Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in San Francisco in 2014. (Kimberly White/Getty Images for Vanity Fair)
The GOP’s tax plan is still a dud. “The tax reform bill is highly unpopular among the American people. In fact, a majority of U.S. residents (52%), including more than one in five Republicans (22%) and one in five Trump supporters (20%), think the legislation will mostly hurt their personal family finances.”
The efforts by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) to defend her vote on the tax bill have been a bust. “Based on the analysis of the CBO and the statements of actuaries and insurers, a reasonable expectation is that repeal of the individual mandate will result in significant coverage losses, increased premiums and instability in insurer participation even with passage of Collins-Nelson and Murray-Alexander. In particular, mandate repeal will hurt older people and people with pre-existing conditions seeking private coverage through the exchanges. Millions of these individuals will be priced-out of affordable health insurance coverage.” Read the whole thing.
Here’s some insight into why the Senate Ethics Committee is rather worthless. “An analysis of available data from the committee’s scant annual reports — the only public-facing information from the oversight body that began in 2008 thanks to the passage of the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act — reveals next to nothing that would inform the public. Even simply tabulating the total number of allegations received and dismissed by the committee since 2007 is a task rife with pitfalls (and a conclusion that’s unverifiable by anyone but the committee itself). But as the only official dataset available, and a government source at that, an Issue One analysis found since 2007.”
This is what comes from having washouts as your lawyers. “What will Trump’s reaction be when he figures out he’s been duped — and that the Mueller probe, far from a ‘nothing burger,’ is a carafe of strychnine that poses an existential threat to his presidency? The likely result is that Trump will either pardon everyone involved or try to fire the special counsel, or both. And then the nation will be plunged into a constitutional crisis the likes of which we have not seen since Watergate.”
The European Union diplomats, unlike Jared Kushner, know the “peace process” is a non-starter for the foreseeable future. “There is no peace initiative, or attempt to restart peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians, that can happen without engagement from the United States … [and] there can be no illusion from the US side that a US initiative alone can be successful, because there is a need for an international and regional framework to accompany the beginning of negotiations.” Shorter: Ignore Kushner.
Wilbur Ross is one of many flops in the Cabinet. “President Donald Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross is facing allegations of insider trading related to the sale of his shares in the Bank of Ireland several years ago, and it’s just the latest claim of financial impropriety lodged against him.” Too bad we don’t have a coequal branch of government willing to do oversight.
If the GOP bombs in 2018 because of a huge gender gap, we’ll know why. “President Trump attacked Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) in a sexually suggestive tweet Tuesday morning that implied Gillibrand would do just about anything for money, prompting a swift and immediate backlash.”