Monday Reads

Good Afternoon!

I’m slogging through so much paperwork at the moment that I don’t think I will come up for air.  Let me just say that in my current state of affairs I am very fond of Dodd Frank.  It seems, however, that the Donald wants a moratorium on financial regulation.  I wonder how well that will go over with any one who supports him that’s not a member of StormFront and in it for the Hate-a-thon.

Donald Trump will propose a temporary moratorium on new financial regulations in an economic speech Monday in Detroit in an effort to draw a stark contrast with the domestic policies of Hillary Clinton, who he says “punishes” the American economy.

The Republican presidential nominee’s speech will focus on providing regulatory relief for small businesses, according to senior campaign aides familiar with its contents. More broadly, Trump will say he will not propose any new financial regulations until the economy shows “significant growth,” the aides said. Trump has previously said he would repeal and replace the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act.

Trump will also propose a repeal of the estate tax, sometimes called the “death tax.” Under current law, the 40 percent tax applies only to estates larger than $5.45 million for individuals and $10.9 million for couples.

For U.S. businesses, Trump will propose a tax rate of 15 percent and suggest strengthening intellectual-property protections. He’s expected to call for three income-tax brackets, down from the current seven. He’ll call for the elimination of special tax treatment for carried-interest income at private-equity firms and other investment firms—the latter of which is a proposal his Democratic rival also supports.

Carried interest, which is a portion of investment gains paid to certain investment managers, is currently taxed like capital gains—at rates that can be as low as 23.8 percent. Trump proposes to tax them as ordinary income, but for members of partnerships, that could actually mean a rate cut to 15 percent.

This is definitely not a left or right wing populist position and is probably geared to getting to small business owners and other business interests. Donald Trump’s support continues to weaken and continues to concentrate itself in a few demographics; mostly white.  Polls show that the Trump convention was a disaster. This is some analysis from Philip Bump on a new Post-ABC poll.

The Washington Post-ABC News poll released Sunday includes data that gives a bit more insight into just how Trump managed to make his position worse.

Before the conventions, the plurality of support each candidate received was thanks to people who wanted to vote against the alternative. In other words, most people who said they were backing Hillary Clinton were backing her because they wanted to see Trump lose, and vice versa.

After the conventions, though, that changed: A slight plurality of Clinton supporters now back her because they want her to be the president. Trump’s position improved slightly — but the percentage of support he gets from people who are doing so out of enthusiasm for his candidacy is still lower than the percent who said that about Clinton before the conventions began. Before the conventions, 57 percent of those who backed Trump did so because they opposed Clinton; after the conventions, that figure was 56 percent.

A new Monmouth University poll continues to show that Clinton retains and even widens her post convention bump.  This can only be due to the disastrous few weeks the Donald has had attacking Gold Star Parents and mom of a baby.  What a schmuck!!!

Hillary Clinton has taken a double digit lead over Donald Trump according to the latest Monmouth University Poll . This compares to the slim two point lead she held among likely voters just before the two major parties held their conventions.  Both candidates remain unpopular, but the Democrat has a growing advantage on being seen as more temperamentally suited for the presidency.  Still, Clinton’s email use remains a problem for her, while voters are divided on the impact of Trump’s attitude toward Russia.  The poll also found that voters are less optimistic and enthusiastic about the 2016 election than they were one year ago.

Currently, 46% of registered voters support Clinton and 34% back Trump, with 7% supporting Libertarian Gary Johnson, and 2% backing Jill Stein of the Green Party.  Support among likely voters stands at 50% Clinton, 37% Trump, 7% Johnson, and 2% Stein.  In a poll taken days before the Republican convention in mid-July, Clinton held a narrow 43% to 40% lead among registered voters and a 45% to 43% lead among likely voters.

Clinton has solidified support among her partisan base since the conventions while Trump struggles to lock in his.  More than 9-in-10 Democrats (92%) say they will vote for Clinton, up from 88% in July and 85% in June.  Just 79% of Republicans are backing Trump, which is virtually unchanged from prior polls (81% in July and 79% in June).

Independents are divided between Trump (32%) and Clinton (30%).  In the Monmouth poll taken before the two parties’ conventions Trump held a 40% to 31% lead among this group.  Johnson the Libertarian has picked up independent voter support in the past month, now at 16% (up from 9%) with this group, while the Green Party’s Stein has remained stable at 4% (compared to 3% last month).

Importantly, Clinton continues to maintain a lead in the swing states – ten states that were decided by less than seven points in the 2012 election.  She holds a 42% to 34% edge over Trump in these states, which is similar to her 46% to 39% swing state lead last month.

“The dust is starting to settle on the tag-team conventions, with the net advantage going to Clinton,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute.

These polls should give a big raspberry to the press that are trying to tear her down. But they don’t give a bit of pause as BB indicated on Saturday.  I’m getting weary too of the constant harping on her lack of personal characteristics that appear more often in right wing rags than in polls outside die hard Republicans.

Here’s a really interesting read on the differences in the Clinton message of hope and the Trump message of fear.  Is this tagline really the source of it all?  “Behind the 2016 race’s weirdness is a skyrocketing violent death rate among older white Americans, even as everyone else gets safer.”

In 2015 – in stark contrast to 1990 – teen gun-related deaths totaled 57, while teen murder arrests numbered 65. Overall in California, the crime rate among teenagers has dropped by 80 percent since 1980 – at the same time immigration has fueled a growing, more racially diverse young population, now 72 percent of color. The school dropout rate has also nosedived, as have births by teen and young-adult mothers. College enrollment and graduation rates have soared. These trends, moreover, are not unique to California. They’re happening nationally.

The flip side of young Americans’ astonishing behavioral turnaround is an equivalently dramatic decline among older Whites. In California, for example, the number of arrests among people over 40 in 2015 was nearly double the number of arrests among Black and Hispanic teens. Nationally, in a shocking reversal of past patterns, a middle-aged White is at greater risk today of violent death (by suicide, accident, or murder, and especially from guns or illicit drugs) than an African American teenager or young adult.

These stunning reversals of fortune among the generations could help explain one of the central mysteries of this year’s election cycle: why two such starkly divergent views of America – Republican Donald Trump’s grim vision of an apocalyptically degenerated America and Democrat Hillary Clinton’s sunny affirmation of a diversifying country’s bright future – are finding equal resonance. The short answer is that both portraits reflect equally valid truths about Americans’ experience today – depending on who and how old you are. While Democrats’ younger, more diverse constituencies are experiencing dramatic improvements in their personal security and behavioral well-being, Trump’s older White demographic is suffering rising drug abuse, crime, incarceration, suicide, gun fatality, and disarray.

These divergent realities, however, have also led to an extraordinary level of mutual incomprehension, as even sophisticated insiders in both parties and in the media seem largely ignorant of the underlying statistical facts.  Hence, progressives dismiss the rage of Trump’s supporters as artifacts of mere racial prejudice and bigotry, without seeing that the anger is rooted in the very real personal insecurity middle-aged Whites are living with. And conservatives mistakenly impute to darker-skinned young people the growing chaos they may be feeling without understanding that a huge, multi-ethnic generation of young voters has perfectly sound reasons for feeling confident and optimistic.

I’m not sure it’s an intergenerational disconnect on this particular factor but let me hear what you think.  I’m still think it’s mostly an old white male thing–with a few women that benefited from that–at the center and that it’s mostly cultural and economic.

So, this is a short thread but it should be enough to get us started on a discussion!

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?