The Goat Pen

sardis wrote:I don't agree that you know where the government will stand in the future. Right now, they're ok and pretty much hands off on content, but there were members on the board trying to restrict content. Replacements on the board could see restriction on certain speech which, to me, is the primary concern.

I'm divided on this issue. Eliminating net neutrality wouldn't be an issue if we enforced our anti-trust laws. But AMazon, Google, and Apple are allowed to continue.

Well, this is a rare thing for me. I trust the government MORE than Comcast in this case.

Pai in his rationale to disable Net Neutrality admits that Comcast throttled bandwidth for customers and lied about it, but with everyone on the internet talking about it, it will never happen again, hence no need for Net Neutrality. This guy is a piece of work.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... -fcc-says/

Where in the world is Matt Lauer? uh oh

Trump is retweeting stuff from Britain First. I'm sure his totally not racist nationalists supporters will object to this.

Remember when Trump went to the Carrier plant in Indy as the hero and savior of these manufacturing jobs? This may come as a shock to all you America First idiots but it turns out that it was all bullshit. 600 workers in that plant are being laid off right after Christmas, another 700 at another Carrier plant in the area, and Rexnord is closing entirely. 91,000 jobs have been sent overseas since Trump was elected - the most in five years.

America First idiots

pretty much says it all

CNN is boycotting this year's White House Christmas party, it announced on Tuesday.

The cable news giant says that President Donald Trump's 'continued attacks on freedom of the press and CNN' has prompted the network to decline the invite to this year's party.

'CNN will not be attending this year's White House Christmas party,' a CNN spokesperson told Politico.

'In light of the President's continued attacks on freedom of the press and CNN, we do not feel it is appropriate to celebrate with him as his invited guests.

'We will send a White House reporting team to the event and report on it if news warrants.'

I think he's implying that the idiocy lies in the idea that what Trump is doing is really "putting America first"...

eCat wrote:America First idiots

pretty much says it all

Yes, idiots. The idea that Trump was going to be able to reverse a generational change in global trade was always ridiculous and you have to be an idiot to buy into it. The only part of his campaign that wasn't fanciful nonsense was all the anti-brown people / anti-foreigner stuff. And not surprisingly implementing policies that hurt those people is the only thing he's been able to do. Of course, you view that as a positive and somehow making America better but on that we disagree.

its the general contempt you hold for Americans who want to improve America that makes you stand out as exceptional, especially while touting yourself as compassionate

I don't have contempt for improving America. I do have a lot of contempt for the Trump plan and the supporters of this plan. I do not think proposing impossible ideas and excluding people is the right approach. What America First really means is White America First and I think that's appalling and not in any way the path towards improvement.

no, it means White America included.

This notion that you're racist if you voted for Trump or that you have some obligation to minorities because you are white is fucking absurd - and we can both agree that his election brought out the racists factions of this country. Where we differ is that isn't just the domain of Neo Nazi's or whites in general.

As for the brown people - yea, while you think people living in West Virginia should be forgotten while Mexicans coming here illegally deserve a chance at a better life, I choose America First and by proxy , Americans first.

If that's racist, so be it. I'll gladly wear that label.

Did Cletus find a country without racists to move to yet?

Whatever non-racist country Cletus loves and wants to emigrate to never elected a black man to their highest office, twice.

so a Republican tax proposal in the house is looking to tax grad students for income based on the value of the grad student agreement with the college versus the actual income paid.

This is problematic for both the students and the college because at it stands now they are given tuition and a stipend to cover living expenses. They go from having a taxable income of say $18K a year which basically means they don't pay taxes to having an income of closer to $90K a year when you throw in the value of tuition.

For the college they go from paying payroll taxes of basically an entry level job to now paying for an executives salary.

One on hand, especially having a daughter seeking to get a scholarship to attend college, I understand the burden this places on a kid trying to get a college education, but on the other, based on the fairness of our tax system, there really should be some recognition that these kids are receiving $70K in tuition. If my daughter doesn't get a scholarship, I don't get a substantial tax break ( I do get one but so does everyone else including the grad students) on the amount of money, already taxed, btw, that I pay for her tuition.

This reminds me of a major problem with our tax system to begin with. The founding fathers never intended the above scenario to be taxable income. A grad student works - in this for more of a barter system than anything else to get access to free tuition. He provides a service, the college provides a service - there is no net gain and therefore there should be no taxable income. If while working at the college, the student discovered the cure for cancer, packaged it and sold it at a profit for either himself of the college, then that would be a capital gain and would be taxable income.

While I sympathize with the college students, in a progressive tax system, even though they are living like paupers and scraping by, they are getting a $70K a year education, far out of reach of the the average Americans ability to pay. Our tax system,as it stands today, would expect them to pay. No one would bat an eye at Harvard paying them $90K a year and then they in turn pay Harvard $70K to cover the cost of tuition, and they pay taxes on the $90K income - which is what the rest of America does.

I wonder if they're going to tax athletes on the value of the tuition for their scholarships? That won't be good for Dook players...

how many grad students fall into that categpory

most have ample support and well paying jobs as soon as they move on

some likely game the system to continue being 7 year colleg students

from what ive seen everyone gets a tax break the forst 10 years

if it simplifies things and attracts corporate America back home I say go for it

hedge wrote:I wonder if they're going to tax athletes on the value of the tuition for their scholarships? That won't be good for Dook players...

yea, that's another part of it. Although they might be able to argue that the endowments they receive cover the cost of the scholarships and they are acting as executors of those endowments in granting scholarships. In other words, Big Daddy donor is paying for the scholarship of student X.

One of the biggest advantages we have here is our advanced education system. We get a huge share of the best talent from around the world to come here and, at least historically, stay here. This is a public good and if it means creating tax breaks to keep this advantage in place, it should be done.

crashcourse wrote: most have ample support and well paying jobs as soon as they move on

Not really. We're not talking about med school or MBA programs. These are research PhD students who will mostly go on to teaching or academic research jobs. These are not very well paying gigs. If you get tenure, that's great and helps a lot but that's not so easy to do.

crashcourse wrote:how many grad students fall into that categpory

most have ample support and well paying jobs as soon as they move on

some likely game the system to continue being 7 year colleg students

from what ive seen everyone gets a tax break the forst 10 years

if it simplifies things and attracts corporate America back home I say go for it

I'd probably first want to understand why we have to justify the spending that we have when cutting corporate taxes. If the corporate tax cuts do result in companies coming back, creating high paying jobs then why not setup the system to the point that the increased jobs resulting in additional income balance out the loss in corporate taxes.

Of course these companies coming back are investing in automation and not creating that many jobs, but that really needs to be addressed to the satisfaction of the American taxpayer if we going to provide these corporate tax cuts.

Its a serious question - what is the value of lowering corporate taxes so that company X will build an automated factory in South Carolina that employs 80 people?

I'm sure as hell not willing to see a tax increase to the middle class and fewer exemptions for the poor if there is isn't a huge spike in middle income jobs being created - and if there is, then why does the government need to make up for tax cuts in other areas?

I'd rather see the Patriot Tax be enacted that is a direct correlation between jobs being created and tax relief to corporations while at the same time make the barriers to selling foreign made goods and services into this country more challenging.