By Karen Rubin, News-Photos-Features.com, editor@news-photos-features.com
At this time of the year, the hubbub is all about Help Feeding America, Save the Children, Toys for Tots, Salvation Army Santas ringing bells to guilt you to toss coins into a pot and just about every sad impoverished cause that can be conceived – but not about actually addressing the systemic causes of deprivation and poverty.
The Christian Nationalists who see in Trump and the Supreme Court’s eradication of separation of church and state their chance to take over, end pluralism (respect for others’ heritage, culture and religion) and mandate Christian Bibles in classrooms and curriculum, have no interest in actually eradicating poverty. They need suffering so that they can appear oh so charitable at Christmastime, justifying their tax-advantaged billions by giving the equivalent of an Uber ride away – thus cleansing the soul. They can appear so very benevolent giving away enough to put their name on a museum, hospital or university wing. They like the idea of communities becoming dependent upon their largesse for their museums, hospitals, libraries, churches and schools just to stay open. “Please sir, can I have some more?”
They can claim to be so much Holier (and Patriotic but really Paternalistic) Than Thou while demanding universities hire only anti-woke, anti-DEI professors, cancel curriculum that questions whether their “success” is justified or fair, and use their power to insure government ignore the suffering caused by pollution, fraud, global warming, gun violence, and women dying for lack of emergency medical care.
Tell me how Dr. Ben Carson, who clearly benefitted from DEI, affirmative action and what they deride as “wokeism” (just like Justice Clarence Thomas) can crusade for Christian Nationalism by condemning “woke curriculum in K-12 schools across our nation” now has the gall to ask for your help (that is, money) to cancel it. “I strongly believe that the current trend of pushing radical ideologies like Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender identity politics, and other divisive teachings is harmful to our children's education and undermines the fundamental principles upon which our country was founded,” he writes. Those “founding principles” he extols included: human beings could be chattel property, women have no rights and could be beaten to death by their husbands, and only white men of property could vote. Those are the founding principles justified by the White Supremacist Christian churches well into the Jim Crow era that Carson thinks are so holy.
(Reminder: The original motto of the United States wasn’t “In God We Trust.” It was E Pluribus Unum—“Out of Many, One”—emphasizing unity, not religion. Adding “In God We Trust” in 1956 was a reaction to Soviet Communists’ legislated godlessness – ironic given Putin’s Russia’s embrace of White Christo Fascism.)
In truth, the Christian Nationalists don’t actually care about “Christian values” (read the Sermon on the Mount again) or even “life”. They read Dickens’ “Christmas Carol” and think Scrooge was a self-made man who was right to hoard and exploit so that, facing an eternity in hell, he could “get religion” and give away some of the fortune he amassed on the suffering of others. They equate their wealth – which they see as proof they have been blessed by their God who has found them superior beings – with the right to exert power over lesser (weaker, more vulnerable) beings. Elon Musk is case in point.
These “pious Christians” would have not only locked up Mary, but snatched Baby Jesus from her arms, purposely losing him in the “system”.
It’s power, not piety.
Voters said they were most upset about the cost of groceries, gas and housing. How will they be helped by a Trump administration overstuffed with billionaires (11 so far) and felons who have shown such contempt for workers rights, women’s rights, families dependent upon Head Start, food stamps, Medicaid, seniors dependent upon Social Security and Medicare – and oh, yes, the IRS having the audacity to collect unpaid taxes from cheats?
Economist Robert Reich notes “The combined net worth of America's 12 wealthiest people just passed $2 trillion. 12 people. $2 trillion. The bottom half of America [170 million people] collectively holds $3.5 trillion. Wealth inequality is eating this country alive.”
Elon Musk - who literally bought the presidency and our $28 trillion economy for a measly $260 million when the rest of us peons are limited to $3300 and who Trump has named with his sidekick Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - has a grand plan to slash $2 trillion from federal spending (that is 30% of the budget, which is also the amount that goes to Medicare and Social Security). How? Certainly not cutting the $3 billion that Musk’s Space X gets from taxpayers. Musk plans to slash federal jobs, which also was the Project 2025 objective to immediately fire 50,000 who weren’t loyal to Trump (“They will do well in the private sector,” Vivek says) and slash the social safety net that 70 million Americans depend on.
They plan to shutter agencies like the National Labor Relations Board and the Consumer Financial Protection Board and eviscerate the IRS (which recovered $1.3 billion from uber-rich tax cheats in 2024). They are intent to privatize Veterans healthcare, Medicare and repeal Obamacare with its protections (making patients even more vulnerable to insurance companies’ practices of denying services and charging for preexisting conditions); slash Social Security, end HeadStart, and effectively shut down public health. Interesting that all these cuts still only gets you to $560 billion, well below the target $2 trillion, but causing incalculable suffering of millions.
Economist Steve Rattner’s analyzed the cuts Musk is proposing: VA Health Care ($119B); National Institutes of Health ($47B): Pell Grants $22B); Head Start ($12B); the FBI ($11B); Federal Prisons ($8B) and the SEC ($2B) – which still only gets to $231 billion of his $2 trillion. What else could be on the chopping block? Education (5%); science and medical research (1% of budget – including Biden’s historic creation of ARPA-H to find medical treatments for cancer and Alzheimers and fund research into women’s health); natural resources and agriculture (1% of budget). And where does the $1 trillion come from to mount Trump’s promised mass deportation of undocumented migrants? Does that mean Musk has to find $3 trillion to cut from a $6.7 trillion budget?
But there’s more: Musk, who is now worth $400 billion (the richest man in history, he added $170 billion just since the election, effectively doubling his wealth in a single year), while the combined wealth of the dozen billionaires Trump has already appointed to his cabinet exceeds the GNP of 169 countries (out of 193 in the world), expressed glee at the prospect of cutting out foreign aid (a mere 1% of federal spending). The excuse, “because that money could better be spent here,” rings hollow because there is no intention to spend money on poor, working class or middle class people, only to extend the tax cuts to the wealthiest individuals and corporations, and cut yet again, from 21% to 15%.
They talk of the “necessity” for “hardship” and “sacrifice” to fix the national debt, but interestingly, all of the hardship and sacrifice is put upon those who can least afford it. It will be the greatest shift in wealth (and power) to the top 1% in history, establishing a new Gilded Age, before income tax, workers rights and women’s suffrage, on steroids.
Not just health care but health, along with clean drinking water, clean air, will all become a privilege, not a right. The next pandemic killing off 1 million seniors and children? Well, that just reduces Social Security and Medicare payouts.
Their excuse is that the national debt is too big, but instead of raising revenue by getting the wealthiest to pay their fair share – as Biden tried to do - they look to cut government spending, which like mortgage or business loan is an investment in future. That’s what Biden accomplished with his policy of sustainable economic growth “from the bottom up and the middle out” that would benefit all, not just the top 0.1%. These guys want to go back to the laughable lie of “trickle down” economics.
“A 2% wealth tax on America's top 100 billionaires would generate enough revenue to end homelessness, end hunger, provide tuition-free public college, provide universal childcare - replace all the lead pipes in the US,” notes Melanie Darrigo. “This is why you don't put billionaires in charge.”
Who else thinks it’s really rich for the richest people in the richest country in the world to cut food stamps for the working poor, health benefits for veterans and seniors, while giving themselves more tax cuts and ending regulation and ending regulation aimed at protecting the environment and public health, which actually wind up costing more in disaster aid and lost lives, livelihoods and productivity?
You know what else Trump wants to get rid of? The FDIC program that protects depositors from losing all their savings, like they did during the Great Depression (remember “It’s a Wonderful Life”), which is why the FDIC was created. That is just a poke in the eye for fun.
They want to basically get rid of progressive income taxes (the “flat tax” is the biggest scam of all), but the ultimate prize is to get rid of estate taxes. As the New York Times documented, the uber rich use schemes like “I Dig It” and “GRATS” so that “only morons” pay estate taxes (adopted in 1916, helping to disrupt the Gilded Age aristocracy, today only estates over $27 million are taxed at 40%), depriving the Treasury of billions of dollars in revenue and reinforcing a new Gilded Age aristocracy.
“Revenue from the tax has barely changed since 2000, even as the wealth of the richest Americans has roughly quadrupled. If the estate tax had simply kept pace, it would have raised around $120 billion last year. Instead it brought in about a quarter of that,” the New York Times reported.
Progressive taxation is supposed to take the edge out of income inequality in a country that is supposed to believe in the American Dream that anyone can succeed if they are smart enough and work hard enough. The better solution than cutting the social safety net to smithereens would be to have a functioning Alternative Minimum Tax and a functioning IRS collection system – indeed, the Biden administration recovered $1.3 billion from billionaire tax cheats this year. (Republicans want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act which would fund IRS improvements).
People voted for Trump believing his bullshit that he would bring down the cost of groceries! Humbug! (No one actually asked how he would do that and now he says well, maybe he can’t.) They are outraged to the point of committing murder because of the high cost of healthcare and the cruel profiteering of health insurance companies when Trump and the MAGAs plan to end Obamacare, vaccinations and public health, altogether. They voted for Trump (falsely) believing the myth he is such a great businessman instead of the guy who runs every business into bankruptcy and wants to do the same to the federal government (a gift to his puppeteer, Putin). But government is not supposed to run like a business, let alone a corrupt one, an oligarchy or kleptocracy (like Putin’s), but is supposed to serve the people. (Trump has nothing but contempt for government, and thinks public servants are suckers and losers.)
The oligarchs and kleptocrats need inequality, they need poverty, they need people living in terror of a hospitalization or car malfunction, constantly running on that hamster wheel just to have enough to put food on the table and a roof over head, so they have nothing left in the tank in time or money to engage in politics, let alone actually compete with the billionaires’ ability to buy access and influence.
They want people to feel insecure and needy, so they can appear to be the beneficent saviors and you won’t notice how they are literally picking your pocket and you will be very anxious not to upset that Big Daddy donor. “Please sir, can I have some more?”
And to do this, they elevate religion because it is a framework that works on blind-faith acceptance of autocracy, where the exploited accept their lot as ordained and the mega-rich as anointed.
“Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich,” Napoleon Bonaparte said.
Karl Marx put it this way: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”
The sad ending to this Christmas story is how easy it is for Evil to triumph over Good.
And remember to say “Merry Christmas,” not “Happy Holidays.”
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