StrangeSox

QUOTE (caulfield12 @ Apr 26, 2017 -> 04:34 PM) Seems like the definition of how authoritarian and/or Banana Republics begin. Or he's simply emulating his brother in arms, Erdogan from Turkey. It's something that only Congress could do, but it does show what his impulses are. FWIW people do talk about "breaking up" the 9th circuit, but that's because they think it should be split into two circuits because of the huge caseload it gets, not because it's "bad" or that it would fundamentally change outcomes. Trump's language seems to indicate that he'd just like to get rid of the 9th all together because they're not nice to him.

Exclusive interview: Trump 'absolutely' looking at breaking up 9th Circuit The 9th keeps slapping down his EO's and now he wants to get rid of them.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Apr 26, 2017 -> 04:04 PM) I'm not necessarily for it either. I just think it gets paraded as this vital tax cut when so few people face it and it brings in way less money than it could because the rich easily outsmart the tax code anyway. To be honest, I had no idea the exemption on it was so high until I met with an estate lawyer a few years ago. I always assumed everyone paid it. I imagine many others don't understand it either The estate tax is good if you want to tempter the effects of aristocracy. Heck, you can even argue that it motivates the next generation to get out and do something for themselves rather than be a bunch of wealthy lay-abouts.

Trump had all 100 Senators up at the White House for a briefing on North Korea. Many of them, including GOP Senators, are leaving the meeting very confused at what the point of it was and what the strategy on North Korea actually is.

QUOTE (illinilaw08 @ Apr 26, 2017 -> 03:47 PM) Well, no disagreement from my end that the defense budget should be cut to pay for infrastructure. But this tax cut proposal is especially absurd when combined with the massive increases in military spending that the Trump administration is proposing. You have to fix infrastructure before you gut the federal revenues... As to the business environment point, I do think that the tax code needs to be simplified, particularly for small business owners who are taking salaries of $30k-$50k. But if you remove government regulation of business, we're back to the 1920s - those glory days for labor. The fact of the matter is that the '08 crash caused some pretty huge damage to the labor market, and the majority of the recovery flowed upstream, beyond the labor market. So I'm not sure what you mean by the business environment being so difficult to compete in. We've been through a tough recession and then several years of barely ok growth that was accelerating only gradually and almost exclusively benefiting people with college degrees. If you don't have a degree, the recession never ended. https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/amer...vided-recovery/

Anyway this tax plan is *probably* DOA in the Senate since it'll need 60 votes to break the filibuster. What we'll most likely get instead is some 10 year sun-setting tax cuts just like the Bush tax cuts that turbocharged the economy bank accounts of the wealthy

Ethics Experts Baffled By Report Of Ivanka Trump’s New Fund For Women This comes on the same day that Trump announced he was eliminating funding for the Office of Global Women’s Issues within the State Department

This tax plan will definitely represent a very efficient redistribution of wealth (upward).

QUOTE (bmags @ Apr 26, 2017 -> 01:51 PM) This had so much momentum behind it in 2006-2008 and really seems like the constituency for it fell out, or just assumed it was stable. Obama's FCC put the rules into place, but Trump's FCC announced today that they're going to dump them and return to regulating the internet the exact same way it was in 1996, just like it should be.

Trump's tax "proposal" is also hilariously tilted towards the wealthy and would personally benefit him and his children to the tune of tens of millions of dollars a year. e: also apparently it's identical to what they released last fall, so they haven't actually been working on it at all. https://twitter.com/ZekeJMiller/status/857294528017027081

Looks like Net Neutrality is dead

Obama's administration did basically nothing to hold the people who got extremely wealthy off of the run-up to the global financial collapse accountable and that left a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.

andrew jackson was an awful, awful person and a terrible president

From a few weeks back, but that report on Well Fargo's sales tactics was pretty brutal http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-shocki...ices-2017-04-10

https://charlotteobserver.relaymedia.com/am...e146486019.html

I'm only okay if he's using it to funnel the wealth from plutocrats to something good, but it's just going to his own bank account I'm sure. It really is like the final blow to the optimism people placed on him in 2008.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Apr 25, 2017 -> 09:03 AM) Rantings of a madman. Remember that this man has the unilateral power to destroy global human civilization in a matter of hours.

Transcript of AP interview with Trump Needs to be read in its entirety to get the full impact imo

https://twitter.com/JoshSchwerin/status/856569274529435648

It's late, and it also endorses the situation (repudiate Trump) and the campaign (energy and grassroots activism) without actually endorsing Ossoff.

It's a few days late though

That's basically my view as well, and why I pretty much ignored the Dem primary entirely.