Author, Doctor, Speaker, Joseph Bentivegna

January 8, 2018

      Many of my regular readers get a sadistic delight in returning to my previous articles, finding one of my wildly inaccurate predictions, and then cutting and pasting it in an e-mail to me. Now they will have even more fodder.

      The Steelers will win the Super Bowl. Both the Patriots and Steelers will make short work of their playoff opponents, making the AFC championship game the de facto Super Bowl. The Steelers are firing on all cylinders now with the Three B’s – Ben, Brown and Bell – healthy and primed. There will be some stressful moments though – such as when the referees on Belichick’s payroll call pass interference for looking cross-eyed at Gronkowski or when they call unnecessary roughness for hitting the whining Brady with a feather duster – but the Steelers will prevail. The quiche-eating winner of the NFC title game will be irrelevant.

      The Republicans will hold the House and pick up Senate seats. The liberal Patriot fans will have another reason to wash down their Prozac with Chardonnay in November. The Democrats have been salivating over their wins in Alabama and Virginia, but these occurred before the Republicans kept their campaign promises of cutting taxes and gutting Obamacare. The battle is now joined.

      The interminable Mueller investigation will continue unless President Trump has the sense to fire him. I am not sure what Mueller will come up with – obstruction of justice, money laundering, sexual harassment, having bad hair – but he will come up with something. Thus, the 2018 mid-terms will become a referendum on whether President Trump should be impeached. But with the economy booming, unemployment among minorities at record lows, ISIS destroyed and the Republican base satisfied, the Democrats will have a tough sell. As one of the millennials I play basketball with put it, “I don’t like Trump but I love seeing my 401K go up.” You liberal Patriot fans might want to renew your Prozac prescriptions and pick up a case of Marcassin Chardonnay. 2005 was a good year.

       The stock market will gain at least another 10%. While President Trump loves his populist rhetoric, the financial shots are being called by Goldman Sachs cronies – Treasurer Secretary Steven Mnuchin and chief economic advisor Gary Cohn, who are experts at keeping the rich rich. President Trump’s appointment of Yellen acolyte, Jerome Powell, as the head of the Federal Reserve indicates that the low interest rate policy will continue, thus making the stock market the only game in town. The bubble will burst someday – it always does – but not in 2018.

      The mullahs are going down. The proud Iranian people are tired of living under a corrupt theocracy and are now rebelling. These mullahs were propped up by the naïve President Obama’s deal, who gave them access to their $100 billion in return for basically nothing. Rather than improve the lot of the average Iranian, the mullahs are using this money to pursue their nuclear ambitions and fund foreign adventures. Inflation is rampant and unemployment among the youth is rife. The revolts will continue until a more secular government comes into power.

      North Korea will be brought under control. The advantage of having a bully like Donald Trump as president is that he can recognize a fellow bully, such as North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. President Trump understands that Kim Jong Un will only respond to a fist to his face, not make nice discussions with feckless Ivy League diplomats in horned-rimmed glasses. With the advice of Defense Secretary Mattis (Don’t you love having a Defense Secretary with the nickname of Mad Dog?), President Trump either will push the sanctions far enough that Kim Jong Un is neutered, or do a surgical military strike. Our defense establishment has concluded that allowing North Korea the ability to dust our cities is simply intolerable.

By Joseph Bentivegna

      Republicans have a unique opportunity to be the dominant party for the next generation by addressing a gnawing problem in American society – the ability of the super rich to manipulate the political process for their own greed. The media concentrate on the top 1%, those who make comfortable six-figure incomes. But these individuals are not the problem. It is the top 0.01%, a class of super wealthy gods – those with a net worth in the hundreds of millions or billions – who use their economic and political leverage to distort the market place.

      United States is becoming a Third World country – where the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and the middle class work like dogs to remain middle class. Health care is unaffordable, private sector pensions are sparse, and jobs that can support a family with one income are few and far between. One percent of the country now controls over 50% of the wealth. Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett now have a combined net worth greater than the lower 50% of the population. While CEO’s typically made 15 times the wage of their workers in 1960, it is not unusual now to see a CEO pulling down 400 times this wage today.

      One factor is the low tax rate on the super rich. What is needed is a tax of 90% on wages and capital gains over $5,000,000 annual income, except for the one time sale of a business. While this may seem extreme, this situation existed during the presidency of Republican Dwight Eisenhower – after adjusting for inflation – and the middle class thrived.

      The low tax rate on the super rich has encouraged them to pillage the country. Leveraged buyouts (using taxpayer-backed money) of viable companies enabled investment bankers to raid pensions, slash health benefits, reduce wages and move jobs overseas. While the middle class got obliterated by the Great Recession of 2008, our super rich laughed all the way to the bank as our political class did their bidding.

      Hedge funds and politically-connected investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and Citibank were bailed out while our children and grandchildren received the bill. Even worse, the Dodd-Frank bill insures that future bailouts will not need the consent of Congress. Meanwhile the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Janet Yellen, is artificially keeping interest rates low so that the super rich can speculate with impunity, creating asset bubbles in commodities and in the stock market. Senior citizens, who have saved their entire lives, cannot find a safe investment that yields 2% a year! Yet, American taxpayers bailed out Greece, Ireland and Portugal to the tune of billions. In fact, American banks and hedge funds bought worthless Greek bonds paying 22% knowing full well that our political class would give the taxpayer the bill.

      And nothing has changed with the supposedly-populist Trump presidency. While the media amuses the populace with the sexual peccadillos of our political class along with the Russian scandal du jour, few are aware that CVS is about to take over AETNA, or that Blue Cross is trying to merge with Cigna, creating health care monopolies that will enrich a few CEOs and Wall Street brokerage firms with billions while the average person is forced to pony up even more money for health care and medications. Avaricious monopolies such as Google and Facebook are not only making record profits, but squelching the free speech of social conservatives such as pro-lifers. President Trump’s treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, is now maneuvering to see that his former pals at Goldman Sachs are bailed out on their purchases of defaulting Venezuelan bonds.

      Elite athletes, who kneel during our National Anthem, become multimillionaires while billionaire owners of sport franchises, punt the cost of stadiums to the taxpayers. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is asking for $50,000,000 along with health care and a private jet for life! Jeffrey Immelt, the former CEO of General Electric, utterly destroyed the company. Yet while the shareholders got obliterated and workers get sacked, he walked away with hundreds of millions! Nice work in you can get it.

      Increasing taxes on the super rich will not significantly increase the coffers of the Government. But it will change behavior and reduce income inequality. Furthermore, it will help the Republicans politically. The tech magnates, the corporate chieftains, the Wall Street zillionaires, the media moguls, the overpaid news anchors, the elite athletes and the snooty amoral Hollywood stars are overwhelmingly Democrats. They are the reason that Hillary Clinton raised $1.2 billion, the most of any politician in recorded history. There is nothing to lose by irritating them. President Trump should betray his fellow billionaires, reassure his reelection, and increase taxes on the super rich.