Money Talks

Trump voters expected him to drain the swamp.  Instead he installed a diving board, built a new pool house, and set out more chairs for everyone to lounge in.

The big money donors demanded the GOP pass a tax bill or else, and so the GOP did.  There's no other reason for it.  Opinion polls don't matter, optics don't matter, letters, e-mails, phone calls don't matter:  none of that matters if you can't get the $$$$ to run for office.  Representatives in the House start the first day of their new job looking for money, and spend several hours a day at that quest every day thereafter, or they don't get re-elected.  Period.  Senators don't have to be quite so desperate, but who thinks they ignore donors until they are four years in?  Money talks.  End of discussion.

Is this tax bill a disaster for the country?  Who in the Congress cares?  It serves the true masters, and it keeps the money flowing so incumbents can win re-election.  Who is to blame for this?  Us.  The rubes.  We're all rubes.  We're rubes because we re-elect incumbents, even though incumbents suck and everybody should face term limits except our guy, who's a-okay.  We're rubes because we thought thought the system would save us and everybody else would elect Hillary Clinton so we elected a GOP Congress.  Balance, donchaknow?  Checks and balances, ain't it?  Didn't work out that way, and it turns out the GOP isn't interested in governance at all; just in keeping their jobs.  There was no legislative process, no regular order, no review of what the bill contained:  just lots of flimsy promises and notes scribbled in margins in pencil and in the end we were no longer discussing what our office holders really are, we were just negotiating price.  And in that game, we the people don't hold the checkbook; but we sure respond to what that checkbook buys.

We are the sovereign.  This is a democracy.   Look in the mirror, because we did this to ourselves.

Hope it was worth it, all the "economic anxiety" and "angry white man" resentment.  Because this is what it produces.

Now they're on to Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security.  Will they gut that?  Paul Ryan sure wants to.  Who is gonna stop him?