Monday, November 20, 2017
Rigged Election: Bannon and Manafort "knew" which swing states Trump would win
Major Development in Trump/Russia investigation
Sunday, November 19, 2017
"Shirtless" Roy Moore trolled for teens at the YMCA--local voters laughed about it
'Shirtless' Roy Moore tried to pick up teens at YMCA — and local voters 'treated it like a joke': report
Saturday, November 18, 2017
Here's the math of the GOP tax plan -- Read it and Weep
Like the Claude Rains policeman character in Casablanca, "I'm shocked! Shocked!..." that Republicans want to raise taxes on the middle class and enrich the wealthy. GOP voters remain oblivious and continue to vote against their own interests.
If McConnell and Ryan manage to pass this brutal hit-against-the-struggling classes in our country, we will need to hold a funeral for our democratic republic. The corporate world reigns. Say goodbye to ObamaCare. Medicare will be next to go. That is the GOP plan. With the insanity that Trump, the GOP, and Company have wrought upon this nation and upon the world, we should all be out marching in the streets every day in protest!!!! I am angry at our Congressional Democrat representatives who are so mealy-mouthed that they will back down on EVERYTHING -- and that includes Obama's 8 years of bending over backwards. Our only hope is that Bob Mueller will ASAP take down the entire Trump tribe and the GOP along with it. If our nation, world -- and planet -- are to survive, we HAVE to START OVER with a brand new slate. First on the agenda should be the environment and global warming!!!!
The Shocking Math of the Republican Tax Plan
The New Yorker, November 17, 2017
If it gives us nothing else positive, the Republican tax plan—and, in its Senate form, the health-care repeal—at least provides clarity. There is no debate. The middle class will, in the long run, pay more in taxes than under current law, and the rich will pay less. For a brief moment last week, there did seem to be space for discussion, in the form of a disagreement between the centrist and highly regarded Tax Policy Center and the Tax Foundation, a pro-business group that is generally seen as more biased. Even if poorly matched, having two groups with similar, boring names set the stage for the appearance of a two-handed tax debate. One side says it helps the rich, hurts everyone else, and will lead to a bigger deficit; the other side says the opposite. Our media and political system has long viewed economic policy—and, especially, taxation—as the equivalent of "American Idol." There is a group of judges, loudly disagreeing, and the home audience can pick whichever side they like, based on whatever criteria they have. In past tax-news cycles (2001, 1993, 1990, 1986 . . . ), there were enough serious, respected economists on both sides to make it seem like there was a real, substantive fight over the impact of taxes on jobs and economic growth. (While each individual economist appears to know everything with certainty, as a group, they are surprisingly unsure of the impact of taxes on a nation's well-being. However, most surveys of economists suggest that virtually none accept the simplistic notion that raising taxes on the rich will cripple an economy.)
Surely, we will have other debates in the future with thoughtful arguments on every side. But not this time. The numbers are in and it's clear: this tax bill helps the rich and hurts everybody else. Just ask the very people who wrote it. The U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation is run by the chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee—Representative Kevin Brady and Senator Orrin Hatch, respectively. The Joint Committee's reports of this week make startling reading, or as startling as a series of spreadsheets of tax revenue data can be. The report shows that this bill is much like a teaser rate on a new credit card: there are some goodies in the first couple of years, but those disappear fairly quickly, at least for those below the median income. In 2019, the first full year that this bill would be law, the benefits are concentrated on the bottom of the income stream, with middle-class people, on average, paying just under ten per cent less in taxes than they would if the law weren't passed. With each passing year the benefits shift upward, toward the rich. By 2021, those making between twenty thousand and thirty thousand dollars a year are paying considerably more in taxes, those between thirty thousand and two hundred thousand see their benefit shrinking, and those making more start to see their taxes falling. By 2027, every income level below seventy-five thousand dollars a year sees a tax increase, while everybody above that level sees a continued decrease, with the greatest cut in taxes accruing to those making more than a million dollars a year.
The report shows that the rich benefit and the poor are hurt in every way that it measures. For example, the effective tax rate—meaning the percentage that people, on average, actually pay after they take all deductions—changes in a precisely regressive form. The poorer you are, the higher your effective rate will rise. By 2027, only those making a hundred thousand a year or more will see an actual cut in their effective tax rate. And, as could be expected by now, the more they make, the greater the cut in their effective rate. By 2025, there is a direct transfer of money from the poor to the rich and corporations. This is not a flaw but the whole point, Harvard's Martin Feldstein argues. Feldstein is, arguably, the single most widely respected Republican-leaning scholar of tax policy, and one of the few academics who came out in favor of the bill, in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. His defense, though, should not give much comfort to the bill's proponents. He argues that cutting individual tax rates won't increase economic growth and will add to the deficit—which, he acknowledges, is a bad thing. But he's so excited about the corporate tax-rate cut that he thinks the bill should pass nonetheless. This is an odd stance, since the corporate rate cuts are about a third the size of the individual cuts.
That is the state of debate on this current bill. Its most respected defender acknowledges that three-quarters of the benefit are a wasted, harmful gift for the rich, but a quarter of the benefit goes to corporations, and we must assume they will spend it wisely.
Monday, November 13, 2017
Trump Tax Plan dumps on the middle class -- and benefits the wealthiest. So what else is new?
Selling the Trump-Republican tax plan should be awkward for an administration that has made patriotism its central theme.
That's because patriotism isn't mostly about saluting the flag and standing during the national anthem.
It's about taking a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.
But the tax plan gives American corporations a $2 trillion tax break, at a time when they're enjoying record profits and stashing unprecedented amounts of cash in offshore tax shelters.
And it gives America's wealthiest citizens trillions more, when the richest 1 percent now hold a record 38.6 percent of the nation's total wealth, up from 33.7 percent a decade ago.
The reason Republicans give for enacting the plan is "supply-side" trickle-down nonsense. The real reason is payback to the GOP's mega-donors.
A few Republicans are starting to admit this. Last week, Gary Cohn, Trump's lead economic advisor, conceded in an interview that "the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan."
Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted that "my donors are basically saying, 'Get it done or don't ever call me again.'"
Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass tax reform, "the financial contributions will stop."
Republican mega-donors view the tax payback as they do any other investment. When they bankrolled Trump and the GOP, they expected a good return.
The biggest likely beneficiaries are busily investing an additional $43 million to pressure specific members of Congress to pass it, according to The Wall Street Journal.
They include the 45Committee, founded by billionaire casino oligarch Sheldon Adelson and Joe Ricketts, owner of the Chicago Cubs; and the Koch Brothers' groups, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners.
They're not doing this out of love of America. They're doing it out of love of money.
How do you think they got so wealthy in the first place?
As more of the nation's wealth has shifted to the top over the past three decades, major recipients have poured some of it into politics – buying themselves tax cuts, special subsidies, bailouts, lenient antitrust enforcement, favorable bankruptcy rules, extended intellectual property protection, and other laws that add to their wealth.
All of which have given them more clout to get additional legal changes that enlarge their wealth even more.
Forty years ago, the estate tax was paid by 139,000 estates, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. By 2000, it was paid by 52,000. This year it will be paid by just 5,500 estates. Under the House tax plan, it will be eliminated altogether.
Why do Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of every other advanced economy? Because Big Pharma has altered the laws in its favor. Why do we pay more for internet service than most other nations? Big cable's political clout. Why can payday lenders get away with payday robbery? The political heft of big banks.
Multiply these examples across the economy and you get a huge hidden upward redistribution from the paychecks of average working people and the poor to top executives and investors. (I explain this in detail in the documentary "Saving Capitalism," airing next week on Netflix.)
All this is terrible for the American economy.
More and better jobs depend on increasing demand for goods and services. This must come from the middle class and poor because the rich spend a far smaller share of their after-tax income.
Yet the middle class and poor have steadily lost purchasing power. Partly as a result, a relatively low share of the nation's working-age population is employed today and the wages of the typical worker have been stuck in the mud.
The Republican tax plan will make all this worse by burdening the middle class and the poor even more.
A slew of analyses, including Congress's own Joint Committee on Taxation, show that the GOP plan will raise taxes on many middle-class families.
It will also require cuts in government programs that middle and lower-income Americans depend on, such as Medicare and Medicaid.
And the plan will almost certainly explode the national debt, eventually causing many middle class and poor families to pay higher interest on their auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards.
I don't care whether the top executives of big corporations, Wall Street moguls, and heirs to vast fortunes salute the flag and stand for the national anthem.
But they enjoy all the advantages of being American. Most couldn't have got to where they are in any other country.
They have a patriotic duty to take on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going. And Trump and his enablers in Congress have a patriotic responsibility to make them.