thirdwave

Doctorow: "[A]n unwillingness to tax creates all kinds of evils. For starters, if a state can’t fund its core programs out of tax, it has to borrow. And when it borrows, it borrows from the rich. So instead of taxation — which weakens the fortunes and political influence of the wealthy — we get bonds, through which the wealthy are paid interest out of the funds extracted from those who lack the political clout to escape taxation"

Richardson: "[T]he center of the [megabill].. is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations. Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of 117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill.

Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts. Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be 'the biggest cut in the program’s history,' Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about 490 billion from 2027 through 2034.

Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: 'Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.'"

Crazy thought - Europe wants current Ukraine admin's ass kicked, once and for all, to rid themselves of them and the pesky US influence in the region. They are fine with extended Russian influence in Ukraine, so they help prolonging current state of conflict by asking Ukraine "not to give up"

Zero-sum is strategically stupid for US.. it doesn't benefit them. But it benefits certain someone(s).. Conflict is in their interest. Who?

You could make the case Russia had an hand in disrupting Sudan too... But the West turns everything into such a zero-sum game that everyone needs to mobilize to the hilt just to survive. It leads "the other side" to be more agressive.

There is a nice little potential RU transit block from Medi to the Atlantic via Libya-Niger-Mali/Burkino Faso-Guinea.

African Support for Russia and China, map is now dynamic, HTML based,

[-]