Brazile: “NOT Rigged” ; The Tax Plan: Even Worse Than You Thought November 7, 2017 But first — as we wait for the election results today — can we just give Donna Brazile the last word? On CBS Morning News today she stated clearly that, no, the 2016 primary process was NOT rigged, “it was a fair fight.” No disrespect to Bernie, but according to Donna, Hillary won millions more votes, fair and square. (She also says she thinks the new DNC chair, Tom Perez, is doing the right things.) Needless to say, it would be have been more helpful for her now-famous Politico excerpt to have been framed this way — but there you are. Watch. Now let’s talk about the awful Republican tax proposal. Taken as a whole, it would widen the deficit, widen inequality, and starve the government of funds needed to revitalize our infrastructure and invest in our future. The proposal is not a massive tax cut for the middle class, it is a massive tax cut for the already-best-off. So start with just the most obvious, most glaring example of this . . . and I don’t mean the proposal to eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, which would have saved Donald Trump $31 million in 2005 (the only year for which his tax return leaked [because, perhaps, the only year he paid any?]). That’s a good example, too, but the best example, obviously, is the Republicans’ long-sought elimination of what they like to call “the death tax.” It’s not a death tax. Dead people don’t pay it. They’re dead. It’s an inheritance tax. Their kids and grandkids are the ones nicked — and they didn’t work a day in their lives to earn it (other than being sweet and adorable and obedient, but so were you and no one’s giving you $250 million). If Trump is really worth the $10 billion he claims, his kids would save $4.5 billion in federal taxes. How is that a massive middle-class tax cut? The middle class would save not one cent from elimination of the estate tax. Almost no one would. Even most of “the top 1%” aren’t wealthy enough to have pay it. And it’s actually worse than ever: Paul S. Ward, CPA: “The atrocious Republican tax bill provides for stepped-up cost basis on ALL inherited assets along with repeal of the estate tax. In the past, estate-tax repeal efforts have included at least some semblance of taxing at least some capital gains on inherited assets. No more. See today’s Washington Post Fact Checker. (“Two words in the GOP tax bill mean tens of billions for the superwealthy.”) The tax bill is tailor-made for people like Trump. No AMT, no estate tax, no capital gains tax on inherited assets, and much lower income tax on pass-through income. Today I voted the straight Democratic ticket in Virginia.” ☞ Amen, brother.