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Manchin for President?

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mountaineer:
This is from a newsletter published by a moderate W.Va. Republican, Bill Phillips:
--- Quote ---Manchin For President?

POLITICO's Huddle reports this morning that U. S. Senator Joe Manchin has not ruled out running for President.   The story by Scott Wong is below.

By Scott Wong (swong@politico.com or @scottwongDC)

IF HILLARY PASSES, MANCHIN FOR PRESIDENT? - Sen. Joe Manchin says a 2016 presidential run is "low on the totem pole," but he's not exactly ruling it out.

The West Virginia Democrat, a frequent critic of President Obama and perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the upper chamber, has already endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2016. But if the former secretary of State takes a pass, expect to hear more about the former Mountain State governor - especially with former Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, another possible '16 hopeful from a red state, making some off-color remarks about gays and prostitutes.

Some Twitter accounts have popped up in the past week with the handles @NH4JoeManchin and @Iowa4JoeManchin - though he hasn't made trips to those early primary states. @DraftJoeManchin recently tweeted: "We think that Joe Manchin is the most gifted leader and the most unifying leader we could elect as our next President."

"It's very flattering. The bottom line is people are searching for somebody who's willing to fix things rather than talk about them," Manchin told your Huddle host on Tuesday. "It's something I haven't given an awful lot of thought about. I've been working hard trying to get [the Senate] to work. It's a shame. It really is a shame. It's a great country, and we have a lot of good people here, but somehow politics has trumped policy.

Told that Manchin's politics would probably be too conservative to win his party's nomination, he replied: "My politics are about as middle of the road and American as you can get. I keep saying I'm fiscally responsible and socially compassionate, and I think most Americans are."

A more likely scenario is that Manchin -- frustrated with Senate gridlock -- will run for the governor's mansion again in 2016. But is a presidential bid completely off the table? "I would think it's low on the totem pole," he said.

Those who've worked closely with Manchin say he's a talented politician who is beloved in his home state, even if he's far from a household name on a national level.

"I don't speak for Sen. Manchin, but if Secretary Clinton decides not to run the field will be as wide open as the Grand Canyon," said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis, who served as Manchin's first chief of staff in his Senate office. "At that point, with his retail politicking skills, Manchin could make a real run against more mortal and less seasoned politicians.

"If she runs," Kofinis added, "it's almost impossible to see the realistic path how anyone on the Dem side beats her in a primary."

--- End quote ---
We officially have passed into Bizarro World. Manchin is a dolt.

mountaineer:
If he really gets serious about this, I'm going to blame him personally for his daughter's actions in moving an American corporation overseas, while whining about the American tax system her father has done nothing to reform (while claiming to be such a conservative, pro-business Democrat).
--- Quote ---Reluctantly, Patriot Flees Homeland for Greener Tax Pastures
By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
NY Times
 July 14, 2014 9:20 pmJuly 15, 2014 9:37 am 


Heather Bresch grew up around politics. Her father is Joe Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia and a former governor. She has heard him say repeatedly, “We live in the greatest country on Earth,” as he did in countless political advertisements. And it appeared to rub off on her: Ms. Bresch was named a “Patriot of the Year” in 2011 by Esquire magazine for helping to push through the F.D.A. Safety Innovation Act.

Ms. Bresch is the chief executive of Mylan, the giant maker of generic drugs.

Until now, Ms. Bresch ran an unabashedly proud American company based in a Pittsburgh-area suburb, one of a handful of success stories that kept the once-thriving steel city relevant.

But on Monday, Ms. Bresch announced plans to renounce her company’s United States citizenship and instead become a company incorporated in the Netherlands, where the tax rates are lower. She did so by agreeing to acquire Abbott Laboratories’ European generic drug business.

The deal is just the latest example of a so-called inversion — in this case, it’s actually called a “spinversion” — and may be the most surprising of such deals given Ms. Bresch’s family background.

Ms. Bresch says she entered the deal reluctantly, and she genuinely seems to mean it.

If Ms. Bresch’s deal is not a call to Washington to address what is clearly a growing trend that it has remained nearly silent on, the nation will most likely continue to lose large employers and taxpayers in droves to countries with lower tax rates. Almost 20 large United States companies have announced plans to give up their United States citizenship over the last two years. Just on Monday, the Irish drug maker Shire cleared the way for a merger with AbbVie, the drug maker based in Chicago, and Walgreen is considering an inversion through a deal with Alliance Boots, a European drugstore chain.

“It’s not like I’ve not been vocal and up there talking to anybody who’d listen to me,” Ms. Bresch told me in an interview about the crusade she had been on in Washington for years, talking to lawmakers about overhauling the corporate tax code to make United States companies more competitive. “But you know what they all say? ‘Yeah, uh huh, O.K. Uh huh.’ ”

She added: “We were one of the last ones in our sector to do this. So it’s not like I was blazing the trail. If you put on your business hat, you can’t maintain competitiveness by staying at a competitive disadvantage. I mean you just can’t. The odds are just not in your favor.”

She’s right about her competitors. Teva Pharmaceutical Products, which is based in Israel, and Actavis, which is now based in Ireland after a tax-driven acquisition of Warner Chilcott in 2013, pay much less in taxes.

Still, there’s something morally disconcerting about a company like Mylan, which is a beneficiary of United States taxpayers who pay for Mylan’s drugs through Medicaid and Medicare, leaving the country, in part, to pay less in taxes. (Ms. Bresch insists that the merger is being driven mostly by its strategic merits, and that the lower tax rate is just an added benefit.)

How much less will Mylan pay?

Ms. Bresch, who said the company’s current effective tax rate is about 25 percent, said the rate would come down to 21 percent in the first year of the deal and then move into the high teens after three to five years. Mylan will continue to pay taxes in the United States on its domestic profits, but not on its business operations abroad.

All of which raises an important question: Even if the United States were to revamp its corporate tax code, how low would the rate have to drop to be competitive and still raise enough revenue to pay for the services that citizens expect?

President Obama has proposed a top corporate rate of 28 percent, and a rate of 25 percent for manufacturers. However, that number would appear to be too high to hold on to the likes of Ms. Bresch. Even 20 percent — some Republicans have floated that number — might still be too high.

This tax-rate arbitrage among global companies creates a race to the bottom as countries try to outcompete one another until the rate becomes zero, a number that many shareholders might be thrilled about, but would be unlikely to produce enough money for the Treasury’s coffers. There have been proposals to curb inversions, but those are only short-term solutions.

When I raised the prospect that Mylan would still leave even if United States tax rates were lowered somewhat, Ms. Bresch stopped me.

“Well, I don’t think you can say that,” she said. “I would step back and say our starting point today is 35, right?” She added: “I can’t say as a starting rate what’s enough or not enough until you honestly are able to sit down and look at a holistic proposal because everything from manufacturing, physical assets, depending on how they would reform this in entirety, would be how it applies, regardless of what that starting point is.”

Ms. Bresch doesn’t appear hopeful about tax reform.

“Obama had the wherewithal to muscle through an entire health care reorganization, right?” she pointed out. “Like it, don’t like it, whatever. This tax reform is even, in my opinion, on a larger scale than that because it’s a global economy.” She added, “Our government, right or wrong, has taken the viewpoint of, ‘We’re not negotiating.’ It is what it is. I think that standoffish mentality around tax has now continued to compound and complicate this issue.”

But Ms. Bresch is even more nervous about the larger implications: “You know what makes me want to cry? I think whoever the next Facebook is, why would you ever start that company here in the United States?”

That’s tough love from the daughter of a United States senator, who learned of the deal on Monday for the first time.

So what does he think of the deal?

“I am always disappointed when American companies feel the need to move overseas because of the U.S. tax code,” Senator Manchin told me in a statement. “However, this decision is systemic of a larger problem with our corporate tax code that puts American companies at a disadvantage with their global competitors. Since the day I arrived in the Senate, I have been advocating for a complete overhaul of our tax system, and I will continue to work with my colleagues on ways to reform our tax code so we are competitive in a global market, and companies that manufacture and sell their products in America stay in America.”

So far, that’s much easier said than done.

--- End quote ---
**nononono*

Relic:
He's too white, too male.

Today's Americans see that as evil x 2.

truth_seeker:
My fear for centrist dems, is they would become beholden to their partisan contributors, like government employee interests. And Carter ran as a centrist, but governed as an incompetent liberal.

Joe Manchin would surely destroy Cruz, if they met on the 2016 Potus ballot, as would virtually any democrat.

mountaineer:

--- Quote from: truth_seeker on July 16, 2014, 05:09:04 pm ---Joe Manchin would surely destroy Cruz, if they met on the 2016 Potus ballot, as would virtually any democrat.

--- End quote ---
Manchin is corrupt, a drunk and has kissed Obama's ring (his "moderate" protestations notwithstanding), and he isn't fooling anyone. I don't know why you brought up Cruz, as he wasn't mentioned in the article, but I'm not as sanguine Mojo could beat him.

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