Comments by "Tim Trewyn" (@timtrewyn453) on "ABC News" channel.

  1. We pay people to make it their life's work to study military and political history, military operations, and the psychology of opponents and with that knowledge advise the Commander-in-Chief as to the pacing and composition of military assistance. I have no confidence in Senator McConnell's opinion on the matter unless he says he is taking his position based on input from those same advisors to him. He did not qualify his position in such a manner, therefore, have no confidence in him. The probability of nuclear war is not zero in this case.
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  2.  @alphaclam  One of many was doubling the estate tax deduction. See the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of signed by Trump on December 22, 2017. It included permanent cuts to corporate taxes. If you file a 1040, you might have noticed the standard deduction was much larger. So unless you have high deductions, filing became simpler, but your taxes did not necessarily go down.
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  3. Yeah, about those gold bars we traded you for 152mm shells? Need to revisit that.
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  4. And now Ukrainian soldiers in those two districts need to find a way out to the new line. Better to go there than fight right now. It would be a very brave act to attrit the Russian Army a bit as they come in, but it is probably better to make a stand where the Russian army can be stopped, and Russian loyalists within are fewer. Get those Russian boys a bit further away from home. The customary web of Russian police and their methods of control are about to drop on those two districts. Everybody just gets to be quiet and afraid and doing what they are told. Welcome to life under the Russian mafia. Ukrainian loyalists need to migrate out and Russian loyalists need to move in from other parts of Ukraine. Somewhere a balance gets struck, and Western Ukraine will be in NATO, or it will never exist. I can only hope that Putin can transfer his nostalgia for East Germany to East Ukraine, or whatever he ends up calling his new acquisitions.
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  5.  @thomasheer825  The Russians might have the original plans.
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  6. I greatly respect this Chairman of the JCS. May he fully enjoy his retirement. I remember the oath. I remember brief statements about the US Constitution in various US military training sessions or assigned reading for NCO school, but I don't remember a set of discussion scenarios where we as members of the military needed to listen to as well as state our own views of the US Constitution. Maybe it happened, but I don't remember it, which says something about me and any impact such instruction had. Since then I have more frequently read and contemplated the Constitution. The big deal is we can be called upon to kill other people to defend it. I encourage everyone who has taken the oath, and every citizen, to study that document. It's what makes us different from those who follow, or are forced to submit to, a personality.
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  7.  @alphaclam  I was hoping for facts in the form of numbers.
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  8.  @alphaclam  I was thinking numbers that support the claim that tax cuts by themselves create a net increase in government revenue. I don't expect you to do the study. I was thinking you could cite one. Maybe the Heritage Foundation or the American Enterprise Institute have something.
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  9.  @alphaclam  Not at all. But what is being held out here is that tax cuts CAUSE increases in tax revenue. I think there is more to it, and that tax cuts' effects are indirect and can be negative. Increased revenue is likely when the government increases borrowing. Government borrowing, as Donald Trump understood very well and Biden has copied, stimulates the economy. A great deal of this borrowed money is distributed through payrolls which deduct FICA and Medicare taxes and federal withholding for taxes. How do I know this? I am an employer and I pay these taxes. So a portion of the money the government borrows comes back to the government through payroll taxes. State revenues go up because some of this borrowed money pays state sales taxes on purchases. It follows that tax revenues and economic activity might very well go down if the federal budget went from running deficits to being balanced. Republicans would prefer that happens when Democrats are in the Oval Office. The Trump administration was not shy about borrowing money. They knew it would give them economic bragging rights. The federal budget does not need to be balanced. It does need to preserve the value of US credit. That is the issue. The lending market is less confident in US credit because it has seen, under Biden and Trump, that the national debt has gone up too fast. The challenge is to bridle that debt growth and improve US credit without a recession. That's difficult. This is why I do not agree that there is direct causation between tax cuts and increases in tax revenues.
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  10. As long as the Russian army is responsive to Putin's direction, there is no end to the war until the Russian army or the Ukrainian resistance collapses.
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  11. This is the one part of Putin's plan that is actually on schedule.
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  12.  @hardinFrisco  How about you work with your local government to maintain integrity and I'll work with mine?
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  13. It means if an American investor still wants to put any money into those districts, then they can forget about any help from the American government if things go badly. It also means they can be financially punished in their other locales for having made such an investment. So now Putin has to spend Russian money in the districts to create any sense of progress, if he cares about that at all. His priority right now is stamping out any opposition, whatever that takes. He also needs to keep his enforcers happy because they are going to be very busy consolidating control of the population. Sad, and getting sadder.
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  14. Too much money behind him. Certain States may hire these agents to improve their own law enforcement. Choosing a State that better shares your values and migrating there may be more achievable than getting Trump out of office early.
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  15. Humanity is as good as its best and as bad as its worst. The full range of that seems to fit inside a nuclear missile submarine.
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  16. The States are the backup plan in the Constitution. These agents should be hired by States and corporations. Federal competence may decline, but State competence can be raised by hiring these agents. I know what you mean though, this is the one part of Putin's plan for America that is actually on schedule.
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  17. The States would do well to reach out to these agents with a new position to increase their own law enforcement capabilities and thus their public safety and economies. It's sad to see the competence of federal law enforcement intentionally reduced. The Constitution set up States as the backup plan when Congress and SCOTUS become derelict in duty. If Trump is going to ignore the Constitution, then States can start to act in more "federal" ways and thus create spaces where the Constitution remains in effect. This makes me wonder if the US is headed toward an India-Pakistan type division. That idea should prompt any Secretary of the Treasury to have a quiet chat with the President on the subject of the full faith and credit of the United States not being questioned. These Trump actions might be the one thing in Putin's plan that is actually on schedule.
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  18. Cargo drones!
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  19. "Empire of lies". His type just can't keep themselves from projecting themselves on others.
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  20. This is the one part of Putin's plan that is actually on schedule. As for the agents, any smart State Governor is going to his legislature right now to get funds to hire as many as possible. Corporations needing agent skills likely having similar discussions. Sad to see the degradation of federal competence, but improved State competence may be just what we need now. The Constitution sets up the States as the backup plan when Congress and the SCOTUS are derelict in defending the Constitution.
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  21. This is the one part of Putin's plan that is actually on schedule.
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  22. You have to talk about the tax cuts that just made the budget deficits worse, Congressman. You have to talk about how much money the IRS is letting slip through the cracks because they don't have the people to catch it. As a percentage of the budget, Ukraine is a minor issue. Mentioning Ukraine looks like serving Russian interests.
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  23.  @markgarrett3647  Who got court-martialed for 9/11?
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  24.  @markgarrett3647  9/11 occurred during the administration of George W Bush.
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  25. Any military has a strong interest in recruiting healthy people who do not need a lot of medical care because that is an expense that takes money away from combat power and the other basic needs in the military like good quarters or housing, food, equipment, and training. I think the military should have some discretion to recruit and retain various genders when valuable knowledge, skills and abilities are there. It's all about the capacity to do the mission, not be some place primarily for obtaining surgery at government expense.
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  26.  @alphaclam  Up how much and why? Obviously not up enough to bring the budget deficits down. Is the suggestion that revenues will go up the more we cut taxes? The sweet spot for taxes and economic growth is probably a moving target with dozens of variables affecting it. But does the party in power ever explain how this will happen and how it worked out two years later. All I am getting here is a vague "Tax revenue actually went up . . ." Old as I am, again and again I have seen Republicans remain silent about budget deficits when they occupy the Oval Office and then become very vocal when they are not. We can send a new person to Congress and somebody sits them down and tells them how their party really works and how government really works. Every voter needs to hear these partisan and lobbyist lectures. We also need to hear more about subsidies, not just taxes and spending. The sweet spot I advocate for is that taxes, spending, and subsidies are managed to reduce the annual budget deficit to the annual value of added long term government assets. It's OK for the government to borrow money every year for its new construction and long-term equipment and amortize those costs. I agree that borrowing to fund annual operations is not good.
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  27. This is the one part of Putin's plan that is on schedule.
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  28. Unfortunately, Russia with 6500 nuclear warheads, more than any other nation, still does not feel secure.
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