A GOP takeover of the House in the 2022 Midterm is a near certainty. Democratic control is only obtainable with 100% Democratic unity. Dems must wake up to the political reality, urgency and get focused. Democracy depends on it.
“Anyway, we got a GOP net gain of roughly a dozen seats, more than the five-seat improvement they need from the 2020 results to win the House majority. This is a deliberately modest outlook, and Republicans could easily blow past it next year, while there are also scenarios under which Democrats are able to minimize those GOP gains and perhaps even save their majority. But our default expectation has been, and remains, a Republican House takeover next year.”
… Under the most aggressive scenarios, Democrats could emerge from 2022’s midterm elections with control of as many as 23 of New York’s 26 House seats in an all-out effort to prop up their chances of retaining control of Congress. …
Sept 22 (Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures rose on Wednesday as concerns over China’s Evergrande eased after the property developer negotiated a domestic bond payment deal, with investors now awaiting policy cues from the Federal Reserve later in the day.
Evergrande’s main unit said it had negotiated a deal with bondholders to settle interest payments on a domestic bond, which helped calm fears of an imminent default that could unleash global financial chaos.
The S&P 500 has fallen for 10 of the past 12 sessions since hitting a record high, as fears of an Evergrande default exacerbated seasonally weak trends and saw investors pull out of stocks trading at lofty valuations.
Focus now turns to the Fed’s decision, due at 2 p.m. ET (1800 GMT) where the bank could possibly unveil plans to begin scaling back its massive coronavirus-related stimulus measures.
A raft of positive economic data in recent weeks has strengthened expectations for a taper announcement from the central bank by as soon as September. …
No, Border Patrol is not whipping Haitians. That is not a bull whip, that is split reins which are common amongst horse riders.
The media portrayal yet again is driving a frenzy of public outrage of poor optics, while politicians sit in Washington bemoaning the news while a humanitarian crisis we have going on down here gets press for all the wrong reasons.
You should see how I was trained at the time I entered the Marine Corps to use an unloaded M14 for crowd control in the seventies. Heel to head and barrel on top of head.
Tt was a stupid maneuver, 2-3 horsemen doing crowd control in an open area?
don’t know about Marines. met an ex FBI in college. said he was trained on the night-stick: “you don’t want to injure them, just enough to hurt. or they’ll come looking for you when they get out of jail.”
them boys down to Del Rio look like they seen too many cowboy movies.
Texas Border Patrol agents have denied whipping migrants and claimed anyone with ‘two brain cells’ knows they use split reins to control their horses, after images emerged of mounted officers appearing to whip Haitian border crossers.
Agents pushed back against the criticism leveled at them and accused the Biden administration of trying to deflect from its own failings in tackling the migrant crisis.
One unidentified agent told Fox News the outrage over the images shows officials lack ‘basic knowledge’ of handling horses and that the outrage ‘just proves what absolute idiots they are.’ …
President Biden is leaning into his push to increase taxes on the rich as he seeks to unify Democrats in the House and Senate behind a $3.5 trillion bill that would expand federal efforts to fight climate change, reduce the cost of child care, expand educational access, reduce poverty and more.
“I’m sick and tired of the super-wealthy and giant corporations not paying their fair share in taxes,” Mr. Biden wrote on Twitter on Wednesday, amplifying an argument that Democratic strategists believe will help sell his economic agenda to the public and potentially lift the party’s candidates in midterm elections. “It’s time for it to change.”
To buttress that argument, White House economists published on Thursday a new analysis that seeks to show a gap between the tax rate that everyday Americans face and what the richest owe on their vast holdings.
The analysis suggests that the wealthiest 400 households in America — those with net worth ranging between $2.1 billion and $160 billion — pay an effective federal income tax rate of just over 8 percent per year on average. The White House is basing that tax rate on calculations using data on high earners’ income, wealth and taxes paid from the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
The analysis, from researchers at the Office of Management and Budget and the Council of Economic Advisers, is an attempt to bolster Mr. Biden’s claims that billionaires are not paying what they actually should owe in federal taxes, and that the tax code rewards wealth, not work.
“While we have long known that billionaires don’t pay enough in taxes, the lack of transparency in our tax system means that much less is known about the income tax rate that they do pay,” administration officials wrote in a blog post the budget office released accompanying the analysis.
The White House’s calculation of what the wealthiest pay in taxes is well below what other analyses have found. The difference comes from the White House officials’ decision to count the rising value of wealthy Americans’ stock portfolios — which is not taxed on an annual basis — as income. It finds that between 2010 and 2018, those top 400 households, when including the rising value of their wealth, earned a combined $1.8 trillion and paid an estimated $149 billion in federal individual income taxes. …
well, i guess i don’t know much about split reins. having been associated with horse trainers for forty years or so, i never saw any need for whips to control horses. but then we don’t drive cattle or people like cattle.
i’d say somteting stinks about this, and it isn’t horse poop.
Rodeo horses or cutting horses you use splits. Easier to move the horse around when you’ve got a jumpy animal to herd.
I honestly feel bad for the border patrol and state troopers who are stuck in the middle of a political battle over a humanitarian crisis.
There are things we could do, such as send resources to Haiti. We as a nation could also send contractors…some of whom are no longer working in Afghanistan, to rebuild some basic public infrastructure. There are options. What’s happening out here is a symptom of poor policy and the republican agenda to cry wolf every time someone the opposing team takes the field.
I agree with your comment on “splits,” even though I am not an accomplished rider myself. Dogs I know, horses I do not. One time at 16, I was almost pinned to a wood fence by a horse which was moving sideways. Some how I leaped straight up and over the fence. Highest I ever jumped. Could not dunk a basketball and could only “thunk (Noise from hitting the rim with the ball)” it on the rim. 🙂
They should not have been given that assignment. Too few of them.
Top Democrats on Capitol Hill grasped to resolve their disagreements over a multi-trillion-dollar social safety net and climate package on Thursday, as President Biden and his team planned another day of negotiations with key lawmakers to find a legislative path to enact his domestic policy agenda.
Democratic leaders claimed progress toward a deal, announcing that they had agreed upon an array of possible ways to pay for it. But they offered no details about what programs would be included or what the total cost would eventually be, and what they called a “framework agreement” appeared to be modest.
The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Representative Richard Neal, signed off on provisions that their respective committees already saw eye to eye on: a top income tax rate of 39.6 percent, which affluent taxpayers faced before President Donald J. Trump cut it to 37 percent in 2017; a crackdown on tax-preferred conservation easements, often used by the rich to lower taxation on historical properties; and closing a loophole, famously used by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, that can shield huge investment gains from taxation within an individual retirement account.
They agreed that the plan should fulfill Mr. Biden’s call to raise taxes on corporations and capital gains, but did not settle on rates for those items, according to aides familiar with the discussions who detailed them on the condition of anonymity. And they committed to trying to find common ground on their other priorities, such as Mr. Wyden’s proposal to tax the wealth gains of billionaires.
The talks came on a day when Mr. Biden and administration officials were expected to continue meetings focused on advancing both a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a broader $3.5 trillion domestic policy plan that most Democrats now concede will have to be scaled back to win passage.
Party leaders hope to coalesce around a compromise on the social safety net bill by Monday, when a vote is planned on the infrastructure measure. But agreement on a total cost, which programs to include and which to jettison, and how to pay for it will involve painful choices for a divided caucus.
Still, Democratic leaders predicted they would ultimately deliver both measures to Mr. Biden’s desk.
“I’m confident we will pass both bills,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters during her weekly news conference at the Capitol. …
… Democrats are aiming to pass the legislation on a party-line vote using a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation that shields it from a filibuster and allows it to pass on a simple majority vote. But because of their slim margins of control on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden needs the support of every Democrat in the Senate and can lose as few as three in the House to win enactment of the plan.
But progressive lawmakers who want to see the reconciliation bill completed first pressed Mr. Biden on Wednesday to weigh in with House Democratic leaders against holding a Monday vote on the infrastructure legislation. Concerned that their more conservative-leaning colleagues may refuse to support the larger plan once the infrastructure measure is enacted, liberal Democrats have said they will withhold their votes for that bill until the reconciliation plan clears Congress.
I can understand the progressives not wanting to get cheated again, but it does not seem wise to me when a little success might lead on to bigger success if the people see it’s working for them.
even I (because in the grand scheme of things I am on their side) think that asking for too much can backfire, and some of what they are asking for does not seem well thought out.
The Treasury secretary must wade into a standoff between Democrats and Republicans over raising the debt limit.
When Janet L. Yellen was Federal Reserve chair in 2014, she faced a grilling from Republicans about whether the federal government had a plan if the nation’s borrowing limit was breached and measures to keep paying the country’s bills were exhausted.
Ms. Yellen, appearing at a congressional hearing, outlined a dire scenario in which financial institutions might try to make payments that they could not cover, because the Treasury Department was out of money, leading to a cascade of bounced checks. She pushed back against the notion held by some Republicans that an economic meltdown could be averted, warning that there was no secret contingency plan.
“To the best of my knowledge, there is no written-down plan,” Ms. Yellen said at the time, adding that it was beyond her remit at the Fed. “That’s a matter that is entirely up to the Treasury.”
Fending off such a calamity is now squarely the responsibility of Ms. Yellen, who is confronting the biggest test she has faced in her eight months as President Biden’s Treasury secretary. Mr. Biden chose Ms. Yellen to help steer the economy out of the pandemic downturn. But in the face of congressional dysfunction, she has been thrust into a political role, trying to convince reticent Republican lawmakers that their refusal to lift the debt cap — which limits the government’s ability to borrow money — could lead to a financial collapse.
It is not a comfortable spot for Ms. Yellen, an economist by training who is now trying to navigate the rough political waters that she tends to avoid by countering legislative gamesmanship with economic logic.
Over the past month, Ms. Yellen has reached out to Democrats and top Republican leaders, including Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, and Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee. She has used those calls to convey the economic risks, warning that the Treasury’s ability to stave off default is limited and that failure to lift or suspend the debt cap by sometime next month would be “catastrophic.”
Ms. Yellen has reminded Republicans in the calls that they have been willing to join Democrats in lifting the debt ceiling in the past, and that raising the cap allows the U.S. to pay its existing bills and does not authorize new spending.
Thus far, Republicans seem unmoved by Ms. Yellen’s overtures. …
… A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center underscored the fact that if Congress fails to address the debt limit, Ms. Yellen will be left with no good options. If the true deadline is Oct. 15, for example, the Treasury Department would be approximately $265 billion short of paying all of its bills through mid-November. About 40 percent of the funds that are owed would go unpaid.
“Realistically, on a day-to-day basis, fulfilling all payments for important and popular programs would quickly become impossible,” the report said, pointing to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, and military active duty pay.
Tony Fratto, a Treasury official during the Bush administration, lamented that Ms. Yellen is operating without any leverage. Democrats, he said, appeared to have miscalculated when they thought that Republicans would be too ashamed to block a debt limit vote after supporting a suspension of the borrowing cap when President Donald J. Trump was in office.
“I think that was in the ‘hope’ category,” Mr. Fratto said. “This is Washington in 2021 — your hopes will be dashed.”
well, Social Security is paid out of payroll tax. congress may have trouble paying back the Trust Fund. I don’t know how much of a cut to benefits that would mean today, but I’m guessing not much. now, if they don’t have a budget can they pay the defense department? and if they can i’m sure they could transfer some funds (Trump did). and if they can’t, well I spect the shutdown won’t last too long.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government will likely face an unprecedented default on its debt obligations between mid-October and mid-November, a Washington think tank said Friday, seconding a warning earlier this week from the Treasury.
The “X Date,” the date when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will run out of maneuvering room to avoid hitting the debt limit if Congress does not act, will occur a couple of weeks after the start of the new budget year on Oct. 1 and may not be reached until as late as the middle of November, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“Given the current pace of federal spending and revenues, we are reasonably confident that the X Date won’t arrive before the start of the fiscal year or even the week or so following,” said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy for the center. “But this train could go off the rails shortly thereafter.”
Yellen sent a letter this week to the leaders of Congress, saying that if the government does not act, the U.S. will be unable to avert a default in October.
Yellen has been employing what are deemed in law “extraordinary measures” to keep the government functioning and from hitting the debt limit, which went back to effect on Aug. 1 after being suspended for two years.
The current limit stands at $28.4 trillion and Yellen has been using book-keeping maneuvers to disinvest various government trust funds, such as government employee pension funds, to remain below the debt ceiling.
If those resources are exhausted the government will no longer be unable to pay its bills, or even service U.S. debt, putting the country in default for the first time in its history.
Such an event would send shockwaves through the global financial system since U.S. Treasury securities are considered the safest investments in the world.
Republicans have said they do not plan to support an increase in the debt limit, though they did so when Donald Trump was president. GOP lawmakers have said Democrats should increase or suspend the debt limit using the budget reconciliation process they are using for President Joe Biden’s $3.5 trillion infrastructure bill. That can be done without GOP votes. …
Doesn’t look like anyone looked at the pictures I posted. Too bad. might learn something about riding and cutting horses.
There is another picture on Twitter showing the officer reaching down grabbing the shirt of a migrant. looked rough in the video. the incident was expalained as “the migrant grabbed the bridle of the horse endangering the officer. there is a good still photo on twitter showing the migrant has both hands full of stuff not the bridle. also shows a “split rein” that looks rather long and thick to me, nothing like the reins in the pictures i posted here. in any case the picture does not show why, or if, the migrant grabbed the bridle. doesn’t look to me like he could have. but if someone was riding me down, or swinging a whip at me from a horse, I think I would try to grab his bridle.
A GOP takeover of the House in the 2022 Midterm is a near certainty. Democratic control is only obtainable with 100% Democratic unity. Dems must wake up to the political reality, urgency and get focused. Democracy depends on it.
From a summary of a very detailed analysis at: https://tinyurl.com/2fndth92
“Anyway, we got a GOP net gain of roughly a dozen seats, more than the five-seat improvement they need from the 2020 results to win the House majority. This is a deliberately modest outlook, and Republicans could easily blow past it next year, while there are also scenarios under which Democrats are able to minimize those GOP gains and perhaps even save their majority. But our default expectation has been, and remains, a Republican House takeover next year.”
Scary, but I’d wait until the redistricting is done.
Indeed. The Dem-controlled NYS legislature is looking
to reduce the number of GOP districts in their state by
four or five, to compensate for the fact that the 2020
census cost them one House seat. That will help.
NY Will Soon Lose 1 House Seat. The GOP Might Lose 5
Buying opportunities abound…
The New York scenario which you outline is already included in the detailed analysis. See: https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/redistricting-in-america-part-eight-a-quick-summation-of-a-long-series/#NewYork
The summary of a very detailed analysis at: https://tinyurl.com/2fndth92
Dems are still in BIG TROUBLE!
Perhaps the NYS gambit will inspire the 19 (or so) other
Dem controlled legislatures in the US to do likewise.
At least those with GOP Reps in Congress, which is
not the case in New England.
No, Border Patrol is not whipping Haitians. That is not a bull whip, that is split reins which are common amongst horse riders.
The media portrayal yet again is driving a frenzy of public outrage of poor optics, while politicians sit in Washington bemoaning the news while a humanitarian crisis we have going on down here gets press for all the wrong reasons.
Yes, no whip, just reins
Still looked awful.
ANOTHER HORSE VIDEO, REINS NO WHIP
but look at how they use the reins
coberly:
You should see how I was trained at the time I entered the Marine Corps to use an unloaded M14 for crowd control in the seventies. Heel to head and barrel on top of head.
Tt was a stupid maneuver, 2-3 horsemen doing crowd control in an open area?
don’t know about Marines. met an ex FBI in college. said he was trained on the night-stick: “you don’t want to injure them, just enough to hurt. or they’ll come looking for you when they get out of jail.”
them boys down to Del Rio look like they seen too many cowboy movies.
coberly:
10th Marines and 82nd Airborne were on call in case of rioting in Washington DC in the early seventies
LESSON IN USE OF REINS https://youtu.be/mswhpLuempw
LESSON IN USE OF REINS
Texas border agents DENY they are whipping migrants
In Push to Tax the Rich, White House Spotlights Billionaires’ Tax Rates
well, i guess i don’t know much about split reins. having been associated with horse trainers for forty years or so, i never saw any need for whips to control horses. but then we don’t drive cattle or people like cattle.
i’d say somteting stinks about this, and it isn’t horse poop.
It could be that the horsemen in the picture
are dealing with their horses using ‘split reins’ &
those odious miscreants are simply getting in the way
Horse expert explains…
Rodeo horses or cutting horses you use splits. Easier to move the horse around when you’ve got a jumpy animal to herd.
I honestly feel bad for the border patrol and state troopers who are stuck in the middle of a political battle over a humanitarian crisis.
There are things we could do, such as send resources to Haiti. We as a nation could also send contractors…some of whom are no longer working in Afghanistan, to rebuild some basic public infrastructure. There are options. What’s happening out here is a symptom of poor policy and the republican agenda to cry wolf every time someone the opposing team takes the field.
Someone I know who actually rides cutting horses says you don’t even use reins. The horse knows what to do. Don’t get in his way.
Michael:
I agree with your comment on “splits,” even though I am not an accomplished rider myself. Dogs I know, horses I do not. One time at 16, I was almost pinned to a wood fence by a horse which was moving sideways. Some how I leaped straight up and over the fence. Highest I ever jumped. Could not dunk a basketball and could only “thunk (Noise from hitting the rim with the ball)” it on the rim. 🙂
They should not have been given that assignment. Too few of them.
well, maybe you know more about this than i do. why do they need to herd people like cattle?
CUTTING HORSE VIDEO
Democrats work to iron out budget differences as White House talks continue
NYT – Sep 23
Top Democrats on Capitol Hill grasped to resolve their disagreements over a multi-trillion-dollar social safety net and climate package on Thursday, as President Biden and his team planned another day of negotiations with key lawmakers to find a legislative path to enact his domestic policy agenda.
Democratic leaders claimed progress toward a deal, announcing that they had agreed upon an array of possible ways to pay for it. But they offered no details about what programs would be included or what the total cost would eventually be, and what they called a “framework agreement” appeared to be modest.
The Senate Finance Committee chairman, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, and the House Ways and Means Committee chairman, Representative Richard Neal, signed off on provisions that their respective committees already saw eye to eye on: a top income tax rate of 39.6 percent, which affluent taxpayers faced before President Donald J. Trump cut it to 37 percent in 2017; a crackdown on tax-preferred conservation easements, often used by the rich to lower taxation on historical properties; and closing a loophole, famously used by Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley billionaire, that can shield huge investment gains from taxation within an individual retirement account.
They agreed that the plan should fulfill Mr. Biden’s call to raise taxes on corporations and capital gains, but did not settle on rates for those items, according to aides familiar with the discussions who detailed them on the condition of anonymity. And they committed to trying to find common ground on their other priorities, such as Mr. Wyden’s proposal to tax the wealth gains of billionaires.
The talks came on a day when Mr. Biden and administration officials were expected to continue meetings focused on advancing both a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and a broader $3.5 trillion domestic policy plan that most Democrats now concede will have to be scaled back to win passage.
Party leaders hope to coalesce around a compromise on the social safety net bill by Monday, when a vote is planned on the infrastructure measure. But agreement on a total cost, which programs to include and which to jettison, and how to pay for it will involve painful choices for a divided caucus.
Still, Democratic leaders predicted they would ultimately deliver both measures to Mr. Biden’s desk.
“I’m confident we will pass both bills,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters during her weekly news conference at the Capitol. …
… Democrats are aiming to pass the legislation on a party-line vote using a fast-track budget process known as reconciliation that shields it from a filibuster and allows it to pass on a simple majority vote. But because of their slim margins of control on Capitol Hill, Mr. Biden needs the support of every Democrat in the Senate and can lose as few as three in the House to win enactment of the plan.
But progressive lawmakers who want to see the reconciliation bill completed first pressed Mr. Biden on Wednesday to weigh in with House Democratic leaders against holding a Monday vote on the infrastructure legislation. Concerned that their more conservative-leaning colleagues may refuse to support the larger plan once the infrastructure measure is enacted, liberal Democrats have said they will withhold their votes for that bill until the reconciliation plan clears Congress.
I can understand the progressives not wanting to get cheated again, but it does not seem wise to me when a little success might lead on to bigger success if the people see it’s working for them.
even I (because in the grand scheme of things I am on their side) think that asking for too much can backfire, and some of what they are asking for does not seem well thought out.
just in case any of them care what i think.
As Debt Default Looms, Yellen Faces Her Biggest Test Yet
well, Social Security is paid out of payroll tax. congress may have trouble paying back the Trust Fund. I don’t know how much of a cut to benefits that would mean today, but I’m guessing not much. now, if they don’t have a budget can they pay the defense department? and if they can i’m sure they could transfer some funds (Trump did). and if they can’t, well I spect the shutdown won’t last too long.
how about some quantitative easing?
actually, i may have misunderstood something. people are still paying taxes. so the money is still there. it’s just congress refusing to apend it.
that should be a crime. send them to jail until they pay their debts.
Policy Center says debt limit could be hit in mid-October
Someday someone will read and comprehend Section 4 of the 14th Amendment.
Doesn’t look like anyone looked at the pictures I posted. Too bad. might learn something about riding and cutting horses.
There is another picture on Twitter showing the officer reaching down grabbing the shirt of a migrant. looked rough in the video. the incident was expalained as “the migrant grabbed the bridle of the horse endangering the officer. there is a good still photo on twitter showing the migrant has both hands full of stuff not the bridle. also shows a “split rein” that looks rather long and thick to me, nothing like the reins in the pictures i posted here. in any case the picture does not show why, or if, the migrant grabbed the bridle. doesn’t look to me like he could have. but if someone was riding me down, or swinging a whip at me from a horse, I think I would try to grab his bridle.