Who knows what’s going to shake from sieve as the Republican tax “reform” package lurches towards Bethlehem? Well, not me, for sure. I don’t know what kind of last-minute gimcracks and switcheroos old Paulie Ryan will pull out of his ass to paste together a bill that will get through the House, whether he will…
Search Results for: tax reform
The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party? Part II Part 2: Matthew Continetti and The Right
A few years ago, I wrote an extended piece bearing the title The Republicans: WTF Happened to this Party?. Recently, in response to a couple of engaging (relatively) meas culpas—Matthew Continetti’s The Right The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism and Tim Miller’s Why We Did It—I began preparing an update. I originally planned to…
Trump, not as bad as he could be. That is to say, not as bad as he will be
Controversy swirls, have you noticed? It does, a lot, about the FBI, about immigration, about North Korea, about everything! The world goes round, and controversy goes around. Yeah, a whole lot of controversy these days. It would be nice if we could step back and get some perspective, a balanced view, as it were, one…
Jennie Made Her Mind Up
There’s an amusing though frequently verging on depressing kerflusterfuck waxing and waning on the right, triggered by a column in the National Review by Charles C. W. Cooke, who, in addition to being to being the only person I know to use two middle initials—in homage, one can only assume, to legendary Bonnie & Clyde…
Never-Trumpers, learning to lie back and enjoy it
You can’t blame anti-Trump conservatives—well, you can’t blame them too much—for squirming under the pressure of having to constantly agree with, you know, liberals that Donald Trump is a continuing disaster and disgrace to the United States of America, easily the worst man ever to occupy the White House, a man without honor or scruple….
Ramesh Ponnuru explains some of it—but only some of it—for you
Over at Bloomberg, Ramesh Ponnuru, sometime truth-teller on the Republican1 side of the aisle, comes up a little short with his take on the Republican tax “reform” package, headed “Tax Reform’s Losers Can Afford the Loss”. Ponnuru praises the bill because it “caps the tax deduction for mortgage interest at a loan value of $500,000,…
Ed Rogers, Hustler Without a Hustle, Politique Without a Party
If you had asked me, six months ago, to come up with a name for right-wing K Street cowboy/honcho Ed Rogers, I might have chosen “Smarmy McSmarmface”, or something, well, equally smarmy. But today I think I’d have to go with “Sad Little Man”, which isn’t really a name but does capture the fact that…
Bloomberg scribes Kevin Cirilli, Sahil Kapur, Anna Edgerton, Erik Wasson, Ben Brody, Shannon Pettypiece, and Colleen Murphy: so not the sharpest knives in the drawer
Perhaps I shouldn’t be making this a case of collective responsibility, but all of these people have their names on an article over at Bloomberg, “Trump Rethinks State-Local Tax Issue Over Middle-Class Concerns”. Guys (and gals): you have to think something before you rethink it. Okay, maybe they didn’t write that headline, but they did…
Trollin’ Donald
The President of the United States is getting in a pissing match with the National Football League? And he’s cracking down on, you know, foreigners? Possible subtext: Please ignore the fact that I’m totally screwing up both health care and tax reform and God knows what else, not to mention all that Russia shit. Did…
Avik Roy Couldn’t Like the Senate Republicans’ Health Care Bill More if He Had Written It Himself!
Back in the day, conservative health care maven Avik Roy put the wood to House Speaker Paul Ryan’s Obamacare replacement legislation, remarking after Paulie “improved” the bill to meet Republican criticism, “it’s curious that extending tax cuts was a higher priority for the House than addressing the fact that the bill will make insurance unaffordable…