- If Joe Biden is still leading in the polls after the debate, we have a real issue. #DemDebate
"Iraq snapshot" (THE COMMON ILLS):
Thursday, September 12, 2019. Deadbeat Joe Biden doesn't pay required
taxes on $13 million via a loophole but wants Americans to vote for him
to be over the federal government -- the same Joe Biden that lived on
the taxpayer's dime for decades.
Tonight, in Houston, Texas, ten Democrats competing for their party's presidential nomination take the stage for a debate. The ten? Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigeig, Julian Castro, Joe Biden, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. ABC and UNIVISION will host the debate
The debate comes as it appears Senator Elizabeth Warren is on the rise. Warren Peace (THE WEEK) reports:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is going nowhere but up.
The 2020 candidate pulled off a rare showing in an Economist/YouGov poll published Wednesday, tying the largely untouchable former Vice President Joe Biden with 26 percent support among registered voters. It marks one of the few polls where Biden is within danger of losing his frontrunner status, and contains a dismal prediction for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Biden has only had a few close calls in previous polls, but Warren's 2020 rise has seemingly been eating away at his support as well as Sanders'. In a late August poll from Monmouth University, Sanders and Warren topped the pool with 20 percent support, and Biden was just behind at 19 percent. In this Economist/YouGov poll, Biden is back up, but so is Warren, both leaving Sanders a full 10 points behind at 16 percent.
This news comes as and
Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead the crowded Democratic field — but under a “ranked-choice” system designed to suss out the majority’s ultimate preference, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would top Biden, 53 percent to 47 percent, according to a new poll exclusively provided in advance to Vox.
Reports continue to be filed that Joe Biden plans to attack Elizabeth Warren on the issue of transparency at tonight's debate. Who's spreading this? It could only be coming from his own campaign. Ryan Grimm (THE INTERCEPT) notes:
That is disgusting and it is no different than a corporation using offshore tax havens to avoid paying their share of taxes. If Joe can rake in $13 million, he can damn well pay taxes on it. The greed is appalling, the refusal to carry your part of the nation's taxes is just disgusting -- especially when you pose as "worker Joe" and want to be president of the United States.
Pay your taxes, deadbeat.
Deadbeat Joe, that's who he really is. That is disgusting. He has benefited his entire life from the taxpayers. They paid his lazy ass. Year after year. And now he refuses to pay taxes on $13 million? That's disgusting. It should be criminal.
Deadbeat Joe.
Meanwhile Paul Steinhauser (FOX NEWS) reports:
On the topic of Elizabeth, in the September 6th snapshot:
I saw Joe's portion and she's correct in her assessment. I didn't see Bernie (we were speaking during most of the townhalls) but I caught a small section of Elizabeth Warren's (Marcia covered her here "Elizabeth and climate change") and I will note Elizabeth is correct that 'personal responsibility' is a slogan pushed by an industry determined to avoid accountability. Ava and I called out that nonsense in July of 2007 with "TV: Global Boring" and more recently ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING took on the refusal of corporations to take responsibility for their actions.
Corporate pollution is a serious issue and good for Elizabeth to speak out on that issue.
It's an important issue and to address climate change, we need to be serious and honest. Jill Richardson (COMMON DREAMS) grabs the topic:
It’s tempting to look for easy ways to fix big problems by trimming around the edges to avoid making the real changes you don’t want to make. Tempting, but not feasible.
That’s similar to what presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren just said about fixing climate change. She was asked about her position on small changes like banning plastic drinking straws or inefficient light bulbs.
“Give me a break,” she said. “This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to talk about… They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws” when “70 percent of the pollution” comes from “the building industry, the electric power industry, and the oil industry.”
Like my cupcakes, those three industries are the real problem. Banning straws while leaving those three industries in place will make about as much of a dent in the climate as eating two cups of parsley a day while continuing my cupcake habit would have made in my waistline: Not much.
Also of great significance is the never-ending wars. Andrea Germanos (COMMON DREAMS) notes that Bernie addressed that topic yesterday:
"If we do not move decisively to end America's longest war," Sanders wrote on Twitter, "we will soon see servicemembers fight and die in Afghanistan and around the world in a conflict that was started before they were born.'"
A new approach to global engagement is necessary, said Sanders.
"We must envision a new form of American engagement: one in which we lead not in war-making but in finding shared solutions to shared global challenges," he said. "U.S. power should be measured not by our ability to blow things up, but to bring people together around our common humanity."
War and the environment are tied together in many ways including that all the money the US government spends on wars means so much less can be spent on addressing climate change or other needs. But that's just one way they are related. BBC NEWS notes:
US warplanes have dropped almost 40 tonnes of explosives on the Qanus Island, in northern Iraq.
Footage of the incident was released in a tweet that described the area as "infested" with members of the group calling itself Islamic State.
F-15 and F-35 fighter jets were used in the joint operation between US-led coalition forces and the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service.
Do we ever ponder what that does to the environment? All these bombs? Oh, wait, it's Iraq. We all turn our eyes, we all avert our gaze.
Tonight, in Houston, Texas, ten Democrats competing for their party's presidential nomination take the stage for a debate. The ten? Andrew Yang, Amy Klobuchar, Pete Buttigeig, Julian Castro, Joe Biden, Beto O'Rourke, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. ABC and UNIVISION will host the debate
The debate comes as it appears Senator Elizabeth Warren is on the rise. Warren Peace (THE WEEK) reports:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is going nowhere but up.
The 2020 candidate pulled off a rare showing in an Economist/YouGov poll published Wednesday, tying the largely untouchable former Vice President Joe Biden with 26 percent support among registered voters. It marks one of the few polls where Biden is within danger of losing his frontrunner status, and contains a dismal prediction for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Biden has only had a few close calls in previous polls, but Warren's 2020 rise has seemingly been eating away at his support as well as Sanders'. In a late August poll from Monmouth University, Sanders and Warren topped the pool with 20 percent support, and Biden was just behind at 19 percent. In this Economist/YouGov poll, Biden is back up, but so is Warren, both leaving Sanders a full 10 points behind at 16 percent.
This news comes as and
Former Vice President Joe Biden continues to lead the crowded Democratic field — but under a “ranked-choice” system designed to suss out the majority’s ultimate preference, Sen. Elizabeth Warren would top Biden, 53 percent to 47 percent, according to a new poll exclusively provided in advance to Vox.
The online national poll of likely Democratic voters was conducted by YouGov, and sponsored by FairVote,
a nonpartisan advocacy group supporting electoral reform. Unlike an
ordinary poll, it asked respondents to rank several candidates in order
of preference — so as to simulate ranked-choice voting, a system currently used in Maine and other localities. (FairVote advocates in favor of the system and hopes it will be adopted elsewhere in the US as well.)
The way ranked-choice voting works is that candidates
with fewer votes are eliminated, and then their votes are redistributed
to whomever each voter designated as their next-ranked preference. For
instance, a voter could rank Sen. Bernie Sanders as their first choice
and Warren as their second choice — meaning that, if Sanders was
eliminated, this vote would be transferred to Warren.
Reports continue to be filed that Joe Biden plans to attack Elizabeth Warren on the issue of transparency at tonight's debate. Who's spreading this? It could only be coming from his own campaign. Ryan Grimm (THE INTERCEPT) notes:
Biden may be
looking to hammer her for hypocrisy, but his charge of a lack of
transparency is badly undercut by his own financial opacity — not
decades ago, but in the last two years. Since leaving the White House,
Biden, long proud of his wealth ranking near the bottom of the U.S.
Senate, began delivering high-dollar speeches to well-heeled clients and
raked in book revenue that elevated him well into the upper class. He
earned some $15.6 million in the last two years alone, according to financial disclosures released by his campaign.
It is typical for presidential candidates to voluntarily release their tax returns, with the exception of Donald Trump. Despite those releases, the details of how Biden, whose career has been partially dedicated to enabling financial secrecy in Delaware, made a significant portion of that money remains a mystery.
The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield his income from public view, by setting up two tax- and transparency-avoidance vehicles known as S corporations. He and his wife Jill Biden called them CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp., respectively, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, have reported more than $13 million in profits the previous two years that weren’t subject to specific disclosure or self-employment taxes. As CNBC has described, money Biden made from book deals and speeches flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as “distributions” rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it, nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)
The use of S corporations by politicians
is known as the Gingrich-Edwards loophole, named for Newt Gingrich and
John Edwards, who have deployed it in the past. The strategy has become
popular among Republicans, but Democratic politicians typically avoid
it, given its capacity to appear hypocritical. Warren, Barack Obama,
Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders, the Journal has reported, all shied
away from the strategy when it came to reporting income from books and
speeches. It is typical for presidential candidates to voluntarily release their tax returns, with the exception of Donald Trump. Despite those releases, the details of how Biden, whose career has been partially dedicated to enabling financial secrecy in Delaware, made a significant portion of that money remains a mystery.
The Bidens have used their home state’s financial privacy laws to shield his income from public view, by setting up two tax- and transparency-avoidance vehicles known as S corporations. He and his wife Jill Biden called them CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp., respectively, and, according to the Wall Street Journal, have reported more than $13 million in profits the previous two years that weren’t subject to specific disclosure or self-employment taxes. As CNBC has described, money Biden made from book deals and speeches flowed into the S corporations and was then remitted to Biden and his wife as “distributions” rather than salary. When money is funneled through an S corporation, the recipient doesn’t owe Social Security or Medicare taxes on it, nor can the source of revenue be traced. (In addition to the distributions, the Bidens drew relatively small salaries from the S Corporations: under half a million dollars, for which they owed self-employment taxes.)
That is disgusting and it is no different than a corporation using offshore tax havens to avoid paying their share of taxes. If Joe can rake in $13 million, he can damn well pay taxes on it. The greed is appalling, the refusal to carry your part of the nation's taxes is just disgusting -- especially when you pose as "worker Joe" and want to be president of the United States.
Pay your taxes, deadbeat.
Deadbeat Joe, that's who he really is. That is disgusting. He has benefited his entire life from the taxpayers. They paid his lazy ass. Year after year. And now he refuses to pay taxes on $13 million? That's disgusting. It should be criminal.
Deadbeat Joe.
Meanwhile Paul Steinhauser (FOX NEWS) reports:
A new poll of Democratic voters in New Hampshire shows Sen. Bernie Sanders leading the field in this first-in-the-nation primary state.
Sanders,
the independent senator from Vermont who's making his second bid for
the presidency, has the support of 29 percent of likely Democratic
primary voters in the Granite State, according to a Franklin Pierce University/Boston Herald Poll released Wednesday.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, long the frontrunner in most national
and early-state polls, stands at 21 percent in this poll. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of neighboring Massachusetts, who, like Sanders, is a progressive standard-bearer in the field of White House hopefuls, registered at 17 percent in the poll.On the topic of Elizabeth, in the September 6th snapshot:
I saw Joe's portion and she's correct in her assessment. I didn't see Bernie (we were speaking during most of the townhalls) but I caught a small section of Elizabeth Warren's (Marcia covered her here "Elizabeth and climate change") and I will note Elizabeth is correct that 'personal responsibility' is a slogan pushed by an industry determined to avoid accountability. Ava and I called out that nonsense in July of 2007 with "TV: Global Boring" and more recently ADAM RUINS EVERYTHING took on the refusal of corporations to take responsibility for their actions.
Corporate pollution is a serious issue and good for Elizabeth to speak out on that issue.
It's an important issue and to address climate change, we need to be serious and honest. Jill Richardson (COMMON DREAMS) grabs the topic:
It’s tempting to look for easy ways to fix big problems by trimming around the edges to avoid making the real changes you don’t want to make. Tempting, but not feasible.
That’s similar to what presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren just said about fixing climate change. She was asked about her position on small changes like banning plastic drinking straws or inefficient light bulbs.
“Give me a break,” she said. “This is exactly what the fossil fuel industry wants us to talk about… They want to be able to stir up a lot of controversy around your lightbulbs, around your straws” when “70 percent of the pollution” comes from “the building industry, the electric power industry, and the oil industry.”
Like my cupcakes, those three industries are the real problem. Banning straws while leaving those three industries in place will make about as much of a dent in the climate as eating two cups of parsley a day while continuing my cupcake habit would have made in my waistline: Not much.
Also of great significance is the never-ending wars. Andrea Germanos (COMMON DREAMS) notes that Bernie addressed that topic yesterday:
"If we do not move decisively to end America's longest war," Sanders wrote on Twitter, "we will soon see servicemembers fight and die in Afghanistan and around the world in a conflict that was started before they were born.'"
A new approach to global engagement is necessary, said Sanders.
"We must envision a new form of American engagement: one in which we lead not in war-making but in finding shared solutions to shared global challenges," he said. "U.S. power should be measured not by our ability to blow things up, but to bring people together around our common humanity."
War and the environment are tied together in many ways including that all the money the US government spends on wars means so much less can be spent on addressing climate change or other needs. But that's just one way they are related. BBC NEWS notes:
US warplanes have dropped almost 40 tonnes of explosives on the Qanus Island, in northern Iraq.
Footage of the incident was released in a tweet that described the area as "infested" with members of the group calling itself Islamic State.
F-15 and F-35 fighter jets were used in the joint operation between US-led coalition forces and the Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service.
Do we ever ponder what that does to the environment? All these bombs? Oh, wait, it's Iraq. We all turn our eyes, we all avert our gaze.
The Iraq war architects are trying to rewrite history about the horrors they inflicted. Don’t let them.
Did you know that in some Iraq cities today there are birth defects higher than those seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the US nuked them?
The US's use of white phosphorus in Iraq has caused many birth defects. The rates are worse than Hiroshima & Nagasaki
U.S. Radioactive Weapons Fueling Birth Defects in Iraq bit.ly/1qwyY58
- salon.com/2019/09/07/the… We found thorium, a product of depleted uranium decay, in the hair of Iraqi children with birth defects who lived in Nasiriyah and Ur City, near a U.S. military base.
Epidemic of Birth Defects in #Iraq caused by US depleted uranium, toxic occupation is a #warcrime. worldcantwait.net/index.php/feat… via @worldcantwait
Birth defects & cancer is the legacy in Iraq b/c of depleted uranium. Media paint Brit soldiers as the victims. Iraqis dismissed as nothing.
Impact of US Imperialism
life-threatening birth defects of Vietnam’s children & #Iraq
There is an epidemic of birth defects and disabilities throughout Iraq, ignored especially by the US - the leading perpetrators, of course.
@mbieseck New discovery: Footprint of depleted uranium in US bombs is found in baby teeth of Iraqi children with birth defects. In press: "Living near a U.S. military base in Iraq is associated w/ increased risk of births defects and higher hair thorium."
Contact me for more info
That might be middle average in Iraq
The Depleted Uranium shells the U.S. has used have already cause hundreds of thousands of birth defects as well.
Always amazes me we used DU Depleted Uranium shells in Iraq enhanced piercing power for tank units as an example. Iraqi birth defects are through the roof hundreds of thousands. Those kids were not even born yet my country deserves better. It is just troubling at least to me.
If only Joe Biden had fathered the Iraqi children! He'd reference them every day on the campaign stump -- as proof that Medicare For All is not needed!
But Joe can't use them as a pawn so he ignores them. What's Tulsi Gabbard's excuse? Our faxu anti-war warrior? Oh, that's right. She only speaks out for her "brothers and sisters." Innocent Iraqi children? Not really her concern. Ever. Keep it faux, Tulsi, keep it faux.
We'll note this Tweet.
Another absolutely tragic article on the Hashd. It's almost as if these "experts" are deliberately ignoring the kidnappings, extortion, bodies popping up in Hashd-controlled areas, their role in corruption, etc
Now we need to wind down but we're going off topic for a moment.
JACOBIN notes:
On September 11, 1973, Chile’s socialist president Salvador Allende was overthrown in a CIA-backed military coup. In this 1971 interview, published in English for the first time, Allende expressed his fears of internal destabilization and US interference.
That was 1973. The CIA is not a glorious organization. It is a stain on the US. It should never have started but it certainly needs to be shut down today.
Sometimes you can end up on the wrong side of history. Me? For years, I defended Gloria Steinem. We got along and were friends and I assumed, because of what she told all of us, that the CIA charges were just not true. Then I saw the video, and this is after years of defending her, where she's bragging about what she did (it's on YOUTUBE -- Ann re-posted it at her site six years ago) and realized Marilyn French, the Redstockings and Betty Friedan had been correct. If you're new to the topic, see "The myth of poor, wronged Hillary (Ava and C.I.)" that Ava and I wrote back in 2016.
Gloria has defended the CIA. They went around killing people. They were responsible for smearing American citizens -- Jean Seberg to note just one. And she worked with them and she has praised them. She will not call them out. She is not our leader, she was our misleader. She has a great deal to answer for. The part that she admits to? What she doesn't tell you is that she wasn't promoting conferences, she was there to spy and compile notes on foreigners -- foreigners who were then targeted by the CIA. She's a damn liar and no friend to democracy. She needs to get accountable and shame on anyone who doesn't hold her accountable.
She didn't just screw Henry Kissinger -- bad enough -- she also felt the need to praise him publicly. Gloria Steinem is not a friend to the left. HARPER'S got it right in many 70s articles where they noted how her task was to weaken feminism and to sell compromise to women.
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