In Florida, the Exemption Amendment Will Get Too Costly

When the Florida Republicans have lost Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, you know DeSantis and his lackeys really f-cked up (via Bay News 9 Spectrum staff):

Polk county Sheriff Grady Judd is urging voters to reject Amendment 3.

He came out against the measure Tuesday during a news conference.

Judd argued that the Florida House made significant changes to the proposal Gov. Ron DeSantis initially made. He says the legislature then passed the measure without doing a proper financial analysis of the effect it would have.

"It's going to affect response times. It does not protect law enforcement, fire emergency services as earlier editions of it supposedly did," Judd said. "It doesn't provide for money to fix roads adequately, to clean stormwater adequately. It doesn't do any of that. It says what you can fund. It doesn't talk about libraries or parks. It's a train wreck."

Judd also suggested that for smaller counties, Amendment 3 could eliminate nearly half of their taxes, saying he would recommend voters reject the measure and instead called on lawmakers to revisit property tax reform that is "reasonable and responsible."

Judd - well-known among Floridians for hogging the spotlight whenever possible - normally is a staunch conservative figure in local politics... and yet here he is talking about paying for county/city services and defending the need for taxes like a New Deal liberal.

To provide some background: Florida is one of those states that does not have its own income tax to build revenues. The state relies on a statewide sales tax (at 6 percent) and separate corporate tax (at 5 percent, boooooooo hiss, they pay a lesser rate than us residents boooooooo), and then for the counties (and cities) a property tax that covers the local needs.

Thing is, at the state level - controlled by hardcore anti-tax Republicans since the late 1990s - they can interfere with property taxes by creating and expanding homestead exemptions. If you own one residence and call it home, you get a base $50,000 exemption: Say I own a house or condo worth $500,000, I will only be on the hook with the county/city for $450,000 when they apply millage rates to various expenditures like roads, water/sewage, trash pickup, libraries, fire rescue, law enforcement, etc. It's a way of reducing my tax burden as a resident.

Over the decades, the Florida GOP has pushed very specific exemptions - for veterans, widows of veterans, select classes of persons - through state amendment referendums to give those groups - many of them the Republican voting base - extra tax cuts. I've never really agreed or supported them over the years if you've ever kept track of my bi-annual "For the Love of God" election previews, but a lot of them still passed because most Florida residents didn't see the overall harm those exemptions caused for their local public services.

This latest amendment could seriously cause more damage to our state counties/cities than any hurricane ever would. It raises the exemption amount to $150,000 for 2027 and then $250,000 by 2028, with increases tied to inflation starting in 2029. It doesn't apply this exemption to new residents (or will that be new homeowners?) - only to those here for five or more years - who'll end up carrying a greater tax burden. 

All of a sudden, our counties and large cities could lose tens of millions in revenues. For example, Orange County (Orlando metro) one of our heaviest populated counties with millions rolling in from tourism and other major industries recorded $58.5 million in property tax for 2023/24, a huge chunk (81 percent!) of their overall $71.7 million intake.

Screenshotting this so I don't lose it

Just to keep county/city services the same as previous years, Orange County and the others would have to increase their millage rates to counterbalance... except this Amendment gives the state power to limit how the counties can spend their money on public services. The implication here is that the governor and legislature - currently in the grip of Far Right Republicans eager to prove their anti-tax bona fides - can stop the counties from adjusting their millage rates, or trying to maintain any ability to pay for any public services at all. 

The wingnuts in Tallahassee are determined to force spending cuts on social services wherever they want (mostly in any Democratic-friendly metros or minority-heavy rural counties: I doubt they want to anger their voting base in the Villages, the Panhandle, Naples, etc.). I wouldn't be surprised if their ultimate goal is to force all Florida residents - by squeezing local governments - to accept their Culture War bullshit against our own beliefs and existence.

As a Florida homeowner, for me that boost to a $150,000 exemption would be a boon... except for the fact that from that point on, my make that our roads won't be paved, the drinking water won't be clean, the trash won't get picked up, the fire department won't stop all the wildfires (we're in a drought right now and wildfires are a serious problem), my neighbors' kids are at greater risk of abuse, animal control won't keep up with rabid ferals, and Grady Judd won't be able to send out the sheriff cars to the surrounding rural areas where they're blowing up meth labs and running sex trafficking rings. I really will NOT save all that much from what I will pay in property taxes. These services matter. 

And as a city employee for a public library, if this amendment passes a lot of my co-workers (and maybe myself) are going to be out of jobs. In terms of essential services at the city and county levels, libraries and parks/recreation get hit with cuts first and hardest. You think libraries are just checking out books? Libraries provide public computer access, activities for kids and adults, means of doing your own work (we get a lot of self-employed people using our study rooms as temp office space), taking care of a lot of personal needs, above all a community hub. I wrote this back in 2018: You get a greater return on investment with public libraries than a lot of other privatized services out there. DeSantis' Amendment 3 will kill all of that, statewide. Mass unemployment just as half of everything goes to shit.

There is no goddamn way I am supporting this Amendment. I sure as hell do not want any of my fellow Floridians voting for this disaster, because it's going to hurt us all a lot more than any money you think you're saving from an unjustified and painful tax cut.

This is what Florida Republicans have wanted for decades: a tax-free "utopia" to gut any help for the poor people, and where the local communities won't be able to fight back against any Far Right social agendas - hurting gays, hurting women, hurting Blacks and Latinos, and shoving their toxic brand of Christianity down our throats - they wish to impose.

But I've noted this before: Utopias don't work. Tax cuts don't work. What the Florida Republicans - under DeSantis and other extremists - will get is a state falling apart faster than Mississippi, recreating that wonderful libertarian experience in New Hampshire of no functioning government and rampaging bears.

It's not a tax cut, Floridians: It's a massive expense you're going to have to pay in other ways. PLEASE VOTE NO on this.

Addendum: I just realized something - although someone better versed on the issue can explain otherwise - one thing that could happen with the increased exemptions is that the county property appraisers could scale the value of properties higher to compensate. A rundown house honestly worth less than that $150,000 exemption could get reappraised to $200,000 just so there's something to tax. This would have the effect of ruining the housing market across the board as property values skyrocket to unjustified values. I doubt the state-level Republicans will care much if houses get more expensive because their buddies the land developers could see more money out of it. But it's going to make it harder for anyone to buy a house - especially low-income first-time buyers - and it's going to make it harder for some to sell their houses if the appraisers make them too expensive for middle-income people. And if the property values go up, so do the insurance rates, which are pretty high in Florida already thanks to hurricane and flood risks.

It feels similar to how homes in California are over-valued to where there's a serious housing crisis in that state. Florida can well see the same problem.

Four For the Fourth 2025: As Usual, What the Hell Republicans?

(This is the first of four articles I write on this blog in honor of the 4th of July, although this 2025 trumpian dystopia is going to make it hard to be a pleasant Fourth)

I once noticed how presidential candidate Mitt Romney had "massive tax cuts for the rich" as his "ever-fixed mark," the one campaign pledge he never flipped against. I should have noted how that massive tax cut was a core belief of the modern (Reagan Era) Republican Party, because even after 2012 the goddamn GOP kept pursuing their massive tax cut plans in order to placate their overlords at the Club For Greed and other SuperPACs.

When the Republicans held control of the federal government back in 2017, one of the few agenda items they were able to pull off was that massive tax cut for the rich, alongside shifting the tax burden more onto lower income brackets to "balance" the shifts in revenue. Even then, it didn't work: Deficits went up and the national debt went up. But the Republican congresscritters didn't care because - under the sway of the minority power of the uber-rich billionaires and mega corps - they honestly don't represent their congressional and state interests anymore.

Which is why this week - again in control of the federal government this 2025 - Congress went and passed an even bigger tax cut for the rich at the expense of the rest of America (via Elena Moore, Claudia Grisales, and Deirdre Walsh at NPR):

President Trump's massive spending and tax cut bill is on the way to his desk for a signature. The bill passed Thursday after Republican leaders in the House of Representatives convinced holdouts in their own party to get in line behind the controversial legislation.

House Republicans passed the bill by a vote of 218 to 214, nearly entirely along party lines. All 212 Democrats voted in unison against the bill, and they were joined by two Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania. Leaders were forced to work all night to win the votes necessary to pass the bill and meet Trump's demand to sign the bill by July 4.

All so donald trump can hold a photo op signing event on the 4th of July, hijacking the symbolism of independence for "independence from taxes" even though that's not going to happen for most Americans. Our taxes - yes my bracket is affected - are going to go up (via David Morgan at Reuters):

Several independent analyses conclude that the bill now before the Senate would effectively transfer money from poor Americans to the rich.

The Penn Wharton Budget Model, for example, found it would reduce after-tax income by $1,500 for families earning less than $22,000 per year, and boost income by $104,000 for those earning more than $5.2 million. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reached a similar conclusion...

House Republicans say the bill would provide the typical family with a $1,300 tax cut and that business tax breaks would lead to higher wages for workers.

Which is a lie: All the previous massive tax cuts for businesses NEVER turned into higher wages for employees. Tax cuts for the wealthy never balanced budgets and never improved the middle or lower classes. Those families with $5.2 million annual income don't NEED $104k extra pocket change, but that family (or individual) on $22,000 a year WILL NEED that $1,500 for bills, bills, and staying out of massive debt.

And those massive tax cuts are not what a sizable plurality of this nation are asking for, if this Pew Research 2025 report from Andy Cerda and Andrew Daniller is accurate: 

Far more Americans oppose the legislation than favor it. Nearly half (49%) oppose it, while 29% favor it. Another 21% are not sure.

A narrow majority says the legislation would have a negative impact on the country. While 54% say it would have a mostly negative effect on the country in the coming years, 30% say it would have a mostly positive effect. Another 12% think it would not have much of an impact.

About half (51%) expect the bill to increase the budget deficit. Just 18% of Americans say the bill would cut the deficit, and 27% say it would not have much of an effect...

You would think congressional Republicans would be intelligent enough - or at least aware of the polling - to understand their budget bill is going to hurt their support back home. And you'd be right: A number of GOP congresscritters were begging everyone else to stop them (via Bill Scher at Washington Monthly):

Soon after Senator Lisa Murkowski coughed up the 50th vote for the Senate version of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, she told reporters what was wrong with it. 

“I struggled mightily with the impact on the most vulnerable in this country, when you look to Medicaid and SNAP,” she said, referring to the bill’s deep cuts to health care and food assistance. The Congressional Budget Office projects that the bill’s onerous provisions would directly strip health coverage from 11.8 million people by 2034, and the omission of any extension for Joe Biden-era health-care tax credits would deny coverage for another 5.1 million, for a total of 16.9 million. And according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities,  “more than 5 million people—about 1 in 8 SNAP participants…would be at risk of losing at least some of their food assistance”  because of the Republican “red-tape-laden, ineffective work requirement. ” For its part, the Congressional Budget Office predicts 2 million people will lose SNAP benefits altogether because of the work requirement...

And yet, Murkowski, you fucking voted for it. You had the power and ability to say NO for the benefit of your constituents of Alaska - and the nation - and yet...

Opinions differ regarding the potential consequences of historically high post-World War II federal debt levels, and whatever those consequences are, they won’t be felt by households as immediately and acutely as the loss of Medicaid and SNAP coverage will be felt. Many Republicans agree with Senator Johnson that our debt level should be declining. Yet, they continue to support legislation that piles on more debt by cutting taxes far more deeply than cutting spending, and in the process, rewarding high-income households and punishing low-income households. Johnson is one of them. He told NPR that Trump “satisfied my requirement, which was a commitment to a reasonable, pre-pandemic level of spending and a process to achieve and maintain it.” A hollower commitment would be impossible to make...

The modern Republican Party is caught in a fantasy of their own making: Pushed by deep-pocket campaign funders who want to keep their greed expanding at the expense of everyone else (damn you, Citizens United ruling), pressured by anti-government ideologues who want to starve the federal government and drown it in Grover's bathtub, and convinced that their incumbent - and gerrymandered - status makes them protected from voter outrage; the Far Right keep buying into the lie of trickle-down in order to justify their cruelty and disdain towards the lower classes.

The Republicans - with trump hosting his horrific photo op today - are going to be celebrating a bill they know is destructive and harmful to the national well-being - especially the Medicaid cuts that will force far too many rural hospitals and nursing homes even in deep Republican Red states to close - but they hope won't affect their re-election hopes for 2026 and 2028.

If trump lets us have fair elections any more, that is.

Goddamn these Far Right bastards.

Liz Truss Is In Trouble

Update: Ooof, what? I was at work today, what's all this about Batocchio adding this article to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up this morning? Dammit, I didn't vacuum the rug or anything! (hurries to clean up the place) Um, glance around, I got other stuff to read. Also, in a couple of weeks I will find out if any of my blog articles up for the FWA's Royal Palm Awards will win anything, so keep an eye out for more news! Thank ye, Batocchio.

When last we checked in with the United Kingdom, the Brits were coping with the loss of their beloved Queen Elizabeth II while their Parliamentary government had chosen a replacement Prime Minister to take over from scandal-plagued Boris Badhair.

Liz Truss had just recently replaced Boris Johnson in early September, going up to Scotland to Elizabeth's pastoral retreat at Balmoral to present her credentials and perform the ritual - bowing, holding the hand, answering three questions to cross the Gorge of Eternal Peril, that sort of thing - each new PM does with the Crown. Only that within 24 hours of doing so, Elizabeth II fell ill and never recovered, which didn't exactly bode well for Truss.

It was as though Liz II met Liz T, and Liz II decided "Fuck all, this ditz isn't worth it, I'll let Charles handle this nightmare" and got out while the getting was good.

Because Liz Truss is turning out to be even WORSE as Prime Minister than Johnson was. Within a month of being in office, Truss has blundered from one bad mistake to the next, exposing her Conservative leadership to humiliation, creating economic catastrophes that can't be easily undone, and forcing her Tory allies to plot her early removal.

Christ. Even William Henry Harrison lasted longer than this (okay, I exaggerate, but Truss is honestly facing the shortest tenure as Prime Minister in British history).

Let's go to the dirty details with Tom McTague at the Atlantic (paywall):

Today, we had the absurd spectacle of a prime minister, barely a month into the job, abandoning the central tax-cutting purpose of her premiership and sacking her closest political ally, who had implemented this vision. This all in aid of a vain and surely doomed attempt to cling to power, after the markets concluded that her policies were insane. Never before has Britain found itself in such a humiliatingly risible position. It is the stuff of nightmares: the national equivalent of getting caught short onstage in front of your entire school because you chose not to go to the bathroom when you had the chance...

The political ally McTague speaks of was Kwasi Kwarteng, chosen to be her Finance Minister in her Cabinet, who was obsessive about the supply-side/trickle-down fantasies of massive tax cuts as stimulus in a British economy facing inflation and several other woes. When Kwarteng presented his tax-cut plan with Truss' approval, everything went to hell (back to McTague):

What Britain needed, Truss argued, was a tax-cutting bonanza to set it free. Her rival for the leadership was Johnson’s chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who argued for fiscal responsibility and warned that such a reckless policy would lead to a run on the pound and a calamitous series of mortgage-rate rises. Given this choice, the electorate for the Tory leadership—the roughly 170,000 members of the Conservative Party—preferred the magical money tree.

So, on September 23—two and a half weeks after taking over as prime minister—Truss and her new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced an extraordinary array of tax cuts without any indication of how they would be paid for. They called this their “plan for growth.”

And then there was a run on the pound and a calamitous series of mortgage-rate rises...

If you've followed my blog, every so often I will come across the Republican Party's obsessions with tax cuts being a cure-all for all ills, and I will scream into the void that TAX CUTS DON'T WORK. Watching the British counterparts of the Tories trying to pull the same trickle-down fantasy and getting smacked by the real world is satisfying in a schadenfreude kind of way. Back to McTague:

The reaction to Truss’s plan was immediate and savage. The markets responded with horror at the sudden gaping hole in Britain’s budget. The pound collapsed against the dollar, almost reaching an unprecedented parity, and the cost of government borrowing rocketed. Huge interest-rate increases by the Bank of England began to be priced in as the only way to protect the currency, which, of course, meant stepping on the brakes after Truss had put her foot on the accelerator.

This, in turn, led ordinary banks to start hiking their mortgage rates in expectation of what was coming, just as Sunak had warned, which then sent the property-owning middle classes into a tailspin as they rushed to lock in new rates before the numbers spiked even further. Suddenly, the tax-cutting budget to get Britain growing again had turned into a massive hit on Middle England. Even the International Monetary Fund departed from protocol to issue a sharp rebuke to Truss’s government...

Her intraparty rival warned her, the UK banks warned her, and Truss STILL pushed ahead on an unjustified tax cut plan all because - Gods help the Conservative Party - they have no other plans that fit their world-view. Tax cuts are all they believe in much like the American Republicans, because they dare not think about raising taxes on their billionaire corporate allies to fix their government's budget woes. Again to to McTague:

In a single act of stupidity, Truss managed to blow up Johnson’s markedly redistributive election-winning platform—and therefore his coalition, which included disaffected Labour voters from the poorer north of England. Instead of spending more on public services, Truss detonated an economic bomb under the middle classes—first, by lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses and cutting taxes for the rich, and then, faced with market turmoil, by scrambling around for new spending cuts. It would be hard to design a more catastrophic act of political self-immolation...

Britain has been broke before. It was in this position after the war when it needed U.S. assistance, and then again in the late ’70s when it was bailed out by the IMF. It was battered by the markets in 1992 when John Major’s economic strategy collapsed.

What’s happening now is entirely new: the very real prospect that the markets will force a change of prime minister before an election. They have already forced a change in policy. Truss’s problems are so acute that Tory MPs are discussing removing her as a serious option, perhaps their only one. If Truss is removed any time soon, hers would be the shortest premiership in British history, beating George Canning’s 119-day tenure in 1827. And he died in office...

(That's where I got the comparison to Harrison. My bad)

While McTague is raking Truss over the coals for her blunders, the thing he avoids discussing is how Truss and her Tory allies were hampered by their blinkered devotion to the primary source of all of Britain's current economic woes: Brexit. That disaster - haunting that nation since 2016 - is a very big reason why Truss - and her predecessor Johnson, and his predecessor Teresa May - can't make any other major economic reform needed to rebuild the UK economy.

For that, I go to Chris Grey at his invaluable Brexit & Beyond blog where he points out the flaws in Truss' agenda and how Brexit is going to doom her and any other replacement Prime Minister until the next general election. From his September 30th article:

The political ambitions of the libertarian wing of the Brexit Ultras have always been ambivalent. On the one hand, they have largely preferred to complain of betrayal from the sidelines rather than take any responsibility or, if accepting ministerial office, to quickly resign rather than engage with the pragmatic realities of Brexit. On the other hand, they have hankered to be in charge not just so as to create ‘true Brexit’, but the ‘real Conservatism’ of which Brexit was a part and to which it was a gateway.

With the advent of Truss’s premiership, they have eschewed the sidelines in favour of governing and, with a rapidity that even their sternest critics would have thought it cruel to predict, have been exposed as utterly incompetent, both politically and economically, and in the most basic of ways. It is deeply ironic that this has happened at the hand of ‘the markets’ which they so slavishly fetishize...

The occasion, of course, was last Friday’s tax-cutting ‘mini-budget’. “At last! A true Tory Budget”, the Daily Mail drooled, whilst Nigel Farage simpered about “the best Conservative Budget since 1986”. Yet, whether despite or because of this fidelity to Conservatism, and as anticipated in my previous post, there was an immediate crisis in the currency and bond markets, with the value of the pound falling to its lowest ever level on Monday, and the cost of government borrowing in the form of gilts or bonds rising very sharply. Amongst numerous knock-on effects, pension funds, which invest heavily in such bonds, came within hours of mass insolvency on Wednesday afternoon, threatening a major breakdown of the financial system and requiring major emergency temporary action from the Bank of England. This, in combination, with a clear signal from the Bank that interest rates will rise in due course, which eased pressure on the pound, has effected a degree of stabilization, but markets remain jittery and it’s by no means clear that this crisis has run its course, especially as regards gilts.

These weren’t routine or trivial market movements, but an overwhelming and brutal vote of no confidence in the government’s plans. Specifically, they were a vote of no confidence in the decision to cut taxes, or not implement previously planned tax rises, and to fund this through borrowing. Again as anticipated in my last post, the government’s refusal to allow its plans to be scrutinised independently by the Office for Budget Responsibility added to market alarm. So, too, did Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s casual reaction over the weekend, even suggesting further tax cuts to come. The rout continued on Monday when, as Paul Donovan, Chief Economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, put it, “investors seem to regard the UK Conservative Party as a doomsday cult”...

Re-read the part about Kwarteng's suggestion of doubling down on an economic plan that already caused a meltdown. The wingnut Conservatives can't stop themselves. If tax cuts create a massive economic crisis, well then by God we'll insist on even more tax cuts, because sooner or later the Trickle Down Fairy will grant us our boons. /headdesk Truss firing Kwarteng from his job was the only way to curtail that particular madness. And yet, the cause of every other act of insanity happening in England remains because Truss and her party are still wrapped up in Brexit dogma, as Grey continues to note:

So, given that the Brexiters themselves regard the mini-budget as integral to Brexit, it’s reasonable to say, as Robert Shrimsley of the Financial Times did (£), that “Brexit ideology lies behind the UK’s market rout”. It’s abundantly clear to even the feeblest intelligence that those Brexiters now include Truss, for all the fury  of Dominic Cummings’s denials (directed at me!) on the inane grounds that she supported Remain in 2016. As I pointed out during the campaign, she is now a ‘born again Ultra’, perhaps the more fanatical for being so, and was extravagantly endorsed by the leading Ultras, making the fact that she was once a Remainer the most tedious and least relevant thing to say about her.

As so often before, Brexiter responses to the crisis they created have been confused and contradictory. Some in the government prissily said they could not comment on market events, as if some new Trappist ordinance of political propriety has been invented. Others downplayed what has happened, suggesting that the market reaction is either trivial or transient, or even that it has little or nothing to do with the budget but is simply a result of a strengthening dollar (which doesn’t explain why the pound fell against all major currencies, or what happened in the bond market). Outrageously, some, like Crispin Odey, hedge fund manager, Tory and Vote Leave donor, and sometime employer of Kwarteng, blamed “Remainers”. Peak insanity was reached by Daniel Hannan, who blamed the crash not on the mini-budget, but market fears of a Labour government!

Of course much like Conservatism itself, Brexit cannot fail it can only be betrayed. Even with the Bank of England and IMF and various other economic entities telling the Tories that it's their Brexit policies creating these economic meltdowns, the Tories cannot accept that fault and must blame others - the Remainers, Labour, hell even the Teletubbies will get accused next - rather than admit where the Leave movement went wrong. Grey calls them out on that:

That refusal has as its counterpart the distinctively Brexity idea, now taken over wholesale by this Brexit government, that they are beleaguered revolutionaries of true Conservativism fighting the (presumably false) conservatism of ‘the Establishment’. The notion of Brexit as an anti-Establishment insurgency has been a ludicrous one ever since the 2016 referendum was won, and Brexit became adopted as the central policy and national strategy. It is even more so now that the Brexit Ultras are unequivocally in charge of government, though of course it is a standard populist trope, familiar from the Trump presidency.

What we have seen this week is that the Brexiters have added ‘the markets’ to the increasingly long and diverse list – encompassing the ‘Woke’ Blob, the civil service in general and the Treasury in particular, the BoE, Remainers, Rejoiners, the National Trust, the BBC – of enemy forces they must confront in the name of revolutionary purity...

So my own view is that, in their arrogance and delusion, this Brexit government, and its cheerleaders, really do believe it has found a new ‘unconventional’ economic model and did not expect the market reaction, and that although a full November budget was certainly planned, including the announcement of the deregulatory ‘supply side reforms’ that will supposedly deliver the growth to pay for tax cuts, it was not going to include significant spending cuts which, instead, were anticipated for after Truss had won the election on the back of what they expected to be a growing economy. Then, with the legitimacy of a fresh mandate and a compliant parliamentary majority, she would declare it was time to shrink public spending but without coupling that with the tax cuts that would already be in place.

If my interpretation is right, the government’s plan is now in tatters, and the expectation is that the November budget will feature huge spending cuts (£) (and perhaps reversing the tax cuts, as some Tory MPs want, which can’t be ruled out though it seems unlikely at the moment)...

For this government was already politically weak, and as a result of this crisis is now much weaker. Although the libertarian cabal has taken control of the government, both it and Truss have many opponents amongst MPs and, as I remarked in a post during the leadership campaign, the current Tory Party is so riven by factions as to be unleadable, with rebellions an ever-present possibility. This week’s crisis has laid that bare, with, almost astonishingly given how new her premiership is, reports of letters of no confidence in Truss being submitted by some MPs and threats of backbench revolts...

There is already talk of a No Confidence vote happening by Monday. They're already pressing the 1922 Committee that oversees such matters to force her out as soon as possible. But this maneuver exposes the Conservatives with the painful reality that they have ousted two Prime Ministers within within 6 months of each other, and creating a leadership crisis among factions who are fighting amongst themselves for high office. A situation that will consume the next unlucky soul who signs up as PM because their party's Brexit platform will condemn that fool to more failure.

Seriously, who will be next to replace Truss? It's looking like it will be Sunak, who warned of the collapse of the pound and housing costs skyrocketing, but he didn't win over the party earlier this year, and he's viewed as being weak on Brexit meaning the extremist factions will rebel against him anyway.

The entire Conservative Party in the UK is stuck in a downward spiral of self-inflicted defeats, all because they can't change course on their Brexit policies and dare not open themselves to the possibility that the Remainers were right all along. But in the meantime, they'll fight against any calls for a emergency election in order to stay in power until 2024 when the general election happens anyway: Two more years of nightmarish intraparty fighting while the British Isles falls apart. 

The only way that election happens is if the Tories finally break apart into their own party factions: If the Tories go to a Minority government, they may not have enough votes to stop Labour forcing new elections.

It then becomes an issue of how angry the British voters will be, and if they abandon Conservatives to switch to Labour - or even Liberal Dems - in a final rebuke to Brexit madness that has broken their nation the last six years.

That's the only hope the British have left.

Penny For My Thoughts Because I'm Out of Pocket Change

Like I've written earlier, I can't understand why people think our economy's gotten better since the Great Recession. Far too many of us are living paycheck to paycheck and weighed under by too much debt.

Even FORBES Magazine is taking notice (via Peter Georgesceu):

Ostensibly, for the past ten years, our economy has been recovering from the 2008 collapse. During the past few years, our comeback seems to have gained momentum. All the official indicators say we’re back in boom times, with a bull market, low unemployment and steady job growth. But there is an alternative set of data that depicts a different America, where the overlooked majority struggles from month to month.

The Nation recently published a stunning overview of the working poor and underpaid. One of the most powerful data points in the piece described how empty the decline in unemployment actually is: having a job doesn’t exempt anyone from poverty anymore. About 12% of Americans (43 million) are considered poor, and yet they are employed. They earn an individual income below $12,140 per year, and slightly more than that for a family of two. If you include housing and medical expenses in the calculation, it raises the percentage of Americans living in poverty to 14%. That’s 45 million people...

If we link to that Nation article by Rejan Menon, we get more details:

For a fuller picture of American (in)security, however, it’s necessary to delve deeper into the relevant data, starting with hourly wages, which are the way more than 58 percent of adult workers are paid. The good news: Only 1.8 million, or 2.3 percent of them, subsist at or below minimum wage. The not-so-good news: One-third of all workers earn less than $12 an hour and 42 percent earn less than $15. That’s $24,960 and $31,200 a year. Imagine raising a family on such incomes, figuring in the cost of food, rent, childcare, car payments (since a car is often a necessity simply to get to a job in a country with inadequate public transportation), and medical costs.

The problem facing the working poor isn’t just low wages, but the widening gap between wages and rising prices. The government has increased the hourly federal minimum wage more than 20 times since it was set at 25 cents under the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act. Between 2007 and 2009 it rose to $7.25, but over the past decade that sum lost nearly 10 percent of its purchasing power to inflation, which means that, in 2018, someone would have to work 41 additional days to make the equivalent of the 2009 minimum wage...

Take the poverty gap, which the OECD defines as the difference between a country’s official poverty line and the average income of those who fall below it. The United States has the second-largest poverty gap among wealthy countries; only Italy does worse...

No nation can honestly maintain itself under this kind of income inequality. At some point, the financial scams at the top can't find any more suckers, and the debt consumes itself (this is what happened with the housing speculation in 2007-08 causing the Great Recession). At some point, the public frustration at being constantly in debt will erupt.

The United States has been separate from the rest of the world when it comes to this kind of oppressive economic decay. Most other countries would have broken out the pitchforks and Molotov Cocktails by now. But in the U.S., we've been able to hide from the economic despair by leaving most of the class warfare to revolve around Race instead of Poverty (despite all the Progressives thinking our class struggle is economic, all of the violent moments in American history have been over racism SEE Tulsa, Rosewood, Japanese internment, Jim Crow and Slavery eras, etc).

But sooner or later, the corrupt minority rule of Republican oligarchs - who are suppressing voters by ethnicity, gender, and youth - worried more about their goddamned tax cuts than good wages for mos workers cannot contain the anger that's brewing. trump can siphon off that rage to confuse his voting base into blaming Illegals for all their ills, but what happens when the boogeymen are gone and the oligarchs are still raking in our wages? How many Latinos and Blacks and feminists are you gonna blame for your $7.65 an hour paycheck (without health benefits) before you realize it's your $21 million a year CEO ripping you off with wage theft?

If voters were genuinely rising up over "economic anxiety" they'd be in the streets demanding $15 an hour minimum wage, caps on CEO pay, ending the GOP 2017 Tax Cut Disaster that made income inequality worse, and relief for majority of Americans regarding college/health care/homeowner debts.

They sure as hell wouldn't be voting for the Tax-Cheat-in-Chief and his Republican buddies.

A Billionaires Ballot, An Electoral Nightmare (w/ Update)

Given how the Beltway media loves covering elections - the horse race nature of campaigning always involves personality clashes and plot twists galore - we're already into the nightmare of 2020 coverage not only with the usual suspects putting in their expected nominations but also a surprising opening appearance.

It seems the former CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz is thinking about putting his hat in the 2020 ring to run as an independent.

Naturally, this requires a reasoned and well-thought response from Twitter (just read this article from Balloon Juice for a nice refresher). Which, if I can summarize for you, was this:

OH FUCK NO.

There's already been calls to boycott Starbucks (I originally argued that it might not work since he retired the CEO gig, but it turns out he still owns a hefty share so yeah go ahead nuke the company).

Schultz's reasoning for running is he posits the "Both Sides are wrong" argument popular with the "No Labels Third Party Will Save Us" wing of mainstream media.

But he's made his real reason pretty clear after his first couple of interviews: He's already attacked the likes of Kamala Harris (who announced this week) and Elizabeth Warren (who's announced earlier) and Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez (who is too young to announce but can dance circles around him) for their open calls for higher tax rates and expanded healthcare / social aid programs that will likely involve taxing the rich.

He's terrified by Democratic Party calls for a high marginal tax rate on billionaires, and he wants to do everything in his power - such as Spoiling the Democrats as a "Centrist" - to ensure trump wins a second term to keep that from happening.

Let's refer to Eugene Robinson at RealClearPolitics on this:

At present, the specter of a second Trump term looks comfortably remote. The blue wave in the midterm election and Trump's cellar-dwelling approval numbers show what the country thinks of him and his corrupt, chaotic, kooky administration. A recent poll shows him trailing any of his likely Democratic opponents. If the election were held next week, I'm pretty confident that Trump would lose to a ham sandwich.

He does have a chance in 2020, however, if the anti-Trump vote is split between two or more candidates. Imagine Schultz, a lifelong Democrat, siphoning off even 5 percent of the Democratic candidate's vote in, say, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida. The horror of 2016 threatens to become a recurring nightmare.

Here is the sad truth of American Presidential Elections that I have noted before: The Electoral College system as currently rigged favors a Winner-Take-All by state meaning the top two major party candidates - Democratic and Republican - are the ONLY possible candidates to win the Electors.

No third party or independent candidate stands a chance. Anderson in 1980 barely won 6 percent of the overall popular vote and NOTHING in the Electoral College. Perot ran his vanity campaigns in 1992 and 1996 and achieved the same Electoral College results (Nada). Libertarians and Green candidates have yet to garner even ONE Elector over multiple campaigns. The last time we had a successful third party candidate was Wallace in 1968 with 46 EV, and that was because of the cultural and political shift over the Civil Rights Acts that sent the racist Southern voters to the polls in revolt.

But that's the thing, as Robinson notes, the third party candidate can perform the role of Spoiler to knock the possible winner down a peg and force the Electoral College - by having key battleground states flip the wrong way by just a handful of votes - to elect the losing Second-Place finisher.

We've seen it within our own lifetimes. The Perot races in 1992 and 1996 arguably pulled away enough votes from the Republican candidates, and there's still bitterness among Democrats towards the role Ralph Nader played in the 2000 elections. You could argue about Jill Stein affecting Hillary's chances in key states, but Libertarian Gary Johnson had a bigger popular vote impact and it did little damage to trump's chances (there's still the specter of Putin sabotaging the whole 2016 scene so that's kind of a wash). Outside of our times, the biggest Spoiler election was 1912's when Teddy Roosevelt - angry at his Republican protege Taft's soft business policies - decided to run his Bull Moose campaign... letting the Democratic candidate Wilson win due to the split Republican voter base.

Robinson notes in his article how even trump understood that in 2015-16:

Remember how coy Trump was early in the Republican primary campaign, reserving the option of an independent candidacy if the GOP did not treat him fairly? Trump used the threat as leverage to get his way on debate logistics and ballot access. But then he suddenly reversed course, signing a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.

A person familiar with Trump's thinking told me why. Trump understood that the most likely outcome, if he ran on his own, would be to guarantee Hillary Clinton's election by taking votes away from the GOP candidate. In his wildest dreams, he might hope to win enough electoral votes to keep either major-party candidate from reaching a majority. But in that case, the election would be thrown to the House of Representatives -- which would surely choose the Republican or the Democrat, not Trump.

That's the real purpose - and threat - of a strong third party candidate in our current Presidential system: shake up enough votes to make the likely winning party actually lose.

Schultz is not actually strong - at least not yet, because he's a relatively unknown figure just re-entering the spotlight - but he is RICH. As a confirmed billionaire, he can throw about 500 million dollars at a vanity campaign and still use it as a tax write-off somehow because he can STILL spend enough money on accountants to cheat the IRS.

Referring back to my earlier argument against Schultz: the sonofabitch is running scared because the ascendant Democratic Party - with its new lineup of Progressive and left-leaning Congresspersons - shows little sign of slipping back for the upcoming 2020 cycle. The Dems are likely to retain control of the House, can arguably retain enough state governments (and maybe win a few Purple ones if the turnout's high enough) to keep progressive efforts going, may threaten Republican control of the Senate (more GOP Senators are up for re-election than Democrats this next cycle), and are poised to win against an unpopular and inept incumbent in trump (barring further Russian intervention).

Running for Governor or Senator as an "Independent" (or even as a business-friendly Democrat - he is apparently a registered D) won't stop that momentum. Running for President - even with the unlikelihood of winning without a popular base of support - to ensure trump retains veto power over everything is the best achievable goal.

Schultz making this a suicide mission is the only thing that makes sense. He has to know he's already getting hit on social media by outraged Democrats, and he's making a terrible impression with the media talking heads he's interviewed with. He's just another amateur at politics. It'd be like... me, making an announcement from my blog that "HEY, I'm throwing my hat in the ring for 2020 as an Independent!"

The only difference between Schultz and myself is I cannot afford to even download the paperwork I'd have to file to start a campaign, and he can afford to hire 10,000 people to do all that for him.

But we're running into the OTHER big problem with modern American politics (actually it's several): terrible, horrifying myths about business and politics.

• The myth that Government ought to be run like a Business;
• The myth that Business Leaders - CEOs for example - are capable of managing Public Sector powers;
• The myth that our partisan landscape can be healed/fixed by a calming Centrist figure that can create bipartisan support just by standing there oh so pretty.

As we've seen from bad performances from other Presidents with business backgrounds - Hoover and Dubya and the current Loser of the Popular Vote trump (the con artist's not even a successful businessman in the first place!!!) - we should know by now that being a CEO is different from being a President. Decision making in a business is top-down, has to be, and there's nothing wrong with that. But a President has to lead by consensus and awareness of the public will, and CEOs can never think like that (everything has to be HIS WAY or the highway, or in Dubya's case he deferred authority out to handlers like Cheney - also having corporate experience - who DID think like that).

The myth of Government being run like a Business should be taking hits as well. Where a business operates in order to earn profits, a government has to operate to provide services as a public good. Those are opposing objectives. Every time the Republicans pull their "run it like a business" stunt - tax cuts and deregulations - everything falls apart with deficits and collapsing infrastructure.

The final myth is the belief - the hope - of the mainstream media and high-ranking punditry that all we need is a Uniter figure outside of "Party" corruption to rise up and save us from our weak political overlords. They look to figures like Washington who seemed to rise above party (only because he existed before they formed, and when they did he leaned conservative/Federalist). They look to calming, fatherly patriarchs like Eisenhower or amiable, cheerful types like Reagan (his spell on the current punditry remains horrifyingly intact).

THAT is the biggest pipe dream of all. There is no outisde Uniter figure waiting to save us, no one with a level of public popularity - outside of entertainers with universal appeal - that can sweep in and guide us to sane policy. And if there is, it sure as hell isn't yet another billionaire - especially one whom nobody could pick out of a police lineup two weeks ago - thinking he can buy his way onto the national ballot.

But we're stuck with Schultz, just like we were stuck with other vanity candidates like Perot, or the likes of Steve Forbes or Herman Cain trying their luck in Republican primaries.

Because the final biggest problem we have with our electoral system: It favors the rich.

It's been a thing since our nation's founding: Every political player from the Founders at the Declaration of Independence through the first few decades of forming the Constitution were all wealthy men. Lawyers, merchants, landowners, slaveowners. Not a one of them were what we'd call poor or middle class. They could afford to play the game of politics and then hand it off to the next rich newcomer to come along and keep the game going.

As our nation grew, we'd get the occasional poor person - someone from a struggling background - but we'd still get overwhelmed by the business leaders and the profit makers, all of them keeping control of government to ensure their needs - staying rich - were met first before taking care of the general welfare (reforms when they happened only happen in waves, like the Progressive Era of the early 20th Century in response to the corruption of the late 19th Century).

This is where we're stuck today. Only the rich can run for office. Entry fees alone to get on a ballot can get expensive. You have to take time to campaign, make speeches, get on airwaves, kiss babies, etc. and only the self-employed and indolent wealthy can afford that. You have to raise campaign funds, which means getting other wealthy people to chip in, and who else can do that but someone from those same social circles?

And the current electoral system favoring dark money and deep-pocket SuperPACs - thanks Citizens United! - guarantees that the wealthy can buy their candidates and make sure they stay bought.

We may live in a republic democracy, and we in theory should have open elections where any person could put their name in to run for office. But in practice we're stuck in a system where the billionaires hire the millionaires to run the government across the board as much as possible. And whenever that gets threatened - when a political party gains power like the Democrats that are willing to disrupt the rich people's attempts to get even richer by avoiding their civic duty of paying taxes or answering to the law - they break out fellow billionaires to run themselves and do their hardest to convince enough suckers voters into thinking they are the MODERATE CENTRIST NON-PARTY SAVIOR of their dreams.

This shouldn't be a hard decision to make, America. Billionaires are ironically not worth it as Presidential candidates. They are more disaster than savior.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T VOTE REPUBLICAN uh DON'T VOTE BILLIONAIRES.

Update: So far, Schultz's campaign rollout has been getting negative reviews. If he's trying to appeal to Democrats, accusing the party's more popular figures as "unAmerican" isn't going to cut it... (via Paul Blest at Splinter):

Schultz has just been getting pummeled from all sides over the past few days for everything from his inability to provide a vision for the country that doesn’t sound like it was left on the cutting floor during West Wing writers’ meetings to his repeated insistence that taxes, a robust safety net, and essentially everything that he doesn’t like are “un-American.” But while a lot of the attacks have come from the left, even Schultz’s presumed natural constituency—ideological centrists who think Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump pose a remotely similar level of danger to the country—are already tired of his shit.

Axios’ Mike Allen, who’s never afraid to ask the tough questions, has a blog out in Axios today which serves to allow Democratic Party “insiders”—i.e., the people whose main responsibility for the last couple of decades has been making sure it never does anything too popular—the opportunity to verbally whale on Schultz and his insipid candidacy... One of Washington’s best-wired party operatives told me: “I’ve talked to six dozen Democrats, and the overwhelming sentiment is that he will be pushed out by this incredible wave of disgust and disdain rolling his way...”

Schultz is going to have a problem appealing to the "Centrists" among the Democratic ranks if Schultz keeps talking like he's further to the Right on economic issues than most Republicans.

Like I tweeted:

it's at the point where Schultz is essentially just trump without the MAGA Hat Racism, which shouldn't make Schultz a draw to anyone in this electoral market. Except the damn media will pretend he's a fcking moderate to try and draw centrist voters away from the Dems. >:(

This election cycle requires total focus, America. Don't vote for billionaire assholes, thank you.

A Statement On Core Principles

So, when it comes down to it, what are the issues I care about the most? On what hills will I stand and fight to ensure those beliefs remain core components of the United States I believe in?

My core principles on key political issues:

1. The rich, and large corporate entities, should be taxed at a higher rate than middle-income and low-income Americans to ensure fairness in the tax burden. This includes rigorous enforcement of upper incomes and large corporations to stop tax evasion.
2. Businesses must be regulated to ensure workplace safety, clean environments, fair access to products and services, high pay and benefits equal to the work performed, and consumer / community protection from any form of fraud.
3. All Americans 18 and older have the right to vote and shall not be blocked, suppressed, or denied their right to vote. Registration must be free and universal to all citizens. If imprisoned, Americans shall immediately regain their right to vote once their sentences are served or are on parole.
4. All Americans provided affordable healthcare across the board as a human right.
5. All Americans provided free public education for children, and affordable public education for all those of college age, as a human right
6. All Americans given personal control of their bodies and health with regards to reproductive rights, meaning affordable and unhindered access to birth control, women’s healthcare services, and abortion as a medical right.
7. All Americans have the right to know that the federal, state, and local governments that represent them are not committing crimes and human rights abuses, and that any agent, official or elected representative committing such crimes be punished (meaning no statute of limitations on those persons).
8. Americans have the right to be protected from active, violent, and spiteful racism / sexism, where haters do NOT have the right to attack someone because of their skin color, their ethnic origin, their gender, their gender preference, or their religion. As much as this means everyone SHOULD be protected, in practice this means protecting the rights and safety of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Muslims, Jews, Hindi, Sikhs, Women, Gays, Trans, and other minorities from the hate groups that are predominately White Protestant (mostly Male) Assholes.
9. No radio personality or disk jockey shall speak over the opening, middle, or ending of a song. The next SOB who talks just as Pat Benatar starts whistling towards the end of “Love Is a Battlefield” will be executed with extreme prejudice. I don’t care if there’s just 30 seconds of the song left, I WANNA HEAR THE SONG NOT YOU.
10. No more lying in politics. All elected officials, candidates for office, and personnel hired to work for them or our government agencies shall be held to an ethical standard that will punish them for false, hypocritical, and misleading public statements. If you can’t speak truthfully and factually on a matter you can always say “No comment.”

This is what I want to see. This is what I hope for.

Does this make me liberal? Perhaps. But I look at Europe where liberalism and conservatism both agree roughly on public welfare matters like healthcare and education, so I don't think that is what's at issue here. I've seen some self-declared conservatives speak in favor of public schools and affordable healthcare, as well as speak for protecting the rights of minorities. It's not the issues themselves requiring extremism to defend or oppose.

What does matter is HOW such plans are enacted. To what degree can we support the public welfare? What's most sensible about regulating businesses for safe practices? THIS is where the ideological fights SHOULD be, where being a Big Letter Liberal and Big Letter Conservative and Big Letter Moderate would matter. This is where being the Liberal would seek massive support and broad freedoms, where the Conservative would be the skeptic honestly concerned about the costs, where the Moderate would find a pragmatic middle ground that would make the thing work as well and as long as possible. This is where I find myself as a Moderate: I want solutions that work and work well for the long term.

But this is where I split hard against Republicans. Where the Democrats - actively engaged among their own ranks between Centrist and Progressive stances - are amenable and solutions-oriented about the issues that matter to me (and hopefully most of you), the Republicans have gone Full Metal Dogmatic. 

The modern GOP -  reflecting not Conservative values but Reactionary values - does not want debate on ANY of those issues. The modern GOP is absolutely opposed to reasonable tax hikes on upper incomes, they want to slash-and-burn. They WANT to cut the social safety net to nothing. In practice at the state level I've seen Republicans gut funding for schools and teachers, and blocked improved funding for healthcare out of sheer spite. The Far Right wants to eliminate abortion (AND women's healthcare) as a safe practice, and oppose sensible affordable access to birth control not because they're pro-Life (they're not even that) but because they're pro-Judgment (they want to demean/control/depower women).

And dear GOD: The way the Republican Party acts towards Blacks and Latinos (and Muslims) should make any honest citizen sick to their stomachs.

The modern Republican Party wants to deny the rights - the right to vote, the right to learn, the right to LIVE - of every person who's NOT White, or Rich, or Male, or over the age of 50. That's all I see of that party anymore.

That's why I keep screaming FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE REPUBLICAN.

Because I have principles. And the Republican Party does not.

Florida Ballot Amendments 2018: These Things Matter, SO VOTE

It's the midterms again, and that means one thing:

Getting the vote out and throwing every Republican out of office!

Well, okay, here in Florida it means TWO things:

That first thing, AND we've got another round of Amendment ballot measures to vote on.

Lemme just link here to Ballotpedia for their easy-to-access listing of items on the upcoming November referendum... If you want a different take on the amendments, here's a link to the Tampa Bay Times' recommendations.

As a reminder, there's normally two ways for an amendment to reach the ballot: Legislative Referred, and Initiated (public) Referred. There's also a third way: a Committee Referred from a Constitution Revision Commission that forms every 20 years. This means there can be a sh-t-ton of ballot measures this cycle. Thank God the courts (try to) weed out the bad amendments before they reach the voters...

Here now for your entertainment are the ballots that may be up for 60 percent approval to pass (some of them are still pending judicial review and may be taken off):

Amendment One: Homestead Exemption Increase

The thing I keep worrying about: cutting back on any kind of property tax that would cut into our cities and counties' ability to raise their own revenue to pay for sh-t.

Whenever there's a tax-related referendum, consider this rule: Who Profits From The Tax Cuts? In this case, the amendment offers to raise the Homestead Exemption for properties valued above $125,000 (that is, for families living in the hint expensive suburbs). This takes a lot of property taxes out of county and city coffers, and shifts the tax burden onto property renters and those properties that DON'T make the value range.

On a personal note, the place I live does not value above $125,000. I will miss qualifying for the exemption. So, yeah, f-ck it I have no reason to vote for this bull. Even the ones who DO qualify, just remember this will f-ck up your county's ability to repair your water and electric utilities and your roads and your parks and libraries and your cultural events and...

For the love of God VOTE NO.

Amendment Two: Permanent Cap on NonHomestead Parcel Assessment

Did I stutter? Back to Rule One of any tax-related referendum: who profits from it?

There had been a ten-year cap on tax assessment to avoid making properties more costly at a time (2008) when property values took a serious hit due to the Housing bubble nightmare (you NEED to see the movie The Big Short, okay?). Now that the recession is over and property values are rising naturally in a growing economy, it would be helpful to city and county governments to regain a solid tax base on the property taxes they raise. Making that cap permanent kills our local governments' revenue-raising abilities.

This is a big NO vote, Florida.

Amendment Three: Casino Gambling

On its face, this amendment is requiring that any further Casino/Gambling legislation in the state of Florida depends on the voters passing amendment referendums like this one to allow it.

Just a reminder, gambling is not a harmless vice. It impoverishes people, puts some into debt. While states could raise revenues from managing it - just look at the Lotto system - it can well be a regressive revenue methid. Making it a requirement for the voters to approve of the matter overall doesn't seem like a bad idea.

It's just - like the Tampa Bay Times editorial notes - this is more a matter of the legislature. Requiring a referendum on gambling all the time means extra footwork and debating at a level that most voters might actually tune out.

Personally, I'm ambivalent about this amendment. I'm not a huge fan of gambling - although I may buy a Powerball ticket if the jackpot is over $150 Million (it is?) - but I don't think making extra roadblocks to the debate is a way to resolve it as a political issue.

Amendment Four: Felon Voter Enfranchisement

This is the big one.

One of the Republicans' biggest tricks holding onto power as a Minority Party has been voter suppression. One of the best weapons they have on that is the current laws that prevent convicted felons from keeping their right to vote even AFTER they've served their time and passed parole. SEE Jeb Bush's voter purge before 2000.

Currently there's a system in place where ex-felons have to petition the Governor's office for reinstatement for voting rights, and that is a system where clear bias will filter out all of one party in favor of the Governor's (which has been Republican since 1998). It's a clearly unfair process.

This amendment makes it automatically restore Right-to-Vote for people with prior convictions, except murder and violent sex crimes (those still have to go through the Governor's office, apparently).

This is, essentially, the key to allowing non-violent offenders - mostly those imprisoned for things like drug possession or burglary - regain their rights as citizens with a voice with their vote.

I will argue this is necessity: Isn't the whole point of parole and reform to allow criminals a chance - their RIGHT - to rejoin society? They served their time: Denying the vote is just further punishment. This would be positive reinforcement to encourage engagement in community. This amendment also weakens the abuse of a legal system that has a troubling habit of imprisoning the poor as a means of silencing their power to speak out.

This amendment needs to pass, Florida. Our legislature and Governor's office will fight it because it improves the rights of the poor and the minorities who suffer a disproportionate amount under the current system. Who profits from this amendment? Every resident will.

Vote YES.

Amendment Five: Two-Thirds Legislative Vote to Raise Taxes or Fees

If this looks familiar, it's tied into the ongoing wingnut obsession to prevent governments from EVER raising taxes to pay for sh-t.

Thing is, we've SEEN what happens when a state government is unable to break past the 2/3rd tax rule. California had a rule like that - Prop 13 - and for decades they faced ongoing budget woes because enough Republicans squashed any attempt to pass that hurdle.

So California voters turned against the Republicans and voted them out of power. That and their anti-immigrant stance pretty much killed the California GOP.

If this amendment passes, regardless of which party is in control of Florida's government, we will not be able to balance our state's budget through sharing the costs via taxes. Our state would have to cut services, cut school funding, cut environmental support, cut transportation/road repairs, cut family services (which is already an underfunded godless nightmare), cut food stamps, cut everything.

You wanna cap on spending for government services? Force your GOP legislator to man up and get his hands dirty instead of rigging the rules to make it harder no matter what.

This should be the easiest f-cking NO vote on your ballot. This is the Far Right's attempt to kill public services in our state.

Amendment Six: Victims Rights, Judicial Retirement Cap, Agency Deferral in Court Cases

This is one of the Commission ballots, and you're gonna start noticing a weird pattern of... well, dumping different ideas into one container and trying to sell it as a box of gold.

This Amendment actually has three parts: There is a Victims Right part known as Marsy's Law that tries to protect crime victims and their families from harassment and intimidation; There is a part that increases the retirement age of state judges to 75 (to match most others' states); And there is a part that blocks the state courts from deferring to a state agency's expertise on interpreting a law. This is the sticking point: Courts like to get input from the agencies implementing certain laws because the legislatures tend to leave the wording of their laws vague to clear interpretation. By blocking that input, this Amendment would force the courts to rely only on the legislature's intent (which is, again, vague because politicians hate getting nailed to anything).

Just on the third part, you shouldn't consider this Amendment. But the annoying thing here: This is bad law. There's three different provisions to this amendment that ought to be voted on separately.

They're trying to get people to vote for the one thing that matters - the victims' rights - to one thing that the legislature ought to do itself - raise retirement age - and then to one thing that would make our legal system worse - denying courts from getting administrative input.

Just vote NO on this. It's a trap, people.

Amendment Seven: First Responders and Military Survivor Benefits, College Fees, and College System

This is the same problem as Amendment Six. WHAT THE F-CK DOES SURVIVOR BENEFITS HAVE TO DO WITH COLLEGE REFORMS?

Okay. Okay, let's look at the provision that makes this a bad amendment: Forcing the state universities to get a supermajority (9 out of 13) vote from their governing board to raise fees. College has been getting costly, yes, but there are reasons for that and like it or not the universities have to raise fees to keep their doors open. Making it harder to do so would force schools to shut down programs or worse close altogether (SEE the near-destruction of LSU a few years back).

Another thing about the Survivor Benefits portion is that it's useless: Military survivors already get benefits from the federal government and what does this amendment even have to do with that?

Just Vote NO. Please. This is a bad idea. Force the legislature to do its damn job.

Amendment Eight: Already blocked.

Ugh. Let's not even look at why...

Amendment Nine: Offshore Oil Drilling, and Office Vaping

This is an amendment making it harder to drill for oil offshore - which can cause environmental catastrophes - and also make it harder to smoke electronically - called vaping - indoors.

...WHAT THE EVERF-CKING HELL IS THIS?

WHAT DOES OFFSHORE DRILLING HAVE TO DO WITH VAPING???

Okay, look, I know this is an environmental concern, and workplace air quality concern, BUT YOU SHOULD NOT SANDWICH THESE TWO THINGS TOGETHER AND CALL IT A MEAL. I mean, Christ, just focus on the offshore drilling, THAT'S a serious concern and should pass. The vaping thing should be done separately in an actual legislative law. WTF. WTF!!!!!

Ahem. I know people wanna block the offshore drilling and I'm tempted to vote YES myself, so most voters will look past the vaping thing. But seriously people, don't encourage this sh-t.

Amendment Ten: County Agencies and Executive Offices Reforms, Change of Legislative Dates

This is another odd one of mashed-up ideas.

• Requires the state to form a Department of Veterans Affairs (?) and a Department of Counter-Terrorism (???),
• Require the State legislature to convene on the Second Tuesday of January every even year (I think the legislature is a part-time job but do they even show up for odd-numbered years???),
• Prevents county governments from removing certain agencies like the Sheriff's Department and require those departments are elective offices.

My mind boggles at the problems that would arise from a Department of Counter-Terror, something that ought to be and IS handled at a FEDERAL Level. It may help for a retirement state like Florida to have a Veterans Affairs office but how much of it would be overlap with the Federal VA? This just seems like bureaucratic overreach... and I am terrified of the implications of what a Republican-led government would think of as a terrorist group (those a-holes still haven't explained why they spy on Quakers all the time!).

The second part about requiring a different starting date to open the State Lege ought to stand on its own.

What I see happening here is the third part of this bad amendment: What this is doing doesn't make the local governments more responsive to voters, this is making those governments more dependent on state intervention. The state will force certain counties to keep open agencies that they may need to close (if even temporarily) should those agencies go bad or corrupt (hello, problematic Sheriff's departments).

The first two parts of this amendment cannot cover up how much the third part looks and smells like a bad deal. Vote NO on this.

Amendment Eleven: A Catch-All Amendment for Repealing a Lot of Junk?

There's three weird things here as well:

• Getting rid of a constitutional prohibition for "foreign-born persons ineligible for citizenship" from owning or inheriting property;
• Clearing out an obsolete provision for high-speed trains in Florida; 
• Ending a confusing provision that "an amendment to a criminal statute does not affect the prosecution of a crime committed before the statute's amendment."

The first part gets rid of aged legal terminology for an Alien Land law that's racist and already proved unconstitutional in other states, so it's something the courts could well take care of on its own. The rest of this looks like it's weeding out bad amendments from earlier eras... but again this is stuff that needs to be done in separate amendments, not one goddamn package of junk.

On this one, I'd vote YES to get rid of the racist stuff in the first part, but I'll be holding my nose when I do so.

Amendment Twelve: Compensation for Public Officials

On the face of it, this amendment "prohibits public officials from lobbying for compensation during the official's term in office and for six years after the official leaves office, and prohibits public officials from using the office to obtain a disproportionate benefit."

It doesn't look wrong, but when you consider it's by the Commission that's offered up a bunch of junk amendments, you need to take a closer look.

This makes it a constitutional limit on lobbying that in most respects should be an Ethics law the legislature should pass and enforce. Putting it into the constitution makes it harder to reform or fix it should unexpected consequences turn up.

I'd hesitate on voting YES on this, if only because - again - this may not need to be so set in stone.

Amendment Thirteen: Dog Races Betting Prohibition

This one again is something that the State legislature could pass as a law, but they're handing it over to the voters because the Lege couldn't be bothered.

The effects of this amendment would likely end dog racing as a sport in Florida, and all things considered I don't think it's an industry that's been doing well lately (the mistreatment of greyhounds is a major problem). On that as a moral issue, I'd vote YES, but again the Lege should be doing this, not the voters.


So that's the amendment ballot for Florida this November.

One troubling thing I'm seeing this year is a mashup of both reform ideas and reactionary sabotage being shoved together in Amendments that would otherwise be treated as separate issues. It's as though the Florida Legislature and the Commission are trying to plug bad laws into the system by using reform ideas that would appeal to an increasingly progressive voter base in Florida (note that a lot of Floridians are pro-marijuana, pro-schools, and pro-environment against the desires of the GOP leadership).

So all in all, PLEASE stay focused on Amendment Four, and probably consider and vote YES on Nine and Thirteen: Make sure those pass. Of the ones to reject, PLEASE reject Amendments One, Two, Five, Six, Seven, and Ten. Seriously, make damn sure One, Two and Five DIE DIE DIE because those will kill our state's ability to raise revenues when we NEED to.

And again a reminder: STOP F-CKING VOTING REPUBLICAN. We've had 25-30 years of their sh-t dominating the Florida State legislature and we've got poisoned waters, collapsing understaffed schools, and an ongoing healthcare crisis that THEY are making worse. It is TIME for different leadership, one that DOES support better education, cleaner environment, and affordable health (hint: DEMOCRATS, YOU PEEPS).

Sigh. Just let me be 100 percent in the right this year, O Lord...

Damage Control For the Next Ten Generations... If We Survive This

(Update: Thanks again as always to Batocchio at Crooks And Liars for the link to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please stay and peruse the other articles...)

We're facing once again the Republican Party obsession with massive tax cuts for the super-rich - trump is proposing an Executive Order to recalculate Capital Gains to the tune of $100 BILLION - and we are reminded once again that these greedy sons of bitches are not listening to the American people.

There's a beautiful article on Slate.com by Osita Nwanevu that needs to be read in its entirety:

Recent polling tells us too that support for increasing taxes on the wealthy is high, as it has been for many years now. Sixty-two percent of Americans believe that the rich pay less than their fair share in taxes, according to Gallup. Last year, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 72 percent of Americans—including 74 percent of white working-class Americans and 58 percent of Republicans—support hiking taxes on those making $250,000 or more a year.

Yet, according to the New York Times, the Trump administration is not only considering cutting capital gains taxes by $100 billion over the next 10 years. It’s openly floating doing so via an administrative mechanism that the George H.W. Bush administration deemed illegal. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said the administration was mulling a change that would allow taxpayers to account for inflation in calculating capital gains, reducing the amount of tax that would be paid when the asset is sold. It is estimated that around two-thirds of the benefit from this change would go to the top 0.1 percent of income earners.

In a well-functioning democracy, doing such a thing, given the state of public opinion on taxes and the wealthy, would likely be politically fatal. Fortunately for the Republican Party, we live not in a well-functioning democracy but in the United States, and the Trump administration and conservatives backing this have surmised, correctly, that they can probably afford to publicly consider (this tax plan of evil) on the basis of a few assumptions.

The first is that most Americans aren’t paying terribly close attention to policy reporting at the New York Times or anywhere else. This is a safe bet at all times. The second is that the Republican base is willing to swallow just about any policy this administration pursues out of sheer antagonism toward the Democratic Party and the people it represents, who they believe might unravel the fabric of our country or upend the nation’s demographic balance, which is about the same as America’s fabric to them anyhow. The third is that the structural advantages the Republican Party currently enjoys—namely the composition of the Senate, gerrymandered House districts, the Electoral College—will help insulate them from the political consequences of proposing and implementing unpopular policy, as will their efforts to augment those advantages with policies that disenfranchise black voters...

Nwanevu is mostly pointing out the arguments I made earlier about the sins of Minority Party Rule: the Republicans do not really represent the will of the Majority but they've successfully figured out how to rig the electoral game. For awhile there they pretended to be a Majority Party, but lately they've been so reckless they don't even care that they're passing laws that benefit the elite few at the expense of everyone else.

Worse, these moves are destined to blow up on the country a few years down the road, likely at the moment the Democratic Party is able to work their way back into some part of federal government control, at which point the needs of fixing the damage - increasing taxes on upper incomes, cutting back on certain spending, borrowing more money to fill the deficit gap - will give Republicans the excuse of railing against Tax-And-Spend Democrats and fake their outrage back into power. We've seen this movie before, and enough voters and Beltway idiots buy into that lie.

Still, the only sane response to this is voter turnout: Turnout on such a massive scale, and favoring Democrats at such a scale, that the Republicans lose control of both parts of Congress with veto-proof majorities. Granted, that's impossible this election cycle because the Senate is only voting on a third of its seats and the best Democrats can do is 57 (three short of 60 to avoid Cloture and well short of 67 for two-thirds override) seats. But they gain enough seats this 2018 they can build on that towards 2020 and gain even more seats (and hopefully vote trump out of office and into a jail cell at the Colorado Supermax).

It's got to be turnout that can overpower Republican gerrymanders. It's got to be turnout in Red States that can rattle the hold the Republicans have on those places since the Reagan Era. It's got to be overwhelming enough for the US House that if the Republicans can rebound in 2020 they still won't earn enough seats to retake that part of the legislature.

And if the Democrats DO regain control of Congress, for God's Sake DO SOMETHING to break Republican rigging of the elections. Pass any and all laws to stop gerrymandering (even if Dems benefit from it in Blue States: IT IS NOT WORTH PROTECTING). You need to increase the number of House districts, something that hasn't been done since 1929 and is something that makes gerrymandering too easy to pull off. You need to give the Elections Commission more teeth in enforcing rules against foreign money and illegal (often negative) campaign ads. You need to pass laws creating universal voter registration, increased spending on balloting systems and protection from hackers. TAKE VOTING MORE SERIOUSLY, DEMS.

In the meanwhile, the Democrats need every bit of support to regain control for the American majority. They need your votes, they need your love. America, we can be better than the greed and viciousness of the Republican Party. We can put into office those who WILL respond to the wishes of the people.

Your voice isn't just for polls, or Twitter posts, or Facebook rants. Your vote is your voice and your power, and you need to use that more than social media now and always.

For the LOVE OF GOD, STOP VOTING REPUBLICAN. And get the damn vote out!

The Next Recession: Not A Matter of When But A Matter of How Soon

It's been awhile since I've linked to Crazy Eddie's Motie News - if Pinku-Sensei can pass along a good hard cider recommendation for me to get drunk to, that would be nice - but he recently posted an article about the impact of the tax cuts would have on the economy and it looks like he's got a better handle than I do on how the coming recession is gonna look.

If I might quote from the parts of his analysis that stand out to me:

Three things could trigger the next recession.  The most likely would be an inversion of the yield curve, which means that short-term interest rates would rise higher than long-term interest rates.  The Federal Reserve has been raising short-term rates for the past two years while long-term rates have been rising much more slowly.  If present trends continue, short-term rates will rise above long-term ones within a year or two, which always signals a recession within a year...

The second is a rapid rise in oil prices, which has occurred either slightly in advance or concurrently with every recession since 1973...

The last, which the U.S. saw along with both of the above during the last recession, would be a crash in housing prices.  However, that is not as reliable an indicator of contraction, as it took nearly two years between the bursting of the housing bubble and the onset of the Great Recession of 2008-2009, barely happened before the recession of 1990-1991, and it didn't happen at all before the 2001 recession...

...I want my readers to notice the timing of recessions.  They range from seven (2001 to 2008) to eleven years (1990 to 2001) apart.  That range is exactly consistent with the Juglar Cycle, an economic cycle that lasts seven to eleven years, the downturns of which correlate to U.S. recessions since 1980.  The Great Recession technically began in December 2007 and adding eleven years to that means the next one should start no later than December 2018.  We're due...

...In fact, I expect the next recession to be somewhere between the 2001 recession or the 1990-1991 recession in its effects, probably closer to 2001.  Before then, the extra disposable income runs the risk of overheating an already booming economy, never mind that the fruits of that economy are very inequitably distributed.  That will increase demand for oil and other energy sources, making their prices go up.  That will cause inflation to rise again as energy costs become distributed throughout the economy.  Higher inflation will prompt the Federal Reserve to raise short term rates, eventually inverting the yield curve.  Viola, recession!

Now, I won't blame the tax cuts for this.  All of this is going to happen anyway; the tax cuts might marginally speed up the process and make it more acute.  It might make the difference between the recession starting in November or December of 2018...

In short: I think he's telling us we're gonna be screwed by November 2018.

Good timing, Republicans, if you can make that recession happen by November 1st before the midterms. It should give us voters additional incentive to vote you fuckers out.

One of the things I note about these recessions is how they seem to coincide with Republican control of the Presidency (and usually control of Congress). If Pinku-Sensei is correct about how the Juglar Cycle ties into the recession cycles, wouldn't Republicans with any economic backgrounds recognize the pattern and do something to change it by committing to programs that wouldn't exacerbate the recessions the way their current policies seem to do?

Then again, I fear most Republicans with economic backgrounds focus too much on their Randian fixations of greed and self-interest. /sigh

Anyway, Pinku-Sensei does a good job putting his arguments together on this. Go read his work, and then GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT FOR DEMOCRATS TO GET THE DAMN REPUBLICANS OUT OF OFFICE. Thank ye.