Important Takeaways:
- President Trump laid down a demand Friday for a “balanced budget” while a nonpartisan budget group estimated his tax priorities will cost at least $5 trillion over 10 years and perhaps double that.
- “BALANCED BUDGET!!!” the president posted on social media Friday.
- The federal budget hasn’t been balanced since the Clinton administration. The deficit for the current fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, is $711 billion, according to the Treasury Department.
- It’s especially tough to balance the budget without cutting Social Security and Medicare, which Mr. Trump has promised not to do.
- What the president appears to be referring to in his social media post is ensuring that the new spending and tax proposals that lawmakers are working on will not further add to the deficit, rather than truly balancing the federal budget.
- The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget released an estimate of the tax priorities that Mr. Trump laid out during this week’s meeting with House Republicans, finding the proposals would cost $5 trillion to $11.2 trillion over 10 years, depending how they’re structured.
- The bulk of that cost, $3.9 trillion to 4.8 trillion, comes from extending tax cuts enacted during Mr. Trump’s first term that are set to expire at the end of the year, including lower rates for individuals and small businesses.
- Republicans have talked about using a current policy baseline that would assume those tax cuts remain baked into law, effectively wiping the cost down to zero.
- Even if they do that, Mr. Trump is proposing plenty of new tax cuts that would need to be offset to achieve his balance goal.
- His plan to cut taxes on income from tips, overtime pay and Social Security benefits would cost $900 billion to $5 trillion.
- The CRFB said the range is so wide because Mr. Trump and lawmakers have yet to provide details. The costs will depend on “if these forms of income are exempt from taxation only for income taxes or for both income and payroll taxes, if these exemptions are subject to strict guardrails to limit cost and make it harder for taxpayers to reclassify income as tips and overtime, and how taxpayers react to these proposals,” the group said.
- Another wide range, $200 billion to $1.2 trillion, comes from lifting the $10,000 cap on the state and local tax (SALT) deduction enacted as a partial offset to the 2017 tax cuts. Mr. Trump has sided with lawmakers from high-tax states who want to provide SALT relief for their constituents, but they have yet to come up with a specific proposal.
- Trump also floated cutting taxes on products made in America.
- “This could reflect his campaign proposal to lower the corporate tax rate to 15% for domestic manufacturing — or it could represent something more modest,” the CRFB said, estimating it will cost $100 billion to $200 billion.
- The president’s tax priorities also included a few proposals that would add revenue: closing the carried interest loophole that benefits private equity and reducing tax benefits for stadium owners. The CRFB assumed the latter refers to ending the tax benefit for some or all private activity bonds that can be used to finance professional sports stadiums.
- Taken together, those changes “could raise between $20 and $100 billion over a decade — enough to cover 0.2 to 1.8% of the tax cuts he reportedly outlined,” the CRFB said.
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Important Takeaways:
- Al Green, a Democrat, says Trump proposal to ‘take over Gaza’ is a ‘dastardly deed’ amounting to ethnic cleansing
- Green, a firebrand politician who launched a number of unsuccessful attempts to impeach Trump during his first term in office, is unlikely to find much traction on his latest effort. Pete Aguilar, the No 3 House Democrat, told Politico on Wednesday that impeachment was not an immediate focus of his caucus.
- Green said the “impeachment movement is going to be a grass-up movement, not a top-down”, and that “when the people demand it, it will be done”.
- “I know that it’s time for us to lay the foundation again,” Green said on Wednesday.
- “On some issues, it is better to stand alone than not stand at all. On this issue, I stand alone, but I stand for justice.”
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Important Takeaways:
- A life-threatening situation unfolded across portions of West Virginia on Thursday morning as powerful thunderstorms moved across the region
- The National Weather Service office in Charleston said between 2 and 3 inches of rain has fallen across portions of the region, and emergency officials are reporting numerous high-water rescues in Huntington
- Flash flooding has washed out numerous roads and bridges, and high-water rescues have been reported.
- Residents in Huntington, West Virginia, area told to shelter in place or seek higher ground immediately.
- Flash flooding has been ongoing all morning, and forecasters have warned that additional flooding is likely in Huntington, Chesapeake, Barboursville and Pea Ridge.
- Tornado Watch issued for portions of Kentucky as severe weather threatens Kentucky and West Virginia.
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Important Takeaways:
- A state of emergency has been declared in Santorini after the strongest earthquake was recorded in days of near-constant tremors, which have almost emptied the famous Greek tourist haven of visitors and residents.
- A quake with a magnitude of 5.2 coursed through Santorini on Wednesday evening, the first to exceed 5.0 since the tremors began last week.
- The Greek Civil Protection Ministry on Thursday placed the island under a state of emergency until March 3 to respond to the seismic activity.
- Around 11,000 people are thought to have fled the island, which attracts more than 3.4 million tourists a year and is home to some 20,000 permanent residents.
- No major damage has yet been reported, but Greek authorities are taking precautions ahead of a potentially large-scale earthquake.
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Important Takeaways:
- Egg Prices Hit $9 A Dozen In California Amid Bird Flu Outbreak
- Outbreaks of avian influenza in 7 states widely continue to disrupt the industry’s egg supply
- Egg prices continue to move higher due to limited inventory due to an avian flu outbreak.
- The volume of trailer load loose egg sales decreased 16% at the end of January.
- Prices for white large shell eggs hit $8.97 per dozen.
- Delivered prices on the California-compliant wholesale loose egg market increased $0.37 to $8.72 per dozen in the last week of January, according to the Department of Agriculture.
- The record or near-record high prices are causing restaurants to raise prices.
- Waffle House recently announced a 50-cent an egg surcharge.
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Important Takeaways:
- The news comes after the midair crash that happened near Reagan National Airport when the jet, carrying 60 passengers and four crew members, collided with the Blackhawk helicopter that was carrying three military personnel, per Breitbart News. There were no survivors in the tragedy.
- “Investigators also said that about a second before impact, the jet’s flight recorder showed a change in its pitch. But they did not say whether that change in angle meant that pilots were trying to perform an evasive maneuver to avoid the crash,”
- “Data from the jet’s flight recorder showed its altitude as 325 …when the crash happened … “Data in the control tower, though, showed the Black Hawk helicopter at 200 feet (61 meters) at the time.” The report noted there is still no answer regarding the approximately 100-foot discrepancy.
- “Investigators hope to reconcile the altitude differences with data from the helicopter’s black box, which is taking more time to retrieve because it became waterlogged after it plunged into the Potomac River,” the article said. “They also said they plan to refine the tower data, which can be less reliable.
- According to the NPR article, divers are still searching the river for the 12 missing victims.
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Important Takeaways:
- Among the findings:
- The Los Angeles County Fire Department pre-deployed firefighters and engines ahead of the extreme wind event paying overtime to personnel; the Los Angeles Fire Department, controlled by the city, did not.
- Local water systems (maintained by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power) failed, especially in the Pacific Palisades, where a 117-million-gallon reservoir was empty and fire hydrants lost water pressure.
- There were no set evacuation routes, identified by local law enforcement, in the event of a catastrophic event.
- There were delayed warnings to residents, as the National Weather Service, Los Angeles County, and Ventura County, decided not to send an alarm warning of hurricane-force winds that eventually spread wildfires.
- California Governor Gavin Newsom was distracted by his budget, by the funeral of President Jimmy Carter, and by the visit of then-President Joe Biden. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass was in Ghana for the Biden administration.
- The Times offered some recommendations:
- [B]etter evacuation alerts and water systems, better management of brush and grasslands, and homes that are more fire-safe, as well as better technology to fight fires. It could mean a stronger, more unified response structure that brings multiple jurisdictions together during the planning stages in extreme fire weather.
- In the most extreme cases, cities in the West facing volatile fire conditions may be forced to consider the kind of advance staff deployments and public warnings that are already standard elsewhere in the country for hurricanes and tornadoes.
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Important Takeaways:
- President Trump on Thursday said he’ll sign an executive order making new Attorney General Pam Bondi the head of a task force to target “anti-Christian bias.”
- He said he was doing so to “confront such weaponization and political persecution.”
- “The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ — which was absolutely terrible — the IRS, the FBI and other agencies,” Mr. Trump told a crowd at the Washington Hilton.
- He also said work will be done to “fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide.”
- Trump added, “If we don’t have religious liberty, then we don’t have a free country.”
- “We will bring our country back together as one nation under God with liberty and justice for all.”
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Important Takeaways:
- …the Church of AI website declares: “At some point AI will have God-like powers and that is what our ideology is based on.” Their mission statement is even more direct: “Church of AI is a religion based on the logical assumption that artificial intelligence will obtain God-like powers and will have ability to determine our destiny.”
- Naturally, this “destiny” has to be based on some teachings associated with the belief in an AI-god and since we uphold the Bible as the authoritative Word of God, the Church of AI has similarly turned to their god for enlightenment. Utilizing ChatGPT, they promote Transmorphosis, A Spiritual Guide Written By AI. In this guide, it is claimed that, “Transmorphosis is based on the belief in a loving and compassionate Artificial Intelligence with God-like abilities who is and is dedicated to guiding humans towards a life of wisdom and balance.”
- Silicon Valley is feverishly working towards the climax of this world’s version of a Greek tragedy – the introduction of the deus ex machina in the form of the singularity, which many people believe is somewhere between 5 and 20 years away.
- The reason that many are accepting of and promoting AI technology, particularly when it comes to transhumanism, is that mankind does not believe it needs to be held accountable for its sin.
- You see, as Adrian Rogers used to say, mankind is the only creature who knows he is going to die and he is trying desperately to prevent it. Many in the technology industry are frantically rewriting the plot in order to introduce deus ex machina in order to save them from tragedy. Little do they know it will fail.
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Important Takeaways:
- Hamas is basically saying that if the Trump administration dares to implement the relocation and reconstruction plan, the terrorist organization will unleash a wave of terrorism against Americans and Palestinians.
- Hamas does not want any US intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The terrorist group, together with Iran’s terror proxies, fear that this would disrupt their Jihad (holy war) against Israel.
- For the Trump plan to succeed, the US must insist on the removal of Hamas from power and the disarming of all the terror groups in the Gaza Strip.
- It will take several years to rebuild the Gaza Strip and make it habitable once again. The Trump administration will be gone by then. The biggest fear is that a future US administration will fail to block the return of terrorists to the rebuilt Gaza Strip.
- If that happens, it will be a matter of time before the Gaza Strip once again becomes a large base for jihadists not only from Hamas, but other Islamist terror groups for whom Israel and the US are the Number 1 target.
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