People saying he’ll admit it in this spate are wrong because he’ll end up in prison. This is the only way he’d maybe admit it.
Law is unclear what happens to Trump and GOP certainly won’t impeach. But everyone knows, you pardon an asshat, and take on the title of pardoning daresay the worst criminal in history.
Take the deal, institute a 99% wealth tax on billionaires anyway.
God, I wish the Dems had the balls for that.
They don’t because many know the history of wealth taxes and how frequently they get abandoned because they are ineffective IRL.
Man, if being ineffective stopped Dem policy, we’d have a lot less Dem policy.
Ineffective tax policies have different direct harms than other ineffective policies. Wealth taxes frequently do not bring in enough revenue which is a significant problem.
Hm. I’d be interested in seeing anything backing that up. You’ve just broadly stated that “ineffective” tax policies don’t work well, and I feel that is sorta in the name. Is there any line of reasoning that would make “wealth taxes” ineffective?
I am not the parent commenter, but the argument for and against wealth taxes is a lot more nuanced than many people would originally think.
For one, a great deal of wealth in this country (the overwhelming majority, actually) is not money but takes the form of illiquid capital goods like real property and shares in companies. There is a real concern that people subject to tax just won’t have enough dollars in a bank account to pay for it, and forcing the sale of that many goods could render the markets illiquid as it wipes out the red side of the order book every April.
A potential way around this is if the tax can be paid in kind, similar to how wealth taxes were collected historically, such as in the Roman Empire. This could be stupid easy to administrate—a 1% wealth tax against companies can be enforced by just minting 1% of every registered company’s outstanding shares in new stock and then transferring it to the control of the Government. Though the downside is that this sort of tax is very indiscriminate and difficult to target towards certain demographic groups. While shareholders are largely wealthy individuals who would be the target demographic for a wealth tax, they aren’t exclusively so. Effectively that becomes a tax on holding shares in companies, which is a good, but not perfect, proxy for wealth. The drawback to collecting shares in kind is that the stuff that is raised is not really “revenue” for the state, in that it is not money that can be spent, and to liquidate it would incur significant loss for the state as well. Which is basically throwing wealth away. This wasn’t a problem when “in-kind” meant grain and barley that could be used to feed the army, but soldiers can’t survive on a diet of stock certificates.
I am in favour of large-scale wealth redistribution from the billionaire class to the working class, but doing so isn’t as easy as saying “You, billionaire, give me 1% of everything you got, cash.” I think a policy of combined high income tax, high capital gains tax, and taxing loans for personal expenses secured against shares as income is more likely to be effective.
Wealth taxes frequently do not bring in enough revenue which is a significant problem.
Yeah, they’re too low!
“Trust me bro”
[citation needed]
pinky swear promise the pardon, get the evidence, then don’t actually pardon.
he can bitch and moan about getting played from prison.
And then Trump declares treason and Elon gets the death penalty before the courts can step in.
Look.
Trump could throat-punch a homeless orphan in the middle of a church on Christmas Day and there’s not a single judge in this country who would send him to jail. The man is untouchable. He’s been convicted of 34 felonies and hasn’t spent a single day in jail. He was impeached TWICE during his last term and still hung on to the presidency.
The only thing we can do is wait for the evil fucker to die of old age. That’s it.
If Luigi taught me anything, it is that waiting isn’t necessary.
No good deed goes unpunished, unfortunately.
Can I be the president that gets elected? Because if so, I take the deal, and he gets the pardon. Of course, our Supreme Court recently said I couldn’t get in trouble no matter what I did as president…
You don’t have to give him a pardon just because you said you’d give him a pardon.
You know. Like a liar.
Nah, pardon him to keep your word.
Have him put to death and pardon yourself and whoever did it. At least you aren’t a liar.
To quote Kenan Thompson, “ain’t nothing gonna happen.” It doesn’t make the slightest difference what any of these monsters admit, or how solid the evidence. None of their crimes are news. They’ve been blatant all along, and we all know it. There is no Big Fix for us. We have already fallen for Lucy’s football too many times. Look at history. When it’s fascism time, the fascists will fascist, and the rest of us will just have to get down there in the trenches and fight. Together.
It’s obvious to us but aside from the Trump-can-do-no-wrong crowd, there’s a lot of oblivious people who just…don’t know.
It’s a situation I have a hard time grappling with as someone who reads the news but I’m regularly introducing people (in-person) to political events. They know about the most recent plane crash or whatever but not that Israel killed another journalist or that Trump sent a legal resident to a concentration camp. It’s wild…but following politics is kind of a hobby. There’s so much going on all the time, you can’t just passively absorb it.
In some ways I resent them but in other ways I’m jealous. Following it like I do has brought me a tiny bit of joy and a whole lot of stress.
Neither Trump nor Musk are going anywhere any time soon. Stop fantasizing about dream scenarios and do what you can locally.
trump is 78 years old and is obese. Neither of those two facts usually makes for longevity. Actuarial tables say he could die of natural causes this afternoon and it would be a completely normal thing.
Funny how you replied to someone saying ‘don’t fantasise about dream scenarios’ with a dream scenario. Just because he could die today doesn’t mean you should sit it out.
You’re projecting your own ideas on that, friend. I never suggesting sitting anything out. That was you.
In the context of that post they referred to “dream scenario” implying that that action will likely never happen for Musk or trump. I was pointing out that it is very likely to happen for trump. Nothing with my statement is advocating action or inaction beyond pointing out that fact.
If it’s true that he did that, yes.
After he’s federally pardoned, each affected state can prosecute him sequentially.
Yes, I take the deal - but he loses his American citizenship for meddling in US elections, and can’t ever get a visa here, either.
Nah, we hold him right here in the country and bankrupt him with civil suits from all the people he efficiently ruined. And the Fed Government will certainly have a slice of the with restoring regulatory actions against his companies and recouping contracts that were improperly granted.
No because rigging an election normally would take thousands of people working in secret. Trump won because America has a lot of dumb people in it
Trump announced before the election that he was going to cheat. This isn’t rocket science in believing he said the quiet part out loud. He has a lot of smart people working for him with flexible ethics. Not to mention, it’s always projection and they’ve been calling the d’s cheats for years.
If what the Bernie Democrats want can nearly all get done, sure. But just having a Democratic president doesn’t mean that. It doesn’t even mean what Democrats want would necessarily get done. Look at Biden’s student loan relief.
A rat snitching is the best possible outcome, you always take that deal.
If he wanted to burn it down, sure why not? But he’s still a multibillionaire. It doesn’t benefit him for Democrats to be in charge.
Take the deal, whoops what’s that, state felony charges for interfering with their elections!
I’d offer that deal and seal it with a trip over the Gulf of America where he’s mysteriously never seen again
Flagrantly breaks community rule #5
#6, but yea.
