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Archive for the ‘Economy’ Category

HB 4118 replicates ‘Bama law by cutting expenditures for prisoner, university student food as cost-cutting measure

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Attorney General, Budget, Economy, Education, Ethics, Finances, Higher Education, House, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Prison on April 1, 2018| 19 Comments »

Taking their cue from Alabama Sheriff TODD ENTREKIN, several members of Louisiana’s House of Representatives have co-sponsored a bill that would cut food expenditures for prisoners and college and university students while increasing the percentage of prisoner work-release pay that the state receives in an effort to boost revenue as the state rushes headlong toward the June 30 fiscal cliff.

HB-4118, co-authored by a dozen Republican legislators who received the highest ratings from the conservative Americans for Prosperity (AFP), would slash funding for inmate meals three days per week in an effort to help make up budgetary shortfalls.

The bill has been endorsed by AFP, the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), U.S. Sen. John Kennedy, and Attorney General Jeff Landry as an effective cost-saving measure that would, at the same time, continue to allow generous tax breaks for business and industry to remain untouched. Also remaining intact would be tax incentives for movie and television production in the state.

In Alabama, existing legislation allows sheriffs to collect a salary supplement as a percentage of savings achieved.

Entrekin, Sheriff of Etowah County in Alabama, recently came under heavy criticism when it was learned that he cut back on his jail’s food budget by eliminating meat for prisoners for all but a couple of days per month but then used the money saved to purchase a beach house for $740,000. HB 4118, while similar to the Alabama law, would have built-in safeguards against any surplus being diverted for personal use.

“Sheriff Entrekin, who runs only a single county jail in Alabama, was able to save approximately $250,000 per year for three years. Granted, he abused the intent of the law by using his surplus funds for personal gain,” said State Reps. Cameron Henry (R-Metairie) and Lance Harris (R-Alexandria) in a joint statement announcing their introduction of the bill. “If surplus funds are properly allocated back to the state instead of to individuals as was the case in Alabama, that misuse of funds can be avoided. With 50,000 prison inmates and more than 200,000 college students in Louisiana, imagine how much we would be able to save by employing the same paradigm.”

HB 4118 would cut servings of meat, milk and juice by three days a week for 50 weeks per year—Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for state-run prisons and all colleges and universities and Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays for parish jails and privately-run prisons. State appropriations for those institutions would be cut accordingly.

“We wouldn’t want to make such cuts for prisons on Sundays or during the weeks of Thanksgiving or Christmas because that would just not be the Christian thing to do,” the statement by Henry and Harris said. “Colleges and universities are out during those weeks anyway, so they would not be affected during those times.”

They said the potential savings to the state, calculated at a minimum of $3 per meal at which meat, milk and juice are eliminated, would be an estimated $22.5 million per year at prisons and $75 million at institutions of higher learning, or a total of $97.5 million per year.

Public schools would be exempted from the more restrictive diets for now, they said.

Operators of prisons and jails typically receive about 60 percent of the earnings of each prisoner who participates in a work-release program. That amount would be increased to 75 percent if HB 4118 becomes law. Additionally, a processing fee of one dollar would be added to the sale of each soft drink and snack to the prices presently charged by prison commissaries, according to provisions of the bill. Currently, prisoners are charged $3 for soft drinks and $5 for snacks.

“These people are in jail for committing crimes,” the two lawmakers’ joint statement said. “They get free housing, food, clothing and they’re learning a trade. There really isn’t any need for them to earn money on top of those benefits.

“This bill will allow the state to protect the valuable incentives for businesses and industry which provide jobs for Louisiana’s honest, hard-working citizens,” they said. “The bill protects the same jobs that will be available to the college students when they graduate. We’re asking students to sacrifice a little now for greater rewards in the future.”

Though the bill’s language doesn’t specifically say so, the same cuts could also be applied at hospitals now operated as part of the public-private partnerships implemented by the Jindal administration, which would produce additional savings although no estimates were provided for the medical facilities.

If approved, the new law would go into effect one year from today.

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Ever wonder why legislature can’t fix state’s fiscal problems? Take a look at corporate campaign contributions for answer

Posted in Budget, Campaign Contributions, Coastal Erosion, Congress, Corruption, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Exemptions, Incentives, Finances, House, Senate, Jobs, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Louisiana Purchase, PACs, Politicians, Revenue, Taxes on March 29, 2018| 8 Comments »

In case you’ve ever taken the time to wonder why our legislature has been unable—or unwilling—to effective address the looming fiscal crisis for the state, here’s a quick lesson in civics that may help you understand the real priorities of our elected officials and the forces that motivate them.

Members of Congress are advised to spend four hours per day FUNDRAISING, or on “call time.” That’s time to be spent on the telephone raising campaign contributions—if they want to be re-elected.

They are also told they should spend one to two hours on “constituent visits,” which often translates to meeting with lobbyists and campaign contributors. That leaves two hours for committee meetings and floor attendance, one hour for something called “strategic outreach,” or breakfasts, meet and greets, press interviews (read: Sen. John Kennedy), and one hour “recharge time.”

It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that we’re paying big salaries for these guys to actually work only about two hours per day for only part of the year.

Another way of putting it is we’re paying big bucks for them to spend twice as much time raising campaign contributions as actually doing the work of the people who, in theory at least, elected them.

That’s in theory only, of course. The truth is special interests such as banks, hedge funds, big oil, big pharma, the military-industrial complex, the NRA, and other major corporate interests—especially since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision—turn the gears of democracy while letting the American middle class delude itself into thinking we actually affect the outcome of elections.

Now, take that image and move it down to the state level and you have a microcosm of Congress.

The numbers are smaller, of course, given the smaller House and Senate districts from which candidates run but the model is the same.

And that is precisely the reason nothing gets done in regard to resolving the financial plight of the state.

Corporate tax breaks, tax exemptions, and tax credits have eroded the state budget until the onus now falls on the individual taxpayers while companies like Walmart enjoy Enterprise Zone tax credits for locating stores in upscale communities across the state.

Petro-chemical plans along the Mississippi River and in the southwestern part of the state enjoy millions of dollars in tax breaks for construction projects that produce few, if any, new permanent jobs.

And who is front and center in protecting the interests of these corporations?

That would be the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), first created with the intent of breaking the stranglehold of organized labor back in the 1970s and now focused on maintaining lucrative tax incentives for its membership.

LABI has four primary political action committees: East PAC, West PAC, North PAC, and South PAC.

LouisianaVoice has pulled the contributions of LABI, its four PACs.

For lagniappe, we’ve also thrown in contributions from pharmaceutical and oil and gas interests. The latter list offers a clear-cut explanation of why efforts to hold oil and gas companies accountable for damage to Louisiana’s coastal marshland have died early deaths.

You will notice in reviewing the reports that LABI, while making individual contributions, pours most of its money into its four PACs, which then make the direct contributions to the candidates.

Enjoy.

LABI CONTRIBUTIONS

EAST PAC CONTRIBUTIONS

WEST PAC CONTRIBUTIONS

NORTH PAC CONTRIBUTIONS

SOUTH PAC CONTRIBUTIONS

PHARMA CONTRIBUTIONS

OIL AND GAS CONTRIBUTIONS

 

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Any cut to TOPS could adversely impact investors’ student housing projects, local economy, curtail school enrollment

Posted in Budget, Economy, Education, Ethics, Finances, Higher Education, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Politicians, Privatization on March 19, 2018| 15 Comments »

A handful of distinguished retired journalists (and me) meets once a month at a Baton Rouge Piccadilly Cafeteria (I told you we were retired) to solve the ills of the state, nation, and the world. Occasionally, we even delve into local Baton Rouge politics.

One of those, Ed Pratt, with whom I had the pleasure of working at the old Baton Rouge State-Times back in the ‘70s, is an occasional attendant but because he is still gainfully employed (unlike the rest of the over-the-hill-gang), he doesn’t join us each month.

But several months ago, at a lunch he did show up. The subject that day was the future of the Taylor Opportunity Program for Students (TOPS) and the legislature’s failure to adequately address the looming fiscal cliff that will see about a billion dollars fall off the books with the expiration of a temporary sales tax.

On March 9, Pratt, who still does a regular op-ed column for the Baton Rouge Advocate, WROTE a piece that accurately illustrated the direct connection between the continued funding of TOPS and the return on investment of apartment developers and restaurant owners, investments that exist in the immediate orbit of the state’s institutions of higher learning.

And while Pratt’s analysis singled out the spurt in apartment, condo, and restaurant development, primarily in the immediate proximity of LSU, other colleges and universities have also witnessed similar private investment, particularly in student housing.

Those investments could be in peril if the legislature continues to shirk its responsibility in setting the state on firm fiscal footing.

Take my alma mater, Louisiana Tech, for example, and Grambling State University, just five miles from Tech. There has been an explosion of housing construction around those two campuses. And because Tech has embarked on an ambitious program of student recruitment to bump its enrollment to something like 20,000 or so over the next few years, construction workers have been particularly busy in Ruston. (The enrollment at Tech when I was there was something like 4,000. But they had rotary dial pay phones, Cokes in 61/2-ounce glass bottles, manual typewriters, carbon paper, and 8 p.m. weeknight curfews for female students back then, too.)

But the way they’ve gone about with their student housing construction at Tech is quite creative and is being emulated by every other campus in the state, according to Ruston political consultant Dr. Gary Stokley, a retired Tech professor.

The Tech Alumni Foundation approaches alumni and other supporters with an “investment opportunity” that, as long as TOPS is maintained, is virtually risk-free. (And no, it’s not a Ponzi or pyramid scheme.)

Tech, despite having torn down some of its dormitories, is growing and with an increase in enrollment, students need housing. And, of course, students would prefer a home environment with private baths and kitchens as opposed to dormitories with a community bath and no kitchen.

By working with the school’s foundation, which actually negotiates the construction contracts, investors enjoy a generous tax write-off, plus they will own a percentage of the apartments or condos. The school takes care of filling the housing units and collecting the rent and is also responsible for the maintenance of the buildings. The dollars generated by student rent pays off the debt. The advantage to the school is that it is relieved of the burden of having to go through the State Bond Commission to obtain funding for the construction. The alumnus or supporter who ponies up the money does nothing but sit back and reap the rewards of his investment.

If you have the funds to sink into the project, it’s a win-win proposition.

“Tech is one of the first schools to come up with this method of financing construction of student housing,” said Stokley. “Other schools have since replicated that method.

“Tech and Grambling have a tremendous impact on the economy of Ruston and Lincoln Parish as do others schools on their communities,” he said.

“A four-year student at Tech has an economic value of a million dollars on Ruston,” he said, “so the retention of students is critical. If TOPS craters, enrollment will drop and these apartments will sit empty.

“It’s a domino effect. If TOPS is cut or eliminated, it affects not only students’ families, but the ripple effect impacts colleges and the community as well.” Stokley said it was not unrealistic to envision some universities actually shutting down or converting from public to private schools with even higher tuitions—which could further reduce enrollment.

There are already all those extra fees that students voted to impose on themselves—before tuition began rising so sharply seven or eight years ago. “At Tech, we have the $62 million Davison Center that students voted to pay a portion of by assessing themselves fees totaling $8 million,” Stokley said. “That’s an added fee tacked onto already rising tuition. If TOPS is cut, that’s money that will have to be made up by students’ parents or by students taking out student loans. If that happens, the money for private apartments and condos just won’t be in the budget.”

Combined with the threat to TOPS, banks are lobbying Congress to cap the amounts of government student loans which could place additional financial hardships on students.

With federal student loans, the interest rate is fixed and often lower than private loans which can have variable interest rates of more than 18 percent. Plus, with federal loans, students are not required to begin repayment until they graduate, leave school or change their enrollment status to less than half time. Private loans require payments while still enrolled.

For other advantages of federal over private loans, click HERE.

If you are a parent with a kid enrolled in a Louisiana public university who is on TOPS, you may wish to turn your attention from March Madness long enough to give your House and Senate members a call to suggest that they take time away from campaign fund raising long enough to do the job they were elected to do.

Better yet, here are the links to the HOUSE and SENATE. Scroll down and click on the name of your members to get their email addresses to contact them that way.

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Irony Anyone? (or how to blow more money daily than many make yearly while not fixing a budget grossly out of balance

Posted in Corruption, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Governor's Office, House, Senate, Legislature, Legislators, Lobbyist, Politicians, Taxes on March 5, 2018| 17 Comments »

By Stephen Winham

Guest Columnist

In the unfunny joke that was the latest “special” [not] legislative session there were no real surprises.  After much bickering over a small gobble-de-gook of incomplete solutions and ideas with no goal beyond getting 70 House votes for just about anything, the session finally ended with a whimper that anybody should have been able to predict after 15 days of inaction.  We are all left to ask why this debacle ever took place at all.

In the weeks leading up to the session Gov. Edwards threatened to not call it if an agreement on what to do about the “fiscal cliff” was not imminent.  Showing a distinct lack of decisive leadership, he not only went back on this threat, but failed, himself, to present a concrete proposal with a combination of cuts and taxes that would yield a recurring balance.  He never even really tried and seemed to say he was tired of doing so.

The governor presented a list of “cuts” he said he had already made, too many of which were not really cuts and a few of which were apparently duplicated.  Even the unambiguous cuts on the list begged the question of what has really changed as their result?  What pain has been inflicted and on whom? At the very least, what services have been diminished?

What evidence did the governor present that his appointees will be held accountable for making government as efficient as possible in the future, so people can have faith the revenues raised or retained will be spent wisely?  Ask anybody on the street if they believe state government is improving in that regard and the answer will most often be a resounding “No.”  This is particularly true of people who read newspapers and political blogs, listen to talk radio, and watch local television news where negative reports about state government are routine.

It is just plain common sense that people want answers to these questions. If the governor has made meaningful cuts he should be able to provide proof.  In other words, it should be possible to demonstrate the effects (not just dollar amounts) in such a way that people can judge whether the cuts should have been made and whether additional significant cuts should be made and, most importantly, specifically where?

For the coming year, the governor presented a list of cuts, but defended none of them as cuts he believed should be made.  On the revenue side, he presented a package that didn’t even fund these cuts and which he only halfheartedly supported.  About the only hope reflected in the governor’s proposal was that the mediocrity that keeps us on the bottom of practically every list of good things could continue.

The state senate waited the whole session for the house to give them something meaningful to do – Revenue bills had to originate in the house by law.  The Senate returned one bill providing tax relief to flood victims and the House concurred.

Despite having plenty of time because of a temporary two-year bridge, solid research of all pertinent issues, and promises to come forth with a plan to simply balance the budget, the house did nothing of the kind.  Instead of presenting a balanced plan of cuts and revenues, or even cuts alone, the house argued over pieces of the puzzle on the sheer basis of whether enough people would vote for them – what deals could be cut.  And cutting deals to get votes does not necessarily work to the advantage of the state or its citizens.

There was never a serious attempt to construct an enduring solution with more than a trace of desperately needed fiscal reform.  If there was a goal, it was to continue what we have had for over a decade – a questionable and temporary balance that makes as few voters and special interests angry as possible.  Thrown in were a handful of feel-good measures including ostensible Medicaid reform, a new spending cap proposal, and a promise of enhanced government transparency – none of which should require legislation.  Accomplishing their goals should be part of responsible governing.  Nobody was made happy -except those who think we should go over the cliff and see what happens.

One measure was anointed the pre-requisite and centerpiece for everything else and every day of deliberation the argument was put forth, “If we can’t renew ¼ of the expiring sales tax, we can’t move forward.”  What was so magical about that quarter of a penny?  Was it important to continue to punish the poor at least a little for being poor as a starting point, or what?  As its author, Rep. Dwight himself pointed out, the prospects for passage of his bill never really improved as the session went on.  Worse, it only took care of about a third of the gap and there was no clear plan for filling the rest of it from anywhere.  In a word, the bill was worthless.

Representatives Barry Ivey and Kenny Havard stood out as sincerely interested in doing something to help the state and its people move forward.  They both repeatedly called out their colleagues for hypocrisy and empty rhetoric. It is unfortunate Ivey did not get his February 28 motion to adjourn sine die on the floor and passed.  At least it would have saved the taxpayers the $60,000+ per day costs of the remaining days.  Sharon Hewitt and a growing number of others at least had sense enough to see the wisdom in that. Always rational, Rep. Julie Stokes attempted to move members in a progressive direction despite her Republican pedigree.  Speaker Pro Tempore Walt Leger offered progressive income tax measures to lukewarm support.  A few others voiced frustration but did little to steer what they clearly viewed as a doomed session toward success.

Republican Caucus Chair Lance Harris, himself a true expert at it, said he was tired of the blame game. Rob Shadoin agreed and restated the obvious when he said the session accomplished nothing except failing the people.  Speaking of blame, many people were happy to place it on the Black Caucus and their fellow Democrats.  If they were to blame for anything, it was for trying to get at a least a minuscule amount of progressive fiscal reform wedged in somewhere.

And speaking of partisan politics, the T Rex in the House was the desire on the part of Republicans to make the governor look as bad as possible.  Helping with that were the special interests, including that beacon of conservative light, Americans for Prosperity, founded and funded by the Koch brothers and claiming a membership of over 3 million right-minded people. How many of our elected officials pay homage to its agenda?  Its representative at the session wanted the session to go the distance in furtherance of the Louisiana Checkbook, a [non]panacea for the masses that will probably never be satisfactorily implemented regardless of legislation.  How many other budget reform laws languish in the books apparently ignored by our policy makers?  And, even when stumbled across, there is always the easy out of no money to implement them.  Forget about the will to do so.

The special session served one critical function to anybody who paid any attention to what went on.  It showed the utter lack of effective leadership in our state’s government.  It revealed who among our elected officials has the best interests of our state and its people at heart, i. e., who literally supports our form of government – and who doesn’t.

We can’t immediately recall the people who continue to ignore those of us without deep pockets, but we can replace them at election time – assuming people willing to truly represent us offer themselves for election – a daunting proposition at best.  Many current officeholders, with the validation of history, believe they don’t have to represent the bulk of us to be re-elected.  All they must do is get enough money from special interests to generate a flood of propaganda and false promises to fool enough people into voting for them.

Let’s prove them wrong.

(Editor’s note: Stephen Winham is the retired Director of the Louisiana Executive Budget Office, having served in that capacity from 1988 to 2000.)

 

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To advice that LouisianaVoice lay off Trump: when hell freezes over or Troy beats Bama, whichever comes first

Posted in Corruption, Economy, Ethics, Exemptions, Fraud, Politicians, Senate, Taxes on November 30, 2017| 20 Comments »

One of LouisianaVoice’s regular readers commented on Wednesday’s post that “half of Congress is occupied by communists” and “half of the supposed ‘good guys’ are swamp creatures that lie to get elected (only half?) and don’t really want the change that got them elected.”

And then he wrote, “Lay off of Trump. You sat by for 8 years as Obama raped and pillaged our country. He turned the IRS and intelligence agencies against us. He made deals with Iran as they chanted ‘death to America.’ Trump isn’t anyone’s savior but at least I don’t have to wonder if he truly hates this country like I did with Osama…I mean Obama.”

Oh dear, where to start? First of all, he every right to his opinion and the right to express it. But saying that “half of Congress is occupied by communists” is such an all-encompassing, paint-em-all-with-the-same-broad-brush kind of generalization that is all too common to people who go off on tangents and post unsubstantiated comments such as that. How can anyone say half of the 535 members of the House and Senate are communists when at the very most, he may have met a half-dozen of them for five minutes? That is such an inane comment that it really doesn’t even warrant dignifying with a rebuttal, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Obama “pillaged our country”? Just how, exactly, did he “pillage” the country? As I recall, Enron self-destructed in 2003, the housing bubble burst, Lehman Brothers went belly up and Bank of America acquired the cratering Merrill Lynch in 2008 near the end of George W. Bush’s term. Moreover, the entire affair was precipitated by the deregulation of financial institutions during the Reagan years.

True enough, Obama’s attorney general, Eric Holder, refused to prosecute the Wall Street bankers who brought on the collapse. That much I’ll give you and I still harbor resentment toward both Obama and Holder over that colossal malfeasance in failing to go after those thieves. You just know if some street thug had robbed a bank of a hundred bucks, he’d see hard time. Yet, those bankers stole billions—and walked away. Some were even paid bonuses of tens of millions of dollars for their trouble.

(You’d think we would’ve learned our lesson with the savings and loan debacle back in the final two decades of the Twentieth Century. William Black even wrote a prophetic book called The Best Way to Rob a Bank Is to Own One. Who knew then that the S&L collapse would reoccur on a much larger scale with the investment banks?)

And that “deal” with Iran is apparently the $150 billion Trump said Obama “gave” Iran. Pulitzer Prize-winning POLITIFACT says Trump got the name of the country right but that was about the extent of his accuracy. The $150 billion, you see, was Iran’s to begin with but had been frozen under several economic sanctions levied against the country. The money—their money—was released following verification by nuclear inspectors that Iran was complying with an agreement to curb its nuclear program. I suppose, though, if our reader got his information from BREITBART, he would have a somewhat different take on the whole affair.

And I just flat-out refuse to hold Obama responsible for the federal government’s response to Hurricane Katrina as some of Trump’s supporters continue to do. After all, the man wasn’t even president then and had only been in the Senate eight months. I actually heard one woman in Denham Springs mutter in disgust, “Thanks, President Obama” when she found the post office closed on Columbus Day—a federal holiday since 1968.

Finally, in response to the request to “lay off of trump”: not a chance in hell.

He has the chutzpa to question Obama’s loyalty to this country while choosing (typically of the TrumpCult) to overlook the fact that Trump has feuded with CNN, MSNBC, Time magazine, Elizabeth Warren, Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, Hispanics, and The New York Times—but strangely never with the Nazis, David Duke, Jason Kessler, or Vladimir Putin. All of which begs the question of where Trump’s loyalties lie.

Nope, I’m not going “lay off of Trump,” or the rest of the Repugnantcan gang of thugs who want to award generous—and permanent—tax breaks to the wealthy while doling out meager temporary breaks to the middle class and the poor.

  • Especially when Trump and his EPA Administrator have proposed the repeal of the Clean Power Plan which will give the go-ahead for polluting companies to pollute even more. That EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, you may remember, filed numerous suits against the EPA while Oklahoma attorney general which, I suppose, somehow makes him the perfect candidate to run the agency. Maybe I should sue Microsoft in hopes of being named the new CEO.
  • Especially when Trump appoints his budget director Mick Mulvaney to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau created by (ahem) the Obama administration to protect Americans from predatory lenders and faulty mortgages—like the very ones that nearly brought down the world economy in 2008. Mulvaney, by the way, once called the bureau “a joke…in a sick, sad way.”
  • Especially when I read a story from 24/7 Wall Street just this week about the top 50 corporations that park their assets offshore. Of those 50 companies, which have a combined $1.7 trillion stashed in overseas accounts, 10 are healthcare and pharmaceutical companies, three are big oil, two are insurance giants, five are military contractors, five are computer companies and internet providers and 11 (count ‘em) are financial companies—many of the ones whose criminal activity (never prosecuted by Attorney General Holder) brought about the 2008 crash that necessitated the federal bailout.

Those 50 corporations, along with all the others, no doubt, have located enough loopholes to make their 35 per cent tax rate. Despite their bitching and moaning that the rate is too high, the 50 averaged just over 25 percent in effective tax rates.

  • AIG, one of the companies that gave us the 2008 recession, for example had an effective tax rate of minus 5 percent, meaning it not only paid no taxes, but actually got money. Likewise, General Motors had an effective rate of minus 32.9 percent.
  • Morgan Stanley, another of those Wall Street bankers who torpedoed the economy, had an effective tax rate of 17.2 percent, less than half the supposed rate of 35 percent. Bank of America, yet another of the rogue Wall Street bankers, had an effective tax rate of 17.9 percent.
  • The pharmaceutical company Allergan had an effective tax rate of zero.

What was your personal tax rate again?

Just take comfort in the knowledge that the biggest tax breaks under this bill go them that got—corporations and the filthy rich.

The wealthiest 1 percent of people worldwide have more wealth than the rest of the earth’s population combined.

Just eight individuals possess more wealth than 3.6 billion people—half the world’s population.

True, not all of those live in the U.S. But let that sink in and be proud for those who will realize the most generous tax breaks under this bill. But don’t take my word for it. See for yourself by clicking HERE. (Be sure to scroll down to the illustration of the spheres of influence.)

Trump and the Republicans in Congress, having failed in every effort to repeal Obamacare, are now so desperate to accomplish something, anything, before standing for reelection next year (the full House and one-third of the Senate), that they are flailing away like a blindfolded man in a martial arts tournament in a near-hysterical effort to get this ill-advised tax bill passed.

Those who proudly call themselves advocates of good ol’ American capitalism will rail against the redistribution of wealth, spitting out the term as if it were a vulgarism of the vilest sort. But a dramatic redistribution of wealth has been taking place for the past several decades. And it has been—and continues to be—redistributed upward, not downward. That’s the dirty little secret they will never discuss because that kind of redistribution is perfectly okay.

And know, too, that there is only one reason to park money offshore: to dodge taxes.

How much do you have sheltered in the Cayman Islands? Or Aruba? Or Belize?

Didn’t think so. Yet, it is the white middle class and white working poor, the ones who make up the core of the 35 percent that comprises the TrumpCult, who are being screwed by this clown and the Republicans in Congress.

And the saddest part is they don’t even know it.

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