Category: partisanship

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national politics & policies partisanship tax policy

Billionaires Backed Better

billionaire, Democrat, taxes

It’s a cliché of politics that the Republican Party is The Party of the Rich while the Democrats serve the Poor and Downtrodden.

But were that true, why so many Democratic billionaires?

And why is President Biden’s Build Back Better legislation offering the top income quintile a tax cut worth billions and billions?

At issue is a “$285 billion tax cut that would almost exclusively benefit high-income households over the next five years,” write Alyssa Fowers and Simon Ducroquet in the pages of The Washington Post. “The measure would allow households to increase their deduction from state and local taxes from $10,000 to $80,000 through 2026, and then impose a new deduction cap through 2031.”

“It’s the second-most expensive item” — when figured in budgeting terms, not merely in outlays.

True to form, Democrats promise that it would raise revenue, actually — eventually. In time-honored procrastination fashion, the legislation jiggers with the deduction cap over time, decreasing the cap in the future. A typical (and easy to re-jigger) politicians’ ploy.

What this is all about is subsidizing the rich in high-tax “blue states” — politically protecting Democrats in California and New York, to name the most obvious two, allowing them to pretend to “soak the rich” and “help the poor,” and decreasing the incentive in those states for the rich to leave for lower-tax environments, like Texas and Florida.

Arguably, these “SALT” caps are the worst sort of tax break possible, since they are regional (affecting different states differently) and even partisan. Not to mention regressive.

Instead of “Build Back Better,” the Biden plan should be dubbed the “Failed State Bailout.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ideological culture partisanship

Authoritarian Ardor

Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald calls it a “mountain of data.” 

On his Rumble account, “System Update,” the journalist shows “how authoritarian self-identified followers of the Democratic Party have become.”

While admitting that “authoritarian tendencies” are in every group, Greenwald insists that “when you examine this data . . . and really compile it, and look all at once at it, it is extraordinary — no matter how low your expectations are of Democrats — how authoritarian they have become, particularly in the wake of the Trump years.”

Citing Pew Research from August, the well-known reporter begins by showing how opinions on free speech have diverged over the last three years: while Republicans wanting the federal government to “take steps to restrict false info online” declined from 37 percent to 28 percent, Democratic support rose from 40 percent to 65 percent. 

And the itch to have tech companies do the dirty work for the federal government “even if it limits freedom of info” shows the same spread: R’s went down 9 points and D’s went up a whopping sixteen!

Greenwald also explores Democrats’ enduring affection for corporate media news, how enthusiastic Democratic politicians are for curbing the basic rights of their political opponents, and how much ardor Democrats show the CIA and the FBI.

All the data, Greenwald insists, shows Democrats getting “more authoritarian by the minute.”

Why?

It might best be looked at in an insider/outsider context. Democrats are becoming more authoritarian because it is their hold on power that they are defending, and Republicans are reacting against that stranglehold. An old principle may be at work: outside of power, people tend to demand freedom; inside, they demand more power.

Authoritarianism is more appealing to insiders, viewing themselves as “authorities.”

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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ballot access partisanship

Fear & Its Peddlers

fear, panic, democracy, Joe Biden

“We’re facing the most significant test of our democracy since the Civil War,” President Joe Biden hyperbolically orated on Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

“That’s not hyperbole,” he insisted, repeating, for emphasis, “Since the Civil War.”

Referring to state legislation passed or proposed by Republicans regarding various election procedures, Mr. Biden must remember the Jim Crow Era with its “literacy tests, poll taxes, elaborate registration systems, and eventually whites-only Democratic Party primaries to exclude black voters,” since he also smeared these current Republican polices as a “21st-century Jim Crow assault.”* 

President Joe painted a picture of “unprecedented voter suppression” and “raw and sustained election subversion” and more.

Somehow, the media chorus line just repeats this nonsense.

Ignore the years of prominent Democrats’ straight-faced berating of Republican support for voter ID laws as nothing more than a purposely racist suppression tactic . . . immediately followed the Democrats’ recent about-face claim that they had always supported voter ID.

Even as they continue to push federal legislation that would effectively obliterate such ID laws in 35 states.**

Then contrast the bill passed in Georgia or being considered in Texas with the process in Biden’s home state of Delaware, which “doesn’t allow 24-hour or no-excuse drive-through voting,” as Karl Rove explains in The Wall Street Journal. 

“It won’t begin early voting until 2022 and then for . . . fewer days than Texas,” which has had early voting for more than three decades.

Somehow, Mr. Biden has never denigrated Delaware for Jim Crow-ism. 

Yet he may be right that “bullies and merchants of fear and peddlers of lies are threatening the very foundation of our country.”

Peddler of lies, know thyself.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Not to mention that a certain “Biden crime bill” passed decades ago may have led to more disenfranchisement of voters — especially voters of color — than any single piece of legislation since . . . the Civil War.

** This HR1 would also allow partisan control of the Federal Election Commission, for the first time ever — the most potentially speech-suppressing provision of any state or federal legislation.

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Our Rules or Theirs?

Last Thursday, President Biden signaled “that he would be willing to consider supporting the elimination of the filibuster,” CBS News reported following his first news conference, “if Senate Republicans use it to block Democratic legislative priorities from receiving a full vote on the Senate floor.”

“If”? Stopping the majority party from taking its legislation to a floor vote without a 60-vote supermajority to end debate is what the filibuster does.  

The president, a Democrat, is saying the filibuster is OK . . . as long as Republicans don’t use it.

You will of course not be shocked to learn that Biden has been a longtime, adamant supporter of the filibuster. In 2005, he gave an impassioned defense, arguing, “At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill — it’s about compromise and moderation.”

Biden called the GOP attack then a “fundamental power grab” and said his oration “may be one of the most important speeches for historical purposes that I will have given in the 32 years since I have been in the Senate.”

Yet, the filibuster is not in the Constitution. 

It is simply a Senate rule. And the majority party in the Senate can thereby fiddle with it. 

I’m not so much wed to the filibuster as I am wed to the idea that the rules with which Washington insiders wield power serve us and not just themselves. 

The filibuster should be made official in law or Constitution precisely so politicians cannot change it on whim or passion. 

Or it should be ended. But not before one party (or both) actually campaigns to end it, so that the American people can weigh in. Because these must be our rules if it is to be our government. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Another Comedian Breaks Free

Sarah Silverman

Comedian Sarah Silverman, who has famously lent no small part of her cachet to the progressive cause, supporting Senator Bernie Sanders in both of his Democratic presidential runs, is now ditching the Democratic Party.

Her complaint isn’t that the party stiffed her candidate twice, first when the Democratic National Committee stabbed Bernie in the back for Hillary and next when it orchestrated ingenious maneuvers to gain the nomination (and then the presidency) for the tepid (and tepidly supported) Joe Biden.

I have argued before that Democrat insiders’ treatment of Sanders was deeply anti-democratic. But no, Ms. Silverman directs her ire against “the absolutist-ness of the party,” as she put it the other day on Instagram. “It’s so . . . elitist. You know, for something called ‘progressive,’ it allows for zero progress.”* Telling, perhaps, that Ms. Silverman emphasizes “progressive” and not “democratic,” as if it were named “The Progressive Party.”

Silverman specifically called attention not only to progressives’ unwillingness to compromise, but also to the it-takes-two-to-tango divide: “You know, Republicans might hear an idea that they would totally agree with, but, if it comes from AOC then they hate it.” She admitted that the same thing applied to her.

No wonder, then, that she does not “want to be associated with any party anymore,” complaining about “too much baggage.”

But she’s objecting to her fellow progressives’ anti-free speech agenda, too, characterizing it as “righteousness porn.”

Silverman, who has a special named Jesus Is Magic and is famous for her rape jokes, has herself felt the sting of cancel culture and would be a natural proponent of principled free speech.

But that is not a progressive cause, it is a very old-fashioned liberal one.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* An f-bomb has been elided in the quotation from Ms. Silverman.

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insider corruption partisanship

Member-Directed Funding

earmark, Congress, corruption

“Congress is about to bring back its secret weapon,” CNN headlined a column yesterday.

Congress? Weapon? 

Be afraid. 

Be very afraid. 

“Earmarks are back,” Chris Cillizza immediately informs readers . . . you know, “what is technically known as ‘member-directed funding.’” 

Before you can say “terrible idea,” the cable channel’s editor-at-large does admit that “members securing money for pet projects in their districts could go wrong.”

Yeah. Right. Has gone wrong. Will go wrong. Is wrong.

“This is a sneaky big deal,” offers Cillizza nonetheless. “And a massive win for party leaders of both parties.”

Cillizza argues that it was a big mistake for Speaker John Boehner and the GOP leadership in Congress to take away their ability to reward individual congresspeople by stuffing a couple multi-million-dollar pet projects into the budget. What’s not to like for an incumbent politician? They get to hand out money right in their districts, with their name attached to it. 

As long as a member of Congress plays ball.

The way the party bosses say.

In return, that incumbent can likely stay in this nation’s heralded leadership for years, decades.

When “you realize that in taking away earmarks,” explains Cillizza, “Boehner robbed party leaders of their most potent weapon to keep their rank-and-file in line on key votes.”

Is it even plausible for the functioning of our democratic republic that “party leaders” — nowhere mentioned or given any power in our Constitution — leverage our tax dollars to essentially buy off our representatives in order to keep our representatives “in line” on other important votes?

No.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Consigned to Outer Darkness

mass media, establishment media, censorship, free speech

Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon are on a de-platforming binge.

The official rationale? Anyone “associated” with rioting must be expelled from virtual society. 

Yet these social media outfits have hardly ousted endorsers of violence against innocents with anything like consistency. Iranian Boss-man Ali Khamenei still has a Twitter account. Socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Cortez, who has opined that some people “have no choice but to riot,” is still merrily blathering on Twitter.

The latest victim of Big Tech’s assault on speech is not an individual but a competing platform, Parler, whose support for free speech is its main selling point.

Apple has kicked Parler off its app store, and Parler got booted from the Google Play store, too.

Now Amazon, which provided storage for Parler, is kicking Parler off its servers with essentially zero notice because Amazon employees “were lobbying the company to disconnect Parler from AWS for hate speech,” which is like arguing that USPS or the Constitution must be shut down because it enables hate mail.

Apparently, once enemies of speech employed by a big-tech service provider scream “Deplatform so-and-so,” any erstwhile reservations of top management — Jeff Bezos, in this case — pop like a soap bubble under a hot iron.

Parler was one possible landing place for the President of the United States, booted from Twitter for allegedly inciting the capitol riot.* It now seems that Trump may find refuge at Gab.com, where his tweets expunged from Twitter have been republished. 

But note: Gab has long been out in the wilderness, denied service on Google’s and Apple’s systems.

Folks who demand inclusion sure do practice exclusion well.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Rush Limbaugh deactivated his Twitter account in protest of Twitter’s action. And I deactivated mine as well — something I meant to do when Twitter blocked the New York Post’s truthful reporting on Hunter Biden during the election.

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media and media people partisanship

Mainstream Disinformation

Joe Biden, election, nightmare

“A historic crime and disgrace.” 

That is how left-leaning journalist Glenn Greenwald characterizes U.S. media coverage of the 2020 presidential race.

Back in October, he resigned from The Intercept, a publication he co-founded with the aim of providing “fearless, adversarial journalism that holds the powerful accountable.” Its editors, you see, refused to publish his writing unless he removed “all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.”

When the New York Post, the nation’s fourth largest newspaper, reported on emails from a laptop belonging to his son, Hunter Biden, Facebook and Twitter quickly blocked folks from sharing the news. Arguing the story was “hacked,” Twitter shut down the Post’s account for the critical final weeks of the campaign.*

“We will not waste our time,” declared National Public Radio, on “stories that are just pure distractions.” Now, with Hunter acknowledging the FBI criminal investigation of the family business, the state-media outlet’s Distraction Meter appears out of whack.

But there’s more. “[A]s soon as these [Hunter Biden] documents became known,” Greenwald told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson, “the operatives in the intelligence community, the CIA, [former CIA Director] John Brennan, [former Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper, [former NSA Director] Michael Hayden — all of the standard professional liars — issued a letter claiming that this material was the hallmark of Russian disinformation, even though they had no basis for thinking that.”**

This, he points out, “gave the media permission to lie to the public continuously” by enthusiastically repeating the baseless claim. 

Most ominously, there was again “domestic interference on the part of intelligence agencies in order to manipulate the outcome of our election,” Greenwald explains.

The election is over. Our national nightmare is not. 

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* There were two huge problems with Twitter’s excuse: (a) the Post’s revelations were not from a hack, and (b) stories are continually written from information hacked and unlawfully leaked to the media — and then shared widely on Facebook and Twitter without any impediment.

** Greenwald is best known for breaking the story of Edward Snowden’s leak of classified information showing unconstitutional NSA spying on Americans, while working for the UK Guardian. Mr. Snowden claimed his “breaking point” in deciding to release the information “was seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress.”

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Ssshhh, Not Now

DC FACES, racism, monuments

“Democrats need to keep their eye on the ball,” a Democratic Party strategist confided to The Washington Post on deep, dark background, “and not say things that are, on balance, a loser when everything is on the line.”

To what “loser” is this anonymous capital insider referring?

“D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser gave [President Trump] ammunition,” informed The Post this week, by “publishing a sweeping list of historical figures whose names should be removed from public property or ‘contextualized.’”

Developed by a task force Mayor Bowser appointed this summer called DCFACES (District of Columbia Facilities and Commemorative Expressions), the report calls for “renaming 21 public schools, 12 recreational facilities, six public housing complexes and other sites.”

The Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial are both fingered, though they are on federal property, not city land. Still, plenty of statues, schools and other public buildings controlled by the city bear the names of such historically tainted folks as Ben Franklin, Alexander Graham Bell and Presidents James Monroe, John Tyler, Zachary Taylor and Woodrow Wilson.

“The mayor, her top advisers and the authors of the list,” The Post noted a day after the public release, “would not discuss it.”

What caught my attention, however, was the issue of timing. 

“The mayor usually has very good political instincts,” offered former D.C. Chamber of Commerce CEO Barbara Lang. “I was just surprised that this came out now, quite frankly.”

As The Post explained, Lang “believes Bowser should have waited to publish the report until after the presidential election.”

Why after? Because the issue is a “loser.” And the Dems do not want the public to know their lofty and ludicrous (and loser) goals and aspirations until after all votes are cast.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Voting Like a Neo-Nazi

Richard Spencer, alt-right, white nationalist, Biden Supporter, Joe Biden

Dinesh D’Souza is tickled. You see, Richard B. Spencer, the almost-famous “alt-right”/“Sieg Heil” guy is voting, he says on Twitter, “for Biden and a straight democratic ticket.”

D’Souza, who is relentlessly pro-Republican in addition to pushing conservative values and arguments, had his dearest dream handed to him. Richard Spencer, an ethnonationalist, is loathed mightily by the left. And, frankly, by most of the right. Not to mention those looking straight-ahead and -backwards. So to have Spencer prefer the Democrats is rich.

For Republicans. (And not a few others.)

Usually, Democrats revel in lambasting Republicans for garnering support among the explicitly racist set. Now, tables turned.

Yet this is not really all that “out there.” Spencer, who is often characterized as a neo-Nazi, has admitted to many leftist sympathies in the past. His only real heresy from the left is his racist nationalism. He likes transfer programs, regulations, etcetera. Hefty-sized, all-encompassing government.

In his original tweet, Spencer explained his rationale less ideologically, though: “It’s not based on ‘accelerationism’* or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people.”

Uh, what?

Oh, the heights — or depths — of irony should this election between Sleepy Joe and The Donald come down to a contest over competence. Mr. Trump’s struggles with the pandemic — as well as the economic impacts of a lockdown strategy so tightly embraced by progressives —hardly proves the competence of Democrats. Nor do riots in cities run by Democrats over alleged structural racism administered by those same Democrats.

But the Democrats were competent enough to get a Richard Spencer endorsement.

That’s something?

At least for the Republicans.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

“Accelerationism” noun : the scheme to embrace one’s opponents’ ideas so that they prove themselves spectacularly bad, and one can then ride in during the ensuing chaos. [Risky maneuver.]

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