Donald Trump

Speaking of Trump not paying any taxes for a number of years, one thing that really amazes me about Republicans who are not of the economic status to justify their support of the party, is that they will tout the excuses of politicians like Trump and Romney about their taxes, as if it is a good thing.

Consider Romney who basically said that as a businessman it would be stupid for him to pay anymore than a 14% tax rate on his income. The bulk of Republican supporters, who represent the Middle and lower classes, and were certainly paying an income tax rate well above 14% repeated this argument in support of Romney like trained parrots hoping for a cracker.

Obviously in Romney's position, and with his wealth, he had all kinds of income streams including capital gains, and probably steady incomes from ongoing business concerns, and real estate deals---income streams that would certainly be taxed at much higher rates than 14%. Clearly he achieves this by having all such income streams flowing through shelters, including offshore trusts and paper companies. He therefore can have all kinds of profitable and lucrative sources of income that any normal American would have to pay a significant portion of as taxes, but to which hits his pocket as mere dividends from his trusts and companies. Any person with half a brain can figure out that, in reality, he receives more than just dividend income that would be taxed at 14%.

Consider why he is a persona non grata in Italy---he and his business partners did a play on the Italian telephone company (I forget if they privatized or liquidated it and sold it off to private concerns or exactly what they did but...) which was one of the most biggest and profitable transactions in Italian history. But not a single penny of the transaction was payed in taxes to either Italy or the US, because it was all funneled through a paper company in Luxembourg.

If you consider that the taxes off of that transaction could have gone far in both the US and Italy to help build roads, bridges, and infrastructure, help the poor, pay for government services, and the stronger military they vote for...

Because Romney and Trump, and so many others in their positions are 'smart businessmen' who do not pay income taxes like the rest of us, the rest of us are left to carry a higher tax burden. In fact, they are so smart that under Bush's Patriot Act, it has become harder for the rest of us to set up offshore trusts and companies in order to be smart businessmen and managers of our own wealth too.

In each of those years that Trump did not pay any taxes, almost all of his supporters, individually, each paid far more income tax than he did. Who do you think that this money would have benefitted more, him or each of them.

Especially if he or Romney are running for political office or playing an influential part in politics where they are going to decide the course of the taxes we are paying and are even paid a salary from the taxes we pay.

And the argument that the money would just be squandered is irrelevant, because no matter what happens to that money-----the rest of us have to pay it.

If Trump sincerely wanted to make America great again, he would have been paying his fair share of taxes along with the rest of us.

 

So then it would stand to reason that corporate media would cover for anyone...and everything is subject to falsity......and that is how I see it, so i base my opinions on my feelings and they way I feel.......based on things i have watched or heard from the horse's mouth, and simply put...I like trump less than I do hillary.....with my own instincts.

 

Yes Pressed Rat, it is so much easier to believe Fox News, and all the right wing conspiracy theorists, and the media outlets that are controlled by the 1% all working hard to create a bunch of dumb sheeep living in a culture of fear.

 

The Clinton Foundation secretly collected donations from foreign governments while Clinton was Secretary of State and did not disclose this information. Countries who donated, among them Saudi Arabia, received an increase of arms deals under Hillary's State Department. The Clinton Foundation receives donations from people Clinton hires and from people with political influence, trading favors for favors.

There are some charity watchdogs that refuse to rate the Clinton Foundation due to its lack of transparency, so so much for it having a perfect rating. You say it gives 89% of its money to charity, but what does that mean? Does it mean spending money to fund Bill Clinton's presidential library? Yes. Does it mean spending gross sums of money on hosting the Clinton Global Initiatives annual conference series? Yes. The vast majority of their charitable donations go to the Clinton Foundation itself, which in turn isn't held accountable for how, exactly, these funds are allocated. We just get vague descriptors like "office supplies" or "travel expenses".

I did not state that this thread was not the place to discuss this. I said I would personally be reticent to comment on sketchy foundations if that were your basis for disliking Drumpf.

The person who called it a slush fund works for a non-profit whose sole purpose is to advocate for transparency in government. And it does appear to be a slush fund when you consider that the people the foundation is hiring happen to be political operatives. Who knows how much money they get and for what under the guise of charity.

But I didn't really want to get into this, and now instead of tearing Drumpf down you're on the defensive about the Clinton Foundation, which is exactly what I said would happen. This isn't the appropriate thread to be talking about the Clinton Foundation.

 

:rockon:

 

So Last Week Tonight with John Oliver is part of the corporate media? And he's shilling for them? I suppose Trevor Noah and Samantha Bee are also corporate puppets. So how do you explain Larry Wilmore getting cancelled despite his vicious attacks on Trump?

 

And did this crack investigation team discover that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial email accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account, and that Secretary Clinton's use of a personal email domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent?

And did they discover that she also used her personal email extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related emails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries?

And did they determine that it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton's personal email account?

And did this crack team of investigators discover that her private employees don't have the authority to decide what does or doesn't count as a federal record, and yet that's exactly what they did? Wouldn't it be great if when you get pulled over by the cops, and they smell smoke, and then tell you that they want to look inside your glove-box, and you say to them, "Sure, but could you let me go home and take some things out first . . . just some things that are personal, and then I'll get back with you," and the cops say, "Sure." Wouldn't it be great if that's the way things worked in the real world?

And did they discover that, contrary to Secretary Clinton's claim, she did indeed receive training on how, and how not, to handle sensitive material?

 

Without looking at the header, can anyone tell me what thread we are in?

 

Post #2110 confused me. I thought someone wanted to see a challenge to their claim that Hillary Clinton is completely innocent by virtue of the findings of a crack team of investigators from some show.

 

Yep. I'll flash you next time I see you.

 

I think Trump is a narcissist, so caught up in his own self-image that it was easy for Clinton to trap him with the Miss Universe thing. He's still bitching about it, lol. He just can't help it.

 

if the president is supposed to represent of the interests of the american people, a gossip columnist might be a logical candidate...

because nobody actually watched him doing it?

 

I don't think Donald Trump gives a fuck what the American people think of him. He's just doing "the whole president thing". At the end of the day he's rich and has rich friends, including the Clintons, and its only their opinions that influence him in the least. None of these rich fuckers care what the people think of them. They're in their own little world. We just see the spectacle they provide, and that is all the significance that it has for them.

 

Well, I didn't refer to them as a crack investigation team, as I reserve such accolades for you Storch. For example, you are pointing out that Hillary Clinton lied to the American people. It's been 5 days and I can't recall... oh wait, no that was right when it became clear that she lied to the American people, months and months ago that John Oliver, Trevor Noah, and the others made a big deal about her lying to the people, then there was Bill Clinton's private meeting with the Attorney General on her airplane on the tarmac...

I could watch the show again on On-Demand, but I will leave that to you. To the best of my memory, in a 15 minute segment, maybe a bit more, that covered many scandals and allegations, I believe they still made mention of many of the things you referred to. Considering that Republicans have done their bit to investigate this, and that there is much in the public domain about the investigations, and quite a bit has been reported in the news, I am sure that they examined all of this.

Their point was that Hillary Clinton did not make the best choices in this matter. But they also pointed out that at that time, what she did was not uncommon and other politicians chose to do it too, because of the technology at the time. And even while she sent and received e-mails in sensitive regions of the world, and that it was possible that enemies of the state could have hacked her e-mails, that no actual evidence has been uncovered that she willfully and intentionally broke the law. In fact, if I recall correctly, there were numerous mistakes made, such as the fact the officials who sent sensitive e-mails did not properly follow protocol and label the e-mails as such in the proper message fields.

Anyway---we could talk all we want about what John Oliver's staff uncovered or didn't uncover---there might have been something about Clinton shooting out the tires of a certain Senator Kennedy on a certain bridge causing his car to careen into a river killing a certain 'lady friend,' but then again, I may have made that up------I guess you will just have to watch the episode yourself and see what all was disclosed. It is the 9/25/16 episode.



By the way, I was writing about Trump:

 

​Now Trump intends to make a big issue of Bill Clinton's affairs while he was President, claiming Hillary was an enabler. But when asked if he'd ever cheated on any of his 3 wives Trump responded, “No — I never discuss it. I never discuss it. It was never a problem.”

​After the first debate Trump's back is to the wall. His only option is resort to this kind of crap. The next two debates should be very entertaining.