Tag Archives: child

Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

by QuinnWayn231 Posted on December 26, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

In a blog post about an entirely different subject, Jay Nordlinger says this about Donald Trump:

I am reminded of how the Left and Right can blend — although it’s pretty much impossible to locate Trump politically. Is he Left or Right or in between?

This has long been a common observation, but is it really true anymore? A few months ago, for example, I wrote that Trump didn’t favor a flat tax. But that’s true of most Republicans. And now that Trump has actually released a tax plan, we know his tax notions are entirely orthodox these days. Ditto for Planned Parenthood, which Trump is now on board with defunding completely. Ditto again for his short-lived support for an assault weapons ban.

So what’s left of Trump’s alleged populism? I count one thing:

He doesn’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare.

Is there anything else left? He’s not stridently anti-gay, but he’s opposed to gay marriage nonetheless. Sort of Jeb Bush-ish. He refuses to say that he still supports affirmative action. His foreign policy is…um…a little hard to get a handle on, but it sure can’t be described as liberal these days. He claims to have opposed the Iraq War, but that’s just a lie—and ten years in the past anyway. He sometimes sounds a populist note on trade, but his real position is that he’s smarter than all the dimwits in Washington and could negotiate better terms than they do. He doesn’t seem to harbor any real leftish views on trade.

So really, his support for Social Security and Medicare is pretty much it for non-conservative heresies—and even there his position remains unclear. Does he mean that he doesn’t want to cut Social Security and Medicare at all, or does he mean he doesn’t want to cut them for people currently in the system? After all, the standard Republican position already protects Social Security and Medicare for anyone over age 55. But since Trump has declined to provide any further detail, we don’t really know what his position is.

Trump used to have a few more quasi-liberal positions, but the campaign has sanded them all down. Today, he’s just a really loud right-winger who understands that bashing Social Security and Medicare doesn’t win any votes. That’s it.

Original post: 

Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump Is Just a Garden Variety Right-Winger These Days

Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Far More Sensational Than Jeb Bush’s

by HansBlubaugh Posted on December 24, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The folks at the Tax Policy Center have spurned my advice to spend more time with their families, instead spending their holiday weekends beavering away on an analysis of Donald Trump’s tax plan. And the important news is that it’s bigger, more energetic, and altogether more taxerrific than Jeb Bush’s weak-tea excuse for a tax plan. Bush would increase the national debt by 28 percentage points over the next decade. Trump kills it with a 39 point increase in red ink. Bush raises the federal deficit by $1 trillion in 2026. Trump goes big and increases it by $1.6 trillion. Bush’s plan costs $6.8 trillion over ten years. Trump’s plan clocks in at a budget-busting $9.5 trillion. And Bush reduces the tax rate of the super-rich by a meager 7.6 percent. Trump buries him by slashing tax rates for the Wall Street set by 12.5 percent.

Once again, Bush has brought a knife to a gun fight, and Trump has slapped him silly. This is why Trump is a winner. Merry Christmas, billionaires!

View original article:  

Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Far More Sensational Than Jeb Bush’s

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Donald Trump’s Tax Plan Is Far More Sensational Than Jeb Bush’s

Congress to Americans: You Get a Tax Break! And You Get a Tax Break!

by JeramyRittenhous Posted on December 18, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

The Senate on Friday passed a massive $1.8 trillion spending and tax bill, including a mess of tax breaks expected to cost the government $680 billion over the next decade. The beneficiaries range from low-income workers to giant corporations, and even include the all-important horse racing and motorsports industries. The measures, which passed the House on Thursday, are now headed to the desk of President Barack Obama.

Both parties came away from the frantic negotiations claiming some victories. Democrats managed to make permanent a series of anti-poverty tax breaks, including an expansion of the child tax credit—which will keep the threshold above which a percentage of a parent’s income can be deducted to defray childcare costs at $3,000, rather than allowing it to rise to $10,000—and the earned income tax credit. “These improvements lift about 16 million people, including about 8 million children, out of poverty or closer to the poverty line each year,” Robert Greenstein, president of the progressive Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said of the measures.

Two other newly permanent tax breaks are the research and experimentation credit—which allows companies to deduct R&D costs—and a tax deduction allowing small businesses to write off up to $500,000 for the purchase of heavy machinery or office equipment. These proposals found support on both sides of the aisle. Republicans, meanwhile, managed to extend or make permanent deductions that will largely benefit large corporations, including one that expands the category of foreign income that is not taxed and another allowing businesses to write off investment costs up front.

The tax bill may raise some problems for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obama’s landmark health coverage bill. It delays the unpopular “Cadillac tax”—a tax on expensive employer-provided health plans—as well as taxes on medical devices and health insurance. Altogether, these cuts will cost the healthcare program more than $30 billion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a bipartisan fiscal policy education organization, making Obamacare just that much more expensive for the government over the coming years.

According to CRFB, the tax deal will cost the government a whopping $680 billion over the next decade—after interest, about $830 billion. With no new revenue sources, the expense will just be tacked onto the yawning US deficit. “The failure to pay for this legislation is completely at odds with rhetoric about fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets,” CRFB president Maya MacGuineas said.

Continue reading:

Congress to Americans: You Get a Tax Break! And You Get a Tax Break!

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, Landmark, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Congress to Americans: You Get a Tax Break! And You Get a Tax Break!

There’s a Big Untapped Market Out There for Insulting Libertarians

by CarmaDja7537 Posted on October 24, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Ah, the mysteries of blogging. Over on the right, you’ll notice that a post of mine has been highlighted: “Here’s Why Libertarians Are Mostly Men.” But why? It’s four months old. It’s 200 words long. It probably took about 20 minutes to write. It offers up a theory that I pulled out of my ass.

And it has 161,000 Facebook likes. By contrast, my piece on lead and crime—by far the most important and most popular piece I’ve ever written for the magazine—has 87,000 likes after three years online. This quick post about libertarians is probably the most widely read prose I’ve ever written in my life.

Fine. My public has spoken. Less research, more Trumpesque insults aimed at libertarians. I’ll see what I can do.

Original link: 

There’s a Big Untapped Market Out There for Insulting Libertarians

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on There’s a Big Untapped Market Out There for Insulting Libertarians

No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

by JeromeBlackweld Posted on October 23, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

I had a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I missed the twilight session of the Benghazi hearing. When I got home, it was 8 pm on the East Coast….and the hearing was still going on. Yikes. I assume I didn’t miss anything, did I?

Anyway, while I was in the waiting room I was browsing The Corner and came across the graphic on the right. It struck me as peculiar. The bottom income quintile in America gets 43 percent of its wealth from inheritance? Even granting that these households don’t have much wealth to begin with, that really didn’t seem right.

There was a link to piece by Kevin Williamson that turned out to be two years old—which is something like two decades in blog years. Still, I was curious, and I had nothing else to do while I waited. So I clicked the link. Here’s what Williamson says:

For the top income quintile, gifts and inheritances amount to 13 percent of household wealth, according to research published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics….Meanwhile, inherited money makes up 43 percent of the wealth of the lowest income group and 31 percent for the second-lowest. In case our would-be class warriors are having trouble running the numbers here, that means that inherited money on net reduces wealth inequality in the United States.

This is pretty misleading. I tracked down the BLS report, and it turns out this 43 percent figure is only for those households that inherit anything in the first place. But as you might expect, a mere 17 percent of low-income households report any inheritance at all. If you average this wealth across all low-income households, inheritance accounts for about 7.4 percent of the wealth of the entire group. If you do the same thing for the top earners, inheritance accounts for about 4.9 percent of the wealth of the entire group.

So….7.4 percent vs. 4.9 percent. When you compare entire groups, which is the right way to do this, there’s not very much difference between the two. And in a practical sense, the difference is even more negligible. If you run out the numbers, the wealth of the bottom group increased from $56,000 to $63,000 per household. Big whoop. Conversely, the wealth of the top group increased from $7.2 million to $7.6 million. That’s a nice chunk of change. In a technical sense, the low-income group got a bigger percentage increase, and income inequality has been reduced. But in any normal human sense, $7,000 is such a tiny amount that it doesn’t matter. In a nutshell, rich people inherit a lot of money and poor people don’t.

I’m not really sure what the point of being misleading about this is, since Williamson’s main themes in the linked piece are (a) rich people don’t get most of their money from inheritance, and (b) rich people are mostly married and work a lot of hours. Those things are both true, and there’s no real reason to toss in the other stuff. All it does is provide grist for other people to make misleading graphics later on.

Source article:

No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on No, Poor People Don’t Inherit a Lot of Money

Let’s Just Blame China for Everything and Call It a Day

by AnnWaddy820093 Posted on October 21, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This cracks me up. A few minutes ago Wolf Blitzer brought on Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the Homeland Security committee, and asked him a question about WikiLeaks getting hold of CIA Director John Brennan’s private email account. McCaul nattered on for a bit about the OPM breach a few months ago, and then said this:

McCaul: I wouldn’t be surprised if China was behind this one.

Blitzer: Behind this one? Because it seems like this hacker claims to be under 22 McCaul starts to appear a bit puzzled and deep in thought a young kid who’s stoned all the time. You think that—

McCaul: Oh yeah yeah yeah, I apologize, you’re correct about that. This was a young, sort of anonymous type figure, that did claim to be stoned at the time he did that, which is remarkable given what he accomplished.

Two things. First, do you notice how McCaul just sort of defaults to hacker —> China? This should give us something of a clue about how Republicans process this stuff.

Second, this 22-year-old stoner hacked an AOL account. That’s not especially remarkable. Apparently McCaul also defaults to hacker —> supergenius. Quite a guy to have in charge of homeland security.

View original – 

Let’s Just Blame China for Everything and Call It a Day

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Let’s Just Blame China for Everything and Call It a Day

RushCard Locks Out the Poor From Their Money for Ninth Consecutive Day

by YettaBrumfield Posted on October 20, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Yesterday I saw the blurb on the right at the New York Times. Russell Simmons. RushCard. On the blink for eight days. That sounds like a drag. I wonder what this is all about? Why haven’t I heard of it before now?

Jamelle Bouie explains:

RushCard, according to its website, is a prepaid debit card that lets users get paychecks up to two days in advance….It’s meant to solve the real problems that come with being unbanked or underbanked. In reality, however, it’s a trap. In exchange for early access to their money, users face a web of fees and charges.

….If RushCard were reliable, this might be a fair price for convenience. But it’s not. Beginning last week, thousands of people were locked out of their accounts following an alleged “technology transition” from the company. As Jia Tolentino notes for Jezebel, these are people with no access to cash outside of RushCard. It’s what they use to live their lives.

….This is a disaster, largely uncovered because of whom it affects.

Yep. If this were a problem with, say, American Airlines mileage awards, it would have gotten about as much attention as the Space Shuttle exploding or the Obamacare website melting down. That’s because lots of upper-middle-class folks use these miles, and so do lots of journalists. But RushCard is mostly used by the invisible poor. It turns out that RushCard’s problems have been big news for the past week in a few places that cater to either the hip hop community or looking out for the poor, but in the mainstream press it’s been mostly ignored. That’s probably because very few mainstream journalists either use RushCard or know a lot of people who do.

The rest of Bouie’s column is about postal banking, which you all know I’m sort of skeptical about. I suspect there are better answers to helping the unbanked. But as a comment on the press and the invisibility of the poor, this story deserves more attention.

Continue at source: 

RushCard Locks Out the Poor From Their Money for Ninth Consecutive Day

Posted in FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on RushCard Locks Out the Poor From Their Money for Ninth Consecutive Day

Have You Ever Thought About the Republican Party? I Mean, Really Thought About It?

by LouisGoldstein Posted on October 10, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

As much as we’ve talked about it, I wonder if we’ve really gotten our heads around the fact that Paul Ryan is literally being begged to be the leader of the Republican Party. He is Literally. Being. Begged. To be the leader of one of America’s two major parties! And he doesn’t want it, no how, no way. Because he knows there’s a substantial faction of his party that’s insane. And who would know better?

I feel like this is one of those things that maybe you can only truly comprehend after a couple of blunts:

Boehner: Dude, have you ever thought about the Republican Party? I mean, really thought about it?

Ryan: I know. I know. It’s, like, insane, man. (Giggles, coughs.) This is good stuff. Medical, right?

Boehner: That’s it! Totally insane. I mean, completely batshit fucked up.

Ryan: But awesome. Insane but still awesome. I mean, seriously, it’s our only defense against, like, total socialism.

Boehner: Oh man, you been reading Atlas Shrugged again? You’re bumming me out, dude.

And while we’re on the subject, I have another idea. As thousands of people have pointed out, nothing in the Constitution says the Speaker has to be a member of Congress. This has spawned a whole cottage industry of jokes. Donald Trump! Bibi Netanyahu! Rush Limbaugh! But I have another idea: does it have to be one person? Here’s the relevant text:

The House of Representatives shall chuse their Speaker and other Officers….

Sure, “Speaker” is singular in that sentence, but “Speaker and other Officers” suggests that maybe leadership of the House could be shared. How about a triumvirate, like Rome in its glory days? Ryan could be one, some tea party nutcase could be another, and the third could be, um, Mia Love, who’s a black woman and the daughter of immigrants. I’m not sure how they’d make decisions, but I guess they’d figure out something. Maybe rock paper scissors.

Continue reading here: 

Have You Ever Thought About the Republican Party? I Mean, Really Thought About It?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Have You Ever Thought About the Republican Party? I Mean, Really Thought About It?

Friday Cat Blogging – 9 October 2015

by Jodi16W319322 Posted on October 9, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Hmmm. What happened here? There is no documentary record, so perhaps if Hopper hides no one will connect her with it. Worth a try! Meanwhile, Hilbert hangs around absentmindedly, not realizing that his sister is doing her best to pin the rap entirely on him. That’s family values, folks.

Continue reading:  

Friday Cat Blogging – 9 October 2015

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Friday Cat Blogging – 9 October 2015

Ben Carson Is Wrong About Hitler and Guns

by EdgardoCooney Posted on October 9, 2015

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

More guns, fewer holocausts?

Ben Carson said Thursday that Adolf Hitler’s mass murder of Jews “would have been greatly diminished” if German citizens had not been disarmed by the Nazi regime…”But just clarify, if there had been no gun control laws in Europe at that time, would 6 million Jews have been slaughtered?” Blitzer asked.

“I think the likelihood of Hitler being able to accomplish his goals would have been greatly diminished if the people had been armed,” Carson said…”I’m telling you that there is a reason that these dictatorial people take the guns first.”

This got me curious: Did Hitler take away everyone’s guns? As you can imagine, I know zilch about the history of gun control in Germany, so I surfed over to Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, for a quick refresher course. Here’s what they say:

In 1919, the Treaty of Versaille disarmed Germany. “Fearing inability to hold the state together during the depression, the German government adopted a sweeping series of gun confiscation legislation.” This was long before Hitler came to power.
In 1928 this legislation was relaxed. “Germans could possess firearms, but they were required to have [] permits…Furthermore, the law restricted ownership of firearms to ‘…persons whose trustworthiness is not in question and who can show a need for a permit.'” Again, this was before Hitler came to power.
In 1938, Hitler relaxed the law further. Rifles and shotguns were completely deregulated, permits were extended to three years, and the age at which guns could be purchased was lowered to 18.

Now, Hitler did effectively ban Jews from owning guns in 1938. However, this is highly unlikely to have affected the fate of the Jews even slightly. The Nazis were considerably better armed and organized, and if Jews had taken to shooting them it would have accomplished nothing except giving Joseph Goebbels some terrific propaganda opportunities. The 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is a good example of this: Jews fought back, and the result was a few dead Germans and 13,000 dead Jews.

The bottom line is familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of history: Hitler was popular. He didn’t need to take away anyone’s guns. Whatever you think about gun control, using Hitler to defend your position is a bad idea.

Read more:  

Ben Carson Is Wrong About Hitler and Guns

Posted in Citizen, Everyone, FF, GE, LG, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Ben Carson Is Wrong About Hitler and Guns