Orlando Sentinel

In tax plan, GOP gave oligarchs their victory

-

to cut his tax rate in half, if and when he pays taxes).

They’ll make billions more as their stock portfolios soar because corporate taxes are slashed.

The biggest winners will be American oligarchs such as the Koch brothers; Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley investor; Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate; Woody Johnson, owner of the New York Jets football team and heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune; and Carl Icahn, the activist investor.

The oligarchs are the richest of the richest 1 percent. They’ve poured hundreds of millions into the GOP and Trump.

The giant tax cut has been their core demand. They also want to slash regulation­s, repeal the Affordable Care Act and cut everything else government does except for national defense — including Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Trump has fulfilled his end of the bargain. He’s blinded much of his white, working-class base to the reality of what’s happening by means of his racist, xenophobic rants and policies.

The American oligarchs couldn’t care less about what all of this will cost America. They don’t worry about Social Security or Medicare because they’ve put away huge fortunes. Climate change doesn’t concern them because their estates are fully insured against hurricanes, floods and wildfires.

They don’t care about public schools because their families don’t attend them. Public transporta­tion? They don’t use it. The poor? They don’t see them. And hey don’t worry about the rising budget deficit because they borrow directly from global capital markets.

They don’t even care that much about America because their personal and financial interests are global. They are living in their own separate society, and they want Congress and the president to represent them, not the rest of us.

A tidal wave of public loathing is growing across the land. That wave could crash in the midterm elections of 2018. If so, the current triumph of the oligarchs will be the start of their undoing.

 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States