[Winstonm]

From my experience, the populist movement of today is comprised of the same people who elected Democrat John Kennedy in 1960 - that the Democratic party has allowed that group to be horn-swaggled by social conservative planks into believing that Republicans are on their side is a condemnation of the Democratic party as it was - and a clear message as to where it needs to head.

[RedSpawn]

 rmnka447, on 2017-December-15, 12:32, said:

So what's your solution for solving "wealth inequality"? So far, I mostly hear progressives proposing some sort of income redistribution. Unfortunately, if you take away all the money from the wealthy, you still won't solve the problem. Then what do you do when there's no windfall to redistribute?

A key part of the tax reform is to give US businesses the chance to compete on a fairly level playing field in a global environment. If we keep penalizing and disadvantaging them, it'll mean the continued loss of jobs and wealth from this country which certainly exacerbates wealth inequality issues.

????

Multinational corporations are doing just fine in this global economy. They are not disadvantaged and have manipulated several governments to systematically reduce their corporate tax liability across the globe. Further, as we give the multinational corporations these unnecessary tax breaks, the likelihood that the tax savings will trickle down to the unemployed and underemployed masses is remote.

We are marching toward a lowly-paid service economy and our politicans are doing very little to help Main Street.

The recipients of this glorified form of corporate socialism will continue to invest their tax savings in stock buyback programs and in mergers and acquisitions which will further imperil the job security of the gainfully employed masses.

Multinational companies have no incentive to increase their payrolls or headcount when they can generate respectable earnings per share (EPS) metrics though company stock buyback programs which reduce the total number of shares outstanding and artificially inflate EPS figures. These multinationals will also continue to generate "value" for shareholders by vertically integrating with other industries and reducing redundancies in business processes through layoffs and reengineering.

None of this bodes well for Main Street.

[johnu]

 hrothgar, on 2017-December-15, 03:15, said:

And now Ryan is making noises about retiring...

I don't believe for a minute that thi has anything to do with being sick of the job or completing his work, rather, he is involved in this whole money laundering scandal and is trying to lower his profile to help save his rep when Mueller comes a calling...

TV political pundits seem to agree that this is because he is facing a very credible challenge in the 2018 election and a loss would put a serious dent in his 2020 presidential hopes.

[y66]

 Winstonm, on 2017-December-15, 15:07, said:

From my experience, the populist movement of today is comprised of the same people who elected Democrat John Kennedy in 1960 - that the Democratic party has allowed that group to be horn-swaggled by social conservative planks into believing that Republicans are on their side is a condemnation of the Democratic party as it was - and a clear message as to where it needs to head.

I'm pretty sure you can make a case that quite a few of the people who voted for Trump in 2016 voted for Obama in 2008 and also that Trump way outsmarted the people running Clinton's campaign when it came to winning over voters in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Keith Ellison (D-MN) is rewriting part of the playbook for the Dems. His idea is that the Dems need to be out there knocking on doors and talking to voters 365 days a year, not just once every 4 years and not just posting here in the water cooler. That was definitely part of the story behind the Dems' success here in Virginia in November. He has probably also been praying for the GOP to pass a tax bill that favors corporations and 1 percenters which will kill any remaining illusions that the reachable 10 percent of Trump's supporters have about who Trump and the GOP are in this for.

[cherdano]

Another Trump achievement ldrews can put on his list: the Center for Disease Control is no longer allowed to use the words “vulnerable,” “entitlement,” “diversity,” “transgender,” “fetus,” “evidence-based” and “science-based.”

https://www.washingt...9010_story.html

That'll show these liberal elites, trying to prevent the spread of diseases based on "science" or "evidence".

[Zelandakh]

 kenberg, on 2017-December-15, 14:59, said:

I am going to add my variant on this, since I think this issue of privilege needs to be though about correctly.

Privilege is something that very much depends on context. By Western standards my background was not privileged - my parents split when I was 1 and my mother worked as a part-time cleaning lady with no additional income (or contact) coming from my father. We were poor enough that I was one of a tiny number (3 I think) at school receiving free meals.

And yet on a world scale I am clearly highly privileged. I qualify for the top 1% by income worldwide, for example. So I feel privileged just to have been born in the UK and have the opportunities that that offered. That is already privilege enough - why anyone thinks that the top 20% or so in a developed country should have additional privileges that mean they massively increase the wealth gap to the bottom 20% or so is something of a mystery.

I understand it in a developing country - they perhaps cannot afford to provide everyone with a high-level education and have to concentrate resources - but in the USA? Seriously, you guys cannot afford to give your poorest children a basic education? And Republicans even defend this as good government? Sorry but that is practically criminal.

[kenberg]

 Zelandakh, on 2017-December-16, 06:01, said:

Privilege is something that very much depends on context. By Western standards my background was not privileged - my parents split when I was 1 and my mother worked as a part-time cleaning lady with no additional income (or contact) coming from my father. We were poor enough that I was one of a tiny number (3 I think) at school receiving free meals.

And yet on a world scale I am clearly highly privileged. I qualify for the top 1% by income worldwide, for example. So I feel privileged just to have been born in the UK and have the opportunities that that offered. That is already privilege enough - why anyone thinks that the top 20% or so in a developed country should have additional privileges that mean they massively increase the wealth gap to the bottom 20% or so is something of a mystery.

I understand it in a developing country - they perhaps cannot afford to provide everyone with a high-level education and have to concentrate resources - but in the USA? Seriously, you guys cannot afford to give your poorest children a basic education? And Republicans even defend this as good government? Sorry but that is practically criminal.

Right, I hope it was clear that I agree. Some people can be difficult to help, I made some dumb choices, but there was enough of a structure so that unless I was truly disaster prone I could make something out of my life. As did my parents, who had a far rougher time of it.

Some public schools today are much better than anything that existed, public or private, in St. Paul when I was young. But also some are much worse. And this is the divide that we desperately need to address. Every young person (ok, there are always pathological exceptions but basically "every" is right) wants to grow into a self-supporting responsible member of society. That option was there for me, it was there for my father, it was there for you. It is absolutely nuts that we do not see this as a fundamental responsibility of our society. Even if we forget altruism and look only to our own benefit, we need to do this. I accept that this might be easier said than done, but we need to do much more. Never mind that some people can fork over a thousand bucks per ticket for Hamilton while others can barely afford the price of a movie. That's a small issue. But their kids need to have a future. That's a big issue.

[Winstonm]

 kenberg, on 2017-December-16, 08:32, said:

Never mind that some people can fork over a thousand bucks per ticket for Hamilton while others can barely afford the price of a movie.

I don't mean this as criticism whatsoever but only as an additional comment that unless one has worked in social services it is understandable to be unaware of how many people there are for whom the price of a movie is not even on their radar as an option. It is difficult for us to understand in a country so wealthy the plight of the working poor and their inability to engage with that society.

[Winstonm]

Repeat of information from another poster removed.

[Zelandakh]

 Winstonm, on 2017-December-16, 09:02, said:

Here is what genuine PC looks like:

See cherdano's link a few posts back...

[Winstonm]

 Zelandakh, on 2017-December-16, 09:37, said:

See cherdano's link a few posts back...

I overlooked that post. Thanks.

[barmar]

 Winstonm, on 2017-December-16, 08:53, said:

I don't mean this as criticism whatsoever but only as an additional comment that unless one has worked in social services it is understandable to be unaware of how many people there are for whom the price of a movie is not even on their radar as an option. It is difficult for us to understand in a country so wealthy the plight of the working poor and their inability to engage with that society.

This reminds me of Senator Chuck Grassley's misguided justification for repealing the estate tax: "I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing, as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies." He seems to think that people are living hand-to-mouth because they waste their money. He tried to backtrack on this and say it was taken out of context, and he just meant that the estate tax is unfair in penalizing someone who had worked all their life to amass that fortune. I don't buy it -- he didn't need to put down the poor people to make this point. And I'll bet many rich people spend lots of their money on booze, women, and movies -- they just have so much that they're still rich after doing it.

I really admire Warren Buffett. He's one of the richest men in the world, but from everything I've seen and read about him he's extremely down-to-earth. He's a self-made man, who started working as a teenager and made his own fortune. He still lives in the same house he bought 60 years ago. His only real extravagance is a private jet. He might avoid the estate tax, but not by any clever loopholes: he plans on giving much of his wealth to charity. He ackknowledges that he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, but believes that the tax laws should be fixed to prevent this type of situation.

[Winstonm]

Back to the Russia investigation: The Hill reports:

Quote

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office on Sunday defended its work after a lawyer for President Trump’s transition team accused investigators of improperly obtaining thousands of emails from transition officials.

“When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process,” Peter Carr, a spokesman for the special counsel’s office, said in a statement to The Hill.

The irony that this administration may come tumbling down due to 50,000 missing e-mails is almost too delicious to describe.

[jjbrr]

LOL the spokesman for the special counsel investigation actually offered a statement? That's unprecedented.

[hrothgar]

http://www.ibtimes.c...-inserted-final

Quote

Republican congressional leaders and real estate moguls could be personally enriched by a real-estate-related provision GOP lawmakers slipped into the final tax bill released Friday evening, according to experts interviewed by International Business Times. The legislative language was not part of previous versions of the bill and was added despite ongoing conflict-of-interest questions about the intertwining real estate interests and governmental responsibilities of President Donald Trump — the bill’s chief proponent.

The Trump organization and the Kushners (the family of Ivanka's husband, Jared) have overseen vast real estate empires, and top GOP lawmakers writing the tax bill collectively have tens of millions of dollars of ownership stakes in real-estate-related LLCs. The new tax provision would specifically allow owners of large real estate holdings through LLCs to deduct a percentage of their “pass through” income from their taxes, according to experts. Although Trump, who became famous for his real estate holdings, has transitioned into branding in recent years, federal records show Trump has ownership stakes in myriad LLCs.

The new provision was not in the bill passed by the House or the Senate. Instead, it was inserted into the final bill during reconciliation negotiations between Republicans from both chambers. The provision, said experts, would offer a special tax cut to LLCs with few employees and large amounts of depreciable property assets, namely buildings: rent generating apartment and office buildings.

“This helps people who have held property for awhile, like Donald Trump,” David Kamin, an New York University law professor who served as a special assistant to the president for economic policy in the Obama administration, told IBT. “If you’ve got an LLC that’s a trade or business with a bunch of real estate holdings and few employees, [I] think you’re now golden. You get the deduction.”

Similarly, Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center senior fellow Steve Rosenthal told IBT the provision would specifically benefit real estate investors.

“It would benefit real estate businesses especially, which typically operate as pass-through businesses, most often LLCs,” said Rosenthal, a former tax attorney at Ropes & Gray. “An LLC's building, and other depreciable property, would be ‘qualified property’ for purposes of the new test, as long as the LLC had not fully depreciated the property. That would be unlikely, as commercial real property is currently depreciated over 39 years.”

IBT previously reported that 13 GOP lawmakers directly sculpting the bill —including U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan — have between $36 million and $163 million worth of ownership stakes in real estate-related LLCs. Those entities generated between $2.6 million and $16 million in “pass through” income and could benefit from the new provision.

Sen. Bob Corker, who was considered a potential “no” vote on the bill, abruptly switched his position upon the release of the final legislation. Federal records reviewed by IBT show that Corker has millions of dollars of ownership stakes in real-estate related LLCs that could also benefit.

“Pass throughs” are business entities that don’t pay corporate income taxes, like partnerships, LLCs and S-Corporations. Instead, they “pass through” income to partners, who then pay personal income taxes on the money they receive. The Senate version of the tax bill would have added a 23 percent deduction for income from pass-throughs to the tax code. The new reconciled tax bill shrinks that deduction to 20 percent but, in a last minute change, added a new way around restrictions that would have kept pass-throughs with large income but few employees from benefiting.

The new bill still has the same income provision but adds a loophole: depreciable property. So instead of being being able to get a large tax cut only if you pay a lot of wages, now you can get the tax cut if you own a lot of property.

“If they were saying before Trump wouldn’t get this because his pass-through firms don’t have employees, that’s clearly no longer the case,” Kamin said.

Congress is expected to vote on the final tax bill next week.

[Winstonm]

 hrothgar, on 2017-December-17, 14:24, said:

http://www.ibtimes.c...-inserted-final

The American-style oligarchy marches onward.

[andrei]

Collusion?

Obama and Hezbollah

[Zelandakh]

 andrei, on 2017-December-19, 08:44, said:

Collusion?

Obama and Hezbollah

With Hillary at State and an African Muslim in the WH? seems obvious.

Seriously though, on an initial scan it sounds like a typical turf war between law enforcement agencies. The fact that DT has not revitalised it suggests that the operation might be in a dark (deep infiltration) phase to reach the top. The DEA might well have been seen as too "leaky" for the undercover operative(s) to remain safe. One thing you can be 100% sure about - if Obama was guilty of anything, DT would be shouting it from the roof-tops. He is surely desperate for a good Whataboutism just now.

[Zelandakh]

How's your 401(k) doing?

[Winstonm]

Jesse Watters of Fox News on Saturday:

Quote

We may have proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy [Trump’s] presidency for partisan political purposes and disenfranchise millions of American voters. If that’s true, we have a coup on our hands in America.

I have to quote The Big Bang's Leslie Winkle: Dumbass!

I can only presume that Jesse meant coup d'etat but was unfamiliar with the term - after all, it's not English - so instead praised Mueller with a "coup", defined by merriam-webster as: :

Quote

a brilliant, sudden, and usually highly successful stroke or act

.

It is either that or Jesse was trying to say that he had won on The Price is Right and now we had a coupe on our hands, but didn't know how to pronounce it. Or perhaps he meant coop, as in chicken coop, because they are certainly up to their eyeballs in lame chickens%^t in the Fox News studios, and they probably have it all over their hands.