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RICHARD COFER

Lunar Occultation of Jupiter (Egress)

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Posts Made By: James Brown

March 21, 2022 11:01 PM Forum: Politics

The "Vlad Didn't Invade Because Trump Was Strong" Nonsense Debunked

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Why don't you quit whining James.   wink

And as for whom is attacking whom, that would be you, in virtually every post, bringing me up and going after me.  Get a life James, and I'd suggest you get over it.  

Your incessant whining like a baby all the time, is to the point of pitiable and your self-pity party got old 6 months ago.  tongue

You need to grow up and move on rather than whining continuously like a little girl.  

BTW, did I mention that all you do is whine??   LOL
FWIW, I don't read James' replies as any sort of whining.  I asked him and Rod why they cared...  They both supplied direct answers.  Good for them.  I certainly don't think disagreeing with you constitutes whining, especially when James explains himself without any overt emotion.  This tactic of your is frankly kind of weird.  You demand loudly for attention, and then when someone gives you attention (like I am here) you accuse them of whining or some such thing in an endless cycle.  

Jim

April 2, 2022 01:29 AM Forum: Politics

So now we know for sure that HIlary lIed and her Campaign funded the Fake Russian Dossier creating the "Russia Hoax"

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Then you were just plain wrong, pure and simple as that, when YOU stated:

Sexual orientation and gender identity are not in school curricula in any public primary education anywhere

Those words above are YOUR words.

What informed you of that nonsense that you posted?

Did you just pull it right out of your ass?
Rich;

Which part of "sexual orientation and gender identity are not in school curricula in any public primary education anywhere..." do you disagree with?  I don't believe that having an offensive book in the library makes the book's content part of any curriculum.  My school and my kid's schools had tons of books in the library that were not part of the curriculum.  The books are there for supplemental reading, research, that sort of thing as I am sure you are aware.

Jim

 

April 4, 2022 11:17 PM Forum: Politics

The game is rigged.

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by Richard Davis


Actually the difference is $999,000,000 not a Billion.  wink

1.  Question:  Which group of people would be materially affected MOST of all, if gov't illegally confiscated another 20% of the material wealth of billionaires? 

Answer:  The worker everywhere would be affected, wealthier workers as well as middle income workers.  Both of those groups would be affected in the worst way of all, because many Americans rely on Billionaires, who are the entrepreneurs of the world and create more wealth than any other group, for the income because they create the companies that employ those workers.

2.  Question:  What moral ethic gives the American gov't the right to confiscate the money of Billionaires because they decide it is their money first rather than the Billionaire who risked his money to make that Billion?  

Answer:    Morally, the gov't has NO right to confiscate the money of Billionaires to satisfy the jealously and immorality of people like yourself, who apparently think that it is the gov'ts money 1st rather than the person who risked their money to make that Billion dollars.

3.  Question:  And do you think that Billionaires keep their money under a mattress? 

Answer: No, they don't, they invest it in companies and corporations who hire then hire people who then pay taxes to the gov't.

4.  Question:  What group is the most inefficient and most wasteful spender of other people's money?  

Answer:  Gov't.  The worst of the worst as far as efficiency is concerned.

5.  Question:  Who creates and has created MORE wealth in this world by FAR, gov't or the individual entrepreneurs as a collective group?

Answer:   The entrepreneur has created more wealth in this world over the centuries than all the gov'ts combined.  
.
I would much rather have a Billionaire keep that 20% of their money, rather than give it to a gov't bureaucrat to waste in the most INEFFICIENT way possible.

Gov't cannot exist without individuals to support it, and gov't creates nothing.  The individual entrepreneur creates everything of value.

The only gov't company that I am aware of that is LARGE and puts out SHIT product is IKEA.  

I wouldn't have their furniture  or wares if you paid me to take their crap.  
For the record, I agree with Rich's substance in this post.  Heck, even the tone of this post is not that bad!   Jim

April 4, 2022 11:34 PM Forum: Politics

The game is rigged.

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by David Cotterell
 The wealth of the top 1% increased by $6.5 trillion last year, mainly driven by soaring stock prices and financial markets, according to the Federal Reserve.
   
The stock portfolios of the top 1% are now worth $23 trillion, and they own a record 53.9% of individually held shares, according to the central bank.
  

“Rising wealth inequality drives the stock market, which then drives more wealth inequality,” said Edward Wolff, professor of economics at New York University.

Think of what a 20% tax on all those trillions would mean....  without materially affecting those taxed.  Medicaid for all, better schools, infrastructure, libraries, the arts, better LIFE...

Q: What's the difference between a millionaire and a billionaire? A: A billion dollars ......

Dave
Dave, I'm not sure I entirely understand.  The gain on the sale of stocks is already taxed at 20% when the stocks are sold.  (Or at a higher percentage, if the stocks have not been held for over a year before they are sold).   I guess you are suggesting an annual tax of 20% be placed on stock holdings?  That would be unprecedented.  It would, as Richard states, merely be confiscating wealth.   What legal principle, in the US, would support simply confiscating wealth?  I can accept taxing capital gains, taxing income, taxing sales, and taxing the right to receive a large inheritance.  I am not OK with simply taxing accumulated wealth that is being held by the owner for later disposition.  The economic ramifications of your proposal would be staggering.  Rather than Medicaid for all, better schools, infrastructure, libraries, the arts, better LIFE... I would suggest that the middle and lower economic classes would suffer mightily.  See Venezuela, see Russia.

Also, "Think of what a 20% tax on all those trillions would mean....  without materially affecting those taxed.  Medicaid for all, better schools, infrastructure, libraries, the arts, better LIFE..."

I disagree entirely.  The billionaires would plan accordingly, and this new tax would not affect them much.  On the other hand, people like me and my wife who are counting on our stock portfolios for retirement income would be extremely hard hit because we do not have the funds or expertise for world-wide tax planning strategies.  Any tax like whatever you are proposing must target the upper middle class and regular middle class to be effective.  The overall standard of living from the upper middle class to the poorest of the poor would be diminished quite a bit.

Jim

April 4, 2022 11:43 PM Forum: Politics

Do You Trust the FBI?

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by Jim Moscheck
 Hell, Rich just went on one of his screeds in another thread why the super rich shouldn’t pay more taxes. 
Hi Jim:

Shocking, but I agree with Rich in the other thread.  The kind of tax Dave seems to be endorsing could wipe out your business.  I am assuming of course, and maybe I am wrong, but I am assuming you could not afford (from a cash-flow perspective) to cut the government a check for 20% of the value of your shop annually, or even once?  At least not while still employing your employees and providing top-shelf goods and services to your customers?  Think what this sort of tax would do to farmers!

I get it that you are not a billionaire.  You are not silly enough however, to think that the government stops at taxing billionaires in this new fashion.  Restraint is not the government's thing... When they go for millionaires next, all of us small, medium, and local business owners are in the crosshairs.

Jim

April 4, 2022 11:59 PM Forum: Politics

So California is now trying to pass AB 2223 which sanctions the MURDER Of Newborn babies

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by James Lacey


All you need is common sense to know that CA is not trying to legalize infanticide. If you insist on believing the propaganda and misinformation whose only purpose is to outrage you, I hope you enjoy being outraged because it will happen a lot. It seems like a sad existence to me, but you do you.
Hi James, I agree with you.  No way California is not trying to legalize infanticide.  Still, this is an extremely crappy drafting job that the CA legislature needs to work over a lot before it is clear enough to be any sort of enforceable statute.  Here is the key text, cleaned up to make it easier to read (taken from Richard's source, I am assuming it was an accurate quote of the amended bill):

Notwithstanding any other law, a person shall not be subject to civil or criminal liability or penalty, or otherwise deprived of their rights, based on their actions or omissions with respect to their pregnancy or actual, potential, or alleged pregnancy outcome, including miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion, or perinatal death.

As drafted, that would be in conflict with any number of existing murder, manslaughter, spousal abuse, battery, and child abuse statutes.  If anyone thinks to revisit this in a few weeks, I'd bet that the bill will be cleaned up.  It needs a lot of work if the idea is to protect people from liability for abortions.

Jim

April 5, 2022 02:34 AM Forum: Politics

The game is rigged.

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by David Cotterell
Jim, Rich:  The point I'm getting at is that there is vast income that is not subject to income tax. As you correctly point out, under the current scheme of things, they are only taxed when they sell.  This provides a great incentive to NOT sell but to hoard instead..and the hoardings get bigger and bigger...

And there are dozens of corporations who are coining it every day and pay no income tax on these earnings.  See my list from a previous post.

20% of the gain in value of a portfolio is not at all the same as taking 20% of  the portfolio.  Having this apply only to portfolios that are more than $100 million in value will protect the vast majority of people.   Making sure that pension funds are exempt from this tax to protect mom and pop....other regulations can be written...

As for the 14th amendment - "equal protection" is currently NOT what is happening in terms of personal taxation.  You and I and pretty much everyone we know pays income tax because we don't make enough money while folks with high income get to  hide it offshore or in a portfolio or some other fancy accounting scheme so as not to pay income tax.   Highly unequal protection it seems to me...

Dave
Hi Dave:

We can agree in theory that the vast morass of loopholes being utilized by the super rich might be closed so that everyone pays a reasonable share under existing tax schemes.   The problem is that many of those loopholes were written with good intentions.  You mention some good-intentioned new regulations yourself for the proposed new tax, "Making sure that pension funds are exempt from this tax to protect mom and pop....other regulations can be written..." 

Sounds pretty innocuous and reasonable, until the super-rich create pension funds or use some other technique to get around the new tax.  Then it becomes a dreaded loophole.  Bottom line, I would support tax simplification, not a new tax on unrealized gains.  

Speaking of taxes on unrealized gains, what do we do when these billionaires' portfolios have a paper loss?  Give them a gigantic deduction to carry forward and offset against future gains, I suppose.  It gets sticky.  

I remain strongly opposed in principle to taxing unrealized gains.  Consider a farmer in a rich agricultural region.  She inherited her farm.  The land is now worth 10 million dollars and virtually all of it is unrealized gain, which would be taxed when she sells the farm.  Are we going to make her sell off 20% of the farm to capture that unrealized gain now?  I certainly hope not, so the people who write the law decide to give an exclusion for agricultural land, and so on.  More loopholes that have good intentions but could be exploited by someone else.

Jim

April 5, 2022 09:41 PM Forum: Politics

So California is now trying to pass AB 2223 which sanctions the MURDER Of Newborn babies

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by James Lacey


It's poorly written and ill-conceived. It's a proposal and not even close to law. I don't know enough about legal language to understand if it violates existing statutes. For example, isn't the phrase perinatal death modified by pregnancy? In and case, the author provided plenty of red meat for the right-wing outrage machine and should have known better
I'm not a statute writer either, and yes, I suppose perinatal death is modified by pregnancy.  I didn't know that word before! 

This bill/proposal demonstrates an interesting political phenomenon, and maybe it is not new, but it seems new.  The left is writing a statute like this to protect abortion providers, even though no legit abortion provider has any risk of being prosecuted in CA, even if Roe is overturned.  I am sure there are plenty of existing abortion laws at the state level in CA that provide all reasonable protections.  Meanwhile the right is writing laws in red states banning the teaching of sexuality and gender issues to K-3rd graders, where no one is actually teaching these issues until later in school.  

These sorts of laws are just red meat to spin up the activists in the wings I guess.  They don't do much except further partisan divides.  It is too bad in my opinion and decreases the chance of any civil discourse between the parties.  So your final clause of, "the author provided plenty of red meat for the right-wing outrage machine and should have known better" cause me to think cynically, "maybe generating outrage and counter-outrage is the author's intention?"  Same deal for the "don't say gay" bills.

Jim

April 5, 2022 10:56 PM Forum: Politics

Primary Steel Plant In COLORADO May Be Supplying Steel For Russian Tanks!

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman
After reading that story, I gotta ask, does anything good come out of Colorado? I mean they got crappy seeing, Lauren Boebert and Rich Davis. 
Yeah, they do got Jim but he's probably at his time shares in the observatories in Mauna Kea and Peru while his wife soaks up the sun on the beach or shops in boutique stores!...
I had no idea that the huge old steel plant in Pueblo had been reactivated.  It has been dormant forever, but I do not get down there much.  Yes, we have crappy seeing a lot of the time, but the clarity is great.  Especially at altitude, so deep sky photography, especially wide angle, is wonderful - easily 250 clear nights a year I would guess!  Unless the smoke from California is obscuring things, like all of last year sad.  So no time-share in Hawaii and Peru - just me and my scope here.  I am queued up to get back into astrophotography big time - I'm just waiting for warmer weather.  Sucks to get old!

Jim

April 6, 2022 02:38 AM Forum: Politics

So California is now trying to pass AB 2223 which sanctions the MURDER Of Newborn babies

Posted By James Brown
Originally Posted by Richard Davis

Probably and I enjoy posting like this just how far the leftists here will go in defending anything that abortionists do, so I try to rile them up.

Let me ask you something though Jim.

What do you think of Kermit Gosnell and why do you think that fiend's abortion mill was swept under the rug by every leftist news outlet out there?  wink
Was that just a rhetorical question?  

If you did actually want an answer, Gosnell is serving a well-deserved prison sentence.  He is a sick murderer, convicted and sentenced for his crimes.   I have not verified that the left leaning news outfits ignored his story.  But, assuming the left leaning news sources did sweep his story under the rug, they did it at least in part because a criminal abortion doctor like Gosnell reflects poorly on the abortion providers who operate within the law.    Jim

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