#billionaires are the main beneficiaries of republican rule

[tomorrowusa]

^^^ This is why people think things are getting worse. 1% of the US population owns 31.4% of the nation's wealth.

This is the result of massive tax breaks for the filthy rich which began under Republican Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s, were boosted twice by Republican George W. Bush in the 2000s, and got a big boost under Republican billionaire Donald Trump.

David Leonhardt at the New York Times writes...

The simplest explanation for the shift is that the old economic approach hasn’t worked very well for most Americans. Starting in the 1980s, the U.S. moved toward an economic policy that’s variously described as laissez-faire, neoliberal or market-friendly. It involved much lower taxes for the wealthy, less regulation of business, an expansion of global trade, a crackdown on labor unions and an acceptance of very large corporations. The people selling this policy — like Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics — promised that it would bring prosperity for all. It has not. Incomes for the bottom 90 percent of workers, as ranked by their earnings, have trailed economic growth, and wealth inequality has soared. For years, Americans have told pollsters that they were unhappy with the country’s direction. Perhaps most starkly, the U.S. now has the lowest life expectancy of any affluent country; in 1980, American life expectancy was typical. Conventional wisdom rarely changes quickly. Friedman and his fellow laissez-faire intellectuals spent decades on the fringes, before the 1970s oil crisis and other economic problems caused many Americans to embrace their approach. But conventional wisdom can change eventually. And after decades of unmet promises about the benefits of a neoliberal economy, more people have grown skeptical of it recently.

Massive tax breaks for the filthy rich as a means of boosting economic growth for all was once regarded as fringe economics – until Ronald Reagan took office. Even the man who became Reagan's vice president referred to such a policy in the 1980 primaries as "voodoo economics" – but to no avail. It has largely overshadowed economic policy for the past 40+ years.

There were only two exceptions. In 1993 when Democrat Bill Clinton raised taxes on the filthy rich. The economy soared and the 1990s became the most prosperous decade since the 1950s. And in 2013 Democrat Barack Obama let the Bush tax breaks expire. Sadly, Trump and the then GOP majorities on Capitol brought back the Bush tax breaks in 2017 and have been ironically blaming poor people for the subsequent rise in the national debt.

As president, Trump often contradicted his own populist rhetoric. (His one big piece of legislation was a tax cut that mostly benefited the rich.)

There needs to be a repeal of the Reagan-Bush-Trump tax giveaways to billionaires like Elon Musk.

One stat which Republicans don't like hearing is that in the mid 1950s, the highest federal income tax rate was 91%.

Republicans are nostalgic about some stuff about the 1950s like Jim Crow laws and suppression of women and gays. But they don't talk about the federal tax rate on the filthy rich which helped build the Interstate Highway System and provided low cost college education to the masses.

We don't need to go back to a rate of 91% for the Musks, Trumps, and Zuckerbergs. But just under half that rate would dramatically restore economic balance in this country. And the ONLY way to get there is to keep promoting growing Democratic majorities in Congress and electing Democratic presidents. Votes for third party losers are about as helpful as used toilet paper.

#usa #wealth inequality #income inequality #republican tax breaks for the filthy rich #voodoo economics #ronald reagan #george w. bush #donald trump #billionaires are the main beneficiaries of republican rule #prosperity = higher taxes on the rich #vote blue no matter who #election 2024

[bllsbailey]

Those Behind the Efforts to Disqualify Trump Have Something in Common

All over America, party loyalists whose preferred candidate is President Joe Biden are engaging in lawfare to win at the ballot box by any means necessary. Some of the bad-faith actors spearheading the efforts to defeat former President Donald Trump — the GOP's far-and-away frontrunner — before Election Day even begins are beneficiaries of puppeteering philanthropist George Soros.

Shenna Bellows

Maine's Secretary of State Shenna Bellows claims to be unbiased when she ruled that Trump is disqualified from running in the state's 2024 presidential race. But Bellows, the Democrat whose Dec. 28 ruling booted Trump off the Republican primary ballot in the northeasternmost U.S. state, previously cashed in on Soros family money.

According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) records, during her doomed U.S. Senate bid against Republican incumbent Sen. Susan Collins in 2014, Bellows received a $2,600 donation from Andrea Soros, the daughter of billionaire investor George Soros, who notoriously spends his wealth influencing local elections across America by bankrolling the campaigns of Democrat picks.

On the FEC filing for the contribution to Bellows For Senate, the younger Soros listed her occupation as a "foundation consultant" and address as the "family office" of Soros Fund Management, the principal asset manager for the Soros-funded grantmaking Open Society Foundations, which serves as the central hub of her financier father's anti-capitalist, redistributionist network. Andrea Soros is currently sitting on the global Open Society Board of Directors as well as its U.S. counterpart.

Some speculate that Bellows is eyeing higher office once again, hoping that the offensive against Trump allures anti-Trump donors who could finance her future political aspirations. Aside from cash out of the Soros family's coffers, Bellows was additionally gifted tens of thousands of dollars from left-wing political action committees (PACs) and progressive mega-donors.

Recommended

The list of benefactors that funded her failed 2014 run for U.S. senator includes hedge fund manager S. Donald Sussman ($5,200), who was one of Hillary Clinton's top backers on the 2016 presidential campaign trail; media mogul Fred Eychaner ($5,200), also a deep-pocketed Clinton devotee; the Soros-backed MoveOn.org PAC ($5,000), which is credited with leading the "anti-Trump resistance"; and Democracy For America PAC ($10,000+/-), which has endorsed members of the radically leftist Squad.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW)

Maine was the second state to officially declare Trump ineligible. In Colorado, the state Supreme Court decided on Dec. 19 to enforce Trump's disqualification. Leading the charge in the Colorado case to ensure Trump's removal is the Orwellian-named Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW). Between FY 2017 and 2021, CREW was given more than $2.8 million in grants by the Foundation to Promote Open Society, which acts as one of Soros's two chief grantmaking vehicles, for "general support" and "support[ing] political advocacy on ethics in government," according to an Open Society Foundations database.

In a 2009 televised Q&A with C-SPAN, CREW's founding executive director Melanie Sloan admitted that the agitation group is heavily funded by Soros via the Open Society Foundations, formerly the Open Society Institute, one of its "biggest" donors:

CREW has allegiance to the Democracy Alliance, the institutional Left's largest secretive dark-money donor club. Soros is a well-known member of this clandestine clique comprised of the ultra-wealthy. In late 2017, the Democracy Alliance distributed a chart, titled the "Resistance Map," showcasing organizations that it recommends members donate to as a means of opposing Trump's administration. On the organizational graph, CREW was spotlighted as an approved part of the money-funneling infrastructure.

CREW previously shared leadership with far-left smear merchant Media Matters. Self-described Clinton enforcer David Brock, the founder of Media Matters, took over as CREW's board chairman in 2014, but the Democrat operative stepped down so that the "nonpartisan" political outfit would not appear overtly partisan. In the aftermath of Trump's 2016 victory over Clinton, Brock hosted a posh Palm Beach retreat with Democrat elites over Inauguration Weekend to scheme about "how to kick Donald Trump's ass."

Eleni Kounalakis

Spurred by Colorado's decision, California's Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis followed suit, requesting in a Dec. 20 letter that the state's Secretary of State Shirley Weber "explore every legal option" to remove Trump from the presidential primary ballot there.

Kounalakis, too, is a Soros recipient. According to campaign finance records, Soros and his wife Tamiko Bolton Soros, another Open Society Foundations board member, handed over a total of $45,400 to bolster Kounalakis' successful 2018 campaign and 2022 re-election. Now, Kounalakis is gunning for the California governorship in 2026. Last year, Soros gave Kounalakis an additional $36,400, the maximum amount allowed, just a few months after she launched her bid to succeed Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Free Speech for the People

Free Speech for the People is the 501(c)(3)organization that filed a flurry of lawsuits across multiple states to bar Trump from the ballot by claiming that he violated the 14th Amendment's little-used "insurrection" clause (Section 3). Dubbed the nationwide "14Point3 Campaign" in reference to the constitutional provision, the left-of-center nonprofit advanced 14th Amendment challenges in Minnesota, Michigan, Oregon, and Illinois as well as organized the most recent Massachusetts complaint.

In the past, Free Speech for the People was partly funded through grants awarded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, which has received $1.5 million in funding from the Foundation to Promote Open Society, a primary Soros grantmaker. Between 2013 and 2017, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave Free Speech for the People $275,000 in grants, according to archived 990-PF forms.