Corporations are not people. I work for a multi-national publicly traded corporation myself. You know what? When they do well so do I. And guess what? So do their shareholders. And guess what again? I'm a shareholder too! Want to know something even better? I have a 401k and some of that is invested in my corporation as well. I guess I should feel all jealous though that some people have more stock than I do. It isn't good enough that my wealth goes up because someone else's might go up more. Oh woe is me!
MSNBC has Trump's 2005 1040. Whatever is revealed to be in them, know this: the White House has now released some info about his 2005 taxes as damage control. Which means the entire "I'm under audit" and any other excuse was, of course, always pure, unadulterated bullshit. All it took was MSNBC announcing they had them to break this facade.
As I've said before in this thread, we should steer clear of sarcasm. It degrades the discussion.
Sorry about that. That may have been more biting than I intended. I just don't think some people realize how childish this 'stick it to the rich' attitude sounds. Not to mention how many of the vanguards of the minority have no compunction against using the tyranny of the majority to steal from another minority. It just strikes me as farcical sometimes I guess...
I just want the rich to pay their fair share instead of being taxed less than the middle class. Hiding in tax haven's and using politicians to create loopholes for you and stuff like that is crap. If you are doing well then bully for you nothing wrong with that as long as you are doing your part. If you are doing well and scheming and cheating to avoid taxes or shifting your tax burden to the middle or lower classes then that's no good.
I agree with you there but we may differ on what a 'fair share' means. By that logic, poor people should pay a 'fair share' too. Since there are many more poor people than rich people there would be a lot of money to gain for the government there as well. Is it fair that they pay next to nothing in income tax but enjoy the use of the same infrastructure as everyone else? Are they poor because of circumstance or is it because of poor choices? Is there a difference? When you start making 'fairness' the issue I'd argue that there are people wasting their lives with drugs and alcohol that aren't paying their 'fair share' either. I'm not saying that this should be done, just pointing out that 'fairness' is a double-edged sword.
MSNBC has Trump's 2005 1040. Whatever is revealed to be in them, know this: the White House has now released some info about his 2005 taxes as damage control. Which means the entire "I'm under audit" and any other excuse was, of course, always pure, unadulterated bullshit. All it took was MSNBC announcing they had them to break this facade.
Trump leaked the 2 pages of his tax returns to the media.
It's so obvious I'm surprised the media falls for it time and again, he's done this stuff in the elections.
He's just trolling the entire leftist media, and honestly as someone who loves trolling. It's kinda funny.
edit: yep, as expected the details turns out to help Trump immensely, even CNN is laughing at MSNBC
Interesting. If Trump really did pay $35 million in taxes in 2005 that's in the neighborhood of 25,000 times more than what I paid. In other words, he's paying as much as 25,000 mid to upper middle class single people. Is that a 'fair share'?
If he gets to keep over 100 million dollars, that seems like a pretty ample reward for a single year. That's more money than I would need for my entire life. If I earned 100 million dollars in a year and got taxed 99%, I'd still be far richer than I am now.
Paying 25% doesn't seem that onerous when you still end up with hundreds of times as much money as your fellow Americans.
I agree that's an ample reward. Just looking at the math is kinda staggering to me right now though. If he paid 25,000 times what I paid that means he's probably paid more than what 100,000 or 200,000 lower income folks paid. That's a fair sized city! I have to say that rich folks must actually pay a whole lot more than I ever thought. That's assuming this is legit of course and assuming they all pay roughly the same percentage of income...
Wow, I see the problem here. I'm off by a factor of 10. He paid 2,500 times not 25,000 times what I paid. Sorry about that. Too tired to do math w/o a calculator. Its obviously time for me to go to bed!
MSNBC has Trump's 2005 1040. Whatever is revealed to be in them, know this: the White House has now released some info about his 2005 taxes as damage control. Which means the entire "I'm under audit" and any other excuse was, of course, always pure, unadulterated bullshit. All it took was MSNBC announcing they had them to break this facade.
Trump leaked the 2 pages of his tax returns to the media.
It's so obvious I'm surprised the media falls for it time and again, he's done this stuff in the elections.
He's just trolling the entire leftist media, and honestly as someone who loves trolling. It's kinda funny.
edit: yep, as expected the details turns out to help Trump immensely, even CNN is laughing at MSNBC
MSNBC has Trump's 2005 1040. Whatever is revealed to be in them, know this: the White House has now released some info about his 2005 taxes as damage control. Which means the entire "I'm under audit" and any other excuse was, of course, always pure, unadulterated bullshit. All it took was MSNBC announcing they had them to break this facade.
Trump leaked the 2 pages of his tax returns to the media.
It's so obvious I'm surprised the media falls for it time and again, he's done this stuff in the elections.
He's just trolling the entire leftist media, and honestly as someone who loves trolling. It's kinda funny.
edit: yep, as expected the details turns out to help Trump immensely, even CNN is laughing at MSNBC
The President of the United States trolling the media and the public. Fantastic. Some of us have a higher standard for President than your average teenager using 4-chan. As I said, the main point out of tonight is that his ENTIRE excuse for not releasing his actual returns in full was a load of horseshit, but then again, everything about Trump is a load of horseshit. I continue to find the defenses of Trump far more insightful into the human condition that Trump himself. To many of his supporters and and defenders, this is all just one big goof and a game. The first sentence of the top definition of the Urban Dictionary article on "trolling" has it described to a tee.
One of the most amazing things about Trump is how grown adults defend and rationalize behavior he engages in that they would punish their own children for in a millisecond.
A troubling spat in Europe between Holland and Turkey. Erdogan is trying to stir up support to win his referendum, while the Dutch government is wary of being outflanked by the right wing populist Wilders pre-election. I would not be surprised to see more of such conflicts as populists grow in strength, as populists can be parasitic upon conflicts with external 'enemies' which are sometimes convenient for both parties. Conflicts like these also present parties which occupy the centre ground with the tough dilemma of what point to occupy on the open / closed axis.
I agree with you there but we may differ on what a 'fair share' means. By that logic, poor people should pay a 'fair share' too. Since there are many more poor people than rich people there would be a lot of money to gain for the government there as well. Is it fair that they pay next to nothing in income tax but enjoy the use of the same infrastructure as everyone else? Are they poor because of circumstance or is it because of poor choices? Is there a difference? When you start making 'fairness' the issue I'd argue that there are people wasting their lives with drugs and alcohol that aren't paying their 'fair share' either. I'm not saying that this should be done, just pointing out that 'fairness' is a double-edged sword.
I'd tend to agree but yeah the poor can't pay lol they're poor. What to do with them? Best would be to support them until they can get on to contributing - education, job training, or even just a helping hand to people in need.
If that's not possible because they are retired or old or disabled then I guess that's just part of the deal. We have to help them.
On to Trump's taxes. Ok, that tax return was not earth shattering bad and seems to be him not avoiding tax and such like we all kind of assumed he was doing since he's been hiding his tax returns. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with the two pages that were shown from that return at all. If anything that return is good for Trump, why's he been hiding his returns though if they are all like that?
I agree with you there but we may differ on what a 'fair share' means. By that logic, poor people should pay a 'fair share' too. Since there are many more poor people than rich people there would be a lot of money to gain for the government there as well. Is it fair that they pay next to nothing in income tax but enjoy the use of the same infrastructure as everyone else? Are they poor because of circumstance or is it because of poor choices? Is there a difference? When you start making 'fairness' the issue I'd argue that there are people wasting their lives with drugs and alcohol that aren't paying their 'fair share' either. I'm not saying that this should be done, just pointing out that 'fairness' is a double-edged sword.
I'd tend to agree but yeah the poor can't pay lol they're poor. What to do with them? Best would be to support them until they can get on to contributing - education, job training, or even just a helping hand to people in need.
If that's not possible because they are retired or old or disabled then I guess that's just part of the deal. We have to help them.
On to Trump's taxes. Ok, that tax return was not earth shattering bad and seems to be him not avoiding tax and such like we all kind of assumed he was doing since he's been hiding his tax returns. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with the two pages that were shown from that return at all. If anything that return is good for Trump, why's he been hiding his returns though if they are all like that?
Those returns are just from 2005, right? This could be a cherry picked return, to make it look as good as possible.
It's a portion of one return from 2005. And besides putting to bed once and for all his "audit" excuse, I think the most revealing thing here is what many have suspected all along. That Trump isn't nearly as rich as he says he is. Which would explain why he has hundreds of millions of dollars in loans outstanding to foreign banks and how Russian oligarchs have been propping him up for over a decade. That's where all of this eventually leads. Like any good investigation, you follow the money. Trump's money leads to Russia.
That's one return he's being secretive for a reason. And he absolutely is le evil businessman: trump university, the not renting to black people, kicking people out of apartments, the multiple bankruptcies all still exist.
Not to mention he still owns all his businesses and is making millions of taxpayer dollars by staying at his hotels (Melania). The secret service had to rent a floor which money goes to Trump. Not to mention they are advertising the place as having secret service, conflict of interest much? His near weekly vacations at his florida resort are costing a lot in travel and security and he's billing the government as he makes the money on the other end as the owner of the resort.
This one tax return appears to be on the up and up and that's good. But all that other stuff still exists and isn't wiped out by this one thing. What are in his other returns? Why's he hiding them if they are all like this one, he should not be ashamed. Is he paying his taxes? Maybe he's been paying his taxes but isn't making as much money as he's been telling everyone. Either way - yeah he's still shady mcshady.
The other thing to remember when mentioning that people pay "their fair share" is this: you don't actually think the government needs your tax revenue to pay its bills, do you? The purpose of taxation is not so that the government can function and pay its bills; no, if the government needs money for something it just prints it and pays the bill. The true purpose of taxation is only to restrict the money supply so that printing money doesn't lead to inflation and a devalued currency.
Caveat: that is true at the Federal level. At the State and local level taxes work as people are taught that they work. You buy things at local stores, they charge you sales tax, the sales tax gets paid to the city, the city can keep the roads paved and clean. Still, the general discussion is IRS taxes so definitely Federal.
Currently there is no law which requires candidates or sitting politicians to release their tax returns...to the best of my knowledge--someone please correct me if I am in error. Trump is under no obligation to release any of his tax returns unless he chooses to do so; other Presidents have done so as a courtesy.
Maybe I am simply weird--well, that is actually true but we'll discuss that elsewhere--but I don't care how much money someone else makes. There is always someone who makes more money than you do unless you are Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Carlos Slim and the three of you keep playing rock/paper/scissors to see who is the richest person in the world in any given year. All three of them are in the $70 billion range so it is likely that one of them will break $100 billion within 10 years. (go on, say it in a Dr. Evil voice--one hundred billion dollars mwah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Bottom line: people need to quit using the word "fair". There is no such thing as fair outside of an organized competition of some sort. Life doesn't deal in "fair" even though we as individual may treat people fairly.
Oh, and by the way, there is a lot more going on right now than Trump-related stuff. Let's not forget the other important things going on in the world.
Damn even Van Jones saying it was a good night for Trump.
Poor Maddow.
Apparently no one actually watched the segment. Literally the FIRST thing the reporter who received the forms said when he got on air with her was that he highly suspected Trump sent them himself because he has done other similarly devious things for years. It's hard to conclude someone has been tricked when they already know what the trickster is doing. Rachel does extensive reasearch for her show and there is no way she didn't weigh that possibility before her segments.
Speaking of the rest of the world. I'm fairly concerned about what is happening in North Korea right now. Anybody have any ideas on what can/should be done about the situation? I'm curious about what you all feel that Trump should do or not do. Doing nothing is an option, but what other options are there?
You don't want to hear it Mathsorcerer but what you said IS fair. Perfectly reasonable. And I agree there is always someone who makes more than you - and this is a joke - except Donald Trump because he makes as much as he can imagine he makes since his net worth is based on his feelings as I mentioned before.
There is no law that says candidates are required to release tax returns it's just something that's been done. A commonly accepted norm. It helps the public decide if the candidate is bought or has conflicts of interest. By deciding against doing what every other candidate does it makes it appear as if he has something to hide.
Damn even Van Jones saying it was a good night for Trump.
Poor Maddow.
I'm sure she's crying all the way to the bank because her ratings are through the roof, #1 even. It seems possible that Trump himself delivered the cherry picked pages of his tax returns (and is now feigning outrage) to distract from the disaster that is his healthcare bill.
And supposedly today James Comey is supposed to say something about Trump - Russia investigations.
@deltago : Would your opinion change if all of his returns were released and they were similar to this one? If he then said he didn't release them because he felt they weren't anyone's business but his own, would you be at all sympathetic? This is hypothetical of course but the way my mind operates I'm far more private in my own dealings than many younger people are today. Barring some law requiring it I doubt I would have released my returns either. I know, apples to oranges, but I at least understand that way of thinking.
It is within Trump's rights to not release it and it is also within other people's rights to be suspicious of what he is hiding. Given that releasing the records is somewhat of a norm recently, it is suspicious no matter how you twist and turn it.
It is within Trump's rights to not release it and it is also within other people's rights to be suspicious of what he is hiding. Given that releasing the records is somewhat of a norm recently, it is suspicious no matter how you twist and turn it.
Agreed, but it seems that Americans on both sides of the aisle are a suspicious lot...
Comments
I'm not saying that this should be done, just pointing out that 'fairness' is a double-edged sword.
It's so obvious I'm surprised the media falls for it time and again, he's done this stuff in the elections.
He's just trolling the entire leftist media, and honestly as someone who loves trolling.
It's kinda funny.
edit:
yep, as expected the details turns out to help Trump immensely, even CNN is laughing at MSNBC
Paying 25% doesn't seem that onerous when you still end up with hundreds of times as much money as your fellow Americans.
One of the most amazing things about Trump is how grown adults defend and rationalize behavior he engages in that they would punish their own children for in a millisecond.
If that's not possible because they are retired or old or disabled then I guess that's just part of the deal. We have to help them.
On to Trump's taxes. Ok, that tax return was not earth shattering bad and seems to be him not avoiding tax and such like we all kind of assumed he was doing since he's been hiding his tax returns. As far as I know, there's nothing wrong with the two pages that were shown from that return at all. If anything that return is good for Trump, why's he been hiding his returns though if they are all like that?
Bernie payed 14%.
Let that sink in.
Hopefully people move away from assuming the stereotype of LE EVIL BUSINESSMAN.
And i like Bernie too and don't fault him if he uses legitimate means to pay less, everyone wants to pay less.
Not to mention he still owns all his businesses and is making millions of taxpayer dollars by staying at his hotels (Melania). The secret service had to rent a floor which money goes to Trump. Not to mention they are advertising the place as having secret service, conflict of interest much? His near weekly vacations at his florida resort are costing a lot in travel and security and he's billing the government as he makes the money on the other end as the owner of the resort.
This one tax return appears to be on the up and up and that's good. But all that other stuff still exists and isn't wiped out by this one thing. What are in his other returns? Why's he hiding them if they are all like this one, he should not be ashamed. Is he paying his taxes? Maybe he's been paying his taxes but isn't making as much money as he's been telling everyone. Either way - yeah he's still shady mcshady.
Poor Maddow.
Caveat: that is true at the Federal level. At the State and local level taxes work as people are taught that they work. You buy things at local stores, they charge you sales tax, the sales tax gets paid to the city, the city can keep the roads paved and clean. Still, the general discussion is IRS taxes so definitely Federal.
Currently there is no law which requires candidates or sitting politicians to release their tax returns...to the best of my knowledge--someone please correct me if I am in error. Trump is under no obligation to release any of his tax returns unless he chooses to do so; other Presidents have done so as a courtesy.
Maybe I am simply weird--well, that is actually true but we'll discuss that elsewhere--but I don't care how much money someone else makes. There is always someone who makes more money than you do unless you are Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, or Carlos Slim and the three of you keep playing rock/paper/scissors to see who is the richest person in the world in any given year. All three of them are in the $70 billion range so it is likely that one of them will break $100 billion within 10 years. (go on, say it in a Dr. Evil voice--one hundred billion dollars mwah-ah-ah-ah-ah)
Bottom line: people need to quit using the word "fair". There is no such thing as fair outside of an organized competition of some sort. Life doesn't deal in "fair" even though we as individual may treat people fairly.
Oh, and by the way, there is a lot more going on right now than Trump-related stuff. Let's not forget the other important things going on in the world.
There is no law that says candidates are required to release tax returns it's just something that's been done. A commonly accepted norm. It helps the public decide if the candidate is bought or has conflicts of interest. By deciding against doing what every other candidate does it makes it appear as if he has something to hide.
People wonder I'm sure she's crying all the way to the bank because her ratings are through the roof, #1 even. It seems possible that Trump himself delivered the cherry picked pages of his tax returns (and is now feigning outrage) to distract from the disaster that is his healthcare bill.
And supposedly today James Comey is supposed to say something about Trump - Russia investigations.
As someone said. It was a cherry pick return. Who knows if part of that was a hold over from previous years, since it wasn't the full return either.
And I am surprised no one brought up the Snoop video yet. The comment section of it is just hysterical.