"Finally, by putting a $1.5 trillion hole in the budget, the tax
plan will accelerate demands for slashing Medicare, Medicaid
and Social Security, together with other forms of social
spending, to plug the gap."
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.
The US tax bill: A massive
handout to the financial elite
18 November 2017
On Thursday, the US House of Representatives passed a sweeping
bill that will slash taxes on the wealthy and hike taxes on millions of working
class households, in a move that will further fuel social inequality in the
world’s most unequal developed country.
Since the 1960s, the slashing of top income and corporate tax
rates has been a major driving force in the phenomenal growth of social
inequality in the United States. Now, under the fascistic billionaire real
estate mogul Donald Trump, this process is being kicked into overdrive.
The centerpiece of the bill is the reduction of corporate tax
rates by almost half, from 35 to 20 percent, at an estimated public cost of
$1.5 trillion, making US corporate taxes the lowest since 1939. This will
dramatically accelerate the fall in effective corporate taxes that has taken
place since the 1950s, when the effective tax rate was 50 percent, to today,
when it is less than 20 percent.
Next, the financial elite is salivating over the abolition of the
estate tax, which the bill mandates by 2025, providing a massive windfall to
the top 0.2 percent of households.
According to a report published last month by UBS, more than half
of all billionaire wealth in the US is controlled by individuals older than 70,
and the US financial elite has been waiting for the abolition of the estate tax
to transfer its wealth to the next generation. The abolition of the estate tax
would be a major step toward making the United States a hereditary oligarchy,
in which wealth is passed down dynastically without any diminution.
According to the non-partisan Joint Committee on Taxation, under
the Senate version of the bill, by 2027 every family earning below $75,000 per
year will see a tax hike, and every family making above $100,000 per year will
see a tax cut.
The bill includes provisions that are
little more than cruel and insulting. Alongside a tax break for the ownership
and maintenance of private jets, it mandates the elimination of tax deductions
for graduate student stipends and tuition reimbursement. The Harvard Crimson wrote
that the result would be a 400 percent tax increase on graduate students, who
are often massively underpaid.
Finally, by putting a $1.5 trillion hole in the budget, the tax
plan will accelerate demands for slashing Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security, together with other forms of social spending, to plug the gap.
While Democratic politicians mouthed criticisms of the
Republican-sponsored bill, its most important measure, the corporate tax cut,
has been a major element in the Democratic playbook. The Obama administration’s
2016 budget, for example, called for lowering the corporate tax rate to between
28 and 25 percent.
The New York Times, a
leading mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, wrote in an editorial this week,
“The Right Way to Cut Corporate Taxes,” that “Republicans are right about the
corporate tax system being broken.” The newspaper added, “If Republicans worked
with Democrats… they could reach a compromise to lower the top corporate tax
rate to between 25 percent and 28 percent.”
On Thursday, the Times and
leading Democratic politicians were far more concerned with whipping up a
series of sex scandals, centered around Republican Alabama senate candidate Roy
Moore and Democratic Senator Al Franken.
As expected, all three US stock indexes soared on Thursday
following passage of the bill by the House of Representatives. Since the
election of Donald Trump, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has shot up by 17
percent, and it has more than tripled in value since the 2008 financial crash.
In an interview last month, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin
made clear that a major driving force in the run-up in prices has been the
expectation that the Trump administration is going to slash taxes on
corporations and the super-rich.
“There is no question that the rally in the stock market has baked
into it reasonably high expectations of us getting tax cuts and tax reform
done,” said Mnuchin. “To the extent that we get the tax deal done, the stock
market will go up higher.” He also made clear that Wall Street would not accept
any slowdown in the upward redistribution of wealth. “There’s no question in my
mind that if we don’t get it done, you’re going to see a reversal of a
significant amount of the gains,” he said.
The comments by Mnuchin, the former Goldman Sachs banker worth
nearly half a billion dollars, are just one expression of the stranglehold of
the financial elite over political, social and economic life in the United
States. The first and last priority of American society is the continuous
enrichment of this financial oligarchy.
The United States is the most socially unequal developed country
in the world. Just three men— Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos—have
between them more wealth than the bottom half of the American population. The
world’s billionaires have had their wealth shoot up by $1 trillion over the
past year, driven by central bank money creation, tax cuts and incentives, and
the continuous assault on the social position of the working class.
The domination of the financial elite, in the United States and
around the world, over human civilization is the root cause of every serious
problem of modern society, from poverty, homelessness, and drug addiction, to
war. The ending of these evils requires the radical transformation and
reorganization of society in the interest of social needs, not private profit.
Andre Damon
Democrats posture as opponents of Wall Street in CFPB dispute
By Patrick Martin
THE ENDLESSLY HISPANDERING DEMOCRAT PARTY funded by Wall Street’s biggest criminals says it is “ALL NEW”….
Meaning open borders to keep wages depressed and no regulation of plundering banks!
It’s Obama’s wet dream!
Meaning open borders to keep wages depressed and no regulation of plundering banks!
"The Dodd-Frank bill, which created it, was an effort by the Obama administration and the Democrats, who then controlled Congress, to pretend to crack down on Wall Street while actually doing very little."
Democrats posture as opponents of Wall Street in CFPB dispute
By Patrick Martin
28 November 2017
In what can only be described as a stage-managed publicity stunt, the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Board, Democrat Richard Cordray, resigned abruptly on Friday after promoting his chief of staff, Leandra English, to the long-vacant position of deputy director.
English then declared herself to be Cordray’s successor and acting director, under the provisions of the Dodd-Frank bill, which established the CFPB in 2010 to act as an extremely limited, essentially toothless consumer watchdog on the depredations of US financial institutions.
The Trump White House, momentarily confused by the maneuver since Cordray had been expected to resign a week later, hastily named Budget Director Mick Mulvaney the acting director of the CFPB, and instructed English to report to Mulvaney as his deputy.
On Sunday night, English filed a civil lawsuit with the US District Court for Washington DC, seeking a declaratory judgment that she was the rightful CFPB director. However, the CFPB’s own general counsel, Mary McLeod, issued a memorandum to the agency’s employees instructing them that Mulvaney, as the nominee of the president, had the legal authority to direct the agency.
On Monday, Mulvaney visited the CFPB and took possession of the director’s office, announcing that he was halting all new hiring and regulatory actions for 30 days, pending a review of the agency’s operations.
While the 1,600 employees of the agency are concerned about an imminent threat to their jobs and livelihood—Mulvaney is an open enemy who, while in Congress, described the CFPB as a “sick joke” and advocated its abolition—the actions of Cordray, English and their Democratic congressional supporters are purely a political stunt.
There is little doubt that Trump has the authority, as president and head of the executive branch, to name interim replacements for vacancies at any executive agency. This authority is further codified in legislation enacted as recently as 1998.
The CFPB has been the subject of political posturing by both Republicans and Democrats since it was established six years ago in the wake of the 2008 Wall Street Crash. The Dodd-Frank bill, which created it, was an effort by the Obama administration and the Democrats, who then controlled Congress, to pretend to crack down on Wall Street while actually doing very little.
The Republicans, for their part, treated the CFPB as the second coming of the Bolsheviks, claiming that the tiny agency, with little enforcement power, was a threat to US financial markets and to the capitalist system itself.
Each capitalist party has used the agency for its own political purposes, while the CFPB itself has been nothing more than a minor annoyance to Wall Street. In six years of operation, it has been responsible for fines and restitution to consumers totaling $12 billion, or $2 billion a year. This amounts to barely one percent of the net profits of the US financial industry ($173 billion in 2016), and less than one half of one percent of bank revenues alone (over $400 billion and rising every year since the 2008 crash).
Cordray’s own role personifies the uses of the CFPB as a political cover. He was named to head the agency after Obama caved in to Republican opposition to Elizabeth Warren, his initial choice. Warren parlayed her undeserved reputation as a scourge of the bankers, and victim of the Republicans, into a successful campaign for a US Senate seat from Massachusetts.
Cordray’s fixed five-year term runs until July 1, 2018, so he was practically the sole Obama appointee to continue serving in the Trump administration. But he decided to abandon the post eight months early—and thus cede control of the CFPB to Trump—in order to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio. He then engineered the handover of authority to English, setting off the subsequent media firestorm, to jet-propel his own political campaign.
BLOG: YOU TAKE GOLDMAN SACHS OUT OF THE SWAMP KEEPER'S ADMIN AND THERE WILL BE NO AT HOME!
More broadly, the obvious determination of the Trump administration to stamp out even a fig leaf of accountability for the big banks allows the Democratic Party as a whole to adopt the stance of opposition to Wall Street.
NEXT TO OBAMA, CLINTON, FEINSTEIN
AND TRUMPER, CHUCK SCHUMER IS THE
BIGGEST BANKSTER SLUT IN THE SENATE
Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer met with Leandra English and Elizabeth Warren Monday afternoon, and then denounced Trump for “putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.” So says the paid agent of the foxes, who has received more campaign contributions from Wall Street than anyone else in Congress.
Schumer’s deputy, Senator Richard Durbin of Illinois, hailed the CFPB, declaring, “Wall Street hates it like the devil hates holy water”—perhaps uttering an inadvertent truth, since the CFPB is precisely as useless as holy water in fighting the domination of Wall Street over the US economy.
DESTABILIZE AMERICA TO LAY GROUNDS FOR A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2017/08/seth-barron-obama-and-building-of.html
US Senate
committee passes tax windfall for the rich
By Barry Grey
TRUMP DEMANDS PUERTO RICO PAY THE BANKSTERS FIRST!
HOW MUCH DID SWAMP KEEPER TRUMPS HUNDREDS OF BANKRUPTCIES COST HIS BANKSTERS???
CHICAGO’S BLACK GANG LAND…. Is what happens when bankster Rahm Emanuel and his corrupt Obama party turned the city under!
BARACK OBAMA:
THE PSYCHOPATH WHO WOULD BE DICTATOR FUNDED BY HIS CRIMINAL CRONY BANKSTERS AND REELECTED FOR A THIRD TERM BY MEXICO
MICHAEL BARONE:
The Lawlessness of the Obama Administration: A never-ending story
CHICAGO: THE FACE OF A NATION IN SHAMBLES
CHICAGO’S BLACK GANG LAND…. Is what happens when bankster Rahm Emanuel and his corrupt Obama party turned the city under!
FROM THE FIRST DAY OF HIS FIRST TERM, BARACK OBAMA AND ERIC HOLDER HAD COMMENCED BUILDING A MUSLIM-STYLE DICTATORSHIP FUNDED BY CRONY BANKSTERS AND MEXICO.
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 .”
ON SUICIDE WATCH:
HILLARY CLINTON: HER PARTNERSHIP WITH PUTIN TO DESTROY THE DEMOCRAT PARTY AND RIG AN ELECTION
“If the Constitution did not forbid cruel and unusual punishment, the sentence I
would like to see imposed would place both Bill and Hillary Clinton in the same 8-
by-12 cell.” ROBERT ARVAY – AMERICANTHINKERcom
THE DIRTY DEALS of DIRTY HILLARY….. looting anything that moves!
Harvey Weinstein has been exposed in the media as the sexual predator he is, and Hillary Clinton has been exposed as the craven money-grubber she is; money over morality is the mantra she lives by. PATRICIA Mc CARTHY – AMERICAN THINKERcom
"But what the Clintons do is criminal because they do it wholly at the expense of the American people. And they feel thoroughly entitled to do it: gain power, use it to enrich themselves and their friends. They are amoral, immoral, and venal. Hillary has no core beliefs beyond power and money. That should be clear to every person on the planet by now." ---- Patricia McCarthy - AMERICANTHINKER.com
US Senate
committee passes tax windfall for the rich
By Barry Grey
29 November 2017
The Senate version of the Republican bill to slash taxes for
corporations and the rich won approval on a 12-to-11 party-line vote of the
Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday, setting the stage for its likely passage by
the full Senate later this week. The House of Representatives passed a similar
measure, also on a party-line vote, earlier this month.
Congress, backed by the Trump White House,
is hurtling toward the
implementation of the
most brazen and far-reaching corporate raid
on the
federal Treasury in US history. The
measure being rushed through Congress,
without
public hearings and by means of legislative short
cuts, gimmicks and
behind-the-scenes horse-trading
between political frontmen for various
financial
interests, will dramatically cut taxes for big business
and the
wealthy while increasing taxes on the
working class.
It will reduce federal tax revenues by between $1.4 trillion and
$1.5 trillion over the next decade, sharply raising the federal deficit.
Republican leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan and House Ways and Means
Committee Chairman Kevin Brady have already indicated that the increased
deficit will be used as justification for laying siege to what remains of the
basic social programs dating from the 1930s and 1960s: Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security.
Both the House and Senate bills reduce the corporate tax rate from
the current 35 percent to 20 percent, saving corporations trillions of dollars.
They also dramatically slash taxes for other business owners and wealthy
families, consolidate an aristocratic caste at the very top by cutting or
eliminating the estate tax on hereditary wealth, and, in general, plunder the
national economy in order to further enrich the ruling class.
The tax “reform” will make the United States,
already the most
unequal developed economy
in the world, far more unequal.
Wall Street celebrated the forward progress of the Senate bill by
driving all three major stock indexes to new record highs. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average shot up by 255 points, gaining more than 1 percent and
closing in on the 24,000 mark. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500 index
gained 0.98 percent and the Nasdaq picked up 0.49 percent.
The Budget Committee vote followed a luncheon meeting on Capitol
Hill between President Trump and Senate Republicans, which Trump in a later
White House appearance described as a “love fest.” Virtually all of the
half-dozen Senate Republicans who have withheld support for the Senate bill
emerged from the meeting signaling their readiness to back it when it comes up
for a floor vote.
Two of these senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Bob Corker of
Tennessee, are members of the Budget Committee and had threatened to vote
against the measure, blocking it from coming up for a vote by the full Senate.
Johnson has been holding out for a tax reduction for owners of so-called “pass
through” businesses even greater than the 17.4 percent included in the current
version of the Senate bill. A recent University of Chicago Study concluded that
69 percent of income from such businesses—where the owners pay the individual
income tax rate rather than the corporate rate—goes to the top 1 percent of US
earners.
Corker has demanded the addition of a trigger mechanism that would
require taxes to be raised if federal revenues after a certain period fall
short of congressional projections. Both said Tuesday they were confident their
concerns would be addressed before a final bill is worked out between the House
and Senate and signed by Trump, who has pledged to do so by Christmas.
Susan Collins of Maine, who has criticized the addition in the
Senate bill of a repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate, which requires
people not insured by their employer or the government to purchase insurance on
the private market, said, “I believe that a lot of my concerns, it appears, are
going to be addressed and that I’m going to be getting the opportunity to offer
amendments on the senate floor.”
She added that Trump had pledged to support legislation restoring
Obamacare subsidies to private insurers, which he had removed by executive
order, if the individual mandate was repealed. The Congressional Budget Office
has concluded that repeal of the individual mandate will result in four million
fewer people having health insurance next year and 13 million fewer by 2027,
along with a 10 percent yearly rise in premiums for those who continue to buy
insurance on government-managed exchanges.
The Republicans control the Senate by a narrow 52 to 48 margin,
meaning they can afford only two “no” votes from their caucus, since the
Democrats are expected to vote as a bloc against the measure. A 50-50 tie would
result in a Trump-Republican victory, since Vice President Mike Pence would
cast the tie-breaking vote.
To avoid a Democratic filibuster and the need to marshal 60 votes,
the Republicans are making use of the parliamentary maneuver of moving the bill
under the “budget reconciliation” process. This requires, however, that the
resulting deficit be kept below $1.5 trillion and not grow further after ten
years.
To achieve this while ensuring a $6.7 trillion
increase in
corporate revenues by 2037 and
hundreds of billions in tax breaks for the
richest 5 percent, they raise taxes elsewhere,
resorting to cruel tax measures
that punish
working families and end up raising their
taxes.
The Senate bill makes cuts in individual income tax rates
temporary, reverting back to the current rates after five years, while
corporate tax cuts are permanent. It eliminates deductions on state and local
taxes and terminates tax breaks on medical expenses, student loan interest,
tuition deferments and a host of other expenses that disproportionately impact
low- and middle-income households.
As a result, according to the Congressional Budget Office and the
Joint Committee on Taxation, on average, households making less than $30,000
will start seeing negative effects in 2019 and households making less than
$75,000 will become worse off in 2027. By that time, 50 percent of Americans
will see their taxes rise.
Meanwhile, according to the Center for Budget and Policy
Priorities, half of the tax cuts will go to the top 1 percent of households,
those making more than $700,000 a year. The top 0.1 percent will receive up to
30 percent of total tax cuts.
The Democrats are putting on a show of opposition to this naked
piece of class legislation, but on an entirely cynical and token basis. The
Obama administration called for a cut in corporate taxes to between 25 percent
and 28 percent, a massive transfer of wealth to the corporate elite that the
Democratic Party continues to support.
As part of their political theatrics, Senate Minority Leader
Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi boycotted a scheduled
White House meeting with Trump and Republican congressional leaders on Tuesday
to discuss extending the federal budget. The current extension expires on
December 8, and without a further one, the federal government will be forced to
partially shut down.
The Democratic leaders announced they would not attend after Trump
issued a tweet Tuesday morning denouncing the Democrats for raising taxes,
starving the military and supporting “illegal” immigration. He added that he
did not believe a deal could be reached to avert a government shutdown.
Schumer was more forthright on the Democrats’ position on the tax
bill when he spoke on the floor of the Senate later in the day, pleading once
again for negotiations with the Republicans to work out a reactionary
bipartisan compromise.
“It’s an issue crying out for a bipartisan solution,” Schumer
declared. “There are a lot of areas where we agree. We have to work to find a
middle ground that’s acceptable to both parties.”
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