In any sane society, the government would make paying taxes easier for everyone and provide free online ability to do so. But we are talking about the US where private for-profit companies buy the legislature and prevent necessary services to its citizens so that they are forced into paying for things they should get free.
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Iran has admitted that it shot down the Ukrainian airliner flight 752 that resulted in the deaths of 176 people and has issued an apology.

A military statement on state TV early on Saturday blamed “human error” for the downing of Ukraine International Airlines flight 752 on Wednesday in the tense aftermath of strikes on US targets. It was followed by an apology from Iran’s president and condolences from the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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The Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, wrote: “A sad day. Preliminary conclusions of internal investigation by armed forces: human error at time of crisis caused by US adventurism led to disaster. Our profound regrets, apologies and condolences to our people, to the families of all victims, and to other affected nations.”

The plane was mistaken for a hostile target after it turned towards a sensitive military centre of the Revolutionary Guards, according to the military statement, carried on the official IRNA news agency.

“The military was at its highest level of readiness” amid the heightened tensions with the US, it said, adding: “In such a condition, because of human error and in an unintentional way, the flight was hit.”

Iranian president Hasan Rouhani has called the shooting an “unforgivable mistake”.

In addition to the many deaths that are deliberately caused which are bad enough, the conditions of war and the heightened tensions result in tragedies of this kind happening, such as the shooting down by the Soviet Union of the Korean Air 007 in 1983 during the Cold War that resulted in 269 deaths and the shooting down by the US of the Iranian Airbus 655 during the Gulf War in 1988 that killed 290 people.

I cannot repeat it enough. War is a sign of madness.

This profile of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says that her outspokenness and progressive views means that she has few friends in Washington, that cradle of the corporate-military-political establishment, but that does not bother her.

As the rest of the world has changed, Congress remains a place of traditions. Even the chaos merchants — the Ted Cruzes and Rand Pauls and tricornered tea-party Republican congressmen — still end up playing by the rules as laid out by the leadership. Ocasio-Cortez, at least so far, has not. She is at once a movement politician and a cultural phenomenon, someone equally at home on CSPAN and Desus & Mero. She isn’t especially interested in compromising with those who don’t share her values, and isn’t afraid to be the lone “no” vote, as she was last January, when she was the only Democrat to vote against funding the government because it meant continuing to fund ICE. Twelve months later, it is clear she isn’t trying very hard to amass power in Congress. Her heroes are Bernie Sanders, who withstood party pressure decade after decade in the Senate, and Howard Thurman, a mentor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s who believed in merging the spiritual and political.

“People come here, and they have served in state legislatures or they may have been executives for health-insurance or fossil-fuel companies or lobbyist groups or PACs, and they’re part of this whole club,” she said.
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If Donald Trump had hoped that his killing of Iranian general Qassem Suleimani would be a big boost for his popularity by generating jingoistic sentiment and taking attention away from his impeachment troubles, then he will be disappointed.

A majority of those surveyed, by 52%-34%, called Trump’s behavior with Iran “reckless.”

Americans were divided on the wisdom of the drone strike at the Baghdad airport last week that killed Soleimani and others: 42% supported it, 33% opposed it; 25% said they didn’t know what to think. Republicans were much more supportive than Democrats; independents were almost evenly split.

But there was overwhelming agreement – in each case by more than 6-1 – that the attack made it more likely Iran would strike American interests in the Middle East (69%), that there would be terrorist attacks on the American homeland (63%), and that the United States and Iran would go to war with each other (62%).

By 52%-8%, those polled said the attack made it more likely that Iran would develop nuclear weapons.
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Changing society’s entrenched views on anything usually takes a long time and the people who first propose new progressive ideas that advocate for major social changes are treated with casual dismissal, if not outright ridicule. But over time, if other people join in and take up the mantle, change can happen.

We have seen that with Bernie Sanders. Many of the things that he proposed in the 2016 election campaign such as Medicare for All, reducing the outrageous levels of inequality by imposing much more progressive tax rates, and the need to get rid of the corruption of politics by big-moneyed interests, were dismissed as outlandish even by members of his own party. But now those are mainstream within the party, with all the presidential candidates signing on to one or the other form of them, varying only in the details and in their desire to retain some of the status quo
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