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Last March. Mitt Romney offered this plan to shore up tax cuts for the wealthy:

"In comments to the Senate budget committee on Wednesday, the Republican senator from Utah said that the spiraling costs of retirement programs had to be tackled to bring national debt under control. Romney raised the politically controversial idea of cutting benefits, but only for younger generations before they reach retirement age.

“ 'For younger people coming along, we got to be able to find a way to balance these programs or we’re gonna find ourselves in a heap of trouble,' he said. He added that he was not in favour of raising taxes as a way of balancing the books, but was open to adjusting “long-term benefits not for current retirees”.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/31/mitt-romney-cut-back-retirement-benefits-younger-americans

Tax cuts for and bailouts for the wealthy, austerity for you. Should be their campaign slogan.

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023

"Tax cuts for and bailouts for the wealthy, austerity for you. Should be their campaign slogan."

JL, the above sentence is spectacular. Too bad Democrats don't have a Fox News coupled with thousands of iHeart radio stations coupled with iHeart podcasts to get that little gem out there. I mean, it is almost not possible to hear some kind of crazy stuff. I woke up on the couch Sunday night after Mahomes, (another East Texas boy) pulled off a miracle and heard, on my local AM station where I had been listening to the game, some super crazy white dude talking crazy, crazy stuff. 9pm on a Sunday evening. Vile stuff.

All we Dems have is Dr. Richardson, and, as good as that really is, it is like walking up to the seaside at Atlantic City and dropping one drop into the giant ocean of media.

Meanwhile, Republicans are building a Spanish language media empire to capture the growing Hispanic population with lies now that they have locked down the white population. It will work. Hispanics are just as subject to repeated propaganda as white folks. Because? Everyone is just human and if, as Goebbels once noted, they hear it enough, they will believe.

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Boy, did you nail it. Not another word as good as yours. Been screaming the Repub/Goebbels connection for years, even back to Rove in Tx in 1994. They all read Mein Kampf, especially the advice re lying effectively. Then along comes Frank Luntz to shine and polish the lies. While Dems play politics as usual. Newt is laughing his arse off…

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If I listened intently I thought I could hear the laughter reverberating around the Kremlin all the way from Moscow. That was in the Trump-in-the-White-House years. Now Putin has more to worry about.

Newt and Pute deserve each other.

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Mike you are absolutely correct. The Republicans have amped up every media source available to spew their propaganda 24/7. If only the Democrats learned their effective techniques from Administrations past.

Again, we will be on the reactive not proactive side of the fence as we very quickly hedge to the next election.

Honestly, are you all sick of being in this position?

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Sick ,sicker,sickest! And the docs think everything is caused by Covid! Political virus has me down,downer, downest....

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Isolative cults strike me as the equivalent of mental malware, like a computer virus that attacks malware detection features and opens a "back door" to manipulation. The punitive notion of "heresy" disables our powers of critical thinking.

This from the 2012 Platform of the Republican Party of Texas

"We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. "

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You're kidding. Do you have a link for this?

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Here is one, but there are many. I include it not because it is the most objective source, but because it speaks of Politifact, who, as I recall made the point that Republicans were objecting to some specific, defined, programs, which is their right, but seems to miss the point. If kids didn't explore beyond "fixed beliefs" we might all be living in caves, assuming we ever got there.

I have often objected that modern "Conservatives" are not conservative at all in the broader sense of the word, but commonly, they seem to elevate older thinking, even Medieval thinking or older above the insights the scientific method delivers (even as they glom on to the powers of selected new technologies). Conservative SCOTUS, for example seems to argue that the personal prejudices of the authors of the Constitution counts for more than the validity of the principles that guide it's provisions, seemingly a more Medieval than modern perspective, and at odds with the "Enlightenment" philosophies reflected in the logic of the Constitution. So eager are authoritarians to invest ultimate authority in an elevated person rather than evidence. If you think about it, science is democratic. Virtually anyone can perform some of the classic experiments to check the result, and those with skills and equipment weigh in on the rest.. Binding personal authority is for kings and their ilk.

I copied the text quoted above years ago, directly from the Texas GOP site. Last I checked, the page was down.

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I am tired of not being a billionaire paying no taxes with some paid lackeys in the Republican Party crawling at my shoes.

Yes.

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LOL! (Me, too!)

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Well, they still pay those taxes out, they just give them out to Republican pols. Not nearly as much, cause some has to go to their church. And maybe for new football stadiums at their alma mater.

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Church?! I don't think so!

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I recall the radical deregulation of media, which I did not know was even happening until it was a fiat accompli. That gave me a chill even back then, though I had no Idea how far we would let it drift from insuring an "informed public".

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It is more chilling still to think that we have traded the assurance of an informed public with that of a well armed one.

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This is what I lay awake worrying about - a Fox "news" in Spanish. Dems need to find a way to compete with this.

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They will also repeat the message from the pulpit, since the evangelicals have made strong inroads there.

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The message of "despise the poor, worship the rich, and shoot your enemies" flies in the face of what Jesus is claimed to have believed.

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Yeah, kinda just the opposite.

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Biden needs to create a task force that is devoted to challenging every MAGA extremist comment from minute to minute.

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That's not his job, that's our's. Democracy Docket and others are watching all of the lies.

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Yes, Democracy Docket is watching. However, watching is not enough. Their plate is overflowing. We are at war. We have enough evidence that shows the successful efforts of advertising. That's what the Rethuglicans are doing. Advertising preaches repetition, flooding social media, TV, airwaves, talking hosts with disinformation. They've taken a page from Frank Luntz, an American political and communications consultant and pollster, best known for developing talking points and other messaging for republicans. Desperate times deserve desperate measures!

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You didn't understand my comment. I was responding to the person saying President Biden should set up a task force and attack all of the disinformation being spread. That is not the president's responsibility, it is ours.

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President Biden and the democrats need to continue pushing their accomplishments and agenda compared to Qrazy Qevin every chance they get. We all need to parrot that ourselves. Every. Chance. We. Get.

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Every. Single. Day. But amplified a bit?

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Not to criticize the Obama administration for downplaying its accomplishments - it was that time before Trump ruined everything - but the Biden administration and the Democratic party have persistently written and spoken about its accomplishments. It's amazing how much good news they have to share. Now it's up to mass media and social media (yes you, Meta!) to give the good news some more air time.

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If only some of the far left would also take this up. Too often they are busy criticizing Biden and any D they deem corporate or mainstream. As Heather points out, it is so much easier to criticize than actually to do something.

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The media commonly speaks of the "far left" with respect to someone such as AOC. and persistently refers to Joe Manchin "centrist", or "moderate", but that is part of the media false equivalency many complain about that plays into Republican extremists hands. And yes, I think in all honesty, it is fair to call today's "Republican" party "extremest. They even purged Dick Cheney's daughter for speaking evidence-supported truth.

Some time ago Republicans ran an ad equating AOC with "Killing FIelds" and Pol Pot. I find it strange that many Democrat's speak of progressives as the Democratic Party's problem when it is the likes of Manchin blocking much of Biden's progress. It seems to me that there is far more in common between the Democratic Party as a whole than there are differences, especially faced by what even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff identified as fascism.

There is no politician, even those I most support, from whom I don't find cause to criticize. "Perfect" people are a myth, and for self governance to work, we have to be collaborators, not followers. I detest "conformity" but respect solidarity, whenever and wherever it is warranted; and it is always needed. E Pluribus Unum.

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They have lots to share BUT THEY DON"T SHARE IT!! Call press conferences!! Speak to the people directly - tell them what the Repugs are trying to do!! WHY won't they do that/??

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Fireside Chats?

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It remains up to everyone to make a just democracy possible, and I agree that mass media and any human beings, whether they form a corporation or not have responsibilities to make choices that do not harm society. Why would they not? It seems to me that Democrats have been on the defensive for far too long, and corruption is on a roll. The Jan 6th Committee was a breakthrough, if only a starting point, for re-asserting rule of law. Biden is speaking more plainly about Republican abuses and better alternatives, a kind of new deal. The ball has visibly moved and needs more concerted shoulders to keep in gaining momentum.

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I would hope so. I would like to see some praise for what he has done from some of the local people I am talking about.

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Yes, in a fr..king elevated voice.

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 2, 2023

Every time someone speaks in an angry, frustrated, loud, colorful, emphatic voice on this forum… they are chastised and then there is a mile of comments for and against.

I am convinced we are able to play the Faux news game. It is finally starting to happen in what has almost become the Republik of Florida. The games they are playing with our freedoms which they consider useless "fweedums", is wearing thin. Everyone has their line in the sand. For me, of late, it is their takeover of public education K-12 and higher public education.

Desantis and Rufo deserve the worst consequences anyone can imagine. They are f*cking traitorous anarchists.

Salud, Pam.

🗽

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Yes ! Contacting my Fl legislators. So with HB1 ,how do you propose preventing homeschoolers from introducing neo-Nazi curriculum (with my tax dollars) in Florida ?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgyb4k/ohio-nazi-dissident-homeschool.

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It depends. The Faux News game is all lies, all the time, and there is a superpower in that, but it's clearly toxic. I am convinced that despotism continues to plague us all the eons later because democracy is hard. It was easy for demagogues like Reagan to deprecate; diversity and decentralized power makes it frustrating. How nice to have a "benevolent" dictator who gets things done. But what things? And do we get a say?

So the big liars get an unfair advantage; but at a terrible price. We don't need to play their game, but we, as in some of the Asian martial arts, can use the force of their attack against them. We are already exposing the lie that (according to the RNC) Jan 6th was just "ordinary citizens engaged in in legitimate political discourse" and we need a lot more compare and contrast their lies vs testable realities, such as rolling video of what self-righteous lying pols swear they never said. I rest my case.

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It HAS to happen, if our democracy is to survive. If the Democrats continue being "rational", with no emotion shown -- well, all I can say is, "Good luck in 2024".

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Elevated as in more visible but also measured. "Checkmate" rhetoric.

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True, but by prioritizing and with finesse. Democrats need to be the adult in the room. Adults can be angry, but ideally focused and articulate in expressing their anger. The kind in which the object either wilts or looks like a fool.

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I fear that "finesse" is paid no attention to the tens of millions of tantruming toddlers in the room. Democrats have GOT to find a way to get their attention.

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Well getting noticed is part of the finesse. How to craft messages that not only get attention but land a payload.

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Got it!

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The opposition does not listen to Biden's accomplishments...they are too interested in getting him impeached and tfg back as their leader! So sad, for they know not what they are supporting!

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I recall a couple of experiments. One back a few years when Republicans were full bore attacking inheritance taxes, which they called death taxes. Subjects were asked if they supported inheritance taxes, and a clear majority said "no". Asked if they would support inheritance taxes if they had thus and such provision, a majority said "yes", but the kicker was that the provision they supported were copied directly from the law as it then applied. Similarly US residents were presented with seemingly arbitrary patterns of societal income distribution and asked which they favored. The majority picked the pattern that applied to Sweden and rejected that of the US.

I don't know whether these results would hold up to further examination, but I have many anecdotal experiences that convince me that a lot of our voting is not well informed. It seems to me that it ought to be possible to improve that.

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Ouch. But so right.

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Democrats seem to have no clue how important messaging is, nor how to create a broad delivery system to get the truth out. Democrats need to imbibe the wisdom of Benjamin Disraeli 24/7: a lie will travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

Republican lies travel fast and easily. Democrats have to work twice as hard to spread the truth. And they aren't even close to getting started.

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This 👆

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Tragic but true! Abetted by mainstream media and those dreadful blogs, the lies and hate gets all the headlines!

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I think we've made some progress, but not nearly enough.

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Easy now, don’t go dropping any oil tainted water from East Texas along the ‘pristine’ shores of Atlantic City! lol! AC never recovered from trump bankrupting 4 casinos then taking a $900 million tax write off!

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Louis, yes Atlantic City is still trying to recover from the disastrous Trump business dealings in that city. Many many small businesses in AC went belly up because Trump refused to pay bills for work done. Plenty of people know about the casino workers losing jobs, but the small business contractors suffered mightily, too.

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Besides the banks who could not say no to a loan request, Trump had help in bankrupting AC! The darling of the gop, Christie Whitman, was governor of NJ in the late ‘90’s. She signed a bill funding a $300 million road project which opened land AWAY from the other failing casinos located on the ocean front! Recall she was the head of the EPA, appointed by little bush, who days after the 9/11 attack declared that the site air quality was safe!

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I will wager that many of the workers you name are worshippers of T still. Talk about falling on one's sword...

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Trump's Modus Operandi. It's remarkable how long he has managed to get away with it.

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LOL I just had a flash of gambling there 40-45 years ago as the "golden years." OUCH!

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Agree with all of the above, to a point. Repeating lies until they believe it, or don't know what to believe (same result), yes, and a tactic as old as the existence of human language. Right wing media is certainly effective - Fox News is #1, after all - but there are some strong voices on our side. As far as Spanish language media is concerned, how long has Telemundo been around, and is it a voice of the right wing? Dr. Richardson is not alone in speaking truth to power (though she's exceptionally good at it). Remember also that all of the billions that oligarchs spend on right wing media has captured roughly 30% of the populace. The crucial tipping point is maintaining free, fair elections. The crucial question is: Are we too late? 2022 gives us some hope, let's see how it goes in 2024.

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Please don't call fox news a news outlet. It is considered entertainment for the incurious imo.

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Agreed, but I didn't call it a news outlet! Great point though - the name Fox "News" is like Trump's "Truth" Social.

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ignorance is strength.

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Austerity is too big a word to use.

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Exactly! What would be better word for them to understand?

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Mike, we don't have the traditional media, and I agree 100% with you about the Spanish media--that being said, my adult kids, niece and nephews aren't watching network news anyhow. Everything comes via social media or the internet. Since I am a pretty meek person by nature, generally my attitude in life has been to outlast/outlive the annoyances. These old white supremacists' have to offer something awfully compelling to recruit young people. Keeping them homeschooled and ignorant is a good method, many of us first encountered people who were "other" from us in college and made lifelong friends of them!

We do have a couple of people that I search out: Politics Girl and Beau of the Fifth Column. Beau frequently mentions irate comments he gets, so the "other" side is listening. (Politics Girl had a similar clip a few weeks back). Both of them (on YouTube) are short and engaging, which, like it or not, many younger people DON'T want to read articles (esp long ones) and were brought up on short clips. I send these clips out---infrequently as I don't want to totally turn certain people off.

If anyone else reading knows of any other YouTube channels to check out, please let us all know. I am going to see if Will from Cali has posted yet today, he is young and he might have a perspective that will have value.

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Miselle,

iHeart Media offers all kinds of right wing podcasts for niece and nephew.

Seriously, the Republicans have positively BLANKETED the media landscape Miselle.

Smothering democracy.

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Meidas Touch is great and The Young Turks TYT network.

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I know of Meidas Touch, not the latter. I will check it out.

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On the one hand I agree that forums such as this are a drop in the ocean, but also a potential butterfly. Good faith conversation is essential to a just democracy, and it is hard to scale that ever upward. That said, I think we as a society are far more capable of maintaining a beneficial dialog than we do. Hubris makes us fools and monsters, and that's what those with predatory lifestyles are pumping. I suppose I do it too with my snarky remarks about Republicans, and yet the present party clearly has no decency in so many ways. Over a year ago Jay Inslee said “I don’t think you can be overly concerned about this. The American psyche has not recognized we were one vice-president away from a coup.”

Goebbels was not the first skillful manipulator, but one of the creepiest thing about Nazis is that they made evil a science. But the use of scapegoats, grandiose flattery (Master Race, etc.) and "divide and rule" goes way back. Orwell, who I read at the age of 12, keeps coming to mind, as Republicans assert again and again pretty much the exact opposite of reality. I think persistence of message has an admirable side as well as a manipulative one. I think that the social empowerment movements that have made progress have maintained a keen focus, and kept that focus in public view until it penetrated. Effective public protest is not an opportunity to vent; it is, one again, a conversation with those who still have a conscience.

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J L.

Completely agree. "Good faith conversation is essential to a just democracy".

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Fox “News”, all it’s little siblings like OAN, Sinclair Broadcasting, and the web of Christo-Fascist radio stations require billions on billions of dollars. There simply does not exist a Democratic version of the Wealthy White Male Christian Oligarchy (WWMCO) to create and sustain an opposing propaganda weapon. With the suspension of the fairness doctrine by the Reagan Administration, Democrats must rely on an anemic and cowed main stream media that only occasionally confronts the lying Republican elected officials with their mendacity. The array of dark money supported pacs and “public interest” organizations bombard the court system with lawsuits attempting to destroy the Federal Government’s ability to protect the American Citizens from corporate abuse and civil rights roll backs. Money rules and is increasingly flowing to the few in their subjugation of the many.

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Easy fix. Biden needs to create a task force that is solely devoted to every MAGA extremist comment made from minute to minute.

·"Tax cuts for and bailouts for the wealthy, austerity for you. Should be their campaign slogan" would be the lead!

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Some talented satirists beat him to it:

https://djtrumplibrary.com/

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I am left breathless and without words. You said it all. I like the part “until their House of Cards collapses.” I can’t wait!

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It is hard to believe such a tangled web lies won't just collapse under it own weight. That said, I've been waiting for the implosion for many years now. Surely, surely now, they are pressing their luck.

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Who said that Romney is a sane Repub? Give that up. He’s a rich man for the rich. Dems have had rich men for the people, repubs never have in my lifetime. Teddy was the only one in the history books, to my knowledge…. BTW, as long as Rupert’s neoNazis are spinning the narrative, expect no sanity.

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Yup, so obvious but to the blind!

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 2, 2023

So true - not different here in Australia - Republicans - our Liberals, Democrats - our Labor.

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Jeri, How about Lincoln? Not in your lifetime, but certainly in the history books.

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Romney is a nihilist who, with Bain Capital, killed much of middle American manufacturing and many small and mid size towns.

But, its all good. He got Filthy Rich and, now pays no taxes.

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Exactly! Keep Romney out of my face!

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023

When I read today's letter several points were clear to me; one of them was how succinctly HCR presented what is at stake concerning the passage of the debt ceiling and another was how the Republican Party is completely shown of democratic principles, ethics and morality. There is no better place for clarity about the American Situation than Letters from an American. Another excellent understanding is the stance and commitment of President Biden to the governance of the United States of America and to the American people. To quote the president:

'...the Democrats need to be very clear about “what we stand for, what we did, and what we need to do more of, and what we’re unwilling to do under any circumstances.”

The final point is our good fortune, intelligence and commitment to democracy for being subscriber-friends of Letters from an American.

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Indeed! Reading the comments is frequently what gives me hope!

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I totally agree with you Fern! Well said.

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… we are joined together, Janet.

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Yes, we are :)

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Thank You, Fern, fellow subscriber-friend of HCR!!

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Hand to heart, MaryPat.

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Nicely put, Fern. Thank you.

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Dems should make ads illustrating the difference between “cutting back funding for retirement programs” and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Those photos of a senior eating a humble meal, on oxygen, in a wheelchair, in a tiny apartment, compared to lounging on the terrace with an al fresco feast, infinity pool in the background overlooking a stunning vista, while meeting with a lawyer to set up an offshore account to avoid taxes .

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Yes! May I share? I would only add that the senior PAID for those retirement programs his entire working life.

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And that, Mary Pat, is what we need to show Americans. We middle class(still a little) pay for all that. And we get taxed on it too!

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True. And if they didn't keep dipping into the SSA funding, it wouldn't be in this state. Also cutting off payroll deductions on earnings above $160,000, is not only archaic it is stupid given the income of top earners today.

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We once thought our retirement was adequate for our “humble needs,” but nope, we are going to struggle, and we have pensions and decent investments etc. We had to leave Florida, because I’d be jailed for murdering someone (can you guess who?). So we returned to Connecticut, a fairly safe and lovely state and blue to boot, and we definitely have to readjust our expectations. Home prices are ok and we do not mind the taxes at all, but geesh, good thing the second-hand shops are filled with unwanted clothes from the very wealthy folks living here. I am a humble soul, so I do not expect much, but I do have flashbacks of poverty I experienced as a child; the visions of the old folks eating dog food comes to mind. SS is president and necessary. If these f-ers f this up, we are no longer exceptional. Hell, what are the chances my granddaughters will grow up in poverty because of these ass-hats. I am usually not a name calling fool, but if fools they be, the names will also be!

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Hi Cyndi, I agree with your summation. If things are too expensive for you, you might look into independent senior living apartments, if they exist. If well managed (which is iffy) they offer meals, activities, limited free transportation, and some housekeeping.

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of course!

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love the visuals!

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023

The democrats must stop bringing knives to a gun fight. They must keep saying out loud (slowly and simply) and at every opportunity that the republicans have no idea how to actually govern as evidenced:

1) By holding the U.S. government hostage over the debt ceiling the republicans are behaving like petulant children having a temper tantrum and have said they will cut social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs. Young people need to pay attention and be made aware of Romney's words.

2) Republicans have not offered any plans because they don't have any.

3) Biden calls McCarthy a "decent man" but he is not. He only wants to hold the gavel and pander to the lowest common denominator as part of a warped and selfish power play and literally that is the only thing that matters to the republicans. That is not "decent", that is evil. Doing anything beneficial for the American people is not on their radar.

Furthermore, at every opportunity, the democrats need to review the list of accomplishments that are beginning to take hold and that the republicans voted NO on every single one of them. The republicans have already written the script (the word NO it isn't long!), so it is easy for democrats to keep the message focused, simple, and succinct!

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One thing Biden does not do is to give out insults personally or label persons in an insulting way who are Americans. I am glad he doesn't call people names like I would if I were in his position. That he calls KM a decent man implies that he will address the issues without ad hominem attacks, and it will be up to KM to live up to his decency. If the meeting today were to degenerate into insults, it would function as a rhetorical Berlin wall between the House and the White House.

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Insults don't go anywhere but neither does saying McCarthy is a decent person. He doesn't have to say anything about the person; only that he is open to negotiate - period! I learned that the hard way when I had a brief foray into small town politics.

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Correct.

Telling the truth is important and McCarthy is a low life crawling on his lips at the feet of Matt Gaetz and whatever billionaire owns both of them.

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Yes. Thank You for this insight, Frank. Explains why Biden is such a successful negotiator. Let's hope, under that weak ego, that KM can be a decent man

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Janet make that rubber knives to a gunfight. I received a donation latter from the DNC and I returned it with more than a page of reasons why they weren't getting my money anytime soon, including my version of your comment. Instead of what I perceive to sound like academic twaddle, which I unfortunately ODed on until I ran for my life, The Dems if they want to wake the country up must let the dogs out, stay on higher ground than their imposters BoBo, Greed, Getz, inSantoes, etc (yes, mispelled) and take them on on public platforms. I once took a conflict class with a professor who started negotiations on my 5 yard line and the only way I could debate him was to step aside, let him power past, and respond with a jujitsu-like response. The Dems should instead of trying to corral the Reps, attack from the quarter, they (we) have plenty of reasons to do so. I believed that President Biden was elected to turn down the temperature, and only recently have I seen indications there is fire in the belly. Where I live, 66% of voters went R in the last two November elections. I get it, rural area, I sat near two old farmers at a restaurant last week and realized that with so much at stake for them financially because they can't control crop,feed, fertilizer, transportation prices, they get a pass from me. But a typical convo at the coffeeshop populated mainly by non-workers goes like this: "no one wants to work anymore." "Why do you say that?" "Too much free stuff." "what free stuff?" "you know, handouts." The only "handouts" I know of, and which these people are recipients of, are SNAP, HEAP, Disability, and maybe a $300 pension or SS check. I don't know anyone who is young enough to work but doesn't. I do know that the argument goes that such-and-such a business can't get enough help. But I haven't heard the rationale for why those businesses should assume people will want to work there. Anyway, when the Dems start fighting like the UKR warriors, I'll gladly open my wallet.

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This “knives to a gunfight” complaint comes up frequently, here and elsewhere. I think it’s unfair, inaccurate, and implies a dearth of creativity, cleverness, and toughness in Democrats compared to Republicans. It’s probably the opposite: the creative class leans Democratic. The problem is not a lack of creativity, cleverness, or toughness. It’s that solutions, which is what Democrats want, involve nuance and thought. Obstruction only requires a slogan. In the 1960s, Republican campaigns needed only to hammer one word to succeed: “bussing.” It’s the same today but for the term of art, which is “woke.” Republicans and Republican sympathizers at all levels, from the street to the highest positions in government, know what they want: to preserve the enormous, systemic advantages that white Americans enjoy over other Americans. Accordingly, Republican politicians need only one word to rally their voters.

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My first reading of your post caught me off-guard: I'm of the generation that reads "bussing" as "kissing" - but I find that it is just an alternative spelling of the more widely accepted "busing". You are correct in your assessment of the ability of the Republicons to weaponize a single word, and feed it to their uneducated base as a pejorative for those more educated.

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Whoops! Right you are. I meant “busing,” of course.

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Nailed it.

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Biden is hoping flattery might get him somewhere? McCarthy is pond scum (sorry to insult Mougeotia).

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There is quite a space between flattery and plain old decency.

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Joe Biden is not out for flattery, he is out for negotiations, and appealing to the possible, if tiny, decent side of KM. The great thing with our current president is that there is no insulting whatsoever.

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Romney is another McCarthy. He wants it bad. The former Massachusetts governor was out of the Commonwealth campaigning for the presidency through most of his term in office. Both of them are chameleons only an idiot would vote for.

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Totally agree. And, when Romney ran for president he was opposed to same sex marriage and national health care . . . two things he signed after they were passed by the MA legislature. So shallow he couldn't even mention the benefits both of those brought to the people of the Commonwealth. There are other things where he waffled to see which way the wind blew and of course there was that embarrassing boot licking he tried with trump to get a cabinet position. In my opinion, he is a POS.

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Mitt, like little bush, co-opted the primary policy of the Democratic legislature in their states. Mitt signed healthcare plan into law in Massachusetts, based on Heritage propaganda mill blue print! Lil bush signed education reform bill in Texas, based on fraudulent data from Houston Superintendent, whom he appointed Sec of Ed!

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Louis, as a native Texan and one who spent the last 15 years in Houston (but not without kicking and screaming), I can confirm that TX public education is still pitiful. As a rich state, you’d think they could do better than being 37th or 38th in spending per student in the country. Education is clearly not a priority now and won’t be as long as the Abbott tribe is in power.

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If I am correct, at one time big oil funded education in Texas! What happened?

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It still does in some ways, but mostly higher education through the Permanent University Fund, which gets proceeds from state lands (grazing payments, oil/gas revenue, etc.). There's also a permanent school fund but it doesn't seem to bring in enough to help much. Our public schools are financed about 60% from property taxes, about 30% from state funds, and about 10% from federal, last time I checked. Some schools are really good, but others suffer tremendously.

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Growing up in Michigan, I can recall my father having nothing good to say about George Romney. In the ultimate irony, after I moved to Massachusetts, Mitt became governor here (of course, not with my vote). Other than the healthcare he signed, I can't think of any good he did for the state. He even got caught using undocumented workers to maintain his Belmont mansion. Once a rich man, always a rich man. Empathy was never his strong suit.

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Economist Robert Reich has a talk somewhere online where he explains that one simple tax change—eliminating the ceiling on the amount of income that is subject to Social Security taxes—would keep the Social Security program solvent indefinitely. But of course, since this would require the rich to pay their fair share, no Republican would consider it. They would rather cut benefits to the younger voters who are already trending away from the Republican party in droves. Seems like all we have to do is heavily publicize this plan to younger voters in these Republican reps’ states and districts.

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Scrap the cap.

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'500 Reasons to Eliminate the Income Cap for Social Security Taxes' (WAPO) See gifted link below.

https://wapo.st/3wJCUDA

Opinion

Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31.4tn debt

Robert Reich

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/01/republicans-arent-going-to-tell-americans-the-real-cause-of-our-314tn-debt

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Yes, the current ceiling of $134,000 is nothing short of ridiculous Oops, it's been raised to $160,200 but in 2023 that's still too low, it should be in the $350,000 neighbor hood. When I retired in 2021 it was still only 7% of gross earnings split between employee and employer.

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True. Also ridiculous: that wage earmers pay over 14% of their compensation in FICA taxes alone while billionaire hedge fund managers pay around 10% or less of their total compensation in federal taxes.. Scrapping the cap requires some complicated legislation, though. The requirement that fhe Social Security pension increases with FICA tax contributions would have to be eliminated above a certain level. For example, benefits could be capped at something comparable to the current maximum while FICA taxes, like Medicare taxes, would have no cap.

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Thanks for this info Rex. I've never taken time to figure out percentages, other than my total income tax paid on my gross earnings (including salary, two State pensions (very small) and Social Security) Until I retired in 2021 I paid about 22.5% in Federal and California State income taxes. I don't object to mine being so high nearly as much as I object to millionaires and billionaires being so low. BTW I never made more than $190,000 combined gross income - and that only one year.

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I think your tax rate (and mine, which is about the same) is fair. Nearly everyone (especially, I imagine, the billionaires themselves) thinks the tax rate paid by most billionaires is absurdly low. However, it’s ridiculous for a wage earler in the bottom quintile to 14% of compensation in FICA taxes.

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Agreed, instead of a ceiling on Social Security, we need a "basement on FICA, say $40.000 to $50,000.

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023

Ah Mitt! The original corporate raider! Taking control of corporations to tear them apart by firing people for his greedy gain!

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Yes, excellent slogan.

Talk about 'pie in the sky', magical thinking - the GOP are now the masters of Owellian double speak. The bottom line is, as Heather says, their belief that they and their ilk are the only ones qualified to rule. And they will use any means necessary to achieve that status.

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They never ‘met’ a voter suppression bill that they did not like!

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Kathleen: I now subscribe to the Hartman report! For years, I have stated that the amoral trump was the Manchurian candidate. Hartman connects the dots in his ‘Barr…ghostbusters’ piece.

I urge fellow commentators to read the Hartman report on Barr’s decades of covering up treasonous crimes by Reagan, Papa bush and trump!

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"Tax cuts for and bailouts for the wealthy, austerity for you. Should be their campaign slogan."

I will be quoting you everywhere I go (or write) for the next 22 months, Mike!! Thanks for this and the refrrence and clarity!

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@JL Graham: I *love* your proposed Republican slogan, "Tax cuts for and bailouts for the wealthy, austerity for you. ". I think if we squeeze it, we can fit it on a bumper sticker:

Republican Plan: Tax Cuts for the Rich---Cat Food for You

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Some other excellent commenter already suggested the perfect stills for the magazine ad or mailer, or quick videos for the TV ad:

Clip One: Wealthy person dressed in "yacht casual" sharing a luxurious lunch with a financial advisor, holding a document that says "Setting Up Your Offshore Account", with fancy house with infinity pool visible in the background.

Clip Two: Skinny elderly person in a wheelchair, wearing a ratty bathrobe, at a tiny kitchen table spooning up cat food, dirty but sunny window shows brick airshaft and fire escape, newspaper on the table says "Republicans Pass Tax Cut for Wealthy, and Demand Social Security Cuts to Balance Budget".

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Wonder if the Lincoln Project would take that idea and run with it . . .

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That bumper sticker might work. Too many people have no idea what "austerity" means.

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I’m fired up today. Must say, it seems more and more the general reaction of living in the Republik of Florida.

Here’s latest from Leigh McGowan, Politics Girl, on the IRS and the nefarious rhetoric of Republican Party leaders.

https://youtu.be/5frAtzD08bI

Salud.

🗽

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Thanks Christine! I love Politics Girl

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Sure, take away a secure future for the young people and spare the old, in the hopes that their elderly base will agree that it's perfectly fine to screw future generations as long as they themselves are left alone. This is NOT fine, and this 66-year-old will not stand for it.

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Read Amendment 14 Section 4, This is an Unconstitutional suggestion from Romney

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Well, if trump wants to "terminate" constitutional election rules...

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I like that slogan for them. I'd just add "continued" austerity for you....

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This is inhumane!

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no worries -- only for the 98% of us...

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Is Social Security on or off the budget? Why do you call it an expense if it is funded by a dedicated tax... and remains pre-funded even today by some $2 trillion? Until just a couple of years ago, it was a net revenue source for the Treasury. I protest the characterisation of Social Security as an expense, or FICA as a tax. The payroll tax is a social insurance premium that buys a life-contingent pension with a spousal benefit. To call it an expense is to hand a weapon unnecessarily to Congressional allies of Wall Street, which is eager to get its hands on the payroll tax.

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Agree! This fact is not emphasized enough! It should be on billboard boards & constantly repeated until everyone could repeat it in their sleep, as catchy as a commercial (two all beef patties ....)

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Agree, Agree, Agree Wholeheartedly!!!!

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In 1986, Social Security was adjusted to prepare for future retirement of the Baby Boom. Normal retirement was increased from 65 to 67. One effect of the change was that SS ran a surplus through the 90s and early 00s. Republicans and Democrats were all happy to include that surplus as part of the Federal budget. It made the yearly deficit lower. Now that the Baby Boom is collecting Social Security, the government must pay back the IOUs, so the SS outflow is part of the budget. The government should just pay it, but lookout for more smoke and mirrors accounting instead.

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Yeah, right, agree!! So, wtf..., republicans? Of course in our disgust for what spews from the R-Mouths.. the tailgators..ie., their 'rubber-meets-the-road' constituents, keep on working for dogpoop wages, pacified by what they listen to on FAUX News and the price of gas.

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Calling Social Security “social insurance” doesn’t make it so. As a matter of fact, SS is an entitlement program with benefits defined by Congress. Thanks to the dismal science of demographics, the payroll tax no longer covers payouts to current beneficiaries. That deficit is being made up by dipping into the SS Trust Fund, which contains nothing but government securities. This paper represents past payroll tax surpluses that went into the federal government’s general fund. In effect, the government loaned that money to itself and now must pay it back by redeeming the paper in the Trust Fund. That money it can get either by raising taxes or by new borrowing—assuming new debt to retire past debt.

If something can’t go on forever, it won’t, and this can’t. Sooner or later, if nothing is done, Social Security (and its stable mate, Medicare) will consume TOTAL government revenue, to the exclusion of all other spending. So SS will have to be reformed—cut, if you will. And this would be possible if Democrats and progressives weren’t in thrall to magical thinking that makes math the handmaid of ideology.

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I have a better idea. Let’s do away with the SS cap on earnings & pay in on all wages.

And as an aside, Social Security & Medicare have a long way to go before they consume total government revenue. Maybe we should look at the monies spent on Defense in order to cut waste. The Department of Defense has NEVER passed an audit in over 30 years. In other words, they can’t account for the money they received. Don’t hear much talk about that.

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The payroll tax cap is currently $160,300. Good luck selling a massive tax increase on every individual and family making more than that. The relevant term is, I believe, “political suicide.”

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Kind of like selling a cut in Social Security & Medicare & Medicaid?

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While hard data (Scientific American) pours in showing a decrease in Life Expectancy across all racial categories. I note sharp & very ugly decreases of Life Expectancy of black & brown people.

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Well played Jean!

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I mean McCarthy did say he wanted to "strengthen" the program lol. In all actuality he really meant up the age for eligibility. At some point we as Americans must decide what is the right thing to do vs the politics of it. I agree, a proposal like that would be very unpopular even if it's the right thing to do. I think we should just legalize marijuana and add a 4% consumption tax on it and have it all go to the Social Security fund.

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While the idea of making Stoner D. Ponytail fund my retirement has a certain appeal, gimmicks like that won't solve the problem posed by Social Security (and Medicare). A program based on the demographics of the 1930s will inevitably hit the wall.

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A program where the funds were misappropriated for 15-20 (?) years doesn't make the program flawed. The mismanagement - theft? - took place long after the 1930s. Guess we were all busy with other things, like overlooking our responsibilities as citizens. Or lowering taxes. Or fighting wars we didn't need to fight.

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@Thomas M Gregg -- You say eliminating the payroll tax cap for Social Security would be a "massive tax increase" on people making over $160,300.

I disagree. Per the IRS, "The current tax rate for social security is 6.2% for the employer and 6.2% for the employee, or 12.4% total. The current rate for Medicare is 1.45% for the employer and 1.45% for the employee, or 2.9% total."

The Social Security wage base limit is currently $160,200, per the IRS page below. The Medicare tax has no wage base limit.

So the tax increase if we eliminated the cap on income taxes for Social Security would be a total of 6.2% that would then apply to income above $160.200, as well as below that threshold.

I don't think a 6.2% payroll tax increase on wages above $160,200 could be described as "massive." Furthermore, income on investments and rental properties, two income types favored by the rich, are not subject to the Social Security payroll tax. (source: https://www.fool.com/retirement/2019/12/15/8-sources-of-income-social-securitys-payroll-tax-c.aspx)

IRS: Topic No. 751 Social Security and Medicare Withholding Rates

https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc751

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He also overlooks the relatively small number of earners that make that amount. Not exactly political suicide. NFIB won't like it. Are they still second biggest lobby in DC?

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Bingo, Jean! You took the words out of my mouth. And, sorry to say, the Dems ADD to the Defense budget, bloated as it already is, even if not requested! It makes me cray-cray. Thank you for mentioning it.

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I think, on the contrary, that DoD can account for much of that money, which is represented by tangible assets like aircraft carriers, guided missile cruisers, nuclear submarines, ICBMs, jet combat aircraft, tanks, other armored vehicles, artillery, small arms, troops, veterans' benefits and the pensions paid to military retirees like me. That more than the Department of Education can do.

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If the Department of Defense could account for everything, they would get a clean audit. They haven’t achieved that in over thirty years. That’s a fact.

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Well, you know, when stuff gets smashed up on the battlefield, there usually aren't any bean counters available to tidy up the accounts. That's a fact too...

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Their failure to pass an audit for over thirty years is not due to battlefield losses of equipment. You can think what you wish about their accounting, but they are the only department who can’t get a clean audit.

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Magical thinking...hmmm. You mean the type of thinking that funds two "off budget" wars and then cuts taxes for the rich to not pay for them?

All of the problems with Social Security and Medicare funding which you so well describe can be remedied by tax reform.

Let's stop this nonsense about social spending being out of control. The truth is we need to spend much more on social programs for all Americans. And there is plenty of money to pay for it. Just ask the Waltons, Mercers, Kochs, Bezos, Musk and whole bunch of not so famous money grubbing robber barons.

The problem is that we have had a one way money train to the rich. And the rest of us have been left in the dust.

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Bill, did you just hear me cheering all the way from the midwest?! :D

I had a very short discussion with someone recently whilst discussing the upcoming Chicago Mayoral election. I said that putting MORE cops on the street is NOT going to solve the problems here! (Especially if some police get in the news for abusing/killing people--that only makes the job harder for the good police. I say that as a relative of 3 CPD).

Take inner city toddlers in urban areas into free or low cost childcare/education. This frees up the parents to work. Make sure those that are employed to care for these children are themselves educated in whatever position they fill, and pay them a living wage. Brainwash or indoctrinate, if you will, young children into the value of education, of healthy living practices. Young kids are naturally competitive so let's set up goals for them that help prepare for the future!

"Childcare" options for the poor all too often are along the lines of some other mother who takes in a couple of kids for a few bucks, plops them in front of the tv screen and feeds them chicken nuggets.

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Wouldn't you think that a Political Party that prides itself on Family Values would like to invest in children? But, noooooo, oh no. We treat our kids and elders as inconveniences and not the future of us.

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Bill, I saw ageism back when my husband was in his early 50s and out of work. I recall thinking that most people lasted in a position for 3 years or so, if they didn't make a change, it was viewed negatively. So why was he not given a chance?

Ageism really hit when my Dad took sick. Due to his hearing loss (and pride) he wouldn't admit he didn't hear exactly what was being said, so I started going to his many doctor visits. The way he was treated MOST times was disgusting. Any new practice or new employee, I'd pull them aside and say, he is NOT senile. He lives alone, keeps up his own house and garden. He shops and cooks for himself AND my sister. He showers, does his laundry, etc. (He cooked Thanksgiving for 7 when he was 90. AFTER he built an extension for his kitchen table that had no leaf!)

I must admit, being elderly worries me. One reason I continue to dye my hair and slather the retinol on my face. I am not vain. I am realistic.

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Bravo, Bill!

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The problem cannot be remedied by "tax reform," i.e. higher taxes. If you mean that old bromide, taxing the rich and corporations, there's just not enough money there. If you mean going where the real money is, i.e. the broad middle class, that's politically impossible. How many times have the Dems sworn up and down that they'd never do that?

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You are right. I misspoke. Just taxing the "income" of the top money hogs would not be enough. We should claw back a few trillion from the people who have benefited from our infrastructure, national defense and laissez faire abusive lack of labor regulation. A righteous redistribution would not cramp the ridiculous lifestyles of any of these pigs at the trough.

A relatively few Oligarchs could pay off our national DEBT today. And with the proper tax structures in place there would be an opportunity to fully fund a nations health care, child care and universal education from Pre-K to a job. And proper housing. And potable water.

From Wiki:

In 2007, the top 20% wealthiest Americans possessed 80% of all financial assets.[13] In 2007 the richest 1% of the American population owned 35% of the country's total wealth, and the next 19% owned 51%. The top 20% of Americans owned 86% of the country's wealth and the bottom 80% of the population owned 14%. In 2011, financial inequality was greater than inequality in total wealth, with the top 1% of the population owning 43%, the next 19% of Americans owning 50%, and the bottom 80% owning 7%.[14] However, after the Great Recession, which began in 2007, the share of total wealth owned by the top 1% of the population grew from 35% to 37%, and that owned by the top 20% of Americans grew from 86% to 88%. The Great Recession also caused a drop of 36% in median household wealth, but a drop of only 11% for the top 1%, further widening the gap between the top 1% and the bottom 99%.

And now, go ahead, say it: "Let them eat cake."

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023

Magical thinking? Like tax cuts that pay for themselves, or that we could fight two wars simultaneously without raising taxes?

There are solid ways to shore up SS and Medicare, to make them viable for our children and grandchildren, like raising the payroll cap, but that would go against GOPer dogma: that the United States Government should never actually help average Americans.

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When have the Democrats ever introduced legislation to raise the payroll tax cap? When has such a bill ever made it to the floor? Like never.

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When have Republicans ever introduced tax cuts that, as promised, ACTUALLY paid for themselves?

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So? That retort doesn't answer my question. The truth is that neither political party is willing to bite the bullet on the government's looming fiscal crack-up.

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How much are you willing to take from defense?

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In June 2022, Senator Sanders & Representative DeFazio sponsored “The Social Security Expansion Act”, which proposed to make changes to Social Security in order to insure its viability. One of changes was to increase the cap. There have been other proposals before this one, also made by Democrats.

Unfortunately, this bill is subject to the filibuster, & it had no support from the Republicans. When the Republicans had control of the Senate, Mitch McConnell would only bring to the floor those bills that he wanted to have a vote on.

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Yup, and in Florida, do not put a Bernie sticker on your car! I almost got run off the road by an angry man with an abundance of you-know-whose face stickered all over his windows, multiple marine soldier and machine gun stickers, five Go Brandon stickers plastered on most of his windows, and a freaking USA flag flapping in the wind behind the cab of his truck. I pulled off to the side of the road and he leveled up with me and threw a cold drink with ice at me. It hit the window of my new car (one we saved for for decades by driving shitty cars for 40 years). This happened in the neighborhood where we lived for over 35 years and where we raised our kids. And damned if my old neighborhood, a decidedly mixed political arena back in my day, is filled with yard displays glamorizing the Q and Republican folks; we’re talking an overwhelming amount of flags, obnoxious signs (my favorite: dems! Don’t let your ass walk on my grass)! These are not wealthy people. They know not what they do? What they are in for, or their kids, and now mostly grandkids, as the area lacks the kids my kids walked to school with and played little league with. The brand-new school my kids went to is run down and the baseball field needs help, badly. Oh, well, oh my, as the Republican folks might tweet: “Let them eat high-quality dog food.”

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So the government took the money paid into social security and now doesn’t want to pay it back? It wants to default on its debt and call social security an entitlement and not insurance? But we get tax cuts for the super wealthy? Hmmm.

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Right? Give me my hard earned money back please. I could have invested my earnings myself or spent it. The money is/was mine. I earned it. I feel like I pay taxes on the same dollar repeatedly while the rich get richer.

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You're absolutely right, you could have invested all the money that you coughed up for the payroll tax. But you weren't given that choice, were you? And when George W. Bush proposed something along those line is 2004-05, Democrats and progressives denounced him for trying to "destroy Social Security."

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Cause he wanted the money sent to Wall St. To drive the markets. You've noticed what goes on there, right? Privatize the gains, socialize the losses. And without Fed printing over the last 15 years the market would barely have moved. Buybacks are scheduled to triple this year. You know before the rates get too high. You're going around in circles whistling past the graveyard. Where Grover and the GOP buried the middle class with tax cuts for the rich. Looks like a bathtub. Or another oligarch mansion that he sees once a year, if he feels like it.

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Hmmm, not what I said.

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You have an interesting perspective; one that suggests that “revenue” to fund SS, etc cannot be obtained, so consequently programs must be cut

Your notion that raising taxes is verboten suggests that you reject using taxes as a revenue solution to the imbalance you speak to

Libertarian, by chance?

Brought to you by the “Get off my lawn” Society

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SS is not a business. It is not a private pension plan. The government is like a giant insurance company, able to call on a massive, mandatory contribution base, able to absorb more market risk and longevity risk than any private company could do at any where near the cost. Your suggestion appears to be that no one should bother trying to provide old age insurance and be done with it... Margaret Thatcher, "there's no such thing as society," etc. That's magical thinking, unless you want to go back to needless mass poverty among the aged. Social Security taxes come out of the banking system from payroll and return to the banking system as the elderly spend it, so there's no loss to the banks' ability to make loans. I didn't invent this. Alexander Hamilton stole it from the British. It has financed the greatest empire the world has ever seen. You are imagining a flat world when the world is actually round. The important thing is that money shows up when it is needed where it is needed. Money is not gold. It is a technology.

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Excellent summary of our econmic wonders! Thank You, Kerry!

"Social Security taxes come out of the banking system from payroll and return to the banking system as the elderly spend it, so there's no loss to the banks' ability to make loans...Money is not gold. It is technology."

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And Nixon took it off the gold standard and we still don't have a person living who knows how that's going to pan out. As for magical thinking, it's not so magical when you recall that we've basically lived without 'society' for centuries of world history, where power and wealth were distributed by force. Slavery and servitude, etc. It's just the kind of society people want that's in question. The unfortunate thing for Mr Gregg is that he hasn't bothered to look deeper. Or wider from his path. Way too many like that.

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Once again, Social Security is not insurance. It's an entitlement program with defined benefits, funded by a payroll tax that thanks to demographic changes and other factors is now inadequate. One factor I didn't mention before is that current Social Security beneficiaries are going to pull much more out of the program than they ever paid into it. How long do you think that can go on?

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Tom, all pension plans face demographic challenges and must adjust. As for the Boomer beneficiaries, starting in 1986 they began paying in far more than then-retirees needed, which created the trust fund. That was the pre-funding that folks like you said the program required. There's still $2 trillion there. Also, benefits are wage and inflation-based, so I don't know how you calculate "more than they ever paid into it." For that matter, lots of people who never paid into it get lots out it, like housewives. Yes, it's insurance because you don't get the money if you're dead. If everybody was guaranteed their full earned amount, taxes would have to be much higher. But the real point is that Social Security is a much cheaper, fairer, more reliable way for a country to protect citizens from old-age poverty than any private, investment-based system could provide. But I sense that your mind is made up.

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THERE IS NO MONEY IN THE SOCIAL SECURITY TRUST FUND. There never has been. Back when a payroll tax surplus remained after current SS beneficiaries were paid, it want into the federal government’s general fund, with IOUs in the form of government bonds going into the Trust Fund.

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Which means you should call your representatives and senators and tell them under no terms should they default on the social security IOUs, er, bonds. You just need to change your definition of money. 'Store of value' works in this case. Your fear is default. And so far, not much concern about that as long as we can afford the ink. Though if we do default and Jared's buddy MbS decides he wants yuan for oil,well, all bets are off. Just know, it'll be the GOP that bought that for you. I'm sure Putin and Xi would love that the GOP would do that for them.

I doubt anybody was under the illusion that SS was always going to be a balanced system when demographics fluctuate across generations, not to mention interest rates. I assume that's partially why the Fed wanted 2% interest rates as their standard - as the best to balance input and output on govt. balance sheets. I'm no Fed lover, but our elected fiscal managers are not helping by cutting taxes on corporate campaign contributors and the wealthiest while in-canting 'supply side, supply side, ...' SS is BS and trickle down is yellow. The Fed just cleans up the mess and keeps the wheels turning.

It's also not much in dispute that our government is outspending its income. It'd be nice to get our balance sheet in better shape. But if you're not interested in raising taxes or cutting expenses in programs like defense that have us on the hook for $1.9T across its six systems in 2023, it's really not intellectually defensible to crow "OMG, entitlements!" That might be a favorite stalking horse for Republicans, but that's all it is. You want to get Federal debt down to a manageable level, let's cut defense too. Maybe you think the war in Iraq was a good idea - it wasn't. And if China is your bugaboo, maybe you should concern yourself with the waste we incur if we truly do lose two carriers trying to defend Taiwan. If you realistically think China can launch an amphibious invasion 100 miles across the Formosa Straits.

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This believe you earned your military pension, right? How about the people that paid directly into the trust fund? What class are your shares?

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Yes, I earned my military pension, having served for twenty-eight years in two conflicts, Vietnam and the Gulf War. Also, duh, I’ve been liable for the payroll tax all my working life.

Incidentally, no one pays anything into the Social Security Trust Fund. There’s no money in it, just a diminishing pile of IOUs written to SS by the federal government.

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Your concept of money and payment is odd. People have been sending real $$$ to the Fed for many decades along with withholding, but somehow since, in your words, the money never even essentially 'passed thru' the Trust Fund it was never really there or paid. So, they have either been paying a hidden extra 6.2% in income tax or it was a phantom "pfffttt, and it's gone." If I go out and drop $100 on a bond I'm - allegedly - getting an interest-bearing asset. But not the SSTF. Maybe you think that bonds aren't money. Or that we're going to default. Yeah, that seems clear.

And yes, I know you pay withholding, too, and I expect you're getting your share of SS from the Gov, at this very moment. It's more likely I'll get the shaft than you if guys like Rick Scott have their way.

PS. I guess they won't be diminishing quite as fast with higher interest rates but that's a double-edged sword in itself, eh?

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Ah Thomas! There it is the entitlement word! Another ‘four letter’ word that the right wing uses to demean the program! Your comment totally ignores the increase in debt that the tax cuts implemented since Reagan declared ‘government is the problem’ by gop legislatures nationally and state wide! Consider, a person is entitled to the compensation due for work done or entitled to a payout for funds paid into a retirement plan! Is that how you use the term entitlement?

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it's a great strategy, isn't it? throw the country into debt and then yell about what a mess it is that the country is in so much debt? genius! sad to say, cutting social security and medicare would appeal to a lot of people. why? life is so expensive for so many people that they are living paycheck to paycheck. they would welcome any reduction in payroll taxes, especially if they are a long way from old age. don't stop thinkin' about tomorrow? they can't think past today. here is a thought, for what it is worth: sometimes it pays to have more than one problem. soc. sec. revenues are down? there are 12 million illegal aliens in the US? conflate the two and get those people on regular payrolls with a path to citizenship and declare the dreamers to be citizens. that should balance the soc. sec. ledger.

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and aren't the boomers a temporary demographic blip? right now fewer working people are supporting a lot of retired people. that won't last forever. boomers had fewer children than their parents did, and one of these days more working people, many of them children of immigrants, will support fewer retired people.

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Boomers have been retiring for over a decade. The GOP needs to add up the surplus they'll get from their COVID policies. Fox should advertise that to their base: hey we cut $X off the entitlements budget by killing your grandma. Vote red!

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Social Security is an entitlement under federal law. That's why it's on the non-discretionary side of the budget. The federal government has to pay SS benefits to eligible beneficiaries, but Congress has power to change the program. Oh, and income tax cuts are irrelevant to this discussion, since SS is funded by the payroll tax and government borrowing.

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If the government took the money in the trust fund to pay your military pension (war in Iraq, dod budget) then it's not exactly separable from income tax. Is it?

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You need to disabuse yourself of the notion that the federal government ever took money from the SS Trust Fund. There is and never has been so much as a dime in the Trust Fund. When SS was originally enacted, it was provided that any payroll tax surplus would go into the federal government’s general fund, with government bonds going into the Trust Fund. In effect, the government wrote IOUs to Social Security. That’s the way FDR & Co. set things up.

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So they took the money and paid in bonds (your words):

"Back when a payroll tax surplus remained after current SS beneficiaries were paid, it want into the federal government’s general fund, with IOUs in the form of government bonds going into the Trust Fund."

And that means they never took the money? Not sure I can argue with that one.

What is money? Not sure if you know this but dollars were fiat before fiat was fiat (1971) and bonds have been fiat for centuries, thanks to the King and Bank of England. Debt has been used as money for centuries.

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Also, I wonder what you think the purpose of government is?

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Hmmm, let's see, would Unwoke in Indiana mean still asleep?

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😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹

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Thomas, That is only one part of the issue. We need to raise the ceiling on payroll deduction to be adjusted to the CURRENT value of the dollar. $160,000 is nothing short of laughable.

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Good luck selling such a massive tax increase to the voters…

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Massive tax increase? It only affects those employees earning in excess of $160,200. Currently the rate is 7.65% combined for SSA/Medicare. So anyone earning up to $160,200 pays that amount to Social Security. As it stands today a person earning $350,000 pays exactly the same Social Security/Medicare deduction as some one earning $160,200. That is the same dollar amount not the same percentage amount. The same applies to an employee making $2 million. This is ridiculous.

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Excellent point!

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Yeah, right. Any presidential candidate proposing to slap a massive tax increase on his party’s own base voters would win in a landslide—not! My suggestion is that you take a close look at the politics of Social Security. Ask yourself whether a family of four living in the greater New York City area with an income of, say, $180,000 would welcome your proposal. Uh-uh…

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Wondering how old you are? Do you recall Reagan stealing money fromSocial Security?

https://www.fedsmith.com/2013/10/11/ronald-reagan-and-the-great-social-security-heist/

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I was born the year WW2 ended, & FDR was President, so I’m pretty old. Some days I’m older than others….😹😹😹 For those who don’t want to get out their calculators, I’m 78.

Ronald Reagan has a lot to answer for. And I don’t mean that in a positive way.

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Total b.s. There has never been any money in Social Security for Reagan or anyone else to steal. What do you think is in the SS Trust Fund? Gold doubloons and pieces of eight? There’s nothing in there but a pile of IOUs.

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“I don’t know what’s gone haywire here with this Republican Party,” he said. Looking forward to the 2024 election, he concluded, the Democrats need to be very clear about “what we stand for, what we did, and what we need to do more of, and what we’re unwilling to do under any circumstances.”

Well said. Lives, Fortunes, sacred Honor. You have to stand for something more vital than political one-upsmanship and deals with the devil.

As far as whats gone haywire with Republicans at least since Reagan, follow the money. For sure, follow the money.

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Haa..and "Reagan" was the HMICC who over-saw the American TAX "PAYER"!!! ..., emphasis here on "payer", being thrown under the bus (toting the billionairs). Only to be followed by yet another bus, thx to "no taxes" (for billionairs) HW Bush. Haywire, says it all. Thanks for your use of it, Mr President. Timely.

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“Money, money, money

Must be funny

In the rich man's world

Money, money, money”

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Amen! Follow the money!

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There is only one way to balance the budget and that is to raise taxes on the wealthy and on corporations. Biden needs to keeping pushing McCarthy on putting up or shutting up about what he sees as the alternative. Of course McCarthy is stalling until after the State of the Union so Biden can't hit the Republicans on specifics.

Biden needs to make clear how much of the Republican tax cuts have gone to the 1% and corporations and how little has gone to the average taxpayer and what fraction of the debt is due to when Republicans controlled Congress vs. when Democrats did and when Congress was spit.

He also needs to point out how Republican proposals will cut benefits for younger Americans. Time for some nice simple pie charts in the state of the Union.

He also needs a graphic to show how Blue states subsidize Red States--

In fact the bulk of the domestic policy portion of the State of the Union should focus on exploding myths about how Red rural America is being shortchanged.

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/10/27/congressional-republicans-five-part-plan-to-increase-inflation-and-costs-for-american-families/

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/25/opinion/rural-voters-republican-realignment.html

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Totally agree. Dems don’t do enough monetary education for Americans, which leaves the repubs filling the holes with horse****. Maybe he could get Katie Porter to help him with explaining it in clear terms with charts!

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Hahaha! Great minds! I just suggested Katie Porter & her whiteboard myself. She surely makes her point in a way no one can miss.

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Indeed! And she’s so entertaining when she does it.

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She. Needs. To. Slow. Down. When. She. Talks.

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And Sen. Whitehouse!

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Maybe Katie Porter beside him with a whiteboard.

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A graphic showing the economy during Republican years of control vs Democrat would be wonderful.

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Get Katie Porter (D-CA) on the circuit . . . she is a fabulously, brilliant communicator! She is also running for the Senate.

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Adam Schiff is running for the same Senate seat.

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I like Schiff but I like Porter better! Since I live in MA it matters not :) However, my brother who does live in CA has said that if there are multiple qualified democratic candidates, he'll vote for a woman; particularly in this case as he thinks the world of Katie Porter and we agree that more progressive women in Congress and throughout government can only be a good thing. Plus, I so enjoy how she uses charts and graphs to show the facts!

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I agree. She’s a sharp cookie. Some people learn better with illustrations & some with words. She offers both, so covers all the bases. I agree with you, & would vote for her myself if I could.

I saw where Barbara Lee is also contemplating running, as is Ro Khanna.

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I don't like that both are running for the Senate, thereby losing 2 Reps from California in the process. Who in CA is running for their abandoned seats?

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Is balancing the budget a good idea? It would suck a lot of money out of the economy, causing deflation and possibly depression.

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It depends on how you do it. decreasing the deficit by cutting social security and medicare , and not funding medicaid and child care mean there will be less money available for discretionary spending in the economy. Raising taxes on the extremely wealthy and corporations circulates more money to stimulate the economy. Back when I first started working 50 years ago CEOs and corporate executives rarely made more than 25 times what the lowest paid worker made. The ratio was 351-1 in 2020.

"From 1978 to 2020, CEO pay based on realized compensation grew by 1,322%, far outstripping S&P stock market growth (817%) and top 0.1% earnings growth (which was 341% between 1978 and 2019, the latest data available). In contrast, compensation of the typical worker grew by just 18.0% from 1978 to 2020.

Why it matters: Exorbitant CEO pay is a major contributor to rising inequality that we could safely do away with. CEOs are getting more because of their power to set pay and because so much of their pay (more than 80%) is stock-related, not because they are increasing their productivity or possess specific, high-demand skills. This escalation of CEO compensation, and of executive compensation more generally, has fueled the growth of top 1.0% and top 0.1% incomes, leaving less of the fruits of economic growth for ordinary workers and widening the gap between very high earners and the bottom 90%. The economy would suffer no harm if CEOs were paid less (or were taxed more)."

Those CEOs aren't spending most of that wealth to buy stuff--it doesn't trickle down--most of it is kept as stock instead of paying more to workers who will use it to buy more cars, pay for childcare and education, etc.

https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/

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Unfortunately, the less fortunate citizens in rural North Carolina ARE getting short changed because since 2010 Boss Berger has controlled the state budget and refuses to expand Medicaid in the state!

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Florida Governor DeSantis also refuses to expand Medicaid. This among many other things he does to the detriment of Floridians….

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Georgia I love the graphic showing the blue subsidizing the red. Excellent idea.

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You sum it up good, Georgia. Now, let me help. I'll make sure all that gets onto billboards alongside our highways (where allowed..) so the tailgators/deniers/trumpsters/ad infinitum.. can see. Yup! And, you know what? It will all go down as FAKE.., It'll do nothing except make you and I feel good. The 'gators' will have none of it. Their minds have been made up, and it's gonna take 8 more years til their 13 yr olds can vote to set things right...hopefully.

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Didn't say it would be easy but Democrats need to be clear and confrontational. It's not like we have to turn around the thinking of all the Republicans--just enough to regain control of Congress and continue to pass legislation that helps the majority of Americans. If we do nothing it will take 8 years--we need to be determined it will only take 2.

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In Florida there are almost as many voters registered as No Party as there are registered as Democrats. That’s who we need to reach.

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Sorry, but there aren’t enough wealthy people and corporations to make that dream a reality. The finances of the federal government are such that tax hikes will always be chasing higher spending. The only solution is to control spending, and it so happens that entitlements make up the bulk of government spending. That’s just the way it is.

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Data references please, to support your point.

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The mainstream media is the missing link re. getting the contrasting plans out to the citizens. They'll rush to publish McCarthy's boyish tweety tweet, thumping his chest for the maga lemmings, but the real meat gets lost in the dust of both sides-ism and the "fair and balanced" myth that has been national coverage for decades, and longer. HCR, thanx for being the press critic you are and shining light on the truth of it; the country needs many more like you.

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"But the Republicans won’t say what they’re planning to do. "

Obstruct. Sabotage.

They're good at that. (And not much else).

The record speaks for itself.

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You forgot “pwn the libs” which as at the root of all Repugnicant malice.

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and chasing all that “Weaponization”

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...and remaining "unwoke"...

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Hand-in-hand with their increasingly anti-intellectual, anti-knowledge, anti-factual trope (in more than one sense of the word) we now see laid bare: a party so bereft of ideas (like seriously, ANY) it cannot make simple statements about a single thing it is FOR (aside from tax cuts--pretty sure we'd solve every problem on earth if we just made taxes zero. Yep.). All it has done, can and will do (until it is stripped to the studs and starts over) is say "We're against Biden." Thankfully, more Americans (yet still, 30% of whom won't vote) have finally decided they WANT something. Better late.... Oh, and of course, these later-day dodos are also against the will of the people, the Constitution, or general peace and welfare. Yep, THAT good. These guys are at the gash in the hull of the Titanic wondering if they can somehow make it BIGGER.

Never fear: in response to that old biology adage (I'm sure this is suspect, since Jesus didn't say it): adapt, migrate or die, GOP "idea" guys (probably, literally, a group of guys), clearly HAVE A NEW IDEA: They choose... OPTION D (courtesy of LizardBrain.gfy): "Go silent; stay still; threat gone. Find food."

Now that is getting back to basics.

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Mr. McTague: I loved your comment, because each sentence and your vocabulary made me laugh! (LizardBrain.gfy was my fav...). Thank you!

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You're welcome. And thank you.

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Had to google it. Duh! Now I can go back to sleep. Thank you HCR and Robert McT for teaching us the basics.

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Find statements as effective as “take away your guns.” Even “taken away your vote” doesn’t compete.

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BRILLIANT!!!

As a logophile (yes, as a child I used to read the dictionary for entertainment) reading your post was like indulging in a decadent French breakfast pastry!! Utterly delicious!

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Thank you, truly. :-)

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Those $400,000 (and up) people are quick to point out that 400k isn't wealthy and with rising costs of food and gas, it doesn't buy what it used to. After all, 400k is only $1095/day or if you're working $146/hour. Compare that to us retired folks sponging off the government and the money we paid in 50 years of work, I make $34/day or $4.29/hour. I can('t) see their rationale.

But wait, next month the pandemic boost for food stamps stops and they'll take $100/month away from the elders. Problem solved. Thanks REPUBLICAN'TS.

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Good points William. Most of us have been paying into Social Security since we were 16 and legal to work. Lowering the cost of drugs like insulin was a big Biden step forward to making retirement money stretch and a nice warning to greedy companies that think they are too big to fail.

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One small correction - There is debt and then there is debt. Federal government debt that is held by the Federal Reserve system is in effect, merely an accounting convention. It is not real debt. A chart of that can be found here at the St. Louis Fed site: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FDHBFRBN

The total is currently just a tad over $6 trillion.

There are a couple of observations one could make about this notation on the books. First, it could be written off, and second, maybe it shouldn't be. But, perhaps it should not be counted with respect to the debt ceiling. Arguing that it should is at best an exercise in sophistry. But, it could become real again, as the Fed has the option of selling it on the open market, and once it is in private hands, or held by other governments, it is very much once again quite real.

In the old Soviet system, the function of the government's treasury and that of the central bank were combined. Rubles were created and distributed based on central planning of the economy. It worked for a lot of things, but the biggest problem with it was human greed and corruption within the leadership of the Communist Party and the Red Army. That's probably the best argument for not writing it off, as one could see our politicians becoming a bit dimwitted and thinking they can just print money to their heart's content.

Whatever, in a very real sense, this current monetary crisis is really a crisis of belief systems about money and widely held misunderstandings of how it is created and distributed. I see plenty of bad thinking about it on both sides of the aisle.

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Many people in finance don't understand that a Treasury bond is an asset to the holder, not merely a liability of the government. In theory, running Treasury purchases through the banking system (rather than direct sales of Treasuries to the Fed) is supposed to put private sector discipline into the system by relying on bank aversion to risk. But the banking system abuses its monopoly by over-lending, taking too much risk, and relying on the Fed for bailouts. Moral hazard.

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Agreed, and this is one of the lesser risks in the economy, which is not to minimize it. A good way to define money is stored work. The storage transaction assigns the productive output of work a value. That value is then a call upon the existing and available, or the future output of other producers. That future output can be discounted at some reasonable rate to a present value and the sum of the two should equal the total money supply, or just fall short of the total a little bit. A small surplus in the money supply is necessary to exert market pressure or opportunity on producers.

The challenge any central bank faces in the modern world is that not only central banks have the ability to add to the money supply. Anytime a line of credit is granted a potential for the entity to which it has been granted to create more money in the instant of drawing on their credit is also created. There are a couple of other transaction types that have the same effect - that is adding to the aggregate accounting records of the entire economy additional amounts, which if taken as a whole represent a potential for instantly adding to the money supply.

Of course, much of it isn't real. Crypto is a great example. If there was a run on it by all of the so-called owners trying to draw on their balances to spend on things, then instantly most of the value would disappear. It's a made-up commodity with no intrinsic value. Things like repurchase agreements and overnight loans have much the same potential in that they add to the aggregate total, but they can't all be called upon at once. Those are much bigger risks than the moral hazards of the granting of excessive lines of credit by the banks, an irresponsible legislature, or governmental corruption (at least so far). A good case can be made that the Russians have enough corruption that it really is their bigger hazard.

But, as I have pointed out before, there is yet another way to create and distribute money, which is to look at the part of the old Soviet system that actually worked pretty well. Right now, when our central bank creates money out of thin air, the only method it uses for distribution is some sort of loan. They don't just pass it out the way the Soviets did. But, some amounts could be safely passed out. It would have to be done through some sort of market process that generates reliable arm's length valuations, and the things being valued would have to be available in the economy in a non-inflationary way, but such things do in fact exist. Education for minors is a great example. We send kids to school, and they are being paid for their schoolwork. It's not money in their pockets unless they are grad students on a stipend or some other scholarship, but they are being paid for what they do. The central banking system could do that directly.

Instead of the current student loan system in which the Fed advances funds as a loan to the lender, and then the student negotiates a loan with that lender, the contract could just as easily be a stipend agreement with some sort of performance requirements. The Fed's advance could be a pass through and not a loan to the lender. This would be almost perfectly non-inflationary, and because a market process would be involved, it would be very efficient in terms of pricing and the cost of the educational offerings by the schools, which would be competing with each other for the students. This could work at any level, K through doctoral studies, with the necessary intermediation for minors.

One could also fund part of the federal budget in a similar valuation generating process, but tied to individual payroll payments. In the current system, through a chain of lending transactions that start with the Fed advances to banks, value is created by employees, which is taxed and remitted to the government to fund it. That's needlessly inefficient and indirect. Instead, one could just as easily note on each employee's paystub or digital equivalent, how much value for the public good has been generated by their having been productively employed. These values could be reported to the Fed and the funds advanced directly to the government - no loans involved. That would dramatically reduce the current moral hazard and systemic losses to tax cheating., and the accounting would be almost identical to what we do now.

Now here's the hilariously funny part of all of this. Way back in Sumer 9,500 years ago when they first started using clay tokens in the markets of places like Uruk when they were little more than tiny settlements with a few mud huts, that's almost exactly they way their monetary system worked. You checked your goods into the market, got your tokens, and the government took its cut directly. Of course the government was super tiny and really just a small number of people doing things like coordinating the ditch digging and wall building, but as a percentage of their whole economy it was comparable to what we have now. But the point is that they invented a monetized economy to replace the barter system and no concept of lending was involved.

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There's a serious shortcoming to the definition of money as stored work, which is that it doesn't adequately account for work that's either underpaid (migrant labor, especially farm work, or the people who actually -do- housekeeping or nursing-home care or janitorial services, as opposed to the companies that overcharge for those services while underpaying their workers), or outright unpaid (child-rearing, elder care, care for disabled family members - most of this falls on women, though by no means all - and let's not forget military members' spouses).

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Your point is a good one, but not because of a problem with the definition of work. It's a problem of the distribution and valuation process. There have been a few brief instances in which monetized economies seem to have fairly valued work that flows through a transaction that has an arm's length quality to it. That very first system in Sumer of 9,500 years ago appears to be one.

If you divide economies into their three major types: tribal, barter, and monetized, then one of the constant fairness problems is that things that remain in the first two do not get monetized, and there is no perfectly fair way to blend them together. You see this same debate in every family when a couple starts trying to figure out to what extent allowances for their kids should be tied to satisfactory completion of chores, or whether or not good grades should be rewarded monetarily. There are no perfect answers to any of these questions. So yes, things like the work performed by a stay-at-home spouse do not get linked into an arm's length transactional measurement and monetization process. With some couples, the teaming relationship works much better that with others.

The key I think is to constantly focus on the issues created in our lives by the seven deadlies, and work together to find incentives to avoid or counteract them.

As for a good book on the topic, I haven't found one yet that really gets things perfectly right. I am working on a write-up on my website, which shoudl take several more weeks to complete. That said, the early chapters of the book that the numismatic curators of the British Museum did back in the 199s ("Money: A History, edited by Johnathan Williams) is perhaps the best I've seen. It too has a bit of a funny in it though.

The human brain does not do a very good job of dealing with large numbers in any context. The size of space and time are great examples of this. And in the book in the space of only a few sentences, the curators compress over 4,500 years of history into language that makes it feel unseparated it time, when they are talking about Sumer. They talk about what was happening 9,500 years ago and then flow right into what was happening 4,000 years ago. That's roughly equivalent to talking about the construction of suspension bridges, pyramids, and the internet as contemporaneous things. That said, they do dig into the cultural stuff starting back about 4,000 years ago. I wish they had done the same for what was going on 9,500 years ago, but they didn't.

It can be difficult to get a handle on just how young and immature the study of economics really is, or now recent a phenomenon the whole notion of "money for everyone" is. Prior to WWII less than 30% of the global population used money. It wasn't until the 1970s that the IMF even started trying to develop tools for measuring this and talking about it. Since then they have come up with something they call the monetization coefficient, but it is fraught with issues, including the one you mention about not valuing work done in the tribal economy (home, extended family or any other chore of volunteer system). Economics may be dismal, but it is also terribly immature.

Another good read that factors in human perceptions and behavior that I strongly recommend is Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow."

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Okay, Craig, that all blew my little mind! I love math but am having trouble adding this reasoning up. Can you recommend a reference or resource? Have you written a book for the fiscally and philosophically challenged?! Thanks.

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See my comment above. Good references are hard to come by. But here is another super silly one, in terms of how it has been used. Try Karl Marx's first book Das Kapital. It's funny in that it makes a HUGE mistake that assumes a hard, almost mechanical, linkage between the ownership of capital assets and the way central banks in conjunction with the banking system create and distribute money. That's just not how it works, although the old Soviet system tried to make it work that way and failed because of the corruption problem. Now the funny part, as in falling off one's chair funny, is that the biggest proponents of Marx's view of how things work are the modern American Republicans. George W. Bush's nonsensical schtick about the "ownership society" is 100% pure Marxist. Art Linkletter would have had a field day with this nonsense.

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Russian Corruption.. whewww! Heavy duty! A modern day feudal society, sans much in the way of military nobility.., but their working on that part (right now). To add: A Society, so ingrained with communism and its ideology that it's in their lungs..part of the air they breathe. To refer to it (communism) as a mindset is too simple. An understanding of 'human nature' would be a start. How can a country, made up of people who look pretty-much like us be that way? Well, we need to pay attention. Sorry. I digress'ed. :))

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Are you both-siding this issue

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In a way, yes. Both sides have very good points, but neither side seems to be advancing a systemic solution. There is no good reason to use loans and taxes as the only accounting methods for granting the government some agreed upon percentage control over the economy for all of the things government does. Market forces are critically necessary in any system, and the moral hazards have to be held at bay. But once it is clearly understood that central banks make up money out of thin air, then it just becomes a distribution and valuation problem. Lending is one way, but not the only one. The folks in Sumer 9,500 years ago who invented the first money using little clay tokens had no concept of lending at all. And, taxes were just a direct rake on the markets. That system worked for a couple thousand years.

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Good morning everyone! I am going to send us on another tack (or maybe two) because I think that the grandstanding performative nonsense going on in front of the Rethuglican's Fox Not-the-News sofa spuds is probably masking a more reality-based process happening in the shadows by the guys and gals who don't like their negotiations to be revealed until they get the consensus they want. McCarthy knows that his short and curlies are being gripped on two sides and that his desire to be Speaker is turning out to be a "be careful what you wish for" moment. I have been following what has been happening in another Conservative "led" (I use that term very loosely) government: the UK. If folks have not been keeping track, the number of own goals the Sunak administration has served up is getting close to Liz Truss levels and even though the nice-but-personality-less leader of the Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer (he's a "Sir" because he is a barrister) can't make a public statement without sounding like a colorless dweeb, Labour is now in double digits ahead of the Tories. Moreover, the Tory backbenchers are starting to rebel; the country has been wracked by multiple industrial actions (short-term strikes) that are SUPPORTED by the people who are being impacted by them, and the entire financial sector looks to be approaching a meltdown because the government cannot figure out how not to pepper-spray themselves in the face (an "Is this thing working?" moment). It is weird that the UK's woes are not being reported more frequently in the US media outlets but I suspect that Americans are more interested in the Harry and Megan Chronicles than in the crap that is really happening. But the meltdown of the Tories is instructive, even if the system in the UK works differently than here.

My other morning post has to do with the (expletive deleted) governor of Florida who is trying to ramp up his (as a NY Times op-ed called it) "performative white supremacy" in anticipation of a "presidential" run by trying to make it illegal to teach anything about non-white, non-cis, non-hetero people in Florida universities--and to gut tenure so that anyone opposing this incredibly stupid move can be fired. But I'll save that for another day.

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As a Floridian, I can’t wait for your thoughts, Linda. As one meme described Florida: 1930’s Germany with theme parks. 😔

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Ouch, Jen. I think he is by far the most dangerous guy with presidential ambitions. And that is because he is a true believer that fascism is the best way to secure power. He's the real deal, unlike TFG, who is just a grifter who uses whatever political winds will provide him with the dosh and notoriety he craves. Gov De-Insanity is taking all the tried and true steps to secure the nazification of his state and, potentially, the country: he has demonized underrepresented minorities, isolated populations, stifled economic prosperity for those groups, and attacked education as the tool of the "antichrist." And because he also has a state that is popular with vacationers and old people, he can claim that any boycott of the state by people upset by his policies is an attack on the "people of Floriduh," thus "proving" that Jews, Blacks, Latin-x who are not Cubans, and "Libs" are the enemy. What I find interesting is that all those old New York Jews (like my grandfather and step grandmother back in the 1960s) who retired to Florida started out as pretty lefty. But the ones who are settling there now are drinking the kool-aid and are willing to be nazified into being scared of the Other. At the moment, the national Ghastly Oligarch Party is a little leery of De-Insanitas because he is wearing his nazi uniform so proudly. But they'll get on board if he galvanizes their "base" in a way that the Orange Menace no longer can.

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Wow! You nailed it beautifully, Linda. His educational policies are described by experts as raising up a next generation of his base who are ignorant racists. That’s truth. Teachers could not have classroom libraries, bc there weren’t enough book Nazis to authorize collections. The same problem existed for beloved book fairs-cancelled-all during a month where literacy is the focus.

Actually, I’m so very glad for you speaking my heart here-I actually have tears in my eyes. So many “snow birds” who come here seasonally praise his efforts at keeping the state “open and free” during Covid. I have been deeply concerned that the reality of Desantis hasn’t been shared out of this state. I live here because of family concerns, but I’d leave in a heartbeat if I could. The normalization of bullying, anger, seething menace, and outright and unabashed racism and misogyny began with TFG but has definitely been enhanced by Desantis. I believe he’s trump 2.0-smarter and intentionally cruel whereas I believe tfg’s mental instability lacks an empathy component-not to excuse his behavior-but I believe trump incapable of “normal” human feelings bc of his instability.

This is not a good place to live-the kool-aid is toxic and being force-fed daily with no antidote.

Really, thanks for your insight. Desantis CAN NEVER ATTAIN NATIONAL OFFICE! He’s a monster who will destroy our nation as we know it. I profoundly believe this.

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I am posting this on FB. I have many friends living in Florida who, like you, are tearing their hair out daily about DeSatan and his brown shirt thugs. I’m with you all the way. I used to live on Singer Island. I was there when Dump was elected. Prick Scott was the governor. The Trumpsters where I lived and climate change would be my end eventually, I got out. I really miss FLA, but not the toxicity of living there.

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I believe you. Damn.

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And all of my RWNJ friends here in Oregon are jumping on the De-insanity bus in freaking droves. He may appeal to far more than we are giving him credit for.

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That is correct, Ally. Strangely enough, Trump will be the only one that can derail him. He is going to extraordinary lengths to out-Trump Trump to get his base. The 20- 25% of MAGAt base will never allow it. They will write in Trump’s name before giving their vote to a putz trying to out maneuver their hero.

Salud.

💜

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Noooooooo.....

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My greatest fear.

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I can't find the right response Ally. So grotesque and terrifying and true.

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The FL autocrat has his own fascist state operating: private police force, 6 am arrests for voting, and now removing all books from public schools until a white supremacy enforcer allows a few back in. It’s horrible.

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Feb 1, 2023·edited Feb 1, 2023

Don’t wait, Linda, to speak on it. At the first Board of Trustees of New College meeting held yesterday fueled by a 10am press conference by desantis and his white fascist boy, Rufo by his side (whose mother was famous for snatching away teaching licenses in California in the past), it didn’t matter about the visible majority of support for New College to retain its identity of decades. Not a chance.

President was fired, corrupted former commissioner of educ Corcoran put in as interim president, tenure and employment contracts put on chopping block, general consul fired and Galvano of FL Senate fame given that appointment.

This has been in the works for awhile to turn that school into the Hillsdale College of the new confederate south. But people did not listen. It only took 6 weeks to generate the takeover.

I believe it will turn out to be the biggest mistake of desanazitis’s career, but for now, it is an astonishing act of treason to witness. Right under the noses of the citizens. A rather emphatic “F*ck you” to ANY parent or ANY student that cherishes their right to a free and public education.

Salud, Linda.

🗽

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That would be POS governor of FL 🤷‍♂️😎

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Linda, You are an incredible writer! Thank you for your thoughts and vivid descriptions. As others have noted forcefully, we cannot allow DeSatan to get anywhere NEAR the White House. I will be reading your comments from here on in.

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Aaaw--thanks Elizabeth!

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What a difference between Nancy Pelosi leading a Democratic congressional majority and Kevin McCarthy's stammering cow-towing of the konservative Keystone Kops now in charge, ("control" really is not applicable,) of the House.

Did he really not see this coming? In his negotiations (pleading) for the speakership did McCarthy not tell the uber-whackos that they would need to propose specific cuts to specific parts of the federal budget, beyond generalized attacks on Social Security and Medicare, so they had better have those proposals available, and be ready to personally and publicly defend those cuts?

Not likely.

That would mean giving orders, that's what leaders do, and Kevin McCarthey put himself in a position where he can't give orders to anyone. In fact, he's the one taking orders.

What a mess! What a difference!

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Ralph, I am truly ashamed of my own country.....thanks for your insightful and to-the-point comment. May we all have some higher power watching over Us The People....you know what I mean.

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Ralph, you totally nailed it. Quevin is so vulnerable, he can barely make hints and suggestions to his team. Not a leader, for sure. He doesn't deserve to have the name Pelosi in the same sentence with his name.

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“i’m not interested in political games. I’m coming to negotiate for the American people.” From the man who antied up his soul and his constituency to gain a coveted political appointment!

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From the purveyor of political games

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Which he could lose if one wacko wants him out...oy.

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One representative can only call for a vote. It would still take a majority to actually unseat him. It’s just yet another way for congress to waste a lot of time on the grandstand while actually accomplishing nothing.

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Good. The less damage the Republicans can do right now, the better.

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I am reminded of the words Sam Bee used to describe Ivanka Trump that almost got her fired. That's Kevin McCarthy, cubed. He gave his power to the Insurrection Caucus in exchange for a nice office with a killer balcony and a big gavel. He's painted himself into a corner with lard.

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Since I can’t get fired from anything, I’ll say Qevin McQarthy is a feckless prick. Yes, I’ve said it. Your image of the lard-paint in is sublime.

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Ah, prick being the male equivalent of the word Sam used. Well done, you.

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OK - what I don't understand, is that setting up AM (or even FM) radio stations is no longer a big technical deal (hey - I've been involved in setting up a community radio station here in Oz (even built the transmitter). So there should be a sufficient number of Dem supporters who can pony up the money to build a network of stations. Where's Pacifica?? Gotta do it, it's not complex (especially FM).

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Yes, there are Thom Hartmann radio types who are good. However, many of the mass-distortion lie-preaching Right are on social media such as YouTube.

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A bit of a non-sequitor but ... Hartmann writes on Substack ... quite interesting. Take a look:

https://hartmannreport.com/p/ghostbuster-bill-barr-was-the-who?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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WOW!!! All I believed at the time(s) was TRUE!! With Bill Barr as the fix it guy. Barr belongs behind bars.

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And they are uncensored.

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C'mon...AM/FM radio or whatever, any tailgator would know it was just libtard baloney..err ahh FAKE news. However, we do have NPR, and they are getting better. The right blend might work.

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I think McCarthy is the epitome of a desperate little boy who wants to be important, so he trades with the bullies.

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Admirable! We can all feel confident, and the President chastened by this strong affirmation that the elected Speaker isn't coming to play political games. It goes with the straight back, sleek silver hair and neatly jutting chin. Good luck to you, Kevin McCarthy. I can't help hearing a little memory voice from 6 January - Trump in White House to McCarthy in Capitol - “Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are."

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Love your comment, Anne-Louise. Unfortunately, I believe it contains too many letters to be packed into a single tweet, so McCarthy, the twit, won't get the memo.

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Typcl Elon covfefe

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New word for me, thank you. Anyone ever figure it out? Perhaps like one of those recursive acronyms like "Gnu" the tech community loves to use on the uninitiated? :-)

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