As marriage equality has emerged as one of the Beltway’s topics du jour, inquiries as to when lawmakers intend to “evolve” on the issue have been in abundance. But whither former South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford?
Sanford, famously, has made his feelings about traditional marriage quite clear. As his history of mistress-having and telling-constituents-lies-about-the-mistress-having demonstrates, he’s clearly not too terribly impressed with the “sanctity” of the institution. “This was a whole lot more than a simple affair,” said Sanford in June 2009. “This was a love story. A forbidden one, a tragic one, but a love story at the end of the day.”
So, newly minted as his party’s nominee for the South Carolina 1st Congressional District seat in the House of Representatives, Sanford made an appearance this afternoon on CNN‘s new show “The Lead,” and host Jake Tapper threw the high, hard stuff at him on marriage equality: “Who are you to deny love between two men or two women, when you are somebody who talks about following his heart, regardless of the laws and traditions of the state of South Carolina? Why are you sitting in judgment of same-sex couples, when you have had the life you have had?”
That woman, Maria Belen Chapur, is now Sanford’s fiancee. The two got engaged last summer, a year and a half after Sanford and his then-wife, Jenny Sanford, divorced.
Where you fall on the income scale will likely determine how you feel about Ellison’s idea as proposed in The Common Sense Housing Investment Act.
Mortgage Interest Deduction Math
Right now, anyone with a home mortgage can write off the interest they pay on their federal income taxes. The calculation is simple: The amount you paid in interest for that year is subtracted from your income.
This is a big deal for many taxpayers. One estimate from The Wall Street Journal puts total federal tax savings at $100 billion a year. It’s also a big deal to real estate agents and banks, as the tax write-off can be a major selling point for homes and home loans.
But to utilize the mortgage-interest deduction, you have to itemize your taxes, which not everyone can do. Enter Rep. Ellison and his Common Sense Housing Investment Act. His bill would open the mortgage-interest deduction to more taxpayers by changing how they claim it. Rather than taking whatever they paid in interest off their income, now homeowners would claim a standard 15 percent tax credit.
Under the Common Sense Housing Investment Act, the number of Americans able to claim the mortgage-interest deduction would jump from the current 43 million to 60 million.
Everyone Wins! Well, Almost Everyone
Perhaps the most interesting trick here is that the bill would allow more homeowners to claim a mortgage-interest deduction on their federal income taxes, but also allow more total tax revenue to be raised.
Ellison’s plan would deny people whose homes cost more than $500,000 the ability to deduct any mortgage interest whatsoever. According to Ellison, however, only 4 percent of homes nationwide sell for more than half a million dollars. So in the end, far more middle-class homeowners would be able to write off their mortgage interest, while the well-to-do would lose the tax break.
According to Ellison’s calculations, his plan would generate an additional $196 billion in revenue over 10 years — money he would earmark toward addressing what he calls a “national rental shortage” — which mainly affects minorities, the elderly, and the poor — by expanding the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and Section 8 rental assistance.
A Tempting Tax Target
The mortgage-interest deduction comes under attack every once in a while for different reasons.
In the wake of the financial crash, it was called out as a contributing factor in that it helped feed the general mentality that everyone should own …read more Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance
President Barack Obama says he’s ready to do whatever it takes to help Democrats win the House next year — a feat that could make the difference between limping to the end of his presidency and going out with a bang.
But some Democratic candidates and operatives in the districts on which control of the House will hinge said in interviews with POLITICO that the message and issues Obama has emphasized since the election are creating a difficult political headwind for them.
Obama’s political choices, they say, reflect a tone-deafness to the challenges they face competing for moderate and conservative-leaning seats.
(Also on POLITICO: Democrats not sold on a safety net bargain) To net 17 seats and flip the chamber, Democrats have to win predominantly on GOP turf, in districts that Mitt Romney won and where Obama and his agenda are unpopular. A number of Democrats made clear in interviews that the more partisan posture Obama has adopted over the past few months — particularly on cultural issues like gun control, and to a lesser extent on immigration and gay marriage — is making an uphill slog that much steeper. “I think the tone coming out of the White House … could probably be more conciliatory,” said Jim Graves, a Minnesota Democrat who nearly knocked off Rep. Michele Bachmann last year in a suburban Twin Cities district where Obama barely eclipsed 40 percent. Graves, who’s girding for a rematch against Bachmann next year, added, “There’s no question — Obama has taken a fairly liberal tack in his second term. But I’m not here for the president. I’m here for the people of the 6th Congressional District.” Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/03/some-democrats-look-for-daylight-from-obama-88675.html#ixzz2NH0acdEO
Stephen Colbert has been hitting the campaign trail this week for his sister, Elizabeth Colbert Busch, who is running for South Carolina‘s 1st Congressional District. At a bowling alley stump speech this weekend, the comedian dropped character to give his heartfelt endorsement to Colbert Busch, whom he affectionately called “Lulu.” The glimpse into the real Stephen Colbert (as opposed to “Stephen Colbert“) was a rare treat for the audience, and made its way to the Internet thanks to a YouTube user who attended.
Colbert began the speech by telling the audience, “Some of you may know that I have a television show and not only am I Stephen Colbert, but I play one on TV.” Amid laughter, he became serious and said he had “never actually supported any candidate before.”
“Now obviously Lulu is my sister,” he said. “And if I did not support her, my mother would be very mad.”
To guarantee the will of the people would decide who would govern us our Founding Fathers gave each state the right to apportion its Electoral College votes (ECVs) as it wished.
Democrats don’t really like this because it opens the door to changes that would give people more of a voice in the selection of our presidents. Throughout the last two hundred years, they have often relied on voter fraud to win presidential elections.
The plan calls for an ECV to be awarded to a candidate for each Congressional District he/she wins, thus ending the “winner take all” system which invites fraud in a few districts which is so rampant as to smother the honest votes throughout a state.
This “win the district, win the ECVs” system is entirely legal and is the mirror image (comparing honesty to corruption) of the Democrats’ plan to award ECVs of some states to the winner of the nationwide popular vote. Doing this would mean that California would not even have to bother counting its presidential votes. It could just wait until the results of ballot box stuffing operations in the northeastern states were complete and say, “Here’s our 55 ECVs” to the Democrat candidate.
How things would change.
If this system was in place last November, six states Obama won in spite of being completely controlled by Republicans could have awarded GOP candidate Mitt Romney enough additional ECVs to win by a narrow margin.
The state-by state-differences in Romney’s favor would have been as follows: In Florida +15; Ohio + 12; Michigan + 9; Wisconsin + 5; Virginia + 9 and Pennsylvania +12 for a grand total of 63 new ECVs and a final tally of 273 ECVs.
The chances of this plan being passed in these states are very real. For various reasons, each Republican governor would be eager to sign this clearly Constitutional change into law.
Under this plan the Democrats could continue to win big cities with 112% of the population voting Democrat but not come close to stealing the ECVs of states whose people want a Republican president. If we are ever to regain our freedom, passing this legislation is essential.
