1. Will Dan Malloy make an endorsement in the volatile 5th District? I doubt the gov would risk this one, though it offers the sort of sweet political payback that Dannel Malloy might not be able to resist.
2. Interesting that the two Republicans with the best chance at knocking off a Democrat — Chris Shays in the senate race and Andy Roraback in the 5th — both agree to limited tax increases in return for substantial budget cuts.
3. Dan Roberti is making a good case for the 2012 vanity-run-for-Congress award. A nice, genuine young man, but running a homeless shelter in New Orleans Spokane doesn’t quite make you qualified for Congress.
4. Is it time for Chris Murphy to retire my mother-grew-up-in-public-housing-in-New-Britain line? What does this tell us about Murph’s qualifications for U.S. Senate?
5. Now that WWE has decided to make a Big Deal out of whether WWE Classic was porn or raunch or a little of both, Linda McMahon is going to have to respond to the topic. What kind of political numbskull is advising this woman? Her campaign for the U.S. Senate was looking pretty savvy until this trainwreck.
7. Among the four Democrats destined to cruise to victory in the state’s Congressional races, give Joe Courtney credit for pushing an issue that actually affects his constituents — the cost of college loans. Proposing a stamp that you can’t even use on a letter isn’t political leadership, Mr. Larson.
8. Somebody needs to tell John Rowland that the busway CTfastrak is actually going to happen, no matter how much you try to use it to attract listeners for your radio show.
9. Is there a more transparently phony grab for votes than Chris Donovan’s push for special session action to increase to the minimum wage? Connecticut already has nearly the highest minimum wage in the land. Shameful.
10. Score one for Malloy: the governor will be joined by U.S. Education Sec. Arne Duncan and American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten in a school reform lovefest today.
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12 Responses to The Political Season Begins Today
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2. What if the “limited tax increases” won’t raise any revenue? The “limited tax cuts” under Bush made our income tax revenue skyrocket.
4. Murphy is talking about his Mom’s upbringing to keep up his false “cares about the little man” motif, and to keep the spotlight off of his own, charmed upbringing. There’s nothing wrong with making money, of course, and his Dad has earned every penny, but let’s call a spade a spade: the only time Murphy ever sets foot into a public housing project is to ask for votes.
I hope you’re being sarcastic with the term “limited tax cuts” under bush Mr./Ms. Voter. Those tax cuts affected nearly all Americans (just look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_tax_cuts), or really any legitimate source on the history of this program.
And it cost about 2 trillion dollars over 7 years to the U.S. coffers while we engaged in 2 ?exorbitant military conflicts (Iraq and Afghanistan) that were largely unfunded, and will be paid back by my generation and the generation after. It was fiscally irresponsible and morally reprehensible that we allowed for these two events to occur simultaneously.
Centrist, tax revenue went up, not down, after the tax cuts. How can you assume that we would have made more money with the old rates in place if we never did before?
Look at the numbers – not what CBO says the numbers would be, because they got the whole concept of the Bush tax cuts wrong from the outset. Take a look at what personal income tax revenue was in 2003, then 2004, then 2005, then 2006, then 2007, then 2008. Through the roof – just like Art Laffer said it would.
It’s not really assumptions, but theory and a hint of reality. Rates were shifted from upper class incomes to lower and middle class incomes (as you know), which are a much larger percentage of the population.
So therefore the revenue went ‘up’, but the sources came from those whose spending power would be much more financially viable in the private markets than the public sector, whereas upper-class incomes largely stay stagnant (and also larger over the same period of time) in a variety of untouched funds and offshore accounts that do no benefit to our nation’s economy, or governmental coffers.
I already know the CBOs numbers are not wholly accurate (no one ever can claim 100% accuracy). But they are strong indicators. And just as revenue historically raised fairly well for the government, income taxes paid by those making 1 million or more dropped at an equally significant rate.
However, I will simply concede to an agreement of disagreement (if you will concede the same).
The context around this debate is around one state Sen. with a strong chance to win that will be in the minority (center-right Republicans) in the House, and a former U.S. Rep who has little chance of winning the Senate primary, and would also be in a fraction with limited power in the U.S. Senate
Centrist, I hate to break it to you, but you’re dead wrong on just about everything in your post. The largest rate cuts were for the lowest tax bracket (from 15% to 10%, or a cut of 33%) and the smallest rate cuts were for the highest tax bracket (from 39.6% to 35%, or a cut of 13.1%). There was no “shifting” of tax rates.
Likewise, there was no “shifting” of tax revenue, either. After the Bush tax cuts went into effect, the share paid by the richest 1% of Americans shot way up, too. In 2002, before the cuts went into effect, the top 1% of taxpayers paid 33.7% of the overall income tax burden. In 2007, the top 1% of taxpayers paid 40.4% of the overall income tax burden.
In short, we allowed Americans to keep more of their income, and this resulted in significant increases in tax revenue, especially from the richest 1% of taxpayers.
These are facts — not from the CBO, but from the IRS, the people whose job it is to track tax revenue. You can look them up, if you’d like.
Links? Because I could just as easily post NYTimes WP and a host of others that would not blindly accept ‘facts ‘. Thanks! BTW,the IRS is as reliable as the CBO or either parties pillars of policy I’ve learned that the fun way in governmental tax policy classes. They can fudge up a lot
Sorry, I’ve learned well to take thrown numbers on online commentator boards without valid citation to be about as valuable as the virtual ink their written on. Especially when they fail to factor in historical data for increases in annual income between the federal income tax brackets brackets. The same goes when they fail to incorporate income distributed offshore that would under any national bank be attributed to their income, and justly pay the rate applied to them. But I see this ‘debate’ making no impasse, so I bid you good day sir/madame.
I’m talking about dollars in the door. Here is the link. Do some homework.
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/indtaxstats/article/0,,id=129270,00.html
The question is whether tax revenue went up or down after cutting tax rates. The answer, as you’ll find at that link, is that tax revenue went up. Every other thing you’ve mentioned at 9:49 pm is a red herring, and everything you mentioned at 11:08 am is flat-out wrong.
>> Proposing a stamp that you can’t even use on a letter isn’t political leadership, Mr. Larson. <<
It's quintessential and so perfectly defines the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
>> Is there a more transparently phony grab for votes than Chris Donovan’s push for special session action to increase to the minimum wage? <> Interesting that the two Republicans with the best chance at knocking off a Democrat both agree to limited tax increases in return for substantial budget cuts.<<
Tax increases pay off the state public sector union workers and political appointees. I'd rather see an increase in minimum wage and added health benefits for Blue collar workers. The mandated sick days (which many employers already ahd under the guise of Personal Days) was a cruel PR joke passing as working class benefits.
Is it any surprise the Education Administration is handing out NCLB waivers as political favors?
Arne Duncan: “Hey CT, you dumbos. No ‘Race to the Top’ money for you! Here’s a waiver for you boyos for adding 500 preschool seats and 2 Charter schools. Meaningful reform like that is what it’s all about! Now excuse me, time to go meet with the AFT’s Randy Weingarten in one of your classically failing districts. ‘Fail on’ dudes and dudettes! Think Blue!”