Well la de dah, Mr. Rich Guy, still gonna itemize. You're not like most people. I wasn't trying to give you advice, and I'm not impressed.
I just think it helps to remind everyone that things in MENA are always more complicated. Except the invasion of Iraq. That was as simplistic and boneheaded as it could be. Even Vietnam made more sense.
Your goals and mine are the same on that score. Yuuup...except for that last sentence only insofar as the Tonkin Gulf Incident was effectively a put-on operation that resulted in the eventual devastation of much of SE Asia. I can see it being a tie, honestly.
You don't take me seriously because you cannot stomach any criticism of this particular politician, with whom you have an emotional attachment. It clouds your judgment. You seem to be making lots of excuses for the bad foreign policy outcomes; his hands were tied; he had no authority to act. I guess the buck didn't top with Obama. And it is sad because no president should be above rational criticism--even if you voted for that politician (as I did). On some specific points: Obama had full authority to decide when to leave Iraq. The expectation was that the agreement would be re-negotiated. And the military on the ground told him the Iraqi government wasn't yet ready. That was proven to be true. You are in denial of this last fact. At a minimum, the appropriate time to withdraw would be when the facts on the ground supported it. Obama explicitly stated that he didn't need Congress's permission to act on Syria. He was in fact making preparations to act without Congress. But then he changed his mind, using Congress as a pretext to avoid taking decisive action. Assad needed a spanking, through bombing or otherwise. These are mainstream foreign policy criticisms of the Obama regime. Even if you disagree, I suggest you take them seriously, because if you don't you will learn no lessons at all.
I think you are misreading the situation: I cannot take you seriously because most of the time you don't provide specifics and your criticism looks motivated by your hatred of certain politicians. Your criticism for the most part looks motivated and irrational. Furthermore, the fact that you keep going back 2 years, but refuse to engage on present development and/or the original causes of the situation, portray you as someone who has an agenda against an specif president, not against an specific situation. 1. When would the troops or Iraq be ready? 2. So your criticism is that Obama should have taken an already negotiated deal that satisfied both parts and make it "better"? You look like you have an agenda. You think that situations only seem to have one answer and that that answer is permanent and never changes. This is a good read about the reasoning behind stepping back in Syria: https://www.theatlantic.com/interna...use-during-the-syrian-red-line-crisis/561887/ Obama remained focused on the United Nations inspection team that was on the ground in Syria. That afternoon, he called Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, and urged him to pull them out. Ban refused, saying that the team had to finish their work. “I cannot overstate the importance of not remaining in Syria for a lengthy time,” Obama said. Ban replied that it could take a few days. Obama pressed again, saying they should be out by the following night. To this day, I wonder if Obama would have launched a strike early that week if the UN team hadn’t been in the way. Obama’s next call was to Angela Merkel. There was no foreign leader he admired more. Like him, she was a pragmatist, driven by facts, dedicated to international order, deliberate in her decision-making. I’d seen them sit together, sometimes for hours, with notepads in front of them, designing strategies that could keep the global economy crawling forward, or hold Afghanistan together. Now I sat in the Oval Office listening to Obama ask for her support for military action. Even if Germany didn’t participate, the United Kingdom and France had indicated that they would. But her public support would show that the United States and Europe were united, and could help bring along the rest of the European Union. Merkel argued that the UN team should have the time to prepare and submit its report, at which point we should pursue a Security Council resolution authorizing action. If the Russians blocked us, then at least we would have tried. This would take several weeks. Obama knew a delay of that length would tie his hands, especially because there wasn’t much public support for war in the United States. As the fresh horror of Assad’s attack faded, the opposition to a U.S. strike would build. With any additional time, Assad could also put innocent civilians around potential targets as human shields. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- After deriding Obama’s response to Syria as weak, Republicans were now making the same warnings about action that we had used to publicly defend our inaction in the past. In doing so, they were signaling that Obama would be held accountable if these scenarios were realized, while seeking impossible guarantees that they wouldn’t be. More ominously, a message was being delivered: Acting without going to Congress would be unconstitutional. Our lawyers also had concerns. There was no firm international legal basis for bombing Syria—no argument of self-defense, which justified our actions against al-Qaeda; no UN resolution such as we had had in Libya. Nor was there any domestic legal basis beyond the assertion that the president had the inherent power to take military action that did not constitute a “war” under the Constitution, which the Republicans were disputing. Some argued that the Republicans could even try to impeach Obama if he acted without congressional authorization—hardly a wild thought, given their posture toward Obama. So tell me, what would you do if you were in Obama's position, knowing that teh EU and the UN would not support you and that the republicans could even try to impeach you? If by mainstream you mean RWTP (like saying Obama regime for example), then no thank you. Your criticism looks even more empty and based on partisan agendas and not founded on "mainstream foreign policy" or "objective thinking".
The right spend 8 years howling about Obama's abuse of power, and now its argument is that he didn't exercise enough unilateral authority? Come on now, we're not that gullible.
Not to mention that the right's guy has implemented hardly any of his policies through conventional legislation, instead opting for the Executive Order, which is the new Royal Prerogative. Rules don't apply to Republicans.
I am pretty sure someone posted something similar to this, but if you look at the list below, you will see 3 names missing. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/what-the-roger-stone-indictment-does-and-doesnt-tell-us/
Sorry if this was already discussed, but what do you think of the wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren? I'd support it at a lower rate if it would work. But I'm afraid experience in Europe may show that it doesn't. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/24/18196275/elizabeth-warren-wealth-tax
This article says yes. The WSJ disagrees. https://assets.documentcloud.org/do...stitutionality-of-a-National-Wealth-Tax-1.pdf
The authors argue that the 1895 Pollock case (in which a 5 - 4 court held the income tax unconstitutional) was wrongly decided and has been eroded by other decisions in the subsequent years. My conclusion is that's all fine and another court might overrule Pollock, but it will be a cold day in hell before the current Court does.
I am not sure any Supreme Court would hold a wealth tax Constitutional without apportionment. Remember, the income tax required a Constitutional Amendment.
I think the weight of Supreme Court precedent should lead to the conclusion that such a tax is constitutional. Pollack has been criticized and/or ignored in many cases and itself ignored Hylton. That being said, I'm skeptical that the current Court would uphold it. The interesting thing would be where Roberts comes down. It's been a while since I've read Sebelius in its entirety, but IIRC, Roberts spent some ink distinguishing Pollack in ruling to uphold the individual mandate.
So does this mean you think a wealth tax isn't a direct tax and therefore wouldn't need to have the apportionment provision applied to it?
Based on how the Supreme Court has construed that term rather narrowly in the majority of the cases on the issue, correct. Obviously, the current Court could decide differently, and it wouldn't be a complete shock if they did.
It’s a bad idea. I think a lot of academic critics of it have a good idea overall, but they don’t have access to the nuts and bolts decisions that go into individual avoidance strategies. Avoidance strategies exist due to three tax differentials: 1-cap gains to the highest marginal tax rate 2-the highest income tax rate to the rate of just “well off” people 3-cross jurisdiction rate differences, so Corp to Corp or income to income in different countries. Every strategy carries a penalty. Renounce citizenship and pay the exit tax up front. Shifting regular income to cap gains requires planning/monitoring costs and loss of access to your cash to some degree. And so on. The problem with ACO’s tax concept or this wealth tax is that they leave gaping tax differentials that are ripe for exploitation. A 70% marginal rate is okay on the super rich if it’s supported by a fairly high tax rate on someone making 500k and if rates are fairly close across countries. They don’t do that. And they don’t do it because it’s easier to go after 0.1% of the country and solve zero than it is to go to 10-15% of the country with an ask that allows you to go after the 0.1% of the country effectively. You need a broad base to both raise revenue and to mitigate avoidance at the very top. These plans are no more serious than the damn wall, even if their heart is in the right place. Frankly, they’re dangerous as hell because of the emotional fear/anger aspects they play to. *there’s actually a fourth differential I ignored because it’s more of a Corp tax issue: earnings stripping by disaggregating earnings into functions across jurisdictions. So converting regular earnings to IP earnings and chucking that in a low tax IP box somewhere like Ireland.
High inheritance tax is a wealth tax, paid at 1 point vs paying on a yearly basis. The inheritance tax is one of the best taxes against inequality. But the middle class doesn't want to pay a tax when Grandma dies and leaves you that house, that is why it has become unpopular.
Well then set the limit higher like $5 mill to avoid that. Unless yer granma's a moneybags. Mine rented her whole life in America in Washington Heights.