#wonkette

[the-cimmerians]

In 2022, Massachusetts residents voted in favor of a Fair Tax ballot measure to extra-super-duper-tax those earning more than one million dollars a year and to spend the revenue from that on education and transportation initiatives.

Naturally, there were the naysayers. Those who warned that all of the state’s rich people would move away to their very own Galt’s Gulch or whatever, if they were forced to pay a four percent tax on anything they make over a million dollars. The implication there, of course, is that raising this tax would, ironically, lead to the state collecting less revenue overall.

That didn’t happen! In fact, the state has already raised $1.8 billion in revenue so far for this fiscal year — which is $800 million more than they expected, and they still have a few months to go. The vast majority of the surplus will go to a fund that legislators can use for one-time investments in various projects.

The revenue has already been invested in universal school lunches, in more scholarships to public colleges, in improvements to the MBTA, and to repair roads and bridges. These are all things that will improve the quality of life for everyone, including the “ultra-rich” who happen to live there. The fact is, it’s just nice to live in a society that is more civil, that takes care of its people and its children and that fixes things when they are broken.

[ ]

Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, and others have introduced bills in the House and Senate for a nationwide millionaire’s tax of two percent — two cents on the dollar for all wealth exceeding $50 million and six percent on all wealth over a billion dollars. This would bring in an estimated $3.75 trillion over 10 years, which we could use to improve the lives of all US citizens. We could have so many nice things!

It’s time to stop living in fear of what millionaires and billionaires — who have made their fortunes off of roads we’ve paid for and employees we’ve paid to educate — will do or where they will move if forced to pay their fair share. That’s no way to live. If they have some place better to go that won’t force them to contribute to improving their community? Let them. Other people will come along and be more than happy to pick up where they left off. But more than likely, they won’t do jack shit because they’re rich, and if they wanted to live someplace else, they’d be there by now.

[planetofsnarfs]

On Tuesday, a shootout in Portage Lake, Maine (pop. 400), ended with one injured police officer and the deaths of both a police dog named Preacher and 29-year-old suspect Steven Righini.

Police had been called to his home following reports of a domestic dispute and were told by his 18-year-old wife who had just given birth four weeks prior that they had gotten into a fight and he pushed her up against a wall.

Instead of surrendering to the police (who, let’s be real, probably wouldn’t have done much anyway), Righini took his very large gun and sat at the window while recording a video and going on an 11-post rant, mostly about abortion, on Xitter. Like you do.

[thatstormygeek]

The enmeshment is so blatant that two Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 people, Noah Peters and James Sherk, have been busted writing government memos before That Man was even sworn in for the Office of Personnel Management, which they forgot to scrub their metadata from. Trump doesn’t just have Project 2025 ties, Heritage Foundation people are literally running the government on his behalf while he farts around his Florida golf course. It’s not his plan, that is technically true. It’s their plan, and his plan is to fuck off and let them do everything for him except rake in “donations” from techbros and the anonymous wallets that buy his memecoins. Totally different.

Reporters did note that 144 out of 307 authors served in his administration. But just two weeks later, they were playing down the ties as just “several of its authors served in his administration.” Is almost half “several”? And why the suspicious tone here? “Less than 10 minutes into their presidential debate, Ms. Harris sought to frame the discussion by tying the project to Mr. Trump’s plans for a second term. [...] Mr. Trump immediately rejected her statement. But the Harris campaign and its supporters had yoked Project 2025 around their opponent’s neck.” Those Democrats were SO MEAN, with that yoking! Isn’t the yoking the real sin, here? ... Conservatives knew they were lying, we know they’re lying, we know they know they’re lying, and it’s now a hilarious joke to them that they were able to sow doubt about the most obvious thing in the world. Watch podcaster “Comfortably Smug” chortle to Megyn Kelly: “The funniest joke we ever pulled on the Democrats is convincing them that Project 2025 wasn’t real,” and they all have a big laugh about it.

[reynard61]

Some history that needs tellin'...

[imkeepinit]

February 13, 2018 As NPR notes, rightwing fiscal responsibility types have made it nearly impossible to restore lost revenue after taxes get cut: Thanks to a ballot initiative passed in the 1990s, any revenue increase has to be passed by a three-quarters super-SUPER-majority in the Legislature. Impressive -- tax hikes in Oklahoma require a bigger majority than the US Constitution demands to remove a president by impeachment.

[katarh-mest]

via Wonkette:

[calicojack1718]

The Emotional Turmoil of White Racists versus The Early Deaths of Black Folks

When you put the whining white grievance of white privilege being violated side-by-side with the actual damage that systemic racism does to Black people, i.e. driving them to an early grave, #sciencefact

This week’s news juxtaposed two interesting stories that cast our structural racism in the spotlight and in stark relief contrasting the woes of being a white openly racist man in America with being an average Black person living in white culture. Let’s present the emotional turmoil news first and then move on to the effect of racism on Black folks. Pity the White Racist Meme: Epitome of White…

[the-cimmerians]

Vice President Kamala Harris announced this week that the Biden administration is looking to lessen the burden medical debt has on people by purging it from their credit report. This means that even if people have piles of medical debt — one in five Americans say they do — it’s not going to affect their ability to get a mortgage or a car loan. So they will at least have a place to rest their head and a car they can drive to work every day while paying off their medical bills.

Via AP:

Harris said that would make it easier for them to obtain an auto loan or a home mortgage. Roughly one in five people report having medical debt. The vice president said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is beginning the rulemaking process to make the change. The agency said in a statement that including medical debt in credit scores is problematic because “mistakes and inaccuracies in medical billing are common.” “Access to health care should be a right and not a privilege,” Harris told reporters in call to preview the action. “These measures will improve the credit scores of millions of Americans so that they will better be able to invest in their future.”

It only seems fair that high medical bills for an emergency or serious illness shouldn’t affect one’s credit rating anyway. It’s not like we’re talking about someone irresponsibly dropping several grand at Versace and then never paying off the credit card bill. Fifty-seven percent of Americans could not afford a surprise $1000 emergency, so the inability to pay off massive amounts of medical debt is hardly a fair reflection of an inclination to default on normal payments — payments you can budget for — on something like a mortgage or auto loan. “Way to be irresponsible by getting cancer, lady! You should definitely be punished for that by not being able to find any place to live!” seems pretty harsh, no?

[planetofsnarfs]

There is one fact that, we think, should preface all fair and balanced reporting about performatively two-faced Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina: Nobody likes her. Not even her own Republican colleagues. 

Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dropped that little fact on Bluesky a few weeks ago. Commenting on Mace’s bizarre, deranged, weeks-long anti-transgender bender, AOC said:

Fwiw she is pretty widely disliked even by her GOP colleagues. She’s all over the place. Messy. Fights with them too. This is the most attention she has gotten in ages despite her many attempts, hence the differences in tack some have taken in this whole brouhaha. She really craves it. It’s weird

That’s a description, quite frankly, of a lot of MAGA figures. These are friendless losers, many of whose only semblance of self-worth comes from completely debasing themselves for Donald Trump, and then craving 24/7 those moments when he acknowledges their unquestioning obedience by sharting in their general direction. 

Mace (recently!) used to love trans rights, before she became obsessed with where trans people poop after the election of incoming Democratic Rep. Sarah McBride of Delaware, who is trans. She’s been acting very constipated and angry about that ever since.

Now she is threatening to sue media outlets that don’t report the true gravity of the murderous transgender handshake attack that left her in a full-body cast this week, completely disfigured for life, and also dead.

[thatstormygeek]

Tribalism has turned our politicians into ciphers. Their actual words and actions don’t matter to the dedicated party electorate: legislators are simply vehicles the voter uses to impose their own priorities.

Then, when the reality of the politician’s actions cause harm to those in the party, an entire industry exists that will spin the story until blame is appropriately cast on the other party, thus maintaining the cipher status.

This guy is wacky, but he’s exemplary of something I’ve been saying for a long time now — and no, not just that the people who pull this kind of shit usually turn out to really hate women. It’s that there are so many people out there who have the economic policies of Republicans and Democrats completely switched around in their heads. Or maybe not that, exactly. It’s almost more that these people have convinced themselves that Republicans stand for everything they want and like, even when they are out here actively proposing the complete opposite.

[yuneu]

i just realized that only one male oompa loompa went to work for willy when he started the wonka factory and none of the others even knew about it. but in charlie and the chocolate factory there are thousands of them. which implies that oompa loompas reproduce asexually. it also implies mpreg but i'm not getting into that

[annacaffeina]

"Trump has a family history of Alzheimer’s and had that bizarre boast about passing a cognitive test of five words, which was somehow supposed to reassure us of his mental acuity. He tends to ramble in speeches and recently blamed Jeb Bush for the Iraq War while promising he’d defeat Barack Obama. He tried to buy Greenland, pushed injecting bleach to stop COVID, and suggested we dampen forest floors to prevent wildfires. Trump also had trouble drinking a glass of water, and looked feeble and unsteady while walking down a ramp. But in all fairness, that might have been a result of the lingering effects of his completely valid and real bone spurs that prevented him from winning the Vietnam War.

On the other hand, Biden looks too old to be president in those deceptively edited clips shared by conservative media.

So, you see the source of my indecision. A corrupt, deranged narcissist who has given voice and energy to right-wing terrorism pulling this country apart? Or a genial lifetime public servant with a steady hand on the tiller of government?

It’s not an easy choice, because the public servant is slightly older.

I mean, Biden was alive when the Allies won World War II. So you can understand how that is of concern to Trump supporters. Their side lost World War II."

Keep saying it loud and often, especially to any "liberal" who brings up OHJ's age.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Marcie Jones at Wonkette:

Trump’s chief of staff, Florida woman Susie Wiles, sat down with Axios to let them know there’s not going to be any backbiting in the new administration. LOLOL! “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.” Hahaha! Good fucking luck with that gameshow host’s team of D-minus-list self-dealing showboats. Or as they’ve been known to dramatically bite at each other behind one another’s backs to the Daily Mail, “'grifters,' 'hucksters,' 'profiteers' and 'cranks', and ‘hustlers looking to make a buck’.” The Mail also added that they are “corner-cutting, scandal-prone, profit-hungry confederates.” And being from Baltimore, we’d say “crabs trying to drag each other to the bottom of the barrel.” Remember a few months ago when Wiles sent out an email demanding no leaks to the press, which was leaked within minutes to the press?

Just last week she sent out another missive, “reiterating that no member of the incoming administration or Transition speaks for the United States or the President-elect himself” and that “all intended nominees should refrain from any public social media posts,” which was also leaked within a day, and nearly universally ignored by the compulsively-tweeting talent pool of top minds that she and the future president have assembled (though SecDef nom Pete Hegseth does seem to have figured out that shutting up is actually his best move for now).

Susie Wiles can try to enforce a “no drama” rule in the Trump Administration all she wants, but in reality, someone’s gonna break it within a week or less in the new administration’s term.