December 6, 2016

It is not even Inauguration Day and the president-elect is making speeches about the jobs he claims to have saved at a Carrier plant in Indiana. Supposedly, this deal, which he says saved 1,100 jobs that the company planned to move to Mexico, was negotiated after Trump made a phone call to the head of parent company, United Technologies.

A few details were left out when this Rust Belt Cinderella story hit the presses. Like the fact that 300 of those jobs were clerical positions that weren’t going anywhere. And the fact that UT is still axing 1,300 jobs at this and another Indiana facility. Plus, a number of nearby plants are also about to close. The vice president-elect, current Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, isn’t lifting a finger to save those 14,000 jobs.

Indiana taxpayers are forking over $7 million in tax breaks — which could cost more losses in public sector jobs — to keep the Carrier factory open.

Now other companies will have their hand out. They will be whining that “Carrier got their present, I want mine.”  At a speech in the plant, the president-elect promised not only Carrier but all of the country’s bosses that under him they would get close to the lowest possible tax rate. The move would take them down from 35 percent to 15 percent. That loss of tax revenue will devastate already cash-starved urban and rural communities.

Trump added that regulations that impinge on profit-gouging would soon be a thing of the past. In other words, no more fair labor standards, no more Occupational Health and Safety Administration rules, no more civil rights laws, no more environmental protections. He promised tax breaks and a gutting of “nonsense” regulations. He’ll dangle carrots for the rich when they threaten to leave the country. That is the essence of Trump’s bogus jobs program.

Oh, there’s one more thing the president-elect neglected to mention. This crony capitalist owns stock in Carrier’s parent company, United Technologies,

The Carrier deal exposes him — to paraphrase Mark Twain — as a liar, damned liar and a politician. That’s besides being a fascist, racist, Islamophobic, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, xenophobic, anti-people-with-disabilities, union-hating pig, whose only concern is his self-interest and that of his class.

He is not our president! Capitalism is not our system! All out for the Counter Inaugural on January 20!