The all things Political topic -In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie

[Skarpen]

3 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

A 33 page paper written by ten guys no one has ever heard of

I love this:

- We need to read and base our politics on actual scientists

*someone shows actual scientists*

- I don't know, I've never heard about those guys. What Kanye have to say on the matter or Oprah? 

[ComradeYellow]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/01/columbus-police-protests-ruling/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=wp_main

Some good news.  Left wing sentiment appears to be winning out.  So we can't be compared to 1920's-30's Germany where right wing sentiment was clearly winning out among state officials.

Slowly, day by day, I feel a bit more relieved.  Kinda waiting around for some kind of climax sucks though.

[Gromnir]

is not as if the wealthy is gonna stuff their money in a mattress if capital gains increases. is a tax on profit. 

US capital gains is 20%.

the bracket for 40k income earners is 22%.

so, where do you think the top 1% is making all their money? 

corporate tax obvious has the corporates pass the hit on to consumers, so is rare beneficial in the long run.

obvious carveouts for personal residences (which there already is) and family owned farms is always considered when there is talk o' adjusting capital gains, but other than the 100ns who also argue in favor o' a flat 15% tax, which would lower taxes on the wealthy significant and disproportionate punish the poor, is tough to come up with a decent argument for maintaining the status quo... other than trickle down which has been a dead-end since reaganomics were laid to rest.

"The lower capital gains rate — designed to encourage investment — mainly benefits the wealthy. For the 99 percent of taxpayers making less than $500,000, salaries and wages accounted for 75 percent of their adjusted gross income for 2012, according to the latest period available from Internal Revenue Service returns. Yet for those making $10 million or more, salaries and wages only account for around 15 percent of their income, while capital gains accounted for about half of their earnings."

https://www.cnbc.com/2016/05/02/bill-gates-calls-for-higher-capital-gains-taxes.html

HA! Good Fun!

[Darkpriest]

4 hours ago, Gorth said:

That the trickle-down effect of tax breaks for the rich (top 1 percent ) somehow benefits the economy is an urban legend... it only makes the rich even richer and doesn't create any positive side effects, like jobs or stimulating the economy.

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/27/50-year-study-of-tax-cuts-on-wealthy-shows-they-always-fail-to-trickle-down/

The result of a study spanning the last 50 years.

 

Ediit: You can find the same study referenced on multiple sites, including nytimes and washington post, but they just offer their own take on the result.

Yet, for some reason US citizens and USA outcompeted most Western countries in personal wealth. 

 

The problem is not with the trickle down economy, but how you enable it. 

US jobs and wealth were hit hard with two punches. 

1 with easy capital outflows and offshoring "expensive" jobs

2 with money printing, which drives asset valuations to the moon, while making day to day living more difficult and costly for those with no assets and zero savings, cused by point 1.

Tax cuts don't work as capital is now invested offshore or kept in appreciating assets. Both offer more return onninvestment than investing cash in US people. 

 

Anything currently published by NYTimes and WaPo is now trash material on a level of the Sun (although the Sun seems to be more entertaining). 

 

Taxing personal income with anything other than linear tax rate for all levels and on all types of gains is unjust. That said, there should be tax free amount up the the amount that is deemed above poverty level, and for those who are adding additional income on their retirement after 40 years of work. 

 

You should rather be spooked by the fact, that you are creating more and more dependables, who will rely on gov to give them money and be parasiting leeches on the tax paying people. 

I wonder how quickly you will start hearing about more cash to the people.... After all 2022 regional elections are coming. 

 

As for the post that started the conversation. 

Letting people keep more fruits of their labor and risk taking is different then giving someone else fruits, who were taken by force from someone who spent time and took risks to produce them. 

 

Problem with hands out is also in the fact, that people in US will spend it on something largely from imports, so your tax does not go back 100% to your community, but 70% goes to Kumar in India, Piotr in Poland and Xiao in China, while you will be stuck with the bill for 130 % as your govermnet also had to take debt to service all the transfers, but you will have to shore up money for gov to repay that debt in the future. 

 

 

 

 

[Zoraptor]

6 hours ago, ComradeYellow said:

EDIT:  What's hilarious is that a lot of these government projects being proposed are being supported by the business community!  Strange times indeed when capitalists and public works officials are working hand in hand.

That's utterly unsurprising. Very good money to be made in public projects, and when companies talk about loving the free market and wanting no government interference they mean no interference with their profits. They happily take subsidies for example, despite them distorting the free market, and big public sector projects are all too often subsidies writ very very large.

4 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Depends on what tax is cut. Capital gains tax for example is about to go up in the US. By a lot. CG punishes investements. If you make a thing more expensive you will have less of that thing. Buying stock for example gives companies cash to expand, hire, innovate, etc. Less stock purchasing means lower growth, less investable cash, retrenchments, layoffs, etc. So yes cutting some tax DOES trickle down.  

CGT is mostly a tax on windfall profits, not actual investment. Raising it an attempt to claw back the massive disparity in practical effect of 'recovery aiding' policies like quantitative easing and super low interest rates.

If you're poor you've seen a lot of your wages- and that's assuming you're still working- inflated away by quantitative easing and the main benefit you've had from low interest rates is maybe lower credit card costs, if the bank has passed them along and is not having to keep them high due to increased defaulting. Yeah, and I guess you had a couple of one off payments too, which probably cover your rent for a month or two. If you're rich though you borrow money at low interest rates against assets and get, what, 15% annual returns from real estate and 20% from shares? And a lot more if you're astute about it. Increased share prices may go to investment in the company, extra jobs and building etc in theory, but the profit goes back to the shareholders who are making the capital gains and the company will happily move its entire workforce offshore if practical, and pay its directors and executives massive bonuses while doing so.

Raising CGT will not suddenly make investment a bad deal, it will simply make it less of a good deal. The Soroses of the world aren't going to be stuffing mattresses with their billions, they'll still be doing what makes them the most money- which will almost certainly still be investing rather than 0% interest from sticking it in the bank. They'll just make less ludicrous profits and pay a fairer, uh, share.

To take the other extreme, no CGT is how you end up with houses costing ~15x your median wage, deposits scaling up faster than its possible to save and outright neofeudalism with serfs making sure the landed gentry never have to do a days work- and how you end up with economists scratching their heads about a non existent economic recovery despite apparently good fundamentals. Free hint guys: the serfs are paying most of their money to the modern equivalent of Jean de Warenne and can't spend it on the things that drive a healthy economy. That is current New Zealand, an economy attached to a housing bubble due in major part to no CGT.

[ComradeYellow]

10 minutes ago, Darkpriest said:

The problem is not with the trickle down economy, but how you enable it. 

Trickle down economy worked for two reasons:

A general mood shift towards entrepreneurship in the 1980's

The U.S. economy getting a massive lift post Cold War (And it was already pretty massive before that).

However we are slowing down now and both Keynesian economics of the 1930's-70's and the now Reaganomics of 1980's-2020 are a thing of the past.

The U.S. is now moving towards an Industrial style economy like the EU and Asia.  What's funny is that nobody seems to notice but our current administrations policies are going to have seismic shifts in the economy in the years ahead, yet it's being done subtly.

[Gromnir]

the non-partisan CBO warned that trump's blissful advocacy o' trickle down as the means by which his proposed tax cuts would pay for themselves were misguided and would cost the US enormous amounts o' money. warned before the tax cuts.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/54994

and yet we still see trickle down being advocated in spite o' yet another fail.

but maybe the fanciful appeals to ye goode olde days has us once again embracing mercantilism or slave labor. heck, the slavery thing worked for the greeks and for the US.

@Guard Dog is likely gonna take offense at suggestion the capital gains tax is mostly a tax on windfall profits, but when looking at the total o' money the fed and states generate from capital gains it could be described as such. am suspecting gd ain't some kinda land baron who is enjoying his scrooge mcduck lifestyle as he skis down small mountains o' gold and jewels.  nevertheless, when he tries and sells any o' his investment properties, he is gonna see a significant amount o' his profits disappear. is more than a few people who live off their investment income and their sale o' small real property investments, and those folks is not making anywhere near windfall profits. the 3.8% surcharge for families making over 250k per year is indeed a windfall tax, or at least it is meant to be. 

but again, the capital gains tax is 20%. compared to income tax rates save for lowest brackets, capital gains is extreme low and the rich has been taking advantage o' the capital gains rate to build ever increasing fortunes for many decades. 

your average american believes the rich is getting away with paying little or no tax, which is bs. 

nevertheless, the current situation with inheritance tax, hedge fund exceptions and capital gains is all contributing to unsupportable income disparity and trickle down does not boost the economy anywhere near enough to pay for even trump's recent tax cuts which pre pandemic the CBO were projecting would cost americans trillions in the next decade and a half.

rich get richer, poor get poorer and gd gets screwed no matter what.

HA! Good Fun!

ps in the spirit o' full disclosure, Gromnir is pretty much living off our ira at this point, and as such our capital gains on investment is deferred until we withdraw, so am not immediate affected by capital gains taxes. our real property, which am increasing convinced we should unload, will be affected by capital gains taxes at some point, but am not gonna be personal hurt if the capital gains rate were to double.

the relative small hit from capital gains is how we were able to make money via real estate. same thread fifteen or twenty years ago and am suspecting we mighta been a bit less critical o' low capital gains.

Edited May 2, 2021 by Gromnir

[Guard Dog]

Likewise for me capital gains tax is a problem for a later date. Most of my properties are leased so not much I can do right now to avoid future screwing. The agricultural properties have a stipulation that I cannot sell the property until the lease has matured. At any rate all of these buys were long-term investments. All of them are in the rural areas surrounding townships that appear to be growing. Basically I am betting that small cities will continue to grow and then eventually these properties will be rezoned as industrial or residential. When that happens I imagine the capital gains tax will be substantial because the gain will be substantial.

Capital gains tax rubs me the wrong way. The government is profiting off my investment in which it shared no risk. If I lost my ass on everything it’s not like they’re on the hook for the losses as well. It’s also not like I can write the losses off. I can only do that to offset gains. But a 40% tax hit on things I invested my life savings in is just evil.  
 

look I get it there is a big income disparity in this country. There’s absolutely nothing any of us can do about that. There’s nothing the federal government can do about it. And the truth of the matter is if you make smart decisions with your money you’ll make more money. If you make smart decisions with your life you’ll have more money. Stay out of debt. That’s the big one. Save to make purchases or investments. The people who did that don’t owe a goddamned apology to the ones who didn’t. Financial challenges is no one’s fault. Things happen. You can do everything right and have a bad outcome. Life isn’t fair. It’s just how it is. 

[Gromnir]

just to be clear, unless gd makes more than $1 mil in a year, the capital gains change should not make a difference to him.  is something like .3% of tax payers the change is gonna impact. is only if you are a top earner the capital gains change is relevant, which sucks for Gromnir if we sell multiple properties all at one time, but c'est la vie. 

HA! Good Fun!

[Guard Dog]

1 minute ago, Gromnir said:

just to be clear, unless gd makes more than $1 mil in a year, the capital gains change should not make a difference to him.  is something like .3% of tax payers the change is gonna impact. is only if you are a top earner the capital gains change is relevant, which sucks for Gromnir if we sell multiple properties all at one time, but c'est la vie. 

HA! Good Fun!

That was not my understanding of the proposed change.  I really really really hope you’re right

[Gromnir]

from the source least likely to be cutting biden slack: the national review

"Turning to the grim details, if this proposal is approved, those earning more than $1 million a year will face a top tax rate on long-term capital gains of 43.4 percent (once the Obamacare surtax on net investment income is thrown in), compared with 23.8 percent today. That would be a top rate higher — generally much higher — than anywhere in Europe, and that’s before considering what state and local taxes can do to the math. Those living in high-tax states such as California and New York will be looking at a top rate in excess of 54 percent, and for those lucky enough to be resident in de Blasio’s New York City, over 58 percent. Those who have been making plans to leave will get moving, and others are likely to join them, something that would come as a major blow to their governments’ already-shaky finances."

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/04/bidens-vindictive-capital-gains-tax-hike/

20% for gd unless is a really good year, in which case he gets the surcharge we mentioned earlier in which case is 23.8%. only way gd gets the big new hit is if he is an extreme top earner.

the current 20% is indeed a burden for folks trying to make ends meet through small investments in real property and non ira kinda stuff. likely still better than the income tax rate, but is still a burden.

yeah, the $1million threshold is not as gracious as it seems for those family farmers we mentioned earlier or for individuals whose entire retirement plan is built 'round selling a business. details will need be worked out to accommodate such inevitable outliers, but is perhaps not near as terrible as gd thought it were.

HA! Good Fun!

Edited May 3, 2021 by Gromnir

[ComradeYellow]

12 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

That's utterly unsurprising. Very good money to be made in public projects, and when companies talk about loving the free market and wanting no government interference they mean no interference with their profits. They happily take subsidies for example, despite them distorting the free market, and big public sector projects are all too often subsidies writ very very large.

Perhaps, but I'm looking at this from an American lens.  The last time the U.S. delved into public works was during the New Deal era, and at that particular time the business community was shunned and belittled and most Americans blamed them (probably correctly) for the 1929 stock market crash.  So to me this seems like a synthesis between The New Deal and the Reagan counter-revolution corporatism of the 1980's.

It's a good start mechanically, now we just need someone to champion the culture aspect (workers rights, minority rights, ect) and I think we'll do well going forward. 

[Gorth]

Looks like our glorious leader (/sarcasm) Scott Morrison is having second thoughts about his party previously selling out of Australia to the Chinese...

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/3/australia-says-its-reviewing-the-chinese-ownership-of-a-port

(Al Jazeera link because Bloomberg has a paywall)

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/03/darwin-ports-chinese-owner-says-it-will-cooperate-with-australian-defence-review\

Short version. In 2015 the Liberal Party (not to be confused with the US use of the word liberal, it's the governing right-wing party), sold out the rights to Darwin harbour to a Chinese company. Never mind that it was and is a very important, strategically, place.

Now buckling under internal pressure, he has decided that maybe it was not a particularly clever idea...

"The defence minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed on Monday that his department was reviewing the 2015 agreement between the Northern Territory’s then-Country Liberal party (CLP) government and the Landbridge Group. The review comes after Scott Morrison said last week he would take seriously any new advice from defence and security agencies. The federal opposition accused the Coalition government of dragging its feet, saying it was only now acting after “six years of warnings”, while the Liberal MP Andrew Wallace told Sky News the original deal was “absolute madness”."

...

"On Monday the federal Labor party said it had long raised concerns about the Port of Darwin, which it described as a “critical strategic asset for Australia”, being under “effective foreign ownership”.
The party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, and her defence colleague, Brendan O’Connor, said the Coalition had voted last year against an amendment to the government’s foreign veto laws that would have ensured the Port of Darwin deal could be reviewed.
“Now that it is becoming a political problem, Mr Morrison is engaging in more of his usual political management – after failing to show leadership for six years,” Wong and O’Connor said.
“Australia needs leaders who will act strategically in the national interest – not someone who’s only interested in political management.”
Wong and O’Connor said the Port of Darwin was used by the defence forces of visiting allies and partners in addition to the ADF, “so we would expect that Defence is also seeking their views as part of this review”.
The original deal prompted diplomatic ripples with the US, with Barack Obama raising it during a meeting with Malcolm Turnbull in Manila in late 2015.
The US – which rotates Marines through the NT – was unhappy it was not kept in the loop, but Turnbull suggested that US officials “should invest in a subscription to the Northern Territory News because it was not a secret”."

 

In short, now that military conflict no longer looks like some kind of abstract impossibility, the message seems to be: Our harbour, beat it, we need it ourselves...

 

[BruceVC]

46 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Looks like our glorious leader (/sarcasm) Scott Morrison is having second thoughts about his party previously selling out of Australia to the Chinese...

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/5/3/australia-says-its-reviewing-the-chinese-ownership-of-a-port

(Al Jazeera link because Bloomberg has a paywall)

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/03/darwin-ports-chinese-owner-says-it-will-cooperate-with-australian-defence-review\

Short version. In 2015 the Liberal Party (not to be confused with the US use of the word liberal, it's the governing right-wing party), sold out the rights to Darwin harbour to a Chinese company. Never mind that it was and is a very important, strategically, place.

Now buckling under internal pressure, he has decided that maybe it was not a particularly clever idea...

"The defence minister, Peter Dutton, confirmed on Monday that his department was reviewing the 2015 agreement between the Northern Territory’s then-Country Liberal party (CLP) government and the Landbridge Group. The review comes after Scott Morrison said last week he would take seriously any new advice from defence and security agencies. The federal opposition accused the Coalition government of dragging its feet, saying it was only now acting after “six years of warnings”, while the Liberal MP Andrew Wallace told Sky News the original deal was “absolute madness”."

...

"On Monday the federal Labor party said it had long raised concerns about the Port of Darwin, which it described as a “critical strategic asset for Australia”, being under “effective foreign ownership”.
The party’s foreign affairs spokesperson, Penny Wong, and her defence colleague, Brendan O’Connor, said the Coalition had voted last year against an amendment to the government’s foreign veto laws that would have ensured the Port of Darwin deal could be reviewed.
“Now that it is becoming a political problem, Mr Morrison is engaging in more of his usual political management – after failing to show leadership for six years,” Wong and O’Connor said.
“Australia needs leaders who will act strategically in the national interest – not someone who’s only interested in political management.”
Wong and O’Connor said the Port of Darwin was used by the defence forces of visiting allies and partners in addition to the ADF, “so we would expect that Defence is also seeking their views as part of this review”.
The original deal prompted diplomatic ripples with the US, with Barack Obama raising it during a meeting with Malcolm Turnbull in Manila in late 2015.
The US – which rotates Marines through the NT – was unhappy it was not kept in the loop, but Turnbull suggested that US officials “should invest in a subscription to the Northern Territory News because it was not a secret”."

 

In short, now that military conflict no longer looks like some kind of abstract impossibility, the message seems to be: Our harbour, beat it, we need it ourselves...

 

So you of the opinion that Port Darwin should belong to Oz and not this Chinese company which translates to the CCP owning it ? I agree

But its seems your government is flipflopping and allowing this to occur, your current  government should be voted out for selling such an asset to the CCP...it would annoy me as well. When are your next elections....I get seriously confused with all the PM changes but your current PM needs to go if he is fine with this 

[ComradeYellow]

https://asiatimes.com/2021/05/australias-china-war-drums-more-sound-than-fury/

Rock/Hard place

Australia also did a great piece on China recently 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by ComradeYellow

[Gorth]

2 hours ago, BruceVC said:

So you of the opinion that Port Darwin should belong to Oz and not this Chinese company which translates to the CCP owning it ? I agree

But its seems your government is flipflopping and allowing this to occur, your current  government should be voted out for selling such an asset to the CCP...it would annoy me as well. When are your next elections....I get seriously confused with all the PM changes but your current PM needs to go if he is fine with this 

Indeed. And the port facilities were just the tip of the iceberg...

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/how-much-of-australia-does-china-own/news-story/a0a710be9cbd78923c7500c147f4e764

Dairy companies, farmland, educational facilities, real estate in center of the large cities, energy companies, it companies etc.

"A number of Australian energy companies, for example, are owned by Chinese firms. EnergyAustralia, despite its name, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based China Light and Power Co Ltd, while Alinta Energy is owned Chow Tai Fook Enterprises. Earlier this year, leaked documents obtained by the ABC and Nine Newspapers revealed that Alinta was potentially putting the personal data of its 1.1 million gas and electricity customers at risk with what an insider described as a “reckless approach to privacy and data”.

The sale of $4 billion sale of Alinta to the Chinese energy giant was signed off by then-Treasurer Scott Morrison in 2017 under a series of 10 secret FIRB conditions, largely related to data security."

 

I.e. selling out of Australia AND Australians including all their personal info to the Chinese government. At least Facebook tries to be a bit less obvious about it and hide it (when they sell your details). Makes it easier to keep an eye on expats and dissidents in exile I presume. It's only very recently that the Scott Morrison government decided that maybe China actually owning so much of Australia wasn't such a hot idea. I doubt he thought it up himself, as he does have a few "hawks" in his government who seems to have raised the red flags (pun unintended) at his current and previous actions. Slamming the door shut on Huawei telling them they weren't going to build and manage Australia's 5g infrastructure after all was probably the first sensible thing he (unwillingly) did.

 

Edit: The biggest problem with getting rid of Morrison is, he has perfected the art of lying. Might have something to do with his background, being from the world of marketing. He can bull**** people like no other. His lies have sometimes been so outrageous, he makes Trump look like a sane and honest person. Unfortunately, Australia also has a large population in more rural areas who are less educated. Not stupid, just less educated and less savvy in the world of politics and believes what they hear. It really is in many ways a third world country ruled by conservative and religious forces. The church is incredibly powerful down here here, as we saw when they managed to avoid being held accountable for the thousands of cases of child rape that got revealed by a Royal Commission and even managed to get Cardinal Pell out of jail and on a plane to the Vatican in the middle of a complete lockdown, as long as the price was right ($2m dollars paid by the Vatican to get him out of jail and away from the press), but that's sort of irrelevant to the China situation, just one of the reasons a conservative government can be hard to get rid of, no matter how incompetent they are.

[BruceVC]

23 minutes ago, Gorth said:

Indeed. And the port facilities were just the tip of the iceberg...

https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/how-much-of-australia-does-china-own/news-story/a0a710be9cbd78923c7500c147f4e764

Dairy companies, farmland, educational facilities, real estate in center of the large cities, energy companies, it companies etc.

"A number of Australian energy companies, for example, are owned by Chinese firms. EnergyAustralia, despite its name, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong-based China Light and Power Co Ltd, while Alinta Energy is owned Chow Tai Fook Enterprises. Earlier this year, leaked documents obtained by the ABC and Nine Newspapers revealed that Alinta was potentially putting the personal data of its 1.1 million gas and electricity customers at risk with what an insider described as a “reckless approach to privacy and data”.

The sale of $4 billion sale of Alinta to the Chinese energy giant was signed off by then-Treasurer Scott Morrison in 2017 under a series of 10 secret FIRB conditions, largely related to data security."

 

I.e. selling out of Australia AND Australians including all their personal info to the Chinese government. At least Facebook tries to be a bit less obvious about it and hide it (when they sell your details). Makes it easier to keep an eye on expats and dissidents in exile I presume. It's only very recently that the Scott Morrison government decided that maybe China actually owning so much of Australia wasn't such a hot idea. I doubt he thought it up himself, as he does have a few "hawks" in his government who seems to have raised the red flags (pun unintended) at his current and previous actions. Slamming the door shut on Huawei telling them they weren't going to build and manage Australia's 5g infrastructure after all was probably the first sensible thing he (unwillingly) did.

 

Edit: The biggest problem with getting rid of Morrison is, he has perfected the art of lying. Might have something to do with his background, being from the world of marketing. He can bull**** people like no other. His lies have sometimes been so outrageous, he makes Trump look like a sane and honest person. Unfortunately, Australia also has a large population in more rural areas who are less educated. Not stupid, just less educated and less savvy in the world of politics and believes what they hear. It really is in many ways a third world country ruled by conservative and religious forces. The church is incredibly powerful down here here, as we saw when they managed to avoid being held accountable for the thousands of cases of child rape that got revealed by a Royal Commission and even managed to get Cardinal Pell out of jail and on a plane to the Vatican in the middle of a complete lockdown, as long as the price was right ($2m dollars paid by the Vatican to get him out of jail and away from the press), but that's sort of irrelevant to the China situation, just one of the reasons a conservative government can be hard to get rid of, no matter how incompetent they are.

Great post and very informative and of course I understand this is your opinion but you not the only person I know living in Oz who shares your views on the current government its just I havent really been following it actively so I appreciate your posts around any perceived Chinese encroachment on any territories outside their legally controlled regions like HK and your views on where Morrison is responsible 

 "The greatest trick the  CCP ever pulled was convincing the world they dont exist " 

China is very effective at legally gaining  mineral rights concessions ( as much as I hate the word " neo-Colonialism 101" )  throughout Africa from failed African leadership or corrupt leadership like we saw in Angola, Zimbabwe and Sudan. If governments are foolish  enough or greedy enough to sell assets to China we cant blame the Chinese but it does lead to anger and dislike of the Chinese later on from citizens when they realize what they have sold to the Chinese....but its not the Chinese fault in this example IMO because leaders, PM and presidents agree to this 

 https://www.dw.com/en/resistance-growing-to-chinese-presence-in-zambia/a-47275927-0

Morrison is doing the same and it demonstrates terrible integrity , poor  moral compass and a lack of simple patriotism 

[Guard Dog]

Nice article about Justice Thomas.

Since we were just discussing him

Edited May 4, 2021 by Pidesco
Fixed link with the original article.

[Guard Dog]

Let the suffering begin!

Inflation is here. This is where you see commodities and crypto go full on roller coaster. But if you are reliant on a retirement nest egg, it's going to suck to be you for a while. Inflation destroys savings. 

[Guard Dog]

Over Thomas dissent, high court rejects West Point case

So, by applying the Feres Doctrine the court is basically saying rape at the hands of a fellow service member is the equivalent to a wound taken in combat. Thomas might be the lone dissenter but it sounds to me like he was on the side of the angels today.

[ComradeYellow]

2 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Let the suffering begin!

Inflation is here. This is where you see commodities and crypto go full on roller coaster. But if you are reliant on a retirement nest egg, it's going to suck to be you for a while. Inflation destroys savings. 

[Gromnir]

31 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

Over Thomas dissent, high court rejects West Point case

So, by applying the Feres Doctrine the court is basically saying rape at the hands of a fellow service member is the equivalent to a wound taken in combat. Thomas might be the lone dissenter but it sounds to me like he was on the side of the angels today.

Thomas is being a hypocrite... again.

1) is a couple similar cases with exact same basis for granting or denying relief involving government employees and prisoners in which Thomas went exact opposite. 

2) the Court has no business handling this case. 

most significant, this is not a Constitutional matter (unlike the prisoner situation), so let Congress fix. it sux that Congress likely won't fix anytime soon, but Thomas o' all Justices should be advocating judicial restraint. we don't like the current situation insofar as the feres doctrine is concerned, but is not actual the job of the Court to right wrongs. Constitutional v. Not Constitutional should not be confused with right v. wrong, even if it is difficult to stomach in many instances. nine unelected men and women should not be deciding cases such as the west point issue. the fact the hundreds o' elected men and women in Congress won't fix has never before been motivation enough for Thomas to intrude on the legislative prerogative, so why only recent?

am suspecting gd missed the subtext, and is not his fault. is no reason gd should be aware o' what Thomas were actual doing in his dissent, a dissent which clear deviates from his past history regarding similar cases. Thomas were grandstanding. for a couple years now, Thomas has been telegraphing his willingness to overturn precedent... save for when the majority actual does overturn precedent and then pretends they did not.

...

this dissent by Thomas had nothing to do with angels or military people, and it sure don't follow Thomas' past opinions, 'cause Thomas has sudden abandoned the one thing which made him an admirable Justice: consistency. Thomas mentioned plessey and brown, but if you don't think people knew he were talking 'bout roe then you are kidding self.

J. Thomas is now firm ahead o' the pack in our personal ranking o' worst scotus Justices. were a competition 'tween Sotomayor and Alito previous in a race to the bottom, but Thomas has gone full darkside the last couple o' years and his past record as one o' the most predictable and consistent opinions on the Court has been replaced with the kinda naked political opportunism we condemned in Rehnquist... though am admitting Kavanaugh may give both Rehnquist and (new)Thomas a run for their money.

HA! Good Fun!

ps is crap like this which plays to the base but simultaneous reveals Thomas abandoning integrity... has us serious considering abandoning the rare capitalization we always afford Justices. not kidding.

 

 

 

Edited May 3, 2021 by Gromnir

[Guard Dog]

Wow. I didn’t pick up on any of that. Interesting perspective.

I just remembered somebody once told me watching a sport is a whole lot different if you’ve actually played the sport. I think that analogy applies here.

Edited May 3, 2021 by Guard Dog

[Gromnir]

20 minutes ago, Guard Dog said:

Wow. I didn’t pick up on any of that. Interesting perspective.

I just remembered somebody once told me watching a sport is a whole lot different if you’ve actually played the sport. I think that analogy applies here.

is no reason you shoulda' noticed. to any casual observer, Thomas appeared to be the lone voice o' justice and integrity on a Court devoid o' humanity and decency.  is exact how his dissent were meant to be viewed. 

this kinda posturing is new(ish) from Thomas. last few years. disappointing.

HA! Good Fun!

[rjshae]

9 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Let the suffering begin!

Inflation is here. This is where you see commodities and crypto go full on roller coaster. But if you are reliant on a retirement nest egg, it's going to suck to be you for a while. Inflation destroys savings. 

I've come to view inflation as a form of taxation. It's a tax upon savings, loans, and pensions. Is it taxation without representation? The Fed seems to control it, rather than Congressional representatives.