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STEVE MOORE

see gop hypocrisy

see pharma drg price medicare negotiate

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mma

NBC spotlights Phoenix weatherization efforts as the Inflation Reduction Act distributes $8.8 billion for home energy improvements

10/25/24

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Project 2025, right-wing media, and Trump zero in on dismantling the Inflation Reduction Act

Special ProgramsClimate & Energy

Written by Ilana Berger

Published 08/29/24 mma

While the Trump campaign has sought to distance itself from the widely unpopular project, both the former president and his running mate JD Vance have extensive ties to it. And although Project 2025 architect Paul Dans resigned from his position at The Heritage Foundation in July, the Trump campaign’s rhetoric on the Inflation Reduction Act appears to align with that of Project 2025, as laid out in an over 900-page policy book called Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.

Project 2025 chapter author Bernard McNamee and Trump have both suggested that renewable energy doesn’t work.}: During an exclusive interview with Fox host Jesse Watters, Trump said, “The whole world is going woke, their world is going woke. The Green New Scam, we’re spending all our money on things that don’t work.” In Mandate, McNamee calls renewable energy unreliable, backing his statement with an endnote that includes no citation and falsely claims that “the challenges to the grid are coming mainly from subsidized renewable resources.” Meanwhile, most power outages are triggered by severe weather. |

Renewable energy is particularly resilient because it is modular, and can adapt more easily even if one component of a system is damaged. McNamee also argues that “electric reliability is decreasing in many parts of the country,” citing “the blackouts and shortages in California (August 2020, summer 2022) and Texas (February 2021, summer 2022)” in an endnote. In reality, widespread blackouts and shortages did not occur in California or Texas in 2022, and a multitude of factors caused the blackouts in 2020 and 2021. Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [7/22/24; Project 2025, Mandate for Leadership, 2023; Climate Central, 4/24/24; Media Matters, 2/19/21; Utility Dive, 11/22/22; ABC News, 9/9/22; Natural Resources Defense Council, 9/12/22, 3/3/21]

Like the architects of Project 2025, Trump has publicly opposed equity-related initiatives throughout the federal government, which would seemingly include billions in IRA funding dedicated to helping underserved communities. McNamee writes: “The next Administration should stop using energy policy to advance politicized social agendas. Programs that sound innocuous, such as ‘energy justice,’ Justice40, and DEI, can be transformed to promote politicized agendas.” }:Trump has also attacked equity-focused programs, writing on Truth Social in 2023 after Biden signed an executive order focused on advancing racial equity, “It is time to eradicate Joe Biden's sinister ‘equity’ Executive Order that has led to the woke takeover of the U.S. Government!” These statements lay bare the threats to initiatives and programs like the $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Grant program, a product of the IRA that aims to reduce the impacts of climate change and pollution in low-income communities. Project 2025, *Mandate for Leadership*, [2023; Newsweek 3/2/23; United States Environmental Protection Agency, accessed 8/16/24]|

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a Democrat-backed 2022 climate law is "drawing growing GOP support," causing friction among Republican lawmakers, according to a Sunday, August 25 Politico report.

While the Inflation Reduction Act "is undeniably bringing federal money, private investments and jobs into communities around the country overwhelmingly represented by Republicans," Politico notes thatno GOP lawmakers voted for the bill in 2022, "and conservatives consistently charge that its hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for electric vehicles, wind, solar and other technologies will drive up prices, distort the markets and benefit China."

Per the report, earlier this month, 18 House Republicans signed onto a letter asking Speaker Mike Johnson to spare the energy tax credits from efforts to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, with many of them seeing the incentives as both good for the planet and extremely beneficial for local economic development."

READ MORE:**GOP commits 'stolen valor' by taking credit for bills 'passed by Democrats': columnist**

However, some far-right Republicans, like Rep. Chip Roy (TX), are calling some colleagues who signed the letter hypocritical.

Noting that the "18 Republicans voted last year to repeal the IRA climate subsidies," Roy claimed via X, "Now, [they] want to preserve so-called ‘green’ handouts to Democrats’ corporate cronies."

Politico reports that Nick Loris, vice president of public policy at the Republican-aligned firm C3 Solutions, predicts GOP members will "treat the tax credits as something of a buffet, with Republicans picking and choosing what they like and what they don’t."

He emphasized, "There’s going to be some division for sure, but it’s not going to be black and white, either."

READ MORE:[Conservative admits Trump’s policies 'would result in price spikes' for most Americans

The possible party showdown, Politico adds, is "all part of an intensifying debate within the Republican Party about how to respond to climate change, a rising priority for many young voters. And while more GOP lawmakers say they want to be active on the issue, many conservatives — including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump — still don’t buy the reality of human-caused global warming and the impact of fossil fuels."

*Politico's full report is available here.

3 24 biden sotu said beat big pharma, insulin cap

moore off BS

this weekend at the CPAC conference one of your Hotline editors, Steve Moore, called AARP an “evil organization” for its nefarious relationships with the Biden administration and one of the country’s largest health insurance conglomerates, UnitedHealth.

The Biden campaign lashed out in a social media blast asserting the old chestnut that Repubs want to cut Social Security and Medicare:

Here’s a reality check: AARP doesn’t really represent the interests of seniors anymore – if it ever did. AARP is a functionary of one of the nation’s largest health insurer behemoths – United Health.

AARP now collects $1 BILLION a year (not $1 million) in royalties from UnitedHealth – a gargantuan insurer with a $500 billion market cap.

This sweetheart arrangement with UnitedHealth explains why AARP sold seniors down the river by supporting ObamaCare despite calls from their own members running 14-to-1 against it.

UnitedHealth and AARP also supported the Biden Inflation Acceleration Act, which imposed price controls on drug companies in a way that is not lowering drug prices but is slowing R&D funding for new drugs to combat Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, and cancer. The last time we checked seniors are the strongest advocates for winning the race for the cure.

AARP signed on to this bill even though it raided over $250 billion from Medicare drug spending to pay for supersized Obamacare subsidies and green energy giveaways.

AARP has opposed many of the most modest debt reduction plans to save America’s future while supporting higher taxes on our kids and grandkids.

If you’re a member of AARP, maybe you should reconsider. We urge our members to check out AMAC or 60+, which are organizations that truly support the interests of older Americans.

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when President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law, many Democrats hailed it as a recipe for job creation — including jobs in red states where GOP members of Congress bragged about voting against it.

In a report published on November 1, The Guardian's Oliver Milman describes Republicans who are vocal critics of the law yet hypocritically take full advantage of it.

"At least a dozen Republican members of Congress have welcomed clean energy investment flowing to their electorates following Joe Biden's landmark climate bill, even as they launch fresh attempts to dismantle the legislation," Milman explains. "The group of conservative lawmakers, including the House of Representatives members Nancy Mace, Clay Higgins and Marjorie Taylor Greene, have all recently praised the arrival of new renewable energy, battery or electric vehicle jobs in their districts even after voting against last year's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which was loaded with incentives for clean energy projects."

Milman notes that the League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has been tracking the "hypocrisy" of Republicans who have bashed the Inflation Reduction Act while trying to take credit for its benefits.

LCV Senior Government Affairs Advocate David Shadburn told The Guardian, "We are clearly seeing this disconnect House Republicans are feeling between their voters and their fossil fuel donors. Voters want clean energy jobs, but the donors in big oil and gas want the repeal of this stuff. These members are stuck between these two things."

Milman points out that Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina), for example, has "called the bill 'absurd' and a 'fiasco' but, more recently, has issued glowing statements about the carmaker Volvo boosting its electric vehicle production and a scheme to further electrified public transit." And Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) called the climate bill 'extremely dangerous' but then lauded the 'fantastic' decision of QCells, a solar company, to expand its manufacturing base in her district."

READ MORE:'Straight up communism': Nikki Haley echoes Marjorie Taylor Greene rhetoric to attack Democrats

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8 23 BBB IRA

ro k says spent 130m$ lobbying to beat? pharma bro spike ~

save 50B/yr? ppl 3b$

https://www.alternet.org/biden-prices/  pharma PO'd

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edit bd 7 23

no lnx

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Donald Trump could lose next year’s president election. He could be prosecuted. He could serve time in prison (though that part seems rather unlikely). But all things being equal, none of it will matter. His followers will simply move on. There’s always another demagogue ready to tell lies....

As long as the conditions remain the same, we can expect Republicans to mourn him, then forget him. Donald Trump, after all, was never a cause. He was always a symptom. The conditions will endure.

If you change conditions, however, you create opportunities to change the way that some Republicans – not all; don’t be daft – think about democratic politics. If you can change that, you’ve changed pretty much everything. You have, as they say, effected a “paradigm shift.”

For many Republicans, democratic politics isn’t a solution to shared problems. It’s a problem, the problem. It produced a Black president, after all. All things being equal, with a gap growing between the .1 percent and 99.9 percent, with 40 years of economic policies that have immiserated the middle class, what’s the point of democracy when autocracy could have prevented Barack Obama from happening?

If you change conditions, however, you create opportunities to change the way that some Republicans – not all; don’t be daft – think about democratic politics. If you can change that, you’ve changed pretty much everything. You have, as they say, effected a “paradigm shift.”

You can’t make a fascist less fascist. But you can buy him off.

That’s what Joe Biden is doing.

According to Tim Noah, of The New Republic, the people benefiting most from investments allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act live and work in states that, in 2020, went to Donald Trump by a mile. 

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“In North Dakota, which Biden lost to Trump by 34 points, and where Biden’s net approval rating was negative 46 percent in March, according to a Morning Consult compilation, personal income during the first quarter of 2023 rose 11 percent over the previous year." He added:

“In Nebraska, which Biden lost by 20 points, and where Biden’s net approval rating in March was negative 36 percent, income rose 11.1 percent. In Montana, which Biden lost by 16 points, and where Biden’s net approval was negative 21 percent, income rose 8.3 percent. In South Carolina, which Biden lost by 12 points, and where Biden’s net approval was negative 23 percent, income rose 6.8 percent. All these increases in personal income exceeded the national average, which was 5.1 percent.”

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi did a segment based on Noah’s reporting. But, as I expect from his employer, he focuses on the wrong things.

“Republicans went looking for a pat on the back even after voting against the funding that made those projects possible,” Velshi said. “Republicans vocally dragging Biden’s economic policies yet bragging about funding and nationwide economic victories that happen does not make them hometown heroes. It simply makes them hypocrites.”

He’s missing the point.

That the Republicans are taking credit for Bidenomics tells us that they believe their constituents want it. Constituents want roads and bridges. They want higher incomes. They want prosperity. And if they want this much, they’ll want more, which is what we should pay attention to.

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7 23 badash an

florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis says if elected president his plan to address climate change will be to throw out President Joe Biden’s Green New Deal.

Last week on Monday planet Earth suffered the hottest day on record, a record that it broke on Tuesday.

Fox News Business’ Stuart Varney, who has attacked climate change activists as “juvenile” and declared it is “ridiculous” that “the western world is obsessed with climate change,” on Monday asked DeSantis if he has a plan to address the climate crisis.

“The headlines are just full of stories about wildfires smoke, extraordinary temperatures in the southwest and the Southeast to some degree. Do you have a climate plan?” Varney asked.

READ MORE: ‘We Are Now Formally Back on Indictment Watch’ With Trump Georgia Grand Jury: Former Federal Prosecutor

“It’s going to be to rip up Joe Biden’s Green New Deal,” DeSantis bragged. “I think at the end of the day, we need to embrace American domestic energy. This could be a huge source of national security, economic vitality can build our industrial base in Florida.”

DeSantis’ claim echoes Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy‘s, who last Thursday said God has blessed America with largenatural gas resources, and the United States should use them to make two of the world’s largest countries and largest economies, China and India, “dependent on American natural gas.” He suggested doing so would “make us economically stronger but geopolitically the world safer,” while falsely claiming it would make the world “environmentally sound.”

The Florida governor bragged to Varney about Florida’s reduction in emissions, which happened, he admitted, through “market forces."

"We’ve actually had a huge reduction in emissions but it was done through innovation,” DeSantis said. “It was done through market forces, not command and control. So we’ll go about that in a much different direction than, than Joe Biden, I think ultimately, Biden’s policies andBidenomics is really about making the average person poor and reducing their standard of living. That is not the way you go about it.”

READ MORE: ‘Keeps on Chugging’: Unemployment Down and Wages Up in ‘Strong’ and Record-Setting June Jobs Report

Last year, a Tampa Bay Times opinion piece noted, “2018, the last year for which [emissions] data is available, Florida utilities had decreased emissions by 19%, the research shows, while tailpipe emissions grew 12%.”

DeSantis was sworn into office in 2019.

Also last year, the Miami Herald warned Florida was not addressing the causes of climate change.

“The last time the Legislature addressed the root cause of climate change — greenhouse gas emissions — it was in a law that effectively blocked cities from cutting emissions,” the paper reported.

Watch DeSantis below or at this link.

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demlabs

taking Credit Where It’s Not Due: Republicans flip flop on Infrastructure Bill

Republicans claim credit for 418 infrastructure projects they voted against. Flip flop! President Biden’s Infrastructure Bill includes $1.2 trillion for transportation, utilities and pollution...

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an 1 23 maya

Amid the Republican battle over the next speaker of the House, Mother Jones Senior Editor Michael Mechanic shed light on another priority of the party — which is the possible enactment of theFamily and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act.

In his reporting, Mechanic asserted that the potential bill is a misnomer, because rather than protecting taxpayers — as the name implies — it would instead protect “tax cheaters” by rolling back IRS funding from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

Americans for Tax Fairness founder Frank Clemente said in a recent press release, “The richest 1 percent avoid paying $160 billion a year that they owe in taxes due to inadequate tax enforcement. Republicans are voting to let them keep on cheating the rest of us.”

READ MORE:Trump’s newly released tax returns reveal cheating & years of paying zero taxes, reporter says

Mechanic reflected on his 2021 reporting around a similar IRS arrangement back in 2011. The agency’s budget was cut by over $2 billion at the time which resulted in a significant drop in non-filer investigations and an astronomical increase in outstanding tax debt by 2019.

In 2020, it was confirmed that almost 800,000 wealthy non-filers owed a hefty $46 billion collectively, and many of the cases were eventually dismissed without any accountability from the agency.

This is what the $80 billion allotted by the IRA was supposed to rectify. As of October 2022, the Congressional Research Service reported that over a span of 10 years, the funding would update the agency’s outdated systems and technologies, bolster operations support (such as rent, facility, security costs), expand and enhance taxpayer services (prefiling assistance and education), and “monitor and enforce taxes on digital assets such as cryptocurrency."

Then, GOP hardliners and allies of former President Donald Trump attempted to hijack that narrative across social media by claiming that the IRA would instead use the money to hire “87,000 new agents” who would track down “ordinary taxpayers."

READ MORE:'Taxpayers are losers in Trumpland': Juror in Trump Organization tax fraud case speaks out

Moreover, members of the party who are spewing that lie are not letting up on their desire to repeal 90 percent of the funding, which Americans for Tax Fairness said in its press release would take away plans to improve taxpayer services (for refunds, customer calls, etc.), fund US Tax Court to resolve cases between taxpayers and the agency, and also provide the IRS with enough resources to launch an easy and free, government e-filing system.

Mechanic noted that the GOP’s gesture of proposing anti-tax bills that benefit no one but the 1 percent is nothing new, and Tax Policy Center Senior Fellow Steve Rosenthal presumed that the issue of IRS funding will be “ongoing” in both Senate and House sessions for the foreseeable future.

READ MORE:Taxpayer rights expert 'absolutely flabbergasted' that Donald Trump escaped IRS presidential audit: report

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an 10 22 comm dr

In addition to threatening cuts to Social Security and Medicare, congressional Republicans are reportedly plotting to use the debt ceiling and an end-of-year clash over government funding to target popular climate investments approved in August as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that "while some Republicans do favor brinkmanship over Medicare and Social Security... some aides and analysts think the GOP may be more likely to demand changes to other Democratic priorities."

"GOP leaders have discussed using the debt limit and government shutdown fights to press for cuts to clean energy spending," the Post noted. "Republicans are also eyeing demands for the administration to slow or reverse its plans to ramp up Internal Revenue Service enforcement of the nation's tax laws, although the GOP planning is preliminary and expected to evolve."

Allying with the oil and gas lobby, Republicans in the House and Senate unanimously opposed the Inflation Reduction Act, which includes nearly $370 billion in climate investments aimed at helping the U.S. transition to renewable energy and meet its emission-reduction targets.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who is hoping to take the majority gavel next year, derided the historic investments as "green boondoggles" while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) called them "socialist scams."

In recent weeks, Republicans have openly floated the idea of using a fight over the federal borrowing limit—which must be raised to prevent a disastrous default—as leverage to secure concessions from Democrats, including Social Security and Medicare cuts.

Another potential opportunity for Republicans could come in mid-December, when a recently passed government funding bill is set to expire.

Top Republicans, including McCarthy, have made clear that they intend to take advantage of those opportunities if they win control of the House or the Senate in the November 8 midterms.

"If Republicans take over Congress, they plan to hold the government hostage and ransom our future," warned Dave Willett, a spokesperson for League of Conservation Voters.

[twt]

it's not clear which specific green energy provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act the GOP intends to target. E&E News reported last month that "some are eyeing provisions... like the electric vehicle tax credit" and "mineral sourcing requirements."

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, told the outlet that he believes the GOP will "try to unwind a number of the bad policies that were enacted."

Democrats, meanwhile, are facing growing pressure to diffuse GOP threats by either raising or eliminating the debt ceiling, an arbitrary restriction on the amount of money the Treasury Department can borrow to meet its obligations. The federal government is projected to reach the current $31.4 trillion borrowing limit at some point next year.

A group of House Democrats led by Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) is calling on the Democratic leadership to act during the upcoming lame-duck session to "permanently undo the threat posed by the debt limit."

The Post noted Tuesday that "some Democrats have advanced legislation to effectively eliminate the debt ceiling by raising it to an impossibly high number, such as googolplex."

"Using the budget process known as reconciliation would make that move possible with only Democratic votes, bypassing a GOP filibuster in the Senate, but Biden's opposition appears to at least for now have put an end to those efforts, which would likely face opposition from centrist Democrats," the newspaper added.

During a speech late last week, Biden warned that Republicans are "determined to hold the economy hostage" to secure Social Security and Medicare cuts.

While the president vowed to oppose any cuts to the key programs, he also rejected calls to support debt ceiling repeal—a proposal backed by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, said in an interview Sunday that he too opposes repealing the debt limit entirely but stressed the importance of lifting the ceiling to avert economic disaster.

"You have to increase the debt ceiling," Sanders told CNN's Jake Tapper. "What Republicans are basically doing—and I hope everybody understands this—they are saying, 'Look, we are prepared to let the United States default on its debt, not raise the debt ceiling, unless you talk about making cuts.'"

"You know what they're talking about? Cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid," Sanders added. "Is that irresponsible? It is absolutely irresponsible. You don't use the debt ceiling to do that."

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an 8 22

ctr attack fail

Some right-wing media pundits have furiously railed against the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, a massive $750 billion climate change/economy/health care bill that President Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, August 16. And plenty of Republicans have lambasted centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia for voting “yes” on the bill.

But all things considered, the Inflation Reduction Act hasn’t been nearly as big a story in right-wing media as the FBI, on August 8, executing a search warrant at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. And journalists Meridith McGraw and Caitlin Oprysko offer a possible reason why in an article published by Politico on August 22. The Mar-a-Lago search, they argue, pushes the “culture war” button in a way the Inflation Reduction Act doesn’t.

“Far from a singular lapse, last week’s split-screen of the Mar-a-Lago search and the passage of the IRA provided a telling portrait of pistons that move modern Republican politics,” McGraw and Oprysko explain. “Whereas conservative activism has, in past cycles, been driven by opposition to Democratic-authored policies or actions — from Obamacare to TARP— the modern version has been fed by culture-war issues and, more often than not, Trump himself.”

READ MORE: The Inflation Reduction Act is a searing rebuke of right-wing fascism

Cesar Ybarra, vice president of policy for the right-wing group FreedomWorks, laments that so far, the GOP hasn’t been able to weaponize the Inflation Reduction Act to the degree that he would like.

Ybarra told Politico, “Everything was moving so fast, the tax provisions were being debated on the fly; so, there was very little time for groups to do that in-depth grassroots pushback like we saw during Obamacare. To create buzz in this town and for it to penetrate across America, you need more time. So yeah, we got rolled.”

When Republicans enjoyed a massive red wave in the 2010 midterms and recaptured the U.S. House of Representatives, one of the things they had been attacking Democrats over was the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare — which passed that year. These days, Obamacare is popular and polls well, but in 2010, Republicans and the Tea Party movement were able to successfully weaponize it against Democrats. Then-President Barack Obama famously described that red wave as a “shellacking.”

But according to Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way,“You’re not having town halls with people screaming about Medicare drug negotiations. It’s very hard to object to a bill that invests a lot of money in clean energy.”

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8 22

ICN

after 25 Years of Futility, Democrats Finally Jettison Carbon Pricing in Favor of Incentives to Counter Climate Change

BY MARIANNE LAVELLE

The $370 billion Inflation Reduction Act is the nation’s first comprehensive climate plan to curtail greenhouse gas emissions and boost renewable energy and green technology. It relies on tax credits and other “carrots,” not sticks.

also lots of $ for CCS

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an edit bd 8 22

What would the American republic look like if, one day, the fascists just disappeared? What could we accomplish if the people most hostile to bargaining were not stabbing democracy in the back?

It would look like the Democratic Party.

The Democrats, as I have said before, represent the full spectrum of legitimate partisan politics. Along with a handful of Republicans, no Democrat would dare cross the line dividing patriotism and mutiny.

READ MORE: Democrats finally have a reason to celebrate. And they should | Opinion

The party itself contains a complete set of respectable ideologies, from Alexandria Cortez on the left, Joe Manchin on the right to the president (and a plurality of Democrats) somewhere in the middle.

As for accomplishments? Well, the Inflation Reduction Act.

And we have Mitch McConnell to thank.

Appalachian pragmatism

READ MORE: Progressives elated after Joe Biden signs 'landmark' Inflation Reduction Act into law

The president signed the legislation into law Tuesday. It is, as I said last month, a big fucking Big F*cking Deal (BFD). According to the Post, it includes $260 billion in clean-energy tax credits; $80 billion in new rebates for electric vehicles, green energy at home and more; $1.5 billion for cutting methane emissions; $27 billion “green bank”; support for fossil fuel projects; the power to lower drug prices.

It funds the IRS so it can go after very obscenely rich tax cheats. It establishes a revenue floor for Fortune 500 companies who get away with paying zero percent in income tax. It moreover imposes a 1 percent levy on every stock bought back to gin up share prices.

It’s not perfect, to be sure, but it’s still so good, according to the Editorial Board’s own Jason Sattler, “especially compared to the alternative we were seriously considering less than two months ago. Which was absolutely nothing. Failing to mark and briefly celebrate this monumental achievement … would be a moral failure.”

Overall, the Inflation Reduction Act does two big things bigly. One, it accelerates the country’s conversion from fossil-fuel energy to renewable energy. Researchers estimate that carbon emissions will drop by as much as 40 percent by the end of the current decade.

That’s never happened before.

In the process, the legislation creates whole markets as well as the jobs (9 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office) and profit-seeking opportunities that go along with new markets.

And it locates much of that activity in coal-loving West Virginia.

By investing billions in a white working-class state, the Democrats hope improved conditions might realign party loyalties such that voters across Appalachia reconsider siding with southern politics.

West Virginia, of course, is Joe Manchin’s home state. Nothing was going to happen without his support. Evidently, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who does not get the credit he deserves, made the conservative Democrat an offer he couldn’t refuse.

The House progressives, who’ve not been shy about expressing serial disappointments in Manchin, quickly turned the bill around, knowing that it was imperfect but also knowing that it would do a lot of good.

So not only are the Democrats representative of all Americans.

They are pragmatic.

Like most Americans.

The moral of the story

We can thank the Republicans for making this experiment in democracy possible. Precisely, we can thank Mitch McConnell.

The Senate minority leader thought he had Schumer over a barrel. It turns out, however, that he just forgot that Manchin is a Democrat.

With his conference united behind him, McConnell had threatened to tank legislation that would support the semiconductor industry if the Democrats pursued the president’s climate change agenda.

After Manchin essentially vetoed that agenda, McConnell greenlit Republican support for the so-called Chips and Science Act.

But hours later, the Post’s Greg Sargent said, Schumer “announced a revived deal to spend hundreds of billions on climate change and health-care subsidies. Now Sen. Ted Cruz seethes that McConnell failed to ‘follow through’ on his threat to kill the chips bill. Other GOP senators ripped McConnell for getting rolled and caught napping.”

The lesson, Greg concluded, is that “procedural hardball” works.

True, but I think the larger moral of the story is that the Inflation Reduction Act is what can be accomplished in a free republic when the fascists are prevented from stabbing democracy in the back – from sabotaging good-faith efforts to solve the country’s problems.

“The real America”

I hope the moral of the story sticks.

Mitch McConnell’s power is proportional to the conventional belief in bipartisanship as the proper means of effecting enduring change. His power is also proportional to the Democrats’ inability to solve problems – a direct consequence of Republican sabotage.

The Inflation Reduction Act proves it doesn’t have to be this way. When it comes to budget-related bills, the GOP can pound sand.

It also proves that the Democrats represent, by themselves, the rich range of political ideas in circulation. As such, the Democrats, by themselves, represent “bipartisanship” in every way but in name.

Republican fascists believe they are indispensable, because they believe only they represent “the real America,” which is to say, a social order created, preserved and advanced by white power. They believe the Democrats, and their yen for multiracial democracy, are a kind of diseased perversion worthy only of contempt, even death.

That’s the other thing the Inflation Reduction Act proves.

Democracy, especially a multiracial democracy, doesn’t need the fascists. It can survive without them. It can flourish! It can provide for the needs of every American, even the Republican fascists who would sell their mortal souls to stop democracy from flourishing.

The fascists can’t live with democracy.

But they can’t live without it either.

All the more reason for the Democrats to go their own way.

READ MORE: Revealed: Joe Manchin's price for supporting climate bill

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OMG SEE OPEN LTR grover

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/democrats-3-5t-reconciliation-bill-woke-handouts-grover-norquist

no lnx vid?

OPINION Published September 22

Grover Norquist: Democrats' $3.5T reconciliation bill's top 10 woke handouts

Here are 10 simply embarrassing examples of corporate welfare, cronyism and corrupt political payoffs

Facebook...

By Grover Norquist FOXBusiness

America cannot afford $3.5T spending plan, US will be in debt: Rep. Young Kim

Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., argues the House Senate needs to create a ‘responsible resolution’ for the spending plan.

Democrats are trying to impose on American taxpayers the largest tax increase since 1968. Their legislation raises taxes on small businesses and would leave the U.S. with a higher capital gains tax than communist China and a higher corporate tax than all of our economic competitors.

Their plan would be the biggest tax hike in 53 years, just as the country tries to recover from a once-in-a-century pandemic.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., discusses the Democrats' spending as the debt ceiling deadline looms and Hunter Biden's pricey art sales.video]

Democrats attempt to tie debt limit to $3.5T spending package

The Democrats have also loaded up the bill with many "woke" handouts they would prefer you didn’t notice. Below is a top ten list of the most perplexing items.

1. $3.5 billion for the Green New Deal youth patrol: A make-work program for jobless climate activists

At a time when small businesses cannot find willing workers, the Democrat bill shovels $3.5 billion of your money so DC bureaucrats can create something called the "Civilian Climate Corps" – a make-work program for young climate activists.

REPORT FROM ANTI-TAX GROUP WARNS THAT $3.5 TRILLION SPENDING PLAN WOULD HIT ECONOMIC OUTPUT, HURT SAVINGS

Instead of getting a real job, these Green New Deal hall monitors will be deployed across the country to engage in unspecified "green" actions. One stated aim is boosting enrollees’ "outdoor recreation."

Fox News congressional correspondent Chad Pergram has the latest on the spending bill on 'Cavuto: Coast to Coast'video

Democrat Party divided ahead of vote on $3.5 trillion spending bill

Perhaps they’ll knock on your door with a clipboard and tell you to put on a sweater instead of heating your home adequately.

The climate brigade youths will receive taxpayer-funded lodging, transportation, and healthcare, possibly even uniforms.

The Democrats even want to make sure they are unionized. Perhaps not by coincidence these union dues would find their way into the coffers of Democrat congressional campaigns.

REPORT FROM ANTI-TAX GROUP WARNS THAT $3.5 TRILLION SPENDING PLAN WOULD HIT ECONOMIC OUTPUT, HURT SAVINGS

2. Fake news tax handout for reporters at "local" newspapers with up to 750 employees

The proposal creates a tax credit for "local newspapers" with up to 750 employees – a largely left-of-center group of workers.

It gives a payroll tax credit for journalists of up to $12,500 in wages per employee per quarter.

This reporter tax carve-out amounts to $1.3 billion. The vast majority of newspapers in the country have fewer than 750 employees, so this will shovel money to long-established daily newspapers as well as weekly left-wing "alternative" papers.

Imagine the outrage if Republicans tried to enact a special tax cut only for talk radio hosts.

CONSERVATIVE GROUP LAUNCHES MULTI-MILLION DOLLARS PUSH TO DETAIL DEMS' $3.5 TRILLION SPENDING PLAN

  1. Tax credit for $8,000 "Electric Bicycles"

The bill creates a 15 percent refundable tax credit for "electric bicycles." A credit of up to $1,500 for electric bicycles costing as much as $8,000 per bike.

As a reminder, a tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar reduction in your tax liability. The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that this provision alone amounts to $7.4 billion.

If you are a "local reporter" and in the market for an "e-bike" this is your lucky day.

4. Solar Subsidies to "Promote Environmental Justice"

This provision gives solar tax credits to select areas to "promote environmental justice" wherein "the Secretary makes an allocation of environmental justice solar capacity limitation."

CLICK HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX BUSINESS REPORTING ON THE DEMOCRATS' MASSIVE SPENDING BILL

  1. Tax breaks for elite, well-funded private universities

The bill would reduce, potentially down to zero, the excise tax on investment income of private colleges and universities depending on the amount of financial aid they offer their students. Notably, universities who can provide a lot of grants and scholarships are typically universities with the largest endowments, such as Harvard and Yale.

This adds up to another $2.3 billion.

  1. Tax credit for "Environmental Justice" programs

A $1 billion refundable tax credit for university "environmental justice programs."

GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE

  1. $10 billion "Green Workforce" tax credit

Democrats allocate $10 billion in a section titled "Investment in the Green Workforce. This contains several niche credits including $400 million for "green" projects in "automotive communities." Automotive communities are defined as communities that have "experienced major job losses in the automotive manufacturing sector" – likely from big-government policies.

8. $15 billion for "Green" doors and windows

The bill would replace a $500 lifetime cap on nonbusiness energy property credits with an annual $1,200 credit. This credit allows up to $600 in credits for "energy efficient" windows and skylights and up to $500 for doors.

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE ON FOX BUSINESS

9.Big Labor tax break 

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Union bosses could more easily raise membership costs as the cost will be partially hidden by a new above-the-line deduction for up to $250 in "dues" to a labor organization. These dues would again find their way right back to Democrat political campaign coffers in order to elect more Democrats who will grow the size of the DC bureaucracy. Rinse, repeat.

  1. Tax credit for contributions to university "research infrastructure projects"

Democrats are creating a credit for contributions to public universities’ "research infrastructure projects."

Much of the Democrat tax plan (higher business taxes) would slow growth and make us uncompetitive with China and Europe. The items above are simply embarrassing examples of corporate welfare, cronyism and corrupt political payoffs creeping back into the U.S. tax code. Chicago-style politics playing with billions rather than millions.

Grover Norquist is president of Americans for Tax Reform.

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BBB--> IRA; dems getting stuff done thru gop obstruction = only policy eg burn pit tantrum

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-incorrectly-attacks-inflation-reduction-act-claiming-it-will-raise-taxes-individuals

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https://americanindependent.com/american-action-network-ad-climate-change-joe-biden-socialist-wish-list-hurricane-tax-lizzie-fletcher/

no lnx vid

New GOP ad falsely claims climate change plan will result in 'hurricane tax' for Texans

By Josh Israel -September 23,2021

A new American Action Network ad invokes climate-fueled storms while calling a bill that addresses them a 'socialist wish list.'

A new ad from a right-wing dark money group invokes the names of three recent hurricanes that caused massive flooding in and around Houston, Texas. At the same time, it urges viewers to oppose President Joe Biden's $3.5 trillion investment plan to address the climate change that is fueling storms like these.

The ad, posted online Wednesday by the American Action Network, is aimed at constituents of Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (D-TX), whose competitive 7th Congressional District includes parts ofHouston and its suburbs.

The ad features a narrator speaking over storm images. "Rita. Ike. Harvey. Names that haunt Houston. All leading to high insurance premiums that continue to rise.

"Now, liberals in Washington want to spend $3 trillion on a socialist wish list, funded by taxes that could make it even more expensive to insure your home. You'd pay more to protect your home so they can fund their socialist pet protects. Call Lizzie Fletcher.Tell her to vote against the hurricane tax."

The three hurricanes each caused significant damage to the Greater Houston area over the past 15 years. Experts say they were worsened by climate change and that global warming will make future storms like those more intense and more frequent.

"Communities all along the Gulf Coast need to adapt to a world where the heaviest rains are more than we have ever seen," Pennsylvania State University meteorologist David W. Titley told the New York Times in 2017 following Hurricane Harvey. He noted that "while a storm of Harvey's strength is still rare, it's not as rare as it once was."

The American Action Network, founded in 2010 and chaired by former Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, is a dark-money 501(c)(4) tax-exempt group that has spent millions of dollars attacking Democrats and supporting Republican candidates. It opposes environmental regulations and promotes unfettered continued use of fossil fuels.

The group opposes Biden's Build Back Better agenda,which would roll back some of the tax cuts that the richest Americans and corporations received under then-President Donald Trump's 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act and invest billions of dollars in climate change, clean energy, and caregiving infrastructure.

The so-called "socialist pet protects" in the plan include funds to "create good-paying, union jobs, establish an energy efficiency and clean energy standard, expand and extend clean energy and electric vehicle tax credits, and enlist a new Civilian Climate Corps" to address climate change immediately, along with financing and tax cuts to lower housing costs and "bolster affordable and resilient housing, supporting the construction or rehabilitation of more than two million homes."

In small print at the bottom of the screen, the American Action Network ad sources its claims of a "hurricane tax" to conservatives who oppose the bill's proposed corporate tax hikes. Their argument is that if Congress raises the tax rates for corporations, insurance companies would then simply pass on those costs to homeowners by raising their premiums.

But even if that is true, their analyses do not take into account another major provision in the legislation: tax cuts for middle- and lower-income Americans. Congress' nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation predicted last week that Biden's plan would cut federal taxes overall for every group earning $200,000 a year or less. Those earning $1 million or more would see a tax increase of about 10.6%.

Biden warned on Sept. 7, after Hurricane Ida caused dozens of deaths, that without major investment things would be even more dire in the future. "Climate change poses an existential threat to our lives, to our economy," he said. "And the threat is here; it's not going to get any better. The question: Can it get worse?  We can stop it from getting worse."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

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an 4 22

Whenever progressive Democrats talk about billionaires, it’s in the soft tones of fairness. Men like Warren Buffet and Elon Musk, we are told, should pay proportionally what normal non-billionaire people pay. The debate is steeped in the inoffensive language of “their fair share.”

The debate is backwards.

Instead of starting with “their fair share,” we should start with a question fundamental to every democracy that’s existed, to wit:

Should billionaires exist?

Should their influence be legal?

Billionaires are not just very obscenely rich. With their wealth comes planetary power.Their decisions affect billions and billions of people, who in turn have no say on whether those decisions should be made.

Why should a democratic republic such as America, which claims to hold power to account – which must hold power to account to survive as a democratic republic – tolerate the existence of billionaires.

We should ask.

We should also awaken to the truth.

We are accountable to them.

Billionaires tolerate the American people and their belief that they are the ultimate sovereigns. It serves their interests for the American people to believe they are more powerful than they actually are.

Are we accountable to them?

Yes.

The American tax code has long been designed to ensure that unaccountable planetary power wins when it’s heads, wins when it’s tails. A democratic republic allowing the existence of such a powerful parasitic class is a democratic republic surviving rather than thriving.

That’s why the debate is backwards.

A debate among progressive Democrats over the question of whether the very obscenely rich should pay their fair share has been settled before it started. It’s a debate the very obscenely rich already win.

We should instead recognize the very real danger billionaires pose to our republic. We should assess how much risk we’re willing to tolerate. How much should be legal, how much illegal? Only then should “their fair share” come into play. It’s fairness as a hedge against systemic risk.

It’s fairness so the people may be free.

To learn more about our tax code, and how upside down, backwards and prolapsed it is, I talked to Amy Hanauer. She’s the director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. She said that, “We do not have to accept a false message of scarcity. Billionaires and big corporations grew much more profitable even in a pandemic.

“We can pay for a better country.”

What is it that normal people should understand about the United States tax code that most normal people do not?

Taxes are essential to providing us with things we need, as families, as communities and as a planet. We can use the tax code to make sure everyone has good schools, to make sure working-class kids can afford college, to have resources to construct affordable housing.

But we can also use the tax code to have the resources necessary for the transition to a clean energy economy, to address racial and economic inequity and to make sure public employees are well-paid.

There are ways to raise revenue that raise resources from rich people and corporations. But unfortunately, the US does far too little to make sure that wealthy people and corporations pay their fair share.

My colleagues at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy did a report last year. It found that 55 profitable Fortune 500 corporations paid absolutely nothing in federal corporate income tax in 2020.

Zero.

A whole bunch of other big profitable corporations paid more than zero but less than half the corporate rate (21 percent).

The big economic legislation that passed the House last year, the Build Back Better Act, addressed this by putting in place a 15 percent minimum corporate tax for the very largest and most profitable corporations. Unfortunately, that bill is stalled in the Senate.

Letting corporations or the very wealthy pay less than their fair share is a choice. It's not a choice that most people agree with. It's also not a choice that most other wealthy democracies make.

In 2019, the most recent year for which data are available, the US collected revenue equal to 25 percent of its gross domestic product(25 percent of its total economic output). Most OECD countries collect more than 34 percent. Only a handful of OECD countries collect less revenue as a share of their economies than the United States. They are all small: Costa Rica, Turkey, Ireland, Chile, Columbia and Mexico.

What can the Treasury do about tax avoidance on its own?

First, to address the enormous problems with our tax code, we need legislation. Things the administration can do without Congress are not a substitute for passing tax reform, which Senator Manchin has said he wants to pass, which Senator Schumer wants to pass, which the House has passed, and which President Biden wants to pass. And not incidentally, which is incredibly popular with the American people.

That said, there are things that the Biden administration will have to do whether the Congress passes something or not.

The Trump administration expanded tax breaks for corporations far beyond what the 2017 law allowed. These regulatory excesses gave corporations and the rich even larger tax breaks than the law did.

Many corporations have admitted they used the expansive interpretation from the Trump Treasury to get bigger breaks.

A second big thing is that when corporations publish their financial disclosures, they are required to list tax breaks they think the IRS is likely to deny. But we found that big companies keep billions in breaks that they had admitted would not withstand scrutiny, simply since the clock runs out before the underfunded IRS has time to investigate.

The IRS should direct more resources to dealing with that.

Another important option is that we don't always know exactly how corporations are avoiding taxes. The IRS could require companies to disclose that. This would help us identify how to make the law better able to address tax avoidance.

So much of the tax code burdens people who work. Shouldn't the tax code burden the people who own and collect rents?

Yes.

One of the big problems with our tax code is that we have a special, lower rate on income from capital gains (which you get when you sell an expensive asset, like stocks or a house, at a higher price than what you paid for it.)

It doesn't make sense to tax earnings from wealth at a lower rate than earnings from work.

But even worse is that the wealthiest people can accumulate wealth without selling their assets, and then can pass that wealth onto their heirs at the new value without anyone ever paying taxes on it.

This is called "stepped-up basis.”

The Biden administration included a fix to that in the BBB plan.But after a heavy lobbying effort led by moneyed interests, the provision was removed before the House committee sent the bill to the floor.

The reforms that did pass the House would raise a lot of revenue and raise them from the wealthiest people and corporations. But long term, we should also go back and revisit these good ideas.

Can you talk about the alleged link between low tax and high growth? That was a very potent argument in the past. Now?

The United States had its strongest decades of economic growth at a time when our tax rates were much higher than today.And that's not surprising. Things that led to high growth required public spending.

In the middle of the 20th century, we put a lot of national resources into helping people become much more educated.

Rates of high school and college completion rose in part because of more spending on K-12 schools, of Pell grants that help regular people pay for college and of state funding to public universities.

We also put resources into improving our national infrastructure, like the interstate. That helped companies get products out to market.

Both of these investments made us much more productive.

Today, we have different imperatives to make our economy more productive but we have nevertheless been underinvesting.

We need to put resources into greening our economy, which would reduce the pace of climate change but also make us more resilient in the face of climate disasters, which are going to be with us.

And we have let inequality – both economic and racial – skyrocket. The result is that many working-class people of all races are left behind.

Addressing both of those things will take public resources but will make us much more economically competitive in the long term.

Did all that growth cause inflation in the 1970s?

Inflation is complicated.

But a lot of rising costs as a result of current inflation could be managed by passing BBB, which would reduce the cost of childcare and health care, two of the biggest costs families face.

Explain please.

For most people, housing, childcare and healthcare are among their biggest costs. BBB has spending that would address all of those, making them more affordable. If we could hold down costs for those items, that would do a lot to keep inflation in check.

We are a very wealthy country.

We do not have to accept a false message of scarcity. Billionaires and big corporations grew much more profitable even in a pandemic.

We can pay for a better country. We have the resources.

We can afford to make college affordable. We can invest in our little kids so their parents can work. And we can and must invest to take on climate chaos. None of us will be protected from it if we don't.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/10/28/oil-executives-testimony-live-updates/

lnx

....Oil and gas industry executives have a lot to be thankful for. On Thursday, hours before the execs were set totestify under oath before the House Oversight Committee, alongside the heads of the American Petroleum Institute, or API, and the Chamber of Commerce, the Biden administration announced its framework for a $1.75 trillion reconciliation budget.

..."We’re leaving everything on the field here, in terms of our opposition to anti-energy provisions,” API CEO Mike Sommers told CNN earlier this month. (Ocasio-Cortez repeated the quote.) Representative Rashida Tlaib pointed out generous industry funding for front groups that have kneecapped national and state-level climate policy efforts. The industry spent $40 million, for instance, protecting the oil and gas industry’s ability to drill within 1,000 feet of playgrounds from a 2018 ballot initiative. Then there are all the documents, reported on at length by Inside Climate News, showing the disconnect between what Exxon told the public about climate change and what its own scientists knew to be true. Shell knew, too.

Watkins and her colleagues on the virtual stand—ExxonMobil CEO Darren Woods, Chevron CEO Mike Wirth, BP America CEO David Lawler, API CEO Mike Sommers, and Chamber of Commerce CEO Suzanne Clark—had plenty to be happy about elsewhere in the Capitol, too.

Having already funneled $462,500 in political action committee money to Senator Joe Manchin, who killed the Clean Electricity Payment Program (the centerpiece of the Build Back Better Act’s climate provisions), they could now claim another win. The text of the Build Back Better Act bill released during Thursday’s hearing revealed that the last remaining provision directly targeting fossil fuel emissions—a fee on methane emissions—had been stuffed with a $775 million fossil fuel subsidy....

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an 4 22

no lnx twt

Kyrsten Sinema believes that a Build Back Better revival is unlikely: report

Alex Henderson April 06, 2022

The Biden White was seriously disappointed when, in December 2021, centrist Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced that he wouldn’t vote for the Build Back Better Act — an announcement that came after months of negotiations. Nonetheless, Biden supporters hoped that some type of BBB compromise could be worked out with Manchin in 2022. But journalist Hans Nichols, in an Axios article published on April 6, stresses that BBB continues to face another major hurdle from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

“Last year, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) publicly sounded the death knell for President Biden's Build Back Better agenda,” Nichols explains. “Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), his fellow holdout, is privately concurring, Axios has learned…. In closed-door conversations, Sinema has told donors a path to revival is unlikely. That's dampened expectations Congress will act on a slimmed-down bill before Memorial Day. It also means any revived BBB legislation faces an arduous route back to the center of the Senate agenda.”

Sinema, like Manchin, is a Democratic senator with a decidedly centrist voting record. And she isn’t shy about voting with Republicans at times. However, Arizona Central has reported that Sinema is “expected to vote to confirm” Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Joe Biden’s nominee to replace the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer on the U.S. Supreme Court. On March 10, Sinema described her meeting with Jackson as “very productive” and wrote, “I welcomed hearing directly her belief in the importance of an independent judiciary, her judicial philosophy, and her approach to precedent.”

Manchin has already announced that he will vote to confirm Jackson, as have three moderate Republican senators: Mitt Romney, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski. Sinema, meanwhile, appears to be more enthusiastic about Jackson than she is about reviving the Build Back Better Act.

“No one's reached out to Sinema about the contours of the slimmed-down (Build Back Better) deal Manchin has discussed, people familiar with the matter tell Axios,” Nichols reports. “Instead, Sinema's telling donors most of her focus is on the $10 billion COVID-19 relief bill, theso-called China competition legislationand modifications to theElectoral Reform Act…. With an expected vote on Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve as a Supreme Court justice this week, the Senate still wants to act on coronavirus relief before leaving town.”

Nichols adds, “If not, after a two-week recess, senators expect to finalize the new COVID-19 spending and then turn to settling differences with the House over the China bill. As a practical matter, those issues will suck up much of the Senate's bandwidth, leaving little room for Build Back Better talks.”

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