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https://fair.org/home/source-who-revealed-how-taxes-steal-for-the-rich-rewarded-with-five-years-in-prison/
https://fair.org/home/source-who-revealed-how-taxes-steal-for-the-rich-rewarded-with-five-years-in-prison/
Nevertheless, he added, “the judge gave him a max sentence, claiming it was ‘a moral imperative’ to punish him as harshly as possible.”
This guy gets fried on ‘mOrAL iMpeRaTivE’ — but Trump and Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh continue to party on— while making a complete mockery of the ever apparent 2-tiered US justice system.
It annoys me to no end that real-life whistleblowers end up in jail, have to emmigrate or die under mysterious circumstances, but fictional whistleblowers are cheered on in theatres and novels.
It's like America has a severe case of cognitive dissonance that the world sees, but is happy to stay that way no matter the cost.
Winston Churchill meme showing cure for insomnia. Bullets are handy cartridges. Gun is applicator. Used recently as a meme for curing fascism.
The middle class is a made up idea to convince part of the working class that they are immune to the problems of the rest of the working class because they’re in a marginally better financial position.
You almost got it. The Totally Fucked class is there to remind the Not Rich class that it could be worse, and that if they rock the boat, they can easily be relegated to the Totally Fucked class if they miss a paycheck or two.
Fictional whistleblowers are cheered on because the public likes whistleblowers and the people making the fiction know that but real whistleblowers are persecuted because the people in power do not represent the public
As has been said here before, not many cheered for Chelsea, Snowden, Reality or even Assange.
We can't keep blaming the elite who rule us if we're not willing to put boots on the ground and shut the nation down until politicians do the right thing.
And it's not impossible ... just look at France to see how it should be done.
There's a severe lack of political will in the US that I attribute to both isolation and electoralism. Many if not most Americans believe the extent of their political actions should be voting for a president every 4 years and any political organization or movement outside of this typically gets co-opted or rebranded into something useless. America is very good at handling it's citizens and very good at squashing radical political movements.
Most people simply don't care because they don't truly believe there is anything they can actually do about it. Better to just not worry about it.
Real life whistleblowers don't have a full team of Hollywood PR professionals boosting their image.
The closest we came to a real whistleblower celebrity was Edward Snowden. And when he left Hong Kong for Russia, all the liberals who thought he was a based freedom fighting chad decided oops nah, Big Russia Foreign Agent disregard everything about that PRISM shit.
I still suspect that change in attitude toward him was at least partially manufactured. The rich absolutely did not want the public lionizing him.
If anything, the jester solidifies the king’s power by working for the king as a sort of pressure valve. The king wants some of the discontent of the people to be expressed openly, releasing built-up tension and ensuring that said discontent will not burst in actions that could really undermine his position. The jester is his means of doing that.
When we, the public, laugh at the king, our laughter is also an expression of his power. He wants us to laugh so as not to act. It is, then, his laughter grafted onto our faces. When we laugh at the king, it is actually the king laughing at us.
The king is still a human being. Refer to historical France and Russia for ways to deal with leaders who don't listen to the people.
Help the guy out… he did it for you and me, and now he has legal bills: https://www.gofundme.com/f/charles-littlejohns-legal-defense-fund
Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager charged with killing two people and wounding a third during racial justice unrest in Wisconsin last year, is continuing to rack up massive amounts of donations ahead of his November trial, according to a legal defense fund associated with his family which said Monday it has raised nearly $500,000 in the past three months. Forbes
Support for Charles Littlejohn $48,685 USD raised of $250,000 goal GoFundMe
To be fair though, Kyle Rittenhouse gets indirect funding from all the weapon manufacturers and conservative groups. Charles Littlejohn managed to piss off everybody who matters/makes decisions.
"We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes." - Leona Helmsley. (~ 1989)
(Convicted of extortion; sentenced to 16 years; released after months.) Her husband's death left her with the Helmsley hotels, the Helmsley Palace and the Empire State Building. (Yes, that one.)
Biden if you were looking for a chance to prove you're about reform and equality for working classes, now is your chance to pardon this guy and give him a position in department of treasurey.
It will never happen. Biden is owned by the same people as Trump. There's only one party, the party of the Oligarchs. All of the petty shit about abortion, trans rights, gay rights, racial equality, gender equality, religion, second amendment, etcetera are all distractions to keep us all at each others throats while the rich cocksuckers figure out more insidious ways to fuck us all over.
This sounds a lot like the one party "they're all the same" bullshit that right wingers like to propogate.
Because make no mistake, one party is at least trying to push laws through that help (democrats), versus the other which just openly fucks people and doesn't give a shit about helping out.
44 Democrat senators, 36 Republicans and Joe Biden all worked together to pass a law forcing a union to accept a contract it's members had already voted on and rejected.
Fuck all of them.
This doesn't mean there's no difference between Biden and Trump. Don't do the fascists favors.
People who voted for Biden in the 2020 primaries did the fascists a favor. They decided they'd rather risk losing to fascists a second time than compromise with leftists. Biden did the fascists a favor when he called on congress to block the rail strike.
Fuck Joe Biden and anybody who voted for him in the 2020 primaries.
It's great that you picked the one option where Democrats were trying to help thos railroad workers but Republicans refused. Then when Democrats have to continue the literal working infrastructure of the United States, they get the blame for it... Rather than the company owners and Republicans lmfao. Democrats literally didn't not have enough votes on their own.
Sounds like Fox News is working to me. Because 90% of Lemmy does nothing but peddle it lol.
How about the public option with the ACA? The Democrats used their super majority to pass a Republican crafted bill that simply enshrined the shitty status quo into law, even going so far as to fine you if you didn't participate in said system. We still pay the highest per capita amount for healthcare in the entire world. What did we really get out of that? The end of "pre-existing conditions" and the option to purchase the same expensive, bare-bones insurance coverage from someone besides your employer?
It’s great that you picked the one option where Democrats were trying to help thos railroad workers but Republicans refused.
The railroad workers didn't need the "help" of Democrats anymore than the UAW did. They were preparing to strike and would have gotten their demands.
Democrats literally didn’t not have enough votes on their own.
THEN THEY SHOULD HAVE STAYED THE FUCK OUT OF IT.
Do not block strikes. End of story.
Sounds like Fox News is working to me. Because 90% of Lemmy does nothing but peddle it lol.
You need to pull your head out of your ass if you think there are zero people who voted for Biden in the 2020 general election and will refuse to vote for him in 2024 over this. The rail workers contract expires at the end of this year. The next president will be faced with the same choice. If Biden believes Trump to be the biggest threat we face then promising to veto any attempts to force a contract on the workers is a bargain.
Make a fucking choice. You want to save Democracy? Here you go. Here's the offer. Reject the offer and we'll vote 3rd party. Stop thinking you can get us to vote for Biden by any other means.
The cognitive dissonance or prop washing is tangible lol.
If you sound like a Fox News segment after typing something out, maybe rethink the reality of what you're trying to say vs what you're actually saying. Hell, you even agreed with what I said in ad many words lol.
you sound like a Fox News segment
Find me a Fox News article stating the rail strike should not have been blocked. I'll wait.
EDIT: Five hours later and no article. Odd. It's almost like people defending blocking the rail strike sound like Fox News watchers. Interesting.
Wow. Thanks for cherry picking one thing out of hundreds to show your point! That's a solid way of arguing.
Would you like me to cherry pick an example of one which disproves you? Or would you like to examine the evidence as a whole and actually properly examine it?
Let me explain it to you since you don't seem to understand.
OP makes a statement that all democrats and republicans act the same and are equal.
I say no, that's not right.
Other poster says well if you look at this one example, they voted together!
I said looking at one example isn't reflective of the whole picture. That I can just pick another example that shows they don't vote together. You need to look at it overall instead of cherypicking facts that suit you.
Do you understand the logic there and why what you wrote makes no sense?
I can make it simpler perhaps if you need it.
>OP makes a statement that all democrats and republicans act the same and are equal.
that is not what they said
OP makes a statement that all democrats and republicans act the same and are equal
Wrong. OP never wrote that - YOU made that statement as a strawman. You should try to be a more honest person.
Yeah, yeah, just shut down any discussion with this canned response calling the other person a fascist. The drunk, neglectful mother is really the good parent because the father is verbally, and sometimes physically, abusive. We shall never criticize the mother because we are so fortunate to have her and that is the end of the discussion.
Buddy, I came from a household like that. The less abusive one is absolutely better.
We, in America, are living that abuse right now. You either choose the less abusive, or watch the other one fuck entire world up.
I also came up in an abusive household, so here's somerhing to think about: who's worse, the abuser who only knows abuse because they were abused, or the one who allows it to happen even though they know it's wrong? That's what we have now. The reps suck, no doubt, but the dems sit back and twiddle their thumbs and allow the corporations to fuck us all over while pretending to give a shit. They don't give a shit because they've sold us out for a little bigger piece of pie.
Wow this is an insane take. I don't often speak to right wingers but this is pretty far from reality. None of what you wrote is accurate and I never called anyone a fascist.
I'm just relying on the evidence that clearly doesn't line up with whatever rhetoric you're spewing. Jeez that's vile though.
When you say:
"One party is at least trying to push laws through that help"
You're getting closer to my point.You admit how ineffectual they are. The dems pretend to help while lettting themselves get steamrolled by the repubs. This is not accidental. How do I know this? Look at the shit that really matters to the war machine, that shit always passes: money for the war in Ukraine (that we instigated), money for Israel (who just happen to be committing genocide right now), money for the military budget (last year they gave them 50 billion extra that they didn't even have to ask for). That's 886 BILLION dollars to spread "democracy" to countries around the world. That's more than the next 10 countries spent on their military combined.
Either you've lived life under a rock to not notice the shit going on around you, or you're a shill for the dems. Pull your head out of your rectum and look around. People are hurting, and if you're not, good for you, you're lucky. How long do you think your luck will hold out?
I'm not admitting how ineffectual they are. It's just hard to push laws through when one party is clearly trying to stop you from doing the right thing.
It's like saying that people fighting for climate change are the same as those arguing against climate change because they're not getting climate change law through.
Your point either makes no sense or you're arguing in bad faith. I wish it was the first but I've dealt with too many people who are just trolling and reporting right wing rhetoric.
Whenever dems start losing an argument these days, they're quick to call it "right-wing rhetoric". I take this as an ad-hominem attack since I've been a lefty all my life. I voted for Bill Clinton. I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I would have voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, but the lying, cheating fucks in the DNC stole the nomination, and we ended up with a clown-ass gameshow host as president.
Hey, guess what single entity in the world is the biggest polluter. The US fucking military. The same military that dems and reps overwhelmingly vote to give mountains of cash to every fucking year.
You say I'M arguing in bad faith? The other (literally Machiavellian) tactic that shit-libs like to use is to accuse the opposition of the thing they themselves are guilty of. I like how you glossed right over the whole funding the military aspect of my argument, as if murdering people for their resources is just business as usual. Obviously you're not affected by it so why should you care?
It absolutely is the same as the right winger rhetoric. Because it is right winger rhetoric. This is their new thing.
Oh no, my trans kid is being discriminated against. Time to ship them off to a private villa in another country.
Oh no, my daughter got knocked up. Impromptu vacation in Europe & private therapy.
Oh no, my relative is the wrong skin color. Give them a job posting "we're all in this together" memes in corporate PR.
Fuck this bullshit. There is a difference here, and what you're spouting here is pure Propaganda.
I agree the wealthy on both sides IS treated differently from all of the rest of us, but that doesn't mean there's no difference between fascism and the failure of progress.
I know that sounds dismissive, but if you have no healthcare and can't afford a place to live, and your right to dissent is eroded every day, then all of the other differences won't matter when we're dead.
Your list of "petty shit" were either examples of or things that directly impact healthcare and living conditions.
The two party/mass media distraction machine working on the next big thing? 😄
Trump even admitted to this stuff though, he said they all do it and they won't change the tax laws. IEven Chappelle write a bit about it.
He waves it in 'average Joe's' face, and people are still voting for him. 🤯
Dude, Joe Biden is a career politician. He's trash... But he's still better than Trump. Trump is a fucking dumpster fire threatening to light this whole world on fire.
Another thing. If that were going to happen, why hasn't he pardoned Julian Assange yet, hmm? Assange embarassed the elites and exposed their bullshit. Trump was his fan for a minute until his bullshit got exposed too. Turns out that Hillary has more ties with Russia than Trump. It's the Machiavellian strategy: accuse your opponent of the thing you're guilty of.
Biden if you were looking for a chance to prove you’re about reform and equality for working classes
No. Shut up. Sit down. If you don't vote for Biden, then you ain't working class, Jack.
Biden is 99% composed of Hitler particles he's not doing jack other than killing Palestinians.
As opposed to Trump, who's only following the Hitler playbook and seeking to aid and abett Putin in dismantling the entire western world?
Spoiler: Everyone is going to die. Not just the West. Everyone. Putin thinks so much less of everyone than Putin and Trump.
I wish trump was going to aid the dissolution of the west lol. You're giving him too much credit. In actuality the only thing he would do differently is dominate the US's allies slightly more and spread slightly more racist rhetoric. Considering the US empire will commit genocide in either case nothing justifies legitimizing it by participating.
In other words, don't fucking give up that you're the source, and journalists mustn't give up their sources either.
Or, you could flee to another country. Is Edward Snowden still alive?
All federal laws are made by the ownership class.
State laws too.
Town laws are different but mostly zero power.
His name is Littlejohn, and he's fighting against rich people? It was his destiny! If that judge didn't let him off he must be in bed with the aristocrats!
Few us citizens will even protest this extreme injustice. Ask yourselves how this would play out in France.
There's only so many times you can guillotine the same corpse before it gets old. After all it's "eat the rich", not "slice the rich like toast". So a few days will be sufficient.
I'd love to "bother" but do you have any suggestions? The French method ain't what it used to. The people need direction and I'm not talking about politicians. Everytime one pops up they get disappeared. The powers that be have gotten very good at keeping the status quo. So until that changes, yeah complacency it is.
Isn't there some kind of amendment you guys are so proud of? Something to do with tyrannical governments? I know solidarity isn't your thing entirely but it makes me wonder what you guys are waiting to happen before you use those guns. I hear they also help against disappearing. I realize that's a big step but you could at least take to the streets, no?
Also, "the powers that be" don't keep the status quo. The complacent populace waiting for something to change is. You are way more than them but for some reason you don't channel that power.
They won't do anything because they are selfish, lazy, weak, authoritarian cowards.
They can't and won't even enforce their own rules on Lemmy so what makes you think they're going to do anything to save their own country?
Lol, thanks for the analysis and your valuable contribution to the discussion. I will vow to better my excessive use of question marks based on your feedback. Can I still ask questions or is it just the question marks you are irked by❔
Your "usual policy" is exactly my point, by the way. You wait for someone to do something, for something to change just as long as you don't have to do anything and can stay angry but complacent. Change doesn't come in the form of some feature update you can download, you have to actively work for it.
I think the biggest problem is how it's such a complicated issue, it's really hard to just 'rally the masses around'. Especially when there's plenty of other runaway complicated issues we also need to rail against.
I think this is why the "Occupy Wall St." protests ultimately fizzled. People were pissed, many knew exactly why, many had a vague idea, and many others just wanted to blow off steam.
One "advanatage" the rich have with their ideology is insidious simplicity. Does it serve money? Do that. Does it keep you rich and punish others? Do that. Terribly predictable, but they all unite under solidarity of acquiring currency. They're not bothered with how it affects the planet or any other human beings that don't threaten their accounts.
A majority of these injustices are essentially us being very unhappy with all the complicated, multifaceted, complex ways in which these weaponized simpletons pursue cash and the power to acquire more cash. We know something is VERY wrong, but untangling it enough to unite under a common demand is a much heavier burden.
A lot of the problems boil down to FPTP-voting and the current way political campaigns are financed. They result in this polarized deadwater where money and power practically become synonymous words wielded to keep anything from changing via journalism and the courts on this matter. It's exactly as intended by the old roman aristocrats that designed it over 2 millenia ago to maintain influence regardless of voter outcomes.
Occupy Wall street was attacked by one of the most coordinated police actions in US history. Never forget that.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy
Excellent dig-up. Thanks for this. :) It's really hard to maintain "what really happened" as time goes on. I can't believe this was so long ago.
And the Judge was furious they couldn't give him a harsher sentence. That five years was quite literally throwing the book at him. It's a felony, though, so even after he gets out he'll be stripped of his rights to vote or purchase a firearm. His job prospects will dwindle to the point of non-existence. And I think he'll be prevented from owning a computer or accessing the Net, given the nature of his crime.
Computer restrictions can be part of probation, but after that, he should be okay to own one. Voting right is a state-by-state thing, I think. Firearms are 100% everywhere for him, though.
Felons voting doesn't hurt voting results more than anything else, the US is just retarded.
I wonder what would have been revealed if he had published tax information on all of Congress.
I feel like them calling for such harsh treatment isnl a defense mechanism for knowing they either use the same tactics,.or they don't like when someone mentions all the legal insider trading/conflict of interest they all do?
I'm pretty sure every senator and rep has more money then everyone I know.
Tax avoidance is the real problem, while tax evasion is largely a misdirection at people who begin to get a fraction of their wealth without the experience to properly manage it. They've even penalized people who essentially have nothing to do with the US, accidental Americans (those who've lived their entire life in another country), as tax evaders because of the slimmest thread of association to the US.
Imagine being growing up in a country for decades, working there and having everything there, and having the US show up and tell you that your day-to-day bank account down the street is really a foreign bank account, using their economic weight to have the bank freeze it and throw you out. It isn't a case of the theoretical, it has happened, and those people have been forced to "renounce" (heckled) to fork out over $4k to get them off their back - and even the EU has been ok with this, largely because it also answers to the lobbyists of wealthy billionaires.
Meanwhile rich assholes use what are essentially shell corporations (they don't even have to be because of the size of their wealth) to move their wealth to whatever fiscal paradise they want. They don't even need to change their citizenship because they can just create a corporation with headquarters wherever they please for whatever tax benefits it gives them. This is the problem: https://time.com/6326583/tax-shelters-multinational-corporations/
Let's make sure that neither cristofacists nor corporation-friendly libertarians economically-minded individuals come to power.
I just learned: In ancient times the government paid money to their citizens to get their fellowship. Only conquered countries had to pay taxes.
And in ancient times in Mesopotamia, there have been quite regular debt reset events. All private debts got null. Commercial debts still were valid.
I‘m currently reading „Debt“ by David Graeber. Interesting to read how religion, money, guilt and debt are intertwined. How we are forced into the rat race by burden us with debts - with both, moral and financial debts.
Only conquered countries had to pay taxes.
"Debt: The First 5000 Years" is such a good book because it really exposes the dynamics of conquest.
Conquered countries had to pay taxes in the coin of the realm. Coin was paid to the soldiers occupying the country. So in order to pay taxes, you were obligated to do business with the occupying soldiery. This system very quickly sorted the folks willing to accept conquest from the folks intent on rebellion, and it had a secondary benefit of enriching the defectors.
The conception of currency as a means of delimiting who is and is not a part of your society is really a genius bit of social engineering.
I'm on my 2nd reading of Bullshit Jobs by Graeber, I'll have to pick up Debt; I hear a lot of good things about it.
This guy obviously shouldn’t be in jail, can someone expand on the guy who the article says was forced into psychiatric care?
Anyways this one legal loophole has been around for awhile—rich people can acquire really low interest loans against their assets so they do, and they use that to pay their expenses, and when it comes tax time they write down that they made some money but they also took out a massive loan so actually they’re in the red. If you own a house you could probably leverage this to some extent yourself. Maybe if everyone who could did it they’d close the loophole? Obviously you couldn’t get rates as low as a politician who chills with the Schwab CEO.
can someone expand on the guy who the article says was forced into psychiatric care?
Judging from how he was treated, it looks like he was one of the good officers the police say they have:
If you own a house you could probably leverage this to some extent yourself.
That's a mortgage. Most people use it to pay for the house itself, but you are free to use the money in other ways if you already own the house. It's probably the only leveraged asset many people own, and the interest rate isn't particularly low at the moment, but it's the same thing as getting, say, a line of credit against your yacht.
It's called a secured loan. And a house secured loan (aka mortgage) isn't as good as a stock secured loan.
Stock secured loans rates were basically zero for quite a few years. I think this is why all the venture capital suddenly dried up. Both owning a stock AND taking out a loan based on that stock at 0.25% APR is an insane deal. A year of interest on a million dollars is $2,500. And the stock you're holding will outperform that. After a few years you just sell a bit of the stock to continue paying the interest of the loan.
Now that the interest rates are 6-7% things are different. Suddenly your yearly payment on that million dollar loan is $65,000 instead of $2,500. And your stock may not make 6% this year to pay for it.
It's kind of a miracle this return to reality didn't cause more of a collapse.
I agree that mortgage rates didn't drop to that level, but the same sort of trick worked on them. House prices were rising at anything up to 10% per annum, well above the mortgage rate, so you could refinance regularly, probably reduce your Loan to Value level, and also free up more capital to pay off the upcomming interest payments.
As you say, these methods have pretty much stopped working as the growth and interest figures have flipped. I don't see much of a risk of a true market collapse though as there are simply too many powerful people and institutions with too much to lose if that happened. It could be rather turbulent for the rest of us though.
There are also equity based life insurance policies I think you can do similar things. My guy explained it to me as the justification for the policy and of course because I'm a stupid simpleton, I've never looked at actually trying to do something with it.
Lol, I don't want to even be in dept to myself.
America built on the backs of the poor, with the rich with whips whipping at their backs. But we all knew this. We know that the rich are evading axes, and we poor are all paying for the criminey! government funding that we hate. (there are some good things the government funds, but nothing compared to what they put in crazy wars and overseas spending. But that's another gripe.) I kind of feel bad this guy got 5 years for telling us all what we already know. Now if he would have given us all a way to fix this problem, that would be something for the rich and government to be in an uproar about.
And five years is quick, compared to the life sentence exile that Edward Snowden got. We all knew all that stuff too.
Well, nobody stood up for Assange or Snowden, rather the opposite, I'm not surprised of this outcome.
Edit: typo