Tag: Taxes

Trumps Tax Cuts at Work

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Remember when AT&T said that the Trump tax cuts would mean 7,000 new jobs and billions in new investment?

Well, the numbers are in, 23,000 job cuts and cut $1.4 billion in capital investments.

Well, I guess that senior executives want to cash in their stock options before tax rates go up again:

AT&T has cut more than 23,000 jobs since receiving a big tax cut at the end of 2017, despite lobbying heavily for the tax cut by claiming that it would create thousands of jobs.

AT&T in November 2017 pushed for the corporate tax cut by promising to invest an additional $1 billion in 2018, with CEO Randall Stephenson saying that “every billion dollars AT&T invests is 7,000 hard-hat jobs. These are not entry-level jobs. These are 7,000 jobs of people putting fiber in ground, hard-hat jobs that make $70,000 to $80,000 per year.

The corporate tax cut was subsequently passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump on December 22, 2017. The tax cut reportedly gave AT&T an extra $3 billion in cash in 2018.

But AT&T cut capital spending and kept laying people off after the tax cut. A union analysis of AT&T’s publicly available financial statements “shows the telecom company eliminated 23,328 jobs since the Tax Cut and Jobs Act passed in late 2017, including nearly 6,000 in the first quarter of 2019,” the Communications Workers of America (CWA) said yesterday.

………

“AT&T’s annual report also shows the company boosted executive pay and suggests that after refunds, it paid no cash income taxes in 2018 and slashed capital investments by $1.4 billion,” the CWA wrote.

AT&T reported $21.6 billion in capital expenses in 2017 and $21.3 billion in 2018, a cut of $300 million. CWA told Ars that the cut is $1.4 billion when “excluding federal government reimbursements for the construction of FirstNet,” AT&T’s government-funded public safety network.

AT&T capital spending is already down more than $900 million this year, as the telco reported Q1 2019 capital expenditures of $5.18 billion, down from $6.12 billion in Q2 2018.

This is not managing a business, this is looting.

We need to repeal SEC Rule 10b-18, which legalized stock buybacks. (Previously they were considered a form of insider trading)

The rule, adopted in 1982, has diverted trillions of dollars from investments in new plants and equipment to self dealing by senior management.

And Steve Mnuchin Calls the Ways and Means Committee Chair a C%$# Sucker

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In defiance of black letter law, the Treasury Secretary is refusing the Ways & Means Committee’s demand for Trump’s tax returns:

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Monday told House Democrats he would not furnish President Trump’s tax returns despite their legal request, the latest move by Trump administration officials to shield the president from congressional investigations.

Mnuchin, in a letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), said he had consulted with the Justice Department and that they had concluded that it would not be lawful for the Trump administration to turn over the tax returns because of potential violations of privacy.

Mnuchin added that requests from Congress “must serve a legitimate legislative purpose” and that the request from Democrats does not.

A number of legal experts have said it would be unprecedented for Mnuchin to refuse to turn over the tax returns, as the power for lawmakers to seek the returns is written explicitly in a 1924 law.

It is, as the saying goes, “On.”

It should be noted that Mnuchin has yet to release the opinion from the DoJ.

Here’s hoping that Neal seriously considers a contempt of Congress citation, but, based on his record, I would instead expect some more whinging, followed by a slow path through the courts.

Mandy Reese Davies Applies

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Bill Gates hates Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s tax plan, to which the obvious rejoinder is, “Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

Bill Gates says he’s fine with the idea of higher taxes for the rich, but plans like the one being championed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which target the top income brackets, are too extreme—and could encourage the wealthy to hide their money in offshore accounts.

Gates, in an interview with The Verge, didn’t mention Ocasio-Cortez or her well-publicized tax proposal directly by name, but his focus was clear. While the Microsoft co-founder and world’s second richest man agreed the U.S. could be “more progressive,” he downplayed “extreme” proposals, such as the freshman representative’s plan to raise the top tax rate from 37% to 70%.

“I believe U.S. tax rates can be more progressive. Now, you finally have some politicians who are so extreme that I’d say, ‘No, that’s even beyond,’” Gates said. “You do start to create tax dodging and disincentives, and an incentive to have the income show up in other countries and things. But we can be more progressive without really threatening income generation—what you have left to decide how to spread around.”

Bill Gates made his money in one of the most heavily subsidized industries on earth (copyright and patents are subsidies), and somehow any meaningful tax reform needs to be opposed, because some rich pig will find a way to avoid the taxes, so we have to try something else ……… And the next thing, that won’t work either ……… Rinse, lather, repeat.

Hell Yes

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San Francisco is looking at instituting a payroll tax on stock awards.

They are calling it an “IPO Tax”, and I wholeheartedly approve.

………

San Francisco Supervisor Gordon Mar is circulating a motion that, if approved by a majority of the county board, would place a payroll tax covering stock-based compensation on the November ballot. The proposal, a draft of which was obtained by Bloomberg, would impose a new cost, “for the privilege of engaging in business in the city,” on companies that dole out equity to employees.

Mar told local labor and community activists at a meeting Monday night that he plans to announce the proposal on Wednesday during a subcommittee hearing and to introduce it in the next couple weeks, said Kung Feng, executive director of Jobs With Justice San Francisco, a coalition of labor and community groups that’s among the organizations advocating for the tax. Uber declined to comment because it hasn’t seen the legislation.

………

“We know corporate IPOs alone did not cause income inequality and our social crises,” Mar plans to say at the Wednesday meeting, according to prepared remarks shared by his office. “But they have, and will, exacerbate it. So today I’m announcing a proposal to tax the wealth generated by IPOs to fund programs to address income inequality.”

The potential law, which some are calling an “IPO tax,” reflects uneasiness in a city with constant reminders of the income gap, from Google buses to Uber drivers sleeping in their cars. A new analysis from San Francisco’s budget office indicates that IPO riches under the current tax system will provide little benefit to the city while driving up housing prices. But there’s a long road to making a new law. For it to take effect, the motion would need to secure majority support from the board of supervisors, win approval from voters in November and survive any potential legal challenges from affected companies.

………

The money from the tax would support affordable housing, lower-income workers, education and other benefits, according to Feng, one of several people briefed on the plans who spoke to Bloomberg. This year’s IPOs are “going to create vast inequality and displacement, and we as a city need corporations to pay their fair share and be good neighbors,” said Feng. “The IPO tax is one step toward that.”

I don’t expect it to pass, and if it does, I expect it to be tied up in court for years, but I can dream.

Corruption Much?

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In their infinite wisdom, Congress is planning to outlaw government offering free online tax filing, because Turbotax gives lots of campaign donations:

Just in time for Tax Day, the for-profit tax preparation industry is about to realize one of its long-sought goals. Congressional Democrats and Republicans are moving to permanently bar the IRS from creating a free electronic tax filing system.

Last week, the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., passed the Taxpayer First Act, a wide-ranging bill making several administrative changes to the IRS that is sponsored by Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Mike Kelly, R-Pa.

In one of its provisions, the bill makes it illegal for the IRS to create its own online system of tax filing. Companies like Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, and H&R Block have lobbied for years to block the IRS from creating such a system. If the tax agency created its own program, which would be similar to programs other developed countries have, it would threaten the industry’s profits.

“This could be a disaster. It could be the final nail in the coffin of the idea of the IRS ever being able to create its own program,” said Mandi Matlock, a tax attorney who does work for the National Consumer Law Center. Experts have long argued that the IRS has failed to make filing taxes as easy and cheap as it could be. In addition to a free system of online tax preparation and filing, the agency could provide people with pre-filled tax forms containing the salary data the agency already has, as ProPublica first reported on in 2013.

This is unbelievably f%$#ed up.

I’m With France on This One

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The French have instituted a digital services tax, and the United states is unamused:

France will stick to plans for a tax on digital giants such as Facebook and Apple, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Friday, despite angry opposition from Washington.

Last month, France unveiled draft legislation to set a three percent tax on digital advertising, the sale of personal data and other revenue for any technology company that earns more than 750 million euros ($841 million) worldwide each year.

The effort comes amid rising public outrage at the minimal tax paid by some of the world’s richest firms which base operations in jurisdictions that charge low rates.

“We are determined to implement a tax on the largest digital companies to bring more justice and efficiency to the international tax system,” Le Maire said as he arrived in Bucharest for talks with his eurozone counterparts.

“All states take their own free and sovereign decisions on tax matters,” Le Maire added.

………

Le Maire spoke just hours after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised his objections to the tax as he met French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in Washington.

Pompeo said the tax would hurt US companies “and the French citizens who use them,” according to the State Department.

The US has opened several fronts against the tax, announcing in March that Washington was considering a complaint to the World Trade Organisation that the levy was discriminatory.

Tax evasion is central to the business models of many (most) of the internet giants, and all of the talk of changing the tax code to work with this is just that, talk.

What France has enacted is a relatively elegant solution to the problem, and it address a problem present in more universal solutions:  That aggressive lobbying by the tech firms, the economics term is “rent seeking”, would have watered down any proposal to meaninglessness.

I Will Use Their Tears to Season My Supper

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New York City real estate brokers, despondent over it becoming more for them to profit off money from drug dealer, despots, and corrupt businessmen are saying that the so called “Pied-a-Terre Tax” is “class warfare” on their clients:

High-end real estate brokers in New York worry that foreign second-home buyers are feeling under assault from all sides and may end up going elsewhere. Already wary of President Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, they now see a planned tax on absentee owners as a swipe from the political left.

“The international buyer has basically gone away over the past two years,” said real estate broker Martin Eiden at Compass, who sells about $50 million of residential property a year. “There’s only so much that people will take — they’ll either go somewhere else or they’ll just get a hotel room.”

 The proposed tax would apply to properties above $5 million owned by non-residents. Governor Andrew Cuomo says the state needs it to pay for transit fixes. Mayor Bill de Blasio says the rich should pay more, especially those who pay no income taxes while full-time residents bear the costs of services that make New York City so attractive to foreigners and out-of-staters.

These people are paying enormous amounts of cash for properties where they spend a week a year because they are laundering money.

It makes no economic sense otherwise:

Properties over $5 million would be subject to the tax surcharge, starting at 0.5 percent of the home value to a maximum rate of 4 percent on homes above $25 million. A part-time owner of a $10 million unit, for example, would have to shell out an extra $45,000 a year.

These guys blow more money than that on a birthday party.

They object to the tax because they want to be worshiped, and taxes are antithetical to this.

F%$# them.

From the Department of “About F%$#ing Time”

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They aren’t calling it that, of course, they are calling it a “Tax on non-resident owners,” but basically, it’s money laundering: (The London property market even more so)

Pressure to find revenue to finance a $40 billion fix for New York’s subways, buses and regional commuter rail has sparked renewed city and state interest in a tax on wealthy non-residents who own luxury city apartments.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget director, Robert Mujica, jump-started the idea Wednesday in a statement that totaled up potential revenue sources for regional transit funding: $15 billion from congestion pricing, $5 billion from Internet sales, and $2 billion from yet-to-be-legalized cannabis. The so-called “pied-à-terre tax” on non-resident owners could raise as much as $9 billion, Mujica said.

………

Mayor Bill de Blasio has preferred a millionaires’ income tax on city residents. Since that proposal hasn’t received support in the legislature, the mayor said Thursday he could back the luxury-apartment tax.

………

The proposal has been opposed by the Real Estate Board of New York, the trade group for an industry that accounts for more than 30 percent of the city’s tax revenue. The board has said it would harm the city’s economy by suppressing investment, cutting jobs and lowering demand for high-priced apartment towers.

 Mandy Rice-Davies applies to the statement by the Real Estate Board of New York, “Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they?”

If there is a sure fire way to destroy your community, it is pandering to realtors, developers, and bankers.

Speaking of Evil Companies Seeking Taxpayer Handouts………

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Alphabet, the parent of Google, has a subsidiary called Sidewalk Labs, pitched a redevelopment project on the Toronto waterfront.

Well, their proposal has now been leaked, and their plans involve tax-kickbacks from the city and control over an area 10 times larger than they would develop:

Plans for a high tech Toronto community led by an Alphabet Inc.-backed entity should be scrapped, say politicians and prominent Canadian business and technology leaders.

In the wake of a leaked report last week that revealed Sidewalk Labs’ interest in laying claim to developer fees and taxes usually routed to the city in exchange for funding Toronto’s waterfront transit, longtime critics of the project said it is time to revisit whether the project should continue to move forward.

………

In addition to funding a light rail transit line, the latest round of ideas floated by Sidewalk includes plans to provide infrastructure to a waterfront area bigger than, but surrounding, Quayside.

City councillor Gord Perks, who represents the west-end Parkdale-High Park neighbourhood, has long fretted about Sidewalk’s data privacy policies, lack of transparency and desires around solid waste and transportation, but considered Thursday’s revelations around it wanting to fund a light rail transit line a “confirmation of our worst fears.”

“The three governments who are involved should halt the process with Google and go to the public and say we have an area of land as big as the downtown, what would you like to do?” he told The Canadian Press.

………

Among those who were calling for the project’s cancellation Monday was Bianca Wylie, the co-founder of the advocacy group Tech Reset Canada, who has long been advocating for the project to end.

“It should absolutely be shut down, but the reason for that isn’t what was in the plan. It’s the process,” she said. “There has been inadequate transparency from the very beginning.”

Despite Sidewalk hosting several meetings to collect public feedback, Wylie has long worried about the company being secretive with its plans — its transit ideas were only shared after slide decks containing the concepts were leaked to media — and is concerned about the breadth of topics Sidewalk has been lobbying all three levels of government on.

………

Developer Julie Di Lorenzo, who resigned from the Waterfront Toronto board over the project, also cast aspersions on the integrity of the project and its future.

“They are trying again to act like a master developer of hundreds of acres of lands that belong to The City of Toronto and its residents. Its outrageous,” she told The Canadian Press.

“Those monies belong to our democratically elected governments and property owners. Every time Sidewalk shows us a map, the land area they ‘need’ gets bigger.”

This is what happens when you get so rich that you start to belong your own bullsh%$.

It appears that Doug Ford, Ontario Premier and brother of the late crack smoking mayor of Toronto, is implacably opposed to such a deal, which segues nicely into the sort of, “Culture wars against latte liberals,” politics that he has promulgated.

Moron

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Writing in Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein describes Amazon’s hissy fit in New York as a, “Political Mugging,” implying that somehow public comment on the deal was a mark of the lack of civility in today’s political discourse.

Of course you do, Mr. Perlstein, Jeff Bezos is paying you to write such tripe as, “There is little doubt that poor and working-class New Yorkers would have benefited from Amazon’s presence,” and, “That money would have allowed New York to quickly recoup the $3 billion in tax breaks it gave to Amazon, with plenty left over to expand infrastructure, help the needy or build more affordable housing.”

This is simply false.

Even in the most Panglossian scenarios, payback is somewhere between 75 years and never, and as to those poor and working class that Steven professes so much concern about would be driven out of their neighborhoods by increasing rents, and the small businesses that would have to pay higher taxes to accommodate those subsidies, and the services that the people that would be coming in.

There are any number of reasons to argue about either side of this argument, but bald faced lies are not a good faith argument.

Oh, You Delicate Snowflakes

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It looks like Amazon little fee-fees are getting hurt by criticism from some New York politicians, and it is threatening to take its balls* and go home.

The undeservedly wealthy and powerful are just SO sensitive:

Amazon.com is reconsidering its plan to bring 25,000 jobs to a new campus in New York City following a wave of opposition from local politicians, according to two people familiar with the company’s thinking.

The company has not leased or purchased office space for the project, making it easy to withdraw its commitment. Unlike in Virginia — where elected leaders quickly passed an incentive package for a separate headquarters facility — final approval from New York state is not expected until 2020.

Tennessee officials have also embraced Amazon’s plans to bring 5,000 jobs to Nashville, which this week approved $15.2 million in road, sewer and other improvements related to that project.

Amazon executives have had internal discussions recently to reassess the situation in New York and explore alternatives, said the two people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly about the company’s perspective.

“The question is whether it’s worth it if the politicians in New York don’t want the project, especially with how people in Virginia and Nashville have been so welcoming,” said one person familiar with the company’s plans.

Let me guess, this, “Person familiar with the company’s plans,” has a name that sounds a lot like, “Splif Cheetos.”

Amazon supporters are aghast that local New York politicians — including Gianaris and Van Bramer — have turned against the company.

They are aghast I tell you, aghast, that they are not being properly worshiped.

Who the f%$# do they think they are?  My cats?

*As an aside, you can see Amazon’s balls in their full glory on the website of the National Enquirer.

Thank You James Tobin

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Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) is proposing a transaction tax on financial transactions.
This tax, called a “Tobin Tax”, after its creator, Nobel Prize winning economist James Tobin, would serve to disincentivize speculative activities:

Wall Street would bear the brunt of the latest tax proposal as Democrats jockey for the most progressive tax ideas with the approach of the 2020 elections.

Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, is working on a plan that would tax financial trades, according to his spokesman, Michael Inacay, who declined to provide details on how, exactly, it would be structured.

Financial transaction taxes typically place a levy of a fraction of a percent on the price of a securities trade. The idea has gained popularity within the Democratic Party as a way to curb high-frequency trading as well as raise revenue for progressive policies such as free college tuition.

………

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, another 2020 presidential candidate, as well as Sanders, has backed plans that would tax financial trades. The revenue of a tax set at 0.1 percent of the value of a securities trade is estimated to raise about $777 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Overseas, the idea for a tax on financial trades in gaining steam. Stock buyers in Europe would pay a 0.2 percent tax under a plan that Germany and France proposed last month.

Of course, such a tax might not raise that much money, because it would serve to discourage reckless speculation.

To quote Randall Munroe, “Mission f%$#ing accomplished.:

Assuming that it is properly structured, so, for example, short sellers would have to pay for each of their 4 transactions, (borrow, sell, buy, return) any revenue shortfall would be just fine with me.

I Hope That This Means Something

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The New York State Senate has appointed a vociferous critic of Amazon “HQ2” deal to the Public Authorities Control Board, which has the power to stop the deal.

I think that there are a couple of things going on here, first the Senate is feeling its oats in challenging a governor of their own party who attempted to keep the body in Republican hands, and second, after the Foxconn debacle in Wisconsin, this deal has become much less popular with the general public.

In either case, :

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and newly emboldened Democrats in the State Senate appeared headed for open warfare on Monday over a plan to bring Amazon to New York City after the Senate leader named a critic of the $3 billion deal to a state board that could scuttle it.

 The decision to choose the critic, Senator Michael Gianaris, for the board immediately presented a direct political challenge for Mr. Cuomo — who must decide whether to refuse the Senate’s selection. And it demonstrated the ability of the Democrat-led State Legislature to call into question the governor’s control over the kinds of state boards that, in recent years, he had been mostly able to bend to his will.

 ………

 Mr. Cuomo could reject the pick, though doing so could create a protracted standoff with the Senate leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and her fellow Democrats. Already, the battle lines were hardening on Monday as Mr. Cuomo’s office reacted angrily to Mr. Gianaris’s appointment.

 ………

 It was yet another sour note in the Amazon deal. Company executives have bristled at the intense criticism and, last week at a City Council hearing, seemed to float the notion that Amazon could reconsider its commitment to New York.

 The ability of a local legislator to block the deal to bring a major new Amazon campus to Long Island City was exactly what Mr. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio had tried to avoid when they decided to use a state development process and to bypass more onerous city rules. Opposition, while vocal, seemed futile.

 But now, with the insistence of Senate Democrats on appointing Mr. Gianaris to the little-known Public Authorities Control Board, those who want to stop Amazon from coming to Queens have gotten their most tangible boost yet. The board will have to decide on the development plan for Amazon, Mr. Cuomo has said, and could veto it.

 ………

 The obscure state board does have a history of blocking major deals: 14 years ago, it helped derail former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plans for a new stadium in Manhattan.

 ………

 He would be one of three voting members of the board; any voting member of the board has the power to stop projects that come before it.

………

Lawmakers have used the Public Authorities Control Board — whose voting members are appointed by the Senate, the Assembly and the governor — as a roadblock to big projects before. In 2005, Mr. Bloomberg saw his plan for a stadium on the West Side of Manhattan, part of the city’s bid to host the 2012 Olympics, shot down in front of the board by the vote of one state lawmaker, Sheldon Silver, who was then the Assembly speaker. Mr. Silver said he could not support a deal that could harm the district in Lower Manhattan that he represented.

(emphasis mine)

I doesn’t help that Amazon has stated that it will continue to aggressively sabotage any unionization efforts in the state.

F%$# Me. I Agree with Joe F%$#ing Liebarman

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For most of the nation’s history, the most common way to read court filings was to travel to the courthouse itself, pull up a desk in the clerk’s office, and leaf through them by hand. This was hardly a convenient system, especially if you lived in a far-flung rural area or lacked the resources to travel to a nearby courthouse for the task. But it was still an impressive one. Public access was a core principle of the American federal judiciary, which absorbed both the Founders’ disdain for secretive British courts and their belief in the democratic virtue of open legal proceedings.

Then came the Public Access to Court Electronic Records system in the 1990s. In theory, the federal courts’ electronic docket system—known universally as PACER—allows anyone with an internet connection to call up the motions, briefs, orders, and appendices for virtually any federal court case. The interface has not evolved with the times. In an age of sleek, minimalist web design, PACER is a clunky and nonintuitive portal into the courts’ inner workings. What’s more, it’s overcharging its users.

Now a medley of legal advocacy groups, media outlets, and former politicians and judges are asking the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals to rein in excessive PACER fees. Some of the organizations argue that the current payment structure violates federal e-government laws that prohibit unnecessary fees. Others see the fees as a threat to judicial transparency and openness. What’s ultimately at stake is the ability for Americans—including journalists and defendants—to fully participate in the nation’s legal system.

Three legal nonprofit groups—the National Veterans Legal Services Program, the National Consumer Law Center, and Alliance for Justice—filed a class action lawsuit against the federal government in 2016 to challenge PACER’s fee structure. They argued that by charging more than the marginal costs to keep the system functional, the judiciary had run afoul of a federal law dedicating PACER’s fees solely to that purpose. “Instead of complying with the law, the [federal judiciary] has used excess PACER fees to cover the costs of unrelated projects—ranging from audio systems to flat screens for jurors—at the expense of public access,” they told the district court in 2016.

“Anyone who wants to be able to access the documents that are essential to understanding the way our court system works has to pay these fees,” Brianne Gorod, the chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, told me. The organization filed a friend-of-the-court brief on behalf of former Senator Joe Lieberman, the 2002 law’s original sponsor. “What that means is that one’s ability to access these documents—to read the briefs that the courts use when making decisions, to understand why courts are doing what they do—is going to turn on one’s financial situation.”

F%$# me.

I am on the same side as Joe Lieberman.

I feel so dirty.

Have a Nice Glass of Shut the F%$# Up, Alan

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After nearly blowing up the world 10 years ago, Alan Greenspan seems to think that there are still people who give a crap what he thinks:

Raising the marginal tax rate on the richest Americans to 70 percent would put a major dent in the economy, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Monday.

During an interview with the CBS program “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez proposed that such a levy be imposed to pay for what she calls a “Green New Deal” to slash carbon emissions and ultimately wean the U.S. off its reliance on fossil fuels.

The tax would apply to those earning more than $10 million a year, a group that currently pays the top marginal tax rate of 37 percent.

Without getting into the details, Greenspan said the move would have dire consequences.

………

When it comes to taxes, Greenspan said the measure passed in 2017 “was an excellent tax cut” though Congress failed to come up with a way to pay for it. He noted that the U.S. budget deficit for fiscal 2018 is likely to hit $1 trillion due in large part to entitlement burdens that lawmakers have not addressed.

It appears that Ayn Rand’s biggest fan doesn’t give a sh%$ about deficits unless there is a possibility that they might help poor people.

This is a man whose take on financial fraud was that the market would take of the problem.

Please, Alan Greenspan, shut the F%$# Up.

Today in Unclear Headlines

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In. the publication Deutsche Welle, they headline a story as,  “Germany mulls introducing ′mosque tax′ for Muslims,” which makes it look like one of the increasingly bigoted steps against Muslims in Europe.

In reality, it constitutes an official recognition, and state subsidy being extended to the religion:

Lawmakers from Germany’s grand coalition government said on Wednesday that they were considering introducing a “mosque tax” for German Muslims, similar to the church taxes that German Christians pay.

Thorsten Frei, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) told Die Welt daily that a mosque tax was “an important step” that would allow “Islam in Germany to emancipate itself from foreign states.”

In Germany, church taxes are collected from practicing Catholics and Protestants in order to fund church activities. They are collected by the state and then transferred to religious authorities.

The justification is that this would reduce the dependence of the German Muslim community on the largess of the House of Saud.

In the absence of a similar tax, mosques in Germany are reliant upon donations, raising concerns about possible financing by foreign organizations and governments, which has sometimes prompted questions about the promotion of fundamentalist ideologies. For example, there has been growing concern about the influence of the Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs (DITIB), an arm of the Turkish government based in Germany.

I do not approve of the policy, I believe that church and state should be separate, but if such a policy exists, then it should apply to mosques, particularity as the effect of Saudi Money is corrosively Medieval.

Nice Troll, Dude

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The head of the 5-Star movement in Italy has suggested that France is risking budget sanctions from the EU because of Macron’s capitulation to protesters.

There is no real risk for France though, because, as Orwell observed, “Some are more equal than others,” but you have to admire the quality of the trolling:

Emmanuel Macron’s decision to make costly concessions to French protesters has prompted angry recriminations in Italy and Germany, where political leaders signalled Paris’ new spending plans could intensify Europe’s tense fiscal debate.

Luigi Di Maio, a leader of Italy’s populist government, said that France should be punished for breaching the EU’s deficit limits after Mr Macron promised tax cuts and handouts that could cost up to €10bn, arguing Rome was being sanctioned for similar “emergency” budget plans.

Mr Macron’s measures, designed to assuage the gilets jaunes protesters, would “cause a widening of the deficit” and should require the European Commission to “also open a case against France, if the rules apply to all,” said Mr Di Maio, head of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement.

Italy is in the middle of a bruising fight with Brussels over its breach of promised spending limits, with the European Commission calling the populist coalition’s new spending plans an “unprecedented” breach of its budgetary rules.

The real problem here is not the deficit, of course, it is that the EU is dominated by Germany, and failed German economics, and like the last disastrous turn, we are seeing the rise of Fascism in Europe as a result.

A Good Start

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Progressive Democrats, most notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), managed to stop Nancy Pelosi’s hair hare-brained scheme to require a super-majority to raise taxes:

House Democrats have backed off a proposed rule that would have made it more difficult for them to raise taxes and pass their most ambitious goals, an early victory for the left-flank of the party that is about to take control of the House.

Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), incoming chair of the House Rules Committee, told lawmakers Tuesday he will not advance “supermajority” rules requiring three-fifths majorities to approve tax hikes for most taxpayers, according to Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

An existing rule created by House Republicans requires a three-fifths supermajority vote in the House to approve any income tax increase. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other Democratic leaders proposed leaving the supermajority intact for most taxpayers, while scrapping the requirement for the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans and for corporations. But some liberal organizations and lawmakers said that did not go far enough, arguing that even the weaker rule would make it nearly impossible to enact progressive legislation such as Medicare-for-All or free universal college.

“We’re very glad to see that one go away,” said Pocan, who added the progressive caucus repeatedly expressed their disapproval of the proposal. “We ran in 2018 on increasing access to health care, and increasing people’s wages. … Anything that took us off this conversation does not serve us well.”

The fight comes amid a broader battle in the Democratic Party over taxes, as an incoming crop of freshman lawmakers push the party to embrace social programs that require larger tax increases. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) were the first two Democratic lawmakers to publicly express their opposition to the rule.

The New Democrat types like to posture on the deficit, and they HATE doing anything that helps ordinary Americans, and this rule achieved both.

Now let’s kill Pay-Go.

Understanding the Yellow Vest Movement

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We can talk about what is, and is not, causing this phenomenon, but at its core, it boils down to this statement, “France’s Gas Tax Disaster Shows We Can’t Save Earth by Screwing Over Poor People.”

French President Emanuel Macron has been cutting taxes on the rich, and raising taxes on everyone else, ever since entering office.

This is a well deserved smack-down of an investment banker who has seen his role as making life easier for other investment bankers.

Nancy Pelosi Needs to be Fired ……… Out of a Cannon ……… Into the Sun

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It looks like Nancy Pelois’s first policy initiative will be to make the House Democrats even more useless than they already are:

This week, Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi unveiled a list of new procedural rules that her caucus intends to implement when the next Congress is seated. Most of these measures are unobjectionable “good government” reforms. But one of them would create a new — and all-but-insurmountable — obstacle to the passage of many of the policies that the Democratic Party claims to support.

The rule, proposed by Pelosi and Massachusetts representative Richard Neal, would “require a three-fifths supermajority to raise individual income taxes on the lowest-earning 80 percent of taxpayers.”

………

Alas, there are several problems with this argument. For one thing, while progressives are committed to increasing the discretionary income of the bottom 80 percent, that does not necessarily mean keeping their tax rates frozen at historically low levels. Currently, for much of the American middle class, health-insurance premiums function as a steadily rising tax. A bill that required those households to pay a new, smaller monthly sum to the government — so as to fund a single-payer system that would actually reduce their cost of living by delivering radically cheaper health-care services — could hardly be called regressive. And the same can be said for legislation establishing universal child care, paid family leave, or any other program aimed at easing the middle class’s financial burdens by dramatically expanding the public sector’s ambitions. Equating support for middle-class families — with opposition to increasing their tax rates — is a conservative project, which Democrats have no business advancing. If the party wishes to establish structural barriers to policies that would hurt the middle class, why not require a three-fifths majority to cut Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security?

………

All this would be a bit less problematic if the Democratic Party had overcome its allergy to deficit spending (and/or accepted Modern Monetary Theory as its personal truth). But it hasn’t: In addition to forbidding tax increases on the bottom 80 percent, Pelosi has vowed to honor the “pay as you go” rule, which requires the House to fully finance any and all new government spending.

Taken together, these two requirements could make Medicare for All impossible to pass out of the House. ………

In the best case, Nancy Pelosi has decided to throw her lot with the Wall Street Bob Rubin Democrats, and in the worst case, she has been in Washington, DC for so long that she has lost touch with reality.

In either case, it is time for her to go now.