DL Open Thread: Sat., June 1, 2019
Trump Ignored Everybody, Imposed Tariffs. Pretty much his entire ‘administration’ counseled against it. Didn’t matter.
Biden Launched ‘Tirade’ Against Obamacare. Because he ‘knows people’, he ‘knows politics’. He’s ‘been doing this for 36 years’. Genius.
The Debtors’ Prison Of Ferguson, MO. How poor people’s constitutional rights get slow-walked.
Photos From The Darkest Corners Of The Tobacco Industry. Child labor, deforestation and, of course, lung cancer.
The Case Against Early Specialization. As a parent, I could not agree more with author David Epstein’s thesis.
Oh, and there was another mass shooting in Virginia Beach yesterday. Doesn’t matter. Nothing will happen. Especially not in Delaware.
What do you want to talk about?
Look. I’m no huge Biden fan, but that is some mega-bullshitty clickbait from Huffpo. Whatever “tirade” Biden launched it is clear that it wasn’t launched at the law, but at the strategy. And it wasn’t launched yesterday, but 10 years ago.
You wouldn’t get any of that from the Huffpo headline though.
To me, the story is the devotion to incrementalism and bipartisanship that he is still pushing:
Here’s what he said then:
“At one point in the Kaiser forum, a panelist asked Biden why he thought Republicans would negotiate on any legislation, given their hostility to Democrats and opposition to a children’s health proposal then before Congress. Biden predicted that with George W. Bush gone, he would be able to bring around some Republicans. “I’d be president and Bush wouldn’t be,” he quipped.
During the forum, Biden talked about health care as a “moral and practical imperative,” pointed to his long record of supporting government-led expansions of insurance and told stories about middle-class Americans struggling with their medical bills. But, Biden warned, passing comprehensive reform on a party-line vote wouldn’t work. “Anyone who thinks we’re going to take $2 trillion of the economy, with stakeholders in that $2 trillion, and by a single vote and move it from here to here [gesturing] is kidding themselves,” Biden said. “It’s not going to happen.”
Here’s where he is now:
“But the debate in the Democratic Party isn’t simply about whether health care reform should require wiping out private insurance. It’s about whether the economic agenda should include some kind of job guarantee or a universal child allowance, whether government should guarantee access to high-quality child care, and whether the crisis of global warming requires something with the ambition of a Green New Deal. Behind each of these proposals are layers of substantive and strategic questions, among them whether to pursue bipartisan reform, even if that means settling for less sweeping measures, or whether to assume GOP intransigence and focus on maximizing what Democrats can accomplish on their own.
Biden has not yet said much specifically about policy and, following reports that he was crafting a climate change proposal that would appeal to Donald Trump voters, rejected suggestions that he was looking for a “middle road.” But Biden has also said he still believes in bipartisan reform, sounding an awful lot like the 2008 candidate who predicted Republicans would be more reasonable once Bush was out of office.”
Bipartisan reform, my ass. Guy’s delusional.
Virginia is an “Open Carry” state that allows anyone to bring guns into anywhere with or without a Concealed Handgun Permit (CHP). It would have been illegal for the murder victims to tell the murder “Hey, you can’t come into this public building with all those guns.”
There are a few execptions, the General Asembly building, for example.
Yeah, that’s always one of the exceptions.
Shoot anybody but state legislators…
Only one story today. Champions League final.
Tottenham Hotspur v Liverpool.
Estadio Metropolitano, Madrid. 15:00.
Come on you Spurs!
Walk on, walk on
With hope in your heart
And you’ll never walk alone
You’ll neeeeever waaaalk alooooooooooooone !!!
From me to you….
Fuck off, scouser scum!
Come on you Spurs!
“Some people believe that football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
Bill Shankly (former Liverpool manager)
All credit to Liverpool. Also, Bill Shankly was a socialist
The socialism I believe in is everybody working for the same goal and everybody having a share in the rewards. That’s how I see football, that’s how I see life.
He said this. So it’s a great day for socialism
Every day is a great day for socialism.
Interesting story on how voting rights attorneys obtained a trove of secret material from the estate of the GOP’s late gerrymandering guru:
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/05/thomas-hofeller-secret-gerrymandering-files-north-carolina.html
There is no longer any question that the so-called ‘citizenship question’ is designed to ensure Rethug control going forward.
We will soon learn whether the Supreme Court has been completely rigged.
Yikes… DE is getting worse. Keep scaring the high earners out of the State.
Delaware
• Avg. income after taxes: $34,182 (pre-tax: $51,449)
• Avg. taxes paid as pct. of income: 33.6% (the highest)
• Federal income tax collections per capita: $12,492 (the highest)
• State and local tax collections per capita: $4,775 (21st highest)
• Largest source of state and local tax collections: Other taxes (49.0% of total)
1) Those millionares are getting off pretty easy based on any common sense reading of this.
2) “Other taxes (49.0% of total)” That’s shameful.
3) Next time link to the USA Today article.
“In an interview with 24/7 Wall St., Katherine Loughead, a policy analyst with the Tax Foundation, a tax policy think tank, explained some of the factors driving the differences. In states rich in natural resources like oil and natural gas, policy makers can raise revenue by taxing energy companies rather than individual incomes. “Those states are able to rely more on extraction taxes … and therefore do not have to rely on an income tax,” Loughead said.
Indeed, resource-rich states like Alaska and Wyoming are among the seven states that do not levy a personal income tax. Partially as a result, taxes have a relatively small impact on the net income of the average resident.”
You’re a high earner, right? Why don’t you leave?