Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Trump Tax Plan
Bloomberg | author | date

Trump's vision for reducing the tax burden on U.S. companies and workers will require deep cuts and hard math. Here's full coverage.

White House economic adviser Gary Cohn said the Trump administration is willing to negotiate on one of the core revenue raisers in the Republican tax overhaul framework -- ending the state and local tax deduction -- potentially exacerbating the deficit impact of the plan.

Cohn told Bloomberg TV on Friday that ending the state and local tax deduction is "not a red line" for the White House in a tax revamp. The GOP plan unveiled Wednesday contains an estimated $5.8 trillion in tax cuts. ... Read more

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Stuck Taxpayers For $12,000 Charter Flight
HP | Willa Frej | 009/29/17

Commercial travel didn't fit his schedule, a spokeswoman said.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and several staffers chartered an oil company plane for a flight from Las Vegas to Zinke's home state of Montana in June, costing taxpayers $12,375, according to reports.

Zinke's expensive travel puts him on a growing list of Trump administration officials who have been using taxpayer dollars to fly on non-commercial planes.

He and several staffers flew on a Beechcraft King Air 200 from Las Vegas, where Zinke had a speaking engagement, to Montana on June 26, an internal calendar obtained by Politico revealed. The plane, according to The Washington Post, belongs to Nielson & Associates, a Wyoming-based oil-and-gas exploration firm. The Interior Department paid for the charter. ... Read more

Exclusive: Russians Impersonated Real American Muslims to Stir Chaos on Facebook and Instagram
Daily Beast | Ben Collins | 09/27/17

Kremlin trolls stole the identity of an authentic U.S. Muslim organization--first to smear John McCain and Hillary Clinton, then to sing her praises.

The Facebook group United Muslims of America was neither united, Muslim, nor American. Instead, sources familiar with the group tell The Daily Beast, it was an imposter account on the world's largest social network that's been traced back to the Russian government.

Using the account as a front to reach American Muslims and their allies, the Russians pushed memes that claimed Hillary Clinton admitted the U.S. "created, funded and armed" al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State; claimed that John McCain was ISIS' true founder; whitewashed blood-drenched dictator Moammar Gadhafi and praised him for not having a "Rothschild-owned central bank"; and falsely alleged Osama bin Laden was a "CIA agent." ... Read more
Russian Troll Army Impersonating US Muslims On Facebook | TYT | 09/28/17 | 10:47

Machine Intelligence: We Need a National Strategy
TheAtlantic | Emma Kinnucan | current

On Thursday, July 20, China's State Council released the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Development Plan. Numbering nearly 40 pages, the plan lays out China's aspirations in impressive detail. It introduces massive investment that aims to position China at the forefront of technological achievement by cultivating the governmental, economic, and academic ecosystems to drive breakthroughs in machine intelligence. To achieve these goals, the Council aims to harness the data produced by more the internet-connected devices of more than a billion Chinese citizens, a vast web of "intelligent things."

The plan also details the strategic situation precipitating the need for a bold new vision: "Machine intelligence [is] the strategic technology that will lead in the future; the world's major developed countries are taking the development of AI as a major strategy... [We] must, looking at the world, take the initiative to plan [and] firmly seize the [technology] in this new stage of international competition. ... Read more

Trump's Nine Russia Scandals (#127) | Keith Olbermann | 09/28/17 | 10:00