Why won't more tax-cuts-for-the-rich work, as Ken Morris explains at TruthOut? Because "people with everything" will "take windfall wealth and simply sock it away in already bloated investment accounts," which does not exactly stimulate an economy. We saw this with the Reagan tax cuts, Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts, and the Sam Brownback "experiment" in Kansas, all of which left working families considerably worse off. People who need to buy stuff will buy more stuff if you give them a tax cut, but even Rand Paul doesn't believe this is a "middle-class tax cut."
Mike Ludwig at TruthOut chronicles the many reversals suffered by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke lately. These include both court rulings halting his efforts to slow or reverse clean air and clean water regulations and heightened scrutiny of his use of taxpayer money to go on joyrides. As one observer notes, "This 'grip-and-grin' tour is galling when the secretary is telling everyone else to tighten their belts...Taxpayers should not foot the bill for public officials acting as tourists."
The Government Accountability Office (or GAO) informs us that the IRS did not, in fact, "have" to award a no-bid contract to notorious private-data losers Equifax -- that they could, in fact, have awarded the contract to the corporation that actually won it, whether Equifax sued over it or not. And is it really American to go around saying I had no choice? I know quite a few conservatives who would say it is, in fact, not. Unfortunately, none of them can get on TV to drown out the whiny reactionaries who pretend to be conservative.
If you like, you can believe the story that Trump Administration Chief of Staff John Kelly had to spend two hours calming down the big man after he heard that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called him a bad name, but I feel compelled to remind everyone once again that Republicans use reports about their infighting to put you off your game, and also that Donald Trump loves drama even more than he loves bankrupting corporations so he can steal their assets. If we remember these things, and focus on stopping his actual agenda, we'll do a lot better.
I suppose it's possible that discussing Mr. Trump's whining about the roasting late-night talk show hosts routinely give him has some purpose. The notion that he should get "equal time" could sure backfire on him -- don't Republicans oppose things like the Fairness Doctrine? If he wants to hear some nice things about him, I suppose he could do some things worth saying nice things about. Of course, the "liberal" media might also say nice things about him if he bombs someone, but I wouldn't recommend that -- it just angers the people you bomb.
Finally, in re Mr. Trump's rolling back of the birth control mandate under the Affordable Care Act for corporations with "sincere" "religious" "beliefs": the religious right may love them some Trump, but they don't comprise a majority of Americans, no matter how afraid of them they'd like us to be. And if we gave rank-and-file religious righters something that'll actually help them -- the 91% tax bracket for millionaire income, single-payer health insurance, tougher clean air and clean water regulations -- then a lot of them will put birth control aside. I've seen it happen.
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