American Politics Thread 2013: I'm a cool Rodham grandma in the USA

Where do you come up with this stuff

Detention Land

this stuff only has to meet the ILX criterion of "shit flung against the wall," try n meet it sometime wawa

Political stagnation is so bad now in the usa that even the ilx us politics threads are stagnant.

dont be a zing lawyer morbs

The only proposed SS "reform" I am interested in seeing is removing the income limit on SS tax.

man it sucks that I can't hear Cuban talk radio at work!

im am interested in seeing ss extended to all people regardless of age

a guaranteed minimum income, then? wouldn't be such a bad idea if there was a resonable revenue stream to support it.

yup, tax the rich nbd

atm, tax financial transactionsat $0.001 per transaction, so as to capture revenue from all those fully-automated computer trades by hedge funds., et. al.

a guaranteed minimum income is a great idea imo

we seem to have a good-sized surplus of labor in the pool right now, with no prospect of the unemployed or underemployed getting boosted up to full time, or the underpaid getting a substantial raise. a guaranteed income of ~$10,000/year per adult would go a long way toward stabilizing lives without removing all incentive to work, imo. but with tea party controlling one chamber of congress that is a hyperfantasy.

you have to start building consensus now then in like 30 years maybe you get it, it shd be set at just above the poverty line and pegged to inflation thereby eliminating poverty

i like the way u think

;)

god bless Nixon for wanting a living wage.

lol yes, different times

apparently even milton friedman wanted one!

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/23/business/23scene.html

“What’s the point?” McCain said when asked by AFP if Obama should have made the gesture.

“Neville Chamberlain shook hands with Hitler,” he said.

You know who else shook hands with Hitler? Goebbels.

and uh I know we're supposed to be happy because the Granny Starver helped reach a bipartisan budget deal but look what the NYT buried in the penultimate graf:

Democrats gave up their demand that the deal extend unemployment benefits that expire at the end of the month, but they hope to press for an extension in a separate measure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/11/us/politics/party-leaders-indicate-deal-is-reached-on-budget.html?ref=politics&_r=0

hungry ppl easiest to throw under the bus

and how exactly are they going to get get scrooge grinch boehner to bring that "separate measure" to the floor for a vote?

Ryan protected all the corporate and individual tax loopholes, and Dems well, uh --no SS cuts at least and instead of agreeing to go after pensions of current federal employees they limited it to new hires (plus got Ryan to agree to one little thing about young military retirees)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/house-senate-negotiators-reach-budget-deal/2013/12/10/e7ee1aaa-61eb-11e3-94ad-004fefa61ee6_story_1.html

excerpt:
Another large chunk of savings — $12 billion over the next decade — would come from reduced contributions to federal pensions, split evenly between military retirees and new civilian workers who start after Dec. 31.

For those in the military, the reduction would take the form of lower cost-of-living increases for retirees between the ages of 40 and 62, many of whom take other jobs while collecting their military pensions. New civilian workers, meanwhile, would be required to contribute an additional 1.3 percent to their retirements.

Current federal workers would not be affected, said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), the lead budget negotiator for House Democrats. The impact on pensions, one of the last major issues to be decided, was hammered out during a weekend of talks between Van Hollen and Murray, who persuaded Ryan to spread the pain to the youngest military retirees.

Spread the pain around! (Except rich people, banks, defense contractors, etc.)

i love how they're increasing taxes on flight fees, but close the tax loophole on the purchase of private planes? socialism!

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/patricia-millett-dc-circuit-court-of-appeals-100944.html

New DC Circuit judge Millett now that prior filibuster rule is gone. 56 to 38 vote with 2 Republicans voting yes--Murkowski and Collins

Dems got rolled, Ezra Klein sez.

8. Democrats flatly got beat on sequestration. Republicans are keeping -- and increasing -- the deficit reduction without ever giving up a dime in taxes. And many Republicans don't want to alter sequestration at all. Ryan entered the negotiations with a much stronger hand than Murray.

9. “I’m proud of this agreement,” Ryan said in a statement. “It reduces the deficit—without raising taxes. And it cuts spending in a smarter way. It’s a firm step in the right direction, and I ask all my colleagues in the House to support it.”

10. This deal is possible only because there are many Republicans who really hate the defense cuts. But there are fewer of those Republicans than there were in the past. There are many fewer of them than Democrats thought in 2011.

11. Whether this deal can be a model for future deals is an open question. The core principle of this deal is that Democrats didn't have to touch entitlements and Republicans didn't have to touch taxes. But a lot of the policies that made that possible got used up in this deal. It's not clear another deal like this would would work in 2016.

basically, dems lost this when they agreed to the sequester. In fairness, defense cuts seemed like a much stronger threat at the time.

yup

if you felt like trying to see some silver lining in this its maybe that republicans are more amenable than they have been in the past to defense cuts

also fees lol http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2013/12/11/tax_metaphysics_everything_is_a_fee.html

only cuz it's DEFICIT DEFICIT DEFICIT all the time.

xpost

i think too w libertarians gaining more power there is legit more openness, obvs this trend would have to grow for a while before you saw real change but who knows

dems are the washington generals to the GOP's harlem globetrotters

unless you ask a republican

haven't read the full klein piece, i don't entirely agree that dems got rolled (if only because i have some respect for patty murray).

cutting off the long-term unemployed is totally ghoulish. what "dems" (read: all americans) get in trade is the end to cliff/hostage type bullshit (right? i mean, what's the point otherwise), which have done real measurable damage to the economy. and it also clears the deck for all the other work that needs to be done: immigration most importantly, but the farm bill, etc

The most cynical view: Dems didn't get rolled because they agree with sequester anyway, like many of them believe in "entitlement reform."
The most generous view: Sequester is here to stay, let's do the best we can.

Ed Kilgore; What's really going on with the GOP 'civil war'.

Uh I'm on lt UI right now, I sure hope they don't axe it prematurely.

There's something hilariously dad-like about Dubya having his ipad there to show off his paintings to everyone at the meeting

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/1992lko8slvx7jpg/ku-xlarge.jpg

Aboard Air Force One, former President Bush shows photos of his paintings to, from left, First Lady Michelle Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Valerie Jarrett, National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice, Attorney General Eric Holder and former First Lady Laura Bush, Dec. 9, 2013. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

wish Eric Holder were reaching over to cuff Dubya tbh

This was the same man who choked on a pretzel, while lying down on a couch watching tv in the White House. Dad-like and hilarious are his m.o.

from that ed kilgore bit:

It its most explicit form, that of the “constitutional conservatives” who really dominate discussion within the GOP and who are likely to produce their next presidential nominee, the only genuinely “American” policies, designed by the Founders according to both natural and divine law, involve a free-market economy with extremely limited government and a traditionalist, largely patriarchal culture. These policies, buttressed by an increasingly chiliastic view of the status quo (e.g., the “Holocaust” of legalized abortion, and the social policy “tipping point” at which an elite-underclass alliance will destroy private property and liberty entirely), simply are not negotiable.

this sounds totally OTT but it's not

Need to jse "chilialistic" in convo more often.

extending the franchise to non-white males who don't own land is totally anti-chiliastic imo. let's get on that, senator paul!

DO IT, SENATOR CHILL

http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/192823-senate-gop-plan-30-hour-plus-talkathon-to-protest-nuclear-option

Trying to delay appointment of next Circuit Court nominee. Will they get chiliastic in their talkathon?

it's a good thing the democrats won by so much last year because otherwise you'd swear there's a republican in the white house, they GOP picked up seats in the house, and they won the senate

"The ultimate result [. . .] is a budget that's below even the pipe-dream Ryan budget of 2011. [. . .] Two years ago, Ryan's budget was basically at the outer limit of mainstream conservative wish lists. Today it looks tame."

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/12/war-over-austerity-over-republicans-won