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.