Illinois tax increase will benefit FIVE states that voted for Donald Trump

Liberals are bad at math everywhere, but starting January 1, 2020 the liberals running the state of Illinois will begin learning math the hard way. As an added irony, all five of the states that will benefit most from Pritz's folly are states that voted for President Donald Trump.

The New Year marks the effective date for a slew of new tax increases, passed by the Democrat-controlled legislature during their Spring 2019 money grab. These included a new gas tax, a new tobacco tax and 18 other "ways and means" signed into law by Governor J.B. Pritzker.

One of the most onerous measures is a trade-in tax, which will be applied to the value of a car with a trade-in value over $10,000.

The trade-in tax is particularly bad tax policy and cannot be justified as anything other than a revenue grab. The money isn’t even targeted to roads.

The state currently collects no sales tax on a car’s trade-in value, which acted as credit toward a new vehicle purchase. The sales tax only applies to the difference between trade-in value and the new vehicle’s purchase price, preventing residents from having to pay sales tax first when a vehicle was purchased new and then a second time when it was traded in. After Jan. 1 that trade-in vehicle will be taxed twice.

Any trade-in value above $10,000 will be subject to the full state and local sales tax burden, which is highest in Chicago at 10.25%. The tax is expected to cost Illinoisans $60 million. The state’s auto dealers are rightly upset about the dampening effect this is likely to have on car sales and have called foul on the double taxation aspect.

If you trade in a car valued at $20,000 before Dec. 30 to purchase a $35,000 vehicle, you will pay $1,311 in sales tax, which was only on the value of the new car above the trade-in value. But that exact same transaction will cost you $2,185 after Jan. 1.

You paid sales taxes when you first bought the vehicle. You pay the state the license and registration fee. You pay sales taxes on the new car and now you have the honor and privilege to pay taxes on the trade, to.

Auto dealerships in  Iowa, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky and Missouri are cackling in delight. There is no stopping a car owner in lovely Mt.Vernon from driving an hour or so to St. Louis or Evanston to trade in their well-maintained Toyota Tundra and buy a new one. Who wouldn't spend a couple of hours to save a few grand? Now think of car owners in Chicago, who have options in South Bend, Gary, Racine and Kenosha.

Automobiles are your property. Once it's paid for, you can sell your property in any state in the union (or overseas, if you want). What you do with that money is your own business. You can put it down on a newer model. You can bank it for something else and sign a zero-down lease.

Automobile sales will be very hard hit in Illinois while sales in her sister states will benefit from a yuuge uptick in volume. You can't have used car sales without used car supply and St. Louis and South Bend is about to be swimming in a sea of inventory, all compliments of Pritz and his ill-schooled liberal friends in Springfield.

Seattle's 'Upscale Homeless' dump million gallons of raw sewage per year

It's hard to wrap a mind around this. Is the homeless problem on the Left Coast getting better, or worse? The pour souls in L.A. and San Fran are basically tent dwellers. But in Seattle there's an upscale flavor, with more than a few doing the RV thing.

I made two trips to Seattle in the late 1980's. It was a very neat place to visit and had very little of the crises they face now with homelessness, crime and the fetid stench of Antifa.

These are all crises of their own making and human nature being what it is, the dive is deep. They all have similar sanitation issues, though. Via HotAir.com:

Using Environmental Protection Agency wastewater pump-out and treatment statistics, it’s estimated that Seattle RV campers likely discharge more than 1 million gallons of untreated sewage annually into our waterways, including the Duwamish Waterway and Salmon Bay…

To better understand the potential impact of RV discharges, the Sodo Business Improvement Area and Ballard Alliance commissioned Anchor QEA, a Seattle-based environmental science and engineering firm, to evaluate existing water-quality data and collect a storm drain water sample from a heavily populated RV parking area in Sodo. The sample from the storm drain in the midst of the RVs registered 300 times greater than the state water-quality standard for fecal coliform bacteria…

While a more definitive pollution-identification study is needed on the relative impact of illegal black-water discharges, the data points strongly suggest that illegal dumping of sewage and trash, along with unsanitary conditions in unregulated RV encampments, increase public-health risks and could result in serious outbreaks of communicable diseases such as hepatitis A and typhus.

Here on the Gulf Coast, people tend to get animated when a few thousand gallons of partially treated effluent is spilled accidentally. Those accidental flows are almost always (1) a result of very heavy rainfalls, (2) result in self-reporting by the parties responsible, (3) lead to universal media coverage by local news outlets.

That million gallons yearly in Seattle is in addition to whatever accidental spills may occur. In a city the size of Seattle, with rainfall patterns close to ours... the scale of pollution must be breathtaking (pun intended).

Station KOMO did an hour-long special (embedded below) on the overall homeless problem. If you watch the whole thing, prepare to come away shocked.


This is why we just can't let the Left export this disease to the east. I could spend a whole bunch of blogspace on the economics of homelessness, but the short takeaway would be that there's a supply crunch. Same thing with healthcare (but that has demand issues, too). Limiting supply is a sure way of driving up the cost of anything. Healthcare and housing are both under attack, though this only focuses on housing.

People out west are forced to choose housing over healthcare and/or  transportation and many end up losing both. The result is RVzuela in Seattle and  Tentezuela in L.A., because the left thinks more government control is needed when it is government control that's causing it all. Madness.

Thank God we still have some small sense of sanity here in happily Red Alabama. Let's keep the standard of living cheap here with lower taxes, fewer regulations and inexpensive housing.

Too funny NOT to watch: Climate change activists can't explain what they're protesting.

How do you know when religious fervor crosses over into the danger zone of cult behavior? One good indication is when you believe in something so fervently that the ability to articulate your beliefs has has escaped you.

Surely... if you're all about something, you can explain what it is about that something that you're all about.

This is... Hilarious.

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Is this cultish? I mean, at least devout Catholics can explain why they abstain from meat during Lent and why they believe in the Sacraments. Devout Protestants can tell you why they abstain from alcohol. They're not cultish. They're merely religious.

What are these folks?

I remember a Peanuts cartoon panel from my early youth that said, "It doesn't matter what you believe in as long as you're sincere." This was sometime between 1968 and 1971, which was about the same time that Peanuts' creator Charles Schulz was said to have begun chasing young skirts and experimenting with certain psychoactive... substances. Maybe that's some of what's going on here, too.

I mean, if you're a left-wing climate change wacko, what better way to start the protest day with a few herbal supplement bumps known for their deletory effects on short term memory?

Maybe this just what these people do for a living. Since no one with a degree in gender or culture studies has sky high earning prospects in a skills economy, ya gotta do something to earn some cash and keep the bowls full. Why not hire on with a professional protest organizer, dress up, and show up? It's not like anyone's gonna actually ask you wtf you're doing here, right?

A fairy tale begins with ‘Once I am elected.’

It is crazy enough how honest a leftist is when he knows the camera is rolling and the mic is hot. When he doesn’t know that he can’t ever make the truth disappear… hoo, boy. This is what we get when Project Veritas goes undercover and gets people to be comfortable with who they are and what they’re up to.

The clip below is just the first 2:30.

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Go here for a link to the full video and a keen analysis of what it means.

Florida, please tell me that you’re not about to be this stupid. Please.

No, liberals… The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 was NOT a tax cut for the richest Americans

The Trump Tax Cut was a great big F-YOU to the richest of the rich people in the bluest of the blue liberal states. These are the Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street and Madison Avenue elites that go out of their way to denigrate you. They call you a deplorable, bitter clinging Bible thumper. They mocked candidate Trump and they despise PRESIDENT Trump.

The sweeping tax cut law was Trump’s way of saying “elections have consequences.” The consequences are that you have more money in your pocket. If you take nothing else away from this post, do take this, and share it.

If you are a Democrat and you repeat the party talking point that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (aka, the Trump Tax Cut) only benefits the rich, then you are either lying, or you have been lied to and you are repeating the lie out of blind party loyalty.

I wrote about this in April, shortly after the bill became law and after all of the details of the provisions were unpacked.

In that post, I wrote:

It’s a net tax increase for the wealthiest people in the bluest of states, who have ridden the state and local tax deduction to billions in tax breaks.

While everyone living in states that impose an income tax have enjoyed this deduction--myself included--people living in states like California, Illinois, New Jersey and New York have had it much better. Those states impose truly burdensome taxes on their citizens and their only respite has been that those taxes are deductible at the federal level.

Not anymore.

I’ve gotten some pushback from left-leaning folks on social media and in internet forums, and in day-to-day discussions with friends, colleagues and acquaintances. These misguided souls either don’t believe that a Republican Congress and Republican President would pass a tax cut that doesn’t disproportionately favor the rich, or they know the truth and don’t want anyone else to know what they know.

Those that do know what’s really in the bill are filing lawsuits to stop the tax cuts from serving one of their key purposes—stopping liberal blue states from balancing their bloated budgets on the backs of the average American family. California, Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, et al are among the highest tax states in the country. They have been making you pay for their liberal utopias.

Their lawsuits have a laughable basis—that their residents aren’t given equal protection under the law. This basis ignores the fact that their residents were previously granted special status vis-a-vis other states’ residents with low or zero state income taxes. That’s complicated stuff for liberals, but it won’t be too complicated for a conservative Supreme Court.

Are you still unsure? Are you still under the foolish impression that Trump’s Tax Cut soaks the poor and pays the rich?

Would you believe the New York Times? The left’s favorite “paper of record” has an online calculator that you can use to prove it to yourself.

I’ll give you a few examples. A married couple with a combined income of less than $75,000 with two children and living in Alabama will get a $1,420 tax cut. That same couple with an income of $75,000 to $100,000 living in Virginia gets a $1,290 tax cut. They make more money but live in a high tax state, so they don’t get as much, even though they make more.

The same couple with a $750,000+ income living in California? They get a $2,700 increase.

I’m not making this up, sports fans. These are real numbers pulled from a liberal media bastion’s own calculator.

If you see some knucklehead posting “tax cut for the rich!” crap, share this article with them. It will either get them to STFU or change the subject.

Liberal activists vs liberal activists, reloaded

The other day, we touched on the subject of how a liberal is supposed to act when one of the left’s favored classes (LGBT community is attacked by another favored class (Muslims).

Today we have the answer: Double Down.

Via Hotair.com’s Jazz Shaw:

A vigil Monday planned by several University of Missouri student organizations was supposed to honor victims of Sunday morning’s deadly shooting rampage in a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, Fla.

It turned into a blame session against Mizzou’s LGBTQ community for not being intersectional enough.

At the University of Missouri, a group of students staged a vigil in memory of the victims, standing in solidarity with the gay and lesbian civilians who were murdered by the now infamous ISIS supporter. Their planned memorial hit a sour note, however, when another student showed up to decry the service because it wasn’t focused on the correct demographic group. (The College Fix)

Jazz posed the same question that entered my mind: “Do you suppose that there’s any room left in our collective consciousness to realize that we are at war and facing an enemy whose brutality and utter lack of any semblance of humanity knows no bounds? We’re turning the worst radical Islamist terror attack on our home soil since 9-11 into a social justice debate. This is a 21st century version of Nero fiddling while Rome goes up in flames.”

My answer is “no.” Not if you’re a progressive special snowflake with a purpose. The leader of the disruptive petulance doesn’t care that most of the victims of the Orlando slaughter were Latinos like herself. All she cares about is why all of these white, gay vigil-goers weren’t out marching the streets, smashing storefronts and shutting down events for Ol’ Teddy Bear, Michael Brown.

In fact, the entire left side of the political spectrum is trying to turn an apolitical, ideological rampage into a ppolitical impetus to pass restrictive new gun laws. None of that would have done nothing to stop any mass murdering whacko from murdering en masse, but they don’t care. All of their proposals would necessarily infringe on the rights of law abiding citizens without due process.

First they deprive you of the right to arm yourself, then they deprive you of the right to speak out, and then they start depriving you of mobility.

Fortunately however, this little bruhaha at Mizzou shows that they don’t yet have their shit together. Can we pray that they never do, while we also laugh at the little snowflakes going at each others’ throats? In the wake of that tragedy; with the current administration showing no signs of addressing the real problem of growing radical islam violence, laughter may be all we have left until the real shooting war starts.

 

Group seeks to grant NCAA the power to regulate coaches’ salaries and other costs of college sports

The Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics, an alliance of faculty senates from Football Bowl Subdivision  schools, has called for action that would grant the NCAA broad powers to “restrain the market forces” driving the rapid growth in the business of college sports.

The group met in January and earlier this week, released a set of five “policy recommendations” aimed at reining in what they essentially see as a breakaway invasion of their turf.

The most controversial recommendation—granting the NCAA the same type of exemption from antitrust litigation enjoyed by labor unions and professional sports.

From the Associated Press:

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"Without modification of antitrust constraints, there is no mechanism to restrain the market forces driving rapid commercial expansion," the steering committee wrote.

Its four other recommendations were:

—To support the so-called "collegiate model" of sports and try to lessen the commercialism that has led to calls that athletes should be paid to play.

—To advocate for policies that will keep big football conferences inside the NCAA, which would allow for some oversight that would be missing if they splintered away.

—To increase efforts to respond to the "reputational risks" that the market-driven model of sports pose to U.S. higher education. This issue came to light, unflinchingly, in the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State, which had its reputation sullied because of problems originating in the football program.

—To continue cooperating with the NCAA in trying to bring about changes, while remaining vigilant about NCAA efforts that place college sports over the academic missions of the schools themselves.

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Restraining free markets, lessening commercial influences, restricting the abilities of football schools to operate their programs in their own best interests and essentially conducting a propaganda campaign against “big football” should sound familiar.

Why, these are all wonderful reasons for Congress to act and grant the NCAA bureaucrats virtual autonomy in regulating the business of college sports, aren’t they? Show me one instance of institutionally imposed wage and price controls that has not resulted in complete failure.

Such action would result in:

• Coaching salary caps
• Recruiting budget caps
• Restrictions on the fundraising abilities of athletic departments
• Restrictions on the abilities of colleges and universities to protect trademarks
• Regulations on facilities expenditure
• Reallocation of resources from “haves” to “have nots”
• Restrictions on market-driven conference realignments
• Restrictions on the ability of universities to leave the NCAA and form their own organization
• The end of college sports as we’ve known it for the last two generations

The chief threat of the COIA proposal is the invitation of Congress to act as the architects of a completely new system of regulating college sports. Fortunately, every time this notion floats to the surface, it is blasted out of the water by the college presidents who, despite their roles as administrators of higher education, understand economic reality. COIA may understand it well, but never let good business sense get in the way of ideologically driven agendas:

"While the NCAA is demonstrating significant ability to regulate in the interests of higher education in the area of academic reform, it is prevented by antitrust laws from doing so in the area of economic regulation, and it has been amply demonstrated that schools are not able to do so themselves."

Member schools are the NCAA. Indianapolis has only the powers granted by the member schools. Whether you believe the current college sports model is sustainable or not, this system of governance must be maintained. The membership will determine how much regulation of college sports is enough. The membership will determine how much more or less regulatory power will be granted to the governing body, and any member school that is dissatisfied with the degree of regulation is free to disassociate with that body and form its own system of governance and regulation.

It’s not perfect, but freedom of association and and free enterprise are the best systems in the world. Nothing good has ever come from regulating either.

Note: Ten of the 14 current and future Southeastern Conference schools have faculty senates that are members of the COIA. They are Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, Georgia, Ole Miss, Mississippi State, Missouri, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vanderbilt.

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Baton Rouge ain’t Berkeley: Hundreds stop flag-burning protest at LSU

This gentleman—and I use that term in the loosest possible definition—thought he’d stage a flag-burning protest right in the middle of the campus at Louisiana State University.

He quickly found out that the only similarity between Baton Rouge and Berkeley is that a major university runs through it.

Local news reports and accounts from witnesses said that a crowd of hundreds of counter protesters swarmed the site and when the leftwing nutjob arrived to do his dirty deed, they began pelting him with water balloons. As the crowd grew large and louder and more objects filled with liquids began to fly, police whisked the man to safety in a police cruiser. No flag was burned today.

Rumors that Les Miles was on the scene, preparing to offer the best water balloon thrower a football scholarship at Quarterback, turned out to be unfounded.

So, what prompted Ben Haas to come up with the great idea of announcing a flag-burning?  Well, it was the arrest of another leftwing goon, Isaac Eslava, for defacing the LSU war memorial and—wait for it—cutting down and burning the American flag flying over it.

That’s right, folks. A leftwing nutjob defaces a hallowed site on the hallowed ground of the LSU campus, burns a flag, steals a car and gets arrested. Outraged, another leftwing nutjob decides he’s gonna go one better. He announced to the world that he was gonna burn a flag in protest of the collaring of another flag-burning, America-hating wack job.

You can’t make this up.

But you can be sure of one thing—Baton Rouge ain’t Berkeley.

You GEAUX, Tigers.

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Fatal Panama City Shooting: “Surreal”

Authorities in Panama City called yesterday’s violent outbreak at a school board meeting “surreal.” I call it typical and expected.  It’s typical, and it’s bound to happen again when we have a government and a media that constantly enforces the false sense that life is supposed to be fair and that everyone is entitled to their fair share.

Here’s the video from ABCNews.com:

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Despite his shock, Bay City Schools Superintendent Bill Husfelt mustered a calm voice and tried to persuade Duke to drop the gun, but the 56-year-old ex-convict just shook his head, blaming officials for his wife being fired. Video showed him slowly raising the gun and leveling it at Husfelt, who pleaded "Please don't, please don't."

Here’s a snapshot of the shooter’s facebook page (click the image for the full size version):

"My testament: Some people (the government sponsored media) will say I was evil, a monster (V) ... no ... I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95 percent of the population. Rich Republicans, Rich Democrats ... same-same ... rich ... they take turns fleecing us ... our few dollars ... pyramiding the wealth for themselves."

The facebook page (which has been taken down) also lists Media Matters, Warren Buffet, and theprogressivemind.info as interests.

There seems to be a pattern, here. That’s right, folks.  Clay Duke, the deceased shooter in the video above, was upset because he’s a lefty who thinks the rich are out to soak the little guy. He bought into the leftist meme that everyone is supposed to get their fair share of the world’s income “distribution.”  Who does this sound like to you?  If the man had any ambition, he could have started a new career as a community organizer.