Senate The US Politics discussion

The news media wouldn't even cover Sanders at all for the first several months. But because he actually believed in his message, he kept talking about it, and when that resonated with people the media eventually came back around and gave it more of the attention it deserved.

 

Wocky, how does that aversion to bloodlust comment make sense when one considers drone strikes?

 

If you think about it, the only reason you'd need to "own" your home is because we live in a capitalist society.

 

Chaffetz is registering websites for a 2028 Presidential Campaign.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/329597-chaffetzs-campaign-arm-registers-2028-websites

Should we start the 2028 election thread?

 

No, it's because people are aspirational in nature and as such, our system caters to that innate quality.

The problem becomes when you have a militaristically individualist culture that has not only enshrined selfishness as a virtue, but has waged a war on any form of social contract in a way that was nakedly obvious to this traveller mere weeks ago.

A capitalist society morally regulated by socialism is a perfectly fair and just system, to the extent you can have perfect fairness and justice (hint, you can't - but utilitarianism has the answer). You don't have a moral capitalist society in the US, so it's no wonder the radical option is appealing.

It doesn't mean though that it's immune from the years upon years upon years of systemic failure that centrally planned, Marxist-inspired economies have endured - from the Bolsheviks to Chavez. Just understandable in its appeal.

 

Memetastic beer capitalism.

 

Oh sure, I get this. Although I question your true feeling on financial transparency, considering when David Cameron and a dozen British MP's were involved in the Panama Papers scandal, you steadfastly defended them beyond what the appearance was.

This is more my point. How many posts did you unapologetically defend the British (among others) questionable offshore holdings when those exact issues were raised? Yes, rationally, you outlined how there were several legitimate reasons why someone like Cameron could use tax avoidance strategies and not impune his position. Which is precisely what you are failing to acknowledge now. Just like with the Panama papers, there are issues that are sensitive for a multitude of reasons that don't exactly have to be sinister. Cameron had any number of valid reasons to keep his financial matters private that weren't illegal or unethical. We know, because you previously outlined them all. In other words, what is good for the British PM is also good for the American President. The problem is that if something like the Panama Papers or Trump's taxes were rationally examined in a setting like an accounting round table and then explained to the public, it would be one matter. But it is another thing all together to have an isolated snippet splashed all over the front page of the Daily Telegraph or New York Times when the lowest common denominator is catered to.

Because just look at the people frothing at the mouth here for any kind of imagined smoking gun of unicorn level mythical importance that they imagine these tax returns will provide them, which is the folly of mob mentality. This is also why the birther comparison is actually quite close for both, despite how some people will try and distance themselves from any such comparison, because "the other people must be worse."

Cameron had several long standing family investments that valued privacy. Trump has decades worth of real estate investments. Perhaps this is more a consequence of mixing finance and politics, but if a former President like Jimmy Carter released his tax returns, it was because he had a naval pension and owned a farm prior to becoming President, he didn't have to worry about market forces or competitors. So a tradition of releasing tax returns that really isn't a tradition isn't really set in stone.

My only point is just like the birther's obsession with a birth certificate that didn't matter then, there are actual policy based issues that can be examined beyond giving a piece of paper (or a collection of papers) a life of their own.

 

Well what was your takeaway from Wealth of Nations then, Even?

Mr44 - stunning duck and weave. Truly amazing. However we were discussing apples, and you seem to be discussing oranges, and even then, what you call an orange appears to actually be a mandarin.

Can you limit the discussion to apples please?

 

This would be where Ramza says "Thank goodness I got out in time!"

 

Yes, of course people are aspirational in nature. But how it shows itself has everything to do with the circumstances and system one is in.

 

Exactly. E_S, for this issue, you know how steadfast you were to defend the Panama Papers. The same reasons that applied then, apply now. You covered market forces, and how some parties involved in the investments might value privacy, or how if certain investments became public, they may be dependent on interest rates, or become diluted through competition, and how the entire thing wasn't all that sinister despite the public having an uninformed reaction.

All those solid points you outlined then are still solid. Just like Cameron, while it might not be the most desirable action from a PR standpoint, it's not a de facto sinister act to keep financial information close to one's cuff. Cameron had long term financial strategies that outlast his time in office, including passing wealth to generations. Could that not apply to any other politician?

Unless you changed your mind since then, which is fine. But you can't explain how having an offshore holding arrangement or tax reduction strategy works for the British Prime Minister and bookend that lesson with a statement of "it shouldn't be any of the public's business because they are private business dealings that don't impact his government position" but then turn around and have the opposite opinion for the American President, just to prove that he isn't a "wealthy person not contributing back to society." It's not a case of before the Panama Papers Cameron held 1 million pounds in a Cayman Islands holding company, but after he donated it all to a soup kitchen in South Croydon.

That is, apples and all.

 

Mr44

The point is that Mr Trump has a vested interest in defying that tradition, and given his apparent failures to divest himself of any conflicts of interest - and I extend this to the family, too, given Ivanka's commercial benefits - as well as his proud non-payment of tax ("that makes me smart"), there is a compelling public interest at stake. No other President before him, but up to Richard Nixon, has seen fit to refuse to release their tax returns. None of course had the complex business web (some if not all of which was gotten through dubious means) Mr Trump had, and none had so much stake in an illusion of greater wealth than might be true being maintained.

The reality is, Mr Trump creates an impression of malfeasance, to use an American-favoured term. The further reality is, Mr Trump is in a position to dispel this illusion if he so wished; he does not. Moreover, Mr Trump arguably stands to benefit by maintaining a shroud as it is widely believed to be the case that he has not discharged himself of his commercial duties.

By comparison, my position on the panama papers was - the mere presence of off-shoring regimes is not illegal (unless they are linked to non-disclosure on mandated pecuniary interest registers), and therefore does not automatically give rise to a financial crime. All I can see in the thread is that position (and proof that you really don't need a brain to drive a lorry) and that position is not out of alignment with the position on Trump.

 

Fox News apparently has a higher ethical standard than the office of the presidency of the United States.

That is not a sentence I ever expected myself to utter.

 

Mitt Romney was closer to the mark than we realized. Corporations are people. Corporations are in fact paid for by people. People threaten the advertisers, the advertisers pull out, the corporation capitulates. Fox did not suddenly gain morals. They lost money and couldn't risk losing more.

There is a lesson to be learned here. We saw it with the town halls. The more organized people are in presenting opposition, the more difficult it is for their complaints to be ignored. And I think that is the key to stopping Trump: lobbyists. Lobbyists represent corporations. If corporations feel the public outcry against something, they will use that lobbying power to further pressure elected officials. The problem is that corporations are of course out for themselves first as are elected officials. But as people get more organized, this becomes easier to make happen. Hence the largest threat right now is to Net Neutrality. If corporations win that battle, we lose a key component in this fight: a free and open Internet.

 

In fairness, I was being more facetious than not.

 

good grief just saw a picture of Palin, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock in the oval office with Trump. eyes cannot unsee that

 

Sure, all that makes sense, but that's not what I question. You're ignoring the foundation of the criticism for the Panama Papers incident. It's not like Cameron boldly proclaimed his offshore holding and tax reduction techniques, which would have been a different matter. The crux of the Panama Papers was that these politicians went to great lengths to keep these structures private, hence why the Prime Minister of the UK went to use a law firm in Panama to set them up instead of the Bank of England.

Your steadfast defence of Cameron was only marginally related to the actual holdings. The bulk of the justification was that Cameron had a right to keep his financial affairs separate (and private) from his official duties as PM because it was nobody's business and there are legitimate privacy issues to set it up that way.

That's where your disconnect is coming into play as it relates to these examples. All the of items you outlined for Trump above applied to Cameron and the other politicians then, from the standpoint of perception. It just looked bad for the PM and the House of Lords to go set up tax shelters using a South American law firm. But as you said, that in itself doesn't mean the actual financial products were illegal, or that the realization contained any kind of smoking gun. It's not like Cameron willingly released the documents to dispel rumors that he "didn't have conflicts of interest between his private holdings and public office." The reality is that had an employee at the foreign law firm not dumped the information, Cameron would have kept those documents private to this day.

Otherwise, it just looks like your point is to conclude that it was ok for Cameron because he's part of the Commonwealth and dear to your heart, but since Trump is American, he's just a greedy SOB because you are critical of anything from the US. I agree with your original strong defence of Cameron and the other British officials. It made sense then, and it makes sense now. But your strong defence also currently applies, as you can't rationally apply both facts and analysis then as a counter to knee-jerk perception, but then suddenly say "Trump should just release his financial information because it would dispel conspiracies." The "tradition" of Presidents releasing tax returns really isn't even a tradition, in the sense that it only includes 6 or so Presidents, and it just kind of morphed into a practice during the Nixon campaign.

 

Erm. Literally everyone who was of voting age when Nixon first came into power is now in retirement age. The period your discussing encompasses every living President. It is over 86% of the entire population of the United States. I think it can count as a tradition.

 

Not often do I find myself agreeing with many here but Jabba-Wocky is right. Something that started almost 50 years ago qualifies as a tradition regardless of the number of presidents.

 

Ok, even with that laser focused rebuttal of the least important point of all that, so what? If Nixon started shooting monkeys out of his butt, and every President after simply followed suit, would it matter if a follow-on President said "nah, I'm good without the entire monkey butt tradition?" But by all means, let's spend time celebrating Nixon, the world's finest trend setter of traditions! You know, especially in light of real issues like the previous President engaging in an 8 year orgy of drone delivered death, and the current President dropping MOAB's like they were skittles?

Go full circle back to reality. Like any 10% wealthy business figure, Trump likely has an army of accountants and lawyers that prepare his taxes. Once submitted, there is also likely an army of IRS reviewers and auditors who comb through his returns.

Do you guys honestly think that if something like "payments to Russian mobsters" was found as a line item, it wouldn't be leaked? Do you think that the IRS auditors wear blindfolds when they look over his returns? That if the IRS had such cause, that it would be a HUGE notch for the IRS to charge a figure like Trump even before he was elected President?

The issue here is the difference between filing the required tax returns according to law and making the same information publicly available just to fulfill a perverse partisan fantasy. Unlike Cameron above, who actively kept his dealings hidden- even legitimately- Trump files a tax return every year that is reviewed by the IRS. However, similar to Cameron, there are numerous legitimate reasons why, although filed with the IRS, there are privacy issues in play with such business information.

Simply put, people shouldn't become fixated with tax-porn, because just like any President, there are actually policies that occur in the real world. And it's just funny to see how those same people get defensive about being compared to the birthers, because the "birthers had an unhealthy fixation" (which they did,) but the obsession with Trump's tax returns is "completely different and oh so worthwhile...." (famous eyeroll here)

 

Here is my thing.

Donald Trump ran on being a business man. He has no foreign policy experience. He has no government experience. He has nothing but business experience.

What is the one thing that could help enlighten how good, or bad, of a business man he is? His taxes and those of his business.

If those taxes would help shut everyone up he would release them in a heartbeat. He isn't. Why?

It doesn't add up, particularly from someone who claimed the prior administration had no transparency.

 

Well, the one thing that could act as a metric would be the policies put in place over the next 4 years.

Tax returns aren't going to matter, because the public doesn't care about things like accelerated depreciation expense, and loss carry forward, and no one is going to take the time to learn.

Again, what do you think doesn't add up in relation to the IRS not finding anything in 30 years of returns, that suddenly posting Trump's Schedule C on TMZ would reveal? The only thing any tax return would become is a sound bite to be endlessly corrupted by either side of the political spectrum, and there is already enough political white noise out there.

Again, following the unseen conspiracy argument, Obama should have immediately provided his original, wet signed, full birth certificate to placate a vocal minority, instead of correctly adopting the attitude of "I'm not going to bother with this stupid **** ." Because it obviously "didn't add up" that he only provided the abridged copy, even though the original was correctly filed, but not publicly available. (yes, that is sarcastic.)

 

Trump has an unprecedented level of conflicts of interest since he hasn't divested himself from his businesses. Releasing his tax returns would shed a great deal of light on what those conflicts of interests actually are. They would show who and what businesses would benefit if Trump chooses to do X, Y, or Z policy, and they would show who "owns" Trump. These conflict of interests do directly affect policy -- if only unconsciously, but in Trump's case, certainly consciously.

"Oh, you gave Ivanka trademarks in China after a nice meeting with her. Hmmm, currency manipulation isn't that big of a deal after all." It would turn up tons of those types of possible scenarios. Trump's son said that Russians are heavily invested in Trump -- are they still? If so, then that would be a conflict of interest that could influence Trump since he chose not to divest. The Tax returns would reveal that.

Even if it's not Russians, someone has investments in Trump and Trump has investments in other entities. His choice not to divest coupled with his non-disclosure of his tax returns makes it even more important that he release his tax returns now than before the election.

 

My guess is that he has a conspicuously small tax burden that, while entirely legal (otherwise he would be in jail), looks bad. And he doesn't want to look bad. Simple as that. I don't need to see his returns to know it, though. He has all but said as much out of his own mouth, when he said that dodging taxes "makes me smart", so I don't care one way or the other, really.