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Here’s What We Need to Think About and Do Now That Republicans Have Passed Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

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(Oh, and the “Tea” in Tea Party didn’t stand for “taxed enough already,” it stood for racism.)

In the dark of night – actually, just before 2 AM Saturday – Republicans in the Senate passed a historic tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy bill that adds $1.4 trillion to the deficit and raises taxes on lower-income and moderate-income Americans, will cause 13 million to lose their health care coverage, while expanding tax subsidies for operators of private planes and cruise liners. 

And that’s just for starters.

It’s practically impossible to offer a detailed list of the horrors of the Republicans’ deceptively-named “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” because not a single person, at least in Congress, has read it. It’s nearly 500 pages long, was released at 8 PM Friday night, then altered – with hand written notes – before being voted on and passed by 51 of the Senate’s 52 Republicans.

Just one Republican, Bob Corker of Tennessee, and every single Democrat, voted against it.

So what do we do now?

Well, a few things.

First, the House still needs to vote on it after it comes out of conference, with even more adjustments made. The Senate may have to vote on it again too, depending on what changes are made to the legislation.

So, first snd foremost, you should continue (or start) to call your Senators – both of them, regardless of their party affiliation, and your Member of Congress. It’s easy: just call the Capitol Hill Switchboard at (202) 224-3121, say where you live, and the operator will connect you with the right person. (Be nice to the operators, they have a very hard and thankless job!)

So that’s three calls you should make, and make first thing Monday, as soon as you can. 

You should also decide if you think Democrats should consider shutting down the government over this bill – we could, if enough House Democrats decided they wanted to. Think about his: CHIP, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, has gone unfunded now for more than two months. Kids are losing their health insurance because Congress has not bothered to act. Trump promised Democratic leaders “Chuck and Nancy” that they would all join together to save DACA recipients and get an immigration bill though Congress in a few weeks. That was over a month ago. And then, of course, there’s the GOP tax bill, aka #GOPTaxScam.

You decide if you want to ask your congressional representatives to shut down the government over these issues. 

In the meanwhile, I think it’s time that Democrats ramp up the fight. We may have lost this battle (and maybe not), but let’s be very clear what the war is about.

It’s about whether or not we want to live in a country that respects the idea that everyone is equal. It’s about whether we want to live in a country that recognizes all people at some point in their lives need some extra help. It’s about whether or not we want to live in a country that says if you’ve benefitted from the efforts of those who came before you, of those who are working hard for your freedoms now, of those who will help in the future, you owe it to them and to your country to pay a little more so others can have the same opportunities you did.

And it’s about whether or not we want to live in a country that believes votes shouldn’t go to the highest bidder, that K Street lobbyists shouldn’t be able to decide the future of America, that people and corporations with the deepest pockets shouldn’t be able to get their way because they can afford to spend more to grease the wheels.

Which means our number one goal, as Americans, regardless of party, should be to vote out of office every single Republican in the House and Senate who voted for this monstrosity they call a tax cut bill. The move has already begun:

Think about these ideas and consider some of these below that others have made in the aftermath of what will go down in history as one of the most damaging acts in modern American history.

And share them. Let’s start using some of these phrases and concepts and ideas to fight back. We may have lost this battle (maybe not, it’s not over yet), but we can make clear that the Republican Party an immoral cult devoid of any semblance of the American idea.

I truly believe the future of the nation is at stake, right now, today.

It’s time to start calling Republicans “tax and spend Republicans.”

Never again can we allow tax and spend Republicans to get away with saying America cannot afford a good program, like ObamaCare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, single-payer health care, education, “welfare” programs, etc.

The Tea Party just proved what we all knew: “Tea” didn’t stand for “taxed enough already,” it stood for racism:

We all know what works, we’ve all seen it this year, starting with the historic Women’s March on January 21. Protests work. Go out and but some cardboard and markers today and get ready to fight.

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Image via Kat Brezler/Twitter

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‘I’m Not Suicidal’: Kari Lake Pushes Hillary Clinton Murder Conspiracy Theory

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10 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake is promoting a conspiracy theory suggesting Hillary Clinton wants to assassinate her. Her remarks came just one day before she lost her attempt to have the Supreme Court review what some have called her conspiracy-theory fueled lawsuit about electronic voting machines.

“Lake, who filed the lawsuit during her failed campaign for governor in 2022, challenged whether the state’s electronic voting machines assured ‘a fair and accurate vote.’ Two lower courts dismissed the suit, finding that Lake and former Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem had not been harmed in a way that allowed them to sue,” CNN reported Monday.

Also on Monday Law&Crime reported that when she filed her lawsuit, a Dominion Voting Systems spokesperson “rejected Lake’s cybersecurity claim, telling Law&Crime it was ‘implausible and conspiratorial.'”

Democracy Docket, founded by top Democratic elections attorney Marc Elias, called it “the end of the road for a conspiratorial lawsuit,” and Lake and Fincham, “election deniers.”

READ MORE: ‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

Lake, a far-right conspiracy theorist who has yet to concede the 2020 election, which she lost to Democrat Katie Hobbs, has a history of pushing exaggerated and baseless claims.

On Sunday, as MeidasTouch Network reported, Lake promoted an old, anti-Clinton conspiracy theory but twisted it to try to make it appear she was in danger from former U.S. Secretary of State and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

Lake on Newsmax listened to a clip of Secretary Clinton calling Trump’s fondness for Russian President Vladimir Putin a “bromance,” and saying the ex-president is “just gaga over Putin, because Putin does what he would like to do: kill his opposition, imprison his opposition, drive, you know, journalists and others into exile, rule without any check or balance.”

Then Lake promoted a thoroughly debunked conspiracy theory by responding, “Oh, boy. Oh, that’s really rich coming from a woman like Hillary Clinton, who’s, how many of her friends have just like, mysteriously died or committed suicide?”

“I mean, honestly, that’s rich of her. What President Trump wants is to root out the corruption and deliver our government back to We The People and she looks very nervous. She talked about her friend Mark Elias, Mark Elias has meddled in in his and his cohorts have meddled in the elections.”

She called Democratic policies, “destructive, deadly and frankly, in some ways, diabolical,”and added, “it’s almost comical that Hillary Clinton is talking about Trump wanting to kill his opponents.”

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

“I just want to say as I’m as I’m speaking about this topic, I want everyone out there to know that my brakes on my car have recently been checked and they work. I’m not suicidal. And Hillary, I don’t mean any harm to you. Please don’t send your henchmen out to me. We understand what you’re about. ”

Watch below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

 

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‘Old and Tired and Mad’: Trump’s Demeanor in Court Detailed by Rachel Maddow

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13 hours ago

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April 22, 2024

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MSNBC top host Rachel Maddow, inside Manhattan’s Criminal Courthouse on Monday declared Donald Trump appeared “old and tired and mad,” as she delivered observations about the ex-president on trial for 34 counts of falsification of business records alleged in the alleged pursuit of election interference to protect his 2016 presidential run.

Trump “seems considerably older, and he seems annoyed. Resigned, maybe, angry. he seems like a man who’s miserable to be here,” the award-winning journalist told MSNBC viewers Monday afternoon.

“I’m no body language expert,” she conceded, “and this is just my observation. He seemed old and tired and mad.”

The New York Times’ Susanne Craig, from inside the courthouse Monday morning reported: “Trump is struggling to stay awake. His eyes were closed for a short period. He was jolted awake when Todd Blanche, his lawyer, nudged him while sliding a note in front of him.”

The Biden campaign was only too happy to pick up and report Craig’s observation, adding “feeble.”

Former Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, pointing to his piece at The Atlantic, wrote of Trump: “He has charmed & conned, schemed & marauded his way through life. He was bred that way. But the weariness & vulnerability captured in courtroom images betray a growing sense in Trump that he could wind up as the thing his old man most reviled:
A loser.”

Watch Maddow’s remarks below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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News

‘Election Interference’ and ‘Corruption’: Experts Explain Trump Prosecution Opening Argument

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15 hours ago

on

April 22, 2024

By

Prosecutors for the State of New York in their opening statement drew a direct line between the October 2016  “Access Hollywood” leaked audio and Donald Trump’s alleged “hush money” payoff to two women, including the adult film actress Stormy Daniels, telling the jury it was “election fraud, pure and simple.”

Legal experts are dissecting the prosecution’s opening argument. Professor of law, MSNBC contributor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann summed it up, saying New York District Attorney Alvin Bragg “squarely places the NY criminal trial in the election interference/corruption bucket– exactly what the DC and GA indictments allege, just 4 years later.”

“And the NY alleged ‘cover up’ is reminiscent of the two MAL [Mar-a-Lago] alleged obstruction schemes post-presidency, to keep prosecutors from uncovering evidence of that scheme,” Weissmann added.

Prosecutor Matthew Colangelo late Monday morning in his 45-minute opening argument told jurors, “This case is about criminal conspiracy and a cover up,” according to MSNBC’s Joyce Vance.

READ MORE: ‘Rally Behind MAGA’: Trump Advocates Courthouse ‘Protests’ Nationwide

“The defendant, Donald Trump, orchestrated a criminal scheme to corrupt the 2016 presidential election,” Colangelo told jurors, CNN reports. “Then he covered up that criminal conspiracy by lying in his New York business records over and over and over again.”

“This was a planned, coordinated long-running conspiracy to influence the 2016 election, to help Donald Trump get elected through illegal expenditures,” Colangelo, a former U.S. Department of Justice Acting Associate Attorney General, told jurors.

“Another story about sexual infidelity, especially with a porn star, on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign,” Colangelo added. “’So at Trump’s direction, Cohen negotiated the deal to buy Daniels’ story,’ and prevent it from becoming public before the election.”

“It was election fraud, pure and simple.”

Vance, an MSNBC legal analyst, professor of law and former U.S. Attorney, explains: “The scheme the prosecution is outlining is catch & kill to elect Trump-awful but lawful. Trump crossed the line into illegality when he created false business records to conceal his payments to Cohen to cover up the payments to Stormy Daniels.”

READ MORE: Fox News Host Suggests Trump ‘Force’ Court to Throw Him in Jail – by Quoting Him

“It’s always the cover up,” she adds.

Professor of law and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Harry Litman adds, the prosecution told jurors “a straight election-interference story.”

Colangelo, Litman says, told jurors that Trump’s then personal attorney Micheal Cohen “then discussed the [Stormy] situation with Trump who was adamant he did not want the story to come out. Another story…on the heels of the Access Hollywood tape would have been devastating to his campaign.”

MSNBC legal contributor Katie Phang describes Colangelo’s opening argument, saying he is “working methodically and chronologically through the conspiracy, identifying the main characters and their involvement. He speaks clearly and succintly [sic].”

Trump has been criminally indicted in four separate cases and is facing a total of 88 felony charges, including 34 in his New York criminal trial for alleged falsification of business records to hide payments of hush money to an adult film actress and one other woman, in an alleged effort to suppress their stories and protect his 2016 presidential campaign, which could be deemed election interference.

Watch an MSNBC clip below or at this link.

 

READ MORE: Gaetz: ‘Corrupt’ Republicans Could ‘Take a Bribe’ and Throw House to Dems, Blocking Trump Run

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