Political Roundtable Part XVIII

[Wizardspride]

I've asked this question a few times but have yet to get an answer: Where is this overwhelming evidence that the DOJ lied to a judge in order get a FISA warrant on Carter Page?

[gtn130]

Read on Twitter

this is funny. i wonder if a few global/liberal billionaires like soros are purposefully pulling money out of the market so Trump cant help the GOP run on the "stock market" for 2018 midterms. if so, i wonder is they are breaking any laws?

I called this a week ago. Look it up. I'm jumping back in it 22500. Oh yeah! Given that I jumped out at around 26000, I am feeling pretty good today.

Whenever your hero tweets something that digs him in to some extreme partisan position, you can almost always find some tweet from the past that directly contradicts it. When you similarly post something that offers some extreme partisan position, sometimes I have to go as far back as the previous day's posts to find that direct contradiction.

Oh, and a team of FBI investigators was unable to find your post predicting this market slide. I think Rose Marie Woods (a Republican, as if you didn't know) accidentally erased the post.

Fake News!


On another point. Rachel Maddow did an excellent piece last night on how reckless this administration has been with classified information. Who's wants to take a swing at where this falls on the "Give a damn" meter for but but Hilary's emails Nate?

Yup.

Yet another case of blatant concern trolling. Such passionate email server management watchdogs!

Anyway, back to being laser-focused on the FISA warrant application process! Another long and historical passion of all principled Trump voters

[dckingsfan]

Sen Rand Paul: "There is probably a lot of blame to go around for the Republicans who are advocating for this debt," Paul said to CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. "But I would say, really, primarily, this is coming from Congress. Leadership in Congress in both the House and Senate has decided to move forward. But the funny thing is you know so often in the media we hear 'we want you to work together.' They are are working together but working together to spend a ton of money."

[dckingsfan]

So, while both sides were distracted by the Russia "thing" - we just got buried. This will take us forever to dig out from - if it is possible at all...

[gtn130]

Sen Rand Paul: "There is probably a lot of blame to go around for the Republicans who are advocating for this debt," Paul said to CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. "But I would say, really, primarily, this is coming from Congress. Leadership in Congress in both the House and Senate has decided to move forward. But the funny thing is you know so often in the media we hear 'we want you to work together.' They are are working together but working together to spend a ton of money."

I might take this seriously if my man Rand didn't vote to add $1.5T to the credit card two months ago. Like I get what he's saying, but he has zero credibility here.

[TGW]

Sen Rand Paul: "There is probably a lot of blame to go around for the Republicans who are advocating for this debt," Paul said to CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. "But I would say, really, primarily, this is coming from Congress. Leadership in Congress in both the House and Senate has decided to move forward. But the funny thing is you know so often in the media we hear 'we want you to work together.' They are are working together but working together to spend a ton of money."

Rand Paul could have been a really good candidate if he wasn't 60% batsh*t crazy. The other 40% is really really good.

[FAH1223]

deficits by year

FY 2008 - $458B
FY 2009 (last bush buget) - $1.4T
FY 2010 (first obama budget) - $1.3T
FY 2011 - $1.3T
FY 2012 - $1.1T
FY 2013 - $679B
FY 2014 - $485B
FY 2015 - $438B
FY 2016 - $585B
FY 2017 - $666B (last obama budget)
FY 2018 - $??? (first trump budget)

[dckingsfan]

Sen Rand Paul: "There is probably a lot of blame to go around for the Republicans who are advocating for this debt," Paul said to CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. "But I would say, really, primarily, this is coming from Congress. Leadership in Congress in both the House and Senate has decided to move forward. But the funny thing is you know so often in the media we hear 'we want you to work together.' They are are working together but working together to spend a ton of money."

I might take this seriously if my man Rand didn't vote to add $1.5T to the credit card two months ago. Like I get what he's saying, but he has zero credibility here.

Zero credibility but 100% correct. Either way - we are f%&ked

[TGW]

Sen Rand Paul: "There is probably a lot of blame to go around for the Republicans who are advocating for this debt," Paul said to CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. "But I would say, really, primarily, this is coming from Congress. Leadership in Congress in both the House and Senate has decided to move forward. But the funny thing is you know so often in the media we hear 'we want you to work together.' They are are working together but working together to spend a ton of money."

I might take this seriously if my man Rand didn't vote to add $1.5T to the credit card two months ago. Like I get what he's saying, but he has zero credibility here.

Zero credibility but 100% correct. Either way - we are f%&ked

I'm a progressive, but I'm actually yearning for the days of George Bush I. Even though I hated his warmongering and social policies, at least he was willing to sacrifice personal popularity for the fiscal good of the country, and raise taxes to PAY FOR STUFF. Reagan, Dubya, and Trump are/were simply irresponsible with the massive taxcuts.

[FAH1223]

I'm a progressive, but I'm actually yearning for the days of George Bush I. Even though I hated his warmongering and social policies, at least he was willing to sacrifice personal popularity for the fiscal good of the country, and raise taxes to PAY FOR STUFF. Reagan, Dubya, and Trump are/were simply irresponsible with the massive taxcuts.

For a second I was about to blast you and thought it was Dubya you were referring to.

[FAH1223]

Read on Twitter

IN DECEMBER, REPUBLICANS achieved their long-held dream of lowering taxes for the wealthy and corporations and increasing taxes for pretty much everyone else.

Democrats were universal in their hostility toward the project, but as the Trump administration has pulled off a PR coup — with companies announcing “Trump bonuses” and workers seeing bumps to their take-home pay — the party has not yet formulated its response nor have they suggested what they’ll do when and if they return to power.

In interviews with The Intercept, a range of Democratic senators either said they have not yet thought about what repeal and replace would look like, or offered broad guidelines for a policy, rather than specific plans.

“Not yet,” replied Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, who served as the party’s vice presidential nominee in 2016, on whether he’s put any thought into how they would replace the tax law. “Too many other things that are coming before that.”

Republicans began promising to repeal the Affordable Care Act before it had even been signed into law, but devoted no serious effort to developing a replacement, a failure that contributed to their inability to repeal it once they took power.

Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz concurred with Kaine. “Not yet,” he said in response to the question.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester didn’t have any specific ideas in mind, but offered some principles the party should look at. “It wouldn’t increase the debt on our kids by a trillion-four, and the middle-class tax breaks — what we have would be permanent,” he said.

He was, however, fairly pessimistic about any changes happening in the near future. “There are a lot of things that could be changed in that, but I don’t see any effort to do any of those things,” he conceded. “I think we’ve got what we’ve got for the next 30 years.”

Ed Markey of Massachusetts offered the most detailed principles for a replacement. “I would make sure that 60 to 70 percent of the tax break went to people who earned $200,000 or less,” he replied, “so that it was benefiting the people who work hard every day. They deserve a real tax break.”

Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has been among the most precise, saying he would roll back the breaks for the rich, keep the new deductions, and restore some of the old ones. “We can permanently double the standard deduction, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit, reinstate the personal exemptions, and make the Child Tax Credit fully refundable,” Sanders said in a statement.

While Capitol Hill has few ideas on what a different restructuring of the tax code would look like, a number of economists offered their own ideas to The Intercept.

Over at the Economic Policy Institute, budget analyst Hunter Blair said the tax law is an opportunity to set up a progressive response. “Progressives should use [this bill] as a springboard for real progressive tax reform. That would be reform that raises revenue that we need to honor and expand our commitment to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and other social insurance programs, and doing so progressively,” he said.

He suggests the Congressional Progressive Caucus’s budget blueprint as one model for repeal and replace. That budget would impose a financial transaction tax, increase tax rates on the highest earners, and establish a “hard work tax credit” for households with a family income of less than $150,000.

Dean Baker, senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, doesn’t think the law is all bad. “There’s actually a lot of good aspects to this,” he said. For instance, he thinks the simplicity of nearly doubling the standard deduction is beneficial for Americans. “Why should people mess around with itemizing? … I’d love to carry it a step further and let the IRS do people’s tax forms for them.”

There are at least two big areas where he thinks there could be significant changes, however. He points to the lowering of corporate tax rates, noting that there was bipartisan support for lowering them in a revenue-neutral fashion rather than the deficit-increasing way the GOP has chosen.

“The idea of lowering the rates and getting rid of deductions, Obama came out for that, a number of Democrats that were on board with it,” he noted. “If [they] had on the table the idea that we’re going to actually collect, we’re going to set a rate of 25 percent or whatever, and we’re actually going to collect something very close to it, that I think would be really good policy.”

His specific proposal would involve the government acquiring shares in companies. “You require the company to give you nonvoting shares in the percentage that you’re going to have as the tax rate. So if you want 25 percent as your tax rate, they give you shares that are equal to 25 percent of their outstanding shares.”

Baker thinks this would cut down on tax avoidance. “Whatever at the end of the day you pay to your shareholders, you’re going to pay the government also,” he said.

He is also concerned about possible cutbacks in state and local spending as a result of losing the state and local tax deduction. The SALT deduction essentially serves as a subsidy to municipalities and states, and tends to be more important to blue states who have higher levels of spending. Because taxpayers who claim the deduction aren’t taxed twice, states feel free to spend higher amounts.

Baker’s idea is for states to levy a payroll tax on employers. He imagines a well-to-do taxpayer in California who owes $10,000 in property taxes.

“What you’re saying is now instead of having them be taxed $10,000 in income taxes, which they could deduct, what we’re going to do is we’re going to tell the employer, you owe us 5 percent payroll tax,” he said. “Employer will say, ‘OK well fine, if I have to pay 5 percent tax on this guy’s payroll, then I’m only going to pay him or her $190,000 rather than $200,000. So they’re out $10,000 that way, but that was the same amount they were out on the state … tax. The benefit is now they’re only paying federal income tax on $190,000 on income rather than $200,000 on income. So in effect, what you’ve done is substituted a deductible tax for a tax that wasn’t deductible.”

There’s also a more radical approach to repeal and replace offered by economists of the Modern Monetary Theory school, who argue that the federal government does not need to rely on taxation in order for revenue.

Randy Wray of Bard College, one of the leading MMT economists, thinks the new tax law could lead to unfair outcomes — such as for states more burdened by repeal of the SALT deduction. But he doesn’t necessarily oppose lowering the corporate tax rate; in fact, he thinks that needs to go further.

The corporate income tax, in Wray’s telling, “encourages avoidance, and evasion, and inversions and all of those problems. In a way they’re greatly reduced, I wouldn’t say that they go away, but they’re greatly reduced if they just eliminate the corporate tax.”

He suggested making the corporate tax rate zero and then imputing the profits to shareholders. You could then tax that money as ordinary income. You could then use this as a way to encourage companies to invest in the economy rather than use the money for stock buybacks. “What you would do is encourage them to invest by saying that profits that are invested are not imputed, they will not be taxed,” he said. “It removes the incentive that corporations right now have to go into debt because they get to write off interest payments from their profits. So we eliminate that incentive because if you invest your profits, those never get taxed either.”

This plan would also have the advantage of being progressive, because of who owns stocks.

[stilldropin20]

Read on Twitter

this is funny. i wonder if a few global/liberal billionaires like soros are purposefully pulling money out of the market so Trump cant help the GOP run on the "stock market" for 2018 midterms. if so, i wonder is they are breaking any laws?

he will still have jobs, GDP, new jobs, low unemployment and better taxes. but if Soros and a few others pull their billions out and keep it out there is nothing Trump can do about it market will stay low.

I think is going to sink to at least 22K in the next few weeks month. Possibly tomorrow? and it has to go back up TO 26-27 in the not too distant future.

Didn't you tell us how smart you were pulling your money out of the market!

And I would jump back in when it hits bottom. These are solid swings folks. It's a good time to pay attention to it.

Sent from my SM-N920T using RealGM mobile app

[stilldropin20]

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone in the Executive Office has security clearance Porter didn't, Kushner has been feeding off temporary clearance for over a year.

White House Counsel Donald McGahn knew one year ago that staff secretary Rob Porter’s ex-wives had accused him of domestic violence but allowed him to serve as an influential gatekeeper and aide to President Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Chief of Staff John F. Kelly learned this fall about the allegations of spousal abuse and that they were delaying Porter’s security clearance amid an ongoing FBI investigation. But Kelly handed Porter more responsibilities to control the flow of information to the president.

In January 2017, when McGahn learned of the allegations, he wanted Porter to stay put because he saw the Harvard Law-trained Capitol Hill veteran as a steadying, professional voice in the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. His view didn’t change in June when the FBI flagged some of its findings to the White House. Nor did he act in September when he learned that the domestic violence claims were delaying Porter’s security clearance, or in November when Porter’s former girlfriend contacted him about the allegations, according to these people.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/8/1739956/-WH-Counsel-Donald-McGahn-knew-one-year-ago-that-Porter-s-ex-wives-accused-him-of-domestic-violence

this is all party of the deep state fbi picking with trump. They are holding up security clearances. For example I want tell the t s s i s c i security clearance that's the same clearance George Bush and Bill Clinton had. I'm on mom was a crackhead. How the phuck can Jared Kushner not get a security clearance??

Sent from my SM-N920T using RealGM mobile app

[cammac]

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone in the Executive Office has security clearance Porter didn't, Kushner has been feeding off temporary clearance for over a year.

White House Counsel Donald McGahn knew one year ago that staff secretary Rob Porter’s ex-wives had accused him of domestic violence but allowed him to serve as an influential gatekeeper and aide to President Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Chief of Staff John F. Kelly learned this fall about the allegations of spousal abuse and that they were delaying Porter’s security clearance amid an ongoing FBI investigation. But Kelly handed Porter more responsibilities to control the flow of information to the president.

In January 2017, when McGahn learned of the allegations, he wanted Porter to stay put because he saw the Harvard Law-trained Capitol Hill veteran as a steadying, professional voice in the White House, according to people familiar with the matter. His view didn’t change in June when the FBI flagged some of its findings to the White House. Nor did he act in September when he learned that the domestic violence claims were delaying Porter’s security clearance, or in November when Porter’s former girlfriend contacted him about the allegations, according to these people.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/2/8/1739956/-WH-Counsel-Donald-McGahn-knew-one-year-ago-that-Porter-s-ex-wives-accused-him-of-domestic-violence

this is all party of the deep state fbi picking with trump. They are holding up security clearances. For example I want tell the t s s i s c i security clearance that's the same clearance George Bush and Bill Clinton had. I'm on mom was a crackhead. How the phuck can Jared Kushner not get a security clearance??

Sent from my SM-N920T using RealGM mobile app

In the real world do you think Donald Trump could get a security clearance?
If you do you are crazy as ****!!!!

[cammac]

Sen Rand Paul: "There is probably a lot of blame to go around for the Republicans who are advocating for this debt," Paul said to CNN's Erin Burnett OutFront. "But I would say, really, primarily, this is coming from Congress. Leadership in Congress in both the House and Senate has decided to move forward. But the funny thing is you know so often in the media we hear 'we want you to work together.' They are are working together but working together to spend a ton of money."

He and his father is and were the biggest fakes in government.
He plays the game like Cruz and the Tea Party as advocates of the people to rein in costs.
Reality is they do not look at ways to modernize the federal government to make it responsive and efficient but to take from the underclass to benefit the ruling class. They are remnants of bygone years and have little incite in producing a modern nation.

[Zonkerbl]

I'll take Rand Paul seriously when he advocates for a tax increase on the wealthy. Until then he's just a run of the mill hypocrite like all the other Republicans.

[Zonkerbl]

DJIA is down 300+ points right now. Thanks Trump!

[cammac]

How Fox manipulates facts for the Trumpster!

First there was the memo from Rep. Devin Nunes, which Sean Hannity hyped would reveal a scandal “worse than Watergate” but proved a dud upon release. Instead of corroborating a conservative line that the case against President Donald Trump was politically motivated, it instead confirmed the New York Times’s reporting that the FBI’s inquiry began with Trump adviser George Papadopoulos’s loose talk.

Finally, Fox News dropped a report on Thursday showing that in March 2017, Sen. Mark Warner, the Virginia Democrat who has been helping lead the Intelligence Committee’s Russia investigation, texted with a Russian oligarch in order to get information on, and potentially meet with, Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous Russia dossier. It isn’t clear what wrongdoing this is supposed to show — it’s reasonable enough that a Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee would have wanted to interview Steele, given that his work was influential — but it elicited a predictable Trump tweet:

Less predictable was Sen. Marco Rubio’s sharp response, accusing both Trump and Fox News of trying to spin a scandal out of nothing, and noting that Warner didn’t “get caught”; he’d told the Intelligence Committee exactly what he was doing:

Tweedle Dumb & Tweedle Dee love to spin these conspiracies that in reality are lies or twisting the truth. When exposed move on to a new one or try and rehash a old one with a new evidence BS.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/9/16991410/trump-fox-nunes-fbi-warner-texts

[Zonkerbl]

Now that we've gotten rid of the idiot corporate income tax (or reduced it significantly anyway) let's replace that lost revenue with a VAT and a one-time lump sum tax on anyone earning more than a million. $250k each. That's about 400,000 people, would net us a clean $100 billion. Huh, that's not much is it - our current deficit is going to be more than a trillion.

If that's not enough, do another one time lump sum wealth tax on billionaires (those whose net worth is more than a billion, not income). There are about 500 of them in the United States (according to this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiesola/2016/03/05/here-are-the-states-with-the-most-billionaires/#30400f47101e) so if we ask them to contribute $200 million each that's another $100 billion off the debt. Huh, still peanuts.

Well, the net worth of those billionaires is $2.4 trillion, so if we ask them to make a one time lump sum contribution of 20% of their net worth, that's $480 billion. That's still only one fortieth of our current debt but it's something.

It's interesting when you do these exercises, you realize just how absurdly out of control the debt has become and how extraordinarily reckless the Republican tax cut was. What were they thinking?

[cammac]

Now that we've gotten rid of the idiot corporate income tax (or reduced it significantly anyway) let's replace that lost revenue with a VAT and a one-time lump sum tax on anyone earning more than a million. $250k each. That's about 400,000 people, would net us a clean $100 billion. Huh, that's not much is it - our current deficit is going to be more than a trillion.

If that's not enough, do another one time lump sum wealth tax on billionaires (those whose net worth is more than a billion, not income). There are about 500 of them in the United States (according to this article: https://www.forbes.com/sites/katiesola/2016/03/05/here-are-the-states-with-the-most-billionaires/#30400f47101e) so if we ask them to contribute $200 million each that's another $100 billion off the debt. Huh, still peanuts.

Well, the net worth of those billionaires is $2.4 trillion, so if we ask them to make a one time lump sum contribution of 20% of their net worth, that's $480 billion. That's still only one fortieth of our current debt but it's something.

It's interesting when you do these exercises, you realize just how absurdly out of control the debt has become and how extraordinarily reckless the Republican tax cut was. What were they thinking?

dckingfan & I agree the whole American public needs a reality check!
There isn't a free lunch and you better get used to it or crippling debt keeps building up.
Tax cuts are nice but if you don't have revenue to replace it's futile escalating costs must be reined in.
Plus cost drivers need to be eliminated or substantially decreased!
The world has had the luxury of low interest rates and the national debt hasn't risen as fast as it could when treasury bills have to start paying 5% plus the debt escalates much more dramatically. The Republicans are incapable of doing this because they do lack conscience and don't care about human consequences. The Democrats could start the process with what is termed a far left approach starting with healthcare. The reality it isn't a far left approach rather than a moderate one. Rein in the cost drivers and set up a single payer system lots of good models out there. Shake the Generals heads and set a reasonable budget for defense and co-operate with allies in a co-ordination of a rational world defense policy.Make social security actuarial sound yes more money out of peoples pockets initially. Get illegal immigrants out of the shadows and paying taxes and have a rational and robust immigration policy. Likely a VAT tax is needed and close the corporate loopholes and have a minimum corporate tax of 10%. Have a infrastructure which produces real jobs and help fund it with gasoline taxes and sin taxes. Modernize the government make it efficient and responsive.

Reality it can be done Canada did it and we live in igloos!!!!