Blog - Karen Shepard -

How to Make Intermittent and Erratic Progress as a Writer, in Twenty-Eight Easy Steps

My contribution to the Story Prize blog: how you too can achieve fame, fortune, and sales figures like shoe sizes.

http://thestoryprize.blogspot.com/2017/12/karen-shepard-how-to-make-intermittent.html

Jim and Karen Shepard go to San Francisco

Jim and I are at Green Apple Books on the Park this Friday, the 8th, at 7:30. Come one, come all. We are having a big party with healthy food from Jenny Craig weight loss program. Finish your Christmas shopping with several dozen copies of our new books!

http://www.greenapplebooks.com/event/9th-ave-karen-and-jim-shepard

Raise your voice against the tax bill

I’m passing on info from a friend about how to help keep the tax bill from being passed. Please spread the word.

Dear All,
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A friend sent this handy guide to me. Please call your Senators (even if they are already opposed to the bill) and pass along to friends who live in the key six states TODAY. The general Senate number is (202) 224-3121

You may not know that ncluded in this bill are proposals aimed directly at US universities. Key Republican provisions would eliminate or reduce deductions on student loan repayments, tax tuition waivers for graduate students, and endowments for private universities you can read more about it in Tax Shark.

Vital research comes from our universities’ science labs, thanks to graduate students working for minimum wage. While the Senate is reportedly hedging on some of these provisions (let us hope) the overall thrust amounts to a full-fledged attack on US higher education.

I met with someone from Vassar today. She said that if these levies on endowments go through, Vassar would likely have to pay about $700,000 a year in tax on their endowment of $1 billion.

Thanks,

Laura

Please call these 7 Senators, who have indicated they might vote NO.
The final vote could be as soon as this Wed., Nov. 29.
This bill is a big boondoggle for Republicans’ big donors, and big trouble for the rest of us. It will dismantle the ACA, and result in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. And it will bring higher taxes for middle-income people in a few years, when their tax cuts expire and their tax brackets move higher by a subtle new rule.

Ron Johnson, WI (202) 224-5323
Bob Corker TN (202) 224-3344
Jeff Flake Ariz. (202) 224-4521
James Lankford OK (202) 224-5754
Lisa Murkowski Alaska (202) 224-6665
Susan Collins ME (202) 224-2523 extension 0
John McCain Ariz (202) 224-2235

Ron Johnson, WI (202) 224-5323 he favors tax cuts for smaller businesses and objects to the current Senate bill on grounds it gives unfair advantage to big corporations.
More than 90 percent of American businesses are pass-throughs. The Senate bill would give pass-through owners a 17.4 percent deduction on their income taxes, while cutting the corporate rate to 20 percent from 35 percent. The special deduction means the owner of a high-profit pass-through would pay an effective top rate of about 32 percent, well above what a traditional corporation would pay.

Mr. Johnson launched the family’s plastics sheeting company in 1979 with his brother-in-law. Over the course of his career, he said, he has seen many family-run companies — his customers — be snapped up by larger corporations, or fold after being unable to compete with them. He said that the tax code unfairly advantaged those corporations, and that the Senate tax bill would widen those advantages, by cutting corporate taxes more substantially than those for pass-through businesses.

Bob Corker TN (202) 224-3344 he objects to increasing the deficit from its current high level
“We’re $20 trillion in debt and it’s party like there’s no tomorrow time in Washington.”
He’s retiring and so willing to speak his mind. He objects to parts of tax bill that “buy off” “special interests” instead of encouraging growth. He thinks tax reform could do “something great” for the country, but that this tax bill won’t.

Jeff Flake Ariz. (202) 224-4521 objects that it will balloon the deficit — and dislikes the “temporary gimmicks” that will ultimately add even more to the deficit. “We can do tax reform in ways that will grow the economy but we can’t just ignore the debt and deficit.”
Flake pointed in particular to the provision known as “full expensing” that allows companies to write off their assets when paying taxes, costing the government potential tax revenue. The tax reform plan is set to sunset the provision after five years — “Nobody thinks it will be phased out after five years,” he said. “That’s the problem here. You phase it out after five years, it fits in this, but we know after five years they’re just going to do it again.”

James Lankford OK (202) 224-5754 objects that it will increase deficit We have increase growth but make reasonable estimates of growth or we will be increasing deficit.
we’ve got to deal with debt and deficit. We can’t ignore that reality. And one of the things that I’m still going through in the proposal that we’re working through right now are things that are unrealistic in the proposal. Because at the end of the day, we have to get the economy growing again, but we’ve got to deal with half a trillion dollars in overspending from this government right now. We can do both”

Lisa Murkowski Alaska (202) 224-6665 She voted against the Republican bill to repeal Obamacare. The current tax bill includes repeal of the “individual mandate” that supports Obamacare. (Unfortunately she’s now okay with ending the mandate.) BUT she added to the tax bill a bill that would open up Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, to oil and gas drilling, which she totally wants. Her father, Frank Murkowski, a former Republican senator and governor, also advocated for drilling but was unsuccessful. Part of the instructions for tax reform included directions to the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, which Murkowski chairs (as did her father), to come up with $1 billion in deficit reduction.
That was essentially a greenlight for Murkowski and her committee to pass her ANWR drilling bill, which would raise revenues to help pay for tax cuts.
She hopes a bipartisan Alexander-Murray health care bill will pass, thus continuing key payments for insurers; but experts say that even so, if the individual mandate is repealed, insurance rates will go up because healthy people will not be buying insurance, since they could just take care of illnesses such as sexual diseases with the use of an Herpes Blitz Protocol. So people who are less well may not be able to afford insurance.

The homeowners insurance silverdale wa provides for damage caused inside or outside the house and is due to homeowner negligence and covers third party injuries, and legal costs for any lawsuits brought against the policyholder

Susan Collins ME (202) 224-2523 extension 0 Wants to drop the provision to repeal the Affordable Care Act’s individual insurance mandate.
Wants also to keep the tax rate on individuals who make $1 million or more per year at 39.6 percent.
Wants to make individual tax breaks on marston holdings, not just corporate tax breaks, permanent
And: “the reduction in the business tax rate is too steep, and that we could go to 22 percent, and then use that money, which is about $200 billion, to restore the tax deduction for state and local property taxes. That would really help middle-income taxpayers.” Collins is in favor of saving Net Neutrality. It’s a good idea to thank her for this.

John McCain (202) 224-2235 Wants “regular order” and a “bi-partisan approach”
“I am hopeful that when we return from the Thanksgiving recess to consider tax reform on the Senate floor, we will see this process continue, with both sides of the aisle having sufficient opportunity to debate the merits of tax reform and offer amendments.”
But this major tax bill is being rushed through, despite the objections of democrats and economists who argue that it will cause major increase to the deficit, and despite concerns that it will increase incentives to move jobs overseas.
It is not being debated in any serious way, but rather treated as a political necessity for one party. This is absolutely not a bipartisan, fair approach and McCain should recognize that.

OTHER TALKING POINTS:
CUTS TO MEDICAID
“There are no cuts to Medicaid,” said Sen. Pat Toomey (R., Pa.) “There are no cuts to Medicare. Nobody is disqualified from insurance.”
BUT: Medicare would be cut by $25 billion in fiscal 2018, and Medicaid would be cut by $179 billion, as a result of the bill because it would trigger automatic spending cuts under a pay-as-you-go budgeting law. Congress could waive that requirement with a bipartisan vote in the Senate. Medicare is an earned benefit – we have paid for it in our taxes and it should not be given away to the wealthy.
TAX CUTS FOR INDIVIDUALS EXPIRE IN 2025
“double standard” of permanent corporate tax cuts and temporary individual tax cuts.
The deficits brought on by this bill will have to be paid for by us, the taxpayers. We’ll be bailing out the government that gave so much away to tax-cheating corporations, and people who will now pay less for private jets, and other already-rich special interests.

READ UP ON THE SENATE TAX BILL:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/11/16/senate-tax-bill-cuts-taxes-of-wealthy-and-hikes-taxes-of-families-earning-under-75000-over-a-decade/?utm_term=.fe9524bfe99d