State’s governor looks to thwart US president’s plan to divert money to allies, including January 6 rioters
California governor Gavin Newsom is looking to thwart Donald Trump’s $1.776bn “anti-weaponization fund” by imposing a 100% tax on any payout received by state residents.
In May, the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced a fund to compensate alleged “victims of lawfare and weaponization”. It’s unclear who qualifies under this category.
The fund was the product of a settlement reached between Trump and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) – the agency the president sued over his leaked tax returns.
Critics, including Newsom, have slammed the fund as a “boondoggle” designed to divert money to Trump’s allies. Speculation has swirled that its benefactors could include the individuals who were arrested in the 6 January 2021 siege of the US Capitol. The Trump administration has described the rioters as patriots and since pardoned many who were charged in relation to the attack.
This is the correct thing to do.
The only change that I would make would be to earmark the taxed money to be given out to genuine victims of the Regime: those raped by Trump, police officers assaulted on January 6th, unlawfully fired Federal government workers, lawfare defense, and people accosted by ICE.
I like the energy here but… I dont think much of this money is destined for Jan 6 idiots. Surely their usefulness to Trump is finished.
It doesn’t say they would only tax jan 6ers, it says any state residents who receive a payout
Yes, but the types of people Trump needs a slush fund to pay, are the types of people that can arrange to receive the money in the most advantageous jurisdiction.
Well Newsom is just the governor of California, so not like he has ultimate power. He’s also problematic in a lot of ways, but this one seems like a good move as far as it goes.
Yeah but the issue is that wealthy people don’t follow the same rules. They’ll create a company or something out of state to funnel that money to their pockets without Cali ever knowing.
It’s only the poor people who get fucked.
oh it’s just manufactured midterm consent. the money is advertising more than anything else.
The money is to whoever trump wants to give it to for whatever reason with zero accountability. It doesn’t matter whether any Jan 6ers get any of it, it’s 100% illegal theft of taxpayer money by trump.
i also assume so. and in the case these assholes would receive something, i assume they would just move after this pr stunt?
Having them move away would be a net benefit to the state, so win-win.
I love this idea so much.
LOL!
Make that 150%.
Make it 101%. Or 200%.
Now now, I think you’re being very unfair. He should make it a progressive amount. Lets be nice and start it at, say 1% on the first $100, then 2% on the second $100, 4% on the next $100, 8% on the next, and so on.
Confused by the downvotes on your comment. Is it just people that hate math?
This quickly becomes an essentially infinite tax. That’s the joke.
If they got $1100 dollars. The tax on just that last $100 of the $1100 would be 1024% or $1,024
Tax on $100 increment n is given by 2ⁿ . So the tax on $900 is the negative break point.
9 ∑ 2ⁿ = $1275 n=1You pay $1275 for receiving $900.
This explodes after that. At $2000 dollars received you owe over $2,000,000. At $30,000 received you owe more dollars than there are atoms in the entire universe.
Edit: Typing math on my phone. Could have gotten a number wrong. But the trend is the point.
Also, explaining math jokes is always hilarious.
Hey kids, don’t do math for fun. You’ll get hooked and then look at what you will become.
I’m not hooked, I can stop any time I want… but maybe just one more exponential function before I head out…
1776%
I like Newsom’s energy in getting attention to another of the administration’s illegal actions
…. But can this actually happen or is it just noise?
The police can take money from citizens on suspicion but no evidence of criminal activity.
Why wouldn’t California be able to take money given to criminals by criminals that was fraudulently taken from the IRS in the first place?
Because all persons are created equal, but corporate persons are more equal than others.
- states do not have jurisdiction over irs, no “standing”
- the new crime was not perpetrated by the defendant. Trump illegally taking money from IRS as a slush fund to criminals who forward hi s desires is his crime
I think you’d need to make the argument that a slush fund payout is directly profiting from your crime but you’d have to argue that
States have the right to levy taxes. This is a special income tax, not a fine. The state isn’t suing anyone, they are just defining a form of income having a certain tax rate.
Why wouldn’t California be able to take money given to criminals by criminals that was fraudulently taken from the IRS in the first place?
Would the Supremacy Clause apply here? Genuinely not sure, because it’s not California superseding federal law per se (as preventing the payments entirely would likely be), it’s just them doing something after-the-fact which is contrary to the goals of the federal government.
How every democrat should respond to Republican aggression.
The recipients are secret, but at least they’ll be committing crimes when they don’t declare the income on their taxes.
Trump is just going to keep it all.
Trump might use it to pay warriors for the 2028 election. He’s going to need people who will fight viciously to keep him in the White House, and now he can sweeten the deal with more than a pardon.
Maybe, but he may use it to pay and arm his private army of goons in 2028. For a billion dollars, he could contract with 20,000 goons for three months, at $50K each, plus weapons, to create chaos before during and after the election, and use it to remain in power.
Can someone explain this to me… Because the lawsuit was filed in federal court and had a judge working the case, the judge has to approve the settlement. But Trump came to this agreement with the DOJ and withdrew the case in a way that wouldn’t require the judge to approve it. But doesn’t that mean that this agreement is technically not a settlement to the case, and therefore it is meaningless?
No. In civil cases you can settle outside of court without the judge being involved. It’s a settlement but not a legal one that has much of a chance of standing up in court.
My
neighborFox news told mecoyotesDemocrats keepeatingstealing hisoutdoor catstax breaks so I asked how manycatstax breaks he has and he said he just goes to theshelterTreasury and gets a newcattax break afterwards so I said it sounds like he’s just feedingshelter catstax breaks tocoyotesDemocrats and then hisdaughterpresident started cryingEdit: edited in a rush, need better words than tax break
Proceeds of crime, people. It’s not a tax: it’s simple confiscation.
Newsom: *moves up 1 in the 2028 standings*
Lemmyleft: *rends garment*
I like the clap backing Newsom does but he’s a shit politician who is only slightly less right than Fetterman.
Yeah, I’m glad he’s needling Trump and MAGA, but I’m not voting for him. He sucks Oligarch cock.
I know little about him, as I expect most of the country does other than he seems ready willing and able to take the piss out of the demented rapist, and that’s such a rare commodity, somehow, that it’s worth political capital.
His state has a lot of electoral votes, he’s a white male, and would likely attract big money to run. Strictly speaking, it seems likely he’ll be a frontrunner, but I expect we’ll be right back to arguing the Dems need to lose again and go through all this *gestures* again.
He is particularly harsh on telling law enforcement to break up homeless camps regularly, shows no concern to the growing amount in his state, he holds conservative beliefs on trans rights. https://abcnews.com/Politics/california-gov-gavin-newsom-breaks-party-transgender-athletes/story?id=119559011
https://www.pacificresearch.org/newsom-has-failed-on-homelessness-and-it-shouldnt-be-hard-so-hard-to-spot/Don’t forget that he vetoed unemployment pay for striking workers, vetoed decriminalization of psychedelics (in other words, the aspiring future leader of “my body my choice” party wants to put people in prison for what they do with their bodies), and frequently flaunted COVID restrictions which he put in place.
He also did nothing about corporations stealing (and now ruining) the legal cannabis industry. Voters who voted to pass cannabis legalization did so under the context of an acreage cap: no corporation could own more than… 2 acres? I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head, but the idea was, it’s small enough to keep corporations from dominating but big enough to allow them decent operating room.
Lawmakers went behind the electorate’s back and removed the acreage cap. Newsom did nothing, and was buddy-buddy with corporate cannabis people like Big Mike, so why would he? This resulted in corporate cannabis, including professional boof cultivators like Glass House Farms (owned by a MAGA-supporting cop), dominating the legal industry. Their weed is garbage, which is why ~75% of cannabis sales in California occur in the legacy market (“illegal” under bullshit laws that everyone should ignore).
He also hosts conservative shitstains on his podcast, though if he was actually ideologically righteous, I could potentially excuse that as genuine outreach. But he’s not, so I don’t.
He was doing homeless sweeps and talking about his undying support for Pissrael when Republicans were on the up-trend. Now everyone hates Republicans, so suddenly Newsom is refusing money from AIPAC and doesn’t talk so much about the problem of having to witness poors in the street. He stands for nothing but his own gain.
Here’s a photo op he did of him throwing away, potentially, the only worldly possessions of homeless people. He presumably retreated to his Napa Valley winery after this. Fucking parasite.
Thank you, I’m not entirely in the news cycle about him but knew he was just a conservative shitbag.
Yeah that pretty much covers it lol, conservative shitbag and hypocrite
Crazy their state constitution allows the governor to just unilaterally impose taxes like this, I would have thought that would be something their legislature has to do
I’m pretty sure he’s not imposing it unilaterally, but sending a bill to the Democrat-controlled California legislature, where it will easily pass. He’s also in good company, with several other governors introducing similar legislation in their own states:
This is what they should be doing to anyone who works in immigration enforcement as well. Like, I get that it’s likely to be successfully challenged but so fucking what, let it trickle through the court while states rip back from DHS what the admin has illegally refused to disburse to them in grants and other funding.
Ah, so he’s not actually doing anything anyone else couldn’t do, he’s just asking other people to do something. That makes more sense but I would not have gotten that out of this headline.
That’s because both he and the people who hate him get a benefit out of pitting him against Trump. So they’ll get more ad revenue with that headline.
But an average person trying to get this bill through the legislature committees, and both chambers, and signed by the governor, would face a much longer process. Whereas it’s fast-tracked by being pre-approved by Newsom and written up by a legal team with a proven record.
I do think it’s an excellent idea, for as long as Trump is in charge of who’s getting money. If sanity ever returns to the White House and deserving people like E. Jean Carroll start to be eligible, the percentage could be adjusted.
