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On September 28 2017 20:29 Plansix wrote:
Session continues promote free speech, unless you are protesting police and law enforcement. Nice when the government starts telling private companies what to do.
Remember when Obama had to have a beer summit because he said the police acted stupidly when they arrested a professor in front of his own home?
Tailgate party for Trump?
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There is one that really should be, though.
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On September 28 2017 20:58 GreenHorizons wrote:Remember when Obama had to have a beer summit because he said the police acted stupidly when they arrested a professor in front of his own home? Tailgate party for Trump?
Cambridge police are not known for super smart actions involving Harvard professors. Police respond poorly to people who know their rights and Cambridge is no exception.
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On September 28 2017 21:27 LegalLord wrote:
There is one that really should be, though.
Your a doctor now?
You quickly become the most impressive man in the World.
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On September 28 2017 15:21 Aquanim wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2017 15:02 Danglars wrote:...
The conclusion also doesn't follow because you claim a false contrast between previous methods and blunt methods. You must go further and say that everything short of forcing people going about their daily lives to be deluged in identity politics and racial protest from sunup to sundown has been tried. Literally everything. You're taking this super broad so I have to dabble in larger themes too here. My argument was indeed very broad, I was attempting to establish a general framework for discussion. In particular I was not intending to ask in that post whether you believe that this anthem thing is the next reasonable escalation from what has come before, I was merely establishing that escalation in general in such a situation is justified. The next question is intended to tie that framework to reality more closely. Do you have any concrete examples of actions intended to combat the same kinds of societal problems that are being targeted by this anthem protest that have not been attempted and should have been before the anthem protest? I am aware that the answer to this question may be that it is unanswerable, in which case perhaps another angle of discussion can be explored.
Trying to find common cause with other races to enact police reform and criminal justice reform is the big one. Wegandi did several mega posts detailing just that. There are far greater numbers of victims of police brutality in non-black demographics that are marginalized because this issue has been racialized. That ship is getting ready to sail with partisan infighting. If you dictate that you’re not looking for allies in this fight with wide opinions on solutions, you’re cutting off potential bases of support.
And nothings being targeted by anthem protests. Targeting implies a focus, and Kaep’s quotes are decidedly unfocused. Now it’s just as much wanting Trump to butt out of the protest with his wildly unhelpful remarks as anything else.
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This has gotten very personal between Trump and McCain now lol. Mostly just with the former of course. And no he's not just "hitting back twice as hard".
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On September 28 2017 23:29 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2017 15:21 Aquanim wrote:On September 28 2017 15:02 Danglars wrote:...
The conclusion also doesn't follow because you claim a false contrast between previous methods and blunt methods. You must go further and say that everything short of forcing people going about their daily lives to be deluged in identity politics and racial protest from sunup to sundown has been tried. Literally everything. You're taking this super broad so I have to dabble in larger themes too here. My argument was indeed very broad, I was attempting to establish a general framework for discussion. In particular I was not intending to ask in that post whether you believe that this anthem thing is the next reasonable escalation from what has come before, I was merely establishing that escalation in general in such a situation is justified. The next question is intended to tie that framework to reality more closely. Do you have any concrete examples of actions intended to combat the same kinds of societal problems that are being targeted by this anthem protest that have not been attempted and should have been before the anthem protest? I am aware that the answer to this question may be that it is unanswerable, in which case perhaps another angle of discussion can be explored. And nothings being targeted by anthem protests. Targeting implies a focus, and Kaep’s quotes are decidedly unfocused. Now it’s just as much wanting Trump to butt out of the protest with his wildly unhelpful remarks as anything else.
Can we really stop calling it anthem protesting? Clearly that's not what they are doing. They are protesting inequality. The message isn't over one single thing like just police brutality because the inequality is so incredibly rampant.
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On September 28 2017 23:46 convention wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2017 23:29 Danglars wrote:On September 28 2017 15:21 Aquanim wrote:On September 28 2017 15:02 Danglars wrote:...
The conclusion also doesn't follow because you claim a false contrast between previous methods and blunt methods. You must go further and say that everything short of forcing people going about their daily lives to be deluged in identity politics and racial protest from sunup to sundown has been tried. Literally everything. You're taking this super broad so I have to dabble in larger themes too here. My argument was indeed very broad, I was attempting to establish a general framework for discussion. In particular I was not intending to ask in that post whether you believe that this anthem thing is the next reasonable escalation from what has come before, I was merely establishing that escalation in general in such a situation is justified. The next question is intended to tie that framework to reality more closely. Do you have any concrete examples of actions intended to combat the same kinds of societal problems that are being targeted by this anthem protest that have not been attempted and should have been before the anthem protest? I am aware that the answer to this question may be that it is unanswerable, in which case perhaps another angle of discussion can be explored. And nothings being targeted by anthem protests. Targeting implies a focus, and Kaep’s quotes are decidedly unfocused. Now it’s just as much wanting Trump to butt out of the protest with his wildly unhelpful remarks as anything else. Can we really stop calling it anthem protesting? Clearly that's not what they are doing. They are protesting inequality. The message isn't over one single thing like just police brutality because the inequality is so incredibly rampant.
Danglars and xDaunt continue to frame it around the flag and anthem because that's where their priorities are. Flag, anthem, nation first.
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Most of the people in here arguing using the term anthem protest still haven't had a valid counterpoint to the cowboys protesting before the anthem and still getting booed. They stood up for the anthem, so how is it am anthem protest? Why argue against their protest if you're not arguing against them protesting the police brutality?
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On September 28 2017 23:35 Doodsmack wrote:
This has gotten very personal between Trump and McCain now lol. Mostly just with the former of course. And no he's not just "hitting back twice as hard".
Getting into piss fights with McCain is a worthy endeavor, to be fair. He certainly deserves more shit than non-Trump individuals are willing to give him.
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On September 28 2017 23:46 convention wrote:
Can we really stop calling it anthem protesting? Clearly that's not what they are doing. They are protesting inequality. The message isn't over one single thing like just police brutality because the inequality is so incredibly rampant.
To be fair he was using it in reply to a post where I used the term as shorthand.
On September 28 2017 23:29 Danglars wrote:...
Trying to find common cause with other races to enact police reform and criminal justice reform is the big one. Wegandi did several mega posts detailing just that. There are far greater numbers of victims of police brutality in non-black demographics that are marginalized because this issue has been racialized. That ship is getting ready to sail with partisan infighting. If you dictate that you’re not looking for allies in this fight with wide opinions on solutions, you’re cutting off potential bases of support.
...
Okay. I don't have the background knowledge to debate this assessment on its merits so I'm going to leave it at that.
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United States43966 Posts
Tax plan is out.
Increasing standard deduction and eliminating the personal exemptions is a dick move to anyone with dependents and a bonus for anyone without. Basically what they're doing is giving you $5.65k more tax free room and taking away $4.05k tax free room for you and $4.05k per dependent you have.
Getting rid of AMT for "paperwork reduction" reasons is pretty laughable. AMT is alternative minimum tax. Basically what it does is, as the name suggests, establishes a floor tax rate that you won't pay less than if you're superrich. You do your best to maximize your deductions and come up with how much you want to pay, just like everyone else. The AMT is a single form that calculates a number based on limiting the exploitation of deductions. If the AMT number is > than the normal number, you pay the AMT. It's all automated and it's a single form designed as a "don't take the piss" limit on the superrich taking deductions. Literally no reason to get rid of it if you're not trying to help them. It doesn't cause any additional work, nobody it applies to is doing their own taxes and nobody doing the taxes for anyone it applies to is struggling with it.
Estate tax repeal doesn't need any explanation. Right now you can pass $11m to your kids tax free. Apparently $11m isn't enough to set them up in life and what we really need is a permanent aristocracy. Incidentally this isn't something that can easily be fixed later. These are wealth transfer taxes, if you transfer over $11m while alive you also pay taxes at the estate tax rate. What that means is that if this passes it'll create a window that allows tax free intergenerational wealth transfers that would then already be complete by the time the estate tax is restored.
Reducing number of tax brackets is whatever. Number of tax brackets isn't really a problem in my opinion. Getting to taxable income is the hard part of doing taxes. Once you have that number it's a pretty simple formula to find out what you owe.
Lowering top bracket is obviously kinda shitty but we all knew that.
The real fun happens in the corporate tax part though. Two big changes.
Depreciation gets to be a total fucking free for all. Here's the ELI5. Normally when you buy a thing it's either expensed or capitalized, depending upon what the thing is. If you buy a sandwich then you would call that an eating expense, you're now poorer, the amount of money you have consumed by eating goes up, the amount of dollars you have go down. Overall, you're poorer.
But if you were to, for example, buy some gold bars, that's not really an expense. You can't resell the sandwich when you're done but you can probably resell the gold bars. So instead of expensing the gold bars we capitalize them. What that means is the amount of dollars we have goes down but the amount of gold bars we have goes up and so we're roughly where we were.
If they get rid of capitalizing assets then suddenly we're in "I didn't make any money this year because my gold bar expense is too high and actually I made a loss" territory. It'll be a fun few years if that goes through.
Also he's fucking with medium size businesses and flow-through taxes. I'll ELI5 it. If you own a business and the business makes $100,000 then really you've made $100,000. For a lot of business structures how that works is that income passes directly for you, the business pays tax on $0, you pay tax on $100,000. If you're a small business owner that's fine because your rate of personal income tax probably isn't that high. But if you're in one of the higher personal tax brackets then that's not great.
Trump is throwing a 25% bracket into the middle of that. It's no use to small business owners but if you're making $300,000 or so of business income a year then suddenly you can start playing games with that shit and switch from a flow-through entity so that your business pays 25% tax and pays you a salary. And naturally you get to decide what that salary is. To make it even more fun anyone who is 1099 (contractors) can come up with their own business for which they are the employee and get that lower tax rate.
The incentives for domestic manufacturing already exist. Not really interesting.
It's a tax bill cobbled together by lunatics and special interests. Almost certainly won't pass but it'll be a fun few years for the accounting world if it does.
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On September 28 2017 23:46 convention wrote:Show nested quote +On September 28 2017 23:29 Danglars wrote:On September 28 2017 15:21 Aquanim wrote:On September 28 2017 15:02 Danglars wrote:...
The conclusion also doesn't follow because you claim a false contrast between previous methods and blunt methods. You must go further and say that everything short of forcing people going about their daily lives to be deluged in identity politics and racial protest from sunup to sundown has been tried. Literally everything. You're taking this super broad so I have to dabble in larger themes too here. My argument was indeed very broad, I was attempting to establish a general framework for discussion. In particular I was not intending to ask in that post whether you believe that this anthem thing is the next reasonable escalation from what has come before, I was merely establishing that escalation in general in such a situation is justified. The next question is intended to tie that framework to reality more closely. Do you have any concrete examples of actions intended to combat the same kinds of societal problems that are being targeted by this anthem protest that have not been attempted and should have been before the anthem protest? I am aware that the answer to this question may be that it is unanswerable, in which case perhaps another angle of discussion can be explored. And nothings being targeted by anthem protests. Targeting implies a focus, and Kaep’s quotes are decidedly unfocused. Now it’s just as much wanting Trump to butt out of the protest with his wildly unhelpful remarks as anything else. Can we really stop calling it anthem protesting? Clearly that's not what they are doing. They are protesting inequality. The message isn't over one single thing like just police brutality because the inequality is so incredibly rampant.
The only “appropriate” way to protest police action is to directly protest police stations. Out of sight, away from cameras and the public eye. Only when no one is aware the protest is happening can we be sure that is it correctly targeted at police and police violence.
But colleges need to make room for whatever right wing entertainment personality that claims they support free speech to assure they get a venue. Even if the speaker has no academic merit and is simply there to fan the flames of division. Free speech must be allowed and colleges can’t make judgments based on the merits of the speaker. That is repression.
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Yep...
The National Flood Insurance Program has depleted its borrowing authority after a series of devastating hurricanes over the past several weeks, a turning point that will put pressure on Congress to allow it to tap Treasury further to pay claims.
FEMA, which runs the program, said it notified Congress on Sept. 20 that it borrowed $5.8 billion from Treasury to fund losses this year, including those incurred by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and "anticipated programmatic activities."
The balance of FEMA’s remaining borrowing authority is now zero, according to the agency. Congress last raised its borrowing cap to about $30 billion after Hurricane Sandy.
"Ultimately, the claims payments on Harvey and Irma will exceed the current spending authorities of the National Flood Insurance Program," a FEMA spokesperson said. "We will be collaborating with Congress so that every claim is paid in full."
For Hurricane Harvey, more than $925 million in claims have been paid, FEMA said. As of Wednesday, more than 88,000 claims had been submitted in Texas and more than 480 in Louisiana.
For Hurricane Irma, FEMA has paid $26 million in claims. More than 25,000 claims have been submitted in Florida, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. FEMA also expects the number of claims to increase.
Congress this week is debating whether to pass legislation intended to boost the private sector flood insurance market outside the NFIP. Lawmakers also are working on reauthorizing the program before it expires Dec. 8.
Source
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On September 29 2017 00:00 Howie_Dewitt wrote:
Most of the people in here arguing using the term anthem protest still haven't had a valid counterpoint to the cowboys protesting before the anthem and still getting booed. They stood up for the anthem, so how is it am anthem protest? Why argue against their protest if you're not arguing against them protesting the police brutality?
One of my good friends reminded me of the racial politics in American Football. A lot of white football fans like it when the black athletes catch and throw ball. They also prefer the players keep their helmet on as much as possible.
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Wait so if I work for a place I could form a company and contract my labor through that company to the company I work for and get a lower tax rate? If thats true thats the most bonkers shit I've heard yet from a trump plan.
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On September 29 2017 00:30 Sermokala wrote:
Wait so if I work for a place I could form a company and contract my labor through that company to the company I work for and get a lower tax rate? If thats true thats the most bonkers shit I've heard yet from a trump plan.
You *could*, but the money you would gain from a tax perspective would be eaten by the loss of benefits. At my company, I have an insane amount of benefits that pretty much directly translate into cash. Contractors don't get paid time off. Or paid holidays. Their insurance is really expensive and generally shitty. Millions of other things. But if your company is shitty anyway, I guess it does make sense..?
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On September 29 2017 00:32 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On September 29 2017 00:30 Sermokala wrote:
Wait so if I work for a place I could form a company and contract my labor through that company to the company I work for and get a lower tax rate? If thats true thats the most bonkers shit I've heard yet from a trump plan. You *could*, but the money you would gain from a tax perspective would be eaten by the loss of benefits. At my company, I have an insane amount of benefits that pretty much directly translate into cash. Contractors don't get paid time off. Or paid holidays. Their insurance is really expensive and generally shitty. Millions of other things. But if your company is shitty anyway, I guess it does make sense..?
Now Kwark please comment on this but couldn't I then now write off my benefits as a business expense on this company that I run to contract my labor to the company that I work for?
The benefits that the company pays me could be translated to cash and I could subcontract the benefits that the company provides through said intermediary company that I'm independently contracting myself to provide a labor to the company I work for? I think I understand kwark now and thats starting to scare me.
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EPT
