Feb. 27, 2024 - GOP wants to raise taxes...in an election year!

… Tax-hike hoax? … Shutdown sitdown … Gross and grocer … Useless utility …

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Heads up, my new reporting should be up today or tomorrow at the latest, if I can finish writing up these stories today. Did I say stories, plural? Sweet Newsfucker, I did. 

I’m going to be revealing information no one else is even looking into, relevant to the impeachment of Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Right as the Senate is considering whether to hold his impeachment trial. So I hope you’ll consider becoming a paid subscriber to help make this kind of – I wanna say “journalism”? – possible. Thank you!

Now, how about a morning quickie…

GOP Rolls Out 2024 Platform: Tax Hikes!

America’s massive debt is so dangerous that Republicans are resorting to a desperate, horrible last resort: Considering talking about creating a commission to consider talking about raising taxes.

House Budget Committee Chair Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-TX) tells Semafor that “It’s only fair to have both revenue and expenditures on the table.” Revenue being Republican-speak to prevent the vile word “taxes” from even lightly brushing their dewy, virgin lips.

Arrington is daring to invoke the Policy-That-Must-Not-Be-Named — in an election year, no less! — because he’s trying to create a commission to keep Medicare and Social Security solvent. So, is he serious? Or is this just a feint to woo innocent Democrats into his creepy white policy van?

The fear is that Republicans are floating openness to tax hikes simply to fool Democratic naïfs into joining a commission that would then “save” Medicare and Social Security the same way battlefield surgeons saved Civil War soldiers: By getting them so drunk on Ulysses Grant’s hooch that they wouldn’t miss their feet.

Is there any evidence of such Republican disingenuousness on this issue? If only there were some sort of google one could use to google this kind of thing!

Luckily, I can still Ask Jeeves and—oh, here we go! Arrington just last year ruled out raising taxes even to prevent America from defaulting on its debts. He explained that “taxes right now would only be passed on to consumers as higher prices. So we will exacerbate inflation.”

Which is funny because the standard Republican line about inflation is that it was caused not by government taking away money, but by giving it out. So apparently now we know what really causes inflation: All the things.

And it’s worth keeping in mind that when Arrington’s party does talk about raising taxes, it’s almost never on the people who have money worth taxing.

Shutdown Talks Today

Congressional leaders will meet with Pres. Joe Biden this morning to try to hash out a deal to keep several government agencies operating past a Friday funding deadline. (Another deadline, for more government, is coming a week from Friday.)

Complicating the deal is the longstanding Republican promise to stop all government agencies from operating ever again (unless their work includes killing people, natch).

Reportedly, a stopgap measure is in the works because of course. But also, a number of appropriations bills are nearing completion — with no idea whether they’d pass muster in the House. “Our House Republican colleagues are still struggling to figure themselves out,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) trolled yesterday.

Once upon a time, Schumer and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) had a top-line deal in place on new funding levels. Then the MAGA folks started hitching their hobby horses to the deal: Abortion, diversity, guns, all the stuff God wants as riders to the funding deal.

Now Johnson’s trying to talk his MAGA caucus down, since obviously you couldn’t just go to the House Democrats and get their votes. Because Satan.

THOUGHT FOR FOOD Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) reportedly is ready to add a billion dollars to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children… but only if he can limit the foods that can be bought by recipients of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Specifically, Harris wants to blacklist food he doesn’t want poor people buying, assuming they can even find it in their Mad Max-quality food deserts. The problems with that include being gross toward poor people. But also, blocking certain foods means creating a massive, gross bureaucracy to police it, enlisting grocers and cashiers as food police and just generally being gross instead of just fucking giving people money to buy food which they can then eat so it goes into their bodies where they need it to be alive.

U.S. Sues to Block Supermarket Supermerger

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) yesterday filed a lawsuit seeking to block what would be the largest supermarket merger in U.S. history.

Astonishingly, the premise of the suit is that Kroger and Albertsons shouldn’t be allowed to merge, even though they want to and even though this is a free country dammit.

So what possible reason could the FTC have to prevent rich people from doing what they want even though freedom? According to the FTC’s suit the reason is that it would be bad!

Specifically, the merger would lead to:

• Layoffs,

• Higher prices,

• Store closures,

• Richer rich assholes¹

The two chains already own dozens of other chains, according to ABC News. Kroger and Albertsons, both union shops, say the merger will help them compete with non-union food-shopping shops like Walmart and Costco. Which, okay, good for them for not being non-union.

But in our post-New Deal, corporations-uber-alles, laissez-faire modern era, what “competitive” means isn’t paying your union workers more money to ensure the highest-quality workforce. Ever since corporate America bought The Dictionary, “competitive” means making a bigger company so you can combine headcounts and then lop off the “redundant” ones. And you can raise prices because you can close down any nearby former-rival stores that you now own.

The merger is actually opposed by a bipartisan coalition in Congress: Including both Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Mike Lee (R-UT), an ideological range that wildly exceeds bipartisanship and veers on outright polyamory.

Yesterday’s lawsuit is just the latest antitrust salvo from antitrust crusader FTC Chair Lina Khan, who is anti-trusting when it comes to trusting any of these fuckin’ trusts.

Justice Comes for Killer Corporation…Late, Slow, and Insufficient

After killing two people and destroying 280,000 acres of trees and everything else with a wildfire in 2017, the people responsible will not be held accountable in any way, prosecutors said yesterday.

The company they work for and use to enrich themselves will have to pay $80 million to settle a federal lawsuit, without admitting guilt. Just the same way you or I would agree to pay $80 million after not doing anything wrong, and then raise the $80 million by hiking prices on people who are forced to buy their electricity from you. No Justice, No Juice.

The 2017 Thomas Fire was the nation’s largest — at the time — and Southern California Edison admitted its wires mmmmaybe were at fault. 

Southern California Edison called the settlement “a reasonable resolution,” which is definitely what you want killers to think about their sentences. (NB: With more time I would’ve added something about how utility companies are exacerbating climate change for profit, which exacerbates they cause by skimping on safety measures for profit.)

Mayorkas Impeachment Trial…or Error

House Republicans working to get their shit together on how to deny shit to poor people haven’t gotten their shit together yet on trying to convict Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of high crimes and misdemeanors. Meaning: Even though the House impeached him last week for failing to stop the fictional invasion of undocumented migrants, they’ve yet to send the case to the Senate, where it will die as surely as an undocument migrant snagged on razor wire in the Rio Grande.

And now Politico reports there’s a growing likelihood that the Senate won’t even hold a trial. They’ll just dismiss the case when/if they get it.

Personally, I think the Senate ought to hold a full trial. For one thing, people ought to see these House Republicans at work in a chamber they don’t control. For another, people should have a better idea of why the charges against Mayorkas are bullshit. It’s not just that they’re coming from deeply unserious people, there are worthwhile issues to explore here.

TEASER It’s not just unserious people pushing the Mayorkas impeachment. The original reporting I’ve been working on — and hope to publish today — includes new information about just how serious some of these people really are. Just not about Constitution stuff.

I hope you’ll keep an eye out for my reporting — hopefully later today, if I get my shit together…

Houston, We Have a Capitalism Problem

After landing on the moon just five days ago, the first privately owned lunar lander will stop working…today. That’s right, we’ve managed to send planned obsolescence into space.

The Odysseus lander, built and flown by Intuitive Machines of Houston, probably should have been seen as suspicious from the start because machines aren’t intuitive.

NASA had paid Intuitive [sic] Machines $118 million to carry its experiments, which will now not be finished. So…maybe capitalism is the experiment that ought not be finished? (Fun fact: NASA is run by former Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL), a longtime associate of The Family, the folks who gave us the National Prayer Breakfast back in 1953 to help convince Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower and every president since then not to give us anything because Jesus loves, and what He loves, is capitalism.)

The reason Odysseus is dying today rather than finishing its odyssey is that it fell over when it landed. Because it came in too fast, like a meteor I mean metaphor.

Campaign Watch

RUN TO THE BORDER Both Pres. Joe Biden and D4FRFP² Donald Trump are heading for the U.S. southern border on Thursday, but to the dismay of a majority of voters, neither of them is actually leaving.

Trump will be at Eagle Pass, TX, which right-wing xenophobes have held up as an example of the dystopian horrors created by undocumented immigrants — even though it’s a safe, diverse, lovely little town that reserves almost all of its invasion rancor for the MAGA one it’s enduring.

Biden, meanwhile, has also endorsed grosser measures — albeit less-than-Trump gross — against undocumented immigrants. After dropping previous Democratic resistance to Draconian GOP assaults on due process, Biden changed his mind when it looked like that would win GOP backing for military spending for Ukraine.

Then Trump told Republicans to change course, since that deal could neutralize a potent campaign issue for them. (Weirdly, Trump doesn’t seem to realize he could’ve let the deal go through, taken credit for forcing Biden to do his bidding — which is exactly what Trump did — and then in the fall simply said that Biden failed to execute the deal well and as proof just fucking claim that there was another invasion; even Trump doesn’t seem to realize he can simply make shit up and have his people believe him.)

Anyway, even though it won’t even help Biden politically, he is now continuing to push gross border measures, looking at new executive orders and doing a guard-dog-and-pony show on the border Thursday. That way he can take credit for tough-guy border shit and for an economy that’s booming…

…thanks to IMMIFUCKINGGRANTS.

That’s right, the Washington Post reports today that the reason the U.S. rebounded so much better than other countries did from the pandemic is that immigrants made up the labor shortfall. Without suppressing wages.

Meanwhile, Trump is running on promising to deport these workers helping to fuel our economy, and his whole party is saying these workers are hurting the economy. In other words, Biden has a massive, fact-based, foundation — solidly built by immigrant workers! — on which to celebrate immigrants, to thank them for helping us recover, to give America reason to fall in love with immigrants again.

But he’s not.

TCB

NICOLE SANDLER I neglected to alert you yesterday, dear Newsfucker, that I was going to be a guest last night on Nicole Sandler’s radio show. Well, I was. In fact, Nicole does a Fucking News segment every Monday so I hope you’ll consider joining us in the future. You can also join us in the past by checking out last night’s discussion here.

ENDLESS PROMISES I swear, I’m going to try to publish my Mayorkas impeachment stories today. Tomorrow the latest!

Three of ‘em. I think. Drafts for two are done. Mostly.

And I gave the House Republicans until last night to respond and they didn’t, so now I can blame only myself. And the relentless passage of time.

YOU I saw yet another surge in support from you Newsfuckers, yesterday. I’m not talking about switching to a paid subscription (which, also good), I’m talking about spreading the word. You dear dears.

All that TFN sharing going on, it’s like…like…dare I say it? Info-socialism!

If you are sharing TFN, please let folks know why — what it means to you — and please let me know you’re doing it, so I can boost you on Twitter or Facebook or Bluesky or Mastodon. Thanks, loyal Newsfuckers!

Go get ‘em, kids…!

1. I added this one. Sue me.

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