That Even Republicans Should Love

Having failed miserably to come up with a sane alternative to Obamacare, the Republicans now turn to tax reform. And, let’s face it, their ideas here are just as moronic as their health care idiocies.

We’ve been here before. Trickle-down economics didn’t work for Reagan and they won’t work for Trump. Massive tax cuts for the rich don’t create higher salaries for workers. All they do is increase the nation’s already obscene income divide.

I have a better idea, one that actually increases working class salaries while cutting taxes for the wealthy. Here’s how:

For example, Chipotle CEO Steve Ells (thanks to his company’s dismal recent performance) just had his salary cut in half. The poor guy now only makes $15,663,000 a year. (This doesn’t include stock options, but for our purposes here let’s not worry about that.) Assuming a 40-hour work week, that comes out to a measly $7,532 an hour. The average Chipotle worker rolling your burrito makes $9.56 an hour. I did the math for you. It takes Mr. Ells less than three hours to rake in what his employees make in a year.

In the GOP’s delusional world, giving Mr. Ells a massive tax cut will somehow translate into his forking over more moolah to his workers. Really? I chose Mr. Ells because he’s the perfect test case for that assumption. If a year ago, when he made almost $29 million, double what he now makes, he didn’t share that largesse, why would he do so now?

Here’s my genius free-market-inspired idea, one that gives Mr. Ells and any other CEO who wants one a massive reduction in taxes: For every 20% he increases his workers’ pay, he gets a 10% tax cut. Double his employees’ salaries, and his taxes get cut in half. We don’t care how he does it. Let him figure it out. Republicans always say that the free market knows best. Fine with me. The government won’t have to mandate what the salaries should be, won’t have to raise the minimum wage, won’t interfere in his business in any way. We won’t begrudge his compensation, whatever his company wants it to be. He built the company, and he deserves whatever he can get. But if he doesn’t take care of his employees, he gets no help on taxes.

Let’s go even further: if he also pays for his poor workers’ health insurance, he gets additional tax relief.

The rich stay rich; the working poor get to join the middle class. Works for me.

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My Brilliant Progressive Tax Plan was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Increase in Tweetstorms Proves It

The Environmental Protection Agency this morning released a report conclusively dismissing the existence of global warming.

As proof of the assertion that no measurable climate change is occurring, EPA head Scott Pruitt cited the increasing frequency and volume of President Trump’s tweetstorms.

Disregarding the alarming conclusion of the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report compiled by the National Academy of Sciences, Pruitt, the nation’s chief climate change denier, said in a prepared statement. “Pay no attention to the alarmists. The evidence the Trump administration prefers to believe closely corresponds with a different climate model, one which was painstakingly assembled by major polluters from all sectors of the nation’s energy industry, excluding, of course, renewables.”

“Presidential tweets on climate have intensified substantially during the last six months, dramatically confirming our predictions,” Pruitt’s statement read. “Our model anticipated that President Trump’s tweetstorms denying global warming would increase in direct proportion with the growing evidence that the climate is changing. Our prediction so far has been amazingly accurate.

“If anything, the volume and frequency of President Trump’s tweets have been even more robust than forecast, proving that climate change denial in this administration is happening even faster and more dramatically than even we believed possible.”

Pruitt’s statement went on to conclude, “Given what we’ve seen, we have every reason to trust that Mr. Trump’s tweetstorms will continue to increase and become even more destructive to climate science in the future.”

EPA: Climate Change Is a Hoax was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

How Star Trek Explains the GOP’s Obamacare Obsession

In one of the original Star Trek episodes, the Enterprise encounters Nomad, an old space probe that has become confused. Its original mission was simply exploration, but after somehow merging with an alien probe, it now believes that its mission is to destroy imperfection, which, it goes without saying, includes all human life.

Fast forward to the present day (or backward, depending on which century we’re referencing; time travel is so confusing) and how we deal with the issues of contemporary human life, especially health care. Obamacare borrowed heavily from the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, which concluded that the only way to cover the maximum number of people was to require a personal mandate to buy insurance. The healthiest people, those who require the least health care, needed to be in the system, thus lowering overall costs for everyone. The idea was that health insurance should function like auto insurance; if everyone is in, we all share the burden at a cost we can afford.

Unfortunately, it was Obama, a Democrat, who got the ACA passed. Republicans, who might have embraced the Heritage Foundation concept had they been the ones proposing a health care fix, were suddenly universally opposed to the very idea they themselves had come up with. They became obsessed, not with improving the current health care system, but with destroying it.

What was most disturbing about the entire Obamacare repeal drama of the last few weeks was how little Republicans cared for the damage that undoing the current law would cause. The major media got caught up, as usual, in the numbers — how many would lose health insurance, were there enough votes for repeal — instead of in the substance, or lack of it, in the debate.

The Republicans simply never came up with a reasonable alternative, not because there isn’t one (single payer, universal mandate would solve most of Obamacare’s problems), but because the GOP is interested only in keeping a stupid promise it made seven years ago when it didn’t have the power to fulfill it. In the end it came down to the ludicrous “skinny repeal,” which was so absurdly awful that its came with the promise that it would never actually become law. As insane as that was, it failed by only a single vote.

Not once have the Republicans even pretended to want to cover more people at a reasonable cost. They might once have been motivated to do that, but those eight years of wandering in uncharted space have left them completely disoriented. During that dark time, their mission became confused. Now with almost unlimited power to do something constructive, they seek only to destroy.

They have become Nomad.

The Changeling was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In the newspaper business we were always careful to wait a few days after the death of someone we despised before using their demise as a chance to express our unflattering opinion about the deceased.. I don’t work for a newspaper anymore.

R.I.P. Roger was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

A. Allowing Michael Flynn to remain as National Security Advisor after having been warned multiple times that he lied about his contacts with Russia and that he might well be compromised until a leak outed him, or

B. A leak outed him.

2. The more important story is:

A. Trump fired FBI director Comey while he was actively investigating the president’s ties to Russia and Russian interference in the election, or:

B. Democrats who didn’t care for the way Comey handled the Clinton investigation were also unhappy that Trump fired him.

3. The furor over Comey’s firing is:

A. A predictable reaction from Americans concerned that this is looking more and more like a cover-up, or

B. Just sour grapes.

Please explain.

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A Short Quiz for My Republican Friends was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Health Care is complicated, and the House GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare has many confusing elements. The impact of the bill, however, is pretty simple to explain:

This is nothing more than a transfer of wealth to the wealthiest. One trillion dollars of wealth. As a result, millions of people will lose their ability to buy health insurance as the subsidies that enable them to afford health insurance disappear into the pockets of the richest Americans. People without health insurance get sicker and die younger than people who are covered. It’s that simple.

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The Republican Health Care Plan Explained was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you happen to be married to someone, as I am, who is obsessed with the damage Trump might do to this country and its people, don’t show her (or him) this cartoon.

If you like what you’re reading, subscribe to my newsletter. You’ll get the latest posts here delivered to your inbox, plus the ability to respond to me directly and share your thoughts on other issues you care about.

And if you know others who might enjoy my cartoons, please recommend this and share with them.

One More Thing To Keep You Awake at Night was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you like what you’re reading, subscribe to my newsletter. You’ll get the latest posts here delivered to your inbox, plus the ability to respond to me directly and share your thoughts on other issues you care about.

And if you know others who might enjoy my cartoons, please recommend this and share with them.

Show Us the Money was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you like what you’re reading, subscribe to my newsletter. You’ll get the latest posts here delivered to your inbox, plus the ability to respond to me directly and share your thoughts on other issues you care about.

And if you know others who might enjoy my cartoons, please recommend this and share with them.

How Republicans Can Learn To Love Obamacare was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you like what you’re reading, subscribe to my newsletter. You’ll get the latest posts here delivered to your inbox, plus the ability to respond to me directly and share your thoughts on other issues you care about.

And if you know others who might enjoy my cartoons, please recommend this and share with them.

It Never, Ever Goes Away was originally published in Ed Stein Ink on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.