The GOP are now the party of tax increases for the poor. Bottom 45 million households will see a tax increase with the new bill.
Johnston writes for Nieman Reports how the failure of the press to accurately articulate the problem makes it difficult for citizens argue with their representatives. Sadly, representatives don’t understand taxes any better than the rest of us.
Social security and medicare will be the major casualties in order to pay for these cuts.
To understand how badly we’re doing the most basic work of journalism in covering the law enforcement beat, try sitting in a barbershop. When I was getting my last haircut, the noon news on the television—positioned to be impossible to avoid watching—began with a grisly murder. The well-educated man in the chair next to me started ranting about how crime is out of control.
But it isn’t. I told Frank, a regular, that crime isn’t running wild and his chance of being burglarized today is less than one quarter what it was in 1980.
David Cay Johnston, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist. A former New York Times reporter, he is a columnist for “Tax Analysts” and a professor at Syracuse University. His most recent book is Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (and Stick You with the Bill).
