Politics in the Zeros: Recent Episodes
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Fast growing Cedar City UT wants to build a pipeline 66 miles long to pump enormous amounts of water from Pine Valley where Paiutes own the water rights. The city has not even consulted or met with Paiutes about this. Gosh. Welcome to the always ongoing water wars of the American West.
Happily, multiple activist groups like the small but mighty Great Basin Water Network are working to block this hideous idea. They are a fine example of “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” Also in the fight is the Center for Biological Diversity. Both groups have won major victories.
Diverting that much water from those aquifers would dry up multiple regions in the area reaching as far as the Great Basin in Nevada to the west. The image here is of Great Basin National Park, large mountains in the middle of a huge, baking desert. Multiple counties in UT have written to Cedar City expressing concern about this ill-though-out, very expensive plan.
Cedar currently enjoys very low water rates. This pipeline, by their own reckoning, would at least triple water prices. There are other, less expensive options too! A local group of conservatives at Iron County Water says, set prices to the free market, convert surplus agricultural water, install meters on secondary water users, and reuse water.
These wastewater treatment plant improvements would cost $21 million and the water savings amount to $10,500 per acre-foot. By comparison the Pine Valley Project would cost $260 million and deliver 15,000 acre-feet of water, at a rate of $17,300 per acre-foot. That makes the Pine Valley Project water nearly 70% more expensive than water from the reuse alternative.
Make your voice heard. Tell BLM to not approve the project. Comments on the Final Environmental Impact Statement are due by December 23, 2025.
The proposed pipeline will hurt communities like Milford, Beaver, and Baker. Additionally, it could harm places like Great Basin National Park, Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, the Great Salt Lake, and sacred tribal sites.
Act now. Get the work out Stop the Cedar City pipeline water grab.
New documentary about far-right politicians and the totally not a front group, Moms for Fascism – whoops sorry – I meant Moms for Liberty, have tried to get books banned in schools. Actual lovers of liberty have fought back and won victories.
Q&A after the movie today at Beverly Theater in Vegas was led by activists and school librarians. Pick a fight with librarians at your peril! They will fight ferociously for your freedom to read books. Seriously.
Yes, the fascist moms are trying to make inroads in Vegas too.
The moms only want to ban books about sex, LGBTQAI, anything about people of color or what questions white supremacy. Like history books. And, well, reality.
Much of the fightback is done at school board meetings and by publicizing attempts to ban books. It’s hard work.
Read Freely Nevada is a grassroots group mobilized to stop them.
“We are a group of educators and community members that believe in literacy freedom.”
No Racism in Schools is another group opposing racism in schools and book bans. The two issues are interlinked. They say, get involved with and monitor what your school boards are doing.
I do taxes at H&R Block. Could AI tax returns replace me? For simple stuff, possibly. But not for anything even slightly complicated. I mean, taxes can get really convoluted fast. Plus, tax code is not all in one place. It’s in multiple places which are updated whenever needed.
From the IRS.
“The IRC is complex, and its sections must be read in the context of the entire Code, the Treasury Regulations, and the court decisions that interpret it.”
This means a LLM would need to slurp up tax code, Treasury regs, and court decisions continually and determine if something has changed, been revoked, or superseded. And it must do everything in the correct chronological order. Also, tax code in particular may be embedded in a larger bill, so the AI would somehow need to know what is relevant and what isn’t.
Tax pros sign the returns. Thus, we would need to double check what the AI did. No hallucinations, please! If it made something up and we miss that in our review, it’s on us. Ramifications could be serious.
For an example of the complexities, a client has foreign income exclusion and rental properties in two states. Will AI know that foreign income excluded in AGI is added back into MAGI to determine if the rentals can show a deductible loss on the return? Because claiming that loss when it shouldn’t will probably get the taxpayer an IRS letter.
Will AI know of any agreements between those two states to offset taxes paid in the other state? To do so, it would need to slurp up all state tax code too. (Good luck with OH, which some tax pros won’t do because it’s so convoluted.)
AI tax returns can’t have hallucinations, but they will. H&R Block (and other) industrial-strength tax software is maintained by teams of hundreds, updating them constantly, and testing and checking everything for errors. To my knowledge, AI is nowhere near capable of doing this.
In the 1930s Saul Alinsky led a Chicago meatpacker’s strike. He was given photos of the company CEO having gay sex, in an era when making them public would have ended the CEO’s career. He didn’t use them but only because he didn’t have to.
“So far, so noble; but, if I had been convinced that the only way we could win was to use it, then without any reservations I would have used it.
What was my alternative?
To draw myself up into righteous “moral” indignation saying, “I would rather lose than corrupt my principles,” and then go home with my ethical hymen intact?
The fact that 40,000 poor would lose their war against hopelessness and despair was just too tragic.
That their condition would even be worsened by the vindictiveness of the corporation was also terrible and unfortunate, but that’s life. After all, one has to remember means and ends. It’s true that I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.
To me that would be utter immorality.”
The Texas redistricting plan, ordered by Trump, wants to steal the 2026 House elections for Republicans. California has responded hard and may redistrict in retaliation. In such a war, most any means will be used to get the win.
MAGA clowns running IRS now want to hire back fired workers to do customer support as contractors. Even though they won’t have experience. They also want to use the magic of AI to answer questions! I’m a as a taxpro, I guarantee AI can’t accurately answer anything complicated about taxes.
AI chokes on enormous sets of data. Like US tax code, which isn’t just in one place. And changes every year. “Oh, hi inexperienced IRS support, if I amend my 2022 S Corp return, can I carryforward [obscure credit].” Answering this requires actual people with expertise!
“I don’t understand why they have let so many experienced people go, and then are hiring new people who have no experience and will take years to get up to speed on what they need to know to help taxpayers.”
Because they are incompetent ideologue idiots?
“Taxpayer issues are very complex as is the IRS. And I think [using AI] just means that taxpayer service will be dumbed down and generalized to limited options.”
Specialists used to answer these complicated tax questions. But they’ve mostly been fired or assigned elsewhere.
My prediction of the coming tax season. It’ll be a train wreck. 25% of IRS employees are already gone. They have been fired or took forced retirement. Blame MAGA, not the remaining IRS employees for the mess that is coming.
Social Security erroneously overpaid some retirees. It is now withholding 50% of retiree monthly benefits to correct errors they made. Yes, you read that right. They originally wanted to withhold 100% of the benefits, However, public outrage forced them to rescind that to the still horrendous 50%.
Terrified seniors worried about how they will pay bills are encouraged to fill out SSA-632-BK Request for Waiver of Overpayment Recovery. It’s just a mere ten pages asking for detailed financial info. Might want to do this before becoming exhausted picking those strawberries.
But wait, there’s more! Form SSA-561 Request for Reconsideration, if you think you weren’t overpaid, or weren’t overpaid as much as Social says. Yes, this is another intuitively obvious form!
Finally, there is SSA-634 Request for Change in Overpayment Recovery Rate to try to get the monthly amount you owe reduced. Whee.
This is just repulsive. Seniors will suffer because Social Security made mistakes. Sure, they owe the money. They were having 10% withheld, which is doable. 50% though will create hardships, especially for seniors whose sole income is Social Security.
I’m a tax pro at H&R Block. We can tell you what SSA forms you might want to fill out. However, we cannot help you fill them out or give you specific advice. I hope agencies and NGOs who help seniors will be able to assist here.
Forget the PR bilge from Social Security about how the Breathtakingly Bad Bill is “historic tax relief” for seniors. It’s not. Yes, the budget bill does add an additional standard deduction for seniors of $6,000 for filing Single, $12,000 for Married. Which might sound great but isn’t. First off, this doesn’t help low-income seniors, who generally pay no tax now. So, those who could really use a tax break get nothing.
Join me in being surprised that this does help the more prosperous. Imagine that! “The new deduction would be more meaningful for upper-middle-class seniors.” The deduction phases out at $150,000 income for upper-middle class married seniors. This is a 22% tax bracket, so the max savings would be $2,640. Not a whole lot for those at that income level.
Tips: Taxpayers can deduct up to $25,000 in tips from taxable income. This phases out over $150,000 income. An unwanted side effect of this will probably be that people will tip less, and employers will reduce base pay.
I do taxes. Many tip income returns are married or Head of Household parents who do it part time. With child tax credits and earned income credits, they already don’t owe tax and have sometimes sizable refunds. And, these new provisions are deductions, not refundable credits.
Overtime: Can deduct up to $12,500 in overtime if filing Single, $25,000 for MFJ. Again, employers could drop base pay if some OT is not taxable. Yes, of course, some employers will do this.
The budget bill really hurts lower income taxpayers because Medicaid, SNAP, ACA will be reduced or eliminated. They will be worse off, even if they qualify for these deductions
AOC:
“The cap on that is $25,000 while you’re jacking up taxes on people who make less than $50,0000 across the United States, while taking away their SNAP, while taking away their Medicaid, while kicking them off of the ACA and their health care extensions. So if you’re at home and you’re living off tips, you do the math. Is that worth it to you? Losing all your health care, not able to feed your babies, not being able to put a diaper on their bottom in exchange for what? This bill is a deal with the devil.”
Apparently, we’ve learned nothing since 2003. This time the war pigs want regime change in Iran. Which means boots on the ground, and Iran War, justified by the lie that Iran is close to having nukes. (There was a different lie for invading Iraq in 2003, that Saddam had WMDs.)
Saddam had no WMDs. The Bush regime made up this lie, fed it to a compliant media who amplified it uncritically as a pretext for war. Sound familiar? The result was “Bush lied, thousands died.” And for what end? We did not help Iraq. (The photo is me helping organize a 2003 Iraq War protest in L.A.)
U.S. intelligence including DNI Tulsi Gabbard, says Iran is not close to having nuclear weapons, a claim that the war pigs have been making for thirty years so they can have their jolly little war. Trump is of course ignoring what these experts say.
Iran is bigger than Iraq, with a powerful well-trained military, 92 million people, and is mountainous. Not an auspicious place to invade.
We will no doubt hear from war apologists about how Iranians will spread rose petals to greet American military liberating them.
Yes, Bush propagandists actually said this about Iraq. The opposite happened. And will happen again if we invade Iran.
Some thoughts on the protests. I was a hippie protester in the late 1960s, helped organize anti-Iraq War protests in L.A, have been teargassed and kettled.
1) Yes, they are watching and monitoring you. Don’t say dumb things on social media or phones. Be smart. Satire is a great weapon.
2) If you are protesting at a federal building, be careful. The sidewalk is safe. Everything is federal land and governed by federal law. It’s the Hammer of Thor compared to state law. Sentences can be severe, are mandated, and the lawyers are expensive.
3) Make sure friends have your contact info so they can track where you are being held and bail you out, if needed. This is especially true if you do a staged sit-down protest in a street. Some jurisdictions require full birth name and DOB to look up someone in custody.
4) If they declare unlawful assembly, you can be arrested if you don’t leave. If you interfere with a police officer (or he says you did) that might get you a felony arrest, instead of a minor misdemeanor.
This is how the game is played, I don’t make the rules.
5) To avoid all this, just go, have fun, yell and scream and protest, then post it all on social media. The point is to rally people to the cause, and to make friends and allies. No need to get yourself arrested!
DOGE bros are creating havoc. However, maybe they can edit specific records. IMO though, they can’t make major (or even minor) coding changes. Here’s why.
These systems are enormous. Just understanding how they work could easily take a newbie months.
And they aren’t just one system. There will be dozens, maybe hundreds of legacy subsystems, written in multiple languages and on different platforms. This will absolutely include code written decades ago in COBOL and FORTRAN.
But surely there will be pristine and understandable documentation, including source code comments so incoming programmers will be able to make changes easily? A HA HA HA. No. That won’t exist. Instead, it will be a convoluted rat’s nest of black hole code.
Think I’m exaggerating? Some years back Microsoft released Windows source code for all to see. Everyone thought surely it would be amazing code, clear and understandable. Nope, there was lots of spaghetti.
A few years ago, the IRS commissioner said their system were immune from hacking because they were so ancient that outsiders had no idea what they were looking at or how to get in.
So, no, DOGE bros almost certainly can’t make major code changes now. Let’s hope it stays that way.
Sometimes lofty moral perches are a hindrance to stopping evil. Or are an excuse for doing nothing. “I agree with your cause, but not how you are doing it.” Means vs. ends. They sit blissfully surrounded by their supposed ethical purity politics and criticize, feeling superior, doing nothing. Worse than useless in a fight!
In the 1930s, Saul Alinsky led a bitter meat packing plant strike in Chicago. He had proof one of the bosses was gay – in an era when that would instantly destroy a career. He didn’t use it because he didn’t have to, but absolutely would have if needed. Because the alternative was 40,000 strikers lost the strike and got retaliated against by the companies. Means vs. ends.
It’s the same thing now opposing the far-right Trump Administration agenda. Beware of those saying our tactics just aren’t quite perfect. Or that we’re too loud and discourteous. Screw all that. Any protest and opposition now is a good thing. Let’s support all of it.
As for those big angelic wings, from Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals:
“So far, so noble; but, if I had been convinced that the only way we could win was to use it, then without any reservations I would have used it.
What was my alternative? To draw myself up into righteous “moral” indignation saying, “I would rather lose than corrupt my principles,” and then go home with my ethical hymen intact?
The fact that 40,000 poor would lose their war against hopelessness and despair was just too tragic. That their condition would even be worsened by the vindictiveness of the corporation was also terrible and unfortunate, but that’s life. After all, one has to remember means and ends. It’s true that I might have trouble getting to sleep because it takes time to tuck those big, angelic, moral wings under the covers.
To me that would be utter immorality.”
We are in the political equivalent of war now against an occupying force in the White House. Whatever tactics and means we use that win are the best ones.
Also, from Alinsky, on means vs. ends.
1) One’s concern with the ethics of means and ends varies inversely with one’s personal interest in the issue, and one’s distance from the scene of conflict
2) The judgment of the ethics of means is dependent upon the political position of those sitting in judgment
3) In war, the end justifies almost any means
Dozens of major tax-related organizations and companies support the new Scam and Scheme Threats task force, including H&R Block, where I’m a tax pro. This initiative to stop tax scams will focus on informing taxpayers how to avoid being tricked into filing fraudulent returns. I sometimes have to clean up the mess these scams create. Like taxpayers being charged exorbitant tax prep fees for returns that get big refunds. Except the returns are fraudulent. So, they paid way too much for tax prep, the credits were denied, they now owe money and maybe there’s a fraud penalty too. It’s ugly.
Convened at the request of IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, the coalition of federal and state tax agencies along with software and financial companies as well as key national tax professional associations agreed to a three-pronged approach. They will work to expand outreach and education about emerging scams, develop new approaches to identify potentially fraudulent returns at the point of filing and create infrastructure improvements to protect taxpayers as well as federal, state and industry tax systems.
Among their initiatives are letting people know about ghost preparers and how you probably don’t qualify for the Fuel Tax Credit!
Ghost preparersIf your tax preparer doesn’t sign a return, well, there’s probably a reason for that. They don’t want their name on it because they’re probably advising the taxpayer to do something dicey or fraudulent. So, if / when the IRS asks about, it’ll be completely up to the taxpayer to explain. Who may not even understand what the ghost preparer told them to claim. Yet the taxpayer’s name and signature is on the return so they are responsible for it. And the ghost preparer is nowhere to be seen.
Fuel Tax CreditThe Fuel Tax Credit is only for off-highway equipment and farming. If that doesn’t apply to you, don’t claim it. This credit will almost certainly be heavily monitored by the IRS this year for fraud. There are probably people living in apartments in cities trying to claim this. Don’t be that person.
Other scams involve bogus credits for sick leave and family leave and for household employment taxes paid.
Household employment taxes: Taxpayers “invent” fictional household employees and then file Schedule H (Form 1040), Household Employment Taxes, to claim a refund based on false sick and family medical leave wages they never paid.
This credit will also be watched by the IRS. If you are high income and have nannies, this might apply. Otherwise, it probably doesn’t.
Yes, it’s a jungle out there. If a tax credit seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. If you have questions, have a reputable tax prep company do your taxes. Stop tax scams. Don’t be a victim.
Street protests and marches are no longer effective as a way to get your message out. If you have a permit (and you must have a permit else you’ll probably get arrested), law enforcement will box you into specific areas and monitor everything. Yes, you can march around, yell, and have a rally. Woo hoo, how exciting.
Police will video the event and track cell phone communications. There will be way more law enforcement than what you see, especially at a high visibility protest like the current pro-Palestine marches at the DNC. If it gets rambunctious, maybe you’ll get kettled! It’s all kind of pointless. Because who hears your message?
Instead, maybe have a press conference. Present your demands and take questions. Make the demands clear and understandable. Then march. The point of a street protest is to get media attention for your cause. However, there’s a problem with having a press conference.
Who gets to lead the press conference? The pro-Palestine protests in Chicago have many groups involved. Some will disagree on issues. Who gets to speak? Also, many groups mean many causes and issues. The message gets muddied because there are so many causes.
Quick. What are the demands of the pro-Palestine street protests in Chicago? I don’t know and neither do you. Any messages they have is completely muddled and they aren’t near the DNC either. They’ve effectively been neutralized by law enforcement who have decades of experience dealing with this.
Photo is Inauguration protesters kettled at 12th and L NW, Jan 20, 2017 DC.
The Pinball Hall of Fame has hundreds of pinball machines ready to play. It’s close to the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign on Las Vegas Blvd. So, visitors can easily see both in one trip. It’s a non-profit operated by people who love pinball, housed in a cavernous no-frills building. Bring cash to put directly into the change machines to get quarters. This avoids ATM fees.
As you might imagine, The Pinball Hall of Fame is really noisy, since 100-150 pinball machines are being play simultaneously. And it is always busy. Parking and admittance are free. A fun way to spend an hour or two.
“The Pinball Hall of Fame is an attempt by the members of the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club to house and display the world’s largest pinball collection, open to the public. A not-for-profit corporation was established to further this cause. The games belong to one club member (Tim Arnold), and range from 1950s up to 1990s pinball machines. Since it is a non-profit museum, older games from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are the prevelant, as this was the ‘heyday’ of pinball. It’s all pure pinball (and a few arcade novelty games) from the past. And since it’s a non-profit, excess revenues go to non-denominational charities.
Big sign. Mandalay Bay in the backgroundThe building. Cavernous and noisy
Foo FightersJohn WickOld school Superman
It’s way more than just casinos here in Las Vegas. The Arts District is a thriving area filled with artist studios and galleries, vintage clothing and furniture stores, bars, restaurants, and more.
The Arts FactoryRestaurant Recycled PropagandaTacotarian. Vegetarian Mexican food.The Strat
Events and politics absolutely are violent, unhinged, and bizarre now. Everyone is twitchy. The election is 114 days away. It reminds me of 1968, a truly insane year. Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Martin Luther King was also murdered, and cities burned in protest. There were massive college, antiwar, and civil rights protests, and a “police riot” at the Democratic National Convention.
The good news is we survived it. The bad news is it’s starting to feel like 1968 again. I hope not.
Events of 1968 from a Smithsonian article.
After a battle for the Vietnamese village of Ben Tre, an American officer tells Associated Press reporter Peter Arnett, “It became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.”
That’s how deranged our military was in the Vietnam war. Destroying villages to save them. Madness.
Martin Luther King Jr., in Memphis for the sanitation workers’ strike, is fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Over the next week, riots in more than 100 cities nationwide leave 39 people dead, more than 2,600 injured and 21,000 arrested.
MLK was murdered by a piece of trash who was clearly getting paid by someone. We still don’t know who.
Students take over five buildings on Columbia University’s campus and briefly hold a dean hostage, calling for the university to cut its ties to military research. Before dawn on April 30 administrators call in the police, who respond with about 1,000 officers. More than 700 people are arrested, and 132 students, four faculty and 12 officers are injured.
Columbia wasn’t the only university with massive protests.
Robert F. Kennedy wins the California primary—and is assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles.
We sure have a lot of unhinged lone gunmen.
At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, police and Illinois National Guardsmen go on a rampage, clubbing and tear-gassing hundreds of antiwar demonstrators, news reporters and bystanders, with much of the violence broadcast on national TV
The official report afterwards said it was a “police riot.” It may also have contributed to Nixon being elected president because people blamed the protesters.
I have no words of wisdom except to say, be safe out there. The runup to election day may have seriously crazy.
Agenda 47 plan is on Trump’s campaign website. The stated goals are to hollow out the government, transfer power to Trump giving him the ability to destroy / neutralize opposition with bothering with those pesky checks and balances. It’s unhinged and wants the Constitution trashed.
Agenda 47 calls for presidential powers to impound (to stop any funding the emperor does not like,) seize endowments from universities, invade Mexico, repeal environmental regulations and clean energy plans, change accreditation rules for schools and of course, get rid of Marxist maniacs!
All links from Trump campaign website.
TLDR: Destroy the federal government as it exists now except for me as emperor.
Using Impoundment to Cut Waste, Stop Inflation, and Crush the Deep State
Education: We will steal endowments from universities we don’t like, then grift the money to us and replace education with our far-right propaganda
Under the plan I’m announcing today, we will take the billions and billions of dollars that we will collect by taxing, fining, and suing excessively large private university endowments, and we will then use that money to endow a new institution called the American Academy.
Drug cartels: We will invade Mexico because nothing could possibly go wrong and of course we will destroy the cartels with no casualties to our troops.
Order the Department of Defense to make appropriate use of special forces, cyber warfare, and other covert and overt actions to inflict maximum damage on cartel leadership, infrastructure, and operations
Homeschooling: Give homeschoolers $10,000 a year and force public schools to provide all services to them. Christianists will love this!
Ensure that every homeschool family is entitled to full access to the benefits available to non-homeschooled students—including participating in athletic programs, clubs, after school activities, educational trips, and more.
Energy: Repeal all environmental protections and clean energy plans. Replace with drilling everywhere.
End Biden’s delays in federal drilling permits and leases that are needed to unleash American oil and natural gas production.
President Trump will remove all red tape that is leaving oil and natural gas projects stranded, including speeding up approval of natural gas pipelines
Marxist maniacs in universities! Accreditation should be based on my rules!
President Trump has pledged to fire the radical Left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics. Our secret weapon will be the college accreditation system. It’s called accreditation for a reason.
Project 2025 is a far-right plan to replace federal employees with MAGA loyalists whose loyalty solely is to Trump, so he can be a dictator. Fronted by the once vaguely sane Heritage Foundation, its funding is quite obscure. Their goal is to destroy and dismantle the federal government as we know it and replace it with Christianist lackeys.
Among Project 2025 goals are:
Deconstruct and destroy the federal government. There would be no independent agencies. Trump would rule all with no checks or balances.
Replace existing federal employees including civil service with far-right acolytes who will ignore the law and be loyal only to Trump. Expertise or competence not required, only devotion to the Orange Menace.
Destroy civil service protections so any federal employee can be fired at any time with no reason given. There would be no job protections.
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket, who is in the battle every day filing and winning lawsuits against the fascists (yes, they are fascist) explains what the goals of Project 2025 are.
Over 100 conservative groups, led by the Heritage Foundation, are working together on Project 2025, a plan that would overhaul the executive branch of the federal government to enact extreme policies and augment the president’s power.Media Matters has more.
The plan aims to reinstate Schedule F, a Trump-era executive order that makes federal employees fireable at-will, stripping tens of thousands of employees of civil service protections. Both Trump and others in the conservative movement have said they will clear out the federal government if he is reelected. The project has even set up online trainings and loyalty tests to narrow down potential hires to those who will commit to follow Trump without question. As Project 2025 senior adviser John McEntee has said, “The number one thing you’re looking for is people that are aligned with the agenda.
We must oppose Project 2025 and keep a Democrat in the White House.
The Supreme Court overturning the Chevron Doctrine means government agencies will be less able to do their job, a long-standing goal of the far right. Make no mistake, they want to dismantle the government, not reform it.
The Chevron Doctrine said when laws passed by Congress are ambiguous or unclear, that federal agency guidance can be used by courts. Because federal agencies have actual knowledgeable experts on the various topics. But that’s gone now. Courts can now ignore any such guidance and simply rule based on their own interpretation. I’m sure that won’t be abused by far-right judges with agendas who will now cite magapatriot1488 on Twitter as justification to disembowel civil rights rather than decades of established practices.
The IRS is currently dealing with enforcing complicated probable tax fraud using really arcane and complicated partnership rules. Any directives they release on this can now be ignored because a judge doesn’t like the IRS. Multiple this across all agencies. It will be chaos. Which is what the far-right wants. A non-functioning government.
Sure, Congress can make laws clearer. However, some things are beyond their expertise because they don’t have the time or knowledge to completely understand the issue. That’s what federal agencies are for.
WaPo
Federal rules that impact virtually every aspect of everyday life, from the food we eat and the cars we drive to the air we breathe, could be at risk after a wide-ranging Supreme Court ruling Friday.
HuffPo
Under the Chevron doctrine, which dates back to a 1984 Supreme Court ruling involving the Chevron oil company, agencies had wide leeway to interpret lawmakers’ instructions and proceed accordingly. Those interpretations could be challenged in court, but under Chevron, judges would defer to agencies as long as they thought the agencies were being “reasonable.”
Chevron has been the foundation for all kinds of rules that affect everyday life. Emission limits on vehicles, safety standards for food and drugs, guidelines for broadband access ? in all of these instances and many, many others, the agencies writing the rules used the authority they got from Chevron.
Now that authority is gone
Scotus Blog
In a major ruling, the Supreme Court on Friday cut back sharply on the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer and ruled that courts should rely on their own interpretion of ambiguous laws. The decision will likely have far-reaching effects across the country, from environmental regulation to healthcare costs.
I used to have an incapacitating stutter and disagree with Heather Cox Richardson that the Gish gallop is especially effective against stutterers. Stutterers aren’t more vulnerable.
This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them.
It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has.
Let me explain. Stress or tension or being attacked doesn’t necessarily make stuttering worse. It may have no effect. It might actually lessen it. A speech therapist who had worked with stutterers for thirty years said, more than anything, a stutterer needs to be sure, they need to be confident. Being attacked or gaslit in a debate doesn’t automatically mean you’ll stutter more. You might already have your counterattack ready and be sure of yourself.
Back in my hippie days when I routinely carried drugs, I, at least once, talk myself out of being arrested. It was tense. Lemme tell you, I was eloquent, completely fluent – and quite confident I did not want to be arrested!
Like Biden, my stuttering is minor and manageable now. I’m a tax pro and at the end of tax season my stuttering gets a little worse because of the stress and pressure. Nonstutterers have other ways of showing stress.
There are multiple causes of stuttering including physical differences in the speech centers of the brain. We’ve just learned to route around it. Being attacked with a Gish gallop will not always make it worse.
…the two studies taken together demonstrate two critical points: A neuro-anatomic abnormality exists in the brains of people who stutter, yet they can learn to speak fluently in spite of it.
Finally, stuttering means nothing about what you are saying or your reasoning processes. It just that the circuitry gets scrambled sometimes!
The IRS Direct File pilot, which was new this tax year, has direct filing of tax returns on the IRS website. It is a success and will be expanded. Basic returns are filed free by the taxpayer. (IRS Direct File is different from previous years where the IRS teamed up with tax preparers to do tax returns.)
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released an interim report including the following image, which details which returns are eligible for Direct File. Currently it’s quite basic, however should be fine for many taxpayers. You can’t use Direct File if you have self-employment, brokerage, or pension income, itemize rather than taking the standard deduction, and – this is a big one – have Marketplace Insurance (Obamacare.) Marketplace Insurance requires the dreaded 1095-A form. This means a whole lot of calculations to determine if the taxpayer owes or gets a refund based on previous year’s income compared to current year income. It’s complicated!
This initial pilot was in the seven states with no income tax (Florida, New Hampshire, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.) It also includes five states with income tax or tax credits (Arizona, California, Massachusetts, New York, and Washington.)
There were a few amusing oopsies:
For example, we identified an open ticket showing a known issue with Direct File allowing biological dependents to be older than the parent(s) listed on the tax return.
I’m a tax pro and hope this program expands. Millions will be able to file free.
Congress enacted the Employee Retention Credit during COVID with the best of intentions to help employers by giving them tax credits for laid off employees. Instead, there was massive, attempted fraud. Battalions of sleazy jackals advised dishonest taxpayers to file bogus returns. They often didn’t sign the returns themselves because they weren’t tax preparers and thus this puts all the problems on the taxpayer. Most of these returns will be disallowed. Since there is no 20% penalty for erroneous claims in employment tax as there is in for income tax, some of these will be now criminally prosecuted. Good.
Upwards of 70% of these returns are problematic.
IRS identified between 10% and 20% of claims fall into what the agency has determined to be the highest-risk group, which show clear signs of being erroneous claims for the pandemic-era credit. Tens of thousands of these will be denied in the weeks ahead.
In addition to this highest risk group, the IRS analysis also estimates between 60% and 70% of the claims show an unacceptable level of risk.
The March 22 deadline to report voluntarily report false Employee Retention Credit has passed. When IRS says “erroneous claims” that means at best mistaken and quite possibly fraudulent.
The special ERC Voluntary Disclosure Program (VDP), has yielded more than $225 million from over 500 taxpayers with another 800 submissions still being processed and more being filed at the last minute before the deadline.
The ongoing claim withdrawal process for those with unprocessed ERC claims has led to 1,800 entities withdrawing $251 million.
The IRS has determined that more than 12,000 entities filed over 22,000 claims that were improper and resulted in $572 million in assessments. The IRS is continuing this work, and more activity is planned in this – and other areas in the months ahead.
There will be tens of thousands, of taxpayers who now will be owe money rather than getting fraudulent credits. Plus, they will be subject to penalties.
Mad Dog PAC has been putting up anti-Trump billboards since 2017. His first was “Impeach Trump” at the approach to Mar-a-Lago in 2017 where Trump was forced to see it when arriving. Since then, they’ve done hundreds more, most recently the Castro Trump billboard in Miami, which has enraged MAGAs. A Republican Member of the House demanded he take it down. He responded by putting it on a billboard truck. This is getting major media attention and requests for interviews. Well done!
I’ve been contributing since 2017. Mad Dog PAC plans many more billboards, which are effective (and cheap!) ways to get the message out. This is completely grassroots. No dark money. No corporate money. Contribute on the site. Take photos of billboards in your area and send them to Claude Taylor via Twitter so he can use them to do more rabble-rousing.
We’ve gotten about 250 contributions in last two days and of those over 150 come from Miami and South Florida. The fact is the bulk of our “Castro Trump” Round 2 about to be unveiled was funded by Cuban Americans. Thats a fact. Please chip in https://t.co/tLqBQPT6ep pic.twitter.com/X6G6By49qM
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) June 20, 2024
I took this photo of their “Convicted Felon” billboard here in Vegas when Trump spoke here recently. It was visible from I-15 at Flamingo.
Yes! Thanks to @polizeros We finally got a photo of our Las Vegas billboard! We scrambled to get this up before the Trump rally tomorrow! Folks. We spent $12,000 on billboards this week-please chip in! https://t.co/tLqBQPT6ep pic.twitter.com/OVQU3d3ut3
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) June 8, 2024
High profile, very visible, seen by many thousands on the Pennsylvania Turnpike every day in this battleground state
Here’s our latest series of four consecutive spots up on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. By this point hundreds of thousands have seen these billboards. Please chip in for the next series. https://t.co/tLqBQPT6ep pic.twitter.com/6v7fNmc13O
— Claude Taylor (@TrueFactsStated) June 19, 2024
MAGAs had fits over the Miami billboard.
Miami's Republican politicians HATE free speech more than anything.
Case in point: Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar.
She demanded this billboard to be removed from its post in Hialeah.
Now, it's rolling ALL OVER THE CITY. pic.twitter.com/Ll26e1xBCJ
— Grant Stern ? (@grantstern) June 23, 2024
And this Roevember billboard will be going up in multiple states. Donate now.
By almost every measure other than polling, Biden is doing well. And Biden's polling is awful. Given that we're five months out and many voters still aren't paying attention yet, it's very hard to say with any certainty what's going to happen. https://t.co/Exnf49pIKh
— Mike Rothschild (no relation) (@rothschildmd) May 18, 2024
This is a confusing campaign season. The polls currently have Biden behind. However, Biden is way ahead in fund-raising. Democratic Senate candidates are polling several points better than Biden. Seniors (and college whites) are for towards Biden and are reliable voters. Trump is gaining ground with under-40 Latinos and with Blacks. The most hardcore MAGA supporters are also among the least likely to vote.
All of this is contrary to usual polling and expectations. Expect the coming confusing campaign season to be explosive, unpredictable, and all consuming, especially after Labor Day. Most people aren’t paying much attention now. That will change. Support for third-party candidates will decline drastically as the election approaches. Undecideds will make their choices. Social media and TV will be nonstop political ads, especially in the battleground states of WI, MI, PA, GA, NV, and AZ. Some of the ads will be AI fakes.
This election is going to be incredibly stupid because we're bored, so both candidates will see several phantom "vibe shifts" towards them.
Then we enter election day with all the battlegrounds within the margin of error, get another incredibly close race, and then we argue.
— Lakshya Jain (@lxeagle17) May 18, 2024
Gosh, why would seniors, who usually vote Republican, be for Biden? Because Republicans want to decimate Social Security, that’s why. And that is a third rail of politics that only lunatics or ideologues attack. Granny will hobble to the polls using her walker to vote against destroying Social Security, count on it.
Ditto for women voting for abortion rights. This election is existential to them. No, they don’t want to be forced to report their periods and pregnancies to the government, presumably so it can be determined they might have gotten an abortion and then be prosecuted.
“According to the GOP, America needs a national registry for pregnant women along with the federal government tracking women’s menstrual cycles”
I’m fine with student protests calling for universities to divest of Israel war ties. It’s a time-honored tactic and was successfully used against South Africa to end apartheid. Ditto for students calling for an end to the slaughter in Gaza on humanitarian grounds.
Of course, mass media was going to twist and distort what the student protests say. That goes with the territory. Experienced organizers know how to counter this. Focus on the message. Keep repeating it. Don’t get deflected. That didn’t happen here because there were no leaders or experienced spokespersons. And there sure needed to be. Because what we got were idiots asking for vegan snacks because they might starve otherwise. Of course that was going to be mocked. And that meant the message of the protests got diluted.
I’ve participated in many protests, starting in the late 1960s. The media and opposition always claim there are outside agitators. This is so they can pretend the protest isn’t home-grown or valid. And, really, so what if outside organizers join in? It’s a protest they believe in, and we supposedly have free speech, right?
Yes, there were a few raging anti-Semites. It is possible to be anti-Zionist but not anti-Semitic. However, anti-Zionism is too often used as a cover for anti-Semitism. And there have been continuing, huge anti-Netanyahu protests in Israel. Clearly lots of Israelis want the madness to stop too.
Some universites, working with students, have ended the protests peacefully. At least one has said they may divest. Others seem clueless about what to do, and a few are coming down like hammers on protesters.
Protesters have gotten their message out, even if it may have gotten a bit muddled. Maybe this can turn into better-organized protest in the future.
1) Mass media always focuses on the craziest protesters at demonstrations. I helped organize anti-Iraq War protests in L.A. At one demo I saw twenty soccer moms with Peace Now t-shirts next to a loonie with an Assassinate Bush sign. Guess whose photo appeared in the L.A. Times? Having said that, these college protests appear to have way more than a just few abhorrent bigots on the fringes.
2) It is possible to be anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. (A few Hasidic sects are.) But it’s difficult. And is too often used as a cover for anti-Semitism. Protesters calling for Tel Aviv to be destroyed is not anti-Zionist, it’s blatantly anti-Semitic.
3) Netanyahu is a thug and so is Hamas. Neither wants peace because that might cause them to lose power. Meanwhile, millions of Palestinians are starving with their homes destroyed. And there are continuing huge protests by Jews against Netanyahu in Israel. Israel is not a monolith supporting Netanyahu, neither are Palestinians mass supporting Hamas.
4) Let’s hope this doesn’t end up like the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protests where the official report said the police rioted and stomped and beat protesters. Because it could.
Nevada has six electoral votes. Arizona has eleven. They are battleground states and will be crucial in determining the next president. Both have large, populous Democratic cities and rural areas that are often far-right. Trump cannot win without taking AZ and NV. However, both states continue to tilt Democratic. This is not a given though, the elections will be close.
Politics in both states can be bonkers. Primaries are mandated by law here in NV yet Republicans will ignore theirs because Trump choose to be in their caucus instead. And six Nevada GOP fake electors in the 2020 election have been indicted! And if you come here, do try to pronounce the state name correctly, as this photo of a wall in a Vegas DMV office explains.
In Arizona, 2020 Republican Senate candidate Kari Lake just managed to blow up the state Republican Party and probably with it her changes for any run in 2024. She is beyond crazy, as is mostly of the AZ Republican Party. No, I am not exaggerating.
In NV, Vegas (Clark County) is the behemoth with about 90% of the population. The Culinary Union has tens of thousands of members, is solidly Democratic, and can turn out thousands of canvassers. They are a major political force. Clark County is where Biden will win the state.
Best election sources in NV and AZFollow The Nevada Independent and especially Jon Ralston for Nevada political and election news. Ralston will give immediate analysis of votes as they come in on election night. He is the one all the other politicos follow for NV political news.
Garret Archer is Ralston’s counterpart in Phoenix. Instant analysis of incoming votes on election night. He will tweet “Maricopa incoming” to alert us a few minutes in advance, something which has become a meme / inside joke.
My prediction is Biden takes both of these battleground states. It will probably be close. The amount of national media focus on both will be nonstop. The campaigns and politics will be frenzied, combative, and nonstop. People. get ready.
Alex Murdaugh, third generation scion of a corrupt rural South Carolina family, will die in prison. Mandy Matney helped put him there. This is a true tale of murder, grotesque criminality, overwhelming privilege, and drug addiction by Murdaugh and his degenerate good old boy banking buddies. many of whom are also in prison now.
The Murdaugh’s were the law in their area for three generations and were rightfully feared. Their reign started to splinter when Alex’s son Paul, a 19-year-old sociopath alcoholic killed Mallory Beach in a drunken boating accident in 2019. At first it appeared the good old boy network would protect Paul. Then Mandy Matney began investigating and published her first story, saying evidence was vanishing and why hadn’t Paul been arrested. She got huge positive feedback from locals saying, finally, someone is speaking the truth. “Blood on Their Hands: Murder, Corruption, and the Fall of the Murdaugh Dynasty” is her account of what happened.
Paul did get arrested, Then, things get completely deranged and violent. Paul and his mother Maggie, Alex’s wife are murdered at the family estate. A few weeks later Alex says someone tried to shoot him while he was changing a tire on a country road. This story crumbles when it becomes clear Alex had a minor wound and his Mercedes has tires that could be driven on while flat.
It gets crazier, Alex’s law firm, of which he is a partner, fires him, saying an audit showed he’d been stealing millions from clients. Alex says he’s a drug addict and checks into rehab.
Mandy Matney was there for the whole story, reporting from the ground what was happening. Mainstream media generally reported what she reported and was mostly lame during the whole story. She faced the good old boy mafia, really insulting misogyny, stonewalling by officials, and still broke story after story. She was working for two small media sites during this but basically broke the stories on her own.
Alex was arrested and convicted for the murder of his wife and son. He’s also been convicted of dozens of financial charges and will never get out of prison.
Prison phone calls between him and surviving son Buster were solely about money, and how to get Buster back in law school since he’d been expelled for plagiarism. They never mentioned the murders. Not even once.
As a result of the Murdaugh murder investigations, state authorities reopened their investigation into the death of Steven Smith in 2015. Smith was gay. It was not a roadside accident. Buster has denied rumors that he was involved.
Justice came very late here, but it finally did come. How many other families are there like this elsewhere? And yeah, sometimes the little journalist on the ground scoops everyone else and has a major impact on what happened.
Never Trump started on Twitter before the 2016 elections. I’d like to share what we learned because social media this year will be brutal and also an important part of winning the 2024 elections. Never Trumpers originally were Republicans. Then people from across the political spectrum joined in. This is important. Factions who normally were not allies banded together because, while we disagreed on much, we were unified in opposing Trump.
What happened then on social media didn’t stay there. Never Trumpers started PACs, ran for office, got involved in organizing, worked on campaigns, and lots more. Social media this campaign season will also play an important, perhaps crucial, role in forming opinion, convincing voters, and getting out the vote.
And it’s a jungle out there. Be prepared to discover that your favorite political buddies on social media sometimes aren’t at all who they pretend to be. There will be duplicity, double dealing, and outright operatives from opposing sides. Bots will attack in swarms. Trolls will try to get their targets to overreact so they can report them and get them suspended. This will be easy enough for them to do on Twitter, since moderation is mostly non-existent except when favoring the far right.
So, don’t go for the bait. When attacked by MAGAs, block early, block often. Do not amplify them by getting into arguments. If you must respond, screenshot what they said instead of quoting it or linking to it. However, it’s better and more effective to just block.
Bots and trolls can be controlled by central entities, who may not even be in the U.S. and who want to get everyone mad and mistrustful of each other. Russian troll factories are well-known for doing this.
But always attack. Because the goal is to convince and flip those watching the attack. We won’t change hardcode MAGA lumpentrash. We can change others. A change in a few percentage points wins elections. From Rick Wilson.
The autocratic movement in this country never rests. It never sleeps. It’s watch-and-watch 24/7, always-on in its absolute intentionality and determination.
You must attack it without a break.
Clausewitz called the attack the “…weaker form with the positive purpose,” and he was right. It’s more challenging and more costly to attack than to defend, but the attack is where victory is found.
You’ll notice I said “always attack,” not “always communicate,” or “always respond,” or “always wait for the bad guys to bash your skull in with a tire iron before issuing a vaguely condemnatory press release”
Social media is now a major way to organize, get new members, rally around the cause. Let’s use it in the 2024 elections.
The 2024 campaign will be our most ferocious ever. Enjoy the holiday peace while it lasts. The presidential campaigns will raise way over a billion dollars. Attack ads will be pervasive and relentless. Some ads will be AI created and completely false, portraying events and speeches that never happened. And if Trump get elected, well, he’s already said he’ll be a dictator. Take him at his word and fight to ensure he loses.
So, let’s make the 2024 campaign all about Trump, about what a danger he is to the country and to democracy. Focus on flipping voters among undecided Republicans and independents. We won’t flip hardcore MAGAs, so no need to waste time trying. A few percentages point edge is all we need to win. We absolutely can keep the Senate, reelect Biden, and flip the House.
It’s going to be war, thunderous, with many battles and multiple fronts. Trump in the White House again means the end of democracy in the U.S. as we know it. So, contribute to candidates, volunteer, make some noise. Some of the original Never Trumpers like Tea Party founder Joe Walsh have lost jobs, major sources of income, and friends because they opposed Trump early and loudly. They continue to fight. Walsh says he make go broke again in 2024 due to his stance and is prepared to do so if needed. Sure, he’s still a conservative – and he can also reach and convince voters who lefties can’t.
That’s the attitude we should all adopt. We can, must, and will win the 2024 campaign. No matter what. And it will be war.
Woo hoo, I just used the WordPress ActivityPub plugin to connect my blog to Mastodon. Now anything I post on the blog will appear on Mastodon too, just like Meta is doing with Threads. It’s easy to install and defaults to your author profile. Copy the displayed user id into Mastodon search and follow it. Then you’ll be subscribed to and see your blog posts. Use their template tags to configure how the post will appear.
This is powerful stuff and was developed by Matthias Pfefferle & Automattic (the parent company of WordPress) so it’s solid and will be supported.
Enter the fediverse with ActivityPub, broadcasting your blog to a wider audience! Attract followers, deliver updates, and receive comments from a diverse user base of ActivityPub-compliant platforms.
With the ActivityPub plugin installed, your WordPress blog itself function as a federated profile, along with profiles for each author
From the plugin
Threads is a viable replacement for Twitter, which increasingly is just far-right low-follower blue checks barging into posts, interspersed with really inane ads selling trinkets. And, oh yeah, a galaxy brain genius owner who thinks the best way to attract big advertisers is by insulting them and by allowing actualfa back on the platform. What a train wreck.
People are leaving Twitter, or at least cutting way back. This isn’t a temporary blip either. Twitter used to be the place for breaking news. However, that’s mostly gone since the galaxy brain genius destroyed the guard rails. Threads is where many politicos, techies, hard news (and intelligent conversations) are going. I’m now, at least sometimes, getting breaking new on Threads, not Twitter, first.
Bluesky is also quite good and is a complete Twitter clone. It’s hampered a bit by still being invite only. I generally have invite codes so contact me if you want one. I do like Mastodon. However, it clearly was created by techies for techies, so can take a bit of time to figure out.
Yes, we’re all going to be posting on multiple platforms for a while. Twitter is no long dominant and it’s not bouncing back. Threads is connected to Instagram which is owned by Facebook, who has resources to back it while it grows.
Nothing on the net stays still for long. Embrace the change and chaos!
Effective Altruism is Silicon Valley techbro Ayn Rand libertarianism wrapped up with in a pretty package, hiding truly noxious ideas like eugenics. They propose helping the world by donating money. But only to very specific things. Absolutely, let’s save the drowning child in a pool (their favorite example) and feed the starving. But they never inquire why the girl was drowning or why the hungry need food. Because that would entail funding social justice causes and asking who benefits from people starving. And EA proponents are so not about that. Instead, it’s about funding tech-related projects so they can presumably tell the rest of us what to do. For our own good, of course.
“They may work on the prioritization of scientific projects, entrepreneurial ventures, and policy initiatives estimated to save the most lives or reduce the most suffering.
WikipedIa
They say to make as much money as you can at whatever endeavor including crime, then donate to the causes. Join me in being surprised that their poster child for this is Sam Bankman-Fried, recently convicted cryptocurrrency felon. Who didn’t actually give away much money. Imagine that.
It gets worse, much worse. Inherent in Effective Altruism is transhumanism, longtermism, racism, and eugenics. We can become more than human, sometime in the future, they say. But to do that we need to create the master race and rid ourselves of the imperfect (and of course from political dissent too.) Longtermism is particularly noxious as it posits we must consider the welfare of those in the future over humans now. You can see where this is going, right?
My first article for The Dig claimed that the ideology of longtermism is in important respects another iteration of the “eternal return of eugenics.” Not only can one trace its genealogy back to the 20th-century eugenics tradition, but the longtermist movement has significant connections with people who’ve defended, or expressed, views that are racist, xenophobic, ableist and classist. Indeed, my point of departure was an email from 1996 that I’d come across in which Nick Bostrom, the Father of Longtermism, wrote that “Blacks are more stupid than whites,” and then used the N-word. He subsequently “apologized” for this email without retracting his claim that certain racial groups might be less “intelligent” than others for genetic reasons.
Truthdig
These philosophies are embedded in Silicon Valley culture. And poisonous to democracy, because at heart they want a world run by them and their technology. Democracy is irrelevant to them.
Good to know our far left is as demented as the far right. Complete with deranged conspiracy theories about false flag operations. In this case, the false flag is Israel massacred its own citizens on Sept 7 at the music festival. This in response to an Oakland City Council member trying to insert language condemning Hamas in a resolution for a ceasefire.
This is Qanon level dementia, complete with hating Jews. A0dded bonus: they are so removed from reality they think Hamas is somehow a progressive organization. Lefties, we have a problem on our left as severe as Republicans have on their right.
Last night the Oakland City Council voted on a resolution to call for a ceasefire.
A city council member tried to insert language condemning Hamas.
This was the reaction… pic.twitter.com/r7aTb2mkrQ
— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) November 28, 2023
And absolutely, the Middle East (and the world!) is anxiously awaiting a proclamation about Israel from the Oakland City Council, who you might think would want to focus on their clearly dysfunctional city. But you’d be wrong.
Complicit is all this are many of the little Marxist parties (WW, PSL, DSA) who operate through front groups and who in the past have made a great show of being anti-Zionist and not anti-Semitic. Yet most of their websites currently have not a peep about opposing anti-Semitism. Huh, imagine that. Except for Socialist Workers Party who are pointblank opposed to Hamas. “Join fight against Jew-hatred! Back Israel’s right to defend itself.” Good for them.
The statements made at the council meeting are just deranged, blatantly antisemitic conspiracy bilge. They must be opposed.
In our deranged era with rancid anti-Semitism crawling out of sewers, Mike Rothschild’s book “Jewish Space Lasers“, details the history of anti-Semitism, using the Rothschild family (Mike is not related) as the focal point. The family has been around for hundreds of years and endured many vile attacks. And TLDR; the attacks are baseless, deliberately filled with misinformation and lies, and routinely libelous. And the family never responds. Which is how it should be.
Mike uses historical record to dissect the rumors and attacks. No, the Rothschilds did not profit from WWI, cause the Great Depression, eat babies, and aren’t worth $500 trillion. The noxious “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” which slimed out of Russia pre-WWI (surprise!) has been used by generations harass, and sometimes kill Jews. It was, of course, all fabricated.
If the placement of the forgery in 1902–1903 Russia is correct, then it was written at the beginning of a series of anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire, in which thousands of Jews were killed or fled the country. Many of the people whom De Michelis suspects of involvement in the forgery were directly responsible for inciting the pogroms.
This and much more in Jewish Space Lasers, which is unfortunately especially relevant now.
Actor Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman were suspicious of cryptocurrency long before it cratered, and the arrests happened. They extensively document the fraud and criminality. This is a must-read. McKenzie being a well-known actor helped on this because he was able to get interviews with crypto hustlers even when they knew he was anti-crypto. All […]
If you have been a victim of identity theft, financial fraud, or think you might be a target, immediately contact the credit reporting agencies, freeze your accounts, and put fraud alerts on them. This will block most attacks. (You can also do this proactively to prevent identity theft.) Open accounts at Experian, Transunion, and Equifax. […]
Climate change is raising temperatures. Most of us currently live in the Goldilocks Zone. That’s changing. Fast. To survive, we need to change with it. Most of all, it’s about the heat and how to cope with it. Because our bodies can only take so much heat before shutting down. We are confronted simultaneously with our vulnerability to catastrophe and our profound unseriousness in the face of it. It’s as if the fires are starting to spread through Rome and all we can do is argue about the fiddling. Areas that have been quite habitable are becoming less so as…
Moms For Liberties is professionally done, funny hit job on Moms For Liberty by Toby Morton, South Park writer. It’s detailed, funny, with links to far-right politician’s websites, except, of course they are hit jobs too. Like DeFascist24.com. He’s fundraising to put DeFascist24 billboards in Florida. Bravo! I just sent him money. “We are an extremist organization that prides itself on making sure that freedom of speech and choice only applies to those who believe gays are demonic, Hitler actually wasn’t that bad so Jews should stop overreacting, any transgender are considered trash and need to be disposed of, current…
It’s way past time to call bullshit on the Kennedy family mystique. Joe Kennedy was a straight-up gangster criminal, according to this book on Vegas. Harry Truman said Joe Kennedy “was as big a crook as we’ve got anywhere in this country,” and did business with and was friends of Vegas mobsters. The Money and the Power is the most comprehensive look yet at Las Vegas and its breadth of influence. Based on five years of intensive research and interviewing, Sally Denton and Roger Morris reveal the city’s historic network of links to Wall Street, international drug traffickers, and the CIA.…
Mastodon is individually run servers linked together using open protocols. No corporate dickheads are in charge. It is part of the Fediverse, which is way more just Mastodon. There are other microblogging services, image and music sharing, Reddit replacements, and much more. You control your feed, rather than having it manipulated. Yes, it’s geeky. Expect to spend a little time learning it. That’s also why it’s powerful. Your feed is who you follow. You can also search by hashtag, subject, or just explore. (Some Mastodon servers have preemptively blocked Threads, assuming it ever supports the Fediverse, which is how it…
Front page story for rural Nevada desert area, including Mesquite. started out with ultra-MAGA headline. I was thinking, so it’ll be like this for the whole paper? Nope! It also features Latina wins poetry prize at immigration banquet, local drag show (!), and environmental news, including repurposed coal plant for battery storage from solar PV. There is a lot of solar PV in the area, much of which is on Paiute land. Some Paiute are LDS members, and Mesquite is near Bunkerville, home of the Bundy standoff. You never really know what you’ll find in the Southwest,
The developing El Niño will be good for California and the American Southwest, which despite deluges of rain recently still needs more water. A powerful El Niño might well get Lake Powell and Mead back to mostly normal levels. And Lake Powell is already getting close!
Elsewhere, El Niño will raise temperatures. Australia in particular will get clobbered by more drought as well as by very high temperatures. The hurricane season on the US east coast will probably be milder.
“The vast majority [of forecasts] are assuming that we’re going to have a big El Niño this winter,” said Amaya. “I think we’re definitely expecting to break global temperature records this year.”
We’ve had La Nina for three years in a row, an unusual event. This presages a strong El Niño because warm ocean water stored by La Nina will now be surfacing in the east Pacific. And that will have worldwide climate ramifications.
Not sure it why it only chose old white males. However, it’s accurate. And I’m just learning Midjourney. Lots more to delve into.
But is this a true AI that learns and teaches itself, or is it just really slick and powerful yet old school algo?
“I think it’s a bit like King Canute on the beach, unfortunately. It’s coming. We’re only just building it. We have no idea what it’s going to achieve. I can’t think of anyone whose job couldn’t be done better by AI in 10 years’ time, maybe five.
I think you do better if you work with a powerful new tool than just grumble or pretend it doesn’t exist”
— Peter Gabriel
The image is “artificial intelligence terrifying exhilarating growing as people watch” from Midjourney
David Bowie’s prescient words in 1999 about the internet said the net will fragment society, change things in unimaginable ways both good and evil, create massive change, create mediums where everyone is both producer and audience, with multiple, changing viewpoints where there is no single accepted consensus reality.
He was right. And AI is going to take that and multiply it by one hundred, or one thousand. AI will become embedded in everything and will be as normal as cell phones. And it will definitely have a dark side too.
We don’t really know how AIs do what they do. They will become smarter very quickly and will be used both to help and to deceive, to further propaganda. “Hey, did you see that Joe Biden clip in the Republican ad where Biden said he worshipped Satan. It was totally him!” Well, no, it wasn’t. The whole thing – video, Biden’s voice, background – was all created by AIs.
AIs will also speed up scientific research, aid us in many ways every day, and save lives. It really is an alien life form. It can’t be stopped, so get prepared, learn about it and use it. Let’s try to steer it the right way.
From the Bowie interview (start at 9:18)
“I don’t think we’ve even seen the tip of the iceberg. I think the potential of what the internet is going to do to society, both good and bad, is unimaginable.”
“I think we’re actually on the cusp of something exhilarating and terrifying.”
“The actual context and state of content is going to be so different to anything we can envisage at the moment. Where the interplay between the user and provider will be so in simpatico it’s going to crush our ideas of what mediums are all about.”
“It’s an alien life form.”
Tax refunds are way less this year compared to last year. Some are getting no refunds are all! There is much consternation and gnashing of teeth. Low to middle income families – the ones who most benefit from Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Credit – often got huge refunds last year. And this year, well, they are finding their refunds are much lower.
Here’s what happened. Credits were temporarily raised very high in 2021 by Congress because of COVID. The government basically shoveled money to everyone because so many were hurting and out of work. They only did this for 2021. Now the credits are back to what they normally are.
Some comparisons:
Earned Income Credit:
In 2021 the income floor was set to zero and anyone 19 or older with qualifying low income would get it. Now they must have at least $2,500 in earned income and be 25-65 years of age.
Child Tax Credit:
In 2021 it was $3,000 per child ($3,600 for 6 yo or less) and was all refundable, and everyone got it. Now it’s a maximum of $2,000 per child and only some of it is refundable. And the $2,500 earned income floor applies here too now.
Stimulus checks:
In 2021 it was $1,400 for every member of the household. Now there are no stimulus checks.
The difference in refunds for 2022 vs 2021 for families can be thousands of dollars less. Sometimes they have no refund at all.
An extreme example: A welfare mom with two kids under six and no income got at least $12,800 in 2021 (CTC. $3,600 x 2 = 7,200. Stimulus. $1400 + 3 = $5,600) and will get zero this year.
The problem is many are expecting their tax refunds to be equally large this year, and they won’t be.
Gosh, Charles McGonigal takes being a dirty corrupt cop to whole new levels. The DoJ statement says “”Charles McGonigal, 54, a former FBI Special Agent in Charge of the New York Field Office, has been arrested on charges relating to his receipt of $225,000 in cash from an individual who had business interests in Europe and who had been an employee of a foreign intelligence service, while McGonigal was serving as Special Agent in Charge of FBI counterintelligence efforts in the New York Office.” Gosh.
From TPM: “The same FBI official accused of illegally working for a Russian oligarch also faces charges of concealing a $225,000 payment while he was working for the bureau, court papers say.”
New: Top former FBI counterintel official Charles McGonigal charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating sanctions by taking payments from Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska to investigate a rival oligarch shortly after he left the agency, per new indictment.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 23, 2023
The person later served as an FBI source in a criminal investigation involving foreign political lobbying over which McGonigal had supervisory responsibility as the Special Agent in Charge of counterintelligence at the FBI New York Office. https://t.co/t87lDouGQS
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 23, 2023
New: Top former FBI counterintelligence official Charles McGonigal hit with a second indictment today — on charges relating to his receipt of $225,000 in cash from an employee of a foreign intelligence service, while still in federal service.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 23, 2023
Hmm…
Was McGonigal the FBI contact who leaked the Carter Page FISA intercept to Rudy Giuliani right before the 2016 election? My guess is there are a lot of NYC FBI agents looking over their shoulders today now that McGonigal is looking at at least 10 years under the guidelines. https://t.co/qUUHb0iPzn
— Tim Hogan ?? (@TimInHonolulu) January 23, 2023
Reservoirs are filling in California. Precipitation and snowpack in Nevada and crucially, in Colorado, are way above the median. Excellent.
Climate change means the climate fluctuates more than before. Let’s hope we get lots many such storm systems this year and in the coming years.
Reservoir conditions in California. Many are above historical capacity at this time of yearColorado snow water equivalent looks promising. Multiple states rely on water from the Colorado River.Nevada precipitation for Jan. is way above normal.
Republicans first said the IRS was hiring 87,000 new armed IRS CI agents. Well, that was such a ridiculous claim that everyone knew it was false. Then they said it was 87,000 IRS agents. Nope, that’s a rubbish claim too. It’s actually 87,000 new IRS employees hired in the coming ten years. After decades of underfunding of the IRS by both parties.
This will allow the IRS to better audit wealthy taxpayers and large businesses, who can afford battalions of lawyers. It takes several years just to train IRS agents to be able to handle such cases. And complicated cases can take months, sometimes years to resolve.
But Republicans sure want to stop the IRS from investigating potential tax fraud among the rich. Now why do you suppose that is?
House Republiacans will be passing all sorts of silly bills that have no chance of getting past the Senate or Biden. It’s just performative bullshit for them.
The figure had been plucked from a Treasury report released in May 2021 about how the administration hoped to address the “tax gap” — the difference between what is owed to the government and what is actually paid. That difference was thought to be at least $381 billion a year, with most of it due to underreporting of income, according to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation.
One major problem is that the IRS does not have enough experienced revenue agents who can tackle complex tax returns. In a May report last year, the Government Accountability Office said audit rates have declined dramatically for the super rich. In 2010, more than 21 percent of tax returns reporting more than $10 million in income were audited — and that dropped to 3.9 percent by 2019, the GAO said.
Sometimes figuring out WordPress errors is a fun, if sometimes frustrating, puzzle. A client reported her site was down. It had a 500 error – which to use highly technical language – means something is seriously borked.
Pressable tech support rolled the site back to PHP 7.4 because the error happened when we updated to 8.0. (I highly recommend Pressable for WordPress hosting. They are owned by Automattic, the parent corp of WordPress and quickly answer questions that more general hosts can’t or won’t.)
Ok, so the site had years old version of themes and plugins that I hadn’t updated for fear of borking something. But it now appeared they might be doing the borking themselves! Hmm.
So, I carefully updated everything on a test version, updated to PHP 8.0,and got the same 500 error again. Aargh.
Researched php upgrading on Pressable and found the PHP log files. The error is below. You might say, this is gibberish to me, Bob. Yes, it probably is. However, once I deleted the wp-config line everything was fine. Whew.
Please note how the error message said the line would create errors in future PHP versions.
Whee.
php-errors
“[01-Jan-2023 08:45:53 UTC] PHP Warning: Use of undefined constant minor – assumed ‘minor’ (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /srv/htdocs/wp-config.php on line 74”
wp-config, line 74
“define( ‘WP_AUTO_UPDATE_CORE’, minor );”
Jail Guitars Doors brings guitars, songwriting and music classes to prisons. It was co-founded by MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer, who served time in federal prison for drugs. So, he’s been there.
Kramer started it based on a similar foundation in the UK started by Billy Bragg. The name come from the Clash song of the same name, which has lyrics about Kramer being in prison.
JGD is an Amazon Smile charity, so 0.5% of your eligible purchases will be donated to it at no charge to you.
“Jail Guitar Doors USA works toward a more fair and just America by providing musical instruments and mentorship to help rehabilitate prisoners through the transformative power of music and advocates for change in the corrective systems.
The purely punitive approach that has predominated the American criminal justice system for the last 30 years has been a dismal failure, and our country is finally waking up to this sad fact. Organizations interested in safer and more just communities have had to step into the breach of this disaster to heal the wounds.
Jail Guitar Doors USA has accepted this challenge.”
Iowa now gets 57% of its electricity from in-state wind energy, and it does this consistently. Texas produces way more megawatts of wind energy than other states. No other state is even close. Yes, I know, this is completely the opposite of what most people think. But hey, there’s plentiful flat land and wind in those states. So, it makes economic sense too. Graphic from EIA.gov.
Iowa is a national leader in wind energy, producing the highest percentage of electricity produced by wind – over 57 percent (2022) – of any state. Iowa is the first state to generate more than 57 percent of its electricity with wind power. Iowa also ranks second nationally in the amount of wind energy installed with 12,219 MW (2021).
The following charts from ChosenEnergy have the data.
Top 5 states generating the highest percentage of wind energy
State % from wind
Iowa 54.2
South Dakota 53.3
Kansas 39.4
Oklahoma 36.1
North Dakota 34.3
Top 5 states generating electricity from wind energy
State September generation, % of U.S. total
Texas 6,340 23.5
Iowa 2,960 11.0
Oklahoma 2,426 9.0
Kansas 2,128 7.9
Illinois 1,271 4.7
Crazy Elon thinks banning links to other social media will somehow stop Twitter from self-destructing. It won’t. Instead,it will speed the process, as more advertisers and users leave.
Mastodon in particular is thriving now. Lots of journalists there now.
All my social media links are here on Beacons.ai
I mean, this is just demented fear-bashed lashing out.
Promotion of alternative social platforms policy
What is a violation of this policy?
At both the Tweet level and the account level, we will remove any free promotion of prohibited 3rd-party social media platforms, such as linking out (i.e. using URLs) to any of the below platforms on Twitter, or providing your handle without a URL:
Prohibited platforms:
Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon, Truth Social, Tribel, Post and Nostr
3rd-party social media link aggregators such as linktr.ee, lnk.bio
White men ages 25-54 are leaving the labor force, because their wages are falling, and their social status along with it. This is not happening to women or other demographics. Why is it happening to prime working age non-college graduate white men and not others? Do they feel entitled while other groups don’t, so those groups work harder? And of course, angry working-class men who feel their status is threatened are prime recruiting ground for MAGA and far right ideologies.
The report is from The Federal Reserve, so it can be assumed to be accurate.
The evidence from this study shows that the widening earnings gap between highly and less skilled workers over the last four decades is closely connected with the decreasing labor supply of prime-age men. The cost of skill-biased economic growth may exceed our current understanding if it has weakened the labor market attachment of less skilled men. Because it can change the aggregate labor supply, wage inequality carries macroeconomic implications that extend beyond the well-being of individual workers.
The relationship between labor force exit rate and relative earnings is strongest among non-Hispanic White men and younger men.
Data indicate that more frequent labor force exit among men without a four-year college degree has been driving the decline in the US prime-age (25 to 54) men’s labor force participation rate over the last 40 years.
From 1980 through 2019, non-college-educated men’s relative earnings declined 30 percent on average across occupations and states. A fall in real earnings and a rise in reference earnings each contributed to half of the decline.
If it’s anything like little Marxist parties in the US, crunchy to far-right recruiting is done through front groups and is quite deliberate and organized. Starts out doing your research on organic food, then proceeds through anti-vax to purity to belligerent mistrust of the government and science to white supremacism.
No, of course all crunchies are not this way. But some absolutely are.
The intersection between wellness influencer culture and the dark conspiracies of QAnon has chillingly emerged as the new place where the left meets the right. During the pandemic, these seemingly strange bedfellows have been linked by their shared distrust of centralized authority and an insistence that they’re “just asking questions.”
https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2021/11/examining-the-wellness-to-far-right-conspiracy-pipeline/
The Anti-Vax Movement’s Radical Shift From Crunchy Granola Purists to Far-Right Crusaders
Limaye worries that the cross-pollination between the anti-vax community and far-right groups could eventually cause an epidemic of vaccine skepticism.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/the-anti-vax-movements-radical-shift-from-crunchy-granola-purists-to-far-right-crusaders/
Written in 2020, that is exactly what happened. Some anti-vax crunchies do indeed go far-right.
Yikes, food production requires huge amounts of water and contributes mightily to eutrophication. It behooves us all to figure out ways to slow or reverse this. Because water and land are static resource. And this is all contributing to climate change. FYI: Beef herds are by far the worst for product greenhouse gas emissions. Interestingly, poultry and pig are much lower. Half of the world’s habitable land is used for agriculture. Habitable land is the land that is ice- and desert-free. 70% of global freshwater withdrawals are used for agriculture2. 78% of global ocean and freshwater eutrophication is caused by…
Microgrids are essentially backup power for grids, communities, essential services, utilities, hospitals – anywhere where power needs to stay on no matter what. They generally use wind and solar to store power in batteries. However, if the outage is long or the wind and sun aren’t providing enough energy, then there could be issues. Enchanted Rock in Texas is using renewable natural gas to provide extra energy to their microgrids. RNG reduces greenhouse gases because it is made by capturing the methane from waste and repurposing it. So it’s sourced from biological materials rather than fossil fuels. And because it…
Millions of taxpayers will receive 1099-Ks this coming tax season for the first time. These 1099-Ks will report third party payment transactions totaling over $600 in 2022. This includes from PayPal, Zelle, Venmo, eBay, Amazon, Etsy, Discogs, as well as any other platform that sent you money that came from someplace else. These 1099-Ks will probably report all payments, not just ones that are taxable income. This is because the third-party payment companies will want to CYA. Also, they may not know if a payment is taxable or not. Thus, they’ll report everything. 1099-Ks go to the IRS as well…
Join me on a journey to the cosplay socialist parties in the US. Surely, they will be opposing the authoritarian right loudly and strongly. Oh gosh, silly you, of course they aren’t. They’re much too busy fund-raising and recycling Pride and The Revolution Is Imminent articles. The cosplay socialists at DSA want you to Win Merch by dialing for new members. What a fun new twist. Maybe they could start a MLM! In a time when there is a war in Ukraine, climate change is threatening, and right-wing authoritarianism at home must be confronted, the tankie dipshit cultists at PSL…
1099s may list income that is genuinely not taxable. An example would be someone whose roommates Zelle him their share of the rent each month, then he pays the full rent. This is not taxable income, even though Zelle might report it on a 1099-K. So, how do you exclude this from taxable income? First, enter all 1099s on your return. Then, total up (and document) what is not taxable. Enter that number as a minus amount on Schedule 1 Line 24 z Other adjustments. You’re done! This minus number automatically flows through to Form 1040 Line 10 Adjustments to…
The war in Ukraine could become a world war. The upcoming midterm elections will be vicious. Climate change is changing things in ways we can barely predict. Unhinged conspiracy theories are going mainstream. The response to all of this can only be, to embrace the chaos. Get into the fray and fight. Relentlessly. However, do it with humor, satire, and yes, with fun too. Forget doomerism. No one wants to join a battle where everyone is gloomy. Give people reasons to join the fight. Yes, these are crazy times. So were the late 1960s. So was the Civil War. We…
The Salton Sea in southern California contains one-third of the world’s lithium supply. It’s an inland saline sea in a baking hot, unforgiving area. The lithium is contained in geothermal liquids, which have been harnessed for decades to create electricity. Controlled Thermal Resources is building a geothermal plant that will also extract lithium from the fluids. If successful, it will provide enormous amounts of lithium, which is used in batteries, and in huge demand. The plant will be quite eco-friendly. It will not connect to the sea, there will be no open pit mining or evaporation ponds. Plus, the entire…
I do taxes in Vegas and see too many people get blindsided by gambling winnings. If you win over certain amounts, the casino sends you (and the IRS) W2-Gs detailing the winnings. But they do not document losses. Which is a problem. Gambling losses can only offset gambling winnings. They cannot be carried forward to future years and cannot be a deduction. Further, to offset winnings, you must itemize on your return. Plus, you need a contemporaneous diary of gambling winnings, losses, dates, etc. if audited. Player’s card transcripts are not sufficient. Pub 529 from the IRS is quite specific…
One of the most cherised shibboleths on the hard left is activists must focus on building an international working class movement that will somehow create major change in the future. Yet it’s a self-defeating strategy that has never been effective. 1) The hard left has said this since at least the 1930s. Yet despite all the organizing, a working class movement has yet to appear. Maybe the theory is wrong. Just saying. 2) Focusing on building something in the future means activists aren’t focused on organizing in the present. Purity politics complicates this. God forbid ideology be compromised, even if…
Danica Roem, a trans woman, just got re-elected as a Virginia Delegate during an election that had multiple nasty attacks on transgenders. Why? At least in part, she got reelected because she has a message. McAuliffe didn’t have a central message and, even worse, did little to counter CRT attacks by Youngkin. A candidate who was paying attention would have realized school issues were resonating with Virginia voters and done something to address them. Saying they’re just a bunch of racists 1) isn’t true, 2) cedes the battleground to the opponent. Charlotte Clymer: “It’s about the central messaging. Voters need…
Starting in 2022, online selling and micropayment platforms will report yearly total income of more than $600 on form 1099-K. This is way down from the current 200 transactions a year totalling $20,000 or more. Many more 1099-Ks will be going out in 2023 for 2022 income. Be prepared! Yes, it is quite possible some, maybe all, of that income will not be taxable. HOWEVER, be ready to prove to the IRS which portions of your 1099-K income are not taxable. Because the 1099-K implies all of it is. Roommates For example, if you have roommates and they routinely Zelle…
If you get an IRS letter, like a CP503, it is crucially important that you read it, then respond by the deadline. The letter will explain how to reply. If you agree you owe the money, pay it in full or set up a payment plan. If you dispute it, follow the procedures in the letter for what to do. Do not do nothing and hope it goes away. It won’t. The absolute worst thing you can do is panic and ignore an IRS letter. If you do not respond, the process will move along inexorably to Collection,. You do…
Just-in-time supply chains are a quaint utopian libertarian concept that assumes markets will always operate efficiently. Thus, goods can be and should be manufactured, shipped, and delivered exactly when needed, and not before. It should be achingly obvious by now that this is not just a silly idea, which posits a magic of the marketplace that doesn’t exist, it is also dangerous. Just-in-time supply chains are the opposite of resilient. There is no redundancy built into the systems, no backup plans for when things go wrong. Like during our current global pandemic. Shelves in stores are not fully stocked now.…
Space aliens and other civilizations almost surely exist. However the universe is so vast that we may never be in contact with them. Our galaxy, The Milky Way, has at least 200 billion stars. About 7% are stars like our sun, and and half of those may have habitable planets. These are just the planets that could support our kind of life. There may well be other forms of life too. NASA says there are several hundred billion galaxies. So, yeah, space aliens and life others certainly exist. The universe is probably teeming with them. However, the nearest star to…
Danny Trejo spent eleven years in prison before getting clean and becoming an actor. Survivors Guide To Prison is hard to watch because it shows sometimes innocent people getting ground up by a legal and prison system that doesn’t care about justice. Prosecutor and police misconduct are common. Our prisons have very high recidivism rates. Most of all, our prisons are deliberately violent hellholes that focus on punishment only and not rehab or providing resources to inmates so they don’t come back.
The US has a far higher percentage of people in prison than other countries. Sentences are much harsher too. Most trials end with plea bargains. Just because someone took a plea bargain doesn’t mean they are guilty. It can mean they knew they’d be convicted of far more serious charges if they didn’t.
Surviving There’s lots of hard-won wisdom in Survivors Guide To Prison too. Never give any information to a cop unless you have a lawyer present. Anything you say absolutely can and will be used against you. They are permitted to lie to you. Ask if you are being detained. If the answer is no, leave immediately. Be polite not confrontational.
If arrested, get bailed out as fast as possible. You don’t want to be in county awaiting trial. Those wearing prison orange to a trial have much higher conviction rates. Get a good lawyer even if it is expensive. Or a public defender with lots of experience (if you can.) Your lawyer is who can keep you out of prison.
While in custody keep your mouth shut and don’t trust anyone.
IMBD
“Today, you’re more likely to go to prison in the United States than anywhere else in the world. So in the unfortunate case it should happen to you – this is the Survivors Guide to Prison. with gripping commentary from inmates, officials, attorneys, celebrity activists, and more.”
You can watch Survivors Guide To Prison for free on Amazon Prime
Mike Rothschild started tweeting about Qanon in Jan. 2018. Soon, people contacted him with horror stories about how loved ones and friends went down the rabbit hole and never returned. In the beginning, many laughed about how crazy Qanon was. Then, on Jan. 6 2021 the Qanon-fueled attempted insurrection happened. People stopped laughing.
It’s still crazy, with way too many opportunistic Republican politicians refusing to denounce it. Qanon doesn’t have leaders. It matters not to adherents how many dozens of times their prophecies have been proven wrong. They just find a new one to believe in. Currently, their belief is Trump will somehow become president again, and soon. Like I said, it’s delusional.
It also doesn’t matter who Q is. He’s almost a peripheral player now. Qanon started on repellent far-right, proudly racist, anti-Semitic, Nazi sewers like 4chan, 8chan, and 8kun, where multiple other nasty movements also have crawled out of.
In The Storm Is Upon Us, Rothschild tracks Qanon from that start to where it is now, threatening to take over at least part of the Republican Party. And, because New Age has always been anti-authority and suspicious of mainstream science, it’s making inroads into that community too.
It’s not specifically a cult or a religion, however shares aspects of each. Russian or other outside interference and manipulation is minimal. It exists on its own.
He concludes by offering solid advice on how to pull people back from Qanon.
“Decide if you really want to do it.
Understand the scope and difficulty of what you are attempting.
Know you’re not alone.
Understand cultic groups and their appeal.
Stay in touch, but on your terms.
Try to unlpug them.
If the door opens, be ready to walk through it.
Understand it will not happen overnight.
Don’t mock or belittle.
Don’t attempt to debate or debunk.
Don’t give up if it matters to you.”
This is similar to alcohol and drug recovery. You can’t force them. The best you can do is be there when they are ready.
If you want to understand Qanon, read this book.
Facebook launched Libra, a cryptocurrency, in June 2019. Governments immediately shredded it, say there was no way in hell Libra would be allowed. And for good reason.
Libra AML (Anti Money Laundering) and KYC (Know Your Customer) were so non-existent is seems deliberate on Facebook’s part. Move fast, break things, then get so big so fast it would be difficult for governments to regulate them. That was the plan.
Among the many stupid things Facebook did was not consulting with governments first, explaining what they wanted to do. Instead Facebook assumed central banks would allow a pseudo currency with few safeguards to prevent money laundering to be launched worldwide.
Not only were the controls vague, it was unclear what Libra actually was. It’s not really a currency, although could be used to make transactions. But that requires having huge amounts of reserve. Which would be invested in short-term securities and based on a basket of currencies. Having that much money sloshing around could upset things, especially since practically no one trusts Facebook.
Libra is probably more like an ETF than anything else. ETFs are, and should be heavily regulated. It could also be regulated as a currency.
And, as always with cryptocurrencies, there is much grandoise babbling about how Libra and the blockchain will empower the unbanked, make for frictionless transactions, and won’t it be wonderful when the damn gummit can’t track our money.
In truth, there are lots of ways to help the unbanked that already exist. Like debit cards, Venmo, and PayPay. H&R Block has an Emerald Card that clients get IRS refunds on. Many have their paychecks deposited on it too. It works fine for them, and AML and KYC safeguards are inherent in all of them.
Facebook’s real objective probably was to track all purchases done on Libra, then sell that data to advertisers. It’s dead, for now.
David Gerard details Facebook’s attempt to launch Libra, how and why it failed, and does so with humor. I highly recommend the book.
“Talia Lavin is every skinhead’s worst nightmare: a loud and unapologetic Jewish woman, acerbic, smart, and profoundly antiracist, with the investigative chops to expose the tactics and ideologies of online hatemongers.” — YouTube interview.
Lavin infiltrated multiple far right online forums under pseudonyms, then wrote about it. At different times, she posed as an incel, white supremacist, and Nazi. Once she lurked while they discussed her anti-fascist journalism and the various ways they wanted to rape her, and are Jews actually human. That’s who these white supremacists are.
White supremacism and anti-Semitism are joined at the hip. They feed on each other. As she explains, the belief is people of color could not possibly be smart or capable enough to fight for their own rights, so therefore it must be the Evil Jew behind the curtain who is manipulating them.
White supremacists and neo-Nazis mostly find each other online. Social media like Twitter, Facebook, and especially YouTube absolutely are gateways to rancid sites where they talk about murdering non-whites. Silicon Valley is mostly libertarians who have a mostly terrible job of policing the filth, probably because they make so much money from it.
They do murder If it was just talk about murdering non-whites (they don’t really consider any Jews to be white) that would be one thing. But they do murder. Dylann Roof, Brenton Tarrant. Patrick Crusius. John Earnest. There are many more. They also are in groups like Proud Boys, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers.
At one point she catfished a dangerous far right heavily armed militia member in Ukraine. She got him to send her a photo of himself, with his car license plate visible in the background. She shared that with anti-fascist friends, who them doxxed and exposed him, He was purged from by his groups. I mean, he let a Jew outsmart him. That’s just unforgiveable.
Talia Lavin goes into the history of white supremacy here. It has, of course, being going on for decades. That’s why she fights, and why we should too. To combat and defeat them. That’s what anti-fascsim and antifa are truly about.