“Overall, defining Walz in terms of the party’s ideological camps is surprisingly difficult, which makes him interestingly reminiscent of Joe Biden.
Often during his long career, Biden was a mainstream Democrat. But he’s also long harbored anti-elite inclinations, being skeptical of Wall Street and the economic policy establishment. He also rejected the foreign policy establishment’s consensus on Afghanistan, advocating against a troop surge during the Obama administration and ordering full withdrawal once he was president himself.
And once in office with a narrow Democratic majority, like Walz, Biden wanted to go big with an FDR-sized agenda. (Walz had no pesky Senate filibuster rule or recalcitrant Joe Manchin to spoil things.) In office, Biden has mostly tried to keep his coalition happy, but when the politics looked dire on immigration this year, he did try to pivot to the center with new asylum restrictions.
So while Walz may be a new face, his political style and instincts may represent a good deal of continuity with the current president.”
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/366201/tim-walz-record-governor-progressive-agenda
Palestine March on DNC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4_vBP-faQM
“Trump’s first-term record on reproductive rights is clear: His three Supreme Court picks led directly to the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. But as that record has become a political liability, the former president has been evasive about how far he’d go to curtail abortion access in a post-Roe United States.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/366495/trump-medication-abortion-mifepristone
“Violent crime levels have dropped significantly in the first half of the year, according to a new report from the Major Cities Chiefs Association.
Overall, violent crime dropped by 6 percent and homicides fell by 17 percent in 69 cities compared to the same period last year. Columbus, Ohio, saw the biggest drop in violent crime at 41 percent, according to an Axios data analysis. But cities including Miami, Washington, DC, and Austin, Texas, also saw large declines. Notably, New York City was not included in the data, though other reports have indicated that violent crime is falling there, too.
It’s hard to say exactly what’s causing the decline, which comes after a major Covid-19 crime wave. It may be partially due to policies aimed at tackling crime at the federal, state, and local levels. But it may also just be a symptom of the fact that normal life in America has resumed post-pandemic — or a combination of those and other factors.
Republicans have long tried to use concerns about crime as a political cudgel against President Joe Biden’s administration. While former President Donald Trump doesn’t appear to be giving up on that attack strategy just yet, Democrats can now use the new data as a defense. Whether that will be effective, however, is far from certain.”
https://www.vox.com/policy/366622/violent-crime-dropping-pandemic-wave-2024
The Syrian Civil War is Restarting Right Now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHjbDySVVXY
“Modern neopatriarchy begins from the opposite fear; the concern is not communist collectivism, but liberal individualism.
The neopatriarchs believe we live in an age where people prioritize self-actualization and fulfillment above all else. Young adults, they argue, live in extended adolescence, lost in some combination of video games, drugs, and casual sex; as they age, raw hedonism is replaced by single-minded foci on money and career. According to neopatriarchs, this liberal social model fails men and women alike, funneling them toward a spiritually empty existence that all but guarantees disappointment and depression, and it fails society by discouraging the production of children who are quite literally required if the country is to have a future. (Immigration, needless to say, is not seen as an acceptable solution.)
The solution, for neopatriarchs, is to return to the past. Men need to rediscover the old John Wayne vision of masculinity, making traditional male gender markers (including acting as fatherly provider) into defining aspects of their identity. The state should play a role in encouraging this reversion, primarily by changing policy to cultivate “masculine” virtues and incentivizing marriage and child-rearing.
In his recent book Manhood, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley urges men to embrace strength and stoicism as routes for self-improvement, calling on them to take on the roles of “warrior” and “builder” in their everyday lives. The psychologist Jordan Peterson has long dispensed similar advice, helping turn him into a conservative guru. In his forthcoming book Dawn’s Early Light, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts argues that contraceptive technologies “break the most basic functioning elements of civilization” by liberating individuals to have consequence-free sex out of wedlock. Vance, who wrote the forward to Roberts’s book, has mused about eliminating no-fault divorce for similar neopatriarchal reasons.
Neopatriarchy can be distinguished from straight-up patriarchy primarily through its treatment of women. Unlike some Christian fundamentalists or alt-right scribblers, neopatriarchs do not assert that women are obligated to be homemakers as a result of divine commandment or natural law. All they insist on explicitly is that women have lots of children, and that choosing to focus primarily on raising said children is no worse than having a career.
It’s obvious why liberals and leftists would have problems taking this seriously. If Americans are supposed to be having more kids, and American men are supposed to be more traditionally masculine, then who’s supposed to be doing the work of raising all of these kids? The answer, of course, is wives (as it’s certainly not immigrants). Neopatrarichy may not explicitly call for a reversal of the feminist revolution, but that’s basically what it’s going for.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/366601/the-rights-plan-to-fix-america-patriarchy-2-0
“An FBI investigation found evidence that the media outlet RT, previously called Russia Today, which is run by the Russian government, “secretly plant[ed] and financ[ed]” a Tennessee content creation company; the indictment describes Tenet in all but name. The company is then alleged to have stealthily spread pro-Russian, anti-democracy propaganda to millions of people across the internet, primarily via YouTube, TikTok, and other major social media platforms.”
…
“According to the indictment, the pair, who worked on digital projects for the outlet, used shell companies in the Middle East and Africa to secretly provide nearly $10 million to the company believed to be Tenet between October 2023 and August 2024, while directing it to spread anti-US and anti-Ukraine messaging. Per the indictment, the RT staffers “covertly fund[ed] and direct[ed]” Tenet and its content, including personally editing and posting content themselves and directing what others posted.”
…
“The associated influencers who have responded to the news have all claimed they knew nothing of Tenet’s Russian affiliations. “Should these allegations prove true, I as well as the other personalities and commentators were deceived and are victims,” Pool tweeted Wednesday.”
…
“two of the pundits entered into contracts of between $400,000-$500,000 a month to create video content for the fake Grigoriann. Most of the $10 million in funding that Tenet received went to creator studios, including, per the indictment, “$8.7 million to the production companies of Commentator-I, Commentator-2, and Commentator-3 alone.””
…
“The Russians not only contracted the most prominent influencers to create content for them through their fake financier, at various points they directly edited the footage submitted to them. One Tenet staffer identified as a “producer” in the indictment protested, when asked to post a video promoting a US influencer’s visit to a Russian grocery store, that it felt like “shilling.” He was ordered to post the content anyway. The Russians would also request that creators make specific content, including, for example, videos about a terrorist attack in Moscow.
The sad part of all this, however, is that this kind of content has become so mundane across the conservative internet that it’s nearly impossible to distinguish what comes directly from the Russian government and what originates from the influencers they employed. After all, while the six figures who were contracted with Tenet might have been unaware of or unbothered about who was paying them, they raised no objections to the content itself. (In fact, the only objection noted in the indictment is a complaint one of the podcasters raised that Grigoriann’s bio was suspect because he mentioned a focus on “social justice.”)
That, perhaps, speaks to how effective Russia’s disinformation war has really been. The indictment claimed that from November 2023 to August 2024, Tenet network members created over 2,000 videos among them, which generated 16 million views for Tenet and its Russian benefactors. At the time the scandal broke, Tenet Media’s YouTube channel had a not-insignificant 300,000 subscribers.
That’s not a shabby number by any means, but it pales beside the larger, unquantifiable scale of influence itself.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/370323/tenet-media-russia-what-happened-tim-pool-dave-rubin-benny-johnson-lauren-southern
Megyn Kelly LOSING HER MIND Over Debate Moderators
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OK2T7bMqRqI
“The problem with tipped wages is not that they are taxed too heavily; it’s how little they tend to pay, and how much tipped workers have to rely on the kindness of strangers to make ends meet. In 2023, for example, the median annual wage for waiters was just below $32,000, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In fact, as the Tax Policy Center put it, eliminating income taxes on tips would do little, if anything, for many tipped workers whose earnings are so low that they are already exempt from paying federal income taxes.
“It’s very hard to dispute that the vast majority of moderate and low-wage workers are left out,” said Brendan Duke, senior director of economic policy at the Center for American Progress. “We know that 95 percent of low- and moderate-wage workers don’t get tips, and only about a third of those tipped workers pay income taxes and would benefit from this.” (Duke was specifically talking about Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s proposed legislation on this issue.)
Part of the reason that tipped workers are paid so poorly is that the federal government only guarantees them a subminimum wage of $2.13 per hour. If along with tips, a worker’s earnings are still below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, then employers have to make up the difference. (Many states and municipalities have wage requirements above the federal minimum, but those also often include carve-outs with lower hourly minimums for tipped workers.)
That’s why a handful of states have abolished the subminimum wage for tipped workers altogether. Because by allowing employers to pay tipped workers less, businesses essentially pass their payroll burden directly onto their customers. And while most Americans are used to paying tips, those who don’t — or those who at least threaten to not tip — create a hostile environment for workers and make it harder for employees to make a fair wage.”
…
“One of the biggest concerns about doing away with federal taxes on tips is that it would discourage businesses from offering more competitive wages. That’s because if workers’ take-home pay increases because of a tax cut, employers wouldn’t need to provide tipped workers a higher base-line wage. In effect, it’s a tax cut that might mostly subsidize businesses’ payroll costs, not workers’ cost of living.
“It will reduce employers’ needs to raise wages,” Shierholz, of the Economic Policy Institute, said.
There’s also the fact that creating a tax carveout for tipped employees could create a major loophole for employers looking to pay people less. Some sectors, for example, can simply become part of the tipped economy, making more of their workers rely on tips rather than a minimum wage.
The policy would “incentivize employers to have more workers be in tipped occupations,” Shierholz said. “[Employers] could reduce the base wages they pay their workers under the guise of doing something for the workers. They could say, ‘We’re making you tipped because you won’t have to pay taxes’ and then in the fine print, it’s like, ‘Oh also, you’re going to be making $2.13 an hour in base wages.’”
That’s why pursuing other policies, like abolishing the subminimum wage, would do much more to increase workers’ pay than eliminating taxes on tips would. The poverty rate for tipped workers in states without a subminimum wage, for example, is lower than that in states with a subminimum wage.
“If you really want to help tipped workers, there are other ways that are far, far better,” Shierholz said, adding that federal dollars would be better directed toward programs like the Child Tax Credit or the Earned Income Tax Credit, which would be much better at targeting workers who need it.
So if politicians are looking to tout a pro-worker agenda, they should point to policies that can actually raise people’s wages, as Harris did by also endorsing raising the minimum wage. Otherwise, they might just be pushing for yet another tax cut for the rich. After all, that might be why major business lobbying groups have endorsed “no tax on tips” — to avoid actually raising workers’ wages.”
https://www.vox.com/policy/366680/no-tax-on-tips-trump-harris-subminimum-wage
“Harris is proposing policies like raising taxes on corporations and creating new tax credits, while Trump promises to institute new tariffs and to cut taxes on certain businesses. There’s not a lot the two agree on, other than a proposal to eliminate federal taxes on tips.
As president, both candidates would struggle to make their promised changes unilaterally as taxation is controlled by Congress, not the executive branch. Neither party seems on track to make the type of huge House or Senate gains a president would need to ram their agenda through Congress, and it’s possible control continues to be split between parties, a recipe for gridlock.
That makes these plans more about demonstrating an economic philosophy to voters than anything else.”
…
“Harris has said she wants to:
Set the capital gains tax rate at 28 percent
Set the corporate tax rate at 28 percent
Give new small businesses a tax break of up to $50,000
Create a $25,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers
Increase the child tax credit for all parents, including giving new parents a $6,000 credit
Eliminate certain taxes on tips
Ensure no tax hikes on individuals making less than $400,000”
…
“Trump says he plans to:
Slash some corporate taxes to 15 percent
Institute a tariff of up to 20 percent on all imports (except those from China, which would have a 60 percent tariff)
Renew the individual tax cuts from 2017, keeping even the highest income tax brackets where they are
Get rid of taxes on Social Security benefits
End taxes on tips”
https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/370753/taxes-debate-trump-harris-irs-tariffs-child-tax-credit