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The U.S. Senate just passed a shockingly irresponsible overhaul of the tax code, called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” Only one Republican – Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) – did not vote for the bill.
This is a donor-serving Frankenstein of a bill, and journalists will be picking through its economic wreckage for weeks to come; the final bill will also change as the House and the Senate go into conference to reconcile their two versions. However, below are some of the most salient measures included in the Senate bill:
- Permanently cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent
- Repealing the individual mandate that makes Obamacare markets possible, likely leaving 13 million fewer people insured and crashing the insurance markets in a number of red states
- Lowering the tax rates for individuals, but only until 2026. Yes, the individual tax cuts are temporary while the corporate ones are permanent
- Repealing the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofits (including, most importantly, churches) from openly opposing or endorsing political candidates
- Adding $1.4 trillion to the deficit
Given that last bullet point, it’s clear that the real damage is yet to come. Congress will have to borrow $1 trillion to compensate for all these tax cuts, and we know how Republicans will plan to make up for that: cuts to the social safety net. “Someone is going to have to pay for those deficits,” said Alan Auerbach, a tax expert at the University of California Berkeley. “To the extent the deficits are addressed by cutbacks to entitlement programs, it could further exacerbate inequality.”
Republicans have explicitly said that they want to dedicate 2018 to “reducing spending” on welfare, Social Security, and Medicare, and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) basically gave the game away by admitting that this tax bill is their first step on the way to those cuts.
Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) admitted the same on the Senate floor.
Here’s the exchange where @SenSanders takes on @marcorubio and @pattoomey on the Senate floor and the Republicans “let the cat out of the box” on cutting Social Security.
Tell your Senators to vote NO on the #TrumpTaxScam! 888-516-5820 #NotOnePenny #FightFor15 #GOPTaxPlan pic.twitter.com/V5L4ewi8qJ
— Fight For 15 (@fightfor15) December 1, 2017
The Senate also rejected multiple attempts to make the bill less of a giveaway and spread some of the tax cuts to average Americans. Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) proposed changing the bill to cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, rather than 20 percent, in order to make room for a larger tax credit for Americans making $20,000-50,000. The Senate rejected this proposal. Rubio was frustrated afterwards, saying, “We could have helped so much more,” but he still voted for this bill. They all still voted for this atrocity, knowing that it will skyrocket income inequality, increase the deficit, destabilize massive swaths of the U.S. economy, and make the government’s budget far more precarious.
And for what? For whom were they willing to do so much damage? For donors and corporations.
As the New York Times editorial board summarized, this bill is a “looting of the public purse by corporations and the wealthy,” and its passage “confirm[s] that the Republican leaders’ primary goal is to enrich the country’s elite at the expense of everybody else, including future generations who will end up bearing the cost.”
Keep calling. Keep emailing. They still have to vote on the compromise bill. Stay angry. Vote them out.
(Via Chicago Tribune, Vox, PBS, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times; image via Shutterstock)
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—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
The U.S. Senate just passed a shockingly irresponsible overhaul of the tax code, called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.” Only one Republican – Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) – did not vote for the bill.
This is a donor-serving Frankenstein of a bill, and journalists will be picking through its economic wreckage for weeks to come; the final bill will also change as the House and the Senate go into conference to reconcile their two versions. However, below are some of the most salient measures included in the Senate bill:
- Permanently cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 20 percent
- Repealing the individual mandate that makes Obamacare markets possible, likely leaving 13 million fewer people insured and crashing the insurance markets in a number of red states
- Lowering the tax rates for individuals, but only until 2026. Yes, the individual tax cuts are temporary while the corporate ones are permanent
- Repealing the Johnson Amendment, which prohibits 501(c)(3) nonprofits (including, most importantly, churches) from openly opposing or endorsing political candidates
- Adding $1.4 trillion to the deficit
Given that last bullet point, it’s clear that the real damage is yet to come. Congress will have to borrow $1 trillion to compensate for all these tax cuts, and we know how Republicans will plan to make up for that: cuts to the social safety net. “Someone is going to have to pay for those deficits,” said Alan Auerbach, a tax expert at the University of California Berkeley. “To the extent the deficits are addressed by cutbacks to entitlement programs, it could further exacerbate inequality.”
Republicans have explicitly said that they want to dedicate 2018 to “reducing spending” on welfare, Social Security, and Medicare, and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) basically gave the game away by admitting that this tax bill is their first step on the way to those cuts.
Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA) admitted the same on the Senate floor.
Here’s the exchange where @SenSanders takes on @marcorubio and @pattoomey on the Senate floor and the Republicans “let the cat out of the box” on cutting Social Security.
Tell your Senators to vote NO on the #TrumpTaxScam! 888-516-5820 #NotOnePenny #FightFor15 #GOPTaxPlan pic.twitter.com/V5L4ewi8qJ
— Fight For 15 (@fightfor15) December 1, 2017
The Senate also rejected multiple attempts to make the bill less of a giveaway and spread some of the tax cuts to average Americans. Rubio (R-FL) and Mike Lee (R-UT) proposed changing the bill to cut the corporate tax rate to 21 percent, rather than 20 percent, in order to make room for a larger tax credit for Americans making $20,000-50,000. The Senate rejected this proposal. Rubio was frustrated afterwards, saying, “We could have helped so much more,” but he still voted for this bill. They all still voted for this atrocity, knowing that it will skyrocket income inequality, increase the deficit, destabilize massive swaths of the U.S. economy, and make the government’s budget far more precarious.
And for what? For whom were they willing to do so much damage? For donors and corporations.
As the New York Times editorial board summarized, this bill is a “looting of the public purse by corporations and the wealthy,” and its passage “confirm[s] that the Republican leaders’ primary goal is to enrich the country’s elite at the expense of everybody else, including future generations who will end up bearing the cost.”
Keep calling. Keep emailing. They still have to vote on the compromise bill. Stay angry. Vote them out.
(Via Chicago Tribune, Vox, PBS, The Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times; image via Shutterstock)
Want more stories like this? Become a subscriber and support the site!
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
We know we were excited about the possibilities when it was announced that Archie Comics’ most magical character, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, would be getting her own live-action TV show on The CW as a sort of companion show to Riverdale. Apparently, Netflix was excited for the possibilities, too! So excited, that they swooped in to claim the show for themselves with an offer the producers couldn’t refuse.
As reported by Deadline Hollywood, Netflix has committed to a two-season, straight-to-series order for the now-untitled Sabrina show. That was an offer Warner Bros. TV couldn’t pass up. Not only does it show a huge amount of faith on Netflix’s part in the show’s potential for success, but partnering with Netflix means that Warner Bros. TV gets to keep exclusive ownership of the show, whereas The CW model means that Riverdale is a co-production with CBS TV Studios, which gives them part ownership.
Now that Netflix is throwing all their weight behind this Sabrina show, I’m even more excited, as the basic concept for the show was already more interesting to me than Riverdale ever was (don’t get me wrong. I love me some Riverdale, but…)
Will you be watching Sabrina when she comes to Netflix?
(image: Archie Comics)
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—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Although the adaptation of Archie Comics‘ classic series Sabrina, the Teenage Witch was expected to land on the CW as a companion series to Riverdale, the comic brand has officially announced the new Sabrina series has instead landed a 20-episode, two-season, straight-to-series order at Netflix. This means no greater Archie-verse on the CW (for now), but it at least guarantees that Sabrina fans will get two full seasons of the series, and—without censors—the show will be allowed to go to much spookier (and sexier?) places than it would have on network television.
A lot of the same creatives that helped bring Riverdale to life will also be bringing Sabrina to the small screen as well. The new show will be written by Archie Comics Chief Creative Officer and Riverdale Showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, directed by Lee Toland Krieger, and produced by Berlanti Productions in association with Warner Brothers Studios. Greg Berlanti will serve as executive producer, because his plate is apparently not full enough with fifty gazillion comic book shows already.
The new, as-yet-untitled series (which we’re betting will be called Sabrina for simplicity’s sake), will be mostly inspired from the critically acclaimed Chilling Adventures of Sabrina comic book series written by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa and artist Robert Hack, which gave fans an updated and modern re-imagining of Sabrina the Teenage Witch’s occult origins. This dark coming-of-age story deals with horror, the occult, and witchcraft and finds Sabrina struggling to reconcile her dual nature (being half-witch and half-mortal) while protecting her family and the world from the forces of evil.
In the introduction to Chilling Adventures’ original collected edition, Aguirre-Sacasa said this of the comics’ tone: “If Afterlife with Archie was about Lovecraft and zombies and body horror, Sabrina would be more psychological, a bit more subtle (but only a bit), a bit more sexual (as stories about witches often are). There would be less humor than Afterlife, which strives for a Sam Raimi-vibe; this would be more like Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist and The Omen and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible…. A dark, occult coming of age story.” If he can translate that to television, we are so very down.
One thing is for sure: it seems, based on the description, this version of the classic character will be a total departure from the 1996 Sabrina, the Teenage Witch comedy series starring Melissa Joan Hart. But producer Greg Berlanti loves a bit of stunt casting when called for (See: original movie Supergirl Helen Slater and former TV Superman Dean Cain as Kara Danvers’ parents on Supergirl), so don’t be surprised if Melissa Joan Hart gets some kind of role on this new series.
No firm date has been given for the show’s premiere, but it is expected to drop sometime in 2018.
Are you as excited as we are for a darker version of everyone’s favorite teenage witch? Be sure to let us know your thoughts down below in the comments.
Need More Sabrina?
- Take a look at the first few script pages!
- Here’s why Melissa Joan Hart prefers a Clarissa reboot to Sabrina!
- And finally, check out 7 Archie Comics that’ll seriously spook ya.
Images: Archie Comics