That’s because the GOP Tax Cuts are not producing the Desired Effects…In this time of massive deficits & escalating income inequality, what is Trump’s single greatest legislative achievement? Something that was purported to put lots of money in the pockets of middle-class Americans through lower taxes & higher wages? Why yes, it was the GOP tax cuts which instead are dramatically increasing both deficits & income inequality. So in essence, Trump has exploded our long-term national debt by giving tax cuts to the top 1%, while the working middle class continues to get the shaft! On the campaign trail, the GOP tax cuts are a dud, since they’re generally unpopular & are not a talking point being used by GOP candidates on the campaign trail or in political ads.
So to gin up their base for the midterms, the GOP is resorting to lies & fear-mongering. The GOP is lying about the Dems on angry mobs, Medicare, preexisting conditions, immigration, paid protesters, paid migrants, & all sorts of other nonsense. So get ready for a barrage of crazy rhetoric as seen in republicans-are-fearmongering-about-a-migrant-caravan-to-boost-midterm-turnout, which could also prompt another round of our government’s family separations & child kidnappings. And instead of ridiculing these people as the far-right does, keep in mind these migrants are desperate & fleeing for their lives.
All this anger & fear stems from how the GOP can’t run on their record, because no matter how good they say the economy is, it’s leaving way too many in the working class behind. We’re in a mostly bubble economy built on deficit spending, so it’s not designed to sustain its growth. Anyone that buys this is a strong economy as we keep hearing about (which for some it really is), & they’re giving undue credit to Trump, they really should read this article we’ve posted here from blame-republican-policy-for-american-income-inequality:
Ratings firm Moody’s recently dropped a bombshell report showing that rising wealth and income inequality in the United States will likely lead to lower income growth, political unrest, and a drop in the credit rating of our government. This prediction may come as a shock to some, but this should hardly come as a surprise to anyone paying attention to the state of our country. We have a government run by politicians devoted to widening the gap between the rich and the poor, and as that gap widens, our economy and our governmental institutions become less and less stable, putting our social, economic, and political fabric in danger. While inequality is an issue in many countries around the world, the United States is uniquely unequal when compared to other developed countries. It is no mystery why. Republican leaders in Washington have shown themselves to be unwilling to address this looming crisis. On the contrary, they have done everything in their power to make things worse.
Rather than work to make higher education more affordable, they have ignored the student debt crisis and proposed nearly $80 billion cuts to the Pell Grant program, which millions of Americans rely on to afford higher education. Rather than boost social safety nets to help low income families afford education, job training, or health care, they have proposed massive cuts to programs like Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that help huge swaths of the population. Rather than work to shape a federal tax code that limits the tax burden on poor and working class families, and requires the rich to pay what they owe, they passed a nearly $2 trillion tax cut just last year that was deliberately designed to provide massive cuts to millionaires, billionaires, and corporations while leaving crumbs for the rest of the nation. There are dozens of factors that contribute to the escalating levels of wealth and income inequality in America, but the tax cut legislation passed last year deserves special mention for the sheer scope and shamelessness with which it contributes to the growing inequality in our country. Despite being sold as a middle class tax cut that would benefit individuals and families across the country, 83 percent of the $1.9 trillion tax cut are projected to go to the top 1 percent of the population.
That is obscene at any time, but especially in an economic environment in which, as the Moody’s report says, “The top 10 percent of income earners have seen their overall median net worth increase by almost 200 percent since 1995, while the bottom 40 percent of income earners have experienced a decline in median net worth over the same period.” At a time when corporate profits have never been higher, and when the top 1 percent of Americans is doing better than any time since the Gilded Age, the architects of the Republican tax bill decided that our tax code asked too much of the wealthy, not too little, and that the poor and middle class did not really need any tax relief. It is absurd and makes no sense. With no end in sight to our growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and Congress and administration that see inequality as a positive thing, I would be hard pressed to say that I personally had unwavering faith in the federal government or the American economy. If we want to retain our status as a global economic leader that most Americans now take for granted, we need to start acting like it. We need a government that works on behalf of all of its citizens rather than just the wealthy.
GOP Chorus Off-Key
And those same people singing the praises of this Trump economy, they should also read these excerpts from robert-reich-truth-about-trumps-booming-economy-opinion:
There’s a myth going around that Trump is presiding over a great economy. As White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow recently put it, “The single biggest story this year is an economic boom that is durable and lasting.” Really? Look at the living standards of most Americans, and you get a very different picture. Yes, the stock market has boomed since Trump became president. But it’s looking increasingly wobbly as Trump’s trade wars take a toll. Over 80 percent of the stock market is owned by the richest 10 percent of Americans anyway, so most Americans never got much out of Trump’s market boom to begin with. The trade wars are also starting to take a toll on ordinary workers. Trump’s steel tariffs have cost Ford $1 billion so far, for example, forcing the automaker to plan mass layoffs.
What about economic growth? Data from the Commerce Department shows the economy at full speed, 4.2 percent growth for the second quarter. But very little of that growth is trickling down to average Americans. Adjusted for inflation, hourly wages aren’t much higher now than they were forty years ago. Trump slashed taxes on the wealthy and promised everyone else a $4,000 wage boost. But the boost never happened. That’s a big reason why Republicans aren’t campaigning on their tax cut, just about their only legislative accomplishment. Trump and congressional Republicans refuse to raise the minimum wage, which is stuck at $7.25 an hour. Trump’s Labor Department is also repealing a rule that increased the number of workers entitled to time-and-a-half for overtime. While unemployment is down to 3.7 percent, jobs are less secure than ever. Contract workers—who aren’t eligible for family or medical leave, unemployment insurance, the minimum wage, or worker’s compensation—now occupy one out of every five jobs in America. Trump’s Labor Department has invited more companies to reclassify employees as contract workers.
Meanwhile, housing costs are skyrocketing, with most Americans now paying a third or more of their paychecks in rent or mortgages. Trump’s response? Drastic cuts in low-income housing. His Secretary of Housing and Urban Development also wants to triple the rent paid by poor households in subsidized housing. Health care costs continue to rise faster than inflation. Trump’s response? Undermine the Affordable Care Act. Over the past two years, some 4 million people have lost health care coverage, according to a survey by the Commonwealth Fund. Pharmaceutical costs are also out of control. Trump’s response? Allow the biggest pharmacist, CVS, to merge with the one of the biggest health insurers, Aetna—creating a behemoth with the power to raise prices even further. The cost of college continues to soar. Trump’s response? Make it easier for for-profit colleges to defraud students. His Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, is eliminating regulations that forced for-profit colleges to prove they provide gainful employment to the students they enroll. Commuting to and from work is becoming harder as roads and bridges become more congested, and subways and trains older and less reliable. Trump’s response? Although he promised to spend $1.5 trillion to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure, his $1.5 trillion tax cut for big corporations and the wealthy used up the money.
Too often, discussions about “the economy” focus on overall statistics about growth, the stock market, and unemployment. But most Americans don’t live in that economy. They live in a personal economy that has more to do with wages, job security, commutes to and from work, and the costs of housing, health care, drugs, education, and home insurance. These are the things that hit closest home. They comprise the typical American’s standard of living. Instead of an economic boom, most Americans are experiencing a bust in all these dimensions of their lives. Trump isn’t solely responsible. Some of these trends predate his presidency. But he hasn’t done anything to reverse them. If anything, he’s made them far worse.
Budget-Busting GOP Tax Cuts
The latest Rubin take on GOP positions is seen here: three-things-the-republicans-got-totally-wrong. Rubin points out in the next one that despite the middle class not benefiting much from the tax cuts & current economy, they will still be on the hook for the enormous deficits we’re racking up, as seen from these excerpts inside whos-conservative-now-republicans-budget-busting-continues:
Among Trumpian Republicans’ decidedly nonconservative positions — against free trade, against values-based foreign policy, against the rule of law (including smearing the FBI) — none is more glaring than their turn against fiscal discipline. In a news release Monday, Michael A. Peterson, chairman and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, a group that advocates for fiscal discipline, took the administration to task for running up a $779 billion deficit in fiscal 2018. That’s the highest it’s been since 2012. “As troubling as this year’s deficit is, it’s just the beginning of large and growing deficits as far as the eye can see. Trillion-dollar annual deficits are expected to return as soon as next year and continue indefinitely, driving historically high and dangerous levels of debt,” Peterson said. “This is a uniquely imbalanced time in our fiscal history, with deficits rising despite a growing economy and low unemployment. In fact, the U.S. is the only developed country in the world whose debt-to-GDP ratio is growing. This is a reflection of just how irresponsible our budget policies have become.”
The notion that the tax cuts “paid for themselves” was patently false, as we noted at the time. The Congressional Budget Office “estimated that the tax law would cost $164 billion in FY 2018, which would account for more than the entire deficit increase. . . . The tax bill and the spending deal are expected to cost more next fiscal year ($228 billion and $185 billion, respectively) as the deficit is expected to reach nearly $1 trillion.” The annual deficit continues a pattern of fiscal recklessness that Trump and Republicans have established since they took office in January 2017. USA Today’s fact check reported, “The federal debt held by the public stood at nearly $15.8 trillion at the last count on Oct. 10 — nearly $1.4 trillion higher than when he took office. That’s a 9.4 percent increase under Trump. And that figure will go up even more quickly in coming years unless Trump and Congress impose massive spending cuts, or reverse course and increase taxes.”
Whatever temporary bump we got from a massive tax cut for the rich, the debt will eventually drag down growth. As the Federal Reserve raises interest rates, the housing market will face “headwinds” and the tax cut-induced sugar high will end. The stock market hit the skids last week precisely because investors got spooked by interest rate hikes and their ensuing impact on growth. Trump blamed the Fed for sparking the stock market pullback, but, as Jared Bernstein wrote, “If he wants to see one big reason rates are up, both at the Fed and elsewhere, he should look in the mirror. When you add this much fiscal stimulus to an economy already closing in on full employment, you’re playing with, if not fire, then at least heat.” He added, “In this regard, his Fed rants are his just usual operating procedure of finding someone to blame in case what he did goes wrong.” Republicans used to worry about debt — as recently as 2016, when President Barack Obama was in office. Too bad we don’t have a responsible center-right party to demand that we stop passing on huge debt to our kids.
More On Our Soaring Deficits
On that same topic of Trump running fiscal policy like a drunken sailor, see trump-continues-gop-hypocrisy-on-fiscal-responsibility & also these excerpts from blame-republican-tax-cuts-soaring-federal-deficits have another disturbing perspective on our runaway deficits:
It wasn’t said directly, of course, but the U.S. Treasury officially reported something Monday that, depending on your political party of choice, you’ve either long suspected would happen or refused to admit was possible: Last year’s big tax cut bill significantly increased the federal budget deficit. According to the Monthly Treasury Statement for fiscal 2018, the year that just ended Sept. 30, the deficit was $779 billion — a $113 billion, 17 percent increase over the $666 billion deficit recorded last year. This was the biggest one-year increase in the deficit since 2009, when the Great Recession wreaked havoc on federal finances. At 3.9 percent, it was the largest deficit compared with gross domestic product since 2013. The bottom line 2018 deficit number is significant because it occurred during good economic times, when the federal deficit typically falls rather than spikes. But that’s not the most important story. A simple analysis of what Treasury reported shows that virtually the entire deficit increase was because the tax cut enacted in December reduced revenues substantially. The Congressional Budget Office estimated fiscal 2018 revenue would be $3.5 trillion under the laws that were in place before President Donald Trump signed the GOP tax cut bill. The actual amount Treasury reported Monday was $202 billion less. That $202 billion would have more than covered the $127 billion in extra spending in 2018. This comparison, to tax revenues that were expected had the laws stayed the same, unambiguously shows that virtually all of the federal deficit increase that occurred from 2017 to 2018 was because of the new cuts in corporate and individual taxes. Had the tax changes not been enacted, the federal deficit in 2018 would have dropped to well below $600 billion, rather than rising to close to $800 billion.
Four things about this are most troubling. First, both Treasury and CBO expect the deficit to keep spiking. Compared with the CBO pre-tax bill baseline, 2019 revenues will be $263 billion below what they would have been if rates had stayed the same. Treasury’s projected 2019 deficit would be just above $800 billion rather than close to $1.1 trillion. Second, not content with how much they’ve already increased the deficit, Congress and the White House are seriously considering passing another big tax cut during the lame duck session after the midterms. That will increase it even more. The House passed this bill just before it recessed for the midterm elections, and the scuttlebutt I hear from budget insiders is that Republican leaders are seriously considering misusing the congressional budget process so no one may filibuster the next deficit increase. In its current form, this new tax bill will reduce revenues by another $630 billion over the next 10 years. Third, unlike the recession-caused trillion dollar federal deficits of the Obama years that fell precipitously when the economy improved, these deficits are the result of permanent changes in federal revenues caused by the tax law. Not only does this put the constantly promised-but-never-achieved goal of balancing the federal budget in 10 years out of reach, it makes even the projection of a balanced budget into the political equivalent of a practical joke or a hoax. And fourth, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney are either in denial about these numbers or think no one notices when they say high spending rather than low revenue is why the deficit is rising so precipitously.
GOP Tax Cuts obliterate the chance at a Balanced Budget
With the slow, steady recovery the past several years from the great recession, some selected data does point to a strong economy through consistent job growth & unemployment trending downwards. So those positive factors to the economy would have still existed even without the GOP tax cuts. We may have been closing in on a near-balanced budget by now with more responsible fiscal policies, as seen from this conclusion to republicans-ignore-the-obvious-effect-of-their-tax-cuts:
But Bloomberg reporter Steven Dennis noted in a Twitter thread that “the deficit would be shockingly close to zero today with Clinton-era tax levels.” Federal revenue has fallen to 16.5 percent of gross domestic product, he writes. If it was still at roughly 20 percent of GDP (it topped out at 19.75 percent in 2000), the deficit would have been less than $100 billion. Granted, those final years of the Clinton administration coincided with the height of the dotcom bubble, but the broader point remains: The tax cuts of the past two decades are a big part of how the deficit reached $779 billion in 2018. Dennis’ points echo a report issued by Senate Budget Committee Democrats arguing that tax cuts passed under Presidents George W. Bush and Trump “are responsible for over 80% of the deficit” and that, if not for Republican policies more broadly, the government would have posted a surplus in 2018. Those arguments can and will be debated, and none of that tax talk diminishes the long-term shortfalls faced by Social Security and Medicare. But if we’re going to have any semblance of a proper national debate on fiscal priorities — including a hard look at spending — we need to understand how we got to this point. Tax policy must be part of that discussion, especially as Republicans still hope to enact a second round of cuts. The truth, thus far at least, is that the tax cuts passed in 2017 have added to the deficit. “There are several ways to ask the question, ‘Are tax cuts paying for themselves?’” Jim Tankersley writes in The New York Times. “Based on the data we have right now, they all arrive at the same answer: ‘No.’”
Workers have been taken advantage of long enough
I will repeat, I’d say the strength we’re now seeing in parts of the economy can be traced to the long slow slog of the recovery, where for years we’ve been on a trajectory of decent job growth & lower unemployment, plus recently unleashing some businesses of the strangling effects of deregulation. To whatever extent the widespread deregulations (without political leadership giving it much thought) might result in real costs down the road remains to be seen, as the unintended consequences could become many more environmental & health disasters like the Flint water debacle, or perhaps another financial collapse like a decade ago. But there are signs labor is rising up out of frustration over wage stagnation & pure desperation, organizing in such a way to finally be heard, as seen in excerpts from economy-grows-workers-struggling-stay-afloat-unionize:
Part of the activism stems from economic desperation as costs rise faster than pay. It’s one aspect of the union’s change in strategy says Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). “We have a movement building, not just transactional unionism,” she says. “I’m not into the battle royal of labor versus management. I’m into values. And the values are: Workers should have a decent wage. And you shouldn’t have an economy that is growing for the last eight years and yet wages are stagnant…. There are allies who believe in all this. It’s part of being part of a broader community.” “Something is happening in America” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said in a speech in Milwaukee last month. “Collective action is on the rise. It’s unlike anything I’ve seen in my 50 years in the labor movement.”
More Reports on the GOP Tax Cuts being Unpopular
Please read these excerpts that the public has gotten a rude awakening about how they’ve been snookered, so they’re ready to take a different path, seen inside why-republican-tax-cuts-are-still-unpopular:
When President Trump signed the tax reform package into law last year, the measure was unpopular, but Republicans believed that would change. History suggested they might be right. Over and over again, voters have cheered tax cuts that reserved most of their benefits for the highest tier of earners and corporations, while granting a smallish sliver for everyone else. Give it time, the bill’s supporters argued: This time won’t be different. We can now definitely say they were wrong. This time is different. It is less than three weeks until the midterm elections, and not only is there still no surge of support for the Republican tax cuts, they remain resoundingly unpopular. On one hand, it should be little wonder that few fell for the Trump tax con. It rained benefits on the highest earners and wealth holders, while offering pennies to the majority of the population. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center pointed out late last year that the typical middle-income household saw an annual after-tax gain of around $930. That’s not even $18 a week. No surprise, few noticed it in their paychecks. As for the widely heralded bonuses that companies such as AT&T and Sinclair Broadcasting all but immediately announced they would give out as a result of the law, well, workers aren’t stupid and they know the difference between a permanent hourly raise and a one-time gift.
So what changed? It is easy to think that dislike of Trump plays no small role — for many voters, if he’s for it, they’re against it (and vice versa). But there’s much more to it. The Great Recession and its aftermath changed how many viewed government, business, and their roles in the system. The number of people describing themselves as a member of the lower classes increased. Business scandals — from the foreclosure crisis to Wells Fargo and Equifax — and the lack of consequences for executives involved made many Americans even angrier. The Occupy Wall Street slogan “We are the 99 Percent” spread the message about an increasing divide between the haves and the have-nots in our society in a way that decades of academics and journalists writing about inequality did not. But it is bigger than that. The results of decades of disinvestment are literally all around us. Student-loan debt soared as states cut funding for higher education, sticking millennials who attended college with life-altering tabs. Our infrastructure is in an increasing state of disrepair, with the American Society of Civil Engineers giving it a grade of D-plus. What’s going on is simple: People increasingly don’t see tax cuts as the answer. In California, where the love affair with anti-tax measures began, a proposition on the November ballot which would roll back an increase in the gas tax to pay for road improvements is foundering. Americans say they would like to see taxes raised before Social Security benefits are cut. Belief in trickle-down economics is fading. An era is coming to an end.
Lots of articles today on GOP tax cuts
See this chart inside No-the-Economy-is-Not-Doing-Great showing since the GOP tax cuts, corporate profits shot up while wages are still flatlining. And it sure is strange how these so-called GOP deficit hawks are more than willing to orchestrate runaway deficits in giving their big donors huge tax breaks: Deficit-balloons-under-Republican-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-but-it-s-the-rest-of-us-that-will-pay. For another take on how those tax cuts at the top landed with a thud for the rest of America, see these excerpts from Republicans-aren-t-running-on-their-2017-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-it-s-not-hard-to-see-why:
To hear Republicans tell it, the 2017 Republican tax cut law was the culmination of Republican thought. It was the be-all, end-all demonstration of the party’s commitment to Lowering Your Taxes, presuming “you” are either a corporate entity or richer than most American small towns. Everyone wanted to be photographed celebrating its passage! Everyone wanted to brag to their voters about how their taxes would most definitely certainly be going down by measurable amounts that you would absolutely notice! (Deficits were no longer a concern; as the federal budget hemorrhages money out every orifice you can expect Republicans will notice this approximately ten minutes after the next Democratic president gains office.) That was then, this is now, and that same glorious Republican tax cut is, on the campaign trail, dead, dead, dead.
That the Republican tax cuts for the wealthy are disappearing from campaign rhetoric is being painted as surprising news, given how fervently the party was touting those same cuts in the months after their passage. If your voters were truly seeing lower taxes, you’d think you’d want to point out that it was you that had done that for them; if Steve Steelworker can suddenly afford a boat thanks to your partisan generosity, you’d want to mention that every chance you get. So what happened? Simple: Not many voters saw a damn thing. If their taxes did go down, it was by some negligible amount within the margins of every year’s fluctuations. The papers were absolutely full of stories about rich people and congressmen making off like bandits, however, and that probably salted the wound.
I’m going to disagree with conventional wisdom here a bit in that I don’t think the “Republican tax cut” was truly intended to be a 2018 election issue at all. This isn’t a case of rhetoric gone stale or a Republican plan gone awry after the voters found out what was really going on; voters were obviously going to catch on as soon as they looked for their cut and didn’t find any. The sole purpose of the Republican tax cuts were to reward wealthy donors. It was to give money away to rich people, because rich people wanted that, and that was all it ever was. As a side effect, it creates deficits so large that some future set of lawmakers will be able to use it as launching pad for killing off still more government programs, but even that was not high on the list of lawmaker concerns. It was to give a crapload of money away to the donors that brought them there, and nothing else. The mewing about how the move would be a boon for the common man was necessary to prevent widespread outrage; even in this decade, shoving money into billionaires’ wallets is only stomached if other taxpayers can be goaded into thinking there’s something in it for them as well.
I really like these thoughts & ideas
There should be multiple avenues for people to pursue success & the American Dream, based on a person’s aptitudes & interests. Our educational system should help young people identify their strengths & passions at a relatively early age, so the education & advanced training in their teen years can be tailored to each individual in preparing them for a productive career. Those who aren’t candidates for college should not be left behind. The path to the right approach is revealed in this excellent article four-year-colleges-arent-the-only-tickets-to-the-american-dream. This next article talks about those forgotten Americans who’ve seen their standing in the world turned upside down, which we need economic policies to help put them solidly back in the middle class. And these two governors would make quite a bipartisan presidential ticket, seen in these excerpts inside us-needs-economic-agenda-for-americans-who-feel-forgotten:
Widening inequality and the loss of jobs to trade and technology have left many American workers feeling disenfranchised and skeptical of government and corporations alike. These economic shifts are changing what it means — and feels like — to be middle class in America. Brookings Senior Fellow Isabel Sawhill focused on the group dubbed the “forgotten Americans” — those without a college degree who make less than $70,000 a year — in researching and writing her new book, “The Forgotten Americans: An Economic Agenda for a Divided Nation.” On October 10, the Future of the Middle Class Initiative at Brookings hosted Governors John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) and John Kasich (R-Ohio) for a discussion on who these “forgotten Americans” are, what they want, and how to give it to them. Senior Fellow Richard Reeves, director of the Future of the Middle Class Initiative, moderated their discussion.
Governor Hickenlooper spoke about the fear that surrounds the rise in automation. Many middle class workers worry that their job will be replaced by machines in the coming years. However, Hickenlooper noted that by training workers the job displacement and disappearance caused by automation can largely be mitigated. He also emphasized the importance of preparing the workforce for the coming changes, saying, “We’ve got to get to a place where we can react much more rapidly to the changes.” Governor Kasich noted the importance of reaching bipartisan compromise and refraining from living on the extremes of each party. He explained that by deciding on guiding principles that everyone can agree on, it becomes easier to work out the details necessary to create a solution. “What are the principles today?” he asked. “Start with common principles and then you can build it out.”
After the governors spoke, Brookings Senior Fellow Isabel Sawhill took the stage to discuss her newest book, “The Forgotten Americans: An Economic Agenda for a Divided Nation.” In her overview, Sawhill discussed how the 2016 election shed light on the influence of forgotten Americans. Looking at a racial breakdown of the Forgotten Americans, Sawhill notes that about half of them are white, and that many white Forgotten Americans voted for President Trump. She stressed that the current divisive climate of the US has led to a rift in economics, culture, and politics. From her conversations with Americans in Missouri, New York, and North Carolina, Sawhill learned about beliefs that are driving their political leanings. The forgotten Americans are largely skeptical of college, cynical about the government, and, importantly, want to be self-supporting.
The Good, the Bad, the Entitlements & the Overprescribing of Drugs
Here’s an encouraging report on an area where the world is going in the right direction global-poverty-health-crime-literacy-good-news & a curious report where it is not hyperalarming-study-shows-massive-insect-loss. Have you noticed fewer birds, bees & butterflies? On the next topic, I agree entitlement programs like Medicare & Social Security are the leading drivers of our debt (the math proves it as half the federal budget is devoted to them). But for McConnell to come out right before a midterm election & admit cuts/changes need made to those programs, that’s bad timing for an honest assessment. Especially when Dems can spin it the GOP wants to take away your entitlements to pay for their tax cuts: democrats-mitch-mcconnell-tax-cuts-social-security-medicare-medicaid. In the next link, generally Americans take way too many prescription medications, as so many drugs can cause dangerous interactions & adds to our sky-high healthcare costs. See this beginning to the article inside health-news/older-adults-fewer-medications:
Most elderly patients taking multiple prescription medications would be willing to reduce their daily pill regimen to minimize their risk of side effects like falls or dangerous drug interactions, a U.S. study suggests. Nine out of ten people 65 and older are willing to stop taking one or more medications if their doctor recommends this, the study found. And two-thirds of older adults would like to cut back on the total number of medicines they take. Approximately half of adults 65 and older are taking five or more medications, researchers note in JAMA Internal Medicine. While this is necessary in some circumstances, drugs that are safe and effective in isolation can become dangerous in certain combinations and contribute to side effects like dizziness, cognitive impairment, falls, hospitalizations and deaths.
A Big Challenge but also some Great Ideas
More signs of our polarizing wide divide are seen inside poll-wide-partisan-gaps-on-americas-biggest-problems, which it’s very difficult to address problems when both sides see things in such disparate ways. As we need to agree around the facts on each issue, we also need a commitment to getting our elections straightened out, fixing our governing bodies & preserving our democracy. Click on these 4 links to read some excellent & smart opinions:
An Angry Saudi Leader runs a Brutal Regime
The murder of a WaPo journalist is rightly getting lots of attention & world condemnation. But there are numerous signs this newly established dictatorship by a crowned prince is abusing human rights & slaughtering innocent people. Of course, Trump & sonny-in-law Jared love the guy! The lyrics in this song are hard to understand & don’t make much sense anyway, but it’s about an angry ruler of an Arab nation, plus it does have a catchy beat:
Recent Comments