Prosperity Already Flowing From Tax Cut! To Paul Ryan! From The Kochs!

O Supply Side Jesus: May the Donors be pleased with my humble offering. Amen

Even more prosperity is flowing from the Great Big Tax Cut For Rich Fuckwads of 2017! Not only are a bunch of businesses getting maximum publicity from one-time bonuses while quietly laying people off, it seems Republicans are seeing the bigpayoffscampaign donations they'd been expecting from the bill, too. The biggest example: Shortly after the bill was passed by the House, fat cat libertarian thug Charles Koch and his wife Elizabeth each donated $247,700.00 to "Team Ryan," a combined fund-raising committee run by Paul Ryan.

While they were at it, the fun couple also gave another $237,000 each to the National Republican Congressional Committee, the maximum allowable amount, spread across three NRCC accounts. Remember all the worries that if the tax cuts didn't pass, the big donors wouldn't come through for Republicans? As it happens, that donation to the NRCC was the very first by the Kochs in all of 2017, so it appears they looked upon the tax bill and saw it was good. Yea and verily, other big donors were well pleased, too: As the bill neared fruition and afterwards, another six donations of $100,000 or more were given unto "Team Ryan" by individual donors. To those much has been given, much will be expected, and that's not even counting dark money to other rightwing causes.

Now before you go spreading irresponsible gossip about Paul Ryan pocketing nearly half a million in Koch cash, keep in mind that "Team Ryan" actually raises funds for three separate entities: Ryan's own campaign fund, the NRCC, and Ryan's PAC, "Prosperity Action," which must bring a smile to the Kochs since its name is so similar to the Koch-funded "Americans For Prosperity" (the two groups are not actually linked -- except in ideology). So don't you go calling this a personal payoff to Paul Ryan -- it's simply a whole lot of free speech being shoveled his way.

As International Business Times points out, the Kochs and their pals ought to like their return on investment:

The Kochs are surely pleased with the final bill, passed on Dec. 22, which established big tax breaks, mostly for businesses and the wealthiest Americans, including a special deduction for oil and gas investors and other perks, like a modification to the estate tax, that will further enrich the Koch family. Experts have shown that the top 20 percent of Americans will reap 70 percent of the tax benefits, with the top 1 percent getting 34 percent of the benefits.

While the big payouts arrived once the bill was finally getting done, Koch-funded outfits also did their part to push for its passage, too. Americans For Prosperity funded ads and hosted advocacy events in 36 states to pressure Republican lawmakers to support tax "reform," and once the thing became law, the Koch brothers' network of political advocacy groups announced a big publicity campaign to convince Americans that giving huge tax advantages to the already wealthy is good for everyone, since the tax cuts suffered from abysmal polling:  

“Given that the tax reform bill was just finalized, there’s a lot of work to be done educating Americans about its benefits,” said James Davis, an executive vice president at Freedom Partners, the hub that coordinates Koch-backed political activities. “We will make a massive push to show how pro-growth policies can revitalize the economy and open the floodgates to new opportunity, innovation and prosperity.”

In other recent Prosperity News, following the big tax cut bill's passage, Bank of America will now start charging its low-income customers a $12/month fee for checking accounts; free checking will only be allowed for those with a balance above $1,500 or direct deposits of at least $250 a month. That's a nice incentive to stop being poor, damn it. Or to get thee to a credit union. And in other terrific economic news, after the big tax cut for corporations, Toys R Us will be closing a fifth of its stores -- 180 of them -- which of course will result in thousands of layoffs. As MSNBC's Chris Hayes suggested, it makes just as much sense to frame negative economic news in terms of the tax cut as it does for the White House to claim all good developments flow from the tax cuts. Cause and effect is such a pre-Trump concept.

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[ IBT / Snopes / Pro Publica / Time / US News ]