The 16th Amendment

 Every once in a while you would hear about President Donald Trump talking about eliminating the income tax. He could start with the 16th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

What Trump has been talking about is eliminating or cutting taxes on overtime and on tips. As far as tips there has been movement in Chicago at least to eliminate tips. Tips is of course who workers such as servers or bartenders make some extra income.

Either way, who knows if Trump is serious about eliminating the 16th Amendment. Amending the constitution seems like a long and difficult process anywa.

At least the repeal prohibition amendment (18th Amendment) wasn't exactly an unpopular deal during the Great Depression. How much support would repealing the 16th Amendment would receive?

Also, I'm all for Trump and Elon Musk's D.O.G.E. having a look at what goes on with the Internal Revenue Service.

Also, it came out the President wants the U.S. Treasury to cease production of the penny. This was something that was mentioned last month. It cost more to produce a 1¢ coin and I'm for it, now does this mean that prices will be rounded to the nearest nickel. If that's the case I'm for it!

I just hope prices for goods and services doesn't increase as a result.

The Onion: Congress forgets how to pass laws

 It's not often I inject humor onto this blog, but this seems timely.

[VIDEO] In spite of the fact that The Onion's bid for Alex Jones' company was effectively rejected by a court once a judgement against Jones for his statements regarding Sandy Hook, this video seems very timely with President Trump's ongoing singing of executive orders.

Granted the U.S. Senate is plenty busy with confirmation hearings right now, but what does both houses have to do right now. I'm not seeing nor hearing much action out of either of them right now.

CapFax: Pritzker blocks pardoned Jan 6 rioters from state jobs

 I saw a brief video about this via Chicago's ABC News affiliate and here's a link from Capitol Fax about this. The discussion is interesting.

O'Reilly: The United States of Trump

 

[VIDEO] I'm sorry to say I don't read too many of Bill O'Reilly's books.

O'Reilly who refers to himself as a "news analyst" known for his long-running TV program The O'Reilly Factor and currently has the program The No-Spin News has written a number of historical books including this one. Though in the case of The United States of Trump it's a bit more current than many of his books.

He analyzes Trump, discusses his own personal history with him. They're both New Yorkers of course and he may say they have similar personalities. It's a fascinating look at a man who's competitive, flamboyant, a showman, an entrepreneur, and later a politician.

Allow me to add, Trump as the 45th P.O.T.U.S. was the first one to have had no experience in either politics or gov't and the military. He went directly from the business/entertainment world to the political world. Isn't that amazing?

And you know that kept me from voting for him in 2016. He was an unknown to me as a politician. He was known for his business dealings (and the case could be made he was a true cultural icon in-spite of that snarky line I had assigned to the now former Vice President Kamala Harris) and his TV program The Apprentice.

Either way, does this 1 hour program give you any great insight about President Trump? Does it change your opinion of him.

Milestone

The year is 2025, do you know what this means?

I started this blog this month in 2005 and that means this blog is 20 years old. Perhaps the question to ask is why have I been posting here for 20 years?

How many of you have been here since the beginning?

And do you follow the "Beta" blog?

And how many Presidents since I started this blog.

• Bush
• Obama
• Trump
• Biden
• Trump (again!)

Can I do this another 20 years?

D.O.G.E. might cut the penny

From CBS News:

In Tuesday X post, Musk's DOGE wrote that the U.S. spends about 3 cents to mint each penny, which, of course, is only valued at 1 cent.

"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost U.S. taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced."

In pointing out the penny's costliness, DOGE is taking aim at an issue that has sparked debate for years, although the price of manufacturing the cent has only grown over the past several years. In 2016, for instance, the U.S. was spending about 1.5 cents to mint each penny, or less than half of its current manufacturing cost.

Still, the cent's $179 million in costs represents mere metaphorical pennies when it comes to DOGE's mandate to cut federal spending. President Donald Trump has said DOGE will provide recommendations to "slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies." Musk has said the group will aim to trim $500 billion in annual federal spending.

Probably time to cash in the pennies I have around the house. Convert it into some real cash.

Federal officials have proposed suspending the penny in prior years, with former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew pushing the idea in 2015. Some economists have also advocated for dropping the penny from circulation, but there could be a costly downside to ditching the cent, as transactions would be rounded to 5-cent intervals, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond said in a 2020 blog post.

"For a single item or small-value purchase, rounding up or down could represent a significant price change," the post noted.

Other nations have ditched their equivalent of the penny, including Canada, which stopped minting its one-cent coin in 2012. One 2018 economic analysis found that Canadian consumers paid about $3.27 million in additional Canadian dollars at grocery stores each year due to prices being rounded higher after the change.

"On the other hand, there may be additional, hard-to-quantify costs to using pennies that would argue in favor of elimination. Counting pennies to make change takes time, and as the old business adage goes, time is money," the Richmond Fed noted.

I don't know. I often don't use change when I spend cash. It has become more convenient for me to use a debit card for every day purchases. Although most of the time I do prefer cash.

I suppose since there are more options than cash when you have to spend at the store (any store - especially supermarkets) is it possible that change will have to be rounded up to a nickel?

Time will tell.

h/t Newsalert 

The 'new' sheriff is the same as the 'old' sheriff...

Visit the new whitehouse.gov

Alright we made it. Just think four years ago it seemed unfathomable that Donald Trump would return to the White House. It seemed like his brief political career was more than finished and it took the pandemic and the unrest (including the January 6, 2021 "insurrection") to take him down.

Oh yeah let's not forget the unforgettable 2020 presidential race that even he still discusses in some ways after his inauguration. He believes there was a lot of fraud and cheating in 2020, still.

Watch his inaugural address here.

There were concerns that outgoing Pres. Joe Biden might resign and make his Vice President Kamala Harris (and vanquished 2024 Democrat nominee) the 47th POTUS. That didn't happen and I can dismiss this as a right-wing conspiracy theory.

Trump made history as only the second man to have been elected to two non-consecutive terms as President. The only other person who achieved this feat was the 22nd & 24th President, Grover Cleveland.

This time around as opposed to 2017, President Trump is in a much better spot. He has a better Congress both with GOP majorities. I'm just not that sure about the US Senate, we'll have to see about the new Republican Majority Leader now that "Cocaine" Mitch McConnel has bowed out - that man has been suffering some serious health issues anyway. I'd say he has a much more supportive Republican majority than he did in 2017. I don't think he'll have much issue pushing his agenda through in this term.

He was a virtual novice in 2017 having held no elective office before being elected President - and I can only imagine winning the 2016 race rocked his world big time. I mean he has a big ego did that even enter his head? Either way his lack of any political or gov't experience caused me to not even vote for him in 2016.

He still did a great job before the pandemic hit. The economy was humming, America was at peace no serious issues in the world at that time. Just remember people thought he's start a third world war during his presidency.

Either way, what I can't wait for is the return of the Trump economy and after the inflation and mismanagement of the economy under Joe Biden it might be a minute before we see that. We'll have to see how the Ukraine war or even the current Israel-Palestine conflict will finally conclude.

However, the 47th POTUS will proclaim a strong America once again.

Matt Walsh: Why A Total Conquest Of Canada And Greenland Would Be Great For America

 

[VIDEO] This is really a discussion on the right.

Canada as part of the United States and an American purchase of the Danish territory of Greenland. Greenland would be primarily purchase for U.S. nat'l security reasons. And well Canada, we did try to take them over during the War of 1812.

Also during the War of 1812, the U.S. capital city was burned to the ground by the enemy - the British Empire whom we had broke away after 1776.

Anyway, Canada is having their own problems. The soon to be former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will be stepping down as due to the political pressure from his own Liberal Party they're feeling the pressure of the incoming Presidency of Donald Trump.

I would like the idea of an American controlled Canada. To go to Montreal or Toronto or Vancouver. Even to go up to Edmonton and Calgary and not need a passport. Nice.

Also the idea of a Gulf of America...

It's going to be a beautiful and huge Gulf of America 🇺🇸👇 pic.twitter.com/AmVRt4ZkY8

— Anti Left Memes (@AntiLeftMemes) January 8, 2025

Is all of this just trolling?

And what about getting control of the Panama Canal? One of the crowning achievements of the late President Jimmy Carter (who passed away last year before New Year's) was returning the canal to the Republic of Panama. I could definitely see this as a solid nat'l security move.

Bill O'Reilly talks about the cost of living in New York

 

[VIDEO] The taxes and the cost of living in the state of New York or at least the New York City area and Long Island. He mentions tolls, parking, utilities, the cost of housing (shelter), etc.

Then he mentions places that probably would be a lot cheaper including Boston, MA of all places. What do they call Massachusetts - Taxachusetts. They're cheaper place to live than New York? Really?

If it's all about taxes where is that money going?

Open History Society: Donald Trump a Jacksonian?

 Early during the first Trump administration, Donald Trump paid a visit to the Hermitage which is the former estate of our 7th POTUS Andrew Jackson. Jackson is well known for his treatment of our Indigenous Americans forcing then onto the "Trail of Tears" not allowing them to remain on their original territories and send them to what is now Oklahoma.

Pres. Trump saw a kindred spirit in Andrew Jackson as in 1828 President Jackson was a change in the character of most other presidents up to that point. Jackson probably could be described as America's first populist president. Trump in 2016 and again in 2024 could be seen as a populist president in our time.

This article from Open History Society explores in what ways that President Trump is Jacksonian. And then you have to get past biased statements as.

Meacham (2009) contends that Jackson was a principled idealist and there seems no doubt that his patriotic, arch-nationalist love of country was sincere. That notwithstanding, the highest virtue for Jackson was loyalty to himself. He judged that those who opposed him, such as John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay, were not just wrong but enemies of the people, a term employed by Trump against numerous political foes and the media (Smith, 2019). Jackson was a short-tempered man who held a grudge tenaciously, and whose moral code was centred upon an inflexible concept of honour which often led him into personal violence in his early life and propelled him sometimes into ill-advised dogmatism (Wyatt-Brown, 1997). Yet he had many friends and inspired a loyalty which was based on admiration of his sense of justice.

Trump’s character is far more dysfunctional, he is a serial liar, and his increasingly bombastic nationalism is essentially a projection of his own narcissism. He too demands loyalty, but unlike Jackson he rarely returns it. Allies pander to him for advancement or fear of falling out of favour. He is the archetypal bully. Jackson was an acerbic and aggressive character, but he could control his temper, unlike the thin-skinned Trump who is gratuitously abusive even to allies and colleagues. Jackson could be devious and less than truthful, but he was not a pathological liar. Innumerable accounts have catalogued Trump’s casual and unreflective telling of falsehoods. The Washington Post (2020) kept a record of these and revealed that in the first three years of his presidency he made 16,241 false or misleading statements, or 15 per day.

I have to keep reading this, but it's as good as an explanation as any about whether or not Trump or Jackson are similar. I also recognize that both men seemed to either engender great support or great dislike. As I stated Jackson even now has his detractors and even his supporters who cite that he paid off the national debt during his presidency among other accomplishments.

When you read this article what's your hottake?