Not really; it's all just $hit show imagery and illusion to deny what you need or complaints because the $elf-$erving agenda is not being driven fast enough. No matter what the letter after the name, certain intere$ts are being $erviced in Washington. The city is far from broke for a certain $elect few.
"Bipartisan group finds bridges hard to build; No Labels brings together lawmakers of diverse ideological stripes to find solutions, but its effectiveness is questioned" by Tracy Jan | Globe Staff, December 01, 2013
WASHINGTON — A nonprofit called No Labels....
Related:
"A nonprofit provides new ways for corporations and individuals to influence"
No wonder they are so prolific in my newspaper.
Predictably, perhaps, the moment of packaged, stage-managed camaraderie proved fleeting.
We call it news.
Some participants almost immediately returned to lobbing partisan attacks in the House. Florida Democrat Joe Garcia compared the Tea Party movement to the Taliban. North Carolina Republican Robert Pittenger branded President Obama a “monarch” for refusing to alter his new health care law.
So much for bridge-building in Washington.
No Labels — which now counts 87 representatives and senators spanning the ideological spectrum as members — is among several tentative, sputtering efforts inside and outside of Congress formed to break down the capital’s no-compromise mentality.
Unless it comes to Israel, Wall Street bailouts, the funding of the war machine, corporate welfare for well-connected interests, or the funding of lavish political lifestyles. Then they are all on the $ame page.
“This is not a bunch of moderates intent on overtaking the world,’’ said former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, who ran in the Republican presidential primary in 2012 and is a cochairman of No Labels. “This is an attempt to get beyond the anger and the acrimony and the finger-pointing.”
In many quarters of Washington, the response has been: Good luck with that.
No Labels has been unable to advance, in any meaningful way, a single item from its relatively modest list of goals. Critics dismiss it as window dressing, with some congressional staffers comparing it to a high school civics project and going as far as drafting memos to their bosses urging them not to join.
Even its own members admit the group has a long way to go. They say their most important accomplishment to date has been to simply convene both parties for monthly breakfast meetings at which Republicans and Democrats listen to each other — or at least feign to listen — instead of labeling the other side as crazy.
“Some members are understandably skeptical of No Labels. It’s not an answer, but it does reflect the heart of a problem, which is our inability to find common ground,” said Representative Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who helped form the group. “If we do some smaller things that are within reach, it’s a lot better than doing nothing.’’
I will be finding some for you shortly.
Other lawmakers agree that baby steps are worthwhile, and there are several, less formal attempts to get people talking.
A bipartisan group of 14 senators, called the Common Sense Coalition, led by Senator Susan Collins of Maine, a Republican, sprang out of a regular dinner gathering of women senators and has continued to meet since the shutdown.
Senator Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, along with Senator Mike Johanns, a Nebraska Republican, and Senator Angus King, a Maine independent, have also organized a bipartisan group of 11 senators who are former governors accustomed to working across party lines and are expanding their group to include former mayors and county executives. And a growing number of moderate Blue Dog Democrats and The Tuesday Group of moderate Republicans are now meeting once a month.
A captain of a bipartisan women’s softball team, comprising both senators and representatives, says it all adds up to hope for a better atmosphere in Washington.
“These bipartisan groups can only help the dialogue and encourage people in Washington to get out of their trenches,” said Senator Kelly Ayotte, a New Hampshire Republican, who led the fund-raising softball team in its annual game, in June. “We need to replicate that as much as we can.”
Blah, blah, blah, blah!
Awkward first meeting
In today’s Washington, two men are lionized as beacons of bipartisanship, and both happen to be dead....
Their heroes are Reagan and Tip O’Neill, and the founder of the group is Nancy Jacobson, a powerful Democratic fund-raiser and Washington operative. Globe really makes you think sometimes.
Some rank-and-file members said that leadership on both sides were leaning hard on them not to “get out front” during the shutdown, stifling their fledging compromise efforts. But they promised to keep meeting, since that’s about all they can do.
“Maybe that’s where the problem is, at the top, at the leadership level,” said Dr. Ami Bera, a freshman Democratic congressman from California and No Labels member....
No doubt about that, and it means every single one of them, sorry.
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There was a time when I would have searched long and hard to link up all the past Globe specials regarding the Broken City' however, seeing as the blog search on Blogger now limits itself to two years of posts and generally sucks, why waste the time?
Why am I even wasting this time posting this? The only reason is to show you, the worldwide and national reader, what a steaming and swirling plate is being served up to this conscientious and caring citizen by the regional flagshit of a new$paper.
Exhibit A (located just below and to the right of the above pos):
"Since ’12 election, drive to end tax loophole fizzled out; No serious attempt to halt benefit for investors despite campaign rhetoric" by Noah Bierman | Globe Staff, December 01, 2013
WASHINGTON — Democrats eagerly stoked outrage during the 2012 presidential election over millionaire Republican Mitt Romney’s low effective tax rate of 14 percent. Did Romney, they suggested, benefit from a special tax loophole for hedge fund and private equity investors, so “fat cats’’ like him can pay taxes at a much lower rate than many regular Americans?
The issue was simple in its appeal to populist anger.
But a year later, the heated rhetoric of campaign season has fizzled.
As predicted on these very pages as it was happening.
Concerted initiatives from the White House and Democrats in Congress to close the loophole have not materialized. The “carried interest” loophole — which allows some fund managers to pay taxes at the rate for investments, now 20 percent, instead of the top income tax rate, now 39.6 percent — lives on.
It’s the tax break that won’t die.
The contrast between Democrats’ demands for action during the campaign and the merely desultory efforts in the year since reveals how the Democratic Party’s commitment to the issue is more complicated than its campaign slogans of 2012.
$ay what?
Yes, Republicans are dug in so deeply against any change that might raise taxes — in this case, the removal of a tax cut benefit — that odds of passage are small.
I'm a Republican. I don't care what it is, this government already takes in way too much money and spends it in the wrong places.
But specialists on the issue say they also detect Democratic ambivalence: crusading against the “carried interest’’ loophole at this stage would inflame an important source of campaign contributions for Democrats.
$ay what?
Since 2000, private equity, hedge fund, and venture capital managers have spent a combined $352 million on federal elections, fairly evenly split between the parties, 53 percent for Republicans and 47 percent for Democrats, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
It is called PLAYING BOTH $IDES and it en$ures why there is NO CHANGE to the $TATU$ QUO!
Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Fiscal Cliff Fraud
Oh, look, $omething el$e they can agree on!
So the TAX INCREASE on the WEALTHY was actually a TAX CUT?
Even with a special committee considering a budget pact in December that could include tax code changes, few are speaking up strongly on the subject.
“The issue has been an effective fund-raising tool for both parties,” said Victor Fleischer, a University of California San Diego law professor who is a leading authority on the issue. “The Republicans, because their base doesn’t like tax increases, and the Democrats because private equity firms believe some legislators can be persuaded.”
Democrats, Fleischer said, “consistently said some of the right things” on the issue but have not put much effort into promoting tax overhaul.
Because they are being BOUGHT OFF and PER$UADED!
Massachusetts, despite its liberal politics, is one of several epicenters for the financial sector executives who benefit most from the break. Though the state’s Democratic politicians have railed against the tax break, they have a mixed record on follow-through....
Both of the state’s new senators, Edward J. Markey and Elizabeth Warren pledged during their campaigns to end the break for wealthy fund managers. But neither has so far made it a priority in office. They blame Republican obstruction for thwarting efforts to close the loophole.
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“Change occurs over time,” said Warren, who says she is adamant that carried interest should be part of any budget or tax code negotiations with Republicans. “There have to be enough people to stand up and speak loudly enough.”
I've run out of patience waiting for change. I've been speaking up loudly for a decade now and nothing. I know she is a well-meaning women, but she is caught in the $y$tem as well. The $ad and $imple fact is the $y$tem is broken beyond repair. The best thing that could be done is dissolve it and start over. Wa$hington can not fix it self, and corporate governance has failed for all those but the very $elect few.
Still, their elections marked a departure from their predecessors. In the Senate, Scott Brown, a Republican, opposed any change in the tax rate, while John F. Kerry, a Democrat, showed ambivalence, warning about “unintended consequences’’ of the change and at times echoing the industry’s argument that eliminating the tax break posed a risk to the economy, even while voting for the change at least twice.
Not really a $urprise coming from him, is it?
The tax break may be the best example in Washington of why it’s so difficult to take on a special interest.
No me$$y parti$an$hip problem, huh?
The Private Equity Growth Capital Council, a chief lobby for the industry, has pushed hard to link the tax break to bedrock American principles of rewarding risk-takers. Its website has a video depicting a pair of fictional sisters who open a restaurant, noting that the tax structure for billion-dollar private equity firms is no different than it is for small businesses.
The industry group insists that the exemption isn’t a loophole. It asserts that eliminating the exemption would curb investment, including real estate.
Tax specialists say the industry has done an especially good job at capitalizing on the confusing aspects of tax law to sow seeds of doubt about the benefit, which allows much of their income to be taxed at the lower, capital gains rate rather than the higher income tax rate.
Meaning they are deceiving you for their own $elf-$erving benefit. Such good guys running the AmeriKan economic $y$tem these days.
“There really is no argument for carried interest to receive capital gains treatment,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a former chief of staff at the Joint Committee on Taxation and now a law professor at the University of Southern California. “They’re just designed to confuse and bamboozle.”
Oh, so they serve the same function as an AmeriKan new$paper?
Though many big businesses tend to favor Republicans in their giving, private equity, hedge funds, and venture capital executives have given generously to both parties. Two of Massachusetts’ top 20 Democratic donors in the most recent election, for example, Jonathan Lavine and Joshua Bekenstein, are top managers at Bain Capital, the private equity firm founded by Romney.
Do I need to type it?
The state’s fifth and eighth biggest Democratic donors, brothers Douglas and George Krupp, cofounded a real estate investment and private equity company. Number six on the list, Walter Gilbert, is a venture capitalist.
And where does venture capital come from? Pension funds and college endowments.
Now you know why, among other reasons, college tuition is skyrocketing and why workers are being asked to give back even more of their flat pensions -- so money junkies can have more, more, more, to ply into politics!!
The industries have been especially helpful to Majority PAC, a “super committee’’ operated by allies and former staffers of Senate Democrats including majority leader Harry Reid that can accept unlimited contributions. James H. Simons, founder of the Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, gave Senate Majority PAC $3 million ahead of the last election. Vincent Ryan, founder of Boston-based Schooner Capital, donated $350,000. Multiple donors contacted for this story declined to comment or did not respond to requests.
Sure is plenty of money out there for such a shit economy.
“The venture community has over the past few decades become an important fund-raising constituency for the Democratic Party and they’ve earned their seat at the table,” said Larry Rasky, a Democratic bundler who runs the public relations firm Rasky Baerlein.
Have you had enough imagery and illu$ion yet?
Though Democrats have campaigned on changing the tax rate, many have quietly found ways to weaken those changes.
$ay f***ing what?
Even Obama, who campaigned against the tax break to draw attention to Romney’s low tax burden, has narrowed his proposal this year to inflict less pain on the industry. Obama’s initial plan would have garnered $24 billion in new taxes over the next decade. The latest version, which excludes more investors, raises $16 billion.
“It’s a good one to demagogue for the Democrats,” said Robert McIntyre, director of the Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal advocacy group. “It’s also a dangerous one for them to do because there’s so much money out there. Even if it’s not going to them, they don’t want it to flood to the other side.”
Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, is often cited for his role in protecting the financial industry. In 2007, he was pivotal in slowing momentum for a bill that passed the House by insisting it apply to more industries, a move both sides saw as a poison pill.
“He broadened it to death,” said former US representative Barney Frank, who backed several bills that passed the House.
Though Schumer consistently ranks among the industry’s top donation recipients, Frank said he believes Schumer was motivated by the impact on his state, the world’s financial capital. Schumer has since voted to close the loophole.
He didn't vote for it when it really matter, that slimy piece of shit!
Kerry’s role in protecting the financial industry’s interests is less well-known. His 2004 presidential run coincided with the industry’s initial forays into political activism, and he continued to tap the them when he returned to the Senate. Kerry, like Schumer, has voted to close the loophole at least twice.
But advocates like McIntyre say Kerry did more to tamp down prospects for closing the loophole behind the scenes, using his post on the Senate Finance Committee to breed skepticism. At a series of 2007 hearings, for example, he grilled industry foes and invoked some of the arguments put forth by the industry’s lobbyist, including the notion that any change in the tax structure held risk for the economy.
Wow, did Kohn Kerry ever sell out to money!
“The thing we have to think about carefully in the committee are the downstream impacts of how you begin to treat this,” Kerry said then. “If you single out one piece and say we are going to get our chunk here on some theory, that theory may well have a lot of impact on how other deals are made and how other capital is treated.”
But he is all for carbon taxes on YOU!
Charles Kingson, who testified in favor of imposing higher taxes on the industries, said he was not prepared for Kerry’s and Schumer’s questions, which he considered hostile.
“I was very surprised,” Kingson said. “These guys are liberal Democrats.”
Thus it does not $urpri$e me at all!
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And look who is to blame for the condition of AmeriKan politics (according to my whoreporate bu$ine$$ pre$$):
"Survey finds Americans losing trust in each other" by Connie Cass | Associated Press, December 01, 2013
WASHINGTON — You can take our word for it. Americans don’t trust each other anymore.
Depends on who you are asking me to trust. Authority or institutions? Nope.
Government or mouthpiece media? No f***ing way!
I trust only in the American people.
We’re not talking about the loss of faith in big institutions such as the government, the church, or Wall Street, which fluctuates with events. For four decades, a gut-level ingredient of democracy — trust in the other fellow — has been quietly draining away....
An AP-GfK poll conducted last month found that Americans are suspicious of each other in everyday encounters. Less than one-third expressed a lot of trust in clerks who swipe their credit cards, drivers on the road, or people they meet when traveling.
In that case, I blame the divisive and fear-peddling AmeriKan media.
What is known as ‘‘social trust’’ brings good things: a society in which it is easier to compromise or make a deal, and in which people are willing to work with those who are different from them for the common good.
Tell it to the EUSraeli Empire first, as$$hole.
Distrust, on the other hand, seems to encourage corruption.
Oh, NO WONDER Washington D.C. is such a ce$$pool.
At the least, it diverts energy to counting change, drawing up 100-page legal contracts, and building gated communities.
There’s no easy fix. Some studies have found that the basis for a person’s lifetime trust levels is set by his or her mid-20s and unlikely to change, other than in some unifying crucible such as a world war.
Or like a 9/11 false flag that will lead to invasions of certain nations, right?
As for the trust level, maybe the LIMILTLESS NSA SPYING has taken a toll, huh?
The best hope for creating a more trusting nation may be figuring out how to inspire today’s youth, perhaps united by their high-tech gadgets, to trust the way previous generations did in simpler times.
Yes, what kind of propaganda program can we come up with to win youth over to the agenda after spending decades on dividing them into little individual con$umer units and breaking up any sort of collective action (unless it served the agenda, of course, in which case it is nothing more than controlled opposition)? Look at the mouthpiece media bitching!
There is no single explanation for the loss of trust.
Yes there is: a lying government and its whoreporate mouthpiece of a corporate pre$$.
The best-known analysis comes from ‘‘Bowling Alone,’’ author Robert Putnam says Americans have abandoned their bowling leagues and Elks lodges to stay home and watch TV. Less socializing and fewer community meetings make people less trustful than the generation that came of age during the Depression and World War II.
I've really had it with the nostalgia, especially considering the wonderful social media I'm always reading about.
Just goes to show you anyone can throw out a piece of shit and get it in the newspaper.
University of Maryland professor Eric Uslaner puts the blame elsewhere: economic inequality. The growing gap between the rich and the poor reduces the sense of a shared fate, Uslaner says.
That sure seems to be true given the record charity hauls that are being sat on (at least the wealthy got the tax break), as well as the corporate profits being kept in cash.
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The destination of that link is what I no longer trust, dear readers.
