Your editorial “Reflections on 2017” provided an excellent if depressing review of the past year. But your use of the Trump terminology, in referring to the recently enacted Republican tax bill, was a sour note in your editorial because it echoes the Administration’s double speak. Trump would have us believe that up is down, black is white, bad is good. His tax bill is anything but “tax reform,” at least not according to my ”American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.”
My dictionary defines the verb “reform” as follows:
1)      To improve by alteration, correction of error, or removal of defects.
2)      To abolish abuse or malpractice in.
3)      To cause a person to abandon irresponsible or immoral practices.
To describe Trump’s tax plan as a “reform” is to fall into his verbal trap. If you have to be neutral, and ignore the fact that it favors the rich over the poor and will deepen a national debt that future generations will be saddled with, you can call it tax revision or tax cuts. If you want to call it like it is, try tax corruption, tax debasement, tax discrimination, tax debacle. Abuse and irresponsibility should figure in there as well.
Any of those labels is much closer to the truth.
Dick Beamish
Middlebury