Trump's Tax Cuts And Jobs Act

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Trump's Tax Cuts And Jobs Act

It's finally happening out here in reality.

Earlier the House passed this bill, but will have to vote on it again in the morning because of a technicality.

A couple of hours ago, the Senate passed it 51-48 (with John McCain abstaining due to illness).

I don't see any scenario where the House votes this bill down in the morning, so essentially, the Senate sealed the deal.

For those who keep accusing President Trump of not having philosophical principles, imagine a universe where his string of achievements this year, reflected in the collapse of the ISIS caliphate, almost 4% growth and over 70 Dow Jones records, massive deregulation, and many others--including this tax overhaul bill--are arbitrary. That means President Trump is one lucky bastard, huh?  

Read about the Senate vote here on Breitbart:

Senate Passes Historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

And, of course, the inevitable tweet.

The United States Senate just passed the biggest in history Tax Cut and Reform Bill. Terrible Individual Mandate (ObamaCare)Repealed. Goes to the House tomorrow morning for final vote. If approved, there will be a News Conference at The White House at approximately 1:00 P.M.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 20, 2017

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

11 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Trump's Tax Cuts And Jobs Act

It's finally happening out here in reality.

Earlier the House passed this bill, but will have to vote on it again in the morning because of a technicality.

A couple of hours ago, the Senate passed it 51-48 (with John McCain abstaining due to illness).

I don't see any scenario where the House votes this bill down in the morning, so essentially, the Senate sealed the deal.

For those who keep accusing President Trump of not having philosophical principles, imagine a universe where his string of achievements this year, reflected in the collapse of the ISIS caliphate, almost 4% growth and over 70 Dow Jones records, massive deregulation, and many others--including this tax overhaul bill--are arbitrary. That means President Trump is one lucky bastard, huh?  

Read about the Senate vote here on Breitbart:

Senate Passes Historic Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

And, of course, the inevitable tweet.

 

 

Michael

 

Just as there is  The Anti-Christ    there is also The Anti-Obama.  Our Donald is erasing the doings of Obama bit by bit.  Since just about everything Obama has done has harmed the U.S.  erasing the doings of Obama  will either decrease the harm  or  actually do some good.  It is a simple plan to follow,  and just about Donald Trump's speed.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The tax bill has passed both chambers. It awaits the President's signature, which should happen next week after legal formalities.

And it starts:

AT&T to give employees $1,000 bonuses after Trump signs tax bill

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

More stuff (from HotAir):

AT&T Celebrates Tax Reform: How Does A $1,000 Bonus For Everyone Sound?

In addition to the G bonus, AT&T "also increased its capital expenditures budget by $1 billion in the U.S."

A quoted tweet in the article: "#Boeing announces $300M employee-related and charitable investment as a result of #TaxReform legislation to support our heroes, our homes and our future."

Another tweet: "Fifth Third Bancorp announces plan "to raise its minimum hourly wage for all employees to $15, and distribute a one-time bonus of $1,000 for more than 13,500 employees" following passage of tax bill."

And another: "Wells Fargo hikes its hourly pay rate to $15 & will aim for $400M in philanthropic donations next year due to the newly-passed GOP tax bill."

And the bill isn't even signed yet.

Good times coming...

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Rush Limbaugh had a cute thought today, but he's right on.

The fake polling machine is working overtime on the tax bill saying nobody likes it. Not only that, the left wing pundits are working overtime cranking out their predictions of doom and gloom.

The thing is, lots of normal people are paying attention to them. They are not going to forget their bluster this go around since it involves their own pocketbooks short term.

And the Trump haters just set the bar about as low as it can go for the Trump administration to log success. Even a poor increase in the economy will be seen as huge against that standard.

Now imagine the massive success that will inevitably unfold--compared against that ultra-bar. This negative press campaign is a boomerang. It's going to come back and whop the fake pollsters and doom-and-gloomers so hard, they won't know what hit them. The term "irrelevant" comes to mind when thinking about their future reputations...

I know, I know, I shouldn't sound so happy about it. But I am...

Michael

[KorbenDallas]

Trump sez it's the 'biggest in history'... is it?  Hhmm:

The biggest tax cut in history? Not quite.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/12/15/politics/is-trumps-bill-largest-tax-cut-in-history-no/index.html

[...]

The Treasury reports found that, since 1968, three other tax cut bills have been bigger: Reagan's 1981 cuts, and two bills passed by Obama to extend the Bush tax cuts. Between 1940 and 1967, when the data is less reliable, three tax cuts were larger, two of them after the war, when rates were lowered again.

The Treasury measured the sizes of tax cuts by looking at the revenue effects of the bills as a percentage of gross domestic product -- in other words, how much federal revenue the bill cuts away as a portion of the economy. Reagan's 1981 cut was 2.9% of GDP. Obama's tax cut extensions in 2010 and 2012 were 1.3% and 1.8%, respectively.

 

[...]

So is it the biggest?  No, but it's one of the biggest.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Korben,

CNN... Really?

Can't you find a more credible source?

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 12/20/2017 at 1:18 AM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

For those who keep accusing President Trump of not having philosophical principles, imagine a universe where his string of achievements this year, reflected in the collapse of the ISIS caliphate, almost 4% growth and over 70 Dow Jones records, massive deregulation, and many others--including this tax overhaul bill--are arbitrary. That means President Trump is one lucky bastard, huh?  

John Nolte over at Breitbart has a very interesting article:

Nolte: Trump’s Wildly Successful First Year Again Exposes #NeverTrump as Amoral Saboteurs

From the article:

Quote

Remember these names: Jonah Goldberg, David Frum, Bill Kristol, Rich Lowry, Max Boot, Mitt Romney, John Kasich, Joe Scarborough, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Jennifer Rubin, George Will, Josh Jordan, Tom Nichols, Charles Cooke, Stephen Hayes, Tim Miller, John Podhoretz, Nicole Wallace, Steven Schmidt, Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, Leon Wolf, David Brooks, Rick Wilson, Evan McMullin, Stuart Stevens, Red State, National Review, the Weekly Standard…

These are the so-called conservative men, women, and institutions who (among others) fought the hardest to sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, all in the unforgivable hope that Hillary Clinton would become president.

These are so-called conservatives who have, for nearly two years now, been promoting themselves and fundraising by smearing Trump as incompetent and “not a real conservative,” as a “Democrat in sheep’s clothing” — when, in fact, all of that best describes #NeverTrump.

These are the so-called conservatives who — after Trump’s first year in office — have now been proven as wrong as wrong can be.

. . .

Trump has had, in my opinion, the most successful first year of any president since Ronald Reagan. And not just a consequential first year that has already built a legacy, but a conservative first year. Below, I do my best to list these accomplishments, but there are so many, forgive me if a few are missed:

• Real, honest-to-goodness tax reform and cuts — the most consequential in 30 years.
• Opening ANWR for oil exploration, an accomplishment few can appreciate who do not remember the 90s and what a sacred cow this is for the left.
• Killing the Obamacare mandate that brutalized those making less than $50,000 a year.
• The Islamic State (ISIS) has been decimated.
• After a 2016 of just 1.9 percent GDP growth, we have now had two quarters in a row of growth over three percent; predictions for the final quarter of 2017 are as high as four percent.
• Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, who has already proven himself the perfect replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia.
• The Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines are a go — which means tens of thousands of jobs.
• A record number of judicial appointments on the appeals courts.
• The end of the War on Coal.
• A surge in coal mining after 2016’s decline.
• The end of the federal government’s violating the religious conscience through indefensible Obamacare mandates involving birth control and abortion pills.
• The civil rights movement for school choice is getting the green light throughout the country.
• Illegal immigration is way down.
• The stock market hit record highs 70 times in 2017, rising 5,000 points for the first time ever.
• The long-overdue recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
• We are free of the awful Paris climate treaty.
• Regulatory reform that is just getting started, but it has already had a hugely positive effect on our economy.
• Withdrawal from the Global Compact on Migration, which undercut American sovereignty.
• Return of nearly two million acres to the state Utah that the federal government had stolen.
• A $250 billion trade deal with China.
• Many of our NATO allies are finally paying their dues.
• Consumer confidence is the best we have seen in more than a decade.
• Pulled us out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) in favor of the American worker and sovereignty.
• Trump has managed to get China to help rein in North Korea.
• Black unemployment is at a 17-year low.
• Hispanic unemployment is at an all-time low.
• Overall unemployment is at one percent.
• Manufacturing jobs boom.
• Standing up for persecuted Christian minorities in the Middle East.
• Promoting Christmas.
• Banning or demanding stronger vetting from countries most likely to import terrorists.
• Housing sales are at an 11-year high.
• Ban on transgender military recruits.

. . .

All these bitter clingers have left now is to further degrade outlets such as the once-necessary National Review, a once-cherished laboratory of vibrant conservative ideas and thought, which is now a hangout for sore losers to keep rewriting the same column over and over and over again about how pure and virtuous they are, as they scold the rest of us for fighting for and sticking with a president who has delivered in ways they told us was not even within the realm of possibility.

He left out Glenn Beck.  

I don't know the full root of Trump hatred by people who constantly profess--as values--the things he has achieved. And he has achieved them in reality, not just in some article or video. But I like the word "amoral." (I'll not deal with the word "saboteur" because I want to look at a wider picture than activists.)

I observe reality and I know these folks have eyes, too. They're intelligent. They see what's happening. They see President Trump's massive political achievements, yet their hatred persists. So reality-based principles are not their grounding for their hatred. The best I can come up with is that President Trump--as a person and by his very existence--threatens them somehow.

I'm developing an idea about the certainty some people have that they are inherently superior to others and I see this all over Trump haters, but I don't know where in the brain (or even thinking system) this certainty is lodged. And I don't know the cause of it.

I do know it's a delusion. But it's one these poor souls will fight to the death to maintain to themselves. They literally believe, with all their heart, mind and soul, that they are a superior life form to President Trump (and, by extension, his supporters). Yet he does the very things they only talk about wishing they could do. (That must sting...)

Rand once promoted a concept called social metaphysics, but a Randian social metaphysician was insecure, creepy and so on. The people I am talking about are often highly intelligent, some are great producers, and they tend to be brash about their smugness that they are above the rest of mankind.

And, man, can they preach. Note how they try to shame everyone not in their club. But, still, they gage their metaphysics and self-worth in terms of other people. Without other inferior people they can use as a standard of their own worth, they get awfully bored. I imagine they get spiritually lost and suddenly don't know what to do anymore.

This is something I keep thinking about, over and over. It causes me cognitive dissonance because they don't have to be that way. Good, intelligent people don't have to live like that. So why do they? Actually, I don't mind that they live and think this way, that is until they get destructive to my own values. And, believe me, they often do. So I keep thinking about it...

I don't know if this mentality is mostly by choice or programming from infancy or even innate. Maybe a mix. These folks are certainly smart enough to know better. Someday I'm going to come up with a plausible explanation about the why. So far, I can only point to examples and say they exist. That's not hard because they exist in all areas where there are people, among all philosophies and religions, among all countries and professions, in all social groupings.

Back to John Nolte's point about amorality. There are a lot of elitist Objectivists (ARI folks, Bidinotto, Tracinski, etc.--and I'll just limit it to those because this is not about bickering, but there are many more) who are Trump haters and I can only call them amoral when they blank out so much reality. Note, they are not immoral. They are amoral. Morality is out the window when their sense of innate superior social standing is involved. So I don't see any fundamental difference between them, the conservative NeverTrumpers, progressive elitists, etc. They all suffer from having this same form of social metaphysics where their reality-facing soul and mental objectivity--and principles--should be.

It's not that they don't have reality awareness or objectivity or principles. It's that this metaphysical conceit is top priority to them and constantly trumps these other things. Reason, reality, objectivity, etc., should be top priority, but they are waaaaaay down the list in their moral hierarchy.

Don't believe me? Look at what they do when their self-believed superior social standing is threatened by something or someone--threated for real, not just by bickering. They get real nasty. I've read enough and seen enough and been targeted enough to recognize the pattern. And it's constant. They give lip service to the side of the Angels as if they were reason-based, but look what they do when faced with a reality they don't like. Or worse, when faced with a reality that has President Trump achieving great things in it. Rather than look, correctly identify, then evaluate, they go crazy. There is no correspondence between what they say and what they do.

So... Snoots of the world, unite!

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Done.

From the Daily Mail:

Trump signs off on 2017: President puts his signature on 'biggest ever' tax cut bill that 'corporations are going wild for' as he prepares to spend a 'working' Christmas at Mar-a-Lago

See it for yourself:

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

The Democrats are not happy.

And their hysteria is perfectly portrayed by this cartoon by Branco:

Michael