December 17, 2020: Russian Hackers Compromise U.S. Computer Network

 

12/17/20: Russian hackers, likely the same crew who pried off the lid to the Democratic National Committee’s emails in 2016, have wormed their way into the computer systems of multiple U.S. government agencies.

Working on a way to overturn the election?

 

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A band of 651 billionaires in this country now controls $4 trillion in wealth. Income inequality reaches highest level in fifty years.

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President Trump has not commented on the hack. He has, however, tweeted (twice) today about efforts to rename Abraham Lincoln High School in San Francisco. He has tweeted about the stock market reaching an all-time high. He has tweeted sixteen times about how the election was snatched from his grasp, just because President-elect Biden got 81 million votes. 

He has not tweeted about the Russian hackers. Not once. Breached among others: the computer systems of the Commerce and Treasury departments, the Department of Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration, three state governments, the City of Austin, Texas, FireEye, a company that specializes in defending others from cyberattacks, and Microsoft, to name just a few of at least 18,000 possible corporate and governmental victims.

 

Not only does the president seem to be ignoring this massive breach he has had almost nothing to say about the pandemic. CDC reports that on December 15, another 2,960 Americans died. 

On December 16, that figure rose to 3,435. That made it the second worst day since the pandemic began. 

Then today, another awful 24-hours: 3,444 dead. That brings the death toll for December to: 

40,794.

 

So, why not focus on a possible name change for one high school in San Francisco? Makes perfect Trump sense.

 

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IN NEWS that matters more by far, a new study by the London School of Economics finds that tax cuts for the superrich don’t benefit the rest of us and don’t cause economies to boom. 

You will be happy to note – if you are a billionaire – that 651 men and women in the United States now control $4 trillion of wealth. You will also be happy to know – if you are one of those 651, such as the president – that last year, income inequality reached its highest level in half a century. According to economists, Jeff Bezos is currently worth $184.4 billion. Elon Musk is second at $143.1 billion, followed by Bill Gates, $118.7 billion, and Mark Zuckerberg, $104.8 billion. This is why we cannot raise taxes on the suffering superrich. 

At the same time, since the pandemic began ripping through the economy, an additional eight million Americans have fallen into poverty. 

To show you how desperately people like Bezos, Musk and Trump needed the Trump Tax Cuts, let’s consider the tragedy that they would have faced, had the top rates on the richest Americans not been reduced. The old rate was 39.7% of income per year. That was cut to 37% under Mr. Trump. 

(Trump’s accountants and lawyers may have figured out a way to cut taxes for the president to almost 0%.)

 

Now consider Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner. They are said to have purchased a $30 million property in Florida. There, they and their children can live a simple post-White House life. Had their taxes not been slashed, and had they been forced to pay that extra 2.7%, they might not have been able to afford their new abode. 

They would have had to settle for a cottage somewhere, three bedrooms, 1½ baths, for only $29,190,000. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: If you’d like to read about Jared and Ivanka’s amazing ability to pay almost zero taxes, feel free to regal yourself at this same blog. (See: 10/14/18.) There’s a good chance that you – like this blogger – pay more in federal income taxes that the First Daughter and her husband. 

Isn’t that fun! 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: We don’t know this at the time, but at 8:44 a.m., on December 17, 2020, Texas entrepreneur Russell Ramsland Jr., emails a plan, almost identical to the one mentioned in the note for 12/16/20. This time the plan to seize voting machines in states that Trump lost is dropped in the lap of the Department of Homeland Security. 

If the Department of Defense won’t grab the machines, maybe DHS will. (It soon turns out DHS wants no part of the plan.) 

Politico notes: 

Chris Krebs, a former top DHS official who defended the election’s integrity and was subsequently fired by Trump, told POLITICO that the draft order was a mess.

 

“This draft executive order is more of the same sloppy, half-baked nonsense written by someone with only a Facebook Groups-level understanding of government authorities, capabilities, and responsibilities,” he said. “That it may have made its way to the Resolute Desk is hard to comprehend, and we should all be thankful that some sane person somewhere near the Oval Office killed this thing.”