September, 28 2017, 02:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Chris Fleming,Email:,chris@redhorsestrategies.com
Worst Features Of The Trump-Ryan Tax Plan
WASHINGTON
This analysis is based on the tax plan framework released by Republican leaders Sept. 27, 2017. The plan is very similar to earlier ones by President Trump and House Speaker Ryan, which were analyzed by the non-partisan Tax Policy Center and form the basis of this analysis.[1]
- The Trump-Ryan tax plan is not tax "reform," but massive tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that will jeopardize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public education. Based on earlier Trump and Ryan plans cost estimates, the plan could cut taxes by a total of $6.7 to $8.3 trillion, of which $3 to $5 trillion may not be paid for by closing tax loopholes and limiting deductions.[2] The resulting jump in the deficit would increase the likelihood of deep cuts to Social Security, healthcare, education and other services. Such cuts are in Trump's 2018 budget, which slashes $4.3 trillion from Social Security, Medicaid, education and other services. Ryan's House budget slashes $5.8 trillion from Medicare, Medicaid education, and other services.[3]
- The wealthy and corporations will get most of the tax cuts at the expense of working families who rely on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and public education. Under Trump's previous tax plan, the richest 1% would get half of the tax cuts, or $175,000 each year, on average.[4] His plan required one-quarter of middle-class families to pay more in taxes.[5] Under Ryan's earlier plan, the richest 1% would get more than 99% of the tax cuts once fully enacted, with a $240,000 tax cut each year, on average.[6]
CORPORATE TAX CUTS
- Corporate tax rates are slashedby more than 40%--from 35% to 20%--losing $1.8 trillion over 10 years.[7] Corporations need to pay their fair share not get a tax cut. Corporate profits are at near record highs, while corporate tax revenues are at record lows.[8] Profitable corporations are paying a U.S. tax rate of just 14%, according to the non-partisan Government Accountability Office.[9] Many pay nothing for years.[10] Only $1 out of $9 of federal revenue now comes from corporate taxes; in the mid-20th century it was $1 out of $3.[11] Moreover, 80% of corporate tax cuts benefit wealthier Americans.[12]
- Trump-Ryan slashes the top tax rate on business income from hedge funds, law firms, real estate firms like Trump's, and other "pass-through" businesses from 39.6% to 25%, losing $390 to $660 billion.[13] Many of these big-money outfits organize as partnerships or other business entities that allow them to pay business taxes at individual rates. Claims that this is a small business tax cut is a hoax: Just 4% of pass-through business owners will get a tax cut from the new top 25% rate, as everyone else already pays that rate or less. The top one-tenth of 1% will get a tax cut of $270,000, on average.[14] As the sole or principal owner of 500 pass-through entities,[15] Trump will benefit handsomely,[16] from what's been aptly dubbed the "Trump Loophole."[17]
- Trump-Ryan temporarily (for at least five years) allows corporations to immediately write off big purchases, which could lose $900 billion to $2.2 trillion.[18] Businesses would be allowed to immediately write off--or fully "expense"--the total cost of big-ticket purchases such as vehicles, equipment, and buildings. Currently, they may deduct (or depreciate) only a portion of the expense each year over a multi-year period to reflect the progressive decline in the property's value. The wide cost range comes from uncertainty as to the tax cut's economic effect. Though this is a 10-year estimate, the bulk of the revenue loss occurs in the first five years.[19] The Tax Policy Center has questioned claims about the supposed economic boost from full expensing, suggesting expensing could retard growth.[20]
- Trump-Ryan potentially allows American corporations to dodge all U.S. taxes on foreign profits through a territorial tax system. Under such a system, U.S. corporations would no longer pay taxes on profits booked offshore (although Trump's plan suggests there may be a minimum tax on profits in tax havens). A territorial system will encourage multinationals to shift even more profits and jobs offshore than they do now.[21] Analysis of a similar plan found a territorial tax system would lose $205 billion over 10 years.[22]
- Multinational corporations with profits stashed offshore could get a $600 billion tax cut. Big American corporations hold $2.6 trillion in profits offshore on which they owe about $750 billion in U.S. taxes.[23] The new plan promises a big tax break on these profits, but it does not indicate the tax rate. Trump previously proposed cutting the rate from 35% to just 10% on cash and only 4% on non-cash assets, raising about $150 billion.[24] So, tax-dodging multinationals could get an undeserved tax break of about $600 billion. They should instead pay what they owe, just like working families and small businesses do.
INDIVIDUAL TAX CHANGES
- The top tax rate on individuals would be lowered from 39.6% to 35%, and six other tax brackets would shrink to just two, losing $2 trillion.[25] The new brackets are 12%--an increase on lower income Americans from the current 10% rate--25%, and 35%. The reduction in the top rate will help give a $270,000 average tax cut to the Top 1%, which was estimated under Trump's earlier tax plan.[26] The top 0.1% would get a $1.4 million tax cut, on average.
- The alternative minimum tax (AMT) would be repealed allowing wealthy taxpayers like Trump to use excessive deductions and other loopholes to sharply reduce or eliminate their tax bill, losing $445 billion.[27] Trump could benefit massively: In 2005, the one year for which his tax returns have been made public, he made $153 million and paid $38 million in federal income taxes for a tax rate of 25%.[28] Without the AMT, he would have paid just $5 million in federal income taxes, a tax rate of less than 4%.[29] That rate is less than the lowest-income Americans often pay.[30]
- Trump-Ryan eliminates estate and gift taxes, losing $239 billion and boosting the inheritances of millionaires and billionaires.[31] The federal estate tax is paid only by estates worth at least $5.5 million, just 1 in 500 estates,[32] or only 5,500 estates in all of 2017.[33] Assuming Trump is worth the $10 billion he claims, his heirs could gain billions if his plan is adopted.[34]
- Trump-Ryan repeals the deduction for state and local taxes (SALT), raising taxes on the middle class and undermining local public services. Taxpayers can deduct state and local property taxes, and either income or sales taxes, from their federal taxable income. Over a third of taxpayers making $50-75,000 use the SALT deduction, and over half of those making $75-100,000.[35] An average family in this last group would see their federal taxes jump by $1,800 if SALT is repealed.[36] Repealing SALT would increase federal revenue by $1.3 trillion over 10 years.[37] In addition to boosting taxes on the middle class, repeal of the SALT deduction will make local taxation more expensive, putting pressure on localities to cut budgets for services like roads and schools.
- Trump-Ryan pulls a bait-and-switch with tax provisions working families rely on, increasing the standard deduction while eliminating the personal exemption, ultimately leaving many families worse off. Taxpayers who don't itemize their deductions (which under this plan may be limited to charitable contributions and mortgage interest) this year can deduct from their reportable income $6,350 for an individual and $12,700 for a married couple.[38] The plan would roughly double those amounts to $12,000 and $24,000, losing $708 billion.[39] At the same time, the plan repeals the personal exemption, which reduces reportable income by $4,050 this year for each member of a household. Even with the increased standard deduction, without the personal exemption many large families, and especially those headed by a single parent, would pay more.[40] A Tax Policy Center analysis found that Trump's earlier tax plan would increase taxes for about 8.7 million families--20% of households and more than half of all single-parents.[41] That analysis assumed a much higher standard deduction, which means even more families will experience a tax increase under the Trump-Ryan plan.
ENDNOTES
[1] Tax Policy Center (TPC), "The Implications of What We Know and Don't Know About President Trump's Tax Plan" (July 12, 2017). https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/publication/142616/implications_of_what_we_know_and_dont_know_about_president_trumps_plan_1.pdf. TPC, "Dynamic Analysis of the House GOP Tax Plan: An Update" (June 30, 2017). https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/publication/142556/2001397-dynamic-scoring-of-tax-plans-and-analysis-of-the-house-gop-plan.pdf
[2] Americans for Tax Fairness, "Updated Analysis: Trump's Unpaid-For Tax Cuts May Total $5 Trillion in New Tax Plan" (Sept. 27, 2017). https://americansfortaxfairness.org/new-analysis-trumps-unpaid-tax-cuts-may-total-5-trillion-new-tax-plan/
[3] Center on Budget & Policy Priorities (CBPP), "Trump Budget Gets Three-Fifths of Its Cuts from Programs for Low- and Moderate-Income People" (May 30, 2017). https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/trump-budget-gets-three-fifths-of-its-cuts-from-programs-for-low-and#_ftn1. CBPP, "House GOP Budget Cuts Programs Aiding Low- and Moderate-Income People by $2.9 Trillion Over Decade" (Sept. 5, 2017). https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/house-gop-budget-cuts-programs-aiding-low-and-moderate-income-people-by-29
[4] TPC, "The Implications of...Trump's Tax Plan," Table 4 and p. 9.
[5]Ibid. Table 4 showing that 23.8% of tax units in the middle quintile would experience increased taxes.
[6] TPC "An Analysis of the House GOP Tax Plan" (Sept. 16, 2016), Table 5. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/2000923-An-Analysis-of-the-House-GOP-Tax-Plan.pdf
[7] TPC, "Dynamic Analysis of the House GOP Tax Plan," Table 5. Amount includes repealing the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).
[8] Estimates are measured as a share of the economy/GDP. Americans for Tax Fairness and Economic Policy Institute, "Corporate Tax Chartbook: How Corporations Rig the Rules to Dodge the Taxes They Owe" (Sept. 2016), Figure 2. https://www.epi.org/publication/corporate-tax-chartbook-how-corporations-rig-the-rules-to-dodge-the-taxes-they-owe/
[9] Government Accountability Office, "Corporate Income Tax" (March 2016). Https://Www.Gao.Gov/Products/Gao-16-363
[10] Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), "The 35 Percent Corporate Tax Myth" (March 2017), p. 4. https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/35percentfullreport.pdf
[11] Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Historical Tables, "Table 2.2: Percentage Composition of Receipts by Source." https://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
[12] TPC, "Would Workers Benefit from A Corporate Tax Cut? Not Much" (Sept. 8, 2017). https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/would-workers-benefit-corporate-tax-cut-not-much
[13] TPC, "Options to Reduce the Taxation of Pass-through Income" (May 15, 2017), p. 6. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/publication/141541/options-to-reduce-the-taxation-of-pass-through-income.pdf
[14] TPC, "Options to Reduce the Taxation of Pass-through Income," p. 8.
[15] Letter to Donald Trump from tax attorneys Morgan, Lewis & Bockius (Mar. 7, 2016). https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Tax_Doc.pdf
[16]The Washington Post, "Donald Trump's New Tax Plan Could Have a Big Winner: Donald Trump's Companies" (Aug. 10, 2016). https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/10/donald-trumps-new-tax-plan-could-have-a-big-winner-donald-trumps-companies/
[17] CNN, "Hillary Clinton Slams 'Trump Loophole'" (Aug. 11, 2016). https://money.cnn.com/2016/08/11/pf/taxes/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-loophole/
[18] The Tax Foundation, "Full Expensing Costs Less than You'd Think" (June 13, 2017). https://taxfoundation.org/full-expensing-costs-less-than-youd-think/ These cost estimates are based on current tax rates. If corporate tax rates are reduced, the cost of this tax break would decline.
[19]Ibid.
[20] TPC, "A Business Cash Flow Tax Could Reduce Investment, Contrary to What Some Economists Think" (Jan. 24, 2017). https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/business-cash-flow-tax-could-reduce-investment-contrary-what-some-economists-think
[21] ITEP, "Turning Loopholes into Black Holes: Trump's Territorial Tax Proposal Would Increase Corporate Tax Avoidance" (Sept. 6, 2016). https://itep.org/turning-loopholes-into-black-holes-trumps-territorial-tax-proposal-would-increase-corporate-tax-avoidance/
[22] TPC, "An Analysis of Marco Rubio's Tax Plan" (Feb. 11, 2016), p. 10. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/2000606-an-analysis-of-marco-rubios-tax-plan.pdf
[23] ITEP, "Fortune 500 Companies Hold a Record $2.6 Trillion Offshore" (March 2017), p. 1. https://www.itep.org/pdf/pre0327.pdf
[24] TPC, ""The Implications of...Trump's Tax Plan," Table 2. See "Deemed repatriation rate on accumulated offshore earnings."
[25]Ibid. See "Individual income tax rates of 10, 25, and 35%."
[26]Ibid., Table 3.
[27] TPC, "The Implications of...Trump's Tax Plan," Table 2.
[28]The New York Times (NYT), "Trump Wrote Off $100 Million in Losses in 2005, Leaked Form Shows" (March 14, 2017). https://nyti.ms/2pmUkEH
[29]NYT, "A.M.T., Which Hit Trump in 2005, Is No One's Favorite" (March 15, 2017). https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/business/economy/trump-alternative-minimum-tax.html
[30] TPC, "Historical Average Federal Tax Rates for All Households." https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/historical-average-federal-tax-rates-all-households
[31] TPC, "The Implications of...Trump's Tax Plan," Table 2. See "Repeal the estate, gift and GST taxes."
[32] CBPP, "Ten Facts You Should Know About the Federal Estate Tax" (Sept. 8, 2016). https://www.cbpp.org/research/ten-facts-you-should-know-about-the-federal-estate-tax
[33] TPC, "Briefing Book: Who pays the estate tax?" https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/who-pays-estate-tax
[34]The Detroit News, "Clinton: Trump Plan to Ax Estate Tax Saves His Family $4B" (Aug. 11, 2016). https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2016/08/10/clinton-warren-economy/88546136/
[35] Government Finance Officers Association, "The Impact of Eliminating the State and Local Tax Deduction" (Using 2015 IRS data), p. 6. https://www.gfoa.org/sites/default/files/GFOA_SALT_09202017.pdf
[36]Ibid., p. 8.
[37] TPC, "Revisiting The State and Local Tax Deduction" (Mar. 31, 2016), p. 2. https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/alfresco/publication-pdfs/2000693-Revisiting-the-State-and-Local-Tax-Deduction.pdf
[38] IRS.gov, "In 2017, Some Tax Benefits Increase Slightly Due to Inflation Adjustments, Others Are Unchanged." https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/in-2017-some-tax-benefits-increase-slightly-due-to-inflation-adjustments-others-are-unchanged
[39] TPC, "The Implications of...Trump's Tax Plan," Table 2. See "Double standard deduction."
[40] Center for American Progress, "How Middle-Class and Working Families Could Lose Under the Trump Tax Plan" (June 13, 2017). https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/reports/2017/06/13/434054/middle-class-working-families-lose-trump-tax-plan/
[41] TPC, "Families Facing Tax Increases Under Trump's Tax Plan" (Oct. 28, 2016). https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/sites/default/files/publication/135696/2000983-Families-Facing-Tax-Increases-Under-Trumps-Plan.pdf
Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) is a diverse campaign of more than 420 national, state and local endorsing organizations united in support of a fair tax system that works for all Americans. It has come together based on the belief that the country needs comprehensive, progressive tax reform that results in greater revenue to meet our growing needs. This requires big corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share in taxes, not to live by their own set of rules.
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'Doesn't Make a Damn Bit of Difference': Trump Belittles UAW Strike in Speech at Nonunion Plant
"I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets," said the former president, "but I don't think you're picketing for the right thing."
Sep 28, 2023
Former President Donald Trump used his speech at a nonunion plant in Clinton Township, Michigan Wednesday night to simultaneously posture as a lifelong champion of workers and denigrate the United Auto Workers' historic strike against the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers, dismissing the union's fight for better wages and benefits as effectively meaningless.
"I don't care what you get in the next two weeks or three weeks or five weeks," Trump said. "They're going to be closing up and they're going to be building those cars in China and other places. It's a hit job in Michigan and on Detroit."
It was a theme the former president and 2024 GOP frontrunner hit repeatedly throughout his remarks at Drake Enterprises, a truck parts manufacturer that offered to host Trump's rally: The electric vehicle transition and the Biden administration's efforts to accelerate it are going to send jobs overseas and leave the U.S. automobile industry in ruins.
"It doesn't make a damn bit of difference what you get because in two years you're all going to be out of business, you're not getting anything," Trump said. "I mean, I watch you out there with the pickets, but I don't think you're picketing for the right thing."
The former president repeatedly and falsely accused the Biden administration of attempting to bring about a "transition to hell" and impose "electric vehicle mandates that will spell the death of the American auto industry," a narrative that was also prominent during the Republican primary debate that Trump skipped.
Kevin Munoz, a spokesperson for President Joe Biden's 2024 reelection campaign, said in response that Trump is "lying about President Biden's agenda to distract from his failed track record of trickle-down tax cuts, closed factories, and jobs outsourced to China." During Trump's four years in office, the offshoring of U.S. jobs increased.
"There is no 'EV mandate.' Simply put: Trump had the United States losing the EV race to China and if he had his way, the jobs of the future would be going to China," said Munoz. "President Biden is delivering where Donald Trump failed by bringing manufacturing back home, and with it, good-paying jobs for the American people."
As HuffPost's Jonathan Cohn reported late Wednesday, "Since Biden took office in January 2021, total auto industry employment in the U.S. has risen from about 948,000 to 1,073,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a monthly rate of about 4,000 new auto jobs a month."
Challenging the notion that the Biden administration's EV policies are imperiling the U.S. auto industry, Cohn noted that electric vehicle subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act "will close the cost gap so that companies manufacturing electric vehicles and their parts can compete."
"And there are lots of signs that the effort is working," Cohn wrote. "Auto companies have announced plans to build literally dozens of new factories in the U.S., many in what's coming to be known as the 'battery belt,' stretching from Georgia in the South to Michigan in the North. They are expected to generate hundreds of thousands of jobs directly, plus many more (along with economic growth) indirectly."
The UAW leadership has made clear that, unlike Trump, it doesn't oppose the transition to electric vehicles.
Rather, the union wants policymakers to ensure that EV manufacturing jobs are unionized. UAW president Shawn Fain has criticized Biden—who joined union members on the picket line earlier this week—for not doing enough to prevent a "race to the bottom" in the EV transition as automakers increasingly invest in the nonunion U.S. South.
Fain has also not been shy about his feelings toward the former president.
"I don't think the man has any bit of care about what our workers stand for, what the working class stands for," Fain said in a CNN appearance on Tuesday. "He serves the billionaire class, and that's what's wrong with this country."
"People are trying to push that this is organic, but it's not. Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off."
Trump—who has repeatedly called on the UAW to endorse his presidential run—didn't respond Wednesday when asked by a reporter whether he supports the union's push for a nearly 40% wage increase for autoworkers, who have seen their hourly pay decline sharply over the past two decades.
During his speech, Trump "didn't specifically address demands made by autoworkers, other than to say he would protect jobs in a way that would lead to higher wages," the Detroit Free Pressreported.
"But he left it unclear how he would do so," the newspaper added, "given that he didn't demand specific wage increases as president."
It's not clear how many union members were in the audience at Trump's speech, though some were waving "Auto Workers for Trump" and "Union Members for Trump" signs. One individual who held a "Union Members for Trump" sign during the rally admitted to a reporter for The Detroit News that she's not a union member.
"Another person with a sign that read 'Auto Workers for Trump' said he wasn't an auto worker when asked for an interview. Both people didn't provide their names," the outlet reported.
Chris Marchione, political director of the International Union of Painters and Allied TradesDistrict Council 1M in Michigan, toldJacobin's Alex Press that at least one local "right-to-work" activist assisted the Trump campaign in organizing Wednesday's rally.
"People are trying to push that this is organic, but it's not," Marchione said. "Trump is curating a crowd, and it pisses me off. If he wants to support union workers, pay the fucking glaziers who got screwed when they put the windows on Trump Tower."
Ahead of Trump's Michigan visit, the AFL-CIO said in a statement that Trump's presidency was "catastrophic for workers," pointing to his anti-union appointments to the National Labor Relations Board, defense of so-called "right-to-work" laws, repeal of Labor Department rules aimed at protecting worker pay, and failure to protect manufacturing jobs.
"The idea that Donald Trump has ever, or will ever, care about working people is demonstrably false," said AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler. "For his entire time as president, he actively sought to roll back worker protections, wages, and the right to join a union at every level."
"UAW members are on the picket line fighting for fair wages and against the very corporate greed that Donald Trump represents," Shuler added. "Working people see through his transparent efforts to reinvent history. We are not buying the lies that Donald Trump is selling. We will continue to support and organize for the causes and candidates that represent our values."
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Which Side Are You On
Sep 28, 2023
With the power of organized labor surging, two guys went to Detroit this week to apprise striking autoworkers what they think of their righteous labor. Joe Biden historically walked the picket line and told union workers, "You've earned a hell of a lot more than you're getting paid." A stable, genius, "billionaire charlatan" who long ripped off workers and ran a fraudulent empire built on lies told non-union workers China, trucks, environmental lunatics, selling you out, yuge jobs, vote for me. Tough choice.
In a newly expanded strike of over 18,000 autoworkers against 38 GM, Ford, and Chrysler parent Stellantis plants in 20 states, the UAW is pushing the so-called Big Three automakers for significant pay and benefit upgrades: A 40% wage increase, a 32-hour work week paid as full-time, an end to lower pay tier forced on new workers as part of the 2008 bailout. Justifiably disgruntled workers cite the industry's surging profits - $250 billion over the past decade - and obscene payouts to CEOs - all over $20 million, sometimes thanks to raises of up to 40%, representing a nearly 400-to-1 ratio of executive pay to that of the average worker, presumably without breaking a sweat. In contrast, the real wages of many workers have declined or inched up by a mere 6% since their 2019 contract; across the country, many workers haven't seen a rise in the $7.25 minimum wage for over 14 years, and largely feel "we're on our own." At the start of the strike, mirroring pay at the top, UAW President Shawn Fain was demanding a 40% wage increase over four years along with the return of pensions and cost of living increases; he's now gone down to 36%, but nobody else has budged.
Given those grossly inequitable numbers, the fact over 60% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck, and the propensity of America's Fattest Cats to act like the entitled assholes they are - Jeff Bezos gives away just 1% of his billions and spent over double that to be weightless in space for four minutes - the strike has garnered broad support. Today, between 62% and 75% of Americans support the union, with that number rising. It thus made political and moral sense for Joe Biden, touted as one of the most pro-labor presidents in US history, to go Tuesday "where no president has gone before" and become the first sitting president to join striking workers on a picket line - a move historians called historic and long overdue. For a gleeful Michael Moore imagining "our 756 billionaires" as they "choke on whatever they were eating (and make a) frantic effort to find a baby aspirin in their vest pocket," it was also "The Day the Filthy Rich Were Sure Would Never Come" - the moment when "the man they thought they bought and paid for, their old friend from Delaware, yeah, that guy Joe, spoke up in "Scrantonese: You fuck with these good people, you’re fucking with me."
Outside a G.M. plant in Belleville, MI, Biden reminded workers they sacrificed to save the auto industry in 2008 when they were hurting, "now they're doing incredibly well (and) you should be doing incredibly well, too...The middle class built the country, and unions built the middle class." Fain thanked him for "being a part of this fight" and "not falling victim to both-sides-ism." He later argued, "We can’t keep electing (clueless) billionaires to solve the problems of the working class," aptly referencing all those you-strike-you're fired GOP masters of cognitive dissonance who implausibly claim to be pro-working class while maligning unions. Among what Eisenhower in 1952called these "unreconstructed reactionaries," surely the most egregious bullshitter of them all is the twice-impeached, multi-indicted, silver-spoon-in-toxic-mouth, tax-cuts-for-the-rich, Labor-Relations-Board-gutting crook and liar who for decades trashed unions, used mostly non-union labor, stiffed, stonewalled, endangered or underpaid workers and contractors, and otherwise schemed to out-Pinkerton the Pinkertons to steal from the little guy however he could in the odious name of enriching himself.
That tawdry history goes back decades. A report by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) found that, outside New York, Trump mostly used non-union crews in "right-to-work" states; faced over 60 lawsuits from tradespeople he didn't pay or shorted on overtime and over 200 mechanics’ liens for nonpayment; was sued by underpaid and unpaid Polish laborers working 12-hour shifts 7 days a week building Trump Tower in "choking clouds of asbestos dust"; was repeatedly cited for labor violations at multiple projects; imposed a "Trump discount" - often 75% of what was owed - at time of payment; paid contractors pennies on the dollar during bankruptcy filings; was sued for non-payment by multiple lawyers who represented him in lawsuits for non-payment. As president, he shaped an anti-worker SCOTUS, chose anti-worker hacks to make anti-worker decisions, bad-mouthed union leaders, wildly inflated awful job figures; and in Lordstown, Ohio promised jobs were "all coming back" right before the GM plant closed: "He flat-out lied to everybody." Said a union leader this week, "He would be a disaster for the American working families. He was a disaster."
He was also, it's now definitively established, a disaster at business. Ruling Tuesday in a civil lawsuit brought by A.G. Letitia James', Justice Arthur Engoron found Trump engaged in "persistent fraud” by wildly inflating his own wealth - the shoddy golf courses and office buildings, gaudy Trump Tower apartment he said was three times its actual size, alleged $10 billion net worth that was maybe $1 billion. In a stunning move one sage deemed "New York's corporate death penalty," the judge also cancelled the Trump Organization's business licenses, effectively dissolving the whole rotten empire - "Spirit Halloween moving into Trump Tower" - sending it into receivership at fire-sale prices, leaving the wannabe tycoon possibly bankrupt and stripping him of his brassy, pathetic persona: "Like everything else about him, it was all a lie, built on rampant fraud." Engoron's scathing, 35-page opinion blasted Trump's legal team for "obstreperous behavior" an d “pure sophistry," dissed their defenses as fantasy "without basis in law or fact" while likening them to both Groundhog Day and Duck Soup, slapped sanctions on them, suggested Trump was also guilty of influence peddling, and left his chance of winning an appeal at "between zero and nothing." Karma rules.
Still, there he was, in Detroit at the incongruously non-unionauto parts supplier Drake Enterprises, greeted by UAW workers chanting "Hey hey ho ho Donald Trump has got to go" and a circling airplane proclaiming "TRUMP SOLD US OUT" but determinedly distracting from his cowardly refusal to attend another GOP debate by telling a carefully curated crowd that Biden will "murder the U.S. auto industry and kill countless union autoworker jobs forever," he's "selling you out to China (and) environmental extremists," "you've seen your lives wrecked and your families destroyed," thanks to electric cars "in two years you're all going to be out of business," but you'll have more (short-on-specifics) jobs you've ever seen before if you "just get your union guys (to) endorse me" even though he was at a non-union shop and union leaders tend to support Democrats, and "Barack Hussein Obama." Also, on the "transition to hell" that is evil electric cars: They'll sell for "peanuts" and "go for like one-fifth," not like one of the "good brands" of current gas-powered trucks, like "you take a Powerbuilt," except Powerbuilt is a brand of tools, not trucks. The UAW's Shawn Fain: "I don't think he gets it."
“They pit the lifers against the new boy, the young against the old, the black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place.” - Yaphet Kotto as Smokey in Paul Schrader's Blue Collar, a dark movie in which "the bad guys far outnumber the good guys because the bad guys are power incarnate and the good guys merely work for it."
Which Side Are You On? - Pete Seegerwww.youtube.com
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Bipartisan House Amendment to Ban US Cluster Bomb Exports Fails
"The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death, and expensive cleanup after generations of use," said Rep. Betty McCollum. "These weapons should be eliminated from our stockpiles."
Sep 27, 2023
The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan amendment to the 2024 military spending bill that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions—which are banned under a treaty ratified by more than 100 nations but not the United States—to any country.
The House voted 160-269 on the amendment to next year's National Defense Authorization Act co-sponsored by Reps. Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). Seventy-five Democrats voted for the measure, while 137 voted "no"; 85 GOP lawmakers approved the amendment while 132 opposed it.
The vote took place less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States would send more cluster munitions to Ukraine.
"Many of us have this idea of American exceptionalism, that America is set apart from the rest of the world. Well, that's certainly true when it comes to cluster munitions and not in the way that we want," Jacobs said on the House floor before Wednesday's vote.
"America is an outlier. We are one of the few countries that hasn't become party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and that is a grave mistake," she asserted, referring to a landmark 2008 treaty, to which 112 nations are parties.
Jacobs continued:
These weapons maim and kill indiscriminately. In 2021, the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor found that over 97% of casualties from cluster bomb remnants were civilians, and two-thirds of those were children. That's because these bomblets are small, colorful, and interesting shapes, so to children they look like toys. So when kids find these unexploded bomblets stuck in trees, or in the water, or simply on the ground and try to pick them up and play with them, they could lose a limb or their life in the blink of an eye.... These weapons are unpredictable, and the human cost is far too high to justify.
Since the end of the Vietnam War half a century ago, unexploded cluster munitions have killed approximately 20,000 civilians in Laos, where the U.S. dropped more bombs than all sides in World War II combined. The U.S. rained as many as 270 million cluster bombs on Laos, and less than 1% of the unexploded bomblets have been cleared since. They are still killing civilians today.
"These cluster bombs are indiscriminate," Gaetz said on the House floor Wednesday. "They've killed tens of thousands of people... and when this is all done, we'll be right back here on the floor appropriating money to de-mine the cluster bombs that we're now sending, which seems ludicrous to me."
"These cluster bombs are indiscriminate. They've killed tens of thousands of people."
Since Vietnam, the U.S. has used cluster bombs in wars including the 1999 NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia; the 1991 Desert Storm war in Iraq and Kuwait; and in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen during the so-called War on Terror. U.S. cluster munitions have been linked to birth defects, miscarriages, cancers, and other ailments.
Earlier this year, the U.S. began sending artillery-fired cluster munitions to Ukraine. Russian invaders and Ukrainian homeland defenders have both killed and wounded soldiers and civilians with cluster bombs during the war.
"The decision by the Biden administration to transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine in my opinion was unnecessary and a sad mistake," McCollum told her House colleagues Wednesday. "The legacy of U.S. cluster munitions... undermines our moral authority and places the U.S. in a position that directly contradicts 23 of our NATO allies who have joined the Convention on Cluster Munitions."
"The legacy of cluster bombs is misery, death, and expensive cleanup after generations of use," McCollum added. "These weapons should be eliminated from our stockpiles."
"Sending these weapons anywhere makes us complicit in unavoidable civilian harm and creates blowback that undermines our national security."
Last week, Biden informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that the United States will provide Kyiv with long-range missiles with cluster munition warheads.
"Let's be clear," Jacobs added. "This isn't about one country, this is not about Ukraine. This is about protecting civilian lives and ensuring our national security all over the world. Because sending these weapons anywhere makes us complicit in unavoidable civilian harm and creates blowback that undermines our national security."
Multiple efforts by lawmakers to ban the export of U.S. cluster munitions have failed to advance. Earlier this year, the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee voted down a resolution proposed by Omar and Jacobs (D-Calif.), while backing another led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)—whose controversial sponsorship doomed the proposal.
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