This is a good, succinct, description of the current state of the presidential race.

With days until early voting begins, and two months before a victor is declared, this remains Donald Trump‘s race to lose.

 

Simply put, Americans prefer strength over weakness and commonsense fairness over wokeness.

 

It’s also a hard fact that Trump can cite more accomplishments from a successful first term than Harris, who despite her regret and reset, represents four more years of the present chaos and crisis.

This should happen.

Now, with Trump proposing the relocation of up to 100,000 federal jobs from Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia under his Agenda 47 plan, concerns about being abruptly moved are again troubling federal workers. The Republican’s proposals stir anxiety in the midst of an unusually competitive U.S. Senate race in heavily Democratic Maryland that could determine control of the Senate, with even the Republican candidate calling the plans “crazy.” The proposals also could hinder Trump’s chances to win Virginia, a state he lost in 2016 and 2020, where a U.S. Senate seat widely seen as safely Democratic is also on the ballot.

“It’s causing a lot of anxiety, a lot of discomfort within the workforce, as you are faced with these strong, negative, anti-federal worker stances and this uncertainty of what might happen to your job, your home and your livelihood,” said Dodson, who is acting vice president of American Federation of Government Employees local 3403, which represents the USDA’s Economic Research Service.

 

[…]

 

Businesses that provide services to the thousands of federal workers fear the ripple-effect threat of the proposed changes. At Census Auto Repair & Sales, for example, across the street from the U.S. Census Bureau’s headquarters in Suitland, Maryland, service manager Tay Gibson says his shop would feel the impact directly.

 

“I would hate to see the federal workers leave,” Gibson said. “That would be business leaving as well, and that would affect small businesses like myself.”

Every community sends vast sums of cash to Washington D.C. to support the federal government. It would be good for America to see those dollars spread around the country instead of being hoarded around D.C.

I read somewhere on X a while back that the inability of people to think through the secondary and tertiary impact of decisions is destroying us. I’ve thought a lot about that since.

Let’s take taxing unrealized gains. Setting aside, for a moment, the fact that the government is already too big and a tax like this is utterly unfair, let’s think through a couple of the possible – even likely – secondary and tertiary impacts if we did it.

Let’s say that I own a stock that goes up 20% in a year. Great! When the tax man comes for the tax on the “gains,” I don’t have the cash. What do I do? I sell some of the stock to raise the cash to pay the tax. The result is that the stock in which I’m invested declines (more shares for sale = lower stock price). The aggregate impact is to depress the equity market.

Furthermore, I am no longer a long-term investor. My horizon can no longer be more than a year, because then I need to get my cash out to pay taxes. So businesses make decisions based on that time horizon. The end of the year becomes a dynamic time of layoffs and juicing numbers to pay the first wave of investors and attract next year’s investors. Long term projects and employment become less attractive to investors.

If I’m a sole proprietor and I experience an increase in the theoretical valuation of my company (“theoretical” because valuation estimates are always a guess until there is a willing buyer and a willing seller), then I might need to sell off part of the company, lay off employees, and restrict investing in more growth because I need to pay the tax man. Again, the negative impact of these decisions is felt by employees and consumers.

All of this is assuming that such a tax does not bleed down to the middle-class, which it will. Taxes always expand once they are allowed to take root. In fact, we already have a tax on unrealized gains – the property tax. As some local bureaucrat tells you what he/she thinks your house is worth, you have to pay the tax on that valuation. The result is one of the most regressive taxes we have. Little old ladies on Social Security and disabled war veterans are losing their homes because those houses because they can’t afford the property taxes. They can’t afford those property taxes because the taxes are indexed to something that isn’t actually money that the owner can spend. This is why consumption taxes or income taxes work.

The impact of taxing unrealized gains is not going to be “soak the rich.” The rich will be fine. They have the ability to move money and make rational decisions to increase and preserve their wealth. The impact will be on the middle and lower classes who can’t afford the largesse of politicians.

Wow. I can’t say it better than the families themselves.

Gold Star families did not invite President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to Arlington National Cemetery by last week to commemorate the third anniversary of the attack at Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, a White House official and a Harris aide told NBC News, rebutting separate claims made Sunday by GOP Sen. Tom Cotton and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.

 

The two were speaking about former President Donald Trump’s visit last week to Arlington National Cemetery, where he has drawn criticism for posing for photos with Gold Star families in a section of the cemetery where photos are traditionally prohibited.

 

Last week, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Trump’s visit was a “personal invitation by families.”

 

[…]

 

In one video, Darin Hoover addresses Harris directly, saying Trump treated the family with the “utmost respect” and asking where she and Biden were on “Aug. 26, 2024.” He said they were “nowhere near Arlington Cemetery. You couldn’t be bothered to be with us or say our kids’ names.”

 

In a statement accompanying the Trump campaign videos Sunday, members of the Gold Star families said they were “appalled” by Harris’ attempts to “politicize” Trump’s visit to the cemetery.

 

“President Trump was invited by us, the Gold Star families, to attend the solemn ceremonies commemorating the three-year anniversary of our children’s deaths,” the statement said. “He was there to honor their sacrifice, yet Vice President Harris has disgracefully twisted this sacred moment into a political ploy.”

Including an American. Meanwhile, Biden is on the beach, Harris is campaigning about “joy,” and Walz is ignoring questions about it. Our nation is being run my truly terrible people who don’t give a single crap about anyone unless it is to their political advantage.

JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel said early Sunday that it had recovered the bodies of six hostages captured during Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack that ignited the Gaza war, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents had led a high-profile campaign for the captives’ release.

 

The military said the six were killed shortly before Israeli forces were to rescue them and that the bodies were found in a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah. The news sparked calls for mass protests by families of the hostages who said they could have been returned alive in a cease-fire deal.

 

Goldberg-Polin and four other hostages were taken from a music festival where Palestinian militants killed scores of people. The sixth was captured from a nearby farming community.