Read About The Tarbaby Story under the Category: About the Tarbaby Blog
“It looks just like a movie.” Wildfires have spread to 31,000 acres in California
Latest updates: http://cnn.it/2BJpCt9
"It looks just like a movie." Wildfires have spread to 31,000 acres in CaliforniaLatest updates: http://cnn.it/2BJpCt9
Posted by CNN on Tuesday, December 5, 2017
Joe Roberts for Metro.co.uk December 2, 2017
Katrin Jakobsdottir becomes Iceland’s new PM after a snap election (Picture: AP)
Iceland’s new prime minister is a 41-year-old anti-war feminist, democratic socialist, who is also an expert on crime literature. Katrin Jakobsdottir plans to make the small island nation a world-leader in fighting climate change.
Her Left-Green Movement will lead a coalition government with two parties across the political spectrum in the hope it gives Iceland some ‘stability’. The country has been rocked by a cycle of scandals that have triggered three elections in the past four years. A snap election was called by former PM Bjarni Benediktsson in September over a furore caused by his father suggesting a paedophile, who repeatedly raped his stepdaughter for 12 years, should have his ‘honour restored’.
Her Left-Green party will form a coalition with two parties from across the political spectrum (Picture: AFP)
Jakobsdottir campaigned on a platform of restoring trust in government (Picture: Reuters)
Less than a year earlier, Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson stepped aside as prime minister amid public fury over the Panama Papers revealing his family had sheltered money in offshore tax havens. In an attempt to break with the past, Jakobsdottir campaigned on a platform of restoring trust in government and leveraged a boom in tourism to increase public spending.
‘It is important that we try to change the way we work together,’ she said announcing the coalition on Thursday. ‘This agreement strikes a new chord.’ Jakobsdottir comes from a family of prominent poets, and before getting into politics, she studied literature with a special interest in Icelandic crime novels.
Katrin Jakobsdottir becomes one of the world’s youngest leaders (Picture: EPA) She is now among the world’s youngest leaders.
Jakobsdottir’s cabinet will be comprised of three members of her Left-Green party, five from the right-wing Independence Party and three from the Progressive Party. ‘In the new government, parties spanning the political spectrum from left to right intend to establish a new tone,’ a statement issued by the new prime minister’s office said.
Today, Trump will announce the fate of national monuments in Utah. For some, it could offer hope and new jobs. Others fear their history being wiped out. http://cnn.it/2kkD8Ps
Decision day looms for Utah hills and their people
Today, President Donald J. Trump will announce the fate of national monuments in Utah. For some, it could offer hope and new jobs. Others fear their history being wiped out. http://cnn.it/2kkD8Ps
Posted by CNN on Monday, December 4, 2017
Matthew Daly, Associated Press December 3, 2017
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rarely unified, Senate Democrats stood together in opposing the GOP revamp of the tax code despite the traditional popularity of tax cuts and warnings from President Donald Trump and Republicans about the political cost in next year’s midterm elections.
White House dinners, trips aboard Air Force One and even threats from Trump during campaign stops in their states were not enough to sway Democrats who rejected the nearly $1.5 trillion tax bill early Saturday. Lawmakers voting against the bill included 10 vulnerable Democrats from states Trump won last year, some handily.
When Trump took office 10 months ago, moderate Democrats such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and others were widely expected to break with their party and side with the Republican president.
But on Trump’s top two legislative priorities — taxes and dismantling former President Barack Obama’s health care law — Democrats unanimously rebuffed the GOP president despite his derision.
Trump said Saturday, “We got no Democrat help and I think that’s going to cost them in the election because they voted against tax cuts. I don’t think politically it’s good to vote against tax cuts.”
Democrats argued that the unpopularity of the tax bill with its deep cuts for business and the wealthy and modest changes for many Americans made their votes relatively easy. Multiple polls show the tax bill is supported by less than 40 percent of voters. And Democrats recall a painful political lesson: In 2010, Democrats backed the unpopular health care bill and lost their House majority months later.
“My Republican friends must know that ‘we needed to notch a political win’ isn’t a good enough excuse for a constituent who asks why you voted to raise their taxes but slash them for big corporations,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said Friday.
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, who was singled out for criticism by Trump at a campaign-style event in Missouri this past week, said her vote against the tax bill — and Trump — “is not risky as long as I do the hard work in making sure Missourians understand what’s in the bill.”
Trump went to her state “and told Missourians something that just wasn’t true,” McCaskill said. “This bill is not helping teachers and police officers and construction workers. This bill is helping wealthy people, and he is among the people it is helping.”
Schumer hasn’t had to do a lot of arm twisting with a caucus whose politics range from liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to Manchin, according to a senior aide. Democrats said they had reasons enough to oppose the GOP bill, which while slashing tax rates for corporations and the wealthy adds more than $1 trillion to the national debt.
“It’s a horrible bill,” said Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, one of the vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in a state Trump won easily.
A third-generation farmer, Tester said if he imposed debt on his family farm at a rate similar to the tax bill, “my kids would go broke.”
Hours before the final vote, Tester released a video on Twitter showing him with a copy of the 479-page tax bill he had been handed minutes before. One page was filled with scribbled policy changes that Tester said he could not be read.
“This is Washington, D.C., at its worst,” he complained.
Heitkamp, who is seeking a second term next year, said the bill’s toll on the national debt made her vote easy.
“The risk is for the fiscal responsibility for this country,” she said. “We all owe a much higher debt — not to a political party or a re-election, but to the people of this country.”
Manchin, who like Heitkamp was considered for a job in Trump’s Cabinet, said he told Trump he wanted to “get to yes” on the tax bill but could not support the bill as drafted by GOP leaders.
“Millionaires, billionaires and gazillionaires should not have tax breaks,” Manchin said in an interview. “That’s what the president told me: It was not going to be for the rich. Well, the bill I have in front of me is not the bill that he talked about” at a White House dinner in September.
Republicans looking to unseat Democrats next year were ready with their criticism.
Rep. Luke Messer, one of several Indiana Republicans seeking to challenge Democratic Sen. Joe Donnelly, said Donnelly’s opposition to the bill showed he votes with his party’s leadership to block the president’s agenda.
“Once again, it looks like Sen. Donnelly has made his choice, siding with Chuck Schumer over Hoosiers,” Messer said in an argument that is likely to be used against other Democratic incumbents.
Donnelly said the Senate bill “would result in a tax hike for millions of middle-class families while giving a tax cut to the top 1 percent.”
Rep. Lou Barletta, a Pennsylvania Republican who is seeking to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Casey, said he was surprised Casey opposed the bill in a state where Trump narrowly won last year.
“Blue-collar Democrats in Pennsylvania voted for Donald Trump because they want to see him do exactly what he’s doing now: allowing them to have more money in their pocket, making sure businesses they work at stay here in Pennsylvania and stopping illegal immigrants who compete for their jobs and depress their wages,” Barletta said.
Casey called the GOP plan “an insult” to middle-class families in Pennsylvania who will pay more in taxes “while the super-rich and big corporations get a windfall. It’s obscene.”
Associated Press writer Alan Fram contributed to this report.
Check out Michael Phelan’s SocialSecurityWorks.org
The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a “Federal Benefit Payment.” This isn’t a benefit. It is our money paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes.
If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that’s close to $180,000 invested in Social Security.
If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you’d have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved!
This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you’d receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month.
That’s almost three times more than today’s average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it’s a fact).
And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you’re 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts.
Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger “Ponzi scheme” than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn’t have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. And they didn’t pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they’ve told us that the money won’t support us for very much longer.
But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they’re calling it a “benefit”, as if we never worked to earn every penny of it.
Just because they borrowed the money doesn’t mean that our investments were a charity!
Let’s take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government.
Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it.
Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income.
Noah Lanard December 2, 2017
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tells reporters “we have the votes,” as he walks to the Senate chamber on Friday. J. Scott Applewhite/AP
Just before 2 AM Saturday morning, Senate Republicans passed the most sweeping tax legislation in 30 years. The final version of the three-week-old bill was not released until four hours before the vote. There have been no hearings on the bill and none of the bipartisanship seen during the last major tax overhaul in 1986.
The bill, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, is projected to add more than $1 trillion in deficit spending over 10 years, but passed a Republican caucus that spent the Obama years obsessed over the national debt. There was just one dissenter in the party, Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee. The final vote was 51 in favor, 49 against, with all the Democrats and Corker voting no.
There were a smattering of last-minute changes tucked into the nearly 500-page bill, but the core of it is quite simple: a permanent tax cut for corporations combined with much smaller, and temporary, benefits for everyone else. Over the next decade, the $1.4 trillion tax cut would disproportionately reward the wealthiest Americans while piling on the national debt—which in turn will likely be used by Republicans as a justification for cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
The House, which already passed its own tax bill last month, and the Senate are expected to work out the differences between their bills in conference meetings. Then each chamber would vote again, and send the final product to President Donald Trump’s desk for his signature. Trump hopes to sign what he has called his “big, beautiful Christmas present” to the American people by the end of the year.
Before the individual cuts expire in 2026—ending the bill’s most charitable years—the top 1 percent would receive slightly more of the tax cut than the bottom 60 percent of Americans combined. Without the individual tax cut, the top 1 percent would get start getting 61 percent of the benefits. And at that point, the vast majority of middle-class taxpayers would receive essentially nothing, or end up paying higher taxes.
Republicans say they’ll eventually extend those individual cuts. But there is good reason to doubt that. The United States will be facing unprecedented debt levels when it comes time to renew the cuts. The annual deficit would be $1.4 trillionin 2025, up from about $700 billion today. The Senate bill asks Americans to trust that a future Congress, comprised of different members, will continue to ignore deficits.
While the Republicans have waffled in their concern for the national debt, the bill shows that they have steadfastly committed to trickle-down economics. Focusing on the corporate tax cuts, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has said the average family would see their income jump by up to $7,000 per year as businesses pass on their windfall. Tax experts have called this forecasting “absolutely crazy,” “absurd,” and “deeply flawed.” On Thursday, Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation found that the bill would add $1 trillion in deficit-spending over 10 years even after taking into account economic growth. But Republican leaders continue to maintain that the bill would pay for itself—despite there being almost no economists who agree with that assessment.
This all begs the question of why Republicans are pushing a trillion dollar corporate tax cut at this particular moment. Corporate profits are near record highs, the rich are richer than they’ve been since the Great Depression, and the incomes of average Americans are in a four-decade slump. Tax reform could have eased that hardship by expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit or making working-class families eligible for Republicans’ expanded Child Tax Credit.
Adding to congressional Republicans’ dubious claims about the fantastical benefits of the bill is the president himself. Trump has regularly claimed that he will not personally benefit from the tax plan. That is almost certainly false. The president, and his children, likely stand to gain tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars. But, conveniently for Trump, it is impossible to know for sure without seeing his tax returns.
So why are Republicans are in such a rush to pass a bill that just 25 percent of Americans approve of? For one, there seems to be fear that the bill will only get more unpopular if subjected to further scrutiny. And then there are the donors. “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,’” Rep. Chris Collins said earlier this month. Many have already closed their checkbooks, and Republicans are keen to see them reopened.
Along with restructuring the tax code, the final bill is also likely to advance a broader culture war. Both bills at least partially block the parents of undocumented children from claiming the Child Tax Credit for their kids. And the House bill would let churches and nonprofits endorse political candidates for the first time since 1954. Mega-donors like the Koch Brothers would get a taxpayer subsidy for campaign spending if the provision makes it into the final bill. Campaign finance groups warn that it is another Citizens United in the making.
None of these provisions fit neatly with Republicans’ stated goal of making the tax code postcard-simple. Nor have the bills’ inclusion of carveouts for everything from citrus trees in Florida to tuna canneries in Pago Pago, American Samoa. (On Friday afternoon, Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) tweeted out a list of about 30 forthcoming amendments that had been passed from Republicans to a lobbyist to Democrats.)
Speaking on the Senate floor earlier in the night, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Friday was one of the “darkest, black-letter days in the long history of this Senate.” He held up an amendment, which went on to be defeated just before the bill passed, that was added “under the cover of darkness” by Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) that exempts a college connected to Education Secretary and billionaire Republican donor Betsy DeVos from a new tax on university endowments. Schumer said the last-minute move was the “metaphor for this bill and how high the stench is rising in this chamber.”
Schumer moved to adjourn the Senate until Monday so that his colleagues had time to review the “monstrosity.” He argued no one could possibly know what they were being asked to vote on. McConnell, well aware that he had the votes to knock down the motion and pass the bill, listened and smirked.
Noah Lanard is an editorial fellow at Mother Jones. Reach him at nlanard@motherjones.com.
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John Hanno December 1, 2017
While out in public these days, I feel uncomfortable when people look askance my way. What are they really thinking? Yes, I’m a white man similar in age to Donald J. Trump but please don’t put me in the same class. All old white men are not as humanly toxic and morally and mentally crippled as our commander in chief *.
I (We) would not, under any circumstances, engage in or entertain treasonous conspiracies with foreign evildoers attempting to undermine America’s democratic principles, just to benefit our own families, friends or contributors financially, or to support some political ambition.
Although our memories falter at times, we don’t all speak with such caviler disregard for the truth like this entire Trump administration. We keep our promises; its call integrity.
We believe that our free and fair press and media is not fake news and is absolutely necessary for a viable democracy.
We would not jeopardize America’s environment, its national public treasures or our children’s and grandchildren’s future, in order to reward political donors from the fossil fuel and mining industries.
We would never undermine our State Department employees, diplomats and even the Secretary of State. Trump’s budget plan for fiscal year 2018 will include a historically large $54 billion increase for defense spending and a corresponding cut from the State Department and foreign aid budgets. But Trump’s own Secretary of Defense, James Mattis has said: “if the State Departments funding gets cut, then I need to buy more ammunition.” Any credible Commander in Chief must realize, if critical American leadership is to maintain world peace, we need two peace makers at the State Department for every one employee in the Department of Defense.
And just because we have to get up a few times during the night to pee, most old men don’t stay up nights devising tweets aimed at spreading crazy fringe conspiracies, supporting racist or white supremacist groups or ideas, or denouncing anyone who would disagree with us, like Trump does when people criticize his hair-brained ideas.
We don’t conspire to divide America into them and us and we don’t denigrate immigrants, people of color, other religions or the LGBT community.
We don’t view all women as objects to be judged or demeaned or sexually abused. And we do not champion political candidates who prey on or sexually abuse underage children, no matter how it may benefit our own goals. Is Judge Roy Moore’s reliable Senate vote really worth the hit to the GOP’s already damaged reputation?
We wouldn’t propose a bull-crap tax reform scam like this Senate Tax Bill that actually transfers a trillion dollars in wealth from the poorest of Americans and the middle-class to the richest special interests, most of whom have already prospered greatly in the last 4 decades.
The Congressional Budget Office attempted a preliminary scoring on this bill and claim it will take 13 million Americans health insurance away and add almost $1.5 Trillion to the national debt.
Trump, the Republi-cons in congress and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin claim the bill will pay for itself, and have attempted to persuade skeptical Republican Senators that dynamic and not the CBO’s static scoring will prove their magic tax bill is the prescription for a blooming economy. They claim it will trickle down to every American, but their trickle down tax bill is really more like Trump’s Russian pee tape.
They claim Multi-national Corporations will jump at the chance to bring back the mountains of cash they have squirreled away offshore over the last 2 decades and will miraculously invest this bounty in new plants and equipment and give their employees thousands in increased wages, instead of their usual MO of buying back their company’s stock in order to plump-up top executives stock portfolios, and then dole out what’s left to stock-holders. Corporations are already releasing statements claiming any such tax benefits will go back to their investors.
They claim the bill will somehow create millions of new jobs, even though economic experts claim America is at full employment. Anyone looking for a job has dozens to choose from. The only problem is the crappy wages most employers consistently refuse to increase. We don’t need bogus stimulants for the economy, we need employers willing to share their new found wealth with their loyal employees. But good luck with that.
Secretary Mnuchin kept promising deficit hawk Republican Senators that he had 100’s of treasury department employees working around the clock analyzing the bill and would show them a favorable score before they had to cast their vote. As it turned out, not one single employee was working on any such analysis. Mnuchin was blowing smoke up their butts and can’t deliver the promised numbers to support this obvious scam. The Inspector General of the Treasury is now investigating whether Mnuchin was a bold face liar or just incompetent.
The Republicans were promising another favorable score from the Joint Committee on Taxation, but they just revealed the bill would cause a one trillion dollar loss to the treasury with very little benefit to the economy. The bill would explode the debt by $1 trillion, increase the GDP by only .8%, increase job growth by a meager .6% and only cut taxes for the middle class by 1%. Is it any wonder this bogus tax scam is the most unpopular in history with only 28% approval. A massively unpopular tax cut bill; simply unbelievable!
Senator’s Corker, McCain, Flake, Johnson and others must feel like fools for believing these flim-flam sharks. They’re now demanding the deficit be reduced from 1 trillion to 500 million. On his MSNBC program last night, Lawrence O’Donnell replayed a video of Sen. John McCain explaining the reason he voted against the Bush tax cuts, was because it would blow up the debt for no credible benefit. Which Senator John McCain will vote on this bill, the sensible deficit hawk or the one willing to take health care away from 13 million Americans, some of which are fighting cancer just like McCain?
These Republi-cons are not credible leaders capable of legitimate legislation. Trump has failed like no President in history in hiring the best and the brightest. He has fired or lost, in only one year, more of his best and brightest than the last 5 or 6 presidents combined.
Unlike Trump, who pisses money away like it going out of style tomorrow, on gold plated everything, I’m an old school, true fiscal conservative. I (we) would not add trillions of dollars to the national debt just to give millionaires, billionaires and very prosperous multi-national corporations, unnecessary tax cuts.
I would not create a fiscal crisis by starving the federal treasury with these tax cuts, which will not only jeopardize and cripple many state government budgets, but will allow the Republi-cons in congress to do a 180 degree flip and cry about the escalating debt they just caused. The ink from Trump’s cut, cut, cut pen will be barely dry, when these slavish miscreants will push legislation aimed at cutting the Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other entitlement programs for America’s poor and middle-class. And the Paygo provisions in the bill would automatically cut from these programs as the national debt increases.
I (we) would also not engage in money laundering schemes with foreign governments, foreign despots or criminal syndicates, who steal from their fellow citizens, no matter how much of a financial windfall we would reap.
The 30 percent of voters who still stand by this Trump cabal of incompetent, unpatriotic evildoers, will sooner or later have to admit they threw in with the wrong saviors. The healers were right in front of them all along. They constituted the diverse democratic party, who pulled us out of a deep recession and repaired the economy after the Republi-cons crashed it in 2008 and also the principled moderates in the GOP, before they were expelled from the party by these ult-right tricksters.
No matter how dire America’s future looks, there are countless folks in our governments who are principled, honest, competent, fiscally proficient and capable of bipartisan legislation.
America has relied on a two party political system to steer it through centuries of democratic progress and middle-class prosperity. Past Presidents and Conservatives like Eisenhower, Nixon, the Bushes and even Regan would not be welcomed or elected by these Republi-cons.
Who will pick up the pieces of the Grand Old Party; will there be enough healers left to reconstitute a valid political opposition?
George W. Bush, Trump, myself and Bill Clinton were all born within a few months of each other; born in the first year of the baby boom. We were blessed with a fantastic new beginning after the nation survived a depression and world war. America was primed for an unprecedented period of prosperity, driven by industries getting back to their non-military business and a burgeoning middle-class of returning veterans, returning to school, ready to start families and building homes.
Employers were desperate for these loyal veterans and willing to pay good wages and ample benefits, including fully paid health insurance with small co-pays and deductibles. And the organized labor movement was growing by leaps and bounds. But what drove that bountiful economy was not a bogus tax cut sham for the already wealthy, but a concerted effort by state and federal governments passing legitimate legislation aimed at those who needed help the most. The G.I. bill, which supported education and housing, corporations willing to share their wealth, a healthy organized labor force, and expanding families drove that remarkable prosperity, something these Republi-cons just don’t get.
Paul Krugman, Op-Ed Columnist November 30, 2017
John McCain’s past lectures on the need for “regular order” in the Senate aren’t stopping him from backing a tax bill that’s being rushed to a vote. CreditZach Gibson for The New York Times
On Thursday morning, The New York Times revealed that Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, has been lying for months about Republican tax plans. Mnuchin has repeatedly claimed the existence of a Treasury report that — unlike every independent, nonpartisan assessment — found that these plans would pay for themselves, increasing growth and hence revenues so much that the deficit wouldn’t rise. But there is no such report, and never has been; Treasury staffers weren’t even asked to study the issue.
Also on Thursday, John McCain — who has delivered sanctimonious lectures on the importance of “regular order” in the Senate — declared his support for the G.O.P. tax bill. Remember, Senate leaders rushed this bill to the floor without holding any hearings or soliciting expert testimony (and tax policy is an area where you really, really need to hear from experts, lawyers and accountants even more than economists). In fact, at the time McCain declared his support, some key provisions were still secret, so they could be presented for a vote with no time for debate.
McCain declared that he had made his decision after “careful consideration.” Careful consideration of what? He didn’t even wait for an analysis of the bill’s economic impact by the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s own scorekeeper — the only official assessment, since the Trump administration was, as I said, lying when it claimed to have its own analysis.
Later that day the joint committee delivered its predictable verdict: Like all other reasonable studies, its review found that the Senate bill would do little for U.S. economic growth, while directly hurting tens of millions of middle-class Americans, blowing up the deficit, lavishing benefits on the wealthy and opening up new frontiers for tax avoidance. But thanks to the moral collapse of McCain and other supposedly principled Republicans, at the time this column was filed the bill nonetheless seemed on track to clear the Senate.
But aren’t politicians always cynical? Not to this degree.
For one thing, there’s no precedent for this frantic rush to pass major legislation before anyone can figure out what’s in it or what it does. By way of comparison, the Affordable Care Act went through months of hearings before it was brought to the Senate floor; the full Senate then debated the bill for 25 straight days.
And there’s a world of difference between normal political spin — yes, all politicians try to emphasize the good aspects of their policies — and the outright lies that have marked every aspect of the selling of this thing.
Mnuchin said his department had a study showing great effects on growth; that was a lie. Donald Trump says the bill is “not good for me”; that’s a lie. Senator John Cornyn said, “This is not a bill that is designed primarily to benefit the wealthy and the large businesses”; that was a lie. Senator Bob Corker said he wouldn’t support a plan “adding one penny to the deficit”; that was a lie.
In other words, this whole process involves a level of bad faith we haven’t seen in U.S. politics since the days when defenders of slavery physically assaulted their political foes on the Senate floor.
There are two further things worth pointing out about this moral rot.
First, it is not, at a fundamental level, a story about Donald Trump, bad as he is: The rot pervades the whole Republican Party. Some details of the legislation do look custom-designed to benefit the Trump family, but both the broad outlines and the fraudulence of the sales effort would have been pretty much the same under any Republican president.
Second, the rot is wide as well as deep.
I’m not just talking about Republican politicians, although the tax debate should dispel any remaining illusions about their motives: Just about every G.O.P. member of Congress, including the sainted John McCain, is willing to put partisan loyalty above principle, voting for what they have to know is terrible and irresponsible legislation. The point, however, is that the epidemic of bad faith extends well beyond elected or appointed officials.
It was remarkable, for example, to see a group of Republican-leaning economists with serious professional credentials put out an open letter clearly intended to lend aid and comfort to Mnuchinesque promises of miraculous growth. True, they didn’t explicitly claim that tax cuts would pay for themselves. But they didn’t clearly state that they wouldn’t, either, leaving Mnuchin free to claim — as they have to have known he would — that the letter vindicated his position.
And weasel-wording aside, it turns out that the letter misrepresented the research on which it was supposedly based. In other words, the rot of bad faith that has spread through the G.O.P. has also infected many intellectuals affiliated with the party. Not all: Some anti-Trump conservatives have stood by their principles. But so far they have had little influence.
So what will it take to clean out the rot? The answer, basically, is overwhelming electoral defeat. Until or unless that happens, there’s no telling how low the G.O.P. will sink.
Travis Gettys November 30, 2017
Jim Carrey at the Jane Fonda Hand And Foot Print Ceremony as part of the 2013 TCM Classic Film Festival (s_bukley / Shutterstock.com)
Actor Jim Carrey lashed out at congressional Republicans for their “soulless” tax reform scheme.
The actor and comedian tweeted out a call to action Wednesday to remove President Donald Trump and his GOP accomplices from office.
“The GOP and WH have become sinister conclaves of souless (sic) traitors, liars and thieves – a gangrene we must remove so democracy can live,” Carrey tweeted.
Jim Carrey, The GOP and WH have become sinister conclaves of souless traitors, liars and thieves – a gangrene we must remove so democracy can live. #killthebill November 29, 2017
November 30, 2017
Is this what America has become? The party that calls themselves pro-life, spends 14 trillion per year on our war machines, but cannot feed, house, provide medical care or educate our people??? Child hunger is a REAL issue affecting real children in real life so please STOP claiming free-school meals to children provide an empty soul.
Kaylie’s family can’t afford a refrigerator. Johnny dreams of eating meals somewhere other than a shelter. Here’s a candid look at hunger in America, explained by three kids living in “food-insecure” homes. (From FRONTLINE)
Posted by PBS on Wednesday, November 22, 2017
PBS. Kaylie’s family can’t afford a refrigerator. Johnny dreams of eating meals somewhere other than a shelter. Here’s a candid look at hunger in America, explained by three kids living in “food-insecure” homes. (From FRONTLINE)