Why Trump Keeps Winning and Establishment Pubs are Clueless Part CXXVI. NRO is having a fantasy of a Rubio speech that adds a plan to the negative Trump campaigning, to attract voters to him. By showing them what he'll do when he gets to office.
Substantively, though, I’d like to see a few changes to the offering. Specifically, I think that Rubio would benefit from talking in a little more detail about how his own plans will help people in the middle class.
Sounds great, let's see what they can come up with.
The frontrunner of the Republican party, Donald Trump, is a con man. And that matters — it matters a great deal. Why? Because he’s giving false hope to people who have hit the hardest of times. Many of you have been through so much over the past few years. Like my parents did, and I like I did as a young man, you’ve felt the fear that one medical bill or car breakdown could ruin your finances; you’ve had to postdate checks so that you didn’t get that call from the bank; you’ve wondered whether your children will be able to go to college. Some of you will have stayed awake at night wondering if America will ever fulfill its promise to you. And along has come Donald Trump — a selfish, arrogant billionaire — and he has decided to make America’s hopes and fears his personal plaything. Well, I think that’s a sin. I think it’s a sin. And make no mistake: Donald Trump is selling America a bill of goods, just like he did to the victims of Trump University; just like he did to the illegal immigrants that he hired to build his skyscrapers; just like he did to the good people of Atlantic City, who are now without jobs. He found good people, and he lied to them. That’s what he does.
But there is some good news, and that good news is that some of us are thinking about these things seriously: not as a game; not for our own advancement; not for our own amusement, and the amusement of the media. Some of us have taken the time to sit down and think about how we can help. And not by promising handouts or threatening to bankrupt your children, like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have; not by promising that the government will rescue you; not with vague slogans like “Hope and Change” and “Make America Great Again.” But by applying conservative principles to a new century. And when I am president of the United States, we will pass my tax plan, which I wrote with Senator Mike Lee, and we will ensure that the middle class comes roaring back. Let me tell you how we’re going to do that . . .
It's a tax cut. *pops champagne* Well, when all you have is a hammer. These guys are so fucking fucked. Also, how are their stale 'middle class' offerings going to peel off Trump's blue-collar supporters? Who knows. Surely not these Republicans.
Well obviously more tax cuts for people making 200k+ a year will do great things for all the people struggling with comfortable-but-not-as-nice-as-I'd-hoped-for lives.
Well obviously more tax cuts for people making 200k+ a year will do great things for all the people struggling with comfortable-but-not-as-nice-as-I'd-hoped-for lives.
It's like, that speech could've been a lead-up into almost anything and it would have fit. "I will do <X> and it will save the middle class!" But man, I didn't even need to read that far to know that X was going to be a tax cut. Is there anything they won't try to sell tax cuts as the solution for?
I think I'm starting to agree with what others have said. Trump's revealed that a lot of conservatives don't really care about all this small-government, economics stuff. They've got no problem with having a big, strong government as long as it's doing the things they like.
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
And when I am president of the United States, we will pass my tax plan, which I wrote with Senator Mike Lee, and we will ensure that the middle class comes roaring back. Let me tell you how we’re going to do that
...And they say the GOP doesn't know how to get voters excited anymore.
I'm not buying it. What does this mean to them? Five days for women and five minutes for men?
EDIT:
And what does 'new' mean? Having a new child so freak shows like the Duggars can get paid leave from their TV show? Or just people who've never had a child before?
I mean, seriously: who the fuck thinks, "...And then we will pass my TAX PLAN!" is a rousing climax to a speech, even if you do really believe it's such a great tax plan? Jesus Christ, no wonder the Trump campaign was able to find so many gifs of supporters literally falling asleep at other rallies.
I'm not buying it. What does this mean to them? Five days for women and five minutes for men?
EDIT:
And what does 'new' mean? Having a new child so freak shows like the Duggars can get paid leave from their TV show? Or just people who've never had a child before?
Like I said, tax credit. After actually checking, definitely a tax credit.
A 25% non-refundable tax credit for businesses that voluntarily offer at least four weeks of paid family leave, limited to twelve weeks of leave and $4,000 per employee each year.
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Y'know, I'd love for the Rubio campaign to explain how they reconcile 'no handouts' with this policy proposal. It's a shitty hand out, sure, but it's still a fucking hand out. It's still subsidy money that someone is taking out of the state coffers.
'No government hand outs... well except this $2,500 per child coupon. But if I call it a tax credit and make the dollar value insulting to anyone who can do basic math, fuck you, it doesn't count as subsidy somehow,'
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
(Part 1)
First, the obvious: The "deep bench" is filled with incompetent morons:
Trump had said things that were true and that no other Republican would dare to say. And yet the press congratulated the candidate stuffed with more than $100 million in donor cash who really did take five whole days last year to figure out his position on his own brother's invasion of Iraq.
At a time when there couldn't be more at stake, with the Middle East in shambles, a major refugee crisis, and as many as three Supreme Court seats up for grabs (the death of satanic quail-hunter Antonin Scalia underscored this), the Republican Party picked a strange year to turn the presidential race into a potluck affair. The candidates sent forth to take on Trump have been so incompetent they can't even lose properly.
Then, the also obvious, but understated (because of course it is): The press are also incompetent. And liars:
The press went gaga for Rubio after Iowa because – why? Because he's an unthreatening, blow-dried, cliché-spouting, dial-surveying phony of the type campaign journalists always approve of.
And when Rubio gets exposed in the debate as a talking haircut, a political Speak n' Spell, suddenly the throng of journalists who spent the past two weeks trying to sell America on "Marcomentum" and the all-important "establishment lane" looks very guilty indeed. Voters were supposed to take this seriously?
There's of course, the Republican's war on the poor:
"Trump has also promised to use tariffs to punish companies," wrote David McIntosh in the Review's much-publicized, but not-effective-at-all "Conservatives Against Trump" 22-pundit jihad. "These are not the ideas of a small-government conservative ... They are, instead, the ramblings of a liberal wanna-be strongman."
What these tweedy Buckleyites at places like the Review don't get is that most people don't give a damn about "conservative principles." Yes, millions of people responded to that rhetoric for years. But that wasn't because of the principle itself, but because it was always coupled with the more effective politics of resentment: Big-government liberals are to blame for your problems.
Which leaves out with the punchline:
No one should be surprised that he's tearing through the Republican primaries, because everything he's saying about his GOP opponents is true. They really are all stooges on the take, unable to stand up to Trump because they're not even people, but are, like Jeb and Rubio, just robo-babbling representatives of unseen donors.
There's a section on how Cruz is repulsive and owned by Goldman Sachs, but is redundant.
Late as fuuuck with this, but reading these rude awakenings from conservatives feels so smug.
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
Honestly, the program doesn't sound too bad to me.
The study examined more than $600 million in federal funding spent between 2000 and 2010, including early demonstration projects.
A decade ago, then-Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn told a Senate committee that teaching relationship skills could "increase the odds that couples will form and sustain healthy marriages." Children raised in "healthy married households" were less likely to endure poverty or commit crimes, Horn said.
The new research adds to a long-standing debate over the effort and whether government can or should promote better marriages as a way to combat poverty. Some supporters argue that marriage rates are an inadequate measure because the goal is not to increase weddings but to improve existing relationships so that children are better off.
Gauging marriage and divorce "is really a narrow view of the benefits," said Robyn Cenizal, project director of the federally funded National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. If someone goes to such classes and realizes their relationship is unhealthy, "choosing not to get married is actually a good thing," Cenizal said.
It's not (or not supposed to be, anyway) a judgmental thing or anti-gay thing, but just a program intended to find out what makes functional marriages work and spread good information about how to improve your odds of being in a healthy relationship.
I have no doubt that bias crept into the study in terms of what parameters were looked for in terms of both success & what how 'marriage' is defined, but the goal was certainly fine and a properly overseen such program would probably have net benefits at the end of the day.
With Love and Courage
0
Options
Captain Marcusnow arrives the hour of actionRegistered Userregular
A 25% non-refundable tax credit for businesses that voluntarily offer at least four weeks of paid family leave, limited to twelve weeks of leave and $4,000 per employee each year.
This is what counts as innovation.
That's still bullshit. "I'm the bright new face of the GOP, here to win over people who will vote for me because of my last name and the youth!"
Aaaand then you do the numbers, and instead of mandating a few months of maternity/paternity leave like a sane people in other countries, Rubio's offering the masses 12 weeks of pay at what they would earn if they made 17 grand a year at the price of lowering corporate taxes by 25%. Such benevolence from the candidate of the elites! Such generosity from the makers to the takers!
I know he's got the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's hand up his ass, but when your puppet's faced with the Trumpening $333 dollars a week to start your new family is all Big Business can spare? "Let them eat tax credits" when the mob's at the palace gates.
What's the parent tax penalty? You get a credit for your dependents, and children are dependents. So, what gives?
If both of you are professionals the overall tax burden can be higher on your AGI when filing jointly versus as individuals. Mostly because the tax code still largely assumes one breadwinner instead of two. Its just a tweak that should happen same as fixing the family fuckup in the ACA since it's basically just a drafting oversight. But, that also means it is leverage to demand some other thing in the bill to fix it, so here we are.
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
It feels very carefully crafted to sound a lot like opposing gay marriage without ever actually saying so.
Which for once isn't to pull the wool over the general public eyes', but rather to convince the True Believers that that's a thing that's going to happen.
The last one really depends on the particulars but is probably just a religiously based couples counseling thing I would assume?
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I'm not buying it. What does this mean to them? Five days for women and five minutes for men?
EDIT:
And what does 'new' mean? Having a new child so freak shows like the Duggars can get paid leave from their TV show? Or just people who've never had a child before?
Since it seems like it'd be up to the companies, they get a tax credit for saying "you get up to 15 extra minutes on your lunch break to call home and see if the baby's okay."
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
Honestly, the program doesn't sound too bad to me.
The study examined more than $600 million in federal funding spent between 2000 and 2010, including early demonstration projects.
A decade ago, then-Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn told a Senate committee that teaching relationship skills could "increase the odds that couples will form and sustain healthy marriages." Children raised in "healthy married households" were less likely to endure poverty or commit crimes, Horn said.
The new research adds to a long-standing debate over the effort and whether government can or should promote better marriages as a way to combat poverty. Some supporters argue that marriage rates are an inadequate measure because the goal is not to increase weddings but to improve existing relationships so that children are better off.
Gauging marriage and divorce "is really a narrow view of the benefits," said Robyn Cenizal, project director of the federally funded National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. If someone goes to such classes and realizes their relationship is unhealthy, "choosing not to get married is actually a good thing," Cenizal said.
It's not (or not supposed to be, anyway) a judgmental thing or anti-gay thing, but just a program intended to find out what makes functional marriages work and spread good information about how to improve your odds of being in a healthy relationship.
I have no doubt that bias crept into the study in terms of what parameters were looked for in terms of both success & what how 'marriage' is defined, but the goal was certainly fine and a properly overseen such program would probably have net benefits at the end of the day.
having long-term marriages is pretty strongly linked to economic stability and mobility. Of course, economic stability also promotes healthy marriages, but there's plenty of data to suggest that the government should be promoting marriage, especially for child-rearing. Really as a big leftie hippie liberal my natural instincts are against that idea, but all of the data I've seen on the issue seems pretty convincing just in economic terms if nothing else.
Course that doesn't mean that any particular program is actually good, but compared to the other laundry list of horrible republican party ideas it's not really something to get concerned over.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I disagreed with HW on a lot of stuff but he seemed an honorable guy, and his morals and humanity were understandable and at times admirable.
Honorable things like subverting Congress, arming Iran, funding Latin American death squads, and then covering it up as he left office?
Perfect being the enemy of good?
In a relative sense, HW is far, far more preferable to anybody currently riding in the clown car.
This phrase doesn't work when talking about events that happened in the past being compared against events of today. We're not picking between George Bush 1 and these dummies, they are all the GOP has got. Conversely, the shitty things that GB1 did aren't less shitty because the GOP got even crazier down the road.
The GOP has always been crazy in my lifetime. My first "political" memory is voting for Dukakis in an elementary school classroom activity. I probably lost.
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
Honestly, the program doesn't sound too bad to me.
The study examined more than $600 million in federal funding spent between 2000 and 2010, including early demonstration projects.
A decade ago, then-Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn told a Senate committee that teaching relationship skills could "increase the odds that couples will form and sustain healthy marriages." Children raised in "healthy married households" were less likely to endure poverty or commit crimes, Horn said.
The new research adds to a long-standing debate over the effort and whether government can or should promote better marriages as a way to combat poverty. Some supporters argue that marriage rates are an inadequate measure because the goal is not to increase weddings but to improve existing relationships so that children are better off.
Gauging marriage and divorce "is really a narrow view of the benefits," said Robyn Cenizal, project director of the federally funded National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. If someone goes to such classes and realizes their relationship is unhealthy, "choosing not to get married is actually a good thing," Cenizal said.
It's not (or not supposed to be, anyway) a judgmental thing or anti-gay thing, but just a program intended to find out what makes functional marriages work and spread good information about how to improve your odds of being in a healthy relationship.
I have no doubt that bias crept into the study in terms of what parameters were looked for in terms of both success & what how 'marriage' is defined, but the goal was certainly fine and a properly overseen such program would probably have net benefits at the end of the day.
having long-term marriages is pretty strongly linked to economic stability and mobility. Of course, economic stability also promotes healthy marriages, but there's plenty of data to suggest that the government should be promoting marriage, especially for child-rearing. Really as a big leftie hippie liberal my natural instincts are against that idea, but all of the data I've seen on the issue seems pretty convincing just in economic terms if nothing else.
Course that doesn't mean that any particular program is actually good, but compared to the other laundry list of horrible republican party ideas it's not really something to get concerned over.
I don't think it's the concept of the program that's sketchy, but the fact that it's basically coming from the sort of people who have a specific value of marriage in mind. In the end, it's kind of expected that it'd come back to that one way or another.
I disagreed with HW on a lot of stuff but he seemed an honorable guy, and his morals and humanity were understandable and at times admirable.
Honorable things like subverting Congress, arming Iran, funding Latin American death squads, and then covering it up as he left office?
Perfect being the enemy of good?
In a relative sense, HW is far, far more preferable to anybody currently riding in the clown car.
This phrase doesn't work when talking about events that happened in the past being compared against events of today. We're not picking between George Bush 1 and these dummies, they are all the GOP has got. Conversely, the shitty things that GB1 did aren't less shitty because the GOP got even crazier down the road.
The GOP has always been crazy in my lifetime. My first "political" memory is voting for Dukakis in an elementary school classroom activity. I probably lost.
Last time they were totally sane was probably Ike, honestly, although I do think they've gotten progressively crazier since Nixon.
OremLK on
My zombie survival life simulator They Don't Sleep is out now on Steam if you want to check it out.
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
Honestly, the program doesn't sound too bad to me.
The study examined more than $600 million in federal funding spent between 2000 and 2010, including early demonstration projects.
A decade ago, then-Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn told a Senate committee that teaching relationship skills could "increase the odds that couples will form and sustain healthy marriages." Children raised in "healthy married households" were less likely to endure poverty or commit crimes, Horn said.
The new research adds to a long-standing debate over the effort and whether government can or should promote better marriages as a way to combat poverty. Some supporters argue that marriage rates are an inadequate measure because the goal is not to increase weddings but to improve existing relationships so that children are better off.
Gauging marriage and divorce "is really a narrow view of the benefits," said Robyn Cenizal, project director of the federally funded National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. If someone goes to such classes and realizes their relationship is unhealthy, "choosing not to get married is actually a good thing," Cenizal said.
It's not (or not supposed to be, anyway) a judgmental thing or anti-gay thing, but just a program intended to find out what makes functional marriages work and spread good information about how to improve your odds of being in a healthy relationship.
I have no doubt that bias crept into the study in terms of what parameters were looked for in terms of both success & what how 'marriage' is defined, but the goal was certainly fine and a properly overseen such program would probably have net benefits at the end of the day.
having long-term marriages is pretty strongly linked to economic stability and mobility. Of course, economic stability also promotes healthy marriages, but there's plenty of data to suggest that the government should be promoting marriage, especially for child-rearing. Really as a big leftie hippie liberal my natural instincts are against that idea, but all of the data I've seen on the issue seems pretty convincing just in economic terms if nothing else.
Course that doesn't mean that any particular program is actually good, but compared to the other laundry list of horrible republican party ideas it's not really something to get concerned over.
I don't think it's the concept of the program that's sketchy, but the fact that it's basically coming from the sort of people who have a specific value of marriage in mind. In the end, it's kind of expected that it'd come back to that one way or another.
oh for sure
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
I disagreed with HW on a lot of stuff but he seemed an honorable guy, and his morals and humanity were understandable and at times admirable.
Honorable things like subverting Congress, arming Iran, funding Latin American death squads, and then covering it up as he left office?
Perfect being the enemy of good?
In a relative sense, HW is far, far more preferable to anybody currently riding in the clown car.
This phrase doesn't work when talking about events that happened in the past being compared against events of today. We're not picking between George Bush 1 and these dummies, they are all the GOP has got. Conversely, the shitty things that GB1 did aren't less shitty because the GOP got even crazier down the road.
The GOP has always been crazy in my lifetime. My first "political" memory is voting for Dukakis in an elementary school classroom activity. I probably lost.
Last time they were totally sane was probably Ike, honestly, although I do think they've gotten progressively crazier since Nixon.
I don't know that Ike really counts. From what I understand, he didn't give much a damn about party loyalty when he was running.
I have to think that Reagan broke them, and he broke them by being successful. He got to put into practice the Supply Side economic theories of their intellectuals. And when that happened, they failed. Miserably. It's taken a long time, but the incredible electoral success of Reagan blew the brains out of the party.
Your honest intellectuals stopped lionizing these theories. Your dishonest intellectuals moved the goalposts so far they've effectively drilled to China. People are stubborn and hate to be wrong, so this process takes a long time. Big business still wants people to believe this crap because it obviously directly benefits them, but it's trying to give a transfusion to a dead patient at this point.
So Republicans have had to basically "run on what's left." And what's left isn't very pretty. It's what Trump has been able to easily seize on. He'll win this nomination. Hopefully not the general election but I wouldn't count him out of it.
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
This scares the shit out of me, because it's basically saying 'let's cut single parents out of already existing social welfare programs, since, yknow, they're the ones that generally need it the most!'
Well, the starting minimum premise to be accepted as a part of serious policy conversation in the GOP is that government is incompetent and intrusive (ignore the criminal justice and privacy stuff for now). What policy venues does he have left? I can quote the entirety of Rubio's issues section for family.
Reform the Tax Code to Treat Parents Fairly by:
Creating a new $2,500 per child tax credit, to allow working parents to keep more of their money and fix the parent tax penalty.
Ending the marriage tax penalty without penalizing homemakers (Read more about Marco’s tax plan here.)
Encouraging paid leave for new parents, caretakers of ailing loved ones, seriously ill employees, and military families, without harmful mandates, taxes, or costly new entitlements (Read more about Marco’s paid leave plan here.)
Promote a Marriage Culture by:
Defending traditional American values and the value of marriage
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
Honestly, the program doesn't sound too bad to me.
The study examined more than $600 million in federal funding spent between 2000 and 2010, including early demonstration projects.
A decade ago, then-Assistant Secretary for Children and Families Wade F. Horn told a Senate committee that teaching relationship skills could "increase the odds that couples will form and sustain healthy marriages." Children raised in "healthy married households" were less likely to endure poverty or commit crimes, Horn said.
The new research adds to a long-standing debate over the effort and whether government can or should promote better marriages as a way to combat poverty. Some supporters argue that marriage rates are an inadequate measure because the goal is not to increase weddings but to improve existing relationships so that children are better off.
Gauging marriage and divorce "is really a narrow view of the benefits," said Robyn Cenizal, project director of the federally funded National Resource Center for Healthy Marriage and Families. If someone goes to such classes and realizes their relationship is unhealthy, "choosing not to get married is actually a good thing," Cenizal said.
It's not (or not supposed to be, anyway) a judgmental thing or anti-gay thing, but just a program intended to find out what makes functional marriages work and spread good information about how to improve your odds of being in a healthy relationship.
I have no doubt that bias crept into the study in terms of what parameters were looked for in terms of both success & what how 'marriage' is defined, but the goal was certainly fine and a properly overseen such program would probably have net benefits at the end of the day.
having long-term marriages is pretty strongly linked to economic stability and mobility. Of course, economic stability also promotes healthy marriages, but there's plenty of data to suggest that the government should be promoting marriage, especially for child-rearing. Really as a big leftie hippie liberal my natural instincts are against that idea, but all of the data I've seen on the issue seems pretty convincing just in economic terms if nothing else.
Course that doesn't mean that any particular program is actually good, but compared to the other laundry list of horrible republican party ideas it's not really something to get concerned over.
Allowing states to use anti-poverty dollars on programs that recognize marriage’s crucial role in lifting families out of poverty
This scares the shit out of me, because it's basically saying 'let's cut single parents out of already existing social welfare programs, since, yknow, they're the ones that generally need it the most!'
But forcing single parents to find a spouse at all costs will certainly promote strong families. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.
Posts
What's sad for Trump supporters is that the major issue the guy is French, not that he's a huge racist.
pleasepaypreacher.net
WHAT IS HAPPENING?!
It's almost like they're aren't really actually friendly with one another! Or maybe Trump just got sick of Christie stealing his media spotlight.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Sounds great, let's see what they can come up with.
It's a tax cut. *pops champagne* Well, when all you have is a hammer. These guys are so fucking fucked. Also, how are their stale 'middle class' offerings going to peel off Trump's blue-collar supporters? Who knows. Surely not these Republicans.
Increase it from a trickle down to a steady drip!
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
Then it just limp dicks into the finish line with Rubio lying about his tax plan (doesn't it have a VAT?)
I think I'm starting to agree with what others have said. Trump's revealed that a lot of conservatives don't really care about all this small-government, economics stuff. They've got no problem with having a big, strong government as long as it's doing the things they like.
A tax cut, a tax cut, a tax credit (heaven forbid the government makes a regulation), gay marriage, I don't even know what the fuck that last one is but it sound like a waste of money on religious bullshit. But he'll finally stop an anti-establishment insurgency, if he just tells him about this tax cut he has.
...And they say the GOP doesn't know how to get voters excited anymore.
I'm not buying it. What does this mean to them? Five days for women and five minutes for men?
EDIT:
And what does 'new' mean? Having a new child so freak shows like the Duggars can get paid leave from their TV show? Or just people who've never had a child before?
Trump went to a military academy or something? He had some bullshit dodge on that.
pleasepaypreacher.net
I was actually in the police explorers for a while. I bet I have more of a military service record than he does.
Like I said, tax credit. After actually checking, definitely a tax credit.
This is what counts as innovation.
Y'know, I'd love for the Rubio campaign to explain how they reconcile 'no handouts' with this policy proposal. It's a shitty hand out, sure, but it's still a fucking hand out. It's still subsidy money that someone is taking out of the state coffers.
'No government hand outs... well except this $2,500 per child coupon. But if I call it a tax credit and make the dollar value insulting to anyone who can do basic math, fuck you, it doesn't count as subsidy somehow,'
The last one sounds like the federal marriage promotion programs that started under the Bush administration. They were generally a bunch of failures. As far as I know, they weren't discontinued under Obama and were reauthorized in 2010 except for the insanely stupid ones no one could justify. So of course Rubio wants to allow states to use federal welfare money on that.
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-healthy-marriage-20140210-story.html
Honestly, the program doesn't sound too bad to me.
It's not (or not supposed to be, anyway) a judgmental thing or anti-gay thing, but just a program intended to find out what makes functional marriages work and spread good information about how to improve your odds of being in a healthy relationship.
I have no doubt that bias crept into the study in terms of what parameters were looked for in terms of both success & what how 'marriage' is defined, but the goal was certainly fine and a properly overseen such program would probably have net benefits at the end of the day.
That's still bullshit. "I'm the bright new face of the GOP, here to win over people who will vote for me because of my last name and the youth!"
Aaaand then you do the numbers, and instead of mandating a few months of maternity/paternity leave like a sane people in other countries, Rubio's offering the masses 12 weeks of pay at what they would earn if they made 17 grand a year at the price of lowering corporate taxes by 25%. Such benevolence from the candidate of the elites! Such generosity from the makers to the takers!
I know he's got the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's hand up his ass, but when your puppet's faced with the Trumpening $333 dollars a week to start your new family is all Big Business can spare? "Let them eat tax credits" when the mob's at the palace gates.
If both of you are professionals the overall tax burden can be higher on your AGI when filing jointly versus as individuals. Mostly because the tax code still largely assumes one breadwinner instead of two. Its just a tweak that should happen same as fixing the family fuckup in the ACA since it's basically just a drafting oversight. But, that also means it is leverage to demand some other thing in the bill to fix it, so here we are.
It's just another tax cut, with a different framing.
It feels very carefully crafted to sound a lot like opposing gay marriage without ever actually saying so.
Which for once isn't to pull the wool over the general public eyes', but rather to convince the True Believers that that's a thing that's going to happen.
The last one really depends on the particulars but is probably just a religiously based couples counseling thing I would assume?
Since it seems like it'd be up to the companies, they get a tax credit for saying "you get up to 15 extra minutes on your lunch break to call home and see if the baby's okay."
having long-term marriages is pretty strongly linked to economic stability and mobility. Of course, economic stability also promotes healthy marriages, but there's plenty of data to suggest that the government should be promoting marriage, especially for child-rearing. Really as a big leftie hippie liberal my natural instincts are against that idea, but all of the data I've seen on the issue seems pretty convincing just in economic terms if nothing else.
Course that doesn't mean that any particular program is actually good, but compared to the other laundry list of horrible republican party ideas it's not really something to get concerned over.
This phrase doesn't work when talking about events that happened in the past being compared against events of today. We're not picking between George Bush 1 and these dummies, they are all the GOP has got. Conversely, the shitty things that GB1 did aren't less shitty because the GOP got even crazier down the road.
The GOP has always been crazy in my lifetime. My first "political" memory is voting for Dukakis in an elementary school classroom activity. I probably lost.
I don't think it's the concept of the program that's sketchy, but the fact that it's basically coming from the sort of people who have a specific value of marriage in mind. In the end, it's kind of expected that it'd come back to that one way or another.
Same thing as he did with Palin
Trump doesn't want people stumping for him. He brings them in long enough to take a news cycle than dumps them like the trash
Last time they were totally sane was probably Ike, honestly, although I do think they've gotten progressively crazier since Nixon.
oh for sure
I don't know that Ike really counts. From what I understand, he didn't give much a damn about party loyalty when he was running.
I have to think that Reagan broke them, and he broke them by being successful. He got to put into practice the Supply Side economic theories of their intellectuals. And when that happened, they failed. Miserably. It's taken a long time, but the incredible electoral success of Reagan blew the brains out of the party.
Your honest intellectuals stopped lionizing these theories. Your dishonest intellectuals moved the goalposts so far they've effectively drilled to China. People are stubborn and hate to be wrong, so this process takes a long time. Big business still wants people to believe this crap because it obviously directly benefits them, but it's trying to give a transfusion to a dead patient at this point.
So Republicans have had to basically "run on what's left." And what's left isn't very pretty. It's what Trump has been able to easily seize on. He'll win this nomination. Hopefully not the general election but I wouldn't count him out of it.
This scares the shit out of me, because it's basically saying 'let's cut single parents out of already existing social welfare programs, since, yknow, they're the ones that generally need it the most!'
The causation goes the other way. Economic stability leads to stronger marriages. Economic instability is a source of stress and strife in the family.
Such, promoting strong marriages does not make the economy stronger.
But forcing single parents to find a spouse at all costs will certainly promote strong families. Nothing can go wrong with this plan.