neonvincent

This was the first video I watched for MSNBC explains 'Trump’s tariffs will cost you. Here’s how', but decided to go in another direction.

I decided to use videos from ABC News for Friday the 13th was an unlucky day for the Trump Organization as it was fined $1.6 million, which also celebrated Blame Someone Else Day, the first Friday the 13th of the year.

I remembered to use the postponed video for a postponed Tax Day in today's Vox explains who really pays the lowest tax rates for a postponed Tax Day plus Supreme Court rules on Trump's tax returns, so I didn't use the following video, which I would have if I had forgotten.

Four of the past five days of posts at Crazy Eddie's Motie News were about Resistance marches, the March for Science and Tax March. Here are the links.

March for Science 2018
Tax March today
Watch reports on March for Science 2018 from four U.S. cities
Tax Marches in Washington D.C., Palm Beach, and elsewhere

Michigan's Proposal 1 trailing by huge margin in final poll before election

(  A poll released Friday evening showed that opponents of Proposal 1, which would increase the sales tax by one percent to fund improvements to the state's roads and trigger ten other laws if passed, still outnumber proponents among likely voters in Tuesday's election by more than two to one. The survey of 600 likely voters conducted by EPIC-MRA found that sixty-one percent of those responding said they would vote against the measure, in contrast to only twenty-nine percent saying they would vote in favor. Those indicating they would vote no increased to sixty-four percent when the language of the ballot measure was read to them. )

I forgot to mention that I had a fun title for the previous elections examiner article over at Crazy Eddie's Motie News: Partisan divisions over Proposal 1 plus a visit from Freewheeling Franklin Freak. Yes, I was into the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers back in the day.

Now it's time for me to rotate to my political articles from the first half of 2015. Here is the first, which is a retrospective of the past year's most read. Look, two stories about the Green Party and no Trump!

Top elections stories of 2014 about underdogs, endorsements, millages

( With 2015 already into its second month, it is well past time to look at the top Washtenaw County election stories of 2014 before moving on to this year's election news. Based on the number of Facebook shares and likes, five stories stood out, the top three of which shared a common theme, underdogs in last year's general election. The other two were about favorites. One was about the candidates endorsed by Detroit's major daily newspapers, while the other was about a millage proposal. Both the endorsees and the millage proposal went on to crushing wins. )

Last story from the general election in 2015.

( Millages for transit, roads, and local schools pass in Washtenaw County. )

One of the favorite anti-tax memes that conservatives use is that "the government thinks it knows better how to spend money than individuals/the people do." I think that meme has it exactly backwards. First, the government in a democratically elected government is the people. Second, what government is doing when it spends is paying salaries of people and contracts to businesses, who then pay it to people. Those people now have more money to spend than they did before. As a result, government spending gives most people more power to make decisions over how they spend their money that they got from the government.

There is one exception to the above. Progressive taxation in support of government spending shows that the government thinks it knows better how to invest money than the wealthiest Americans for the greater good. The justification for keeping the tax rates low on the wealthiest Americans is that they will use that money to create jobs. They generally don't. Instead of hiring people for their own businesses, they use that money to blow speculative bubbles, whether in stocks, bonds, commodities, or real estate. Yes, those bubbles may create jobs while they're inflating, but they destroy jobs when they pop.

The last pair of bubbles was especially pernicious, as it first inflated people's home values then, as they started to collapse, leaving Americans owing more than their assets were worth, inflated commodities, making food and energy cost more just when Americans could no longer withdraw money from the "home ATM." Both of those bubbles harmed people financially even before the panic in the stock market and contraction of the economy threw people out of work. Now we're left with vacant houses, people who can't sell their houses to move to where there are jobs, and a government that has to borrow a trillion dollars a year to maintain the spending it's already doing to pay people the money they need to make more decisions with what is now their own income.

So, I think raising taxes, particularly on the wealthiest 2%, is a good idea. They're not doing much useful with that money other than trying to increase their own wealth by blowing asset bubbles. What the economy needs is demand, and the other 98% of Americans will gladly provide that demand if they have money to spend. Paying them that money shows that the government has faith that individuals do know how to spend their own money!

/rant

Originally posted to Crazy Eddie's Motie News.