Naked Robbery on the Hill

What’s going on now in the tax bill is naked robbery.

I was reading Philadelphia mob wiretap transcripts about 25 years ago, and there on the wire was a politician from Chester, Pennsylvania explaining his thesis about what to do about the poor folks:

“Fuck ‘em -- they don’t pay taxes and they don’t vote.”

I think that’s become the Republican party play book.

Look at the tax bill coming out of Conference Committee today, and they’re padding out the folks who make more than $100,000 a year because they vote.

The lunch bucket folks? They figure they would never vote for the Republicans (because they're black, or Hispanic, or hippies, or pro-choice, or anti-gun), or they don’t vote at all, or they’re gun and anti-choice nuts that the conservatives figure they cannot lose no matter what else they do to America.

And guess what?

That calculation put Trump in office.

We live in scary times.

Woody Guthrie is gone and the unions are very, very sick.

To tell the truth, I ain’t feeling too good myself….


From Politico Pro Report yesterday afternoon:

The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are hoping to make the most sweeping changes to federal safety net programs in a generation, using legislation and executive actions to target recipients of food stamps, Medicaid and housing benefits," report pPOLITICO's Andrew Restuccia, Sarah Ferris and Helena Bottemiller Evich. "The White House is quietly preparing a sweeping executive order that would mandate a top-to-bottom review of the federal programs on which millions of poor Americans rely. And GOP lawmakers are in the early stages of crafting legislation that could make it more difficult to qualify for those programs. In the meantime, the Trump administration has already begun making policy shifts that could have major ramifications.

"Federal health officials are encouraging states to impose work requirements on able-bodied adults on Medicaid — a major philosophical shift that would treat the program as welfare, rather than health insurance. The Agriculture Department said last week that it would soon give states greater control over the food stamp program, potentially opening the door to drug testing or stricter work requirements on recipients of the $70 billion program long targeted by fiscal conservatives," the trio write. "The president is expected to sign the welfare executive order as soon as January, according to multiple administration officials, with an eye toward making changes to health care, food stamps, housing and veterans programs, not just traditional welfare payments. To be sure, many of the changes are still in the talking stages, and it remains to be seen when and how they are actually implemented and at what political cost. And there remains internal debate in the administration over how to balance other priorities like an infrastructure bill. ... Defenders of the safety net programs, meanwhile, fear the effort could rob Americans — including many Trump voters — of a vital lifeline."