Hola amigos: Disculpas por el prolongado silencio. Pero hay les voy con unas notas del inteligente columnista del NYT Leonhardt, acerca de la cacareada "Reforma Impositiva" del GOP y la no menos cacareada Venta de Uranio a Rusia, por parte de la "corrupta"(dixit Trump) Hillary Clintona lo mejor ni siquiera me extrañaron-, pero hay les voy, con unas notas del NYT, sobre la tan cacareada reforma impositiva del GOP Republicano de los EUA y la no menos sobre la supuesta venta de uranio a Rusia orquestada por la "corrupta" Hillary Clinton:
David Leonhardt
Op-Ed Columnist
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| An important, and often overlooked, part of the Republican tax plan is the change to the tax code’s inflation adjustment. I realize that “inflation adjustment” may not be one of the more exciting phrases you will find in your inbox this morning, but stick with me for a moment. |
| The federal government calculates a handful of different inflation measures, the best known being the Consumer Price Index. The other measures tend to show a slower rate of economywide inflation than the Consumer Price Index does. With a slower inflation rate, real incomes — that is, incomes after adjusting for inflation — rise more quickly. |
| (An example: If you got a 4 percent raise last year and inflation was estimated to be 2 percent, your real income rose about 2 percent. If inflation was only 1 percent, your real income rose about 3 percent.) |
| Tax brackets are based on inflation-adjusted incomes, and they currently use the Consumer Price Index. But the tax bill in Congress would switch to one of the other measures, which tends to show less inflation. By doing so, the Republicans’ plan makes incomes appear to be rising faster than they otherwise would — and pushes more households into higher tax brackets over time. This change is effectively a tax increase on families who are not already rich enough to be in the top tax bracket. |
| In the latest version of their tax plan, Senate Republicans have made the change in the inflation measure permanent. But all of the plan’s middle-class tax cuts are temporary. To summarize: The middle-class tax cuts vanish, while the middle-class tax increases (and an enormous tax cut for corporations) remain. |
| As Lily Batchelder of N.Y.U. tweeted: “By 2027, only income group that will benefit from Senate bill on average is top 1%. The other 99% will be worse off on average.” Her colleague David Kamin has much more detail in a post on Medium. |
| In related news, a new Quinnipiac poll finds that only 16 percent of Americans think the tax bill will reduce their own taxes. More than twice as many — 35 percent — expect their taxes to rise. |
| One G.O.P. senator broke with party leadership yesterday to oppose the plan. “I’m not going to vote for this tax package,” said Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson. His opposition is good news, but I’d encourage caution. Johnson also made noise about opposing the Senate health care bill this summer, before changing his position without a very good explanation. |
| Finally, if you missed this politically questionable photo of the treasury secretary and his wife, be sure to check it out. “If the Democrats were a competent political party,” wrote Bill Kristol, the conservative strategist and writer, “this photo would be in ads in every GOP swing district tomorrow, with a competition for best caption to get voters engaged.” |
| Uranium One, debunked. Fox’s Sean Hannity has called it part of “crooked Hillary Clinton’s web of corruption.” Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, is considering appointing a special counsel to investigate it. President Trump dubbed it “the real Russia story.” |
| It’s Uranium One, a made-up scandal involving Hillary Clinton, which has been making the rounds in conservative media. The claim is that Clinton, while serving as secretary of state, approved the sale of a mining company called Uranium One to Russia, giving it access to 20 percent of the uranium produced in the United States. She supposedly did so in exchange for donations to the Clinton Foundation, her family’s nonprofit organization. |
| The truth is far less sensational. And this week, one of the most clear-eyed fact-checks came from an unlikely source: Fox News. |
| For six and a half minutes on his Tuesday show, the anchor Shepard Smith calmly outlined the facts behind the controversy. “A committee of nine evaluated the sale, the president approved the sale, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and others had to offer permits and none of the uranium was exported” to Russia, Smith explained. |
| What about the donations to the Clinton Foundation? As Smith notes, the man who gave the bulk of the money as part of a supposed quid pro quo says that he sold his stake in Uranium One in 2007 — three years before the sale and over a year before Clinton became secretary of state. |
| The bottom line? “The accusation is predicated on the charge that Secretary Clinton approved the sale. She did not,” Smith concluded. |
| The full Opinion report from The Times follows, including Gail Collins and Nick Kristof on the tax plan. |
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