US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9183

On November 09 2017 08:49 ticklishmusic wrote:


I'm surprised the GC didn't have an aneurysm over that.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- The Kentucky county clerk jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples will run for re-election in 2018, facing voters for the first time since her protest against gay marriage in rural Appalachia provoked a national uproar.

Kim Davis could face a familiar foe: A gay man to whom she refused to issue a marriage license said he's seriously considering running against her.

"I think I could win," said David Ermold, an English professor at Pikeville University who was among the many who sued Davis in 2015. "I don't think that she has learned anything from the experience at all. I really, truly think that she feels like she is right. I really don't think she cares at all about what civil rights are."

Mat Staver, founder of the Florida-based law firm Liberty Counsel, which represented Davis during the monthslong controversy, confirmed Tuesday that she will seek a second term. He said Davis was unavailable for comment because of a medical procedure.

"She loves her job and she loves the people," Staver said. "I'm sure (the election) will probably have more attention because of who she is, but you know she doesn't have any major concerns about it."

Filing for Kentucky's 2018 election cycle opens Wednesday.

Davis stopped issuing marriage licenses in 2015 after a U.S. Supreme Court decision that effectively legalized same-sex marriage nationwide. After Ermold and others sued her, a judge ordered her to issue the licenses. Davis refused and spent five days in jail.

She was released to a carnival-like atmosphere at a rural county jail, greeted by hundreds of cheering supporters as she stood arm-in-arm with a Republican presidential candidate while a church choir sang nearby.

Davis has not kept a low profile since getting out of jail. She caused an international outcry when she greeted Pope Francis during his visit to Washington, eventually leading to the resignation of the Vatican's U.S. ambassador who had arranged the visit. Earlier this year, Davis traveled to Romania in support of an effort there to change the constitution so it defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Her protest also inspired the state's Republican governor to issue an executive order to remove the names of county clerks from marriage licenses. The state legislature then made the change permanent.

But the various lawsuits against Davis continue. In July, a federal judge said state taxpayers had to pay the more than $220,000 in legal fees for some of the couples that sued Davis. The state has appealed the ruling, but it might not be resolved before the 2018 election.

"It's hard for her to make the argument that the $220,000 she has cost taxpayers is a good value for Rowan County residents," said Chris Hartman, director of the Kentucky Fairness Campaign.

Staver said that would not be an issue for Davis, noting the money would not come out of the county's budget.

Davis was elected as a Democrat, but switched parties to become a Republican shortly after the controversy erupted. Rowan County is heavily Democratic. While its voters overwhelmingly elected Donald Trump for president, nearly all of the local elected officials are Democrats.

Davis is well known in the county of nearly 24,000 people, having worked in the clerk's office for nearly three decades when her mother was the clerk.

"Everybody is speaking and getting along," said Rowan County Democratic Judge-Executive Walter Blevins. "I don't see a lot of animosity toward her."

But her actions brought international attention to the county, much of it unwelcome by local residents annoyed at the chanting protesters and satellite trucks taking all of the parking spaces at the county courthouse.

Those feelings could return in a heated campaign, but Blevins said Davis will still be hard to beat.

"Anytime you take on an incumbent it's an uphill battle," he said. "She may have all kind of dignitaries come in here and speak for her that would make a difference. The president of the United States may come in here and campaign for her."

On November 09 2017 09:01 Mohdoo wrote:


GC? Is my understanding correct? If you make employees sign a "you must always settle instead of suing us" form, then allow someone to only be fired when it is a legal ruling, you actually make it impossible for the dude to be fired for sexual harassment, right?

On November 09 2017 08:48 Nixer wrote:
Chainsaw bayonet is a brilliant way to screw with the weight balance of your rifle. Sounds metal though.

On November 09 2017 09:05 ticklishmusic wrote:


GC as in General Counsel, their head lawyer. The amount of liability (in both a legal/ non-legal sense) it exposes the company to is ridiculous.

On November 09 2017 06:10 IgnE wrote:


despite being a statistician he's incapable of thinking about systems of relations between humans. for him "the human," and by extension the "rational and the moral" (although its actually unclear if there is a distinction between the moral and the rational for him -- the "moral" seems only to function as rational axioms from which deductive corollaries are drawn) begins and ends with the individual spirit, maybe extended a bit to include progeny. its sad really. a social consequence of anomie.

On November 09 2017 05:17 Wulfey_LA wrote:
On the new AWB and Democrats. There are pretty much two competing strategies in the Dem party right now.

(1) Dress up like cultural whites with guns, cowboy hats, barns, tractors, and talk with a white identity accent in an effort to win back whitebutthurt rurals.
(2) Push bills that women want because they are the ones that vote for Democrats.

(1) has its place, like Tester in Montana or Manchin in WV. But (2) is how Dems win the suburbs. This board is rife with youngish single white males who play video games filled with guns. Most of us are probably gun owners. Many of my suburban white male peers are hardcore gun ideologues. But outside of our demographic, there is a real demand for gun regulation. The VA election has me rethinking Schumer's 'don't ever talk about guns' strategy.

On November 09 2017 09:22 GreenHorizons wrote:


2) Black Women*

White women voted Trump and Gillespie.

He’s winning 60 percent of women overall, compared to Clinton’s 56 percent, according to the exit polls. He’s winning white women with 48 percent compared to Clinton’s 41 percent, white women without a college education 32 percent to Clinton’s 29 percent and white women with a college degree 57 percent to Clinton’s 50 percent.
He isn’t, however, winning black women at the same rate that Clinton did. Hm!

On November 09 2017 08:48 Nixer wrote:
Chainsaw bayonet is a brilliant way to screw with the weight balance of your rifle. Sounds metal though.

On November 09 2017 09:31 Nevuk wrote:

Apparently white women were 48-51 on Northam v Gillespie (this is much better than Clinton did, (from 538 liveblog)

Final exit poll stats :

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/928111976676511745


https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/local/virginia-politics/governor-exit-polls/?utm_term=.92b814250b7e

On November 09 2017 01:19 mozoku wrote:

Is this not a picture-perfect example of abusing weasel words? Yeah, it's cutting tax for the rich. It's also cutting taxes for everyone. The implication of an accusation that the bill is "tax cuts for the rich" in the context of attacks from the left is pretty much always "the rich are trying to screw the rest of us and reward their rich buddies", which I demonstrated is clearly not the case for this bill in my post.

ChristianS: I only skimmed Kwark's breakdown a while ago, but my recollection is that he ignored the fact that the rearranging of marginal rates and brackets gave most of the tax cuts to the middle class, and focused on the elimination of a bunch of deductions that affect relatively few people. Instead of looking at Kwark's cherry-picked analysis that looks at counts of provisions of who is favored instead of looking at the actual amounts, try looking at an actual analysis.



Source

As a percentage of income, the middle class (20k-200k annual income) is by far getting the largest tax cut.

On November 09 2017 09:18 mozoku wrote:

No, the issue is that there's no basis to assume your judgment on someone's assessment of the global utility vs. personal liberty tradeoff (or even your global utilitarian value system to begin with) is any better than the wealthy person's own judgment. If you value helping the poor and he values taking care of his kin, then go out, work hard, and earn the money to help the poor yourself. Not everyone can have their cake and eat it too.

Personally, I'm willing to (and do) donate my money to philanthropy. But that's my own choice. I don't expect to make that choice for people I interact with on a daily basis, and the fact that it's unclear whom specifically I'm making that decision for when I vote in favor of taxation doesn't make it any more morally defensible than doing it to those I know personally.

Of course, it's always a judgment call and taxation/civilized society have produced immense benefits for pretty much everyone, but the very strong benefit of the doubt should always be given to not spending other people's money. Hence why I can say the above but still reluctantly support single payer healthcare.

On November 09 2017 09:39 GreenHorizons wrote:


Black women voted for Northam 91-8.
White women voted for Gillespe 51-48
So like I said. Black women.

On November 09 2017 09:53 ChristianS wrote:

Mmkay, so your WSJ chart specifies that it excludes the estate tax in its numbers. It doesn't specify what all it includes – whether it accounts for the deduction changes, or just the new marginal rates. The source is locked behind a paywall, so I can't check whether the article clarifies that at all.

A much more significant issue, though, is that little note at the bottom that says "in millions of dollars." That means the numbers you've presented here are total, not per capita. Divide the numbers in each of those cells by the number of people in that group, and you've got how much each one is saving. I don't have those numbers, but I'm quite certain there are way more people in the poorer groups there, meaning each person in those groups is saving a lot less in taxes. Seriously, aren't you a statistician? Or am I misremembering?

Even with those issues, the chart you've offered here clearly shows far greater savings for the wealthier brackets. If you make 6 figures, or high 5 figures, that chart says you're gonna save a lot in taxes. I'm honestly not sure how you could think it makes sense to label the range $20,000-200,000 "middle class." That's literally an order of magnitude difference. Then you lump all those people together, and say that because people in the $80,000-$200,000 range are getting a lot of tax cuts everybody in that group should be happy. Notice that most of the red on this chart is in the $10,000-40,000 range? Not to mention this chart completely ignores that a lot of people will see tax increases even in the first few years (since it doesn't deal with any of the particulars around deductions). Guess which income brackets those people are in?

Look, most of your arguments here are just run-of-the-mill Republican and libertarian arguments against a progressive tax system. That's fine, I've heard them before and I don't agree with them but I don't think they're stupid either. But you didn't open with "this bill makes the tax system less progressive, but that's good for reasons x y z." You opened with "this bill isn't regressive and anybody who thinks it is is brainwashed." Then you brought in a chart that isn't geared to answering this question, and it doesn't even support your argument. You're wrong, and you're arguing badly, neither of which would be as obnoxious if you didn't decide to be shitty about it at the same time. Even if you were right that a rigorous analysis of the bill shows it's less regressive than people think, the "brainwashed" stuff you're throwing would still be obnoxious.

On November 09 2017 10:30 Falling wrote:

Is that a strategy to get more votes? Because it seems from those numbers, Dems already have it. Unless it's a get out the vote strategy? But if African Americans are 12.6% of the population, then African American women would be 6.3% of the population, and if the Dems are already getting 91% of that, then you are looking at a very small percentage of the US population to swing your victories- a half percent of the population? Or I guess if voter turnout for African American women was at 50%, you could be looking at 3% of the population. I guess that could be more significant.

On November 09 2017 10:41 Plansix wrote:
Number of dependents is not a random deduction. Or interest on student loans. Or state taxes. If you don't understand how real people file taxes, maybe you should leave the discussions to people who do.

On November 09 2017 11:08 mozoku wrote:

In terms of regressive vs progressive, the deductions don't matter. Regressive vs progressive relative to status quo is a simple matter of where the tax burden is shifting. You're free to hate the tax bill because it eliminates deductions for dependents, but you're incorrect in claiming it's regressive when the tax burden is shifting towards the rich despite the elimination of whatever deductions you're a fan of.

On November 09 2017 11:08 mozoku wrote:

In terms of regressive vs progressive, the deductions don't matter. Regressive vs progressive relative to status quo is a simple matter of where the tax burden is shifting. You're free to hate the tax bill because it eliminates deductions for dependents, but you're incorrect in claiming it's regressive when the tax burden is shifting towards the rich despite the elimination of whatever deductions you're a fan of.