JHB
JHB's Journal"Simplifying" the tax code by cutting brackets has always been a lie and a swindle
The Trump/Heritage Foundation Project 2025 is a wish list of Conservative/Right-Wing hobby horses, one of them being "simplifying" the tax code by cutting the number of brackets down to two: 15% and 30%.
This is a repeat of the tax cuts in Reagan's 2nd term, with the brackets then being 15% and 28%, with the dividing line being roughly at the median income at the time (in effect 1988-1990). All it got us was a ballooning deficit and the last gasp of actual Republican fiscal responsibility when GHW Bush went back on his "read my lips, no new taxes" pledge and signed a feeble improvement by adding one -- count 'em, ONE -- additional bracket at the high end. Bill Clinton signed a reform adding two more. It was still inadequate and didn't go anywhere near really high incomes, but it proved doomsaying Republicans wrong by putting us into budgetary surplus.
The argument for "simplifying" the tax code by cutting brackets was always a lie. All the complicated parts (what's deductible, what type of income is this, can I take these credits, etc.) come before calculating the bill. Calculating what is owed is just math, no matter the number of brackets. It can be tedious, but it's already simple. And that was before these little things called "computers" that, y'know, compute numbers fast.
The highest number of brackets we had was more than a hundred years ago (1919-1921) when there were 56. Let me repeat that: FIFTY-SIX! Fifty six in an age of paper calculations and mechanical adding machines. Today we can make tee shirts with enough computing power to handle the bracket math.
Through most of the post-WW2 era, there were 24. It's been over 10 years since I did some adjusting for inflation, but to take good old 1955 as an example, two-thirds only affected taxable income above the equivalent of $250,000 (in 2013 dollars). Eleven of those only affected taxable income above the equivalent of half a million dollars. The top bracket affected taxable income over the equivalent of a little under $4 million.
It is now and always has been about cutting taxes for the top and sticking everyone else with the bills.
Related discussion: Trump's Project 2025 will bring large middle class tax increase
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100219165937
ProLeft Podcast Ep 819 Ridin' With Biden!
Jul 12, 2024 The Professional Left with Driftglass and BlueGal
We're so stabby about the mainstream media right now, it's a swear-fest. Fran is boycotting MSNBC for the Summer to protect her mental health and punish the suits upstairs (Sorry, Lawrence.). And Driftglass remembers the 60th anniversary of Freedom Summer, when Black Mississippians had to fight the Democratic establishment to become the Democratic base. More at proleftpod.com.
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JHB: An unequivocally Pro-Biden perspective from the cornfields of the heartland.
"Bleach Blonde Bad Built Butch Body" Sorry I had to.... 😂
Found this little ditty on Twitter (not calling it that other name). Apologies to those who can't see it, but I can't find it in another format.
https://twitter.com/Tn_Brando/status/1791928487055405373
He has a YouTube channel, but the song isn't on it (yet).
https://www.youtube.com/@TennesseeBrando
Photo
(Don't ask how I managed to do that. It involved "View page source" and scrolling down through a lot of page code until I saw something and thought "would that work?" I'm not sure I could repeat it)
So we should take that one example of a poorly-run channel as the end-all be-all?
It's a walkway under a road to provide beach access, not an "underground tunnel"
Yes, it would provide Giuliani a "secret route" simply by using the beach access rather than one of the main gates the media might be watching, but the tunnel itself is nothing mysterious or unusual.
Red circle is entrance/outlet on MAL side, yellow line is approximate path under the road.
MAL is on a barrier island. The water table there is much too high to maintain actual underground tunnels.
From October 2021: CIA admits to losing dozens of informants around the world
https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/575384-cia-admits-to-losing-dozens-of-informants-around-the-world-nyt/Leading counterintelligence officials issued a memo to all of the CIA’s global stations saying that a concerning number of U.S. informants were being captured and executed.
The CIA’s counterintelligence mission center investigated dozens of incidents in the last few years that involved killings, arrests or compromises of foreign informants. In an unusual move, the message sent via a top secret cable included the specific number of agents killed by other intelligence agencies, according to The New York Times.
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The uptick in compromised informants highlights the more sophisticated ways in which foreign intelligence agencies are tracking the CIA’s actions. These mechanisms include artificial intelligence, facial recognition tools and other hacking methods, per the Times.
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“No one at the end of the day is being held responsible when things go south with an agent,” Douglas London, a former CIA operative who was unaware of the cable, said to the Times. “Sometimes there are things beyond our control but there are also occasions of sloppiness and neglect and people in senior positions are never held responsible.”
Who was in charge for "the last few years" from last year? Who's always been very chummy with our adversaries, and stuffed a truck's worth of secret documents in an unsecured residence? Hmmm?
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