Station little theme song music.
Welcome back and a Happy New Year from the Taxpayer Protection Alliance, which you can find online of Protecting Taxpayers dot Org. Dave Williams, great to have you back on this year.
Happy new Year, Brian, and it's good to hear my theme song. Good to hear the old streetcar. And I was talking to Joe before I came on. He was mentioning the big snowstorm you had, and of course that streetcar that was chugging along.
It was and they actually, you know, it was kind of really a crazy, great illustration of the allocation of resources, scarce resources, I might add, given the financial situation going on the city of Cincinnati. They actually kept the tracks on the streetcar clear. They shoveled them or otherwise you know,
treated them. But there was a reporter out in the middle of the street with a picture of they call it the Connector moving along, although not a single human being in sight along the long stretch of roadway that they photographed it on. Certainly, and the which is typically the case, no one on the streetcar when they took the photograph. But in spite of the fact that they failed to shovel a lot of roads in the city
of Cincinnati, so people could actually use them. You could sure get on the street car if you're able to make it downtown.
It's amazing how city officials, national officials doubled down on bad ideas. Right, is that they just can't admit when they've made them, you know, the wrong mistake, and they just can't they can't move on with it, and they have to double down on their mistakes.
It's so typical, it really is.
They get they get singular focused, and that's all they care about, and they don't care that everything else is falling apart. We regularly complain here in the city about the roads, just the deteriorating and and and just worsening state of many of the roads. They haven't been cared for. And every calendar year that rolls by, Dave, they all further behind on the Responsibility're supposed to do X number of roads annually and they never even meet that loan goal. So the amount of.
Bryan, Bryan, think of this, So the amount of money they spend on the streetcar per year, how many potholes could that fill every year? And I'm serious about this is if you look at what it costs to fill a pothole, right, and what it costs to operate the streetcar five millionaires. There needs to be an analysis here of like how much the streets because you've just alluded to this, like how much the streets would be so much better and the damage to the cars would be less.
I mean, that's what people need to realize, is that this money is being taken from somewhere. So when you're bottling out in that pothole, think about the money that's going to the streetcar.
Yeah.
Really, And then we're going to get to it a little bit. But now they're talking about building a new arena here in the city, which we know you and I both love.
Must have so much cash. We did, we must have so much money you can just spend.
Just flush with cash. Anyhow wonderful article, David McGarry. You can find it at protecting Taxpayers dot org where she is the Taxpayer Protection Alliance web page. Consumer Financial Protection Bureaus added again targeting credit card reward programs. And this is actually almost I mean, if it was a Babylon b article, we could laugh at it. But apparently like two people in the world have complained about credit card rewards programs, even though there are hundreds and hundreds of
thousands of cards out in the world. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has decided it's going to go after credit card reward programs. How they're going to solve the problem that really doesn't exist, Dave? And what is the problem that they're claiming they want to address.
Wow, this is the most baffling thing.
That we've been talking about for the past couple of years. Is that a certain member of whereas this is Dick Durban from Illinois.
Yeah, Dick Derbin was flying back.
To Illinois and the flight attendants walking down and she said, if you sign up for uh, this credit card, you get fifty thousand miles and you're part of the rewards program.
And He's like, what's going on here? Why are airlines doing this? And this is how it all started. I am not lying to you. This is how this started.
And now he is convinced the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to go after credit card rewards programs. Now, mind you, these same rewards programs are used by millions of people of all income levels to travel to get discounts at the supermarket. You know, rewards programs cover so many things, but this takes one member of Congress to have an idiotic moment.
So wait a second. The rewards program, like, for example, when I use my credit card and it's American Airline. I used to fly to American all the time when I was practicing law in Chicago and I had to travel a lot, and they had you know, big major hub up there, and that was the airline of choice for me. So I've been collecting American Airlines points on my credit card purchases for years and years and years, I mean a couple of decades worth. That's the kind
of reward program you're talking about. Because I use those to help pay for my entire family and my daughter's fiance to fly out west to see Yellowstone National Park. It was awesome. It was like, I finally am going to get these back and I didn't have to pay the four or five thousand dollars it was going to cost to buy five airline tickets. I was really happy about that. A lot of people are what is it? How is that a bad thing?
Though, Because what Dick Durbin and others are saying now is that it's anti competitive, that they're hooking people into credit, that it's benipulative that the credit card company. And there's no competition with credit card companies because it's only Visa and MasterCard and American Express. I mean, there's a whole host of ration now for this, but none of them
make any sense. First of all, credit card companies are very competitive because it's not the send MasterCard, it's the different banks that are competing with the different interest rates. So there's a whole host of things you can choose from. And who cares if an airline wants to give you fifty thousand miles if you sign up for their credit card.
I mean, well, you know the other component.
The other component of this is does Dick have a problem with people getting credit cards? Because last time I checked, and I know this to be a fact. If you want a good credit score, if you're going to buy a house, for example, the factor in your credit score. You can go up to eight hundred and fifty on your credit score, but you need a good and the better your credit score, the more likely it is you're
going to get a well good terms and conditions. You are considered a low risk and if you have more credit available, the higher your credit score goes. So is he going to reform the entire credit score thing as well. Maybe that needs reform, I don't know, but I mean that just going to the point, it's important that you have available credit, not that you use it all and maxim out and get charged thirty percent interest rate for not you know, getting rid of your balance every month.
But you need credit available and that someone's willing to offer you an extra fifty thousand miles. That will help you in one respect by increasing the amount of credit available to you, plus you get an extra fifty thousand miles. It doesn't mean you have to use the damn.
Card exactly exactly and listen, I think, yeah, the credit card industry is under a lot of pressure from Congress because there's talk about capping interest rates on credit cards at ten percent. Now, superficially, that sounds great for consumers, but what's going to happen.
It's going to.
Squeeze credit because credit card companies are not going to give credit cards to people that may not have great credit that need to build that and establish it.
So you're going to have people that cannot get a.
Traditional credit card go underground and be paying twenty five and thirty percent. So again it's government manipulating the market. Let it be, Let the market be. And there's just there's no need for them to do this. I mean, there are bigger fish to fry in this country. For Congress, we're talking about a thirty six trillion dollar debt, We're
talking about border security, tax cuts. This is what Congress needs to be laser focused on, not credit card rewards and whether or not we can use, you know, get fifty thousand miles by signing up for a credit card.
It's just a nonsensical issue.
Well, does the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau even have the authority to do this?
They do because they have this weird authority. First of all, they don't have a budget like Congress doesn't set their budget. They determine what their budget is every year up to a certain amount, like twelve percent. You know, the Fed. The Fed determines their budget. So the Congress has nothing to do with this at all. So their budget, I believe it's about seven hundred million dollars right now and can grow to eight hun undred million dollars with dot Congress batting an eye.
But this is controlling the terms and conditions of contractual relationships between credit card companies. And the individual who applies for the credit card. I I guess I want to know how this independent, you know, an agency has any authority whatsoever to manipulate the terms of conditions between these two separate individuals or the company issuing it and the person signing up for it. How under what government law under?
I mean, that's what I'm saying here. This seems and this seems to be like one of those extra regulatory exercises. Congress never gave the authority to do anything like this, and yet here they go doing it, and somehow we're supposed to comply. It sounds to me like this is going to result in litigation.
Oh, when we hit the nail on the head, it absolutely will result in litigation. And again that's going to take months and years, and maybe we get a court that sides with consumers, maybe we don't. I mean, that's the problem is that at some point it's a crapshoot right on what course the side, And if it even gets to the Supreme Court, who knows what happens. But we don't need the CSPB, we don't need the Consumer Financial Protection Pewer.
It's just it's unnecessary.
Totally unnecessary. I'm just completely baffled by this, Dave, and you're right, this is one of the stranger, more baffling things that you and I have talked about in a long time. Stare around. We've got more baffling things to talk about, including what you and I paid for through our labor, like trimp on treadmills and bearded transvestites on ice. A couple of comments about Rampau's Festus report plus taxpayer funded arena. It's more with Dave Williams coming up after
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There's your nine first morning weather forecast. Uh, it's cold, get that out of the way. Twenty three is gonna be our high today. We'll have sunny skies though nine degrees. Overnight clouds rolled back in. We got snow likely tomorrow sometime around ten. They're estimating between two and five inches of snow. I have twenty eight twenty degrees overnight. Friday, snow will taper off. Slick roads are possible. Be careful and the partly thoty Saturday with a high of thirty five degrees.
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Seven fifty five KRC detalk station Happy Thursday Friday eight call it what you want, good day to be listening to Dave Williams from Taxpayer Protection Alliances on and I'm sure Dave you had a lot of fun reading what you labored through. I would like to express taxation in the form of slavery because they can take whatever they want by way of the taxation level, and after we work and slave over it and they take the percentage
in the slice, they don't quite get enough. And that's why we are spending two trillion dollars more annually than they even take in in taxes. Then they go ahead and spend it on stuff like I don't know, shrimp on treadmills and bearded transvestites on ice, helping other countries with their border security. I mean, we could go on and on and on. It's all laid out in glorious, gory detail in the Festivus Report.
It sure is.
And this is something that Rand Paul has been doing for a number of years now, and we're talking and this year he lists a trillion dollars in wasteful and unnecessary spending.
Then you talk about you know, taxation. If you make one small mistake.
On your tax return, get what the IRS is that, take notice.
And watch out.
But you know, this is an insane amount of spending. And I mean, there's so many things that jump out of me. But there's one item in here, and it's fifteen million dollars to turn the Internal Revenue Service into the tax preparer. So this was supposed to be a study to see if the IRS should do this. The IRS lied to Congress, they said they were going to study this, and they said, oh no, here we go. Here's the program, here's the software that we built, and
it is wildly unpopular. Go figure because they did a pilot program this past year and they said, oh, ninety percent of the people love direct They love for the IRS to do their the returns, prepare the returns. So what we did, Brian, is we submitted a Freedom of Information Act request and we got all of the responses. They listed all their responses. It was not ninety percent. It was less than fifty percent of the people who said that they liked direct file and that it was it was working.
Now here's here's the worst part of this. And we've heard whistleblowers.
They've called us and said, I've been audited that IRS prepared my taxes. Now they're they're auditing me.
I don't know what to do.
So they are going back to H and R Block, to these other private companies saying can you help me? And I'm betting audited by the IRS, and H and R Block is saying, we didn't do your taxes, so we're gonna have to charge you to get you out of this mess.
Yeah.
So the IRS who prepared the taxes did it incorrectly, so now they're being they're auditing the taxpayer. I mean this is orwellians say the least right, I mean, this is just beyond Yeah.
Well, it shocks me not that the way that they prepared the software, that the actual.
Federal government would have gone out and uniformly created its own version of dealing with the tax code. But more fundamentally, I think there is no reason in hell the tax code needs to be as complex and as ridiculous as it is. It is the mechanism through which the government manipulates behavior, and that just irks me to no end. Let's get to a flat tax, Let's get to a fair something that's simple. No more ride offs, no more incentives, no more dangling carrots of you know, incentive from the
federal government through the tax code. Just give me the damn fifteen percent and that's it. One page, single file period, end of story. How why is that not a great idea other than the fact it's going to give up take away their power to manipulate.
Us and the tons of lobbyists in you know, on Capitol Hill that are keeping the tax code complicated because they want their write offs, they want their special treatment. I mean, it's really lobbyist in government working together. It absolutely is, Yep, no doubt about it.
Where are the lobbyists for the tax preparers out there fighting against the IRS taking over their role in preparing taxes? Don't they have enough voices out there and enough lobbying money to prevent that from happening.
You would think they would, But I mean, look what we have now, and now the IRS wants to expand it. This was a pilot program for twelve states. Now they want to expand it to all fifty states, because you know, if you're going to fail at twelve, why not sail at fifty? Right?
Amen?
Very briefly, you got to comment about taxpayer funded arena before we part company.
I saw it on the list of topics, Dave, I'm sorry.
The taxpayer funded arenas, Oh my gosh, an absolute waste of money. This is corporate welfare for billionaires. And there's no reason that taxpayers should be paying for the construction of any arenas. It's just it is the most ludicrous things that locals are spending money on these days, and it just keeps on happening.
What I don't understand is that it keeps on happening.
And we've fought these battles in Kansas City in Florida, and you know, we've had some success, but they just still keep on popping up.
Well, I think it's because people get the idea that they need that professional football team in their city. I don't know for traditional reasons, or because it's a magnet for you know, people going to restaurants or something. But I mean, there's a really, very very small number of football teams in the grand scheme of things, and there are hundreds and hundreds of cities in the country that managed to get along fine without a professional sports team on the taxpayer dollars.
I just have to observe that.
Yeah, and Brian, so many studies have been done about the economic activity generated by these arenas and stadiums.
It doesn't.
These arenas and stadiums do not generate economic activity because people will spend their money elsewhere in the city. It's just shifting spending your money from a restaurant to an arena, so it doesn't bring in any new money. And so many studies have been done. It's been exhaustive, and almost every economist agrees and says no, this doesn't create economic activity.
Plus, I enjoy watching a game at home much more than getting in my car, driving downtown, paying for parking, dealing with weather, and paying twelve fourteen to fifteen dollars for a beer. Dave William's tax.
Baber, then the drunk guy next to you yelling there's that too.
Protecting Taxpayers dot org, check out the website, bookmarket and even contribute to help Dave and the team continue holding government accountable. Dave, I'm looking forward to having you on the show regularly throughout the year, as I always do. Have a wonderful day and a very happy New Year to you and everybody at the Taxpayer Protection Alliance.
Thanks Brian, Happy New Year.
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