Taking away healthcare wasn't enough: Koch Brothers Push Trump's 'Tax-Cuts for Billionaires' Plan

[CousinIT]

CLASS WARFARE, people. It's US against the Kochs and the rest of the billionaires:

After times of only tepid support for President Donald Trump’s agenda, the billionaire Koch brothers are putting their financial muscle behind the White House’s plan to overhaul U.S. taxes.

Two gatherings in Washington this week mark the start of the push, and the network of conservative advocacy groups controlled by the Kochs has already lined up events in 36 states to make sure members of Congress hear the call for lower taxes when they’re home for their August recess.

The move marks a pivot for the Kochs, who didn’t support Trump in 2016 and have come out against some of his policies. The network -- joined by many of the nation’s retailers -- scored a kill last week when Republican leaders abandoned the so-called border-adjusted tax on domestic sales and imports.

The proposal had driven a wedge between the Koch-affiliated groups and some of their staunchest allies, including BAT advocate House Speaker Paul Ryan.

“We’re committed to achieving legislation that can get to the president’s desk that he can sign,” Americans for Prosperity President Tim Phillips said in an interview. “We are strongly supportive of the blueprint for tax reform that was laid out by the Trump administration.”

Thus far, the administration has released only a one-page plan that was shy of specifics on how to pay for cutting taxes for businesses and individuals. As details take shape, tensions could re-emerge. While the Kochs tend to favor a more purist view of limited government, Republican lawmakers face a political balancing act, which may become more fraught after having failed to unite behind a measure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-31/koch-network-readies-push-for-lower-taxes-after-border-tax-kill

[asiliveandbreathe]

1. Closing in with great reporting - I have been reading

Democracy In Chains by Nancy MacLean - terrific expose of the Libertarian movement, yes, Kochs..

One review from NPR -

“This sixty-year campaign to make libertarianism mainstream and eventually take the government itself is at the heart of Democracy in Chains. . . . If you’re worried about what all this means for America’s future, you should be” – NPR

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/9781101980965

If you go to the link - you will have an opportunity to "look inside" - especially "xv1" where they want to privatize everything ...do away with Unions, cuts in public education etc etc....

So when you hear the republican party is crumbling..yep, moving towards their Libertarian agenda..This is where Rand Paul is coming from, among others Walker, tea party folk's(why don't they just change their party name to Libertarian)...

Be well

[Gabi Hayes]

2. Democracy in Chains

https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/nancy-maclean/

At the center of MacLean’s book is Nobel Prize-winning economist James McGill Buchanan, who died in 2013 at age 93. Largely bankrolled by Charles Koch and other deep-pocketed misanthropic libertarians throughout most of his career from the mid-1950s onward, Buchanan latched onto public choice theory to become its leading promoter. Buchananassumed self-interest primarilymotivated politicians, bureaucrats, union organizers, civil rights activists, and others, MacLean says. He cast public service in a deeply cynical light and denigrated the idea of “we the people” and the common good. Where the common good leads, Buchanan thought, is to an out-of-control government that destroys individual liberty.

The movement’s ultimate goal is capitalism free from government interference, and a government essentially stripped to maintaining law and order and national defense. Its adherents want to privatize most public services, especially public schools and Social Security. They have adopted the language of conservatism, and have successfully hijacked the Republican Party in the process, but they are not conservative in the traditional sense. Most people would not support the movement’s extreme libertarian vision if its adherents didn’t couch it in appeals to a benign personal freedom.

The final prescription of Buchanan’s career was “constitutional revolution”—a rewriting of the rulebook to unleash free-market fundamentalism and prevent majorities of voters from ever being able to effect change. This revolution would turn the Constitution’s checks and balances into locks and bolts, and can be heard in present-day calls by Republican governors and legislators for a convention of the states to amend the Constitution.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. 26 states out of the necessary 34 are supposedly

in line to call a CC

[asiliveandbreathe]

5. Scary!!!!eom

[asiliveandbreathe]

4. So many are trying to discredit MacLean - but, we are living her claims

They sound so disingenuous in their attack..who can't see their movement?

Tks Gabi Hayes - everytime I see your name, I see Gabi Hayes....

[Gabi Hayes]

7. I made the attack point many times

If you google the title, almost ALL the hits send you to loonattac links

Pretty stunning

The real Gabby says

[procon]

6. Its a pointless exercise in futility until they make taxcuts revenue neutral.

The only plan Republicans had to pay for their taxcuts was to kill off Obamacare funding, stealing money from poor, sick Americans to give to the most wealthiest people. Since their healthcare fiasco went bust, they really have no path to get to taxcuts... unless they just go totally crazy and damned the cost, just do it without any offset at all.