#link to article

[tngbabe]

Master Replicas Announces New STAR TREK UNIVERSE Action Figure and Toy License • TrekCore.com

Ok, I'm soo happy to see these guys & I'm gonna spoil it by saying their «affordable« price is 24.99 for a 4.5 in figure. Uhhhh....yeah..and no people that is not affordable for me & idk about y'all. As much as I love our Riker man & Beverly, I will only be able to see pictures of them. ...f%ucking 24.99 & if you're outside England tack on a shipping charge to that.......positive side is it's way less than exo....here's the article & some screenshots for ya.

[cherryblossomshadow]

For additional context, this debacle is what they cut their mics over, btw

MB: Thank you, Governor. And just to clarify for our viewers, Springfield, Ohio does have a large number of Haitian migrants who have legal status. Temporary protected status. Norah.

JDV: Well, Margaret, Margaret, I think it's important because…

MB: Thank you, senator. We have so much to get to.

NO: We're going to turn out of the economy. Thank you.

JDV: Margaret. The rules were that you guys weren't going to fact check, and since you're fact checking me, I think it's important to say what's actually going on. So there's an application called the CBP One app where you can go on as an illegal migrant, apply for asylum or apply for parole and be granted legal status at the wave of a Kamala Harris open border wand. That is not a person coming in, applying for a green card and waiting for ten years.

[cherryblossomshadow]

No (Federal) Taxes on Tips

No Tax on Tips by the Daily Show ft Desi Lydic

Desi Lydic: It's weird he's even talking about sending teachers to the gulag, because Trump has more popular policies, like his proposal to end taxes on tips, which is so popular that Kamala Harris now says that SHE supports it. And Trump is not happy about that … Look, to be fair, Kamala did copy Trump's no tax on tips idea,

which would make it the first time in history that a woman got credit for repeating a man's idea.

We did it, girls. And she didn't stop there. Kamala also completely ripped off his idea to lead in the polls by 3 points against a rapidly deteriorating candidate. That was his thing. That was his thing.

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Harris v. Trump on Taxing Tips by Robert Reich

Kamala Harris, Saturday, in Las Vegas: Raise the minimum wage. And eliminate taxes on tips for service and hospitality workers Donald Trump, at Mar-A-Lago: We’re gonna have no tax on tips. Very simple

Ali Velshi from MSNBC: The Trump plan sounds like it's for regular people, but it could easily be a backdoor way to give big tax breaks to rich people who can reclassify their commission income as tips

Robert Reich: You betcha. In fact, we are going to see all kinds of things reclassified as tips. You can bet that private equity managers and hedge fund managers, who are now in the seven or eight digit classification, suddenly a lot of what they earn will become tips. At least under Donald Trump's proposal, because it's not — there are no guardrails. There's no limits to who can declare what as tips Ali Velshi from MSNBC: The key difference in Kamala Harris’ no taxes on tips proposal is that it's only for service and hospitality workers RR: I think it could be helpful if combined, as Kamala Harris wants to do, with a minimum wage hike. And also limit it so that Wall Street commission professionals can't sort of reclassify their income as tips. By the way, let me just say one further thing about this, and that is that the Labor Department under Donald Trump DID change the regulations to allow employers to take the tipped incomes of their employees and use it for their profits.. I mean, it's quite rich that Donald Trump has jumped on this one

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Americans For Tax Fairness (@/4TaxFairness)

"No taxes on tips" isn't the win you think it is. Most tipped workers wouldn't get much of a tax cut at all. But you know who would? Corporations that employ tipped workers and the wealthy who can relabel their income as "tips" at will. Pass.

(Title of the above image is Table 1: The No Tax on Tips Act would provide no or paltry tax cuts to many tipped employees – far less than restoring American Rescue Plan tax credits)

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Robert Reich (@/RBReich) quote-retweeted with:

Trump keeps touting plans to not tax tips. But estimates show that a majority of tipped workers wouldn't benefit.  Who would benefit? Big earners like hedge fund managers who could convert their fees into "tips" and get big tax breaks. It's another Trump tax scam.

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Why Trump's and Harris' proposals to end federal taxes on tips would be difficult to enact

By Dee-Ann Durbin | The Associated Press

Quotes:

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris agree on one thing, at least: Both say they want to eliminate federal taxes on workers’ tips.

But experts say there’s a reason Congress hasn’t made such a change already. It would be complicated, not to mention enormously costly to the federal government, to enact. It would encourage many higher-paid workers to restructure their compensation to classify some of it as “tips” and thereby avoid taxes. And, in the end, it likely wouldn’t help millions of low-income workers.

“There’s no way that it wouldn’t be a mess,” said James Hines Jr., a professor of law and economics and the research director of the Office of Tax Policy Research at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.

Both candidates unveiled their plans in Nevada, a state with one of the highest concentrations of tipped service workers in the country. Trump announced a proposal to exclude tips from federal taxes on June 9. Harris announced a similar proposal on Aug. 10.

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Harris’ campaign has said she would work with Congress to draft a proposal that would include an income limit and other provisions to prevent abuses by wealthy individuals who might seek to structure their compensation to classify certain fees as tips.

Her campaign said these requirements, which it did not specify, would be intended “to prevent hedge fund managers and lawyers from structuring their compensation in ways to try to take advantage of the policy.” Trump's campaign has not said whether its proposal would include any such requirements.

Even so, Hines suggested that millions of workers — not just wealthy ones — would seek to change their compensation to include tips, and could even do so legally. For example, he said, a company might set up a separate entity that would reward its employees with tips instead of year-end bonuses.

“You will have taxpayers pushing their attorneys to try to characterize their wage and salary income as tips,” Hines said. “And some would be successful, inevitably, because it’s impossible to write foolproof rules that will cover every situation."

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Though supporters say the measures are designed to help low-wage workers, many experts say that making tips tax-free would provide only limited help to those workers.

The Budget Lab at Yale, a non-partisan policy research center, estimates that there were 4 million U.S. workers in tipped occupations in 2023. That amounted to about 2.5% of all employees, including restaurant servers and beauticians. Tipped workers tend to be younger, with an average age of 31, and of lower income. The Budget Lab said the median weekly pay for tipped workers in 2023 was $538, compared with roughly $1,000 for non-tipped workers.

As a result, many tipped workers already bear a lower income-tax burden. In 2022, 37% of tipped workers had incomes low enough that they paid no federal income tax at all, The Budget Lab said.

“If the issue is you’re concerned about low-income taxpayers, there are a lot better ways to address that problem, like expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit or changing tax rates or changing deductions,” Hines said.

In her speech in Nevada, Harris also called for raising the federal minimum wage. (The platform on Trump’s campaign site doesn’t mention the minimum wage.)

Changing federal tax policy on tips would also be costly. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a non-partisan group, estimates that exempting all tip income from federal income and payroll taxes would reduce revenue by $150 billion to $250 billion between 2026 and 2035. And it said that amount could rise significantly if the policy changed behavior and more people declared tip income.

Whether Trump or Harris wins the presidential election, tax policy will be high on Congress’ agenda in 2025. That’s because Trump-era tax cuts, passed in 2017, are set to expire. But Hines said he thinks Congress will be in no hurry to add “vast amounts of complexity” to the tax code.

“A presidential candidate can say whatever they want, but it's the House and Senate that have to do it,” he said.

[tngbabe]

Hallmark Honors Data and His Cat with 2023 "Ode to Spot" STAR TREK Ornament • TrekCore.com

Y'ALL, I GOT SO EXCITED. I LITERALLY PUKED...... I mean, it's not our Riker man... but it's Ode to spot DAMN IT! Oh sh...deep breathing....calm....calm... There's badgey TOO! Now, if they made a moopsie & a Riker man this year would be ornament complete for me....well, I need a crusher too.

[cherryblossomshadow]

Apparently, that section of land was just "No Man's Land" for a full forty years, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society, ending with the Oklahoma Organic Act.

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#there is a saying in indian country #It doesn't matter how good you are at the game they'll change the rules. (tags courtesy of @sahonithereadwolf)

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[Image ID 1 and source: Tweet from lil red (@/lilredridingwud) reading:

What goes on here?

Below is a picture of a map of Oklahoma with Texas visible below. Oklahoma's panhandle is circled in red.

/end ID]

[crabussy]

slightly furious reminder that fish do in fact feel pain and do in fact experience fear and distress when in pain since people seem to love spreading the myth that fish don't feel pain. what is it with people assuming a creature is incapable of feeling pain or emotion just because it doesn't have complex facial muscles. come on gang

[chongoblog]

WAIT

I JUST REMEMBERED HEARING AN ELON MUSK QUOTE WHERE HE TALKS ABOUT HOW HE BELIEVES CHESS IS "TOO SIMPLE" OR WHATEVER AND HE SAID HIS FAVORITE GAME WAS A GAME CALLED "POLYTOPIA"

I JUST REMEMBERED THAT IVE PLAYED POLYTOPIA

It being Elon's favorite game (or at least one so important to him that his biographer dedicates a lot of time to it) is.....really really funny.

Basically, imagine Civilization, but as a mobile game. So like if Civilization Revolution was even more dumbed down (that's a Civilization insult. That's devastating. It's devastated right now). For what it's worth, it's not a bad game. On the contrary, from what I could tell in the little bit of time I played it, it's a perfectly competent game with good design. But it's not a deep game by any means. I played through it once, won easily on my first go, then saw that the other playable characters had barely any differences between them.

Like, not to imply you can judge a book by its cover, but here's what it looks like

I came across an article by Dave Karpf discussing this exact thing, and I think it describes it wonderfully

[ed-nygma]

Jury Nullification: Your Power To Choose

[irate-iguana]

For those who don’t know, Elon Musk has recently been directing his assholery towards Wikipedia — calling them ‘Wokepedia’ due to the amount they spend on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and calling for people to stop giving them money “until they restore balance to their editing authority” —, now is a great time to consider donating to Wikipedia!

[anotherpapercut]

I don't really think it's fair to dismiss the idea that that guy might have been framed for killing the CEO as like an unfounded conspiracy theory when NYPD has a proven history of planting/fabricating evidence on people. in 2011 there was a massive investigation of the NYPD and hundreds of cases against people were dismissed after a former police officer testified that they literally have a name for planting evidence on people: flaking. you cannot be out here acting like considering the possibility that cops who do this shit under normal circumstances might possibly also do it when they're under intense global pressure and scrutiny is the same as republicans thinking democrats run a secret pedophile ring in the basement of a pizza restaurant

[cherryblossomshadow]

February 9 2016

Transcript below the cut:

Sean Edwards (South Australian Liberal Senator): How do you get bee semen into the country? Tim Chapman (Dept of Agriculture and Water Resources first asst secretary): So the bee semen gets collected in the exporting country, and it gets sent in in little vials Bill Heffernan (veteran NSW Liberal Senator): Better still, how do you get- do you have to kill the bee to get the semen? How to you get the semen out of the bee? TC: So that's the most common question we get asked, Senator Unknown: Thank you, you asked what I was [unintelligible] how you do that TC: So- so look. It’s part of the vernacular; everyone wants to know how you get semen out of a bee Um, to-to- And I can't claim to be an expert- and you can- [More laughter from the crowd] How come I'm the only one with a straight face here? [More laughter] TC: Basically, basically, you squeeze the bee which everts its endophallus. And then the semen is collected from the end Unknown: And the bee is still alive when you finish? TC: No but- BH: So that was the answer. So to get the semen, you gotta kill the bee TC: Bees also die when they mate naturally BH: Oh right TC: In fact, they explode [more laughter] Unknown: The penis explodes BH: On that cheerful note-

Please enjoy the infectious laughter of the Australian senate struggling to keep its composure while grilling a man about getting semen out of a bee

[cherryblossomshadow]

Capitalism's Washing Machine

Hamilton Nolan

Pete Stavros, the co-head of private equity at the gargantuan firm KKR, which recently bought the publishing house Simon & Schuster. Stavros was bragging about a KKR program that shares a small portion of the eventual profits of a private equity deal with the employees of the company in question. Reporter Megan Greenwell asked him why it wouldn’t be better to just raise the low salaries of Simon & Schuster employees instead.

Stavros replied:

We are managers of other people’s money - [wealthy people's money, yes, but also] teachers’ retirement funds If you’re managing teachers’ pension money and you want to just raise everyone’s salary, that is on the backs of teachers, which is not ethical, and it’s not our money.

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Consider this typical process:

Oppressed by the unchecked power of capital, workers form a union.

Unionized workers use their united power to negotiate a pension plan for themselves.

That pension plan takes money from the workers and gives it to investment firms like KKR, with the mandate to grow it.

Investment firms take the workers’ money and buy other businesses, full of other workers.

The investment firms economically oppress the workers at the companies they own, in order to maximize profits.

The profits reaped by the exploitation of the new workers fund the retirement plans of the old workers.

This is a simple machine that reflects the incentives of capitalism. As soon as you begin to participate in this system (which anyone who wants to not retire in poverty must do) you find that your own incentives have been arranged in the same bloodless direction.

To hear a private equity executive speak of the idea of raising workers’ salaries as “not ethical” because it would hurt investors—who are hardworking teachers, after all!—is so emblematic of the monstrously clever nature of this system that I almost have to respect it.

(Note that this passion for being a good steward of every last precious dollar for the teachers does not prevent private equity executives from taking a huge slice of the profits for themselves.)

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According to the excellent labor researcher Chris Bohner, the total combined financial assets (cash, investments, real estate) of American labor unions are a little more than $30 billion. But the total assets of private collectively bargained pension funds are nearly three fucking trillion dollars. And public pension funds have another four and half trillion on top of that. Lay your head back for a moment, close your eyes, and dream of what could be accomplished if organized labor could invest those trillions of dollars in ways that bolstered the power of the working class, rather than undermined it. Mmm. Yeah. That’s nice.

On the other hand, business interests understand quite well how bad such a thing would be for them, and so America has erected an entire edifice of laws reining in what can be done with pension money, and who can make the decisions. (The current Republican crusade against all forms of ESG investing is motivated by this underlying realization that it would be bad for right wing political goals if the largest pools of capital in the country can be wielded in service of non-right wing political goals.)

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To be clear, this discussion is not about “Let’s take your hard earned pension money and spend it all on COMMUNIST LEAFLETS.” The general idea is that pension funds can create sets of standards that guide what they invest in, to make sure they are not funding the direct oppression of some other union workers (or child labor in their supply chains, or environmental destruction, or whatever), and also that pension funds can create lists of demands that they attach to their money, for any investment firms that want to manage it. To give one obvious example, a union pension fund could say that any private equity firm that wants its money has to agree to neutrality in any union campaign that arises at any of the companies it manages. Stuff like that. If you try to have this discussion in the political arena the other side will go directly to “They want to lose all your retirement money by giving it to freaking Ben and Jerry’s to build union ice cream shops in Palestine!” The quality of the public discussion, I’m afraid, tends to be low.

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The post you are now reading has only scratched the surface of this topic … Mostly, this is a reminder that we can never do an accurate calculus of how far we’ve come on the road to salvation without reckoning with all of the interconnected pieces of where our own capital flows.

It’s easy to think, “Workers unionized. Workers got a contract. Workers got a pension. Workers are winning.”

But if all that pension got funded by, you know, throwing 30,000 Toys R Us employees out of work with no severance, it’s not really a win for the workers of the world.

We gotta think holistically, people.

Our money is part of our power. We have trillions of fucking dollars. Trillions. Wall Street will do the bidding of the working class for that kind of money. We just have to get it together to ask.

[tngbabe]

Jonathan Frakes Added Personal Touches To Riker In Star Trek: Picard Season 3

Great article! Another one about our Riker man!

[cherryblossomshadow]

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