Sen. Joe Manchin great filibuster slowed down another American government scam . |
It's about CLIMATE rather than the American People .
But if the bill truly is a goner, it will be much more than a political setback for the Biden agenda.US government to accelerate the transition away from fossil fuels this decade with major legislation like this bill, to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The bill also contains funding for adapting to climate change and helping the most vulnerable communities; (8)>>without it the "bulk" of the pork is hardly about the American people . The headline is that Build Back Better includes more than $500 billion for climate and clean-energy measures, but keep in mind that the already-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill included $150 billion for clean-energy baubles such as electric-vehicle chargers ($7.5 billion) and electric school buses ($5 billion), so the grand total of both bills would be about $650 billion.What are we actually getting for that eye-popping sum?Some of the infrastructure bill targets worthy improvements, such as $65 billion for upgrading our creaky electricity grid and $50 billion for “climate resilience,” which includes common-sense steps such as building more robust defenses against flooding and better managing national forests to reduce wildfire risk.The bulk of the Build Back Better bill, on the other hand, consists of large tax credits and subsidies for special interests with marginal benefits — and, incredibly, still more tax breaks for the affluent on top of the reinstatement of the state and local tax deduction that will deliver more than 90 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of income earners.Sounds like it’s designed that way on purpose to drive public sentiment away from supporting getting anything in return for the taxes they pay. The government takes like a third of all the money you make, but what exactly have we gotten in return for it over the past 40 years? (9)>>Everything that tax dollars are supposed to go toward has crumbled because the government and media present proposals to use our tax dollars in ways that help us in the worst way possible while presenting things that only benefit the ruling class, military industrial complex, and surveillance state in the best way possible.
NOTES AND COMMENTS:
This is a note about " Notes and Comments " . The Notes below are my comments to expand on the article above . Each paragraph in bold letters expands , or gives more information. Also as in "notes" they are not mostly about sources to the above article , some will contain links when provided or sources quoted .
(1)>>West Virginia senator just killed Democrats' agenda."Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) announced on "Fox News Sunday" that he will not vote for President Biden’s “mammoth” climate and social spending bill, essentially killing the White House's top legislative priority. "I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation, I just can't. I tried everything humanly possible, I can't get there" he told host Bret Baier. " Not a coincidence Manchin chose FoxNews as the platform to deliver this message.They fumbled it intentionally because the Establishment Dems agree with the establishment Republicans on more things than they want to admit.(2)>>"pork" and taxes on every American. Biden's plan as EVERYONE KNOWS tried to sneak a way to tax people by expanding IRS powers to look into peoples bank accounts for transfers over 600 $ . This I think BLEW Manchin to go against the BBB . Milton Friedman observed years ago. “You’re pushed up into higher brackets of the income tax,” Friedman explained. “The Congress, again, is in a marvelous position. It can vote to lower tax rates when in fact taxes are going up.”U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) may not have Friedman’s credentials, but he does have a better understanding of inflation than the average layman and is speaking out about the dangerous inflationary potential of the Build Back Better Act. In addition to being an obvious boondoggle, the so-called Build Back Better Act is a classic example of a bill whose (intended) inflationary impact is going to be more onerous than the cost of the bill itself. Yet, members of Congress have the gall to say that it’s not going to cost anything at all, that it will somehow “pay for itself.”(3)>>but most of the money is on sustaining the military industrial complex. The families of 61 million children received their final payments under the expanded Child Tax Credit. This credit has kept 10 million children above the poverty line, but it is expiring as the Senate delays a vote to renew it through the Build Back Better Act.Instead, on the same day these last payments went out, the Senate voted to approve a $778 billion military spending budget — four times as much as the annual cost of the entire Build Back Better plan. Yet we've heard endlessly about how it's Build Back Better that needs to be gutted so we can skimp and save. BOTH PARTIES are for the military build up , its never about the American people as we are learning now.While the numbers are massive -- a trillion here, a trillion there -- U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, a Madison Democrat, tried to put some perspective on it all with this Oct. 3, 2021 tweet:"The annual Pentagon budget hovers over $750 billion annually, twice that of the much debated Build Back Better Act that costs about $350 billion annually as currently proposed. And the Build Back Better Act is PAID for, unlike the Pentagon’s budget (which we don’t even audit!)." After two decades of war—and nearly two years into a pandemic that just won’t end—it feels like our country is at a fork in the road. Down one way, we reinvest in our families and communities. Down the other, we follow a status quo that’s left too many Americans vulnerable.Then there’s the sprawl. The U.S. maintains more than 750 military installations around the world. Rather than keeping Americans safe, these bases—and the ships, planes, and troops that accompany them—are 20th-century relics that antagonize rivals and make armed conflict more likely. Even military officials have advocated cutting back. (4)>>Manchin has told several of his fellow Democrats . Manchin put out this statement [ see >>>[ https://www.manchin.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/manchin-statement-on-build-back-better-act ] One thing he said : “My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country even more vulnerable to the threats we face. I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight. “The American people deserve transparency on the true cost of the Build Back Better Act. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office determined the cost is upwards of $4.5 trillion which is more than double what the bill’s ardent supporters have claimed. They continue to camouflage the real cost of the intent behind this bill. But no matter how you slice it, giving a huge tax cut to the super-rich is a weird thing to do when you’ve been claiming that the solution to our problems is simply getting the rich to “pay their fair share.” It’s even weirder when you consider that this tax break would be even bigger and more regressive than former President Trump’s tax “giveaway” that was so reviled by progressives — which the House version would keep. Benefits from the Democrats’ regressive giveaway would largely go to taxpayers in the top 20% of the income scale and would overwhelmingly benefit the top 0.1% of earners, specifically in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois and California.(5)>>Continuing the child tax credit for another year is a core part of the Build Back Better legislation. This is a extremely trying problem . Given any tax credit for extremely low poverty " Americans " , this one should be worked on by both parties of Congress . BUT the child tax credits is overrun with a problem , The question has to be asked of republicans, did they agree with the 3.5 trillion tax break given to the ultra rich? How did they expect that to be payed for? Did it help them personally in any way?The worst thing, which I just learned last on Pod Save America, is that spending bills are reported by the top-line spending number over 10 years without accounting for increased revenues while tax cuts are reported as a net figure that accounts for increased revenues. So, the media is essentially driving taxes and spending down because we negotiate those bills based on those numbers. In this bill, for example, there are plans to raise capital gains income taxes on the upper brackets, but that isn't accounted for in the $3.5 trillion. Biden: we have cut child poverty in half, Cutting the number of children would be detrimental to the overall economy. Let's ask ourselves: what's the point of a tax credit? To incentivize behavior. Why would the government want to incentivize people having children? Because the labor market relies on a certain number of people to ensure "full" employment. How can you offset retiring members of the labor force? Through childbirth and immigration. Are both of those incentivized through taxes? Yes.(6)>>Pretend to be for the working class but in reality they are Republican light. Yet I feel ever since 2016, Identity Politics has become the cornerstone focus on the Democratic Party. Their slogan was "With her," instead of "with you." I feel like identity politics is a way they can appeal to the Left (by making a show of speaking out against inequality and racism) without actually having to do anything substantial (like abolish Bush Era tax cuts or put forth a Carbon Tax). If they can make their main campaign simply speaking about Leftist issues and finding candidates who check off the right demographic, they don't actually have to bring any meat and potatoes to the political process. I think other Democrats also got tired of this charade, just like I did, and didn't even bother going out to the polls. Despite what the media portrays, I think the vast majority of Americans don't care about identity politics. "Identity politics" is really just the polite term for a movement which denounces "white privilege," the entire purpose of which is to put white people in the same moral position that Hitler put the Jews in, and the same position that communists put the "capitalists," the same position that socialists place the wealthy. The purpose, transparently, is to try to create and leverage envy of white people.By embracing this rhetoric of white privilege, and the idea that all white people are guilty of "implicit" racism at least, the Democrat party has not merely abandoned the white working class , the black working class as well . They have openly declared themselves their enemies, and the enemies of all white people generally.Whether you're willing to admit it or not, deep in your subconscious that is the reason people are uncomfortable with "political correctness" and "identity politics." It's all about demonizing an entire race of people. (7)>>Student loan forgiveness, even a small amount. Democrats have playing a game with "student loan forgiveness" since Obama , it keeps coming up all the time , nothing is ever done .Reminder: Biden can forgive all federally held student loan debt by executive order, but has decided not to. Instead, Biden has announced plans to unpause loan payments at the start of the new year, forcing desperate people trapped in the low wage US economy into even more desperate circumstances. Honestly I don't think it has to do with that. Maybe I'm a crazy conspiracy nut but I think both parties only care about themselves and their lobbyists. They just appoint a person or two to be the scapegoat. They make a ton of money while in office and eventually the game switches sides when they eventually get voted out.It used to be that the Democratic party's lobbyists were unions, so catering to them helped working people. Now working people have no significant representation in Washington and it shows. BUT , So, weirdly enough, yes some millionaire's children are actually taking out student loans instead of cashflowing it. Their parents have the credit/assets to take out private student loans at rates <3% so it's better for them to keep their cash in investments instead of pay for the super expensive private schools in cash. As Insider has previously reported, experts and lawmakers disagree on whether Biden actually has that authority, and Biden himself wasn't so sure either and asked the Education Department to prepare a memo on his legal ability to broadly cancel student debt — a memo he has had since at least April but has yet to release it. So there is a memo but it's being kept secret for some reason. AOC should push for it to be made public.(8)>>without it the "bulk" of the pork is hardly about the American people . The Build Back Better Act has nothing to do with infrastructure…that’s a separate bill that passed late LAST Friday night. The BBB Act is basically a Democrat wish list of items and pork barrel spending. I agree with another post above…this bill is DOA. [ The BIGGEST ARGUMENT AGAINST IS FOUND HERE >>shorturl.at/bgnFG 5 Major Problems With Biden’s Infrastructure Plan ] In short, contrary to his campaign promises, by reducing the value of money, Biden has inflicted a huge new tax on all Americans, which falls most harshly on the poor and middle class. Of course, the stock market, which adjusts more quickly to inflation, Remember Obama’s shovel ready jobs? The trillion dollars appropriated for that all went to Wall Street banks who fired their American IT staff and hired Indian H1-B workers. Remember all the highway work we had then.(9)>>Everything that tax dollars are supposed to go toward has crumbled . The math doesn't add up. The amount of economic growth generated in the short term is a drop in the bucket compared to the long term costs of maintaining America's roads and bridges.This bill is just like the ARRA - more bullshit road expansion projects. It's a bad deal for our country and does nothing to address the insolvency of ever expanding road networks and car dependent low density suburbia What infrastructure is needed the most?!? You can use this report to justify ANY spending. Road, train, or dam. So that road widening project that you know sucks "but we need to invest in infrastructure." Also this is a protection if we spent $0. It says we need to spend $13 trillion to save $10 trillion in GDP. The problem is we've had infrastructure cash for shovel ready jobs and it went to practically inventing ways to spend it rather than pinpointing the overdue upgrades. We'll get a lot of landscaping and not a lot of replacing power poles.The utility delivery systems in many cities that remain in use today were largely built in the 19th century and the opening decades of the 20th, the modern power grid was built in the 1950s with a 50 year lifespan, and in 2016 an infrastructure survey found an absurd number of bridges were structurally unsound, something like 26k. I have zero faith in Biden’s ability to deliver on any of this because frankly the people he’s beholden to (Wall St. fully backs the Obama-Pelosi axis which controls the Democratic Party) have little interest in restoring American infrastructure. They just see dollar signs, same as they did when Obama had his brilliant infrastructure plan. Oh yeah only 10% of that actually was spent on infrastructure. Just look at John Kerry’s recent climate speech where he declared that “no government will solve climate change.”