Replies to post #275579 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[BOREALIS]

Here are some of the sweet tax cuts Republicans are offering ... if you're already rich

By Laura Clawson
Thursday Dec 07, 2017 · 10:05 AM CS


The Republican tax plan is loaded with sweet little windfalls for people who are already rich—provisions you just can’t take advantage of unless you have money to start with. One of the big ones is that claim Republicans love to make about a corporate tax cut leading to businesses investing in new jobs. Except really, corporations say they won't create jobs [ https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/11/29/1719495/-Corporations-agree-Tax-savings-will-NOT-go-toward-hiring-new-workers-or-raising-wages ] with the added money, they’ll use it for stock buybacks benefiting people who already have enough money to own their stocks.
That’s not all, though. Check it out:
"Count the ways: How GOP tax plans would reward rich families"
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/07/gop-tax-plans-would-reward-rich-families.html

Tax-free profits from 529 college savings plans would now be eligible to cover $10,000 worth of costs at private elementary and secondary schools.

What that means is that if you have enough money to have a big tax-advantaged 529 account for your kid, you can now use it to get out of taxes on part of their tuition at a fancy private grade school or high school. If you don’t have enough money to put in the 529 (or pay private school tuition), no savings for you!

An estate tax is now paid on fortunes above $5.5 million for individuals or $11 million for couples. The Senate bill would double those thresholds through the end of 2025. The result is that fewer rich families would pay any tax on inherited estates. Those families that would still owe tax would pay less. The House bill would eventually eliminate the estate tax altogether, saving wealthy heirs nearly $20 billion a year. Among the likely beneficiaries: Trump's own children.

Two out of 1,000 estates were going to owe any estate tax at all in 2017. That’s the measure of how rich you have to be to benefit from this one.

Both the Senate and House plans would reduce taxes on companies whose profits double as the owners' personal income. Republicans say this lower rate would help small businesses and entrepreneurs. But such "pass-through" companies, whose profits are taxed at the owners' personal rates, include lucrative partnerships and sole proprietorships — including much of Trump's business empire. A lower rate for them would enable many rich Americans to consolidate their wealth.

The top one percent gets 51 percent of pass-through income, and millionaires would get 79 percent of the benefit from a tax cut on pass-through companies. So again, no matter how much they package this cut as being about “small business owners,” it’s another give-away to rich people.

Republican lawmakers would raise the Child Tax Credit, with the Senate bill doubling it temporarily from $1,000 to $2,000. But the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that the benefits are restricted based on income. It estimates that 10 million children from poor working families would receive a "token" $75 or less. By contrast, a family of four earning $500,000 with two children would, under the Senate bill, receive a $4,000 credit.

If you can already afford great child care, you get money. If you’re struggling to afford adequate care so you can go to work, Republicans have virtually nothing for you.

This is the Republican approach to tax cuts in a nutshell. If you have money, you’ll get money. If you don’t, you won’t. It’s a recipe for even worse economic inequality than we already have. And that’s the point.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/12/7/1722112/-Here-are-some-of-the-sweet-tax-cuts-Republicans-are-offering-if-you-re-already-rich

[BOREALIS]

9 New and Crazy Revelations About Unhinged Trump

Insider disclosures from The NY Times describe days filled with TV and a dozen Diet Cokes.

By Kali Holloway / AlterNet
December 9, 2017, 3:54 PM GMT

On Saturday, the New York Times offered a lengthy look at Donald Trump’s presidency from the inside with an article informed by “60 [presidential] advisers, associates, friends and members of Congress.”
[ "Inside Trump’s Hour-by-Hour Battle for Self-Preservation"
With Twitter as his Excalibur, the president
takes on his doubters, powered by long spells
of cable news and a dozen Diet Cokes. But
if Mr. Trump has yet to bend the presidency
to his will, he is at least wrestling it to a draw.
By MAGGIE HABERMAN, GLENN THRUSH and PETER BAKERDEC. 9, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/09/us/politics/donald-trump-president.html?_r=1 ]

The piece is a portrait of a president who has made almost no strides toward being a competent statesman and instead continues to do things his way, in the hope he can reinvent his role on his own ill-defined terms. The Trump presidency has largely been defined by the president’s highly visible insecurities and outsized ego. “Despite all his bluster, [Trump] views himself less as a titan dominating the world stage than a maligned outsider engaged in a struggle to be taken seriously.” Also, the guy seems able to tear himself away from his television only long enough to take in a few rounds of golf.

(omitted imbedded links)

Here are nine of the craziest revelations from the Times article.

1. He watches a ton of television, but lies about it.

As soon as he wakes around 5:30am each morning, Trump turns on cable news and channel-hops throughout the day. Fox News shows like “Fox & Friends,” along with programs hosted by Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Jeanine Pirro, which offer unfailingly fawning coverage, give the president “comfort and messaging ideas.” Trump reportedly “hate watches” MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” and CNN, particularly Don Lemon, in order to get “fired up.”

Those close to the president told the Times they “estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television, sometimes with the volume muted.” (According to staffers, “[n]o one touches the remote control except Mr. Trump and the technical support staff — at least that’s the rule.”)

He also lies about his level of TV consumption. During a recent trip to Asia he insisted reports about his television obsession were based on “fake sources,” out of fears it would bolster “criticism that he is not taking the job seriously.”

2. He’s erratic, and his behavior is often determined by how his news coverage looks.

Trump basically starts tweeting from his iPhone shortly after waking and taking in cable news headlines, even dashing off messages “while propped on his pillow.” Staffers are careful to keep an eye on “Fox & Friends” live in the morning for a guide to the president’s headspace and a sense of how difficult the day will be.

“If someone on the show says something memorable and Mr. Trump does not immediately tweet about it, the president’s staff knows he may be saving Fox News for later viewing on his recorder and instead watching MSNBC or CNN live — meaning he is likely to be in a foul mood to start the day.”

But moodiness means that the president is unpredictable at every turn; cranky and volatile one moment and personable the next. “Several advisers said the president may curse them for a minor transgression...then make amiable small talk with the same person minutes later.”

3. He still doesn’t read and needs briefings tailored to his short attention span.

Trump has previously admitted that he doesn’t read because he imagines he has “a lot of common sense.” His disdain for knowledge has been a consistent marker of his approach to U.S. intelligence. Post-election, Trump defended his practice of skipping most daily briefings by noting he didn’t need “to be told the same thing in the same words every single day” since he is “like, a smart person.” He now gets verbal updates each day, with staffers noting he has “become more attentive during daily intelligence briefings thanks to pithy presentations by Mike Pompeo, the C.I.A. director.”

“He really loves verbal briefings,” Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told the Times. “He is not one to consume volumes of books or briefings.”

4. He drinks up to 12 Diet Cokes a day.

According to a new book by erstwhile campaign Trump staffers Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie, “On Trump Force One there were four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke.” (Another Trump staffer told Axios, “Big Macs were served on silver trays in his private jet.”) The Times reports that Trump puts away two six-packs of Diet Cokes every single day, which he guzzles while (what else?) channel surfing and spouting off to anyone within earshot.

“Watching cable, [Trump] shares thoughts with anyone in the room, even the household staff he summons via a button for lunch or one of the dozen Diet Cokes he consumes each day.”

5. For all his complaints about his news coverage, he absolutely hates not being talked about.

According to insiders, Trump gets sad when he doesn’t see himself prominently featured among the day’s stories. Who would have thought a narcissist with the most fragile of egos would desperately need any kind of attention he can get.

To an extent that would stun outsiders, Mr. Trump, the most talked-about human on the planet, is still delighted when he sees his name in the headlines. And he is on a perpetual quest to see it there. One former top adviser said Mr. Trump grew uncomfortable after two or three days of peace and could not handle watching the news without seeing himself on it.

6. He persists in fabricating his own reality.

Nearly everyone in Trump’s orbit Times writers spoke with “raised questions about his capacity and willingness to differentiate bad information from something that is true.” That jibes with a recent report from the Washington Post that even behind closed doors, the president traffics in falsehoods and conspiracy theories, raising absurd questions about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, insisting he actually won the popular vote and suggesting 2005 Access Hollywood footage of him bragging about grabbing women’s pussies may not be real.

7. He thought being president would be like ruling a monarchy.

Trump had never held a role in the military or government before the election and was clearly uninterested in politics or policy. During the campaign season, he promised to defend nonexistent Articles of the Constitution, while as president, he revealed complete ignorance about Abraham Lincoln’s membership in the Republican Party of yore. After eight years of enduring racist taunts about every move he made, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Obama had to “spend more time with his successor than presidents typically do” because Donald Trump was so out of his depth coming into the job.

In April, Trump told Reuters that being president is “more work than in [his] previous life,” and that he’d thought leading the country “would be easier.” Which is dunderheaded for all the obvious reasons, but also because Trump essentially thought winning the U.S. presidential election was akin to becoming king, per the Times report.

Mr. Trump’s difficult adjustment to the presidency, people close to him say, is rooted in an unrealistic expectation of its powers, which he had assumed to be more akin to the popular image of imperial command than the sloppy reality of having to coexist with two other branches of government.

The story goes on to note that “Trump expected being president would [entail]...ruling by fiat, exacting tribute and cutting back-room deals.”

8. Nancy Pelosi offered this blatant and totally undisguised shade.

"[H]e was utterly unprepared for this. It would be like you or me going into a room and being asked to perform brain surgery. When you have a lack of knowledge as great as his, it can be bewildering.”

9. Despite the mere five years that separate them, Trump made fun of Bernie Sanders’ age.

While giving a White House tour to four Democratic legislators, Trump began speculating on who might run against him in 2020. He suggested Bernie Sanders would almost certainly run “even if he’s in a wheelchair,” and then mocked both the aged and disabled by “making a scrunched-up body of a man in a wheelchair.”

https://www.alternet.org/election-2016/9-new-and-crazy-revelations-about-unhinged-trump

[fuagf]

Did President Donald Trump Tell Michael Flynn To Lie To The FBI? | All In | MSNBC

"Michael Flynn's Text Shows Donald Trump WH Was All About Money | Morning Joe | MSNBC"

Published on Dec 11, 2017

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is examining the period before Flynn's firing, according to NBC News, focusing on what the president knew and when.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kzBPvI_32E4

The article mentioned in the video.

What Putin Really Wants

Russia's strongman president has many Americans convinced of his manipulative genius. He's really just a gambler who won big.

Julia Ioffe January/February 2018 Issue

[...]

Putin governs with the twin collapses of 1917 and 1991 at the forefront of his thinking. He fears for himself when another collapse comes—because collapse always comes, because it has already come twice in 100 years. He is constantly trying to avoid it. The exiled oil magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky has publicly spoken of deposing Putin, and until recently did not eschew violent means. People like Alexey Navalny, the opposition leader, openly talk about putting Putin and his closest associates on trial. The Russian opposition gleefully waits for Putin to fall, to resign, to die. Every misstep, every dip in oil prices, is to them just another sign of his coming personal apocalypse. The hungry anticipation is mirrored in the West, especially in the United States.


Alexey Navalny, a Russian anti-corruption crusader and presidential candidate, meeting with staff (Max Avdeev)

For the most part, the Kremlin is focused not on any positive development program, but on staving off that fate—and on taking full advantage of its power before the state’s inevitable demise. That’s one reason corruption among the ruling elite is so breathtakingly brazen: A Russian businessman who works with government clients describes the approach as the “last day of Pompeii,” repeated over and over. Another businessman, who had just left the highest echelons of a big state-run bank out of frustration at its corruption and mismanagement, told me, “Russia always rises from the ashes, time and time again. But I have a feeling that we’re about to go through a time of ashes again.”

[...]

Fear of collapse is also why Russian propaganda is intent on highlighting the bloody aftermath of revolutions the world over. Things may not be great in Russia now—the country has struggled mightily since 2012—but, the country’s news programs suggest, things can always get worse. That’s what Russians are told happened in the 1990s, in the nine frenetic years between the Soviet Union’s collapse and Putin’s ascent to power. “When you have two governmental collapses in 100 years, people are scared of them,” Migranyan told me. Many Russians remember the last one personally.

But the number who do is shrinking. One in four Russian men dies before the age of 55. Putin turned 65 in October, and is surrounded by people who are as old as he is, if not older. Russia is now “in an autumnal autocracy,” Ekaterina Schulmann, a political scientist in Moscow, says. “The more it tries to seem young and energetic, the more it obviously fails.” As Aleksey Chesnakov, a former Kremlin insider, told me, in Russia “the most active voters”—the people who buy in most fully to what Putin’s selling—“are the pensioners.”

To Putin’s supporters, his regime isn’t an autocracy, exactly. “It can be described as demophilia,” Migranyan explained. “It is not a democracy, but it is in the name of the people, and for the people. Putin’s main constituency is the people. All of his power comes from his rating with the people, and therefore it’s important that he gives them the fruits of his rule.” The Kremlin calls it “managed democracy.”

[...]

Navalny laughed at the state’s accusations that his supporters—the hundreds of people sweating with him in the room—had been paid by the U.S. State Department to show up. “This is the real political force of the country,” he said. “And we will win. We are destined for victory, because in any culture, in any civilization, people like us win, because they lie and we tell the truth.”

[...]

Putin’s approval rating surged in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea—and, by extension, Russia’s return to imperial grandeur. It was a risky maneuver, the equal, perhaps, of Putin’s later interference in the U.S. election. And it paid off, at least in the short term. Russians rallied behind the Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine—and behind Putin, their audacious president. “There was a spike in loyalty” toward “every organ of the state,” Kirill Rogov, a political analyst in Moscow who studies Russian polling, told me—“a conservative shift in all directions. People started paying more attention to the news, they watched more TV, and they became more indoctrinated.” For a decade, a majority of Russians had told pollsters that they would rather be well-off than live in a great power. In 2014, those preferences flipped.

But the rush of patriotism provided by the Crimean annexation proved fleeting.

[...]

Worried about potential terror attacks in nearby Sochi during the 2014 Olympics, the Russian secret services had allowed hundreds, if not thousands, of Islamist rebels, all of them Russian citizens, to go to Syria. According to one report in Novaya Gazeta, the FSB even provided some of them with a passport and transportation to the Russian border.

It was a shortsighted counterterrorism strategy. Two Dagestani men who traveled to isis-controlled territories in Syria in order to bring back their children told me that they heard as much Russian as Arabic on the streets of isis cities. An October report by the Soufan Center, a security-intelligence nonprofit, showed that more foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria came from Russia than from any other country. What will become of these Russian fighters, now better trained and battle-hardened, as isis territory continues to shrink?

[...]

Ironically, one of the Russian institutions to suffer the most blowback for the Russian hack is the FSB, one of the agencies believed to be behind the 2016 interference. “Before 2016, the FSB had a good reputation in Washington,” Andrei Soldatov, the Russian journalist, told me. The head of the FSB “was considered a reliable partner in fighting terrorism.” But “it all ended in 2016, and it ended very badly.” FSB officers were put on the FBI’s most-wanted list for cybercriminals, an unprecedented retaliation. The head of the FSB’s elite cyber unit and his deputy were forced out; two other top officers from the unit ended up in Moscow’s most notorious jail. “They’re now under incredible pressure both from the inside and the outside,” Soldatov said. “Sometimes,” says Michael Hayden, a director of the National Security Agency under George W. Bush, “you have successful covert operations that you wish hadn’t succeeded.”

[...]

Kuznetsov and Stolyarov have an extensive list of American victims. In February, posing as the Ukrainian prime minister, they prank-called Senator John McCain, who confessed that the Trump era was the hardest time of his long political life. “He sounded like he didn’t know what to do—like, at all,” Kuznetsov recalled. That same month, they prank-called Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who told them that new sanctions against Russia were unlikely.

The point of Kuznetsov and Stolyarov’s American work is both to uncover important information—like what will happen regarding sanctions—and to troll, distract, confuse, and ridicule people whom American voters might be inclined to respect but who are hostile to Russia.

[...]

Some Americans, including the current president, believe that if only we could identify where our interests align, Russia could be a good partner. But those who have dealt with Putin for decades understand that this is, at best, a fantasy. “Putin defines Russia’s interests in opposition to—and with the objective of thwarting—Western policy,” Ash Carter, Obama’s last defense secretary, told me recently. “It’s very hard to build a bridge to that motivation. It makes it ipso facto impossible” to “work cooperatively with Russia.”

Putin is not a supervillain. He is not invincible, or unstoppable. He pushes only until the moment he meets resistance. His 2014 plans to lop off the eastern third of Ukraine, for instance, broke apart against the surprisingly fierce resistance of the Ukrainian army, and Western sanctions.

[...]

There is one dot on the horizon that particularly worries the Kremlin. In 2024, Putin’s next six-year presidential term will be up. The constitution limits Putin to two consecutive terms, and he will be 71 years old. “All these guys are thinking about 2024,” said the businessman high up in United Russia, Putin’s party. The parliament could change the constitution to allow Putin to serve yet another term. But that’s not ideal. Putin, who trained as a lawyer before he was a KGB agent, has insisted on maintaining a simulacrum of legality. And anyway, he, a mortal man, can serve only so many terms.

So what is Putin to do? Will he hand off his throne to a successor? There are ever fewer candidates. His circle of advisers has shrunk; now it’s made up mostly of old men who, like him, came from Leningrad or served in the KGB. In recent years, he has replaced regional governors with young loyalists and even former bodyguards—most of whom have no significant governing experience but owe everything to him. More and more, he appears to be a man without an exit strategy.

[...]

In 2014, Vyacheslav Volodin, now the speaker of the Russian Parliament, said, “If there is Putin, there is Russia. If there is no Putin, there is no Russia.” Putin has personalized the institutions of the state—the courts, the army, the security forces, the parliament, even the opposition parties—and the economy, too. As the economic pie gets smaller, the elites are cannibalizing one another in the struggle over whatever resources remain, and can be squeezed out of the population. The people now filling Russia’s most notorious jails are elite government officials: countless bureaucrats, at least four governors, and numerous mayors. A minister is under house arrest. They are the losers in an increasingly savage fight. The winners are typically those who spin in the orbit closest to Putin’s dying star.

[...]

Putin has been kicking the can down the road for a long time, and this has generally worked for him. He is still popular and still in good shape, as his shows of bare-chested masculinity are meant to remind us. But there is less road left every day, and one day, it will run out. Everyone in Moscow knows that day is coming, but no one knows what happens the day after. “If he suddenly leaves in 2024, we will be orphaned,” says Konstantin Malofeev, an oligarch who was sanctioned by the West for supporting pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine (which he has denied doing). He believes that Putin was chosen by God to lead Russia. The next person, he fears, won’t have the same sense of duty. “The next person,” he says, “will be worse.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/putins-game/546548/

[fuagf]

Nuclear plan backer denies Inauguration Day text with top Trump aide

"Michael Flynn's Text Shows Donald Trump WH Was All About Money | Morning Joe | MSNBC"

December 12, 2017 / 7:19 AM / a day ago

Reuters Staff

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A company promoting a plan for the United States and Russia to jointly build nuclear reactors in the Middle East denied in a letter made public
on Monday that its director received an Inauguration Day text message from incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn saying the project was “good to go.”

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-flynn/nuclear-plan-backer-denies-inauguration-day-text-with-top-trump-aide-idUSKBN1E52IU?il=0

So seems two questions exist on that. Did Flynn text some 11 minutes into Trump's inauguration speech, or not? If Flynn did who did he text?

Mueller likely knew the answers some time ago.