#Ways and means committee

[amprosite]

Lets hope so.

[quillsword]

Seniority in Congress is a Major Problem

Seniority in Congress is a Major Problem

Every time Congress commits some new outrage, I mean bigger than their average weekly outrages, the cry goes out far and wide for term limits. This has been going on unsuccessfully for decades. Such movements come and go and rarely gain any momentum. Why? Well, there are a variety of answers. The most common is the incumbent advantage: people tend to stick with a known quantity and so will vote…

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The amount of income, deductions and taxes paid by or refunded to former President Donald Trump while serving in the White House was detailed in a new report released Tuesday night.

The report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017.

On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million, according to the report by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The report was posted online shortly after the Ways and Means Committee voted to make public redacted versions of Trump’s full income tax returns, and those of eight related business entities for the tax years 2015 through 2020.

Those full returns are expected to be released in the coming days.

A separate report released by the Ways and Means Committee revealed that the IRS had started an audit of just one of Trump’s tax returns while he was serving as President despite an internal policy mandating that sitting presidents have their returns audited annually.

The 39-page report by the Joint Committee on Taxation staff gives a breakdown of the highlights of Trump’s joint tax filings with Melania during his time in office, and the two years he first ran for President.

The report identifies different areas that the staff thought warranted further examination, such as documentation of nearly $506,000 in charitable donations claimed by the Trumps in 2019.

Highlights of the report include:

• On their 2015 federal return, Trump and his wife declared negative income of $31.7 million, with taxable income of $0. The couple paid federal income taxes of $641,931.

• The 2016 return declared negative income of $31.2 million, with zero dollars of taxable income. The Trumps paid $750 in taxes.

• The 2017 return declared negative income $12.8 million, with $0 in taxable income. The couple paid $750 in taxes.

• The 2018 return declared total income of $24.4 million, with taxable income of $22.9 million. The Trumps paid $999,466 in federal income taxes.

• In 2019, the Trumps declared $4.44 million in total income, and $2.97 million in taxable income. They paid $133,445 in taxes.

• The 2020 return shows negative income of $4.69 million, with zero dollars in taxable income. The tax paid by the Trumps was $0 and they claimed a REFUND of $5.47 million.

Read the report on Trump’s annual tax returns here.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jordan Carney at Politico:

House Republican investigators accused President Joe Biden of engaging in “impeachable conduct” as part of a long-awaited report. It’s unlikely to change a reality the party has faced for months: They don’t have the votes to impeach him. The 291-page report released Monday by the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees comes roughly eight months after Republicans formalized their impeachment inquiry against the president. Their sweeping investigations, largely focused on the business deals of Biden’s family members, have gone on even longer, informally starting around the time they first took the House majority in January 2023. Republicans on the committees are accusing Biden of two offenses they argue meet the bar for impeachable conduct: abuse of power and obstruction. They’re the same charges that House Democrats cited in the 2019 impeachment against then-President Donald Trump — an inquiry frequently mentioned in the House GOP report. “The Constitution’s remedy for a President’s flagrant abuse of office is clear: impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal by the Senate,” the committees write in the report, adding they are releasing the report to the House “for its evaluation and consideration of appropriate next steps.”

Even as Republicans noted on Monday that the inquiry remains ongoing, the report marks a soft end for the impeachment effort; two leading investigators told POLITICO last month that their probes had largely wrapped up. Some Judiciary Committee Republicans have pushed to hold public hearings on impeachment articles, but Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) didn’t commit to that step in a recent interview, instead indicating the decision about where to go next is up to the larger conference. Not holding an impeachment vote on the House floor would constitute a historical anomaly: Every formal presidential impeachment inquiry in modern times has led to an impeachment vote — except in the case of Richard Nixon, who resigned from office before a vote could happen. It also risks irritating the party’s base, which has pushed for a quicker impeachment against the president, though that focus has since shifted to Kamala Harris.

[...] Democrats quickly declared a political victory after Republicans released the report, which stops short of directly recommending that the House take up impeachment articles. “After wasting nearly two years and millions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans have finally given up on their wild goose chase. This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories,” said Sharon Yang, a White House spokesperson.

Much of the GOP investigation, and Monday’s report, focused on business deals and money received by Hunter and James Biden, as well as Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents and the years-long federal investigation into his son. Investigators, for example, say they traced $27 million in payments to Biden family members and their associates from foreign entities. They also delved deeply into “loans” received by Hunter and James Biden, the president’s son and brother, respectively. Republicans uncovered examples of Hunter and James Biden leaning on their last name and their connection to Joe Biden to bolster their own influence. For example, some former Hunter Biden associates, in closed-door interviews, told lawmakers that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during meetings with potential business partners, though they said that the conversation was limited to pleasantries. In other instances, witnesses recalled Joe Biden stopping by dinners or lunches — but that business wasn’t discussed at those moments.

Much of Republicans’ abuse of power charge focuses on Hunter and James Biden’s business deals or loans they received, arguing that they likely wouldn’t have happened unless Joe Biden had been in office. The three Bidens, and some of their former business associates, have said repeatedly that Joe Biden was not involved in the business agreements. For their second offense, obstruction, Republicans focused on both their own sprawling investigation and the years-long federal probe into Hunter Biden. IRS whistleblowers have accused Biden administration officials of stymying the latter — allegations repeatedly rebuffed by Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel David Weiss. Republicans also referenced their ongoing court battle to try to force the Justice Department to hand over audio of Joe Biden’s interview with former special counsel Robert Hur, rather than just the transcripts.

House Republicans released their long-awaited report on their partisan impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden by three different House committees: Ways and Means, Oversight, and Judiciary. The GOP, with a narrow House majority, do not have enough votes to impeach Biden.

[fictionadventurer]

Hey, so it turns out that not only did James and Lucretia Garfield finally fall in love with each other after years of marriage, but we have proof of it in one of the sweetest love letters I've ever read.

*

Willard's, Nov 24, 1867

My Precious Darling,

It is nearly ten o'clock Sunday night, and I will not lie down to sleep till I have told you again that I love you. Surely, "love is the fulfilling of the law," and the law of our love is liberty. We no longer love because we ought to, but because we do--the Tyranny of our love is sweet. We waited long for his coming, but he has come to stay. I hope wish, my dear love, that God would let us die together when we die, that neither of us might be left in the empty world for a single hour. It would be unkind of me, to tell you, if I could, how lonely and lost I am without you. Part of the machinery of my life seems to be gone, and I wander around unconsciously as if in search of it, that I may set nature at work again.

Your precious words of the 21st came to me this morning--and fell down into my heart like benedictions. Did you know how unutterably sweet it is to be praised by you? The words you wrote have lifted me and made me proud and happy all day. How sweet the privilege I have had, this summer! The alchemist sought to transmute other substances into gold--I have done far better. I have been able to transmute gold into esthetic joys, intellectual growth, heart life--and better than all--have been permitted to see it transformed into sweet and beautiful decorations of the noblest and truest woman I ever saw--and she as glad to be mine as I to be hers. This surpasses alchemy. It is divine. It is a new proof of the truth that "God is love."

Well Darling, I have done nothing of worth except to hunt houses and read. I am satisfied that the price of the house I wrote you of is too great and we ought not to pay it. I hope I can do better. I am thinking of buying a house on time and hope to sell it again when we are done with it. If we had done so, four years ago, we should have owned it now. I am anxious to receive your answer to my letter of Thursday--It may help me to a decision.

[political paragraph cut for irrelevance]

Dear Love, do write me very often. Kiss the sweet [???] and tell them Papa loves them all.

Ever Your ownest own James

[nerdgirlriot]

so I did a perusal of Echo's wikipedia page and saw that there are Indigenous and also Deaf individuals on the production staff, mostly in the writers' room. Most of the episodes were directed by an Indigenous woman (Sydney Freeland) and the production worked closely with leaders from the Choctaw nation to assure that their culture was represented authentically in the show.

Probably the bits of the show that felt out of place to me were included by the Disney/Marvel overseers/execs but it looks like the production went out of its way to attempt authenticity, which I appreciate.

It does devolve a little in the finale because you have to have the climactic battle where the MC is able to tap into their newly discovered powers to defeat the bad guys but this has become such a superhero trope now. Like, I KNOW that this is where it was always going to end up, doesn't mean that I like it (it's gotten predictable) but I can't sincerely come up with something better and I guess the writers couldn't either?

Also its a little sad that the top GIFset on the echo hashtag right now is the Matt v. Maya fight which...hahaha... I know we all love our broken Catholic son (I mean I DO too) but Maya is a disabled Indigenous young woman who kicks so much ass and she deserves so much more love than she's getting rn

hi it's me the one who complained that The Marvels wasn't getting a lot of love either

[exopelagic]

I need to go to bed I’m just gonna shout a lil

[belladonnafleur]

I hate people with dreams because I wish I could give up mine !!

[rebellum]

Basically whenever you see something that gives evidence which makes you think "yeah, exactly! I always knew it!" you should look more into it.

This is re: the calorie post I just reblogged, but is also about that post from a year or two ago where people were like:

"LOOK THIS STUDY BLATANTLY SAYS NO DIETING EVER WORKS, YOU CANT LOSE WEIGHT FROM CHANGES IN FOOD INTAKE"

and the conclusion of the study was like "after studying these 8 fad diets we concludesd that the rate of weight loss evens out after 18 months"

so people were literally just straight up lying, and everyone reblogging it thought "this person says this study proves what I already think is true (that dieting can't work), so it must be true"

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

The Supreme Court said that the House is allowed to see trump's tax returns, but what does that actually accomplish? Democrats have less than 6 weeks before they're booted from power, they're not gonna pass amy legislation in the lame duck period, and Republicans will bury the returns the second they're sworn in on January 3rd, so what's the point? What can Democrats actually do with them now that they have access? Csn they turn them over to the special counsel? Prosecutors? There's going to be a lot of paperwork to sift through and there's no way Democrats will be able to make heads or tails of anything before the next congress begins; they won't be able to pinpoint all his tax crimes and recommend the DOJ do anything about them, so what good are they now? Democrats don't have the balls to leak the tax returns once they get them, so this feels like a Pyrrhic victory. "We won! Now what?"

[hawnks]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

The House Ways & Means Committee is now in possession of six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns after a three-year battle to obtain them.

The Committee received the documents from the Treasury Department on Wednesday after the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s final appeal on Nov. 22, according to the Treasury Department.

“Treasury has complied with last week’s court decision,” a Treasury official said.

The receipt of Trump’s tax returns brings to a close a three-year legal fight that began when Ways & Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) asked the Treasury Department to hand over the then-president’s tax returns under a law that allows congressional tax-writing committees to obtain tax returns for its investigations.

Trump was the first major party presidential nominee since Richard Nixon to not publicly disclose their tax returns while running for the office or while in office.

“I intend to see this through,” Neal told HuffPost on Wednesday when asked if he’d submit information from the returns to the full House this year.

[jestiamy]

being an editor means every five seconds going oh my god that would work so well with an oc. and then remembering I have three pictures of said oc and almost none of them fit this song

[bighermie]

Fucking unreal............