The Wild Colossus

Just like the brazen giant of Greek fame

With conquering limbs astride from sea to sea;

Here at our fear-washed , padlocked gates shall stand

A berserker with a torch, whose flame

Is a firebolt of intolerance, and her name

Forsaker of exiles.  From her beacon hand

Glows world-wide rejection, her wild eyes command

The bridge spanned harbor that twin cities frame.

"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she

With silent lips.  "We reject your tired, disdain your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Hinder these, the homeless, tempest-host, forbid them from me,

I douse my lamp beside the impermeable door!"

I Shit You Not

 “Why are we having all these people from s---hole countries come here?” This is a quote of our esteemed, honorable President, Donald J. Trump.  This is another sterling example of the statesmanship and leadership in which he engages.  The president was referring to people from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras and African countries in the temporary protected status program.  The following are the countries included in the program:  El Salvador, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, Nicaragua, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, Syria & Yemen.  So that you may place these comments into a context I will share what the Temporary Protected Status Program (TPS) is and its aims.      

     The Secretary of Homeland Security may designate a foreign country for TPS due to conditions in the country that temporarily prevent the country's nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately.   The Secretary may designate a country for TPS due to the following temporary conditions in the country:Ongoing armed conflict (such as civil war), An environmental disaster (such as earthquake or hurricane), or an epidemic, Other extraordinary and temporary conditions.     The purpose of the TPS is to provide humanitarian relief.  It does not exist to provide a right to citizenship.  It does allow one to work and pay taxes.  In 2016 there were approximately 153,000 benefactors of this program.  

     He followed this with suggesting that instead, the U.S. should allow more entrants from countries like Norway.  This may be hard to fathom, but Norway does not have any citizens who need to immigrate based on a need for humanitarian relief.  In fact, in 2016 there were only 362 U.S. immigrants with Norwegian citizenship.

     Immigrants from developed countries with industrial capabilities and fully functioning governments are not going to be using TPS.  What they will use is the EB-1/-2/-3/-4/-5 workers visa program.  If one believes immigrants are taking away jobs from Americans, this is the program you should be worried about.  TPS beneficiaries may gain employment.  EB visa holders are brought into the country exclusively to work.  There are approximately 140,000 EB visas issued annually.  There are EB visas issued to citizens of the listed shithole countries.  Is it possible for there to be shithole country citizens who are welcome in the U.S.?

     “Certain Washington politicians choose to fight for foreign countries, but President Trump will always fight for the American people,” said Raj Shah, the principal deputy White House press secretary.      Nobody is fighting FOR any countries.  Some are actually attempting to provide humanitarian aid to those who are hungry, suffering, oppressed, and war weary.  Not every difference in opinion has to be framed as a fight or "war on" or "epidemic", although such rhetoric is prevalent whenever a party desires to make another feel threatened and enlist the other in their cause as if they have a shared enemy.  This strategy has been employed through the centuries and across all borders.  It has been employed as a propaganda tool by democracies, monarchies, and tyrants.

     Also, can a country be a shithole without being a part of the TPS program, or is that the sole qualification?  Furthermore, is this really the type of speech in which you wish to engage in order to facilitate the conduct of foreign affairs?  The countries you refer to as shitholes today are the recipients of aid from and allies to your actual global enemies and competition tomorrow.

     If you are actually curious as to why some of the countries on the TPS are in the state they are you may want to refer 20th century history, especially with reference to U.S. military interventions and U.S. imposed market and economic policies.  

     Whaduyathink?

     

     
     

Massive Voter Fraud!!! Wait..what? Oh, maybe not.

     Apparently, voter fraud is rampant, at least in the United States.  This must be the case because candidate and President Donald Trump has made this claim repeatedly.  The context has been varied.      Allow me to share a few with you.
     January 5, 2016:   "This voting system is out of control. You have people, in my opinion, that are voting many, many times. They don't want security, they don't want cards."
     August 2, 2016:  "We may have people vote 10 times. "  "I’m just saying that I wouldn’t be surprised if the election . . . there’s a lot of dirty pool played at the election, meaning the election is rigged. I would not be surprised."

RUCKER: Do you think someone can vote multiple times?  TRUMP: Multiple times. How about like 10 times.

    October 17, 2016:  "Of course, there is large scale voter fraud happening on and before election day."

     November 27, 2016:  "In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."  "Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire and California - so why isn't the media reporting on this? Serious bias - big problem!"

     January 25, 2017:  "I will be asking for a major investigation into VOTER FRAUD, including those registered to vote in two states, those who are illegal and even, those registered to vote who are dead (and many for a long time). Depending on results, we will strengthen up voting procedures!"     

     There is no credible evidence to support these assertions. Furthermore, there is no credible evidence of large-scale voter fraud occurring in the United States, nor any credible evidence of any large-scale voter fraud having occurred in the 2016 election. Most claims to the contrary have originated on right-wing websites and those claims have not stood up to scrutiny, like an article on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s InfoWars website, which falsely claimed that 3 million undocumented immigrants voted illegally this year.

     May 11, 2017:  Presidential Executive Order on the Establishment of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.  

     Read it, you'll see how POTUS 45 uses the power of his office to attempt to validate his own desires.  Do not be distracted by the prose in which it is couched.  I would also strongly recommend you peruse the meeting minutes this commission has issued.  

     There are many more assertions of this type that have been made since the establishment of the Advisory Commission.  That's a hell of a lot of smoke, there must be a fire.  Evidently not, 

     January 3, 2018:  Executive Order on the Termination of Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity.  What the hell?  Oh, wait, there must be some definitive findings regarding the massive voter fraud taking place in U.S. elections.  Tell us, is it the undocumented immigrants (illegal aliens, for my Republican readers)?  Maybe it is all the dead people.  Could it be the folks who are registered in multiple states and driving amongst those on election day?  No?  Then why are you disbanding?  

     Maybe some realized the only fraud being perpetrated here is the existence of this commission.  Nope, not that either.  “Despite substantial evidence of voter fraud, many states have refused to provide the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with basic information relevant to its inquiry. Rather than engage in endless legal battles at taxpayer expense, today I signed an executive order to dissolve the commission, and have asked the Department of Homeland Security to review these issues and determine next courses of action.” Donald J Trump.

     So, your position is still that voter fraud exists and there is substantial evidence of such.  However, because it is difficult and costly to prove this, you will, metaphorically, take your ball and go home.  Apparently the sanctity of the polling booth is not as firmly held a belief as you have led us to accept it to be.

     The only fraud here is you.  Oh, and your little hands, those are fraudulent appendages.

     Whaduyathink?

     

     

Words that shall not be Spoken

                                        

     The forbidden words are "vulnerable," "entitlement," "diversity," "transgender," "fetus," "evidence-based" and "science-based."  These are the 7 words the Trump administration has advised the CDC (Center for Disease Control) shall not be used in any official documents being prepared for next year's budget.

 

     There have been other lists of forbidden words.  If you are of a certain age you will recall the seven dirty words”.  These are the seven English-language words that American comedian George Carlin first listed in 1972 in his monologue "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television".^[1] The words are: shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, and tits.

     According to a former U.S. Secretary of State, “Censorship gives power to dictators and tyrants; it allows them to mask the truth, to propagate false narratives that play to their self-serving interests.”

     In the 18^th century, an author known as Voltaire offered the following exposition to those who would practice censorship.  “As you have it in your power, sir, to do some service to letters, I implore you not to clip the wings of our writers so closely, nor to turn into barn-door fowls those who, allowed a start, might become eagles; reasonable liberty permits the mind to soar — slavery makes it creep.

     Had there been a literary censorship in Rome, we should have had to-day neither Horace, Juvenal, nor the philosophical works of Cicero. If Milton, Dryden, Pope, and Locke had not been free, England would have had neither poets nor philosophers; there is something positively Turkish in proscribing printing; and hampering it is proscription. Be content with severely repressing defamatory libels, for they are crimes: but so long as those infamous calottes are boldly published, and so many other unworthy and despicable productions, at least allow Bayle to circulate in France, and do not put him, who has been so great an honour to his country, among its contraband.

     You say that the magistrates who regulate the literary custom-house complain that there are too many books. That is just the same thing as if the provost of merchants complained there were too many provisions in Paris. People buy what they choose. A great library is like the City of Paris, in which there are about eight hundred thousand persons: you do not live with the whole crowd: you choose a certain society, and change it. So with books: you choose a few friends out of the many. There will be seven or eight thousand controversial books, and fifteen or sixteen thousand novels, which you will not read: a heap of pamphlets, which you will throw into the fire after you have read them. The man of taste will read only what is good; but the statesman will permit both bad and good.”

      Napoleon claimed that the censorship was based on stopping, “the manifestation of ideas which trouble the peace of the state, its interests and good order.”  Is Trump and/or his administration troubled by the words he has banned from use by the CDC?

     I hear you, let’s just pull back on the reins for a moment.  I’m only talking about words banned from use by 1 agency.  Surely this is not a particularly urgent moment in history.

     Were this the only case of censorship or attempt to intimidate and control functions of the government and public it certainly would not be noteworthy.  However, and unfortunately, that is not the case.

     He (POTUS45) has made extensive use of his bully pulpit to do just that, bully.  He wants to control the narrative in such a manner that he can control all action and reaction.  He has proclaimed the media to be the “enemy of the American people”.  Any reporting which does not reflect favorably upon POTUS and his administration favorably is proclaimed to be “fake news”.  This proclamation has nothing to do with truth or falsehood, but is strictly about image.  If your inauguration crowd is not as impressive as you desire just present “alternative facts”.  “This was the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe,” according to Sean Spicer back in January of this year.  Now, once committed to the lie, he attacked the contrary reports.  Sean accused the press of “deliberately false reporting.”   Staff at the U.S. Department of Agriculture were instructed to censor the terms "climate change," "reduce greenhouse gasses," "sequester carbon," and "climate change adaptation" in their work.  In March, the Department of Energy's international climate office had instructed staff not to use "climate change," "emissions reduction," or "Paris Agreement" in "memos, briefings, or other written communication."  Because, if you don't say the words, the problem doesn't exist.

     If Trump is sincerely concerned about his image and legacy, I would recommend he consider banning the following; tyrant, demagogue, narcissist, defaulter, sexual predator, and adulterer.  This list is not to be considered comprehensive but merely to provide a guide. 

     When George Carlin engaged in adolescent humor by uttering “dirty” words in a public forum, that can be considered either humorous or in poor taste.  When the President of the United States engages in censorship of government offices and attacks upon a free and unfettered press, that is of much more serious consequence.

     Whaduyathink?

The Latest LIE!!!

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

Biggest Tax Bill and Tax Cuts in history just passed in the Senate. Now these great Republicans will be going for final passage. Thank you to House and Senate Republicans for your hard work and commitment!

POTUS made this claim via Twitter at approximately 645 a.m. CDT today December 2, 2017. He has made this claim several times this year. It is still not true. However, such claims by POTUS are consistent with his view that facts are malleable. 

This is not my opinion. POTUS has explicitly made this claim. In The Art of the Deal he says " People want to believe something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration — and a very effective form of promotion." 

 This quote is a variation of "the big lie", also known as "Goebbels’ principle".   The expression was coined by Adolf Hitler, when he dictated his 1925 book Mein Kampf, about the use of a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”

It is also not my opinion that POTUS' claim of the biggest tax bill and tax cut in history is not true.  A 2013 Treasury Department report assessed the size of major tax bills either as a percentage of the economy, by the reduction in federal revenue or in inflation-adjusted dollars. The 1981 Reagan tax cut is the largest under the first two metrics. It was equivalent to 2.9 percent of gross domestic product and reduced federal revenue by 13.3 percent. The 2012 Obama tax cut amounted to the largest cut in inflation-adjusted dollars: $321 billion a year. For Mr. Trump’s tax cut to exceed the Reagan cuts as a share of G.D.P., the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates it would need to cost roughly $6.8 trillion over 10 years. To have a larger effect on revenue, it would need to cost $5.7 trillion. No version of the current tax cut plan meets those benchmarks. The budget blueprint that Republicans released in mid-October, the bill passed in the House in November and the bill currently being considered in the Senate all amount to a tax cut of about $1.5 trillion over 10 years. This would place as the 12th-largest as a share of the economy. If this data is available to me and you, it is certainly available to POTUS.

Whaduyathink?

White House promotes hate, offers legitimacy to recognized hate group

November 14, 2017 WhiteHouse.gov/the-press-office released the following: Immigration Reform Law Institute's Brian Lonergan: "America has seen enough tragedies result from its open boarders".  You may ask, how does this in any way promote hate or legitimize any hate group.

The Office of the Press Secretary evidently felt it was prudent to provide an op-ed piece from The Hill to U.S. citizens via an official executive office platform.  WhiteHouse.gov is not a venue for the promulgation of intolerance and bigotry via the views of a person not a member of the U.S. government.  WhiteHouse.gov is supposed to be a venue to publish official government views and documents.  The list of documents and views it espouses to provide are

Speeches & Remarks

Press Briefings

Statements & Releases

Nominations & Appointments

Presidential Actions

Legislation

Disclosures

This is the list according to the Briefing Room section of WhiteHouse.gov.  There are additional sections of WhiteHouse.gov not germane to this piece.

Here is where the promotion of hate and legitimizing of recognized hate groups comes into play.  The Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) is the affiliated legal organization for the Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR).  FAIR is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPCL) for 2014, 2015, and 2016 and described as  xenophobic, publishing racist propaganda, and/or confronting or harassing immigrants and their supporters.^[

Does the Office of the Press Secretary actually mean to endorse and facilitate the dissemination of unashamedly bigoted and hateful speech and actions?  Is this to be considered the official stance of the United States Government or at least the Executive branch?

And just who the hell is Brian Lonergan.  According to IRLI.org/legal-team Mr. Lonergan joined IRLI in 2017 as Director of Communications. He is a veteran of corporate communications in the Washington, D.C. market and has worked at several trade associations in and around the nation’s capital. Mr. Lonergan has worked in television, print media, podcasting and digital marketing. Most recently he directed communications at the Media Research Center, one of the nation’s premier media watchdog organizations. He started his career as a journalist and has interviewed a long list of public figures from the world of business and politics.

Great, so, at the least, Sarah Huckabee Sanders thinks the views of a media hack/lobbyist are the basis for a sound immigration policy.

Whaduyathink?

TrumpTax Plan for Idiots

Hey, glad to be back with you. 

I've been paying attention to the reform President Trump wants to apply to the current tax code, both personal and corporate.  This has been a major theme of his since he began campaigning.  In fact, he has repeatedly promised to lower the corporate tax rate to 15%.  In fact, let's do the corporate thing first.

“When it comes to the business tax we are dead last, …"  This is technically true.  The statutory corporate tax rate in the U.S.A. is 35%, the highest in the world.  If any corporation paid that it would certainly stifle growth.  However, in perusing the taxes paid by the 10 largest corporations in the Unit4ed States for the past several years I was unable to find any that paid more than 20%.  Most were around 15% and some as low as 5%.  All this information is available in the corporate annual reports.  Let's ignore the POTUS' disingenuous statement and work with 35% as actual accurate and applied number.

So, the 35% is currently proposed to be cut to 20%.  Stop, wait, you say, the President said he would cut the rate to 15%.  He did say that, however, like so many things he has said or promised it has not come to fruition. 

Trump long ago promised to decrease the tax rate to 15% for corporations.  Here's what he said on Wednesday September 27, 2017, "

"In fact, I wanted to start at 15 so that we got to 20,…"

"Twenty is my number, so I'm not negotiating that number," Trump said. "I'm not going to negotiate."

Trump also claimed that 20% was his goal all along, despite advocating for 15% as late as Tuesday.

"That's the number I wanted to get to," the president said. "I wanted to start at 15 to get there. We really had to start there because of the complexity of the numbers, but 20 is a perfect number."

According to the President's own statements he never had any intention of cutting the corporate tax rate 15% although he repeatedly assured America that was his intent.  Oh well, live and learn.

So, we're going to cut 35% to 20% , excellent.  That's a 15% point cut in the statutory rate.  This should result in a reduction of revenue of about 43%.  Just a minute there, how can we have a 43% reduction in revenue when the tax rate was only cut by 15%?  Excellent question young Jedi.  Here's the deal, you were theoretically collecting taxes at a rate of 35%, you will now collect at a rate of 20%, that 15% cut represents 42.85%, let's call it 43% of the rate at which you were collecting.  Here's an example;  35% of $100 is $35.  20% of $100 is $20.  You collected $20 rather than $35, so you collected 20/35 or 57% of your previous collection.  There is your 43% reduction in revenue. 

If I'm a corporation I love this.  I wasn't paying 35% to start with and I'm not any more likely to pay a statutory rate of 20%.  

On to individuals.  Ok, the rates for individuals are a little more diverse.  Here's a table for you:

                               2017                                                     Proposed

10%                $0-$9,325                                            12%   Income not specified

15%                $9326-$37,950                                   12%          "         "         "

______________________________________________________________

25%                $37,951-$91,900                                25%  Income not specified

28%                $91,901-$191,650                              25%        "         "          "

33%                $191,651-$416,700                            25%        "         "          "

______________________________________________________________

 35%               $416,701-$418,400                             35%  Income not specified

39.6%             $418,401 or more                               35%         "        "          "

______________________________________________________________

Standard deduction              $6,350                          $12,000

Personal exemption              $4,050                            Eliminated

Let us review.

If you are the poorest of the poor who are required to pay taxes your are subject to a 20% rate increase.  No doubt this will go far to help make up for the decrease in corporate tax revenue.

The people at the next level will receive a 20% rate decrease.

Folks currently paying 25% get no benefit.  Good, these folks are bearing the majority of the tax burden for the United States now and I see no reason why they should not continue to do so. 

The taxpayers at 28% and 33% will receive a rate reduction of 11% and 24% respectively.  Why shouldn't they?  Their incomes are considerably higher than the median or average for the U.S. 

The people at 35% get nothing and the "elite" earners see a 12% decrease.

The above numbers are for single filers.  For joint filers the percentages remain the same but the income levels differ.

So, the big winners are corporate America and individuals who make the most money.

Be not disheartened.  "And we will make taxes simple, and easy, and fair for all Americans."  DJT. 

Corporate America gets a 43% tax cut, followed by those who make substantially more than the median income, because they deserve it.

Once again the "little guy" gets screwed.  So, if you make $91,901 or more annually, good for you.  If you make less or are poor, fuck you.  What could be more fair than that?

I have to admit, it is simple and easy.  It always has been simpler and easier to tread on the backs of the weakest and poorest.

No doubt, Jesus is proud.

Whaduyathink?