Robert Borosage at The Nation writes—The GOP Tax Bill Is an Attempt to Destroy Government:
The House Republican tax bill has been introduced, packaged beautifully with lies. Now House Republicans will push to pass, in one week, a 500-page bill written in secret that transforms the tax code. Powerful special interests will spend millions for and against. Legions of lobbyists will fill congressional offices. Experts will duel over the effects. Trump is already boasting about “a great Christmas present” of the biggest tax cuts ever.
Republicans hope that the fog of competing claims will cover their tracks. In the midst of the frenzy, remember one thing: this entire project is utterly wrong-headed. Few politicians dare say it, but the reality is Americans are not overtaxed. They are underserved by their government.
American corporations and American citizens are not overtaxed, compared with other industrial nations. The greatest impediment to corporate competitiveness isn’t what corporations pay in taxes; it is an inefficient, outdated, and increasingly dangerous infrastructure. It is time wasted in traffic jams, slow trains, and overcrowded airports. Our broadband is slower and costs more than that of other leaders in the industrial world. Nine percent of all bridges are rated “structurally deficient” and 40 percent are over 50 years old. Our energy and water systems are aged and fragile. A bridge falls every other day in America. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that our increasingly decrepit infrastructure will cost about 2.5 million jobs and $7 trillion in sales by 2025. For businesses, the best use of public dollars isn’t tax cuts for the rich and big corporations but investments in rebuilding America.
Similarly, America’s workers are gouged far more by inadequate and wasteful public investment than by high taxes. We pay about two times as much per capita for health care—with worse results and leaving millions of people still not covered. [...]
What’s coming up on Sunday Kos …
- There are over 5 million Puerto Rican Americans on the mainland who won't forget or forgive Trump, by Denise Oliver Velez
- Progressives must change the Democratic Party from within and without, by Egberto Willies
- Guarding the guardians, by Susan Grigsby
- In '57, a judge said 'incorrigible' and sent me to 'reform school.' Such places still need big fixes, by Meteor Blades
- Trump's trickle-down rich man's tax cut is simply cruel to many middle-class families, by Ian Reifowitz
- Key precincts will tell the tale: is it an average night for Virginia House Dems, or a great night, by Steve Singiser
- More climate change victims: health and productivity, by Sher Watts Spooner
- 39 million reasons to vote ‘Yes’ on Ohio Issue 2, by David Akadjia
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2011—Rick Santorum explains God’s role in American law:
No, when Rick Santorum is speaking about "God's law" and how it supersedes the laws of the country, he is referring to "God's law" as he himself defines it. That is what Santorum wishes to enshrine into American governance. He quite literally presumes to be speaking for God, when he goes on about how this or that law needs to be changed to comport with God's law, but where other religious figures might simply say that those that believe different interpretations of God's law are going to hell, Santorum and others demand that those that belief different interpretations of God's law be identified as criminals.
Do you believe life "begins at conception?" Rick Santorum does, and so, he asserts, American law must comport entirely to his interpretation, not yours. Do you believe homosexuality is a sin? Rick Santorum does, and so he demands the laws of the nation be written to properly punish those that believe otherwise.
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