Trump Voters Waking Up From Their Long Snooze?

Why is this woman laughing?

More than just anecdotal evidence that some Trump voters are getting the message directly that the great Trump Tax Cuts of 2017 were a fraud. You can't continue to give the billionaires a cushy ride and not expect the shrinking middle class to pick up the slack. Take a look at this long and angry thread: #GOPTaxScam.

Heather Long: "Millions of Americans filling out their 2018 taxes will probably be surprised to learn that their refunds will be less than expected or that they owe money to the Internal Revenue Service after years of receiving refunds."

The tax bill in 2017 was Trump's sole major legislative "achievement," and Paul Ryan bragged that it would be a major political achievement that would be a bulwark against Democratic gains in the midterm elections. Didn't work that way. Paul Ryan himself is gone home. In fact, the tax bill has consistently polled badly, and now this public relations nightmare of voters waking up to a new reality about their tax refunds.

Rich people may be ecstatic, but the rest of us ... not so much.

The Republicans Who Voted No

These are the Republicans who voted against the tax bill on Monday, and they will likely vote against it again today when it comes up for a re-do:

Walter Jones

Rep. Dan Donovan, New York
Rep. John Faso, New York
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, New Jersey
Rep. Darrell Issa, California
Rep. Walter Jones, North Carolina
Rep. Peter King, New York
Rep. Leonard Lance, New Jersey
Rep. Frank LoBiondo, New Jersey
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, California
Rep. Christopher Smith, New Jersey
Rep. Elise Stefanik, New York
Rep. Lee Zeldin, New York

The New York and New Jersey reps are probably among the most endangered Rs in the upcoming mid-terms and are justifiably trying to save their bacon. North Carolina's Walter Jones, a former Democrat and a once and future pain in leadership's ass, issued a statement saying he saw no logic in borrowing a couple of trillion dollars from China in order to give rich people a tax break. No logic whatsoever.

The Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher no votes are the clearest indication you're likely to get that smart Republicans see a Democratic wave coming in 2018. Issa won reelection in 2016 with a 1,600-vote margin, a tighter than expected outcome, and he's been raising money for 2018 as fast as he can.

Rohrabacher, who second only to Trump loves Vladimir Putin more than bacon fat, has attracted plenty of negative publicity, and his reelection is already rated a toss-up (as is Issa's for that matter) before anyone even knows which of approximately 300 willing Democratic candidates will win the privilege to face him.

Get Ready for the Bragging, But Trump Ain't Standing Up for the Forgotten Man

1. He's going to sign that tax bill like it's the greatest achievement for "common people" since chickens agreed to die for Col. Sanders. Well, it's great for Trump and other billionaires, fer sure. It will deliver its largest benefits, "not only in dollar terms but also as a percentage increase in income," to corporations and the wealthiest Americans. Trump's own family stands to gain from tax breaks maintained or extended for corporate real estate ventures, and his heirs have reason to celebrate the doubling of the exemption from estate taxes.

2. With Rep. Virginia Foxx doing the leg-work, Trump's Education Department plans to roll back protections for college graduates saddled with student debt from sham for-profit universities. That's working-class kids who thought they'd get a leg up in this labor market by giving all their money to fake institutions of higher training, who are, in turn, giving big gobs of cash to Virginia Foxx.

3. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission, led by Trump’s new chairman, reversed the Obama-era policy known as net neutrality, over the objections of consumer groups and owners of small internet businesses, who fear that without the protection, giant internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon will charge internet companies for offering “fast-lane” speeds, slow down the content of companies that do not pay or even block them. Consumers could be charged variable rates for internet access, depending on which websites they visit. Does that look like "standing up for the forgotten man" to you?

4. Who knows if Trump even knew all the Federal regs that he rolled back, or was just signing whatever anybody put in front of him because he thinks signing his name is akin to making royal decrees. But one rule he eliminated -- out of dozens -- required retirement planners to agree that financial advice had the client’s best interest at heart, not the investment company’s. That ain't a rule any more.


His rhetoric is always about the "forgotten" Americans he's going to help. "You will never be ignored again," he told the screaming crowd in Pensacola just days before his Senate candidate in Alabama lost the race. It's all just show biz, the strutting of a reality show huckster whose act has worn thin. May the New Year kink his gut.

Fairyland

Seeing that the public is not buying the propaganda that everything will come up roses under the Republican tax rewrite, the billionaires who will get even filthier rich are putting some pocket change into trying to convince the rest of us that we should be grateful.

For example, Americans for Prosperity -- with a large field staff and volunteers, some of them high school students working off a community service requirement -- is spending $10 million nationwide for grass roots canvassing and advertising to rally middle-class support for the tax rewrite. They've reportedly hit more than 41,000 homes and made 1.1 million phone calls.

knock knock “Hello. Do you have a moment to hear my claim that Americans for Prosperity believes it’s time to fix our broken tax code and let families keep more of what they earn. By 'families' I don't mean necessarily yours. I mean the families of those who sent me out here today with this informative orange flyer."

You know Americans for Prosperity, right? Charles G. and David H. Koch. They have your best

Charles and David Koch

interests at heart, no matter which cold storage unit currently holds theirs.

Here's an example of some of your "best interests" written into the Republican tax plan: young and well educated people are specifically targeted in a "tuition tax" on university graduate students pursuing higher degrees. Many US universities waive tuition for students who conduct research or teach, but a provision in the tax bill would add the value of those waivers to a students’ taxable income. They're already poorly paid as graduate assistants. So making them suffer for being smart and innovative, that's especially nice.

Part of the Koch Bros' pitch is that the tax cuts will pay for themselves. That's an old, old line which hasn't improved with age. Their gospel is that more tax revenue will flow to the Treasury from higher paid workers (who'll therefore pay more in taxes because they're better paid) and from increased investment (jobs! more tax payers to take up the slack) -- growth in general. That's their fairyland: because corps will reap windfalls, they'll just naturally want to rain benefits on both workers and the general public.

Tax cuts will pay for themselves? The Republican tax cut will create a $1.5 trillion deficit for the budget. The Joint Tax Committee scored the plan, taking into account expected economic growth, and found that only $400 billion of the $1.5 trillion would be recouped. Falls well short of paying for itself. It will doubtless spur some economic growth, which conservatives want to claim will disproportionately benefit the middle class. It will benefit corporations more. They are not philanthropic organizations, and being thankful to them for the huge tax cuts they're getting is a little too much like the serf's rejoicing when some ort drops from the table where the lords are feasting.

In essence, Republicans and their corporate bosses are trying to sell us a free lunch made up largely of projected mirror images.

“Hey, look, I’m president. I don’t care. I don’t care anymore.”

Above, what Trump said in Missouri yesterday, touting the wonderfulness of the Republican tax plan, which he's obviously neither read nor understands. He kept claiming among other things that he personally will not benefit from the tax bill, which it not at all true. Trump will benefit personally, exactly how much depends on what his tax returns show, and you know about those missing documents.

"I don't care anymore." Translation: I don't give a flying fuck what anybody thinks about anything, because that don't-give-a-shit attitude is what my followers love the most, and it's my impression that so long as I'm a complete and total jerk, an unleashed racist, a bullying braggart, I'll be swathed in gold and sit in power forever.

Did I say he doesn't know what's in the tax bill, or else -- another likelihood -- he just likes lying to puff himself up -- but he's continuing to peddle such complete horseshit about how wonderful his tax "reform" is going to be for the little people, when it's not going to be wonderful at all, and the pittance the Republican "reformers" in Congress are willing to front-load for some of the poor and the middle class in lower taxes will all be taken away in a few years while tax cuts for the rich are made permanent.

It's Trump Trickle-Down. Corporate taxes and taxes on the already filthy rich -- slashed, on the presumption that when people in penthouses get relief, the benefits flow down to basement tenements. Are you going to buy that thoroughly disproved theory once again?

How Stupid Does He Think We Are?

“The deal [Republican tax revenge] is so bad for rich people, I had to throw in the estate tax just to give them something.”

— President Trump, in reported comments to Senate Democrats, Nov. 7, 2017

"Believe Me," Sez Trump. We Don't

Trump unveiled his tax overhaul plan yesterday in Indiana. It has big benefits for corporations and the very wealthy. Because there is little substance yet in the 9-page master outline (the press got a one-page summary), the bottom line for the middle class is unknown and may be modest. It will definitely add substantially to the national debt, over $2 trillion by the estimates I've seen this a.m. (Republican cheerleaders claim the deficit doesn't matter: see below).

During the rollout, Trump said, “Our framework includes our explicit commitment that tax reform will protect low-income and middle-income households. Not the wealthy and well-connected. They can call me all they want; I’m doing the right thing.” He then added: “And it’s not good for me, believe me.”

Said the man who's afraid to release his tax returns.

Under the Trump tax plan, the very wealthy -- including Mister too -- will pay only 35 percent on their income taxes (down from 39.6 percent). At the moment, this rate applies to any income above about $418,000. "If you make $1,000,000, in other words, you’ll save about $27,700 a year in taxes" (Heather Long). 

This guy Trump. Look at just one gigantic lie: "They [the very wealthy] can call me all they want" -- presumably to complain about how hard this tax plan will be on them -- "I'm doing the right thing." Bro, they don't need to call you; they'll see you at Mar-a-Lago.

Huge addition to the national debt. Just like that, the fiscally conservative Republican Party goes to turning tricks for the wealthy like an Avenue Q street-walker. Was this deficit toxin the trigger that prompted The Drudge Report to headline the Trump tax plan yesterday, “MORE BETRAYAL”? (Don't go looking for the headline now. Headline's been changed. But here's a screen capture of the original.) 

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that deficits will total $10.1 trillion over the next

decade (that's in addition to the current $20 trillion deficit). New deficit spending under the Trump Plan is expected to top $1 trillion a year in 2022 and keep growing from there.

Some Congressional Republicans who had until yesterday been deficit hawks jumped into promoting the tax plan. "It'll be great! It'll produce 4% growth as the economy explodes, because really rich people will want to build new factories and hire and hire some more!"

A dubious proposition. The CBO projects that, under current laws and policies, "the economy will grow 2.3 percent this year but growth will average just 1.9 percent a year over the coming decade." Oh, "under current laws"! We're changing that, sez the Trumpian fantasy. With a new law, we're unleashing a flood of economic development that will top out at 4% national growth. Dubious at best, say the economists at The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.

Even calling the 9-page outline "the Trump tax plan" is wrong, since it's not really his. Maybe he's read the nine-page outline, and very possibly he hasn't. The plan is actually the product of the so-called Big Six working group -- Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Council director Gary Cohn, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Finance Committee chair Orrin Hatch, and the House Speaker Paul Ryan and Ways and Means Committee chair Kevin Brady.

They're shrugging off the specter of adding trillions to the federal deficit (while meanwhile and incidentally enriching a chief executive and many of his ideological pals. Trump for one has never been shy about conflicts of interest and profiting off the office).

What this guy said: "President Trump’s tax plan is morally repugnant and bad economic policy,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. 

econo

Reality in the States Is Still a Fantasy in Mugstomp-on-the-Potomac

South Carolina, Tennessee, and Kansas -- especially Kansas! -- are wholly dominated by conservative Republican state legislatures. Yet Republican state legislatures in all three states -- South Carolina, Tennessee, and especially Kansas -- have recently decided to raise taxes because of revenue shortfalls, and they have done so often over the vetoes of their conservative Republican governors:

...in the most striking rebuke of conservative tax policy in recent memory, Republicans in Kansas have undone much of the tax overhaul that Gov. Sam Brownback held up as a model for other states and the federal government to emulate .... Republican lawmakers in Kansas decided that they could cut only so much without doing irreparable harm to vital services and voted to increase taxes by $1.2 billion last month. Mr. Brownback vetoed the plan, but Republicans overrode him. [Jeremy Peters]

Stephanie Clayton, a Republican state representative in Kansas, said that many conservatives overpromised on tax cuts as a “sort-of Ayn Rand utopia, a red-state model,” citing the author whose works have influenced the American libertarian movement.

“And I loved Ayn Rand when I was 18 — before I had children and figured out how the world really works,” Ms. Clayton added. “That’s not how it works, as it turns out.”

But tell that to Congresswoman Virginia Foxx and the rest of her crowd up in Washington, who are eager to do the "Kansas experiment" for the whole country. Congressional Republicans have a current president who doesn't know a Rand from a rind and will go along with anything they propose.

“Tax cuts — good. And that’s about as much thinking that goes into it,” said Chris Buskirk, a radio host and publisher of American Greatness, a conservative online journal. Now, he said, Republicans in Washington seem to be in an arms race to the lowest rates possible.

“Everybody is trying to overbid each other,” Mr. Buskirk said. “How much more can we cut?”

Until the elections of 2018, at least, they have all the power, and they will not use their power for the public good when there are so many needy millionaires with their hands out.

The Alternate Reality of Grover Norquist

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) near Lake Geneva recently discovered the long-sought atomic particle, the Higgs boson, which is theorized to allow matter to achieve mass, and the operators of the LHC still hope to find other hidden elements of the universe, including additional dimensions of space.

One of those extra dimensions appears to reside in or near the brain of No-Tax Czar Grover Norquist, who has decided that the best antidote for John Boehner's collapse and the votes of 85 Republicans for the fiscal cliff deal is to deny that anything like a tax increase actually happened, and if it did happen, Republicans had nothing to do with it.

His butter-will-NOT-melt-in-my-mouth denial to Andrea Mitchell may go down as one of the great political fails of the modern era.

Oy

The Obama Rich People Enhancement Act of 2010 passed the U.S. House last night 277 to 148, with 112 Democrats and 36 Republicans voting "no."

Among the 36 Republicans were theatrical deficit hawks, including Virginia Foxx, given a pass by their leadership (who had brokered the deal, after all) to vote against the bill because it was assured passage ... because so many Democrats caved in to their cave-prone president.

The price tag on just some of the goodies for the uber-rich that Tea Partiers' grandchildren will be paying interest on to the Chinese government:

● The top tax rate, on taxable income above $379,150, would stay at 35 percent, instead of increasing to 39.6 percent. Cost: $186.8 billion.

● More generous itemized deductions for high-income households. Cost: $20.7 billion.

● A top capital gains tax rate of 15 percent. Cost: $25.9 billion.

● A top tax rate on dividends of 15 percent. Cost: $27.3 billion.

● A lower estate tax for the next two years, allowing couples to pass estates as large as $10 million to heirs tax-free. The balance would be taxed at 35 percent. Cost: $68.1 billion.

The filthy rich that Fox News said were on feeding tubes prolonging the appearance of life because of inheritance taxes may now commence their death-bed leave-takings. The coast is clear.

The Senators in Opposition

Sen. Kay Hagan voted against the Obama Tax Bill yesterday ... which is to say she was one of 15 who voted against cloture on the issue. The others in opposition:

Bingaman (D-NM)
Brown (D-OH)
Coburn (R-OK)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Feingold (D-WI)
Gillibrand (D-NY)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)
Leahy (D-VT)
Levin (D-MI)
Sanders (I-VT)
Sessions (R-AL)
Udall (D-CO)
Voinovich (R-OH)

A Genuine Folk Hero

...Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who talked for nearly nine hours on the floor of the Senate Friday against the Obama administration's decision to continue the Bush era tax cuts to millionaires -- and make them worse.

By Friday night, Sen. Sanders was at the top of Twitter's "trending topics," the true mark of post-modern buzz.

What did Sen. Sanders say?

"You can call what I am doing today anything you want. You can call it a filibuster. You can call it a very long speech. I am not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides....

"Mr. President, in the year 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income. The top 1 percent earned 23.5 percent of all income -- more than the entire bottom 50 percent. That is apparently not enough. The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent has nearly tripled since the 1970s. In the mid-1970s, the top 1 percent earned about 8 percent of all income. In the 1980s, that figure jumped to 14 percent. In the late 1990s, that 1 percent earned about 19 percent.... [Figures subsequently verified by PolitiFact, just incidentally]

[The top 1 percent say...] " 'How can I get by on one house? I need five houses, ten houses! I need three jet planes to take me all over the world! Sorry, American people. We've got the money, we've got the power, we've got the lobbyists here and on Wall Street. Tough luck. That's the world, get used to it.' Rich get richer. Middle class shrinks....

"It has been a very long day. I do believe that if the American people stand up … I think we can defeat this proposal. I think we can come up with a better proposal which better reflects the needs of the middle class."

Federal Taxes at Historically Low Levels

Analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which will no doubt be labeled now as a notorious mouthpiece for Socialism:

"Middle-income Americans are now paying federal taxes at or near historically low levels, according to the latest available data. That's true whether it comes to their federal income taxes or their total federal taxes." HT: Rob Schofield at The Progressive Pulse for putting us on to this info

It pleasures the tea-partiers no end to scream about being taxed to death, when the evidence is exactly the opposite. Our tax bill on April 15th certainly went down, though nothing else in our personal situation had changed from last year.

The tea-partiers won't hear it. Their ears are stuffed with the noxious cotton-wadding of Fox News. Either that, or they're part of the filthy rich who can and should pay more for the sake of the commonweal and are terrified at the thought of funding anything other than senseless wars against third-world enemies.