NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU
Welcome to the first post of my new blog, in which I'll cover any social commentary that occurs to me. This blog won't be updated nearly as often as the fiction blog I share with my good friend Volt, but this will be the place to read what I think about almost anything else besides Comalan. As I used to on Tumblr, I'll try to be witty and incisive in everything I post. As a reader, I ask you to keep an open mind. This blog is meant to be a completely separate entity from World of Comalan, so if you disagree with something I say here, but love Comalan, don't give up on it! I feel this is especially important to say because, while Comalan is meant to be an inclusive project, this blog is not. I will say things that people will likely disagree with, and I don't take back my words unless I think they were wrong.
To anyone who's been paying attention, it's no secret that the U.S. Congress has just put a tax bill to vote that is not only painful to everyone except establishment donors, but was ramrodded into the process without any chance for the opposition to debate it, or even finish reading it. This bill is over 400 pages long, and the senators who passed it had only four hours to even prepare. This serves not only as a cheap political tactic on the part of the Republican Party, but a convenient excuse for Democrats who will also benefit from this bill but wish to maintain the moral high ground in this debate. To be clear, the moral high ground is exactly what the opposition to this bill has. Let's take a look at just a few of the things in store for America's future.
Changes in tax rates: In the current tax code, there are seven different tax brackets divided according to income: 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, 35 percent, and 39.6 percent. The proposed tax bill has managed to consolidate these brackets into four: 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent, and 39.6 percent. Pay particular attention to the first and last numbers of each set. On an individual basis, the taxes of the wealthiest Americans will remain unchanged while those of the poorest tax-paying citizens are guaranteed to go up under this plan. I'm sure people who are more learned in the specifics of each tax bracket in both plans could point out more ghastly implications, but I can already see enough to be critical of. Even if every single person who benefits from the current 10 AND 15 percent brackets fall under the new 12 percent bracket and even if the majority of those people trend toward the 15 percent scale, this change alone is a slap in the face to those in the 10 percent bracket. Especially when you remember that the wealthiest people in this country won't be expected to make any such sacrifice.
Now, I may be an ignorant socialist who can't claim to be an expert on taxes, but I was able to find the specific numbers which tell an even more unusual story. While these changes will be pretty iffy for the poor and are certainly beneficial for a portion of the rich, it's the middle class that suffers most. The new 35 percent bracket, in particular, will apply to anyone with even half of the income of the current 35 percent bracket. While it is true that this could plan could lower individual taxes for almost everyone, the poor and upper middle class alike won't be so lucky. And, let me just repeat for emphasis: the wealthiest people in this country won't be expected to make any such sacrifice.
Corporate Taxes: This is the biggest giveaway of the whole bill, which aims to reduce the corporate income tax rate by a whopping 15 percent. Where they plan on finding the revenue to offset the changes for corporations alone is beyond me (since, you know, the deficit is still a thing that Republicans claim to care about). I've long been of the opinion that wealthy people and corporations have the least need for financial assistance, but nobody ever fucking listens to me! Argue all you want about how decreased taxes will somehow motivate the people who run the beneficiary companies to create more jobs instead of using that extra money to line their own pockets. I haven't blown a raspberry since I was a kid and I wouldn't mind having a legitimate excuse to see if I remember how.
Removed Deductions: This is where you'll find the changes that affect the most people. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct the cost of supplies they have to buy out of their own pockets to do their fucking jobs. People who pay high out of pocket costs for medical care will no longer be able to deduct anything for those costs. Alimony payments will no longer be deductible. Changes to your tax rate aside, there probably isn't a single person who isn't affected by some removed deduction or another, but at least two of the three things I've listed are morally indefensible (personally, I think all teachers can go fuck themselves).
More What-the-Fuckery: So, this massive clusterfuck of a bill can only be described as such because of the numerous provisions that are either tangential to taxes or completely out of left field. An example of the first is the removal of the Johnson Amendment, which bans any non-profit (including churches and charities) claiming tax exemption from endorsing or opposing any political candidate. Soon, your church may no longer have to pay taxes to participate in politics, a development that will undoubtedly turn the wall of separation between church and state into a revolving fucking door. In another twist that I can't discern any relevance to taxes in whatsoever, both the House and Senate versions of the bill will allow companies to drill into Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge for oil and natural gas. How fucked up do you have to be to slip in the ability to wreck a protected stretch of wilderness into a freaking tax bill? One of the most odious changes of the individual mandate of the ACA, which is the only thing that made that shitty healthcare law work in the first place. Without it, insurance premiums will spike and millions of people will lose healthcare coverage. Way too many people could actually fucking die for this bill!
I won't claim to understand this bill any better than most people because, to be frank, who really can?It's only been out for less than two days and contains 429 pages, several of which are handwritten. The GOP have rushed this process both because they are admittedly being pressured by their corporate donors and because obfuscation of the issue benefits their agenda. For their part, Democrats rightly oppose this bill, but it's hard to trust their motive of the majority of party legislators because this legislation benefits them and their donors as well. It would be fair to say that revealing a bill four hours before it's supposed to come to a vote presents an impossible challenge for its opposition, but it would also be fair to suspect that most of them don't have their hearts completely in the fight. If someone came out and told me tomorrow that the rushed vote on this recently-revealed bill was pre-planned by members of both parties, I wouldn't be surprised at this point. We live in a country which is propped up by two political parties that are governed by the pursuit of money and those parties are held up by people on both sides of the political spectrum who can't be bothered to call their bullshit for what it is. In terms of most people in the public eye, it seems like nobody truly cares about the average American's needs. There are examples of those who do, sure, but it is absolutely appropriate to scream "NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU!" if you didn't mind being a little hyperbolic.
To anyone who's been paying attention, it's no secret that the U.S. Congress has just put a tax bill to vote that is not only painful to everyone except establishment donors, but was ramrodded into the process without any chance for the opposition to debate it, or even finish reading it. This bill is over 400 pages long, and the senators who passed it had only four hours to even prepare. This serves not only as a cheap political tactic on the part of the Republican Party, but a convenient excuse for Democrats who will also benefit from this bill but wish to maintain the moral high ground in this debate. To be clear, the moral high ground is exactly what the opposition to this bill has. Let's take a look at just a few of the things in store for America's future.
Changes in tax rates: In the current tax code, there are seven different tax brackets divided according to income: 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent, 35 percent, and 39.6 percent. The proposed tax bill has managed to consolidate these brackets into four: 12 percent, 25 percent, 35 percent, and 39.6 percent. Pay particular attention to the first and last numbers of each set. On an individual basis, the taxes of the wealthiest Americans will remain unchanged while those of the poorest tax-paying citizens are guaranteed to go up under this plan. I'm sure people who are more learned in the specifics of each tax bracket in both plans could point out more ghastly implications, but I can already see enough to be critical of. Even if every single person who benefits from the current 10 AND 15 percent brackets fall under the new 12 percent bracket and even if the majority of those people trend toward the 15 percent scale, this change alone is a slap in the face to those in the 10 percent bracket. Especially when you remember that the wealthiest people in this country won't be expected to make any such sacrifice.
Now, I may be an ignorant socialist who can't claim to be an expert on taxes, but I was able to find the specific numbers which tell an even more unusual story. While these changes will be pretty iffy for the poor and are certainly beneficial for a portion of the rich, it's the middle class that suffers most. The new 35 percent bracket, in particular, will apply to anyone with even half of the income of the current 35 percent bracket. While it is true that this could plan could lower individual taxes for almost everyone, the poor and upper middle class alike won't be so lucky. And, let me just repeat for emphasis: the wealthiest people in this country won't be expected to make any such sacrifice.
Corporate Taxes: This is the biggest giveaway of the whole bill, which aims to reduce the corporate income tax rate by a whopping 15 percent. Where they plan on finding the revenue to offset the changes for corporations alone is beyond me (since, you know, the deficit is still a thing that Republicans claim to care about). I've long been of the opinion that wealthy people and corporations have the least need for financial assistance, but nobody ever fucking listens to me! Argue all you want about how decreased taxes will somehow motivate the people who run the beneficiary companies to create more jobs instead of using that extra money to line their own pockets. I haven't blown a raspberry since I was a kid and I wouldn't mind having a legitimate excuse to see if I remember how.
Removed Deductions: This is where you'll find the changes that affect the most people. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct the cost of supplies they have to buy out of their own pockets to do their fucking jobs. People who pay high out of pocket costs for medical care will no longer be able to deduct anything for those costs. Alimony payments will no longer be deductible. Changes to your tax rate aside, there probably isn't a single person who isn't affected by some removed deduction or another, but at least two of the three things I've listed are morally indefensible (personally, I think all teachers can go fuck themselves).
More What-the-Fuckery: So, this massive clusterfuck of a bill can only be described as such because of the numerous provisions that are either tangential to taxes or completely out of left field. An example of the first is the removal of the Johnson Amendment, which bans any non-profit (including churches and charities) claiming tax exemption from endorsing or opposing any political candidate. Soon, your church may no longer have to pay taxes to participate in politics, a development that will undoubtedly turn the wall of separation between church and state into a revolving fucking door. In another twist that I can't discern any relevance to taxes in whatsoever, both the House and Senate versions of the bill will allow companies to drill into Alaska's National Wildlife Refuge for oil and natural gas. How fucked up do you have to be to slip in the ability to wreck a protected stretch of wilderness into a freaking tax bill? One of the most odious changes of the individual mandate of the ACA, which is the only thing that made that shitty healthcare law work in the first place. Without it, insurance premiums will spike and millions of people will lose healthcare coverage. Way too many people could actually fucking die for this bill!
I won't claim to understand this bill any better than most people because, to be frank, who really can?It's only been out for less than two days and contains 429 pages, several of which are handwritten. The GOP have rushed this process both because they are admittedly being pressured by their corporate donors and because obfuscation of the issue benefits their agenda. For their part, Democrats rightly oppose this bill, but it's hard to trust their motive of the majority of party legislators because this legislation benefits them and their donors as well. It would be fair to say that revealing a bill four hours before it's supposed to come to a vote presents an impossible challenge for its opposition, but it would also be fair to suspect that most of them don't have their hearts completely in the fight. If someone came out and told me tomorrow that the rushed vote on this recently-revealed bill was pre-planned by members of both parties, I wouldn't be surprised at this point. We live in a country which is propped up by two political parties that are governed by the pursuit of money and those parties are held up by people on both sides of the political spectrum who can't be bothered to call their bullshit for what it is. In terms of most people in the public eye, it seems like nobody truly cares about the average American's needs. There are examples of those who do, sure, but it is absolutely appropriate to scream "NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOU!" if you didn't mind being a little hyperbolic.
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