Okay, I Was Wrong, I Admit It: Turns Out Speaker Johnson Ain’t So Smart After All

I thought he might display a tiny small hint of vague leadership skill, but, oh well

Unlike most political pundits, I do admit when I am wrong. I also do not make excuses for myself. I was wrong. Period.

I had written previously that I was cautiously possibly slightly optimistic and heartened by the fact that the new Speaker of the House Mike Johnson was at least intelligent and could speak like a human to fellow humans.

I did acknowledge everything problematic about him — his offensive homophobia, his stark Christian nationalism, his anti-abortion views, and his past pandering to Trump with a weird legal theory to overthrow the 2020 election— and yet I still insisted that at least he had a brain and that was a plus.

Turns out, nope. No actual brain in evidence. Too bad.

That previous article I wrote… I printed it out. I ripped it up into small pieces. I placed it in a large candle holder. I took a match. I lit it on fire. I carefully collected the ashes and deposited them in the trash. Satisfied with this cleansing ceremony, I then deleted that article from Medium. It had earned me eight dollars, and I almost wish I could refund the eight dollars somehow.

You may be wondering what is up with the photo I chose for this piece. That is a Rubik’s cube that anyone can solve. That is the game the House GOP is playing. It is not even black and white to them, but just all white (and no, I’m not talking about racism; a topic for another day). Keep it all white and hey, no thinking is required. No facts are required. Certainly, no reasonableness is required.

Active grey matter in skull is optional.

Everything they do, everything they say, every bit of legislation they propose is all part of one game: Get applause when they appear on Fox News and get lots of likes on their social media fundraising sites, and count that as a “legislative” success.

Nothing they do, nothing they say, no legislation they propose has anything to do with solving actual vexing puzzles and problems. Their solutions don’t even solve the problems they say are problems!

Speaker Johnson revealed himself to be one of those guys who is clever at “faking it” but can’t show any proof of intelligence when handed a real Rubik’s cube.

Here is the proof that actual intelligence is not there.

Speaker Johnson proposed — with a straight face — 14.3 billion in funding to support Israel that must be offset by cutting 14.3 billion from the new funding that had been given to the IRS for staffing and improvements in how the IRS operates.

He proposed this because he and the GOP are concerned about the growing deficit. Uh-huh.

Allow me to quote Steve Rattner — who is not a flaming liberal when it comes to money matters. He is chairman and chief executive officer of Willett Advisors LLC, a private investment firm. Steve said:

“Offsetting government spending by cutting the IRS budget is like offsetting a fire with gasoline.”

It really does not take a big brain to understand that. The IRS is in charge of collecting revenue. They need funding to audit billionaire tax cheats and collect what is owed. Cutting IRS funding cuts their ability to go after tax cheats. So the government takes in less money. So, the budget deficit increases even more.

I bet if you illustrated all of this with bits of Halloween candy instead of money, even a 7-year-old could understand it.

Yet, budget hawk Speaker Johnson proposed to control the increasing debt by… increasing the debt even more!

The bottom line is that cutting 14 billion from the IRS will equal lost revenue of approximately 27 billion that the IRS could have squeezed out of super-wealthy tax cheats. That is 27 billion added to the debt.

Mike, you are complaining about adding 14 billion to the debt so you propose to solve the problem by instead adding 27 billion to the debt?!

I had thought I had spotted signs of intelligent life in the House GOP. I was wrong. Turns out the search for intelligent life in the House GOP is as pointless as sitting on a hill outside Area 51 with your binoculars, hoping to spot a UFO or a little green man or whatever.

My apologies to my readers for my stupidity in thinking I had a sighting of a brain. Sorry. My bad.