Thursday 7 March 2019

The Possibility of this House Investigation Being Just One Big Tax Audit?

Well....100-percent chance.

So you can sit and imagine hearing after hearing, for hours and hours upon the networks....talking about page 7 of the 2010 return, and why this information comes out this way, instead of that way.....with the tax accountant sitting there with people who think they know tax law, and it's apparent about four hours into this first day.....that the House 'expert' is not an expert on X, Y and Z.

So it continues the next day, and the next week.....by week six.....just about everyone has turned the whole thing off, and the reality starts to sink in.....the tax code was written by Senators and Congressmen, and it's 80,000-plus pages.....are no match for the talky-talk guy hired by the Democrats to get 'evidence'. 

Then some reality starts to sink in with the public.  All this evidence for this impeachment business is stuff about taxes, and there's over ten-million individuals who took the same credits and deductions as Trump.  Are they going to be dragged in for a House tax audit?

Then you start to wonder.....let's say Bernie is the next guy lined up, and some idiots start talking from the GOP side about a pre-tax audit of Bernie.  Can Bernie survive this?  Would we have to impeach Bernie if he's elected? 

Messy?  Yeah, and the public's ability to consume and just accept this?  That's what you need to start asking yourself. 

Impeachment Scenario 1 and 2

These are my scenarios, which could fall into play.

1.  The House wastes most of 2019 on hearings and then shortly before Christmas, and the primary season...they send the impeachment package to the Senate.  The Senate spends 45 days calling witnesses and doing their hearing, in the midst of primary season. 

In the red states (the thirty that voted for Trump)....there's open hostility, and they are still full turbo for Trump. 

The Senate eventually finds 51 votes (with several GOP figures voting against Trump), and then removes him from office.  Pence is declared the President.

Trump refuses to sit down from the campaign and continues to engage.....find tens of millions arriving weekly from working-class supporters.  The convention?  Various GOP pretenders try to halt Trump and find that the public is now openly hostile, and the five GOP senators that voted for impeachment.....are now having police protection around the clock.

Eventually in November....impeached Trump beats Bernie or the Democratic contender. 

The Democrats and the news media sit there in shock.....finding that over 100 Democratic seats were lost from the House, and an overwhelming number of votes for Trump came out of this mess.

2.  The Houses wastes most of 2019 on hearings and then shortly before Christmas, and the primary season...they send the impeachment package to the Senate.  The Senate spends 45 days calling witnesses and doing their hearing, in the midst of primary season. 

In the red states (the thirty that voted for Trump)....there's open hostility, and they are still full turbo for Trump. 

The Senate then finds 51 votes in voting down the impeachment.  The Democrats think the embarrassment is enough to dissolve votes for Trump in November.  They misjudge the public frustration, and an overwhelming number of voters show up, and Trump wins easily.  Going into 2021?  The Democrats lose 80 to 100 seats in the House election, and there's nothing left for them to really slam Trump.  One out of every ten Democrats now say they'd like to leave the party and create a new group, or follow the Green Party.

The worst of the two scenarios?  Number one....having Trump come back and continue the election effort and drill down into massive anger from conservative voters at pretender-Republican Senators.

Worthless Degree

I sat and watched an interview yesterday, and in the midst of this....a 'Scholar' came up for Whiteness Studies.  Yes, she actually was some holding a degree of some type.....over Whiteness Studies. 

I reflected upon the degree, and just sat there for twenty minutes....trying to contemplate where four to six years of college, and this degree (likely costing $100,000)....would lead onto.  Basically, if you didn't get a job with some college, you are 'toast'.  There's just not any business operations out there, or operations sector....that ask for people with 'Whiteness Studies degrees'.

Folks getting 'Blackness Studies degrees'?  Probably.  Latino Studies degrees?  I guess. 

The problem I see is that it really eliminates the path ahead in life for real work, and real value attached to the degree. 

The Pejorative 'Gimmick'

Pejorative is not a word that most people use, and it's usually drawn up by a PhD-level guy who wants to have a hour-long lecture.....talking about something fairly negative.

The meaning?  It's often built to be a concept of disparagement.....a negative view of something.  You could even draw upon this as a slur against someone or a cause.

A criticism?  Yes, to the ninth-degree.

It's where you view something and have decided to go full-board.....go as negative as possible....to influence the people in front of you.

Words that fit into pejorative ways?

Example: Do-Gooder, typically meaning you've taken a position simply to look good, and it was more for public recognition, than logic.

Example: Cuckservative, typically meaning you do some things in the name of pretending to be a conservative, but for the most part.....are not a conservative.

Example: Cave-people, typically meaning a person who hates changes in their local area or region.

Example: Jobsworth, typically a person who uses rules to prevent people from accomplishing things.

Example: Fundie, typically a person who is on the far end of religion, and lives their life to 100-percent within the rules of the religion, and it bothers them when others fail to 'see the light'. 

A Security Clearance Story

For several weeks, I've been watching this news media hype over Trump's daughter and son-in-laws top secret clearance, for their DC job, and tried to grasp what there is of significance in the story.

Prior to the 1990s, you could have filled out the paperwork (maybe 12 pages), and some security specialist could have wrapped up your clearance in roughly three-to-four  months.  The time-consumer (if there was one).....you had to list three people to 'vouch' for you.  Amusingly enough.....the field agent guy could go to the three listed for 'vouching' or just skip them entirely and find three totally different people who knew you.  Two or three weeks after that guy signed off....the rest of the paperwork finished up, and it was good for five years.

At some point in the early 1990s....some folks determined that the system wasn't working well enough and added more points onto it....basically making this a six-month process.  By the late 1990s, another group got into this, and determined that the new process wasn't through enough, and now it was getting up to an entire year.  Part of the blame for this was simply a lack of field agents, and perception that people were getting into serious financial issues (which should hinder your clearance).  Another item....more spouses coming up into the scene....who weren't US citizens (particularly in the 1990s, with Russian wives now showing up, married to US military guys).

At some point, a guy I worked with....had sat there and counted his submission and the weeks required.....with the final sign-off of a update (not a new clearance), and this had reached 19 months. 

The folks who travel extensively?  Here's the odd thing about doing clearance updates (every five years).  The audit people want a complete list of all foreign travel.  As long as you stayed in the US....you were safe.  The folks who traveled to ten to fifteen foreign locations over that five year period (like a four-day trip to Cancun, or a 7-day trip to Paris)?  It's not a difficult thing, but the audit guy wants your dates for the trip.  So you find yourself going back to calendar and trying to recall ten trips over the past five years and trying to line the dates correctly up.  If you were the daughter of Trump?  I'd take a guess that just on international travel.....she's got a list of forty places that she's been to in the past five years.  For that poor audit guy trying to assess things or look for some type of corruption or spy stuff?  A list of forty international trips is going to freak you out.  That alone....probably would add three months onto the whole process. 

Is it really some five-star news media story?  No.  It's marginally a two-star story at best.