1. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA). The federal estate tax applies to money over $5.49 million dollars that a person leaves behind when they die—$10.98 million for a married couple. Here’s what Republican Sen. Grassley thinks of all those bums who didn’t bother to leave $5.49 million apiece and therefore won’t benefit from an estate tax repeal:
"I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing,” Grassley (R-Iowa) told the Des Moines Register, “as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”
Yes, if you’d just stopped spending every darn penny your $40,000-a-year job paid on booze and women and movies, you’d have the nearly $6 million that would mean your heirs would benefit from Republicans repealing the estate tax. Why, when you think about it that way, it’s not about massive generational wealth at all!
In reality, of course, the estate tax isn’t about some people who can’t lay off the booze and movies, it is about massive generational wealth transfers, with only two out of 1,000 estates paying any federal estate tax at all. Because it turns out that even if you drink no booze and watch no movies and invest pretty damn carefully, you can’t save $5.49 million in a lifetime of work, not if you’re making the average American salary-- or twice the average American salary, for that matter. To have estate tax-level money, you either have to have inherited a lot yourself, been paid an amount that only a couple percent of Americans are paid, or hit a lottery jackpot. Oh yes, you couldn’t have been a lucky early investor in Apple.
Shame on you if you don’t have $5.49 million to leave your heirs.
2. Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT). More hypocrisy on the tax cut plan. During the Senate “debate” over the Tax cuts and Jobs Act, Hatch was challenged over the implications of the proposed cut for the children’s Health Insurance Program, which covers nine million children, whose funding lapsed two-months ago and has not been renewed. Hatch insisted that “the reason CHIP’s having trouble is because we don’t have money anymore.”
Hatch uttered these words just as he voted for a trillion-and-a-half tax cut that will mainly benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations. If this wasn’t enough hypocrisy, Hatch went on to say:
“I have a rough time wanting to spend billions and billions and trillions of dollars to help people who won’t help themselves, won’t lift a finger and expect the federal government to do everything.”
To whom might Hatch be referring? Food stamps that help children, the elderly and disabled? Maybe he’s talking about Medicaid, which again mainly benefits the same groups? Ah, could it be he’s thinking about hard-working people whose jobs don’t provide for healthcare, or people who can’t make ends meet? I could go on and on. The fact is there are very few Americans who willingly “don’t lift a finger” because they can get some government subsidy.
He surely couldn’t be thinking about Americans who inherit large estates, even though most didn’t lift a finger to earn it. On second thought, maybe he is. Maybe that’s why he supports the Republican tax plan that will increase the estate tax exemption to $22.4 million. The hypocrisy is sickening: gut assistance programs for children, the elderly and disabled while padding the pockets of super-rich folks. Make no mistake about it, this is the entitlement reform the GOP has in mind.
Not that any of this bothers Hatch; quite the contrary. When asked about the GOP Christmas gift to the super-wealthy, Hatch had this to say:
“I’m going to just say to you that I … come from the poor people. And I’ve been here working my whole stickin’ career for people who don’t have a chance. And I really resent anybody saying that I’m just doing this for the rich. I think you guys overplay that all the time and it gets old. And frankly you ought to quit it.”
Hatch may claim that he came from “the poor people,” but, if so, that was many decades in the past. Because the 83-year-old Hatch is now one of the richest members of Congress. Oh how perspectives change.
3. The Mormon Church. One thing that most religions are good for is trying to control people’s morality by shaming them for their natural sexual impulses. Newsweek has published the findings of a leaked 1981 Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ guidebook, provided by a group called MormonLeaks. Here’s an important bit of information to pass on to your children.
“Early masturbation experiences introduce the individual to sexual thoughts which may become habit forming and reinforcing to homosexual interests,” the guidebook claims. “Self-masturbation is almost universal among those who engage in homosexual behavior, and is a very difficult habit for most to overcome.”
The Mormon church believes homosexuality is “of grave concern” because it may involve violent or criminal behavior and is as sinful as heterosexual adultery and fornication, the guidebook says. The book also claims that homosexuality is a learned behavior influenced by unhealthy development in early childhood, and says that absentee fathers and dominant mothers are among the main culprits for these developmental problems leading to homosexuality. The guidelines also include excommunicating LGBT people from the church as well as from any Latter-day Saints’ affiliated institutions (schools, etc).
Since that time the Mormon Church has loosened up some of its more restrictive rhetoric around the issue of homosexuality—including finally coming out against conversion therapy and other barbaric homophobic practices. But it’s still a big “no-no” for the church. The tweaks to the religion’s official rhetoric, however, do not include changes in its doctrine. Being LGBT is still considered a “sin” in the Mormon Church.
4. The Republican Party. Well, they did it! In the dead of night, Republicans passed the giant giveaway to corporations and the wealthy that they like to bill a “middle-class tax cut” or “tax reform.” The Republican tax bill is the most unpopular major legislation in decades and economists say it will not help the economy in the ways Republicans keep promising, but that wasn’t going to stop them. The House voted on Tuesday afternoon, passing the bill by 227 to 203, with 12 Republicans joining every Democrat in voting no. The Senate voted after midnight, passing the bill 51 to 48 on a party-line vote (Sen. John McCain was absent).
As a good citizen, I hope the “tax cut” will work out as Republicans predict, but there is virtually no chance this will happen. In the past, gigantic tax cuts have not spurred the kind of in vestment and growth that raises wages and improves the lives of ordinary Americans. They have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthiest citizens. This one will be no different. It will predictably raise taxes for many middle-class Americans (especially after 2018), increase the cost of medical coverage for most Americans, and undoubtedly widen our already obscene inequality.
But give the GOP credit. If this is part of a larger scheme (scam!) to please wealthy donors, explode deficits which will lead to spending cuts (except for defense), and lay the groundwork for replacing social security and Medicare with market-driven schemes, then their strategy is brilliant. Republican disregard for expert analyses of the plan and their behind-the-scenes rush to passage lead me to suspect that this is exactly what they're up to. Brace yourselves.
5. President Donald Trump. I couldn’t resist one little tidbit. Commenting on the East Coast cold spell, the Donald brilliantly observed:
“In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!”
The moron equates weather with climate change. Maybe next he’ll bring a snowball to his golf resort New Year’s Eve party as his evidence that the planet isn’t warming.
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AND THE WINNER IS . . .
Grassley is undoubtedly worthy of an IGGY, but for its duplicity, hypocrisy and contempt for ordinary Americans, this month’s winner is THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.
This award is entirely appropriate. Passing the tax cut ranks as one of the most brazen abuses of power I have witnessed in America. Despite widespread disapproval the GOP obeyed their "desperate" corporate masters who feared they wouldn't get the massive gift they "paid" for with legalized bribery. The donors aren't stupid - they know they have a limited window to get their "gift" I can only describe this as the completion of a coup by giant corporations and the super wealthy. They simply wanted "theirs" at any cost, no matter how reckless and found a willing partner in the current GOP where so many of them fervently and conveniently believe that tax cuts are a magical economic elixir. In spite of a mountain of evidence to the contrary that these types of tax cuts benefit everyone, they continue to push them at every opportunity. It will likely have the opposite effect and cause even more distorted wealth inequality and economic instability.
ReplyDeleteOf course, the more cynical members of the GOP know this and don't care because it fits their even greater cause of dismantling the government in service to their wealthy donors. As long as the donations (bribes) keep coming in and they stay in power, they will continue on their reckless path. Of course they are coming for all of it - social security, Medicare, Medicaid, health care subsidies, welfare.
Of even greater concern is the way this tax cut was passed. They made little effort to sell the tax cut - polling indicates the vast majority of Americans know what this was - but they didn't care. They are sure that by avoiding debate and passing it at lightning speed they can "shock "the citizenry enough that they won't resist during the ensuing time of confusion. This tactic is the classic tool of kleptocrats and authoritarians described so beautifully in Naomi Klien's 2007 book "The Shock Doctrine" and provides context for what is happening here. Make no mistake, this type of action is the antithesis of democratic rule and we can expect more from this regime. What happened should be a blinking red light warning of danger to our entire system. I don't think most Americans will like where this will lead.
Fortunately, there is very strong resistance to this. To stop this threat the people will need to make them pay both politically and economically. We must vote the current regime out and quickly (before the power of the vote is even further diluted) and we must make the kleptocrats pay for their bad behavior. This is still very much a demand driven economy and the people can make them pay a high price economically by boycotting the business interests that paid for this tax cut. This is the way forward and I hope we can see this through before further economic and political shocks weaken our will to resist.
I couldn't agree more
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