DECEMBER 20, 2017 BY PAUL BUDLINE
Did you know that President Trump pushed through tax reform primarily so he could enrich himself, his family, and his billionaire cronies?
Yup, that was the prevailing media storyline over the days and weeks before the bill finally passed. Here’s a brief sampling of the unhinged commentary:
New York Times: “Tax Bill Lets Trump and Republicans Feather Their Own Nests.”
Bloomberg: “Goodie for Trump Oozes Out of Tax-Reform Fog.”
Think Progress: “The president cashes in.”
Joy Reid, MSNBC’s resident homophobe: “Millionaire Republicans are cutting THEIR OWN TAXES and those of the super-rich.”
CNBC: “GOP tax bill includes a provision that could enrich Trump and Republican senators.”
New York Times, The Sequel: “The tax bill’s generosity toward real estate titans stands in stark contrast to its stinginess toward the average wage earner.”
Those are just a few of the analyses put forth by media outlets, most of whom hit the gas pedal as the bill’s passage became inevitable. To write this kind of tripe requires that a reporter totally ignore the bipartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, which predicts that lower-income Americans will reap the largest percentage tax reductions next year.
As usual, the worst of the bunch was the always-dishonest-and-getting-more-dishonest CNN. That once-respected network ran this headline on Tuesday: “Public opposition to tax bill grows as vote approaches.”
This is worth a closer analysis. CNN’s numbers came from its own poll, which was conducted by an outfit called SRSS. The poll found that 55% of voters oppose the tax reform legislation, while 33% are in favor.
But dig a bit deeper into the bowels of the poll’s methodology, pardon the disturbing imagery. Just 23% of SRSS’s sample describe themselves as Republicans, while 33% are Democrats. Compared to actual voter registration numbers, the CNN poll had too few Republicans and too many Democrats. What a shocker!
So this is the flow chart of dishonesty: First, CNN and other outlets denounce the tax plan as a gift to the rich, enabling America’s plutocrats to make out like the bandits they are. Meanwhile, according to the stunningly biased coverage, the poor and middle class will be left with just a few scraps and crumbs.
Then, after all that negative coverage, CNN commissions a poll about the plan. And just in case the overwhelmingly negative media coverage didn’t have its intended effect, the pollsters overweight their survey with Democrats. Can you spell corruption?
The Wall Street Journal, in an effort to bring a smidgen of honesty into the debate, opined that this entire media narrative “may go down as the most misleading political message” since President Obama’s false assurances on ObamaCare.
The truth is, the truth can’t be hidden for very long. Either working people will see a bigger paycheck in January or they will not. And they will. Either the corporate rate reduction will stimulate growth or it won’t. We’ll know soon enough.
The very worst case scenario for Democrats and Trump-haters is that this tax legislation will actually help the economy and working Americans.
Their claims that it will fail are bad. But their hopes that it will fail are far, far worse.
If this tax plan is a gift to the rich, enabling America’s plutocrats to make out like the bandits they are, and that the poor and middle class will be left with just a few scraps and crumbs, then it couldn’t be any worst than obama bailling out the greedy bankers who created the gigantic financial bubbles that enriched the banking autocrats to make out like bandits they were. The poor didn’t even have scraps and crumbs for a taste while obama’s huge corporate welfare robbed them dry and put a never ending burden on their children and their children’s children.
I didn’t see the msm and the dems throwing tantrum and whine about obama, did you?
Their comments about enriching the pockets of Trump and rich Republicans doesn’t mention a word about how it would also enrich the pockets of Obama, Hillary, and rich Democrats. The Democrats speak as if there is a provision in the tax bill that specifically excludes Democrats.