US Politics Megathread

[n0el]

this isn't even illegal

[Dolan]

You can't get unbiased news sources, you read all sides with full knowledge of the bias.

That's true, in general, for mainstream media.
The only major unbiased source of news are news agencies. If you want to see the least biased coverage of an event, check Reuters.

However that doesn't mean that a trash source can't tell you something useful.

I often found some useful pieces of news on Daily Express, despite them having a penchant for approaching political topics like a tabloid.

[gibson]

Feels Harder and harder to get unbiased news sources nowadays.

Well you can’t get unbiased news, but you can get news that at least makes an effort to be objective. Project veritas is the opposite of this, in fact they are striving to be biased and even manufacturer “news” that will appeal to their base.

[voigt1240]

100% Unbiased news is something I've yet to find, and I don't expect to find it. I feel it's just unavoidable for news to lack any sort of bias. whoever is reporting, writing the scripts, or even owns the outlets has, like all people, an opinion and it is very difficult to keep these opinions from making their way into the reporting. But that being said, many news sources don't even try to see the issue from both sides, And take a somewhat unbiased position, which i think is sad.

[chris1089]

Objective truth exists, but no-one portrays stuff 100% accurately.

[Jam]

Damn Joe Biden is old.... Joe Biden Reads Teleprompter Incorrectly: “I Got to the Senate 180 Years Ago” lol what an idiot

That's why he's so sleepy, he just got out of hibernation.

[oats13]

You can't get unbiased news sources, you read all sides with full knowledge of the bias.

That's true, in general, for mainstream media.
The only major unbiased source of news are news agencies. If you want to see the least biased coverage of an event, check Reuters.

However that doesn't mean that a trash source can't tell you something useful.

I often found some useful pieces of news on Daily Express, despite them having a penchant for approaching political topics like a tabloid.

Sadly even the agencies aren't as balanced as they should be anymore, but at least they are subtle about it.

The Express is, with the Mirror, the worst rag in Britain IMO, but it will touch some stuff others won't shall we say .

[spanky4ever]

So Trump did not pay any taxes for 10 out of the last 15 years In his election year 2016, he payed 750 dollars in tax. A nurse will pay ten times as much on average.
Hillarious! who would have guessed?
I think we prolly all knew he was more broke, than rich - and a terrible businessman.
I think we all knew that he would scam every tax rule in the book to avoid paying in to the society.

For every breaking news on new scandals, in every book that has been published - we can all nod our head and say - we already knew that.

This is how the scandals, when they are displayed, do not get the attention they deserve. There is just to many of them. Ppl are exhausted with scandals tbh. Even you, my friends in this thread, have not mentioned it at all - the FUCKING BREAKING NEWS all around the world - TODAY.

[Dolan]

Yeah, he paid 750 bucks more in taxes than Amazon.

[deleted_user]

eat the rich

[spanky4ever]

eat the rich

I think I will say no to a meal of Trump Drump. But go ahead
I would prefer they pay in to society, as we all do.
Maybe Trump should cut his haircut budget, from 700 000 dollars, and accept that he is half bold

[spanky4ever]

background info if anyone cares anymore

[quote][/quote]

[spanky4ever]

[spanky4ever]

Do Trump have more debt, than wealth? to big to fail? and to whom do he owe all those billions? That should be a question in the race imo

[Dolan]

Trump used the same strategy to avoid paying taxes Jeff Bezos used at Amazon. He reinvested all the profit and borrowed money to invest more.
So when the revenue service checks his companies' books, what they see is more liabilities than assets, which is reported as "losses".

Is this illegal? No.
Is it immoral? It's just as immoral as Amazon's zero-corporate tax policy is.
So if you want to condemn Trump for doing this, you should also condemn Bezos and Amazon for doing the same.

Personally, I argued in another thread that this tax facility of reinvesting profit should be capped by law, so that you'd still allow companies some leeway to invest in equipment and r&d, but not to the extent they completely dodge paying any taxes at all. Because if you do that, sure, you help that company grow, but if this growth comes at the cost of you providing public goods and services for free to that company, you're undermining yourself as a state and fostering a corporatocracy that keeps accumulating wealth and controlling more and more of your economy.

[n0el]

He’s got 350 million dollars of debt. That’s much more concerning than having a low tax liability. I agree, this is a systemic problem, not a trump problem.

[wardyb1]

Trump used the same strategy to avoid paying taxes Jeff Bezos used at Amazon. He reinvested all the profit and borrowed money to invest more.
So when the revenue service checks his companies' books, what they see is more liabilities than assets, which is reported as "losses".

Is this illegal? No.
Is it immoral? It's just as immoral as Amazon's zero-corporate tax policy is.
So if you want to condemn Trump for doing this, you should also condemn Bezos and Amazon for doing the same.

Personally, I argued in another thread that this tax facility of reinvesting profit should be capped by law, so that you'd still allow companies some leeway to invest in equipment and r&d, but not to the extent they completely dodge paying any taxes at all. Because if you do that, sure, you help that company grow, but if this growth comes at the cost of you providing public goods and services for free to that company, you're undermining yourself as a state and fostering a corporatocracy that keeps accumulating wealth and controlling more and more of your economy.

The problem is that what he is doing is probably (read: most likely but is still being investigated) tax fraud. He is on the hook for $100M to the IRS for illegally claiming $72M in deductions. His problem is that he claims deductions through losses/depreciations but then uses those same assets that he has claimed to be not worth much and he then gets exorbitant loans and but now inflates the value of his assets to back the loans. And that is illegal. Now Amazon isn't (at least to anyone's knowledge at the moment) dumb enough to do that. They actually have shit loads of money to reinvest so they do so and that is how the pay no tax.

[wardyb1]

He’s got 350 million dollars of debt. That’s much more concerning than having a low tax liability. I agree, this is a systemic problem, not a trump problem.

He's got way bigger problems that just 350 million in debt.
This thread is still being made, but already highlights just how serious trouble he is in.

[Dolan]

@wardyb1 That's why presidential candidates should be required by law to publish a complete account of their personal wealth. It could be called something like: statement of assets and liabilities or disclosure of assets and liabilities.

We have something like that here, in a much less developed country. Every public official, every state employee is required by law to publish two documents, every year:
- a declaration of assets
- a declaration of interests (in which the person declares potential conflicts of interest)

You can't hold any kind of job paid by the state here without making these 2 public every year (they need to be updated every year). They are all published on each public institution's website, so we can all see, for example: how much doctors in public hospitals own and how much they net per year, how much teachers earn, how much wealth our president has, how much our MPs, what kind of declared interests they have, how many cars, how many houses, how many shares, etc. You can visit, at any time, the website of a Romanian public institution and check their employees' personal wealth, if you want to investigate if they took bribes or if something doesn't check out.

I'm not sure if Americans have anything like this, but if they don't, they should learn from us. This has been a big step we made towards getting a grip on corruption. It really helped us make some big progress on this front. We still have a ways to go, but we made substantial progress too.

So, no president should be allowed to not declare their wealth and interests before taking office. And there needs to be an institution which checks the veracity of those statements. We have those institutions here and if they find out that someone submitted a false declaration of assets and interests, that person will get prosecuted for misrepresentation, which carries a penalty of 3 months up to 2 years of prison.

Now, going back to Trump's case, it's possible those decisions were made by a board of directors and following the advice of their financial staff. I don't even think Trump knows the legal tricks they used to cut their tax bill. Some companies even outsource this kind of legal advice (for example, Apple used Ernst & Young's advice when they cooked up that double Dutch tax avoidance scheme in Ireland). But if any such decision was passed through a board of which Trump was a member, I suppose there could be some legal consequences for him. If any of this stuff is actually proven to be illegal or fraudulent in any way and if it actually gets prosecuted. It could also get settled with their local IRS, if I'm not mistaken, they have this procedure too.

[wardyb1]

100% agree it needs to be enshrined into law, and it kind of is already. Well not really, but there is law preventing the president from enriching himself through the office. I'll link this article despite it being a bit out of date as it is talking about Trump pre-presidency but it talks a bit about the law and previous presidents. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... st/503333/
You've also got the security agencies that I think would probably know about this because they recognise that debts are an easy way for outside forces to leverage a person. In a hypothetical universe, Trump would be a 0% chance of getting the lowest security clearance because of his business dealings.

Obviously your solution is a good one and works because in order to be eligible to run and be on the ballots you would have to show transparency. The reason this isn't law at the moment is because historically presidents haven't be willing to so flagrantly flout convention and the law once in office. From there the big issue is that impeachment is the only solution to a president who flouts the law. So as long as the president hold either the house, or enough votes in the Senate (and is willing to be complicit in their crime) then they can be as corrupt as they want.

[spanky4ever]

100% agree it needs to be enshrined into law, and it kind of is already. Well not really, but there is law preventing the president from enriching himself through the office. I'll link this article despite it being a bit out of date as it is talking about Trump pre-presidency but it talks a bit about the law and previous presidents. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... st/503333/
You've also got the security agencies that I think would probably know about this because they recognise that debts are an easy way for outside forces to leverage a person. In a hypothetical universe, Trump would be a 0% chance of getting the lowest security clearance because of his business dealings.

Obviously your solution is a good one and works because in order to be eligible to run and be on the ballots you would have to show transparency. The reason this isn't law at the moment is because historically presidents haven't be willing to so flagrantly flout convention and the law once in office. From there the big issue is that impeachment is the only solution to a president who flouts the law. So as long as the president hold either the house, or enough votes in the Senate (and is willing to be complicit in their crime) then they can be as corrupt as they want.

trough all of these past 4 years, we have seen the Trumps enriching themself of the POTUS. It is not a secret.

[wardyb1]

100% agree it needs to be enshrined into law, and it kind of is already. Well not really, but there is law preventing the president from enriching himself through the office. I'll link this article despite it being a bit out of date as it is talking about Trump pre-presidency but it talks a bit about the law and previous presidents. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... st/503333/
You've also got the security agencies that I think would probably know about this because they recognise that debts are an easy way for outside forces to leverage a person. In a hypothetical universe, Trump would be a 0% chance of getting the lowest security clearance because of his business dealings.

Obviously your solution is a good one and works because in order to be eligible to run and be on the ballots you would have to show transparency. The reason this isn't law at the moment is because historically presidents haven't be willing to so flagrantly flout convention and the law once in office. From there the big issue is that impeachment is the only solution to a president who flouts the law. So as long as the president hold either the house, or enough votes in the Senate (and is willing to be complicit in their crime) then they can be as corrupt as they want.

trough all of these past 4 years, we have seen the Trumps enriching themself of the POTUS. It is not a secret.

I know. That is the problem. There is no recourse, there is no way to change behaviour, the only mechanism available is impeachment. And that won't happen.

[Amsel_]

Imagine taking project veritas seriously

They did a really great job doctoring that video of someone associated with Ilhan Omar driving around with a car full of blank ballots, as well as those interviews of other people associated with the DFL admitting that fraudulent activity is taking place.

[Horsemen]

seems that the donald has won the hearts andminds o f thsi community

[oats13]

This whole tax thing is a nothing burger tbh, Firstly we don't even know if it is true but let's assume it is all true and has come directly from the IRS.

Even if it is true that he paid tax in only 11 out of 18 years that means he did pay tax in the other 7 years.

This means he is bouncing debt across tax years when it is of benefit and then paying the tax in years which are more suitable to him- that is just standard business practice available to all businesses of any size if their bank deems the core business to be viable.

The real method is to take the entire 18 years period, plus and minus the profits and losses and if there is a net gain then average the tax liability on that, the fact that none of these articles mention this and that apparently the IRS know about it without having a problem with it leads one to speculate that he simply made x money and paid x tax on it across that period just like anyone else.

If it looks too low you will have found out what most people already know- that Accountants are a thing.

It's just calculated to coincide with the debates so that if Joe does well it can create a wave or if Joe does badly it will take the edge of off it.

People just see headline like 'Billionaire pays no tax' and think that someone who has made billions should be paying loads of tax whereas Trump inherited his fortune, he could have just brought a massive property sat on half of it and invested the rest and lived a playboy lifestyle but instead he has ran businesses that have employed many hundreds (thousands?) of people over the years, if he has avoided any tax legally then the question is to ask whether he has employed those people more or less efficiently than the government may have done over the same period.

By all reliable accounts Trump inherited about $2 Billion which would be worth $4 billion if he saved it, best estimates are that he is still worth about $4 billion so therefore if he has paid little tax but employed people solidly over the period he has contributed, after all isn't this a better thing for a wealthy person to do than simply invest in global stock and keep any profits for themselves?

As for debt, $350 million is basically nothing of concern for someone if they have $4 Billion of assets/private wealth, in fact it would be really odd to have that amount of money without having significant debts.

What is interesting to me is why basically every news outlet is running the story without mentioning any of the above...........