Wonk: Tax Reform Will Be GOP’s Next Nightmare
After “a stinging defeat” in their bid to replace ObamaCare, “President Trump and Republicans are looking for an easy win,” notes The Atantic’s Derek Thompson. But “tax reform is the opposite of easy.” Democrats aren’t likely to vote for GOP plans for a large tax cut, so Republicans will have to rely on budget “reconciliation rules,” which will require only 51 votes instead of the 60 needed to break a Senate filibuster. But they also require “offsets” to prevent boosting the deficit, and that spells trouble. House Speaker Paul Ryan “would scrap most itemized deductions,” Thompson notes. But removing even one is “like sending the equivalent of a bat signal into the Washington sky, all but ensuring that lobbyists for that particular cause swarm Capitol Hill.” It’s been 30 years since the last comprehensive tax reform, he notes, and “there’s little mystery” why: “Tax reform is a nightmare.”
Culture critic: It’s Hollywood vs. Scientology — Finally
Scientology’s newest problem comes from the same place that once helped make it “a worldwide phenomenon,” notes John G. Ekizian at Acculturated: Hollywood. “The number of new recruits is down, thanks in part to Scientology’s inability to develop younger breakout stars to supplant Tom Cruise and John Travolta.” Plus, “Hollywood and the mainstream media, which for decades stayed clear of reporting anything negative about Scientology” in order to make nice with Cruise and Travolta “doesn’t run scared anymore.” Ekizian cites new films, exposes and documentaries that “expose the insidious nature of this organization.” And if they “succeed in entertaining audiences, they also do a great service in reminding viewers of the dangers of cults.”
Media watchdog: More Fake News About Trump
“Just when you think media is ready to calm down and cover President Trump more carefully, they prove you wrong.” The latest example, says T. Becket Adams in the Washington Examiner, are reports that Trump “handed German Chancellor Angela Merkel a fake multibillion-euro invoice for her country’s NATO obligations.” Not only does the White House deny it, but now Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert does, too. “Reports that President Trump had presented the federal chancellor with a kind of bill . . . are not true,” Seibert told reporters. Unfortunately, Adams adds, the denials came “only after a significant number of media groups” latched onto the initial reporting.
Reporter: A Heroine Even Liberal Jews Love
At the pro-Israel group AIPAC’s conference Monday, “there was one question on the minds” of the 18,000 attendees, reports Armin Rosen at Tablet: “Where does the US ambassador to the UN fall in the presidential line of succession?” Rosen says Nikki Haley is “rapidly approaching folk hero status in the pro-Israel world” — even among these activists, a majority of whom are “liberals uneasy with the current administration.” Why the love? Haley has delivered “tangible results” for Israel supporters, helping to kill an anti-Israel UN report, for example, and blasting both the Iran nuke deal and the Team Obama’s decision not to veto a UN resolution on settlements. Haley got “frequent” applause at the event, but the “crowd would have given her the biggest cheers . . . no matter what.”
Conservative: Fly the Friendly Skies, but Dress Right
United Airlines’ insistence that three girls dress appropriately before boarding a flight unleashed a media storm, but Nicole Gelinas at City Journal says the airline is right not to back down. For starters, the girls weren’t paying customers but “travelers flying for free on United’s passes for employees and family members,” and the company has a strict dress code “for such perk flyers.” Gelinas calls the issue an “anodyne employer-employee matter,” but “an important one.” After all, United is “asking off-duty employees to uphold standards of dress that society, in general, should observe . . . If we can see the top band of your underpants or the straps of your bra, you’re doing something wrong.”
— Compiled by Adam Brodsky