United States Congress of Fail (Part 3)

[OtterRuletheWorld]

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.
 

I saw this. The guy has a public Facebook profile. He was posting a LOT and then suddenly stopped in May. Strange. What would make him suddenly decide to do this?

https://heavy.com/news/2017/11/rene-boucher-rand-paul-assault/

[fraurosena]

Wut?

Yeah, and I believe men like him should be mandatorily castrated so they can't procreate for the sake of humanity.

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh: "Using tax legislation to overhaul Obamacare still ‘being discussed,’ Ryan says"

Spoiler

Republicans are poised to begin debating details of their tax plan this week, but House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) signaled Sunday that party leaders are still mulling whether to use the proposal to end a central element of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act.

The tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee is set to begin reviewing the GOP plan on Monday in public hearings that could stretch into Thursday. But significant differences remain, and new proposals could be added. Ryan signaled that a repeal of the health law’s individual mandate is still up for discussion, while a key New York Republican warned that he and other GOP lawmakers from highly taxed northeastern states remain opposed to the legislation.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Ryan said that repealing the individual mandate is “one of the things that’s being discussed.”

“We’re listening to our members about what we can do to add to this bill to make it even better,” he added.

Despite the research and Trump’s pleas, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-Tex.) said Friday that he is unlikely to add changes to health-care policy to the tax legislation, because doing so would doom its chances in the more closely divided Senate.

Meanwhile, Rep. Peter T. King (R-N.Y.) told ABC’s “This Week” that the tax plan as written would have “a particularly devastating” effect on New York, which has some of the highest local and state taxes in the country.

“As of now, I would have to” vote against the plan, King said. He also lobbed a veiled shot at the White House, saying that in his Long Island-area swing district, “The main objection I’m getting is from Trump voters” who have voted for Democratic presidents in the past.

“You would have my voters, my constituents, subsidizing other states in the country. New York does subsidize the rest of the country already. I just want to work this right now. If it’s worked out, I support almost everything else in the bill,” he said.

King was among 20 House Republicans who withheld support for a budget resolution last month that set the rules for the forthcoming tax debate. King and many of the others voted no because GOP leaders were planning to eliminate deductions for state and local taxes. In a bid to win their support, the bill unveiled last week would allow taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 in property taxes.

Rep. Tom MacArthur (R-N.J.), who also voted against the budget resolution, on Sunday called the $10,000 cap “a huge win for middle-class taxpayers even in high-tax states like mine.”

“A $10,000 property tax cap covers the vast majority of people in my state, in my congressional district,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding that he now plans to support the tax plan.

Other conservatives on Sunday expressed support for the tax overhaul.

“Failure is not an option,” Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told ABC, calling the tax plan “a work in progress” that would ultimately lead to long-term economic growth, despite adding $1.5 trillion to the deficit.

“The preliminary numbers really look very good in terms of economic growth,” Meadows said, adding that growth will “outweigh any short-term deficit increase.”

Another conservative, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), said he remains concerned about how much the GOP plan could add to the debt.

“This is something that’s been a behind-the-scenes conversation for a long time. It’s one thing to be able to cut taxes; it’s another thing to be able to say, ‘How are we going to deal with our debt and deficit?’ So my main focus has been — whatever economic growth model we put in place has to be reasonable to be able to do it,” Lankford told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Ryan said he still expects the House to complete its work on the bill by Thanksgiving and said, “We expect our friends in the Senate to be about a week behind us.”

The Senate is poised to release its own version of a tax overhaul in the coming days, possibly as early as this week. News reports last week suggested that the Senate’s tax plan would propose phasing in a new corporate tax rate of 20 percent over five years instead of immediately.

But in an interview on Fox News Channel, Vice President Pence said the new corporate tax rate “has to happen immediately. And we’re going to drive and drive hard.”

“We got to do it quickly so businesses . . . will be able to invest growth dollars in wages and hiring more employees,” Pence told “Sunday Morning Futures.”

Pence said he expects all negotiations between House and Senate leaders to be completed in time for Trump to sign a final tax plan by mid-December.

Democrats, meanwhile, rejected the GOP plan. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) described the proposal as a “Ponzi scheme” and “a “gift to corporate America.”

“They spread out a banquet for the wealthiest Americans and threw some crumbs to the middle class,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

She also accused Republicans of rushing their plan and implied that they had not adequately researched its effects before proposing it. The plan was crafted “at the speed of light, in the dark of night,” she said.

Well, Mr. Lyan, I can tell you what will make the plan better -- use the one you've come up with as toilet paper.

[OtterRuletheWorld]

More on Rand Paul. He was much more seriously injured than thought.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/sen-rand-paul-recovering-from-injuries-suffered-in-alleged-assault/2017/11/05/6380c78a-c250-11e7-84bc-5e285c7f4512_story.html

[GreyhoundFan]

"Three (almost) inexplicable parts of the Republican tax plan"

Spoiler

With the release of the Republican tax proposal, the most important tax debate in a generation is in full swing. Most reasonable experts agree that tax reform has the potential to spur investment and raise wages while also simplifying the system and increasing its fairness and legitimacy. The right question for debate is not the desirability of tax reform or even of business tax reform directed at spurring investment. It is the likely economic effect of particular proposals.

Unfortunately, the proposal on offer by House Republicans may well retard growth, reward the wealthy, add complexity to the code and cheat the future, even as it raises burdens on the middle class and the poor. There are three aspects of the proposal that I find almost inexplicable, except as an expression of the power of entrenched interests.

First, what is the rationale for passing tax cuts that increase the deficit by $1.5 trillion in this decade and potentially more in the future, instead of pursuing the kind of revenue-neutral reform adopted in 1986? There is no present need for fiscal stimulus. The national debt is already on an explosive path, even without taking into account large spending needs that are almost certain to arise in areas ranging from national security to infrastructure to addressing those left behind by globalization and technology.

Borrowing to pay for tax cuts is a way to defer pain, not avoid it. Ultimately, the power of compound interest makes necessary tax increases or spending cuts that are even larger than those tax reductions. But in the meantime, debt-financed tax cuts would raise the trade deficit and reduce investment, thereby cheating the future.

Second, what is the case for cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent? For at least five years under the GOP proposal, businesses would be able to write off investments in new equipment entirely in the year that those investments are made. So the government would be sharing to an equal extent in the costs of and returns from investment, eliminating any tax-induced disincentive to invest. The effective tax rate on new investment would be reduced to zero, or less, even before considering the corporate rate reduction. A corporate rate reduction serves only to reward monopoly profits, other rents or past investments. Given the trends of the past few years, are shareholders really the most worthy recipients of such a windfall?

Proponents of the House approach defend it by pointing to international considerations. Unfortunately, the “territorial” approach being pushed by the House, which would renounce the objective of taxing the global income of U.S. companies, could easily encourage offshore production. Wouldn’t it be much better for the United States to lead an initiative to prevent a race to the bottom in global corporate taxation than for it to try to win a race to the bottom?

Third, why include new complexities that help the richest taxpayers while taking steps that hurt middle-income families? Why should passive owners of businesses that are already avoiding the corporate tax get a big rate reduction to 25 percent when those who actually operate and work in such businesses pay at a higher rate? What is the rationale for eliminating the estate tax when it is paid by only 0.2 percent of estates?

At a bare minimum, if such provisions are to be adopted, one would assume they would be paid for, to the maximum extent possible, through steps such as eliminating the carried-interest loophole or loopholes that enable real estate tax shelters. Not so. The proposal instead goes after measures such as the adoption tax credit, deductions for major medical expenses and the deductibility of student-loan interest. These seem like far more important benefits to preserve than carried interest.

Congress should instead return to the 1986 approach of revenue-neutral tax reform, while being careful not to adversely affect the progressivity of the tax system. This would enable what is most needed now: strengthening incentives for investment in the United States relative to other countries and raising the legitimacy of the tax code.

It is possible (though I doubt it) that the questions I have raised here have good answers. And there may be reasons that 1986 is an inapplicable model for today.

What is certain, though, is that we have a once-in-a-generation debate underway. Even those who disagree on policy should be able to agree on the importance of not making decisions until all relevant analytical work can be completed.

The opinion piece was written by Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury Secretary. Sadly, I think the only real explanation for the "inexplicable" parts of the "tax plan" is that the Repugs want to cut taxes for the ultra-wealthy, no matter what.

[GreyhoundFan]

The photo that accompanies this article is of Ivanka, Junior, and Eric: "Who wins biggest in the GOP tax plan? The lazy rich."

Spoiler

The Republican tax bill is often described as being weighted toward “the rich.” But that’s not the full story. 

It’s actually weighted toward the loafer, the freeloader, the heir, the passive investor who spends his time yachting and charity-balling. 

In short: the idle rich.

Republicans claim the opposite, of course. For years the GOP has argued that we need to cut taxes to incentivize work and job creation. If only today’s allegedly sky-high marginal rates were lower, millions of talented, driven Americans would apply more of their talent and drive toward growing the economy. 

Why? Well, if they got to keep more of their hard-earned cash, there would be a greater payoff from clocking that extra hour, taking on that extra project, seeing that extra patient, scoring that extra client, building that extra business, and so on. Working would look more attractive relative to playing an extra round of golf. 

Yet the GOP tax bill offers the biggest windfall to those who sit on their duffs and do nothing.

Rich layabouts benefit in multiple ways from the proposal. 

The most obvious way is the repeal of the estate tax, which currently affects only estates worth at least $5.49 million, or roughly the wealthiest 0.2 percent of Americans who die each year. 

Eliminating estate taxes paid by the very wealthy few seems unlikely to improve their work ethic. If anything, increasing the value of their bequests will make it less attractive for heirs and heiresses to hold down a job or start a company that they actually run.

This is hardly the only way that the Republican tax proposal would reward passively received income. The big cut in corporate tax rates and the corporate repatriation holiday also disproportionately benefit passive owners of capital rather than workers.

But the bill’s differential treatment of those who work and those who don’t is starkest in provisions related to “pass-through” entities. 

Almost all businesses in the United States are structured as pass-through businesses, such as partnerships, sole proprietorships and S-corporations. This means their incomes are taxed at individual rates, rather than corporate ones. Despite the usual rhetoric, these businesses are not necessarily “small”; the Trump Organization, for instance, is organized as a pass-through. 

The Republican tax plan would dramatically slash tax rates for pass-through income, down to no more than 25 percent. This special pass-through rate is much lower than the normal top marginal rate for individual income, which would continue to be 39.6 percent. 

As you might imagine, a gap in tax rates is likely to create a tax-sheltering bonanza. Lots of high-income people currently working as employees would likely start calling themselves “companies” — by working as sole-proprietor “consultancies,” for instance — to take advantage of the lower rate. 

The bill also includes some “guardrails” to discourage people from gaming this system. At least in theory. 

Among them is a rule that says if you’re actively involved in your business, typically only a portion (30 percent) of your earnings would qualify for the special pass-through rate. The rest of your earnings (70 percent) would be considered equivalent to the wages you’d pay yourself for your work at the firm. Accordingly, these would be taxed at regular individual income-tax rates. 

But here’s the rub. This 70-30 rule would apply only if you’re “actively” working for the company you own. If instead you’re considered a “passive” owner — determined by, for example, how many hours you log working for it — then you inexplicably qualify for the special pass-through rate on 100 percent of your earnings. 

Consider a hypothetical, similar to one New York University School of Law’s Lily Batchelder suggested to me recently: A family business has been passed down to several siblings with varying levels of industriousness and IQ.

The most competent sibling works for her family’s company full-time. The least competent sibling kicks in a few hours of work each year, but otherwise spends his time popping bottles of champagne and hunting endangered wildlife.

Under the Republican tax bill, the lowest tax rate is paid by the ne’er-do-well brother, rather than by the worker-bee sister who actually grew the business. Although, with a good enough accountant, she might be able to convince the Internal Revenue Service that she’s just as lazy and uninvolved as her brother.

This is a strange way to design tax incentives. As New York University law school professor Daniel Shaviro has noted, our existing tax code typically incentivizes people to avoid being classified as passive and instead to prove that they’re “materially participating” in running their business. This bill encourages rich people to do the opposite.

So much for the dignity of work.

 

[fraurosena]

More on the tax-plan:

Republican Plan Would Raise Taxes on Millions

Quote

Nearly half of all middle-class families would pay more in taxes in 2026 than they would under current rules if the proposed House tax bill became law, and about one-third would pay more in 2018, according to a New York Times analysis, a striking finding for a bill promoted as a middle-class tax cut.

President Trump and congressional Republicans have pitched the plan unveiled last week as a tax cut for most Americans. But millions of middle-class families — particularly those with children — would see an immediate tax increase, averaging about $2,000. Among the hardest-hit under the plan would be some of the most vulnerable taxpayers: those with huge out-of-pocket medical expenses.

By 2026, 45 percent of middle-class families would pay more than what they would under the existing tax system.

The preliminary Times analysis found that, in 2018, the plan would cut taxes for about 68 percent of families in the middle class, broadly defined as those earning between two-thirds and twice the median household income, or between about $50,000 and $160,000 per year for a family of three. For most of those families, the cut would be about $1,300 in 2018. In order to focus on families, the analysis excluded individual filers and households headed by people 65 or older and is adjusted for the size of each household.

The bill is likely to change significantly in coming days. On Monday evening, the House’s tax-writing Ways and Means Committee began the formal process of reviewing the bill, which could involve dozens of amendments, some of them substantial. The bill, which the House could pass as early as this week, is likely to change further in the Senate, where procedural rules place practical limits on how much the plan can add to the federal deficit.

The Times analysis looks at the direct effect of the tax changes on Americans’ incomes and does not account for changes in economic growth that Republicans say will amplify the impact of the tax cut and deliver higher wages to Americans across the income spectrum. Economic models disagree about the size of those effects, but generally agree they would be smaller in the initial years after a bill was passed since the tax cuts would take a while to filter throughout the economy.

Still, Republican leaders in Congress and the White House haven’t just argued that the bill would have broader economic advantages. Rather, they have repeatedly described it as a tax cut for middle-class families.

“This whole tax reform is designed for the middle-class family that’s working so hard, for that Main Street business that’s working so hard,” Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said on MSNBC on Thursday. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, went further, telling the MSNBC host Hugh Hewitt over the weekend that “nobody in the middle class is going to get a tax increase” under the bill.

Few independent economists find evidence to support that claim. Analyses published since the plan was introduced last week have consistently found that some middle-class families would see their taxes go up immediately, compared with existing law. One such analysis, from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, found that 8 percent of middle-income earners would pay more in 2018 — and 21 percent in 2027 — with upper-middle-class taxpayers more likely to see their taxes rise.

The Times analysis accounts for the differing financial situations of Americans who look relatively similar on paper. It shows significant differences in how “typical” families might fare under the Republican bill.

Consider, for example, a four-person family earning about $75,000 a year. There are nearly 150,000 such taxpayers in the United States, according to data from the Census Bureau. About two-thirds of them would benefit under the Republican tax plan, with their taxes falling by about $1,500 on average. But the other third’s taxes would go up, by nearly $700 on average, and some would pay thousands of dollars more than under current law.

> explanatory graph <

The bill is devised to allow millions of Americans to simplify their tax returns — to file, as Republican leaders put it, “on a postcard.” The plan would most likely simplify taxes for some taxpayers, who would choose to take advantage of the plan’s more generous standard deduction. But the analysis suggests that among lower- and middle-class families, the greatest benefits of the bill flow to those taxpayers who already file simple returns and do not itemize their taxes.

The millions losing out under the bill would largely be families with more complicated finances, who now generally itemize their deductions. The bill would eliminate many common and valuable tax deductions that, in some cases, would eliminate thousands of dollars in tax benefits. This would be particularly acute for taxpayers who deducted state and local income and property tax payments, interest on student loans, or the cost of health insurance for self-employed workers.

The plan could be particularly costly for Americans facing large medical bills. Nearly nine million taxpayers collectively deducted about $84 billion in medical expenses from their taxes in 2015. The House bill would eliminate that deduction.

Mark Mazur, the director of the independent Tax Policy Center, said any attempt to reform the tax system — as opposed to just a broad-based tax cut — would have winners and losers. But he noted that many of the provisions that would benefit middle-class taxpayers in the House bill were set to expire or lose value over time.

“You could create a plan that just cut taxes for middle-class people,” Mr. Mazur said. “That’s not what this is.”

The Times’s figures are based on an analysis of Census Bureau data using a tax model from the Open Source Policy Center, a Washington research organization affiliated with the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute. The organization’s model does not yet fully account for the tax bill’s treatment of so-called pass-through income, which is business income that is taxed at the individual rate under current law. And because the analysis is based on publicly available data, not actual tax records, it may not capture all the intricacies of Americans’ household finances.

The source of the tax increases is rooted in the structure of the Republican bill. The plan would roughly double the size of the standard deduction, to $24,000 for married couples and $12,200 for individuals. That could yield a substantial tax cut for many middle- and lower-income families that now take the standard deduction, or whose itemized deductions amount to less than those thresholds.

But the Republican plan would also eliminate many of the deductions now taken by millions of taxpayers.

Its elimination of the deduction for medical expenses could hit some families particularly hard because medical bills can be so large, unpredictable and unavoidable. Of the roughly 6.5 million middle-class families whose taxes would rise in 2018 under the bill, about 800,000 took advantage of the medical expense provision, deducting more than $17,000 on average from their taxes. Nearly 200,000 middle-class families owed no income tax under the current law at least in part because the medical-expense exemption offset their taxable income.

The Republican proposal would also be costly for many large families. That’s because, in addition to raising the standard deduction, the plan would eliminate the so-called personal exemption, which lets most taxpayers deduct about $4,000 for every person in their household. The plan would replace the exemption with an expanded child tax credit, but that would fill only part of the gap for many families. Fewer than 40 percent of middle-class families with at least three children would receive a tax cut under the plan, compared with nearly 80 percent of families without children.

Negotiations over the House bill are continuing, and details could change. In the Senate, Republicans such as Marco Rubio of Florida and Mike Lee of Utah have pushed to expand the child tax credit further, a move that could mitigate many of the tax increases on middle-class families, but that would force leaders to find other sources of revenue to offset the change.

Democrats, meanwhile, have been quick to seize on analyses finding middle-class tax increases. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon last week called the bill “a middle-class con job.”

Conclusion: this is a shitty tax-plan. However, this part of it made me giggle a little:

The Republican proposal would also be costly for many large families. That’s because, in addition to raising the standard deduction, the plan would eliminate the so-called personal exemption, which lets most taxpayers deduct about $4,000 for every person in their household. The plan would replace the exemption with an expanded child tax credit, but that would fill only part of the gap for many families. Fewer than 40 percent of middle-class families with at least three children would receive a tax cut under the plan, compared with nearly 80 percent of families without children.

Just imagine Jim-Boob Duggar and Gilcifer Bates missing out on a $76.000 deduction each... 

 

(yes, I know the calculation is based on 19 kids, and they have married adult offspring, but still)

[AnywhereButHere]

I just saw a TV ad this morning aimed at supporting the tax plan. Part of me is wondering just how bad it's supporters know it is that they felt the need to shell out huge advertising dollars to sell support for something that should be able to sell itself.

[candygirl200413]

To go with that I actually have heard any fuck face supporters say anything about this bill. Like I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone be like Orange fuck face is going to save me all this money!

[GrumpyGran]

4 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

To go with that I actually have heard any fuck face supporters say anything about this bill. Like I'm surprised I haven't heard anyone be like Orange fuck face is going to save me all this money!

They're scared. They know they're going to get screwed. Republicans always screw everybody but the rich. And when you're big selling point is "Look, your taxes will fit on a post card! Unless, you're rich, of course, then you need lots of lines for all those deductions and write-offs you will still get."

[GreyhoundFan]

Well, Lyan has publicly donned his knee pads. Blech. "Paul Ryan erases any doubt: ‘We’re with Trump’"

Spoiler

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan's M.O. with President Trump has been to deflect questions about his controversies and focus on the GOP agenda. All the while, Ryan has reserved some plausible deniability, sending some signals that he’s not quite all-in on Trumpism, or Trump himself.

Ryan erased almost all doubt Wednesday.

Speaking with Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade, Ryan offered perhaps his biggest bear hug of Trump to date. Kilmeade asked Ryan if the GOP has to choose between Bush-style Republican policies and Trump, and Ryan didn’t equivocate.

“We already made that choice,” he said. “We’re with Trump.”

And a thousand Democratic campaign ads were born.

“We already made that choice,” Ryan repeated. “That’s a choice we made at the beginning of the year. That’s a choice we made during the campaign, which is we merged our agendas. We ran on a joint agenda with Donald Trump. We got together with Donald Trump when he was President-elect Trump and walked through what is it we want to accomplish in the next two years. We all agreed on that agenda. We’re processing that agenda.”

Again, Ryan turns it all back to the agenda and not the man himself. But these comments are significant. Ryan could have said that there are members of the party in both the Bush and Trump mold, and that they were working together on “common values.” But he instead implied that the party has chosen to shift in a Trumpian direction, and that it was committed to it.

This doesn’t mean Ryan will suddenly sign off on all of Trump’s foibles — he has offered pretty unmistakable criticisms of Trump, including the president’s response to the tragedy in Charlottesville. But it does send a signal to fellow Republicans that Trump’s policies, including his controversial brand of nationalism and anti-illegal immigration rhetoric, are now essentially the GOP platform.

To be clear: These were the policies that were at issue after the GOP’s loss in the Virginia governor’s race on Tuesday, given Ed Gillespie’s decision to try to morph from a card-carrying member of the GOP establishment into a Trump-esque culture warrior. Some of these policies are the ones the GOP establishment warned in its post-2012 election “autopsy” might severely damage the party over the long term.

The GOP has never actually made the choice to go whole-hog on those policies, no matter what Ryan said Wednesday. But he just gave it his blessing to do just that.

 

[GrumpyGran]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Well, Lyan has publicly donned his knee pads. Blech. "Paul Ryan erases any doubt: ‘We’re with Trump’"

  Reveal hidden contents

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan's M.O. with President Trump has been to deflect questions about his controversies and focus on the GOP agenda. All the while, Ryan has reserved some plausible deniability, sending some signals that he’s not quite all-in on Trumpism, or Trump himself.

Ryan erased almost all doubt Wednesday.

Speaking with Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade, Ryan offered perhaps his biggest bear hug of Trump to date. Kilmeade asked Ryan if the GOP has to choose between Bush-style Republican policies and Trump, and Ryan didn’t equivocate.

“We already made that choice,” he said. “We’re with Trump.”

And a thousand Democratic campaign ads were born.

“We already made that choice,” Ryan repeated. “That’s a choice we made at the beginning of the year. That’s a choice we made during the campaign, which is we merged our agendas. We ran on a joint agenda with Donald Trump. We got together with Donald Trump when he was President-elect Trump and walked through what is it we want to accomplish in the next two years. We all agreed on that agenda. We’re processing that agenda.”

Again, Ryan turns it all back to the agenda and not the man himself. But these comments are significant. Ryan could have said that there are members of the party in both the Bush and Trump mold, and that they were working together on “common values.” But he instead implied that the party has chosen to shift in a Trumpian direction, and that it was committed to it.

This doesn’t mean Ryan will suddenly sign off on all of Trump’s foibles — he has offered pretty unmistakable criticisms of Trump, including the president’s response to the tragedy in Charlottesville. But it does send a signal to fellow Republicans that Trump’s policies, including his controversial brand of nationalism and anti-illegal immigration rhetoric, are now essentially the GOP platform.

To be clear: These were the policies that were at issue after the GOP’s loss in the Virginia governor’s race on Tuesday, given Ed Gillespie’s decision to try to morph from a card-carrying member of the GOP establishment into a Trump-esque culture warrior. Some of these policies are the ones the GOP establishment warned in its post-2012 election “autopsy” might severely damage the party over the long term.

The GOP has never actually made the choice to go whole-hog on those policies, no matter what Ryan said Wednesday. But he just gave it his blessing to do just that.

 

Hurrah! Christmas is here. The children will be watching The Polar Express. The Republicans have decided ride the Get-Your-Ass-Kicked-at the-Poll Express. All aboard!

[GreyhoundFan]

"The GOP’s Roy Moore and Steve Bannon nightmare just came into focus"

Spoiler

The Washington Post just published some downright shocking allegations about Alabama's Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore. And if current polling and Moore’s recent electoral history are any indication, it could tip the race to the Democrats.

If it does, the GOP just saw its slim Senate majority cut in half, all while giving Democrats an actual chance to take over the chamber in 2018.

And if it does, the GOP also just saw the real damage Steve Bannon could do to the party -- in case it forgot what happened in the 2010 and 2012 elections.

In The Post's report, Leigh Corfman accuses Moore of initiating sexual touching with her back in the 1970s, when she was 14 and he was a 32-year-old assistant district attorney. Three other women say Moore pursued them when he was in his 30s and they were between the ages of 16 and 18. "I wasn’t ready for that — I had never put my hand on a man’s penis, much less an erect one,” Corfman told The Post about one encounter with Moore. She added: "I wanted it over with -- I wanted out."

It isn't immediately clear what might happen now. Absentee ballots have already gone out with Moore’s name on them for the Dec. 12 special election, according to the Alabama elections division. State law also says a replacement nominee must be filed at least 76 days before an election. "I believe it is too late" to replace Moore on the ballot, said John Bennett, a spokesman for the Alabama secretary of state's office. There has been some talk about a possible write-in campaign, like the one Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) successfully waged in 2010.

And if Moore's political career has shown us anything, it’s that he is more than happy to take a stand against anybody who tries to tell him what to do. This is a guy who has made not one but two principled stands that effectively forced his removal from the state Supreme Court. It wouldn’t be surprising to see him try to fight this, especially after President Trump withstood numerous sexual harassment and assault allegations on his road to the presidency. Put plainly: It's hard to rule anything out in the Trump Era -- even a Moore victory.

But if Moore doesn’t win and Democrat Doug Jones does, Republicans’ effective Senate majority will have declined from 52-48 to 51-49. That gives them almost no margin for error in passing legislation.

It would also make the GOP’s Senate majority significantly more vulnerable next year. Given that Vice President Pence breaks ties in the Senate, Democrats need to pick up three seats and hold all their seats (many of them in red states) to win back the chamber. But they only had two obvious pickup opportunities: In Arizona and in Nevada. If Democrats can win in Alabama, those two pickups might suffice. The math and their path to a majority will be significantly clearer.

And now to Bannon. Saying the former head of Trump's campaign and chief White House adviser delivered the nomination to Moore is giving him too much credit -- Moore already led before Bannon came on-board and made an appearance for him -- but Moore is the kind of candidate Bannon has promised to support in Republican primaries across the country. Bannon is seeking primary challengers to run against basically any Republican incumbent who doesn't call for Sen. Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) removal as majority leader. He's looking for anti-establishment, nationalistic, Trumpian firebrands. But those firebrands also tend to be less vetted, more extreme and prone to spectacular downfalls that cost the GOP seats.

"Steve Bannon is responsible," said Josh Holmes, a former McConnell chief of staff who argued that Bannon has enabled candidates like Moore who are outside the GOP mainstream.

The pitfalls of this approach are all-too-familiar to Republican leaders. The party nominated a series of extreme candidates backed by the tea party who went on to lose very winnable Senate races in 2010 and 2012. Think: Todd Akin, Sharron Angle, Richard Mourdock, Ken Buck and Christine O’Donnell. Republicans’ ability to win the Senate majority was arguably delayed for years by these candidates' upset wins in GOP primaries.

Bannon is threatening to usher in a replay of the GOP's tea party primary pains. It may have just started earlier than we expected.

Yes, Moore and Bannon are a nightmare, but not just for the Repugs -- they are a nightmare for the country.

[RosyDaisy]

Roy Moore will win this election. Democrats are hated here in Alabama, more than child molesters. Here, people vote with their Bible, and the most Conservative, Christian Republican will win. More is already considered a martyr, and this will make him even more of one. He will win based on his religion. That is all that matters to people here. All this other bullshit doesn't even factor in.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, RosyDaisy said:

Roy Moore will win this election. Democrats are hated here in Alabama, more than child molesters. Here, people vote with their Bible, and the most Conservative, Christian Republican will win. More is already considered a martyr, and this will make him even more of one. He will win based on his religion. That is all that matters to people here. All this other bullshit doesn't even factor in.

You're most likely right, @RosyDaisy, but I guess the small hope is that the Democrats there will see this as an opportunity and those who usually don't vote because they don't think there's any hope will come out and vote. And that a significant number of Repubs will have enough of a hard time with what Moore might have done to just stay home and put the responsibility of electing a child molester on someone else.

[AnywhereButHere]

Apparently, Luther Strange came out to say the Moore's actions were despicable and he'd have more to say later. I don't know if "later" has come and gone yet, but the suggestion from someone this morning on MSNBC was that if his "more to say" comment entailed asking voters to write him in as a candidate, it could work very well in Doug Jones' favor. All speculation and most likely won't happen, but I can dream.

 

[GrumpyGran]

4 minutes ago, AnywhereButHere said:

Apparently, Luther Strange came out to say the Moore's actions were despicable and he'd have more to say later. I don't know if "later" has come and gone yet, but the suggestion from someone this morning on MSNBC was that if his "more to say" comment entailed asking voters to write him in as a candidate, it could work very well in Doug Jones' favor. All speculation and most likely won't happen, but I can dream.

 

That's what I think @AnywhereButHere. I think there is some serious discussing and weighing potential outcomes going on right now. Strange probably wants to encourage the write-in but he will need the blessing of some powerful mouthpieces. It could clearly split the vote and in that case there's a chance they could lose that seat. But if a tidal wave of women come forward in the next few weeks the Republicans could be guilty of once again putting a pedophile in Congress. Hastert would be brought back from the political graveyard and it could be fatal. What to do.

[RosyDaisy]

Fuck Big Luther! He's no better. Covering up a sex scandal is what gotten him Sessions' senate seat.

[GreyhoundFan]

From Jennifer Rubin: "The GOP can’t be rebranded. Let’s junk it."

Spoiler

I get asked a lot what I think is the future of the Republican Party. These days, with increasing conviction, I say that it doesn’t have one. You need not look beyond the Roy Moore allegations to understand why it’s better just to start from fresh.

Let’s begin with the premise that the Trump presidency and Trumpism more broadly have degenerated (if it was anything more substantial) into a cult of personality and a spasm of tribalism, white resentment and authoritarianism. Trump calls a free press the enemy of the people; Fox News leads the cheers. President Trump repeals the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and starts removing protections for Nicaraguans and Hondurans; the anti-immigrant crowd hoots and hollers. He’s for big business but also for trade protectionism; he’s against Islamist terror states but for their Russian patrons; he’s for religious liberty but also for a Muslim travel ban. This is incoherence on steroids.

If there is a single idea animating Trump’s GOP, it is that “blood and soil” (or race and religion, if you prefer) — not the American creed (“All men are created equal…”) — is the defining feature of the United States. Whatever else that is not white and Christian is foreign, alien and a threat to “real America.” Whether in day-to-day politics, foreign affairs or domestic policies, there is no right and wrong, only them and us. That’s Trumpism in a nutshell. The Republican Party’s inability to immediately and completely separate itself from and denounce Moore is the predictable result of this thinking.

I would like to think that Americans have gotten a good look at this Frankenstein-esque party and will repudiate it in 2018 and 2020. I still carry the belief (bolstered by Tuesday’s election) that most Americans have not lost their minds and souls.

Evan McMullin, the independent conservative 2016 presidential candidate, says, “It’s time for the GOP to start over with new leaders, new solutions, new strategies, and a new commitment to basic human decency and American values.” I would add: And a new name, a new logo and …  well, just junk the whole thing. Its brand, as they say, has been tarnished, and virtually none of its political leaders possess the moral judgment and intellectual honesty to hold office in the future.

What will be the excuse for enabling Trump and sticking by Trumpism, for sublimating every other value to tribal protection? The GOP needs the Senate seat. We can’t let the left win. But the Supreme Court! These are not defensible arguments if your highest priorities are democracy, decency and the rule of law. They are the childish arguments of people who see politics as a game in which you always root for the home team.

How could one “rebrand” this, or trust these people again? I find it hard to imagine how. So the future of the GOP? It’s either a nationalist front party or a battleground mostly between Trumpists and strident ultra-right-wingers whose platform (repeal Obamacare; corporate tax cuts; reckless foreign policy that imagines war with Iran and/or North Korea are viable options) is unacceptable to the vast majority of the country. It’s not a civil war in which I’d have a favorite side.

In short, the GOP, I think, is kaput. The real question is what sprouts up to fill some of that space, the ground occupied by those who favor reform conservatism; responsible internationalism; free trade and robust immigration; tolerance and the rule of law; and market economics with an ample safety net. I don’t have the answer. I only know it cannot be the GOP.

 

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

From Jennifer Rubin: "The GOP can’t be rebranded. Let’s junk it."

  Reveal hidden contents

I get asked a lot what I think is the future of the Republican Party. These days, with increasing conviction, I say that it doesn’t have one. You need not look beyond the Roy Moore allegations to understand why it’s better just to start from fresh.

Let’s begin with the premise that the Trump presidency and Trumpism more broadly have degenerated (if it was anything more substantial) into a cult of personality and a spasm of tribalism, white resentment and authoritarianism. Trump calls a free press the enemy of the people; Fox News leads the cheers. President Trump repeals the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and starts removing protections for Nicaraguans and Hondurans; the anti-immigrant crowd hoots and hollers. He’s for big business but also for trade protectionism; he’s against Islamist terror states but for their Russian patrons; he’s for religious liberty but also for a Muslim travel ban. This is incoherence on steroids.

If there is a single idea animating Trump’s GOP, it is that “blood and soil” (or race and religion, if you prefer) — not the American creed (“All men are created equal…”) — is the defining feature of the United States. Whatever else that is not white and Christian is foreign, alien and a threat to “real America.” Whether in day-to-day politics, foreign affairs or domestic policies, there is no right and wrong, only them and us. That’s Trumpism in a nutshell. The Republican Party’s inability to immediately and completely separate itself from and denounce Moore is the predictable result of this thinking.

I would like to think that Americans have gotten a good look at this Frankenstein-esque party and will repudiate it in 2018 and 2020. I still carry the belief (bolstered by Tuesday’s election) that most Americans have not lost their minds and souls.

Evan McMullin, the independent conservative 2016 presidential candidate, says, “It’s time for the GOP to start over with new leaders, new solutions, new strategies, and a new commitment to basic human decency and American values.” I would add: And a new name, a new logo and …  well, just junk the whole thing. Its brand, as they say, has been tarnished, and virtually none of its political leaders possess the moral judgment and intellectual honesty to hold office in the future.

What will be the excuse for enabling Trump and sticking by Trumpism, for sublimating every other value to tribal protection? The GOP needs the Senate seat. We can’t let the left win. But the Supreme Court! These are not defensible arguments if your highest priorities are democracy, decency and the rule of law. They are the childish arguments of people who see politics as a game in which you always root for the home team.

How could one “rebrand” this, or trust these people again? I find it hard to imagine how. So the future of the GOP? It’s either a nationalist front party or a battleground mostly between Trumpists and strident ultra-right-wingers whose platform (repeal Obamacare; corporate tax cuts; reckless foreign policy that imagines war with Iran and/or North Korea are viable options) is unacceptable to the vast majority of the country. It’s not a civil war in which I’d have a favorite side.

In short, the GOP, I think, is kaput. The real question is what sprouts up to fill some of that space, the ground occupied by those who favor reform conservatism; responsible internationalism; free trade and robust immigration; tolerance and the rule of law; and market economics with an ample safety net. I don’t have the answer. I only know it cannot be the GOP.

 

Let it burn. Good riddance. And I don't want it to re-emerge. I used to work in advertising and I know what re-brand means. It's not a turd anymore, it's a "stool sample" and it helping medical research!

No fucks to give, can't happen soon enough.

[WiseGirl]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/11/10/politics/mcconnell-new-york-times-tax-plan/index.html

He "misspoke?" He "misspoke"? What the fuck you asshole! 

"....but what we are doing is targeting levels of income and ...." Yeah, targeting everyone but those in your income level. 

(WiseGirl stomps off to fill the swear jare, muttering obscenities under her breath the entire way....)

[GreyhoundFan]

Fuck you, McTurtle. Even though the majority of Americans have now said they want the ACA, you just have to keep cutting it off at the knees. "Senate GOP to add repeal of Obamacare insurance mandate into tax bill"

Spoiler

Senate Republican leaders are adding a provision to their tax bill that would repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, a major change as they now try to accomplish two of their top domestic priorities in a single piece of legislation.

“We’re optimistic that inserting the individual mandate repeal would be helpful” to the tax effort, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday after meeting with party members during a closed-door lunch.

President Trump and many GOP lawmakers have supported using the tax bill to repeal the mandate, a part of the health care law that creates penalties for some Americans who don’t buy health insurance. But up until Tuesday Republicans had resisted making the change, worried that injecting health care politics would imperil the tax bill.

Repealing the mandate would free up more than $300 billion in government funding over the next decade, but it would cause 13 million fewer people to have health insurance in a decade, according to projections from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Republican Conference and a member of the finance committee that is drafting the tax bill, said repeal will allow the GOP to further cut taxes for middle-income families.

“It’ll be distributed in the form of middle-income tax relief,” Thune said. “It will give us even more of an opportunity to really distribute the relief to those middle-income cohorts who could really benefit from it.”

But the change could unnerve less conservative Republican senators, who voted against previous Senate efforts to repeal large parts of the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), one of the Republicans who opposed previous attempts to roll back the health care law, said she was concerned about including the mandate repeal while the Senate was still addressing a health care compromise negotiated by Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

“I personally think that it complicates tax reform to put the repeal of the mandate in there, particularly if it’s done before the Alexander-Murray bill passes because of the impact on premiums,” Collins said. “I’m going to see what the bill says.”

The updated tax bill could include provisions of the new bipartisan health care agreement, according to Collins and Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn).

Sen. Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer said including a repeal of the mandate in the tax bill would torpedo Democratic support for the Murray-Alexander compromise.

“We don’t need to trade it for a tax bill, and we won’t,” he said.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, slammed the decision to include the mandate’s repeal, saying it would “cause millions to lose their health care, and millions more to pay higher premiums, all to pay for more tax breaks for multinationals.”

Repealing the mandate would undermine other key parts of the Affordable Care Act. The health care law banned insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing health conditions. But in order to prevent people from waiting to buy insurance until they got sick, the law also imposed financial penalties for individuals who did not maintain health insurance coverage.

Repealing the mandate would free up new revenue, as fewer people with health insurance would mean the government would spend less on insurance subsidies, according to CBO projections. But Republicans appeared to give differing explanations for what they would do with that money.

McConnell, speaking later at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal, said the repeal would allow them to ensure corporate tax cuts remain permanent and also to lower taxes for middle-class families.

“It’s pretty appealing to us and it will be in the version that comes out of the finance committee this week,” McConnell said.

Trump has said the repeal should be focused on getting income tax rates down for the wealthy, with any leftover money going toward cutting taxes for the middle class.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Tuesday morning that he would introduce his own amendment to the tax bill that would repeal the individual mandate and use the savings to lower taxes for middle-class families.

The tax bills in the House and Senate would lower taxes for many Americans, but nonpartisan analysts have concluded millions would pay higher taxes, particularly if they lived in states such as New York, New Jersey, and California.

Those analyses have also concluded the biggest beneficiaries of the bills would be corporations and the very wealthy.

The addition of the mandate repeal again forces Republicans to grapple with their own internal divisions over health care. GOP lawmakers spent much of the first eight months of 2011 trying to repeal or roll back the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s signature legislative achievement. But they were repeatedly stymied by GOP defections in the Senate, with a handful of Republicans saying they wanted the changes to be either more sweeping or done in a bipartisan way.

Republicans control 52 votes of the 100-seat Senate, and so the defection of three members would imperil any changes to the bill. They are trying to pass the tax cut bill through a process known as reconciliation, which means they would only need 50 votes — plus, if necessary, a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Pence — to pass the bill.

House GOP leaders have said they would explore whether to include a repeal of the individual mandate in their version of the tax cut bill, but they have so far not made that change. They are hoping to vote on their version of the measure as soon as Thursday.

The House and Senate must pass matching versions of the tax cut bill in order for Trump to be able to sign them into law.

The Senate Finance Committee is debating their version of the tax bill this week, and Republicans hope to approve it within days. The House version, which as of now does not include mandate repeal, is expected to be voted on by the full chamber as early as Thursday.

Republicans are hopeful they can pass a tax bill by early December, though they have a number of other issues they need to resolve and face the prospect of losing a Senate seat because of the special election in Alabama.

They will continue to try and screw over as many non-millionaires as possible.

[GreyhoundFan]

For those who are interested, two senators, Mark Warner and Bob Corker, are part of a panel discussion Wednesday night at the Newseum in DC. Supposedly people can stream it live. Sadly, I won't be able to watch, as I have a class conflict. The topic is: Bipartisanship -- A Lost Art?.

[fraurosena]

Somehow I don't think McTurtle et al will heed this sage advice though. 

[fraurosena]

Wow. Now here's a reality-check on trickle-down economics for you. 

After seeing that, how can anyone still believe the GOP's taxplan is going to result in tax-cuts for the middle class?