Thom Hartmann

Authoritarian-minded people, the people that John Dean wrote about in his book "Conservatives Without Conscience". There's a small number of authoritarian leaders, there's a large number of authoritarian followers and most of the people who voluntarily and enthusiastically become police officers or members of the military are authoritarian followers. Not all of them, certainly not all of them, but probably well over half.

The countries of the world that have the most stable economies and that suffer from the smallest boom and bust cycles are the countries with the highest tax rates on the very, very wealthy. The reason for that is that the government is functioning essentially as a stabilizer, so capitalist economies, there's just a fundamental truth about them. This is not a knock on capitalism, it's just the way it is.

I've got a question for you. I find this absolutely fascinating. Susan Crawford who wrote the books The Responsive City and Captive Audience, she's a professor at Harvard Law School and over at Wired magazine she's writing about the case of Louisville, Kentucky, or West Louisville specifically.

The tax bill is all about cutting income to the federal government and over a 10-year period the top one percent are going to gain five trillion dollars. The bottom 99 percent are going to lose three and a half trillion dollars. And the remaining one and a half trillion dollars will be added to the national debt.

"Ajit Pai is going to lose", wrote Evan Greer over at Fight for the Future just before the FCC voted to gut net neutrality…

John Gray in his article from 2004 or earlier, "A Day in the Life of Joe Republican", explains eloquently the attitude of conservatives towards protecting the people from the greed of big corporations.

FDR had this to say about paying taxes:"Taxes, after all, are the dues that we pay for the privilege of membership in an organized society. And as society becomes more civilized, Government - national, State and local government - is called on to assume more obligations to its citizens.

Let me just give you some names.The House Speaker Paul Ryan, the Republican, and Nancy Pelosi get to appoint conferees, people who are going to be on the conference committee for the Republican tax scam.

Can the President be convicted of high crimes and misdemeanors while sitting in office? If Mueller finds something, will Republicans call for impeachment?

There are some folks who say, well, this is all brand new, right? This Republican tax scam and all this kind of stuff.