...and gets his ass kicked!!
That's called "framing", son!
ASMR Drawing: Bee
This is the first drawing that I have done on a dry-erase board. The problem is, it could've been noisier. There are taps and such but no real squeaky markers. I think the dry-erase board was made of vinyl or something. Anyway, I hope you like the bee and I'll do more of these soon.
Please like the video and subscribe!
Oh, and I take requests.
Leave a comment and I'll do my best to make your drawing.
XOXO, Jim Roy
http://whisperchat.blogspot.com/
Did These Swedish Cops School The NYPD?
Yay Sweden!!!! And just for your efforts, a hot chick wearing your flag as a coat!
So, some cops of yours were here and they saw a fight. They stopped it and subdued the subjects until the NYPD arrived.
Wait. They didn't need to empty a clip or two into the black guys to stop the fight? They didn't need guns at all? They PROTECTED these guys from each other and themselves SERVING all in the process? What a bunch of pinko commie socialists?!?!
So, some cops of yours were here and they saw a fight. They stopped it and subdued the subjects until the NYPD arrived.
Wait. They didn't need to empty a clip or two into the black guys to stop the fight? They didn't need guns at all? They PROTECTED these guys from each other and themselves SERVING all in the process? What a bunch of pinko commie socialists?!?!
House quietly passes tax exemption for megadonors
House quietly passes tax exemption for megadonors
Major contributors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer would get a break on gift taxes to secretive non-profit groups.
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Hillary Flynn
The House on Wednesday with little fanfare passed legislation that would protect major donors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer from having to pay gift taxes on huge donations to secret money political groups.
The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is seen by fundraising operatives as removing one of the few remaining potential obstacles to unfettered big-money spending by nonprofit groups registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that allows them to shield their donors’ identities.
Critics decry such groups as corrupting, but they have played an increasingly prominent role in recent elections, and they’re expected to spend huge sums in 2016.
And, while fundraising operatives say most donors do not pay taxes on their donations to so-called 501(c) groups, the law is somewhat ambiguous on whether gift taxes could be assessed. That’s left donors fearing that such gifts could bring scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service — which, in fact, has launched probes of major groups’ donors in recent years to determine whether they improperly avoided paying gift taxes.
There’s no such concern about donations to party and campaign committees and PACs, which are registered under section 527 of the code. That section explicitly exempts donations from gift taxes, but there’s a tradeoff: It also requires the disclosure of donor names and contribution amounts.
The bill that passed Wednesday would make clear that the gift tax does not apply to groups registered under sections 501(c)4, (c)5 or (c)6. That covers a wide swath of organizations including everything from the Karl Rove-conceived Crossroads GPS and the Tom Steyer-funded NextGen Climate (both of which are registered under section 501(c)4 of the Tax Code) to major labor unions (501(c)5) to the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce (501(c)6).
A coalition of conservative and liberal nonprofit groups and their lawyers on Wednesday sent a letter to members of the House supporting the bill. It asserted that the “application of the gift tax to 501(c)(4) donors raises serious constitutional questions, and threatens to hamstring smaller or start-up citizens’ groups.”
Elizabeth Kingsley, an attorney at Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, who signed the letter, said the bill merely evens the playing field for donors. She said the ambiguity around the gift tax question put cautious donors at a disadvantage, and benefited those more comfortable taking aggressive positions.
“If the law is clear everyone knows what the rules are and can follow them, and I think that’s a better situation,” Kingsley says.
The bill was part of a package of measures aimed at clamping down on IRS abuses in the wake of the agency’s targeting of conservative tea party groups. The gift tax bill was proposed by Rep. Peter Roskam (R.-Ill.), the chairman of Ways and Means subcommittee that oversees the IRS, but it had bipartisan support and passed on a voice vote.
Democrats who supported the bill said it merely clarified an area of the law that has not really been enforced.
“The bill codifies existing IRS practice,” said a spokesman for Sander Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member on the House Way and Means Committee, which approved this bill last month. “Right now, for contributions to 501(c)(3)s and 527s, the gift tax does not apply, and there is a moratorium applied to the gift tax on 501(c)(4) donations.”
But Democrats are not unified in their support for the bill.
Some believe it deprives their side of ammunition to use against Republicans in 2016, while also easing the way for more secret-money political spending by conservative billionaires like the industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and the Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
They and other conservative donors have more aggressively embraced such spending through groups like the Crossroads GPS, Freedom Partners and the Koch-Backed Americans for Prosperity (also registered under section 501(c)4 of the code).
Liberal billionaires such as the financiers Steyer and George Soros have similarly funded politically active 501(c) groups such as NextGen Climate and Media Matters for America. But unlike Republicans, Democrats up to and including President Barack Obama and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid have sought to make an issue of secret-money conservative spending, with Reid explicitly and repeatedly blasting the Koch brothers from the floor of the Senate.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, seemed to pick up the charge this week, saying “We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all — even if it takes a constitutional amendment.”
Had Democrats opposed Roskam’s bill, or at least forced a roll call vote, it would have given them a cudgel to attack Republicans who supported it, operatives said Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t comment on the specific bills in the IRS package, but he said this week “we’ll take a look at the bill[s] in the near future,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Conservatives seem more united in support of the bill, partly because they feel the IRS has disproportionately scrutinized 501(c) groups and donors on their side.
James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners, said the bill “would prevent political targeting by the federal government which is a response to the very real threat we’ve witnessed over the past few years. Regardless of political affiliation, Americans are rightly concerned about partisan-Washington bureaucrats targeting and penalizing individuals due to their beliefs.”
The highest profile IRS gift tax inquiry did in fact target a big-money conservative group called Freedom’s Watch, which was backed by Adelson and spent heavily supporting President George W. Bush’s military surge in Iraq.
Donors to 501(c)4 groups objected to audits into their past donations saying they came out of the blue, and arguing the law was so vague it was unclear whether the gift tax even applied.
The IRS suspended such audits in 2011, choosing to let Congress decide whether these donations were subject to the gift tax. When the agency announced the halt on these audits it said, “This is a difficult area with significant legal, administrative, and policy implications with respect to which we have little enforcement history.” Former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller’s office said it would “be coordinating with the Office of Chief Counsel to determine whether there is a need for further guidance in this area.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/house-quietly-passes-tax-cut-for-megadonors-117067.html#ixzz3XihFi3EZ
Major contributors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer would get a break on gift taxes to secretive non-profit groups.
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Hillary Flynn
The House on Wednesday with little fanfare passed legislation that would protect major donors like the Koch brothers and Tom Steyer from having to pay gift taxes on huge donations to secret money political groups.
The legislation, which now heads to the Senate, is seen by fundraising operatives as removing one of the few remaining potential obstacles to unfettered big-money spending by nonprofit groups registered under a section of the Tax Code — 501(c) — that allows them to shield their donors’ identities.
Critics decry such groups as corrupting, but they have played an increasingly prominent role in recent elections, and they’re expected to spend huge sums in 2016.
And, while fundraising operatives say most donors do not pay taxes on their donations to so-called 501(c) groups, the law is somewhat ambiguous on whether gift taxes could be assessed. That’s left donors fearing that such gifts could bring scrutiny from the Internal Revenue Service — which, in fact, has launched probes of major groups’ donors in recent years to determine whether they improperly avoided paying gift taxes.
There’s no such concern about donations to party and campaign committees and PACs, which are registered under section 527 of the code. That section explicitly exempts donations from gift taxes, but there’s a tradeoff: It also requires the disclosure of donor names and contribution amounts.
The bill that passed Wednesday would make clear that the gift tax does not apply to groups registered under sections 501(c)4, (c)5 or (c)6. That covers a wide swath of organizations including everything from the Karl Rove-conceived Crossroads GPS and the Tom Steyer-funded NextGen Climate (both of which are registered under section 501(c)4 of the Tax Code) to major labor unions (501(c)5) to the Koch brothers-backed Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce (501(c)6).
A coalition of conservative and liberal nonprofit groups and their lawyers on Wednesday sent a letter to members of the House supporting the bill. It asserted that the “application of the gift tax to 501(c)(4) donors raises serious constitutional questions, and threatens to hamstring smaller or start-up citizens’ groups.”
Elizabeth Kingsley, an attorney at Harmon, Curran, Spielberg & Eisenberg, who signed the letter, said the bill merely evens the playing field for donors. She said the ambiguity around the gift tax question put cautious donors at a disadvantage, and benefited those more comfortable taking aggressive positions.
“If the law is clear everyone knows what the rules are and can follow them, and I think that’s a better situation,” Kingsley says.
The bill was part of a package of measures aimed at clamping down on IRS abuses in the wake of the agency’s targeting of conservative tea party groups. The gift tax bill was proposed by Rep. Peter Roskam (R.-Ill.), the chairman of Ways and Means subcommittee that oversees the IRS, but it had bipartisan support and passed on a voice vote.
Democrats who supported the bill said it merely clarified an area of the law that has not really been enforced.
“The bill codifies existing IRS practice,” said a spokesman for Sander Levin (D-Mich.), ranking member on the House Way and Means Committee, which approved this bill last month. “Right now, for contributions to 501(c)(3)s and 527s, the gift tax does not apply, and there is a moratorium applied to the gift tax on 501(c)(4) donations.”
But Democrats are not unified in their support for the bill.
Some believe it deprives their side of ammunition to use against Republicans in 2016, while also easing the way for more secret-money political spending by conservative billionaires like the industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch and the Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
They and other conservative donors have more aggressively embraced such spending through groups like the Crossroads GPS, Freedom Partners and the Koch-Backed Americans for Prosperity (also registered under section 501(c)4 of the code).
Liberal billionaires such as the financiers Steyer and George Soros have similarly funded politically active 501(c) groups such as NextGen Climate and Media Matters for America. But unlike Republicans, Democrats up to and including President Barack Obama and Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid have sought to make an issue of secret-money conservative spending, with Reid explicitly and repeatedly blasting the Koch brothers from the floor of the Senate.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the leading Democratic presidential candidate, seemed to pick up the charge this week, saying “We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all — even if it takes a constitutional amendment.”
Had Democrats opposed Roskam’s bill, or at least forced a roll call vote, it would have given them a cudgel to attack Republicans who supported it, operatives said Thursday.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t comment on the specific bills in the IRS package, but he said this week “we’ll take a look at the bill[s] in the near future,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
Conservatives seem more united in support of the bill, partly because they feel the IRS has disproportionately scrutinized 501(c) groups and donors on their side.
James Davis, a spokesman for Freedom Partners, said the bill “would prevent political targeting by the federal government which is a response to the very real threat we’ve witnessed over the past few years. Regardless of political affiliation, Americans are rightly concerned about partisan-Washington bureaucrats targeting and penalizing individuals due to their beliefs.”
The highest profile IRS gift tax inquiry did in fact target a big-money conservative group called Freedom’s Watch, which was backed by Adelson and spent heavily supporting President George W. Bush’s military surge in Iraq.
Donors to 501(c)4 groups objected to audits into their past donations saying they came out of the blue, and arguing the law was so vague it was unclear whether the gift tax even applied.
The IRS suspended such audits in 2011, choosing to let Congress decide whether these donations were subject to the gift tax. When the agency announced the halt on these audits it said, “This is a difficult area with significant legal, administrative, and policy implications with respect to which we have little enforcement history.” Former IRS Commissioner Steven Miller’s office said it would “be coordinating with the Office of Chief Counsel to determine whether there is a need for further guidance in this area.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/house-quietly-passes-tax-cut-for-megadonors-117067.html#ixzz3XihFi3EZ
Kansas's Failed Experiment
 |
| Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas (Orlin Wagner/AP) |
Kansas's Failed Experiment
Surviving a tough reelection race, as Sam Brownback did in Kansas last year, can often be a cleansing experience for a governor. It should certainly bring relief. After all, Brownback managed to earn a fresh nod of support from voters despite a messy first term marked by a fiscal embarrassment of his own making.
Yet three months later, the humbling in the heartland goes on, much to the frustration of a Republican governor and one-time presidential contender who hoped to make Kansas the national emblem of conservative governance. Brownback's hard-fought victory on election day won him another four years, but it did nothing to fix the problem that nearly cost him his job: the state's finances. Kansas's budget has for months resembled a wallet with a hole in it—every time the state's bookkeepers peek inside, they find less money than the government thought would be there. Just a few days after the November election, the Kansas budget office revealed that revenue projections were off by more than $200 million, bringing the budget gap facing Brownback to $600 million in all.
The yawning deficit is widely blamed on the deep income tax cuts that Brownback, along with a Republican legislature, enacted during his first two years in office. They not only slashed rates, but more importantly, they created a huge exemption for business owners who file their taxes as individuals. By Brownback's own description, the tax plan was a "real live experiment" in supply-side economics, with the idea being that lower taxes would spur investment, create jobs, and refill Kansas's coffers through faster growth. Yet even under the most charitable analysis, revenue has plummeted much faster than the economy has expanded.
Now, Kansas's red ink has left the governor red- faced. Brownback is asking Republican state lawmakers to slow the income tax cuts over the next few years, raise taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, overhaul school funding, and divert money from the state's highway fund in order to balance the budget. It's not as if he's abandoning his conservative economic philosophy—he still wants to replace the state's income tax entirely with consumption taxes over time. And like any politician on the ropes, he is preaching patience. "These things take time," he said last month. He also acknowledged the toll his stumbles have taken on his image. "We're in Lent season, so I'm giving up worldly things, like popularity," he joked to a small crowd. Brownback has blamed the budget shortfall in part on automatic increases in education spending (a subject of a long-running court dispute), and he's cited a recent uptick in job growth as evidence that the tax cuts, on the whole, are working. "Kansas is on the rise, and the state of our state is strong," the governor proclaimed in an annual budget address in January.
Yet Brownback's latest proposals represent at least a partial retreat, and it's unclear how many of them the legislature will approve. "He’s trying to figure out how to save face. I think that’s the bottom line," Rochelle Chronister, a former Republican state chairwoman, told me. Chronister has led the GOP opposition to Brownback's agenda through the group she founded, Traditional Republicans for Common Sense. A separate anti-Brownback effort led more than 100 current and former Kansas GOP officials to endorse Brownback's Democratic opponent, Paul Davis, in the 2014 election. Brownback won anyway, 50 to 46 percent. "He’s lived and died by this philosophy," Chronister said of the governor, "and it’s becoming more and more obvious that it is not going to be successful."
Lori McMillan, a law professor at Topeka's Washburn University specializing in taxation, said Brownback's latest proposals were "band-aids" and an example of a "reactionary, by-the-seat-of-your-pants fiscal policy." The original tax plan went awry, tax analysts said, not merely because it slashed rates but because it wasn't paired with deeper structural changes to the budget. The exemption for businesses wasn't tailored narrowly enough to encourage job creation, and so people rushed to take advantage of it without actually boosting employment. "They used a lot of adjectives I’m sure they now regret, like 'immediate' and 'shot-in-the-arm' and 'adrenaline,'" said Joseph Henchman of the Tax Foundation. "Just cutting taxes, and so deeply, without really any plans for how the state will pay for the spending that it’s not cutting–that’s proven to be a big problem there."
* * *
The state's predicament has drawn its share of national attention, and not only because it offers up an impossible-to-resist headline (What is the matter with Kansas?). But given how neatly Brownback's tax experiment fits into the Democratic argument against conservative budgeting, it's surprising that it hasn't drawn more coverage. That's particularly unusual because, inside Kansas, some of the blame has gone to the Koch Brothers—the favorite bogeymen of Beltway Democrats. Koch Industries is based in Wichita, and the family was a big supporter of Brownback's original tax plan. "We’ve given tax exemptions to the Koch Brothers without necessarily any outcome," said McMillan, who criticized the loophole for business owners. "Have the Koch Brothers created any more jobs? Was it meant for multibillionaires? The idea is going to be no."
The relatively dim spotlight may have something to do with Brownback himself. During 16 years in the Senate, Brownback was known not for his economic policy but for the kind of staunch social conservatism that peaked in 2004. His presidential campaign in 2008 drew little notice, and two years later, he easily won the governor's seat that had been held by Kathleen Sebelius before she became President Obama's secretary of health and human services.
Brownback's mellow personal style is most generously described as bland. He possesses neither the charismatic combativeness of Chris Christie nor the folksy humor of Mike Huckabee. And while his record as governor is as aggressively conservative as Scott Walker's in Wisconsin, Brownback passed his tax plan without the initial blowback that Walker faced from Democrats and unions in the deeply polarized Badger State. Aside from the explanation that he isn't running for president, Democratic officials in Washington say they haven't harped on Brownback only because they have so many other ripe targets among Republican governors, including Christie, Walker, Mike Pence in Indiana, Rick Scott in Florida, and Bobby Jindal in Louisiana. (Of course, that's another way of pointing out that Republicans control well over half of the nation's governorships, thanks to their recent electoral success.)
Another way to assess the impact of Kansas's conservative experiment, however, is to note the absence of copycats. “You haven’t seen any Republican governors follow in his footsteps," McMillan said. Indeed, as Politico noted earlier this year, conservatives in states like Ohio, Missouri, and Indiana view Kansas as a cautionary tale and have pulled back on their own plans for deep, immediate tax cuts. "We are not going to do what Kansas did," South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, a Republican, said bluntly in January as she discussed her plans to phase in tax cuts over a decade.
It will be more interesting to see what role, if any, Kansas plays in the 2016 campaign. Brownback may not be running, but the Republican presidential nominee will be asking voters to deliver the same kind of one-party power that he used to effect such significant change in 2011 and 2012. And it wasn't limited to economic policy—just in the last week, Kansas has approved legislation allowing people to carry concealed weapons without a permit, and Brownback signed what is arguably the nation's most restrictive abortion law.
The crowded field of GOP contenders for the White House means that a wide range of fiscal plans will be proposed, some pie-in-the-sky and others more realistic. The debate often devolves into hypothetical arguments about exactly how many jobs a particular proposal will create, or how much money it will cost. Kansas, as Brownback once conceded, offers "a real, live experiment." Are any of the candidates interested in learning its lessons?
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/04/kansass-failed-experiment/389874/
Copyright © 2015 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.
ASMR Drawing: Bird
I like drawing birds. I am sure another one will come along at some point.
HEY TINGLECHASERS: Lot's of marker screeching triggers!!!
You may or may not notice, but I drew this upside down. My camera set up only allowed for this option. The top of my head got in there a smidgen. Hope that doesn't distract you.
Please like the video and subscribe!
Oh, and I take requests. Leave a comment and I'll do my best to make your drawing.
XOXO, Jim Roy
Dress Code Sexism
Hey Laci Green, I just wanted to let you know that I am using your videos to learn how to raise my daughter.
I love, love, love your brain.
I love, love, love your brain.
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