US Politics: the Moore things change...

[Mlle. Zabzie]

So, in other news, looks like there is a tax deal.  21% corporate rate.  No AMT.  Top individual rate of 27%.  More to come.  Probably mostly horrifying.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

5 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

So, in other news, looks like there is a tax deal.  21% corporate rate.  No AMT.  Top individual rate of 27%.  More to come.  Probably mostly horrifying.

27% or 37%?

[Mexal]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

27% or 37%?

37%. Must be a typo. Rubio can't get an expanded child tax credit for people making 40k a year but the agreement is to lower millionaire's taxes by 2.5% when the House bill kept the top tax bracket and the Senate bill had it at 38.6%. Unreal.

[aceluby]

2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Of course he isn't. He's a clown like the rest of them. But, anyway, might as well grab the popcorn and watch as these two buffoons go at it.

And while were at it, I don't consider David French all that credible. Of course, what we've got here is conservatives trying to point the finger at someone else, when they should take a hard look at themselves. I mean if Trump completely flames out, I won't be surprised if conservatives don't try to change their tune and be like "uh, well, I never liked the guy. And anyway he wasn't a true conservative".

That's been their only play for 40 years.  The only 'true conservative' they've had in 100 years is Reagan.

[lokisnow]

The big takeaway here is that the Alabama template for African American gotv and registration efforts is a template for mississippi and Tennessee in particular.

also given their smaller populations democrats need to devote a ton of resources to registration and gotv in Nebraska and Wyoming.

we can amplify these results by surging down ballot races as well. We need a candidate in every single race, as every race adds people voting, and that means drives up turnout. 

Voting is a habit so we need to work these states with gotv and registration hard in the 2018 primaries, because it builds a habit for then voting in the midterms.

we should not concentrate on Texas, that is the last priority.

that is because it is too populous, and its intense anti voter registration legislation.

remember, per Texas law you can't register voters unless you're a Texas resident.

per Texas law you can't register voters unless you take a class

per Texas law the class is only held once per month and if it fills up you're shit out of luck 

per Texas law the class will only be held in places only accessible by car and only during hours and days when it's unlikely anyone will be able to attend.

And even if you jump through those hoops to be certified to legally register voters:

per Texas law, at the end of every Even  numbered year, your ability to register voters expires and you must go through the whole process again.

so while we should be registering voters in Texas simply to build up a base, it's literally impossible to flood the state with voter registration efforts. 

[Sivin]

South Dakota Senator: We need a Republican majority to do big things like healthcare and tax reform. I guarantee that if a democrat majority was in place these things wouldn't be happening. 

America: That's the point. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, Mexal said:

I mean, I understand what you're saying but I'm not really that worried about it. In a State that Clinton lost by 30 pts, Jones won a Senate seat. That's extraordinary. Yes, Moore, being a terrible candidate helped, but so did the mobilization of the Democratic base, the same mobilization we've seen in every election so far this year. In addition, this is a good article to read about the common threads between these different races. 

Big picture, I get what you’re arguing. I just think this race is especially interesting, and a deep dive could reveal a lot or nothing. I’m trying to get back to the science part of political science.

21 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Bannon looks like the most obvious loser in all this - he supported the one Republican who could lose a Senate seat in Alabama.  Luther Strange was a forgettable Republican, and he almost assuredly would have defeated Jones by ~10 points.  Mo Brooks also would have.  Virtually any Republican could.  Bannon's anti-establishment mantra meant ignoring all warnings about Moore as "just the swamp trying to protect their own" rather than common sense that Moore was a horrible, horrible candidate. 

So Bannon has no choice but to blame McConnell for Moore's failure.  And he's (sort of) right, that if Republicans had been 100% united behind Moore, they could have made Republican voters less likely to defect.  Shelby in particular said he believed the accusations against Moore, and would have to vote for someone else. 

But Bannon's argument is somewhat self defeating.  He wants a Republican party that is totally impervious to facts and decency, that will vote in lockstep for Moore because all allegations against him are false, because he said they were false.  If the Republican party were totally united in this way, then they wouldn't need the Bannon insurgency.  They would already be a party totally beyond reason.  As it stands, most Republicans were able to hold their nose and support Moore.  But many Republicans, particularly in Congress, could see that Bannon is already planning to unseat them, and that Moore is the kind of toxic candidate that can drag his peers down.  So it's no surprise that McConnell and most of the Republican Senate wanted to distance themselves from Moore. 

Totally agree with your breakdown. I just wanted to highlight that the dam is about to break and then the long awaited civil war will begin.

11 minutes ago, Mexal said:

37%. Must be a typo. Rubio can't get an expanded child tax credit for people making 40k a year but the agreement is to lower millionaire's taxes by 2.5% when the House bill kept the top tax bracket and the Senate bill had it at 38.6%. Unreal.

That’s what I figured, but it wouldn’t have shocked me if the Republicans tried to sneak that through.

[denstorebog]

Heh, I forgot all about it, but there was an Iowa state special election yesterday as well. Republicans won it by 8.

Fly in the ointment, you say?

Trump won the district by 41.

[OldGimletEye]

Martin Wolf evidently rejects Say's Law,  has a problem with loanable funds theory, and evidently people like Tyler Cowen, and then goes totally Post Keynesian (ie the anglo-Italian version)

Not bad for a guy that started his career as a Neo Liberal.

Maybe very relevant for our own corporate taxes, though its largely about Japan.

https://www.ft.com/content/2b9f4180-de74-11e7-8f9f-de1c2175f5ce

Quote

Why is Japan finding it so difficult to raise inflation to its 2 per cent target? Why has its monetary policy become so extreme? 

Quote

The more important point is that the government’s persistent deficits are simply the mirror image of the private sector’s huge and persistent financial surpluses. 

This very interesting. It’s almost like Wolf is doing the stock flow analysis that Post Keynesian or the so called Cambridge Keynesians (anglo italian keyneisans  ie think Kaldor,Pasinetti, etc.) favor. The jist of this is that stock of savings generated is going into government bonds. The government has to create debt in order to satisfy private demand for it.

I view it kind of like, corporations or whatever, feel they don’t have good investment projects. So they look to put their savings into cash or super safe assets. The private market, for variety of reasons, can’t produce enough of these safe assets, so the public sector has to create them in order to stabilize demand, particularly once the natural rate gets pushed down.

And I look at something like this:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=g85x
And wonder if even standard models, which don’t find “tax cuts pay for themselves” are being too generous in their estimates.

Quote

The solution is not to tax consumption, as respectable opinion suggests. The solution is to tax savings. 

In other words corporate taxes may prevent companies from holding too large monetary balances or safe assets. That's unless of course your a Say's Law/ simple loanable funds sort of person.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

46 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

27% or 37%?

37. Fat fingers on phone. 

[S John]

46 minutes ago, lokisnow said:

The big takeaway here is that the Alabama template for African American gotv and registration efforts is a template for mississippi and Tennessee in particular.

also given their smaller populations democrats need to devote a ton of resources to registration and gotv in Nebraska and Wyoming.

we can amplify these results by surging down ballot races as well. We need a candidate in every single race, as every race adds people voting, and that means drives up turnout. 

Voting is a habit so we need to work these states with gotv and registration hard in the 2018 primaries, because it builds a habit for then voting in the midterms.

we should not concentrate on Texas, that is the last priority.

that is because it is too populous, and its intense anti voter registration legislation.

remember, per Texas law you can't register voters unless you're a Texas resident.

per Texas law you can't register voters unless you take a class

per Texas law the class is only held once per month and if it fills up you're shit out of luck 

per Texas law the class will only be held in places only accessible by car and only during hours and days when it's unlikely anyone will be able to attend.

And even if you jump through those hoops to be certified to legally register voters:

per Texas law, at the end of every Even  numbered year, your ability to register voters expires and you must go through the whole process again.

so while we should be registering voters in Texas simply to build up a base, it's literally impossible to flood the state with voter registration efforts. 

Nevermind, misread the post.

[Maithanet]

1 minute ago, S John said:

Where did you get that? What class? I never had to do anything like that and I just got my renewed Texas voter registration card in the mail last week and I did literally nothing to make that happen.  I originally registered to vote in Texas during the process of getting my Driver's license same as I have done in all the other two states (and DC) where I've lived as an adult resident.

I think he means you cannot go out and help other people register without taking a class.  Citizens do not need to take a class to register to vote, that would be unconstitutional. 

[Paladin of Ice]

1 hour ago, Maithanet said:

Bannon looks like the most obvious loser in all this - he supported the one Republican who could lose a Senate seat in Alabama.  Luther Strange was a forgettable Republican, and he almost assuredly would have defeated Jones by ~10 points.  Mo Brooks also would have.  Virtually any Republican could.  Bannon's anti-establishment mantra meant ignoring all warnings about Moore as "just the swamp trying to protect their own" rather than common sense that Moore was a horrible, horrible candidate. 

So Bannon has no choice but to blame McConnell for Moore's failure.  And he's (sort of) right, that if Republicans had been 100% united behind Moore, they could have made Republican voters less likely to defect.  Shelby in particular said he believed the accusations against Moore, and would have to vote for someone else. 

But Bannon's argument is somewhat self defeating.  He wants a Republican party that is totally impervious to facts and decency, that will vote in lockstep for Moore because all allegations against him are false, because he said they were false.  If the Republican party were totally united in this way, then they wouldn't need the Bannon insurgency.  They would already be a party totally beyond reason.  As it stands, most Republicans were able to hold their nose and support Moore.  But many Republicans, particularly in Congress, could see that Bannon is already planning to unseat them, and that Moore is the kind of toxic candidate that can drag his peers down.  So it's no surprise that McConnell and most of the Republican Senate wanted to distance themselves from Moore. 

I think Bannon has made a typical ideologue's mistake, and assumed that most people view and prioritize things exactly the way he does deep down, and being surrounded by his fanboys and radicalized converts has reinforced that impression. This has led him to assume he has much greater reach and influence than he does, and now that perception is running headfirst into reality.

Reevaluating his perceptions would call into question the causes he has dedicated himself to and whether they can be achieved, so I doubt he does it, and probably goes ahead (at least partly) with his primary all Republicans and try to have Breitbart displace Fox News as the main news source/propaganda arm of the right wing.

As was said before, may he have just as much luck in his endeavors as he did in Alabama.

[denstorebog]

Just to keep the sugar high going, there's a really interesting Monmouth Trump approval poll out today - mainly interesting because of the Monmouth trend throughout 2017:

March: 43/46
May: 39/53
July: 39/52
August: 41/49
September: 40/49:
December: 32/56

Gotta wonder what's going on here - if this is the tax bill working its magic.

(Their GCB was +15D, no trendline to compare to.)

[Maithanet]

Just now, denstorebog said:

Just to keep the sugar high going, there's a really interesting Monmouth poll out today - mainly interesting because of the Monmouth trend throughout 2017:

March: 43/46
May: 39/53
July: 39/52
August: 41/49
September: 40/49:
December: 32/56

Gotta wonder what's going on here - if this is the tax bill working its magic.

(Their GCB was +15, no trendline to compare to.)

Was just about to post about that.  Trump has had several bad polls this week.  It is hard to say why his popularity has gone down recently, but it could be:

 - The tax giveaway for the wealthiest Americans

 - Supporting a pedophile for Senate

 - His NSA pleading guilty to a felony

 

Under most presidents, any one of those things would be a huge blunder.  But Trump goes big.  So Much Winning! 

[Fragile Bird]

I tried to quote Kalbear's post 6 pages back, but it wouldn't load.

In honor of last night's win and the fact this thread title is totally totally wrong, I think it should be changed to "Quoth the voter, Never Moore".

 

[SkynJay]

I know Gerrymandering is a state issue, as are many of the voter suppression tools.  So what could be done at the federal level to support the right to vote if the Dems were able to take all three branches again.  I've have heard federal holiday for elections thrown out but i fail to see that helping the poor and working class voter.

Could a national ID card help?  Can some state level suppression be stopped by federal laws?  What else am i missing?

[A True Kaniggit]

1 minute ago, SkynJay said:

I know Gerrymandering is a state issue, as are many of the voter suppression tools.  So what could be done at the federal level to support the right to vote if the Dems were able to take all three branches again.  I've have heard federal holiday for elections thrown out but i fail to see that helping the poor and working class voter.

Could a national ID card help?  Can some state level suppression be stopped by federal laws?  What else am i missing?

You wouldn't even need a federal holiday. Just start holding the elections on weekends. 

[Morpheus]

'Member that time the Republicans unknowingly had a child molester in their midst and then they wrote letters defending his character after everything was revealed

https://nypost.com/2017/12/12/ex-speaker-hastert-barred-from-being-left-alone-with-minors/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPTwitter&utm_medium=SocialFlow

[Fragile Bird]

Another woman has tweeted about Trump. The wife of former hockey star, now president of the LA Kings, Luc Robitaille, said 20 years ago she was at Madison Square Garden in the elevator with Trump, when he was 'aggressive', told her she was coming home with him, and in her reply to her telling him she was married to Luc, said he guaranteed he made more money.

Cuz women will leap into the bed of a rich man, right?

"I was once on a elevator alone with [Trump] (& a man w/him) at Madison Square Gardens (sic)," Stacia Robitaille wrote. "He was aggressive & told me I was coming home with him. I laughed, stating I was married to a Ranger. He guaranteed me my husband didn’t make as much money as him. #ThisIsOurPresident

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/sports/nhl/wife-of-nhl-hall-of-famer-luc-robitaille-tweets-about-elevator-encounter-with-donald-trump/ar-BBGFFZh?li=AAadgLE&ocid=spartanntp