Posts tagged as “Column of the Day”

She’s the candidate with a plan and a tax for everything: That’s Elizabeth Warren’s brand. Despite a recent swoon, she's still a top tier candidate. So, her ideas show where the American left wants to go. Consider just five of her myriad proposed new taxes, then read the full WSJ column to see the massive scale of socialism she intends to fund with these taxes.

• New Social Security tax: For those earning over $250,000, a new 14.8% tax on wages over $250,000 and on net investment income.
• Higher capital gains taxes: Tax both realized and unrealized investment gains of the wealthiest 1% at the ordinary income tax rate of about 40%.
• Wealth tax: Tax net worth over $50 million at 2% a year; at 6% above $1 billion.
• Global corporate tax: Raise the top business rate to 35%. Overseas, if foreign tax rates are lower, applied to bring combined tax to 35%.
• Corporate surtax: Tax profit over $100 million at a new 7% rate, atop the regular corporate rate.

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Read in The Wall Street Journal

During this time of the year our neighborhood is aglow for the holidays. My next-door neighbors were famous for illuminating every one of their shrubs and trees for Christmas with several alighted deer figures adorning their front lawn. This year their lights are out, and all is dark. Like many of my other neighbors, they made the hard decision to pull up stakes and take their family to a less expensive state to live and do business. They left behind family, schools, friends and a thriving business.

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Read on Connecticut Insights

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Read on The Red Line

With elected officials, the best taxes are those that most people can't see or understand and that can't easily be evaded even by the people who can see and understand them. That's one reason Governor Lamont last week settled on a proposal to impose highway tolls exclusively on trucks. The other reason is that once the toll gantries are in place, they can toll all traffic if trucks-only tolling is found unconstitutional or against federal law.

● Read in Journal Inquirer

● Read in The Red Line

Over the last year Connecticut state government’s unfunded pension and retiree insurance obligations have been authoritatively estimated at between $60 billion and $80 billion. But last week a study for the Connecticut Council of Municipalities, written by Gordon Hamlin of Pro Bono Public Pensions, put the total at $112 billion.

Chris Powell, Journal Inquirer.

Medicaid expansion was a key component of ObamaCare. In 2014 when the expansion started, the feds stopped doing audits of states’ Medicaid eligibility determinations. The Obama administration’s goal was to build public support for the new law by signing up as many people as possible. Now, after a four-year hiatus, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have begun auditing program eligibility again. According to a report released Monday, the audits found “high levels of observed eligibility errors.”

Brian Blase and Aaron Yelowitz

Mr. Blase was a special assistant to President Trump at the National Economic Council, 2017-19. He is president of Blase Policy Strategies. Mr. Yelowitz is an economics professor at the University of Kentucky and a senior fellow at the Cato Institute.

Can Ned Lamont really be as bad a governor as was suggested by last week's Sacred Heart University poll, with only 24 percent of respondents approving his performance, 47 percent disapproving, and another 29 percent having no opinion?

● Read in the Journal Inquirer
● Read in The Red Line