Blue Country Gazette

Friday, April 23, 2021

Republicans demonstrate again how incapable they are at governing with infrastructure offer

Remember back when Senate Republicans presented a ridiculously underfunded and insulting COVID-19 relief plan in response to President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan? One that solved absolutely nothing for hurting Americans and was so blatantly bad that Biden had no qualms about dismissing it out of hand? How they were basically laughed out of the negotiating rooms?

Senate Republicans apparently don't remember it, because they're doing it again. To counter Biden's $2 trillion proposed investment in the American Jobs Plan to restore crumbling infrastructure and start to address the threat of climate change, Republicans have this: a $568 billion proposal limited almost entirely to transportation and broadband. And make Americans pay for it through higher fees for driving electric vehicles.

Demonstrating their rock-solid commitment to the fossil fuel technology of the last century, the Republican plan doubles what Biden would spend on roads and bridges, $299 billion. It would spend the remainder on narrow range of other projects, including $61 billion for public transit, $44 billion for airports, $65 billion for broadband internet access, and $35 billion for water and wastewater projects. They seriously want to pay for this through user fees including new fees for owners of electric vehicles—penalizing the businesses and individuals who are trying to reduce their carbon output and save the world. (Because of course that's who Republicans think should be paying.) They also want to claw back any unspent COVID-19 relief money, because of course they do. They're Republicans.

Biden's proposal includes $115 billion to modernize the bridges, highways, and roads of the fossil fuel age. His proposal includes another $85 billion for public transit, $80 billion for Amtrak, and $174 billion to build 500,000 electric vehicle charging stations, electrify 20% of school buses, and electrify the federal fleet. He'd spend $100 billion on broadband, $25 billion for airports, and $111 billion for water projects. Biden also includes a critical $400 billion for home-based care for elderly and disabled people and $300 billion toward building and retrofitting safe homes.

This idea from Republicans is still basically just a sketch, but its lead author, West Virginia Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, touts it as "the largest infrastructure investment Republicans have come forward with." Which is pretty pathetic when you really think about it. Much of it doesn't include any new spending projects but is just tacking some increases to existing programs.

Again, that's in contrast to the new programs Biden is proposing to expand the number of electric vehicles on the roads, to modernize schools and public housing, and to address not just climate change but social ills as well. That includes replacing every lead water pipe in the country. It includes addressing the decades of racial inequity in how this nation built itself.

That includes funds to find ways to "reconnect" communities of color that were bulldozed, paved under, and cut into parts by previous redevelopment and urban renewal programs that emphasized building highways to bring white suburbanites into cities by plowing through existing neighborhoods. So of course Republicans are opposed to that.

This is supposed to be the "good faith" effort to show they want to be engaged in this process. They have to at least pretend at this point, because it's what the American people want.

What Republicans have come up with here isn't even enough to satisfy the Senate Democrats like Joe Manchin and Chris Coons, who have been insisting Republicans will help and that this can be done with bipartisanship. But what they were talking about was an $800 billion offer from Republicans, one that showed they were serious. What they got instead was this.

Republicans have no new ideas. They are so out of the habit of actual governing that the best they can do is crib stuff from previous bills and use pixie dust and "owning the libs" to pay for it. They're actually proud of this. They're bragging about how far they've been willing to go.

Ooooops! Here's a graphic illustration of what might happen if the GOP's infrastructure bill were to become law.

Thursday, April 22, 2021

Chauvin guilty verdict induces much wailing and gnashing of teeth among far-right extremists

ATLANTA, GA - APRIL 20: People march through the streets after the verdict was announced for Derek Chauvin on April 20, 2021 in Atlanta, United States. Former police officer Derek Chauvin was on trial on second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter charges in the death of George Floyd May 25, 2020. After video was released of then-officer Chauvin kneeling on Floyd's neck for nine minutes and twenty-nine seconds, protests broke out across the U.S. and around the world. The jury found Chauvin guilty on all three charges. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images) — **The sight of Black Lives Matter activists celebrating Derek Chauvin's guilty verdict Tuesday sent some white nationalists over the edge.**

The online angst among white nationalists and other far-right extremists was neck-deep Tuesday following Derek Chauvin’s conviction for the murder of George Floyd.

“God help you if you’re a white male in this anti-white country,” wrote Andrew Torba, founder of the white nationalist-friendly chat site Gab, to his 3.2 million followers.

Many of the reactions were collected by Chuck Tanner at the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, who noted that “the response across the far right and white nationalist movement demonstrated its base lack of compassion and lack of mooring in reality.”

“Does anyone really see a way out except Civil War/secession?” asked Peter Brimelow, founder/publisher of the white-nationalist site VDare, on Twitter. Brimelow quote-tweeted an article he wrote in 2017 predicting that “it will come to blood.”

Michelle Malkin, the so-called “Groyper mommy,” wrote on Telegram: “Chauvin was sacrificed.” Another Groyper figure, America First students head Jaden McNeil, chimed in: “He never stood a chance.”

Scott Greer, a speaker at the recent white-nationalist America First PAC convention and a former writer for the Daily Caller, tweeted earlier in the day that “White boy summer starts with Derek Chauvin's acquittal,” but then updated that: “Uhhh... it appears white boy summer has been postponed.”

“Why even remain a cop?” Greer added. “This system hates you and only needs you to enforce mask regulations. Get a job that won’t send you to jail for doing your job.”

“If you’re a white police officer you should quit or move to a rural district. You could be next,” tweeted far-right maven Cassandra Fairbanks.

At the Klan-boosting League of the South account on Telegram, the messages were even more explicit. “America is suffering from a bad case of N****r Fatigue. And for that, you can thank the jews (sic).”

“The US is a failed state with an organized communist criminal cabal for a government,” they added. “If you’re White middle-or working-class, you have not good future in this system. The late Dr. Samuel Frances predicted this state of affairs and called it Anarcho-Tyranny. He was right on the money. What indeed is the meaning these days of a ‘jury of your peers?’ ”

“Why don’t whites riot?” wondered a white-nationalist “Groyper” fan at the message board 4chan. “Blacks rioted their way into forcing the state to pander to them, so why not whites? I just feel so angry right now.”

4chan screen shot on Chauvin trial — **A post by a white-nationalist ‘Groyper’ at 4chan.**

“Now twitter leftists are gonna go on /pol/ [a 4chan section dominated by white nationalists] to take screencaps and make fun of us,” complained another.

A Proud Boys group based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, posted a meme to Telegram reading: “Derek Chauvin Did Nothing Wrong” (a play on previous Proud Boys memes, the original version of which read “Pinochet Did Nothing Wrong”). At the Boogaloo Intel Drop channel on Telegram, the racism was more explicit: “Derek Chauvin, the cop that legally restrained a feral ni****, George Floyd, was found guilty on all counts. This is not ni**** vs pig, this is being white in America… The system is rigged by the international jew (sic) for the subhuman hordes. THERE IS NO POLITICAL SOLUTION.”

And on the far-right My Militia website, the conclusions were similar, if less hysterical: “Yep, the left are emboldened over this,” wrote the user “Wolfenstein.” “They will not quit until they achieve what they describe as justice which is the death and destruction of the United States (its rebuilding in their image), the death and destruction of the culture and people that created it all while giving the world over to Communism. The chaos is just getting warmed up.

Far-right conspiracy theorists, particularly those from the authoritarian QAnon cult, were frothing similarly, primarily on Telegram. John Sabal, a popular influencer who uses the nom de plume “QAnon John,” claimed the whole Chauvin trial was merely a “movie.”

“The silver lining in what’s going to come out of another series or riots, and looting is that EVERYONE, regardless of which side of the aisle will KNOW that this NEVER had anything to do with ‘Justice for George Floyd,’” wrote Sabal, who is organizing a large QAnon conference in Dallas next month.

That followed the line of thinking among other QAnon believers writing on Telegram, Gab, and elsewhere—namely, that Chauvin’s trial was a media-produced sham and the defendant himself merely a “crisis actor” playing a role as part of a massive plot to spark a race war.

“I’m just going to go all out and say there is no Derek Chauvin,” wrote Tiffany, a QAnon fan on Telegram. “It's just another show; this actor is a fall guy. Agenda to stage race war or civil unrest. Take your pick.”

Another user called Christine said that “nothing is a coincidence. They are trying to start a race war.”

Tucker Carlson’s rant on Fox News on Tuesday—in which he claimed that Chauvin couldn’t receive a fair trial—was echoed widely on far-right channels.

“Everyone understood perfectly well the consequences of an acquittal in this case,” Carlson said. “After nearly a year of burning and looting and murder by BLM, that was never in doubt.”

Blaming Democrats for the verdict, Carlson echoed white nationalist themes as well: “No mob has the right to destroy our cities,” he said. “No politician or media figure has the right to intimidate a jury. It’s an attack on civilization.”

The far-right We The Media channel on Telegram agreed. “I don't think any police officer can have a fair trial due to them by our Constitution,” wrote one member. “I don't think the public should be jury, because of situations like this. I'm just saying he didn't get a fair trial. He was already tried by the judges/juries of the media and politicians.”

A little earlier, Alex Jones depicted a scenario identical to Carlson’s, but with the conspiracist anti-Semitism more explicit: “This is a defeat for the globalists at certain levels,” Jones said on his Infowars “War Room” program. “They wanted to go ahead and burn the country down. But at another level, they wanted to show we control juries by intimidation and threats, which means they can threaten any police department and make them go under globalist control. That’s what George Soros is financing, that’s what he’s funding.”
The far right at play. At least they're not attacking Congress at the Capitol.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021

'I thought I was dying’ says COVID-19 denier Ted Nugent after announcing he has COVID-19

MUSKEGON, MI - OCTOBER 17: Ted Nugent performs at a campaign event for U.S. President Donald Trump on October 17, 2020 in Muskegon, Michigan. After testing positive and reportedly recovering from the coronavirus, President Trump has ramped up his schedule of public events as he continues to campaign against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden ahead of the November election. (Photo by Rey Del Rio/Getty Images)

A little over a week ago, reports came out that aging 1970s rock-n-roll hunting enthusiast Ted Nugent was still promoting the concept that the 2019 novel coronavirus was all hype. During an interview posted on Facebook, he asked the question: "You know, I guess I would ask you — because I’m addicted to truth, logic and common sense — and my commonsense meter would demand the answer to why weren’t we shut down for COVID one through 18?"

Now, I know that as a parent I frequently find myself saying things like “There are no stupid questions,” but in this case, well, um. It wasn’t a surprising take from a man who has made a career of being ignorant and saying ignorant things. In general, playing his guitar loudly over his ignorance has allowed people to pretend they didn’t hear him.

On Tuesday night, Nugent did a Facebook Live where he told his audience he had contracted the virus. “Everybody told me that I should not announce this. I have had flu symptoms for the last 10 days. I thought I was dying. Just a clusterfuck.” Nugent also repeatedly used racist MAGA-virtue signaling the entire time that put the blame of the virus on China. He described his experiences over the last 10 days, saying he could barely crawl out of bed because he was in such bad shape. He said he was finally tested Tuesday, thus the diagnosis.

Nugent has been a very public COVID-19 denier, telling conservative radio personality David J. Harris Jr. in August that he thought all of the reported coronavirus-related statistics being put out by world health organizations and our own country’s scientific communities were made up. “They claim 160,000 people dead from the Chinese communist virus. Bullshit. They claim millions and millions have been tested positive [for the virus]. Bullshit. They claim that the ICU units are overcrowded. Bullshit.” He also called himself a “radical for justice” during that same interview, but he seems to have been mum on all of the deaths of citizens at the hands of law enforcement. Racist much?

And even though Nugent has now experienced the virus, he still says he won’t get vaccinated against it: “If you can’t even honestly answer our questions of exactly what’s in it and why are you testing it on human beings and forcing it on people in such a short period of time,” which isn’t a real thing. You can read about the vaccination and what’s “in it,” on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website. If you have other anxieties over the vaccine that’s fine, but don’t bullshit about why you’re afraid of things.

Nugent’s bad, destructive takes on the public health questions and policies of our country goes hand in hand with his crotch-grabbing support of Donald Trump. Nugent literally illustrated some kind of point about “blue states” at a MAGA rally by grabbing his crotch. He has also promoted the need to carry guns in order to rid our government and country of “evil, dishonesty, and scam artists” who he said are liberals, Democrats, RINOs, Hollywood, fake news, and the media, saying: “There are rabid coyotes running around, you don’t wait till you see one to go get your gun, keep your gun handy. And every time you see one, shoot one.” Seems like that virus was able to get right past Nugent’s clean-living, bow-hunting, millionaire ranch-living fortress of ego-tude no problem.

The Tedster and The Donald: Two denying peas in a coronavirus pod.

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

CNN Host throws back Ted Cruz faux outrage over Maxine Waters Chauvin case comments

TedCruzgetshiswordsthrownbackforfauxoutrageofMaxineWaterscommentsonChauvincase.JPG

Some in the mainstream media are challenging Republican hypocrisy. This CNN host exposed Ted Cruz and his cabal Maxine Waters faux outrage.

Republicans are hyperventilating over some comments made by Maxine Waters. What did she say when asked about what should happen if Derek Chauvin is acquitted.

“I’m going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice,” said Waters, who is Black. “We’ve got to get justice in this country, and we cannot allow these killings to continue. … We’ve got to stay on the street, and we’ve got to get more active, we’ve got to get more confrontational. We’ve got to make sure that they know that we mean business.”

There is nothing in that statement anyone should disagree with. Ask our Founding Fathers if that would not be their reaction as well.

Well, Republicans think they are smelling a reason to attack. A recent Daily Kos article comes to the perfect conclusion.

But Republicans are shouting about cases of property damage in the midst of protests against killings. The incitement of violence they claim to be concerned about is when a Black lawmaker calls for protest of racial injustice, while they continually downplay far more serious violence from their supporters—and, rather than expelling people like Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks, move steadily toward following her twisted leadership.

CNN upped the anti, though. They actually exposed that Ted Cruz and his Republican cabal are not only hypocrites but posers, projectionists. After all, these same GOP politicians incited an insurrection on Jan. 6 that caused the loss of life of several police officers.

How do you spell "hateful"? Why T-E-D-C-R-U-Z, of course.

Monday, April 19, 2021

Gun violence never lets up in the U.S. Let's be clear who doesn't want to change that

BOULDER, CO - MARCH 22: Healthcare workers walk out of a King Sooper's Grocery store after a gunman opened fire on March 22, 2021 in Boulder, Colorado. Dozens of police responded to the afternoon shooting in which at least one witness described three people who appeared to be wounded, according to published reports. (Photo by Chet Strange/Getty Images))

Many things stopped or dramatically slowed in the United States starting in March 2020. Gun deaths were not among them. In fact, 2020 set a 20-year high for gun violence. What stopped—for a while—were the kind of attention-grabbing mass shootings that make headlines, usually because they affect white people in public places for reasons other than domestic violence. The “it could happen to me” shootings, where the “me” in question is writing the headlines.

That kind of mass shooting returned in March 2021, starting with the Atlanta spa shootings—which, while six of the eight people killed were Asian women, were in businesses where more customers (white ones) could have been killed—then moving to the Boulder, Colorado, supermarket shooting that killed 10 people, and most recently to the eight people killed in an Indianapolis FedEx facility. But while those have made the headlines, they’re far from the sum total of gun violence—or even of mass shootings—in the U.S. during this time.

And none of it has been enough to shift Republican lawmakers to be willing to vote for even the most modest and popular gun law reforms, like universal background checks.

There were four other mass shootings that killed four or more people between Boulder and Indianapolis, Eric Boehlert points out at Press Run. Five people killed in Essex, Maryland, on March 28; four in Orange, California, on March 31; six in Rock Hill, South Carolina, on April 7; six in Allen, Texas, on April 13. In the just over a month since the Atlanta shootings, there have been at least 50 mass shootings in the U.S., which are defined as shootings that injure or kill four or more people not including the shooter.

And mass shootings are not the only way people are killed by gun violence, even terrifyingly random gun violence. On Sunday, a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed in a car at a McDonald’s drive-thru in Chicago, and a 29-year-old man in the same car was also shot.

Over the course of the same weekend, three people were shot and killed in one incident in Austin, Texas, but, hey, it’s okay because it was an isolated “domestic situation.” The suspect in that case is a former sheriff’s office detective who was charged last year with sexually assaulting a child. Three people were killed and three were wounded in a shooting in a bar in Kenosha, Wisconsin. One person was killed and five people were wounded in a shooting at a vigil for a shooting victim in Columbus, Ohio. One person was killed and another was wounded in a shooting at a mall in Omaha, Nebraska. Six people were injured in a shooting at a 12-year-old’s birthday party in LaPlace, Louisiana.

That’s one weekend.

“We can’t give up. One hundred Americans are shot and killed every day. Hundreds more are wounded,” Moms Demand Action co-founder Shannon Watts told The Washington Post. “This isn’t something where anyone can afford to sit on the sidelines and just say, ‘This is the way it is.’”

Voters are divided on that, though. The vast majority favor some changes to gun laws, like universal background checks. But decades of campaigning by gun lobby groups have left us in a situation where, depending how you word the poll question, 34% to 42% of people think current gun laws are, you know, fine. If you ask people about background checks they say yes, but it’s not a high-intensity position, and the people who want even looser gun laws are the most likely to see guns as one of their top political priorities.

But we can’t just give up and say this is the way it is on public opinion, either. Again, there has been a very well-funded, decades-long campaign by gun lobby groups to get us to this point. That campaign has given people a big pile of readily available talking points in favor of unfettered, unregulated gun sales and ownership, while the arguments for more limits and regulation aren’t as well aired. Like, say, this:

Then, of course, you have a unified Republican Party, and a media not eager to advertise “the fact that a key reason Republicans don’t face a ‘backlash’ is because the press routinely portray GOP's obstruction as mere ‘gridlock,’ or ‘Washington’ being unable to pass laws,” as Boehlert points out.

That Republican unity on the issue gets us back to that pro-gun campaign: “By the way, how radical of a shift is today's GOP behavior on guns? Note that in 1999, 31 Senate Republicans voted in favor of mandating background checks at gun shows,” Boehlert writes. “And in 1994, 42 House Republicans voted for the Crime Bill, which included a ban on assault weapons. But all of that context gets left out of gun reform coverage today, as the press pretends Republicans have always been uniformly opposed to new laws to protect citizens.”

The United States didn’t get to this level of gun violence problem by accident. Getting us out of it will take serious work—and part of that work is being entirely clear about who is standing in the way of improvement.

Sunday, April 18, 2021

The Bigot Party

The “surge” has been fabricated by Republicans in order to stoke fear – and, not incidentally, to justify changes in laws intended to prevent non-whites from voting.

Robert Reich. (photo: Getty)

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

18 April 21

readersupportednews.org

epublicans are outraged – outraged! – at the surge of migrants at the southern border. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, declares it a “crisis … created by the presidential policies of this new administration.” The Arizona congressman Andy Biggs claims “we go through some periods where we have these surges, but right now is probably the most dramatic that I’ve seen at the border in my lifetime.”

Donald Trump demands the Biden administration “immediately complete the wall, which can be done in a matter of weeks — they should never have stopped it. They are causing death and human tragedy.”

“Our country is being destroyed!” he adds.

In fact, there’s no surge of migrants at the border.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection apprehended 28 percent more migrants from January to February this year than in previous months. But this was largely seasonal. Two years ago, apprehensions increased 31 percent during the same period. Three years ago, it was about 25 percent from February to March. Migrants start coming when winter ends and the weather gets a bit warmer, then stop coming in the hotter summer months when the desert is deadly.

To be sure, there is a humanitarian crisis of children detained in overcrowded border facilities. And an even worse humanitarian tragedy in the violence and political oppression in Central America, worsened by U.S. policies over the years, that’s driving migration in the first place.

But the “surge” has been fabricated by Republicans in order to stoke fear – and, not incidentally, to justify changes in laws they say are necessary to prevent non-citizens from voting.

Republicans continue to allege – without proof – that the 2020 election was rife with fraudulent ballots, many from undocumented immigrants. Over the past six weeks they’ve introduced 250 bills in 43 states designed to make it harder for people to vote – especially the young, the poor, Black people, and Hispanic-Americans, all of whom are likely to vote for Democrats – by eliminating mail-in ballots, reducing times for voting, decreasing the number of drop-off boxes, demanding proof of citizenship, even making it a crime to give water to people waiting in line to vote.

To stop this, Democrats are trying to enact a sweeping voting rights bill called the For the People Act, which protects voting, ends partisan gerrymandering, and keeps dark money out of elections. It already passed the House but Republicans in the Senate are fighting it with more lies.

On Wednesday, the Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz falsely claimed the new bill would register millions of undocumented immigrants to vote and accused Democrats of wanting the most violent criminals to cast ballots too.

The core message of the Republican party now consists of lies about a “crisis” of violent immigrants crossing the border, lies that they’re voting illegally, and blatantly anti-democratic restrictions on voting to counter these trumped-up crises.

The party that once championed lower taxes, smaller government, states’ rights and a strong national defense now has more in common with anti-democratic regimes and racist-nationalist political movements around the world than with America’s avowed ideals of democracy, rule of law, and human rights.

Donald Trump isn’t single-handedly responsible for this, but he demonstrated to the GOP the political potency of bigotry and the GOP has taken him up on it.

This transformation in one of America’s two eminent political parties has shocking implications, not just for the future of American democracy but for the future of democracy everywhere.

“I predict to you, your children or grandchildren are going to be doing their doctoral thesis on the issue of who succeeded: autocracy or democracy?” Joe Biden opined at his news conference on Thursday.

In his maiden speech at the State Department on March 4, Antony Blinken conceded that the erosion of democracy around the world is “also happening here in the United States.”

The secretary of state didn’t explicitly talk about the Republican Party, but there was no mistaking his subject.

“When democracies are weak … they become more vulnerable to extremist movements from the inside and to interference from the outside,” he warned.

People around the world witnessing the fragility of American democracy “want to see whether our democracy is resilient, whether we can rise to the challenge here at home. That will be the foundation for our legitimacy in defending democracy around the world for years to come.”

That resilience and legitimacy will depend in large part on whether Republicans or Democrats prevail on voting rights.

Not since the years leading up to the Civil War has the clash between the nation’s two major parties so clearly defined the core challenge facing American democracy.

We are a stronger country because of immigrants - the people who value freedom the most.

Saturday, April 17, 2021

GOP perfectly happy to kill jobs to shield corporations from paying their fair share in taxes

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 17: Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) talks to reporters about a sex trafficking bill that has stalled in the Senate with (L-R) Sen. Deb Fischer (R-NE), Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) following the weekly Senate Republican policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol March 17, 2015 in Washington, DC. McConnell said he will not move on to a vote to confirm Loretta Lynch, the nominee to replace Attorney General Eric H. Holder, until the Senate votes on the sex trafficking bill. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images) — Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia called raising the corporate tax rate a "red line" on Biden's American Jobs Plan. Aren't you glad these sourpusses aren't your aunts and uncles? How would you like to face Uncle Moscow Mitch and the rest of them around your Thanksgiving table?

For a couple decades now, roughly two-thirds of Americans haven't believed American corporations were paying their fair share in taxes according to Gallup polling dating back to 2004. Naturally, Republicans took that as a mandate to cut corporate tax rates even further in 2017, from 35% to 21%, in a bill that ultimately proved to be wildly unpopular among the public.

“In 2017, Republicans slashed corporate tax rates, which decimated corporate tax receipts,” Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, told The Washington Post's Greg Sargent. “U.S. corporations avail themselves of the benefits of the U.S. economy — infrastructure, workforce and the like — but contribute very little to it.”

According to new data from Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, from 2000 to 2016, corporate tax receipts averaged about 1.7% of total GDP, or what he calls the "modern average." Immediately after the GOP's tax gift to America's wealthiest, corporate revenues dropped nearly 40% below this modern average. Over the next decade, corporate tax revenues will fall more than 25% under the modern average.

In 2018, following the GOP’s handiwork, the U.S. came in last among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development—37th out of 37—in terms of how much corporate tax revenue it collected as a share of GDP. If you compare the world's 10 largest economies, all nine of the other countries have corporate tax rates ranging from 25–34%, according to Sen. Wyden’s report.

“Corporations have never contributed less to federal revenues than they do now — thanks to Republicans’ tax giveaway,” Wyden told the Post.

The Tax Policy Center's Rosenthal agrees. “Historically, corporations that enjoyed the benefits of the U.S. economy contributed substantially more,” Rosenthal said. “In recent years, these contributions plummeted, which in my judgment is simply unfair. Corporations and their shareholders can afford to contribute more.”

But Republicans have decided raising the corporate tax rate is their "red line," and they're working to kill Biden's American Jobs Plan over it. Here's their three-step gambit:

Declare that increasing corporate taxes is a deal killer
Make a counteroffer on infrastructure/jobs that will be a mere fraction of President Biden’s (in other words, laughable)
Tag American taxpayers with bearing the brunt of paying for it, which progressive Democrats will never agree to

In other words, the GOP counteroffer is dead on arrival and they know it.

So here’s where that leaves us: Republicans are more than happy to kill a plan to revolutionize America's infrastructure and create millions of jobs in order to shield corporations from helping to foot the bill for improvements that will undoubtedly help their bottom lines.

That seems fair. If you're a congressional Republican.

Seriously, dear readers, to be a Republican today you have to be some combination of rich and greedy, dumb and gullible, and/or racist and homophobic. If you're an old fashioned Republican, you ought to be doing some serious soul searching.