TAX REFORM MY ASS RANT

      The Republican effort to deprive 20 million Americans of health care having failed, the Grand Old Party is turning to what they’ve decided to call Tax Reform. I use caps here only to draw the reader’s attention to the basic fraud.  Republicans are actually proposing enormous tax cuts that will, inevitably, accrue to the richest and most powerful American families.

       So, what would these tax cuts look like? At present, the various proposals are sketchy, but they include some common elements.

      The corporate tax rate would be reduced from 35% to 20% (congressional plan) or 15% (Trump plan).

      The estate tax, only applicable to individuals with estates above 5.45 million dollars, less than 1% of all estates, would be eliminated.

      The alternative minimum tax, applicable only to those with so many deductions, through so many loopholes, they would otherwise pay little or no taxes, would be repealed.

      Taxes on business conducted overseas by American companies would be reduced to zero.

      The current high-end tax on income, now 39.5%, would drop to 33%.

      Rather than cite estimates of who gets the dough, I invite readers to re-scan the above items while asking themselves a simple question: Does this benefit me? If you answer in the negative, don’t fret. There’s a bone for the doggy. Standard deductions for individuals and married couples will double. That accounts for about 3% of the total. As for the rest? Hey, Bill Gates hasn’t had a tax cut in years. Give the poor guy a break.

      How to pay for this, or at least pay for enough to cover the bill’s private parts with a fig leaf? Well, the original plan called for the money saved by repealing the ACA - a claimed 250 billion through tax cuts and reduced Medicaid spending over ten years – to be applied to the Republican tax plan. That’s out the window now, which reduces Republican options to exactly one. Slash spending. Thus, Trump’s proposed budget includes savage cuts – ten-year cuts - to social spending programs.

      Medicaid and children’s health programs: 616 billion.

      Food stamps and block grants designated for needy families: 272 billion.

      Disability: 72 billion

      Federal employee retirement benefits: 63 billion

      Financial regulation (by changes to Dodd-Frank): 35 billion

      Aid to education: 9.2 billion

      Once again, I invite readers to examine the above list. How many of these items are likely to affect you or someone you know? How many on the first list? Who wins? Who loses?

      One final note. Trump’s tax cuts will add 7 trillion dollars to the deficit over the next decade, even with the budget cuts, most of which he won’t get. That’s 700 billion per year, considerably more than 100% of our current deficit. But have no fear. According to our leader, Don the Con, we can deduct 2 trillion from the bottom line because an inspired growth fairy will show up to expand the economy. This is the same growth fairy conjured up by Ronald Reagan, George H. Bush and George W. Bush. All three invoked the growth fairy’s holy name again and again, but she never responded and deficits ballooned, a fact that can be verified by a one-minute search for “federal deficit spending in constant dollars”.

      It’s sad, taken all in all, but the saddest part is still to be named. The deficits produced by the long-planned Republican tax cuts will, of course, add to the national debt, providing Republicans with cover when they propose ever more savage cuts to social spending. Before we go over that pesky fiscal cliff.

QUICK HIT #8

      The Mystery:

      Russia’s desire to repeal the Magnitsky Act and its sanctions has become pretty obvious, as it’s becoming more and more apparent that repeal of those sanctions is Putin’s price for helping Trump win the presidency. But if repeal is the aim, you’d think Putin would be trying to appease the United States and its allies, not antagonize them.

      Make no mistake, Putin and the Oligarchs are ripping their country off to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars and they want to stash the loot outside the country. Why? Because they fear sharing the fate of Ukraine’s former, pro-Russian President, Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych fled his country in the face of a popular uprising, running, if not for his life, at least for his liberty. If there’s anything crooked oligarchs hate, its imprisonment by their victims.

       Yanukovych is currently residing in Russia. Perhaps he and Puttin have met from time to time, reminiscing on the good old days when they sucked the Ukrainian economy dry. But even if they haven’t, even if Yanukovych has fallen too far to be accorded a royal audience, Putin can’t help but think, “If it can happen next door, why not here?”

       Right now, despite a high poverty rate and falling wages, the Russian people continue to support Putin. That comes as no surprise, what with the murders of journalists and political competitors, the suppression of anti-Putin demonstrators, and state-control of almost all elements of the media. But the future is cloudier. The Russian economy, after nine quarters of recession is finally moving forward, but at an anemic rate, a mere .5%. And with the United States expected to become among the world’s largest exporters of oil by 2020, Russia’s economy isn’t likely to boom anytime in the near future. You have to sell a lot of caviar and vodka to compensate for $50 per barrel oil prices.

      For dictators the world over, moving a substantial portion of your loot into a safe harbor, in case you have to make a run for it, is a priority. Losing power is one thing, going broke another, serving years and years in an eastern-European jail still a third.

      Given the need to protect his ill-gotten gains, you'd think Putin would do everything he could to maintain prosperity and stability in the West. But Putin’s effort to destabilize the very countries he counts on to protect his money is virtually undisputed. Now these countries are biting back and biting hard. Russian oligarchs wake up these days to find their laundered money frozen, themselves banned from travel to the West and their pet banks unwilling to do business with Russian crooks.

       To my beloved wife, Putin’s actions are no mystery at all. Putin’s sense of his own greatness, in her opinion, far exceeds any rational measure of his abilities, just like Trump’s. We’re looking at grandiosity, pure and simple, and Vladimir Putin’s just another deluded psychopath who thinks he’s too smart to get caught. Jails around the world are full of people exactly like him.

      I’m not crazy about comparisons between Trump and Putin. That because I’m pretty sure that Trump, if he wasn’t born rich, would be driving a truck. Putin, on the other hand, made his way up the ladder, one claw-hold at a time. I have to think, what with all the pundits who talk about him playing three-dimensional chess to Trump’s checkers, that Putin’s too smart to destabilize the economies of countries that hold and protect his money. Then why….

       But that’s the mystery part, and if I had an answer that passes the stink test, it would’ve started this posting. As it is, I’m resisting the obvious, that Vladimir Putin, like Don the Con, is simply irrational. That one’s just a bit too frightening. 

QUICK HIT #7

      Jared Kushner gave his much-awaited public statement earlier this afternoon. If true in all its details, I’d have to say it looks pretty good for Jared. That’s one of those really-big ifs, however, and only time will tell. But one sentence did tickle at the edges of my bullshit-detector. Not the part about not colluding with the Russians, or knowing of anyone who colluded. Rather, following that disclaimer, Jared (or, more likely, his lawyers) wrote: “I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”

    The word “relied” is a weasel word if there ever was one. For example, even though the mortgage on my house is entirely held by Citibank, I can always claim that I never relied on Citibank because I submitted mortgage applications to Chase and Wells Fargo. Kushner never denies taking money from Russia, whether through a bank or an oligarch. He simply claims not to have relied on Russian largesse.

     Not good enough, folks, and just now, reading through his statement again, I’d eagerly take an even-money bet that Russian money found its way into the Kushner business empire. Anybody out there want the other side?

SECOND AMENDMENT REMEDIES MY ASS RANT

      In January of 1787, just a few months before the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, four thousand armed men, led by several revolutionary war officers, including Daniel Shays, marched on the federal armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. Their purpose, clearly stated, was to overthrow the government in Boston and write a new constitution. These same men had been active throughout the winter of 1786-1787, shutting down courthouses in six, widely-separated counties.

      Farmers all, they had grievances aplenty, though whether an outright rebellion was justified is a matter of debate among historians. But justification isn’t the point of this posting. We don’t have to root for one side or the other to admit that this was a Second Amendment remedy and every bit as purposeful (if not as effective) as the Revolution that ousted King George. Most of the rebels – and each of their leaders – were battle-tested Revolutionary War veterans and they knew how to fight.

      The State of Massachusetts initially called out its various militias, only to discover that many of them were already under arms. They were marching alongside Daniel Shays. The State then petitioned the federal government, formed at that time under the Articles of Confederation. Though sympathetic, the Congress took a pass. It had neither an army, nor the taxing power to raise an army. So sorry.

      The mercenary force that eventually rode out to confront the rebels was hired by a small group of Boston bankers, the same bankers who’d been preying on the farmers now in revolt. General William Shepherd commanded this army as it headed off to battle, forty-five hundred strong. No fool, Shepherd knew that if Shays took the Springfield Armory, the rebels would be the best-armed force in the region, more than a match for anything the state could throw at them. He had to get there first and he did.

      Shepherd found what he needed inside, several cannons, one of which he filled with grapeshot and fired waist-high into a rebel charge. And that was that, at least as far as the revolt was concerned.

      Shays and his cohorts weren’t the first to rebel, even in Massachusetts, only the most famous. In 1782, five years before, a preacher named Samuel Ely organized a Second Amendment solution of his own. The muster form for his ragtag, and ultimately unsuccessful, army included the following pledge: “We do Each of us acknowledge our Selves to be Inlisted… for the Suppressing of the tyrannical government in the Massachusetts State.”

       Other states experienced similar uprisings as courts were shut down by angry farmers in one state after another. Shays’s Rebellion was special because it caught the attention of a relatively small group of men who wanted a more powerful central government, men like George Washington, James Madison Alexander Hamilton, Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts, James Wilson of Pennsylvania and Charles Pinkney of South Carolina. One and all, they were outspoken nationalists who wished to transform what amounted to an alliance of nation-states into a single nation.

      Writing as an observer of Shays’s Rebellion, General Henry Knox, Washington’s Artillery Commander during the Revolution, described the rebels as “levelers”, equivalent in that era to the 20^th Century charge of Communist. “Their creed is that the property of the United States has been protected from the confiscation of Britain by the joint exercise of all, and therefore ought to be the common property of all….”

      Writing back, Washington told Knox that he expected the nation to be “much tumbled and tossed, and possibly wrecked altogether.” Later, he explained, “I could not resist the call to a convention of the States which is to determine whether we are to have a Government of respectability… or are to submit to one which may be the result of chance or the moment, springing perhaps from anarchy and Confusion….”

      Others chimed in. According to James Madison, “The insurrection in Massachusetts admonished all the States of the danger to which they were exposed.” James Wilson, later a Justice of the Supreme Court, echoed Madison’s and Washington’s opinions. “The flames of insurrection,” he declared, “were ready to burst out in every quarter….” Wilson wasn’t describing the situation in Massachusetts, but conditions in western Pennsylvania.

     Charles Coatesworth Pinckney of South Carolina committed the obvious remedy to paper. “There must be a real military force,” he wrote. “The United States has been making an Experiment without it, and we see the consequences in their rapid approach to anarchy.”

      On May 25, 1787, representatives from every State except Rhode Island met to form a new, far more powerful, truly national government. These men (all, of course, were male) were among the richest and most powerful in the country. They represented many interests, including men with large agricultural holdings, like the Livingstons who owned 160,000 acres spread out along the Hudson, and George Washington who owned 317 slaves. One agricultural interest, however, went virtually unrepresented, the interest of small farmers like Daniel Shays, who comprised 70% of the population. No, the delegates in Philadelphia were determined to put this class of Americans in its place. And they did.

      Five Examples, all found in Article 1:

      Article 1, section 10, clause one: No state shall “impair the obligation of contracts.” One form of relief certain states allowed hard-pressed farmers was a postponement of the due date for payments on mortgages and loans. These were called “stay laws” and states would no longer have the power to write them.

      Article 1, section 8, clause 5: “No state shall… make Anything but gold and silver Coin a Tender in payment of debts.” Some states had issued paper money because gold was so scarce. In rural areas, where these small farmers raised their families, gold was literally not to be found, which made it impossible to pay taxes and debt obligations. Paper money, under these circumstances, was a blessing when it was handled properly, but it would be a blessing no more. Once the Constitution was ratified, the federal government would control the supply of money.

      Article 1, section 8, clause one: “The Congress shall have the Power to lay and collect Taxes….”

      Article 1, section 8, clause 12: “The Congress shall have the power to… raise and support armies.”

      Article 1, section 8, clause fifteen: Congress is given the power, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

      Article 1, section 9, clause 2: The privilege of the writ of habeus corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.”

      OK, so I stuck in my own italics. The obvious nevertheless remains the obvious. The framers of our founding legal document  (the Declaration of Independence is not a legal document) provided the delegates with the means to confront and contain a problem, not in the distant past or the far future, but a problem at hand, an ongoing problem as events would prove.

      Beginning in 1791, two years after George Washington became our first President, farmers in western Pennsylvania, incensed by an excise tax on whiskey, started what has come to be called the Whiskey Rebellion. Again leaving aside the merits of their grievances, they initially enjoyed enough success for them to be declared, by Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, to be in a state of rebellion. That allowed Washington to call up the militia which he promptly did, eventually assembling an army of 13,000 men from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Maryland. With Washington in the lead (the only time in American History when a President rode into war at the head of an army), they proudly marched off. True, the rebellion was pretty much over by then, but a point had to be made. Never again would the United States of America tolerate a Second Amendment solution for any grievance, no matter how just.

      Second Amendment solution advocates commonly turn to Thomas Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence for justification. So, I’m going to close with a passage Jefferson included in a letter to C. W. F. Dumas shortly after the Constitution was signed.

      “Happy for us, that when we find our constitution defective and insufficient to secure the happiness of our people, we can assemble with all the coolness of philosophies and set it to rights, while every other nation on earth must have recourse to arms to amend or to restore their constitutions.”

       Sorry, but I can’t resist on more jibe. In 2014, Clivon Bundy, assisted by a few hundred Second Amendment remedy types, stood off the Bureau of Land Management for a couple of months. I’m sure they were very proud of themselves, what with the cammo gear, the cartridge belts, the side arms, the AR-15’s, the K-Bar knives, the MRE’s. But I particularly recall video of perhaps fifty of them stretched out along a highway overpass. Though I’ve never been to war, even I had the good sense to pose an obvious question.

      “What exactly do they plan to do when the helicopter gunships come over the hill?”

      Credit where credit is due. I drew the facts in this piece from a number of sources, but I owe a special debt to a book by Leonard L. Richards: Shays’s Rebellion. It’s impossible to come away from reading the book and still believe the founding fathers supported Second Amendment remedies.

QUICK HIT #6

      I’ve just finished watching OJ’s parole hearing, the hearing and the small army of talking heads chosen by MSNBC to comment. Curiously, all agreed on one item. The State of Nevada chose to punish O.J. Simpson for the California murders when it sentenced him to 33 years for an armed robbery, first offense. Supporters of the Goldman and Brown families pronounced the state’s actions righteous. Experienced defense lawyers, by contrast, cited the dangers of allowing the government to punish a defendant after an acquittal. But each acknowledged the excessive nature of the sentence.

      For some reason, as I followed the very predictable chatter, I found myself thinking of James Comey. Despite the FBI Agents and Assistant AG’s from the Justice Department agreeing unanimously that no case against Hillary Clinton existed, Comey decided to punish her anyway. His press conference was bogus from the beginning. I invite readers to do a Google-Image search for “classified documents”. You will find hundreds of examples, each with a header on the first page identifying the document as classified, secret, top secret, etc. Comey, in examining roughly 60,000 emails, did not find a single email containing a document so-marked. Instead, he told us, the investigation had turned up 20 (out of 60,000) emails that discussed a classified matter somewhere in the body of the document. In his opinion.

     Was Comey’s opinion shared by each of the FBI Agents assigned to the case? How about the Assistant AG’s who examined the FBI’s findings? And then there’s Hillary’s staffers and Hillary, herself. Did she or any of her staffers challenge Comey’s determinations?

     This is why we have trials, folks. This is why we place the facts before neutral bodies called juries. This is why we allow defendants to challenge the evidence. This is why we don’t allow cops to punish. And make no mistake, James Comey, as Director of the FBI, was a cop. Highly-placed, true, but still a cop. He was not, for instance, a prosecutor, a juror, or a judge – he just played all those parts on TV. For the benefit of Donald Trump.

     There are countries (including Russia) all over the world that allow cops to punish. Cops are freely able to detain individuals without charge, to inflict physical abuse, including torture, to finally release or murder their victims. No messy prosecutors, no judge, no jury. And this isn’t about a left-right, progressive-reactionary divide. This is about tyrannical regimes where dictators guard their power with brute force. Mess with me and I’ll kill you.

      Sabotage the Democrat? Help elect a man whose every instinct is totalitarian? Thanks, James.

READ IT AND WEEP

    The following is from Foreign Policy: http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/12/doj-settled-massive-russian-fraud-case-involving-lawyer-who-met-with-trump-jr/

      "Democratic congressmen on the House Judiciary Committee want to know why Attorney General Jeff Sessions abruptly settled a money laundering case in May involving the same Russian attorney who met with Donald Trump Jr. during the presidential election to offer “dirt” on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

      "The civil forfeiture case was filed in 2013 by Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York — who was fired by Trump in March. The case alleged that 11 companies were involved in a tax fraud in Russia and then laundered a portion of the $230 million they got into Manhattan real estate.

      "The forfeiture case was heralded at the time as “a significant step towards uncovering and unwinding a complex money laundering scheme arising from a notorious foreign fraud,” Bharara said. “As alleged, a Russian criminal enterprise sought to launder some of its billions in ill-gotten rubles through the purchase of pricey Manhattan real estate.”

But Instead of proceeding with the trial as scheduled, the Trump Justice Department settled the case two days before it was due to begin. By then, Bharara had already been axed by the president. Bharara’s assistant did not immediately respond to request for comment.

      "In May, the Justice Department settled the case for $6 million instead of $230 million and did not demand any admission of wrongdoing. According to the lawmakers’ letter to Sessions, Veslnitskaya was surprised by how generous the settlement was, telling one Russian news outlet the penalty appeared like `an apology from the government.'”

    Quoniam res ipsa loquitor. The thing speaks for itself

QUICK HIT #5

      Today the Republicans finally gave up the ghost on the repeal-and-replace of Obamacare, an especially craven capitulation, even by political standards. After all, they did vote a straight repeal many times before they had the power to carry through. I guess the thought of 20,000,000 people losing health insurance had them more concerned with their political health than with revealing their punk-ass propensities.

      Although my wife (I’m insured by Medicare) is one of those people who’s seen their premiums rise by 50% over the past two years, I’m happy for all those Americans who got access to health care for the first time through the Affordable Care Act. Now they get to keep it… unless, of course, the Republicans settle for quietly sabotaging Obamacare. But that won’t happen, right? The Republicans can’t be that spiteful, that mean-spirited? Right? Right?

      Funny, but I fail to hear an echoing chorus here.

      Anyway, I’m going to close with a really depressing thought, but one that won’t stop running through whatever neurons still survive in my forebrain. The United States isn’t the only country struggling with the ever-increasing cost of providing health care to its citizens. Every industrialized nation on the planet struggles with the same problem, despite almost all spending less, as a percentage of their GDP, than we do. This reality leads - inexorably, in my opinion - to a question that must be asked. Is it possible that modern medicine is reaching the point where it can provide more healthcare than human beings can afford?