The IRS Builds its Own Wall

By Lowell Ponte

Is the wall only to keep illegals out, or is it also to keep the rich in? The Internal Revenue Service, which many hope Mr. Trump will rein in, on January 25 asserted its power to revoke the passports of those the IRS says owe taxes. In our latest book, Money, Morality & The Machine, Craig R. Smith and I warned of this. This new Progressive rule declares that citizens who owe taxes would not be permitted to leave the United States. These citizens would be required to pay the demanded tax and penalties to exit, or live out their lives without leaving the United States under a kind of nationwide house arrest. [more...]

Business First Says Major Tech Companies

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

Big news over the weekend came from states, organizations, and public and private companies speaking out against President Trump’s immigration restrictions. Moreover, the long-awaited Super Bowl commercials took their 30-second to 1-minute ad space to fuel the controversy. It seems that the heavyweights are trying to warn the country that this action could hurt our economy. On Sunday, major U.S. tech companies such as Alphabet (Google), Apple, Facebook, and nearly 100 others, argued in a letter to the President that banning visitors would hurt their businesses. [more...]

The Fiduciary Rule is the Obamacare of the Investment Industry

By Crista Huff

President Trump signed a memorandum on February 3, 2017 which directs the Department of Labor to undertake a new “economic and legal analysis” of a pending piece of Dodd-Frank legislation - the new Department of Labor Fiduciary Rule - which was to be implemented in April. The memorandum seeks to determine whether investors and the financial industry have been and will be harmed by the directive, in the areas of access to financial advice, access to investment products, job loss within the financial industry, changes in investment costs and increased litigation. Many news outlets misreported that the President issued an executive order that halted implementation of the Fiduciary rule, but that was not the case. “To the extent that the new analysis reveals problems, the Labor secretary is directed to ‘publish for notice and comment a [new] proposed rule rescinding or revising the rule.’” [more...]