To many hard-working people, this is a time of economic uncertainty. Thus, it is important to point out that America’s superrich are intentionally and brazenly knocking down the middle class and poor to further enrich themselves. They are aided by clueless, corrupt politicians who don’t care about the future of ordinary Americans or of America itself.
In these hard times, along comes Donald J. Trump, a swaggering billionaire braggart promising greatness by goading working-class white people into mollifying their pain and anxiety by despising those “other people” situated near them on the social-economic ladder.
Donnie learned from Daddy Fred, who built his son’s inherited fortune by milking federal housing programs in the 1940s and ’50s, and then — as the landlord of these New York City apartments — flagrantly discriminated against black applicants. One of Fred’s tenants was Woody Guthrie, who was so appalled, he wrote about Trump’s greed and racism.
Donnie has enhanced his fortune by emulating his father’s business ethics, including engaging in wage theft, outsourcing his clothing line and other brand-name products to such low-wage countries as China and Vietnam, and underpaying undocumented immigrants engaged in dangerous construction work on his luxury projects. Also, as of this summer, Trump or his companies were defendants in 1,300 lawsuits — many of which were over stiffing cabinet makers, plumbers and other small business suppliers.
Candidate Trump grandiosely says he’ll lift up the middle class, but his proposed economic policies would do the opposite by expanding the GOP’s old anti-labor agenda: giving massive new tax cuts to corporations and the rich, slashing public spending on programs that working families rely on, and embracing the laissez-faire ideological claptrap that Tea Party Republicans mindlessly repeat in their ceaseless efforts to drive down wages.
On the minimum wage, he’s taken more positions than you’ll find in the “Kama Sutra.” First, he said $7.25 an hour was already too much; then he called for abolishing the wage floor entirely; then he mused that he might be open to an increase (but certainly not the $15-an-hour living wage that worker activists are fighting for).
Even Trump’s “rock-solid” opposition to NAFTA, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and other trade scams now looks to be a political bait-and-switch fraud, as indicated by his choice of Indiana Gov. Mike Pence to be his VP and top policy “partner.” Pence is a notorious free-trade fanatic who pushed zealously to pass all eight trade deals that came before him while in Congress, and he’s been lobbying hard this year for passage of the TPP.