Board 8 > Politics Containment Topic 379: Kabulshit

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://twitter.com/hunterw/status/1452434020810346498?s=21

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...and nobody is surprised. And they'll still face no consequences. "Move on!" Republicans will tell us, as they continue to refuse to move on from Obama, Hillary, the American Civil War, and a billion other things.

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Nah they'll definitely go "but what about" for this one.

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Have we thought about this:

Obama

Thank you.

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I mean, many of those congress people campaigned to win the vote of insurectionists. Of course they helped. That should surprise nobody.

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masterplum posted...

I mean, many of those congress people campaigned to win the vote of insurectionists. Of course they helped. That should surprise nobody.

But I heard the whole thing was done by Antifa, the Dems, and the treasonous FBI!

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Pretty good interview with a scientist studying climate change on what parts of models are done and largely solved (that cutting CO2 is a good idea), and the work that remains to be done in the field (a lot of computer cloud modeling to get more accurate local predictions--for two reasons. First reason being since local phenomena like melting in greenland can have an impact on global temperature. Second reason because local governments want to know what kind of disasters they should prepare and budget for).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fkCo_trbT8

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https://twitter.com/joshuapotash/status/1452691150310187012?s=21

Last year they said driving through protestors blocking traffic is ok right?

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https://twitter.com/peoplesmedianyc/status/1452664872244858890?s=21

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https://twitter.com/peoplesmedianyc/status/1452737854791159814?s=21

good thread showing the contrast between how the on-duty police treat these protestors and BLM protestors

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https://youtu.be/3OVLf_U-1fM

Neil Cavuto is one of the few examples left of "reasonable conservatives."

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This proposed billionaire tax on unrealized gains feels blatantly unconstitutional to me. Maybe I'm wrong but I could see a 9-0 vote in SCOTUS striking this thing down.

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Just make capital gains tax rate match income tax rate.

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Just in case anyone's still under the ridiculous impression that the BBC is a reputable news organization any better than American institutions, tonight they put out an article about trans women raping lesbians based on a poll conducted by an anti-trans group (as described by the BBC of 3 year ago's reporting of the same group, Get The L Out UK) social media page with 80 responders, only one of which making an actual claim of coercion by a trans woman

https://twitter.com/AyoCaesar/status/1452921646784856076

The kicker: one of the anecdotal stories cited was from a cis woman Lily Cane with an admitted history to a number of rapes against women that article doesn't bother to note - after working on it *for a year*

https://twitter.com/christapeterso/status/1453149042125332480

This comes what, a month after BBC cutting ties with LGBT groups for the sake of "impartiality", and a year after banning their staff from attending pride to avoid "the trans issue"?

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I feel like I need a year just to unpack the "reproductive organ of a female ape" line, why would anyone *ever* describe it like that.

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Maniac64 posted...

Just make capital gains tax rate match income tax rate.

The problem is that it is unrealized.

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Yeah, taxing unrealized gains is pretty ridiculous (and will probably tank the stocks of the companies when theyre forced to sell a sizable fraction of their shares to pay the tax, not to mention the ownership implications). The tax would also be deceptively bad for revenue since its super frontloaded; Wydens proposal would tax all previous unrealized gains which would get a bunch of money in the 10 year period for scoring, but in subsequent decades it would only be getting money on new gains, so itll no longer be sufficient to pay for the corresponding spending. And then even longer term the government would have gotten the money anyway when the stock actually finally is sold but now wont (because they got it earlier).

This is a really stupid way around just raising rates on the rich more broadly defined than like 700 people.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

This is a really stupid way around just raising rates on the rich more broadly defined than like 700 people.

blame sinema for that

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xp1337 posted...

blame sinema for that

I do!

Looks like it's out, though
https://twitter.com/elwasson/status/1453435246075056133

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If it's really only 700 people maybe it runs afoul of the bill of attainder/ex-post facto provision of the constitution also. Imagine a law that makes it illegal for people whose first name begins with an H, middle name begins with an R, and last name begins with a C, who were born in Illinois between 1945 and 1950, and who have lived in Arkansas and New York, to receive more than $10,000 for giving a speech. That should be unconstitutional right? This was a direct response to the old British rule that if the courts wouldn't convict someone, Parliament could just pass a new law declaring the person guilty and punishing them.

Hmm....so if unrealized gains are to be taxed, and we are trying to save this law's constitutionality, it could be argued that any gain from before the passage of the bill cannot be taxed without the new law being an ex-post facto law. It would be like putting in a new tax on giving speeches and applying it to speeches already given.

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what the fuck is even going to be left in the bill

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Or maybe it's not out?

https://twitter.com/StevenTDennis/status/1453440802290536458

Who knows with this thing

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HeroDelTiempo17 posted...

what the fuck is even going to be left in the bill

"It is the sense of Congress that President Trump did a bad job. The end."

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Corrik7 posted...

The problem is that it is unrealized.

I was saying that as an alternative means of raising taxes on the rich 2ithout actually raising their taxes.

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I thought I heard there was an existing tax scheme from like the 80s that works on the same principle as the proposed unrealized gains tax but it hasn't faced any real legal challenge.

Putting aside whether or not it is constitutional or not I have little doubt that this current court would strike it down. At which point the issue would become severability and such. If they strike that tax down but all the other programs remain intact there are worse outcomes than that. But I can see them trying to pull some "well it only qualified for reconciliation because that income was assumed so now that it's not it shouldn't have been, etc, etc" even if litigating Senate rules is not even remotely in their lane.

but really this could all be avoided if sinema wasn't just opposed to the more straight-forward approach

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Another good tax change that was in the bill earlier but got killed was eliminating stepped up basis (basically, if I buy a stock for $10 and sell it at $100, Im taxed on $90. If I die when its at $60, however, the basis is stepped up from $10 to $60 for my heirs and when they sell it at $100 they only owe taxes on $40).

I think part of the reason it got killed was that the Dems got greedy and also wanted death to be a realization event rather than just killing stepped up basis.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Another good tax change that was in the bill earlier but got killed was eliminating stepped up basis (basically, if I buy a stock for $10 and sell it at $100, Im taxed on $90. If I die when its at $60, however, the basis is stepped up from $10 to $60 for my heirs and when they sell it at $100 they only owe taxes on $40).

I think part of the reason it got killed was that the Dems got greedy and also wanted death to be a realization event rather than just killing stepped up basis.

Doesn't estate tax take care of that? Death is already a realization event. Like, your heirs are already paying 40% tax on the value inherited above the exclusion amount, so when they get it at $100 they have to pay $40 in estate tax.

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red sox 777 posted...

Doesn't estate tax take care of that? Death is already a realization event. Like, your heirs are already paying 40% tax on the value inherited above the exclusion amount, so when they get it at $100 they have to pay $40 in estate tax.

Well, in the sense that theyll have to pay something on it. But the estate tax is already normally a double tax; for the stock it would change it from being untaxed to singly taxed whereas normal income/realized gains would have been doubly taxed (income or capital gains tax + estate tax vs just estate tax).

Under the current system theres a substantial benefit to your heirs not to sell your stock before you die unless you need to (unless there are unrealized losses, in which case you would want to sell before dying)

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Ran some numbers to test it and you're right. I think if you got rid of the step up entirely though, it would advantage people to sell before dying so as to pay the capital gains tax before death and thereby reduce the amount being subjected to the estate tax. So maybe a partial step-up in basis would be best to get rid of this difference in treatment? I feel like there should be some fraction of the total step-up you can do in order to make people indifferent between selling before death or not.

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Paid Family Leave is out.

...I hate our politicians so much. How do we live in one of the only countries in the world where paid family leave is considered controversial? And yeah, it's mostly Manchin and Sinema. But we shouldn't let Republicans off the hook. Paid Family Leave should have bipartisan support if we had NORMAL political parties instead of the far right-kookery paid shills that we have in the Republican Party. The day the Republican party dies will be a great day for America. If it ever comes, and I don't have faith it will. Or if it does, something worse will come out of it.

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Dancedreamer posted...

Paid Family Leave is out.

...I hate our politicians so much. How do we live in one of the only countries in the world where paid family leave is considered controversial? And yeah, it's mostly Manchin and Sinema. But we shouldn't let Republicans off the hook. Paid Family Leave should have bipartisan support if we had NORMAL political parties instead of the far right-kookery paid shills that we have in the Republican Party. The day the Republican party dies will be a great day for America. If it ever comes, and I don't have faith it will. Or if it does, something worse will come out of it.

I thought latest reports were that Gillibrand cornered Manchin and insisted she would not vote for the bill without it in.

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Definitely better things to drop from the bill than that...!

(*cough* SALT *cough*)

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https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-27/paid-family-leave-benefit-likely-to-be-removed-from-democrats-bill

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Dancedreamer posted...

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-10-27/paid-family-leave-benefit-likely-to-be-removed-from-democrats-bill

https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/578835-democrats-try-to-back-manchin-off-killing-paid-family-leave-proposal

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The first article actually covers the same thing, I think. The headline is just less optimistic.

Manchin said that hes considering the proposals, but that the fast-track procedure Democrats are using to enact the bill is not the place to do major policy.

Oh fuck off. The only reason theyre doing it this way is because Republicans literally will not give them any other alternative.

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Our country's work culture is destructive. We live in a country where we value the factory owner over the factory worker. All because the Factory Owner can line the pockets of our politicians. People are lauded for going to work sick, ignoring their own health in order to help out their poor wealthy bosses who make more money in a year than most of them will make in 5.

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https://mobile.twitter.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1453510548260364289

"Every time we might lose, it's voter fraud."

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Taxing unrealized gains is beyond stupid, in terms of the fact that it will do more damage to tax revenue and the economy than any other policy talked about in the last year. Paid family leave not being a thing is kinda bonkers though, what a backwards country the US is

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Definitely better things to drop from the bill than that...!

(*cough* SALT *cough*)

The Democrats are gonna pander to their base. Affluent people in California and New York whose taxes went up under Trump because they lost their massive SALT deductions.

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Dancedreamer posted...

Paid Family Leave is out.

...I hate our politicians so much. How do we live in one of the only countries in the world where paid family leave is considered controversial? And yeah, it's mostly Manchin and Sinema. But we shouldn't let Republicans off the hook. Paid Family Leave should have bipartisan support if we had NORMAL political parties instead of the far right-kookery paid shills that we have in the Republican Party. The day the Republican party dies will be a great day for America. If it ever comes, and I don't have faith it will. Or if it does, something worse will come out of it.

Is this actually true or is this another USA is not Western Europe thing. Serious question

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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_leave

The United States, Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and a few island countries in the Pacific Ocean are the only countries in the United Nations that do not require employers to provide paid time off for new parents.

According to my mom, new mothers got at least six months off in the 80s. In Iraq. During the Iran-Iraq war.

We're behind bro.

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Looks like a deal was reached, or else Biden is leeroy jenkings'ing it and daring Manchin and Sinema to tank this to cripple it even further.

https://twitter.com/POTUS/status/1453710652409892872

https://twitter.com/ThePlumLineGS/status/1453710825626157056

Top Line: $1.75t

• Universal Pre-K for all 3 and 4 year olds
• Child Care funding for families that make under 250% state median income; caps costs at 7% of income
• Child Tax Credit extended another year
• $555bn in Climate Funding
• Medicare covers hearing now
• ACA subsidies expanded, including Medicaid in red states

Revenue Side (projected to raise $1.95t so fully paid for and even reduces the deficit):

• 15% Corporate (and Global) Minimum Tax
• 1% Surcharge on Corporate Stock Buybacks
• Some kind of penalty for companies that move overseas to try and dodge the tax

Not in as far as I can tell, but we'll see I don't think anyone has actual text yet:

• Paid Family and Medical Leave (looks like this is pretty much entirely on Manchin)
• Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices (Not sure on Senate side but I know some corporate Dems in the House were raising a fuss here. WH says they don't have the votes.)
• Medicare covering Dental and Vision (IIRC it was Sinema who killed this inexplicably)
• Unrealized gains tax on billionaires. (Manchin opposed this.)

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this country is so brainwashed into sucking business owner dick at the expense of workers.

Any facebook comment thread complaining about this will see dozens of other workers popping up to defend business owners at the cost of their own interest. It's a sickness.

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Or they're just sock puppets.
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Stock buybacks are completely moronic to begin with so I am ok with that

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ExThaNemesis posted...

this country is so brainwashed into sucking business owner dick at the expense of workers.

Any facebook comment thread complaining about this will see dozens of other workers popping up to defend business owners at the cost of their own interest. It's a sickness.

It really is strange. We prop up business owners and small business owners so much in this country, but like...not EVERYONE can be a business owner. SOMEONE needs to be a worker for those businesses to actually run. So why can't we praise those people too?

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xp1337 posted...

Paid Family and Medical Leave (looks like this is pretty much entirely on Manchin)
Medicare being able to negotiate drug prices (Not sure on Senate side but I know some corporate Dems in the House were raising a fuss here. WH says they don't have the votes.)
Medicare covering Dental and Vision (IIRC it was Sinema who killed this inexplicably)

Anyone against any of these things has no business being in office.

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