Pro Publica shows that billionaires don’t pay their share of taxes

Republicans don’t want to raise taxes on rich people. I doubt this will change their mind.

The bottom line – see #6

6/ Here’s the summary: A typical American with $70K in income will pay about 14% in federal income taxes. The top marginal income tax rate is 37%.

The top 25? They paid 3.4% of their wealth growth in 2014 to 2018.
— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) June 8, 2021

The origin of The Tax Files: Someone sent ProPublica "the private tax data of some of our nation's richest citizens." The publication doesn't know the identity of the source. "We did not solicit the info." Here's the editor's note about why it's newsworthy https://t.co/HL2Dl1B1Sh
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) June 8, 2021

NEW: Today @ProPublica presents The Secret IRS Files. We have obtained a vast trove of never-before-seen tax data on thousands of the richest Americans covering more than 15 years. (THREAD)https://t.co/M9XrLLoihT
— Jesse Eisinger (@eisingerj) June 8, 2021

The 25 richest Americans including Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg and Elon Musk paid relatively little — and sometimes nothing — in federal income taxes between 2014 and 2018, according to an analysis of IRS filings by ProPublica. https://t.co/IsZyRbMT53
— The New York Times (@nytimes) June 8, 2021

A day after Jeff Bezos proudly announced that he intends to take a trip to space this summer, ProPublica has shed some light on how he and other U.S. billionaires have managed to amass such a ridiculous amount of wealth https://t.co/qkzf3gMWz2
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) June 8, 2021

The rich really are different from you and me: They’re better at dodging the taxman.

Overall, the richest 25 Americans pay less in tax — 15.8% of adjusted gross income — than many ordinary workers do, once you include taxes for Social Security, Medicare https://t.co/FnsjscteR7
— Yahoo News (@YahooNews) June 8, 2021

IRS records show wealthiest Americans, including Bezos and Musk, paid little in income taxes, report says https://t.co/vTbXFvqMsE
— Glenn Kessler (@GlennKesslerWP) June 8, 2021

Film: Extreme Job

Extreme Job is a very entertaining 2019 South Korean comedy film. It’s available on Amazon Prime and YouTube Movies but not on US DVD or Blu-ray. I bought an Asian Blu-ray on eBay. There is a similar Chinese film, Lobster Cop, which I haven’t seen, also on Amazon Prime. Kevin Hart announced that he is making a remake in the US.

The film is about police officers who are trying to monitor the activities of a criminal gang. They buy a chicken restaurant across the street from the gang’s headquarters. They introduce a new chicken recipe to keep the place open and suddenly their great success at running the restaurant interferes with tracking the bad guys.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckb911KahSo

Two things you always see in bad monster movies

Somebody always falls down when they are running away from the monster.
The military and police always uses guns to try to kill the monster. Shooting the monster never works but do they change their strategy? No, they keep trying to shoot the monster. You would think they would have learned from other monster encounters that shooting them doesn’t work.

The worst part of Republican voting laws

They can use this to overturn the voting results. It’s really dangerous.

The dangerous GOP voting laws change who counts the votes | Analysis https://t.co/AjuYwu8pU4
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 6, 2021

NYT editorial board reaching the more or less inescapable conclusion about HR1: "poorly matched to the moment," as it at once fails to address the clearest threats to democracy and attempts to do far more than what's feasible and necessaryhttps://t.co/A0hnT3CC2E
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) June 4, 2021

HR1 doesn’t address vote counting but I don’t think we realized Republicans would be this aggressive in their efforts to prevent election results from standing if they lost.

Opinion: Republicans aren’t just making it harder to vote. They’re going after election officials, too. https://t.co/YVpI04QZ6J
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) May 9, 2021

"Anxiety is growing among a broad range of civil-rights, democracy-reform & liberal groups over whether Democrats are responding w/enough urgency to the accelerating GOP efforts to both suppress voting & potentially overturn future D election victories." https://t.co/VlJQbPUqvT
— Ronald Brownstein (@RonBrownstein) May 27, 2021

Wow. New Hampshire Republicans are considering passing an amendment that would create separate federal & state election administration systems so the GOP could try to maintain voting restrictions in the latter if Dems in Congress pass voting reforms https://t.co/IFo5leKmtH
— Stephen Wolf (@PoliticsWolf) May 17, 2021

Yes, the scenario in which Congress doesn't recognize a legitimate election victory is one in which members go "Well, this state says they're not sure the true result and who are we to say for them? Welp, the Constitution says it's up to us to decide the president then." https://t.co/gyDKnFMdYt
— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) June 8, 2021

This is true if the election were tomorrow, but all of the trends in the GOP have been moving in one direction for a decade or more. Imagine where we will be with another 3.5 years of radicalization and conspiracy-mongering. We ignore this at our peril https://t.co/10YXSYvUCM
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) June 8, 2021

Two tweets about data concerning streets

One of my favorite scientific figures is this one of the entropy levels of 100 world cities by the orientation of streets. The cities with most ordered streets: Chicago, Miami, & Minneapolis. Most disordered: Charlotte, Sao Paulo, Rome & Singapore. Paper: https://t.co/DTd5JiahmF pic.twitter.com/OCdTHHfrbN
— Ethan Mollick (@emollick) June 4, 2021

A new analysis finds that streets take up about 18% of urban space in major U.S. counties. That is $959 billion worth of land.

Read and subscribe to #MapLab: https://t.co/aOeR3NU3DI
— Bloomberg CityLab (@CityLab) June 6, 2021

Covers: Sharp Dressed Man

“Sharp Dressed Man” is a ZZ Top song from 1983. Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox just covered it.

Robert Fripp and Toyah Wilcox cover ZZ Top's "Sharp Dressed Man" on the latest installment of their 'Sunday Lunch' series. https://t.co/PGiEJHO3PB
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) June 7, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3WdXLSiP9w

Doors Open Baltimore 2020 – African American and Civil Right Tour

Doors Open Baltimore 2020 – African American Heritage and Civil Rights Tour – Geotourist

Amazing Florida woman video

Twitter and Florida at their best

Naked Florida woman, 53, Tasered, charged with aggravated battery on law enforcement and felony criminal mischief after wrecking Outback Steak House and Moji Grill in Ocala #BecauseFlorida: https://t.co/tYyOFoOb5W pic.twitter.com/2TAY71XeUs
— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) June 6, 2021

She trashed not one, but two restaurants https://t.co/xKiqPw8CfV
— Madeleine Marr (@MadeleineMarr) June 10, 2021

Twitter thread on music ideas for Gaetz rallies

The comments are great. Lots of other good song ideas. https://t.co/WfgPbBdVQe
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) May 21, 2021

Don’t dismiss Trump and his cult members as “crazy” or “insane”

This is not mental illness. This is evil. This is bad people or normal people doing bad things. Do you think that the 70% of Republicans who think Biden was not elected fairly are mentally ill? This is millions of people. I think most of them are regular people who have chosen to believe and do bad things. Don’t use mental illness as an excuse. These are sane people who know what they’re doing. Just because it’s terrible and we haven’t seen anything like it here doesn’t mean they are insane.

I frequently object to the mental illness explanations on Twitter:

Agree. I think Trump and his cult are sane people saying/doing bad things. 70% of Republicans think Trump won – I don’t think millions of Republicans are mentally ill.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) June 6, 2021

This is not mental illness. They’re sane people who believe terrible things.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) May 31, 2021

Evil, not mental illness. These people are bad, not crazy.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) May 31, 2021

This is not mental illness, this is evil. People need to stop using terms like "crazy", "insane", and "madness" to describe bad actions by sane people. They knew what they were doing.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) June 15, 2021

Not insane. This isn’t mental illness. These are sane people deliberately saying and doing bad things.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) June 27, 2022

They're not nuts. They are sane people saying and doing bad things.
— Harris Levy (@HarrisL585) October 17, 2022

So she's for real crazy https://t.co/Itzu51FSAK
— Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) September 29, 2022