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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
[NYTimes] Under the Trump Tax Plan, We Might All Want to Become Corporations
. Short version is that the different rates of corporate vs individual income tax could incentivize people setting up corporations so they pay under a corporate tax rate income instead of a personal one. In other words: the tax reform plan has loopholes big enough that all of America
◊* can pass through.
*Not to be confused with the nation called United States of America, which is mostly situated in the continent.
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
Don't forget the bigotry. So much bigotry.
He particularly had it in for the Jewish for some reason. Seriously, it seems like his favorite way of dealing with stress was to get drunk and go on anti-Semitic rants.
Disgusted, but not surprisedGoing back to that city in Alabama re-segregating schools; was it they were specifically going "only white kids here" or was it that they were trying to create a school district for badly veiled racist reasons. Because if it's just that latter, that's nothing new.
And going back to the question of even if it is (which it definitely seems to be racist) can you actually stop people from forming a school district for that if it's just de facto and not de jure segregation?
Normally I just post a little of an article, in this case I'm making an exception.
Now Trump is talking about consolidating his own power.
In an interview with Fox News that aired Friday night, Trump dismissed the “archaic” rules of the House and Senate — using that word four times — and suggested they needed to be streamlined for the good of the country.
A sampling:
- “We don't have a lot of closers in politics, and I understand why: It's a very rough system. It's an archaic system.”
- “You look at the rules of the Senate, even the rules of the House — but the rules of the Senate and some of the things you have to go through — it's really a bad thing for the country, in my opinion. They're archaic rules. And maybe at some point we're going to have to take those rules on, because, for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different.”
- “You can't go through a process like this. It's not fair. It forces you to make bad decisions. I mean, you're really forced into doing things that you would normally not do except for these archaic rules.”
And then Trump came out and just said it: He doesn't like the filibuster.
“I think, you know, the filibuster concept is not a good concept to start off with,” he said.
So there you go. Trump is frustrated with the pace of legislation after 100 days, and his answer is that he wants to change the rules.
Whether this is just him blowing off steam or signaling what lies ahead, it's significant. Because it suggests a president, yet again, who doesn't agree with his own powers being limited or even questioned. Remember when senior policy adviser Stephen Miller declared “the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned?” This is more of that kind of attitude.
He wants more power — and he wants it quickly. It's not difficult to connect this to his past admiration for authoritarian leaders, and these comments are likely to give Democrats (and even some in the GOP establishment) plenty of heartburn. This is a demonstrated pattern for him, for all the reasons listed at the top of this post.
We're a far cry from the presidential candidate who decried President Obama's executive orders, suggesting they were an indication of a weak leader who couldn't bend Congress to his will. Trump is now admitting that he can't bend Congress to his will, but he blames the system rather than himself. Who knew governing was so tough, right?
And it's difficult to overstate how significant it would be if he actually went after the filibuster. The 60-vote threshold for passing legislation in the Senate — which still exists for everything except presidential nominations — is the last vestige of Democratic power in Washington and really the only thing standing in the way of the majority party doing whatever it wants. Getting rid of it completely would change the face of American politics for good and clear a major hurdle for Trump in passing his agenda.
He'd still have to get Republicans to unite behind his priorities, which hasn't proven easy. His health-care push, for example, isn't stalled because of the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. It's actually not even subject to it; his problem is getting House Republicans to agree.
Whether he targets the filibuster specifically or not, his attitude toward his own power is clear: The more, the better. He's already gotten a taste for rolling back the filibuster, and after just 100 days of frustration, he already wants more.
edited 29th Apr '17 12:13:17 PM by sgamer82
Wall Street freaked over American Airlines giving a pay raise to its workers:
Wall Street freaked out, sending American shares plummeting. After all, this is capitalism and the capital owners are supposed to reap the rewards of business success.
“This is frustrating. Labor is being paid first again,” wrote Citi analyst Kevin Crissey in a widely circulated note. “Shareholders get leftovers.”
Indeed, major financial players were so outraged by American’s decision to pay higher wages that they punished airline stocks across the board. American itself took it hardest on the chin, of course, but the consensus among stock analysts was that higher pay at American could signal higher pay at other airlines too, with negative consequences for the overall industry.
JP Morgan’s Jamie Baker was even more scathing than Crissey.
"We are troubled by AAL's wealth transfer of nearly $1 billion to its labor groups,” he wrote, suggesting that the move was not just contestable as a matter of business strategy, but somehow obviously illegitimate.
Baker is certainly correct that for workers to get a larger slice of the pie would be a dramatic new precedent relative to recent trends. As a report last year from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows, in both the United States and other rich countries workers as a whole have been receiving a smaller and smaller share of national income.
Noah Smith of Bloomberg View recently wrote a column summarizing the various main theories professional economists have about why this is happening — monopoly power, global trade, robots, and landlords are the leading contenders for villain.
It’s less quantifiable, and thus not-beloved by academic economists, but my personal view is that what amounts to a management fad for treating workers poorly is an underrated factor here. The beating American took in the stock market — and the outraged tone of the analyst letters — is a clear sign of the constant pressure that modern companies are under to be as stingy as possible with their workforce.
Good ol' Wall Street.
I only quoted the more important parts.
edited 29th Apr '17 12:39:40 PM by MadSkillz
The reason they haven't gotten rid of him is because they're implicated to with all this Russia shit, considering that the RNC was hacked too yet NONE of their shit was leaked by Wikileaks.
Their base are a bunch of (almost literally) brain dead racist morons who swallow fake news and propaganda daily, sometimes hourly. They could easily spin the propaganda of how we needed to impeach Cheeto for the sake of our nation or some other bullshit, and it might take anywhere from six months to two years, they'd fully turn on him eventually.
New Survey coming this weekend!![]()
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But you also need 3/4ths of the States to approve it themselves in order to pass an Amendment, as well as the outright majorities in both Houses. Republicans do not have any of these. Plus, the Republican Party right now is a mess, so even then they probably wouldn't agree to it.
edited 29th Apr '17 1:43:27 PM by DingoWalley1
re: "Trump is now talking about consolidating his power - This is exactly what I expected to happen. Whether he can get his tiny hands around the levers of power to make it happen is another matter.
Trump asked Washington Post to run 2016 electoral map on front page to commemorate first 100 days.
No, he's not insecure. What makes you think that?
And here's a tweet I find incredibly revealing:
But the most pathetic part of his "accomplishments" is "great optimism." This goes back to what we've talked about before: It was never actually making people's lives better (see his legislation), it was about making them feel better, which is much easier.
And that ties into something much more worrisome: When talking about North Korea, while he would “love to solve things diplomatically … it’s very difficult.” That should immediately set off red flags and alarm bells, because he is a lazy-ass motherfucker.
edited 29th Apr '17 1:46:50 PM by Eschaton
@Top of the page: Relevant Youtube clip
.
That aside, apparently some neo-nazis in Kentucky are getting pissed off at Trump for not being fascist enough
.

"Able was I ere I saw Elba."
Hurrah, we're on day 100.
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."