#tax and spend

[jccheapalier]

Kamala Harris’s Track Record: Big Spending, Wokeness, Equity and Flip Flops

[commonsensecommentary]

“The fantastic—and profoundly damaging—Faustian bargain of total security in exchange for total control that has been the premise for the incredible growth of government and government oversight over the past century is coming to a close both because we cannot afford it and its false promise has been exposed.” (From my blog archive)

[nando161mando]

Why “tax and spend” is a big lie

Comment, Jun 19th

Politicians assure us that their plans are “fully funded” not because of economic constraints, but to satisfy the rich, writes Matthew Hoare

[nosferdoc]

Biden’s New Ideas: More Taxes, More Spending

DAN MCLAUGHLIN | MAR 8 2024

Meet the new Bidenomics, same as the old Bidenomics.

Joe Biden is trailing in the polls. Voters overwhelmingly believe he’s too old for the job. Soaring inflation is crippling ordinary families. The border is wide open. Public safety is at an all-time low. So, what was this administration’s big, shiny idea for Thursday’s State of the Union address?

Tax hikes and yet more government handouts! Our 81-year-old President couldn’t be less original if he was stumbling up Air Force One.

[thenewdemocratus]

The Globalist: Bill Hunphrey: The Problem With Billionaires

The Globalist: Opinion: Bill Humphrey: The Problem With Billionaires The New Democrat This idea that what America needs to do is just tax the hell out of millionaires and billionaires and use that money to spend more on War on Poverty programs to help the poor, as if fifty-years later that has worked very well, because the ultra-right as Bill Humphrey likes to say, has so much money that they…

[imkeepinit]

[sforzesco]

hey! hi! the cartoonist cooperative has an e-sim drive for gaza, offering art for e-sim donations (instructions etc in the link)

[rockyp77mk3]

Good question.

[tiefling-queer]

i find it hard to get jazzed about harris' proposal to tax the rich if said tax dollars are going to fund more cops and bomb more Palestinians. i don't think it actually helps the working class if the rich are taxed and that money doesn't go towards making our lives better.

[jccheapalier]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DF0gtfPOs5E/?igsh=MTJjbnN4YWhteXA5Ng==

[tanadrin]

I am sorry for the anon but I feel too vulnerable to come off due to the nature of my question.

I am slowly losing friends due to my refusal to engage in negative/nihilistic/doomer views of the future. My friends are 1000% convinced Trump and Republicans are going to crash the economy on purpose, leading to a depression, and carry out a Gilead situation. I told one of my friends the other day how, despite everything and the political situation, I am trying to be as positive as possible - or at least neutral. Her response to me was, "Why? I don't understand your optimism. You know they're going to enslave us all like in The Handmaid's Tale, right?" and it has become so dreadful now to interact with them. Anytime I disagree, they try to intellectually dominate me or put me under them in a way where I have no choice but to just leave the conversation.

I know this was a lot. But is there any advice you might have for someone like me? Because I sometimes feel like I am being painted as crazy. I know things will be hard but they genuinely want me to believe I have no future and I can't stand that.

Also, would it be too much to ask if you maybe mind sharing some of the other people/blogs you follow?

I once heard advice on dealing with Qanon family members who had fallen down the rabbit hole and only ever wanted to talk about conspiracy theories or the outrage bait they'd seen on Fox News or OANN or whatever, about not challenging them on their views but basically saying "I don't want to talk about this; let's talk about our plans for the weekend, or what movie we wanna go see later, or what interesting books you've read lately." The idea being, arguing with someone can only further entrench their beliefs, and if you really want to shake someone out of their dismal universe of conspiracism, it helps to remind them of all the things that aren't the fear-and-anger-activating content they're stuffing their brains with for hours every day.

Maybe something like this could help? I have a hard time imagining that someone really believes The Handmaid's Tale really is just around the corner--if you really believed that, surely you would be trying to flee to Canada or doing some political volunteer work or something--and sometimes doomer stuff can be kind of reflexive or phatic, like making a crack about how your retirement plan is to die in the water wars or something. But even if it isn't, I don't think there's any point in trying to argue about this stuff in the moment. Instead try to build on the things you still find fulfilling in that friendship, the conversations and interests and activities with those friends that caused you to become friends in the first place.

If you can't do that--if hanging out with them is always a constant grind of full-throttle doomerism, and they express no interest in actually trying to do something with their feelings of anger and frustration--you are perfectly within your rights to spend less time around them. You could, if you wanted to and you felt that you owed them at least that, give them a heads up as to why. If a close friend of mine or a family member was doing this, I would certainly talk to them about it. But your obligation to subject yourself to someone else's self-destructive idee fixe is not bottomless. Even with a partner you are within your rights to eventually say "I'm not going to talk about this with you anymore."

(And that's not only true of politics or conspiracy theories, by the way! If you have a close friend or family member or partner who--for example--has severe depression but refuses to seek treatment for it, you are not obligated to be the sponge for their misery forever every time they need someone to talk to. If someone in your life is in a relationship or a job that is making them miserable, and won't do anything to leave that relationship or find a new job, and just wants a friend to complain to, you are within your rights to eventually shut that down. Lots of people fall into a holding pattern in their life where they are unhappy but unable to do anything about it, and they will make this their friends' or loved ones' problem. That doesn't make them bad people: lord knows I have found myself doing this before. It's a very human thing to do. But sometimes the Good Friend Thing is to say "I love you, and will support you if you want to actually *do something* about your situation, but otherwise, oh my god shut the fuck up." But, you know, nicely.)

But if your friends want to make themselves miserable because hanging on to an endless stream of toxicity and doomerism from social media (and I will bet this is primarily coming from social media) is more important to them than your friendship, and they can't handle you not agreeing with them, you may lose them as friends. If you do, I'm sorry. That sucks. It's hard to lose friends, and it's even harder later in life when making new friends is more difficult, and I don't want to pretend like that's not a big deal.

[bitchy-peachy]

From PBS NewsHour

Democrats ain't having it.

Watch the whole thing.

[hppjmxrgosg]

the other day my friend asked me "would you rather live a long and boring life or a short and exciting one?" and my answer, that left my mouth before i even thought of it, was "i guess it depends on who i was living it with."

ive never considered myself much of a romantic but i think that needs to change.

[thegreatyin]

scoundrel?? what scoundrel???? the magnificent mr cards (who ironically has more of a flower aesthetic going on) is completely unrelated to any "bandaged scoundrels" running around the neath. in fact it's never heard of the word scoundrel ever in its entire definitely long definitely ancient life. but yknow, hypothetically, if it did know the scoundrel, it's confident that they're really really really handsome and cool and epic and they're almost just as amazing as it is and you should totally donate all your valuables to them and stuff

aaand because i like them too much, have a transparent version. the Creachure. the Thing, even.

[thebreakfastgenie]

While back you said we need a functional rightwing party in the US, elaborate on that?

I said we need a functional conservative party. It's not technically incorrect to use right wing in this context, but colloquially right wing often implies farther right/more extreme, so I want to be clear that's not what I mean.

Unfortunately, half of this country (give or take) is conservative. They need a party to vote for. They're not going to just vote for Democrats anyway, we have ample evidence of that. I would like them to vote for a conservative party that is not comprised of insane wannabe fascists as the Republican Party currently is. I know in partisan politics people love to call their opponents evil, but that's not an exaggeration with the Republican Party at this point. I think that can be hard to see because we used hyperbole against Republicans in the past before it was literally true, and also because the far right capture of the Republican Party has been a longterm project, but they used to be normal. Bad, but normal. Nixon resigned before articles of impeachment were brought against him because Republican Senators told him they had the votes to convict in the Senate. That was a mere 50 years ago. And Nixon era Republicans weren't exactly cute and fluffy, a lot of their policies were very right. They still rejected their president when he got caught committing crimes.

We need two parties. The US system makes it pretty much impossible to have more than two at the national level, and it's really not that big a deal--with primaries and state-level parties we can have parties like the modern Democratic Party that are effectively large coalition parties. Having one party isn't good. Philosophically I'm against one-party rule and just in terms of functionality, there's a reason everyone complains about New York Democrats. In states that are so non-competitive they effectively have one party rule, the government tends to become dysfunctional. You see a lot of corruption and cronyism too. Elections are decided in the party primaries, which means you have to registered with that party. Even in open primary states, you can pick which primary you vote in but you can only vote in one. So you have to choose between building opposition or getting any say at all over who your governor, mayor, etc. is. Sometimes people who would, for example, be Republicans in any other state, run as Democrats in deep blue states because it's the only way to get elected. That's also not helpful.

Even if it wasn't a terrible idea, one party rule at the national level is not really viable. Enough of our voters are fickle and perpetually dissatisfied. "Democrats win every election for the foreseeable future" is not a viable election strategy. As we've seen, we can't count on that. People complain that liberals say every election is life or death, but we say that because every election since 2016 has been life or death. That's not normal. Losing elections is supposed to be disappointing, not apocalyptic.

As a left-leaning person, of course I think it would be great to have a center-left party and a left party, but that's not the reality of the electorate. Most of this country is further right than me. I'm not going to give up on persuasion, but in the meantime they need a party to vote for that isn't attempting to implement fascism and blowing up our relationships with our allies. People who don't agree with me have a right to political representation too. I would never vote for this hypothetical functional conservative party, I would campaign against it every time, but for the health of democracy it needs to exist.

[fatedroses]

Adventurer Zenos and G'raha cause I had to draw my silly guys. I just enjoy the idea of Zenos hanging out with fellow bookworms and being begrudgingly (though occasionally willingly) helpful.