h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

These days, I am losing all sense of time. I see now that it is getting late on your side of the Pond. I shall wish you good night, and I shall try to catch you later this week.

One for the road,and happy sleep!!!

My best to your family as well!!

saw a doc on tv the eighties trump interveiw asked would you want to be president, reply not every intersested in govement let alone president lol jim

That's regression to the mean, which refers to the maddening tendency of things to eventually average out. If Obama was the best we were likely to have, keeping the average going meant that one of the worst would succeed him. Not that Trump has no redeeming qualities, but we're too close to the situation to appreciate them as well as someone 30 or 40 years hence might. I see some things I like in the recently-passed tax bill, but also some things I don't like. The economy will get some stimulation from the tax cuts. If they're inflationary, we'll see some higher bond yields, which will please some sectors of the public, even if those yields get eroded by inflation.

The Tax Scam will be a disaster. Almost all of the benefits will go to the wealthiest 1%, and the tax breaks for working class people are temporary. Any tax savings I'm likely to see will be more than erased by increased health care costs. Huge tax cuts combined with increased deficit spending on military and border security will explode the already mindbogglingly huge national debt. Trickle down economics has never worked. The Tax Scam is nothing but a payoff for republicans' wealthy individual and corporate donors. The Koch brothers gave Paul Ryan and other republican congressmen half a million as a gratuity shortly following passage of their tax bill. They expect to receive huge returns on their investment.

But that's just my opinion, who wants pie?

I know some well-heeled people who will pay a lot more because the deductions for combined state and local taxes are capped at $10,000. If you live in a state with a five percent income tax, exceeding $5,000 n state taxes will likely happen before your income exceeds $100,000. Likewise, local property taxes can easily exceed $5,000. Whether these higher taxes are offset by other provisions of the tax plan, I don't know. Maybe the higher standard deductions will help.

The elimination of the taxes paid by people who can afford to pay for health care but don't want to? That's just a silly thing to get rid of, because ldeficits will be higher without the money taken in by that tax. And once inflation raises its ugly head, federal deficits will be more expensive to pay down, as Treasury securities will have to offer higher rates in order to attract customers.

Trump, of course, has problems of his own.

Not least, saddled with almost identically the same 'stick in the mud' congress Obama had.

I don't know about that. Today he refused to enact a law passed by an almost unanimous congress to enforce further sanctions on Russia and the oligarchs close to Putin.

Sounds rather sensible Alassla is only a short boat trip

Akaska cat on keybord

Congressional Representatives and Senators may be nominally Democrats or Republicans, but they're almost uniformly terrified of a Presidency unleashed, after what happened back in the LBJ and Nixon eras (the Claire Booth Luce era).

Have you noticed there's been a recent reorganization at MGM, by the way?

http://youtu.be/9t2_Clln1so

https://youtu.be/9t2_Clln1so

hijacked

Hi-jacked?

Nowt new in my threads!


lil xx

Welcome back, Lil. You were sorely missed.

"Today he refused to enact a law passed by an almost unanimous congress to enforce further sanctions on Russia and the oligarchs close to Putin"
[Baron Grim]

Chances are, the congress would have enough votes to override Trump's veto.

Oh, they absolutely do; there were only 5 votes against it in both houses.

But he didn't veto it. He is refusing to obey it. He half-assedly partially complied by publishing a list of Russian oligarchs that he sourced by simply plagiarizing a Forbes list of the richest Russians, but he's claiming that the mere threat of sanctions is as good as implementing the actual sanctions.

Is the fact that he reads Forbes a good sign or a bad sign?

Who said anything about reading Forbes?

Oh... I did. I was thinking about the other mention of Trump and Forbes together this week.


But seriously, I'm sure he just had some toady retype the names for him.

Be careful not to throw those in the wrong direction