A Platform for 2020; Stop the Vampire Liberty

The current Republican Party has a platform.  You can read about it on their website by clicking the link above.  If you don't want to waste your time reading empty rhetoric, I'll save you that time and tell you that it contains a lot of platitudes that would be useful if the Republican Party, or any party, actually "walked the walk."  Like any politician, they will tell you what you want to hear and then do what they want once elected.  What they want in most instances is to make a lot of money for themselves, their friends, and above all their campaign fund so they can get re-elected.

The Republican Platform
(To be more accurate, Trump should be right-handed and
hopefully, that shark is a Democrat)

I hate to pick on the Republicans here but they are an easy target.  They are in power in the White House, they control both the House of Representatives and the Senate, and they have abandoned the main plank in their own political platform.  They used to be the party of fiscal responsibility.  What they have actually been doing is, what we used to call in the Navy, enjoying a "vampire liberty."

For those of you who didn't have the privilege of serving in the United States Navy, let me explain this old nautical term.  A sailor who has the opportunity to go on leave (aka liberty), but who doesn't have enough money, would head to the nearest blood bank and sell a pint of blood.  This accomplished two things.  First, it gave him some ready cash.  Second, whatever money he spent on alcohol would be more effective in its intended purpose because he was already a pint low.  So, to complete our analogy, Republicans are spending money like a drunken sailor.  To see what their policies have done, partially due to the recent tax reforms, just look here at the current national debt clock.

Snapshot of National Debt taken on 8/5/2018 at 5:12 a.m.(click the link for a current update)

Sorry for the use of the masculine pronoun in that previous reference but, when I was in the Navy, it was almost exclusively male.  Secondly, know that "vampire liberties" as I knew them, are a thing of the past.  You can no longer sell your blood for profit, but you may donate blood and get leave.

Now it is time to pick on the Democrats.  They have myopically championed the "little guy" and not the "middle guy" in their old platform planks.  They have lost sight of the importance of the middle class.  The Democrats, just like their Republican brethren across the political aisle, don't walk the walk.  While the Republicans don't seem to bear any resemblance to the party for which I occasionally voted years ago, the Democrats haven't fared much better.  They seem to have followed the poor little sheep made famous in the 1909 Yale University a capella group's, Wiffenpoof Song and have lost their way.

Wiffenpoof Song click link at left for youtube performance

I won't bother to go into detail here, but it should be clear to one and all that the Democratic Party, that used to be the champion of the middle class, can no longer make that claim.  They can't win a presidential election, a Senate seat, a governor's mansion, or even run successfully for dog-catcher, with their current political platform.  Somehow, their current direction doesn't ring true for middle anything.  Middle America or the middle class can't see what you are trying to do because they are in fear of losing their jobs.  Some of that fear is misplaced but, perception is a reality to most voters.

Let's just take one example here, immigration.  Neither party has come up with a plan that works.  Why not think outside the box on this one and come up with something that most Americans can accept.  I came up with an idea, granted it was a 5 a.m. "lightbulb moment" after only six hours of sleep, but it might just provide some relief.  It is a "what-if" proposal and would certainly not work in all instances and it probably has a few holes that I haven't thought of yet, but I'll throw it out there to hopefully stimulate some dialogue.

Lightbulb Moment
(maybe it's Goofy)

What if we relocated new immigrants, particularly those from south of our border, to Puerto Rico.  Let the new hopefuls be part of the rebuilding of that nation.  For the past decade, that nation's population has been in decline and that decline has been exacerbated by the 2017 Hurricane Maria.  We would need to make an investment in the Puerto Rico infrastructure, but that investment is long overdue anyway.  Most of the new immigrants already speak Spanish and this could be an easier assimilation than here in the U.S.  We could even establish, as part of the overall plan, a path to statehood to ease the shock to the local population.

This solution should even assuage the fears of the xenophobes that run around in their little red hats screaming that the sky is falling.  It consolidates the problem into a more manageable area, allows for the rebuilding of a nation, and provides a path to citizenship and statehood.  [Note:  The current citizens of Puerto Rico are already citizens of the U.S. and the statehood question would need to be put to a vote.]

The proposal above would only be a part of an immigration plank in the platform of a political party.   A creative Democratic solution to the immigration problem might just sway some Republicans who must be in a funk watching their old party morph into something created by Lewis Carroll.  Since the "tea party," the "freedom party," and the "religious right," are all influences into whatever President Trump has painted on top of the Republican platform, the Mad Hatter reference is not out of line.

Trump, the Mad-Hatter of the Republican Party

The Democrats, on the other hand, need a complete rethink of their current platform.   They need some new lumber to rebuild the party since the old platform isn't getting them elected.  They need to address the problems of the dwindling middle class.  If you can salvage the middle class, the poor will have something with which to aspire.  If "trickle down" can work anywhere it would be that the poor would be better off with a healthy middle class.

Democrats need to come up with a platform that addresses immigration, rebuilds our crumbling infrastructure, provides job retraining to restructure for a modern economy, reigns in the current Republican runaway spending, provides for a strong military streamlined for modern warfare, repairs our relationships with our allies without breaking the piggy bank, and which reinstates those controls necessary to repair the damage to the environment, consumer safety, and education wrought by the Trump administration.  I use the term "administration" loosely as it normally infers the "proper" execution of executive duties.

It's hard to have foresight when you have your head....

It is too late for a platform change in the midterm elections but, you could have one engineered, designed, assembled, sanded, varnished, and polished for the 2020 presidential elections.  Develop the platform but don't let it languish as platitudes on some party webpage.  Have an actual plan for implementation and don't forget, your success will require that you work across the aisle.  This country was built on bilateral compromise and cooperation.  Your voters will not stand for party infighting where nothing of note gets accomplished.  Democrats, it is time to roll up your sleeves and build a better platform upon this nation can proudly stand.

2018, 2020, etc.

You've Been Conned

If you are a staunch Republican and blindly support President Trump and his tax reforms, you might want to consider some information that hasn’t been handed you by one of the greatest con artists of the twenty-first century.  Perhaps it is time to smell the roses and see how much manure is stacked around the base.

While individual tax cuts will vary wildly across the nation, just know that, if your net worth is somewhere south of $10,374,030, you are not in the top one percent.  To put that in perspective, your household income for last year would need to be around $430,600, for you to enjoy the biggest piece of the pie from the new legislation.  The further away you are from those numbers, the worse you were treated in the last round of tax reforms.

The Fat Cats Know How to Party With Your Money

In my state of Florida, the top one percent earned $682,090.  It is projected that 98% of those wealthy individuals will get, in 2019, a tax cut of around $101,350.  If you are a wage earner, your paycheck may be a bit larger than it was this time last year.  Two factors enter here for individuals earning an hourly wage.  If you got an actual raise, congratulations, you are in the minority.  What you will normally see, would be a reduction in your withholding taxes that caused your check to be bigger.  Before you get too excited about this “raise” just know that it was done with the money we borrowed from countries like China.  Yes, your tax cut based raise should have a Made in China sticker affixed, just like your Ivanka Trump handbag (which was exempted from recent US tariffs, actually all clothing missed the list not just her stuff.)

 According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, from June 2017 to June 2018, real average hourly earnings decreased 0.2 percent, seasonally adjusted.  Combining the change in real average hourly earnings with a 0.3-percent increase in the average workweek resulted in no change to real average weekly earnings over this period.

Source:  Bureau of Labor Statistics

While you may see a reduction in your hourly wage taxes, wealthy individuals and corporations got the giant bulk of this Republican sponsored windfall.  Also, know that their (corporate) income bump is permanent and yours is temporary.  The con man in chief will tell you that the corporate tax cuts, again paid for with money we borrowed from China and others, will eventually “trickle down to you.”  Well, history shows that it didn’t trickle down under Reagan and it didn’t trickle down under any administration elected since.  Most of this latest round went to corporate stock buybacks and executive bonuses.  There is not much left to trickle.

Where the lion's share of the corporate tax-cut landed: Wealthy America

When you see that the stock market is doing well you can rest assured that there are people out there making a nice profit.  If you don’t manage a stock portfolio of significant size, you don’t get to celebrate by buying a new ostrich skin jacket.  (I couldn’t resist the Paul Manafort reference)

Who Do We Owe?

President Trump claimed that people like him wouldn’t benefit from the tax cuts.  In fact, he claimed that the new tax bill will, “cost me a fortune.”  Well, he just got a top individual tax reduction of 2.6% (now 37% down from 39.6%) and the new “pass-through” provision will give the Trump Organization an additional 20% reduction for his pass-through business, which is taxed as personal income.  His business is basically a large holding company that is exempt from corporate income tax and brings in around $9.5 billion annually.  He would only be taxed on the amount distributed to shareholders.  President Trump and Jared Kushner will be getting this windfall for the near future and it will be financed by increasing the national debt and borrowing more money from China and others.

Average American's Slice of the Pie
(That's Your Share, enjoy your crumbs)

Over the next seven years, the tax bill benefits for individuals will expire, but the corporate benefits will continue.  The bill that was passed will result in higher individual income taxes for over half of all Americans in nine years.  The takeaway here is that you may have gotten a small sliver of the pie but the fat cats got a giant serving of pie a-la-mode.  President Trump got his pie with extra sprinkles.

Fat Cat Serving of the Tax Cut Pie
(Sorry, but they've already started eating theirs)