Illinois Affordable Housing Tax Credit Program: Fill & Download for Free

There is actually a lot to like about Chicago, and things to hate as well. Having lived in multiple other cities and countries, and having spent my last 20+ years here I can see it both ways.The good:Public transportation is excellent. The L (elevated train), buses and Metra trains can get you almost anywhere quickly and cheaply and if you live in the city you really don’t need to own a car.Food - Chicago is a cultural melting pot with huge ethnic communities that makes for a culinary heaven.Economy - I read in a Wall Street Journal article that Chicago has the most diverse economy of any US city, and it certainly has more economic opportunities then any non-coastal city in this country. No other Midwest city has the type of high paying jobs that Chicago offers.Housing - whether you want the high rise experience or a single family home Chicago has more affordable housing options that don’t put ownership out of reach for middle class families. I know some will dispute this point but before you call me out on this look at housing in New York, San Francisco or Seattle.Sports - I learned when I moved here that Chicago is a sports town. It took me several years to understand that this meant the folks here rally around the Bears, Bulls, Cubs, Sox, Fire, Blackhawks, Wolves etc, instead of actually participating in sports themselves. During my tenure hear we have had the NBA finals multiple times, Worlds Series on both the North and South sides, Stanley Cup Finals, and the Bears have gone to the Super Bowl. Chicago fans go crazy for their teams while other cities can be rather indifferent. The Chicago Marathon, Triathlon, Chicago to Macinaw Island Sailboat race, John Hancock building stairway race, local century rides and various sports leagues provide plenty of opportunities to be active in Chicago. In winter the city parks are great for x-country skiing and there are numerous free public skating rinks.Culture - Theatre, Opera, Dance, Museums, Live Music…. Chicago has it all and there are multiple events going on every day of the week.The bad:Taxes - Illinois and Chicago specifically have been owned and operated by the Democratic party for almost 100 years and any type of one-party rule like that doesn’t yield good results. Illinois has the highest property taxes in the nation, and state income taxes are the highest of any Midwest state. Illinois has the worst credit rating of any state in the US and will eventually need to file for bankruptcy to dissolve its pension obligations. See Detroit, see Puerto Rico…Corruption - see point #1 above. In Chicago they say ”vote early, vote often” and consider political corruption to be laugh worthy. 5 of the last 8 Illinois governors have gone to jail after their terms in office and machine politics dominate at all levels of government.Education - The Chicago Public School system boast a 55% graduation rate, and sending your kid to the neighborhood school is a last resort for many parents. There are selective enrollment schools that have better educational outcomes if your kids can test into them, but parents with the mean generally opt for parochial or private options. I pay to send my kids to private school and every year there are families that leave the city to get their kids into the stronger free public schools in the suburbs. Many CPS teachers send their kids to private schools, and that statement says it all.Traffic - If spending your day caught in a traffic jam irks you then Chicago might not be for you. The public transport is excellent, but if you have to drive somewhere in a private car don’t expect to average more than 10 mph in the city.Sports - It took me a while, but I found folks in Chicago who actually participate in sports themselves. In general I don’t think of Chicago as a healthy or active place to live - see Boulder Colorado. We have snow without mountains, and beaches without waves.Housing - While real estate in Chicago may be cheaper than other major metropolitan areas, in most cases its wont be a great investment over the near to mid term. Illinois has not fully recovered from the housing crisis and property values have not fully recovered to their pre-recession levels. Foreclosure prevention programs the city put in place have kept zombie properties from being rehabilitated and these drop the value of all surrounding real estate. Ever increasing ptate and property taxes have caused Chicago and Illinois residents to flee leading to population decreases in the city and state for 5 consecutive years. These demographic trends make Chicago a poor choice for buy and hold investors or home owners in general. These demographic trends are unlikely to be addressed unless the city and state elect adult leadership and/or file for bankruptcy.

How are unemployment insurance benefits in the United States broken?The Welfare CliffEffectively, lower paid workers are encouraged through a broken system to take a lower paying position in order not to risk losing welfare benefits such as health insurance.From The Welfare Cliff and Why Many Low-Income Workers Will Never Overcome PovertyPretend you are a poor, single parent of two in Chicago, earning $12 an hour, working full time, and determined to do what is best for your family. And suppose your employer, impressed with your work, offers you training for and promotion to a new job paying $15. Should you take the offer?It sounds like a no-brainer, but it’s not.At your present $12 an hour you are eligible for refundable tax credits, food assistance, housing assistance, child care assistance, and medical assistance worth $41,465 combined. Together with your earned income after taxes of $22,121, you are now bringing home about $63,586 a year.If you take your employer’s offer, you’ll earn $5,451 more after taxes, $27,572. You will also become eligible for an Affordable Care Act (ACA) premium tax credit. But at that level of earned income all your other benefits would decrease by $8,336, more than your increase in net pay. That means the income you would bring home would decrease from $63,586 to $60,701.Now, would you take your employer’s offer? What would be best for you and your family, a move up the job ladder with a loss of $2,885 in income? Or staying in your same job and keeping the larger income?Introducing the “Welfare Cliff”This example, which is taken from a clear, thorough, fascinating, and appalling study by the Illinois Policy Institute entitled “Modeling Potential Income and Welfare Assistance Benefits in Illinois,” illustrates with clear charts and tables what is known as “welfare cliffs” or the “low wage trap,” which can trap families in poverty.The total incomes of poor people can fall off “welfare cliffs” as they increase their earned incomes. Here is the chart on which the hypothetical above is based (the particular numbers in our example come from tables in the report, which clarify the visual data in the charts.)Notice that welfare cliff we considered above, which occurs between $12 an hour and $15 an hour, is relatively small. A bigger one (and the reason I call the report “appalling”) occurs between $15 an hour and $18 an hour.When earning more means taking home less, the disincentive to work is obvious.The Thought Experiment, ContinuedNow let’s suppose that you want to get free of welfare eventually, and you know that moving up the job ladder is key to doing so, so you take your employer’s offer of a raise to $15 an hour and the corresponding loss of $2,885 in annual income. You cut back on spending where you can and look to the future.Now suppose further that you do well in your new job, you boost your knowledge and skills, and your employer offers you another promotion, with still more training and a raise to $18 an hour.Should you take it? Can you afford to take it?At $18 an hour full time, you would earn gross income of $37,440 and net income (after taxes) of $33,023. But earned income that high would reduce your refundable tax credit and ACA premium assistance, and eliminate your cash assistance, food assistance, housing assistance, and child care assistance, for a total reduction in government benefits of $26,820. So if you take the promotion and raise, your income would decrease from $60,701 to $39,332! A case could be made that it is irresponsible for you to reduce your family’s income that way.Welfare and the American TragedyJust think what that kind of welfare cliff does to the incentive to work (“on the books,” at least) and thereby to get off welfare. And the problem is not restricted to Chicago; the same kind of problem exists all across the country.One of the great tragedies of America today is that so many adults of sound mind and body do not support themselves and their families. It’s a tragedy not because they suffer material want; indeed, relatively few do suffer so, because government assistance satisfies many of their material needs. It’s tragic because one of the keys to human happiness is earned self-respect, which requires, as Charles Murray has written, making one’s own way in the world.The vast majority of poor people don’t want welfare and they don’t want handouts; they want a good job with which they can support themselves and their families comfortably. But the American welfare system traps so many people in dependency on government by hindering them from getting on and climbing up the job ladder, and thereby earning self-respect and happiness.Of course, welfare cliffs are not the only reason so many capable Americans languish in partial dependency on government assistance. Dreadful government schools in poor areas and systematic obstacles to getting a job, such as minimum wage laws and occupational licensing laws, are also to blame.But the perverse incentives of America’s welfare system can’t be ignored.Howard BaetjerHoward Baetjer Jr. is a Lecturer in the Department of Economics at Towson University in Towson, Maryland, where he teaches courses in microeconomics, money and banking, comparative economic systems, and… read more”I would propose an easy enough fix. Simply remove the “steps” of welfare benefits and instead apply them as a percentage. If the government feels that someone should have a certain amount of spendable assets and benefits the welfare program would provide 50% of the difference between double that amount and how much a worker earns.Example: The federal poverty guideline is $12,880 per person. This means the government considers you to be in poverty if you make less than that figure per year. All that would need happen is Congress would need to set the standard deduction to twice this amount, $25,760, and pay a 50% negative income tax to all filers who earn less than this. If you earn $0.00 in a given year, or can prove that you are currently earning $0.00 this month, you would be eligible to receive $12,880 for that benefit year, or its monthly equivalent of $1,073.33, in direct spendable cash. If you earn $10,000 in a year, you would earn an additional payment of $7,880 from the program to your wages. No one would be left with less than $12,880 per year if they truly could not find work and no one would be encouraged to not take a higher paying position due to a loss in benefits.Simply apply this logic to the bundle of welfare benefits received and it will disappear, while still providing assistance to whomever that program (state or federal) deemed eligible. For simplicity sake, no federal taxes would be levied on any amount earned less than $25,000.Here’s Uncle Milt discussing this idea.

There seems to be no limits to the extent that people are willing to stand up for the guy.There is no accounting for human stupidity or ignorance https://www.facebook.com/NowThisPolitics/videos/464018517733024/Some people consider the right to shop and get a haircut more important than the right to breathe and think they have a perfect legitimate right to do these things because they are Americans.Is it karma or irony that John McDaniel, a vocal protester against the Governor of Ohio's shutdown orders, has recently died of COVID-19?Somehow carrying a semi automatic loaded weapon into the Michigan senate has something to with personal liberties and being able to leave the house during a pandemic.People will support him even though he blatantly acts against the interests of the people who vote for him.Americans seem to think they can ban imports from China but still be able to buy cheap Nikes or clothing at Walmart and somehow don’t see the connection between the two.Many people think its perfectly OK to impose their religious dogma on the rest of the country, even though it may be oppressive or discriminatory to minority groups.Now I know what it must feel like to belong to a massive personality cult.Many Americans will say he is the best President ever without actually being able to articulate why and back it up with solid numbers and facts.America is not a democracy but an oligarchy where the many are ruled by a few.Rather than a United States, the U.S is more like a collection of small independent countries run by governors who happen to be controlled by Washington. This pandemic has shown that states are largely autonomous in their power..As of June 2019, the top 10 percent held 69.4 percent of total U.S. net worth (that is the value of all assets a person holds minus all their liabilities)Americans are unaware that Mexicans didn’t steal your jobs, technology did and the majority of people are simply wage slaves working for the 1%. Companies move to Mexico because its cheaper to produce goods there or the jobs in the US have been replaced by machines.If a guy is rich enough and brags about how much money he has people will actually believe that hes a successful businessman despite seven bankruptcies and three wives.Trump can not even borrow money from a US bank but somehow he is in charge of the US Treasury and Central Bank. Go figure.America is the only country where you can lose an election but still become President.Farmers are having to throw out millions of gallons of milk and produce rots in the fields as they have no way of harvesting or getting the product to the market. People no longer have jobs, no money and cant buy anything at the store anyway.People whose sole means on making a living on tips from being paid $2 an hour are now unemployed and homeless, and most do not have health insurance.Millions of Americans believe Fox News is actually real news and not just entertainment.Americans believe that a gaudy rich real estate developer living in a gold palace in New York understands what its like to be poor and living paycheck to paycheck.You talk a great game about what a great country you are but cant seem to score enough PPEs and ventilators for everybody. Governors have to smuggle in supplies from Korea without the Federal government finding out.The country grinds to a halt as soon as people miss one paycheck.And yes, Fundamentalist Christians are the worlds biggest hypocrites.The health system is a joke.Trump has spent over 100 million dollars on his security detail to visit his Mar-a-Lago resort. That works out to about 250 times his annual salary.He has spent about 1 day in 4 playing golf while on the job. Or about the same as Obama did in 8 years as President.Probably the first time in history that some one who dodged the draft for Vietnam gets to make the commencement address at West point.Trump wants to build a wall to keep out immigrants even though 40% of illegals come in legally and overstay their visas. there is also such a thing as airplanes that immigrants use.Speaking of the wall, in Texas some parts of the border run through private property, and a wall would put some parts of United States on the Mexican side of the border. The government is trying to take peoples land off them by force to build the wall.Trump took credit for the wall that was mostly built by Obama. He was simply adding to it, maybe a few hundred miles out of a 2000 mile border.Trump said the new wall panels would be impossible to climb but video records show it being scaled in under 3 minutes.Trump said he would drain the swamp. All he has done is fill it with alligators.Steven Miller’s father or grandfather was a Hungarian Jew who came to America to escape the Nazis. if Miller had been around the time of his grandfather in WW2 he would likely have ended up in Auschwitz, not be allowed to enter the US and Miller not have been born.Ivanka Trump signed over 500 business patents for her company with the Chinese government while campaigning to buy American.Trump called Jeffrey Epstein a “ terrific guy”. Said Epstein liked his girls “really young”Trumps mother was an immigrant from Scotland and his grandfather ran a brothel in Oregon in the early part of the 20th century. Grandfather was kicked out of Germany for avoiding the draft.Trump pushed for the use of an anti malarial drug that actually increased the death rate and many people died from taking it.Trump received about $480 million from his father and probably would have made more money if he had just invested it in the stock market.Trump is estimated to have personally lost over a billion dollars in 10 years.Trump is reportedly known to cheat at golf.If you are a daughter-in law or girlfriend to the son of the President. You can get a $180,000 dollar a year paying gig without reporting it to Congress as a political donation.Stormy Daniels got 130,000 dollars from Trump. All we get is a fucking T-shirt.Its amazing what you can get people to lie about if you pay them enough or give them enough authority they are not qualified for.Jared Kushner failed his security clearance a dozen times, had multiple omissions and finally got clearance on Trumps say-so.No one, including White House staff, knows what Ivanka Trump does all day.To make money on his casinos Trump would have had to bring in close to a million dollars a day to break even. That was impossible and the casinos folded within 6 months.Trump actually wanted Marla to abort Tiffany (she was unplanned) and hoped she’d have nice breasts.Steve Muchnin the Secretary of the Treasury believes that its possible to make a $1200 subsidy check from the government last 10 weeks.This is the same guy who used a government tax-payer funded jet to go on his honeymoon.Best one I heard yet: “If we are going to have a dictator in America, i want it to be Donald Trump”.Donald Junior seems to have spent the best part of his adult life trying to gain his fathers respect and admiration while the Donald regards him as a bit of a failure and a disappointment. Going on safari shooting rhinos just made him look like a bit of an insensitive tone-deaf jerk.14 year old Barron Trump has a whole floor to himself in Trump Tower and favors wearing suits to copy his dad.Not commonly known but Trump wears platforms in his shoes to appear taller. Has bragged that he is 6′2″ but he is the same height as Barack Obama who is 6′1″.The states that scream most loudly about being anti-government and anti-Washington are largest beneficiaries of federal Aid, including Kentucky, the home state of Mitch McConnell and many are Republican.Jared Kushner’s sister-in-law was in China selling US visas to rich Chinese for $500,000 a pop until the government got wind of it.Jared Kushner’s father is a convicted felon who paid a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law as payback for a bad business deal. He did 2 years in a federal penitentiary. The guy who put his father in prison was none other than Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie.Trump canceled the health insurance on his grand-nephew who had a serious life-threatening illness, as revenge for a dispute over a family will..Mike Pence’s wife told reporters her husband didn’t know he had to wear a Mask at a visit to the Mayo clinic even though he was specifically told by the hospital everyone had to wear a mask.Trump suffers an affliction (Dunning-Kruger) where he believes he is the smartest guy in the room knows better and more than all the experts, including generals and doctors and called himself a “natural” at medicine despite no training or expertise in the field.Stupid people often lack the cognitive awareness that they are actually stupid. This is why Trump is unaware that telling people to drink bleach is not only stupid but he just doesn’t understand why it’s stupid.When asked if she married Trump for his money Melania said he wouldn’t have married her if it wasn’t for her looks.Former Secretary of Energy Rick Perry didn’t know America’s nuclear missiles came under his department.After 3 years in office Trump has still not released his tax returns.Melania is NOT fluent in five languages. In televised shots she says hello in Italian and then reverts to English. She spoke English to a bunch of French school children and relied on an interpreter for the rest. Probably speaks some Serbo-Croatian, Slovenian and some heavily accented English.Its possible to have bone spurs and play college level football when you are the President.Trump say often he attended Wharton business school but he was in the less well-known undergraduate school, not the graduate MBA program. One of his teachers said Trump was one of the laziest students he had ever taught. Penn was relatively easy to get into in 1965 when Trump was there.Trump said he was one of the smartest students in his year but there is no record of him coming anywhere near the top 50 students and his name is not listed anywhere in the summa cum laude class of 1968.So far the president has said little if anything to comfort the families who have lost loved ones due to the corona virus. What he has said is perfunctory and brief and lacking in any real compassion.Recent headline. Melania has been having a long time affair with the head of security at Tiffany in Trump Tower and he looks like Michael Avenatti. Trump knows about it and is perfectly OK with it.Trump and Melania were planning a divorce but it has been put on hold since he became the President. Watch this space.4 people died in Benghazi, the hearings lasted 2 and half years and cost 5 million dollars. 60,000 people have died in the last 2 months and Trump is still President. No charges were ever filed against Hillary Clinton.Trump is still waiting on that 3 am phone call.When Mike Pence went to Germany they flew back via Scotland where Trump has a golf course and airport is about a 2 hour drive from the course. Pence and his security detail were pretty much ordered to use his boss’ hotel as accommodation.The Trump International Hotel in the Federal Post Office building recently petitioned the federal government i.e. the President for a break in the rent, so basically you have the owner of a private hotel business petitioning himself for a rent break.Trump apparently likes to eat pizza with a knife and fork.There is something wrong when 30 million people sign up for unemployment assistance one month into a lock down.Kelly Anne Conway actually though there was a Covid 1–18, not realizing “19” stood for 2019.Report: Trump Hired 200 Illegal Workers in NYC and Paid Them $4 an Hour, if they Got Paid at AllStarted a fraudulent university bearing his own name, which was then sued by thousands of its students, subsequently closed down, and to settle the suits, agreed to pay $25 million (!) in restitution.Was captured on video saying “And when you're a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Paid off porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 to stay silent about their affair, then lied about it repeatedly.Used his fraudulent Trump Foundation to buy a portrait of himself, pay off porn stars, and bribe Florida Attorney General to drop a lawsuit against him. Then was forced to close up said fraudulent foundation.Hired Campaign Chairman Paul Manafort, who was paid millions of dollars by Russian oligarchs, subsequently indicted, and found guilty of tax evasion and money laundering.Perpetuated the known false “birther” conspiracy against President Obama for years.Endorsed known pedophile and child molester, Roy Moore, for US Senate.Repeated the absurd campaign promise countless times that “Mexico will pay for the wall”. Then, when he took office, blamed Democrats for not giving him money for the wall.Campaigned on “Lock her up,” which was ridiculous at the time, and turned into another broken campaign promise.Continually called the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt”, even after it resulted in 35 indictments, convictions and guilty pleas. All while this investigation was conducted by people who reported to him in his own Justice Department.Falsely proclaims all news he doesn’t like to be “fake news.”Routinely tramples the First Amendment by attacking and insulting reporters.Locked immigrant children in cages.Appointed to the Supreme Court a man who was, very credibly, accused of sexual assault.Commuted the sentence of disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, and pardoned disgraced Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.Sided with Vladimir Putin over America’s Intelligence agencies.Withheld aid to Ukraine in exchange for a personal favor that Ukraine investigate his political rival.Impeded, and continues to impede, oversight investigations by Congress.Repeatedly promised to release his taxes when elected, then refuses to release his taxes as promised.Has told over 16,000 lies or misleading claims while in office.When you are Donald J Trump Jr. You write a book about how your father has been victimized and bullied by the media and the Liberals. May as well be useful for something.Ivanka said she was going to work for all women when her father became president. So far she has done squat for working mothers, maternity leave and went so far as to say it was not her responsibility. Pretty easy to be a working woman when you can afford nannies and maids.When your daddy is President its “take your daughter to work day” at international summits where you hobnob with the foreign heads of state and pretend to be one.When the Trumps meet the Queen its a family affair as even Eric’s and Junior’s wives and children went along for the ride.Be publicly made the butt of jokes when other world leaders gather and talk about Trump. Justin Trudeau was laughing about how Trump made his own staff’s collective jaws drop at his behavior.Trudeau admits to talking about Trump after President calls him 'two-faced'Trump refused to attend a Veterans Memorial service because it was raining.Ivanka and her husband declared a personal income of $120 million dollars last year while working as unpaid advisors in the White house.Many of the apartments in Trump Tower are owned by shell companies backed by Russian oligarchs and Putin’s cronies. One paid close to double the market rate for his apartment.Trump pulled out of a security deal with North Korea without first telling his Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of State. Japan’s Shinzo Abe almost had a heart attack.The US government had been working very closely with the WHO in China overseeing the pandemic in China before Trump pulled its funding saying they had been working with the Chinese and had not warned the US about he pandemic. The US has known since January but did nothing till late March about it.Bill O’Reilly was one of the biggest blowhards and loudmouths on Fox News until he got fired for sexually harassing his staff. He had to pay a $20 million dollar settlement.Fox News pundit Sean Hannity is a college dropout.Melania herself only finished one year of architecture school in Slovenia and did not graduate. She tried to make out she had a degree in design until it was shown to be a lie on her CV.She likely worked illegally on a tourist visa, used a special visa for “geniuses” to gain her green card and then went on to sponsor her parents for residency in America. her husband wants to ban all illegal immigration. But not if you are a Slovenian trophy wife.Trump tried to sue the Scottish Parliament when they built windmills in front of his property n Scotland saying they ruined his view. His case was thrown out of court.Tiffany is probably the only member of the family to have gone to graduate school, with a Law degree from Georgetown University in Washington.Ivanka, Donald and Donald Junior all attended Penn University with Ivanka attending the Wharton school of Business.Donald Junior was known best for partying hard at college and not known for his scholarship or brains. Mostly majored in beer pong.Trump held up the distribution of subsidy checks so he could put his name on them. The checks are tax payer money, not specifically from the Donald.The CDC spent weeks working on a detailed report including flow diagrams, on how to deal with the pandemic but once it reached Trump’s desk it was promptly shelved.Trump watching a solar eclipseTrump has no dress sense or sense of sartorial style. His jackets and pants are too big, his ties are worn too long. He wears baggy clothes to hide his protruding gut. When he went to a white die dinner with the queen his white vest was lower than his jacket lapels and he looked like a huge penguin. He can afford to get bespoke suits but prefers off-the-rack or perhaps has his own tailor.Trump could not name a single book that he had read apart from his own, nor name any newspapers that he reads.On one occasion he wished out loud that he wished Melania could have been there, except she happened to be standing right next to him.Trump has a very peculiar way of standing. He will lean forward, stick his bum out and hang his hands in front of him as if holding two hot irons.THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY ITBy: Fintan O'TooleOver more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality. The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode? The US went into corona virus crisis with immense advantages: precious weeks of warning about what was coming, the world’s best concentration of medical and scientific expertise, effectively limitless financial resources, a military complex with stunning logistical capacity and most of the world’s leading technology corporations. Yet it managed to make itself the global epicentre of the pandemicAs the American writer George Packer puts it in the current edition of the Atlantic, “The United States reacted … like Pakistan or Belarus – like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.”It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus. Trump, his party, and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated.Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?It is hard to remember now but, even in 2017, when Trump took office, the conventional wisdom in the US was that the Republican Party and the broader framework of US political institutions would prevent him from doing too much damage. This was always a delusion, but the pandemic has exposed it in the most savage ways.Abject surrenderWhat used to be called mainstream conservatism has not absorbed Trump – he has absorbed it. Almost the entire right-wing half of American politics has surrendered abjectly to him. It has sacrificed on the altar of wanton stupidity the most basic ideas of responsibility, care and even safety.Thus, even at the very end of March, 15 Republican governors had failed to order people to stay at home or to close non-essential businesses. In Alabama, for example, it was not until April 3 that governor Kay Ivey finally issued a stay-at-home order.In Florida, the state with the highest concentration of elderly people with underlying conditions, governor Ron DeSantis, a Trump mini-me, kept the beach resorts open to students travelling from all over the US for spring break parties. Even on April 1, when he issued restrictions, DeSantis exempted religious services and “recreational activities.”Georgia governor Brian Kemp, when he finally issued a stay-at-home order on April 1, explained: “We didn’t know that [the virus can be spread by people without symptoms] until the last 24 hours.”This is not mere ignorance – it is deliberate and homicidal stupidity. There is, as the demonstrations this week in US cities have shown, plenty of political mileage in denying the reality of the pandemic.It is fuelled by Fox News and far-right internet sites, and it reaps for these politicians millions of dollars in donations, mostly (in an ugly irony) from older people who are most vulnerable to the virus draws on a concoction of conspiracy theories, hatred of science, paranoia about the “deep state” and religious providential-ism (God will protect the good folks) that is now very deeply infused in the mindset of the American right.Trump embodies and enacts this mindset, but he did not invent it. The US response to the coronavirus crisis has been paralyzed by a contradiction that the Republicans have inserted into the heart of US democracy. On the one hand, they want to control all the levers of governmental power. On the other they have created a popular base by playing on the notion that government is innately evil and must not be trusted.The contradiction was made manifest in two of Trump’s statements on the pandemic: on the one hand that he has “total authority”, and on the other that “I don’t take responsibility at all”. Caught between authoritarian and anarchic impulses, he is incapable of coherence.Fertile groundBut this is not just Donald Trump. The crisis has shown definitively that Trump’s presidency is not an aberration. It has grown on soil long prepared to receive it. The monstrous blossoming of misrule has structure and purpose and strategy behind it.There are very powerful interests who demand “freedom” in order to do as they like with the environment, society and the economy. They have infused a very large part of American culture with the belief that “freedom” is literally more important than life. My freedom to own assault weapons trumps your right not to get shot at school. Now, my freedom to go to the barber (“I Need a Haircut” read one banner this week in St. Paul, Minnesota) trumps your need to avoid infection.Usually when this kind of outlandish idiocy is displaying itself, there is the comforting thought that, if things were really serious, it would all stop. People would sober up. Instead, a large part of the US has hit the bottle even harder.And the president, his party and their media allies keep supplying the drinks. There has been no moment of truth, no shock of realisation that the antics have to end. No one of any substance on the US right has stepped in to say: get a grip, people are dying here.That is the mark of how deep the trouble is for the US – it is not just that Trump has treated the crisis merely as a way to feed tribal hatreds but that this behaviour has become normalised. When the freak show is live on TV every evening, and the star is boasting about his ratings, it is not really a freak show any more. For a very large and solid bloc of Americans, it is reality.And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again.THIS WAS ON A FRIEND’S PAGE: An anguished question from a Trump supporter: ‘Why do liberals think Trump supporters are stupid?’THE SERIOUS ANSWER: Here’s what the majority of anti-Trump voters honestly feel about Trump supporters en masse:That when you saw a man who had owned a fraudulent University, intent on scamming poor people, you thought "Fine." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/04/10/trump-university-settlement-judge-finalized/502387002/)That when you saw a man who had made it his business practice to stiff his creditors, you said, "Okay." (https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-hotel-paid-millions-in-fines-for-unpaid-work)That when you heard him proudly brag about his own history of sexual abuse, you said, "No problem." (https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/list-trumps-accusers-allegations-sexual-misconduct/story?id=51956410)That when he made up stories about seeing Muslim-Americans in the thousands cheering the destruction of the World Trade Center, you said, "Not an issue." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/11/22/donald-trumps-outrageous-claim-that-thousands-of-new-jersey-muslims-celebrated-the-911-attacks/)That when you saw him brag that he could shoot a man on Fifth Avenue and you wouldn't care, you exclaimed, "He sure knows me." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/10/23/president-donald-trump-could-shoot-someone-without-prosecution/4073405002/)That when you heard him relating a story of an elderly guest of his country club, an 80-year old man, who fell off a stage and hit his head, to Trump replied: “‘Oh my God, that’s disgusting,’ and I turned away. I couldn’t—you know, he was right in front of me, and I turned away. I didn’t want to touch him. He was bleeding all over the place. And I felt terrible, because it was a beautiful white marble floor, and now it had changed color. Became very red.” You said, "That's cool!" (https://www.gq.com/story/donald-trump-howard-stern-story)That when you saw him mock the disabled, you thought it was the funniest thing you ever saw. (https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/donald-trump-criticized-after-he-appears-mock-reporter-serge-kovaleski-n470016)That when you heard him brag that he doesn't read books, you said, "Well, who has time?" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/01/americas-first-post-text-president/549794/)That when the Central Park Five were compensated as innocent men convicted of a crime they didn't commit, and he angrily said that they should still be in prison, you said, "That makes sense." (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2019/06/19/what-trump-has-said-central-park-five/1501321001/)That when you heard him tell his supporters to beat up protesters and that he would hire attorneys, you thought, "Yes!" (https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-trump-campaign-protests-20160313-story.html)That when you heard him tell one rally to confiscate a man's coat before throwing him out into the freezing cold, you said, "What a great guy!" (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-orders-protesters-coat-is-confiscated-and-he-is-sent-into-the-cold-a6802756.html)That you have watched the parade of neo-Nazis and white supremacists with whom he curries favor, while refusing to condemn outright Nazis, and you have said, "Thumbs up!" (https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/08/why-cant-trump-just-condemn-nazis/567320/)That you hear him unable to talk to foreign dignitaries without insulting their countries and demanding that they praise his electoral win, you said, "That's the way I want my President to be." (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-insult-foreign-countries-leaders_n_59dd2769e4b0b26332e76d57)That you have watched him remove expertise from all layers of government in favor of people who make money off of eliminating protections in the industries they're supposed to be regulating and you have said, "What a genius!" (https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2017/12/29/138-trump-policy-changes-2017-000603)That you have heard him continue to profit from his businesses, in part by leveraging his position as President, to the point of overcharging the Secret Service for space in the properties he owns, and you have said, "That's smart!" (https://www.usnews.com/opinion/articles/2018-03-05/how-is-donald-trump-profiting-from-the-presidency-let-us-count-the-ways)That you have heard him say that it was difficult to help Puerto Rico because it was in the middle of water and you have said, "That makes sense." (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2017/09/26/the-very-big-ocean-between-here-and-puerto-rico-is-not-a-perfect-excuse-for-a-lack-of-aid/)That you have seen him start fights with every country from Canada to New Zealand while praising Russia and quote, "falling in love" with the dictator of North Korea, and you have said, "That's statesmanship!" (https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/02/politics/donald-trump-dictators-kim-jong-un-vladimir-putin/index.html)That Trump separated children from their families and put them in cages, managed to lose track of 1500 kids, has opened a tent city incarceration camp in the desert in Texas - he explains that they’re just “animals” - and you say, “Well, OK then.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/more-5-400-children-split-border-according-new-count-n1071791)That you have witnessed all the thousand and one other manifestations of corruption and low moral character and outright animalistic rudeness and contempt for you, the working American voter, and you still show up grinning and wearing your MAGA hats and threatening to beat up anybody who says otherwise. (https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/democracy/reports/2018/06/04/451570/confronting-cost-trumps-corruption-american-families/)What you don't get, Trump supporters, is that our succumbing to frustration and shaking our heads, thinking of you as stupid, may very well be wrong and unhelpful, but it's also...hear me...charitable.Because if you're NOT stupid, we must turn to other explanations, and most of them are less flattering.- Adam-Troy Castro