Category: Uncategorized

Greg Snyder
March 6, 2018 ·
What do Trump supporters and Russian bots have in common? They deny treason. They deny collusion and obstruction of justice. The Russians get what they want politically from a very stupid Trump. Trump supporters get what they think of as a “rebel” in Trump when all they are really getting is a con and a cheesy television reality persona from a show that was never even worth watching.

Posted onAugust 26, 2019Leave a comment on The con and rip off of Trump

August 26, 2019

The United States gives churches a tax exempt status but should this standard be maintained when many churches involve themselves in politics or discriminate against certain groups of people? These are two issues that I believe the United States Congress should re evaluate in terms of whether or not churches should retain their tax exempt status.  A separate issue but also one that is very important to consider in whether or not to allow any church to retain its tax exempt status should be its charitable activities and spending. There should be a minimum amount of church expenditure whether monetary or service-based, based on the income of the church, in order to retain their tax exempt status. If this basic obligation is not met annually, the church should have its tax exempt status revoked.

1.Does the church discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity?

2.Does the church act politically by contributing money to any political candidates, parties, or campaigns? Or, does the church support any political candidates, parties or campaigns not monetarily but with endorsements and/or public statements? Both types of support should be considered to be political actions.

If a church is non-inclusive, discriminates, and/or is abusive to any of its members, to people who want to be members, or to the general public and/or culture and society, it should not be considered a religious institution and therefore should not be tax exempt. It should be taxed fully as an ordinary business using ordinary business tax rules and law.

The culpability of the church can be determined even by the testimony of a single person with a solid grievance. The church accused of discrimination and/or abuse can appeal but has the burden of proving that it does not or did not discriminate and was not abusive in order to clear itself of the accusation. The church would have to prove, beyond a doubt, that it does not or did not do anything that was discriminatory and/or abusive. On the other hand, if a church does not ever have any complaints against it in terms of how it treats its members or people who would like to be members, it should be able to retain its tax exempt status as a religious institution.

Churches should be required at tax time to demonstrate their charitable spending to maintain their tax exempt status. Churches should be required to spend a fixed amount of their income on charity and the provision of services to the community.their tax exemption. 

If churches are to be thought of as being religious institutions with a tax exempt status they should be required to not discriminate against anyone, whether a member of the congregation or anyone outside of the church, on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Churches found to be violating civil/moral/ethical/and, yes, religious precepts to not discriminate should no longer be given a tax exempt status.

Churches, if involved in political activities or discrimination should have their tax exempt status revoked. They can appeal, but the churches would have to prove beyond a doubt that they did not discriminate and that they did, indeed, fulfill their legal obligation to spend x amount of their income on charity and/or the provision of service to the community. It would be the burden of the church to prove its innocence in cases of discrimination and in compliance in matters of charitable spending at tax time.

Greg Snyder
October 27, 2016 ·
I think the world of economics has 2 kinds of people:People who hoard and amass and are selfish and do not care about anyone but themselves. That kind of selfishness creates poverty and misery, drives more and more people into poverty and deprivation. That’s the world we live in now.Or, people who value living collectively and socially and taking care of each other for the common good and welfare so that everyone can be a productive, contributing member of society and society can be as strong and unified as it can be and income inequality is minimized.What kind of a world do we want to live in?

Posted onAugust 26, 2019Leave a comment on It’s a choice.

August 27,2019

Greg Snyder

One Koch brother is dead. That’s good. But it still leaves the other one alive.

Still leaves Trump as president and he is trying to accomplish the Koch brother agenda of killing off Social Security and Medicare and getting rid of the entire social safety net that Americans have paid into and on which they depend, the Post Office, fair elections, voting rights, the list goes on

still leaves all the libertarian/conservative think tanks doing Koch brother work

still leaves the Koch brother financed “universities” churning out legions of lawyers indocrinated in Koch brother libertarian dogma and trained to do their political work

still leaves Americans for Prosperity and the tea party doing Koch brother work

still leaves ALEC writing Koch brother legislation instead of our elected representatives doing their job and writing legislation themselves, for their constituents, the people who elected them, addressing the needs of the people, not the Koch brother interests

still leaves Koch organizations to continue to attack workers and labor and weaken the middle class and (mom and pop) small to medium sized business

still leaves total Koch control of the entire Republican Party

still leaves Koch industries that are carbon-based, fossil fuels and petrochemical mega corporations churning out their planet-killing poisons and Americans eagerly buying them all up

still leaves the vast fortune that the Koch family will continue to use to manipulate and control national, federal and state politics

still leaves the Koch dynasty intact with a vast fortune

still leaves the country at the mercy of what the Koch brothers want to do with our politics and their continued assault on the world’s climate

Yes, it’s good that one of the Koch brothers died. But nothing else changed and his death really doesn’t matter at all.

The Koch brothers are half of the problem they create. The other half of the problem is us. Americans who buy their products, buy their gas, invest in their stocks, give them more money day in, day out. Accept and acquiesce the political manipulation and gaming of our American democracy, which has turned it into an oligarchy that represents the Koch brothers and the Walton family and the 500+ other billionaires that make up the top 2% of the population. We do nothing to make any changes to this pattern of behavior. And we do nothing to correct and/or counteract the evil empire that the Koch brothers set into place.

We could do a lot about it. We could make a lot of changes and shut down this evil empire even though they have all the money and we don’t.

Would the Koch brother empire be able to continue to exist if it no longer had the republican party to do its work? If ALEC no longer had the ability to advance Koch brother legislation? If all eligible American voters voted? Would the Koch dynasty be able to continue to do its work if it were taxed progressively, aggressively? All of these things are do-able but it would require a democratic Congress and President and a lot of laws that have been made in the last few decades that provide this power to the Koch empire would have to be rescinded.

David Koch is dead. But his evil empire lives on. That could be corrected. But will it ever be corrected? That’s the question we now face.

Trump campaigning, fund raising, and campaign activities all began before Trump was officially named the republican presidential nominee for the general election in 2015 and has continued uninterrupted and unabated from then until now so how is this news or anything different? The grift goes on.

A billion dollars is equal to 1,000 million dollars. Let that sink in. A million dollars times 1,000 is a billion dollars. Even if a billionaire is taxed at maximal rates and all of the taxes ever proposed are collected, that billionaire would still be a billionaire and have at least a thousand million dollars left in his pocket.

I think the only thing Sinema is focused on is her big donors. It’s not about bipartisanship. It’s not about results. It’s MOST DEFINITELY NOT about the American people. It’s ALL about the payoff. Oh, and it’s partially also about that tingly sensation she gets in her hooha when she does the acting out, bad girl thing or when she ignores her constituents. Everything she does is a performance. A badly done performance. A performance that is seriously detrimental to the entire country.

The federal government should make it clear to all states that threaten to or actually withhold any federal funding for public schools for any reason that they will be prosecuted for doing so. Playing politics with the education of the country’s children and state and/or local governments making idiotic political positions and policies on a public health issue like Covid 19 that are dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible and using federal money to do it are not cool and should not be condoned or allowed.

Dark money is the libertarian root of the evil that is trying to destroy our democracy. Ask the Kochs, Mercers, DeVos Family and others. Ask Trump and Bannon. And thank the Supreme Court for making it so easy.

“Right to work” is really “Right to impoverish.”