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Evening Shade---Resistance Rising---TGIF! May 23th [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-23
YOU CAN REPOST IT AS COMMENT in the DIARY
WHEN YOU FIND SOMETHING in the DIARY that you LIKE
THE PERSON who MAKES the FIRST COMMENT WILL GET TWO CRITTERS
(Or NOT As the CASE MAY BE)
YOU WILL FIND in the DIARIES a LOT of POLITICS
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I’m trying to make sense of the Big Beautiful(?) Bill. At least it is big, at 1100 or so pages. It’s been suggested that the House passed it in the dark of night with many House members not having actually read it all. It’s stuffed with items of interest but each news source homes in on different parts of it. The Cut says
At the bill’s core are tax breaks constituting a massive wealth transfer to the rich at the expense of people barely scraping by. According to one analysis from the Penn Wharton Budget Model, a nonpartisan research project, people in the bottom fifth of earners — those who make $17,000 or less — would see their incomes decline by around $1,000 under the proposed legislation... Meanwhile, the top 0.1 percent, who make $4.3 million or more, would gain an average of almost $400,000 annually. Millions of people will lose their health care (Medicaid) and grocery funds provided by the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP)… The bill imposes the strictest work requirements in Medicaid history. The bill includes a clause barring any regulations on AI or similar models for ten years… All this, for what? To funnel billions more in taxpayer money toward mass deportation and military assistance to Israel, which has been blocking humanitarian aid from reaching starving Palestinians in Gaza. To potentially line the pockets of Elon Musk, whose company SpaceX is reportedly angling for a half-a-trillion-dollar contract to build a U.S. missile defense system. Trump’s budget proposal allocates 75 percent of all funding to the military and police. To advance that agenda, the “Big, Beautiful Bill” adds $150 billion to defense funding and bulks up border security with a plan to remove 1 million immigrants annually. The kicker? An additional $2.3 trillion to our national deficit over the next decade.
USA Today focuses in on child tax credit, no tax on tips, and no tax on overtime.
The Hill goes into SALT — the deduction for state and local tax that matters in very high tax local areas.
The Tax Foundation gets into nitty gritty details that are beyond my limited accounting knowledge but these stood out to me: sunsetting Biden’s IRA clean energy tax credits, phasing out business tax credits on wind energy components, and an increased tax deduction for seniors, but only until the next election.
Associated Press adds the boost to standard deduction, no tax on gun silencers, no money to Planned Parenthood, child MAGA accounts (a child bonus) and cutting funding for nonprofits that the government says support terrorism. It adds that the military spending specifically covers the proposed “Golden Dome” missile defense shield. And it permits opening more land for mining and oil drilling, and the sale of public lands.
NPR addresses the national school vouchers that could be used for private, even religious schools.
House Ways and Means has the rosy view, that nearly everyone pays less in taxes. They predict that the economy will boom, and the bill “Holds woke, elite universities that operate more like major corporations and other tax-exempt entities accountable.”
While this issue isn’t coming up in most news sources, The Hill sees cuts to Medicare on the way (in addition to cuts in Medicaid.)
The House GOP’s “big, beautiful bill” will add so much money to the debt it will force across-the-board spending cuts to Medicare, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO late Tuesday said the legislation will increase the debt by $2.3 trillion over 10 years. That will trigger as much as $500 billion in Medicare cuts starting as soon as 2026.
And there are all sorts of odds and ends tucked into corners:
x This is what an authoritarian regime would do. Hidden deep in Trump’s 1,100-page bill that passed the House today is a provision that would block federal courts from enforcing contempt charges against government officials who violate court orders. — Alt National Park Service (@altnps.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 6:50 PM
(Click the flutter for specific section and more details.)
There’s more. What important bit did I miss?
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The good news? The senate is expected to object to a good deal of it. USNews says we can expect them to protest the depth of Medicaid cuts, the increase of the debt ceiling, and items that they feel are extraneous and should be, if passed at all, passed separately.
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On to ICE.
x Keep an eye on this one. Sounds like Govt, DHS specifically may have again stepped in it getting caught lying to federal judge and judge wants an explanation by 8 pm tonight. www.courtlistener.com/docket/69938...
[image or embed] — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 4:45 PM
x 2/ This is about closing down a series of statute-mandated oversight offices at DHS - basically civil rights and not abusing immigrants oversight. But the technical issue is one we're seeing across govt. That is the govt is saying we're not closing this office, just reorganizing it with RIFs and ... — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 4:45 PM
x 3/ can do that. Again, this is the figleaf lie governing a huge amount of what's happening now. But internally DHS seems to have been freely telling the RIF'd civil servants yeah we're closing this office down. And I assume tho I don't know that someone dropped a dime to the judge on that. — Josh Marshall (@joshtpm.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 4:45 PM
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George Takei is spot on as usual.
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x Tell me: if these dudes show up with guns in an unmarked van to grab someone, why don’t the Second Amendment fans think they should be shot?
[image or embed] — I’m Sorry I Don’t Have A Plane To Give Hat (@kenwhite.bsky.social) May 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM
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It all just feels so unreal sometimes. There’s a word for that.
“Welcome to the hypernormalization club,” Harfoush said in a response video. “I’m so sorry that you’re here.” “Hypernormalization” is a heady, $10 word, but it captures the weird, dire atmosphere of the US in 2025. First articulated in 2005 by scholar Alexei Yurchak to describe the civilian experience in Soviet Russia, hypernormalization describes life in a society where two main things are happening. The first is people seeing that governing systems and institutions are broken. And the second is that, for reasons including a lack of effective leadership and an inability to imagine how to disrupt the status quo, people carry on with their lives as normal despite systemic dysfunction – give or take a heavy load of fear, dread, denial and dissociation. “What you are feeling is the disconnect between seeing that systems are failing, that things aren’t working … and yet the institutions and the people in power just are, like, ignoring it and pretending everything is going to go on the way that it has,” Harfoush says in her video… “It’s reading an article about childhood hunger and genocide, only to scroll down to a carefree listicle highlighting the best-dressed celebrities or a whimsical quiz about: ‘What Pop-Tart are you?’” (The Guardian)
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But it’s important to look at the bright side: At least you don’t have a container ship in your garden like this Norwegian man.
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Today is a musical birthday celebration. It’s the birth date of:
Artie Shaw. Frenesi is my favorite of his songs. I think. So many Artie Shaw favorites!
x YouTube Video
It’s Rosemary Clooney’s birthday too.
x YouTube Video
And now for something completely different, it’s the birthday of Robert Moog. Dick Hyman had a way with his Moog synthesizer.
x YouTube Video
It’s National Road Trip Day! Pack up and go!
x YouTube Video
It’s also National Don’t Fry Day. If you’re the driver on that road trip, don’t forget the sunscreen on your left arm and ear (or right, in the UK.)
And it’s National Cooler Day!
x YouTube Video
And National Taffy Day.
x YouTube Video
And National Lucky Penny Day. Or is it? Pennies are being phased out.
[END]
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