All The News That's Fit to Print

Apparently there was a lower court decision today involving another one of Trump’s executive orders.  Trump has issues more executive orders than any president since FDR in WW II.  New York and California and other blue states were worried about declaring “sanctuary cities” or sanctuary states where law enforcement would not carry out Federal laws on immigration.  Today this Court ruling declared that states are not servants to the Federal Government bu rather are “co equal” and they as such have every right not to go along with a federal law.  To me this violates court precedent but apparently now it’s OK to flaut executive orders and say that “We have the right not to be conscripted by the federal government”.  But haven’t Presidents “federalized” the Nation Guard in various civil rights cases? 

It seems that “Taj” is a type of honey wine that will get you really drunk if you let it.  I’ve heard honey wine referenced in “The Ten Commandments” by one of the Egyptian women in the movie.  It seems that Taj is a drink you can get at an Ethopian restaurant.  And you can only get this exotic foreign food in highly urbanized settings.  Norman Goldman made a string plug for the advantages of urban living, and he himself has lived his whole life in an urban setting.  I know Thom Hartman speaks often of an Ethopian restaurant and I’m wondering whether there are a lot of Ethopian restaurants in Washington DC.   They apparently use lot of bread and eat with their hands.

There was a double execution in Arkansas last night.  It was one Black and one White, if you’re curious.  There was talk of executing seven prisoners in eleven days a while back but there were temporary court restraints because of the drugs used. 

President Trump apparently has backed down on insisting for Congressional funding to build the wall with Mexico.  It seems neither side wisely wants to close down government or get into a big argument over this issue.  So the Republicans agreed to get funding for drones and other RADAR equipment for enforcement measures and that Trump says he’ll seek funding for the wall itself this coming September.  

That “space” thing that I keep getting pop-ups of, has this thing on Einstein, which might be called “Another Side of Einstein”.  It shows Einstein as a younger man who was married but also a womanizer.  He made statements like everything in the Universe is connected to everything else, and now all he has to do is prove it.  I guess the movie is called “Genius” or something. 

The 25^th anniversary of the LA Riots is April 29^th, which is another harrowing event that occurs this Saturday along with the government shut-down.  Eye Witness news photographers were on the scene in a helicopter and they had guns stowed away for use in an emergency.  And they kept remarking how menacing the gathering crowds looked, and they knew there was trouble.  Of course there were no police around because they knew when they were outnumbered, and had more or less of a “let it burn” policy.   Even today in these protest situations the police slink into the background when anything approaching a fist fighting contest appears to be occurring.  

Trump's income tax reform knocks out a leading tax deduction people routinely take and that is to deduct their state and local taxes from what they pay Uncle Sam.  This is a major rip-off in Trump's plan of the little guy.  And Trump’s advisers are looking to ax some tax breaks that are very popular in certain states, including the deduction Americans take for the state and local taxes they pay separately each year. Eliminating this deduction could save more than $1 trillion over 10 years but inflame lawmakers and governors in states that have high income tax rates.  The central feature of the White House’s plan would be a big reduction in tax rates for virtually all Americans and businesses.  It would eliminate the seven existing income tax brackets and replace them with three brackets, containing new rates of 10 percent, 25 percent and 35 percent, based on someone’s income. White House officials haven’t specified which income levels would hit the higher tax brackets, as they see that as part of ongoing discussions with Capitol Hill.  It would also roughly double the standard deduction that Americans can use to reduce their taxable income. The deduction for married couples would move from $12,600 to $24,000. This would incentivize people not to itemize their tax returns and instead use the standard deduction, simplifying the process and potentially saving taxpayers thousands of dollars each year.  It would allow for "repatriating" tax dollars from foreign located US corporations moving back to ten percent.  Congress wants to lower the tax rate on corporations to twenty percent.  The world average is 23 percent.