How To Hide a Tax Cut Behind a Wall

Fox News' Chris Wallace grills White House adviser
Stephen Miller on Trump's emergency declaration

Have you noticed how Trump's delusional anti-immigrant rhetoric has ramped up to "Defcon-1" just as tax season has begun to unfold and millions of Americans are now discovering the ugly truths of the Republican Tax Con Cut?

You know things are bad for the White House when they trot the unhinged, unapologetically white supremacist policy adviser Stephen Miller out on the Sunday morning talk show circuit - as they did this morning.

Politically speaking it's actually kind of like when the twisted character Zed orders his sidekick Maynard to "bring out the Gimp" in the unforgettable scene from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.

Miller, who previously served in communications and advisory roles for right-wing Republican nut-jobs like former Minnesota Tea Party Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and ex-attorney general Jeff Sessions, is such a despised and divisive figure that the only real reason to put him on national television to speak is because he has the innate ability to draw media attention away from where the Trump administration doesn't want it to be.

You know how an octopus or squid has the ability to release a squirt of dark ink in the water as a way to temporarily confuse a predator to allow it to escape?

If you imagine the Trump administration as a squid, Stephen Miller is kind of like the ink.

When Fox News host Chris Wallace grilled Miller with facts and data that dispute Trump's rationale for taking the unusual step of declaring the situation at the southern border with Mexico a "national emergency", Miller simply responded as he usually does.

He launched into the predictably obtuse mix of right-wingy hate speech coupled with unhinged attacks on other politicians which usually has nothing to do with the question he was asked.

Trump announcing that his concocted half-truths
about immigrants constitute a "national emergency"

For example, as NBC News reported, in response to Wallace questioning Miller about the need for Trump declaring a national emergency at the border when immigration levels have plunged 75% since 2000, Miller responded by saying:
"former President George W. Bush's immigration policy was an 'astonishing betrayal of the American people'." 

As if Trump's emergency declaration can be blamed on Bush's policy decisions 18 years ago.

In my view Trump's obsession with the wall is little more than a convenient prop that serves as something of a political cattle-prod he can use to jolt his shrinking base of support awake whenever he needs to rile up the cult of personality that surrounds him.

When the brain trust at Cambridge Analytica, with the help of Republican billionaire Robert Mercer, produced data that showed that Trump's target core audience responded enthusiastically to the idea of a "wall" to keep the perceived "threat" of immigrants at bay - Trump embraced it.

To many of the disenfranchised working-class whites frustrated over an insular Washington political elite that has left them shut them out and angry over being left out of an economic system that's largely left U.S. manufacturing out of the equation and is tilted to benefit top earners, the wall became an easy symbol to grab hold of.

When Trump starts talking about the wall, his supporters know exactly what it symbolizes to them and it's a language they can understand; they can vent their frustrations onto it.

At this point, does it really even matter that it gets built?

Prototype sections of Trump's border wall east of
 San Ysidro, California near the Mexican border 

When Trump takes the podium to talk about the wall, those supporters are distracted from the dark reality of his administration.

When media headlines are filled with news of his former campaign associates pleading guilty to lying about their relationships with Russian figures associated with alleged interference in the 2016 elections, Trump starts talking about the wall.

When his popularity slips in polls, or a member of his cabinet resigns over ethical lapses, Trump starts talking about the wall.

And lets' be honest, does anyone really believe he cares about illegal immigration?

From the 200 undocumented Polish laborers hired to do demolition work on the Bonwit Teller building in New York back in 1980 to clear the site for the construction of Trump Tower, to undocumented Hispanic men and women who've been working at his various country clubs and golf courses for years, his companies have been knowingly hiring undocumented immigrants for well over a decade.

Where was his outrage about immigration when he was able to avoid the costs of hiring union workers by hiring those undocumented Polish laborers for $4.00 an hour?

The wall serves a purpose, and the cloak of bigotry needed to sell it slips easily onto Trump's shoulders - so my belief is that the government shutdown and the fake national emergency declaration were all orchestrated to distract people from the truth of the Republican tax cut.

The much-lauded (by Republicans anyway) tax reform bill was a secretive and widely-criticized piece of legislation that passed with no public hearings, and was quite literally drafted behind the closed doors of various Republican politician's offices just before Christmas in 2017.

So it's never really been out of the garage for a test drive so to speak - most Americans are seeing it for the first time this tax season - Trump certainly doesn't want any pesky questions about the ways in which the Republican tax cut benefits him and his family specifically.

Better to talk about invading hordes of drug-dealing, terrorist-rapists than how the Treasury Department under Secretary Steven Mnuchin fought to prevent high tax states like New Jersey, New York and California from getting around the $10,000 cap on deduction of state and local taxes.

Remember when Trump promised to simplify the tax
code so the form would be the size of a postcard?

Many Americans who filed their federal taxes early expecting a refund are now realizing that the Republican tax plan simply fiddled with the withholding calculation that employers use to withhold x-amount of federal tax from employee's paychecks.

By definition that's not a real tax cut.

It's more of a shell game that gives some Americans the temporary illusion that their taxes were "lowered" because they saw a few more dollars in their paycheck.


When in fact, that money simply translated into many Americans owing more to the IRS simply because it wasn't taken out of their paychecks.

That's something that any American could change by taking 5 minutes to go to the IRS website, downloading a blank W-4 "Employees Withholding Allowance Certificate" form, printing it out, filling in your name, address and Social Security number and simply writing in the amount you want deducted from each paycheck on Line 6 - and submitting it to your HR department or whoever handles payroll.

Want more money back in your refund at tax time? Just increase that number by a few bucks.

Want more money in each paycheck? Then just lower the number and come tax time, you'll just get less back, or owe a little more - it's not complex or some secret, Republicans just figured that many Americans don't take the time to understand how withholding works.

Remember when conservative media was pushing the misleading narrative of average Americans cheering about "seeing more in their paychecks" as a result of the Republican tax cut?

It was basically nothing more than a W-4 withholding gimmick Republicans used to try and distract Americans from the fact the REAL tax cuts were for top earners, cash-rich corporations and of course, people like Trump with "pass through" income from real estate investment holdings, rental income, s-corporations or partnerships.

By the way, the changes in "pass through" income translated to about $17 billion in tax cuts to the millionaires whose wealth allows them to receive income derived from their stakes in real estate and complex partnerships - only that income is taxed at a much lower rate than the rate that the IRS taxes the paychecks of average Americans.

It's a selective tax cut by the few, for the few - but it's easy to disguise that with intentionally overly complex tax forms, especially when you can't see past a wall that hasn't even been built yet.

DeVos & Mnuchin: A Peek Inside the (Republican) Cabinet

Trump's exclusive Bild interview [Photo - Getty Images]

With the uninformed and divisive rhetoric of the soon-to-be inaugurated PEOTUS now inspiring ripples of uncertainty and fear across the European continent in the wake of his Sunday interview published in the Times of London and Germany's Bild in which he described the 67 year-old NATO alliance of 28 countries as "obsolete", the world is finally grasping the sense of unease felt by millions of Americans.

Welcome to our world Europe.


Much of the political amd media establishment's attention was justifiably focused on the contentious confirmation hearings of Secretary of Education nominee Betsy DeVos, a politically conservative billionaire with no actual education experience who has given large political donations to five of the same Republican Senators sitting on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee tasked with approving her nomination. (Drain that swamp!)

That's a pretty scary thought for advocates of public education as well as the bedrock Constitutional principle of the separation of church and state.

According to an extensively researched and well written article posted today on Mother Jones.com by Kristina Rizga, in a 2001 interview, when asked if Christian schools should continue to rely on the kinds of philanthropic donations ($50 million between 1999 - 2104) she and her husband give to Christian schools and organizations, DeVos famously said:

"Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God's kingdom."

As Forbes reported earlier this evening, during questioning Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders reminded DeVos that millions of Americans are troubled by the idea of a small handful of conservative billionaires forming an oligarchy that ostensibly controls the country.

He then asked DeVos how much her family has contributed to the Republican party.

She said it's "possible" her family has donated $200 million to various Republican politicians.

"Advance God's kingdom" indeed...

For those who may shudder at the idea of a crusading charter school advocate and Republican rainmaker whose father-in-law (Amway founder Richard DeVos) is worth over $5 billion being given the keys to the Department of Education, today the federal government only contributes about 10% of the funds for American public schools.

So the reality is that there is really only so much damage that she can actually do if she is nominated to the post.

More worrisome was her testimony that she wants to see more control over schools established at the local level.


I'm not an expert on education by any means, but I do believe strongly in the need for federal standards and guidelines for schools, curriculums, teachers, administrators and students.

Should administrators, teachers and parents have influence on the local level?

Absolutely, but when DeVos uses language like shifting control of schools to the local level, it reflects the growing disparity and segregation (both socio-economic and racial) in American schools that stems largely from the steady decline of federal funding for public schools that has taken place since the 1960's.

Back in June I touched on this subject in a blog post after New Jersey Governor Chris Christie advocated for a "Fairness Formula" that would cap per-pupil spending in New Jersey public schools regardless of the school district.

NJ Gov. Chris Christie

Like DeVos, Christie was in essence arguing for the kind of public school funding that we have here in NJ - for the most part wealthier school districts with higher tax bases are able to fund higher quality public school education than urban areas coping with trickier fiscal challenges, less concentration of higher paying jobs, less tax revenue and the steady drain of human capital to the suburbs.



I don't think DeVos is a bad person or anything.

I just don't think it's a good idea to put someone in charge of the Department of Education who never attended public schools, didn't educate her kids in public schools, has money invested in for-profit education and has no degree in education - or ever worked in education in a professional capacity.

Did I mention that she thinks that teachers are overpaid?

Yes, she whose family has given $200 million to the Republican party.

Speaking of controversial cabinet picks by the embattled PEOTUS, the nominee for Secretary of Treasury Steven Mnuchin has certainly raised eyebrows.

Remember during the presidential campaign when Trump berated both Ted Cruz and Hillary Clinton for their ties to Goldman-Sachs?

Steven Mnuchin

In addition to Mnuchin, Trump now has no less than four key advisors and cabinet picks who are former Goldman-Sachs employees; including his pick to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, Manhattan attorney Jay Clayton.

As has been widely reported, it's not just the fact that the 53-year-old Mnuchin is a former partner at Goldman-Sachs.

His fitness to be placed in charge of the U.S. Treasury has been called into question over his role as part of the management team that purchased the notoriously troubled lender IndyMac during the housing crisis in 2009.

As Kim Masters reported in an excellent article on Mnuchin's rise from Goldman-Sachs to film financier in a recent issue of the Hollywood Reporter, Mnuchin and his investors paid $1.5 billion for IndyMac, renamed it OneWest, then pocketed a tidy $1.9 billion profit after selling it to the CIT Group in 2014 for $3.4 billion.

As Max Kutner reported in an article for Newsweek back in December, some critics and former homeowners charge that Mnuchin ran OneWest when it was a "foreclosure machine" that systematically (and heartlessly) kicked thousands of California homeowners out of their homes in an effort to squeeze profits for investors via the mortgage crisis that almost wrecked the economy.

Mnuchin later became Trump's campaign finance chairman - and presto, is now possibly the man who will take over the Treasury Department.

Take a few minutes to click the link above and read Kim Master's THR article on Mnuchin and his move to Los Angeles, very interesting read.

Is he fit to be Secretary of the Treasury?

By the standards of the political and financial establishment, Yale graduate, Goldman-Sachs partner, he is - he's clearly a smart guy.

But his personal choices and his role in the sale of OneWest call into question what his priorities will be as head of the U.S. Treasury - like Betsy DeVos, I'm highly skeptical that it will be the interests of the American people who are not members of the 1%.