JEB! promises to grow the economy at 4% using the same tired Republican proposals.

The promises JEB! has made with his latest tax proposals amount to a great big hill of beans that means nothing. In the first place, lowering taxes to increase economic prosperity has been tried before, by Reagan, George Bush Sr., & George Bush Jr. Each time the result was the same. Reduced taxes led to reduced revenues which led to reinstating the taxes that had been cut. George W. Bush's taxes have not been entirely repealed, but the result of the initial tax reduction is painfully obvious to all: years of trillion dollar deficits in the federal budget.

JEB! clearly has some new ideas. He figures that he can push 15 million people who currently pay taxes into the non-taxpayer category. That means that more people should be willing to vote Republican, perhaps enough of them to make him the President.

JEB! thinks he can also cut the deduction that lets hedge fund managers treat their incomes as capital gains. But wait a minute. How is he going to get that one through the all-Republican congress?  which has sworn never to raise taxes, ANY taxes? Answer: He cannot. So add $6 billion annually to the amount that will have to be cut from other programs to pay the hedge fund managers, or $60 billion over the next ten years.

There's another big hole dug in the treasury by JEB!'s budget. It's a switch from taxing multinational companies for their world-wide income to taxing them only for their income in the US. As you might imagine, the big corporations are all in favor of this change. But economists estimate it will cost the US Treasury $13 billion a year in lost taxes, or $130 billion over the next 10 years.

Another tax reduction JEB! proposes is to cap all deductions at 2% of a tax filers income. This proposal also runs afoul of the Republican promise not to raise taxes because, for those guys, fewer deductions means higher taxes and thus a tax increase.

This whole tax plan is a lie, like most Republican plans. Even if all the provisions were passed, the government would still lose $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That means the Republican Congress will be looking to cut $150 billion from the federal budget every year--under a best case scenario. Under a more reasonable scenario, where the economy grows at 2% instead of the 4% JEB! is praying for, the government would lose $3.4 trillion over 10 years, or $340 billion a year. Add to this the cost of failing to raise taxes on hedge fund managers ($60 billion) and the underestimate of the cost of territorial corporate taxation ($130 billion), and the total amount the Republicans will have to cut from the federal budget every year will be...$360 billion.

That $360 billion will be coming out of our social security, Medicare, and Affordable Health Care payments. If you like the idea of getting less for medical care and social security, by all means vote for JEB! and the Republicans. If you think the wealthy and the corporate elite already have a big enough slice of the national pie, vote for the Democrats. Then, at least, you will have a chance to stop losing ground to the wealthy!

JEB! fortune built on bribes and payoffs--all legal, of course!

It's all legal because We, the 99 percent, have not yet caught on to how politicians have been robbing us blind. Instead, due to misdirection by conservative front groups, we focus on their salaries. Politicians don't get wealthy from drawing salaries while in office. Geb!'s salary as governor of Florida was never higher than $130,000. While that may seem like a hulluva lot to the 99%, it's just chickenfeed to one-percenters like the Bush family.

When Jeb! was the Governor of Florida, his net worth was $1.3 million. A lot to you and me but not to Jeb!'s family. In 2016,9 years after leaving office, Jeb!'s wealth is estimated at $10 million. The year that he left office, 2007, he earned $27 million. What could that money be but payoffs for favors he had done while in office? No, please, tell me what else it could be. Right now I'm going by the Sherlock Holmes rule:

When you have exhausted all the possibilities, whatever is left, no matter how implausible, must be the truth.

During his tenure in office, Jeb! funneled more than $1.3 billion to international brokerage houses in return receiving more than $5 million in campaign contributions for his brother and other Republicans:

Blackstone Group	$99,000.00	$150,000,000.00
Carlyle Group	$69,000.00	$275,000,000.00
Deutsche Bank	$200,000.00	$45,000,000.00
Freeman Spogli	$743,000.00	$50,000,000.00
Goldman Sachs	$1,500,000.00	$150,000,000.00
Hicks Muse	$189,000.00	$25,000,000.00
JPMorgan Chase	$64,000.00	$100,000,000.00
Lehman Brothers	$499,000.00	$175,000,000.00
Morgan Stanley	$1,100,000.00	$150,000,000.00
Prudential Financial	$406,000.00	$100,000,000.00
UBS	$147,000.00	$100,000,000.00
Totals	$5,016,000.00	$1,320,000,000.00

Source: International Business Times.

In the case of Lehman Brothers, the investment company that nearly tanked the entire US economy in 2008, it's not at all implausible that Jeb! received a payoff. During his term as Governor, Jeb! funneled $500,000 in campaign donations from Lehman Brothers employees into various Republican campaigns. In return, Jeb! took $175 million from the state of Florida's workers' pension funds and handed it to Lehman Brothers to invest (as they jokingly called it). After Jeb! left office,  Lehman Brothers hired him at a salary of $1.7 million. Sounds like a payoff to me.

Bush's appointees in Florida kept on giving money to Lehman Brothers for questionable purchases, including over $1.3 billion "invested" in mortgage derivatives. By 2008, that money had vanished as Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy and it turned out that all those mortgage derivatives were worthless. But Lehman Brothers brokers got their commissions and didn't have to stand trial for misrepresenting the value of their "investments".

So Jeb! and his pals transferred $1.3 billion from Florida State Employees pension funds to Lehman Brothers. Not just a bad investment, that money was gone. While Jeb! was working for Lehman.

What has this got to do with you? Check this out. In an interview with the Washington Post, Jeb! claimed he would propose that politicians would have to wait 6 years before going to work for lobbyists. Fascinating proposal, since Jeb! himself didn't wait 6 months after leaving office to get paid off by Lehman Brothers.

It's definitely a case of "do as I say, not as I do".

If Jeb! is elected president, he will no doubt try to do the same thing with the Social Security accounts, currently worth $2.6 trillion. If international brokers paid $5 million to get their hands on $1.3 trillion in Florida Employees' retirement accounts, how much will they pay to get Social Security?

Republicans will tell you that retirement funds can earn more if they are invested in Wall Street. That's a bald-faced lie. Just ask the Florida public employees whose accounts were looted by Jeb!!











http://www.ibtimes.com/george-w-bush-fundraisers-whose-firms-received-florida-pension-deals-under-jeb-bush-1880624

Hell yes, "anchor baby" is offensive to Latinos!

Jeb Bush probably tanked his presidential hopes by copying Donald Trump's use of the term "anchor baby" to describe a child born to immigrants in the US. Trump went on to describe how he would kick all immigrants out of the country. All. Right away.

"What about the children? Do you think families should be separated?"

"Well, no, " Trump replied. "But they all have to leave."

Donald Trump raises cognitive dissonance to a higher level. That's where you say one thing while you believe the opposite to be true. Trump changes what he says depending on the mood he's in. Maybe this should be called "emotional dissonance".

Trump doesn't have any chance to become President, despite those polls, because his unfavorable ratings--these are people who just plain don't like him--are over 50%. You have to win at least 51% of the vote, generally speaking, if you want to win the election.

But Jeb! has been considered the establishment choice for several months now, despite low poll numbers--$100 million in attack ads should take care of that. One reason the Republican party likes him so much is because he appeals to Latinos. His wife is a Latino. That's why his use of offensive racial slurs is so surprising, and also so harmful to his candidacy. The Republican establishment likes him because they think he can win the key swing state of Florida, but if he keeps on offending Latinos, they could go looking for someone who doesn't.