President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Lots of them.

Ugh.

Pence is onto something.

 

LOL. I do love some of my corporate clients.

 

Isn't the Pence thing because he doesn't trust himself not to cheat?

It's an evangelical thing. A lot of them have mutual Facebook accounts, too, for example.

 

I understand the dinner date thing.

Not working late with female colleagues is a little weird. I've worked after hours with female colleagues and there was absolutely zero sexual tension, even when we were both objectively hot. It's called being a professional.

 

S. Carolina women decline White House invite

Frank Burns: The men, they hate me, don't they?
Radar O'Reilly: Just your guts, sir.

 

Seems pretty clear to me that the state & local tax deduction is a subsidy of taxpayers in high-tax states, and I'm surprised nobody else on the board seems to see it that way. Let's say Connecticut voters decide through their elected state officials to tax Connecticut taxpayers an additional billion dollars. They're doing this because they believe the additional state spending on roads, universities, state employee pensions, debt reduction, or whatever has benefits that are worth more than a billion dollars to state residents. (Voters, taxpayers, and residents not being the same groups is a separate issue.) That seems like the "remotely similar benefit" that Ragu doesn't see. But the Connecticut taxpayers only have to pay something like $750 million of the cost (assuming a weighted average 25% marginal rate; a different number wouldn't change the point), and the federal government, nearly entirely funded in the long term by taxpayers from other states, makes up the difference by receiving $250 million less than it would otherwise. Looks like a subsidy to me, regardless of whether it's outweighed by other subsidies.

I'm also not convinced by the argument that it's unfair that high-tax states pay more in taxes than they get back. High-tax states tend to be states with higher-than-average incomes (I suppose there might be high-tax states with low incomes, but I can't think of any), so their residents pay relatively more federal taxes than those of other states and get relatively less in means-tested entitlement benefits. That's as much math as it is politics, and I don't see how you could realistically set up a system in which each state's residents get back from the federal government what their taxpayers pay.

 

I can't even.

 

I need Reader's Digest versions of both Ragu's and Dick's posts because, well, TL;DR. If people like typefitter continue to pull out the nuggets, I will be grateful.

 

I think I'm there.

 

By the PUSSY, Al, the PUSSY! Not the tits!

 

LOL.