They Cheered When This Tax Bill Passed

I have waited my entire life for this day. I knew it would come, sure as little fish make little fish, and here it is. No more Republican dickering at the edges of it, as they have through all these soft-pedal decades of trickle-down gibberish. No, they went for the thick red meat this time, the prime rib, and they don't frankly care if you know how badly you're getting screwed. Most people don't know. They will, alas, and soon.

The Republican tax bill is a done thing. It passed the House by a gruesome margin, only to be called back on procedural grounds regarding something Ted Cruz wants and something for-profit universities can't have. The Senate then passed it, and the House will pass it again today after they unsnarl last night's mess.

They cheered in the House when it passed the first time with no Democratic votes and all but 12 Republican votes. They cheered. When the time comes, remember that.The bill now awaits only the jagged, shuddering signature of this catastrophe president, like an earthquake signing its ruins with the Richter scrawl of its documented damage. Let the elderly wither, let the infirm wilt, let the students stumble, let the teachers flail, let the seas rise and the skies boil, let the future be only for the gilded few and everything else can fall to dust. They got what they came for, and the paymasters are pleased.

Mammon wins the day. Mammon, the ancient word for "money," adopted by the New Testament and John Milton as the very personification of greed, that which any God-fearing Christian must shun at the cost of their very soul, as explained succinctly in Matthew 6:24: "You cannot serve both God and Mammon." Yet on Tuesday night, the erstwhile "party of God" was busy dancing and cheering in delight around its golden calf.

They cheered. It would be bad enough if they did this with their heads hung low in shame, knowing as we all know that this is only happening because the big GOP donors demanded the key to the Treasury and refused to donate again until they got it. We're sorry, they could (but would never) say, but they made us do it. We had to, we're sorry. Instead, they cheered.When the president of the United States of America signs this bill into law, he will, among many other things, be signing a check to himself and men like Bob Corker. That check has a great many zeroes to the left of the decimal. These are the people the Evangelicals embrace as "theirs," though their pockets will be picked and their futures plundered, once again.

They actually cheered.

For the record: The people who will take this tax bill in the teeth reject and repudiate it out of hand. Only 33 percent of those polled by CNN think the tax bill is anything other than a smash-and-grab looting of the Treasury, and that number correlates exactly with the ever-dwindling number of people who think Donald J. Trump is himself the golden calf, beyond reproach, a shining orange beacon on a hill. If Trump threw out the first pitch at a ballgame and hit a grandmother behind third base with the ball, that 33 percent would call it a strike and denounce videotape footage to the contrary as "fake news."

I remember the quaint days of summer and fall, when the Republican Party could be counted on to be its worst enemy. Remember those attempts at repealing the Affordable Care Act, when GOP "heroes" like John McCain, Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins thwarted the president and majority leader McConnell? That was only a few hundred billion dollars going to other people. This thing is a trillion dollars and more, all going directly to the wealthy and the corporations they control. McCain got a boozy tax break for his wife's portfolio, Murkowski got oil wells in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and God only knows what brought Collins back into the fold; she will not be enjoying the aftermath, to be sure.

Do not despair. That which has been done can be undone. Trump has made it his mission to erase the very existence of his predecessor, like some tantrum-y pharaoh ordering the scourging of glyphs from the pyramid walls. Let him try. All works can be undone in time. Even this. Especially this.Prepare yourself for this in whatever way best suits. The thing that is about to happen today will be beyond your worst expectations. Donald Trump is going to strut and crow over a bill he has not read and knows next to nothing about, but will sign anyway because that is his purpose in life. It is entirely fitting that a gigantic legislative fraud will be made law by the biggest fraud in presidential history. It simply could be no other way.

They cheered. Never, ever forget that.

William Rivers Pitt

December 20, 2017

Tax plan is a disgrace

Here are the 3 main Republican arguments in favor of the Republican tax plan, followed by the truth.

1. It will make American corporations competitive with foreign corporations, which are taxed at a lower rate.

Rubbish.

(1) American corporations now pay an effective rate (after taking deductions and tax credits) that’s just about the same as most foreign based corporations pay.

(2) Most of these other countries also impose a “Value Added Tax” on top of the corporate tax.

(3) When we cut our corporate rate from 35% to 20%, other nations will cut their corporate rates in order to be competitive with us – so we gain nothing anyway.

(4) Most big American corporations who benefit most from the Republican tax plan aren’t even “American.” Over 35 percent of their shareholders are foreign (which means that by cutting corporate taxes we’re giving a big tax cut to those foreign shareholders). 20 percent of their employees are foreign, while many Americans work for foreign-based corporations.

(5) The “competitiveness” of America depends on American workers, not on “American” corporations. But this tax plan will make it harder to finance public investments in education, health, and infrastructure, on which the future competitiveness of American workers depends.

(6) American corporations already have more money than they know what to do with. Their profits are at record levels. They’re using them to buy back their shares of stock, and raise executive pay. That’s what they’ll do with the additional $1 trillion they’ll receive in this tax cut.

***

2. With the tax cut, big corporations and the rich will invest and create more jobs.

Baloney.

(1) Job creation doesn’t trickle down. After Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush cut taxes on the top, few jobs and little growth resulted. America cut taxes on corporations in 2004 in an attempt to get them to bring their profits home from abroad, and what happened? They didn’t invest. They just bought up more shares of their own stock, and increased executive pay.

(2) Companies expand and create jobs when there’s more demand for their goods and services. That demand comes from customers who have the money to buy what companies sell. Those customers are primarily the middle class and poor, who spend far more of their incomes than the rich. But this tax bill mostly benefits the rich.

(3) At a time when the richest 1 percent already have 40 percent of all the wealth in the country, it’s immoral to give them even more – especially when financed partly by 13 million low-income Americans who will lose their health coverage as a result of this tax plan (according to the Congressional Budget Office), and by subsequent cuts in safety-net programs necessitated by increasing the deficit by $1.5 trillion.

***

3. It will give small businesses an incentive to invest and create more jobs.

Untrue.

(1) At least 85 percent of small businesses earn so little they already pay the lowest corporate tax rate, which this plan doesn’t change.

(2) In fact, because the tax plan bestows much larger rewards on big businesses, they’ll have more ability to use predatory tactics to squeeze small firms and force them out of business.

***

Don’t let your Uncle Bob be fooled: Republicans are voting for this because their wealthy patrons demand it. Their tax plan will weaken our economy for years – reducing demand, widening inequality, and increasing the national debt by at least $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Shame on the greedy Republican backers who have engineered this. Shame on Trump and the Republicans who have lied to the public about its consequences.

Robert Reich

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 16, 2017

Patriotism, Taxes, and Trump

Selling the Trump-Republican tax plan should be awkward for an administration that has made patriotism its central theme.

That’s because patriotism isn’t mostly about saluting the flag and standing during the national anthem. 

It’s about taking a fair share of the burden of keeping America going.

But the tax plan gives American corporations a $2 trillion tax break, at a time when they’re enjoying record profits and stashing unprecedented amounts of cash in offshore tax shelters.

And it gives America’s wealthiest citizens trillions more, when the richest 1 percent now hold a record 38.6 percent of the nation’s total wealth, up from 33.7 percent a decade ago.

The reason Republicans give for enacting the plan is “supply-side” trickle-down nonsense. The real reason is payback to the GOP’s mega-donors.

A few Republicans are starting to admit this. Last week, Gary Cohn, Trump’s lead economic advisor, conceded in an interviewthat “the most excited group out there are big CEOs, about our tax plan.”

Republican Rep. Chris Collins admitted that “my donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’”

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham warned that if Republicans failed to pass tax reform, “the financial contributions will stop.”

Republican mega-donors view the tax payback as they do any other investment. When they bankrolled Trump and the GOP, they expected a good return.

The biggest likely beneficiaries are busily investing an additional $43 million to pressure specific members of Congress to pass it, according to The Wall Street Journal.

They include the 45Committee, founded by billionaire casino oligarch Sheldon Adelson and Todd Ricketts, whose family owns the Chicago Cubs; and the Koch Brothers’ groups, Americans for Prosperity and Freedom Partners.

They’re not doing this out of love of America. They’re doing it out of love of money.

How do you think they got so wealthy in the first place? 

As more of the nation’s wealth has shifted to the top over the past three decades, major recipients have poured some of it into politics – buying themselves tax cuts, special subsidies, bailouts, lenient antitrust enforcement, favorable bankruptcy rules, extended intellectual property protection, and other laws that add to their wealth.

All of which have given them more clout to get additional legal changes that enlarge their wealth even more.

Forty years ago, the estate tax was paid by 139,000 estates,according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center. By 2000, it was paid by 52,000. This year it will be paid by just 5,500 estates. Under the House tax plan, it will be eliminated altogether.

Why do Americans pay more for pharmaceuticals than the citizens of every other advanced economy? Because Big Pharma has altered the laws in its favor. Why do we pay more for internet service than most other nations? Big cable’s political clout. Why can payday lenders get away with payday robbery? The political heft of big banks.

Multiply these examples across the economy and you get a huge hidden upward redistribution from the paychecks of average working people and the poor to top executives and investors. (I explain this in detail in the documentary “Saving Capitalism,” airing next week on Netflix.)

All this is terrible for the American economy.  

More and better jobs depend on increasing demand for goods and services. This must come from the middle class and poor because the rich spend a far smaller share of their after-tax income.

Yet the middle class and poor have steadily lost purchasing power. Partly as a result, a relatively low share of the nation’s working-age population is employed today and the wages of the typical worker have been stuck in the mud.

The Republican tax plan will make all this worse by burdening the middle class and the poor even more.

A slew of analyses, including Congress’s own Joint Committee on Taxation, show that the GOP plan will raise taxes on many middle-class families.

It will also require cuts in government programs that middle and lower-income Americans depend on, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

And the plan will almost certainly explode the national debt, eventually causing many middle class and poor families to pay higher interest on their auto loans, mortgages, and credit cards.

I don’t care whether the top executives of big corporations, Wall Street moguls, and heirs to vast fortunes salute the flag and stand for the national anthem.

But they enjoy all the advantages of being American. Most couldn’t have got to where they are in any other country. 

They have a patriotic duty to take on a fair share of the burden of keeping America going. And Trump and his enablers in Congress have a patriotic responsibility to make them.  

Robert Reich

Nov. 12, 2017

Trump vs. the poor

In order to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy in his tax reform package, Trump's 2018 budget proposes a $193 billion cut in Snap benefits (food stamps), a $473 billion cut in Medicare, and a $1 trillion cut to Medicaid.

"In the United States, the 400 richest individuals now own more wealth than the bottom 64 percent of the population and the three richest own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent, while pervasive poverty means one in five households have zero or negative net worth.

Excluding the value of the family car, 19 percent of US households have zero or negative net worth," a report by the Institute of Policy Studies notes. "Looking at this trend through the lens of race reveals that 30 percent of black households and 27 percent of Latino households have zero or negative wealth."

The Power of the People

William Rivers Pitt of Truthout writes:

"I don't have all the answers, but one is fairly self-evident: Math. About 20-30 percent of US voters are Trump supporters to the teeth. They are comprised of one of the strangest amalgamations in US political history -- some evangelicals, some wealthy whites, some rural poor whites, some underemployed blue-collar white laborers, some reality TV fans -- and in their eyes, Trump can do no wrong. By itself, this is not a massive coalition, but it becomes truly muscular when:

1. Half the country doesn't vote in the general election;

2. Two-thirds of the country doesn't vote in primaries or in the midterm elections.

What do you have to do to make a dent? Here's a thought: Stop trying to convince Trump supporters they're wrong. You may as well try to convince Patriots fans that Tom Brady is a cheater. You will fail, because they won't believe you, and furthermore they don't care. The national spleen is being vented, and right now they love the smell of bile.

You can't fix that. You have to beat it. There are many paths to activism, but in the meantime, don't squander your energy trying to crack the façade of the true believers. That, among other things, is bad strategy. Instead, fight to win, period."

Use your power in the voting booth.

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/42412-stop-trying-to-convince-trump-voters-start-trying-to-win

The Huge Tax Heist

You know the plot: The bank robbers set off a bomb down the street from the bank, and while everyone’s distracted they get away with the loot.

In the reality TV show we’re now suffering through, Donald Trump is the bomb.

The robbers are the American oligarchs who bankroll the Republican Party, and who are plotting the biggest heist in American history – a massive tax cut estimated to be up to 5.8 trillion dollars.

Around 80 percent of it will benefit the richest 1 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Trump is busily distracting America with his explosive tweets and incendiary tantrums – blasting Republican senators Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, NFL players who take the knee, Dreamers, refugees, immigrants, transgender people, the media, “rocket man,” Hillary Clinton, Obama, NAFTA, Muslims.

The Trump bomb is hugely damaging – unleashing hate, threatening democratic institutions, isolating America in the world.

But none of this seems to bother Republicans in Congress, except for a handful of Senators who won’t be running again. That’s because congressional Republicans are concentrating their efforts on pulling off the giant heist for their rich patrons.

They want to move quickly so no one notices – passing the tax cut before Christmas, with no hearings and minimal debate.

If the plot succeeds, most Americans will be robbed in three ways.

First, they’ll lose tax deductions they rely on – such as the deduction on earnings they put into tax-deferred savings in 401k plans. Some 55 million Americans now rely on 401(k) plans to save for retirement.

They’ll also lose the deduction for what they pay in state and local taxes. More than half of this deduction now goes to taxpayers with incomes of less than $200,000.

Republicans say the middle class will come out just fine because they’ll get a larger standard deduction. Not true. The average American’s tax bill will rise because the deductions they’ll lose will total more than the higher standard deduction Republicans are proposing.

Second, most Americans will lose government services that will have to be eliminated in order to pay for the giant tax cut – including, very likely, some Medicare and Medicaid.

About $1.5 billion in Medicare and Medicaid cuts were quietly included in the budget resolution Republicans just passed, in order to get their tax bill through the Senate with just 51 votes. (No one paid much attention because Trump was attacking grieving combat widows.)

Third, most Americans will have to pay higher interest on their car and mortgage loans and other money they borrow, because the huge tax cut will explode the national debt.

That debt is now around $20 trillion, or 70 percent of the total economy. If it goes much higher, it will crowd out borrowing and force interest rates upward.

Putting all this together, the theft would be the largest redistribution from the bottom 90 percent to the richest 1 percent in history.

Republican’s biggest fear is that word of the heist will leak out to the public, and their tax bill will be defeated by a handful of Senate Republican holdouts who feel the public pressure.

That’s exactly what happened with their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The GOP’s big-money patrons pushed for repeal not because they had any principled objection to the Act, but because they didn’t want to fork over $144 billion in taxes on incomes over $1 million to pay for the Act over the next decade.

In the end, Republicans couldn’t get away with it because Americans learned that more than 23 million people would lose their health coverage, and Medicaid would also be on the chopping block.

Trump was willing to distract the public’s attention to give congressional Republicans a shot at repeal, but the moment the public started catching on he blew their cover. After the Congressional Budget Office announced the consequences of the Republican health bill, Trump called it “mean.”

He could do the same with the tax bill. He almost has. When word leaked out last week that Republicans were planning to limit 401(k) deductions, Trump tweeted that it wouldn’t happen (and then backtracked on his tweet).

The moneyed interests who run the GOP depend on the Trump bomb to divert attention from their huge heist. Their challenge is to make sure the bomb doesn’t go off in the wrong direction.

Robert Reich

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 29, 2017

WHY THE REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN IS MORE FAILED TRICKLE-DOWN ECONOMICS*

Trump and conservatives in Congress are planning a big tax cut for millionaires and billionaires. To justify it they’re using the oldest song in their playbook, claiming tax cuts on the rich will trickle down to working families in the form of stronger economic growth. 

Baloney. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. Just look at the evidence:

1. Clinton’s tax increase on the rich hardly stalled the economy. In 1993, Bill Clinton raised taxes on top earners from 31 percent to 39.6 percent. Conservatives predicted economic disaster. Instead, the economy created 23 million jobs and the economy grew for 8 straight years in what was then the longest expansion in history. The federal budget went into surplus. 

2. George W. Bush’s big tax cuts for the rich didn’t grow the economy. In 2001and 2003, George W. Bush lowered the top tax rate to 35 percent while also cutting top rates on capital gains and dividends. Conservative supply-siders predicted an economic boom. Instead, the economy barely grew at all, and then in 2008 it collapsed. Meanwhile, the federal deficit ballooned. 

3. Obama’s tax hike on the rich didn’t slow the economy. At the end of 2012, President Obama struck a deal to restore the 39.6 percent top tax rate and raise tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Once again, supply-side conservatives predicted doom. Instead, the economy grew steadily, and the expansion is still continuing.

4. The Reagan recovery of the early 1980s wasn’t driven by Reagan’s tax cut. Conservative supply-siders point to Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts. But the so-called Reagan recovery of the early 1980s was driven by low interest rates and big increase in government spending. 

5. Kansas cut taxes on the rich and is a basket case. California raised them and is thriving. In 2012, Kansas slashed taxes on top earners and business owners, while California raised taxes on top earners to the highest state rate in the nation. Since then, California has had among the strongest economic growth of any state, while Kansas has fallen behind most other states.

So don’t fall for supply-side, trickle-down nonsense. Lower taxes on the rich don’t generate growth and jobs. They only make the rich even richer, at a time of raging inequality, and they cause bigger budget deficits. 

Robert Reich

robertreich.org

It's time to pick a side

In referring to Charlottesville, Trump stated: ""We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides." There are really only two sides but I agree with him that both sides hate. One side hates non-whites, non-Christians and non-straights. The other side hates hate. It is time to pick a side. Choosing to stay above the fray or acting indifferently is tantamount to picking a side. Silence is complicity. There is no middle ground here.

Hate speech is not unconstitutional and rightly so. But if you're comfortable seeing the American flag being proudly flown alongside the flags favored by the alt-right including the Nazi and KKK flags, then you're on the wrong side. And for you patriots who think Colin Kaepernick is a traitor, you're on the wrong side. If you don't think that Trump should fire Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller, White House advisers who have ties to or have been supportive of the alt-right, then you're on the wrong side. And if you don't know the name Heather Heyer, a name Trump refuses to mention, then you're on the wrong side.

The Daily Stormer, a website very popular with the alt-right, knows of Heather Heyer. An article posted on the Stormer called Heyer "...fat and a drain on society." The author of the article went on to state that "Despite feigned outrage by the media, most people are glad she is dead, as she is the definition of uselessness. A 32-year-old woman without children is a burden on society and has no value." If you're not outraged by this, you're on the wrong side.

It's time to choose. You can't remain on the sidelines anymore. The enemy (evil) is at the gates. If you don't believe that, you're on the wrong side. Choose. Choose now.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre 
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; 
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; 
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?