Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“If wealthy homeowners want to live in places likely to experience severe weather events, they’re free to do so, but it shouldn’t be the federal government’s responsibility to help protect them against the consequences.”
https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19/2023/1/1/23532942/xi-jinping-china-zero-covid-travel
https://www.yahoo.com/news/explainer-why-u-flights-were-142321962.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/21/data-brokers-privacy-federal-government-00072600
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/14/cdc-long-covid-deaths-00073816
“The Biden administration..launched “China House,” the centerpiece of its effort to strengthen its diplomatic heft in its global rivalry with Beijing.
The State Department-based unit is designed to eliminate silos among sometimes redundant government bodies, giving U.S. officials from within State and beyond a central clearinghouse to share information and shape policy on China, State officials told POLITICO”
…
“China House — formally known as the Office of China Coordination — replaces the China Desk in the State Department’s East Asian and Pacific Affairs bureau. The new entity will employ roughly 60 to 70 personnel, including liaisons from other parts of the department such as the Africa and Latin America bureaus, as well as people detailed from other U.S. departments and agencies who may focus on topics such as technology or economic policy.
“The sheer scale, scope, complexity and stakes of the China challenge required us to think, collaborate, organize and act differently,” a senior State Department official said. “It could not be managed alone through the bilateral desk approach.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussion involved sensitive diplomatic matters.”
“The IRS didn’t audit the personal tax returns filed by former President Donald Trump during his first two years in office, despite an agency program that mandates scrutiny of every president’s tax information, a House committee said”
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“the agency did not initiate an audit of any of the returns that Trump filed while in office until April 3, 2019. That was the same day that committee Chair Richard Neal (D-Mass.) first asked IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig to provide Neal six years of Trump’s tax returns and any audits of those returns.
Only one such examination — that of the former president’s 2016 return — was flagged as a mandatory president audit. And three personal tax returns that Trump filed while in office for tax years 2017, 2018 and 2019 weren’t selected for scrutiny until after he left the White House.
The report reveals glaring problems for a program that is supposed to assure Americans that the president is abiding by the law, Joe Thorndike, a longtime tax historian, said.”
“Trump frequently made tens of millions of dollars annually during that period. But he was able to whittle away his tax bill by claiming steep business losses that offset that income.
In 2016, he paid $750. The following year he again paid just $750. In 2020, he paid nothing.”
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“In other years, Trump paid more. In 2018, he had far fewer losses to report and ended up paying $999,466.”
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/12/17/ro-khanna-silicon-valley-00074391