Tax Rates | Michael Patrick Leahy

Crom Carmichael Outlines Taxes and Their Counterproductive Policies

Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to outline tax rate structures, deficiencies, and counterproductive policies.

Leahy: And, of course, to make your Monday even more fun, today is the last day you can file your taxes.

Scooter: Some counties in Tennessee are going to get an extension.

Leahy: Oh, how about that? The federal deadline was May 17th that’s today. But why are we getting an extension?

Scooter: A severe storm.

Leahy: Of course! Of course! Crom, you were talking about taxes and various policies that are counterproductive.

Carmichael: They don’t accomplish what the policymakers claim they will. For example, and this is from the article, the 1986 Tax Reform reduced the top tax rate to a post-war low of 28 percent. Now, remember, earlier it got as high as 91 percent and as recently as 1980 it was 70 percent.

By 1986 it had been lowered to 28 percent. According to the so-called experts, if you lower the top tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent, you’re going to see a dramatic drop in income. But the opposite was true. And the article says while the top marginal tax rate fell from 91 percent in 1962 to 28 percent in 1988.

The percentage of income actually paid in income and payroll taxes by the top one percent and the top 10 percent, these two groups rose to 21.5 percent and 19.6 respectively, from 16.1 and 14.4. In other words, the amount that the wealthy paid at a 28 percent rate versus a 91 percent rate actually went up by almost 25 percent.

Leahy: Because if knowing human nature and there’s a legal way to avoid paying 91 percent you will do that.

Carmichael: Right. Well, you’ll also change what you do. At 91 percent, let’s just say that’s at a million dollars of income in today’s dollars and it’s at 91 percent on amounts over a million dollars, you make a million dollars and you just quit.

You just decide I’m not going to make any more. I’m not going to make any more money that’s reported this year. Whatever it is I’m going to do, I’m going to do it in such a way so that the income comes to me next year.

Leahy: And that’s a logical way to go because why should you work more and get basically nothing for it?

Carmichael: It also gets to the question of equality and fairness, because if I’m not willing to pay 91 percent on the next dollar I earn, then why should I expect somebody else to pay 91 percent on the next dollar that they earn? Because we are talking about marginal tax rates. But I want to go back to this question of wealth.

And that is that what we don’t do as a society is we don’t tax unrealized gains. Let me just finish this one thought then you can jump in. There are good reasons to not tax unrealized gains, in my opinion, up to a point, because taxing unrealized gains at low levels, and when I say low levels, it can still be a very large number, like a billion dollars.

That’s a lot of money. Most people who start a business or invest in a business, they’re not investing so that they can make multiples more than a billion dollars. They might hope to. But that’s not why they do it. You’re not going to be changing the incentives to invest if you were to start taxing people’s unrealized gains above a certain value and whatever that value is.

But that is where the real money is in today’s economy because Jeff Bezos is worth $200 billion dollars. I’ll bet you he hasn’t paid two billion dollars in taxes. Two billion dollars in taxes sounds like a lot, but it’s one percent of what he’s worth.

Whereas if you are a doctor or a lawyer and you’re making a million dollars a year, and I’m just picking that number out of the year, I’m not saying that doctors and lawyers, there are not many who do that. But if they were to make a million dollars a year compared to Jeff Bezos, is net worth going up at five billion dollars a year, it’s not even close.

Yet the doctor who makes a million dollars, according to Elizabeth Warren and all these left-leaning Democrats ought to be paying 50 to 60 percent of that next dollar in taxes either at the federal or the state level. Whereas Jeff Bezos sees his net worth goes up to five billion dollars in a year or 10 billion dollars and he doesn’t pay anything. So what were you getting ready to say?

Leahy: Senator Elizabeth Warren is one of those people that believes we should have a tax on wealth, not just income.

Carmichael: Her’s starts at a very low level. Her’s are starting at about $50 million dollars. And there are a lot of people who have $50 million dollars that would be especially if it’s tied up in a privately owned business…

Leahy: They’d have to liquidate the business.

Carmichael: They have to liquidate the business. Her ideas, as is generally the case with her are ill-founded, stupid, and do not apply to her.

Leahy: Absolutely.

Carmichael: Let’s be sure about that last piece. Do not apply to her.

Leahy: She just actually got, apparently a $900,000. advance for this book she’s written called Persist instead of, How I Lost the Presidential Primary, by Elizabeth Warren.

Carmichael: And what is she say in it?

Leahy: A couple of things. Politico has a story about her where she said she’s going to run for the Senate in 2024. She’s 71 now, she’ll be 74 then. She would be, of course, the prohibitive favorite to win the Democratic primary there and the general election.

But she was talking about her presidential campaign and her decision to take a DNA test to show the depth of her Native American roots. In her book, she said that was a mistake to take that test. What she didn’t say was why was it a mistake.

Carmichael: Well, it was a mistake because it showed that she had been lying for her entire adult life.

Leahy: It showed what the DNA test showed that she had less than one-tenth of one percent of DNA that was consistent with residents of Peru, Mexico, and Columbia. The reason that there was no DNA, there is no DNA database for Native Americans in the United States because they don’t comply. They refused to cooperate with the DNA testing companies.

Carmichael: I can certainly understand that.

Leahy: Absolutely.

Carmichael: I don’t want to have my DNA in some federal database.

Leahy: Absolutely. And increasingly, people are seeing that. But again, there’s zero zip nada documentary evidence that she has Native American ancestry. And the average American has more than one-tenth of one percent of DNA consistent with. And the proxy they use as residents of Peru, Mexico, and Columbia.

Carmichael: But what was interesting was her reaction to the results of the DNA test. She says, case closed. I’m a Native American. That’s so typical. It’s also the same thing Biden does. If you ask Biden the question, I mean nowadays I just can’t imagine that he’ll do press conferences because the press is now beginning to ask him fairly simple questions, like, should Americans be concerned about inflation?

Leahy: The answer is yes of course.

Carmichael: The answer is yes but he walked away from the microphone. Another one is, are you concerned about the violence in the Middle East? No comment. (Leahy chuckles) What violence?

Leahy: Violence? What violence? C’mon man! (Laughs)

Carmichael: What about the crisis at our Southern border?

Leahy: There is no crisis.

Carmichael: And so it looks kind of silly. The other thing about Elizabeth Warren, Michael, I want to point out, is Elizabeth Warren now wants to take away the IP pharmaceutical companies intellectual property because she says drug costs are too high.

Now, I agree with the last statement. Drug costs are too high. But if you take away the IP of pharmaceutical companies, you will end all research and development. There won’t be any new drugs because there’d be no reason to make the substantial investment. Drug prices are high for two other reasons.

One is and I’m convinced, and I cannot prove it but based on this. When Trump set up his Operation Warp Speed program to bring a vaccine to the market he went around the FDA. He appointed somebody outside of the government to run the program and they had a vaccine.

In fact, they had three vaccines in nine months from the time that he initiated Operation Warp Speed. The bureaucrats, like Anthony Fauci and the other bureaucrats, said it would be three years. The reason that they said it would be three years, at least is they know how the FDA works and they know how slow that process is.

And they agree with that process, by the way. So they were very angry when Trump went around the FDA and he brought the drugs to market. I think that there is an incestuous relationship between Big Pharma and the FDA to make bringing a drug to market very expensively in a lot of time so that drug companies can buy fledgling pharmaceutical companies that show promise before they get to market.

Leahy: To maintain their differentiation.

Carmichael: And then the second one is our third-party payment system also lends itself toward exorbitant drug price.

Listen to the full show here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Crom Carmichael” by Crom Carmichael.

Crom Carmichael Talks Biden’s Villainous Priorities, Cronyism, and Critical Race Theory

Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio to analyze the cronyism of a Biden administration.

Leahy: We are joined by our good friend, the original all-star panelist, Crom Carmichael. Crom, good morning.

Carmichael: Good morning, Michael.

Leahy: Well, another Friday, another week, almost the fourth full month of the Biden-Harris maladministration. There are crises all over the place. Short gas supplies, the attack on Israelis in Israel, and the border crisis. Jimmy Carter has come back and he’s older and worse.

Carmichael: I think you’re being unkind to Jimmy Carter.

Leahy: You and the former 45th President of the United States agree on that. And I think you’re right.

Carmichael: Carter’s policies were not good because primarily because he believed that the tax rates that existed at that time should not be cut. He was adamant about that. At that time, you hit the 70 percent marginal tax rate at $59,000.

Leahy: That’s pretty quick.

Carmichael: And so it was the combination of the high tax rates and the inflation of the 70s that drove people into higher and higher tax brackets and ruined their livelihoods and created two liquidity crises. But Carter meant well. That’s the difference. Carter meant well.

Leahy: I would agree with that.

Carmichael: His policies were bad, but he meant well. Biden, on the other hand, I’m not going to say that Biden is sitting around saying, what can I do to harm the American?

Leahy: He’s not twiddling his tons like a classic villain, but he’s got villainous character in some regards.

Carmichael: His priorities are villainous.

Leahy: There you go.

Carmichael: That’s the problem, his priorities. His priority is not the typical American middle-class person. His priority is the government and the power that comes from being associated closely with the government. And that’s going to be my theme today and my theme probably for weeks and months to come.

Leahy: It’s a very good theme. And it’s a very succinct way of describing the problem.

Carmichael: If you’re close to the Biden administration, then you’re going to do very well. If you’re not close to the Biden administration, your chances of doing well are still there but in many ways, the Biden administration will be out to hurt you.

The difficulty that Biden is going to have is that his policies because they are so pro-government, pro-cronyism, that only incorporates about 20 percent of the people. The other 80 percent are going to be harmed by these policies, if not directly, indirectly.

When the midterms come up and people look at what’s going on and if they lose in the midterms, which I suspect they will.

Leahy: The Democrats.

Carmichael: Yes, the Democrats. If they lose, then they don’t have the authority and the power to do all the things that they would like to do to help their own cronies. So let me just give a few examples here. Biden picked as Secretary of Labor, a guy named Marty Walsh.

Leahy: Oh, yeah.

Carmichael: Marty Walsh used to be the police chief in Boston. He used to be the Mayor of Boston. What we’re now finding out is while he was the police chief, there was a fellow named Patrick Rose. Have you heard the name Patrick Rose?

Leahy: I have not.

Carmichael: Patrick Rose has just been arrested on 33 counts of sexually abusing children. A lot of this happened while Marty Walsh was the police chief.

Leahy: What’s the relationship between those two guys?

Carmichael: He worked for him and he was arrested. Patrick Rose was arrested for this while he was a policeman, but he got off. And that was while Marty Walsh was the police chief and then he went on to become the Mayor of Boston.

And that’s what made him so popular with Biden is because he was such a union guy. He was such a crony type of person. So the Boston Herald has been trying to get information about this case and about previous cases against Patrick Rose.

And Walsh has done everything he can to stop it. And the new Mayor only relented to give the information after Marty Walsh had safely been confirmed as the Secretary of Labor.

Leahy: After.

Carmichael: After.

Leahy: How convenient.

Carmichael: So what you have is a person who is completely tainted as the Secretary of Labor but the Democrats simply don’t care because he has a very solid history of supporting unions and government.

Leahy: He also is a big supporter of the PROAct, which is designed to destroy the independent contractor relationship in America.

Carmichael: It’s also designed to destroy the right to work and to force people to be part of a union, which, of course, increases the dues that the union thugs have available to them to help the Democrats. So he’s a perfect person for Biden.

The point I’m making here is he’s terrible for the country. Let me just quote the last paragraph of The Wall Street Journal article. It says, ‘Union corruption is one of the most enduring realities in American life. President Biden is proposing new regulations and supports legislation that would make it much easier for unions to organize American business.

Someone in Congress might ask Mr. Walsh why Americans should believe he’ll fight union corruption when his city may have helped to protect a union chief with a history of alleged predation against children.’

And the point is, is that these guys don’t care about the things that they say they care about. It’s a lot like when I listened to the call with Jim Roberts. What greater act of voter suppression is there for the city of Nashville to try to say that voters don’t have the right to vote on whether or not the tax increase that has just been imposed on them by the council and the Mayor. Why they don’t have a right to chime in on that.

Leahy: After they followed every element of the requirement in the charter to get a petition referendum on the ballot.

Carmichael: And the Election Commission went through a very careful procedure to make sure that this particular referendum met all of the criteria. And as an institution, it’s the one that determines whether or not a ballot initiative is good enough to go in front of the voters. That’s their job.

Leahy: It’s their job.

Carmichael: And they have voted. Then there’s another story about another Biden ally who gave lots of money to the presidency and that was the former President of the International United Auto Union. He’s going to go to prison for 21 months.

And he was the President for four years, and he gave lots of money to the Biden campaign and to Democrats in general, and he’s going to prison for stealing money from the union. Do the Democrats care about this? They’re sad that he’s going to prison. (Leahy chuckles) That’s what they’re sad about.

Leahy: They’re sad he got caught.

Carmichael: Because now there’ll be somebody else. But whoever the next person is, we’ll give money to Democrats. And this is the problem that we have as a country. It is the institutions. And this is why we talk about the need for institutional constraints.

And if you don’t have institutional constraints, then institutions veer in the wrong direction. The Ford Foundation is giving $100 million dollars to Black Lives Matter or to the critical race theory effort. Let’s be very clear. It is essentially a Marxist doctrine.

The government should take control of all resources and allocate those resources according to what the government considers to be best, which is the ultimate in cronyism. And here you had the Ford Foundation who is now giving money to this. But I see some real pushback coming.

Michael, there are some parents in Loudon County in Virginia, and these are just average folks. But they’re Black, white and it doesn’t matter. They are furious that critical race theory is being taught to their children. And one of the mothers got up there and actually read some of the passages from the book. And it had to be bleeped out.

Leahy: It was that bad.

Carmichael: Fox News had to bleep out some of the words as she was reading them. Fox News had to bleep them out because they’re that bad. But these are the books that are being read to and taught to children. And she said, if these words offend you, imagine what they do to our children.

If you’re upset by my reading them to you, imagine what they’re doing to our children. But these board members simply don’t care. They’re following the doctrine.

Leahy: They really are. We’ve got a little bit of a group like that here in Williamson County called Moms For Liberty. They’ve got an event on May 19th where they’re addressing some of these things as well.

Listen to the second hour here:

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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.