Screw the Whales ...
Having just retired and with time on my idle hands, I want to give something back to society, to patch this fractious world up a wee bit.
Where to start? Save the whales? Bring back the woolly mammoths? Provide medical care for the working poor—and their children? Good causes all, but I decided to think outside the bleeding-heart liberal box, by starting my own bespoke charitable foundation.
The Society for the Welfare And Manumission of Plutocrats (SWAMP) will provide succor and largess to a hitherto overlooked minority group in our midst: the well to do, the wealthy, and the filthy rich (the three main gradients on the International Richer Scale). At one percent of the American population (give or take, but mostly take), these poor people (figuratively speaking) need our help.
Segregated and largely out of sight—typically they roam gated ghettoes and ultra exclusive private clubs—they are out of mind. But, believe me, they are suffering, bigly. I know; some of my best friends have more money than they know what to do with.
Hear me out: It’s not easy being totally flush. Don’t take my word for it; just ask any of the ultra rich, the One Tenth of One Percenters, assuming you can find one. You’d think they’d be happy as clams on medical marijuana. But, tragically, they are not.
No, my fellow stone-hearted conservatives, they are hopping mad from sunup to sunset, and beyond in some cases. They grind their teeth in their sleep something awful. Case in point, the leader of the free world: does he look happy to you? How many of us are waxing wroth at 3 a.m.?
What’s more, this moneyed minority has been persecuted since time immemorial. Okay, sure, bottom line-wise, they may be doing swimmingly on this vale of tears, but the next world is very much in doubt, according to no less a source than Jesus of Nazareth. He opined, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Is it any wonder that Peter Thiel—of PayPal fame and an avid Trump supporter—is spending millions on science to find a modern Fountain of Youth? If you can’t take it with you, why not figure out how to stay put. The word on the street is that he also is hoping to develop a smaller camel.
Just imagine a world in which Donald Trump lives forever.
But even eternal life would be no picnic for the all-set set. For example, they spend much of their days worrying about, of all things, money. The richly rich sometime pay a higher percentage of their income (that isn’t squirreled away in tax shelters, real estate scams, and Cayman Island bank accounts) to Uncle Sam than their secretaries or landscapers do.
This cannot stand, and the Republicans are bound and determined to set matters straight. They plan to lower federal income tax rates further still on fat cats—rates that are already, with the exception of a few years, as low as they have been since 1931.
Bravo, GOPP (Grand Old Plutocratic Party)! To paraphrase a famous beer slogan, “Less taxes, more jobs!” That’s the marketing ticket. So based on such bumper sticker logic, why merely lower taxes on Daddy and Mommy Warbucks?
My foundation, SWAMP, will lobby hard to have all taxes on the Upper Crust eliminated altogether—whether income, sales, capital gains, real estate, death, you name it. That should cheer up our obscenely wealthy brothers and sisters.
No taxes on Warren Buffet, Thiel, Trump et al means they won’t have to spend their days searching for loopholes, deploying SWAT teams of creative accountants and tax lawyers, and being audited 24/7.
Swamped with cash, oppressed plutocrats will be free to get back to the hard work of creating jobs for French champagne makers and purveyors of foie gras and Russian caviar.
Of course, before we know it, they’ll be wanting us to pay them for doing the heavy lifting of being so doggone rich.