hey're going to move. And it could be a bluff. Maybe they prefer to stay, but they're making sure that people know that if they do go everybody would go and they would turn California into something it hasn't been.

But there have been some other options for raising money that have been raised. First of all, let me say the obvious. No one wants higher taxes when your state is wasting the money. No one wants higher taxes in general, but in the current context of massive fraud, it's going to be really hard to increase taxes on anybody if you know that it's just been wasted. So we'll see how that goes. But some people have proposed that if you just raise the sales tax, it would be a more reasonable approach. The idea is that it's automatically progressive. So if a billionaire buys a boat, a yacht, that's a lot of sales tax. But if you get a stick of gum, it's a little bit of sales tax, but not much. However, the sales tax in California is already insanely high. I forget what it is. So I'm not in favor of a sales tax. It's just an alternative. However, even billionaires agree with the following that billionaires have a way to avoid taxes that ordinary people don't and that maybe that needs to be closed.

Did you know how that works? I used Grok to give me a little tutorial on how the billionaires avoid taxes. And let me see if I can explain that in a way you would understand. So a normal person gets normal income and they pay income tax. A billionaire might not have income at all. They might just have a lot of assets. So one of the ways that they can avoid paying income taxes is to make sure that their businesses do not give them a salary. So there's no income. But where do they get the money to spend if they don't have an income? And the answer is they can take a loan. So they could go to a bank and they can say give me a large personal loan. Now, it wouldn't be large compared to their assets. It would still be tiny, but it would be large to us and it would be so much money that they could spend it like income, buy mansions and yachts and stuff without any income. The bank would say, "Can you pay back this loan?" And the billionaire would say, "Are you kidding? I'm worth $20 billion. I'm only asking you for half a billion." So the bank says that's a pretty good deal and we're definitely gonna get paid back. Not definitely, but probably. So they give them a loan and it's collateralized by the assets of the billionaire. So the bank is happy. They always know they can seize the mansion or seize the stock if something goes wrong. Then the billionaire spends the personal loan just because it's their cash. They can do whatever they want. It's not a business loan. It's a personal loan. Sort of like a line of credit on your house or just the big version. Then when they die, the billionaire, they can transfer those assets to their heirs at a stepped up fair market value. And even the heirs avoid taxes. Now, I believe there's still an estate tax. So if you didn't know, the estate tax over a certain level is 40%. So when I die, if I do, my estate tax above a certain dollar amount will be taxed at 40%. Which is pretty egregious, but it's happening. Anyway, did that make sense? I'd never really spent two minutes looking into why billionaires don't pay taxes. So I would agree that seems like a loophole that needs to be closed. Seems like it.

Well, according to the Epoch Times, the CEO of the IRS, I didn't know they had a CEO, says that 94% of middle class taxpayers will see tax relief next year. So that would be under the big beautiful bill, I guess. Do you believe that? I'm primed to never believe anything about taxes going down. I always think taxes are going up even if all the reporting is it's going down for some people. So I'm going to say maybe but probably not. So it doesn't matter who's president. Doesn't matter what the law is. I never believe taxes will go down.

Whoa. Did you know there's a study SciPost is writing about this of Vladimir Hiri that mass shootings increase the local turnout for voting but do not shift presidential choices. How many of you would have known that without looking at a study that if there's a mass shooting in the news locally you might get a higher turnout for a vote but they don't change who they vote for. The people who wanted Democrats to get rid of guns still want it. And the Republicans say, "Well, it's the cost of being in a free country. Don't take my guns." So they both get more votes, but it doesn't change the mix. They could have just asked me. I knew that.

But Daniel Greenfield of Front Page magazine is reporting that MSNBC, which is now rebranded as MS Now, the ratings have collapsed, as you probably know. How bad is it? We'll see. According to Nielsen Media Research, this is fairly new. Fox News averaged 2.72 million prime time viewers and 287,000 viewers in the key demographic 25 to 54. So that was up 14%. And the key demo group was up 18%. That's pretty damn good. How did MSNBC do? Oh. They averaged 923,000 down 25% since 2024 and only 81,000 in the key demo that was down 39%. Wow. And CNN did even worse. Now the reporting doesn't give reasons. Would you like to know some reasons why MS Now is down and Fox News is up? Well, I say this a lot, but MS Now has bad producers and their on-air talent was mentally insane, right? If you look at any show on MS Now, it's poorly produced. You'll see a table of people who look crazy just yelling at each other. Rachel Maddow looks like she just has mental illness and they just seem a little weak and weird and just somebody you don't want to watch. But also, none of the shows are engineered to be as interesting as Fox. So if you've never watched the show called The Five on Fox, you haven't seen what good producing looks like. So everything from the selection of the cast to how many there are to how they always have the one person who's sort of the foil, the Democrat foil. Everything about that is well-designed and the people don't look mentally insane. So over time you can completely see how Fox News c