Feb. 1, 2024 - House sends pillaging bill to Senate

… child tax credit … prayer breakfast … Zuckerberg … presidential poll …

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House okays $79 billion in tax cuts to feed, doom our children

House Republicans took a break yesterday from fighting tooth and claw to prevent even a single penny of additional federal debt from dooming our children and bankrupting America, because fighting tooth and claw is exhausting. During their America-saving respite, House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and joined by their Satanist pedophile colleagues across the aisle, pillaged our future, adding $79 billion to our debt by giving it away in tax credits.

The reason Democrats voted for this is that Republicans were holding America’s poor children hostage: The tax cuts were basically $33 billion for impoverished poor kids, which Republicans agreed to even though higher national debt dooms our kids because another $33 billion was for rich people and to create jobs (spoiler alert, it won’t) because that’s worth dooming our kids.

The bill will mean an average of $680 in tax cuts for poor families with kids. You may remember that during the fever dream of Democratic control, they increased the child tax credit even higher and drove child poverty to its lowest level since Charles Dickens and Jonathan Swift voted for it. When that increase was killed by Republicans (and you know who, rhymes with “no ranchin’”) child poverty spiked again.

MAGA Republicans voted against the bill. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) called it “a welfare bill in drag,” indicating that he really, really wanted to have sex with it.

So what do Republicans get in return for agreeing to let hungry children be slightly less hungry? Tax cuts for the rich, der.

The ransom payment consists of three bags, each to be left under a park bench at the zoo. One bag of tax cuts revives deductions for buying new equipment. Another contains deductions for investing in research and development. And the third does some boring tax thing which would probably strike me as fascinating and important if I knew the details — because everything is fascinating when you understand it.

Republicans claimed that tax credits for buying shit and researching shit will “help American businesses grow, create jobs and sharpen their competitive advantage against China,” as Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) said lyingly.

For one thing, if businesses really needed that tax-credit money to create jobs, turns out America does actually still have more than one bank left. But here’s the main reason the jobs thing is bullshit, and by “main” I mean “four”:

• #1 bullshit thing: Business windfalls often go to investors, shareholders, and the executives who sagely gave the windfall to investors, shareholders.

• #2 bullshit thing: Businesses often use windfalls to merge or acquire, which means job cuts which Wall Street rewards by spiking the stock price, which means a windfall for investors, shareholders, and executives.

• #3 bullshit thing: Businesses often use windfalls to offshore or outsource their work, which means job cuts which Wall Street rewards by spiking the stock price, which means a windfall for investors, shareholders, and executives.

• #4 bullshit thing: Businesses often use windfalls to buy robots (which they can now get a deduction for buying!), which means job cuts which Wall Street rewards by spiking the stock price, which means a windfall for investors, shareholders, and executives.

If you’re wondering how I know this will happen it’s because it happened under the Bush tax cuts so much so that even Pres. George W. Bush could see it, and he’s dumber than a fish. I mean, literally, people, Bush administration people told us they knew this would happen.

And then it happened again with the Trump tax cuts, and Pres. Donald Trump wasn’t pissed because he’s not dumb but does think it’s hilarious.

Theocracy Makes it Into the Capitol Legally

As I reported last night, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) has allowed today’s National Prayer Breakfast to take place inside the U.S. Capitol building, in historic Statuary Hall, where literally none of the founding fathers wanted it because they (a) prayed in private, and/or (b) were Deists, and mostly because (c), if they had wanted a prayer breakfast there they would have founding fathered one there.

In addition to it being a symbolic poop-taking on the First Amendment, it’s worth noting that the event is being run by a private non-profit — with mucho connections to the controversial, coup-loving Fellowship Foundation (aka The Family) — that has broken its pledge to reveal at least something about who’s funding it. And that has a history of using this event for its own … I wanna say nefarious? … purposes.

Rep. Jared Huffman (D-CA) chairs the Freethought Caucus and told me he sees this as yet another incursion by far-right religious extremists into secular government. I’m paraphrasing; if you want his exact quotes, go read my story!

Appropriately, this historic breach of the separation of church and state came on the same day Congress missed a deadline to approve a plaque commemorating law enforcement for trying to keep anti-American theocrats out of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Congress Bullies Social-Media Execs IRL

Senators of both parties bullied social-media executives who for some reason showed up for a hearing about how they allowed bullying on their platforms because the laws created by members of both parties allow bullying on those platforms in the name of the Invisible Hand and also Mammon.

The Senate Judiciary Committee hearing went viral with clips of Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and other rich nerds getting confronted by the parents of kids whose kids are dead or emotionally/physically traumatized by going viral. Both Republican and Democratic senators said social media was terrible and then immediately did not privatize it and utilize its vast potential for the betterment of all humanity.

Four Quickies

• The E.U. approved 50 billion Euros — which is about $54 billion in real money — to help bolster Ukraine’s economy and presumably at least some of the humans therein.

• U.S officials tell CNN that Iran’s leaders are increasingly nervous about the actions of the military groups they arm and fund, meaning now they now how Pres. Joe Biden feels.

• Congress is moving on multiple bills to address the lack of affordable housing but still somehow continue to make the rich people responsible even richer.

• Pres. Joe Biden leads D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump by six points among registered voters in a new poll taken Jan. 25th through Jan. 29th that has zero bearing on the November election because it was taken Jan. 25th through Jan. 29th, but might ease your free-floating anxiety in early February.

TCB

I’m probably gonna live-Tweet today’s National Prayer Breakfast — live from inside the Capitol — over on Twitter/X/Xitter-pronounced-shitter (courtesy of Nicole Sandler), so do please join me.

Oh, and I might not do a TFN tomorrow OR Monday because I’m beat up from all this original reporting on the NPB this week and because original reporting just isn’t moving the needle in terms of subscribers and support. So I gotta focus on getting the word out better. There is a handful of newsfuckers out there doing the Lord’s work (not the grisly, Deuteronomy shit), and I see you and appreciate you. If you don’t see me boosting your boost, please send it to me and I will. Telling people why you like being a newsfucker is the most effective thing you can do to keep TFN going!

Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President