Mega-Thread: Trump Focused Discussion

[kaid]

The Catholic Church got between $1.4 and $3.5 billion in PPP funds.

By the way, while Trump might have handed them the money, Congress allowed him to. If you object to taxpayer money going to religious sources, there's plenty of people you can blame for this one. To be fair, the church does pay people. But if other religious nonprofits were turned away or discriminated against, that's not Congress anymore -- that's the Executive Branch deciding who gets the money.

Seeing more and more why Trump hid the list in Mnuchkin-land.

Well congress did try to mandate oversight to make sure it was done right but the trump admin promptly fired those who would do oversight and then decided nah we good no need for oversight. At that point congresses only real option would be to not give any money at all which was not really viable.

[Thekri]

The Catholic Church got between $1.4 and $3.5 billion in PPP funds.

By the way, while Trump might have handed them the money, Congress allowed him to. If you object to taxpayer money going to religious sources, there's plenty of people you can blame for this one. To be fair, the church does pay people. But if other religious nonprofits were turned away or discriminated against, that's not Congress anymore -- that's the Executive Branch deciding who gets the money.

Seeing more and more why Trump hid the list in Mnuchkin-land.

The Lord will provide! But he can't sign checks, so Trump will do it for him.

The Catholic Church is about as far from a "Small business" as I can think of, being neither small nor a business.

[Edge-]

The Catholic Church got between $1.4 and $3.5 billion in PPP funds.

Fucking hell I hate the way that tax-exempt religious institutions have lobbied and found a way to continue avoiding taxes while also being able to claim all kinds of business benefits through their business operations.

IT'S ONE OR THE OTHER YOU GREEDY FUCKS

I mean, couldn't they have asked the Vatican to loosen the purse strings on their coffers instead? Because tax dollars flowing into a place like the Catholic church is basically mandated-tithing for non-members and is absolute horse shit of the highest order. I don't mind tithing if I happen to be at a service or something due to family obligations, but that's my fuckin choice.

[cubby]

Fucking hell I hate the way that tax-exempt religious institutions have lobbied and found a way to continue avoiding taxes while also being able to claim all kinds of business benefits through their business operations.

IT'S ONE OR THE OTHER YOU GREEDY FUCKS

I mean, couldn't they have asked the Vatican to loosen the purse strings on their coffers instead? Because tax dollars flowing into a place like the Catholic church is basically mandated-tithing for non-members and is absolute horse shit of the highest order. I don't mind tithing if I happen to be at a service or something due to family obligations, but that's my fuckin choice.

I agree - but there is almost no hope of changing this - to do so would be "attacking religion" and that's not going to happen. Those mega-churches are just currency printing machines. It's all about the money. How many private jets did that one ginormous mega-church have? Was it 3?

[draynay]

We shouldn't really be expecting churches to not take money from the ignorant, its the government giving them the money that bears scrutiny.

[Edge-]

As Trump continues to brag about his "perfect score" on the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, I would like to take a moment to share what the test actually is -

https://www.parkinsons.va.gov/resour...st-English.pdf

[PhaelixWW]

CNN is reporting that Fuck Florida's Miami-Dade County is at 33.5% positivity for testing right now.

With the amount of testing being done these days, that probably reflects a somewhat similar infection rate as the ~45% that the state of New York saw at its peak, but it's nowhere near the over 70% positivity that New York City saw at its peak.

Regardless, it's not good news for a state that refuses to take this seriously.

[Rasulis]

CNN is reporting that Fuck Florida's Miami-Dade County is at 33.5% positivity for testing right now.

With the amount of testing being done these days, that probably reflects a somewhat similar infection rate as the ~45% that the state of New York saw at its peak, but it's nowhere near the over 70% positivity that New York City saw at its peak.

Regardless, it's not good news for a state that refuses to take this seriously.

Wow. I thought Imperial County, which at 23% has the highest positivity rate in CA, was bad.

[Edge-]

CNN is reporting that Fuck Florida's Miami-Dade County is at 33.5% positivity for testing right now.

With the amount of testing being done these days, that probably reflects a somewhat similar infection rate as the ~45% that the state of New York saw at its peak, but it's nowhere near the over 70% positivity that New York City saw at its peak.

Regardless, it's not good news for a state that refuses to take this seriously.

This is fucking horrific, and a testament to either/both a massive failure in leadership across all levels and a failure in personal responsibility/accountability.

[Zan15]

The Catholic Church got between $1.4 and $3.5 billion in PPP funds.

By the way, while Trump might have handed them the money, Congress allowed him to. If you object to taxpayer money going to religious sources, there's plenty of people you can blame for this one. To be fair, the church does pay people. But if other religious nonprofits were turned away or discriminated against, that's not Congress anymore -- that's the Executive Branch deciding who gets the money.

Seeing more and more why Trump hid the list in Mnuchkin-land.

The Lord will provide! But he can't sign checks, so Trump will do it for him.

The Catholic Church is about as far from a "Small business" as I can think of, being neither small nor a business.

The nutty part of the whole thing is companies like newspaper corporations could not file for PPP loans because they were technically "too big".

100 newspapers spread across the country under one company as an aggregate too big to help. 50,000 churches however, let them play those loopholes like a banjo!!


And on the topic of churches not paying taxes we got trump saying:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgdhp

President Donald Trump on Friday said he had called on the U.S. Treasury Department to re-examine the tax-exempt status and funding for universities and school districts, following days of threats to cut federal education funding for schools that don't reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!" he tweeted.

Oh the irony...my god...oops there i go with the irony...

[Thekri]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/polit...?ocid=msedgdhp

President Donald Trump on Friday said he had called on the U.S. Treasury Department to re-examine the tax-exempt status and funding for universities and school districts, following days of threats to cut federal education funding for schools that don't reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic.

"Too many Universities and School Systems are about Radical Left Indoctrination, not Education. Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues. Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!" he tweeted.

Oh the irony...my god...oops there i go with the irony...

Well I actually agree with this, as long as he does it to all of them. Sounds like he only wants to do it to "Left Wing" ones of course, which is about as illegal as possible. He can't do it of course, a court will slap him back into place instantly, but his base will eat it up. Trump is all about his base, which makes zero fucking sense, because they already support him, he isn't doing anything to broaden his base.

[Thepersona]

The Lord will provide! But he can't sign checks, so Trump will do it for him.

The Catholic Church is about as far from a "Small business" as I can think of, being neither small nor a business.

Remember, the catholic church is pretty much the roman imperial church with different names and worshipping 1 god instead of several

[Rasulis]

Well I actually agree with this, as long as he does it to all of them. Sounds like he only wants to do it to "Left Wing" ones of course, which is about as illegal as possible. He can't do it of course, a court will slap him back into place instantly, but his base will eat it up. Trump is all about his base, which makes zero fucking sense, because they already support him, he isn't doing anything to broaden his base.

Good for Biden. We don't want Trump to broaden his base. As for revoking school's tax-exempt status and funding, good luck with that.

[Casterbridge]

CNN is reporting that Fuck Florida's Miami-Dade County is at 33.5% positivity for testing right now.

With the amount of testing being done these days, that probably reflects a somewhat similar infection rate as the ~45% that the state of New York saw at its peak, but it's nowhere near the over 70% positivity that New York City saw at its peak.

Regardless, it's not good news for a state that refuses to take this seriously.

As someone who lives in South Florida I can say it's crazy.

For every one person that seems to be taking it seriously, you can easily point several who are not.

If you are taking the pandemic seriously you have to be very picky about where you go for any kind of service or shopping.

A good recent example is getting a hair cut. An acquaintance of mine told me they went and got a hair cut recently after barber shops etc were allowed to reopen, they went to their usual place, a little family-style barbershop, he told me that while there was signage up for masks etc, when he went inside they were a bit crowded, none of the barbers was wearing masks and joking and talking, there didn't seem to be any real cleaning etc going on between clients, or not much.

By contrast, I went to a place I researched a bit, they only worked by appointment and no one was allowed to just wait in the waiting area, the employees all wore masks the whole time, they make sure they showed you that they sanitized their area and equipment before seating you and so on.

It's insanity honestly and now we have people who want to have anti-mask rallies etc. I work in the healthcare sector so I know a bit more than most, but some of these people here are just insane.

[Benggaul]

CNN is reporting that Fuck Florida's Miami-Dade County is at 33.5% positivity for testing right now.

With the amount of testing being done these days, that probably reflects a somewhat similar infection rate as the ~45% that the state of New York saw at its peak, but it's nowhere near the over 70% positivity that New York City saw at its peak.

Regardless, it's not good news for a state that refuses to take this seriously.

I came here to post the same article, not just because fuck Florida, but also apparently the US set another new record at 63k cases yesterday which wasn't reflected in worldometer's data because of the GMT time cutoff.

I don't think we'll hit 70k, because some of these states should be peaking by now so hopefully we'll see new cases level off soon, but then a month ago I didn't think we'd hit 50k (and never even considered 60k), so I guess what the fuck do I know?

Also, Florida reported nearly 11,433 today and that's not even a new record for them (11,458 is the highest, a week or so ago) so we can expect higher falsified death counts coming out of there within a week.

[Thekri]

Good for Biden. We don't want Trump to broaden his base. As for revoking school's tax-exempt status and funding, good luck with that.

Yeah, on the list of the things that are wrong with this country, tax exemption for schools and universities is incredibly far down the list. Churches too for that matter. I would prefer all schools that are not public schools be subject to the same taxation as any other business. You either go to public school, or you pay the full value of a private education. I do not like tax dollars going to schools that teach unscientific nonsense, either through subsidies or direct education.

It is not a particularly critical national problem however, not worth the political capital to do anything about it.

[Thepersona]

I came here to post the same article, not just because fuck Florida, but also apparently the US set another new record at 63k cases yesterday which wasn't reflected in worldometer's data because of the GMT time cutoff.

I don't think we'll hit 70k, because some of these states should be peaking by now so hopefully we'll see new cases level off soon, but then a month ago I didn't think we'd hit 50k (and never even considered 60k), so I guess what the fuck do I know?

Also, Florida reported nearly 11,433 today and that's not even a new record for them (11,458 is the highest, a week or so ago) so we can expect higher falsified death counts coming out of there within a week.

Are Florida, Texas, Georgia, Mississipi, et al closing or re-issuing stay at home orders? No? Then expect the cases to stay at the very least at 50k+ and even reaching 70k+ in the future :/

[Thekri]

I don't think we'll hit 70k, because some of these states should be peaking by now so hopefully we'll see new cases level off soon, but then a month ago I didn't think we'd hit 50k (and never even considered 60k), so I guess what the fuck do I know?

I think we will hit 70k by next Wednesday at the latest. I see no reason why the increase will level off, i expect it to continue to acceleration. New York peaked because it was in one area, and that area got over-saturated. Right now it is growing rapidly in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, LA, Charleston, and many more. Still massive amounts of room for this to accelerate. I expect to see 100k a day in the next month. This isn't being pessimistic, I just don't see any factor that will stop the upward trend.

[Benggaul]

Are Florida, Texas, Georgia, Mississipi, et al closing or re-issuing stay at home orders? No? Then expect the cases to stay at the very least at 50k+ and even reaching 70k+ in the future :/

I think we will hit 70k by next Wednesday at the latest. I see no reason why the increase will level off, i expect it to continue to acceleration. New York peaked because it was in one area, and that area got over-saturated. Right now it is growing rapidly in Houston, Dallas, Atlanta, LA, Charleston, and many more. Still massive amounts of room for this to accelerate. I expect to see 100k a day in the next month. This isn't being pessimistic, I just don't see any factor that will stop the upward trend.

Yeah, I know. I'm just trying--and failing--to have a more positive outlook about the whole thing. I saw the numbers for Arizona and California leveling off the past week and dared hope.
...Of course Arizona just posted their third-highest daily total of 4.2k after having spent the past week around 3.5k, so that kind of deflated me a bit.

[Rasulis]

Yeah, I know. I'm just trying--and failing--to have a more positive outlook about the whole thing. I saw the numbers for Arizona and California leveling off the past week and dared hope.
...Of course Arizona just posted their third-highest daily total of 4.2k after having spent the past week around 3.5k, so that kind of deflated me a bit.

Isn't Disney World opening this weekend?