From NBC News — a clown car occupant disembarks:
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez ended his long shot presidential bid Tuesday after failing to qualify for the first Republican primary debate in Milwaukee. He is the first GOP candidate to drop out of the race.
“Running for President of the United States has been one of the greatest honors of my life,” Suarez wrote in a lengthy statement on his X account. “While I have decided to suspend my campaign for President, my commitment to making this a better nation for every American remains.”
On the stump in early voting states, Suarez honed his message on his economic and policing record in Miami, railing against the “defund the police” movement and highlighting his family’s history migrating from Cuba to the United States.
Maybe Burgum will call it a day next to spend more time with his Achilles tendon injury bootie. Or maybe he’ll hang in there as an excuse to get out of whichever Dakota he runs and campaign in places like Nevada and South Carolina during the chilly months.
Speaking of lost causes, over at The Daily Beast, Never Trumper Matt Lewis is trying to will the Nikki Haley campaign into relevance:
Is it time for Republicans to take Nikki Haley seriously? (NO! — ed.)
According to a new Emerson College Polling survey, “Haley saw the largest increase in support among Republican candidates, jumping 5 points from 2 percent to 7 percent” following last week’s debate.
She vaulted from 2% to 7% — watch out, world!
Open thread.
E.
Was there some candidate whose wife collapsed on stage during his announcement and he stood there staring at her?
Ken
Cool, it works. I just tried saying “I’m running for President…. and now I’m dropping out,” and I also felt honored. Not greatly honored, but I’ve done other things with my life. Still, I think I’ll try writing a self-help book with this One Weird Trick.
scav
How am I to miss him when I was unaware of his existence let alone his pretense of running?
jackmac
I didn’t realize Miami had a Republican mayor. Then again, I try to pay as little attention to Florida as possible.
Too many bad things and bad people down there (excepting Betty Cracker and a few others!)
RaflW
I heard of Francis Suarez for the very first time roughly two hours ago when Zitter announced his implosion.
So. Whatever.
Jeffro
I just saw that about Suarez! What a player, that guy!!
“Ok, let’s see…my name’s been out there for a month, so I’m good for the veepstakes…this is a complete shitshow…alrighty, let’s pull the plug here team”.
Let’s see if the rest of them can figure it out.
Related: picture any one of the remaining GOP candidates running one-on-one against trumpov. Now picture the reaction of a majority of GOP primary voters…who are they most likely to chose?…
…and you’ll see why Uncle Joe has such a sunny disposition, most days. =)
trollhattan
Who? Do better, Miami.
Tony Jay
Come on! She’s only (gets out the abacus, shuffles bits around, slaps the abacus aside in frustration) a few steps from overtaking Trump!
Remember, if you don’t support her in thought, word and deed, however horrible she is, that’s exactly the same as loving Trump and wanting to be his dewdrop sponge*. So really, be careful, clap more to be on the safe side.
* Less of a fact than an aspirational claim, but people over here make the ‘argument’ with such authority!
Scout211
Republican nobody says what? Something tells me that Francis did not have a wide appeal.
I like the idea of Nikki Haley floating up to the top of the bottom pack. I am looking forward to her going after inmate P01135809’s treatment of women, immigrants and people of color.
🤣🤣🤣 Who am I kidding?! Never, ever gonna happen.
Alison Rose
Man, must have been a shit life so far, then.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, for me, stand head and shoulders above the rest. This because they’re only pretending that advancing various causes of bigotry is the most important issue facing our nation, when anyone can see their heart is really dedicated to the project of bringing all working Americans one step closer to slavery, just like your daddy’s Republican party wanted.
catclub
@RaflW: Wasn’t Suarez the ear biter in the last world cup?
I think he would have done better with the GOP primary voters if he had emphasized that.
RaflW
Suarez “rail[ed] against the ‘defund the police’ movement”.
Meanwhile, though Biggs is generally insane, he isn’t even remotely outside the norm of Republicans any more on this:
Ocotillo
He’s not even the best known Francis from his state, that goes to the Hurricane (Frances). Too bad, never got the chance to say “lighten up Francis”.
laura
Nimrata’s bump in the polls is likely due to her desire to come for our earned benefits. The WSJ is polishing it’s social security boner and I could not be happier to point that out to all my peeps who’ve been paying in to retirement security their entire working lives. It’s a gift I tells ya- a gift to every Democrat running for any office.
CliosFanBoy
Gad, Matt Lewis is just so pathetic. Someone needs to sit him down and tell him, “Dude, the only difference between trump and the other republicans is that trump is louder and more orange. They’re all bigotted, clueless, Fascist bastards.”
Bunter
@E.: I had to look it up because I remembered that too. Rollan Roberts II, West Virginia state senator “At Rollan Roberts II’s announcement speech on Jan. 20, his pregnant wife literally fainted behind him, taking Old Glory down with her. And, frankly, it took him a beat too long to go to her.”
RaflW
@Tony Jay: How soon before the pundits start calling for a Nikki Haley – Vivek Ramaswamy ‘unity’ ticket?
Maybe with Rick Scott for A.G. and Bill Hurd as, ehhh, pfft, I don’t even know. It’s all just too ridiculous to contemplate.
moops
Was he being investigated and under possible indictment? I hear that running for President was a popular legal defense.
Citizen Alan
@RaflW: Well, I’m not going to reject a good idea just because it comes from a Republican nutcase-moron.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Yeah, with numbers like that, she should be getting a call any minute from the National Radical Meadow Party of Bloom County. It’s been a long time since they ran a candidate who didn’t poll below zero percent.
moops
Did Trump drop in any polls after the debate? Seems like these pick ups are not all coming out of DeSantis supporters.
dmsilev
What was the point of this? It’s not like he was going to get serious grifting opportunities from running a sub-Mike-Pence campaign. Sure, a few more people know his name, but they’re all going to forget it within the next week or so. So why even bother?
Omnes Omnibus
Trials and tribulations of Trump’s lawyers.
narya
I scored some dried xoconostle from Rancho Gordo, and now I want to use it with halibut. I can wing it if need be, but if any Jackals have ideas, or have had dishes, I’d love to hear some suggestions. (I’m thinking rehydrate it, add some ginger, honey, maybe some lime and a pinch of chile, and marinate the halibut in it, then wrap in banana leaves and bake.)
Mai Naem mobileI
Burgum’s got personal money to burn so he can afford to stay in for a little while longer. Burgum is still one of the ones who I worry about. He’s got a good interesting life story. He doesn’t appear to have any scandals. Founded a tech company in ND but doesn’t have that tech bros persona. He’s one to keep an eye on for 2028.
RaflW
@laura: WSJ gets really, really sweaty when people like Senator Baldwin correctly note that if we lifted (or even just raised a decent amount) the cap on earnings that are taxed to go into SSI+Medicare, much or all of the projected insolvency vanishes.
Tony Jay
@RaflW:
Running on the Golden Brown/Texture Like Sun ticket? Or No Labels.
Barbara
What I hate most about Nikki Haley is that her opportunism is just so transparent. If she lived in a reliably blue state like California her politics would almost certainly be 180 degrees different. She stood next to Herschel Walker and said that Raphael Warnock should be deported, proving that she is 100% an opportunist who is willing to leverage racial hostility to gain political advantage. She is utterly despicable.
RaflW
@dmsilev: Rhonda is term limited. Probably way cheaper to announce a ‘run’ for president and get some – any, really – earned media in Florida, than to be unseemly this early in raising one’s visibility directly for Governor. Just a guess, tho.
hueyplong
Francis Suarez? Who does he play for?
sdhays
@Bunter: Not the candidate the Republican Party needs, just the one it deserves.
Mai Naem mobileI
@moops: always possible with Suarez since he was pushing Bitcoin. I was just surprised Miami had a GOP mayor. I would have thought the city would be too big for Cubans to succeed with a GOP mayor.
AM in NC
So, as a NC resident, I regularly call my Senators Tillis and Budd about the latest Republican horrors, and while Budd’s people are totally cray (as to be expected), Tillis’s staffers have sure seem discouraged and down at the mouth the past few times I called. Tillis used to be seen as very conservative, but now is considered too liberal for our state GOP (they censured him for not hating on gay people enough) and I think the kids of the Country Club Republicans who get these internship and junior staffer positions are not all down with the Christofascist cray.
I am trying to work on the young people on these phone calls by emphasizing my unhappiness with GOP gun fetishism and Climate inaction (as well as asking why Tillis is silent about Trump), and the interns/staffers seem sad and have no good responses. I feel like if I can get them to start questioning the bubble they grew up in, maybe some scales fall away and votes change. Asking them how on earth being in multiple lockdowns makes my kids more free is a good question to ask them. Whose freedom are they protecting here? It sure isn’t mine or my kids’.
frosty
@Omnes Omnibus: Another lesson that you gotta obey the law!
Josie
@RaflW:
I don’t understand why Democrats don’t push this more than they do. It seems to me a no brainer.
smith
@RaflW: I really wish we were better at countering the propaganda about SS “insolvency” that regularly panics younger people about their future. They really need to know about the free ride high earners are getting, and how simple it would be to make sure SS is there for them when they retire.
E.
@Bunter: I figured he must have dropped out already but now I see he remains in the race. Not polling super well yet, and he doesn’t seem real bright.
RaflW
@Barbara: Good g-d. She really did say that!
Ballotpedia: “Reverend Warnock is a native Georgian whose family has honorably served in the armed forces for generations.”
I knew she was an ugly opportunist who had no problem lying down with fleas (ie: be Trump’s UN ambassador), but the deep, deep racism in wanting to deport a multi-gen USer Black man, and coming from a child of immigrants. Day-um.
p.a.
@smith: I don’t know how bad Dems actually are about defending SS because media gatekeepers are in lockstep with republicans and Fox news about pushing the “going broke, must cut Cut CUT” bullshit.
Almost Retired
Oh Frankie, we hardly knew ye.
Really. Not at all. Not even a little bit.
Who?
hitchhiker
Nikki disqualified herself as a normie on national television when she raised her hand to indicate she’d vote for Trump even if he were convicted of a felony. A lot of never-trumpers were thrilled to see her speak like a human to that creepy game-show guy, but being the darling of never-trumpers isn’t the path to Republican glory in 2023.
It’s going to be such a weird year, watching as these fools impale themselves on the built-in contradictions of their party. We want smaller government, except when we don’t. We want fiscal sanity, except when we don’t. We want strong character in our leadership, except when we don’t. And so on.
Old School
@moops:
Trump dropped about 6%. Undecided dropped 3%.
Francis Suarez actually surged from 0% to .3%. Why is he stopping now?!?!
HumboldtBlue
Sorry, guys, I know it’s disappointing, but I have decided I will not be running for president.
That’s my final decision.
RaflW
@Josie: The conventional wisdom (ugh) for decades has been that raising the SS tax income cap is ‘unpopular’, in part because it would require business matching of that tax up to the new limit (or … no limit!).
But we’re talking about individuals who make over $160,200 (btw that cap did rise, apparently by 13K this past year). So if a business needs to pay the ~7.5% match on >160K earnings, well that can just help tap the brakes on all the absurd upper-income pay packets. Double-win (though it would likely drive some more compensation into stock offers, which aren’t SSI taxed at all to my knowledge).
Mai Naem mobileI
@Barbara: Nikki’s always been an opportunist. https://twitter.com/michaelharriot/status/1669915356524163073?t=I8qvK0T1qDINIkT7o6wUTQ&s=19
Nikki’s just a better female version of Bobby Jindal. It really bothers me how she talks about Biden and TFG kicking the bucket. People who talk like that are usually the ones who themselves die unexpectedly. In Biden’s case it’s because she’s blowing the dog whistle of blackity blackity black VP Kamala Harris.
artem1s
Watch out if she decides she wants Lindsey’s senate seat. Vance was polling under 5% in Ohio until TFG endorsed him (bought and paid for by Theil). He’ll never choose her as his VP (not a 10). So as soon as she bows out, hands over her fundraising list, and a check, he’ll endorse her for whatever she’s got her eye on. And you know he would never give up a chance to humiliate Lindsey.
TaMara
@E.: This one? And whatever happened to him. And her and the baby?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CYQ7e1cjyTQ&ab_channel=TheIndependent
lollipopguild
@Ken: You probably get this a lot, are you close personal friends with Barbie?
smith
@p.a.: Sigh. That seems to be true across the board, whatever the issue. Can’t get around or over or under or through the solid brick wall of mass media favoritism toward Republican framing. The Dems are at least getting pretty good at social media, but it’s probably not enough.
Brit in Chicago
@RaflW: Biden has pledged not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $400k per year. So his version of the proposal would have a doughnut hole: the present rate up to the present limit, then the rate kicks in again when you get up to $400K. Might not make all that much sense, but I think that’s a pledge that he won’t break except under pretty extreme circs. Unfortunately the big money does not come in the form of income subject to payroll taxes at all.
Barbara
@RaflW: I am guessing that she was followed by taunts that she should be deported more than once in her childhood. Barack Obama is an exception to the fact that most Black Americans have ancestry in the United States that goes back to 1808 at the latest. One of the most powerful parts of the movie “I Am Not Your Negro” was James Baldwin’s disgust at Bobby Kennedy’s suggestion that African Americans had to be patient — he, the mere grandchild of immigrants, was the beneficiary of a family that was able to make more progress in a single generation than African-Americans were permitted multiple generations after the end of slavery.
Barbara
@Mai Naem mobileI: Her willingness to trade on racism is truly disgusting. As if wink wink nudge nudge her own dark skin is “neutral” because she doesn’t identify with those people.
Ken
@lollipopguild: Not so much since grade school. However when I bought my latest car, I got some jokes; it’s a Malibu.
LAO
@Omnes Omnibus: so fitting.
Sister Golden Bear
@RaflW:
Can we do without feminizing names as a pejorative?
We now return you to our regular programming.
cmorenc
Don’t get me wrong about Haley, but she’s the least insane of the GOP candidates, and her core constituency in South Carolina was chamber-of-commerce type Republicans rather than the RW evangelical socio-cultural warriors, though she played enough to them to keep them on board her in-state support. Which doesn’t mean she wouldn’t cater to the latter as President, with some of the same terrible policy results as if a real evangelical socio-cultural warrior was the GOP nominee.
We should be glad she won’t get any traction with enough of the national GOP base to get anywhere near winning the nomination – she would be a better candidate vs Biden in the general than most of the rest. She doesn’t come across nearly as scary to normal non-MAGA folk as the rest of the field.
Barbara
@smith: So I am in favor of raising the wage cap but I don’t think you get much mileage from calling it a free ride for people at the higher end of the wage spectrum. SS has both a minimum and maximum level of benefits. If you looked at the proportion of benefits as a function of what was paid in, people at the low end make out better — as they should in my view — while people at the high end are, proportionately, getting less money as a function of what they paid in. They are still getting more, but the amount of monthly benefit as a percentage of pre-retirement monthly income is higher at the lower end of the benefit spectrum.
You can’t really look at this issue, however, without also noting that higher income people are able to shelter wages through favorable tax treatment of 401(k) contributions and health insurance premiums, which they are much more likely to benefit from than their lower wage counterparts.
HumboldtBlue
I have been a huge Sacha Baron Cohen fan since the first time I saw Ali G, and he remains an awesome dude.
Here he is speaking about the March on Washington after being invited to speak by the King Center.
rikyrah
@RaflW:
If we raised the cap to $1,000,000
that is what we need
rikyrah
@Mai Naem mobileI:
her jealousy is raging when it comes to the VP
Barbara
@cmorenc: I disagree. I think Chris Christie is less insane, and for me, at least, Haley’s naked racism disqualifies her from holding any office. That she is not insane means that her racist messaging is intentional. She has no excuse, none.
Barbara
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you. Expressions like “blankety-blank isn’t for sissies” drive me insane. Ditto with things like calling Lindsay Graham “Miss Lindsay” as negative innuendo that he might be gay. Female attributes should not be used as an insult.
misterpuff
@Tony Jay:
That would be “Please Clap!”
PAM Dirac
@Barbara:
That is true on his father’s side, but on his mother’s side he has an ancestor that came to Maryland in about 1655 as an indentured servant. I found that out because my wife shares that ancestor with him.
Mr. Bemused Senior
She is just trying to get ahead in her chosen profession. [/snark]
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
@Barbara: All besides which, there is a beautiful drag queen out there, likely in Florida, whose name is being sullied by the association.
Barbara
@PAM Dirac: Yes, I was going to mention that, but the point is that the trajectory of the timing of white immigration is far more variable and most African Americans have a family tree that encountered the New World very early on in that trajectory.
HumboldtBlue
The motherfucking Tennessee GOP has gone full fascist, and that fucking speaker needs a slap in the face.
Gvg
@smith: I encounter so many people who just accept that it won’t be there when they retire. Not even conservatives, just everybody. They don’t even know why. I have a policy of laughing and saying that’s what they said 50 years ago when I started working , and my father said he was told it too. It’s still here and it’s always been an easy fix every time it’s actually in danger, most of the time it’s been lies and didn’t need anything done at all. Ignore the doomsayers, but don’t elect them.
Steeplejack
@Omnes Omnibus:
Apparently the Trump criming exemption covers only felonies, not misdemeanors. Weird oversight.
Old School
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation:
There is. And if she isn’t from Florida, she was in Florida last week.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@RaflW:
They won’t call for a ticket with both of them on it. It’s not the white <cough> I mean, right combination.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Omnes Omnibus: I laughed. Does that make me a bad person?
smith
@Barbara: Not only do the high earners get the added advantage of 401Ks and IRAs providing additional retirement income, they also have a boost in pay every year when they surpass the cap. That extra income, and the opportunity to invest it, which also comes with a high income since they don’t have to spend it on necessities, adds up over a lifetime of working. So, maybe it’s not a totally free ride for high earners, but it’s certainly a low-cost one.
Also the idea that people with low retirement incomes should get a better return on their SS contributions is already built into the progressive tax rates on SS income after retirement. The higher your overall income, the more tax you pay on your SS. So it’s not a a new concept.
Mai Naem mobileI
@Barbara: Nikki marked ‘white’ on her first voter registration form. She’s light skinned enough to pass for white. I’ve wondered is she’s what South Asians call a coconut – its the Indian version of oreos. Brown on the outside, wanna be white on the inside. Her parents sending her to a primarily white private school in SC might have led to towards that. We are talking the 70s not even the 80s.
Barbara
@smith: Agreed, I would just shy away from calling SS as currently configured a “free ride” for high earners.
Jackie
@RaflW: I really wish you’d quit insulting women by calling a male asshole Rhonda. Seriously.
rikyrah
Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) posted at 6:20 AM on Mon, Aug 28, 2023:
NEWS: McCarthy, under pressure from the right, has told Republicans he’s serious about a Biden impeachment inquiry & wants to start in September.
But they don’t have the votes — or evidence — yet, which is why there’s talk of skipping an inquiry vote.
Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) posted at 6:53 AM on Mon, Aug 28, 2023:
Meanwhile.. Trump’s patience with Republicans is starting to wear thin: Yesterday, he complained on Truth Social that the House GOP isn’t moving fast enough on a Biden impeachment.
“Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION,” he wrote.
lawhawk (@lawhawk) posted at 7:51 AM on Mon, Aug 28, 2023:
Because this is explicitly a witch hunt to try and smear Biden for all the things Trump is caught doing and for which there’s overwhelming evidence of Trump malfeasance in multiple jurisdictions and for multiple felonies.
(https://twitter.com/lawhawk/status/1696143492886512065?t=92d-nSSuLmNn8fT7DjXplw&s=03)
Tony Jay
@misterpuff:
Danged Internet traditions.
Omnes Omnibus
@Sister Golden Bear: Thank you.
Jackie
@rikyrah: The GQP should’ve named TIFG Speaker of the House. He is in all but name. I wonder how Kevin manages to comb his hair every morning w/o looking in the mirror…
dirge
A key point I rarely see raised is that the trust fund is deliberately designed to go to zero. It’s a temporary solution for the retirement of boomers, and will no longer be needed once enough of them are gone. So, sure, best if it doesn’t go below zero, but it’s not supposed to be a permanent gigantic pot of money.*
* Unless POSIWID, in which case it’s intended to accumulate a gigantic pot of money so that republicans can try to steal it.
Dangerman
@Barbara: Utterly Despicable would poll great. She should change her name.
Utterly Despicable Trump might get her sued, however.
hueyplong
@rikyrah: I look forward to Trump’s “They’re sentencing me tomorrow. You have to imprison Biden immediately or fade into OBLIVION.”
RaflW
@Sister Golden Bear: Oh, gosh. That was very uncool of me. My apologies.
trnc
OK, that made me laugh.
HumboldtBlue
May I note the name Rhonda Santis came about when he went after the drag community, so they decided to give him a drag name.
We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.
Also, I just made my first order from Penzeys. They have an about page on why they don’t support the GOP, which, while I agreed, I found odd.
Jeffro
@HumboldtBlue:
Well, that’s just silly. Running for president gives you full immunity from any & all prosecutions, don’t ya know?
Aren’t there any crimes you were thinking about committing in this election cycle? If so, you ought to file and run – BOOM! Totally immune!
(and if you lose in 2024, the very next day, you can declare yourself a candidate for 2028. DOUBLE BOOM!!)
Villago Delenda Est
@hueyplong:
Auschwitz FC
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: Only the best scofflaw mouthpieces.
Baud
Mine too, Mr. Suarez. Mine too.
West of the Rockies
Tributes, assemble! We bid farewell to… [checks notes]… someone whose name never registered.
Roger Moore
@HumboldtBlue:
That seems fair, but you have to be careful about that kind of stuff. In general, it’s OK to tease someone using insults that are usually directed against your group, but that doesn’t make it OK for outsiders to do it. Those of us who aren’t members of the drag community should probably leave that nickname to people who are.
Maybe it’s just me, but I generally don’t like the whole genre of targeting the other side with insults. It’s always seemed childish to me. If you are going to use insults, they should be very pointed and based on something specific you want to tie to that person in the listener’s mind. Calling MBS “Mohammad Bone Saw” is a good example of this; it isn’t just a generic insult but something that reminds the listener of what depths he will go to.
West of the Rockies
@Scout211:
That’s what I don’t get… all these dreary candidates who refuse to speak ill of Trump. Eventually they will have to do so… otherwise it’ll be, “My opponent is flawless and brave and true! But please vote for me nonetheless. “
smith
@West of the Rockies: That’s what we largely got from that first debate, with a couple of exceptions who apparently got no mileage out of their apostasy.
Matt McIrvin
@West of the Rockies: They’re running either as potential running mates for Trump, or as backup nominees if something happens to take Trump out of the race. They know that if they actually try to beat Trump, the Republican rank and file will hate them. They are pathetic creatures.
The Kropenhagen Interpretation
Funny thing about being an apostate…
Matt McIrvin
@Jackie:
There was actually talk of it. I would be very worried if they did, because it would strongly suggest they were maneuvering him into the presidential line of succession in preparation for some nefarious act.
hueyplong
@West of the Rockies: It seems like a fairly transparent audition for step father in case their God Daddy Trump drops dead or goes to prison for enough years that the party reluctantly looks elsewhere. They (except Christie, who found offensive Trump’s nearly successful attempt to kill him by giving him COVID) are assuring the crowd that they’ll respect their dead Daddy’s memory and give them the hate they crave.
smith
@The Kropenhagen Interpretation: Right. Who could have predicted?
dirge
The kernel of truth in that is that it’s designed as a system by and for wage-earners, with a couple key properties:
All of those things do contribute to the popularity of the program, in large part by giving no constituency a strong motive to oppose it.
I think increasing the cap makes sense, but you really want to design it so the upper middle class feels that they’re getting a decent deal, which means increasing benefits for them as well (presumably slightly less than proportionally). Not because they can’t afford to put in more than they get out, but because that’s what the income tax is for, not SS.
You don’t give any voting group a legitimate claim to be getting a raw deal from SS. That’s how we’ve kept it so far.
FelonyGovt
@Gvg: I always thought SS wouldn’t be there when I retired. Now I’m collecting it.
Roger Moore
@dirge:
I think this is really key, and it’s important for every kind of program. What you really don’t want with any program is to divide it into haves and have nots, because the have nots are a built in constituency for ending it. This is why means testing social programs is such a bad idea; the people who don’t qualify hate having to pay for a program they don’t benefit from. Even worse, the well off people who don’t benefit from the program tend to be more politically powerful than the poorer people who do, so the politics are against you.
Epicurus
@dmsilev: I read that he was trying to escape some potential legal troubles. Sorry I don’t have more details.
dirge
It’s one reason that means testing is a bad idea. The other that leaps immediately to mind is the needless complexity and attendant costs, hassles, and screw ups, not to mention the duplicative effort of means testing by dozens of different criteria across dozens of programs.
If you think someone is getting something for free that they ought to be paying for, let the IRS sort it out. One means test to rule them all.
Paul in KY
@catclub: Luis Suarez is many things, but he is certainly smart enough to stay far away from American politics.
Paul in KY
@Barbara: She does lust for power. She emanates that lust.