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23 May, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Texas has so many additional taxes that its burden is actually higher than California's for middle-class people.

California's taxes on rich people are significantly higher than Texas. That's actually why GOP commentators whine about CA taxes bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Try this link. I didn't copy the full URL last time bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
This is a very good point. California needs more new housing, and not just in the Palm Springs area
Just as a quick follow-up, California's reliance on high taxes on rich people is why it now has a budget surplus rather than a deficit, despite the pandemic flux.community/conversation/r…

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More from @mattsheffield

Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
25 May
1/x: Charlie Kirk and the Republican Jesus machine

You may not care about the awkward founder of Turning Point USA, but you should be aware of what he has planned for you.

This thread is a summary of @MatthewBoedy's excellent @DiscoverFlux article: flux.community/matthew-boedy/…
Kirk began his career on a lie, claiming to know that he had been rejected by West Point based on affirmative action. He started TPUSA by telling rich, elderly Republicans that he would stop the millennials from becoming socialists. (That didn't exactly work, did it?)
But Kirk did have one important difference in his message from past GOP youth outreach. He correctly understood that Americans, especially young ones, want secular arguments for ideas, not religious ones.

This idea + Kirk's open embrace of trolling, propelled him on campus.
Read 14 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
22 May
1/x: Polls keep showing that Republicans believe objectively false ideas, but have conservatives really lost their grasp on reality or have they decided to just lie about it to pollsters?

Join me for this summary thread or click through to my essay here: flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
American conservatism is based on a modern Christian fundamentalism which believes the Bible is literally and completely true.

This is something everyone, including them, knows to be nonsense. But this realization has psychically damaged conservatives flux.community/matthew-sheffi…
As a result, the far-right is in "epistemic collapse," they know that their arguments are unprovable but they still want to believe.

Michael Flynn's Covid election conspiracy below is a great illustration. He refers to "my truth," not the truth
Read 10 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
21 May
The national press is so obsessed with DC gossip that it mostly ignored the years-long effort to overturn abortion access in the states.

flux.community/fair/julie-hol…
Unfortunately, this keeps happening. Why? Because media executives and editors for NY and DC outlets hold very antiquated views of politics, wrongly supposing that ideas flow from elected officials down to the grassroots. But this is untrue and has been for some time.
I can't tell you how many times people have remarked to me in recent months that they're astonished how quickly the Christian supremacist political insurgency that's unavoidably obvious now was able to assemble.

My response is that this story has been out there for years.
Read 12 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
19 May
ICYMI, RedState is now running articles saying that Marjorie Taylor Greene should be in the House leadership.

It took about four months for a person who's endorsed executing Democrats to start getting endorsements from "mainstream conservative" sites.
Just as an FYI, the "Conservative Review" site mentioned in the original tweet is a vehemently anti-government publication that hates almost all Republicans for not being crazy enough.

But the site has a very curious history. It was started by a Democratic donor.
The man in question, Cary Katz, operated a massive student loan business that made him a billionaire. He worked to make student loans so that they couldn't be discharged in bankruptcy.

But his business evaporated thanks to an obscure provision in the Affordable Care Act.
Read 6 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
16 May
Thread: The disinformation machine you've never heard of, how Christian fundamentalists brainwash millions

A short version of this very important #SundayRead by @anelsona flux.community/anne-nelson/20…
While there has been a lot of attention in recent years devoted to white nationalist and fake news websites, their audiences are dwarfed by Christian fundamentalist media companies.

Almost all of them are linked to a secretive group called the Council for National Policy
These media outlets, which are covered in even greater detail in @anelsona's book "Shadow Network," are constantly promoting a message of Christian supremacism and die-hard Trump fandom to tens of millions of Americans daily bookshop.org/books/shadow-n…
Read 14 tweets
Matthew Sheffield Profile picture
12 May
Thread: Liz Cheney, Trump, and the epistemic collapse of fundamentalism

Liz Cheney was expelled today by House Republicans from their leadership. The defenestration has been rightfully construed as a byproduct of Trumpism in the GOP, which is true, but there's much more to it.
People have observed that Cheney was defrocked for the supposed crime of questioning Trump's election lies, but this is untrue.

Mitch McConnell has repeatedly said as much while also working to block Trump. Cheney's real crime was repeatedly speaking against Trump.
You won't get expelled in Trump's Republican party for disagreeing with him. You'll only get expelled if you do so publicly.

Big Lies are incredibly powerful but they're also incredibly fragile. They crumble at the slightest challenge.
Read 14 tweets

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