That might be difficult to do because then you would have to say that Mexico is run by terrorists, which it is, officially. The cartels are running every inch of that country everyone knows that. If the USA speaks this out you have problem. Maybe a war. Which won't happen. Too many people are fed by this system.

This belongs in the 'Trump incites Terrorists to attack the Capital' thread, but my view is that the DOJ needs to re-evaluate the deal they gave Flynn that was the basis of his guilty plea an that which Trump Pardoned him for.

As i recall a big part of it was a promise to not go after his family members who might have been complicit in certain areas and if so, if he or his family could be found to be guilty of anything, in a way that gets around the pardon, the DOJ should definitely go after him and them.

That this guy does not have the humility and feeling he should lie low and keep quiet due to dodging a very serious bullet means he will continue to be very dangerous. Almost suicidally dangerous.

Dunno if you saw this:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-57317220

A literal 'deal with the devil'.

I will leave it to philosophers to debate the utilitarian value versus the ethical compromise of such deals where a monster is granted some mercy in return for help in putting away other monsters.

Canada had its own version of this type of deal with the devil, when the Prosecutors cut a deal with Karla Homolka, who was active co-conspirator to one of Canada's most notorious serial rapists and murders, Paul Bernardo.

Karla would gain the trust of the female victims in a way Paul could not and then basically feed the young women to him (and also for her as she would participate in much of the torture).

The reason the Karla plea deal was so egregious was not necessarily that it was so lenient on her, treating her as a victim of male abuse and pressure instead of a willing corrupt participant but rather because she broke the terms of her plea agreement by blatantly lying about many of the crimes to make herself look better which was shown in video tapes of the incidents found by police much later. A requirement of the plea (as with many) was full honest disclosure otherwise all the info given could be used against you.

As demands from the public grew for her Prosecutors due to the failure to comply with the plea agreement conditions, the Prosecutor instead took the position that they would not try to invalidate the deal as it would might deter future participation by needed co-defendants if they knew Prosecutors would seek to undue their deals later.

The exact opposite of what the rationale should have been which is 'if you participate and get a plea deal then we demand honesty and full disclosure, and if not we will come after you'.

Because as it sits now every cooperating co-defendant witness has been sent the message they do not have to be fully truthful and only need disclose what they want and if found out later they will still be protected, ...so why not lie

Parking space sells for $1.3 million in hong kong

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57353627

Fox news is blaming China for corona virus:
https://www.foxnews.com/media/hannit...ovid-china.amp

Thanks for the link I wasn't aware that pos was released. When asked how many people he'd murdered, Brusca replied "more than 100 but less than 200".
He's a serial killer and should have died in prison like Riina and Provenzano.

She's remarried with kids of her own now if you can believe that. She participated in the rape and murder of her own sister. Unbelievable people like this are free among us

There's a Covid thread in this forum. And that take is not new nor limited to Fox...it's actually becoming more mainstream all the time.

Similar to Sammy the bull confessed to 19 murders but let off for helping put Gotti away in nyc

Ya, the media outs here every few years showing where she lives and her life.

Some people cry about them disrupting her life and that of her family, but f*ck her. She killed so many young girls.


True story,
I rented an office in Arizona for a business i was involved with and Sammy the Bull had an office on the ground floor in a real out of the way spot in the same building that he had just moved out of before we moved in.

The entire building knew despite it supposedly being a secret. I can't imagine bumping into him in the communal areas and maybe spilling your coffee on him or the landlord having to go collect when he was late on rent.

I know Sammy left witness protection voluntarily so maybe it was at that point when he had the office. You’d think he would stay out of trouble but I think he got 20 years for crimes committed after making his deal.

He did, old dog getting back into the crime game. But he was let out of prison again in 2017/8 and that is when apparently he became a Youtuber and had that office I referred to.

Alrighty then ...

Bride dies of heart attack at her wedding in India, so groom reportedly marries sister
Bride collapsed while exchanging traditional garlands with husband-to-be


A bride collapsed and died at the beginning of her wedding in India — so the groom married her younger sister instead after the body was moved to another room, according to reports.

...

She was pronounced dead by a doctor who raced to the festivities in Samspura village in Uttar Pradesh, the report said.

"We did not know what to do in the situation. Both the families sat together and someone suggested that my younger sister Nisha should be married to the groom," the women’s brother, Saurabh, told IANS.

"The families discussed the matter and both agreed," he said.

"It was a bizarre situation as the wedding of my younger sister took place while the dead body of my other sister was lying in another room,..

After the joy of the wedding, the family immediately held last rites for the dead bride-to-be, the report said.

"It was a tough decision for our family," one of the women’s uncles, Ajab Singh, told IANS.

"One daughter was lying dead in one room and the wedding of another was going on in another room. We have never experienced such mixed emotions," he said.

"The grief over her death and the happiness of the wedding has yet to sink in."

Sammy has his own youtube channel now, which is kinda surreal to me. He regularly reminisces about various "Stand up guys" etc.

I might be wrong on this but afaik she married her lawyer's brother which is pretty weird. I saw video footage of her where she's bemoaning her property, she comes across as a psychopath, even if not quite as depraved as Bernardo.

I think he started an ecstasy trafficking ring, and got his wife and son involved and was associated with an Israeli crime gang who may have supplied him.

I used to argue with one of his ecstasy competitors on twitter,Shaun Atwood,regarding the Teresa Halbach murder. I gotta say he's as thick as two planks nailed together when it comes to defending his position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_Attwood

I guess anyone can be a stock market millionaire and ecstasy kingpin. (Until Sammy comes along that is, then it's brown trousers time for Shaun)

Well who would have thought a serial murderer has his own YouTube channel. Strange times.

Imagine still being a conservative in 2021 lol

Indeed.

Has the US found a way to seize a 'safe' or did they try to monetize the crypto and move it?

Excerpts from article above for those who don't like to click thru.

---------------

The Secret IRS Files: Trove of Never-Before-Seen Records Reveal How the Wealthiest Avoid Income Tax


ProPublica has obtained a vast cache of IRS information showing how billionaires like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Warren Buffett pay little in income tax compared to their massive wealth — sometimes, even nothing.

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

Michael Bloomberg managed to do the same in recent years. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn did it twice. George Soros paid no federal income tax three years in a row.

ProPublica has obtained a vast trove of Internal Revenue Service data on the tax returns of thousands of the nation’s wealthiest people, covering more than 15 years. The data provides an unprecedented look inside the financial lives of America’s titans, including Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. It shows not just their income and taxes, but also their investments, stock trades, gambling winnings and even the results of audits.

Taken together, it demolishes the cornerstone myth of the American tax system: that everyone pays their fair share and the richest Americans pay the most. The IRS records show that the wealthiest can — perfectly legally — pay income taxes that are only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions, if not billions, their fortunes grow each year.

Many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, amassing little wealth and paying the federal government a percentage of their income that rises if they earn more. In recent years, the median American household earned about $70,000 annually and paid 14% in federal taxes. The highest income tax rate, 37%, kicked in this year, for couples, on earnings above $628,300.

The confidential tax records obtained by ProPublica show that the ultrarich effectively sidestep this system.

America’s billionaires avail themselves of tax-avoidance strategies beyond the reach of ordinary people. Their wealth derives from the skyrocketing value of their assets, like stock and property. Those gains are not defined by U.S. laws as taxable income unless and until the billionaires sell.

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

No one among the 25 wealthiest avoided as much tax as Buffett, the grandfatherly centibillionaire. That’s perhaps surprising, given his public stance as an advocate of higher taxes for the rich. According to Forbes, his riches rose $24.3 billion between 2014 and 2018. Over those years, the data shows, Buffett reported paying $23.7 million in taxes.

That works out to a true tax rate of 0.1%, or less than 10 cents for every $100 he added to his wealth...

...Consider Bezos’ 2007, one of the years he paid zero in federal income taxes. Amazon’s stock more than doubled. Bezos’ fortune leapt $3.8 billion, according to Forbes, whose wealth estimates are widely cited. How did a person enjoying that sort of wealth explosion end up paying no income tax?

In that year, Bezos, who filed his taxes jointly with his then-wife, MacKenzie Scott, reported a paltry (for him) $46 million in income, largely from interest and dividend payments on outside investments. He was able to offset every penny he earned with losses from side investments and various deductions, like interest expenses on debts and the vague catchall category of “other expenses.”

In 2011, a year in which his wealth held roughly steady at $18 billion, Bezos filed a tax return reporting he lost money — his income that year was more than offset by investment losses. What’s more, because, according to the tax law, he made so little, he even claimed and received a $4,000 tax credit for his children.

His tax avoidance is even more striking if you examine 2006 to 2018, a period for which ProPublica has complete data. Bezos’ wealth increased by $127 billion, according to Forbes, but he reported a total of $6.5 billion in income. The $1.4 billion he paid in personal federal taxes is a massive number — yet it amounts to a 1.1% true tax rate on the rise in his fortune....

...ProPublica’s data shows that while some wealthy Americans, such as hedge fund managers, would pay more taxes under the current Biden administration proposals, the vast majority of the top 25 would see little change...

...In the here and now, the ultrawealthy use an array of techniques that aren’t available to those of lesser means to get around the tax system.

Certainly, there are illegal tax evaders among them, but it turns out billionaires don’t have to evade taxes exotically and illicitly — they can avoid them routinely and legally.

Most Americans have to work to live. When they do, they get paid — and they get taxed. The federal government considers almost every dollar workers earn to be “income,” and employers take taxes directly out of their paychecks.

The Bezoses of the world have no need to be paid a salary. Bezos’ Amazon wages have long been set at the middle-class level of around $80,000 a year.

For years, there’s been something of a competition among elite founder-CEOs to go even lower. Steve Jobs took $1 in salary when he returned to Apple in the 1990s. Facebook’s Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Google’s Larry Page have all done the same.

Yet this is not the self-effacing gesture it appears to be: Wages are taxed at a high rate. The top 25 wealthiest Americans reported $158 million in wages in 2018, according to the IRS data. That’s a mere 1.1% of what they listed on their tax forms as their total reported income. The rest mostly came from dividends and the sale of stock, bonds or other investments, which are taxed at lower rates than wages...

...Asked whether it was appropriate that he had paid no income tax in certain years, Icahn said he was perplexed by the question. “There’s a reason it’s called income tax,” he said. “The reason is if, if you’re a poor person, a rich person, if you are Apple — if you have no income, you don’t pay taxes.” He added: “Do you think a rich person should pay taxes no matter what? I don’t think it’s germane. How can you ask me that question?”...

...What it would take for a fundamental overhaul of the U.S. tax system is not clear. But the IRS data obtained by ProPublica illuminates that all of these conversations have been taking place in a vacuum. Neither political leaders nor the public have ever had an accurate picture of how comprehensively the wealthiest Americans avoid paying taxes.

Buffett and his fellow billionaires have known this secret for a long time. As Buffett put it in 2011: “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years, and my class has won.”...

And while there are and should be a ton of tightening up around all the purposely designed legal tax loopholes ...the biggest contributor here to that wealth, which is the unrealized Capital Gains of stock, is not an easy one to solve. Any attempt to do 'Market Based Adjustments' to unsold stock and to make them pay on the 'paper gains' could and likely would be disastrous to the middle class, while forcing 'paper adjustments' on the ultra wealth dictating 'when' they pay more so then 'how much' they would pay.

That said the 'inherited stock' loophole is an abomination that needs to be gone and taxes on dividends and the other ways companies provide income to shareholders should be taxed higher than basic income.

Can we just admit she is not going to be the next President of the USA

Yes. I would bet all my money on that and give odd's.

Nothing to do with race or gender (although both are very difficult to over come in US politics) and almost everything to do with her, like Hillary, not being very likeable and seen very much as a prototype 'establishment' politician.