Exactly. Why on earth would you mention something that was due to you simply because you were who you are? One doesn’t need to bring up the fact that one has a right to breathe. Is breathing a ‘thing’ now? Jeez. I wish they’d keep us in the loop.
First you don’t get to deduct credit card interest or auto loan interest. So why mortgage interest?
Second the mortgage interest deduction is regressive (it benefits people in higher tax brackets more than lower brackets and has no benefit to people who don’t itemize their deductions) and like most subsidies acts as a booster of prices. So while its theoretical purpose is to make homes more affordable, and it may have initially had that effect, today it has at best a neutral effect and arguably an adverse effect on affordability since buyers price the deduction into what they’re willing to pay and the regressive nature means it gives higher income people more buying power, raising prices for everyone.
At the end of the day it primarily has the effect of inflating broker commissions and state transfer taxes since the subsidy is built into the price of almost every home sold.
But it’s politically very difficult to repeal because (1) homeowners who relied on it in calculating what mortgage they could afford would suddenly be screwed and (2) it would hurt home values, wiping out voters’ equity and likely harming the economy at large.
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That’s a lot of bread bags.
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When did family stop being a synonym for kin?
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That seems like something that one, smaller country can do as long as most others don’t. That is, NZ may very well be buffered by the fact that larger countries do subsidize. (The US and Canada account for a third of world grain exports.)
Or maybe wool works differently than grain.
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Everyone is opposed to “pork”, unfortunately “pork” is always defined as Federal funds the other guy gets, not yourself.
If the GOP cut all Federal subsidies I’d applaud them, but mainly because it means they would massively lose the next several election cycles.
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They’re not subsidies - rich people get entitlements. It’s just the poor who get undeserved benefits.
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No shit. If everyone who eats the products from factory farms could pay a personal visit to see just how the animals are treated on their journey to your plate, there would be a lot more opposition to the evil calculations of pure greed that treat living creatures as if they were unworthy of consideration and unfeeling.
Factory farming is horrible on so many levels.
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You’re not mistaken. Look at the title. In the linked article, the title indicates that Ernst’s family received the subsidies. In BoingBoing’s title, it’s Ernst herself who received the subsidies.
Snopes article: http://www.snopes.com/politics/politicians/ernst.asp . Thanks to fake_tudza.
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OMG! Isn’t that like the basic ingrediants for a Cuban sandwich? Are you a commie? Why do you hate freedom @japhroaig? Why?
Also, I’m so sick of hearing about bootstraps! Shut up about bootstraps, people. Seriously. Get some new analogies, will the world?
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They feed us and the world - kind of important. My problem with the farm subsidy is that it seems to be more and more going to large corporate farming interests and that more and more of it goes to corn, the vast majority of which is not aimed at directly feeding people, but at feeding livestock, so we can eat more beef.
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Unfortunately, the vast majority of farm payments go to the big mega farms and not to the “small” farmers. Check the stats on farm payments.
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Mostly because it is a very tinny word. Gooorn.
Monty Python - Woody and Tinny Words: http://youtu.be/-gwXJsWHupg
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Meh. A difference that doesn’t really make a difference. The point still stands – she’s a fucking hypocrite.
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At some level, without a mortgage interest deduction there’d be a big tax incentive for landlord owned housing, because THEY get to deduct mortgage interest as a business expense. If you got rid of the mortgage interest deduction because of its regressive nature, I guarantee that the wealthy wouldn’t buy houses but instead would create shell corporations to lease them from so that they would benefit from said deduction.
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You can reasonably define “family” or “kin” as the people whom one is related to, AND whom one relies on. Occasionally or constantly, it don’t matter. (It also doesn’t matter if you don’t realize you are relying on them).
At present I am funding* an indigent sister, and our 1st cousin is actually providing a roof over her head. We are all family see. We are significantly burdened by her. However, supporting sickly, unstable middle-aged women is what families do – if they are functional. The only people who don’t admit this are the kind who choose to pretend their freakish isolation is normal, or commonplace in American society. That is the very opposite of true. Most Americans live and prosper within a web of family connections. A web that extends well beyond their immediate next of kin.
The Snopes entry (http://www.snopes.com/politics/politicians/ernst.asp) a few commenters have cited claims that Ernst was no longer in Iowa, was self-sufficient and therefore in no way a beneficiary of federal pork that her family claimed after 1995. I see that as baloney. Federal money that went towards her uncle is money that neither she nor her dad ever needed to lend him. It may have seen her father through a tight spot – instead of her and his son-in-law doing so. It may have offset the price of a small vacation – instead of her and her husband footing their travel bill. The net benefit exists, irrespective of how it was used.
She has distinctly and consistently benefited from the broad, steady flow of guilt-free " federal subsidies to her people, and more generally, “her kind” of people. Dollars to donuts, that history of personal benefit extends well back in time, long before the handouts that were documented in this District Sentinel article. (e.g. federal farm subsidies her dad’s neighbors received even in the 1980s became money in his pocket that he never needed to loan them. Or that he never needed to use to supplement their reduced tithes at their church, or dues he never covered for them at the Elk Club…Eventually, it became money of his that helped young Jodi in college.)
Her self-sufficiency shtick is vile falsehood. The kind only a politician or a fool could admire.
*(storage units, cell phone, auto insurance, some medical, occasional cash. Cost exceeds $1000/month)
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They have those, they’re called “petting zoos.”
I actually doubt this…Witness the fact that most objections to GMO food is based on the rather fanciful idea that it might be harmful to consume, and not the unknown ecological effects. Or that Sinclair’s “the Jungle” sparked more worries about food safety than working conditions…It is vastly easier to get people to do something about their perceived self-interest than about injustice, or suffering for “others” who aren’t like them. Witness how many more people are upset about the prospect of eating dogs or horses than cows or pigs…
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Said it elsewhere and I’ll say it here–I got through ~30 seconds of that video and wondered, “is that a Boston Dynamics product or something from the Japanese?” Joni Ernst is the new definition of the uncanny valley.
The point doesn’t still stand. The title was distorted to falsely make her appear to be a hypocrite. The BoingBoing title indicates that she received $460K in federal subsidies, which simply isn’t true.
Regarding politicians and improper payments - note that there is zero coverage whatsoever on BoingBoing about Sheldon Silver, a prominent New York politician who was recently arrested on federal corruption charges, for failing to disclose payments that he received from multiple law firms. It’s been all over the front page of the New York Times for days now. Not a word on BoingBoing. Sheldon Silver isn’t a Republican.
