US Politics Mega-thread - Page 7121

On March 15 2017 12:24 On_Slaught wrote:
Maddow def looks bad. Why hype it before you have anything good? Either way, while it isn't positive for the media it's not like it's fake news (which is the much more dangerous narrative than bias media) since the administration admitted it was real. The real loser is just her. Obvious the right will hate her regardless. Problem is she loses respect from people on the left as well.

But the documents also showed that about 82% of the total paid to the Internal Revenue Service that year by Trump and his wife, Melania, was incurred due to a tax that Trump has said should be abolished.

The “alternative minimum tax” (AMT), which was introduced to ensure the mega wealthy pay a fairer share of tax, comprised $31m of Trump’s tax bill compared to $5.3m in regular federal income tax. In the run-up to November’s election, Trump pledged to eliminate the AMT altogether, meaning the president campaigned for a change in the tax law that would have benefited him.

The alternative minimum tax was created in 1969 (and amended in 1979) to address the fact that some of the uber-wealthy could use so many deductions and loopholes that they ended up paying zero federal income tax. People with high incomes have to calculate their taxes twice – once with all their deductions and once without many of them. The taxpayer must then pay the higher of the two figures.

The gap between those two figures can be enormous – as is made clear by these Trump tax returns, which show Trump would have paid a fraction in taxes were it not for the AMT.

“If we didn’t have the alternative minimum tax, he would have paid taxes at a lower rate than the poor who make less than $33,000 a year,” David Cay Johnston said on MSNBC about the returns. The AMT was applied to just a few hundred wealthy individuals when it was first imposed, but today it hits almost 5 million taxpayers.

Obama and Trump were both in the highest tax bracket but Trump paid a higher percentage, checkmate liberals

oh yeah, well why would the average tax rate change just because he earned more, they're in the same bracket

Trump paid a higher rate than the corporation MSNBC!!!

On March 15 2017 13:46 Danglars wrote:

Yeah, that tax that wasn't indexed to anything and now hits the middle class so hard for so long it's become a key part of federal revenue? Fucking failure.

On March 15 2017 13:46 Danglars wrote:

Yeah, that tax that wasn't indexed to anything and now hits the middle class so hard for so long it's become a key part of federal revenue? Fucking failure.

On March 15 2017 15:33 IyMoon wrote:
If trump did play RM, could it come back to bite him? Could the news cycle now be "If 2005 is so bland, why is he hiding all the rest?"

On March 15 2017 12:33 xDaunt wrote:
This doesn't really qualify as "fake news." It's more accurate to call it "stupid news."

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has arrived in Tokyo to begin a a six-day sweep through Northeast Asia. It's his first trip there as America's top diplomat, and he heads into a region full of challenges, both old and new.

In South Korea, where Tillerson is expected on Friday, the government is still sorting things out following last Friday's ouster of the country's president, Park Geun-hye. The historic impeachment on corruption charges brought on a power vacuum in Seoul — just as the new U.S. administration begins to engage with Asia.

"South Korea now enters a vortex of a political campaign, an election that has to take place in two months," says John Delury, a professor of international relations at Seoul's Yonsei University. He echoes recent Korean opinion polls in saying the government here is likely to shift to the more liberal opposition party when elections are held in early May.

Delury says that could bring significant change South Korea's policy regarding the North.

"Liberals think you engage North Korea," he says. "You draw them out. You have dialogue. You work on denuclearization but you have to work on a lot of other issues at the same time."

The North Korean threat is a top priority for Tillerson's trip. Since President Donald Trump took office, North Korea has twice tested missiles — last week firing four of them into the Sea of Japan. North Korea watchers say it appears to be preparing for another rules-breaking nuclear test. State's spokesman Mark Toner admits existing approaches to curb Pyongyang haven't worked.

"Thus far we have been unable to persuade them either through U.N. action, through sanctions, whatever. So I think we need to look at new possibilities," Toner said on Monday.

Those likely to take charge in South Korea aren't the leaders Tillerson will be meeting with this week. He'll instead talk through the North Korea threat and other regional issues with a lame duck South Korean government that was picked by a president who's no longer there.

"South Korea has two more months of a political vacuum," says Delury. "There's a lot of tensions.

"Just from a South Korean perspective, the relationship with China is quite bad, over THAAD [a missile defense system the U.S. is deploying in South Korea against Chinese objections], the relationship with Japan is bad, mostly over [World War II] history issues.

"And the relationship with the United States is uncertain, just because all of the questions around Trump."

China is the last leg of Tillerson's Asia trip, and the missile defense system promises to get a hearing, from various perspectives, on each stop, beginning with Japan tomorrow. The State Department says getting cooperation from China, Japan and South Korea is key to trying to slow down North Korea's advancing nuclear program.

"Everybody agrees on the challenge, which is how do you stop North Korea's bad behavior?" said Toner.

Not everyone agrees on how to solve it. And a key player in the region will soon change. Adding another complication to what was already one of the thorniest issues facing the White House.

On March 15 2017 11:24 kwizach wrote:


This is simply not true, actually. [bla, bla, bla]

Describing themselves as "centrist", they are an economically right-wing and "Third Way" faction which dominated the party for around 20 years, starting in the late 1980s after the US populace turned much further to the political right. They are represented by organizations such as the New Democrat Network and the New Democrat Coalition.

During the presidency of George W. Bush, the evolving New Democrat or “economically liberal” movement was dominated by socially liberal economic conservatives on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley. These "centrist" Democrats shifted their base from white working-class Southerners and Westerners and focused instead on winning over former moderate Republicans in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast who combined liberal attitudes on abortion, LGBT rights, and environmentalism, with opposition to “big government” and concern about federal deficits. In 2008, many Wall Street Democratic donors abandoned Hillary Clinton and supported then US Senator Barack Obama for President.

As presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama both reflected the priorities of the second New Democrat coalition, uniting donors from Wall Street and Silicon Valley with a “new majority” coalition of racial minorities, immigrants, liberal women, and young voters.

Barack Obama said on 10th of March, 2009:
I am a New Democrat

CNN anchor Chris Cuomo said Tuesday morning that newly leaked audio of House Speaker Paul Ryan could damage congressional Republicans’ ability to pass a health care bill “more than anything that’s happened thus far.”

On the recording from a private conference call in October, Ryan is heard telling House Republicans that he couldn’t defend then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump at that moment or “in the future.” His comments came amid a scandal over the now-president bragging on tape about groping women.

The never-before-heard recording didn’t come to light through a liberal or mainstream news site. Rather, the right-wing, nationalist Breitbart News published it Monday night.

That Breitbart would drop this 5-month-old recording now ― as Ryan and the Trump administration make their case for a health care bill to repeal and “replace” Obamacare ― may appear surprising. After all, the site vigorously supported Trump’s candidacy and its former chairman, Steve Bannon, is chief strategist in the White House.

But Breitbart News emerged as a force in Washington through its sustained attacks on Republican establishment. Boisterous commenters joined in to label politicians deemed insufficiently conservative as RINOs ― Republicans In Name Only. The site boosted Trump during the 2016 election as an alternative to the Washington establishment, and has long characterized Ryan as emblematic of conventional GOP politics.

Breitbart News has noticeably blamed Ryan for any problems with the Republican bill to replace Obamacare, known as the American Health Care Act. The site has portrayed the bill as part of an effort by the speaker to mislead the president into supporting legislation that betrays conservative principles.

Still, Breitbart’s opposition to the health care bill ― which it has called “Obamacare Lite” and “Obamacare 2.0” ― runs the risk of antagonizing Trump, who publicly supports the bill, and administration officials arguing on its behalf.

After Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price said Sunday that “nobody will be worse off financially” under the Republicans’ plan, Breitbart News mocked the claim on Twitter and questioned whether it would go down as the “lie of the year.” A Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation report published Monday suggests that as many as 24 million people could lose health insurance as a result of the GOP bill.

Trump is a devoted Breitbart reader, as Bannon told The Huffington Post last summer, and some suspect he made an unsubstantiated claim about former President Barack Obama “wiretapping” his building after reading an article on the site.

So it’s likely that the president has seen the site’s blaring, negative headlines about the Republican health care bill. He also may have seen Breitbart’s broadsides amplified on major TV networks, as CNN and MSNBC played the Ryan recording more than a dozen times on Tuesday.

Breitbart News’ most critical coverage of Ryan has come from Matthew Boyle, the chief Washington correspondent who long championed Trump’s candidacy and recently scored an Oval Office interview.

However, Boyle reportedly told colleagues last week that “there are no sacred cows in war” ― meaning the site would even attack Republicans if they strayed from Breitbart’s brand of populist, nationalist conservatism. He has interviewed several Republicans who are concerned with or opposed to the health care bill, including former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.).

“I don’t think it makes any sense, and I think [Ryan]’s trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the president,” Paul told Boyle.

“Everybody, I think, knows that Paul Ryan does not have President Trump’s best interests at heart, right?” Boyle said Monday morning on Breitbart News’ Sirius radio show. “He tried to undermine him repeatedly during the course of 2016, even after he was the Republican nominee for president. Paul Ryan did nothing to help President Trump win on November the 8th. Nothing. Nothing. And since then has been repeatedly trying to co-opt and destroy the Trump agenda.”

That night, Boyle dropped the recording of Ryan saying he wouldn’t publicly defend Trump ― even as he was the Republican nominee. In the article, Boyle disclosed that Breitbart News was provided “a portion” of the Ryan conference call that included the speaker’s remarks. He did not mention when Breitbart News obtained the recording.

But Axios’ Mike Allen reported Tuesday that Breitbart’s “bomb” was one that “Ryan opponents had been husbanding for months, waiting to detonate at a time of maximum vulnerability.”

A Breitbart spokesman declined to make Boyle or editor-in-chief Alexander Marlow available for interviews.

On March 15 2017 19:36 Nebuchad wrote:


Okay! So clearly America should go more right wing, clearly this strategy of going left wing hasn't worked and has caused them to lose. Do you disagree?

On March 15 2017 19:55 a_flayer wrote:
I think that there is an element within the Democratic party that has essentially become fiscally conservative to accommodate those Republicans that can't stand the socially conservative part of the Republican party any more. In my mind, these are the people that cheer on wars and drone terrorism. Both Clinton and Obama were part of that group. And neither of them did much in the way of promoting socially liberal agendas, but rather let the people do this for them through activism to slowly adjust the social views of America across the board.

I don't see why kwizach keeps denying that this a real thing. It is well-documented. They, of course, end up serving their wealthy donors rather than the poor that they are supposed to represent. Just like the Republicans. Both parties are owned by corporations. Both like to go to war. One is socially conservative, the other socially liberal. That is the only real difference.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Democrats


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