GOP Tax Cuts Are Worse Than We Thought

Yep, the repugs just snatched the wallets of every working person in the country and handed them directly to corporate shareholders.  Do not invest in new factories, do not create jobs, do not pass go.  Just steal the savings of everyone who's not obscenely rich.

Political Animal

Corporations aren’t just spending their tax cuts on stock buybacks. They’re investing at almost record levels on mergers and acquisitions, which increases what they’re making on buybacks. Isn’t that special?

Let’s take all this one step further though. Mergers and acquisitions are the building blocks of monopolies, something the Washington Monthly has been warning about for years as perhaps the single biggest contributor to stagnant wages and income inequality.

We can all complain that Democrats didn’t do enough to tackle the monopolization of our economy when they had majorities in Congress and a president in the White House. But now we see what the Republican position is. They aren’t just ignoring the issue, they’re feeding it with their corporate tax cuts and expect the rest of us to be happy with an extra buck fifty a week.

Noah at Down with Tyranny has it in meme form:

Take a look at that $6 Billion for workers. Chances are that is you, the reader of this post. If you are one of the approximately 300 Million Americans (I'm rounding it off just in the interest of simplicity), your average share of that $6 Billion would be $20.00. How's that $20.00 changing your life? Oh, you say your share is well above the average? OK. Great for you! You say your share is what $100? $1,000? $1,500? Wow! I bet that's life changing for you! That money can buy you a lot of healthcare, no?

RepugNoCare in Pictures

Kevin Drum has the graphs in all their fuck-workers glory. Here's one with the guy who is sacrificing 22 million Americans to give a trillion-dollar windfall to the already obscenely rich.

 

Need words?  Kevin's got 'em.  He concludes:

Reading the CBO report in its entirety, it’s hard to see that BCRA offers any improvements over Obamacare aside from cutting taxes for the rich. Net premiums go up for most people—quite massively in the case of older consumers; deductibles go up; out-of-pocket expenses go up; the working poor are virtually shut out of the insurance market; the quality of coverage gets worse; and 22 million people lose insurance.

The only plausible path for any improvement is the increased flexibility states would have to run their own health care progams. Historically, this has accomplished little except to allow conservative states to cut back on health services to the poor, so you’d need to be mighty starry-eyed to think that it will produce amazing innovations this time around. But that’s about it: believing in the power of states to innovate because they have less money is the only path for defenders of BCRA.

It's making liberals puke and scream and cry, and it cancels the primary achievement of That Ni**er in the White House, so in the eyes of trump voters, it's perfect.

They'd rather watch their children die in agony from lack of health insurance than let Those People win. 

Yes, working class white, repugs are fucking you with a barbed dildo

But they're really sticking it to the niggers and the spics and the ragheads, and making liberals cry, so it's all worth it, right?

Charlie Pierce:

All the bustle and noise has been on the Senate side for a couple of weeks, what with the brawl over nominations at all. But the real mischief is going on over in the House of Representatives. That's where all those white working people who have had major publications and networks buying them cookies for the past two months are getting sold down the river in one quick hurry. As I think I've said before, I empathize, but I do not sympathize. Not a lick.

They're going to be the ones that suffer when regulations get rolled back. It's their water and air that is going to get fouled when the regulations against mountaintop mining get eviscerated, which was debated on the House floor just Wednesday afternoon. It's their streams that will run green and purple. It's their landscapes that will get gouged and ruined.

SNIP

But the real whopper came in a press conference in the Rayburn building in which Congressman Steve King and Congressman Joe Wilson—now there's a pair to draw to—announced that they would be filing a bill to enact a national right-to-work law. Of course, this has been a corporate and conservative dream shot ever since the National Labor Relations Act was passed in 1935.

Needless to say, the enactment of this kind of law—which experience shows lowers wages precipitously, and which severely drains the ability of unions to lobby for themselves—would not do much for the president*'s image as a hero of the working class.

No, the White Working Class Man Will Never Save the Democratic Party

I am so sick and tired of all this fucking shit about how Democratic politicians have to reach out and embrace the very poisonous snakes of the white working class men who have been trying to kill us for decades. (No names; you motherfuckers know who you are.)

That we have to "embrace" their "cultural values."  Those would be the "cultural values" of racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, right-wing violence, domestic terrorism, greed, freakazoid religion and stupidity.

In other words, the entire platform of the Republican Party.

We've been here before.  Whenever the repugs steal elections from the Democratic Party, the response is always "we have to become more like repugs!"  Democratic candidates who campaign like repugs Are. Not. Democrats.  They. Are. Repugs.

And somebody's missing from this equation.  A whole lot of somebodys.  Working class African-Americans.  Working class Hispanics. Working class white women.  Working class immigrants.  Working class Muslims.  Working class LGBTI people.

Together, we vastly outnumber those white men who think an imbecilic game show con artist is going to bring back coal jobs.

The repugs were able to steal the 2016 election because the Democratic Party did not do enough to stop repugs from suppressing the vote and preventing all those non-white, non-male, non-christian, non-straight non-rich Democratic voters from voting.

Whining to white male repugs that we understand their racism, misogyny, homophobia, religion and stupidity is not going to gain a single white working class vote.  And it sure as fuck is not going to get a single suppressed Democratic voter to the polls and voting.

Forget the working class white man.  He abandoned the Democratic Party the instant the Democratic Party noticed that black people and brown people and female people and gay people are human beings with rights the full equal of any white man.

Let's work with the voters who have proven their loyalty.  The voters whose rights have been stolen by the repugs.  The voters who gave us President Barack Obama and thus millions of auto industry jobs, a 4.5 percent unemployment rate, hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure and oh yeah, an Affordable Care Act that has saved countless lives, hundreds of rural hospitals and their communities, and by the way Medicare and Medicaid.

Let's dance with the ones that brung us.

Working class white men are not anyone who will prove an asset in any way to the Democratic Party. They've abandoned us, and it's far past time that we abandon them to the repugs who will laugh as them as they die of trumpism.

Good riddance.

Fuck the White Working Class

Let's concentrate on uniting the coalition of people who share our values and stop chasing after racist motherfuckers who don't.

Rude Pundit:

My friend Duke from West Virginia said something that had crossed my mind but had shoved aside as bitterness: "Fuck the white working class. Obama gave them health insurance and a chance to get new jobs and they hated him. Fuck them."

Without thinking, I immediately agreed, and as soon as I did, it made total sense. "You're right. Democrats need to abandon the white working class." By "abandon," I mean not trying to desperately court the votes of people who always vote against their best interests and against those who are trying to help them. See, Democrats don't have a working class white people problem. Working class white people have the problem. When you vote against those who are trying to help you for the very people who have harmed you, then you are not dealing with rational thought.

Yeah, that's patronizing and elitist. But nearly half of the voters in a presidential election chose the man who regularly lied to them. So you'll have to forget it if you want me to romanticize and normalize their ignorance.

By the way, that ignorance is a product of years of Republican fuckery at the local level to assure them that they do not get educated. That long game has finally paid off big time.

This is my solution, fantasy though it may be.  Devote even more resources to making sure a coalition of non-whites is united. Devote less to the hurt feelings of angry whites. Let's have this fuckin' fight for what the country is. They won this battle. Let's win the war.

"Do You Think She's Going to Win?"

Yeah, yeah: one person, one anecdote, I know.  Bite me.

She glanced at my shirt as she was taking my order.  Middle-aged white woman working food service in Kentucky.

"Do you think she's going to win?" Her voice was wistful, almost pleading.

It took me a second to realize she was referring to the Hillary 2016 image on my T-shirt.

"Oh, yes she is," I said in my most encouraging voice.

"I really hope so."  She took my money and gave me my food.

"Be sure to vote!" I sang as I turned away.

It didn't hit me until later.  As bad as a Trump presidency would be for people like me, it would be infinitely worse for minimum-wage workers like the woman who had just sold me some food.

Maybe I imagined the longing and hope I heard in her voice.

But when I vote on November 8 - no early voting in Kentucky without proof you will be out of the state on Election Day - I will be voting for more than just a* historic victory for progressives, Democrats and women.

I will be voting for - and with - the ignored, unsung working poor women of Kentucky for whom Hillary is more than a symbol.


* Yes, "a historic."  "Historic" has an aspirate "h," meaning it is pronounced, not silent, and therefore takes the article "a," not "an."  "An historic" is illiterate.

"Hillbilly" Betrays Family to Push Repug Lies

Shame on you, J.D. Vance.  All that powerful prose about family loyalty and beating people bloody for the slightest insult, thrown away as a defense of repug, conservatard racism.

"Hillbilly Elegy" purports to be a revelation of the real reason white working-class people are suffering in this country.

It's even written by an actual working-class white person!  A self-proclaimed "hillbilly!"  With statistics to back up his bullshit!

I'm sure his accounts of family violence, struggles with substance abuse and poverty are true; it's the lessons he draws from them that are lifted straight from the elitist conservative pages of the National Review.

T-bone steaks bought on food stamps?  That canard is older than you, son.

Poor people don't need welfare; they just need to get off their lazy asses? Um, didn't you just disprove that very lie in the previous chapter?

Poor whites aren't racist; they just hate "Obama" (never "President Obama") for unknown reasons.

Vance deplores the economic and social collapse of the Ohio town where he grew up without ever recognizing, much less acknowledging, that it was repug tax and deregulation policy that encouraged corporations to abandon places like Middletown.

And that it is repug austerity budgets that deny impoverished residents the decent jobs, housing, education and treatment they need to recover.

No, no, it's all the fault of "liberal" welfare.

For shame, J.D. Vance.  You may have a Yale Law degree and a six-figure job for a biotech company, but the uneducated, jobless "failures" you despise back in Breathitt County know the truth better than you do.

Who's Worth A Million?

PZ Myers has the quote of the week:

Nobody is worth hundreds of millions. Nobody. The life of the CEO making all that money is worth no more and no less than the life of the drunk homeless guy who offended Justin Keller by leaning on his car. The person who had the capital and the support to be able to go to college, make profitable connections, and get the investments to begin a startup is not working harder than the person who is doing two minimum wage jobs and getting periodically laid off by a volatile economy, and I am disgusted by these people who have failed to learn these basic lessons in life.

But greed and short-sighted selfishness and a lack of empathy seem to make up the recipe for financial success, which allows these oblivious parasites to foster more greed and short-sighted selfishness and lack of empathy.

Keeping Us in Our Place

The only thing modern conservatives "conserve" is the power and wealth of the plutocracy. Anything and everything they say to the contrary is a lie.

 

Via Down with Tyranny:

Conservatism is the theoretical voice of this animus against the agency of the subordinate classes. It provides the most consistent and profound argument as to why the lower orders should not be allowed to exercise their independent will, why they should not be allowed to govern themselves or the polity. Submission is their first duty, agency, the prerogative of the elite.

Though it is often claimed that the left stands for equality while the right stands for freedom, this notion misstates the actual disagreement between right and left. 

Historically, the conservative has favored liberty for the higher orders and constraint for the lower orders. What the conservative sees and dislikes in equality, in other words, is not a threat to freedom, but its extension. For in that extension, he sees a loss of his own freedom. ... Such was the threat Edmund Burke saw in the French Revolution: not merely an expropriation of property or explosion of violence but an inversion of the obligations of deference and command. "The levellers," he claimed, "only change and pervert the natural order of things."

Why Haven't You Eaten the Rich Yet?

They're taking everything you have, including hope.

 

Erik Loomis at LGM:

The Institute for Policy Studies has a new report on income inequality:

America’s 20 wealthiest people — a group that could fit comfortably in one single Gulfstream G650 luxury jet –­ now own more wealth than the bottom half of the American population combined, a total of 152 million people in 57 million households.

The Forbes 400 now own about as much wealth as the nation’s entire African-American population ­– plus more than a third of the Latino population ­– combined.

The wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the United States. Among the Forbes 400, just 2 individuals are African American –­ Oprah Winfrey and Robert Smith.

The wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population. Just five members of the Forbes 400 are Latino including Jorge Perez, Arturo Moreno, and three members of the Santo Domingo family.

With a combined worth of $2.34 trillion, the Forbes 400 own more wealth than the bottom 61 percent of the country combined, a staggering 194 million people.

The median American family has a net worth of $81,000. The Forbes 400 own more wealth than 36 million of these typical American families. That’s as many households in the United States that own cats.

Make Voting a Condition of Public Assistance

David Atkins is an excellent analyst of Democratic voting behavior, especially at the local level, but I think he misses the obvious solution on this one.

If formerly Democratic strongholds in Eastern Kentucky are going repug because the working class votes and the poor don't, the solution is not to keep digging the bottomless hole of pandering to the middle class.

The solution is to get the poor who are not voting out to the polls to vote.

And the way to do that is to provide government assistance only to people who prove they are voting.

Repugs are so enamored of piling conditions on people who are starving and homeless; Democrats should propose this one and make repugs explain why not.

It's the turnout, stupid.

David Atkins at Political Animal:

Alex McGillis at the New York Times has one of the most intriguing and important pieces of political analysis I’ve seen in quite some time today. Most of us are familiar with analyses reliant on racial and cultural resentments to explain why poor white communities seem to vote against their own interests: voters with racist tendencies and those who fear the changing of social mores vote for Republicans in order to thumb their nose at minorities and coastal social liberals—even if the impact of conservative policies is worst in their own communities. But McGillis’ analysis suggests that conservative voters in these areas are just as resentful of their white neighbors on public assistance, and that most of the poor whites on public assistance aren’t voting for Republicans but have simply stopping voting altogether:

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

McGillis points to data showing that people who struggle economically are most likely to hold liberal views on economics, but are also least likely to vote. The more they need government help, the less connected they feel to their communities and the less interested they become in politics. Crucially, 57% of these nonvoters are white—mostly living in conservative communities.

In the meantime, those who vote Republican in these areas are the ones doing somewhat better economically who feel not just sublimated racism and generalized cultural resentment against coastal elites, but also direct anger at the increasing number of their neighbors and acquaintances in need of assistance:

SNIP

Democrats don’t really have a good answer for this problem. As a matter of public policy, obviously reducing inequality and improving working-class economics broadly should make progressive politics more palatable in these communities. But that’s a long-term project. From a communications standpoint, if voters are willing to give away tax breaks to Wall Street while intentionally voting for policies that will throw their friends and neighbors into the street and deny them lifesaving medical care, there’s not much you can do.

These mostly suburban and rural communities are infused with a Calvinist ethic that attributes success to moral virtue and failure to moral weakness. The cultural and psychological pull of that doctrine is incredibly powerful and buoyed by hucksters preaching the prosperity gospel that God will make you rich if you are faithful enough and want it badly enough. This toxic stew creates an instinct to push down the person below them rather than up against the person above them, and transcends simple racism and cultural resentment at this point.

From a communications standpoint, one approach Democrats can and should take is to strongly promote policies that not only help those who have fallen through the cracks, but also those who have middle-class jobs as well. Many of those policies already exist, but are hidden from voters in the form of tax credits rather than direct transfers. A more radical analysis would suggest that the forces of mechanization and globalization may require a universal basic income that would supplement the incomes of the employed and unemployed alike in a way that might make welfare payments seem fairer and more democratized to these voters. And, of course, a more full-throated progressive economic message (and laws that create easier access to voting) from Democrats may be able to encourage more of the downtrodden to make their voices heard at the polls.

Ultimately, though, there may be little Democrats can do to win over these surburban and rural white voters. Their shift to the GOP has been overwhelming, and if they’re willing to throw their friends and neighbors under the political bus there’s not all that much to be done. We can excuse it with economic, religious and social analysis, but at the end of the day that approach to life and ethics is usually described with negative moral language designed to invoke shame. Urban voters and minority communities don’t share this dog-eat-dog moral value system, and their numbers are growing. A more powerfully aggressive progressive politics and economic egalitarianism would likely help, but ultimately the solution may simply be a matter of waiting for demographic change and limiting the impact of gerrymandering designed to artificially increase the influence of these voters.

Arm Yourself for the Class War

Compared to the masters of the new Gilded Age, foreign terrorists are amateurs.

It's been going on for a very long time, and the obscenely rich are winning again, piling up victories that would shock their predecessors in the Gilded Age.

Erik Loomis at TPM:

There is a class war going on in the New Gilded Age. If “war” is the term we want to use for “massacre of the defenseless.”

Time for everyone to update your Class War Calendars with the latest income inequality figures. The Economic Policy Institute this week released the most recent figures on wages, and here is what we learned:

The “annual earnings of the top 1.0 percent of wages earners grew 4.9 percent in 2014, and the top 0.1 percent’s earnings grew 8.9 percent.”

In the past year, wages of the entire bottom 99 percent of earners grew less than 2 percent.

The “earnings of workers between the 99th and 99.9th percentiles have reached their highest level of all time,” and the earnings of the top 0.1 percent were only higher in 2007, just before the global economy crashed.

Since 1979, when the Reagan era ushered in our current age of American inequality, average annual earnings of the bottom 90 percent have increased by 16.7 percent; average annual earnings of the top 1 percent have increased by 149.4 percent; and average annual earnings of the top 0.1 percent have increased by 324.4 percent. It is not just that the rich have more money than the rest of us; their income is also growing much faster than the income of most people.

What Repug Tax Cuts Would Buy

This refers to jebbie's "plan," but all the repugs propose the same thing: stripping trillions from the public to further engorge the obescely rich.

Matt Yglesias:

The plan, as currently released, is not sufficiently detailed to permit credible independent scoring. But even four economists handpicked by Bush's team to analyze it say that under standard methods it would reduce federal revenue by about $3.4 trillion over its first 10 years. That's trillion with a T. Which is to say that if you had a stack of a billion dollars, you would need to add 3,399 more billion-dollar stacks to equal the cost of this program.

To get a sense of the scale, consider the following big government liberal proposals:

• Create subsidized job opportunities for 80,000 adults per year ($10 billion)
• The Center for American Progress' plan for high-quality day care ($40 billion)
• A bipartisan plan to boost the EITC to help the working poor that's held up in Congress because of disagreement on how to pay for it ($60 billion)
• Barack Obama's proposal for universal preschool ($75 billion)
• Eliminate the Highway Trust Fund fiscal gap ($168 billion)
• Hillary Clinton's plan for debt-free college ($350 billion)
• A national high-speed rail network ($500 billion)
• End sequestration, and adopt the Congressional Progressive Caucus's wish list of domestic discretionary funding increases ($1.9 trillion)

Sounds pretty ridiculous, right? Especially if you don't specify how you are going to pay for it. But it all adds up to only $3.1 trillion in new budgetary commitments. Read too quickly and the difference between $3.1 trillion and $3.4 trillion can seem like just a decimal point, but $300 billion is a lot of money, even spread across 10 years. So much that it would be enough to add in the $30 billion a year it would take to end hunger globally.

Obviously, a person is free to believe that delivering a large tax cut to owners of corporate bonds will do more to boost social mobility than providing preschool to poor children, or that reducing the tax burden on people who inherit $10 million estates is more morally urgent than reducing global malnutrition. 

But that would make you a moral monster.  More honest to just admit that you don't give a flying fuck about anybody who is not a billionaire, except to the extent that the poor can be mined and exploited for every last dime they can still produce.

QOTD: Affordable Care Act and the Supremes

Steve M:

So maybe Roberts will rescue the law again. But if he does, it'll be as a pro-GOP chess move, not because the suit fails on the merits or because he thinks pulling the rug out from millions is a bad thing.

"Make the right choices so that everyone who works hard can get ahead."

There's only one policy change that can accomplish that, Mr. President: Tax the super-rich out of existence.



Full transcript here.

Tax the RIch Out of Existence

They know exactly what's happening, and every minute that goes by without us attacking them with torches and pitchforks just makes them richer and safer.

Digby:

That's from a week-long series at Mother Jones about the effects of income inequality.  

I thought this one was particularly interesting:

That proverbial rising tide is really a giant wave. The wealthy are comfortably riding it on their multi-million dollar yachts while the rest of us are strapped to the keel. Sure, you could say we rise with that wave too but we're still under the water.

Bosses Stealing $50 Billion From Workers Every Years

And that's not counting what they steal in terms of low wages and lack of benefits; that's actual taking-money-out-of-your-pocket theft.

Danny Vinik at The New Republic:

As the economy slowly recovers, it’s become increasingly clear that it’s not just unemployed Americans who need help from the government. It’s those that are employed as well.

That’s the main finding of a new report from the Economic Policy Institute on wage theft. What is wage theft? It’s when employers refuse to pay their workers their rightful wages and benefits, such as refusing to pay overtime. It’s a major problem across the United States. One study, which EPI cites, examined three cities (New York, Chicago and Los Angeles) and found that two-thirds of workers in low-wage industries had experienced a pay-related offense in any given week in 2008. Those violations cost workers more than $2,600 a year on average—nearly 15 percent of their total earnings. If wage theft is as prevalent in the rest of the United States as it is in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, then it costs workers more than $50 billion a year.

Mitch's Working Family Con Game

Zandar offers a detailed expose of how Mitch McConnell is pretending to help working families by pushing legislation that will actually severely harm the people who do the real work in this country.

And finally, let's remember that Mitch the Turtle here voted against the Family Medical Leave Act, guaranteed sick pay legislation, and the Paycheck Fairness Act, things that actually would help families struggling here in Kentucky (and did when Clinton signed the FMLA into law).

This con game is what Mitch McConnell is selling, and the only thing between you and your boss getting you to work like indentured servants is the Democratic party.

Zandar shows just how vulnerable Mitch is on these issues - somebody tell Alison.

Happy 109th, IWW

“a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism.”

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

On June 27, 1905, at a convention in Chicago, the Industrial Workers of the World was founded. The IWW would play a major role in the industrial warfare of the early twentieth century, scare the employer class, and capture the imaginations of late 20th century and early 21st century radicals.

The IWW had many roots. Socialists and anarchists looked to form a broad-based labor organization. The Western Federation of Miners, a radical union with strongholds in the Rocky Mountains, wanted to expand their form of industrial unionism nationwide. Radicals of various stripes came to Chicago in late June to form this union. Among them was WFM leader Big Bill Haywood, who would become the union’s leader, although it was always a decentralized organization, especially when compared to both the American Federation of Labor and its constituent unions that were quite top-down, even in this era. Eugene Debs, former head of the American Railway Union and socialist candidate for president attended. The legendary matron saint of the United Mine Workers, Mary “Mother” Jones was there. Socialist leader Daniel DeLeon played a major role. Lucy Parsons, leading anarchist, African-American pioneer in American radicalism, and widow of one of the Haymarket martyrs attended. Haywood was the clear leader of this motley crew. The radical western miner stated the goal of the IWW was to form “a working class movement that shall have for its purpose the emancipation of the working class from the slave bondage of capitalism.”

Fuck YEAH

Not Enough, But A Good Start

Nothing short of confiscatory taxes on the rich will halt and reverse income inequality, but if you're not ready to back a real solution, Robert Reich has some acceptable half-measures for you.

Robert Reich at the Nation:

Some inequality of income and wealth is inevitable, if not necessary. If an economy is to function well, people need incentives to work hard and innovate. The pertinent question is not whether income and wealth inequality is good or bad. It is at what point do these inequalities become so great as to pose a serious threat to our economy, our ideal of equal opportunity and our democracy.

We are near or have already reached that tipping point. It is incumbent on us to dedicate ourselves to reversing this diabolical trend. It will not happen automatically, because the dysfunctions of our economy and politics are not self-correcting when it comes to inequality. In order to reform the system, we need a political movement for shared prosperity. Herewith, a short summary of what has happened, why it has happened, how it threatens the foundations of our society, and what we must do to reverse it.