November 7, 2017: Good Morning, Tax-Paying Chumps!

 

11/7/17: Good morning, Tax-Paying Chumps. I know you plumbers, speech therapists, and tattoo artists pay your taxes. You can’t help it. You’re not rich enough to pay a $1,000-per-hour tax lawyer to finagle a deal. 

 

Wilbur Ross won’t even be taxed once. 

Anyway, you know what Paul Ryan says. What this country needs most is…healthcare for poor kids. No, we’re joking! Funding for the CHIPS program is stalled in Congress right now. 

What we need is to put an end to the estate tax – which almost no Americans pay. That way poor billionaires like Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross won’t be taxed twice. You know, once on income, a second time when he dies. 

We all know guys like Ross never game the system! They pay more than their share. Oh, wait. 

Documents leaked this week show: 

A)    Ross has lucrative business ties with Russians, despite U.S. sanctions imposed after Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of the Ukraine. 

B)     Ross “forgot” to mention these ties during his Senate confirmation hearing. 

C)    Ross has most of his cash stashed where he doesn’t have to pay taxes, in secret bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.

 

Do you have a secret account to hide your cash in the Cayman Islands, Mr. or Ms. Tax-Paying Chump? 

No, you do not. (See: 11/8/17.)

The blogger, right, and his wife: both tax-paying chumps.

February 2018: Trump Spills the Red Ink

 

2/10/18: R.I.P. Tea Party movement. Hang up your tri-corner hats. When Obama was in office, you thought deficit spending was a disgrace. 

 

Deficits larger than under Obama. 

Now you have your own boy in office – or is it occupying the throne? The GOP controls both houses of Congress and the “power of the purse” is firmly in Speaker Paul Ryan’s hands. 

The projected budget deficit for 2018 now stands higher than for any year since 2012, when the U.S. economy was recovering from the Great Recession. If we also look at projected deficits for 2019-2021, the four-year total of $4 trillion would be significantly larger than the deficits ($2.852 trillion) rolled up during President Obama’s last five years. Of course, to be fair, the deficits in Obama’s first term were worse; and, again, to be fair, Obama inherited a mess.

April 20-21, 2018: Trump Says He Has Tapes - and the Koch Brothers Go Shopping for Lawmakers

 4/20/18: Besides bingeing on Fox News and wondering if Melania will dump his fat ass for lying about porn stars and Playboy Bunnies, and pregnant house cleaners, what is the president up to today? He’s fuming every time he hears the name “James Comey.” He rages every time he thinks about Comey’s memos, which Comey says outline conversations he and Trump had about the Russia investigation. 

For months, Trump insisted those memos didn’t exist. He insists Comey never took notes while they were together! 

Comey just made them up later to cover his F.B.I. butt. 

____________________ 

Trump hints he has tapes. Comey hopes so.

____________________ 

 

In fact, at one point, Trump went for a kind of lying-sack-of-presidential-poop bluff. He could prove Comey was lying: 

 

 

Several weeks passed. Trump laid low. Apparently, he was laying in wait to catch Comey in a “perjury trap” of his own. (See: 1/26/18.) 

Okay. No. Trump finally admitted, if there were tapes….um…he didn’t happen to have them.

 

 

Now the Comey memos have been released. They don’t directly implicate the president in any collusion with Russians. 

You know what that proves! According to the White House, suddenly the Comey memos are real and prove Trump is innocent.  

You can’t make this up.

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4/21/18: Speaker Paul Ryan decides to do his part in draining the swamp by firing House chaplain Father Patrick Conroy. This is the first time in history a chaplain has been fired before completing his term.

 

How much does it cost to buy the Speaker of the House?

 

A billion-dollar tax cut. Annually. 

You are probably thinking: Another sex abuse scandal! Or: Conroy must have been flying all over Kingdom Come, like Scott Pruitt! (See: 4/15/18.) Not at all. Ryan took umbrage when Father Conroy offered up this prayer during House debate on the huge Republican tax cut bill: 

As legislation on taxes continues to be debated this week and next, may all members be mindful that the institutions and structures of our great nation guarantee the opportunities that have allowed some to achieve great success, while others continue to struggle. May their efforts these days guarantee that there are not winners and losers under new tax laws, but benefits balanced and shared by all Americans.

 

At this point you realize Ryan doesn’t care enough to pretend he cares about the typical American. He passed a giant tax cut with hundreds of billions going to the wealthy few. He’s going to retire before he can slash Social Security, which was always his blue-eyed dream. But you wonder if he wouldn’t have fired Jesus, had he been House chaplain, for saying: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” 

Americans for Tax Fairness estimates that under the Ryan/Trump tax plan each of the Koch brothers, Charles and David, will see their income taxes slashed – annually – by at least $1 billion. This explains why they donated $500,000 to “Team Ryan” in January. The Koch brothers don’t buy the message of Jesus. 

They buy lawmakers.