Write-offs are deductions from income, not reductions in taxes owed. They only get to deduct the taxes they would have paid if they had kept the donations.

Let’s imagine their annual income was $10,000,000. Their nominal tax rate would have them owing $2,100,000.

If they received a $100,000 in donations, that would make their income 10,100,000. But with the donations they could write off the 100 grand, reducing their tax bill by $21,000, for a total of $2,100,000.

Either way, they pay the same in taxes with or without the donations.

That’s not how tax deductions work. All the write-offs allow is for them to not count the money donated as income, so they make the same amount of money on the sale whether or not you donate.

The benefit to the company is PR or donating to a non-profit with a mission that aligns with their corporate goals. For instance, Bass Pro may ask you to donate to wildlands preservation non-profits that maintain environments in which people fish and hunt.

He said rape is bad, but also any sex outside of marriage is bad.

So, by his logic, raping someone is no worse than getting consent if you aren’t married.

Was hoping to open the article and find out that it was an exaggerated clickbait headline and he was just doing laundry.

I should never hope when it comes to Republicans.

Insurance companies make deals with hospitals along the lines of “We’ll pay 1k for this procedure which should cost 300 bucks, or 40% of your standard rates, whichever is lower.” So the standard rate becomes $2500.

Then the insurance company will require a 40% “copay” based on the standard rates, and the patient ends up paying the $1000 and the insurance company doesn’t pay shit despite collecting hundreds a month in premiums.

If you tell them you don’t have insurance they’ll frequently discount the fee to the $300 it should cost.

You have to stay with the agency several years. The plan is to fire them before paying.

I suppose we could make Flock feeds into porn sites…

I used to be the liberal gun salesman in a store full of right-wing crazies. I ended up being one of the top salesmen because word of mouth got around that I was there and didn’t spend the whole time being a dick and talking about how evil liberals and gay people were.

She’s one of a few the Republicans have had strategically vote against the party when her vote wasn’t needed to pass a bill. Basically her, Murkowski, and for a while McCain, until he really bucked the party with the ACA vote and became a pariah until his death.

Engaged people typically do have a ring.

Super PACs are so 2012. In 2024 SCOTUS ruled that officials are allowed to accept “gratuities” so long as they don’t directly say it’s a bribe.

Unless it’s for the President. Then they can just say it’s a bribe.

4mph is close to the maximum speed in downtown Austin traffic.

It’s Austin. The traffic is so shitty you can’t go fast enough to get in a wreck most of the time.

I live in the area, and can confirm anecdotally that the Teslas are bad drivers and the Waymos generally are excellent.

That’s what happens when the boomers refuse to let go.

Bilbo Baggins is in the files. By conflating “in the files” with “took part in the crimes” a lot of innocent people will be falsely accused.

And that’s the point.

Trump and team want so many innocent people to be called out that it provides cover for the guilty.

It matters in digital signals more than I expected.

A bad-quqlity HDMI cable over a long run will start getting a bunch of noise on some of my displays that shows up as random green specs popping off due to signal loss, whereas better cables will give a clean signal.

And back when more broadcasts were analog and I ran tech for a road show, I’d occasionally pick up random stations on poorly-shielded cables that would get amplified by powered speakers. The cables essentially became antennas. Though I haven’t run into that in over 20 years.

Poorly-shielded cables and speakers also used to have a lot of issues with cell phones. Anyone else remember the series of 3-beeps you could sometimes hear on speakers a few seconds before a phone in the room started ringing?