All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Tendrin]

I hope he doesn’t think that.

But I think few of us here are by “international standards” (opposed to American standards) left wing.

Let me give just a few examples of that...you rarely seen any opposition to inherited wealth here, any real desire to fundamentally change the tax system, and certainly no real desire to make the third world better off at the expense of the west.

I'm pro death-tax, thank you very much.

[Steel Inquisitor]

I hope he doesn’t think that.

But I think few of us here are by “international standards” (opposed to American standards) left wing.

He's not left wing. International standards according to who? It's not like Corbyn was popular in the UK.

Let me give just a few examples of that...you rarely seen any opposition to inherited wealth here, any real desire to fundamentally change the tax system, and certainly no real desire to make the third world better off at the expense of the west.

Because the subject never comes up, not because we don't have opinions about it. Ask questions rather than assuming. Changing the tax system is not a simple subject and you'll find many liberals are ok with that, how to do it is another matter not that we're just opposed it because we're not leftists - which is a group which don't have a single response to that. Sure we do. What's with the straw men?

[JackDaw]

I'm pro death-tax, thank you very much.

I would also prefer to pay tax when I’m dead to while I’m alive...

Joking aside...maybe I’ve made a wrong assumption (on general position here on inherited wealth) because it’s something rarely discussed here...compared to the constant streams of discussion on racism, eccentricities of Republican politics, and better US healthcare.

And I’m genuinely interested: what kind of death tax do you support?

(We have a tax in UK where estate of anyone dying has to pay 40 percent tax after allowance of around 325,000 pounds...but I’d say it’s largely ineffective as a means of wealth redistribution, because the very wealthy can avoid the tax by various means such as setting up trust funds.)

[Tendrin]

I would also prefer to pay tax when I’m dead to while I’m alive...

Joking aside...maybe I’ve made a wrong assumption (on general position here on inherited wealth) because it’s something rarely discussed here...compared to the constant streams of discussion on racism, eccentricities of Republican politics, and better US healthcare.

And I’m genuinely interested: what kind of death tax do you support?

(We have a tax in UK where estate of anyone dying has to pay 40 percent tax after allowance of around 325,000 pounds...but I’d say it’s largely ineffective as a means of wealth redistribution, because the very wealthy can avoid the tax by various means such as setting up trust funds.)

It has been as high as 80% before. I'm fine with that.

[worstblogever]

Byrd at least renounced the KKK. The GOP follow Trump like hungry dogs.

Hell, Kelly Loeffler's taking selfies with former Grand Wizards.

[JackDaw]

It has been as high as 80% before. I'm fine with that.

Once when I was young and idealistic I would have been fine with the tax at that level too.

Now..If it came to a referendum..I would vote against it, I suspect. (I might conceivably support if it was part of very sweeping reforms to fundamentally make society much fairer.)

Partly because I would be sceptical how the UK state would use that money but largely because I have become more selfish over the years and would prefer my own friends and family to benefit rather than society as a whole.

[Tendrin]

Once when I was young and idealistic I would have been fine with the tax at that level too.

Now..If it came to a referendum..I would vote against it, I suspect. (I might conceivably support if it was part of very sweeping reforms to fundamentally make society much fairer.)

Partly because I would be sceptical how the UK state would use that money but largely because I have become more selfish over the years and would prefer my own friends and family to benefit rather than society as a whole.

The tax only kicks in past a certain level. It's a marginal tax rate. In the States, it starts after the first million of inherited wealth. Given things like land values and more, that number can probably be changed but I'm fine with thet tax rate being even higher. It's perfectly fair to me. There's been a lot of propaganda about 'family farming' and the inheritance tax being a 'danger' to it, but 'family farms' in point of fact don't exist like the popular imagination implies.

[Gray Lensman]

I'm pro death-tax, thank you very much.

Let's call that one what it was intended, the Aristocracy Prevention Tax.

[Tendrin]

Let's call that one what it was intended, the Aristocracy Prevention Tax.

Yeah, I agree.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" ran a profile of Lori Klein, who served one term after sweeping into office as part of the Tea Party Wave, and quickly established herself to be one of the more racist and insane members of the Arizona state legislature. And THAT is saying something. Where to begin? Well, Klein introduced legislation that would deny giving birth certificates to children of immigrants born in the United States (which is obviously a gross unconstitutional violation of the 14th Amendment), doing so not just once, but twice. She also personally approached a crowd of people protesting Arizona's SB1070 and told them to "go back to Mexico", and when they pointed out they were of Mexican descent, but American citizens, she instead chose to call them "thugs" and demanded to know "who was paying them" to be there. She also read a racist letter on the floor of the Arizona State Senate, purportedly from a constituent who said they were a teacher, and that the "black and Hispanic children refuse to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because America is stealing Mexican land, and they refuse to speak English because they want to be gang members." If you're not already mortified by Klein's rhetoric, there's also her defense of Herman Cain's sexual harassment allegations, where she said he never hit on her and she is "not an unattractive woman". Finally, we'll throw in the flap that occurred when she tried to walk into a speech with Governor Jan Brewer while carrying her pink Ruger revolver, and tried throwing a 2nd Amendment tantrum when the governor's security detail stopped her trying to do so. She was outraged enough to do an interview with a reporter for some public sympathy afterwards, but that backfired when she pointed the gun directly at the reporter in the interview to explain why it was a "harmless" gun. A gun without a safety. While it was loaded. Lori Klein lost in the 2014 GOP Primary just trying to get by in the Arizona House of Representatives and has yet to resurface politically.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted a profile of former Maryland Congressman Roscoe Bartlett, a 7th Day Adventist who supported every anti-gay and pro-life piece of legislation he ever saw cross his path in the House. Bartlett started to make people think he’d gone senile toward the end of his career, like how in September 2012, Bartlett told a crowd that federal student loans were unconstitutional, and could lead down a slippery slope to the Holocaust, warned people to “not live in cities” in a documentary about a potential smallpox outbreak, and fought to have hearings held on the United States' readiness for an attack from an outside entity using an electromagnetic pulse (which is not a viable technology right now outside of any sci-fi movie). Bartlett was so convinced that this threat was imminent that since retiring from politics, he has moved himself and his wife into a cabin "off the grid" without telephone service in the middle of the mountains of West Virginia with his wife.

On this date in 2017, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Charlie Janssen, a former Nebraska State Senator who made a run at the governor’s mansion in Lincoln back in 2014. Janssen was first elected to the Nebraska State Senate back in 2009, and his career has shown him with a tendency to vote against LGBTQ protections, and for things like 20 week abortion bans. After six years of establishing a bright red streak of conservative votes, Janssen felt he was ready to take a crack at becoming Governor. Like a lot of politicians during the 2014 mid-term elections, Janssen was looking to ride a surge in anti-immigrant paranoia into office. While most Republicans were content to ignorantly fear-monger about people bringing Ebola virus across the U.S./Mexico border (amazing because it was coming from Africa, like it always does)… Charlie Janssen decided to take a different tack in stirring up fears about immigrants. He once submitted a bill inspired by Arizona’s SB 1070 to try to let law enforcement racially profile people, and likes to talk at length about how he feels that immigrants are “a drain on public resources”. So, when Janssen began trying to exploit the rape and murder of a 93-year-old woman by a drunk 19-year old, which he blamed on our illegal immigration system. Most criticized Janssen for this, because illegal immigrants actually commit fewer crimes, especially violent crimes statistically far less than other citizens. Shortly after facing criticism for being such a xenophobic bigot, Janssen non-coincidentally dropped out of the governor’s race, saying that he “didn’t see a path to victory”. He’s still on the younger side at only 45 years old, so it bears watching if he makes a run at an officer higher than State Auditor, which he settled on (and barely won office for in 2014). It’s not uncommon for Nebraska State Auditors to try to make that jump, either. This guy is unlikely to stay quiet.



It was on this date in 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the day profiled Utah State Senator Todd Weiler, who first took office in 2012 when his predecessor, Dan Liljequist resigned his seat to try to unseat the methuselah who represents Utah in the U.S. Senate, Orrin Hatch.While Weiler got through his first years as a legislator without stirring up too much drama in Utah, it was in his second term that Weiler declared pornography a public health crisis and tried writing a bill that would let porn addicts sue internet pornography companies. Now, the obvious counter-argument to Weiler’s bill would be that it’s a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution. Well, he’d like to let all his critics know that online pornography actually violates HIS First Amendment rights, saying, “Someone may have the First Amendment right, according to the U.S. Supreme Court, to view pornography,” Weiler told Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch” radio show. “But what about my First Amendment right not to view it?” Of course, the “research” Weiler did on any of this was also not based in reality and as level-headed as Claude Frollo’s research into gypsies. And when you have to release a statement later to try to mitigate the damage where you compare porn to tobacco (Since it causes cancer, right?) and claim “I’m not trying to ban masturbation”, maybe you know you’ve taken your quest way too far. Guess what sorts of impropriety Todd Weiler doesn’t have a problem with? BIGAMY. Yeah, when Utah put a bill out to make bigamy a third degree felony in 2017, and he voted against it. Among the other things that Weiler doesn’t consider a public health crisis include bringing back public executions by firing squad, sex education being taught in public school.

When we last checked in with Todd Weiler… he’s been accused of extortion by a wealthy GOP donor, who even provided audio of the suggestion to offer her $1 million to make a false accusation against him. We tend to believe accusers here at CSGOPOTD, but we’re just noting in this story that it seems Weiler has made an enemy of a top political donor in the state. More than one, in fact, because Weiler’s not even up for election until 2020, and the Koch Brothers were also targeting him to be defeated in the GOP primary in 2020, sending out fliers deriding him well in advance. Meanwhile, Weiler has been pretty active, and pretty much gaslighting on Twitter, where he’s made half-assed defenses of Brett Kavanaugh and trying to show some sort of double standard that the media supposedly applies to him and other perpetrators of sexual assault, as well as misrepresenting the facts about investigations into Donald Trump not being biased upon review.

Todd Weiler got to practically skip the primary process for his re-election by the Utah GOP, being awarded the win without a public vote over his challenger, Marci Green Campbell. While she did resolve herself to start a write-in campaign for the November election, she struggled to even get on mail-in ballots. Thus, Weiler was all but guaranteed victory in November, and won with 94% of the vote. He will now remain in office for another four years, and we’re sure we’ve not heard the last of him doing and saying incredibly stupid things.

[Amadeus Arkham]

Happy News Years to all, let’s all hope politics gets back to some semblance of sanity this year.

[PaulBullion]

The notion that this is a 'right-wing nest of vipers' made me laugh a lot.

I like to think of myself as more of a centrist copperhead.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

If you think this is a nest of right wing vipers, you are left of Mao Tse Tung

"Right wing vipers?" Good lord! How'd I miss that?

[CaptainEurope]

I hope he doesn’t think that.

But I think few of us here are by “international standards” (opposed to American standards) left wing.

Let me give just a few examples of that...you rarely seen any opposition to inherited wealth here, any real desire to fundamentally change the tax system, and certainly no real desire to make the third world better off at the expense of the west.

I think it is more complex than that.


Here in Germany, the far left party in parliament, Die Linke, is clearly to the right of US Democrats on immigration. Their highest profile member, Sarah Wagenknecht, grew up the daughter of a single mom in communist Eastern Germany, her dad an Iranian exchange student whom Sarah never met. She is such a xenophobe, seeing immigration as a threat for a widely imaginary white working class. Her entire party at best tiptoes around the issue, as their main voting base is in the Eastern Bundesländer, where racists live.

And out Greens have clearly moved to the center, entering coalitions with the conservative party in several regional parliaments.


Elizabeth Warren's call to break up tech companies is far, far to the left from anything I am hearing in Europe.

[Tendrin]

I think it is more complex than that.


Here in Germany, the far left party in parliament, Die Linke, is clearly to the right of US Democrats on immigration. Their highest profile member, Sarah Wagenknecht, grew up the daughter of a single mom in communist Eastern Germany, her dad an Iranian exchange student whom Sarah never met. She is such a xenophobe, seeing immigration as a threat for a widely imaginary white working class. Her entire party at best tiptoes around the issue, as their main voting base is in the Eastern Bundesländer, where racists live.

And out Greens have clearly moved to the center, entering coalitions with the conservative party in several regional parliaments.


Elizabeth Warren's call to break up tech companies is far, far to the left from anything I am hearing in Europe.

This is accurate. People like to claim that the Democrats are 'to the right' of the global left, but they mostly mean on some economic metrics. On trans rights, on gay rights, on civil rights, on abortion rights, and more, t he Dems are well to the left fo many 'leftist' parties world wide. And some of this comes from the fact the dems are the party of Joe Manchin as much as they are the party of AOC.