The Real Entitlements: Privilege

 

Donald Trump’s proposed $4.7 trillion budget shows increases for Defense and Homeland Security (including $8.6 billion for his vanity wall that Mexico will never pay for), but cuts to those arenas designed to provide government support and programs for “most of us.” Who needs clean air or pure water? So, Trump proposed to cut the EPA budget by 31%. Bye-bye electric car tax credit; Trump wants us to burn more gasoline. Spent your life contributing to your Medicare and Social Security account? Not to worry, Trump is slashing and burning those earned benefits big time.

“Trump's ‘Budget for a Better America’ features dozens of spending cuts and policy overhauls. Total spending on Medicare, the popular health care program for the elderly that in the past he had largely said he would protect, would be reduced by roughly $845 billion over 10 years. Some of those savings would be redirected to other health programs, but most would be completely cut from the budget.

“His budget would also propose a major overhaul of Medicaid, the health care program for low-income Americans run jointly with states, by turning more power over to states and cutting spending by $241 billion over 10 years.” Chicago Tribune, March 11^th. Just about any form of safety net also saw dramatic cuts. Damn those poor, old and sick people with their damned entitlements! We have a hugely expanded federal deficit to pay back! Those poor, old and sick people are sucking us dry!

Public education? Who needs it? The rich put their kids in private school anyway, and as for college… well more on that later. “The budget request would cut Education Department funding by 10 percent while expanding money for school choice [religious education], school safety and apprenticeship programs. The $64 billion proposal would eliminate 29 programs, including a $2 billion program meant to help schools improve instruction and a $1.2 billion program to create community centers.

“Meanwhile, it would add $60 million for charter schools [mostly religious instruction] and $200 million for school safety initiatives… Education Secretary Betsy DeVos says the plan would end programs better handled at the state or local level. She also proposed up to $5 billion in federal tax credits to support school choice scholarships.” New York Times, March 11^th.  Fortunately, that budget is dead on arrival, but the battles and the potential for another government shutdown loom large. Unfortunately, the biggest damage to our federal finances happened already.

That total-gift to the rich, the big Republican tax cut (with no Democratic votes) that went into effect last year cutting federal corporate tax rates from 35% to 21% – yeah, the one that fueled tons of stock buybacks but virtually no job-creating corporate investment – is among the biggest boondoggle failures of the Trump administration. Not a failure if you are mega, mega-wealthy. Just if you are not. Not only does the negative impact of that tax cut continue to ripple through the economy – we’re expecting north of one trillion dollars in deficit this year directly caused by that law – but the resulting increase in income inequality, already intolerable, is much, much worse.

We know that the top one percent on our economic ladder own 40% of this nation’s wealth. And over the last decade and a half, the top 0.1% have increased their percentage of wealth from, 7% to over 22%. That latter little sliver of mega-wealth owns almost as much as the entire bottom 90%! They needed a tax cut? One that did not create the promised jobs but gave rich folks even more ownership of wealth?

Only the rich can afford the legions of accountants and tax planners to shift their earnings and wealth around to avoid taxes. Corporations? The rich use them mercilessly, and the loopholes they use are carefully lobbied into place by reason of their massive contributions to election campaigns. Do you really believe that Donald Trump’s taxes will reveal anything but massive manipulation of the system, a track record of pushing loopholes to the limit, and playing fast and loose with “valuations” of assets that could generate greater tax liability? Of course, he wants those records confidential! We know Donald Trump believes he is above the law. He even loves executive orders that defy Congress! He admires Vladimir Putin so much!

We also know that skirting the edge, using money to grease officials to tilt the results in favor of the “man with the money,” just comes with being rich. Remember Citizens United, the Supreme Court case that took the SuperPAC spending cap off the political machinations of the super-rich? Think politicians running for office missed that?

And when a law is broken by rich folks, mostly it’s viewed as a non-violent white-collar crime that lets highly compensated lawyers get charges dismissed or plea-bargained into trivial consequences. Once and a while we throw a white-collar criminal to the wolves to prove we are “fair,” but it just might take something like the Bernie Madoff $50 billion plus pyramiding scheme to trigger that result! The notion of rich privilege is stitched into our system. Try comparing the effectiveness of a public defender, overwhelmed with an impossible caseload and no help, with a $1500/hour legal superstar with a team of overpaid legal experts.

This notion of entitlement, privilege if you will, is simply an assumption of people with more money than they could ever spend. Donald Trump apparently had consistently terrible grades all his life, yet somehow he got into an Ivy League university (Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania). You didn’t have to bribe coaches and admissions officers in those days. A big donation opened the door. Trump’s grades a Wharton seem to have remained consistently bad. 

The notion of privilege runs in the extended Trump family as well. Jared Kushner attended The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey – his prep school. A former official from that school told book author and ProPublica editor, Daniel Golden, “There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard… His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.” 

It seems that real estate developer and Jared’s daddy, Charles Kushner, made a $2.5 million “donation” to Harvard in 1998… and somehow after that payment, Jared, who like Donald Trump could not get into any Ivy League university on his merits, was a Harvard freshman. It’s bad enough that wealthy people enroll their kids in chi chi private schools, engage top-flight tutors and access “enriching” summer experiences in camps or special summer university programs aimed at rich high school students. It’s worse that rich kids can afford to work in unpaid internships to get those hot jobs that almost always follow. Poor kids have to earn money. But when you have dramatically unqualified rich kids, whose parents have enough money to fund special access and bribes of relevant coaches and admissions officials, it’s downright infuriating.

“Students and parents have long suspected that money and connections help win access to top-tier colleges… But the federal indictments unsealed Tuesday [3/12] alleging a massive nationwide scam by wealthy parents — including corporate titans and Hollywood actresses — to get their children into prestigious universities floored even the most jaded observers of higher education… And it reinforced what many say is a drastic imbalance between the uber-rich and everyone else in the hyper-competitive college admissions game.

“‘This is disgusting,’ said Eloy Ortiz Oakley, chancellor of the California Community Colleges and a University of California regent who has long fought for wider access to higher education. ‘It reinforces the notion that … if you come from wealth you have a much greater chance of acceptance than if you’re just a normal working-class American.’

“Susan Paterno, a Chapman University professor who is writing a book on college admissions, said the arena has become a $100-billion business that is reshaping American culture, exacerbating income inequality, restricting opportunity and corrupting higher education’s role in the nation’s democracy… She said she met a test-prep company executive who admitted his tutors teach students to cheat on standardized tests, and she has found firms that charge as much as $40,000 for college admissions coaching.” Los Angeles Times, March 13^th.

There’s burning anger growing in America over the abuse of privilege. Trump’s followers are convinced that their leader is all about the little guy, when clearly he’s not. Bernie Sanders tapped into the aversion to elite privilege among younger and better educated Americans. Bernie clearly is. Will the system change or does it have to implode, dissolve and find some new incarnation in one or more new countries that carve up what was once the United States of America? VIP status, special doors, special access, special lines or no lines at all. First class or private jets. Five-star hotels. Welcome to America, land of Opportunists!

              I’m Peter Dekom, and I seem to be hearing a modern equivalent of “Let them eat cake” in the halls of Congress and state legislatures everywhere.