#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.

[thatstormygeek]

Call me crazy, but I don’t actually want to live in the world where “fat” is the worst thing we could call, for instance, a genocidal maniac or serial killer or racist or the nightmare president from hell. That is a world with some truly fucked up priorities.

I promise you. People who are fat are thoroughly aware that they are fat. They are also aware that many people are judging them, regardless of what they are saying out loud. This idea that making fun of fat people is a beautiful mitzvah that will result in them “getting healthy” and later thanking you for saving their very life with your motivational cruelty is absolutely insane and also not how bullying works.

[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…

[neekofab]

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Credit: https://www.wonkette.com/p/dangit-gretchen-whitmer-did-the-lesbian

[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?

[thatstormygeek]

"At least 653,000 people in the United States are currently unhoused. That is about 70,000 more people than there are in the entire state of Wyoming."

"But several conservative justices, who make up a majority of the court, suggested that policymakers, and not judges, should be setting local rules for dealing with homeless people." Except for when it violates their constitutional rights. Because everyone, including the unhoused, has constitutional rights. That aside, what this comes down to is that we, as a society, want to punish people for a problem that we created. This is a direct consequence of whole lot of people getting exactly what they wanted, policy-wise. They got low taxes for the rich and for corporations, they got a broken social safety net, they got employers who can pay people less than they need to survive and landlords who can charge absolutely obscene rent if they feel like it. They even got to wear tiny flag pins during some super fun patriotic wars that scrambled people’s brains! This is what even a little bit of laissez-faire capitalism looks like, and in case you were not aware, it is still not enough for a lot of people. We failed. We are going to keep failing, because we are a society that looks at people living in tents and says “How dare they inconvenience us by making us look at them!” instead of “How do we help?” or even “That could be me. But for the grace of Whoever go I.” The fact that people want to “solve” this problem by making things even worse for those who have found themselves in this situation is beyond galling.

This is not just to be kind. Truthfully, it is the only way we are going to get the results that everyone wants. If you throw people in prison for being unhoused, what is going to happen when they get out? What will they do then? And where are we putting them in these prisons, anyway? Our prisons our overcrowded as it is, with 1.2 million incarcerated. How are we going to increase that by half? It is logistically ridiculous and, frankly, physically impossible. It would be lovely if once, just once, we could all calm the hell down and come up with solutions that are actually solutions, that would actually help people, instead of just throwing our hands up and saying “Well, I guess we have to just go with the cruelest thing we can imagine doing! Surely there is no other option!”

[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

[puipui-official]

Hahahahahahaha! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!