“Corporate whore,…Warmonger…#CreepyJoe”
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“Even Wall Street Shills Understand Why the Democrats Failed”
“A new autopsy of the Democrats’ 2020 electoral underperformance supports the Left's arguments about the weaknesses of the party’s strategies. The only surprise is where the report came from: Wall Street–funded neoliberal think tank Third Way.”
Red Admiral (Vanessa Atalanta)
Driftless Area South Central Wisconsin, Dane County USA
2020 6/29 _F2A9898aaa
Trump 2024?!:
“14 GOP-Controlled States Have Passed Laws to Impede Free Elections
Twenty-four new laws will “politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration.””
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“Tell Biden: nominate a climate leader as Fed Chair
The Federal Reserve enables the financing of fossil fuel expansion during a climate crisis. Our central bank needs to do its job and steer the economy towards a just and sustainable future. That begins with new leadership.”
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“Attorney General Garland vows billionaire tax leak to ProPublica will be ‘top of my list’ to investigate”
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Please don’t invest in things that don’t provide a return so why does government give money and bailouts to tax dodging individuals and their corporations?:
“A major ProPublica investigation by Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel on how billionaires pay next to nothing in income tax. Can you believe it???
—Erika
In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.
Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.
ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.
Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.
Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.
The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.
America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.
To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.
We’re going to call this their true tax rate.
The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.
It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.
No one among the 25 wealthiest avoided as much tax as Buffett, the grandfatherly centibillionaire. That’s perhaps surprising, given his public stance as an advocate of higher taxes for the rich. According to Forbes, his riches rose $24.3 billion between 2014 and 2018. Over those years, the data shows, Buffett reported paying $23.7 million in taxes.
That works out to a true tax rate of 0.1%, or less than 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth.”
“The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax”
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“Michael Bloomberg vows to pursue leaker of tycoon tax files”
“Should we be surprised??? Bloomberg spent nearly a Billion Bucks attempting to gain the Democratic Party nomination at the behest of Wall Street's establishment.
From The Times of London:
Michael Bloomberg vowed to use “all legal means” to pursue whoever leaked the tax returns of the 25 richest Americans. The disclosure has revived a campaign by left-wing Democrats for a levy on wealth rather than just income.
Bloomberg, a billionaire media mogul, paid no income tax in at least one recent year, according to ProPublica, the independent journalism group that published selective records of the super-wealthy, including the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the investor and philanthropist George Soros and the Tesla founder Elon Musk.
ProPublica said that it had obtained “a massive trove of tax information covering thousands of America’s wealthiest individuals” and defended on public interest grounds its illegal move to release them.”
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“Alliance against Democrat Establishment Hypocrisy:”
“To be fair, Biden never said he’d be BETTER than Trump. He only said he was NOT Trump.”
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“There Is No Crisis of Laziness
Republicans seem determined to make workers so financially desperate that they’ll labor for whatever pay employers deign to offer.”
“"Lawmakers in these 24 states say they are responding to claims by business owners that more generous unemployment benefits make people unwilling to come back to their jobs. But that complaint is more fantasy than fact.
Why might this be? Even if an unemployment check is higher than what someone used to earn at work, we all know it’s temporary. A job, on the other hand, offers ongoing income, on which we smartly place a higher value.
What’s also clear is that the significantly higher unemployment benefits Congress offered during the pandemic have kept people from going hungry. When Congress finally passed a new increase in December after the previous one had lapsed, and also added another round of stimulus checks and increased food stamp benefits, the number of people living below the poverty line fell by 13 million.
Taking that lifeline away won’t goose the economy."”
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“Democrats Don't Grasp That Unions Can Transform the Electorate
Unions are machines for producing people who wouldn’t be satisfied with Joe Manchin’s obstinance.”
“If Democrats were really interested in exercising power, they'd be doing everything they possibly can to expand union membership.”
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“The EpiPen two-pack sold by Mylan that cost a little over $100 in 2009 and would cost a little under $500 in 2016 thanks to Joe Manchin’s daughter.”
“Manchin Family Values”
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“What’s wrong with us?
In Norway , elections are 74% government funded, political advertising on TV and radio is banned, and voter turnout is 81% (ranked 15th highest in the world).
In the US, elections are 80% funded by corporations and the super-wealthy, much of it for negative TV and radio advertising, and voter turnout is 48% (ranked 120th out 169 countries)
Time for the USA to make a change”
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