A GOP stocking stuffer
Dear editor:
President Trump says he wants the horrible, nearly 500-page tax bill to be passed by Christmas. Then he can stuff the stockings of the rich Republican donors with billions of candy canes and toys to add to their billions of baubles already shoved into their closets. The donors and their heirs will never be able to spend their horde in their lifetimes.
Better and more Christian gifts for Americans would be a tax package that would make up for the millions of good paying jobs outsourced by American corporations to foreign countries. A better present for the heirs of our semi-plutocracy would be a stable and prosperous middle-class and poor Americans, getting a hand up rather than a hand out, as under Roosevelt’s New Deal. Instead, this bill takes money from the already shortchanged by policies — policies promoted by corporations and the right-wing donor class.
There is nothing in the bill that would make up for the fact that Wall Street, most health insurance and other insurance companies are ripping off the American people; or for the overcharging of Americans by drug companies, cable, government privateers and defense contractors; or for the hiding of taxable money on tax shelter islands; or for the underpaying of American workers for many of the jobs that provide huge profits for the CEOs and stockholders of American companies; or no remedy for the usurious interest rates charged by credit companies.
No, the very people who are defrauding the American taxpayers are being rewarded for their ability to buy Republican politicians and to establish a massive propaganda machine (“think tanks,” Limbaugh, Fox News, etc.) to cover up their legal thievery.
Chris Collins (R-N.J.) has said, “My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again.’” So we see there is a big difference between rightwing wealthy and liberal or moderate wellheeled people. The nonright-wing affluent allow middle-class Americans those programs that help them survive. But rich right-wingers like the Koch brothers say, “The American people can’t have health care, Medicare or Social Security because it is against ‘our’ ideology. Even though the American people have paid for Social Security and Medicare, we want these safety nets gone.”
But right-wing millionaires/billionaires want every tax and policy gimmick that helps them to get even richer. Putin and foreigners will get more indirectly from this tax bill than poor or average Americans.
The two-Santa strategy proposed by right-wing operative Jude Winniski is as follows: The Republicans pass a “tax cut” bill that primarily favors the rich. The rest get a little cut, but don’t realize the penalties. The country gets into big debt. The Democrats come along and want to solve economic problems that hurt 90 percent of Americans. Then the Republicans yell, “Debt, debt.” Situations get worse to terrible, and everything is blamed on minorities, liberals, the poor, etc.
We’re not even getting lumps of coal. Big burning bags of waste are what’re being shoved into our stockings.