Simple. They played the long game. Ever since FDR's 'New Deal,' the old money ultra-wealthy oligarchs have done everything in their power to destroy it, including a coup plot that blew up in their face (Wall Street Putsch). They combined their forces with a Christian Nationalist movement with designs to turn the US into a fascist Protestant theocracy (Project 2025). {The British should have scuttled the Puritans's ships.} These groups combined with Silicon Valley billionaires, hoping to score a huge billionaire tax break renewal, as their windfall tax break that Trump had helped pass in his first term was expiring, to bring Trump back to office.

Of course, the Democratic Party making sure to shoot itself in every single toe, along with both of its feet, helped things along. But I believe that was more hubris and incompetence than a conspiracy. They believed they couldn't lose against the seemingly unelectable Trump and acted like it all the way until election night. And in doing so, helped crown him. It's also why they were such a disorganized mess after Trump took office. In their hubris, they thought they were untouchable. Being proven wrong shook them to their core. Though, they seem to have learned all the wrong lessons from their defeat... again. They seem unwilling to comprehend that it's their sucking up to the big banks and billionaire class that's at the core of their growing unpopularity. They're supposed to be the party of the people, and the GOP the party of bankers and corporate elites. One of the GOP's biggest coups was Reagan making rural southern farmers and suburbanites believe that the GOP served their interests. And with the Dems sucking the billionaire teat, they've never been able to disprove the lie.

The GOP has excelled in getting people to vote against their interests. You have to give them credit where credit's due. They played the long game and fooled half of the American people. Well done. And the Dems? With a few exceptions, they're all a bunch of morons with god complexes. Well, both parties are, but one is clearly better organized.

I was coming here to post this exact thing. I remember the Cupertino campus posting sentries outside to warn employees when he was coming so they could all get to their desks and 'look' busy. He had a habit of firing people for walking in the halls for a power trip, and if you spoke to him without being spoken to first, automatic termination. He was a petty, pathetic tyrant who got his jollies by bullying people who couldn't stand up to him, refusing to acknowledge he ever had a daughter, and denying the genius of Apple was anybody's achievement but his. (Sorry, but the other Steve was the genius, not you, Jobs.) Good riddance to bad rubbish.

The IRS has been trying to implement such a system for decades, but the tax filing lobby and their (mostly) GOP allies have killed it time and time again and are threatening to do so once more with Trump's so-called 'Big Beautiful Bill'. (Really, just how obsessed with Biden [and Obama] is Trump?!) There's little to no need for commercial tax filing software for most people. The only people who require a professional tax preparer are people who itemize their deductions. Mostly, these days, that's business owners, or people with extensive medical bills.

I looked it up and the pay per view price of the world cup looks upwards of ~$30 for the game itself and ~$2.50 per lead up game. Note, this is in addition to your normal cable rate, which may be between ~$125-200 if you have sports packages (many cable companies won't allow you to drop sports packages, because of how much money they make off them). And, if you are a sports fan, many games aren't shown anywhere but cable, making games impossible to watch legally if you're a cord cutter. The entire industry is a rip-off and people are finally waking up to this fact.

I'd think an 'Epstein Special' is far more likely. Miss Teen USA contestants (by definition, under 18) complained that Trump, after buying the pageant, would come into their changing room and stare at them. This has gotten lost against things like pictures of him arm in arm with Epstein and all the other shit he's pulled. Maybe that's the point?

Hate to break it to you, but most illegals pay taxes. There are who separate state and federal departments who deal with false social security numbers just for this reason. Most have been advocating for assigning ID numbers to all immigrants, regardless of immigration status, just to deal with this issue. Part of the reason is the penalties for tax evasion, but most illegals don't want to commit a crime, period, even if it's one caused by a failure of the system. Some, because they don't want to jeopardize any chance of becoming a US citizen, but mostly because immigrants, like most people, are law-abiding citizens. The only reason they broke the law to enter the country was because their own circumstances were so dire. People don't abandon everything and walk away with little more than the clothes on their back for the hell of it. It requires pretty dire conditions. Just think what it would take for you to do that, and you'll get a pretty good picture.

Disclosures: I used to work as a tax preparer, and a former girlfriend worked for California's Franchise Tax Board's Duplicate Social Security Number office.

You're suggesting they spend $30 for a quality connector when the CEO can buy a bigger yacht? What are you? A communist?!

Sucking a billionaire's cock. What else? There's a reason they've abandoned nearly all their progressive positions and instead aligned with Reaganomics, for the most part.

Hint: It is usually found with sentences starting with, "Those people..." But, then again, that assumes you're listening at all.

They're all cheering for it because they think it'll never be directed at them. Of course, by the time they're proven wrong, it'll be too late.

Because there's a horde of MAGA people on here downvoting anything remotely anti-Trump.

The problems is, now the Ads division basically runs all of Google. They're the only department, apart from, maybe, legal, that can send directives to the other divisions of Google that must be adhered to. This accelerated after the DoubleClick purchase. At this point, Google is an Ad company that happens to make some secondary products to support the ads.

As an American, I support this message (and your tagline).

No, they didn't 'intentionally' lose billions of dollars. What they did do was use financial strategies that would artificially boost short-term profits at the cost of long-term stability. They gambled that they could weather it, and we lost. Which is something fundamentally broken about the system. If you steal $20, it's theft. If you steal $20 million, that's capitalism, hand's off (unless they stiff the shareholders, then they get the book thrown at them). It's a classist double standard that should be illegal.