![]() The dissent, written by Alito and joined by Thomas and Scalia, is quite the read. ![]() When the Stolen Valor Act ended up before SCOTUS, it was the court’s three rightist justices-Alito, Thomas, and Scalia-who wanted to uphold the law (they were outvoted). That’s different how? It’s punishing “false speech.” Really? More shocking than the Stolen Valor Act of 2005, which made it a federal crime to lie about medals? The case against Doug Mackey is the most shocking attack on freedom of speech in this country in our lifetimes. So as a result, Douglass Mackey faces 10 years in prison. This was mockery, but in the wake of the 2016 election and the rising hysteria about Donald Trump, mocking the Democratic Party became a crime. Mackey’s insult did not alter a single vote in the election and no one has proved otherwise. In a meme, Mackey suggests it’s possible to vote for president by text message because only Hillary voters could be stupid enough to believe something so absurd. To start, here’s Tucker Carlson’s spin on the Mackey conviction:ĭouglass Mackey’s crime was mocking Hillary Clinton voters online. So before I started writing this column, I reached out to my go-to guy on matters of law: constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh, who’s always been most generous with his time whenever I’ve needed a consult (check out his blog it’s the best of its kind). That said, maybe I am becoming a tad predictable. Readers: “Oh crap, I bet Dave’s gonna be contrarian and scolding, like a broken fucking record.”ĭear readers, you shouldn’t cuss so much. It’s almost as if Congress is pleading for help: Stop us before we spend again.Dave: “Let’s talk about Doug Mackey, the guy convicted of posting memes!” Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem. This brought businesses and jobs back to these shores and helped fuel the Trump economic boom.Īn obvious question is, why are we running a $1.4 trillion deficit if we have an all-time high in tax payments?īecause under Biden, federal spending has exploded to more than $6 trillion. One of the most important and successful features of the Trump tax plan was reducing the tax rate on American businesses from 35% - the highest in the world - to 25% while closing special interest loopholes. ![]() This would be like firing a coach who wins every game. They want to monomaniacally repeal a tax cut that worked. ![]() None of this seems to matter to the White House or congressional Democrats. Kennedy cut tax rates in the 1960s and when Republican President Ronald Reagan cut tax rates in the 1980s. The same thing happened when Democratic President John F. We got higher growth and higher tax payments with lower tax rates. In other words, there was a giant Laffer Curve effect from Trump’s tax cut. And remember, that estimate in 2017 never anticipated the two-year hit to the economy from COVID-19 lockdowns - which depleted the Treasury. I compared these numbers with the estimates of what the Trump tax cuts were expected to “cost.” Instead of an expected $1 trillion revenue “loss,” the tax receipts over this period were almost precisely what they would have been if we didn’t cut taxes at all. So much for this being a tax giveaway for the rich. The evidence through the first three years of the tax cut finds that the share of taxes paid by the wealthiest 1% rose as well. In other words, revenues were up 40% in five years. This was up - ready for this? - almost $1.5 trillion since 2017, the year before the tax cuts became law. The latest Congressional Budget Office report released earlier this month calculated that the federal government collected $4.9 trillion of federal revenue last year. “We got higher growth and higher tax payments with lower tax rates.”
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