Out With the Old, Trash the New

I hope everyone enjoyed their holidays, reconnecting with family and friends...and binging on carbs and sweets. Now we have the new year to look forward to and with all of our best intentions we will all try to make resolutions to do better, be better...at least that's what most of will be doing. But I know one person who won't be bothering with such introspective pursuits so filled is he with narcissistic self-regard and disdain for anyone and anything else in this world.

Which is why I can't say I'm really look forward to 2018. We'll have at least one more year of Trump unfettered, certainly not by the band of soulless Republicans enablers in Congress. Pundits talk about how they haven't accomplished much besides the massive tax cut and confirmation of the Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court judgeship they stole from Merrick Garland. I would respectfully disagree - look at the massive rollback of environmental, health, labor, financial and consumer safety regulations. These regulations were designed to respond to real, documented abuse by private sector actors and to protect our society's most vulnerable from the real costs of our Social Darwinian economic system.

I'll focus on just one example of this frightening reverse a century's worth of social and economic reforms - the Child Health Insurance Program (CHIP). It has been said that the compassion and strength of a society can be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable. It that's the case, then the refusal of the Republican Congress and the Trump administration to renew and sustain CHIP stands out as one of the more egregious examples of their examples of hypocrisy as the self-appointed party of "Family Values." Combined with the reverse Robin Hood tax cut that lavishes benefits on the wealthiest, this callous act of omission has reinforced what has been apparent to most for past 50 years, the Republican Party's complete and utter moral bankruptcy. Happy New Year, kids, and good luck with that.