From HUSTLER Magazine

Trump’s Tax-Cut Smoke and Mirrors

Trump and the Republicans are once again proposing massive new tax cuts to solve the nation’s many problems. They cite Reagan’s big tax cuts in 1986 as a model for spurring economic growth, but there’s a problem with that rationale: You see, the decade before Reagan’s tax cuts actually saw higher growth than the decade after. In fact, during Reagan’s two terms America went from world’s greatest creditor nation to world’s greatest debtor nation, a stunning reversal from which we have never recovered. A major reason for this turnabout was Reagan’s lavish, debt-based defense spending—exactly what Trump is proposing.

In recent years, when corporations and the wealthy have received a windfall—from incentives to repatriate profits held in offshore accounts, for instance—they have not invested the money in business expansion and job creation, as the GOP propaganda would have us believe, but rather stock options for short-term financial gain. Plus, with unemployment now at a 17-year low, most economists believe massive tax cuts just don’t make any sense, except to fill the pockets of Donald Trump’s rich cronies, who have been parking their money in offshore tax shelters. All of this hidden loot was exposed by the Paradise Papers last November, the result of an investigation by 380 international journalists pouring through 67 years’ worth of records.

Guess who’s on that list of big-time tax evaders? Before he became secretary of state, Rex Tillerson was CEO of ExxonMobil when it hid about $51 billion in tax havens located in the Bahamas, Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. Trump’s treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, operated a scheme at CIT Bank where customers could purchase personal aircraft worth tens of millions of dollars to avoid sales taxes. And the list goes on: Randal Quarles, a vice chairman at the Federal Reserve; Jon Huntsman, the new ambassador to Russia; Kenneth Juster, the ambassador to India; Jay Clayton, the new SEC chairman; Ben Carson, the HUD secretary—all are named in the Paradise Papers for operating massive tax-evasion shelters offshore.

Now Trump wants to give these champion tax dodgers another big break! It’s being called the Leona Helmsley tax plan. Recall how that rich bitch said, “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” Think of all the things that could have been funded had the nation not been robbed of that revenue! Journalist Thomas Frank says it best: “We endure potholes and live in fear of collapsing highway bridges because our leaders wanted these very special people to have an even larger second yacht. Our kids sit in overcrowded classrooms in underfunded schools so that a handful of exalted individuals can relax on their own private beach.”

Some poor souls still believe that Donald Trump is a real “man of the people” devoted to their welfare over that of the top one percent! He’s made an art out of swindling contractors and students, and now he’s about to swindle the whole middle class again with his fake populism. P.T. Barnum said it, and Donald Trump has devoted his life to proving it: “There’s a sucker born every minute.”