This is Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in West Palm Beach, Florida.
It is a resort strictly for the wealthy. It costs $200,000 to join (doubled after Trump took office) and $14,000 for annual membership dues plus $2,000 for annual food and beverage costs. (None of those amounts, you may want to know, includes taxes.)
Trump is there currently, as he has been numerous times already in his first year in office, and enjoying the Christmas / New Year's holiday period. His time has included tweets, of course, including taking credit for returning the U.S. to saying "Merry Christmas" again, and lots of golf. His time has also included basking in the glow of his victory for the rich in the form of the tax bill he signed into law before leaving for Mar-a-Lago.
That basking in the glow has included a statement made by Trump that confirms the suspicions -- not that facts that support this, but merely the suspicions -- that the "tax bill" was a nothing more than a huge wealth grab right in front of the American people. Trump once claimed that, "The rich will not be gaining at all with this plan." Permanent corporate tax cuts and temporary personal tax cuts, except for the wealthy, does that?
Let's look at how the whole series of disgraceful events leading to this wealth grab unfolded:
On Tuesday, December 19, at just before 2:30 p.m. EST, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill by a vote of 227-203. (All Democrats and twelve Republicans voted "no".) That same day, the Senate took up the bill and the Senate parliamentarian noted that there were some things included in the bill the House passed that should not be in the bill. Therefore, the House would have to vote again. Nonetheless, the Senate also voted in favor of the bill by a vote of 51-48. (The vote in the Senate was around 1:00 a.m. EST on December 20, again, in the middle of the night.) Twelve hours later, at just before 1:00 p.m. EST, the House, not surprisingly, voted again in favor of the changed bill by a vote of 224-201. Then, in the late morning of December 22, Trump signs the bill into law, citing the "rush job" on getting the printed bill -- I guess without scribbled notes in the margins -- and the signing of it put together was because of the media asking if he would keep his promise of signing the bill or not. Later that that same day, Trump, at his Mar-a-Lago resort, says, "You all just got a a lot richer." The White House tried to suggest that the "all" meant the middle class in general. Trump said, "You all just got a lot richer," to his fellow wealthy elite at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Yes, they did ... and the middle class just got screwed.
The GOP "tax bill", the greatest overhaul of the tax code ever, will be voted on this week. The House of Representatives vote on it tomorrow; the Senate votes on it either Tuesday, right after the House vote, or on Wednesday. I wrote about this legislation on the 3rd of this month and my focus then was on the just-passed Senate version. Below are some key points to the finalized bill with the updated figures from the Senate's version: > All personal deductions are temporary (gone in 2025), while corporate deductions would be permanent. > The top level of taxation drops from 39.6% to 37%, but that top level of taxation that currently does not kick in until $418,000 of income for single filers would not kick in until $500,000 of income ... for joint filers, the new threshold (that, in the Senate version, was $1,000,000) would now kick in at $600,000 of income. > Corporate taxation would become territorial, meaning only profits made within the U.S. would be taxed. > The child tax credit (which would have dropped from $2,000 to around $1,100) will now be $1,400. (More on that below.) > The top level of taxation on "flow-through" companies ("S" corporations) would drop from nearly 40% down to 25%. [*** Watch video below this paragraph regarding "S" corps.] > The overall corporate tax rate would drop from 35% down to 21%. > The estate tax exemption would double from $11,000,000 to $22,000,000 ... eventually to be eliminated altogether. > The Obamacare mandate is eliminated (Last I heard, a person would pay a penalty, not a tax, for not having health insurance. I guess they nicknamed it a tax so they could chip away at Obamacare.) I will discuss the child tax credit in a moment, but, if you did not see this video from my December 3rd post, please watch this twenty-minute video that goes into "S corporations", and "pass-through" entities first.
Regarding the child tax credit, allow me to single out Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, who said he would vote "no" if the proposed credit of $1,100 was not raised. It was raised to $1,400 and he said he will vote yes. Whereas the $1,400 figure doesn't even split the difference between that and the original $2,000, Senator Rubio's gain of another $300 on the total exemption will translate to roughly an extra $25 per month. In my opinion, Senator Rubio made a lot of noise for a pittance of a return to gain favorable attention for himself.
One more senator I would like to single out is Tennessee Republican Senator Bob Corker. He voted "no"'on the Senate's version of the bill originally because he said he would not vote in favor of a bill that adds to the deficit. However, even though estimates show that this bill would add anywhere between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion to the deficit, he is now a "yes" vote. Why? An added-at-the-last-minute provision for an additional tax reduction on "pass-through" companies, which was not included either the House's or Senate's original bills, and which would give a huge tax break to people like Corker (and Donald Trump and his family), swung his vote.
In my opinion, Senator Corker is a leech.
I have another video I would like you to watch. This one is from 'The Dylan Rattigan Show', which ran on the MSNBC cable news channel from 2010-2012. This particular video is of Rattigan passionately arguing the case about how money is being taken out of this country, to the benefit of the rich and to the detriment of the country itself. What he talks about here is still true today.
It is no secret that politicians, along with big business and the banks, have been doing more for the wealthy that the rest of the citizenry ... long before Trump took office. No, it is not right. What Rattigan in the video above calls the "extraction" of the U.S., is continuing ... and is getting worse. As sneaky as they may have been -- and no, hiding it from us did not make it right -- they are more emboldened and brash about doing it. What they are doing is a power-driven, forced series of actions that financially give them something gratifying, but leave us with the unsteady, disheveled remains.
An assault is happening. It is a wealth rape of this country, and this "tax bill" is the biggest single means to that end.
Yesterday, in the wee hours of the morning, when most of the very citizens who would be affected were asleep, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of its version of the Republican tax overhaul bill. (The U.S. House of Representatives passed its version on November 16.) The two bills now go to a committee for what's called "reconciliation" in order to come up with one bill that will go to President Trump's desk for his signature. Some good things are included. Some. Consider the child tax credit being doubled from $1,000 to $2,000 and the standard deduction being almost doubled from $6,350 to $12,400 for single filers and from $12,700 to $24,800 for joint (married) filers. Both good things. Now consider the following: > All personal / itemized exemptions would, over ten years, disappear. > The top level of taxation drops from 39.6% to 38.5%, but that top level of taxation that currently does not kick in until $418,000 of income for single filers would not begin until $500,000 of income ... for joint filers, whereas the higher level of taxation kicks in at $480,000, the new threshold would $1,000,000 (more than double). > Corporate taxation would become territorial, meaning only profits made within the U.S. would be taxed. > The top level of taxation on "flow-through" companies ("S" corporations) would drop from nearly 40% down to just under 30%. [*** Watch video below this paragraph regarding "S" corps.] > The overall corporate tax rate would drop from 35% down to 20%. > The estate tax exemption would double from $11,000,000 to $22,000,000 ... eventually to be eliminated altogether. This video from the old MSNBC program 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' from 2010 will talk, in part, about "S corps". It runs about twenty minutes, but is still relevant and worth the watch...
There is much more to the Senate's bill than what I have mentioned above, but let's see who wins with it. The Republicans "win" -- I put it in quotes here because it is a shallow victory -- because they get a major piece of legislation finally passed in both houses of the Congress. Big business wins. Wealthy people win. The President wins -- he and his family, by means of his family's businesses, could gain anywhere from hundreds of millions to possibly even one billion dollars -- even though he claimed just days ago...
Some of the exemptions flat-out giveaways go to such small numbers of individuals, it is mind-numbing, but still an example of who these politicians really want to help. Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, prior to the under-the-cloak-of-night vote, and following the clandestine handwritten "final version", highlighted just one example of this:
I described the hand-written "final version" as clandestine. This video from Montana Senator John Tester will help explain why...
The handwritten addendum was done behind closed doors with Republican senators excluding Democratic senators from attending. I would like to single out one Republican senator in particular, even though all but one voted in favor, Arizona Senator John McCain. During a vote in the Senate earlier this year regarding repealing Obamacare, he voted in the affirmative to move the bill forward for debate. At the time, he seemed the rare voice of reason from the Republicans on the issue, so, like many others, I was upset with him with that vote. It turned he voted that way because he wanted to see regular order followed and not a secretive jamming through of the bill. That did not happen and it resulted in his dramatic thumbs down vote on the floor of Senate on the final bill itself.
And yet, for all of his bravado about regular order in the Senate, including an impassioned "We're getting nothing done" speech just days before his thumbs down vote, Senator McCain voted in favor of this financial raping of the American people. Like the lies that prefaced this vote, it is hard to see how regular order was followed in this vote yesterday. Unless there are those in Congress who want to remove regular order from Congress, or simply allow that to happen. Here is a list of the senators, all Republicans, who voted in favor of this legislative abomination:
This latest act of Congress is nothing less than the behavior of traitors. Let me remind you that this vote took place in the wee hours of the night, around 2:00 a.m. EST. This disgrace affects everyone. Watch the moment when Vice President Mike Pence announces the vote...
They sure are pleased with themselves sticking it to the American people, aren't they? The ruining of the American public has been going on for years, long before the current administration. Long before even George W. Bush's administration, if you want to look back further than the past ten months in recent history. However, it seems that, beginning with the time of Bush's administration, the raping of the American citizen has become more and more blatant, and it gets more so year after year. They still, however, act sneakily. (Isn't that something our founders were trying to get away from with their establishment of governance here?) In this particular instance, they can argue that the debate and vote were televised. To that point: a) your amendments were handwritten, and not all of it legibly, behind closed doors, so full transparency was discarded like an old rag doll; and b) most Americans can watch a recorded copy of the vote Sunday or a summation and discussion on Sunday morning news programs, but that all takes place after the fact. You callously used the late hour to your devious advantage. One can bemoan about why in the world would they stick it to us like this. Their feelings are not misplaced, but the reasoning behind it on Capitol Hill is correctly placed in favor of the wealthy. Here are some of the reasons I would argue for this overreach: > Like-kinds look out for each other. (The rich look out for the rich primarily or solely.) > Republicans still support, to whatever degree, President Trump. > It's all about getting the win and not about doing the most good for the most people. > Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn now aiding Special Counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation (and that investigation getting closer and closer to the President) making Republicans feel as though jamming this disgraceful legislation through before anything worse happens (possibly including some of them) is justified. No calling for executing the Second Amendment (raising militia) here, notatall, but we need a kind of revolutionary response of our own desperately. This is an assault, a pillaging, and a war on all of us. It has been going on for years and is being willfully accelerated at our peril. We must declare our own assault on our government and we must do it now. Complacency aids and abets these thieves. Here is my contribution: I have just written both of my Senators about how this current debacle unfolded, thanking them for their opposition to the bill (they both voted Nay), and offered a suggestion on how to possibly address this in the future. (If your Senator voted Yea, state how disappointed you are in their vote.) Now, to be transparent, this applies to both the Senate and the House of Representatives, but I am starting with the Senate since that is where this vote took place ... and yes, what I offer as a suggestion can be ignored or gotten around, if ever put in place, but at least it's a start. Your correspondence does not have to be long -- in fact, it's better if it's not -- but it needs to have, and get to, a point. In the subject line, I highlighted "Taxes". Even though my concern, based on the options their websites offered, would fall squarely under "Other", putting "Taxes" as the subject, in light of yesterday's vote, may garner it more attention. (Be attentive to being timely.) Here is the full text of what I wrote to both of my senators. Feel free to copy and paste it yourself:
Dear
Senator [Senator's last name]:
My
name is [Your full name] and I am writing to you today in light of the Senate's
passage of H.R. 1 (Tax Cuts and Jobs Bill).
Thank you very much for voting against this abomination, both in
substance and parliamentary order, of legislation. This should not and must not happen again! A stop to this kind of behavior must be put
in place!
I
would like to suggest a law or constitutional amendment be introduced that
would: a) require any legislation that affects a minimum of 20% of the American
public be debated on and voted within reasonable hours as to allow the public
to avail themselves to said proceedings the same day; b) prohibit any one-party
closed door sessions regarding such a bill as noted in "a)" from
taking place [i.e. controlling a body of Congress of a party must not be akin
to willful exclusion of the other party]; and c) require a minimum of a reasonable
length of time to absorb and debate any such bill as noted in "a)".
Again,
I thank you very much for your opposition to H.R. 1 and I hope my suggestion
may be helpful to moving toward preventing this kind of unfair activity from
being allowed to continue.
Sincerely, [Your full name]
Click HERE to find out how to contact your respective Senator.
For those for whom going out to a protest is their style, go out and protest. (Help organize one if there are none near you.) I sent the above message via E-mail, but if your style is to write a physical letter and mail it, or to make a call, then get to writing and mailing and calling.
We can no longer continue to do all that we have been doing so far. The people in Washington, D.C., are still doing what they are doing and their accelerated activities mandate we accelerate our activity. Get on social media, get to your paper and envelopes, get on the horn, take it to the streets, and do not stop!
