The South Gibson Star-Times serves the towns of Haubstadt, Owensville and Fort Branch.
Issue link: https://www.ifoldsflip.com/i/1476385
D-4 Tuesday, August 16, 2022 South Gibson Star-Times Shannon, a leader we need in D.C. A runoff election will take place in Oklahoma Aug. 23, which will de- cide who the Republican candidate will be to run for the Senate seat held by James Inhofe since 1994. Thirteen candidates ran in the primary. But no one got 50 % of the vote, hence the Aug. 23 runoff. Leading the field is Rep. Mark- wayne Mullin, who received the endorsement of former President Donald Trump and received 43.6 % of the vote in the primary. Running second was T.W. Shannon, who got 17.5% of the vote, and who will face off with Mullin Aug. 23. A poll one week ago in Oklahoma City by News 9/News on 6 showed Mullin at 57.1% and Shannon at 32.4% . Shannon still lags signifi- cantly, but since the primary, he has picked up support disproportionate- ly greater than Mullin. It is clearly a challenge for Shan- non to close this gap by Aug. 23, but it's not impossible. Which is the point of this column. I happen to know T.W. Shannon. He is a friend and serves on the board of my organization, CURE. It is because I know Shannon and his family so well that I know his extraordinary leadership and personal characteristics that make his presence in the U.S. Senate so important in these particularly chal- lenging times. At the age of 34, Shannon became the youngest speaker of the Okla- homa House of Representatives in history and the first Chickasaw and A frican American to hold this post. And, in his becoming speaker, T.W. became the first A frican American Republican to head a legislative body since Reconstruction. Shannon is also a businessman and banker and is CEO of the Chickasaw Community Bank. He assumed leadership of Black Voices for Trump after the passing of Her- man Cain. But most important, he is a man of principles, and the principles that drive his vision are the principles that drove those that founded our nation. At a time when we have so badly lost our way, when our na- tion's future is uncertain because the pillars of limited government and family have been so badly com- promised and lost, we need leaders who see our problems clearly and will not waiver in leadership to get our nation back on track. Shannon is running on what he calls the 3 C's: Christianity, Capi- talism and the Constitution. Some bristle when a candidate is upfront about his Christianity. But one fa- mous Republican who did not was President Ronald Reagan, who quot- ed William Penn saying, "If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants." Which brings in capitalism and the Constitution. The Constitution was written to ensure that the pow- er of government was defined and limited so that in a nation under God, men could be free. Capital- ism is about private property and unleashing individual initiative and creativity. These three pillars built the greatest nation in history. But we have lost our way. Government at local, state and federal levels is now taking almost 50 % of the American economy. Congressional Democrats are about to pass into law the decep- tively titled Inflation Reduction Act. This amounts to hundreds of billions in new spending and taxes driven by those in Washington deciding who winners and losers in the U.S. econ- omy will be. Contrary to the claims of Democrats, University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan, who was chief economist of Trump's council of economic advisers, says the law will cut employment by 900,000, GDP by 1.2 % , average household in- come by $1,200, and cause increases in inflation and the deficit. Black conservatives like T.W. Shannon are so deeply committed to our founding principles because they know how badly their commu- nities have suffered as a result of de- parture from these principles. We have today two Black Republicans in the House and one in the Senate. We need the passion and commit- ment of more Black conservatives like T.W. Shannon in national lead- ership. Race for the Cure By Star Parker Heritage Viewpoint By Rachel Greszler Fact-checking Team Biden on who those 87,000 new IRS agents would audit Give Me a Break By John Stossel Everyone should be deeply trou- bled by the recent report that the Army is on pace to miss its recruit- ing goal by dozens of thousands of troops and by the report that fol- lowed a few days later, alleging that the Border Patrol is running short of agents in Arizona and Texas. The border is so porous these days that even mayors of sanctuary cities are starting to complain about illegal immigration. So, what is Congress doing about these crises? They are going to spend tens of billions of dollars to increase the number of ... IRS em- ployees. The plan calls for spend- ing some $ 80 billion to hire some 80,000 new agents and investiga- tors. This will give the IRS the re- sources to double the number of people who get audited every year. Is this about the most warped set of national priorities you've ever heard? If this $ 80 billion were re- routed to the Army and the Border Patrol, we could easily stop much of the tide of illegal immigration and staff up our military so we have the soldiers we need to defend our country. According to official budget numbers, the overall cost of bor- der security at the Department of Homeland Security is roughly $55 billion a year. That is less than just the increase in IRS funding to ha- rass the public. Or consider this: The epidemic of opi- oid and other drug overdoses is killing close to 100,000 a year. We spend about $11 billion a year to prevent these tragic deaths. But the ironi- cally named Inflation Reduction Act calls for 30 times more than this, or more than $ 300 billion, to try to combat climate change, while the number of those who die from CO2 emissions each year is close to zero. All of this is to say that the Biden-Manchin-Schumer spending bill that has now passed the Senate is arguably the greatest misalloca- tion of our federal dollars in Amer- ican history. It spends money in areas where we should be cutting expenses and ignores national se- curity priorities. The reason we have inflation is that the Biden administration has increased spending by $ 3 trillion in 18 months. Almost everyone knows this. The central idiocy of the Biden Inflation Reduction Act is that in- stead of cutting a half a trillion from the budget, this bill does just the opposite: It increases spending by that amount. Incredibly, a bill that supposedly re- duces the budget deficit does not cut one penny of actual spending from the federal budget. Even with federal audit re- ports finding more than $250 billion of "erroneous" pay- ments in Medicaid, food stamps and un- employment insur- ance, Congress does nothing to reduce the fraud and theft. As the latest report on shortages of recruits in our armed forces tells us, we have national priorities that need to be met. This bill bloats the budget, makes inflation worse and will add to our $ 30 trillion national debt without dealing with any of the nation's priorities. It's reminiscent of the immortal line by Jeff Daniels to Jim Carrey in "Dumb and Dumber": "Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any- thing dumber ..." Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at Freedom Works. He is also author of the new book: "Govzilla: How The Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy." Eye on the Economy By Stephen Moore Biden puts IRS funding ahead of security The Biden administration has promised not to raise taxes on any- one making under $400,000 a year. And despite estimates from official congressional scorekeepers that the Schumer-Manchin-Biden tax in- crease indeed would raise taxes on those Americans, the administra- tion has doubled down on the claim as a final vote nears on Democrats' bill(Ed. note: the bill was passed by the House and awaits Biden's signa- ture). Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles P. Rettig that includes this statement: Specifically, I direct that any additional resources—including any new personnel or auditors that are hired—shall not be used to in- crease the share of small business or households below the $400,000 threshold that are audited relative to historical levels. Yellen's directive follows Rettig's Aug. 4 letter to U.S. senators declar- ing the same objective: These resources are absolutely not about increasing audit scru- tiny on small businesses or mid- dle-income Americans. As we've been planning, our investment of these enforcement resources is de- signed around the Department of the Treasury's directive that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for households making under $400,000. But considering the sheer magni- tude of 87,000 new IRS agents and an estimated $204 billion in new revenues from enforcement, is it possible for all those new audits and revenues to involve only taxpayers making more than $400,000? Returning to 2010 audit rates for all individuals making more than $400,000 would generate only 28 % , or $ 9.9 billion, out of the estimated $ 35.3 billion in new IRS enforce- ment revenues in 2031. Even increasing recent audit rates 30 -fold for taxpayers making over $400,000, including 100 % audit rates on taxpayers with incomes over $10 million, still would fall more than 20 % short of raising the estimated $ 35.3 billion in new reve- nues in 2031. Note: This assumes a 98% increase in the number of tax filers making over $400,000 between 2019 and 2031, based on annual growth rates between 2014 and 2019. Au- dit rates from 2010 to 2019 by income group and additional tax per individual tax return audited for 2021 is available here from the nonpartisan Government Account- ability Office. Estimated revenues from a 30 - fold increase in audits almost cer- tainly is overstated, since 30 % to 40 % percent of audits in these in- come groups result in no additional tax being owed, and audits already target returns with higher likeli- hoods of underpayments. Auditing every single taxpayer with annual income over $1 mil- lion would require only 25,000 new IRS enforcement agents, but Democrats' bill calls for 87,000 new agents. What will all those extra agents be doing? Note: Estimates are based on the Treasury Department's estimated new full-time-equivalent agents, and the Government Accountability Office's estimated hours per audit by individual income level. Calculations conservatively as- sume that only 57.3% of the Trea- sury Department's estimated 86,852 new IRS agents (49,754 in total) would be assigned to enforce- ment, based on $45.6 billion of the bill's $79.6 billion increase for the Internal Revenue Service dedicated to enforcement. Calculations also assume that 8.9 % of IRS enforcement agents would be assigned to corporate au- dits, based on the Congressional Budget Office's estimate that cor- porations account for 8.9 % of the tax gap. Enforcement agents are assumed to spend 75% of their paid time auditing tax returns. Despite the Biden administra- tion's claims, it's almost certain that households making less than $400,000 a year would face in- creased audits under Democrats' bill. And that seems to be the true intent of the IRS. According to a 2021 report from the Government Ac- countability Office, "From fiscal years 2010 to 2021, the majority of the additional taxes IRS recommended from audits came from taxpayers with incomes below $200,000." That recommendation is based on audits of lower-income tax re- turns producing more bang for the buck, as the report noted: Audits of the lowest-income tax- payers, particularly those claiming the EITC [earned income tax cred- it], resulted in higher amounts of recommended additional tax per audit hour compared to all income groups except for the highest-in- come taxpayers. The Treasury Department's re- port on the proposed new funding includes a footnote highlighting the already-high prevalence of IRS au- dits among low-income households: "Work by former IRS economist Kim Bloomquist points out that the five counties with the highest audit rates are predominantly A fri- can-American, rural counties in the South," the report says. High rates of return from audit- ing low-income households along- side the average large corporate tax filing totaling nearly 6,000 pages says that our current tax code is far too complex. Instead of increasing taxpayer audits, policymakers should simpli- fy taxes across the board. That way, it would be easier for everyone to pay the correct amount to the gov- ernment. Politics by profession Why are you a conservative? Or a libertarian, Republican, Democrat, socialist? Ok, if you read my column, you're probably not a socialist ... But how do people come to such different conclusions? We like to think that our politics are formed by rational analysis. We analyze what conservatives and liberals write, weigh their ideas, and form conclu- sions based on facts and evidence. But it turns out something else is probably going on. I can predict your political party pretty accurate- ly if I just know what you do for a living. Here's why I say that: When you give money to a po- litical candidate, the government requires that candidate's campaign to ask you what your profession is. That information is turned over to the Federal Election Commission. Verdant Labs took that data and made an infographic that shows how people's professions predict their politics. Eighty-nine percent of people who work in the fossil fuel industry donate to Republicans. Teachers mostly (79 %) give to Democrats. Sixty-four percent of flight atten- dants give to Democrats, but pilots (62 %) prefer Republicans. Why? In my new video, Rob Henderson, who studies the psychology of poli- tics at the University of Cambridge, tries to explain. For pilots, he says, "Their job is whether they take off and land and everyone's alive. Whereas for flight attendants, their job is more reliant on, 'How do people feel about you? '" Those differences lead them to dif- ferent political parties. The job differences go on and on. Bartenders mostly give to Demo- crats (89 %), while truck drivers favor Republicans (69 %). Business owners lean right (62 %). Artists lean left (86 %). Psychologists overwhelmingly give to Democrats (91%), while peo- ple in the military favor Republicans (60 %). Henderson served eight years in the Air Force. There, he says, most of his colleagues were conservative, and he was sometimes teased for holding a liberal position. "It was all good-natured," he says. "Someone can hold different views but still be a good person." But now in academia, he says the politics is not good-natured. He sees lots of hatred. He thinks it's because increasingly, the left and the right don't mix. Recent surveys do show that now, 80 % of us have few or no friends across the aisle. It is hard to be friendly with peo- ple you never meet. At colleges to- day, there are few conservatives. One study of professors found 12 Democrats per Republican. In so- ciology departments, it was 44 to 1. In communications, 108 to zero! "People have no Republican col- leagues, no conservative or liber- tarians that they interact with day to day," Henderson says. Spending no time with people who think differently does make it easier to hate them. To understand the other side, shouldn't we talk to each other more? That's what I try to do with my videos - - bring both sides togeth- er to argue. Then they learn a little about the other side. Many still hate each other. Eighty-nine percent of bartend- ers donate to Democrats, but beer wholesalers (78 %) prefer Republi- cans. Taxi drivers (85%) give to Demo- crats, truck drivers (69 %) to Repub- licans. Pediatricians (79 %) favor Dem- ocrats, but urologists (76 %) prefer Republicans. Why? I have no clue. Architects (74%) prefer Demo- crats, while home builders (77%) prefer Republicans. That one I get; builders hate dealing with Demo- crats' stupid regulations. Carpenters (64%) give to Demo- crats; plumbers (60 %) to Republi- cans. Episcopal priests (91%) like Democrats; Catholic priests (73%) like Republicans. Can you explain it? If so, please explain it to the rest of us. John Stossel is creator of Stossel TV and author of "Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media."