The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Twenty-some years ago, conservatives were fond of using the phrase “transfer of wealth” to scare the Republican base into voting lest the country be overrun with poor people driving Italian sports cars and buying homes in affluent suburbs.

So it is ironic, then, that our current infestation of Republicans is presiding over that which they wielded as a threat all those years ago.

The latest installment of their ongoing effort to hand the country over to the one-percent is their tax reform, a hastily-written proposal composed in shadow to keep we the people from seeing it for the outrage it is. 

(But not to worry. I have it on good authority that the half-eaten bag of Doritos in your kitchen and that basket of dirty laundry are, for the moment, safe.)

First off is the nearly fifty-percent reduction in the corporate tax rate.

Anyone with even the faintest knowledge of corporate America knows businesses routinely employ armies of tax attorneys to reduce their tax burden. And they succeed, wildly. No company able to keep its head outside its rectum pays the listed rate—none.

This reduction has the added benefit of relieving corporations of that need to keep tax attorneys around, which come to think of it must be frightfully expensive. *sniff*

To further assuage our put-upon corporations, they will be allowed to repatriate their offshore cash reserves to the U.S. at a suggested tax rate of just 10%. To ensure they aren't too inconvenienced by our largesse, they have eight years to pay up. 

To those of you made inconsolable by our immigration policy, which seemingly rewards illegal aliens for not getting caught, please explain to me in excruciating detail how this is different. It is certainly interesting that our pillars of pilferage sit on historic amounts of cash—even despite the strangulating regulation forced upon them by the big, bad—and presumably liberal—government.

Someone is getting screwed, and it doesn't appear to be the folks with the mountain of offshore tender, does it? 

But the biggest, most-lavishly-wrapped gift is a change in the methodology of taxation. Our beleaguered corporations are no longer required to report overseas income, the likely outcome of which will be said cash returning to these shores virtually untaxed.

If the facts aren't horrific enough, Trump's stooges are actually attempting to sell this tax bill as a stimulus package. It's right there in the title: Tax Cuts & Jobs Act. Citizens of a certain age will recognize it as the Reagan Administration's trickle-down theory of economics.

You will be excused for proffering tart and unappreciative comments such as “Hey! It didn't work then, so maybe it won't work now, either!” 

As a twentieth-century wit once noted “Republicans are people who believe nothing should be done for the first time.”

Donald? Mitch? Paul? I'm pretty stupid. But I'm not vote Republican stupid.

Granted, your tax overhaul gives middle Americans a break in the same sense that—technically—I'm employed. But I shouldn't ever confuse 'employed' with 'self-supporting'.

Non-partisan summations universally conclude that middle-America's cut is not only faint, it's also temporary. By contrast, the parasite class receives cuts that are deep and full and also—to quote Trump's stooges—permanent.

If our homegrown corporations didn't routinely exhibit the venal and self-serving behavior they dismiss their employees for, I might actually be inclined to believe the money they save will fund infrastructure investment and job growth.

But we all know where it's going, don't we?

And we haven't event touched on the ugliness of how these cuts are going to be paid for.

To compensate for lost revenue, Republicans will be forced to reduce costs. They will also want to avoid being seen as growing the deficit, which this bill does—in spades. And I'm guessing oil company subsidies aren't on the table.

More likely, frivolities like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security will be.

The many will fund the few.

The most contentious, immature, hostile and sociopathic president in American history will oversee the most draconian tax reform in memory.

But like the suspense thriller with multiple red-herring endings, this show ain't over. Not yet.

There is one final indignity.

We must listen to the fortunate son, the spoiled, petulant, ungrateful recipient of an undue amount of life's blessings inform us that he is screwing himself because, as our president, he has discovered a higher calling.

Even higher than grabbing women by their pus... well, never mind.

Yes, his accountants are “going crazy” as Donald inexplicably directs his chauffeur to the poor house because the Republicant tax reform is going to break him.

(Do the room temperature IQs who voted for this cretin really believe this shit?)

I know of a waitress who posts regularly on Facebook. After Trump's election, she ardently, stridently and obnoxiously announced that “America got its balls back.”

Pity those selfsame balls will soon be slapping her on the chin.