Mr. Jones Goes to Washington

Personnel Changes:  Child molester Roy Moore still hasn’t conceded that he lost his bid to become Alabama’s next senator but he has issued a statement decrying the victory of sodomy and abortion over righteousness.  No one seems to care so for all practical purposes Doug Jones will be going to Washington. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like Jones will get a chance to cast a vote against the tax reform bill because contrary to recent precedent, Majority Leader McConnell does not plan to put the bill on hold until he is seated.  In fact, if anything his plan is to speed the bill to the finish line.  It’s worth noting that, under similar circumstances, former Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid held up Obamacare legislation until Massachusetts’ then newly elected Republican Senator Brown could be seated. During his first news conference Doug Jones reported that he’d received congratulatory calls from Trump and Republican and Democratic leadership but has heard nothing from the vanquished Moore.  Providing an indication that he is already positioning himself to run for reelection in 2020, he talked about the need to work cooperatively across the aisle, saying that his priority was meeting the needs of Alabamans rather than the preferences of any given party.  However, he then proved that he is a Democrat by calling for Congress to get off their butts and pass the languishing Children’s Health Insurance Program legislation.  While Jones was speaking,  Republicans assigned blame for his victory. Trump blames everyone except himself, especially Moore for being an inadequate candidate and McConnell for refusing to support the child molester’s candidacy.  Everyone blames Steve Bannon, he in turn blames everyone else and continues to assert that his strategy of hounding Republican party leadership out of office is proceeding according to plan. Alabama’s other Senator Richard Shelby is feeling pretty happy about his decision to encourage Alabamans to write-in a candidate of their choice, a recommendation that might well have been the determining factor in Jones’ victory, since the number of write-in votes came close to matching Jones’ margin of victory. A giddy “liddle” Senator Corker just said that he couldn’t be more happy that Jones won.  In other Senate news, Minnesota’s Governor appointed his Lieutenant Governor Tina Smith, a Democrat, to replace the departing Al Franken.  Earlier it had been suggested that Smith would be a place holder, however, shortly after she was appointed she announced that she plans to run for reelection when her interim term is up.  For a brief moment it appeared that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was about to follow Franken out the Senate door. In an effort to tank his career someone sent “proof” that he had harassed a former staff member to multiple news sources. Fortunately, he was quickly able to prove that the “so-called” evidence was forged.  The former staff person cited as the “faux” victim emphatically backed him up.  Schumer reported the accusation to the Capital Police who are now looking for the devious perpetrators.  Responding to Senator Grassley’s complaint that even he couldn’t support the judicial nominations of a KKK advocate or a man who called transgender children the spawn of Satan, the White House agreed to pull their nominations.  Omarosa Manigault, Trump’s favorite reality star and token White House black person, is leaving.  After Chief of Staff Kelly told her she was fired, to the surprise of no one who remembers her stint on The Apprentice, she didn’t go peacefully, instead she tried to break into the White House’s private quarters to personally appeal to Trump but was stopped by the Secret Service.  The party line is that she resigned and will be working through the end of January, however in reality her White House privileges have been revoked.

Taxing Update: Spurred on by concerns that Doug Jones’ victory will make it harder to pass tax legislation next year if they don’t get it done now, the House and Senate announced that they have reached agreements on several key outstanding issues. The corporate tax cuts will go into effect next year but the new corporate rate will be 21% instead of the previously agreed upon 20%.  The bill will lower the top individual rate to 37% from 39.6%, a move intended to make the reduction in state and local tax deductibility more palatable for high earners. Taxpayers will be allowed to deduct up to $10,000 for property taxes or state and local income taxes and the interest on up to $750,000 of their mortgages.  The absurd graduate student tax has been eliminated, the estate tax remains but the threshold has been lifted to around $11 million, the corporate alternative minimum tax has been eliminated and the tax rate for pass-through corporations has been adjusted.  Here’s a shocker, most of the compromises are advantageous to corporations and wealthy individuals, little has been done to make the already very unpopular legislation more appealing to middle and lower income voters. Although more details need to be resolved, the bill is still expected to be pushed through by Christmas, unless of course a few more House members wise up and realize that they are signing their own pink slips or a few Senators like Susan Collins realize that they are being hoodwinked.  One possible complication, Senator McCain, who so far is planning to support the legislation, is currently in Walter Reade Hospital suffering with side effects from his most recent round of chemotherapy putting his availability for a vote in doubt.         

Kabuki Theater:  Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee are doing their best to deligitimize the Mueller investigation with the help of two of Mueller’s former staff members whose foreplaly involved texting about politics instead of sex. Peter Strzok a senior FBI agent was having an extramarital relationship with Lisa Page, a senior Justice Department lawyer.  The two previously worked on Mueller’s team and before that worked on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.  During that time they texted regularly, revealing their less than flattering opinions about Trump and his suitability for office.  In one of those emails Page refered to Trump as loathsome and Strzok agreed, expressing his concern that Trump could actually win the election.  Although it is perfectly legal for FBI employees to have and share their political views, when the texts were brought to Mueller’s attention he removed  Strzok and Page from his team in order to avoid any appearance of bias.  Nevertheless, yesterday Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee went into full Benghazi mode, accusing Mueller and his whole team of liberal bias suggesting that Mueller’s team should be wearing “MAGA hats” instead of “donkey pins.” They called for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to fire Mueller immediately and to retain a second special counsel to investigate Mueller and the investigation into Hillary’s emails. Curiously, the committee members had copies of the texts because in a highly unusual move they had been invited to the Justice Department on Tuesday night to view them.  At no point during the meeting did any of the Republican members express any concern about the far larger number of FBI agents who are Republicans.  Representative Jerome Nadler, who only recently moved into the Ranking position on the Committee, replacing the disgraced John Conyers, showed that he was up to his new task by pointing out that Strzok “did not say anything about Donald Trumpt that the majority of Americans weren’t also thinking at the same time.” Despite the Republican’s best efforts to get Rosenstein to fire Mueller on the spot, he said that he was perfectly happy with the job that Mueller was doing and that he was also happy with the scope of his investigation.  Interestingly, when asked if that scope included reviewing Trump and Trump family financials, Rosenstein demurred, saying that he wasn’t prepared to discuss details.  While the House was busy grilling Rosenstein, the Senate Intelligence Committee had Donald Trump Jr on their rack.  He spent over nine hours in their hotseat. No news yet as to whether he was more forthcoming with the Senate than he had been during his earlier House testimony.

Net Neutrality: Calling complaints about his plan to eliminate net neutrality “hysteria” and hot air” Ajit Pai, Trump’s Federal Communications Commission Chairman plans to move forward today with a vote to dismantle the rules that prohibit internet service providers from charging websites for “higher quality” delivery, blocking access to some services and giving preference to large clients.  He is moving forward despite New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman’s report that millions of fake comments, many from those nasty Russian bots, corrupted the FCC’s public comment period.  The decision to change the net neutrality rules is another one of those things that most Americans do not support, 89% of Democrats oppose it and they are joined by 75% of Republicans, 86% of independents and 18 state attorneys general.