Best of the Program | Guests: Kevin Freeman, Kyle Sammin & Max Lucado | 10/22/19

Hello, you sick freak.

Welcome to it.

It is a Tuesday.

Great show for you.

We have Kevin Freeman on.

He's the guy who actually tracked down for the Pentagon what happened right after the 08 collapse.

Remember, somebody got really rich on the housing collapse, somebody got rich on 9-11.

He's the guy the Pentagon hired to track it down because there's something new that is going on.

The media seems to be trying to make this into a Trump scandal, but it's not.

It looks like it's a Chinese and Iranian scandal in our stock market, what it means and what it even is.

Also,

Beto's thoughts on America.

I mean,

I think we all need to hear, we all need to hear those, don't you?

We take some of the chaos and tie it together and show you what's happening around the world and ask you about agents of sabotage.

We talk about Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax and why exactly it wouldn't work and unconstitutional.

And An Amazing, Amazing Hour with Max Lucado, How Happiness Actually Happens, all on today's podcast.

You're listening to the best of the Blenbeck program.

All right, so there's a couple of things going on in the world that I want to address and try to tie together.

My only real skill in life, I think,

is to be able to

see a bigger picture.

I want you to look at the demonstrations in Lebanon, Chile, Spain, Haiti, Iraq, Sudan, Russia, Egypt, Uganda, Indonesia, Ukraine, Peru, Hong Kong, Zimbabwe, Colombia, France, Turkey, Venezuela, the Netherlands, Ethiopia, Brazil, Algeria, Ecuador, and what's happening in England.

Now, what happened last night in Canada?

And I want to break these up into two different categories.

Usually, when you have riots or you have violent protests, it's because of one of two things.

Either the people are hungry and they can't afford the things that they need and they see the government as a problem,

or

the government's not listening to them,

and the government's not responding to them.

Both of those things are happening, but there's a third new one that is also being injected.

So let's look at some of these.

For instance,

you have fuel subsidies that

have been cut.

So the price of fuel has gone up.

In places like Haiti,

they can't afford it.

In Lebanon, there's a new tax levied on the use of WhatsApp.

That's the social media thing.

That's also one of the causes for Uganda.

They're starting to put taxes on social media.

Now, why would you put a tax on WhatsApp?

And why would that cause a riot?

This is really important.

We'll come back to that here in just a second.

In Sudan, it's the cut to fuel and food subsidies.

In Chile, they're protesting subway fare hikes.

Now,

this is where WhatsApp comes in.

You'll notice these aren't striking workers like we have with GM.

These are just average people getting together on the streets.

Now, how is that happening?

That's happening now because we used to have to have labor unions because

it was the only way to get the message out, and we could all come together against the man.

And so you had a labor organizer come in and he would organize everybody.

But now you have WhatsApp, now you have Facebook, now you have the internet.

And so

if you're upset about gas prices, you can find other people that are upset about gas prices that you would have never met before.

This is why the governments are starting to crack down on social media and start to tax them and everything else.

Because just like Facebook admitted to, and so did Twitter, they were greatly responsible for the uprising in Egypt.

And they actually helped push Egypt.

So you don't have to form unions anymore as long as you have the app.

Now,

let's switch to other places.

There is a shortage of gasoline, there is a shortage of food.

Okay, we understand that.

But here's where something new is happening.

In France,

one of the original demands of the yellow vests was, and I'm not kidding,

free parking in Disneyland, Paris.

One of the things, one of the demands they wanted was free parking at Disneyland, Paris.

Now, if you don't understand, if that seems crazy to you, which it does me, it is crazy.

If it seems crazy, it's because you haven't really fully understood what kind of changes are happening to our world.

And there's a reason for it.

People have very high expectations

in these successful countries,

and anything that will help them cut their expenses

or give them free stuff is being pushed.

Just give me free stuff.

And the more free stuff that is out there, the harder it is for, for instance, a government to be able to pay for all that free stuff.

It's an overwhelming of the system.

People are now just starting to say, well, I own that parking lot too.

That parking lot wouldn't be here if it wasn't for us.

I mean, it's in France.

Should be free parking at Disneyland for everybody.

Also, at the same time in France, something else is happening.

Farmers are upset at the climate change plans.

Climate change, if you think it's unpopular here,

climate change with anyone in the socialist-leaning countries

is growing really unpopular with farmers and people, but only people, who consume food

because it's jacking the price of food up.

When the government says we have to cut these programs to save money, nobody wants to hear that.

It's starting to set people on fire because they're also jacking up things like things for climate change.

So here's what we have.

We have the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere with the most dysfunctional politics, Haiti.

And it's seeing protests because the situation is bad.

But in the same hemisphere, we also have Chile.

It's the wealthiest country in Latin America, and it has falling inequality.

So, why are they protesting?

Let me give you one other thing.

I told you 10 years ago, in the future, the operative word will be chaos.

And anything that causes chaos, get away from,

because

we know who the author of chaos is.

So

get away from anybody who's trying to cause chaos.

Let me show you one other thing.

Governments cannot work.

Governments fail

when the gears get jammed.

This is what saboteurs were during the war.

Saboteurs were people that would put a

monkey wrench into the gears.

That was an actual thing.

In the Industrial Revolution, somebody would take a wrench and they'd throw it in the gears and it would break the gears and jam the machine up.

So it would stop the factory from producing things.

That was a saboteur.

Do we have saboteurs in our midst now?

And I don't mean just here, I mean all around the world.

Because the gears of the machine is stopping.

Let me just give you a couple of stops here.

Benjamin Netanyahu looks like he's going to have to quit.

He's been re-elected, but he cannot put together a coalition.

Coalition-style parliamentary governments only work

when there's goodwill.

There is no goodwill.

Everybody is standing their ground.

Everybody is saying, my way or the highway.

So Benjamin Netanyahu looks like he's going to retire and quit, and hopefully they'll find somebody else that can put a coalition government.

But don't count on it because look what's happening in England.

You have Boris Yeltsin, or Boris Yeltsin, Boris Johnson, who is just trying to follow the dictate of the people.

They voted Brexit.

The extremists in parliament are saying no Brexit

at cost.

So screw the people.

Monkey wrench.

Boris Johnson can't put together a coalition.

There is no coalition left.

Justin Trudeau.

Justin Trudeau won in Canada, but he doesn't have a margin big enough to put together a coalition government.

So now the machinery in Canada is also stopped.

And I would say that while we don't have a parliamentary system here, look at our machinery here.

Because one side refuses to work and listen to things that they themselves four years ago said they wanted.

Because they won't act on those things, because they will stand against those things, because they're against one person and putting that one person ahead of the whole country, you don't have a coalition, you don't have good faith, you have nothing that will work.

Congress cannot get anything done, the administration cannot get anything done because they're fighting over things that honestly nobody in the country cares about.

Everyone in the country wants us to move forward.

So, let let me just ask you a question.

And this is an honest question.

Is this really a coincidence?

Now, it could be because everybody seems to have just been violating their social

contract with

the people all over the world.

So it could be.

But it's interesting how no one seems to be learning the lesson.

Things just keep getting worse and worse and worse.

And what do people do?

While Barcelona burns?

Ah, we've got models out there twerking in the streets.

Is anyone taking this seriously?

Is anyone seeing what's happening to the entire world?

It might be a coincidence.

But then again, it might not be.

And we turn to AOC and Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton in one minute.

You remember in Twister, one of the characters comes running towards the camera.

He's like, it's coming, it's coming.

Run for your life.

And the other character says, no,

it's already here.

That was the tagline in, you know, all the trailers.

No, I don't remember that.

Who would remember that?

But people remember the dialogue of Twister.

There's one thing you remember from Twister, which is a cow flying by.

That's it.

That's the only thing that anyone remembers from Twister.

You don't remember the guys,

it's coming.

That was the commercial for it over and over and over again.

I don't remember that.

There was that, and they tied themselves to a pipe to survive a tornado, which is totally realistic.

But you let me do a commercial.

Sorry.

My Patriot Supply has you covered because

Stu will be the guy who's like, I don't remember you saying that.

It's coming.

It's coming.

And I'll say, it's already here, Stu.

Get off my porch.

My Patriot Supply are the experts in emergency preparedness, and they have guaranteed two-day delivery.

Now, disasters aren't going to wait, so why should you?

When the chips fall, find yourself prepared or in trouble with stew.

This week, you'll save $70 on two-week emergency food kits when you go to the website preparewithglen.com.

That's my Patreon supply.

Their food kits last up to 25 years in storage, including breakfast, lunch, and dinners.

They're really, really good.

You order a few today and receive guaranteed two-day delivery discrete to your door.

You take action so you're ready when something comes

because it's almost here.

Save $70 right now.

Just go to preparewithglenn.com.

That's preparewithglenn.com.

We break for 10 seconds, station ID.

All right.

So

I'd like to

just give you this headline.

Democrats 2020 race has a new shadow,

Hillary Clinton.

Some Democrats are putting caution signs up for Hillary Clinton as she wades back into presidential politics by casting a 2020 candidate, Tulsi Gabbard, as a Russian asset, mocking President Donald Trump's dealings with foreign leader and drawing counterattacks from both.

Bernie Sanders

wrote yesterday, people can disagree on issues, but it is outrageous for anyone to suggest that Tulsi is a foreign asset.

Larry Cohen, one of Sanders' top supporters, was conciliatory, but warned in an interview that Clinton could harm the eventual 2020 nominee by weighing in against specific candidates.

And now they're thinking that maybe,

maybe,

she's thinking about running.

Of course she is.

I mean, there's no chance of winning, but of course she's thinking that.

You think, really?

Boy, yes.

I mean, she's thinking about it.

Yeah, no, I'm not saying anyone else is thinking about it.

She is thinking about it.

She's thinking about it all the time.

Oh, they'll come crawling back to me.

They will.

I mean, when they went with, she went with the double stack conspiracy theory yesterday that it was Dulcie Gabbard was a Russian agent and Jill Stein was a Russian agent.

At that point, you kind of thought she's a little desperate and certainly obsessed about this.

But you don't think she's actually jumping in, do you?

I think she is waiting for the moment where they're just going to come and ask me.

I know they'll come and ask me

to leave because that's what people are asking her about.

She is delusional.

She is delusional.

And the Democrats know that they're in trouble mainly because of the split in the party.

I mean, I don't know if you've seen the headlines in the last 24 hours, but because of Ocasio-Cortez, they're now saying, is the Democratic Party, as we know it, over this election?

And I think so.

I mean,

you mean it changes into something

I mean that was

Ocasio-Cortez and the squad endorsing Bernie rips that apart.

Well, they're setting a pretty clear signal.

I mean, you know, think about this.

You have, we're in a moment where Warren is arguably the frontrunner, right?

Warren's going to give you 95% of what you want out of your socialist candidate.

95%.

Okay.

Why now?

Do you pick now to endorse Bernie Sanders, a guy who can barely walk across the stage?

Now, I want you to listen to this because I think this is spot on.

Now, listen.

Remember, Bernie Sanders just had a heart attack.

Yeah.

Okay.

He's falling in the polls.

She's rising.

Biden is falling in the polls.

Warren is clearly the one to rally around.

And again, Sanders just had a heart attack.

And they pick that moment to endorse.

Why?

Why?

Number one, she's saying, this is my movement.

As soon as Bernie's gone, I'm in it.

It's me.

I'm the head of this socialist movement.

I am the one

to bring the torch forward.

And this is not something that's going away.

And number two, there is no compromise when it comes to socialism.

There is no 95% of what we want from Elizabeth Warren.

We want 100% of it.

We're not satisfying for someone who still says they're a capitalist despite all evidence.

We are the people that are going to say, no, we want them to say they're socialists.

We're not embarrassed about it.

And we're going forward.

And going forward, when Bernie does decide to stop running, it's my game.

Yep.

She will take the torch up.

And all you have to do is know what party she was actually working for.

It's not the Democrats.

And go back and listen to what Sank said the night of the last election.

We're tired of these people.

We'll destroy them.

The best of the Glenbeck program.

Hey, it's Glenn, and you're listening to the Glenn Beck program.

If you like what you're hearing on this show, make sure you check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

It's available wherever you download your favorite podcasts.

Okay, here's the story from Vanity Fair.

In the last 10 minutes of trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on Friday, September 13th, someone got very lucky.

That's when he or she, or a group of people, sold short 120,000 SP E-minis, their electronically traded future contracts, linked to the Standard ⁇ Poor's 500 stock index.

When the index was trading around 3,010, that's when this purchase came in to sell it short.

The time was 3.50 p.m.

in New York, and it was nearing midnight in Tehran.

A few hours later, drones attacked a large swath of Saudi Arabia's oil infrastructure, choking off production in the country and sending oil prices soaring.

By the time the CME opened for pre-trading Sunday night, the SP index had fallen 30 points, giving that very fortunate trader or traders a quick $180 million in profit.

Now, does that sound like something that Donald Trump or one of his people are doing?

And does that sound like the chaos he's creating?

It was not an isolated occurrence.

Three days earlier, in the last 10 minutes of trading, someone bought 82,000 S ⁇ P E-minis when the index was trading at $29.69.

It was nearly 4 a.m.

on September 11th in Beijing, where a few hours later the Chinese government announced that it would lift tariffs on a range of American-made products, as has been the typical reaction in the U.S.

stock markets as the trade war with China chugs on without any perceptible logic.

When the news about the potential resolution

seemed positive, stock markets go up.

The news was viewed positively.

The SP index moved swiftly on September 11th to 2996, up nearly 30 points.

That same day, later, President Donald Trump said he would postpone the tariffs on some of the Chinese goods, and the SP moved even higher, up 47 points.

The person that bought the 82,000 e-minis just before the market closed on September 11th

saw a movement up.

An e-mini contract worth $50

just moving up 47 points is now worth 2,350.

That person or persons made $190 million.

Now that sounds to me like that one was coming maybe from China, somebody that knew China, or they were just extremely lucky.

A week earlier, three minutes before the CME closed on September 3rd, someone bought 55,000 e-mini contracts with the index at about 29.06

around 9 p.m.

New York, 9 a.m.

Hong Kong.

Market started moving, kept rallying for six hours, then reaching 2936 around 2 p.m.

Hong Kong, 2 a.m.

New York.

Carrie Lam, the Hong Kong leader, announced that she would be withdrawing the controversial extradition bill that had been rolling the city in protest for months.

Somebody there made $82 million.

But then, somebody who bought 420,000 September E-minis in the last 30 minutes of trading in June 28th, that was 40% of the day's trading volume.

They made a trade that no one could ignore.

President Trump was already in Osaka, Japan, 14 hours ahead of Chicago, on his way to a roughly hour-long meeting with China's President Xi.

As part of the G20 summit, Saturday in Osaka, the market had closed, blah, blah, blah.

Trump emerged from the meeting with Zi and announced that

their intermittent trade talks were back on track.

That person made a profit of $1.8 billion.

When this happened on September 11th,

a financial expert who now does a show on Blaze TV

was called in by the Pentagon and said, Can you do the forensics on this?

And he found that indeed somebody shorted the market and it looked like it was a sovereign fund.

Kevin Freeman was that guy, and he's on with us now.

Hi, Kevin.

Kevin, are you there?

I am, Glenn.

How are you doing?

I'm good.

So,

this story is presented as if it is Trump that is, you know, possibly

involved here, but this looks like it would be sovereign funds or investors that have inside information outside of the U.S.

and not about U.S.

movements on things.

Is this just a string of coincidence or does this look like a pattern to you that we should be looking into?

Well, there's no question it's a pattern, number one.

Number two, it is not President Trump.

He wants to see the market go up every single day, all day, every day, during the period of his presidency.

He has no desire whatsoever to manipulate the market during this.

His trades would be noticed.

There's no way he's behind it.

But foreign governments are behind it.

It's what I wrote in my book, Secret Weapon.

It's what I talked about when you first uncovered my research from the Pentagon.

It's what we've talked about on the show all the time.

Foreign governments have interest in manipulating our market, or traders associated with foreign governments, they want to both profit, but they also want to destroy the American economic system.

So is this the beginning?

Has this been going on forever?

Because I mean, if I'm Tehran and I'm really struggling for cash and I'm going to launch some things, I immediately short the markets because I know it will affect and that will just give me more money for whatever it is I'm trying to do.

Well, there's no question.

In fact, Osama bin Laden was found to have manipulated the markets prior to 9-11.

And, you know, they dismissed it in the 9-11 Commission, but there are several collegiate university studies that came back afterwards and said, no, there was unusual trading activity in United Airlines and in reinsurance companies and so forth before 9-11.

This is a path to profit if you don't mind manipulating, causing harm to people and so forth.

Of course, it's an old mob technique.

You take out insurance on a warehouse and then you burn down the warehouse.

So absolutely, it's a way to make money, and it's a way to manipulate the global system.

So what has stopped people from just making money like this in the past?

I mean is this

something new that we're dealing with?

No, it's not entirely new, but it certainly has ramped up recently and certainly with the Iranians.

I mean we gave, for example, during the Obama administration, we gave the Iranians something like $150 billion to play nice and be good and so forth.

But now they're desperate for capital.

And under the Trump administration, we're really locking down in a lot of areas.

And so this is their way to lash back and to access capital.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: So

the market should know who's making these transactions, right?

Is there a way to track them?

No, you can do a lot of this in secret through dark pools and other places.

And keep in mind, we just assume that every trade is economic.

That's something that we're born and bred into.

So where a trader says, well, somebody's trying to make money.

This is economic.

And so we assume that they're acting nice and being legal and appropriate.

It's not always the case.

So what we say in the economic war room is what we see as a marketplace, our enemies view as a battle space.

And there's no real way to

track down some of these foreign trades.

You can say they're unusual, where is it coming from?

But there's no real way to trace and understand what happened in 2008, for example.

We looked at the short selling on the banks, and you had to go through like seven layers before you found out where it came from, which was a sovereign wealth fund in the Middle East.

It took, you know, they were trades placed by traders, placed by dart pools, placed by you just keep going back until you finally found where it was.

And it takes a while to do that forensic analysis.

Aaron Trevor Brandon, are you concerned at all?

We've talked on this program about the, I think it's $50 trillion that China has just printed,

and 24 of that looks like it went to offshore accounts and was was invested in stocks, bonds, et cetera, et cetera, here in the United States and in the West.

That is a staggering amount of money that if somebody wants to collapse the market, you know, $20 trillion, $15 trillion

makes the market move dramatically, does it not?

Yeah,

it would.

You normally wouldn't be concerned because a major nation would realize that the blowback if you destroyed the global financial system would be so severe.

The frightening thing to me is that China has, along with Russia and other nations, created virtually an alternative economic system that doesn't use the Western system at all.

So they may not use the swift transaction system they've created, their China payment system.

They may not use the International Monetary Fund.

They may use the Asia Development Bank.

And so normally you'd say, well, no sane nation that's not collapsing would

collapse the world economy because it would just damage them too much.

But we're fast approaching the point where they may have an alternative system.

If they wanted to pull the plug on the West, they could restart very quickly and they would be winners from this.

And this is something that's actually out in the literature.

It's something they've talked about in unrestricted warfare.

And it's also something that the Russians talked about more than, well, 20 years ago now.

Well, but they've also taken action steps on those.

They're both stockpiling gold,

and they both have negotiated with Saudi Arabia to get off of the petro dollar.

And so they've already taken those steps to

show us that they are moving towards getting away from the Western standards.

Absolutely correct.

100%.

Okay, and it never makes me feel good when I talk to you, Kevin.

I mean, I always am glad because I know you know these things, but

there's part of me that's like, I don't know if I really want to know these things.

What should we be looking for, Kevin?

Well, one of the signs would be

an issue that we're dealing with is the thrift savings plan, where the Chinese are still seeking to access Western capital.

And so in the thrift savings plan of the United States, which is all of our pensioners and retirees and veterans and so forth, that's going to be invested in the MSCI International Index, which is heavily weighted to China, much against the patriotic veteran who doesn't want his money going into Chinese stocks.

As long as they continue to access Western capital,

they're probably not pulling the plug yet.

They're just preparing for it.

And that is a massive push to take billions and billions of dollars from our thrift savings plan and put it into Chinese companies.

It will be very painful when they switch over.

It will be more painful for us than them if they succeed.

Their economy, unfortunate or fortunately for us, their economy is not the powerhouse juggernaut that it once was.

They're struggling, and President Trump, as the first president in my lifetime, actually stood up to the Chinese.

So, this is a war, and we're finally beginning to recognize it.

There's no other signal we need to realize that they're fighting an economic war against us.

We've seen everything we need to see, and what you're mentioning here about

currency that they're pushing around the world to the tune of trillions just boggles my mind.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Hey, it's Glenn.

And if you like what you hear on the program, you should check out Pat Gray Unleashed.

His podcast is available wherever you download your favorite podcast.

Hi, it's Glenn.

If you're a subscriber to the podcast, can you do us a favor and rate us on iTunes?

If you're not a subscriber, become one today and listen on your own time.

You can subscribe on iTunes.

Thanks.

Okay, so we've been hearing a lot about wealth tax, and I don't even think most people even know what a wealth tax is.

And they stop listening because it's only going to affect, they say, only going to affect those people making, you know, or have a billion dollars or more.

But it's going to be a tax on everything they own.

So their art, the money they gave to their kids,

you know,

all of it, all of it.

And so it doesn't seem to be constitutional at all,

but everybody is loving it because it doesn't affect them and it's going to raise all this money.

But it's unconstitutional.

Kyle Salmon is the senior contributor for the Federalist.

He has a podcast.

He's a co-host of Conservative Minds.

Welcome to the program, Kyle.

How are you?

Good.

Thanks for having me on, Glenn.

You bet.

So you wrote a very good article in the Federalist about why Elizabeth Warren's wealth tax is completely unconstitutional.

But

can you explain it in simple layman's terms

why and what a direct tax is?

You know, just kind of break this down for us.

Sure.

And the distinction, I mean, between direct tax and indirect tax is one that doesn't come up very much.

But it was something discussed at the Constitutional Convention because the Founding Fathers, the government they were living under, the Articles of Confederation, did not have the power to tax.

They had to just ask the states for money and hope they got it.

So a lot of times they didn't get it because the states didn't want to pay it.

So when they wrote the Constitution, they thought, well, okay, we need to be able to tax directly.

So Congress can levy a tax and we can pay for the Army and the Navy and everything else we need to pay for.

But they didn't want to give them too much power to tax.

They didn't want them to overwhelm the States and take away all of the people's money and

put themselves in a worse situation.

So they split the difference and said that Congress could tax, but they couldn't do any direct tax unless it would be apportioned by population.

So

what does that mean?

At the Constitutional Convention, Rufus King of Massachusetts asked, what is the precise meaning of direct tax?

And according to Madison's notes, nobody answered and they moved on.

Okay, good.

So even in the beginning, it was sort of a compromise language.

But as we moved on, it kind of took on the idea that a tax on people or property is a direct tax.

A tax on sales or imports is an indirect tax.

So Congress always has taxed imports or had the ability to tax imports.

I mean that's tariffs and we've had that since the beginning.

And

the

you know Alexander Hamilton came up with the whiskey tax which caused a little stir in the West, but it was definitely constitutional because it was a tax on the sale of whiskey.

But they could not tax property directly was the idea

unless they apportioned that tax among the states so that each state paid its share according to population not according to property effectively this made property taxes impossible because it wouldn't make any sense

why why if you had two states that had the same population say

but one of them was rich and one of them was poor they'd both have to sit pay the same amount of property tax to the government

but what effectively means is that each poor person in the poorer state had to pay the same amount as the rich people in the the richer state.

Okay.

Sort of the opposite of how taxes, even in those days, were meant to go.

So it had to be apportioned by the state, meaning California and South Dakota would pay the exact same rate

and as a state.

Yes.

But if one was California that had all the rich people there and South Dakota had none of the rich people there, they're screwed.

Yeah, and that's why Congress never really imposed a tax like that because it would have made no sense and everyone would have been angry.

So

that worked for about 100 years, and then we get down to the first permanent income tax getting imposed in the 1890s.

And people said, hey, isn't this the same thing?

You know, you're taxing income, that's a direct tax.

And the Supreme Court agreed, and they said you have to apportion this, which basically meant they were going to repeal it because of the same problems.

Then we passed the 16th Amendment a few decades later that says you can do direct taxes on income, but all the other direct taxes are still not permitted unless they're apportioned.

Well, what is the difference between my income

and

my stuff?

Well, that's what the court said in Pollock, a case that struck down the unapportioned income tax in the 1890s, because they said, look, if you have property and we can't tax that directly, now you get income from that property and we can, it doesn't make sense.

It's the same thing.

Right.

Right, or you can't tax a person directly, but you can tax his income.

That doesn't make sense.

So

that's what that was struck down, and it's only legal now because of the 16th Amendment which carved out this one part of direct taxation and left everything else closed.

So it's only about income tax.

And they had to change the Constitution to make it that direct tax could only be income.

Right.

And it's it's pretty broad.

It's income on you know any kind of income you get they can tax and they do.

But it's got to be income.

It can't be just property.

And that's why there is no federal property tax.

I mean we have you know in your state or your township or whatever, your school district, you might pay a property tax, but there's no federal property tax, and this is the reason, because it, you know, without going through these weird math computations to make it fit the Constitution, it's not the Constitution.

So how is Elizabeth Warren, I mean, besides getting away with it with the American people because they just don't know, how is she planning on pulling this off?

She hasn't had a good answer for that.

I mean, that's, that's kind of John Delaney brought it up in the last debate that he was allowed to participate in, and they kind of just moved on from it.

But he raises a very good point.

This is something that, you know, we've had 100 plus years of direct tax jurisprudence that says you can't just tax property directly.

The one thing that, I mean,

one thing that's kind of confused the issue is in the Obamacare case,

you remember that

they struck down the insurance mandate, but said it could survive as a tax.

And in the dissent,

Justice Scalia brought up this direct tax question.

He said, wait a minute, if you're saying this is a tax,

this is a tax on a person not having insurance.

That sounds a lot like a direct tax, not an indirect tax.

And Justice Roberts kind of shrugged this off and said it's he looked at a bunch of direct taxes that existed in the 1790s, the first time the court looked at this and said, it's not one of these, so it can't be a direct tax.

But

it's sort of a backward reasoning because, of course, it's not one of those.

They didn't even have health insurance in the 1790s.

Right.

Right.

Not having health insurance.

Right.

So that kind of muddied the waters a little bit.

And perhaps Warren thinks she could, you know, if the Democrats succeed in court packing, just, you know,

tell me the ramifications, because people will it's people with a billion dollars.

They have it.

They won't miss it.

Tell me the ramifications of it.

Well, I mean, that's, that's part of it, too.

It's not just the billionaires.

It actually starts at if you have 50 million, which is still it's more than I'll ever have.

But it's, you know, it's a lot closer.

And the problem problem is, that's a Warren said.

She said, it's 2%.

It's on the ⁇ only the very rich are going to pay it.

You know, who cares, right?

But that's exactly, even down to the percent, what they said about the income tax in 1895.

They said it was a 2% tax, and it was only on people making $4,000 a year or more, which in today's money is about $116,000.

You know, it was less than 1% of the population.

And they said,

if I remember right, they said it would never go above 7%

and it would never be paid by anybody but the uber rich.

Yeah, this was just a rich man's tax, you know, and then people got behind it.

They said, well, yeah, look at these guys.

This guy owns 100 factories.

He can pay 2%, right?

But

it never stops at that.

Once they get access to a new form of taxation, it always creeps in and goes more.

And especially because something like a wealth tax

and Lawrence Summers, Clinton's Treasury Secretary, brought this up more than once in response to Warren's plans.

It's not going to take in as much money as she thinks.

They've tried it in Europe over the decades, and it never brings in as much because people hide their stuff.

Or then you have things that, like

the things that regular folks own, you know how much they're worth, you know.

But the things that rich people own are sometimes hard to value.

And then what that turns into is just an audit every year because this is an annual tax where she wants 2%

every year of all your stuff.

Which doesn't that over time just delete, just deplete

your stuff?

Yeah, I mean, that means you have to earn 2% on all of your investments just to keep them.

And some things aren't owned as investments.

I mean, sometimes you might, you know, people own a house.

It might not go up 2% every year.

I think most don't, you know, but you don't own it necessarily for an investment.

You own it because it's the place you live, you know, or other things.

You know, I mean, things you, you know, art, it can be an investment, but that market is very up and down.

And art collectors don't always buy because they appreciation they buy because they think it's beautiful and they want it on their house

so keeping yeah this this basically says if you don't earn two percent on these investments every year in a way that you can pay to the government like you earn two percent cash really because if you you know if your house goes up two percent it doesn't mean you have that two percent it's you know you have to have the you have to have the two percent in cash which might require you selling an asset to be able to hit that

right so it's it's a very and then you know, I mean, we have we have estate taxes where audits go on for years and these big estate taxes.

I mean, I began my legal career as a trust and estates attorney, and there's a whole lot that goes into those, and they only happen once a generation.

This would happen every single year.

Unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

All right.

Kyle, thank you so much.

I appreciate it.

All right, thank you.

You bet.

We wanted to have him on.

He's podcast host, Conservative Minds.

Wanted to have him on because he took this very complex thing thing and made it pretty simple in the Federalist.

And there's just no way to do it.

And the ramifications of stuff like this, it fundamentally changes.

If they can get away with this, like Obamacare, if they can get away with this, if they can start to say, no, we can have direct taxes like this,

they're going to go after everything because they have to.

They have to.

If they are wanting to spend an extra $50 billion, a trillion to $100 trillion in the next 10 years, they have to have access to everybody's stuff.

That's still not going to be enough.

No, still not.

But I mean, they're talking about if you think that it starts at 50 million and it stays at 50 million, you're nuts.

It's going to be: do you have 50,000 in your bank account?

Well, then we need a percentage of that too.

And what do you have?

What about your stocks?

What about your retirement funds?

You don't come after all of that.

You don't own anything.

You don't own anything.

That

goes against everything this country has stood for.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

Like listening to this podcast?

If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes.

And while you're there, do us a favor and rate the show.

Max Lucato is here, and one of the reasons why I'm having him on, I'm just being transparent, is he's friends with Chip and Joanna Gaines and they're my favorites and I'm a huge fan and

if you ever just want to pass my name out there and say, you know, I have a friend and he'd love to have dinner with you guys, feel free, Max.

I'm just saying, feel free.

Those two people, if you watch Chip and Joanna,

They have a, what seems to be, a happy family because they seem to have fun with each other.

They laugh.

They love each other.

They support each other.

In your book, you talk about how it's got to be a five-to-one ratio, positive to negative.

Are you there, Max?

Yes, yes.

And you talk about how you have to have, you know, you have to have more positive going out than negative.

Talk about families and relationships.

Yeah, yeah.

You're right about Chip and Joanna.

They're just splendid people.

I wish I knew them better, but I know Chip better than I know Joanna.

I mean, you know Chip enough to say, hey, you should get together with my friend Glenn, right?

I'll do it.

I'll do it.

I'll throw him in the dance right now.

Okay.

All right.

Anyway, Max, go ahead.

You know, this whole issue of happiness, the big idea is that

we can find happiness by making other people happy.

That's really what we cherish about people who have a genuine happiness.

They haven't found it because they won the lottery.

They haven't found it because they found a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.

They found it because they discovered that the secret to happiness is making other people happy.

And you cited some really fascinating research, and that is that healthy, happy marriages have a five-to-one ratio of encouraging words over negative wounds.

Negative words.

The truth is, words can wound people.

Words can bless people.

Some people's words are like water on an oak tree.

Some people's words are like poison or some type of toxicity on an oak tree.

And so what I urge people in this book is look at the ways that you can make other people happy.

Because

you set out today.

to make five or ten people happy.

You just set out today to give them words of encouragement, to bless them, to compliment them, and you'll be amazed how the clouds part in your own sky, and

you really will find that it's more blessed to give than it is to receive.

You know, that sounds like such

dime store

advice.

It's too simple.

Right, but it is true.

I am convinced, Max, that

we are arguing so much about how bad things are in our past and everything else if we just said you know what let's put that on the table for a while let's put that on a back burner for a while there are 50 million slaves right now enslaved in the world let's let's work together to get those people out of bondage I think we would forget about all of our problems quickly and the people we thought we were you know enemies with would soon become our friends because we were not focused on us

that is absolutely the truth and that's a biblical truth, and it's increasingly being borne out by research.

In the first chapter of the book, I talked about what I thought was really a fascinating piece of research

in which volunteers

were attached to an MRI scanner, and they were asked to imagine.

Glenn, not even do, but just to imagine doing good things for other people.

And when they imagined it, it, that part of our brain that is called the pleasure center just lit up like Christmas trees.

And just the thought of doing something good for somebody generated the same response that a good meal or a hobby or a beautiful walk on, you know,

on a trail on a blue sky day.

It generated that level of happiness.

So the point is, you don't have to change your circumstances to find happiness.

That's the big lie.

And that is, if I can get my circumstances right, then I'll be happy.

All we need to do is go from the posture of everybody take care of me to the posture of I'm going to try to serve other people.

I heard a speaker, actually I did my wife heard a speaker just over the weekend bemoan what you were talking about, and that is the decrease in church attendance.

And I'd love to explore that with you.

It's a disturbing fact.

And he said, I wonder how much of that is the fact that we live in a society where if your coffee isn't exactly the way you want it, you walk it back up to the counter and they'll make you a brand new one and give you an apology.

Or if your pizza is not the way you want it,

they'll send a team to your house and bring you a new pizza.

And he said, I wonder if we've created an attitude in churches of all sorts that if you don't like the temperature or the song or something the preacher said, then

it needs to be fixed to serve me.

It's a consumer mindset

that is taken into churches, and consequently, no church is perfect, especially mine.

And so people are saying, well,

they're not meeting my expectations.

And

as a result, the attendance is at an all-time low.

I would like to actually explore that.

Let me take a break here, but before we do, let me just throw this out.

My son said to me Sunday morning, we're getting up to go to church, and he said, Dad, why do we have to go to church?

I'm so tired.

Why do we have to go to church?

And I said, Because we have to say thank you for all the things that have gone right this week and all the blessings that we have.

We have a lot to be grateful for.

And

I wonder if we have

forgotten that this isn't our time to have things made right for us.

This is our time to go with gratitude and to hear what he's trying to tell us.

Okay, here's what you do next.

I don't know if we have that attitude.

The Blaze Radio Network

on demand.