To The Eagle:

Sarcastic declarations of diminished intellectual capacity aside, I am baffled by my fiscally astute neighbor, Howard Brawn's, disingenuous assertion that he "has no clue as to who is getting fleeced" by the Trump misadministration. Here are a few of those clues.

Let's consider how the middle class and poorer taxpayers will now be shorn. The Republican tax "reform" package is the most egregiously immoral, ravenously greedy, singularly heartless transfer of wealth from the middle and low income classes to the wealthy that this country has ever been politically coerced into.

The Non Partisan Tax Policy Center states that at its maturity 10 years hence, this rapacious Federal tax scam will see 80 percent of tax savings going to the top 1 percent of wealth holders even as the tax rates of those on the lower rungs of the income ladder will go up from 10 percent, to 12 percent!

Next clue on the "now being fleeced" list is every woman with a job in America. At his personal command, our Misogynist in Chief has crushed and flushed the Obama Administration's Wage Gap Initiative. The initiative's intent was to research, document and help remedy the gender pay gap that persists in this country. According the the Bureau of Labor Statistics women's wages are often up to 20 percent less than men's while performing the same tasks with the same experience levels in the same sectors. The National Women's Law Center sees this to be "Trump's surrender to corporate interests and an all out attack against equal pay."

I disagree somewhat. This is not Trump surrendering to Wall Street. This is him catering to it. It's just Business as usual, Big Business first and Business always here at Trump's America Inc. Trump's is the ultimate "pay to play" administration. What it has done and continues to do through deregulation and tax cuts is aggrandize the Corporate State, enriching the few at the expense of the many, particularly the dispossessed and distressed whom Trump claimed to champion. Our Deceiver in Chief loves the working folk as a mascot but despises us as a class.

Clueless, indeed. We've been had by a professional. Trump has spent his business career swindling people. Nothing has changed for him but the relocation of his office to the White House.

J.B. Bouchard

Cathlamet