Month: September 2016

Hillary Clinton has not agreed to debate me, but she has been researching me. She announced a bigger and better inheritance tax on huge estates, such as the Koch Brothers, George Soros, Warren Buffet and the Walton family. Well, I elaborated on such a Democrat plan back in 1935, and she seems to love it. (Read the Historic quote below)

Clinton had already said she wanted to hike the inheritance tax from about 30% up to 45%. This week she raised it again, saying, for some wealthy folks, the government should get 2/3 of everything a billionaire tries to leave the heirs.

At first I thought maybe she would put this new found money to good use by balancing the budget. But no, she wants it to pay for even more government spending, and the debt will keep rising.

Suppose a man, or a woman, owns a billion dollar oil refinery. If the person dies while Hillary Clinton is president she’ll be the one at the funeral smiling. Instead of the family continuing to operate the business successfully, paying good wages and corporate taxes, the government takes ownership of two-thirds of the business. Knowing her disdain for fossil fuels, she would shut it down and try to persuade the laid off employees to find a job installing solar panels. The local economy will be devastated. And what can the heirs do with one-third of a shuttered refinery?

Of course Donald Trump and the Republicans want to eliminate what they call the “death tax.” Now, I can see why the government has a legitimate claim on a small part of an estate. As I wrote in 1926, “If a Country is good enough to pay taxes to while you are living, it’s good enough to pay in after you die. By the time you die you should be so used to paying taxes that it would just be almost second nature to you.”

Historic quote by Will Rogers: [On a radio broadcast in 1935, Will talked about a proposal by a major Democrat official, who I’ll call Mr. M.]

“He came out with a plan to put a bigger tax on these big estates, an inheritance tax. On an estate of say $10 million, why the government will take about 90 percent of it, and then give the off-spring 10. And then on estates of 100 million, 200 million, a billion and like that, well, the government just takes all of it and notifies the heirs, saying, ‘Your father died a pauper here today. And he’s being buried by the Millionaire’s Emergency Burial Association.’

Now mind you, I don’t hold any great grief for a man that dies and leaves millions and billions. I don’t mean that. But I don’t believe Mr. M’s plan will work, because he gives figures that show what this new inheritance tax would bring in every year. He says in 1936 we get so much, in 1938, and so on. That is, as long as the Democrats stay in.

He seems to know just who’s going to die each year. And how much they’re going to leave. Now, brother, that’s planning!

According to plans, J. P. Morgan has got to die in order for Mr. M. to reach his quota for that year. I think his patriotism might compare with some of the rest of us, but whether he’d be patriotic enough to want to die on this year’s schedule, just to make the budget balance —  I mean that’s asking a good deal of a man to just die right off just so I can balance my budget. He might be rather unreasonable and not want to do it.

So in order for Mr. M’s plan to work out a hundred percent he’s got to bump these wealthy guys off, or something. Well, now, the government’s doing everything else, but there is a humane society.” Radio broadcast, Apr. 28, 1935

The Presidential campaign has been dogged by the candidates’ refusal to be prompt, honest and transparent. Transparent is a word that means you can see right through ‘em. And most voters don’t like what they see.

Here are a few “if’s” that could have prevented a lot of arguments and saved millions of dollars.

If Obama had released full details about his birth in 2008 or sooner, there would be no such word as “birther.” If Trump had released a year ago his tax returns, or at least an accurate summary, no one would be raising a fuss about them. Of course, his income might be far less than he has claimed.

If Hillary Clinton had corrected her huge mistake of having classified emails on a private server shortly after beginning her term as Secretary of State, and then all four years of her official emails had been made available to Congressional committees, millions of dollars and years of investigation would have been avoided. Then we would have never heard the phrase, “At this point, what difference does it make?” nor learned how to bleach emails.

No one accepted my offer to debate, not even our minor party candidates. So I’m gonna sit between two empty chairs and pretend Trump and Clinton are sitting there. I’ll spring a couple of surprises. To Mr. Trump, I’ll quote from his “audited” income taxes and ask, “In 2012 did you actually only net $37,000 after taxes?” Then to Mrs. Clinton, I’ll read one of her “bleached” top secret emails, skipping the CIA agent’s name, and ask, “Would you like me to read any more of your 30,000 boring emails?” (You can read more about my “Anti-Bunk” campaign at: WillRogersForPresident.com)

The first debate next Monday will have six major topics, to be selected by the Moderator, Lester Holt. What should they be? How about these: Illegal immigrants (amnesty, citizenship, deportation); National security (handling classified information, Muslim refugees from terrorist countries); Economy (jobs, tax rates); Federal debt ($19 Trillion and rising); Foreign policy; and Farm policy.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:      

“If you ever injected truth into politics, you would have no politics.”
“If there is one thing a politician hates worse than a recount, it’s somebody that is not in their business.”
“Our Anti-Bunk Party may not get many votes, but we got many a laugh coming. And we’ve got our conscience intact.”

This weekend there were many moving tributes remembering the victims on Sept. 11, 2001 of the horrific attack by Islamic terrorists, led by Osama bin Laden. Our military eventually took out bin Laden, but ISIS has taken over as the main radical Islamic terror group. And they continue to affect our daily lives in most parts of the world.

Back to politics, in a 1935 radio broadcast I referred to the Untouchables in India and to some of the snobbish stars in Hollywood, including Greta Garbo, as Unapproachables. Now, Secretary Clinton has added another word to the dictionary: Deplorables.

She claimed that half of Donald Trump’s followers are a “Basket of Deplorables.” That made Trump and his backers mad so she apologized by saying that actually only 45 percent of them are deplorable. She added the other half support Trump because “the government let them down, the economy let them down, and nobody cares.” And that made President Obama mad.

It turns out that Mrs. Clinton has pneumonia. She should be in a hospital for 3 or 4 days until it clears up, but don’t count on it. She will likely keep campaigning across the country.

Trump continues to praise Putin for his leadership accomplishments in Russia. He somehow ignores that Putin shot down a passenger plane over Ukraine, killed journalists and political opponents, took Crimea from Ukraine, and threatens other former parts of the USSR in Eastern Europe. Can’t Trump find another world “leader” to brag about?

The first Debate will be Sept. 26 and has Lester Holt of NBC as the moderator. But I think, considering the reputation of both candidates for lying and exaggerating, the man who should be the Moderator is the newscaster Holt replaced at NBC, Brian Williams. He told some whoppers, too. Have they ever considered having the candidates under oath, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? That would be a refreshing debate. Boring maybe, but refreshing.

The Will Rogers for President Campaign is picking up steam, rolling along. Neither Trump nor Clinton has accepted my offer to debate, so I may have to challenge the Libertarian, Gov. Gary Johnson, or the Green Party candidate, Dr. Jill Stein.

As a reminder, I am the candidate of the “Anti-Bunk Party.” I am depending on the support of the Dissatisfied members of the Republican and Democrat parties, of which there appears to be a majority.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers: (from the 1928 campaign)

Our Platform will be: Whatever the other fellow don’t do, we will.  Now no man would want a broader, or more numerous planked platform than that.

Now a word to the Republican voters: We won’t be able to pay you anything for your votes, so that will naturally eliminate all Republican support. And as we can’t pay the Democrats, they will naturally, if they have to vote for nothing, stay with their own Party, for they have been voting for nothing for years.

Our support will have to come from those who want nothing, and have the assurance of getting it.

My next debate proposal is to give Hillary Clinton a practice session. I’m not optimistic she will come out of hiding to face me.

But really, she has all the advantages. She has a Yale Law degree and more than 30 years in government. I sneaked out of Kemper Military Academy in the middle of the night and my only time in politics was a short stint as Mayor of Beverly Hills.

When it comes to making money in farming and ranching, she’s got me beat. I learned, almost from the day I was born on a ranch at Oologah, about caring for beef cows and their calves, letting ‘em graze on big bluestem, then in a couple of years we would drive those fattened cattle to the railhead in Kansas City. But Mrs. Clinton learned how to buy cattle futures and almost overnight turn a thousand dollars into $100,000.

I was never ornery enough to attract attention of the FBI so I don’t know how I would come out of an encounter with them. But they seem to love Hillary Clinton. And they love holidays. They interrogated Secretary Clinton on Saturday of the July 4 holiday weekend (and on July 5 said she was extremely careless with top secret emails, but should not be prosecuted). Then late on Friday of Labor Day weekend they released their notes from that interview, with more damning information. My guess is the next bombshell from the FBI will be released on Thanksgiving Friday. Yes, after she’s been elected and everyone is at the Mall.

In our debate, I won’t ask her about anything that happened more than a couple of weeks ago. If I did, she would just say, ‘I don’t remember.’ If she desires, she can have her Blackberry on the lectern. Or 13 of ‘em. For my opening remarks, I’ll just read a couple of her deleted emails, even if they are boring.

Historic quote by Will Rogers: (This is Will Rogers’ debate challenge in 1928. As you read this, replace Al Smith with Hillary Clinton.)

“Gov. Al Smith: This is the open season for Debates, and I believe you and I could put on about as good a one as one of these others.  So I hereby challenge you the way I challenged the other fellow last week. Now the trouble with most Debates, they are confined to a subject.  Now we won’t let that worry us, we won’t let issues or questions worry us at all, we’ll just rent Madison Square Garden.

I hate old records.  I won’t dig up how you voted on every bill since you been in office. I think what a man did years ago has nothing to do with what he is doing today. Your old records mean nothing to me.

What you and I want to talk about is, “What will we do if we get in?” The first thing I will do is to have that White House painted green, so they can’t call it the White House any more.

Prohibition: let’s not mention that.  It has stirred up enough trouble already. Farm relief: you know how a Farmer votes.  When he gets to the polls he reaches in his pocket and sees how much he’s got.  If it’s only a few cents, why, he says ‘Throw the rascals out.’ But if he’s got as much as a dollar he guesses that the rascals is on his side after all, so maybe he’d better leave ’em in.

I challenged Hoover, but he wanted to make it over the radio.  Now, that’s no way to debate. There is too many people listening in that have no vote, so what’s the use trying to convince them? A Debate over a radio would be just about like a game of chess by telegraph.

Al, you want to make your appeal to the common people. Well you can’t make any commoner appeal than I can.  The poor people are my people till election, too.

Let’s hold it in New York City. We’ll hold it at midnight and draw a big crowd. So I am just practicing till I hear from you, and I hope it will be soon. You and I can pack ’em in.”