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WASHINGTON - What a year this has been! While it’s been a bumpy ride for the Trump administration, lurching from one controversy to another, it ended with a big tax cut victory in Congress that could help Republicans survive the challenging 2018 midterm elections. The U.S. economy is finally soaring as a result of the tax rate reductions, breaking out of the anemic 2 percent growth rates of the Obama years that prevented America from achieving its fullest economic potential. Throughout his two terms, President Obama was best known for cherry-picking economic statistics in an attempt to prove the...

We've been having some fun at the expense of Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party's literally apocalyptic hyperbole and rhetorical overreach about the new tax reform law, showcasing examples of businesses -- large and small -- that are celebrating passage of the landmark legislation by paying out employee bonuses, raising wages, expanding, and making charitable investments.  For what it's worth, here are a few additional examples that have cropped up since our last pre-Christmas post on the matter.  As we await more announcements from corporations and small businesses across the country in the new year, I'd like to go back...

The unsung hero of the GOP Christmas gift of a tax cut is Arthur Laffer -- the Reagan economist who helped devise the Gipper's tax reductions. Those tax cuts rebuilt the U.S. economy in the 1980s and pulled us out of the mini-depression of high inflation and unemployment in the late 1970s. Some 30 years later, Laffer has struck again. House Speaker Paul Ryan tells me that there "were very few economists who had a bigger impact on this tax bill than Laffer. Believe, me our (Republican) members listen to him." Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus,...

As Michigan Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell appeared as a guest on Tuesday's New Day, CNN host Alisyn Camerota at one point seemed to fret that businesses are planning to pay out bonuses after the tax cuts were passed as a way of making their employees grateful to Republicans for their pay increase and coax them to vote for the GOP -- and that the ploy might succeed. At 7:24 a.m., as Rep. Dingell complained that she wants President Donald Trump to do more on economic issues like infrastructure and health care, Camerota began setting up her next question: ALISYN CAMEROTA:...

"""TRUMP EFFECT: RECORD HOLIDAY SALES NEAR $600 BILLION; Expert: Spending Pace Not Seen Since Great Recession"""" Retailers are reporting record holiday sales this season of $598 billion as of Christmas Eve, fueled by confidence in the pro-business, pro-jobs economic polices of President Donald Trump of cutting Obama-era regulations and enacting major tax cuts and reforms. Yet media reports by CBS, AP and the Wall Street Journal all failed to mention President Trump in their reports on the record sales. The Drudge Report however is leading Monday night with a photo and headline crediting Trump with the boom in sales over...

NEW YORK -- Retailers are seeing plenty of green this holiday season. And it's not over yet. Records are falling as sales add up. "This is literally the best season since before the recession," business owner Craig Johnson said. Johnson's company, Customer Growth Partners, analyzes all things retail. He credits low unemployment and a booming stock market for this humbug-free holiday season. "The single biggest drive of retail sales is growth in real disposable income," he said. "And when real income goes up, people have money in their pocket and they're able to spend it."

Boy, are they annoyed: Democrats are pooh-poohing the avalanche of announcements by major corporations that they’re giving their workers bonuses and raising wages after the passage of tax reform.It’s classic left-wing disdain for anything big business does, even when it’s rewarding its workers — and even when those reaping the benefits include the Democratic cheerleading squad at MSNBC.Following President Trump’s signing of the act, which lowers the corporate-tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, leading companies began — in his words — “showering their workers with bonuses.”AT&T announced $1,000 bonuses for its 200,00 workers. So did Sinclair, the nation’s...

As further evidence that they have fully lost the plot, NY Times reporters make a clear case that Trump has no shot at being the next President of the European Union: U.S. Tax Bill May Inspire Cuts Globally, While Fueling Trade Tensions To President Trump and congressional Republicans, the overhaul of the tax code that became law on Friday will make the United States a better place to do business. To the rest of the world, it has the potential to challenge the global economic order, creating an uneven playing field and setting off a race among countries to cut...

On Sunday morning, Thomas Beaumont and Nicholas Riccardi at the Associated Press did all they could to convince readers that the tax bill just passed by Congress and signed by Donald Trump isn't seen as a big deal and has no genuine enthusiastic support (even though they found some) among those who voted for him in 2016. They predictably claimed that the law bestows "its richest benefits on companies and wealthy individuals,' and employed a classic statistical deception to support that false contention.Here are the opening paragraphs of the pair's downbeat report, with the final excerpted paragraph presenting the misleading statistics (bolds...

Important (for good or evil) as Brexit may be to the future of Britain, it is not without its importance for the European Union. Indeed, it was always essential for the Union that Britain’s departure should be an economic disaster for Britain: for if it were not, why have a union at all? It was therefore entirely predictable that the Union should drive a hard bargain with Britain, even a bargain economically harmful to itself, provided only that it was worse for Britain: for the self-preservation of the European political class is at stake. In the European Union politics always...

The Republican tax plan may have passed Congress and been signed by President Trump, but that’s not stopping the New York Times from slamming it as a fairy tale that will doom the GOP in the 2018 congressional elections. In the process the paper made some bold anti-Republican predictions that can be checked next year, as the consequences of the tax bill wind through the economy and the political landscape The Republican tax plan may have passed Congress and been signed by President Trump, but that’s not stopping the New York Times from slamming it as a fairy tale that...

When he took office, barack obama haughtily demanded the he be handed the economy: President Obama this summer has repeatedly blamed George W. Bush for the nation’s economic woes, a year after he took ownership of the economy and criticized those who “carp and gripe.” The White House’s effort to tie congressional Republicans to Obama’s predecessor comes less than three months before the midterm elections. But the president’s campaign speeches this summer are in contrast to a speech he delivered in Michigan last year when his approval ratings were 17 points higher. During a July 14, 2009, address in Warren,...

Full title: 'Armageddon:' Major Companies Announce Hiring, Bonuses, Raises, and Charitable Donations Thanks to Tax Reform Nancy Pelosi is running out of hysterical pejoratives to hurl at the now-passed GOP tax reform bill, which will cut taxes for 80 percent of Americans. She's already called it "armageddon," and the "end of the world," adding " Frankenstein " to the list just today. Oh, and poor little "Tiny Tim!" These are patent absurdities. The bill is a mostly-good mixed bag that will make US companies more competitive and allow the overwhelming majority of taxpayers to keep more of the money they...

WASHINGTON - The U.S. economy grew at its fastest pace in more than two years in the third quarter, powered by robust business spending, and is poised for what could be a modest lift next year from sweeping tax cuts passed by Congress this week. Gross domestic product expanded at a 3.2 percent annualized rate last quarter, the Commerce Department said in its third GDP estimate for the period. Although that was slightly down from the 3.3 percent reported last month, it was the quickest pace since the first quarter of 2015 and was a pickup from the second quarter’s...

WASHINGTON -- "It's the economy, stupid," as we used to say back in the good old days -- the good old days being the 1990s, when the president of the United States could have molested women in the White House during business hours with impunity. In fact, if memory serves, that president, William J. Clinton, saw his popularity soar after accusations of his molestations were made public, or at least after some of them were made public. If all of them were made public, according to wisdom of the time, he might have been elected President for Life. Those...

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The primary goal of the mainstream media and their puppets in Washington known as the Democratic Party (or is it the other way around? It’s so hard to tell these days…) is now to study the 2017 Tax Reform plan and identify who directly benefits most, and who directly benefits least, so that the program can be portrayed as a contest between winners and losers. This is logical in their zeitgeist – a world that operates under the “zero sum game” theory of the anti-capitalist mentality. They believe the economy is a pie, so if someone gets a bigger slice,...

During ABC’s World News Tonight on Wednesday, the network demonstrated just how well they could stick to the Democratic Party’s talking points. “The biggest tax cuts will go to the wealthy, corporate America,” boldly declared sensationalist anchor David Muir as he was coming on the air. While he was quick to continue the liberal echo chamber, he cast doubt on the Republicans’ promise of economic growth. “But will that happen? Not everyone is convinced,” he chided before handing the report over to Senior White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega.Vega began her segment on the tax reform victory by sneering at Republicans...

The media's fact checkers just got fact checked by reality. The New York Federal Reserve on Friday raised its estimate of U.S. gross domestic product growth for the fourth quarter of 2017 closer to 4 percent, based on revisions of prior data that suggested stronger economic activities. The regional central bank’s “Nowcast” model calculated the economy was expanding at an annualized pace of 3.98 percent in the fourth quarter, quicker than the 3.92 percent rate calculated a week ago.

Now that we are a full year into President Trump’s increasingly consequential first term, it is long past time to give him complete ownership of the American economy. If it seems odd to do so after only a year, that is due to former President Barack Obama, who never stopped blaming his predecessor for a recovery that never arrived because Obama could not stop sabotaging it with his anti-growth policies and anti-free market rhetoric. Even lying conspiracy theorists in the media and Democrat Party backed by a special prosecutor, even the gale force wind of hate and lies, have not...