At year’s end we can expect the pundits and the mass media that hates our President to begin their assessments of Donald Trump’s first year as president.  The truth about Trump’s first year in office, however, is that he is proving to be the Prosperity President. 

Our nation has seen economic growth of 3% or more in the last two quarters of Trump’s first year.  This compares to -4.5% in the first quarter of Obama Administration.  The rate of real economic growth is the single greatest determinate of both America’s strength as a nation and the well-being of the economy.   But in Obama’s America in his first full year in office in 2009, the GDP growth rate was -2.8%.  In other words, the economy contracted 2.8%. 

Economists profess that the ideal GDP growth rate is between 2-3%.  Less than 2% will not create new jobs for the growing labor force.  More than 3% means the economy is headed toward an asset bubble.  This situation generally creates inflation and rising prices.  Sometimes higher prices will cool off demand.  More often, the bubble bursts, and the economy descends into recession.  Trump’s 3% growth rate over the last six months is absolutely perfect medicine to improve an ailing “Obama” economy.  In fact, Obama’s record on economic growth will be considerably worse than that of the much-maligned George W. Bush.  Bush 43 delivered GDP growth averaging 2.10%, with two years (2004 and 2005) above 3.0%.  But Obama hardly nudged the economy above 1%, rarely near 2%, and averaged a limp 1.5% over eight years as President.  This performance ranks Obama as the fourth worst president in history by the economics, and the only president in history to never see economic growth at 3% or more in any one quarter of his term.

In contrast, Ronald Reagan brought forth an annual real GDP growth of 3.5% .

According to Fox Business News channel’s Maria Bartiromo, since Trump’s inauguration, six billion dollars in new wealth has been added to stock market.  Companies like Boeing are now investing hundreds of millions in new manufacturing facilities.  The Dow Jones average up 25% in first year of office.  

While Trump can point to other first year achievements, such as Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch being confirmed along with a record number of 19 federal judges with lifetime appointments, a major tax cut bill, ISIS is removed from Iraq, huge reductions in illegal immigration, ending the ObamaCare mandate, deregulation and more, all this has occurred while according to the Media Research Center – 91% of the news coverage on Trump in September through November by the major networks was negative. 

Obama may have been personally popular but his policies were not.  Trump remains much more popular than Hillary Clinton in public opinion polls, something the media won’t give him credit for, but his policies are surely more popular than Obama’s.  Not only are they popular, they are delivering for the American people, and among the top deliverables is prosperity and economic growth.  Trump is proving himself to be the Prosperity President.

There is a controversy on social media going on regarding the new ownership of the LA Weekly newspaper.   But Gustavo Arellano, a former writer for the OC Weekly and Voice of Orange County, threatened me from participating in the debate on social media by tweeting to me after I made a comment:

“But with you popping in, don’t get @RScottMoxley interested!”

R. Scott Moxley describes himself as a person whose “award-winning investigative journalism has touched nerves for two decades.”  Moxley’s pieces include exposes, sometimes targeting conservatives, like me.  So, what Arellano was conveying to me in his tweet, now deleted, and blocked from his account, is that if I had anything more to say about the LA Weekly newspaper ownership issue, that I could draw a retaliatory negative story from his friend Moxley at the OC Weekly.

Journalism is great when it “touches nerves” and exposes hidden truths.  But journalists are quite shameful individuals when they threaten to use their contacts to suppress public participation in debate.  Yet it is very clear that Gustavo Arellano intended to bully me into silence, and for this he deserves to be outed for the bully he is, and he owes me, and his profession, and even R. Scott Moxley, an apology.

Here is Arellano’s tweet threatening me:

Gustavo Arellano

In this video broadcast Sunday morning, October 8 on Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Weekend Breakfast,” California Political Review Publisher Jim Lacy discusses the Las Vegas shooting tragedy, explains Second Amendment rights, and defends the Trump Administration’s response to the Puerto Rican hurricane.

The much anticipated Federal tax reform framework developed by the Trump Administration and Congressional leaders has been released this week, and it not only lives up to the President’s campaign promises to lower taxes, but will be particularly welcome relief for California’s small businesses.  An outline of the tax reform proposal appears below.

Small businesses in California create jobs at a faster rate than big businesses according to the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California.  Sole proprietorships make up 3.1 million of California’s 4 million business entities according the the state legislature, yet their job creating abilities have been hampered by both Obama-era policies that impose high marginal income tax rates of 39.6% and job killing regulations, and also state policies that keep raising taxes, set the highest marginal state tax rate at 13.3% and place further regulatory impediments to business growth.  The combined current Federal and state top marginal tax rate of 52.9% of income is simply killing off California’s potential for business expansion and better job growth among the state’s many small businesses.

But that is about to change with federal tax reform if the Trump plan can be embraced by members of California’s Congressional delegation and passed into law.  While the over-all Trump tax plan is geared to middle class tax relief and simplifying the enormous tax code, an important provision will give California’s many small businesses some needed breathing room.  Under the Trump plan, the top marginal tax rate for small family-owned businesses, sole proprietorships and so-called small business “S Corporations,” will be reduced and capped at 25%!  This tax reform will allow many of California’s small businesses immediate tax relief, helping profitability, and help businesses to plan and grow and create new jobs with the understanding that their firms won’t be pushed into a more expensive tax bracket for all the effort.  The result should be a greater participation in an improving economy by middle class business owners and more and better job opportunities across the state.

There are a lot of good ideas in the new Trump tax plan, but in my view among the provisions that are the best are those that help and offer hope for California’s small businesses, who are otherwise under siege in a state considered the “worst for business” by CEO magazine now ten years running.

I had to read the story in the San Francisco Chronicle twice to let the facts sink in.  Over the last three years, The City has budgeted and spent $821 million in public funds on programs to address homelessness.  My thought, and also the question posed by the piece, was that the problem must have surely improved.  But the answer was no!  “(D)espite all the money and effort, reality on the streets hasn’t improved.   In many ways, homelessness in San Francisco is as bad as ever,” said the story.  My God!

So, I decided to look a little deeper and ask the question, just how many homeless people live in San Francisco anyway?  And the astonishing answer was also on the pages of the Chronicle, which has nobly established a “homeless” project to track, research and comment on programs serving the homeless and their degree of success.  According to the newspaper, there are 6,686 homeless on the streets in San Francisco pursuant to a point-in-time count conducted in January 2015.  The newspaper calls city efforts to address the problem “a disgrace.”

And that is an understatement!  $821 million divided by 6,686 equals $122,793 per homeless person.  If you divide that sum by 3 to account for three fiscal years of spending, the total is $40,931 per homeless  person.  In other words, just San Francisco (remember there are also federal and state programs that fund homelessness assistance) has been spending over $40,000 a year, for several years, on every homeless person in the city, and is not making any progress at all in helping to get this troubled community off the streets!

While San Francisco’s liberal politicians are squandering huge sums of money on ineffective homelessness programs, and continuing to raise taxes by claiming deficits and rising needs, one thing is for certain.  They are darn well NOT going to give in to that awful President Donald Trump and cooperate with federal authorities on enforcement of immigration laws against criminal illegal aliens like the one they released from jail, who famously murdered Kate Steinle with a stolen gun.  Oh, and they aren’t going to give up their lawsuit either to make sure they are paid the federal grants they say they are due for helping to enforce federal immigration laws, even though they won’t help enforce those laws.  Go figure.

Here is a link to a radio broadcast discussion on 1/25/17 on Jerry Brown’s “State of the State Address” and “California vs. Donald Trump” on the Trevor Carey Show on Power Talk FM 96.7, Fresno.  California Political Review publisher Jim Lacy starts a long segment with Trevor at the 21 minute mark.  Enjoy!

http://powertalk967.iheart.com/media/play/27633841/

CA Secretary of State Alex Padilla has certified the final Presidential vote in California and Hillary Clinton swamped Donald Trump here with close to 62% of the vote and nearly a 4 1/2 million vote victory margin.  While President-elect Trump won 30 states and a landslide in the electoral college, Clinton ended the campaign with a lead of 2,833,000 votes nationally.  Yet if California is backed out of the national popular vote totals, Trump would have a substantial 1,677,000 vote lead nationally.

Thus, the CA vote proves just how “out of touch” California voters are with the rest of the nation.  Hillary won 48.3% of the vote nationally only if you factor in the extraordinarily good showing in CA.  In fact, Hillary’s CA results stand in stark contrast to the predictions prior to the election: while few polls showed Trump winning in the important swing states of Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, and he ended up winning them all, the last poll in California before the election pegged Hillary at 53% – far below her actual victory margin here.  In fact, Hillary, almost inexplicably, won about 900,000 more votes than Barack Obama did in 2012, and finished with an even higher percentage of the vote than Obama in that election.

California Democrats increased their representations in the State Legislature and came close to knocking off an additional Republican Congressman or two.  They are firmly in control in California, and going forward, when they brag about California being the 6th largest economy in the world, it will be impossible for them to blame California’s 24% poverty rate based on cost of living on Republicans.  If California is indeed the 6th biggest economy in the world, then this means it also has the highest poverty rate of the top six in the world, and that is nothing to brag about, Democrat friends!

California however is not exactly an unimportant state in Presidential politics.  Up to the point of the Indiana GOP primary election on May 3, just about a month before the California primary, it was apparent that Trump and Ted Cruz would be headed for a bruising finale in the Golden State, and because of a terrific campaign in which CA consultant Tim Clark played a key role, Trump was ahead in the polls and looking to our state as a “firewall” to win the nomination.  But when Cruz was knocked off by Donald Trump in Indiana, he soon dropped out of the race and Trump “cruised” to a big win with over 75% of the GOP vote.  California, with its largest delegation to the Republican National Convention, will indeed continue to play an important role in support of Donald Trump’s re-election in 2020.

All the polls were wrong.  One of the polls had Donald Trump at 32% in Utah with a narrow, two point lead.  But he won the state with over 50% of the vote and more than a 25 point lead.  Wow.  That was a bad poll!

Here is another “wow” from the media, a headline from a column by Clarence Page in the Chicago Tribune: “Donald Trump is insulting his way down a losing path.”  Page wrote on August 12, “At least, the man — who proudly declared, “I’m so tired of this politically correct crap,” to a cheering crowd in South Carolina last September — may be learning the hard way that manners still do matter in politics. You can’t insult your way to the White House, Jeb Bush told Trump in a primary debate, but Trump is still trying.”  Hindsight now may reveal to Page perhaps a different reality.  That was no losing path…

Because Donald Trump tapped into an understandable anger shared by 75% of the electorate that the nation is moving in the wrong direction.  With so many Americans yearning for a change, why shouldn’t Trump have won the election, as the representative of change?

Trump’s vote, even in victory, was probably suppressed by a biased media.  The fact is the mainstream media did much to try to “rig” the election unfairly against Donald Trump.  Wikileaks and other disclosures revealed again and again the transgression of journalist ethics: CNN’s Donna Brazile gave debate questions, twice, to Hillary Clinton in advance.  CNBC’s John Harwood, a debate moderator, coordinated his reporting with John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.  Steve Harvey gave questions for his program to Hillary Clinton in advance.  It went on and on and on…

Nevertheless, we have a new Republican President, who has the benefit of Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, and a chance to remake the Supreme Court for decades to come.  Liberals will shudder, but there is no more gridlock in Washington, D.C.  That is President Trump.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters as he takes the stage for a campaign event in Dallas, Monday, Sept. 14, 2015. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

Successful Californians must pay over 50% of their income at the top marginal rates in state and federal income taxes.  That’s right – Obama’s tax hike created a 39% top Federal income tax bracket, and combined with California’s top of the nation 13% plus, our state’s most successful citizens aren’t working for themselves anymore, they are working for the government when they hit the top brackets.

But the “California Tax Hike Industry” isn’t satisfied.  In the upcoming election, they want even more taxes.  They want to keep California’s sales and income taxes the highest in the nation by urging voters to vote “Yes” on Proposition 55.  They want even more “consumption” taxes on cigarettes by urging a “Yes” vote on Proposition 56.  And more sinisterly, the California Tax Hike Industry has qualified about 200 local measures that ask voters to raise their property taxes (“for the kids” but really for the California Teachers Association who already benefit from high wages and great pension plans), raise and extend sales taxes (claiming the funds will fix roads, roads that should have been fixed in the first place but for overpaying civil servants and overly generous pensions), raise hotel taxes, raise parcel taxes, you name it, the professional tax raisers are really at it in this election.

Californians must simply say “No” to all these taxes!

Californians are already among the most heavily taxed citizens in the nation.  Should Prop. 55 pass, that will continue, and things will only get worse should all the other local tax measures pass, driving up local sales taxes and property taxes even higher.  Already considered an inhospitable place for businesses to locate and for successful people to live in (other than for the fine weather and lifestyle – if you can afford it), all these new taxes will guarantee that California continues to have the highest poverty rate in the nation, as it has for the last two years, when cost-of-living is factored.  And can you imagine what successful people in California (the people who create jobs) will pay in taxes if Hillary Clinton is elected, and hikes yet again the Federal marginal tax rate above the Obama levels?

In the upcoming election, we may not have clear choices on many of the candidates on the ballot, but one thing is for sure: the last thing California needs is more taxes!!  Just say “No” to them!!