Phil1111 1,149 #1 December 20, 2017 A recent report in The Washington Post, quoting intelligence sources, said Putin may have spent less than $500,000 to hack our last election and help Donald Trump become president. And Putin’s payoff is Trump’s first year: a president who is simultaneously eroding some of our most basic norms, undermining some of our most cherished institutions and enacting a mammoth tax bill that will not make America great again.... On norms, we’ve grown numb to a president who misleads or outright lies every day. Different newspapers measure this differently. The Washington Post says Trump has averaged 5.5 false or misleading claims every day in office, putting him on pace for 1,999 in his first year. According to The Times, Barack Obama told 18 “distinct falsehoods” over his entire eight-year presidency, while Trump, in his first 10 months in office, “has told 103 separate untruths, many of them repeatedly.”... Given the power of the president to shape our public discourse, it’s chilling to imagine what four years and 8,000 lies or misleading statements from Trump will do to trust in government in America — and how deeply that will filter into society, giving permission to anyone and everyone to lie with impunity. In terms of institutions, Trump has personally disparaged the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and the Justice Department. His head of the Environmental Protection Agency has turned the E.P.A. over to the fossil fuel industry. Ditto at Interior. His I.R.S. is being starved of funding to do its job. And his secretary of state is gutting the State Department, shedding our most experienced diplomats and replacing them with … no one.... Instead, this bill will spend money preserving unfair tax breaks for hedge fund billionaires and shrinking the inheritance tax on their heirs. Second, we invested in the best infrastructure — roads, rail, ports, airports, telecom. This tax bill not only makes no provision for that, it actually erodes such investments in many states. With a limitation on the deduction for state and local taxes, and the deficit’s ballooning by $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, many cities and the federal government will have fewer resources for new schools and bridges. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/opinion/merry-christmas-vladimir-your-friend-donald.html?mabReward=TS2&recid=0xyKl35fVkFyEkvG1TJ6Q8J4VQr&recp=1&action=click&pgtype=Homepage®ion=CColumn&module=Recommendation&src=rechp&WT.nav=RecEngine Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
