The Light from the Gates of Hell, Again

Last July I wrote, of the ACA repeal: "The main thing here is not the health care bill, which will be bad enough, but that Ryan, McConnell and their shadowy backers can pass enormously cruel and unpopular laws – even laws which will kill Americans – written in secret. Now that they have succeeded in that, there will be more such laws passed. The USA is now an authoritarian state run by a largely secret faction."

Except that did not happen after all. Instead, five months later, we have the tax rewrite, written by lobbyists, released at 5pm on a Friday. It is likely to pass; one of the last holdouts, Sen. Robert Corker, was persuaded to vote for it, demonstrating that his deficit hawkery was all along hypocrisy. So unless something extraordinary happens, it will pass. No single person even knows every provision of the law; indeed, one that seems to be specifically for the Trump family was snuck in at the last moment.

Now what? Do we need a constitutional amendment that forbids the creation and maintenance of aristocratic fortunes?