Mediaboss Marketing

As the nationwide debate over reopening schools raged, teachers' unions gave overwhelmingly to Democratic political candidates.

Two of the nation's largest teachers' unions, the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, gave almost entirely to Democratic candidates versus Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets. In 2020, at the same time that parents were fighting for schools to reopen, 98.29percent of political donations from AFT went to Democratic candidates while just 0.26percent went to Republicans. NEA, similarly, gave 95.17 percent of its donations to Democrats while just 2.21 percent went to Republicans.

"For those wondering why Senate Democrats would prioritize teachers unions over the well-being of students, the answer is simple: Follow the money," the National Republican Senatorial Commitee said in a statement on Wednesday. "The nations two largest teachers unions were funneling mountains of cash to Democrat campaign organizations and candidates all while these same organizations fought to keep schools closed."

CA TEACHER CAUGHT BERATING STUDENTS IN LEAKED ZOOM OVER PUSH FOR IN-PERSON LEARNING: 'COME AT ME'

In a statement to Fox News, American Federation of Teachers spokesperson Oriana Korin slammed Republicans for not supporting President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan, which included billions of dollarsfor schools. The plas was roundly criticized by Republicans, however, for including items they said had nothing to do with responding to Coronavirus.

"So AFTs frontline educators, school staff, nurses and other workers have no doubts about whos on their side when it comes to safe, equitable in-person reopening, which is something weve been working on since the start of this pandemic," Korin said.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Jonathan Zachreson, who helps the lead the group Reopen California Schools, spoke with Fox News about teachers' unions "control" over embattled California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who now faces a recall election later this year.

"We also have a situation where unions have a lot of control over our governor and pretty much every step of the way has conceeded to what the unions wanted."

IS EDUCATION SECRETARY CARDONA FIGHTING HARD ENOUGH TO REOPEN SCHOOLS?

"Unions are absolutely not following the science" when it comes to reopening schools, Zachreson said, citing educators' insistence on maintaining six feet of distance in classrooms instead of three feet, which the CDC has now recommended.

Zachreson slammed the American Rescue Plan, which Korin referenced, since the legislation did not tie money for schools toreopening.

"That should have been a contingency but it wasn't," Zachreson told Fox News.

The National Education Association did not return a request for comment in time for publication.

Read the original here:
Democrats bankrolled by teachers unions while schools stayed closed, 'Follow the money' - Fox News

Instead of making the most of our FDR and LBJ moment, we are in danger of inexplicably putting an expiration date on our own legacy, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) said on the House floor last week, in a speech focused on the child tax credit.

Did FDR put an expiration date on Social Security? Did Lyndon Johnson put an expiration date on Medicare? Torres said. Why should we put an expiration date on the Social Security and Medicare of our own time?

At the same time, while Biden and his plans remain popular now, that can change once more details are released and Republicans have more time to wage a campaign against them as they did with President Barack Obama's efforts to expand health-care coverage a decade ago.

That public support has yet to pass the test of time, the opposition onslaught, said Bruce Stokes, a former director at the Pew Research Center who is now with the German Marshall Fund. And we know from the [Affordable Care Act] and other things that thats effective.

A shift in public opinion is what many Republicans are counting on to derail the president's agenda. With midterm elections in 2022 already looming, GOP lawmakers and party strategists are embarking on an intense public messaging campaign against the infrastructure package and the tax hikes being used to fund it a move they hope will disrupt the united Democratic front.

One path forward for Republicans is to sow discord among Democrats, said Joe Hack, a former chief of staff to Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) who joined the Daschle Group, a lobbying firm, earlier this month.

"You just need one Democrat to get upset about a provision, and you've got a problem," he said.

Even if Democrats are able to get some aspects of their infrastructure package through this year, they could be setting themselves up for a walloping in the midterms, said former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-Va.). "That's going to really stifle President Biden and anything he's trying to accomplish."

Still, to many Democrats, the effects of Bidens steps so far are already here to stay, no matter whether the programs themselves are currently slated to expire. Beyond shifting public opinion to support government intervention, his relief plan is on track to accelerate the economic recovery and could help the U.S. see levels of growth this year as high as 8 percent, by some estimates, the most in decades.

Read the rest here:
Part of the fabric: Democrats say Bidens sweeping changes will be hard to undo - POLITICO

Democrats struck a chord with voters in the 2020 elections by campaigning on the need for the wealthiest Americans to pay higher taxes. Now the party is flirting with a major change in tax policy that would allow the wealthiest Americans to pay lower taxes.

A bloc of House Democrats, mostly from the New York area, are loudly withholding support for a broad package of tax increases to fund President Bidens infrastructure plan unless it also includes a tax cut: an unlimited deduction for state and local tax payments, or SALT.

In the narrowly divided House, it takes only a handful of Democrats to derail the presidents agenda by making common cause with do-nothing Republicans. In an open letter last week addressed to the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 17 of the 19 Democrats who represent New York threatened to do exactly that, writing that they reserve the right to vote against any tax increase that does not include a full repeal of the $10,000 limit on the SALT deduction, enacted in 2017.

A number of Democrats from other states, including New Jersey and California, have taken a similar stand. Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey held a news conference last week behind a lectern emblazoned with the logo No SALT, no dice.

Proponents of an unlimited SALT deduction say they are seeking to help middle-class taxpayers. If so, they should go back to the drawing board. The top 20 percent of American households, ranked by income, would receive 96 percent of the benefits of the change, according to a detailed analysis by the widely respected Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

The primary beneficiaries would be an even smaller group of the very wealthiest Americans. The 1 percent of households with the highest incomes would receive 54 percent of the benefit, on average paying about $36,000 less per year in federal income taxes.

A tax cut with such a skewed distribution of benefits ought to be unacceptable to any politician genuinely concerned about the rise of economic inequality.

The federal government lets Americans reduce their taxable income either by a standard amount or by the amount spent on such categories as SALT, interest on mortgage loans and charitable contributions. The 2017 law imposed a $10,000 limit on the deductibility of SALT and a separate limit on mortgage interest deductions.

The SALT deduction cap is unfair. The deduction is often described as a federal subsidy for state and local governments because the federal government effectively is paying for a portion of each dollar in state and local taxes. Capping the deduction has the effect of providing a smaller subsidy, per dollar, to jurisdictions that collect more money in taxes.

New Yorkers, who pay higher taxes than most Americans, get more extensive and higher quality public services. Residents of other states choose lower taxes and less government. Federal tax policy should provide consistent support for either choice.

This board historically has opposed the elimination of the federal subsidy. But the rise of economic inequality has increased our focus on the distribution of taxation and led us to a different conclusion: Instead of eliminating the SALT deduction cap, Congress should eliminate the deduction.

The SALT deduction is an inefficient subsidy. The primary beneficiaries are the wealthy people who get a tax break. It would make more sense to collect those dollars from the wealthy and then to provide direct federal financial support to state and local governments.

Proponents of an unlimited SALT deduction have worked hard to portray the cap as a burden on a broad portion of the population. This is wrong in two important respects. First, the existence of the SALT deduction is the primary inequity. It shifts the distribution of taxation off the shoulders of the wealthy and onto the shoulders of the majority who do not make enough money to itemize tax deductions. The bigger the deduction, the greater the inequity.

Second, lifting the cap would primarily benefit the very wealthy. The Tax Policy Center estimates that 16 percent of households making between $100,000 and $200,000 annually would benefit from an unlimited SALT deduction, but that the average benefit would be just $130. Almost everyone making more than a million dollars a year would benefit on average by more than $44,000.

The Biden administration has avoided taking a stand on the issue beyond indicating that proponents of a SALT deduction restoration would need to find a way to offset the lost revenue, estimated at almost $90 billion in 2021 alone. But it makes little sense to find another way of raising taxes on the rich so that the money can be returned to the same people.

Mr. Gottheimer, for example, proposed last week that the cost of the SALT plan could be offset by increased Internal Revenue Service enforcement to collect what people owe already. Is he seriously suggesting that his support for enforcement of the nations tax laws is contingent on a tax cut? The necessity of stronger tax enforcement is clear, but it ought to be pursued on the merits, and the government surely can find better uses for the money it collects.

Most members of this editorial board are paying more in federal taxes because of the SALT deduction cap. In a narrow financial sense, we would benefit from its repeal. But we believe in the broader benefits of progressive taxation, and in the necessity of concrete steps toward creating a more equal society. Members of Congress who have espoused those principles repeatedly now have an important opportunity to demonstrate their sincerity.

Read the original post:
Opinion | Why Are Democrats Pushing a Tax Cut for the Wealthy? - The New York Times

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at http://www.umass.edu/poll

AMHERST, Mass. As federal law enforcement officials continue to announce charges and arrests related to the invasion of the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, a new nationwide University of Massachusetts Amherst/WCVB poll released today finds that while a plurality of Americans hold former President Trump responsible for the violence and destruction that day, Republicans are more likely to pin the blame for the days events on Democrats.

The new poll of 1,000 respondents conducted April 21-23 found that Trump is viewed as most responsible for the violence at the Capitol, with 45% deeming the former president liable for the hours-long siege of the seat of American government. Trump is blamed by 79% of Democrats and one-third (32%) of independents, as well as solid pluralities or majorities of all races, ages, genders and income and education levels.

The Republicans who responded in the poll have an entirely different view, however. Nearly a third (31%) of Republicans blame the Democratic Party for the violence at the Capitol. Antifa the informal anti-fascist political activist group was blamed by over one-fifth (22%) of Republicans, while 16% blamed the U.S. Capitol Police, who have reported that over 70 officers were injured in the siege.

A little over 100 days since the shocking events that resulted in five deaths, scores of injured police officers, millions of dollars of damage to the U.S. Capitol and the temporary delay in the certification of the presidential election, close to 6-in-10 Americans describe the event as a riot, says Tatishe Nteta, associate professor of political science at UMass Amherst and director of the poll. Partisanship isa lens by which we see the political world, however, and unsurprisingly partisanship plays a central role in the ways that Americans describe the events that took place on January 6th.

Democrats are more likely to employ words such as insurrection, riot and coup, while Republicans describe the events in a more positive light, with 70% using the word protest.

Republicans also use different terms than the rest of the population to describe the participants in the days events. Overall, respondents used terms such as mob, rioters, white nationalists, insurrectionists, and terrorists. Meanwhile, nearly two-thirds (64%) of Republicans described them as protestors.

In the early hours of January 6th, a number of conservative media outlets labeled the participants as patriots, Nteta says.This characterization has seemed to stick as a shocking 35% of Republicans describe the participants as patriots.

The racial differences between how voters understand the January 6th events cannot be understated,says Raymond La Raja, professor of political science at UMass Amherst and associate director of the poll. About half of whites appeared to legitimate the activities by calling them protests compared to just a third of voters who belong to non-white racial groups. Instead, majorities of African Americans and Latinos called the participants white nationalists and rioters.

Alexander Theodoridis, associate professor of political science at UMass Amherst and associate director of the poll, observed, If there was any lingering doubt that Americans see the world through red or blue colored lenses, evaluations of the shocking events at the United States Capitol on January 6 should putit to rest. We all watched the same events, but we somehow saw very different things depending on our party identity.

Four months after the event, a wide majority of Americans want the authorities to continue seeking justice against those who stormed the Capitol that day, according to the poll.

With the assistance of the public, hundreds of participants in the events of January 6th have been arrested and close to two-thirds (65%) of the public supports continuing the efforts to identify, arrest and charge those responsible for damaging the U.S. Capitol building, Nteta says.

One-third of Republicans and 36% of Trump voters polled said that they opposed the ongoing efforts of federal law enforcement agencies to hold the Capitol invaders responsible, however.

Methodology

This University of Massachusetts Amherst / WCVB Poll of 1,000 respondents nationwide was conducted April 21-23 by YouGov. YouGov interviewed 1,151 respondents who were then matched down to a sample of 1,000 to produce the final dataset. The respondents were matched to a sampling frame on gender, age, race and education. The frame was constructed by stratified sampling from the full 2018 American Community Survey (ACS) one-year sample with selection within strata by weighted sampling with replacements, using the person weights on the public use file.

The matched cases were weighted to the sampling frame using propensity scores. The matched cases and the frame were combined and a logistic regression was estimated for inclusion in the frame. The propensity score function included age, gender, race/ethnicity, years of education, and region. The propensity scores were grouped into deciles of the estimated propensity score in the frame and post-stratified according to these deciles.

The weights were then post-stratified on 2016 Presidential vote choice, and a four-way stratification of gender, age (4-categories), race (4-categories) and education (4-categories) to produce the final weight.

The margin of error within this poll is 3.4%.

Topline results and crosstabs for the poll can be found at http://www.umass.edu/poll

See the original post:
Republicans Blame Democrats, Antifa and U.S. Capitol Police for Jan. 6 Mayhem, According to New UMass Amherst/WCVB Poll - UMass News and Media...

SUPPORT THIS INDEPENDENT JOURNALISMThe article youre about to read is from our reporters doing their important work investigating, researching, and writing their stories. We want to provide informative and inspirational stories that connect you to the people, issues and opportunities within our community. Journalism requires lots of resources. Today, our business model has been interrupted by the pandemic; the vast majority of our advertisers businesses have been impacted. Thats why the SC Times is now turning to you for financial support. Learn more about our new Insiders program here. Thank you.

JOIN NOW

JERRY DAVIS, San Clemente

It is time to sort out some facts thatthe Party of Trump, formerly known as the Republican Party, is unwilling oruninterested in accepting.

Ballot harvesting has been used by Republicans.

Mitch McConnell, during his tenure as Senate majority leader, has rammed through lower court judges and Supreme Court justices. His anti-democracy moves included not allowing a vote on Merrick Garland.

Lower courtsunder a Republican President and Senatehavepacked the courts; in fact, 234 of Trumps nominees have been confirmed.

Republicans have very effectively used gerrymandering to draw safe districts. That, coupled with the Electoral College, have made it possible for Republicans to win electionswithout attaining the majority of votes, making it possible for America to be governed by a minority.

As far as the legitimacy of our election, 86 judges ruled that the 2020 election was without fraud. Lets not forget that the Republicans gained 10 seats in the House.

Voter rights are now under attack by red state governors and lawmakers. There are now over 300 laws introduced in red states to limit the right to vote. These include limiting the time allowed for voting and reducing the number of voting locations. There is even a law to make it illegal to pass out water and food to people waiting to vote.

I would like to hope that we can live in a community thataccepts facts, not dogma.

Related

BECOME AN INSIDER TODAYTrustworthy, accurate and reliable local news stories are more important now than ever. Support our newsroom by making a contribution and becoming a subscribing member today.

CONTRIBUTE NOW

The rest is here:
Letter to the Editor: Response to 'Democrats Undermining the Constitution' - San Clemente Times