newspaper, the Corriere della Sera, and he said,
00:21:20.140
In it, there is a supernatural sense of belonging.
00:21:22.860
I'm just surprised at how still to this day people call me gay.
00:21:34.620
The word gay is just a word, an invented word that is used to identify people.
00:21:38.240
But I don't want to be identified or classified based on my sexual choice.
00:21:51.060
He wrote in his Pensee and the Thoughts of Pascal, one of the great geniuses of the modern era.
00:21:56.380
He said, No man should be known by his book, which is pretty bad because I do get known by that blank book sometimes.
00:22:03.500
They shouldn't say you're a mathematician or you're a this or you're a that.
00:22:10.640
Only be known ultimately by that which is totally transcendent and infinite and all-encompassing, the I am,
00:22:16.360
rather than these stupid little categories that try to take what is a great thing, mankind,
00:22:23.660
and fit him into a little box which is ideological and stupid.
00:22:28.340
Gabbana understands all of these little ancillary identifiers are trivial.
00:22:34.100
That's an excellent mark for those Italian fashion designers.
00:22:48.260
Before we move on, unfortunately, oh, this is bad news because we have such a good this day in history today.
00:22:53.620
This day in history is when Bill Clinton was impeached.
00:22:57.320
This Leftist Tears Tumblr is going to fill to the brim as it did 20 years ago, 19 years ago.
00:23:03.420
But if you're not on the DailyWire.com right now, you can't see the whole rest of the show.
00:23:07.580
If you're on Facebook or YouTube, you've got to go over to DailyWire.com.
00:23:15.540
If it is $10 a month or $100 for an annual membership, what do you get?
00:23:27.400
This day in history, 19 years ago, Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives for being a dirty, rotten, lying, sexual deviant.
00:23:37.080
And so if you want to be able to celebrate that and not drown in all the lefty tears, especially now that the Clintons are totally dead politically, you have to go to TheDailyWire.com.
00:24:11.600
I remember I was just a wee little lad on this day in history in 1998.
00:24:15.660
But Bill Clinton was impeached for lying under oath to a federal grand jury and obstructing justice.
00:24:22.880
House Resolution 614 resolved that Mr. Hyde, Mr. Sensenbrenner, Mr. McCollum, Mr. Geekes, Mr. Kennedy, Mr. Booyer, Mr. Bryant, Mr. Shabbat, Mr. Barr, Mr. Hutchinson, Mr. Cannon, Mr. Rogan, and Mr. Graham.
00:24:35.460
Are appointed managers to conduct the impeachment trial against William Jefferson Clinton.
00:24:53.380
I did not have sexual relations with that woman.
00:25:00.520
But then, about five minutes later, he admitted this.
00:25:04.280
Indeed, I did have a relationship with Mr. Lewinsky that was not appropriate.
00:25:11.040
It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part,
00:25:15.640
for which I am solely and completely responsible.
00:25:29.880
Now, how could Bill Clinton make both of those statements with a straight face?
00:25:39.660
the statement that there is no sex of any kind in any manner,
00:25:44.280
shape or form with President Clinton was an utterly false statement.
00:25:50.360
It depends upon what the meaning of the word is.
00:26:09.760
What he's referring to is when he told his aides,
00:26:16.260
Now, he was following the classic mob advice of deny till you die.
00:26:35.500
are you having any kind of sexual relations with Ms. Lewinsky?
00:26:38.960
That is, ask me a question in the present tense,
00:26:51.120
Clinton was the second president in American history to be impeached.
00:27:03.200
The House decided not to pursue the second two.
00:27:05.500
So, he lied about a year and a half long sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky,
00:27:09.780
a 21-year-old intern who, when he was 49 and 50 years old.
00:27:15.920
So, Democrats tried to play it off as some little fling.
00:27:18.940
Clinton's associates and his wife and campaign managers smeared the women as bimbos and trailer trash.
00:27:25.840
We're talking about the president of the United States and his employee,
00:27:28.460
who was 28 years younger, certainly young enough to be his daughter.
00:27:32.360
Consider for a moment the performed anger right now that we're seeing from Democrats
00:27:36.940
at Roger Ailes, Bill O'Reilly, even Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, on and on and on.
00:27:42.440
What they did doesn't hold a candle to what Bill Clinton did.
00:27:44.840
All of those guys doesn't hold a candle to what Bill Clinton did.
00:27:47.680
Among the more lurid findings of the investigation against him
00:27:50.600
are Bill Clinton's creative use of a cigar on the lowest-level staff member and his employee.
00:27:56.340
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, but not for Bill Clinton.
00:27:59.580
And, of course, Lewinsky wasn't the only accuser.
00:28:01.740
Even at the time of the Lewinsky affair, former Arkansas state employee Paula Jones
00:28:06.520
was suing Clinton for sexual harassment, including his exposing little bubba to her in 1991, uninvited.
00:28:13.060
Former White House aide Kathleen Willey accused Clinton of groping her without consent in 1993.
00:28:18.580
Imagine, imagine then, we just saw this frank and fake resignation, but at least he had to go through it.
00:28:24.740
Clinton admitted an extramarital affair with Jennifer Flowers.
00:28:27.220
He's had variously documented extramarital affairs with countless other women.
00:28:32.180
And Juanita Broderick, then a nursing home aide, claimed Clinton raped her so viciously that he made her bleed.
00:28:38.200
Nevertheless, Clinton was acquitted, ostensibly because Democrats concluded that
00:28:42.140
I did not have sexual relations with that woman really meant, yes, I did have sexual relations with that woman.
00:28:48.680
You know, I mean, I understand how you could get confused.
00:28:51.420
Now, it was a party-line vote, basically, for Democrats who were joined by a handful of squishy Republicans,
00:28:58.280
including Susan Collins, Arlen Specter, and Olympia Snow.
00:29:13.980
Do we look back with pride on the legacy of Olympia Snow?
00:29:17.440
We look back, there's going to be a big statue to Olympia Snow.
00:29:23.580
Winston Churchill explained why he would continue to fly after his third plane crash, a nearly fatal plane crash.
00:29:38.200
Speaking of me too, only now that the Clintons are no longer politically useful to Democrats
00:29:42.680
is the party willing to raise a ruckus over sexual assault.
00:29:50.080
Democrat politics are always, at all times, cynical.
00:29:54.060
The party of slavery, of the KKK, of urban destruction, of appeasement, of disloyalty and division.
00:30:02.060
Some pearl-clutching Republicans think we should be wise as doves and innocent as serpents.
00:30:08.740
We have to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.
00:30:12.220
FBI agents last year texted about an insurance policy in case Trump won.
00:30:16.840
They had that conversation in the office of the director of the FBI.
00:30:20.480
Democrats have called for impeachment since last November simply because they don't like this president and they really don't like how effective he has been.
00:30:28.900
This investigation about Russian collusion may have been started just to stop Trump from getting elected.
00:30:37.360
Republicans better not let themselves get played for fools.
00:30:42.140
I always love when history relates to the present.
00:30:44.580
It's always nice when we can learn some very important lessons from that.
00:30:52.360
Get all of your mailbag questions in for Thursday.
00:30:55.760
The Michael Knowles Show is produced by Marshall Benson, executive producer Jeremy Boring, senior producer Jonathan Hay, supervising producer Mathis Glover.
00:31:10.580
Our technical producer is Austin Stevens, edited by Alex Zingaro.
00:31:20.060
The Michael Knowles Show is a Daily Wire Forward Publishing production.