Nuts and Bolts

There's a new book out by Michael Wolff called "Fire and Fury", chronicling the dysfunction of the Trump Campaign and inside the Whitehouse. Explosive would be a mild word to describe it. Among the headline grabbing excerpts are the statements made for the book by Stephen Bannon, including his belief that Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with a Russian lawyer in the summer of 2016 was "treasonous and unpatriotic." Bannon asserts that Special Prosecutor Mueller will get President Trump through Mannefort, Trump Jr. and Kushner and it's all about "money laundering". A close billionaire friend of the President is quoted as saying Trump is not only crazy, he's stupid. According to Wolff when the late Roger Ailes, who was a campaign advisor, recommended to Trump that he consider asking John Boehner to be his Chief of Staff, he didn't know who that was. Other insiders in the Whitehouse believe the President is barely semi-literate. It should be noted that Wolff has his critics as a writer but frankly the narrative rings true. We know Trump doesn't read books because he told us he doesn't. We know he doesn't like briefings and that his staff has to use lots of graphs and shiny things, sort of like rattling keys to get a babies attention. Trump certainly can't write, other than tweets. His name is on several books but he didn't write any of them, they're simply branding tools. His most important book, his Mein Kampf, is "The Art of the Deal". He reveals in it exactly what he is, a lying salesman who will do anything for attention. One of the tidbits in Wolff's new book is not only did Trump not expect to win but he didn't want to. Again this rings true with everything we know about Donald Trump. It was nothing but a publicity stunt to keep him relevant in the media and spread the falsehood of how successful and great he is. Now it is we the American people who must pay the price for his folly.

Trump is a liar of the highest order and even his voters know it but they accept it out of a belief that everybody in politics is. No, they're not. He lies even when he doesn't have to. Like any pathological liar he believes what he's saying. Case in point is he has passed more legislation in his first year than any other President in history. He hasn't, in fact he has passed the least and has achieved only one major piece of legislation. Well he didn't achieve it, the Republican Congress did. That is the massive tax cut for the rich. Remember when candidate Trump promised sweeping tax code reform? That's okay, Trump doesn't remember it either. The legislation that just passed is not tax reform, it's a fat juicy gift for those who least need it.

I support tax reform, including cutting the corporate tax rate but only with legitimate reform with teeth that includes the removal of loopholes and special dispensations for some of the most powerful companies in the world. None of that happened, in fact the code was made more complex. The prediction is that by February, 2018 the minor tax reductions that some middle-class citizens are getting will be reflected in their paycheck. The reality is that all of those alleged cuts for the working poor and middle-class expires in 2023. You know what doesn't expire? The cuts for the rich and corporations, they are permanent. The 1.4 trillion dollars this tax abomination costs and that figure is likely to go up, is borrowed money and will ultimately result in tax increases on the poor and middle-class in the not too distant future. The corporate tax rate was lowered from 35% to 21% so now we're really competitive with the world, yippee. Oh, wait a minute, every major industrial country in the world is already preparing to assure their corporate rates are lower than that. American companies are sitting on 2.3 trillion dollars in cash reserves and the estimate is they have another 6 trillion sitting in safe havens abroad, surely they'll repatriate that money, no of course not, there's no incentive for that nor was it addressed in the legislation.

We are told that this tax break for the rich will bring greatness to the country because businesses will expand and build. It's a rehash of trickle down economics which George H.W. Bush correctly characterized as "voodoo economics" decades ago. The economy of the United States is strong, for the rich and it just got stronger, for the rich. Here's a question, how many refrigerators and ovens do the rich buy each year? The 500 richest people in the world gained over one trillion dollars more in wealth in 2017 and that's before the great American giveaway to it's rich kicks in because of the tax abomination. Thank goodness the death tax is gone, I'm sure your family had assets in excess of eleven million dollars because that's the amount it would take for a married couples heirs to have to pay one cent and even then the rate of 40% only kicked in after that initial exemption, thankfully now the super rich can truly rest easy knowing their heirs mega dynasties will be epic.

Happy New Year folks, we are being driven back to the days of the Robber Barons but I'm sure it will all work out once the rich start rebuilding America, opening new factories, expanding our economic opportunity, raising wages and the GDP grows by double digits. The sun is shining and the honey is flowing.