brandon

joined 3 weeks ago
[–] brandon@piefed.social 42 points 5 days ago (8 children)

The problem is that federal income taxes are generally paid directly by employers to the federal government. It's not clear by what mechanism states and/or cities might withhold them.

It's true that the State of New York, and NYC are both large employers, so hypothetically I guess they could refuse to collect income taxes from their employees on behalf of the federal government, but certainly the IRS would still hold the individual taxpayers responsible for those taxes at the end of the year.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 22 points 1 week ago (1 children)

The cruelty is the point.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 78 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

If Jesus was real and did come back we'd probably never know because he would get deported and die in a Salvadorian torture prison.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 78 points 1 week ago (2 children)

You know, I don't recall Medicaid being mentioned once in the bible.

I do seem to remember something about giving all of your possessions to the poor though. But maybe I am imagining that.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 29 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

I don't know how they could implement this across the private sector, but the State of California has a quarter million employees for which they could probably stop sending tax withholdings to the feds.

According to this random site I found Googling, it's around $230M every month.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 13 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I am saying that:

  1. the vast majority of violence perpetrated at these demonstrations is done by law enforcement
  2. if cops wanted people to stop throwing water bottles at them they would stop trampling people with horses and shooting reporters with rubber bullets
  3. framing these demonstrations as "violent" only serves the narrative of the right
[–] brandon@piefed.social 10 points 3 weeks ago

It's textbook manufacturing of consent

[–] brandon@piefed.social 16 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

They will say that regardless of how much violence protesters actually do. Purity testing demonstrations only makes the situation worse by allowing the right the ability to dictate the narrative.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 40 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

As an additional point to add to yours, every single political protest movement in history has included violent elements. It's unavoidable. When these political "moderates" start pearl clutching about some windows being broken or whatever it is an attempt to de-legitimize the entire movement, and draw the focus away from the actual source of the majority of violence, the cops (including ICE).

[–] brandon@piefed.social 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Protestors should start bringing packs of Crayola to lure them across the line.

[–] brandon@piefed.social 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Careful how you phrase this. The right wing anti-woke crusaders will retort "oh, so you're saying this level of CO2 is natural after all?"

[–] brandon@piefed.social 9 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

They are referring to some fringe "tax protester" conspiracy theories which dispute that the 16th amendment was properly ratified. You can read about them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester_Sixteenth_Amendment_arguments#Sixteenth_Amendment_ratification

Suffice it to say, these 'theories' have been largely rejected, including by the states themselves, and by the SCOTUS.

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