President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said of America, “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little.” By this moral standard, the Republican Party has grossly failed our country with the passage of their tax bill. By providing a giant tax cut for the rich and corporations (and making those permanent) and giving modest tax cuts for individuals (and making those temporary), by ballooning the deficit by $1.5 trillion, and by repealing the Obamacare mandate, it takes from those who need it most – everyday Americans, the poor, the sick, the disabled – to give to those who have more than enough. In short, it’s a sort of reverse-Robin Hood.

With language like “deductions” and “loopholes,” it’s easy to gloss over the debate over taxes. However, tax policy affects every single American, so it’s important to know the good, the bad, and the ugly. Unfortunately, this tax bill is mostly ugly.

In the bill just passed by Congress, the tax rate for top earners drops from 39.6 percent to 37 percent. This cut is actually bigger than what was in the individual House and Senate bills, and it goes back on a promise that President Trump and his administration made that any cuts made to taxes wouldn’t benefit top earners, particularly the president himself. It turns out, that was a huge, blatant lie. And while the top bracket previously started at $470,000 for married couples, now it starts at $600,000, with those still quite wealthy people making between $470,000 and $600,000 being taxed at an even lower rate of 35 percent. The plan also doubles the threshold for the estate tax – meaning that the super rich can pass down up to $22 million per married couple to their heirs, tax-free. How nice.

The biggest benefit in the bill, however, goes to corporations. It’s the biggest cut in our nation’s history, dropping the rate from 35 percent to a mere 21 percent. The GOP argument here is that cutting the corporate rate significantly puts more money in the pockets of businesses to reinvest, grow their businesses, provide wage increases, and create jobs. But economists aren’t sure that’s entirely true, given that corporate after-tax profits are currently at a historic high. This means corporations already have the cash to spend on reinvestment and higher wages – they’re just choosing not to. So, the link between cutting the corporate tax rate and increasing jobs and wages is dubious, with many economists saying it’s not likely at all.

A plot of geopotential height for a single pressure level shows the troughs and ridges, Highs and Lows, which are typically seen on upper air charts. The geopotential thickness between pressure levels — difference of the 850 hPa and 1000 hPa geopotential heights for example — is proportional to mean virtual temperature in that layer. Geopotential height contours can be used to calculate the geostrophic wind, which is faster where the contours are more closely spaced and tangential to the geopotential height contours.[citation needed]

The National Weather Service defines geopotential height as:

"...roughly the height above sea level of a pressure level. For example, if a station reports that the 500 mb [i.e. millibar] height at its location is 5600 m, it means that the level of the atmosphere over that station at which the atmospheric pressure is 500 mb is 5600 meters above sea level. This is an estimated height based on temperature and pressure data."[1]

Those were heavy losses in pages whose content is managed by fewer than thirty people in total. And the reason, according to several defectors, was the Journal’s skidding reversal once Rupert Murdoch realized Trump could win. Several sources pointed to the editorials by one writer, James Freeman. “All-in for Ted Cruz” during the primaries, Freeman wrote a strong attack on Trump’s Mob dealings, and had a second ready to go. But as Trump got closer to clinching the nomination, Paul Gigot kept delaying publication, saying “it needed work.” Once Trump became the likely Republican nominee, Freeman executed a neat volte-face. “The facts suggest that Mrs. Clinton is more likely to abuse liberties than Mr. Trump,” he wrote. “America managed to survive Mr. Clinton’s two terms, so it can stand the far less vulgar Mr. Trump.”