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'17 Specials & '18 Midterms Thread

Pa. candidate: Tax return, income his business, not his workers'

“If I make money or don't make money that's my business,” Wagner told the questioner. “And you know what? If I disclose those tax returns, union representatives get a hold of my tax returns, go around to my employees' homes at night and say, `Hey Mrs. Jones, how much does your husband make?' She goes, `Well he makes this.’ `Well this guy makes a lot more.“’
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Looks like the negative news about Trump and the GOP is going to counter the GOP's negative ads.
 
Trump does have a way of sucking all the air out of the room. I remember they were supposed to be blanketing the airwaves with ads that would turn public opinion on the tax bill as well.
 
This could go in the tax reform thread, but I’ll put it here...

The Tax-Cut Con Goes On


What will happen if the blue wave in the midterm elections falls short? Clearly, at this point it still might: Democrats will surely receive more votes than Republicans, but thanks to gerrymandering and population geography, the U.S. electoral system gives excess weight to rural, white voters who still have faith in President Trump. What if, thanks to that excess weight, the minority prevails?

One answer, obviously, is that the unindicted co-conspirator in chief will continue to be protected from the law. And for those concerned with the survival of American democracy, that has to be the most important issue at stake in November. But if the G.O.P. hangs on, there will also be other, bread-and-butter consequences for ordinary Americans.

First of all, there is every reason to believe that a Republican Congress, freed from the immediate threat of elections, would do what it narrowly failed to do last year, and repeal the Affordable Care Act. This would cause tens of millions of Americans to lose health insurance and would in particular hit those with pre-existing conditions. There’s a reason health care, not Trump, is the central theme of Democratic campaigns this year.

But the attack on the social safety net probably wouldn’t stop with a rollback of Obama-era expansion: Longstanding programs, very much including Social Security and Medicare, would also be on the chopping block. Who says so? Republicans themselves.

In a recent interview with CNBC’s John Harwood, Representative Steve Stivers, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee — in effect, the man charged with containing the blue wave — declared that, given the size of the budget deficit, the federal government needs to save money by cutting spending on social programs. When pressed about whether that included Social Security and Medicare, he admitted that it did.

And he’s not alone in seeing major cuts in core programs for older Americans as the next step if Republicans win in November. Many major figures in the G.O.P., including the departing speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, and multiple senators, have said the same thing. (Meanwhile, groups tied to Ryan have been running attack ads accusing Democrats of planning to cut Medicare funding — but hey, consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. So, apparently, is honesty.)

Now, Republicans who call for cuts in social spending to balance the budget are showing extraordinary chutzpah, which is traditionally defined as what you exhibit when you kill your parents, then plead for mercy because you’re an orphan. After all, the same Republicans now wringing their hands over budget deficits just blew up that same deficit by enacting a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy.

So it might seem shocking that only a few months later they’re once again posing as deficit hawks and calling for spending cuts. That is, it might seem shocking if it weren’t for the fact that this has been the G.O.P.’s budget strategy for decades. First, cut taxes. Then, bemoan the deficit created by those tax cuts and demand cuts in social spending. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This strategy, known as “starve the beast,” has been around since the 1970s, when Republican economists like Alan Greenspan and Milton Friedman began declaring that the role of tax cuts in worsening budget deficits was a feature, not a bug. As Greenspan openly put it in 1978, the goal was to rein in spending with tax cuts that reduce revenue, then “trust that there is a political limit to deficit spending.”

It’s true that when tax cuts are on the table their proponents tend to deny that they’ll increase the deficit, claiming that they’ll provide a miraculous boost to the economy and that tax receipts will actually rise. But there’s not a shred of evidence to support this claim, and it has never been clear whether anyone with real political power has ever believed it. For the most part it’s just a smoke screen to help conceal the G.O.P.’s true intentions.

The puzzle is why Republicans keep getting away with this bait-and-switch.

Fifteen years ago I wrote a long piece titled “The Tax-Cut Con,” describing what was even then a time-honored scam; it reads almost word for word as a description of Republican strategy in 2017-18. Yet I keep reading news analyses expressing puzzlement that men who were strident deficit hawks in the Obama years so cheerfully signed on to a budget-busting tax cut under Trump. To say the obvious: These men were never deficit hawks; it was always a pose.

And the gullibility both of the news media and self-proclaimed centrists remains a remarkable story. Remember, Ryan, who was utterly orthodox in his determination to cut taxes on the rich while savaging programs for the poor and the middle class, even received an award for fiscal responsibility.

Which brings us back to the midterm elections. Rule of law is definitely on the ballot. So is health care. But voters should realize that the threat to programs they count on is much broader: If the G.O.P. holds its majority, Social Security and Medicare as we know them will be very much in danger.
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Some FL universities add voting sites. Some don't.
http://www.tampabay.com/florida-pol...ly-voting-sites-stuns-league-of-women-voters/

It has been a month since a federal judge bluntly declared a "stark pattern of discrimination" by the state of Florida for refusing to allow college students to vote early on campus.


U.S. District Judge Mark Walker's ruling was a big victory for the League of Women Voters of Florida, which had sued Gov. Rick Scott's administration and successfully challenged the ban on campus early voting.


Hillsborough says it will have an early voting site on the USF campus for the November election, and Orange County will have one at UCF — the state's largest university. Alachua County, where the lawsuit began in Gainesville, announced earlier that the Reitz Student Union at the University of Florida will serve as an early voting site.


But the League says it is fighting reluctant county election supervisors who in some cases have decided not to add a campus early voting site in 2018.


The group cited Tallahassee's Leon County, home of Florida State and Florida A&M, and Miami-Dade, home to FIU and Miami-Dade College, which has more than 160,000 students.


"It's incredible that they wouldn't make it happen," League President Patti Brigham said. "It sends a terrible message to our young people."
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Some good news because UCF, UF, and USF are 3 of the 4 largest universities in the state. The state's only public HBCU (FAMU) isn't getting a site. FIU is the second largest university and the only Hispanic Serving Institution among FL public universities. Miami-Dade College has 9 campuses and 165,000 students who are 71% Hispanic and 17% Black. It's ridiculous they have no early voting sites.

and two HSI (Hispanic Serving Institutions) in Miami aren't getting early voting sites.
 
 
At some point, you would think Republicans would have trouble fundraising in this environment enough to contest all these races.
 
well PH, there is your answer. The party of corporate tax cuts has bottomless pockets.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
well PH, there is your answer. The party of corporate tax cuts has bottomless pockets.
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Yeah. It's amazing how many wealthy people waste money on politics. In FL, billionaire Jeff Greene spent $20 million on trying to get the Dem nomination. He's polling 4th.
 
PhDeac said:
Yeah. It's amazing how many wealthy people waste money on politics. In FL, billionaire Jeff Greene spent $20 million on trying to get the Dem nomination. He's polling 4th.
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You realize he has $3.4 Billion, right ? That's 0.59% of his estimated net worth. He can easily make $200,000,000 in interest annually if that's how he chose to invest.

Not accounting for the declining utility of a huge sum of money, that's like a millionaire paying $6,000 for a used car.
 
avalon said:
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shouldn't they have filmed him hitting the ball, instead of swinging and missing, before rounding the bases?
 
He did hit the ball. Good ad by the way. All-American, simple message, doesn't mention his opponent.

Biff, I know he's worth billions. I said he's a billionaire. Doesn't mean it isn't wasted money.
 
PhDeac said:
He did hit the ball. Good ad by the way. All-American, simple message, doesn't mention his opponent.

Biff, I know he's worth billions. I said he's a billionaire. Doesn't mean it isn't wasted money.
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Dude, it's his own vanity and he's creating jobs.
 
This could have been said about Trump too, but that campaign hasn’t worked out so well in the long run.
 
I love local politics. Earlier today, someone shared that one of the Dem County Commission candidates was endorsed by the country Dem Black Caucus. I posted that I was impressed with her when she spoke at the local Dem club meeting several months ago. A few minutes ago, she friend requested me on Facebook. Funny thing is she's white and I've been Facebook friends with her black opponent for about a year.
 
PhDeac said:
I love local politics. Earlier today, someone shared that one of the Dem County Commission candidates was endorsed by the country Dem Black Caucus. I posted that I was impressed with her when she spoke at the local Dem club meeting several months ago. A few minutes ago, she friend requested me on Facebook. Funny thing is she's white and I've been Facebook friends with her black opponent for about a year.
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Are you surprised she friend requested you because you said something nice about her? I don't get it.
 
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