US politics general thread

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No wonder Nunes is a looney tune. He's been hanging out with Flynn for years.

http://www.newsweek.com/nunes-memo-trump-russia-probe-flynn-mueller-page-fbi-802710

Nunes and Flynn evidently maintained close ties through the election and beyond, even as Flynn’s world was beginning to unravel with questions about his payments from Kremlin mouthpiece Russia Today, secret talks with former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and a confidential lobbying contract with a law firm tied to Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan. “I talk to Flynn virtually everyday, if not multiple times a day,” Nunes told me in the late December 2016 interview. “Seldom there's a day that goes by that I don't talk to Flynn, and especially right after the campaign, directly.”
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Which is what they did. “The Nunes Memo fizzled and failed,”*said*former Nixon White House counsel-turned Watergate witness John Dean in a representative view. “The only thing it established is that Nunes is a nut job, and he has released anew the putrid stench of neo-McCarthyism.”
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White House denies U.S.-Israel discussing settlement annexation

The United States dismissed as false an Israeli assertion on Monday that the two countries were discussing the possibility of Israel annexing Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, in a rare display of discord between President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"On the subject of applying sovereignty, I can say that I have been talking to the Americans about it for some time," Netanyahu told a closed-door meeting of his right-wing Likud party's legislators, according to the party's spokesman.

Netanyahu was referring to applying Israeli law to the settlements, a step tantamount to annexation. They are currently under the jurisdiction of Israel's military, which has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 war.
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OrbitalDawn said:
White House denies U.S.-Israel discussing settlement annexation
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On the subject of applying sovereignty, I can say that I have been talking to the Americans about it for some time," Netanyahu told a closed-door meeting of his right-wing Likud party's legislators, according to the party's spokesman.
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Translation: Me and my buddy Kushner, the guy I know from his childhood, yes, the same guy boning your daughter, spoke about it and came to an agreement. Just sign off on it old orange head. You do know who is running the show, don't try to be brave.
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/us/politics/white-house-budget-congress.html

White House Proposes $4.4 Trillion Budget That Adds $7 Trillion to Deficits

WASHINGTON — President Trump sent Congress a $4.4 trillion budget proposal on Monday outlining steep cuts to domestic programs, large increases in military spending and a ballooning federal deficit that illustrates how far Republicans have strayed from their longtime embrace of balanced budgets.

The blueprint has little to no chance of being enacted as written and amounts to a vision statement by Mr. Trump, who as a businessman once called himself the “king of debt” and has overseen a federal spending spree that will earn him that title in an entirely different arena.

The White House budget request would add $984 billion to the federal deficit next year, despite proposed cuts to programs like Medicare and food stamps and despite leaner budgets across federal agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency.

Mr. Trump’s budget statement calls deficits the harbingers of a “desolate” future, but the White House plan would add $7 trillion to the deficit over the next 10 years.
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The budget plan is a doozy.
 
The_Assimilator said:
The part of fiscal responsibility... except when it comes to handing out contracts to their military buddies.
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Yeah, and Trump was never going to cut Medicare, and Mexico was going to pay for the wall, and the mining jobs were coming back.
 
And the gullible fell for it

@realDonaldTrump

I was the first & only potential GOP candidate to state there will be no cuts to Social Security, Medicare & Medicaid. Huckabee copied me.

8:38 AM - 7 May 2015
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@realDonaldTrump

A day after Greece burned @BarackObama released a $3.8 Trillion budget for 2013 with a $900 Billion deficit.He will turn America into Greece

8:29 AM - 14 Feb 2012
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rietrot said:
Like the gullible had any alternative.
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ITT: people who confuse deficit spending on infrastructure and tax cuts vs deficit spending on social welfare.

Which one is more likely to grow the economy I wonder?

Whilst deficit spending is unsustainable and irresponsible, it works out in the end when your GDP grows. Spending money on food stamps and abortions for minorities is not going to grow the economy as much as a tax cut.
 
cerebus said:
Yeah, and Trump was never going to cut Medicare, and Mexico was going to pay for the wall, and the mining jobs were coming back.
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About those mining jobs:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-st...ls-hundreds-of-black-lung-cases-in-appalachia

A new research letter published in a medical journal details hundreds of cases of black lung disease in the Central Appalachian coalfields.

Three clinics in southwestern Virginia identified 416 coal miners with the disease from January 2013 to February 2017, according to the study published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Of those, 157 lived in eastern Kentucky, it said.

The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the study provides further evidence that progressive massive fibrosis, commonly called black lung, has surged in recent years among coal miners in Central Appalachia.
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konfab said:
ITT: people who confuse deficit spending on infrastructure and tax cuts vs deficit spending on social welfare.

Which one is more likely to grow the economy I wonder?

Whilst deficit spending is unsustainable and irresponsible, it works out in the end when your GDP grows. Spending money on food stamps and abortions for minorities is not going to grow the economy as much as a tax cut.
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Deficit spending on tax cuts so that the rich get richer, the middle class gets poorer, and overall the country collects less tax... yeah that's a brilliant 41D strategy. As for "when" your GDP grows... you mean, if.

And all those dirty minorities having unwanted children really helps with that social welfare spending, but providing free abortions to them doesn't, I guess.
 
The_Assimilator said:
Deficit spending on tax cuts so that the rich get richer, the middle class gets poorer, and overall the country collects less tax... yeah that's a brilliant 41D strategy.
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Well good on you for pointing out that tax cuts result in lower tax revenue :wtf:

As for the rich getting richer- they predominantly do that by being in control of financial institutions that are given money by the government at low interest rates, then they make a profit by lending said money out at higher interest rates, this happens if you have infinite fiat currency. Taxing the super rich will not make them poorer or balance out the scales. This is what France tried to do and all their billionaires moved to Russia.

The remaining rich people who get rich by investing their non taxed money, are getting rich because they are using their money in the most productive way possible. Which helps everyone. This evil concept is why China has drastically reduced its poverty rate, it is because they have allowed rich people to keep their money.

As for the middle class:
How do you create well paying, middle class jobs? Here is the easy answer- investments in capital equipment. Said equipment allows people to shift from doing manual labour to more technical labour that requires some skill- hence people can ask for more money for their work as they are using their brains more than their bodies.
Having access to capital (aka through the institutions I talked about in the first paragraph) facilitates that process. If you don't have a high tax rate, the money will come more from investors than it will from banks.

The_Assimilator said:
And all those dirty minorities having unwanted children really helps with that social welfare spending, but providing free abortions to them doesn't, I guess.
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If there is economic growth, along with a cut in the amount of people coming into the country, those "dirty minorities" will not need social welfare spending and will be free to abort as many of their children as they want to.
 
rietrot said:
Lol you don't spend on tax cuts.
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From the point of view where the government regards everyone as their cash cow, whose property they already have a right to expropriate, they are "spending" money on their population by not taking as much.

For example:
Let say you own a flat and are paying off the bond on it. You have a tenant who is paying monthly. Their rent doesn't cover the bond, so you have to spend money to keep the rent competitive.
 
konfab said:
Taxing the super rich will not make them poorer or balance out the scales. This is what France tried to do and all their billionaires moved to Russia.
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It absolutely can. The greatest era of growth in prosperity (for the middle class and everyone else) happened when the US had a 70%-90% top tax rate.

What happened since the early 80s when massive tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity came in, across the US and Europe? Wealth inequality grew at incredible rates while income for those dependent on salaries or wages have stagnated and those at the top have grown their share of national income tremendously, at the cost of everyone else.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...s-rising-globally-and-soaring-in-the-u-s.html

14-inequality-2.w710.h473.png


Now obviously that doesn't mean those kinds of tax rates are feasible or even necessary. But this reflexive recoiling at any idea that the wealthy could be taxed more (and more effectively) is not supported by evidence.

konfab said:
The remaining rich people who get rich by investing their non taxed money, are getting rich because they are using their money in the most productive way possible. Which helps everyone.
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This is complete fiction, konfab. The most productive way to accumulate wealth is not necessarily the most productive way "for everyone". Did we learn nothing from the GFC?

konfab said:
As for the middle class:
How do you create well paying, middle class jobs? Here is the easy answer- investments in capital equipment. Said equipment allows people to shift from doing manual labour to more technical labour that requires some skill- hence people can ask for more money for their work as they are using their brains more than their bodies.
Having access to capital (aka through the institutions I talked about in the first paragraph) facilitates that process. If you don't have a high tax rate, the money will come more from investors than it will from banks.
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You forgot one key thing, strong unions.

Unions Help the Middle Class, No Matter the Measure

konfab said:
If there is economic growth, along with a cut in the amount of people coming into the country, those "dirty minorities" will not need social welfare spending and will be free to abort as many of their children as they want to.
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Nope. Drastically cutting immigration will negatively impact the economy and weaken the budget.

Immigration crackdown is a recipe for national decline

And the issue isn't really economic growth (which they've managed to get back post-GFC), but how they're spending the money that they are spending. Their spending is staggeringly inefficient in many ways, including on healthcare. If they properly reformed their healthcare system they could have better outcomes while spending less, like the UK. They also waste inordinate amounts of money on defence spending. The latest budget that passed added $160b spending to an already bloated defence budget.
 
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