We repurchased 10 million shares totaling $1.2 billion at an average price per share of $119.
They are just greedy. They have the money, but giving the money to the rich is evidently more important.
They are barely able to handle the fact that we are supposed to be a democracy in the first place.
I am not suggesting that a land tax is the only part of fixing the billionare problem.
I'm 50/50 on whether it will ever be possible for the U.S. to fix the problem of money being a part of politics without a straight up 2nd revolution.
As for your "hands in pockets" thing, we are running a deficit every fucking time. That needs fixed. We can't just not solve it.
Trump was the last one to screw with high income tax earners with the salt limit
https://www.investopedia.com/taxes/trumps-tax-reform-plan-explained/
"The overhaul was forecast to raise the federal deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars—the Congressional Budget Office estimating $1.9 trillion—over the coming decade."
"For the wealthy, banks, and other corporations, the tax reform package was considered a lopsided victory given its significant and permanent tax cuts to corporate profits, investment income, estate tax, and more. Financial services companies stood to see huge gains based on the new, lower corporate rate (21%), as well as the more preferable tax treatment of pass-through companies.3 Some banks said their effective tax rate would drop under 21%."
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/tcja-2-years-later-corporations-not-workers-big-winners/
Fuck em. There is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. There is no way to get that type of money without fucking other people over.
This should be done as a land tax IMO, but whatever.
It's crazy how many incriminating things he's been caught doing. One would think that the party of "law and order" would have done something to stop him.
So which is it. Goal post move or goal post move
How about you instead focus on something that actually matters:
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4369951-young-voters-right-now-prefer-biden-poll/
Young voters overwhelmingly say they would support President Biden over former President Trump in a hypothetical head-to-head match-up if the 2024 presidential election were held today, according to a poll released Wednesday.
In the Economist/YouGov poll — conducted via web-based interviews Dec. 16-18 — more than half (53 percent) of registered voters under 30 said they would support Biden, and less than a quarter (24 percent) said they would support Trump.
Another 10 percent said they would support another candidate, 4 percent said they were not sure, and 9 percent said they wouldn’t vote.
The younger generations are voting more and more. And they are seeing through the bullshit.
Then why are talking about money?
Because a school needs money to operate. There is a minimum amount of money it takes to operate a school. Taking money away from an already struggling school will just make things worse.
You said the were siphoning off money which isn’t true
So then where is the money coming from? The government's budget is a zero sum game.
That's not the claim though. Quit trying to move the goal posts.
Republicans are trying to destroy education by siphoning money away from already underfunded schools. Y'all aren't trying to fix it. You're just focusing on culture war bullshit.
Nobody is intentionally increasing crime
Republicans and people like you are trying to destroy education. And that leads to higher crime rates.
So ultimately you're saying you want higher crime rates.
they destroyed California
like locusts consuming all
leaving a wasteland California.
they are starting to do that in Oregon.
These are emotionally loaded terms.
People are moving to Texas, Florida and other red states. That’s a fact.
There are people moving to and from all states at all times. Water is wet. Demographics will change. The sky is blue.
we just keep them incarcerated.
How very freedom. We are number one in prisoners per capita. Land of the Free my ass.
Any system that intentionally increases crime, prisoners per capita, and cost is a bad system. There are alternatives that reduce all three. But it requires everyone investing in education.
I distrust that citation because they rate CNN as mostly factual
CNN is atrocious for bias, but at least in comparison to say fox news, they're much more factual. Far, far from perfect, but significantly better.
I would point you to the study they cited, and in turn the publicly available census data instead.)
And that's fine. But that's not what a link to fox news is.
I see that in Oregon as well, moving here because they destroyed California with their politics. My concern is they will move like locusts consuming all the resources and leaving a wasteland behind like they did in California. I can already see where they are starting to do that in Oregon.
This is emotionally loaded, misleading, and just silly.
And anybody could just as easily claim Texas has been destroyed by their politics. It's just a meaningless statement.
The local communities can vote a tax in.
I already addressed that:
"On top of that, marginalized demographics do not have the generational wealth required to get better jobs, meaning they can’t bear the burden."
It’s not my job to pay another schools upkeep. I
I can't fathom why somebody would want higher crime rates. Failing to educate the public leads to higher crime rates.
Republicans truly are the party of crime.
The only good news source to such folks is that which parrots their ideology.
Anything else is “far right” or “biased”.
No, thats not the case. To paraphrase, it's because fox News has been peddling conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, propaganda, has used poor sources, and has failed numerous fact checks:
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news-bias/
If you want a good source, go to AP news, Reuters, the hill, BBC, etc. Fox News is a trash source.
This is why liberals look confused to people. They scream we want to be more like Europe then scream when we want to be more like Europe.
This is a strawman. Quit trying to put words in my mouth.
If a community is under funded then it’s that community fault.
Not really. There are housing developers and real estate orgs that intentionally destroy neighborhood housing value for their own profit. The lower house prices mean that local schools go underfunded because of how property tax is tied to school funding.
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockbusting
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/blockbusting/
On top of that, marginalized demographics do not have the generational wealth required to get better jobs, meaning they can't bear the burden.
Tax them more but don’t tax me to pay for other areas.
Fuck that. No school should be left behind because of some made up failure to pull up bootstraps that don't exist.
Piss away your vote if you like, but I'm going to vote to keep society educated. I don't want to live in a world of uneducated assholes, especially considering how big of a factor education is in crime rates.
At a minimum you guys could at least attempt to understand the argument.
https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/alabama-political-reporter/
Tl;DR: "School choice" is as good for freedom as the Patriot Act was for privacy. It's a bullshit label to cover for the fact that the actual policy ends up fucking over society by under funding already struggling schools and instead giving the money to corporations that already have too much power.
"We are afraid of the uncharted territory that we have now entered.”
VICE News built a database out of the public neo-Nazi actions over the last four years and it shows a dramatic increase year over year that's only growing.
A man who admits he ran down a Muslim family said he did so because he believed anti-Muslim conspiracies he found on fringe websites like Alex Jones’ Infowars.
Active Clubs are quickly expanding their presence in the United States, and one such group is wreaking havoc in a Tennessee mayoral race
Active Clubs are quickly expanding their presence in the United States, and one such group is wreaking havoc in a Tennessee mayoral race
The city of Franklin, Tennessee, has exploded into a political firestorm in the wake of an alliance between conservative mayoral candidate Gabrielle Hanson and a white supremacist “Active Club.”
Last week, Hanson arrived at a candidate forum with members of the Tennessee Active Club acting as her escort. Rolling Stone reported last month on Active Clubs, which are an emerging form of open-network groups that blend martial arts and combat training with white supremacist ideology. According to a report by the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), more than 46 of these clubs have been established in the United States since 2020, one of them in Tennessee. When the group arrived in Franklin, they claimed to be there to “protect” Hanson, a current alderman for the city. Brad Lewis, who has described himself as “an actual literal Nazi” and owns a gathering place and training center for the Active Club, told News Channel 5 that Hanson was a “friend” and that they came at her request.
The members of the Franklin Board of Mayor and Aldermen (save for Hanson) released a statement last Wednesday declaring they would not “tolerate any form of hatred, intimidation, or violence directed at our residents, media representatives, or anyone else attending or participating in the democratic process.”
Tuesday night, members of the board took Hanson to task in person, accusing her of sowing division and endangering the community. Hanson refused to condemn the group. “This is the old adage of ‘you reap what you sow,’” Hanson told the board, claiming the Active Club was in Franklin partially as a result of alleged discrimination against Christians. “You’ve planted seeds for years and years against our citizens, and they are coming to harvest, this is what the citizens of Franklin are getting because of bad decisions.”
“It’s easy to shift all the blame,” Hanson added. “I just happened to arrive at a time when everything was starting to crumble.”
Active Clubs are the brainchild of Robert Rundo, a California white supremacist who, after failing to launch one racist group and being charged with incitement of riots in the U.S., moved to Eastern Europe to craft what he calls “White Supremacy 3.0,” a style of white supremacist ideology that eschews flashy, aggressive public displays of past neo-Nazi movements. Active Clubs have also taken on a self-appointed status as a “stand-by militia,” primed for violent action.
Hanson claimed that the Tennessee Active Club came to Franklin because they were an “anti-antifa group” and “the dark web is showing massive antifa activity” in and around the city. At one point on Tuesday, Hanson referred to Brad Lewis, the “actual literal Nazi,” as her “client.”
“I’m a realtor, I’m not going to denounce anybody their right to be whatever it is that they want to be, whether I agree with what they do in their personal life or not,” she said, adding that “we don’t discriminate in this community” and that the Active Club “never laid a hand on anyone and they were very respectful while they were here.”
Alderman Matt Brown rebuffed Hanson, questioning the assertion that her relationship with the Tennessee Active Club was just a business. Brown pointed out that Hanson had publicly shared social media posts from the group, including screenshots of Telegram chats that contained the phrase “there is no political solution,” and accused Franklin’s current mayor of having antifa connections.
“We cannot allow this kind of hate to take hold in Franklin or else we have lost everything,” Brown said, before addressing Hanson directly. “Is it your mission to divide our city? Because you are doing a bang-up job of it right now.”
Amid coverage of his relationships with high-profile conservatives, the Supreme Court justice wants to reconsider a landmark First Amendment cases
The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to review a challenge to its landmark New York Times v. Sullivan ruling. Justice Clarence Thomas has some thoughts.
The 1964 ruling established limits on public officials’ ability to sue on grounds of defamation, as well as the need to prove a standard of “actual malice” by the outlet making the allegedly defamatory statements.
The Supreme Court declined to hear Blankenship v. NBC Universal, LLC, a lawsuit brought by coal magnate Don Blankenship, who in 2015 was convicted of a misdemeanor charge of conspiring to violate safety standards at a Virginia mine where an explosion killed 29 workers. Blankenship was sentenced to a year in prison and fined $250,000. Last year, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction. Blankenship then sued NBC Universal, alleging that the news company had defamed him by describing him as a “felon.” Lower courts ruled that NBC had not acted with “malice” in their statements, and the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.
While Justice Thomas concurred that Blankenship’s case did not require a ruling by the Supreme Court, he called for the justices to review the standard set by New York Times v. Sullivan “in an appropriate case.”
“I continue to adhere to my view that we should reconsider the actual-malice standard,” Thomas wrote,” referencing his previous opinion in Coral Ridge Ministries Media, Inc. v. Southern Poverty Law Center. “New York Times and the Court’s decisions extending it were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law,” he added, “the actual-malice standard comes at a heavy cost, allowing media organizations and interest groups ‘to cast false aspersions on public figures with near impunity.’”
The push from Thomas comes amid widespread media reporting on allegations of corruption and improper financial relationships involving the justice. A series of investigations by ProPublica and The New York Times have uncovered unreported gifts, real estate deals, and luxury perks given to Thomas by high-profile conservative figures — many of which were not reported in financial disclosures, or weighed as conflicts of interest in relevant cases.
In April, ProPublica reported on the extent of Thomas’ relationship with billionaire Harlan Crow. The real estate mogul gifted Thomas frequent rides on private jets, vacations to luxury resorts, and trips on his superyachts. Crow also purchased $133,000 in real estate from Thomas, and footed private school tuition bills for a child Thomas was raising.
Subsequent reporting has exposed Thomas’ relationship with other powerful conservative players, including the Koch brothers, oil tycoon Paul “Tony” Novelly, H. Wayne Huizenga, the former owner of the Miami Dolphins, and investor David Sokol.
Thomas has claimed that the omissions from his financial statements were nothing more than oversights and that he had been advised that “this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable.”
Conservatives and conspiracy theorists are increasingly convinced the concept of a “15-minute city” is the latest nefarious plot to curtail individual freedoms.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has been voted out of the job in an extraordinary showdown, a first in U.S. history. The 216-210 vote was forced by a contingent of hard-right conservatives and throws the House and its Republican leadership into chaos.
How dare somebody work with the democrats to avoid a government shutdown. Absolutely disgraceful, preventing our economy from blowing up.
Stew Peters Advocates for a Violent Overthrow of the Government
Stew Peters is a far-right virulently anti-LGBTQ bigot who regularly uses his nightly “The Stew Peters Show” program, speeches, and social media accounts to promote white nationalists and antisemites and to spread wild conspiracy theories, …
Friendly reminder:
https://dictionary.law.com/Default.aspx?selected=1903
It is hypocritical to claim to be the party of law and order when you support sedition, the interference of elections, and violence against political enemies.
65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/[email protected]/t/488620
> 65% of U.S. adults say the way the president is elected should be changed so that the winner of the popular vote nationwide wins the presidency.
Rep. Paul Gosar said that the "homosexual-promoting" general "would be hung" in a better society...
[Meta] To the mod who deleted this post, the article was from within a month and therefore not old content.
The two week old article is about a recent event that occurred within the last month, here is a section of the article:
> Published 12:05 PM EDT, July 14, 2023
>A Capitol riot suspect who had guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his van when he was arrested near former President Barack Obama’s Washington home has been indicted on federal firearms charges, authorities said Friday.
If posting an article that is older than two weeks is considered "old content" deserving of being removed, then the rules on the sidebar should represent that. I'm not sure which mod removed it so I'm making this a general post instead of talking to the mod that removed it directly.
The Brain Washing of My Dad
This is a long video, but a good one. Definitely worth listening to in the background.
It explains a bit about how right wing media got to be how it is, as well as a story about bringing people back from right wing extremism.