We have never had a President who so blatantly and brazenly lies to the American public with such ease and a lack of ethical pause. There is a genuine disconnect between what the President says and the truth, and that’s something we’ve never seen before. Now, all politicians lie to get what they want—mainly votes—and we, the voters, know that. But this President is claiming a “record breaking” string of accomplishment and benefits to the middle class. And there’s just no rhyme or reason to that statement. There is no evidence to back it up. This tax law is the first legislative accomplishment of his administration and it’s a complete partisan disaster, which will destroy the middle class and create a regressive tax code that steals more wealth from the middle class and poor and redistributes it to the wealthy and corporations. Everything else he’s done has been through executive order, and it hasn’t been much!
From the failed responses to the hurricanes in Texas and Puerto Rico to the complete absence of a response to the multiple high-profile mass shootings in Las Vegas and Texas, this President has been an ineffectual leader. Internationally, he’s destroyed the country’s standing on the world stage by pulling us out of the Paris Climate Accords, abandoning the Trans Pacific Partnership, and walking away from the United States role as the middle-East peace broker by recognising Jerusalem as Israel’s capitol and moving the US embassy there—not to mention his abject behaviour at the NATO summit. Even within his own administration he’s toxic, his State Department is constantly and repeatedly undercut on North Korea and the Middle East, his Justice Department is demoralised, and his FBI is hardly feeling the love from his repeated attacks and insults.
He may have signed 52 executive orders, issued 35 presidential memoranda, 11 determinations, and 114 proclamations, but what has he actually accomplished? Nothing. His leadership is a complete farce.
This tax law is an assault on the very basic decency of the American public. When the economic crash of 2008 occurred, Duke University and the Harvard Business school polled the American public and asked what the country wanted the distribution of wealth to be, what the country thought the distribution of wealth actually was, and then compared that to what the distribution actually is as of that time. Today it’s even worse. And while correlation isn’t causation, it is worth pointing out that economic disparity has been at its greatest immediately before the two greatest financial crashes in this nation’s history (the first was the crash of 1929 which lead to the Great Depression). Not only has this President done nothing to address this gulf of economic disparity, but he’s happily taking credit for all of the returns of the policies of his predecessor. Adding insult to injury, this tax law that was rammed through Congress last night will add $1.4 trillion to the national debt! Republicans, the party of fiscal conservatism, just added $1.4 trillion (that’s $1,400,000,000,000.00) to the national debt by returning to the failed policies of Reagan’s “trickle down economics.”
Piling on to the train wreck, they managed to repeal the individual mandate of the Affordable Care Act—one of the effects of which was to ensure insurance pools were robust enough that costs would remain low for everyone—thus crippling the affordability of the insurance marketplace. Republicans have managed to, in once single act, effectively raise taxes on the poor over 10 years and make it more difficult for everyone to afford healthcare. Yes, they’re real public servants.
All of this, of course, comes on the heels of the FCC chairman, Ajit Pai, and his Republican cronies on the FCC board ignoring the comments, protests, and voices of the public and dismantling the Title II protections that constituted Net Neutrality last week. Enough has been said about this and there are multiple remedies in action ranging from legislation to lawsuits, so I’m not going to delve too deeply here.
Suffice to say, I’m frustrated, dear reader. I don’t know what to do.
I want to make it hurt for these Republicans, I think they should suffer for these travesties they’ve visited on the American public. It should be uncomfortable for them to lead normal lives so long as they remain in office; and make no mistake, I mean for them to lose their seats as soon as possible. Legislation should never be written in the manner in which this bill was written, with no hearings, no consultation of the minority party, no input from constituents, and no respect or care for the consequences. This is an assault and it should not go unanswered. We need to make sure these representatives and Senators lose their jobs over this. We need to organise, we need to start today, we need to make sure we get the vote out in 2018, 2020, and 2022. We need to be busy, we need to be active, we need to be strong.
Let’s go.
