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Archive of Articles in the "Taxes" Category

Friday Talking Points -- Scrambling For Votes

[ Posted Friday, October 11th, 2024 – 17:32 UTC ]

We are entering the homestretch of the presidential election, and who is going to win is anybody's guess. Polling is no real help since it shows many battleground states either perfectly tied or within a point or two. Both candidates are out there campaigning hard, but neither has a clear edge over the other one. It's going to go right down to the wire, that's about the only thing which seems certain at this point.

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Friday Talking Points -- From Liz Cheney To Bruce Springsteen

[ Posted Friday, October 4th, 2024 – 17:49 UTC ]

There were two major events in the presidential race this week, but we are left wondering if either one of them is going to make much of a difference one way or the other. Perhaps we're getting a bit jaded by it all....

The first was the one-and-only vice-presidential debate, held on CBS this Tuesday. Republican JD Vance faced off with Democrat Tim Walz, and it was watched by 43 million people as it aired. The second was the public release of a document prosecutor Jack Smith had previously filed with the court in Donald Trump's January 6th case. It laid out Smith's basic case, in great detail (165 pages' worth).

In a normal campaign season, either one of these would have been impactful, perhaps shifting the polling in significant ways. But in our hunkered-down tribalistic politics, the needle barely quivered. Maybe we're all getting a bit jaded?

There were two other rather large events that could affect politics this week: the massive damage Hurricane Helene did -- especially in the Appalachian Mountain region -- and an East Coast dockworkers' strike. The first shouldn't really have been political, and the second was over almost before anyone was aware it was happening.

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A Very Midwestern Debate

[ Posted Wednesday, October 2nd, 2024 – 16:06 UTC ]

After what were arguably the two most consequential presidential debates since at least the Nixon-Kennedy debate (which launched the era of televised debates), last night's vice-presidential debate was pretty... well, normal. It harkened back to the age before Donald Trump entered the political scene, when two candidates would debate political issues without getting overly vicious or personal in their attacks, in the hopes of presenting themselves to the public as acceptable leaders of the country. That was really the striking takeaway from last night -- a return to normalcy, in the midst of yet another Trumpian rollercoaster of a presidential campaign. In fact, this normalcy stuck out as completely abnormal to the bizarre political landscape Trump has dragged us all into for the past nine years.

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Friday Talking Points -- Trump Wallows In 'Burgerism'

[ Posted Friday, September 27th, 2024 – 17:31 UTC ]

Donald Trump got his start in politics by infamously pushing the "birtherism" lie about Barack Obama. Now he's pushing what might be called a "burgerism" lie about Kamala Harris -- that she somehow just made up the fact that she worked at McDonald's back when she was a student. It's all a measure of the desperation Trump finds himself now wallowing in, since to date none of his attacks against Harris have even come close to landing.

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Friday Talking Points -- Reckless Endangerment

[ Posted Friday, September 20th, 2024 – 17:17 UTC ]

Donald Trump (rather infamously) never admits he's wrong. Even on things that are easy to disprove with incontrovertible evidence, Trump will still insist he is right. He will construct an alternate reality inside his own head where he is proven to be right and all those who disagree are proven to be in some giant conspiracy against him, and he will go right on insisting that up is down, or that night is actually day. He never backs down and certainly never apologizes -- no matter how much harm his lies may cause.

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House Republicans' Kabuki Show

[ Posted Monday, September 16th, 2024 – 15:33 UTC ]

Congress is back in town, after their obscenely-long summer break, and (as usual) they are facing a big deadline. This is exacerbated by the fact that it is an election year, so all the congresscritters really want to be back in their home states and districts campaigning full-time. So they really want to just pass something and get out of town (again).

However, to achieve this goal would mean reasonable politicians on both sides of the aisle sitting down and hammering out a bill, and then both houses passing it with little or no drama. Since the House of Representatives is run by Republicans, this is currently impossible. It may yet happen, but only after the House GOP puts on yet another Kabuki production of: "Here Is Precisely How Incapable We Are Of Governing." And as we've already seen, this sort of thing can end the political careers of anyone currently in the speaker's chair.

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Friday Talking Points -- She Slices! She Dices! She Does Not Lose Her Edge!

[ Posted Friday, September 13th, 2024 – 16:30 UTC ]

This week, millions of Americans tuned in to politics only to make an astonishing discovery: Donald Trump is still exactly who he always was! He opens his mouth, and lies and crazy talk pour forth. Same as it ever was... what a surprise!

Now, normal people can be excused for being surprised that Trump is still Trump. Most people have lives to lead and plenty of other things to do, so they simply don't pay much attention to politics. But tens of millions of them made the time this week to tune in to the first debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. And it was like going to a family Thanksgiving dinner and once again having to put up with your crazy uncle -- because you had somehow forgotten just how bad he truly was. And still is.

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Friday Talking Points -- Debate Prep Underway

[ Posted Friday, September 6th, 2024 – 17:13 UTC ]

Traditionally, Labor Day is the kickoff to the "real campaign season." This implies that none of what has gone before really made much of a difference, and that the American people will now give each of the candidates a fresh look as people slowly turn their focus to politics after the summer season is done.

Maybe that was true once, but quite obviously we've been in the midst of the general-election campaign season for most of this year already. There was no drama or mystery about who would become the major parties' nominees -- Donald Trump and President Joe Biden had the primaries wrapped up before they even began. And then the most dramatic event of the general election campaign happened midsummer, as Biden decided to end his candidacy (after a disastrous debate performance with Donald Trump). In other words, plenty has already happened this election season, and so we've got to look at the remaining two months as nothing more than the homestretch.

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Hunter Pleads Guilty

[ Posted Thursday, September 5th, 2024 – 16:18 UTC ]

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, entered a guilty plea today in the federal tax evasion case against him. This would have been a much bigger deal, of course, if Joe were still actively running for re-election, but now it will be no more than a political footnote, at least as far as the election is concerned.

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The Year The Debates Mattered

[ Posted Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024 – 15:02 UTC ]

One week from today, the two major political parties' presidential candidates will debate each other. Although this will be the second general election campaign debate held, it is not technically accurate to use the word "again" in that previous sentence, since we won't see the same two candidates on stage that we did last time. This is unprecedented in modern American politics, and 2024 might very well be remembered in the future as "the year the debates mattered."

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