US politics: Red Tide Rising

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

If all Sinema wants is to keep the carried interest loophole and the extra $5 billion, then it's a no-brainer to just give it to her and pass the damn thing.

But that's a huge if, she's more cagey and unpredictable than Manchin.  There's also talk she's not wild about the corporate minimum tax, but her demands there are unclear.  Also should be noted we're still waiting on MacDonough's ruling.

The carry bill is largely symbolic (not a real revenue raiser), and it's honestly a drafting debacle.  But, of the two, it is the better policy! So, yeah.

 

The corporate minimum tax is deeply $h!tty policy (bad both for tax and for financial reporting!), and probably unadministrable as drafted.  The bill punts a lot of the actual "how can this possibly work" stuff to a regulatory grant (which may or may not survive this Supreme Court).  It is a fantastic headline.  I assume it goes through for that reason and Sinema slaps some additional BS window dressing on this steaming pile of crap to get there.

[LongRider]

Good grief, but Alex Jones is screwed.  Lovely news in the mornin'!  

 

[LongRider]

Oh, AJ emailed Roger Stone did he? 

 

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

The carry bill is largely symbolic (not a real revenue raiser),

Right, the $14 billion it's scored at is about 1.8% of the revenue raised, so whatever.  If they were doing Wyden & Whitehouse's plan to actually close the loophole that'd be one thing.  But..they're not.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Right, the $14 billion it's scored at is about 1.8% of the revenue raised, so whatever.  If they were doing Wyden & Whitehouse's plan to actually close the loophole that'd be one thing.  But..they're not.

Well, the real answer is to promote rate unification (i.e., get rid of the capital gains preference, either for everyone or for people with incomes over $X).  That is deeply unpopular for "reasons" so won't happen.  And even the Wyden bill (which has its own issues) doesn't raise all that much.  Honestly, there aren't that many people who benefit (which is why it is a popular group to go after - it's the proverbial "man behind the tree").  

But to be clear, this current bill is ... odd?  The headline is a 5 year hold period, but honestly it may be more like a 15 year period when you factor in what it actually does, but that's not even that clear. 

[DMC]

7 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

And even the Wyden bill (which has its own issues) doesn't raise all that much. 

Well, just saying $70 billion is five times fourteen.

[IheartIheartTesla]

Sanders has been whaling on this bill for 2 days straight, saying it doesnt go far enough, but I suppose no one expects him to let the perfect be the enemy of good (I presume). Expect a lot of amendments from him though.

Leaving aside Sinema all this looks to be standard political theater. Fingers crossed something happens.

[Zorral]

AJ denied mistrial yet again.  The Judge is sick of having to deny his lawyers' requests for mistrial, over and over and over again, and told them to stop.

https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/mistrial-denied-jury-weighs-damages-against-alex-jones-sandy-hook-defamation-2022-08-04/

It turns out Zuckerberg personally intervene, to soften the fb ban on AJ's lies ongoing on fb. No surprise, amirite?

https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-zuckerberg-alex-jones-facebook-ban-soften-lenient-report-2021-2

 

 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Wow.  Jones’s attorneys need to talk to their malpractice carrier… yesterday:

 

[Centrist Simon Steele]

15 hours ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I wonder if it's also possible that more repub than dem voters straight up did not understand which vote was which. 

The cynical side of me wonders too. What if the confusion campaign launched by alt righters actually confused the wrong side?

[Maithanet]

23 minutes ago, Centrist Simon Steele said:

The cynical side of me wonders too. What if the confusion campaign launched by alt righters actually confused the wrong side?

A smaller issue is that in general with ballot measures like this, there is always a certain inertia with "no", because low information voters prefer the status quo.  For the voters who read the (extremely confusingly worded) amendment and didn't know WTF it said, most of them probably voted no. 

[DMC]

As a general rule, primary electorates have higher information voters (or rather, a larger proportion of high information voters).  Combined with the incredibly high salience of and attention paid to the ballot measure, it's very unlikely more than a negligible number of voters were duped by the language.

[Mindwalker]

The dogs have eaten their homework, I mean texts... now after Secret Service and Homeland Security, Defense has that same problem! Curiouser and curiouser...

 

[Zorral]

But-but-but-THEIR emails! 

U.S. sues former Trump aide Peter Navarro over White House emails
National Archives lawsuit demands former White House aide turn over private emails used for government work

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/justice-department-sues-peter-navarro-seeks-trump-era-emails-from-personal-protonmail-account/

All crowned, crowned, crowned by AJ's emails.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-04/infowars-alex-jones-emails-texts-sandy-hook-closing-arguments/101299112

Etc., etc., etc.

There cannot be too much Schadenfreude for these evil people plotting treason and coups, and siccing mobs on the parents of murdered children, for funsies and personal, private profit in the millions.  There just CANNOT.

Reichlicans are remarkably quiet about the AJ legal evidence debacle.

~~~~~~~~~~~

16 minutes ago, Mindwalker said:

Secret Service and Homeland Security, Defense has that same problem! Curiouser and curiouser...

Yes, my goodness how careless romperisto coupsters are with their emails, from those members of the Pentagon, the White House, the Secret Service and -- Homeland Security!  Every one of these agencies had members collaborating with the Jan 6 coup.  Not to mention Alex Jones, who wasn't careless enough w/ HIS emails, evidently. But in AJ's defense his emails were invisible as he found none having mention of Sandy Hook at all.  Bet it's the same for Jan. 6th.

 

[maarsen]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Wow.  Jones’s attorneys need to talk to their malpractice carrier… yesterday:

 

Shouldn't a lot of the released info have been released to the plaintiff's legal counsel as part of discovery anyway? I think perjury and contempt of court charges against Jones are called for at the least.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

2 minutes ago, maarsen said:

Shouldn't a lot of the released info have been released to the plaintiff's legal counsel as part of discovery anyway? I think perjury and contempt of court charges against Jones are called for at the least.

Agreed.  And that’s why there weren’t grounds for mistrial what was “accidentally” released should have been released in discovery anyway.

[Mindwalker]

Charles Booker's new ad is more conventional than the previous ones, but a nice example for messaging, I think:

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

3 hours ago, DMC said:

Well, just saying $70 billion is five times fourteen.

First of all, the 2023 Greenbook score for the Biden administration version was about $16.5.  Second, the Wyden bill scored at $63.  

The Wyden bill would have imputed current taxable income as wages based on estimates, based on foregone interest on an implicit interest free loan from investors (whether or not cash actually received).  Then there is an imputed LTCL in the amount of the comp that they can offset against LTCG later allocated to them.  It’s super super complex.  But it’s just a totally different, and fundamentally radical design.  There were a fair number of problems with it.

 

 

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

First of all, the 2023 Greenbook score for the Biden administration version was about $16.5.  Second, the Wyden bill scored at $63.  

Sure, I was just going by how the Dems themselves scored each.  Frankly the estimates are so close, respectively, nobody can say with confidence which ones will/would be more accurate.

[Fragile Bird]

On 8/2/2022 at 2:29 PM, Ormond said:

The only big surprise about the name to me is that she was born in Naperville, Illinois instead of the South. This sounds like a usual "southern Preppy" female name to me. 

I suppose "Ryan Kelley" seems "whitebread" to someone of your generation, but Ryan was really rare as a given name before Ryan O'Neal became famous. I don't know anyone my age with Ryan as a first name so it still seems youthful and semi-hip to me.

Tudor is a woman? Weirdly, I thought it was a man, because when I think of Tudors I think of Henry VIII first, and his father, even though Elizabeth and Mary were of course Tudors as well.

Elizabeth I is a force of nature all by herself, to hell with being a Tudor, lol!