Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Belated Happy Thanksgiving everyone. Glad we do have this site, even if it’s just for a few enthusiasts. New t-day recipe. Roasted turnips and carrots. My 16 year old vegetarian absolutely loved them. We’re in the sticks back East, and a neighbor noted that fresh turnips are in. Never ate one, let alone cooked one in my life. . .. Gotta admit, they were indeed very tasty! Rutabagas next year. . . .
One of the things I’m most thankful for in my life is that I married a gourmet chef, and she’s in a family of great cooks…and they’re competitive.
Our Thanksgiving starts on Wednesday with a regional dinner (Mexican this year), just the adults, at a local club. Thanksgiving day, every one of these great cooks takes two dishes and puts their own spin on it. Friday morning, a brunch, and each cook creates a brunch dish. There are no leftovers…
Doesn’t surprise me, tbh, and not just because Journalism is a dying/nearly dead business. My early connections with journalists weren’t positive, I didn’t have much respect for the profession. My sister, who is one of the most objectionable people I know, worked as a journalist at the local paper, writing a muckraking article. The editor loved it, and essentially wanted her to write all sleaze all the time. Disgusted by the emphasis, she quit in a huff. If my sister thinks you ooze slease, well then…
Seeing Marketing Management/Research on the list surprises me, a little. My undergrad major was Finance. I always knew that I’d end up in Marketing, but as the oldest of six, my father limited my options to Accounting, Finance or Engineering. I had zero affinity for engineering, and I was an Accounting major until Intermediate Accounting (it’s the Great Separator, basically the HumBio of the Accounting world…either you have it or you don’t, and I definitely didn’t have it). Ergo, Finance. My favorite undergrad course was the single Marketing class I took from a mensch of a prof named Moshe Handelsman.
I wish I’d been able to major in MM/R, it would have been very helpful in my career. Oh well. And I really liked the final comment on being a lawyer. My brother was a Poli/Sci major who now practices as a public defender in San Diego. According to the ABA and as of 2020, there are 1.3 million lawyers in the United States. Or as the legal profession likes to comment, just four lawyers for every 1,000 Americans.
I don’t think Trump has a chance to win the primary — unless many Republicans get in and split the primary vote. He has a lot of support, no question. But I have to think that cooler heads will prevail. In a very strange way, he’ll generate a huge turnout among the anti-Trump Republicans — for that reason, I actually support the idea of him running. Republicans will register to vote in record numbers. Based upon how Trump’s candidates got trounced last week, I have to think his support is receding. Not just that, it is likely that Biden and other progressive Democrats will continue to stink up the joint. Incidentally, I don’t dislike Democrats — I’m a registered Independent, and I prefer to think carefully and soberly about any politician for whom I vote. I voted for Obama over McCain and for Romney over Obama.
Once Trump loses the primary, he and the anti-democracy/vote conspiracy people will be finished. I do, however, hope that his common-sense policies remain. Every time I hear a politician support a common sense, middle-of-the-road policy, I want to weep, because it’s so rare. That’s what attracted people to Trump in the first place. And let’s not forget that if there wasn’t a COVID pandemic, Trump would have won the 2020 Presidential election. Or if it had been any other candidate instead of you-can-always-count-on-Joe-Biden-to-f-things-up (my favorite Obama quote), then Trump would have won, because the Dems were only running polemicists like Bernie or Pocahontas.
Ps: I read that Republican house candidates received 6 million more votes nationally than their democrat counterparts. Yet relatively few seats flipped. The power of gerrymandering front and center. Do citizens have a “vote” anymore?
At 10 p.m. Pacific time on November 10, the vote count is:
Republicans, 50,935,540 (52.2%)
Democrats, 45,226,768 (47.8%)
So the Repubs have about 5.7 million votes more than the Dems.
We’re going to be paying for this for decades. We flooded the system with money, didn’t allow many people to work, ruined kids with the sorry-assed approach to “education” (thanks education unions!), and beat the hell out of many of our core industries.
Just makes me sick.
What makes me mad about inflation is that it erodes savings. It takes most people a lot of sacrifice to build up a nest egg. To have it devalued by 13% (being generous here) means a lot more time, sacrifice, and effort just to build it back up again. Not to mention main store of savings (stocks) are down 25% lately. https://nypost.com/2022/10/16/average-american-is-losing-34k-and-everything-else-on-bidens-watch/ Not to mention that real wages have declined every month for 19 straight months. An astonishing “accomplishment.”
I’ve had 2/3rds of my investment in cash for nearly a year now. Just bad feelings about economic mismanagement by the current administration.
Every variable rate loan (mortgages, credit cards, auto financing) just got a lot more expensive. Real estate will likely hit a hard ceiling, and I suspect will drop substantially in certain areas that experienced big runups. Going to be a tough next six months…to a year. Or two…
US Home Prices Now Posting Biggest Monthly Drops Since 2009 (yahoo.com)
San Jose and San Francisco housing markets are leading the decline with 13% and 11% drops in residential real estate values.
Makes one wonder what those 87,000 new IRS employees will focus on?
I don’t wonder. I think we all know what 87,000 IRS agents will be focused. Collectively turning the taxpayers upside down and shaking as much money out of them as they possibly can. The IRS estimates that there is a $600 bils. delta between their collections and what they estimate they should collect.
As to the new budget and new headcount, here’s what it’s really going for:
– $45 billion of the $80 billion appropriated is going to update systems.
– In the next five years, 50,000 IRS employees will retire and will need to be replaced.
– They only answered 11% of their calls in 2021, so that needs to be addressed.
– In fact, they still have 8 million unprocessed 2021 tax returns.
– There’s been an overall 17% reduction in IRS workforce since 2010 That needs to be addressed, and in that time, the percentage of returns that were audited went from 0.9% to 0.25%. That needs to be addressed.
– Yes, the number of audits will go up, but likely only for people making $400k or more annually; basically high net worth individuals, complex partnerships and large corporations.
– Supposedly, only 57.3% of the estimated new 86,852 agents will be assigned to enforcement.
public confessions of doubt by Jay Powell don’t help the nation’s confidence:
Fed unsure of economy’s direction as Wall Street meltdown worsens (msn.com)
So not only did the Fed increase rates 75 basis points, they signalled that there will likely be another 75 basis point increase and a 50 basis point increase in the next two sessions.
Every variable rate loan (mortgages, credit cards, auto financing) just got a lot more expensive. Real estate will likely hit a hard ceiling, and I suspect will drop substantially in certain areas that experienced big runups.
Going to be a tough next six months…to a year. Or two…
California is down 11% in personal income tax revenue versus expectations and 8% below forecast.
California Sees Warning Sign From Weak Tax Revenue Collections (msn.com)
Not surprising as California depends on revenue from the rich, and a tanking market hammers technology. Apple, Alphaet, Netflix, Lyft, Nvidia, all hurting.
The not-so-secret secret is that California has salted away surplus funds for just such an emergency.
200 homeless were moved from the 40 acre Guadalupe Gardens homeless encampment. I’d seen Guadalupe Gardens before the homeless had moved it, it was quite attractive and meshed well with the surrounding topography. Humans there, as everywhere else, are hard on the environment. The residents had been warned for months that this would happen. Since March, San Jose has moved 1.3 million pounds of debris and 84 cars and trucks that don’t run. San Jose Resumes Homeless Encampment Cleanup Near Airport – NBC Bay Area
Denver is spending $2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act.
Others that I didn’t mention, such as when Trump redirected funds that had been appropriated to other U.S. government operations to cover the cost of building his wall. As I said, I don’t like how this was done. And I suspect it will be challenged as unconstitutional.
Apparently, Biden is restarting the construction of the wall…
Joe Biden Resumes Construction of Trump’s Border Wall (theintercept.com)
