As anyone who has ever been
to any of the many cities that are graced with a Trump hotel, casino,
golf resort, etc. likely knows, Donald Trump insists that his name be
gaudily displayed in giant letters across every structure he owns –
preferably in gold.
Now,
he’s taken ownership of a massive new structure that’ll reach across
all of America, and he might not want his name slapped all over this
one. It’s Trump’s towering redo of our country’s tax law – and, no
surprise, his plan is truly golden. For the super-rich, that is,
revealing in hard numbers whom his presidency really serves: Not just
the 1 percent, but especially the 1-percent-of-the-1-percent who are
multimillionaires and billionaires ... like – guess who? – him.
First
and foremost, the Trump tax plan slashes the payments that giant
corporations make to support our nation. He claims that this will let
corporate elites raise the wages of workers and create jobs, winking at
the fact that, of course, the elites will pocket every dime of Trump’s
tax giveaways. And he doesn’t mention a little secret gotcha: A third of
his corporate benefits would go to foreign owners of American
corporations.
Meanwhile,
Trump’s luxurious new tax structure eliminates many benefits for
middleclass families, such as tax deductions for medical expenses,
college tuition
and interest paid on student loans. He wants modest-income families to
pay more so he can eliminate current taxes on his own uber-rich family,
including killing the alternative income tax paid by the rich and the
estate tax.
Did I
mention that the gilded tax structure proposed by this self-described
business genius would hang an additional $1.5 trillion debt around our
children’s necks? No surprise, for Trump’s grandiose luxury projects
were often built with other people’s money, advancing himself before he
slipped away, leaving others to grapple with the bankruptcy.
Here’s
a question you might want to ask our Trumpestuous President and his
mousey Trumpeteers in Congress: “Why are you even considering giving
more tax breaks to corporate giants?” First, the self-serving corporate
class is wallowing in warehouses of wealth, greedily hoarding it in
offshore tax shelters and stockbuyback schemes, refusing to invest their
unconscionable profits to benefit the vast majority of people they’ve
been knocking down and holding down.
Second,
you shouldn’t give away our public treasury when our nation has a
budget deficit and faces a frightening backlog of crying needs for
public investment – from our deteriorating infrastructure to our
disappearing middle class.
Third,
our people’s sense of equality and social unity has been severely
fractured by 30 years of gross wealth inequality, so intentionally
widening the wealth gap is criminally stupid and dangerous.
Fourth,
why would you think overpaid, overpampered CEOs deserve more pampering?
They’ve become imperious potentates who feel entitled to gouge, cheat,
defraud, lie and otherwise run over us commoners.
Consider
Jeff Immelt, who resigned as the imperial CEO of General Electric until
this June. Not only did he have a fleet of corporate jets to fly him
around, but we now learn that when this royal chief jetted here or
there, he had a second jet, called a “chase plane,” follow right behind
him. Jet number two carried no passengers or equipment; it was just a
spare in case his highness needed it for ... well for what? GE offers no
reasonable answer, because there isn’t one. Immelt says he never used
the spare, but there it was, zipping along behind him, costing GE
shareholders thousands of dollars an hour.
This
pompous waste cost you and me too, for GE got a tax deduction for every
flight Jeff’s chase plane made. Why would Trump & Company reward
such common corporate ripoffs with more tax breaks?