1) Who’s up for a $5.1 Trillion Tax Increase?

Bernie Sanders, for one. He and most of the gang of Senate liberals want the Trump tax cut to expire on December 31 - which would be the largest tax increase on middle-class families and small businesses in modern times and maybe ever. 

The average cost per household will be an extra direct and indirect $3,200 tax bill starting next year, according to the fiscal analysts at the Heritage Foundation. Here's a summary of their analysis:
 

2) Bye Bye Barr

We have been banging the drum for President Trump to fire Fed Vice Chair Michael Barr, architect of the Fed's economically destructive Basel III capital requirements proposal. Barr not only deserved to be booted from his role as the Fed's top regulator, but Trump could also have sent a shot across the bow of Jerome Powell as potentially the next target. 

Good news. Barr has just announced he's giving up the post as vice chairman for supervision "effective February 28, 2025, or such earlier time as a successor is confirmed."
 

And here's the best part: the press release announcing the resignation also says: "The Board does not intend to take up any major rulemakings until a vice chair for supervision successor is confirmed." That's a good reason to keep the chair empty. 

We predicted on these pages and elsewhere several weeks ago that Trumpism is an international phenomenon, and that arrogant and self-serving leaders from across the globe would be tossed out of office in favor of pro-people populists. 

We just didn't think the dominoes would start falling so fast. 

Justin Trudeau, the hapless Prime Minister of Canada, is resigning because his public approval rating has tanked to  22% - below Nixon's at the height of Watergate.
 

Trudeau was most reviled during nine years in office for being an authoritarian bully.

Last year, the Canadian Federal Court ruled that his unprecedented shutdown of the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests against COVID restrictions was unlawful and unconstitutional.

Trudeau granted the police powers close to martial law to crack down on the protestors. He used this to freeze or seize the bank accounts of people donating to the Freedom Convoy.

His progressive governance also wrecked the economy. His legacy is: rents have soared, wages are stagnant, crime has climbed and the federal debt has doubled during his rule. Canada's per capita  income has fallen to below 70% of what it is in the U.S. The average Canadian is now poorer than the average resident of Alabama, America's fourth poorest state.

He was a climate change, anti-fossil fuel fanatic in a country rich with oil and gas. Is there any country in the world that should fret about slightly warming temperatures less than Canada? 

Pierre Poilievre, leader of the Conservative Party, should propose a massive Trumpian tax cut. 

Britain, you're next. 

For all our problems here at home, we still have the most productive and profitable companies in the world. Our friend and financial guru Scott Grannis notes that America now has a $170 trillion private sector net worth. His chart below shows that the market capitalization of U.S. equities is greater than the sum of the market caps of all other global equity markets combined. Think how high this can go with Trump's tax cuts and deregulation. 
 

Congratulations to John Fund, our senior fellow in election reform. His first-rate work monitoring and exposing election fraud and irregularities in states across the country, helped ensure a much cleaner election in 2024 than 2020. 
 

But he is first to acknowledge that his work to ensure fair and honest elections is not done. Congress still needs to plug holes.  

The Constitution gives primary responsibility for running elections to the states, but Congress can intervene if the facts are compelling enough.

A good start would be something like the SAVE Act, which passed the House last July with the support of five Democrats, only to die in the Senate.  Its core idea is to firmly establish that noncitizen voting in federal elections is illegal. (What a concept! It speaks volumes that the Left is STILL against this.)

But there are other ideas that should supplement the SAVE Act:

• It should be illegal for any state, county, or precinct to accept third-party election-related funds.
   
• It should be required that all absentee ballots must be received by Election Day.
   
• Fixing of deficient ballots (or mail-in envelopes) should be restricted and must be fully transparent.
   
• As a condition of receiving federal funds, every state must annually update its voter registration lists. Some states have gone over a decade without doing so.
   
• Federal guidelines should require that vote counts take place under public observation, with not only poll watchers from all parties, but also members of the public.

Election safeguards in other countries are generally stricter than in the U.S. - but citizens in these countries don't march around chanting "voter suppression."

As law professor Glenn Reynolds notes: "Congress has ample authority to do all this under the Constitution, and the best time to do it is before tensions begin to build before the next election season, and when states have time to make the necessary changes."
 

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