How Can You Tell There Are Russian Troops in Syria? Just Look for Some Soldier Selfies
Although Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied that he is sending troops to Syria, selfies taken by Russian soldiers and posted on social media are telling a different story.
Russian investigative journalist Ruslan Leviev reports that an increasing number of experienced Russian troops have been deployed to a naval maintenance facility in Tartus, along Syria’s Mediterranean coast. His source? Status updates and photos posted on Russia’s two biggest social networking sites by members of the 810th marine brigade, an infantry force in the Russian navy.
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One photo Leviev found is of a career soldier named Mazhnikov, who appears to be at the naval facility in Syria. Another soldier, Anatoly Golota, also a member of the 810th brigade, updated his status on the Russian version of Facebook with the words, “Off to Syria :)).”
Russia has not denied that it’s been supplying weapons to the Syrian government and helping train the Syrian military. But Putin knows that combat troops are a different story.
The naval maintenance facility at Tartus is small, and in the past has been manned by just a handful of personnel. Leviev reports that the number of troops stationed at the facility is growing, and the troops are experienced contract soldiers, not draftees.
Videos uploaded to social media sites have raised concerns that Russian troops might be involved in combat inside Syria, according to an article in Foreign Policy. However, beyond the footage, which shows a Russian-made BTR-82A armored vehicle firing its gun in Syria, no other substantial evidence of active combat involving Russian troops has been found.
While the marines may or may not be directly involved in the fighting, the presence of Russian troops in Syria shows how hard Putin is pressing for a victory by the Assad regime. Now if he can just teach his soldiers how to avoid giving themselves away on social media.
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Two conservative groups are spending millions to promote an overhaul of the tax code.
The American Action Network announced Thursday that it will spend $2 million on a new TV ad featuring a Midwestern mom who says her family is “living paycheck to paycheck” and that a middle class tax cut would give them “piece of mind.” The ad will air in 28 congressional districts currently held by Republicans. Americans for Prosperity, backed by the Koch brothers, will spend $4.5 million on ads that promote tax reform while criticizing three red-state Democratic senators -- Claire McCaskill (MO), Tammy Baldwin (WI) and Joe Donnelly (IN).
Some States Will See Dramatic Obamacare Price Hikes in 2018
Premiums for Affordable Care Act policies are set to rocket higher in many places in 2018. Many of the rates for next year won't be made public until November, but The New York Times found that Georgia has already approved increases of up to 57.5 percent, while the average rate in Florida will jump by about 45 percent and the average in New Mexico will climb by 30 percent. Minnesota, on the other hand, announced this week that a new state reinsurance program has helped stabilize rates and price changes for individual plans in the state will range from a decrease of 38 percent to an increase of 3 percent.
Confusion stemming from the White House and Congress, including uncertainty about whether the Trump administration will continue to make cost-sharing payments to insurers, is largely driving the increases. Keep in mind, though, that about 85 percent of people who buy insurance through Obamacare exchanges won’t feel the price hikes because their plans are subsidized — but the federal government will have to shell out more for those subsidies.
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The National Association of Home Builders says it's open to changes to the mortgage-interest deduction — a major policy shift that could have significant implications for the Trump administration's proposed tax reform, Politico's Lorraine Woellert reports. The break benefiting homebuyers was preserved as part of the tax framework released last week, but the reform plan also calls for increasing the standard deduction, a shift that would make the mortgage interest deduction less valuable. The National Association of Realtors last week criticized the administration's plan, even though it left the mortgage tax break in place. "This proposal recommends a backdoor elimination of the mortgage interest deduction for all but the top 5 percent who would still itemize their deductions," the group's president said.
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Treasury Pulls a Paper That Contradicts Mnuchin’s Corporate Tax Argument
The Treasury Department has taken down from its website a 2012 analysis that found that business owners and shareholders — not workers — bear most of the burden of corporate taxes. The findings of the report run counter to the argument Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has been making in selling the benefits of a reduction in the corporate tax rate. The Trump administration’s tax reform framework calls for dropping the corporate rate from 35 percent to 20 percent.
The 2012 report from the Office of Tax Analysis found that “workers pay 18 percent of the corporate tax while owners of capital pay 82 percent” — figures that are “in line with many economists’ views and close to estimates from the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation and Congressional Budget Office,” according to The Wall Street Journal.
A Treasury spokeswoman told the Journal: “The paper was a dated staff analysis from the previous administration. It does not represent our current thinking and analysis.”
Jason Furman, who was chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, tweeted that the goal of the technical paper series that included the removed study “was to be more transparent about the methodology Treasury used for its modeling and analysis.”
Treasury website has 40+ yrs of Tax Working & Technical Papers. This is the only one removed https://t.co/QzLTSHderk https://t.co/MFZRd7HoFQ
— Jason Furman (@jasonfurman) September 29, 2017