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The Biden Presidency Vol. 1

Laz

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If my girlfriend's employer hadn't swindled her out of collecting unemployment during the worst of COVID (misinterpretation of the small business loan, possibly deliberate), and she had been able to file for medical disability as a result (autoimmune issue in addition to being a new mom), we'd have been making a total of $65-70k for 2020. That's borderline country club money in Brody's neck of the woods but just enough to get by on the Mass north shore.

Fucking Appalachian 1%ers...
 

Dandy

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Don’t get what I am saying confused, @BruiserBrody; I am not saying people $100K and below cannot be well off enough to not need the stimulus money. Some are and I very much am. I have been blessed and my cost of living is extremely low compared to parts of the country.

But that is one major thing; each individual couple or individual will be totally different in how this money would impact them. An arbitrary income limit does nothing to dig into their expenses or needs. Nor does looking at their latest tax return determine their current situation.

The second issue is that this is meant to simultaneously help those who need it while stimulating the economy. I certainly do not need the money to get buy, but I will certainly spend a potential $7,000 ($1,400 x 5) because that is what is it intended for and it allows me to be in a better position immediately.

Everyone except for Mitch McConnell, including President Trump, was for the additional $1,400 checks back in October/November. We are now into March and it is again being diced up after the months of delays because of more political posturing. Even if a person received every cent of each stimulus payment, it would be $2,600 for a person for one calendar year now that we have been facing this pandemic. That is $50 per week. In America. $50. And these politicians are wanting to make sure some people don’t get all of that.
 

Dandy

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If I can chime in without coming across as a braggart, I would like to address that. As I revealed in my Humblebrag thread, I made $113K+ last year; my wife made $108K+ last year; and our apartment rental brought in another $7K+ gross last year. Plus our tax return; plus our stimulus (which was based off the previous year’s return which had less income). We have three children, so our stimulus was pretty hefty even though as a household we were phased out a bit.

If we get even more from the stimulus this round, we will be throwing that money back into the economy as soon as it hits our account. It will be local, and it will be the epitome of the “velocity of money” principle. I am going to have my contractor do a complete bathroom renovation in the apartment; and I am going to do another project to my house. The contractor will both pay his employees as well as have money from the projects himself. He will buy meat off the local butcher shop that helps the farmers; he will buy items his three daughters want/need; and he will go visit some of his favorite locally owned restaurants. His employees will receive less as it will be wages only, but it is guaranteed work during the winter and will augment whatever stimulus money they receive. Those vendors, restaurants, and stores that I and these people will patron will have their owners spend locally as well.

See, no matter how badly the GOP and others have tried to condition the entire country to think, $228K is not “the rich,” and we have bills too. We are also almost guaranteed to spend that money. I could pad my savings or buy stocks, but I really want to get these projects knocked out without having to save up for them or allocate income that could go elsewhere so we do not feel a pinch. I also want to do my part in stimulating the economy.
Update to this thought now that the stimulus is imminent and so are the calculations for who gets what.

As mentioned, we have three children. $1,400 x 3 = $4,200. But, they are prorating what you get for each dependent now as well if you make an adjusted gross income of a certain range.

We purposefully did not file our 2020 taxes yet because our income is so much higher. However, the new limit for Married, Filing Jointly is $160,000. My wife and I had $155,591 on our AGI line (we have an amazing CPA) for 2019.

How impactful (and stupid) was the reducing of the phase out limits for this stimulus? See below.

If we had made $149,999, our check would be $7,000.

At what we reported, $155,591, our check will be $3,087.

If we had made $160,000, our check would be $0.

That is a hell of a wave for $10,000 difference in income for a couple for a year.
 
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Baby Shoes

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I know this probably makes me part of the problem in some sense but after years of lying and ineptness, I got really angry reading a New York Times Fact Check on Biden’s speech last night. They said he exaggerated Trumps’s lack of response and exaggerated death tolls because he said the 529,000 was greater than the 610,000 if you truly crunched all kinds of variables.

The fact of the matter is too many people have died and we’ve been trapped in this pandemic longer than we would have if we had an actual grown up in office and not an inadequate troll who thought it was a good idea to get rid of pandemic response teams in lieu of a damn space branch of the fucking military.

I just hate treating someone responsible who seems to care in the same fashion as the worst President this country every had. Hold everyone in office accountable, yes, but painting him as misleading after what we just lived through makes me beyond mad.
 

King Kamala

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Fact checking Presidential speeches has been a thing since at least, I started following politics in the early '00s (and I would imagine probably before) but I think having a habitual liar like Trump in office certainly brought a lot more attention to those columns and TV segments. I think they're a necessary evil.

I'm still more pissed that the mainstream media mostly treated Trump as they would any other President (albeit a fucking terrible one) and not the abnormal aberration that he really is until his last year or so in office. It'd really grind my gears when CNN or MSNBC would analyze a Trump address like it was a completely fucking normal speech.
 

Baby Shoes

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I think that’s what bothers me and makes me ultra sensitive. It’s needed but I felt this one today rubbed me wrong because I felt it was more arguing semantics that will only lead to more ignorant stuff like Brody post earlier with the guy who thinks Biden is going to put immigrant children in space prisons.
 

Baby Shoes

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Agreed. He’s actually getting work done and people having this thought that news conferences are needed are a part of the reason we are getting morons from reality shows and idiot football coaches in political offices.
 

King Kamala

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On one hand, yeah, he probably should have given one by now but it's nice to have a President who recognizes his weak points. I feel like news conferences are where Biden's most likely to say something dumb and he's done a very good job of avoiding situations where he says dumb things. And really it's good it's more of a worry getting the country out of the Grand Canyon sized hole he inherited from Trump than verbally volleying back and forth with Steve Doocy's kid and whoever gets dragged over from OANN and NewsMax.
 

snuffbox

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Didn't he do that town hall thing? Or does it have to be people in, you know, broadcasting asking him questions?
 

Mr. S£im Citrus

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I don't. The very idea sounds stupid. An elected head of state "debating" another nation's head of state? Where they do that at? For who? For what?

Frankly, I find it more interesting that Fox News appears to be pro-Putin, in this proposed "debate." Because, of course, they would:


 

Mickey Massuco

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So in his first presser:

- shuns Fox News, pissing off the right wing media
- says the Chinese president “doesn’t have a democratic bone in his body”
- says the gop voter suppression tactics are Unamerican
- called out republicans for only caring about the national debt now that there’s a democrat in the White House.

honestly this guy is real af
 

Hawk 34

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Also he tripped on some steps and didn’t shut the country down tweeting about how it never happened.
 

cobainwasmurdered

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EyiqzTWWUAM2MWa



republicans are of course losing their minds already.
 
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