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Trump's Second Term

Andy_Ross said:
Secretary Marco Rubio
@SecRubio
President Trump's withdrawal from 66 international organizations sends a clear message that it is no longer acceptable to invest the American people's hard-earned tax dollars in institutions that cannot demonstrate results, accountability, or respect for our national interests.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2010005978562142387
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The concept of soft power just completely eludes these people.
 
Congressman Randy Fine
@RepFine
The Somali pirates are no longer in Africa; they’re right here in our backyard, and their captain is named Tim Walz.

While my constituents are suffering, 81% of Somalians are on welfare, stealing from hardworking Americans.

They have every right to be outraged.

We must root out those involved in this fraud, and hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law

https://twitter.com/x/status/2009680340323897611
 
Andy_Ross said:
Today, @USDA is SUSPENDING FEDERAL FINANCIAL AWARDS to Minnesota and Minneapolis, effective immediately

Secretary Brooke Rollins
@SecRollins
Enough is enough! The Trump administration has uncovered MASSIVE fraud in Minnesota and Minneapolis—billions siphoned off by fraudsters. And those in charge have ZERO plan to fix it.

Today, @USDA is SUSPENDING FEDERAL FINANCIAL AWARDS to Minnesota and Minneapolis, effective immediately, until sufficient proof has been provided that the fraud has stopped.

No more handouts to thieves! Time to drain the Minnesota swamp and put American taxpayers first

https://twitter.com/x/status/2009755310718648629
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Just like he oh-so-successfully drained the Washington one. Straight into his wallet.
 
Andy_Ross said:
He has to know this is a stupid thing to lie about.
We all know China is investing massively in wind and has huge wind farms and turbine manufacturing.

Trump: All you have to do is say to China, how many windmill areas do you have in China? They are not able to find any. They don’t have windmills. I have told my people, we will not approve windmills. We will not approve any windmills in this country.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2009734556522557527
Click to expand...
Well, he's probably right, they don't have many, if any, windmills in China, or anywhere else for that matter. Wind turbines are another matter.
 
Resume said:
People remember the USFL, another business you helped run into the ground, you stupid ◊◊◊◊.
Click to expand...
He just posts whatever idiocy enters his peanut-sized brain at the moment. Pretty soon he'll be posting "I pissed my diapers again." twenty times a day.
 
Aridas said:
Ehh. Technically, it can. It's just that in practice, 1) the taxes would need to be outright ruinous to start with and/or 2) the taxes in question would actually need to be used to deal with the debt. Neither is in play here, of course. Taxes aren't even remotely ruinous. They're likely far too low on the rich, for that matter. Republicans will also be continuing to try to give the rich more money and completely ignoring the debt in practice, as they consistently do, for all their pretending to care about the debt.



Not quite. The thing in question is that AOC did a thing about educating immigrants on what rights they actually have. No surprise that the Trump Administration would absolutely hate that. She was already a prime target because the Republican Party hates and feels threatened by strong, popular Democratic women that actually work to uplift the country, so this was a bit of a twofer.
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The really crazy thing about all of this talk about taxes and the debt, it completely begs the wrong question.

The root of "money," cash, is to make commercial transactions easier. Otherwise, we'd be on a highly inefficient bartering system. I have to transport my crops to a market, and exchange it for your horse that you also have to drag to the same location. Then sit down and try to hash out what each thing is worth.

So civilization came up with a much easier medium of exchange: Gold, along with official weights and measures. But again, gold can be a bit bulky, and scales can be made to be fraudulent. So later, more advanced civilizations came up with coins.

Again, coins can be rather bulky. So even later yet, came paper currency. Then checks to make it even easier to use a single piece of paper to write a custom amount on that can then later be cashed in at a bank.

Anyway, all of this is getting away from my point.

The entire point is that currency is supposed to be moving. That's why its called "currency." Its the verb for the root word "current." Which is a flow. Usually a liquid or gases.

So the question isn't how much the civilization itself is in debt, so much as it is how much that civilization's total amount of cash is MOVING or FLOWING.

This is why i was always a huge fan of Bernie Sanders. He never, ever allowed the republican party to ever distract him from the REAL issue at hand:

Coagulation, or a clot, like a blood clot. All the money accumulating into the hands of fewer and fewer and fewer individuals. Yes, taxes absolutely would help to alleviate this. So would unions and workers' rights. So would something like what MLB has instituted: A "soft cap" on player payroll, combined with a graduating luxury tax based on how long a team is above the cap.

So we have Republicans and the media literally getting away with murder by constantly screaming about the government's debt. And everyone following along with this as if it's a legitimate problem, and completely ignoring the REAL issue:

The existence of billionaires who own large companies that employe full-time workers that are on food stamps!

Democrats REALLY need to get away from the trap of talking about the federal debt and its deficit and start screaming at the tops of their lungs and redirecting the conversation to the REAL problem that is the enormous wealth disparity in a free-market society where very dangerous blood clots are occurring.

We need different tools. Yes. Taxing the rich back to the pre-Reagan levels would begin to fix the real problem, while also tackling the deficit, and therefore, the debt. Strengthening the unions and handing out REAL ACTUAL financial "punishment" to the billionaires who are raping their own companies at the expense of everyone else associated with their company: Raising overtime to double-time. Raising the minimum salary to at least $75,000/year, and the minimum wage to $17.50/hour. And tying both to the previous year's inflation percentage.

Another tool that I highly suspect would work really well that, incidentally, I personally thought of myself:

Using MLB's "soft cap / luxury tax" model, and implementing that for every single registered company:

Nobody in any company is allowed to make more than....say.... $500,000 / year in both salary and bonuses combined without paying a company-induced "luxury tax" that graduates for every year any individual is above that amount.

For instance:

On top of paying their federal income tax to the federal government, an individual would have to pay into a company "pot." Probably like into an escrow account, a certain percentage above $500,0000.

So. Let's say the CEO of Wegman's Grocery Stores makes $1 million in combined salary and bonuses. That's $500,000 above the $500,000 soft cap of what any individual is allowed to bring home.

Let's say this is the first year where he is above that $500,000 mark. And the first year of being above that line, he would be responsible for paying 10% on his second $500,000 income into an escrow account in Wegman's name. So he'd pay $50,000, and still retain his $950,000 he made that year.

Add in all of the board of directors who also raked in clsoe to a million. All of the regional managers that were above 500k. Anyone who made more than 500k will pay into the escrow account.

At the end of the fiscal year, that escrow account gets divided up evenly between every single person who was on Wegman's payroll for at least 9 months for that year, from the lowliest of cart pushers all the way up to the very leaders of that business. So the CEO would get something back from his $50,000 that he initially paid into.

The $500,000 soft cap would also be tied into last year's inflation as well. So if inflation was 1.8% last year, the soft cap would rise by 1.8%. So the minimum thresh hold would rise with it. 1.8% of $500,000 is $9,000. So the second year, anyone who makes more than $509,000 would pay 10% for every dollar above $509,000.

If an individual has had to pay this luxury tax for three years in a row, it would spike to....say.... 25% in his or her 4th year of having to pay into it. After another certain number of years, it would spike to 50%. And so on, all the way up to a max of 75%.

So if Elon Musk continues raking $400 million from Tesla every single year in both salary and bonuses, he would eventually max out at having to pay a hefty 75% of most of that income to his company's escrow account, and that money would be split evenly among everyone on his payroll for at least 9 months.

That's how the MLB does it with their soft cap, combined with a luxury tax, and with revenue-sharing of that pot.

This is the only way for Ronald Reagan's "Reaganomics" to ever become a reality. When businesses do well, EVERYONE IN that business should also do well. Unfortunately, greed never played a part in this oft-repeated libertarian evaluation of economics. By strengthening the tax base.... the ENTIRE tax base....it would make it easier for the government in balancing a budget, while protecting free market economics from both laissez faire capitalism and from a communist revolution spurred by the massive numbers of desperately poor with nothing else to lose.

The best kind of economy works for everyone, while giving everyone the freedom to start their own small businesses, or to rise up through the ranks of large corporations to become wealthy business people, as well as for those who just simply want a full-time job that pays well enough to take care of their family and have enough personal time to spend with their family without taking on way too much of a workload and responsibilities.
 
Nihilianth said:
The really crazy thing about all of this talk about taxes and the debt, it completely begs the wrong question.

The root of "money," cash, is to make commercial transactions easier. Otherwise, we'd be on a highly inefficient bartering system. I have to transport my crops to a market, and exchange it for your horse that you also have to drag to the same location. Then sit down and try to hash out what each thing is worth.

So civilization came up with a much easier medium of exchange: Gold, along with official weights and measures. But again, gold can be a bit bulky, and scales can be made to be fraudulent. So later, more advanced civilizations came up with coins.

Again, coins can be rather bulky. So even later yet, came paper currency. Then checks to make it even easier to use a single piece of paper to write a custom amount on that can then later be cashed in at a bank.

Anyway, all of this is getting away from my point.

The entire point is that currency is supposed to be moving. That's why its called "currency." Its the verb for the root word "current." Which is a flow. Usually a liquid or gases.

So the question isn't how much the civilization itself is in debt, so much as it is how much that civilization's total amount of cash is MOVING or FLOWING.

This is why i was always a huge fan of Bernie Sanders. He never, ever allowed the republican party to ever distract him from the REAL issue at hand:

Coagulation, or a clot, like a blood clot. All the money accumulating into the hands of fewer and fewer and fewer individuals. Yes, taxes absolutely would help to alleviate this. So would unions and workers' rights. So would something like what MLB has instituted: A "soft cap" on player payroll, combined with a graduating luxury tax based on how long a team is above the cap.

So we have Republicans and the media literally getting away with murder by constantly screaming about the government's debt. And everyone following along with this as if it's a legitimate problem, and completely ignoring the REAL issue:

The existence of billionaires who own large companies that employe full-time workers that are on food stamps!

Democrats REALLY need to get away from the trap of talking about the federal debt and its deficit and start screaming at the tops of their lungs and redirecting the conversation to the REAL problem that is the enormous wealth disparity in a free-market society where very dangerous blood clots are occurring.

We need different tools. Yes. Taxing the rich back to the pre-Reagan levels would begin to fix the real problem, while also tackling the deficit, and therefore, the debt. Strengthening the unions and handing out REAL ACTUAL financial "punishment" to the billionaires who are raping their own companies at the expense of everyone else associated with their company: Raising overtime to double-time. Raising the minimum salary to at least $75,000/year, and the minimum wage to $17.50/hour. And tying both to the previous year's inflation percentage.

Another tool that I highly suspect would work really well that, incidentally, I personally thought of myself:

Using MLB's "soft cap / luxury tax" model, and implementing that for every single registered company:

Nobody in any company is allowed to make more than....say.... $500,000 / year in both salary and bonuses combined without paying a company-induced "luxury tax" that graduates for every year any individual is above that amount.

For instance:

On top of paying their federal income tax to the federal government, an individual would have to pay into a company "pot." Probably like into an escrow account, a certain percentage above $500,0000.

So. Let's say the CEO of Wegman's Grocery Stores makes $1 million in combined salary and bonuses. That's $500,000 above the $500,000 soft cap of what any individual is allowed to bring home.

Let's say this is the first year where he is above that $500,000 mark. And the first year of being above that line, he would be responsible for paying 10% on his second $500,000 income into an escrow account in Wegman's name. So he'd pay $50,000, and still retain his $950,000 he made that year.

Add in all of the board of directors who also raked in clsoe to a million. All of the regional managers that were above 500k. Anyone who made more than 500k will pay into the escrow account.

At the end of the fiscal year, that escrow account gets divided up evenly between every single person who was on Wegman's payroll for at least 9 months for that year, from the lowliest of cart pushers all the way up to the very leaders of that business. So the CEO would get something back from his $50,000 that he initially paid into.

The $500,000 soft cap would also be tied into last year's inflation as well. So if inflation was 1.8% last year, the soft cap would rise by 1.8%. So the minimum thresh hold would rise with it. 1.8% of $500,000 is $9,000. So the second year, anyone who makes more than $509,000 would pay 10% for every dollar above $509,000.

If an individual has had to pay this luxury tax for three years in a row, it would spike to....say.... 25% in his or her 4th year of having to pay into it. After another certain number of years, it would spike to 50%. And so on, all the way up to a max of 75%.

So if Elon Musk continues raking $400 million from Tesla every single year in both salary and bonuses, he would eventually max out at having to pay a hefty 75% of most of that income to his company's escrow account, and that money would be split evenly among everyone on his payroll for at least 9 months.

That's how the MLB does it with their soft cap, combined with a luxury tax, and with revenue-sharing of that pot.

This is the only way for Ronald Reagan's "Reaganomics" to ever become a reality. When businesses do well, EVERYONE IN that business should also do well. Unfortunately, greed never played a part in this oft-repeated libertarian evaluation of economics. By strengthening the tax base.... the ENTIRE tax base....it would make it easier for the government in balancing a budget, while protecting free market economics from both laissez faire capitalism and from a communist revolution spurred by the massive numbers of desperately poor with nothing else to lose.

The best kind of economy works for everyone, while giving everyone the freedom to start their own small businesses, or to rise up through the ranks of large corporations to become wealthy business people, as well as for those who just simply want a full-time job that pays well enough to take care of their family and have enough personal time to spend with their family without taking on way too much of a workload and responsibilities.
Click to expand...
It remains fascinating to me that lefties are obsessed with supposed wealth inequality but have absolutely zero curiosity about wealth creation. It's always take, take, take. Just pure envy and greed.
 
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