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U.S. Politics: Alabama Jones and the Template of Doom


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10 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Told you it wouldn’t take much for Rubio to budge. He got his political stunt and now can claim a meaningless victory. I guess that means Lee will be a yes now too.

He wasn't looking for much to begin with, and he got some of it. He never wanted to vote no.

My bigger question is whether the bill is still going to be Byrd compliant. From what's been said, everything that's changed has made the bill more expensive, except for a slight change to the corporate tax rate. Unless they've raised lower/middle individuals' income taxes even more, or phased out the individual cuts even faster (which they claim they didn't), I don't see how the bill is going to follow Byrd or the original reconciliation instructions.

If Republicans were competent at legislating they'd have ensured the bill still is, and maybe they have. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if they haven't; and that'd throw a big wrench into things since the conference report has already been approved by house and senate negotiators.

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13 minutes ago, Fez said:

He wasn't looking for much to begin with, and he got some of it. He never wanted to vote no.

My bigger question is whether the bill is still going to be Byrd compliant. From what's been said, everything that's changed has made the bill more expensive, except for a slight change to the corporate tax rate. Unless they've raised lower/middle individuals' income taxes even more, or phased out the individual cuts even faster (which they claim they didn't), I don't see how the bill is going to follow Byrd or the original reconciliation instructions.

If Republicans were competent at legislating they'd have ensured the bill still is, and maybe they have. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if they haven't; and that'd throw a big wrench into things since the conference report has already been approved by house and senate negotiators.

Technically I think the answer is no, but they won’t respect it and I’ve seen a few conservative articles that argue that it’s more of a suggestion than a hard Senate rule (I’m not really sure what the answer is). But the bolded is what’s key. Every .1% represents $10b over 10 years, so if they come in a little over $1.5T, they can just bump the corporate rate up a little to make the math work. And really, I don’t think the corporate world would care. What’s the difference between a 21% rate and a 21.5% rate when you’re still getting a 13.5% cut? Either way they’re making out like bandits.

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11 minutes ago, Mexal said:

Never good when the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee thinks the investigation is going to get shut down.

 

Could be a net positive, politically speaking. I’m skeptical that anything would come from the House investigation anyways, given that the Republican members have made it obvious that they’re not interested in pursuing a real investigation. Closing the investigation in a shady way does two things. First, in would give the Senate a kick in the backside to do their job, and the Republican members there have taken their oversight role more seriously. Second, it would be a boon for Democratic House candidates, and if they can retake the House, they can run an actual investigation.

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24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Could be a net positive, politically speaking. I’m skeptical that anything would come from the House investigation anyways, given that the Republican members have made it obvious that they’re not interested in pursuing a real investigation. Closing the investigation in a shady way does two things. First, in would give the Senate a kick in the backside to do their job, and the Republican members there have taken their oversight role more seriously. Second, it would be a boon for Democratic House candidates, and if they can retake the House, they can run an actual investigation.

You could be right. In the end, they had no teeth anyway. The amount of " I can't remember or it's privileged" meant nothing could truly ever be learned.

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www.washingtonpost.com
Three months into the longest blackout in U.S. history, Puerto Ricans are in limbo. Millions still have no safe water, schools remain shut and the tasks of daily life are exhausting and dangerous. Full electricity may be months way.

 

 
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Corker's announced he will vote yes on tax bill next week. I don't know what's changed his mind, if anything the bill will be even worse for the national debt than the first time around, when he voted no. And with no other announced no votes, there didn't need to be any pressure on him to flip.

All I can think of is that there is real doubt of whether McCain and Cochran will make the vote. If they missed it and Corker voted no, Collins would have the decisive vote and she could start asking for whatever she wanted.

So yeah, unless there's an extremely unexpected revolt in the House, it looks like this thing is passing.

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2 hours ago, Mexal said:

You could be right. In the end, they had no teeth anyway. The amount of " I can't remember or it's privileged" meant nothing could truly ever be learned.

That and the assertion of attorney-client privilege and the number of closed door hearings. They really should be doing them out in the open if nothing classified is going to come up.

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1 hour ago, Fez said:

Corker's announced he will vote yes on tax bill next week. I don't know what's changed his mind, if anything the bill will be even worse for the national debt than the first time around, when he voted no. And with no other announced no votes, there didn't need to be any pressure on him to flip.

All I can think of is that there is real doubt of whether McCain and Cochran will make the vote. If they missed it and Corker voted no, Collins would have the decisive vote and she could start asking for whatever she wanted.

So yeah, unless there's an extremely unexpected revolt in the House, it looks like this thing is passing.

Collins, or really any other Republican senator, could halt things up if both senators are unable to vote due to illness.

Also, I get why Republicans want to pass a tax bill, but why this flaming piece of garbage? The polling on it is terrible:

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American voters disapprove 52 - 25 percent of the Republican tax plan. Republican voters approve 60 - 15 percent, with 26 percent undecided. All other party, gender, education, age and racial groups disapprove. 

The wealthy would mainly benefit from this tax plan, 61 percent of American voters say, while 24 percent say the middle class will mainly benefit and 6 percent say low-income people would mainly benefit. 

American voters say 59 - 33 percent that the Republican tax plan favors the rich at the expense of the middle class. 

Only 16 percent of American voters say the Republican tax plan will reduce their taxes, while 35 percent of voters say it will increase their taxes and 36 percent say it won't have much impact on their taxes. 

Only 36 percent of voters believe the GOP tax plan will lead to an increase in jobs and economic growth, while 52 percent do not believe it. 

American voter opinions on some of the elements of the Republican tax plan are:

  • 49 - 45 percent that lowering the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent is a bad idea;
  • 58 - 30 percent that doubling the standard deduction is a good idea;
  • 59 - 30 percent that eliminating the deduction for state and local income taxes is a bad idea;
  • 48 - 43 percent that eliminating the estate tax is a good idea.

"The sentiment from voters: The GOP tax plan is a great idea, if you are rich. Otherwise, you're out of luck," Malloy said. 

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2501

The bolded line really pisses me off. American voters can be so unbelievably dumb some times.

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Have you guys been following this? Economists on inequality (yes, again):
https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/dec/14/inequality-is-not-inevitable-but-the-us-experiment-is-a-recipe-for-divergence

The conclusion:

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The US has run a unique experiment since the 1980s – and the results have been uniquely disastrous.


And today's statement by the UN special rapporteur on human rights and extreme poverty in the US:
http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E

I'm quite certain the folks over at Breitbart would call this "anti-American lib'rul bulls**t" but the statement is quite damning:

Take for instance this selection of mine:

Quote


8. Successive administrations, including the present one, have determinedly rejected the idea that economic and social rights are full-fledged human rights, despite their clear recognition not only in key treaties that the US has ratified (such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination), and in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which the US has long insisted other countries must respect.  But denial does not eliminate responsibility, nor does it negate obligations.  International human rights law recognizes a right to education, a right to healthcare, a right to social protection for those in need, and a right to an adequate standard of living.  In practice, the United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable healthcare, or growing up in a context of total deprivation.

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18. The foundation stone of American society is democracy, but it is being steadily undermined.  The principle of one person one vote applies in theory, but it is far from the reality.  In a democracy, the task of government should be to facilitate political participation by ensuring that all citizens can vote and that their votes will count equally.  In the US there is overt disenfranchisement of vast numbers of felons, a rule which predominantly affects Black citizens since they are the ones whose conduct is often specifically targeted for criminalization.  In addition, there are often requirement that persons who have paid their debt to society still cannot regain their right to vote until they paid off all outstanding fines and fees.  Then there is covert disenfranchisement, which includes the dramatic gerrymandering of electoral districts to privilege particular groups of voters, the imposition of artificial and unnecessary voter ID requirements, the blatant manipulation of polling station locations, the relocating of DMVs to make it more difficult for certain groups to obtain IDs, and the general ramping up of obstacles to voting especially by those without resources. The net result is that people living in poverty, minorities, and other disfavored groups are being systematically deprived of their voting rights.

 

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42. Calls for welfare reform take place against a constant drumbeat of allegations of widespread fraud in the system.  The contrast with tax reform is instructive.  In that context immense faith is placed in the goodwill and altruism of the corporate beneficiaries, while with welfare reform the opposite assumptions apply.  The poor are inherently lazy, dishonest, and care only about their own interests.  And government officials with whom I met insisted that the states are gaming the system to defraud the federal government, individuals are constantly coming up with new lurks to live high on the welfare hog, and community groups are exaggerating the numbers. The reality, of course, is that there are good and bad corporate actors and there are good and bad welfare claimants.  But while funding for the IRS to audit wealthy taxpayers has been reduced, efforts to identify welfare fraud are being greatly intensified.  The answer is nuanced governmental regulation, rather than an abdication in respect to the wealthy, and a doubling down on intrusive and punitive policies towards the poor.  Revelations of widespread tax avoidance by companies and high-wealth individuals draw no rebuke, only acquiescence and the maintenance of the loopholes and other arrangements designed to facilitate such arrangements.  Revelation of food stamps being used for purposes other than staying alive draw howls of outrage from government officials and their media supporters.

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47. One of the overriding concerns however is the enormous impetus given to income and wealth inequality by the proposed reforms. While most other nations, and all of the major international institutions such as the OECD, the World Bank, and the IMF have acknowledged that extreme inequalities in wealth and income are economically inefficient and socially damaging, the tax reform package is essentially a bid to make the US the world champion of extreme inequality.  As noted in the World Inequality Report 2018, in both Europe and the US the top 1% of adults earned around 10% of national income in 1980. In Europe that has risen today to 12%, but in the US it has reached 20%. In the same time period in the US annual income earnings for the top 1% have risen by 205%, while for the top 0.001% the figure is 636%. By comparison, the average annual wage of the bottom 50% has stagnated since 1980.

 

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Collins, or really any other Republican senator, could halt things up if both senators are unable to vote due to illness.

Not until Jones is seated. For now, two GOP absences and one no vote is a 49-49 tie that Pence can break. It still takes two to halt things, and that's only if McCain and Cochran really are too sick to vote; we don't know if that's actually the case.

Maybe Flake and Collins team up (I think they're the only two to not publicly say they are voting yes yet), but I really doubt it.

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6 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Collins, or really any other Republican senator, could halt things up if both senators are unable to vote due to illness.

Also, I get why Republicans want to pass a tax bill, but why this flaming piece of garbage? The polling on it is terrible:

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2501

The bolded line really pisses me off. American voters can be so unbelievably dumb some times.

The Republicans are doing this for their donors, some of them, like Graham said so explicitly.

The Estate Tax has been successfully branded the "death tax" by Rs, I don't think most people realize it only affects millionaires.

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20 minutes ago, Fez said:

Not until Jones is seated. For now, two GOP absences and one no vote is a 49-49 tie that Pence can break. It still takes two to halt things, and that's only if McCain and Cochran really are too sick to vote; we don't know if that's actually the case.

Maybe Flake and Collins team up (I think they're the only two to not publicly say they are voting yes yet), but I really doubt it.

Don’t you specifically have to reach a 50 vote threshold when passing legislation via reconciliation and not just a simple majority?

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Collins, or really any other Republican senator, could halt things up if both senators are unable to vote due to illness.

Also, I get why Republicans want to pass a tax bill, but why this flaming piece of garbage? The polling on it is terrible:

https://poll.qu.edu/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2501

The bolded line really pisses me off. American voters can be so unbelievably dumb some times.

I know that those of us who follow politics know this, but I really don't think people realize that the estate tax does not touch estates under $5 million.

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4 minutes ago, Inigima said:

I know that those of us who follow politics know this, but I really don't think people realize that the estate tax does not touch estates under $5 million.

Yep. It affects roughly .2% of Americans (or American families, can't remember which it is). 

But hey, we've got to get rid of it for those 80 "family farmers*."

 

 

 

 

News flash, that ain't a thing. Those are monster corporate entities. 

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