Joe Money, Joe Problems: the November 2021 U.S. Politics Thread

Good morning!

Is Manchin gonna call Schumer on New Year’s Eve and say he’ll back the bill as long as everyone can make it to the Senate with 36 hours?

At this point I’ve lost track of the various bills

Wolf Blitzer has arrived at COP26 in.... Edinburgh?

I’m now reporting from Edinburgh in Scotland where 20,000 world leaders and delegates have gathered for the COP26 Climate Summit. COP, by the way, stands for “Conference of the Parties.” It’s the 26th time they have gathered to discuss and take action on this critical issue. pic.twitter.com/BGTAeU5cBy

— Wolf Blitzer (@wolfblitzer) November 1, 2021

All COPs are British

Researchers at the Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit, found that 30% of Republicans agreed with the statement “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country”.

not an expert on polling, but this sounds a little loaded to me

I’m also suspicious that number has been right around there since 1972.

1972? Plenty of violent right wing "patriots" were around back then, too.

The poll is of Republicans. Deeper in the past you’re going to have to decide how to just poll conservatives of both parties.

oy vey

Overheard on the floor: Bernie Sanders showing colleagues a Morning Consult poll on his phone of the most popular provisions falling out of Build Back Better.

“So we drop what’s most popular?” he asks, referring to the Medicare expansion

— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) November 2, 2021

Schumer says a deal has been reached among Democrats on drug pricing provisions. They will add it to the $1.75T legislation. Says Medicare empowered to negotiate drug prices. Democrats had said would focus on just the most expensive drugs and insulin, which will be capped at $35.

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) November 2, 2021

Schumer says Sinema is on board with prescription drug deal: “Sen. Sinema has told me she supports this” and adds “I think we’re there.”

Admits it’s narrower than what many Dems wanted but says it’s still “a big step.”

— Alex Bolton (@alexanderbolton) November 2, 2021

Sinema insisting that Chuck kneel and kiss her ring before they discuss drug pricing provisions

Update: the pace of in-person voting in Charlottesville increased *a lot* between 9am and 1pm, now putting it on track to perhaps slightly exceed 2017's 16.5k turnout - a relief for Dems. https://t.co/VbokbIcMMs

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2021

lol this is why I'm losing my appetite for minute-by-minute political coverage; I saw the earlier Wasserman tweet reporting on how turnout in Charlottesville was down (and thus Bad News for Democrats).

no, jaymc, you meant In Disarray.

Haha

Here's the average annual cost or year 1 cost of D policy priorities. Retroactive SALT repeal comes in as 2nd most expensive annual priority behind CTC, nearly 3X what is devoted to climate change.https://t.co/f1w0pLtO4t pic.twitter.com/yCgcavwhfJ

— Donald Schneider (@DonFSchneider) November 2, 2021

But How Will We Pay For It

this is obscene but also ... i don't understand how this is possible as a practical matter

The five year salt relief is retroactive

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) November 2, 2021

Rich peoples’ accountants will refile their taxes, I assume?

i stand to benefit personally from this but i definitely do not have the paperwork to refile with itemized deductions in years i didn't previously itemize. cry me a river, right.

You should have a family office like Pelosi’s neighbors and donors.

Will any Republicans be smart enough to turn this tweet into a billboard?

Yep. We pay maybe $40k per year in SALT. I have always wanted to put in a guest suite/workout room above my garage . . . .

— Kristin Shapiro (@mrsshap) November 2, 2021

i mean this is beside the point, and extremely obvious, but the fact that you need to retain staff to access the benefits and incentives you're entitled to is ... well, it's not good IMO!!

i can see how it's possible (i could do it paperwork-wise but i still itemize so i don't need to) but there seems to be so little additional political benefit to making it retroactive as compared to just doing the repeal in the first place. it's just a waste. xpost ok now i see.

this sounds pretty definitive

As a result, the top 1% would pay lower taxes after passage of the Build Back Better plan than they did after the Trump tax cut in 2017. This is beyond unacceptable.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 2, 2021

I am open to a compromise approach which protects the middle class in high tax states. I will not support more tax breaks for billionaires.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) November 2, 2021

presumably they'll cap it at $20k or something to get the sausage made

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EzXC5OCVUAUM7Kg?format=png&name=900x900

I am torn about the SALT. There should be no SALT deduction, the repeal will lower my taxes, and that's bad, I should be paying more taxes.

On the other hand, the 2017 tax bill handed out huge deductions to groups deemed friendly to Republicans while intentionally punishing groups friendly to Democrats (high-SES high-ed people in cities) by social-engineering added costs in blue state.

Like, there should be no SALT deduction, but there should also be no pass-through loophole and no step-up basis and a way lower threshold for the estate tax to kick in. Why can't they fix all that stuff at once in this bill?

(OK looking at it it does look like SOME of the favored treatment for pass-throughs is indeed mitigated in some versions of this bill but who knows what ends up in it.)

Why can't they fix all that stuff at once in this bill?

Manchin, Sinema and a half dozen more hiding behind them.

"Well the country is falling apart spiritually, morally, environmentally, and infrastructurally. One of our major priorities should be handing out tax benefits to rich people."

What a fucking swindle. Failed state.

“half dozen”

lol if only

To be clear, if Shapiro pays $40K/yr in state and local taxes, she doesn't gain $40K from an elimination of the cap, right? She deducts $40K from the income she declares to the federal government, so the amount she stands to gain is just whatever the marginal tax proportion is on those $40K of income. Which if she's paying that much in tax is probably top bracket. So what, she stands to gain $15K a year from this? Again, if she has enough household income to pay that much tax, $15K more or less a year means nothing to her. It's just that much more or less her kids get in their inheritance. If she wants to put in a guest suite she can do it anyway.

(And yes I know her tweet was facetious but others will say the same non-facetiously.)

How does this even get in there? Who's demanding it? I am the most normie homeowning-in-a-high-property-tax-environment Democrat imaginable and I'm not.

Donors are demanding it (and rich Congresspeople). It’s such a key issue for that class Pelosi tried to put it in various 2020 stimulus bills.

I'm a donor! But I guess you mean some class of megadonors with whom I don't interact.

Yeah, not “give to the alumni fund” donors, more “name the new library” donors.

Though it’s much more expensive to buy a library than a politician.

sorry, this isn't us politics specifically but i'm posting it everywhere it is so good

https://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-extractive-circuit-singh-chaudhary

How does this even get in there? Who's demanding it?

― Guayaquil (eephus!), Tuesday, November 2, 2021 5:39 PM (eighteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

the NJ congressional delegation

NEWS: The US government would negotiate just 10 drugs starting in 2025 under a new compromise drug pricing plan, @Alexruoff reports.

The proposal was pitched to Democratic holdouts who have opposed previous, broader schemes to lower drug prices.

— Laura Davison (@laurapdavison) November 2, 2021

look if it’s not worth doing in a broken half-ass way it’s just not with doing at all

haha how does it get negotiated down to 10

hmm 100 is too many that's a lot of drugs you're being unreasonable here

is there another guy in the bar offering 12

how many decades of this broken-ass gilded age do we have to endure, it's an insulting state of affairs for everyone

NEW: manchin will accept negotiations for up to 30 drugs - but only the ones that don't work well

I know the party in power always loses the VA gov race but this is pretty disheartening

Manchin will accept negotiations for up to 30 drugs not produced by the his daughter's company.

Reminder that if an oleaginous cadaver from the Clinton Administration loses it's absolutely imperative to place the blame on the Left

— Eli Valley (@elivalley) November 3, 2021

raw racism wins the day once again

Lol Neanderthal

For anyone who needs to hear it, VP is a vital partner of POTUS: US Politics December 2021

it seems like people are way more concerned with the price of gas than the fact that we probably won't have a democracy in about 3 years

something something material circumstances yada yada yada

Something something Mussolini made the trains run on time.

xp to table

we blame people as much as city planners and nimbys because those same people are deeply invested in the policies advocated by those latter groups. our fox news radio station has a local morning show that i would occasionally tune into on the way to work, and their only talking point for over a year was recode, an effort to update and modernize our zoning laws. it's no mystery why the local pundits were so invested in this particular dog whistle. recode is not only a harbinger of right wing culture war boogeymen, threatening eg their right to barrel around town in a coal rolling four ton truck because the city narrowed the street and put planters in by the sidewalk; it also raises the possibility that a non-white person will move in next door in a newly affordable apartment, townhouse, duplex, ADU or what-have-you. and local non-pundits have these same concerns and will express them in explicit terms.

i choose disunity over empathy for someone who would sooner see me and my loved ones dead than ride a bus. i don't have patience for concern over the proverbial trump voting diner patron, but from the left, and certainly not when the matter at hand is the desire for cheap acreage.

pretty sure i can never afford to live near my job in DC and i live on .008 acres rn but yeah everyone concerned about gas prices chose to live far away from work so they could cheaply store their kids in their SUV/mcmansion and is in a trump diner. just to add to the series of strawmen set up here.

I mean, also sometimes companies move their offices/warehouses/headquarters/whatever and most don't bother to ask their employees if that's convenient with them before doing so. All of that without getting into people who are asked to work shifts that are incompatible with public transportation schedules/options, etc etc etc.

Which isn't to say I defend people driving monstrous pickup trucks or gigantic gas guzzling SUVs just because, but there's a whole lot of ugly strawmen in that argument.

Yeah, sorry, but setting up all people who don't live in cities as relentlessly fascist hicks who don't care about the planet is fucking idiotic, period.

Beyond that, it's also untrue.

It's also not something anyone has said but go off son

Fortunately there's an alternative, and it's called the electric car

...which is overwhelmingly a luxury product for rich people

Personal consumer choices still don’t matter.

I can’t wait for my apartment complex that hasn’t been remodeled since 1975 and has probably 600 cars parked on the lot every night to install charging plugs for all of them.

Yeah close-in, mixed-use, high-density development that is engineered for walkability? Unfortunately, it's still largely a luxury product, mainly consumed by rich people.

New urbanism is great but even I can barely afford it, and I'm pretty well off.

My office is 30 miles from Chicago. There's plenty of single family homes within short drive of it. Yet many of my coworkers choose to live in what are basically rural areas so they can afford a larger home. None that I know of drive anything other than a huge suv. Obv this isn't all or even most ppl! But they're out there and they tend to be the ones I hear bitch about gas prices. Ymmv Har Har.

Imo this isn't an either/or situation, it's a both/and one. Sometimes people's choices are limited by things outside of their control so we shouldn't rest blame on anyone at the bottom of a power structure, AND ALSO some people make bad & selfish choices and are proud of doing so for reasons that are incompatible with community survival and that's not a value-neutral choice they're making.

This isn't really a strawman in my experience. The white flight from cities to suburbs has clearly moved on out to rural areas and townships where the taxes are low and minorities are rare. More and more farmland is being parceled up for them and boy oh boy do they love putting Trump signs on their oversized lawns.

I don't think anyone is arguing that this isn't happening, more just that those are not the ONLY people who live in far-flung suburbs and rural areas.

More and more farmland is being parceled up for them and boy oh boy do they love putting Trump signs on their oversized lawns.

Was in the Fresno/Clovis area for Thanksgiving, and I can confirm this is true. Former orchards now sprouting beige, enormous faux-tuscan abominations

If a development is called Quail Brook, you can surmise that quail used to live by a no longer existent brook

yeah, any subdivision named after an animal comes about when the animals are gone.

“Quail Brook” sounds like the title of a lame solo Malkmus c-side from 2003

in orbit otm

the assholes are just louder, maybe more likely to be in the office workplace, and have land to put their trump signs on. it's selection bias.

If they all moved back to the suburbs or cities, it also wouldn't matter (to the climate or anything else), aside from making the rapidly diversifying suburbs as unaffordable as the cities.

En route to Fresno, saw a bunch of variations of this: "Newsom! Stop Dumping Our WATER INTO THE OCEAN!"

Even ancient watersheds and rivers are now the democrats' fault

idk how much I trust the whole yard sign thing my area was fucking slammed with Trump shit in 2020 and he wound up actually losing here by a small amount. Trump is just an entire identity to some people. It goes way beyond politics and policy. as crazy as the people putting up the Trump/Rambo flags are if I ever saw anyone do that with Biden I'd think they were fucking insane

those are not the ONLY people who live in far-flung suburbs and rural areas.

Did someone say that though? I thought it was an example of a person ironically complaining about gas prices and that is exactly what you will hear out there. They gotta have at least one truck, an ATV and a lawn tractor but they aren't farming anything. They like being able to shoot their guns in the back yard. And family farms that can no longer stay afloat are understandably cashing out by selling their land to them. The rural midwest is increasingly becoming a conservative/libertarian playground and they blame Biden for the higher gas prices that are cramping their rugged individualist lifestyle.

Top House Democrats are considering whether to take action against Lauren Boebert for her “harmful and dangerous” comments implying Ilhan Omar is a terrorist threat, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer says.

https://t.co/gII8QYhcMT

— Axios (@axios) November 30, 2021

hmm gonna have to mull this one over

Has the sitting President ever not been blamed for gas prices? I don't see that as telling any greater narrative - Bush's popularity (or lack thereof) correlated strongly to rising gas prices from the start of the war on terror onward. The 2006 blue wave midterm came around the same time as record per gallon prices.

"oh no don't censure me" she says as she readies the fundraising emails

Jesus

.@IlhanMN just played a voicemail she received a few hours after she got off the phone w @RepBoebert:

“There’s plenty that would love the opp to take you off the face of the earth… you’re a fucking traitor, you will not live much longer bitch. I can almost guarantee that.”

— Jacqueline Alemany (@JaxAlemany) November 30, 2021

VM not left by Boebert, kind of a confusing tweet

Still though..

Jfc

Boebert is garbage, but that's also a bad tweet

I didn't appreciate how Biden has all but halted the drone war, especially compared to Trump https://t.co/kjTNuWdw3r pic.twitter.com/wE7qyqjAmO

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) November 30, 2021

NEW: Patrick Leahy, the longtime former Senate Judiciary Committee chairman + longest-serving sitting U.S. senator, says it's time for Native American activist Leonard Peltier to go home after 44 years in prison. https://t.co/jrNBVJ6uS6

— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) November 30, 2021

past time, I'd say. the FBI agents deserved jail time at least as much as the AIM resistors did.

"more just that those are not the ONLY people who live in far-flung suburbs and rural areas."

Do you genuinely believe anyone was under that impression??

Of course I didn’t. But every time it was pointed out that these lazy, broad brush stereotypes were lazy, broad brush stereotypes someone had to chime in with, “gee I dunno, all the rural people *I* know are Trump supporters with massive SUVs”, so I thought it a point worth belaboring. But ilx loves few things more than sneering disdain of anyone who doesn’t live in an urban center.

and with that I want to just bid this thread farewell

may this be its last dying breath

good night sweet thread

may flights of angelzzzz

Going... going...

Come ooooooon, the suspense is killing me. Plus I have to post a thing.

Someone else start whatever this thread is gonna be

"I have had it up to here waiting for the U.S. Congress to be remastered"

lol

I was just thinking of the same title idea lol

ok

US Politics, December 2021 — I have had it up to here waiting for the U.S. Congress to be remastered