Yes, yes, yes.

Paul on the road epiphany? Wow.

I'd actually prefer voting for FDR clones, personally, but there don't seem to be too many of them around these days. That's a shame, because Trump would never have been possible if there had been a few strong Dems cut from that particular cloth...

Don Harris [10] -

I believe that if the minimum wage had been allowed to rise to cover the cost of living, then we wouldn't be in this mess today.

If workers for McDonalds or WalMart didn't have to get government subsidies like food stamps just to survive and raise their families, then things would be a lot better for everyone. Average people would have more money in their pockets (due to wage pressure from the bottom up), the federal budget wouldn't have to give such corporate welfare out which would help things significantly, and a 40-hour week would mean being able to support yourself no matter who you worked for.

OK, I'm going to have to continue answering comments tomorrow, but I promise I'll deal with the backlog!

-CW

Yeah, yeah, the old Willie Sutton thing ("that's where the money is"), right?

Most economists take the income scale in the US on a quintile basis (divide it into five groups). I'm not too concerned about the bottom fifth. As you point out, they pay no income taxes and therefore aren't included in any tax plan, for the most part (this is a broad-brush comment, but whatever).

But did you notice that all the other tax brackets were slated to come down, but the bottom one went up from 10% to 12%? Please explain the GOP's reasoning for that one, because I don't understand it, personally. Let's tax the bottom MORE so we can tax the top LESS? That's baffling, politically.

I'm also not too worried about the top fifth, because they will doubtlessly make out like bandits under any GOP tax "reform."

But the middle 3/5ths is where the conversation is going to be centered -- and for many of them, their taxes will actually go up. To pay for big cuts to corporate tax rates. And THAT is what concerns me the most, personally.

Balthasar [3] -

My question is: if it were actually true, as conservatives like to say, that 50% of Americans don't pay any taxes, why require them to file, and the IRS to process all of those tax forms, when it would be simpler and cheaper to simply figure the taxes themselves for us (allowing the option for us to 'correct' their math later, if necessary), and just cut checks for for refunds and mail them out?
Or do they just like to harass folks for no reason?
This wasn't my idea, but it sure seems like a good time to bring it up.

OK, one at a time. The GOP likes to say that half Americans don't pay taxes. This was Mitt Romney's "47 percent," if you'll remember. But what they really mean is "income taxes" and to get to that 47% figure, they add in everyone who is not actually working -- including college students, the disabled, retired people, whatever. The percentage of "working, paycheck-earning Americans" who don't pay income taxes is actually a lot lower.

And what you suggest is already true. If you make less than a certain amount of money (where you start owing income tax) then you DO NOT NEED TO FILE a tax return each year.

As for the gummint figuring the taxes, that would probably work well for people who today use the 1040EZ form, because their taxes are incredibly simple to figure. And they'd probably be thankful for avoiding the hassle of filling the forms out (I know several close friends in this situation, some of them on fixed incomes and retired).

But I'm beginning to deal with Irish income taxes (long story involving my wife), and they do have some sort of system like the one you suggest. However, I have not wrapped my brain fully around it, so I will have to get back to you when I do figure it out to let you know if it actually is an improvement or actually adds layers to the contact you have to have with the IRS (or, to coin a phrase, the "Eire IRS").

As for Bush and harassment, I tried harassment as a flirting technique in like seventh grade. It mostly consisted of "snapping bra straps" in the hallways in Jr. High. But I quickly discovered a basic fact: girls talk to each other and word would quickly get around if you were a jerk. So I stopped. Most of us learned a similar lesson at a similar age, but some never learned it, it seems -- in both parties, in politics, in entertainment, in frat houses, pretty much all over the place.

As for legalization, I am sorely looking forward to January first of next year. That's all I'll say at the moment.

:-)

Yeah, I saw the Colbert balls bit and thought it was funny! I also noticed that Jimmy Fallon used my "Flake News" joke, earlier in the week...

:-)

And, OK, I hear your point on Frederica Wilson and mayor Cruz. Duly noted.

neilm [6] -

Whoops! Dunno how that one happened, musta been some mistaken copy-n-pasting. Thanks for pointing it out, I fixed it. Good eye!

:-)

OK, I'm going to post this and continue in a new comment...

-CW

On the other hand, like everyone else on this Orient Express, he seems to have had offices or business dealings in Alexandria and New York, so he's not entirely in the clear.

And his lawyer already sent a letter to Senate Investigators indicating that he has "a lot to tell" in return for immunity. I imagine that Mueller believes him, but would remind him that Manafort also offered to sing for his freedom.

So the game is afoot!

I find the deafening silence in relations to Flynn very interesting...

Also a very interesting read. Gives some idea of why the no knock search was approved. Trump can go stuff his "nothing to it" tweets up his Putin hole.

Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos. Papadopoulos!

I know, right! Turns out there are sealed indictments. Who knew? ;)

http://www.chrisweigant.com/2017/06/15/senate-votes-to-take-power-away-from-trump/#comment-102998

Was he wearing a wire?

Signs point to yes ~ Magic 8-Ball

A good read indeed. It looks US intelligence was reading a lot of Russian E-mail and listening to a lot of Russian phone calls.

Papadop's goose was cooked before the FBI ever interviewed him. A lot of Trump's friends, family and staff must be very worried....which is the whole point as far as the FBI is concerned.

https://www.justice.gov/file/1007346/download

Makes for good reading.

And here’s the rub: This is only Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s opening salvo.

As opening salvos go, it’s a doozy.

Was he wearing a wire? Does it matter? If Blotus/Gang think he might have been wired…whooo boy!

It was precisely a 'Black Sea view' for the Russian fleet that Putin was seeking when he invaded Crimea!

https://www.justice.gov/file/1007271/download

https://www.scribd.com/document/363002868/Manafort-Gates-Indictment#from_embed

Mixed game-show metaphors?

I think the "Come on down" hearkens back to "The price is Right", not to "Jeopardy".

Paul appears to be the first contestant to participate in Legal Jeopardy, the latest incarnation of the durable Merv Griffin staple.

Contestants are presented with evidence of questionable activities (such as, "buying condos with bags of cash") and must answer with an applicable crime, phrased as a question (What is money laundering?) Criminal Activities are arranged in order of sentencing guidelines, increasing from left to right across the board. Contests hope to choose the hidden "Pardon Box" and avoid the dreaded "Double Jeopardy" for failing to answer in the form of a question.

The cows having grown tired of the constant cycle of slaughter while being the productive members in the equation have decided to breakaway and declare independence in Cowtelonia.

CowCo CEO is upset at the attempted breakaway of the cows and has sacked the heardmaster for allowing the Cowtelonian movement to gain steam and have rallied the cows loyal to CowCo to protest the breakaway.

The leaders of the Cowtelonian movement have stated they are willing to talk as long as they can get a better policy regarding slaughter and working hours for producing milk. Angus B. Cow the leader of the movement stated "why can't the villagers just use our chips to help grow more vegetables so more of us don't have to be slaughtered for CowCo intrests? Why won't CowCo diversify? They already have to many steaks."

Will the status quo prevail or a new order be established that forces the villagers to eat more vegetables?

Only time, tweets, and backdoor negotiations with the leaders of Cowtelonia will determine.

Stay tuned for breaking news, up next in the Situation Room endless loops of the same stuff you just spent 30 minutes watching with vowel by vowel analysis by Wolf Blitzer. If you haven't already gone numb we will see you after the break.

Anyway all of the answers have been interesting, and each was idiosyncratically original.

C.R. pointedly dismisses the communists, and then suggests 'progressive' taxation in his solution, but then inexplicably ends by conjuring a scapegoat class: 'lazy' villagers, who don't exist in the setup question, but who, by his reckoning, deserve to die just for being so uninspired. wow.

Don, however, makes a strong bid to top him by raising the issue of Food Consent. Sir Paul McCartney is with you Don, as he's avowed publicly that he won't eat anything that ever had a face.

So is my Waffle house waitress, who suggested milking the cows, rather than slaughtering them, and living on cheese. You could make a binding contract...

JL tops everyone, I think, with the conjuring of Cowco, corporate overlords and oppressors of the Chief and his villagers. Well, it has been "Conspiracy Week", so why not?

now about those cows... it's the cows who have calves and give the milk, while the stable workers do all the milking, butchering, husbandry and so forth. yet it is the people who own the cows who are categorized as "productive."

but how can the chief order any cows to be shared when they don't really belong to the owners themselves. legally they belong to the owners' imaginary friend CowCO, who lives on a faraway island where he stores millions of stored-up steaks that the chief can't access. further, neither the owners nor their imaginary friend can be held responsible for all the cow chips that are polluting the entire tribe's drinking water.

that's externalities for ya.

JL

Well understood. I'm only a couple steps behind Bush Sr. myself, but I'm still upright so for the time being at least, I have more options where to squeeze.

"Mark Halperin (one of the smarmiest political commentators around)"

He's no Morton Halperin. This apple rolled far away from the tree, into the gutter and got squashed by a truck.

Meanwhile, Republican apologist media has been busy making false equivalency arguments of Clinton:Trump collusion with Russia. In fact, Clinton is guilty, Trump is innocent (and shuffling his feet with hands behind his back. All old wine in new bottles, so why now? Won't work outside the Core Contemptibles. Ah, but it appears somebody in Trumpville is about to be indicted, possibly on Monday. It's time to for the Orange Squid Man to generate some smoke and scuttle away.

..."ya gotta remember, when you're 93 yrs old and confined to a wheelchair, asses are pretty much the only thing that you can reach!"

Bush Sr. is 93 years of age and suffers from vascular Parksinson's. Cognitive deficits, including changed/inappropriate behavior are recognized signs of the disease. I'm surprised the press hasn't brought this possibility up, especially since Bush Sr. was known for upper class standards of etiquette tuned to any occasion. Ass grabbing was not part his routine, at least not in public appearances.

The Bush family may be reluctant to publicly acknowledge his cognitive declines out of respect for his dignity. Nobody likes to see an old lion lose his teeth, or his marbles for that matter, but mental decline and changes in personality are some of the many hazards of living a very long life.

I see at least one glitch in your scenario. You never indicated that this tribe has a bull? Where are the calves going to come from for distribution to the cow-less??

In a more serious vein, of course as a result of the enlightenment arising from my recent epiphany/conversion (above), I would now go with your "communist" solution, even knowing full well that by the following spring after the cows had been equally distributed, the same people who had no cows prior to the distribution would once again be cow-less. That's inevitable with the unproductive.

But PRIOR to my epiphany/conversion, I would have said the first thing to do would be to segregate the cow-less according to the reason(s) for their cowless-ness. Some would be cow-less because they were too young, some because they were too old, some because they were too ill or otherwise physically handicapped, some because they were too incompetent/dumb, and some because they were too lazy.

Then I would levy a graduated "progressive"tax on those with cows, with which I would support the too young, the too old, the too sick/handicapped, and even the too incompetent, but I'd tell the too lazy they were on their own.

Then I'd abdicate my position of decision-maker, and let the people fight over that thing where "the devil is always found" - you know, the details, meaning at what LEVEL should the various cow-less by supported?

Hey, waddya ya know, that's right we ourselves are right now!!

Nor am I a Bernie Bro., as many here can attest. I generally appreciate and agree with his goals, but dispute the path that he would take to achieve them.

Let me illustrate: imagine a tribe of cow-herders, and that in this tribe the cows are very unevenly distributed. Some folks have many cows, others have one, two, or three, but some have no cow at all, and others are too lame or elderly to raise a cow.

But one year there is a famine, and the Chief convenes a council to decide how best to feed everyone.

The communists say, redistribute the cows, so that everyone has one.

The socialists say, keep the cows in a general pen, and use them as needed.

The progressives say, take a cow from the villager with the most cows, butcher it, and distribute the meat to those with no cow. In the spring, distribute calves to them and see if they can raise them.

The conservatives say, require those with fewer cows to work for those with more cows; eventually there will be enough leftovers generated so that those with no cows can eat. In the spring, maybe they can try to buy a calf.

The totalitarians say, let he with the most cows decide who gets to eat and who doesn't.

The authoritarians say, you're the Chief, you decide who eats and who doesn't.

And the libertarians say, why intervene at all? Those with cows will eat, and those without, won't.

Now imagine that you're the Chief, and your sibling is among those with no cow. How would you decide?

My take on Perez's foolish-sounding statement is that he was trying to say, not that the Electoral College is not in the Constitution, but that the way the College presently operates is not in the Constitution. The Constitution does not say states must observe a winner-take-all rule; it does not say that the people must elect the Electors in a democratic election; it does not say that Electors must be identified by party and/or by a candidate they are pledged to vote for if he or she wins a majority in the state. So Perez earned his ridicule by speaking carelessly, but he had a serious point he was trying to make. Very little of the EC system as we currently practice it is "in the Constitution."

The problem with 'reforming' the EC system, of course, is that each party will only support suggested reforms that ensures a higher percentage of presidential victories for itself going forward.

To end-run a reform or abolition by constitutional amendment, which won't happen ever, leads to jerry-rigged ideas like the NPVC or Don's alternative "State Compacts"; or, from the GOP side, the simpler and more achievable strategy of voter suppression and gerrymandering on a state by state basis.

As a result of that experience, I suddenly recognize what it actually is that is wrong with America. All of our problems can be epitomized in the single hateful fact that the highly productive among us, in an egregious manifestation of greed and avarice, are unwilling to share the fruits of their labors with the rest of us in any measure that we would ever be willing to settle for.

Of course, the practical implications of my epiphany serve to greatly simplify political life in general, and governmental policy in particular. All that has to happen is, everybody's gotta vote for Bernie Sanders or his clones for evermore!

Voila! Problems solved. Bet nobody ever dreamed it could be that easy.

Steyer was trying to push an idea for how to change presidential elections, but he just flat-out got his facts wrong:

Should read "Perez was trying ..."

Two investigations, in fact. Turns out, I guess, that Republicans are so enamored with the past that they can't even let go of old enemies.

On taxes: As you noted Wednesday, the Bush tax cuts were an actual real-world test of the 'trickle down' theory, and it didn't work out as planned - we ended with anemic growth and ballooning deficits. Republicans had a slew of excuses for that, but the bottom line was that Clinton had done better after his tax hike in '93 than Bush did with his 'historic' tax cuts in '03. Obama's results were mixed, mostly due to the fact that he threw lots of tax cuts into the Stimulus Bill in the hope that it would bring GOP votes into his camp. It didn't, and Republicans still managed to savage the effort. And despite the fact that it included the largest chunk of public works expenditures in a half century, the left found plenty to hate about it too. Bi-partisanship at its best. ahem.

At the bottom of the comments section to that column, C.R. and I had a back-and-forth that I thought was pretty good, in case you missed it, about 10 posts in all (not that long - Michale used to do that much per hour!). Since then, I've found another useful article about Who Pays Income Taxes from Pew Research that has good up-to-date numbers.

My question is: if it were actually true, as conservatives like to say, that 50% of Americans don't pay any taxes, why require them to file, and the IRS to process all of those tax forms, when it would be simpler and cheaper to simply figure the taxes themselves for us (allowing the option for us to 'correct' their math later, if necessary), and just cut checks for for refunds and mail them out?
Or do they just like to harass folks for no reason?
This wasn't my idea, but it sure seems like a good time to bring it up.

On the harassment scandals: about time the pussy-grabbers got their turn in the spotlight, after making nice guys like me feel inadequate since grade school for not being as crass as they were. Here's hoping the grabber-in-chief doesn't escape from this one unscathed again, as he managed to do during the campaign.

Good news about public support for legalization. I just wish it would hurry up - at this rate, it will be legalized in my state at about the same time I start breathing through a tube, which would remind me too much of my high school years.

About Flake: best quote of the week about this was from Stephen Colbert, who called Flake and Corker out for quitting just as they were beginning to make sense: “They finally grow a set," said Colbert, "Then they say, ‘I’m taking my balls and going home.’”

Finally, I'm a bit disappointed that you again missed the opportunity to give the MIDOTW to Rep. Frederica Wilson for continuing to stand her ground in the face of withering attack from the GOP media, and lies from the White House (Maher quipped tonight that the GOP loves cowboy hats - except for when black women wear them).

Another that I'd applaud is San Juan, Puerto Rico Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz, who is, after a month and eight days, still the only US official able to get the press to remember that the humanitarian crisis hasn't abated there. Honestly, if she wasn't still raising hell about it, would anyone still be talking about it?

Also, I can certainly sympathize with the women who complain that ex pres. Bush Sr grabs their asses, but ya gotta remember, when you're 93 yrs old and confined to a wheelchair, asses are pretty much the only thing that you can reach!

Would you say the same thing if he was biting men on their junk? Probably not. I doubt that Bush Sr. is an equal opportunity groper with his “David Cop-a-feel” joke!

Well yeah, we are still talking about income taxes, right? And the people at the lower end of the income scale (the bottom half of all Americans) aren't even included in the federal income tax system. Not surprising that even crooked politicians can't come up with a way to reduce taxes on people who don't even pay taxes!

Also, I can certainly sympathize with the women who complain that ex pres. Bush Sr grabs their asses, but ya gotta remember, when you're 93 yrs old and confined to a wheelchair, asses are pretty much the only thing that you can reach!