US Politics Thread 2021-24

[Rockstar]

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by em2nought

It certainly "feels" like justice is peeking out from under her blindfold to me.

Could well be

[Jimbuna]

Politics the world over unfortunately.

Trump campaign has received nearly $1.8 million from his clemency recipients

Donald Trump's questionable usage of his presidential pardon power before he left office is paying dividends for his 2024 presidential campaign as grateful recipients are showering his campaign with cash and, in some cases, using the media platforms to boost his chances of returning to the Oval Office.

According to a deep dive from the Washington Post, the former president and his campaign have taken in nearly $1.8 million from appreciative recipients and their families with more expected to come.

The report notes, Donald Trump's ability to grant clemency was mostly focused on those accused of white-collar crime than any other offenses, with the Post adding that "tax scofflaws, health-care fraudsters, corrupt politicians and Ponzi schemers all benefited."
Those people, the report notes, are well positioned to lavish money on his latest campaign.

"The Post found 26 clemency recipients or their immediate family members have contributed to a Trump campaign account or a pro-Trump political committee. That means more than 1 out of 10 of the people who received pardons and commutations gave money either before they received clemency, afterward or in both periods, for a total of nearly $1.8 million," the report states with Charles Kushner, father of Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner leading the way.

The elder Kushner, who received his pardon in 2020 has contributed $1 million to a pro-Trump super PAC in 2023.

The report adds, "New York-based real estate investor Alex Adjmi had served time in the late 1990s for a money-laundering conviction. He rarely donated to federal campaigns, records show, but in 2020he made three payments, including one contribution to the Republican National Committee and another to a joint account with the Trump campaign totaling $37,600. Adjmi was among the 144 people who received clemency on Trump’s last day in office. This year, he donated $100,000 to a pro-Trump political committee."

In an interview, Adjmi claimed, "It had nothing to do with my pardon.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...95345989&ei=25

[Rockstar]

In 2026 new cars, someone can remotely stop your car with the flick of a switch, listen to your conversations and watch you while you drive.

[Rockstar]

One Supreme Court Case Could Mess Up Chunks of the Tax Code
Justices will debate the meaning of ‘income’ under the 16th Amendment

By
Richard Rubin and Jess Bravin
Dec. 3, 2023 at 9:00 am ET

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/one-...-code-680a9ba6

WASHINGTON—A case that could punch holes in the federal tax code heads to the Supreme Court on Tuesday.

The court will hear arguments in Moore v. U.S., which challenges a piece of the 2017 tax law that imposed a one-time levy on profits that companies had accumulated outside the U.S. But its implications could reach much further, providing the justices an opportunity to define what Congress can tax under the Constitution—and what it can’t.

The case, brought by a Washington state couple seeking a $14,729 refund, raises a seemingly simple question: Must income be “realized,” or received, before it can be taxed?

Charles and Kathleen Moore argue that when the law passed, they hadn’t realized income from their investment in an India-based company and thus couldn’t be taxed. Some conservative groups have backed them, seeing a chance to block future Congresses from taxing wealth or unrealized capital gains. A broad ruling for the Moores could create a constitutional bar against some popular Democratic proposals to tax the superrich.

Tax lawyers and the government say a sweeping ruling could also upend many longstanding rules affecting partnerships, multinational companies and bond investors. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who helped write the 2017 tax law, warned in September that the case could damage a third of the tax code.

If the Moores win, investors and companies could demand billions of dollars in refunds tied to the 2017 law. And a loss for the government could prompt a wave of lawsuits over other tax-code provisions, according to lawyers.

“It’s hard to see how this is going to turn out well,” said David Rosenbloom, a tax lawyer at Caplin & Drysdale. “They really are opening up a can of worms.”

Uncontroversial provision

The Moore case stems from a piece of the 2017 tax law written by Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump. The provision itself was relatively uncontroversial.

Before then, U.S. companies paid foreign taxes on foreign profits but could defer any U.S. taxes until they brought earnings back home. Republicans switched to a system with a minimum annual U.S. tax on foreign profits and tax-free repatriation.

In that transition, to deal with 30 years of profits companies had accumulated overseas that hadn’t faced U.S. taxation, Congress imposed a one-time levy.

The bulk of the estimated $338 billion in revenue that change generated is being paid by large companies such as Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft. But the tax also applied to some individuals, including those who owned more than 10% of a foreign corporation.

That group includes the Moores, who had invested in KisanKraft, a friend’s company in India. The couple, backed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute and other conservative groups, sued for a refund. They say that they hadn’t realized any of KisanKraft’s profits, so the one-time tax wasn’t within Congress’s 16th Amendment power to tax income.

Lower courts disagreed, saying income doesn’t have to be received to be taxed. The pair appealed to the Supreme Court, which will decide what the Constitution says about taxing income.

What is ‘income’?

The Constitution, as ratified, gave Congress broad national taxing power. But it required that any “direct taxes,” such as per-capita taxes, be apportioned among the states by population.

After the Civil War, Congress sought to impose an individual income tax, but the Supreme Court ruled in 1895 that such a move was an unconstitutional direct tax. A response was the 16th Amendment, which says “income, from whatever source derived,” can be taxed without apportionment. That led to the modern federal income tax.

The 1913 amendment doesn’t specify what “income” means, nor does it say income must be realized.

The government contends that plenty of tax-code provisions already don’t require Americans to see income hit their bank accounts. That includes rules governing the taxation of futures contracts and bonds with original-issue discounts.

Tax lawyers point to other examples. Since the 1960s, significant U.S. investors in foreign companies have faced taxes on those corporations’ passive income, even if the Americans didn’t get money directly. That is a way of keeping U.S. taxpayers from dodging taxes by stashing assets in foreign corporations.

Partners are taxed on partnerships’ annual profits, even if they don’t get a check for their portion. Some people who renounce their citizenship owe taxes as if they sold assets. Certain securities dealers can pay income taxes on changes in asset value. Even basic accrual accounting—booking income before it is literally received—could be considered a form of unrealized income. Recent minimum taxes on large U.S. corporations or international income could also be in jeopardy.

Some think-tank estimates tally the potential revenue impact of a sweeping ruling in favor of the Moores in the trillions.

“A holding that the realization rule is constitutionally required could well cause massive parts of the current tax system to become invalidated,” said David Schizer, a Columbia law professor.

The Moores argue that the 2017 tax is unique because it reaches back to capture years of accumulated earnings. The problem, their lawyers contend, is that taxes fell on whoever owned assets when the law was passed, not people who actually earned or received income.

Court’s options

In briefs and at conferences, tax lawyers have suggested ways the court could decide the case without jeopardizing other tax-code provisions.

The simplest would be to say the Constitution doesn’t require income to be realized for it to be taxed. But that could conflict with a previous ruling from 1920 that has been limited by subsequent cases.

Another option: The court could avoid the broader question by saying that KisanKraft realized income and that the Moores can be taxed on it because they are significant investors.

The court also could say that realization is necessary but that the one-time foreign-profit tax meets the definition. That might not disrupt existing law, but it could offer a warning against taxes on wealth or unrealized capital gains that are percolating in Congress and Democratic policy circles.

“If they say realization is required and it’s satisfied here, then it’s probably going to be satisfied nearly everywhere at least under existing law,” said Andy Grewal, a University of Iowa law professor.

One other option could let the justices sidestep the realization argument. They could declare that the 2017 tax is neither an income tax governed by the 16th Amendment nor a direct tax subject to apportionment. That is similar to what the court did in 2012, when it upheld Obamacare’s individual mandate for purchasing health insurance as a constitutional tax.

Rosenbloom, the tax lawyer, said he expects the justices to overrule lower courts, perhaps in a narrower way that will nonetheless spur new challenges to tax-code provisions.

“This is the beginning of the story, not the end. And it could be a long story,” he said. “The court will be writing on a very, very blank slate.”

Write to Richard Rubin at richard.rubin@wsj.com and Jess Bravin at Jess.Bravin@wsj.com

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

[Jimbuna]

McCarthy limps towards possible exit from Congress after year of bruising speakership

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was third in line to the presidency just a few months ago. Soon, he may not be in Washington at all.

The California congressman endured a grinding nine months as leader of a fractured and bitter Republican caucus, one that may have been destined to cast him aside from the very beginning. Following a last-minute deal with Democrats to avert a government shutdown in October, he was unceremoniously ousted by one of his most polarising foes: Matt Gaetz of Florida, leading a cadre of Republican malcontents with their own varying complaints about Mr McCarthy’s leadership.

It was no secret within Washington DC circles that Mr McCarthy, 58, had long pined for the speaker’s chair. He had assumed the role of Republican foil to Nancy Pelosi years ago, and was hoping to begin his term this year at the helm of a reinvigorated Republican majority propelled into office by a “red wave” in November of 2022.
The red wave never materialised. Instead, Republicans eked out only a single-digit majority, unable to capitalise on growing concerns about Joe Biden’s performance and age and dragged down by a politically-toxic ruling by the Supreme Court tossing out the legal precedent set by Roe vs Wade. In the Senate, the party fared even worse; Democrats expanded their control of the chamber by one vote, prohibiting most legislation that leaves the House from ever reaching the president’s desk.

Mr McCarthy assumed control in the midst of all of this. Support from moderates in his party was hamstrung by his party’s aforementioned electoral troubles, and conservatives were eager to exact meaningful concessions from the new speaker — including a lowered motion to vacate threshold which eventually was the cause of his demise. Just one member could trigger a vote to remove the speaker from their job.

Just a few short months later, he was out. Republican rightwingers cited a lack of trust in his leadership, unmoved by his ploys for their support including an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden launched without a full House vote.

Now, reports indicate that the onetime GOP standard-bearer is more uncertain than ever about his future in Washington.

This past Wednesday, he addressed his future with remarks that exemplified that uncertainty during an interview following an appearance at the New York Times DealBook summit in New York. And he confirmed directly that he was considering leaving Congress altogether.

“I just went through losing, so you go through different stages,” said the former speaker, according to the Times. “I have to know that when I go, that there’s a place for me, and what am I going to do, and is that best?”

“I have to know that if I decided that wasn’t for me and I leave, I don’t want a year from now to think ‘Aw, I regret — I shouldn’t have left,’” he continued. “So if I take a little longer than most people normally, that’s just what I’m going through.”

Mr McCarthy’s own comments during the effort to oust him indicated that the successful vote to fire him caught him by surprise. His actions and those of his allies in the weeks following the vote (and the subsequent eruption of turmoil in the House) reinforced that idea, and suggested a personal animus towards those who ended his career. Democrats who had supported the vote saw themselves expelled from hideaways within the main Capitol building by a key McCarthy ally, while Mr McCarthy himself been unrestrained in his public criticism of Republicans like Mr Gaetz, Nancy Mace and Tim Burchett who were behind his removal.

In one wilder incident, an NPR congressional correspondent witnessed a confrontation between Mr Burchett and the former speaker in the halls of Capitol Hill after the former speaker physically collided with his colleague from Tennessee during the latter’s interview. Mr Burchett maintains that Mr McCarthy deliberately elbowed him in the back; Mr McCarthy denies this.

In October shortly following his removal from the speakership, he stressed to reporters that he would not resign and intended to run for reelection.

“I’m not resigning. I got a lot more work to do.”
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...1ff5d0947&ei=8

[Jimbuna]

And never the twain shall meet

Trump calls Biden ‘destroyer’ of democracy despite own efforts to overturn 2020 election

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday attempted to turn the tables on his likely rival in November, President Joe Biden, arguing that the man whose election victory Trump tried to overturn is “the destroyer of American democracy.”

Trump’s allegations about Biden, a Democrat, echo the ones that Biden has been making for years against his predecessor. As Trump has dominated the Republican presidential primary and talked about targeting his rivals and the news media if he wins the White House again, Biden has stepped up his own warnings, contending Trump is “ determined to destroy American democracy.”

On Saturday, Trump made his most explicit argument to date on why voters should instead see his rival as the bigger democratic threat. Trump repeated his longstanding contention that the four criminal indictments against him show Biden is misusing the federal justice system against his rival.
“He’s been weaponising government against his political opponents like a Third World political tyrant,” Trump said to a crowd in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. “Biden and his radical left allies like to pose as standing up as allies of democracy,” Trump continued, arguing: “Joe Biden is not the defender of American democracy, Joe Biden is the destroyer of American democracy.”

Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesman, responded: “Donald Trump’s America in 2025 is one where the government is his personal weapon to lock up his political enemies. You don’t have to take our word for it — Trump has admitted it himself.”

Trump has long promised to prosecute Biden in retaliation should he return to the White House. On Saturday, though, the former president extended his arguments about Biden’s threat to democracy to lawsuits filed by two liberal organizations seeking to rule him ineligible for office under a rarely used Civil War-era constitutional provision that prohibits those who “engaged in insurrection” from returning to office.

All of the suits to date have failed. Biden has no involvement in them, but Democratic donors who back him also help fund the liberal groups filing the claims. That’s led Trump to blame them on the president, whom he contended had “defaced the Constitution” in trying to block him.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...9c3be48a&ei=15

[Rockstar]

Whoa, former U.S. ambassador caught working for Cuba.

Former U.S. ambassador charged with being an agent for Cuba

UPDATED DECEMBER 4, 20233:29 PM ET
HEARD ON ALL THINGS CONSIDERED

By
Greg Allen


https://www.npr.org/2023/12/04/12170...sador-cuba-spy

A longtime U.S. diplomat who served as ambassador to Bolivia has been arrested and charged with being a clandestine for the Cuban government.

Victor Manuel Rocha was a State Department employee for more than 20 years. Prosecutors say during that time and in the 20 years since, he acted as an illegal agent for Cuba. He was formally charged today in federal court in Miami.

Rocha was born in Colombia and became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1978. According to the criminal complaint, he began working for the State Department in 1981. Over the next two decades, he held positions at U.S. embassies in Mexico, Honduras, the Dominican Republic, Argentina and Bolivia where he served as ambassador.

From 1995 to 1997, he was stationed in the U.S. Interest Section in Havana, Cuba.

"This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent," U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said in Washington following Rocha's arrest.

Rocha is charged with conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government and with passport fraud.

"Like all federal officials, U.S. diplomats swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Acting as an agent for Cuba – a hostile foreign power – is a blatant violation of that oath and betrays the trust of the American people," FBI Director Christopher Wray said.

In the complaint, prosecutors say the FBI was alerted of Rocha's alleged work for Cuba in 2022. An FBI undercover employee, posing as a Cuban agent, then contacted Rocha and held a series of meetings with him in Miami. In those meetings, the complaint says Rocha admitted to being a Cuban agent for nearly four decades.

His stint in the U.S. Interest Section in Havana between 1995 and 1997 was at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries. In February 1996, the Cuban military shot down two airplanes operated by Brothers to the Rescue, a U.S. group opposed to the Castro regime. Four people were killed. At one of the meetings with an undercover FBI employee, Rocha called it "the knock down of the small planes." He said, "Brothers to the Rescue and other similar people ...were pushing politics toward unnecessary provocations."

In 2002, while serving as ambassador to Bolivia, Rocha inserted himself into that country's presidential race, warning Bolivians that if they elected former coca grower Evo Morales President, the U.S. might retaliate by cutting aid. The move gave the leftist Morales a boost, and is credited with helping him win election three years later.

The federal criminal complaint doesn't cite any specific episodes where Rocha's work for Cuba undermined U.S. policy or interests. In his meetings with the FBI informant, Rocha appears to have grown increasingly confident and bragged about the importance of the information he provided the Cuban government.

"For me, what has been done, has strengthened the Revolution," he said. "What he have done...it's enormous...More than a grand slam."

[Jimbuna]

Rather worrying if true or is it?

Trump shares warning that his own re-election will plunge America into dictatorship

Former President Donald Trump promoted a post on Truth Social linking to an article warning that his re-election would create an American dictatorship.

The post was originally made by Rep. Cory Mills (R-FL), a supporter of the former president, and included a link to the Washington Post opinion article, "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending."

"Pres. Trump could not win a general election. They tried to launch countless indictments & false allegations to get him off the ballot. Now, it’s obvious the Americans from all walks of life, not from any singular socioeconomic background, are in staunch support of Donald J. Trump," Mills wrote above the link.

"The American people want the economy Trump created, affordable living conditions, safety back in our communities, peace through strength foreign policies that prevented all out war, and an America first driven agenda."
"All that is opposite of what we’ve gotten under the failed Biden Admin," Mills continued.

The article itself, written by editor Robert Kagan, warned that Trump, who is currently trying to use his own criminal indictments to boost his brand with voters, will shape his next administration into a personality cult.

"Those who choose to serve in his second administration will not be taking office with the unstated intention of refusing to carry out his wishes," it stated.

"If the Heritage Foundation has its way, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, many of those career bureaucrats will be gone, replaced by people carefully 'vetted' to ensure their loyalty to Trump."

A number of reports have already outlined how Trump, and GOP interest groups aligned with him, have laid out a plan for stripping away all civil service protections and basing employment in the executive branch on loyalty to the president and fealty to his orders.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/world...6885f4913&ei=9

[Buddahaid]

And McCarthy announces he will resign at the end of the year, and he will take the war chest of donor money with him no doubt.

Meanwhile, the MAGA party tells the world what they will do if Trump gets elected. I never thought I'd face a choice between voting for keeping the government I grew up with, or a fascist dictatorship in the making.

[August]

It disturbs you to think Trump might start acting like a democrat eh?

[em2nought]

The Republicans should offer to give up impeachment of Biden in exchange for fixing the broken border.

[Buddahaid]

Originally Posted by August

It disturbs you to think Trump might start acting like a democrat eh?

And that means what?

This piece shows the letters exchanged between Comer and Hunter Biden's lawyer. Why does Comer insist on a secret hearing while lying on Fox about Hunter's choices? Where's the transparency Comer, afraid of the light of day?

[ET2SN]

I'm still not sure if I'm posting this in the correct thread, but for the most part its about the US.




So, watch this vid and be skeptical all you want.
No matter how you feel, pulling a cut-and-run NOW on Ukraine should make you a little angry.

"We were 100% on their side..until we weren't."

This new "hardcore" stance only rewards one guy, who painted himself into a small corner when he invaded and started the war.

The outcome is pretty chilling. Look for missiles to get aimed at Poland next.
After that, look for attacks on Germany. We should also remember, Ukraine has held up much better than anyone thought they could. They have a very smart military and Intel service. They also have a very good memory. Meaning, don't be shocked when things start blowing up in north America.
Payback, as they say, is a #####. And we'll certainly deserve it.

Also, keep an ear out to hear The Sensible Talking Heads call for the repeal of Article V. If we're going to reward Putin for doing something stupid, we may as well go all the way.

[ET2SN]

Originally Posted by em2nought

The Republicans should offer to give up impeachment of Biden in exchange for fixing the broken border.

The Senate is basically split 50/50 and they'll need 67% to convict.
How do you think this is going to play out?

BTW, this is the same basic tactic the Yakuza used in Japan after WWII.
If you don't believe me, look it up.