A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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The IRS on Thursday released a plan for the nearly $80 billion in agency funding enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act in August — including expected boosts for customer service, technology and enforcement.
"We will increase capacity and expertise
for enforcement to better address high-dollar
noncompliance among complex filers."
"Effective enforcement: Reduce the gap
between taxes owed and paid"
"Earlier contacts as appropriate will also
improve the effectiveness of overall IRS
compliance actions by focusing enforcement
efforts on high-priority issues and cases with
significant evidence of noncompliance."
"Indicators of success
Decreased repeat noncompliance rates
Decreased enforcement contact with the IRS for compliant taxpayers"
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3744.pdf
Beware, Donald Trump! The IRS will be chasing you to the grave and beyond to get paid the $billions you owed for decades.
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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Trump has paid his taxes.
These agents aren't going after the rich and powerful. They're going after you.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:I have never been audited. Not because I'm honest but because the IRS can't do it. My taxes are one-tenth as complicated as Trump's, but there are a million ways to cheat when you own the company. I don't go that way, but Trump does. Every Trumptard I know that got audited also got into trouble with the IRS because they all cheat. The Trumptards actually believe all taxation is theft so they conclude that cheating is admirable.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Trump has paid his taxes.
These agents aren't going after the rich and powerful. They're going after you.
Trump posted a massive $4.8 million adjusted loss in 2020, which alone wiped out his federal income tax obligation. Trump paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2020.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/politics/donald-trump-tax-returns-relea
sed/index.html
Trump is a crook. So are his voters.
If you look at his 2020 returns, Trump wants a refund of $5,468,593. Just that request ought to be enough to bar Trump from being President. But it gets better. He claims he overpaid by $13,468,593. What a bullshit artist and con man Trump is.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/pdfs.taxnotes.com/2022/Trump_2020_1040.pdf
See all tax returns at https://www.taxnotes.com/presidential-tax-returns
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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Everybody gets audited.
You don't have a business.
I don't debate with liars.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:You (or your cheating Trumptard relatives in their crappy little businesses where the main source of profit is price-gouging customers) must have done something obviously crooked, which is why you got audited. People who are honest or at least competent at appearing honest while cheating don't get audited. I understand why Trumptards are paranoid about the IRS. Trumptards don't pay what they owe and don't do as they are supposed to, then lie to cover up, which is why their lives are full of unnecessary drama.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Everybody gets audited.
You don't have a business.
I don't debate with liars.
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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"Kennan: A Life Between Worlds," by Frank Costigliola (2023)
Reviewed by Terry W. Hartle
April 10, 2023
In the history of American foreign policy, few individuals have had the powerful and sustained impact of George F. Kennan. From the 1930s, when he helped open the first U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union, until after the Soviet government collapsed some 60 years later, Kennan was the United States’ most influential analyst of Russia and its intentions. A new biography by Frank Costigliola, “Kennan: A Life Between Worlds,” offers a penetrating assessment of the accomplishments and character of this seminal figure.
As the extent of Soviet expansionism became clear after World War II, America faced a stark choice: either acquiesce and let more countries disappear behind the Iron Curtain or confront the Soviet Union militarily and run the risk of nuclear war.
As these debates raged, Kennan – already an experienced hand in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow – was asked to respond to a speech by Joseph Stalin. On Feb. 22, 1946, he dictated what quickly became known as the “Long Telegram,” which explained Soviet motivations and outlined a new strategy to gently but firmly respond to Soviet provocations.
Kennan was soon installed as the State Department’s first director of policy planning in an office next door to Secretary of State George Marshall where, among other things, he helped design the Marshall Plan. But most importantly, his 5,500-word telegram became the agency’s operating manual for engaging the Soviet Union across the globe.
In 1947, in an article in Foreign Affairs, he called on America to remain “cool and collected” and to refrain from “outward histrionics” while enforcing “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment” of our ally-turned-adversary. Kennan believed that such a regimen would lead to the “moderation” or “mellowing” of Soviet power.
But Kennan’s plan had a second dimension that was quickly forgotten. After signaling the commitment to containment, Kennan wanted the U.S. to also engage in serious and sustained diplomacy to find a permanent solution to the post-war map in Europe.
Government policies – especially those dealing with existential threats – once set in motion are hard to redirect. Blocking the Soviets at every opportunity became the central goal of America’s foreign policy for the next four decades.
To the end of his long life (he died in 2005), he steadfastly and vociferously argued that the failure to move to diplomacy extended the Cold War and even increased the possibility of nuclear war. But as time passed, the consensus of the foreign policy establishment was that containment worked and produced the “long peace” that lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed. In short, Kennan lost control of the policy and the narrative.
Kennan was the ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Truman administration until, frustrated by lack of direction from Washington and an inability to engage with Russian officials, he lashed out and compared the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany. Stalin declared this man who deeply loved Russians and their culture “persona non grata.”
Kennan would later serve as ambassador to Yugoslavia in the Kennedy administration. He was often called upon for advice by government officials, but, for the most part, he spent the remainder of his career as a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.
In later years, he was often in the news for his clear, sometimes contrarian, and prescient foreign policy advice. Beginning in the 1950s, he predicted that Soviet hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe would collapse. He was a very early critic of the war in Vietnam. When the Soviet Union did fall, he warned against the expansion of NATO, fearing that it would lead the Russians to feel surrounded by hostile, nuclear-armed forces. He thought the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq could turn into quagmires. But while he received accolades and honors, “Kennan was not heeded,” Costigliola
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Sneaky politicians cheat to make democracy fail: Political parties use gerrymandering to counteract shifting voter preferences
New research that focused on “swing states,” where political parties are evenly matched, suggests that whichever party controls the redistricting process in the state legislature engineers an 11 percentage point increase in its probability of winning a U.S. House race in the next election. And these advantages often run counter to the will of voters.
Ultimately, gerrymandering is a way for political parties to minimize the electoral impact of opposition voters without actually winning a greater share of votes.
The study’s unique methods applied “bunching tests” to real-world data to look for non-random patterns in election results that can only arise through strategic party behavior. And the finding that gerrymandering conferred an average 11 percentage point advantage in swing states was just the tip of the iceberg. The team also took a close look at the conditions under which these advantages arose and found that, in the election before a redistricting cycle, political parties systematically won narrow majorities in the legislatures of states where they had recently lost U.S. House races. Then, in the election after redistricting, the trend of that party’s losses at the federal level reversed, despite no change in their share of votes.
“The deeper question of this work was not just a matter of whether parties that control redistricting use that to their advantage, but also where and why they wind up in control,” Shenoy explained. “And our findings suggest that parties seek control of redistricting in places where the electorate is turning against them, which is, in some ways, more concerning because it indicates that redistricting is being used to actively thwart the popular will.”
More at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/political-parties-use-gerr
ymandering-counteract-shifting-voter-preferences-key-battleground
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:
Sneaky politicians cheat to make democracy fail
Yup. That sums up what Democrats did to the system during Covid.
Republicans will make you regret that in 2024.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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Quote:I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which — notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie in 2016 — is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity in the opposite direction.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Sneaky politicians cheat to make democracy fail
Yup. That sums up what Democrats did to the system during Covid.
Republicans will make you regret that in 2024.
What occurred in Nashville last week is a frightening reminder of the fragility of American democracy when Republicans obtain supermajorities and no longer need to work with Democratic lawmakers.
The two Tennessee Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House were not accused of criminal wrongdoing or even immoral conduct. Their putative offense was to protest Tennessee’s failure to enact stronger gun controls after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville left three 9-year-old students and three adults dead.
They were technically in violation of House rules, but the state legislature has never before imposed so severe a penalty for rules violations. In fact, over the past few years, a number of Tennessee legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct. And the two who were expelled last week are Black people, while a third legislator who demonstrated in the same manner but was not expelled is white.
We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost Trump Republican politics — scorched-earth tactics used by Republicans to entrench their power, with no justification other than that they can.
Democracy is about means. Under it, citizens don’t have to agree on ends (abortion or whatever else we disagree about) as long as we agree on democratic means for handling our disagreements.
But for Trump Republicans, the ends justify whatever means they choose —including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election.
My friends, the Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy.
More examples of Republicans being uncommitted to democracy at https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-supermajorities
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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Second is talking about this clown, who used to be a normal person.
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Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
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