Skip to main content

The Donald's hands: Quicker than the eye

The Donald gives to you with one hand and takes from you with the other. 

Take for example the tax bill that he signed some months ago. The Donald said it was a really big tax cut. Some of us - not me - actually paid less taxes and got pay raises because our employers were paying less taxes. That was good and the press The Donald loves to hate so much wrote about that a lot.

So now a lot of people have some extra money in their pay check. They are looking for ways to spend it. Where should it go? A vacation? Restaurants? A new lawn mower or outdoor grill? It’s hard to decide.

Don’t worry. The Donald will decide for you. And he has decided that you will spend your money from his really big tax cut on gasoline. You can use that gasoline to go to work to pick up your extra large pay check.

If you drive to work in a Ford F100 you’ll pay $413 extra for gas this year compared to last year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. If you’re driving a Honda Civic you’ll have to dish out an extra $206. So, how much was your tax break?

I say The Donald decided for you because shortly after he signed the law to give Americans a tax break he unsigned the Nuclear Weapons agreement with Iran.

"Withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal will support higher oil prices,” Dan Eberhart, CEO of oilfield services company Canary LLC, told CNN just before The Donald jumped ship on the Iran deal.

When the Iran nuclear deal was signed, sanctions on Iranian oil were lifted and a lot of that oil poured into the market. That brought gas prices down. Now, with The Donald saying he’s going to put sanctions back on Iran and Iranian oil, gas prices have gone back up.

But, of course, its not just gas and oil that The Donald is putting extra taxes on . He’s taxing steel and aluminum coming from other countries. He’s going to tax imported steel by twenty-five percent and aluminum by ten percent. That’s going to cause us to pay more for everything that’s made out of those metals.

Wilbur Ross, The Donald’s Secretary of Commerce, said that the steel tariff will raise the cost of a can of soup less then a penny. That’s not much but Secretary Ross also said that a new car will cost about $200 extra, thanks to The Donald’s steel and aluminum taxes.

So, if you’re going to trade in the Ford F100 for a vehicle that guzzles less gas you’ll have to pay more for your smaller, more efficient car. You’ll have to pay more for soup. More for gas. And more for a new car or snowmobile. So, how much was your tax refund?

Utah Republican Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a big supporter of The Donald’s really big tax cuts, doesn’t like the steel and aluminum tariffs. He called The Donald’s tariffs a tax hike on the American people.


So, you see, The Donald cuts your taxes with one hand and raises them with the other.  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T...
2 comments
Read more

More Republican dirty tricks

  As a Blue Dog Corporate Democrat, 7th District Rep. Collin Peterson’s votes in Congress go against the beliefs and convictions of progressive voters in our district. I’m one of those progressive 7th District voters. Like most average voters I rarely actually encounter my Member of Congress. However, I recall three encounters with Rep. Peterson over the many years I’ve been stuck with him. I met him at Mikey’s Restaurant, on Main Street in Long Prairie, when he was first campaigning for a seat in Congress. We were both young then and he was full of energy and inspired in me a sense of hope for positive change. Besides, I’d met the Republican incumbent. He was an older man who, it seemed, was operating on dead batteries. I was happy to vote for the energetic Peterson. Some years later I was a delegate to the DFL District convention in Bemidji. Peterson opposed a woman’s right to choose abortion. He was being challenged by a woman who supported the right to that choice. I gave...
Post a Comment
Read more

The bible should rule in the MN Senate, says Majority leader Gazelka

“A lot of my job frankly is stopping the onslaught of the left from continually moving us in a way that we know is contrary to the Bible,” Gazelka told the extremist Christian evangelical leader Andrew Wommack during an interview in November on Truth & Liberty, a weekly extreme right Christian on-line broadcast. Gazelka told Wommack that he is engaged in a spiritual battle as leader of the Minnesota Senate. Wommack in turn told Gazelka that opponents of conservative Christians are with “the spirit of Antichrist. What they call political correctness is nothing but demonic inspired and so … I can get by with stuff maybe you can’t.”  Gazelka didn’t disagree with the extremist opinion that opponents of conservative Christians are with the spirit of the Antichrist. He merely dissembled and claimed he was like Jesus who went among the sinners to convert them. Gazelka has always seen himself as a minister who intends to convert Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Sikhs, Bahai, ...
1 comment
Read more