Fascism and the Republican Party

cannabineer said:

The one intractable problem with any privileged voting scheme is its corruptibility. Who watches the watchmen?

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cannabineer said:

The one intractable problem with any privileged voting scheme is its corruptibility. Who watches the watchmen?

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

thats the same argument i always get...so instead of devising a system that can't be gamed, and imposing very stiff penalties for even attempting it, we allow people who have no idea what so ever about what or who they're voting for, to make decisions that effect people who actually go to the trouble to make themselves aware of the realities. because that's fair, too...just like life. the responsible end up carrying not only the irresponsible, but the fucking huge mess they produce as well.
how long do the irresponsible get a free ride? more than a free ride, they get to load their fucking stupid ass baggage up as well.
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DIY-HP-LED said:

Let's talk about accidentally left Republicans....

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HGCC said:

I dont watch many of that guys videos, any talking heads really, but that was pretty good.

It's why I make the joke about finding myself accidentally cheering along with nazis. Rant about banks and big business, income inequality, etc., all things I think are major issues, then it's:

"and who's responsible?!?"
Me: "the capitalist system!"
Rest of crowd: "jooooooos"
Me: "dammit"

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DIY-HP-LED said:

Far Right Turns on ‘Faker’ & ‘Liar’ Marjorie Taylor Greene

Joe Raedle/GettyThe far right is out to destroy one of their own.Over the past week, far-right pundits have begun lining up to take shots at Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as the congresswoman reportedly vacationed in Costa Rica.As for why fellow extremists are upset? That’s three-fold—and...

news.yahoo.com

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DIY-HP-LED said:

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

i can explain that, easily. people are getting fucking stupider, daily. people thought the internet would cause some vast explosion of enlightenment, and what it has caused is a whole generation, still growing, that doesn't bother to learn a motherfucking thing, because they can look up any required information on their brain substitute...they have the attention span of fruit flies, and the situational awareness of a fucking stone.
so, when you actually had to learn shit, you started to realize that you've been a fucking fool so far, and you change your views to deal with that new found knowledge...now, there is no new found knowledge, just a head long rush to the grave through a sea of ignorance to everything not on a three inch screen in front of your face.

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Roger A. Shrubber said:

because they can look up any required information on their brain substitute...

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In one of its last acts under Democratic control, the House of Representatives on Friday released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns, dating to 2015, the year he announced his presidential bid.

The thousands of pages of financial documents were the subject of a prolonged legal battle after Trump broke precedent in not releasing his tax returns while running for, and then occupying, the highest office in the land.

Some takeaways from a review of the documents:

A BANK ACCOUNT IN CHINA

The longtime real estate and media mogul with business interests on multiple continents was asked during a 2020 presidential debate about having a bank account in China. He said he closed it before he began his 2016 campaign — a statement his tax returns show was not true.

“The bank account was in 2013. It was closed in 2015, I believe,” Trump said during the debate. “I was thinking about doing a deal in China. Like millions of other people, I was thinking about it. I decided not to do it.”

The tax returns, however, report that Trump had a bank account in China in 2015, 2016 and 2017.

The returns show accounts in other foreign countries over the years, including the United Kingdom, southern Ireland and the Caribbean island nation of St. Martin. By 2018, Trump had apparently closed all his overseas accounts other than the one in the U.K., home to one of his flagship golf properties.

The returns don’t detail the amount of money held in those accounts.

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MANY FOREIGN INVESTMENTS

China is one of several countries where Trump reported making money over the years.

He reported $38 million in overseas gross income in 2016 and $55 million in 2017, from countries including Azerbaijan, India, Indonesia, Panama, the Philippines, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

This sort of information about potential conflicts of interest for the commander-in-chief of the United States are one reason presidents normally release their tax returns.

It’s not clear what that overseas money came from. Trump claimed tens of millions of dollars in losses and expenses in his overseas investments as well, but his liabilities there sometimes were greater than those in the U.S. In 2016, for example, Trump told the Internal Revenue Service that he paid $1.2 million in foreign taxes, while he ended up paying only $750 in U.S. income taxes.

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WORKING THE SYSTEM

It’s been long known that Trump, like many rich people, has been able to exploit the country’s complex tax code to avoid paying as large a share of his income to the federal government as working families do. When he was pressed on not paying federal taxes in a 2016 debate against Democrat Hillary Clinton, Trump retorted, “That makes me smart.”

It also highlights the two-tier tax system that allows wealthy people like Trump to take advantage of breaks and loopholes not available to regular households. In 2020, for example, Trump reported owning more than 150 private corporations that claimed losses, sometimes in the millions of dollars. Partly by claiming those losses, Trump reduced his own federal tax income liability to zero that year.

Some of those losses were real as the coronavirus pandemic battered the economy. But others reflect special deductions that developers like Trump can take on the depreciation of buildings and equipment.

Some losses Trump claimed may be more questionable — one of the companies he reported owning is called “Unreimbursed expenses.” The Joint Committee on Taxation noted that one of Trump’s firms claimed $438,000 in losses for gift cards redemptions and urged additional investigation of whether the losses were genuine — one of a number of deductions into which the Democratic-controlled committee called for further investigation.

They’re the sort of deductions the typical American household, which earns $70,000 a year, can’t take.

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NO REPORTED CHARITABLE GIVING IN 2020
In the final year of his presidency, Trump reported making no charitable donations.

That was in contrast to the prior two years, when Trump reported making about $500,000 worth of donations. It’s unclear whether any of the figures include his pledge to donate his $400,000 presidential salary back to the U.S. government.

Trump, who has bragged of being a billionaire, told The Associated Press in 2015 that he gives “to hundreds of charities and people in need of help.”

He said, “It is one of the things I most like doing and one of the great reasons to have made a lot of money.”

He reported larger donations in 2016 and 2017, donating $1.1 million in the year he won the presidency and $1.8 million in his first year in office.

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MONEY FROM THE ARTS WORLD

Trump collected a $77,808 annual pension from the Screen Actors Guild, as well as a $6,543 pension in 2017 from another film and TV union, and reported acting residuals as high as $14,141 in 2015, according to the tax returns.

Trump has made cameo appearances in various movies, notably “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” but his biggest on-screen success came with his reality TV shows “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice,” where each episode would end in a boardroom setting with Trump dismissing a contestant with his trademark phrase: “You’re fired!”

Trump also reported paying a little more than $400,000 from 2015 to 2017 in “book writer” fees. In 2015, Trump published the book, “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again,” with a ghostwriter.

In 2015, Trump reporting receiving $750,000 in fees for speaking engagements.

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TRUMP VOWS PAYBACK

Trump broke political tradition by not releasing his tax returns as president. Now Republicans warn that Democrats will pay a political price by releasing what is normally confidential tax information.

Trump himself underscored that in a statement Friday morning after his returns were made public. “The great USA divide will now grow far worse,” Trump said. “The Radical Left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!”

Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over tax matters and released the Trump documents, warned that in the future the committee could release the returns of labor leaders or Supreme Court justices. Democrats countered with a proposal to require the release of tax returns by any presidential candidate — legislation that is unlikely to pass, given that Republicans take control of the House next week.

Notably, the GOP cannot disclose President Joe Biden’s tax returns because they’re already public. Biden resumed the long-standing bipartisan tradition of releasing his tax records, disclosing 22 years’ worth of his filings during his presidential campaign.

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cannabineer said:

It’s a problem that has fascinated thinkers probably since before writing. The badness of the universal solution hardly needs discussing.

But the worseness of any other proactive approach remains unchallenged in its truth.

Are you violating Clarke’s Second Law? No being of intelligence resents the inevitable.

The only out that I see is damned risky, and that is eventual government by AI. Current human nature leaves us with the least bad default.

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hanimmal said:

Better yet, we just work within the system and have people run as candidates that will allow their votes to follow the AI programmed for optimization of the actual citizens benefits/needs of the area that voted in their election.

Human still pushes the button and has to take responsibility for breaking their voters' trust if they go back on their promise to follow it..

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hanimmal said:

Better yet, we just work within the system and have people run as candidates that will allow their votes to follow the AI programmed for optimization of the actual citizens benefits/needs of the area that voted in their election.

Human still pushes the button and has to take responsibility for breaking their voters' trust if they go back on their promise to follow it..

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DIY-HP-LED said:

You already have a souless machine running government, it is called Ted Cruz

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