Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 23, 2017 12:24 pm

Why Trump won't 'totally destroy' North Korea

After US President Donald Trump's address to the UN National Assembly, there is renewed confusion over what direction the US will take in developing a coherent strategy against the regime in Pyongyang.
Trump UN Rede in New York (Reuters/E. Munoz)
During President Trump's first address to the UN National Assembly in New York on Tuesday, the one statement that echoed loudest in the plenary chamber was the US president's full-throated threat of force toward North Korea.
This being Trump's most prominent appearance on the world stage to date, these overt threats of force, made in front of world leaders attending a conference devoted to avoiding international conflict, sounded more suited coming from a belligerent warlord than the president of the United States. But the larger issue with Trump's statements is the ambiguity they entail.
"The United States has great strength and patience but if forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea," said Trump.
Read More: France's Macron seeks conciliatory tone while Donald Trump lashes out at UN
By saying the US will act "if forced" to defend itself and allies, Trump is indicating that the US will only act if North Korea attacks first. This begs the question of how high a threat level the US and its allies would have to perceive in order spark a preemptive strike? So far, repeated missile and nuclear tests have not pushed the US into action.
And later in the speech, Trump characterized North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un as being on a "suicide mission," which indicates that he considers Kim to be entirely irrational and this could conversely be interpreted that the US intends to act first.
These inherent contradictions in Trump's public formulations on US-North Korea policy can have a destabilizing effect. At the same time they diminish the credibility of the US and its allies in threatening force against Pyongyang's dangerous military escalation.

Trump's brand of foreign policy

During his campaign and first months in office, unpredictability has been the only consistent measure of Trump's foreign policy and is something the president has even lauded as being a strategic asset.
"I don't want people to know my thinking," Trump was quoted as saying during a radio interview in August 2016.
"Trump has no larger plan regarding North Korea and no nuanced view of when, how, why or how long military force is useful or effective," Katharine Moon, Chair of Korea Studies at the Brookings Institution, told DW.
"Kim has a larger plan, regime survival, maintenance of national pride, and resistance to US power. Trump changes his mind regularly; Kim does not," she added.
And North Korea doesn't seem to be taking Trump's threats very seriously right now. On Thursday, North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho said Trump's remarks amounted to "noise."
"If he thought he could scare us with the noise of a dog barking, well, he should be daydreaming," Ho told reporters in New York. Ho also said that he "felt sorry" for Trump's aides.

Image

Trump has taken a more direct tone with N. Korea than previous US presidents

Trump goes on the record
After Trump's off the cuff remarks in August threatened North Korea with "fire and fury," officials in his administration scrambled to water down the implications.
This time, there has yet to be any attempt from US military and foreign policy officials to put a euphemistic spin on Trump's remarks. And unlike the spontaneous statements in August, these latest Trump threats came in a carefully written speech to the UN, which certainly lends them more "official" weight.
"The Trump administration has sent mixed messages about the possibilities for preemptive or preventive actions and North Korea's threats will echo those sentiments. The risk of miscalculation is rising significantly." Jenny Town, the managing editor of the 38 North think tank at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, told DW after Trump's remarks in August.
The US allies in the region, South Korea and Japan, responded to the UN speech with varying degrees of support for Trump's position.
"We view the speech as portraying a firm and specific stance on the key issues regarding keeping peace and safety that the international community and the United Nations are faced with," the office of South Korean President Moon Jae In said in a statement issued on Wednesday.
"It clearly showed how seriously the United States government views North Korea's nuclear program as the president spent an unusual amount of time discussing the issue."
During his speech to the UN on Wednesday, Japan's premier, Shinzo Abe echoed the US' emphasis on increasing pressure on North Korea.
"Again, and again, attempts to resolve issues through dialogue have all come to naught. In what hope of success are we now repeating the very same failure a third time?" said Abe, adding that "pressure" rather than dialogue is what's needed.

More bark than bite?

Image
Trump speaking at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 19, 2017

Despite new posturing from both sides, the fact remains that a preemptive military strike by the US on North Korea would have catastrophic consequences for South Korea and Japan. And the regime in Pyongyang is fully aware it would be destroyed in a direct confrontation with the US and its allies.
And despite threats of force, there are major limits for the US to acting preemptively when millions of people around Seoul are in range of conventional North Korean artillery, which is a simple, yet effective weapon.
"North Korea's artillery could inflict significant damage on Seoul," Kelsey Davenport, Director of Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association in Washington, told DW. "The country possesses a number of systems that are concentrated along the DMZ. Estimates put the number of artillery pieces at more than 11,000."
Davenport added that although the systems are aging and have a high failure rate, some could reach Seoul. Specifically, 300mm multiple launch rocket systems can fire into the center of the capital. According to the US strategy think tank Stratfor, if every one of these were fired, a single volley could "deliver more than 350 metric tons of explosives across the South Korean capital, roughly the same amount of ordnance dropped by 11 B-52 bombers."

Image

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the US maintained a policy of "containment and deterrence" to address the threat of Soviet nuclear weapons. The strategy rests on limiting the effectiveness of weapons systems and providing a major disincentive for their use, also known as "mutually assured destruction."
The current problem with developing a policy of deterrence and containment is that the US has no intention to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and there is little to no dialogue between the two sides.
"Dialogue is really the only way that is going to get us out of this escalatory cycle," said Town from 38 North. "Sanctions play their role and as North Korea demonstrates new capabilities, bolstering deterrence capabilities is necessary. But pressure and isolation alone is not going to change North Korea's belief that it needs a deterrence capability."
Up to now, the US has said that it is open to dialogue only if North Korea is willing to abandon its nuclear program, an offer North Korea rejects outright. To begin dialogue, expectations must be changed.

http://www.dw.com/en/why-trump-wont-tot ... a-40630057

Jesusfuckingchrist, these liberals! The assumption that N Korean ordinance is aimed at civilian population centers is dubious, to say the least. Can there be any rational doubt that the weapons are trained upon those who would invade them? Just another case of capitalist's projection.

The one thing they get right is that trump doesn't have a plan. But other people in DC do...

Edit: more crap analysis
We must keep in mind what a strike on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) may result in," Sivkov said. "If the US decides to begin an all-out war against North Korea it will mean only one thing: 25 nuclear reactors in South Korea will be destroyed by a retaliatory attack from the DPRK. This equates to 25 Chernobyl disasters on the Korean Peninsula."

https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201709 ... a-pacific/
DPRK does not recognize 'two Koreas'. Ain't gonna happen.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 23, 2017 2:49 pm

He's like a 'wtf' generator:

Image

There is of course a method to this madness. As to whether this Archie Bunker act will continue to shore up his base in the face serial embarrassment in foreign policy and legislation remains to be seen. He will try to brazen & bullshit his way thru the bad news but eventually quantity becomes quality.

I haven't watch football or any other TV since that rich bastard stole the Colts from Baltimore but now mebbe I will.

The Dems should enjoy it while they can, when he's gone they got nothing to compare themselves to favorably.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Mon Sep 25, 2017 1:47 pm

http://billmoyers.com/story/dangerous-c ... duty-warn/

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: Robert Jay Lifton and Bill Moyers on ‘A Duty to Warn’
Renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton on the Goldwater Rule: We have a duty to warn if someone may be dangerous to others.

By Bill Moyers | September 14, 2017

Robert Jay Lifton on the Goldwater Rule

U.S. President Donald Trump participates in a joint news conference with Amir Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah of Kuwait, September 7, 2017. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

There will not be a book published this fall more urgent, important, or controversial than The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, the work of 27 psychiatrists, psychologists and mental health experts to assess President Trump’s mental health. They had come together last March at a conference at Yale University to wrestle with two questions. One was on countless minds across the country: “What’s wrong with him?” The second was directed to their own code of ethics: “Does Professional Responsibility Include a Duty to Warn” if they conclude the president to be dangerously unfit?

As mental health professionals, these men and women respect the long-standing “Goldwater rule” which inhibits them from diagnosing public figures whom they have not personally examined. At the same time, as explained by Dr. Bandy X Lee, who teaches law and psychiatry at Yale School of Medicine, the rule does not have a countervailing rule that directs what to do when the risk of harm from remaining silent outweighs the damage that could result from speaking about a public figure — “which in this case, could even be the greatest possible harm.” It is an old and difficult moral issue that requires a great exertion of conscience. Their decision: “We respect the rule, we deem it subordinate to the single most important principle that guides our professional conduct: that we hold our responsibility to human life and well-being as paramount.”

Hence, this profound, illuminating and discomforting book undertaken as “a duty to warn.”

The foreword is by one of America’s leading psychohistorians, Robert Jay Lifton. He is renowned for his studies of people under stress — for books such as Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (1967), Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans — Neither Victims nor Executioners (1973), and The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (1986). The Nazi Doctors was the first in-depth study of how medical professionals rationalized their participation in the Holocaust, from the early stages of the Hitler’s euthanasia project to extermination camps.

The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump will be published Oct. 3 by St. Martin’s Press.

Here is my interview with Robert Jay Lifton — Bill Moyers
Right off the top of my head, people whom the US government and it's 'free press' deemed mad or crazy:

Manuel Noriega

Muammar Gaddafi

Saddam Hussein

Kim Jong-un

Maurice Bishop

I know there's more...

And going all the way back, labeling the enemy as 'mad' is a favored tactic. Opens up all sorts of possibilities for response, doncha know?
Whom the gods would destroy first they make mad
Did Wadsworth know what he was saying?
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by Dhalgren » Mon Sep 25, 2017 5:05 pm

You know, to be a living avatar for the capitalist class, one would have to be dangerously deranged. These liberals don't "see" it. The Kock brothers are just as inhumanly deranged, but they don't have "the button"...as far as we know...
" If it were necessary to give the briefest possible definition of imperialism we should have to say that imperialism is the monopoly stage of capitalism." Lenin, 1916

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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Tue Sep 26, 2017 6:43 pm

I'm not entirely sure that Trump has 'the button' either, mebbe he just thinks he does...

If Trump is crazy he's no more crazy than a boatload of Americans. Which is still crazy.

Trump is ruling class, but I don't think he is unique in his ignorance(the arrogance comes standard) despite the expensive education his father paid for. Money covers a raft of deficiencies. Trump's functional education comes from the TV, especially news channels. And TV is the primary means of social control and is aimed at the masses. This explains his popularity more than his being a reality TV star, or even the racism, misogyny, xenophobia. These things contribute, but more importantly he and a whole lot of folks went to the same school, while sitting on their sofas. It is a worldview inappropriate for the executive of the Imperium for it's gross inaccuracies, though the tone is fine.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Sep 30, 2017 11:49 am

The 'wtf's keep on coming

Trump tweets:

The Mayor of San Juan, who was very complimentary only a few days ago, has now been told by the Democrats that you must be nasty to Trump.

...Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan, and others in Puerto Rico, who are not able to get their workers to help. They....

...want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.

The military and first responders, despite no electric, roads, phones etc., have done an amazing job. Puerto Rico was totally destroyed.

*****************************************************************

Ya knew that was coming. Next, austerity.Tighten the screws, drive the people to the mainland, property values bottom, 'urban renewal' on a geographic scale. "Business opportunity!"
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Mon Oct 09, 2017 7:04 pm

seems that replying 'fucking moron' to any Tweets of @the Real Donald Trump will get ya suspended.

Should I say 'fucking cunt' instead?
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Fri Oct 13, 2017 6:00 pm

Iran - Trump Has No Strategy, Only Aims And No Way To Achieve Them

Trump hates the international nuclear deal with Iran. The agreement put temporary restriction of Iran's nuclear program and opened it up to deeper inspections. The other sides of the deal committed to lifting sanctions and to further economic cooperation. Trump wants to get rid of the deal; but he is unwilling to pay the political price.

The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was negotiated and signed by the five permanent UN Security Council members (U.S., Ch, Ru, UK, F), Germany, the EU and Iran. If the U.S. defaults on the deal it will be in a lone position. The diplomatic isolation would limit its abilities to use its influence on other issues.

Trump has little knowledge of Iran, the nuclear deal, the Middle East or anything else. What he knows comes from Fox News and from Netanyahoo and other Zionist whisperers who get to his ear. All he heard is that the deal with Iran is bad. Therefore, he concluded, it must end.

The White House handed a paper to the media which is supposed to describe President Donald J. Trump's New Strategy on Iran. But there is no strategy in that paper. It list a number of aims the Trump wants to achieve. But it does no explain how he plans to do that. It is a wish list, not a program to follow.

The "Core Elements of the Presidents New Iran Strategy" are:

The United States new Iran strategy focuses on neutralizing the Government of Irans destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression, particularly its support for terrorism and militants.
We will revitalize our traditional alliances and regional partnerships as bulwarks against Iranian subversion and restore a more stable balance of power in the region.
We will work to deny the Iranian regime and especially the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) funding for its malign activities, and oppose IRGC activities that extort the wealth of the Iranian people.
We will counter threats to the United States and our allies from ballistic missiles and other asymmetric weapons.
We will rally the international community to condemn the IRGCs gross violations of human rights and its unjust detention of American citizens and other foreigners on specious charges.
Most importantly, we will deny the Iranian regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.
The list is full of factual mistakes:

Iran stabilized Iraq when the Islamic State was only days away from taking over Baghdad. Iran also helps to stabilize Syria and to defeat the Islamic State.
Ballistic missiles are not "asymmetric weapons". Iran's neighbors Pakistan and Saudi Arabia have such missiles. Iran's missiles are no threat to the United States.
The IRGC is the equivalent of the U.S. special forces. It is funded by the state. It does not "extort the wealth of the Iranian people". (The IRGC's pension funds (bonyads) hold significant industrial assets. But they are different entities.)
The IRGC does not detain American citizens.
Iran has repeatedly declared that it rejects all nuclear weapons out of religious reasons. It signed several international agreements which prohibit and prevent it from seeking such weapons.
The White House list of aims, "the strategy", is followed by "background" information on Iran and its alleged behavior. Some White House intern must have copied it from a neoconservative version of Wikipedia. It is a conglomeration of general talking points which lack a factual basis.

When the JCOPA deal was closed, Congress legislated that the White House must certify every 90 days that Iran sticks to the deal. Trump will now stop to certify Iran's compliance even as everyone, including the White House, acknowledges that Iran is fulfilling all its parts. The White House claims that non-certification is not a breach of the agreement. The issue now falls back to Congress which might re-introduce the sanctions on Iran which the agreement had lifted. If it does that Trump will say that it is responsible for all consequences.

It is not clear if or what Congress will do. Senators Corker and Cotton are pushing for legislation that amounts to an unilateral change of the nuclear deal. It would introduce new sanctions if Iran does not accept their demands.

The EU countries are again craven and offer to push against Iran's ballistic missiles if Trump does not completely break the JCPOA deal. This is utterly stupid negotiation behavior. Why offer concessions to Trump even before he makes his self defeating move?

Iran will not give up to its rights and it will not disarm. Obama pushed sanctions onto sanctions to make Iran scream. But the country did not fold. Each new U.S. sanction step was responded to with an expansion of Iran's nuclear program. In the end Obama had to offer talks to Iran to get out of the hole he had dug himself.

Now Trump is saying that stopping Iran from getting nukes is the priority. And that Obama was wrong to focus on it. The result is a bungled policy which will have either catastrophic, or no consequences at all.

Posted by b on October 13, 2017 at 01:42 PM | Permalink

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/10/ir ... -them.html

While I'm sure that Israel has made efforts to influence Trump on Iran, and undoubtedly the Saudis have too, they're working prepared ground. Could be wrong but I'll bet a quarter the the Donald's animus towards Iran dates back to 1979. Probably the only thing he knows about Iran and all he feels he needs to know.
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 14, 2017 1:44 pm

« The Trump-Goldman Sachs Tax Cut–AudioIs Trump a ‘Moron’? (Quote from US Secretary of State, Tillerson) »
The Trump-Goldman Sachs Tax Cut for the Rich-print
October 2, 2017 by jackrasmus
The following will shortly appear in various blogs and print publications. My detailed analysis of the Trump tax plan announced this past week.
Dr. Jack Rasmus
Copyright 2017

“This past week Trump introduced his long awaited Tax Cut, estimated between $2.0 to $2.4 trillion. Like so many other distortions of the truth, Trump claimed his plan would benefit the middle class, not the rich—the latest in a long litany of lies by this president.

Contradicting Trump, the independent Tax Policy Center has estimated in just the first year half of the $2 trillion plus Trump cuts will go to the wealthiest 1% households that annually earn more than $730,000. That’s an immediate income windfall to the wealthiest 1% households of 8.5%, according to the Tax Policy Center. But that’s only in the first of ten years the cuts will be in effect. It gets worse over time.

According to the Tax Policy Center, “Taxpayers in the top one percent (incomes above $730,000), would receive about 50 percent of the total tax benefit [in 2018]”. However, “By 2027, the top one percent would get 80 percent of the plan’s tax cuts while the share for middle-income households would drop to about five percent.” By the last year of the cuts, 2027, on average the wealthiest 1% household would realize $207,000, and the even wealthier 0.1% would realize an income gain of $1,022,000.

When confronted with these facts on national TV this past Sunday, Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin, quickly backtracked and admitted he could not guarantee every middle class family would see a tax cut. Right. That’s because 15-17 million (12%) of US taxpaying households in the US will face a tax hike in the first year of the cuts. In the tenth and last year, “one in four middle class families would end up with higher taxes”.

The US Economic ‘Troika’

The Trump Plan is actually the product of the former Goldman-Sachs investment bankers who have been in charge of Trump’s economic policy since he came into office. Steve Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, and Gary Cohn, director of Trump’s economic council, are the two authors of the Trump tax cuts. They put it together. They are also both former top executives of the global shadow bank called Goldman Sachs. Together with the other key office determining US economic policy, the US central bank, held by yet another ex-Goldman Sachs senior exec, Bill Dudley, president of the New York Federal Reserve bank, the Goldman-Sachs trio of Mnuchin-Cohn-Dudley constitute what might be called the ‘US Troika’ for domestic economic policy.
The Trump tax proposal is therefore really a big bankers tax plan—authored by bankers, in the interest of bankers and financial investors (like Trump himself), and overwhelmingly favoring the wealthiest 1%.

Given that economic policy under Trump is being driven by bankers, it’s not surprising that the CEO of the biggest US banks, Morgan Stanley, admitted just a few months ago that a reduction of the corporate nominal income tax rate from the current 35% nominal rate to a new nominal rate of 20% will provide the bank an immediate windfall gain of 15%-20% in earnings. And that’s just the nominal corporate rate cut proposed by Trump. With loopholes, it’s no doubt more.

The Trump-Troika’s Triple Tax-Cut Trifecta for the 1%

The Trump Troika has indicated it hopes to package up and deliver the trillions of $ to their 1% friends by Christmas 2017. Their gift will consist of three major tax cuts for the rich and their businesses. A Trump-Troika Tax Cut ‘Trifecta’ of $ trillions.

1.The Corporate Tax Cuts

The first of the three main elements is a big cut in the corporate income tax nominal rate, from current 35% to 20%. In addition, there’s the elimination of what is called the ‘territorial tax’ system, which is just a fancy phrase for ending the fiction of the foreign profits tax. Currently, US multinational corporations hoard a minimum of $2.6 trillion of profits offshore and refuse to pay US taxes on those profits. In other words, Congress and presidents for decades have refused to enforce the foreign profits tax. Now that fiction will be ended by officially eliminating taxes on their profits. They’ll only pay taxes on US profits, which will create an even greater incentive for them to shift operations and profits to their offshore subsidiaries. But there’s more for the big corporations.

The Trump plan also simultaneously proposes what it calls a ‘repatriation tax cut’. If the big tech, pharma, banks, and energy companies bring back some of their reported $2.6 trillion (an official number which is actually more than that), Congress will require they pay only a 10% tax rate—not the current 35% rate or even Trump’s proposed 20%–on that repatriated profits. No doubt the repatriation will be tied to some kind of agreement to invest the money in the US economy. That’s how they’ll sell it to the American public. But that shell game was played before, in 2004-05, under George W. Bush. The same ‘repatriation’ deal was then legislated, to return the $700 billion then stuffed away in corporate offshore subsidiaries. About half the $700 billion was brought back, but US corporations did not invest it in jobs in the US as they were supposed to. They used the repatriated profits to buy up their competitors (mergers and acquisitions), to pay out dividends to stockholders, and to buy back their stock to drive equity prices and the stock market to new heights in 2005-07. The current Trump ‘territorial tax repeal/repatriation’ boondoggle will turn out just the same as it did in 2005.

2. Non-Incorporate Business Tax Cuts

The second big business class tax windfall in the Trump-Goldman Sachs tax giveaway for the rich is the proposal to reduce the top nominal tax rate for non-corporate businesses, like proprietorships and partnerships, whose business income (aka profits) is treated like personal income. This is called the ‘pass through business income’ provision.
That’s a Trump tax cut for unincorporated businesses—like doctors, law firms, real estate investment partnerships, etc. 40% of non-corporate income is currently taxed at 39.6% (the top personal income tax rate). Trump proposes to reduce that nominal rate to 25%. So non-incorporate businesses too will get an immediately 14.6% cut, nearly matching the 15% rate cut for corporate businesses.

In the case of both corporate and non-corporate companies we’re talking about ‘nominal’ tax rate cuts of 14.6% and 15%. The ‘effective’ tax rate is what they actually pay in taxes—i.e. after loopholes, after their high paid tax lawyers take a whack at their tax bill, after they cleverly divert their income to their offshore subsidiaries and refuse to pay the foreign profits tax, and after they stuff away whatever they can in offshore tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Switzerland, and a dozen other island nations worldwide.

For example, Apple Corporation alone is hoarding $260 billion in cash at present—95% of which it keeps offshore to avoid paying Uncle Sam taxes. Big multinational companies like Apple, i.e. virtually all the big tech companies, big Pharma corporations, banks and oil companies, pay no more than 12-13% effective tax rates today—not the 35% nominal rate.

Tech, big Pharma, banks and oil companies are the big violators of offshore cash hoarding/tax avoidance schemes. Microsoft’s effective global tax rate last year was only 12%. IBM’s even less, at 10%. The giant drug company, Pfizer paid 18% and the oil company, Chevron 14%. One of the largest US companies in the world, General Electric, paid only 1%. When their nominal rate is reduced to 20% under the Trump plan, they’ll pay even less, likely in the single digits, if that.

Corporations and non-corporate businesses are the institutional conduit for passing income to their capitalist owners and managers. The Trump corporate and business taxes means companies immediately get to keep at least 15% more of their income for themselves—and more in ‘effective’ rate terms. That means they get to distribute to their executives and big stockholders and partners even more than they have in recent years. And in recent years that has been no small sum. For example, just corporate dividend payouts and stock buybacks have totaled more than $1 trillion on average for six years since 2010! A total of more than $6 trillion.

But all that’s only the business tax cut side of the Trump plan. There’s a third major tax cut component of the Trump plan—i.e. major cuts in the Personal Income Tax that accrue overwhelmingly to the richest 1% households.

3. Personal Income Tax Cuts for the 1%

There are multiple measures in the Trump-Troika proposal that benefits the 1% in the form of personal income tax reductions. Corporations and businesses get to keep more income from the business tax cuts, to pass on to their shareholders, investors, and senior managers. The latter then get to keep more of what’s passed through and distributed to them as a result of the personal income tax cuts.

The first personal tax cut boondoggle for the 1% wealthiest households is the Trump proposal to reduce the ‘tax income brackets’ from seven to three. The new brackets would be 35%, 25%, and 12%.

Whenever brackets are reduced, the wealthiest always benefit. The current top bracket, affecting households with a minimum of $418,000 annual income, would be reduced from the current 39.6% to 35%. In the next bracket, those with incomes of 191,000 to 418,000 would see their tax rate (nominal again) cut from 28% to 25%. However, the 25% third bracket would apply to annual incomes as low as $38,000. That’s the middle and working class. So households with $38,000 annual incomes would pay the same rate as those with more than $400,000. Tax cuts for the middle class, did Trump say? Only tax rate reductions beginning with those with $191,000 incomes and the real cuts for those over $418,000!

But the cuts in the nominal tax rate for the top 1% to 5% households are only part of the personal income tax windfall for the rich under the Trump plan. The really big tax cuts for the 1% come in the form of the repeal of the Inheritance Tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax, as well as Trump’s allowing the ‘carried interest’ tax loophole for financial speculators like hedge fund managers and private equity CEOs to continue.

The current Inheritance Tax applies only to those with estates of $11 million or more, about 0.2 of all the taxpaying households. So its repeal is clearly a windfall for the super rich. The Alternative Minimum Tax is designed to ensure the super rich pay something, after they manipulate the tax loopholes, shelter their income offshore in tax havens, or simply engage in tax fraud by various other means. Now that’s gone as well under the Trump plan. ‘Carried interest’, a loophole, allows big finance speculators, like hedge fund managers, to avoid paying the corporate tax rate altogether, and pay a maximum of 20% on their hundreds of millions and sometimes billions of dollars of income every year.

Who Pays?

As previously noted, folks with $91,000 a year annual income get no tax rate cuts. They still will pay the 25%. And since that is what’s called ‘earned’ (wage and salary) income, they don’t get the loopholes to manipulate, like those with ‘capital incomes’ (dividends, capital gains, rents, interest, etc.). What they get is called deductions. But under the Trump plan, the deductions for state and local taxes, for state sales taxes, and apparently for excess medical costs will all disappear. The cost of that to middle and working class households is estimated at $1 trillion over the decade.

Trump claims the standard deduction will be doubled, and that will benefit the middle class. But estimates reveal that a middle class family with two kids will see their standard deduction reduced from $28,900 to $24,000. But I guess that’s just ‘Trump math’.

The general US taxpayer will also pay for the trillions of dollars that will be redistributed to the 1% and their companies. It’s estimated the federal government deficit will increase by $2.4 trillion over the decade as a result of the Trump plan. Republicans in Congress have railed over the deficits and federal debt, now at $20 trillion, for years. But they are conspicuously quiet now about adding $2.4 trillion more—so long as it the result of tax giveaways to themselves, their 1% friends, and their rich corporate election campaign contributors.

And both wings of the Corporate Party of America—aka Republicans and Democrats—never mention the economic fact that since 2001, 60% of US federal government deficits, and therefore the US debt of $20 trillion, are attributable to tax cuts by George W. Bush and Barack Obama: more than $3.5 trillion under Bush and more than $7 trillion under Obama. (The remaining $10 trillion of the US debt due to war and defense spending, price gouging by the medical industry and big pharma driving up government costs for Medicare, Medicaid, and other government insurance, bailouts of the big banks in 2008-09, and interest payments on the debt).

The 35-Year Neoliberal Tax Offensive

Tax cutting for business classes and the 1% has always been a fundamental element of Neoliberal economic policy ever since the Reagan years (and actually late Jimmy Carter period). Major tax cut legislation occurred in 1981, 1986, and 1997-98 under Clinton. George W. Bush then cut taxes by $3.4 trillion in 2001-04, 80% of which went to the wealthiest households and businesses. He cut taxes another $180 billion in 2008. Obama cut another $300 billion in his 2009 so-called recovery program. When that faltered, it was another $800 billion at year end 2010. He then extended the Bush tax cuts that were scheduled to expire in 2011 two more years. That costs $450 billion each year. And in 2013, cutting a deal with Republicans called the ‘fiscal cliff’ settlement, he extended the Bush tax cuts of the prior decade for another ten years. That cost a further $5 trillion. Now Trump wants even more. He promised $5 trillion in tax cuts during his election campaign. So the current proposal is only half of what he has in mind perhaps.

Neoliberal tax cutting in the US has also been characterized by the ‘tax cut shell game’. The shell game is played several ways.

In the course of major tax cut legislation, the elites and their lobbyists alternate their focus on cutting rates and on correcting tax loopholes. They raise rates but expand loopholes. When the public becomes aware of the outrageous loopholes, they then eliminate some loopholes but simultaneously reduce the tax rates on the rich. When the public complains of too low tax rates for the rich, they raise the rates but quietly expand the loopholes. They play this shell game so the outcome is always a net gain for corporations and the rich.

Since Reagan and the advent of neoliberal tax policy, the corporate income tax share of total US government revenues has fallen from more than 20% to single digits well below 10%. Conversely, the payroll tax has doubled from 22% to more than 40%. A similar shift within the personal income tax, steadily around 40% of government revenues, has also occurred. The wealthy pay less a share of the total and the middle class pays more. Along the way, token concessions to the very low end of working poor are introduced, to give the appearance of fairness. But the middle class, the $38 to $91,000 nearly 100 million taxpaying households foot the bill for both the 1% and the bottom. This pattern was set in motion under Reagan. His proposed $752 billion in tax cuts in 1981-82 were adjusted in 1986, but the net outcome was more for the rich and their corporations. That pattern has continued under Clinton, Bush, Obama and now proposed under Trump.

To cover the shell game, an overlay of ideology covers up what’s going on. There’s the false argument that ‘tax cuts create jobs’, for which there’s no empirical evidence. There’s the claim US multinational corporations pay a double tax compared to their competitors, when in fact they effectively pay less. There’s the lie that if corporate taxes are cut they will automatically invest the savings, when in fact what they do is invest offshore, divert the savings to stock and bond and other financial markets, boost their dividend and stock buybacks, or stuff the savings in their offshore subsidiaries to avoid paying taxes.

All these neoliberal false claims, arguments, and outright lies continue today to justify the Trump-Goldman Sachs tax plan—which is just the latest iteration of neoliberal tax policy and tax offensive in the US. The consequences of the Trump plan, if it is passed, will be the same as the previous tax giveaways to the 1% and their companies: it will redistribute income massively from the middle and working classes to the rich. Income inequality will continue to worsen dramatically. US multinational corporations will begin again to divert profits, and investment, offshore; profits brought back untaxed will result in mergers and acquisitions, dividend payouts, and financial markets investment. No real jobs will be created in the US. The wealthy will continue to pump their savings into financial asset markets, causing further bubbles in stocks, exchange traded funds, bonds, derivatives and the like. The US economy will continue to slow and become more unstable financially. And there will be another financial crash and great recession—or worse. Only this time, the vast majority of US households—i.e. the middle and working classes—will be even worse off and more unable to weather the next economic storm.

Nothing will change so long as the Corporate Party of America is allowed to continue its neoliberal tax giveaways, its tax cutting ‘shell games’, and is allowed to continue to foment its ideological cover up.”

Dr. Jack Rasmus, October 2, 2017

https://jackrasmus.com/2017/10/02/the-t ... ich-print/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Donald Trump, Avatar of his Class, Capitalism & the Decline and Fall of Bourgeois Democracy

Post by blindpig » Sat Oct 21, 2017 4:26 pm

The basic way people’s thinking is controlled today is by confusing them and creating a perpetual state of mental vertigo. Muddled and disordered by double-speak, illogical reporting, and a kaleidoscopic merry-go-round of conflicting reports, the average person is reduced to a mental mess.
“To the average man who tries to keep informed,” writes Jacques Ellul in Propaganda, “a world emerges that is astonishingly incoherent, absurd, and irrational, which changes rapidly and constantly for reasons he can’t understand.”
Take Donald Trump. He is regularly castigated by the media for his endless stream of tweets and contradictory statements. He is called a moron, mentally imbalanced, and a clown. But what these critics fail to grasp is that he is beating them at their own game of sowing confusion. He is our modern mythic Johnny Appleseed, wildly spewing seeds of bedlam to incite and confound. He is no anomaly. He has stepped out of our celebrity reality-TV screened world to carry on the media’s task of what Orwell said was a necessary task for the rulers in a totalitarian society: “to dislocate the sense of reality.”

http://john-steppling.com/2017/10/blunt-force-trauma/

Leave aside " what Orwell said was a necessary task for the rulers in a totalitarian society: “to dislocate the sense of reality.” and replace it with 'what Bernays said in Propaganda' and this is pretty true. Though of course I must add that Trump's 'confusion' is itself a product of the 'fake news' which he misconstrues as being all about him, naturally, as any social cripple of the ruling class might conceive.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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