Trail Mix

Thanks to Trail friend BiD for sharing this with us last night, a good idea that’s found its time:

Sanders-Warren plan would tax the rich to increase Social Security by $2,400 a year | Salon.com

The Social Security Expansion Act, introduced by Sanders, I-Vt., and Warren, D-Mass., in the Senate and by Reps. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., and Val Hoyle, D-Ore., in the House, would put an additional $2,400 in beneficiaries’ pockets each year and ensure the program is fully funded through 2096.

The bill would accomplish this by lifting the cap on the maximum amount of income subject to the Social Security payroll tax—a change that would not raise taxes on the 93% of U.S. households that make $250,000 or less per year, according to an analysis conducted by the Social Security Administration at the request of Sanders.

Currently, annual earnings above $160,200 are not subject to the Social Security payroll tax, which means that millionaires will stop contributing to the program later this month. The legislation proposes lifting this cap and subjecting all income above $250,000 per year to the Social Security payroll tax. If enacted, the bill would have raised more than $3.4 billion from the nation’s top 11 highest-paid CEOs alone in 2021, including $2.9 billion from Tesla and Twitter executive Elon Musk.

Weatherwise, war-wise, workwise and worse-wise for some.

Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections | Cybercrime | The Guardian

A team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media has been exposed in a new investigation.

The unit is run by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who now works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”, and appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.

He is being unmasked by an international consortium of journalists. Hanan and his unit, which uses the codename “Team Jorge”, have been exposed by undercover footage and documents leaked to the Guardian.

[…]

Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others describe as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe.

One of Team Jorge’s key services is a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims. It controls a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube. Some avatars even have Amazon accounts with credit cards, bitcoin wallets and Airbnb accounts.

The consortium of journalists that investigated Team Jorge includes reporters from 30 outlets including Le Monde, Der Spiegel and El País. The project, part of a wider investigation into the disinformation industry, has been coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a French nonprofit whose mission is to pursue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed reporters.

“What the World Needs Now” Music by Burt Bacharach, Lyrics by Hal David for Virtual Orchestra

They never should have called them “mop heads.”

*For all of you out there who don’t really follow sports, an armchair coach is someone who has no affiliation with a given team other than for the fact that they call themselves a “fan” and feel that they know a thousand times more about football (or whatever sport it is) than the entire coaching staff combined.