“If you care about
America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it’s
happening in the inner city or on Wall Street. ”
TUCKER CARLSON
“Under our current system, an
American who works for a salary pays about twice the tax rate of someone who’s
living off inherited money and doesn’t work at all. We tax capital at half of
what we tax labor. It’s a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of the
richest people do. In 2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million
dollars in investment income. He paid a federal tax rate of 14 percent. For
normal upper-middle-class wage earners, the federal tax rate is nearly 40
percent. No wonder Romney supports the status quo.” TUCKER CARLSON
“Bain Capital all but invented
what is now a familiar business strategy: take over an existing company for a
short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run up the debt, extract
the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees without their earned
pensions.” TUCKER
CARLSON
Tucker Carlson: Romney’s Trump Attack Indicative of a Ruling Class
Who ‘Feel No Long-Term Obligation to the People They Rule’
https://www.breitbart.com/video/2019/01/03/carlson-romneys-trump-attack-indicative-of-a-ruling-class-who-feel-no-long-term-obligation-to-the-people-they-rule/
Wednesday on Fox News Channel’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host
Tucker Carlson opened the program by reacting to Sen-elect Mitt Romney’s (R-UT)
public critique of President Donald Trump.
Carlson reminded viewers of Romney’s path to prosperity at Bain
Capital and how his exploitation of the “finance-based economy” had implications on real Americans. Carlson
said it was indicative of the broader problem of how the ruling class is
harming the country overall, which led to the election of Trump.
Transcript as follows:
Good evening and welcome to Tucker Carlson Tonight. Happy New
Year. Newly-elected Utah senator Mitt Romney kicked off 2019 with an op-ed in
the Washington Post savaging Donald Trump’s character and leadership. Romney’s
attack and Trump’s response this morning on Twitter are the latest salvos in a
longstanding personal feud between the two men. It’s even possible that Romney
is planning to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination in 2020. We’ll
see. But for now, Romney’s piece is fascinating on its own terms. It’s a window
into how the people in charge, in both parties, see our country.
Romney’s main complaint is that Donald Trump is a mercurial and
divisive leader. That’s true of course. Beneath the personal slights, though,
Romney has a policy critique. He seems genuinely angry that Trump might pull
American troops out of the Syrian civil war. Romney doesn’t explain how staying
in Syria would benefit America. He doesn’t appear to consider that a relevant
question. More policing in the Middle East is always better. We know that.
Virtually everyone in Washington agrees.
Corporate tax cuts are also popular in Washington, and Romney is
strongly on board with those too. His piece throws a rare compliment to Trump
for cutting the corporate rate a year ago. This isn’t surprising. Romney spent
the bulk of his business career at a firm called Bain Capital. Bain
Capital all but invented what is now a familiar business strategy: take over an
existing company for a short period of time, cut costs by firing employees, run
up the debt, extract the wealth, and move on, sometimes leaving retirees
without their earned pensions. Romney became
fantastically rich doing this. Meanwhile, a remarkable number of those
companies are now bankrupt or extinct. This is the private equity model. Our
ruling class sees nothing wrong with it. It’s how they run the country.
Mitt Romney refers to unwavering support for a finance-based
economy and an internationalist foreign policy as the “mainstream Republican”
view. He’s right. For generations, Republicans have considered it their duty to
make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more
foreign wars. Modern Democrats generally support these goals. There are signs,
however, that most people do not support this, and not just in America. In
countries around the world — France, Brazil, Sweden, the Philippines, Germany,
and many others — voters are suddenly backing candidates and ideas that would
have been unimaginable just a decade ago. These are not isolated events. What
you’re watching is populations revolting against leaders who refuse to improve
their lives.
Something like this has been in happening in our country for
three years. Donald Trump rode a surge of popular discontent all the way to the
White House. Does he understand the political revolution he harnessed? Can he
reverse the economic and cultural trends that are destroying America? Those are
open questions. But they’re less relevant than we think. At some point, Donald
Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be too. The country will remain. What
kind of country will be it be then? How do we want our grandchildren to live?
These are the only questions that matter. The answer used to be
obvious: the overriding goal for America is more prosperity, meaning cheaper
consumer goods. But is that still true? Does anyone still believe that cheaper
iPhones, or more Amazon deliveries of plastic garbage from China are going to
make us happy? They haven’t so far. A lot of Americans are drowning in stuff. Yet drug addiction and suicide are depopulating large parts
of the country. Anyone who thinks the health of a nation can be summed up in
GDP is an idiot.
The goal for America is both simpler and more elusive than mere
prosperity. It’s happiness. There are a lot of ingredients in being happy:
Dignity. Purpose. Self-control. Independence. Above all, deep relationships
with other people. Those are the things that you want for your children.
They’re what our leaders should want for us, and would if they cared. But our
leaders don’t care. We are ruled by mercenaries who feel no long-term
obligation to the people they rule. They’re day traders. Substitute teachers.
They’re just passing through. They have no skin in this game, and it shows.
They can’t solve our problems. They don’t even bother to understand our
problems.
One of the biggest lies our leaders tell is that you can
separate economics from everything else that matters. Economics is a topic for
public debate. Family and faith and culture, those are personal matters. Both
parties believe this. Members of our educated upper-middle-classes, now the
backbone of the Democratic Party, usually describe themselves as fiscally
responsible and socially moderate. In other words, functionally libertarian.
They don’t care how you live, as long as the bills are paid and the markets
function. Somehow they don’t see a connection between people’s personal lives
and the health of our economy, or for that matter, the country’s ability to pay
its bills. As far as they’re concerned, these are two totally separate
categories.
Social conservatives, meanwhile, come to the debate from the
opposite perspective, but reach a strikingly similar conclusion. The real
problem, you’ll hear them say, is that the American family is collapsing.
Nothing can be fixed before we fix that. Yet, like the libertarians they claim
to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct. The idea
that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them.
They refuse to consider it. Questioning markets feels like apostasy.
Both sides miss the obvious point: culture and economics are
inseparably intertwined. Certain economic systems allow families to thrive.
Thriving families make market economies possible. You can’t separate the two.
It used to be possible to deny this. Not anymore. The evidence is now
overwhelming. Consider the inner cities. Thirty years ago, conservatives looked
at Detroit or Newark and were horrified by what they saw. Conventional families
had all but disappeared in poor neighborhoods. The majority of children were
born out of wedlock. Single mothers were the rule. Crime and drugs and disorder
became universal. What caused this nightmare? Liberals didn’t want to
acknowledge the question. They were benefiting from the disaster, in the form
of reliable votes. Conservatives, though, had a ready explanation for inner
city dysfunction: big government. Decades of badly-designed social programs had
driven fathers from the home and created what they called a “culture of
poverty” that trapped people in generational decline.
There was truth in what the conservatives said. But it wasn’t
the whole story. How do we know? Because virtually the same thing has happened
decades later to an entirely different population. In many ways, rural America
now looks a lot like Detroit. This is striking because rural Americans don’t
seem to have much in common with people from the inner city. These groups have
different cultures, different traditions and political beliefs. Usually they
have different skin colors. Rural people are white conservatives, mostly. Yet
the pathologies of modern rural America are familiar to anyone who visited
downtown Baltimore in the 1980s: Stunning out of wedlock birthrates. High male
unemployment. A terrifying drug epidemic.
Two different worlds. Similar outcomes. How did this happen?
You’d think our ruling class would be interested in knowing the answer. Mostly
they’re not. They don’t have to be. It’s easier to import
foreign labor to take the place of native-born Americans who are slipping
behind. But
Republicans now represent rural voters. They ought to be interested. Here’s a
big part of the answer: male wages declined. Manufacturing, a male-dominated
industry, all but disappeared over the course of a generation. All that
remained in many areas were the schools and the hospitals, both traditional
employers of women. In many places, women suddenly made more than men. Before
you applaud this as a victory for feminism, consider the effects. Study after
study has shown that when men make less than women, women generally don’t want
to marry them. Maybe they should want to, but they don’t. Over big populations,
this causes a drop in marriage, a spike in out of wedlock births, and all the
familiar disasters that follow: more drug and alcohol abuse, higher
incarceration rates, fewer families formed in the next generation. This isn’t
speculation, or propaganda from the evangelicals. It’s social science. We know
it’s true. Rich people know it best of all. That’s why they get married before
they have kids. That model works. Increasingly, marriage is a luxury only the
affluent in America can afford.
And yet, and here’s the bewildering and infuriating part, those
very same affluent married people, the ones making virtually all the decisions
in our society, are doing pretty much nothing to help the people below them get
and stay married. Rich people are happy to fight malaria in Congo. But working
to raise men’s wages in Dayton or Detroit? That’s crazy.
This is negligence on a massive scale. Both parties ignore the
crisis in marriage. Our mindless cultural leaders act like it’s still 1961, and
the biggest problem American families face is that sexism is preventing
millions of housewives from becoming investment bankers or Facebook executives.
For our ruling class,
more investment banking is always the answer. They teach us it’s more virtuous
to devote your life to some soulless corporation than it is to raise your own
kids.
Sheryl Sandburg of Facebook wrote an entire book about this. Sandburg explained
that our first duty is to shareholders, above our own children. No surprise
there. Sandburg herself is one of America’s biggest shareholders. Propaganda
like this has made her rich. What’s remarkable is how the rest of us responded.
We didn’t question why Sandburg was saying this. We didn’t laugh in her face at
the pure absurdity of it. Our corporate media celebrated Sandburg as the leader
of a liberation movement. Her book became a bestseller: Lean In. As if putting
a corporation first is empowerment. It’s not. It’s bondage. Republicans should
say so.
They should also speak
out against the ugliest parts of our financial system. Not all commerce is
good. Why is it defensible to loan people money they can’t possibly repay? Or
charge them interest that impoverishes them? Payday loan outlets in poor
neighborhoods collect 400 percent annual interest. We’re ok with that? We
shouldn’t be. Libertarians tell us that’s how markets work: consenting adults
making voluntary decisions about how to live their lives. OK. But it’s also
disgusting. If you care about
America, you ought to oppose the exploitation of Americans, whether it’s
happening in the inner city or on Wall Street.
And by the way, if you really loved your fellow Americans, if it
would break your heart to see them high all the time. Which they are. A huge
number of our kids, especially our boys, are smoking weed constantly. You may
not realize that, because new technology has made it odorless. But it’s
everywhere. That’s not an accident. Once our leaders understood they could get
rich from marijuana, marijuana became ubiquitous. In many places, tax-hungry
politicians have legalized or decriminalized it. Former Speaker of the House
John Boehner now lobbies for the marijuana industry. His fellow Republicans
seem fine with that. “Oh, but it’s better for you than alcohol,” they tell us.
Maybe. Who cares? Talk about missing the point. Try having dinner with a
19-year-old who’s been smoking weed. The life is gone. Passive, flat, trapped
in their own heads. Do you want that for your kids? Of course not. Then why are
our leaders pushing it on us? You know the reason. Because they don’t care
about you.
When you care about people, you do your best to treat them
fairly. Our leaders don’t even try. They hand out jobs and contracts and
scholarships and slots at prestigious universities based purely on how we look.
There’s nothing less fair than that, though our tax code comes close. Under our current system, an American who works for a
salary pays about twice the tax rate of someone who’s living off inherited
money and doesn’t work at all. We tax capital at half of what we tax labor.
It’s a sweet deal if you work in finance, as many of the richest people do. In
2010, for example, Mitt Romney made about $22 million dollars in investment
income. He paid a federal tax rate of 14 percent. For normal upper-middle-class
wage earners, the federal tax rate is nearly 40 percent. No wonder Romney
supports the status quo. But for everyone else, it’s infuriating. Our leaders
rarely mention any of this. They tell us our multi-tiered tax code is based on
the principles of the free market. Please. It’s based on laws that Congress
passed, laws that companies lobbied for in order to increase their economic
advantage. It worked well for those people, but at a big cost to everyone else.
Unfairness is profoundly divisive. When you favor one child over another, your
kids don’t hate you. They hate each other. That happens in countries too. It’s
happening in ours, probably by design. Divided countries are easier to rule.
Nothing divides us like the perception that some people are getting special
treatment. In our country, some people definitely are. Republicans should
oppose that with everything they have.
What kind of country do you want to live in? A fair country. A
decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don’t accelerate
the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement. A country you
might recognize when you’re old. A country that listens to young people who
don’t live in Brooklyn. A country where you can make a solid living outside of
the big cities. A country where Lewiston, Maine seems almost as important as
the west side of Los Angeles. A country where environmentalism means getting
outside and picking up the trash. A clean, orderly, stable country that
respects itself. And above all, a country where normal people with an average
education who grew up no place special can get married, and have happy kids,
and repeat unto the generations. A country that actually cares about families,
the building block of everything.
What will it take a get a country like that? Leaders who want
it. For now, those leaders will have to be Republicans. There’s no option at
this point. But first, Republican leaders will have to acknowledge that market
capitalism is not a religion. Market capitalism is a tool, like a staple gun or
a toaster. You’d have to be a fool to worship it. Our system was created by
human beings for the benefit of human beings. We do not exist to serve markets.
Just the opposite. Any economic system that weakens and destroys families isn’t
worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.
Internalizing this won’t be easy for Republican leaders. They’ll
have to unlearn decades of bumper sticker-talking points and corporate
propaganda. They’ll likely lose donors in the process. Libertarians are sure to
call any deviation from market fundamentalism a form of socialism. That’s a
lie. Socialism is a disaster. It doesn’t work. It’s what we should be working
desperately to avoid. But socialism is exactly what we’re going to get, and
soon, unless a group of responsible people in our political system reforms the
American economy in a way that protects normal people.
If you
want to put America first, you’ve got to put its families first.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
TRUMP’S NAFTA SELL OUT… Now he goes back to building
his pretend wall!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/08/under-nafta-28b-us-mexicao-trade.html
TRUMP DECLARES THAT THE ECONOMY IS STRONG FOR THE
RICH, and then cuts pay increases for Federal Employees!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/swamp-keeper-declares-to-american.html
Trump’s Gentrification
Scheme to Enrich Real Estate Developers
A tax
loophole intended to help the poor is funneling money to wealthy investors.
By BRYCE
COVERT
Buried within the more
than 500 pages of Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut was an unobtrusive line item with
potentially damaging consequences. Proposed by Senator Tim Scott of South
Carolina, the provision allows governors to select certain census tracts in their
states, in economically distressed areas, as “opportunity zones.” The Treasury
certified the last of these zones in June, bringing the total number to 8,700.
Now, investors who fund projects in these areas will get sizable tax
breaks—even on unrelated investments. As long as they dump profits into a fund
earmarked for the opportunity zones, they can defer or even eliminate the
capital gains they would otherwise have owed.
Some of the census tracts
that have been identified as opportunity zones may be truly distressed. But
it’s dubious whether others should qualify—this summer, for example, much of
Long Island City in New York was named an opportunity zone. Now that Amazon has
announced it’s moving one of its two HQ2 branches there, the retail behemoth could
nab a $225 million tax break simply because the site happens to fall in one
such zone—this, on top of the $1.7 billion New York has already offered Amazon.
Investors who purchase apartment buildings for the influx of tech employees
will also see tax breaks. So will anyone building office parks, or grocery
stores. That money may well be better spent elsewhere, but during the debate
over the tax bill, such questions received very little attention. Neither,
really, did the zones themselves. Since its passage, though, President Donald
Trump has enthusiastically promoted the plan, issuing press releases boasting
that “new investment will flow into blighted developments, stalled
infrastructure projects, and other desperately needed economic enhancements”
and create fiscal improvements that will “help turn dreams to reality.”
The thinking behind the
zones reflects Republican faith in privatization as a cure-all. If Trump has
departed from conservative orthodoxy on trade and entitlements, he is squarely
with the party when it comes to this issue. On the campaign trail, he promised
to spend $1.5 trillion on the country’s infrastructure, but when the details of
his plan were released a month before the election, it was merely a proposal to
privatize roads, bridges, and waterways. Trump has similar plans for the
nation’s air traffic control system, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and
even the Postal Service. Each one offers huge upsides for a select group of
financiers and business owners, but does little to nothing for the American
people.
None of these promises
has fully gone into law—apart from opportunity zones, the first of which the
Treasury implemented this spring. Since then, a number of funds have cropped up
to cash in on the boom. Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s director of
communications for all of ten days, plans to launch a $3 billion “opportunity
fund” at his hedge fund Skybridge Capital. Cadre, the real estate crowdfunding
platform partially owned by Jared Kushner and his brother, Joshua, is also
focused on exploiting the zones. As Charles Clinton, the CEO of EquityMultiple,
a real estate investment startup, said in September, they are “one of the
biggest real estate investment opportunities in decades.”
Similar efforts have been
undertaken in the past. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher created eleven
“enterprise zones” in the United Kingdom, which produced fewer jobs than
promised. Each cost the government between $35,000 and $45,000, indexed for
inflation. The areas are still home to some of the poorest people in the
country. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton set up 104 “empowerment zones” in six
urban areas around the United States, including Atlanta, Baltimore, and New
York, as well as three rural areas, in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Texas. Clinton’s
plan (unlike Trump’s) tried to encourage not just capital investment, but also
hiring and upfront investments in equipment. But research on empowerment zones
has found that they had little to no effect on economic growth or poverty. They
were expensive, too, costing $850 per resident.
One of the reasons why
these zones often fail to deliver an economic boost is that governors and
investors tend to pick areas that are already on an upswing. (Long Island City
is a good example; it had been gentrifying for years before Andrew Cuomo
nominated it as an opportunity zone.) In May, the Urban Institute found that 28
percent of the census tracts governors had designated as opportunity zones
already benefit from some of the highest levels of private investment. They’d
be attractive areas in which to invest with or without a big tax giveaway. In
other words, opportunity zones are a massive handout for investors, and there
is scant evidence that they bring investment to the places that need it most.
Get the latest from TNR.
Sign up for the newsletter.
Of course, Trump himself
has experience bilking tax breaks and subsidies to make massive profits. He
accumulated at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants, and other subsidies
from New York to build his empire of hotels and high rises, according to The
New York Times, including the longest tax abatement the city ever handed out,
40 years, to rehabilitate the Grand Hyatt Hotel in the ’70s. He even pocketed
$150,000 from a fund meant to help small businesses damaged in the September 11
attacks. (He owned a Wall Street skyscraper not far from Ground Zero, but it
wasn’t damaged when the planes hit the Twin Towers.) Trump may be the country’s
preeminent expert in spotting a government handout to developers and squeezing
it for all it’s worth. It’s no surprise that he’d be as excited to stamp his
name on these opportunity zones as he would one of his hotels.
Trump may be the
country’s preeminent expert in spotting a government handout and squeezing it
for all it’s worth.
But these misguided
policies have lasting consequences. For one, there is no way to ensure that
investors who were already planning to put money into housing or infrastructure
don’t just decide to do it in opportunity zones to reap the tax benefits. Second,
the zones typically allow investors to retain complete control over their
projects. After state governments designate the areas, local communities get no
say over what is invested in and by whom. Don’t like the new toll road in your
town financed by a hedge fund? You may have no way to vote it down or give
input into how it’s implemented.
There’s a better way.
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society directly financed construction across the
country. Dwight Eisenhower built the country’s network of highways. The
bipartisan Community Development Block Grant program, enacted in 1974 by
Republican President Gerald Ford, gives local communities money for projects
they decide are most important for their economies—a program that Trump wants
to eliminate.
The Joint Committee on
Taxation has estimated that the tax incentives in opportunity zones will cost
$1.5 billion a year for the first eight years. Just think what that money could
do if directed to build new water lines in Flint, affordable housing in Fresno,
decent school buildings in Baltimore, or better roads in Akron. Bankers on Wall
Street might not get a payday. But do we care more about their dreams, or those
of poor residents in neglected communities?
Trump’s Gentrification
Scheme to Enrich Real Estate Developers
A tax loophole intended to help the poor is funneling money to wealthy investors.
By BRYCE COVERT
Buried within the more
than 500 pages of Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cut was an unobtrusive line item with
potentially damaging consequences. Proposed by Senator Tim Scott of South
Carolina, the provision allows governors to select certain census tracts in their
states, in economically distressed areas, as “opportunity zones.” The Treasury
certified the last of these zones in June, bringing the total number to 8,700.
Now, investors who fund projects in these areas will get sizable tax
breaks—even on unrelated investments. As long as they dump profits into a fund
earmarked for the opportunity zones, they can defer or even eliminate the
capital gains they would otherwise have owed.
Some of the census tracts
that have been identified as opportunity zones may be truly distressed. But
it’s dubious whether others should qualify—this summer, for example, much of
Long Island City in New York was named an opportunity zone. Now that Amazon has
announced it’s moving one of its two HQ2 branches there, the retail behemoth could
nab a $225 million tax break simply because the site happens to fall in one
such zone—this, on top of the $1.7 billion New York has already offered Amazon.
Investors who purchase apartment buildings for the influx of tech employees
will also see tax breaks. So will anyone building office parks, or grocery
stores. That money may well be better spent elsewhere, but during the debate
over the tax bill, such questions received very little attention. Neither,
really, did the zones themselves. Since its passage, though, President Donald
Trump has enthusiastically promoted the plan, issuing press releases boasting
that “new investment will flow into blighted developments, stalled
infrastructure projects, and other desperately needed economic enhancements”
and create fiscal improvements that will “help turn dreams to reality.”
The thinking behind the
zones reflects Republican faith in privatization as a cure-all. If Trump has
departed from conservative orthodoxy on trade and entitlements, he is squarely
with the party when it comes to this issue. On the campaign trail, he promised
to spend $1.5 trillion on the country’s infrastructure, but when the details of
his plan were released a month before the election, it was merely a proposal to
privatize roads, bridges, and waterways. Trump has similar plans for the
nation’s air traffic control system, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and
even the Postal Service. Each one offers huge upsides for a select group of
financiers and business owners, but does little to nothing for the American
people.
None of these promises
has fully gone into law—apart from opportunity zones, the first of which the
Treasury implemented this spring. Since then, a number of funds have cropped up
to cash in on the boom. Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s director of
communications for all of ten days, plans to launch a $3 billion “opportunity
fund” at his hedge fund Skybridge Capital. Cadre, the real estate crowdfunding
platform partially owned by Jared Kushner and his brother, Joshua, is also
focused on exploiting the zones. As Charles Clinton, the CEO of EquityMultiple,
a real estate investment startup, said in September, they are “one of the
biggest real estate investment opportunities in decades.”
Similar efforts have been
undertaken in the past. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher created eleven
“enterprise zones” in the United Kingdom, which produced fewer jobs than
promised. Each cost the government between $35,000 and $45,000, indexed for
inflation. The areas are still home to some of the poorest people in the
country. During the 1990s, Bill Clinton set up 104 “empowerment zones” in six
urban areas around the United States, including Atlanta, Baltimore, and New
York, as well as three rural areas, in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Texas. Clinton’s
plan (unlike Trump’s) tried to encourage not just capital investment, but also
hiring and upfront investments in equipment. But research on empowerment zones
has found that they had little to no effect on economic growth or poverty. They
were expensive, too, costing $850 per resident.
One of the reasons why
these zones often fail to deliver an economic boost is that governors and
investors tend to pick areas that are already on an upswing. (Long Island City
is a good example; it had been gentrifying for years before Andrew Cuomo
nominated it as an opportunity zone.) In May, the Urban Institute found that 28
percent of the census tracts governors had designated as opportunity zones
already benefit from some of the highest levels of private investment. They’d
be attractive areas in which to invest with or without a big tax giveaway. In
other words, opportunity zones are a massive handout for investors, and there
is scant evidence that they bring investment to the places that need it most.
Get the latest from TNR.
Sign up for the newsletter.
Of course, Trump himself
has experience bilking tax breaks and subsidies to make massive profits. He
accumulated at least $885 million in tax breaks, grants, and other subsidies
from New York to build his empire of hotels and high rises, according to The
New York Times, including the longest tax abatement the city ever handed out,
40 years, to rehabilitate the Grand Hyatt Hotel in the ’70s. He even pocketed
$150,000 from a fund meant to help small businesses damaged in the September 11
attacks. (He owned a Wall Street skyscraper not far from Ground Zero, but it
wasn’t damaged when the planes hit the Twin Towers.) Trump may be the country’s
preeminent expert in spotting a government handout to developers and squeezing
it for all it’s worth. It’s no surprise that he’d be as excited to stamp his
name on these opportunity zones as he would one of his hotels.
Trump may be the
country’s preeminent expert in spotting a government handout and squeezing it
for all it’s worth.
But these misguided
policies have lasting consequences. For one, there is no way to ensure that
investors who were already planning to put money into housing or infrastructure
don’t just decide to do it in opportunity zones to reap the tax benefits. Second,
the zones typically allow investors to retain complete control over their
projects. After state governments designate the areas, local communities get no
say over what is invested in and by whom. Don’t like the new toll road in your
town financed by a hedge fund? You may have no way to vote it down or give
input into how it’s implemented.
There’s a better way.
Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society directly financed construction across the
country. Dwight Eisenhower built the country’s network of highways. The
bipartisan Community Development Block Grant program, enacted in 1974 by
Republican President Gerald Ford, gives local communities money for projects
they decide are most important for their economies—a program that Trump wants
to eliminate.
The Joint Committee on
Taxation has estimated that the tax incentives in opportunity zones will cost
$1.5 billion a year for the first eight years. Just think what that money could
do if directed to build new water lines in Flint, affordable housing in Fresno,
decent school buildings in Baltimore, or better roads in Akron. Bankers on Wall
Street might not get a payday. But do we care more about their dreams, or those
of poor residents in neglected communities?
ROMNEY'S BETRAYAL
ROMNEY'S BETRAYAL
The new senator takes the low road.
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided,
resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior
Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years. Romney
himself is personally to blame for Obama’s second term.
Maybe if Romney had bothered to prepare for his final two
presidential debates with Obama or put together a competent get-
out-the-vote effort the 44th president’s time in office could have
been cut short.” MATTHEW VADUM
January 3, 2019
With a singularly impressive record of failure in public life under his belt, the always-predictable virtue-signaler Willard Mitt Romney has chosen to take the low road, beginning his freshman term in the United States Senate by stabbing President Trump and his fellow Republicans in the back.
Instead of, say, waiting a brief time to get settled into his new office as Utah senator, the former Massachusetts governor, who to this day refuses to apologize for his Bay State government healthcare program that inspired Obamacare, took to the pages of the Washington Post two days before his swearing-in to attack the “character” of someone who as president has been generous, forgiving, and supportive of him.
In his Jeff Bezos-approved column, Romney embraced the leftist critique of Trump, hurling every leftist smear he could think of and bashing the president for his mastery of social media, a field Romney barely grasps.
As senator, Romney vowed to “support policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country and my state, and oppose those that are not. I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”
Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart News provided a helpful timeline of the flip-flopping unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate’s love-hate relationship with Trump in recent years on Twitter:
@MittRomney's "character":
2012: Seeks @realDonaldTrump's endorsement, gets it.
2016 (Mar.): Trashes Trump.
2016 (Nov.): Crawls to Trump, asks to be [Secretary] of State.
2018: Seeks Trump's backing for Senate, gets it.
2019: Trashes Trump in @washingtonpost.
Firmly aligning himself with lawless, out-of-control Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Trump’s other enemies, the ungrateful Romney echoed the complaints of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the Weekly Standard crowd, calling the president a liar and a coward.
To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.
Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years. Romney himself is personally to blame for Obama’s second term. Maybe if Romney had bothered to prepare for his final two presidential debates with Obama or put together a competent get-out-the-vote effort the 44th president’s time in office could have been cut short.
But Romney didn’t bother to fight back against Obama and allowed himself to be run over again and again by a street thug-loving community organizer from Chicagoland who never ran an honest campaign in his life.
Trump may not be perfect, but unlike Romney, the 45th president is a fighter who gets things done. Trump got historic tax cuts enacted, placed two new conservative justices on the Supreme Court, slashed government regulations, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, renegotiated NAFTA, and repealed the individual mandate in Obamacare. The wall on the U.S.-Mexico border may not yet be underway, but it is obvious that a squishified President Romney never would have been brave enough to force a government shutdown to win funding to guarantee border security.
To keep his Deep State friends happy, Romney characterized Trump honoring his campaign promise to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan as a betrayal of America’s allies, calling it “the abandonment of allies who fight beside us[.]” Romney slammed Trump for the departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, even though Mattis was infamous his dove-like posture on the mad mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Romney wrote that these foreign policy-related developments, including Trump’s 100-percent accurate claim “that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs,” have all somehow “defined his presidency down.”
Then there is Romney’s breathtakingly imbecilic reading of world affairs under Trump.
“America has long been looked to for leadership,” Romney wrote.
Our economic and military strength was part of that, of course, but our enduring commitment to principled conduct in foreign relations, and to the rights of all people to freedom and equal justice, was even more esteemed. Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.
Romney seems to forget here that Donald Trump is not the president of Europe. How he polls in Europe is completely irrelevant to Americans.
Besides, Trump’s popularity in Europe has experienced an upswing in recent months. Trump’s name is chanted at yellow-jacket rallies in now pre-revolutionary France and at public gatherings throughout the European continent. Trumpism, for lack of a better term, is on the march worldwide, including in Brazil where Trump wannabe Jair Bolsonaro was just sworn in as that nation’s president.
Romney mocked Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, making it clear he puts the interests of other nations ahead of the United States.
“America is strongest when our arms are linked with other nations. We want a unified and strong Europe, not a disintegrating union. We want stable relationships with the nations of Asia that strengthen our mutual security and prosperity.”
It is this kind of RINO wailing and sabotage that we can look forward to on a daily basis with Mitt Romney’s arrival in the Senate.
If Donald Trump loses his reelection bid in 2020, Romney will share some of the blame.
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE
RICH…. and his parasitic family!
Report:
Trump Says He Doesn't Care About the National Debt Because the Crisis Will Hit
After He's Gone
"Trump's
alleged comment is maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this
reminder of the scope of the problem, not
that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
TRUMPERNOMICS:
THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD
TWITTER’S TRUMP’S
TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
“Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided,
resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior
Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years. Romney
himself is personally to blame for Obama’s second term.
Maybe if Romney had bothered to prepare for his final two
presidential debates with Obama or put together a competent get-
out-the-vote effort the 44th president’s time in office could have
been cut short.” MATTHEW VADUM
January 3, 2019
With a singularly impressive record of failure in public life under his belt, the always-predictable virtue-signaler Willard Mitt Romney has chosen to take the low road, beginning his freshman term in the United States Senate by stabbing President Trump and his fellow Republicans in the back.
Instead of, say, waiting a brief time to get settled into his new office as Utah senator, the former Massachusetts governor, who to this day refuses to apologize for his Bay State government healthcare program that inspired Obamacare, took to the pages of the Washington Post two days before his swearing-in to attack the “character” of someone who as president has been generous, forgiving, and supportive of him.
In his Jeff Bezos-approved column, Romney embraced the leftist critique of Trump, hurling every leftist smear he could think of and bashing the president for his mastery of social media, a field Romney barely grasps.
As senator, Romney vowed to “support policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country and my state, and oppose those that are not. I do not intend to comment on every tweet or fault. But I will speak out against significant statements or actions that are divisive, racist, sexist, anti-immigrant, dishonest or destructive to democratic institutions.”
Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart News provided a helpful timeline of the flip-flopping unsuccessful 2012 presidential candidate’s love-hate relationship with Trump in recent years on Twitter:
@MittRomney's "character":2012: Seeks @realDonaldTrump's endorsement, gets it.2016 (Mar.): Trashes Trump.2016 (Nov.): Crawls to Trump, asks to be [Secretary] of State.2018: Seeks Trump's backing for Senate, gets it.2019: Trashes Trump in @washingtonpost.
Firmly aligning himself with lawless, out-of-control Special Counsel Robert Mueller and Trump’s other enemies, the ungrateful Romney echoed the complaints of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and the Weekly Standard crowd, calling the president a liar and a coward.
To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation. A president should unite us and inspire us to follow “our better angels.” A president should demonstrate the essential qualities of honesty and integrity, and elevate the national discourse with comity and mutual respect. As a nation, we have been blessed with presidents who have called on the greatness of the American spirit. With the nation so divided, resentful and angry, presidential leadership in qualities of character is indispensable. And it is in this province where the incumbent’s shortfall has been most glaring.
Of course, one of the main reasons the nation is now “divided, resentful and angry” is because race-baiting, Islamist, class warrior Barack Hussein Obama was president for eight long years. Romney himself is personally to blame for Obama’s second term. Maybe if Romney had bothered to prepare for his final two presidential debates with Obama or put together a competent get-out-the-vote effort the 44th president’s time in office could have been cut short.
But Romney didn’t bother to fight back against Obama and allowed himself to be run over again and again by a street thug-loving community organizer from Chicagoland who never ran an honest campaign in his life.
Trump may not be perfect, but unlike Romney, the 45th president is a fighter who gets things done. Trump got historic tax cuts enacted, placed two new conservative justices on the Supreme Court, slashed government regulations, moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, renegotiated NAFTA, and repealed the individual mandate in Obamacare. The wall on the U.S.-Mexico border may not yet be underway, but it is obvious that a squishified President Romney never would have been brave enough to force a government shutdown to win funding to guarantee border security.
To keep his Deep State friends happy, Romney characterized Trump honoring his campaign promise to withdraw troops from Syria and Afghanistan as a betrayal of America’s allies, calling it “the abandonment of allies who fight beside us[.]” Romney slammed Trump for the departure of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, even though Mattis was infamous his dove-like posture on the mad mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Romney wrote that these foreign policy-related developments, including Trump’s 100-percent accurate claim “that America has long been a ‘sucker’ in world affairs,” have all somehow “defined his presidency down.”
Then there is Romney’s breathtakingly imbecilic reading of world affairs under Trump.
“America has long been looked to for leadership,” Romney wrote.
Our economic and military strength was part of that, of course, but our enduring commitment to principled conduct in foreign relations, and to the rights of all people to freedom and equal justice, was even more esteemed. Trump’s words and actions have caused dismay around the world. In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.
Romney seems to forget here that Donald Trump is not the president of Europe. How he polls in Europe is completely irrelevant to Americans.
Besides, Trump’s popularity in Europe has experienced an upswing in recent months. Trump’s name is chanted at yellow-jacket rallies in now pre-revolutionary France and at public gatherings throughout the European continent. Trumpism, for lack of a better term, is on the march worldwide, including in Brazil where Trump wannabe Jair Bolsonaro was just sworn in as that nation’s president.
Romney mocked Trump’s “Make America Great Again” agenda, making it clear he puts the interests of other nations ahead of the United States.
“America is strongest when our arms are linked with other nations. We want a unified and strong Europe, not a disintegrating union. We want stable relationships with the nations of Asia that strengthen our mutual security and prosperity.”
It is this kind of RINO wailing and sabotage that we can look forward to on a daily basis with Mitt Romney’s arrival in the Senate.
If Donald Trump loses his reelection bid in 2020, Romney will share some of the blame.
TRUMPERNOMICS FOR THE
RICH…. and his parasitic family!
Report:
Trump Says He Doesn't Care About the National Debt Because the Crisis Will Hit
After He's Gone
"Trump's
alleged comment is maddening and disheartening,
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
but at least he's being straightforward about his indefensible
and self-serving neglect. I'll leave you with this reminder of the scope of the problem, not that anyone in power is going to do a damn thing about it."
TRUMPERNOMICS:
THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD
TWITTER’S TRUMP’S
TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the
super-rich, on top
of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of
the supposed
recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1
percent income
bracket."
“The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.”
A Gutted I.R.S. Makes the Rich Richer
With
enforcement enfeebled, as much as 20 percent of potential tax revenues go
uncollected.
By The
Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its
editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed
section.
Let’s take a moment to pity the Internal Revenue Service.
Yes, to many Americans, it’s a money-grabbing ogre siphoning hard-earned cash
to the faceless federal bureaucracy.
But the nation’s tax collector today is an enfeebled
enforcer. Its budget has been bled dry by a Republican Congress in service to
wealthy donors and businesses aggressively pursuing tax avoidance, leaving
uncollected 18 percent to 20 percent of potential tax revenues annually. That’s
the conclusion in articles by the journalism site ProPublica, co-published by
The Atlantic and The Times.
Loopholes are beyond the means of most Americans who earn
salaries or are paid hourly wages, and are exploited by those who derive
significant income from investments or business revenue. Although we’d all like
to pay less, relative to most developed nations our tax burden is a pretty good
deal.
It’s an even better deal for the richest Americans, who have
benefited the most from President Trump’s tax cuts. The rich are different:
They’re more likely to cheat, according to one study of I.R.S. data. And the
I.R.S. has about as many auditors now as it did 60 years ago, when there were
half as many Americans. The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.
Dodging taxes is as old as taxes themselves. Just ask Mr.
Trump, who has employed systematic dodging for decades, according to a Times
investigation.
We got a good look at one of the bigger problems, the
proclivity of the wealthy to hide cash from the I.R.S., in 2008, when the
Justice Department was able to pierce the Swiss bank secrecy veil during an
investigation of UBS. The department uncovered thousands of rich Americans who
were hiding about $18 billion in offshore accounts arranged by that Swiss bank.
Many were compelled to fess up and pay up. But eight years later, the Panama
Papers, millions of files hacked from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in
caching money for the rich and powerful, disclosed that there were still plenty
of rich people willing to play hide-and-seek with the I.R.S.
The odds are in their favor, and growing. ProPublica reported
that I.R.S. audits dropped 42 percent from 2010 to 2017, a period in which the
I.R.S. budget was lopped by $2.5 billion, adjusted for inflation. New
investigations of people who don’t file dropped to 362,000 last year, from 2.4
million in 2011. That costs the Treasury $3 billion annually in uncollected
taxes. More than $8 billion in back taxes did not get collected in 2017 because
the agency couldn’t get to them before the 10-year statute of limitations ran
out, another worsening problem. Tax delinquents can simply wait the agency out.
ProPublica estimated the total shortfall of uncollected funds since 2011 at $95
billion.
These uncollected billions could pay for any number of
things: better care of wounded veterans, infrastructure improvements such as a
desperately needed new tunnel between New York and New Jersey. You could even
build an expensive wall.
One area where the I.R.S. still bares its teeth is in
auditing people in the lowest tax bracket. If you are claiming the
earned-income tax credit, which provides cash for people who typically earn
less than $20,000 annually, you are as likely to be audited as someone earning
between $500,000 and $1 million. ProPublica reported that 36 percent of all
I.R.S. audits focused on this group. It may not be a crime to be poor in the
G.O.P.’s America, but you can expect to be treated like a criminal for
accepting the government’s cash to make ends meet. At best, that’s an
inefficient use of I.R.S. agents: Compliance should apply to all, but the I.R.S.
should do most of its fishing where the big fish are.
The Trump/G.O.P. tax policy is now operating at peak failure.
The tax cuts have failed to increase gross domestic product beyond the “sugar
high” stimulus they gave to an economy already heading toward record low
unemployment. The economy seems to be slowing, making a mockery of the promise
of strong growth that was used to peddle the tax cuts.
The stock market is shuddering at the idea of a slowdown,
which corporations contributed to by using their tax windfall to buy back more
than $1 trillion of their own stock. They have, to this point, immolated
capital instead of using it for additional hiring, increased wages or further
business investments.
A CNBC poll found that millionaires are still sanguine about
the economy. They can well afford to be. If their stocks lose value, they can
take a write-off. If stocks rise, their maximum long-term capital gains tax is
only 20 percent. Most American households don’t own stocks — or no longer own
them, having been forced to liquidate stock holdings in the Great Recession,
which was precipitated by a collapse in the housing market. Thus the wealth gap
grows, reaching levels not seen since the Roaring Twenties.
To pay for the millionaire tax cuts, sacrifices had to be
made. So Congress limited deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000
annually. While that generally applies to well-to-do people who can itemize
their tax returns, it was also a clear shot against blue states such as
California and New York that have relatively high state and local taxes. But
reducing these deductions, along with higher interest rates, punished the
housing market, which is stagnant nationally and in a free fall in the
Northeast.
Our ability to keep the $1 trillion deficit created by the
Trump tax cuts from deepening depends in part on collecting taxes to which the
government is legally entitled.
Think of it this way: To protect our nation, we have the most
powerful army in the world. To protect our tax base, we have an army on the order
of Liechtenstein’s.
The lack of
deterrence will only encourage more cheating. The I.R.S. needs to be capable of
doing the job for which it was created — from answering taxpayers’ questions to
chasing down the richest cheats, even if they occupy the Oval Office
SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP’S BIGGEST DEAL EVER:
Saving the 9-11 invading Saudis’ arses!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money.
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I
recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
“You saved my a rse again and again… So, I’ll save yours like
Bush and Obama did!
WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND
SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of
Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his
landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond
Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
Swamp Keeper Trump prepares
for the inevitable move to impeach him and ask for asylum in Scotland.
Fox News host Tucker
Carlson said in an interview Thursday that President Donald Trump has succeeded
as a conversation starter but has failed to keep his most important campaign
promises.
“The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.”
A Gutted I.R.S. Makes the Rich Richer
With
enforcement enfeebled, as much as 20 percent of potential tax revenues go
uncollected.
By The
Editorial Board
The editorial board represents the opinions of the board, its
editor and the publisher. It is separate from the newsroom and the Op-Ed
section.
Let’s take a moment to pity the Internal Revenue Service.
Yes, to many Americans, it’s a money-grabbing ogre siphoning hard-earned cash
to the faceless federal bureaucracy.
But the nation’s tax collector today is an enfeebled
enforcer. Its budget has been bled dry by a Republican Congress in service to
wealthy donors and businesses aggressively pursuing tax avoidance, leaving
uncollected 18 percent to 20 percent of potential tax revenues annually. That’s
the conclusion in articles by the journalism site ProPublica, co-published by
The Atlantic and The Times.
Loopholes are beyond the means of most Americans who earn
salaries or are paid hourly wages, and are exploited by those who derive
significant income from investments or business revenue. Although we’d all like
to pay less, relative to most developed nations our tax burden is a pretty good
deal.
It’s an even better deal for the richest Americans, who have
benefited the most from President Trump’s tax cuts. The rich are different:
They’re more likely to cheat, according to one study of I.R.S. data. And the
I.R.S. has about as many auditors now as it did 60 years ago, when there were
half as many Americans. The undermining of the I.R.S.’s enforcement capability
coincides nicely with the Republican playbook: Enrich wealthy individuals and
corporations with tax giveaways that balloon the deficit, justifying spending
cuts for health care, education and infrastructure, then amplify the process by
not holding high-end taxpayers accountable for the amounts they owe.
Dodging taxes is as old as taxes themselves. Just ask Mr.
Trump, who has employed systematic dodging for decades, according to a Times
investigation.
We got a good look at one of the bigger problems, the
proclivity of the wealthy to hide cash from the I.R.S., in 2008, when the
Justice Department was able to pierce the Swiss bank secrecy veil during an
investigation of UBS. The department uncovered thousands of rich Americans who
were hiding about $18 billion in offshore accounts arranged by that Swiss bank.
Many were compelled to fess up and pay up. But eight years later, the Panama
Papers, millions of files hacked from a Panamanian law firm that specialized in
caching money for the rich and powerful, disclosed that there were still plenty
of rich people willing to play hide-and-seek with the I.R.S.
The odds are in their favor, and growing. ProPublica reported
that I.R.S. audits dropped 42 percent from 2010 to 2017, a period in which the
I.R.S. budget was lopped by $2.5 billion, adjusted for inflation. New
investigations of people who don’t file dropped to 362,000 last year, from 2.4
million in 2011. That costs the Treasury $3 billion annually in uncollected
taxes. More than $8 billion in back taxes did not get collected in 2017 because
the agency couldn’t get to them before the 10-year statute of limitations ran
out, another worsening problem. Tax delinquents can simply wait the agency out.
ProPublica estimated the total shortfall of uncollected funds since 2011 at $95
billion.
These uncollected billions could pay for any number of
things: better care of wounded veterans, infrastructure improvements such as a
desperately needed new tunnel between New York and New Jersey. You could even
build an expensive wall.
One area where the I.R.S. still bares its teeth is in
auditing people in the lowest tax bracket. If you are claiming the
earned-income tax credit, which provides cash for people who typically earn
less than $20,000 annually, you are as likely to be audited as someone earning
between $500,000 and $1 million. ProPublica reported that 36 percent of all
I.R.S. audits focused on this group. It may not be a crime to be poor in the
G.O.P.’s America, but you can expect to be treated like a criminal for
accepting the government’s cash to make ends meet. At best, that’s an
inefficient use of I.R.S. agents: Compliance should apply to all, but the I.R.S.
should do most of its fishing where the big fish are.
The Trump/G.O.P. tax policy is now operating at peak failure.
The tax cuts have failed to increase gross domestic product beyond the “sugar
high” stimulus they gave to an economy already heading toward record low
unemployment. The economy seems to be slowing, making a mockery of the promise
of strong growth that was used to peddle the tax cuts.
The stock market is shuddering at the idea of a slowdown,
which corporations contributed to by using their tax windfall to buy back more
than $1 trillion of their own stock. They have, to this point, immolated
capital instead of using it for additional hiring, increased wages or further
business investments.
A CNBC poll found that millionaires are still sanguine about
the economy. They can well afford to be. If their stocks lose value, they can
take a write-off. If stocks rise, their maximum long-term capital gains tax is
only 20 percent. Most American households don’t own stocks — or no longer own
them, having been forced to liquidate stock holdings in the Great Recession,
which was precipitated by a collapse in the housing market. Thus the wealth gap
grows, reaching levels not seen since the Roaring Twenties.
To pay for the millionaire tax cuts, sacrifices had to be
made. So Congress limited deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000
annually. While that generally applies to well-to-do people who can itemize
their tax returns, it was also a clear shot against blue states such as
California and New York that have relatively high state and local taxes. But
reducing these deductions, along with higher interest rates, punished the
housing market, which is stagnant nationally and in a free fall in the
Northeast.
Our ability to keep the $1 trillion deficit created by the
Trump tax cuts from deepening depends in part on collecting taxes to which the
government is legally entitled.
Think of it this way: To protect our nation, we have the most
powerful army in the world. To protect our tax base, we have an army on the order
of Liechtenstein’s.
The lack of
deterrence will only encourage more cheating. The I.R.S. needs to be capable of
doing the job for which it was created — from answering taxpayers’ questions to
chasing down the richest cheats, even if they occupy the Oval Office
SWAMP KEEPER TRUMP’S BIGGEST DEAL EVER:
Saving the 9-11 invading Saudis’ arses!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money.
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I
recommend that Ignatius read Raymond Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
“You saved my a rse again and again… So, I’ll save yours like
Bush and Obama did!
WHO IS FINANCING ALL THE TRUMP AND
SON-IN-LAW’S REFINANCING SCAMS???
FOLLOW THE MONEY!
"I doubt that
Trump understands -- or cares about -- what message he's sending. Wealthy
Saudis, including members of the extended royal family, have been his patrons
for years, buying his distressed properties when he needed money. In the early
1990s, a Saudi prince purchased Trump's flashy yacht so that the
then-struggling businessman could come up with cash to stave off personal
bankruptcy, and later, the prince bought a share of the Plaza Hotel, one of
Trump's many business deals gone bad. Trump also sold an entire floor of his
landmark Trump Tower condominium to the Saudi government in 2001."
“The Wahhabis finance thousands of
madrassahs throughout the world where young boys are brainwashed into becoming
fanatical foot-soldiers for the petrodollar-flush Saudis and other emirs of the
Persian Gulf.” AMIL
IMANI
I recommend that Ignatius read Raymond
Ibrahim's outstanding book Sword
and Scimitar, which
contains accounts of dynastic succession in the Muslim monarchies of the Middle
East, where standard operating procedure for a new monarch on the death of his
father was to strangle all his brothers. Yes, it's
awful. But it has been happening for a very long
time. And it's not going to change quickly, no matter how outraged
we pretend to be. MONICA SHOWALTER
Swamp Keeper Trump prepares
for the inevitable move to impeach him and ask for asylum in Scotland.
Fox News host Tucker
Carlson said in an interview Thursday that President Donald Trump has succeeded
as a conversation starter but has failed to keep his most important campaign
promises.
“His chief promises were
that he would build the wall, de-fund Planned Parenthood, and repeal Obamacare,
and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson told Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
December
marked one year since the passage of Trump’s corporate tax windfall
legislation, cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent down to just 21
percent. Officially known as the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017,” the legislation
handed some $1.5 trillion to the major corporations and the super-rich while
leaving the working class to shoulder the burden.
As
we predicted in its December 21, 2017 perspective, the bill “marks a new stage in the
decades-long social counterrevolution in the United States. It will make
America, already the most unequal advanced economy in the world, far more
unequal, entrenching the rule of an unaccountable financial oligarchy.” One
year later, a balance sheet of the legislation’s effects on American society
confirms this analysis.
In October,
the United States Treasury announced that the federal budget deficit has risen
to $779 billion, up 17 percent from the previous fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office
(CBO)
issued a report in April projecting the
national debt will now increase by $1.9
trillion
over the next decade. The spike in the deficit
will precipitate a new
round off assaults on the
few remaining social programs in the US—
above all,
Social Security, Medicare, and
Medicaid.
After-tax
profits rose nearly 20 percent in the third quarter from the previous year as a
result of the cuts, while wage growth remained static. After-tax corporate
profits are now growing nearly 10 percent faster than pre-tax profits, a
phenomenon which usually only occurs around recessions. The first three
quarters of this year saw enormous tax savings for some of America’s largest
corporations. Walmart saved $1.6 billion, with Bank of America saving $2.4
billion. AT&T and Verizon saved $2.2 billion and $1.75 billion,
respectively. Apple alone has collected a whopping $4.5 billion.
Corporate
spokesmen and media pundits at the time had made promises of raising wages,
handing out bonuses and creating new jobs. In reality, the handouts in the form
of bonuses and raises for workers amounted to a small fraction of the $200
billion in savings on income tax. A recent report by the Economic Policy
Institute estimated that bonuses gave workers only 2 cents more per hour over
the past year. Wages overall have increased only 3.1 percent over the course of
the year, barely keeping up with the rate of inflation. By comparison, dividend
payouts to corporate shareholders have set a new annual record of $420 billion.
The majority of the payouts went to the wealthiest 10 percent of the US
population, which owns 84 percent of all stock holdings.
Capital
investment—intended to fund research and development and create jobs—rose at
the beginning of the year only to fall sharply in the third quarter.
Conversely, stock buybacks—a method by which a corporation repurchases shares
in order to artificially inflate their value without creating anything or
hiring employees—surged to previously unseen heights.
The total
amount of S&P 500 company buybacks alone neared $200 billion in the third
quarter, with a total buybacks reaching $579 billion for the first nine months
of 2018. The total amount of buybacks is expected to top $1 trillion by the end
of the year, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. This is almost double the
amount of the previous annual buyback record of $589 billion in 2007—the year
that began the financial meltdown that triggered the worst recession since the
Great Depression.
It is now
clear the vast majority of corporate spending from the tax cut has gone to the
further enrichment of a tiny parasitic layer of investors and CEOs. Whatever
expenditures made on paltry handouts to workers have been dwarfed by buybacks
and dividends, a financial orgy that once again threatens another and even
greater financial meltdown. The events of the past year once again underscore
the deeply intractable crisis of capitalism, marked by a degree of
financialization of the world economy that has long ago surpassed the point of no
return. Profit is now primarily made not through the growth of the productive
forces, but rather, through their destruction.
In fact, many
corporations have instead carried out layoffs in spite of their surge in
profits. General Motors (GM) has announced plans to lay off 15,000 workers and
shut down five plants in the United States and Canada, along with two
unspecified plants internationally. While GM is planning to cut $6.5 billion in
costs, it has squandered over $10 billion in stock buybacks and dividend
payouts for its richest investors since 2017, and $25 billion since 2012.
Bank of
America has cut 5,000 jobs this year alone. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
has cited the growth of automation and online banking as the impetus for the
layoffs. According to Moynihan himself, the corporation has cut 100,000 jobs
since 2010 when he took over the company. Wells Fargo, another bank that has
made billions from the cuts, followed suit in an announcement that it plans to
downsize its work force by up to 10 percent. This came shortly after an
announcement of $40 billion in stock buybacks since the law passed.
AT&T
slashed more than 10,000 union jobs this year in an acceleration of layoffs
from last year. Verizon has laid off 3,100 employees this year, while announcing
a buyout offer cutting an additional 10,000 workers. The company recently made
the decision to outsource 2,500 jobs to Infosys, a large Indian technology
firm.
The trade
unions representing many of the affected workers, such as the United Auto Workers
(UAW) and Communications Workers of America (CWA), have directly collaborated
in imposing the layoffs and plant closures.
The Democratic
Party offered only nominal opposition to the tax cuts. While voting against the
legislation last year in a party-line vote in both the House and Senate, the
Democrats are not proposing to introduce legislation to repeal the cuts once
they regain control of the House of Representatives January 3—neither partially
nor as a whole. The Republican Party introduced legislation to repeal,
deauthorize, defund, or otherwise do away with Affordable Care Act (ACA) 83
times during Obama’s presidency. The Democrats are opposed to even a
symbolic gesture against the
tax cuts, as doing so
would risk alienating the party from its corporate
base.
CRIMINAL GLOBALIST BANKSTERS AND THE POLITICIANS THEY BOUGHT:
The Story of Goldman Sachs and Clinton, Obama and Trump corruption.
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests”
Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely
from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses,
and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P.
Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores, and the White House
wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering
corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO
SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.
TRUMPERNOMICS:
THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD
TWITTER’S TRUMP’S TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
“His chief promises were
that he would build the wall, de-fund Planned Parenthood, and repeal Obamacare,
and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson told Urs Gehriger of the Swiss weekly Die Weltwoche.
December
marked one year since the passage of Trump’s corporate tax windfall
legislation, cutting the corporate tax rate from 35 percent down to just 21
percent. Officially known as the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017,” the legislation
handed some $1.5 trillion to the major corporations and the super-rich while
leaving the working class to shoulder the burden.
As
we predicted in its December 21, 2017 perspective, the bill “marks a new stage in the
decades-long social counterrevolution in the United States. It will make
America, already the most unequal advanced economy in the world, far more
unequal, entrenching the rule of an unaccountable financial oligarchy.” One
year later, a balance sheet of the legislation’s effects on American society
confirms this analysis.
In October,
the United States Treasury announced that the federal budget deficit has risen
to $779 billion, up 17 percent from the previous fiscal year. The Congressional Budget Office
(CBO)
issued a report in April projecting the
national debt will now increase by $1.9
trillion
over the next decade. The spike in the deficit
will precipitate a new
round off assaults on the
few remaining social programs in the US—
above all,
Social Security, Medicare, and
Medicaid.
After-tax
profits rose nearly 20 percent in the third quarter from the previous year as a
result of the cuts, while wage growth remained static. After-tax corporate
profits are now growing nearly 10 percent faster than pre-tax profits, a
phenomenon which usually only occurs around recessions. The first three
quarters of this year saw enormous tax savings for some of America’s largest
corporations. Walmart saved $1.6 billion, with Bank of America saving $2.4
billion. AT&T and Verizon saved $2.2 billion and $1.75 billion,
respectively. Apple alone has collected a whopping $4.5 billion.
Corporate
spokesmen and media pundits at the time had made promises of raising wages,
handing out bonuses and creating new jobs. In reality, the handouts in the form
of bonuses and raises for workers amounted to a small fraction of the $200
billion in savings on income tax. A recent report by the Economic Policy
Institute estimated that bonuses gave workers only 2 cents more per hour over
the past year. Wages overall have increased only 3.1 percent over the course of
the year, barely keeping up with the rate of inflation. By comparison, dividend
payouts to corporate shareholders have set a new annual record of $420 billion.
The majority of the payouts went to the wealthiest 10 percent of the US
population, which owns 84 percent of all stock holdings.
Capital
investment—intended to fund research and development and create jobs—rose at
the beginning of the year only to fall sharply in the third quarter.
Conversely, stock buybacks—a method by which a corporation repurchases shares
in order to artificially inflate their value without creating anything or
hiring employees—surged to previously unseen heights.
The total
amount of S&P 500 company buybacks alone neared $200 billion in the third
quarter, with a total buybacks reaching $579 billion for the first nine months
of 2018. The total amount of buybacks is expected to top $1 trillion by the end
of the year, according to Goldman Sachs analysts. This is almost double the
amount of the previous annual buyback record of $589 billion in 2007—the year
that began the financial meltdown that triggered the worst recession since the
Great Depression.
It is now
clear the vast majority of corporate spending from the tax cut has gone to the
further enrichment of a tiny parasitic layer of investors and CEOs. Whatever
expenditures made on paltry handouts to workers have been dwarfed by buybacks
and dividends, a financial orgy that once again threatens another and even
greater financial meltdown. The events of the past year once again underscore
the deeply intractable crisis of capitalism, marked by a degree of
financialization of the world economy that has long ago surpassed the point of no
return. Profit is now primarily made not through the growth of the productive
forces, but rather, through their destruction.
In fact, many
corporations have instead carried out layoffs in spite of their surge in
profits. General Motors (GM) has announced plans to lay off 15,000 workers and
shut down five plants in the United States and Canada, along with two
unspecified plants internationally. While GM is planning to cut $6.5 billion in
costs, it has squandered over $10 billion in stock buybacks and dividend
payouts for its richest investors since 2017, and $25 billion since 2012.
Bank of
America has cut 5,000 jobs this year alone. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan
has cited the growth of automation and online banking as the impetus for the
layoffs. According to Moynihan himself, the corporation has cut 100,000 jobs
since 2010 when he took over the company. Wells Fargo, another bank that has
made billions from the cuts, followed suit in an announcement that it plans to
downsize its work force by up to 10 percent. This came shortly after an
announcement of $40 billion in stock buybacks since the law passed.
AT&T
slashed more than 10,000 union jobs this year in an acceleration of layoffs
from last year. Verizon has laid off 3,100 employees this year, while announcing
a buyout offer cutting an additional 10,000 workers. The company recently made
the decision to outsource 2,500 jobs to Infosys, a large Indian technology
firm.
The trade
unions representing many of the affected workers, such as the United Auto Workers
(UAW) and Communications Workers of America (CWA), have directly collaborated
in imposing the layoffs and plant closures.
The Democratic
Party offered only nominal opposition to the tax cuts. While voting against the
legislation last year in a party-line vote in both the House and Senate, the
Democrats are not proposing to introduce legislation to repeal the cuts once
they regain control of the House of Representatives January 3—neither partially
nor as a whole. The Republican Party introduced legislation to repeal,
deauthorize, defund, or otherwise do away with Affordable Care Act (ACA) 83
times during Obama’s presidency. The Democrats are opposed to even a
symbolic gesture against the tax cuts, as doing so
would risk alienating the party from its corporate
base.
symbolic gesture against the tax cuts, as doing so
would risk alienating the party from its corporate
base.
CRIMINAL GLOBALIST BANKSTERS AND THE POLITICIANS THEY BOUGHT:
The Story of Goldman Sachs and Clinton, Obama and Trump corruption.
Goldman Sachs, GE, Pfizer, the United Auto Workers—the same “special interests”
Barack Obama was supposed to chase from the temple—are profiting handsomely
from Obama’s Big Government policies that crush taxpayers, small businesses,
and consumers. In Obamanomics, investigative reporter Timothy P.
Carney digs up the dirt the mainstream media ignores, and the White House
wishes you wouldn’t see. Rather than Hope and Change, Obama is delivering
corporate socialism to America, all while claiming he’s battling corporate
America. It’s corporate welfare and regulatory robbery—it’s OBAMANOMICS TO
SERVE THE RICH AND GLOBALIST BILLIONAIRES.
TRUMPERNOMICS:
THE SUPER RICH APPLAUD
TWITTER’S TRUMP’S TAX CUTS FOR THE SUPER RICH!
"The tax overhaul would mean an unprecedented windfall for the
super-rich, on top
of the fact that virtually all income gains during the period of
the supposed
recovery from the financial crash of 2008 have gone to the top 1
percent income
bracket."
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars
in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other
charities.”
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS
KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four
out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants
- Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and
Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS
COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR
CORRESPONDENT
Wall Street firms have
chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing
heavily in Barack Obama.
Although the Democratic
presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes,
financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to
GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.
*
“The administration has
been pushing hard for a settlement among state attorneys general, the nation's
five largest mortgage servicers — Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan
Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial
Inc. — and certain federal agencies.”
OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE ACTOR
PRESIDENT, AND HIS BANKSTER DONORS!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants -Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
and Citigroup ($358,054).
THE TRUMP FAMILY FOUNDATION SLUSH FUND…. Will they see jail?
VISUALIZE REVOLUTION!.... We know where they live!
“Underwood is a Democrat and is seeking millions of dollars
in penalties. She wants Trump and his eldest children barred from running other
charities.”
WHAT DID THE BANKSTERS
KNOW ABOUT OUR ACTOR OBAMA THAT WE DIDN’T KNOW?
Records show that four
out of Obama's top five contributors are employees of financial industry giants
- Goldman Sachs ($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207) and
Citigroup ($358,054).
BARACK OBAMA HAS
COLLECTED NEARLY TWICE AS MUCH MONEY AS JOHN McCAIN
BY DAVID SALTONSTALL
DAILY NEWS SENIOR
CORRESPONDENT
Wall Street firms have
chipped in more than $9 million to Barack Obama. Zurga/Bloomberg
Wall Street is investing
heavily in Barack Obama.
Although the Democratic
presidential hopeful has vowed to raise capital gains and corporate taxes,
financial industry bigs have contributed almost twice as much to Obama as to
GOP rival John McCain, a Daily News analysis of campaign records shows.
*
“The administration has
been pushing hard for a settlement among state attorneys general, the nation's
five largest mortgage servicers — Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan
Chase & Co., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup Inc. and Ally Financial
Inc. — and certain federal agencies.”
OBAMA’S CRONY CAPITALISM, A LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE ACTOR
PRESIDENT, AND HIS BANKSTER DONORS!
Records show that four out of Obama's top five contributors
are employees of financial industry giants -Goldman Sachs
($571,330), UBS AG ($364,806), JPMorgan Chase ($362,207)
and Citigroup ($358,054).
THE BILLIONAIRE
CLASS WAGES WAR ON AMERICA!
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/09/bill-gates-zuckerberg-jeff-bezos.html
"GOP estb. is using
the $5 billion border-wall fight to hide up to four blue/white-
collar cheap-labor
programs in lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that
salaries are too
damn high, & estb. media does not want to know."
"GOP estb. is using
the $5 billion border-wall fight to hide up to four blue/white-
collar cheap-labor
programs in lame-duck DHS budget. Donors are worried that
salaries are too
damn high, & estb. media does not want to know."
TOP EVIL CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA
Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON
CRONIES
JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES
ExxonMobil
Halliburton BUSH CRIME FAMILY CRONIES
British American Tobacco
Dow Chemical
DuPont
Bayer
Microsoft
Google CLINTON CRONIES
Facebook OBAMA CRONIES
Amazon
Walmart
*
“The radicals seek nothing less than secession
from the United States whether to form their own sovereign state or to reunify
with Mexico. Those who desire reunification with Mexico are irredentists who
seek to reclaim Mexico's "lost" territories in the American
Southwest.” Maria Hsia Chang Professor of Political Science, University
of Nevada Reno
"Mexican
president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to
the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all
the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that
immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free
medical in the United States."
TOP EVIL CORPORATIONS LOOTING AMERICA
Goldman Sachs TRUMP CRONIES – CLINTON
CRONIES
JPMorgan Chase OBAMA CRONIES
ExxonMobil
Halliburton BUSH CRIME FAMILY CRONIES
British American Tobacco
Dow Chemical
DuPont
Bayer
Microsoft
Google CLINTON CRONIES
Facebook OBAMA CRONIES
Amazon
Walmart
*
“The radicals seek nothing less than secession
from the United States whether to form their own sovereign state or to reunify
with Mexico. Those who desire reunification with Mexico are irredentists who
seek to reclaim Mexico's "lost" territories in the American
Southwest.” Maria Hsia Chang Professor of Political Science, University
of Nevada Reno
"Mexican
president candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador called for mass immigration to
the United States, declaring it a "human right". We will defend all
the (Mexican) invaders in the American," Obrador said, adding that
immigrants "must leave their towns and find a life, job, welfare, and free
medical in the United States."
"Fox’s Tucker Carlson noted Thursday that Obrador has
previously proposed ranting AMNESTY TO MEXICAN DRUG CARTELS. “America is now
Mexico’s social safety net, and that’s a very good deal for the Mexican ruling
class,” Carlson added."
TRUMP’S TAX BILL:
A massive tax cut
for his plundering Goldman Sachs infested administration.
Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi
reportedly said to a gathering of illegal aliens in California in
2009 that U.S. immigration laws were “un-American,” suggesting that they need not be obeyed. JAMES WALSH
PELOSI’S OPEN BORDERS MEXIFORNIA where La Raxa loots first!
7 OUT OF 10 ILLEGALS ON WELFARE!
https://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2018/12/mexifornia-where-mexico-loots-first-7.html
What is the true cost of all the Democrat Party’s “cheap” labor?
OPEN BORDERS FACILITATE AMERICA’S RACE TO THE BOTTOM
“Cheap labor” is anything but cheap.
January 2, 2019
For decades the United States government, on all levels, has betrayed its own citizens, promoting open borders policies that have come to undermine national security, public safety, public health, and jobs and wages for American workers.
The massive influx of alien children who lack English language proficiency also has a profound impact on the education of American kids. Increasingly schools across the United States are forced to provide costly ESL (English as a Second Language) services draining funds that could and should be used to provide quality education for American children. Additionally, as autism rates soar and with it the growing need for special services and early intervention for such learning challenged children, money that should be spent on those vital programs that could help so many of those children live better and more productive lives is being used, instead, to fund those ESL programs for illegal aliens and frequently the children of illegal aliens who do not speak English in their homes.
When early intervention is withheld from at-risk students, the results are frequently catastrophic, yet with all of the emotional arguments posed by the immigration anarchists who call for compassion for illegal aliens, their calls for compassion utterly disregard the plight of American children.
Open borders policies permit huge numbers of foreign workers to enter the United States and displace American workers, not because American’s “won’t do these jobs” as claimed by the duplicitous politicians, but because these foreign workers are willing to accept lower wages and worse conditions than would the American workers whom they displace.
We can all think back to the days when we were growing up and sought our very first jobs to provide us with some spending money, enabling us to put our foot on the bottom rung of the economic ladder.
We often encountered the conundrum of not being able to get a job without a reference. In order to get a reference we had to have a previous employer vouch for us. This made getting that very first job all the more difficult and, at the same time, all the more important.
I remember my first job, when I was 14 yeas old, working during my summer vacation in a Kosher delicatessen, a short bike ride from home in Brooklyn where I washed dishes, fried potatoes and served hot dogs at the counter, waited on tables and delivered sandwiches to the women who spent hours at the nearby beauty parlors.
It was exciting and empowering to be earning money instead of asking my parents for an allowance. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, that job also provided me with an education in life lessons, teaching me to be responsible, punctual and take instructions from an employer. That job also taught me the value of money, I was far less likely to squander money when I had to work so hard to earn it.
Finally, that job provided me with that important first reference that helped me get other jobs in the future as I climbed the economic ladder to a successful life.
Many of my friends also worked in nearby restaurants. Brooklyn has no shortage of great places to eat, often small “mom and pop” restaurants and everyone of those establishments routinely hired teenagers and college students who were desperate to earn money.
Today most of those jobs in all too many local restaurants and other businesses are not taken by teenage American kids, but but illegal aliens, thereby shutting out Americans.
Consequently, these American kids are often unable to get that first job that would mean so much to them and provide them with important life lessons including a sense of self-worth and empowerment.
Unable to find legitimate employment, some kids, particularly in the poor neighborhoods, resort to committing crimes to get their hands on some money to take a girl on a date or make purchases. This often puts these teenagers on a trajectory that does not end well for them or for their communities, or for America.
Illegal alien day laborers often displace construction workers, resulting in massive unemployment for American and lawful immigrant workers, boosting the profits of their employers who hire them “off the books” and pay them extremely low wages.
The open-borders/immigration anarchists are quick to invoke arguments about the need for compassion. The reality is that there’s no compassion in the exploitation of vulnerable foreign workers nor is there compassion in the destruction of wages and jobs for Americans.
Now with the legalization of marijuana in many cities and states across the United States the issue not being raised in the media is that inasmuch as many companies test their employees for illegal drugs, it is likely that those who are encouraged to smoke marijuana will lose their jobs, perhaps leading to the globalists claiming that not only are lazy Americans not willing to take physically demanding jobs, and too dumb to take hi-tech jobs but are now too stoned to take any jobs.
The displacement of American workers is not limited to the economic bottom rung jobs. America has been increasingly importing computer programmers and other hi-tech workers from India and other countries to displace Americans.
The Democratic Party used to act in the interests of American workers and, as a part of their efforts to protect the jobs and wages of Americans, opposed the importation of foreign workers. Today, the Democratic Party no longer represents American workers and, in fact, has come to betray American workers and their families. Today’s Democratic Party insists on raising the minimum wage to $15.00 per hour to achieve “wage equality.” This works out to an annual wage of slightly more than $30,000.
The question that is never asked, particularly by the mainstream media is: “with whom would these workers become equal?”
The question that is never asked, particularly by the mainstream media is: “with whom would these workers become equal?”
It would be one thing if they insisted on a $15.00 minimum wage to help America’s working poor. But to tout that wage as a means of achieving “wage equality” should give all Americans cause for pause.
As I noted in an article I once wrote about the veiled attack on the middle class, The Wage Equality Deception, Alan Greenspan the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank, invoked the notion of wage equality way back on April 30, 2009 when he testified before the Senate Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Citizenship that was, at that time, chaired by Chuck Schumer.
The subject of the hearing was “Comprehensive Immigration Reform in 2009, Can We Do It and How?” Greenspan's prepared testimony included this assertion:
But there is little doubt that unauthorized, that is, illegal, immigration has made a significant contribution to the growth of our economy. Between 2000 and 2007, for example, it accounted for more than a sixth of the increase in our total civilian labor force. The illegal part of the civilian labor force diminished last year as the economy slowed, though illegals still comprised an estimated 5% of our total civilian labor force. Unauthorized immigrants serve as a flexible component of our workforce, often a safety valve when demand is pressing and among the first to be discharged when the economy falters.
Some evidence suggests that unskilled illegal immigrants (almost all from Latin America) marginally suppress wage levels of native-born Americans without a high school diploma, and impose significant costs on some state and local governments.
Greenspan must not have gotten the memo- when America’s poorest workers suffer wage suppression they are likely to become homeless and, indeed, across the United States, homelessness has increased dramatically. This not only creates chaos in the lives of the homeless and their children, but imposes severe economic burdens on cities that have to cope with this disaster.
Greenspan went on to state the United States must accede to Bill Gates’ demand for more H-1B visas as Gates noted in his testimony at a previous hearing, that we are "driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most."
Where I come from, “the world’s best and brightest” are AMERICANS! This is what is commonly referred to as “American Exceptionalism.”
Greenspan supported his infuriating call for many more H-1B visas by the following “benefits” for America and, as you will see, the last sentence of his outrageous paragraph addresses the notion of reducing “wage inequality” by lowering wages of middle class, highly educated Americans whom Greenspan had the chutzpah to refer to as “the privileged elite”!
Consider this excerpt from his testimony:
First, skilled workers and their families form new households. They will, of necessity, move into vacant housing units, the current glut of which is depressing prices of American homes. And, of course, house price declines are a major factor in mortgage foreclosures and the plunge in value of the vast quantity of U.S. mortgage-backed securities that has contributed substantially to the disabling of our banking system. The second bonus would address the increasing concentration of income in this country. Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums of skilled over lesser skilled. Skill shortages in America exist because we are shielding our skilled labor force from world competition. Quotas have been substituted for the wage pricing mechanism. In the process, we have created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals. Eliminating such restrictions would reduce at least some of our income inequality.
Generally, the prospect of high-paying jobs incentivized American students to go on to college and acquire costly and time-consuming educations to be qualified to take those exciting and well-paying jobs. If wages for high-tech professionals are slashed, those jobs will no longer be attractive to Americans.
Greenspan, Schumer and their cohorts are determined to create a $15.00 per hour “standard wage” to be paid to all workers irrespective of education or the nature of their jobs. This is called Communism!
Many have said that the Democrats want to import immigrants who will vote for their candidates.
What is often overlooked is that the downward economic spiral caused by the massive influx of cheap alien labor pushes ever more beleaguered Americans to vote for the Democrats who promise to help the hapless, financially strapped Americans for whom, no matter how hard they may strive, the “American Dream” has become an unattainable dream.
Pelosi’s great “achievement” in her first stint as Speaker was the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, aimed at shifting much of the burden of paying for health insurance from businesses and the government onto the backs of workers.
In 2007, she worked closely with her top aides, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn, to block any efforts to impeach President George W. Bush and ensure an unending stream of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
US House Democrats reaffirm right-wing program of austerity, bipartisanship
The 116th Congress opened Thursday with a nearly unanimous vote by the Democrats in the House of Representatives reaffirming their commitment to austerity by adopting a rules package which includes a “pay as you go” provision, requiring any increased spending on social programs or tax cuts to be offset by equivalent budget cuts or tax increases. The Democrats took control of the House for the first time in eight years following November’s midterms while the Republicans increased their majority in the Senate.
The new rules were moved by Democratic Representative Nancy Pelosi who was re-elected to the position of Speaker of the House earlier in the day, giving her effective control of its legislative agenda. Pelosi became the first woman to be elected Speaker when she held the position from 2007 to 2011. As Speaker, she is now second in line of succession for the presidency behind Vice President Mike Pence.
Pelosi’s great “achievement” in her first stint as Speaker was the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, aimed at shifting much of the burden of paying for health insurance from businesses and the government onto the backs of workers. In 2007, she worked closely with her top aides, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip James Clyburn, to block any efforts to impeach President George W. Bush and ensure an unending stream of funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hoyer and Clyburn have been returned to those positions for the 116th Congress.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy congratulates Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. [Credit: C-Span]
Pelosi’s re-election as Speaker was welcomed by President Donald Trump Thursday during an afternoon press conference called to pressure the Democrats on funding for his proposed wall along the US-Mexico border, in which he expressed his hope that they would work together on infrastructure and “so much more.” Trump has forced a partial shutdown of the government, now approaching the third week, with 800,000 federal employees either furloughed or working without pay, over his demand for $5 billion to fund the construction of the border wall.
The House passed two bills on Thursday which would reopen the government. However, the bills, modeled on legislation passed by the Republican-controlled Senate last year, must win Senate passage again in the new legislative session. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he will not allow action on the House legislation because Trump has already declared he will not sign it since it does not include his demand for border wall funding.
While Pelosi told NBC News in an interview Thursday morning that it was an “open question” if Trump could be criminally indicted while in office or should be impeached, she has maneuvered over the last two years to suppress any efforts among House Democrats to move for impeachment. Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer met publicly with Trump at the White House last month in an effort to strike a deal on immigration reform where they assured the president that they supported increased border security but sought a rhetorical climbdown on his part in relation to the wall.
“I think it’ll be a little bit different than people are thinking,” Trump quipped about his relationship with Speaker Pelosi while flanked by Border Patrol union officials Thursday.
Indeed, her first speech as Speaker was an olive branch to the right-wing within her own party as well as to the Republicans in Congress, singling out for praise Republican presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush and calling for bipartisanship, meaning an even further shift to the right by the Democratic Party.
Pelosi was elected in a carefully orchestrated vote Thursday afternoon with the support of all but 12 Democratic representatives. The vote came after weeks of horse-trading and backroom deals in which Pelosi had to agree to a four-year term limit to win over a dozen members, mainly on the right wing of the Democratic caucus, who had threatened to block her election.
Among those who voted for Pelosi were Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, both members of the pseudo-left Democratic Socialists of America faction of the Democratic Party. That they both cast their votes for Pelosi’s right-wing promise of bipartisanship, and Tlaib for a rules package which commits the House to austerity, shows that their association with socialism is entirely false, meant only to misdirect youth and workers who are looking for a genuine alternative to capitalism, and trap them within the Democratic Party.
Newly elected CIA Democrats made up a significant portion of those who did not vote for Pelosi, opposing her from the right, including former CIA officers Abigail Spanberger of Virginia, Elissa Slotkin of Michigan and Afghan war veteran Max Rose of New York.
Despite the much touted “historic” character of the newly sworn-in Congress, which will see the most female and minority representatives seated in US history, all of them go to Washington, D.C., as representatives of the capitalist class and enemies of the working class. The growing number of women, African Americans, Muslims and other minorities will do nothing to push Congress to the left.
The majority of members of Congress are millionaires and those who are not are vetted to ensure they will serve the interests of the rich and are increasingly drawn directly from the military-intelligence apparatus. The non-millionaires entering Congress for the first time will find their fortunes rising quite rapidly. The median Congressperson had a net worth of at least $1.1 million in 2015, and the figure has only continued to rise.
According to the latest data analyzed by Open Secrets, Speaker Pelosi had an estimated net worth of $100 million in 2013. Among her declared property holdings that year were a 59,000 square foot warehouse in San Francisco, worth between $5 and $25 million, and a vineyard in Napa Valley, also declared at $5 to $25 million. According to one admiring media profile, her main skill as a Democratic Party leader was as a fund-raiser, having raked in $728 million for Democratic congressional candidates since 2002.
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