Donald Trump thread v2.0

[Muda69]

[Muda69]

Eric Swalwell refuses to stop talking as Republicans try to interrupt him pointing out they may be in a cult
byu/ExactlySorta inPublicFreakout

[swordfish]

SF was out of town (in DC actually) while this useless tit-for-tat was transpiring......

Yes, SF will be supporting a convicted felon for President this election.  Convicted in a sham trial that was obviously (read my previous post describing the methods) rigged to result in a guilty verdict.  He is the only (IMHO) legitimate non-politician (yeah, he ran as a Republican and was a Republican President) in DC.  He is also the only President in modern history to actually lose personal wealth by serving as President. 

(IMHO) Both sides of Muda's uni-party are empowered by one thing - no term limits.  So long as the ruling class is allowed to remain entrenched in the House and Senate, nothing will ever change - even with a 3rd party President.  There needs to be a laser-focused push for term limits.

[Muda69]

4 hours ago, swordfish said:

SF was out of town (in DC actually) while this useless tit-for-tat was transpiring......

Yes, SF will be supporting a convicted felon for President this election.  Convicted in a sham trial that was obviously (read my previous post describing the methods) rigged to result in a guilty verdict.  He is the only (IMHO) legitimate non-politician (yeah, he ran as a Republican and was a Republican President) in DC.  He is also the only President in modern history to actually lose personal wealth by serving as President. 

(IMHO) Both sides of Muda's uni-party are empowered by one thing - no term limits.  So long as the ruling class is allowed to remain entrenched in the House and Senate, nothing will ever change - even with a 3rd party President.  There needs to be a laser-focused push for term limits.

Yet Mr. Trump is a member of the ruling, privileged, class. 

And hasn't Mr. Trump mentioned in recent campaign speeches that he wants to be the POTUS for at least three terms?:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/18/trump-at-nra-convention-floats-a-three-term-presidency-00158786

"Term limits for thee, just not for me."

 

[temptation]

On 6/5/2024 at 1:54 PM, Muda69 said:

Yet Mr. Trump is a member of the ruling, privileged, class. 

And hasn't Mr. Trump mentioned in recent campaign speeches that he wants to be the POTUS for at least three terms?:

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/18/trump-at-nra-convention-floats-a-three-term-presidency-00158786

"Term limits for thee, just not for me."

 

Both sides suck…one sucks a bit less.

Felonies > war and dead children

[Muda69]

2 hours ago, temptation said:

Both sides suck…one sucks a bit less.

Felonies > war and dead children

Sorry, I don't subscribe to the "lesser of two evils" theory when it comes to voting.  If no candidate, uni-party or third-party, subscribes to what I believe is important then I write-in a candidate or I don't vote for that office.     

It is not a horse race.

 

[temptation]

28 minutes ago, Muda69 said:

Sorry, I don't subscribe to the "lesser of two evils" theory when it comes to voting.  If no candidate, uni-party or third-party, subscribes to what I believe is important then I write-in a candidate or I don't vote for that office.     

It is not a horse race.

 

Cool.

[Muda69]

Trump Wants To Exempt Tips From Income Taxes. Why Stop There?: https://reason.com/2024/06/11/trump-wants-to-exempt-tips-from-income-taxes-why-stop-there/

Quote

If voters send him back to the White House, former President Donald Trump has promised to stop the IRS from raiding workers' tip jars to fund government spending.

But he's yet to identify any specific spending cuts that would offset that reduction in federal revenues. Without that, this proposal is little more than a promise to add to the federal budget deficit—or it is merely campaign trail blather.

Trump first floated the idea during a campaign rally in Las Vegas on Sunday. "This is the first time I've said this, and for those who work at hotels and people that get tips, you're gonna be very happy," Trump said. "When I get to office we are going to not charge taxes on tips, on people making tips."

The announcement drew cheers from the crowd, and for good reason. Taxes are awful. Having to pay less in taxes sounds great. Trump may not possess the most sophisticated understanding of policymaking, but he's certainly smart enough to grok these basic facts—and to use that knowledge to cater to a crowd that was likely heavy in working-class folks from Vegas who earn a good bit of their income via tips.

Even if this is nothing more than empty pandering, it's an idea that deserves to be taken seriously. That's true in part because this campaign has so far been severely lacking in serious policy discussions. But it's also true because Trump could very well be in a position to execute this vision in a little more than seven months.

There are a few different ways to look at this idea and more than a few unknowns about it would work.

First, as a matter of tax policy, removing the obligation that workers pay income tax on their tips would mean that about 6.1 million Americans would get to keep about $38 billion in income that would otherwise have been taxed away. That's the number of workers who reported earning tips to the IRS in 2018 (the most recent year for which we have full data; data from Table 5.A) and the amount of taxes paid on those tips.

On the surface, that sounds great. But there's already one likely unintended consequence: A lot more income will suddenly be reported as tips. Any time a government gives preferential tax treatment to one type of economic activity, you tend to get a lot more of that type of economic activity. Does that mean we'll have an entirely tip-based economy? Probably not, but there would inevitably be some marginal changes to how workers are compensated.

That brings us to the fiscal policy implications of Trump's plan. Removing the obligation that workers pay income tax on their tips means reducing federal revenue by $38 billion (and likely more, for the reasons just discussed) annually. On its own, that's totally fine—I trust those workers to make better decisions about how to spend that money than the government would.

However, if there are no offsetting spending cuts, reducing federal revenues by $38 billion is nothing more than a promise to borrow more heavily. That's an irresponsible thing to do when the country is already on track to run deficits exceeding $1.5 trillion every year for the next decade. Trump's campaign has started to make an argument for giving the president more direct control over the spending side of the federal budget, but we still need to see a clearer plan for what Trump would be willing to cut in a second term—particularly since his first term landed a long, long way from fiscal responsibility.

Finally, there's the question of whether Trump could actually do this as soon as he takes office. The quick answer is "no."

As The Wall Street Journal explains, exempting tips from income taxes would "require approval from Congress" and "could be challenging for lawmakers to write and for tax authorities to enforce." Realistically, this would have to be a component of whatever tax package passes Congress next year, when lawmakers will have to grapple with the expiration of the 2017 tax cuts.

When that time comes, Trump's plan to eliminate taxes on tipped income is worth considering solely because it means that millions of Americans would get to keep more of their earnings away from the grubby hands of the government. But the drawbacks might be overwhelming. Ideally, the federal tax code ought to impose the smallest possible burden on Americans and ought to distribute that burden as fairly as possible. Trump's plan would fail on those grounds since it would create huge tax advantages for some workers over others (For example, servers at high-end restaurants would stand to benefit far more than workers at fast-food joints or other low-end retailers, as the Journal notes.)

Whether as a campaign tactic or tax policy, politicians should stay away from promising to cut taxes for certain groups or special interests. American workers would be better off with a balanced budget, a less complex tax code, and a government that takes less of their money, regardless of how it is earned.

Another empty, uni-party campaign promise. 

[Muda69]

[Muda69]

Republicans Upset by Trump's Conviction Should Embrace Criminal Justice Reform: https://reason.com/2024/06/14/republicans-upset-by-trumps-conviction-should-embrace-criminal-justice-reform/

Quote

As a general rule in politics and public policy, I'd suggest applying one's principles as consistently as possible. It's hard to be taken seriously if, say, you want the feds to prosecute your political opponents on some ill-defined charges—and then complain about the "weaponization" of the justice system when you or your allies are in the dock. Just saying.

One of my oft-stated warnings for those, on the Left or Right, who advocate for new laws, more regulation, and broader powers for police agencies: First consider how these powers might be wielded in the hands of your enemies. Many "well-intentioned" laws have been twisted in ways that the authors never envisioned. Sometimes the reasons are nefarious, other times the result of bureaucratic inertia.

During the 1980s War on Drugs, the U.S. Department of Justice created civil asset forfeiture laws that empowered the government to grab the property of drug cartels. It quickly became a means for police agencies to steal cars and cash from ordinary Americans, many of whom had never been convicted of or accused of a crime. The criminal justice reform movement has been trying to reform those and other unjust laws for years, but governments are amazingly resistant to change.

But perhaps that movement is ready to welcome a large group of Americans who previously had shown little interest in the inner workings of the justice system. Now that former President Donald Trump is a convicted felon—and faces other state and federal charges in a variety of prosecutions—the Make America Great Again movement has suddenly discovered the evils of politicized prosecutions, inequities in the justice system, and fear of police abuse. MAGA hasn't gotten the requisite takeaways yet, so I'm spelling it out for them.

Before Trump showed up on the political scene, the nation was heading toward a new consensus about the criminal justice system. The forfeiture issue had become a bipartisan concern given its abuses. Liberal groups had long complained about police abuse, but prominent conservatives also came to realize that bad policing costs taxpayers a lot of money and undermines good policing. Incarceration levels and costs soared, which provided impetus for change.

However, Trump's 2016 election polarized the electorate. The excesses of Black Lives Matter and "defund the police" hardened the battle lines, especially after protests and riots following George Floyd's death in Minneapolis. COVID-19 struck and crime rates increased. Conservatives went all in on "backing the badge." We found ourselves in the same old place, with little room for bipartisan anything.

Trump made matters worse with his rhetoric. There was the time he joked to a crowd of police officers that they shouldn't protect suspects' heads when putting them in squad cars. He denies it now, but Trump seemed to encourage crowds to chant "lock her up" referring to Hillary Clinton. It's hard to keep track of the number of officials MAGA supporters have wanted to lock up, with U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's (R–Ga.) comments to Anthony Fauci the latest example.

The Mueller report "shows Mr. Trump trying to wield the power of law enforcement to target a political rival, a step that no president since Richard M. Nixon is known to have taken," The New York Times summarized. But that was then and this is now. With Trump feeling the sting of a jury (albeit after a local prosecution rather than a federal one) maybe his minions will rethink their inconsistency. Hope springs eternal.

The antidote to an allegedly political prosecution is to limit the ability of prosecutors to take novel and politicized readings of relevant statutes. The goal is to reduce their power so they can't do this to anyone, but Trump and his supporters just don't want it happening to them.

"Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy," posted U.S. Rep. Mike Collins (R–Ga.) on X, per an ABC News report. It pointed to other Trump supporters, including conservative commentator Charlie Kirk who called on Republicans to "indict the left" and Donald Trump Jr., who called on Republicans to "fight fire with fire." It's almost as if they only care about justice when they are on the receiving end of it.

A recent Reason column lamented the dissipation of justice reform in some Red States: "Claiming to be responding to rising crime and the excesses of progressive reformers, several Republican-controlled state legislatures have not only reversed progress but also rolled back key reforms: increasing prison sentences, limiting parole and probation, restricting charities that pay bail for offenders, curtailing the discretion of local district attorneys and gutting civilian police oversight boards."

So, granted, there's no evidence whatsoever that Trump and MAGA want to reform the justice system and consistently address their concerns about the Trump prosecution. They seek revenge following the travails of their Dear Leader. But there's always time to learn the right lessons. When they do, I'll be the first one to welcome them into the criminal justice reform fold.