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For wed, Dec. 20, 2017
~All Gave Some~Some Gave
All~God Bless America
The real big bird
Just heard Art Laffer on Fox. He is a cautious economist. Commenting on on the tax law and the economy Art was more excited than I am when the Red Sox are a pennant race. We may have both in 2018. A World Champ and a booming economy. Happy New Year.
Divorce Is Making American Families 66% Bigger
Americans’ sprawling stepfamilies can make it harder to stay close.
By Ben Steverman
This holiday season, many Americans may need a flow chart to figure how they’re all related. What do you call, for example, your stepmother’s son’s live-in girlfriend’s 11-year-old son?
As family structures become more complicated, a new body of new research is attempting to quantify the trend. The proliferation of stepchildren, half-siblings, and other extended relationships has important implications for how American families function.
Almost a third of U.S. households headed by adults under age 55 have at least one stepparent, according to a recent analysis of survey data by University of Massachusetts Boston Professor Emily Wiemers and others. Similarly, the study found that, looking at couples over age 55 who have adult children, 33 percent have a stepchild.
These step-relationships can stretch both the size and definition of family—researchers included both married and unmarried cohabiting couples in the analysis. For Americans with grown children, counting stepchildren boosts the total number of adult kids by 66 percent, the study found.
The rise in divorce and remarriage is driving this growth in family size. Over the past two decades, the divorce rate has doubled for older Americans. Almost 30 percent of people over 50 had been married more than once, according to a recent study by scholars at Bowling Green State University. About 40 percent of older Americans with children are in stepfamilies, according to survey data.
“People in stepfamilies are often unsure of what their obligations are to their stepkin,” said Bowling Green sociology professor Karen Benjamin Guzzo. “It’s not uncommon for individuals to feel like they have to choose how to spread resources across their biological and step-relatives.”
These questions come up when planning vacations, paying for college, and especially as parents and stepparents age. Couples can fight about how much money or time they owe to children from their previous vs. current relationships.
As complex families get older, and baby boomer stepparents move from middle age into their elderly years, even more questions are raised. For example, when your elderly stepparent needs a ride to the doctor’s office, should you feel the same obligation as you would to a biological parent?
Stepkids can end up with more elderly parents to take care of, and aging parents may have more children to lean on for help. In practice, though, stepfamilies can feel less connected to each other. The Weimers study analyzed survey data to compare how often stepfamilies and more traditional families donate time to each other. Couples with adult stepchildren are 11 percentage points less likely to give time to their children, and 13 points less likely to receive time from kids.
“The increased availability of kin does not fully compensate for the weaker bonds among family members in stepfamilies,” the paper concludes.
Of course, many stepfamilies are quite close, and many traditional families never get along. But stepfamilies often need to work harder to bring their sprawling families together.
As family structures become more complicated, a new body of new research is attempting to quantify the trend. The proliferation of stepchildren, half-siblings, and other extended relationships has important implications for how American families function.
Almost a third of U.S. households headed by adults under age 55 have at least one stepparent, according to a recent analysis of survey data by University of Massachusetts Boston Professor Emily Wiemers and others. Similarly, the study found that, looking at couples over age 55 who have adult children, 33 percent have a stepchild.
These step-relationships can stretch both the size and definition of family—researchers included both married and unmarried cohabiting couples in the analysis. For Americans with grown children, counting stepchildren boosts the total number of adult kids by 66 percent, the study found.
The rise in divorce and remarriage is driving this growth in family size. Over the past two decades, the divorce rate has doubled for older Americans. Almost 30 percent of people over 50 had been married more than once, according to a recent study by scholars at Bowling Green State University. About 40 percent of older Americans with children are in stepfamilies, according to survey data.
“People in stepfamilies are often unsure of what their obligations are to their stepkin,” said Bowling Green sociology professor Karen Benjamin Guzzo. “It’s not uncommon for individuals to feel like they have to choose how to spread resources across their biological and step-relatives.”
These questions come up when planning vacations, paying for college, and especially as parents and stepparents age. Couples can fight about how much money or time they owe to children from their previous vs. current relationships.
As complex families get older, and baby boomer stepparents move from middle age into their elderly years, even more questions are raised. For example, when your elderly stepparent needs a ride to the doctor’s office, should you feel the same obligation as you would to a biological parent?
Stepkids can end up with more elderly parents to take care of, and aging parents may have more children to lean on for help. In practice, though, stepfamilies can feel less connected to each other. The Weimers study analyzed survey data to compare how often stepfamilies and more traditional families donate time to each other. Couples with adult stepchildren are 11 percentage points less likely to give time to their children, and 13 points less likely to receive time from kids.
“The increased availability of kin does not fully compensate for the weaker bonds among family members in stepfamilies,” the paper concludes.
Of course, many stepfamilies are quite close, and many traditional families never get along. But stepfamilies often need to work harder to bring their sprawling families together.
Report: California Second Worst State for Economic Freedom
A new international report has found that due to the burden of regulatory overreach and the highest taxes in the nation, California ranks 49th out of all 50 U.S. states in economic freedom. Only New York is worse.
When Canada’s Fraser Institute published its 2017 “Economic Freedom of the World” survey in September, the index surprisingly found that the United States suffered the third-worst plunge in economic world freedom (EWF) between 2000 and 2015, by falling 7 places from number 4 to number 11.
The index measures individual components for 1) the size of government and tax rates; 2) impartiality of the legal system and protection of property rights; 3) sound money and inflation; 4) freedom to trade; and 5) regulatory reach and costs.
Co-author Fred McMahon commented, “The freest economies operate with comparatively less government interference, relying more on personal choice and markets to decide what’s produced, how it’s produced, and how much is produced.”
Researchers at the Fraser Institute teamed with the U.S.-based Independent Institute’s Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation to gain insight into how much of America’s dismal loss of competitive standing was caused by California’s two-decade lurch to the left.
What they found is that California is now the second-least economically free state, with a score of 5.8 out of 10. That is about 30 percent lower than New Hampshire — America’s most economically free state, with a score of 8.3. New York continued to capture the booby prize for the least economically free with a score of 5.3.
To give a sense of just how far California has fallen, the nation of Mexico has a score of 6.17, or about 6.4 percent higher than California.
Independent Institute Senior Fellow Dr. Lawrence J. McQuillan stated that California has become so toxic for economic opportunity that 10,000 businesses left the Golden State, reduced operations, or expanded elsewhere over the last 7 years. Census data reveal that 3.5 million residents left California for greener pastures from 2010 to 2015.
Breitbart News recently reported that California continues to lead America in poverty, with 20.4 percent of residents in poverty, according to data released by the Census Bureau. With about 46,686,000, or 14.7 percent, of U.S. residents living in poverty, California, with 7,946,000, accounts for about one in six U.S. residents living in poverty.
According to David J. Theroux, Founder and President of the Independent Institute, “The 2017 report shows the public, news media, and policymakers in Sacramento what changes need to be made to make California competitive in the future.”
President Trump Infuriates Liberals by Hosting NRA’s Wayne LaPierre at White House Christmas Party
by AWR HAWKINS
President Trump infuriated liberals by hosting the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre at the White House’s December 14 Christmas party.December 14 was the fifth anniversary of the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School, and gun controllers who still use that attack to call for more Second Amendment restrictions were outraged.
Yahoo News! quoted Nicole Hockley, whose son was killed in the Sandy Hook attack:
December 14th marked five years since my six-year-old son, Dylan, was murdered in his first grade classroom alongside 19 of his classmates and 6 educators. Not only did [Trump] ignore the 5-year remembrance completely — not even a single tweet — he slapped us all in the face by having none other than NRA President Wayne LaPierre at his White House Christmas party that night. The appalling lack of humanity and decency has not gone unnoticed.
What Yahoo News! did not point out is that Hockley is the founder of the gun control group Sandy Hook Promise. This is the group for which country singer and former President Barack Obama supporter Tim McGraw held a fundraiser in 2015. It is the same gun control group for whom singer Sheryl Crow released a gun control anthem this year.
During the past two years, Sandy Hook Promise has supported a gun confiscation bill in Oregon and a federal expansion of background checks, neither of which would have prevented the Sandy Hook attack. Moreover, the group unsuccessfully opposed a concealed carry bill for law-abiding citizens in Georgia.
Hockley is upset that President Trump hosted LaPierre at the White House because LaPierre’s response to Sandy Hook is not a call for more gun control, but a call for good guys with guns guarding schools to keep children safe. After all, Sandy Hook was a gun-free zone, and that allowed the attacker to have more than nine minutes without facing any armed response. Nine minutes are an eternity if the bad guy is the only person in the building holding a gun.
During a White House press briefing on the day of the Christmas party, press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked if there were any gun controls the administration would support in light of attacks like the one at Sandy Hook or the October 1, 2017, attack in Las Vegas. She said, “I don’t think there’s any one thing that you could do that could have prevented either one of those. If you could name a single thing that would have prevented both of these, I’d love to hear it because I don’t know what that would look like.”
Sanders is correct. The expanded background checks Sandy Hook Promise supports would not have stopped the Sandy Hook attacker because he stole his guns. He did not walk into a store and buy them. Moreover, the expanded checks would not have stopped the Las Vegas attacker because he passed background checks for his firearms. Gun control proved impotent once more.
AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at http://ift.tt/2AC36Vm.
Powerful Democrat to quit Congress after disturbing accusations revealed
Sherry V Smith / Shutterstock.com
December has been the month of the #MeToo movement in Washington as multiple prominent lawmakers have resigned from office in the face of compelling sexual misconduct charges — and there are still two weeks of the month to go for more scandalous accusations to surface.
Following pivotal resignations of Democrats Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), Rep. Ruben Kihuen (D-Nev.) announced that he will not seek reelection in 2018 after enduring two weeks of disgraceful sexual harassment allegations. Just one day earlier, the House Ethics Committee revealed that Kihuen was going to be subjected to an investigation exploring accusations made by a former campaign aide.
Calling It Quits
Like the lawmakers before him who left under similar circumstances, Kihuen’s statement of resignation lacked an admission of guilt or an apology to any alleged victims. The 37-year-old freshman lawmaker denied any wrongdoing and suggested that an investigation would clear his name:
I want to state clearly again that I deny the allegations in question. I am committed to fully cooperating with the House Ethics Committee and I look forward to clearing my name.
Due process and the presumption of innocence are bedrock legal principles which have guided our nation for centuries, and they should not be lost to unsubstantiated hearsay and innuendo.
However, the allegations that have surfaced would be a distraction from a fair and thorough discussion of the issues in a reelection campaign. Therefore, it is in the best interests of my family and my constituents to complete my term in Congress and not seek reelection.
Kihuen allegedly “propositioned” a female staffer for “for dates and sex despite her repeated rejections,” and touched his accuser’s thigh against her wishes. An exposé from Buzzfeed News broke the initial story on Dec. 1, and Democratic Party leaders have consistently called for Kiheun’s resignation.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led the calls for his ouster, releasing a statement that left no room for negotiation with the House leader.
“In Congress, no one should face sexual harassment in order to work in an office or in a campaign,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The young woman’s documented account is convincing, and I commend her for the courage it took to come forward.”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) echoed Pelosi’s position in his own statement, declaring that, “Members and candidates must be held to the highest standard. If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault,” he continued, “they should not hold elected office. Congressman Kihuen should resign.”
Due process and the presumption of innocence are bedrock legal principles which have guided our nation for centuries, and they should not be lost to unsubstantiated hearsay and innuendo.
However, the allegations that have surfaced would be a distraction from a fair and thorough discussion of the issues in a reelection campaign. Therefore, it is in the best interests of my family and my constituents to complete my term in Congress and not seek reelection.
Kihuen allegedly “propositioned” a female staffer for “for dates and sex despite her repeated rejections,” and touched his accuser’s thigh against her wishes. An exposé from Buzzfeed News broke the initial story on Dec. 1, and Democratic Party leaders have consistently called for Kiheun’s resignation.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) led the calls for his ouster, releasing a statement that left no room for negotiation with the House leader.
“In Congress, no one should face sexual harassment in order to work in an office or in a campaign,” Pelosi said in a statement. “The young woman’s documented account is convincing, and I commend her for the courage it took to come forward.”
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Rep. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) echoed Pelosi’s position in his own statement, declaring that, “Members and candidates must be held to the highest standard. If anyone is guilty of sexual harassment or sexual assault,” he continued, “they should not hold elected office. Congressman Kihuen should resign.”
Kihuen ultimately succumbed to the pressure after a second woman came forward. The Nevada Independent detailed a lobbyist’s account of Kihuen’s “persistent, unwanted sexual advances” made while he was serving as a Nevada state senator. The second anonymous accuser says that Kihuen touched her against her will on at least three different occasions.
“That Was Wrong”
Kihuen is the fifth national congressman to announce his resignation in just the last two weeks. Senior Rep. Conyers was the first to go, announcing his immediate retirement on Dec. 5 after being hospitalized for a stress-related illness.
Two days later, both Sen. Franken and Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) said they would resign in the coming weeks for similar allegations. While both congressmen admitted that their actions could have been perceived as making women uncomfortable, they each remained defiant, refusing to acknowledge any history of sexual misconduct.
Like Kihuen, Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) said that he will not seek reelection in 2018 after media reports alleged that he fostered a hostile work environment and sexually harassed female staffers. Farenthold was perhaps the most candid of the disgraced lawmakers, admitting that he “allowed a workplace culture in my office that was too permissive and decidedly unprofessional” and said that he allowed the stress of his job to surface “in angry outbursts and too often a failure to treat people with the respect that they deserved.
“That was wrong,” Farenthold admitted in an apology that was notably absent among the other accused congressmen.
While these men apologized to their constituents, each failed to offer an apology to the people that most needed to hear this it: their victims.
Report: Trump could fire Robert Mueller before Christmas
The now-infamous Robert Mueller was appointed as a special counsel to investigate allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election, particularly in the form of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials. But his reign as special prosecutor may soon come to end, according to one Democratic congresswoman.
Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.) claimed Friday that President Donald Trump is about to fire special counsel Robert Mueller. This claim is reportedly based on a reports that Mueller’s investigators hadn’t scheduled any interviews for January.
“The rumor on the Hill when I left yesterday was that the president was going to make a significant speech at the end of next week,” Speier told Public Media for Northern California’s KQED News on Friday. “And on Dec. 22, when we are out of D.C., he was going to fire Robert Mueller.”
“This is a Circus”
“We can read between the lines I think,” Speier, who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said. “I believe this president wants all of this shutdown. He wants to shut down these investigations, and he wants to fire special counsel Mueller.”
She added that she believes “there is a rush to try and shut this committee investigation down.”
“This is a circus at this point,” Speier claimed.
Mueller’s team has been investigating claims of Russian collusion for months, but thus far, no evidence has been produced that suggests the Trump transition team had any illegal contact with the Kremlin.
House Investigation
The House Intelligence Committee, including Speier, has also been conducting its own investigation into possible collusion. But Rep. Adam Schiff, (D-Calif.), the committee’s ranking Democratic member, fears that the committee’s GOP majority will attempt to shut hearings down on the subject.
He tweeted that he is “increasingly worried Republicans will shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation at the end of the month.”
Since March, our investigation has made important progress. We’ve interviewed numerous key witnesses behind closed doors, held public hearings, reviewed thousands of documents, identified new leads — all to understand and expose Russia’s meddling and protect our democracy.
Yet, Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in [2018]. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on.
Trump Team Denies Rumors
Though Mueller is similarly hesitating to schedule interviews, this is not the first time rumors have swirled that Trump may fire the special prosecutor. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders first dismissed these rumors in October.
“There is no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel,” she said at that time.
Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb is reportedly denying the current claims, as well.
Yet, Republicans have scheduled no witnesses after next Friday and none in [2018]. We have dozens of outstanding witnesses on key aspects of our investigation that they refuse to contact and many document requests they continue to sit on.
Trump Team Denies Rumors
Though Mueller is similarly hesitating to schedule interviews, this is not the first time rumors have swirled that Trump may fire the special prosecutor. White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders first dismissed these rumors in October.
“There is no intention or plan to make any changes in regards to the special counsel,” she said at that time.
Trump’s lawyer Ty Cobb is reportedly denying the current claims, as well.
As the White House has repeatedly and emphatically said for months, there is no consideration at the White House of terminating the special counsel.
With reports surfacing that allege bias and corruption from members of Mueller’s team, as well as claims that suggest Mueller himself has lied to the Senate, it may be best to keep the special prosecutor’s team in place: they’re digging their own graves at this point.
Many of you told us this would happen --- Report: Four Senators Want Al Franken to Reconsider His Resignation
by KATHERINE RODRIGUEZ
At least four senators want Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) to rethink his resignation from Congress, including two senators who issued statements calling for Franken to step down two weeks ago, according to a report.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), one of the senators who did not call for Franken to resign from Congress until he went through an Ethics Committee investigation, said what the Democrats did to Franken was “atrocious” and “hypocritical.”
“What they did to Al was atrocious, the Democrats,” Manchin told Politico. “The most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen done to a human being — and then have enough guts to sit on the floor, watch him give his speech and go over and hug him? That’s hypocrisy at the highest level I’ve ever seen in my life. Made me sick.”
Other senators privately said that they think calling for Franken’s resignation was premature.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who publicly called for the Minnesota Democrat to step down, told Franken privately that he regrets his statement.
A third senator, who declined to be identified because of how politically sensitive the issue is among Democrats, also regretted calling for Franken’s ouster.
“I think we acted prematurely, before we had all the facts,” said a third senator who has also called for the resignation, and has since expressed regret directly to Franken. “In retrospect, I think we acted too fast.”
Two of the senators who called for Franken to step aside told Politico that they felt rushed to comment on the issue as other meetings and hearings distracted them from giving their full attention to the situation while more Democrats piled on Franken.
Franken, along with several other senators, called for an ethics investigation into his behavior as allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced.
The first allegation of sexual misconduct emerged after veteran radio journalist Leeann Tweeden accused Franken of groping her breasts while she slept and shoving his tongue down her throat without permission in 2006.
At least two other accusers who came forward accused the Minnesota Democrat of groping them while posing for photos when he was in office.
Democrats stopped calling for the ethics investigation and immediately called for his resignation after the eighth accuser came forward. Franken obliged and announced that he would resign “in the coming weeks.”
It appears that despite some Democrats calling for Franken to reconsider his resignation, the Minnesota senator has not changed his mind about resigning from his position.
Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton announced that Lt. Gov. Tina Smith would be appointed to Franken’s seat, and Franken said he was working with Smith on the transition.
Once First in the Nation, Massachusetts Students Show Further Decline After Common Core
by DR. SUSAN BERRY
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Massachusetts students were first in the nation in reading and math performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam – until the state adopted the Common Core standards in 2010 and then updated the same standards this year.
According to a new study released by the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, while Common Core led to tumbling scores on the NAEP in both English and math for Massachusetts students, the 2017 standards update shows students’ performance in English is deteriorating further as math scores remain as they did with the 2010 Common Core.
“These standards rely on process- and skills-based ideas, which brush aside knowledge of Western and English literary traditions,” said Emory University English Professor Mark Bauerlein, a co-author of Pioneer’s study titled “Mediocrity 2.0: Massachusetts Rebrands Common Core ELA and Math.”
“The result is a set of standards light on content but heavy on fuzzy subjective terms such as ‘high quality’ and ‘challenging,’” Bauerlein added. “Great works of literary art and the history of the English language, not to mention the American patrimony, disappear.”
The standards direct teachers to fill their syllabi with materials drawn from different cultures, but with no guidance as to the enduring literary value of various works. As a result, sensitivity to diversity prevails over traditional literary and historical knowledge.
…
The new mathematics standards are not an improvement over the Common Core-aligned standards adopted by Massachusetts in 2010. Under the new standards, Massachusetts students will remain three or more years behind their peers in high-achieving countries like China, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore.
“These standards are based on the idea that the math students used to learn is obsolete,” said Stanford University Professor Emeritus of Mathematics James Milgram, a co-author of the study, according to Pioneer. “But mathematics is entirely hierarchical. Areas that have become more prominent in the 21st century require the same basic math foundation.”
The fall in scores in the Bay State since Common Core was adopted is especially noteworthy, given the state’s prior first place ranking, but between 2011 and 2015, Massachusetts was one of 16 states that experienced a drop in their NAEP scores.
“The evidence is building that it was a demonstrable mistake for Massachusetts to adopt these standards,” said Jamie Gass, director of Pioneer’s Center for School Reform, according to the Gloucester Times. “It’s pretty clear from the recent data that we’re backsliding as a state. Common Core is failing kids.”
Another international measure of reading skills released last week showed that the achievement gap in the United States has widened since implementation of Common Core, a progressive reform that was supposedly going to shrink that gap.
According to results released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), in 2016, the average score in the U.S. on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) dropped to 549 out of 1,000 from the average score of 556 in 2011. The results translate into the nation’s decline from fifth in international ranking in 2011 to 13th in 2016 out of 58 international education systems.
Additionally, the lowest performing students in the U.S. declined the most in performance on the PIRLS, leading to the wider gap between lower income minority and middle class students.
Similarly, in April of 2016, NAEP results showed that only about 37 percent of U.S. 12th graders are prepared for math and reading at the college level.
Results of the 2015 Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS) and the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA) also found American students showing, at best, mediocre performance in math, science, and reading.
“What we see since the Common Core took over is that our educational achievement is actually deteriorating rather than just being unable to keep up,” former U.S. Education Department senior policy adviser under George W. Bush Ze’ev Wurman told Breitbart News.
“One wonders for how long will the states – and [Bill] Gates-funded educational researchers – keep the charade that Common Core standards are ‘rigorous’ and ‘demanding’ in view of the deteriorating reality hitting their faces,” he added. “At some point even all the Bill Gates billions thrown at propping up this mediocre and ill-conceived educational disaster should not justify harming the future of millions of children.”
WSJ: The Tax Cuts Will Grow the Economy by Much More than Expected
by JOHN CARNEY
Mark Wilson/Getty Images
Tax cuts are going to grow the economy by much more than expected.
That’s the verdict of the Wall Street Journal‘s prestigious “Heard on the Street” column. Importantly, Heard on the Street is run by the news side of the WSJ, not its tax-cut loving editorial page. So there’s no particular pro-tax cut or pro-Republican bias at work here.
There were several surprises for investors when Republicans unveiled their final tax bill Friday, but the most significant is that they add up to a bigger boost to economic growth next year.
The bigger stimulus could fundamentally change how the market behaves in 2018. Sales and profits will be stronger than most investors expect. But with the unemployment rate low, wage pressures will mount faster, and inflation should pick up more. If the tax plan passes, as seems likely, it could lead the Federal Reserve to raise rates faster, putting the bond market at risk.
The tax plan was always expected to juice the economy, but the Senate version, which passed after the House approved its bill, had relatively modest short-term stimulus. While the stock market kept rising in anticipation of a cut, the bond market hardly budged. The bill unveiled Friday front-loaded more than $200 billion in stimulus for next year. Economists had been penciling in a boost of about a third of a percentage point next year. Now that is looking way low.
Some of the pro-growth changes include eliminating any delay to the corporate tax cuts, lowering of the top individual rate, lowering rates for most taxpayers, and increasing the child tax credit. The latter is particularly important because middle-class households are “more likely to spend extra income than the rich.”
The tax bill could increase GDP by 1.3 percent, Lahart writes.
That’s an additional full percentage point gain from what economists had been expecting based on earlier bills.
(Full disclosure: I used to work for Heard on the Street and consider Lahart a personal friend. He’s had me over to his apartment for fish.)
Another Poll Exposes the Steep Toll of Fake News About Tax Cuts
by JOHN CARNEY
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite
Half of Americans predict that the tax bill Congress is close to passing will raise their taxes, a view that is contrary to all serious studies of the tax bill.
According to the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation assessment of the Senate version of the bill, just 8.1 percent of Americans would see their taxes rise under the Senate bill. That number is likely lower now that the child tax credit and deduction for state and local taxes have been expanded in the final version of the bill.
Yet a Monmouth University poll shows that 50 percent of the public say they expect their taxes will go up.
Just 14 percent say their taxes will go down, according to the Monmouth poll. The JCT estimates that 61.7 percent of taxpayers will get a tax cut. And, again, that number is likely to be higher due to the expansion of credits and deductions in the final bill.
Public ignorance about the reality of tax cuts has become markedly worse in recent weeks. An earlier poll by CBS News showed that 22 percent expected their taxes to fall under the bill and 44 percent expected their taxes to rise.
The results of the poll show that news outfits have failed to inform the public about the tax reform bill. Instead of understanding how the bill will actually affect them, the public appears to have absorbed the talking points of the Democrat opposition.
Given this widespread misunderstanding, it is not surprising that 47 percent of the public disapprove of the tax reform efforts, and just 26 percent approve. Just 29 percent say they want to bill to succeed (a bit mysteriously, since that’s three percent higher than the approval figure), and 39 percent say Congress should scrap the bill and start again next year.
One potential source of the public confusion on this issue could be the fact that many of the tax cuts for individuals are set to expire sometime over the next decade. The expiration of those cuts would, if it occurred, raise taxes on many Americans. But Republican lawmakers have already vowed to fight against the expiration and no Democrats have said they figure allowing the cuts to expire. Most “temporary” tax cuts get extended or made permanent. And that seems highly likely in the case of the current bill, given that no lawmakers advocate permitting the expiration.
The official Congressional scorekeepers, however, are required to adopt the improbable outcome that tax bills will operate exactly as written. No serious economist would use that as a reliable forecast, however.
What’s more, even if tax cuts did expire, most taxpayers would still have paid lower taxes over the ten year period that forecasters use to evaluate tax and budget plans. Which means that even in the worst case scenario, far fewer Americans would see a tax hike than polls indicate expect tax hikes.
But the public has been led to believe that the least likely outcome–and one that would not, in any case, happen for several years–is not only certain but immediate.
How Christmas Baptizes Norse Mythology Into Powerful Christian Archetypes
As long as we bring trees into our homes every December, the gospel is being scandalously preached to he or she who has an ear to hear their sermon.
By Aaron Gleason
Every Christmas we all take a tree that otherwise doesn’t die and we kill it. Then we place it inside our homes and cover it with a bunch of chintzy nonsense. As Jim Gaffigan says, this sounds like the actions of a drunk man.
In his Christmas tree bit, a wife wonders why there’s a pine tree in the living room, and Jim answers with slurred speech saying that they’re gonna decorate it, for Jesus. Indeed, that is exactly why we have Christmas trees: Not drunk people, but Jesus the Messiah.
The Christmas tree is a perfect symbol of Christian theology. It depicts the complete good news of Christ. But to see this we need to understand what the tree means and where it comes from. Let’s look at the tree’s origins. That begins with Norse mythology.
The Tree Upon Which the World Hangs
Norse mythology centers upon a tree. This is not exactly novel. Trees are sacred in almost every culture and religion to varying degrees. This makes sense for several reasons: trees represent immortality because they can live for thousands upon thousands of years. They also are often a source of life either by their fruit or the shade they provide, or because humans have learned how to craft almost anything from their flesh.
But the tree at the center of Norse mythology is unique. It is called Yggdrasil. Modern people tend to think of and depict it as a gigantic ash tree where the nine realms of gods, elves, dwarves, etc. sit in the branches and roots. Ancient Norse people would’ve probably seen these renditions and known what was meant, but to them the tree didn’t actually exist in that way at all. Yggdrasil was existence itself. The world itself was the tree.
By world, I don’t mean earth. Earth was a realm—Midgard, or, as J.R.R. Tolkien called it, middle earth. Our realm of Midgard was small within the world of this cosmic tree.
The cosmic tree was most clearly seen and understood only after the sun went down. Then the universe is laid bare before man’s eyes. In a world without city lights, the naked eye can see the universe of stars that surrounds us in shocking detail. Billions of stars explode across the night sky like a Jackson Pollock painting.
In the middle of all that splendor was the Bifrost, what we call the Milky Way. We’ve discovered this white path through the night sky is actually an arm of our spiral galaxy. But to the Norse the Bifrost was a bridge between Asgard and Midgard. Asgard was the home of the Aesir, the greatest Norse gods, Odin of course being their chief.
So what does Yggdrasil mean? It is often translated as “Odin’s horse.” But that is actually a theological interpretation of the true meaning of the word. The word literally means “The Awesome One’s Gallows.” To say it is Odin’s horse is therefore not false.
‘I Hung on a Windy Tree’
Odin was the Zeus of the north men. He was the awesome one, the highest of the high ones. Now what about this business of horse and gallows? This, as Bill the Bard would say, is the rub.
Odin is a strange god by ancient standards. Tolkien’s Gandalf is explicitly patterned after him. The only real difference is that Odin carries a spear and is missing an eye. Aside from that, he looks like Gandalf, from the top of his grey wide-brimmed hat to the bottom of his dirty boots. This visage that could pass for a homeless man disguised the awesome one as he wandered about the earth.
In contrast to other ancient gods, Odin benefited humanity both metaphysically and ethically. He was generally not depicted as a god requiring elaborate propitiation. In ethical terms, he modeled the humility and cost of gaining wisdom. This is seen through the story of how he sacrificed his eye to gain wisdom, but even more significant is his search for the runes. The Poetic Edda recounts it like this:
I know that I hung on a windy Tree nine long nights,
Wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
Myself to myself,
On that tree of which no man knows
From where its roots run.
No bread did they give me nor drink from a horn,
Downwards I peered;
I took up the Runes, screaming I took them,
Then I fell back from there.
Wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
Myself to myself,
On that tree of which no man knows
From where its roots run.
No bread did they give me nor drink from a horn,
Downwards I peered;
I took up the Runes, screaming I took them,
Then I fell back from there.
To us this seems bizarre and esoteric, but to the north men the finding and the giving of the runes to humanity was equivalent to being made in God’s image. Odin wins the runes through his sacrifice of himself, then gives them to humanity.
The ability to speak and communicate is one of the primary things that separates humans from animals. It is our most powerful faculty, enabling thought, communication, politics, etc. Scholar G. Ronald Murphy explains the runes’ relevance to Jesus:
Woden gave the powerful Runes, Christ gave powerful words, and is himself, in John’s Gospel the Logos, the divine word of creation. If we take the ninth-century Heliand as indicative of a Germanic appreciation of the story of Christ and words, the poet is amazed primarily at the power of the “light words” used by Christ in speaking.
The North men saw the obvious parallels between Jesus on the cross and Odin on the tree. And that tree was Yggdrasil: the awesome one’s gallows, the place where God was hung. Yggdrasil is the cross.
Overcoming the End of the World
Before they came to know Jesus, the north men celebrated a holiday called Yule. This was connected to the winter solstice for the same reason that Jesus’ birth is: symbolism. But the symbolism of the sun’s retreat ending is far more striking in the cold north lands, because there winter means more than hardship. In a world without electricity, snow and ice mean death.
So they celebrated Yule by honoring “the mothers” with an all-night vigil on December 25. The mothers were almost certainly the three wise “hags” known as the Norns, who continually refresh the cosmic tree Yggdrasil with the waters from the well of Urd.
One part of the Yule celebration was to bring evergreen trees into homes and halls. The evergreen tree thus came to symbolize Yggdrasil as much as the ash tree does. In fact it’s a far more appropriate symbol because the evergreen trees were reminders of two things: first, that winter could be defeated, as evergreens do it every year; and second, that one day Yggdrasil would defeat Ragnarok, the Norse end of the world.
In Norse eschatology, the sign of the end is three harsh winters in a row. Then the gods are defeated and everything is destroyed in water—except for Yggdrasil, who suffers the horrors of Ragnarok but survives the cataclysm. Then the great tree opens itself, revealing two children who will repopulate a new earth.
Because of these beliefs, the north men saw in Jesus their own worldview completed. He hung upon the cross, like Odin, for the sake of humanity. By clinging to the cross we can all escape God’s wrath in Ragnarok, just like the children hid within Yggdrasil. So the churches of the north are explicitly patterned upon evergreen trees because their union with Christ places them inside Yggdrasil’s protection.
And the cross became to them Yggdrasil: the awesome one’s gallows, the place where god was sacrificed for us. Just look at the stave churches, especially: they are Christmas trees. You can actually go inside these Christmas trees, and there with the body of Christ find salvation from sin and death. Within Yggdrasil you can escape Ragnarok.
‘The Gallows We Shall Never Know’
After learning of all this I was moved to write this poem about Christmas, called “Yggdrasil: The Winter Soldier.”
The cold bites
Then soul fights
The seasons come and go
The pain of loss
Then falling dross
The seasons come and go
The sun shines
Then ties unbind
The seasons come and go
All other leaves fall
Yet the gallows stand tall
Regardless of season or snow
Evils still smolder
And slowly grow bolder
But the one the gallows know
Burns much colder
This winter soldier
The one the gallows know
Has crossed the bifrost
To pay our cost
Now the gallows we shall never know.
In this poem, I realized that for the first time God had spoken to me as he did on Pentecost, “each one heard them speaking in his own native language.” My heart speaks the language of Yggdrasil, and Jesus learned that language too so he might speak with me as he did my European ancestors, and as he does to all the nations of the earth.
Sociology has been pointing out our decreasing religiosity for decades. But as long as we bring trees into our homes every December, the gospel is being scandalously preached to he or she who has an ear to hear their sermon.
A.C. Gleason grew up in the Philippines as a child of evangelical missionaries. He is a graduate of Biola University (where he met his wonderful wife) and Talbot Seminary, where he studied philosophy and theology. Currently he works with special-needs students in California public schools.
G’ day…Ciao…
Helen and Moe Lauzier
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