DL Open Thread Saturday, March 1, 2024
Elect a professional-wrestling president, you get professional-wrestling kayfabe. Everyone knew the moment Trump was elected that the U.S. would abandon Ukraine. Everything else is Trump’s reality show.
Historian Timothy Snyder’s take.
The U.S., Russia and Israel are the new Axis of Evil. Discuss.
The floor’s yours.
The plan was never an Ukraine mineral deal for us protection. It was a spectacle to goad Zelensky into “disrespecting” the his so trump can make a mineral deal with Putin when he takes over Ukraine
I heard these takes which both over complicate it: 1) Trump got a call from Putin on Thurs night reminding him of all the kompromat after chummy Oval Office meetings with France and the UK. 2) Zelensky baited Trump into making a Russian loving ass out of himself to deny the US a seat at the negotiating table and force Europe to stand up once and for all.
The bottom line is Trump is an asshole who likes Russia and hates Ukraine. I’ve been avoiding news “analysis” because it is too much like sports talk radio. Just filling up the dead air. These takes remind me of that.
I did some back-of-napkin math on the actual effects that HB 13 would have on peoples’ income taxes. Got some interesting results:
Income Current law HB 13 % change
$5,000 $66.00 $60.00 -9.1%
$10,000 $261.00 $260.00 -0.4%
$20,000 $741.00 $660.00 -10.9%
$25,000 $1,001.00 $935.00 -6.6%
$60,000 $2,943.50 $2,860.00 -2.8%
$125,000 $7,233.50 $7,150.00 -1.2%
$250,000 $15,483.50 $15,587.50 0.7%
$300,000 $18,783.50 $19,312.50 2.8%
Basically, you have to be in the $250,000 bracket to see any real increase in your tax rate. For everyone making less than $125,000/yr, this bill is a tax cut. Hopefully its sponsors make sure everybody knows that, because God knows the journalists will never do the math.
EDIT: Sorry, the comment editor screwed up the formatting. Hopefully it’s still somewhat readable.