US Politics Mega-thread - Page 1328

On April 16 2019 02:48 Plansix wrote:

The impeachment of Nixon seemed impossible and turned around in like 7 days. When it is not longer possible to deny that the President is conspiring to commit criminal acts to further his agenda or protect himself, it changes the political calculation.

Right now there is deniability of some form. They can blame the Democrats, the deep state, the globalist and so on. A tape of Trump overtly and clearly telling someone to break the law, as an example, and receive a pardon would remove final defense. That is what the Nixon tapes did. It removed any ability to deny that Nixon was involved with a crime and the cover up of said crime.

That being said, you might be right and the Republicans in the Senate are completely feckless and would just ignore all of it. But they don’t have as firm of a hold on the Senate as they going into the mid-terms, so there might be enough of them that are worried about losing their seat.

On April 16 2019 06:31 Gorsameth wrote:
I think you have to much faith in Republicans, that undenying crimes would even move the needle on this.
This is not the same party that threw out Nixon.

On April 16 2019 07:38 Wombat_NI wrote:
Is that really a Republican specific thing these days?

On April 16 2019 07:48 GreenHorizons wrote:


Not from where I sit. Though I would say Democrats do more downplaying than outright denial compared to Republicans.

On April 16 2019 08:01 Wombat_NI wrote:

They’re not averse to outright denial, although downplaying and deflection have been the more recent MO I suppose.

The response of Dems in office and the base to the auld Wikileaks stuff getting out there being a case in point.

On April 16 2019 09:12 Wombat_NI wrote:
Bernie’s 100% right on basically all those things.

It’s not just a top level politics thing either, partisanship of the kind we see today is toxic at all stratas of life.

I didn’t use to lose friends over political differences, it’s happened to me now and it’s never been something I’ve instigated.

It benefits almost nobody for things to be this fractious

On April 16 2019 09:27 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:


It could be(and is increasingly becoming) which is why, whether win or lose, Sanders is achieving what he set out to do 3 years ago. Change the narrative; can you imagine in past elections of any Democratic candidate proposing universal education, and healthcare? No. It would be insane. Now imagine if Democrats jumped on introducing said Healthcare, and Education changes. It would force their opponents to defend and come out and support private healthcare companies, one of the most hated groups in this country.

On April 16 2019 09:12 Wombat_NI wrote:
Bernie’s 100% right on basically all those things.

It’s not just a top level politics thing either, partisanship of the kind we see today is toxic at all stratas of life.

I didn’t use to lose friends over political differences, it’s happened to me now and it’s never been something I’ve instigated.

It benefits almost nobody for things to be this fractious

On April 16 2019 10:00 semantics wrote:

Well while democrats and republicans agree for the most part on quite a few broad stroke subjects, it's in the details that they fight over and stallout. Which i'm sure sanders knows all too well.

Democrats want reform and investment in programs and agencies
Republicans want divestment, privatization and contractors to programs and agencies

Both will ending up spending more.

Face It: You (Probably) Got a Tax Cut

If you’re an American taxpayer, you probably got a tax cut last year. And there’s a good chance you don’t believe it.

Ever since President Trump signed the Republican-sponsored tax bill in December 2017, independent analyses have consistently found that a large majority of Americans would owe less because of the law. Preliminary data based on tax filings has shown the same.

Yet as the first tax filing season under the new law wraps up on Monday, taxpayers are skeptical. A survey conducted in early April for The New York Times by the online research platform SurveyMonkey found that just 40 percent of Americans believed they had received a tax cut under the law. Just 20 percent were certain they had done so. That’s consistent with previous polls finding that most Americans felt they hadn’t gotten a tax cut, and that a large minority thought their taxes had risen — though not even one in 10 households actually got a tax increase.

To a large degree, the gap between perception and reality on the tax cuts appears to flow from a sustained — and misleading — effort by liberal opponents of the law to brand it as a broad middle-class tax increase.

That effort began in the fall of 2017, when Republicans prepared to introduce legislation that models by the independent Tax Policy Center predicted could raise taxes on nearly a third of middle-class taxpayers. It continued through Mr. Trump’s signing of the law, even though the group’s models showed that the revised bill would raise taxes on relatively few in the middle class in the 2018 tax year.

After the law went into effect, Democrats played down those estimates and instead highlighted projections that most Americans’ taxes are set to increase in 2026, after the individual tax cuts in the law are scheduled to expire.

The messaging stuck. In December 2017, polling for The Times by SurveyMonkey showed that nearly two-thirds of Americans — and three-quarters of Democrats — did not believe they would get a tax cut from the new law. In this month’s poll, three-quarters of Democrats again said they did not think they got a tax cut from the law, and the overall share of Americans who said they had benefited rose only slightly from the 2017 expectations.

In convincing people that they would not benefit, “the Democrats did a very good job,” said Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center. “They were able to put that into the public perception, and the reality has been unable to break that perception.”

Tax Cuts by the Numbers

Experts are divided on whether the tax law was a good idea. But there is little disagreement on this core point: Most people got a tax cut.

The Tax Policy Center estimates that 65 percent of people paid less under the law and that just 6 percent paid more. (The rest saw little change to their taxes.)

Other analyses reached similar conclusions. The Joint Committee on Taxation — Congress’s nonpartisan team of tax analysts — found that every income group would see a tax cut on average. So did the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank that was sharply critical of the law. In fact, that group went even further: In a December 2017 analysis, it found that every income group in every state would pay less on average under the law in 2019.

So far, tax season seems to be playing out more or less as the experts predicted. H&R Block, the tax-preparation giant, said last week that two-thirds of returning customers had paid less tax this year than last (excluding people who owed no tax in either year). Taxes were down, on average, in every state.

“The vast majority of people did get a tax cut,” said Nathan Rigney, an analyst at H&R Block’s Tax Institute. That’s been clear all along, he added, “just now we have real data to back that up.”

On April 16 2019 10:53 JimmiC wrote:


It is hard to put Trump on the spectrum because he basically says everything and because of his constant lying it is hard to know what his position is. But to me the main policies that stuck out from the election were wall and tax cuts. Both which are decidedly right. And considering the next one I think of is getting rid of Obama care it is more right. What of his fiscal policies or promises strikes you as left?

On April 16 2019 10:56 Introvert wrote:


Trump didn't campaign on tax cuts. He campaigned on the wall, yes. But every time he was asked about doing things conservatives want done, like fixing entitlements, he said he wouldn't touch them. He didn't run on reducing the deficit, although he made noises about how he was going to save the government so much money. But he didn't campaign on tax cuts or on lowering government spending.

On April 16 2019 10:56 Introvert wrote:


Trump didn't campaign on tax cuts. He campaigned on the wall, yes. But every time he was asked about doing things conservatives want done, like fixing entitlements, he said he wouldn't touch them. He didn't run on reducing the deficit, although he made noises about how he was going to save the government so much money. But he didn't campaign on tax cuts or on lowering government spending.

DONALD J. TRUMP’S VISION

Reduce taxes across-the-board, especially for working and middle-income Americans.

[...]

The Trump Plan will lower the business tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent, and eliminate the corporate alternative minimum tax. This rate is available to all businesses, both small and large, that that want to retain the profits within the business.

[...]