1. Ron Insana: 'Average' Americans left holding empty bag in tax reform proposals

The latest version of "tax reform" is deeply flawed.

Given its construction, as we understand it today, it's not necessary. It will wreck the housing market; it's punitive to every high-tax blue state in the nation (maybe purposely so); it's anti-family and now, with the repeal of the Affordable Care Act potentially imbedded in the House version, there will be tens of millions of Americans without health insurance, unlike their peers in Congress.

Let's start with the issue of necessity. The White House and congressional Republicans claim the tax package is needed because it will create jobs and raise wages for the "average worker."

First off, we don't need to create any more jobs. The unemployment rate is at a 17-year low, while a record 6.1 million jobs remain open and could stay that way in the absence of sufficient education, retraining and increases in immigration.

In short, the U.S. has a shortage of workers, not a shortage of jobs.

Further, with economic growth accelerating, a tax cut could be saved for a rainy day, when counter-cyclical policies would be more beneficial to a struggling economy.

With respect to wages, there is scant, if any, evidence that suggests cutting taxes will lead to a hike in take-home pay for workers at any level. History has shown that both temporary and permanent tax cuts that lead to rising corporate profits and widening profit margins most often result in the gains being paid to shareholders in the form of stock buybacks and dividend increases, not given to workers in the form of pay increases.

Companies do not raise wages when rapid technological change is leading to greater automation, lower labor costs and higher productivity.

It's a bald-faced lie that wages will magically rise once corporate tax rates come down.

Indeed, with corporate profits at both cyclical and historic highs, companies have been in no hurry to raise wages, a conundrum that has defied economic orthodoxy.  https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/09/average-americans-left-behind-in-tax-reform-proposals.html

2. Masha Gessen: One Year After Trump’s Election, Revisiting “Autocracy: Rules for Survival”

 Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Most catastrophes unfold over time. Following the shock of a disastrous election—or a Presidential tweet—the sun rises again in the morning, and life appears to proceed as before. One adjusts, until the next shocking event.

Trump has moved faster, assaulting our senses in more ways and more often than I (and, I think, most other people) expected. The sun still rises every morning, but an early-morning barrage of Trump’s tweets might obscure it. The word “Presidential” has gradually faded from the conversation: no one expects the President to live up to the standards of speech and behavior that his office would seem to demand. Instead, we have settled into constant low-level dread: a state in which a person can function, but can hardly be creative or look into the future. A Russian writer who blogs under the name Alexander Ivanov-Petrov, writing of a different time and place, has called this state of living “provincial time.” It is a time in which people continue to think and create, but “in some fundamental way lack agency or the ability to be fully aware of themselves.”

This state renders us incapable, too, of absorbing the bigger threats, ones that strain the imagination. For months, we have been living with the very real threat of nuclear war with North Korea and the near-inevitability of irreversible and unmitigated climate change, made that much more catastrophic by the actions of the Trump Administration. In this context, Trump’s daily dreadful tweets, and our ability to feel something in response, pass for small signs of normality.  https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/one-year-after-trumps-election-revisiting-autocracy-rules-for-survival

3. Gabriel Sherman: “you Can’t Go Any Lower”: Inside The West Wing, Trump Is Apoplectic As Allies Fear Impeachment

Until now, Robert Mueller has haunted Donald Trump’s White House as a hovering, mostly unseen menace. But by securing indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and a surprise guilty plea from foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos, Mueller announced loudly that the Russia investigation poses an existential threat to the president. “Here’s what Manafort’s indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization,” said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “Trump is at 33 percent in Gallup. You can’t go any lower. He’s fucked.”

The first charges in the Mueller probe have kindled talk of what the endgame for Trump looks like, according to conversations with a half-dozen advisers and friends of the president. For the first time since the investigation began, the prospect of impeachment is being considered as a realistic outcome and not just a liberal fever dream. According to a source, advisers in the West Wing are on edge and doing whatever they can not to be ensnared. One person close to Dina Powell and Gary Cohn said they’re making sure to leave rooms if the subject of Russia comes up.

The consensus among the advisers I spoke to is that Trump faces few good options to thwart Mueller. For one, firing Mueller would cross a red line, analogous to Nixon’s firing of Archibald Cox during Watergate, pushing establishment Republicans to entertain the possibility of impeachment. “His options are limited, and his instinct is to come out swinging, which won’t help things,” said a prominent Republican close to the White House.  https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/11/the-west-wing-trump-is-apoplectic-as-allies-fear-impeachment

4. Ed Kilgore: Tuesday’s Crushing Defeat Convinces Republicans They’re on the Right Track

The danger indicators on the console are blinking red, but the people driving the GOP seem determined to ignore them.

There are certainly multiple reasons for this willful refusal to change course.

Sheer inertia is one factor. The GOP legislative agenda was set before Donald Trump even took office, and the failure to deal with health care, cut spending, or stay on schedule has naturally intensified the determination of Republican leaders to get something done by the end of this incredibly disappointing year. Pausing for reflection at this point is the last thing Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell want to do.

In addition, the tax bill is very important to GOP donors, who are already furious at their hirelings for their legislative incompetence. The more Republicans pay attention to the demands of donors that they defy public opinion, the more they need those donors to finance campaigns that swim upstream against public opinion: It’s truly a vicious circle.

The demands of the base matter, too, particularly given the possibility of right-wing primary challenges to members of Congress who are too accommodating to mainstream public opinion. It is often forgotten that the vast majority of Republicans in both chambers of Congress are personally invulnerable to the general elections that could destroy their majorities and their power.

That can lead to some really delusional thinking. Here’s an example: Maine voters approved a referendum by a landslide 59/41 margin to force their state to accept the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid-expansion option, which atavistic GOP governor Paul LePage has repeatedly blocked. Some congressional Republicans are viewing that as a sign they should keep trying to repeal the Obamacare law that made the expansion possible. As Talking Points Memo reports:

Despite polls showing that more Americans approve of Obamacare than at any time since its implementation, and the vast majority disapprove of Republican bills to repeal it, GOP members said the message they got from Tuesday’s elections was that their failure to deliver “results” is what is hurting Republicans, not their repeated attempts to gut the ACA.

And how about that Maine vote?  http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/11/tuesdays-crushing-defeat-convinces-gop-theyre-doing-well.html

5. Joy-Ann Reid: Finally, the Real Majority Pushes Back Against the Bitter Third

It was a week in which the American majority held its breath, bracing for yet another gut punch, in which a country that became virtually unrecognizable to so many on Nov. 9, 2016, revealed its utter capitulation to the bitter third again. Instead, Ed Gillespie, who shamefully morphed from ordinary, New Jersey Republican to brown-baiting neo-Confederate cosplayer, lost and lost big in the Virginia governor’s race.

A wave of women, immigrants, candidates of color, and trans candidates swept into office from coast to coast, in an utter repudiation of Trumpism’s ugly intolerance. On an off-year Election Day that typically attracts fewer voters of color, it was those very voters, particularly black women, who carried Democrats and pro-health care, pro living-wage ballot initiatives over the top. Trump apologists in the right-wing media feverishly tried to spin the night as a lesson to Republicans to cling harder to Dear Leader, but the exit polls made it clear that he might as well be made of asbestos.

It turns out that Trumpism is many things: a cult, per religious scholar Reza Aslan, and perhaps even a doomsday cult; an excuse for those who demand that the long dead past come calling on them, rather than proactively moving toward the future, and a window into an ugly part of the American soul. For the Republican Party, Trumpism is like a slow-acting poison. It may not kill the party today, but just as its wiser adherents, some of whom have left the party, warned a year ago, it is condemning the Grand Old Party to at best a schism, and at worst an existential grave.

Tuesday’s election allowed millions in the American majority to finally take a deep, cleansing breath after a year of fear and loathing, watching the rampant corruption of our government and the degradation of our culture by the vulgar president and his Putinite coterie. It allowed the world to see that our country has not gone entirely mad.

So permit me to be unusually hopeful about the future, because no matter how dark the present often feels, we do stand to inherit a world free from Trumpism, no matter how pervasive and oppressive it can feel day to day. Trumpism is doomed to fail because in the end, you can’t beat modernity into submission. Nor can you roll back progress for long.  https://www.thedailybeast.com/finally-the-real-majority-pushes-back-against-the-bitter-third

6. Max Boot: Roy Moore Response Shows GOP Deserves to Die

This episode is the sorry culmination of two trends that have disfigured the conservative movement beyond all recognition: contempt for the facts and desire to win at all costs. Republicans are increasingly reliant on ‘alternative facts’ manufactured by the likes of Fox News and Breitbart, which claim that global warming isn’t real and neither is the Russian hack of the Democratic National Committee. The real scandal, they tell us, is the Steele dossier paid for by the Democrats in an attempt to uncover Trump’s Russian connections. Or is it the evidence-free claim that Obama supposedly wiretapped Trump?

In the final analysis, no indictment of their candidate will convince the faithful. As Trump once said, ‘I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters’ Or, more to the point, Roy Moore could molest a 14-year-old girl and not lose votes. Because for Republican partisans, their opponents are ‘the forces of evil,’ and anything is preferable to that. Even Donald Trump. Even Roy Moore. So in ostensibly fighting evil, Republicans have become complicit in it.

This is a party that does not deserve to survive.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2017/11/10/roy-moore-response-shows-gop-doesnt-deserve-survive-max-boot-column/851640001/

7. Jamelle Bouie “If True"

Unequivocal condemnations of Roy Moore, the party’s nominee for the U.S. Senate in the upcoming Alabama special election, were the minority. More common were those from figures like Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan. “If these allegations are true, Roy Moore should step aside for all the obvious reasons. Very disturbing allegations,” said McConnell. “If these allegations are found to be true, Roy Moore must drop out of the Alabama special Senate election,” said Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner. “If there is any truth to that, he ought to step aside, of course,” said Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. “These allegations are disqualifying if true. Anyone who would do this to a child has no place in public office, let alone the United States Senate,” Ryan said.

If true. On the surface, this looks like a condemnation and a call for Moore to leave the race. But it isn’t. These Republicans are shocked by the allegations, but they aren’t willing to make a judgment about their veracity or make a choice about their support for Moore. Indeed, if true defers the issue to Moore himself. Either he makes it true by acknowledging and affirming the allegations, or he doesn’t, in which case those Republicans won’t have to act. If true renders the question inert. If true is moral cowardice.

Republicans face the same choice they did last year, when Trump was accused of sexual assault. And with few exceptions, they have deferred making a choice, which is a choice in and of itself. By hedging their statements, and by not directly calling for Moore to leave the race, they are signaling their willingness to accept Moore into the Senate, if he wins. His predatory behavior, his bigotry, his contempt for the rule of law—all of those are secondary to the fact that he will give them an additional vote. This is where the Republican Party and the conservative movement stand. If partisanship demands that they support an abuser and a predator, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.  http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/11/
the_moral_cowardice_of_saying_allegations_against_roy_moore_are_horrible.html

8. Scott Gilmore: Donald Trump: Putin’s Manchurian Idiot

t can’t be denied that Russia interfered in the U.S. election in support of Trump. But what did the President know about it?

There are three things that all objective observers cannot deny. First, Russia did interfere in the U.S. election. Second, the interference was in support of Trump. And third, senior members of Trump’s campaign were aware of it. That leaves us with what is likely to become the great historical question of the Trump presidency: What did he know, and when did he know it?

There are three possible answers to that question. The most implausible is that Trump has been working with the Russians for years and that he is their “Manchurian Candidate” knowingly doing the Kremlin’s bidding. If this were true, it would be the most incredible strategic coup in modern history. But there is absolutely no evidence to support this. And setting aside partisan fever dreams, Trump’s mercurial nature and inability to keep a secret or stay on script—even for a few minutes—makes this impossible.

A more likely scenario is that the Russians saw an opportunity to support a candidate who might be an ally, trailed their coats in front of the campaign several times and got a bite from Papadopoulos and maybe a couple others. Trump eventually found out, but didn’t care—or even welcomed the help. And now he is willing to say or do anything to protect himself and avoid impeachment.

The third possibility is that Trump was indeed kept out of the loop and genuinely does not believe the accusations and indictments now being levelled at his team. My money is on this scenario. I think Trump sincerely believes there was no collusion. And in spite of the growing pile of evidence in front of him, he is constitutionally incapable of admitting a foreign power helped win the election, because that conclusion would dramatically diminish the single greatest accomplishment of his life. And like he has with NAFTA, NATO, climate change, ISIS, the Central Park Five and dozens of other issues, Trump will risk looking like a fool unable to grasp the evidence before his eyes or presented by all the experts, if accepting the truth would cause him to lose face.

This is still a strategic coup for Moscow. Washington is embroiled in what will be years of partisan chaos. The American people are increasingly disenchanted with democracy. And in the Oval Office there is a man few take seriously at home or abroad. Trump is, in short, Putin’s Manchurian Idiot.  http://www.macleans.ca/politics/washington/donald-trump-putins-manchurian-idiot/

9. Paul Waldman: Republicans' hilariously pathetic attempt to manufacture another Hillary Clinton scandal

They've got her now, just you wait.

Republicans in Congress have Hillary Clinton in their sights, and it's all going to be different this time. They're demandingthat the Justice Department appoint a special counsel to investigate Clinton, or more specifically, a couple of different matters relating to her, including the sale of a company that mines uranium and the Russia dossier, in which an opposition researcher assembled potentially damaging information on Donald Trump in 2016. What America obviously needs is a prosecutor with unlimited resources and subpoena power to get to the bottom of these matters, because ... because ... well because Hillary Damn Clinton, that's why!

You may have noticed that Hillary Clinton is not actually the president, a fact that has left Republicans who were looking forward to four or eight years of rip-roaring investigations rather bereft. So why not have the Justice Department investigate the president's former opponent? Maybe they'll get to lock her up after all. Sure, that's something that tends to happen in countries where elections are a prelude to tyranny, but isn't the American system far too lenient on people who commit the crime of losing an election?

What is the point of all this? The answer is a bit complicated, but first let's quickly address the Republicans' complaint. In their fantasy world, what demands investigation is chiefly this: Hillary Clinton gave 20 percent of our uranium to Russia in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation, and there was obviously something fishy going on. However, every bit of the previous sentence is false, other than that there is a person named "Hillary Clinton," a thing called "uranium," a place called "Russia," and an organization called the "Clinton Foundation."  http://theweek.com/articles/737366/republicans-hilariously-pathetic-attempt-manufacture-another-hillary-clinton-scandal