Misguided? Are you saying you want to go back to when your state's House Reps decided your state's Senators?
I understand our federal politics are a complete mess but think that has more to do to equating money with freedom of speech, the great return on campaign donations, the polarization of our media and the lack of solid non-partisan research institutes that our elected leaders can rely upon. Have you ever watched CSPAN? Our leaders routinely become informed about the world around us through the same mass media as we do.
This would give even more power to special interests, as they only need to influence a governor (or a small number of state reps) to get their senate choice, rather than all the voters in the state. I can’t see why that’s better, since at least now senators have to pretend to represent constituents.
I know exactly what you mean. The presentation is a bit off what you'd normally consider news. All caps, lighting bolt emoji. Massive bars with cyan text at the top and bottom of the video. An interesting mix of fonts.
I'm not sure what Dr. Coppola's intentions are. But it's a bit of a shame trying to inject what seems like to me sensationalist tone via the presentation, since his message could probably stand alone (although let me watch the whole thing first).
It would be interesting to find out how much debt these "superstar" cities have taken on and the structure of their "portfolio"s. Almost all revenue generation done by local municipalities is through property taxes so it's very important to evaluate these places by some sort of Sharpe Ratio or else you're just encouraging these places to be the next Detroit.
It shouldn't - the damage dams do to our fisheries is devastating. We likely wouldn't need fish farms and genetic modified salmon if we didn't have so many dams.
I would consider them renewable as long as the river keeps flowing. The question of whether or not we should use them because of the damage to fish populations is another question entirely.
> The state applied to kill the sea lions “because their analyses showed that the high levels of predation by sea lions meant there was an almost 90% probability that one of the upper Willamette steelhead runs would go extinct,” the wildlife agency said in a statement.
I was having drinks with an accountant friend of mine who had/has clients in the budding borderline legal pot biz a little while ago and he said something interesting - we were talking about President's Trump's refusal to share his tax returns. Forgot the exact gotcha was but the jist of it was that you should ALWAYS report all your income even if it's not technically legally obtained.
On a side note, this friend of mine thinks the reason why the President isn't showing his returns isn't because of Russia but because his accountants may have done false filing of some shady business deals and the release of this data will place the President under serious legal troubles.
> On a side note, this friend of mine thinks the reason why the President isn't showing his returns isn't because of Russia but because his accountants may have done false filing of some shady business deals and the release of this data will place the President under serious legal troubles
This is the rationale a lot of laypeople give - but we need to remember the IRS isn't a bunch of laypeople. The entire purpose of the IRS is taxes - more-or-less.
I'm very confident that, by now - particularly with all the "Never Trump'ers" that surely populate some of the offices in the IRS - we'd have heard something tangible. I'm confident people at the IRS have looked into Trump and The Trump Organization's taxes quite a bit by now, and the lack of any "leaks" or public releases from the IRS or its employees really speaks to there not being anything there - other than complicated multi-national corporation taxes.
The act of not letting every Tom, Dick and Harry look at his personal tax filings and selectively choose pieces to misrepresent for political purposes isn't indicative of wrong-doing. I'm surprised it ever became a thing for any politician to do.
IRS is run under the Treasury, which yes may be part of the Executive Branch - but that doesn't mean there's 100% support for the current President in every desk. Just like any department, there's a lot of career employees and hold-overs from previous administrations. Just look at the EPA... or FBI.
Not to mention Trump just became president in 2016... they've had his entire life to review his taxes. Wouldn't there be a whiff of something foul, somewhere, if there was something nefarious going on there?
A lack of investigation does not mean a lack of criminal activity. IRS is perpetually understaffed and doesn't have the resources to go after HNW offenders, which is why auditing of lower income individuals has skyrocketed
We're talking about an organization that's existing for 96 years... and a person that's been an adult filer for 55 years. I'm confident the IRS has looked into it by now.
Other than disliking the guy - is there any evidence there's any "criminal activity" here?
The IRS audits the president continually, I believe they've done so for many years though I don't recall exactly when they started.
This particular president has been audited for something like 12 years consecutively as I recall. If there were something there to find, it likely would have been found by now.
Sure - there may be nothing wrong with his IRS tax filings; he may have gains or losses listed under "other" - but what does that mean? He reported them, and that's all that matters, right?
Except for the fact that there was a particular bank lending to him, the only bank in the world that would lend to him, because American banks would not.
And that bank is currently under investigation for money laundering activities for people in a certain other country; and many of those people have cozy relationships with the government of that country. And Trump is particularly cozy as POTUS with the leader of the government of that country.
So - what if the "other" amounts on his tax returns happen to match up in some way with certain amounts on the books with that bank?
I don't know - I'm not an expert in these matters - but something tells me it wouldn't bode well for Trump, and that might be the reason he's so cagey about his tax returns.
After all - if there were nothing there, he shouldn't really care, right? The fact that he isn't "calling their bluff" speaks volumes...
> After all - if there were nothing there, he shouldn't really care, right? The fact that he isn't "calling their bluff" speaks volumes...
Or the simple fact that almost nobody are tax experts and almost everybody would like to selectively pick pieces and misrepresent them for political purposes.
What would he gain by releasing them? What would anybody gain by releasing theirs?
I understand our federal politics are a complete mess but think that has more to do to equating money with freedom of speech, the great return on campaign donations, the polarization of our media and the lack of solid non-partisan research institutes that our elected leaders can rely upon. Have you ever watched CSPAN? Our leaders routinely become informed about the world around us through the same mass media as we do.