U.S. Elections: Is Keeping The SC Worth Risking A Dictatorship?

[Castel]

29 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Btw, what would lead someone to be opposed to gay marriage other than at least some form of anti-gay prejudice?

It just wasn't popular. Gay marriage flipped from 60-30 against to for since 2001.Which is actually worse than I thought. The point it flipped is pretty late.

IIRC the Clintons had already dealt with the controversy of gays in the military and...it was just wasn't a good hill to die on. It seems today that you can't both be against or tepid on gay marriage and not loathe gays, partly because any marginal case, or anyone that could be flipped to the progressive cause has had enough convincing that they've either come around or just had to admit that they never will. Gay marriage is a barometer cause of how successful the cultural shift has been.

And so...politicians prevaricate and compromise until a change won't be fatal. Hell, isn't this what Obama did, with his transparent "evolution" on gay marriage? Obama seems to have gotten a pass near the end but it didn't go unnoticed.

[maarsen]

6 hours ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Regarding the how playing with the houses money can engender a tax liability or losses, I look at it like this. A clown called Tramp creates a series of shell corporations. He makes himself an officer in those organizations and thusly the organizations compensate Tramp in his capacity as that officer. With said compensation Tramp aquires and invests in real estate. Tramps real estate has a depreciation schedule, deductible expenses, net losses on sales and so and so forth to the point where Tramp can show he has suffered losses, personal losses, even though that original compensation came from the shell entity that Tramp created and made himself officer of (the House Money). 

There's also the vampire aspect to it , where Tramp could use one of the shell entities and suck all the blood out of a asset ( like its cash or equipment or any asset of value) once that asset is stripped out, the Shell entity can declare itself unable to pay the debt on the original loan to buy the asset ( a casino, or resort ,etc ) and declare itself bancrupt. Tramp as officer of the bancrupt shell entity would often partner with other investors and structure cash infusions to the shell along the way ( more house money ) but the way these things end is usually these partners are left holding the bag, they only recieve pennies on the dollar for there original investments on the Tramp ventures. 

Tramp has repeated this cycle most of his career. Its also why Vegas will not issue Tramp a casino license for his hotel there. Tramp sees no problem with this methodology for doing business and believes it makes him taller by several inches, also less obese and very manly, he will tell ya.

Isn't this also called fraud? Don't people end up in jail for doing this? Is this not at heart just another version of a Ponzi  scheme? 

[James Arryn]

Okay, I'll back off doubting the likelihood of later life fundamental change, but people are talking around reasons for saying gay marriage is wrong. There's only one reason; at some level they aren't equal. That's bigotry.

I'll fully admit that at one point that was the default position for most. Same applies to interracial marriage; at one point that wasn't a good hill to die on either, and even many early civil rights champions wouldn't go there because it was a bridge too far.

Doesn't make the thinking behind it any less bigoted, and I've never gotten the sense that Clinton was just previously holding back for fear of losing the war. Has anyone else?

[Larry of the Lawn]

10 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Okay, I'll back off doubting the likelihood of later life fundamental change, but people are talking around reasons for saying gay marriage is wrong. There's only one reason; at some level they aren't equal. That's bigotry.

I'll fully admit that at one point that was the default position for most. Same applies to interracial marriage; at one point that wasn't a good hill to die on either, and even many early civil rights champions wouldn't go there because it was a bridge too far.

Doesn't make the thinking behind it any less bigoted, and I've never gotten the sense that Clinton was just previously holding back for fear of losing the war. Has anyone else?

 

No, doesnt make the thinking less bigoted, but it's not where she is now policy wise.   She publicly supports LGBT rights now, her personal feelings on the subject are meaningless to me when it comes to voting, I feel pretty good about trusting her in this even if it's just out of expediency.  It's like Mario Cuomo and abortion, dude was more or less pro-choice despite his personal opinion.

[maarsen]

Like me she was raised during a time when gay rights were unimaginable.  It was never talked about and there were laws against homosexuality on the books. Like me,  her eyes were opened. 

[Commodore]

10 hours ago, Shryke said:

And that's why we have Romney's tax returns.

/nod

he released some

and if there was anything damning in others, they would have been leaked

how is what the NYT did (publishing an illegally obtained private record) different than what Gawker did to Hogan?

This is all academic of course, no chance of any prosecution for the leaker or publisher.

[James Arryn]

9 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

 

No, doesnt make the thinking less bigoted, but it's not where she is now policy wise.   She publicly supports LGBT rights now, her personal feelings on the subject are meaningless to me when it comes to voting, I feel pretty good about trusting her in this even if it's just out of expediency.  It's like Mario Cuomo and abortion, dude was more or less pro-choice despite his personal opinion.

I'll absolutely agree that the only thing that really matters is her policy...so long as it remains popular...but her (former?) position speaks to whether or not there is a 'shred' of evidence to calling her a bigot. My main point was that the comparison with Trump was false, but this was the one thing Mormont said that I think was overstated.

That said, outside responding to those posts, while it's not meaningless to me re: my opinion of her, but it's meaningless in terms of effect, and that's what really matters. Trump might even be personally fine with gay marriage but adopting an expedient position in the other direction, which would present different moral issues but also be meaningless in terms of effect. 

[Tempra]

1 hour ago, Commodore said:

he released some

and if there was anything damning in others, they would have been leaked

how is what the NYT did (publishing an illegally obtained private record) different than what Gawker did to Hogan?

This is all academic of course, no chance of any prosecution for the leaker or publisher.

No reasonable prosecutor would find a violation of 26 USC 7213(a)(3). :eyesroll:

 

 edit: apparently NYT obtained info from Trump's NY, CT, and NJ state returns.  So perhaps no violation of federal law.

[LongRider]

1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

I'll fully admit that at one point that was the default position for most. Same applies to interracial marriage; at one point that wasn't a good hill to die on either, and even many early civil rights champions wouldn't go there because it was a bridge too far.

I can't speak for Clinton, but I was raised to be a racial, religious and homophobic bigot.  However, as I grew older, I realized that these were terrible positions and have worked hard to change my perspectives away from such hatred and bigotry.  It can be done, and I'm not the only person in the USA who has ever done this.  It's a part of growing up for many people. 

If Hilary supports gay marriage now where she wasn't before I can accept this based on my own experience.  Sure, she may have some issues of political expediency with her position, I get that.  But if the end result expands rights, equality and fairness to marginalized populations in this country, I can live with that. 

[LongRider]

50 minutes ago, James Arryn said:

Trump might even be personally fine with gay marriage but adopting an expedient position in the other direction, which would present different moral issues but also be meaningless in terms of effect. 

He's done this with abortion, wasn't against it before he ran and now is strongly 'for it' while he courts the religious right.  Unlike being for marriage equality which benefits people and society overall, anti-abortion hurts real people.  Trump doesn't care about that though.  If being pro-abortion got the votes he wants, he'd swing that way.

[James Arryn]

5 minutes ago, LongRider said:

He's done this with abortion, wasn't against it before he ran and now is strongly 'for it' while he courts the religious right.  Unlike being for marriage equality which benefits people and society overall, anti-abortion hurts real people.  Trump doesn't care about that though.  If being pro-abortion got the votes he wants, he'd swing that way.

Sure, and the same applies to his pretending to oppose gay  marriage if he's personally not prejudiced; it means he's fine hanging people out to dry for the sake of power. Which, I mean...politicians....but he's pretty misanthropic all around so far as I can tell. What a dick.

[Martell Spy]

Donald Trump Can’t Shut Down New York Times Tax Leak Showing He Lost Nearly $1 Billion in 1995
Donald Trump may fashion himself as a winner, but the law is on the side of The New York Times. Plus, when it comes to speech-related his attempts in the past to shut down opponents have failed miserably.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/02/donald-j-trump-can-t-shut-down-new-york-times-tax-story.html

[maarsen]

9 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Donald Trump Can’t Shut Down New York Times Tax Leak Showing He Lost Nearly $1 Billion in 1995
Donald Trump may fashion himself as a winner, but the law is on the side of The New York Times. Plus, when it comes to speech-related his attempts in the past to shut down opponents have failed miserably.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/02/donald-j-trump-can-t-shut-down-new-york-times-tax-story.html

More to the point is that Trump managed to lose almost a billion dollars while the economy was doing well. How has he done when things really went downhill? Using his tax losses to offset income would have given him about 20 years of not paying taxes. Right about now that should be exhausted, unless he has additional losses to use.  He may be right that he pays no taxes. It just is not because he is smarter than everyone else. He just lost more than everyone else. There are better ways to avoid taxes than by losing lots of money.

[OldGimletEye]

14 minutes ago, maarsen said:

More to the point is that Trump managed to lose almost a billion dollars while the economy was doing well. How has he done when things really went downhill? Using his tax losses to offset income would have given him about 20 years of not paying taxes. Right about now that should be exhausted, unless he has additional losses to use.  He may be right that he pays no taxes. It just is not because he is smarter than everyone else. He just lost more than everyone else. There are better ways to avoid taxes than by losing lots of money.

Yeah, like if Trump is the best business person ever, then why does his businesses keep reporting all these losses?

His bragging about his awesome business experience is even worse than Carly Fiorina, who got shit canned and the company's stock jumped like 7 percentage points upon her firing.

[DireWolfSpirit]

4 hours ago, maarsen said:

Isn't this also called fraud? Don't people end up in jail for doing this? Is this not at heart just another version of a Ponzi  scheme? 

Guess who Trumps neighbor was in Palm Beach............................Bernie Madoff. I would never place a Ponzi scheme as beyond a depth Donald would sink to.

There's also this interesting headline from a few months back-

Trump's New Finance Chief Cashed Out Madoff Ponzi Profits ...

Bloomberg › politics › articles › trump-s-...

May 5, 2016 - Risky Business: How Will Trump Raise Campaign Cash? ... Get our politics newsletter daily. Sign Up.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Trump is the huckster shout about the dangers of "Pool" right there in "River City".

[maarsen]

30 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Yeah, like if Trump is the best business person ever, then why does his businesses keep reporting all these losses?

His bragging about his awesome business experience is even worse than Carly Fiorina, who got shit canned and the company's stock jumped like 7 percentage points upon her firing.

Donnie gets a cool million to play with from dear old Pater, and uses that to become a yuge businessman, the best there is. Well, if that money was put into the stock market, with the dividends reinvested, and his investments tracked the Dow Jones index, today, he should be worth about 1.8 billion. Blithering morons with trust funds could expect this return. Now Donnie also gets his Pater's estate to play with upon said Pater shuffling off his mortal coil. A minimum estimate was 40 million for the estate.  A max was 250 million. Again reinvested in the DJ index this  should give him about 72 to 650 million more to play with. If his tax returns show anything less than 1.872 billion as his net worth, then Donnie is a sub par business man. A recent estimate put his net worth at about 250 million. The man seems to be pissing away his money. Sorry, he seems to be getting paid to piss away other people's money.

[OldGimletEye]

21 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Donnie gets a cool million to play with from dear old Pater, and uses that to become a yuge businessman, the best there is. Well, if that money was put into the stock market, with the dividends reinvested, and his investments tracked the Dow Jones index, today, he should be worth about 1.8 billion. Blithering morons with trust funds could expect this return. Now Donnie also gets his Pater's estate to play with upon said Pater shuffling off his mortal coil. A minimum estimate was 40 million for the estate.  A max was 250 million. Again reinvested in the DJ index this  should give him about 72 to 650 million more to play with. If his tax returns show anything less than 1.872 billion as his net worth, then Donnie is a sub par business man. A recent estimate put his net worth at about 250 million. The man seems to be pissing away his money. Sorry, he seems to be getting paid to piss away other people's money.

Yep. Remind me not to invest in anything Trump is involved in.

[Denvek]

Vox notes that all this says is that Trump could have avoided taxes for nearly 20 years, not that he actually did. However, it then follows up to suggest that since Trump's still not releasing his full tax returns, whatever is in there is at least as bad as what the NYT suggests, and possibly even worse. Quoting the final sentence of the article.

Quote

The Trump campaign has decided it prefers the picture the Times is painting — a picture where Trump didn’t pay taxes for 18 years — to the picture Trump’s real records would paint.

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2016/10/2/13137604/trump-tax-return

[LongRider]

I don't have twitter on the cyber, but don't see any reports of Trump making any 3am tweets about the NYT's report on his leaked taxes.  Hmmmm, people say that his campaign had him tied down to the bed to prevent just that.  Credible people.  Sad.