US politics: Alabama Jones and the Temple of Moore

[Maithanet]

3 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Why would this be more disappointing than the polllng? I would think polling would be more accurate than individual reporters' impressions based on interviewing a non-random sample of Moore supporters.

I am likewise very disappointed in the polling.  My brief optimism that things would fall apart for Moore has passed, and I now remain pretty confident that Moore will either win the election and remain in the Senate or win the election, get expelled, and then win the Senate seat again in Special Election 2:  Election Bugaloo. 

Doug Jones has an outside shot that relies on a combination of high Dem turnout, Republicans staying home and a few Strange voters flipping.  But I nonetheless think his chances are slim.

[Ormond]

Just found out that Oklahoma state senate election in Tulsa is even more amazing because the winning Democratic candidate is openly lesbian:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/democrat-pulls-off-special-election-victory-for-senate-seat-in/article_7aed6549-3589-54ea-b3be-9a5f8c87c420.html

[denstorebog]

27 minutes ago, Ormond said:

This was not a House set -- it was a seat in the state Senate. Still good news, but at the state rather than federal level.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/democrats-add-to-win-column-in-deep-red-oklahoma/2017/11/14/023da920-c9b7-11e7-b506-8a10ed11ecf5_story.html?utm_term=.355b333a4b65

Yeah, obviously, no idea why I made that typo. Also, Alberqueue are belong to us!

[Fez]

5 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Just found out that Oklahoma state senate election in Tulsa is even more amazing because the winning Democratic candidate is openly lesbian:

http://www.tulsaworld.com/homepagelatest/democrat-pulls-off-special-election-victory-for-senate-seat-in/article_7aed6549-3589-54ea-b3be-9a5f8c87c420.html

Alabama has arguably never had a modern, functioning state government, but Oklahoma did. The past 7 years of unitary Republican control has mostly destroyed it though, and I think voters there are realizing it. At least the ones in the suburbs are, upset at the school funding crisis the state has been experiencing, and are willing to go back to voting Democratic to fix it. No matter what other issues they have with Democrats.

Oklahoma had a Democratic governor as recently as 2010, a Democratic state senate as recently as 2008, and a Democratic House as recently as 2004 (okay that one's a while ago now).

[DMC]

50 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Speaking of tax reform, new changes to the Senate plan sunset individual tax cuts after 2025, but make corporate tax cuts permanent. 

I mean seriously? It's starting to get cartoonish. Republicans might as well bring back top hats and monocles while they're at it.

Indeed.  It's not surprising that they had to sunset the individual cuts, but this is quite something:

Quote

So Senate Republicans decided to comply with the rule by simply having all the most expensive individual cuts in the bill expire, and paying for permanent corporate tax cuts by reducing access to subsidized health insurance and using chained CPI to raise individual taxes over time. It worked: By year 10, the bill doesn’t increase the deficit, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, suggesting that it won’t raise the deficit over the long-run. [...]

He finds that if you include the benefits of corporate tax cuts, and assume about 20 percent of the benefits go to workers (as the JCT does), about 38 percent of taxpayers would pay more in 2027. Likeliest to see a tax hike are families earning $10,000 to $75,000; in particular, over half of households making $30,000 to 40,000 would see their taxes go up. [...]

Parents are particularly likely to see a tax increase in 2027, as the increased child tax credit and boosted standard deduction will expire, and they appear less likely to benefit from corporate cuts

I don't know how the GOP Senate managed to conjure a tax bill that has a chance to rival the AHCA in unpopularity, they are truly incorrigible.

16 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

I am likewise very disappointed in the polling. 

I'm not too disappointed by the polling.  Like Fez noted, the trend is good - Moore's lead was cut in half from the same firm's poll two weeks ago.  As someone linked, it appears Hannity is about to abandon him as well.  If Moore starts losing the support of Hannity's ilk the polling is likely to show a precipitous decline.

[Fez]

2 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Indeed.  It's not surprising that they had to sunset the individual cuts, but this is quite something:

I don't know how the GOP Senate managed to conjure a tax bill that has a chance to rival the AHCA in unpopularity, they are truly incorrigible.

I'm not too disappointed by the polling.  Like Fez noted, the trend is good - Moore's lead was cut in half from the same firm's poll two weeks ago.  As someone linked, it appears Hannity is about to abandon him as well.  If Moore starts losing the support of Hannity's ilk the polling is likely to show a precipitous decline.

He's lost Matt Drudge too. Though I don't know if the Drudge Report is still popular with Republicans.

 

ETA: Bad formatting, bad. But if you like at the Drudge Report, Moore is currently be referred to as 'Judge Whore'.

[Maithanet]

5 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

I'm not too disappointed by the polling.  Like Fez noted, the trend is good - Moore's lead was cut in half from the same firm's poll two weeks ago.  As someone linked, it appears Hannity is about to abandon him as well.  If Moore starts losing the support of Hannity's ilk the polling is likely to show a precipitous decline.

The trend is good, but probably not enough.  And I think if anything the next few weeks are more likely to see a reversion to the mean "both candidates are bad, so I'm voting team Republican". 

[OldGimletEye]

On 11/15/2017 at 10:47 AM, Mlle. Zabzie said:

OGE should really weigh in here, but (1) the expensing rules are temporary.  If someone happens to plan to do some capital investment in the next 5 years, it is a windfall for them, but if they weren't, most long-range-plans/forecasts (LRP) only go out at most 5 years.  Businesses don't plan beyond that.  So depending on where a company is in its planning process they may not think they have a need for additional capex. Second, there is a ton of pressure from activist shareholders, among others, to return cash to shareholders through buybacks (reducing share count is usually viewed as a Good Thing).  If the business has excess cash, activists would rather see it go back to the equity holders rather than being (in their view) frittered away by management on vanity M&A and speculative projects.  Basically, this whole thing is a giant NUH DUH.

One of many problems I have with the Chamely-Judd model of capital taxation (which gets a 0% capital taxation rate in the long run at least), which there are many, is it’s perfect foresight assumption. The model assumes that owners of capital simply know or compute their consumption (or that of their descendants) over a very long time given a series of rates of return (which they can compute for a very long time).

And I think that is kind of hokey. Me thinks a bit of animal spirits is often in play.

And rational expectations as model of expectations isn’t often much better. Its often used because 1) yes people do take the future into account when making plans today, and 2) well because it’s simply a bit more mathematically tractable.

Rational expectations says something like:

I want to forecast the path of a variable lets say y(t) over a period of time y(t+1), y(t+2)…...y(t+n) where n is exceedingly large, then I do it on a set of conditional variables today like x(t), z(t) getting something like:

y(t+1) = Bx(t) + Cz(t) + e 

But obviously rational expectations has extremely strong informational requirement. Actors may not have an extremely strong handle on what the parameters (B and C in this case) of the system are or they might intuitively  know that B and C are can change and will change their estimates of B and C as new information comes in. (or at least don't do rational expectations with market clearing assumptions, by price. A deadly combination).

The upshot of this is that, it’s not surprising to me that in your experience business don’t forecast beyond 5 years. And secondly, business just may not see future demand conditions as being strong enough to justify future investment projects.

And as you say, if business have already decided to make investment projects today, a change in tax rates tomorrow likely isn't going to change their plans, as they have deemed those investments already profitable.

I think a lot of the additional money will probably just be used to do additional stock buy backs. Certainly, I think many CEOs have a financial incentive to do so, even if its not in the best interest of the company (where we get into principal agent issues). Plus the shareholder pressure you mentioned, at least those shareholders that aren’t acting on a very long horizon (the guy/gal that just wants to hold the stock for 35 or 40 years for retirement).

And finally, just as aside, I think macro is still fighting about how to model expectations correctly. I mean certainly expectations of the future influence people’s decisions today. So in some situations rational expectations may be better than nothing, but it’s not an optimal state of affairs. Personally, I’m a bit partial too this, but there is other learning approaches out there, but I'm probably getting a bit off topic.

[OldGimletEye]

Like, many here I’ve just about had it with all this Moore, Weinstein et. al stuff. And it’s time we put a stop too it.

1. Not only is having a job an economic necessity for most people, but I think its extremely important to most people’s well being. So lets not throw unnecessary crap on people.

2. If you hold any position of power over others, I think you need to think about all the time where your legitimate authority begins and ends, so you don’t end up coercing people to do shit they don’t want to do and you really have no legitimate right to ask them.

3. And can't we show a basic level of professionalism at work: So would you take  your Casanova act and grab assery out of my effing place of business, puuuleeeeze.

And I think Ygelsias makes a good case that we (meaning liberals) need to really re-asses Bill Clinton’s Presidency.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/15/16634776/clinton-lewinsky-resigned

Quote

Many years ago, when I was a high school student making my first visit to Washington for a two-week summer camp for weird politics dorks, the dominant news story was then-President Bill Clinton’s August 17, 1998, admission that despite earlier denials, he “did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate.”

“In fact,” Clinton conceded, “it was wrong,” and it “constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible.”

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

OGE should really weigh in here, but (1) the expensing rules are temporary.  If someone happens to plan to do some capital investment in the next 5 years, it is a windfall for them, but if they weren't, most long-range-plans/forecasts (LRP) only go out at most 5 years.  Businesses don't plan beyond that.  So depending on where a company is in its planning process they may not think they have a need for additional capex. Second, there is a ton of pressure from activist shareholders, among others, to return cash to shareholders through buybacks (reducing share count is usually viewed as a Good Thing).  If the business has excess cash, activists would rather see it go back to the equity holders rather than being (in their view) frittered away by management on vanity M&A and speculative projects.  Basically, this whole thing is a giant NUH DUH.

I will weigh in shortly with a few thoughts on the Chairman's mark of the Senate proposal.  However, one part of the House proposal that hasn't gotten a lot of attention is how inventors get slammed.  Under current law, one can sell a self-created business and the portion of the purchase price allocable to a self-created patent is treated as capital gain.  The House proposal would treat that as ordinary income.   

You know more about this topic than I do, but it seems to me that Republicans are relying on an outdated method of creating growth that was always hit or miss to begin with. I never expected this tax cut to do anything more than create an environment for aggressive buybacks, as you laid out, and increased  incentivisation for offshore stashing.

[DMC]

12 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

And I think if anything the next few weeks are more likely to see a reversion to the mean "both candidates are bad, so I'm voting team Republican". 

That's usually true in a regular election, but I disagree when there's a scandal like this - if Hannity and the idiot media does indeed abandon him.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ormond said:

Why would this be more disappointing than the polllng? I would think polling would be more accurate than individual reporters' impressions based on interviewing a non-random sample of Moore supporters.

IIRC, in person interview polling is the most accurate, but you’re correct to say that the methodology and sample size are imperfect. Still, I’m becoming increasingly pessimistic about Jones chances of winning. Far too many respondents are saying various forms of “What he did was wrong, but he’s still better than a Democrat.”

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

I really loved the line of questioning about how he sent a guy to jail for amending his sworn testimony after the fact, and how he used that as the reason why Clinton needed to be impeached for it.

But now that he's had to do it 3 different times now?  No big deal.  It happens.

What a fucking weasel.

And he was insulted by the question. You jailed a man for doing once what you have now done 3 times! And you're insulted? Fucking unreal. And this is the "most powerful lawman in the country". 

[Guest]

So now it appears that Steve Bannon may even be reconsidering his support for Moore. If Moore loses the NRSC, the RNC, Breitbart and Hannity, I don't see how he wins.

Per The Daily Beast:

Quote

Several of Bannon’s most trusted allies have already told him that it would be “insane,” as one put it, to believe at this point that the Moore accusations are baseless. They have also warned that the time is rapidly approaching when he would have to disavow Moore before it appeared as though he was simply caving to political pressure. (Critics of Bannon, of course, argue he should never have backed Moore in the first place.)

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

15 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

That's usually true in a regular election, but I disagree when there's a scandal like this - if Hannity and the idiot media does indeed abandon him.

Inversely, he’s probably benefiting from McConnell et al. dumping him.

[Morpheus]

Just now, The Great Unwashed said:

So now it appears that Steve Bannon may even be reconsidering his support for Moore.

Per The Daily Beast:

 

 

Though I doubt it will change his overall strategy of finding the most batshit candidate to back in any given race. The parade of extremists, ex cons, and legitimate idiots will march on apace. 

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Morpheus said:

Though I doubt it will change his overall strategy of finding the most batshit candidate to back in any given race. The parade of extremists, ex cons, and legitimate idiots will march on apace. 

Agreed, although I encourage him to back as many batshit-insane candidates as possible for Republican primaries.

[Morpheus]

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Inversely, he’s probably benefiting from McConnell et al. dumping him.

Of course. A page or two back, Altherion was going on about the conspiracy and propaganda against Moore coming from Dems, establishment Rs, and the liberal media. For these people, McConnell fully abandoning him is just proof that it is all a fix.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

Oklahoma had a Democratic governor as recently as 2010, a Democratic state senate as recently as 2008, and a Democratic House as recently as 2004 (okay that one's a while ago now).

Yep.

Brad Henry was elected as governor in 2002 and was re-elected with 66% of the vote in 2006. If he hadn't been term-limited in 2010 he most likely would have won again as he was a rather popular governor.

No one would know it today, but Oklahoma at one time had a history of backing progressive, populist issues. The Socialist Party was a significant influence in state elections from the time of statehood up until around the end of WWI, but began losing popularity and was essentially eliminated as a political factor during the Great Depression/Dust Bowl.

The current Republican supermajority in the Oklahoma Congress has run a budget deficit every year since at least 2014, leading to multiple cuts in state services across the board. Teachers haven't received a raise since the Great Recession and education funding has been cut every year for at least the past 5 years. This upcoming mid-term election could be very interesting if it turns into a wave election.

Fun facts: Brad Henry and I share a hometown, and his wife Kim Henry was my high school government teacher.

Another fun fact: current Republican governor Mary Fallin is from a town nearby my home town and went on several dates with my father when they were in high school - I'm less proud of that fun fact.

[Zorral]

How Trump walked into Putin's web:

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/15/how-trump-walked-into-putins-web-luke

Long read, fascinating, if disgusting and depressing.