American Politics Discussion Thread

[Cyneheard]

How stupid can one person be.

Cynical. The correct word is cynical - she's playing at civil war, and doesn't want to face the consequences, and thinks that she's going to convince Trump to save her by appealing to the camera (since he's always watching TV - the scary part is that it might actually work!). She's not being stupid - it's something much, much darker.

[Charriu]

The terrible thing is that you might be right about that

[Jowy]

Jenna Ryan, a Texas real estate broker who took a private jet to Washington to join the attack on the US Capitol, has pleaded with Donald Trump to pardon her after she was arrested by federal authorities.

After surrendering to the FBI on Friday, Ryan said: “We all deserve a pardon.”

“I’m facing a prison sentence,” she told CBS11 at her home. “I think I do not deserve that.”

Turning to look into the camera, she said: “I would ask the president of the United States to give me a pardon.”

Well.. If she's rich enough to fly in there on a private jet, she's rich enough for Trump to pardon her.

[superdeath]

I give it a solid 95% chance that she gets pardon'd as a last "haha" from Trump.

[darrelljs]

If he pardons her he is admitting he supports the rebels, and that would be fun to watch the Cruz’s and Hawley’s of the world rationalize.

Darrell

[Cyneheard]

If he pardons her he is admitting he supports the rebels, and that would be fun to watch the Cruz’s and Hawley’s of the world rationalize.

Darrell

Pardoning her does Trump zero good - why would he do it? He'll pardon some people he actually needs and knows - Bannon and Giuliani seem very likely - but he doesn't care about the people who actually stormed the Capitol. They were useful peons who've now been used and discarded.

[Miguelito]

600 + 1400 = 2000

Yep.

A few points:
1) AOC's bill from two weeks ago - that passed the House - would have done this as well. It's just that you'd have gotten $2000 at once, instead of in two pieces. Criticizing this simply because it's in two pieces makes you look petty or Lucy and the football - where agreeing to your position from two weeks ago is no longer good enough. Feel free to advocate for more money on its own merits, but don't make up trouble.

From what I've read they are aiming for a monthly 2k during the pandemic? Then the critique would make sense. (I'm agnostic as to whether the actual proposal is a good idea in current US circumstances)


Regarding the pardons, it was floated here and there that the impeachment prevents Trump from pardoning anybody for related crimes, is this correct?

If he pardons her he is admitting he supports the rebels, and that would be fun to watch the Cruz’s and Hawley’s of the world rationalize.

Darrell

At this point I don't think that they'd have any trouble with that. Healing, unifying and triggering the lib neocon commies all at once, whatever. A great majority of republicans seem to be convinced that the election was stolen, and like half seem to support the would be coupists, and that's the audience they have to play to?

[SevenSpirits]

Regarding the pardons, it was floated here and there that the impeachment prevents Trump from pardoning anybody for related crimes, is this correct? 

No. The pardon power cannot be used to nullify impeachments. Additionally, if having been impeached, he is then removed by the Senate, he obviously would no longer be able to pardon anyone. But impeachment alone has no effect on the pardon power - that's a misreading of the law.

[Cyneheard]

600 + 1400 = 2000

Yep.

A few points:
1) AOC's bill from two weeks ago - that passed the House - would have done this as well. It's just that you'd have gotten $2000 at once, instead of in two pieces. Criticizing this simply because it's in two pieces makes you look petty or Lucy and the football - where agreeing to your position from two weeks ago is no longer good enough. Feel free to advocate for more money on its own merits, but don't make up trouble.

From what I've read they are aiming for a monthly 2k during the pandemic? Then the critique would make sense. (I'm agnostic as to whether the actual proposal is a good idea in current US circumstances)

If that's the actual plan, that's an argument - but that isn't what AOC's bill two weeks ago (maybe it's three weeks now) would have done. And Nicolae's response was to Biden's proposal - which would add $1400 new dollars on top of the existing $600 that we received about two weeks ago, and he was talking about how it was "backing off" the $2000 proposal, which only makes sense if the $2000 proposal was understood as a one-shot check.

Monthly $2000 per adult would be Universal Basic Income at that point - and I think monthly payments would be very hard to end (probably part of the point). Biden is willing to deficit spend in this crisis, but I think $300B+ a month for all time is more than he's comfortable doing - especially since there's other things he needs to spend the money on. (US has ~210M adults, but not all are eligible, especially with the income cutoffs. 150M fully eligible = $300B); to put that in perspective - in Fiscal Year 2019, the US federal government spent $4.4 trillion, and this would be pretty close to that amount.

There's another problem with making it monthly without adjusting it:
Right now, the $600 we got phases out at $75,000 for an individual, at a rate of 5% for the next $12,000. So effectively, income in the $75,000-$87,000 range is taxed at an additional 5% because you don't get as much stimulus money. That's fine if it's a once or twice thing - not enough to make earning over $75,000 a bad idea. And if it's $2000, instead of $600, I think it would have been a $75,000 - $115,000 income range - following the same 5% rule.
But if this was monthly - now instead of it being 5% once or twice, it's 12 times that, or 60%. Add on other income taxes (state - varies, I'm 4.75%, federal - 22 or 24% in this income range, Social Security + Medicaid is another 7.65%), and you're talking an effective tax rate of 89.65% or higher - that creates a very large swath of income where it would no longer make sense to earn more money. The Laffer curve is a joke at our actual tax rates, but at 90% it really does reduce the incentive to work. (One reason I chose not to go for my manager's position when it became vacant was the modest extra $ wasn't worth the stress/loss of job security, but take away the extra $ and there's no way I'd have gone for it).

It's a fixable problem, but only by spending more money - making the income cut off more gradual (like instead of it being 5% per check, it's 2% - but now you're giving UBI to people who make up to $175,000, so at that point you're basically paying everybody, and might as well just pay everybody and raise taxes to make up for it).

This income cutoff issue is common with designing any type of poverty support program: how do you make sure that it doesn't create a "benefits cliff" where it no longer makes sense to work more, because you take home the same/less money?
- For monetary and quasi-monetary support (the big ones are SNAP/food stamps, rent subsidies, and direct cash), it can be done - basically, you gradually decrease the benefits until someone isn't eligible - so for every $10 they earn above a threshold, they get $1 less in benefits, things like that, and we generally do that (one exception: school meals).
- This is a huge problem with Medicaid. Health benefits tend to be an all-or-nothing thing - it's not like you can be "half-insured." There are people who choose to work fewer hours because they have to keep Medicaid. A universal health care system would solve that problem.
- This is also a problem if there are a lot of programs someone has access to - if you've got five programs that decrease their benefits by $1 for every $10 you earn, all of a sudden it really doesn't make sense to work. And in the US, where we have a very fragmented system of governance, this can occur.

In short, while I think UBI would be a very good system, it's not something you can put together in a week because the cost is so large and it probably does require thinking through what else we would change, especially since you need to pay for at least some of it (if we increased federal expenditures $3.6T without increasing taxes on anyone, the financial system would quite reasonably flip out and we could have an unpredictable mess on our hands).

Separately, the impeachment does not prevent Trump from pardoning other people. Really, all that clause does is prevent a President from pardoning someone who was impeached from their impeachment.

[superdeath]

They could probably cut foreign aid/military funding and easily afford UBI..