A General thread for 2024 Presidential Elections

[p0rtia]

Ooh, sah-nap!

[neonzx]

It's all good. The Harris team thinks Kamala can handle an open mic policy. Looking forward to it.

[Volkonski]

Once Trump hears about this he will demand that the mikes always be on. He won't see that it is a trap intended to expose his craziness.

[zekeb]

The Kamala campaign wants the world to see how out of control DonOld can be. As if we don't already know.

[neonzx]

"I'm Speaking" along with a stern look.
DonOld is going to get scolded by mom.

[Volkonski]

Trump appears to undercut his campaign’s efforts over microphone rules at debate

https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/26/politics ... index.html

But while Trump took aim at what he called the “biased” network Sunday evening – complaining about reporter Jonathan Karl and a panel of “Trump Haters” on his Truth Social platform – he said Monday that he would prefer the mics to stay on.

“We agreed to the same rules, I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time,” Trump said when asked by a reporter if he wanted the microphones muted during the debate when the candidate is not speaking.

Trump also again cast doubt on whether he would participate in the debate.

“When I looked at the hostility of that, I said, ‘Why am I doing it? Let’s do it with another network.’ I want to do it,” Trump said

The Harris campaign, for its part, is requesting that ABC and other networks seeking to host a potential October debate keep microphones on, according to a senior campaign official, marking a change from the June debate when the then-Biden campaign wanted microphones muted except when it was a candidate’s turn to speak.

A top Harris spokesman said Monday that the campaign considered the mic issue “resolved” after Trump’s comments.

[RVInit]

It's all good. The Harris team thinks Kamala can handle an open mic policy. Looking forward to it.

Absolutely. Putting in controls just made Trump appear as if he was able to comport himself like a reasonable adult.

[Rolodex]

The plan to goad trump into saying stupid stuff on socmed is working. Make him boast about doing something (despite his campaign's wishes) and consider it done. Harris can hold him to whatever stupid stuff he says. Oops!

Mics on! The question is whether he'll actually show up. I don't know if this ABC one had an audience.

[Slim Cognito]

Get busy running ads accusing trump of being too chicken to debate Harris. Plaster Fox News with them. Get busy Rick Wilson.

[Rolodex]

Not sure exactly where to put this, but if you're on social media at all, you've seen the recent outcry about proposed taxes on unrealized gains. Trumpers were screaming their heads off, although it may have cooled a bit now that the detail that it applies only to people with $100 million+ in assets (although I'm sure plenty of maga haven't seen that part yet, and probably most have little to nothing in investment unless they have a good retirement plan or 401K at work).

Anyway, the whole point of the unrealized gains taxation on super wealthy is to have them pay a "fair share" and increase revenues. I'm no tax expert, but I had questions about how it might work. How to value? what about loss years? what about illiquid assets?

It turns out other people have been thinking about this, too. And not just in the past when when peoples' hair was on fire. This proposal was in Biden's 2022 budget. And it's been bandied about way before that.

This is a link to a thread reader post that compiles a long-ish but easy to understand thread about this topic. Within this post are links to a couple of really interesting articles. One addresses a technique that I knew about the weathy doing - borrowing against assets and using that borrowed money to live. It's "income" on which you pay no taxes because it's just a loan. Meanwhile, the assets you borrow against continue (generally) to increase in value. There's a link to a paper about a proposal to tax that borrowing. Seems like a better idea than taxing unrealized gains.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1829 ... 94171.html
Download the pdf in this link to read the very understandable proposal/argument defending taxing borrowing against assets: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=4716197

Good history on threadreader about how long people have been looking at how to collect revenue on unrealized gains...even as early as 1939.

/tax nerdiness

[MN-Skeptic]

I'll believe they'll tax unrealized capital gains when I see them pass the law. Even then I won't believe it. I haven't looked at the proposal, but I can't imagine the headache of determining just who has $100M in applicable assets. I would assume that the taxed assets would then have their basis stepped up to reflect that taxes had been paid on them.

Some folks will still be around who will remember the Tax Act of 1976. Before 1976, if you inherited property, your basis in the property was stepped up, i.e., your cost basis for tax purposes was the value on the date of the decedent's death, not the lower, original price of what they had paid for it years ago. The Tax Act of 1976 changed the rules and said that heirs now had to use the cost basis of the decedent. Can you imagine the nightmare of figuring out what your grandpa had paid for that painting 50 years ago, or that land 75 years ago? The law was delayed, and finally repealed in 1980. Because, of course.

I think taxing unrealized capital gains will end up just being a proposal, not an actuality.

[Suranis]

Because one of the things that helped Biden first time around was the ability to tell the fucker to shut the hell up. If Biden had been free to tell Turnip that he was a fucking liar, the headlines would have been filled with less "disasterous debate performance" the next day. The Press is going to be looking for anything at all to cast Harris as the loser, so might as well unshackle the rules and let her go nuts. Turnip will be Turnip so giving him ample oppritunity to dig his own grave can only help her.

[keith]

"I'm Speaking" along with a stern look.
DonOld is going to get scolded by mom.

Turnip never had a mom give him that Mom look. If the nanny ever gave him that look she'd probably only ever do it once so she wouldn't have to bear the screaming and caterwauling that she would have been blasted with.

[Rolodex]

"I'm Speaking" along with a stern look.
DonOld is going to get scolded by mom.

Turnip never had a mom give him that Mom look. If the nanny ever gave him that look she'd probably only ever do it once so she wouldn't have to bear the screaming and caterwauling that she would have been blasted with.

lil donnie would probably have hit her. There are reports he struck a teacher when he was in grammar school. I think that's part of why they sent him to military school.

[Dave from down under]

The GOP is unhappy that the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court has Ruled against disenfranchising voters over incorrect dates on mail in ballots

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/pennsy ... 024-08-31/