Bill Gates Advocates Higher Taxes, While Famoulsy Using His Charitable Foundation As A Tax Haven Of Sorts

Business, Celebrity, Taxation, Technology

What a so-and-so! Bill Gates, like Messrs. Buffett, Zuckerberg and Musk, shovel their “fortunes into a charitable foundation,” which “has the happy side-effect of reducing tax bills, too—meaning that billionaires’ schemes can leave poorer taxpayers to fill in the gaps in public spending.”—The Economist, “Billionaires and the Falcon Heavy.”

“He’s learned the art of virtue-signaling hypocrisy from his bridge buddy,” mocks investor Clifford Asness.

Microsoft founder and billionaire … Gates says he should pay more in taxes and that the government should require other superwealthy people like him to contribute “significantly higher” amounts.
“I need to pay higher taxes,” Gates, who is worth over $90 billion, said in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on Sunday.
“I’ve paid more taxes, over $10 billion, than anyone else, but the government should require the people in my position to pay significantly higher taxes,” he said.

“Billionaire Bill Gates says he should pay ‘significantly higher’ taxes.”

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Beware, City Slicker Republicans; The Democrats Are Running ‘Prairie Populists’ In The Dakotas

Democrats, Donald Trump, Elections, Republicans, States' Rights

The Economist: “The Democratic brand is often toxic in rural America, where it is seen as a party of coastal elites. But Western voters seem willing to pull the lever for the right kind of Democratic candidate.”

In South Dakota, where “Republicans hold overwhelming majorities in both of the state legislative chambers; and Donald Trump won nearly twice as many votes as Hillary Clinton in 2016,” the Democrats are running “country politician” and former rodeo champion Billie Sutton for governor.

Sutton, who was “was paralysed from the waist down” in a rodeo accident, identifies “The main divide in South Dakota politics” as “not between Democrats and Republicans but between urban and rural regions.”

In the general election Mr Sutton will probably face either Kristi Noem—who has spent the last seven years in Washington as the state’s sole House of Representatives member—or Marty Jackley, who has spent nearly a decade as the state’s attorney general.

For obvious reasons, these are Sutton’s “dream opponents.”

Mr Sutton is a pro-life, pro-gun, church-going Democrat, just as Heidi Heitkamp—a Democratic senator from North Dakota—supports fracking and the Keystone oil pipeline. They are less prairie populists than prairie pragmatists, focused on kitchen-table issues and connecting to individual voters rather than joining the partisan vanguard.

Source: “A Democrat With A Chance In South Dakota.”

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Russian Response to Robert Mueller’s Ludicrous Indictment Of The Famous 13 Spy Bots Sounds About Right

America, Conspiracy, Donald Trump, Elections, Reason, Russia

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova:

“Turns out, there’ve been 13 people, in the opinion of the US Justice Department. 13 people interfered in the US elections? 13 against billions budgets of special agencies? Against intelligence and counterespionage, against the newest technologies? Absurd?  The indictment, however, is the “modern American political reality.”

Russian businessman Evgeny Prigozhin:

“The Americans are very emotional people, they see what they want to see. I have great respect for them. I am not at all upset that I am on this list. If they want to see the devil, let them.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov:

“It’s a pity that under Donald Trump, for more than a year of his presidency, our relations have not improved compared to the period of the Democratic administration. Even worsened to a certain extent,” Lavrov told Euronews.

Indeed. Deplorable were promised peace and cooperation; instead we are getting agitation based on idiocy. To say that Americans are merely emotional is very charitable indeed.

And my own analysis in “Making Sense of The Russia Monomania.

UPDATE (2/18): With respect to my “Making Sense of The Russia Monomania,” most people don’t get the column and reduce it to the kind of non-issues of simple paralleled. It is about, however,  the anatomy of, 1. The US creating its own reality. 2. The US forcing the world into that parallel universe. 3. The US having the power to do all that and more.

Bill Meyer was the only individual who got it.

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UPDATE II (4/5): Nothing New About Parkland School Massacre. FBI Has Been Criminally Negligent In Almost All Of America’s Major Terrorist Attacks.

Ethics, Government, GUNS, Homeland Security, Internet, Justice, Law

The FBI, now investigating POTUS, was criminally negligent or criminally culpable in almost all of America’s major terrorist attacks and, not surprisingly, in the Florida Parkland School massacre, too. Patrick Pool, national security and terrorism correspondent for PJMedia, coined the phrase Known Wolf just for the FBI’s feats of incompetence.

However, as far as I can recall, this is the first time this rogue agency has admitted to some wrongdoing.

FBI Statement on the Shooting in Parkland, Florida

On January 5, 2018, a person close to Nikolas Cruz contacted the FBI’s Public Access Line (PAL) tipline to report concerns about him. The caller provided information about Cruz’s gun ownership, desire to kill people, erratic behavior, and disturbing social media posts, as well as the potential of him conducting a school shooting.

Under established protocols, the information provided by the caller should have been assessed as a potential threat to life. The information then should have been forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office, where appropriate investigative steps would have been taken.

We have determined that these protocols were not followed for the information received by the PAL on January 5. The information was not provided to the Miami Field Office, and no further investigation was conducted at that time.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said:

“We are still investigating the facts. I am committed to getting to the bottom of what happened in this particular matter, as well as reviewing our processes for responding to information that we receive from the public. It’s up to all Americans to be vigilant, and when members of the public contact us with concerns, we must act properly and quickly.

“We have spoken with victims and families, and deeply regret the additional pain this causes all those affected by this horrific tragedy. All of the men and women of the FBI are dedicated to keeping the American people safe, and are relentlessly committed to improving all that we do and how we do it.”

Another Florida-based mass murderer, Omar Mateen, practically begged the FBI to put him on their terror watch list. FBI refused. Director James Comey thought Mateen was too wholesome looking. Blood on their hands. See “Let The Gun Market Close Government Loopholes“:

It transpires a friend of Orlando mass murderer Omar Saddiqui Mateen had done his duty and reported Mateen to the FBI. Mohammed A. Malik had also worshiped at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce and had become alarmed when Mateen openly professed to an infatuation with the videos of Yemeni Jihadi Anwar al-Awlaki. Not only did the FBI discount Malik’s report, but when Malik softened his assessment of the danger his friend posed to others—a natural human tendency—the FBI acted post haste on that assessment.
In mitigation of the FBI’s decision to back-off Mateen, Director James Comey even cited Malik’s good reference. Better that FBI agents watch reruns of CBS’s Criminal Minds, than follow FBI Standard Operating Procedure, dictated by the Obama administration. Taxpayers would be safer.
The mad farrago got more maddening when Attorney General Loretta Lynch (confirmed by Republican lickspittles) stepped up to assure the public that federal authorities were scouring their contacts with Mateen, and those around him, to ferret out whether they’d missed anything. When grilled about Mateen’s wife, a key figure in the investigation and a possible co-conspirator, Lynch replied that Noor Salman was … missing.

What did the FBI do in response to Nikolas Cruz? Double down on Russia, of course. For which CNN’s Evan Pérez expressed his gratitude. Perez sure tapped into what Americans are thinking when he confessed to breathed a sigh of relief because … the best of the FBI just caught dem Russian bots, although the agents missed Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz (Perez added as an after thought).

UPDATE I (3/26):

FBI recruited Omar Mateen’s dad.

General intelligence:

UPDATE II (4/5):

Joe Kennedy hated the CIA:

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