In Arizona, the teachers and supporters have turned in over 200,000 signatures for a referendum on the flat tax recently passed by the Republicans in the state legislature. If verified, the tax will go on the November, 2022 ballot. Here’s more detail:
I am sitting in Mesa now waiting for a house to be completed. The date is now a dart throw. A week ago they committed to Oct 28th and now it is Nov 8th since yesterday. Cabinetry was supposed to be late. The sales Rep could not tell me this time what caused the date shift but he could tell me the dates(?).
If I go to Close and can not close, they will charge me $250/day according to the Title person. And they prefer a wire. I prefer a cashier’s check which I will sign over at Close. I beat them up on both and the contract I signed says I can do wire or other means. What came out today was the $250 penalty is the result of the builder. Pretty much they have it both ways, they can be late and forcing a penalty on the buyer for being late.
To Arizona’s issues? I read the article:
Ducey’s income tax cuts, which serve as his legacy policy achievement during his two terms as governor, dramatically reform Arizona’s tax system. Instead of a progressively graduated system with a maximum rate of 4.5%, Arizona will shift to two income tax rates: 2.55% for people who earn $27,272 annually and 2.98% for those who earn more than that, under SB1828. That law, which Invest in Arizona is challenging and hoping to hand to the voters in 2022 for approval, will also create a single 2.5% rate as soon as 2023 if state revenues hit certain triggers.
Legislative budget analysts estimate those cuts coupled with other tax law changes will cost the state about $1 billion in revenue. The median household income in Arizona is about $62,000, which will realize a tax savings of $42 under the new proposal. The benefit of the tax cut skyrockets as income increases: Households making at least $500,000 will save $10,000; those making at least $1 million save nearly $45,000; those making more than $5 million will save nearly $350,000 a year.
The referendum is a reaction to the tax cuts Ducey championed. The tax cuts themselves came in response to, and were designed to blunt the effect of, the Invest in Education Act on wealthy Arizonans. That measure, which voters approved in 2020, imposes a 3.5% surcharge on income greater than $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples, with the money directed to public schools to increase teacher pay and boost overall funding.
Ducey is an ass it seems. Education is underfunded in AZ as it is today.
Somebody should explain to the freedom not to vax folks that everyone of those folks sick and dying in the hospital were put there by somebody who did not or would not vax.
As always, don’t our vax freedom geniuses buckle up — even only they are going to go through the windshield if something goes wrong? And of course there are the baby and school vaxes that everybody is compelled to get — which nobody questions.
Some pandemic, epidemic thoughts and facts, mostly facts
More Americans have been killed by the new coronavirus than the influenza pandemic of 1918, despite a century of intervening medical advancement. The U.S. was ranked first among nations in pandemic preparedness but has among the highest death rates in the industrialized world. It invests more in medical care than any comparable country, but its hospitals have been overwhelmed. It helped develop COVID-19 vaccines at near-miraculous and record-breaking speed, but its vaccination rates plateaued so quickly that it is now 38th in the world. Just as cholera forced our cities to be rebuilt for sanitation, COVID-19 should make us rethink the way we ventilate our buildings, as my colleague Sarah Zhang argued.
And vaccines were already produced far faster than experts had estimated and were more effective than they had hoped; accelerating that process won’t help if people can’t or won’t get vaccinated, and especially if they equate faster development with nefarious corner-cutting, as many Americans did this year. Every adult in the U.S. has been eligible for vaccines since mid-April; in that time, more Americans have died of COVID-19 per capita than people in Germany, Canada, Rwanda, Vietnam, or more than 130 other countries did in the pre-vaccine era.
the physician Rudolf Virchow wrote, “The answer to the question as to how to prevent outbreaks … is quite simple: education, together with its daughters, freedom and welfare.” Virchow was one of many 19th-century thinkers who correctly understood that epidemics were tied to poverty, overcrowding, squalor, and hazardous working conditions—conditions that inattentive civil servants and aristocrats had done nothing to address.
In the early 1930s, the U.S. was spending just 3.3 cents of every medical dollar on public health, and much of the rest on hospitals, medicines, and private health care. And despite a 90-year span that saw the creation of the CDC, the rise and fall of polio, the emergence of HIV, and relentless calls for more funding, that figure recently stood at … 2.5 cents. Every attempt to boost it eventually receded, and every investment saw an equal and opposite disinvestment. A preparedness fund that was created in 2002 has lost half its budget, accounting for inflation. Zika money was cannibalized from Ebola money.
62 percent of Americans believe that pandemic-related restrictions were worth the cost, Republican legislators in 26 states have passed laws that curtail the possibility of quarantines and mask mandates, as Lauren Weber and Anna Maria Barry-Jester of KHN have reported.
‘There Will Be a Vote Today’ on Infrastructure, Pelosi Says
The House is expected to try for a second day to hold a vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill amid a stalemate among Democrats. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had put off the vote to give Democrats time to reach agreement on a social safety net bill that has split the party.
The House of Representatives aims on Friday to try to pass President Biden’s trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure plan, hours after the chamber’s Democratic leaders put off a planned vote on the measure amid a revolt from the party’s liberal wing.
The late-night delay came after Speaker Nancy Pelosi had spent much of Thursday insisting she would get the bill to the House floor that day. Just before 11 p.m., the vote was delayed to Friday, giving Democrats more time to reach agreement on an expansive climate change and social safety net bill that had become a sticking point for liberals in the negotiations.
Leaving the Capitol just after midnight, Ms. Pelosi told reporters “we’re not trillions of dollars apart” and vowed “there will be a vote today.” …
Some key liberals, including Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent in charge of the Senate Budget Committee, have been told that they will be consulted on any framework agreement, according to an aide.
Ms. Pelosi and top members of Mr. Biden’s team worked late into the night to strike a deal that could allow for passage of the infrastructure measure, which passed the Senate in August with great fanfare. But amid intense negotiations, the House’s most liberal members would not budge, while Republicans remained largely united behind their leaders’ efforts to kill the bill.
… Only in Congress, which is governed by arcane rules and traditions that often operate like a parallel reality, is it possible to extend a day for more than 24 hours. In this case, by keeping the House in recess on Thursday night, instead of adjourning as it does at the end of most days, leaders were able to keep the chamber in the Sept. 30 legislative day, regardless of the actual passage of time.
It allowed lawmakers, aides and White House officials who had toiled all day to reach an elusive deal among warring Democratic factions on President Biden’s flagship domestic policy bill to go home for a few hours of sleep without officially calling it quits. And it smoothed the path for leaders pushing to strike a compromise on Friday to head immediately to the floor for a vote if they are able to reach a breakthrough.
But the bigger reason for Ms. Pelosi’s calendar trick was political. She had promised a group of moderate Democrats who demanded a vote on the infrastructure bill this week that it would see action by Sept. 30. By refusing to allow Oct. 1 to roll around, Ms. Pelosi was upholding her commitment in the very most technical of ways, and offering the moderates a fig leaf to cover for the failure to secure the vote they had been promised. …
There are 51 votes — the Senate Democratic caucus plus Vice President Kamala Harris — to raise the debt limit and save the United States from default.
There are 51 votes — again, the Senate Democratic caucus plus Vice President Harris — to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act, end partisan gerrymandering and shield state and local election officials from outside interference. …
“WASHINGTON — There is legendary story told among basketball people about the late Marvin Barnes. (Or, alternatively, there is a story told among basketball people about the late, legendary Marvin Barnes. Either is correct.)
When Barnes was playing for the old American Basketball Association’s Spirits of St. Louis, they had a game in Louisville. Now, thanks to the magic of time zones, the Spirits technically would land in St. Louis several minutes before their scheduled departure time in Louisville. Barnes took one look at the itinerary and informed team officials, “I ain’t getting on no damn time machine.”
It has long been a central tenet of mainstream economic theory that public fears of inflation tend to be self-fulfilling.
Now though, a cheeky and even gleeful takedown of this idea has emerged from an unlikely source, a senior adviser at the Federal Reserve named Jeremy B. Rudd. His 27-page paper, published as part of the Fed’s Finance and Economics Discussion Series, has become what passes for a viral sensation among economists.
The paper disputes the idea that people’s expectations for future inflation matter much for the level of inflation experienced today. That is especially important right now, in trying to figure out whether the current inflation surge is temporary or not.
But the Rudd paper is part of something bigger still. It reflects a broader rethinking of core ideas about how the economy works and how policymakers, especially at central banks, try to manage things. This shift has also included debates about the relationship between unemployment and inflation, how deficit spending affects the economy, and much more.
,,, as Mr. Rudd writes in the first sentence of his paper, “Mainstream economics is replete with ideas that ‘everyone knows’ to be true, but that are actually arrant nonsense.”
One reason for this, he posits: “The economy is a complicated system that is inherently difficult to understand, so propositions like these” — the arrant nonsense in question — “are all that saves us from intellectual nihilism.”
Biden Meets With Feuding Democrats and Expresses Confidence in a Deal
“We’re going to get this done,” President Biden said after meeting with House Democrats on his domestic agenda. But he suggested that a deal could be as far as weeks off. It was not clear if a House vote on infrastructure would move ahead Friday.
… “I’m telling you, we’re going to get this done,” Mr. Biden said at the Capitol after huddling with Democrats who have been feuding over the two bills. He added: “It doesn’t matter when. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days or six weeks. We’re going to get it done.” …
… there’s a strange provision in U.S. law that empowers the Treasury secretary to mint and issue platinum coins in any quantity and denomination she chooses. Presumably the purpose of this provision was to allow the creation of coins celebrating people or events. But the language doesn’t say that. So on the face of it, Janet Yellen could mint a platinum coin with a face value of $1 trillion — no, it needn’t include $1 trillion worth of platinum — deposit it at the Federal Reserve and draw on that account to keep paying the government’s bills without borrowing.
Alternatively, Biden could simply declare that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, which says that the validity of federal debt may not be questioned, renders the debt ceiling moot. …
Their persistence forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a planned vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill. In the end, President Biden sided with their position.
Progressive Democrats in Congress, who have long promoted a bold, liberal agenda but often shied away from using hardball tactics to achieve it, did something unusual this week: They dug in.
The nearly 100-member caucus refused to support a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that is a major piece of President Biden’s agenda, seeking leverage for a bigger fight.
Their stance forced Speaker Nancy Pelosi to delay a planned vote on the measure and ultimately prompted Mr. Biden to side with them in saying that there could be no vote on the infrastructure legislation until agreement on a far broader, multitrillion-dollar social policy and climate measure.
The maneuver drew plaudits from liberal activists who had watched with dismay in the past as their allies in Congress caved to pressure from Democratic leaders and surrendered in policy fights. And it signaled that the progressives enjoyed newfound influence, including the backing of a president long associated with his party’s moderates.
“Things only happen here when there is urgency,” Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said on Friday. “I’m just so proud of our caucus, because they are standing up for people who feel like they have not been heard in this country for a very long time.”
Still, while the progressives scored a tactical victory, negotiations continued to whittle down the size of the social policy and climate bill, which was already much smaller than the initial $6 trillion to $10 trillion that many of them had envisioned.
Their persistence also risked the collapse of both bills, angering moderates in the party who had delivered the slim majority to Democrats and are at the highest risk of losing their seats in the midterm elections. …
Progressives flexed, but remain empty-handed. Moderates feel betrayed. The outcome of their battle could determine Democrats’ fate in the midterms and the success of the Biden presidency.
… After he vanquished Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary, he brought the liberal icon’s ardent supporters into the fold by embracing much of the senator’s platform even as he ran on unifying the country. When moderate Democrats came to call, he used the tones of centrism to assure them of his conciliatory bona fides.
But when Mr. Biden ventured to the Capitol on Friday to help House Democrats out of their thicket, he had to choose sides. He effectively chose the left.
“The way he is governing doesn’t reflect the skills I know he must have from his years as a legislator,” said Representative Stephanie Murphy of Florida, who had been one of the moderate Democrats demanding an immediate vote on a trillion-dollar infrastructure bill, convinced that was what the president wanted — or at least needed. She called Mr. Biden’s refusal to push harder for legislation he had embraced “disappointing and frustrating.”
“I’m not clear why he came up to the Hill,” she grumbled.
Since the president claimed his party’s nomination last year, he has nurtured the fragile peace between his party’s fractious center and left by convincing both sides he is their ally. Unified first by their shared disdain for former President Donald J. Trump, and then by Mr. Biden’s adoption of an expansive platform, the two factions remained in harmony into this year. They responded to the pandemic by passing a sweeping stimulus package in the spring.
Now, the two factions are at loggerheads — one flexing its power but as yet empty-handed, the other feeling betrayed, both claiming they have the president on their side — and the outcome of their battle over Mr. Biden’s proposals could determine Democrats’ fate in the midterms and the success of his presidency.
That agenda consists of two sweeping domestic proposals resembling a modern Great Society: the “American Jobs Plan,” spending $1 trillion over 10 years on traditional infrastructure like roads, bridges and tunnels, and a bigger and more controversial “American Family Plan,” which the Democrats labeled “soft infrastructure” — including universal prekindergarten and community college, paid family and medical leave, child care and elder care support, and an expansion of Medicare.
But liberals feared that moderate Democrats would vote for the infrastructure bill, claim victory, and peel away from the social policy measure, so they refused to support the smaller infrastructure bill until the larger social-policy package had been passed. …
Heading into last week, both the moderates and the progressives felt as if they had ironclad promises: the moderates, that a vote on infrastructure would happen before October; the liberals, that the bill, a crucial part of the president’s domestic agenda, was inextricably twinned with their higher priority, the more expansive measure addressing climate change and the frayed social safety net.
The liberals, however, used their larger numbers to blockade the infrastructure bill — and they said they did it for Mr. Biden. Representative Ilhan Omar, a left-wing Democrat from Minnesota and one of the leaders of the blockade, stood before reporters last week and said the blockaders were the ones “trying to make sure that the president has a success.”
“If we pass the infrastructure bill alone, we are not even accomplishing 10 percent of his agenda,” said Ms. Omar, the vote-counter in the Congressional Progressive Caucus, a bloc of Democrats nearly 100-strong, who showed their cohesion in last week’s showdown. ,,,
The latest Covid-19 deaths were concentrated in the South, and included more younger people than before. Every age group under 55 saw its highest death toll of the pandemic this August.
The United States surpassed 700,000 deaths from the coronavirus on Friday, a milestone that few experts had anticipated months ago when vaccines became widely available to the American public.
An overwhelming majority of Americans who have died in recent months, a period in which the country has offered broad access to shots, were unvaccinated. The United States has had one of the highest recent death rates of any country with an ample supply of vaccines.
The new and alarming surge of deaths this summer means that the coronavirus pandemic has become the deadliest in American history, overtaking the toll from the influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, which killed about 675,000 people.
…
People who died in the last three and a half months were concentrated in the South, a region that has lagged in vaccinations; many of the deaths were reported in Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas. And those who died were younger: In August, every age group under 55 had its highest death toll of the pandemic. …
… A Pew Research Center poll last month found that 86 percent of Democratic voters had received at least one shot, compared with 60 percent of Republican voters.
The political divide over vaccinations is so large that almost every reliably blue state now has a higher vaccination rate than almost every reliably red state …
In Arizona, the teachers and supporters have turned in over 200,000 signatures for a referendum on the flat tax recently passed by the Republicans in the state legislature. If verified, the tax will go on the November, 2022 ballot. Here’s more detail:
Education advocates file signatures to force vote on Ducey’s tax cuts in 2022 (azmirror.com)
Appears Gov Ducey is a real dick-head.
I am sitting in Mesa now waiting for a house to be completed. The date is now a dart throw. A week ago they committed to Oct 28th and now it is Nov 8th since yesterday. Cabinetry was supposed to be late. The sales Rep could not tell me this time what caused the date shift but he could tell me the dates(?).
If I go to Close and can not close, they will charge me $250/day according to the Title person. And they prefer a wire. I prefer a cashier’s check which I will sign over at Close. I beat them up on both and the contract I signed says I can do wire or other means. What came out today was the $250 penalty is the result of the builder. Pretty much they have it both ways, they can be late and forcing a penalty on the buyer for being late.
To Arizona’s issues? I read the article:
Ducey’s income tax cuts, which serve as his legacy policy achievement during his two terms as governor, dramatically reform Arizona’s tax system. Instead of a progressively graduated system with a maximum rate of 4.5%, Arizona will shift to two income tax rates: 2.55% for people who earn $27,272 annually and 2.98% for those who earn more than that, under SB1828. That law, which Invest in Arizona is challenging and hoping to hand to the voters in 2022 for approval, will also create a single 2.5% rate as soon as 2023 if state revenues hit certain triggers.
Legislative budget analysts estimate those cuts coupled with other tax law changes will cost the state about $1 billion in revenue. The median household income in Arizona is about $62,000, which will realize a tax savings of $42 under the new proposal. The benefit of the tax cut skyrockets as income increases: Households making at least $500,000 will save $10,000; those making at least $1 million save nearly $45,000; those making more than $5 million will save nearly $350,000 a year.
The referendum is a reaction to the tax cuts Ducey championed. The tax cuts themselves came in response to, and were designed to blunt the effect of, the Invest in Education Act on wealthy Arizonans. That measure, which voters approved in 2020, imposes a 3.5% surcharge on income greater than $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for couples, with the money directed to public schools to increase teacher pay and boost overall funding.
Ducey is an ass it seems. Education is underfunded in AZ as it is today.
The first house I bought was new construction. After that experience I vowed never again to buy new construction.
They are being elusive rather than being open. I can deal with issues if you tell me.
Dumb asses in AZ will have to contend with me now. Michigan Pols did not care for me.
I would like to have a few minutes with Manchin. What an ass.
I don’t need that long. I am only going to apply prozac or a baseball bat.
Somebody should explain to the freedom not to vax folks that everyone of those folks sick and dying in the hospital were put there by somebody who did not or would not vax.
As always, don’t our vax freedom geniuses buckle up — even only they are going to go through the windshield if something goes wrong? And of course there are the baby and school vaxes that everybody is compelled to get — which nobody questions.
Some pandemic, epidemic thoughts and facts, mostly facts
‘There Will Be a Vote Today’ on Infrastructure, Pelosi Says
The House is expected to try for a second day to hold a vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill amid a stalemate among Democrats. Speaker Nancy Pelosi had put off the vote to give Democrats time to reach agreement on a social safety net bill that has split the party.
Here’s the latest…
The House is set to try again to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill after Pelosi delayed the vote
That fen paper.
“split the party” Yeah, two ahs.
I Know This Is Crazy, but Maybe We Should Live Under Majority Rule
(Therein lies the problem, at least in the Senate. The 50 GOP senators
plus the two outliers – Manchin & Sinema – are the Majority that wants
to spend as little as possible ‘going forward’)
hehe
“WASHINGTON — There is legendary story told among basketball people about the late Marvin Barnes. (Or, alternatively, there is a story told among
basketball people about the late, legendary Marvin Barnes. Either is correct.)
When Barnes was playing for the old American Basketball Association’s Spirits of St. Louis, they had a game in Louisville. Now, thanks to the magic of time zones, the Spirits technically would land in St. Louis several minutes before their scheduled departure time in Louisville. Barnes took one look at the itinerary and informed team officials, “I ain’t getting on no damn time machine.”
https://www.esquire.com/new…
Nobody Really Knows How the Economy Works. A Fed Paper Is the Latest Sign.
NY Times – Neil Irwin – October 1
Biden Meets With Feuding Democrats and Expresses Confidence in a Deal
‘We’re going to get this done,’ Biden says after meeting with House Democrats on his domestic agenda
… “I’m telling you, we’re going to get this done,” Mr. Biden said at the Capitol after huddling with Democrats who have been feuding over the two bills. He added: “It doesn’t matter when. It doesn’t matter whether it’s in six minutes, six days or six weeks. We’re going to get it done.” …
The Trillion Dollar Coin is Back!
Biden Should Ignore the Debt Limit and Mint a $1 Trillion Coin
NY Times – Paul Krugman – October 1
On the face of it… (the coin that is)
On the obverse, Joe Manchin. On the reverse, Kyrsten Sinema.
Progressives Flex Muscles on Biden Agenda, Adopting New Tactics
Hitting a Blockade Over His Agenda, Biden Tacks Left
Biden Throws In With Left, Leaving His Agenda in Doubt
The Pace of Covid when the vaccine was abundant.
US Coronavirus Death Toll Surpasses 700,000 Despite Wide Availability of Vaccines
Red Covid – Neil Irwin – NYTimes
David Leonhardt, not Neil Irwin