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[Starver]

"Setting up properly" is doing a hell of a lot more lifting than it probably should, too. The US electoral infrastructure is incredibly patchwork, doing anything major to it as a whole is a pretty damn herculean task being aimed at a workforce that's substantially manned by temporary volunteers. You'd be seeing a lot of that user error, heh.

There was a thing, the other day, about the claims (by guess-who!) abut that cities with the highest murder rates weren't being couted by the FBI (ah, should be in this podcast, in with a couple of unrelated things), in which they pointed out that the fragmentation of police-departments meant that some of the smaller (though basically none of the more (obviously) murdery) ones just weren't really up to speed on such submissions. (Probably better not explained second-hand, but that was my own takeaway.)

With State>County>District (I think... or is it >District>County?) fragmentation of roles and responsibilities for all kinds of things (not just policing/elections), I'd not be surprised if the inertia to standardise might be hard to overcome. (Perhaps even harder than the any inertia to keep using "-ize" words instead of "-ise" ones!)

{i}edit: ...urgh tagging error.{/i}

[anewaname]

Georgia local ABC news article, Georgia completed their review of 8.2 million registered voters, looking for Trump's hundreds of thousands of illegal voters... and found 20 non-citizens on the register, "Those 20 people were removed from the state’s voter rolls – which total 8.2 million – and have been referred to local law enforcement, he said. Of the 20, only nine actually ever cast a ballot."

[hector13]

Right. Even if they do cast a ballot there’s still checks and balances that are in the way of that ballot being counted.

Voter rolls are checked against immigration and other registries to make sure that people who are registered are allowed to actually cast a ballot; if they’re not they get flagged and if they try to cast a ballot they need to provide evidence that they’re allowed to vote before it’ll actually get counted.

This… it’s not even a molehill.

Even if all the people who are registered wrongly cast a ballot that was counted, it wouldn’t affect an election.

https://www.reuters.com/article/fact-check/re-examining-how-and-why-voter-fraud-is-exceedingly-rare-in-the-us-ahead-of-th-idUSL1N2XP2AI/

[MaxTheFox]

Hacking isn't magic. The best hacker in the world won't get data in or out of an airgapped system unless they could physically access it.

[Robot Parade Leader]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-open-eliminating-income-145419157.html

WTF? He will lie about literally anything to get re elected.

He is not going to eliminate income taxes and anyone who think he can is fooling themself. The military alone costs a ton of money.

Infrastructure, Medicare, Social Security (Payroll taxes and income), vA, and everything peple won't be able to live without, there's no way. Even if he somehow guts the country and takes out every program that remains after years and decades of stupid budget cuts (Musk and the rest of the ultra rich has to have another Billion or Trillion or whatever, don't you know), there is no possible way. This is both the end result of the stupid idea of constantly cutting taxes until there's nothing left (you know it won't work) and the fact that he basically just heard it on a radio show and didn't even care even though he said yes.

He has no plan for this and it was just basically thrown out there with nothing.

[Starver]

Well, from my reading[1] of it, he's apparently going to replace the revenue of Income Taxes with that from Tariffs.

Which, from the POV of most people, will likely mean a raised personal tax-burden for the same total national take, as there's no way to make that fairer/less-unfair upon non-high-earners who still need to consume things. But it'll definitely be good for those who have CEO-level wageslips, or higher. A bit further down the hierarchy too, perhaps, but wage-slaves won't actually benefit from such a simple 'solution'.

But I find the US tax system confusing (all the things that mean that "doing your taxes" seems to be a staple once-a-year time-sink for many people, not just the ones with actually complex taxable situations like dividends, having paid positions on multiple company boards or even a change in marital/parental status), the way it's figured in popular US culture... I think we've discussed this all before, of  course.

[1] Brief, admitedly, I don't like the taste of word-saladcream, no matter what the bulk of the word-sandwich might be...

[Robot Parade Leader]

So basically if he does tariffs, then he turns progressive taxes into regressive taxes (hurting the poor and helping the rich)? Got it.

I pay an accountant $50 to do my fairly simple taxes and I get money back when he itemizes everything and keeps copies of my receipts in case the IRS ever calls. He used to work for the IRS. If he does that for 2000 people a year, then he grosses $100,000. He said he did more when he worked for the IRS and got paid less even after inflation, and I believe him.

This is simple. The US could shut up and pay professionals to do it right for everyone, but nobody wants to pay for anything ever.
You take the person's services and spread out the cost to a bunch of people and it works so they get paid steady and guaranteed as long as they meet the quality requirements and fix it when they don't. I've seen others say it and I don't get all the details but it can totally be done. This isn't impossible but it just would require rich people to shut up and realize they should be happy to have the privilege to pay for things if they care about this country. If they don't then they should leave, because we don't need those leeches. 

But yeah, this is one of the insane conservative end results they want. Rich people paying little or no taxes while you the average person pay a ton. Those tariffs aren't magic and you can't make foreign companies just pay for everything. It's stupid. They are just going to raise the prices and pass that expense on to you when you buy things. They can't just get rid of income tax. Jesus these absolute nut jobs want things back to the 1800s before the civil war. Screw this lying crap.


What the hell is wrong with people? This is just more "Mexico will pay for the wall," crap.
Mexico didn't pay for anything.

[MonkeyHead]

Well, yes, sure, but the people who want him as leader dont know or care about how Mexico didn't pay for it. They just believe what he says because he says it and they want him to be correct.

[anewaname]

Trump is a pro-salesmen of the pro-conman variety. He is changing his sales pitch to include a "if you buy now, you also get a free tax break..."

"No income tax" is a part of project 2025. Ron DeSantis says there are good things about slavery... "no income tax" is one of those good things.

<calm voice>People, accept the collar... <reassuring voice>see? it has a "non-taxable" sticker on it...

If you want a better idea of what trump's plan is, listen to Zoe Chace (who does the "This American Life" series that play on NPR and elsewhere) talking with Ivan Raiklin (this link is to Raiklin's 20 minute vid on Rumble) about his involvement as the future enforcer for a trump regime. There is no fat in this video, this guy is a very focused individual who says what he plans to do and who he is in contact with...

He and his 80,000 buddies are waiting for someone to give them the authority to hurt people. He plans to live-stream SWAT takedowns of an initial target list of 350 individuals who were involved in legal attacks/investigations on Trump. He says the list is also known to people like Jordan, Colmey, Flynn, Musk, and a bunch of others. He plans to be the attack dog who will fill the labor camps with "the enemy within" and put the rest of the population in fear.

[Robot Parade Leader]

John Stewart and the Daily Show.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnL4yzSXaMU

Basically sum it up.

Did we all die during COVID and this is the bad place? Donald Trump is hanging out a McDonalds Drive through window in a faked PR move BSing if he will respect the popular vote or not.

[Folly]

As much as it was a stupid publicity stunt and trolling attempt, Trump working a shift at McDonalds is still by far the most compelling thing I've seen come out of his campaign so far. I honestly didn't think he was capable of putting on an apron and associating with regular working men and women for that long.

[Frumple]

... for like 15 minutes? It wasn't exactly a full shift, and the whole thing was staged; no one got in there that wasn't vetted. He wasn't capable of putting on an apron and working an actual McD's shift for any amount of time.

Statement could still stand, but that would be saying your bar for how long he could stand that was incredibly low :V

[hector13]

He wasn't capable of putting on an apron and working an actual McD's shift for any amount of time.

qft

Someone else put on the apron, and the place was closed the entire time he was there. He didn’t even take orders from the people in the queue, they got what he gave them and that was it. He gave away one order at least for free, so I imagine there was a net negative for that particular location for the time he was there.

[Duuvian]

There was a thing, the other day, about the claims (by guess-who!) abut that cities with the highest murder rates weren't being couted by the FBI (ah, should be in this podcast, in with a couple of unrelated things), in which they pointed out that the fragmentation of police-departments meant that some of the smaller (though basically none of the more (obviously) murdery) ones just weren't really up to speed on such submissions. (Probably better not explained second-hand, but that was my own takeaway.)

With State>County>District (I think... or is it >District>County?) fragmentation of roles and responsibilities for all kinds of things (not just policing/elections), I'd not be surprised if the inertia to standardise might be hard to overcome. (Perhaps even harder than the any inertia to keep using "-ize" words instead of "-ise" ones!)

{i}edit: ...urgh tagging error.{/i}

I don't know if this is useful info or not:
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/21/another-report-undercuts-the-constant-narrative-that-us-crime-rates-are-out-of-control/

Spoiler: From the article (click to show/hide)

This report is far from complete. Participation by US law enforcement agencies is barely over 70%. Additionally, the FBI revamped its crime categorization, which may result in some crimes being over- or under-reported until every reporting law enforcement agency is on the same page in terms of crime classification.

For further reading, the article has blue text hyperlinks aplenty that are generally good. See!

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/techdirt/
Bias Rating: LEFT-CENTER
Factual Reporting: HIGH
Country: USA
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rating: MOSTLY FREE
Media Type: Website
Traffic/Popularity: Medium Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: HIGH CREDIBILITY

[hector13]

BUT THE IMMIGRANTS ARE CROSSING ILLEGALLY AND THEY’RE EATING THE DAWAWGS

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