Posts Made By: James Brown

Originally Posted by James Brown

If Trump ever successfully asserts immunity where you think he should not have been immune, let's talk.

Meanwhile, only a day before the debate.  My guess is that the loser of the debate loses the presidency, if there is a clear loser (i.e. Biden last time).  I doubt there will be a clear winner, if you follow me, but there could be a dramatic loser.

Originally Posted by James Brown

If Trump ever successfully asserts immunity where you think he should not have been immune, let's talk.

Rod, if you, James or anyone else think the following is an incorrect summary, please let me know.  I am going from memory:

1.  In the hush money case, the judge said that immunity does not apply.   Not sure how it would have, since Trump was not president at the time and concealing a payment to your porn star paramour is hardly an official act.

2.  The documents case was dismissed because in the Judge's (hotly contested) opinion, Jack Smith was inappropriately appointed.  This is being appealed.  We have not had an immunity ruling.

3.  I have no idea what is going on in Georgia, but the incompetence of the prosecutors has possibly killed that case.

4.  The immunity ruling came down in Jack Smith's Jan 6 case.  The Supreme Court did not and never does make a factual ruling on a fact issue.  Instead, they laid out the three situations where immunity applies, does not apply, or may apply.  They then sent the case back to the trial court for factual rulings on whether or not immunity applies.  Jack Smith filed a new indictment a few weeks ago, that is supposed to only charge Trump with acts that are outside of his presidential capacity.  It would be interesting to compare the original charges with the new ones.  Has anyone done that?  Presumably the stuff Smith dropped in the new indictment he believes is likely to be subject to an immunity ruling.  Presumably the stuff he kept in the new indictment he feels strongly are acts not subject to immunity.   If I can find an analysis comparing the former charges to the new charges I'll post it.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

Ronald Reagan?  The guy who killed the middle class for the foreseeable future with his 'trickle-down' giant tax cuts for the rich?  That Ronald Reagan?  

Dave

Killed the middle class?  You're joking right?

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa261.pdf

Originally Posted by Rod Kaufman

The point is the above doesn't matter if the lower court rulings that are or will be appealed to SCOTUS and aren't considered under their factual context (even though Gorsuch and fellow cons have done so when they desire it) and are narrowly viewed through a legal soda viewpoint that ultimately is decided in Trump's favor.

Let me know if any of what you are concerned about ever happens.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

The Cato institute?  

Well, we should lock our two articles in a room and let them fight it out.  

In the post war era, until about 1980 a single, middle class income earner could buy a house, a car, send the kids to college and take the family on a vacation to Wally World every year.  

Fast forward to the most recent years and a single middle class income won't get you any of that.  The concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people has as its direct result the elimination of the middle class.

Dave

Hi Dave, I see the middle class everywhere.   I am the middle class. Upper I reckon, but still.   In your neck of the woods do you only see rich and poor with nothing in between?

Look, the rich have done well in part because of reasonable tax reform.   But so has most everyone else economically.   Can you sit there with a straight face and say the middle class is extinct?   That is more or less what you said earlier.  

Can you sit there with a straight face and say that you would have preferred Jimmy Carter’s tax policy to Reagan’s in retrospect?   I know that you were in the early stages of your career when Carter was president.   Those were tough times for my middle class family.   A lot of blessings have come to my family since 1980, but reasonable taxation and reasonable inflation created by Reagan at just the right time are part of the mix of blessings and privileges I am very grateful for.   If Carter had won and if his tax policy had endured, who knows, but I think the tech revolution that has greatly benefited mankind might have never occurred.  Jim

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

The Cato institute?  

Well, we should lock our two articles in a room and let them fight it out.  

In the post war era, until about 1980 a single, middle class income earner could buy a house, a car, send the kids to college and take the family on a vacation to Wally World every year.  

Fast forward to the most recent years and a single middle class income won't get you any of that.  The concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people has as its direct result the elimination of the middle class.

Dave

Also, your article does not really rebut the raw economic data presented in the Cato article.  Nonetheless, I’ll concede that 4 decades of Tax breaks have (in part) fueled inequality.   Reasonable tax policy has also fueled the biggest economic boom ever to benefit mankind. A rising tide does float all boats. 

Can you cite any examples of a major industrialized country that has tax policy similar to Jimmy Carter’s, which has thrived over the last four decades? Heck, not just thrived, but rebuilt the entire world economy from the ground up. It certainly is not Canada, where I believe you have a tax policy very similar to what the United States currently has, which is of course a lot more like a Reagan tax policy than a Carter tax policy.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

The Cato institute?  

Well, we should lock our two articles in a room and let them fight it out.  

In the post war era, until about 1980 a single, middle class income earner could buy a house, a car, send the kids to college and take the family on a vacation to Wally World every year.  

Fast forward to the most recent years and a single middle class income won't get you any of that.  The concentration of more and more wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer people has as its direct result the elimination of the middle class.

Dave

By the way, your quote above ends with “has as its direct result the elimination of the middle-class".  

This concept, the elimination of the middle-class, is what got me so spun up in the first place. I suppose we need to define terms.

How do you define “the middle-class”.

I’m right now sitting in a mom and pop restaurant in Salida Colorado. I am surrounded by people whom I presume are middle-class. In your worldview, are they all rich?  I’m not in Aspen 😁. The people around me certainly are not poor, lots of nice Jeeps, Subarus, and pick up trucks in the parking lot.   A burger cost 15 bucks (and is worth it!).    

In my view, the middle-class includes the billions of people who have jobs, pay taxes up to about the top one or maybe 2% of earners. Above that are the rich, who of course pay about 50% of all income taxes paid.  The poor in my view are unable to earn sufficient income to pay taxes.  Some of the poor (some whom I know personally) live pretty well.  Others live in abject poverty.

How do you define this "eliminated" middle-class?

p.s. on edit - sorry to carpet bomb your post Dave, but this is very interesting and I appreciate the opportunity to have the discussion.  Jim

Originally Posted by Maurice Clark

Hi All,

Here is the ABC News (Australia) take on the debate. Executive summary... Harris did well, Trump was mostly Trump, neither landed any knockout blows.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-11/harris-trump-presidential-debate-stakes-higher-for-harris/104336552

Maurice

I think that is a reasonable assessment.  Personally, I think Harris missed some opportunities to add some meat to her policy proposals and appeared evasive, whenever the Biden/Harris administration's record came up.  Especially on the first question.

On the other hand, Trump was combative, angry, fact-free, evasive and in some instances seemed detached from reality.  Typical Trump, his own worst enemy.  He missed the opportunity to really tie Harris to her past policy positions and tie her more closely to the Biden administrations failures.  He really liked going down rabbit holes, and Harris played him like a finely tuned instrument.  

Since Harris controlled Trump and sent him down those rabbit holes on purpose, I think she won easily, to the extent winning mattered.  I do not know if she convinced any undecideds to vote for her in PA, WI, MI, AZ, GA and other states that are close.

Jim

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

The disappearance of the middle-class' spending power is what has really gone in comparison to what it once was. June Cleaver could stay at home and make lunches while wearing her pearls in 1960 but in 2024 she'd have to be working full time for the family to live as well.

The money has trickled UP, not down. 

The income gap has greatly widened.  CEO pay vs worker pay ratio has increased tenfold or more.  The murderous student loan system in the US is another blight on the middle class - many people are in their third decade of trying to pay it off and have fully paid back the principal more than once but the interest just keeps piling up..  Minimum wage has been stagnant for decades.  Worker productivity is way up but wages are not even close to keeping pace with that.  Huge profits are turned into stock buybacks instead of being shared, at least partially, with the workers who made the profits possible in the first place.

More and more money in the hands of fewer and fewer people.  This money didn't disappear from the poorest folks because they don't have the money to appropriate.  It's the teachers, cops, firefighters, appliance store owners, DMV clerks, construction workers etc. etc.  who are losing their purchasing power.  These people and their jobs still exist so my saying the middle class has disappeared is misleading in the literal sense.  But metaphorically it is a disappearance.

Sure the economy is doing well - just look at Walmart's sales figures as a perfect example. They are setting records every quarter.  But everyone working there south of the Walton family on the income ladder is barely making minimum wage and they sure aren't driving a Lexus to the restaurant. And they are viciously prevented from organizing a union...

A clear beginning for the big change in the fortunes of the middle class is the first half of the 1980's - the Reagan years.

Dave

This is a more defensible position rather than the wildly exaggerated "vanished" middle class you started with.  I think the data likely does show that the cost of housing, transportation, medical care and food have gone up faster than wages in the last 45 years.

There are a lot of reasons for this - inflation being a big one, with rampant consumerism thrown in. 

I understand that income equality is, in your opinion, the root cause of decreased middle class spending power.  Consider this however:  you have not answered whether you would have preferred that Jimmy Carter win in 1980 and continue with his tax policies.  You lived through the economic disaster that was Carter's presidency.  This is the reason Reagan won 46 states in '80 and a historic 49 states in '84.  Also, history shows that when the Democrats re-took the White House (Clinton, Obama, Biden) they did not revert to Carter's failed tax policies.  Indeed, these Democrats who were in the White House for about half of the time since Reagan more or less kept the Reagan tax policies in place.  Why?  In my opinion they knew that reasonable tax rates on high income earners supports economic growth, even though this was obviously not a talking point for them.

Originally Posted by David Cotterell

The murderous student loan system in the US is another blight on the middle class - many people are in their third decade of trying to pay it off and have fully paid back the principal more than once but the interest just keeps piling up..  

Dave

Whose fault is that?