From Gov. Cuomo, end the cap on SALT

DaveSchmidt said:

If MOL political threads never give you any satisfaction, nan, what’s the appeal? 

I like the interface here. It's so much better for conversation than Facebook where your response goes about ten feet down and loses the context. On twitter, you only get a few characters and people just comment and try to be clever.   I also, and this probably seems strange, like discussing things with people in my community that I have been talking to for years. I don't mind when people disagree but I hate the negative interruptions. The hostility is truly painful for me, but I can't conform to what seems to be the norm here. 

I can find places to post where most people agree with me, but I find that boring.  What's the point of everyone just agreeing or only having mild differences? What do you learn from that? You end up being in a bubble and shocked when things don't turn out the way everyone you know said they would. I make a point of listening to views outside my sphere and that has enabled me to better understand why things in this country are where they are now.  Some of my friends, who tell me they can't imagine why I would bother with MOL are in much bigger shock and denial. 

But, the people in my community don't seem to like me and they also don't seem to want to discuss things unless they are negative things about Donald Trump and positive things about Democrats.  To me, that's one of the reasons we have Trump now and will probably have him in the future.  But, clearly, I need to find some place else to express my views, because it's not good to stay in an abusive situation, especially when I can't do what I want to do here, which is have discussions about ideas.  What's the point of being the incredible MOL interface when you just get twitter like-troll responses, even from the person who designed the fantastic interface for conversation?  Sbenois, who has sent me 40 private messages (since my last response--there are lots more) calling me every name in the book and telling me how ecstatic he is that Bernie lost, is another aspect of posting here that people might not realize I have to endure. My son keeps bugging me to go on Reddit, so maybe I will try that. 


nan said:

On MOL, I am one of the few, if only Progressives left.  But, out in the real world lots of people think similar to the way I think and vote the way I vote.  I'm not unique. Running the last remaining progressive off your website will bring more agreeable discussions, but it will not reflect much of views that go beyond standard mainstream media. 

 


nan said:

I also, and this probably seems strange, like discussing things with people in my community that I have been talking to for years.

This doesn’t seem strange to me. People have different ways of doing it, is all. For what it’s worth, I decided long ago that to enjoy MOL I didn’t have to engage with everyone, and it’s been pretty easy to determine when, how and whom. I guess it depends, in part, on how much we want to express our views and/or convince others, and how much we want to listen and learn.


Now Peter King has joined in.


jimmurphy said:

Now Peter King has joined in.

 Peter King is fighting with Nan?


So Gov. Cuomo continues to say, if the government is looking to help, they should end the cap on SALT. Now I hear it is in the new package.


The House will pass another round of stimulus, that this time will go to states and emergency workers instead of to wall street + corporate america. Republicans are against it because, wait for it, they suddenly remembered they are concerned about our deficit.


The Senate and Trump seem dead set against another round.


jimmurphy said:

The Senate and Trump seem dead set against another round.

 Of course. God forbid we start bailing out actual people instead of corporations.


nan said:

I like the interface here. It's so much better for conversation than Facebook where your response goes about ten feet down and loses the context. On twitter, you only get a few characters and people just comment and try to be clever.   I also, and this probably seems strange, like discussing things with people in my community that I have been talking to for years. I don't mind when people disagree but I hate the negative interruptions. The hostility is truly painful for me, but I can't conform to what seems to be the norm here. 

I can find places to post where most people agree with me, but I find that boring.  What's the point of everyone just agreeing or only having mild differences? What do you learn from that? You end up being in a bubble and shocked when things don't turn out the way everyone you know said they would. I make a point of listening to views outside my sphere and that has enabled me to better understand why things in this country are where they are now.  Some of my friends, who tell me they can't imagine why I would bother with MOL are in much bigger shock and denial. 

But, the people in my community don't seem to like me and they also don't seem to want to discuss things unless they are negative things about Donald Trump and positive things about Democrats.  To me, that's one of the reasons we have Trump now and will probably have him in the future.  But, clearly, I need to find some place else to express my views, because it's not good to stay in an abusive situation, especially when I can't do what I want to do here, which is have discussions about ideas.  What's the point of being the incredible MOL interface when you just get twitter like-troll responses, even from the person who designed the fantastic interface for conversation?  Sbenois, who has sent me 40 private messages (since my last response--there are lots more) calling me every name in the book and telling me how ecstatic he is that Bernie lost, is another aspect of posting here that people might not realize I have to endure. My son keeps bugging me to go on Reddit, so maybe I will try that. 

 we've been through this before.  You are a person who doesn't seem to want to take "yes" for an answer, unless the other person says yes 100% of the time. You and I are probably in agreement 90%, and yet you respond as if I'm an enemy of all you believe in.  That and the utter tedium of your repetitive responses is the reason I don't engage with you.  It's not usually a discussion with you, it's typically a diatribe, even against people like me who are mostly on your side.


DaveSchmidt said:

You’re going to make me fight for the title of most condescending commenter on MOL, aren’t you. 

 OK, this was pretty good grin

Back in the day, I think Jamie may have awarded this to me.  But I'll be cool if y'all want to fight for it.


ml1 said:

nan said:

I like the interface here. It's so much better for conversation than Facebook where your response goes about ten feet down and loses the context. On twitter, you only get a few characters and people just comment and try to be clever.   I also, and this probably seems strange, like discussing things with people in my community that I have been talking to for years. I don't mind when people disagree but I hate the negative interruptions. The hostility is truly painful for me, but I can't conform to what seems to be the norm here. 

I can find places to post where most people agree with me, but I find that boring.  What's the point of everyone just agreeing or only having mild differences? What do you learn from that? You end up being in a bubble and shocked when things don't turn out the way everyone you know said they would. I make a point of listening to views outside my sphere and that has enabled me to better understand why things in this country are where they are now.  Some of my friends, who tell me they can't imagine why I would bother with MOL are in much bigger shock and denial. 

But, the people in my community don't seem to like me and they also don't seem to want to discuss things unless they are negative things about Donald Trump and positive things about Democrats.  To me, that's one of the reasons we have Trump now and will probably have him in the future.  But, clearly, I need to find some place else to express my views, because it's not good to stay in an abusive situation, especially when I can't do what I want to do here, which is have discussions about ideas.  What's the point of being the incredible MOL interface when you just get twitter like-troll responses, even from the person who designed the fantastic interface for conversation?  Sbenois, who has sent me 40 private messages (since my last response--there are lots more) calling me every name in the book and telling me how ecstatic he is that Bernie lost, is another aspect of posting here that people might not realize I have to endure. My son keeps bugging me to go on Reddit, so maybe I will try that. 

 we've been through this before.  You are a person who doesn't seem to want to take "yes" for an answer, unless the other person says yes 100% of the time. You and I are probably in agreement 90%, and yet you respond as if I'm an enemy of all you believe in.  That and the utter tedium of your repetitive responses is the reason I don't engage with you.  It's not usually a discussion with you, it's typically a diatribe, even against people like me who are mostly on your side.

 Your reflexes slowing down?  Took a while for that response to Ms. Nan.


nohero said:

 Your reflexes slowing down?  Took a while for that response to Ms. Nan.

I thought this was all new stuff.  I guess SALT wasn't compelling enough for me to click on last month.


When I moved from the city, I looked at property taxes as similar to maintenance fees. 

When I started selling homes in our area, I used that as an argument to those who were moving here from Manhattan. As they continued to rise I found myself leaning on the fact that they were tax deductible. 

Then our property values were reassessed and lowered of course the high taxes stayed the same. The lower prices appealed to some buyers but my listers were often retired and down sizing and had counted on their home as a nest egg. That caused a lot of pain. Of course I still reminded buyers that  their property taxes which kept climbing higher were tax deductible but after I had watched buyers purchase houses a few years earlier at wild prices in silent bidding wars, I threw up my hands and left real estate sales.

Then along came Trump and the GOP put a cap on SALT, and the old justification of deductible taxes went out the window.

So now with people losing jobs amid businesses closing,  and the possibility of foreclosures, what will it do  home values? As well what will Main Street look like in our towns. So, the only thing  that might help is an end to the SALT cap. Seems pretty reasonable since this deduction has been around since 1913 when it all began..


If there were a true "Resistance" people would refuse to file their Tax Returns and pay their taxes until Trump made his Returns public.

In 1846, the United States declared war against Mexico. Thoreau and other Northern critics of the war viewed it as a plot by Southerners to expand slavery into the Southwest. Thoreau had already stopped paying his taxes in protest against slavery. The local tax collector had ignored his tax evasion, but decided to act when Thoreau publicly condemned the U.S. invasion and occupation of Mexico.

In July 1846, the sheriff arrested and jailed Thoreau for his tax delinquency. Someone, probably a relative, anonymously paid Thoreau’s taxes after he had spent one night in jail. This incident prompted Thoreau to write his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience” (originally published in 1849 as “Resistance to Civil Government”).

Thoreau’s minor act of defiance caused him to conclude that it was not enough to be simply against slavery and the war. A person of conscience had to act. In “Civil Disobedience,” he proclaimed an activist manifesto:

In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation, which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty, are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.

Thoreau argued that the government must end its unjust actions to earn the right to collect taxes from its citizens. As long as the government commits unjust actions, he continued, conscientious individuals must choose whether to pay their taxes or to refuse to pay them and defy the government.


STANV said:

If there were a true "Resistance" people would refuse to file their Tax Returns and pay their taxes until Trump made his Returns public.

In 1846, the United States declared war against Mexico. Thoreau and other Northern critics of the war viewed it as a plot by Southerners to expand slavery into the Southwest. Thoreau had already stopped paying his taxes in protest against slavery. The local tax collector had ignored his tax evasion, but decided to act when Thoreau publicly condemned the U.S. invasion and occupation of Mexico.

In July 1846, the sheriff arrested and jailed Thoreau for his tax delinquency. Someone, probably a relative, anonymously paid Thoreau’s taxes after he had spent one night in jail. This incident prompted Thoreau to write his famous essay, “Civil Disobedience” (originally published in 1849 as “Resistance to Civil Government”).

Thoreau’s minor act of defiance caused him to conclude that it was not enough to be simply against slavery and the war. A person of conscience had to act. In “Civil Disobedience,” he proclaimed an activist manifesto:

In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation, which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty, are slaves, and a whole country [Mexico] is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize.

Thoreau argued that the government must end its unjust actions to earn the right to collect taxes from its citizens. As long as the government commits unjust actions, he continued, conscientious individuals must choose whether to pay their taxes or to refuse to pay them and defy the government.

 April 15, 2017 there were large protests against Trump and people threatened to withhold their taxes but Trump blew the whole thing off. I thought before this election cycle some bill would surface to demand future nominees disclose their taxes but alas nothing. 

Someone needs to find Ivanna and suggest that her old ad "Gorgeous hair is the best revenge" could be updated to include tax returns.


Today Cuomo pulled no punches on the "blue state bailout" issue. He went directly after McConnell, Rick Scott and Art Laffer. I particularly relished his attack on McConnell.

From the transcript, still arguing against the cap on SALT:

But if you want to pose the question, what states give money and what states take money? Right? There is a financial equation that is the federal government. And if you want to ask, what states give money to other states and what states take money from other states, that's a question that Senator McConnell and Senator Scott and Mr. Laffer don't really want to ask, because the truth, the truth is totally the opposite of what they're saying. You look at the states that give more money to the federal government than they get back. You know the top, what they call donor state, you know what one state pays in more to the pot than they take out to the federal pot than any other state than the United States? It's the State of New York. New York pays more every year, $29 billion more, than they take back. You know the second state, New Jersey. Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, every year, they contribute more to the federal pot. You know who takes out more than they put in from that pot? You know whose hand goes in deeper and takes out than they put in? Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, Alabama, Florida. Those are the facts, those are the numbers.

The great irony is, the conservatives want to argue against redistribution of wealth. Why should you take money from the rich and give it to the poor? That's exactly what you are doing. That is exactly what you have done every year. So it's only redistribution unless you wind up getting more money. Then it's fine, then it's not redistribution. Take from the rich, give to the poor, that's redistribution, yes, unless you're the poor, Senator McConnell, Senator Scott because you were the ones who have your hand out. You were the ones who are taking more than others. Redistribution, you're against it, except when the richer states give you more money every year. Then the great hypocrisy, they actually make the redistribution worse when they passed three years ago a provision ending what's called state and local tax deductibility. That didn't level the playing field.

What they did was they took the states that were already paying more money into the federal government, the quote, unquote richer states and they increased the money they were taking from the richer states. They took another $23 billion from California and another $14 billion from New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois, Connecticut. The hypocrisy is so insulting because when you start to talk about numbers, there is still facts. People can still add and people can still subtract and they know what they put in and they know what they take out.


Morganna said:

Today Cuomo pulled no punches on the "blue state bailout" issue. He went directly after McConnell, Rick Scott and Art Laffer. I particularly relished his attack on McConnell.

From the transcript, still arguing against the cap on SALT:

... etc (don't want to repeat the whole body of text ...

That is exactly right and very much to the point. There is a lot of hypocrisy in today's conservative movement (if you want to still call it that). When Obama spent money the Tea Party was all up in arms about the deficit. Now Trump is spending trillions of dollars, and where is the Tea Party? ... crickets ...

Having said all that, the only thing we can do about this happens on November 3. That better be our day, there is plenty at stake, for our state, for the country, and frankly for the world. 


Cool Cuomo briefing. He shared that his daughters think he has a problem communicating with younger New Yorkers, that he is not cool, so he introduced Chris Rock and Rosie Perez to get out the message to wear masks and get tested. When asked Chris Rock said he sees only 40% wearing masks. Both want to do whatever to get the message out.

The enthusiasm from both for the Governor was enjoyable unlike the "dear leader" speeches that surround DJT. Chris Rock signed off saying he hoped the Governor was going to stay in politics. Chris also said something that expressed what I often say, that he watches him everyday and he makes him feel calm. 

I threw out a question to an old friend whose family all went from Obama to Trump, asking if he liked Cuomo. He responded that he watches him everyday. I said I wished he would run and thought he would win and my friend said, 2024.


Morganna said:

I threw out a question to an old friend whose family all went from Obama to Trump, asking if he liked Cuomo. He responded that he watches him everyday. I said I wished he would run and thought he would win and my friend said, 2024.

Your friend is funny. Why would Cuomo run against a Democratic incumbent President? 


basil said:

Your friend is funny. Why would Cuomo run against a Democratic incumbent President? 

Sigh


I don't get the Cuomo love.

He's a horrible, horrible politician. Even worse, a horrible, horrible Democrat. He barely qualifies.


DaveSchmidt said:

Sigh

 You have the sense of humor of a Waldorf Salad


basil said:

DaveSchmidt said:

Sigh

 You have the sense of humor of a Waldorf Salad

But punnier. More like a Statler and Waldorf salad.


drummerboy said:

I don't get the Cuomo love.

He's a horrible, horrible politician. Even worse, a horrible, horrible Democrat. He barely qualifies.

 Isn't part of being a good politician, being popular? Maybe he's just the right man for the moment.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/politics/andrew-cuomo-coronavirus-poll/index.html


Morganna said:

drummerboy said:

I don't get the Cuomo love.

He's a horrible, horrible politician. Even worse, a horrible, horrible Democrat. He barely qualifies.

 Isn't part of being a good politician, being popular? Maybe he's just the right man for the moment.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/01/politics/andrew-cuomo-coronavirus-poll/index.html

 Do you know anything about his governing record as governor?


drummerboy said:

 Do you know anything about his governing record as governor?

 No. I'm following his handling of the pandemic. Basing my opinion on his daily briefings. Found online that many of my political friends were responding to him as well. This is the current life or death issue and looking around, he inspires confidence. For now, how this is handled is the most important thing to me. I can't get even pet adoptions done with everything closed, can't find vet clinics to handle TNR and I'd like to know there is a hospital bed available if I need one.

Do I think he would agree with me on the issues that I work on? No. That person is Cory Booker or Julian Castro. But what's important to me doesn't even interest posters on MOL so I am always settling, often on people I wouldn't go to dinner with.


Cuomo was an @ss before the pandemic hit. I think his popularity had hit new lows with Democrats in NY.

NY was the hardest hit state in the nation for COVID-19 by far but somehow he's getting all the credit for being a great leader.  He made a lot of deadly mistakes in the response to COVID-19.


yahooyahoo said:

Cuomo was an @ss before the pandemic hit. I think his popularity had hit new lows with Democrats in NY.

NY was the hardest hit state in the nation for COVID-19 by far but somehow he's getting all the credit for being a great leader.  He made a lot of deadly mistakes in the response to COVID-19.

While Cuomo clearly delayed the response to covid, and he deserves blame for that, the fact is that he did step up to try and get things under control, and I think he did a good job at that. He exhibited good leadership and competence at a time when we needed to see that.

Having said that, I still would never vote for him if there was another Dem to choose from.


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