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Ivanka Trump Meets With Congress to Pretend That Her Father Cares About Children

Mother Jones

Bloomberg reports on Ivanka Trump’s first foray into policymaking:

Members of the House and Senate met with the president’s eldest daughter in the Roosevelt Room at the White House last week to discuss her proposed child care tax benefit, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting….It’s not clear whether Ivanka Trump is finding much appetite on Capitol Hill for her proposal. A deduction for child care expenses is both costly and regressive because it would favor wealthier families with two working parents. The deduction would cost the federal government $500 billion in revenue over a decade, according to an estimate by the Tax Foundation, a politically conservative, nonprofit research group.

Let’s see. It would cost $500 billion and fund a touchy-feely welfare program. On the bright side, it would benefit wealthy families more than the poor. Decisions, decisions….

As for the regressiveness, here’s a quick stylized example for a plan that allows, say, a deduction of up to $5,000 for child care expenses:

Income of $500,000, tax bracket = 39.6 percent, total value of deduction = $1,980
Income of $70,000, tax bracket = 15 percent, total value of deduction = $750
Income of $25,000, tax bracket doesn’t matter because you’re not paying any income taxes, total value of deduction = $0.

Everybody in the world with even a passing knowledge of tax policy is well aware of all this. Tax deductions are next to useless for the working and middle classes. That’s why anyone who actually wants to help the non-rich proposes tax credits with a fairly low income cap.

In other words, this is typical Trump. Launch Ivanka onto Capitol Hill with a high-profile proposal and get plenty of good PR for it. But the proposal itself does little for the working class, and Congress won’t pass it anyway. I think I should start keeping a list of Trump proposals that fit this model.

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Ivanka Trump Meets With Congress to Pretend That Her Father Cares About Children

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Obama Defends Clinton Protester, Tells Crowd to "Respect" His Right to Free Speech

Mother Jones

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Speaking at a campaign rally in North Carolina on Friday, President Barack Obama came to the defense of a man protesting Hillary Clinton.

At first, attendees ignored the president’s calls to stop heckling the demonstrator. “Hey everybody, listen up!” Obama said, trying to regain control of the crowd. “I told you to be focused and you’re not focused right now. Hold up. Everybody be quiet for a second!”

“You’ve got an older gentleman who is supporting his candidate,” he explained. “He’s not doing nothing, you don’t have to worry about him. You don’t have to worry about him. This is what I mean about not being focused. First of all, we live in a country that respects free speech. Second of all, it looks maybe like he maybe served in our military and we gotta respect that. Third of all, he was elderly and we gotta respect our elders.”

And then the famous Obama rejoinder: “Fourth of all, don’t boo. Vote!

The moment stood in stark contrast to the sometimes vitriolic scenes at Trump rallies, where attendees have been dragged out and roughed up after protesting. “Get him out of here,” Trump said at one rally last November. “Throw him out!”

At another campaign event in February, Trump said: “So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of ’em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell—I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise.”

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Obama Defends Clinton Protester, Tells Crowd to "Respect" His Right to Free Speech

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Does Donald Trump Really Have a 30% Chance of Winning?

Mother Jones

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Sam Wang, my go-to presidential forecaster, says Hillary Clinton would have a 99 percent chance of winning if the election were held today. But the election isn’t being held today:

Historically from 1952 to 2012, the likely range of movement in two-candidate margin from this time until Election Day has been 10 percentage points, which is the standard deviation from the 16 past elections. Therefore, even though Clinton currently leads by a median margin of 7 percent (12 national surveys) and would certainly win an election held today, she could still lose the lead, and from a purely poll-based standpoint, is only narrowly favored to be elected President in November (probability: 70%).

It is also the case that Clinton is the only candidate who is poised for a blowout. Her “plus-one-sigma” outcome (current polls plus one standard deviation) is a popular vote win of 58.5%-41.5%. Trump’s plus-one-sigma outcome is a narrower win, 51.5%-48.5%.

In chart form it looks something like this: two bell curves centered 7 points away from each other, each with a standard deviation of 10 points.

The blue span from 48.5 to 51.5 is Trump’s 30 percent chance of winning—though it’s worth noting that Wang says the standard deviation in recent elections has been more like 4 points, which would give Trump virtually no chance of winning. Nonetheless, he also says this: “But considering the upheaval in the Republican Party, a little voice tells me to open my mind to a wider range of possibilities… including a Trump win.”

James Wimberley isn’t convinced. He takes a look at various upsides and downsides of the two candidates (gaffes, oppo dumps, unusual outside events, etc.) and concludes that virtually all of them favor Hillary:

Adding these pseudo-numbers up, I get the total risks to Clinton 39, to Trump 352. Really the only more than marginally possible future events in my categories that he has going for him are ISIS pulling off a big atrocity and economic collapse in China, both at long odds. I don’t claim credibility for my particular numbers, just that overall we have to put a very fat thumb on the probability scales in Clinton’s favour. So her chances to a sensible bettor are more than Wang’s 70%, a lot more.

Comments? I’m pretty astounded that after locking up the nomination Trump has actually gotten more out of control, not more restrained. Everybody sort of assumed that when it came time to widen his appeal beyond the Republican base, he’d be smart enough to dial things back a notch, but he seems to have taken this as some kind of schoolyard challenge. The last couple of weeks he’s been crazier than ever. If this keeps up, I’d be hard put to give him more than a 1 percent chance of winning.

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Does Donald Trump Really Have a 30% Chance of Winning?

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The story behind Prince’s low-profile generosity to green causes

The story behind Prince’s low-profile generosity to green causes

By on Apr 26, 2016Share

In the outpouring of media coverage after Prince’s death at the age of 57 last week, fans around the globe began to learn more about the notoriously private star — including that he gave away a lot of money. Van Jones — the activist, author, former Obama administration official, and current CNN commentator — revealed that Prince had secretly funded causes from public radio to Black Lives Matter to the Harlem Children’s Zone. He also conceived of #YesWeCode, an initiative to train black kids for work in tech. And he supported Green For All, a group working to fight climate change and bring green jobs to underprivileged populations. Jones is in the leadership of the latter two organizations.

“I was an Oakland activist giving speeches about the need for green jobs,” Jones told me over the phone, recalling how he first came into contact with the musician 10 years ago. “Prince heard me in the media and sent a $50,000 check to support the work I was doing. But he did all his giving completely anonymously, so I sent the check back. You never know when someone is trying to set you up — it could have been from Chevron or from a drug dealer or whatever. So then he sent the check back and I sent it back again, and then he sent it back and then I sent it back, until finally a representative called and said, ‘Will you please accept this check? I won’t tell you who it is from, but the guy’s favorite color is purple.’ I said, ‘Well, now you have a different problem: I’m not gonna cash this check, I’m gonna frame it.’”

Soon after, Prince reached out to Jones, and the two became friends — a friendship that would last until his death. Jones’ role in Prince’s life was, he says, as “his lead guitarist for social impact, for lack of a better term.” Jones helped distribute Prince’s resources when he didn’t want the attention, including providing solar panels for families in Oakland. The families never knew who their benefactor was.

As a Jehovah’s Witness, Prince wasn’t permitted to advertise his good works. But even without his spiritual tradition, Jones says Prince would have been modest about his giving. “He thought it was in poor taste for these celebrities to get millions of dollars and then write a check and have their publicists all over the media bragging about it,” Jones said. “He was like, ‘This is ridiculous. We get enough attention. We’re celebrities.’”

Jones says that what Prince really cared about was humanity. “He cared about life and love and freedom,” Jones says. “His politics were not red. They were not blue. They were purple. He had a mind that let him see answers — musically, spiritually, even politically. Rather than argue about global warming, he said, ‘Let’s help kids put up solar panels.’”

It’s clear in conversation that Jones deeply mourns the loss of his friend. When asked what he will miss most, he takes a long pause, so long I think for a moment that the line has gone dead.

“Everybody will tell you about the songs, but the genius didn’t stop when he walked out of the studio,” Jones says. “He was so hilariously, ridiculously funny. He was Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Kevin Hart–level funny. Dave Chapelle is probably funnier, but he’s the only one. Everybody else, Prince could have eaten their lunch, and half the time with no curse words. That’s irreplaceable. You can’t find that on YouTube or iTunes.”

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The story behind Prince’s low-profile generosity to green causes

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