Political Roundtable Part XIII

[Wizardspride]

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[dckingsfan]

Holy crap batman...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/opinion/sunday/justice-springs-eternal.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Wow this is a great article, thanks!

It is still just amazing to see how bad this is - but it gives me heart. It is more a local issue than a national one but I like that prosecutors are now running on a different platform

[sfam]

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This is the new normal. It used to be authoritarian regimes could at least count on a tongue lashing from Foggy Bottom when they curtail human rights, regardless which party held the White House. That day looks past.

[dckingsfan]

All they need to do is add single payer and increase the taxes on the 1% (two things Obama originally wanted but folded on) and Obamacare is fixed. Of course the Republicans want neither, thus leaving Obamacare as a watered down, deeply flawed bill.

They could increase taxes to 100% on the top 1% and we still couldn't get out of deficit spending for just entitlements and interest.

TGW - given that is the case - is there any entitlement program you would be willing to cut? Any adjustments you would make? Or are you good with the mantra that the top 1% aren't paying their share?

I wouldn't cut any program. I would focus on cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in each program and incentivize people to get off of government programs altogether.

I would cut in other places--change the tax code to reduce loopholes, tax wall street speculation, and punish corporations like Walmart and McDonalds, who use government programs to pay their employees. I would raise the minimum wage.

So, you feel you could balance the budget by cutting waste, fraud and abuse? Do you feel that waste, fraud and abuse is rampant in the federal government as a percentage of what they spend?

You would incentivize individuals to get off of SS, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA? How would you do this? What do you think the savings on this type of program would be?

The tax code changes wouldn't do anything to reduce the deficit as we have discussed.

Raising the minimum wage is an interesting model - would you also mandate that the corporations pay for healthcare as well? Would you give smaller mom and pop shops a break or would they need to pay their employees $15 an hour plus full benefits?

[Wizardspride]

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[sfam]

Paging AFM, Alex Jones apologizes for "Pizzagate"
https://wftv.relaymedia.com/amp/news/trending-now/infowars-alex-jones-apologizes-for-spreading-fake-pizzagate-story/506119936



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Lawsuit coming! The only thing in the alt-right that actually uncovers facts apparently.

[sfam]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/25/opinion/sunday/justice-springs-eternal.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

Wow this is a great article, thanks!

It is still just amazing to see how bad this is - but it gives me heart. It is more a local issue than a national one but I like that prosecutors are now running on a different platform

Agreed, would love to see prosecutors running on an acknowledgement of the systemic problems with our justice and security system. Would love to see a huge drop in prisoners over the next few years. On sentencing and incarceration, ideally we should be able to make significant changes in nonviolent offenders. But we did just elect "Law and Order" guy. The local level is the place this will have to happen.

[dckingsfan]

Wow this is a great article, thanks!

It is still just amazing to see how bad this is - but it gives me heart. It is more a local issue than a national one but I like that prosecutors are now running on a different platform

Agreed, would love to see prosecutors running on an acknowledgement of the systemic problems with our justice and security system. Would love to see a huge drop in prisoners over the next few years. On sentencing and incarceration, ideally we should be able to make significant changes in nonviolent offenders. But we did just elect "Law and Order" guy. The local level is the place this will have to happen.

Yep, the local level is where the vast majority of this resides. And they have budget issues that are just as bad as the federal government in some cases. This is one way they can tackle those budget issues.

Plus - it's the right thing to do!

[Wizardspride]

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[sfam]

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Apparently the story is Nunes found this "shocking information" that he had to run and tell Trump about, the day before "at the White House".

Its pretty clear what happened. Nunes was asked to sacrifice his reputation to give Trump fake cover for lying about Obama. His claim fell apart within a day, but his strongest supporters were gullible enough to buy it because they wanted to believe.

EDIT: MSNBC just reported that Nunes was in a SCIF in the White House when he "found" this new information.

The whole thing was a ruse.

It looks like Nunes was brought to the White House, shown stuff, and then the next day was "shocked, shocked" at what he found - so much so that he had to run to the White House to publicly tell them about it - the very same White House who showed Nunes the shocking news the night before.

This really is Banana Republic level governance.

[sfam]

So Trump was DONE with negotiating 18 days after starting the Repeal and Replace Obamacare debate. Trump supposedly cares about Tax reform more - do you think he will put in a solid month or more to make a change than hasn't been tried for since 1986 due to the complexities?

The best part of this is Trump wined and dined Republicans at White House parties, brought them to the Oval Office, gave them rides on Air Force One - all the glad-handing that Obama reportedly never did, or at least not in earnest.

Obama's reasoning behind "not having a beer" with McConnell was essentially that they were debating fundamental policy differences, and that schmoozing wouldn't help that.

It turned out the glad-handing didn't help Trump either, nor did the threats. There were fundamental policy differences...

[bealwithit]

Nunes needs to step down and be questioned immediately. How could you be so sloppy with this... lmao

[sfam]

Just more backing for the upcoming Beautiful Wall from the LA Times.

Pew says net illegal immigration has shifted in recent years, with more Mexicans leaving the country than entering, a function of the U.S. economy’s slow recovery from the 2007-2009 recession and improved job opportunities in Mexico. The Border Patrol similarly has charted a decrease in apprehensions along the Mexican border, from an average of 1.16 million a year between 2000 and 2006, to 858,638 in 2007, bottoming out at 327,577 in 2011. Driven partly by an influx of Central American children and families, who tend to turn themselves in upon arrival to seek asylum, apprehensions rebounded to 408,870 last year. Given that diminished human flow, and the fact that more people are leaving than arriving, it hardly seems worth the expense of building a wall that the Department of Homeland Security estimated would cost $21.6 billion (other estimates run much higher)...

The 20 billion dollar figure is really for a fence, not a wall. The wall costs are around 50 billion.

The best part of this is the Republicans are giving indications this morning that because they missed out on repealing Obamacare and the supposed savings that comes with that, they are floating the idea to bypass the 0 deficit increase requirement for Tax reform, and other legislation.

Shocking, I'm sure. As I mentioned before, the only time Republicans care about deficit spending is when there is a Democrat in the White House.

[gtn130]

They could increase taxes to 100% on the top 1% and we still couldn't get out of deficit spending for just entitlements and interest.

TGW - given that is the case - is there any entitlement program you would be willing to cut? Any adjustments you would make? Or are you good with the mantra that the top 1% aren't paying their share?

I wouldn't cut any program. I would focus on cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in each program and incentivize people to get off of government programs altogether.

I would cut in other places--change the tax code to reduce loopholes, tax wall street speculation, and punish corporations like Walmart and McDonalds, who use government programs to pay their employees. I would raise the minimum wage.

So, you feel you could balance the budget by cutting waste, fraud and abuse? Do you feel that waste, fraud and abuse is rampant in the federal government as a percentage of what they spend?

You would incentivize individuals to get off of SS, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA? How would you do this? What do you think the savings on this type of program would be?

The tax code changes wouldn't do anything to reduce the deficit as we have discussed.

Raising the minimum wage is an interesting model - would you also mandate that the corporations pay for healthcare as well? Would you give smaller mom and pop shops a break or would they need to pay their employees $15 an hour plus full benefits?

Why don't you share your plan for balancing the budget?

[Zonkerbl]

This is an interesting article:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/the-right-wing-media-helped-obamacare-in-spite-of-itself/520851/

[sfam]

I wouldn't cut any program. I would focus on cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in each program and incentivize people to get off of government programs altogether.

I would cut in other places--change the tax code to reduce loopholes, tax wall street speculation, and punish corporations like Walmart and McDonalds, who use government programs to pay their employees. I would raise the minimum wage.

So, you feel you could balance the budget by cutting waste, fraud and abuse? Do you feel that waste, fraud and abuse is rampant in the federal government as a percentage of what they spend?

You would incentivize individuals to get off of SS, Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA? How would you do this? What do you think the savings on this type of program would be?

The tax code changes wouldn't do anything to reduce the deficit as we have discussed.

Raising the minimum wage is an interesting model - would you also mandate that the corporations pay for healthcare as well? Would you give smaller mom and pop shops a break or would they need to pay their employees $15 an hour plus full benefits?

Why don't you share your plan for balancing the budget?

Tax more, spend less.

Very similar to how we are told to lose weight ("Do more, eat less"), and its about as useful advice here as it is for those overweight

[Wizardspride]

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[Zonkerbl]

I wouldn't necessarily balance the budget. For reasons I've explained before we can have a deficit of about $200 billion without increasing our debt to GDP ratio. But we do need to get that ratio down from 100% to 70%, so we'll have to cut corners.

First thing I would do is cut the military's budget in half, then I would dramatically increase rich people's contribution to medicare and I would increase the retirement cutoff for social security to be equal to the average US life expectancy, plus I would increase the salary cutoff for contributing to SS. I would raise tax revenue by eliminating subsidies for oil production and other corporate tax subsidies.

It's really simple to say what has to happen to balance the budget. No one has the cojones to actually *do* it. There's no point in arguing what has to be done - big expenditures have to go down, revenues have to go up. The big ticket items are the military, healthcare expenditures, and social security. The big leakages on the revenues side are the tax cuts over the past 30 years and the maintenance of various tax subsidy handouts to big oil and such.

[dckingsfan]

I wouldn't necessarily balance the budget. For reasons I've explained before we can have a deficit of about $200 billion without increasing our debt to GDP ratio. But we do need to get that ratio down from 100% to 70%, so we'll have to cut corners.

Yup, this is a hard concept. I think around 50% but I can understand 70%. Either way - we are headed toward 200+% and that is all but unworkable.

First thing I would do is cut the military's budget in half, then I would dramatically increase rich people's contribution to medicare and I would increase the retirement cutoff for social security to be equal to the average US life expectancy, plus I would increase the salary cutoff for contributing to SS. I would raise tax revenue by eliminating subsidies for oil production and other corporate tax subsidies.

And you would have both sides screaming. And that is why this has to be a bipartisan approach. Move back retirement cutoffs and Pelosi is going to cry CUTS, CUTs, CUTs. Same with the defense hawks.

Sadly we haven't had one of those approaches since a couple of administrations back...

It's really simple to say what has to happen to balance the budget. No one has the cojones to actually *do* it. There's no point in arguing what has to be done - big expenditures have to go down, revenues have to go up. The big ticket items are the military, healthcare expenditures, and social security. The big leakages on the revenues side are the tax cuts over the past 30 years and the maintenance of various tax subsidy handouts to big oil and such.

Although I would point out - we are still at around 20% of GDP for revenue. So, our spending problem >>>>>> than our revenue problem.

[Wizardspride]

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