And another day of revealing taxes, the Air Force helping LGBTQ+ families, KY approves abortion ban, a test for long Covid, Republicans committing voter fraud, the student debt crisis is worse for Black women, and some STD rates are increasing comes to a close:
"The policies I uphold are the policies represented by Trump, the policies represented by Putin," says Far-right French candidate Le Pen
It’s amazing the number of people who are pro fascism.
Deaths
US: 1,014,114
World: 6,214,081
Cases
US: 82,192,880
World: 502,141,105
Ukraine conflict: 'Russian soldiers raped me and killed my husband'. "About 25 girls and women aged 14 to 24 were systematically raped during the occupation in the basement of one house in Bucha. Nine of them are pregnant," she said. "Russian soldiers told them they would rape them to the point where they wouldn't want sexual contact with any man, to prevent them from having Ukrainian children.”
America’s Highest Earners And Their Taxes Revealed. Secret IRS files reveal the top US income-earners and how their tax rates vary more than their incomes. Tech titans, hedge fund managers and heirs dominate the list, while the likes of Taylor Swift and LeBron James didn’t even make the top 400. Which people and professions rake in the most income year after year? Which are most adept at shielding that money from the taxman? And what does this tell you about America?…In theory, our tax system is designed to tax the rich at higher rates than everyone else. That’s not the way it works at the loftiest incomes. The data reveals a system where the very highest earners, on average, pay far lower tax rates than the merely affluent do. And even among the top 400, some groups have it better than others: Tech billionaires pay rates well below even other business owners…In an era of widening gaps between the rich and everyone else, ProPublica’s analysis shows that the U.S. tax system is making inequality worse. Let’s walk you through the world of the highest-earning Americans…To make it into the top 400, each person on this list had to make an average of at least $110 million each year. A typical American making $40,000 would have to work for 2,750 years to make what the lowest-earning person in this group made in one. Each of the top 11 averaged over $1 billion in income annually from 2013 to 2018. The typical American would have to work for 25,000 years to make $1 billion…On average, the rate of income tax that people pay does climb as incomes ascend into the top 1%, but when you get to the range of $2 million to $5 million, that trend stops. The group earning in this range, composed mostly of business owners and workers with extremely high salaries, paid an average income tax rate of 29% from 2013 to 2018. After that, average tax rates actually drop the further up in income you go…Taxing long-term capital gains at lower rates than income is not new. The U.S. has done so for most of the past century. But in 2003, under President George W. Bush, that special rate was extended to most stock dividends, or money paid out to owners of a company’s stock, for the first time in U.S. history. That change particularly benefited the wealthy. Together, the top 400 saved an average of $1.9 billion in taxes each year — due solely to the lower rate on dividends. — Fucking Republicans — While the income tax rates paid by the richest Americans can be surprisingly low, they are still generally much higher than the income tax rates paid by average working people. But income taxes are only part of the story. A majority of workers actually pay more in taxes for Social Security and Medicare than income taxes. These payroll taxes are automatically deducted from paychecks every month. The rich, meanwhile, tend to pay proportionally little of these types of taxes because wages are a small portion of their total income. Because payroll taxes hit low- and middle-income workers disproportionately, they can wipe out the progressivity of income taxes. It’s common for wage earners to pay a higher rate of personal federal taxes than even the highest-earning Americans. It’s even more striking when you compare ordinary Americans with the very wealthiest Americans, as opposed to just those with the highest incomes…The top 25 wealthiest Americans got $401 billion richer from 2014 to 2018, but paid just $13.6 billion in federal income taxes, a “true tax rate,” as we called it, of 3.4%. Even the conventional income tax rate for this top 25 is remarkably low: 16%. Over time, the gap between those at the top and ordinary Americans has gotten wider. This is evident when looking at both wealth and income. Since it began, the idea behind the progressive income tax was to make the rich pay their “fair share” and narrow this gap. A century later, however, our data shows that aspiration has been undermined. — If you are okay with this wealth inequality, then you are part of the problem.
Kentucky legislature overrides governor's veto of sweeping abortion bill. Kentucky's GOP-controlled legislature on Wednesday overrode Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto of a broad abortion bill that bans most abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, restricts access to medication abortion and makes it more difficult for a minor to obtain an abortion in the state…House Bill 3 prohibits a physician from performing, inducing or attempting to perform or induce an abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, except in a medical emergency. It does not include exceptions for cases of rape and incest. — Make no mistake, wealthy white people in Kentucky will still be able to get abortions. This is about making sure poor people and people of color remain in their place.
Air Force Offers Help To Military Families Hurt By States' New Anti-LGBTQ Laws. In an incredibly unusual move, the Air Force is making a point to let its hundreds of thousands of personnel know that it will provide families with medical and legal help if they are personally affected by new state laws attacking gay and transgender children. And if those service members feel they need to leave those states entirely, for the sake of their kids’ mental or physical health, the Air Force will help them to do that, too. The Air Force is the only branch of the U.S. military doing this.
Hong Kong team develops test for long Covid so recovered patients can tell if trouble lies ahead. A simple stool test can tell recovered Covid-19 patients their risks of suffering the effects of long Covid with 90 per cent accuracy, researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) have found.
Trial date set in defamation suit against Fox News over U.S. election claims. An April 2023 jury trial has been scheduled in Dominion Voting Systems Inc's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit accusing Fox News of trying to boost its ratings by falsely claiming the voting machine company rigged the 2020 U.S. presidential election against former President Donald Trump.
Two Republican men from The Villages admit to illegally casting multiple ballots for Trump in the 2020 election. Charles F. Barnes and Jay Ketcik pleaded guilty to casting more than one ballot in an election, a third-degree felony that could have resulted in a maximum five-year prison sentence. — Election fraud is mainly committed by Republicans. And they get off easy unlike the 5-year sentence a black woman got in Texas. And she didn’t even do it on purpose.
The Student Debt Crisis? It’s Infinitely Worse for Black Women. Black women sit at the intersection of racism and misogyny, so it’s not surprising they have the highest loan burden. But the scope of the disparity is shocking. Women of all races carry two-thirds of the $1.7 trillion in outstanding student loan debt in this country, but Black women carry more per capita, carry it for longer, make less money, and have less help when trying to pay back their debts. It’s a bleak picture: Essentially, Black women are punished for daring to try to improve their prospects with education and credentials…This seems like a good time to mention that Republicans have no intention of helping women of any race pay back their educational debts but do think the government can live, rent free, inside a woman’s uterus if she becomes pregnant at any point under any circumstance…People don’t often talk about student debt relief as an issue of racial justice, but it absolutely is. Black people borrow more, make less, and are less likely to have family members with enough wealth to help out.
Cuba Gooding Jr admits forcible kiss on waitress. Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr admitted forcibly kissing a waitress, his lawyer said Wednesday, in a New York court plea that will see other criminal complaints against him dropped. The "Jerry Maguire" star had been accused by more than 20 women of groping and unwanted touching over decades, and had faced criminal charges stemming from complaints by three of them. — Fucker. Our system seems rather broken when he can get more than 20 criminal complaints against him dropped so easily.
Rates of gonorrhea, syphilis continued to increase in 2020, CDC data shows. Data published Tuesday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States decreased in the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic, but many had recovered and even increased by the end of 2020. According to the 2020 STD Surveillance Report, cases of gonorrhea had risen 10% by the end of the year, and rates of syphilis, both primary and secondary, were up 7%. Primary and secondary refer to different stages of syphilis infection.
RIP Gilbert Gottfried. He was 67.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
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