Based on facts, not partisanship politics, criminal Trump was an irrefutably inferior president in comparison to Biden. In fact, he was one of the worst presidents in American history. Here is one of the critical facts. And yet, many voters seem to want him to return to the Presidency. Why? Because he is the personification of their hate, religiosity, and racism. In my view this election is about who we are as a people, a society. What we choose to be.
The fiscal policies of the Trump administration added twice the amount to the national deficit as have President Biden’s, a new analysis has found.
Trump’s administration borrowed $8.4 trillion during the former president’s time in office, while Biden has borrowed $4.3 trillion, according to an analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a Washington think tank.
Ignoring the pandemic relief measures enacted by both presidents, the proportion of debt addition still holds around 2-to-1, with former President Trump adding $4.8 trillion in non-pandemic-aid fiscal debt and Biden adding $2.2 trillion.
Those additions were mostly due to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), changes to the Affordable Care Act, and different budgetary acts in 2018 and 2019.
Most of Biden’s non-pandemic-related additions were due to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, student debt relief, appropriations bills and other executive actions.
The two parties add to the debt in different ways, with Republicans doing it mostly through bipartisan legislation and Democrats doing it more through executive actions, the CRFB says in a preview of future work.
Seventy-seven percent of the Trump administration’s additions to the national debt were attributable to bipartisan legislation, while […]
Jesse Eisinger, Jeff Ernsthausen and Paul Kiel, Senior Editor | Senior Data Reporter | Business and Consumer Finance Reporter - ProPublica
Stephan:
If American voters are stupid enough to elect criminal Trump for President, which I hope does not happen, he has promised his uber-rich backers he will lower their taxes and through imposing tariffs raise yours. What most Americans don’t seem to comprehend is that the uber-rich already pay only a tiny faction of the tax rate you pay, and sometimes, they pay no income taxes at all. This article from ProPublica will give you the facts. The obscene wealth inequality in the U.S., the worst amongst all the developed democracies, is in large part the result of a tax system that is already rigged by corrupt Congress members to favor the rich.
Credit: ProPublica
ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.
In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.https://audm.herokuapp.com/player-embed/?pub=propublica&articleID=secret-irs-files-eisinger
Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.
ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the […]
Because of the endless greed of American corporations, the Great Schism Trend, the lack of universal birthright single payer healthcare and the cost of every aspect of healthcare, as well as the grotesque wealth inequality, and what climate change is doing, the culture of the United States is radically changing, and not in a good way. Like many of my friends, I bought my first house in 1971 when I was just 29 much like the generation described in this piece. It was in Chevy Chase, Maryland, a very desirable location just outside of D.C.. It cost $48,000 with a $5,000 down payment. The house is now appraised at $790,000, and I doubt many 29-year-olds would have the money to afford that today. This article on home ownership is based on actual research and describes the nature of our society today, and it is not a happy story.
The big picture: Gen Zers, roughly those aged 12-27, feel deeply pessimistic about the world around them, Axios’ Erica Pandey reports.
What they’re saying: “There’s nothing left to put away for a down payment” after shelling out for rent and other bills, and saving for retirement, Minneapolis renter Jaylen Santos, 23, tells Axios.
Unless someone’s married or they get homebuying help from family, “I don’t see how Gen Z can afford it,” Dallas renter Annabelle Hull, 22, says.
Some say they’d rather rent in buzzy neighborhoods than cough up for houses further from the action.
Over half of U.S. adult men (57%) and women (55%) under 25 lived in their parents’ home in 2022, an arrangement that’s become more common in the past several […]
LAUREN BAKER, JANE MALAND CADY, and MICHAEL KWAME NKONU, Senior Director of Programs at the Global Alliance for the Future of Food | Program Director, Global Collaboration for Resilient Food Systems, McKnight Foundation | Head of Portfolio - Agricultural Livelihoods at the IKEA Foundation. - Common Dreams
Stephan:
Finally, here is some good news about efforts being made to prepare food systems throughout the world for climate change. I will be paying close attention to how the United States prepares. So far I do not see the kind of preparation that is going to be required.
Agroecology has been lauded as an approach that should guide the transformation of food and agriculture systems. Credit: Wendy Stone / Corbis / Getty
A growing coalition of philanthropic organizations, under the Global Alliance for the Future of Food, is committing to scale up funding for agroecological food systems to address intersecting challenges across climate, food and nature.
This year climate finance is all the talk. As the UN Climate Conference in Bonn wraps up and the stage is set for COP29 later this year, expectations are high for governments to agree on a new climate finance package that will tackle the worsening climate and ecological crises.
In many countries, food production is the climate frontline. Nearly 95% of nationally determined contributions (NDCs) include adaptation and mitigation actions in the agriculture sector yet fail to address the full food system.
It only takes one climate disaster—a drought, flood or heatwave—for entire villages to spiral into debt, poverty and hunger, impacting regional food systems and economies.
Tony Diver, Reporter - Yahoo News / The Telegraph (U.K.)
Stephan:
The willful ignorance, actually the stupidity, of anti-vaxxers anti-science mostly Republican MAGAts is amazing to me. The anti-vaxxers died by hundreds of thousands because they would not get vaccinated. Now they want to go back to drinking raw milk. Milk has been pasteurized for over a hundred years since Louis Pasteur discovered pasteurization in 1862, and German agricultural chemist Frans von Soxhlet suggested in 1886 that milk sold to the public should be pasteurized. Over time it has saved uncounted lives. We will see what happens as a result of drinking raw milk.
Credit: USA MILK
For more than 130 years, Americans have been instructed that drinking milk that comes directly from a cow’s udder can be dangerous.
The US dairy industry spends millions of dollars each year heating its product to 70C before sale, to kill microorganisms that can make people ill.
But a growing number of consumers would rather they left it alone. No longer the preserve of farmers and hippies, “raw” milk is now on sale in corner shops and trendy health food stores across America.
Its proponents argue that it helps with weight loss, gut health and lactose intolerance. Gwyneth Paltrow, the actress and a longtime promoter of unorthodox health advice, takes it in her coffee every morning.
“I think there are schools of thought that drinking raw milk is better because once you process it and everything, that’s when the dairy becomes harder to tolerate,” she said in a recent interview.
Pasteurisation, once a consensus issue, has become the latest frontier in America’s never-ending culture war.
Public health officials say that drinking the milk is dangerous, and could lead to […]
The fiscal policies of the Trump administration added twice the amount to the national deficit as have President Biden’s, a new analysis has found.
