Pick Up the Phone December 16, 2017 I never call — 202-224-3121. I type. But I’m calling. We have to stop this bill — and need only a couple of Republican Senators to do the right thing (and another to not vote). Call their in-state offices, too. From the newly-energized DNC (with links to the Wall Street Journal, etc.): Changes To The Republican Tax Bill Make It Even Worse The Republican tax bill could encourage companies to actually cut jobs, not add them. Wall Street Journal: “Based on analyses of past programs to repatriate overseas corporate earnings, Wall Street analysts and tax experts expect companies would use the money for purposes such as buying back shares and mergers. Instead of adding jobs, they say, companies might cut them if they use their cash to buy rivals and then take out costs.” [And as I’ve noted, this Financial Times piece says “Trump tax bills would push US jobs and factories abroad.”] The Republican tax bill creates a huge pass-through loophole that benefits the rich. Vox: “The deduction creates a huge loophole for rich people, who could incorporate as sole proprietorships and ‘contract’ with their employers so their income is counted as pass-through income rather than wages.” Republicans have tried to claim their tax bill helps middle-class families with changes to child tax credits and other deductions, but these changes are small and only temporary. Bloomberg: “Other temporary changes, which would last through 2025, would boost the standard deduction and child tax credits and modify state and local tax deductions and the mortgage interest deduction.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: “Final CTC Changes Don’t Alter Tax Bill Basics: 10 Million Working Family Children Get Little or Nothing” The Richest Americans Are Still The Biggest Winners The Republican tax bill benefits corporations and the richest Americans – who get massive tax cuts — more than the middle class. Associated Press: “GOP tax bill slashes rates for corporations and wealthy with smaller benefits for middle class” Washington Post’s Wonkblog: “The final plan lowers the top tax rate for top earners. […] This amounts to a significant tax break for the very wealthy, a departure from repeated claims by President Trump and his top officials that the bill would not cut taxes on the rich.” CNN: “The bill — which critics say is heavily weighted to ease the tax burden of businesses rather than the middle class — drops the corporate tax rate down from 35% to 21%, repeals the corporate alternative minimum tax, nearly doubles the standard deduction for individuals and restructures the way pass-through businesses are taxed.” Tax cuts for middle-class families in the Republican tax bill expire, leaving many households left to pay more than they do now. The Daily Beast: “Your tax cut is temporary. A company’s tax cut is permanent.” Wall Street Journal: “Middle-income households will get tax cuts that are set to expire, and some households, particularly upper-middle-class residents of high-tax states, would likely pay more than they do now.” Washington Post’s Wonkblog: “Republicans are paying for a permanent cut for corporations with an under-the-radar tax increase on individuals. […] Republicans can’t just let the individual tax cuts expire, as they do at the end of 2025, but they actually need to raise money to offset the permanent corporate tax reduction.” The Republican tax bill repeals the individual mandate and would result in 13 million fewer people having health insurance. Bloomberg: “As a bonus for Republicans, the measure would repeal the individual mandate that requires individuals to purchase insurance — a measure imposed by the Obamacare law. … Congressional budget experts have estimated that repealing the mandate would result in 13 million fewer people having health insurance in 10 years. “ The Republican tax bill increases the deficit by nearly $1.5 trillion, and Republicans will use that as an excuse to slash funding for critical programs that would hit lower-income families the hardest. New Yorker: “The Final Version of the G.O.P. Tax Bill Is a Corrupt, Cruel, Budget-Busting Hairball” Bloomberg: “A preliminary score from Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation showed that the new version of the bill would increase federal deficits by $1.46 trillion over 10 years — before accounting for any economic growth that might result. Earlier versions of the legislation were estimated to boost deficits by roughly $1 trillion even after such effects.” Washington Post: “On top of that, Republican leaders say they want to ‘reform’ welfare and entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare next year. Scaling back those benefits hits lower-income families and, again, exacerbates the gap between the top and the bottom.” Trump and his family would still benefit a lot from changes in the Republican tax plan, but we can’t know exactly how much until he releases his tax returns. The Daily Beast: “The Trump Organization wins, big league. […] The final tax bill, however, slashes this liability, allowing most pass-through businesses—like the Trump Organization—to deduct 20 percent of their income tax-free, effectively cutting the president’s tax rate in half. Of course, without the president’s tax returns, it’s impossible to know for sure.” Business Insider: “It’s noteworthy that even just from the changes to the tax brackets and the eliminations of deductions, very wealthy households, including President Donald Trump, stand to benefit handsomely from the plan.” Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon: “The final bill has a new loophole (carved into the limits of the pass-through loophole) specifically for business owners that don’t employ many people. I’m told it’s a carve-out mostly for (surprise!) the real estate industry.” Now is the time to scream bloody murder — 202-224-3121 . . . and Google their local offices to call those, too. Not sure what to say? If all else fails, just read them the highlights of yesterday’s post.
37% December 14, 2017December 16, 2017 It would be fine to have a well-thought-through corporate tax reform that were revenue-neutral . . . and that did not encourage companies to move jobs overseas as the current Republican plan, being rushed into law, likely will. And it would be economically dumb but at least morally defensible to give the working poor and middle class a tax cut. They are struggling to get by! They’ve been cut out of the tremendous gains in wealth the country has made these past 30-odd years. It’s almost all gone to the top few percent, especially to the tippy top. (As you know, the net worth of just three individuals now exceeds the combined net worth of the entire bottom half of the country.) But what possible reason can there be to lower the top individual tax bracket from 39.6% to 37%? How would that help the working poor or middle class? How would it help fund revitalization of our crumbling infrastructure? How would it help reduce the deficit that Republicans care so deeply about when they’re not in power — but then explode when they are? What possible reason can there be to cut the estate tax (which they like to call the “death” tax but is effectively an inheritance tax on lucky multi-millionheirs and billionheirs)? How would that help the working poor or middle class or fund revitalization of our crumbling infrastructure or reduce the deficit? What possible reason can there be to cut the top tax rate on highly-earning professionals and business folk from 39.6% to 30% or so, as they “pass through” their income from LLC’s and S-corps? It’s no fun being taxed 39.6% on that portion of your income above $450,000 when you’re making $600,000 or $1 million or $3 million a year — but do we really need to go deeper into debt to cut those taxes? Shouldn’t we revitalize our infrastructure instead? Why has the “carried interest” loophole for hedge-funders survived yet again? It’s just an illogical giveaway to people, some of them immensely wealthy, who simply don’t need it. Why throw out “the individual mandate,” which is projected to raise the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans — and cause 13 million to lose coverage altogether? Republicans consider it a great way to save money, because when people lose their Affordable Care Act insurance, the government won’t have to provide the subsidies that make it affordable. With inequality threatening our economy and our society like never before (well, maybe like 1929), why would we do this to ourselves? Could it be because the Koch brothers and the Mercers and the Devos family and Wilbur Ross and Carl Icahn and the Trump family really want to? Call every Republican senator you can think of, especially these, and ask their staff these questions. Or if you call in the middle of the night, leave those questions on their voice mail. The Senate switchboard is 202-224-3121. Collins, Murkowski, Flake, Sasse, Corker, Rubio, Paul, Johnson, McCain . . . And then, if one or both your senators is Republican, go a step further. Google over to their website and find the phone number for their local office — and call that one, too. Seriously: we’re not going to get another shot at this. Have a great weekend.
What The DNC Did In Alabama; The Tax Scam December 13, 2017 Read it here: DNC Waged Stealth Organizing Campaign for Jones. It’s a new day at the DNC, as the results in Virginia and Alabama are beginning to show. Invest in the ground game they’re building for 2018. I’ll see whatever you do the instant you do it, if I’m at my screen, and jump through yours to say thanks. And check out The First Night of Chanukah, from Mother Jones — a primer on The Big Lie, that book of Hitler’s speeches Trump used to read. But mainly (speaking of The Big Lie): it’s not too late to defeat the tax scam . . . billed as “a massive tax cut for the middle class,” that would “cost me and my rich friends a fortune” — but that would actually save them a fortune. It’s such a breathtaking lie — “up is down,” “water is dry,” “I will absolutely release my tax returns if I run” — that many of his followers can’t imagine it is a lie. But it is. Here, again, the Quick Recap, to refresh your memory. The Republican tax bill would: Cut the tax rate on billionheirs — from 40% (already down from 55%) to ZERO. This would help them — Trump’s kids would save billions — but do nothing for the bottom 99.8%, whose inheritances fall below the estate tax minimum. Hurt charities. (Because the after-tax cost of bequeathing $100 million would jump from $60 million to $100 million. When something costs more to do, people do it less.) Eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which would have saved Trump $20+ million in 2005, the one year we know he paid tax, but which would do nothing for most. (The AMT hits about 5 million of us, and is annoying, to be sure; but we need the revenue.) Keep the carried-interest loophole — a great gift to a few thousand very fortunate folks who pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries. Push US jobs and factories abroad (now there’s one you didn’t expect) as explained by Bob Pozen here in the Financial Times. Balloon the deficit — and not for the purpose of revitalizing our infrastructure (something worth borrowing for, that would create good jobs) but, rather, to enrich the already rich — and the corporations that they own. Crimp badly needed spending, e.g., cutting $25 billion from Medicare next year alone. (How would that help Trump voters?) Open the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to drilling. There’s more, and some of it may have changed — no one has seen the final bill (maybe we should?) — but that’s the gist. Also: hurting blue states by eliminating the deduction for state income tax; hurting higher education, by taxing graduate students on the imputed value of their waived tuition and taxing large university endowments; enriching $1 million-a-year surgeons and law partners, et al, by taxing much of their income at what will be the much lower corporate tax rate. Oh! And raising health insurance premiums for tens of millions, while an estimated 13 million lose their insurance altogether. Trump considers all this a triumph. Call the Senate switchboard — (202) 224-3121 — and ask for the office of Susan Collins! Lisa Murkowski! Marco Rubio! John McCain! Bob Corker! Jeff Flake! Ben Sasse! Richard Shelby! Tim Scott! Call every Republican senator you can think of — respectfully, of course. Tell them you would be in favor of a well-thought-out revenue-neutral corporate tax reform — but this? This would just take us deeper into debt to shift resources mainly from the bottom 80% to the top 1%. They should be ashamed. And Trump is massively lying about the personal sacrifice he and his family and fellow Cabinet gazillonaires would be making if it passed.
She’s Comin’ For You, Mitch and Paul December 12, 2017December 11, 2017 Yikes. Not sure I’d want to get in this woman’s way. But hats off to her. I think the difference is that where she is boiling mad — and rightly so — I am too fortunate, live too well, to be boiling mad. For me, it’s more dismay than anger. Deep sadness at seeing the American Century end; our leadership forfeited; our infrastructure crumble; the top 0.1% poised to become even richer at the expense of the middle class and poor. Plus fear that our precious democracy, that “city on the hill,” could be lost at the hands of a deeply unhinged narcissist who frequently read from a book of Hitler’s speeches that he kept by his bedside. But if I faced “real people problems,” as I sense this woman does? Like worrying about how to feed my family? Well, I might be every bit as volubly enraged. Watch what she has to say. Ron Sheldon: “Re your ‘fantasy‘ — would you accept the reverse order? That George and Barack recommend to the Court Mitt Romney and Joe Biden as interim president and vice president?” ☞ Sure. Although that seems a little odd, since — even WITH the Russian attack — the Democrat got more votes than any Republican in history. But if that’s what George and Barack decide, who am I to argue. Eugene Robinson asks in the Washington Post: what if lifelong-Republican Robert Mueller nails Trump and the Republican Congress decides not to do anything about it? If the President and Republican National Committee will support a credibly-accused child molester for the Senate . . . even as the President works to tear down trust in the free press and in the FBI and in the courts . . . who is to say he couldn’t (say) walk down Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody without being removed from office? And now back to sitting on the edge of my seat to see what the good people Alabama — and there are loads of them — decide.
This Is An Emergency: We Should Break The Glass December 9, 2017 But first, to get you in the mood . . . Conservative columnist and Republican David Brooks: . . . First, [Trump] asked the party to swallow the idea of a narcissistic sexual harasser and a routine liar as its party leader. Then he asked the party to accept his comprehensive ignorance and his politics of racial division. Now he asks the party to give up its reputation for fiscal conservatism. At the same time he asks the party to become the party of Roy Moore, the party of bigotry, alleged sexual harassment and child assault. There is no end to what Trump will ask of his party. He is defined by shamelessness, and so there is no bottom. And apparently there is no end to what regular Republicans are willing to give him. Trump may soon ask them to accept his firing of Robert Mueller, and yes, after some sighing, they will accept that, too. That’s the way these corrupt bargains always work. You think you’re only giving your tormentor a little piece of yourself, but he keeps asking and asking, and before long he owns your entire soul. The Republican Party is doing harm to every cause it purports to serve. If Republicans accept Roy Moore as a United States senator, they may, for a couple years, have one more vote for a justice or a tax cut, but they will have made their party loathsome for an entire generation. The pro-life cause will be forever associated with moral hypocrisy on an epic scale. The word “evangelical” is already being discredited for an entire generation. Young people and people of color look at the Trump-Moore G.O.P. and they are repulsed, maybe forever. The GOP sold its soul a long time ago. Trump only revealed the black, evil monster that hid behind the doors. . . . “What shall it profit a man,” Jesus asked, “if he gain the whole world and suffer the loss of his own soul?” The current Republican Party seems to not understand that question. Donald Trump seems to have made gaining the world at the cost of his soul his entire life’s motto. . . . It’s amazing that there haven’t been more Republicans like Mitt Romney who have said: “Enough is enough! I can go no further!” The reason, I guess, is that the rot that has brought us to the brink of Senator Roy Moore began long ago. Starting with Sarah Palin and the spread of Fox News, the G.O.P. traded an ethos of excellence for an ethos of hucksterism. The Republican Party I grew up with admired excellence. It admired intellectual excellence (Milton Friedman, William F. Buckley), moral excellence (John Paul II, Natan Sharansky) and excellent leaders (James Baker, Jeane Kirkpatrick). Populism abandoned all that — and had to by its very nature. Excellence is hierarchical. Excellence requires work, time, experience and talent. Populism doesn’t believe in hierarchy. Populism doesn’t demand the effort required to understand the best that has been thought and said. Populism celebrates the quick slogan, the impulsive slash, the easy ignorant assertion. Populism is blind to mastery and embraces mediocrity. Compare the tax cuts of the supply-side era with the tax cuts of today. There were three big cuts in the earlier era: the 1978 capital gains tax cut, the Kemp-Roth tax cut of 1981, and the 1986 tax reform. They were passed with bipartisan support, after a lengthy legislative process. All of them responded to the dominant problem of the moment, which was the stagflation and economic sclerosis. All rested on a body of serious intellectual work. Liberals now associate supply-side economics with the Laffer Curve, but that was peripheral. Supply-side was based on Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand. It was based on the idea that if you rearrange incentives for small entrepreneurs you are more likely to get start-ups and more innovation. Those cuts were embraced by Nobel Prize winners and represented an entire social vision, favoring the dispersed entrepreneurs over the concentrated corporate fat cats. Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence. They do not respond to the central crisis of our time. They have no vision of the common good, except that Republican donors should get more money and Democratic donors should have less. The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational. More and more former Republicans wake up every day and realize: “I’m homeless. I’m politically homeless.” OK? Now here is Ezra Klein making the case for impeachment in an interview with Chris Hayes. (“Impeachment seems like a big deal? Nuclear holocaust seems like a big deal!”) It stems from his recent piece in Vox. Every Republican we know — it seems to me — should see Brooks’ column, above. And every American we know — it again seems to me — should see Klein’s Vox piece, excerpted below. Please share both widely. The Case for Normalizing Impeachment Impeaching an unfit president has consequences.But leaving one in office could be worse. By Ezra Klein Updated Dec 6, 2017, 3:29pm EST . . . Republican Sen. Bob Corker, the widely respected chair of the Foreign Relations Committee, warned that the president was treating his office like “a reality show” and setting the country “on the path to World War III.” In an interview with the New York Times, he said of Trump, “I know for a fact that every single day at the White House, it’s a situation of trying to contain him.” These concerns, Corker told the Times, “were shared by nearly every Senate Republican.” It’s not just Senate Republicans who worry over the president’s stability. Carl Bernstein, of Watergate fame, told CNN that his reporting found “a consensus developing in the military, at the highest levels in the intelligence community, among Republicans in Congress, including the leaders in the business community,” that Trump “is unfit to be the president of the United States.” A subsequent poll by the Military Times found only 30 percent of commissioned officers approved of the job Trump was doing. The fear is shared by members of Trump’s own staff. Axios’s Mike Allen reported that a collection of top White House advisers see themselves as an informal “Committee to Save America,” and they measure their success “mostly in terms of bad decisions prevented, rather than accomplishments chalked up.” The Associated Press reported that Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and then-Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly “agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump’s presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House.” . . . . . . We talk often about running the US government like a business, but businesses — at least public ones — have clear methods for deposing a disastrous executive. The president of the United States controls the world’s largest nuclear arsenal, not to mention the vast resources and powers of the federal government, and so the possible damage of letting the wrong person inhabit the Oval Office stretches all the way to global catastrophe. But is there anything we can do about it? . . . Sometimes I imagine this era going catastrophically wrong — a nuclear exchange with North Korea, perhaps, or a genuine crisis in American democracy — and historians writing about it in the future. They will go back and read Trump’s tweets and his words and read what we were saying, and they will wonder what the hell was wrong with us. You knew, they’ll say. You knew everything you needed to know to stop this. And what will we say in response? . . . What is clear is that high crimes and misdemeanors described far more than mere legal infractions. . . . Asked, for instance, about a president who removed executive officials without good reason, James Madison replied that “the wanton removal of meritorious officers would subject him to impeachment and removal.” Capricious firings are not a crime, but they were, according to the founders, an impeachable offense. “The grounds for impeachment can be extremely broad and need not involve a crime,” says political scientist Allan Lichtman, author of The Case for Impeachment. “That’s why they put impeachment not in the courts but in a political body. They could have put it in the Supreme Court, but they put it in the Senate.” . . . “We’ve talked ourselves into believing impeachment is some kind of constitutional doomsday device: ‘Break glass in case of existential emergency,’” says Gene Healy, a vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute. “The result is we almost never break the glass.” In its roughly 240 years of existence, America has had 45 presidents and three serious impeachment proceedings. None of them has led to the removal of a president, though Richard Nixon’s would have if he hadn’t resigned. “It’s very hard to say of 45 presidents in 240 years [that] never, or once if you count Nixon, is the right number of impeachments historically,” Healy continues. “It’s a much easier case to make that we’ve impeached far too infrequently.” . . . It would have been simple enough to enumerate the offenses that could lead to impeachment, and some at the Constitutional Convention proposed doing so. Instead, “high crimes and misdemeanors” was the result — a recognition that flexibility would be needed and future generations would need a term they could define for themselves. . . . It is time to reassess. Impeachment, in Donald Trump’s case, would lead to the elevation of Mike Pence — a Republican who is better liked by his party and who, to Democrats’ chagrin, would likely be much more effective at pushing a conservative legislative agenda. But it would mean less danger of an accidental war with North Korea, less daily degradation of democratic norms and civil discourse, an executive who has the attention span to follow briefings and the temperament to stay off Twitter when he’s angry, and the precedent that there is some minimal level of job performance that the American people and their political representatives are willing to demand of their president. An objection to this is that it might lead to more common impeachment proceedings in the future. And indeed it might. Other developed countries operate on roughly that basis, with occasional no-confidence votes and snap elections being used to impose midterm accountability, and they get along just fine. Impeachment under the American political system requires a majority in the House of Representatives and a two-thirds majority in the Senate; it is not easy to use and, as Republicans learned in the aftermath of their attempt to impeach Clinton, can backfire on those who use attempt it frivolously. It seems unlikely that America is at risk of regular or trivial impeachments even as it seems quite likely that the holders of an office as powerful as the American presidency might be well served to believe that impeachment is a real possibility if they perform their duties unacceptably poorly. A lesson of Trump’s presidency, thus far, is that we have come to see the impeachment power as too sacrosanct, as too limited. While I was writing this piece, Trump embarked on a diplomatic trip to Asia. While there, he sent [a tweet about Kim Jong Un being short and fat]. There are plenty of people who simply should not be president of a nuclear hyperpower, and Trump is one of them. This is a truth known by his staff, known by Republicans in Congress, and known by most of the country.That so few feel able to even suggest doing the obvious thing and replacing him with another Republican who is better suited to the single most important job in the world is bizarre. (It is a particular irony in this case, given that Trump’s entire public persona is based on the idea that well-run organizations need to swiftly and ruthlessly fire poor performers.) We have grown too afraid of the consequences of impeachment and too complacent about the consequences of leaving an unfit president in office. If the worst happens, and Trump’s presidency results in calamity, we will have no excuse to make, no answer to give. This is an emergency. We should break the glass. But even if we muddle through Trump’s presidency, it should be a reminder that the presidential elections are as fallible a method of selecting an executive as any other. American government is built so that a president can be removed and a duly elected co-partisan is always present to step in and take his place. Impeachment is not a power we should take lightly; nor is it one we should treat as too explosive to use. There will be presidents who are neither criminals nor mental incompetents but who are wrong for the role, who pose a danger to the country and the world. It is a principle that sounds radical until you say it, at which point it sounds obvious: Being extremely bad at the job of president of the United States should be enough to get you fired. I refer you again to “my fantasy” Supreme Court ruling (once a case were brought), which — however unlikely — would be even better than impeachment. Putin attacked us and won. The Court, if asked to rule, has what seems to me a perfectly reasonable way forward.
Of Bee-yuh and Spiders December 8, 2017December 6, 2017 But first (and trust me, you don’t want to miss the bee-yuh): My friend Peter Kinzler is seeking seven patriots. To wit: On June 1, 1950, Republican Senator Margaret Chase Smith took the floor of the Senate to address what she described as “a serous national condition. It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear.” Her concern was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on American citizens as communists or fascists. Today, we face similar attacks on American citizens and institutions from a reckless president, but where is the Republican response? With the support of six other Republicans, Senator Smith delivered a “Declaration of Conscience” criticizing the statements and tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Among Senator Smith’s indictment were the following points: . . . As you’ll see if you read the full piece (the bee-yuh will still be hee-yuh), he quotes that declaration; identifies seven current Republican senators of conscience; and goes on to say: . . . What [these] seven haven’t done is emulate Senator Smith by making it clear—together—that Trump’s actions represent a clear and present danger to our democracy, one that requires that they act on the premise that, “We are Republicans, but we are Americans first.” On the contrary, every one except Corker worked with Trump and voted for tax legislation that was crammed though the Senate without any semblance of normal legislative process. If they act together, these Republicans can save the nation from Trump’s deepening autocracy. If they do not and American democracy goes down, it will be to their everlasting shame that they knew the danger but lacked the principles and courage to stand up. December 15, the day the Bill of Rights was adopted 226 years ago, is rapidly approaching. Wouldn’t it be fine if these seven honored the day by emulating Senator Smith and her six fellow Republicans with an updated Declaration of Conscience? ☞ Spread the word? OK: Forget bitcoin (more on that soon) — he-yuh’s the alt-currency you can rely on. (And if you enjoyed that, you might get a kick out of this.) My ironic friend texted me this link with the heading: “But finally some good news.” Have a great weekend!
How They Broke Congress December 7, 2017December 4, 2017 My centrist friend Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, co-wrote this for the New York Times Sunday: In the past three days, Republican leaders in the Senate scrambled to corral votes for a tax bill that the Joint Committee on Taxation said would add $1 trillion to the deficit — without holding any meaningful committee hearings. Worse, Republican leaders have been blunt about their motivation: to deliver on their promises to wealthy donors, and down the road, to use the leverage of huge deficits to cut and privatize Medicare and Social Security. Congress no longer works the way it’s supposed to. . . . If in 2006 one could cast aspersions on both parties, over the past decade it has become clear that it is the Republican Party — as an institution, as a movement, as a collection of politicians — that has done unique, extensive and possibly irreparable damage to the American political system. . . . Mr. Trump’s election and behavior during his first 10 months in office represent not a break with the past but an extreme acceleration of a process that was long underway in conservative politics. The Republican Party is now rationalizing and enabling Mr. Trump’s autocratic, kleptocratic, dangerous and downright embarrassing behavior in hopes of salvaging key elements of its ideological agenda: cutting taxes for the wealthy (as part of possibly the worst tax bill in American history), hobbling the regulatory regime, gutting core government functions and repealing Obamacare without any reasonable plan to replace it. This is a far cry from the aspirations of Republican presidential giants like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, as well as legions of former Republican senators and representatives who identified critical roles for government and worked tirelessly to make them succeed. It’s an agenda bereft of any serious efforts to remedy the problems that trouble vast segments of the American public, including the disaffected voters who flocked to Mr. Trump. . . . We have never suggested that Democrats are angels and Republicans devils. Parties exist to win elections and organize government, and they are shaped by the interests, ideas and donors that constitute their coalitions. Neither party is immune from a pull to the extreme. But the imbalance today is striking, and frightening. Our democracy requires vigorous competition between two serious and ideologically distinct parties, both of which operate in the realm of truth, see governing as an essential and ennobling responsibility, and believe that the acceptance of republican institutions and democratic values define what it is to be an American. The Republican Party must reclaim its purpose. India looks to save 20 billion rupees on airport taxiing . . . which may not be the most pressing thing on your mind, but now I probably have you wondering how much that is in dollars ($310 million), which I know because I asked Alexa. I had previously asked her, with regard to the Pilgrims, “How long did it take the Mayflower to reach America?” and she said, “You are 234 miles from America [actually, I was in New York, so maybe she meant the real America] but I don’t know how fast you’re traveling so I can’t calculate your travel time.”
Meal Pal December 6, 2017December 5, 2017 You know I don’t eat. Saves time, saves money, saves the planet, good for health and weight, and much easier on the cows and chickens. Especially the chickens. That said, one has to eat something, and if you’re the kind of person who does, let alone “meals” (I graze), MealPal may be worth a look. You sign up for either 12 or 20 lunches a month (or, now, in some cities, dinners), at a rate ranging from $5.19/meal in Miami to $6.39/meal in cities like New York, Boston, DC, and San Francisco. No beverage; but you get a full hot lunch or dinner (and plastic utensils and a napkin). Not bad for $6.39. I just watched a friend eat his moules frites from Café Tallulah — $24 plus tax and tip if he had sat there to eat it instead of coming by my place — and because he couldn’t finish it all, I made out like un bandit. Plus, he got a beer from my fridge that cost him nothing (and me, just a buck) instead of $8. Each night (or early the day-of), you peruse nearby restaurants to see what’s offered — no choices or substitutions, but a wide variety of chefs — and click to reserve one. Then just drop in at lunch time, give your name, grab your bag. No lines. No cash register. Real fast. And you might want to have a Heineken with that. I guess it’s five years old, but have you ever seen this ad? (Watch all the way to the end.) Thanks, Mel!
Go To Mars Soon? December 5, 2017December 3, 2017 Not me! But how can one not be excited by this: a 90-day journey to Mars in 2024. Less time than it took the Mayflower to reach Cape Cod (all things considered) — and with comforts and luxuries of which the Pilgrims could never have dreamed. (Thanks, John!) Back here on Earth . . . Rex Tillerson has largely destroyed the State Department — a huge win for Vladimir Putin and his fellow murderous autocrats around the world. But the Republicans in the House and Senate don’t seem to care. They are making America great again by making health insurance less affordable, higher education less affordable, inequality more pronounced, our National Debt needlessly higher . . . all the while letting our infrastructure crumble. An almost certain prescription for progress and prosperity. It’s almost funny. As president, we have a genuine fake-wrestling hall of fame inductee. As secretary of state, we have a genuine Russian Order of Friendship Medal recipient. The latter calls the former “a fucking moron.” The former calls the latter “an idiot.” Maybe it’s time to remind you of my fantasy: My fantasy — and it is only that — is that some crisis a month or three down the road triggers a lawsuit that can only be decided by the Supreme Court. And that that Court, though captured by the right, somehow finds the fundamental patriotism and fairness to say something like this: “Seventeen years ago this Court faced a national crisis and — in a ruling it went out of its way to brand as non-precedential — made a tough and widely criticized call that, in effect, gave George W. Bush the Presidency and, as it happened, the opportunity to appoint two of us to this body. Last year, the Senate made the unprecedented decision not to allow the President to fill a vacancy on this Court, on the grounds that the will of the people as expressed in 2008 and 2012 did not give him that authority — the Senate needed to see how the people leaned in 2016. As we now know, the people — not the Electoral College, the people — leaned toward the Democratic candidate. “Today we face a new crisis. In developments that have been building all year, it has become clear that the 2016 election results were interfered with by a massive Putin-directed thumb on the electoral scale — a thumb the existence of which the Trump team long denied knowledge of but of which we now know they were well aware. In that context, we have been called upon to overturn the 2016 result as tainted, and to order a workable mechanism by which the country can move forward and regain its footing. “We hereby direct former presidents Obama and Bush, acting in concert, to recommend to this Court, in the shortest time possible, an interim president and vice president to serve out the remainder of this presidential term — or a shorter term if a majority of the House and Senate shall call for an earlier election.” Or something like that. And Barack and George, very different people but both sane patriots, would perhaps recommend to the Court Joe Biden and Mitt Romney; the Court would approve; and most of the nation — not having attained anything like great health care at a tiny fraction of the cost — nor remotely to have tired of “winning so much you’ll get tired of winning” — would breathe a huge sigh of relief. As would the world. Or they could just give it to Hillary, who did get more votes despite it all; but Putin/Trump have been so effective at getting people to misperceive her (she is wonderful and would have made a great president), it could fail to give the same sense of closure. Just sayin’.