Friday, November 10, 2017

JEFF BEZOS, BILL GATES and WARREN BUFFETT HAVE MORE WEALTH THAN HALF THE AMERICAN POPULATION - SOARING POVERTY, HOMELESSNESS, DRUG ADDICTION AND EARLY DEATH FOR THAT HALF

VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!

VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!

VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!


"Today, each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 

million people, more than the total population of Latin America

and double the population of the US."



BOOK:…..TRAGIC!

THE DEATH GAP: INEQUALITY IS KILLING AMERICA!



CALL IT OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS OR TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE SUPER RICH!


Three billionaires are wealthier than half the US population

10 November 2017
According to a report published Wednesday by the Institute for Policy Studies, the three richest Americans—Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett—now own more wealth than the poorest half of the US population, some 160 million people.
America’s “60 families,” whose massive wealth was documented in journalist Ferdinand Lundberg’s 1937 exposure, have been replaced by just three billionaires whose combined wealth is over $264 billion.
The Institute for Policy Studies report, 
“Billionaire Bonanza: The Forbes 400 and 
the rest of us,” reveals that the richest 25 
Americans are wealthier than the bottom 56 
percent of the US. The net worth of the 400 
richest is roughly equal to that of the bottom 
two thirds of the country, a total of 200 
million people. According to the report’s 
authors, the US has become “a hereditary 
aristocracy of wealth and power.”

The unprecedented concentration of wealth is an international phenomenon. Oxfam reported in June 2017 that the world’s 5 richest people own as much as the poorest half of the world’s population, down from 80 people in 2015. Today, each of the top 5 billionaires owns as much as 750 million people, more than the total population of Latin America and double the population of the US.
The IPS report explains that the US data “underestimate[s] our current levels of wealth concentration” because “the growing use of offshore tax havens and legal trusts has made the concealing of assets more widespread than ever before." A 2017 report published by Alstadsaeter, Johannesen, and Zucman titled “Who owns the wealth in tax havens?” estimates that the world’s superrich have between $5.7 and $32 trillion hidden from taxation or statistical analysis.
While the superrich dominate the commanding heights, the bottom 90 percent face hardship and crisis that vary only in terms of immediacy. The IPS report measures the net worth of working class families by subtracting the value of durable goods like automobiles, household appliances and furniture. According to its estimate, over 19 percent of US households—roughly 60 million people—have “zero or negative net worth” when durable goods are subtracted.
Beyond the poorest 20 percent, the report explains, “even those low- and middle-income families who do have some wealth often don’t have any liquid assets—cash or savings—at their disposal. Over 60 percent of Americans report not having enough savings to cover a $500 emergency.”
Even above the roughly 200 million people with nothing saved, conditions for the 60th to 90th percentile are similarly difficult. The bulk of this section of the working class’s net worth derives from housing equity, and when this is subtracted, most lack enough to survive through a few years of retirement. According to a recent study of Census data by the Economic Policy Institute, retirement account savings have plummeted in recent years among all age groups.
The IPS report is based on data from the US Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which the World Socialist Web Site analyzed in detail last month. While the extremely wealthy have accumulated vast sums of wealth, a broader layer, comprising the top 10 percent, has also greatly enriched itself in recent years at the expense of the working masses. The richest 10 percent of the US—the social and political base for gender and identity politics—owns 77.1 percent of total wealth, while the bottom three quarters owns just 10 percent.
The explosion of social inequality is not an accidental process. It is the product of a decades-long campaign by both the Democratic and Republican parties to transfer trillions of dollars from the working class into the pockets of the rich. The “accomplishments” of both parties over the course of the last forty years are a litany of tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to social programs, the deindustrialization of broad swaths of the Midwest, gutting corporate regulations and spending trillions on imperialist war, state surveillance and mass deportation and incarceration.
The Obama administration marked a milestone in this protracted social counterrevolution defined by the Wall Street bailout of 2008-2009, the restructuring of the auto industry in 2009 and the bankruptcy of Detroit in 2013-14. With the help of the Democratic administration, the ruling elite cashed in on the financial crisis.
As a result, the United States is now an oligarchy. Through its immense wealth and control of the major corporations, the superrich have established total domination over all of the official institutions of political, cultural and intellectual power.
The courts, the congress, and the president not only operate on behalf of competing interests within the aristocracy, they are increasingly personally staffed by millionaires and billionaires, as expressed most directly in the figure of Donald Trump. The military wages permanent war across the globe to protect corporate profits. The mainstream media is nothing more than the official propaganda wing of the American oligarchy. The trade unions, in their typically brutish and corrupt form, are paid off by the corporations to police the workers and suppress opposition.
The obsessions and preoccupations of this privileged layer of the population are entirely alien to the concerns of the bottom 90 percent. The cost of health care is skyrocketing; thousands of immigrant families are torn apart each week by deportation; nearly 100 people die each day from opioid abuse; student debt crushes a whole generation; millions remain devastated by floods, fires and hurricanes; entire states have been stripped of women’s health clinics; one veteran commits suicide every 80 minutes; and on and on.
Congress holds no hearings on these subjects. Its calendar is booked full with hearings on alleged Russian interference in US politics and the need to bring social media and tech companies to heel by censoring antiestablishment media. The Democrats and Republicans are working around the clock to reach a deal on a tax bill that will hand over trillions to the wealthy and corporations, with Senate Republicans announcing their version just yesterday.
The astronomical growth of inequality and the absence of any institutional mechanisms by which the population can address its social grievances presages an historic explosion of the class struggle. Strikes and protests involving tens of millions of workers and youth are inevitable, but they must be guided by a socialist program.
The billionaires’ wealth must be expropriated and redistributed to those in need. The corporations through which they derive their riches must be seized, placed under democratic control and reorganized by the workers themselves to serve public need and not private profit.
Companies like Bezos’ Amazon can be used to deliver medicine, food, water and construction equipment to disaster zones and impoverished areas. Gates’ Microsoft software and programming development can be harnessed to introduce an unprecedented degree of social planning into the world economy, allowing for production to be controlled so as to eliminate scarcity of basic resources and reverse environmental degradations. All industries can be made to serve the interests of the human race.
Under socialism, across all industries and in all countries, workers will come together in their workshops, plants and offices to plot a course for wielding the world’s productive forces in pursuit of equality and progress. But the ruling class will not give up its wealth voluntarily. 
Eric London


House to vote on giving Amazon $53 billion deal to become main Pentagon supplier

 

By Evan Blake
11 November 2017
Members of the US House of Representatives and Senate Armed Services committees announced Wednesday that they have reached agreement on the proposed $700 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the annual defense spending bill. This astronomical figure—an $80 billion increase over spending in 2016 and roughly $26 billion more than was requested by President Donald Trump—is a clear signal that the US will expand its ongoing wars around the world and is preparing to engage in far broader conflicts potentially involving North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.
The NDAA will now be voted on by the House of Representatives, where it has been rubber-stamped every year since 1961, before being signed into law by Trump. While reporting by the bourgeois press on the NDAA has been limited overall, a key section of the bill, titled “Procurement Through Commercial E-Commerce Portals,” has been almost entirely overlooked. This section establishes the framework whereby Amazon will be able to corner the market for Defense Department procurements worth roughly $53 billion, and its inclusion in the NDAA is a product of the direct links connecting Amazon with the state and military-intelligence apparatus.
Already marked as a semi-official wing of the US military-intelligence apparatus by their back-room deal with the CIA, Amazon will likely soon become the primary supplier for numerous items demanded by the Defense Department.
The Pentagon will now purchase office equipment, internet service, and all other equipment needed to direct its out war crimes directly from Amazon, both in the US and at its military bases internationally. In other words, if the bill becomes law, Amazon will be providing hundreds of thousands of CIA agents, military personnel, prosecutors, and immigration agents with their pencils, desks, and chairs.
Section 846 of the NDAA requires the Defense Department to purchase commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products on “e-commerce portals.” While congressmen claim that there will be healthy “competition” between a variety of such “e-commerce portals,” in reality Amazon possesses immense advantages that leave it poised to quickly monopolize the market.
By claiming that the online marketplaces are inherently competitive, Section 846 also enables the federal government to secure no-bid contracts, eliminating the requirement that procurement officers seek competitive bids.
The experience of numerous third-party vendors on Amazon, however, testifies that their online marketplace is the antithesis of a “free market.” Rather, the company is notorious for using the most sophisticated technology to drive out their competition and take over markets for themselves. By using algorithms to track sales data on Amazon, the company determines which products are most profitable, diverts traffic to their own marked-down version of the same product to drive out their competition, and then gouges the price to reap super-profits once they’ve established monopoly control.
Amazon is able to do this in part because they charge third-party companies 15-20 percent of their sales revenue for the ability to sell on Amazon, which impinges on profits and sets a higher price threshold at which companies can sell while still being profitable, thus enabling Amazon to perpetually undercut their competition.
With the establishment of an online marketplace catering to the federal government, Amazon will be able to track the Pentagon’s spending data on everything, and repeat the above process until they control every major market. Very shortly, Amazon could be the sole source of chairs, paper, desks, water bottles, etc. for the entire Defense Department, netting annual revenue of almost the entire apportionment of $53 billion, equal to 38 percent of the company’s overall $136 billion revenue in 2016.
Similar to the 2013 deal between Amazon and the CIA, the current deal gives the company a foot in the door for securing even more lucrative military contracts in the future. If this foray proves successful, the broader intelligence community and other federal agencies could themselves formulate “online marketplace” policies designed to benefit Amazon.
The proposed NDAA budget explicitly states that it will promote “the objective of enabling Government-wide use of such portals,” while making the entire process as seamless as possible for Amazon and the other e-commerce portals. The document states, “The conferees encourage the Administrator, General Services, to resist the urge to make changes to the existing features, terms and conditions, and business models of available e-commerce portals, but rather demonstrate the government's willingness to adapt the way it does business.”
In 2016, Amazon accounted for 38.1 percent of all online retail sales, followed distantly by eBay at 7.8 percent, Apple at 3.2 percent and Walmart at 2.8 percent. Amazon’s e-commerce sales are projected to grow by 32 percent this year, with their market share ballooning to 43.5 percent. If their growth continues at the same rate, Amazon will control 100 percent of online retail sales in roughly 10 years. With the help of the Pentagon, Amazon could reach this level of monopolization far sooner.
The connections between Amazon and the state find open expression in the implementation of Section 846 of the NDAA, which the company sculpted with House Armed Services Committee chair Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican who has been lobbied by Amazon over the past year. Thornberry first introduced the concept of establishing online marketplaces via a standalone bill last May, which he then wrapped into the NDAA budget proposal in the following months. Announcing the initial bill proposal, Thornberry declared, “if you’re buying office supplies, you ought to be able to go on Amazon and do it.”
So far this year, Amazon has spent $9,660,000 lobbying the federal government, the 15th largest amount of any company or entity. They are on track to spend $12 million this year, more than Dow Chemical and Exxon Mobile. In the second and third quarters of 2017, Amazon explicitly lobbied on the “modernization of the procurement process,” according to filings by lobbying firm TwinLogic Strategies.
Amazon Business, the company’s commercial sales platform launched in 2015, will likely be the platform by which they sell merchandise to the Defense Department. The current head of Amazon Business’ public sector division, Anne Rung, was the head of the US government’s Office of Management and Budget’s Office of Federal Procurement Policy until fall 2016. In that capacity, Rung effectively oversaw the program that will now be making purchases directly from Amazon.
As the International Amazon Workers Voice (IAWV) has repeatedly exposed, Amazon is deeply implicated in the war crimes of American imperialism. Behind the backs of Amazon workers and the American population, the company has facilitated the machinations of the military and formed connections at the highest levels of the state. Their latest efforts to create a private marketplace to secure immense profits from the Pentagon marks a significant deepening of this corrupt relationship.
The only way to break the domination of the 
corporations and the military-intelligence 
apparatus is for workers to expropriate 
corporations like Amazon, redistribute the 
company’s wealth and the $90 billion belonging to
CEO Jeff Bezos according to human need, and 
reorganize the corporation as a public service. 
Under socialism, Amazon’s distribution networks could be directed by the workers to deliver food, medicine, and rebuilding supplies to disaster zones like Puerto Rico, to help deliver clean water to impoverished regions of the world, and to establish a level of social planning to the distribution of the world’s resources.


OPEN BORDERS:NOT ONE BILLIONAIRE DOES NOT WANT AMNESTY, OPEN BORDERS AND OPPOSES E-VERIFY.... Why?

IT'S ALL ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASSING ALONG

THE ILLEGALS' WELFARE AND CRIME COSTS TO THE AMERICAN MIDDLE CLASS!


“That Washington-imposed policy of mass-immigration floods the market with foreign laborspikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate priceswidens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million marginalized Americans and their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.” ---- NEIL MUNRO

SQUANDERING AMERICA!
Endless wars for Muslim dictators while the Mexican drug cartels expand from border to open border.
TRILLIONS WASTED AS AMERICA CRUMBLES!
AMERICA’S SUICIDE:

PATHOLOGICAL VIOLENCE, OPIOID ADDICTION, STAGGERING POVERTY, SOARING JOBLESSNESS FOR LEGALS AND POVERTY FOR ALL….. While the rich only get SUPER RICH!

AMERICAN WORKERS ASSAULTED ON ALL FRONTS!
U.A.W BELLIES WITH THEIR CORPORAT BRIBSTERS TO ASSAULT THE AMERICAN WORKER.

JOBLESS AMERICA: Push 2 for English and go to the front of the line!

95 MILLION AMERICANS (Legals) HAVE NO WORK AS THE BORDERS ARE FLOODED WITH FOREIGNERS SUCKING UP JOBS, WELFARE AND VOTING DEMOCRAT FOR MORE!


THE LA RAZA MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS REMIND AMERICANS (Legals) THAT THERE IS NO (REAL) BORDER WITH NARCOMEX!

SHOCKING IMAGES OF CARTELS ON U.S. BORDERS:
“Heroin is not produced in the United States. Every gram of heroin present in the United States provides unequivocal evidence of a failure of border security because every gram of heroin was smuggled into the United States. Indeed, this is precisely a point that Attorney General Jeff Sessions made during his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on October 18, 2017 when he again raised the need to secure the U.S./Mexican border to protect American lives.” Michael Cutler …..FrontPageMag.com

THE GOLDMAN SACHS WHITE HOUSE 

DEMANDS THEIR LOOT!

TRUMP DEMANDS PUERTO RICO PAY THE BANKSTERS FIRST!

TWITTER TRUMPER trades WALL for tax cuts for the super rich…. But he doesn’t pay taxes!!!


TRUMP: For more tax cuts for the rich, NO (REAL) WALL, NO E-VERIFY, NO LEGAL NEED APPLY and NO ENFORCEMENT!


OBAMA’S CRONY BANKSTERISM destroyed a TRILLION DOLLARS in home equity… and they’re still plundering us!

Barack Obama created more debt for the middle class than any president in US

history, and also had the only huge QE programs: $4.2 Trillion.

OXFAM reported that during Obama’s terms, 95% of the wealth created went to
the top 1% of the world’s wealthy. 

TRUMP OFFERS VICTIMS OF HARVEY AND IRMA $15 BILLION or about HALF of what California hands their Mexican welfare state!


IS IT YET TIME TO REBUILD AMERICAN AND END THE BUILDING AND REBUILDING OF MUSLIM DICTATORSHIPS OVER THERE?

HOUSTON: ONLY THE POOR DROWN IN THIS COUNTRY!
THE HOUSTON FLOOD   -   CRONY CAPITALIST LICK THEIR LIPS OVER REBUILDING.... FIRST, LIKE KATRINA, CUT WAGES AND INVITE HORDES MORE ILLEGALS IN TO WORK CHEAP!
"Like Katrina, Hurricane Harvey has lifted the lid on the ugly reality of American society, exposing colossal levels of social inequality, pervasive poverty and ruling class criminality."

"The reason why these warnings have been ignored is not hard to fathom. They have been resolutely opposed by corporate interests, including the real estate industry, Wall Street and Big Oil. Their ability, operating through bribed politicians of  both parties, to veto and block elementary measures to protect the American people, exemplifies the complete subordination of all social needs under capitalism to the selfish drive of a corporate-financial oligarchy to accumulate ever greater levels of personal wealth and profit."
TWITTER TRUMPER’S PROMISE TO DEMS & MEXICO: NO (real) WALL, NO E-VERIFY and NO ENFORCEMENT of DACA
WHILE THE SWAMP KEEPER TWITTER TRUMPER SERVES THE SUPER RICH…. The wall remains a joke on Legals and HUNDREDS OF STORES across America’s OPEN BORDERS are being shuttered by the hundreds!

WALL STREET TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE: DIE YOUNG… your company pension dies with you!
OPIOID AND ALCOHOL ADDICTION KILLS OF MIDDLE AMERICA

SOARING POVERTY AND DRUG ADDICTION UNDER OBAMA
"These figures present a scathing indictment of the social order that prevails in America, the world’s wealthiest country, whose government proclaims itself to be the globe’s leading democracy. They are just one manifestation of the human toll taken by the vast and all-pervasive inequality and mass poverty. 

AMERICA UNRAVELS:

Millions of children go hungry as the super- rich gorge themselves and ILLEGALS SUCK IN BILLIONS IN WELFARE!

"The top 10 percent of Americans now own roughly three-quarters of all household wealth."

http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/america-unravels-millions-of-children.html

"While telling workers there is “not enough money” for wage increases, or to fund social programs, both parties hailed the recent construction of the U.S.S. Gerald Ford, a massive aircraft carrier that cost $13 billion to build, stuffing the pockets of numerous contractors and war profiteers."


OBAMA-CLINTONOMICS to serve the filthy rich

The same period has seen a massive growth of social inequality, with income and wealth concentrated at the very top of American society to an extent not seen since the 1920s.

“This study follows reports released over the past several months documenting rising mortality rates among US workers due to drug addiction and suicide, high rates of infant mortality, an overall leveling off of life expectancy, and a growing gap between the life expectancy of the bottom rung of income earners compared to those at the top.”


THE OBAMA COUP: IT STARTED IN CHARLOTTESVILLE

 

 

"We know that Obama and his inner circle have set up a war room in his D.C.

home to plan and execute resistance to the Trump administration and his legislative

agenda.  None of these people care about the American people, or the fact that

Trump won the election because millions of people voted for him."  

Patricia McCarthy / AMERICAN THINKER.com


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/did-barack-obama-start-charlottesville.html

 

 "Cold War historian Paul Kengor goes deeply into Obama's communist background in an article in American Spectator, "Our First Red Diaper Baby President," and in an excellent Mark Levin interview.  Another Kengor article describes the Chicago communists whose younger generation include David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Barack Hussein Obama.  Add the openly Marxist, pro-communist Ayers, and you have many of the key players who put Obama into power." Karin McQuillan


OPERATION OBOMB:

DESTABILIZE AMERICA TO LAY GROUNDS FOR A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP


http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/seth-barron-obama-and-building-of.html

 

“Obama’s new home in Washington has been described as the “nerve center” of the anti-Trump opposition. Former attorney general Eric Holder has said that Obama is “ready to roll” and has aligned himself with the “resistance.” Former high-level Obama campaign staffers now work with a variety of  groups organizing direct action against Trump’s initiatives. “Resistance School,” for example, features lectures by former campaign executive Sara El-Amine, author of the Obama Organizing .”

 

THE FINAL SOLUTION:

America surrenders its borders to the MEXICAN FASCIST PARTY of LA RAZA, now masquerading as UNIDOSus.

An American immigrant is not someone supported by government funds in a "relocation" center; flown over here at government expense; given a cash allowance, free housing, and medical care; and then eased onto local public assistance: Section 8 rental grants, food stamps, WIC, AFDC, clothes from one government-sponsored charity or another, Medicaid, and public schooling, with free lunch and breakfasts and even help with furniture. That's not an immigrant.  That's a future Democrat voter.  ----- RICHARD F. MINITER – AMERICAN THINKER         COM
MARK ZUCKERBERG AND OTHER TECH BILLIONAIRES SAY HELL NO TO PAYING LEGALS LIVING WAGES… not when there’s boatloads of Chinese ready to take our tech jobs and work cheap!
          
Billionaire Mexicans tell their poor to JUMP 

U.S. OPEN BORDERS and LOOT THE 

STUPID GRINGO… and loot they do!

Billions of dollars are sucked out of America from Mexico’s looting!







Steve Bannon: ‘Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post’ Is ‘Purely Part of the Apparatus of the Democratic Party’




Breitbart News exec and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon ripped into the Washington Post Thursday night at the 603 Alliance’s “Taking On The Establishment” fundraiser in Manchester, NH — calling the paper, owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, “purely part of the apparatus of the Democratic Party,” citing its similar hit pieces on Judge Roy Moore and then-candidate Donald Trump.

From CBS News:
At a speech in New Hampshire Thursday night, GOP strategist Steve Bannon compared the accusations against Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore to the release of President Trump’s infamous “Access Hollywood” video during the 2016 election.
“But it’s interesting,” Bannon told the audience. “The Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped that dime on Donald Trump, is the same Bezos-Amazon-Washington Post that dropped the dime this afternoon on Judge Roy Moore. Now is that a coincidence? That’s what I mean when I say opposition party, right? It’s purely part of the apparatus of the Democratic Party. They don’t make any bones about it. By the way, I don’t mind it. I’ll call them out every day.”
Bannon called out the media saying, “it’s not a free and fair media anymore.”
Bannon called it the accusations “politics of self-destruction,” as he headlined the 603 Alliance’s “Taking On The Establishment” fundraiser benefiting candidates running for the statehouse. Bannon’s defense — that the Washington Post report was an orchestrated political attack — echoed Moore’s campaign statement calling the Washington Post report the “very definition of fake news and intentional defamation.”
Read the rest of the story here.


"These measures amount to a tax surcharge on workers, young people and the elderly to help pay for the tax boondoggle for the rich."

"The Democrats are putting on a show of opposition that is cynical to the core. They are denouncing the Republican bills for skewing the tax benefits to the wealthy, while fully supporting the centerpiece of the legislation, a huge tax cut for US corporations."


White House, congressional Republicans accelerate drive for corporate tax cut worth trillions

By Barry Grey
11 November 2017

The push is accelerating for an overhaul of the US tax system that will divert trillions of additional dollars to the corporate aristocracy, widen the gap between the rich and the working class and set the stage for the destruction of basic social programs.
On Thursday, the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee passed a White House-backed tax bill on a party-line vote, after which House leaders said the measure would come to the House floor for a vote next week. On the same day, the Republican-controlled Senate released its version of the measure, with plans for a floor vote in the upper chamber before the Thanksgiving holiday later this month.
If passed, the two versions will be reconciled and a final bill will be moved through the two chambers and signed into law by President Trump.
The Trump administration and congressional Republicans are pushing for passage of the handout to the richest 5 percent by Christmas. The Democrats are putting on a show of opposition that is cynical to the core. They are denouncing the Republican bills for skewing the tax benefits to the wealthy, while fully supporting the centerpiece of the legislation, a huge tax cut for US corporations.
While there are differences between the House and Senate bills, both versions adhere to the same basic framework. The corporate tax rate is to be permanently reduced from the current level of 35 percent to 20 percent, saving US corporations $2 trillion in taxes and generating an additional $6.7 trillion in revenues over the next decade. The House bill enacts the corporate tax cut in 2018, while the Senate bill, in order to reduce the projected deficit from lost federal revenues, delays the corporate tax cut one year, until 2019.
The House bill keeps the top federal tax bracket at 39.6 percent (down from 70 percent in 1980), but applies it to households making more than $1 million a year, as compared to the current threshold of $500,000. The Senate version provides a bigger windfall for the very rich by reducing the top bracket to 38.5 percent.
Both bills eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which almost exclusively impacts the wealthy, and they both slash the tax rate on so-called “pass-through” income reported by business owners.
Each bill allows corporations that have 

stashed hundreds of billions of dollars 

overseas to avoid US taxes, such as Apple and

Amazon, to repatriate their profits at a 

sharply discounted tax rate even lower than 

the new 20 percent corporate rate.
The bills either sharply restrict or eliminate outright the estate tax, which is currently paid by the wealthiest 0.2 percent of households. The House bill doubles the exemption for an individual to $11 million and eliminates the estate tax entirely in 2025. The Senate version doubles the exemption but does not repeal the tax.
Either way, the change underwrites the right of the richest households to pass on their wealth to succeeding generations, institutionalizing the transformation of the United States into an oligarchy, presided over by a semi-hereditary dynastic caste.
Other boons to business are included in both bills, including an immediate 100 percent tax write-off for capital investments. Neither bill eliminates or reduces the so-called “carried interest” loophole that allows hedge fund, private equity and real estate speculators (such as Donald Trump) to pay only 20 percent on their income instead of the normal tax rate, currently almost twice as high.
This is in line with the legislation as whole. While shifting the tax code to further redistribute the social wealth from the bottom to the top, it particularly favors the most parasitic sections of the ruling class, those engaged in financial manipulation.
In order to promote the fiction that the overhaul is geared to the “middle class,” the bills include certain tax breaks, such as a doubling of the standard deduction for taxpayers who do not itemize and an increase in the child tax credit. However, they also rein in or eliminate existing tax deductions that benefit working class and middle class households.
This is driven above all by the need to keep the total ten-year deficit resulting from the legislation to $1.5 trillion. That limit must be met in order to move the tax overhaul on an expedited basis through the Senate, where the Republicans have only a 52 to 48 majority, ruling out a filibuster and enabling passage by a simple majority.
The House bill eliminates the federal tax credit for state and local income and sales taxes, but continues the write-off for state and local property taxes, capping it at $10,000. It reduces the existing tax reduction on mortgage interest payments as well as a tax break on medical expenses. It also eliminates tax credits for student loan payments and imposes a tax on graduate student stipends. These measures amount to a tax surcharge on workers, young people and the elderly to help pay for the tax boondoggle for the rich.
The Senate version calls for a somewhat different package of added tax burdens for the working class and middle class. It eliminates all state and local tax deductions but retains the tax credits for mortgage interest, student loan payments and medical expenses.
The Republicans are resorting to brazen lying to present the legislation as a boon to “hard-working middle class Americans.” Typical is an op-ed column published Friday in the Washington Post by Orrin Hatch of Utah, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. “For too long, middle-class Americans have struggled with stagnant wages, sluggish labor markets and economic growth well below the historic average,” he writes. “It is time to pay attention to those Americans who have felt left behind in economic stagnation, by providing tax relief and economic opportunity.”
The line is that corporate America will use the trillions in tax savings to buy new equipment, build new factories, hire more workers and raise wages. This ignores the fact that US corporations already have access to cheap credit, are making bumper profits, and are sitting on trillions of dollars in cash. It also ignores the past record of tax cuts for big business, whether under Reagan or George W. Bush, which pushed up stocks and the wealth of the ruling elite while accelerating the destruction of jobs and working class living standards. The same lying pretext was used to justify Obama’s bailout of the banks.
In fact, the extra trillions will be used to buy more and bigger yachts, private planes, mansions, penthouses, private islands and gated communities and bribe more politicians to do the bidding of the oligarchs.
One indication of the two-faced character of the Democrats’ opposition is the fact that interest groups backed by Republican billionaires such as the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson have thus far spent almost $25 million on TV ads to promote the Republican tax plan, while Democratic groups have spent less than $5 million to oppose the plan.
An updated analysis of the House bill published Wednesday by the non-partisan tax center spells out in detail how the tax overhaul is designed to sharply increase the wealth of the richest 5 percent, and especially the richest 1 percent and 0.1 percent, and vastly increase over the next decade the concentration of wealth at the very top.
Under the so-called “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act,” in 2018, taxpayers in the top 1 percent (with income above $730,000) will receive nearly 21 percent of the total tax cut, an average of about $37,000, or 2.5 percent of after-tax income.
Those in the top 5 percent income bracket, 

and especially the top 1 percent and top 0.1 

percent, will get by far the biggest percentage 

gains in after-tax income. In other words, if 

you are among the very rich, the rate of 

increase you receive will be far higher than for

the lower 95 percent. That means the plan is 

designed to widen the gap between the very 

rich and everybody else.
In 2018, the top 20 percent of income earners will get 56.6 percent of the total federal tax cut. Within the top 10 percent, the 90-95 percent group will get 7.4 percent of the total, the 95-99 percent group will receive 14.8 percent, the top 1 percent will get 20.6 percent and the top 0.1 percent will receive 10 percent. In other words, within the richest 10 percent, the benefits are skewed dramatically to the richest of the rich.
One decade out, by 2027, the transfer of social wealth to the very rich will be even more pronounced. In 2027, taxpayers in the bottom two quintiles (those with income less than about $55,000) will see little change in their taxes, with a tax decrease of $10-$40. Taxpayers in the middle of the income distribution will see their after-tax incomes increase by only 0.4 percent. Taxpayers in the top 1 percent will receive nearly 50 percent of the total benefit.
Someone in the top 1 percent will get a break of $52,780. Someone in the top 0.1 percent will get a tax cut of $278,370.
In total, 12.8 million households will have a bigger tax bill in 2018 under the law, including more than three million earning between $48,600 and $86,100. By 2027, more than 11 million households in this income group will see their tax bills increase. Overall, by 2027, 47.5 million households, a quarter of the total, will have a tax increase.

THERE'S NOT ONE BILLIONAIRE, INCLUDING THE SWAMP KEEPER, WHO IS NOT FOR AMNESTY, OPEN BORDERS AND HELL NO TO E-VERIFY AND HIRING AMERICAN!


Trump's Mar-a-Lago gets approval to hire 70 foreign workers because there aren't enough Americans willing to do the jobs


  • Managers claim there aren't enough Americans qualified and willing to do work
  • Trump's hiring of foreign workers was criticized during the 2016 election

  • Trump defended Mar-a-Lago's hiring practices, saying not enough Americans apply for its low-end service jobs

  • Mar-a-Lago has been approved to employ 35 foreign waiters, 20 cooks and 15 housekeepers to help serve its 500 members starting this month through May 31

  • The waiters will receive $11.88 an hour with no tips, the cooks $13.34 an hour and the housekeepers $10.33 an hour
  • The waiters' and cooks' wages are slightly above the national average

  • The housekeepers' are slightly below, per Labor Dept. statistics

President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago club has received permission to hire 70 foreign workers to fill out its staff during its upcoming busy season, after managers attested there aren't enough Americans qualified and willing to do the work.
The president's hiring of foreign workers at the Florida resort over several years was criticized by his opponents during the 2016 campaign after he slammed companies for moving jobs out of the U.S. and others for hiring immigrants in the country illegally. 
During the Republican primary debates, Trump defended Mar-a-Lago's hiring practices, saying not enough Americans apply for its low-end service jobs and if his managers didn't recruit outside the country 'we might as well just close the doors.'
Trump Organization spokeswoman Amanda Miller did not return calls and emails seeking comment. Janine Gill, Mar-a-Lago's personnel director, also did not return a call. 
Trump visited Mar-a-Lago seven times after his January 20 inauguration and is expected back this season, perhaps as early as Thanksgiving.

President Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort has received approval to hire 70 foreign workers for its upcoming busy season. The Florida club pictured above in April  
Under requests approved by the U.S. Labor Department, Mar-a-Lago can employ 35 foreign waiters, 20 cooks and 15 housekeepers to help serve its 500 members starting this month through May 31. 
The waiters will receive $11.88 an hour with no tips, the cooks $13.34 an hour and the housekeepers $10.33 an hour. The waiters' and cooks' wages are slightly above the national average for those fields and the housekeepers' slightly below, according to Labor Department statistics.
Trump (pictured above in Vietnam on Friday) came under fire in the 2016 presidential race for his hiring of foreign workers, especially since he blamed immigrants for stealing jobs from Americans 
Trump (pictured above in Vietnam on Friday) came under fire in the 2016 presidential race for his hiring of foreign workers, especially since he blamed immigrants for stealing jobs from Americans 
Mar-a-Lago has made similar requests in recent years, ranging from 88 employees in 2014 down to 64 last year.
Many other high-end resorts and clubs in Palm Beach County annually receive similar approvals from the government, including 141 foreign employees this year for The Breakers, a historic beachfront hotel near Mar-a-Lago, and 65 for The Polo Club of Boca Raton. 
All are offering wages roughly similar to Mar-a-Lago, according to their Labor Department filings. The area's peak tourist season is from about Thanksgiving to Easter.
The workers are hired under the H-2B visa program, which is for seasonal, non-agriculture employees and is capped at 66,000 nationally per year. 
The State Department says all visa applicants are screened against law enforcement and counter-terrorism databases, but would not say whether Mar-a-Lago applicants get extra scrutiny.
Peter Ricci, director of Florida Atlantic University's hospitality and tourism program, said most foreign workers hired by Palm Beach County resorts are students from Ireland, South Africa, Portugal and the Netherlands who are fulfilling a graduation requirement. 
Ricci, who has studied and worked with the local resort industry, said most American hospitality students don't want to work as servers but want to get into a management trainee program, while the foreign students see high-end waiter and service jobs as possible careers and are eager to take them.

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'The more upscale the type of venue, the more difficult it is to hire the type of (American) server or employee that we need,' Ricci said. 'With their culture from their home countries, (the foreign recruits) come with a more dedicated attitude for service that the recruiters just can't find enough of locally.'
Palm Beach County's unemployment rate is 3.6 percent, below the national rate of 4.1 percent. The county's Great Recession rate peaked at 11.6 percent in August 2010 and has been in a steady decline since.
Mar-a-Lago's members pay $14,000 annual dues for access to the 17-acre (6.9-hectare) estate, with new members paying a $200,000 initiation fee that doubled earlier this year. 
Trump purchased Mar-a-Lago - 'The Greatest Mansion Ever Built,' according to its website - from the foundation of cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post in 1985 for $10 million and has invested tens of millions of dollars improving the property. He opened it as a club in 1995.
The property now boasts 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, a 20,000-square-foot ballroom, tennis and croquet courts and three bomb shelters. Members pay extra to dine and stay on the property.
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Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5067051/Trumps-Mar-A-Lago-gets-approval-hire-70-foreign-workers.html#ixzz4y4JH22RG

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