I found this on a Facebook page, but without a link to the original. David Brooks has usually been a rational critic of Obama and now and then supported some ideas. I think he is becoming more and more disenchanted with the GOP Alternate facts and reality. Today I also got one of Kristi Noem's e-mails with her complete and utter nonsense on Obamacare. She is a nutcase shill for corporations and nonsense ideology. Brooks pretty much destroys her nonsense too.
David Brooks is a NY Times columnist and regularly appears on PBS Evening News.
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We have Freedom Caucus Republicans who still think the major problems in the country today can be cured with tax and spending cuts. We have a Trump administration that has populist impulses but no actual populist safety net policies. And we’ve got a Republican leadership in Congress mired in Reagan-era thinking and trying to pay lip service to every obsolete prejudice in the various wings of the party.
You end up with this hodgepodge legislation that pleases nobody and takes the big crises afflicting our country and makes them all worse.
The Republican health plan would make America’s economic chasm worse. It would cut health subsidies that go to the poor while eliminating the net investment income tax, which benefits only the top 1 percent.
The Republican plan would further destabilize the social fabric for those at the bottom. Throwing perhaps 10 million people off the insurance rolls will increase fear, isolation, social tension, chronic illness, suicide and bankruptcy.
The Republican plan will fuel cynicism. It’s being pushed through in an elitist, anti-democratic, middle of the night rush. It seems purposely designed to fail. The penalties for those who don’t purchase insurance are so low they seem sure to guarantee Republican-caused death spirals in the weaker markets.
This thing probably won’t pass, but even if it passes it will probably lead to immense pain and disruption. That will discredit market-based social reform, cost the Republicans their congressional majorities and end what’s left of the Reagan-era party.
It will also point the way to a new era.
The central debate in the old era was big government versus small government, the market versus the state. But now you’ve got millions of people growing up in social and cultural chaos and not getting the skills they need to thrive in a technological society. This is not a problem you can solve with tax cuts.
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****Stay tuned for more reports on the Trump unnatural disasters and catastrophes-- Doug Wiken
DonT Care as in Donald Trump Care
There was a name contest on Facebook, did not include my favorites: TheBirther, ToxicOrange, TheBigOrangeSkidMark while having a lot of the old standards like DonTheCon Etc.
Posted by: Mike Jones | Mar 21, 2017 at 05:03 PM