For the second time in two weeks, Kentucky lawmakers have rejected a bill that would make it illegal for adults to marry young children. Currently, it is legal to do so.
The post Lawmakers Guarantee Old Men Can Marry Little Girls, Reject Bill to Ban “Legalized Rape of Children” appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Earlier this month, Trump touted the idea that, under his tax plan, 1,000"s of Americans would be able to "file their taxes on a single, little beautiful sheet of paper." Of course, this so-called "postcard" that Trump and Paul Ryan have referenced repeatedly over the past several months is basically nothing more than a 1040EZ shrunken down to fit on a smaller piece of paper but who are we to rain on their parade?
That said, while many Americans will enjoy an easier tax filing in 2018, or at least as easy as the 1040EZ, others, especially high-income folks living in high-tax states like New York and California, are suddenly scrambling to retain accountants to figure out how they might best game the new tax code to avoid higher rates.
Of course, one of the key opportunities for "gaming" results from the new taxation rules for "pass-through" entities. Unlike high-income earners filing as individuals who lost a substantial portion of their deductions, pass through entities, with the exception of certain professionals like doctors, lawyers and stockbrokers, are still eligible for a 20% deduction from their earnings. To put that into perspective, a 20% deduction reduces Trump"s top marginal tax rate for pass-through entities to 29.6% from the 37% that will be paid by individual filers.
Not surprisingly, as CBS points out, the change has pretty much everyone suddenly plotting a post-holiday discussion with their boss to see if they can be fired and promptly re-hired as an independent contractor.
First, you convince your boss to let you quit and hire you back as a contractor after you"ve set yourself up as a sole proprietorship. Assuming you can do that and your tax treatment is better, you can offer your ex-employer the same services for less -- the company does not have to worry about giving you benefits or paying its share of your Social Security and Medicare taxes. That latter part is the iffy one for you, and the numbers would have to work out. "Do you really want to go without health care and a 401(k)?" asked online financial adviser group Betterment"s tax expert, Eric Bronnenkant.
Meanwhile, even lawyers, who are specifically excluded from the pass-through rules, could qualify by leaving their law firms and pursuing a position as an in-house counsel.
An end run works like this: A law partner, sick of the barricade to a kinder tax rate other pass-through people enjoy, moves over to be in-house counsel at an engineering firm, which is not on the ban list. "Now she"s no longer in a specified service," wrote Ari Glogower, a law professor at Ohio State University, on Vox.com. "Voila, she may qualify for the pass-through deduction."
As we pointed out earlier this week (see: Why Wall Street Is Furious At The Trump Tax Plan), for others who can"t game the pass-through system, like most of the traders earning big bucks on wall street, the best option might be to simply move from New York to a lower-taxed state like Florida or Texas.
Still others are considering a move to lower-taxed states like Florida and Texas which, as Todd Morgan, chairman of Bel Air Investment Advisors in Los Angeles notes, sounds like a great idea right to the point that you realize that actually entails uprooting your entire family and starting a whole new life in a different part of the country...something that generally doesn"t go over well with teenage kids..."If you’re already rich why would you move to another state and live a different life just to save some money on taxes? What are you going to do with the money? Buy more clothes? Eat more food?"
Finally, the tax bill could even influence decisions on if/when people decide to get a divorce. As Bloomberg points out, starting January 1, 2019 divorce suddenly becomes way more attractive for the recipients of alimony and punitive for payers as the payments will not longer be counted as income or allowed as a deduction.
Tax considerations are even changing for those getting a divorce.
Under the law, divorced taxpayers who pay alimony would no longer be able to deduct those payments from their income, and recipients of alimony would also no longer need to report the money as income. However, the provision doesn’t go into effect right away and instead applies to divorces finalized after Dec. 31, 2018. So, depending on whether you’re set to pay or receive alimony, you might want to speed up or slow down those divorce proceedings.
...which may or may not have been a clause specifically added by Melania...
Between 2000 and 2015, at least 207,468 minors were married in the United States.
As Statista"s Martin Armstrong notes, despite an overall fall in child marriage since 2000 (25,583 to 9,247), there are still a shocking number of young children legally married in the country. Only 14 percent married other minors, meaning 86 percent wedded an adult.
As the infographic below shows, the youngest to marry since 2000 were three ten year olds.
You will find more statistics at Statista
According to Frontline, the three girls married men aged 24, 25 and 31 in Tennessee in 2001.
While certain conditions have to be met before a minor can marry, and consent from a parent or judge is usually required, every state in the U.S. allows children to marry to some extent.
In Oregon and Nebraska, for example, the lower limit is set at 17.
In 26 states, there is no minimum age for marriage.
Authored by Marc Thiessen via PennLive.com,
There is a place for contempt in our public discourse.
We should have contempt for a regime in North Korea that brutalized a young American student named Otto Warmbier. We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children. We should have contempt for Islamic State terrorists who behead Americans, burn people alive in cages and systematically rape Yazidi girls.
But we should not have contempt for each other.
Yet, we do. Our politics today is descending into a bitter spiral of contempt. And we saw the consequences in the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, last week.
Back when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in 2011, many on the left were quick to blame conservative political rhetoric - falsely it turned out. But the attack on Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and his colleagues was politically motivated. The assassin volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called President Trump a "traitor" on social media and, according to witnesses, asked if the players were Republicans before opening fire.
No one is responsible except the would-be assassin. But his actions should serve as a wake-up call that the demonization of our fellow Americans who disagree with us has gone too far. The culture of contempt permeating our politics has now had near-fatal consequences. We need to put on the brakes and learn how to distinguish once again between our opponents and our enemies.
Case in point: A few weeks before the Alexandria shooting, Hillary Clinton gave a commencement speech at Wellesley College where she declared that Trump"s budget is "an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest." No, it is not. Using nerve agent on the innocent is "an attack of unimaginable cruelty." Putting a hapless college student into a coma is an "attack of unimaginable cruelty." Reducing the growth of government spending is not.
Think for a moment what Clinton was saying: It"s not simply that Democrats and Republicans have an honest disagreement about how best to help the most vulnerable among us. In Clinton"s telling, Republicans are waging war on the vulnerable. That is toxic.
No doubt, Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the "enemy of the American people," Mr. President). But since Trump"s election, the scope and scale of political contempt on the left have reached unprecedented heights. Just a few months ago, when President Barack Obama was in office, it would have been unimaginable for a comedian to proudly pose for a photo holding up the president"s bloody, severed head.
Worst of all, we are in the process of cementing these attitudes in the next generation. On college campuses, students are being taught that it is acceptable to treat with contempt those with different ideas. We saw this phenomenon on display when Charles Murray - a distinguished conservative scholar - was shouted down and assaulted at Middlebury College in a riot that sent a professor to the hospital. Not a single student suffered any real consequences. Similar incidents are taking place on campuses across the country. Young Americans are learning that people they disagree with are not to be listened to respectfully and debated; they are to be silenced and driven out of the public square.
This is not to suggest that there is no role for righteous anger in political discourse. Conservatives felt anger about many of Obama"s policies, and liberals have every right to be angry about Trump"s policies they find objectionable. And they have every right to fight like hell to stop them.
But it wasn"t so long ago that, despite bitter differences over policies, Republicans and Democrats still found ways to work together. President Bill Clinton and Republicans in Congress worked together to pass NAFTA and welfare reform. George W. Bush and congressional Democrats cooperated to pass tax cuts and education reform. Today, that kind of cooperation is unimaginable.
And the reason is simple: When anger transforms into contempt, permanent damage takes place. As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks points out, a marriage can recover from anger. But when couples become contemptuous of each other, they will almost certainly end up in divorce court. That is where our country is headed today.
Liberals need to understand: When they show contempt for Trump, they are expressing contempt for the millions of Americans who voted for him - including millions who twice voted for Obama. These Americans felt that the establishments of both parties were ignoring them and wanted to send Washington a message. The response they are receiving could not be clearer: We have contempt for the man you elected, and we have contempt for all of you who put him into office. They will never forget it.
We need to pull back from this spiral of contempt before it is too late. North Korea is our enemy. Our fellow Americans who disagree with us are not. It"s time we learn the difference - before someone gets killed.
As the minutes tick by ahead of the announcement of "the greatest tax cut in human history," we are getting more information on the personal tax rates (something Treasury Secretary Mnuchin failed to mention earlier). As Fox News reports, in addition to raising deductions, the Trump administration will collapse the current seven-tier bracket system into just three tax brackets under the new plan, taxed at rates of 35 percent, 25 percent and 10 percent.
As Fox News reports, President Donald Trump’s tax plan, which will be unveiled Wednesday, calls for a sizable increase to the standard deduction Americans can take when filing taxes, potentially allowing taxpayers to keep more of their income – to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, White House sources told Fox News.
A piece of the proposed tax overhaul would nearly double the standard deductions that both individuals and families can claim on their returns, Fox News reported. Under the proposal, the tax cuts for individuals and married couples filing separately will increase from $6,300 to $12,600. The standard deduction for a married couple filing jointly will jump from $12,700 to approximately $24,000.
White House sources also said the plan would eliminate the marriage penalty.
In addition to raising deductions, the Trump administration will collapse the current seven-tier bracket system into just three tax brackets under the new plan, taxed at rates of 35 percent, 25 percent and 10 percent... this is slighlty different than Trump’s previously proposed tax rates were 33 percent, 25 percent and 12 percent.
We look forward to hearing from Mnuchin and Cohn in an hour on the details... and of course any guesstimate at whether this will pass.
Did you know that the percentage of 18 to 34-year-old Americans that are married and living with a spouse has dropped by more than half since 1975? Back then, 57 percent of everyone in that age group “lived with a spouse”, but today that number has dropped to just 27 percent. These numbers come from “the Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood” report that was just released by the U.S. Census Bureau. Some are postulating that the reason for this dramatic cultural shift is a phenomenon known as “extended adolescence”, while others fear that large numbers of young men and/or young women are giving up on the concept of marriage altogether.
Instead of getting married and starting their own households, many young adults are deciding that living with Mom and Dad is the best approach. In fact, this new Census Bureau report found that one out of every three 18 to 34-year-old Americans is currently living with their parents…
According to the Changing Economics and Demographics of Young Adulthood report for 2016, one in three Americans ages 18 to 34 are living at home with their parents.
Coming in second place is living with a spouse (27 per cent), followed by other (i.e. living with a roommate or other relatives, 21 per cent), living with a boyfriend or girlfriend (12 per cent) and living alone (8 per cent).
Once the last recession ended, this trend was supposed to start reversing, but instead the number of young adults still living at home has just continued to increase. This is going to have very serious implications for our looming retirement crisis, and that is something that I am going to write about later today on End Of The American Dream.
And a lot of these young adults are not being productive members of society at all. In fact, this new report from the Census Bureau found that one out of every four 25 to 34-year-old Americans that are currently living at home do not have a job and they are not going to school either.
In other words, they need to get a life. I really like how a recent CNBC editorial made this point…
One of the most memorable Saturday Night Live sketches ever was broadcast in 1986 when guest host William Shatner played himself appearing at fictional Star Trek convention. After fielding one childish question after another from costumed fans in their late 20s and 30s, Shatner loses his cool and shouts: “GET A LIFE, will you people? I mean, for crying out loud, it’s just a TV show! … Move out of your parents’ basements! Get your own apartments and GROW THE HELL UP!”
Thirty-one years later, it sure seems like all of America needs to heed that message. Here’s why: The Census Bureau now says that more 18-34 year-olds are living with their parents than with a spouse.
But a lot of young men these days do not even want to go down the traditional route of marriage, family, career, etc.
In fact, a lot of them are forsaking the concept of marriage together. Author Suzanne Venker says that a lot of these men are blaming their lack of desire to get married on modern women…
“When I ask them why, the answer is always the same: women aren’t women anymore.” Feminism, which teaches women to think of men as the enemy, has made women “angry” and “defensive, though often unknowingly.”
“Now the men have nowhere to go. It is precisely this dynamic – women good/men bad – that has destroyed the relationship between the sexes. Yet somehow, men are still to blame when love goes awry.”
“Men are tired,” Venker wrote. “Tired of being told there’s something fundamentally wrong with them. Tired of being told that if women aren’t happy, it’s men’s fault.”
On the flip side, a lot of women are extremely distressed that so few men seem to have the willingness to commit these days. So many men just want to run around having sex with an endless series of women without ever putting a wedding ring on any of their fingers.
Of course many men figure that if they can get some of the best benefits of marriage (sex, companionship, etc.) without having to make a commitment then that is a pretty good deal for them.
Personally, I am a huge advocate of marriage, but the rest of society is moving in the exact opposite direction. According to the Pew Research Center, 44 percent of 18 to 29-year-old Americans now believe that “marriage is becoming obsolete”. And for a lot more numbers like this, please see my previous article entitled “43 Facts About Love, Sex, Dating And Marriage That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe”.
But of course not all young adults that are living at home are doing it for the wrong reasons. Thanks to our long-term economic decline, it is much more difficult for young people to find good paying jobs today than it was several decades ago. The following comes from CNS News…
“More young men are falling to the bottom of the income ladder,” says the Census Bureau study. “In 1975, only 25 percent of men, aged 25 to 34, had incomes of less than $30,000 per year. By 2016, that share rose to 41 percent of young men (incomes for both years are in 2015 dollars).”
I have absolutely no problem at all with young adults that are living at home temporarily for economic reasons. These Millennials are simply victims of our failing economy, and thus we should not be so quick to judge them.
And many of these young people graduate from college already saddled with tremendous amounts of debt.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the cost of going to college has increased by an astounding 63 percent since 2006. We assure our youngsters that they will get good paying jobs when they graduate that will enable them to pay off those student loans, but once they do finally graduate many of them are discovering that the good paying jobs that we promised them do not exist.
Today, Americans owe more than a trillion dollars on their student loans. It has become a major national crisis, and it is financially crippling an entire generation.
So the next time you hear of a young adult that is still living at home, don’t be so quick to judge until you know the facts.
Yes, there are many that need a good kick in the pants to get them going in life, but there are also millions that are simply victims of our ongoing long-term economic collapse.
