Author: ali redford

I love dogs and people. I want living creatures to thrive. I love to cook, and share the food, but ya gotta get in line in front of the dog, and greatest good luck with that!

[Sen.] Gallego Introduces Legislation to Crack Down on Billionaire Tax Loophole

Legislation would close the ‘borrow’ aspect of the ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax loophole used by the ultra-wealthy to avoid paying capital gains or income tax

WASHINGTON – Today, Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) introduced the Redistribution Of Billions by Instituting New High-income Obligations on Overlooked Debt (ROBINHOOD) Act to close the ‘borrow’ aspect of the ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax loophole that is used by the ultra-wealthy to finance extravagant spending without paying income or capital gains taxes.

“Working and middle-class Americans are paying their fair share – they do it with every paycheck. But the billionaires in this country? They’re using legal loopholes and tricky accounting to finance private jets and yachts while most Americans struggle to afford healthcare and groceries,” said Senator Gallego. “My legislation closes a critical loophole and brings us closer to billionaires finally paying their fair share.”

Punchbowl News: Gallego targets ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax maneuver

The ‘buy, borrow, die’ tax loophole has three stages:

  • Buy: A wealthy individual buys, or is given as part of their compensation package, assets, such as stocks. This allows them to store and grow their wealth without paying taxes since the gains from these assets are considered unrealized. 
  • Borrow: The individual then borrows tax-free cash loans, often backed by those assets, to finance their extravagant lifestyles. All the while, their assets continue to gain value.
  • Die: Finally, when they die, their assets are gifted to their heirs on a stepped-up basis, meaning their heirs can sell the assets without paying taxes on the capital gains accumulated during the individual’s life.

The ROBINHOOD Act closes this loophole by treating taking out a loan as a realization event, meaning the individual would have to pay taxes on capital gains equal to the loan amount. The provisions of the bill apply to taxpayers who have an income over $100 million and/or assets worth more than $1 billion. 

You can find a one-page summary of the legislation HERE.

You can find a section-by-section explainer of the legislation HERE.

You can find the full text of the legislation HERE.

Companion legislation was introduced in the House by Rep. Dan Goldman (NY-10).

“While working, wage-earning New Yorkers pay income taxes on every single paycheck, billionaires live tax-free by borrowing against their stock portfolios, real estate holdings, and art collections without paying a dime in taxes on that money,” Congressman Dan Goldman said. “By restoring basic fairness to our tax code and making the ultra-wealthy pay their fair share and contribute what they owe, this bill will generate revenue to invest in universal pre-K, child care, and working families instead of subsidizing billionaires’ yachts and private islands. It’s long past time for the wealthiest people in the country to pay their fair share.”

Clay Jones + Open Windows

President Trump’s health is excellent

Maybe the First Lady is actually in charge

Ann Telnaes

I’m looking forward to the publication of Jake Tapper’s next book.

Pool for Fools

It’s getting deep

Clay Jones

For some bizarre reason that I don’t believe anyone has figured out yet, Donald Trump showed off a graph in the Oval Office, comparing the size of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool to the size of skyscrapers. Seth Meyers said, “You’re not allowed to compare horizontal to vertical. If that was the case, I-90 crushes the reflecting pool.”

Trump showed off a chart which compared the freshly-painted 2,030-foot-long pool against the 1,451-foot-high Sears Tower in Chicago, New York City’s 1,454-foot Empire State Building, and the 1,776-foot One World Trade Center. Upon seeing these comparisons, many people said, “So what?” What does the length of the Reflecting Pool compared to the size of skyscrapers have to do with anything?

You can take this incident to point out how senile Trump is becoming, but it also proves that he is surrounded by enablers because somebody had to print this graph. He’s comparing a pool to buildings, horizontal to vertical. Michael Kosta of The Daily Show said, “I’d say you’re comparing apples and oranges, but at least those are fruits.” (snip-MORE)

Your Saturday Bird Post:

Black Skimmer

Rynchops niger

Wayaya (Wayampi)

Also Known As

  • Tayataya (Carib)
  • Pa’â guasu (Guaraní)
  • Iwenti (Palikúr)
  • Corta-Mar (Portuguese)
  • Rayador (Spanish)

About

A group of Black Skimmers in flight resembles an aerial ballet, circling, banking, and gracefully alighting as one. Although taxonomists place this unique, long-winged waterbird in a separate genus, it’s closely related to gulls and terns.

The Black Skimmer’s most striking feature is its gaudy red-and-black bill: Both jaws are long and narrow like a knife blade, with the lower jutting out well beyond the upper. Its unique appearance lends the Black Skimmer a number of evocative folk names, including Scissor-bill, Cutwater (Cortagua or Corta-agua in South America), and Seadog (after its calls, often compared to dog barks).

This odd bill is what affords these birds their distinctive foraging style, and the name “skimmer.” A feeding skimmer flies low over the water with its beak open and lower mandible partially submerged. Where a broader bill would send a continuous spray of seawater straight down the throat of another species, the uniquely narrow mandible of the skimmer cuts through the water like a fin. When the extended lower mandible touches prey, such as a small fish, the bill’s upper mandible snaps down, securing the bird’s meal.

Another remarkable feature of the Black Skimmer is its eyes, which have large pupils that can narrow to vertical slits, like a cat’s pupils. This adaptation compensates for glare off the water’s surface and may enhance the bird’s vision as it hunts in dim light or at night.

Threats

According to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, Black Skimmers have declined in the United States by almost 90 percent since 1966. This is largely due to habitat loss and human disturbance at nesting colonies. These birds are also affected by oil spills and chemical pollution in coastal waters, and may face additional threats during the breeding season with climate change as sea levels continue to rise. (snip-MORE)

A Small Bunch Of Stuff

Life has been happening here with me this couple of weeks, and I have a few things I’ve picked up here and there to post when I’m busy. Most of this is positive, because why not?

Hey-today is World Environment Day! Let’s be proud to care for our home; we all get overheated.

June 5, [since 1972]
World Environment Day was established by the U.N. General Assembly to commemorate the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment in Sweden.
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) was established as a result of the conference.
The 1972 Stockholm conference 
UNEP’s mission: To provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
Each year World Environment Day adopts a different theme.

Gregory Natal.

Wouldn’t work on Ollie!

And finally, a story of theft that has worked out well, from the person whose work was stolen!

Now, all the reviews have happened, so you can just relax and enjoy a bit of justice!

Farming While Beige

Farming While Beige 14 hours ago

My book’s nearing the top 1,000 in all books on Amazon… this is nuts. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GBR2ZBCF#…

http://youtube.com/post/Ugkx4ERU1GoB4DsmLI_-MLNRSBtQ5f8EvrQn?si=VdQCJjNjD1X_YoIw

Family Togetherness, Slush, J6 Creepers: Clay Jones + Open Windows

Slushy Intel

The insurrectionist slush fund has been canceled, but maybe there’s another way Trump can compensate his homegrown terrorists.

Clay Jones

During congressional testimony, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said that Donald Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund, which his J6 insurrectionists/terrorists could have applied for, is dead. In the Oval Office today, Donald Trump said that he doesn’t know if it’s dead. He is lying.

The one thing that we do know for sure is that the immunity for Trump and his family from IRS audits is still alive and well. But more on that tomorrow.

The slush fund was not popular, even with Republicans, with one calling it “stupid on stilts.” Another unpopular thing, even with Republicans, is the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte is currently the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

When asked if he has concerns that Pulte would “weaponize” the position, given the role he has played during Trump’s second term in digging into mortgage records to see whether Trump’s political adversaries have committed fraud, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said: “We don’t need a weaponized DNI; we need professionals there.” (snip-MORE)

The family who grifts together…

hopefully is convicted together

Ann Telnaes

Recently I posted a cartoon after reading this Propublica story about the connections between a Don Jr. linked company and a $620 million Pentagon loan. We haven’t heard as much in the news during the second presidential term about the Trump family and their various grifts (probably due to Trump taking the oxygen out of the room with his various vanity projects), so I’m posting some cartoons from the first as a reminder the entire Trump family is in it all for themselves.

(snip-there are 7 MORE, and they are fantastic-go see!)

J6 Creepers

Trump’s $1.8 billion slush fund for white nationalist insurrectionists is dead (maybe), but MAGA pedos can still find a silver lining.

Clay Jones

Andrew Paul Johnson was one of the insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He pleaded guilty to multiple nonviolent charges for breaching the Capitol, and was just a few months into his year-long sentence when Donald Trump gave him a pardon. Last March, he was sentenced to life in prison after a Florida jury found him guilty of five criminal charges, including molestation, lewd and lascivious exhibition, and transmission of material harmful to a minor.

Police reported that Johnson, 45, tried to keep the children quiet by telling them he would share millions of dollars in restitution money he expected to receive from the Trump regime in connection with his Jan. 6 case. Don’t worry, kids, he told them. Uncle Donald will take care of you. (snip-it’s disgusting that there is MORE just like this)

Happy PRIDE On Friday

in Hawai’i!

Hawai’i Governor Signs Powerful Trans Shield Law Bill Just In Time For Pride

“Parents and caregivers who affirm, support, and seek medically appropriate care for their keiki [child] are exercising their fundamental right.”

s. baum

After a three-year push, Hawai’i officially has implemented a shield law to explicitly protect providers and patients of gender-affirming care for the trans community.

House Bill 1875, also known as Act 059, was signed by Governor Josh Green—himself a physician—late last week. The bill explicitly adds gender-affirming care to its existing shield law, which broadly covered reproductive health, and established safeguards from “abusive litigation” coming from outside states.

Shield laws create “legal protections for patients, health care providers, and people assisting in the provision of certain health care in states where that care is legal from the reach of states with civil, criminal, and professional consequences related to that care,” according to the Center for Reproductive Health, Law and Policy at UCLA. For example, it means Hawai’i state actors may not aid out-of-state attacks—such as, say, through the extradition of health care providers—over lawful care rendered in Hawai’i.

“The legislature finds that the people of Hawai’i have a long tradition of protecting an individual’s right to privacy and bodily autonomy independently of, and more broadly than, the United States Constitution,” the bill reads. It emphasized that the right to privacy and bodily autonomy extends to minors.

“It is the policy of this State that the rights of equality, liberty, and privacy guaranteed under […] the Hawaii State Constitution are fundamental rights and that those rights include an individual’s right to make health care decisions about one’s own body, including the right to seek and receive health care services that affirm their expressed gender.”

The signing was a resounding victory for LGBTQ activists on the islands. Hawai’i was among the last of the blue states to enact a shield law for the transgender community and their providers.

“We’ve heard from legislators that this is considered a controversial topic and that they’d rather not engage in bills that could draw attention to Hawai’i from the Trump Administration,” Abby Simmons, Chair of the Stonewall Caucus of the Democratic Party of Hawai‘i, told Erin in the Morning last year.

Now, she’s singing a more triumphant tune. “This bill truly was a team effort,” she said in an interview this week. “Lawmakers wanted to understand the legal implications, hear from stakeholders, and make sure they were crafting legislation that would withstand challenges. While that process can sometimes feel slow, it also means that when legislation succeeds, it often has a stronger foundation.”

Simmons also said the playbook for getting the bill over the finish line was rooted in building a big tent. “I think what finally made HB1875 successful was that supporters increasingly focused on a message that resonated far beyond the LGBTQ+ community,” she continued.

“The conversation wasn’t simply about gender-affirming care. It was about protecting patients, families, and healthcare providers who are following Hawaiʻi law. It was about preventing out-of-state actors from interfering with healthcare decisions made here in Hawaiʻi. It was about provider stability at a time when Hawaiʻi already faces healthcare workforce shortages. And it was about preserving Hawaiʻi’s ability to govern itself.”

The bill arrived on the Governor’s desk amid rising federal threats from the Department of Justice against hospitals, including the use of judge and forum shopping to prosecute gender-affirming care providers in conservative jurisdictions based outside of their state. Last month, the Northern District of Texas—an infamously conservative federal court—ordered Rhode Island Hospital, which is almost 2,000 miles away, to hand over patient records from its transgender youth care program. That legal battle is ongoing.

“Gender-affirming care is lawful in Hawaiʻi, grounded in established medical standards, and essential to the well-being of transgender, nonbinary, māhū, and gender-diverse people,” Hawai’i’s LGBTQ political action committee, HOKU, wrote in submitted testimony from when the bill was being considered by the legislature.

“Failure to protect access to gender-affirming care is not only an attack on patients and providers; it is a violation of parental rights,” reads another submission from Pride at Work Hawai’i. “Parents and caregivers who affirm, support, and seek medically appropriate care for their keiki [child] are exercising their fundamental right.”

Donavan Kamakani Albano, Policy Fellow at the ACLU of Hawaiʻi, further spoke to the importance of gender diversity in Hawaiian tradition. Some right-wing officials may push the myth that transness is somehow novel or a “trend.” But Hawai’i has especially rich ties to its pre-colonial culture—including non-binary concepts of gender.

“In Kanaka Maoli culture, māhū describes someone who embodies kāne and wahine [the masculine and feminine] energies,” Albano’s testimony said. “While the visibility of māhū individuals has recently increased, ongoing barriers to gender-affirming care remain.”

This united LGBTQ advocacy with other causes. “Those principles brought together a broad coalition of supporters and helped lawmakers see the bill as a matter of healthcare access, privacy, and state sovereignty,” Simmons said.

Rest In PRIDE (Redux)

In Honor and Memory

Erin In The Morning

Pride, Birds, And The Beauty Of Survival

Everything beautiful survived something to get here.

Erin Reed

Birds (Sources: Birdsandblooms, Blair Benson, Bill Duncan, Blair Benson, JM Arment, Hummingbird centarl)

It’s June 1, which means Pride Month begins again today. It’s my seventh Pride. I remember my first one, seven years ago—terrified and excited, going out dressed in the clothes I felt best in, using the name I wanted to use for the first time in public. I had people with me that day, people I found safety with, people who helped me grow into the person I am now. Seven years later, so sure of myself and so comfortable in my skin, I look back on those moments as some of the best of my life. And now, this year, as I have every year, I watch the new flock—countless in number—who are wearing rainbow colors and joining a family that will show them more love than they have ever known. They are arriving even after a political winter that was, by any measure, cold and brutal to all of us. It is watching them that has me thinking about the beauty of what we witness starting today.

This year, I took up birding. I always thought it was a silly hobby, but my wife Zooey encouraged me to point my camera at a new subject. I first did so on the Pattee Canyon trail up in Missoula—and caught, soaring in place, a single red-tailed hawk, just hovering, watching the ground below. I stared at it for a while in awe. That was all it took. And the timing was perfect, because in the weeks that followed I stumbled into the best time to be a birder: spring migration. Wave after wave of orioles, tanagers, flycatchers, and warblers of every different color and size came pouring through. I didn’t even know there were so many birds. It made me realize that for most of my life I had been walking through the world completely unaware of the beauty around me—that there was this entire world that had always been there, just waiting for me to lay eyes on it.

What I also didn’t know was the incredible journeys so many of these birds had taken just to be here—how far they had traveled to find the flocks they’d spend the season with, to build nests, to raise families, to simply exist in a place that could sustain them. The Prothonotary Warbler I spotted in the marsh? It spent the winter in the mangrove swamps of Central America, then crossed the entire Gulf of Mexico in a single flight—more than 600 miles of open water, eighteen hours in the air with nowhere to land. It had to travel that far just to find its family. And the most stunning thing about a bird like that—one that has gone through so much, that has flapped its wings until it has exhausted itself and left everything behind? It arrived here in the most brilliant gold you’ve ever seen, and began to sing. The Prothonotary Warbler isn’t nearly the only species that does this. Ruby throated hummingbirds, blackpoll warblers, bobolinks… all take incredible journeys.

I was unaware of all of this before I took up birding. It makes me wonder how much else I walk right past without seeing. I remember before I came out, I didn’t know how rich this chosen family was, how many different people were also queer like me. I had no idea that once I came out, I’d find so many of them had been here all along. They were just waiting for me, and all I had to do was stop and look and embrace something new. And I did, and an entire world opened up. I love moments like this, where life teaches you something about itself, and you realize that diversity and surprise might just be the best things it has to offer.

Today, as Pride begins, I am reminded that every single person who has made it here, put on their colors, and found their family has survived something difficult. Every one of them has just lasted through a winter where our rights were systematically stripped away. Politicians who hate us have spent the year dismantling everything we built—healthcare ripped from hospitals, identities stripped from documents. Corporations that once draped themselves in rainbows every June are nowhere to be found. Some of us have quite literally migrated to entirely new states looking for safety. And our gulf crossing this year was met with heavy headwinds.

And yet, so many of us still made it. This year, you will see your city streets filled with rainbows. This year, countless new people will celebrate their first Prides. People will put on the clothes that fit them best. People will love in ways they didn’t know how to before. People will dance and sing, and others will have no choice but to acknowledge our existence, because when we arrive, we do not do so quietly. Every single person you see in the streets this month is a testament to our resilience, and a reminder to the fact that this is a journey we have been making since the beginning of human existence. We call it something different now. We carve out a specific month for it. But we have always been here, and we have always had to search for ways to express ourselves, be ourselves, and find our kin.

Maybe birding is a silly hobby. Maybe dragging myself out of bed before dawn—and I am not a morning person, I might add—is more trouble than it’s worth. Birders look ridiculous. We stuff our pants into our socks so the ticks don’t climb up our legs. We carry binoculars and absurdly large cameras into places where everyone else is just taking a walk. But I think there is something more to it than that, something that opened my eyes to the way the world moves around me—something I wasn’t expecting to find when I first pointed a camera at a hawk and couldn’t look away. I think I understand something about this month that I didn’t understand before because of it. Pride isn’t just a celebration, it’s a testament to survival and a refusal to be quiet even after the journey. It’s putting on your most brilliant colors after the longest winter of your life. And I’m so glad we made it one more year.

Happy Pride.

TV & FCC News

Disney Finds Its Spine

By Lizzie O’Leary

In normal times, in a normal Federal Communications Commission, Anna M. Gomez’s job might be described as wonky. But now is not that time.

“A large part of my role is to call out this administration’s abuses of the First Amendment, particularly when it chooses to weaponize the FCC in trying to shut down any voices that it doesn’t like,” said Gomez. “And we see this constantly, there is a constant infringement on the free press and on the First Amendment and on the rights of viewers and listeners to see and hear what they want to see.”

Gomez is the sole Democrat on the commission. Her term is set to end on June 30. Normally, there would be five commissioners at the FCC, but right now, there are only three. Two resigned last year, and the Trump administration has not nominated their replacements. Gomez is on a First Amendment tour of sorts—telling Americans that the actions of the FCC chair, Brendan Carr, are egregious. Disney seems to agree. Unlike other media companies, it’s lawyered up to fight against the FCC’s latest demands.

On a recent episode of What Next: TBD, host Lizzie O’Leary spoke to Gomez about the FCC and why ABC isn’t folding like CBS did. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Lizzie O’Leary: How do broadcast affiliates work?

Anna M. Gomez: Although Disney owns and operates only eight stations nationwide, there are hundreds of ABC affiliates because there are hundreds of markets all over this country. They are owned independently by other broadcasters. Some of those broadcasters are quite large, and some of them are very small.

The FCC manufactured a complaint against a Disney station in Texas that carried The View. And although multiple ABC stations carried that particular program, it had the Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico on it.

There were tons of other ABC affiliates that also could have had this complaint lodged against them. But the FCC went to the nonowned affiliates in the market and said to them: “We want you to file with us, and we’re not going to hold it against you because of this alleged violation.” They didn’t go to Disney.

The FCC then used the fact that other affiliates filed as a reason to initiate this investigation against the one Disney-owned station. That to me is a setup. Some would call that entrapment. It’s where the FCC manufactures an issue and coordinates with the other stations so that only the Disney-owned station is the outlier. And this is why it is so egregious what this FCC is doing, because it is clearly targeting Disney in retaliation for its viewpoints.

How is that legal? 

It’s not. It’s absolutely unlawful. Not only is it unlawful, it is also unconstitutional. The FCC is challenging the First Amendment rights of the broadcasters, the talent, the press, through all of these actions. We are explicitly prohibited from censoring broadcasters, but this is censorship.

This feels like a shakedown. This feels like the emperor doesn’t like these comedians, whether it’s Jimmy Kimmel or Joy Behar, and if you don’t do something, we’re going to take away your affiliate licenses. Is that a fair reading? 

Absolutely. This administration cannot tolerate anything that is critical of it, that doesn’t mention its worldview. And it is weaponizing any tool in its toolbox, whether it’s the FCC, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Defense, in order to go after the press and to go after the media.

It is clear that this is absolute harassment in order to get Disney to capitulate. The good news is that Disney is not capitulating. It has actually shown courage. It has decided to stand up for its First Amendment rights and to push back. And if this gets carried out to its conclusion, and by that I mean it goes to court, the FCC will lose.

Is Disney finding a spine, or can Disney read a poll? 

Disney has, in fact, found its spine. Part of that, of course, is that we saw Disney capitulate very early on when it settled the case against ABC because of the George Stephanopoulos interview. And legal scholars said there is no basis for this case, but it went ahead and settled it. And that opened the door to all of these future actions against the media. I think what Disney learned is that capitulation doesn’t buy you protection; it might buy you some time, but they will keep coming back and coming back for more because what they demand is absolute allegiance to this administration and nothing else.

I’m curious about where this impacts TV. How much of this campaign is about pressuring tech platforms? 

There’s an absolute campaign by this administration to censor and control any media outlet using whatever levers it has at its power. Look at social media. The Federal Trade Commission used the fact that there were two ad agencies merging to force them to carry ads on Twitter, which they had stopped doing because of some of the content that they found to be harmful to their clients’ interests. And that is forced speech. That is a First Amendment violation.

I do believe that this administration is sending a signal. We have seen media companies win time and time again against this administration when they go to court. But litigation and regulatory investigations are costly, and a lot of companies, corporate parents, make the decision that it is actually less painful to settle and to capitulate than it is to fight. So the process is the point, the pain is the point, the threat is the point. They don’t want this to be carried out to its fruition. They want it to just force the companies enough pain so that they will capitulate. Now, I think this is a signal to every part of the media that they would do this to them, whether it’s to the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, universities, law firms, or broadcasters. They will go after anyone who speaks out against them.

Real But Not Real-

Friend of Playtime Barry, from Another Spectrum, intro’d me to this blog I’m reblogging today. Thanks to both!

How can something seem true, look true, feel true — but still not be quite true?