10/12/2024
Christie’s BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATERS.
ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/chris-christie-becomes-latest-to-sound-alarm-over-trump-s-significant-mental-decline/ar-AA1s9Btt?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=d48d428ae3a641a1abd753d2190507c9&ei=73
Where is your patriotism? Do you want four more years of Obama?
kommonsentsjane
10/12/2024
ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/money/news/what-if-warren-buffett-had-faced-kamala-harris-s-unrealized-capital-gains-tax-from-the-outset-here-are-the-numbers/ar-AA1s1FuH?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=u531&cvid=953f280ca68a4279c64c0e81c6e78610&ei=24
What if Warren Buffett had faced Kamala Harris’s unrealized-capital-gains tax from the outset? Here are the numbers.© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
One of the earliest proposals in Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign was taxing the unrealized capital gains of the very wealthiest Americans.
The controversial idea, which even in a blue-wave scenario would be difficult to get through Congress, would be to impose a 25% tax on the income, inclusive of unrealized capital gains, of taxpayers with wealth above $100 million.
Opinion (August 2024): Kamala Harris’s critics are totally wrong about taxing unrealized gains
Daniel Gladis, a director of the Malta-based Vltava Fund, decided to calculate the impact if such a tax were law for all of Buffett’s career.
(One quick caveat — he does assume that Buffett would be paying right from the start. If you inflation-adjust Buffett’s holding in Berkshire Hathaway from April 1965 it would be about $75 million, so not wildly far from the proposed threshold.)
In a letter to shareholders, Gladis also assumes for calculation purposes that Buffett didn’t give away shares to charity, as he has done. Otherwise, the sage of Omaha hasn’t sold any Berkshire Hathaway stock.
In the Gladis calculations, Buffett doesn’t pay any tax in years where Berkshire Hathaway’s stock doesn’t appreciate; in years in which it does, he sells enough to pay the tax on the unrealized gain.
Related video: Kamala Harris’ Capital Gains Tax Proposal: How It Could Affect Your Investment
Kamala Harris’ Capital Gains Tax Proposal: How It Could Affect Your Investment StrategyUnmute
On to the result: In the current tax regime, the nearly 393,000 shares Buffett held from 1965 would be worth $271 billion. But in the alternative world envisioned by the Harris revenue proposal, he’d own just 22,648 shares, worth $15.6 billion.
That’s a big difference — to Buffett. For the federal government, however, the additional revenue is just $5.7 billion, he says. “Instead of the $271 billion in wealth created, all of which Buffett has given or intends to give to charity, only $15.6 billion would have been generated for charitable purposes and $5.7 billion in revenue for the state,” he says.
Gladis also says that in an unrealized-capital-gains-tax world, Buffett might not even be running the company. “Had Buffett needed to sell off a significant chunk of stock each year, however, he might have lost control sometime in the 1980s, and who knows what the company would look like today, what it would be worth, or whether it would even exist at all,” he says.
While Gladis is of the opinion the Harris proposal is unlikely to become law, he says he considers the idea to be the tip of an iceberg.
“The idea of introducing a tax on unrealized capital gains may not be put into practice, but we will almost certainly hear more and more similar half-mad proposals for new forms of taxation. Some politicians believe that low taxes are the root of the world’s problems today, some don’t believe it but nevertheless know the suggestion can win them votes, and some know that more taxes mean greater power in their hands,” he says.
Read on (September 2024): Would Kamala Harris’s corporate taxes be bad for your 401(k)? The answer may surprise you.
*****
Harris is a very greedy person.
kommonsentsjane
10/12/2024
Political division in the U.S. – statistics & facts | Statista
https://www.statista.com/topics/5701/political-division-in-the-united-states/#topicOverview
ttps://www.statista.com/topics/5701/political-division-in-the-united-states/#statisticChapter
Throughout history, the United States has witnessed periods of political discord, yet the current level of polarization has reached unprecedented heights, leading more than half of Americans to consider the occurrence of a civil war in the U.S. a possibility within the next few years. At the root of this divide are deeply entrenched ideological differences which shape policy positions and public attitudes, thus contributing to the growing chasm between the two major political parties in the U.S.Show more- Description
Published by Statista Research Department, Jul 3, 2024
U.S. major political party identification 2000-2023
U.S. trust in government by political ideology 1972-2024
Level of trust in major U.S. institutions 2022, by institution and political party
Subscribe
Share of U.S. adults who identify as political independents
Number of U.S. states who do not lean towards either the Democratic or the Republican Party
Share of U.S. adults who believe the government is doing too much to solve the country’s problems
******
kommonsentsjane
10/12/2024
Too late Democrats – the dye has been cast.
You have shown your marbles and they aren’t RED/WHITE/BLUE.
ttps://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/deep-state-and-uniparty-to-defeat-trump-s-american-caste-system-democrats-need-a-realignment/ar-AA1s8Iam?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=06ca24dac2ba4eb38db6c07f3a280d4b&ei=54
Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images
Since at least 2017, a series of high-quality polls show that a majority of Americans believe that a so-called deep state of unelected elites wields dominant power in the U.S. The term “deep state” is covered by the media as a phrase invented by Donald Trump, who uses it frequently to denounce unelected liberals and “Marxists” in government. But the idea of a deep state has a long history on the left as well as the right — with two very different meanings. The outcome of this year’s presidential election may depend on whether the public comes to see the real deep state as the one Trump is attacking, or the one that the left has long challenged.
Trump’s deep state includes the civil servants in the federal regulatory and social welfare bureaucracy as well as in the national security apparatus of the CIA, FBI and Pentagon. He denounces them as the real threat to democracy, aligning with Project 2025’s proposal to purge more than 50,000 civil servants and replace them with his political appointees. He has promised to prosecute the leaders of this deep state elite and their coastal allies in the Democratic Party, the media and universities who work in concert to promote open borders and the ideology of DEI (diversity, equity and equality) that is stealing the jobs of hard-working “true” Americans who are white Christian patriots.
But there is a more authentic and real deep state, identified by scholars and the Left. In “The Power Elite,” one of the most important sociological books of the 20th century, C. Wright Mills wrote that America was ruled by a triangle of unelected elites: wealthy corporate elites allied with top civilian government leaders and the military. This is a true deep state largely organized around corporate class interests both at home and abroad, sacrificing the jobs of ordinary working Americans of all races for the profits of “the 1%.
*****
kommonsentsjane
about:blank
Despite nationwide pleas to cool things down after the second
‘The Five’: Democrats and the media didn’t get the memo to stop demonizing Trump
Interestingly, there is an overlap between Trump’s and Mills’ notions. Both agree that unelected groups exercise great power and that the national security apparatus is part of the real deep state. But the power elite, as understood by Mills and the left, also includes and highlights the corporate rich. They constitute a ruling class, people whose power stems from controlling the vast majority of America’s wealth. To win support, they have been appealing to white Christian nationalism, a caste-based identity.
Sociologists distinguish between class and caste. Class is a status stemming from wealth, where you theoretically can rise or fall, although few people do. Trump was born in the upper tier of the ruling class, with whom he continues to schmooze in Mar-A-Lago to make mutually profitable deals for his second term. A caste is a biological state you are born in and can’t change; race and gender are typically considered castes.
The power elite identified by Mills and that Trump would restore to unfettered control melds class and caste—and has an important history. In our work, we show that the U.S. was founded as an uneasy marriage between two deep states, a Northern proto-capitalist one and a Southern slave-based one that was proto-fascist. One was based on class power of early merchant capitalists and the other based on the caste power of the Southern white gentry. While they came together to secure independence from the British over taxes, trade and continental expansion, they would later divorce in the Civil War. They had very different visions, one of an agrarian caste nation and the other an industrial power based on class, theoretically open to all races or castes.
In 1980, Reagan proved the modern electoral power of a right-wing politics relying on corporate class power allied with caste-based white Christian nationalism. But Trump’s approach has far earlier roots, as he marries his corporate deep state with elements of a caste-based white proto-fascist deep state., It’s what happened in the original founding. This storied historical legacy helps explain the attraction of so many Americans to Trump, who claims to be bringing back the greatness of an early American system governed by wealthy white men in the name of all the true American patriots. It purges the “criminal” immigrants and inner-city Black Americans who he blames for the problems of ordinary white Americans today.
Trump could win a second term, unless the Harris-Walz campaign makes clear that Trump’s resurrected power elite uniting caste and class power will worsen the problems of ordinary working voters, especially blue-collar workers in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. It was the unification of Democrats and Republicans under George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton that ushered in a new era of bipartisanship, or a “uniparty” of sorts, in support of nearly unfettered free trade which saw the devastating loss of well-paying blue collar jobs that allowed Trump to become the first Republican in three decades to win the Rust Belt. This uniparty built on Reagan’s neoliberal revolution embraced by both Republicans and Democrats. The Democrats need to show that Trump is actually resurrecting the real deep state that is endangering their jobs and democratic voice.
Democrats appear to be attacking caste-based race and gender power and, in their embrace of labor and unions, they are also starting to attack corporate class power. But in the way they are recruiting conservative Republicans like Dick and Liz Cheney, Democrats are highlighting, as Harris explicitly says, that she is proudly “a capitalist” and are hesitant to challenge forcefully the corporations and the military-industrial complex that continue to endanger the wages and jobs of workers while supporting American militarism.
Harris needs to show that she will deliver for working people the good wages, affordable necessities and democratic voice they need to ensure their future. Since Bill Clinton, Democratic identity politics has challenged racial and gender caste power while focusing far less on class power. Harris needs to recapture the spirit of the New Deal, when Democrats had landslide victories among working-class voters who have been migrating in droves to the GOP since the end of the New Deal era. Her future—and the nation’s—will depend on her making clear that she takes class as seriously as she does caste and will fight for all working people against the corporate deep state.
****
kommonsentsjane
