Another Republican President, Another Recession.

[mooray]

Obama destroyed America.

Explain please.

 

[hanimmal]

Are political contributions taxed? I think I would love to see a nice fat tax on all of those dark money donations that are used to create better information resources for the voters that they are aimed towards.

https://www.rawstory.com/why-aggressively-taxing-the-obscenely-rich-is-key-to-fighting-fascism/

A reader asked the other day why the Republicans are voting against the full faith and credit of the United States when the GOP comprises so many millionaires and billionaires invested in financial markets. In other words, why would the very obscenely rich support a party that's clearly threatening the very obscene power of the very obscenely rich?

One theory, which I think is the right theory, is they don't want the Republicans to prevail. They think the Democrats will do the right thing for the sake of their country, not their party. The gamble is almost certainly the right one. Bringing the economy to the brink of panic is dangerous, but the actual risk is minimal given the Democrats are the party of governance. They would not call the Republicans' bluff.

Proof of this theory can be seen in the near-total silence of the very obscenely rich in the wake of news that the Senate Republicans had voted against the full faith and credit of the United States. Sure, there's been a few gentle reminders that defaulting on the national debt would be, um, subpar. But that's nothing compared to the hysterical outcry against the Democrats and their big plan to raise taxes on the very obscenely rich to pay for reshaping the government. While they have little to say about the real danger of default, they have a lot to say about higher taxes! That would hurt business! The economy! Jobs!

One takeaway is the very obscenely rich are lousy with bad faith. The government taxed them at much higher rates decades ago (at more than 90 percent during the Eisenhower administration). Yet they still managed to continue being very obscenely rich. During the same period, the economy was gangbusters. Jobs, too. The Democrats haven't yet passed their 10-year infrastructure bills, but so far, they seem unaffected by the lousy bad faith of the very obscenely rich (though the rates they are aiming for are not nearly high enough).

The other takeaway is the very obscenely rich are fully supportive of the Republican Party's efforts to sabotage the country just enough to maintain parasitic control of it. The GOP and the very obscenely rich don't want to kill off democracy. That would be bad for business. They only want to weaken it. As I said earlier this week, the party voting against America's credit is the same party "undermining the national recovery from the covid pandemic, which is the same party tolerating insurgents who nearly brought down the republic, which is the same party eroding the rule of law, which is the same party welcoming interference by Russia, which is … so on and so forth." The very obscenely rich, meanwhile, have resumed campaign donations to Republicans who voted to toss the 2020 election results. Firms like Home Depot and Walmart want the people to buy their stuff. They also want to prevent the people from flexing the sovereignty that would prevent them from continuing to extract wealth from the people.

Those of us worried about the future of democracy have pinned hope on the Democrats passing election reform. I've pointed out one reason that's not enough. We need to crack down on lawlessness, too. But all of the above is another reason reforming elections is insufficient. If we're going to fight authoritarianism creeping through the body politic, we need to do more about the very obscenely rich who are paving the way for that authoritarian creep with their money. The democratic way of doing that is with higher, much higher, taxation.

The problem is worse than it looks. The very obscenely rich are not only financing Republicans prepared to deny the sovereignty of the people. Directly and indirectly, they are enabling the bullies, thugs and terrorists trying to bring the republic down. In April, The Guardianreported a Christian fundraising site connected the Proud Boys and other violent groups to "anonymous high-dollar donors." Robert Mercer, Donald Trump's sugar daddy, backs far-right candidates and a social media network insurgents used to organize the assault on the US Capitol. Charles Koch, the industrialist, is tied to a vast propaganda network that includes VDare, a fascist organization. Virtually all organized anti-government "protests" during the covid pandemic can be traced back to the very obscenely rich. Mercer's daughter, Rebekah, has been called "one of the chief financiers of the fascist movement."

Right now, the Democrats are focused on getting two infrastructure packages through the Congress to reshape government and the US economy. Their focus is on raising taxes on the very obscenely rich just enough to pay for it. Democracy demands taking that another step. To fight fascism, we must fight the people paying for it. That means raising taxes higher, much higher, on the very obscenely rich.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

Republicans doing the work to keep this virus burning through our society. And to divert evoke "AOC" and political divisions, that the Republicans have worked (and funded) so hard to manufacture.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

https://apnews.com/article/business-congress-janet-yellen-economy-financial-crisis-9ec6c2615fc3f9d6b6b70b032809d95b

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday told Republican senators to “get out of the way” and let Democrats suspend the nation’s debt limit on their own, hoping to keep the U.S. government from coming dangerously close to a credit default as Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to lend his party’s help.

Biden’s criticism comes as Congress faces an Oct 18 deadline to allow for more borrowing to keep the government operating after having accrued a total public debt of $28.4 trillion. The House has passed a measure to suspend the debt limit, but McConnell is forcing Senate Democrats into a cumbersome process that could drag on for weeks and brush up against a deadline with little margin for error.

Both Biden and McConnell have promised the country will avoid default, yet the public fight and political posturing risks an economic meltdown. The global economy relies on the stability of U.S. Treasury notes, and unpaid debt could crush financial markets and hurl America into recession.

“They need to stop playing Russian roulette with the U.S. economy,” Biden said at the White House. “Republicans just have to let us do our job. Just get out of the way. If you don’t want to help save the country, get out of the way so you don’t destroy it.”

Once a routine vote, the need to raise the nation’s debt limit has become increasingly partisan. It’s become a favorite political weapon of Republicans to either demand concessions or force Democrats into unpopular votes to enable more borrowing. McConnell has tied the vote to Biden’s multitrillion-dollar tax and economic agenda that awaits Congressional approval.

Biden said he planned to talk with McConnell, who dug in with a letter of his own to the president.

“We have no list of demands. For two and a half months, we have simply warned that since your party wishes to govern alone, it must handle the debt limit alone as well,” the Kentucky senator wrote in the Monday letter.

The financial markets have stayed relatively calm with interest rates on 10-year Treasury notes holding just below 1.5%. That rate is slightly higher than the all-time lows set last year as the coronavirus pandemic spread, but it’s still lower than at any time other time over nearly 60 years of data tracked by the Federal Reserve.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the government will exhaust its cash reserves on Oct. 18, an event she says would likely trigger a financial crisis and economic recession. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned on Monday that it would be hazardous for the economy to come anywhere near that deadline.

“The consequences of even approaching the X date could be disastrous for our economy and devastating to American families, raising the costs of borrowing for average Americans and hampering our economic recovery over the long-term,” Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators.

Democrats and Republicans are in a standoff over how to handle an extension for the debt ceiling. Republicans are insisting that Democrats go it alone with the same legislative tool that is already being used to try and pass Biden’s plan to boost safety net, health and environmental programs. Democrats say that extending the debt limit has traditionally been a bipartisan effort and that the debt cap was built up under presidents from both parties.



Schumer said that if the debt issue is not resolved this week, the Senate will likely be forced to remain in session during the weekend and possibly the following week when senators were scheduled to be back in their home states.

Schumer also discussed the current state of play with the bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill that has already passed the Senate and is stuck in the House, as well as Biden’s larger, $3.5 trillion effort focused on social programs and the environment that would be offset by tax increases on corporations and the wealthy. He noted that the president visited with House Democrats on Friday to generate support for both measures.

“He encouraged them to stick together, compromise, and find the sweet spot that will allow us to complete our work,” Schumer said. “I agree with his sentiment wholeheartedly – we can get this done, together, if we put aside our differences and find the common ground within our party.”

Biden will be traveling to Michigan on Tuesday to promote his legislative plan as negotiations resume in Washington. Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have said they won’t back a $3.5 trillion spending bill. And many House Democrats won’t support the smaller bipartisan infrastructure plan until they get an agreement on the larger measure.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stuartanderson/2021/10/04/trumps-exit-from-asian-trade-pact-damaged-america-boosted-china/?sh=5680a5ff5e80

Removing the United States from the Asia-Pacific trade pact designed to promote U.S. economic and strategic interests over China’s will go down as one of the worst decisions by an American president in the past 50 years, according to trade and foreign policy analysts. Now that China has applied to join the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, Donald Trump’s decision looks even worse than it did in 2017.

Background: President George W. Bush proposed a trade agreement with like-minded Asia-Pacific countries in 2008. “While quick to embrace TPP [Trans-Pacific Partnership] and successful in concluding an agreement among the parties, President Barack Obama fatally delayed pushing for trade promotion authority from Congress in 2014,” writes Matthew P. Goodman, senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “And in one of his first, catastrophic acts as president, Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the unratified TPP—not understanding that it was one of the most powerful tools he had to compete with his nemesis, China.”

The Latest Developments: On September 16, 2021, China submitted an application to join what is now called the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTTP). The group of countries in the trade pact currently includes Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam. China’s notification was sent to New Zealand’s trade minister, the designated CPTPP member for such matters, notes Wendy Cutler, a vice president at the Asia Society Policy Institute.

New Zealand’s trade minister is well aware of the stakes. “It was February 2017 and President Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress,” according to Tim Groser, who served as New Zealand’s trade minister (2008–15) and ambassador to the U.S. (2016–18 ). “As the president announced the U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I was thinking about a conversation I’d had with a particularly astute Asian ambassador. He’d suggested to me that if a book on the decline of American influence in Asia and the Indo-Pacific were ever written—and he hoped it never would be—its first chapter would be an account of the withdrawal of the U.S. from TPP.”

Will China Be Accepted into the Trade Pact?: China has prepared for gaining admittance to the CPTPP, even though the criteria and its poor relations with some of its members make the country’s entry less than certain. “Despite concerns over its inward-looking ‘dual circulation’ strategy, China has spent the past few months tearing down trade and investment barriers to make it easier to negotiate its entry to the 11-member trans-Pacific trade pact,” write Henry Gao, an associate professor of law at Singapore Management University and the author of a National Foundation for American Policy analysis on a proposed U.S. strategy to address China trade issues at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and Weihuan Zhou, director of research at the Herbert Smith Freehills CIBEL Centre at the law and justice faculty at UNSW Sydney.

“At the international level, such a move is a continuation of China's strategy of being more active in international rule-making, following the conclusion of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) with its Asian neighbors last year, and the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment with Europe last December,” according to Gao and Zhou. “This is in marked contrast to the approach taken by the Biden Administration, which, despite its rhetoric that ‘America is back,’ has not been able to conclude or even initiate any major international trade agreement in its first eight months in office. Moreover, domestic political considerations are likely to keep the U.S. from returning to the CPTPP anytime soon. This creates a perfect window of opportunity for China to maneuver its way into a trade pact that was, ironically, created by the U.S. in order to contain China.”

The Impact on the United States: China’s latest actions and the U.S. government’s poor policy choices concern American companies. “First, China would have to overcome formidable obstacles to join the CPTPP. It would have to win over current CPTPP governments that have ongoing differences with China or that question its readiness to join,” said John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in an interview. “It would need to undertake deep reforms to its system of state capitalism and regulation to meet the pact’s terms and convince the other parties that it had done so. However, if Beijing managed to clear these hurdles, Chinese firms would win substantial advantages over their U.S. competitors in terms of access to markets across the Asia-Pacific.”

Murphy notes, “The United States would face a significant setback in its efforts to shape the international economic landscape to support our values and interests. These dynamics show the risk that Washington’s inaction on trade could deal a severe blow to U.S. competitiveness and to the long-term prospects for American workers and companies.”

Joining the Asia-Pacific trade pact is a priority for China’s leadership. “China's application to join the CPTPP is not a spontaneous decision but has been long in the making,” according to Gao and Zhou. “Since 2013, China has been carefully studying the CPTPP, including its predecessor the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Last November, President Xi formally confirmed China's intention to join the pact. In the long run, China's accession could further cement the Asia Pacific's role as the world's leading economic bloc, with CPTPP and RCEP [Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement] playing complementing roles to further boost growth in the region.”

The Trump administration’s trade policy was a story of inflicting great harm and achieving few successes. The administration levied tariffs on $350 billion worth of imports from China. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the Trump tariffs cost the average U.S. household more than $1,200 a year. The Biden administration has maintained the tariffs.

Trump’s trade policies, particularly tariffs on steel and aluminum, cost many manufacturing workers their jobs. The tariffs also resulted in companies listed on the U.S. stock market losing an estimated $1.7 trillion in market value, according to research by Mary Amiti, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Columbia University economists Sang Hoon Kong and David Weinstein.

The Trump administration’s trade policies harmed consumers and companies and failed to achieve their stated objectives with China or America’s other trading partners. Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership created an opening for China and will continue to put U.S. workers and companies at a competitive disadvantage.

 

[hanimmal]

https://www.rawstory.com/chamber-commerce-republican-controlled/

Although the Republican Party and the Chamber of Commerce have long rallied behind the same pro-business interests, that relationship was strained recently when the GOP kicked the Chamber off of their strategy calls.

PunchBowl news reported earlier this morning that Republicans were hosting strategy calls on the bipartisan infrastructure package and negotiations and booted the Chamber. But this evening the story took a different turn.



According to Axios, the Chamber caved into the GOP, pulling its support of the infrastructure deal that Republicans in the Senate have already passed.

"The Chamber's chief policy officer, Neil Bradley, announced the policy shift in a letter to its Board of Directors on Monday," the report said. "The pretense for his decision: President Biden formally linking the 'hard' infrastructure bill with the $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation package during a meeting with House Democrats on Friday."

Republican House members have been whipping votes against the bipartisan bill, even if Senators like Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) voted to passed the bill. There are two bills, one is the bipartisan agreement between the two parties and the second is the human infrastructure bill that would help children, students, seniors and families. But House Republicans operate under the assumption that the two bills are one.

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) called it "pure stupidity."

"It's not because of the policy," Cassidy said of the House GOP's opposition. He cited support from pro-business and conservative groups like the Chamber. "If you do it strictly on the merits, on the policy and the positive things it does for the United States of America, then you vote 'yes.' If you've got other considerations, aside from what's good… for America, then you vote 'no.'"

Chamber policy officer Neil Bradley claimed in a strategy memo that politics have nothing to do with the group's behavior. He wrote that it's because they no longer expect the bill to pass the House.

"The events of the last few days make it all the more crucial that everyone across the business community does everything in our power to ensure the reconciliation bill does not pass. While the Chamber believes that passing infrastructure as a stand-alone bill prior to consideration of the reconciliation bill would have enhanced our position, that is no longer a realistic possibility," Bradley wrote.

Read the full story at Axios.

 

[hanimmal]

 

[mooray]

View attachment 5003031

Spicy! A little inflammatory, but entirely accurate.

 

[ttystikk]

Want to guess what that chart above would look like if we updated it today?


Right, shift to the progressive troll, nicely done.

Do you actually understand how laws get passed in our nation? There are three branches, the Democrats have only held power in all three branches at the same time for 2 years in Obama, Clinton, and Carter's presidencies. The first two years, and they got a hell of a lot done for the people. Even though they also all had to deal with Republican's recessions. After that the Republicans won back a branch after 2 years of Republicans trolling them and effectively shut the ability of the Democrats to push through their legislation without Republican poison pills.

And it has been a long road to get to today's Democratic party.

Back to your "Progressive troll" comment; guess what? Democrats have the House, the Senate AND the White House.

Aaaaaand what are they doing with it?

Fuck all.

How many times does Lucy have to snatch the football away from you before you figure it out, Charlie Brown?

 

[hanimmal]

Back to your "Progressive troll" comment; guess what? Democrats have the House, the Senate AND the White House.

Aaaaaand what are they doing with it?

Fuck all.

How many times does Lucy have to snatch the football away from you before you figure it out, Charlie Brown?

Really you don't count the cutting of child poverty in half 'fuck all'?

 

[ttystikk]

Really you don't count the cutting of child poverty in half 'fuck all'?

It hasn't happened yet and I find it hard to believe that one bill magically cuts child poverty in half.

 

[hanimmal]

It hasn't happened yet and I find it hard to believe that one bill magically cuts child poverty in half.

Really you don't know anyone with kids?

If you do maybe check how those direct payments are helping them out.

 

[hanimmal]

The astroturf TeaParty2.0 is so classy.

I was trying to see people's plates, but couldn't. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these cars are out of state.

Im guessing this lady is trying to get names to stop our ability to easily vote here in the state.


And this nazi with a bullshit race baiting 'pro' cannabis shirt (that really is not IMO) ripping pro Biden signs out of elderly people's hands.

 

[Fogdog]

It hasn't happened yet and I find it hard to believe that one bill magically cuts child poverty in half.

Locked yourself up in one of those kennels have you?

#prisonerofthemoment.