Reddit Politics Summary Thursday Dec 21st 17

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This is a digest of the top posts on reddit/r/politics over the last 24 hours.
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Charlottesville renames street after woman who was killed in white nationalist rally

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• James Alex Fields, the man accused of killing Heyer, was charged last week on 10 counts, including first-degree murder. Dozens of other counterprotesters were injured in the attack.

Donald Trump accidentally admits Republican tax bill was deceptively sold as boost to middle classes

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• Trump's second admission was about the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate being repealed in the bill. Apparently eager to argue that this constituted him having cut taxes and slew Obamacare in one fell swoop , he argued that repealing the individual mandate was basically the same as repealing Obamacare.

Jeff Sessions reportedly orders review of debunked Hillary Clinton claims, violating recusal vow

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• The decision to divert law enforcement resources to a debunked conspiracy theory against the woman who ran against Trump in the 2016 elections may appear to be a political decision aimed to settle scores or distract from the many ongoing investigations into Russia’s role in electing Trump. And it is just that appearance that one Jeff Sessions warned against in explaining his decision to recuse himself from these questions.
• Chuck Grassley , the committee’s chairman, whether he would formally recuse himself and turn such decisions over to a deputy attorney general, he said that he would. "I believe that would be the best approach for the country because we can never have a political dispute turn into a criminal dispute.

Mueller Is Looking Into a U.S. Foundation Backed by Russian Money

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• It was financed by $500,000 in donations, mostly from wealthy Russians with ties to Petr Katsyv, deputy director of Russian Railways and a longtime acquaintance of Prosecutor General Yuri Chaika. The foundation, called the Human Rights Accountability Global Initiative , offers a window into Russian efforts to influence U.S. politics before the presidential election.
• Vladimir Lelyukh, deputy general director of Sberbank Capital LLC, a subsidiary of state-controlled Sberbank, said he kicked in $50,000 of his own money to support Denis Katsyv.

CNN anchor gets House Republican to admit he communicated with the White House on Mueller

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• Asked by anchor John Berman if he’s "had conversations with the White House about the Mueller investigation," Jordan initially tried to talk over Berman and ignore the question. But under sustained grilling, Jordan eventually admitted that he has in fact discussed the investigation with Trump administration officials.
• If Jordan is taking cues from the White House with regard to the Russia investigation, he wouldn’t be the first congressional Republican used by the White House in an effort to exonerate Trump. Richard Burr were both enlisted by the White House to call members of the media and help tamp down media reports about the Trump’s campaign contacts with Russia. In February, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Sen.
• in attempts to challenge stories about alleged contacts between members of President Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives," the Washington Post reported. Burr and Nunes "made calls to news organizations...

We're the VICE News team that discovered police shoot people twice as often as previously known. Trump is walking away from reforms that could stop these shootings. Ask Us Anything!

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• In our report, we analyzed data from the 50 largest local police departments in the United States and revealed that police in these departments shoot black people at a higher rate and shoot unarmed people far more often than any data has shown. Cities that adopted reforms, including improved training and new policies around use of force and accountability, saw their number of police shootings decline by about 29 percent on average. We also found that under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump’s DOJ has stopped pursuing efforts that led to dramatic drops in these types of police shootings.
• Some police departments — we’re looking at you Seattle, Austin, and Cincinnati — were very transparent and either already posted the records on their websites or quickly responded to our requests for additional info.
• The Memphis Police Department required a Tennessee resident to file the records request, then asked for $3,300 unless the documents were reviewed in person at police headquarters." We actually sent somebody to Memphis to review those records, btw. An official in the Essex County District Attorney’s Office told us that Newark police likely didn’t keep a list of officer-involved shootings so that they could charge reporters fees to retrieve the case files. "The Detroit Police Department said it would take up to 3,120 business days and cost at least $77,532 to retrieve records that other departments made available online for free.

Deducting a CEO’s Jet, But Not a Cop’s Uniform

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• But in 2018, cops who buy their uniforms or are required to buy their own guns and ammunition will no longer be able to deduct those costs as reasonable and necessary expenses to support their earning a paycheck, thanks to Trump and Congressional Republicans.
• An earlier draft of the legislation eliminated this tax break, one of the reasons we reported earlier that the tax cut bill for the rich and businesses should be called the IDIOTS Tax Act of 2017 for Intellectual Destruction Initiative Outrageous Tax Savings.
• The tax cuts for those at the top cost more than that, so Trump and his allies on Capitol Hill had to take away tax breaks to offset the tax rate cuts.

The Republican Party Has Bowed, Completely, to the Mad King

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• After Wednesday’s extended carnival of sycophancy, in which the leaders of the institutions of American government did everything except toss a virgin into a volcano in tribute to the president*, it seems almost too obvious a thing to point out that the Republican Party has handed itself over to this president* as his personal chew-toy.
• On Thursday morning, for example, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, who previously recused himself from "all aspects" of the investigation into the Russian ratfcking of the 2016 presidential election, apparently has decided that the Uranium One "controversy" is not one of those aspects.
• There is an undercurrent of shared fantasy now driving a Republican Party that controls all the institutions of the government and can do pretty much anything it wants, as long as it doesn’t get in its own way, for which it also has something of a gift.

Puerto Rican governor vows to unseat House GOP in 14 states for raising his island’s taxes

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Discussion Megathread: Congress votes on GOP Tax Bill

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• The violation of the so-called Byrd Rule forced the Senate to strip those provisions from the bill and vote on a different version than what passed the House, that vote passing after midnight on Wednesday.
• No one, including the authors, understand the scope of the loopholes and unintentional distortions that are baked in, we are simply going to have to discover them all together.
• In the past there have been things like special bonus depreciation, so we tell our clients "buy your new equipment this year because you'll be able to deduct more of it right away", or changes related to retirement accounts so we can tell our clients "you have to roll your money into a Roth this year to get a special tax break", etc. This is an absolute nightmare for accountants because our jobs, the laws we abide by and use to advise clients, are going to completely change in 11 days and we don't know what they'll say. It's just a fucking nightmare to think I'm going to spend my Christmas reading a tax bill and all next week scrambling to figure out how it will affect my few dozen clients. Even the people who wrote this bill have no idea what it will do anymore because they've been adding and removing provisions and reworking parts until the last second.