FondrenRoad

We used to, and still should, give U visas for things like this.

This. It has only been 4 years since "Mandate bitches! Dems can get fucked. We ain't listening to shit!" Dems really need to stop falling for this shit and get things done. If they need to negotiate with anyone, it should be those in their own party that have some issues with whatever they are trying to pass. And maybe, every now and then include someone like a Romney. No terrorists at all, and no concerned but nonetheless Trump blowers.

The job market is different. Canada doesn't have 100s of thousands of employers who are not only willing to turn a blind eye to a lack of paperwork, but are actively looking for those with no paperwork. Go try to work in a kitchen in Toronto. Undocumented immigrants come here because there are jobs for them. There aren't jobs for them in Canada. The solution to illegal immigration was always simple. Come down hard on employers and people will quit coming and/or staying. You don't need to put kids in cages or even enforce the labor side of the immigration equation at all. That being said, we clearly have a need for people to fill those jobs and we don't have Americans that want to do them. Our work visa process should reflect what our actual workforce needs. And it needs a lot of low end labor.

Wait, is a finger in the ass a bad thing?

Canada has no wall. Plenty of visa overstays and undocumented people there. They do remove them when discovered, but don't have a policy of using a gestapo to round them up. And when they do arrest them, they dont separate families and they treat them humanely. This is largely what the left wants. No wake up call needed. Also, plenty, if not most, legal immigrants to Canada had some desire to migrate to the USA but weren't eligible or lacked the ability to cut through the red tape. So their legal immigration system is also better structured than ours. Most of our problems are cultural. Our culture is fucked up. We celebrate punishment of others for their mistakes whether intentional or unintentional. Prisoners deserve to get raped by other prisoners. Unlawful immigrants deserve to be in cages. Poor people deserve to die without healthcare. We could have the Running Man gameshow and it would get double the ratings of the super bowl.

Agree. This is pretty much the only tax the federal government does right. Clearly delineated taxes work. They still managed to thieve some of it away for other bullshit even with that though. But also agree with Penelope. All money paid to FICA should be deductible from income for general FIT purposes.

You have to also avoid the recalcitrant federal government. If my goal is to forcibly make wealthy Americans in wealthy states provide services for impoverished Americans in other states, federal taxes is the worst way to get the money there. Less than a fraction of a penny on each federal tax dollar makes its way there. One can say the GOP got their wish when it comes to national governance. They made the government shitty so they can say "we were right, look how shitty it is." You can say the GOP sucks for doing that and be 100% right, but that doesn't change the fact that the federal government is shitty and will likely continue to be shitty as long as the Senate is structured for minority rule. High wealth states would be better off forming an NGO or multi state authority that distributes excess tax revenue to poor state residents and bypass the federal government entirely.

Low corporate taxes encourage profit extraction rather than reinvestment. Business expenses are deductible. The tax rate is largely irrelevant when deciding to hire someone new. However, a higher rate will have accountants figuring out how to keep more money in the business. And much of that will cause legitimate growth rather than buying a portrait of the company President for the Mar a Lago bathroom. The pass through 20% deduction is even worse for job growth. And that is also exacerbated by the fact that most business owners probably didn't expect the gravy to flow forever so chose extraction and leanness over hiring. I'm all about everyone paying their fair share of taxes. What needs to be overhauled is the top down (fed to local) tax structure. It needs to be local to fed. Taxes from wealthier areas can and should cover the shortfall in poorer areas. However, this redistribution should cover the services that local taxes normally provide. It should not cover foreign wars and/or things that provide zero benefit to these poorer areas. But the larger problem is that the GOP simply isn't a good steward of the government when it has power. It is entirely anti-government. So how and why should taxpayers fund an anti-government government? Look, I support most of AOC's platform. I voted for her. But at the end of the day, we are going to throw more money in a federal black hole while our local infrastructure crumbles because she doesn't have the power to implement anything at all on a national scale. Nobody does. So we will just be increasing our military funding and corporate handouts while our small cities still die and bridges collapse in our large cities. And this is what you seem to support. Overall, the problem is that we aren't really a nation now. We are a grouping of independent states that pays a significant tithe to a king. Maybe we never were really a nation, but we at least had government that tried to make us one.

The low hanging fruit you are missing is repealing the corporate tax cuts that were part of the same bill and larger than the personal income tax cuts. We are lucky that Trump didn't get that 2020 payroll tax IOU bill he wanted. That would have been a far bigger clusterfuck to undo. The thing about asking to cut local taxes is that local taxes actually pay for things. Federal taxes don't. Property values are high in Manhattan due to high demand. Demand is high because the city usually has adequate funding for services, police, schools, transit, and other infrastructure. Part of maintaining a safe desirable place also includes keeping poor people sheltered and fed. All these things have costs. The federal government takes more money than state and local government and provides wars that nobody wants and corporate handouts. With advertised SALT deductions, perhaps small cities in America would implement higher local taxes in order to stop their decay. Public amenities and infrastructure go a long way.

Yep. FDR's play nice letter to Hitler in 1938 didn't work. In 1941, he switched to attack dog. But in reality, FDR was never an attack dog. He was fighting fire with fire. Same thing Truman did after the war. Same thing AOC is doing as well. You can't have "unity" with evil. You can only work to remove evil and then try to have "unity" with what is left. Hitler killed himself, but the Allies didn't work with Donitz either. They should have hanged him, but they at least threw him in jail. They worked with Adenauer. But you can't compare Trump and Cruz with Hitler, they say. Well, Hitler definitely did worse things overall than Trump and Cruz. But Trump and Cruz attempted to have elected officials murdered and end our democracy. Had they been successful, we may still have the name USA, but the Constitution would have become toilet paper. Hitler may have wanted to do that to America, but he didn't live long enough to try. What Trump and Cruz did to America is worse than what the Nazis did to America.

SS and Medicare have their own separate taxes. Raise or adjust them accordingly. No means testing. Raise it even more instead. I'm not even talking about those taxes. I'm talking about federal income tax. Defense eats up nearly all of it. Outside of clearly delineated taxes/services like Medicare and SS, I wouldn't let the federal government collect taxes at all anymore. If we want accountability, there should be a defense tax, regulatory tax, and a small admin tax. That's it. All delineated. If they want more for something, then they need to create a specific tax for it. This is largely why SS and Medicare still exist even as they run into structural issues. If they had been funded by a general tax increase, they would have already been completely abolished. But as they are, they aren't subject to the whims of the yo-yo. This is also why Medicare for all is a more workable long term plan than any of the other universal healthcare solutions.

Come on now. Be realistic. You didn't only pay for F-35's. You also paid for several Trump vacations, several marked up Mar a Lago room packages for the secret service, and a secret service shitter next door to Ivanka's. And I'd also limit that wasteful spending entirely. When you run for President, you do so knowing you will live in the White House. You can have a reasonable vacation, but outside of that, if you want to live elsewhere or travel leisurely, you should be on the hook for all the security bills.

NIH and NOAA are rounding errors when it comes to federal spending and I'd hardly call a tax credit a service. The federal government yo-yo is also damaging to those who desire long term stability. The tax cuts were designed specifically to punish blue state residents and also hinder revenue generation in those same states to prevent them from having the budget to provide gap services. NYC provides pre-K for all, school lunch for all, guaranteed shelter, and numerous other services. I would love for these to be nationwide efforts, but we don't live in that nation. We live in a nation that wants to force NYC into canceling these programs. Now maybe Biden shores this up briefly, but we will still be at the mercy of the yo-yo. Id rather just pay an increased NY tax and have steady services. Other states can do whatever they want. Keep SS and Medicare. Expand them even. Have a small tax for admin and be done with it. If we need to have a war, Congress can come hat in hand to the states to fund it.

I would normally agree, but federal taxes provide almost no services for anyone, much less the impoverished. Progressive taxation needs to provide common and progressive services. It isnt intended to be a money bonfire. The rich should pay more, but they should actually be paying for something and not paying just to pay.

Our federalist system, along with our anti-government party, have decided that state and local governments or private enterprise should provide nearly all services that are ordinarily government provided in other countries. Since this is the case, then state/local governments and/or service-providing pseudo government entities need to be able to collect before the IRS collects. I'll even take it a step further. You should be able to deduct every cent of state/local/property/sales tax before even calculating your federally taxable income. Only clearly demarcated items like Medicare and Social Security should come before local taxes. The GOP is halfway to its endgame. They have made federal spending useless to the people. Now its time to reduce that spending along with revenue collection. States rights. And DC residents shouldn't have to pay federal taxes at all.

I briefly considered jumping in yesterday, but that bag seems too hot to handle.

Hate to break it to you. Brownwood has 20 thousand people. You ain't rural.

Things didn't just get better in Germany by themselves. 20 percent of the population was killed and half of Germany was burned to the ground. So far, we have had a handful of deaths and some broken windows. Gonna get a whole lot worse before it gets better.

Thats mesmerizing. Would love to be a spoke in that wheel. Six months stuck immobilized with a spinal injury afterward would be worth it.

These are all great but I'm not sure an aggie would understand. The factory farmers think the price of sheep is gonna go down so they borrow a bunch of sheep from others and "sell" them back at the current price, and pay interest until they "buy" the sheep later at what they hope will be a lower price. Regular ags on Texags don't like factory farmers and they don't want the sheep who share their beds to lose value, so they buy more sheep and drive up the price to screw the factory farmers. Eventually, the factory farmers can't afford the margin interest and are forced to "buy" at a loss.

Personally, I think it should be scaled based on cost of living. We aren't a one size fits all nation. A country store with 5 employees can't really afford a minimum $12,000 in labor costs a month. More with benefits. Plus if rent is $300 or $400 a month in that town, those employees are getting way more purchasing power parity than someone making the same in a city where rents are 3 or 4 times higher. Conservatives are full of shit when they say high minimum wages cause issues in expensive urban areas. Those areas have plenty of buffer to spread the wealth. However, a $15 min wage would absolutely cause issues in most small towns.

This is true and we are at the end game for that where people are voting R no matter who the candidate is. I see a bunch of good policy suggestions on this thread, but the truth is policy doesn't matter as a platform. Trump offered zero policies. Cruz is practically the same. If a Dem really wants to win right now, they should run as an R, run nothing but attack ads against the incumbent, make their website vague, shoot a gun, wear a cowboy hat, and ride a horse. Really, as an R, they don't even need to do that. They can be from NY or Canada, wear a poorly fitted suit, and pretend to be rich. Once elected, they can vote however they want to, and even vote to ban guns or make abortion mandatory. They can still win reelection by going back to the same campaign model no matter what they do in Congress. If they grease the right palms, they can even stop PACs from attacking them in the R primary. Even the allegedly pro-gun R PACs don't really give a shit about guns. Give them what they want and they won't rile up the pro-gun masses. To an extent, the opposite is true in blue areas, but you see it more from the old guard than the new guard. Young progressives are policy driven.

Texas is visual. Ann Richards was photographed shooting guns and riding motorcycles. Its why GOP candidates often focus on wearing cowboy hats or wearing dude ranch costumes that they think cowboys wear. Unlike GOP candidates, a Dem is going to need to be authentic like Ann was. That's the main difference. All a successful Dem candidate needs to do is get photographed while hunting, and stay tight lipped on gun control and abortion. They can actually be pretty liberal or flexible on other topics. The GOP candidates won't have any policy ideas at all and will attack based on authenticity, guns, and abortion. If you can shore up your defenses there, you can win.

This. I think adults often forget what it's like to be a kid. Its their house. They are usually there more than their parents, and are going to gain access to anything they want to gain access to. Ultimately, education is better than restriction, but until they are old enough to really understand, I personally wouldn't have any guns at home. But you have to know your kids as well. I never messed with my moms gun even though I knew exactly where it was even when she moved it and her hiding spots were crap. On the flip side, my cousin got expelled from elementary school for a while for taking my uncle's gun there. His was stored in a combo safe. Every one of us knew the combo. My uncle didn't know we knew until he went to pick my cousin up at school that day. That said, a biometric safe will work for all but the most enterprising of kids. Overall, there isn't a need for a ban. There need to be stronger checks on purchases, mandatory safety classes, and liability for gunowners who fail to secure their guns properly. If someone steals a gun from your safe, you did the best you could do. If they steal it from the back of your pickup, you should be looking at time if they commit a crime with it.

Without a fax, where am I going to learn about vacation deals and stock tips?