The city's Emergency Operations Center is open and ready to go for today's storm pic.twitter.com/iNbupTdd9c
— City of Worcester (@TweetWorcester) March 14, 2017
Everybody picks on poor Wistah (local pronunciation). The city’s in a geographical anomaly where it tends to pick up more snow than its neighbors (much less the local coastal elites), so the local TV weathercasters always prep some ‘blasted hills of Worcester’ B-roll for every weather event.
Our house is just outside Rte 128 (the off ramp runs behind our neighbor’s yard), which is a dependable meteorological dividing line (as is the second ‘ring’ outside Rte 495). But this time, for once, we got rather less than some of the communities between us and Boston proper — “only” about 8 inches, from my unscientific tally. It was eight nasty, sludge-based, top-crusted heavy inches, though. I cleared the front steps and walkway, but there’s no way we could break through the waist-high ice berm at the road edge… if the Spousal Unit’s plow guy doesn’t show up as promised this morning, we’re not gonna be leaving the house.
Apart from digging out — or mocking us diggers, if you weren’t in Stella range — what’s on the agenda for the day?
***********
Speaking of niche enthusiasms… several BJ commentors enjoyed rescue terrier Ollie’s agility adventure at Crufts (Britain’s national show, proudly the ‘biggest dog show in the world’). Ollie’s antics are indeed a mood-lifter, but what caught my eye was the flyball competition, a sport that has certainly come a long way in the quarter-century since I enjoyed watching my Midwestern dog-loving friends compete…
Here’s the (full, 22min) 2017 finals, if you’ve got extra time on your hands. A lurcher is a cross between a sighthound and a ‘working breed’ — usually a border collie or a terrier, these days. You might think that purebred sighthounds (whippets, greyhounds, basenjis) would have an unbeatable advantage at flyball, but sighthounds are notorious divas… they love to run, but not necessarily to retrieve. (Sighthound fanciers will tell you their dogs were bred to run down prey well ahead of their human partners, and it was more profitable to have a dog that would bring down the bunny/deer/mountain goat and then lose interest while the human caught up to do the retrieving part.)
Speed, as the announcers keep mentioning, is the key factor in these top-rank races… but I can tell you from my days observing the sport, the foundation of a winning team is finding “high-intensity” dogs with the drive to gettheballgettheballgettheball and then bring it back, not just once but dozens of times a day, hundreds of days in a row. You’ll notice in the embedded video that one of those very speedy lurchers spits out the ball once he’s just barely past the finish line — in the 2017 race, the same dog (IIRC), despite his record-breaking speed, ‘faults’ his run by dropping the ball too soon and cheats his team of the win. That’s why there are so many border collies and collie-crosses on these teams; their prey drive is as intense as a sighthound’s, and while they may not be quite as fast, they’re less likely to flake out at a crucial moment.
Just in case you’re curious… yes, there is a North American Flyball Association, and probably a group that trains in your area. It’s open to dogs of any and all breeds, and (unlike, say, dog agility) doesn’t require the humans involved to be in good physical shape — teenagers and creaky old people with fit dogs can compete on equal terms.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
Philly suburbs here. Yeah, I would rather have had straight-up snow than the “wintry mix” we got, which both (a) reduced the overall depth so the visuals were less impressive (if I’m going to be snowed in, I want it to look like the Yukon) and (b) gave me ice on top of snow on top of slush, which was back-breaking. Got it dug out though, even the plowed-in part was not too bad.
Day started out sucky because I had to telework. The policy as I understood it, as everybody understood it, was that if you are a teleworker (as I am on Fridays) then anytime the office has an emergency closure, you still have to telework. But about 11 am HR sent out an email blast that in fact the policy is if the office is closed and it’s not your telework day, you’re closed too. So that made the rest of the day all the sweeter.
And I don’t mind the digging out. I grew up in a snowy place, and I like to know that I still know how to shovel and to clear off a car. Plus my wife makes one helluva good hot cocoa, and from childhood on I never felt you’d earned hot cocoa in winter until you’d spent some time out in the snow.
satby
Good morning everyone! Off to Lexington, Ky. All you in the snow/bad weather zones stay safe!
raven
Damn, years ago I went to a conference that was billed as being in Boston. The thing was in a hotel in Wooster that was right off the interstate and totally isolated. I can’t remember how much it cost but you had to take a cab to get to the train to go into the city. Never got over that bad taste.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Front page at WaPo
The Domino Principle
Admiral Ackbar
Rats Fleeing Sinking Ship
You cant Handle the Truth
rikyrah
@satby:
Morning satby ??
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Day 54 — America Held Hostage
Ceci n est pas mon nym
HAAALP!!!! In the spam bucket!!! Somebody rescue meeeee….
Oh goody, I see we’re back to the symptom where FYWP throws out your comment if you edit it.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@rikyrah: ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
rikyrah
Remember:
1. It’s Trumpcare
2. 24 MILLION will lose their insurance
3. Those 24 MILLION will lose their insurance so that rich people can get a tax cut
4. This is an AGE TAX
Don’t forget to highlight these points, no matter where you are discussing Trumpcare.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
So what’s the take on Rachel’s income tax story this morning? Disclaimer: I get my TV after the fact, when it’s available on the internet. So I won’t see the report till tonight.
It sounds like they tried to give her the Dan Rather treatment, do a deliberate release then use it to discredit her. But I can’t believe she’d fall for that, and reports here were that she looked satisfied at the story. So I think she has a bigger story to tell and this was just page one.
What I was watching while you guys were waiting for the income-tax shoe to drop, was a pretty devastating story about Russian money-laundering. I know we’re supposed to hate her long-windedness, but nobody connects the dots like Rachel and the Russian ties to this administration have a lot of dots to connect. I want to see deep analysis, I don’t want 150-word internet stories. I want (eventually) articles of impeachment with dozens of charges, maybe hundreds.
Spanky
@rikyrah: Good morning, Sunshine!
Giant Federal Agency is opening late this AM, and it’s about time to go put my face on and get out of here.
Because it doesn’t really count when the Democrats do it. Reality is whatever the Republicans say.
WereBear
Our local office closed, working at home today. Main office might as well be; we are in a ski area and anything over 6 is a snow day.
Still in state of emergency. Looks like 22 inches.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@satby:
I’m sorry you gotta go to Lex. Wave at me as you pass through Louisville.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
satby
@rikyrah: morning sweetie!?
Dogs pottied, cats fed, last cup of coffee downed. I’m off!
Good day to everyone!
Baud
Via Reddit, we’ll need to find a way to get Amir the DVD.
satby
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: ok, should be about 3 1/2 hours from now!
OzarkHillbilly
Welcome to America…. Now go away:
Your mistake was in telling them you were coming to help the poor. W can’t have that.
p.a.
Good morning.
Here is Fred Clark to start your day off with a chuckle.
bystander
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The take is that Trump planted them because he thought it looked great that he gave nothing to charity and paid some tax. Now, Trump is calling it illegal and fake news and he’s smearing David Cay Johnson – who really has Trump’s number concerning what a crook he is – as a nobody. This seems to be another red herring to distract from the Russian story and the lie about Obama.
I listen to the EZ French daily newscast pretty frequently. It’s funny but they always call him Trump, never President. They loved saying M. le President Bah-rack O-ba-ma.
Hal
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: The rather comparison is way off. Nothing Maddow reported is untrue. It’s that people keep expecting some big, huge, revelation that will bring Trump down and that’s just not realistic. Maybe if she just made the tax documents a regular, unhyped segment it would have played better, but holy shit, some of the meltdowns here last night were over the top ridiculous.
EDIT: Also, I find the whole theory that Trump leaked this doc idiotic. He’s not that smart, and nothing is going to take the focus of this shit hole health care bill. Or Russia. Or Steve King. Or or or….
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
So, are you saying the tax return hasn’t distracted anyone? Unfair!
WereBear
My take, too.
debbie
@satby:
Drive carefully!
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
Friends from my hometown in Ulster County, NY are posting their snow pics. They got slammed. Reminds me of that huge snowstorm in 1993.
Here in Central Ohio we only got about an inch, but boy did the cold really come in right after. My husband was outside freezing all night.
Supposedly, a clipper is gonna come in and bring more snow Thursday through Sunday. We will see.
debbie
@rikyrah:
Don’t leave out the part where Ryan’s definition of “choice” is a life-and-death choice for many in the middle class.
bystander
David Cay Johnston, not Johnson.
I love that the Worcester people are gathered around a soothing kitteh show.
debbie
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Here, they’re talking about the large write-offs Trump took, which he will see as smart business, and the AMT. I don’t think it’s the disaster many here were bewailing last night.
Baud
@Hal: Agree. It was the hype that was the problem.
Betty Cracker
Jury duty should be wrapping up today. I have a newly recalled sympathy for people who have to commute into town every day. Looking forward to resuming my hermit-like existence in the sticks when this is over.
Spanky
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
I sometimes accidentally do that with my cats. I guess you didn’t hear him scratching at the door.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
Wish me luck and patience, beloved jackals and others. Creamsicle Caligula will be here in Nashville today, to lay a wreath on Andy Jackson’s grave, hold a rally at the Municipal Auditorium (hilariously, a shabby, older venue that hasn’t been torn down because it’s just right for the smaller events that can’t fill the bigger, newer, shinier) spaces, try to justify the ways Trumocare will Make America Great Again, and fuck up traffic for an entire city. The downtown bus plaza will have to close by demand of the Secret Service and the Meeting of the Buses is moved to the other side of the downtown area, some of the state offices and others downtown will close at noon, and it’s starting out in the twenties because of the cold snap.
I still don’t know if we’re closing early or not. Either way, my usually simple evening commute will suck.
I wish Baud had campaigned harder in Wisconsin and Ohio.
WereBear
@debbie: Perhaps the whistle blower is dripping the information so it forms its own vetting and backgrounding as it goes.
The revelations before and after the election would have been enough to sink anyone, but the Republicans have fully embraced playing by their own rules, in the defiance of law, custom, morality, and physics.
The People are the ones who must act now. And to do that properly, The People need to understand what the hell is going on.
What, Mr. Johnston and Rachel herself, gets a copy of the elusive tax returns and they ignore it? Trump fought to keep even this out of the public record.
And there is more. I am sure.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Spanky: HA!! He’ll live that joke. You know, later.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):
That Baud was a terrible candidate, the worst.
Baud
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):
Stupid Law & Order marathon.
Fitting. Dems are now the Party of Lincoln and the GOP is the Party of Jackson.
rikyrah
@bystander:
One of my most fervent prayers is for David Cay Johnston to get his hands on two years of Dolt45’s taxes- within the last 10 years.
HE will know how to read them, and will give us the entire truth about them.
Amir Khalid
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
One of them nekkid statues of President Trump might come in handy.
Patricia Kayden
@rikyrah: It’s amazing that Trump is breaking every one of his promises about the ACA and his replacement. Liar-in-Chief.
Central Planning
Still snowing here in Rochester, NY and expecting another 8″ or so today. Schools closed for the second day.
We will have to dig out later to get to school so we can take our robot to the FIRST Robotics venue and setup our area so we are ready for tomorrow.
Baud
@Patricia Kayden: If by amazing you mean totally expected.
Kay
880 billion in Medicaid reductions over 10 years. So some of that “goes away” in that people simply won’t get care- the service won’t be provided- but a lot of it doesn’t go away- they either get it and don’t pay for it or they pay for it over time. And the vast majority of health care workers are lower or middle class so that 880 billion translates to “work for wages” as far as them. Republicans are transferring 880 billion directly to rich people. No stops along the way. Shoots right up and stays there.
Ohio has a one billion dollar budget hole right now because Kasich cut taxes and his magical formula didn’t work any better than it worked in Kansas. This will make that much, much worse.
amk
@Betty Cracker: Isn’t called the hollers? Or is there a difference?
Baud
@Kay: It’s hard to believe they are proposing to do the things they have always done.
prob50
I won’t brag about how great the weather is in L.A. this morning ‘cuzz it pissed somebody off yesterday.
But it’s really nice right now, even for 4:50 a.m.
But I’m not bragging about it.
Seriously, hope you NorEasterners get a break from all that snow real soon.
Schlemazel
@WereBear:
The copy shown was stamped “Clients Copy”. It could have been part of a loan application & leaked by someone working at the bank or similar. My money is still on rat fuck, this came from Trumps people and is fake. I sincerely doubt anyone who make $150 million, particularly on real estate with all the depreciation and deductions possible, paid $38 million in taxes. It smells funny.
prob50
@Baud:
MomSense
Ugh. So much wet snow.
Kay
@Baud:
And who are the health care workers who get hurt?
Odd we never hear about them, huh? 25,000 coal miners and it seems like every one has been interviewed. Republicans are taking 880 billion in wages for work out of the system and no one gives a shit. Because it’s women’s work.
MJS
The NCAA isn’t good for much, but kudos for this- there are no NCAA tournament games in North Carolina this year because of HB2. And they’re running out of time for the 2018-2021 tournaments, with those venues being picked soon. Now, if we could just get the NCAA to threaten those states that are curtailing voting rights.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@Baud: That’s why they say hindsight is 20/20.
So far, no one has mentioned the fact that Rachel Jackson, like the current Mrs. Trump, was unhappy about moving to Washington.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@prob50: Lol, well, snow equals drinking water, so……
California has earthquakes and drought (and other stuff), the Northeast gets snowstorms, the South, Midwest, and Plains gets tornados, the coast gets hurricanes. Er’rybody got that something! ;-)
Baud
@MomSense: I disagree. They have been quite successful in making the wealthy wealthier.
@Kay: It’s women’s work and it makes the Republicans rather than the Democrats look bad. I’m curious to see what story the NYT reporter you talked to comes up with.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
@Kay: And lots of those women are women of color. So they doubly don’t care. Good point, Kay.
Tripod
Who has the Jackson fixation?
That was a looong time ago, and the marks don’t give a fuck.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk: They don’t even have hills in Florida. How can they have hollers? ;-)
Patricia Kayden
@OzarkHillbilly: Wow. Speechless. Unfortunately, this is what we can expect for the foreseeable future. Canadians should just stop visiting here and go elsewhere where they won’t be harassed.
Another Scott
@bystander: My take is that someone outside of the White House leaked them. Donnie wants his taxes to go away, and he doesn’t want Congress to be investigating him. Having his taxes in the news doesn’t help him, even if it’s people saying it’s a nothingburger. “He released the 2005 return before it was on TV. Why can’t he release the other years? What’s he hiding?”
DCJ has more discussion about the return on his web site. He does some out-loud figuring about what it means in terms of his average income in prior years, etc.
What I’m looking for is, as I said last night, whether the Teabaggers use this as an excuse to gut the IRS even more (e.g. by just eliminating the AMT; by cutting auditors even more; etc.).
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire
Kiddo is making Stone soup with her preschool class today. I remember making it in first grade! I’m off to the gym after I drop her off. Have a good day, Juicers!!
MomSense
If anyone is interested, Tommy Vietor interviews Glenn Greenwald on Pod Save the World. Going to listen while I shovel.
ETA last storm I played some air guitar with my neighbor and he suggested we spray paint This Machine Kills Fascists on our shovels. Retired union reps make great neighbors.
prob50
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
Yup!
OzarkHillbilly
@prob50: Sounded to me like he was just giving you shit.
Another Scott
@Schlemazel: He paid $31 M in AMT. Without that, he would have only paid $5M. Naturally, he wants to kill the AMT.
See DCReport.org for more.
Cheers,
Scott.
prob50
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
Back in the day when I was busy dropping out of college “Stone Soup” had a whole different meaning.
Citizen Scientist
@satby: Safe travels satby!
amk
@OzarkHillbilly: gotcha. so sticks means literally sticks over the famed swamps?
Kay
@Baud:
Just to be clear I didn’t talk to the reporter. The reporter called the hospital and the CEO of the hospital emailed me and some other Democrats. He doesn’t like me- we dislike each other- but I am in a book club with his wife. I bet that’s where he got my email.
There’s like 2 degrees of separation in this town :)
I once needed someone to explain “a pulling truck” to me- the vehicles they use for “truck pulls”. I hit pay dirt on the first person I asked. I knew he would know someone.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio):
And like Ms. Trump, she never did move to Washington; but she had a very good excuse, she died.
prob50
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, I know, but I offered up a lukewarm apology anyway. I really don’t need a flame-war just because of a silly comment I made about the weather. I’ve got plenty of much sillier things to say that often do a much better job of “pizzing” people off.
OzarkHillbilly
@amk: I think “sticks” means those things that fall out of trees. When you are “in the sticks” you are in a place with a lot more trees and hence, more sticks. People who don’t like picking up sticks tend to live in the “parking lot”.
Just One More Canuck
@?BillinGlendaleCA: and his emails!
Kay
I feel like the “Bannon is angry at Wall Street” piece in the WSJ was planted by Bannon.
Because it doesn’t make any sense- the Trump Administration is packed with Wall Streeters and they’re gutting every regulation in sight.
He must have hired Ivanka’s publicist. She’s an environmentalist and also cares deeply about quality child care. Or so I have read.
MomSense
@Kay:
This is also why we only hear about manufacturing jobs and never about the mom of two who works at McDonalds. Let’s just raise the minimum wage to 15/hour and stop differentiating between kinds of work.
NotMax
@amk
Another venerable, somewhat pejorative term for rural along the lines of boondocks or backwater.
Variety‘s famous 1935 headline: Stix Nix Hick Pix.
efgoldman
@amk:
Y’all need hills n’valleys t’have hollers. Biggest hill in Florida is a 400′ tall landfill.
Tripod
@Kay:
1.2 million unionized workers.
Trumka has been meeting with with Trump regularly. He refused the photo op last week when they went over this screw job.
The hardhats went all in on a handful of temp pipeline jobs, and a pig in the poke on infrastructure.
Kay
@MomSense:
I agree! All work has value. I see this all the time, though. One of the things the stimulus did was send money to states to retain public school teachers. An emergency with them because you can imagine the chaos if schools closed. But K-12 teachers are like 75% women so it was all “that’s not a shovel-ready project!”
It’s just so moronic. They really have to see tangible things to see the work behind them? Are they 7 years old?
I went thru this with all of my kids because they want to steal. They make this distinction between stealing goods and stealing ideas and services. Same thing! It’s all someone’s work.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@prob50: It’s not a problem, they’re predicting some storms to blow though next week. Then we can complain about the mud flows again.
I’m thinking of driving to Griffith Park and get some sunrise pics.
Kay
@Tripod:
Union workers in Ohio have been about 40% Republican for a long time. The most Republican union here is not construction trades, it’s the UAW. It’s really complicated with them. The best union we have locally as far as political action is the Teamsters. My son’s union, the IBEW, were traditionally further Left than other construction trade unions- I don’t know why. Part of it is younger workers, IMO, don’t really get the idea of collective action. There’s a lot of “you’re not the boss of me” which is fine unless the whole concept only works if you buy into that premise. I’m not sure they do.
Mathguy
About Crufts flyball…ok, I’ll be “that guy”: that was not a lurcher, it was a whippet. I have been the servant of whippets and Italian greyhounds for 27 years, and it was no lurcher but a racing whippet. The commentators point this out as well, along with being shocked by the speed of that dog. Its second heat run was jaw dropping.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: Here in Misery, carpenters seem to be more conservative than the other trades. I have to emphasize the “seem to be” as my pov is probably skewed by the fact of my being a carpenter.
amk
@OzarkHillbilly: @NotMax: @efgoldman:
And here I thought I could only learn novel swear words & insults from bj.
different-church-lady
Darn — that’s about 100k of equity gone right there.
See, I warned you folks!
Baud
@Kay: I know unions are a net benefit, but it gets hard to take them seriously sometimes.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay: Tell it, sister!
OzarkHillbilly
Maria wants some ice-cream but her brother doesn’t want to share I love the look on her face. More fun pics of My life in Jordan: children share their photos – in pictures
different-church-lady
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: I think she’s a cable news yapper and she’s doing a cable news yappy thing. No more, no less.
different-church-lady
@Adria McDowell (formerly Lurker Extraordinaire:
What were you punishing him for?
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
I feel like we’re living through a phase of the political romanticization of the honest, blunt, resilient industrial worker that corresponds to the prior political romanticization of the honest, blunt, resilient yeoman farmer — which happened right about the time that kind of work started to become less of a daily reality. Plus the left loves industrial workers because of Marx and the British anti-Thatcher moment. But have American industrial workers _themselves_ ever been politically on the left? It feels like nostalgia crossed with wishful thinking and a pinch of theory.
different-church-lady
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
It’s your turn in the
barrelbucket.OzarkHillbilly
@amk: We live to serve. (humbly bows) (have i told you how humble i am? i am very humble, some say it is my finest quality)
?BillinGlendaleCA
@FlipYrWhig:
Maybe between the 1930’s to 1950’s, they certainly started a rightward move in the mid 1960’s to the late 1970’s. Much had to do with new competition in the labor market due to Civil Rights legislation, the influx of young people(the Boomers) and women entering the labor force. So unions became more of a force for conservatism and stuck with the way things had been done.
maurinsky
In central CT, we got 12-18″. When we went out and shoveled, it was like a pie, appropriately enough for pie day – a layer of slush on the bottom, many inches of the kind of snow that makes excellent snowballs/snow people, then a layer of ice on top.
NotMax
@maurinsky
Well, there’s no business like snow business.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: Unions exist solely for the economic health and safety of their members. Those are the trees they focus on and the woods all around can be clear cut and they are OK with it as long as those 2 trees are still standing.
This is both a good thing and a bad thing.
Brachiator
Just getting around to the Rachel Maddow tax return thing. Her introductory wind-up is long, meandering and largely pointless. Pulling Nixon out of crypt to kick him around some more is fun, but a lame diversion.
raven
@Brachiator: She basically re-did the night before on that part.
rikyrah
The CBO Destroyed the Entire GOP Argument for Repealing Obamacare
by Nancy LeTourneau
March 15, 2017 7:00 AM
The report released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) was meant to outline what would happen if the American Health Care Act put forward by Republicans was passed. Because of that, the references to Obamacare were primarily about comparing the differences between the two approaches. But with one sentence, CBO destroyed the entire GOP argument for repealing Obamacare. Here’s the sentence:
They go on to explain why the nongroup market is stable under Obamacare:
That is the exact opposite of what Republicans are saying in order to justify the need to repeal Obamacare. For example, here is the kind of thing that Trump has been tweeting regularly:
…………………………..
After extolling the fact that their plan decimates Medicare, provides tax cuts and reduces the deficit, Ryan suggests that — contrary to what CBO actually said — their plan stabilizes the nongroup market while it is collapsing under Obamacare.
What is actually happening is that seven years ago Republicans decided that they would try to make health care reform “Obama’s Waterloo” and did all they could to obstruct its passage. That included lying about things like death panels and socialized medicine. When their obstruction failed to prevent Obamacare from becoming law, they switched to other lies and exaggerations about things like job losses and pretending that millions of people had lost their health insurance. None of that turned out to be true either.
Now that Republicans have the possibility of actually repealing the law, they are in need of a rationale for why it is important to do so. They’ve pretty much settled on this idea that the nongroup market is just about to implode and they are the ones to stop that from happening with their repeal/replace bill. CBO completely undermined that argument.
zhena gogolia
This blog is frustrating for people who sleep at night. I wake up to see that 6-7 interesting threads have appeared since I turned in at 11:00 PM. Then there’ll be the same thread all afternoon. Oh well.
Corner Stone
@Kay:
I feel like by now each one of them has their own agent.
rikyrah
Quick Takes: Republicans Are All Over the Map on Health Care
by Nancy LeTourneau March 14, 2017 6:15 PM
* While conservatives suggest that the Republican health care bill is Obamacare Lite, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) is working on an amendment that would make it a tiny bit more like the original version.
OzarkHillbilly
@zhena gogolia: I only participate in the early AM. I just read the previous days posts and skip reading the comments entirely.
rikyrah
* It is important to note what the CBO said about the Republican plan to de-fund Planned Parenthood as part of their health care bill.
To the extent that there would be reductions in access to care under the legislation, they would affect services that help women avert pregnancies. The people most likely to experience reduced access to care would probably reside in areas without other health care clinics or medical practitioners who serve low-income populations. CBO projects that about 15 percent of those people would lose access to care.
The government would incur some costs for Medicaid beneficiaries currently served by affected entities because the costs of about 45 percent of all births are paid for by the Medicaid program. CBO estimates that the additional births stemming from the reduced access under the legislation would add to federal spending for Medicaid. In addition, some of those children would themselves qualify for Medicaid and possibly for other federal programs.
rikyrah
From Paul Krugman about so-called “populism.” and health care
prob50
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Yes, I can hardly wait.
Just went out for an early morning grocery trip a half hour ago. Big-time fog rolled in and visibility was pretty close to zero as I approached the Marina area. It wasn’t like that an hour earlier.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: It’s a good thing, the place is full of doofuses later!
rikyrah
Congress Wants to Block States’ Efforts to Improve Retirement Security
by Ida Rademacher, Jeremy Smith, and David Mitchell
March 14, 2017
More than 30 states across the country are contemplating new ways to help workers save for retirement. Five states — California, Oregon, Connecticut, Maryland and Illinois — are already implementing new programs aimed at providing better access to retirement savings for the 55 million workers in America whose employers do not offer a retirement plan.
These innovations have strong bipartisan support, from Republican and Democratic state treasurers and other officials, and from small business owners and labor unions. In Maryland, for example, the state’s new “Secure Choice” plan won the approval of a Democrat-controlled legislature and a Republican governor.
Yet these promising experiments to improve the retirement security of America’s workers and their families could come to a screeching halt, if Congress acts to roll back Obama-era rules that gave states a green light to experiment with new ways of promoting retirement savings access.
The legislation, which has passed the House and is now pending in the Senate, would rescind a legal ruling the Department of Labor published last year confirming that employers who participate in the program would not run afoul of a federal statute called the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, or ERISA. But easing the regulatory burdens that today make it hard for busy small business owners to offer a retirement plan to their workers was the whole point of these state programs.
MomSense
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
When I went to the Lowell National Park last Spring I learned that the millworkers were opposed to Abolition because they were concerned that newly freed slaves would take their jobs.
rikyrah
ask me if I care…..
Trump’s Trade Policies Could Crush Mike Pence’s Hometown
In export-heavy Columbus, Indiana, anxiety is high about the administration’s trade priorities.
by Saahil Desai
March 14, 2017
Indiana, like much of the Midwest, is littered with nondescript towns that blend together between the oceans of corn and soybean fields lining its arterial interstates.
Columbus, Indiana, nestled between Indianapolis and Louisville, isn’t one of them. The town of 45,000 is known for its impressive collection of modernist architecture. It also features a gleaming new sign visible when you drive east into town from nearby Bloomington: “Hometown of Michael R. Pence: Vice President of the United States.”
Columbus is where Pence was born and raised. It’s also the American city most vulnerable to protectionist trade policies that could be imposed by his administration. That’s the result of a report from Mark Muro and Joseph Parilla of the Brookings Institution, who ranked metro areas by the share of their economic output generated by exports, a metric they call “export intensity.”
While the country’s largest cities generate the most exports in absolute terms, it’s generally smaller towns with less diversified economies that are most reliant on exports. During the campaign, Trump promised to impose tariffs on foreign manufacturers. If he follows through, it could spark a trade war, as the affected countries respond by raising tariffs on American goods. Towns with high export intensity would be at the greatest risk because they tend to rely on a single large manufacturer or a single industry to sustain their economies. A trade war affecting that industry could bring an entire town to its knees.
For Columbus, the industry is auto manufacturing. A staggering 50.6 percent of the town’s GDP is generated from exports, mainly of vehicle engines, by far the most nationwide. (The next highest-ranked city, Beaumont, Texas, comes in at 40 percent.) Columbus has a remarkable concentration of auto manufacturing for a city of its size; one in six American jobs in engine equipment manufacturing is located there. Two other Indiana cities appear on Brookings’ list of export-intensive towns: Elkhart and Lafayette, reflecting the strong manufacturing presence in this corner of the Rust Belt. The most export-intensive cities in fact resemble a coalition of the downtrodden places across Middle America that Trump rode to victory last November
Jeff R.
Out in the wilds of Worcester county (just outside the 495 belt), we got around 8 inches or so. But very heavy snow, some of the heaviest I’ve ever seen. Thanks to daylight savings, I had an extra hour to clear it last night. The roads were OK and the train was on time. Sidewalks in Boston a little icy in spots.
rikyrah
Trump claims “nobody ever heard of” reporter who has covered him for decades and says Trump has called him at home: https://t.co/oaRZy2pw1b
— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) March 15, 2017
prob50
@OzarkHillbilly:
And we are all moved and uplifted by your selfless humbility.
Or should that be “humble-hillbillity”?
rikyrah
James Comey expected to reveal whether FBI is investigating Trump campaign for Russia ties https://t.co/olWFpB4pYn pic.twitter.com/iuLIWxXvRP
— New York Daily News (@NYDailyNews) March 15, 2017
I hate to say it but Comey could say there’s been no investigation
If that’s the case then we have a bigger problem#trumprussia #resist
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) March 15, 2017
rikyrah
New from Gallup: Trump’s approval rate TANKING from 55 to 39. Dem opposition should be emboldened; resistance is working.
— David Brock (@davidbrockdc) March 14, 2017
MomSense
@Kay:
Stealing ideas is a big problem. I see it all the time just in the knitting/crafting community. My son, the musician, is livid about it.
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: sink holes?
rikyrah
By firing Preet Bharara, Trump may have screwed himself even further. Now, AG Schneiderman (D) NY has control.https://t.co/G32rRjAJMq
— Adam B. Bear (@democraticbear) March 15, 2017
prob50
@zhena gogolia:
Easy solution. You could do what I do and embrace night-time insomnia, then sleep through the mid-mornings into the afternoon. Doesn’t work if you have a job, spouse or family, however.
I thought that “Non-24” thing was only for people who are blind, but maybe not.
bystander
@rikyrah:
You see, they’re all about choice. Choice is foremost.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: This doofus would just get lost amid all the other doofuses.
prob50
@rikyrah: From Klugman:
Yeah, pretty much.
rikyrah
Uh huh
Uh huh
Republicans consider the subtle nuances of the word ‘everybody’
03/14/17 04:33 PM—UPDATED 03/14/17 05:09 PM
By Steve Benen
Two months ago, Donald Trump made a seemingly unambiguous commitment on the issue of health care: “We’re going to have insurance for everybody.” Soon after, BuzzFeed reported that congressional Republicans were working under the assumption that the president didn’t actually mean what he said, and were working on a plan that did not, in fact, cover all Americans.
And as it turns out, GOP lawmakers were correct; Trump didn’t mean a word of it. But this creates a political challenge for the White House: if the president guaranteed “insurance for everybody,” and the Republican plan Trump supports would increase the ranks of the uninsured by tens of millions of Americans, how in the world is the president’s team supposed to spin the obvious contradiction?
The answer is, by pointing to the invisible fine print. Today, for example, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said the administration supports coverage for “everybody who wants to get it.”
See the difference?
This came up a bit yesterday, when the Congressional Budget Office’s report on “Trumpcare” was first unveiled, and news accounts noted that 14 million Americans would lose their coverage next year, and that number would expand to 24 million by 2026.
Not so, Republicans said. Sure, an additional 14 million Americans may no longer have health security next year, and that total may grow to 24 million in a decade, but it’s wrong to say they’ve “lost” their coverage. Rather, Republicans argue, it’s correct to say these millions of people simply won’t buy it.
THE EVERLOVING PHUCK?!?!?!?!?
Ok…calm down….
This is only confirmation folks. NEVER EVER TALK ABOUT TRUMPCARE WITHOUT MENTIONING THE 24 MILLION.
They can try this bullshyt, but people understand in their GUT – 24 million. They aren’t talking about libertarians who won’t buy it on principle…everybody knows one of the 24 million.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@amk: Stephen King (the writer, not the brain-dead IA congressman) is my favorite source for new swears. They talk funny in Maine.
I’ve always found the scariest things in King stories to be the people who are his neighbors, not the monsters eating those neighbors. We have 2 degrees of separation from one of the buddies in “The Body” / “Stand By Me” and he sounds like a very scary dude.
OzarkHillbilly
@prob50:
Hmmmmmmm….. I kinda like that. May have to steal it.
different-church-lady
@prob50:
Many years ago I recall reading about studies that said if you remove all external cues (natural light, clocks, etc.), humans will fall into a 30 hour day.
prob50
@rikyrah:
Well, it’s certainly not designed for those once considered “3/5th” human in counting our country’s residents.
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly:
That’s what I’ve ended up doing, but I miss things like the disappearance of Steve, etc.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@rikyrah: In the recorded Rachel segment I was listening to last night, she raised the question: Bharara bought himself an extra 24 hours in office by forcing them to fire him rather than resign. What did he set in motion in those 24 hours?
OzarkHillbilly
@Aleta: Most of their sinkholes are no more “hollow” than their swimming pools. ;-)
prob50
@different-church-lady:
You mean if I took down all the tin-foil on my windows and plugged in all my clocks again I might be able to sleep at night? Shoot,I shoulda thotta that.
Seriously, there’s probably a fair bit of truth to those studies.
prob50
@OzarkHillbilly: Does have a nice alliterative ring to it, doesn’t it?
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: This border official cleverly pointed out that the Katrina work they must be prevented from stealing has ceased to be.
different-church-lady
@prob50: No, I mean we weren’t made to get along with this planet’s rotational period. Put up another layer of tinfoil, quit your job, and never interact with anyone else and you’ll sleep like a baby.
Iowa Old Lady
I’m still in Oklahoma City where it’s unseasonably cold but no snow. The friend I’m visiting had to go into work for a couple of hours this morning so I’m catching up on BJ. My friend is a federal worker who’s horrified by Trump so I’ve been pointing her to stories here.
kindness
I love my current dogs but neither of them will fetch or play catch. They see what ever drop and look at me and say ‘?????’. If I threw chunks of meat they might catch it. Well, the big guy would once he knew it was good food. The lil girl? She’d let it drop and eat it off the ground.
Love ’em anyway.
rikyrah
‘Mortally wounded’ Republican health plan starts moving backwards
03/15/17 09:20 AM—UPDATED 03/15/17 09:46 AM
By Steve Benen
The Republican health care bill isn’t just struggling; in the wake of a brutal Congressional Budget Office report, “Trumpcare” is actually losing ground when its proponents expected to be making progress.
The CBO score was released last Monday afternoon, and yesterday, three House Republicans announced their position on their party’s bill: they’re now all opposed. The trio included Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), an influential moderate from Miami.
The picture in the Senate, where it only takes three GOP senators to vote with Democrats to kill important legislation, is almost certainly worse for the party’s leaders. Vox counted 12 Republicans senators who’ve publicly denounced and/or expressed serious concerns about the House bill, and that total doesn’t include Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), who also criticized it yesterday. (Even South Dakota’s John Thune, a member of the Senate GOP leadership, suggested he’d like to see key changes to his party’s existing proposal.)
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who isn’t yet included in the group of intra-party skeptics, told NBC News’ Matt Lauer this morning that the existing House plan is “mortally wounded.”
Perhaps Republican leaders – in Congress and the White House – can find greater support outside the Beltway? The evidence points in the opposite direction: Politico reports that “at least 15 Republican governors have raised concerns about the House GOP’s health care bill.” The number of GOP governors who’ve publicly endorsed the American Health Care Act, meanwhile, stands at zero.
Paul Ryan, Donald Trump, and their allies aren’t just struggling at this point to move their bill forward; they’re actually moving backwards, gradually pushing their goal further away.
Aleta
@different-church-lady:
waking up screaming every three hours
rikyrah
@Kay:
Uh huh
You always bring up great points, Kay.
Aleta
@kindness:
Which could be a measure of intelligence.
OzarkHillbilly
@different-church-lady:
It’s true, for expeditionary cavers at least. My “day” actually became even longer than that.
zhena gogolia
Chris Christie is an asshole. That is all. Lock him up.
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly:
Were you in that cave with Huck Finn’s pa? Or somebody like that in Mark Twain, details are fuzzy.
ETA: Injun Joe! Just remembered.
LAO
Today, during my slog into work through the streets of Manhattan, I saw a very”meta-liberal” thing. I tote bag with the word “Resist” on it. Made me laugh. I should buy one.
Felt the need to tell someone. People in my office wouldn’t get it.
zhena gogolia
@LAO:
I do find it amusing that we gray-haired liberals are imagining ourselves as Paul Henreid in Casablanca. But it’s a harmless self-dramatization for people who are on the right side of things.
zhena gogolia
@LAO:
I was planning to get a Vanity Fair totebag, which I thought would be a subtler form of the same message.
LAO
@zhena gogolia: That is subtle. I may have to follow suit.
zhena gogolia
@LAO:
They’ve been doing wonderful investigative pieces, but I can’t stand to read them. The one on Comey this month is very illuminating, but I can only read a paragraph at a time before I get sick.
LAO
@zhena gogolia: Graydon Carter’s public feud with Trump has brought me back to Vanity Fair (which I always enjoyed, not sure why I stopped reading it in the first place).
Also — as you noted earlier, Chris Christie is an asshole.
Brachiator
@zhena gogolia:
Here’s a test: If you can walk into a karaoke bar like a boss, with an Ingrid Bergman look-alike on your arm, and get the crowd to start singing “La Marseillaise,” then you can imagine yourself to be a Paul Henreid. ;)
bystander
@zhena gogolia:
Not me. Paul Lukas in Watch on the Rhine.
amk
Miss Bianca
Cross-posted from other thread…but the House has done it again…because states’ rights demands that federal protection be stripped from wolves and grizzlies on federal lands!
Please contact your Senators and demand that they kill this sickening bill.
Miss Bianca
@rikyrah: “Populism”, therefore, is the political version of “Stuff White People Like”. Makes perfect sense to me. Excuse me while I go drink some Woolite…
--bd
Okay. I’m a CPA and can tell you the likely story behind the numbers, and the reason that John Barron leaked this.
The reason he is leaking THIS tax return is as follows:
1. Line 21 Statement 1 will be the final utilization of a net operating loss (NOL), at least for ordinary income tax purposes. Perhaps it was the 1995 loss and no tax was paid for 10 years, or he could have roller-coastered between income and losses and the NOL could have been generated in ,say, 2002 after the 9/11 economy dip.
2. It shows the effect of the “evil” Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). This tax is usually generated on middle to high wage earners ($200,000 – $400,000) with itemized deductions for state income and real estate taxes, which are not allowed for AMT. After that threshold, enough ordinary taxable income is taxed at 33% and 35% to “cover” the AMT. With $17,000,000 of itemized deductions, the part that is real estate and state income taxes will get added back for AMT. However in Trump’s case, most of the AMT would have been caused by the differences in the rules for regular NOL and AMT NOL. The main difference is that you are only allowed to utilize Therefore, his AMT NOL deduction for 2005 would be more like $92,000,000. Adding that difference of 10 million dollars to the perhaps $15,000,000 of state and local taxes on Schedule A, turns line 43 taxable income of 31.5 Million into AMT income of $56.5 million.
3. That is not enough to explain the AMT of $36,571,795. (Line 46 tax is calculated based on AMT rules. The difference between that and Line 44 “ordinary” income tax is the amount you see in line 45.) A simple, stupid flat rate 28 tax there (since the AMT exemption and benefit of the lower 26% rate are phased out at that point) would give us an estimated AMT income of about $130,000,000. Possible explanations would be other years’ differences in net utilization of regular and AMT net operating losses, leading to a lower AMT NOL even before only being allowed to use 90%.
4. He gets props for paying a significant portion of self-employment tax. Let’s assume he has FICA maxed wages as part of the line 7 wages, (very likely, since there is an application of over-withheld FICA on line 67, which occurs when you have multiple W-2s, each withholding FICA). $1,887.556 of self employment tax divided by the 2.9% employer/employee portions of Medicare gets us about $65,000,000 of reported self-employment income, which would be all of the Schedule C income, Line 13, and about half of the Schedule E income. This makes sense. Personal real estate activities owned directly and through partnerships and LLCs would probably be subject to self-employment taxes. Earnings from Subchapter S corporations would not be.
5. Hardly any of the Line 9a dividends were considered to be qualified (eligible for the lower long-term capital gains tax rate). This usually comes from interest type money market funds reported as dividends, or also real estate investment trusts (REITs), whose dividends are not qualifying.
6. I need to get back to my real work now. Luckily, all my 3/15s are already extended.
--bd
Please double check mod. My edit got flagged as spam.
--bd
Late edit to Item 2.
The main difference is that you are only allowed to utilize [90 percent of your AMT NOL in any given year] Therefore, his AMT NOL deduction for 2005 would be more like $92,000,000.
--bd
One more realization: We would need to know how much of his Schedule D capital gains were long term. Those would have been taxed at 20% for both regular and AMT purposes and would explain much of the remaining difference from Item 3.
zhena gogolia
@–bd:
Please come back to a thread that’s still alive!
MomSense
Finally watched the flyball video. OH MY GOD. I am watching the trainers try to contain their dogs and thinking I should get my dog to a flyball competition.