American Politics

[EihTooms]

The worst slam against the Times reporting on Trump's Russia connection in 2016/17 is that it was "uncorroborated", never that it was false or untrue or a lie. Prior to his election, I believed him to be simply, in KGB parlance, a "useful idiot" -- greedy, vainglorious and easily manipulated. I chalked up the 2016 changes to the GOP platform as purely (or mostly) the contrivance of Manafort who, inarguably, is a Russian agent. Trump's opposition to NATO could have been due to his primitive, internal ideology. However, my epiphany about him occurred in the summer of 2017 when he, out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, when he opposed Montenegro's talks about eventually joining the EU. Manafort, long gone by then, had had a financial interest in Ukraine, but not Montenegro. I mean, come on, could Trump even find Montenegro on a map? Clearly, someone had instructed him to say that word for word. Later, Trump in Helsinki, Trump undermining NATO, Trump blocking arms to Ukraine were just further evidence that someone was telling him what to say. The false narrative in the press was that Trump was using arm sales to Ukraine to elicit dirt on Biden. The reality is that search for Biden malfeasance was just a cover for blocking arm sales. Stopping the shipment of MANPADS was the entire point.

I'm hopeful that Russia will come to its senses after Putin is gone, and that 2016/17 uncorroborated (and unfairly maligned) NYT reporting will be shown to be wholely true. I'm looking forward to it.

Reports of this kind have been coming in since at least last year. Much further back than that if you count his attempt to fire Mueller.

Of course, a so-called potus illegally ordering IRS audits and investigations on his perceived foes for investigating his extraordinarily tight connection and collusion with Russia is exactly what someone does when he know there was nothing even more incriminating for the investigators to find.

Clearly, even that numbskull recognized that what those investigations did and could reveal about him and his Team regarding Russia was far from "nothing":

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Lisa-Page.html

John Kelly, who served as Donald Trump's chief of staff from July 2017 to January 2019, has testified about Trump's request to the IRS.

Kelly said that Trump wanted the IRS to investigate FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, after they were involved in investigating his Russia ties in 2016.

[EihTooms]

Sigh. Another article published in 2019 that just looks at data from the first year when changes in the corporate tax regime went into effect.

What do shareholders do with money from corporate buybacks? They re-invest it. That's the process by which typewriter manufacturers are replaced by computer manufacturers. Buybacks and dividends which move money to higher return investments are better for the economy than when empire-building CEO's keep the money and invest it in lower return projects and expansions.

Companies didn't immediately repatriate all their cash held overseas in 2018. And as I said, companies didn't immediately pick up and move a business from, say Ireland to Austin, the year when the corporate tax cut and the GILTI tax on foreign earnings took effect. And as I showed you, investment by S&P 500 companies at least didn't boom until a couple of years after the tax cut.

As to your article on the 2004 act, I'm not familiar with it. It did not lower the corporate income tax rate from the highest in the developed world to the middle of the pack, thus making many American businesses competitive again. Nor did it impose a new tax on foreign earnings like the TCJA. In the medium and long term, those changes encouraged domestic investment.

Finally why do you keep quoting the 2.5 trillion number, for the amount that the TCJA is supposed to leave in taxpayers' pockets? That assumes that all the provisions of the TCJA will be extended when they sunset. And that will require Democratic votes in Congress and most likely a Democratic President. Given the way the Republican Party is self destructing, that's unlikely to happen.

Oh, then you must have loads of up-to-date links from, say, the Federal Reserve Board as well as the BLS detailing all the domestic jobs being created due to repatriated money flowing into USA thanks to TCJA lo these 6 years later.

May we see them, please?

I don't even think Fux News is on the assignment to float such a claim. Nor have I heard pro Trump Repub leadership insisting that is what is behind Bidenomics' historic jobs creation. Their preference is either to blame inflation due to too many jobs being created by Biden's remarkably successful recovery legislation or to just ignore the job gain numbers as they come in. Shouldn't they all be celebrating these fabulous results of Repub economic stewardship each and every time the same as you do?

[Xpartan]

The worst slam against the Times reporting on Trump's Russia connection in 2016/17 is that it was "uncorroborated", never that it was false or untrue or a lie. Prior to his election, I believed him to be simply, in KGB parlance, a "useful idiot" -- greedy, vainglorious and easily manipulated. I chalked up the 2016 changes to the GOP platform as purely (or mostly) the contrivance of Manafort who, inarguably, is a Russian agent. Trump's opposition to NATO could have been due to his primitive, internal ideology. However, my epiphany about him occurred in the summer of 2017 when he, out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, when he opposed Montenegro's talks about eventually joining the EU. Manafort, long gone by then, had had a financial interest in Ukraine, but not Montenegro. I mean, come on, could Trump even find Montenegro on a map? Clearly, someone had instructed him to say that word for word. Later, Trump in Helsinki, Trump undermining NATO, Trump blocking arms to Ukraine were just further evidence that someone was telling him what to say. The false narrative in the press was that Trump was using arm sales to Ukraine to elicit dirt on Biden. The reality is that search for Biden malfeasance was just a cover for blocking arm sales. Stopping the shipment of MANPADS was the entire point.

And let's not forget his friendly chats with Pu without an interpreter. At least three such chats took place between 2017 and 2019, but who knows if there weren't other occasions.

And when there was an interpreter present? Well. . .

Trump has concealed details of his face-to-face encounters with Putin from senior officials in administration.

President Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details of his conversations with Russian President Vladi*mir Putin, including on at least one occasion taking possession of the notes of his own interpreter and instructing the linguist not to discuss what had transpired with other administration officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

The constraints that Trump imposed are part of a broader pattern by the president of shielding his communications with Putin from public scrutiny and preventing even high-ranking officials in his own administration from fully knowing what he has told one of the United States main adversaries.

As a result, U.S. officials said there is no detailed record, even in classified files, of Trumps face-to-face interactions with the Russian leader at five locations over the past two years. Such a gap would be unusual in any presidency, let alone one that Russia sought to install through what U.S. intelligence agencies have described as an unprecedented campaign of election interference.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...0a8_story.html

I'm hopeful that Russia will come to its senses after Putin is gone, and that 2016/17 uncorroborated (and unfairly maligned) NYT reporting will be shown to be wholely true. I'm looking forward to it.

No doubt! We'll get his file. The only question is what new set of lies Trump's apologists will manage to come up with.

[Tiny 12]

For example the Mediterranean coastal life is superior in about every aspect, infrastructure, stability, scenery, food, and even hookers (loads of variety)

Agreed, depending on which countries you're comparing to, at least with respect to the Costa del Sol. The hookers in France are harder to come by, and then for those of us who don't speak French, the language is an impediment. I also agree with the Commander about wacko attitudes. And you better be darn sure you don't spend over 183 days a year in either country and not file a tax return, as Shakira found out. She's facing up to 8 years in jail.

[Tiny 12]

The worst slam against the Times reporting on Trump's Russia connection in 2016/17 is that it was "uncorroborated", never that it was false or untrue or a lie. Prior to his election, I believed him to be simply, in KGB parlance, a "useful idiot" -- greedy, vainglorious and easily manipulated. I chalked up the 2016 changes to the GOP platform as purely (or mostly) the contrivance of Manafort who, inarguably, is a Russian agent. Trump's opposition to NATO could have been due to his primitive, internal ideology. However, my epiphany about him occurred in the summer of 2017 when he, out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, when he opposed Montenegro's talks about eventually joining the EU. Manafort, long gone by then, had had a financial interest in Ukraine, but not Montenegro. I mean, come on, could Trump even find Montenegro on a map? Clearly, someone had instructed him to say that word for word. Later, Trump in Helsinki, Trump undermining NATO, Trump blocking arms to Ukraine were just further evidence that someone was telling him what to say. The false narrative in the press was that Trump was using arm sales to Ukraine to elicit dirt on Biden. The reality is that search for Biden malfeasance was just a cover for blocking arm sales. Stopping the shipment of MANPADS was the entire point.

I'm hopeful that Russia will come to its senses after Putin is gone, and that 2016/17 uncorroborated (and unfairly maligned) NYT reporting will be shown to be wholely true. I'm looking forward to it.

From the cjr piece, the Republican Party in its 2016 platform went farther than Obama in its support for Ukraine. Manafort wasn't a Russian agent, and the campaign dropped him like a hot potato when his Ukrainian connections came to light. Yes, he did help pro Russian Ukrainian oligarchs and politicians as a part of his consulting business.

Trump in Helsinki was just being self serving. He didn't want to admit Russia interfered in the election. Same with the Ukraine. He temporarily withheld aid to use that as leverage to try to get the Ukrainians to investigate Giuliani's loony Hunter Biden conspiracy theory and the extremely loony Crowdstrike conspiracy theory. I'm not familiar with Montenegro or MANPADS.

Trump's criticisms of NATO were coupled with demands that NATO countries spend more on defense. And Trump jumped through hoops to try to prevent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from starting up. Those don't sound like actions of a Russian asset.

You know this subject better than I do. Still, the claim that Trump's a Russian asset sounds very dubious to me, like Republican claims linking Joe Biden to bribery and extortion.

[John Clayton]

.. the highly-respected Columbia Journalism Review.

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/t...ent-part-1.php

The worst slam against the Times reporting on Trump's Russia connection in 2016/17 is that it was "uncorroborated", never that it was false or untrue or a lie. Prior to his election, I believed him to be simply, in KGB parlance, a "useful idiot" -- greedy, vainglorious and easily manipulated. I chalked up the 2016 changes to the GOP platform as purely (or mostly) the contrivance of Manafort who, inarguably, is a Russian agent. Trump's opposition to NATO could have been due to his primitive, internal ideology. However, my epiphany about him occurred in the summer of 2017 when he, out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, when he opposed Montenegro's talks about eventually joining the EU. Manafort, long gone by then, had had a financial interest in Ukraine, but not Montenegro. I mean, come on, could Trump even find Montenegro on a map? Clearly, someone had instructed him to say that word for word. Later, Trump in Helsinki, Trump undermining NATO, Trump blocking arms to Ukraine were just further evidence that someone was telling him what to say. The false narrative in the press was that Trump was using arm sales to Ukraine to elicit dirt on Biden. The reality is that search for Biden malfeasance was just a cover for blocking arm sales. Stopping the shipment of MANPADS was the entire point.

I'm hopeful that Russia will come to its senses after Putin is gone, and that 2016/17 uncorroborated (and unfairly maligned) NYT reporting will be shown to be wholely true. I'm looking forward to it.

[Tiny 12]

Trying to persuade you is a waste of precious world bandwidth. Eventually, after Putin is deposed, it will be revealed that Trump was a closely held Kremlin asset. He is a traitor to the United States.

Correct, you can't persuade bots like Questner and me. If you said Trump was traitorous to American democracy for what he did after the 2020 election, I might agree with you. Your belief that he was a closely held Kremlin asset is just plain wrong. The press misled you, as described in this very-well-researched four part series by Jeff Gerth in the highly-respected Columbia Journalism Review.

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/t...ent-part-1.php

[Tiny 12]

From the first 2 years after it was signed and passed and now well into the 6th year after it was signed and passed, there is still zero evidence that repatriated profits due to Trump's TCJA have created any more jobs, stimulated any more domestic investment or Research & Development than would have been created without it. It was simply $2. 5 Trillion+ added to the deficit with nothing notable to show for it. Not only did that one time spike in profits serve primarily to purchase stock buybacks and nothing else, the trend of repatriating profits back to the USA was already in an upward trajectory for several years PRIOR to the TCJA, the same as the 7 year downward trend for the Unemployment Rate and the Historic Years' Long Steady Gains in Jobs. Thank you, Obama.

U.S. Corporations' Repatriation of Offshore Profits: Evidence from 2018

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econr...-20190806.html

Repubs just love to jump in on an already well-established positive trend created almost solely by the hard work and legislative skillfulness of Dems and claim their subsequent deficit ballooning nothingness had something to do with it. And, of course, on the other side of it, Repubs also love to crash the USA economy and wipe out millions of jobs right at the end of their term so they can enlist the aid of their beloved pro Repub Mainstream Media to blame the incoming Dem administration for it while that administration cleans up the typical historic and unprecedented mess they've made of everything.

Now, as you'll see in the Federal Reserve's charts in the above link and in the report below, this colossal Repub waste of time and money with No Jobs Created charade was already tried by the 108th Repub Congress back in 2003 and 2004 with their Homeland Investment Act (HIA) tax holiday for foreign cash holding companies. What happened then? LOL. The same thing that happened with the TCJA; they did NOT create more jobs, increase domestic investment or Research & Development. They bought back their own losing stocks:

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=37852

Sigh. Another article published in 2019 that just looks at data from the first year when changes in the corporate tax regime went into effect.

What do shareholders do with money from corporate buybacks? They re-invest it. That's the process by which typewriter manufacturers are replaced by computer manufacturers. Buybacks and dividends which move money to higher return investments are better for the economy than when empire-building CEO's keep the money and invest it in lower return projects and expansions.

Companies didn't immediately repatriate all their cash held overseas in 2018. And as I said, companies didn't immediately pick up and move a business from, say Ireland to Austin, the year when the corporate tax cut and the GILTI tax on foreign earnings took effect. And as I showed you, investment by S&P 500 companies at least didn't boom until a couple of years after the tax cut.

As to your article on the 2004 act, I'm not familiar with it. It did not lower the corporate income tax rate from the highest in the developed world to the middle of the pack, thus making many American businesses competitive again. Nor did it impose a new tax on foreign earnings like the TCJA. In the medium and long term, those changes encouraged domestic investment.

Finally why do you keep quoting the 2.5 trillion number, for the amount that the TCJA is supposed to leave in taxpayers' pockets? That assumes that all the provisions of the TCJA will be extended when they sunset. And that will require Democratic votes in Congress and most likely a Democratic President. Given the way the Republican Party is self destructing, that's unlikely to happen.

[SubCmdr]

Please define ill informed? Maybe grab a mirror. https://fortune.com/2023/07/03/what-...ing-countries/

I can do that for you. And I use a mirror to shave. I don't need one to answer your question. But thank you for your suggestion. There is an organization known as the World Bank. Are you familiar with it?

3rd world describes geo political situation that no longer exists. And if you look at the current world the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd world does not exist. The world is breaking down into trade blocks without unified political philosophy. The World Bank classifies economies for analytical purposes into four income groups: low, lower-middle, upper-middle, and high income.

https://datatopics.worldbank.org/wor...nd-region.html#text=The%20 World%20 Bank%20 classifies%20 economies,%2 Dmiddle%2 see%20 and%20 high%20 income.

You are welcome for the education I gave you.

[SubCmdr]

I live in the States, not that that has anything to do with the statement you are replying to.

It sure does. It speaks to you knowledge on the subject. You are talking about something that you actually don't know anything about now do you? I have lived in the (Dis) United States of America and overseas. I know of what I speak from direct knowledge. Not YouTube videos.

Do you realize that many who use the term are aware that it's dated, but still employ it as it's widely understood and goes far to get the point across? Said countries didn't suddenly become developed when the USSR was dissolved.

Yes, but the term is inaccurate. Relating to a time in Geopolitics that have past. And interestingly enough you used the term "developed" which is actually the term used to describe these countries at this point.

I couldn't care less. Expats with real money when retiring overseas tend to gravitate toward developed countries like France or Spain. For example the Mediterranean coastal life is superior in about every aspect, infrastructure, stability, scenery, food, and even hookers (loads of variety) than the 3rd World countries many here reside in to stretch their meager or modest retirement incomes. That's in spite of the lying that's easy online and so common in monger communities.

I understand that is your opinion. But if you had some facts to back it up you would.

Why would I want to leave the (Dis) United States of America in order to reside in another Western nation with the same WACK attitudes of the nation I left. But them again, you are not talking about me personally now are you? At least not in this thread you are not. LOL!

[EihTooms]

I live in the States, not that that has anything to do with the statement you are replying to.

Do you realize that many who use the term are aware that it's dated, but still employ it as it's widely understood and goes far to get the point across? Said countries didn't suddenly become developed when the USSR was dissolved.

I couldn't care less. Expats with real money when retiring overseas tend to gravitate toward developed countries like France or Spain. For example the Mediterranean coastal life is superior in about every aspect, infrastructure, stability, scenery, food, and even hookers (loads of variety) than the 3rd World countries many here reside in to stretch their meager or modest retirement incomes. That's in spite of the lying that's easy online and so common in monger communities.

Great. Then since you have done so much better with your investments, building a retirement income and will be retiring in Spain, that leaves more 20-something Asian cuties for me to fuck and get blown by in my poor but beautifully well-located shanty in the #1 most visited city on the Planet. Personally, I prefer to live in a big city, not on a beach, staring at the ocean. I spent many years living at or near the beach in the USA:

The Worlds Most Visited Cities.

June 23, 2023

https://travelness.com/most-visited-cities-in-the-world

Yeah, Paris and London are on the list. After Bangkok. But those are the only cities in France or the United Kingdom on the list. Thailand has three on the list of the top 20, including a mongering resort town too boring for me to even consider living in. All three of them rank higher than the first city in Spain on the list.

Maybe you should do a little more traveling around Thailand and other destinations in Asia before you settle on retiring in that casa in Spain.

[EihTooms]

From the first 2 years after it was signed and passed and now well into the 6th year after it was signed and passed, there is still zero evidence that repatriated profits due to Trump's TCJA have created any more jobs, stimulated any more domestic investment or Research & Development than would have been created without it. It was simply $2. 5 Trillion+ added to the deficit with nothing notable to show for it. Not only did that one time spike in profits serve primarily to purchase stock buybacks and nothing else, the trend of repatriating profits back to the USA was already in an upward trajectory for several years PRIOR to the TCJA, the same as the 7 year downward trend for the Unemployment Rate and the Historic Years' Long Steady Gains in Jobs. Thank you, Obama.

U.S. Corporations' Repatriation of Offshore Profits: Evidence from 2018

https://www.federalreserve.gov/econr...-20190806.html

Investment by the top 15 cash holders also rose in 2018 figure 3, particularly relative to other nonfinancial S&P 500 firms black line. However, the increase in investment was far less notable than the increase in share buybacks. For the top 15 cash holders, the average ratio of investment, capital expenditures plus research and development expenses, to assets rose from 2.3 percent in 2017 to 2.8 percent in 2018, while it remained flat at 1.5 percent for other nonfinancial S&P 500 firms. However, it should be noted that investment by the top 15 cash holders was already on an upward trajectory for several years prior to the TCJA, both in dollar terms, red bars, and relative to other nonfinancial S&P 500 firms, black line. Given this pre-existing upward trend, it is difficult to know how much of the observed increase in investment by the top 15 cash holders might have occurred even in the absence of the repatriation. Moreover, the increase in investment by the top 15 cash holders before the passage of the TCJA is consistent with the notion that, because these are large firms, they are unlikely to have faced notable constraints or costs to accessing capital markets to fund their investment needs. Of course, it may be too early to reach a definitive conclusion, as any additional boost to investment due to the repatriation may take more time to fully materialize.

Repubs just love to jump in on an already well-established positive trend created almost solely by the hard work and legislative skillfulness of Dems and claim their subsequent deficit ballooning nothingness had something to do with it. And, of course, on the other side of it, Repubs also love to crash the USA economy and wipe out millions of jobs right at the end of their term so they can enlist the aid of their beloved pro Repub Mainstream Media to blame the incoming Dem administration for it while that administration cleans up the typical historic and unprecedented mess they've made of everything.

Now, as you'll see in the Federal Reserve's charts in the above link and in the report below, this colossal Repub waste of time and money with No Jobs Created charade was already tried by the 108th Repub Congress back in 2003 and 2004 with their Homeland Investment Act (HIA) tax holiday for foreign cash holding companies. What happened then? LOL. The same thing that happened with the TCJA; they did NOT create more jobs, increase domestic investment or Research & Development. They bought back their own losing stocks:

Watch What I Do, Not What I Say: The Unintended Consequences of the Homeland Investment Act

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=37852

ABSTRACT
This paper analyzes the impact of the Homeland Investment Act of 2004, which provided a one-time tax holiday for the repatriation of foreign earnings and thereby reduced the cost to U.S. multinationals of accessing a source of internal capital. Lawmakers and lobbyists justified its passage by arguing that it would alleviate financial constraints. This paper's results indicate that repatriations did not lead to an increase in domestic investment, domestic employment, or R&D, even for the firms that appeared to be financially constrained or lobbied for the holiday. Instead, estimates indicate that a $1 increase in repatriations was associated with a $0.60 to $0.92 increase in payouts to shareholders, despite regulations stating that such expenditures were not a permitted use of repatriations qualifying for the tax holiday. The results indicate that U.S. multinationals were not financially constrained and were reasonably well governed. The fungibility of money appears to have undermined the effectiveness of the regulations.

[John Clayton]

...You haven't persuaded me...

Trying to persuade you is a waste of precious world bandwidth. Eventually, after Putin is deposed, it will be revealed that Trump was a closely held Kremlin asset. He is a traitor to the United States.

[Tiny 12]

Note the #1 most often repeated Myth on the list...

EihTooms has already addressed this falsehood...

From page 173 of the Mueller Report:

"Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities. ".

I am not a Trump fan. I did not vote for him and in fact contributed to the campaigns of two of his opponents. I have defended his policies here that I agreed with.

You haven't persuaded me. I still believe that the Democratic politician's attempts to paint Trump as conspiring or colluding with the Russians in the 2016 election are as lame as Republican's attempts to paint Joe Biden as a recipient of bribes and as a participant in extortion.

You might be excused because the left-of-center media has misled you about Trump and the Russians, as set out brilliantly by Jeff Gerth in a four part series for the Columbia Journalism Review.

https://www.cjr.org/special_report/t...ent-part-1.php

But the truth is that the Democratic Party is your religion, and you won't allow your interpretation of what's happening in the world around you to conflict with Party dogma.

[EihTooms]

EihTooms has already addressed this falsehood.

1. And this wasn't a sign of the collusion? Really?

2. My recollection also includes Trump calling Jr. From the Air Force 1 and coaching him to lie about the topic of the meeting (adaption of Russian children). Not a sign either?

LOL, OK.

Did Hunter work for his daddy's campaign?

Nah, it doesn't work like this. When two ridiculous hypotheses are presented to excuse Trump's obviously criminal behavior -- that's too funny, even for a mongering forum.

Unsolicited? Russia, if you're listening. . . LOLOL!

And they did. Once again, EihTooms already answered that one. Not prosecuting a sitting president is not the same as not "uncovering it".

As Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, has stated several times including under oath, Trump speaks in code like a mob boss in order to maintain a buffer of deniability about his crimes and transgressions. And to keep alive his and his Crime Family's favorite go-to defence for those things; That he is too stupid to commit that crime or transgression.

That included his extraordinarily tight connection and collusion with Russia:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ie-to-congress

Trump and his Team only dodged direct accusations of some levels of collusion because, without a written or recorded trail of a "conspiracy" to collude with Russia, it is impossible to prove they were NOT too stupid to understand the meaning of collusion and commit that transgression.

Of course, Team Trump's consciousness of guilt about their collusion is really difficult to miss in light of their astonishing number of meetings with Russians and their almost universal attempt to keep them secret until they were cornered and could no longer do so:

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/clos...ry?id=50397154

Sure, any pro Repub / Trump noodnik can accept that Trump Crime Family chestnut about them being too stupid to know what they were doing as long as they are happy to collude with them to propose such obvious bullshit as well.