Tag: #MAGA
Texas v. Pennsylvania
Democracy isn’t letting people vote then invalidating the ones you don’t like, but here we are — Texas v. Pennsylvania and its accompanying amicus briefs. Republicans are the party of states rights — unless the state does something they don’t like. But, I suppose, disqualifying the votes of people who don’t vote the way you want is the logical extension of the “real American” mantra touted by Palin. And the tea party’s “no taxation without representation” … uhh, we all voted. You have representation. “Well, they don’t represent me” logic. Having lived through many years of minority rule, I get their point. Philosophically George W Bush didn’t represent me. Trump sure as hell doesn’t represent me. But — however much we may philosophically differ, they did represent me. Because that’s how American government works.
Could we use modern technology to have direct representation? Sure. Direct representation would eliminate gerrymandering and the oversized influence of low-population-density states. It would be rather inequitable — who has the time to read through every piece of proposed legislation, get online and vote their opinion, etc. But it could happen. Even then, though … 60% of the people vote for X, that’s what we get. And the 40% who voted not-X suck it up.
Always A New Low
On Taxes and Businesses
I expect a lot of hype about how little Trump paid in taxes — and, yeah, it really sucks that someone is able consider private planes, meals, club memberships, car leases, etc to be a tax-deductible business expense. One of my first introductions to the working world was a privately-held company. I was the IT department, and one of my jobs was to move data from the old systems (mainframe for order management, database for inventory, and paper ledger for accounting) into the new all-in-one business management platform. Which meant I not only had access to all of the company’s accounting, but that I had to read through it all to get the information typed into the new platform. The company owner’s plane was owned by the business, so the hangar and maintenance was a business expense. He’d hire time in the plane for person use, but he got a really good discount from his company’s transportation service. Same for the company car he drove. And the country club membership — that’s where he’d meet with clients to solicit business, after all. Food and drink at those client meetings were business expenses too. It was all perfectly legal and designed both to maximize the owner’s enjoyment of life and the minimize the business’s profits. As a broke out-of-college kid, it seemed awfully unfair that the rich old dude was able to eat every day and avoid paying some taxes in doing so but the huge chunk of my paycheque that went to various taxes meant I had some rice to eat that day.
There were subordinate companies that paid consulting fees back to the main company to zero out any profits they made. And that parent company had a bunch of “business expenses” that minimized their profits. Ideally, the CFO told me, you’d net zero every year (or even have a paper loss) and not have to send the federal government anything in business taxes. Which I get — people shop around for the best price, find coupons and promo codes … you try to get the best deal. And, if the legal structure allows you to do so, why wouldn’t you avoid paying taxes altogether?
I’ve heard people say that a business needs to show a profit every ten years — that’s not true. If you don’t show a profit once in a ten year period, you may be asked to prove to the IRS that it’s a legit business. I come across this in the soap-making community — buying stuff for my soap-making hobby is not tax deductible even if I construct a business entity under which to make those purchase. Even if I happen to sell a few bars of soap to friends and neighbors. But if you’re advertising your product, going out to craft fairs and selling your soap … you provide the IRS evidence of your attempts to sell your product and you could be losing money every year for decades and still write off business expenses.
And the tax code is designed to encourage businesses to minimize their net — investing in your business offsets profit too. It’s one of the biggest problems I had with the interaction Obama had with Joe the not-a-plumber. If you buy a plumbing business that grosses a million dollars a year? You hire another plumber, buy another truck … you invest in a new tool that lets you offer more services. You spend some of that money and don’t have to pay taxes on it. Well, that hiring and purchasing also improves the country’s economy.
The New Caravan
Black Helicopters Approach
Monolithic Extremism
From The Nation:
Marketing Genius
Using riot police to clear away peaceful protesters so Trump can get a photo of himself standing in front of a church holding up a bible doesn’t exactly scream “marketing genius” … https://www.npr.org/2020/06/01/867532070/trumps-unannounced-church-visit-angers-church-officials
Safety, Security, and Prosperity
Trump Impeachment / SARS-CoV-2 Timeline
Date | # US Infections | Detail |
18-Dec-2019 | 0 | House Impeaches Trump |
18-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Michigan |
21-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
22-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
23-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
24-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
26-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
27-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
28-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
29-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
30-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
31-Dec-2019 | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
1-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
2-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
3-Jan | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Florida |
4-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
5-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
8-Jan | 0 | First CDC warning |
9-Jan | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Ohio |
14-Jan | 0 | Trump campaign rally – Wisconsin |
16-Jan | 0 | House sends impeachment articles to Senate |
18-Jan | 0 | Trump golfs – Florida |
19-Jan | 0 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
20-Jan | 1 | First case of corona virus in the US, Washington State. |
22-Jan | 1 | “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” |
22-Jan | 1 | Impeachment prosecution’s opening arguments and presentation of evidence |
23-Jan | 1 | Impeachment prosecution’s opening arguments and presentation of evidence |
24-Jan | 2 | Impeachment prosecution’s opening arguments and presentation of evidence |
25-Jan | 2 | Impeachment defense presentation |
28-Jan | 5 | Trump campaign rally – New Jersey |
30-Jan | 5 | Trump campaign rally – Iowa |
31-Jan | 7 | Impeachment Senate vote against calling witnesses & travel restriction from China |
1-Feb | 8 | Trump golfs – Florida |
2-Feb | 8 | Trump maybe golfs – Florida |
2-Feb | 8 | “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” |
5-Feb | 11 | Impeachment Senate votes to acquit. Then takes a five-day weekend. |
10-Feb | 11 | Trump campaign rally – New Hampshire |
12-Feb | 12 | Dow Jones closes at an all time high of 29,551.42 |
15-Feb | 13 | Trump golfs – Florida |
19-Feb | 13 | Trump campaign rally – Arizona |
20-Feb | 13 | Trump campaign rally – Colorado |
21-Feb | 15 | Trump campaign rally – Nevada |
24-Feb | 51 | “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!” |
25-Feb | 51 | “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” |
25-Feb | 51 | “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.” |
26-Feb | 57 | “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” |
26-Feb | 57 | “We’re going very substantially down, not up.” Also “This is a flu. This is like a flu”; “Now, you treat this like a flu”; “It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for. And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.” |
27-Feb | 58 | “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” |
28-Feb | 60 | “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.” |
28-Feb | 60 | Trump campaign rally – South Carolina |
2-Mar | 98 | “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?” |
2-Mar | 98 | Trump campaign rally – North Carolina |
2-Mar | 98 | “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.” |
4-Mar | 149 | “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.” |
5-Mar | 217 | “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” |
5-Mar | 217 | “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!” |
6-Mar | 262 | “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.” |
6-Mar | 262 | “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.” |
6-Mar | 262 | “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.” |
6-Mar | 262 | “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.” |
7-Mar | 402 | Trump golfs – Florida |
8-Mar | 518 | Trump golfs – Florida |
8-Mar | 518 | “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.” |
9-Mar | 583 | “This blindsided the world.” |
1-Mar | 583 | Travel lockdown from Europe. |
13-Mar | 2179 | State of emergency declared |
17-Mar | 6421 | “This is a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” |
18-Mar | 7783 | It’s not racist at all. No. Not at all. It comes from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate. |
23-Mar | 42152 | Dow Jones closes at 18,591.93 |
25-Mar | 63928 | 3.3 million Americans file for unemployment. |
30-Mar | 160530 | Dow Jones closes at 21,917.16 |
2-Apr | 239099 | 6.6 million Americans file for unemployment. |