Let Me Tell You How It Will Be . . .

We're screwed.  

Congress passed the tax bill, and by next week, when it goes to the White House, it will be law, thanks to Donald J. Trump.  Also thanks to Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican senator who switched his vote to yes, which he insists had nothing to do with a provision in the bill that allowed deductions on his real-estate holdings.  

The rich will make out like bandits, of course.  The middle class will only get temporary relief from this bill, and Trump is gambling - perhaps correctly, if we consider just how stupid voters can be - that enough of these rubes will be taken in by the extra money in their pockets in the fall of 2018 to reward the Republicans with continued control of Congress.  And what do the Democrats think of all this?  No one cares.  I watched MSNBC for an hour yesterday and didn't see any Democrats being interviewed on the subject.  MSNBC did, though, cut away to Paul Ryan when he spoke about the tax reform bill.  Perversely, Martin O'Malley got to speak out against it on Fox News.

The biggest takeaway is the taking away of unlimited deductions for state and local taxes, now capped at $10,000.  In New Jersey, this will make it much more difficult for incoming governor Phil Murphy to raise taxes on the rich, because if the rich can't deduct their state taxes, they'll move to a low-tax state . . . and leave everyone else holding the bag.  Unless state taxes are lowered.  That means, no universal pre-kindergarten education, no mass transit improvements, no highway repairs - none of that stuff.  In short, Murphy will not be able to create in New Jersey an American Denmark, a place of the sort of amenities that make any place worth living in.  

Should ten-grand caps appear too small . . . be thankful they won't take it all. 

And to those of you stupid enough to continue to support the GOP once this law goes into effect on January 1, I have another George Harrison lyric I'd like to paraphrase . . ..  Ring out the old, ring in the new, ya ding-dongs! :-p   

You Win Some, You Lose Some

Net neutrality? Done! Finished!  Even though five out of six Americans supported keeping it, Federal  Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said no and nixed it.  Now Internet service providers will get to do with Uncle Charlie's blessing all of the nasty, evil things I kept talking about.

Fortunately, we don't have to worry about paying extra for content or getting our blogs blocked just yet.  Many pro-Net neutrality groups are immediately calling on Congress to stop Pai under the provisions of the Congressional Review Act, which allows the legislative branch to review bureaucratic regulatory actions, and New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is already suing the FCC to stop the rollback.

And how about Doug Jones's victory in the U.S. Senate special Alabama?  Roy Moore's personal issues obviously had a lot to do with it, but a growing distrust of Trump and of his poisonous populism turned off important demographic groups, like white women with college degrees and independents, and most Alabama voters said that pedophilia allegations against Moore were not an important factor in their decision - mainly, no doubt, because there were so many other factors that turned them against Moore. Like when he said slavery was a force for preserving black families?  Or that homosexuality should be criminalized?  Imagine being too reactionary even for Alabama . . . and you imagine Roy Moore.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell won't allow Jones to be seated before the vote on the tax bill, likely on the grounds that Jones was not involved in the debate and so should not vote on the legislation - even though he demanded - and got - the seating of Scott Brown of Massachusetts after a special election in 2010 to get the 41st vote for a filibuster against health care reform legislation (which the Democrats managed to get passed in the filibuster-proof reconciliation process) when Senate Republicans were in the minority.  But keeping Jones out until after the tax reform vote may not help; a few Republican senators have expressed doubts about the final bill.  That smooth path to passage may not be so smooth after all; Trump may end up being able to sign it by Christmas, provided he means Eastern Orthodox Christmas (January 7).   But then Trump loves people who celebrate Christmas thirteen days later, like the Greeks; he once proposed that more Greeks be able to emigrate here after Greece's economy tanked big time.  

You don't suppose that was because Greece is a so-called white country, do you?

Things are getting more interesting . . ..  

You win some, you lose some . . .. 

Flynn and Taxes

Michael Flynn, Donald Trump's former national security adviser, agreed with special counsel Robert Mueller to plead guilty to lying about his contacts with Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak, after it turned out that he had asked the ambassador on December 29, 2016 to, as CNBC reported, "refrain from escalating the situation in response to sanctions that the United States had imposed against Russia that same day" while Barack Obama was still President.  Trump had opposed the sanctions and Flynn apparently was trying to tell Kislyak to stay calm and wait for the incoming administration to take charge and initiate a friendly relationship.

Even if you don't think Russian intervention caused Trump to win the Presidency - I think they intervened in the election but I don't think they were instrumental in Trump's victory -  Flynn has been under investigation for allegedly planning a kidnapping and a Turkish cleric living in exile in the U.S. and having him sent back to Turkey.  And if all that weren't mind-boggling enough, Trump has now tweeted that he fired Flynn for lying to the FBI about his meeting with Kislyak, suggesting that he knew all along that Flynn had lied when he asked then-FBI Director James Comey and was therefore trying to obstruct justice.  Then, of course, he later fired James Comey.

Trump could be forced out of office soon.  But as far as preventing him from doing irreparable damage to the country, it's already too late.

Because the Senate just passed its tax reform bill by a 51-49 margin. Bob Corker of Tennessee was the only Republican to vote against it.  They got it through after last-minute revisions to the bill that, I understand, were written on the back of a Chinese takeout menu.  And even though the differences between the Senate bill and the House bill have to be worked out in a bicameral conference, no one thinks there'll be any problems with that.  And Trump, the chief instigator of tax reform, will proudly sign it before the first day of Kwanzaa and rhetorically ask black voters what they could possibly have to lose.

The final bill will likely eliminate state and local tax deductions and possibly also eliminate the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate and thus possibly eliminate . . . the Affordable Care Act.  The biggest benefits go to the wealthy, and the pressure on the deficit will mean cuts to public assistance and the sort of amenities that make a country worth living in.  

Because of procedural rules, there's nothing the Democrats could do to stop this bill, and to be fair, they didn't have the time or the ability to digest or even read the last-minute changes to it.  But the Democrats did a lame job in opposing it, concentrating more on the deficit than on the threat to domestic spending and, as a result, arguing against the tax bill on the basis of Republican talking points, which did the Democrats no favors.  They only tipped the scales to the GOP in the debate, and scale-tipping is something Hillary supporters know a thing or two about.   The pressure this tax law will put on expensive, Democratic-leaning states will short-circuit the progressive agenda and doom incoming New Jersey governor Phil Murphy to failure before he's even sworn in.

Thus, despite Democratic victories in  2017 gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia, the party has gone back to going full Whig. 

On the bright side, now that tax reform is all but done, maybe Republicans, no longer needing Trump to pass their agenda, will go ahead and help remove him from office.

Tax "Reform?"

I'm not going to write a long analysis of the Republican tax reform proposals in Congress, because, quite frankly, I don't have to go through all that pretentious mumbo-jumbo.  I'm just going to come right out and tell you what I think of it - it sucks!

Most of the tax breaks in this plan go to cuts in the estate tax and the alternative minimum tax, which benefit . . .rich people.  Deductions for student loans, medical expenses, and other expensive necessities would be eliminated, as would, in the Senate version of the bill at least, deductions for property taxes . . . so that property owners all pay their fair share.  But it would hurt a homeowner in New Jersey, where the cost of living is high, than it would affect a homeowner in Tennessee, where the cost of living is much cheaper.  The main reason it's so expensive to live in northern New Jersey is because of its proximity to New York City.  Of course Tennessee is a cheaper (and more Republican, by the way) state to live in.  Who wants to live in Knoxville?

Republicans have fixed the process so that there is no way that Democrats can stop the tax reform bill, not even through a Senate filibuster.   Trump wants it on his desk to sign before Christmas.  The GOP has have the power to pass it without debate - Soviet-style rubber-stamp legislating without the Marxist ideology.  But there are enough differences between the House and Senate bills to make it awfully hard to reconcile by Christmas . . . Christmas 2018.  Trump wants it passed by this Christmas (2017).  One can only hope that this bill goes the way of their GOP's disastrous health care "reform."

And that is all I have to say on this subject. >:-(  

The Democratic election victories?  I'll get to that . . ..            

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Taxation Without Representation

The Republicans just passed a budget resolution in the U.S. Senate that more or less gives its blessing to the fiscal 2018 budget supported by the House - which, by the way, makes domestic-spending cuts in just about . . . everything.  The House is now ready to pass its own resolution.

Oh, yeah, a Senate budget resolution is normally standard procedure, but this resolution now clears the way for Congress to consider tax reform - without any room for the Democrats to stop it.  See, not only do Republicans have a commanding majority in the House, but the Senate resolution enables the Senate Republican caucus to push tax reform through without the ability of the Democratic minority to slow or filibuster the effort.  In other words, Democratic lawmakers and their constituents will have absolutely no say in whether or not tax reform should happen now, and Democratic efforts to mitigate it will be voted down by the majority.  Taxation without representation.

Hold on.  It gets worse.  The passage of tax reform - which could occur as early as March - will motivate Republican voters to come out in droves for the next congressional midterm elections, like they always do, but the Democrats now have to go back to their voters and explain why they couldn't prevent the Republicans from freezing them out of the tax reform debate.  Oh yeah, and this will likely depress Democratic turnout in the midterms (and it's always despressed) while making it impossible for the party to cultivate more Democratic voters and reach out to independents.

So Democrats will likely lose the midterms in November 2018.  And so I once again recall historian David Jacobs' appraisal of the Whigs after they lost the 1852 presidential election to Franklin Pierce - they "were so bewildered and demoralized by his election that they disintegrated."