#i also think this solves the possible scheduling problem with Martin and Ben being so busy

[bisexualmindcabin]

I hate how much your S5 theory makes sense, but it does! The 100y D-notice thing, wow. However, the part about trying to recreate the outrage surrounding the original stories that led to it coming back after a decade didn't really happen. There's like 20 people who want more (I'm referring to TJLC-ers such as myself) but no one is being vocal about it. Even people who liked S4 at face value have all but forgotten the show exists by this point, so what is the big pay-off for waiting 10 years do you think? Is it just so they can say they did it? Because honestly, after 10 years even the most hardcore fans will move on to other interests. There's so much media out there, if it does come in 2027 the majority of people will be like, oh wow, yeah I remember that show and not like a huge celebration that it's coming back. And I say this as someone who is hyper-obsessed with the show, but a decade is so long. What do you think?

MOOD NONNY DJSJDKD. I too hate how much my theory makes sense!

To answer your other question, I agree. It didn't work. As I understand it, they meant to make s4 in a way that was off-putting, but made people react by saying actually, go back, we don't want a Sherlock that is only about the stories, we don't want a Sherlock in which Sherlock and John are estranged, or fighting, or with someone else in between.

The reaction that actually happened was astronomical compared to what (I think) they wanted. It exploded in rage or derision at how bad it was then died off quickly for the general masses. It made us, TJLCers, equal parts deeply confused and hurt, for a long time.

And they know this! The know they failed and "broke the contract between an author and a reader", which is exactly what BBC Dracula is about (If you haven't watched it, I recommend). In it, if you agree with @victorianpining's reading of them using Dracula as a self-insert, they pretty much acknowledge that they did, and didn't mean to, but that the game is on regardless.

I disagree with the part about it being too long a time. As a hyper-obsessed fan myself, I'm gonna be sat lmao. For normal people however, is it too long for hype to be high and fandom to be active? Yes and probably yes. Is it so long all interest will have died down? Well depends. People won't be thinking about it before it's announces, but 10 years is exactly the amount of time for nostalgia to sort of set in. People who watched casually have probably forgotten how bad s4 was. People who were once fans but despised s4 might, in 10 years time, stop resenting that season and decide to enjoy the first three again. It's difficult to know those things beforehand.

And ultimately I think it's a moot point. The BBC doesn't care about international audiences and has generally allowed the writers to do whatever they wanted, and the writers have never cared too much about what other people thought, rather they were doing the show because it was what they wanted to see. And that, right there, is the pay off. The thing that would motivate them to do it is that they consider their adaptation to be the first one that gets it right, where everyone else has been getting it wrong. If that includes a 10 year gap, that has been foreshadowed by the entire subtext and meta-meaning of s4, and brings new meaning to the reason they might ascribe as to why ACD originally killed off Holmes, but with a satisfying rewrite for the reason they will bring him back, then they'll do it.

[patriotsnet]

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

While Republicans believe in balancing spending cuts with tax cuts across the board, Democrats believe in cutting taxes for the middle and lower class, while raising them for the upper class. They believe in a higher marginal rate, with income tax being higher for those who make more, as opposed to the Republican views that taxes should be equal percentages for all income levels. In the 2012 Party Platform, 56% of republicans opposed raising taxes on those who earned over $250,000. This isnt to say that Republicans do not believe in focusing relief on the middle and lower classes; they do, however, believe in relief for all Americans, and not in raising taxes on the upper classes.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

They want to take away your hamburgers, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in February. This is what Stalin dreamt about America will never be a socialist country! The Conservative Political Action Conference audience cheered. The video played on my phone as I waved at Danny, the homeless man who begs for food every morning at the Newark Penn Station, where scores of poor people sleep in wheelchairs or lean on crutches or stand by the delis to ask for change.

These folks need more than hamburgers. They need jobs and homes. Yet, as the 2020 election season starts, Trump has branded progressives as socialists who will steal property and bring tyranny. The presidents fearmongering contrasts with the actual Green New Deal that some Democrats support but failed to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate. Its a fear driven by ideology. Republicans paint the poor as undeserving, marked by cultural or personal character flaws. Whereas Democratic Socialists believe people have the ability to run the economy and society to meet their needs. Why this difference in perception? It is because Republicans arent afraid of socialism they are afraid of equality with people they see as inferior.

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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The 10% cuts were “across the board,” as he liked to say, implying they were of equal value to all. The dollar value of the cuts was, of course, far larger for those with larger incomes. Moreover, the tax law changes that accompanied the rate cuts made it easier for individuals and corporations to “write off” various forms of income and spending to lower their tax bills further. The tax rate for capital gains, money made from successful investing, would come down from 28% to 20%.

Reagan did not get everything he sought in this initial foray against high taxes and progressivity. The Senate trimmed the third year of the tax cut from 10% to 5%, and it would take a second bill, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, to pull the marginal top rate all the way down to 28%.

But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

They were the culmination of rising anti-tax sentiment in the late 1970s, when some states adopted tax limitations by popular referendum. That spirit was kept alive in the decades to come by groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by activist Grover Norquist. Starting in 1986, Norquist has challenged candidates for office to sign his “taxpayer protection pledge” not to raise taxes. The great majority of Republicans have signed.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

Reagan was able to reverse what had been a decades-long commitment to at least the look of progressivity. He could do it in part because his 1980 election coattails enabled his party to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. Moreover, while Democrats still had a House majority, their ranks included scores of members from Southern and Midwestern districts that had also voted for Reagan.

When the budget resolution passed in that summer of 1981, 63 House Democrats joined all 190 Republicans in backing it. And when the tax package came to its critical votes in July, dozens of Democrats sided with Reagan and the Republicans rather than their own leadership.

In 1982, Democrats added to their majority in the House and negotiated some revenue increases with the Senate and the White House. And in Reagan’s second term, momentum built quickly for a tax overhaul that would combine still lower marginal rates with new business taxes and a paring back of tax preferences and other “loopholes.” The new overhaul’s main appeal to Democrats was that it exempted far more middle- and lower-income earners from the income tax altogether.

Career anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, here in 2018, called the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut “Reaganite” the ultimate compliment from the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.hide caption

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Democratic socialism is not a Marxist fever dream; its a call for help. Its less socialism than humanitarian aid for a people in crisis. Millions of Americans are in dead-end jobs, slipping behind on bills, deep in debt and scared of climate change.

Something is wrong with capitalism, Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1966. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Saying the economic system causes pain means moving beyond the conservative image of the poor as flawed, personally or culturally, or the liberal image of them as unlucky victims of a more or less functioning meritocracy. To honor our human potential, capitalism must be dismantled, its pieces taken apart and recombined into a new world.

Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said at the rollout of the Green New Deal. To combat that threat, we need to be as ambitious and innovative as possible. In its 14 pages, the plan envisions a World War II-scale mobilization of millions of workers. They will repair roads and bridges, build smart grids, upgrade industry to be zero carbon, build green public transit, remove carbon from the air, clean up waste sites, and clean up the poisoned land and waterways. When they come home, those workers can rest in new, green housing, and if sick or injured, they can go see a doctor, using a Medicare for All card.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Not true. Welfare officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

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Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

More recently, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Richard Burr of North Carolina have headed up the Republican fight on health care. Their proposal was named the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, and is based upon the principle of providing more flexibility and purchasing power to the individual. It shares some important similarities with the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to allow dependent coverage through the age of 26, and the inability of insurance companies to provide lifetime limits. When the three senators released their proposal, Burr stated The American people have found out what is in ObamaCare broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates and government bureaucracy. We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.;The group stated that their proposal is designed to be roughly budget neutral over the first 10 years, leaving the financial burden on the American people at nothing. Coburn commented that they created this proposal because Its critical we chart another path forward. Our health care system wasnt working well before ObamaCare and it is worse after ObamaCare.

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile the poorest 20 percent will stay there. And the same stickiness exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

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How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If youre a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If youre a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the basket of deplorables, support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this years report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

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Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 – Leading Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed a substantial roll-back of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, including raising the top tax rate on corporations to 26.5% from the current 21%.

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

In an attempt to finance the new spending, the Democratic-led committee will debate a proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to a document circulated among members of the panel.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

Even if the legislation as proposed passes Congress and is signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, corporate taxes would still be lower than they were before the enactment of the tax cuts pushed through by Republicans in 2017. But the top individual income tax rate would revert to its pre-2017 level.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has scheduled work sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to debate tax policy and other matters under its jurisdiction to be included in the $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, which would require a simple majority to be passed in the Senate.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

getty

The economy is recovering from the depths of the pandemic in large part due to the massive relief packages that Congress passed in 2020 and 2021. Just in time for this recovery, Senate Republicans are pushing for cuts to vital programs. According to news reports, five GOP senators are proposing a commission that would come up with proposals to balance the federal budget within a decade. Given that four of the five sponsors of this idea have signed on to the tax pledge to never, ever under any circumstances raise taxes, they are looking for programs to cut. They consequently take aim mainly at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These targeted programs are already and will continue to prove crucial to the financial and physical health of millions of Americans that have suffered from the pandemic. Many workers, especially older ones, have lost their jobs permanently and will move into early retirement with permanently lower benefits and little or no savings outside of those benefits. Millions of Americans, again particularly among older ones, experience long-term consequences from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Those hardest hit by pandemic will need strong, expanded retirement and health benefits, not cuts to an already basic system.

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[junker-town]

Let’s pretend Iowa won’t go 8-5. Will things be better or worse?

A physical defense and plenty of fullback and tight end action? Kirk Ferentz’s 20th year should be ... familiar.

Bill C’s annual preview series of every FBS team in college football continues. Catch up here!

It was maybe the most apt afternoon in the nearly 20-year Ferentz era. On November 4, 2017, nearing the home stretch of a season that boasted plenty of surprising results, Iowa destroyed No. 3 Ohio State in the most Iowa possible way.

The Hawkeyes picked off J.T. Barrett four times (he threw only five interceptions in OSU’s other 13 games), running backs combined for 35 carries and 239 yards, and Hawkeye tight ends and fullbacks combined for 10 catches, 126 yards, and five touchdowns. Iowa receivers touched the ball six times, but Iowa destroyed a top-five team.

Iowa then got blown out by Wisconsin and lost to Purdue for the second time in a decade. The Hawkeyes finished 8-5, just as they did in 2016.

If the Ferentz era has taught us anything, it’s that the universe balances itself out, sometimes with force. Iowa has won either seven or eight games six times in the last eight years, with a positive outlier (12-2 in 2015) and a negative one (4-8 in 2012). Iowa is going to do what Iowa does, deploying fullbacks and multiple tight ends, working in plenty of current and former walk-ons, and playing sturdy, controlled Iowa Football™. It’s going to result in about eight wins, and every now and then, the breaks are going to skew particularly happy or sad.

Hey guess what: S&P+ projects the Hawkeyes to win seven to eight games this fall, and after averaging a ranking of 37.5 over the last decade, they’re projected 36th. Constants are important.

In a lot of ways, Iowa is the ideal of a lot of the things I advocate for in college football. I spend a lot of time talking about how schools need to be more patient and less willing to cut a good coach loose, starting a likely fruitless quest for a great one. I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of an administration trying to give a good coach what he needs instead of starting over. I rail against the lack of a long-term vision at most programs, and Iowa has the most long-term vision of all.

Iowa’s relentless stability means we know what’s most likely to happen this fall: the same thing that usually happens. But it’s no fun to write a preview with that viewpoint. So let’s look for tea leaves to read. If this isn’t the typical 8-5 Iowa season, what’s more likely: something better or something worse?

I’m leaning former.

The passing game is in excellent shape. The Hawkeyes ranked 23rd in Passing S&P+ and return quarterback Nate Stanley, two of his top three wideouts, every tight end (this being Iowa, that’s important!), and both offensive tackles.

The secondary loses a stud (cornerback Josh Jackson) but returns one, too (injured safety Brandon Snyder).

The defensive line runs four-deep at end and returns three of four tackles.

The running game was strangely bad last season and now must replace two previously solid running backs, and after fielding one of the league’s sturdiest linebacking corps in 2017, the Hawkeyes have three starters to replace. (It’s hard to worry about Iowa linebackers, but that’s a lot of turnover.)

In all likelihood, the plusses and minuses will cancel out and give us a familiar quality. But there’s more to be excited about than worried about, I think.

Offense

Despite the 1,000-yard rusher (Akrum Wadley), the requisite all-conference lineman (Sean Welsh), the run-heavy tendencies (61st in run rate on standard downs, 32nd on passing downs), and the typical collection of tight ends and fullbacks, Iowa’s offense wasn’t exactly Iowa’s offense last year.

The Hawkeye ranked only 105th in rushing success rate and 92nd in yards per play on first down. Part of that was due to good run defenses — they were 62nd in the opponent-adjusted Rushing S&P+, and that 92nd YPP ranking was a middle-of-the-pack eighth in the Big Ten — but they faced a lot of second-and-longs and put pressure on a sophomore quarterback to make up ground.

For the most part, Stanley did. He completed only 56 percent of his passes and took a few too many sacks (Iowa was 76th in Adj. Sack Rate), but he made a lot of huge throws. Considering how many of his passes came when Iowa was on schedule, you would expect a lower completion rate. You’d also probably expect something far worse than his sparkling 26-to-6 TD-to-INT ratio.

Plus, you can get away with a lower completion rate if most of your completions result in successful plays, and that was basically the case when Stanley was throwing to either of two tight ends (Noah Fant and T.J. Hockenson) or split end Matt VandeBerg.

Ferentz suggested he was committed to his identity when he promoted his son Brian to offensive coordinator last year. But it might be a little harder than normal to avoid the temptation to throw.

The Des Moines Register-USA TODAY Sports

Nate Stanley (4)

Stanley’s back, as are Fant, Hockenson, and flankers Nick Easley and Ihmire Smith-Marsette. Tackles Alaric Jackson and Tristan Wirfs, who combined for 20 of 26 starts out wide, are back as well. Leaning heavily on Stanley’s arm could pay off.

Meanwhile, the run game, already shaky, is starting over. Wadley and backup James Butler are gone after combining to carry 344 times. Fullback Drake Kulick and two all-conference interior linemen (Welsh and honorable-mention all-B1G center James Daniels) have departed as well.

To maintain the run-heavy identity as we assume the Hawkeyes will, they will need some help from youth. Sophomore backs Toren Young, Ivory Kelly-Martin, and Toks Akinribade are all back, but they combined to average 5.1 yards per carry as freshmen, 4.5 if you take out a nice performance against Nebraska’s moribund defense. All three are built like Iowa running backs of lore (5’11 or 6’0, 200 to 220 pounds), but they are mostly unproven, and they’ll be behind a couple of unproven pieces up front.

So maybe the problem solves itself. Iowa runs on first down, gets nowhere, and Stanley gets a couple of passes to try to catch up to the chains. Boom — pass-heavy offense!

Stanley had a 61 percent completion rate and 158 passer rating (with 11 touchdowns to just one pick) when he was allowed to pass on first down, and with this offense, a lot of those passes were in play-action. And not that this means anything in a large-sample sense, but he had a sense for the moment: he was 5-for-8 with three touchdowns on fourth downs, and he was better when down by one possession (144.3 passer rating) than tied (111.5) or ahead by one possession (130.7).

Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

T.J. Hockenson (38) and Noah Fant (87)

Defense

For the seventh time in the Ferentz era, Iowa ranked in the Def. S&P+ top 15. But as with the offense, last year’s strengths and weaknesses weren’t quite what we have come to expect. The bend-don’t-break tendencies were still there, but there was more bending than usual up front — Iowa ranked 84th in rushing success rate and 52nd in Rushing S&P+.

The pass defense, though? Stupendous. The Hawkeyes combined big-play prevention (10th in passing IsoPPP, eighth in passes per game of 20-plus yards) with a solid pass rush and opportunism. Of opponents’ incompletions, 46 percent were the result of either an interception or pass break-up. That’s the second highest rate in the country.

Better yet, the pass defense improved as the year progressed. After allowing a 60 percent completion rate and 122 passer rating over the first five games, they improved to 53 percent and 103.4, respectively, over the final eight.

Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

Brandon Snyder

Eight different Iowa defenders — two linemen, two linebackers, and four defensive backs — had at least four passes defensed, and half of them return. But it does have to be concerning that the two most prolific defenders (corner Josh Jackson, who had 26 passes defensed, and linebacker Josey Jewell, who had 13) are gone. Junior corners Manny Rugamba and Michael Ojemudia are back, as is sophomore Matt Hankins, but Jackson set the bar awfully high.

Brandon Snyder’s return will help. The safety and senior-to-be combined three tackles for loss with seven passes defensed and three forced fumbles in 2016 before injuring his knee, returning for one game (in which he had a pick six and two breakups), and re-injuring it.

Snyder is an all-conference talent, as is senior Jake Gervase, who nearly matched his disruption numbers while replacing him. Throw in junior Amani Hooker, and it appears Iowa is more than set at safety. That could counter at least some potential CB difficulty. And the pass rush will help: ends Parker Hesse, Anthony Nelson, and A.J. Epenesa combined for 25.5 TFLs and 16 sacks. They’re all back, as are tackles Matt Nelson, Cedrick Lattimore, and Brady Reiff.

Jeffrey Becker-USA TODAY Sports

Parker Hesse (40) and Cedrick Lattimore (95)

So that leaves the other issue: linebacker. It is difficult to imagine Iowa struggling at this position, but Jewell, Bo Bower, and Ben Niemann were absurdly good.

Only Jewell and MIchigan’s Khaleke Hudson combined at least 13 tackles for loss with at least 10 passes defensed. He almost single-handedly beat Penn State. Bower and Niemann added 9.5 more TFLs and eight more PDs. That’s a crazy amount of production.

If nothing else, there are plenty of options: seniors Jack Hockaday and Aaron Mends, juniors Amani Jones and Kristian Welch, sophomores Nick Niemann and Barrington Wade, redshirt freshmen Djimon Colbert and Nate Wieland, and true freshmen Dillon Doyle and Jayden McDonald will pretty much all head into fall camp thinking they have a chance at a spot.

Of course, “rotation” is a theoretical concept at Iowa, where coordinator Phil Parker, like Norm Parker before him, tends to play the smallest number of guys possible — the fourth-leading tackler at LB last year had only 6.5 tackles.

Special Teams

Special teams were a net positive, thanks mostly to Miguel Recinos and a decent return team. Recinos made all of his PATs and eight of 10 field goals and ranked 11th in kickoff efficiency, and returning kick returners Ivory Kelly-Martin and Ihmir Smith-Marsette combined to average 23.4 yards per return. That drove a No. 38 Special Teams S&P+ ranking.

Now imagine where the Hawkeyes could have ranked had they not been 124th in punt efficiency. Colten Rastetter averaged just 37.8 yards per punt, which led to freshman Ryan Gersonde tearing off his redshirt midseason. He averaged a much healthier 42.5 yards but got hurt after just four games, and a less-than-confident Rastetter’s average sank to a ghastly 30.5 over the final three contests.

If Gersonde is healthy, then this is a very good unit.

2018 outlook

2018 Schedule & Projection Factors

Date Opponent Proj. S&P+ Rk Proj. Margin Win Probability 1-Sep Northern Illinois 69 9.7 71% 8-Sep Iowa State 46 5.1 62% 15-Sep Northern Iowa NR 24.3 92% 22-Sep Wisconsin 12 -8.1 32% 6-Oct at Minnesota 67 3.9 59% 13-Oct at Indiana 58 2.5 56% 20-Oct Maryland 80 11.4 75% 27-Oct at Penn State 8 -15.5 19% 3-Nov at Purdue 54 1.5 54% 10-Nov Northwestern 38 3.2 57% 17-Nov at Illinois 99 12.3 76% 23-Nov Nebraska 60 7.8 67%

Projected S&P+ Rk 36 Proj. Off. / Def. Rk 81 / 19 Projected wins 7.2 Five-Year S&P+ Rk 6.2 (37) 2- and 5-Year Recruiting Rk 39 / 46 2017 TO Margin / Adj. TO Margin* 7 / 6.9 2017 TO Luck/Game +0.0 Returning Production (Off. / Def.) 61% (67%, 54%) 2017 Second-order wins (difference) 7.3 (0.7)

The overall S&P+ projection — 36th with an average win total of 7.2 wins — is pretty boring. But Iowa’s 2018 could end up anything but that. The Hawkeyes have six games projected within a touchdown, with four likely wins and two likely losses. Go 3-3 in those close games, and there you go: seven wins.

There are more than seven on the table, but we’ll probably know most of what we need to know about Iowa’s 2018 by the end of September. The Hawkeyes will begin the year as a 71 percent favorite against a speedy NIU and a 62 percent favorite against Iowa State. Win both of those (which there’s only a 44 percent chance of doing), and you’re probably 3-0 when West favorite Wisconsin comes to town.

The range of outcomes there is wide: Iowa has a 55 percent chance of being 3-1 or 4-0 at the end of the month and a 45 percent chance of being 2-2 or 1-3. So yeah, there is outlier potential, good or bad.

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

While Republicans believe in balancing spending cuts with tax cuts across the board, Democrats believe in cutting taxes for the middle and lower class, while raising them for the upper class. They believe in a higher marginal rate, with income tax being higher for those who make more, as opposed to the Republican views that taxes should be equal percentages for all income levels. In the 2012 Party Platform, 56% of republicans opposed raising taxes on those who earned over $250,000. This isnt to say that Republicans do not believe in focusing relief on the middle and lower classes; they do, however, believe in relief for all Americans, and not in raising taxes on the upper classes.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

They want to take away your hamburgers, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in February. This is what Stalin dreamt about America will never be a socialist country! The Conservative Political Action Conference audience cheered. The video played on my phone as I waved at Danny, the homeless man who begs for food every morning at the Newark Penn Station, where scores of poor people sleep in wheelchairs or lean on crutches or stand by the delis to ask for change.

These folks need more than hamburgers. They need jobs and homes. Yet, as the 2020 election season starts, Trump has branded progressives as socialists who will steal property and bring tyranny. The presidents fearmongering contrasts with the actual Green New Deal that some Democrats support but failed to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate. Its a fear driven by ideology. Republicans paint the poor as undeserving, marked by cultural or personal character flaws. Whereas Democratic Socialists believe people have the ability to run the economy and society to meet their needs. Why this difference in perception? It is because Republicans arent afraid of socialism they are afraid of equality with people they see as inferior.

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To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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The 10% cuts were “across the board,” as he liked to say, implying they were of equal value to all. The dollar value of the cuts was, of course, far larger for those with larger incomes. Moreover, the tax law changes that accompanied the rate cuts made it easier for individuals and corporations to “write off” various forms of income and spending to lower their tax bills further. The tax rate for capital gains, money made from successful investing, would come down from 28% to 20%.

Reagan did not get everything he sought in this initial foray against high taxes and progressivity. The Senate trimmed the third year of the tax cut from 10% to 5%, and it would take a second bill, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, to pull the marginal top rate all the way down to 28%.

But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

They were the culmination of rising anti-tax sentiment in the late 1970s, when some states adopted tax limitations by popular referendum. That spirit was kept alive in the decades to come by groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by activist Grover Norquist. Starting in 1986, Norquist has challenged candidates for office to sign his “taxpayer protection pledge” not to raise taxes. The great majority of Republicans have signed.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

Reagan was able to reverse what had been a decades-long commitment to at least the look of progressivity. He could do it in part because his 1980 election coattails enabled his party to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. Moreover, while Democrats still had a House majority, their ranks included scores of members from Southern and Midwestern districts that had also voted for Reagan.

When the budget resolution passed in that summer of 1981, 63 House Democrats joined all 190 Republicans in backing it. And when the tax package came to its critical votes in July, dozens of Democrats sided with Reagan and the Republicans rather than their own leadership.

In 1982, Democrats added to their majority in the House and negotiated some revenue increases with the Senate and the White House. And in Reagan’s second term, momentum built quickly for a tax overhaul that would combine still lower marginal rates with new business taxes and a paring back of tax preferences and other “loopholes.” The new overhaul’s main appeal to Democrats was that it exempted far more middle- and lower-income earners from the income tax altogether.

Career anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, here in 2018, called the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut “Reaganite” the ultimate compliment from the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.hide caption

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Democratic socialism is not a Marxist fever dream; its a call for help. Its less socialism than humanitarian aid for a people in crisis. Millions of Americans are in dead-end jobs, slipping behind on bills, deep in debt and scared of climate change.

Something is wrong with capitalism, Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1966. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Saying the economic system causes pain means moving beyond the conservative image of the poor as flawed, personally or culturally, or the liberal image of them as unlucky victims of a more or less functioning meritocracy. To honor our human potential, capitalism must be dismantled, its pieces taken apart and recombined into a new world.

Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said at the rollout of the Green New Deal. To combat that threat, we need to be as ambitious and innovative as possible. In its 14 pages, the plan envisions a World War II-scale mobilization of millions of workers. They will repair roads and bridges, build smart grids, upgrade industry to be zero carbon, build green public transit, remove carbon from the air, clean up waste sites, and clean up the poisoned land and waterways. When they come home, those workers can rest in new, green housing, and if sick or injured, they can go see a doctor, using a Medicare for All card.

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Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Not true. Welfare officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

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Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

More recently, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Richard Burr of North Carolina have headed up the Republican fight on health care. Their proposal was named the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, and is based upon the principle of providing more flexibility and purchasing power to the individual. It shares some important similarities with the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to allow dependent coverage through the age of 26, and the inability of insurance companies to provide lifetime limits. When the three senators released their proposal, Burr stated The American people have found out what is in ObamaCare broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates and government bureaucracy. We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.;The group stated that their proposal is designed to be roughly budget neutral over the first 10 years, leaving the financial burden on the American people at nothing. Coburn commented that they created this proposal because Its critical we chart another path forward. Our health care system wasnt working well before ObamaCare and it is worse after ObamaCare.

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile the poorest 20 percent will stay there. And the same stickiness exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

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How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If youre a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If youre a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the basket of deplorables, support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this years report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

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Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 – Leading Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed a substantial roll-back of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, including raising the top tax rate on corporations to 26.5% from the current 21%.

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

In an attempt to finance the new spending, the Democratic-led committee will debate a proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to a document circulated among members of the panel.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

Even if the legislation as proposed passes Congress and is signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, corporate taxes would still be lower than they were before the enactment of the tax cuts pushed through by Republicans in 2017. But the top individual income tax rate would revert to its pre-2017 level.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has scheduled work sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to debate tax policy and other matters under its jurisdiction to be included in the $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, which would require a simple majority to be passed in the Senate.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

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The economy is recovering from the depths of the pandemic in large part due to the massive relief packages that Congress passed in 2020 and 2021. Just in time for this recovery, Senate Republicans are pushing for cuts to vital programs. According to news reports, five GOP senators are proposing a commission that would come up with proposals to balance the federal budget within a decade. Given that four of the five sponsors of this idea have signed on to the tax pledge to never, ever under any circumstances raise taxes, they are looking for programs to cut. They consequently take aim mainly at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These targeted programs are already and will continue to prove crucial to the financial and physical health of millions of Americans that have suffered from the pandemic. Many workers, especially older ones, have lost their jobs permanently and will move into early retirement with permanently lower benefits and little or no savings outside of those benefits. Millions of Americans, again particularly among older ones, experience long-term consequences from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Those hardest hit by pandemic will need strong, expanded retirement and health benefits, not cuts to an already basic system.

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