Desertortoise 🌴 🥥

And things are getting worse: The effective tax rate of billionaires has fallen sharply after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018. In a context where billionaire wealth is booming, this deprives governments of very significant amounts of revenues.

More broadly, if one looks at the 400 wealthiest Americans, our research shows the billionaires tend to have low individual income tax rates. Why? Simply put, the ultra-wealthy can easily structure their wealth so that this wealth generates little – sometimes even no – taxable income. Hence little or no income tax owed. gabriel-zucman.eu/files/BSYZ2025…

Your personal case is a good illustration of the problem with the US tax system. Based on public data it is possible to estimate your total effective tax rate: the total amount of tax you pay personally plus indirectly through Amazon, relative to your income. Your total effective tax rate was just 15% in 2018. Meanwhile, the average person in the US pays around 30% of their income in taxes. gabriel-zucman.eu/files/SaezZucm…

Hello @JeffBezos, since you question the results of our studies on the unfairness of the US tax system, please allow me to remind you of the main conclusions of our work, the most comprehensive research to date on this issue.

Keep posting this so people don’t forget how truly bad this event was. Don’t let people gaslight you into thinking it was peaceful and worthy of 1500+ pardons and slush fund payoffs.

Andreessen Horowitz has already donated 115.5 million to republicans this election cycle.

I can't believe we are still doing this. Underage voters: This is flatly false. Georgia's Secretary of State investigated this claim by comparing the full list of people who voted against their birthdays. The audit revealed there were zero underage voters in the 2020 election. Raffensperger stated directly: "They said there were 66,000 underage voters. There were zero." Dead voters: Vastly overstated. State officials investigated this and found a total of two instances of a deceased person's name being used to cast a ballot. "Usually, that's somebody who died recently, and a family member votes with [the name]," a state official noted, adding that such a handful of cases is consistent with every election. Felons illegally voting: Significantly exaggerated. The Trump campaign alleged 2,056 felons voted illegally. Georgia officials said they were investigating a total of 74 potential felons who may have cast ballots. When Georgia's State Election Board referred cases for prosecution, among them were just four incidents of felons voting or registering to vote in the 2020 general election. 2,423 not registered to vote: Also false. Raffensperger specifically addressed this: "They said that there were 2,423 non-registered voters. There were zero." 1,043 voted via PO box: This claim conflates voter registration addresses with actual fraud. Having a P.O. box associated with a registration record is not itself illegal, and investigators found no evidence of fraudulent voting tied to P.O. boxes. A state audit examining this issue found no proof of fraudulent ballots. 4,926 voted after registration: This claim has also been investigated and found to be based on data mismatches — primarily clerical errors in dates, data entry issues, or voters who were already on the rolls and whose records were updated after the election. No credible evidence of people actually voting before being registered was found. 395 voted multiple states: This claim was based on matching names and partial data across state lines — a notoriously unreliable method that generates false positives. Investigators found no substantiated cases of double-voting that would have affected the outcome. 40,279 voted after moving counties: This one has the most merit and actually is the hardest to part, but it's largely a misunderstanding of the law. Georgia election officials have repeatedly said they found no credible examples of election fraud related to address changes. Critically, federal law is directly relevant here: the National Voter Registration Act explicitly states that a state cannot remove a voter from the rolls on the ground that they changed residence unless the registrant confirms in writing that they moved outside the jurisdiction. In other words, voters who have moved but haven't updated their registration are often still legally entitled to cast a ballot in their former jurisdiction under federal law. Sworn affidavits: Yes, they exist. Affidavits allege but do not prove. The point of an affidavit is for a court to review it. Courts reviewed these extensively. Trump's legal team's challenges were repeatedly rejected in court, with one judge writing that plaintiffs presented "strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations... unsupported by evidence." So, yes, cool list. All B.S. Also, btw, all super old (we knew most of this 4-6 years ago).

Kto chce poznać ciekawy szczegół z konferencji prasowej JD Vance’a? Otóż wiceprezydent USA przyszedł z listą dziennikarzy, których miał po kolei wywołać do odpowiedzi. Miał też mapkę sali, na której było zaznaczone, kto gdzie siedzi. W połowie briefingu wypaliłem więc: „Może wywołasz kogoś spoza listy?”. Zadziałało. Vance popatrzył na mnie i powiedział:„To było interesujące więc tobie dam zadać pytanie”. W ten sposób udało się uzyskać pierwszy komentarz Białego Domu w sprawie wycofania z rotacji w Polsce 4000 amerykańskich żołnierzy.

1/ I wrote about Trump's slush fund: "The optics of this are so bad that it’s hard to believe Trump would expose himself to their consequences unless he really needed this deal. The protection it offers must be essential in some way we are as yet unaware of." Now, we're learning about the reasons. joycevance.substack.com/p/almost-as-go…

@NatureUnedited 😆

These two giant tortoises have been fighting each other for over 120 years. According to the zoo, one tortoise stole the other’s food 120 years ago, and from that day on they became enemies. There hasn’t been a single day where they haven’t fought for a while

Meta will layoff 8000 of its workforce starting TODAY. Their net income over the last 12 months was $70,587,000,000. They could give every single one of their 79,000 workers a $440,000 bonus and still sock away over $35,827,000,000 in pure profit.

Activists from the Global Sumud Flotilla who’ve been deported to Italy have described their detention by Israeli forces as ‘terror’. They say they were punched and kicked while being told, ‘Welcome to Israel’.

A nearly $1.8 billion DOJ-controlled fund cannot be created, defined, and distributed in the shadows. Today, I called on Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to provide immediate transparency on the Department’s newly announced “Anti-Weaponization Fund.” By June 1, DOJ must answer three basic questions: Where is the money coming from? Who is eligible to receive it? And under what legal authority is DOJ creating a discretionary compensation fund of this scale without explicit congressional authorization, court approval, or judicial oversight? Taxpayer dollars will not be turned into a discretionary payout fund. Transparency is not optional. Accountability is not negotiable. @kaitlancollins and I discussed this tonight @TheSourceCNN ⬇️

Netanyahu ordered drone strikes on a Gaza-bound flotilla last year. Its pretty clear that the official policy is to brutalize these activists.

Ben Gvir is not an outlier he is a key member of Netanyahu's coalition who both shapes and carries out Israeli government policy.

MacFarlane: I'm filling a notebook with misinformation spreading about January 6th today. The idea that these cases were wrongful, no case was overturned, not a one on appeal. And lots of people appealed. They had a 100% success rate for juries at trial.

Here's how the corruption works: Thursday: RJ Reynolds donates $5M to Trump Saturday: Trump invites RJR execs to Mar a Lago; execs ask to loosen regs on flavored vapes; Trump calls up RFK Jr. and tells him to change it Friday: FDA changes the policy #donation-big-tobacco-vaping" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">nytimes.com/live/2026/05/2…

McGovern: It took us forever to compensate the victims of 9/11, and here you have this $1.8 billion slush fund that doesn’t go through any committees or hearings. All of a sudden, they have the money to compensate convicted felons—people who attacked our democracy and tried to overthrow a free and fair election. This is the most corrupt administration in our history.

$30 million. That's what one Jan 6er hopes to get from the US government. I spoke to two people who spent time behind bars for Jan 6 -- they welcome Trump's "anti-weaponization" fund and they hope to cash in.

Rep. Mary Miller promotes the Great Replacement conspiracy theory, telling people to stop voting Democrat because "they opened the southern border, they facilitated the invasion of our country to replace you."