POLITICS SCHMALITICS

[Edman85]

Another drag queen in Jacksonville caught with minors.

Did I say drag queen? I meant youth group leader at a local church. My mistake.

[smr-nj]

4 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

More from the so called party of family values

Any contributions from the Billionaire Class. How about taxing bribes to congress critters and Supreme Court justices. I suggest the rate starts at 50%

 

Democratic candidates need to pound the GOP on this.  
Cold and so uncaring.  Horrendous. Shameful.

[ewsieg]

7 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

Democratic candidates need to pound the GOP on this.  
Cold and so uncaring.  Horrendous. Shameful.

So first let me add that cutting spending alone is not the solution, but it seems most people believe that cutting spending and raising revenue are two things that need to happen if we want to get our budget under control.  

While one side might complain about defense spending, neither side will do anything about it.  With Entitlements locked in, social spending is pretty much all that is left.  

[smr-nj]

2 hours ago, ewsieg said:

So first let me add that cutting spending alone is not the solution, but it seems most people believe that cutting spending and raising revenue are two things that need to happen if we want to get our budget under control.  

While one side might complain about defense spending, neither side will do anything about it.  With Entitlements locked in, social spending is pretty much all that is left.  

Yeah, well, then **** that.

 I’m not willing to let children go to bed hungry.

[gehringer_2]

10 minutes ago, ewsieg said:

So first let me add that cutting spending alone is not the solution, but it seems most people believe that cutting spending and raising revenue are two things that need to happen if we want to get our budget under control.  

While one side might complain about defense spending, neither side will do anything about it.  With Entitlements locked in, social spending is pretty much all that is left.  

This is all Reagan's fault.

I say that a bit tongue in cheek but it's also true. There was a kind of virtuous cycle at work in the post WWII era where inflation slowly but constantly pushed people into higher tax brackets, and Congress could righteously - and popularly - vote to lower taxes on a regular basis. The conservatives decided this was bad mechanics and indexed the income tax. But in retrospect that has turned out to be a terrible outcome. Now Congress still feels the political imperative to periodically stroke the voters by cutting taxes, but they have lost the built in restoring force which used to make those cuts constructive rather than destructive. If you look at the old system, there was a certain elegant logic to it. Congress could periodically consider total spending levels, but they could always make the adjustment by controlling how much they cut taxes. They never had to raise them. The situation we are in now leads to bad economic policy because rate increases are politically too difficult, but of course in any sane world they are periodically required to correct excess mistakes made on the cutting side or just ordinary changes in the economy.

Tax politics in the US have basically be in chaos from the time the income tax was indexed.

Edited September 26, 2023 by gehringer_2

[ewsieg]

3 minutes ago, smr-nj said:

Yeah, we’ll, then **** that.

 I’m not willing to let children go to bed hungry.

I mean, good governance would help, but i'm trying to point out things that legitimately could happen.

[1984Echoes]

2 hours ago, ewsieg said:

So first let me add that cutting spending alone is not the solution, but it seems most people believe that cutting spending and raising revenue are two things that need to happen if we want to get our budget under control.  

While one side might complain about defense spending, neither side will do anything about it.  With Entitlements locked in, social spending is pretty much all that is left.  

Or the military.

Or raising taxes on the "Cut taxes so we can line our pockets more" top 1% (including Senators and Representatives).

[1984Echoes]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

This is all Reagan's fault... 

"Cut taxes on the rich and shift the burden onto the middle and lower classes and we'll ALL benefit from the trickle down economics..." Wink, wink.

[chasfh]

2 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

"Cut taxes on the rich and shift the burden onto the middle and lower classes and we'll ALL benefit from the trickle down economics..." Wink, wink.

"You know how I describe the economic and social classes in this country? The upper class keeps all of the money, pays none of the taxes. The middle class pays all of the taxes, does all of the work. The poor are there just to scare the **** out of the middle class ... keep 'em showing up at those jobs!"

[pfife]

Political pet peeve:   when politicians characterize their ideological positions as "what the American people want"

I'm an amaerican person and I usually don't want what they say I want.

[Tigeraholic1]

Sad….

 

[ewsieg]

Shawn Fain / UAW update - talks continue with all 3 companies.  Two more plants going on strike at Noon, GM/Lansing, and Ford/Chicago.  He says really good talks with Stellantis just this morning.  He drove home the point that Biden stood on the line with them.

[Tiger337]

On 9/26/2023 at 4:35 PM, ewsieg said:

So first let me add that cutting spending alone is not the solution, but it seems most people believe that cutting spending and raising revenue are two things that need to happen if we want to get our budget under control.  

While one side might complain about defense spending, neither side will do anything about it.  With Entitlements locked in, social spending is pretty much all that is left.  

What they need to be doing is cutting budgets across the board by cleaning up government waste and inefficiency, not cutting services to people who need it.  

[chasfh]

Politicians would definitely be cleaning up government waste and inefficiency if only it didn't pay so gosh darn well.

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, Tiger337 said:

What they need to be doing is cutting budgets across the board by cleaning up government waste and inefficiency, not cutting services to people who need it.  

but there is a point of decreasing returns here as well. If you spend 100 dollars, maybe you spend 5$ on controls to keep your losses to $5, so you have a spending efficiency of 90% and 5% residual losses. So if you spend $6 trillion, you should have $300 billion on the table to save right? But maybe you don't, because the reality is that you may already be at a point where it will cost you more than $1 dollar in additional controls to save each additional dollar, in fact you may be at at point where your last dollar in controls is  already costing you more in paperwork and compliance reporting than the last dollars it's saving. When you spend 6 Trillion $ it's always easy to find the cracks that the dollars are seeping though, but it is not always true that they can be closed for less money than it cost to do it. 

[Tiger337]

On 9/26/2023 at 6:37 PM, 1984Echoes said:

Or the military.

 

The MAGA peaceniks are very proud of "no new wars under Trump".  So, why do we need a huge military if we aren't going have wars anymore?  

[chasfh]

13 hours ago, Tiger337 said:

The MAGA peaceniks are very proud of "no new wars under Trump".  So, why do we need a huge military if we aren't going have wars anymore?  

They may or may not say it flat out, but our military is a huge jobs boondoggle for the (mostly non-union) laborers in MAGAland who work in that industry. That’s why you can’t tell them trickle-down doesn’t work, because when they look anecdotally at how the humongous government spending on the military leads directly to those jobs, they think it works great.

[CMRivdogs]

 

[CMRivdogs]

Is anyone following the Sarah "Huckster" Sanders Podium Scandal?

$19 K for a podium, that she instructed an aid to lie about (and was evidently never delivered)

It must have been the power steering and the ultra Bluetooth upgrades

[chasfh]

5 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Is anyone following the Sarah "Huckster" Sanders Podium Scandal?

$19 K for a podium, that she instructed an aid to lie about (and was evidently never delivered)

It must have been the power steering and the ultra Bluetooth upgrades

Anyone gives you that line of sht that they're giving up a good income in the private sector in order to do the God's work for the public by going into government, just remember that they actually live high on the hog on the public dime, like this.

[CMRivdogs]

This popped up in my feed today. In normal times it would deserve some discussion

Given how badly I've seen term limits have worked in practice (Michigan) I have qualms about that one. However the executive branch didn't have limits until Truman (Thanks FDR). 
 

Banning stock trading and PACs and corporate donations seem like a good thing as well as judicial ethics.
 

[ewsieg]

9 hours ago, CMRivdogs said:

Given how badly I've seen term limits have worked in practice (Michigan) I have qualms about that one.

No term limits results in some bad politicians, not having them results in even more of them.  I'm on board with the rest though.

[MIguy]

I'm not in favor of term limits but would be totally on board with mandatory retirement ages.  72 sounds about right to me, we don't need 80 and 90 year old people running the country.  

[CMRivdogs]

1 hour ago, ewsieg said:

No term limits results in some bad politicians, not having them results in even more of them.  I'm on board with the rest though.

That's pretty much my thinking on term limits, especially after seeing in action. You end up with the legislative branch effectively being governed by non elected long time political staff who basically have no accountability. By the time the elected official gets up to speed their forced to move on.

I'm in favor of terms for Supreme Court and other judges. They can be appointed "judges for life" but after a set number of years need to be rotated to another court or serve as "judge emeritus" 

[chasfh]

40 minutes ago, CMRivdogs said:

That's pretty much my thinking on term limits, especially after seeing in action. You end up with the legislative branch effectively being governed by non elected long time political staff who basically have no accountability. By the time the elected official gets up to speed their forced to move on.

I'm in favor of terms for Supreme Court and other judges. They can be appointed "judges for life" but after a set number of years need to be rotated to another court or serve as "judge emeritus" 

Don't political staff get rotated out when an elected representative leaves office? Unless you mean staff not tied to specific elected officials?