Donald J. Trump is not alone in wishing bad luck for Black people, Muslims, other non-White people, and the poor.
The entire Republican apparatus — even GOP Sens. Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake and John McCain of Arizona, who correctly condemned 45’s disgusting behavior in office — voted to fast-track the disastrous budget/tax-cut scheme, so the Democrats can’t filibuster and block its eventual passage.
These folks are determined to engineer a huge redistribution of wealth, via the public coffers, into the pockets of the top 1 percent of U.S. income earners, who will receive 80 percent of the tax-plan’s benefits. Robin Hood in Reverse: they take from the poor and give to the rich.
A second goal (an extension of the original really) is to permanently reduce the size of the government; to eliminate services provided by the government for the needy. The military-industrial-complex and the prison-industrial complex are the only sectors immune from government budget cuts. The silent desire of budget “deficit hawks” is to “reduce the size of the government till it’s small enough to drown it in a bathtub.”
Now, the budget-reducers control absolute power over the purse. Their plans and their rhetoric have changed. The deficits produced by the tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy, will eventually pay for themselves in the form of “economic growth.” They lie.
This is my simple illustration of how economic “growth” makes the bunny appear out of the economic magician’s hat, deceiving the masses. Economist David Stockman called a similar giveaway during the Ronald Reagan era: “voodoo economics.”
Picture 100 people sharing a pie that’s cut into 100 pieces. In this scenario, two rich guys in the group control more than 50 pieces, leaving the remaining 50 pieces to be divided among the 98 people still waiting for their own “piece of the pie.”
The next 18 people (now the top 20) also get largely disproportionate amounts of the distribution, on down to the bottom 50 divvying up less than 10 pieces left, after the rich guys got their portions first. Not a fair deal, but that’s the way it works around here.
But then: Abracadabra! Growth!
When the size of the pie grows, the rich guys at the top can continue to get the same amount they’ve always gotten, but now, the new portion that was added to the pie by the “growth” can be dispersed down to the poor, giving them the illusion that life is getting better, and that they are living in the Land of Opportunity.
Vote the Tax Cut Ticket or else, even those of you from dirt-poor districts. Cha-ching.
GOP candidates say it over and over: the middle class have been “waiting” for the $1,300 annual tax cut their plan promises to a $50,000-a-year family. Really Congressman, entire families are “waiting” for that $50 extra, every two weeks. (I’m sure the fleeced masses would agree that it’s a good idea to make wealthy the members of 45’s family, his cabinet, and POTUS himself.)
Now the math part of that equation is easy. What’s hard to understand is why poor, indigent White folks in this country vote for legislators who oppose their best interests? You see, until 1968 when Republican Richard Nixon took power utilizing his “Southern Strategy,” Christian, segregationist, White Democrats — so-called “Dixiecrats” — ruled the South telling White voters six “truths:” 1. the federal government’s a threat; 2. federal courts don’t understand the Constitution; 3. taxes are bad; 4. unions need to be eliminated; 5. you have a lousy hospital; 6. but at least you’re White.
Now that strategy is working for Republicans everywhere.
In this country’s poorest counties, in the predominantly White, poor counties throughout the poverty belt, stretching from Kentucky to West Virginia, Donald J. Trump won 95 percent of the vote, the White vote, in those poor counties. At least they’re White, so they vote against their own best interests.
