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schraubd · 5 years

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Election 2018: Post-Mortem

We're not 100% "post-" yet, as there are still a decent number of races outstanding. Here in California, the mail vote could yet push around some House race numbers (though Montana just was called for Jon Tester!). Nonetheless, we've got enough of a picture to give a pretty solid account of yesterday's events. Here are my takeaways: * * * Dems winning the House is huge: This was not something to take for granted. Let's not forget, there was a good chunk of time where people thought GOP gerrymandering had placed the House out of Democratic reach. And control of the House doesn't just prevent Congress from ramming through far-right pieces of the Trump agenda. It also gives Democrats a key fulcrum from which to launch investigations into the deep cesspool of corruption that characterizes the Trump administration. On that score, I actually don't recommend starting with Trump necessarily. There are so many targets to choose from, and if there's one thing I think we learned from how the GOP handled the Benghazi (non-)story, it's that a steady and constant drip-drip-drip of scandal is far more powerful than blowing everything in one shot. Start with easy marks like Zinke, and the noose will slowly begin to tighten around the inner circle. This was a continuation, not a reversal, of 2016's trend: One theory about 2016 was that it was a fit of temporary insanity, whereby good-hearted Americans had a bout of temporary insanity or rage or anti-Clinton derangement and chose a President whom they didn't really endorse or even like. Under this view, 2018 would be a "snapback" election, where these voters would revert to form and go back to supporting sensible candidates while repudiating Trump's extremism. Another theory about 2016 takes Trump voters more seriously. It posits that in certain very conservative parts of the country -- generally more rural, generally less-educated, concentrated in Appalachia and the American southeast -- they liked Trump, and they continue to like Trump. All the lying and racism and extremism and utter off-the-wall demagoguery -- the love it. Meanwhile, other parts of the country -- more suburban, more diverse, and especially in the southwest -- were moving away from Trump and Trumpism. Last night, I think, decisively ratifies the second theory. By and large, the people who like Trump still like Trump. Rick Scott's numbers in Florida were almost perfectly correlated with the 2016 presidential race. And at the same time, we saw a more decisive shift away from the GOP in the sort of districts where people already didn't like Trump. From what I saw, Democrats did better in Romney-Clinton districts than Obama-Trump ones, which verifies this instinct. And Democrats are continuing to make big strides in Nevada and (yes, even in defeat) Arizona and Texas. The partial exception to this view is the midwest (where Democrats won governorships in Wisconsin and Michigan, and a decent clutch of House seats as well). But even here, the news was mixed: Democrats lost the Senate races in Indiana and Missouri, the governorship in Iowa (albeit while winning 3 of 4 House seats) and Ohio, and their two pickups in Minnesota House races were offset by at least one and probably two GOP flips (which were some of the only such GOP wins nationwide). There is a truth that is important for pundits to get through their head: conservative Americans like Trump. He's not an aberration. He's not deus ex machina. He's not someone they begrudgingly tolerate. American conservativism, right now, is Donald Trump. If that's a scary thought -- and it is -- start reporting it like something scary rather than pretending that most Republicans basically pine for Gerald Ford but somehow got sucked into an authoritarian nightmare they wish they could escape from. State Races Matter The national focus also has somewhat obscured how Democrats did on the state level. A bucket of governor's mansions have just turned blue -- Maine, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, and Kansas -- and there were no blue-to-red flips (solid holds in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Oregon, and Colorado). And it looks like they've turned over at least six state legislative chambers too -- not bad! Priority #1 in any state with Democratic majority: lock in voting rights. It's embarrassing that a state like New York has a train wreck of a voting system, and it needs to end immediately. Republicans really did overperform Senate side Yes, it was a brutally tough map for the Democrats. But Republicans nonetheless exceeded at least gameday expectations. Democrats taking back the Senate was always a longshot, but if the GOP holds onto their leads in Arizona and Florida (likely), then they'll have come close to running the table on their best realistic Senate scenario (with only Montana and Nevada as the blemishes). That's legitimate GOP ammo for the spin cycle. And, of course, it does give Trump the ability to continue to pack the courts with right-wing ideologues, which is substantively terrifying. The Democratic Party Neither Needs To Pivot Left Nor Pivot Center The favored post-election parlor of any pundit after an election is to explain why the results decisively demonstrate why a given party needs to adopt the political positions they already supported. Among Democrats, this has typically shaken out along the Bernie/Establishment divide that we're apparently doomed to relive forever because this is The Bad Place. But the fact is, there was no clear trend in which sort of Democrats were winning and losing last night. A bunch of more conservative voices went down in the Senate, but in states which were already punishing turf. And some progressive darlings -- like Ben Jealous in Maryland and Andrew Gillum in Florida -- lost too. On the other side, some establishment picks did their job and won their race (think Jacky Rosen in Nevada, or Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan). But progressives had their stars too -- Beto O'Rourke's campaign in Texas certainly performed better than Texas's red tint should've allowed, and there were a bunch of more progressive challengers who are among the entering House class. Which is to say: different races are different, and different candidates are good fits for different districts. The Party isn't the enemy here. What I think has been shown is that the more extreme "Bernie" accusation -- that there were a bunch of winnable races that Democrats were quasi-deliberately letting go Republican because something-something-corporate-money, and if we only ran Real Democrats they'd be ours -- has been decisively refuted (I don't think Ben Jealous necessarily did worse than Rushern Baker would have done in Maryland, but he certainly didn't do better). But that was a colossally stupid take anyway. Which probably means it still won't die the death it deserves. Briefly on Beto -- Yes, He Deserves Praise This isn't even a hot take anymore but obviously O'Rourke deserves a ton of credit for how he performed in his race against Ted Cruz. I'm seeing some mockery from the usual conservative suspects on this, since he lost, but that's a dumb take. Yes a loss is a loss, and yes everyone hates Ted Cruz, and yes Texas has been slowly purpling. But a sub-three point victory in a statewide race in Texas (by contrast, Governor Greg Abbott -- no political superstar -- won reelection by 13 points) is a monster performance. And his tailwind likely carried a few House races over the finish line as well. The New Redemption is (Sort of) Upon Us I'm by no means the first to come up with the idea that we're going through a "second redemption" to undo the "second reconstruction" that was the civil rights era. But I think there is something to be said about the re-energizing of White racist attitudes that's occurred in America over the last few years. People have talked a lot about Trump and, before him, the Tea Party, not so much creating prejudice as "activating" it. I think that in places like Georgia or Florida, there was some demoralization among the White racist crowd where they had basically given up on the possibility that open racism was something they could "do" anymore. Now, they're downright jazzed -- and from that we get both Kemp and DeSantis likely entering a governor's mansion. That said, the story does seem too pat in some ways -- especially with the passage of Amendment 4 (felon re-enfranchisement) in Florida. It's no exaggeration to say this might put Democrats firmly in the driver's seat in a state as evenly divided as Florida (a full 40% of Black male adults in the state regained their right to vote through this measure), which makes it all the more surprising that it managed to clear the 60% threshold. And to be fair, some amount of credit thus has to be given to those voters who punched a ballot for both Amendment 4 and DeSantis/Scott (there must be a lot of them). One-State Wave! With Rashida Tlaib's victory in Michigan, we not only have our first Palestinian-American Congresswomen, we also will have the first Democratic Representative to openly support a one-state solution to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. She will join approximately 2/3 of the House Republican Caucus in taking this view (and if you're a pro-Israel type who's about to respond "that's not fair -- Republicans only support a one-state solution where Palestinians aren't allowed to vote!" stop and listen to yourself). Mixed Results for Anti-Semites Tablet did a whole bit on "antisemites running for Congress", but I found their list far too restrictive (or in a few cases -- most notably Rep. Andrew Carson and GOP challenger Lena Epstein -- too expansive). Overall, it seems like the worst-of-the-worst antisemites -- the open Holocaust denier sorts -- lost, but some more "moderate" cases did fine. I may do a more in-depth exploration of this later. Early Frustration is Misleading There did seem to be an extent which last night felt like a letdown for Democrats. Obviously, the Senate is a clear case where that sentiment is justified. At the same time, it seemed like the night got better for Democrats as it went on -- a couple of races which seemed to be slipping away (Wisconsin, Connecticut) broke blue late, and some of our biggest victories (Nevada) were also well into the evening. On net, there's no question this was a big night for the good guys. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2AQsRAy

#Election 2018

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mikemortgage · 5 years

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New Brunswick voters rejected carbon taxes, but a new premier might ignore them

A confidence vote scheduled for Friday in the New Brunswick legislature should — finally — determine who will govern the province. The September 24th provincial election produced a legislative stalemate: Premier Brian Gallant’s Liberals won 21 seats and Blaine Higgs’ Progressive Conservatives won 22. With three seats each won by the Green and People’s Alliance parties, Premier Gallant has opted to try and win the confidence of the legislature, likely by making a deal with members of the smaller parties, instead of stepping down. Higgs will try making a deal of his own. We should find out Friday who pulled it off.

But no matter who wins this provincial Game of Thrones, the loser of any backroom deal-making could be taxpayers. Even if the Higgs PCs prevail, New Brunswick families may end up stuck with a CO2-emissions tax they don’t want — and certainly didn’t vote for.

Both the PCs and the Liberals had sensed the unpopularity of a carbon tax and turned against it in their campaigns. The PCs under Higgs saw what happened in Ontario when PC leader Doug Ford was elected to a huge majority on a popular “scrap the carbon tax” platform. Since Gallant had until then been playing rather nice with the federal Liberals on carbon taxes, Higgs went hard against it, making it a key campaign issue and urging voters to “Stop the Carbon Tax” by voting PC.

Terence Corcoran: Ignore Trudeau’s carbon-tax chorus. Nobel economists aren’t backing this plan

Philip Cross: Carbon taxes are just another futile government attempt to change society

Gwyn Morgan: Here’s a far better, easier, more effective idea than carbon taxes

But Gallant’s Liberals also quickly recognized the carbon tax’s rising unpopularity among voters and turned themselves into a pretzel by attempting to both please Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who is demanding provinces tax carbon dioxide emissions, while also shielding consumers from the pain of new tax increases. Their plan? Don’t charge a carbon tax, but spend government money on green projects as if they had. To keep energy affordable, Gallant even promised to freeze electricity rates.

So by election day, both main parties had publicly abandoned the carbon tax. But then the ballots were counted and suddenly support from the small parties was crucial. Wooing the Green party became the focus of the Liberals’ and Tories’ quest to form government. The People’s Alliance, which is opposed to the carbon tax, has already said it could temporarily support a Tory government, so the battle is on to convince the Greens where to put their support.

The Greens have been pushing the idea of a carbon tax for years. And what do you know? Higgs, hoping to make a deal, recently told reporters that his position on carbon taxes happens to be very close to the Green party’s, since they both support tackling industrial CO2 emissions without forcing new direct costs on consumers.

Would the PCs cut a deal with the Greens to stop the Liberals that ends up imposing the carbon tax that Higgs explicitly ran against? Their track record on tax promises is not encouraging. The PCs vowed in the 2010 provincial election, led by David Alward, to not raise taxes. By 2013, they had broken that commitment. Higgs, then finance minister, increased corporate, tobacco and income tax in the 2013 budget by more than $200 million, New Brunswick’s biggest tax hike since 1983.

Now Higgs insists that if he becomes premier he’ll first fight the carbon tax in court and, if the Trudeau government still forces him to charge a carbon tax, he’ll rebate all the revenue back to taxpayers. But that doesn’t give much confidence about his Plan A to fight the tax if he’s already talking about how he’ll respond to defeat. None of the other provincial conservatives fighting against Trudeau’s carbon tax — in Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba — are conceding defeat to the Liberals.

And last week, after Trudeau unveiled the specifics of his plan to impose a carbon tax on non-compliant provinces, sending rebates to households in those provinces, Higgs sounded even more accommodating, saying he could support the Trudeau government’s carbon tax plan if New Brunswick taxpayers “are getting more money than they’re taxed.”

But that scheme won’t work. Firstly, it’s impossible to rebate all taxpayers what they’ve paid into the carbon tax, since everyone pays different amounts based on their lifestyle, which the government can’t accurately track (for instance, Ottawa can’t know if you heat your home with gas, oil or electricity). Second, history shows those revenues are virtually certain to get gobbled up the next time government needs cash. That’s what happened in B.C. when a “revenue neutral” carbon tax inevitably became a new revenue source. And thirdly, while politicians may try rebating taxpayers, there is no discussion about rebates for the small and medium-sized businesses that will also pay the carbon tax.

New Brunswick voters have clearly cast their ballot against any carbon tax. But as politicians vie for power, they may end up getting stuck with a carbon tax anyway. Whoever forms government this week will be laying the groundwork for the next election. If it is Blaine Higgs, voters will remember whether or not he kept his promise to “Stop the Carbon Tax.”

Kevin Lacey is the interim president of Canadians for Affordable Energy.

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2EXQ201 via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

#IFTTT #Financial Post

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theliberaltony · 6 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

To quote the great political philosopher Cyndi Lauper, “Money changes everything.” 1 And nowhere is that proverb more taken to heart than in a federal election, where billions of dollars are raised and spent on the understanding that money is a crucial determinant of whether or not a candidate will win.

This year, the money has been coming in and out of political campaigns at a particularly furious pace. Collectively, U.S. House candidates raised more money by Aug. 27 than House candidates raised during the entire 2014 midterm election cycle, and Senate candidates weren’t far behind. Ad volumes are up 86 percent compared to that previous midterm. Dark money — flowing to political action committees from undisclosed donors — is up 26 percent.

Presumably, all that money is going to buy somebody an election. In reality, though, Lauper isn’t quite right. Political scientists say there’s not a simple one-to-one causality between fundraising and electoral success. Turns out, this market is woefully inefficient. If money is buying elections a lot of candidates are still wildly overpaying for races they were going to win anyway. And all of this has implications for what you (and those big dark money donors) should be doing with your political contributions.

The candidate who spends the most money usually wins

How strong is the association between campaign spending and political success? For House seats, more than 90 percent of candidates who spend the most win. From 2000 through 2016, there was only one election cycle where that wasn’t true: 2010. “In that election, 86 percent of the top spenders won,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan research group that tracks campaign fundraising and spending.

Looked at this way, a campaign is like a dinner party, and fundraising is the plates and silverware. You may work hard. You may get a lot of other things right. But if everyone is eating four-star lasagna off the table with their hands, the party will still be a failure and remembered more for what it didn’t have than what it did.

Overall, advertising ends up being the major expense for campaigns, said Travis Ridout, professor of government and public policy at Washington State University. In 2012 and 2014, the average Senate campaign spent 43 percent of its budget on ads, he told me, and the average House campaign spent 33 percent. Presidential races spend an even bigger chunk of their budgets on advertising. In 2012, for instance, ads made up more than 70 percent of President Obama’s campaign expenses and 55 percent of Mitt Romney’s.

But that doesn’t mean spending caused the win

Money is certainly strongly associated with political success. But, “I think where you have to change your thinking is that money causes winning,” said Richard Lau, professor of political science at Rutgers. “I think it’s more that winning attracts money.”

That’s not to say money is irrelevant to winning, said Adam Bonica, a professor of political science at Stanford who also manages the Database on Ideology, Money in Politics, and Elections. But decades of research suggest that money probably isn’t the deciding factor in who wins a general election, and especially not for incumbents. Most of the research on this was done in the last century, Bonica told me, and it generally found that spending didn’t affect wins for incumbents and that the impact for challengers was unclear. Even the studies that showed spending having the biggest effect, like one that found a more than 6 percent increase in vote share for incumbents, didn’t demonstrate that money causes wins. In fact, Bonica said, those gains from spending likely translate to less of an advantage today, in a time period where voters are more stridently partisan. There are probably fewer and fewer people who are going to vote a split ticket because they liked your ad.

Instead, he and Lau agreed, the strong raw association between raising the most cash and winning probably has more to do with big donors who can tell (based on polls or knowledge of the district or just gut-feeling woo-woo magic) that one candidate is more likely to win — and then they give that person all their money.

Advertising — even negative advertising — isn’t very effective

This is a big reason why money doesn’t buy political success. Turns out, advertising, the main thing campaigns spend their money on, doesn’t work all that well.

This is a really tough thing to study, Ridout said, and it’s only getting harder as media becomes more fragmented and it’s less clear who saw what ad how many times and in what context. But it’s also something people have been studying for a long time. Driven by fears that attack ads might undermine democracy by reducing voter turnout, researchers have been looking at the impacts of negative advertising since the 1990s. And, beginning around the mid-2000s, they began making serious progress on understanding how ads actually affect whether people vote and who they vote for. The picture that’s emerged is … well … let’s just say it’s probably rather disappointing to the campaigns that spend a great deal of time and effort raising all that money to begin with.

Take, for example, the study that is probably the nation’s only truly real-world political advertising field experiment. During Rick Perry’s 2006 re-election campaign for Texas governor, a team of researchers convinced Perry’s campaign to run ads in randomly assigned markets and then tracked the effect of those ads over time using surveys. Advertising did produce a pro-Perry response in the markets that received the treatment. But that bump fizzled fast. Within a week after ads stopped running, it was like no one had ever seen them.

What’s more, Ridout said, ads probably matter least in the races where campaigns spend the most on them — like presidential elections. Partly, that’s because the bigger the election, the more we already know about the people running. It’s not like anyone went into the 2016 presidential race confused about who Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were, for example. Also, partisan politics are just really powerful: In 2016, about 7 in 10 voters identified as either a Democrat or Republican, according to exit polls; 89 percent of Democrats voted for Clinton and 90 percent of Republicans voted for Trump. Even in congressional races, most voters aren’t persuadable. Instead, when there’s a shift from one party to another, it’s usually more about national waves than what is happening in individual districts, Bonica said. So the ad run by your would-be congressperson matters less than the overall, national sense that this year is really going to swing for one party or another.

There are times when money does matter, though

“Money matters a great deal in elections,” Bonica said. It’s just that, he believes, when scientists go looking for its impacts, they tend to look in the wrong places. If you focus on general elections, he said, your view is going to be obscured by the fact that 80 to 90 percent of congressional races have outcomes that are effectively predetermined by the district’s partisan makeup — and the people that win those elections are still given (and then must spend) ridiculous sums of money because, again, big donors like to curry favor with candidates they know are a sure thing.

In the 2016 campaign for Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, for example, House Speaker Paul Ryan plunked down $13 million winning a race against a guy who spent $16,000. Across the country that same year, 129 members of Congress were elected in races where they spent hundreds of thousands, even millions, of dollars — and their opponents reported no spending at all. It wasn’t the cash that won the election. Instead, challengers likely chose to not invest much money because they already knew they would lose.

But in 2017, Bonica published a study that found, unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races. That matches up with other research suggesting that advertising can have a serious effect on how people vote if the candidate buying the ads is not already well-known and if the election at hand is less predetermined along partisan lines.

Basically, said Darrell West, vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, advertising is useful for making voters aware that a candidate or an issue exists at all. Once you’ve established that you’re real and that enough people are paying attention to you to give you a decent chunk of money, you reach a point of diminishing returns (i.e., Paul Ryan did not have to spend $13 million to earn his seat). But a congressperson running in a close race, with no incumbent — or someone running for small-potatoes local offices that voters often just skip on the ballot — is probably getting a lot more bang for their buck.

Another example of where money might matter: Determining who is capable of running for elected office to begin with. Ongoing research from Alexander Fouirnaies, professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, suggests that, as it becomes normal for campaigns to spend higher and higher amounts, fewer people run and more of those who do are independently wealthy. In other words, the arms race of unnecessary campaign spending could help to enshrine power among the well-known and privileged.

“That may be the biggest effect of money in politics,” West wrote to me in an email.

So you probably missed the window to have your donation really affect this election

Look, donating to congressional and presidential campaigns is not, across the board, a great investment. Fortune magazine told rich people as much back in 2014, pointing to big donors like billionaire Tom Steyer — who poured $50 million into TV ads for various candidates and got less than half of them elected. If big donors wanted their dollars to actually affect the outcome of elections, Forbes wrote, they should focus spending on issue referendums, small races and long-term strategies (making sure state-level redistricting ensures highly predictable partisan elections at the national level, say).

And researchers have similar advice for “petite” donors. The best time to donate is early on in the primary, Bonica said, when out-of-the-gate boosts in fundraising can play a big, causal role in deciding who makes it to the general election. At this point in the cycle, not only are most general election races in the hands of partisan district power, but ads start to be less and less effective. If the Rick Perry study made you think it’s best to advertise the week before an election — well, at that point, pretty much everybody has made up their minds, and studies show ads don’t have much effect at all.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Maggie Koerth-Baker

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newstfionline · 6 years

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Trump’s ambitious agenda: 7 things to watch in 2018

David Jackson and Deirdre Shesgreen, USA Today, Jan. 2, 2018

Washington: US President Donald Trump may have big policy plans for 2018, but political distractions are likely to shadow prospects of big legislative achievements.

White House officials say Trump wants to rein in the threat from North Korea and list four top domestic priorities on his 2018 agenda: Repealing and replacing President Obama’s 2010 health care law, welfare reform, immigration, and a new infrastructure plan.

Yet the Republican-controlled Congress has been struggling to pass some of Trump’s major priorities since his election--and their challenges will only increase in 2018. The GOP’s Senate bare majority will shrink when Alabama’s newly elected senator, Democrat Doug Jones, is sworn in.

In January, lawmakers will have to confront a thicket of unfinished business. In their rush to get home for the holidays, the GOP-led Congress passed a short-term spending bill that expires on January 19.

Trump and GOP leaders will have to negotiate a longer-term spending deal before then to avert a government shutdown, and they will likely need Democratic support for that to pass. Other sticky issues on the January agenda include legislation aimed at stabilising the Obamacare individual insurance markets and reauthorising the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a contentious anti-terrorism law that gives law enforcement sweeping spy powers.

What’s more, lawmakers will be consumed with their own 2018 mid-term elections--and the increasingly contentious Russia investigations.

“As everybody in Washington knows, a midterm election year is a year when most legislation comes to a standstill,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.

“Members of Congress are going to be obsessed with winning re-election,” Cohen said, and will be more eager to campaign at home than be in Washington casting tough votes.

Here are seven key issues that Trump and Congress will confront:

North Korea: Trump will lobby China--and other countries--to twist the economic screws on North Korea, in the hopes of forcing that rogue nation to give up their nuclear weapons program.

Trump travelled to Asia to press that issue in November and declared North Korea a state sponsor of terror. Yet North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has more or less thumbed his nose at the effort, recently setting off another ballistic missile test, and continued threatening the US and its allies.

As 2018 approaches, Trump and his advisers hope to settle the dispute diplomatically, but they have not ruled out the possibility of a military strike.

Infrastructure: In his 2018 budget proposal, Trump sought $US200 billion over 10 years to spend on infrastructure, leveraging private-sector spending to focus federal dollars on “transformative” projects seen as priorities at both the federal and regional level.

That went nowhere in 2017, as Trump and the GOP-led Congress focused instead on trying to repeal Obamacare and enacting tax cuts. But the President plans to rev up that push early next year, with the hope that Democrats will cooperate.

Infrastructure spending is generally a bipartisan issue, and few dispute the need to improve the nation’s highway and bridges. But Trump and Democrats have already outlined competing plans, and conservatives are likely to oppose any legislation that calls for massive new spending.

So the fate of that will likely depend on Trump’s willingness to cut a deal with Democrats--and vice versa--heading into a heated election year.

Healthcare: Trump insists he has not given up on his goal of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, former president Obama’s health reform law, even though Republicans in Congress could not muster enough votes to deliver on that long-promised goal this year.

After Congress passed a massive tax bill in December that included measures to repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, Trump declared the law was “essentially” repealed and lawmakers would work together to find a replacement. (However, the law is barely touched, though the requirement that nearly everyone have insurance or pay a penalty at tax time was repealed effective in 2019.)

Overhauling Obamacare will only get more complicated in 2018, as Republicans will have just 51 seats in the Senate. And the GOP’s previous efforts to nix it sparked intense anger among voters who wanted to keep the coverage--something lawmakers may not want to reignite when many of them will be on the ballot.

Immigration: Congress has a March deadline to decide the fate of the so-called Dreamers, the approximately 700,000 immigrants brought to the US illegally when they were children. Trump nixed an Obama-era program that shielded the Dreamers from deportation, but he also said Congress should figure out a legislative fix so the young people aren’t sent back to countries they did not grow up in.

Critics have called the Obama protections--known as DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals--a form of “amnesty” and suggested those young immigrants have taken jobs from Americans. But there’s bipartisan support in Congress and in the public to grant the Dreamers legal status and even a path to citizenship.

Whether Trump--who campaigned on a hardline anti-immigrant platform--will sign such a bill is unclear. He has sent mixed signals on the issue, and he’s also called for new restrictions on refugees and others seeking entry into the United States.

After the December 12 arrest of a man who tried to set off a bomb in a New York commuter tunnel, Trump called for the end of “chain migration” and the diversity visa lottery programs. Those issues may again come up this year.

Welfare reform: In announcing a new major legislative priority following the tax cut bill, Trump said welfare reform was “desperately needed in our country”.

A Trump budget proposal last year called for adding work requirements to some government programs and tightening eligibility requirements for low-income tax credits.

“We want to get our people off of welfare and back to work,” Trump said. “So important. It’s out of control. It’s out of control.”

Democrats say welfare reforms instituted two decades ago are working and that Trump wants to punch major holes in the social safety net.

Iran: Trump announced in October he would no longer certify that Iran is in compliance with an Obama-era deal, in which Tehran pledged to give up the means to make nuclear weapons while the US and allies ease economic sanctions. Instead, Trump called on Congress to improve the agreement, and the fate of the Iran nuclear deal is likely to come to a head in 2018.

Supporters of the agreement fear Iran will walk away from the deal and pursue nuclear weapons anyway, triggering a dangerous arms race in the Middle East. Trump is up against his own side on this issue, with Republican Senator Bob Corker, the current chairman of the Senate’s Committee on Foreign Relations, keen to preserve the deal.

The debt limit: The US Treasury will run out of money to pay its bills sometime in the northern spring--unless Congress and the President agree on legislation to raise the nation’s debt limit. The Treasury Department lost its authority to borrow any new money to pay the government’s obligations on December 9.

Officials are currently taking “extraordinary measures” to keep from defaulting on the government’s current obligations, including Medicare benefits and the interest on the national debt. But the agency will run out of those accounting gimmicks in late March or early April, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office.

That could lead to a round of partisan fiscal brinksmanship--with threats of defaulting on the government’s debts. Conservatives have generally opposed increasing the nation’s borrowing authority, so Trump will likely have to negotiate with Democrats to come to an agreement. Three Senate Democrats propose scrapping debt ceiling.

#Trump #Trump key issues #Congressional issues #US Congress

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djgblogger-blog · 6 years

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The GOP doesn't care if you like their tax plan. Here's why

http://bit.ly/2jbdB8i

Protesters shout their disapproval of the Republican tax bill on Nov. 28, 2017. AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Congressional Republicans’ collective sigh of relief after passing tax legislation may seem confusing. Won’t voters hold them accountable in 2018 for passing such an historically unpopular bill? The answer is “no,” for several reasons.

First, the bill’s unpopularity may be somewhat overstated. A lot of the disapproval expressed in surveys is more about the bill’s sponsors than about the bill itself. In these polarized times, almost anything carrying the president’s endorsement is going to be a non-starter for more than half the population. If Trump were to designate ice cream the official White House dessert tonight, at least a third of us would stop “screaming for it” tomorrow.

This is not to say that this legislation should be more popular. But let’s face it, efforts to win over Blue America with fewer corporate tax cuts, fewer cuts for wealthy individuals, or fewer changes to popular tax breaks would have probably fallen on deaf ears in this environment.

Placating the base

More importantly, as University of Glasgow political scientist Christopher Jan Carman and I have found, Republicans in Congress simply don’t care as much about public opinion as Democrats do. The ideological convergence between voters and legislators is more than three times greater among Democratic legislators than among Republicans.

And there is good reason for this: Republican voters don’t really care either. Across several years of data, we found that Republican voters are between 20 and 30 points less likely than their Democratic counterparts to agree that elected representatives should “try their hardest to give the people what they want.”

Why? Many Republicans – voters and lawmakers alike – simply cherish their principles more than they do the preferences of a largely capricious and inattentive public. And nothing is more central to Republican orthodoxy than tax cuts for the wealthy. If they can’t cut taxes when they have control of the presidency and both houses of Congress, what do they have to live for? To be sure, if Republican lawmakers hadn’t gotten this done now, while they had the chance, they could have expected donors to ignore their calls next year.

But this goes well beyond fundraising. The first elections members of Congress need to worry about next year are the primaries. If they were to have nothing to show for their two years in power – which, until now, they arguably didn’t – they could have expected to face serious primary challenges. Make no mistake, everyone in the GOP remembers what happened to former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014, not to mention Dick Lugar, Mike Castle and Bob Bennett before him.

Republicans also know that their collective fate in 2018 depends on voter turnout. Unlike presidential years, when heavy mobilization efforts, media focus and social pressure leads most voters who are even remotely interested in politics to go to the polls, midterms are much lower profile affairs. Almost always, the party that controls the presidency loses seats, because dissatisfied voters are more motivated seek revenge at the ballot box. And that tendency may be heightened in 2018, if recent rallies or elections are any indication. But by slashing taxes and destroying Obamacare in one-fell swoop, Republicans might motivate their base enough to at least contain their losses.

But isn’t there plenty in the new law to motivate Democrats as well? Certainly: if reduced deductions on mortgage interest, charitable deductions, state/local taxes, graduate students’ tuition waivers, teacher supplies and so on don’t get the Democrats’ backs up, the repeal of Obamacare’s individual mandate surely will. But here’s the deal: there are plenty of other things motivating The Resistance right now, so the Left was going to turn out in 2018 regardless. If the GOP hadn’t done something to counter that tide, they may have faced an electoral tsunami.

Claiming credit

But this is not just about playing defense.

Long-term policy consequences aside, the GOP had a lot to gain, politically, by passing this bill. The economy has been gaining steam over the past year, and while this tax bill probably won’t produce the growth that its proponents claim it will, it probably won’t reverse the trend either, at least not in the short term.

If GDP growth is still humming along in two years, Republicans will credit this legislation. And if history is any guide, Trump will be well positioned for reelection —- despite all the reasons why Democrats may find that prospect mind-blowing.

Yes, growth will have preceded the cuts. Yes, the causal relationship between cuts and growth is tenuous anyway. And yes, the cuts will swell the deficit and expand inequality. But as we all surely know by now, such facts don’t really matter all that much anymore, and maybe they never did. After all, Republicans have never wavered from their insistence that the Reagan tax cuts of 1981 ushered in strong growth later that decade. Such faith contributed to big GOP victories in 1984 and 1988, and continues to inform Reagan nostalgia on the Right.

And if Trump wins reelection, everything else that we associate with his candidacy and his presidency may be validated and copied by future politicians, on both sides, as “the way to win” – leaving a political legacy that may far outlast the consequences of this tax bill.

David C. Barker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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whimsicallyenchantedrose · 4 years

Text

New Year, New Town

Pairing: Captain Swan

Rating: F for fluffy feels

Word Count: around 2k

Summary: Taking place sometime not long before grown up Henry calls for Hook, Regina and Emma to come to his aid in the alternate Enchanted Forest in 7x2, the residents of Storybrooke are living out their Happy Beginnings. With New Years approaching, Regina and Snow decide it’s time for a new town wide initiative. Emma and Killian use the occasion to make a special announcement of their own.

Happy New Year (almost) everyone! 2019 was kind of a rough year for me, so I’m hoping 2020 is a turning point. Here’s to us all having our best year--and best decade--yet! Shout out to @kmomof4, @searchingwardrobes @snowbellewells and @laschatzi for giving me ideas for this fic!

“Good morning, Beautiful. How was your night?” Killian crooned softly as he leaned down to kiss Emma’s cheek, his hand softly caressing her shoulder.

Emma smiled as she slowly opened her eyes and turned over to meet her husband’s adoring gaze. She’d introduced him to the song a few months ago, and ever since then, he’d woken her up to it nearly every morning.

They’d been married for five years now, and yet Killian could still make her stomach swoop like a teenager with her first crush. It should be illegal for someone to be so romantic.

Emma sat up, ran a hand through her riotous curls, and then pulled Killian down for a long, slow kiss. Life was good. Life was really good.

Killian pulled away with a reluctant groan. “I’ll never complain about a good morning greeting like that, my love, but if we continue on in this manner, we’ll never make the city council meeting on time.”

Emma groaned. “You sure we can’t just skip it? It’s New Year’s Eve; I’d much rather just stay here in bed with you.”

“Likewise darling,” Killian said with one more smacking kiss to her lips before he threw back the covers and got to his feet, “but you know neither Regina nor your mother would ever let us get away with that given their New Year, New Town initiative.”

Emma groaned again. “Oh yeah, that. Can’t wait”

About a month ago, just after Thanksgiving, Regina and Snow had called a special town council meeting.

“We’ve been Big Bad free for five years now,” Regain began without preamble, staring down each of the members of the council, “and you’d think that would mean our town would be nearly perfect, by now, but that is not the case. I’ve still had to deal with the same petty squabbles as I’ve always had to, and I think it’s high time we do something about it.”

“Just what kind of squabbles we talking about ‘your majesty’?” Leroy asked, scowling fiercely

“Well, for one thing, I think we would all appreciate it if you’d lay off the threats of a lawsuit everytime someone eats the last of Granny’s bacon before you get there.”

“I have always tried to get as much bacon as I possibly could, and my brothers all know it”, Leroy argued. “They double cross me at the diner counter, they know what to expect.”

Regina rolled her eyes and looked on the point of retorting back, which Snow quickly stepped in.

“The point is not to point fingers at any one person,” she said. “The point is that I think we all have things about ourselves that we could change in order to become the best versions of ourselves.”

“So, Lady Snow, what particularly are you and the queen proposing?” Killian asked.

“As you all well know, the holiday season is just now ramping up, and before you know it, it will be Christmas and then New Years,” Snow explained. “Regina and I were talking over tea one day, and we had a thought. New Years is the time for resolutions. What if we--all of us--the whole town--made new year’s resolutions to make our town a better, friendlier town?”

“We’ll call it the ‘New Year, New Town’ initiative,” Regina said in her typical no nonsense tone. “It will, of course be compulsory for all residents of Storybrooke.”

There was a general groan among the council as everyone began talking at once. Regina banged her gavel, finally restoring quiet to the council room.

“While I personally don’t think New Year’s resolutions are a bad thing,” Archie said, “I do have questions about how it would work practically, though. Surely you can see that forcing the town to make New Year’s resolutions is a bit high-handed, even for you.”

“Not happening, Sister,” Leroy tossed in.

“For once, I have to agree with the dwarf,” Killian tossed in. “No bloody way in Hades you will get the town--or even most on this committee--to go along with such an authoritarian scheme.”

Regina sighed in exasperation. “Listen Captain Guyliner…”

Snow stepped in again before things could further devolve. “Okay, maybe we can’t make it compulsory, but I was thinking, we could have incentives. You know, get pledges from various businesses for prizes for anyone who makes and keeps their resolutions until the end of the year. Make it a fun, citywide competition. That sort of thing.”

After a fair bit more debate, the council finally voted six to five--with Regina, Snow, David, Archie, Whale and Marco voting aye and Zelena, Emma, Killian, Leroy and Granny voting nay--to implement the initiative. Emma had been on the fence about the whole thing, but what finally tipped her to the “nay” side, was Regina’s final decree.

“There is one thing I must insist upon,” Regina said. “If we can’t force the entire town to comply with the initiative, we must at least stand in solidarity in our efforts to encourage full participation. To that end, I move that the initiative be compulsory for the members of the council.”

Another groan around the room.

“What’s stopping everyone from just making self-serving resolutions?” Whale asked.

“Well….” Snow began slowly. “Now just hear me out!”

No statement that started like that could ever end well.

“Regina and I discussed that, and we came up with a plan that we think is fair for everyone,” she said. “We, the council, have a say in each other’s resolutions. Everyone is free to submit resolution ideas for each other, and then on New Year’s Eve, we hold a vote to determine what each person will focus on next year.”

That suggestion got more than a little pushback, but in the end, it was reluctantly adopted.

And so here they were, New Year’s Eve morning, making their way to town hall to decide upon and commit to their resolutions for the coming year.

Emma took a deep, calming breath, as she and Killian took their seats at the council table. Killian took her hand and gave it a gentle squeeze offering her his support and strength. She couldn’t care less what the council had decided for her resolution; the whole thing was ridiculous anyway. What did have her nervous and excited and a little freaked out was the plan she and Killian had come up with just before Christmas when they learned the news. Fact was, it was a big deal, a really, really big deal.

Regina, dressed in her customary power suit, banged her gavel against the table to quiet the gathered council and call the meeting to order.

“Okay, as it’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m sure we all have better places to be, let’s go ahead and get to it,” she said.

“Here’s how it will work,” Snow said eagerly. “Everyone will vote on the proposed resolutions via secret ballot. The ballots will be tabulated, and then each one of you will be given an envelope with the list of suggested resolutions the council proposed. The one picked for you will be listed at the top in red.”

“And if we refuse to go along with that one?” Leroy asked, crossing his arms and scowling fiercely.

“We aren’t unreasonable,” Snow said in answer. “If you can’t go along with your top choice, you have the option to choose one of the other selections on your list.”

Voting and tabulation were rather quick affairs, and within fifteen minutes the results were in.

“Just to get you all to stop bitching about this and see that it’s not that big of a deal, I’ll go first,” Regina said, taking her own envelope. Taking her letter opener, she neatly slit the top of the envelope and pulled the single sheet of paper free. Taking a moment to read through it, Regina scoffed. “‘Cut back on snarkiness and insulting nicknames’? Really? I don’t--”

“Oh yes you do, your majesty,” Killian said. “I’ve lost count of the number of times you’ve called me some variation of ‘Handless Wonder’ or ‘Captain Guyliner’.”

“Oh, did I hurt your little feelings?” Regina snapped.

“Aaaannd there’s the snark,” Emma commented.

“Fine!” Regina said, “just to prove to all of you that I’m serious about making this initiative work, I’ll accept your stupid resolution.”

With the first resolution reveal out of the way, the rest went rather smoothly. Snow resolved to refrain from revealing secrets (although Emma personally preferred the resolution Killian had submitted for her mom: Call before coming over to your daughter and son-in-law’s house). David resolved to make time for his mates now that his farm was taking up so much of his time. Zelena resolved to cut out envy from her life. Leroy resolved to stop running through the town yelling “terrible news!” about anything less than a full blown emergency. Whale resolved to stop drinking while on duty. Archie resolved to actually get a medical degree not given to him from a curse. Granny resolved to replace the uncomfortable matresses in her inn. And Marco resolved to take classes to bring his woodworking business into the twenty-first century.

Finally, it was down to just Emma and Killian. The moment of truth.

Emma stood up, and without even looking at what was written on her envelope said, “I resolve to be the best mother I can possibly be and to learn all I can about how to care for a newborn.”

She was met with blank, confused stares as she sat down and Killian rose to make his announcement.

“And I’d like to address my resolution directly to Dave,” he said with a cheeky grin. “Mate, my resolution for next year is to not get your daughter pregnant….again.”

For a moment the blank stares continued until suddenly Snow gasped. “Emma….Killian? Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

Emma stood, and laced her fingers with Killian’s as her smile bloomed and a tear fell from the corner of her eye. “If you think we’re saying you’re about to be a grandma again, then yes. We found out on Christmas Eve. It finally happened! I’m pregnant!”

Later that night, after the ball dropped and the new year came in amid fireworks and cheers, Emma settled in bed in Killian’s embrace.

“How are you feeling, love?” he asked, holding her to him and nuzzling her neck. “Is the little one causing any distress?”

“At the moment all is well,” Emma said. “Now in the morning when the nausea hits like a ton of bricks I might have a different answer, but for right now, everything feels just about perfect.”

Killian placed his hand on her belly and rubbed gently, his attempt, she knew, to caress their growing child. “Something tells me this new year is going to be our best one yet.”

“Something tells me the same thing, babe,” Emma said.

They fell silent for another moment before Emma broke the silence with a chuckle. “How long do you think it will take for the council to realize we totally blew off their resolutions for us?”

#cs ff #cs new years ff #ouat happy beginnings #new years resolutions #my fanfiction

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