Letter: Both parties crony capitalists

With the election of Donald Trump, Republicans will continue carrying out their corporate coup. Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, Democrats, will covertly continue to cater to Wall Street.

Trump threatened to impose tariff taxes on companies that took jobs offshore (China, Mexico).

For hundreds of years, America imposed taxes on trading partners — from 1789 until the bipartisan North American Free Trade Agreement, which lifted most tariffs on goods.

Tariffs protected workers’ wages and manufacturers from less-developed economies. Import taxes make it less attractive for manufacturers to outsource jobs to other countries.

Predator corporations threaten workers with moving their jobs offshore. This ruthless action creates stagnated wages, benefits and bullied employees.

The painful truth is that our government leadership supports crony capitalism. The result is 47 percent of Americans (two-thirds of them workers) with incomes too low to pay federal income taxes.

Disgruntled taxpayers subsidize this ruthless action with food stamps, unemployment benefits and Medicaid. Corporate media propaganda paints subsidized workers as the takers.

Understand, tariffs fly in the face of Republicans who feed crony capitalism at taxpayers expense, and Democrats who are intertwined with lawless bankers of Wall Street. Of course, tariffs are judged unfavorably from the libertarian perspective.

When the “deplorables” realize they’ve been duped again, they may take to the streets in protest. Except they could be classified as economic terrorists and military-style police could deal with them. Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (detention under the law of war without trial) may legally be enforced. This would bring us closer to fascism.

This story was originally published January 3, 2017 at 11:31 AM with the headline "Letter: Both parties crony capitalists."