Air Force undersecretary gives bleak assessment on service’s readiness to defend the homeland
Source: Washington Examiner · Bias: Center Right
Summary
Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier provided a bleak assessment of the service’s current readiness outlook, calling it “older, smaller, and less ready than it needs to be to defend the homeland and deter aggression in the Pacific.” The undersecretary’s warning about the dangers of the service’s chronic underinvestment came during his keynote address on Monday, […]
Air Force undersecretary gives bleak assessment on service’s readiness to defend the homeland
Center Right
Air Force Undersecretary Matthew Lohmeier provided a bleak assessment of the service’s current readiness outlook, calling it “older, smaller, and less ready than it needs to be to defend the homeland and deter aggression in the Pacific.” The undersecretary’s warning about the dangers of the service’s chronic underinvestment came during his keynote address on Monday, […]
Former Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) received an emotional send-off Wednesday at two memorial services, where political allies and foes, some of whom had shifted back and forth during the South Carolinian’s long career, bid him tribute. “He was a force of nature, and I will miss him greatly,” President Trump said at the latter service…
President Donald J Trump attends the funeral service for Senator Lindsey Graham and delivers remarks. It is a remarkable memorial to the legacy of Senator Graham. President Trump remarks begin at 15:00 of the video below. . Posted in Big Government, Celebrations, Christian Values, President Trump, Press Secretary - Trump
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Newly released entries from Dr.
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Todd Blanche was warned by a former insider to be careful what he wishes for as he prepares to face a Senate confirmation vote.The acting attorney general is poised to become the most powerful lawyer on earth as the head of President Donald Trump's weaponized Department of Justice, wrote former Homeland Security staffer Miles Taylor for The i Paper, who served some cautionary advice about what to expect."If he loses, it will be a historic failure," Taylor wrote. "But if he wins, the job he’s fighting for is likely to destroy him. And the world will see how far Trump will go if he is unrestrained."His tenure has already drawn scrutiny over the stalled Jeffrey Epstein investigation, which critics say was suspended under circumstances that shielded Trump and his allies. Blanche personally interviewed Ghislaine Maxwell before her transfer to more comfortable custody, oversaw a chaotic release of Epstein files that exposed survivors' identities while redacting alleged abusers' names, and is now facing a federal judge's order to hand over unredacted documents directly — a sign the court no longer trusts DOJ's representations."Blanche set fire to his reputation when he agreed to be Trump’s personal criminal defense attorney," Taylor wrote. "He was the man at the defence table in Manhattan when Trump became the first American president convicted of a felony. But this week is the ultimate showcase of how he might debase himself in an effort to protect his employer."During confirmation proceedings, Blanche submitted over 400 pages of written answers, more than 160 of which declined to respond on grounds it would be "inappropriate." He would not commit in writing to rejecting future slush funds for Trump allies or sweetheart deals for the president — a refusal two Republican holdouts have specifically flagged as disqualifying. More than 1,200 former Justice Department officials across administrations signed a letter opposing his confirmation, citing a "culture of fear" and constitutional failures, dwarfing the fewer than 80 signatures backing him."I worked with both of Trump’s former attorneys general, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, and their teams during the first Trump administration, when I served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security," Taylor wrote. "Whatever criticisms people had of those men — and I had plenty — they generally pushed back on Trump’s anti-constitutional conduct."Taylor described White House meetings where Trump ranted at length about settling scores with his enemies, money laundering and other illegal schemes, but he expressed doubt that Blanche would react as his predecessors had."After those meetings, these men would go back to their departments," Taylor wrote. "They’d confer with their teams. And after weighing Trump’s more egregious schemes, they’d conclude that it wasn’t worth going to prison for him."Taylor warned that Blanche would become legally accountable for implementing Trump's most extreme future actions, with no institutional check left between the president and the machinery of government as there had been during his first term."It’s the highest-risk job on earth. And for what?" Taylor wrote. "Trump discards lawyers the way he discards wives and creditors. Michael Cohen went to prison for him. Rudy Giuliani was disbarred and bankrupted for him. His former chief lawyers, Sessions and Barr, looked at the train wreck and walked away while they still could."
South Korean authorities have ordered civilians to evacuate after an apparent white phosphorus leak was reported at a United States military base near the capital, Seoul.
Friends,I want to start today with a warning about “charitable giving” and end with a primer on wealth inequality. The two are closely related, as I’ll explain.We’re on the cusp of the biggest gusher of “charitable giving” in history. Beware.We tend to think of “charitable giving” as unambiguously good because we equate “charities” with organizations that help the poor and equate “giving” with generosity. But both assumptions are wrong.In fact, the “giving” is actually a giant tax loophole that provides the super-rich a means of dramatically cutting their tax bills while quietly funding their own priorities.And “charities” under the tax code include elite universities, fancy opera houses, cultural palaces frequented only by the richest of the rich, and nonprofit “think tanks” devoted to right-wing causes.The problem is that every dollar of “charitable giving” means substantially fewer dollars paid in taxes, because donors deduct their “charitable giving” from their taxable incomes. This tax loophole is especially big and lucrative for the super-rich.According to the Institute for Policy Studies, up to 74 cents of every dollar donated to charity would have been paid as taxes. In 2022 alone, charitable giving resulted in $73 billion in lost tax revenue.Here’s the thing. Taxes finance public goods such as public education, scientific research, roads and bridges, nutrition and healthcare for lower-income Americans, and clean water and clean air.But the “charitable” tax deduction taken by the super-rich finances things that the super-rich want, such as Ivy League universities and culture palaces.This means a lot of “charitable giving” results in more money for organizations that cater to or do the bidding of the rich, and less for things we all need. Behind the facade of “charitable giving” is a profoundly anti-democratic tax loophole that allows the super-wealthy to effectively substitute their priorities for what would otherwise be public priorities.Which brings me to the upcoming gusher of “charitable giving” — the consequence of the AI boom and the largest IPOs in history.Thousands of people with shares of Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceX, and other AI-related companies have seen, or soon will see, the value of their shares soar into the stratosphere. That means gigantic capital gains.You don’t need a degree in high finance to understand that these capital gains could also result in big tax payments. If you sell, say, $10 million worth of stock, you could easily face a tax bill exceeding $3.5 million.Unless you reduce that tax bill through your “charitable giving.”Hence, the upcoming gusher in charitable giving. According to some estimates, it could be more than $100 billion a year.Consider: The seven founders of Anthropic, which is expected to have an enormous IPO as soon as this fall, have each pledged to give away 80 percent of their wealth, which is estimated to be about $90 billion. Anthropic also has a philanthropic matching program, which would mean another $60 billion in funds earmarked for giving. Nan Ransohoff, who heads public goods at the payment processor Stripe, estimates that these will generate between $37 billion and $100 billion to charities annually.Add in the newly rich created by SpaceX, whose IPO has spawned an estimated 4,400 millionaires (and some 400 employees now worth more than $100 million), as well as OpenAI’s IPO, which is likely to create as many more millionaires and multimillionaires, and you’re talking really big money — and huge incentives for making tax-deductible “charitable contributions.”Don’t get me wrong. I consider the nonprofit sector of the economy enormously important. I just don’t want the nation’s priorities to be set by the moneyed interests. Their massive political donations already give them extraordinary power.One reform would be to limit the definition of “charities” — that is, the sort of contributions that warrant tax deductions — to places and institutions that actually serve the poor.Another reform would be to reduce the tax deduction for “charitable contributions” and increase the capital gains tax rate on very high incomes. (At the very least, raise the capital gains tax rate to match the tax rate on ordinary income.)And by all means let’s get rid of the “stepped-up-basis-at-death” tax rule, which now allows families to escape all capital gains by leaving appreciated assets to their heirs. For example, consider someone who got OpenAI stock for almost nothing and watched its value explode, and then contributed enough of it to charity to allow her to make a nice living off it without paying any capital gains taxes. She gave the remaining shares to her children when she died. The kids can then sell those shares for what they’re worth at the time of her death — say, hundreds of millions of dollars — yet pay zero capital gains on it.These three reforms are, or should be, no-brainers.
A reported white phosphorus leak at a U.S. military base in South Korea prompted local authorities to briefly order civilians to evacuate on Tuesday. Officials in Pyeongtaek, near the capital, Seoul, said residents close to Osan Air Base should move to a safe location after a leak was detected at around 5 p.m., an evacuation…
Over the weekend, conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch made a claim that has MAGA in full meltdown mode. His assertion: that the First Amendment exists, and that the nation’s founders were not motivated by the Christian nationalism so often pushed by the far-right of today. Gorsuch was speaking with PBS when he made a statement that has horrified MAGA, saying, “We were founded, a lot of our colonies, for our religious pluralism, right? And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way. And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion. It was about those ideas,” he noted, referring to America’s founding principles of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. “And those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all.” Appointed to the Supreme Court by President Donald Trump in 2017, Gorsuch’s words flew in the face of assertions by the Christian nationalists of MAGA, like Vice President JD Vance, who has claimed, “Christianity is America’s creed, the shared moral language from the revolution to the Civil War and beyond.” Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, added, “Across that history, our country’s major debates have always centered on how we could best as a people please God.”But according to the Hill, “Gorsuch took a different tact, pointing out that Charles Carroll, who was also Catholic, signed the Declaration of Independence alongside members of other Christian faiths. He also explained that Amish and Quakers settled in the then-British colonies.”As Gorsuch put it, “We have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion, everybody has a freedom of religion, everybody has the freedom of speech, we are all equal under law,” adding, “Now, you can not agree with those ideas, fair enough. Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind.”MAGA, however, is decidedly not uniting behind Gorsuch’s words. “Wow — that is astounding historical ignorance!” posted one outraged Christian nationalist. “I wonder what ‘Creator’ he thinks they meant in the Declaration of Independence?”“Our country is failing in every way possible because traitors to our founding and our nations principles are overthrowing it,” declared another MAGA adherent. “Now Gorsuch just said that our nation was not founded as a Christian nation. Everything that could go wrong, is going wrong. The communists and overlords are extremely powerful and there is no one to keep us on track with our constitution and with American principles. We also have a two tier justice system and our elections are stolen so we are ruled by anti Americans. Sad times, and to think ‘our side’ is in charge.”“Good job GOP ... Three picks, three sellouts, cowards and gibbering clowns,” wrote another, referring to Gorsuch as well as Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh, who have drawn MAGA’s ire recently for taking occasional stances against Trump’s agenda. “Screw originalism, the whole institution is rotten and should be ignored.”“Really[?] So in dollar bill inscription IN GOD WE TRUST is totally Islamic and Muslim,” claimed yet another. “What ... plain imbecile human[!]”The slogan “In God We Trust” was not added to U.S. currency by the country’s founders. It began appearing on select coins nearly 100 years after the Declaration of Independence, and was not added to paper currency like the dollar bill until 1955.
