Another Republican President, Another Recession.

hanimmal said:

I agree with what you are saying.

I do like how this guy sticks to facts and really has some of the best clips of video that is not always as readily available. There is something to be said that even though he is opinion, he is not lying and gas lighting people.




I do post his videos for the clip at the front and not the commentary almost always. The only one I didn't, I actually explained that in my post.


I don't think I actually finished too many of his videos either (at least since I listened to a bunch to make sure he wasn't pushing nonsense), but his clips are spot on generally. And he does bring in a lot of really good information in his rants.

Thinking a couple seconds more I bet if we actually went though his videos with a fine tooth comb we might be hard pressed to find any half truths in them, which is why I don't feel bad putting them out there. They are heads and shoulders better than 'the Hill video's for example.

Especially since he often does get into the details from the Mueller report/senate reports on the Russian military attacking our citizens I do think it is something good to get amplified. If anyone ever hears him saying something untrue though or misleading I would be very interested in taking another look. I will always keep my eyes open for it too.

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Fogdog said:

He's not bad.

But people using his format are. Kyle Kulinski and Jimmy Dore come to mind. Padshystikk were continually citing them when the were bashing Hillary Clinton ahead of the 2016 election.

Looking back, a difference that I see in Cohen's clips is that he speaks evenly and with facts and logic. Kyle and Jimmy were full of vitriol and half-truths. So maybe the format isn't the problem but how the speaker used their time. Kyle and Jimmy went after an emotional reaction by fuming with anger during their speech. My criticism is probably mislaid.

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Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) on Thursday will propose providing at least $3,000 per child to millions of American families, lending bipartisan support to President Biden’s push to dramatically expand child benefits.

Romney’s proposal would provide $4,200 per year for every child up to the age of 6, as well as $3,000 per year for every child age 6 to 17. Senior Democrats are currently drafting legislation as part of their $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal that would provide $3,600 per year for every child up to the age of 6, as well as $3,000 for every child aged 6 to 17.

The emergence of Romney’s child benefits plan as Democrats prepare a similar effort could give the White House an opportunity to incorporate policies with bipartisan support into its relief package. Romney has said Biden’s stimulus proposal is too expensive, meaning he may vote against the broader plan even if it includes much of his new child benefits proposal.

Romney’s new plan, like the one being explored by senior Democrats, would provide the benefit monthly by depositing it directly in taxpayer bank accounts. Advocates for expanding child benefits say they will make an enormous dent in child poverty in the United States, although some conservative scholars argue the benefits may discourage parents from pursuing employment. The extent of GOP support for Romney’s proposal is unclear.

Unlike Democrats’ plan, Romney’s Family Security Act would be paid for, in part, by eliminating Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, a welfare program, as well as other existing federal tax credits for children and working families. Many Democrats are likely to oppose this part of Romney’s plan.

Senior Democrats drafting plan to give parents at least $3,000 per child in Biden stimulus

Romney is expected to offer the bill as an amendment to Democrats’ budget resolution on Thursday night, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning. The budget resolution is the vehicle for passing Biden’s stimulus package.

“We have not comprehensively reformed our family support system in nearly three decades, and our changing economy has left millions of families behind," said Romney, the GOP’s 2012 presidential nominee, in a statement. “Now is the time to renew our commitment to families to help them meet the challenges they face as they take on the most important work any of us will ever do — raising our society’s children.”

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain reacted to the proposal on Thursday, tweeting: “Really looking forward to see what @SenatorRomney will propose here -- an encouraging sign that bipartisan action to reduce child poverty IS possible.”

The United States currently has among the highest rates of child poverty in the developed world, a trend exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. The nation provides less financial support to families with children than all but a handful of developed countries. That has led Democratic lawmakers such as Sens. Michael F. Bennet (Colo.) and Sherrod Brown (Ohio) to spearhead legislation to expand child benefits that command near-universal support among the Democratic caucus.

Their push is now gaining bipartisan momentum in part because of social conservatives such as Romney and Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who have also expressed alarm about high levels of child poverty.

Romney’s plan would have a dramatic impact on lowering child poverty, according to an analysis by the Niskanen Center, a center-right think tank. The percentage of children in poverty would fall by about 32 percent, with close to 3 million lifted out of poverty. Additionally, the percentage of children in “deep poverty” would fall by about 50 percent, meaning about 1.2 million children would be lifted out of deep poverty, the analysis found.

“Romney’s proposal shows that there’s substantial bipartisan agreement around expanding child benefits,” said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist who served in the Treasury Department under the Obama administration. “A permanent expansion along the lines of what Senator Romney or President Biden have proposed would be among the most pro-family, anti-poverty policies in a generation.”

Some liberal Democrats said Romney’s plan could be improved by maintaining the tax credits and welfare program it proposes repurposing to fund the new child benefit. “It’s misguided to undercut the policy’s poverty-reducing impact by using deep cuts in other critical forms of support for low-income people to pay for it,” said Sharon Parrott, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Democratic-aligned think tank. “There are far better financing options that ask those who are doing the best to pitch in a little more.”

Romney’s plan would also not provide the benefit to those living in the U.S. without a Social Security number. In their 2017 tax law, the GOP stripped as many as 4 million immigrant filers from receiving the existing child tax credit — which Romney envisions repurposing for his new proposal.

Matt Bruenig, founder of the People’s Policy Project, a left-leaning think tank, said the benefits Romney’s new plan provide to poor families outweigh the potential downsides of eliminating these programs, which Bruenig said are complicated and hard for families to navigate.

On the right, Angela Rachidi, a conservative scholar at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, wrote last month that extending child benefits to the poorest families would “decrease employment for low-income parents.”

“When you add in other benefits nonworking people get — such as food stamps and housing assistance — [to the proposed child tax credit], you start getting $25,000 in benefits, which is where you start to get concerned about employment disincentives,” Rachidi said in an interview.

Sam Hammond, a poverty expert at the Niskanen Center, said work disincentives come from sharp declines in the values of benefits as worker income increase, something he said the Romney plan avoids.

Biden expected to include new child benefit in major new stimulus proposal

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https://www.insider.com/the-average-number-of-kids-per-family-in-every-state-2019-2

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate early Friday approved a measure that would let Democrats muscle President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan through the chamber without Republican support. Vice President Kamala Harris was in the chair to cast the tie-breaking vote, her first.

Democrats in the chamber applauded after Harris announced the 51-50 vote at around 5:30 a.m. The action came after a grueling all-night session, where senators voted on amendments that could define the contours of the eventual COVID-19 aid bill.

The budget now returns to the House, where it will have to be approved again due to the changes made by the Senate. Final passage will unlock the next phase in drafting of the virus relief bill, with the work divided among several congressional committees.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer D-N.Y., called passage of the resolution the “first big step to putting our country back on the road to recovery.”

By moving on a fast track, the goal for Democrats is to have COVID relief approved by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid expires. It’s an aggressive timeline that will test the ability of the new administration and Congress to deliver.

The push for stimulus comes amid new signs of a weakening U.S. economy. Employers added just 49,000 jobs in January, after cutting 227,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department said Friday. Restaurants, retailers, manufacturers and even the health care sector shed workers last month, with state and local governments also letting go of non-school employees.

The unemployment rate fell to 6.3% from 6.7%, but there was a decline in the number of people who were either working or looking for a job in a sign that some people are dropping out of the labor force. The U.S. economy is about 12 million jobs shy of its pre-pandemic trends.

Biden, who has been meeting with lawmakers in recent days to discuss the package, will talk Friday at the White House with the House committee chairs who will be assembling the bill under the budget process known as “reconciliation.”

Biden also plans to make remarks Friday on the economy as he keeps up the pressure on Congress to “act big” on his relief package.

With a rising virus death toll and strained economy, the president’s goal is to have COVID-19 relief approved by March, when extra unemployment assistance and other pandemic aid measures expire. Money for vaccine distributions, direct payments to households, school reopenings and business aid are at stake.

The marathon Senate session brought test votes on several Democratic priorities, including a $15 minimum wage. The Senate by voice vote adopted an amendment from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, opposed to raising the wage during the pandemic. Ernst said a wage hike at this time would be “devastating” for small businesses.

None of the amendments to the budget are binding on Democrats as they draft their COVID plan, but passage of a wage increase could prove difficult. Even if a $15 wage can get past procedural challenges in the final bill, passage will require the support from every Democrat in the 50-50 Senate, which could be a tall order.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a vocal proponent of the wage increase, vowed to press ahead. “We need to end the crisis of starvation wages,” he said.

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Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell said Wednesday that the unemployment rate in January was “close to 10 percent,” significantly higher than the 6.3 percent rate reported by the Labor Department last week.

The discrepancy is partly due to many unemployed Americans being misclassified as employed, Powell said during a virtual speech at the Economic Club of New York. After accounting for people who have left the labor force since February 2020 and other factors, the unemployment rate is much higher than the official figure, he said.

“Correcting this misclassification and counting those who have left the labor force since last February as unemployed would boost the unemployment rate to close to 10 percent in January,” Powell said Wednesday.

The economy gained just 49,000 jobs in January as recovery sputters amid pressure from virus

The higher figure is another reflection of how the pandemic continues to constrain the labor market. The United States gained back a paltry 49,000 jobs in January. In December, the country lost 227,000 jobs.

The latest figures come as Congress debates President Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronaviruspackage, which would extend unemployment benefits, issue $1,400 in direct checks and set aside hundreds of billions of dollars to fight the pandemic.

Powell repeatedly has said that the economy’s future depends on controlling the virus. As the number of cases rose through the holiday season, the labor market’s recovery slowed. And for many service-sector workers, jobs that depend on person-to-person contact have yet to return.

Following Powell’s speech, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said the 10 percent unemployment rate cited by Powell reinforces “the need for the strongest possible benefits package in our COVID relief bill.”

“Federal Reserve Chair Powell’s assessment of joblessness in America is bleak,” Wyden said in a statement.

Powell noted that nearly 5 million people said the pandemic prevented them from looking for work in January. Some parents are providing full-time child care or have been forced to stay home with children during virtual schooling. Others have been deterred by fear of the virus, especially in jobs at restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues.

“We are still very far from a strong labor market whose benefits are broadly shared,” Powell said.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has flagged undercounts in the official unemployment rate before. In May — when the unemployment rate was a reported 13.3 percent — the agency noted a “misclassification error” that had lowered the overall rate by about 3 percentage points, meaning the May unemployment rate would have been about 16.3 percent.

Powell has spoken about the discrepancy before. After the official unemployment rate fell to 7.9 percent in September, Powell said a broader, more accurate measure that adjusts for “mistaken characterizations of job status, and for the decline in labor force participation since February” would put that month’s rate at around 11 percent.

Powell has repeatedly urged lawmakers to keep relief flowing, especially for the 10 million Americans whose jobs have not returned since the pandemic began. The Fed, in turn, has no plans to raise interest rates until the labor market heals substantially.

Democrats want to give parents $250 a month. Here’s who qualifies.

As congressional Democrats rush to pass Biden’s coronavirus package, some economists worry the full thrust of the bill could be too much for the economy to handle. Some economists have questioned whether the $1.9 trillion stimulus, combined with pent-up savings that Americans are expected to unleash once the pandemic ends, could suddenly overheat the economy, triggering a rise in inflation and forcing the Fed to respond by raising interest rates.

Powell dismissed those concerns. Inflation has been low or stable for decades, and the Fed is prepared to tolerate a temporary rise in inflation over its 2 percent target, he said.

It’s possible, Powell said, that aid from Congress plus a spike in consumer spending could cause “some upward pressure on prices.”
But “my expectation is that will be neither large nor sustained,” he said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits edged higher last week to 745,000, a sign that many employers continue to cut jobs despite a drop in confirmed viral infections and evidence that the overall economy is improving.

Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that jobless claims rose by 9,000 from the previous week. Though the pace of layoffs has eased since the year began, they remain high by historical standards. Before the virus flattened the U.S. economy a year ago, applications for unemployment aid had never topped 700,000 in any week, even during the Great Recession.

All told, 4.3 million Americans are receiving traditional state unemployment benefits. Counting supplemental federal unemployment programs that were established to soften the economic damage from the virus, an estimated 18 million people are collecting some form of jobless aid.



In Texas, applications for benefits surged by nearly 18,000 in the aftermath of freezing weather and power outages. And jobless claims rose by more than 17,000 in Ohio, where the weekly totals have been thrown off by potentially fraudulent claims.

Restrictions on businesses and the reluctance of many Americans to shop, travel, dine out or attend mass events have weighed persistently on the job market. Job growth averaged a meager 29,000 a month from November through January, and the nation still has nearly 10 million fewer jobs than it did in February 2020. Though the unemployment rate was 6.3% in January, a broader measure that includes people who have given up on their job searches is closer to 10%.



“Hundreds of thousands of Americans are continuing to struggle in this economy,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Thursday. “We can’t get numb to what this represents. These are moms and dads, friends and neighbors, who will now have to worry about how they’ll support families, put food on the table and make ends meet in the midst of the pandemic.″

Psaki urged Congress to move quickly to pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package, which, among other things, would provide $1,400 checks to most U.S. households.

The data firm Womply reports that 64% of movie theaters and other entertainment venues, 40% of bars and 34% of hair salons and beauty shops are closed. And on Wednesday, the Federal Reserve reported that across the country, “overall conditions in the leisure and hospitality sector continued to be restrained by ongoing COVID-19 restrictions.”

“The source of all labor market damage continues to be COVID-19,” said AnnElizabeth Konkel, economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “Increased vaccine distribution is promising, since the public health situation must improve for there to be a full economic recovery. When we completely return to ‘normal’ is still unknown.”

On Friday, though, economists have forecast that the government will report a strong job gain for February of near 200,000, which would raise hopes that layoffs will slow. Optimism is rising that increasing vaccinations and a new federal rescue aid package that will likely be enacted soon will spur growth and hiring in the coming months. Many analysts foresee the economy expanding at an annual rate of at least 5% in the current quarter and 7% for all of 2021.



Already, crucial sectors of the economy are showing signs of picking up as vaccinations increase, federal aid spreads through the economy and the Fed’s low-rate policies fuel borrowing and spending. Last month, America’s consumers bounced back from months of retrenchment to step up their spending by 2.4% — the sharpest increase in seven months and a sign that the economy may be poised to sustain a recovery.

The solid gain suggested that many people were growing more confident about spending, especially after receiving $600 checks that went to most adults early this year in a federal economic aid package. Additional relief is likely for American households and businesses as Congress considers Biden’s new aid package.

At the same time, rising bond yields in the financial markets are pointing to worries that higher inflation could be on the way as the economy recovers. This week, Lael Brainard, a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, sought to calm investors by stressing that the Fed, while generally optimistic in its outlook, is still a long way off from raising interest rates or otherwise lessening its support for the economy.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that despite the strong job gains last month, Congress still needs to “go big” by passing President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion relief package to get millions of people back to work sooner.

In an interview with the PBS NewsHour on Friday, Yellen said Biden’s package should not be trimmed just because the February jobs report showed 379,000 new jobs had been created, the best showing since October.

At that pace it would still take the country more than two years to get back to full employment, she said. But with the administration’s package, she said the country could see a return to full employment by next year.

“It is a big package but I think we need to go big now, and we can afford to go big,” Yellen said. “The most important thing is to get our economy back on track and to help people get their lives back in order to make sure this pandemic does not permanently scar our workforce.”

Yellen said the unemployment rate, which fell to 6.2% in February, was overstating the improvement in the labor force because it does not count the 4 million people who have stopped looking for work and have dropped out of the job market. She said the real unemployment rate is 10%.

After House approval last week, the Senate is now debating the $1.9 trillion relief package with supporters trying to keep Democrats on board in the 50-50 chamber since no Republican is expected to vote for the measure.

Asked about turmoil in U.S. financial markets over the past two weeks, as interest rates have started rising, Yellen said she does not view that development as a sign investors are starting to worry inflation is getting out of hand. She said the rise in rates is a sign that prospects for the economy are starting to improve as more people are vaccinated and Biden’s fiscal package makes its way through Congress.

The Federal Reserve “does have the tools to address inflation if it becomes a problem but I don’t see markets ... worried about that,” Yellen said.

Yellen also said that Biden remains strongly committed to raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. The administration will be looking for other legislation later this year where the proposal can be included, after the Senate parliamentarian ruled it could not be part of the relief bill, she said.

The administration is working on a “Build Back Better” measure to boost spending on infrastructure that will also be used to address problems of racial inequality by increasing support for job training and education, she said. The administration also wants to deal with other issues, such as paid leave and child care, she said.

The national debt, which has grown to levels not seen since the end of World War II in terms of its relationship to the total economy, is not a threat at the moment given that interest rates, even though they have risen, still remain at historically low levels, she said.

“The spending we are doing now is arguably helping our debt path by getting our economy back on track,” Yellen said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress are making the politically brazen bet that it’s more advantageous to oppose President Joe Biden’s ambitious rebuild America agenda than to lend support for the costly $2.3 trillion undertaking for roads, bridges and other infrastructure investments.

Much the way Republicans provided no votes for the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill, they plan to sit on the sidelines for this next big lift by the White House, forcing Democrats to take full ownership of the massive package of spending and corporate tax hikes that Biden wants approved over the summer. The tension could mount this week as Biden shows no signs adjusting to satisfy Republican leaders, instead appealing directly to their constituents for support.

“I think the Republicans’ voters are going to have a lot to say about whether we get a lot of this done,” Biden told reporters at the White House.

That leaves Biden and congressional Republicans on a collision course, the outcome of which could define the parties and his presidency. The GOP strategy is reminiscent of the Obama-era blockade that helped sour voters on the Democratic president more than a decade ago. Then and now Republicans are intent on saddling Democrats with responsibility for all the taxes and spending to come, much as they did the 2009 rescue after the economic crisis, framing it as government overreach that piles on debt.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell set the defining tone for his party when he flatly declared last week he will fight Biden’s agenda “every step of the way.”

But it’s not at all certain the GOP playbook that worked more than a decade ago will produce the same political gains this time around. Voters appear tired of the partisan stalemate in Washington, live amid the country’s run-down spots and signal they are initially supportive of Biden’s approach to governing, at least on the virus aid package.

Recent polling by The Associated Press-NORC Public Research Center found Americans have responded favorably to the president’s approach, with 73% approving of his handling of the pandemic. That includes about half of Republicans.

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of Senate GOP leadership, said Sunday a smaller package of about $615 billion, or 30% of what Biden is proposing, could find bipartisan backing from Republicans if the White House found a way to pay for it without raising the corporate tax rate. He pointed to potential user fees on drivers and others.

“There’s an easy win here,” Blunt said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Rather than shy from a new era of big government, Democratic leaders in Congress are embracing it, believing they can bypass the GOP blockade on Capitol Hill and make the case directly to Americans hungry for investments in homes, communities and livelihoods, especially as China and other rival countries make advancements.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared Biden’s plan to the far-reaching aims of presidents before him — from Thomas Jefferson’s efforts to build the Erie Canal to Teddy Roosevelt’s designs on a national park system.

“Now, in this century, President Biden is undertaking something in the tradition of thinking big,” Pelosi said at a news conference.

Progressives want Biden to go even bigger. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., said Sunday he expects more funding to combat climate change and is pushing to include his own proposal to expand Medicare with dental, vision and hearing aid care for seniors.

“Now is the time to begin addressing our physical infrastructure and our human infrastructure,” Sanders said on CNN.

As Congress hunkers down to begin drafting the legislation for Biden’s proposal, both parties will be put the test.

In the House, lawmakers will be invited to submit requests for projects in their home districts — roads and other infrastructure that could be “earmarks” eligible for federal funds. It’s a way to entice bipartisan participation and ensure the funds are spent on agreed-upon needs.

Republicans will be forced to either participate or disengage, often with pressure from elected officials and other constituents clamoring for funds to upgrade sewers, airports and countless other infrastructure systems.

Peppered in Kentucky with questions about money that could be potentially flowing for home-state road, bridge and housing projects after the president unveiled his plan, McConnell batted them back one by one.

Biden’s package “is not going to get support from our side,” McConnell said.

Asked about the McConnell’s comment, Biden smiled Friday while speaking to reporters at the White House and asked if the Republicans are arguing the country doesn’t need the infrastructure — or if the Republicans “decide that we need it but they’re not going to pay for it?”

Biden also pressed whether Republicans are opposed to cleaning up lead pipes in homes, schools and day care centers.

“What do you think would happen if they found out all the lead pipes were up at the Capitol?” Biden asked.

At the same time, Democrats and Republicans will be faced with the politically difficult vote of raising corporate taxes to pay for all the spending, bucking the business community that is largely against Biden’s plan to permanently hike the rate corporations pay from 21% to 28%.

Both parties view it as an almost existential battle over competing political views: The Democrats who believe in the power of government to take the lead solving the nation’s problems; the Republicans who put their faith in the private sector to drive solutions.

On Capitol Hill, it’s also a battle over which party will control Congress.

After Barack Obama was elected in 2008, McConnell famously said his goal was to make him a one-term president. This time around the Republican leader appears to have a shorter-term goal at hand — he wants to win back the now evenly split 50-50 Senate.

“They’re so close to the majority in 2022, they can taste it,” said Alex Conant, a Republican strategist.

Democrats have Senate control because their party’s vice president, Kamala Harris, can cast a tie-breaking vote. In the House, the Democratic majority is holding on with just a handful of seats.

“They really don’t want to give Biden wins,” Conant said.

Democrats, uncertain about their political prospects, are taking no chances, legislating as if they are on borrowed time.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has set in motion a potential process that would allow Biden’s package to advance without the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster by Republicans. Instead, it could be approved with a simple 51-vote majority.

Pelosi has set a July 4 goal for House votes, but acknowledges that ambitious timeline may slip.

“The sooner we can get the legislation done, the sooner we can allocate the resources,” she said.

The goal, she said, was “to get the job done as soon as possible.”

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Rozetta Dotson worked two jobs to scrape together the money to pay down a delinquent tax debt on the Kansas City, Kansas, home she owns with her husband, Ricky. Then the pandemic hit, she lost her second job and Ricky got COVID-19.

The Black homeowners kept paying what they could toward the taxes while waiting to talk to a judge about a new payment agreement. Then she found out her house was up for auction online.

“We just felt like it was a scam, like they were trying to take our property and my husband said we felt like we were targeted, you know, because we are living in a predominantly Black neighborhood and they were doing everything they could to cause us to lose our house,” she said.

The Dotsons are among those in historically Black neighborhoods in Kansas City, Kansas, who risk losing their homes amid the pandemic as delinquent property tax sales resume under a practice critics decry as racist and government officials laud for revitalizing communities.

“It is a reverse redlining that is racist. And I don’t use that word a lot, but that is the only thing, I mean, it is classism and racism to socially and economically deprive people of color who live in a particular part or who have acquired a foothold in a particular part of Wyandotte County,” said state Sen. David Haley, a Black Democrat, who has tried to help some residents in his hometown keep their houses.

Officials with the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, acknowledge delinquent parcels up for tax sale are predominantly in Black neighborhoods. The county — whose population of 165,000 is about 23% Black, 30% Latino and 40% white — typically has 2,200 properties for sale annually at its three tax auctions, far more than other large Kansas counties.

Wyandotte County says it auctions residential property as soon as the law allows — when taxes are three years behind. It says the goal is to put properties into “responsible hands” to improve the appearance of neighborhoods.

A lot of the properties don’t sell at auction, and the county then gets them through the Wyandotte County Land Bank, a public authority that now has about 3,500 properties — nearly all of them acquired through tax foreclosures.

Katherine Carttar, local director of economic development, said the county decided to be more proactive with delinquent property taxes about three years ago and to use the land bank more as a way to rebuild neighborhoods. At a virtual conference last year touting its successes, she showed slides featuring now-renovated homes and credited the program with raising property values and the county’s tax base.

Critics say Wyandotte County has a disproportionately high number of delinquent tax sales compared with the rest of the state, and that the effort deprives residents of hard-fought gains in communities that for generations have faced discrimination.

Wyandotte County, where 21% of residents live in poverty, has whole city blocks of foreclosed property for future redevelopment. Displaced property owners get no compensation, Haley noted.

Carttar says most properties in the land bank have been long abandoned. The upcoming online delinquent tax sale lists 43% of properties as vacant.

The practice comes against the national backdrop of a wealth gap between white and Black households. The “first rung of the wealth building ladder” is homeownership, said Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive research group.

Nearly 72% of white Americans owned their own homes in 2017, compared with just slightly more than 42% of Black families, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

“Here we are during a pandemic where the racial impact of the pandemic has not been equal. It has been disproportionately borne by Black and brown people and there is a huge risk of evictions and foreclosures coming out of the pandemic once the various moratoriums are lifted,” Collins said. “So it might be a time not to pursue aggressive tax sales.”

The two Black county commissioners who represent neighborhoods hard hit by the sales did not respond to interview requests from The Associated Press.

In the Dotsons’ case, Haley noticed that their house was on the auction list and alerted them. They went to pay the full $2,300 in delinquent taxes the day of the sale, but were told it was too late, Rozetta Dotson said.

They eventually got their home back — by paying back taxes plus legal fees for the attorney for the real estate company that had bought it. The total was $5,200.

Haley successfully warned another Black resident, Karen Pitchford-Knox, that the house where she’d grown up was on the auction block this January. When Pitchford-Knox’s mom died in 2016, she inherited the house as well as more than $5,000 in delinquent property taxes. She got behind on her payment plan after losing her job during the pandemic.

Pitchford-Knox had about two weeks to — as she put it — “beg, borrow and steal from Peter and Paul” the $1,000 for the taxes.

“I most definitely do feel they are targeting Black homes,” she said, noting she knew three other Black women whose homes were on auction lists. “I feel it is like Black female homeowners and Black seniors.”

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hanimmal said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/01/landlord-tenant-eviction-moratorium-pandemic/?itid=hp-top-table-main-0430bView attachment 4893422

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mooray said:

Man, what a mess, but I kinda blame Trump and Biden for their corporation feeding stimulus payments. The stimulus should have been targeted to the people that truly need it, with renters/landlords being able to setup automatic rent payments, even if at a reduced rate.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Hundreds of Gov. Tony Evers’ priorities, including legalizing marijuana and raising $1 billion in taxes, were going to be killed Thursday by the Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee as it begins the process of writing the next state budget.

Republicans are essentially scrapping the Democratic governor’s entire two-year spending proposal and instead building off the current budget, which the GOP-controlled Legislature passed two years ago without a single Democratic vote and Evers signed into law.

The Joint Finance Committee will vote to remove nearly 400 of Evers’ proposals. On the issues that remain, Republicans will build the budget based not on what Evers wanted, but instead on what is current law.

The items Republicans are killing would have brought in $3.4 billion to the state, mostly through higher taxes on capital gains and manufacturers, and by accepting federal Medicaid expansion. That alone would have saved the state $1.6 billion, when including federal money that would have come to Wisconsin.

Evers, in a Thursday letter to Republican leaders, called their plans to gut his budget “ill-advised.” He singled out their anticipated killing of Medicaid expansion, and the loss of $1.6 billion, which he said will “jeopardize our state’s ability to bounce back from this pandemic.”

Republicans for years have resisted accepting full Medicaid expansion. Evers’ plan would allow about 90,000 people to be eligible for BadgerCare Plus, a move Democrats have long pushed for only to be blocked by Republicans.

Other proposals that Republicans planned to kill included legalizing and taxing marijuana; raising the minimum wage to $10.15 per hour by 2024; restoring public workers’ collective bargaining rights that were lost in the Act 10 law; suspending enrollment in the private school voucher program; and creating a so-called red flag law that would allow guns to be seized from people deemed to be a danger by courts.

Republicans say the budget they will write will likely include a tax cut of some sort, but they haven’t given details. They are also calling on Evers to give them more details about how he intends to spend $3.2 billion in one-time federal stimulus money coming to the state. Evers has revealed some details, but not all of his intentions for the money, which is solely under his discretion to spend.

Evers, in his letter to Republicans, said the one-time federal money was designed to provide immediate relief to businesses and individuals hurt most by the coronavirus pandemic, which is why he was moving ahead to spend it quickly. It’s not intended to replace state money for ongoing programs that are funded in the state budget, he said.

Evers noted that he has released general areas where he intends to spend the federal money while he waits for guidance from the federal government on details about how it can be used. He also said he would be willing to meet with Republicans, as they requested, to discuss his plans.

Thursday’s meeting of the budget committee is the first where it takes votes on the two-year spending plan that runs from July through mid-2023. The full Legislature will likely vote on the budget in June or July, and then Evers can make significant changes with his broad veto power.

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hanimmal said:

Republicans stopping 90k people from being able to access Medicare and blocking the legalization of marijuana in Wisconsin.
https://apnews.com/article/business-government-and-politics-81413cf328328ffc2869eda8363d9bbc
View attachment 4895647



Why do people still vote these idiots Republican trolls into office?

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hanimmal said:

The Republicans are all in on stopping any ability to actually shore up the infrastructure that has been lacking any real investment in for decades while pretending like Trump's first three years were economically worse than Obama's last three years.

They are so concerned about inflation now that they want to snatch up all those economically stressed properties for cheap.

Also interesting is that they are pulling the 'gas lines' troll when it is their buddies over in Russia that attacked our pipelines causing this problem.

Anyway, screw Moscow Mitch.

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