United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[GrumpyGran]

57 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

To these folks, it's not enough to win, you have to complete decimate and demoralize your opponent. It's like the anal orifice of a football coach who continues to leave his first team in and run up the score on an overmatched opponent. It's also like the story of the Romans salting the soils of Carthage after the Third Punic War ( if I correctly remember the story my Latin teacher told us.) You can't just defeat your opponent, you must destroy your opponent so he/she is permanently destroyed ( "crooked Hillary"). I abhor these new political times.

And remember deflect, deflect, deflect! If we can just come up with something she did that's worse than what we know he did. Then we can put her in jail and then...and then... Do you ever wonder what they would do if Hillary Clinton were in jail? Would that magically make Mueller and everything Trump and his team possibly did disappear?

[JMarie]

Just saw an interview on MSNBC with Kelli Ward, who lost in the primary last year against John McCain, and had already announced she'd be running for Jeff Flake's seat before yesterday.  I reeeeeeeeeeally hope more Republicans join the race, or that the Democrats have a very strong candidate.  She' just hasn't only drunk the Kool-Aid, she's swimming in a pool full of Kool-Aid.

[Cartmann99]

1 hour ago, JMarie said:

Just saw an interview on MSNBC with Kelli Ward, who lost in the primary last year against John McCain, and had already announced she'd be running for Jeff Flake's seat before yesterday.  I reeeeeeeeeeally hope more Republicans join the race, or that the Democrats have a very strong candidate.  She' just hasn't only drunk the Kool-Aid, she's swimming in a pool full of Kool-Aid.

She's a nutbag. You've heard the expression that someone's cheese has slid off their cracker? I don't think her cheese and her cracker even live in the same county anymore.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Jeff Flake asked us to fight for our country. Then he quit."

Spoiler

In his instantly famous Tuesday Senate floor speech — one his hometown newspaper called a “bombshell” — Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) decried the “destructiveness” of President Trump’s politics while warning of the perils of succumbing to electoral considerations; of politicians’ “fear of the consequences” of speaking out; and of bending to “the rules of what is politically safe.” Flake, who has voted with the president more than 90 percent of the time, wondered aloud what he, and we, would tell the next generation when they ask, “Why didn’t you do something?” He rallied Americans not to let Trump’s habitual offenses become the new normal, never to “meekly accept the daily sundering of our country.”

Then he surrendered.

Yes, Flake was one of the few Republican senators who declined to endorse Trump’s candidacy. And yes, his words were powerful and needed to be spoken by a member of the president’s own party. That’s why some were quick to suggest, quite optimistically, that the speech could represent “a notable marker in the decline of the GOP” that will “end up in the history books.” But in declaring, “I will not be complicit or silent,” on the way to announcing that he will not seek reelection, Flake confused abdication with absolution. Cincinnatus returning to the farm, Flake is not. In the end, he’s a profile in cowardice.

Accurate though Flake’s political diagnosis might be, it can hardly be taken seriously as a form of public service when paired with his abandonment of the very power to do something about it. That merely makes him part of a growing problem: politicians who want us to believe that they are powerless, being pulled by forces beyond their control. Sadly, it’s one thing Flake and Trump actually have in common.

Also on Tuesday, Flake’s fellow Senate retiree, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) re-upped his ongoing and escalating Twitter feud with Trump: a convenient detour from the support he lent Trump in his run for the White House. Just a couple of hours before Flake’s speech, their colleague, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who has carried Trump’s water a whopping 96 percent of the time — brought a bag of freshly popped popcorn to Senate Republicans’ lunch with the president at the Capitol, a stunt minimizing both the stakes of this drama and his role in it.

These legislators, entrusted with a constitutional responsibility to hold the executive accountable and a moral responsibility to uphold the values of our nation, are the last ones who should be treating the Trump presidency as spectacle. Senators, more than most other Americans — if they do their jobs — are in a position to prevent Trump’s “destructiveness” “indecency” and “coarseness” from becoming the new normal that Flake fears.

On the Senate floor, Flake said, “Sustained incumbency is certainly not the point of seeking office and there are times when we must risk our careers in favor of our principles.” Of the woeful new normal, he added, “If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that this is just politics as usual, then heaven help us.” But his logic misses an important step: the risk lies in taking that case to the people and earning the consent of the governed. The risk lies in staying, fighting and taking on the bully in the Oval Office. “If you’re disappointed by your elected officials,” President Barack Obama counseled anxious Americans in his farewell address, “grab a clipboard, get some signatures and run for office yourself.”

The saddest parts of Flake’s speech were his buck-passing prediction, uttered in the passive voice, that “this spell will eventually break” and his worry, as if stripped of free will, that running in 2018 would “cause me to compromise far too many principles.” There is neither risk nor honor in quitting, even as an elaborate form of protest. There is only selfishness marketed as selflessness.

While Trump is doing his worst to undermine our nation’s values, one thing he can’t change is democracy’s essential element: It is nothing if not participatory. That is the part we control — advocates who agitate and demonstrate, voters who fight for the franchise and elect their leaders, and representatives who faithfully discharge their duties, even in … especially in … the face of adversity. If public servants keep away from politics and our politics keep people away from the polls, don’t look to the heavens for help. It’s only a republic, Benjamin Franklin warned, if we can keep it.

Yeah, I'm not calling him brave for calling out the orange menace. Hopefully his actions between now and January 2019 will be admirable.

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Wall Street wins big as Senate votes to roll back regulation allowing consumers to sue their banks"

Spoiler

Vice President Pence cast a tie-breaking vote late Tuesday to block new regulations allowing U.S. consumers to sue their banks, handing Wall Street and other big financial institutions their biggest victory since President Trump's election.

The rules would have cost the industry billions of dollars, according to some estimates. With the Senate's vote, Wall Street is beginning to reap the benefits of the Trump administration focus on rolling back regulations it says are strangling the economy. The vote is also a major rebuke of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which wrote the rules, and has often found itself at odds of Republicans in Congress and the business community.

At issue is the fine print in many of the agreements that consumers sign when they apply for credit cards or bank accounts. These agreements typically require them to settle any disputes they have with the company through arbitration, in which a third party rules on the matter, rather than going to court or joining a class-action lawsuit.

The CFPB rule would block mandatory arbitration clauses in some cases, potentially allowing millions of Americans to file or join a lawsuit to press their complaints.

After more than four hours of debate, the Senate voted 51 to 50 to block its implementation. Pence was forced to cast the deciding vote shortly after 10 p.m. when two Republicans, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Kennedy of Louisiana, opposed the resolution. House Republicans already passed legislation to block the rule, which now needs the approval of President Trump.

“Tonight’s vote is a giant setback for every consumer in this country. Wall Street won and ordinary people lost," CFPB Director Richard Cordray said in a statement minutes after the vote. The legislation "preserves a two-tiered justice system where banks can have their day in court but deny their customers the same right."

The measure was widely loathed on Wall Street and among Republicans in Congress, who called it a gift to plaintiffs' attorneys. Critics argued the rule would trigger a flood of frivolous lawsuits and drive up credit card rates. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several other business groups filed suit last month to block its implementation.

"Today's vote puts consumers first rather than class-action lawyers," said Rob Nichols, president of the American Bankers Association. The Credit Union National Association said the rule "was just the latest example of the one-size-fits-all rulemaking coming from the CFPB and thankfully Congress acted to remedy the situation.”

Proponents of the measure have dismissed such complaints. Class action lawsuits are a public way to force companies to change questionable business practices that would otherwise receive little attention. They also allow large groups of people to seek small amounts of money they individually wouldn't have the time or money to pursue, supporters of the rule say.

To gain support for the legislation, Republicans in the Senate had to overcome a populist campaign led by Democrats and consumer groups linking the rule to the backlash against two big -- and unpopular -- financial firms, Wells Fargo and Equifax. Wells Fargo has been under pressure since admitting last year that employees had opened millions of sham accounts customers didn't ask for, and Equifax is struggling to recover from a massive hack that affected more than 145 million people. Consumer groups have used both cases as a rallying cry against arbitration clauses, which Wells Fargo and Equifax both use.

... < great tweet from Elizabeth Warren >

"Companies like Equifax and Wells Fargo have hurt millions of consumers and tried to escape accountability using forced arbitration clauses," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a long-time critic of Wall Street, said on the Senate floor.

The Treasury Department took the unusual step on Monday of criticizing the work of another government agency, issuing an 18-page report that said the CFPB's arbitration rule “would upend a century of federal policy favoring freedom of contract to provide for low-cost dispute resolution.” Another banking regulator, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency led by Keith Noreika, has also criticized the rule. The OCC and Treasury Department are both led by Trump nominees.

The friction reflects a lingering division between the CFPB and the White House. Under the Trump administration, many agencies have begun taking steps to roll back regulations, which the White House has said strangles economic growth. But the CFPB, a watchdog agency established after the global financial crisis and still led by an Obama-era appointee, has continued to draw the ire of business groups with its aggressive tactics.

“Today’s vote was an important step in asserting Congressional oversight of an agency that has routinely demonstrated a lack of accountability,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who sponsored the legislation, said in a statement.

Earlier this month, the agency finalized wide-ranging rules targeting the billions of dollars in fees collected by payday lenders offering high-cost, short-term loans immediately drawing industry protests. The Senate vote may indicate that the payday rule and other measures being contemplated to rein in debt collectors will face similar Republican resistance in Congress, industry analysts said. "The seemingly revitalized GOP/Trump administration commitment to deregulation," Charles Gabriel of Washington-based research firm Capital Alpha Partners said in a research note.

 

[Childless]

17 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

And remember deflect, deflect, deflect! If we can just come up with something she did that's worse than what we know he did. Then we can put her in jail and then...and then... Do you ever wonder what they would do if Hillary Clinton were in jail? Would that magically make Mueller and everything Trump and his team possibly did disappear?

Yeah, this whole investigation into Clinton is an attempt to distract everyone from Mueller's investigation.  Won't work.  You don't get away with breaking the law because someone else did something worse.  You all get punished.

I laugh at all these investigations of Clinton though.  That woman has been under nearly constant investigation for over 20 years and they've found nothing.  She's either innocent or about a 1000 times smarter than all the Congressional Republicans who served for the last two decades put together.  I wonder if they realize that saying she's guilty of something even if they can't find it just makes them look stupid.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Jeff Flake is out, and Roy Moore is in. Heaven help us."

Spoiler

Out: Jeff Flake.

In: Roy Moore.

This week brought a clarifying moment in the sad denouement of the once-proud GOP into an organ of grievance and intolerance. Flake, a Republican from Arizona, said he was retiring from the Senate. This honorable man and faithful conservative followed another good man, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), in concluding that there is no place for their service in Trump’s America.

Yet even as Flake bowed out Tuesday, Senate Republicans were tightening the party’s inevitable embrace of the new: Ten Commandments judge Roy Moore, who after his GOP primary win is very likely to be the next senator from Alabama. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a longtime leader in his party’s race to the bottom, issued a statement Tuesday endorsing Moore. Two other senators reportedly will hold a fundraiser for Moore, and GOP leadership, with its silence, is tacitly accepting that Moore is its man.

The torch was passed. This is no longer the GOP of Flake, who carried the flame for Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. It’s not even Donald Trump’s; he was just using it. The GOP is now the party of Roy Moore.

In the spirit of those “in and out” features my newspaper colleagues do at year’s end, lets look at what’s “out” in the GOP — the sentiments voiced by Flake in his moving speech Tuesday — and what’s “in”— some of the memorable words of Moore.

Out: “I rise today with no small measure of regret, regret because of the state of our disunion, regret because of the disrepair and destructiveness of our politics, regret because of the indecency of our discourse.”

In: “Homosexual behavior is a ground for divorce, an act of sexual misconduct punishable as a crime in Alabama, a crime against nature, an inherent evil, and an act so heinous that it defies one’s ability to describe it…. [T]he homosexual conduct of a parent — conduct involving a sexual relationship between two persons of the same gender — creates a strong presumption of unfitness that alone is sufficient justification for denying that parent custody.”

Out: “Reckless, outrageous and undignified behavior has become excused and countenanced as telling it like it is when it is actually just reckless, outrageous and undignified. And when such behavior emanates from the top of our government, it is something else. It is dangerous to a democracy.”

In: “In 1943, we would never have allowed a member of Congress to take their oath on ‘Mein Kampf.’ . . . Congress has the authority and should act to prohibit Ellison [Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim member of Congress] from taking the congressional oath today!”

Out: “When a leader correctly identifies real hurt and insecurity in our country and instead of addressing it, goes looking for somebody to blame, there is perhaps nothing more devastating to a pluralistic society.”

In: Moore: “Do you know that bestiality, the relationship between man and beast, is prohibited in every state?”

Interviewer [who had been asking about gay rights]: “Did I ask you about having sex with a cow? Or a dog?”

Moore: “No, you didn’t, but it’s the same thing.”

Out: “American leadership looks to the world and just as Lincoln did sees the family of man. Humanity is not a zero-sum game.”

In: Interviewer: “[Ronald Reagan] said that Russia was the focus of evil in the modern world.”

Moore: “You could say that very well about America, couldn’t you?”

Interviewer: “Do you think?”

Moore: “Well, we promote a lot of bad things, you know.”

Interviewer: “Like?”

Moore: “Same-sex marriage.”

Interviewer: “That’s the very argument Vladimir Putin makes.”

Moore: “Well, then, maybe Putin is right. Maybe he’s more akin to me than I know.”

Out: “The impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican Party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.”

In: “In 1857, the United States Supreme Court [in Dred Scott] did rule that black people were property. . . . But this [gay-marriage] ruling in Obergefell is even worse in a sense.”

In: “Now we have blacks and whites fighting, reds and yellows fighting, Democrats and Republicans fighting, men and women fighting.”

In: “My personal belief is that he [President Barack Obama] wasn’t” born in the United States.

In: “There is no such thing as evolution.”

In: “You wonder why we’re having shootings and killings here in 2017? Because we’ve asked for it. . . . We’ve taken prayer out of school.”

In: “False religions like Islam who teach that you must worship this way are completely opposite with what our First Amendment stands for.”

In: “There are communities under sharia law right now in our country. . . . Well, there’s sharia law, as I understand it, in Illinois, Indiana — up there. I don’t know.”

In: “America the Beautiful, or so you used to be,

Land of the Pilgrims’ pride, I’m glad they’re not here to see,

Babies piled in dumpsters, abortion on demand,

Oh, sweet land of liberty, your house is on the sand.”

As Flake said on the Senate floor: Heaven help us.

Just when we thought the Repugs couldn't be more odious...

[Cleopatra7]

Why Harvey Weinstein is in disgrace while Donald Trump is president:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/26/16526922/harvey-weinstein-donald-trump-sexual-harassment

TL;DR Hollywood abandoned Weinstein, but Republicans and the conservative base are sticking with Trump.

[GreyhoundFan]

"McConnell allies declare open warfare on Bannon"

Spoiler

Allies of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared open warfare on Wednesday against Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist and leader of an insurrection aimed at defeating mainstream Republican candidates in next year’s midterm elections.

More than a year ahead of the 2018 congressional contests, a ­super PAC aligned with McConnell (R-Ky.) revealed plans to attack Bannon personally as it works to protect GOP incumbents facing uphill primary fights. The effort reflects the growing concern of Republican lawmakers over the rise of anti-establishment forces and comes amid escalating frustration over President Trump’s conduct, which has prompted a handful of lawmakers to publicly criticize the president.

Yet the retaliatory crusade does not aim to target Trump, whose popularity remains high among Republican voters. Instead, the McConnell-allied Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) will highlight Bannon’s hard-line populism and attempt to link him to white nationalism to discredit him and the candidates he will support. It will also boost candidates with traditional GOP profiles and excoriate those tied to Bannon, with plans to spend millions and launch a heavy social media presence in some states.

The turbulence presents a danger to Republicans’ narrow 52-seat majority in the Senate, with seasoned GOP lawmakers deciding against seeking reelection amid the political storm — and with many GOP voters cheering the rancor that Bannon has stoked from his perch at his website, Breitbart.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), in an emotional plea Tuesday, said that he would not run in 2018, after Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) had done the same in late September. Both men, no longer accountable to Republican primary voters, have taken on higher-profile roles as critics of the president, with Corker calling for a “day care” to step in and control him and Flake calling Trump’s behavior “unacceptable.”

Some Republican lawmakers have privately fretted that simply speaking out against Trump’s incendiary statements or the ­Bannon-aligned candidates that are rousing anger in their states will not be enough — and could backfire — as they try to survive the surge of grievance-driven politics that has gripped the GOP’s base.

“It’s tough,” Flake told CNN on Wednesday. “I’m competitive. I like to fight these battles. But I also knew that I couldn’t run the kind of race that I would be proud of and win in a Republican primary at this time. The politics in that way have changed.”

In the wake of Flake’s announcement, the SLF called Arizona state Sen. Kelli Ward, Bannon’s pick to replace Flake, a “conspiracy theorist” and promised to ensure her defeat.

In recent weeks, Bannon has held court as dozens of candidates have streamed through his Capitol Hill townhouse, including Ward last week, urging them to pledge to vote against McConnell for majority leader. Mississippi state Sen. Chris McDaniel (R) is close to making a decision on a bid against Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and has won Bannon’s blessing, according to a person close to him.

Hedge fund executive Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah — Bannon’s wealthy allies — have pledged millions to the cause, said people briefed on their plans.

Bannon’s critics argue that he is causing unnecessary internal divisions that could make it harder to pass tax legislation — and to win general elections next fall. They also point to Sen. Luther Strange’s defeat in last month’s Republican primary in a special Senate election in Alabama as an example of a dynamic they worry could repeat itself across the next year if left unchecked. The SLF spent more than $10 million to help Strange.

Strange was endorsed by Trump and McConnell but lost to a former state judge, Roy Moore, who had won the backing of Bannon and his orbit of allies. Moore is now in a tight race with Democratic nominee Doug Jones.

“This is a guy who is more interested in seeing his name in the headlines than he is in any kind of accomplishment for the president,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to McConnell who has been increasingly outspoken in his opposition to Bannon. “It comes at great cost to the president’s term, the Republican Party and any hope they can have at working as a team.”

On Wednesday, the SLF’s Twitter account mocked Danny Tarkanian — a frequent conservative candidate in Nevada who is challenging Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) — for suggesting that Heller join him in pledging to oppose McConnell as majority leader.

The tweets also turned the spotlight on Bannon.

The SLF tweeted a 2016 headline from the New York Daily News — “Anti-Semitic Trump campaign CEO Stephen Bannon not a big fan of ‘whiny brat’ Jews, ex-wife says” — with space for Tarkanian’s signature.

“Here’s another pledge for @DannyTarkanian to sign,” the PAC tweeted.

The Daily News reported last year that in a 2007 court statement, Bannon’s former wife Mary Louise Piccard said he didn’t want their twin daughters attending a school because too many Jews attended. “The biggest problem he had with Archer [School for Girls in Los Angeles] is the number of Jews that attend,” Piccard said in her statement, the newspaper reported.

Bannon’s spokeswoman Alexandra Preate told The Washington Post last year that Bannon has denied saying that and proudly sent the girls to Archer. And after seeing the SLF tweet to Tarkanian on Wednesday, a Bannon confidant said, he responded to the group’s social media blitz with laughter — as he has to other recent attacks on his character.

That attack was one of a number of swipes at Bannon that have popped up as the former White House adviser has emerged as a player on the national political scene. Holmes and others have called him a “white supremacist.”

Holmes defended his use of the term to describe Bannon in a recent interview. “If you look at his associations, the people who are ecstatic about his efforts, the long history of conduct that he has been a part of, I will let others come to their conclusions,” he said. “But this is not a guy that just burst on the scene. Let’s not act like everybody doesn’t know exactly who Steve Bannon is.”

Bannon has said repeatedly that his nationalist, populist vision includes a place for all races, sexual orientations and genders to succeed.

“Do we need any further evidence than Mitch McConnell and his cronies reducing themselves to using left-wing talking points to attack Steve? It’s pathetic to watch,” said Andy Surabian, a senior adviser to the Great America Alliance super PAC and Bannon’s former deputy at the White House. The pro-Trump PAC is engaged in a slew of races, sending around a bus to rally activists, and counts longtime operative Edward Rollins as its strategist. “Every poll shows Mitch McConnell is an albatross on the Republican candidates,” Surabian said. “If McConnell truly cared about our Republican majority in the Senate more than he cares about his own power, then he would step down as Senate majority leader today.”

Bannon’s circle says the contents of his divorce proceedings, along with claims of racism, are unlikely to do new damage to his reputation, since he has been targeted in the past along those same lines by Democrats, and even in a “Saturday Night Live” caricature as an angel of death. Advisers also note that the attacks elevate Bannon’s profile, which could help carry his anti-establishment message.

In an email, SLF President Steven Law said he expects Bannon to become a liability for any insurgent candidates he supports in 2018.

“But his real impact would be felt in general elections, where Bannon’s well-documented, toxic views and alt-right paper trail could become a liability for candidates who are perceived as closely tied to him,” Law said.

According to public polling, neither McConnell nor Bannon is in good standing with voters. In an April poll conducted by Quinnipiac University, one of few to ask voters about Bannon, just 11 percent said they viewed him positively and 45 percent said they viewed him negatively. The numbers were better among Republicans, with a nine-point favorability margin.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), one of the incumbents mentioned as a possible target for Bannon in 2018, dismissed the effort to get Senate Republicans to sign pledges vowing to oppose McConnell.

“No, I haven’t signed pledges. I didn’t sign Grover Norquist’s pledge,” Barrasso said on Wednesday, referring to the anti-tax advocate’s famous pledge. “I’m not a guy that signs pledges, and I’m going to vote for whoever I believe is in the best interests of the people of Wyoming.”

The reasons for Flake’s decision may be tied less to the national environment surrounding the feud between McConnell and Bannon and more about raw home-state politics. Reams of public and private polling in recent months have found Flake to be an unpopular incumbent, especially among the Republican voters he would need to win over in a primary fight next year.

McConnell’s polling among Republicans has tumbled since the start of the year — a fact that Bannon has used to his advantage. On Tuesday, Bannon’s Breitbart website reported that a Harvard-Harris poll found 56 percent of Republicans in favor of dumping McConnell as leader. That same day, at a media roundtable organized by the conservative Heritage Foundation, a reporter for Breitbart asked members of the House Freedom Caucus to respond to the poll number.

“It was that high?” scoffed Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), wondering jokingly about why it wasn’t even higher.

As the two sides spar, Senate Republicans are trying to demonstrate that the party’s agenda is moving forward despite the infighting — and that relations with the White House are smooth. On Wednesday, a day after Flake made his charged speech, Ivanka Trump appeared with Republican senators to pitch a child tax credit that she has lobbied to include in the upcoming tax legislation.

Still, GOP donors who are friendly with McConnell welcomed the effort to thwart Bannon’s attempts to shape the 2018 contests and rattle McConnell as Senate Republicans are trying to work with Trump.

“Absolutely. Why not?” said Al Hoffman, a major Republican donor and McConnell ally. “You’ve got to get rid of the Bannon banner.”

If we could be sure that the Dems will benefit from this fighting, I'd turn a blind eye, but I think they're going to drag out everyone and everything.

[AnywhereButHere]

22 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

And remember deflect, deflect, deflect! If we can just come up with something she did that's worse than what we know he did. Then we can put her in jail and then...and then... Do you ever wonder what they would do if Hillary Clinton were in jail? Would that magically make Mueller and everything Trump and his team possibly did disappear?

She's their White Whale. If they ever did manage to convict her of anything they'd probably spend the rest of their days wandering around in a fog not knowing what on earth to do with themselves.

[Audrey2]

4 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

She's their White Whale. If they ever did manage to convict her of anything they'd probably spend the rest of their days wandering around in a fog not knowing what on earth to do with themselves.

Sadly, I think they'd continue to crow about themselves and how they always knew she was guilty, then go after Obama.

[fraurosena]

As the main Trump thread has been renamed and moved from quiverful of politics while I slept (what’s up with that @Destiny?) I’m posting this here, as it’s Congress who should impeach.

 

[Howl]

On 10/26/2017 at 6:56 AM, Childless said:

She's either innocent or about a 1000 times smarter than all the Congressional Republicans who served for the last two decades put together.

I've always thought Hillary was brilliant and quite possibly a lot smarter than her husband, who is no slouch. 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Republicans, desperate for a win, already face setbacks as they prepare to unveil tax bill this week"

Spoiler

The Republican effort to overhaul the tax code suffered a bruising setback over the weekend when a powerful corporate interest group came out against the proposal just days ahead of House leaders’ planned release of the legislation to the public.

President Trump and GOP leaders are casting the measure as a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the federal tax code, one they say will stimulate the economy, create millions of jobs and give voters a reason to stick with their party in next year’s midterm elections. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is scheduled to reveal the House version of the bill on Wednesday.

A discouraging clue emerged for House Republicans on Saturday, when the National Association of Home Builders came out against the bill after Brady informed the group’s chief executive about key details.

“We will do everything we can to defeat this thing,” said Jerry Howard, chief executive officer of the National Association of Home Builders.

For Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the stakes couldn’t be higher. With the approach of the end of their first year controlling the White House and Congress, and the failure of health-care legislation still fresh, Republicans are desperate to post a win before next year’s midterm election cycle begins in earnest. By many of their own accounts, failure to pass tax legislation could lead to an electoral bloodbath, and the end of Ryan’s political career, in 2018.

Much of the pressure, and spotlight, will fall on Brady. A bare-pated, unfailingly sunny former Chamber of Commerce executive who is largely unknown outside of Washington after 20 years on Capitol Hill, Brady’s challenge is to build consensus while fellow Republican lawmakers, corporate lobbyists and perhaps even Trump himself pick the bill apart.

Ryan and Brady had been hoping to stave off corporate defections as long as possible, arguing that the plan’s benefits to the economy would outweigh the loss of any industry-specific tax break. But a decision to roll back key itemized deductions has already alienated the home builders as well as the National Association of Realtors, both major lobbying forces on Capitol Hill.

Home builders are considered among the most politically influential groups, as they play a large role in the local economy for virtually every congressional district — and contribute millions to political campaigns. Lawmakers have frequently leaned in whatever direction the home builders have taken.

Howard and Brady’s aides spent weeks working together to add to the bill a “homeownership tax credit,” which essentially would have replaced the mortgage-interest and property-tax deductions, combining both benefits into a new tax credit.

Howard said home builders like other parts of the tax plan, such as tax cuts for businesses and lower rates for many families. But he feared that other changes could tip the housing industry into a recession. He was particularly concerned about ideas to eliminate the federal deduction for state and local taxes and doubling the standard deduction, which could remove incentives for all but the “very wealthy” to deduct their mortgage interest — and have a chilling effect on homeownership.

The homeownership credit had some buy-in from the White House and congressional tax writers, but leaders including Ryan were wary of threatening the bill’s passage by reneging on a pledge that they had made for weeks to scores of lawmakers, according to a personal familiar with the negotiations — that the mortgage interest deduction would remain intact.

“Chairman Brady and his staff and [NAHB] worked hours and hours on it and we were very excited about that concept, and all of the sudden on Friday we were told that concept would no longer be considered,” Howard said.

After Brady communicated that the changes would not be made, top NAHB officials held an emergency conference call on Saturday and agreed unanimously to oppose the bill after months of reserving judgment, a spokesman for the organization said. Now, the group is preparing a public campaign against the bill, with plans to mobilize members in congressional districts across the country.

Brady, in a statement, said the homeownership tax credit could still be added, but the advocates will have to make the case directly to lawmakers.

Republicans also appear poised to limit what American workers will be allowed to contribute pretax to their retirement plans — a change that stands to generate strong opposition. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested Sunday in a television interview that the GOP is instead looking to increase the limit on post-tax contributions as a substitute.

Currently, Americans can contribute up to $18,000 a year in pretax income to a 401(k). Those contributions are later taxed when withdrawn in retirement. But the GOP plan appears poised to reduce the pretax contribution limit — and increase limits allowed to post-tax accounts. Withdrawals from those accounts are not taxed, meaning the federal government would gain revenue in the short term as a greater portion of initial savings is taxed — but lose revenue in the long term.

McCarthy suggested in an interview Sunday that the GOP plan would be a boon to middle-class savers. “We’ll expand the amount you can invest, but we’ll also give you an option to not be taxed later in life, not to have that tax burden hanging over you but actually have more income in the future,” he said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Other setbacks could quickly follow. The commercial real estate industry is wary of a proposal to eliminate or scale back the deductibility of corporate interest payments.

Democrats, meanwhile, have not been closely consulted on the bill, and few, if any, are expected to support it.

“This will be a roller coaster,” said Rohit Kumar, a former top domestic policy aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who is now a tax lobbyist for PwC, the accounting and consulting firm. “Any major piece of legislation has its brush-with-death moment, and sometimes more than one. But the overriding imperative here is to get a tax bill to the president’s desk and to do so as quickly as possible.”

Negotiators released a broad framework in September, calling for lower individual and corporate rates, elimination of most itemized deductions and an increase in the standard deduction. But the legislation has been kept unusually close for months, and even members of the Ways and Means Committee said last week that they were unaware of how key provisions would work.

“We have no details,” said Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.). “All anyone wants to talk about, especially the business people and so forth, is the tax reform. And I can’t tell them anything, because I have no details . . . I’ve been very frustrated that all I can say is, ‘It’s going to be good for the economy.’”

The gravity of the task is not lost on Brady, 62, who has led the committee since Ryan left the post two years ago to become speaker. Central to the challenge has been making hard choices about which tax breaks to eliminate to make way for the rate cuts that the GOP has promised.

On Saturday, Brady gave ground on the planned elimination of the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes — a provision that had put Republican House members from New York, New Jersey, California and other high-tax states on edge — agreeing to maintain a deduction for property taxes but not for income or sales taxes.

“You’re going to have to have give and take, and I think Kevin’s strength is that he understands that and is able to pivot and move forward and just keep pivoting and keep moving forward,” said former representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican who chaired the Ways and Means Committee from 2011 until 2015 and released his own blueprint for comprehensive tax reform shortly before his retirement. “He will have an incredible amount of say on many, many issues. But even if you’re chairman, you still only have one vote.”

Inside the committee, the drafting process has unfolded behind closed doors over the course of months. Recently, the pace has quickened, with panel members spending long hours inside a Longworth House Office Building conference room hashing out the plan.

Identifying Brady’s personal stamp on the tax bill could be difficult. He has been a relentless advocate for “pro-growth” measures — which largely refers to business provisions meant to goose investment.

But he has taken little personal ownership of any particular aspect.

Brady’s test, GOP observers say, is melding the various pieces into a cohesive whole and convincing fellow Republicans to back it.

“He has a lot more patience than most people,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). “This has gone on for years . . . but to get to this point where we’re actually putting pen to paper and then to get everyone on the same page? It’s been a tremendous effort.”

A Ways and Means member, Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), recalled pitching an esoteric plan for business-tax deductions that he thought should be incorporated into the tax bill at one of the recent closed-door committee sessions.

The idea seemed “brilliant,” in Schweikert’s recollection. But then Brady started asking questions. And not long afterward, Schweikert withdrew his idea and the debate quickly moved along. Thanks to Brady’s soft touch, he said, he understood the decision.

“I don’t know of many members here who could handle the ideological or even the temperamental range that’s in the room,” Schweikert said. “Instead of saying, ‘That’s a dumb idea,’ or, ‘No, I’ve got to get you back over here,’ it’s, ‘Let’s walk through that. How would that work? How would you enforce that?’”

To the public at large, the push for the tax overhaul has largely been identified with Ryan, who has repeatedly said he was dragged kicking and screaming from his coveted Ways and Means post to the speaker’s office. And Ryan remains a consequential figure who has worked in tandem with Brady to sell the bill to the public.

While Brady has become a more familiar presence on cable news, he has yet to step into the public spotlight the way one of his predecessors did a generation ago, when then-Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski went on national TV in 1985 asking Americans to “write Rosty” to demand tax reform — generating tens of thousands of replies that helped build momentum for bipartisan legislation that passed a year later.

The Senate is expected to start its own process of drafting a tax bill soon after the House text is released. The stakes will be high for Senate Republicans too — notably McConnell. Brady’s counterpart in the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), has already cemented a reputation as a monumental figure over four decades of service. But for Brady, guiding a bill of this level of ambition through the House and into law could thrust him into the congressional annals.

“Hopefully, I contributed a serious, collaborative effort to get to this single, unified tax reform plan,” he said. “Having the architectural designs, the meetings, discussions, I think was helpful to everybody . . . I want people to know where we’re going, why, and to get their engagement when we’re doing it.”

Yeah, I hope and pray their "reform" doesn't go through. My mortgage interest and property tax payments are my biggest deductions, and my 401K is what I need to retire, I certainly don't want to be paying more taxes on it now.

[onekidanddone]

On 10/25/2017 at 2:52 PM, JMarie said:

She' just hasn't only drunk the Kool-Aid, she's swimming in a pool full of Kool-Aid.

Hell, that lady cooked up her own batch of extra special Kool-Aid.

[Howl]

Oh, John, don't hold back.  Tell us how your REALLY feel. 

“Fuck Jordan. Fuck Chaffetz. They’re both assholes,” Boehner told Politico.

Boehner Unloads On His Former GOP Colleagues, Right-Wing Media

 

[GrumpyGran]

16 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Republicans, desperate for a win, already face setbacks as they prepare to unveil tax bill this week"

  Reveal hidden contents

The Republican effort to overhaul the tax code suffered a bruising setback over the weekend when a powerful corporate interest group came out against the proposal just days ahead of House leaders’ planned release of the legislation to the public.

President Trump and GOP leaders are casting the measure as a once-in-a-generation rewrite of the federal tax code, one they say will stimulate the economy, create millions of jobs and give voters a reason to stick with their party in next year’s midterm elections. Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Tex.), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is scheduled to reveal the House version of the bill on Wednesday.

A discouraging clue emerged for House Republicans on Saturday, when the National Association of Home Builders came out against the bill after Brady informed the group’s chief executive about key details.

“We will do everything we can to defeat this thing,” said Jerry Howard, chief executive officer of the National Association of Home Builders.

For Trump and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the stakes couldn’t be higher. With the approach of the end of their first year controlling the White House and Congress, and the failure of health-care legislation still fresh, Republicans are desperate to post a win before next year’s midterm election cycle begins in earnest. By many of their own accounts, failure to pass tax legislation could lead to an electoral bloodbath, and the end of Ryan’s political career, in 2018.

Much of the pressure, and spotlight, will fall on Brady. A bare-pated, unfailingly sunny former Chamber of Commerce executive who is largely unknown outside of Washington after 20 years on Capitol Hill, Brady’s challenge is to build consensus while fellow Republican lawmakers, corporate lobbyists and perhaps even Trump himself pick the bill apart.

Ryan and Brady had been hoping to stave off corporate defections as long as possible, arguing that the plan’s benefits to the economy would outweigh the loss of any industry-specific tax break. But a decision to roll back key itemized deductions has already alienated the home builders as well as the National Association of Realtors, both major lobbying forces on Capitol Hill.

Home builders are considered among the most politically influential groups, as they play a large role in the local economy for virtually every congressional district — and contribute millions to political campaigns. Lawmakers have frequently leaned in whatever direction the home builders have taken.

Howard and Brady’s aides spent weeks working together to add to the bill a “homeownership tax credit,” which essentially would have replaced the mortgage-interest and property-tax deductions, combining both benefits into a new tax credit.

Howard said home builders like other parts of the tax plan, such as tax cuts for businesses and lower rates for many families. But he feared that other changes could tip the housing industry into a recession. He was particularly concerned about ideas to eliminate the federal deduction for state and local taxes and doubling the standard deduction, which could remove incentives for all but the “very wealthy” to deduct their mortgage interest — and have a chilling effect on homeownership.

The homeownership credit had some buy-in from the White House and congressional tax writers, but leaders including Ryan were wary of threatening the bill’s passage by reneging on a pledge that they had made for weeks to scores of lawmakers, according to a personal familiar with the negotiations — that the mortgage interest deduction would remain intact.

“Chairman Brady and his staff and [NAHB] worked hours and hours on it and we were very excited about that concept, and all of the sudden on Friday we were told that concept would no longer be considered,” Howard said.

After Brady communicated that the changes would not be made, top NAHB officials held an emergency conference call on Saturday and agreed unanimously to oppose the bill after months of reserving judgment, a spokesman for the organization said. Now, the group is preparing a public campaign against the bill, with plans to mobilize members in congressional districts across the country.

Brady, in a statement, said the homeownership tax credit could still be added, but the advocates will have to make the case directly to lawmakers.

Republicans also appear poised to limit what American workers will be allowed to contribute pretax to their retirement plans — a change that stands to generate strong opposition. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested Sunday in a television interview that the GOP is instead looking to increase the limit on post-tax contributions as a substitute.

Currently, Americans can contribute up to $18,000 a year in pretax income to a 401(k). Those contributions are later taxed when withdrawn in retirement. But the GOP plan appears poised to reduce the pretax contribution limit — and increase limits allowed to post-tax accounts. Withdrawals from those accounts are not taxed, meaning the federal government would gain revenue in the short term as a greater portion of initial savings is taxed — but lose revenue in the long term.

McCarthy suggested in an interview Sunday that the GOP plan would be a boon to middle-class savers. “We’ll expand the amount you can invest, but we’ll also give you an option to not be taxed later in life, not to have that tax burden hanging over you but actually have more income in the future,” he said on Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Other setbacks could quickly follow. The commercial real estate industry is wary of a proposal to eliminate or scale back the deductibility of corporate interest payments.

Democrats, meanwhile, have not been closely consulted on the bill, and few, if any, are expected to support it.

“This will be a roller coaster,” said Rohit Kumar, a former top domestic policy aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) who is now a tax lobbyist for PwC, the accounting and consulting firm. “Any major piece of legislation has its brush-with-death moment, and sometimes more than one. But the overriding imperative here is to get a tax bill to the president’s desk and to do so as quickly as possible.”

Negotiators released a broad framework in September, calling for lower individual and corporate rates, elimination of most itemized deductions and an increase in the standard deduction. But the legislation has been kept unusually close for months, and even members of the Ways and Means Committee said last week that they were unaware of how key provisions would work.

“We have no details,” said Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.). “All anyone wants to talk about, especially the business people and so forth, is the tax reform. And I can’t tell them anything, because I have no details . . . I’ve been very frustrated that all I can say is, ‘It’s going to be good for the economy.’”

The gravity of the task is not lost on Brady, 62, who has led the committee since Ryan left the post two years ago to become speaker. Central to the challenge has been making hard choices about which tax breaks to eliminate to make way for the rate cuts that the GOP has promised.

On Saturday, Brady gave ground on the planned elimination of the federal income tax deduction for state and local taxes — a provision that had put Republican House members from New York, New Jersey, California and other high-tax states on edge — agreeing to maintain a deduction for property taxes but not for income or sales taxes.

“You’re going to have to have give and take, and I think Kevin’s strength is that he understands that and is able to pivot and move forward and just keep pivoting and keep moving forward,” said former representative Dave Camp, a Michigan Republican who chaired the Ways and Means Committee from 2011 until 2015 and released his own blueprint for comprehensive tax reform shortly before his retirement. “He will have an incredible amount of say on many, many issues. But even if you’re chairman, you still only have one vote.”

Inside the committee, the drafting process has unfolded behind closed doors over the course of months. Recently, the pace has quickened, with panel members spending long hours inside a Longworth House Office Building conference room hashing out the plan.

Identifying Brady’s personal stamp on the tax bill could be difficult. He has been a relentless advocate for “pro-growth” measures — which largely refers to business provisions meant to goose investment.

But he has taken little personal ownership of any particular aspect.

Brady’s test, GOP observers say, is melding the various pieces into a cohesive whole and convincing fellow Republicans to back it.

“He has a lot more patience than most people,” said Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.). “This has gone on for years . . . but to get to this point where we’re actually putting pen to paper and then to get everyone on the same page? It’s been a tremendous effort.”

A Ways and Means member, Rep. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.), recalled pitching an esoteric plan for business-tax deductions that he thought should be incorporated into the tax bill at one of the recent closed-door committee sessions.

The idea seemed “brilliant,” in Schweikert’s recollection. But then Brady started asking questions. And not long afterward, Schweikert withdrew his idea and the debate quickly moved along. Thanks to Brady’s soft touch, he said, he understood the decision.

“I don’t know of many members here who could handle the ideological or even the temperamental range that’s in the room,” Schweikert said. “Instead of saying, ‘That’s a dumb idea,’ or, ‘No, I’ve got to get you back over here,’ it’s, ‘Let’s walk through that. How would that work? How would you enforce that?’”

To the public at large, the push for the tax overhaul has largely been identified with Ryan, who has repeatedly said he was dragged kicking and screaming from his coveted Ways and Means post to the speaker’s office. And Ryan remains a consequential figure who has worked in tandem with Brady to sell the bill to the public.

While Brady has become a more familiar presence on cable news, he has yet to step into the public spotlight the way one of his predecessors did a generation ago, when then-Ways and Means Chairman Dan Rostenkowski went on national TV in 1985 asking Americans to “write Rosty” to demand tax reform — generating tens of thousands of replies that helped build momentum for bipartisan legislation that passed a year later.

The Senate is expected to start its own process of drafting a tax bill soon after the House text is released. The stakes will be high for Senate Republicans too — notably McConnell. Brady’s counterpart in the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), has already cemented a reputation as a monumental figure over four decades of service. But for Brady, guiding a bill of this level of ambition through the House and into law could thrust him into the congressional annals.

“Hopefully, I contributed a serious, collaborative effort to get to this single, unified tax reform plan,” he said. “Having the architectural designs, the meetings, discussions, I think was helpful to everybody . . . I want people to know where we’re going, why, and to get their engagement when we’re doing it.”

Yeah, I hope and pray their "reform" doesn't go through. My mortgage interest and property tax payments are my biggest deductions, and my 401K is what I need to retire, I certainly don't want to be paying more taxes on it now.

You know, I'm surprised that they didn't slide some more shivs in there. A Federal tax on food maybe? Shop at the Walmart, Costco, Trader Joe's or Aldi and there will be a 10% tax on top of the state and local. Shop at the Wegman's, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, maybe 2%? And if you get your food at Dean and Deluca-no need to pay any taxes! 

[fraurosena]

Has anyone from the Hill reacted yet to the indictment news about Manafort, Gates and Papadapolous yet?

[onekidanddone]

Other than playing 'duck and cover', I've not heard a peep

5 hours ago, GrumpyGran said:

Shop at the Wegman's, Whole Foods, Harris Teeter, maybe 2%? And if you get your food at Dean and Deluca-no need to pay any taxes! 

Wegman's isn't that bad for some things. I've found a lot of their produce to be cheaper and of better quality than other stores.

[GreyhoundFan]

Excellent op-ed: "Paul Ryan Is Choking On His Own Mystery Meat"

Spoiler

House Republicans were supposed to unveil their tax proposal today, but it has been put off — and not, as you might imagine, because they’re a bit worried that their grand opening might be overshadowed by the indictment of Trump’s campaign manager and sworn testimony of collusion between campaign officials and Russia.

No, they’re delaying because on the verge of trying to pass a huge change in the U.S. tax system, they still haven’t settled on key parts of the proposal — specifically, how to pay for huge corporate tax cuts and large cuts to wealthy individuals.

But wait — how is this possible? Republicans, and specifically Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, have been talking about tax “reform” and putting out white papers for years — actually, since 2010. How can basic things be up in the air at this late date?

The answer, of course, is that Ryan and friends have been faking it all these years. This was obvious from the beginning. I identified Ryan as a flimflam man more than 7 years ago. And the reason I knew he was a phony was that he was proposing large tax cuts while asserting that the lost revenue would be made up for by closing unspecified loopholes.

A couple of years later, Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center complained about the “mystery meat” in Ryan’s budget — the huge revenue gains assumed from eliminating unspecified tax preferences:

Ryan proposes big, specific spending reductions such as cutting Medicaid in half and slashing other federal spending (except for Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) by nearly 75 percent from current levels by 2050. But his budget still can’t add up without eliminating or sharply scaling back those popular tax preferences. Which ones, it seems, remain a state secret.

And they’re still a state secret — on the day the House was supposed to release its plan, we still have no idea what will be used as “pay-fors”.

Now, a cynic might have expected Republicans to go for full-on cynicism: “What, you took it seriously when we talked about fiscal responsibility? The joke’s one you! Ha ha ha!” And to a certain extent that is what they’ve done: after all the deficit-hawk posturing, they’re openly admitting that their intention is to increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion.

But they apparently didn’t feel free to cut completely loose: they did set a deficit target, and as I understand the mechanics of reconciliation, the budgets passed by the House and Senate, while they don’t actually set policy, kind of leave them stuck with an upper limit on just how much they can blow up the deficit.

And they have no idea how to get there. Try to cut one set of deductions, and the homebuilders get mad at you. Try to cut another, and upper-middle-class suburbanites in blue states who still vote GOP get mad. And so on.

The point is that these problems were always predictable, which is why the Ryan budgets were always obviously fraudulent. Ryan’s fakery may have fooled his naive constituents — by which I mean practically the whole Beltway pundit class — but never fooled anyone who could do the math.

So will the GOP pass something? Probably — but it’s more likely to be a miniature Christmas tree of handouts to the wealthy than the grand tax reform they’ve been promising.

And let’s hope that whatever happens gets reported as the failure it is. Ryan and company promised big stuff, but never had any way to deliver. When it comes to big lies, Donald Trump is actually a very good, very normal Republican.

I agree with the author. Ryan is a flim-flam man. Actually, that's too nice. Ryan is a lying sack of shit. Yes, I shouldn't insult sacks of shit by comparing them to Ryan, but that's the best I can do today.

[GreyhoundFan]

I just called my Rep's office. This tax plan is a bad joke: "GOP tax plan would shrink mortgage interest benefit, slash corporate tax rate"

Spoiler

House Republican leaders on Thursday proposed legislation that would overhaul the U.S. tax code, slash corporate and individual income tax rates and jettison numerous tax breaks Americans and businesses have used for years to limit their tax bills.

The release of the proposal accelerates a frantic political effort that could impact almost every American household and business. In a number of cases, the tax plan cuts back on tax benefits for families and individuals while expanding tax benefits for companies.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would lower the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent and collapse the seven tax brackets paid by families and individuals down to four. It would create giant new benefits for the wealthy by cutting business taxes, eliminating the estate tax, and ending the alternative minimum tax.

The legislation would cut in half the popular mortgage interest deduction used by millions of American homeowners, changing the deduction’s rules for new mortgages. Presently, Americans can deduct interest payments made on their first $1 million worth of home loans. Under the bill, for new mortgages, they would only be able to deduct interest payments made on their first $500,000 worth of home loans.

This change could have a particularly big impact on high-cost areas, such as San Francisco, New York, Boston, and the Washington D.C. area, and housing groups and lawmakers will likely try to defeat it. The bill would allow people to deduct their local property taxes from their taxable income, though this benefit would be capped at $10,000.

The bill would nearly double the amount of money not subject to federal income tax, a tax break known as the “standard deduction.” Under the plan, that deduction would rise from $12,700 per family to $24,000. But this benefit would be partially offset by the personal exemption many Americans can claim, which can be large for families with multiple children.

The bill’s true impact on the middle class will be difficult to immediately measure. The bill would create a new “Family Credit” and expand the child tax credit used by working families. The child tax credit would grow from $1,000 per child to $1,600 for each child.

Families would also no longer be able to deduct their state income taxes from their federal taxable income, another change that would have a particular impact on places like New Jersey and New York, where state taxes are higher than in other areas. Taxpayers will be able to deduct their property taxes up to $10,000.

Americans would no longer be able to deduct their medical expenses or property and casualty losses, according to a document outlining the plan.

The legislative fight over the tax bill has become the Trump administration’s biggest political goal, after failed attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Trump wants the legislation to pass the House and the Senate by the end of the year, though they must resolve numerous differences.

The bill would add $1.5 trillion to the debt over 10 years, but Republicans believe the changes would trigger a surge in economic growth, higher wages, and job creation.

Other changes in the bill would be far reaching. It would, for example, make changes to college savings programs and have new requirements for tax-exempt organizations like churches and charities.

The measure now moves into a contentious phase as Republican lawmakers look to make their preferred changes to the bill while nearly all Democrats work to block it, all while an army of lobbyists lean on Congress in a bid to protect their preferred deductions.

Not happy here.

[Howl]

Lamar Smith (R Texas), a 30-year veteran of the US congress, has announced he will not run again.   Him being from Texas, though, his seat will likely reliably go to whatever Repub will run in his place. 

[GreyhoundFan]

The WaPo published this piece by Elizabeth Warren: "The Republican tax plan puts rich donors ahead of working families"

Spoiler

The Republican leadership has outsourced its economic agenda to a handful of billionaires and corporate donors. From attempting to kick millions off of health insurance to rolling back rules protecting worker health and safety, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) have relentlessly pursued their donors’ interests at the expense of working families. The Republican tax plan unveiled Thursday is the latest example.

 American families are already on the ropes. Booming corporate profits have not translated to higher wages for workers. The result is a middle-class squeeze: Most workers barely make more than what they did 30 years ago, while the costs of necessities such as housing, transportation, health care and education have risen sharply. If Congress tackled the middle-class squeeze head-on, it could provide more financial security for America’s families and produce faster economic growth.  

But the Republican Party’s rich donors want tax giveaways, and the party is happy to oblige. According to estimates based on the original outline of the Republican tax plan, it showers $2.5 trillion on big corporations. Fewer than 10 years after sparking a devastating financial crisis and receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts, big banks would reap billions from the Republican plan. Wells Fargo is projected to receive a bigger tax handout than any other U.S. company.  

Wealthy foreign investors also win big. By slashing the corporate tax rate, the Republican plan could put as much as $700 billion in the pockets of the foreign investors who now hold nearly 35 percent of the stock in U.S. companies. Is that what President Trump means by America first?

Multinational corporations are big winners, too, with a giveaway that establishes a lower tax on money earned abroad than money earned here at home. That makes it even harder for small U.S. businesses without overseas operations to compete with the giants. It also creates a powerful incentive for U.S. multinationals to shift investments — and jobs — abroad. Fewer investments in America will mean even lower wages for American workers.  

But the GOP plan isn’t all giveaways. The Republicans have thrown a lot of working families under the bus. The Republican plan imposes a double tax on millions of families who pay state and local income and sales taxes. The plan also makes home ownership more expensive by nullifying the benefit of the mortgage interest deduction for many families.

It’s hard to sell a plan that imposes new taxes on millions of working families while shoveling money to big banks, multinational corporations and wealthy foreign investors. That’s why Republicans are pushing two big lies about their plan instead.

The first big lie is that the plan will “supercharge” economic growth, creating a rising tide that would lift all boats. Despite Republicans’ wild claims, independent analysts agree: The corporate tax cut at the center of the Republican plan will have a negligible or even a negative impact on economic growth.   

The second big lie is that corporations will pass along their tax giveaways to workers in the form of higher wages. When multinational companies got a huge tax break under President George W. Bush, corporate profits shot up and shareholders grabbed nearly all the gains. When the United Kingdom cut its corporate tax rate by 11 percent, wages went down. Republicans know the facts aren’t with them, which is why Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin tried to bury Treasury’s own report showing that wealthy shareholders would be the overwhelming beneficiaries of a massive corporate tax giveaway.

In fact, corporate executives are already telling their investors that tax giveaways from the Republican plan will be passed not to workers but to shareholders, through bigger dividends and more stock buybacks. Stock ownership is highly concentrated among the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans — and half of all Americans don’t own a single share of stock — so the Republican plan will be a bonanza for America’s richest.

Meanwhile, the Republican plan will make the middle-class squeeze worse. As the government collects trillions less in corporate taxes in coming years, the national debt will explode. After voting over their careers to add more than $3 trillion to the debt through tax giveaways to the rich and the Wall Street bailout, Ryan and McConnell will suddenly rediscover their concern over the debt. They have already shown their hand, promising to pursue deficit reduction next year with trillions in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, housing and infrastructure programs on tap. If Republicans push through those cuts to address the very debt they created, that means higher health-care, transportation and housing costs for many working families.

The GOP tax plan lays bare the corporate priorities of the Republican Party. The trillions that Republicans hand over to corporations could go to rebuilding our roads and bridges and energy grid, creating millions of high-paying jobs and a stronger economy. Or that money could raise millions of American children out of poverty. But jobs and children aren’t priorities for today’s Republican Party. Instead, it grovels before wealthy corporate donors who want tax giveaways — and want them now. 

We can build an economy that grows faster and provides every American family with basic economic security. That work starts by shutting down the McConnell-Ryan $2.5 trillion corporate giveaway.

I've actually gotten to know some of my house rep and senators' staffers since the election. They have already heard from me about this horrible tax plan, but I will call again. The Repugs really don't care about anyone who isn't a millionaire.

[GreyhoundFan]

I can't stand Rand Paul, but this is sad: "Police arrest neighbor after Rand Paul is assaulted at Kentucky home"

Spoiler

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is recovering after being assaulted at his Kentucky home on Friday, joining a growing list of lawmakers who have been injured or threatened with violence this year.

Paul, a second-term senator, suffered a minor injury when he was assaulted at his Warren County, Ky., home Friday afternoon. Kelsey Cooper, Paul’s Kentucky-based communications director, said in a statement Saturday that the senator “was blindsided and the victim of an assault. The assailant was arrested, and it is now a matter for the police.”

Kentucky State Police charged 59-year-old Rene Boucher with fourth-degree assault with a minor injury. He is being held at Warren County jail on $5,000 bond, state police said.

Paul and Boucher live in the same gated community along Rivergreen Lane in Bowling Green, Ky., according to two people close to Paul who asked for anonymity out of respect for the senator. Boucher is an anesthesiologist who has been recovering from injuries related to a recent bike accident, according to one of the people close to Paul.

He is the inventor of the Therm-a-Vest, a cloth vest partially filled with rice and secured with Velcro straps that is designed help with back pain, according to the Bowling Green Daily News.

Troopers responded to Paul’s residence at 3:21 p.m. on Friday after reports of an assault. Upon arrival, troops determined Boucher “had intentionally assaulted Paul causing a minor injury,” state police said.

Paul, 54, has served in the Senate since 2011. He is an ophthalmologist who has practiced in Bowling Green, Ky., where he moved with his wife in 1993. He ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016, focusing the closing months of his bid on attacking then-candidate Donald Trump and his readiness for office. In recent months, he was a lead opponent of Republican attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But more, recently Paul has emerged as a leading defender of Trump’s policies and has golfed with the president at Trump’s Virginia golf course.

It’s unclear whether the attack against Paul was politically motivated. But an unprecedented wave of threats against House and Senate lawmakers this year has prompted congressional security officials to review and follow up on thousands of threatening messages to members of both parties.

The threats turned to violence this summer when House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot and nearly killed by a gunman who showed up at a congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Va.

More recently, Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-Fla.) skipped several days of votes following threats made against her after she sparred with Trump over the treatment of the widow of a soldier killed in Niger.

In addition to Scalise, Paul and Wilson, Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) has faced threats since suggesting that Trump should face impeachment. And several GOP lawmakers, including Sens. Jeff Flake (Ariz.) and Marco Rubio (Fla.), have faced threats. Rubio, another failed 2016 presidential candidate, was spotted in July walking around the U.S. Capitol with three U.S. Capitol Police officers wearing suits and ties.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Get ready for Moore bad news on Election Day"

Spoiler

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling Monday temporarily blocking a White House ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military prompted right-wing Republican candidate Roy Moore to provide fresh evidence why sensible Alabamians should not allow him to set foot in the U.S. Senate.

Moore, a rabid homophobe and champion of the anti-Obama “birther” movement, has called for Kollar-Kotelly’s impeachment by the House of Representatives because, in making her ruling, she has “placed herself above the Constitution” with a display of “judicial activism.” A more insanely ignorant reading of the judge’s decision would be hard to find.

If Moore had bothered to digest the 76-page memo that accompanied the judge’s ruling instead of regurgitating his own radical understanding of the law and the role of judges, he might have learned why Kollar-Kotelly came down the way she did on the lawsuit filed by the National Center for Lesbian Rights and GLBTQ Legal Advocates and Defenders .

Kollar-Kotelly, nominated in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan to the D.C. Superior Court and appointed to the federal bench in 1997 by President Bill Clinton, took direct aim at President Trump’s out-of-nowhere tweets and subsequent directive declaring that transgender individuals cannot serve “in any capacity” in the U.S. military.

“The Court finds,” she wrote, “that a number of factors — including the sheer breadth of the exclusion ordered by the directives, the unusual circumstances surrounding the President’s announcement of them, the fact that the reasons given for them do not appear to be supported by any facts, and that the recent rejection of those reasons by the military itself — strongly suggest that Plaintiffs’ Fifth Amendment claim” that Trump’s ban violated the right to due process “is meritorious.”

The judge noted that Trump’s reasons for excluding transgender people “were not merely unsupported, but were actually contradicted by the studies, conclusions and judgment of the military itself.”

Ah, but what’s the Constitution to someone such as Moore, who contended in 2005 — and repeated in 2015 — that “homosexual conduct should be illegal”; who was suspended from Alabama’s Supreme Court for failing to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide; and who, in 2014, urged all state governors to support a constitutional convention to ban gay marriage?

However, as of this moment, Moore stands a good chance of winning December’s Alabama Senate special election. According to a poll commissioned by the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell-aligned Senate Leadership Fund, Moore is leading his Democratic opponent, former prosecutor Doug Jones, by 17 points.

That spells good news for a president who will feel right at home with the divisive, mean-spirited and fact-challenged Moore. A Moore victory, however, would spell bad news for the country.

Moore’s penchant for off-the-wall assertions is jaw-dropping.

A Moore interview with Vox’s Jeff Stein this year conveys the flavor of what passes for Moore’s thinking. Stein asked Moore whether he believed “Sharia law is a danger to America.” Here’s how the discussion went:

Moore: “There are communities under Sharia law right now in our country. Up in Illinois. Christian communities; I don’t know if they may be Muslim communities. But Sharia law is a little different from American law. It is founded on religious concepts.”

Stein: “Which American communities are under Sharia law? When did they fall under Sharia law?”

Moore: “Well, there’s Sharia law, as I understand it, in Illinois, Indiana — up there. I don’t know.”

Stein: “That seems like an amazing claim for a Senate candidate to make.”

Moore: “Well, let me just put it this way — if they are, they are; if they’re not, they’re not.”

You follow? Imagine a steady diet of that stuff should Moore land in Washington.

Imagine, too, how Moore will write legislation that addresses human problems and needs.

It mattered not to him that Trump’s arbitrary and ignorance-infused anti-transgender directives, because of their inherent inequality, would cause injury.

It matters not to Moore that Trump’s directives were clearly driven by a desire to express personal disapproval of transgender people generally, and not based on concerns about military effectiveness or budget constraints. The Defense Department had already placed those concerns to rest.

It mattered most to Moore — and to Trump — to keep people with the ability and willingness to serve their country out of uniform because of who they are.

And because Judge Kollar-Kotelly found Trump’s justification for banning transgender people from military service to be likely unconstitutional, Moore wants her impeached and removed from the bench.

Good people of the Yellowhammer State, please keep Roy Moore down home, way down home, in Alabama.

I hope the people of Alabama don't elect this shitstain masquerading as a human being. We don't need him in power.