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Well... it's Trump... again. #47, here we go.

I wonder how many times Orange Joffrey is going to say the phrase, :"the likes of which no one has ever seen", in his word vomit.
 
SCOTUS (5-4) denies Trump Admin ability to thumb nose at USAID related services that have been provided. Should be noted, this doesn't address the full issue, only whether the Trump Admin could freeze payment on stuff that has already been completed. Roberts and Barrett joined the liberal justices. I would have thought this could be 6-3 with Kavanaugh, but clearly he is done.

Hyper-technical dissent by Alito et al indicate the Federal Judge didn't have the authority to say the Executive Branch is supposed to follow the law to force the Executive Branch to pay out.
article said:
“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” wrote Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh.
Again, we see the unitary executive folks (when the GOP is in charge) create a ridiculous argument to suggest the GOP can do whatever they want.
 
It is not u8nthkanble that all this will lead to an economic crash.
It's hard for me to avoid thinking it's all intentional, directed, and an unspeakably tragic accommodation of one person's neuroses.
 
How many here are going to watch tRump tonight?
I think I would rather scrub the toilet.
I’d rather rub my mother in law’s bunions.
I'd rather put ointment on my mother-in-law's hemorrhoids.
Tom
I'd rather hang my mother-in-law's grandmother's hemorrhoids from the back of my car and pretend they are JD Vance's balls.
Y’all have some real weird druthers.
I’d rather not any of the above.
Sure as hell didn’t watch the talking rectum, tho.
 
What's holding me back? Political support for the right-wing has been rising rapidly in France and Germany. Fascism is on the rise; a new world order is emerging with, at least in the short term, Vladimir Putin as Capo di tutti capi.
I think a better observation is that the extremist parties are on the rise. Yes, in France National Rally is strong but so is France Unbowed. In Germany, AfD is strong, but so is the Left Party.

The likely new coalition after last month's election is between center-right CDU/CSU and center-left SPD. Traditionally, this is called the "grand coalition" because these two parties used to be major parties ("Volksparteien") which, between them, commanded a strong majority. Even as recently as 2013, they had 80% of the seats between them. Now they could only manage a bare majority of 52%, and even that only because BSW (Bund Sahra Wagenknecht) missed the 5% requirement by a whisker (they got 4.97%).

Among young people in Germany, almost half of the vote was between the two extremist parties. Add the Bund Sahra Wagenknecht, a splitter party from the Left Party, and it's more than half.
grafik-bundestagwahl-junge-waehler-100~1920x1080

The traditional major parties could not even get a fourth of the total youth vote between them!

All this is a problem, but it is not just a right-wing problem as you make it out to be.

What also must be noted is that the only reason AfD is this strong (20%) is that mainstream parties failed to handle the mass migration crisis. Especially the then Chancellor, the nominally conservative Angela Merkel. One wonders what things would be like if Friedrich Merz managed to win against her for Party leadership back then. Would he have made the same mistakes?
 
To be fair, the share of taxes paid by income quintile is skewed even more than the graph provided by Zipr.
Share-of-Taxes-by-Quintile-2021.png

From here.
 
Of course this is a little deceptive. Under Trump’s tax cuts the first time I ended up paying more in taxes because of the SALT limit, intended to hit the high tax blue states even though according to this chart I should have seen a reasonable cut.
I saw a slight increase with Trump's tax cuts since I am single with no dependents and I itemized deductions, which were just above the standard deduction, but I lost the personal exemption.
 
To be fair, the share of taxes paid by income quintile is skewed even more than the graph provided by Zipr.
Share-of-Taxes-by-Quintile-2021.png

From here.
That chart says nothing about the rate they pay, especially by the top 1 percent. So do those people deserve a tax cut?
 
That chart says nothing about the rate they pay, especially by the top 1 percent.
The chart with rates is found in the very same article.
In any case, we should compare like with like. Your chart expressed proposed tax cuts by share of the total tax cut amount, by quintile. So I posted the equivalent - share of all federal income taxes paid by quintile.
As you can see, the two are fairly similar. In fact, the lower and the middle quintiles are somewhat favored compared to their share of total taxes paid.
So do those people deserve a tax cut?
Ah, that is a horse of a different color. My point was that the tax cut proposal was not out of line with the share of federal income taxes these income groups are paying. I was not making a statement about what should be in the tax cut bill.
For the record, I do think the top quintile (>$165k household income) and especially top 5% (>$315k household income) do not particularly need a tax cut.
I also do think tax cuts should be more general. For example, a tax cuts for bottom four quintiles helps 80% of the people. But Dems of late have favored schemes that only help subsets of taxpayers. When your plans focus on things like increasing the child tax credit, the child free are left holding the bag.
 
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Of course this is a little deceptive. Under Trump’s tax cuts the first time I ended up paying more in taxes because of the SALT limit, intended to hit the high tax blue states even though according to this chart I should have seen a reasonable cut.
I never understood why people should get a cut on their federal taxes because they pay state and local taxes AND itemize deductions.
Most people do not benefit from it at all.
12-10-19taxf2.png

It's a tax break for the rich, but because it helps blue state rich more than the red state rich, Dems are all for it.
 
Of course this is a little deceptive. Under Trump’s tax cuts the first time I ended up paying more in taxes because of the SALT limit, intended to hit the high tax blue states even though according to this chart I should have seen a reasonable cut.
I never understood why people should get a cut on their federal taxes because they pay state and local taxes AND itemize deductions.
Most people do not benefit from it at all.
12-10-19taxf2.png

It's a tax break for the rich, but because it helps blue state rich more than the red state rich, Dems are all for it.
In California a larger salary isn’t as “rich” as you think it is because cost of living is much higher. I could live somewhere cheaper but my salary for the same work would be lower and I would pay significantly lower percentage in taxes so I could actually be “richer” there than here.

It doesn’t make sense to tax me of money I use to pay taxes. A kind of double taxation. It’d be better to cap the mortgage interest deduction instead but that would hurt more than just the blue states so republicans aren’t for it.
 
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