Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/12/07/fuck-the-donor-class.html
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Cripes, this has been going on since the Reagan administration and just now they’re waking up to it?
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Democratic Party: “Class war!”
American voter: “Grrrr! Hell yeah!”
Republican Party: “Abortion! Muslims! Mexicans! Deficits! Tax cuts! The Flag! Boogie-men! Pizza!! EMAILS!!! HIILLLARYYYY!!!”
American voter: “oh yeah. Those things.”
Don’t let this happen to you!
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Well, when colluding and profiting from it is part of your party platform for nearly a generation, it’s hard to have, you know, scruples. I’m glad to see some change on the Democrats’ part, but I’ll believe it when I see more than them using increasingly impoverished Americans as soapboxes.
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Historically, Karl Marx predicted that the petite bourgeoisie were to lose in the course of economic development. In the event, R. J. B. Bosworth suggested that they were to become the political mainstay of fascism, which political reaction was their terroristic response to the inevitable loss of power (economic, political, social) to the haute bourgeoisie.[4] Wilhelm Reich also highlighted the principal support of the rise of fascism in Germany given by the petite bourgeoisie and middle-class in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. He claimed that the middle classes were a hotbed for political reaction due to their reliance on the patriarchal family (small businesses, according to Reich, are often self-exploiting enterprises of families headed by the father, whose morality binds the family together in their somewhat precarious economic position), and the sexual repression that underlies it.[5]
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But it’s a tax cut across the board. Depending on what version (house vs. senate) you look at, the poor could get a bigger percentage tax cut than the rich. go here (http://taxplancalculator.com/) and compare a family with 3 kids making $50,000 vs. $500,000.
It’ll be a proper class war when they get to Medicare and Medicaid. 2018 is going to be an interesting year.
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Guess whose cuts expire and whose don’t, though.
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I really hope that this leads to the “Republican-lite” Dems getting shuffled off the stage and more of the BernieCrat-type Dems getting pushed forward, because it’s time for the DNC to start fighting back and making the wealthy assholes backing these bills scared to try it again because of the extreme backlash.
That’s really the only way to fight this - get as many far-left progressive Dems into office as possible in 2018 and 2020, take back the Presidency, and then ram through as many reforms and inequality-reducing bills as humanly possible, as well as trying to build up a brick wall on the way out in order to make it as hard to reverse as possible.
Same with Net Neutrality: the Dems need to punish the telecoms hard for Ajit Pai’s treacherous bootlicking by instituting vicious and as-permanent-as-possible NN rules, which should be designed to spank these megacorps by doing things like making deep packet inspection (and related technologies) disallowed, which would have the lovely side effect of making it much harder to police piracy, which hopefully would help to bleed some of these big ISP-cum-content-owners out. Adding in stuff like unbundling of cable channels and removing regional monopolies (as well as federal mandates that municipal ISPs cannot be legislatively blocked) would really put the screws to them as well.
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Right now the DNC is stacked with Wall Street and Silicon Valley types so at least at the national level the Democratic Party is being held hostage. If the 2018 primaries flip to Sanders-like candidates then it might lead to the DNC being forced to reshuffle in favor of the state parties. But that’s a big if. Otherwise, they’ll keep soaking up state party contributions for their consultant buddies while the party gets eroded away.
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Screw the middle class! Most of us can’t even afford an unexpected bill of 500-1000 dollars.
Currently I have a cushion of nearly 0 and FYI, I work minimum of 50 hours a week and have most of my adult life.
So Let’s stop hand wringing about the plight of middle class and worry about the bulk of us.
Christ I’d love to have the illusion of middle class
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Who will be the first one then?
(I’m not disagreeing with the idea, i’m just disagreeing with the claim that Bernie and most of his supporters are anything further than centre left.)
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@justicedems
Currently getting ready to primary the hell out of cooperate Democrats
https://www.justicedemocrats.com/
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I wouldn’t describe them as far left either, from my borderline anarcho-communist perspective. This isn’t a criticism (at least, not at this point. It’s better to get the really shit people out first).
I am also refusing to acknowledge the US Overton window anymore, as it is normalising fascism. This means that I see the corporate democrats as being similar to European conservatives and the republicans as being nearly identical to European far right parties.
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I want to see this and much more from the Dems, they glad handed the last General Election to this maniac tRump.
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The bill hasn’t been enrolled just yet (and thus, the exact nature of minimization strategies remains to be determined), but I’m guessing that the rich will be able to use novel “pass through” enterprises to avoid paying even the new, lower rates. This might just have an additional effect on the deficit, among other things.
In 2005, Donald Trump paid many millions of dollars in tax because the AMT kicked in. Perhaps in the future, it won’t, and his liability will be closer to zero.
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Without factoring in the cuts to services the lower classes rely on, sure.
“Hey, poors, we’re gonna give you an extra G off your taxes, yay!!!”
Which is great for about the month that extra G lasts, the rest of the year your child is spending in a classroom w/ a ratio of 45/1, oh, and SSI age has been conveniently pushed back to beyond your average life expectancy. Woo!
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Yep.
Taxes are how we collectively get shit done. Education, infrastructure, justice, defence, environmental protection, parks, libraries, police, health, diplomacy, museums, transport, …
And yes, rich folks pay more for those things because their taxes are higher. And they should pay more, since they get more benefit from them; I enjoy driving on good roads to get to the beach, while rich folks profit from good roads because their can move product - and customers, and workers - more efficiently. I benefit from a good education (and libraries, and museums) because it means I can secure a better standard of living, while rich folks profit from my education (and libraries, and museums) because it provides them with a skilled workforce. I appreciate the presence of an effective justice system because it makes my life safer, while rich folks profit from an effective justice system. Etc.
This drive to lower taxes for folks who’re already rich beyond avarice is absurd, whichever way you look at it.
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Err what? Class what? What war? What what? I can’t really hear any new ideas from the Democratic Party due to the constant (and never ending) screaming over Identity Politics. But whatever the ideas are I’m sure they’ll really really win the 2016 elections for us.
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