Donnie's Little Lies are Huuuuuge
By
Jim Hightower for Creators.com
Now, however, we've been given an even-higher
level of intentional deception: Policy speeches by Donald Trump.
Take
his recent highly publicized address outlining specific economic policies he
would push to benefit hard-hit working families.
It's
an almost-hilarious compilation of Trumpian fabrications, including his bold,
statesmanlike discourse on the rank unfairness of the estate tax: "No
family will have to pay the death tax," he solemnly pledged, adopting the
right-wing pejorative for a tax assessed on certain properties of the dearly
departed.
Fine,
but next came his slick prevarication: "American workers have paid taxes
their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death." Workers? The tax exempts the first $5.4 million of
any deceased person's estate, meaning 99.8 percent of Americans pay absolutely
nothing.
So Trump is trying to deceive real workers into thinking he's standing for them, when in fact it's his own wealth he's protecting.
What
a maverick! What a shake-'em-up outsider! What an anti-establishment fighter
for working stiffs!
Oh,
and don't forget this: What a phony!
Well,
he's right about that, but what's he going to do? Don't worry, he says smugly,
I'll fix it, I'll make the system honest again — trust me!
As
Groucho Marx said, "To know if a man is honest, ask him — if he says he
is, he's a crook."
Or,
in the case of this phony populist, just look at the specific policies he laid
out as his fixes for our economy. Trumpeting the package as his blueprint for
the "economic renewal" of America's working class.
But
Trump's idea of "working class turns out to be millionaires and
billionaires, for that's who would get the bulk of benefits from his agenda —
rewarding the very corporate chieftains he denounces in his blustery speeches
for knocking down middle-income families and grabbing all of the new wealth our
economy is creating.
His
proposed tax cuts, for example, don't benefit low-wage workers at all and
provide only a pittance of gain for those with middle-class paychecks, but
corporations are given a huuuuuuuge windfall with over a 50 percent cut in
their rate.
His
tax giveaway will also take $240 billion a year out of our public treasury —
money desperately needed for such basics as expanding educational opportunities
and restoring our nation's dilapidated infrastructure.
In
his policy speech, he offered a new tax break to help hard working people
reduce their cost of child care "by allowing parents to fully deduct
[such] spending from their taxes." Trump even gave this push a personal
touch, saying his daughter Ivanka urged him to provide a helping hand to
working parents because "she feels so strongly about this."
Before
you tear up over their show of dad and daughter working-class empathy, however,
note that 70 percent of American households don't make enough to warrant
itemizing tax deductions.
Thus,
the big majority of Americans that are most in need of child care help get
nothing from Trump's melodramatic gesture.
Once
again, his generosity is for his own elite class, for the tax benefits would
flow uphill to wealthy families like his who can purchase the platinum packages
of care for their children.
What
we have here is the same old failed, establishmentarian, economic elitist hokum
that Republicans have been peddling for decades, only bigger and more extreme.
Rhetoric
aside, the reality of Trump's plan is to replace Ronald Reagan's trickle-down
theory with his own arrogant, anti-worker scheme of tinkle-down economics. As
an early 19th Century labor leader noted, "Figures don't lie, but liars do
figure." That fits The Donald perfectly.
©
2016 Creators Syndicate
Jim Hightower is
a national radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With
The Flow. Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers
That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families,
environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.