Grand Tetons early morning â 2011 photo by Wrongo
Two short thoughts for your Saturday. First, hidden in the language of the GOPâs Tax Bill is a something that would change the Johnson Amendment, a provision in the tax code that prohibits churches, faith communities, and other non-profits from outright endorsing political candidates:
âŚThe provision is not a complete repeal of the Johnson Amendment. As written, it would only free up religious communitiesânot all non-profitsâto endorse candidates and appears to prohibit churches from going out of their way to campaign for a candidate outside of their normal religious activities.
The GOP wants to erode the separation of church and state. Letâs see who, if anyone, in Congress is willing to fight for the Constitution.
Second, the Democrats had a grenade go off inside the DNC when an excerpt from Donna Brazileâs new book was published by Politico. She claims that the Clinton administration assumed control over the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in exchange for keeping it solvent, then funneled most of the funds raised into her campaign, leaving the states with very little to support down-ballot races.
The states kept less than half of 1 percent of the $82 million they had garnered from the Hillary fund-raisers the campaign was holding to support state-level candidates. Thatâs about $4.1 million.
When Howard Dean was chair of the DNC he instituted a 50-state policy, saying the DNC would maintain full time workers in each state, to contest seats up and down the ballot from the county, to state legislature to house and senate races.
When Obama won, Dean was out, and the 50-state policy was dismantled. After that, the DNC was reorganized to serve only national level elections. And Obama For America took its place as the funds-raising vehicle for the presidential re-election. And Hillary did much the same with the Hillary Victory Fund, but she went further, as Brazile reveals: The DNC would covertly back Hillary in the primaries.
And now, through these efforts, the Democrats have lost the White House, the Senate and the House, in addition to most state governments.
Itâs hard to decide whatâs worse, that the party is run by incompetents, or that it is just hopelessly corrupt.
Time for a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party.
On to the weekend. You obviously need to go to a happy place that doesnât include continual assaults by our national media. So brew up a cup of London-based Union Hand-Roasted Coffeeâs El Topacio Microlot, El Salvador, available online for ÂŁ8/200g.
Now kick back someplace you can see the natural world outside, and listen to Peter Mulvey playing his instrumental, âBlack Rabbitâ. Mulvey is known for his guitar chops and songwriting. He got started by playing in the Boston metro. This short acoustic gem is executed with ease, and pure musicality:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Fall at the Statehouse in Augusta, Maine â photo by Robert F. Bukaty
Welcome to what we may start to call Robert Mueller Monday. Ray Dalio, the founder of the Bridgewater Associates, the worldâs largest hedge fund has serious concerns about the uneven recovery of the US economy.
In a LinkedIn post, Dalio said that if politicians and business people look only at the economyâs average statistics about how Americans are doing, they could easily make âdangerous miscalculationsâ because the averages mask deep differences in how people in various income segments are doing.
Dalio divides the economy into two sections: the top 40%, and the bottom 60%. He then shows how the economy for the bottom 60% of the population, (thatâs three in five Americans for you English majors), has been much less successful than for those in the top bracket.
For example, Dalio notes that since 1980, real incomes have been flat or down for the average household in the bottom 60%. Those in the top 40% now have 10 times as much wealth as households in the bottom 60%, up from six times as much in 1980.
Dalio says that only about one-third of people in the bottom 60% (20% overall) save any of their income. Only a similar number have any retirement savings. These three in five Americans are experiencing increasing rates of premature death. They spend about four times less on education than those in the top 40%. Those in the 60% without a college education have lower income levels, and higher divorce rates.
Dalio believes these problems will intensify in the next five to ten years. The inequality problem is caused by our politics and our fiscal policies, not by the Fedâs monetary policies.
OTOH, Dalioâs concerns arenât a surprise to anyone who follows the political economy. In fact, it isnât a surprise to anyone who has walked through any mid-sized American city, or driven through any small town in the heartland.
The problem is not low wage growth.
The problem is not long-term unemployment, as degrading and humiliating as that is.
The problem is that the US economy has been restructured over the past 30 years as an underemployment, low-wage economy in which most new jobs created are temporary jobs (whether you are a laborer, a technician, a service worker or a professional) with no job security, low wages and few benefits.
The real question is can we solve the problem? Many old lefties argue for a Universal Basic Income, (UBI), but Wrongo thinks thatâs, er, wrong. If the UBI were high enough to provide even a subsistence living for every American, it would be massively inflationary. And it would merely allow businesses to pay lower wages, which is why some wealthy business people, like Peter Thiel, support a UBI.
Wrongo thinks we should support guaranteed work, not guaranteed income. Most people need and want to work in order to keep their place in our society. Getting a check just isnât sufficient. If people matter at all, and if 95% of them lack the means to live without working, society must strive to employ all of those who have been deemed redundant by the private sector.
And there is plenty to do around America. Start with the 5,000+ bridges and dams that need replacing, or the 104 nuclear power plants that are falling apart.
We need real tax reform that can’t be loopholed. Corporations must pay more, not less. Stop the move to give corporations incentives to repatriate offshore earnings by lowering their effective tax rates. That only compromises our future tax stream. Corporations have to pay more in taxes, and agree to increase the wages of average workers.
Economically, we are in a pretty scary place. People across party lines and socio-economic levels are frightened for their financial security. We need a jobs guarantee, not a UBI.
So, wake up America! Letting corporations and the rich dictate our investment in human capital or infrastructure has us on the road to eclipse as a country. To help you wake up, here is Todd Snider performing “Conservative Christian, Right Wing, Republican, Straight, White American Male“, live at Farm Aid 2014 in Raleigh, North Carolina in September, 2014:
Why arenât the Dixie Chicks singing harmony on this?
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
When the dog lies about his previous sheep-herding experience
A new set of tax policies have been proposed by the White House and the GOP. They involve both tax cuts, and some tax reforms. Here are the bullet points of the GOPâs sales pitch:
The tax cut wonât help the rich, and wonât help Donald Trump personally
The tax cut will generate enough growth to pay for itself
Most of the benefits of the tax cut will go to the middle class
Here are the NYTâs calculations on Trump not gaining anything:
Trump could save more than $1 billion under his new tax plan
And here is the Tax Policy Centerâs take on the benefits to the wealthy:
The top 1 percent of households (those with incomes above $730,000) would get about 53% of the frameworkâs net tax cuts, or roughly $130,000 a year on average.
The top 0.1 percent of households (those with incomes above $3.4 million) would get roughly 30% of the frameworkâs net tax cuts, or about $720,000 a year, on average.
Turning to the statement that âtax cuts will pay for themselvesâ, Trump claimed in a talk with House Ways and Means Committee a few days ago, that his tax plan will produce more than 6% growth.
An economist once said that you donât need to look at the details of a Republican tax plan. The higher the Republican growth forecast, the worse the actual deficit in their plan. Thatâs because they need greater revenue growth to cover the deficit hole they are creating. Given Trumpâs 6% growth forecast, you just know the tax plan is going to be a budget buster.
We have learned from past GOP tax cuts that they wonât reduce deficits or balance budgets. Want proof?
The George W. Bush tax cuts made the deficit larger, while doing little or nothing to stimulate the economy
The income-tax cuts in Kansas caused the state’s deficit to accelerate significantly, while economic growth lagged the contiguous states
Regarding the point that most of the cuts will go to the middle class, it wonât happen. Since 83% of the plan’s cuts are going to the top brackets, thereâs not much left for the middle class.
What they donât talk about is their plan to get rid of personal exemptions, which is a key deduction for middle class families, especially those who itemize deductions. To determine whether middle-class families get a cut or an increase under the new plan, you need to calculate if the higher standard deduction, plus the proposed expansion in the child tax credit, (no details about that yet), is greater than the loss of personal exemptions.
Josh Barro at Business Insider crunched the numbers, and his conclusion is: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
While there are still a lot of details to be filled in, the information we have available suggests the new Republican tax proposal would raise income taxes on many families who make just a bit more than the national average.
They are promising to eliminate the âalternative minimum taxâ, (AMT) a tax provision designed to ensure that wealthy taxpayers (who can have accountants find deductions) would pay some modicum of taxes rather than get off scott-free. In fact, the GOP has it backwards: People who owe the AMT should be paying more tax than they would pay with the AMT. It serves its intended purpose. Elimination of the AMT is another tax break for the wealthy:Â For example, Trump has had to pay the AMT, as have most real estate developers.
Now, ask yourself why should personal tax rates be less progressive in 2017 than they were in 1963? Shouldnât progress towards a more equal society mean our rates would be MORE progressive, not less? Itâs not as if we have less inequality, we have more.
The reason we should want to tax the rich (till it hurts) is to reduce their power and overwhelming choke hold on policy.
When will the GOP engage in an honest discussion about their tax plan?
Not soon. Maybe not ever.
Hereâs First Aid Kit doing a cover of Simon & Garfunkelâs âAmericaâ, from 2014:
We all need to look for America, its getting very hard to find.
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Old Prison, Annecy, France. This 12th century prison sits in the middle of the river Thiou. Because of the canals in the town, Annecy is called the Venice of the Alps.
Yesterday, Wrongo said that we needed a special tax to be used solely to rebuild the economies and infrastructure of states hit by Irma and Harvey. It didnât take long to hear that millionaires already pay enough taxes. In one way, that is correct. From the Atlantic:
Forty years ago, the richest 1% paid about 18% of the country’s federal income taxes. Today, they pay about 40%.
While 40% seems high, we need to look harder at the arithmetic: The number of million-dollar-earners in the US has grown rapidly since Y2K. According to the IRS, the number of households with an adjusted gross income greater than $1 million more than doubled between 2001 and 2014, the last year with complete data. And no group has grown faster than the super-rich; the number of households earning more than $10 million grew by 144%.
Between 2001 and 2014, income earned by millionaires grew twice as fast as income earned by the rest of us. In 2001, million-dollar earners and above collectively reported income of about $600 billion. In 2014, they reported $1.4 trillion, more than double the amount in just 14 years. And the top 10% of wealthiest families in this country control 76% of our country’s total wealth.
So, we shouldnât feel guilty about taxing them for a specific need, for a time-limited period.
If you’re a millionaire, it’s not just because you worked hard. It’s because you worked hard, and you live in a country where the government provides a well-developed infrastructure, stable institutions and markets governed by a strong commercial code.
Rich people need to stop griping and pull their weight, just like the rest of America’s tax-payers.
So Wrongo says again, we all need to pay extra taxes into a special fund for redevelopment of Florida and Texas. As the libertarian Joseph Tainter asserts in his book âThe Collapse of Complex Societiesâ (donât read it), when a society no longer has the reserves to help offset what might otherwise be a recoverable disaster, collapse canât be far off.
Increased revenues will absolutely increase our reserves. And they will help us recover from this current disaster.
Itâs Saturday, and we need to relax. Today Dr. Wrong prescribes a double Hayes Valley Espresso (whole bean is $ 17/lb.) from Oakland, CAâs Blue Bottle Coffee. Get it now, Blue Bottle has just agreed to be acquired by Nestle.
Brew it up, put on the Bluetooth headphones, and listen to the Flute Quartet No.1 in D major by J. J. Quantz, flute maker and Baroque composer. Quantz was extremely prolific. He wrote six flute quartets that were discovered in 2001 by American flutist Mary Ann Oleskiewicz in archives of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin. Here is Quantz’s Flute Quartet No. 1:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
That leaves $220 billion to be funded by individuals, or taxpayers. Where will that money come from?
The president and his GOP buddies want to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy, but they call it tax reform. Theyâll throw some chump change at the middle class, so that their base feels they got something for their vote last November, but at best, their tax plan will be revenue-neutral. That will provide nothing new for the rebuild of Texas and Florida.
We shouldnât accept the usual ârevenues canât be increasedâ mantra when we know cities and people may not be able to afford rebuilding on their own. There are many costs that need to be considered, for example victims of the flood will have to contact some of the roofing companies austin has to offer in order to get their roof fixed, or they will have to find a roofing service closer to their home. They will also have to pay for all new furniture, and decorating services. Getting their lives back on track will be extremely difficult and costly, but with the help of donations they’ll get there. We could also raise revenues. Itâs time for a specific and time-limited National Recovery Tax. And everybody has to chip in. This can be a unifying moment. Nobody wants to pay more, but the job must be done.
Think for a second about the Hand In Hand benefit. The idea was that celebrities would induce the average person to donate to disaster relief. The minimum donation that Hand In Hand asked for on their web site is $25. The average US Net worth for 45-54 year olds is around 84k. $25 is .0003% of the average US familyâs net worth.
Celebrities should ask us to open our wallets, but that canât be the way we raise the billions necessary to fund this recovery. And we canât count on the corporations. Apple gave $5 million, thatâs nice. Apple is worth about $850 billion; $5 million is .0000058% of Appleâs net worth. They gave less proportionately than the average American. Apple pays very little tax relative to their profits, most of which are kept overseas. Here is a link to how Appleâs income is sheltered.
Think about where Appleâs money comes from. You bought the iPhone, iPad and maybe a MAC computer. You were the source of their money. The same is true for Michael Dellâs $36 million donation to Harvey relief. He gave a heroic amount, but itâs a pittance when we need $220 billion.
Disasters happen. We need a fund to make people whole, and it has to come from increased revenues. Some could be from state-level taxation in the states impacted, but other states wonât do that voluntarily. That assessment has to come from a new federal tax assessment. Congress should work out the details.
We need to wave off any discussion of additional tax breaks for corporations or for the wealthy, until we rebuild Texas and Florida.
We are all beneficiaries of living in America, including those companies that keep their money offshore. We all should be in this together. If we don’t look out for each other, we’re screwed.
There are other questions, such as, should we be rebuilding in the âbathtubâ parts of Houston or Florida? Should we continue allowing coastal homeowners access to federal flood insurance when they tap into it every few years? Maybe we shouldn’t build on waterfront. The NYT had a piece about St. Augustine, FL. They routinely have sunny day flooding caused by rising sea water. What do we need to do to protect historic sites like St. Augustine? Should we protect them?
Can we even ask these questions? Can we agree to do a study? Views differ. But the truth doesn’t travel far in America, because the truth hurts. So, we never ask the big questions, or seek answers to them. We just occasionally donate a little to the disaster of the moment in order to feel a little better.
How can we keep America great if we fail to fund the recovery from disasters? A temporary tax on everyone is the best answer to what just happened in the South.
Here are the Talking Heads with âOnce in a Lifetimeâ from their 1980 album, âRemain In Lightâ:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1wg1DNHbNU
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Takeaway lyric:
Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again after the money’s gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground
And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go to?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right? Am I wrong?
And you may say to yourself, “My God! What have I done?”
Depression Bread Line by George Segal, 1999, at the NJ Grounds for Sculpture â 2017 photo by Wrongo
There are two political imperatives facing America by the end of September: The House, Senate and the president must extend the Federal borrowing limit, and pass a budget. When Obama was president, extension of the borrowing limit was a dicey thing, as was passing a budget. From 2008-2016, we largely avoided government shutdowns, we passed spending bills, but not an entire budget.
And we never even considered tax reform, but itâs the third item on the GOPâs 2017 to-do list.
Republicans and Wall Street used to have concerns about the consequences for America if we didnât get our finances under control. They said that the growing federal debt could eventually drag down the economy, burden future generations, and even threaten national security. CEOs of corporations and the biggest banks joined a campaign called Fix the Debt, arguing that the size of our debt was our most pressing issue.
But now these same people are all in on Trumpâs plan to cut taxes for corporations and high earners, saying it is the way to fuel economic growth. That, despite estimates that Trumpâs plan could reduce federal revenue by $3.9 trillion over 10 years, thereby increasing the debt that CEOs used to hate. From Bloomberg:
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, a Fix the Debt supporter…in 2012 told CNBC heâd be for higher taxes if they helped mend the fiscal gap. After the 2016 election, Blankfein told colleagues…that Trumpâs proposals, including tax reform, âwill be good for growth and, therefore, will be good for our clients and for our firm.â
Hmmm. Aren’t Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Trump’s Economic Adviser Gary Cohn both from Goldman?
They [CEOs] were yelling, Deficits, deficits, deficits… [and] as soon as George W. Bush gets in the White House? Oh, weâll have a big tax cut.
The same thing is happening now. Bloomberg reports that according to Seth Waugh, chairman of wealth adviser Alex. Brown, many in finance have moved on from the debt: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)
Itâs not a fun, sexy thing to talk about…Waugh, another Fix the Debt member, recalls playing golf with a private equity executive…Waugh told his friend it would be nice if Congress addressed deficits… [but]…The private equity executive said nobody was talking about that. It was a dead issue, and they should take the good news: Paying less in taxes, the friend reminded him, means getting richer.
Itâs probably a distant dream. The GOPs plan for tax reform involves using the budget reconciliation process, which allows them to pass it with just 51 votes, that is, without Democrats. Otherwise, they face a filibuster. Reconciliation starts with passing a budget resolution for the coming fiscal year. In that budget resolution, they need to include special budget directives or instructions:
To start the reconciliation process, the House and Senate must agree on a budget resolution that includes âreconciliation directivesâ for specified committees. Under the Congressional Budget Act, the House and Senate are supposed to adopt a budget resolution each year to establish an overall budget plan and set guidelines for action on spending and revenue.
So they need to pass a budget, but before that, Republicans need to vote to raise the borrowing authority of the government. That may be impossible without support from Democrats.
Weâll know very soon if Dems are willing to get on board with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell on any of this.
Itâs Saturday again, and despite the brief three-minute respite from politics brought by the solar eclipse, Trump had another successful week. (If success is his continued destruction of what remains of Americaâs psyche).
We are now in desperate need of something soothing to kick off next weekâs war for truth. So grab a couple of Trader Joeâs Cold Brew Latte Dessert Bars (40 calories and 7 grams of sugar each), put on your best Bluetooth headphones, and listen to the late guitarist John Abercrombie, who died this week. Here is Abercrombie with Dave Holland on bass, and Jack DeJohnette on drums doing âHomecomingâ live in 1995. Letâs hope itâs not the best few minutes of your week:
Pay attention to Abercrombieâs remarkable and airy technique.
US Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced that there would be no change for the Missouri Breaks National Monument. Zinke is from Montana, so saving one for his peeps isnât a big surprise.
Missouri Breaks is one of 27 monuments established during the previous 20 years by presidents using the Antiquities Act. The Antiquities Act allows presidents to set aside objects of historic or scientific interest to prevent their destruction. The law was created in 1906 to guard against looting of sacred American Indian sites.
In April, Trump ordered the Department of the Interior to review the status of every national monument designated since 1996. As a result of the review, these cultural and/or natural treasures could be significantly reduced in size or even eliminated, and the Antiquities Act itself could be severely limited. The land would remain owned by the federal government, but might lose its protected status, and be contracted to private enterprises. When you allow corporations to ‘lease’ land for oil, fracking, mining, ranching, etc. fences go up, private police forces are hired to keep people out for their ‘safety’.
Not everyone agrees that Trump has the authority to do what he wants. From the Washington Times:
If President Donald Trump or any successor desires the authority to revoke national monument designations, they should urge Congress to amend the Antiquities Act accordingly. They should not torture the plain language of the Act to advance a political agenda at the expense of regular constitutional order.
Indeed, those who claim that the Antiquities Act does not grant a reversal power cannot find a single case in another area of federal law that supports that contention. To override the norm, legislators have to clearly limit reversal powers in the original law; the plain text of the Antiquities Act includes no such limits.
Who knows? Next, Der Donald will lease the Grand Canyon to China for use as a landfill.
But the bigger picture is that behind the smoke and mirrors of Trumpâs pathological lying and the mediaâs obsession with Russia, his cabinet appointees are working like industrious termites, eating away much of the support beams of our nationâs rules-based edifice.
Consider Attorney General Jeff Sessions. From the New Yorker: (brackets and editing by the Wrongologist)
He [Sessions] has reversed the Obama Administrationâs commitment to voting rights…He has changed an Obama-era directive to federal prosecutors to seek reasonable, as opposed to maximum, prison sentences for nonviolent drug offenders…he has revived a discredited approach to civil forfeiture, which subjects innocent people to the loss of their property. He has also backed away from the effort…to rein in and reform police departments, like the one in Ferguson, Missouri, that have discriminated against African-Americans.
Although candidate Trump promised to protect LGBT rights, President Trump last week vowed to remove transgender service members from the armed forces, and Sessions…took the position in court that Title VII, the nationâs premier anti-discrimination law, does not protect gay people from bias. Most of all, Sessions has embraced the issue that first brought him and Trump together: the crackdown on immigration…
All across the government, Trump appointees are busy chewing through the existing regulatory edifice, ending not just Obama-era rules, but others that have been in place for decades.
Another truly damning thing is Trumpâs surrogatesâ efforts to undermine foreign policy. The WaPo reports:
Trump signed off on Iran’s compliance with profound reluctance, and he has since signaled that when Iran’s certification comes up again â as it will every 90 days, per a mandate from Congress â he intends to declare Iran not in compliance, possibly even if there is evidence to the contrary.
American officials have already told allies they should be prepared to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the US may [unilaterally] abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord.
It is difficult to see how this ends well for the US. Imagine, Iran and North Korea both pursuing nuclear weapons to deploy against the US. Why would we want to engage on two fronts, when one (North Korea) is already so problematic?
What is the Trump agenda? Are there any articulated goals? What are the strategies to achieve them?
Have we heard a concrete proposal for any of his big ideas (health care, tax reform, or infrastructure)?
We have not, but his termites keep chewing, and soon, our whole building will be compromised.
Is it the best of times or the worst of times? This is no longer a partisan discussion. We have an economy in the midst of a long expansion, the third longest since 1850. The statistics say we are close to full employment. But, our mortality rate is moving in the wrong direction, and we have an opioid epidemic that is serious enough to cause jobs to go unfilled. The NYT reports that in Youngstown Ohio, middle class factory jobs go begging:
Itâs not that local workers lack the skills for these positions, many of which do not even require a high school diploma but pay $15 to $25 an hour and offer full benefits. Rather, the problem is that too many applicants â nearly half, in some cases â fail a drug test.
The Fedâs regular Beige Book surveys of economic activity across the country in April, May and July all noted the inability of employers to find workers able to pass drug screenings.
So the best of times? Probably not. Bloomberg reports that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) looked at the US economy. This is what they see:
For some time now there has been a general sense that household incomes are stagnating for a large share of the population, job opportunities are deteriorating, prospects for upward mobility are waning, and economic gains are increasingly accruing to those that are already wealthy. This sense is generally borne out by economic data and when comparing the US with other advanced economies.
The IMF then goes on to compare the US with 23Â other advanced economies in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in this chart:
The chart is a bit of an eye test unless itâs viewed on a big monitor, but its overall point is that the US has been losing ground relative to its past OECD reports by several measures of living standards. 35 countries make up the OECD. The members include all of Western Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia, and several developing nations like Korea and Panama.
And in the areas where the US hasn’t lost ground (poverty rates, high school graduation rates), it was at or near the bottom of the heap to begin with. The clear message is that the US — the richest nation on Earth, as is frequently proclaimed, although it’s actually not the richest per capita — is increasingly becoming the developed world’s poor relation as far as the actual living standards of most of its population go.
This analysis is contained in the staff report of the IMF’s annual “consultation” with the U.S., which was published last week. The IMF economists havenât turned up anything shocking or new, it’s just that as outsiders, they have a different perspective than what we hear from our politicians and economists.
For example:
Income polarization is suppressing consumption…weighing on labor supply and reducing the ability of households to adapt to shocks. High levels of poverty are creating disparities in the education system, hampering human capital formation and eating into future productivity.
What is to be done? Well, the IMF report concludes:
Reforms should include building a more efficient tax system; establishing a more effective regulatory system; raising infrastructure spending; improving education and developing skills; strengthening healthcare coverage while containing costs; offering family-friendly benefits; maintaining a free, fair, and mutually beneficial trade and investment regime; and reforming the immigration and welfare systems.
In other words, they suggest substantial reform. Itâs doubtful that America can take care of these things anytime soon.
The subtext to most of their suggestions is that other affluent countries have found ways to improve in these areas, while the US has not. We donât have to look too far into the past to see when those countries were modeling their economies on ours. But today, on all sorts of issues, like taxation, labor markets, health care, and education, the opposite is now true.
Other wealthy countries have figured out how to raise revenue, provide quality education, help the the unemployed, reduce poverty, and keep their citizens healthier than America has.
We must catch up, or admit our time as the world’s indispensable economy is over.
Todayâs music (dis)honors the turmoil in the White House. See âya Mooch! Remember that in just six months, Trump has gone through two National Security Advisers, two Chiefs of Staff, two Communications Directors, two Press Secretaries, and two Directors of the FBI.
Here is âDisorder in the Houseâ by the late Warren Zevon and Bruce Springsteen:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
âGovernments last only as long as the undertaxed can defend themselves against the overtaxed.â â Bernard Berenson
(There is an extra ration of cartoons today. Wrongo is taking a few days to celebrate the hot dogs and potato salad he found in the fridge. Posts will resume on July 5th.)
If this week shows how well we are playing defense, we are all screwed. The party of personal responsibility always blames their opponents when things go wrong. The party of fiscal responsibility will blow up the budget whenever they get in power.
And the party of family values is merrily slashing away at programs that support families:
When it comes to health insurance, the GOP has all the right viewpoints:
Trump revealed his true self with the âMorning Joeâ tweets:
The Court-tested, Judges approved Muslim ban is now in effect:
Trump (or his lackeys) made fake Time Magazine covers featuring the Donald:
Trumpâs Press Team orders no cameras at most press conferences. So on to Virtual News:
Trump Election Commission asks states for each voterâs personal data, like party affiliation and social security number. What could go wrong?
When it comes to health insurance, the GOP has all the right viewpoints:
