The Democratic establishment keeps gushing that Joe Biden’s first months in office have been the most “consequential” in decades. Oh, they’re consequential all right. Look at gas prices. And if the latest headlines are any indication, the pain at the pump is just the beginning.

“Higher taxes for the rich” is an easy campaign slogan, Politico points out, but it’s not so easy to execute — especially not when you’re trying to keep a limping economy going. Still, the Biden team seems undeterred, following up its massive $1.9 trillion COVID “relief” package with a slew of proposed tax hikes. As they did in the campaign, Biden’s spokespeople claim that none of these taxes will affect the middle-class families. But just how true is that?

Not very, Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas) warns. “[W]e’re going to see real serious tax increases on the corporate side, certainly which will drive us to the least competitive tax rate in the world,” the ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee said on Monday. And those tax spikes — the biggest in almost 30 years — will “have an impact on the economy, jobs and wages.” According to the Tax Foundation, as many as 159,000 people would lose their jobs if Biden goes through with pledge to gouge U.S. corporations. By raising their tax rate from 21 to 28 percent, wages could drop almost a full percent — hardly the kind of policy that will endear Democrats to working Americans.

According to Bloomberg, the other ideas on the table would raise the income tax on people earning more than $400,000, broadening the estate tax, raising capital gains tax, and limiting the tax preferences for “pass-through-businesses.” But just because the plan targets the more successful doesn’t mean it won’t affect other Americans too. After all, the Heritage Foundation points out, “Most Americans are employed by businesses, and when businesses do well, workers do well, too.” That means the burden for these so-called “taxes on the rich,” as Democrats deceptively call them, falls almost “entirely on workers.” In fact, their analysts explain, “most of the cost of corporate tax — between 75 percent and 100 percent — is passed on to workers in the form of lower wages. Corporate tax increases will be primarily paid by people making less than $400,000 a year.”

So much for protecting the middle class. And the pain doesn’t stop there. America’s 401k retirement accounts will take a hit, so will families who inherit property (and with it, a bigger tax bill). Small businesses would lose some of their deductions, and drive businesses to look for more favorable climates overseas. “President Biden’s proposed tax hike would reduce American economic output during a time when we need to maximize economic growth to reach our country’s pre-pandemic growth trend and return to full employment,” the Tax Foundation cautions. But, as Sean Hannity joked, the Green New Deal and the president’s ridiculous climate agenda have to be paid for by somebody.

And that somebody is you. “They want to raise taxes on money that you make, the money that you invest and put at risk… They want a piece of that action, [as well as] the money you still have left when you finally die. And in the interim they are going to go back and get another bite at the apple with the wealth tax,” Sean fumed. Then, on top of all of that, the taxes they’re raising on corporations are going to put you out of work. That’s how Biden plans to repay the unions for their election support. Make no mistake, he warns, “Nobody will be spared.”

Let’s hope that Big Business really likes those radical policies they keep peddling, because they’re about to pay for them in a major way. That’s one of the greatest ironies of political realignment taking place in corporate America. These woke CEOs are about to feel the difference between aligning themselves with the free market principles of the GOP and embracing the Left’s pricey social extremism. At the end of the day, though, earnings will still matter more than these phony ideas of “equality.”

“America’s wokeness can’t last forever,” the New York Post’s Charles Gasparino insists, “because in the long run it’s unprofitable. Example: Ratings for the social-justice-posturing NFL were weak all year, as was this year’s Super Bowl. That means the NFL will have to go back to football… That’s why the NBA — another big business — just made the pre-game national anthem mandatory after one of its owners, liberal tech entrepreneur Mark Cuban, enraged many fans by pulling it from the start of Mavericks games. Remember, 74.2 million consumers voted for Donald Trump in part because they can’t tolerate virtue signaling being thrown in their faces every minute of their lives.”

Add that virtue signaling to sky-high taxes, and you’ve got the Biden agenda. It won’t be long until the American people — and Big Business’s social justice capitalists — will be tired of opening their wallets for both.

Originally published here.

Facts Check the Washington Post

This week, the Washington Post was forced to majorly correct its January 9 report on President Trump’s phone call with a Georgia elections investigator. The article’s headline read “‘Find the fraud’: Trump pressured a Georgia elections investigator in a separate call legal experts say could amount to obstruction.” In other words, one of America’s largest newspapers publicly claimed that the sitting president had committed potentially criminal misbehavior.

House Democrats cited Trump’s alleged pressure on Georgia election officials in their article of impeachment against Trump, and they cited The Washington Post article itself in their impeachment brief and during televised oral arguments. The only problem is, “they made up quotes,” as CNN commentator Mary Katherine Ham tweeted. Trump never said “find the fraud” in his Georgia phone call, as The Post had boldly reported.

The Post, which last destroyed a sitting president nearly 50 years ago in the Watergate scandal, has spent the last four years with the rest of the mainstream media wishing Trump would misstep so they could destroy him, too. But, barring real evidence, it seems any fake scandal will do. The news media during Trump’s term in office has paraded out one spurious allegation after another — Russia collusion, a Muslim ban, “very fine people,” kids in cages, Ukraine corruption, insulting veterans, and now the Georgia hoax. Almost all these stories prominently feature, insinuate about, and repeat ad nauseum claims by anonymous sources, secret documents, or outright lies.

The media’s only false claims about Trump that have been squelched are those where documents released later proved their original reporting to be false. Still, a retraction never gets the airtime of a lie, so it’s usually too little, too late.

The Post’s January 9 story and their retraction “two months after publication” is no different. In the 130-word correction, they admit “The Post misquoted Trump’s comments on the call, based on information provided by a source.” That is, an anonymous source. They continue, “Trump did not tell the investigator to ‘find the fraud’ or say she would be ‘a national hero’ if she did so” — fake quotes that made the original story lively. Trump’s actual comment was that the investigator would find “dishonesty” in ballots Fulton County if she looked. For the record, Fulton County’s election results have also been called into question by a superior court judge, the Georgia Secretary of State, and the Democrat-controlled Fulton County Election Board. Trump also told Georgia’s top election investigator that her job — verifying the election — was “the most important job in the country right now.”

There used to be a perception that journalism was a rigorous profession, reporting cold, hard facts verified by multiple, on-the-record sources, because it used to be true. But today’s postmodern culture has rejected the very notion of absolute truth, replacing it with the idea that any truth claim is really an attempt to exert power over someone — an idea from critical theory that is friendlier to a Marxist worldview. Sadly, the mainstream media, which has fully ingested this worldview, will continue to promote their political agenda through brazenly false narratives. They will do this without remorse and without consequences, because they are telling their readers what their itching ears want to hear.

In a perfect world, the Post’s misleading reporting would earn “Four Pinocchios.” But if we lived in a perfect world, we would need no “Pinocchio” system. The Washington Post ostentatiously displays a banner reading “Democracy dies in darkness” above every story. If only they could be bothered to bring the truth to light.

Originally published here.

This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.