Today in 1967, the Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” …
… which proved insufficient for the Yardbirds, which disbanded one year later:
No comments on Presty the DJ for July 7
Month: July 2017
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Ronald Reagan was fond of saying that Republicans believe every day is July 4, and Democrats believe every day is April 15.
Case in point, according to Capitalism:
On Sunday, the Illinois House of Representatives considered legislation that would increase tax revenue by $5 billion adding tax rate increases on personal and corporate income taxes and adds services taxes on previously untaxed service industries, among other reforms. Lawmakers passed the measure; however, Rauner has vowed to veto the bill coming from the General Assembly because it would raise taxes drastically—a 32 percent tax increase was attached to this bill.
Illinois is ranked as the most tax-burdened state in the union, according to a WalletHub analysis, with an average combined tax rate–state income tax, local property taxes, other taxes–of 14.76 percent.
Because of the already high tax burden, several Illinoisians wish to leave the state for relief, according to a survey by the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute in October 2016. In fact, that survey reports that 47 percent of respondents wish to leave the state.
Migration out of the state isn’t just reserved for the citizens as several companies are shuttering operations or are moving out of state to more business friendly environments.
Taxes would increase for individuals and corporations who wish to remain to shore up the loss of revenue. Simply put, the debt of the state government will drag the state’s economic health down with it as corporate, sales, and personal tax obligations continue to increase. …
The proposal serves as the Democrat’s budget proposal despite Rauner’s, and other Republicans, wish to balance the budget without increasing taxes. Ultimately, the wish of the governor’s administration was to advocate for and ensure the passage of a budget proposal that has several cuts in select areas of the state government’s operations.
To make matters worst, the state legislature failed to reach a budget agreement before the new fiscal year began on July 1st. Such a failure marked three years without a budget.
The Illinois Senate overrode Rauner’s veto on, of all days, Independence Day. The Illinois House hasn’t voted, but could as early as today, according to the Chicago Tribune, and the tax increases passed with a sufficient margin to override Rauner’s veto.
North of the state line, The Capital Times reports:
Gov. Scott Walker has made a career out of cutting taxes. And with $4.7 billion in tax cuts over the span of his two terms as governor, he’s not done yet.
Walker’s proposed 2017-19 budget would bring that reduction to a total of $8 billion since he took office in 2011. The governor argues those cuts, along with other major initiatives including his signature Act 10 legislation, have driven up revenue — a concept he has dubbed the “reform dividend.” While the catchphrase hasn’t quite caught on, the argument has. Conservatives point to the state’s low unemployment rate and proposed investments into education as evidence that Wisconsin is, as Walker puts it, “working and winning.” And with that “reform dividend” comes his justification for even more tax cuts, including a proposal to eliminate the state’s portion of the property tax entirely. …
Meanwhile, within the Legislature — with its largest Republican majority in decades — momentum is growing behind what could amount to more significant changes to the way Wisconsin taxes its residents, including an effort to move the state toward a flat income tax and a proposal to eliminate the personal property tax.
Todd Berry, a longtime tax policy analyst and president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, is “not inclined to predict” any major changes to the way the state raises revenue. A proposal to repeal the personal property tax would require an adjustment in priorities. Moving to a flat tax requires more support than currently exists. Even a significant change in transportation funding — the largest source of discord among lawmakers and the governor during the budget process this year — is unlikely, he said.
What is significant in the current climate, Berry said, is that so much of the push for major tax reform is coming from lawmakers, particularly from a group of trained accountants known as the “CPA Caucus.”
The four-member group is composed of three certified public accountants — Sen. Chris Kapenga, R-Delafield, Sen. Howard Marklein, R-Spring Green, and Rep. Dale Kooyenga, R-Brookfield. Rep. John Macco, R-Ledgeview, is a financial adviser. Marklein and Kooyenga both sit on the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, which reviews, refines and rewrites the state budget after it is introduced by the governor.
The accountant-lawmakers have led the charge on tax policy changes large and small: eliminating 18 tax credits in three years, reducing the number of income tax brackets, reducing the number of people required to pay the alternative minimum tax and reducing the so-called “marriage penalty.”
While Walker typically speaks in general terms about simply cutting taxes, the measures coming from the CPA Caucus are more about the particulars of tax policy.
Historically, major tax policy initiatives have come from governors, Berry said, in particular changes made under Warren Knowles, Patrick Lucey, Lee Sherman Dreyfus, Tony Earl and Tommy Thompson.
“When we really had pretty dramatic tax law changes, from both parties, those proposals have come from the governor,” Berry said. “What is somewhat different about, particularly income tax policy in the last several budgets, is that the big change that we saw in 2013-14 and now this new change in 2017-18-19, both came not from the executive branch, but from a small group of Republican legislators with professional tax background.”
Kooyenga, a U.S. Army Reservist and potential U.S. Senate candidate with a penchant for quoting the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” said his goal is to pull back on efforts made by politicians to “move levers” and control behavior through tax policy.
“I’m a firm believer that there should be less power in Madison and less power in D.C. And one of the ways that even Republicans have tried to assert their power is by creating mechanisms in the tax code to try to get people to do what they want to do,” Kooyenga said. “And I think that people should decide what they want to do and try to minimize the government trying to penalize or reward certain actions.” …
“Locked myself in the office this evening to develop a plan to eliminate the state’s personal property tax,” Kooyenga tweeted at 9:48 p.m. on June 6.
Kooyenga has since completed his plan, which he said is now being reviewed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.
The personal property tax, implemented in the early days of Wisconsin, when most of its governmental revenue came from property taxes, began as a tax on items like livestock, furniture, jewelry and vehicles. Its property tax counterpart — real property — covers land and buildings.
The list of exemptions to the personal property tax has grown to include, among other items, clothing, personal items, stocks and bonds, vehicles, farm and manufacturing machinery and business computers. The tax now applies, in general, to furniture, equipment, machinery and watercraft owned by businesses.
According to an analysis by the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, personal property has accounted for between 2.2 and 2.6 percent of the state’s property tax base since 2005. Compared to the 40 other states with some form of a personal property tax, Wisconsin taxes less than most, but more than most of its neighbors.
While the personal property tax brings in a relatively small sum compared to other taxes, the state Department of Revenue estimates eliminating it would result in a loss of about $261 million per year in funding for schools and local governments. That’s based on a proposal introduced in April by Sen. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, and Rep. Bob Kulp, R-Stratford.
Depending on the proposal, the money would either be gone or accounted for with an increase to real property taxes — paid by homeowners and business owners, rather than only business owners, as it is currently.
Kooyenga said in an interview that his plan would reclassify some personal property items as real property, putting the fiscal impact below $240 million. It would also eliminate and reduce some tax credits.
“We would be replacing (the revenue),” Kooyenga said. …
Walker is supportive, with conditions.
“I don’t mind chipping away at that. I’ve said all along, if I started from the ground up and had to build something, there’s no way I would create the personal property tax because it doesn’t make any sense,” Walker said in an interview.
Walker said he would “love” to get rid of the tax, but not at the expense of his other changes, including income tax cuts proposed in his two-year budget.
Competition with other priorities is why the tax remains on the books despite a century-long desire among people of varied political perspectives to get rid of it, said Berry.
“The problem is, it’s never anybody’s top priority for tax cuts, because it’s not sexy,” Berry said. “The sticking point simply is if you get rid of it you’ve got to come up with several hundred million dollars of money so that local governments are made whole, so they don’t lose revenue. And of course there are always other, better things to do.”
In Walker’s 2017-19 budget proposal, income tax cuts fall into the “better things to do” category, as does eliminating the state’s portion of the property tax, known as the forestry mill tax.
His plan would reduce income tax revenues by about $203 million, in part by cutting rates for the two lowest brackets by one-tenth of a percentage point.
Walker’s plan to eliminate the forestry mill tax would amount to a reduction of about $180 million over the two-year budget period. While most property taxes are levied by local governments and school districts, the state’s portion goes to fund the acquisition, preservation and development of forests in the state.
That move helps the governor make good on a campaign promise to keep property taxes on a median-valued home at or below where they were in 2014, when he was last elected.
“That’s just been a target of ours,” Walker said. “It’s not just keeping a political promise, but it’s the one area where people are seeing a tangible difference. I always like to warn lawmakers to be cautious because sometimes people say, ‘Well, we don’t hear as much about property taxes as we used to.’ That’s because we’ve lowered them.”
If property taxes were to increase again, Walker said, it wouldn’t be long before lawmakers would start hearing about them.
Simplicity is listed by those on the left and right as a quality to strive for in tax policy. The disagreement lies in how to achieve it.
Kooyenga’s vision involves gradually adjusting the state’s tax brackets until the income tax reaches a flat 3.95 percent rate for all income levels in 2029. That proposal was included in a sweeping transportation funding plan the lawmaker introduced in May as an alternative to Walker’s budget. …
“A lot of Republicans were upset, as they should be, with (Democratic Gov. Jim) Doyle for raiding the transportation fund. Now the opposite is happening. Now we’re transferring general fund money into the transportation fund,” Kooyenga said. “One could argue that we’re raising too much money in the general fund, by evidence that we have plenty leftover to move to the transportation fund … If you look over the last 10 years, there’s actually been $715 million net that has gone from the general fund to the transportation fund.”
Walker is intrigued, but not committed to supporting the shift to a flat tax. In general, he said, it would be good to have “one simple rate” for income and sales taxes, with limited exemptions and loopholes. Current law places taxpayers in four brackets, with rates ranging from 3.95 percent for the lowest earners to 7.65 percent for the highest earners.
“I think the concept’s a good one,” Walker said, adding that he would want to see a proposal that includes a substantial enough deduction to make sure taxes weren’t increased on working families. “There’s ways you could make it work so the average citizen would either see it as a tax cut or tax-neutral.”
At the heart of the debate are questions about what makes a tax policy fair. These questions are framed around terms like “horizontal equity” and “vertical equity.” A tax policy that is horizontally equitable taxes people within a similar income or wealth range at the same rate. A tax policy that is vertically equitable taxes people with more wealth or income at a higher rate than people who make less money.
Within that framework, there are progressive taxes, which tax higher incomes at higher rates; regressive taxes, which take a larger percentage from low-income earners; and proportional taxes, which apply the same rate regardless of income.
Opponents of a flat, or proportional tax, say income should be taxed progressively — people who have more resources should contribute at a higher rate. Supporters argue that higher earners would still pay more money than lower earners under a flat tax, just not at a higher rate.
Kooyenga’s plan would scrap the state’s alternative minimum tax, capital gains exclusion, property/rent tax credit, married couple credit and others.
By the time the plan would fully take effect, in 2029, 1.9 million taxpayers would have their taxes cut by $2.8 billion, an average of $1,436 per person, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
About 340,000 people would see their taxes go up by $53.7 million, or $158 per person. About 30 percent of the increase, or $15.8 million, would be paid by people earning between $30,000 and $50,000.
About 18 percent of the tax cut, or $6.5 million, would go to people earning more than $1 million, and about 28 percent, or $383.4 million, would go to people earning between $100,000 and $200,000. …
Asked what’s good about the state’s tax code, Kooyenga struggled to find an answer. After a few seconds, he named the governor’s efforts to lower property taxes and rattled off some of the changes pushed by the CPA Caucus, like the elimination of some credits.
“I know I’m never going to reach what my utopian tax policy is for the state of Wisconsin,” Kooyenga said. “But definitely we’ll be closer. We have less brackets, less tax credits. That’s what I’m trying to move towards. I don’t think I’ll ever get to exactly what I think the income tax and corporate tax and sales tax should look like, but I think with a lot of my colleagues, I’m doing a good job of playing defense and making the tax code work, and making it fairer, flatter and simpler.”
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Can one wish a happy birthday to an entire band? If so, wish Jefferson Airplane a happy birthday:
Or perhaps you’d like to celebrate Bill Haley’s birthday around the clock:
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Britain’s Guardian writes:
Sgt Michael Verardo, who lost an arm and a leg while serving with the US army in Afghanistan in 2010, says he was failed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He had to wait 57 days to get his prosthetic leg fixed and three and a half years for adaptations to his home. But then came Donald Trump.
“Thank you, President Trump and [Veterans Affairs] Secretary [David] Shulkin for ensuring that we are not forgotten and that we will receive the care we need and deserve,” Verardo said at the White House recently.
Trump, signing an act to protect VA whistleblowers, revelled in the moment, using his fingers to mime a gun and mouthing his catchphrase “You’re fired!” at Shulkin. Then he smiled: “We will never use those words on you, that’s for sure.”
The audience in the East Room laughed dutifully. This is the parallel universe that Trump occupies whenever he can, a universe of achievements, applause and adoration, a safe space where he is monarch of all he surveys and his punchlines land. In his version of Washington, he is the Henry V-style man of action to Barack Obama’s indecisive, cripplingly intellectual Hamlet.
Trump’s self-belief appears to get a shot in the arm from every victory, real or imagined. This may go some way to explaining why, even as his approval ratings fall off a cliff and some call for his impeachment, he sees no reason to course-correct, as he and a noisy caucus around him seem to become ever more self-righteous.
Trump is “much more resilient” than his opponents allow, said Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, before pivoting to a plug for his new book, Understanding Trump.
The past two weeks illustrate how, when on the ropes, Trump can still throw some punches that at least get him to the bell. And he makes sure his 33 million Twitter followers know about it. When Republican Karen Handel beat Democrat Jon Ossoff in a Georgia race much-hyped as a referendum on his presidency, Trump tweeted: “Thank you @FoxNews ‘Huge win for President Trump and GOP in Georgia Congressional Special Election.’”
Then the president headed to Iowa to bask in the adulation of his supporters in the forum he likes best, a campaign-style rally. When he ranted against the “dishonest media” and floated the idea of solar panels on his border wall, the crowd lapped it up. Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, commented: “You know what was really impressive to see last night? How Trump supporters are so onboard with their dude he can say anything and they’ll come along for the ride.”
Then came the veterans event at the White House where, under the gaze of portraits of George Washington and Teddy Roosevelt, Trump projected himself as a man who gets things done.
“We’ve announced that the VA will finally solve a problem that has plagued our government for decades,” he said, referring to the transfer of veterans’ medical records from the Department of Defense to the VA – a seemingly simple process that has earned comparisons to the incompatibility of the Xbox and PlayStation.
Meanwhile, Trump finally caught a break on the worst crisis facing his presidency, the multiple investigations into his election campaign’s links to Russia. First, David Brooks, a Trump critic and New York Times columnist, suggested that the scandal may be overblown.
“There may be a giant revelation still to come,” Brooks wrote. “But as the Trump-Russia story has evolved, it is striking how little evidence there is that any underlying crime occurred – that there was any actual collusion between the Donald Trump campaign and the Russians. Everything seems to be leaking out of this administration, but so far the leaks about actual collusion are meagre.”
Then, the Washington Post published a major investigation that raised questions over whether Obama could have done more to stop Moscow’s interference in last year’s poll, quoting one former administration official as saying: “I feel like we sort of choked.”
That gave Trump the opening he needed, to deflect and disrupt the prevailing narrative.
“The real story is that President Obama did NOTHING after being informed in August about Russian meddling,” he tweeted. “With 4 months looking at Russia… under a magnifying glass, they have zero ‘tapes’ of T people colluding. There is no collusion & no obstruction. I should be given apology!”
He was handed another gift when CNN was forced to retract a report, citing a single anonymous source, that Congress was investigating a “Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials”. It changed nothing about the Russia-related cloud over Trump but it did feed into his narrative that untrustworthy media organisations are conspiring against him.
The president gloated: “So they caught Fake News CNN cold, but what about NBC, CBS & ABC? What about the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost? They are all Fake News!”
Politico reported that Trump and his allies “believe he’s gained a tactical advantage in his war with the media” – which intensified over the weekend – adding that many White House staff members were “elated” by the CNN blunder, reckoning it will prove to sceptical voters that the mainstream media has a “vendetta” against the administration. The president’s supporters seized on the incident to plant seeds of confusion and false equivalency: if that Russia story was wrong, perhaps all of them are wrong?
Yet another lifeline was thrown to Trump from an unexpected quarter. The supreme court partially restored his executive order imposing a travel ban on six Muslim-majority countries and said it would hear arguments in the autumn. After setbacks in lower courts, the president was quick to crow about a “clear victory”.
Trump’s parallel universe also consists of speeches, bill signings, Oval Office photo ops and meetings with foreign leaders with whom he has, of late, stopped taking questions from the media, preferring to be lavished with praise that often jars with the national conversation. Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, for example, thanked Trump for “having spent so much time with me, for having spoken such kind words about me and my country … In this journey of India-America relations, I think I would like to thank you for providing great leadership.”
None of these examples comes without caveats. Handel’s victory in Georgia was in a seat that Republicans have held since 1979. Democrats say Trump’s proposed budget will make it harder for veterans to receive care. The Russia investigations are likely to drag on for years and could find that Trump obstructed justice when he fired FBI director James Comey. The supreme court did not fully reinstate his travel ban, granting exemption to people with a “bona fide relationship” with someone in the US. And his campaign promise to repeal and replace Obamacare remains in limbo on Capitol Hill, while the president has been condemned by both parties for a crude attack on TV host Mika Brzezinski.
But politics, after all, is often a battle of perceptions. Niall Ferguson, a British historian and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, California, said in May: “I think one of the things Guardian readers, and their counterparts on the American coasts, don’t want to think about is the possibility that despite his obvious ineptitude, Trump might actually be successful.
“I said last summer to a bunch of liberal friends: ‘Your worst nightmare is not a Trump presidency; it’s a successful Trump presidency.’ The successful Trump presidency scenario is one in which, despite it all, the economy does better thanks to deregulation and tax cuts, foreign policy delivers some big wins on North Korea, the Middle East.
“It doesn’t take an awful lot for a president to start looking good. If the expectations start really low, which they have done, it may be one win, and I definitely don’t rule out a kind of ‘success in spite of himself’ scenario. And then you begin to wonder if a left-of-Clinton Democrat in 2020 would be blown away. We’ll see. The fun thing about doing history is you really can’t tell at this point which way it will go. It could quite easily go Jimmy Carter and he could be a lame duck.”
The president has not given a solo press conference since 16 February. Since 11 May, he has not given a TV interview to a channel other than the staunchly supportive Fox News. Combined with increasingly terse White House press briefings, often off camera, the pattern suggests that Trump is focused on firing up his base and has all but given up on reaching beyond it.
Michael Barnett, chairman of the Republican party in Palm Beach County, Florida, said: “I haven’t seen Trump lose any bit of support on the ground here. I hear people say he’s not presidential but it looks like he is beginning to redefine what it means to be presidential. He’s not going to take it lying down but he’s going stand up for himself and give it back.”
He added: “We believe, just as President Clinton said, it’s all about the economy. That’s what people care about most, not Russia or climate change, but things that affect them personally like putting food on the table. If Trump focuses on that, he’ll win again in 2020.”
A successful Trump presidency would enrage liberals (if that’s possible beyond current derangement levels) because liberals don’t support what Trump said he wanted to do, in the same way that conservatives (correctly) didn’t support what Barack Obama wanted to do. So far the Trump presidency has been a giant exercise in undoing Obama, which conservatives should support, even if Trump is just a conservative by convenience, similar to how Bill Clinton’s ideology was based on whoever was in office in Congress.
Here are multiple examples of undoing Obama, from Reuters:
President Donald Trump on Thursday promoted a “golden era” of the U.S. energy business by seeking to assert power abroad through a boost in natural gas, coal and petroleum exports.
In what he called a policy of “energy dominance,” Trump re-branded efforts to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to markets in Eastern Europe and Asia that had been set in motion during the previous presidential administration.
The United States also will offer to export coal to Ukraine, where energy consumers often have suffered from cuts in natural gas supply by Russia.
“We are here today to unleash a new American energy policy,” Trump said at an event at the Department of Energy attended by oil and coal executives and union members who build pipelines. “We will export American energy all around the world.”
Trump plans to promote U.S. LNG exports at a meeting next week in Warsaw with a dozen leaders from central and eastern Europe, a region heavily reliant on Russian supplies. Trump then will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a Group of 20 summit in Germany, in the first meeting between the two leaders, coming amid rising tensions over interference in the 2016 U.S. election.
After decades of being a major importer of natural gas, the United States is set to become a net exporter of gas later this year or in 2018 thanks to the boom in fracking in states such as Texas and Pennsylvania.
There is currently one operating U.S. LNG exporting facility in Sabine Pass, Louisiana, with four others currently under construction that are expected to become operational between 2018 and 2020. …
While many of Trump’s opponents have said his plan to pull the United States out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate has the potential to harm the country’s relations around the world, Energy Secretary Rick Perry said at the event that energy exports will strengthen ties with allies.
The United States is in a position “to be able to clearly create a hell of a lot more friends by being able to deliver to them energy and not being held hostage by some countries, Russia in particular,” Perry said.
Whether it is sending LNG to Poland or Ukraine, “the entirety of the EU totally get it that if we can lay in American LNG … we can be able to have an alternative to Russia,” for natural gas sales to Europe, Perry said.
Earlier this month, Cheniere Energy Inc (LNG.A) delivered the first U.S. cargoes of LNG to Poland and the Netherlands.
The Energy Department on Thursday approved additional LNG exports from the Lake Charles project in Louisiana, which is under development.
Trump announced plans to offer coal exports to Ukraine, as well as lift restrictions on U.S. lending for coal projects overseas.
“Ukraine already tells us they need millions and millions of metric tons (of coal),” he said. “Right now, there are many other places that need it too and we want to sell it to them and to everyone else all over the globe who need it.”
The Trump administration will launch a review of the ailing nuclear power industry, which has experienced a slew of closures due to stagnant electricity demand and low natural gas prices. Trump’s 2018 budget included $120 million for addressing nuclear waste at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain and other projects, but most of the state’s politicians oppose that project.
In addition, the State Department issued a permit for a NuStar Logistics LP for its New Burgos Pipeline oil product pipeline from the United States to Mexico with a capacity of up to 180,000 barrels per day.
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Proof. Glenn Harlan Reynolds wrote this six months ago, two months after the election, but little has changed:
The campus safe spaces and cry-ins immediately after the votes were counted were bad enough. But the craziness is still going on.
Why are they so upset? I think it’s because of status anxiety. Our privileged, college-educated left — what Joel Kotkin calls the gentry liberals — feels that its preeminent position in American society is under threat. And people care a lot about status.
What’s more, the people who seem to be lashing out the most are, in fact, just those gentry liberals: academics, entertainers, pundits, low-level tech types, and so on. As journalism professor Mark Grabowski reported, another academic texted him on election night: “Oh my God! We will be the ones ostracized if he wins.”
Maybe we shouldn’t “ostracize” people based on whether their candidate wins, but in a way this professor was right: A Trump victory is a blow to the status of the people who thought Hillary Clinton was their candidate — one that they feel even more deeply because gentry liberals, having been raised on the principle that the personal is political, seem to take politics pretty personally. …
When people feel their place in the world is threatened, they tend to lash out. And after all, the gentry liberals were promised by no less a figure than Clinton Labor secretary and former Harvard professor Robert Reich that the symbolic analysts like them would own the future.
But my favorite example came much more recently, in the form of a New Yorker cartoon showing an airline passenger (seated in Economy, of course) standing up and asking his fellow passengers: “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?”
In this view, ordinary people are just carried along for the ride, while the country is run by experts with vast experience and credentials. Letting ordinary people take charge would surely result in a disastrous crash. If the pilots are “smug” it’s because they have abilities that ordinary people lack.
This is nice, if you see yourself as one of the pilots, possessed of those special abilities. If you think of yourself as one of the smart people, the ones who should be guiding the airplane of state (we used to talk about the “ship of state,” but hey, this is the 21st century), then the suggestion that the passengers might want to take over the controls is both insulting and frightening.
But, of course, being a member of the governing class doesn’t involve anything like the specialized skills that flying an airplane does. And just as passengers on an airplane actually do get to choose their destination — they’re paying customers, after all — so the voters get to choose things, too. (And if you look at recent history, the “pilots” tend to crash the plane a lot, but then walk away unscathed, unlike those passengers in the back. Peggy Noonan calls these political elites the “protected class” and she’s not far wrong: “The protected make public policy. The unprotected live in it.”)
And now that Trump has won, people are, in fact, a lot less respectful of the traditional academic and media and political elites. Trump didn’t just beat them, after all. He also humiliated them, as they repeatedly assured everyone (and each other) that he had no chance. It’s a huge blow to the self-importance of a lot of people. No wonder they’re still lashing out.
Of course, lashing out doesn’t exactly bring people around. A lot of people who cast their votes for Trump reluctantly are likely to conclude that they did the right thing, as Trump’s opposition (who during the election cast Trump as the unstable, crazy one) keeps going berserk. In response to the New Yorker cartoon, Sean Davis tweeted: ”Do you want more Trump? Because this is how you get more Trump.”
It really is.
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Today is the anniversary of the Beatles’ first song to reach the U.S. charts, “From Me to You.” Except it wasn’t recorded by the Beatles, it was recorded by Del Shannon:
Five years later, John Lennon sold his Rolls–Royce:
Sharing my daughter’s birthday are Smiley Lewis, who first did …
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This seems appropriate on Independence Day:
So does this:
And this:
So does this, from 2011:
Rebellion goes back before our existence as an independent country to the Boston Tea Party. Everyone who came (or now comes) to this immigrant country by choice came here because they thought their lives would be better here, however they defined “better,” than wherever they left.
Dr. Tim’s Moment of Clarity points out that if this is not who we are, this is who we should be:
Our founding fathers recognized the concept of Natural Law; a set of universal rights and responsibilities endowed to us by our Creator that precedes any governments we might form for the purposes of protecting and enforcing them. Numbers 5-10 of the Ten Commandments are sufficient for us to live in peace with each other, and most of us instinctively follow them, whether or not we believe in the God of the first four.
When six is the upper limit of our tolerance of things we will be told we can’t do, 2,000 pages of “shall” and “shall not” don’t stand a chance. We are Americans; we don’t do “shall.” That seems so obvious.
Americans are the perfected DNA strand of rebelliousness. Each of us is the descendant of the brother who left the farm in the old country when his mom and dad and wimpy brother told him not to; the sister who ran away rather than marry the guy her parents had arranged for her; the freethinker who decided his fate would be his own, not decided by a distant power he could not name. How did you think we would turn out?
Those other brothers and sisters, the tame and the fearful, the obedient and the docile; they all stayed home. Their timid DNA was passed down to the generations who have endured warfare and poverty and hopelessness and the dull, boring sameness that is the price of subjugation.
They watch from the old countries with envy as their rebellious American cousins run with scissors. They covet our prosperity and our might and our unbridled celebration of our liberty; but try as they might they have not been able to replicate our success in their own countries.
Why? Because they are governable and we are not. The framers of the Constitution were smart enough not to try to limit our liberty; they limited government instead. …
Those who cling to the promise of government ignore its reality. Which side of liberty are you on – the Department of Energy side, or the Internet side? Which do you trust to deliver your prosperity – yourself or the government? Who owns you?
That is the question for our time. A self-owned person is ungovernable; and ungovernable is our natural state. Liberty is our birthright, and prosperity is its reward.
And …
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This seems appropriate to begin Independence Day …
… as is this, whether or not Independence Day is on a Saturday:
This being Independence Day, you wouldn’t think there would be many music anniversaries today. There is a broadcasting anniversary, though: WOWO radio in Fort Wayne, Ind., celebrated the nation’s 153rd birthday by burning its transmitter to the ground.
Independence Day 1970 was not a holiday for Casey Kasem, who premiered “America’s Top 40,” though it likely was on tape instead of live:
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This state’s budget cycle ended Friday, leading the Wisconsin State Journal to report:
What does that mean for most Wisconsinites?
In the short term, very little. Spending levels from the previous two-year budget cycle carry over into the new one, enabling state agencies to continue operating.
If a budget stalemate drags on for months — as has happened a few times in recent decades — highway projects now under construction could be affected, Walker has said. That could mean projects get delayed, adding millions in costs to taxpayers, said Craig Thompson, director of the Transportation Development Association of Wisconsin.
“If this does continue for months, it’s going to have an impact,” Thompson said. “The money won’t be there.”
Wisconsin school districts also could struggle to craft their own budgets since they won’t know how much state aid to expect.
The budget impasse is happening because Walker and his fellow Republicans can’t agree on one. They’re deadlocked on how to fund road projects, how to increase funding for K-12 schools and how to cut taxes. Walker and legislative leaders hinted at progress in budget talks Wednesday, but no deal appears imminent.
If the parties reach a deal in coming weeks, Walker and others have said Wisconsinites would see few impacts.
But in the case of a protracted standoff, road projects would feel the pinch more acutely than other areas of the state budget. That’s because road projects in the last budget relied heavily on borrowing — a one-time measure that, unlike regular spending, doesn’t carry over into the new budget cycle.
How long would the standoff have to continue before road projects would be affected? The Wisconsin Department of Transportation hasn’t said.
But it’s clear something would have to give eventually. The state’s highway improvement program would see a funding reduction of nearly $900 million over the next two years if no new budget were enacted, according to figures provided by the state’s nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, told reporters last week that this scenario, described as a “base” budget for transportation, could be an option if Walker and lawmakers can’t agree on a new budget. …
Most school districts in Wisconsin are working on finalizing their budgets for the upcoming school year — which includes setting how many teachers and other staff members they can pay for in the 2017-18 school year.
Department of Public Instruction spokesman Tom McCarthy said because districts aren’t facing a cut in state funding it’s not immediately significant. In other words, school districts will likely end up with more money to spend instead of less, eliminating the prospect of laying off teachers after the school year begins.
Not knowing exact aid levels on July 1 isn’t that big of a deal for districts unless budget deliberations are expected to extend beyond August, he said. School districts often settle their final spending plan after July 1 and don’t receive their first payment from the state until the school year is under way.
“Things start to get serious in terms of a budget not being in place the closer you get to Nov. 1,” McCarthy said. …
Under one-party control of state government by both Democrats and Republicans, the state budget was completed by July 1 in three of the past four budgets.
In 2015, Walker signed the budget July 12 and it was published the next day after a protracted debate over transportation, the prevailing wage and funding for a new Milwaukee Bucks arena, which was taken up in a separate bill.
In the 20 previous budgets, nine were completed sometime in July, including two by July 1, three were completed in June, four were completed in August and four wrapped up in October, November or December.
Budget debates that extended for months after the deadline were usually the result of different parties controlling the Assembly and Senate.
What’s unusual about the budget stalemates of the past two cycles is that Republicans have controlled both chambers and the governor’s office.
Mark Graul, a Republican political strategist, said the budget impasse will be a blip on the public’s radar by the time elections roll around next year, “assuming it doesn’t drag out for months upon months.”
“It certainly doesn’t help anybody if this is a protracted situation,” Graul said, adding that the point at which it becomes problematic would be Labor Day.
“If kids are going back to school and school districts are trying to do their budgets next fall, then it starts to become much more problematic.”
In other words, despite hand-wringing by those who want to make Republicans look bad, this is not a crisis.
To the south is what a real budget crisis looks like. The Chicago Tribune did the same story the State Journal did Friday south of the state line, and …
As Illinois hurtles toward a third year without a budget agreement, the state’s political leaders have managed to accumulate a series of notable, if inglorious, distinctions — the lowest credit rating of any state, just a whisker above junk status; a growing pile of unpaid bills that now stands at more than $14.5 billion; and a yearly population decline that is the highest of any state in the nation.
The standoff is costing taxpayers dearly — consider the $387 million in loans that Chicago Public Schools have recently taken to tide it over until state funding comes through. The loans came at a cost of about $70,000 a day in interest alone, the Tribune reported. Think of it as a payday loan, but on a grand scale.
The stalemate has been felt in human terms as well. Just seven months after missing the first budget deadline, Lutheran Social Services, the state’s largest provider, imposed steep cuts in programs like addiction treatment and senior home care. State employees are now finding that doctors in some cases will not accept their health insurance. Vital roadwork is already being suspended. And hospitals are imposing hiring freezes and cost cuts. …
Without a deal, the impact on the state will only be compounded. What follows are seven critical areas of the state’s economy, government and social institutions and how they will be affected if lawmakers continue with business as usual.
New York bond rating agencies have warned they will downgrade the state’s credit if no budget deal is reached by Friday.
It’s the latest in a series of downgrades that started when Democrat Pat Quinn was governor amid concerns over the state’s huge government worker pension debt and continued under Rauner as unpaid bills hit $14.5 billion, nearly half the amount of money the state brings in each year.
The next downgrade is significant because it would leave Illinois’ credit at the level of junk status. Illinois would have the ignominious distinction of becoming the first state to sink that low in the eyes of Wall Street.
The impact? The state’s debt is considered below investment grade, and borrowing money will cost more because interest rates will be higher. So building roads or refinancing existing debt will be more expensive. A federal judge’s recent ruling that the state would have to start paying down more of its $2 billion backlog in Medicaid bills shook investors and tanked Illinois bond prices.
What else is in the junk-status club? Chicago Public Schools; the agencies that run Navy Pier, McCormick Place and the White Sox stadium; and five public universities: Eastern Illinois, Northern Illinois, Southern Illinois, Northeastern Illinois, Governors State.
The state’s public universities have been caught in a ever-tightening financial vise as state funding has dried up. Schools have received the equivalent of 10 or 11 months of state dollars in the past two years, leading to credit downgrades to junk status. Most state universities typically get more than 20 percent of their annual funding from Springfield.
Now they face another risk, albeit a more remote one. If the state universities are forced to start a third straight school year with no state funding, their accreditation could be at risk.
The president of the Higher Learning Commission, which oversees colleges and universities in 19 states, recently told Illinois leaders that universities still must meet rigorous academic and financial standards to remain accredited, no matter what the legislature is doing.
Schools that continue to lose enrollment, eliminate faculty and staff, empty their cash reserves and cut programs — as is the case with many Illinois state universities — could face sanctions.
The financial struggles could also make it more difficult for universities to fill key jobs. One candidate for chancellor at Southern Illinois University Carbondale recently withdrew from consideration, citing “fiscal concerns at both the state and campus level.”
Illinois has already cut off sales of Powerball lottery tickets and is set Friday night to end sales of its other multistate game: Mega Millions.
The games are popular because Illinois bands together with other states to offer bigger jackpots than just one state could. But, to be part of the games, each state government needs to pass a basic budget authorization to ensure its share of prize money gets paid, and Illinois’ authorization expires Friday night.
The Illinois Lottery estimates both games bring in profit of $90 million a year — or roughly $250,000 a day — to state coffers, nearly all used to supplement tax money sent to schools.
Even without an authorization, the lottery will continue selling the rest of its draw and scratch-off games, but big winners of those games will have to wait for their paydays. That’s because, without the formal authorization, the state comptroller can’t cut checks to winners of more than $25,000. Those winning less than that should still get paid without delay, the lottery has said.
Illinois pavers and bridge builders are shutting down projects to prepare for a possible cutoff of state funds starting this Saturday. If the state cannot pass a roadwork appropriation this week, it will halt about 700 projects valued at $2.3 billion now underway and throw up to 25,000 people out of work, according to the Illinois Department of Transportation.
For the past two weeks, contractors have been holding off on “destructive” work like tearing up old asphalt because they may not be able to finish the job.
Contractors also are starting to move equipment off of job sites, cover up exposed dirt against erosion and put up traffic controls to secure areas while workers are away, said Mike Sturino, president and chief executive of the Illinois Road and Transportation Builders Association. …
With the next school year fast approaching, the stalemate has cast a dark cloud of uncertainty over public schools’ ability to operate.
Everything, from paying the teachers and janitors, to funding extracurriculars, to getting children to and from school, depends in some way on state funding. And without a budget agreement, those plans cannot be made.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool have assured Chicago residents that the city’s schools will be ready to welcome students. Emanuel has said that local officials will “meet our responsibility” to open schools on time this fall, and Claypool has said they’ll “do whatever is necessary.”
But they won’t get more specific than that, pending the outcome in Springfield. The mayor, after all, has said that spilling the city’s plans while lawmakers negotiate an education budget “would be the dumbest thing you could do.”
On a more practical level, budget plans that schools must make for the coming year are also stuck in a holding pattern. Principals won’t see potential spending plans, for example, which delays needed decisions on hiring or laying off staff members and setting up class schedules.
Nowhere has the impact of the state budget stalemate been felt more acutely than in the myriad social service agencies and nonprofits that are so dependent on state funding.
Andrea Durbin, chief executive of the Illinois Collaboration on Youth, had a stern warning Thursday before a state House of Representatives hearing. “In order for services to flow to the community, people have to be paid,” she said, “and for that to happen, we need a budget.”
Durbin is also chairwoman of the Illinois Pay Now Coalition, which filed two lawsuits against the state seeking payment for services. One suit was dismissed, and one is pending.
It’s among hundreds of Illinois social service agencies, nonprofits, treatment clinics and outreach providers whose services to poor, sick or otherwise vulnerable people are at risk if no budget deal is reached.
Durbin cited the case of a downstate domestic violence shelter, Courage Connection, which faces closure without a budget.
Chicago’s Haymarket Center, a drug treatment program that treats a mostly low-income clientele, cut its caseload by more than a fifth as the state budget crisis caused payments to dry up.
A spokesman, Jeffrey Collord, said that the decline would continue if the stalemate goes on, and could accelerate if the state fails to set aside matching funds needed to secure a federal grant.
Readers will recall that 2011 Act 10 was delayed in passage because of the Fleeting Fourteen, the 14 Democratic state senators (including Sen. Kathleen Vinehout (D–Alma), now starting to run for governor) who ran to Illinois to prevent a quorum and a vote. Apparently Illinois is where politicians with bad fiscal skills go to hide, or live.
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Dan Mitchell picks out one thing of the infinitely long list of worst features of the Barack Obama (mis)adminstration:
Three economists (from MIT and Tex A&M) have crunched the numbers and discovered that Obama’s Cash-for-Clunkers scheme back in 2009 was a failure even by Keynesian standards.
The abstract of the study tells you everything you need to know.
The 2009 Cash for Clunkers program aimed to stimulate consumer spending in the new automobile industry, which was experiencing disproportionate reductions in demand and employment during the Great Recession. Exploiting program eligibility criteria in a regression discontinuity design, we show nearly 60 percent of the subsidies went to households who would have purchased during the two-month program anyway; the rest accelerated sales by no more than eight months. Moreover, the program’s fuel efficiency restrictions shifted purchases toward vehicles that cost on average $5,000 less. On net, Cash for Clunkers significantly reduced total new vehicle spending over the ten month period.
This is remarkable. At the time, the most obvious criticism of the scheme was that it would simply alter the timing of purchases.
And scholars the following year confirmed that the program didn’t have any long-run impact.
But now we find out that there was impact, but it was negative. Here’s the most relevant graph from the study.
It shows actual vehicle spending and estimated spending in the absence of the program.
For readers who like wonky details, here’s the explanatory text for Figure 7 from the study.
The effect of the program on cumulative new vehicle spending by CfC-eligible households is shown in Figure 7. The figure shows actual spending and estimates of counterfactual spending if there had been no CfC program. Cumulative spending under the CfC program was larger than counterfactual spending for the months immediately after the program. However, by February 1 the counterfactual expenditures becomes larger and by April has grown to be $4.0 billion more than actual expenditures under the program. It is difficult to make the case that the brief acceleration in spending justifies the loss of $4.0 billion in revenues to the auto industry, for two reasons. First, we calculate that in order to justify the estimated longer-term reduction in cumulative spending to boost spending for a few months, one would need a discount rate of 208 percent. Given the expected (and realized) duration of the recession, it seems difficult to argue in favor of such a discount rate. Second, we note that Cash for Clunkers seems especially unattractive compared to a counterfactual stimulus policy that left out the environmental component, which also would have accelerated purchases for some households without reducing longer-term spending.
By the way, the authors point out that Cash-for-Clunkers wasn’t even good environmental policy.
One could also argue that this decline in industry revenue over less than a year could be justified to the extent the program offered a cost-effective environmental benefit. Unfortunately, the existing evidence overwhelmingly indicates that this program was a costly way of reducing environmental damage. For example, Knittel [2009] estimates that the most optimistic implied cost of carbon reduced by the program is $237 per ton, while Li et al. [2013] estimate the cost per ton as between $92 and $288. These implied cost of carbon figures are much larger than the social costs of carbon of $33 per ton (in 2007 dollars) estimated by the IWG on the Social Cost of Carbon [Interagency Working Group, 2013].
So let’s see where we stand. The program was bad fiscal policy, bad economic policy, and bad environmental policy.
The trifecta of Obamanomics. No wonder the United States suffered the weakest recovery of the post-WWII era.
A comment adds:
You missed one more. It was also bad social policy. There are two more things about the program that bothered me deeply.
Firstly, the program removed from the buying public a source of decent used cars. All of those cars were the types of cars that the less-affluent of our society typically buy. Now they had a choice of either keeping a much older clunker going, or doing with out transportation. Because all of the vehicles within their price range of affordability had been removed from the road.
Secondly as a car collector, I hate what it has done to the used parts market. A whole generation of good used car parts was removed from the marketplace. It was a requirement that the engines on these vehicles be run until they seized, and then the rest of the car was mandated to the crusher. This part never made ANY sense to me.
So, this program made a dent in the normal operational fabric of society that will have implications in the decades to come as well.One of the accusations of Cash for Clunkers was that it would prompt people to purchase cars they couldn’t afford and then would have repossessed, just like the subprime housing crisis that crashed the entire economy.
Well, a few years later, the National Motorists Association reports:
For the past couple of months, there have been rumblings that auto loans are indeed on the same downward spiral as home loans were in 2008. Fitch recently announced that loans issued in 2015 may end up being the worst performing ever in the history of auto-loan securitizations. Fitch rates the loans as cumulative net losses projected to reach 15 percent, exceeding the peak loss during the 2008 financial crisis.
This is a slow-moving train wreck however because experts are unsure about loans issued in 2016. The auto loan instability has to do with the fact that institutional investors grabbed subprime auto loan securities because of higher yields (similar to the subprime house loan crisis of 2008). These subprime auto loans have been repackaged several times over and stamped with a high credit rating.
Negative equity has hit an all-time high. During the first three months of 2017, the average negative equity per traded vehicles reached $5,195 which is the highest ever according to Edmunds. Also the highest ever—the 32.8 percent of trade-ins with negative equity. When the negative equity is then rolled into the new loan for the new vehicle—the consumer starts in a steep hole. In the event of a loan default, net losses soar.
Why all this negative equity? Business Insider says there are three reasons:
1) Even though vehicle prices have gone up, consumers buy more expensive models because interest rates are low and longer loan terms keep the payments at an affordable monthly cost.
2) Loan terms are longer. In the first three months of 2017, loan terms reached a record 69 months. Terms between 73 and 84 months (seven years) accounted for 32.1 percent of all vehicle loans in the fourth quarter of 2016, up from 29 percent in 2015 during the same period. Used-vehicle loans accounted for 18 percent, a two-percent increase from 2015.
3) Used vehicle values are falling. In May, the Used Vehicle Price Index by J.D. Power Valuation Services declined for the tenth month in a row.
Also, just like with the mortgage crisis, many consumers who are seeking funds to buy a car do not really have the credit rating or the money to buy a car but are lured in with less than stellar lending practices. This usually means much higher interest rates for people who are already on the edge financially.
How can all this affect a motorist?
The New York Times recently profiled a subprime auto loan borrower named Yvette Harris who is still paying off her 1997 Mitsubishi even after it was repossessed. Her auto lender took her to court and garnished her wages in order to pay off the difference of the sale value of the car and the outstanding loan. This is now a common practice of subprime lenders. Unable to recover the balance of loans by repossessing and reselling the cars, some are aggressively suing borrowers to collect what remains.
Why not take the chance on a risky borrower?
If he or she defaults, subprime lenders can repossess the vehicle and persuade a judge in 46 states to garnish the borrower’s wages to cover the balance of the car loan.
The impending subprime auto loan crisis might indeed be worse than the recent subprime loan mortgage crises for individuals. With a mortgage, a homeowner could turn the keys in and walk away. Not so with auto loan debt. Repossession is just the beginning of the quagmire for many car owners caught in the subprime auto loan trap. New York Legal Assistance Group consumer lawyer Shanna Tallarico said, “Low-income earners are shackled to this debt.”
In February, a Bloomberg article stated “To be clear, this doesn’t point to an imminent, 2008-style meltdown. After all, the U.S. auto-loan market is about $1.1 trillion, which pales in comparison with the $8.9 trillion U.S. mortgage market and $8.6 trillion of dollar-denominated corporate credit. And only about one-quarter of the outstanding car loans have been extended to subprime borrowers, who are the ones having the problems.”
Yvette Harris, the single mother living in the Bronx, mentioned earlier says this has been a nightmare. Even after $4,133 of her wages were garnished and she paid an additional $2,743 on her own, the lender still sought an additional $6,500. All for a vehicle that probably has a blue-book value less than $2,000.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 