Gary Cohn and Steven Mnuchin Risk Their Reputations – The New York Times

 

In the early stages of promoting Trump’s tax cut, they have made a series of statements that are blatantly false — not merely shadings of truth or questionable claims but outright up-is-down falsehoods mocked by various fact-checkers. The statements make the two look more like Trump press secretaries than serious business executives whom members of Congress can trust.They fall into two main categories. The first is who benefits from the tax plan. “Wealthy Americans are not getting a tax cut,” Cohn said on “Good Morning America.” He was echoing a promise that Mnuchin had made before the inauguration: “Any reductions we have in upper-income taxes will be offset by less deductions, so that there will be no absolute tax cut for the upper class.”No one needs to read a sophisticated analysis (although you can do that, as well) to know these claims are ridiculous. Trump’s tax plan is reducing the top income-tax rate to 35 percent, from 39.6 percent. It is deeply cutting corporate taxes, which benefits people who own a lot of stock. It is eliminating the estate tax.Want to guess how many families in New York State — population 20 million — are wealthy enough that they’re likely to pay any estate tax next year, according to an estimate based on I.R.S. data? Just 470. The number is so low in Montana, Vermont, West Virginia and four other states — likely fewer than 10 families in each — that the I.R.S. doesn’t provide details, to avoid privacy concerns.There is no way to make up for tax cuts this large by eliminating deductions, as Mnuchin claimed. The administration isn’t trying very hard, anyway. The deductions for charitable donations and mortgage interest, including on second homes, will remain.

How Did Dove Think it Was Okay to Run this Painfully Racist Ad?

By Sharanya Gopinathan

Image courtesy Twitter

Pretending to care about social issues is a lot like lying, in so far as that if you keep doing it, you will get caught one day. The international beauty brand Dove (by Unilever), has made a lot of noise over the years about how body positive it is, and how it champions the movement to accept women of all shapes and sizes, not just the stereotypically skinny women we’re seeing in ads.

This mask first slipped badly back in May, when Dove came up with a laughable plan to promote body-positivity by releasing a body wash in a bunch of strangely shaped bottles that were supposed to represent different women’s body types. The plan backfired when everyone pointed out how silly it is to sell bottles in the supposed shape of a woman’s body to promote body positivity, and people were quick to point out how this could erase some of the brownie points Dove had earned for itself for promoting “socially conscious beauty” over the years.

In which case, they’ve probably leapt a mile backwards with their newest, ill-fated campaign. This weekend, Dove posted a GIF to its Facebook page as part of an ad for their body lotion. The GIF showed the image of a black woman taking off a dark brown shirt to reveal a white woman wearing a white shirt. It’s honestly a shocking image to see, because the second you see it, the strong message you receive is that that non-white skin and colouring is dirty and meant to be scrubbed off or removed in favour of whiter skin. The ad also included an image of the body lotion bottle, which said that it creates “visibly more beautiful skin”.

It’s an awful message to put out there: totally tone-deaf at best, and racist, offensive and dangerous to the psyche of non-white women at worst.

As angry commentators on social media pointed out, it’s also pretty amazing to think that a group of advertising execs, probably really good ones if they were hired by a huge brand like Dove, sat together and conceptualised this horrible ad, and then a boss somewhere okayed the final product, and no one at any step of the process found this offensive at all.

Lol did this even look right to y’all? I mean your whole team sat down and cleared this bullshit right here? How? http://pic.twitter.com/WzsZfpkxAr

— Musimbwa (@UNcubeOthungayo) October 7, 2017


Dove has since apologised for the post in a tersely worded tweet (with no explanation for why and how the ad as published at all), and have taken down the offensive Facebook post. They haven’t been responding to the media’s requests for statements on the issue, so clearly, this is all Dove has to say on the issue:

An image we recently posted on Facebook missed the mark in representing women of color thoughtfully. We deeply regret the offense it caused.

— Dove (@Dove) October 7, 2017

The post How Did Dove Think it Was Okay to Run this Painfully Racist Ad? appeared first on The Ladies Finger.

Climate change action like trying to ‘appease the volcano gods’, Abbott says

His 15 minutes are done so why broadcast his neolithic views?

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Former prime minister Tony Abbott says climate change is “probably doing good” and likened policy to address it to “primitive people” killing goats to please their deities, as he renews calls for the Government to abandon a Clean Energy Target.

 Bulgaria and their rightwing’s love affair with Nazi’s – will preside over EU for a year…

Volen Siderov, the head of one of the three parties (“Ataka”), forming the United Patriots, once called on the Roma minority (Gypsies) to “behave themselves,” if they did not want to be deported to India. In a book, he wrote that “a gang of Jews” have “ruined the orthodoxy.”[4] Valeri Simeonov, Chair of a second party in the United Patriots, the “National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria” (NFSB), referred to Roma as “human-like creatures, who have become beasts,” and said that their children were playing “in the streets with pigs.”[5] Since May 4, Simeonov has been in office as the Vice Prime Minister, in charge of the economy and demography, as well as being Bulgaria’s Commissioner for Integration.

Twice, photographs have already emerged showing high-ranking officials of Bulgaria’s government, elected to office in May, in poses honoring the Nazis. May 17, Pavel Tenev, Minister of Regional Development, at the time, was forced to resign, after publication of a photo, showing him with his right arm extended in a Nazi salute, standing in front of a wax figure of a Nazi officer in Paris’ Musée Grévin. May 19, another photo was published on the internet, showing the freshly appointed department director in the Ministry of Defense, Ivo Antonov, also giving the Nazi salute in front of a Second World War tank of the Wehrmacht. (On the right, german-foreign-policy.com documents a segment of this photo.) His most senior employer, Defense Minister, Krasimir Karakachanov, Chair of the IMRO-Bulgarian National Movement, refused to fire him.[6]

Source: www.german-foreign-policy.com

Bob Corker Says Trump’s Recklessness Threatens ‘World War III’ – The New York Times

 

“Look, except for a few people, the vast majority of our caucus understands what we’re dealing with here,” he said, adding that “of course they understand the volatility that we’re dealing with and the tremendous amount of work that it takes by people around him to keep him in the middle of the road.”As for the tweets that set off the feud on Sunday morning, Mr. Corker expressed a measure of powerlessness.“I don’t know why the president tweets out things that are not true,” he said. “You know he does it, everyone knows he does it, but he does.”

Donald Trump reignites spat with Bob Corker over Iran deal, senator hits back with ‘day care’ White House jibe – Donald Trump’s America – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Donald Trump aims his Twitter account at sometime ally senator Bob Corker with a series of derisive posts.

Source: Donald Trump reignites spat with Bob Corker over Iran deal, senator hits back with ‘day care’ White House jibe – Donald Trump’s America – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

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