Imagine blaming corporations for the tax code when it’s the govt and politicians who are responsible for it.
▪️The irony is if you proposed a truly simple tax code, like everyone owes 10% on whatever they make, the Jon Stewarts of the world would howl and call it unfair. Instead, in the name of fairness, they want a progressive tax code, with a bunch of different brackets.
▪️But wait, having children is a financial burden. Ok, let’s carve out a child tax credit loophole to help parents. What about homeowners, we want to help them, right? Ok, let’s have a mortgage deduction. Wait, that’s unfair to those who rent, so let’s add a renter’s credit, too. And student loans? Those are also burdensome, let’s let borrowers deduct them.
▪️What about childcare expenses? Ok, add another deduction. And it’s unfair people who are self employed have to shoulder business expenses, so let them deduct business expenses. Same with healthcare expenses. And what about people who take care of their elderly parents? Surely they deserve a deduction, too. Heck, let’s just include a standard deduction, just so no one is left out, and let people add up a hundred things to see if they can itemize.
▪️And we want to encourage people to save for their retirement, right? Ok, let’s have a 401K where their contributions aren’t taxed. But limit it to $23K/yr. Oh, but $30.5K for people over 50. Let’s also add loopholes for individual retirement accounts (IRAs). People can contribute, say, $7K, but of course we’ll let those over 50 shelter $8K. Unless they make over $161K/yr.
▪️Surely, we also want people to donate to charity, right? Ok, let’s add a charitable deduction. But only to approved charities, which have to be recognized by the IRS and file their own tax returns. We’ll make a whole new tax code for them so there’s no funny business.
▪️But what about climate change?! We need to move towards renewable energy. Ok, anyone who buys an electric car can get a…$7,500 tax credit. And if you put solar panels on your home…1/3 of that can be a credit. Of course, only wealthier filers can take advantage of these things, but there’s a climate emergency going on.
How dare the corporations make things so complicated!
The reality is that politicians love having a complicated tax code because it ensures special interest lobby them for favors and carveouts. If the code was truly simple, they’d have no power to dole out favors. And while it’s true that poor people don’t get a lot of loopholes, it’s because most poor people pay zero in federal income tax.
As with the leftist freak out over “banned books” this is not banning books, it’s still easy to get Harry Potter and bookstores should be able to limit whatever books they want for whatever reason. But not only does it show a double standard, the rationale is far less justifiable than removing certain content from school libraries. At least there the justification was the content of certain books are inappropriate for children, clearly not every book should be available in a school library. Here, there’s no argument about the content they just don’t like the author’s politics!
Because news came out about his letter to the FBI, revealing he was a nutcase. The letter was rambling and incoherent, claiming he was trained by the US military off the books, and that Walz had instructed him to kill Amy Klobuchar so he could run for Senate. None of it made any sense (Walz is not running for Senate) and none of the assassinations made any sense, even in a diabolical way.
Nearly all of his hit list was Democrats (including Walz) and abortion clinics, but he was supposedly working for Walz?! Plus, one of the guys he killed wasn’t even on his list, and others were no longer in office or deceased. None of it makes sense from any coherent angle.
Basically, it appears the guy was mentally ill and neither the left or right can use the incident to push their agendas anymore, so the story was dropped.
This is so dumb. First, this means LA began as Spanish land founded to support Spanish missions (i.e. colonialism). Which contradicts their entire premise. But the reality is that Los Angeles is a quintessential American city.
▪️When the US acquired California in the 1840s, LA was a small town of less than 2,000 people. It was basically nothing. It became large only after the gold rush and the railroads completed in the 1870-80s, which brought thousands of new settlers and a booming commercial center.
▪️But LA had a major issue limiting its growth, no water. It wasn’t until Mulholland found a water source and built an aqueduct down from Northern California that LA had the infrastructure to grow into a major city.
▪️Then, a combination of oil, real estate and the film industry caused it to boom in the early 1900s. Post WWII, industries like aerospace continued its spectacular growth. Calling this “Mexican land” is a brain dead take. Neither the Mexicans, Spanish nor ...
