NBC News - Bernie Sanders hits the trail again, this time to fight GOP tax bill

by Alex Seitz-Wald, Nov. 28, 2017

Lexington, Kentucky 18.com:

“This legislation goes well beyond taxes. If passed, the Republicans will then rediscover the ‘deficit crisis,’ and push aggressively for massive cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition, affordable housing and more. That is why I am going on the road this week to talk directly to working people. If we stand together we can defeat this horrific bill,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in the press release. 

You can see the entire tour schedule below:

Friday, December 1 – Louisville, Kentucky

Saturday, December 2 – Dayton, Ohio

Saturday, December 2 – Akron, Ohio

Sunday, December 3 – Reading, Pennsylvania

Mike in Ohio, from ground zero, at Booman Tribune:

I have resolved simply to cease communication with Trump supporters about anything remotely related to the current political circumstance. Convincing arguments and rational, evidence based discussions and observations are worthless tools when dealing with these people. I have tried, time and time again, to reel my family and friends back into the folds of humanity when it comes to this.  And I have decided that it is hopeless. There is only one way to deal with this.  You don't reason with a rabid dog. This whole thing has taken on a cult-like feel with Trump supporters.  Things like "honest thought" are simply not even in their universe now. They are gulping this poisonous kool-aid by the barrels full, every day.  They are gorging themselves, round the clock, at the trough of Trumpism. And daily they are sliding more and more into a place where anyone who is not in their tribe is a sub-human mongrel.  I am done with trying to dance around this whole thing, acting as if it's simply another, albeit more polarized than normal, political disagreement. The world they inhabit is irreducibly unhinged.  It is beyond reclamation or repair. They need to be told this, again and again, because it is the truth. There is a narrow line between humanity and inhumanity.  They have crossed so far beyond this line, that it long ago disappeared over their horizon. ..... We are seeing the end game of two generations of relentless propagandizing by the far right. None of which could have happened at the rate which it did without the complete co-opting of corporate media.

It's not a new phenomena.  Voltaire nailed it over 250 years ago.  "Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities."

Once you become conditioned to accepting what you are told, without question, no matter how absurd it might seem to be, you lose the ability to understand the difference between what is good and what is evil. The day where you stop questioning what people tell you, the very moment where you stop morally evaluating the implication of the words you are hearing, you will do things simply because someone tells you.  And you will do it that easily and without a second thought, because they will also tell you that "it's the right thing to do."

History is flashing a fiery red warning light to all of us right now.  The parallels are undeniable and inescapable.  Only a fool would ignore them, unless one is an accomplice to the evil.

Paul Krugman, The Biggest Tax Scam in History:

Of the 42 ideologically diverse economists surveyed by the University of Chicago on the impact of Republican tax plans, only one agreed that they would lead to substantial economic growth, while none disagreed with the proposition that they would substantially increase U.S. debt.

So it’s a giant scam. And while the exact nature of the scam may be unclear, ordinary American families would end up being the victims either way.

For suppose those temporary tax breaks did end up becoming permanent, so that the budget deficit soared on a long-term basis. Then what? You know the answer: Republicans would suddenly revert to the pretense that they’re deficit hawks, and demand “entitlement reform” — that is, cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, programs that ordinary families depend on. In fact, they’re already talking about those cuts — they’ve started the switch even before getting the suckers to take the bait.

NYT

..Under the Senate bill, business owners could claim a 17.4 percent deduction on their pass-through income before paying taxes. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Daines want a higher deduction, meaning that moguls would pay taxes on less of their earnings. It is conceivable that this could benefit some mom-and-pop businesses, but only modestly so. This is really about stuffing the pockets of people like Mr. Trump, who controls his real estate, licensing and hospitality empire through more than 500 pass-through businesses, according to his lawyers... millions of poor and middle-class families whose tax and health insurance premiums would rise under the Senate bill. Republican lawmakers keep talking about how middle-class families would see tax cuts of about $1,000, or about $19 dollars a week, but those cuts would last only a few years before expiring after 2025. By 2027, families making under $75,000 a year would on average pay more in taxes..

The Republicans voted out the money grabbing tax scam from committee today. there will be no hearings or testimony from economists or constituents, no input from across the aisle. The GOP is dead set on increasing the economic divide in this country, stripping more wealth from the workers and middle class, and perpetuating the plutocracy of the Koch brothers and other sociopathic billionaires who fund the Republicans.

Like Bernie, we must get the word out to those not informed on it, call our Senators, and expose that this tax plan is an enormous fraud, a con job, fueled by Republican greed, a brazen defiance of everything America stands for, and a tax on the future.