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    Cali4lifeCharles D. Ellison
    11/16/17 7:35pm

    Yeah, and the dems are awfully quiet. I’ve gotten a few emails, but where are the dem leaders right now? Nowhere, that’s where. They are quiet af while they are all over that hypocrite Al Franken. No Bernie. No Corey. Pelosi. Feinstein (who will love the tax bill tbh), no Biden. Everyone is quiet..

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      DolemiteCali4life
      11/17/17 9:14am

      I feel like they’ve been mostly silent this entire Trump presidency. Every now and then one might pipe up, but...yeah, where are they? Now Franken is probably going to get kicked out and replaced by a Republican or a corporate paid-for Dem that falls in line and remains silent. On the other hand, Republicans are all lining up behind a pedophile. It’s like the Democratic party can’t rally people at all, and the only thing uniting people is the incredibly brazen “steal from everyone to give to the rich, and we don’t even hide it” philosophy of the GOP. I want to rally behind someone, but there’s no one to be found.

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      Cali4lifeDolemite
      11/17/17 10:26am

      Point. It’s a lame party. The president is the easiest target since he’s literally mentally deranged. But there’s child-lover Moore, Mitch, Russia, fucking jared’s Email, Flynn, manfort, Brannon and nazis all over and the dem “leaders” are arguing over franklin and Bill Clinton!

      My own local leaders - on speed dial - have gotten an earful, letters, and more and even they say the national leaders are a bunch of lame losers.

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    Not Enough Day DrinkingCharles D. Ellison
    11/16/17 6:29pm

    You left out the part where this deal is frontloaded to not seem as bad. Corporate tax rates wouldn’t change until 2019, so the deficit won’t seem to grow by too much before midterm elections next year. And by 2023 a family tax credit expires which means housesholds earning under $40,000 will see a big tax hike...but they won’t see that until after the next presidential election.

    And you touched on the state income tax deductions, but I don’t think you really highlighted just how bad it actually is. New York has an almost 9% state income tax. Without the deduction, they’re effectively raising New Yorker’s taxes by the full 9%. Even the rich people in New York are going to complain about that. The only people who won’t are people who run most of their money through corporations, say the Trump Organization for example, that have the P.O. boxes for their headquarters in another state and don’t pay that state tax anyway.

    But meanwhile I, who live in Texas, don’t have a state income tax at all, so there is no deduction to take away, and I won’t notice anything different at all. So when you complain about your tax hike, I’ll just say you don’t know what you’re talking about because my take home income is a few hundred dollars higher than last year even if you’re losing thousands.

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      Not Enough Day DrinkingNot Enough Day Drinking
      11/16/17 8:49pm

      Yes, you’re right about the 30%. My brain was fried after work. If you make $100,000 then taking away that deduction will increase your tax burden by $2700 a year while potentially pushing you into a higher tax bracket where it could cost you far more.

      The rest of your statement is nonsense. Firstly, SALT deductions do exist for states without income taxes. A state like Texas makes its money on regressive taxes like sales taxes that disproportionately affect the poor specifically so they don’t have to ask the rich share the burden. So if I buy a million dollar yacht here, I can write off $62,500 as a SALT deduction because of that 6.25% sales tax, but I’m far less likely to itemize the shoes I bought my kid for school.

      Secondly, when I lived in Massachusetts and paid a state income tax, the state used that tax to provide 98% of residents with healthcare (as close to universal healthcare as this country has ever had) without taking anymore per person from the federal government than Texas where over 20% of the population is uninsured. It also had the top schools in the country (ranking in the top 10 of world rankings) without taking any more from the federal government per person than say Mississippi which ranks among 3rd world countries in education. That seems like an incredibly efficient use of tax money compared to the federal government which continues to slash funding to education and welfare programs all while spending hundreds of billions of weapons to fight wars that will never happen.

      Finally, the ultimate irony is of course that the states that yell the loudest about ‘states rights’ seem really opposed to allowing states the right to decide how to spend the tax dollars generated within the state when those states happen to be high earning blue states...

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    Vanguard KnightCharles D. Ellison
    11/16/17 6:25pm

    It is just the beginning.

    When climate change decimated the environment and automation decimated the tax rolls American society will be looking for a scapegoat.

    Which group has played that role over the past 400 years? Economically weaker, low population, and easily identifiable as well.

    The rest of this century is going to be brutish. There is a future coming when there is going to be 10 people and only 5 seats at the table.

    What does history tell you how those in charge (white people) will act to ensure they and those they care for are at those seats?

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