Voters Send Messages to Democrats and Republicans
Tuesday’s election message was loud and clear. Knowing the answer in advance, I asked anyway: Is Anyone Listening?
Hello Socialists
Sensible people are fed up with “free” Socialist programs that turn out to not be “free”.
Don’t expect that message to be heard. Instead, Progressives will whine about Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Expect Bernie Sanders to double down on Medicare expansion, free school, etc., even though the system is broke.
Two Key Messages
- Voters are sick of progressive issues including CRT, education, and other “free” programs.
- Republicans are far better off ignoring Trump
Youngkin smartly distanced himself from Trump, refusing to be seen with him.
Ignore means just that. Pretend Trump does not exist. Don’t engage him, encourage him, or mock him. Don’t appear on the stage with him. Walk around Trump as you would a homeless beggar in LA.
Republicans, please pay attention. Stick to winning messages and just let Trump be.
We have the Democrat’s answer already, and sure enough instead of subtracting from socialist nonsense, they added to it.
House Democrats Add Paid Leave, State-and-Local Tax Deduction to Bill
Despite Senator Joe Manchin protesting the expansion of programs, despite the election in Virginia and the near miss in New Jersey, Democrats heard they did not do enough.
Please note House Democrats Add Paid Leave, State-and-Local Tax Deduction to Bill
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said House Democrats would add a paid-leave measure to the party’s education, healthcare and climate package, trying to revive a provision that had fallen out of the $1.85 trillion legislation after opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin.
The proposal gives four weeks of leave to parents, the sick and caregivers.
Mrs. Pelosi (D., Calif.) wrote in a letter that House Democrats would present an additional set of changes to the legislation on Wednesday. Democrats have been racing to wrap up negotiations over the package this week, resolving a disagreement on prescription drug pricing on Tuesday as they try to close out their final issues.
Message Not Heard
Some Democratic lawmakers said the party’s loss in the Virginia governor’s race Tuesday underscored the need to quickly pass both the social spending and climate plan and a parallel infrastructure bill that has been held up in the House.
Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, said Wednesday that Democrats should move briskly after the results Tuesday night, which he called disappointing but not surprising. “We’ve spent enough time talking, enough time thinking and enough time suggesting to America that good things are coming. Now we gotta prove it,” he said.
“The D in Democrats should stand for do-er, not delay, dithering, do nothing, division,” said Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, who blamed all sides of his party for being purists and not giving party candidates policy wins before election day.
Manchin Sniff Test
Those measures already failed the Manchin sniff test, yet Pelosi added them back in.
In a nod to New York Representatives, Pelosi raised the $10,000 cap on State-and-Local Tax (SALT) deductions to $72,500 even though that primarily benefits the wealthy.
Why stop there?
A group of House Democrats insisted that the bill must have provisions to aid the millions of undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the US.
Of course, Pelosi said OK even though it’s clearly against reconciliation rules and will be struck down by the Senate Parliamentarian.
After Spending Just $153 on Campaign, Republican Truck Driver Beats NJ Senate President
In the hoot of the day, please note After Spending Just $153 on Campaign, Truck Driver Beats NJ Senate President.
New Jersey’s longest-running state Senate president has lost his seat to a truck driver who spent only $153 on Dunkin and paper fliers over the course of his campaign.
Steve Sweeney, the Democratic Senate president in NJ, has lost to Edward Durr, a furniture company truck driver. With 98% of the vote counted, Sweeney remained about 2,000 votes short of Durr when The Associated Press called the race Thursday morning.
The loss by one of New Jersey’s most powerful politicians will result in upheaval of political power in the state, forcing the Senate to find a new president. Sweeney has been the chamber’s leader since 2010.
Sweeney’s loss came on the same election as his fellow Democrat, Gov. Phil Murphy, nearly lost a re-election that polls and political experts in the Garden State long had predicted as an easy victory. It was anything but: Murphy was finally projected as winner on Wednesday evening when he was up by only 19,000 votes over his Republican challenger out of more than 2.3 million ballots cast.
Minneapolis Voters Resoundingly Reject Measure End Police
NPR reports Minneapolis voters reject a measure to replace the city’s police department
Approximately 57% of voters rejected a ballot question that would have removed the Minneapolis Police Department from the city charter, replacing it with a “public-health oriented” Department of Public Safety.
Biden Can’t Hear or Think
Here’s Biden’s election takeaway: Election Defeat Shows Urgency of His Agenda
“People want us to get things done,” Biden said in remarks at the White House. “People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things, from Covid to school to jobs to a whole range of things. The cost of a gallon of gasoline.”
But Joe Manchin, a crucial moderate vote, said the takeaway from Tuesday’s votes was to pump the brakes. “I would just say that we better be very careful and be very, very transparent so so people know what’s in them,” he said. “Don’t even set a timeline until we thoroughly, thoroughly vet this bill.”
Manchin can hear, Biden can’t.
Message From Carl Rove
In a post that came out after my take on election messages, Carl Rove said nearly the same thing in Youngkin Clears a Path to Victory for 2022.
Mr. Youngkin blanketed the airwaves with positive ads so Virginians would know why the fleece-wearing businessman who coached his kids’ basketball team was running, and he started doing it before Democrats tried making him President Trump’s Mini-Me. The campaign ran 18 different positive spots to highlight his agenda; 12 to attack his opponent, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe; and five contrast ads comparing the two men’s records—an unusually positive mix.
He whacked Mr. McAuliffe for opposing Virginia’s right-to-work law, lowering education standards as governor so no school received a failing grade, and appointing parole board members who became mired in controversy. Mr. Youngkin punched particularly hard when issues of critical race theory, the role of parents in their children’s education, and school safety emerged.
Mr. Youngkin kept a distance—not disrespectful but also undeniable—from Mr. Trump. He praised the former president’s policies when he agreed and voiced his disagreement where needed—as when the former president dialed into a mid-October “Stop the Steal” rally where Steve Bannon appeared in person and repeated Mr. Trump’s false claims that he won in 2020.
Congratulations, Governor-elect. Pay attention to how he did it. He focused on what he’d do for voters and kept a respectful distance from Trump.
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Mish
It’s been a disappointing fall. The Covid Delta variant has fenced in a restless public, while the economy is still woozy from rapid shifts in spending patterns and kinks in supply lines. Back to normal, we are not.
But consumers are way gloomier than they should be. Consumer confidence is https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UMCSENT, and by some measures nearly as bad as the early days of the Covid pandemic in April and May of 2020. A recent CNBC poll found that https://newsletry.com/Home/Axios%20AM/2384b9a2-6e94-49bd-bb3d-08d99db11e7f, with just 34% feeling it’s not. This grumpiness may explain why voters thumped Democratic candidates in the recent Virginia and New Jersey governor races, voting down the performance so far of President Biden and his fellow Democrats in Congress.
Shoppers are clearly worried about https://finance.yahoo.com/news/fed-chair-powell-we-understand-the-difficulties-of-rising-inflation-212410432.html, with overall prices up 5.4% during the past year. Gas prices are up 42%. Home prices are up 14%, locking out many buyers. https://money.yahoo.com/food-prices-are-going-up-three-times-152157829.html, overall. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/intel-ceo-chip-shortage-highlights-a-national-security-issue-134612338.html of products such as cars and electronics is contributing to inflation and putting some goods out of reach. It may also remind people of the panic buying and empty shelves that signaled deep trouble after Covid exploded in the spring of 2020.
Those are real problems affecting family budgets. But the outlook is a lot better than many seem to believe. Here’s a breakdown:
Inflation. Price hikes are real. The question is whether they’re permanent, more or less, or a one-time https://finance.yahoo.com/news/supply-chain-disruption-worst-over-134844137.html. At least some inflation is almost certainly temporary. Huge spikes in the price of cars, electronics and other goods are largely due to the https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-q4-earnings-2021-171323043.html. That won’t end soon, but it will end, and prices will moderate when they do. Traffic jams at ports are another reason for shortages and price hikes, and those, too, will unwind eventually, as demand slows after the holidays and consumers start spending more on services (and less on goods). A year from now, it’s quite possible there will be deflation—falling prices—in some things that are getting costlier now.
Oil and gas prices are a wild card. The shift to clean energy will cut demand for fossil fuels, but the same dynamic will depress investment in drilling, since returns could decline in coming years. So demand and supply will probably both decline over time, and if one outpaces the other, prices will rise or fall accordingly. Home prices will probably moderate whenever interest rates go up, but that might not be a year or two and meanwhile there’s certainly no excess of supply. On the whole, some things will remain expensive, but there are good reasons to think inflation six or nine months from now will be better, not worse.
Covid. The Delta surge clearly spoiled many Americans’ plans for a return to normal, but Delta is now receding while the vaccination rate continues to creep up. Two new developments could really end the pandemic in 2022: The availability of vaccines for kids as young as 5, and President Biden’s https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vaccine-mandate-covering-84-million-workers-124503548.html for many employers to require workers to get vaccinated. The usual battles will ensue, but vaccination rates will still go up, and as the weather warms next spring, a real return-to-normal might be imminent.
Jobs. There are still a https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm open across the country, with businesses continuing to raise pay and offer other perks to entice workers. There’s almost no chance a recession could be looming if the https://finance.yahoo.com/news/october-2021-jobs-report-labor-department-hiring-covid-shortages-180531280.html. Some factors keeping people out of the labor force should improve. The employer vaccine mandate will ease concerns some people still have about contracting Covid at work. The normalization of school schedules should gradually free more parents to start working. And as Covid disruptions ease, fewer people will worry about it.
Pent-up demand. Americans’ total net worth has https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/z1/balance_sheet/chart/, as savings rates skyrocketed, stock and home values surged and federal stimulus payments materialized in bank accounts. Household debt as a percentage of income is https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/default.htm. Consumers have money and they’re eager to spend. Car sales, for instance, are close to recession levels simply because automakers can’t build enough vehicles. As the chip shortage eases and more cars roll off the line, a buying boom seems inevitable. The same goes for most other sectors crimped by pandemic disruptions.
There’s always something that could go wrong—as the Delta variant proved this summer and fall. A more powerful Covid variant less susceptible to vaccines could emerge. The Federal Reserve, which helms the economy, could screw up. Inflated asset prices—namely, stocks—could turn south. But a lot has already gone wrong, since Covid arrived, and stress tests have already revealed vulnerabilities in supply lines and other weak links in the global economy. How much worse could it get?
President Biden is in the cellar now, with inflation, political gridlock and other factors pushing his approval rating well below 50%. Biden’s Democratic Party looks like an unmanageable herd of cats that can’t establish a functional majority in Congress, even with numerical control of both houses. Voter disgust in 2021 reflects a stalled and confusing Biden agenda, and voters could send a lot more Democrats packing in the 2022 midterm elections.
But the economy probably won’t be the reason. A lot of momentum is lining up that could make 2022 the breakout year 2021 was supposed to be, but wasn’t. Eventually, it will be safe to believe it.
Rick Newman is the author of four books, including “https://www.amazon.com/Rebounders-Winners-Pivot-Setback-Success-ebook/dp/B005WBBXTE/ref=sr_1_4?.” Follow him on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rickjnewman. You can also rnewman@yahoofinance.com, and click here to https://authory.com/RickNewman.
The network that hawks penis pills, nutritional’supplements’ and miracle pillows is clearly credible.
California Congressman Darrell Issa was one of a handful of Republicans who bucked his party in 2017 and voted against Trump’s tax overhaul.
Issa said he opposed the legislation because it all but eliminated the deduction taxpayers could take on their federal returns for state and local taxes. That provision was particularly contentious in high tax blue states like California, but most Republicans from his state still fell in line. The other GOP congressman in the San Diego area, for example, voted yes.
Limiting the write-off, known as the SALT deduction, was one of the few progressive changes in the Trump tax law. The deduction had long disproportionately benefited the wealthiest because they pay the most in state and local taxes. According to one projection, if the cap were removed from the deduction, households with income in the top 1% would reap the most benefit, paying $31,000 less a year on average — amounting to more than half of the total taxes avoided through the write-off. The top 25% of households would average less than $3,000 in savings a year, and the savings drop precipitously from there, with most households deriving no benefit.
In interviews and public statements, Issa said in fighting to preserve the deduction, he was defending the interests of middle-class taxpayers. “I didn’t come to Washington to raise taxes on my constituents,” he said at the time, “and I do not plan to start today.”
But the 68-year-old congressman, who made a fortune in the car alarm business, was in the top echelon of its beneficiaries. Between 2003 and 2017, his tax data shows, Issa generally paid a relatively high tax rate but was able to claim more than $51 million in write-offs thanks to the SALT deduction, an average of more than $3 million a year.
By contrast, households in his district that made between $100,000 and $200,000 and took the SALT deduction claimed an average of $14,843 in 2017.
Issa’s spokesman, Jonathan Wilcox, declined to say if the SALT deduction’s impact on the congressman’s taxes factored into his decision to advocate for it.
“So much stupid,” Wilcox said. “Be sure to write back if you ever do better than trolling for garbage.”
trump’s gift to the wealthy costs me an additional 4K in taxes every year.
On election night this quote from President Truman kept ringing through my head non-stop, like a ringing in my ear.
President Harry S. Truman, August 8, 1950
Early career
After graduating from Rice in 1990, Youngkin joined the
investment bank First Boston,[14] where he handled mergers and acquisitions and
capital market financing.[16] The company was bought out by Credit Suisse and
became Credit Suisse First Boston; Youngkin left in 1992 to pursue an
MBA.[17][14]
In 1994, after receiving his MBA, he joined the management
consulting firm McKinsey & Company.[17][14][18]
The Carlyle Group
In August 1995,[18] Youngkin joined the private-equity firm
The Carlyle Group, based in Washington, D.C.,[17] initially as a member of the
US buyout team.[14] In 1999, he was named a partner and managing director of
Carlyle.[19][20] He managed the firm’s United Kingdom buyout team
(2000–2005)[14][21] and global industrial sector investment team (2005–2008),
dividing his time between London and Washington.[19][22]
In April 2008, Carlyle’s founders asked Youngkin to step
back from deal-making to focus on the firm’s broader strategy.[3][23] In 2009
the founders created a seven-person operating committee, chaired by Youngkin,
which oversaw the non-deal, day-to-day operations of Carlyle.[23][24] In 2009
Youngkin also joined, along with Daniel Akerson, the firm’s executive
committee, which had previously consisted solely of the three founders.[24][25]
When Carlyle’s chief financial officer Peter Nachtwey left
suddenly in late 2010, Youngkin became interim CFO[26] until Adena Friedman was
hired as CFO late March 2011.[27] In 2010, Youngkin joined the firm’s
management committee.[28][23] Youngkin was chief operating officer of the
Carlyle Group from March 2011 until June 2014.[29]
Youngkin played a major role in taking Carlyle public,
supervising the initial public offering.[23][30][31][26][32][33]
In June 2014, he became co-president and co-chief operating
officer with Michael J. Cavanagh, who joined the Carlyle Group from JPMorgan
Chase.[34][35] Together they helped develop and implement the firm’s growth
initiatives and managed the firm’s operations on a day-to-day basis.[36]
Cavanagh left the firm in May 2015 to become CFO of Comcast, leaving Youngkin
as president and COO of Carlyle.[37]
Co-CEO
In October 2017, the Carlyle Group announced that its
founders would remain executive chairmen on the board of directors but step
down as the day-to-day leaders of the firm; they named Youngkin and Kewsong Lee
to succeed them, as co-CEOs, effective January 1, 2018.[3] As co-CEOs, Youngkin
oversaw Carlyle’s real estate, energy, infrastructure businesses, and
investment solutions businesses; Lee oversaw the firm’s corporate private
equity and global credit businesses.[38][39] Youngkin and Lee also joined the
firm’s board of directors when they became co-CEOs.[33]
During Youngkin and Lee’s tenure as co-CEOs, they oversaw
the firm’s transition from a publicly traded partnership into a
corporation.[40][41][42]
Bloomberg News described the co-CEO relationship as
“awkward … and increasingly acrimonious” and Youngkin announced his
retirement after 2 1⁄2 years.[32] In July 2020, Youngkin announced that he
would retire from the Carlyle Group at the end of September 2020, stating his
intention to focus on community and public service efforts.[43][40] In 2020,
Youngkin and his wife founded a nonprofit, Virginia Ready Initiative, focusing
on connecting unemployed people in the state with job-training programs and
potential employers.[44][45][46][47]
LOL. Who is getting the wrong message again?!
Many components of the BBB bill have public support in the high 50s to high 70s.
The defeats happened because (a) the Democrats have failed to deliver on what the people wanted and (b) the candidate was a right-wing neoliberal BJ Clinton/Obama/Biden Democrat in many cases, the most notable of whom was McAuliffe.