The largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich

About a year ago I discussed the book Tyrant, Shakespeare on Politics by Stephen Greenblatt. One of the tyrants discussed by Greenblatt is the English King Richard III. But what if Shakespeare portrayed Richard III not as the man actually was, but how the following Tudor dynasty portrayed him? Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets (Wikipedia says he was the last of the Yorks) was followed by Henry the VII, the first of the Tudors. And the Tudor line, especially Henry VIII, is the fodder of a great number of novels, plays, TV series, and movies because of how bad they were. My Sunday movie was The Lost King, based on a true story. That story is that the bones of Richard, lost since his death in 1485, were found under a car park in Leicester in 2012 (so we know how the movie ends). The woman behind the excavation was Phillipa Langley, an amateur historian. She lives in Edinburgh and is inspired to do the search after seeing Shakespeare’s play. Phillipa gets help through the Richard III Society, those who believe that the king’s reputation was slandered by the Tudors. She also sees an apparition of Richard, who sometimes answers her questions, and sometimes not. The big one he doesn’t answer is: What happened to the two nephews in the Tower of London? (I’ve read a science fiction story about the boys, posing another answer to what happened to them.) Eventually she gets to the University of Leicester and the City of Leicester. She’s dismissed because she is an amateur, a woman, and claiming that Richard was not what historians and the royal family say he was. Eventually they help her – and then claim the credit. IMDb added that Langley was not the first to accurately conclude where Richard III was buried and how that land was now used. She was the one to act on her conclusion and dig up the car park. I enjoyed this one. Though Shakespeare may or may not have accurately portrayed Richard III, that play is accurate in portraying how a tyrant may rise to power, what happens when in power, and how the tyrant falls. Last evening I was in my car and listened to about ten minutes of the NPR show Fresh Air. The topic of this episode was the book Original Sin by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. In this 44 minute segment Terry Gross talked to Tapper. This is the book discussing Biden’s mental decline and the cover-up by Jill Biden and senior staff at the White House in the last two years of his presidency. Tapper says that cover-up – insisting that Biden was mentally fine while covering for him on days when he obviously wasn’t then insisting he was healthy enough for another term – is why we have the nasty guy in the White House. In the part I heard Tapper lays out a pretty good case. That included an excerpt of Biden being interviewed by the Justice Department in October 2023 about what he knew about mishandling presidential documents found on his property. The deposition was the same day that Hamas attacked Israel. I remember the uproar when the interviewer said the DoJ would not bring charges because the jury would see Biden as a forgetful old man and would not convict him. In that excerpt Biden did indeed sound like a forgetful old man. During the last 18 months of Biden’s tenure, on days where he wasn’t good, the senior staff acted as a five-person presidential board. When Biden had to speak publicly on a not-so-good day he speech was prepared for him and he read it from a teleprompter. He could still do that. I didn’t listen to the whole episode, so maybe my question was answered. That question is: Why did Jill and senior staff cover up the decline? What were they trying to protect? Joe’s reputation? Sure. But his reputation would be better if he made a graceful exit before a decline. The chance to keep a Democrat in the White House? That didn’t work. The good of the country? That backfired. As I thought about it I became more disappointed in what the Bidens chose to do. First, of all, they should have prevented him from running for a second term. That was Tapper’s point. Even better, they should have convinced him to resign or used the 25th Amendment to have the Cabinet force him out, handing the presidency to Harris. That would have given her time to show she was presidential material. It would at least given challengers time to mount a campaign and go through the primary process. It would also shifted the “too old” meme onto the nasty guy. Even though what Tapper documented is likely accurate, showing the “too old” messages of the campaign were justified, the book still feels like a hit-job because there is no corresponding book on the nasty guy, detailing his own mental decline and his much more obvious poor mental health and dangerously fragile ego. Alas, too many people – billionaires, Republicans, white nationalists, and the MAGA faithful – like what the nasty guy is doing (at least until the faithful discover his agenda biting them in the ass) and don’t care about his mental state. Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported on the big bill (no, it’s not “beautiful”) being considered in the House. It hasn’t passed the House yet, and I’ve heard an important committee voted it down. It would also have a hard time in the Senate. But if it did pass... Singer begins her report:

President Donald Trump's "One Big Beautiful Bill" that House Republicans are trying to ram through the chamber would be the "largest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in a single law in U.S. history," according to a report published Wednesday by the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank. The bill, if passed, would lead to at least 13.7 million people losing their health insurance. It would also impose massive cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—better known as “food stamps”—that would put nearly 11 million people at risk of losing the ability to feed their families. And it will make college more expensive by eliminating subsidized federal student loans, meaning loans would start accruing interest as soon as students take them out rather than once they leave school. And Republicans are doing all of this only to partly pay for an extension of the tax cuts they passed in 2017, which have overwhelmingly benefited the richest taxpayers while giving the lowest-income Americans pennies.

The bill is in a bit of trouble because some Republicans say it cuts too much and other Republicans say it doesn’t cut enough. Lisa Needham of Kos reported that Republicans have found a group they can raise taxes on. Republicans don’t mind raising taxes. They “just hate to be perceived as raising taxes.” And one way to do that is to tax people whose complaints they can ignore. They propose to tax remittances. A remittance is sent by a person in the US to family in their home country. This is usually money the people back home desperately need. The money is usually sent through a financial institution set up to protect the transaction. Republicans propose to tax those remittances at the 5% rate, but only if sent by a noncitizen. This idea has been floating around for a while. It won’t raise much money for covering the huge budget deficit. But it will make immigrant lives harder – which is what Republicans really want. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted tweets by Aaron Fritschner who quoted Brendan Duke who included a chart by the Center on Budget and Policy and Priorities. The chart shows the change in income both in percent and dollar amount for various income groups for year 2029. For the top 10% their income increases by 3.4% though for the top 1% that is $52,050 a year. Percentages drop from there. The second 20% (from the bottom) get an increase of 0.6% or $260 in a year. The bottom 20% would lose 0.5% or $100 a year. Duke:

The bill is even more regressive when you look at 2029 when tax cuts for families expire & tax increases resulting from cuts to ACA premium tax credits grow larger.

Fritschner added:

But here is the thing Per JCT, Congress’ official scorekeeper, the bottom 20% of households – tens of millions of Americans – will see a Tax Increase beginning in 2029. Republicans are cutting taxes for billionaires and raising taxes on working people. This isn’t a nit-picky point based on a technicality or an asterisk. It isn’t analysis from a far left group, the White House sent these tables out and posted them on their website.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats:

A tiny Chinese company owned by the same people that own TikTok just bought $300,000,000 of $Trump Coin. Now why do you think they did that? Foreigners are literally bribing Trump with hundreds of millions to get favors!

Also, paulpro posted a cartoon by Christopher Weyant. Two girls are talking. The girl of color says, “My first choice college is the one with an endowment big enough to protect me from the government.” In today’s news was a story about South African president Cyril Ramaphosa visiting the White House. The nasty guy lectured him about “white genocide” which Ramaphosa tried to refute. But like the infamous visit by Ukraine’s Zelenskyy it didn’t go well for the visitor. Last Saturday Oliver Willis of Kos wrote about the Republican fixation on white genocide. This fixation includes the nasty guy admitting fifty white South African refugees not long ago while refusing refugees from other countries. The SA refugees were welcomed because of this false white genocide. Willis explained:

The “white genocide” myth is being invoked in U.S. politics because conservatives long ago embraced the politics of victimhood. Even when the right is in majority control of U.S. political institutions, like right now, it still claims that it’s a persecuted minority. ... This mentality perfectly combines with the conservative embrace of white supremacy. Claiming that a “white genocide” is underway, even when the data disproves it, becomes a way of being racist while simultaneously laying hands on the mantle of victimhood.

Also, the whites of South Africa (and no doubt in America) felt the law that distributed land from white to black owners (as in back to the original owners) was an “attack.” And an attack on their land was equivalent to an attack on their body. I thought of the claim of victimhood this way: When those at the top of the hierarchy (and Republicans declare they are) feel challenged in any way they will claim they are the victim, even if their position in the hierarchy is still quite secure. An attack on their position in the hierarchy is to them equivalent to an attack on their body. They feel they are the victim because in their position in the hierarchy no one is supposed to be able or allowed to challenge them. No one is supposed to be able to make them feel uncomfortable. This article in Kos linked to one in Salon by Michael Bader from January 2024 discussing claims of victimhood. Some of Bader’s points: Those claiming to be victims use it as a rationale for striking out at others without guilt. These acts of violence are reframed as revenge or a twisted form of self-care. Conservatives can use fear to claim liberals are trying to replace them. That makes their listeners feel they are victims. That, in their minds, justifies violence. The “victims” become victimizers. For example, if an election was “stolen” stealing it back makes moral sense. They don’t need to feel guilty about hurting others because they quickly come up with a story on how those “others” were first hurting them. Bader also compared the use of “victim” by liberals and conservatives. Liberals identify actual victims, people actually injured by racism, war, or other form of oppression. They try to defend these victims and care for them. Conservatives use victimhood as propaganda, to stir up a mob. They then use the mob to get rid of the democratic norms that restrain the political aims of the conservatives. Those political aims are always to oppress some other group. Because of that incitement to violence claiming to be a victim is dangerous. Denise Oliver Velez of Kos, in her Caribbean Matters series, reported that Pope Leo has Louisiana Creole ancestry through his mother, Mildred Martínez. Her parents were described as black or “mulatto” in historical records. They lived in New Orleans Seventh Ward, a Catholic area and melting pot of people with African, Caribbean, and European roots. The pope’s brother John Prevost said that while growing up in Chicago he and his brothers always considered themselves to be white. Passing for white has a long history in the US. But his ancestry would have marked him as “colored” in Louisiana as recently as 1982.