President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

When I talk about how screwed up state government is in Alabama, it can be hard to convey the depth of the problem. This describes a big one very succinctly. Alabama's 1901 Constitution institutionalized two things: Jim Crow and low property taxes for big landowners. The state is #50 in property taxes, and tries to run everything on sales tax. It's 10% where I live, 11% in some other parts of town, and includes food and prescriptions. Regressive as hell - as intended.

 

Hehe.

 

Very similar to my area. We are maxed out at 9.75% on the sales tax. I want to think we pay something like 27 cents a gallon on gas tax. My county hasn't raised property taxes since in the 1980s and loves its "wheel tax." In my county, it costs $84 to renew you car tags each year. Only $24 of that is to the state. The county raises the wheel tax "because everybody pays it." It doesn't matter if you drive a Mercedes, an average truck, or a beater... whether you make $250K a year, are middle class, or a high school kid working part time, everybody pays the same.
Trying to explain a regressive tax is like talking to a sheep.

 

Preach.

Buttigieg blasts Trump: My marriage never involved ‘hush money’

 

Smokescreen of pardons obscured this release yesterday

 

I'm afraid we're going to have another Murrah Building incident very soon.

What is the ‘boogaloo?’ How online calls for a violent uprising are hitting the mainstream

 

Is there any good reason why the next president, D or R, won't follow the same authoritarian playbook?

Violence is the only solution.

 

I kind of wish whoever is running DevinNunes2020.com was better at satire. What a waste.

 

I think Sanders is fine - he is who he is. I do think some of the people around him might not hold up to greater scrutiny though. It isn't a campaign that is used to playing defense, and its a lot more comfortable complaining about being ignored. But I do think there are people turning to Sanders frustrated by the inability of "mainstream Ds" to deliver on promises - in the same way that many Trump voters grew frustrated over the GOP constantly saying they'll overturn Obamacare and never getting it done. If you're going to be let down - at least give someone new a chance to let you down.
The person who should be making more of this is Mayor Pete. The Dem field currently has more than 100 years of combined experience in Washington, and personally I get tired of hearing "the Electoral College is unfair" "the Senate is unfair" as excuses. And ACA aside, The party used to be able to get things done - how long have we been talking about infrastructure?

 

Hard to get much done when it's a race to decide which demographic-related historical grievances have to be resolved before America can be declared a country worth living in.

What's crumbling infrastructure and mass transit systems compared to systemic repression?

I'm only being half-snarky here. Schools have taken consistent pains, over the last 20-30 years, to "remove the veil" on what teachers, professors and academics believe to be fetid, corrupt nation while extolling the unicorn virtues of almost everywhere else, and the perception had long taken hold even before Trump became president. (Hell, Trump gladly feeds into it, albeit from the opposite end of the spectrum.) You have multiple generations of folks so cynical and certain of our nation's moral rot that "enlightened" souls actually equivocate the US and China. We may not be far from whole swaths of America going on a moral strike. Don't underestimate the times we live in.