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Ron Powell
11/15/2021 @ 12:52 pm
“If the Republicans take the White House and Congress in 2024, McConnell’s first act will be to eliminate the filibuster…”
This is precisely why the Dems must act first…
The Trump cultists will do away with the filibuster in such a way as to seal the Dems off from any means of functioning as the “loyal opposition” with no means of regaining control of the reins of government.
Koshersalaami
11/15/2021 @ 2:04 pm
Yes, they should. That’s obvious. The problem is that Biden is being treated by the public as if he had a working Senate majority because of the theoretical Democratic numbers but he hasn’t. So not only can’t the Democrats accomplish what they need to, they’re getting blamed for what they don’t accomplish.
Somebody has to reach Manchin. He’s going to go from a position of extreme power to a position of infamy and embarrassment. At this point we are heading toward a 2022 disaster. The kind of disaster we’re heading for will result in a whole lot of disenfranchised voters and quite possibly more of the country believing Trumpian fairy tales.
Ron Powell
11/16/2021 @ 3:44 am
“Somebody has to reach Manchin.”
Throw Sinema in a room with Manchin and LBJ and you’ve got 2 Senate Democrats who would be on board with the ‘agenda’ without question.
Selling Civil and Voting Rights in the 60s had to be a more daunting task than selling the funding the expansion and preservation of the social safety net today.
How these two hold-outs can’t sell the win-win in the Build Back Better legislation to the constituents in two of the most needful and sparsely populated states raises all kinds of questions, doubts, and suspicions re their bona fides as Democrats…
SBA would not have any problem labeling both of them ‘stealth Republicans’….
Koshersalaami
11/16/2021 @ 3:41 pm
It wouldn’t take SBA to make that observation. Manchin is a Democrat in a Republican state and has to look semi-conservative to stay there, but at some point he has to look at what good Biden would do his constituents.
And in fact the failure to sell the agenda to that population is not Manchin’s fault, it’s the party’s. They can’t sell shit because they’re so wrapped up in the ideological side of what they do that they can’t see the practical salable side. And they can’t even sell the ideological side worth a shit, which is insane.
I’ll give you an example of what I’m talking about:
If you listen to Democratic pundits talking about the economy, like say Robert Reich, he’ll talk about what the rich have. What he won’t talk enough about is what the poor don’t and how little it would take to change that, but neither does anyone else. According to 2013 numbers, I don’t have more recent numbers but they’re guaranteed to be even more skewed, way more, the richest 20% of the population had 84% of America’s wealth. So everyone talks about one percenters. But that’s not the important number. The important number, which you don’t see anywhere, is that the poorest 40% of the population collectively had less than 1/3 % (that’s 1/3 of 1 percent) of America’s wealth. That’s both a humanitarian problem and a business problem, but let’s talk for a minute about how little redistribution would do how much. If we were able to move 1% of the nation’s wealth from the top quintile to the bottom two, which would incidentally be under 1.2% of the wealth of the top quintile, it would more than QUADRUPLE the wealth of the bottom 40%. No one else is doing that math and it’s really easy math. Add 3/3 to less than 1/3 and you’ve better than quadrupled your number. Of course we need redistribution, and that kind of redistribution wouldn’t touch socialism. Do you hear Rachel Maddow saying this? Anyone? Is anyone even noticing? The numbers are out there. The misery is out there. What, are we supposed to make America poor because of some misguided concept of freedom?
And the numbers now would be far, far worse, particularly in the aftermath of COVID. In 2013, the Walton family had more money by themselves than the poorest 40% of the population. Now you can add at least Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos to that list by themselves. In terms of families, probably more. Mark Zuckerberg may not be quite there but he’s in that neighborhood. Gates at least is trying to accomplish some things for his country with his money, being involved in both the Gates Foundation and the commitment among billionaires to give away half their fortunes on or before their deaths.
You’ve doubtless heard my money/time analogies before, 1 second = 1 dollar. By that scale, Gates is worth about 4,000 years, Musk 4,800, and Bezos well over 6,000 years. The median value of an American home is a little under three days, mortgaged. The home reputed to be the most expensive in America right now, in Bel Air, is worth about eleven years. If the most expensive home in America is eleven years, why the fuck is anyone unwilling to tax six thousand years? This is lunacy. This isn’t about functional wealth, it’s about gamesmanship. It’s about competition at the expense of hundreds of millions of Americans.
Ron Powell
11/16/2021 @ 11:14 pm
“Do you hear Rachel Maddow saying this?”
No, not with personal numbers like this:
Rachel Maddow’s net worth:
$35 Million
Her Salary: $30 Million Per Year
When so called “journalists” become superstars and celebrities with “brand names” re the matter of the gross and grotesque income and wealth disparities ‘mum’s the word’.
Koshersalaami
11/17/2021 @ 11:26 am
I don’t blame people for being rich. I blame them for supporting policies that make the distribution of wealth worse rather than better.
Ron Powell
11/17/2021 @ 3:55 pm
“I blame them for supporting policies that make the distribution of wealth worse rather than better.”
That’s what rich people do…consistently!
Koshersalaami
11/17/2021 @ 6:02 pm
Not all of them. Warren Buffet doesn’t.
I realized tonight that there may be a simpler way of explaining wealth disparity than by comparing it with time, even though that works really well. To put things in perspective, it works to simply divide everything by one thousand.
So, the median value of a home in America (by one source I read recently) would be $249, the most expensive house in America would cost $350,000, and the richest man in America would be worth over $200,000,000. (That’s over 570 of the most expensive house in America.) There has to be some way of getting the general public to realize just how absurd distribution has gotten, even though a significant majority of Americans are for taxing the rich more.
Ron Powell
11/18/2021 @ 2:00 am
There’s a point at which we should tax the wealth of the wealthiest and acknowledge the fact that even in a free market capitalist society, too much money in too few hands. is violative of the Democratic principles upon which the American society was established and around which American governance revolves…
It should become increasingly apparent that those who have too much money are quickly becoming ungovernable.
Such people don’t necessarily see themselves as being ‘above the law’ …
They see themselves as being beyond the reach and scope of the evolution of the fundamental American social contract and central American organizational paradigm…
In short, they see themselves as untouched and untouchable by the things the average American might characterize and refer to as kitchen table concerns and issues…
By the way, it is the quality of being untouched and untouchable re the everyday ‘slings and arrows’ that is the fantasy that far too many Americans hold in their hearts as “The American Dream”….
koshersalaami
11/18/2021 @ 7:54 am
I don’t think so. I don’t think the American Dream is about being untouched and untouchable. I think it’s about being free from money worries while having some luxuries. And that’s the problem with America now: the vast majority of the population has money worries. Several years ago I heard a DJ ask “What do most Americans have three of?” The answer was overdue bills. That’s the problem.
This is fixable. Part of it is a wealth tax, understanding that a wealth tax of the kind we’re talking about would not affect the lifestyles of those taxed.
Right now I just read that the US has 614 billionaires. Remember that the most expensive home in the United States costs a little over a third of one billion dollars. And there’s only one house that expensive. And especially keep in mind that most billionaires don’t have one billion dollars. There are over fifty billionaires with more than ten billion dollars. There are over a hundred more with over four billion. For most of these, the most expensive home in America, not mortgaged, would be under 1/12 of their net worth. Raising taxes on these people wouldn’t exactly be a hardship. And yet not raising taxes on them is a serious hardship for well over a hundred million Americans.
Ron Powell
11/18/2021 @ 9:23 am
“….I don’t think the American Dream is about being untouched and untouchable. I think it’s about being free from money worries while having some luxuries…”
I disagree…
BTW in the minds too many Americans there’s little difference between being ‘untouched and untouchable’ and I don’t think so. I don’t think the American Dream is about being untouched and untouchable’ and
“…being free from money worries while having some luxuries…”
To me, the problem is that far too many Americans see the competition in pursuit of the American Dream as the exclusive province of white people…
There’s a kind of proprietary aura that encapsulates the concept of the American Dream the gives many white a sense of exclusivity and entitlement…
Too many white folks believe that America belongs to them exclusively and that they are entitled to unilaterally determine who has the right to share in the American experience and pursue the American Dream…
People of color are characterized and defined as being inherently unworthy and undeserving and therefore may be arbitrarily excluded from the fruits of American Democracy and a free and open marketplace…
koshersalaami
11/18/2021 @ 8:04 am
And, of course, a lot of these billionaires are billionaires because they inherited.
Ron Powell
11/18/2021 @ 9:28 am
Here’s a couple of good questions for you:
How much money would you consider to be enough?
How much money would you consider to be too much?
koshersalaami
11/18/2021 @ 3:33 pm
Depends where you live. Cost of living is drastically different in different places. Are we talking net worth? With a mortgage or without? With rent or without? How much do you have to travel to see family and, when you do, do you have a free place to stay? Does anyone in the family have an expensive medical condition?
What’s too much? There isn’t a too much if you’re pulling your weight wherever you are. The problem isn’t that we have ridiculously rich people, the problem is that we have ridiculously rich people who are seriously undertaxed with political support to tax them even less. There are people talking about the “death tax” by which they mean families should accumulate enormous amounts of money without earning it and without paying taxes on it. The associated problem is that we don’t have enough campaign finance regulation to keep them from buying representation who need fortunes to stay in office. We know from polling information that middle class priorities don’t make it into passed legislation if they diverge from wealthy priorities. A large majority – that is incidentally bipartisan – thinks we should be taxing the rich more heavily. See it happening? We had one of the Koch brothers, I think the one who passed away, say on camera that if he gives someone a campaign donation he expects something in return. That’s the definition of graft.
You want to be worth 200 billion, fine, but embrace helping your country, don’t avoid it. Don’t behave like you have to worry about your living. It doesn’t matter how heavily anyone taxes you, it would have to be rates no one in America has seen during your lifetime to even affect what you own, let alone how you live. If you’re in that position, making more money will make you more vulnerable, not less. There’s very little Bezos can do with 200 billion that he couldn’t do with a quarter of that. At this point his money makes him a target. We can hold him up as an example of what we shouldn’t have here.
I wish I could put a photograph in my comments. For the one I have in mind I might have to write a new post.
Ron Powell
11/18/2021 @ 4:35 pm
I have often said that it must be nice to have enough money so as never to have to worry about having enough money…
Trump and the Republicans gave the super rich a huge tax cut….
Virtually none of that money found its way back into the economy…
Your litany of ‘what ifs’ and ‘what abouts’ begs the question:
How much money is enough to not have to be concerned with any of the contingencies you enumerated.
I’d say 100 million in total net worth should just about cover any personal circumstance.or contingency you might wish to conjure up.
And I might suggest that having 10 times that much in annual net worth could be construed as having too much money concentrated in the name of one individual…
We won’t be able to reach just solutions to the problems income and wealth disparities create until we can dispel the notion that taxes are, by definition, punitive…
koshersalaami
11/18/2021 @ 7:29 pm
Yes, I’d say $100 million means you should be able to cover any contingency that comes up.
Have you seen the Obama’s house in Martha’s Vineyard in the Edgartown area? I think nearly 20 acres of waterfront (pond, not ocean), it might be more. Martha’s Vineyard is pretty prime real estate.
Under $12 million.
Yes 10 times $100 million is excessive. Jeff Bezos has 2,000 times that.
Ron Powell
11/19/2021 @ 10:21 am
“What’s too much? There isn’t a too much if you’re pulling your weight wherever you are.”
“Yes, I’d say $100 million means you should be able to cover any contingency that comes up.”
Yes 10 times $100 million is excessive.”
If 100 million renders one “…free from money worries while having some luxuries…”
and “10 times $100 million is excessive.”
What exactly would be a ‘fair share’ in taxes and how would you calculate that ‘fair share’ such that it must be remitted without exemptions, exclusions, or exceptions?
jpHart
11/18/2021 @ 2:03 pm
Let me telephone my good buddy @the MACC fund. He’s not judgmental and I also must tell him I espied a $283. paperback copy of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged @ 1/2 Priced Books. He’ll see my name on the phone and say: ” … where have all the flowers gone …?” And I’ll go, “Thought I saw ’em walking now … over the hill ….” Then we’ll try to loudly chorus, “LOW PLACES?!” “LO;}!”
Art W. Stone
11/19/2021 @ 9:30 am
It’s rather funny to see two regular guys deciding that if one had $100 million that they could face any of life’s contigencies. In fact it is more than funny, it’s knee-slapping hilarious and a bit sad. I had a goal of accruing $99 million, but it sounds like even then I might fall short. I give up.
Ron Powell
11/19/2021 @ 10:41 am
I’d agree Art except for the fact that somebody somewhere must engage in this kind of conversation and exchange in order to come up with solutions to what seems to be the intractable issues of gross wealth and income disparities and the inequities in taxation and distribution…
BTW Your goal of 99 million would have been entirely reasonable if you inherited 98 million and paid less in taxes than the woman who bags your groceries…
Of course with 99 million grocery shopping could be one of ‘life’s contigencies’ wouldn’t need to be bothered about…
Or, would you care to join the conversation and make a contribution to the discourse?
koshersalaami
11/19/2021 @ 11:42 am
I don’t think it makes sense to look for a number because I think it focuses in the wrong direction. Yes, $100 million should take care of anyone’s life contingencies. I’ll agree to that, not that I’d have any reason to select that number.
It looks in the wrong direction because the way the conversation will never go in America is confiscation beyond a ceiling. The constituency for that wouldn’t be big enough to get anywhere. Too many Americans think they might get filthy rich some day and none of them has a clue as to what constitutes filthy rich. What could in theory happen is a wealth tax or a heavy inheritance tax beyond a certain amount, though shelters could probably be constructed from both. Depends on the scope of the possible shelters. We do need some kind of redistribution because current distribution threatens the country in a whole lot of ways. But the redistribution doesn’t have to be anything like as major/drastic as Republicans fear because so little redistribution from a percentage standpoint accomplishes so much. Moving less than 1.2% of the wealth of the wealthiest 20% of the population to the bottom 40% of the population would better than quadruple the wealth of two out of every five Americans (if distributed proportionately, which would not be the best way to distribute it) and would result in a purchasing boom.
The problem is that that kind of redistribution is labeled by some as Socialism because of its nature rather than its scope. The hole in this case (aside from the fact that that’s not what Socialism means) is that it ignores welfare for the rich in much the same way that those who object to Reverse Discrimination in college admissions don’t understand just how much affirmative action (figuratively defined here) White students get, particularly White male students.
jpHart
11/20/2021 @ 6:07 pm
…@the MACC fund…ought read: Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer…looks like my plans fell through…seasonal slip into darkness…minds well go quantify all the discarded toothpaste caps in the North Pacific…so very many Soldiers of the War on Poverty…darkness our old friend…never charge an active shooter…nothing but the dead of night…fear and greed; countless billions in need
☮‼ please keep 🆒
JP Hart
12/04/2021 @ 3:33 pm
Please watch for my {:} Subterranean Notes & Stadium Lights {:}
Right now an impaired approach forward such as ‘100,000 Years of Beauty’.
Very truly yours, JPH, parking cars and pumping gas, ROSEY + me(:.)me@%.
0! I solved the missing sock dilemma:
wear one sock
Koshersalaami
12/05/2021 @ 9:58 am
How zen. What is the sound of two hands clapping?
JP Hart
12/05/2021 @ 2:45 pm
Ovation on another STAY cation? Silver dollar sized unique snowflakes — as even the touchdown referee applauds — while candy-colored clowns roll out the barrel, cup 0′ kindness all round! The tight end’s spikes prance the ground … new day has begun … or does it involve Thomas Mann’s Magic Mountain and that orange Bangladesh album?
JP Hart
12/05/2021 @ 4:58 pm
Does the peachline invoke a ⁉ relevant to unique plastic like those pesky fasteners merchandisers pierce ski caps on — not easy being a ‘pointy-head-liberal’ all summer long Koshersalaami — certainly unlike the biblical report yelling for Barabbas — smarm-BindlesnARKish and cuddly — if polar bears could talk? Quantification of the woo-dB-SewveeYets and fumed gasoline in and around the Ucranium? Miss spelling Celine as ceiling? Abrupt gerrymandering so more Representatives can produce hate speech cartoons?
It’s ALRIGHT?
Koshersalaami
12/06/2021 @ 1:18 am
Good question. But my head is actually pointed. Really. I have something called a sagital crest, a bony ridge that’s rather sharp. As I lose hair it looks rather strange.
JP Hart
12/07/2021 @ 2:44 pm
No doubt it is a self-conscious secret not noticed (0m Shanti 0m) by civilians. TY? Goodness a least FALLOUT shelters are out the news. Hive sorta a Gorbachevian (fade) your right my left temple. Collection caps news visors share cropper lids Harley snugs Schwinn helmets day-glow DAY0 TREK hard silo bands a mosquito mesh safari gizmo my Rudy V terrycloth turban, my fodder’s gold-silver splashed welder’s helmet 0 my Neal Young-like broad-brim with a bluebird feather and every hue of watchman cap to pull down LO;}
Do you have any thinking caps available Koshersalaami?
And what the heck is a crocked eyebrow?
Koshersalaami
12/07/2021 @ 3:41 pm
Naha, I don’t use hats to think. I use late night do walks up a 150’ hill to think. Possibly crooked eyebrow., “crooked” being one syllable.
Koshersalaami
12/07/2021 @ 3:41 pm
Typos. Naah, doG walks
JP Hart
12/08/2021 @ 4:22 pm
No doubt very many of us have gone quietly into howl’s it go into the good night fandango A hash tag uno sans shirk so I am & have procured Kim Gamble’s ‘Come the Terrible Tiger’ holly-holy just like an old time movie tree top brothers et al by the tale Anna Feinberg + all God’s children frolic I say mark this day when John Lennon went away as Joe and Jill take on the hill a golden light acclaims one good deed hey how very many in need Gamble’s touch unnumbered humbly I salute Bob Dole simulacrum learning hearing Google’s tutorials search old code what the hay bale golden/silver years I can still easily make an acronym with any three words though the four winds blow lonely now if we could only imagine how to get some of this Minnetonka snow upon CO Springs & Loveland and perhaps predictably GIMME SHELTER future looks bright LO;}
JP HART
12/09/2021 @ 5:12 pm
Q: What did the Whippet dog say to the Savannah cat?
a): drones, clones, Nano physics domes, Dead Sea Scrolls wrapped up like a two (2) of hearts
b): Fleck! tadpoles could talk
c): RICK’S CAFE ————>tHAt away
d): *!* GLORIA *!* GLORIA *!*
JP Hart
12/09/2021 @ 6:04 pm
E = mc2): what that i should ✔ the rainx & retro red river valley work & practice summer wind — as free as the wind blows