monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

I'm not in denial about the facts...

...so there's no reason to avoid what they have to say.

President Trump's rhetoric turned from humorous playfulness with liberal America to often outright open disdain. Away from Washington, the attitudes of many of those on the right turned even more resentful.

Today we see the manifestation of those attitudes now in full bloom. Few Republicans now have any more interest in bipartisanship, instead preaching to the choir in fundraising emails or on Breitbart about how Democratic actions are evil.

Many “establishment” Republicans still hope for the return of a time when our discourse and process was less polarized. Nonetheless, a new breed of Republican activists that is rising in the party has no such inclination. For them, destroying liberals is almost as worthwhile a goal as promoting their conservative causes.

When Donald Trump’s campaign was accused of spreading “fake news,” he quickly appropriated the term for himself. The true purveyors of fake news, he claimed, were television networks like CNN and newspapers like this one.

Now, as Mr. Trump and his allies seem on the verge of staging a coup against independent institutions and the rule of law — maligning the special counsel Robert Mueller and threatening a purge at the F.B.I. — the president’s supporters are appropriating yet another word for themselves. Mr. Mueller’s investigation aims to “destroy” the Trump presidency “for partisan political purposes and to disenfranchise millions of American voters,” the Fox News host Jesse Watters claimed on Saturday. “We have a coup on our hands in America.”

This marks a new era in American politics. The Republican Party is no longer just obfuscating the truth or defending the president when he is accused of wrongdoing. Rather, Mr. Trump, Fox News and Republicans in Congress seem to be actively using falsehoods to prepare an assault on the institutions that allow American democracy to function.

In all democracies, politicians occasionally lie to cover up scandals or exaggerate their legislative accomplishments. In the United States, the rise of the right-wing news media in recent decades has tempted politicians to play to their own supporters without worrying whether their rhetoric is inflammatory or fair. But the construction of an alternate reality that obviates the very possibility of conducting politics on the basis of truth is a novelty in this country. And it is increasingly becoming obvious that it will serve a clear purpose: to prepare the ground for egregious violations of basic democratic norms.

Once any string of words is considered as true as any other, any course of action comes to seem as legitimate as any other. One moment, Mr. Mueller is a respected civil servant leading an important investigation at the behest of the Justice Department. The next, he is plotting a coup — potentially committing treason, a felony for which the law demands the death penalty. By the same token, Mr. Trump would, at one moment, be scandalously overstepping the bounds of his rightful authority in firing Mr. Mueller or pardoning his closest associates. The next moment, he would be valiantly defending the Republic.

The most puzzling thing about these claims is how patently ridiculous they are. Mr. Mueller, for example, is a Republican who was named F.B.I. director by George W. Bush. And yet he is now being maligned as a Democratic stooge out to sabotage the Republican Party. On its own merits, this is laughable. But over the past months, we have seen how quickly many citizens can come to believe claims that once seemed ridiculous.
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The basic playbook is now familiar. At first, the most extreme partisans — like Mr. Watters of Fox News — float an outlandish idea. Then, supporters of the president who affect an air of moderation debate whether this idea is true in a seemingly evenhanded manner. Before long, Mr. Trump himself is spreading the claim, saying something like “many people are asking questions” about it.

One person telling one lie is easily shown to be a liar. But a hundred people telling a thousand lies quickly exhaust the ability of news outlets to disprove each claim, and of citizens to keep track of all the real and invented scandals. Overwhelmed by the noise, they take refuge in believing whatever their own team tells them. As a result, the public sphere quickly degenerates into a battleground in which opposing tribes string together words to wield as a weapon.

This is the same strategy that authoritarian populists have long used to attack democratic institutions. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, for example, has spent the past year calling journalists criminals, terrorists and coup-plotters. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India recently accused Manmohan Singh, a former prime minister, of being in league with Pakistan. And Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary has portrayed his opponents as pawns in the billionaire philanthropist George Soros’s supposed scheme to use refugees to subjugate his country (a claim that is increasingly being echoed on the farther reaches of the American right).

The rapid degeneration of the public sphere in Turkey, India and Hungary can teach us two important lessons: First, up can become down and legitimate investigations can turn into supposed coups only if a few politicians and journalists are shameless enough to repeat blatant lies over and over again. Second, and more important, these lies can justify a power grab by the executive only if many more politicians and journalists are willing to stand by instead of calling those outrageous calumnies what they are.

This is why the pundits and politicians who have helped to delegitimize Mr. Mueller and his investigation over the past weeks are making themselves active accomplices in a deliberate assault on our democracy. But it is also why those who have failed to condemn these attacks — like Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader — are equally to blame.

The only effective way to stop the creation of an alternative reality that justifies any action whatsoever is for politicians who are trusted by their own side to call out shameless falsehoods. That is precisely what most mainstream conservatives are failing to do.

This marks a new era in American politics. The Republican Party is no longer just obfuscating the truth or defending the president when he is accused of wrongdoing. Rather, Mr. Trump, Fox News and Republicans in Congress seem to be actively using falsehoods to prepare an assault on the institutions that allow American democracy to function.

The Trump administration wants to let employers control workers’ tips.

...The Department of Labor’s proposed rule is about employers taking control of workers’ tips. It rescinds portions of long-standing Department of Labor regulations that prohibit employers from taking tips. Under the administration’s proposed rule, as long as the tipped workers earn the minimum wage, the employer can legally pocket their tips.

What's the strategy here, I wonder?

Fact check: Trump's 'middle-class miracle' favors wealthy

WASHINGTON — You wouldn't know it from President Donald Trump's rhetoric, but the tax overhaul coming into effect is heavily tilted to the rich. It also leaves "Obamacare" in place, despite his assertion that the tax plan repeals the health care law. Nothing about the plan provides the fuel to achieve economic growth at the levels he's predicted.

Trump's penchant for exaggeration and sometimes pure fiction has clouded the realities of the overhaul as it has shaped up over months. As for Democrats, you wouldn't know to hear them talk that middle-class people are getting a tax cut out of the deal, too.

A look at remarks made Wednesday and earlier about the tax plan Trump will shortly sign into law.

TRUMP: "It's the largest tax cut in the history of our country." — remarks Wednesday.

THE FACTS: It isn't. For months Trump has refused to recognize larger tax cuts in history, of which there have been many, or to grant that other presidents have enacted big tax cuts since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.
An October analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget found that it would be the eighth biggest since 1918. As a percentage of the total economy, Reagan's 1981 cut is the biggest followed by the 1945 rollback of taxes that financed World War II. Trump's plan is also smaller than cuts in 1948, 1964 and 1921, and probably in other years.

Valued at $1.5 trillion over 10 years, the plan is indeed large and expensive. But it's much smaller than originally intended. Back in the spring, it was shaping up as a $5.5 trillion package. Even then it would have only been the third largest since 1940 as a share of gross domestic product.
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VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE: "You're delivering on that middle-class miracle." — to Trump at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday.

THE FACTS: Modest doesn't make for a miracle. Pence's praise to the boss reflects Trump's assertion that "it's a tax bill for the middle class," as he put it earlier and many times, but average people are not the prime beneficiaries of the tax cuts. Aside from businesses, rich people get the most.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates the biggest benefit of the new law will go to households making $308,000 to $733,000. Households making over that should get a tax cut worth 3.4 percent of their after-tax income. For the richest 0.1 percent (making over $3.4 million), the tax cut should be worth 2.7 percent of their after-tax income. For middle-income earners: 1.6 percent, the center estimates.

Moreover, only high-income people would get a meaningful tax cut after 2025, when nearly all of the plan's individual income tax provisions are due to expire.

Republicans argue that the middle class will also see benefits from the business tax cuts, in the form of more jobs and higher wages.
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DEMOCRATIC SEN. CHARLES SCHUMER: "Their bill increases taxes on lots of middle-class people. ... According to the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of earners in our country gets 83 percent of the benefits." — remarks Tuesday.

THE FACTS: The tax cuts are not nearly as lopsided as many Democrats are portraying them. Almost all of the middle class would initially pay less in taxes.

For the next eight years, the vast majority of middle-class taxpayers — those earning between $49,000 and $86,000 — will receive a tax cut, albeit a small one. In 2018, nine-tenths of the middle class will get a cut, according to the Tax Policy Center. In 2025, 87 percent will. The tax cut won't be very big: just $930 next year for the middle one-fifth of taxpayers, the center's analysis concludes. For those paid twice a month, that's about $40 a paycheck.

Schumer and other Democrats are basing their assertions on the fact that nearly all personal tax cuts expire after 2025, which would result in a slight tax increase for about two-thirds of the middle class by 2027. The top 1 percent would still get a cut that year.

Only in 2027 do the wealthiest taxpayers get 83 percent of the benefit, as Schumer says. In 2018, roughly 21 percent of the tax cut's benefits go to the richest 1 percent, a much smaller figure, though still a disproportionate share. Just 11 percent will go to the middle one-fifth.

The emphasis on the flaws of contemporary populist political movements in Turkey Hungary & India is an apparent effort to associate Trump with political movements quite unconnected with his policies and aspirations for this country.

(...) that appears to have no policy or goals other than opposition our elected government, and a party that defeated them in elections (...)

(...)the beneficial effects of the reduction of regulations(...)evident benefits of our renewed focus on economic growth(...)

(...)and the evidence of it can be seen in their blatant refusals to rely or respond to authoritative Congressional requests for information.

(...)still disorientated by their defeat in 2016, and suddenly aware that many of their own lies have been found out(...)

I had thought - like most who understand politics - the "neo-" in "neo-liberal" referred to the meaning of "liberal" in the meaning it is used where this term was invented/first used.
Liberal outside the USA means something different ...