CBS News claims Trump keeps the EITC

Here.

For the current 5-year period 2012-2016 the Joint Committee on Taxation has previously estimated the annual cost of the Earned Income Tax Credit to be about $64 billion.

That's actually less costly than the food stamp program was in 2014: $74.2 billion.

Keeping the EITC means keeping what amounts to a welfare program, but one which rewards only those who work. The transfer payments to such individuals basically rebate the Social Security taxes they pay even though they generally make too little to pay much in the way of federal income taxes, if they pay any at all.

Trump's claim that his plan will be revenue neutral is already taking incoming because of things like this.

Of course we don't know what spending Trump plans to cut. He might go really big and call for shuttering some cabinet level departments entirely. The Department of Education, for example, costs $77.4 billion.

Sean Trende spells out the achievements of John Boehner

Sean Trende notes that:

• federal expenditures on a quarterly basis flatlined beginning in early 2011, right when Republicans took control of the House under Boehner, largely because of sequestration won in the debt ceiling showdown that year despite controlling only one chamber of Congress, "no small feat";

• even "more impressive" was the fiscal cliff deal brokered by John Boehner in late 2012, making the Bush tax cuts permanent, again with control of only the House of Representatives;

• Boehner "managed to kill" the immigration bill that came out of Mitch McConnell's US Senate, despite "substantial internal pressures" all around to pass it.

Much more at the link.

The Detroit News says GOP malcontents weakened John Boehner's hand in dealing with Obama

Rep. Justin Amash, MI-3, a ringleader of the malcontents

Here:

Boehner has been no pushover for the Obama administration. He has staked out tough, rational positions on issues important to conservatives. But his hand has been weakened in negotiating with the White House because he has lacked the full support of such a large portion of his caucus, those members who feel symbolic fights over principle are more important than long-term victories.

Joe Nocera says Trump will be out before Iowa

In The New York Times here.

Washington Examiner has the rare proper assessment of Speaker John Boehner, faced with the unique challenge of a president disloyal to the constitution

Here:

"[R]ight wingers give him an undeservedly bad rap. As a Republican speaker with a Democratic president, he never had a chance to do several of the things they clamored for him to do. Sometimes his most critical Republican colleagues' demands that he get rid of Obamacare or, more recently, defund Planned Parenthood, have suggested a fundamental failure to grasp the mechanics of the system of government in which they work.

"Boehner was not in a position to enact a sweeping, positive agenda. It could not have progressed through the narrowly divided Senate, let alone [have] overridden President Obama's inevitable veto.

"The best accomplishments Boehner could hope for were mostly defensive and negative. The beginning of the his speakership marked the end of Obama's legislative agenda, although sadly the president took this as a cue to exceed his proper powers and bypass Congress, governing by fiat. ...

"Boehner did his job well, and with the sort of patience that conservatives may not appreciate until he is gone."

Trump's tax plan released to the public today is ambitious and pro-growth

The Trump tax plan can be reviewed here.

Notable features include exemption from federal income taxation entirely for up to about 73 million households who make up to either $25,000 individually or $50,000 jointly.

This is in the spirit of the original income tax law, which for its first few years, that is until the demands of World War I and the bureaucratic state came into play, taxed the incomes of no one except the very wealthiest.

It is unclear whether the plan retains the child tax credit or the earned income tax credit, two programs which effectively transfer welfare to lower income families who pay no income tax anyway and who receive through these two vehicles what is effectively a rebate of Social Security taxes they pay as employees, eliminating its regressivity.

For the rest there are just three tax brackets of 10%, 20% and 25%, kicking in at joint incomes up to $100K, up to $300K and beyond $300K. Presumably, but not stated, short term capital gains are taxed at these ordinary rates. Long term capital gains tax rates are 0% up to $100K of joint income, then 15% and 20% up to $300K and beyond $300K of joint income.

Business taxes are slashed to 15% no matter the size, which is YUGE for American competitiveness.

The AMT is eliminated entirely, along with the marriage penalty and . . . the death tax. It's going to be unbelievable!

Deductions are capped for the richest Americans, but deductions for charity and mortgage interest are retained.

We'll see what the dynamic scorers will have to say about it for revenues, as time goes by.

And they say liberals have a death wish: Why Republicans fail

Republicans fail because instead of attacking Democrats, they would rather attack and eat their own.

And it's not like both sides in the Party haven't done this, or that conservatives don't have a case against the leadership. The long history of establishment attacks against conservatives goes back to the George Romney failure to endorse Goldwater in 1964, book-ended most recently by the Mitt Romney campaign's vicious attack of the totally hapless Todd Akin of Missouri, a mere pimple on the butt of the elephant. The kinder gentler conservatism of the Bush clan was, after all, a repudiation of the Reagan era. Kinder and gentler it wasn't, nor conservative.

Pressuring their own Speaker of the House John Boehner to resign last week, however, marks a new low in the history of Republican politics. And this morning Laura Ingraham is endorsing the "frenzy" to get rid of the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell. People caught up in this have more in common with the Jacobin Club than they do with the men who prevented the revolution against the rights of Englishmen in 1776.

Conservatives now find themselves in the ignoble position of doing the job the voters didn't do in 2014. And they say liberals have a death wish. 

What goes around comes around, but for the faction which drapes itself in the US Constitution there is nothing conservative, or wise, about any of this. Conservatives should ask themselves whether the citizens of the state of Kentucky and Ohio are entitled to the representation they have or not. And if not, then why are conservatives entitled to theirs?

NBC/WSJ poll pulls Trump back to earth, still first in Real Clear Politics poll average with 23.4%, 6.4 ahead of Carson

Trump in the middle of summer was +4 in the NBC/WSJ poll

Trump starts autumn at +1 in the NBC/WSJ poll

Trump's poll average hasn't changed much in the last eight weeks, indicating he's stopped persuading people to join him, while the average spread of his lead has dropped by 39% in the interim. This is because support is firming for candidates below him. 

While the names have changed in second and third, the level of support has improved for the person in second by 33% and remained more or less the same for the person in third over the period. Ben Carson is the most benefited, going from fifth to second, even as Fiorina rocketed up 1060% to take third, replacing Walker who dropped out.

Similarly the persons occupying fourth and fifth have improved their levels of support on average by 42%, but their names have changed, too. Marco Rubio in fourth has improved his support by 85% over the period, but Jeb Bush is the most hurt, going from second to fifth.

Ted Cruz is notably stuck in sixth in both snapshots, with the same average of support. He's persuading no one, either, except maybe so-called values voters to shift their votes around, unaware that they are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Ted Cruz' true calling is stand-up comedy: The president of China is in town, meeting with the world's most powerful communist

The Don and Ted Show: "You're fired!" "No I'm NOT!"

Seen here:

"And today, the president of China, President Xi, is in town. Media all over the world are reporting on this historic meeting of the world's most powerful communist... And the President of China."

The endorsement of Ted Cruz by so-called values voters means little, except for Ben Carson and Donald Trump

From the story at The Hill, here:

Sen. Ted Cruz won the Values Voter Summit straw poll for the third year in a row on Saturday, a strong showing of support from evangelical voters for his 2016 presidential bid. The firebrand Texas senator won a whopping 35 percent in the poll of summit-goers, ahead of runner-up Ben Carson’s 18 percent. That margin is significantly wider than last year, where he edged out Carson by just 5 percentage points. Former Gov. Mike Huckabee (Ark.) took third with 14 percent, followed by Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) with 13 percent. Real estate magnate Donald Trump finished a distant fifth with 5 percent.

So "values voters" have finally figured out one thing: Ben Carson's values may be traditional, but they are rooted in a crackpot religion which was born of a failed prediction of the end of the world in 1844.

Now if they could only figure that out about their own religion.

What's happening here is that the evangelical base is clearly choosing a Southern Baptist over a Seventh-day Adventist, and distancing itself dramatically from the mainline Protestant in the race, Donald Trump.

Meanwhile Ted Cruz isn't going to be the nominee, not as long as he garners just 27% of the support enjoyed by the frontrunner.

The anatomy of an ideologue: Right winger Ace of Spades is a manipulative hope peddler, just like Obama

But dumber than Obama because he comes right out and admits it, here:

One of the things that political movements offer its [sic] adherents, similar to religious movements, is hope. The fecklessness, failures, and flat-out betrayals of the current GOP leadership has [sic] destroyed all hope in the GOP. And a political movement without hope is not a political movement at all; it is simply an advocacy organization for getting a very small number of people cush jobs in the federal government. If there is to be any hope permitted to the rank and file of the Republican Party, then we need big changes that permit us the illusion and fantasy of hope, without which we are nothing at all, just dejected former Republican voters. ... Hope requires a change -- Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, and Cathy McMorris-Rogers are no change at all; they are simply John Boehner's less accomplished inferior employees. ... And if you want to entice the alienated back into the fold, you have to at least let us dream of the possibility of actual change. That requires allowing us hope -- and not simply doubling-down on the current crop of failures and fainthearts we are obligated, sourly, to call our "leadership." Hope is a silly illusion, but it is a necessary, sustaining silly illusion.

Textbook George W. Bush that, trying to fight ideology with a better ideology, except the right doesn't have a better ideology. Better ideology is an oxymoron because you can't just bottle up and export what it took 500 years to develop on these shores and expect it to work elsewhere, or even here the same way it used to. Nor can you tell your fellow Americans that the people they are happy to keep reelecting don't represent them when they do and hope to succeed in getting them to follow you instead. We had the government we deserve and 30 malcontents just got rid of our leader who gave us $3.25 trillion reasons to be pretty happy with him.

I predict the president who was reduced to playing the tyrant to get his way as John Boehner gently strung him along will act more boldly now that he's gone and Republicans are in disarray and are about to crack up. Obama has nothing left to lose.

The Mark Levin wing of the Republican Party is unhappy the American people got only $3.25 trillion in tax relief from John Boehner

WaPo, grossly underestimating Boehner's achievement, calls Boehner's opponents in Congress "conservatives" but what they are is ideologues, fanatics for whom anything less than everything they demand is unacceptable, and for whom the good is the enemy of the perfect, here:

"Boehner could never please his most conservative members. Fiscal deals negotiated with President Obama produced more than $2 trillion in savings and made the GOP’s tax cuts permanent for 99 percent of workers, but the far right painted both deals as sellouts."

Conservatives give thanks for the achievements of John Boehner, libertarians, the ignorant and the stupid just snarl

• Saved taxpayers $762 billion over ten years by making the Bush tax rates permanent for 98% of all filers beginning at the dawn of 2013
• Saved taxpayers $1.8 trillion over ten years by finally fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax for all victims of bracket-creep
• Saved taxpayers $339 billion over ten years by maintaining the 15% capital gains tax rate for incomes below $450,000
• Saved families $354 billion over ten years by maintaining the child tax credit
• Cut average annual federal deficits of $1.3 trillion 2009-2012 by 57%, to $556 billion on average 2013-2016 by ending the emergency Social Security Tax reductions and instituting the sequester spending cuts
• The S&P 500 immediately responded with total returns in 2013 of 32.39%, the fifth best year since 1970  
• The moribund US Dollar rose 19%, from below 80 to 95 today as overall fiscal rectitude improved
• Causing oil prices to plummet from an average of $95/barrel 2011-2014 to $52/barrel on average in 2015 
• Causing average US gasoline prices to fall from $3.34/gallon one year ago to $2.28/gallon today
• Helping to keep the all-items consumer price index year-over-year nearly flat, rising just 0.2%

Politico lies about what John Boehner and Barack Obama accomplished together

Here:

"But [Boehner's] tenure will also be remembered for his complicated relationship with President Barack Obama. He and Obama tried — but repeatedly failed — to cut a deal on a sweeping fiscal agreement."

Boehner got the Bush tax cuts made permanent, and under a Democrat president no less, something Bush couldn't do while he himself was president. If I were Politico I wouldn't mention it, either.

Boehner also got the fix to the Alternative Minimum Tax made permanent, something which eluded Republicans for decades, again under a Democrat president.

Passed at the very opening to 2013, the stock market boomed as a result, tax revenues recovered and the dollar soared from 80 to 95ish today, helping to tank oil prices, for which each and every American should be grateful everytime he fills the gas tank.

"Repeatedly failed"?

Utter nonsense.

John Boehner to resign at the end of October

Story here.

Better to resign than face the mutiny?

German Americans still the largest ethnic group in 2013 at 46 million

The Economist reported here in February:

German-Americans are America’s largest single ethnic group (if you divide Hispanics into Mexican-Americans, Cuban-Americans, etc). In 2013, according to the Census bureau, 46m Americans claimed German ancestry: more than the number who traced their roots to Ireland (33m) or England (25m). In whole swathes of the northern United States, German-Americans outnumber any other group (see map). Some 41% of the people in Wisconsin are of Teutonic stock.

That figure is down from 51 million before 2009 and from 50 million in 2009, so evidently the German American population is declining by about 1 million per year. 

Walls work: The pope's Vatican has a population of 8 people per acre, Manhattan 109

People who live in walled states shouldn't throw stones, even if they have plenty.

Trump's critics of his investment success need to get a new calculator, and some brains

This morning on the Chris Plante Show on WMAL a caller complained that Trump inherited $200 million and that anyone could have $10 billion after 30 years, too, just by investing in a CD.

Chris Plante said "that's some CD"!

This meme is now ubiquitous in the media critical of Trump, and while not as obviously silly as this morning's example the critics nevertheless display remarkable investment ignorance.

Grant for a moment that Trump inherited $200 million, and keep in mind that that is the upper end of the estimates, which go as low as $40 million. Also keep in mind it's mostly real estate, not cash, not stocks, not bonds, a completely different business.

$200 million invested in the S&P 500 for 30 years from 1985 to 2015 yielded $4.2 billion, or just 42% of the net worth Trump claims to have accumulated over the period. The actual average nominal rate of return for the S&P 500 was 10.75% per annum, dividends fully reinvested. The $10 billion net worth claim, on the other hand, represents an annual net rate of return of 13.93%, again assuming the investment of $200 million, almost 30% better every year than what the S&P 500 actually yielded. But again, the S&P 500 return is not net. You still have to deduct taxes, inflation and expenses from that, which is an individual calculation and highly variable, and in New York can be quite onerous. 

On the other end of the scale, the investment of $40 million becoming $10 billion is the equivalent of a net return of 20.21% per annum, 88% better than the S&P 500 nominal return every year on average.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but no matter how you cut it, Donald Trump capitalized on what he was given in a way which has been exceptionally more successful than what most people ever experience.

He's Yuge.

Mark Penn strategy memo from 2007 shows Hillary Clinton campaign wanted to exploit Obama's "lack of American roots"

The Atlantic has the memo here.

Trump has held first place in the Real Clear Politics poll average since July 19th, over two months