GOP tax code reform; The reality of capitalism sinks in with some after it bites

GOP style tax code reform: The Hill writes about a proposed House Republican reform proposal that favors the rich and lower income households, while shafting the middle class. Replace the entire tax code with a single 30% on everything tax, but with a tweak, and mostly get rid of the IRS by shifting tax collection responsibility to the states. The Hill writes:

The advantage to higher earners is so pronounced that the legislation includes a “prebate,” a cash transfer program in which taxpayers get regular checks equal to the amount that people at the poverty level would owe in taxes.

The result is a smaller tax burden for the highest and lowest earners and a bigger one for people in the middle.

A 2006 study by the House Small Business Committee on a similar proposal found that the tax burden for people making more than $200,000 and less than $15,000 a year would go down, while the burden for people making something in between would go up.

Republicans say that tax simplification is needed, which is true. Republicans have favored tax code complexity for decades because of loopholes for the rich that are routinely built in. Apparently, this proposal would reduce the burden on the rich even more than the existing code allows. 

Tax liability for the top 20% of earners would fall from 84.2% to 65.1%. People in the middle would go from 3.8% to 10.5%. Apparently, Republicans like the idea of states controlling tax revenues because it is easier for rich people and big corporate interests to subvert and corrupt a state tax agency compared to the federal IRS, which is already significantly subverted and corrupted by the rich and powerful. One can imagine how rotted state tax agencies will be once the state GOP has had time to sink its Christian nationalist-capitalist claws in states that Republicans control. 

Republicans really do want to starve the federal beast to its death, and then us to our deaths.

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Capitalism can be callous: Some of the people being laid off from jobs at tech giants are discovering that they are expendable at will. Business Insider writes:

A Google engineer laid off after over 16½ years at the firm said in a LinkedIn post that the tech giant viewed staff as "100% disposable."

Justin Moore, an engineering manager at Google, was one of the 12,000 people affected by Google's layoffs last week. Moore wrote that he found out he had been laid off via an automated account deactivation at 3:00 a.m.

"This also just drives home that work is not your life, and employers — especially big, faceless ones like Google — see you as 100% disposable," Moore said.

"Live life, not work," he added.

MAGA!! to that. Fire those suckers and losers!

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A warning about personal data safety on the internet: ProPublica reports that some websites that sell abortion pills give sensitive personal data to Google. Law enforcement can potentially use this data to prosecute people who end their pregnancies with medication. ProPublica writes:

Online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sharing sensitive data with Google and other third parties, which may allow law enforcement to prosecute those who use the medications to end their pregnancies, a ProPublica analysis has found.

Using a tool created by the Markup, a nonprofit tech-journalism newsroom, ProPublica ran checks on 11 online pharmacies that sell abortion medication to reveal the web tracking technology they use. Late last year and in early January, ProPublica found web trackers on the sites of at least nine online pharmacies that provide pills by mail: Abortion Ease, BestAbortionPill.com, PrivacyPillRX, PillsOnlineRX, Secure Abortion Pills, AbortionRx, Generic Abortion Pills, Abortion Privacy and Online Abortion Pill Rx.

The time is coming when forced birthers are going to get laws passed that criminalize the pregnant woman. The current restraining belief is that the woman is not guilty of anything, but anyone who aids in an abortion is criminally liable. Once the urge for God's righteous vengeance punches through this already weakening mental restraint, pregnant women themselves will be zealously hunted down and punished harshly. 

That is Christian theocracy serving us lovingly but righteously, so to speak. /s

Abortion information and disinformation; COVID update

 Combatting abortion disinformation: In a brilliant piece of journalism, a NYT article strikes into the heart of a vicious, decades-long disinformation campaign by forced birthers. They have successfully used emotion-provoking disinformation to dissuade many pregnant women from getting an abortion. This is the kind of fetus-oriented imagery that forced birthers routinely use to deceive and dissuade:

About 80% of abortions are done by week nine of a pregnancy. What the fetal tissue actually looks like at week 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 is shown below, left to right, top center to bottom right. There is no discernable, innocent little body to be seen because no such thing had developed by week nine. The top left image is uterine tissue, not fetus. This is what ~80% of abortions look like. This is not the kind of inconvenient information that forced birthers would ever show to a pregnant woman.

Now, compare the week 8 fetal tissue (center of lower row) with the image below of what forced birthers show the fetus allegedly looks like at week 8:

See the difference? This exemplifies the vicious, morally rotted tactics that forced birthers routinely rely on to deceive and dissuade. With infallible God is on the forced birther side, lies, deceit and guilt built on lies and deceit are good and proper. What a bunch of shameless, morally bankrupt liars. 

What was the reaction to the publication of the real photos? Lots of people, including some pro-abortion advocates thought they were faked. The NYT commented:

The Guardian published our first photos on Oct. 19; they went viral, appearing in media outlets and getting shared widely on social media.

Many people, even those who support abortion rights, did not believe the photos were accurate. Some insisted we had deliberately removed the embryos before taking the photos. The images weren’t consistent with those often seen in embryological textbooks, magnified on ultrasounds or used in anti-abortion propaganda; these enlarged images are not what you see with the naked eye after an abortion. A Stanford gynecologic pathologist has validated our photos, but many people could not believe the pictures were presented unaltered.  

We weren’t surprised by the vitriol. We knew we’d face pushback. While we have long felt comfortable showing our patients the pregnancy tissue after an abortion, we went through serious consideration before making the images public on our website. We did not want our message to undermine our unequivocal support for patients who make this decision at later stages when there is a visible embryo or fetus.

This shows, once again, just how powerful and effective a sustained, well-funded dark free speech campaign really can be. Actual medical professionals put out accurate information, but sustained propaganda has undermined trust in doctors and even convenient truth. Even people who just want the truth are blindsided and derailed by forced birther deceit and emotional manipulation. 

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A flash of common sense about COVID: The WaPo reports that the FDA experienced a flash of common sense:

FDA proposes switching to annual coronavirus vaccine, mimicking flu model

 

The Food and Drug Administration is proposing a crucial change in the way the coronavirus vaccine is handled: Switching to a once-a-year shot that targets the strain expected to pose the greatest threat during the following winter — a system akin to what is used for the influenza vaccine.

It was obvious to me over a year ago that this is exactly what needs to be done to deal with COVID for the long term. That it took this long for experts to see something this blatantly obvious is troubling to say the least.  

Biden world giddy at MTG, Gosar, and Boebert being placed on Oversight

 Is this for real? 😮

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/18/biden-world-celebrates-gop-oversight-picks-00078447

Consider:

House Republicans’ installation of some of their most incendiary conservatives on the Oversight Committee is sparking an unexpected feeling inside the White House: unbridled glee.

The panel tasked with probing Biden policies and actions, as well as the president’s own family, will be stocked with some of the chamber’s biggest firebrands and die-hard Trumpists — including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) — ideal figureheads for a White House eager to deride the opposition party as unhinged.

“[W]ith these members joining the Oversight Committee,” White House oversight spokesperson Ian Sams said in a statement, “it appears that House Republicans may be setting the stage for divorced-from-reality political stunts, instead of engaging in bipartisan work on behalf of the American people.”

Democrats haven’t yet named their members to the top House investigative committees, but they’re already confident the Republican-led panels will self-destruct.

“The more unserious people performing congressional oversight the easier this is going to be for the [Biden] administration. And in that regard I think the White House hit the jackpot. This is a crowd that will make [former House Oversight chair] Darrell Issa look intellectual.”

OK OK, not everyone is that excited, as noted:

 The jubilation was tempered, somewhat, by Democrats on the Hill who expressed more apprehension about the posting.

Predictions? Will these investigations actually help Biden? Or will they hurt? Are Republicans overplaying their hand? Or hitting all the right notes? 

Decisions, decisions…

Are you a “one-issue above all” voter?  Many people are. For example:

• The religious often vote strictly on the abortion issue.
• Gun advocates often vote strictly on more lax gun laws. 
• Health professionals often vote strictly on medical issues (prescription costs, universal healthcare, etc.). 
• Gay people often vote strictly on more sexual equality rights.
• PeTA members often vote strictly for the candidate who promotes animal rights.
• Etc.

So…

1. What are your political issues? 
2. Does one issue trump all others? 
3. How do you reconcile your vote if your potential candidate has some views that match yours, and others that do not?  What factor is the “clincher/decider” for you to give them your vote?

Thanks for favoriting and posting.

News bits: New nuclear reactor design gets approval, etc.

Nuclear reactor design approved: The AP reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified the design for what will be the first small modular nuclear reactor in the US. This is a big deal. The US desperately needs to get away from carbon energy as fast as possible. Doing that will require a lot of non-intermittent power generation unless battery technology makes a vast advance real soon. That’s unlikely. For right now, nuclear power is probably the best option we have for generating a lot of clean power to supplement intermittent solar and wind power. The AP writes:

The rule that certifies the design was published Thursday in the Federal Register. It means that companies seeking to build and operate a nuclear power plant can pick the design for a 50-megawatt [about 37,500 homes], advanced light-water small modular nuclear reactor by Oregon-based NuScale Power and apply to the NRC for a license.

It’s the final determination that the design is acceptable for use, so it can’t be legally challenged during the licensing process when someone applies to build and operate a nuclear power plant, NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said Friday. The rule becomes effective in late February.

This is really good news. We need hundreds of these little reactors.

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Rut roh! Biden really screwed the pooch this time: After a 13-hour search of Biden’s home in Delaware, DoJ investigators found another batch of classified US government documents. The NYT writes:

Investigators for the Justice Department on Friday seized more than a half-dozen documents, some of them classified, at President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., after conducting a 13-hour search of the home, the president’s personal lawyer said Saturday evening.

The remarkable search of a sitting president’s home by federal agents — at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers — dramatically escalated the legal and political situation for the president, the latest in a series of discoveries that has already led to a special counsel investigation. 

During Friday’s search, six more items with classified markings — including some documents from his time as a senator and others from his time as vice president — were taken by investigators, along with surrounding materials, according to the statement from Bob Bauer, Mr. Biden’s attorney.

Jeez, what a mess. One can just feel Faux News firing up its sanctimonious outrage machine.

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Exemptions in anti-abortion laws are not being granted: One of the things that I greatly fear from radical right Christian nationalism is how it deals with the rule of law. In my opinion, it is often biased and/or incoherent. Therein lies the power of government to discriminate. The NYT writes:

Last summer, a Mississippi woman sought an abortion after, she said, a friend had raped her. Her state prohibits most abortions but allows them for rape victims. Yet she could not find a doctor to provide one.

In September, an Indiana woman learned that a fetal defect meant her baby would die shortly after birth, if not sooner. Her state’s abortion ban included an exception for such cases, but she was referred to Illinois or Michigan.

An Ohio woman carrying triplets faced a high risk of dangerous complications, including delivering too early. When she tried to get an abortion in September through Ohio’s exception for patients with a medical need, she was turned away. 

In the months since the court’s decision, very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted, a New York Times review of available state data and interviews with dozens of physicians, advocates and lawmakers revealed.

The NYT article goes on to point out that women with money are travelling out of states that have abortion exemptions because the requirements to qualify are difficult and unpredictable. On top of that, doctors and hospitals turn away patients, because laws are ambiguous and they face of threat of criminal penalty for making a mistake in applying an exemption. 

So, even when a law looks neutral, how it is written and/or implemented can be highly discriminatory. In my opinion, this is the kind of result that Christian nationalist elites want. To them, the rule of law is God-given for them to apply as they see fit. That is theocracy, not democracy.

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Blowback against the Supreme Court investigation of who leaked the Dobbs anti-abortion decision intensifies: The NYT writes:

The investigation was an attempt by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to right the institution and its image after a grievous breach and slide in public trust. Instead, it may have lowered confidence inside the court and out. 

While noting that 97 workers had been formally interviewed, the report did not say whether the justices or their spouses had been. .... Public reaction was scathing: “Not even a sentence explaining why they were or weren’t questioned,” tweeted Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, a conservative magazine.

A day later, the court was forced to issue a second statement saying that the marshal had in fact conferred with the justices, but on very different terms from others at the institution. Lower-level employees had been formally interrogated, recorded, pressed to sign affidavits denying any involvement and warned that they could lose their jobs if they failed to answer questions fully, according to interviews and the report.

In contrast, conversations with the justices had been a two-way “iterative process” in which they asked as well as answered questions, the marshal, Gail A. Curley, wrote. She had seen no need for them to sign affidavits, she said.

But Chief Justice Roberts was a staunch defender of the court’s independence, reluctant to let outsiders interfere. “The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs,” he had written months before, “insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government.”

Once again, the court is blind to the fact that the six Republicans on the bench are seem by many Americans, maybe most, as political partisans. One can imagine that many or most Republicans believe that the three Democrats on the court are political partisans too. In general, some polling indicates that much or most of the public is distrustful. 

Roberts cannot or will not see that the unwarranted secrecy he believes insulates the court allows the public to believe that Republican judges are political partisans working for the Republican Party. Supreme Court secrecy can cut two ways. It can make the court less susceptible to outside political influence or it can make it more susceptible to hidden inside political influence.

News bits: About the Supreme Court leak investigation, etc.

First bit context

Everything degenerates, even the administration of justice, nothing is safe that does not show it can bear discussion and publicity. .... Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. -- Lord Acton, 1834-1902

Power cloaked in unwarranted opacity, tends to accelerate, harden and deepen corruption. The Supreme Court has an awful lot of power and it is awfully opaque. That opacity can hide an awful lot of corruption, including partisan politics. Hidden corruption in government deceives and betrays the public. -- Germaine, 2021 

Our thesis may be simply stated: basic democratic theory requires that there be knowledge not only of who governs but of how policy decisions are made. .... We maintain that the secrecy which pervades Congress, the executive branch and courts is itself the enemy. .... For all we know, the justices engage in some sort of latter-day intellectual haruspication[1], followed by the assignment of someone to write an opinion to explain, justify or rationalize the decision so reached. .... That the opinion(s) cannot be fully persuasive, or at times even partially so, is a matter of common knowledge among those who make their living following Court proclamations. -- A.S. Miller and D.S. Sastry, Secrecy and the Supreme Court: On the Need for Piercing the Red Velour Curtain, 1973

The investigation told us nothing, and that plus the totality of circumstances leaves plenty of room for rational cynicism: A couple of points are worth mentioning about the internal investigation into the leaked draft Dobbs anti-abortion decision of last year. First, the Republican court put Michael Chertoff in charge of the investigation. Chertoff is a longtime loyal Republican elite who worked as Homeland Secretary under George Bush. For some people, that leaves him with no credibility, for others it bolsters his credibility, while others have no idea of who he is and/or don’t care. For some, the investigation’s credibility will reflect their trust in the court and/or Chertoff.

Second, the final report claims that al though the investigation was thorough, the investigators were unable find a “preponderance of evidence” for anyone who might have leaked the draft.  The preponderance of evidence standard is the lowest level the law recognizes as needed to establish liability for any law breaking. In common language, it literally means more likely than not, or any amount over 50% likelihood. One interpretation of that is that internal court operations are rather sloppy. 

Two court watchers speculated that the investigation did not even talk under oath to any of the justices themselves. They just pleasantly chatted off the record. That feels probably right to me. The boundless smug arrogance and utter unwillingness of Supreme Court judges to even think about any significant public transparency or accountability has been well-known for decades. For decades, the court has refused to allow cameras at oral arguments. For centuries, the court has refused to allow one glimpse of the inner workings of its decision-making process. The Supreme Court is just an arrogant beast that puts out decisions is strict secrecy. 

On rare occasions when anyone has the guts to actually ask a Supreme Court judge why all the secrecy, the answer always has been and still is, more or less, “the secrecy is needed for obvious reasons.” Of course that assumes the judge will answer the question. Usually they won’t answer because they know there is no rational answer. The secrecy is in place to hide the judge’s partisanship and party loyalty, prejudices, incompetence, conflicts of interest, irrationality, authoritarianism, sympathy for corruption, treason, etc.

Finally, the first sentence of the investigation report flatly stated that the leak of the draft Dobbs anti-abortion birth decision, which now underpins forced-birth laws in red states, constitutes one of the greatest breaches of trust in Supreme Court history. Think about that for a moment. What trust was breached? How was it breached? By letting the public get a glimpse of the court’s reasoning in a draft opinion, the public got to see something that it us usually prevented from seeing. The justices would answer those questions about any allegedly breached trust with a dismissive the secrecy is needed for obvious reasons. 

Pardon my French, but what a bunch of fucking lies from a bunch of fucking arrogant, lying jackasses. In my opinion, lying jackass justice Sam Alito leaked the draft pro-theocracy Dobbs decision, just like he leaked his 2014 pro-theocracy Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Store decision. If he didn’t, I put the burden of proof on him to show his innocence. Of course with his vast imperial arrogance, he would never deign to even listen to the allegation. So, my opinion will remain safely unrebutted forever.

At least, that’s how I analyze it. (Woof! Sounds like someone was in a snit! Cool your jets there dude!)

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The endless legal morass that is Trumplandia: What an awful mess of blither, lies, slanders and enough crackpottery to make QAnon flinch (briefly) before posting it or Faux News flinch (briefly) before “reporting” on the horrors and persecutions that poor Trump was suffering under. Two days ago, a judge finally blew up. The judge whacked scumbag Trump and his scumbag lawyer for filing a frivolous lawsuit against Hillary and a slew of other people. The judge imposed $937,989.39 in liability against Trump and Alina Habba, his lead attorney. Clinton's share of those legal fees will be $171,631.

Yesterday, Trump withdrew an other lies and crackpottery lawsuit he had filed against NY AG Letitia James. James was suing Trump for $250 million in a fraud lawsuit against his New York-based real-estate empire, the Trump Organization. The same judge was handling both cases. The judge had already warned Trump that his lawsuit against James “had all the telltale signs of being both vexatious and frivolous.” 

Vexatious and frivolous? That’s an understatement to say the least. Trumplandia is a hellscape. 

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From the Aw Crud, Rut Roh! Files: Playing Russian Roulette with climate change and our lives: Accidental discoveries about a massive glacier in the Antarctic is sending out waves of intense creepiness and mounting fear. The NYT writes about a series of accidental discoveries that are deeply worrying. Now the possibility is at least 15 feet of sea level rise. This could happen in an unknown time period from a massive glacier that was believed to be stable but isn’t. 

The article is long and complicated, but the upshot is that scientists are now scrambling to get research ships and remote controlled submarine instrument vessels sent to the site as soon as possible. The glacier in now play for sea level rise is called the Denman Glacier. Not only is it gigantic, it acts as a cork to keep much larger glaciers from being exposed to sea water than has just been discovered to be much warmer than was previously believed. 

The initial accidental discovery was when a big elephant seal with instruments attached to it traveled to Denman Glacier in 2011. Elephant seals were not believed to go there. The data the instruments sent back was scary, i.e., the water was too warm, but scientists overlooked it and the data was ignored. Then another accident occurred when a remote controlled submarine instrument vessel got taken off course by water currents and it wound up at Denman in 2020. It sent back very scary data. The water was way too warm compared to what it was believed to be. Scientists went back to the data from the seal in 2011 and confirmed that warm water (slightly below freezing, which is way too warm for that area) had reached Denman.

Now, everybody is frantically planning trips to Denman. Research ships from Australia and Germany are now planned to get to Denman in 2024. The NYT article concludes with this:

One of the most disconcerting things about climate change is that what we do not know may hurt us the most. When it comes to Denman, said Van Wijk, “we probably know more about parts of the moon.” It is thanks in part to good fortune that we know as much as we do. We have had news from a seal and a robot, but it looks like it is time to send in the humans.

What the hell else is there we still do not know about?

This being a site about politics, this has to be said: The pro-pollution, pro-climate change, anti-climate science Republican Party and businesses that profit from polluting and climate change are playing Russian Roulette with our lives, our standard of living and modern civilization. Climate change is deadly serious business, but the polluters lie about it, downplay it, deny it, slander the scientists, lie about the science and do whatever they can to maintain a profitable but dangerous and unsustainable status quo. This is far beyond unacceptable. 

This is not democracy. This is fascism.