> Heck, I was a part of an utterly failed project with a $150m budget (in 2005), in a large European company
Was it a just a somewhat complex CRUD app like the SSA example or most govt IT projects? Or were you guys trying for something more complicated and innovative and failed?
It was an ERP application from a large three-letter European company. In other words, a CRUD app with lots of UI forms. Nothing innovative or particularly interesting.
The hardware to deploy it was alone a couple of million. At least, I got to play with some rather cool gear (for that time).
This feels like the "only Democrats have agency" story, where Republicans are somehow never to blame because they're just toddlers or forces of nature, while Democrats are always at fault because they didn't stop the Republicans from burning the house down or clean up all the poop from the carpets or whatever, in an endless and impossible race.
By your logic, Republicans didn't fix it because they didn't want to either! Why was that? Partisan vengeance against California?
> That wasn't a clean bill
Well, that one happens to be a bill from a Republican, I was just looking for ones that affected that tax-provision.
In any case, did you check out the table-of-contents, and not just the page-length? It may not be as minimal-as-possible, but it's all tax-related stuff.
> This feels like the "only Democrats have agency" story
Because only Democrats had agency when the law took effect? The president can veto any bill. Democrats passed two bills in 2021 and 2022 with zero Republican votes, zero, they could've easily included the repeal in those bills if they wanted to. They didn't coz they didn't want to, their stated policy is to raise taxes on corporations, how is this even debatable? Meanwhile the Republicans at that time had no agency. Once they got agency, they repealed it immediately, with zero Democrat votes.
Would you similarly blame the Democrats for all voting against the repeal as part of the BBB that just passed? You wouldn't and your reason would be "but the BBB contained a lot of other things apart from this repeal that the dems didn't like". Why won't you apply the same logic to the non-clean bill you brought up?
> By your logic, Republicans didn't fix it because they didn't want to either! Why was that? Partisan vengeance against California?
Huh, they fixed it immediately after coming to power. They couldn't fix it before the BBB because it needed to go in reconciliation because the dems don't suppor the repeal. They didn't fix it in 2019 because it wasn't even in effect yet and IIRC dems had the house. So how does the partisan vengeance allegation even make any sense?
What evidence led you to that conclusion? It feels like there's some Fundamental Attribution Error [1] going on here, where Republicans are getting a free-pass for the pain they created "because there were circumstances" (which is true) but somehow Democrats failing to remove the pain is automatically "because they wanted it that way."
I already shared some opposing evidence, that Republican-sponsored Senate bill with a repeal in it that still garnered strong (but not unanimous) Democratic support.
Here's another: Section-174 relief was originally included in the 2021 "Build Back Better" act, but--due to those tight partisan vote margins--a particular conservative-leaning Democrat (who later left the party!) decided to prevent it [0]:
> With the Build Back Better Act (BBBA) being all but dead in the Senate after Joe Manchin’s unexpected rejection of the bill, concerns remain high regarding the future of Section 174 of the Internal Revenue Code. [...] But, with Senator Manchin’s refusal to support the BBBA, the legislation is now on its last breath, although the Biden administration remains optimistic that there is a chance of getting a modified version of the bill passed.
They controlled the Senate and the Presidency, and never allowed a clean bill(one introduced by Marco Rubio which was killed in the Dem controlled Senate committee) that restored the exception to come to vote. The Republicans came to power and immediately restored it, with zero Democrat votes.
> I think it's not as clear cut as "the Democrats" or "the Republicans" here-- especially since there would probably be a requirement that the shortfall be made up in some other way in order to balance the effects on revenue
For the 10th time in this thread, the repealing bill DID NOT need to be revenue neutral since it had Republican support, all it needed was 60 votes in the Senate. Reconciliation only applies if a yearly budget bill can get at least 51 votes but not 60.
Sorry, I feel like I am taking crazy pills. I stated the same in another comment and was downvoted. I know HN is liberal biased but it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
> it's becoming unusable if you as much dare to criticize democrats.
Is this situation right now really "unusable"? Aren't you overreacting just a tad? People might disagree with you, I'd hope you'd be able to have a conversation without getting upset.
Quite literally unusable because I got blocked by HN from commenting for more than two hours coz of all the politically motivated downvotes. If you have the right politics, keep commenting!
> I'd hope you'd be able to have a conversation
See above, literally not able to have one because I dared to criticize Democrats for their actions and inactions that led to tech job losses for over two years.
> People might disagree with you
I'm open to arguments but looks like people disagree with the facts that I am bringing forward, so they're downvoting to suppress them to lower visibility and to discourage me from participating on here.
It's like on Reddit when you state a plain fact 'Musk founded SpaceX' in reply to a highly upvoted comment that said 'Musk bought all this companies' and get heavily downvoted and even permanently banned in large subs by highly biased moderators.
This place is turning into yet another BlueSky or Reddit where facts don't matter and only a one sided political narrative is pushed at all times. Don't think it's worth engaging. I don't want to be in a place where my comments are deemed so terrible that I get max downvoted and then unable to comment for several hours.
Ironically, such controlling behavior and shutting down of facts, criticism of one side and conversation is leading more and more people to vote for the other side. I am now ashamed of being a lifelong liberal and won't vote democrat till people change this obnoxious partisan behavior on platforms like this one.
So your opinions are unpopular and people are tired of responding to the same points over and over again?
Hacker News is far from a bastion of left wingers, many people have complained about liberal and progressive ideas being downvoted as well. Above all, this platform isn't made for political debate, and it is not encouraged. If it makes you feel better, not a single one of my posts in all this has much or any upvotes. If you are looking for political validation, this ain't the place for it.
> people are tired of responding to the same points over and over again
For example, not a single person has addressed the fact that that the Democrats platform is to raise taxes on corporations, which this change accomplished during their watch. So I have to keep bringing it up. People are downvoting facts that they don't like, for political reasons and to reduce visibility.
Anyway you're right, this is not worth my time or effort. There is no open exchange of facts or ideas, it's just party line downvoting to suppress them. It's best not to engage at all, just like all the others with alternate viewpoints that stopped engaging on here. That's what the downvoters want anyway, they win. The only way I can possibly make a difference to combat this behavior is changing how I vote at the ballot box.
I actually addressed that in an edit to a parent post:
> [Deductions on] research and development is one of the main reasons taxation on higher income classes is effective: The idea is you'll be taxed if you want to take it as profit, but if you advance the state of the art, innovate, or create new technology then you can deduct that. The high tax rates of the US post WWII up to Reagan worked so well because of this combination: It was incentivized for businesses to reinvest their profits into R&D, since they'd hopefully be able to scale their profits if the R&D was successful.
Not sure how it addresses the fact that Democrats want higher taxes on corporations regardless of what you stated, hence they didn't act to stop this on their watch. You're just arguing that Democrats were wrong to let the R&D exception expire, which I already agree with.
Even after this recent change by Republicans, increasing corporate taxes(say after the 2028 elections if Democrats are elected) means there is less money leftover to spend on R&D.
> increasing corporate taxes(say after the 2028 elections if Democrats are elected) means there is less money leftover to spend on R&D.
You misunderstand how tax exemptions work.
When you make money, you need to pay taxes on that money. However, if you spend that money in certain ways, the tax code lets you take that amount of money and _deduct_ it from your overall taxable income. Thus, you pay taxes on _less_ of the money you earned. Imagine the tax rate was 100%, but you could deduct 100% of R&E expenses, and you spent 100% of your income on R&E. You would pay zero dollars in taxes.
> Imagine the tax rate was 100%, but you could deduct 100% of R&E expenses, and you spent 100% of your income on R&E. You would pay zero dollars in taxes.
No. The Democrats added a new minimum corporate tax last time they were in power. As I have to keep repeating, their policies and actions are all about taxing companies more which why they didn't repeal the R&D exemption removal. They consider it a tax loophole that companies abuse to pay less taxes.
Kamala's proposal was to increase the minimum corporate further.
No need to repeat yourself. Why are you getting so worked up? I think we'd all like to understand what the hold up was on these bills, but let's base that in supported facts, not partisanship.
As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference.
Two bills were passed with zero Republican votes in 2021 and 2022 by Democrats, the repeal could've been included in either if democrats wanted.
> As stated above, it was 14 to 13 by party lines in this committee, and that's a negligible difference
There were only 27 members in the committee. So all the Democrats on the committee voted against the repeal and all the republicans voted for the repeal.
How is that a negligible difference? That's a massive maximum difference between the parties, in fact it was impossible to have a higher difference.
Do you have the voting records of this bill in committee? Of course there were 27 members, that's the sum of the Democrats and Republicans. That does not mean that they voted on party lines in committee.
I have no problem blaming them. The biggest problem with Democrats is that they cede all their power to Republicans, and don't seem to use the power they have when they have it. You can have the best policy positions ever but you still suck if you can't capitalize on wins.
But the Republicans made this change to start with. That's a lot of blame. And if they did it just to create a political firestorm against Democrats later (which is exactly what they did), do we (A) recognize that politicians shouldn't be using Americans as cannon fodder to damage their political enemies or (B) blame their political enemies?
Dems were elected to undo damage. They chose not to because their platform is higher taxes on corporations and high earners, and ended up creating the tech downturn on their watch. Republicans came in and immediately reversed it with zero Democrats support.
Both sides are the same, Republicans destroy things and Democrats are not perfect in stopping and fixing them! "I am gonna support Republicans as they create problems and then blame Democrats" just makes you someone who intentionally creates problems.
Dems had the chance to fix it and intentionally did not. Republicans did it immediately once they had the chance. If Dems weren't elected in 2020 we'd have plenty of tech jobs now. Their fault, full stop. If Kamala was elected, her platform was even higher corporate taxes.
It had Republican support so it would've gotten the 60 votes in Senate without needing to get reconciliation. It didn't even get a vote because the Democrats stopped it from proceeding with their control of the Senate. Their policy is all about higher taxes on corporation and high income individuals so it tracks.
> That is a bit of a jump. It wasn’t too long ago we had the Republicans vote against their own bill.
There was no way for the Republicans to stop a bill from coming to vote. And there were multiple republican co-sponsors or even bills introduced by them to repeal the provisions. It didn't even get to a vote because the dems killed the efforts. They like higher corporate taxes so it tracks, they didn't care about the damage caused. Once the Repulicans were able to repeal it on their own, they immediately did it ASAP.
> It’s tempting to view this as “support”, but a simpler explanation is that it was just pragmatic to wait one additional day for the incoming administration to carry out enforcement actions
The Biden administration was specifically looking for ways to keep TikTok running during the last days.
Only 25% of Democrats want TikTok banned vs 38% of republicans, it's the opposite of a coup with the President siding with the opposing party. Politicians of all colors are reading the room. Not hearing Democrat politicians calling for an immediate TikTok ban.
Is lack of federal enforcement of anti-marijuana laws a coup too?
Not sure if the GP was talking about what people want or what Congresspeople want. If the former, that's not really indicative of much. Congress often doesn't pass laws based on what a majority of their constituents want, but based on their own interests (or the interests of their financial backers).
Congress can pass a bill immediately removing the TikTok exception and also criminalizing the App store.
Are even Democrats calling for TikTok to be immediately banned? All this feels so bizarre as how something that absolutely no one in real life wants being heavily pushed for talking points.
Was it a just a somewhat complex CRUD app like the SSA example or most govt IT projects? Or were you guys trying for something more complicated and innovative and failed?