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California Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is behind on his property taxes again. Maybe this explains why the governor allowed his Napa Valley winery to stay open but ordered other wineries in the state to close down. ... Marin County Tax Collector's website currently lists Gov. Newsom's property taxes on his Kentfield estate as delinquent. Newsom did manage to pay his property taxes on his Sacramento mansion this year, but not without racking up a late-payment penalty of some $2,094.15. In March, Newsom became the first governor to issue a stay-at-home order in response to the Wuhan coronavirus. A month later,...

I wrote five years ago about the growing threat of a wealth tax. Some friends at the time told me I was being paranoid. The crowd in Washington, they assured me, would never be foolish enough to impose such a levy, especially when other nations such as Sweden have repealed wealth taxes because of their harmful impact. But, to paraphrase H.L. Mencken, nobody ever went broke underestimating the foolishness of politicians. I already wrote this year about how folks on the left are demonizing wealth in hopes of creating a receptive environment for this extra layer of tax. And some...

“Through Her Eyes” is a new weekly half-hour show hosted by humanitarian and women’s rights activist Zainab Salbi that aims to explore a hot button news issue through the lens of a female newsmaker. You can watch “Through Her Eyes” every Tuesday at 8 p.m. on the Roku channel, and see full episodes at yahoonews.com. Weeks after Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made headlines by calling for a top marginal income tax rate of 70 percent in an interview with “60 Minutes,” her fellow freshman congresswoman, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., suggested that the rich could pay even more. “There are a...

The One Percent on Wall Street must save the nation by taking political control from President Donald Trump, says former President Bill Clinton’s far-left labor secretary. “If the leaders of American business remain silent about what Trump is doing to American democracy, they will be complicit in its demise,” Robert Reich begged Wall Street CEOs in the April 26 San Francisco Chronicle. Reich, who was a progressive Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, justifies calls for a virtual occupation by Wall Street of the White House, saying: As the Republican Party moves toward Trump’s looniness — his xenophobia, isolationism,...

Yes, tax the Super Rich. Tax them now. Before the other 99% rise up, trigger a new American Revolution, a meltdown and the Great Depression 2. We know the Super Rich don’t care. Not about you. Nor the American public. They can’t see. Can’t hear. Stay trapped in their Forbes-400 bubble. An echo chamber that isolates them. They see the public as faceless workers, customers, taxpayers. See GOP power on the ascent. Reaganomics is back. Unions on the run. Clueless masses are easily manipulated. Even Obama is secretly working with the GOP, will never touch his Super Rich donors. Yes,...

Title: Video Shows Hillary At New York Fundraiser Saying She’s Happy To 'Get A Little Breather From Iowa'. Video has emerged showing Hillary Clinton telling attendees at a fundraising event in New York on Thursday that she appreciated being able to take "a little breather from Iowa."

Despite being dogged with questions about her ties to Wall Street, Hillary Clinton will take a detour from the campaign trail in Iowa to do a finance industry fundraiser on Wednesday. Clinton will appear in Philadelphia at a "gala" fundraiser hosted by executives at Franklin Square Capital Partners, a $17 billion investment fund. Rocker Bon Jovi will reportedly play an acoustic set for "friends" who pledge $1,000 and hosts who bundle up to $27,000. (Giancarlo Stefanoni, a Clinton campaign staffer, confirmed that as of Tuesday afternoon, the event is still on.) The Philadelphia Inquirer notes that "Franklin Square employs Ivy...

Airport commission approves a private LAX lounge for the rich and famous A proposal to build a posh private lounge at Los Angeles International Airport for Southern California’s glitterati was approved Thursday in a move that officials hope will reduce disturbances by paparazzi, looky-loos and autograph-seekers in the busy central terminal area. The Board of Airport Commissioners voted unanimously in favor of the exclusive facility, which would cater to wealthy Hollywood celebrities, sports figures, diplomats and anyone else seeking privacy while waiting for their flights or after arriving at LAX. Airport officials say the lounge will be located in a...

<p>Obama is visiting the 0.001%, the 0.0001%, and the 1% respectively, as he begins his evening at a private gathering in Manhattan with "25 to 30 people, each of whom paid $10,000" to giggle and make small talk with a man whose brain is processing the implications of a possible ground war with Pakistan.</p>

Tax reform isn’t exactly something we associate with California. With the highest income-tax rate in the nation (and the third-worst overall state business tax climate, per the Tax Foundation’s most recent rankings), the Golden State offers plenty of practical lessons in how not to run an economy. However, California State Controller Betty Yee recently suggested tax reform that shows a clear understanding of the peril facing California’s economy – and offers ideas that could restore energy and momentum to a sluggish state business climate. Yee, a Democrat, wants to broaden the state tax base. California bureaucrats have grown far too...

This month Congress will consider whether to renew the charter of the Export-Import Bank (Ex-Im Bank). Ex-Im Bank is a New Deal-era federal program that uses taxpayer funds to subsidize the exports of American businesses. Foreign businesses, including state-owned corporations, also benefit from Ex-Im Bank. One country that has benefited from $1.5 billion of Ex-Im Bank loans is Russia. Venezuela, Pakistan, and China have also benefited from Ex-Im Bank loans. With Ex-Im Bank’s track record of supporting countries that supposedly represent a threat to the US, one might expect neoconservatives, hawkish liberals, and other supporters of foreign intervention to be...

Yep, the United States is so racist that Kanye West was able to become a multi-multi millionaire here. He probably does need to travel more to find out how little racism affects success in the United States compared to most of the rest of the world. This reminds me of when Johnny Depp said he and his family were moving to Paris, France because the United States was too violent. Then the reality of Muslim riots in Paris with many cars being burned each night set in. Remember that? Yeah, after a few years Depp moved back to the States....

Mayor Bill de Blasio is the first New York City mayor to release his tax returns in 12 years, according to the WSJ. de Blasio earned $165,000 as public advocate last year and brought in an additional $52,000 in rent on a second home he owns in Park Slope, according to his 2013 tax returns. Mr. de Blasio’s effective tax rate was 8.3%. As WSJ reports, Mr. de Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, a billionaire who served as mayor from 2002 through 2013, released highly redacted copies of his return that gave scant information about his net worth. In 2001, during...

According to the New York Post, New York City’s mad cap Sandinista Mayor Bill de Blasio is about to find out a truth that conservatives have known all along, that bashing the rich can only go so far. It seems when he is not throwing little children out of charter schools or banning carriage rides in Central Park, de Blasio is on full class warfare mode and is going after New York’s one percent with a vengeance. It seems that the wealthy elite are starting to have had enough and are getting ready to decamp en masse, to Florida it...

In the 21st century, during the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the U.S. economy has not shown the ability to grow that it did in the last two decades of the 20th century, according to data released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In fact, real average annual economic growth has been nearly cut in half so far this century compared to the last two decades of the last century; and specifically during President Obama’s time in office it has dropped to an average of just over 1 percent. …

Al Gore Nets Another Fortune on Apple Stock By Javier E. David Former U.S. vice president Al Gore recently netted a huge payday by selling his cable station. Now, it appears he's making another big profit buying Apple's (AAPL) stock on the cheap. Al Gore According to a filing with the Securities and Exchanges Commission, Gore -- a director on Apple's board -- exercised an option to purchase nearly 60,000 shares of the tech giant at the bargain basement price of $7.48, costing him a total of about $445,000. But with Apple's current market price at about $500 a share,...

I have told these three tales in order to provide a context for a couple of quotes. The context that I am providing is that there is an almost inconceivable distance from the top of the heap to the bottom of the heap. The top of the heap is the 1%, not of the US, but of the global population. That 1% is made up of the people like you and me and the folks who read this blog who live in the western world, the top few percent of the global population who enjoy the full benefits of development,...

The scariest thing about lies is that if they are repeated often enough, people eventually assume that they are true, especially when they go largely unchallenged by the victims of those very lies. The president of the United States has lied so often about “the 1 percent” that even House speaker John Boehner, and some wobbly Republicans, have swallowed Obama’s toxic fiction that “fairness” requires the rich to surrender more of their money to Washington — albeit through narrower deductions rather than higher tax rates. Washington’s problem is not a paucity of revenues but a nicotine-like addiction to blowing through...

The most striking proof that the Arab anti-Israel cause is a common meeting ground for both Nazis and Communists --and that the Arabs welcomed supporters of both ilks-- lies in the friendship of Carlos, the notorious master terrorist who served the PLO, with Fran*ois Genoud, an old Nazi, one of the leading Nazis in pre-War Switzerland, later a financier who provided funds for Habash's faction of the PLO. "Carlos" (his nom de guerre) was what is called a "red diaper baby." His fabulously rich father, a Venezuelan lawyer and owner of estates, gave "Carlos" the name Ilich, Lenin's patronymic, as...

According to the report, those in the top one percent had an average pre-tax income of $1,219,700 in 2009. Of this, they paid $353,000 federal taxes. Despite having earned 13.4 percent of the nation’s income, these individuals paid 38.7 percent of federal income taxes that year. To put it more starkly, this group makes less than 16 times as much as the average household but pays more than 40 times as much in federal income taxes.