Tax Plan Might not Prove that Generous to Middle Class

Tax Reform has many authors if you make bank form it; none if your taxes go up.  Most middle class taxes will go up when the provisions of this bill expire.

For families with children, another big provision comes into play: the child tax credit. The Senate bill would double that credit to $2,000 per child. As a result, families with children would generally get a bigger tax cut, although the benefits start to phase out above a certain income — that’s why the cuts are smaller for families higher up on the earnings ladder. (This analysis is based on an interpretation of the tax bill that is being used by the Joint Committee on Taxation and many other economists. The bill is ambiguous, however, and there is an alternative interpretation that would be much less generous to lower-income parents.)  https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/11/28/upshot/what-the-tax-bill-would-look-like-for-25000-middle-class-families.html

Following this lovely paragraph comes the most important words:People who pay a lot in state and
local taxes could see big tax increases.  (Emphasis in original.)

Until now, we’ve been focusing on the impact of the Senate bill on people’s taxes in 2018, when most households would get at least a small tax cut. But the situation would look very different a decade from now. That’s because in order to reduce the cost of the bill, its authors set essentially all of the individual tax cuts — the doubled standard deduction, the more generous child credit, the lower tax rates — to expire after 2025. But one provision that’s bad for taxpayers — changing the measure of inflation used for many tax calculations — would not expire. As a result, two-thirds of middle-class households would get a tax increase in 2027, and none — zero percent — would get a tax cut. (That’s what’s shown in the left-hand chart above.) 

Those figures, however, consider only how the bill would affect personal income taxes. Starting in 2019, the bill would also cut taxes on businesses. Unlike the personal tax provisions, the business tax cuts would not expire.

Edition for today of making complicated things simple; the rich get richer and the rest get poorer.

Republicans suck.

PS: "...many would pay more under the Senate bill."  (From article linked above.)

Taylor Swift, Get Married...

get married and have babies, or else you stand for what others want to perceive as Bad.

Really, why should people and the media care what her personal/political views are.  Really, if her songs make us wanna dance or tug at our heartstrings, what else matters?

Confessin: have never knowingly listened to Swift song.

Bloodshed (Updated)

But the word of the Lord came to me, saying, ‘You have shed much blood and have waged great wars; you shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood in my sight on the earth. 
- 1 Chronicles 22:8

3 guesses as to modern nation which closely models that described above?  Perhaps a great country built on bloodied backs of kidnapped slaves?

Could we say 'tis the country which unleashed the nuclear sword on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which although dread and terrible probably still killed less than the original sin of slavery?

Could we use the example of a country which fought 2 land wars in Asia: 1 which has not ended on the Korean peninsula and another where our Vietnamese allies became abandoned, the latter where US experts told politicians we could not win.

Or could we use the example of country which declared a global war on terror which will last for generations since we can't kill an idea?  This war recently claimed the lives of 4 American patriots in some homeless, misbegotten jungle.  Our leaders claim the right to blow anyone anywhere to bits, even Americana.

Whither our cival rights?  Whither the Constitution?

Primer on History and Communication

Way back when--when humans invented language or God created the first modern human (Homo Sapien) from Cro Magnon stock--we had to walk over to another to talk.

Then we domesticated animals and could ride over a distance and speak or deliver a message. This took some thought prior as one had to think of what to say or transcribe said message.

Men still invariably said the wrong thing to women or their mates yet still the human race survived.

With the harnessing of electricity, came the invention of the telegraph, and messages could get sent over greater distances which took some thought, more if having to write the message if for giving it to the telegraph operator--less if sent by telegraphists to each other, which latter state allowed the operators to shoot the fecal matter over greater distances which still took some reflection even to communicate "wassup" to the receiver on the other end, also allowing first recorded LOL message.

Then came the invention of the telephone, which enabled communication with no thought other than dialing some numbers: "Wassup?  Blah, Blah, Blah."

This gave us the ability to initiate communication over longer distances, with less thought except perhaps thinking of what to say on  "break up calls" if done caringly rather than coldly, the latter usually done by men; yet still the race survived even after "white supremacists" got invented to codify slavery.  One wonders whether this electronic invention advanced the species or detracted from it.

Then came the accursed invention of the computer and then progeny: ICBMS, messageboards, email,  hook-ups, intertubes, web pages, laptops (the latter 2 which allow dissemination of stupidity, obnoxious crap, and wry drollery such as mine over the whole wide world and even outer space.

One shudders and hopes and prays humans will survive and civilizations thrive even as we fear the whole damn thing will burst into flames made by ourselves.)