1641

YES! ABSOLUTELY! Romney’s bullshit IS inexcusable. The man literally does not know how anything works, because he’s never had to!

1642

Oh man. That’s the gonna make the Freepers have many sads…The Gallup daily trackers have been one of their only lifelines to hope that Romney can pull this out. Can’t wait to read it, have much schadenfreude etc

1643

How could you throw away something which was no-doubt totally awesome?

I would have kept that thing as a collectors’ item.

1644

The polls are a vast main stream media liberal conspiracy!

1645

I fell for it obviously, but I thought it was just a snarky writer throwing some jokes at an otherwise serious bit of leakery. It probably illustrates my own bias that I seem to be falling for this shit more often.

1646

Polls tend to be nonsense in terms of predicting things, but the double crazy polls there are totally awesome.

1647

This poor sonofabitch:

1648

Single polls are indeed worthless except as data points. Aggregation has a pretty decent track record though…in the sense that I’d put 3 to 1 on Obama to win, not that I’d state with 100% certainty that Obama will win.

I’d certainly encourage anyone who believes that the “unskewed” polls are accurate to put their money down, though.

1649

So here’s a Romney quote from a speech in Ohio that is starting to make the rounds:

“Small businesses most typically pay taxes at the individual tax rate. And so our individual income taxes are the ones I want to reform. Make them simpler. I want to bring the rates down,” Romney said.
But, he added, “Don’t be expecting a huge cut in taxes because I’m also going to lower deductions and exemptions. But by bringing rates down we will be able to let small businesses keep more of their money so they can hire more people.”

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/romney-…–election.html

Folks are seeing this as an admission of what economists have been saying all along – If his tax plan is really going to be revenue neutral, he’s going to have to eliminate deductions that benefit the middle class. He’s coming out and saying it now. He wants to shift more of the tax burden onto the middle class to pay for cuts to the capital gains tax.

1650

Per that quote he’s not talking about capital gains (though he would very likely try to freeze the Bush rates) he’s talking about the top marginal personal rates. So individuals get screwed by losing deductions, the real middle class gets kinda screwed by probably having the same rate, and the 5% gets to have a tax cut because, you know, they create all the jobs.

1651

Well, honestly, I’d be in support of a simplification of the tax code, even if it doesn’t result in a significant decrease in what I pay.

Cut the rate, remove the deductions. I don’t really like the idea that my taxes get cut if I live how the government wants me to live.

1652

Yeah, sorry, I was extrapolating to the tax priorities he’s been willing to elucidate up 'til now.

1653

Capping/eliminating deductions is a progressive tax reform b/c they benefit high-income taxpayers more. President Obama has proposed capping deductions for high-income people in every budget. You can’t claim it will be a regressive tax move since eliminating deductions is a progressive reform.

1654

So, I must be an idiot because to me that makes absolutely no sense. He states:

  1. Most small businesses file as individuals
  2. He will reduce rates, but eliminate deductions, so individuals will pay the same amount in taxes.
  3. The small businesses, which are paying the same amount, will use the money they saved (none) to hire more people.

I’m sure there’s some wiggle room in who the deductions apply to, and how you distinguish between an individual filing for himself vs. for a business, or something like that. But taken on it’s face it seems totally self-contradictory.

1655

As a foreigner watching the American political process with amusement, I think only an absolute landslide of a victory for Obama can be considered a success by Americans that care about their political system.

The Republican party are going so far down the far right rabbit hole, that, to maintain even a moderately healthy two party system, it needs to turn back the policy clock, and return to a ground that has a semblance of sanity. For that to happen, the Republicans need a shellacking of epic proportions.

Frankly, that a party gets to pull the shit they do withoput repercussions leaves me stunned. Note that I state that as a native of Portugal, a country with a horrible political class.

Finally, I’m not a fan of Obama or the Democratic Party. They appear to me as your typical political party, and that’s not a good thing. Their saving grace is that they’re not absolutely fucking batshit insane.

1656

Putting his comments through the Romney translatron, we learn that when he says “small business” he means humble mom-and-pa enterprises such as these folks.

1657

Specifically, I was thinking of this recent study by Martin Feldstein that Romney has been trumpeting of late:

Eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax in 2009 would have reduced revenue by an additional $23 billion. Eliminating the tax on interest, dividends and capital gains for married couples with 2 incomes below $200,000, and for single taxpayers with incomes below $100,000, would cost an additional $10 billion to $15 billion. This brings the total cost of the Romney income tax cuts to $186 billion at 2009 levels.

This came up in a recent ABC interview:

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/exclusive-romney-on-debates-obama-will-say-things-that-arent-true/

Democrats say Romney’s plan would cause a $2,000 tax hike on the middle class - something Romney disputes and points to a number of studies that say his plan to cut taxes will not increase the deficit, including one by Harvard professor Martin Feldstein.
Feldstein says Romney’s math will work, but he would have to eliminate the home mortgage, charitable, state and local tax deductions for incomes greater than $100,000.
When I pressed Romney on that point, he conceded that he actually hadn’t read the Feldstein report that he and Paul Ryan cite on the campaign trail.

It would seem that Romney has now read the study and is admitting that his plan is going to eliminate deductions and exemptions for middle class tax payers.

I’m not sure if Feldstein is being charitable in assuming that Romney only wants to eliminate “the tax on interest, dividends and capital gains for married couples with 2 incomes below $200,000, and for single taxpayers with incomes below $100,000.” Has Romney specified a cut off like that or is Feldstein fudging the numbers to come up with a revenue neutral model?

1658

But corporations are people, too!

1659

I actually agree with the principle here.

There are HUGE structural problems within the Democratic Party, insomuch as over the last dozen years or so it’s become the party identifier of a whole bunch of folks who–everything else being equal–oppose traditional Democratic Party positions but want nothing to do with a GOP being subsumed by its Know Nothing wing. As such, they’ve become this huge, bloated thing that stuggles to get anything done because they’re almost like three political parties themselves.

1660

Feldstein says Romney would need to eliminate key deductions for folks over $100K. How are you translating this to middle class? Is Middle class over $100K?