Tag Archives: Tax Laws

The meme of nothing

Something made me pause this morning. The actor Tim Russ (Tuvok, Star Trek Voyager) had sent a meme over Twitter. Now in itself this is nothing new, actors and actresses do this to entertain the fans and for the most show their commitment to issues. The meme below was send.

I have seen similar memes for some time and the setting is fine, it is just a useless meme. Like all those people shouting tax the rich. You see America is a nation of laws and there are all kinds of laws. This impacts tax laws and an overhaul has been overdue for over a quarter of a century. I made mention of this as early as June 8th 2014 (over aI made several more mentions, even earlier at that. In this case I wrote “The US gets through taxation a mere 14% of where the debt is at. How is any of that realistic? So, the total collected taxation, before any other cost is taken into account (like paying government staff and utilities), it only amounts to 14%, after all that is done 0.1% is left if the US government gets a fitting budget (something that has not been achieved since president Clinton was in office).”, the debt now is close to 50% larger. So wonder if you will, what is the use of taxing the rich if the law prevents discrimination? Moreover we might want to blame Billy bad boy Gates (Microsoft), Sergei sneaky Brin (Google), Larry Scoundrel Ellison (Oracle), Jeff paperback Bezos (Amazon), Tim the shifter Cook (Apple) or even Andy off-the-books Jessy (Also Amazon). We can call them names, we can blame them. The truth is that they did nothing wrong. They adhered to tax laws, a black letter interpretation if you want, but the problem is not them, it is the people who wrote the laws, the stakeholders that influenced the lawmakers and the politicians who weaselled out for all kinds of selfish reasons. There is no Democratic or Republican blame, they are all to blame from Bill Clinton onwards. The last president in the existence of America who had a surplus in the treasury. It has been that long and and I wrote about it over a decade before, I am pretty sure I raised it a few times before that, but the story should be clear. A setting that has been known for over a decade and the media loves the tax the rich flames. They love cashing in on flames per digital dollar. The rest not so much. So wonder something simple. Am I more intelligent than 334,925,763 Americans? I don’t think so. I am definitely not more intelligent than the five mentioned above and a few dozen more. They knew what was going to happen and as such they aren’t innocent, but they were not guilty either. Guilt should be sought in Washington DC, amongst the lawmakers. They catered to the mess America is in now and these meme’s are entertaining but incorrect. One might surmise that some of the wealth of Jeff Bezos comes from the fact that he can safe on shampoo. A bottle of that stuff costs  £390 in Harrods, so that is money saved in the bank. The rest has hair (as far as I know). 

You think I am making a joke, but there is a hidden flaw in that. You see, shampoo is something we all get to buy, I have no doubt that they have all kinds of expenses that a doctor misses out on. Tax deductions are the game for some and that is pretty much all they can be gotten on. The rest is corporate and that impacts Amazon, Apple, Google, and all other corporations and that is set in law and the lawmakers gave these corporations a huge discount all over the place. So when you go in ‘tax the rich’ mode, consider how useless that mode is. 

As someone told me, when you get access to web camera on Tiananmen Square,

tilt the camera from centre 24.5 degrees to the left and 15 degrees up, you might (might is the operative word) see President Xi stating ‘對富人徵稅’ howling with laughter (I have no idea what he says, I do not know Chinese. But I reckon they are grateful for the easy victory handed to them by American lawmakers no less.

The simplicity is that America gave the world away by giving tax breaks to corporations. And there isn’t much time left, there might not be any time left. As I personally see it, in the age of President Trump the corporations will clean house, give the bonuses to the board of directors and they will all split to a zero tax place with no extradition. You might call me out on that, but that is how I see the world change and they will leave whatever is left behind to clean up the mess. It will go gradually, but I reckon that these five people will have at least one apartment in Monte Carlo, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Nassau or Lichtenstein and they will get some diplomatic status so that they cannot be extradited to America. 

You want to doubt this, fine. But the reality for over a decade will have been clear. The taxation does not show or warrant the amount of debt America has and Economists all over the world either never said anything or the media kept it quiet. Your choice in what happened. I actually cannot tell. I can only see the numbers, not the reality behind that. I am not an economist, but I reported this for over a decade, so I feel fine. I leave it up to you to dig into the matter how others (with economic degrees) didn’t see this. And when the next bubble comes (the thing they refer to AI) and the so called trillions of revenue, that bubble is as I see it an excuse for some on whatever mattering reason to remain in denial that it was a simple error (in stead of that it never was possible) and they will walk away with whatever they can afford. 

Bubbles are only useful as long they are still presented when that falls down (I reckon within 1-2 years) the setting changes from what they think is bad to actually severely disastrous. And it was never going to be solved via memes.

As I see it the meme doesn’t lie, but the impact goes in the wrong direction and has been going in the wrong direction for over a decade. There was an urgency for my selling my IP and I would rather be in a pace with some actual money then be thrown in the midst of desperate people seeking someone to blame, but that’s just me. 

Have a great day.

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It’s that time again

Yes, America has Thanksgiving, they have Christmas and now they have stopgap (4 times a year). You see, yesterday the news was given (at https://arab.news/vysbu) with ‘US Senate passes stopgap funding bill to avert government shutdown’ I made mention of this on October 2nd with ‘An altering stage’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/10/02/an-altering-stage/)where I gave the readers “I expected it would, but I also expect that this might go wrong in the future and the next shutdown is a mere 45 days away and US businesses are setting this new marker as the disaster moment” and I actually got it exactly right. Yes,. There was a stopgap now, but that is not a budget, as such Americans face the same dance around December 29th, just as the year ends. So when the stopgap isn’t coming through things will turn bad really really fast. Consider the thought that the bulk of approximately 2.79 million civil servants will be set out in the cold just after Christmas. As such how deeply disturbing will this become? All this because for 25 years America decided not to overhaul the tax laws. Lets be clear, this was ALWAYS going to happen, but with overhauled tax laws they would have had an additional year to get their act together, now their end of game moment comes in stages of stopgaps. All to stop the government from falling over. We might see the populist setting from others with their ‘tax the rich’ but it is a farce, a joke that has no way to go. A complete overhaul was the only option and now with BRICS and China pushing in on the little revenue they had left, they have no options now and their competitors are moving in on whatever revenue they had left. Is it doomsday speech? To some degree, but it is laced with reality. The debt of $31,000,000,000,000 is real and that interest will exceed $310,000,000,000 annual, all whilst we see articles that America is a mere 18th on the list. Yes, it is flimflam presentations. We get that Japan is in deeper waters, but not by much. We see the flimflam approach towards % or GDP, but when you look at the outstanding interest and the simple setting that 100% annual taxation in America doesn’t even cover the interest bill, the larger stage is seen that this is a decliner with no escape. And all that is before we see the impact of infrastructure bills (like paying civil servants). The stage is not a nice one, but America did this to themselves and as the rich and the large corporations become ‘transient’ out of America could be the killing nail that shows the stupidity of several administrations that refused to overhaul tax laws. And when this goes south fast, debts will implode and those owning US treasury bonds will lose whatever they thought they had. That is the nightmare scenario that is showing to become an optional reality ever 45 days from now. Until when? Until it goes wrong. 

Enjoy the day, it is Friday here now. The weekend is starting for the Pacific, the west needs to wait the better part of a day.

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Discrimination Legislation of America

This is not new and I have talked about it before (some time ago). This all started with a Tweet, not the most academic source, but it gave me somewhere to start.

Then I went out and looked for something more reliable and Forbes handed me (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) a story from April. 

The setting given is ‘Biden’s War On Billionaires’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) it is there we see “All American earners are subject to federal income taxes, but not everyone is subject to the same tax rate. While middle-class Americans pay, on average, roughly 14% in federal taxes annually, the wealthiest American families frequently use loopholes to avoid paying these tax rates.” This is one point of you and it is not an invalid one. Yet, in black letter law the US has tax laws. The law is what nations rely on and I agree it is not a fair one, but guess what. This is the fault of the US Congress and the US Senate. I have been talking about fair taxation for over 10 years. But the law is the law and there is an additional setting, the reason why people focus on Jeff Bezos, this is merely a first step. You see, that 20% will do nothing, America is in too deep, it is a sinking ship and the only thing these political people want to do is step out, so they can say not was not on their watch. It is too late for that. You see when that first law is passed, they might get a chunk of Bezos, but they will also get a chunk of Marc Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison and that list goes on. My issue is that this is discrimination, Ageism (age discrimination), economic discrimination is also discrimination. So they are going after the real innovators, real inventors and what America wants is not their money, it is their IP, or at least part of it and co-controlling it. You really want all these systems to be co-owned by the USA? Whatever freedom you thought you had would be gone. The US has been playing stupid since the Clinton Administration, it was the last time that the US had green numbers, since then the allotted a debt surpassing $31,000,000,000,000 dollars. The US is broke and they are now in it to delay for whatever time they can. The USA has become a sinking ship, they are patching holes by cutting pieces out of the same leaking hull, it never ends well. I have pleaded for tax law overhauls for well over a decade. I noticed the slippery slope close to 25 years ago and it impacts the EU and Japan as well. China is growing, China is becoming the next power player in its lonesome position. BRICS is becoming an inner circle with China in the lead position, the moment it sheds Russia, their geese will be count as well. BRICS went from the elite of 5, to a group with 40 nations interested, the lead of the US is gone. No one follows the broke person who can no longer feed itself and with the the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates added to the BRICS group the US has very little left, so now they are setting the stage to go after the billionaires and whatever more they can get. Yet in all this the numbers of what Apple (Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft too) paid in taxation. That would have ben the fair setting, but no one is really digging into this, are they? Fair taxation starts with the corporations that was the first step and that has been overdue for decades, the loopholes had to be dealt with and that never was, that is the real story. Jeff Bezos et al used the legal options like tax lawyers to avoid paying more taxation than was required. Tax avoidance means “the use of legal methods to minimise the amount of income tax owed by an individual or a business”, which is perfectly legal, tax evasion is not legally stated and a crime. This is the stage that brings in the players like PwC, they are one of the leading experts in tax avoidance, this is why a tax overhaul had been essential for about 25 years and now it is too late. The us has its opponents knocking on their gates (BRICS and their members). So we get another populist call for taxing the rich, but it is the tax system and IRS who needed to clean their houses, they never did. I am no friend of Jeff Bezos, I do not think I ever was but that man took an online bookshop and turned it into something huge, then he went against the biggest tech company of all and created an equal if not a better version with his Amazon Luna (against the Google Stadia) which made Google leave the field (leaving billions on the floor), it almost destroyed Microsoft with its Azure through Amazon AWS. Two clear wins by (an online) bookshop. That is what Jeff Bezos did. You have to respect that and the others made their own innovative futures. Now the US wants to go after these innovator? So what happens to the US when these places resettle in BRICS territory? Good luck with that idea. So consider the Discrimination Legislation of America, the DLA, which by pure coincidence (LOL) also means Disability Living Allowance. The pay setting that most Americans are about to get towards to. Consider that the DLA ranges from around $1,000 – $5,000 depending on the member’s pay grade and dependency status. You can normally only receive DLA once each fiscal year. So a maximum of $5000 a year to make ends meet. Where in America can you live of that? I am not certain there is any place that will make America liveable and when the larger corporations leave that will be close to all that is left, until the money is gone. That is the future and I tried to warn you all, not to bite the hand that was feeding the US (Saudi Arabia) and when the tech players leave billions on the floor, why is that? I will let you decide.

Weekend is entering the last hours of the day, it is at the end of Sunday in the East (New Zealand) and at its start in Western Canada, enjoy.

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Welcome to the OC bitch!

Yes, this sounds strong and it was part of a script. The series threw that phrase out for weeks as the OC was gaining traction. It drove Misha Barton to success and that is pretty much all I know about the series. We take some facts to the bank, we count on it, we depend on it. But then I got to thinking. OC also stands for Organised Crime and at present can you tell the difference whether  it is Organised Crime or a bank? That is not a joke, it is a serious question. Al Jazeera gives us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/3/29/french-prosecutors-raid-five-banks-in-massive-tax-fraud-case) ‘French prosecutors raid five banks in massive tax fraud case’. There we are given “banks, including Societe Generale, BNP Paribas and HSBC, faced a compensation request of more than $1bn” we also get “an earlier report in Le Monde newspaper, said Tuesday’s searches had also targeted Exane, which is part of BNP Paribas, and Natixis, the investment bank arm of French banking group BPCE” in the late 80’s someone told me “To be a thief, you need to be good and agile, if you lack these skills you could always become a banker” well we have been seeing that a lot since 2008 onwards. And now we see “it was impossible to put an exact figure on the scale of the fraud but said the banks together faced an overall compensation request of more than $1bn, including fines and late interest payments” this had been going on (as far as they could tell) since 2014. So what is the difference between Organised Crime and bankers? Is it a mere case of legislation? So after we are given the sleep creating news (by the media) regarding United States of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and Credit Suisse. We see more cases regarding Fraud? So when will someone wake up and realise that banks are either properly regulated or they are allowed to collapse and the shareholders lose their funds. So when we see advertisement from HSBC how climate change ignores borders, can the next advertisement please state “Climate change, not unlike our alleged involvement in fraud is happily ignoring all border issues” 

Perhaps it is more on point than the so called ‘awareness’ vibes they are spreading now. And when I look at half a dozen advertisements from HSBC I can apply the same strokes to the text and the advertisement becomes a lot different, it becomes a clear path of opportunity seeking. Now, I cannot tell how involved HSBC is, but the raids seem to imply issues. You see the banking system has been skating on the edge of legality for so long (for the need of profit) and when we think back to the billboard days when we got all the anti-Brexit announcements, I saw that there was no mention of Bank fraud, as such, is this hypocrisy or is it like adultery. Everyone expects you to lie about that? Think about that for a second. It is the ‘expects you to lie’ part. In 2018 UNSW gave us ‘Heavy penalties are on the table for banks caught lying and taking fees for no service’, I would add to that that anyone lying is barred from banking services forever. There needs to come a time when these issues need to be dealt with. And the fact that a raid on five banks was done, implies (not proven) that there is a massively large problem out there. So why do we allow these bankers to continue? 

It is a serious question. Uber is short on people, there is seemingly a shortage in supermarkets, let the disgraced bankers fill those holes. Just a thought.

Meanwhile German Deutsche Welle gave us (at https://www.dw.com/en/paris-banks-raided-in-100-billion-tax-fraud-probe/a-65151312) ‘Paris banks raided in €100 billion tax fraud probe’. This seems to be the larger stage (and several media had nothing on this). So when we consider “the investigations are linked to legally dubious “cum cum” practices in which banks create overly complex legal structures as a way to allow wealthy clients to skip out on tax liabilities for dividends. Authorities say Societe Generale, BNP Paribas, BNP Paribas subsidiary Exane, Natixis and the British banking behemoth HSBC are suspected of aggravated tax fraud laundering. Moreover, BNP and Exane are suspected of aggravated tax fraud” can you honestly answer whether there is a difference between Organised Crime and Bankers. We could argue that most bankers have some form of Filofax and are therefor Very Organised Crime. Yet that is seemingly the largest difference at present. Yet this text also gives us another side and that is important. It is seen with “complex legal structures as a way to allow wealthy clients to skip out on tax liabilities for dividends”. That raises the question whether the law was ACTUALLY broken. The Al Jazeera article and two others did not clearly give me this, so there are issues which reflect back on the old premise I made 25 years ago “The tax systems are in dire need of a complete overhaul” This view was mainly on the US and EU, but the setting still applies. And when we see terms like tax fraud and tax fraud laundering and the stage is ‘suspected’ the question becomes “Were laws broken?” You see if that is not the case, these bankers were merely clever sneaky bastards (aka: administrators) and there is no law stopping them (just like there is no laws on Karen’s and idiots). They are all allowed to stay, visit our surroundings and do their business and they are allowed to be as creative they can be within the law and the law is the issue. We might think they are hiding behind the setting of ‘overly complex legal structures’, but that isn’t illegal and we need to recognise that. We need to recognise that the laws and specifically tax laws have been blatantly ignored by all who should have ben overhauling them. That is the heart of the matter and that is under debate as I personally see it. Yet for over 3 decades politicians avoided that subject and now that governments are all running out of funds they are desperate to keep the nose away from their necks and that time is runing out faster and faster. That is merely how I see it.

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800,000,000 failures and a home-run

This is what I faced today, but the two are not connected, well not directly, optionally even indirectly. They are connected by the smallest sliver of thought. To start, the first part comes from the BBC. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61080536) gives us ‘Sanctioned Russian oligarchs linked to £800m worth of UK property’, which sounds nice, but lets take a deeper look. We get “Some of the individuals deny ownership of the mansions, which may mean they are beyond the reach of the sanctions. To get to the bottom of who owns what, we carried out a detailed trawl of leaked offshore documents, the Land Registry and court papers – as well as previous reporting.” It comes down to the first part. There we see “Because of the system of secrecy here in the UK and in relation to the Overseas Dependencies it’s really easy for people to hide their assets and their funds in the UK and not even the police necessarily have sight of where those assets are,” these people are skating around the central issue ‘What they did was perfectly legal’ a setting of creating actual tax laws is at the heart of this and this is decades overdue. It should have started in the age of Gordon Brown (2007), there is a stage where we could agree that Tony Blair (1997-2007) should have started it, but the pressure was not on for the UK at that point, the meltdown in the US should have been a clear signal, but from 1997 onwards NOTHING was done to rewrite tax laws into the laws the UK needed to have in 2010, and now a decade later we see “To get to the bottom of who owns what” and there hiding behind the Panama Papers is jut a farce. This should have been adjusted in the EU, UK and US by 2010 but none of them did ANYTHING to clear the waters. They merely pretended to do so to appease political friends, they all did. And now when we see the laughingly weak “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains” this implies that laws were broken, so is he just incompetent, stupid or both? And this matters, because it is all linked. 

Roman Abramovich, has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. On Roman Abramovich we see “He has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. His most expensive London property is a 15-bedroom house on a street that is nicknamed Billionaires Row. With its vast stucco-faced Italianate mansions, it is home to royalty and ambassadors – as well as oligarchs.” The one element missing (two actually) were any laws broken? More important we see sanctioned by UK and EU, not the US. Then we get to the main event. It is Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by all three and the desert of all this is more than a Medovik. We are given “a spokesman for Mr Usmanov said most of the billionaire’s UK property, plus a $600m (£456m) yacht, had already been “transferred into irrevocable trusts”, potentially putting them beyond the reach of sanctions.” A stage that is perfectly legal and the laws were never rewritten making this a sliding scale of discrimination, a scale of injustice and no laws were broken. The law makers were too stupid, too lazy to do anything about it. In the UK, the US and the EU. The lawmakers appeased THEIR friends as I personally see it and the oligarchs merely used the laws available to THEM TOO. A stage we need to accept and respect if we are a nation of laws. More important, which of these oligarchs ACTIVELY supported the war by Putin? I am asking, I actually do not know and the media merely surrounds itself with emotional BS, not a fact in sight and it is time to call these media players out on that too. The BBC article is actually quite good, but where do we see ‘Laws were broken’? We see “Ravenmorrow Limited was set up in December last year and no individual is identified on UK company records as the beneficial owner.” A clear failure of UK Laws, a setting where it was allowed to do this and no one is to blame but British Parliament and the House of Lords. The BBC does not really state that do they? As. I see it I see not the acts of Oligarchs, I see the failures of governments not overhauling tax laws when they could and as I see it all parties are guilty (except the greens), unlike the others the green parties all over the world seem to be oblivious on what a rudder is or does, so they are going Hades knows where at a speed no one can predict to arrive at some location no one knows.

Home-run
Yes, like the side we saw before there is another side and it makes more of a case towards the end of Microsoft, all whilst Adobe is getting more and more in place of taking over 25% of their office business. It is depending on two elements, and when these elements are out I will happily hand them over what I have if Google or Amazon buy the other IP and give me permission to hand that over to Adobe, I will gladly do that, just to see Microsoft squirm a little more. 5 markets lost to stupidity, 5 markets lost to shortsightedness and Adobe will be one of the winners. The setting that comes has been out for a while and the lost sides (four at present) are things that Microsoft should have seen years ago, their inaction is now more than enough. If you are asleep at the wheel you lose the ship, it is that simple and unlike the Ever Given, others are not in the Suez Canal, we can go around this Microsoft vessel and let it sink. A home-run out in the open and Microsoft just will not wake up, well let them sleep, I reckon that Adobe is more than ready to take over a chunk of the Office users. Consider that after all this time and all these follies, people do not merely gain a program, they gain a suite of options to tantalise their creativity. 

There is no telling where the creative people are going to end, but it will be ahead of where Microsoft hoped they would be, a lag that only intensifies the losses they will face. The setting reminded me of an article I saw in LinkedIn. 

There we see a person objecting to the discrimination of scouting. There we see “The announcer labelled the boy scouts as ‘Future leaders of America’ and the girls scouts as a group that were ‘just having fun’” This is what we see as a setting for Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe instills and propagates creativity, whilst Microsoft merely sets a mediocre foundation of presenting. Yet if there is one thing I have seen from Adobe, it is a clear stage where presenters can create works of art, whilst Microsoft sets a stage of mediocre joyous presentations, but in this day and age presentations are serious business, it sets the tone for corporate stories, sales events, propagating new projects and products. Joy gets us nowhere and Microsoft joy is close to a decade old. Adobe is on the verge of setting the next generation of presenting tools. So where do YOU wanna be when your idea is ready to be shown to the world? At the edge of what is possible, or in a joyous looking meadow, one that we have seen a million times over? I will let you decide on where you want to be and be honest, do you really think that Microsoft has any serious relevance left?

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A dangerous ploy

Today, we see President Biden play a dangerous card. It is his version of ‘tax the rich’. Now lets be clear, I have nothing against it, I find it unfair, in stead of ‘properly tax everyone’ he goes after one group, a populist approach to this issue. A setting we see but do we see it correctly. Presidents going back decades have been unwilling to overhaul tax laws in the US. The difference here is that it comes with an added bonus. The article (at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/bidens-budget-boost-military-raise-taxes-billionaires-2022-03-28/) gives us ‘Biden’s budget boosts military, raises taxes on billionaires, companies’ it comes with the added text “U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday submitted a $5.79 trillion budget plan to Congress that calls for record peacetime military spending while raising taxes for billionaires and companies and lowering government deficits.” In 2021 the US estimates that they expect to collect $3.86 trillion. Expected does not mean achieved, it is an educated guess. In 2019 they collected $3.46 trillion. The 2020 numbers are also expected. So in this, how does the US give us a $5.79 trillion budget, $1,930 billion more than they will collect. Money the US does not have and the billionaire fix get them nothing more than about $360 billion in the next decade, according to the document. So $360,000,000,000 in a decade does not tell us how the US will survive $1,930 billion more than they expect to collect. An additional of $1.9 trillion more and there is no space to wiggle, the chance is that those with more than $100,000,000 will more completely to the zero tax havens like Dubai, Bermuda, Bahamas, Monaco and a few other places. It will start an economic brain drain and a wallet drain to boot. It is a dangerous play, especially as (again) no proper tax overhaul follows. 

As I see it, this dangerous play will make the rich avoid the US like the plague, for a lot of them it no longer pays them to stay there and the moment this administration figures that out, the danger will overwhelm them. 

What I do not get is why the overhaul of tax laws are avoided to this degree. You see, it has always been about proper taxing people. A setting that might not make people like Elon Musk, George Soros, Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos happy, but it is an essential one. As such the overall quality of life in the US will slip and slide to lower levels still. And when it does the average person will see no real reason to stay there, the exodus will start and it will stops the US industrial machine to a near standstill position.

So when we see “Called the “Billionaire Minimum Income Tax,” it would assess a 20% minimum tax rate on U.S. households worth more than $100 million. Over half the revenue could come from those worth more than $1 billion.” We need to realise that ‘Tax the rich’ is dangerous. I have nothing against taxing billionaires (I am not one, and the next 3-4 years I do not expect to become on and I am not American), but when it is unfair taxation, it merely means that the courts will overflow with cases and if the next republican president stops that setting the US will be nearly $2 trillion out of pocket yet again and no achievements were made.

That is the danger of the play and that is the case that will stop the US. Yes, the Americans are so much better off than the previous fellow, are they not?

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A disregarded shelter setting

The Guardian was at it again and they are not doing anything wrong (at least I think they aren’t) but the stage created is calling for a nice stage and it is getting close to immediate that we take a hard look at the meaning of hypocrisy. 

The article ‘Pandora papers: biggest ever leak of offshore data exposes financial secrets of rich and powerful’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/pandora-papers-biggest-ever-leak-of-offshore-data-exposes-financial-secrets-of-rich-and-powerful) gives us a few items and before you think we are digging into the air, lets take a look at a few essential parts. It starts with “companies hired by wealthy clients to create offshore structures and trusts in tax havens such as Panama, Dubai, Monaco, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands” first, this is not an illegal act, then we need to look at Monaco and Dubai. Monaco gives us over two sources “You can apply for a Carte de Residence once you have an address in Monaco (either bought or rented a property for a minimum of a year). You must also agree to live there for more than three months of the year. Resident individuals are not subject to personal income tax in the Principality of Monaco”, now this is not the easiest setting as decent apartments tend to start at €3,000,000 going up to €387,000,000. As such I wish you good luck finding something you like. In Dubai we see “There is currently no personal income tax in the United Arab Emirates. As such, there are no individual tax registration or reporting obligations.” These are called tax havens and they are perfectly legal. It is the way THAT nation operates and it works for them, so when we see the Guardian give us “But the secrecy offered by tax havens has at times proven attractive to tax evaders, fraudsters and money launderers, some of whom are exposed in the files”, which is a debatable setting. You see someone who takes effort in buying an apartment in Monaco or Dubai, or most of these places is not a tax evader, that person is involved with tax avoidance and it is not the same. Black letter lawyers found a setting where the rules work FOR their clients and they are allowed to do this. Yet the Guardian inserts ‘tax evader’ whilst knowingly adding “some of whom are exposed in the files”, some implying not all and some is seemingly inserted hoping that the people are flamed to the list of “more than 100 billionaires, 30 world leaders and 300 public officials” hoping that they are all painted by the flamed audience. And in light of this, did anyone take a long hard look at “the cache includes 11.9m files from companies hired by” what is not looked at is the source of that information and how that source got the information. A setting not dissimilar from my article ‘The same gramophone’ on September 16th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/16/the-same-gramophone/) regarding Pegasus and in light of evidence given (lack thereof) to the people by the Washington Post an interesting repetition of flames lacking evidence. The article on tax issues does not once, NOT ONCE mention tax avoidance, or give the setting of tax evasion versus tax avoidance. One is illegal the other is not. In this the text “They also shine a light on the secret finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries” could be seen as “They also shine a light on the private finances of more than 300 other public officials such as government ministers, judges, mayors and military generals in more than 90 countries”, yet they chose to not use the word Private did they? Private and non evidence could be seen as intrusive and harassing, the media really does not like it when their actions are seen in that way. 

My view?
You see if there was clear ‘tax evasion’ we would be getting this, instead of “leaked data with select media partners including the Guardian, BBC Panorama, Le Monde and the Washington Post. More than 600 journalists have sifted through the files as part of a massive global investigation”, so are they incompetent or is there too little remaining? The price of 600 journalists cannot be cheap so the more they flame, the more they ‘earn’ back, but that part is not really given is it? There is no top-line, a flaw we have seen more than once before. If it was clear 300 people can be shown in a top-line like Nation, government, non government easily enough. That would take an hour, perhaps two, but we do not get to see that, do we? We also get all kinds of embossed examples, with the added text “This is the Panama papers on steroids, it’s broader, richer and has more detail”, my view would be, then give it Ryle you dumb fuck! Do not posture, present facts! The top-line, the setting of tax evasion versus tax avoidance and a few other facts, including the source of the data, but we do not get any of that, do we?

I see it as a mere approach to the upcoming US debt ceiling and someone flaming that if ‘they’ had paid their taxes, there would not be an issue. Well, my view “Well, you stupid fucks, if you had clearly focussed on the tax laws that needed an overhaul for THREE DECADES we might not be in this mess either!” So whilst we are given “The files include disclosures about major donors to the Conservative party, raising difficult questions for Boris Johnson as his party meets for its annual conference”, an anti-tory smear setting. No matter who donates and to what party, if these people are not proven criminals, there would be no issue and I wonder how far these 600 journalists got. So when we consider “Many use shell companies to hold luxury items such as property and yachts, as well as incognito bank accounts” we need to see whether laws were broken and let’s be clear, they stated that these are people in over 90 countries. So which have laws against these acts and if they have an address in Monaco or Dubai, are any laws broken? This took me 5 minutes and we see a lack of a lot in one article seemingly the source of 600 journalists. 

I personally see only one option for a person like Gerard Ryle. Either give us that top-line clearly or become an Uber driver. As I personally see it, someone posturing absent of evidence should be somewhere else, not be some director of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, but that is merely my call on the matter we see here now.

Oh, and before I forget the meaning of Hypocrisy is “the practice of claiming to have higher standards or more noble beliefs than is the case”, a setting too many journalists fall into lately.

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Stupid is, as stupid does

Yup, we all have these moments, any person (including me), a setting where we think (or delusionally hope) that effects will turn to our favour. We go through this a few times in our lifetimes, or if you are a civil servant, or elected official 3-4 times a week. So when I saw something that had hit the ‘news’, we see something which was announced previously, as such I am not surprised, and as we are given ‘The Australian government has urged Google to focus on paying for Australian content instead of blocking it’ I merely wonder how stupid the Australian government (my government) needs to get. It is a business principle, one that THEY embraced for a lifetime. ‘Why pay, when you can get it for free?’ A setting that is globally accepted, and as such, why are we surprised? The governments lost credibility and confidence on not overhauling tax laws for decades, now they want to sulk and cry over media not getting paid? Media that does not have the most reliable track record in the last 10 years, so do you think that the people care? Media and taxes have been pussyfooted around on a global scale, as such the people do not really care what happens there, they do not care because the media made it easy not to be cared about.

And the stupidity does not stop there. As we see “After media reports said Australian news websites were not showing up in searches, Google confirmed it was blocking the sites for a small number of users”, we might overlook ““The digital giants should focus on paying for original content, not blocking it. That’s my message to those digital giants,” said Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg”, now we accept that Josh Frydenberg is not the most useful person, yet the setting is different. 
Consider the news below (one of hundreds)

We click on it because we are curious, yet we do not get the news. We get

In this the station is that the news USES digital media for free advertisement, and why exactly should Google, Facebook et al cater to that? Yes Josh, do you have a list of ALL the media outlets doing that? 

As such we are not going to lose any sleep when these ‘news providers’ are no longer in the mix, so perhaps we should change ““The digital giants should focus on paying for original content, not blocking it. That’s my message to those digital giants,” said Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg” into “Digital giants should leave uninvoiced advertising attempt by so called news groups alone said Australian tool Jay Eff”, am I right, am I wring, you decide.

And the same news outlet sent three articles (in that same approach) in the last hour alone, so the fact that we see “Google said the tests affect about 1% of Australian users, and will be finished by February” and we get “After media reports said Australian news websites were not showing up in searches” implies that someone at the news outlets is keeping track on what w see and what we look for, so how Orwellian is that side of the news?

A stage they set, a stage they tried to bake and now that they are getting bitten, they cry like snivelly little bitches, oh whoop ti do. And this is the stage we walk on, the media is getting less and less reliable and we need to wake up, especially when the treasurer is crying too instead of overhauling tax laws for corporations. Is anyone paying attention?

Enjoy the weekend, Monday morning is 58 hours away.

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Kill the law

Yes, that moment has finally arrived, I for the most was against the need to do that, if only the politicians and lawmakers would not have been such a collection of pussies, it might not have been an essential act, but the stage we are on now is one is one that Shakespeare gave us in Henry VI, “The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”, yet at moments away we have arrived at this moment. A few things happened, first there is the stage of the British wankers on ski’s, then there is ‘UK judge blocks extradition of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange to US’, in this the BBC reports that “because of concerns over Mr Assange’s mental health and risk of suicide in the US. Mr Assange, who is wanted over the publication of thousands of classified documents in 2010 and 2011, says the case is politically motivated”, he was such an outspoken great man when he released the documents, we can’t have him being a pussy now, can we? Even as I am still in the mindset that he is not a traitor as some call him, he is in a stage where he broke the law and so far half a dozen nations went out of their way to cater to him. A stage of law breaking without accountability, as some would say. And in all this, the one winner is Stella Moris, in all this she gets the limelight she needs to cater to her career. 

Then there is ‘Covid-19 in Switzerland: Mutated UK virus strain found in several cantons’ (at https://www.thelocal.ch/20210104/mutated-coronavirus-strain-found-in-several-regions-of-switzerland), the British pussies (or cunts) that slipped into the night afraid of being in lockdown travelled all over Switzerland too get to France, to get to Freedom, and as I personally see it infecting the Swiss along the way. Now this speculation should be matched by investigation, I understand that, yet if any are found and the British tourists find themselves out of prison instead of in prison for a decade, the basic line is set that the law has become useless and serves the mere large corporations in legally avoiding taxation, to smite the common man in a ruleset that they break again and again. So when we see “Several other cases of the UK variant were also found at the end of December in Zurich, Graubünden, Valais, and Bern, and one case of the South African strain was detected in Ticino, according to the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH)”, we need to wonder what is next. So when we see all kinds of versions of “British tourists have fled the Swiss ski resort of Verbier “clandestinely” under cover of darkness rather than submit to a new quarantine imposed on UK visitors, a local official says”, all whilst the British governments are solent on the matter (as far as I know), we see a stage where we cannot accept the irresponsible acts of others. I wonder if the UK has considered what the larger contemplations are when Switzerland calls for the UK citizens to be pronounced ‘Persona Non Grata’, not one, not 200, but all. I wonder if the law suddenly sees a setting where they either pucker up or they will find themselves left no longer being considered valid by the largest group of people. 

Lacking a proportional response?
Yes, one might say that and it would not be entirely wrong, yet when we are told “More than 2,500 break virus restrictions at illegal rave” (France), even as some sources state that the group had reached 10,000. As well as ‘Demonstration party in Duindorp’ (Netherlands), there are a few more, but they are instances not the common field and we acknowledge that, yet the law cannot sit by, it has to be strict and it has to be firm this time around, if only to get to some specific tourists, they have no valid defence, no matter how they slice it.  This is seen in the larger stage, COVID-19 was a reality for the longest part of the year, they could have let go of this one holiday, until it was safe, they decided that ego was more important, as such they should pay. Yes, we know that the lockdown was not initially in play, but we have had two already and other nations have other stages and settings, they also have the new viral strain and no action was promptly taken until it had spread to 40 nations. In one stage I can say, the more that die, the more valuable my services will be, some will say that is inhuman e, but they decided not to act when it mattered, now it does not. And with 86 million people diseased, we will see the death rate go up beyond 2,000,000 and those are jobs that can go somewhere else, optionally solving unemployment to a much larger degree. In the US there are 12 states where masks are not required, which implies (an unproven imply) that the disease will have a lot more fun in those 11 states (Yes I mentioned 12), Alaska is perhaps the only one that is a bit out of shot, they got a partial save by weather and environment. I reckon that the initial clouds will rise after march, if there is any healthcare or NHS left, we will need to massively address tax law issues on an international scale, if we falter again there is every chance that the uprising against the law will turn massively violent, I myself am totally against the Nanny state (my Republican blood), yet there needs to be a level of accountability and so far the law has merely served those wanting to evade accountability, and the people are stating to notice this and they are putting two and two together, I speculatively reckon that being by tech senator will prove to be a lot less healthy in 2021 than ever thought possible, but I could be wrong.

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