November 30, 2017
Every day, the flow of corrosive poison from this White House continues unabated. From insulting the heroic Navajo code talkers, to barring Black White House correspondent, April Ryan from the White House Christmas Party for the first time in twenty years, to retweeting vile, Islamophobic garbage so extreme it earned a rebuke from Teresa May, there is no off switch to Trump’s splenetic attacks on every marginalized group of Americans.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress stand by, not uttering a whisper of reproach, as Trump ceaselessly stokes irrational fear and hatred in order to turn Americans against one another. Of course, we know why. With the constant drip of damning news coming from Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, Republicans are racing to pass their tax cut before Trump is frog marched out of The White House in handcuffs.
Congressional Republicans stand poised to vote on a cruel, regressive and irresponsible tax bill that could singlehandedly upend years of social policy. 37 of 38 prominent economists from liberal Joseph Stiglitz to conservative Bruce Bartlett say that the bill would not result in significant economic growth (Source: “G.O.P. Tax Plan Could Reshape Life in the U.S.”, by Peter S. Goodman and Patricia Cohen, The New York Times,11/30/17).
This sweeping bill not only aims to erase the legacy of Barack Obama, but of FDR. This budget busting giveaway to the donor class will trigger massive cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and education. It genuflects to the Republican theocratic base both by removing a ban on political activity by churches that has been in place since 1954 AND by conferring legal rights on fetuses (Source: Goodman and Cohen, The New York Times, 11/30/17). It punishes Democratic states who finance generous safety nets through high taxes by eliminating the deduction for state and local taxes.
If this bill becomes law, America will be transformed into a neo-feudal state, the likes of which we haven’t seen since our great grandparents fled pogroms in Eastern Europe or domestic terror in the Jim Crow South. Don’t be deluded by the warmed over lies about “trickle down” economics. This law is massive social engineering disguised as a tax cut. Every sphere of American society will be impacted, rendering us poorer, sicker and dumber.
In a mere eleven months, Trump and his henchmen in the executive and legislative branches have laid the groundwork for a far reaching transformation of this country from a flawed representative democracy to an autocracy led by a small class of bigoted oligarchs. Every policy is designed to cement their hold on power, long after Trump has exchanged ill-fitting suits and fat red ties for orange jumpsuits. They are packing federal courts with unqualified ideologues. They are poised to choke off the free flow of information by overturning Net Neutrality. They aim to make higher education, already stratospherically expensive, beyond the reach of virtually every ordinary American. They hope that when the chickens come home to roost, Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric will push working class white Americans to turn their inevitable ire on the convenient scapegoats of Blacks, Latinos, Jews and Muslims.
Every day, Republicans prove that they are not patriots, but complicit co-authors in the destruction of our democracy. Everywhere we look, from Trump to Roy Moore, it is evident that the Republican Party is like a late-stage syphilitic 18th century monarch, rotten to the core, with a crazed determination to hold on to power at any cost. If Congress passes this abomination, we had better devote everything we have to making sure that the only way any of these unprincipled reprobates sees the inside of the Capitol again is as a tourist.
#CallyourSenator
#Resist