If you’re middle class, expect to have less of these under President Donald J. Trump.
Sometimes, it’s hard to know where to begin – with the rage and frustration at what’s happening in this country, I mean.
I just filed my taxes, which have increased almost $5,000, thanks to no itemized deductions any longer, a cap on property tax deductions and the elimination of the deduction of state taxes from federal taxes. How again is the tax cut this supposed to benefit the middle class? Oh, that’s right, it’s supposed to benefit those corporations that are not passing along the windfall to their employees and to punish the blue states, which usually have high property taxes and whose citizens make good use of the state tax deduction. But since the blue states send more money to Washington D.C. than they get back, and the red take more than they give, why would you want to upset the cash cow?
From an idiotic revision of the tax code, we move to an idiotic employment of tariffs. The Chinese have stolen American intellectual property, the theory goes, so we need to punish them, too. And if that punishment happens to cost everyone from farmers to consumers – to say nothing of the crashing stock market – well, what the heck, right? The point is to be strong on everyone, not to ask why the corporations – the same ones now buying back their stock with their windfall – didn’t confront China themselves or instead build better firewalls so that their property wasn’t stolen. Whose fault is it when a burglar robs an unlocked house – the government’s or the homeowner’s?
Such rational questioning has no place, however, in the Revolving Door Policy of the Trump Administration. Lead Russian investigation defense lawyer John Dowd’s out. National security adviser H.R. McMaster is out. Joseph diGenova was in for Dowd but, oops, not so fast. Now John Bolton – who never met a confrontation he didn’t relish or a war he did not like – is the new national security adviser. God help us.
There were some bright spots this week – the women led by Stormy Daniels (on “60 Minutes” Sunday) who will not be silenced about their relationships with Trumpet – or, in one case, his harassment. And the students who are marching for their lives – doing the courageous work to protest gun violence as dastardly adults, particularly the Republican Congress, absent themselves. And Trumpet flees to Mar-a-Largo.
It will be difficult to remove an incumbent. And Trump’s piggish consumption of women has been viewed as a somewhat entertaining sideshow. As for Robert Mueller’s investigation of Trump’s Russian connections, who knows what that will yield or when – or what the heretofore silent Congress might do with any revelations.
But if the stock market continues to fall and the economy fails, ah, then Trump will be toast.