The Purge

[Shadowy Man]

And, I'm happy to say that my son who works for the DOD just got a notice telling him he was considered an essential employee despite being technically on probation since he went from sub contractor to employee just a few months ago. Maybe there is hope.

and being “essential” means he’ll work during the impending shutdown.

There isn't going to be a shutdown,

At the time I posted I didn’t expect the Democrats to cave.

. He will quit his job before he does that or work from home until they fire him. I don't know how federal employees are putting up with this shit.

They want people to quit.

 

[bilby]

IBM have been using mandatory relocations and office attendance by remote workers for decades as a means to 'quietly' cut staff by persuading them to quit. That's how they got rid of me (though due to Australian legal protections, it cost them a big chunk of cash in my case. My colleagues in the US were not so fortunate).

It's generally cheaper and more politically palatable than explicit sackings or redundancies.

I have no doubt that this strategy is very widespread in the IT industry, particularly amongst the largest corporations, and it doesn't surprise me at all that Afrikaner Cartman would use it, once explicit sackings have been forbidden or made politically or legally difficult.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/minnesota-senate-republicans-bill-proposes-adding-trump-derangement-syndrome-to-mental-illness-definiti-11742049348473.html

Again, bunch of snowflakes (also, fascists) who don't want their (lack of ideas) challenged.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/minnesota-senate-republicans-bill-proposes-adding-trump-derangement-syndrome-to-mental-illness-definiti-11742049348473.html

Again, bunch of snowflakes (also, fascists) who don't want their (lack of ideas) challenged.

I actually called this ahead of time. Some people will try to justify RFK's proposal to put Democrats into labor camps due to mental illness. Of course, those things won't happen, but they are pushing the Overton window way out there. When they are done, a moderate view will be "Well, yeah, of course Democrats are crazy, but labor camps are not the answer."

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Trump dismantles Voice of America with executive order

More than 1,300 staff placed on administrative leave as White House accuses VOA of being anti-Trump, "radical" and "leftist".

www.bbc.com

He already removed influence of AFP, AP and Reuters on VOA. Now he is streamlining it to gain complete partisan control for his own pre-approved messaging. Anyone who disapproves of this will be canned.

 

[GenesisNemesis]

https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/minnesota-senate-republicans-bill-proposes-adding-trump-derangement-syndrome-to-mental-illness-definiti-11742049348473.html

Again, bunch of snowflakes (also, fascists) who don't want their (lack of ideas) challenged.

I actually called this ahead of time. Some people will try to justify RFK's proposal to put Democrats into labor camps due to mental illness. Of course, those things won't happen, but they are pushing the Overton window way out there. When they are done, a moderate view will be "Well, yeah, of course Democrats are crazy, but labor camps are not the answer."

May not happen across the board. There's nothing stopping it in states where fascists control everything.

 

[Shadowy Man]

https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/minnesota-senate-republicans-bill-proposes-adding-trump-derangement-syndrome-to-mental-illness-definiti-11742049348473.html

Again, bunch of snowflakes (also, fascists) who don't want their (lack of ideas) challenged.

Republican who introduced Trump derangement syndrome bill arrested for soliciting a minor — Guardian US

Minnesota state senator Justin Eichorn allegedly traveled to meet a 17-year-old he thought he’d met online, but was instead a cop posing as minor

apple.news

Republican who introduced Trump derangement syndrome bill arrested for soliciting a minor


Minnesota state senator Justin Eichorn allegedly traveled to meet a 17-year-old he thought met online, but was instead a cop posing as minor

 

[Jarhyn]

https://www.livemint.com/news/us-news/minnesota-senate-republicans-bill-proposes-adding-trump-derangement-syndrome-to-mental-illness-definiti-11742049348473.html

Again, bunch of snowflakes (also, fascists) who don't want their (lack of ideas) challenged.

Republican who introduced Trump derangement syndrome bill arrested for soliciting a minor — Guardian US

Minnesota state senator Justin Eichorn allegedly traveled to meet a 17-year-old he thought he’d met online, but was instead a cop posing as minor

apple.news

Republican who introduced Trump derangement syndrome bill arrested for soliciting a minor


Minnesota state senator Justin Eichorn allegedly traveled to meet a 17-year-old he thought met online, but was instead a cop posing as minor

Does this mean his district gets someone to replace him?

Who are they going to pick, if they picked that Very Fine 'Person'?

Ugh, this is MY state...

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5146332-house-republicans-impeachment-judges-trump-musk-doge/

House Republicans plot impeachment against judges blocking Trump, DOGE​

A few House Republicans are pledging to bring up impeachment articles against federal judges who have blocked Trump administration actions, including those of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), backing up tech billionaire Elon Musk’s call for a “wave of judicial impeachments.”

Impeaching judges is moving forward. The article gives 3 examples of the specific representatives writing articles of impeachment. Of course, MTG is one.

Not too worried as,

"It would take near-unanimous support from House Republicans to impeach a judge if Democrats do not support the measure, and support from Democrats would be required to clear the two-thirds threshold to convict on impeachment articles in the Senate."

Trump isn't exactly following the rules, though. So impeachment under Trump might look different. I am not creative enough to come up with what they might and so specifics do not matter. So don't assume these specifics matter: like an early retirement package or be impeached or a Russian disinformation campaign around them during impeachment with planted evidence or entrapment or Trump could fire them, even if illegal, who knows what they'll come up with that they'll call impeachment.

Here's a follow-up from Bizzaro World:

Ron DeSantis Proposes Solution to Stop the 'Sabotaging of President Trump's Agenda' by Federal Judges (strip jurisdiction of the federal courts)

freerepublic.com

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Yes, you need to prove you're employable. But it's possible to do so with documents containing no anti-counterfeit provisions.

(And the US passport is easiest if you don't run into someone who can't comprehend you don't actually need two documents. My passport I actually use, my social security card I certainly haven't used since the 80s and I'm not sure I used it even then. Of course I can lay my hands on my passport faster.)

I can't remember the last time I saw my social security card. I might be here at my house or it could be at my parent's house or it could be just lost. I sure have not needed the physical card for decades. If I ever needed to prove it I'd pull out an old W2. But I don't think I've had to prove it for decades either.

I'm confident my Social Security card is in the house (and there isn't any other place it could be), I'm virtually certain it's in one of two places that combined comprise about 10 ft^3, but I have very little idea beyond that. My passport I can identify down to an inch or so, the only ambiguity being hers is with it.

 

[southernhybrid]

My SS card, marriage certificate, birth certificate and other important documents are in our bank vault, a local bank that is still in good shape. We will put it all in a small safe when we move next month. If you have a driver's license or state ID in Georgia, you have what is known as a real ID, the one with a star on it that is proof you are a citizen or a legal resident. We had to submit a birth certificate and probably one other proof of ID, about 10 or so years ago before we could renew our Driver's license. Hopefully that will make it easier to get one in Indiana when we move.

Right now, I'm mostly concerned about changing the banks where our SS is deposited monthly. At least we can do the changes online. We've been. using the same local bank for 26 years, but we could bank online for awhile I guess. Every now and then, someone who is alive is treated as if they are dead, due to a SS fuck up. It takes time to restore those benefits. I worry that will be more common now that the rat and the felon are controlling things and a high percentage of SS workers have been dismissed. SS has been understaffed for years. Now it's much worse.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

I have a W2, and get a 1040 every year, but I don't have a social security number, and am not eligible to work in the US. I own US shares that pay taxable dividends, but have never been a US resident, much less a citizen. The IRS deduct taxes from my dividends, and the ATO refunds them under some reciprocal tax treaty or other - but the tax years don't line up, and the exchange rate fluctuates, so it gets very complicated.

I leave it up to my accountant.

I don't have to mess with separate returns but we have some foreign assets. Half my time (not half the return) is spent on them. There's always some currency fluctuation involved and it always bugs me that we are paying tax on a number that never matches the change in value.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

The other thing? The cost of preventing the waste. The irony in life is that sometimes it is cheaper not to develop huge backups, as long as the waste is effectively noise, because otherwise, you must pay more to stop the waste. Is the ratio reasonable? Look at the IRS. Increase staff by X, get 10X or 20X in return is very likely, maybe a gross underestimation.

Yup. I set off a stupidity at the DMV some time ago, a few bucks failed to transfer when it should have because two people did different things in abbreviating data to fit the field. The labor that went into getting that properly accounted for was unquestionably worth more than the money in question. Contrast that with my experience of buying a 31# watermelon. Oops, all the usual grocery store certified scales only go up to 30# as consumers almost never buy by-the-pound objects in excess of that. Once the problem was identified (not that it was 31#, but that it was >30#--it was our scale at home that said 31#) the manager simply offered to sell it to us for the price of a 30# watermelon. They understood that trying to get a legal weight for the offending watermelon was going to cost more effort than simply giving us whatever weight was over 30#.

Get every detail perfectly documented at high cost vs simply producing a result acceptable to all.

 

[Elixir]

I have a W2, and get a 1040 every year, but I don't have a social security number, and am not eligible to work in the US. I own US shares that pay taxable dividends, but have never been a US resident, much less a citizen. The IRS deduct taxes from my dividends, and the ATO refunds them under some reciprocal tax treaty or other - but the tax years don't line up, and the exchange rate fluctuates, so it gets very complicated.

If you sell shares, do you get a 1099?

 

[bilby]

I have a W2, and get a 1040 every year, but I don't have a social security number, and am not eligible to work in the US. I own US shares that pay taxable dividends, but have never been a US resident, much less a citizen. The IRS deduct taxes from my dividends, and the ATO refunds them under some reciprocal tax treaty or other - but the tax years don't line up, and the exchange rate fluctuates, so it gets very complicated.

If you sell shares, do you get a 1099?

I seem to recall seeing a form labelled 1099, but to be honest, I only look at the documentation when attaching it to a big email to my accountant.

Hi Sam,

Here's all the paperwork I have from the USA, let me know if you think anything you need is missing.

It's typically tens rather than hundreds of dollars, so I just don't care that much.

 

[Elixir]

I have a W2, and get a 1040 every year, but I don't have a social security number, and am not eligible to work in the US. I own US shares that pay taxable dividends, but have never been a US resident, much less a citizen. The IRS deduct taxes from my dividends, and the ATO refunds them under some reciprocal tax treaty or other - but the tax years don't line up, and the exchange rate fluctuates, so it gets very complicated.

If you sell shares, do you get a 1099?

I seem to recall seeing a form labelled 1099, but to be honest, I only look at the documentation when attaching it to a big email to my accountant.

Hi Sam,

Here's all the paperwork I have from the USA, let me know if you think anything you need is missing.

It's typically tens rather than hundreds of dollars, so I just don't care that much.

There seems to be a bell curve of IRS concerns. When I was claiming $20-60k of income they never made a peep no matter how I filed. But lo, a couple of years of six figure incomes and they started challenging shit, fining me for minor errors etc.
I mentioned a couple of billionaires to my accountant and said “shouldn’t they be going after THOSE guys?”
Turns out to be a feature of the system, that unless auditing billionaires is likely to yield tens or hundreds of millions to the IRS, it’s not worth it. Billionaires will tie up millions in IRS resources fighting them, appealing rulings and making it unprofitable to try to make them pay.
So they like to go after people with significant but not massive incomes, because that’s where the profits are, regardless of whether or not they are honest filers.
They make their bread and butter on picking apart the returns of upper-middle income people; they have some money to collect, but not enough money to give the IRS a fight.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

View attachment 49489

One can hope it kicks back and hits him in the knees.

Huh? I'm not comfortable with saws like that but I do own a mini version on a pole for tree trimming--and the kick danger is up, not down. (But mine is on a long enough pole that there's no way I can have my end of the pole and have the business end close enough to pose a threat.)

 

[Loren Pechtel]

There seems to be a bell curve of IRS concerns. When I was claiming $20-60k of income they never made a peep no matter how I filed. But lo, a couple of years of six figure incomes and they started challenging shit, fining me for minor errors etc.
I mentioned a couple of billionaires to my accountant and said “shouldn’t they be going after THOSE guys?”
Turns out to be a feature of the system, that unless auditing billionaires is likely to yield tens or hundreds of millions to the IRS, it’s not worth it. Billionaires will tie up millions in IRS resources fighting them, appealing rulings and making it unprofitable to try to make them pay.
So they like to go after people with significant but not massive incomes, because that’s where the profits are, regardless of whether or not they are honest filers.
They make their bread and butter on picking apart the returns of upper-middle income people; they have some money to collect, but not enough money to give the IRS a fight.

They've always been picky about anything the computer could catch. I've gotten a few notices for things like transposed digits etc even when our income was low. I do think the computer has become more able to match things and thus catches more such minnows. IIRC only one notice since I started doing taxes on the computer--and that they were actually in the wrong. But, ok, if you're going to say I owe a couple of days worth of interest because you processed it late but then you say the extra I owe is small enough you're zeroing it out as not economic to collect that certainly makes it not worth my fighting them over $0. And they didn't catch the doozie--fat-fingered an extra digit into a basis value. It had zero effect on the bottom line that year (which is why I didn't notice it, it never propagated off D) but a big effect on the carry-over, I caught it the next year when it actually altered the numbers. (And then left me struggling with trying to convince the computer to do an amended return that produced no change.)

 

[KCFlyer]

View attachment 49489

One can hope it kicks back and hits him in the knees.

Huh? I'm not comfortable with saws like that but I do own a mini version on a pole for tree trimming--and the kick danger is up, not down. (But mine is on a long enough pole that there's no way I can have my end of the pole and have the business end close enough to pose a threat.)

it was a joke

 

[unapologetic]

I'm mostly concerned about changing the banks where our SS is deposited monthly. At least we can do the changes online.

Sorry. Dangerous Oligarch Gouging Employees is screwing that as we speak. Announced this week they are shutting the website. Making folks apply for benefits in person at local offices, AND closing a bunch of local offices.
(gouging is not the right word. I couldn't think of a good G word.)