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?

Naivete or lack of compassion

In his Aug. 11 Indianapolis Star column, "Affirmative action has overstayed its welcome," Ruben Navarrette sides with Jeff Session's plan to end affirmative action in college and university admissions. There's no mention of Session's failure to investigate lower admissions standards for children of alumni and major donors. Navarrette claims affirmative action "stigmatizes recipients," but he proudly admits that affirmative action enabled his father to "get his badge (policeman's) and earn promotions." Navarrette then goes on to say that now that "my children are being raised in the suburbs by parents who have graduate degrees," that affirmative action has "overstayed its welcome." Apparently, Navarrette is naive enough to think that there are no longer any disadvantaged families similar to his father's or he feels that now that he and his family got their fair share of the "American dream" thanks to affirmative action he should no longer care about the plight of others.

Phony political outrage

When reading the outrage professed by our politicians about the assault on democracy by the Russians supposedly interfering in the election I sometimes snicker, and on occasion guffaw, maybe even cackle. The legacy of the U.S. government in covert interference in other countries is stunning. We were heavily involved in seven successful coups (Iran '53, Guatemala '60, Congo '61, Dominican Republic '63, South Vietnam '63, Brazil '64 and Chile '73). The list does not include any U.S. military interventions against hostile regimes and U.S.-supported insurgencies or the plan to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar. Our disdain for democracy is exceeded only by our hypocrisy.

Night Thoughts on Trump and America

MONDAY, AUGUST 7, 2017
By Robert Reich

With Donald Trump away vacationing at one of his golf resorts, the rest of us may have a chance to relax. But in truth it’s more like a short break in a continuing nightmare. Just enough time to turn on the light, look at the clock and ponder where we are, before the nightmare envelopes us again.

What can we ponder that will make all of this a bit less frightening? For one thing, it could be far worse. Trump could have fulfilled his campaign promises to repeal Obamacare, lock Hillary up, build a wall, and throw out all immigrants without papers.

By now he might have confused so many Americans about the truth that most of us would believe the words coming out of his mouth. Hell, by now he could have incited another civil war.

Actually very little has happened. He’s huffed and puffed, threatened and fumed, yet almost none of it has found its way into concrete laws. And it may not: The typical “honeymoon” enjoyed by new presidents is over for him. His first hundred days came and left, almost without a trace.

Another thing is Trump’s “favorables,” as pollsters call them, continue to tumble into territory never before seen at this stage of a presidency. Only about a third of the country still supports him; the opinions of the rest range from bad to awful. And his credibility is shot. 

Even Republicans in congress are now more willing to buck him (some are even talking about fixing what needs fixing in Obamacare). Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury with the power to subpoena Trump’s financial records. Didn’t Trump hint he’d fire Mueller if he did this? Wouldn’t firing Mueller be the beginning of the end?

Trump has also ignited a prairie fire of grassroots activism, almost all of it against him. Across the country, people who were never politically active are rolling up their sleeves and getting involved – attending congressional town meetings, writing letters to the editors of their local papers, organizing for the 2018 midterms. Some are even running themselves.

This outburst of political effort resisting Trump has no parallel in recent history. John F. Kennedy asked Americans to ponder what they might do for America; Donald Trump is getting them to actually do it.

In the middle of the night one’s thoughts also turn to where we are in life.  Trump was born in 1946, the same year Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and, coincidentally, Clinton’s own special prosecutor, Ken Starr were born. And yours truly. We are all, shall we say, beyond our prime. There’s only so much damage a septuagenarian can do from here on.

To put it another way, a few weeks from now I’ll be returning to the classroom and a new crop of college freshmen. They were born in or around 1998. Chronologically, they’re as far removed from Trump and the rest of us early boomers as we were, when we went to college, from Americans born in 1894. Which is to say, a very long way.

So unless Trump brings on a nuclear war that ends life as we know it on the planet, he is unlikely to have much influence on the lives of my upcoming freshmen. His first (and perhaps only) term in office will be over when they’re just 22. Think of being 22 years old and having your whole life ahead of you, without Trump.

At the same time, Trump has been a boon to ethicists, moral philosophers, and the rest of us who tend to wake up in the night and think about big scary things. Trump has brought the nation back to first principles.

Most presidents spur debates over things like whether the economy needs a more stimulative fiscal policy, or whether America should support the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states. Trump has made us debate whether the U.S. economy can exist separate from the rest of the world, and whether we should even belong to NATO.

Some presidents get us talking about civil rights and civil liberties. Trump has got us talking about democracy versus tyranny.

I don’t mean to minimize the damage he’s already done. I don’t remember America so angry and divided – not even through the battles over civil rights and Vietnam. Trump has also demeaned the office of the presidency, licensed bigotry, appointed absurdly incompetent people to his Cabinet, violated every ethics and conflict-of-interest rule imaginable, reduced America’s influence and moral authority in the world, and may even have conspired with a foreign power to rig a presidential election.

That’s a lot in just under seven months. He deserves a vacation.

But taking the slightly longer view, the nation is still functioning. Our democratic institutions have so far stood the test and remain strong, just as the founding fathers intended. Presidential power is checked and balanced so the current occupant of the Oval Office is hemmed in. Plus, our friends and allies around the world understand that our condition is temporary. America will be back.

It has been an incredibly stressful time, but most of us are okay. In fact, I’d venture to say most Americans remain optimistic – especially my upcoming college freshmen, who have their whole lives ahead of them.

robertreich.org