The GOP tax bill in its current form: still not simple enough for LITD, but far more consideration-worthy than the NYT wants you to believe

There are a lot of good things in it: the Rubio-Lee child tax credit, reduction of the corporate tax rate, removing federal-level subsidy of high state-level income tax.

But it's still awfully arcane. And that's because no one in Washington has the spine to take an approach driven by basic prioritization of freedom. The starting premise ought to be that every penny of an American citizen's money is his or hers, and that government at any level ought to have to puke all over itself to justify forcibly taking any of it.

(There's going to be a certain kind of reader who, at this point, is going to be saying, "You sound like a wild-eyed libertarian." My rejoinder is that libertarians are actually spot on when it comes to the matter of taxation. If one doesn't cling to principle as the storm gales of special interests whip and toss one about, one will fly away and never be able to find that principle again.)

But then there is the New York Times spin on the bill, as discussed by Michael Barone:

"The Republican tax bill hurtling through Congress is increasingly tilting the United States tax code to benefit wealthy Americans." That's the beginning of a 37-word first sentence in a stage-setting front-page story in The New York Times on the tax bill under consideration in the Senate this week.

It's a nice illustration of creatively phrased advocacy journalism. "Hurtling" suggests irrational, uncontrolled, threatening movement; "tilting" suggests abandoning upstanding fairness; spelling out "the United States tax code" suggests an ominous attack on a respected national institution. And all this "to benefit wealthy Americans."

This is less reportage than it is advocacy journalism, written to advance the argument, with which many people agree, that Republican tax bills are harmful because they make federal taxation less progressive. But it's also an argument against any tax cut at any time. After all, if you start off with a progressive system that imposes higher rates on high earners and doesn't tax low earners at all -- as is the case with the current federal income tax -- then every tax cut takes that shape.

Acela-Corridor pointy-heads take it as a given that the leviathan state is entitled to a given portion of a citizen's assets, a portion much higher than what is required to finance government's constitutionally-specified functions.

The Grey Lady's arrogance is once again on full display.