#fiscal-policy

[chassius1]

The Santa Claus Election

The Santa Claus Election

[bixels]

Always an experience watching the leftism leave FNAF fans when someone mentions that Scott Cawthon financially backed fascist politicians.

The switch from posting hardline leftist tweets about boycotts and signal boosts and critical takedowns of politicians and celebrities to ‘ohhh, well. everyone makes mistakes. who can blame him, listen he. he donated money to gay charities too. that makes it ok! a millionaire in his forties is allowed to have political beliefs. does it even matter? just let it go!’ is whiplash inducing. The antivaxxer celebrities have got to go, but this one horror dev who quietly handed wads of cash to antivax lawmakers? He’s chill, he can stay.

The charity thing is so funny too because suddenly utilitarian positive-negative point counting is the way to go. Maybe an abacus would help calculate the net good of donating to the Trevor Project minus donating thousands of dollars to Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump. -10 points if I push a kid in a lake but +11 points if I help an old lady across the street, so I’m chill. You can’t judge me. Hey, maybe. Just don’t push a kid in the lake period. How fucking low is the bar when we’re excusing maxing out the possible dollar amount of donations to Mitch fucking McConnell. That should be like. Default you’re a bad person.

[enlitment]

Being a debater is great because people assume you talk about the fiscal policies of Northern Europe or whatnot when you hang out after practice but you actually spend good thirty minutes playing f---, marry, kill: philosophers' edition.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

In March, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s colleagues laughed as the California Republican mocked President Joe Biden’s age, saying he would bring Biden “soft food” so they could negotiate over the debt ceiling.

But McCarthy apparently did not bring Biden anything to eat during their talks, and the President chewed up the GOP’s debt limit proposal instead. Republicans aren’t laughing anymore.

“Republicans got outsmarted by a President who can’t find his pants,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) tweeted on Tuesday, making clear she opposed the compromise legislation that came out of Biden and McCarthy’s negotiations.

Biden, 80, is the oldest person to serve as President of the U.S., and his age and alleged senility have been a constant focus of Republicans and right-wing commentators, despite assurances from his doctors that there’s nothing wrong with his mind. Polls have also shown that voters have concerns about Biden’s age.

During the debt limit standoff, McCarthy repeatedly said that by refusing to negotiate with Republicans, Biden was “bumbling” the U.S. toward a potentially catastrophic default. Even some Democrats criticized the President for not publicly engaging as much as McCarthy has in recent weeks. But as of Wednesday, default seemed unlikely, and the outlines of the deal appeared favorable to Democrats.

Asked if Biden had gotten the better of McCarthy, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), replied, “Yeah, I think that’s a fair assumption.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), meanwhile, said he believed McCarthy had simply been “misled.” He didn’t say by whom.

Even McCarthy conceded that he had been impressed with Biden’s negotiating team during the talks, calling them “very professional, very smart” and “very tough at the same time.”

But the Speaker has denied that he was outsmarted, touting the bill’s reductions to government spending and stricter “work requirements” for federal food benefits that Democrats opposed. The legislation would reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years, in large part due to cuts to non-defense programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“How were we outsmarted? The largest cut in the history of Congress. The biggest ability to pull money back,” McCarthy told ABC News on Tuesday. “We’ve got work requirements for welfare where the Democrats said was a red line.”

Still, Biden got plenty of wins in the bill, which cuts federal spending far less than Republicans initially hoped. And in a twist, the CBO said the work requirements won’t reduce spending or enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

The program supports 20 million households and already limits benefits for unemployed adults without children or disabilities who are between the ages of 18 and 49, unless they work or perform some other qualifying activity for 20 hours a week. Republicans proposed expanding the work requirement to people in their early 50s, as well as restricting states’ discretion to exempt some recipients. The CBO estimated the Republican proposal would have saved $11 billion and reduced SNAP enrollment by 275,000.

Biden signaled early on that he was open to stricter work requirements for SNAP, just not “anything of any consequence” — a statement that drew mocking laughter from McCarthy and his colleagues as someone, apparently a lawmaker behind the Speaker, shouted, “Loser!”

Sure enough, Biden agreed to expand SNAP’s work rules to people as old as 54 — but the White House also won changes that render the net impact of the bill inconsequential, at least from a budget perspective. The CBO said that, thanks to brand-new work requirement exemptions for veterans and homeless people, the bill would actually increase SNAP enrollment by a small amount and boost federal spending by $2 billion.

The analysis was not a surprise to the White House; a senior administration official said Sunday that “we expect that the number of people subject to SNAP work requirements will stay roughly the same under this agreement.”

The deal also preserves key Democratic priorities like student loan debt relief, climate change funding, and the bulk of investments aimed at making sure the wealthy pay their taxes.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) likened the bill to a “shit sandwich” that Republicans would have to eat — a sentiment shared by other Republicans planning to support the bill in a vote on Wednesday.

That doesn’t mean Democrats don’t have concerns about the legislation. Progressives, in particular, are furious that Biden was forced to negotiate over the debt limit at all, warning that he set a precedent Republicans will exploit time and time again if the debt limit isn’t abolished.

“It rewards the hostage-taking that the Republicans have gotten so damn good at,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said Tuesday.

Still, Democrats maintain the GOP has underestimated Biden at every turn, pointing to his many legislative accomplishments in the last Congress, including bipartisan investments in infrastructure and semiconductor research, and his signing of a historic climate change bill.

“If you haven’t figured out by now that our president is in the top 1% of negotiators, you haven’t been paying attention the last two and a half years,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told HuffPost.

[compacflt]

okay "normie median Biden voter ice" got me. That's funny. But also so true! It prob took him a bit to vote dem too (though I believe that Ice would have never voted for Trump). Would love to hear more thoughts on Ice and Mav's politics. Also the list of who they would have voted for if you're willing to share.

i do worry that posting my extremely in-depth headcanons about some of this stuff will have the JKR “wizard shit” effect on my writing and ruin it a little, but ask and ye shall receive

copy-pasted straight from my list of “unhinged compacflt!top gun headcanons” that ive been keeping since september: on ice & mav's politics

16. Since their friendship began, Ice has always told Maverick who to vote for, since Maverick doesn't care enough to pay attention to national politics. They are begrudging ConservaDems (conservative political views, would vote conservative every election if Republicans weren’t actively sending them to war/actively promoting fascism). Ice’s voting record (and after 1988, Mav’s too) 1980-2020—note that he has always considered himself an “educated moderate”: 1980: Reagan. 1984: Reagan. 1988: Bush. 1992: Bush. 1996: Clinton (reaction to aftermath of PGW. Doesn’t care that Clinton enacted DADT because “I’m not [redacted], so it doesn’t apply to me”). 2000: Gore (refusal to vote for another Bush). 2004: Kerry (Mav votes Bush this year out of spite as he and Ice are going through their break-up). 2008: McCain (Navy loyalty). 2012: Obama (liked him as a person/worked closely with him, didn’t like his policies so much). 2016: Clinton (no other alternative). 2020: Biden (actually liked/previously worked with Biden, and now actively married to another man and therefore had to make some liberal concessions). 2024-onwards they will vote for any Democrat as long as they aren’t a “socialist.”

17. Also, Maverick didn’t vote in 2016. Partially because in my universe the TGM mission takes place that November, very near the election, and he has bigger fish to fry (something Ice will later take him to task for), and partially because I genuinely think he wouldn’t be able to stomach either mainstream candidate and probably would’ve voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, which might have torn his relationship with Ice to shreds a few days before schedule. “Are you fucking kidding me? Johnson? Pete, this moron’s moronic party wants to abolish the driver’s license—” / “—Yeah, and then I could ride your sweet wheels with no problem whatsoever—maybe he’ll abolish pilots’ licenses, too, I’d like to see that—” / “If you vote for Gary fucking Johnson, I will very happily stop footing the bill for your piece-of-shit airplane, and you can see how useful your pilot’s license is then—” / So Mav didn’t vote in 2016. 

35. In terms of what he Tweets: I do foresee, post-retirement, Ice basically becoming a neoliberal military intellectual type on Twitter a la Mark Hertling (look him up on Twitter). Bio: “Retired @SECNAV. Advisor @WhiteHouse and @VoteVets. Contributing writer @TheAtlantic. Interested in geopolitics & modern warfare. Aviator, husband, Padres fan. [American flag emoji]” Only posts pictures of himself and Maverick at three specific annual events: 1. their wedding anniversary (“36 years with this fool and he’s still surprised to find out that I like the F-5 better than the A-4 #happyanniversary”), 2. every EAA Airventure (huge airplane convention), 3. San Francisco’s Fleet Week (which of course they MUST attend, they even headline it in 2018). Informative, analytical, highly-respected. Maybe goes on CNN or NBC all the time to talk about civil-military relations shit (aversion to FOX since the start of the Iraq War). Gonna say he had like four really viral threads about Russia and Ukraine in April or May and so has 300k followers or something like that. He has a personal website that links back to his Twitter and every essay he writes for international publications, with a pretty braggadocious bio (something along the lines of “Tom Kazansky has directly almost started global nuclear war twice in his life, and in the thirty-year gap in between, sold the Swiss half their entire goddamn Air Force and directed an entire Fleet during the Iraq War”). Lots of tweets like “Military aviation hot take: Compared to the F-22, the F-35 is a waste of money. Source: husband with 400+ hours of F-35 experience.” / “[Quote tweet of Russian Foreign Minister boasting about Su-57 production lines] Oh, so you guys finally figured out how to make more than one every other year?” / “Analysis of the failure of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine, from an ex-US Pacific Fleet Commander’s perspective: a short [thread emoji] [This thread gets 26k likes and 4k retweets]” / “This weekend my husband & I flew in to @EAA Oshkosh #OSH19 & took home first place for best P-51. Not to brag, but.” (A reply to this tweet: “Sir, you really know how to bury the lede that your husband is Adm. Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell. I had to look it up on Wikipedia.” / @TKazansky: “What, was it not obvious? Who else could it have been?”) Also, I see him writing a whole bunch of op-eds for international political magazines a la Tom Nichols (look him up on Twitter too). Writing analyses of recent geopolitical/military events for the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Bulwark, the Navy Times, the Atlantic, Bellingcat, etc. Not so much focused on domestic issues (but VoteVets [socially progressive vets’ group] board member, and ardently pro-democracy, yay!). He’s a smart guy.

37. This is not a headcanon, just kind of a… a real-life implication. My Ice was Deputy Commander of Third Fleet in 2003, meaning he’d have been there in command of the USS Abraham Lincoln when President Bush gave his “Mission Accomplished” speech aboard that ship in May less than 2 months after the initial American invasion of Iraq. Very premature & embarrassing. Ice would’ve been in direct contact with Bush/Cheney/NSC bureaucrats many, many times during the war. I genuinely believe this is what pushed him over the edge into firm liberal territory.

[sarasapen]

Actual conversation I had with my mum about A levels but instead it’s Bruce Wayne and Tim Drake-Wayne about the Wayne Enterprises board meeting.

Tim: - and I just FORGOT what the fiscal policies were!

Bruce: aren’t they just policies that have to do with…

Tim: go on

Bruce: Fisc…

Tim: How are you Batman.

[leninisms]

if you had told me one year ago that in 2024 would be helping lead the charge to get two different counties to divest from israel bonds i would have laughed in your face

[divinekangaroo]

hooray group work partner did something

[chassius1]

Foreign Aid Is a Failure

Foreign Aid Is a Failure

[sofiaflorina2021]

For me, college assignments are like fiscal policy and exams are like monetary policy. I need the output to be maximized.

[princesscolumbia]

So I'm once again seeing so-called "conservative" content on my dash...

...and I'm just not having it.

There's a LOT that goes into my worldview and the way it was formed and the nuances and philosophy that formed who I was growing up and who I am now, but, to use the broadest of all possible strokes, it boils down to this:

Whatever side Nazis take is the side I will go out of my way to end!

Everyone who just stood up (and has a Nazi armband in their back pocket, safely out of sight so you think we'll give you pass to vomit the shit you let clot your corrupted, rotting cranial cavity), SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUT UP!

And yes, we have Nazis. Turns out they didn't all get the bullet after killing all the queers, Jews, and whatever people of color they could get their hands on (SHUT UP! Fuck your Holocaust denial! You don't get a FUCKING VOTE if you try to PISS ON THE GRAVES OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE!), some of them just hid because they knew what would happen to them if they opened their mouths and tried that shit again!

But here we are a few generations later and it seems the Nazis forgot how hard we stomped down on them eventually.

I was an American Conservative once, too. I learned from all the right places and right people about how modern conservatism was a good thing and the right thing and we had to "stop the libs" in order to keep our country from turning into a new Soviet state or something.

And in some ways, I haven't changed my mind, but that's for another post, because the opinions I still have from then are STILL THE OPPOSITE OF THE SIDE NAZIS ARE ON!

Even up to the start of the pandemic, I was still staunchly conservative, pushing back against what I saw as liberal pushes to subvert our country and make things worse for everyone.

Then: "...oh, uh...that's a Nazi. Saying the same things I'm saying. That's okay, 'cause the conservatives in leadership positions will surely repudi...ate...them... They're agreeing with them."

"Well, that's okay, I'm sure my fellow conserv...I'm surrounded by Nazis, aren't I?"

Myth after conservative lie after "evangelical christian" talking point were knocked over like pins in a bowling alley. Things that I had been told over and over were just facts of life were having the masks ripped off and exposed for being the greedy old rich white man trying to fuck over the "punk kids," usually largely people of color and queer folk.

Am I mixing metaphors a little? Yeah, probably, but I'm fucking MAD AS FUCK that these FUCKERS ARE GOING TO BE A THING EITHER I OR MY DAUGHTER HAS TO DEAL WITH!

Why do I hate Nazis so much? Well, in no particular order:

They KILL PEOPLE FOR BEING DIFFERENT FROM THEM

They burn books that contain opinions that they don't like

They KILL PEOPLE FOR BEING QUEER

They don't actually produce anything, they just consume and conquer and play a shell game with their economy (whatever the size) and when the music's about to stop they hold the band at gunpoint and keep things going until it eventually collapses, then they blame someone else. (Usually, the Jews, and if that doesn't work they blame the queers)

They KILL PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THE MELANIN CONTENT OF THEIR SKIN

They concoct psuedoscience to support their beliefs, resulting in intellectual stagnation that, if passed down to their children, becomes entrenched

They KILL PEOPLE BECAUSE THEY DON'T LIKE THE LOOK ON SOMEONE'S FACE

Oh, and in case I may have glossed over this part:

I HATE NAZIS BECAUSE THEY KILL PEOPLE JUST BECAUSE!

Scratch a Nazi and you'll find a school bully. Plant a school bully and in 10-20 years you'll have a fresh-from-the-plantation Nazi. (word choice was deliberate, because you can't corrupt a child to view their fellow human beings as sub-human without showing them how to treat them as sub-human)

And I think we all know what Steve Rogers did with Nazis.

Did you question the results of the 2020 election? I mean, there were a bunch of people saying some really bad things about election tampering and the like.

...and they all turned out to be white supremacists and Nazis. All their "evidence" was smoke and mirrors and if you questioned the Nazi rhetoric you were a dirty [N-word] or [K-word] or [F-word] or [T-word] and probably voted for Biden!

Did you think the Jan. 6th Insurection was a grassroots movement and it was just a bunch of people trying to take their country back? Yeah, and I'm sure a bunch of them thought so too...but even more of the insurrectionists turned out to be white supremacists and Nazis. And look at that, they were being FUCKING ORCHESTRATED by Republicans who wanted to seize power from duly elected officials. And supported by Nazis.

We're at the point in history where they're not even trying to hide what they're doing, or if they are trying, they're failing. ("Project 2025," anyone?) The same people who are saying the quiet part out loud now (how they think Jews should be put to death and blacks should be enslaved and brown people need to be mass deported regardless of nation of birth and all queer folk should be rounded up and shot, etc.) are the same people who believe that Trump should have king-level powers and immunity and cheered on the passage of laws that restrict medical care for women and children (with the goal of extending that restriction to adults that fall into the category of "people we don't like") and the same people who cheer for Putin as he spins lies out of whole cloth to invade Ukraine and the same people who declared the vaccines were going to kill you or plant trackers in your body and the same people who said respiratory masks were the government trying to police your actions and the same people who said that the rioters carrying tiki torches and calling for racial segregation were "just good American boys who don't mean any harm" and the same people who...

...I think you get the point.

The Nazis were in our midst the whole time, they just weren't waving a flag or wearing an armband.

I've been burned. I've been burned badly. I've had my trust in the conservative movement gutted, my faith in America shaken, and my previous worldview shattered. You'd better believe I'm hyper-aware when it comes to dog whistles, false flags, and code-speak. And remember, I used to be one, so I know the conservative playbook.

I may not be able to actually kill a Nazi, but get 'em banned on social media? Get 'em blocked on chat apps? End their influence before it starts wherever I can? You bet your ass I'm going to take whatever action I can to end the threat before it becomes my daughter's problem.

Because my daughter is growing up well aware that one mom is queer and the other mom Gets Looks™️ and is culturally guilty of being queer by association. My kiddo is well aware the world she's going to inherit is a place that could be very, very bad.

And my daugher is neurodivergent.

Which means she has a hardwired sense of fairness and justice.

Which means she's going to step up in the bravest and most noble way possible, and I want to make sure when she finds that hill to die on that her mom has done the hard work before her and she's not actually gonna die on that hill.

'cause she hates Nazis as much as I do.

And that means it's bad news for Nazis, because my hatred of Nazis pales in comparison to how much I love and want to protect my daughter.

So if you're a Nazi, just remember, I'm with The Captain.

No, not that one, this one:

And remember, if you're standing with the Nazis? Even if you say you're "not a Nazi," it's awfully hard to tell, what with the red, white, and black flag you're standing under.

[canadianabroadvery]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

By Steve Benen

As the current Congress got underway, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy assured his members that he’d honor something called the “72-hour rule” — an informal commitment that assured Representatives that they’d have a few days to read legislation before it reached the floor for a vote.

With a dangerous debt ceiling deadline looming, and time running out, there was some speculation that House Republican leaders would simply waive the rule and advance the bipartisan “Fiscal Responsibility Act” faster. McCarthy, for good or ill, stuck to the policy.

Apparently, for some, that’s not quite good enough. For example, Republican Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina, a House Freedom Caucus member, told reporters yesterday that he considers it an “insult” to only have a few days to read the bill.

The South Carolina Republican — perhaps best known for misspelling “marital law” while pushing the Trump White House to deploy the military to nullify the 2020 election — took the same message to Fox News, arguing, “It’s like the Pelosi days. You gotta pass it before you read it.” Norman added, “[W]e ought to have a lot more time” than 72 hours.

First, the fact that Republicans continue to screw up an innocuous 2010 quote from then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains disappointing.

Second, let’s not forget that the Fiscal Responsibility Act is only 99 pages. “War and Peace” it is not. What’s more, we’re talking about double-spaced pages, with a large font, generous margins, and a modest number of words per page.

Even a slow reader could get through this bill pretty easily in an afternoon.

Rep. Ted Lieu had a little fun at his far-right colleague’s expense. “Let’s do some math,” the California Democrat wrote on Twitter. “If GOP Rep Ralph Norman works 8 hours a day, that’s 24 hours over 3 days to read 99 pages. That comes out to reading a little over 4 pages every hour. And these are double spaced text pages. Alternatively, he can have AI summarize the bill for him in 1 [minute].”

Evidently, despite his complaints, the South Carolinian has apparently read enough of the bipartisan deal to know he doesn’t like it: Norman condemned the agreement as “insanity” a few hours after it was announced.

[uboat53]

"A curious aspect of the U.S. political discourse (at least on the internet) is that American Democrats tend to be very interested in Keynesian economics and worried about things like how Europe austeritied itself to death, while American Republicans tend to be very interested in anti-Keynesian ideas and concerned about the dangers of falling into an Argentina-like spiral of deficits, money-printing, and inflation. But in actual American politics, it’s Ronald Reagan and especially George W. Bush and Donald Trump who consistently grounded their politics on fiscal profligacy. Bill Clinton balanced the budget, Barack Obama cut deficits and sought more austerity than the congressional Republicans would agree to, and the Biden administration has at least proposed ideas for deficit reduction, while the GOP presidential candidates have nothing useful to say on this."

Source

[er-cryptid]