A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
VIEWED: 755368
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You could read the whole bill if you want: https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/25/text?r=18&a
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You got any more info on the amount of the monthly check, how it would be administered, and what hoops you'd have to jump through for it?
mp;s=1
It won't pass into law, so don't worry about reading it.
It's a whole lot of words that tell you almost nothing.
I glean two thing from this...
1. If you as an individual or a family fall into the poverty level, you will be granted an undetermined sum of money per month, split evenly between each individual over the age of 18. Once again, I'll stress that no mention of money or any numerical values are given here whatsoever.
2. If you as an individual or a family are above the poverty level, it is incumbent upon you to save every receipt and file every single month for a rebate.
Let's all hope this bill doesn't pass. 80% of Americans not below the poverty level get fucked every month because they're too stupid and/or lazy to do this every month, and the government will make it as HARD AS POSSIBLE to do at the same time.
(eg: If you don't file a "timely monthly report (with regard to extensions)" in time, it looks like you're fucked for the month, because there is no mention of how you would file for previous months if you missed the deadline. The only mention of retroactivity in the document is a retroactive 6 months of payments missed if a family under the poverty level screws up and commits a "Failure To Provide Annual Registration" on time to prove that they're still under the poverty level.)
And I'd even think that a similar percentage of Americans below the poverty level would get screwed as well. The only saving grace that they would have is if they're already working with SNAP and/or medicaid then this monthly process would already be figured out for them with whatever Family Services apparatus their state has in place. That being said, I'm sure the quality of these governmental institutions vary greatly from state to state.
Here's the two relevant chapters that say a lot but tell you almost nothing:
“CHAPTER 2—CREDITS; REFUNDS
“Sec. 201. Credits and refunds.
“Sec. 202. Business use conversion credit.
“Sec. 203. Intermediate and export sales credit.
“Sec. 204. Administration credit.
“Sec. 205. Bad debt credit.
“Sec. 206. Insurance proceeds credit.
“Sec. 207. Refunds.
“SEC. 201. Credits and refunds.
“(a) In General.—Each person shall be allowed a credit with respect to the taxes imposed by section 101 for each month in an amount equal to the sum of—
“(1) such person’s business use conversion credit pursuant to section 202 for such month,
“(2) such person’s intermediate and export sales credit pursuant to section 203 for such month,
“(3) the administration credit pursuant to section 204 for such month,
“(4) the bad debt credit pursuant to section 205 for such month,
“(5) the insurance proceeds credit pursuant to section 206 for such month,
“(6) the transitional inventory credit pursuant to section 902, and
“(7) any amount paid in excess of the amount due.
“(b) Credits Not Additive.—Only one credit allowed by chapter 2 may be taken with respect to any particular gross payment.
“SEC. 202. Business use conversion credit.
“(a) In General.—For purposes of section 201, a person’s business use conversion credit for any month is the aggregate of the amounts determined under subsection (b) with respect to taxable property and services—
“(1) on which tax was imposed by section 101 (and actually paid), and
“(2) which commenced to be 95 percent or more used during such month for business purposes (within the meaning of section 102(b)).
“(b) Amount of Credit.—The amount determined under this paragraph with respect to any taxable property or service is the lesser of—
“(1) th
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Quote:6ix, are you anxious to get some free money from the Federal Government? Why not go fully criminal by filing fake income tax returns with huge tax rebates? Or fake disability with Social Security? Or commit stock fraud? There must be some way to rob old people with email by convincing them you are their grandson who needs money. Do that!
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
“SEC. 304. Rebate mechanism.
“(a) General Rule.—The Social Security Administration shall provide a monthly sales tax rebate to duly registered qualified families in an amount determined in accordance with section 301.
“(b) Persons Receiving Rebate.—The payments shall be made to the persons designated by the qualifying family in the annual or revised registration for each qualified family in effect with respect to the month for which payment is being made. Payments may only be made to persons 18 years or older. If more than 1 person is designated in a registration to receive the rebate, then the rebate payment shall be divided evenly between or among those persons designated.
“(c) When Rebates Mailed.—Rebates shall be mailed on or before the first business day of the month for which the rebate is being provided.
“(d) Smart cards and Direct Electronic Deposit Permissible.—The Social Security Administration may provide rebates in the form of smart cards that carry cash balances in their memory for use in making purchases at retail establishments or by direct electronic deposit.
What to Do if Someone Files a Fraudulent Tax Return in Your Name
https://money.usnews.com/money/personal-finance/taxes/articles/what-to
-do-if-someone-files-a-fraudulent-tax-return-in-your-name
5 Examples of Social Security Disability Fraud
https://www.thegoodlawgroup.com/blog/social-security-disability-fraud/
If it is not clear to you, there is absolutely no way the FairTax Act of 2023 will pass in the Senate or get Biden's signature. The FairTax Act is nonsense from the mentally ill Trumptards.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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What The Proposed ‘FAIR Tax’ Really Looks Like
"After September 30, 2027, no money will be appropriated for enforcing the taxes repealed by the act (income, estate, payroll) and all records related to the administration of those taxes are to be destroyed by then except for records related to ongoing litigation. It does strike me as an invitation to go out of compliance, but being a CPA and all I'm not supposed to give that kind of advice."
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2023/01/20/what-would-the-fa
ir-tax-really-be-like-/?sh=6cac12b463f2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
“SEC. 304. Rebate mechanism.
“(a) General Rule.—The Social Security Administration shall provide a monthly sales tax rebate to duly registered qualified families in an amount determined in accordance with section 301.
“(b) Persons Receiving Rebate.—The payments shall be made to the persons designated by the qualifying family in the annual or revised registration for each qualified family in effect with respect to the month for which payment is being made. Payments may only be made to persons 18 years or older. If more than 1 person is designated in a registration to receive the rebate, then the rebate payment shall be divided evenly between or among those persons designated.
“(c) When Rebates Mailed.—Rebates shall be mailed on or before the first business day of the month for which the rebate is being provided.
“(d) Smart cards and Direct Electronic Deposit Permissible.—The Social Security Administration may provide rebates in the form of smart cards that carry cash balances in their memory for use in making purchases at retail establishments or by direct electronic deposit.
Yes. This is part of the entire thing that I posted just above your post.
Simply re-posting it doesn't make it any more clear than when it was part of a greater whole.
Quote:
6ix, are you anxious to get some free money from the Federal Government?
No. As I stated yesterday, I might actually support a Value Added Tax, but ONLY if necessities including Food, Water/Trash pickup, Electric/Natural Gas, Gasoline, Your first car (and your spouses' first car if it's a 2 income household), Car repairs for said cars so you can get to work, Hell... even things like diapers for kids, had no up front sales taxes.
I also stated that these things simply shouldn't be taxed in the first place, and that a rebate system would be asinine. But here we are... With a bill that will fuck over millions of Americans who are too stupid and/or lazy to jump through all these needless hoops.
Quote:
Why not go fully criminal by filing fake income tax returns with huge tax rebates? Or fake disability with Social Security? Or commit stock fraud? There must be some way to rob old people with email by convincing them you are their grandson who needs money. Do that!
Why would I do any of that? Not only is the ROI terrible on any of those suggestions with the risk you're taking, but I don't have a love of money like you do. I also wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I were a con man.
Quote:
If it is not clear to you, there is absolutely no way the FairTax Act of 2023 will pass in the Senate or get Biden's signature. The FairTax Act is nonsense from the mentally ill Trumptards.
I agree. It will not pass. And I'm glad that it will not pass. I would only support it if necessities weren't taxed on the front end and they dropped this ridiculous rebate program.
And here's why: How Mail-In Rebates Rip You Off
https://www.investopedia.com/financial-edge/0810/how-mail-in-rebates-r
ip-you-off.aspx
Quote:
Rebate deals are a way to get customers into stores and encourage them to spend. Even better, the companies know they often won't have to pay out that rebate money at all. According to ConsumerAffairs.com, more than $500 million in rebates go unclaimed every year.
"Between 40% and 60% of rebates are never redeemed," says Edgar Dworsky, founder and editor of ConsumerWorld.org.
I always file mine. I've gotten nearly $4,000 worth of rebates in the last 2 years now.
But half of Americans would get raped on VAT taxes by not filing for their rebates (or knowing somebody smart enough to do it for them since the Government will make it at least as difficult as it is to apply yearly for governmental assistance programs would be... every single month).
Yes. As it is written, H.R.25 — 118th Congress (2023-2024) is a terrible p
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Quote:Contemplate the fact that High-income workers work fewer years and live a lot longer than low-income workers. Here's what that looks like for the US:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Every once in a while we agree on something, even if the road we took to get to that conclusion was very different.
Here's the rich vs poor life expectancy differential internationally:
https://jabberwocking.com/frances-retirement-system-is-unfair-so-is-ev
eryones/
All around the world, life is short and unfair to angry poor white trash.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Contemplate the fact that High-income workers work fewer years and live a lot longer than low-income workers. Here's what that looks like for the US:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Every once in a while we agree on something, even if the road we took to get to that conclusion was very different.
I've worked less than any not rich person you will ever know. And my house is paid for.
And no. I won't look at your graphs from jabberwocking.
Quote:
All around the world, life is short and unfair to angry poor white trash.
Oh. You must be in Shitting on the People mood this morning. Let me know when you're back in defending the people from the evil corporations mode.
I'm just kidding. Don't bother. I don't care about any of your multiple personalities or their opinions on anything.
That being said, if you want to remove your head out of your ass and go back to the discussion we were having instead of taking the last sentence of a long post and quoting it just so you can shit-talk and insult somebody because you're a worthless piece of shit with a never-ending supply of sand in his vagina, let's talk.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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What Republicans (and anyone else) who support Trump need to know
THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:
That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought “Fine.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/04/10/tru
mp-university-settlement-judge-finalized/502387002/
That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, “Okay.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions-in-fines-for-u
npaid-work
That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, “No problem.”
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexua
l-misconduct/story?id=51956410
That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, “Not an issue.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-dona
ld-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/
That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn’t care, you exclaimed, “He sure knows me.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-dona
ld-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/
That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year-old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t — you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, “That’s cool!”
https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story
That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-criticized
-after-he-appears-mock-reporter-serge-kovaleski-n470016
When you heard him brag that he doesn’t read books, you said, “Well, who has time?”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/americas-first-po
st-text-president/549794/
When the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn’t commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, “That makes sense.”
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has
-said-central-park-five/1501321001/
That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, “Yes!”
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-campaign-protests-2016031
3-story.html
When you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man’s coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, “What a great guy!”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-orders-proteste
r-s-coat-is-confiscated-and-he-is-sent-into-the-cold-a6802756.html
That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, “Thumbs up!”
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/why-cant-trump-ju
st-condemn-nazis/567320/
When you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, “That’s the way I want my President to be.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-insult-foreign-countries-leaders_
n_59dd2769e4b0b26332e76d57
That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they’re supposed to be regulating and you have said, “What a genius!”
https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/12/29/138-trump-policy-chan
ges-2017-000603/
That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as P
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When Americans Lost Faith in the News
Half a century ago, most of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, most say they don’t. What happened to the power of the press?
Almost as soon as Donald Trump took office, he started calling the news media “the enemy of the American people.” For a time, the White House barred certain news organizations, including the Times, CNN, Politico, and the Los Angeles Times, from briefings, and suspended the credentials of a CNN correspondent, Jim Acosta, who was regarded as combative by the President. “Fake news” became a standard White House response — frequently the only White House response — to stories that did not make the President look good. There were many such stories.
Suspicion is, for obvious reasons, built into the relationship between the press and government officials, but, normally, both parties have felt an interest in maintaining at least the appearance of cordiality. Reporters need access so that they can write their stories, and politicians would like those stories to be friendly. Reporters also want to come across as fair and impartial, and officials want to seem cooperative and transparent. Each party is willing to accept a degree of hypocrisy on the part of the other.
With Trump, all that changed. Trump is rude. Cordiality is not a feature of his brand. And there is no cooperation in the Trump world, because everything is antagonistic. Trump waged war on the press, and he won, or nearly won. He persuaded millions of Americans not to believe anything they saw or heard in the non-Trumpified media, including, ultimately, the results of the 2020 Presidential election.
The press wasn’t silenced in the Trump years. The press was discredited, at least among Trump supporters, and that worked just as well. It was censorship by other means. Back in 1976, even after Vietnam and Watergate, seventy-two percent of the public said they trusted the news media. Today, the figure is thirty-four percent. Among Republicans, it’s fourteen percent.
That we need a free press for our democracy to work is a belief as old as our democracy. Hence the First Amendment. Without the free circulation of information and opinion, voters will be operating in ignorance when they choose whom to vote for and what policies to support. But what if the information is bad? What if you can’t trust the reporter? What if there’s no such thing as “the facts”? . . .
In the memoir slash manifesto “Newsroom Confidential: Lessons (and Worries) from an Ink-Stained Life” (St. Martin’s), Margaret Sullivan argues that objectivity is not so much impossible today as meaningless, and that the press ought to stop striving to achieve it. The events of 2020 and 2021 showed that the press’s values were in the wrong place. “The extreme right-wing had its staunch all-in media allies,” she writes. “The rest of the country had a mainstream press that too often couldn’t, or wouldn’t, do their jobs. Too many journalists couldn’t seem to grasp their crucial role in American democracy.”
She complains about a number of common journalistic practices, but what concerns her most is precisely the “objectivity” standard. She thinks this leads to both-sides-ism, the insistence on giving each party in a dispute equal coverage. In her view, the traditional news media engaged in a pattern of treating election denialists as “legitimate news sources whose views, for the sake of objectivity and fairness, must be respectfully listened to and reflected in news stories.” And this was true of the mainstream coverage of national politics generally. “Almost pathologically,” Sullivan says, reporters “normalized the abnormal and sensationalized the mundane.”
Sullivan’s position is an appeal to the original rationale of the First Amendment. We have a free press in order to protect democracy. When democracy is threatened, reporters and editors and publishers should have an agenda. They should be pro-democracy. Reporters should “stop asking who the winners and losers are,” Sullivan says; they should “start asking who is s
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
When Americans Lost Faith in the News
It was earned. And The New Yorker is a part of that problem.
That's fine. They are all going to be laid off now.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Trump's wall settles into a strange, costly afterlife
The border wall is largely ineffective as immigration policy. But it's very effective as an assertion of values.
By Frank Wilkinson
Donald Trump's signature border wall is morphing in strange and costly ways - even as it seems to play little role in stemming illegal migration.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been busy spending state money - in hundred-million-dollar chunks - to erect his own political statement on the Texas-Mexico border. Abbott's wall, which the Texas Observer calls a "colossal waste of money," has generated contracts for GOP campaign donors and a talking point for Abbott's political future. But Abbott's wall is running into some of the same difficulties that plagued Trump's wall. As USA Today reported in 2017, 4,900 privately owned land parcels in Texas "sit within 500 feet of the border." Thus, building a wall provides annuities for an army of lawyers as well as for construction firms. The Texas Observer estimates that at its current rate, completing the state wall would cost around $17 billion.
In Congress, Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana, a leading Republican defender of those who overran the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, just introduced the Finish The Wall Act. The legislation is largely self-explanatory. It's designed to complete the Trump wall and stop the "horror" that President Joe Biden is "forcing on America."
Meanwhile, in Arizona, before leaving office in January, Governor Doug Ducey agreed to remove the shipping-container wall that had transformed parts of Arizona's southern border into a linear junkyard. The state's taxpayers will spend about $76 million or so to remove the eyesores, which is a bargain compared with the roughly $95 million that they spent to install them in the first place.
Each of these barriers, state and federal, has something in common beyond the waste of public money and the hazards they pose to wildlife: Each can be surmounted by a ladder, a technology that is many thousands of years old and widely available in Mexico. Smugglers with a taste for more elaborate gear can deploy an inexpensive power saw to get through. The Washington Post reported last year that traffickers had done exactly that - 3,272 times in the preceding three years. Some of the openings they created were large enough to drive a vehicle through. Occasionally, authorities find a tunnel that enables passage beneath the wall.
If you're young and athletic, you can climb freestyle. But in places where the height of the wall was raised to 30 feet, some migrants have been getting injured or even dying, according to Mexican consulate data provided to Border Report. Carlos González Gutiérrez, Mexico's Consul General in San Diego, told Border Report that the higher wall hasn't deterred migrants but has led to hundreds of cases of bruises, fractures and lacerations as well as spinal cord or brain injuries. Hospitalizations from falls have increased.
The correlation between the wall and deterrence is shaky at best. "In fiscal year 2022," states a report by the Cato Institute, a libertarian, pro-immigration think tank, "the border wall was breached 4,101 times - more than 11 times per day. This was far more than the number of breaches in any of the prior six years and double the number of breaches for fiscal year 2016 before any of the Trump wall was built."
It's a paradox, isn't it? Apparently, the more wall you build, the more it is breached for illegal access. Sometimes the breaches are cosmetically repaired by the same smugglers who created them, so that the opening can be used over and over.
All of which raises the question of why so many Republican politicians, and the voters who elect them, are so enamored of this costly symbol of failure and futility. After all, the same data that I quoted above are available to governors and members of Congress. And it's not as if champions of the
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