Hasta La Gadget!

White House press secretary Sean Spicer apologized Tuesday for his remarks on the Holocaust, telling CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that his comments during a White House press briefing were a “mistake.”

Discussing the use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime on Tuesday, Spicer argued that Adolf Hitler “didn’t even sink to using chemical weapons.” (That is false: The Nazis, under Hitler’s leadership, gassed millions of Jewish people in concentration camps.) 

After attempting several times to clarify his remarks and facing intense backlash from lawmakers and organizations like the U.S. Holocaust Museum, Spicer appeared on Blitzer’s show to offer an apology.

“I was obviously trying to make a point about the heinous acts that Assad had made against his own people last week using chemical weapons and gas, and frankly, I mistakenly used an inappropriate and insensitive reference to the Holocaust, for which, frankly, there is no comparison. And for that I apologize. It was a mistake to do that,” he said. 

“Did you not know, Sean, that there were gas chambers where the Nazis brought Jews and others … to slaughter them in these poison gas chambers at Birkenau near Auschwitz and other death camps?” Blitzer asked. 

“Yes, clearly I’m aware of that,” Spicer replied. “Again, as I said initially, and there’s no attempt to clarify this, the point was to try to talk about the use of aircraft as a means by which Assad was using to gas his people, but it was a mistake to do that. And that’s why I should have just stayed on topic.”

When Blitzer asked Spicer if President Donald Trump had pressured him to apologize, the press secretary said the decision was his own.

“I realized that I had made a mistake and did not want to be a distraction to the president’s agenda and the actions he’s taken [in Syria],” he said. 

Spicer didn’t acknowledge Democrats’ calls that he step down. Instead, he said he intends to “stay focused on Assad” in any further discussion of the Syrian conflict.

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Roku fans have another treat this week aside from getting Sling TV’s Cloud DVR functionality. Assuming you opt in, the latest software version (7.6) will use Automatic Content Recognition to listen to what broadcast programming you’re watching and su…

GoPro has announced a new trade-up program designed to get consumers to upgrade to the latest action camera models. Under this program, which is open to all GoPro owners, the company will give either $50 or $100 off the price of a new GoPro camera in exchange for turning in an older model. Any old GoPro model can be returned … Continue reading

Imagine a tax scam so outrageous that even Donald Trump admits it’s inexcusable. Hard to believe, I realize, but it’s all on tape right here – along with more information about how organizers are sidestepping the cash-drunk powers that be in Washington and working to put billions of dollars back into state budgets.

The scam is called the carried interest loophole and its beneficiaries are private equity partners and hedge fund moguls – aka virtually everyone in the Trump Administration. Now that he’s in office, Trump isn’t touching it, which surprises exactly no one.

The carried interest loophole allows partners at private-equity firms and hedge funds to treat a big portion of their income as capital gains – that is, as profit on the sale of an investment. Capital gains are taxed at 20 percent, plus a 3.8 percent surtax typically. Compare that to the tax rate for ordinary income – salaries earned by the rest of us – which is 39.6 percent, and you see the problem.

The rational justification for carried interest is nonexistent. The term itself comes from the 12th century when ship captains where paid by percentages of the sale of the cargo they carried. The idea, which was eventually enshrined in the tax code, was to encourage certain kinds of investments by rewarding those who took risks to build businesses. How that got twisted to reward private equity and hedge fund partners who make the vast majority of their millions in fees is lost to history.

There is one billionaire who claims that the carried interest loophole is good for America because it gives him the money to support philanthropy. Beyond that single example of hubris so mind-blowing you would be forgiven for thinking it is satire, there is virtually no one who will defend carried interest on any rational terms. There is an effort every year in Congress by Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Rep. Sander Levin to get rid of it and even some halfhearted support from one or two Republicans but nothing gets done.

Meanwhile, $15.6 billion that could be going to schools, to clean energy investments, to repairing our nation’s crumbling infrastructure, instead sits in the vaults of multimillionaires.

Fed up with congressional inaction, states are now getting serious and creative about the issue. They can’t change federal tax law, but they can mitigate the damage it does by “repatriating” lost revenue. Some are well into the process, pushed along by Hedgeclippers and other groups standing up for the rest of us.

Several eastern states and Illinois are already well along that path with legislation that taxes the carried interest income of hedge fund and private equity partnerships headquartered in their states.

New York’s proposal would get around this congressional inaction by raising state income taxes on private equity and hedge-fund partners who live in New York. The increase would be equal to the tax savings they receive from using the loophole at the federal level. The aim is for the tax increase to take effect once various states have closed the loophole. That way, the tax could not be avoided by moving to a neighboring state.

Closing the loophole would raise $3.7 billion a year in New York. Estimated annual revenue would be $938 million in Massachusetts, $535 million in Connecticut and $112 million in New Jersey.

Labor, community and activist groups are building coalitions to spread the movement to other states including California, DC, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Ohio and Minnesota. Check out how much money each state stands to gain here. Then check out the Hedgeclippers and see how you can help.

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Jian Ghomeshi, the disgraced Canadian radio host, has reemerged with a new podcast three years after being fired from the CBC after he was accused of sexual assault by several women. 

Needless to say, people are not here for it. 

Ghomeshi has been relatively quiet since he was acquitted of four charges of sexual assault in a Canadian court last year, following a highly publicized trial that included damning testimony from three accusers. Among the allegations were that Ghomeshi, 49, had “non-consensual” rough sex with an ex-girlfriend. 

On Monday, Ghomeshi tweeted a link to his new podcast, called “The Ideation Project” from a brand new Twitter account.

Reactions from people on Twitter ranged from calling out the justice system for alleged rapists like Ghomeshi to go free, to quite bluntly encouraging potential listeners to ignore the podcast completely:

Linda Redgrave, one of the women who accused Ghomeshi of assault, told Canada’s Global News on Monday that it’s “just too soon” for Ghomeshi to be returning to the public eye, and described the podcast as a “slap in the face.”  

“I found it very triggering … re-experiencing the trial in my head, re-experiencing the trauma. I wasn’t ready for it,” Redgrave said.

The first episode of “The Ideation Project” is a six-minute podcast on “exiles.” Redgrave believes the subject had an underlying message. 

“It sounded more like he was trying to make it about Trump and about cultures and being exiled,” Redgrave added. “But what I heard from it was, ‘I will not be exiled.’ That’s what I personally took from it. ‘I will not be exiled and here I am.’”

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