>Prop 13 for non-primary and commercial property should be repealed.
Agreed. The Democrat legislature could do anytime without a single Republican vote. All it takes then is a simple majority of voters in the next statewide election. Ask yourself why that has never even been attempted.
It has been attempted and failed as of 2020[0]. Voters are mostly uninformed. CA voters voted against commercial properties at market rate but further increased family home reassessments.
No, that was an Initiative, not a Legislative, measure. Again, the Legislature could do so anytime without the burden of seeking ballot signatures or encountering any other such friction.
The Democrats would have put a Prop 13 repeal -or- a split-roll property tax system on the ballot almost anytime in the past two decades without a single Republican vote. All it takes then is a simple majority of voters in the next statewide election. Ask yourself why that has never even been attempted.
>the US is the "first world power", and yet there is so much gun violence, those healthcare problems, homelessness, high co2 per capita, obesity, the prison system (especially in Louisiana where it's almost still slavery for inmates), money in politics, inability to get abortion...
Exactly. It's horrible here, so people should stop emigrating to the US for starters.
For several periods during Obama's first term, his party totally controlled the legislative process. The Senate Democrat caucus had a filibuster-proof majority. They could have passed Medicare for All, Single Payer, immigration "reform" -- all of it. Ask yourselves why they did what they did instead.
They had a short period with 60 senators until Ted Kennedy died, so they had to reconcile in the senate what was already passed in the house — they had 59/60 senators who wanted to pass Obamacare with a Medicare public option but Lieberman refused and again, 0/40 Republicans helped in any way. So we got the ACA, a flawed piece of legislation but one specifically chosen to engender bipartisan support since it was largely based on the free market Romney/Heritage plan from MA.
And then what health care proposals did the republicans pass when they had legislative control to make things better? Literally nothing. Vote after vote to repeal the ACA and “a plan” to replace it that’s been 6 months away from being released for the past decade. It’s insane people refuse to admit this out loud.
Republicans had no access to even read the bill draft. They were limited to voting for the proverbial pig in a poke (remember Pelosi: "You have to pass the bill to see what's in it.")
Which is both a misquote of Pelosi and obviously false because they had been working for months to build a bill that Republicans could support. Enzi, Grassley, Snowe were involved from February onwards and Obama addressed a joint session of congress in September and the final bill wasn't signed until the following March.
Why on earth would you believe people who have lied about every other facet of the bill (Death panels! unconstitutional individual mandate that they used to support!, illegal immigrants!) when it comes to their culpability for failing to improve it.
More specifically, Pelosi's quote about understanding the benefits of the bill after it was signed was in March 2010 on the eve of Obama signing it. The bill he was signing was voted on by the House in October 2009, and the Senate that December.
Now, the border is more porous than ever. There's plenty of labor -- go to any home improvement store parking lot. And that's just the illegal labor -- boost wages and you could recapture legal workers.
But for now, go to any construction site in California, and you'll hear only Spanish spoken between the carpenters, roofers, etc. and their supervision.
Those people were around in 2020 (outside Home Depot here in Seattle) but are all gone now. I guess they are all just really busy rather than being deported or something.
I wouldn’t assume all or even most labor on constructions sites are illegal immigrants just because they speak Spanish, if only because the USA has a lot of legal first-gen Hispanic immigrants.
There is an exclusion amount for personal residence where capital gains are taxed at 0% federally. It’s $500K for married couples at the moment. That is likely what GP was commenting on with that clause.
"in the final two years of the Obama administration. After years of gridlock, we suddenly — with little fanfare but large bipartisan majorities — got:
The Every Student Succeeds Act, a major rewrite of federal K-12 policy
An overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs, spearheaded by Bernie Sanders and John McCain
The FAST Act, which authorized $305 billion over five years in infrastructure spending
A ban on incorporating plastic microbeads into health and beauty products"
This is buried within a lot of anti-Republican language, but the irony is that the Republicans controlled BOTH houses of Congress for the last two years of the Obama administration. So, they just torpedoed their own attempt at narrative.
A lot of this is/was my bread and butter but I completely agree. Moribund. Additionally, a list so mis-titled, I'm cancelling my (non-existent) subscription to this thing called Slant.
Agreed. The Democrat legislature could do anytime without a single Republican vote. All it takes then is a simple majority of voters in the next statewide election. Ask yourself why that has never even been attempted.