US Politics: Corporations are made out of people

[Shryke]

Silent Cal Coolidge was the anti-Obama in all things:

If only we would elect a solemn ass as president, but I doubt that could be done today.

Coolidge would look at our selfie-taking president and shake his head.

That's because Coolidge would wonder what a n****r was doing in the White House.

[Prince of the North]

Hey, you'll never guess what the House ended up voting for wrt Obama's requested money to deal with the "crisis" at the border. While screaming about how Obama wasn't doing anything about it.

Definitely not surprising (after all, we've seen this show before). This seems to me to be President Obama jumping through this particular hoop, knowing full-well what the vote would be, before doing what he was going to do anyway. Isn't he already on record as saying he would by-pass congress on this? I'll be interested to see what he does now and, good for him, I'm all for by-passing the obstructionists.

[Suttree]

Hey, you'll never guess what the House ended up voting for wrt Obama's requested money to deal with the "crisis" at the border. While screaming about how Obama wasn't doing anything about it.

I didn't realize a vote had taken place?

Love too how they are ignoring the fact that it's a law Bush the lesser signed and the war on drugs that is largely causing the problem in the first place.

RR

The surge of children across our southern border has turned into another partisan attack. House Judiciary Committee Chair Bob Goodlatte charges that "Obama created this disaster at our southern border” by allowing undocumented kids to stay in America. Baloney. The children who have streamed into the U.S. in recent months aren’t even eligible for the new program. In reality, they’re here mainly because of the “war on drugs” that’s moved from Mexico southward into El Salvador and Honduras – forcing thousands of teenagers to either risk their lives working for the drug lords, be killed, or flee to the north. The truth that no one in Washington wants to face is that the violence now consuming much of Central America is a consequence of Americans’ demand for drugs, combined with our criminalization of them. Unless or until we decriminalize and regulate these substances -- rather than wage this violent, futile, and never-ending “war” on them -- we’ll further empower and enrich criminal cartels across Central America while creating an ever-larger refugee crisis along the U.S.-Mexican border.

[MerenthaClone]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/10/10/want-a-better-economy-history-says-vote-democrat/

• Personal disposable income has grown nearly 6 times more under Democratic presidents
• Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown 7 times more under Democratic presidents
• Corporate profits have grown over 16% more per year under Democratic presidents (they actually declinedunder Republicans by an average of 4.53%/year)
• Average annual compound return on the stock market has been 18 times greater under Democratic presidents (If you invested $100k for 40 years of Republican administrations you had $126k at the end, if you invested $100k for 40 years of Democrat administrations you had $3.9M at the end)
• Republican presidents added 2.5 times more to the national debt than Democratic presidents
• The two times the economy steered into the ditch (Great Depression and Great Recession) were during Republican, laissez faire administrations

The strength of the free, unregulated market, y'all.

[BloodRider]

What the hell. Fuck that guy.

[The Marquis de Leech]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/adamhartung/2012/10/10/want-a-better-economy-history-says-vote-democrat/

The strength of the free, unregulated market, y'all.

Forgotten trivia: the annual rate of job growth under Jimmy Carter (yes, that Jimmy Carter) was the fourth best of any Presidential term since WWII, trailing only Johnson 1965-1969, Clinton 1993-1997, and Reagan 1985-1989 (Carter was better for jobs than Clinton's second term or Reagan's first):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_created_during_U.S._presidential_terms

Which ironically means the correct answer to "Are you better off than four years ago?" is, in terms of jobs, a quite solid 'yes'.

[Inigima]

It never ceases to amaze me how much political savvy the left completely lacks, and the utter inability to ever accept anything less than 100percent of what they want

The existence of the ACA itself debunks this in hilarious fashion. You are delusional.

[Paladin of Ice]

So, the 2008 and 2010 elections gave us a whole class of Republican governors, many of whom were seen as potential emerging stars who took their states often in a sharply right direction and pushed through a wish list of Republican policies, especially with regards to taxes. Lets see how that's working out:

Kansas governor Sam Brownback's tax cut has turned Kansas from having a surplus into a deficit, forcing it cut services after dropping 700 million in revenue in a single year, lagging behind on job growth.

After the cuts became law, it was undisputed that Kansas's revenue collections would fall. But some supply-side analysts, like economist Arthur Laffer, argued that increased economic growth would deliver more revenue that would help cushion this impact.

Yet it's now clear that the revenue shortfalls are much worse than expected. "State general fund revenue is down over $700 million from last year," Duane Goossen, a former state budget director, told me. "That's a bigger drop than the state had in the whole three years of the recession," he said — and it's a huge chunk of the state's $6 billion budget. Goossen added that the Kansas's surplus, which had been replenished since the recession, "is now being spent at an alarming, amazing rate." You can see that in this chart (the surplus is cumulative, not yearly):

Kansas has to balance its budget every year, so when that surplus runs out, further spending cuts will be necessary. The declining revenues have necessitated extensive cuts in state education funding, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Moody's cut of the state's bond rating this May was another embarrassment. And the economic benefits Brownback promised haven't materialized either. Chris Ingraham wrote at Wonkblog that Kansas's job growth has lagged behind the rest of the country, "especially in the years following the first round of Brownback tax cuts."

Brownback currently has a 33% approval rating and is trailing his opponent in the polls.

Scott Walker in Wisconsin promised to bring 250,000 new jobs to Wisconsin by 2015, (which the more astute pointed out was the minimum number of new jobs expected to come about regardless of what was done politically, making it a worthless number) now it looks like he won't hit that number, growth in the state is significantly lower than it was before Walker took office, hiring has trailed behind both the national and regional average.

The definitive national jobs report that came out recently confirmed how badly Wisconsin's economy continues to sputter under the stewardship of Gov. Scott Walker.

In 2013, as in every year since Walker became governor, job growth in Wisconsin significantly trailed the national average and Wisconsin ranked just 37th among U.S. states in the rate of employment growth. Taking all three years (so far) of Walker's tenure as a whole, employment in Wisconsin grew at just 59% of the national rate.

What's more, Wisconsin under Walker has posted the slowest job growth rate among the seven neighboring Great Lakes/Midwestern states: about half the growth rate of states such as Michigan, Minnesota and Indiana, and a growth rate lower than even much-maligned Illinois.

...

far from "taking off like a rocket," as Republican leaders predicted, Wisconsin's employment performance — relative to the national growth rate — actually deteriorated after the recall. Other partisans have blamed the Obama administration's macroeconomic and health care policies for Wisconsin's woes, an odd explanation since the national economy has created jobs at a 40% faster clip than the Wisconsin economy since Walker took office.

Another perspective, offered recently by the Journal Sentinel Editorial Board, is that Wisconsin's underperformance shouldn't be attributed to Walker or his policies because sluggish job growth is really a long-term trend in which Wisconsin "has consistently trailed the national average." This is factually incorrect. In four of the nine years before Walker took office, Wisconsin outgained the national rate of job growth; going back further, in nine of the 20 years before the Walker administration, Wisconsin outperformed the national average.

Indeed, in 2010, the year before Walker became governor, Wisconsin's rate of job growth was 42% higher than the nation's, in large measure thanks to an unprecedented surge of federal expenditures in the state (in part, from the Obama stimulus that Walker and his allies loudly opposed). In 2013, by contrast, Wisconsin's growth rate was 40% lower than the national rate, and preliminary 2014 data indicate that Wisconsin continues to lose ground, with a job growth rate over 60% lower than the national rate between January and May 2014. Whatever the long-term trends, relative employment growth changed sharply for the worse in Wisconsin in 2011.

In Louisiana, Bobby Jindal's tax cuts have resulted in it choking off state revenue. In 2013 tax collection revenue was still 12.5% lower than it was in 2008, while the average for the other 49 states was 7.9% higher. This has led to incredibly sharp cuts in state funding for infrastructure, health care, and especially higher education. The state spending for colleges has dropped almost 37% between fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year 2013, (page 6) which has had to be made up by rapidly raising tuition costs by about 50%. Good luck to any poor kids trying to get a bachelor's degree and improve their lives, especially since congress likes slashing Federal Student Aid as well.

Texas frequently brags about low taxes and the low cost of starting a business, but it turns out that in Texas, taxes are only low on the very wealthy and big business. Also, Texas has extremely limited chance for upwards social mobility.

This comparatively low level of net domestic migration to Texas is consistent with another little-appreciated fact that runs counter to the conservative narrative about the Texas Miracle. It is that, for most Americans, as well as for most businesses, moving to Texas would not mean paying less in taxes, and for many it would mean paying more.

Oh yes, I know what you’ve heard. And it’s true, as the state’s boosters like to brag, that Texas does not have an income tax. But Texas has sales and property taxes that make its overall burden of taxation on low-wage families much heavier than the national average, while the state also taxes the middle class at rates as high or higher than in California. For instance, non-elderly Californians with family income in the middle 20 percent of the income distribution pay combined state and local taxes amounting to 8.2 percent of their income, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy; by contrast, their counterparts in Texas pay 8.6 percent.

And unlike in California, middle-class families in Texas don’t get the advantage of having rich people share equally in the cost of providing government services. The top 1 percent in Texas have an effective tax rate of just 3.2 percent. That’s roughly two-fifths the rate that’s borne by the middle class, and just a quarter the rate paid by all those low-wage “takers” at the bottom 20 percent of the family income distribution. This Robin-Hood-in-reverse system gives Texas the fifth-most-regressive tax structure in the nation.

Middle- and lower-income Texans in effect make up for the taxes the rich don’t pay in Texas by making do with fewer government services, such as by accepting a K-12 public school system that ranks behind forty-one other states, including Alabama, in spending per student.

Moving a business to Texas also turns out to have tax consequences that are inconsistent with the conservative narrative of the Texas Miracle. Yes, some businesses manage to strike lucrative tax breaks in Texas. As part of an industrial policy that dares not speak its name, the state government, for example, maintains the Texas Enterprise Fund (known to some as a slush fund and to others as a “deal-closing” fund), which the governor uses to lure favored businesses with special subsidies and incentives.

But most Texas businesses, especially small ones, don’t get such treatment. Instead, they face total effective tax rates that are, by bottom-line measures, greater than those in even the People’s Republic of California. For example, according to a joint study by the accounting firm Ernst & Young and the Council on State Taxation, in fiscal year 2012 state and local business taxes in California came to 4.5 percent of private-sector gross state product. This compares with a 4.8 percent average for all fifty states—and a rate of 5.2 percent in Texas. With the exception of New York, every major state in the country, including New Jersey, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota, has a lower total effective business tax rate than Texas. If you think that means Texas might not offer as much “liberty” as advertised, well, you’re right.

The same study compares how much businesses in different states pay in taxes for every dollar they get back in government-provided benefits. Using methodology developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the study first allocates public spending between households and businesses. Certain expenditures, such as for health care and welfare, are treated as benefiting only households; others, such as for police, fire, and highway transportation, are treated as benefiting businesses as well. The big question mark here is how to treat education spending, since businesses differ in how much education they require from their workers. But regardless of how that allocation is made, California businesses as a whole still get a far better deal on their taxes than those in Texas.

In the San Francisco Bay Area, for example, children who grew up in families in the bottom fifth of the income distribution had only a 12.2 percent chance of rising to the top fifth as adults ... In the greater Austin area, children who grew up in families of modest means had only a 6.9 percent chance of joining the top fifth of earners when they became adults; in Dallas, only 7.1 percent; in San Antonio, just 6.4 percent. Yes, Texas offers more chances for upward mobility than places like Detroit and some Deep South cities like Atlanta. Yet the claim that Texas triumphs over the rest of America as the land of opportunity is all hat and no cattle. Children raised in the postindustrial wasteland of Newark, New Jersey, during the 1980s, it turns out, had a better chance of going from rags to riches than did children born in Houston, which was the best city in Texas for upward mobility during that time.

[Ormond]

That's because Coolidge would wonder what a n****r was doing in the White House.

Calvin Coolidge might well be surprised that a man of African descent was elected President in 2008. However, the implication from this comment that he would be displeased by that fact seems to be incorrect given what we know about his own racial attitudes, including a letter he wrote sharply disagreeing with someone who protested the fact that a black man had been nominated for Congress as a Republican in New York:

http://www.theblaze.com/contributions/calvin-coolidge-and-civil-rights-the-rest-of-the-story/

A relevant paragraph from Coolidge's letter:

Our Constitution guarantees equal rights to all our citizens, without discrimination on account of race or color. I have taken my oath to support that Constitution. It is the source of your rights and my rights. I purpose to regard it, and administer it, as the source of the rights of all the people, whatever their belief or race. A colored man is precisely as much entitled to submit his candidacy in a party primary, as is any other citizen. The decision must be made by the constituents to whom he offers himself, and by nobody else. You have suggested that in some fashion I should bring influence to bear to prevent the possibility of a colored man being nominated for Congress. In reply, I quote my great predecessor, Theodore Roosevelt: “. . . I cannot consent to take the position that the door of hope—the door of opportunity—is to be shut upon any man, no matter how worthy, purely upon the grounds of race or color.”

[awesome possum]

So, the 2008 and 2010 elections gave us a whole class of Republican governors, many of whom were seen as potential emerging stars who took their states often in a sharply right direction and pushed through a wish list of Republican policies, especially with regards to taxes. Lets see how that's working out:

Kansas governor Sam Brownback's tax cut has turned Kansas from having a surplus into a deficit, forcing it cut services after dropping 700 million in revenue in a single year, lagging behind on job growth.

Brownback currently has a 33% approval rating and is trailing his opponent in the polls.

I saw that the other day. His excuse for Kansas's ills? Obama's federal policy.

[Queen Ayras Lord Commander]

Always blame Obama, AP.

You could be a Republican Congressman caught banging a stripper right next to church alter while doing lines of blow off her tits and just say, "Obama's policies made me do it!" The right will love you and protect you for this (here's to you David Vitter!)

[DanteGabriel]

We're on page 22, new thread is here:

http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/113944-us-politics-trickle-down-economics-and-trickle-up-dysfunction/

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

RBPL,

Forgotten trivia: the annual rate of job growth under Jimmy Carter (yes, that Jimmy Carter) was the fourth best of any Presidential term since WWII, trailing only Johnson 1965-1969, Clinton 1993-1997, and Reagan 1985-1989 (Carter was better for jobs than Clinton's second term or Reagan's first):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_created_during_U.S._presidential_terms

Which ironically means the correct answer to "Are you better off than four years ago?" is, in terms of jobs, a quite solid 'yes'.

You can't look at that number in isolation. It was coupled with double digit inflation. Inflation, and then the hostage crisis, are what undid Carter.