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U.S. Politics: Oh Donnie Boy, the Feds are calling...


A Horse Named Stranger

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In an interview scheduled to air Sunday on 60 Minutes, America’s most widely covered new House member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) floats the idea of a top marginal income tax rate as high as 70 percent as part of a plan to finance a “Green New Deal” that would aim to drastically curb America’s carbon dioxide emissions.

This is not a formal policy proposal. Indeed, the whole idea of offsetting the budgetary cost of decarbonization with taxes is somewhat at odds with the main currents of thought in the Green New Deal universe, which lean more toward the idea that deficits don’t matter and the costs shouldn’t be paid for at all.

Seventy percent is a lot higher than the current rate and will doubtless fuel the conservative effort to paint AOC as a know-nothing, but the number is in line with one prominent strain of recent economics research and is at least moderately well supported by America’s historical experience.

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is floating a 70 percent top tax rate — here’s the research that backs her up
Some studies indicate she’s aiming too low.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/4/18168431/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-70-percent

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2 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is floating a 70 percent top tax rate

Something like this would work and is in fact how things worked in the middle of the middle of the 20th century (in fact, in the 1950s the top marginal tax rate was over 90%), but her proposal is an even more blatant example of grandstanding than the calls for impeachment. There is no way even a majority of Democrats would agree to such a tax structure, let alone the Republicans.

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44 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Something like this would work and is in fact how things worked in the middle of the middle of the 20th century (in fact, in the 1950s the top marginal tax rate was over 90%), but her proposal is an even more blatant example of grandstanding than the calls for impeachment. There is no way even a majority of Democrats would agree to such a tax structure, let alone the Republicans.

Um, this is how politics work now.  In a polarized era the only way to move the status quo is to establish a ridiculously extreme point.  This has been established in myriad formal models.  Hell, she should have came out with 90%.  The GOP has pushed the country right since Eisenhower, but now we're gonna get hissy when the left does because COLORS!

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Was hoping someone would post this today so I could respond to it.  Since not, I'm bored and will now:

The Public Blamed Trump For The Shutdown — But That May Be Changing

This is just a weekly poll rundown, so I want to be clear I'm not trying to impugn the author.  Anyway, it cites a YouGov poll commissioned by HuffPo that shows Trump did better, came out a few days ago.  Trump did better from December 28-30.  This makes me want to clarify - I don't think of the shutdown as actually starting until January 2, at the earliest.  Before that, 8 of the 11 days of the partial "shutdown" was during weekends or holidays.  And no one cared from December 26-8 either, including Congress.

Anyway, during his rundown Rakich says something I think it's important to refute because it's not empirically supported:

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While Trump’s approval rating has taken a dip in the last two weeks — quite possibly related to the shutdown — it’s unlikely that any ill will over it will last until the next national election. Our analysis of polls after the 1995-1996 and 2013 shutdowns found that other news events quickly overtook them. Indeed, by just one month after the 1995-1996 and 2013 shutdowns, any changes in the polls that had occurred during the shutdowns had vanished.

This is a vapid interpretation of the data.  One could look at campaign ads and come to the same conclusion - that there's no long-term effect.  Of course there's not a direct long-term effect on something that happened over a year ago.  That doesn't mean it doesn't have an effect.  If you believe in the RAS model of political learning - which generally I do, at least as juxtaposed to the memory model - then early perceptions matter (and in fact they matter more in the memory model).  The fact this is not picked up in panel data or anything less is not surprising, it just means people forget details - not their primary dispositions.

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12 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

I really don’t want to sound like an alarmist, I was laughing at the Obama 2012 people who though he could lose MN, but Trump said something today in his mess of a press conference that has my hackles raised. He used the term that many have feared he might one day: national emergency. Now, declaring a national emergency to take control of the army for the purposes of building the wall isn’t that troublesome in and of itself, but what it does is twofold. First, it lets Trump know he can get away with it, and god knows what he could do with it in the future. Second, it lowers the bar for all future presidents if he does in fact do this. We’re still a long ways away from the Rubicon, but this could bring us one step closer, which is a frightening thought to me.

Surely the creation and abuse of a national emergency to grant himself dicatorial powers would (or certainly should) be grounds for an impeachment in and of itself.
Surely even Republicans in Congress/Senate don't want to be bypassed by a lose-canom president; or set the precedent for a future Democratic president.

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16 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

Surely the creation and abuse of a national emergency to grant himself dicatorial powers would (or certainly should) be grounds for an impeachment in and of itself.
Surely even Republicans in Congress/Senate don't want to be bypassed by a lose-canom president; or set the precedent for a future Democratic president.

What future democratic president? Congress has abdicated power for decades. An autocracy is perfectly palatable for Fascists. In fact, it's a pretty big part of the promotional material. 

Humans are shortsighted and vain creatures, especially when they have power. Especially especially when they have everything to lose by trying to reverse an already established eventuality. 

Far easier to attempt to maneuver through the mists of collapsing democracy as unobtrusively as possible than to take a stand. Particularly if you're already well founded enough to have a position of authority in the first place.

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Supreme Court to take on partisan gerrymandering this year
The court will hear arguments over congressional maps in Maryland and North Carolina that lower courts have struck down.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/04/supreme-court-gerrymandering-case-maryland-north-carolina-1081760

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The Supreme Court will grapple with the legality of partisan gerrymandering in March when it hears arguments challenging congressional-district maps in two states.

The court announced Friday it would consider cases from Maryland and North Carolina after lower federal courts threw out the congressional maps in both states, ruling that they were so gerrymandered to favor one party that they violated the constitutional rights of voters. The high court will consider whether to uphold those rulings and order new maps drawn for the 2020 elections in those states.

 

 

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37 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said:

WRT to Ocasio-Cortez being at it again. As long as she is not going Bachmann batshit, can we at least wait and see how and what she actually does in congress?

But.. But... Her dancing!! 

:P

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On 1/1/2019 at 12:03 PM, OldGimletEye said:

 Christmas. Just a few very iconic American things that came from other ethnic groups or immigrants.

I agree with your main point, but "Christmas" did not come from "other ethnic groups or immigrants." Some of the common trappings of modern American Christmas, like Christmas trees, may have come from other countries than Britain, but Christmas was certainly celebrated in Virginia and most other English colonies in North America. Do not confuse the anti-Christmas sentiment of some Puritans in New England with the general way things were done in colonial British America.

https://www.historyisfun.org/jamestown-settlement/a-colonial-christmas/

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14 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

What future democratic president? Congress has abdicated power for decades. An autocracy is perfectly palatable for Fascists. In fact, it's a pretty big part of the promotional material. 

Humans are shortsighted and vain creatures, especially when they have power. Especially especially when they have everything to lose by trying to reverse an already established eventuality. 

Far easier to attempt to maneuver through the mists of collapsing democracy as unobtrusively as possible than to take a stand. Particularly if you're already well founded enough to have a position of authority in the first place.

I said it earlier, I'll say it again:

 

Team Trump is far too corrupt, cowardly, and incompetent to pull off the 'dictatorship via national emergency' thing.  

 

Consider how badly Team Trump has botched past efforts like the travel ban, border abuses, and hurricane response.  Now, Trump being Trump, and him getting rid of the few relatively sane types left in the Whitehouse, yes he might issue the order - but Trump wants to be liked above almost all else, and a stunt like this would draw immediate, massive negative response all but the most fringe of news groups.  Likely, it would split his base and is probably one of the very few things that would prompt republican senators to go the impeachment route.   

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