9 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Turns out people really like a candidate who clearly stands up for the middle class and who isn't afraid to say others should pay more taxes and the press should quit replaying the superficial over covering the substantive. 

    

    

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   1. Seems like Bernie attracts an older crowd of latter-day hippies, with grand kids in tow. To what demographic groups does he appeal ?

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      1. You pretty much nailed the demo.

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      2. The reality based community.

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         1. Well hell, that pretty much rules out nearly all party-affiliated voters . . . 

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      3. Don't punch the hippie – he/she is probably your boss now. Or retired / approaching retirement, with union benefits, time on the hands, faithful to the ideals of the 60s and 70s, and very savvy and experienced in political organizing, having learned from the mistakes of the past.  Every progressive group I've been involved in since  2008 has plenty of gray heads volunteering.

         As far as what demographics Bernie appeals to:

         Older voters, yes. (25% of the crowd according to the author of linked article). Doesn't say who the other 75% were.

         But his message echoing Obama's call  for two years of free college is resounding with millenials and younger voters.

         This Sanders town hall meeting has plenty of oldsters in the audience, but most of the questioners are younger folks.

         And Sanders is still polling higher than every Republican candidate, according to Kos blogger gjohnsit, referencing this Q poll.

         This more recent PPP poll, with 39% of its respondents under age 34, had Sanders at 20% favorable, 28% unfavorable, and 51% unknown. It isn't that younger people aren't following Sanders – like the rest of the country, they don't know him well.

          

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2. 

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3. I'm guessing he doesn't appeal to the top .01% of income earners. 

   Bernie Sanders based his comments on generalized information about wealth inequality, but the new IRS data on income inequality bolster his argument.

   Currently, the highest income tax bracket and capital gains tax bracket each kick in at a little over $400,000 in annual income. But there are nearly 14,000 tax filers who earned more than $12 million in 2012 as members of the best-paid 0.01 percent of all taxpayers, according to the IRS, and about 1,360 who earned over $62 million that year. Their vast earnings were not taxed any more heavily – and indeed, they paid a lower overall income tax rate than their merely one-percent brethren.

   It is the first time the IRS has ever broken out income tax data at the very top end of the earnings spectrum. Previous releases have shown the top 1 percent and the top 0.1 percent of filers, but the new data drill deeper. There were a little under 1,400 income tax returns filed in that very richest sliver of data in 2012, the agency reports, with an average income of roughly $161 million for the year.

   Dismissive, snide, and cynical remarks most welcome…….especially how the top bracket is around $400,000, and all the millionaires/billionaires above that have the best kind of tax surety right now: very few will ask them to pay more for the wealth they are accumulating at record pace.

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4. Here's a shocker — six major European Oil & Gas companies calling for a plan to tax greenhouse emissions:

   The leaders of six of Europe’s largest oil producers are calling for a plan to price planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, citing climate change as “a critical challenge for our world.”

   “As major companies from the oil [and] gas sector, we recognize both the importance of the climate challenge and the importance of energy to human life and well-being,”wrote the chief executive officers of BP, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, Total, Eni and the BG Group in a letter to the executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the president of the upcoming 2015 Paris Climate Conference.

   “The challenge is how to meet greater energy demand with less [carbon dioxide],” wrote the CEOs, who collectively represent nearly $1.4 trillion in annual revenue, asClimate Central notes. “We stand ready to play our part.”

   But of course the Devolutionists (and major GOP members and investors) in the US are not a part of this:

   Noticeably absent from the letter were American petroleum giants, such as ExxonMobil and Chevron, though both those companies are already planning internally for a price on carbon emissions.

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/02/european-oil-carbon-pricing_n_7497016.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

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