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Mitch McConnell is burning down the country so he can collect the insurance money.

At the time the Trump tax plan was passed, economist on both sides said pretty much the same things. It would inflate the deficit. It would lead to stock buy backs, not new investment. It would mostly go to a small group of people who are already wealthy. The GOP didn’t even bother to debate this point. They repeated talking points and shoved the bill through without debate. Without Democratic amendments. Without a second thought.

Bruce Bartlett was talking about this in 2012. It was called the “Two-Santa Theory” and it dates back to 1976 and was a core part of the Reagan years.

I want people to consider a second term for it. “Burning down the country to collect the insurance money”

The idea is simple. You run up the debt. You privatize everything, transferring it to the same people who got bags of cash in the form of tax giveaways and subsidies. You then loot the nation’s insurance fund, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to pay for it all. You burn the country down. You then fix the damage by collecting the insurance.

“New Treasury Department analysis on Monday revealed that corporate tax cuts had a significant impact on the deficit this year. Federal revenue rose by 0.04 percent in 2018, a nearly 100 percent decrease on last year’s 1.5 percent. In fiscal year 2018, tax receipts on corporate income fell to $205 billion from $297 billion in 2017.

Still, McConnell insisted that the change had nothing to do with a lack of revenue or increased spending and instead was due to entitlement and welfare programs. The debt, he said, was very “disturbing” and driven by “the three big entitlement programs that are very popular, Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid.… There’s been a bipartisan reluctance to tackle entitlement changes because of the popularity of those programs. Hopefully, at some point here, we’ll get serious about this.””

Call it what it is, burning down the country to collect the insurance money.

From: newsweek.com https://www.newsweek.com/deficit-budget-tax-plan-social-security-medicaid-medicare-entitlement-1172941

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What Liberals must learn about Ilhan Omar

If you come here legally.

If you learn english.

If you work hard and play by the rules.

If you integrate into your community, If you earn respect from that community. If you become the representative of that community.

If you do everything right.

Republicans will not hold you up as the embodiment of the American Dream, alive and well in the US. They will tell you to go back where you came from.

Respectability politics is like treading water and waiting for conservatives to toss you a life jacket. They will never toss it. And when you give up and drown they’ll blame you for giving up. Clearly you didn’t want it enough.

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Trump’s HHS embraces socialized medicine

The important thing to remember here is that Canadian drugs aren’t cheaper because they went on a medical vacation to Canada. They are cheaper because Canadian socialized medicine works.

Americans have been traveling to Canada for drugs like insulin when the cost is too high to obtain them in the U.S. This plan would ostensibly make it easier for Americans to obtain cheaper drugs without having to cross the border.

Source: HHS To Allow Imports Of Cheap Prescription Drugs From Canada

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Using the military as a campaign prop. Nothing new.

Hey, remember the last republican president? The one before Obama.

He used the military as a campaign prop. He politicized national intelligence. He made it office US policy to torture people. He used pardons to keep his advisors out of jail. He blocked investigations. He used shill media. He complained that the media was unfair. All of it.

If you pretend this all started with Trump, you’ll never be able to actually address the problem, let alone fix it.

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Republicans always want credit for some shit they supposed to do: Mitt Romney edition.

You know the worst thing about Republicans? Republicans always want credit for some shit they supposed to do. A Republican will brag about some shit a normal man just does. A Republican will say some shit like, “I would go to the FBI” You’re supposed go to the FBI, you dumb motherfucker! What kind of ignorant obstruction of justice shit is that? “I ain’t never colluded with Russia!” What do you want, a cookie?! You’re not supposed to collude with Russia, you low-expectation-having motherfucker!

I don’t actually hate Romney. But… WTF? This isn’t about you Mitt.

Look, Mitt would go to the FBI. I’ll have no reason to think he wouldn’t go to the FBI. Great. That’s a low bar. And the fact that you wouldn’t commit light treason doesn’t matter when you’re unwilling to take action to stop the sitting president from doing it.

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Mitch McConnell Will Not Act in Good Faith, Even When the Security of the Country Is at Stake

Why Obama didn’t take more action when presented with evidence of Russian attacks on our election? Mitch. That’s why.

“Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) went further, officials said, voicing skepticism that the underlying intelligence truly supported the White House’s claims. Through a spokeswoman, McConnell declined to comment, citing the secrecy of that meeting. Key Democrats were stunned by the GOP response and exasperated that the White House seemed willing to let Republican opposition block any pre-election move”

This is why Obama didn’t take more action. Mitch. And this guy is still there and still preventing the American people from knowing the full truth.

From: esquire.com

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a27394996/mitch-mcconnell-mueller-report-donald-trump-elizabeth-warren/

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Waiting for Soybeans to Break 800

Trump’s policy of handing over buckets of cash to farmers to compensate them for the damage his trade policy is causing them is far more socialist than anything the democrats are suggesting.
This is the MAGA lined road to serfdom.

From: econbrowser.com https://econbrowser.com/archives/2019/05/for-corev-waiting-for-soybeans-to-break-800

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When investigators threatened his power, he declared himself dictator

“Mussolini undermined the institutions and culture of Italian democracy persistently and methodically. He denounced any negative press coverage of him as “abusive” and “criminal,” and demanded that the offending reporters and editors be fired. In Parliament he made offhand remarks about abolishing the constitution, creating a secret police and becoming a dictator. He dismissed officials who were insufficiently servile. He bullied Parliament into passage of an electoral law that guaranteed his coalition’s victory in the 1924 elections. And he stayed silent when Fascists beat up or killed opposition politicians.”

Every work of fiction that describes the US turning into a dictatorship starts like this. A populist is elected, bullies the press, consolidates power, uses the DOJ to attack his opponents and then turns the FBI into his secret police force.

From: washingtonpost.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/06/19/when-investigators-threatened-his-power-he-declared-himself-dictator/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6d9e71d6a8c3

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Trump’s steel tariffs cost U.S. consumers $900,000 for every job created, experts say

“U.S. consumers and businesses are paying more than $900,000 a year for every job saved or created by Trump steel tariffs, according to calculations by experts at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The cost is more than 13 times the typical salary of a steelworker, according to Labor Department data, and it is similar to other economists’ estimates that Trump’s tariffs on washing machines are costing consumers $815,000 per job created.”

Remember Solyndra? While the government program that funded Solyndra turned a slight profit, Solyndra lost 528 million. Divide that by the 1100 Solyndra employees and you get 480,000 per job created or saved.  The Trump tariffs are nearly twice as expensive per job created as the most ungenerous metric of Solyndra.

From: washingtonpost.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/05/07/trumps-steel-tariffs-cost-us-consumers-every-job-created-experts-say/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6c24c8c4b156