Tax filing season is underway, and the process of millions of Americans understanding the brand-new tax code and tax forms has now begun. So far, it doesn't seem to be going particularly well. Stories are appearing in the media about people being shocked and surprised that things have changed. Some will be pleasantly surprised, but they're not the ones the stories have been written about. Because for many, this year's tax season is going to mean they either get a much smaller refund or that they actually owe additional taxes, when they were used to getting an annual refund. This is bad financial news for any family, but it also points out how skewed most people's general thinking is on income taxes.

By this, I am not referring to the ideological or partisan debates over taxes, but rather the practical nuts-and-bolts way we go about paying our income taxes in this country. In other words, Trump supporters and Bernie supporters alike will probably have the same reaction, because most people focus on the wrong thing when thinking about their own taxes.

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It's been an eventful week, with Trump's second State Of The Union speech and Virginia politics entering complete free-fall. Democrats in the House began work in earnest this week as well, on both the legislative and investigative fronts. Also, there are now some new Boondocks comics! So the week was anything but dull, although it was a bit disjointed.

President Donald Trump gave his second State Of The Union speech this week, in which he flat-out threatened the United States economy if Democrats had the temerity to investigate him. Here are the two relevant passages, from the transcript:

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President Donald Trump is not a happy camper. This was plain to see in his morning tweetstorm, where he finally realizes that he did not, in fact, win the 2018 midterm election. There has been a transfer of power in the House of Representatives, and Trump is finally waking up to what this is going to mean for both him personally and for his administration. Most normal politicians would have cottoned onto this basic fact over three months ago, but Trump is anything but normal.

He expressed his shock and anger at the prospect of Democratic-led congressional investigations in typical Trumpian fashion -- in other words, tweeting in all caps: "PRESIDENTIAL HARASSMENT!"

In begging to differ with Trump's assessment, I accidentally coined a new word. Here is my dictionary definition of the new term, which I hope everyone will soon start using as many times as necessary:

ASSMENT --
(1) accusing others of harassment when you are guilty of harassing them.
(2) revealing voluntarily to the world that you are an ass.
[synonym for (2): BECLOWN]

Of course, by changing HARASSMENT to just ASSMENT, we'll have one syllable left over, so allow us to dispense with a few of these, in direct response to Trump's claims of "presidential harassment": HAR HAR HAR!!!

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Virginia Democrats seem to be in free fall, dropping fast with a very hard landing soon ahead. At least, that's the way it looks from the outside looking in. The top three political jobs in the state are all now held by men who either dressed up in blackface long ago or have been accused of sexual assault. The situation is now so bad that people are looking at who is third in line to succeed the governor -- and it turns out that the third guy in line happens to be a Republican, which complicates matters even further.

Governor Ralph Northam has yet to resign, five days after an indefensible photo of two men in costume surfaced from his medical school yearbook. The photo is about as awful as you can imagine, since it shows one man in blackface and another wearing Ku Klux Klan robes (complete with pointy hood). About the only way it could have been worse would have been if a noose had been in the photo, really.

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As usual, what follows are my own snap reactions to President Donald Trump's second State Of The Union speech (he's actually now given three such addresses to Congress, but the first one doesn't technically count as a State Of The Union speech). I write all of this before hearing or reading what other pundits thought, so I won't be influenced by any sort of groupthink about the speech.

My usual caveat: all of the quotes I'm using come from my own hastily-jotted notes taken during the speech, and occasionally I will get a word or two wrong. But I don't think I've ever mischaracterized a quote altogether, as I strive to reproduce the essence of what was said. However, when I check these later against the actual transcript, there are always a few minor mistakes, just to warn everyone in advance.

General impressions

It was said beforehand that Trump practiced this speech more than he had the other two he has given. I'm not sure if this was true or not, but if so it did seem to help. Trump has always been rather stilted (if not robotic) reading someone else's words off a TelePrompTer, and the contrast to how he speaks at rallies was obvious.

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[Program Notes: I have two program notes to begin with today. The first is that hopefully the site is now living on its final destination server, and that this article won't disappear right after I post it (as last Thursday's did). But you never know -- we could experience further gremlins up to perhaps midday tomorrow. We're not out of the woods yet, but hopefully will be by this time tomorrow. Which brings me to my second program note, since tomorrow is the State Of The Union day. As usual, I will watch the speech and make notes, and then write up my snap reactions to both President Trump and Stacey Abrams immediately afterwards. So there will be a new column tomorrow, but it'll be posted late, after the speeches. Oh, and one last note -- since today's column may have technical problems, I chose to write a pretty generic one. Just to warn everyone.]

It has been a few weeks since we last took a look at the ever-expanding 2020 Democratic presidential primary field, so I thought it'd be a good time to update the first article I wrote on the horserace.

To stretch the analogy a bit further, I should point out that this can't even really yet be called a proper "horserace" column, since I'm not ready yet to begin examining the candidates' relative strengths, weaknesses, or viability. Once the field gets a little more settled, we'll have plenty of time for such comparisons later. All I'm doing so far is updating the scorecard with the list of the horses running, before the race really begins. So far, this has mostly meant additions, although we do have one scratched candidate to report already.

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For a change, we're not going begin with Trump's idiocies-of-the-week. After the whole shutdown fiasco, Trump's had a (relatively) quiet week, so we're instead going to focus on what's going on with Democrats first, and then just quickly itemize Trump's flailing later on.

The biggest news on the Democratic side of the aisle -- as it will be from now until at least the spring of 2020 -- is the presidential contest. The race is getting bigger, as more and more people toss their chapeaux into the ring.

Today's news is that Senator Cory Booker is running. Precisely nobody was surprised at this development. Earlier in the week, Kamala Harris kicked off her campaign in pretty spectacular fashion (more on this later). For those keeping score at home, this means at least four senators will be running: Booker, Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren. This list is, however, expected to grow soon, as Bernie Sanders seems on the brink of joining the race.

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There's something new in the air in Democratic politics, or at the very least something old that is now getting a whole lot more attention now than it has in a long time. Nothing shows the pivot in the Democratic Party away from Clintonian centrism (or corporatism) back to the party's workingman roots as much as the newfound eagerness to tax the rich. So far, the only real disagreements among Democrats are how to tax the rich, not over whether they should be taxed more at all. This is a sea-change from what the party stood for back in the 1990s, when being "business-friendly" was something Democratic politicians strove for.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez sparked this whole discussion with her proposal to create new marginal income rates at the top of the income scale, which would go as high as 70 percent for the top earners. She rather brilliantly explained that this would not affect almost everyone else, by stating that "only your ten-millionth dollar and above would be taxed at 70 percent." Republicans love to muddy the waters by scaring everyone into thinking that all income would be taxed at the highest rate, but this just isn't true. And, as many have been pointing out, the American economy ran just fine in the 1950s and 1960s when the top marginal rates were sometimes as high as 90 percent. Taxing the rich doesn't equate to the economy grinding to a halt, in other words, no matter how much Republicans try to convince everyone that this would automatically be the case.

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OK, we've reached the crunch time, so I have to warn everyone that strange things may be happening to the site in the next few hours. If the whole thing blows up, then I'll reset it back for the whole weekend, and it should appear fine (although there may be a few hours today when it is unavailable -- keep trying, it'll eventually right itself), and we'll try again on Monday.

If everything goes smoothly in the next few hours, then I'll be able to write a column today and post it. No guarantees, though -- if I'm debugging, then I won't have the time.

Again, thanks for everyone's patience during the upgrade process.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

There will be no new column today, sorry. For the next two days, this site will be undergoing a technical upgrade, which should (knock wood) be completely transparent to you. However, it is an extensive operation, so I can't make any promises.

Best case scenario is that you don't notice any changes and experience no interruptions in service. Worst case scenario is that the site somehow goes dark and you get an error message when trying to access it. In-between scenario is that there will be minor and very limited interruptions in service, hopefully not lasting more than a few minutes at the most. Also a possibility is that we may lose either whole columns (from this point forward, until roughly Friday) or individual comments as the database is moved around. So be prepared for gremlins on the site for the next few days, in other words.

Again, this is only a technical upgrade. The site will remain the same afterwards. I know the site needs its own upgrade in user interface and functionality, but that will have to wait for another day, sorry.

Since there will be no column today, here's what I would have written about today, if I had the time: the Democrats' H.R. 1 bill in the House is finally getting some notice, due to Mitch McConnell saying on the Senate floor that the provision for making Election Day a national federal holiday would somehow be a "power grab" for Democrats. Imagine that -- making voting easier for everyone is somehow a "power grab." This could be a very potent political issue going forward for the Democrats, as it very obviously puts them on the side of making voting easier while Republicans are left defending the proposition that voting should be as difficult as possible (for their own partisan benefit). You can just imagine what I'd have to say about that! Which, unfortunately, you'll have to, because with the upgrade, I won't be able to write it all out.

For the next few days, please let me know either in the comments or via email if you're having any problems with the site. Although my email may also be affected, just to warn everyone in advance. Let's hope for the best and hope that by Friday everything will be smoothly up and running once again without any interruptions. Thank you all for your patience in the meantime.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant