Changing Horses in Mid-Stream

19 Tuesday Dec 2017

Posted by in U.S. President, War

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My friends and relatives are concerned whether President Trump will start another war perhaps with North Korea. Such a war would cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians south of the border. Thousands of those would be American civilians working and living there. This does not count our soldiers and their dependents. A North Korean attack on Japan would escalate civilian and military deaths. If North Korea used its large supply of nukes, the numbers become millions instead of thousands.

Would Trump’s narcissism cause him to start a war just to boost his popularity and help him stay in the Oval Office? Will his military advisors follow the lead of Nixon’s advisors and take the suitcase away from him? Nixon was paranoid but otherwise stable. We cannot say the same of President Trump. Many people here and abroad wonder about his apparent dementia. Would he start a war and use the old tried and true phrase of, “Don’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” or some other justifying words? I think we have to be scared s – – – – – -s !

Do As I Say, NOT

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in U.S. Economy, U.S. Taxes, Uncategorized

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In the 1970s after I paid my taxes, I would lay in bed at night trying to figure out where we had spent all the money we had made (less than $10,000) and have nothing in the bank. We rented a small house for $140; health insurance was covered by work (still paid a portion) and had a $125 car loan. Taxes were the biggest item and were mandatory.

To figure out where it went I started to do a budget – it was an eye opener. Budgeting made a difference into what we borrowed. We borrowed to buy a lot, paid it off, and then borrowed and built a house I designed. Through budgeting and time we have paid off all debts.

This behavior is exactly what the conservatives in Washington D.C. have been saying responsible people should do. Then why did the Republicans vote to give a huge tax cut for corporations that are awash with money and billionaires when we are over $20,000,000,000,000 in debt? The Democrats did not vote for it and several Republicans voted for it because their vote was bought by amendments in the bill. Suddenly principles and admonishing us to be more responsible were buried for politics and being re-elected.

History has shown tax cuts are net losses to the treasury. So this would be similar to my being several million in debt and borrowing another million which I can’t pay for. So instead of increasing revenue to pay off my loans, I decided to cut my hours to 32 instead of increasing them to 48. This is exactly what our Republican leaders just did. So much for years of preaching fiscal responsibility. Do as I say and vote for me again!

What Is Sexual Harassment?

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in Sexual Harrasment, Uncategorized

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A senator French kisses a woman and it’s called sexual harassment – maybe. Women I don’t know kiss and hug me and I am not comfortable with it. Is that sexual harassment? People want to jam their bodies against another person for a picture so hands may touch a personal area. If a squeeze doesn’t happen it’s an accident, not harassment!

To counter the kisses and hugs I have learned to shoot a hand out to stop a hug in its tracks. I have seen many professional men and women hugging the same or opposite genders without any apparent problem. How does one know who to hug and who not to hug?

One man is resigning because he asked a staffer if she would be a surrogate mother. That’s not harassment to me. Trump said he had groped many women but millions voters don’t care.

It would be very interested to hear from men and women what they consider borders on harassment and under what conditions. Is most harassment that nebulous and exists mainly in the eyes of the beholder? Will it get to the point where we are like little kids and afraid to touch or even be near someone else? Please write in your opinions.

Alamo Hidden

10 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by in US National Parks

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My wife and I stayed in the Menger Hotel several years ago during her Christmas vacation because of its history and its location near the Alamo. The Alamo was getting a facelift with scaffolding on it. We also took a river tour with all the lights on the trees. It was beautiful

We went back in May 2017 and we only have one question. What did you do to a National Treasure? It now looks like some kind of flower garden. Santa Anna must be laughing his tombstone off its base. Even Texans I have talked to about the sacrilege agree.

Tell the Garden Club to get lost and put it back to monument condition; not a florist shop!

Champagne For A Few

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in National Debt, U.S. Economy

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When Bush II Administration came into power they had two items on their agenda. Cut taxes on the rich and take out Saddam Hussein. Both have been disastrous to America. The Republican mantra is cut taxes under any condition. The Clinton/Gingrich debt reduction plan had paid off all 30 years bonds, most of the 20 year, and some of the 10 year. Immediately after the tax break the surplus was gone and the treasury started buying new bonds. The wars were not being paid for so debt started to mount again.

The 10 year expiration on the tax cut was made permanent because we were recovering from the Great Recession and an increase was impossible. This cut is another ploy to cut the social programs when the National Debt reaches $30,000,000,000,000 in about seven years (note middle class tax cuts expire in seven years — coincidence?). The programs on tap to cut because of the increasing deficits caused by the unneeded tax cuts are Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Warren Buffet, the world’s greatest investor, said December 3rd that nothing in the tax cut is necessary. Corporations are awash in money and debt is very cheap. Many times Buffet, worth over $85 billion, has said the greatest threat to America is the National Debt. His corporation owns about forty major companies so he knows.

As for Trump’s claim we are the highest tax country in the world, these countries have a higher percentage of all taxes to GDP: Denmark, France, Belgium, Finland, Austria, Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Norway, Netherlands, Iceland, Luxembourg, Germany, Greece, Slovenia, Portugal, Spain, Estonia, Czech Republic, New Zealand, U.K., Slovak Republic, Poland, Japan, Canada, Israel, Turkey, Latvia, Switzerland, and Australia. Ireland, two notches below us, is being sued by the E.U. for violating the tax laws. They will lose, pay billions and move above America.

The top 1% gets over 60% of the cuts and, as written, Trump may save millions each year. The fossil fuel industries preserve or increase their loopholes and deductions while green power, employing more than coal and struggling against the Chinese manufacturers, lose theirs.

If we vote right in November, we can fix this mess 60% of us don’t like.

Harassment – A Can Of Worms

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Sexual Harrasment

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Sexual harassment is in the eye of the beholder which is the crux of the problem. Is a hug or kiss harassment? Those acts are uncomfortable to some when they are not of a romantic nature? Many families are huggers and kissers, so when those women meet someone, know they are apt to hug, then kiss and hug when parting. If the roles were reversed would it be harassment?

Many families teach their children to hug and kiss each other, relatives, and even family friends. I can understand why some parents teach their kids to be overly friendly and I see why others teach handshakes. Are the hugging and kissing parents training their kids to be harassers when they grow up?

How does someone decide if a kiss or a hug is innocent or harassment? Is it when a hug is tight and prolonged? Some of those are innocent and to give emotional support. Is a kiss on the lips instead of cheek harassment? (Tongue action definitely is!) Can the place of the act be the definition for one and not the other? My solution has been to be a fast hand to show a handshake is preferred.

Many of the reported charges against famous people have been in the eye of the beholder. If a man is groped he may be thrilled, if it happens to a woman, it is harassment.

What a can of worms sexual harassment claims can be, especially if the act was many years ago. How can one defend oneself since memories fade and others are created? We can’t look to spiritual leaders for advice since hundreds are guilty themselves. Sexual harassment is fluid and defined by the times.

Death Tax Is Proper

28 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in U.S. Taxes

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Let’s say I bought a hotel for $200 Million in 2008. Since then I have written off my expenses for mortgage, renovations, real estate taxes and maintenance. I hold on to the hotel that is now considered a luxury property due to my careful management of its finances! I die in 2020 and the independent appraiser says my $200 million hotel is now worth $1.2 Billion. That increase is not unreasonable because real estate has increased in value and room rates have skyrocketed. Both ways of appraising a hotel would support the $1,000,000,000 increase.

The new billion has never been taxed except on the value I paid in real estate taxes. Even then I paid an appraiser (not an independent) to grossly underestimate the value, hired a highly connected tax lawyer (in Chicago I would hire Madigan’s firm) and give to the assessor’s campaign to keep my taxes low.

I would love for someone to tell me how I paid income taxes on that billion dollars. If I had sold it before I died I would have paid capital gains taxes on any gains I couldn’t hide through the many avenues of that tax code the rich had bought over the last few decades.

Did I put $200 million into the property? No, I borrowed all of it and the money for renovation by convincing a financial entity I had a few million in equity in another property. So my investment is zero and in 2020 my profit is $1.2 billion. If I sell I pay a tax, if I die my heirs pay the tax. With the proposed tax reform my heirs would pay nothing.

My knowledge comes from brokering much smaller hotel deals for people who are not the 45th President of the United States. That’s how I found an owner can buy a tax deductible life insurance policy to cover the amount of the estate tax.

The current estate tax starts at $11 million or 900 acres of Grundy County’s prime farmland. A lot of this land was bought to avoid paying income taxes from other sales at a much lower cost. Selling it means capital gains. Dying means estate tax on the deferred money plus any increase in value.

Bad Traits

26 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by in Bad Influence, Workplace

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According to a survey taken by a placement agency, RandstadUSA, the following are the top eight traits the people they placed hated most in their supervisors: only cares about self, steals the spotlight, never wrong, confused, likes control, bully, missing in action, and is a narcissist.

Among millions of others around the world, I bet our Secretary of State and Attorney General knows of someone with all these traits!

9-11 and 11-8

20 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Politics, U.S. President

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We were attack on both of those dates. September 11, 2001 was when the Twin Towers and Pentagon were attacked by Al-Qaeda. The U.S. reacted vehemently for a few months before being sidetracked with Iraq. The other was when Putin’s agents and hackers interfered with and tried to subvert our 2016 election. We have done nothing of any substance to punish Putin and ensure that it never happens again.

We went after Ben Laden and his people until the political hacks surrounding Bush II persuaded him to go into Iraq. The CIA’s agents and Afghans had Ben Laden and his small bunch of Al-Qaeda troops trapped in a complex of caves and tunnels carved into a mountainous section of eastern Afghanistan known as Tora Bora. Rumsfeld had them pull back so his rangers could be heroes. They got beat up and the bad guys escaped to spread their violence.

The other was November 8, 2016 election for President of the United States. Russian President Putin decided to support Trump — a neophyte his KGB training and intelligence said he could sway — against former Secretary of State Clinton. He knew he had no chance of rolling her. Putin had his cyber warfare people hack into her campaign and into as many voting districts as possible. We have been told they never got into any voter rolls, but I think they did.

We now have at least three on-going investigations into what, if any, collusion the Trump campaign had with Putin’s agents. We know the Russians aided the campaign and Trump himself asked for their help, but did it go farther than what we already know? Granted the campaign people were stupid and desperate but did they cross the legal line?

President’s Trump’s personality makes him incapable of admitting he would have lost without Russian help to win the electoral votes. He has repeatedly said Putin had nothing to do with any interference in the election. His own appointees say they did.

Without any substantial retribution against Putin and his ambition to destroy democracies around the world, we must wonder if we will ever have an unfettered election. Oddly enough Putin has found he can get away with murder and invasions with Republicans in charge rather than Democrats. Trump isn’t going to stop Putin and may ask for more involvement to be re-elected.

Thin Bibles In D.C.

16 Thursday Nov 2017

Posted by in U.S. Economy, Uncategorized

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Where are those Bible-thumping conservative Republicans when we need them? They are in the pockets of the extremely rich of the world. I say world because in a global economy, the investors around the world own pieces of our stocks, bonds, real estate, and other financial instruments.

Haven’t they read how we are supposed to be saving up during the good years so we have money during the bad years? When the Democrats are in power those conservatives complain about the deficits and debt. Now they are pushing a tax reform that they admit will increase both. Even in their rosiest predictions we will go another $150-200 billion a year farther in the hole. Shouldn’t we be cutting our debt like President Clinton and speaker Gingrich did? The debt started ballooning again with Bush IIs tax cuts. Then when the Great Recession hit he had blown the savings and we had no choice but dump debt money into the system.

Phony reform which supposedly is for the middle class which really saves the rich billions is a deception to get re-elected by suckers. The money that keeps them in office comes from those millionaires and billionaires directly or through the many non-profits they use as fronts. The Koch’s Cabal’s businesses will save tens of billions.

Their Bibles must be very thin because they have removed so much that conflicts with their deplorable ethics. It seems like the money changers are in charge in our country. All other countries take care of their people but we get trickle down voodoo economics. When will we get tired of being trickled on and vote them out? Our supposed national debt is now over $21,000,000,000,000 and the hidden maybe twice as much.