THE POOR, FORGOTTEN RICH WILL FINALLY GET SOME TAX RELIEF

I will go on the record right now to state that I am rich. No, I am not anywhere near being in the 1%. My wealth did not come from an accumulation of money and property. My wife and I live very comfortably but there is not a chance we'd be confused with any of the small number of Americans who have financial assets in excess of seven figures.

I am rich beyond the dreams of avarice because I have three of the best children in the world; all college educated, all successful in their careers, all still wanting, and looking forward to, spending time with my wife and me at any time. I have three wonderful, well-adjusted, very intelligent grandchildren. All three grandkids go wild with happiness when my wife and I visit their homes, or when they come to see us. I am their gymnasium. They love when my wife reads and sings to them - and they love everything that comes out of her kitchen. They make the two of us feel richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett combined. Needless to say (but I’ll say it anyway), I have a wonderful wife who I have been married to for 38 ½ years. I live in a modern, desirable southeastern US city with nice weather, close to the ocean. I recently retired from a highly successful career in broadcasting. I am an award-winning author and perform with a local band. So I am quite content.

          But I have never pursued money. I saw my father engage in that as I was growing up, but for all his pursuit, he never seemed to be happy about it. He was grouchy, distant, self-centered, devious…but never happy. Money accumulation only gave him a dour look as he sought a way to get more.

          I took a cue from that and decided whatever he did I wasn’t going to do…so I never chased the almighty dollar. I have had a successful career and by any measure I have done well, contributed to my savings account along the way, lived frugally, and invested in my wife’s and my retirement. But I did not try to rake in as much cash as I possibly could. I was far more interested in spending time with my family, watching the kids grow, teaching them, being with them, being the best father and husband that I could. I turned down dozens of lucrative opportunities to make substantial additions to our bank account…because of how I saw my father’s accumulations did nothing for his well-being, but generally it was because what those opportunities required of me…far too many nights, weekends, even months away from my family. My family was, is, and always will be, tremendously more important than money. But I apparently got it all wrong.

          The GOP is going to punish me for NOT pursuing the almighty dollar to make myself a millionaire - by making sure my taxes will go up while providing an enormous wealth redistribution to the very well-off, uber-wealthy, and filthy rich. People making over a million dollars a year will get a massive tax cut from the Republican tax plan by taking that money away from people like me to give to someone who’s net worth is ten to a hundred times what mine is.

The poor will just waste that money, anyway.

          

              Why do I deserve to have my taxes raised and my financial wealth diminished? Because, as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa explained in a November 29^th interview with NPR’s Robert Siegel, part of the reason for repealing, say, the estate tax is “I think not having the estate tax recognizes the people that are investing as opposed to those that are just spending every darn penny they have, whether it’s on booze or women or movies.”

So my tax burden will have to go up substantially because I'm not throwing my money at the stock market, plus, to make up the difference from the government's loss of Estate Tax revenue. I am not deserving of a huge tax cut because Grassley has imagined I spent most of my "pennies" on a house, college funds for my kids, day-to-day living expenses, utility bills and the like...which Grassley equates with booze, women and going to the movies. As my wife, children and friends will all attest, I rarely drink any alcohol, the only women I’ve spent money on the past 40 years are my wife and daughter, and when we go to the movies, we almost always go to the dollar theater, if we don’t just wait for the edited version to air for free on TV. So I don’t know where Grassley got his information. He is implying I’d be a millionaire now and could look forward to getting some of that GOP wealth transfer from poor and middle-class people to fatten my own bank account if I had just pursued a hell of a lot more money the past 50 years.

              

          Put simply, the GOP tax plan has been written to favor asset-based incomes, passive business investments and inherited wealth (like Trump’s, so Trump is lying when he says this tax plan is going to hurt him), and it penalizes those foolish enough to actually work for a paycheck. Hey, if your income is obtained from your stock portfolio or you were born into a rich family, you’re going to love this plan. Otherwise, tough sh*t.

Grassley let the cat out of the bag in that same interview. Siegel asked him “…you agree that before you begin to do that [paying down the $20 Trillion National Debt], this bill would increase deficits and the debt by at least $1.5 trillion...unless you really do take away middle-income tax cuts, $2 trillion, right? Are those numbers about right?” Grassley’s response? “Yeah, if you look at it on paper the way the Congressional Budget Office does, that is right.”

He went on to claim that since Trump SAYS the economy is going gangbusters and IF we can boost our economic growth, up from 2 to around 3%, then the $1.5 trillion additional debt will be made up. 

Not one economist thinks that is realistic. They say that is something Grassley "made up."

         Except for a few years doing factory work and then teaching for a short duration, Grassley has spent his career in Congress where he voted in favor of almost every pay raise Senators and Representatives could give themselves, helped to run up the National Debt (while blaming it exclusively on the Democrats), gave the military Carte Blanche for whatever it wanted, and fleeced American taxpayers. He is fleecing us again…only bigger, badder and bolder than ever before. But by the time the worst of the wealth transfer…uh, I mean the fair and equitable tax policy...is implemented, Chuck Grassley will be well into his own retirement. So he won’t need to make any pretense that those “tax cuts” in the GOP bill were aimed at the middle class.

               Grassley claims the massive tax cuts (like eliminating the Estate Tax which only affects .2% [that's point two percent] of Americans) is really just a question of “basic fairness.” Yes, but fairness to whom? It damn sure isn't fair to people like me who are not millionaires.

Trouble with a capital T

One of the most memorable songs from the 1957 Broadway hit “The Music Man” was Ya Got Trouble. As performed by huckster “Professor” Harold Hill, he sings to the townspeople in Iowa “…well, ya got trouble, my friend, right here, I say, trouble right here in River City…”

Fast-forward 60 years. Take out River City and put in America.

And we have a new huckster. Instead of a con artist salesman named Hill, we have one named Trump. He’s not here to sing about a problem…he IS the problem.

We are in deep, deep, trouble.

We are facing an economic downturn in the coming months, maybe even just a few weeks. It would have happened no matter who won the election. Our capital-based economic system goes through high and low cycles on an average of every five to seven years. Our last low cycle was 2008-2010 when Wall Street financial institutions brought our economy to its knees. (Look up Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, and Bear Stearns for greater understanding.) The economy slowly recovered and has been on an up cycle since then, but no one learned any lessons. The corporations that brought the economy down did not make any changes, nor were virtually any CEOs or officials punished in any way. The next drop is coming soon; as sure as the sun will rise from the east. When it comes, our president-elect is going to be way out of his depth, as he is on many other issues. Yes, he is successful. Of that, there is no doubt. He is a successful marketer of himself…that’s it. That’s all. He cannot cure financial woes. He cannot stimulate the economy. He cannot generate wealth. He cannot guide or command the military-industrial-legislative complex of the shadow government that holds the real reins of power in this nation. He made dozens, if not hundreds, of economic promises while campaigning, even claiming at one point that regarding taxes and our economy, only he“…alone can fix it.” No, he can’t. He said those things for only one reason...to get elected. And he got elected simply to enrich himself and his billionaire cabinet member friends and donors. He was good at hiding that from his supporters. They would never have thought that possible beforehand.

His economic plan goes something like this: get all his uber-wealthy friends into high cabinet positions, and then let them do whatever they want to bring more money into their personal accounts…only now use the federal system to clear an even bigger path from all the financial opportunities around straight into their piggy banks. Then, jobs will just magically appear. At least Trump pitched a simplistic version of that to his voters. The people he is putting in his cabinet are almost all donors who gave him millions of dollars in campaign contributions…even though he claimed he didn’t want anyone else’s money because that way no one would own him. And to top it all off, remember that name Goldman Sachs from the paragraph above? Trump put at least three Goldman Sachs executives…the same guys who helped torpedo and sink the U.S. economy in 2008…on the federal payroll as cabinet members.

     Gary Cohn   -  Steve Mnuchin  - Steve Bannon  - All Goldman Sachs privateers (As of 01-18-17 Trump has now put six people from Goldman Sachs on the payroll.)

Our economy will suffer and then crumble...after being gutted.

Then, when Donald Trump can’t fix the economy, he will look for a distraction or someone to blame…an enemy…possibly Iran, maybe an African nation, but most likely China…and we will be in a war. Wars always help the economy because someone has to build the weapons. But they are disastrous for people.

First question: how stupid do you have to be to start a war with the country that provides the U.S. with 60% of its goods? 

Question Two: What kind of sense does it make to close the U.S. to Chinese exports, and what impact will that have on the Chinese economy? What will be the Chinese reaction? One thing is for certain, it will NOT bring them to the negotiating table.

Question three: Can the U.S. in any way make up the 60% loss from doing that? How?

Our military and CIA have been taunting and provoking the Chinese for more than a decade; sending Navy EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft to fly near disputed air space along China’s coast, where one was struck by a Chinese jet fighter on April 1, 2001, and the EP-3 had to crash-land on China’s Hainan Island. In August 2014 and again in May of 2015 Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft deliberately overflew the newly-constructed Chinese developments in the Spratly Islands and our military has sent U.S. warships to patrol the area around them forcing a Chinese response. The Chinese reaction has been to send their J-8 and J-11 jet fighters buzzing around the reconnaissance aircraft sometimes approaching to within 20 feet, risking another collision. The Chinese have upped the ante by introducing their very first carrier Liaoning in the area which can launch the versatile Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark interceptors..

The U.S. Navy has released underwater drones around the South China Sea, supposedly for innocent oceanic research, without asking China if they would care to help in the exploration. Earlier in December, a Chinese warship stopped and grabbed one out of the water right in front of the U.S. ship and took off with it. They offered to give the drone back three days later...but Trump, who missed the security briefing on it, tweeted for the Chinese to keep it.
However, here is the real issue. Imagine if the Chinese navy released an underwater drone between Key West and Pensacola somewhere off the Florida coast? Might our military not see that as a hostile act or a provocation to war?

China will have to weigh just how much to make of these provocative acts, but the U.S. defense industry, the military, and the CIA will be hoping and even praying for a hostile response. Because then the demonization of China will begin. We in the U.S. and around the world will be sold a fake bill of goods contrived to make the Chinese (or whoever Trump and his handlers of the shadow government decides the enemy-du-jour is) look really evil and deserving of whatever military response is conjured up. But in this coming war, we’re not going to get a coalition to help us in that fight...you can bet Mexico will not help, nor will the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Russia, Iraq, Vietnam, Australia, or even Tuvalu. We'll be on our own.

Trump will push for war because he will be told it is a boon to the economy. People won’t matter to Trump in the numbers-crunching equation except as worker bees in the defense industries, or as cannon-fodder. Plus, a war will mask just how badly the economy has done under his plunder, I mean leadership. Only this time, that war will escalate and involve weapons that are going to cause immeasurable damage to our planet. Remember Trump asking why, if we have nuclear weapons, don’t we use them, and how he wouldn’t take the nuclear option off the table? This is why. Our enemies know that Donald Trump is extraordinarily thin-skinned and can easily be provoked on Twitter. How simple will it be for an unfriendly government to initiate some kind of a nuclear response from Trump by baiting him with a fake news story or insulting tweet that appears to come from a country the American public has been told is the enemy? Any nuclear-armed countries Trump orders attacked are going to retaliate tenfold. 
Trump is okay with that because as long as he, his family, and a few friends are safely hidden away somewhere from the nuclear exchange he initiates, the rest of us can go to hell.

And speaking of hell, don’t be surprised when evangelicals encourage the war. They desperately want Jesus to come roaring out of the sky and launch Armageddon. It doesn't even matter to the evangelicals that most of them will be incinerated in a nuclear war.They truly believe Jesus will whisk them off the planet moments before Trump brings on what they have long interpreted in the Bible's Revelations. This is why they supported electing him, not because he showed any Christian qualities but because he would force God’s hand and initiate the End Times ™

We got trouble with a capital T and it stands for Trump.

IF WE SURVIVE...