David Gill

-by Jasper Ward

Before Bruce Barlett served in George H.W. Bush’s Treasury Department, he was a Reagan economics advisor and before that he worked as an advisor to Ron Paul. He labored away as a tax specialist for the Heritage Foundation. Since then he’s quit the Republican Party and is now an independent, although, he likes to say, an independent Reaganite.

The Republicans seem to have gotten away with passing Paul Ryan's egregiously class warfare tax scam-- even if the newest polls show most American voters hate it. A Gallup poll released this week shows that a majority of independent voters (56%) oppose the tax bill, as do 87% of Democrats. Only 16% of Republicans disapprove of it.

Every cycle the DCCC sends out something like these faux contracts-- "Memorandums of Understanding" they're calling it-- to their favorite candidates in the "hot races." I haven't found a single candidate who likes them. In fact most of the candidates I've spoken to are either railing against it-- or laughing at it. Actually they're all laughing at it-- at least to me.

If you follow Austin Frerick, the Blue America-endorsed candidate for Iowa's 3rd congressional district on Twitter-- and you should: @AustinFrerick-- you are probably already familiar of the term Second Gilded Age or New Gilded Age. This morning Austin, a former Treasury Department economist, told me that "The 1st Gilded Age lasted from the 1870s to about 1900.

Most voters want them both gone alreadyThe most current generic congressional vote polling-- by Fox News, NBC/Wall Street Journal, PPP, ABC/Washington Post, Quinnipiac, NPR?Marist, Reuters/Ipsos, and Economist/YouGov-- show the Democrats outpolling the Republicans by, on average 9.6%.

The GOP is a natural opposition party but they have so degenerated over the last few decades that they are not a governing party. They can't get anything done at all-- not even the most basic and simple things.

Yesterday, Newsweek warned that Jeff Sessions is planning to end the recognition of the legitimacy of medical marijuana before the end of the year.

Last week, Valerie Brown and Elizabeth Grossman, writing for In These Times reported on how Monsanto has captured the EPA (and twisted Science) for it's own corporate ends. Their concern is primarily health issues around glyphosate, the world’s most widely used herbicide and the primary ingredient of Monsanto's Roundup.

Zero Humility by Nancy OhanianBefore Trumpanzee started demanding Ryan call his tax bill, "The Cut Cut Cut Act," Chuck Todd had reported that House Republicans were facing a major disadvantage with their tax plan, even before they delayed the rollout of their bill until today, namely that "their plan starts out underwater, according to