How much money Americans have in their savings accounts—nearly half have less than $500
Nearly 50% of U.S. adults don't have enough cash to pay for an unexpected medical bill or car repair.
www.cnbc.com
-
As of today ICMag has his own Discord server. In this Discord server you can chat, talk with eachother, listen to music, share stories and pictures...and much more. Join now and let's grow together! Join ICMag Discord here! More details in this thread here: here.
2024 US Presidential Election
www.cnbc.com
RickLafleur
Well-known member
So they've gone fully mask off over at CPAC now, huh?
I have to assume now if you vote Republican in 2024 you are either one of 2 things - either the dumbest motherfucker on the planet or you want to destroy democracy and install a christian theocracy with no freedom AND the dumbest motherfucker on the planet.
I have to assume now if you vote Republican in 2024 you are either one of 2 things - either the dumbest motherfucker on the planet or you want to destroy democracy and install a christian theocracy with no freedom AND the dumbest motherfucker on the planet.
fighting for second?
just got my ballot. it says i can only vote for one of two parties. like here:
RickLafleur
Well-known member
At least they’re getting paid. Trump just photoshops people into his crowd, without their permission of course.
https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN23U2JK/
RickLafleur
Well-known member
Blue Laws for Red Citizens
28 Comments / February 22, 2024Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
One state prosecutor and one civilian plaintiff have already won huge fines and damages from Donald Trump that may, with legal costs, exceed $500 million.
Trump awaits further civil and criminal liability in three other federal, state, and local indictments.
There are eerie commonalities in all these five court cases involving plaintiff E. Jean Carroll, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg, New York Attorney General Letitia James, federal special counsel Jack Smith, and Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis.
One, they are either unapologetically left-wing or associated with liberal causes. They filed their legal writs in big-city, left-wing America—Atlanta, New York, Washington—where liberal judges and jury pools predominate in a manner not characteristic of the country at large.
Two, they are overtly political. Bragg, James, and Willis have either campaigned for office or raised campaign funds by promising to get or even destroy Donald Trump.
Carroll’s suit was funded by left-wing billionaire Reid Hoffman.
Smith sued to rush his court schedule in hopes of putting Trump on trial before the November election.
Three, there would not be any of these cases had Donald Trump not run for the presidency or not been a conservative.
Carroll’s suit bypassed statute of limitation restrictions by prompting the intervention of a left-wing New York legislator. He passed a special bill, allowing a one-year window to waive the statute of limitations for sexual assault claims from decades past.
Until Trump, no New York prosecutor like James had ever filed a civil suit against a business for allegedly overvaluing real estate assets to obtain loans that bank auditors approved and were paid back in full, on time, and with sizable interest profits to the lending institutions.
Alvin Bragg bootstrapped a Trump private non-disclosure agreement into a federal campaign violation in a desperate effort to find something on Trump.
Smith is also charging Trump with insurrectionary activity. But Trump had never been so charged with insurrection, much less convicted of it.
Willis strained to find a way to criminalize Trump’s complaints about his loss of Georgia in the 2020 national election. She finally came up with a racketeering charge, usually more applicable to mafiosi and drug cartels.
Four, in all these cases, the charges could have been equally applicable to fellow left-wing public figures and officials.
Joe Biden, like Trump, was accused of sexual assault decades earlier by former staffer Tara Reade. Yet Reade was torn apart by the media and the left for inconsistencies in her memory. By contrast, the wildly inconsistent and amnesiac E. Jean Carroll won $83 million from Trump.
Jack Smith created the precedent of charging former president Trump for unlawfully removing classified files to his private residence.
But the government simultaneously did not charge Joe Biden for similar offenses. Yet Biden had removed files not for two years but for more than 30. He stored them not in one location but several.
His rickety garage was a mess, not a secure family compound like Trump’s estate. Moreover, Biden did so while a senator and vice president, without any presidential authority to declassify almost any presidential document he wished.
Biden never came forward to report the crime for over thirty years—until Trump was charged. Indeed, he was caught on tape six years ago, admitting to his ghostwriter that he possessed classified files but never reported it.
Bragg might have noticed that both Hillary Clinton (fined $113,000) and Barack Obama (fined $350,000) broke campaign financing laws. Neither was subject to federal criminal charges by local prosecutors.
An array of left-wing celebrities, politicians, 2004 House Members, former Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), and failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams have all recently challenged elections. They sought either to delay or redo ballot counting or, on the federal level, to sidetrack electors to ignore popular votes in their respective states.
These lawfare cases are part of other efforts that were highly partisan and without merit. Recall the Trump “Russian collusion” hoax and the “Russian disinformation” laptop farce.
In another first, some blue states are suing to take Trump’s name off the ballot for “insurrection,” a crime for which he has never been charged.
Total up the deaths, damage, and length of the summer 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. Then compare the tally to the one-day January 6 riot.
The former proved far more lethal, long-lasting, and destructive. Yet very few of the 14,000 arrested rioters in 2020 were ever prosecuted, much less convicted.
By contrast, the Biden administration sought to jail hundreds for crimes allegedly committed on January 6, such as “illegal parading.”
We are entering a dangerous era in America.
Ideology and party affiliations increasingly determine guilt and punishment. Opponents are first targeted, and then laws are twisted and redefined to convict them.
The left is waging lawfare with the implicit message to political opponents: either keep quiet or suffer the consequences.
Hiddenjems
Well-known member
Over a hundred years ago homesteaders were exercising real freedom. An isolated plot of land to work and raise a family on. Not many people are interested in that type of freedom and independence today.
Another thing that’s dwindling is small business ownership.
Most people are perfectly happy living in a corporate owned apartment cashing a too small paycheck from another corporate monstrosity. That’s not freedom, that’s being a wage slave.
say it ain't so.
President Biden's Transfer of Other People's Debts To You
Friday, Feb 23, 2024 - 04:20 AM
Authored by Rob Natelson via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),
The courts, in the exercise of what is called “equity jurisdiction,” have long excused borrowers from obligations incurred through fraud, duress, and other forms of creditor unfairness.
In addition, federal bankruptcy laws (authorized in the Constitution by Article I, Section 8, Clause 4) offer a path to safety for debtors who get in over their heads.
President Joe Biden speaks in Culver City, Calif., on Feb. 21, 2024. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)President Joe Biden’s “student loan forgiveness” measures qualify as neither. Instead, they are classic examples of what James Madison called an “improper or wicked project.”
Under the president’s program, no debtor will have to declare bankruptcy. And far from being victims, they already have enjoyed the benefit of very favorable loan terms at taxpayer expense. The borrowers spent the money for what both they and the federal government thought was a good purpose.
Still, you and I will have to pay their bills.
Madison called debt cancellation “improper or wicked” for very good reasons. Cancellation does not abolish an obligation. It merely transfers it to innocent people. If you are reading this, chances are that you will be one of those victimized by the Biden program.
Cancellation also injures the capital markets. In other words, it makes creditors less likely to lend on favorable terms. This makes it harder for deserving people to borrow.
Cancellation damages the sense of personal responsibility. It frays the social fabric by creating bitterness between different classes of people.
Nevertheless, for centuries demagogues have used debt-cancellation to buy votes. They then find ways to exploit the resulting bitterness for political advantage.
America’s Experience
The American Founders had learned all about debt cancellation from their study of history. But they also learned about it from personal experience.During the 1780s, the newly independent United States fell into economic recession. Some debtors got behind in their payments. Many were determined to pay, but others wanted to dodge their obligations.
The dodgers put pressure on their state legislatures. Some of the legislatures yielded to the pressure.
In some states, lawmakers issued fast-depreciating paper money, and forced creditors to accept it in lieu of other forms of payment. In other states, they granted debtors lengthy extensions. (Laws authorizing these extensions were called “stay laws” or “installment laws.”) Still other state legislatures allowed borrowers to discharge debt by offering creditors cheap or worthless property (“tender laws” or “pine barren laws”).
These measures were part of a wider pattern by which states adopted statutes with retroactive effect.
The Disastrous Results
The 1780s state “debtor-relief” measures proved disastrous. The American economy got worse. Creditors stopped lending. Bitterness grew between different classes of people.Bitterness also grew among the states. For example, many people in Connecticut had loaned money to Rhode Islanders. When the Rhode Island legislature adopted laws excusing its citizens from paying Connecticut creditors, the Connecticut legislature retaliated with new laws of its own.
Soon the two states were on a path toward war.
Fortunately, leading American statesmen understood that a new Constitution was needed to cure the problem.
The Constitution’s Solution
Because the Constitution created a new central government, it addressed primarily matters of federal governance. But it also included these terms:“No State shall ... coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any ... ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts ....” (Article I, Section 10, Clause 1).
Let’s unpack that language.
First, the ban on states “coin[ing] money” was understood to prevent them from issuing money in any medium—including paper. This prevented states from emitting depreciating paper currency as a debt-avoidance scheme.
Second: A “bill of credit” was a small paper instrument evidencing a state debt. Because people used bills of credit as one kind of paper money, the Constitution prohibited states from issuing them.
Third: The Constitution barred states from passing tender laws. States could no longer require creditors to accept cheap or worthless property in payment of debts.
Fourth: “Ex post facto laws” are retroactive enactments. After the Constitution became public, some people interpreted this term as a ban on debt abolition. During the ratification debates, however, “ex post facto” was clarified to mean only retroactive criminal laws. Still, the ban on ex post facto laws prevented states from enacting measures punishing creditors who previously refused to accept worthless property in payment of debts.
Finally: The prohibition on state laws “impairing the Obligation of Contracts” was designed as a general ban on state debt-cancellation schemes.
As Alexander Hamilton clarified in Federalist No. 80, the Constitution did not prevent state courts from continuing to relieve deserving debtors from obligations incurred through creditor fraud and other unfair practices.
In the years since the Constitution became effective, the Supreme Court has weakened somewhat the prohibition on state laws “impairing the Obligation of Contracts.” However, some of the ban still survives.
The Gap in the Constitution
Although the Constitution barred states from abolishing debts wholesale, for the most part it did not extend the same prohibition to the federal government—although a ban on federal ex post facto laws and the Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause did grant some protection against federal retroactivity.One reason for not barring federal debt relief measures may have been that the federal government was charged with the principal responsibility for waging war. The needs of waging war might require debt readjustment.
Moreover, the Constitution did not authorize (and does not authorize) the federal government to guarantee loans for adolescents so they can swell the coffers of universities, or of any other constituency of the National Democratic Party.
Further, as Madison suggested in Federalist No. 10, the Founders did not believe that a single special interest (in this case the universities and their former students) could become powerful enough to generate this kind of self-serving measure at the federal level.
From my long exposure to the Founders’ speeches and writings, I think another reason they did not extend the ban on debt cancellation to the federal government is this: The Founders could not imagine a national leader being so shameless.
Conclusion
History demonstrates that attempts to “cure” a problem by exceeding the federal government’s constitutional powers generally lead to more and worse problems. The federal student loan program is a good example.In an attempt to make college more affordable, the program has had precisely the opposite effect: The flood of federal money has greatly inflated the cost of tuition. It also has created a generation of debtors, and added billions to the national debt.
Now the president’s administration of the student loan program threatens to victimize hundreds of millions of innocent people by imposing on them an obligation they did not incur—and from which they in no way benefitted.
The Republican majority in the House of Representatives should respond to the latest Biden announcment by defunding federal student loan programs (aside from Veterans’ Benefits), completely and permanently.
buying votes! yes it is.
The Chump has too many real people that loathe him for anyone to need to offer money to protest against him. sorry... that IS fair wages if you're unemployed though. 
greyfader
Well-known member
none of them want to discuss Democracy! They don't believe in majority rule because they know the demographics are against them.
but they are, quite hypocritically, perfectly willing to use a democratically structured election to seize power. Hitler did the same thing. once in power only death could remove him.
Trichy has admitted on this thread that if Trump gets elected he wants him to be president in 2028, 2032, 2036, and so on until the day Trump croaks.
the MAGA-tards don't believe in Democracy! they must be stopped because of this alone, even if one doesn't bother to mention all of the hate and racism they bring to the table.
