I am seeing things going on in the U.S. I never thought I would see ...
There is so much misdirection going on in the MSM right now, for example ... The Kavanaugh approval process focused on things that happened so long ago, but no politicians from either party really asked him about his stance on constitutional issues. A Supreme Couurt Justice has one job ... Uphold the constitution of the United States. I heard very little on Roe v. Wade for example, which is like a de facto questioning line ... Or very little on his decisions regarding the 4th and 5th amendments, or why he has supported the idea that corporate money represents a first amendment right, when the first amendment applies to individuals, freedom of the press, and freedom to practice ones religion of choice.
And anything to do with the economy or Foreign wars pretty much falls on the backburner.
We can take the Tax bill from last fall as an example ...
1. My wife and I added up the change in the withholding tables for us. We are not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but we are having 4500.00 a year less withheld.
2. The Standard deduction doubled for all fix filers. The neat part here is that it benefits renters over home owners. They finally get a break.
3. The Tax credit for each exemption doubled from 1,000 to 2,000 dollars. This is great for poor families. For a married family of five - The first 30,000 dollars is tax free.
4. The SALT (State and Local Tax) deduction got capped at 10,000 dollars. In Central Ohio, if one lives in Columbus ... This gets people to about 180,000 dollars. Taxes have to be paid over that.
5. The Home Mortgage deduction got capped at 750,000 dollars of equity for up to two homes combined. We will see a totally new tax form for this one, but those whom have million+ dollar martgages will have to pay a lot more.
6. People whom file business returns and are a Sole Proprietorship, Partnership, Subchapter S Corp, or a small LLC gets the first4 315,000 of income tax free.
7. Companies were given 1 year to be able to repatriate off shore money. This has gone mostly into Stock Buybacks and Mergers/Acquisitions ... But this does happen in the U.S.
Foreign Wars ...
1. The North Korea deal of which there has been ongoing negotiations is a Great Thing. Both my Dad and Grandpa fought in the Korean war and neither could figure out why we were there. I just wish they were still alive to see this.
2. Syria - Over 200 diplomats have been sent to Syria, and Trump is working on two items - Drawing down our military involvement there as well as getting Iran to pull their military out of Syria
3. Afghanistan - We will see a total troop withdrawal from Afghanistan within the next year.
4. There is a lot of pressure on the Saudi's to end the bombing in Yemen.
All This stuff could be talked about on the MSM, but the focus has been on other things of less significance.
Shermann