#Donors Capital Fund

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Republicans are laying the groundwork to completely remake the U.S. Constitution through state legislatures, and there’s a good chance they could succeed.

That makes it imperative for Democrats to focus their energies on strengthening the party’s representation at the state level to stop this attack on our democracy.

According to recent reporting by Insider, GOP party leaders are making arrangements to amend the Constitution via Article V. In order to build a forever-conservative nation, Republican leaders want state legislators to start thinking long-term about what it takes to pass a constitutional amendment—and many GOP lawmakers from across the country met last month in Denver to discuss launching a constitutional convention.

This plan, spearheaded by the group Convention of States Action (COS), has received millions from the Donors Capital Fund, as well as from numerous other high-profile Republican donors. COS is led by Mark Meckler, the interim president of the conservative-friendly social media site Parler, and Eric O’Keefe—a longtime right-wing political operative. COS also has the support of high-profile conservatives and Republicans such as Sean Hannity, Ben Shapiro, Mark Meadows, and Ben Carson. It’s even endorsed by prominent GOP elected officials, including Govs. Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, as well as Sens. Rand Paul and Marco Rubio.

Article V lays out two ways to add amendments to the Constitution.

The first is through the federal government, which requires two-thirds of Congress to pass a joint resolution. By design, this rarely happens (we’re only at 25 amendments, 235 years after the Constitution was ratified). And in today’s highly polarized Senate, where Democrats hold the slimmest of majorities, a new amendment any time soon is all but unthinkable.

But the second option, a convention called by two-thirds of the state legislatures in the nation, is a path Republicans are very close to making possible.

Republicans already control 30 state legislatures—they’d only need three more to be able to call a constitutional convention. This means the upcoming November elections—especially at the state level—may be the deciding factor on whether the GOP has the power to radically remake the Constitution.

And lest there be any doubt as to the motivation behind a state-driven constitutional convention, COS has stated that limiting the federal government's power is its main goal in a constitution amendment proposal.

Melissa Murray, a NYU Law professor and co-host of the Strict Scrutiny podcast, expressed serious concern over this idea. “With amendments that only limit the power of the federal government, there’s actually quite a lot Republicans could do,” said Murray. “Taking away power from the federal government could mean curbing some of the powers of the federal government to enforce the 14th Amendment, it could also mean expanding protections of the 2nd Amendment.” This plan has been in the works for years, according to Murray.

With Republicans mounting egregious attacks in state legislatures on the right to vote and abortion access—as well as expanding partisan gerrymandering—it should not come as a surprise that a constitutional convention is now a part of the GOP playbook.

“When we talk about these issues in silos, we fail to realize this is all joined together,” said Melissa Murray. “They (Republicans) are connecting everything under the same organizing principle: to consolidate Republican power in state legislatures. It’s why we have gerrymandering and even why we have voter suppression laws.”

This crisis has been over 10 years in the making. During the Obama administration, Democrats were singularly focused on advancing federal legislation, like the Affordable Care Act. Democrats assumed this would translate to similar victories in state legislatures. Ultimately, this strategy came with a cost, a major one: Democrats lost 13 governorships and 816 state legislative seats. Moreover, they didn't explain to their base of young, diverse, minority voters that the issues that played into local state elections were equally important as the election of the first Black president.

Republicans during this time launched effective organizing groups, such as the Tea Party, which vehemently advocated for a version of “states’ rights” that was in conflict with the American system of federalism—the idea that power should be shared between the federal government and the states. The GOP made sure its supporters understood that there was political power outside of Washington—and that it existed in state and local government.

In the middle of Obama’s first term, Republicans in 2010 were able to win control of the once-in-a-decade electoral map drawing process that defines competitive elections at the state level. This made the district maps easier for them to run candidates in races where it was nearly impossible for them to lose.

Democrats now have to change their strategy. Instead of simply telling voters to give them control of Congress and the Senate, Democrats must emphasize to voters that Republicans still control most state legislatures, and if they remain in power, they can drastically change the Constitution. Furthermore, Democrats running for the state house must drive home the oft-forgotten political maxim that “all politics is local.” The people in state houses and city halls often have a lot more to do with the policies that affect your day-to-day life and the health of your community than whoever’s in charge in Washington.

Amanda Litman, a senior political strategist and co-founder of Run for Something—an organization that recruits and supports young, diverse progressives running for down-ballot office—has been working to get more progressives elected in state legislatures. “Republicans have a longstanding infrastructure even in blue states that give their candidates a leg up. They have been investing in the local races for much longer.”

When asked what Democrats can do to fight back against the threat of a constitutional convention, Litman replied, "Democrats should take the threat seriously. Republicans always tell us what they want to do. We should believe them and think broadly and in the long term of where we should be working to stop this from happening.”

There should be no doubt that Republicans are launching an all-out attack on American institutions, whether it’s the conservative Supreme Court majority removing Americans’ constitutional right to an abortion or state legislatures passing hundreds of measures to limit voting rights. Democrats cannot afford to waste time. This November, they need to invest heavily in every single state legislature race. Every American needs to understand the GOP’s constitutional plans threaten our way of life.

The Constitution has never been a perfect document. In its origin, it permitted the gross inhumanity of slavery and fell short in granting women and all ethnic minorities the right to participate in the political process. But the Founding Fathers, flawed though they were, had the wisdom to create parameters that would allow the Constitution to change with the times.

If Republicans are permitted to run wild with Article V of the Constitution, decades of progress to make our country more fair, equitable, and just could be undone.

#us politics #news #the daily beast #2022 midterms #2022 elections #2022 #Republicans #conservatives #gop #us constitution #constitutional crisis #article v #constitutional convention #Convention of States Action #Donors Capital Fund #Mark Meckler #Eric O’Keefe #Melissa Murray #Strict Scrutiny #tea party

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Betsy DeVos has been trying to break public education for decades so her “for profit charter schools” can rake in the dough from school districts across the nation.

Most charter schools are non-union, pay slave wages, don’t require qualified teachers, are exempt from the standards public schools are held to. They are failing miserably, offer little to no special needs or bilingual education, and produce poorly educated MAGAs that can not survive in today’s complex job market. It’s a scam that was pushed into the mainstream by Bush/Cheney with their No Child Left Behind. Another tricky Republikkkan misnomer.

NCLB brought us standardized testing to punish public schools, particularly those in inner cities that catered mainly to children of marginalized people. A school superintendent in Texas, that was a crony of Bush, expelled all the failing children (mostly minorities and poor whites) issued standardized tests and proclaimed his district proficient based on the scores. State legislatures across the country started punishing inner city districts by pulling funding from underperforming schools and giving it to charter schools. The charter schools were owned by DeVos and other billionaire Republikkkan donors.

Even blue states were pressured into adopting the standardized tests and the curriculums and texts that came with them. These materials that costs millions per district mostly came out of Texas and other red states. Ironic that Texas supplies the majority of our textbooks and has since before this scam. The Red States control our history and education in general, or at least have a profound impact on it. Many local level Dems on school committees and state boards of education also invested in this get rich scam.

Betsy DeVos runs a propaganda policy agency, the Mackinaw Center, that purports to be a grass roots movement for better education. It sends out emails, to everyone in education, that praise charter schools while denouncing public schools. Mackinaw created an artificial crisis of faith in public schools and largely blamed teachers’ unions-because organized labor is always the enemy of billionaires. DeVos’s agenda has seeped into the consciousness of Americaand even some public school employees have unwittingly bought into her propaganda. Southern Red States was where, and still mostly is, where the underperforming schools are-and that’s by Republikkkan design. Late stage capitalism, when the people have been bled dry the oligarchs begin plundering the government.

Oligarchs have been attacking our society on every level for decades. They have so many policy institutions, propaganda outlets, and political operatives working 24/7/365 that is almost inconceivable. While the main attack ramped up in the 1960’s it’s actually been going on here since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Hilary Clinton was mocked viciously by Fox, talk radio, and Republikkkan politicos for comments about the “vast right-wing conspiracy” in the 90’s. Today there are college courses about it, books, articles, and documentaries. High ranking Dem party leaders are given briefings about it. RI Dem Senator Sheldon Whitehouse exposes it on the floor of the Senate daily. We’ve all seen charts of the Koch-topus with its tentacles stretching from right-wing billionaires to think tanks that openly write legislation for Republikkkan politicos to introduce. From the John Birch Society to ALEC and the Federalist Society they shape and control our laws and destiny.

[abra-ka-dammit]

Making a new one so the initial text better reflects the current situation.

My youngest cat, Bojji, swallowed a few feet long ribbon on Nov 22. After ER extraction, he went septic due to a tear in his throat. Between the ICU, and a shorter period of tube-fed home care, he seemed to get better; then his tubes were removed, and he got worse. After so much desperate time in and trips back and forth to the ER, getting him every single possible potential solution regardless of the cost or inconvenience to myself, on December 22, I still had to put him down. You can find more detailed information in my pinned, my ko-fi, or by searching my blog for the name Bojji.

All in all, even with around 2/3 of all of this paid for with compassion funds from the vets themselves, I spent $9.5k trying to save my boy. Generous donors helped give me hope through this ordeal, allowing me to agree to further treatments with less dread. Now there is no more treatments. Only the remaining debt.

It's not as inspirational as the last post, because there's no more cat to try to save. But if you have some sympathy to spare, please donate and/or share to help a heartbroken catmom (with 2 other, much older babies to care for still,) get out from under the crushing weight of capitalism's awful effect on medical emergencies.

Thank you in advance.

And please, if you have a cat: put all string, ribbon, bows, tassels, ropes, or any other such items in sealed places it cannot get to, or just remove them from your home entirely. They're not worth it. They're just not worth it.

#long post #donations #cw animal death mention #bojji cat

[probablyasocialecologist]

Put simply, what appears to be a culture war on minority healthcare is in fact an industry-funded fusillade on public control of regulatory institutions and the government more generally. Industry donors and leaders are presently shrinking government capacity to provide social welfare while reducing the scope of who is included in the demos that is served.

Joanna Wuest, Big Capital and the Anti-Trans Agenda

#lgbt #transgender #transphobia

[eretzyisrael]

By: Ronn Torossian

The day after hundreds of Pro-Hamas protestors rallied outside of a Manhattan cancer hospital, we learn that the organization which hosts these heinous rallies throughout New York City calling for an elimination to the State of Israel, and mass murder of Jews is funded by Goldman Sachs. Full stop. Period.

Goldman Sachs, one of the largest banks in the world has given $18 Million Dollars to The People’s Forum which organizes these rallies. Goldman Sachs has a fund, where donors send money to send nonprofits and rather than Goldman Sachs saying no, we will not send money to an organization which supports rape and terror, they sign the checks. And Goldman Sachs funds it. Goldman Sachs can refuse to sign the checks – they choose not to.  It has been ongoing.

Manolo De Los Santos of the People’s Forum gave a speech Monday in New York City where he said “When we finally deal that final blow to destroy Israel. When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism.”

The speech preceded a rally, “Flood Manhattan for Gaza MLK Day”, during which pro-Hamas protestors walked the streets of Manhattan blocking traffic, and eventually they protested outside Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, a hospital. As The New York Post reported protestors screamed:  “Make sure they hear you. They’re in the window,” one organizer said through a bullhorn, and another in the crowd chanted, about the cancer center, “MSK, shame on you, you support genocide, too.”

These are people who support rape and baby-killing. On October 7th, the leader of The People’s Forum tweeted about “the heroic resistance of the Palestinian people”, and “the struggle for the national liberation in Palestine.” On October 7 in Manhattan. These protests are a clear call for murder with chants of “Free Palestine from The River to the Sea”, and “Intifada Now” are calls for violence and murder of Jews.

Authorities allow these terrorist Anti-Semitic supporters to block traffic, disrupt the city and threaten Jews. The People’s Forum has hosted Anti-Semitic rallies in NYC since October 8th they are well-funded and well organized  and there are also events on Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin and “the path to revolution.” In the New York Post, a 74-year-old Jewish woman was quoted as saying, “I thought I was in Germany in 1939.” She is right, and in 2024 the free world is either with us or against us. Goldman Sachs is funding calls for the mass murder of Jews. Goldman Sachs is signing checks which pays for Anti-Semitic events in New York City. It must end now. It’s not unlike Outten Golden, a leading law firm in New York City, where their lawyer Kathleen Peratis has visited the Hamas deadly terror tunnels multiple times, praised Hamas leaders, openly opposes a Jewish state and supports BDS.

Elie Wiesel rightfully said: “I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides.” Goldman Sachs stop funding this.

#goldman sachs #the people's forum #aid to terrorists #support for terrorists

[exitrowiron]

A Personal Appeal

Those who have followed me for a few years know that in 2018 Beth and I started a charity with a work colleague to support a school in Kovie, Togo. Beth and I funded the construction and outfitting of a 3 room school building and a computer lab. With the help of a very small list of friends we've also built a basketball court and a security wall in addition to paying the tuition and providing books and school supplies for 800 elementary students. We only have ~60 donors but we make a big impact.

Every year I write a letter summarizing our progress and appealing for donations. I hand address the envelopes and include a personal note in each letter. I think this approach is much more meaningful than sending an email.

I know this is hard to believe, but our school doesn't have toilets or facilities for hand washing. Can you imagine 800 students without bathroom facilities!? So in addition to our normal budget, this year we're kicking off a capital campaign to construct toilets with running water. We think it will cost ~ $25,000. Beth and I will match all donations.

This is the school's annual budget.

Would YOU like a letter with a handwritten note from me, ExitRowIron next year? Well all it takes is a donation of any size at EFFAC.org or send a check to the address below. Be sure to ask for a matching donation if offered by your company.

Education Foundation for African Children

EIN: 81-2812389

Contact: Anthony Osei

Contact Phone: [phone]

Address: PO Box 44052, Eden Prairie, MN 55344

Or Credit Card donation at EFFAC.org

If you're in need of a little extra Christmas spirit, click this link to see a hidden page at EFFAC.org with additional content from our 2023 school supply distribution.

#Kovie #kovie togo

[queersatanic]

@QueerSatanic end-of-year legal defense fundraiser

FINAL UPDATE: Thanks everyone for making this a success, and the donors who came together on New Year's Eve to reach our final goal

$5,025/5000 (1/1/23)

[Links]

Since the trans pride satanic antifascism flag goal was met, all donors who gave $100 or more will have that as an option as well as the red and black satanic antifascism flag in anarcho-communist ("AnCom") colors; all who gave $200 or more will be able to get both.

For that and those who gave smaller amounts but want their stickers, please make sure we have a postal address for you: [email protected]

We hope you'll continue to donate in return for stickers, patches, and flags as we can make them available while The Satanic Temple's SLAPP suit against us stretches into another calendar.

(If we have any flags left over, we'll see about making them available to other donors in the future, but we're not doing a very big batch at present.)

Previous post:

The Satanic Temple may have missed another deadline in their ongoing lawsuit against us, but they still made us spend quite a lot of money dealing with another round of their bullshit.

That means more fundraising, and more slap stickers (SLAPP stickers?) for everyone who wants to support us.

[Links]

We also just got someone who has committed to matching all our donations up to the first $500.

Update: Capital Area Satanists are now also matching all donations up thru the first $500, so we are at $2 (two dollars) matching for every $1 (one dollar) donated.

Update: A third supporter is now also matching all donations up thru the first $500, so we are at $3 (two dollars) matching for every $1 (one dollar) donated.

Update: A comrade at Facebook meme page Anarkitty matching all donations between $2,001 and $2,500!

Update: And a pair of Baptists.

Please help us maintain our ability to defend ourselves from a frivolous lawsuit by an abusive religious/business organization that has lasted for more than two and a half years.

In case that image is not clear, we're looking to raise at least $500 to roll out five more glossy sticker designs, 2x2" in size

How many you personally get mailed to you is dependent on how much you donate

=In return for donation (from within the USA)=

$5 = 5 stickers ($1 per sticker- 1 of each design)

$10 = 10 stickers ($1 per - 2 each)

$25 = 40 stickers ($0.62 per - 8 each)

$50 = 100 stickers ($0.50 per - 20 each)

$100 = 400 stickers ($0.25 per - 80 each)

(If you live outside of the USA, it's going to get a bit more complicated because we need to do more than break even; it's still possible, but maybe DM us about it if you want to do more than just donate?)

=Ways to donate=

PayPal @QueerSatanic: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/queersatanic

CashApp $QueerSatanic: https://cash.app/$QueerSatanic

GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/legal-fund-for-victims-of-satanic-temple1

You can use [email protected] to send addresses to us + proof of donation like a screenshot; but basically, just make sure you find some way to get your mail address to us.

For other merch and designs, check our Redbubble store:

The margins on this aren't great, but we don't have any extra labor to do, and if you're outside the USA, this may be the easiest way to physically get something in your hands.

#The Satanic Temple #SLAPP #Queer Satanic #Satanic Antifascism #Satanism #legal defense #Satanic Temple #TST

[warningsine]

https://www.reuters.com/world/france-germany-eu-mark-anniversary-sudan-war-with-funding-push-2024-04-15/

PARIS/CAIRO, April 15 (Reuters) - Donors pledged more than 2 billion euros ($2.13 billion) for war-torn Sudan at a conference in Paris on Monday, French President Emmanuel Macron said, on the first anniversary of what aid workers describe as a neglected but devastating conflict.

Efforts to help millions of people driven to the verge of famine by the war have been held up by continued fighting between the army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), restrictions imposed by the warring sides, and demands on donors from other global crises including in Gaza and Ukraine.

Conflict in Sudan is threatening to expand, with fighting heating up in and around al-Fashir, a besieged aid hub and the last city in the western Darfur region not taken over by the RSF. Hundreds of thousands of displaced people have sought refuge in the area.

"The world is busy with other countries," Bashir Awad, a resident of Omdurman, part of the wider capital and a key battleground, told Reuters last week. "We had to help ourselves, share food with each other, and depend on God."

In Paris, the EU pledged 350 million euros, while France and Germany, the co-sponsors, committed 110 million euros and 244 million euros respectively. The United States pledged $147 million and Britain $110 million.

Speaking at the end of the conference, which included Sudanese civilian actors, Macron emphasized the need to coordinate overlapping and so far unsuccessful international efforts to resolve the conflict and to stop foreign support for the warring parties.

"Unfortunately the amount that we mobilised today is still probably less than was mobilised by several powers since the start of the war to help one or the other side kill each other," he said.

As regional powers compete for influence in Sudan, U.N. experts say allegations that the United Arab Emirates helped arm the RSF are credible, while sources say the army has received weapons from Iran. Both sides have rejected the reports.

AID EFFORTS IMPEDED

The war, which broke out between the Sudanese army and the RSF as they vied for power ahead of a planned transition, has crippled infrastructure, displaced more than 8.5 million people, and cut many off from food supplies and basic services.

"We can manage together to avoid a terrible famine catastrophe, but only if we get active together now," German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said, adding that, in the worst-case scenario, 1 million people could die of hunger this year.

The United Nations is seeking $2.7 billion this year for aid inside Sudan, where 25 million people need assistance, an appeal that was just 6% funded before the Paris meeting. It is seeking another $1.4 billion for assistance in neighbouring countries that have housed hundreds of thousands of refugees.

The international aid effort faces obstacles to gaining access on the ground.

The army has said it would not allow aid into the wide swathes of the country controlled by its foes from the RSF. Aid agencies have accused the RSF of looting aid. Both sides have denied holding up relief.

"I hope the money raised today is translated into aid that reaches people in need," said Abdullah Al Rabeeah, head of Saudi Arabia's KSRelief.

On Friday, Sudan's army-aligned foreign ministry protested that it had not been invited to the conference. "We must remind the organisers that the international guardianship system has been abolished for decades," it said in a statement.

WAR CRIMES

The military factions, uneasy partners in the toppling of President Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and the overthrow of a government in 2021, have killed thousands of civilians, though death toll estimates are highly uncertain.

Each side has been accused of war crimes - which Macron said would not go unpunished - and the RSF and its allies have been blamed for ethnic cleansing in West Darfur. Both factions have largely denied the accusations against them.

In al-Fashir on Saturday, local activists reported that 40,000 people had fled their homes after RSF and allied militias raided and set fire to villages on the western outskirts of the city, killing at least 11.

The next day, fighting in the city including airstrikes by the army killed nine and injured 60, they said.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned on Monday that any attack on al-Fashir could lead to "full-blown intercommunal conflict" in Darfur.

($1 = 0.9404 euro)

#humanitarian aid #sudan #news tag

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Here are just two of the corporate giveaways hidden in the rushed, must-pass, end-of-year budget bill

Yesterday, Congress finally voted through the must-pass, end-of-year budget bill. As has become routine, this bill was stalled right until the final moment, so that Congressjerks could cram the 4,000-page, $1.7 trillion package with special favors for their donors, at the expense of the rest of the country.

This year’s budget package included a couple of especially egregious doozies, which were reported out for The American Prospect by Lee Harris (who covered a grotesque retirement giveaway for the ultra-rich) and Doraj Facundo (who covered a safety giveaway to Boeing and its lethal fleet of 737 Max airplanes).

Let’s start with the retirement scam. The budget bill includes Rep Richie Neal’s [DINO-MA] SECURE Act 2.0, which gives savers with retirement funds until age 75 to cash out their retirement savings — netting an extra three years of tax-free growth for the lucky, tiny minority with substantial retirement savings. This follows on Neal’s SECURE Act 1.0 of 2019, when the age was raised from 70.5 to 72.

The tax-exempt retirement savings account is a Carter-era bargain that replaced real pensions — ones that guaranteed that you wouldn’t starve or freeze to death when you retired — with accounts that let people gamble on the stock market, to be the suckers at Wall Street’s poker table:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/25/derechos-humanos/#are-there-no-poorhouses

The market-based gambler’s pension is a catastrophic failure. Half of Americans have no retirement savings. Of the half that have any savings, the vast majority have almost nothing saved:

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econres/scf/dataviz/scf/chart/#series:Retirement_Accounts;demographic:all;population:all;units:have

All in all, America has a $7 trillion retirement savings shortfall:

https://crr.bc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/IB_19-16.pdf

But for a tiny minority of the ultra-rich, tax-free savings accounts like ROTH IRAs are a means of avoiding even the paltry capital gains tax that you have to pay if you own things for a living, rather than doing things for a living. Propublica’s IRS Files revealed how ghouls like Peter Thiel avoided tax on billions in “passive income” by abusing tax-free savings accounts that were supposed to benefit the “middle class”:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/26/wax-rothful/#thiels-gambit

Meanwhile, Social Security is crumbling, thanks to a sustained attack on it by the business lobby and its friends in both parties. Progressive Dems had sought to amend SECURE Act 2.0 by inserting some clauses to shore up Social Security, and none of these were included in the final bill.

One of the fixes that died was the Savings Penalty Elimination Act, introduced by Senators Sherrod Brown [D-OH] and Rob Portman [R-OH]. This act would have tweaked the means-testing for Supplemental Security Income, which supports 8m low-income disabled adults and kids. Right now, you can’t collect SSI if you have $2k in the bank, a limit that hasn’t been adjusted for inflation since the 1980s (adjusted for inflation, $2k in 1980 is $7226.00 in 2022).

The $2k savings cap means that you have to be substantially below the poverty level to receive $585/month in SSI assistance — this being the only source of income for the majority of SSI recipients. Means-testing is a self-immolating fetish for corporate Dems and in retrospect, this betrayal seems inevitable:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/05/03/utopia-of-rules/#in-triplicate

(Notice how no one proposes means-testing billionaires when they get PPP loans or hundreds of millions in IRS “refunds” — like Trump, who paid substantially less tax than you did:)

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/trump-income-tax-returns-detailed-in-new-report-.html

And it was a betrayal: progressive Dems bargained with Neal and co not to publicly condemn SECURE Act 2.0 if they could get some concessions for the 8 million poorest disabled people in America. In the end, Neal rug-pulled them. Of course he did! This is Richie Fucking Neal, the best friend the Trump tax giveaway ever had:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/13/youre-still-the-product/#richie-neal

As with everything Neal touches, this screws poor people in multiple ways. First, it leaves the SSI cap intact. But it also creates a giant unfunded liability in the federal budget. Technically, there’s no reason this should lead to cuts. The US Treasury can’t run out of dollars, and giveaways to the rich are only mildly inflationary, since rich people put their money in the bank and mostly spend it on buying politicians, not goods.

But because of the delusion that currency producers like the US Treasury have the same constraints as currency users like you and me, Congress will need to come up with “Pay Fors” in future budgets to “make up for” the money they’re giving to rich people with SECURE Act 2.0. Dollars to toenail clippings, they’ll do that by hacking away at the tattered remains of the US social safety net.

Fear not, you don’t need to be a desperately poor disabled person or child to get fucked over by late additions to a 4,000 page must-pass bill! If you can afford to get on an airplane, Congress has something for you, too!

Remember when Boeing (the monopoly US airplane manufacturer that squandered $43b on stock buybacks and had to borrow $14b from the US public to survive the pandemic) told the FAA that it could self-certify its 737 Max airplanes, and then killed hundreds and hundreds of people with its defective planes?

https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/12/boeing-crashes/#boeing

The 737 Max was unsafe for many reasons, but one glaring factor was the fact that Boeing sold some of its core safety as “extras” — like they were downloadable content for your Fortnite character — leading to multiple crashes in which all lives were lost:

https://apnews.com/article/ethiopia-indonesia-accidents-ap-top-news-international-news-140576a8e9d4449eae646c8c479fdc3a

Boeing was forced to take the 737 Max out of service, but it eventually brought the plane back, “fixing” the problems by renaming the “737 Max” to the “737 8”:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/20/dubious-quantitative-residue/#737-8

Supposedly, Boeing has been diligently working on fixing the problems with its defective jets that can’t be addressed by a rebranding campaign. This wasn’t voluntary: the 2020 Aircraft Certification, Safety, and Accountability Act required Boeing — and every other manufacturer whose aircraft were certified by the FAA — to meet new minimum safety standards by December 27, 2022.

Every manufacturer met that deadline, except Boeing, and someone amended the budget bill to give the company three more years to meet these security standards. Critically, the new security measures, when they come, will be certified by an FAA that Republicans will control, thanks to the House changing hands.

https://prospect.org/infrastructure/transportation/government-spending-bill-waives-aircraft-safety-deadline/

Boeing is slated to ship 1,000 new 737 Maxes, which will fetch $50b for the company. Many of these planes will fly directly over my house, which is on the approach path for Burbank airport. Southwest Air flies dozens of 737 Maxes right over my roof every single day.

As Facundo points out, the FAA can ill afford any more hits to its credibility. It was once the case that if the FAA certified an aircraft, every other country in the world would waive any further certification, so trusting were they of the FAA’s judgment. That is no longer the case: today, the European Aviation Safety Agency does its own aircraft testing, holding jets that enter EU airspace to a higher standard than the FAA does for US planes.

It’s just another reminder that the US doesn’t have “corporate criminals” because the US doesn’t have any meaningful enforcement for corporate crimes. In America, we love our companies like we love our billionaires: too big to fail and too big to jail:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/12/no-criminals-no-crimes/#get-out-of-jail-free-card

Image: Ryan Lee (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/190784293@N05/50862532686

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Henry Wadey (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flames_%2858765896%29.jpeg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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#pluralistic #secure 2.0 #ssi #means testing #irsleaks #fidelity #vanguard #regulatory capture #faa #retirement crisis #retirement #finance #social security #pensions #corruption #congress #aviation #boeing #737 max #must-pass #irs files

[eaglesnick]

Scandal After Scandal: Will They Never End?

Boris Johnson was so beset by scandal that his own party turned on him and threw him out of office. We all know about the Partygate affair but there were also questions raised regarding his personal monetary arrangements.  From charges of corruption concerning him asking a Tory donor to supply funds to refurbish his Downing Street residence, to his appointment of the BBC Chairman and an alleged £800,000 loan, Johnson was the epitome of the self-serving Tory.

Johnson has gone but the scandals have continued to rumble on. We had the unedifying debacle of multi-millionaire Nadhim Zahawi being forced to resign after he was  found  guilty of serious breaches of the ministerial code  by covering up issues to do with his attempts to minimise his tax bill.

Sunak’s own wife also avoided UK tax payments by claiming non-dom status. After being asked to “come clean” on his wife’s tax affairs and after much embarrassment the Sunak’s decided she should pay tax in this country.

It is not only those Tories at the top of government who are self-serving. Conservative MP’s have been calculated to have received an additional £15.2 million on top of their MP salaries, personal fortune hunting seemingly more important than giving their constituents 100% of their time. 

“Since the end of 2019, millions of pounds of outside earnings have been made by a small group of largely Tory MPs."  (Skynews: 08/01/23)

When Sunak, after much delay, made public his own tax affairs we discovered that for the year 2021/22 he made £172,415 unearned income from dividends and £1.6 million from capital gains. In total, the PM paid an average tax rate of 22% over a three-year period.

For you and I, the basic rate of tax on income between £12,571 and £50,270 is 20%.  Between £50,271 and £125,140, it is 40 %, going up to 45% for earned income over £125,140.

For Mr Sunak to have only paid 22% on his millions is therefore quite a smack in face for ordinary tax-payers, and one only made possible because the Tories have arranged the tax system to benefit  themselves and their rich friends.

“Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, said: “[The tax returns] reveal a tax system designed by successive Tory governments in which the prime minister pays a far lower tax rate than working people who face the highest tax burden in 70 years

“… the fact that Sunak paid less than a quarter of his gains in tax highlighted the problems with taxing capital gains at a much lower rate than income…The low tax rate is because we have much lighter taxes on wealth than work”   (Guardian: 22/03/23)

So, if you work for a living, expect to pay proportionately more in tax than those who live on unearned income.

Way back in July 2022, Rishi Sunak was so disgusted with the immoral behaviour of Boris  Johnson that he resigned his post as Chancellor. This is what he said at the time:

“... the public rightly expect government to be conducted properly, competently and seriously. I recognise this may be my last ministerial job, but I believe these standards are worth fighting for and that is why I am resigning.”

But if a week is a long time in politics, then 9 months is an eternity. As we have seen, Sunak himself has become as equally embroiled in monetary scandal as his predecessor and now he is under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Committee. 

“Rishi Sunak investigation: Government blocked Freedom of Information request into childcare firm.

Mr Sunak is currently being investigated by the Parliamentary Standards Commissioner over his failure to be more transparent about his wife’s shares in childcare agency Koru Kids when quizzed on the subject by MPs.

It comes after i revealed last month that Akshata Murty, the Prime Minister’s wife, holds shares in the firm, which stands to directly benefit from reforms to the childcare system announced in last month’s Budget.” (inews: 19/04/23)

Time and time again we see top Tories under investigation by the Parliamentary Standards Commission. Time and time again we see how self-serving and unprincipled our leaders really are. Mr Sunak it seems, is no different to his predecessors and the sooner he goes the better.

#uk politics #rishi sunak #boris johnson #scandal #corruption #tax affairs #standards #promises

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Opinion | The GOP tax plan is to let the rich pay less and make you pay more

By Jennifer Rubin

President Biden, consistent with his idea of building an economy from “the bottom up and the middle out,” has tried to get the rich and big corporations to pay more taxes. The MAGA GOP, abandoning all pretense of populism, has a scheme to junk the progressive tax code and replace it with a national sales tax, with devastating results for the middle class.

That tells you a lot about the contrasting visions of the two parties. One still fights for the little guy in practical, concrete terms while the other proposes one harebrained scheme after another with no regard to the needs of average Americans.

Biden’s American Rescue Plan expanded the child tax credit for a year and permanently made it fully refundable, meaning that parents receive the money regardless of how much they owe in taxes. Keeping his promises not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $400,000 a year and to get businesses to pay more, Biden raised $300 billion in revenue in the Inflation Reduction Act by placing a new tax on stock buybacks and enacting a minimum tax on big corporations. To the chagrin of tax cheats (and their sympathetic Republican politicians), the law also boosted funding for the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on tax evaders.

None of these were radical changes in the code. More far-reaching plans to increase the individual top marginal tax rate, to boost the corporate tax rate, to equalize tax treatment of capital gains and ordinary income for those making more than $400,000, and to eliminate the step-up basis for the estate tax never passed.

The principle underlying all of these measures, which would be comparatively small adjustments that would not hit the vast majority of Americans, was simple: The rich have made out very well and should pay more taxes; working- and middle-class taxpayers shouldn’t.

“Over the past 40 years, the wealthy have gotten wealthier, and too many corporations have lost their sense of responsibility to their workers, their communities and the country,” Biden said in a speech in September 2021. “CEOs used to make about 20 times the average worker in the company that they ran. Today, they make more than 350 times what the average worker in their corporation makes.” He added, “Since the pandemic began, billionaires have seen their wealth go up by $1.8 trillion. That is, everyone who was a billionaire before the pandemic began, the total accumulated wealth beyond the billions they already had has gone up by $1.8 trillion.”

That grotesque widening of income inequality offends most Americans, who consistently tell pollsters the rich should pay more.

GOP politicians and their wealthy donors see things differently. The first tax measure proposed by the MAGA House was to try to take back funding for the IRS to chase down tax cheats.

“The debate should focus on one accurate and alarming number: the IRS has 2,284 fewer skilled auditors to handle the sophisticated returns of wealthy taxpayers than it did in 1954,” Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities wrote. “The decade-long, House Republican-driven budget cuts have created dysfunction at the IRS, where relatively few millionaires are now audited.”

But allowing tax cheats to avoid paying what they legally owe is not the sum total of the GOP thinking on taxes. “As part of his deal to become House Speaker,” Semafor reported, “Kevin McCarthy reportedly promised his party’s conservative hardliners a vote on legislation that would scrap the entire American tax code and replace it with a jumbo-sized national sales tax.”

A mammoth 30% sales tax would be grossly regressive, socking it to the same working- and middle-class families Republicans ostensibly worry are paying more at the pump and grocery store because of inflation.

You know the idea is rotten when Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, blasted the move. He told Semafor: “This is a political gift to Biden and the Democrats.” Even Norquist knows that because the poor and middle class spend a much higher percentage of their income on necessities such as food and clothing, the impact would be devastating.

Unsurprisingly Democrats leaped at the chance to blast the scheme. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) tweeted:

Biden also hammered Republicans: “National sales tax, that’s a great idea. It would raise taxes on the middle class by taxing thousands of everyday items from groceries to gas, while cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans.”

The GOP plan boils down to this: Let rich tax cheats get away with not paying what they owe while redoing the entire tax system so the overwhelming burden will fall on those less able to pay. Genius! Well, if you are a Democrat running in 2024.

The plan is unlikely even to get a vote. But it is indicative of the utter lack of seriousness that pervades the GOP. They throw out one boneheaded idea after another, hoping to please some segment of their base or donors, with nary a care in the world for the needs of their constituents nor for the actual challenges we face.

#us politics #news #the washington post #op eds #Jennifer Rubin #president joe biden #biden administration #american rescue plan #inflation reduction act #taxes #us tax code #federal tax codes #internal revenue service #Chuck Marr #Center on Budget and Policy Priorities #Semafor #rep. kevin mccarthy #Grover Norquist #sen. elizabeth warren #tweet #twitter #the white house #2023 #118th congress #us house of representatives #conservatives #republicans #gop policy #gop platform #gop

[pillowfort-social]

Donation Update:

As of 01/18/2023 we have met 37% of our $4943 goal for January thanks to our generous community donors.

Pillowfort has been user-funded since the beginning. Our entire team will continue the stance of never relying on venture capital investments, as being user-funded allows us to continue to operate without compromising our content guidelines or business philosophy.

While Pillowfort doesn't have investor funding, this does create many challenges for our team. Relying only on user payments and donations limits our resources significantly compared to other sites that receive millions of dollars in investment funding. We also pay higher payment processing fees because we allow adult content. Our continued survival depends on the generosity of our community until we implement a long-term business plan such as our premium features suite. We are still on track to launch the premium features suite sometime during the first of this year. More details will be available soon. 

Our Donation page provides a budget breakdown of Pillowfort's current monthly expenses.

While Pillowfort will not have to shut down immediately if we do not meet January's goal, it is in the best interest of the site to continue to reverse this trend so we do not face a situation where we eventually run out of finances. We have been fortunate to have saved up a ‘safety net’ of funds from previous fundraising drives and periods of high revenue (an example of a high period of revenue would be November 2022), which allows us to continue working on the platform at a deficit.

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Stay tuned for more updates. Have a great rest of your week, 

Best,

Pillowfort Staff

#pillowfort #pillowfort.social #pfstaffalert #pillowfort.soc #pillowfort donation update

[ivie-online]

while i don’t wish to diminish the effort put into this piece, to find out that supreme court justice clarence thomas has received undisclosed, expensive trips from a rich republican donor is simply not a revelation.

this is mostly because in addition to their ~$300k yearly salaries, 8 of 9 of our supreme court justices are independently millionaires.

our justices are landlords. they invest in education and defense manufacturers. they invest in mutual funds, and hold significant stock in private companies.

even in the absence of direct invites/gifts for island-hopping & yacht trips, they would (and do) act in the interest of maintaining a homogeneous, heteronormative, capitalist society.

so in the final analysis, it seems as if some americans want the transparency simply for the principle of it, but once they have it, there is no pointed effort to truly address the material consequences of living under the dictates of american class society.

so whether justice thomas was invited to the yacht by a republican donor or a fellow multimillionaire justice, in the final analysis, the minautie of the movements capital are irrelevant to the majority of the working class, and dwelling on them only serves to obscure the truth: rule of the american masses by a moneyed, well-positioned elite is exactly what the founding fathers intended, and within the electoral political system, there are no clear mechanisms to fundamentally change that.

so (smacks legs with both hands, stands, collects my coat while heading to the door) you know the drill, workers of the world, nothing to lose but your chains, and so on and so forth

#scotus #clarence thomas #supreme court #ivie

[anyoneknowwhatbrexitmeans]

“With so many investors both bankrolling Leave campaigning and cashing in on the referendum result, this is particularly true of Brexit.

Of all the political decisions around the EU referendum, Paul Marshall’s impact on Gove is one of the most precipitate and important. Gove’s defection to Vote Leave persuaded his old Oxford University college friend, Boris Johnson, to join him.

Marshall went on to be a major donor to, and a major beneficiary of, the cataclysmic victory of the Gove and Johnson campaign.”

Old article but very informative. Marshall crops up yet again. What a role he has played in UK disastrous decisions.

#Brexit #finance

[gimletagain]

gimlet, i need to know where you think the $10 million went. I'm assuming the hermes blanket fund but why would you ever release something like this

I think it’s interesting that they put out an impact report that’s light on real numbers in advance of the 990. (By interesting, I mean it’s a planned diversion from the scrutiny and criticism that even neutral charity watchdogs will call them out on. $13m in funds and they only gave $3m out? Bad, unless they are restricted grants made to be part of multi-year commitments or earmarked for things like capital campaigns, which makes no sense since they’re not building out any facilities.)

the $10m came from an anonymous donor via the Silicon Valley community foundation. If I had to guess it comes from Benioff. Multiple connection points, the most notable being one of the VCs backing BetterUp through Salesforce ventures. More pathetically he’s such a Hollywood starf*cker that he invites Matthew McConaughy and will.I.am to salesforce meetings. Activist investors are looking to start trimming the company. Good luck.

[exitrowiron]

Rich People Getting Richer (Part 2 of ?)

Take my word for it when I say that Rich People don't give a shit about whatever is the current 'outrage' occupying the attention the Joe Sixpack and Mrs. Soccer Mom. No, they don't care about the imaginary threats of drag queens, wokeness, trans people, pronouns, using the gender correct bathroom, etc. Their kids go to good public schools or private schools that don't ban books and if Buffy gets pregnant you can bet they'll find a way to obtain an abortion. These are all useful distractions to keep the masses from protesting what I'm about to explain to you.

In Part 1 we established that the Federal Income Tax brackets are Progressive; rich people have higher marginal and effective tax rates.

But these tax rates only apply to Ordinary Income. What's that you ask? Ordinary Income is wages, salaries, tips, bonuses etc.; the kind of income earned by ordinary people in their job. Ordinary income also includes interest earnings (like from a savings account or CD) and dividends (profit sharing that companies give their shareholders).

But there is another source of income enjoyed by rich people - Capital Gains. A Capital Gain results when you sell an asset for more than it's purchase price. Other than your home, what is the most common capital asset? STOCKS! Selling a stock for more than it's purchase price results in a Capital Gain. If you owned the stock for more than a year, it is considered a Long Term Capital Gain; less than a year and it is a Short Term Capital Gain.

The tax rate on Long Term Capital Gains is MUCH lower than the rates on Comparable Ordinary Income:

Let's use an example of two couples, each with a taxable income of $150K and each filing jointly. The Kramers are a working couple and all $150K of their earnings is Ordinary Income. The Kramers will pay $24,234 in taxes for an effective tax rate of 16.1%. The Seinfelds are trust fund kids. They earned $25K as butterfly shepherds and the remaining $125K comes from capital gains. The Seinfelds will pay $12,586 in taxes for an effective tax rate of 8.4%.

That's not the end of the good news for the Seinfelds though. They bought more stocks with the $11,648 they 'saved' in taxes and that helped them generate even more capital gains next year which were taxed at a lower rate and so they kept getting farther ahead of the Kramers at an accelerating rate.

This is obviously an exaggerated example, but you get the idea. The lower tax rate on capital gains is a huge advantage and the people who generate capital gains are (white) people who already have enough wealth to invest in assets like stocks. And the wealthier you get, Capital Gains income becomes a larger and larger share of our total income. For the Super Rich (ex. Elon Musk), Capital Gains can easily far exceed Ordinary Income.

But Mike, the Kramers (and many Americans with modest incomes) own stock too in their 401K! Yes, but 401Ks are already tax advantaged; that's not a reason for lower capital gains taxes.

Every year the Democrats propose increasing the capital gains tax and every year lobbyists and rich political donors go ape shit and the Republicans vote it down. They argue that this would lower investment, slow the growth of the stock market and the economy, etc. I doubt that. Are rich people going to start putting their money under their mattress? Are they really going to change citizenship to a low tax country? Probably no on both of those, but rich people have been known to hide money overseas and that risk should be accompanied by increased IRS audit resources (another initiative voted down by Republicans).

If you're ever going to write a letter to your Congressperson - you should write supporting parity of taxes on long term capital gains and ordinary income.

(Yes, I am aware of Net Investment Income Tax, which imposes an additional��3.8% tax on investment income, including your capital gains on high earning individuals. This additional tax still doesn't close the gap.)