Much to be thankful for (Page 1 of 2)

Thanks for posting that, Memphis Trace.  Very nice reminder of what we have to be thankful for. 

I would add additional thoughts of my own:  I'm thankful we haven't been attacked with a nuclear bomb yet by North Korea because of Resident Trump's foolish mouth and inability to see the error of his public name-calling and childish tweets.  I am thankful the curtain is about to fall on his Residency in the White House, as well as the Trump Mafia who have taken over, including his daughter and son-in-law.  I am thankful there are still sane people in this country not willing to let this fool run rough-shod over us as were his intentions from the beginning.  I am thankful there are people who oppose the Republican tax cut, giving a person like myself an additional $800 (WOW!) of spending money per year, while giving Resident Trump an additional $25 billion per year. 

All in all, things could be worse.  Hopefully Mueller is about to wrap up his investigation and arrest the entire Trump clan, including Junior and his brother, Cadaver Boy. 

Fingers crossed, and wishing everyone here a blessed and happy Thanksgiving! 

MJ

Trump explains his tax bill as different strokes for different folks

Memphis Trace

GAIL COLLINS
Hillary Lost, but the Future Is Hers

Question: Do you think Donald Trump spends more time thinking about Hillary Clinton than Hillary Clinton spends thinking about Donald Trump?

Sure does seem like it. The other day, President Trump was discussing Russia at a press conference with the prime minister of Norway, when he suddenly announced that Clinton “was not for a strong military and Hillary, my opponent, was for windmills, and she was for other types of energy that don’t have the same capacities at this moment certainly.”

Yeah, it didn’t make any sense. But he really can’t seem to get past her. Recently while promoting tax cuts and a congressional candidate in Pennsylvania, Trump veered off to remind the crowd that during the campaign, Clinton had once called his supporters “deplorables.”

“Who would have thought that was going to turn into a landslide?” asked the president, alluding to a contest in which he lost the popular vote by 2.9 million.

This weekend, we’re commemorating — acknowledging? — the first anniversary of Trump’s inauguration. And remembering the great national explosion of Women’s Marches that followed, in which millions of Americans poured out of their homes and took to the streets to announce that this was not going to be the end of anything.

In honor of that second anniversary, let’s think about Hillary’s side of the story. Before we begin, it’s important to agree that this is not going to involve any discussion of whether she should have gone to Wisconsin more. Therein lies madness.

Here’s my take: Her campaign was probably doomed from the start and utterly transformative.
Doomed because when a president has served for two terms, Americans are inclined to go for change and pick the other party next time — even if things have been going along rather swimmingly. That’s generally been the modern pattern and it’s probably going to become even more true now that what’s left of our attention span is being pulverized by cellphones. And in 2016 if you were going to find a candidate who seemed to promise more of the same, it would have to be the woman who had been secretary of state for the departing two-term Democratic president, and was married to the two-term Democratic president before that.

I suppose she could have emerged after the nomination, dressed in white for the suffragists, and said, “Look, I love those guys but I’ll be totally different.” Would have been tough. Dissing both the first African-American president and her husband, who seems to take rejection of his legacy rather badly. Anyhow, didn’t happen.

This is the point where we start sinking into a dark hole, mulling whether she should have spent more time in Wisconsin. Then, of course, comes the question of whether Clinton lost because she was a woman. The answer is: sort of. Her gender was both a handicap and an enormous selling point. Would the Democrats have wanted Harry Clinton to be their nominee? (Just try to construct a Harry Clinton in your mind. I dare you.)

And — wait a minute, don’t get depressed. There’s another side: Even if her sex was a problem, it allowed her to transform the country more than many men who won the job. While losing, she made it normal for women to run for the most powerful office on the planet.

This is critical. Look at all the breakthroughs women have made in the last century, and you’ll notice how many of them involved just making their presence in some new place seem matter of fact. All that pain and struggle to win the right to vote, and what did it get us short term? Warren Harding. But long term, it created a world where the big gubernatorial election in Virginia was analyzed in terms of women in the suburbs and that knockout Senate race in Alabama was pretty much all about black women streaming to the polls.

Or take a more modest example. There was a time — not all that long ago — when television executives believed a woman could not be the solo anchor on the national evening news because our voices didn’t convey the proper sense of authority. Then in 2006, Katie Couric took over at CBS, to great hubbub and commentary. She did fine. Life moved on. In 2009 Diane Sawyer became the anchor at ABC. She did fine. There was barely a peep. The great triumph actually did not arrive until everybody found the whole matter boring.

Now, when people handicap the next Democratic presidential nomination, there are lots of women in the mix — Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand. (And, O.K., Oprah.) Whoever runs, the important thing is that primary debates will no longer resemble Shriner conventions. Women will be all over the place. Soon, they’ll be half the big decision-makers. It will be normal.

When Hillary Rodham Clinton graduated from law school and started her career, virtually the only women who had made it into the Senate were either honorary appointees for a brief symbolic term (the first, Rebecca Latimer Felton, got one day) or a senator’s widow. The exceptions proved the rule. The great Margaret Chase Smith came from the House, where she had succeeded her dead husband. Nancy Kassebaum happened to be the daughter of the Republican presidential candidate Alf Landon.

You get the idea. And there was Hillary. On the one hand, another political wife. On another, a marker for the entire country, driving home the fact that Congress was never going to be just a guy thing again. At times of despair I like to recall that when she was sworn into the Senate in 2001, my little niece watched the coverage intensely, and asked my sister whether it was possible for men to be senators, too.

Campaigning in 2000, almost everywhere Clinton went, she drew enthusiastic crowds. Partly, they were there to see the first-lady-turned-candidate, the one who had come through more disasters than the Titanic. Partly they were already imagining their party’s next standard-bearer. But nobody seemed more excited than women around her own age, who turned out in droves, no matter how unpleasant the weather or remote the spot. I always thought they saw her and thought about second chances: If you put in the time as a stay-at-home mother or took non-dream jobs because of all the responsibilities at home, you could still move on at midlife to something new and totally terrific. And maybe the kids would be sitting proudly behind you on the bus, like Chelsea.

That Senate race was the moment when she found her own identity as a politician. Floundering in the early high-profile media moments, she retreated off to long tours of upstate New York in which she went from one earnest panel discussion on economic development to another about the dairy compact. That, it turned out, was the Hillary version people liked best. Super-prepared, taking every problem seriously. She tried to resurrect it for her presidential campaign but the country was, it seemed, looking for something more exciting. Except for the 65.8 million people who voted for her.

It’s 2018, a big election year, and women are going to be running everywhere. We’re sort of astonished by the numbers, but not by their ambition. They’ll be elected to city councils, state legislatures and Congress and hardly anyone will give their gender a second thought. That’s Hillary’s gift.

Here’s the message she left us. You can have that double dip at opportunity — you can even have a third or fourth chance if things go wrong. All you need to do is ignore every setback and work like a maniac.
And also, you could think about changing the Electoral College.

This article should be subtitled: A Profile of Courage.

Apple just paid 38 Billion dollars in taxes in anticipation of bringing 350 Billion back from overseas, where it was parked to protect it from a double-taxation regime inflicted by no other industrial country.  That's over a Third of a Trillion dollars that will go to work in the US economy.  It will raise living standards.  It will result in taxes paid.  And, unlike government stimulus, it will keep cycling over and over--or until some future Democrat administration decides again to kill the goose in order to get at the golden eggs faster ... or to strangle the goose with regulations, just on principle that government should be free and capitalism should be in chains--instead of in harness.

The first lie which comes from Trump's version of the announcement is that it's not 350 billion, rather around 250 billion. Yeah, that's a lot of money, but there was nothing in Apple's announcement that it would spend that money in the U.S. It doesn't need that money for any foreseeable U.S. investments.

The second lie in Trump's version is that Apple did not need the tax change to park that money in the U.S. They would not have to pay the tax until the money was spent which is probably no time soon since as stated they have enough U.S. generated profit to cover their needs. No spending, no taxes.

I've stated this in other forums, but I'll say it again here that if the Republicans or Democrats want to reduce the taxes on business, it is a simple solution. Do away with the business tax totally instead of playing their sham game. Change the code so that any profit must be passed on to individuals whether owners, stockholders, or employees. A certain percentage could be set aside for future funding of research or capital needs, but even that must be used within a reasonable time say ten years. Any additional needs beyond that could be funded by standard means of borrowing or bringing in more investors.

But politicians of either stripe won't make such a simple change to the tax code because the wealthy donors would then have to pay fair taxes on what they can now avoid and couldn't cry all the way to the bank about unfair business taxes. And the beat goes on. Take care. Vern

I'll agree with you on getting rid of the business tax.  But try and convince Chuck Schumer or Nancy Pelosi to go along with it.

They're about as likely to go along with it as Ryan and McConnell are to let it come to light. Not going to happen unless by some miracle they impose term limits to take the preponderance of donor money out of the equation. Until then, the Republicans are only whistling at dogs about being concerned about over-taxation of business. Take care. Vern

Contribution of what sort, for what purpose?

The press uses 'Koch brothers' the way 1984's government used 'Emmanuel Goldstein'.  They never mention George Soros, whose fortune produces interest equal to all the Koch wealth, and who pours the money into anything that will help undermine the modern nation-state.  And while the Koch's run productive industries, Soros has built his fortune on currency trading, taking advantage of instabilities in the fortunes of nations

It looks like the Democrats like government power more than they hate Trump: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/liber … le/2646052   Of course, given the rumors of FBI abuses soon to be revealed, and the FBI's failure to keep records of anti-Trump communication in their ranks, this might be expected.

Look for disclosures as this year's campaigns ramp up.

Remembering how we got here, where we came from, and where we want to go.

Opinions

Without immigration, America will stagnate

By Fred Hiatt  January 28 at 7:11 PM
Message to Republicans: You can be pro-growth. You can be anti-immigration. But, honestly, you can't be both.

Now, within the immigration debate, there are a lot of questions with no obvious right answers.

What's the right balance of immigrants admitted for their skills and those allowed in because they have relatives here?

How much effort should be devoted to tracking down the undocumented, and how much to punishing companies that hire them?

What should we do about the millions of immigrants who came here illegally a decade or more ago and have become established members of their communities?

And—what is the right number of legal immigrants every year from now on?

Big, complicated questions—which is why Congress shouldn't try to solve them all between now and Feb. 8, its self-imposed deadline for resolving the issue of the "dreamers." In the few days that remain, the best it could do would be to, well, resolve the issue of the dreamers—the undocumented immigrants who were brought here as young children through no fault of their own, who obey the law and who go to school or work or serve in the military.

They are American in all but legal status. Give them a path to citizenship, as President Trump has proposed. Give Trump the money for his wall (until he gets that check from Mexico). Punt on the big, complicated questions, something Congress certainly knows how to do. Everyone declares victory, and the government doesn't shut down.

Of course, that would leave us still facing the big questions. Ideally, Congress would schedule a serious debate on them for the spring. Ideally, it would be conducted in a constructive spirit—acknowledging, for example, that reasonable people can disagree on skills vs. family.

But ideally, also, it would also be conducted with an understanding that those who favor a drastic, absolute drop in the level of immigration, as many Republicans do, would be making a choice about America's future.

They would be turning us into Japan.

Now, to be clear, Japan is a wondrous nation, with an ancient, complex culture, welcoming people, innovative industry—a great deal to teach the world.

But Japan also is a country that admits few immigrants—and, as a result, it is an aging, shrinking nation. By 2030, more than half the country will be over age 50. By 2050 there will be more than three times as many old people (65 and over) as children (14and under). Already, deaths substantially outnumber births. Its population of 127 million is forecast to shrink by a third over the next half-century.

Japan is a pioneer and an extreme version of where much of the First World is headed as longevity increases and fertility declines. The likely consequences are slower economic growth, reduced innovation, labor shortages and huge pressure on pensions. If you think our entitlement politics are fraught, think about this: In Japan in 2050, the old-age dependency ratio—the number of people 65and over as a percentage of the number who are 15 to 64—is projected to be 71.2 percent.

The comparable figure for the United States is 36.4 percent, up from 25.7 percent in 2020. Still high, but if it proves manageable, we will have immigration to thank. America still attracts dynamic, hard-working people from around the world, and they and their offspring help keep our population and our economy growing, as recent Pew Research Center and International Monetary Fund papers explain.

The wave of immigration over the past half-century also has changed the face of the nation, reducing the share of the white population from what it would have been and increasing the share of Asians and Hispanics. It's not surprising that some people find this disorienting.

But as so often with such debates, perceptions lag reality. Nearly half (48 percent) of immigrants these days have college degrees, as a fact sheet from the Migration Policy Institute last year showed. A quarter of technology company start-ups between 2008 and 2012 included at least one foreign-born founder. As incomes and education levels rise around the world, in other words, the skills mix of U.S. immigration is already changing, without any changes in our laws.

Here's the bottom line: I think we should remain open to immigrants because it's part of who we are as a nation, because every generation of newcomers—even, or maybe especially, the ones who come with nothing but moxie and a tolerance for risk—has enriched and improved us.

But you don't have to buy into any of that Statue of Liberty stuff to favor immigration, because naked self-interest leads to the very same conclusion. A vote to choke off immigration is a vote for stagnation and decline.

Memphis Trace

To give you a little perspective on what President Trump will say in his first SOTU tonight:
The truth about the Trump economy, explained

Insofar as your rosy prediction about the growth of the economy, this from the article:
More broadly, whether you want to characterize current economic trends as fantastic or terrible (I prefer, “They’re okay”), they simply aren’t very different from the trends we saw under Obama. In the fourth quarter of 2017, the economy grew 2.5 percent relative to where it had been a year ago. That’s better than what we saw in 2016 or 2015 but worse than what we got in 2014 and 2013. It’s also considerably lower than the 3 percent average annual growth he promised in his official budget submission, which in turn was lower than the 4 percent average annual growth he touted on the campaign trail. It’s also slightly worse than Canada or Mexico did last year.

Illegal immigrants are more than prepared to be productive:
Undocumented Immigrants Contribute Over $11 Billion to Our Economy Each Year.
Altogether, according to the state and local tax data analysis—published by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP)—undocumented immigrants contribute about $11.6 billion to the economy annually, including nearly $7 billion in sales and excise taxes and $3.6 billion in property taxes. They are, in economic terms, productive citizens, and pay a higher effective tax rate than the top 1 percent income bracket. That alone is not the primary reason they should be embraced as neighbors and coworkers. But it dissolves the myth that immigrants do nothing but drain public coffers.

&

Similarly, we know immigration enforcement is a huge drain on the federal budget, but that’s not the problem of the undocumented so much as it is an issue of irrational priorities, according to reform advocates. Consider the billions spent on enforcement, including checkpoints and electronic surveillance, Border Patrol personnel and weaponry, and private prison contractors commissioned to run dungeonlike detention centers.

Now imagine if that funding were redeployed in legal services or rehabilitation for refugee families.

Another potential ramification of regularizing the status of over 11 million people is that it would help dismantle a two-tier labor structure that enables exploitation of and discrimination against immigrants. Along with facilitating abuse of unauthorized workers, the systematic alienation of the “foreign-born” workforce abets the trafficking of temporary “guest workers” imported by low-wage employers.

Memphis Trace