Mediaboss Marketing

The Partnerships first tax filing, obtained this week by Andrew Perez of Maplight, details how the organization has embedded itself within a network of Democratic shit-hawking shops to conduct its work against health care reform. Its biggest vendor was consultancy Forbes Tate, whose relationship with the organization is well known: The Partnerships operations are run out of the firms office, according to Politico. Shaver is a partner at Forbes Tate; before that, she worked for Hillary Clintons 2016 campaign and Obamas Department of Health and Human Services. Forbes Tate received $1.7 million for this work last year, a third of the Partnerships total income. (We are not informed who donated to the Partnership, because it is a 501(c)(4).)

The second-biggest winner from the Partnerships activities: Bully Pulpit Interactive.* It has, according to its website, worked with clients ranging from the Democratic Party and Tammy Duckworths campaign to such society-ruining, law-flouting tech giants as Airbnb and Uber. In 2016, the firm was a major vendor for Hillary Clintons campaign, collecting more than $10 million for its work handling digital advertising and digital media buying for both the Hillary Clinton campaign and its joint fundraising organization with the Democratic National Committee. Bully Pulpit Interactives clients include some of the biggest center-left advocacy joints in town, including the American Civil Liberties Union, the Human Rights Campaign, Emilys List, and Everytown for Gun Safetythough these are just the clients it makes public. For some reason, its site doesnt list its work for the National Collegiate Athletic Association, a cartel dedicated to exploiting the labor of student-athletes, which was worth $12 million in 2017. Who knows what other clients the firm services but doesnt publicizeas it chose not to do for the Partnership? Thanks to our feeble transparency laws, it doesnt have to tell us. Public relations work doesnt count as lobbying for the purposes of lobbying disclosure rules.

The firm Seven Letter, formerly Blue Engine, made $140,000 off the Partnership last year. The Intercept reported that Seven Letter handled the Partnerships interactions with the media. Its staff includes prominent spin doctors such as Brendan Buck, who has previously worked for Paul Ryan and Americas Health Insurance Plans, and Adam Abrams, who used to work for the Obama White House. (If you long for a lost era of bipartisan comity, youll find it thriving on K Street.) According to a tax filing viewed at ProPublica, in 2014 Blue Engine worked for a group called Reforming Americas Taxes Equitably, a coalition of some of Americas biggest corporations that exists to push for lower corporate tax rates; it would go on to celebrate the 2017 Trump tax bill.

The New Republic asked Karthik Ganapathy, a former Bernie Sanders campaign staffer who recently founded MVMT Communications, which bills itself as primarying the consultant class: What is the deal with these firms? A lot of people come into politics to make peoples lives better, he said. Somewhere along the way, though, those folks get ground down by its institutions and start to understand that politics is a business just like any other, run by really rich folks who call the shots, and begin to see a lot of potential money on the table. So they start to work for and with people that the 25-year-old version of themselves would have thrown tomatoes atand thats just really sad to me. It is worthy of lament: Youll meet very few young people who moved to Washington for the purpose of feathering the nests of petrochemical corporations.

The pressure on all sides in this towninstitutional, ideological, financialto accept the broad status quo is immense; candidates who make a habit of challenging the established order are rare. Many of the firms that work for the Partnership were started by or staffed with former members of Obamas Yes, We Can brigade, with others going on to work for Amazon or Uber (or Theresa May). The ability of people who come to public service as righteous, justice-and-fairness-seeking liberals to transform themselves into dedicated laborers against the goals they once espoused is astounding, but every road in Washington is laid to funnel people toward that stupid, cynical end.

The rest is here:
The Lucrative Liberal Business of Killing Health Care Reform - The New Republic

Back Johnson or Corbyn? Thats not necessarily the right question. Photo: Aaron Chown/PA Wire/PA Images

Every general election presents the Liberal Democrats with a challenge. How should they position themselves against Labour and the Conservatives? Over the years they have tried a variety of tactics. A glance back at them helps us to understand the way Jo Swinson is wrestling with that question today.

In February 1974, the Liberals argued that they were Britains only radical party. They asked of their two rivals: Which twin is the Tory? Their vote more than doubled to 19 per cent, but they won only 14 seats.

In 1983, the Liberal/Social Democratic Party Alliance sought to break the mould of British politics by replacing Labour as Britains main progressive party. They came close in votes (Labour 28 per cent, Alliance 26 per cent), but Labour still won almost ten times as many seats (209 versus 23).

In terms of seats gained, the Lib Dems most successful election by far was 1997. They jumped from 20 MPs to 46the largest third-party number since 1929. Actually, the partys vote share slipped slightly, from 18 to 17 per cent; but tactical voting by Labour supporters helped Lib Dem candidates defeat more than two dozen incumbent Tories. It helped that Paddy Ashdown, the Lib Dem leader, abandoned the partys policy of equidistance between Labour and the Conservatives, and moved closer to Tony Blair and New Labour.

There is one obvious example of the Lib Dems co-operating with the Toriesafter the 2010 election. Nick Cleggs party paid the price: it lost 49 of its 57 seats.

Today, Swinson finds it far easier to say what she doesnt want than what she does. She hates Boris Johnsons Brexit, and Jeremy Corbyns far left prospectus. She says she wants to be prime minister; but she knows that this is nonsense. Corbyn is more likely to become Chief Rabbi.

More relevantly, she says that if we end up with another hung parliament, she wont prop up either Johnson or Corbyn. This leads to the obvious follow-up point: since one of them is almost certain to be prime minister after the election, she really should tell her voters what she would do.

Here is my suggestion. It is not to change her stance but to make it more credible.

Swinsons starting point should be to acknowledge that, in a hung parliament, the initiative will not lie with her. Either Johnson will try to soldier on without a majority or he will step down. If he tries to stay in Downing Street, Ed Davey, Swinsons deputy, has told Andrew Neil on his BBC show that the Lib Dems might be up for discussions with Johnson on a new Brexit referendum. I doubt Johnson would agreetoo many of his MPs hate the ideabut it would not be crazy for the Lib Dems to make the offer.

What, though, if Johnson decides that there are too few Tory MPs for him to carry on? He will then resign, and the Queen will invite Corbyn to try to form a government. The assumption that pretty well everyone makes in discussing what happens next is that the Tories, who will almost certainly still be by far the largest party in the new House of Commons, will oppose Corbyns Queens Speech. The decision of the Lib Dems to vote for Corbyn, or against him, or abstain, could be vital to what kind of government, if any, Britain has at the start of 2020.

Is that assumption correct? Twice in the past century, a Conservative prime minister has resigned following an inconclusive election. In January 1924 Stanley Baldwin made way for Ramsay MacDonald, even though the Tories had 67 more MPs than Labour. In March 1974, Edward Heath resigned after failing to do a deal with the Liberals, and Harold Wilson returned to office.

The key point is this. On both occasions, the Conservatives did not try to stop Labour governing. They voted against specific measures, but not to bring the new government down. Their reason was that, having acknowledged that they could not carry on, they would risk a huge public backlash should they seek to prolong political deadlock and intensify a great national crisis.

The same logic would apply this time. Indeed, one could go further. Neither Baldwin nor Heath faced an immediate challenge to their party leadership. In contrast, Johnson, having lost his election, would face a Conservative Party in turmoil. It is likely to retreat in order to sort outfight overits own future.

In practice, then, Swinson would not have to decide what to do. Corbyn would survive as prime minister thanks not to the Lib Dems or SNP but to the Conservatives. However, he would be a prime minister without the power to do anything much, apart from sort out Brexit and legislate for a new referendum. Parliament wouldnt turf him outbut nor would it vote for any of his more radical policies. He would probably get through a modestly expansionary budget, with more for health, schools, welfare, police etcbut not much more than the Tories have promised. But rail nationalisation? Free monopoly state broadband? Workers on boards? Big jump in corporation and income taxes? Forget them.

So Swinson should not tie herself in knots fretting over the Johnson-or-Corbyn question, for she will have no real power to answer it. Instead, should simply say: a) my MPs will oppose both a hard Brexit and a vast increase in the power of the state; and b) in a hung parliament, the more Lib Dem MPs there are, the more certain it is that we can, with other MPs, block either form of madness.

Sorted. Pleased to help.

Read this article:
What everyone has missed about the position of the Liberal Democrats - Prospect

One of the key architects of President Donald Trumps domination of Facebook in 2016 has joined a progressive group leading the counterattack.

James Barnes, a Facebook employee embedded with the campaign and who was once called its MVP, took his digital talents to the liberal group Acronym. He came to the organization as it charts out a $75 million plan to help liberals close the gap with Trump online.

I was absolutely crushed the morning after the election, Barnes said on Acronyms podcast, FWIW. I knew my life, personally and then the path our country was on was changed fundamentally. And I knew that I was going to have to come to terms with what happened and chart a path going forward.

Barnes, previously a Republican, supported Trumps campaign through Facebooks program to help political candidates use the platform. Hillary Clinton also had support from Facebook. Tatenda Musapatike, a staffer who worked with Democrats' campaigns, has also joined Acronyms 2020 ramp-up.

READ: The GOP's impeachment defense all tracks back to these 2 journalists

It just was not adopted on the left as it was on the right, Musapatike said of Facebooks efforts. There were established ways of doing things and I think Democrats were really, really cautious to change to, I think, our detriment.

The boot-strapped Trump campaign, however, embraced Barnes guidance. It pumped out torrents of cheap, at-times divisive ads to highly targeted audiences, spreading its message and culling small-dollar fundraising.

We hadspent years mapping out what is the strategy that we think the ideal candidate would use, using all the products we have, using all of the thinking that weve done, Barnes said. We kind of came ready with that playbook. Wed written it.

READ: Elizabeth Warren needs to win over young black women. Here's how that's going.

Gary Coby, then a Trump fundraiser and now the digital director of his reelection effort, went so far as to call Barnes the campaigns MVP.

Facebook will be even more central to the 2020 contest. Trump has vastly outspent his Democratic rivals so far, crushing fundraising records and enticing users to share all-important personal data.

Now working for the lefts primary answer to that digital strategy, Barnes said that hes conflicted about his work at Facebook to help create it in the first place.

One thing I want to be really clear on is that I voted for Hillary Clinton, he added. I despised Donald Trump from the moment I learned of him. And my commitment in the 2016 election had much less to do with supporting him or his platform and a lot more to do with supporting Facebooks commitment to democracy.

Cover: President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally in Bossier City, La., Thursday, Nov. 14, 2019. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

Read more here:
The 'MVP' of Trump's 2016 Facebook Campaign Just Joined a Liberal Group Trying to Take Him Down - Motherboard

Liberals need a wealth tax because income tax revenues cannot fund their spending.Despite the lefts assertions, the rich do not earn enough even if they pay significantly higher tax rates than less-well-off Americans.Therefore, the left must increasingly call for a revolutionary wealth tax to escape their revenue reality.

Everything about Democrats pursuit of their partys 2020 presidential nomination is big.First, they have big plans.Collectively, they have called for Medicare for All, a Green New Deal, free college tuition, college loan debt forgiveness and massive new infrastructure spending.

Second, they already face a big federal deficit.According to the Congressional Budget Office, the 2019 fiscal yeardeficittotaled just under $1 trillion and 4.6 percent of GDP.Third, as a result, Democrats will need big revenues to pay for their big plans.

Fourth, they have made a big promise: Only the rich will pay their needed big revenues.Yet, Democrats still have a problem an even bigger one: The rich do not earn enough to foot Democrats big bill.

According to Congress official revenueestimator, the Joint Committee on Taxation, the highest income earners shoulder by far the largest share of todays income tax burden.In 2018, those making over $1 million annually amounted to 689,000 returns (0.4 percent of total returns) and paid $583 billion in income taxes (39 percent of total income taxes paid) at an average rate of 25.4 percent.

But these revenues are built into current estimates and do nothing to offset Democratic candidates future spending plans.So, more revenue is needed. And if you are going to tax only the truly rich, it must come from here.

Even doubling this groups income tax burden hardly dints Democrats spending bill, though. It would raise an additional $583 billion in new annual revenue and take their average tax rate to 50.4 percent.Yet over 10 years, that would raise less than $6 trillion in new revenue.

Of course, such drastically higher tax rates would undoubtedly lead to behavioral changes. The Laffer Curve is real, and increasing tax rates would induce decreased levels of the taxed activity.How long people would continue to work, while taking home less than half their earnings, is debatable. But it is certainly likely that they would work less, preferring instead to take more of their return in untaxed form such as greater leisure time.

The upshot is that while such dramatically higher tax rates may arithmetically promise dramatically higher though still insufficient new revenues, they cannot be expected to fully deliver them.So, the Democrats will need to find more rich.

Even going down to the next earning group, those making $500,000 to $1 million annually, does not help much.In 2018, this group paid $187 billion (12.5 percent of total income taxes) at an average 20.7 percent rate. Doubling that only raises, on paper, another $1.87 trillion over ten years, while taking this groups average tax rate to 41.4 percent. Still more rich are needed.

Going to the next earning level, those making $200,000 to $500,000, offers considerably larger taxing opportunity.Laying aside whether these people are in fact rich, in 2018, they paid $381.7 billion in income taxes (25 .5 percent of total income taxes paid) at an average 13.3 percent rate. Doubling here would theoretically raise almost another $4 trillion over ten years.Of course, doing so would raise this groups average tax rate above todays top average tax rate.

All these doublings on paper still would raise only $1.152 trillion in new income tax revenue annually and just under $12 trillion over ten years.Yet, just Medicare for All, according to the Urban Institutesestimate, would cost an additional $32 trillion over a decade.

To make matters worse, this is only the revenue side of Democrats problematic equation.As already discussed, as rates rise, revenues assuredly will fall short of estimates.Simultaneously, spending will rise above estimates, as its subsidization increases demand.In practice, the fiscal shortfall will widen further beyond projections.

Of course, increased spending has never been the lefts concern, but a shortfall of revenue from the rich is.Unable to produce more rich, or plausibly redefine them from the middle class, liberals are forced to look beyond conventional sources to attain revenue.This has led to their unprecedented move to target wealth not just the wealthy instead.

The reality is that there is not enough income in America from the rich or otherwise to pay for the lefts spending plans. Only a wealth tax can sustain the illusion that the rich alone will pay despite the certainty that the burden will spread well beyond them.As income tax revenues prove: Pie-in-the-sky spending inevitably means taxes for the masses.

J.T. Young served under President George W. Bush as the director of communications in the Office of Management and Budget and as deputy assistant secretary in legislative affairs for tax and budget at the Treasury Department. He served as a congressional staffer from 1987-2000.

Follow this link:
Liberals need a wealth tax because income isn't enough | TheHill - The Hill

How little it takes for a Muslim to be called an extremist.

Look at Aatish Taseer, who once thrilled to Sanskrit word-roots and the glories of Benares, and had fond hopes from this government in 2014. He wrote about his disappointment with PM Modi in an international magazine. Now his overseas citizenship status stands revoked, and the right-wing has promptly dubbed him a jihadi.Take Firoz Khan, the BHU professor of Sanskrit literature, whose father was also steeped in cow-welfare and bhajan-singing. But ABVP activists were enraged that a Muslim dares to teach us our religion, and alleged that he would want a holiday every Friday. Some Hindu nationalists are more charitable, allowing that Khans interest in Indian culture is to be encouraged.

Clearly, melting yourself down to Hindutva specifications isnt enough if you have a Muslim name.

But forget the Hindu right, who are ideologically committed to their position. What is remarkable is how even liberals buy into similar suspicions.

Our prejudices about Muslims are not even original. Our language and images are borrowed. Through the last millennium, the West constructed the Muslim as a threat, as Christianity and Islam competed for power. Nineteenth-century European scholars of the Orient, obsessed with classifying and differentiating, with racial and civilisational theories instilled the idea that the Muslim mind is one, unchanged from the deserts of Arabia, sexist and violent and fanatical.

These colonial storytellers gave us our H&M history Hindus were cast as indisciplined and soft, Turks and Afghans and Persians were all made into generic ferocious Muslims, medieval warfare on all sides was recast as running religious enmity. This British-made history didnt just set off Hindu nationalists you hear it everywhere. Then the American Islamophobia industry after 9/11, which cast specific political conflicts as an enduring struggle with a malevolent, medieval other, fed perfectly into Indian politics and majority common-sense.

This stuff is not always about memories of trauma, it is mass-manufactured mythology. Someone I know in Kerala, who has inherited no psychic injury from any invasion or riot, is a library of Islamophobic stereotypes. He quotes cherry-picked bits from the Quran that abound on the internet, gives no quarter to context. He forgets his real schoolmates and acquaintances, as he frets about this abstract Muslim terrorist.

This allows people like him to blank out the violent hate-crimes, the insecurity and denial of rights that the NRC threatens, the majoritarian tilt of the Ayodhya judgment. It makes it impossible to see the facts of subordination and exclusion that the Sachar committee showed. It makes them reduce democracy-as-usual i.e., responding to interest groups, as every party does as suspect vote bank pandering when it comes to Muslims.

Some liberals are not much better; accepting Hindutva terms like appeasement for basic cultural protections given to minorities in a multicultural nation. They hold pity-parties for Muslim women, as though non-Muslim women are much better off, affecting not to know that sexist societies make for sexist practices, whatever the faith.

To them, just being a believing Muslim is a sign of indoctrination or orthodoxy. Just speaking strongly for yourself, in this embattled situation, makes a Muslim a Musanghi in their eyes. The only acceptable Muslim is the post-faith Muslim, or someone willing to run down their community. Think of everyone clucking over Zaira Wasims choices, or liberal feminists bemoaning the hijab without respecting the rationality of the wearer. Remember how Nusrat Jahans sindoor was gloriously Indian, but Hadiyas choices were about ISIS mind control? Most of us know little, ask little, but judge with an airy superiority.

Religion is a source of selfhood, a personal journey and a community, a refuge and a practice. But when it comes to political Islam, we make a point of the Islam rather than the politics. Even liberals divide things into a grid between good or bad, Sufi or Wahhabi, moderate or fundamentalist, syncretic or scarily alien. But Sufism has inspired fighters too; a better approach might be to see totalitarianism and violence as what they are, whether under the banner of Islam or class struggle or anything else.

As Hindus, we can see the distinctions between our quietly praying grandmothers, people who loudly talk up their faith, those who have a political view of religion, and those accused of violent acts in its name. So lets be consistent in our standards.

This is not to rule out criticism of any religious or social system or practice, but to see it more sharply, locate it in its context, even to criticise more accurately. As the anthropologist Clifford Geertz metaphorically put it, Morocco and Indonesia both bow to Mecca but in opposite directions. The upside of unlearning these biases is obvious the sooner we rid ourselves of phantom fears, the better we can focus on our common welfare, on things that will truly make our lives easier.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

Original post:
Liberals need to watch out for their own careless Islamophobia - Economic Times