Halloween Demons

The Tax Man Cometh:  Plans to release the tax bill today have been scrapped.  Tomorrow is the new target, for now.  Apparently House and Senate leadership are having a problem with their arithmetic, in other words they can’t figure out a way to fund their tax cut wish list.  The plan still calls for cutting the corporate tax rate to 20% all at once even though a number of legislators had suggested that the cut should be phased in over time, a solution that Trump opposes.  It’s looking likely that the elimination of the estate tax, to the extent it survives, will be phased in over several years. The top rate for the highest earners is still under discussion, it may not be cut and may even rise above 39.6%, an unlikely outcome but one that was pushed by Steve Bannon before he left to become the outside Trump whisperer. The current plan still calls for the elimination of the state and local income tax deduction but will permit a deduction for property taxes.  The treatment of 401 (k) retirement savings still hasn’t been resolved. Trump continues to lay the blame for discontent about components of the plan at the feet of the Democrats tweeting “the Democrats want to raise taxes and really create obstruction, and the Republicans want to lower taxes, and we want to get rid of regulations,” a soundbite for the masses but one filled with inaccuracies.  Democrats still haven’t been invited to the tax negotiation table and so far Trump’s biggest problems are Republican insiders.  It’s not just blue state Republicans who aren’t happy.  Senator Susan Collins, who voted no on Obamacare repeal legislation is again in the middle of the mix.  Speaking in her usual measured Maine tones, she’s said that a bill that lowers the top rate for high income earners and eliminates the estate tax would “concern” her.  She doesn’t buy into Trump’s claim that taxing estates hurts farmers, though she is open to raising the size of the estate tax exemption.  Trump needs every vote he can get so her comments are being taken seriously.  Republicans remain desperate to get tax reform passed, believing that their future control of Congress hinges on tax cut success, so Trump has cut Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Gary Cohn, the man who is out of the running for Federal Reserve Bank head because he questioned Trump’s response to the Charlottesville demonstrations, from the Asia trip, leaving them home to help with the tax push.  Even Ivanka has had her wings cut.  She will join the Trump traveling squad for the Japan leg of the trip but will be being heading home early without getting to visit the Chinese manufacturing plants where her dresses are made, so that she can continue promoting her child tax credit, the ones that no one in Republican world want to pay for.      

The Mueller Investigation:  George Papadopoulos, the guy who served as a foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign is now being called nothing more than a “coffee boy” and a “proven liar,” who no one really knew or hung out with.   At least the lying part is true, Papadopoulos did lie to the FBI, but only because he was trying to cover up the Trump team’s Russian canoodling.  It’s not the lying that Trump finds problematic, after all lying is the norm in Trump land, it’s Papadopoulos’ new penchant for truth telling that’s causing sleepless nights.  It doesn’t help that Papadopoulos’ keeps showing up in newly released pictures taken during the campaign, the flattering photo of him seated next to the squirmy Attorney General Sessions, who was the head of the campaign’s foreign policy team, is particularly problematic.  Papadopoulos’ credentials to serve the campaign were weak, he was filched from Ben Carson’s campaign, his resume lists participating in a Model UN conference as one of his shining achievements, but despite all that he really was a member of the Trump team and his pro-Russian stance was wasn’t an outlier position, he was following the lead of his higher ups, including Trump, who at that time was applauding Putin’s brilliance and Michael Flynn, who went on to be the security advisor before he was booted.  Papadopoulos was based in London which explains why he wasn’t seen around the water cooler, he traveled extensively for the Trump team and met with many diplomats on their behalf.  He also maintained frequent email contact with the campaign team, particularly with co-chairman Sam Clovis who confirmed that he is the “unnamed supervisor” referred to in Trump related emails who said that Papadopoulos could “make the trip” to Russia, a trip that Papadopoulos didn’t make but one that was made by another Trumper, the odd Russia-phile Carter Page.  Apparently Clovis’ interview with Mueller took place last week before the Papadopoulos guilty plea was announced.  Clovis better have told the truth or he too will be in bigly trouble.  In any case, his appointment to serve as the Department of Agriculture’s chief scientist may now be up in the air, less because of his woeful lack of knowledge about science, and more because of his involvement in the Russia mess.  Mueller hasn’t finished his staff interviews, Hope Hicks, Trump’s long term aide who is now the White House Communication Director is scheduled to be interviewed after Trump’s Asia trip.  By disclosing the Papadopoulos guilty plea, Mueller has sent a loud and clear message to Hicks that she should be ready to speak the truth and nothing but the truth.  Trump’s team continues to insist that Mueller’s position is safe, but from his outside bat cave, Steve Bannon is urging that Trump cut Mueller’s funding and consider hiring more combative defense lawyers.  As to pardons, when asked yesterday if he would pardon Paul Manafort , Trump tellingly refused to answer and cut off future questions.

Social Media:  Officials from Facebook, Google and Twitter testified in front of the Senate Judiciary’s Crime and Terrorism Subcommittee yesterday.  In anticipation, the companies released additional information about the Russian ad barrage that faced users during the 2016 campaign. As a result, we’ve learned more about just how unsocial, the social media platforms can be.  With each report the number of people impacted by Facebook postings has increased dramatically.  Apparently 126 million Facebook users, an amount equal to almost 40% of the size of the US population, were exposed to Russian election related ads.  Twitter revealed that in just two and a half months, Russian bot accounts tweeted 1.4 million times, yielding 288 million “impressions.”  Google acknowledged that it has found evidence that Russian operatives used the company’s YouTube platform to post 1108 videos with 42 hours of content, and that’s just what they’ve found to date. Senator Al Franken pressed Facebook’s General Counsel Colin Stretch to commit to refusing to sell political ads paid for in foreign currencies, and he refused saying that foreign currency is just one of many signals that Facebook will take into consideration.  There’s no question that Russian bots could move to dollars if they wanted to and that shutting down bot election activity won’t be easy, but Facebook’s refusal to rule out posting political ads paid for in rubles is troubling and ridiculous, foreign financing of election ads is illegal.  All three social media companies are pushing back against any regulation and so far, given this administration’s stance against regulation, they may get their way.  Then again Trump may change his tune, apparently Russian bots have changed their tactics, though they are still fomenting racial and social unrest, they are now also going after the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency, one indication that Putin’s love for Trump is pretty fickle, his true goals are the destruction of democracy and the weakening of US world dominance.  He’s doing pretty well so far.

Chief of Staff:  It’s only fitting that Chief of Staff John Kelly’s position on the dark side was fully cemented in time for Halloween.  His remarks about the Civil War and Robert E. Lee have not gone over well.  Respected historians have lambasted his suggestion that a little more “negotiation” would have avoided the Civil War and his implication that a few more decades or centuries of slavery would have been an okay price to pay to avoid southern secession.  Kelly can take comfort in Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders’ undying support.  She again pointed out that criticizing the retired General is never okay in the increasingly authoritarian Trump universe.  

One more thing.  Terrorism be damned.  I love New York!!!