Bear Pit: now the sole domicile of politics at LuLa

[digitaldog]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/15/trump-nft-digital-cards-presidency/
Trump University/Steaks and now this. At least Photoshop got used:

[Chris Kern]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/12/15/trump-nft-digital-cards-presidency/
Trump University/Steaks and now this. At least Photoshop got used:

Hold on a minute.  Are you insinuating this isn't a serious investment?  How could anyone resist an opportunity like this?

[Robert Roaldi]

Hold on a minute.  Are you insinuating this isn't a serious investment?  How could anyone resist an opportunity like this?

Guys, guys, this should be in the humour thread.

[Robert Roaldi]

"Free speech absolutist" Elon Musk de-platforms inconvenient journalists, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63996061. Is this irony or hypocrisy, I can't decide.

There is one good aspect to this, I think. It might put an end to the incorrect view that privately owned media are public places. It should also put an end to the notion that social media de-platforming and government suppression (what free speech used to be about) are not the same thing.

I heard another take on an aspect of this on a podcast the other day (sorry, I can't remember which one). It was a counter to the notion that social media "freedom" means that anything goes (you know, the kind of thing that a 12 year old thinks is freedom). The speaker pointed out that one of the reasons that people participate in social media is because IT IS moderated. No one wants to be in a place filled with nutbars and whackadoodles or worse. Maybe any media that relaxes moderation too much will eventually disappear because no one sane will want to be on them, "absolutism" aside.

There is another minor benefit to this kind of drama. Maybe, just maybe, it might end the absurd habit our culture has of exulting the thoughts of people just because they're rich. Being able to build a profitable business on the web is no easy feat. But it doesn't mean that the creator is a great thinker on social matters or that they even understand the basic principles.

[digitaldog]

Just in case there was any doubt about the stupidity of many Americans to a carnival barker:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3777969-trumps-digital-cards-sell-out-within-a-day/

Former President Trump’s digital trading cards have sold out less than 24 hours after he first announced they were available.
As of Friday morning, the site selling the non-fungible tokens (NFTs) says they are sold out, and links to purchase the digital cards are no longer available.

[Chris Kern]

Just in case there was any doubt about the stupidity of many Americans to a carnival barker:

"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public."

   — attributed to H.L. Mencken.

[Robert Roaldi]

Just in case there was any doubt about the stupidity of many Americans to a carnival barker:

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/3777969-trumps-digital-cards-sell-out-within-a-day/

Bending over backwards to be fair, selling 45,000 of the things for $4.46 million is not a bad haul, is it. Legal too. I'm a little jealous.

But is 45,000 a low enough number for them to be considered collectibles with real value. I watch Antiques Roadshow now and then and people collect all kinds of worthless ugly junk. But if someone else also wants the same junk, you have a market.

I think he priced them right. At $100 each, they're not too expensive to keep away speculators. I suspect that amount is probably pretty normal for Vegas high rollers, for example. People blow lots of money on all kinds of crap every day.

[faberryman]

I am convinced that Trump released his digital trading cards when he did because Harry and Meghan have taken over the celebrity press and Trump simply can't stand being out of the limelight*. For the past couple of weeks there has been at least one and sometimes four stories about the H&M** docudrama in my newsfeed every morning. Notwithstanding the titillating previews, I have resisted the urge to tune in and see how it turns out. I have been wasting my time instead watching this Finnish noir crime series called Bordertown. It did get me to thinking about maybe shooting Netflix an email to see if they would pay me $100,000,000 to tell everyone about this time my brother yelled at me. Then I remembered I didn't have a brother. Some people have all the luck. The big winner in all of this though is Pottery Barn, which seems to have done the set design. I heard Netflix had to to rent a house to do the shoot because Harry and Meghan's house wasn't big enough. I thought these (ex) royals were zillionaires.

*So I was wondering why they call it limelight instead of lemonlight or something. The internet provided the answer:

"In the early 1800's, theater stages were lit by heating a cylinder of the mineral called lime — the result was an intensely bright white light. The word limelight came to have its figurative meaning of "at the center of attention" in 1877."

I am still trying to track down what happened in 1877.

** As badly as I know they want to, Harry and Meghan are not going to be able to trademark H&M because the mark is already taken by a Swedish clothing company. They have three locations when I live. I was looking at the line of men's clothing they offer. It is comprised of 268 different (sort of) hoodies. The one that really stood out had Homer Simpson on the front. Harry would probably look good in that one. Unfortunately, there wasn't a matching hoodie for Meghan with Marge Simpson on it, though there was a woman's hoodie with Homer, Marge, Bart and Lisa which might work. Sort of a Windsor family hoodie. I wonder if Harry and Meghan's nicknames for Archie and Lilibet are Bart and Lisa? Maybe that's what Megxit is really all about; Harry and Meghan's obsession with the Simpsons. Perhaps they wanted to call the Queen Mona and she wasn't having it. You never really know what's going on behind the scenes with these royals.

[Robert Roaldi]

Some headlines are too revealing for words, https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/3778585-gop-lawmakers-say-trump-electability-problem-is-behind-cratering-support/.

So it's not his behaviour or character or the things that he has done that stand in the way of them supporting him, it's his "electability". Now there's some high ideals!

[marvpelkey]

Just happened to be switching the channels and passed through CNN, where they were announcing that the Ways and Means Committee was releasing Trump's tax returns.

Although I have absolutely nothing nice to say about Trump, can someone explain to me how it is OK for some arm of the government to release the returns of any person.

I realize Trump refused to release his returns after promising same, he failed to undergo the required Presidential tax audits by the IRS, and likely broke most tax laws over the years, but is not the privacy of a person's tax information one of the more important tenets of American culture? What is the justification for releasing them to the public?

Marv

 

[digitaldog]

The justification we Americans need to “know“and why Congress should write a law all presidents must):

https://www.americanprogress.org/article/president-trump-cannot-hide-tax-returns-congress/

In part:

On Election Day 2016, the American people did not know that throughout 2015 and 2016, Donald Trump had been pursuing a Trump Tower Moscow deal that could gain him as much as $300 million in profits. The public did not know about the deal, because Trump and his campaign repeatedly lied about it.2 The extent of Trump’s dealings with Russia, or with other foreign governments or interests, remains unclear—and Trump’s finances in general are still murky.

Under these circumstances, it is not only appropriate but also vital to the functioning of our democracy for Congress to seek an answer to the basic question: Is President Trump working for the interests of the country, or himself? As this report explains, Congress cannot adequately answer that question without first obtaining and reviewing his tax returns.

The House Ways and Means Committee has the discretion to make tax information public

IRC Section 6103(f) also gives Congress the discretion to make tax returns or return information public in appropriate circumstances. Professor Yin describes this as Congress’ public “informing function.”27 The relevant statutory text reads:

[Rhossydd]

Although I have absolutely nothing nice to say about Trump, can someone explain to me how it is OK for some arm of the government to release the returns of any person.

In all the four Nordic countries - Sweden, Norway, Finland & Denmark - ALL tax returns are public forever. In Norway, they are even available on the web.
Therefore these four countries have the least corruption in the world.

What do you choose? Openness or corruption?

[PeterAit]

Just happened to be switching the channels and passed through CNN, where they were announcing that the Ways and Means Committee was releasing Trump's tax returns.

Although I have absolutely nothing nice to say about Trump, can someone explain to me how it is OK for some arm of the government to release the returns of any person.

I realize Trump refused to release his returns after promising same, he failed to undergo the required Presidential tax audits by the IRS, and likely broke most tax laws over the years, but is not the privacy of a person's tax information one of the more important tenets of American culture? What is the justification for releasing them to the public?

Marv

If the returns are evaluated only by the Dem-controlled committee, then any malfeasance they find will immediately be dismissed by the Trumplets as partisan, witch hunt, etc. By making them public, they can be examined by hundreds of independent, non-partisan experts and the findings will have much more legitimacy.

[digitaldog]

What we know so far:

After years of reporting large losses, according to the New York Times investigation, Trump reported a stunning reversal of fortune during the middle two years of his presidency that led to a considerable tax bill, according to the report from the Joint Committee on Taxation released Tuesday night.

The $1.1 million Trump paid in federal income taxes in 2018 and 2019 stand in stark contrast to the $750 he paid in 2017 and $0 in 2020.

Trump’s tax bill grew substantially as his income surged in 2018 and 2019. For example, Trump reported a $22 million capital gain in 2018 and a $9 million gain in 2019 from asset sales, sending his income into the black following years of enormous losses.

In 2015 and 2016, Trump reported he lost more than $32 million each year. In 2017, Trump said he lost nearly $13 million. But he reported taxable income of $24 million in 2018 and more than $4 million in 2019, giving him a sizeable tax bill.

Trump has leveraged massive losses he accumulated over the years to zero out his tax liabilities, as previously shown by a New York Times investigation. For example, the JCT noted that Trump carried forward $105 million in losses on his 2015 return, $73 million in 2016, $45 million in 2017 and $23 million in 2018.

“It’s the 2,000-pound gorilla. … He still uses the net operating losses” to reduce his tax liability,” Rosenthal said.

And once again, in 2020, as the pandemic raged on, Trump reported a loss of nearly $5 million. He paid $0 in federal income taxes that year.

[Robert Roaldi]

Just happened to be switching the channels and passed through CNN, where they were announcing that the Ways and Means Committee was releasing Trump's tax returns.

Although I have absolutely nothing nice to say about Trump, can someone explain to me how it is OK for some arm of the government to release the returns of any person.

I realize Trump refused to release his returns after promising same, he failed to undergo the required Presidential tax audits by the IRS, and likely broke most tax laws over the years, but is not the privacy of a person's tax information one of the more important tenets of American culture? What is the justification for releasing them to the public?

Marv

I get what you're saying and I have no knowledge of American privacy laws, if there are any. We should not assume there are. But in general I'm wary about being doctrinaire about what we think of as rights. For example, there are self-declared free speech absolutists on the prowl these days. But is that a real thing in law or just some convenient made-up concept? As an example of what I mean by that, consider the recent Musk pronouncements on free speech, that people should be able to say whatever they want. That's utter hokum, but because he's rich, people pay attention to what he writes, as if he knows something about the subject. But when push came to shove, when people criticized him on his own company's "pages", he de-platformed them. Imo, that tells you all you need to know about free speech "absolutism". They took the concept of the government not being allowed to act against you for what you believe and tried to stretch the concept into areas in which it does not belong. That doesn't mean they can't succeed though, the "body politic" does dumb shit all the time.

Would a "privacy absolutist" position make real-world sense? Wouldn't that make it almost impossible to prosecute any crime? How could you go after people who don't pay their taxes without getting access to their private info. In general I get it that you (and me) don't like that the authorities can make my privacy info public. But if you're running for high office, isn't it more important that people know how you got your money and to whom you owe favours? Surely that supersedes any candidate's right to privacy. Otherwise, you're just setting up a system to facilitate crooks. Surely society's needs in that case matter more than the individual's privacy rights. I think it's a mistake to make any concept sacred, including individual rights, no matter how much it appeals.

[Chris Kern]

Although I have absolutely nothing nice to say about Trump, can someone explain to me how it is OK for some arm of the government to release the returns of any person. . . .  I realize Trump refused to release his returns after promising same, he failed to undergo the required Presidential tax audits by the IRS, and likely broke most tax laws over the years, but is not the privacy of a person's tax information one of the more important tenets of American culture?

United States federal tax returns are by law generally confidential, but there is an explicit statutory exemption for the release of tax returns and related information by the Internal Revenue Service to specified committees of the U.S. Congress: 26 U.S.C. § 6103(f)(1).  The decision by the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives to publicly disclose redacted versions of some of Trump's tax information—after eliminating certain personal information considered subject to exploitation—was controversial, and passed on a party-line vote (i.e., all of the Democratic representatives and none of the Republicans).  But there is precedent for doing this and the issues regarding Trump's compliance or noncompliance with the requirements of U.S. tax law during his tenure as president were cited by the proponents as the justification for the disclosure.

[marvpelkey]

I agree with pretty well everything which has been provided in your replies. And I agree that there should be some mechanism to allow the public to scrutinize financial records of those who serve them, and for reasons already given.

However, one would think Congress should have long ago enacted laws that require this so, as pointed out, a partisan action cannot be challenged by the other side. It should be a routine requirement and, perhaps, members of Congress also be required.

I was just a little surprised that a body of the government, which has for the longest time shown an extreme dislike for Trump, had the power to choose whether to release or not. Just seems to make it so partisan.

Having said all that, I think it serves the public immensely.

Marv

 

[digitaldog]

But there is precedent for doing this and the issue regarding Trump's compliance or noncompliance with the requirements of U.S. tax law during his tenure as president were cited by the proponents as the justification for the disclosure.

Exactly, and it happened to a crook who couldn't compare to Trump: Richard Nixon. By bipartisan support at the time.

[Robert Roaldi]

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However, one would think Congress should have long ago enacted laws that require this so, as pointed out, a partisan action cannot be challenged by the other side. It should be a routine requirement and, perhaps, members of Congress also be required..
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I know what you mean. I was astonished that by electing certain state level officials, some people seemed to think that they could engineer the overturning of electoral college votes, in effect nullifying citizen's votes. People pursued this tactic in plain sight and it seemed to be legal. I would have thought that election procedures would have been nailed down by now, they are in numerous other countries. Counting votes is kind of a basic thing and it's not rocket science.

[Robert Roaldi]

Well, on the plus side, the GOP Speaker nonsense has kept the Elon Musk soap opera out of the headlines for a few days.