The IRS can issue Private Letter Rulings (which are anoymized but public so you could check if they treat a company preferentially - although not which company) and Advance Pricing Agreements.
Rulings from different countries are typically used to ensure no taxes are paid. E.g. get a ruling from the US that some activity is taxable in Luxembourg, and then get a ruling from Luxembourg that it's taxable in the US. Like McDonald's did. Either country will then say "well, it's up to the other country to tax that, I'm not policing that". Mostly after a while, multiple companies get clued in and it all gets exposed and the "loophole" is closed. E.g. a uble Irish with a Dutch Sandwich. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
This can be an honest error by one or both tax services, a strategic move (to be a "tax paradise" and prevent other taxable activities from leaving the country), or - one would speculate, allegedly - for political or personal gain.
Large companies cut deals with the government all the time.
When a large company wants to create a new plant somewhere, they go shopping for what state/city will give them the most favorable tax. Politicians throw in special exemptions, special tax credits, exclusivity contracts, all sorts of things.
Legally no, but in practice the president has been trying to assert the power to unilaterally levy taxes, even in spite of the supreme court ruling that you need the legislature to pass a tax. People still paid the tariffs. I would be extremely suprised if that's the only place this admin is trying to tax by fiat, and tax policy enforcemetn is far less visible than consumer tariffs.
This is the answer. The cartels would have to be insane to poke that particular bear. They would get crushed like a bug. IIRC they murdered a single US undercover officer in the 90s and the retaliation was so bad that they themselves handed over the perpetrators.
Much as I despise them, I'm not so sure that would be the case. I seem to remember folks saying the same about the Taliban, and the cartels have a lot more money and high-tech kit, than the Taliban.
The Taliban was repeatedly crushed. All of the leadership was killed many times over. The problem is the Taliban is an idea that transcends individual human members and it can always be reconstituted. It also benefited from being able to harbor supporters in Pakistan, which is a nuclear power the US was not willing to also invade.
There isn't a real analogy there because cartel leaders have no official state support anywhere, let alone in a bordering nuclear power, but even if they did, it hardly seems reassuring from their perspective to know the drug trade will outlive them after they all get killed. It's different when you're deeply religious and believe what you're doing is worth dying for and the larger arc of history is more important than your own life and wellbeing. I don't think drug lords think that way.
All this is true. Yet the cartels operate like militarized insurgents. Adopting similar tactics seen in Ukraine fighting so it’s interesting to say the least that they might be utilizing drone technology for their purposes.
I didn’t mean to start this giant thread about Mexican Cartels but here we are. Most think it’s just an isolated problem. Others know it’s more widespread. I simply stated that these murderous thugs are out there in full force with technology and armored vehicles. If provoked, they would lash out. It’s ridiculous because of course going up against the US is a losing proposition but each “generation” of cartel leader thinks they can somehow manage it.
I don’t think the technology matters nearly as much as the asymmetry. Iraq had better technology than the Taliban and their military didn’t last a week.
True enough, but the cartels are also experts at running what is basically guerrilla warfare, against each other. Not sure if the Mexican Army has ever tried to take them on. A lot of cartel soldiers come from the army.
* A conventional military war, on a battlefield: Neither Saddam Hussein's military nor the cartels nor the Taliban would last long against the US.
* An unconventional insurgency: The Iraqis quickly turned to this approach and it worked very well for them, as it did for the Taliban. The Taliban won, and the Iraqi insurgency almost drove the US out of Iraq and was eventually co-opted.
The cartels of course would choose the latter. They, the Taliban, etc. are not suicidal.
The US decided to leave because staying was not politically popular, and left. They were not beaten by the Taliban, they were beaten by the political climate at home.
If someone is actively kicking your ass, then they decide that you aren't worth the effort to keep hurting and decide to walk away, that doesn't mean you "won" the fight even if you get what you want afterwards.
The Taliban control what they and the US and allies fought for. That's winning. Your personal requirement of how it must be won is not important - nobody cares how it was done and it doesn't change the outcome. The Taliban don't care and the US and its allies don't care.
It's also a perfectly common, expected way to win a war: First, wars always end with political solutions. The most well known principle of warfare is that it is 'politics conducted by other means' (i.e., by violence rather than by law or diplomacy). If there is no political solution, the war never ends. That's why the US didn't win the war in Afghanistan after decades - they couldn't create a stable political solution because they were unable to impose one on the Taliban, who in the end imposed one on the US and its allies.
Victory by outlasting enemy resources, including political will, is fundamental to warfare; wars end when resources to fight (for the political outcome) run out, but few end in total kinetic destruction of those resources - someone runs out of money or political will. It's also the explicit strategy of insurgencies. Enemies of the US know it very well and have used it for generations - that is how North Vietnam won, for example. When the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Afghans famously told them, 'you have the clocks (the technology), we have the time'.
Annoying your parents until they give you a cookie is still getting a cookie. Just because you didn't leverage overwhelming military firepower to get the cookie does not mean you aren't holding a cookie
I think the key difference between the Taliban and the cartels is that the Taliban were a bunch of ideologues who actually enjoyed being an insurgency and living under siege in caves, with making money from the drugs trade being a mere means to their real purpose of fighting infidels, whereas the cartel leadership sees wealth and power from controlling the drugs trade as an end, crushing local rivals as a means, and would really rather avoid the sort of conflict that's bad for their medium term business prospects.
I mean, some sort of cartels would bounce back after any "war on drugs" because supply and demand, but the people running them aren't hankering for martyrdom or glory over consolidating their territory and accumulating.
How are they not rational? Violence is a tool. They operate an illegal business so they can’t sue other parties for breach of contract. They can't call the police if they are robbed or file an insurance claim for what was taken. Even the over-the-top violence has a rationale. They aren't punishing the victims as much as they are attempting to broadcast that there is a higher price to be paid than any gain from giving information, to reduce their future losses and enforcement efforts. It isn’t moral or ethical, but I wouldn’t say it is irrational.
Lots of organized crime around the world manages to operate without cutting all the limbs off somebody then arranging them like flowers in a "vase" made out of the poor soul's ribcage. The cartels take violence far beyond what is pragmatically necessary. Their system of crime breeds excessive violence and insanity.
This stuff mostly followed after the zetas. It was a very deliberate strategy to compete in a hostile landscape that others eventually copied to survive.
It's notable that a lot of the Zetas came from a military special forces background, making it seem as if their extreme brutality was a strategic choice inculcated during their training.
I would recommend reading the Freakinomics book or listen to their podcasts on drugs.
TL;DR: drug cartels are run like businesses. They are very rational. But, unlike your boss, their boss can also shoot you in the face if you annoy them too much
In any case that was a war against a hardened, experienced, determined enemy fighting for its freedom from any form of colonial occupation, both as a formal military and as an insurgent force in South Vietnam.
I scarcely think the Mexican population would rise up in defense of the cartels here.
A non-aligned population will look out for their own interests and are aware that the attention of the US is temporary but the cuadillismo that lead to cartels are a durable cultural artifact.
The Battle of Culiacán, also known locally as the Culiacanazo and Black
Thursday, was a failed attempt to capture Ovidio Guzmán López, son of Sinaloa
Cartel kingpin Joaquín "El Chapo" Guzmán, who was wanted in the United States
for drug trafficking.
Around 700 cartel gunmen began to attack civilian, government and military
targets around the city, despite orders from Ovidio sent at security forces'
request. Massive towers of smoke could be seen rising from burning cars and
vehicles. The cartels were well-equipped, with improvised armored vehicles,
bulletproof vests, .50 caliber (12.7 mm) rifles, rocket launchers, grenade
launchers and heavy machine guns.
The problem is you can't just target the cartels, the cartels are made up of random Mexican people. There is an almost guarantee that any significant US strikes would be 90%+ civilian casualties.
The destruction of cartels would involve careful policing and corruption controls, the best American administrations have been bad at this. The worst... can barely put its pants on much less dismantle foreign organized crime. You can't shoot a missile at a cartel and poof it's just gone.
They'd probably quickly stop cheering as their own homes and families were destroyed as collateral damage, which is what would happen if the "full force of the US military" were deployed against the cartels.
I don't really think you thought through that one. It sounds like what your saying is that the Vietnamese won and thats the outcome that matters. It does matter but that isn't the issue - it is the cost that everyone is talking about: the amount of destruction that was brought upon the country and people was terrible.
He's not just the leader, he's the primary beneficiary, and he's a blatant white supremacist. He's arguably responsible for the deaths of over 1 million people world wide from his short tenure shutting down USAID[0]. So yeah, I'd say its more than fine to take pleasure in his failings.
The Trump admin was very creative when it came to Harvard and figured out many different pressure points to push all at once. Don't expect it to be too simple. The guys running this have thought about avoiding the easy dismissal: https://www.ortecfinance.com/en/about-ortec-finance/news-and...
Just look at how the recent flag burning EO was worded in order to get around 1A concerns.
It is painfully obvious that this administration and their party do not care about the Constitution, or even the principles they were willing to die to defend just 2 years ago.
If Trump wants Wikipedia gone he'll just sue them or open an investigation that never needs to ever go before a judge. Then in return for dropping the suit/investigation all they need to do is make sure that a friend of MAGA sits on the board and can make sure that certain edits get approved and others don't.
People who are surprised by this or still assuming that he can't/won't do something because of the law or norms or "but then the Democrats will do X" need to wake the fuck up.
These people are going to do whatever the fuck they want under whatever justification they can cook up, and they don't fear any repercussions because they are not planning to turn over their new-found power to anyone else.
The Trump admin has a lot less leverage over Wikipedia, though.
The Wikimedia Foundation does not depend on US government funding and even if the US somehow made life difficult for donors, they are sitting on a substantial endowment fund that can float them for a long time.
And at some point, if the harassment gets to be too much, Wikimedia can just up and leave. There's no reason that the Wikimedia Foundation needs to be headquartered in San Francisco, it could just as easily be in Oslo or Paris. That's a huge advantage that Harvard didn't have.
I mean it is a "a pejorative term used to describe negative reactions to U.S. President Donald Trump..." How is having a page for that biased. And this is coming from some who has been described in the past (not anymore) of having TDS.
Negative reactions to a US president isn’t exclusive to Trump. Yet here is a page indicating that there is something special about a person not liking a US President named Trump.
Where is the Bush Derangement Syndrome? Where is the Biden Derangement Syndrome? Arguably this page owes everything to Obama Derangement Syndrome.
Wikipedia is not a source of original research or thinking. If prominent and reputable sources spoke about and coined these other terms there would be articles about them, or the article would be more generic.
Wikipedia exists in the context of the real world. All it does is reflect it. Deal with it.
I am dealing with it. I am informing people about the crap quality of content on Wikipedia. All I’m doing is reflecting the hypocrisy. You don’t like the fact that I can post my dissent online? Deal with it.
You haven’t informed anyone of any such thing. Wikipedia does not generate original concepts on purpose and you are complaining that an equivalent term exists for other presidents. Right now if Wikipedia was to create pages for those terms, _that_ would actually be bias as those terms aren’t widely used/don’t exist and would only be added to meet some people’s concept of “fairness” where if something bad happens to my side something bad has to happen to yours too
Edit: Also as someone else pointed out the page describes the origin of the term as evolving out of Bush Derangement syndrome being coined in 2003 and even comments on a Thatcher Derangement Syndrome phrase used after her death. The Trump Derangement Syndrome appears to be the main article because of the actual usage by government and in legislation
This is has to be ragebait by a pathetic troll. You haven't even read the first 4 lines of the page you've linked, where it refutes your argument that "this is specific to Trump". At least work a little on your clown material.
Bush Derangement Syndrome is covered (the writeup is linked to from the TDS article) but there is something special when republicans in multiple state legislatures have proposed _legislation_ on the subject of TDS, under that name, which would spend taxpayer money. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_derangement_syndrome#P...
>Where is the Bush Derangement Syndrome? Where is the Biden Derangement Syndrome?
I'd say not everybody was paying attention at the time, but these syndromes defintely exist, it's just that no former President actually did what it takes to reach this level of regard.
All kinds of people agree that Trump can not be matched in a number of ways, conservatves, progressives, independents, whether they are deranged or not.
With any syndrome it does take a lot of consenus but eventually it's foolish to deny.
Every Presdient has it, some are just more prominent and widely recognized than others.
For an even handed treatment, it should really include discussion of or a link to the propaganda technique of projection / accusation in a mirror, which is how that term came about to begin with. Derangement is a key element of Trump's support, because objectively none of his policies add up to any kind of effective plan, nor do they make sense in the context of American values of individual liberty. It's all just empty spectacle of look over here, you've been wronged, we're going to performatively attack the people who supposedly wronged you. By preemptively lashing out and gaslighting the actually-conservative group as "deranged" for merely reacting to the destruction, they obscure the obvious.
Yeah, I wrote this in a bit too short a hand to meet the critics where they sit...
There's an immense history of humans studying animal intelligence, which has tended pretty uniformly to find that animals are more intelligent than we previously thought at any given point in time. There's a very long history of badly designed experiments which surface 'false negative' results, and are eventually overturned. A common favor in these experiments is that the design assumes that animals have the same prescriptions and/or interests as humans. (For example, trying to do operant conditioning using a color cue with animals who can't perceive the colors. Or tasks that are easy of you happen to have approachable thumbs... That kind of thing.) Experiments eventually come along which better meet the animals where they are, and find true positive results, and our estimation of the intelligence of animals creeps slightly higher.
In other words, humans, in testing intelligence, have a decided bias towards only acknowledging intelligence which is distinctly human, and failing to take into account umwelt.
LLMs have a very different umwelt than we do. If they fail a test which doesn't take that umwelt into account, it doesn't indicate non-intelligence. It is, in fact, very hard to prove non-intelligence, because intelligence is poorly defined. And we have tended consistently to make the definition loftier whenever we're threatened with not being special anymore.
I don't want to be too inflammatory but seeing comments like this are what's poisoning AI to me more than the crappy products themselves. Of course the apology would suggest that, it would be business malpractice not to. However the history of results with these things shows otherwise so why put stock in the apology letter and not what has happened.
Also, sure people want that, but that doesn't mean it's a valid thing to want without putting the work in and once again, the history of these things being used shows that they don't really offer that. They offer the *feeling* of that which is good enough to get people's money, end products be damned. You could say the same thing about herion, tbh: "There are many people who don't wanna feel the crappiness of life, and these dealers are offering it."
> However the history of results with these things shows otherwise
Do you remember Will Smith's first video generated by AI compared to what Sora, Veo3, and Kling are doing now?
Do you remember first generated text by GPT-3 compared to new models? 2 years ago, there was no AI coding due to models' limitations, and now we have substantially better products that Cursor and others cannot cope with the demand.
If you can't see the progress, that's a personal thing; it doesn't mean others are not finding benefit.
It's hard to say the nuclear arms race is stopped when the US actively bombed a countries nuclear processing plants recently, and the US is also talking about building the Golden dome.
If the incentive is there, the technology will advance. I hear "we need to slow down the progress of technology", but that's misunderstanding _why_ it progresses. I'm assuming the slow down camp really need to look into what's the incentive to slow down.
Personally I don't think it's possible at this stage. The cat's out of the bag (this new class of tools are working) the economic incentive is way too strong.
