Parents send their children into danger because home is more dangerous

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reports on a COVID milestone. One of the ways to measure the deadly effects of the virus is to estimate the number of deaths if the virus hadn’t been around and compare that to the actual number of deaths. This difference is the excess deaths attributed to the virus. That can also be shown as a percent. And in the US for the first half of this year that has been 0%. In terms of deaths, the pandemic is over. Yes, that means people are getting sick, sometimes quite sick, from COVID, but they’re doing a lot less dying. There are a couple factors at work. One is that the circulating variants are quite similar to Omicron. So between people having caught it already, having been vaccinated, or having already died about 96% of Americans are protected. The other is medical workers know a lot more about how to treat the virus, reducing the rate of death. Variants of the virus are out there. It can still mutate. The next big wave may never come or may come next week. For now, let’s celebrate the milestone. Sumner had been convince living with the virus would be impossible. He thought we had to eradicate it and were doing a terrible job of it. This news is much better than expected. Kos of Kos asks an important question: Would you prefer to live next to the person complaining about what immigrants are doing to the country, or would you rather live next to the immigrant? At the top of this post is a photo of the words:

No one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land.

Those against immigration dehumanize them as criminals or opportunists, those hoping to take advantage of hospitality. Yet, data are clear that immigration supports our economy. Florida is now struggling to get enough farm workers. There seems to be a big disconnect in those who can’t get enough farm workers yet still think the nasty guy is the best president ever.

People don’t leave their homes on a lark. They don’t say goodbye to everything they know, the people they love, and the communities they belong to for funsies. They don’t get on rickety boats to cross the Mediterranean, like the one that recently sank and killed over 600 Pakistani, Egyptian, Palestinian, and Syrian migrants, simply because they want a higher-paying gig. It is always an act of desperation. ... The people making these trips are just as desperate as the Latin American immigrants who brave the gauntlet of thieves and rapists, a dangerous river, and a blistering hot desert on the American side full of even more bandits, plus right-wing militia nutbags. Parents will send their children into danger because gang and drug violence at home is even more dangerous. So let’s ask that question again: Who would you rather live next to? The people who risk everything to come work, to find a better life and send money to their families back home, or those who would steal water left for migrants in the desert, point guns at them, and vilify them for their desperation?

A ProPublica article written by Paul Kiel and posted on Kos discussed some of the tax avoidance tricks used by billionaires. The example in this case is Harlan Crow, revealed a few months ago as the sugar daddy for Justice Clarence Thomas. The article focuses on the way Crow uses his yacht, which frequently hosted Thomas, to reduce taxes. The big way to do this is have a wholly owned corporation own the yacht, then write off its cost through depreciation and business expenses. To actually claim the yacht as part of a business it must be chartered. No problem – the company charters it to Crow. He pays for its use, though well under what the company shells out. The company loses money. And Crow gets a tax writeoff. As a billionaire he paid a 15% rate, lower than many middle-income workers. ProPublica got a trove of IRS data with tax info on thousands of wealthy people. I read parts of the original ProPublica article. It’s a long one. They say the data was provided to them after they published a series of articles scrutinizing the IRS. Beyond that they are not disclosing how they got the data. The stash includes returns from Crow. What Crow did is likely illegal. There is no evidence the yacht was chartered to anyone else, which means the charter service isn’t a real business. The article discusses a second way of getting around the law. Above a certain threshold gifts are subject to a gift tax. What Crow gave Thomas is likely way above that. But Crow claims he doesn’t need to report or pay it because his company still owns the yacht – which ignores the value of such things as the services of the yacht’s staff. Since the rich rarely report these sorts of gifts the only way the IRS learns about them is through an audit. That’s a big reason why Republicans were so intent on keeping the IRS budget so low that it didn’t have the manpower to audit the rich.

“A lot of these tax rules were developed in an era where there were a few millionaires and the tiniest number of billionaires,” [Pace Law School professor Bridget] Crawford said, “and now there are many. This is becoming a more visible problem.”

Charles Jay of the Kos community discussed the current situation of Yevgeny Progozhin, the head of the Wagner group that staged a mini coup in Russia. A photo of him has surfaced, the first since the coup, perhaps taken at a camp in Belarus. Of more importance is that for now Russian authorities have dropped insurgency charges. He has already been described as a traitor, so maybe Putin will threaten him with investigating his finances. But there’s still an arrest warrant for Prigozhin in the US. He was indicted for his role in running a troll farm that interfered in the 2016 election. He was placed on the FBI’s most wanted list and there is a reward for information on Russian interference in US elections. Progozhin has both denied he interfered in our elections and boasted that his interference was successful and that he founded and was financier of the Internet Research Agency, the troll farm. Hunter of Kos discussed the Turning Point Action conference that was held last weekend. One of the things that happened was a straw poll showing 95.8% of them voted against supporting, “U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine.” The conference leadership is known to be brazen liars, so it is hard to tell if the they made up that poll result or if the attendees actually voted that way. Hunter says either is possible – the nasty guy was the keynote speaker. Support for Ukraine among voters is about two-thirds. Among Republicans it’s a bit over half. And here’s a bunch that’s 95% against Ukraine. So don’t say that candidates and politicians are supporting Russia because their voters tell them to. The only ones demanding the US leave Ukraine are the activists. But it means candidates have to placate this anti-Ukraine crowd or try to evade the questions. Since those activists were aggressively interventionist towards war in Afghanistan, a second war in Iraq, and wanting one in Iran, why do they now say Ukraine is none of our business? The best answer that Hunter has come up with seems to be the obvious one: Money. It seems to have started with Paul Manafort making serious cash boosting Russian interests in Europe. Then there was Rudy Giuliani, the nasty guy (who was impeached for his efforts), Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, and many more activists trumpeting Russian disinformation. Sumner posted a Ukraine update yesterday about noon that has two important topics in it. The first is the Kerch Bridge, the one between Crimea and the Russian mainland, has been hit again. The first time was last October. This time a section of the vehicle bridge has dropped several feet. Perhaps a pillar underneath has been damaged. It is closed. There may be no damage to the adjacent rail bridge, but that is also closed while it is checked for damage. The strike was reportedly done by the Ukrainian navy using sea drones. Russia says it will be repaired in a month, though if that support pillar was damaged, repairs will take longer. The closed bridge will affect Russia’s ability to supply its forces on the southern front of the war. All travelers to Crimea will now have to take a ferry or add to the heavy traffic along the coastal highway in occupied Ukraine, a war zone. The other big topic is that Russia has ended the deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to be shipped to the rest of the world. While the deal was in place 33 million metric tons of grain was shipped. That reduced world grain prices by 20%. Some reports say Putin ended the deal not because of Ukraine, but because Turkish president Erdogan had annoyed him with a couple other actions. The question is what happens now? Will Russia attack the grain ships, causing a halt to getting grain to the rest of the world? Will Turkey escort the ships so that if Russia fires on them it brings all of NATO into the war? Will alternate methods of shipment be found? No clear answers yet.