The GOP’s New Plan to Enrich the Super-Rich… Again

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Republicans are offering yet another sob story about the super-rich suffering unbearably from excessive taxation.

Excellent news, people: Republican officials are mounting an all-out political push for a massive cut in our taxes next year!

Well… by “our taxes,” they don’t mean yours. Rather, here they come with another absurd sob story about giant corporations and the super-rich suffering unbearably from excessive taxation. Claiming to feel the pain of these multibillionaires, the GOP is riding to their rescue, promising to extend the trillion-dollar tax boondoggle Donald Trump handed to the rich in 2017, and vowing to add an extra trillion dollars’ worth of new breaks for them.

Ludicrously, the lawmakers, lobbyists and corporate front groups pushing this garish plutocratic giveaway loudly insist that the real beneficiaries are not the privileged few but (cue the patriotic music) America! Lowering taxes on the corporate super-rich, they exclaim, will let those elites invest more in new jobs and enterprises, expanding the economy for all.

Of course, that’s the same ball of dung they keep rolling up Capitol Hill again and again, and it gets stinkier every time, especially now that monopolies control everything from high tech and health care to oil and food prices. Why reward them? Far from creating jobs, they’re frantically automating them, and rather than increasing competitiveness, monopolies buy up or squeeze out competitors. Plus, if they get another tax windfall, the oligarchs will just use it to jack up their stock prices, artificially making them richer and more dominant over us.

Another “gotcha” in the GOP’s giveaway would gut the IRS’ ability to investigate and prosecute these filthy-rich scofflaws who annually cheat us out of billions of dollars they owe for the upkeep of America. For information and action on this massive ripoff, go to AmericansForTaxFairness.org.

Let’s Put Labor Day to Work for Workers … and Democracy

What if Labor Day was not about giving working families one measly Monday off to sleep in, rush to the beach, do some 12-ounce elbow bends and then report back first thing Tuesday to start another 364 days of pulling the corporate plow?

Instead, imagine if working stiffs themselves took hold of this day, putting it to work rallying and reinvigorating a rebellious labor movement to achieve economic fairness and social justice for all in America. This was, after all, the purpose of the original Labor Day, held in 1882. Thousands of bricklayers, machinists, piano makers, longshoremen and other unionized workers in the New York City area defied corporate bosses to declare their own day off. They were not taking a vacation but making “a public show of organized strength,” energizing labor’s demand for an end to the tyranny of 12-hour days, six-day weeks and $2 a day in pay.

In an audacious affront to the plutocracy, a miles-long parade of common workers marched six abreast, accompanied by union floats and boisterous bands. They pointedly traversed right in front of the gilded mansions of robber barons living along Fifth Avenue, the most ostentatious corridor of wealth and power in America. The day culminated in a sprawling picnic and festival, with 25,000 union celebrants enjoying food, beer, dancing, one another… and a shared sense that the working class was on the move.

Why not again? Autoworkers, flight attendants, fast-food workers and others are clearly on the move, so why not make a new “public show of organized strength,” directly confronting the corporate greedheads and political boneheads who’re stealing our democracy. Ralph Nader called for this two years ago — to see his ideas for a “Workers’ Action Day,” go to Nader.org.

Jim Hightower
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