How you vote in November, as this article explains, is going to make a big difference as to what your tax rate will be.
Illustration: Sarah Grillo / Axios
When Americans go to the polls in November, they will be deciding the playing field for the biggest battle in memory over the direction of U.S. fiscal policy.
The big picture: Major provisions of former President Trump’s 2017 tax law expire at the end of 2025, meaning taxes would go up for most Americans if no new bill is passed. Neither party wants to let that happen in its entirety — but Democrats and Republicans have radically different visions of what the tax code should look like in 2026 and beyond.
Why it matters: Control of the White House, Senate and House will determine who holds the best cards in negotiations to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The legislation that results will decide the outlook for U.S. public debt, and where the burden of paying for government falls.
“Doing nothing means you go over a cliff,” Zach Moller, director of centrist think tank Third Way’s economic program, […]
Drones have changed the nature of war weaponry, and this new British technology is a response to that. It makes the Israeli genocide in Gaza even more obscene. It forces one to ask, was their no other way to conduct Israel’s war than killing tens of thousands of women and children?
The RFDEW – a 13-cent solution to a million-dollar problem. Credit: U.K. Crown
A new directed energy weapon is being rolled out to bolster British defense capabilities. And, at 13 cents a shot, it’s just as effective, but a lot cheaper than the multi-million dollar missiles it’s designed to replace.
The Radio Frequency Directed Energy Weapon (RFDEW) is part of the British government’s policy to respond to a changing geopolitical situation, placing the country’s defense on more of a war footing as it increases spending to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. This policy change also includes fast-tracking the rollout of lasers and other directed energy weapons.
The latter is extremely important, because, well, knocking out a drone that costs a few grand with a missile costing millions of dollars per round is bad economics – see, for example, the US$1.3-2.5 million Sea Viper missile used to take out a US$20,000 drone, as reported by Navy Lookout. Also, missile stockpiles tend to be pretty small, […]
Emily Badger, Margot Sanger-Katz and Claire Cain Miller, -
Stephan:
This article dates to 2022, but I am running it today to show the obscene lie behind the anti-abortion movement in MAGAt States. The anti-abortion claim of MAGAt advocates is protecting babies. But the truth is it is about controlling women, and keeping them subordinate. What is the proof? You have a lot of rights in those states as a fertilized egg but, once you are born, these same MAGAt States don’t give a damn about your wellbeing, or your mother’s. The social outcome data prove this, as this article describes.
Today, however, Mississippi fares poorly on just about any measure of that goal. Its infant and maternal mortality rates are among the worst in the nation.
State leaders have rejected the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion, leaving an estimated 43,000 women of reproductive age without health insurance. They have chosen not to extend Medicaid to women for a full year after giving birth. And they have a welfare program that gives some of the country’s least generous cash assistance — a maximum of $260 a month for a poor mother raising two children.
Mississippi embodies a national pattern: States that have banned abortion, or are expected to, have among the nation’s weakest social services for women and children, and have higher rates of death for infants and mothers.
According to a New York Times analysis, the 24 states that have banned abortion […]
I don’t know how it could be made any clearer that the oligarchs want criminal Trump as President because of what he will do to reduce their taxes and give them greater control over the country. They don’t care if he is a convicted rapist, multi-convicted grifter, and convicted super-felon. It is all about money and power; it has nothing to do with fostering national wellbeing. And the MAGAt peasants love him because he promises to address their resentments, racism, and pseudo-Christianity.
Miriam Adelson (center), controlling shareholder of the Las Vegas Sandals Corp., watches the Phoenix Suns play the Dallas Mavericks in the first half of an NBA basketball game in Dallas, on Feb. 22, 2024. Credit: Tony Gutierrez / AP
Republican mega-donor and casino billionaire Miriam Adelson plans to help bankroll a massive super PAC for Donald Trump as he seeks to close his financial gap with President Joe Biden.
Adelson is planning to play a major role in funding Preserve America, a pro-Trump super PAC founded during the former president’s 2020 reelection campaign. The group is now being reconstituted for the purpose of helping Trump’s 2024 bid, according to a person with direct knowledge of her plans who was granted anonymity to speak freely.
How much Adelson will donate to the super PAC is not clear, though the person familiar with her plans said the group was expecting to spend more than it did four years ago when Adelson and her late husband, Sheldon, donated $90 million to Preserve America. Their funds accounted for about 85 […]
The corruption and lack of ethics of the Supreme Court, the dysfunction and corruption of the House of Representatives, the silence and lack of positive work by the Senate, the inability of the Biden administration to make a positive impression, particularly its disastrous policies concerning the Israeli genocide going on in Gaza, as well as the Great Schism Trend splitting the nation into two countries has reached such a crisis level that young voters, the next generation of the country see, as this article is headlined, “A dying empire led by bad people.” If Biden and the Democrats do not wake up to this reality and win the Presidency and a majority in both the Senate and the House, I am not at all confident that the United States will be a democracy by 2025.
Young voters overwhelmingly believe that almost all politicians are corrupt and that the country will end up worse off than when they were born, according to new polling from Democratic firm Blueprint obtained exclusively by Semafor.
The sour mood points to potential trouble for Joe Biden, who is struggling with Gen Z and younger Millennials in polls compared with 2020, and needs to convince them he can be relied on to improve their lives.
As part of the online poll of 943 18-30-year-old registered voters, Blueprint asked participants to respond to a series of questions about the American political system: 49% agreed to some extent that elections in the country don’t represent people like them; 51% agreed to some extent that the political system in the US “doesn’t work for people like me;” and 64% backed the statement that “America is in decline.” A whopping 65% agreed either strongly or somewhat that “nearly all politicians are corrupt, and make money from their political power” — only 7% disagreed.
“I think these statements blow me away, the scale of these numbers with […]
