Once A Stiff

I used to see Trump at the fights at his Taj Mahal in Atlantic City, one of the immortal monuments to bad taste in the history of bad taste.

He would come in surrounded by a bunch of guys who didn’t look like they were used to wearing suits. I would meander over and hang near him to see what this dude was all about, and what I saw was totally weird hair and an attention span of maybe 30 seconds.

This was when he was being vilified by small businesses all over South Jersey and the Jersey Shore for stiffing everyone in sight during his ego-ridden blitz of Atlantic City. He hated paying any bills and put a lot of people out of business when they could no longer fight his mad dog lawyers in trying to get their legitimate bills paid by this asshole.

Steve Wynn made a brief foray into Atlantic City, but when he saw that this was a town where Donald Trump could be a big player, he got the hell out and went to Las Vegas. None of Trump’s AC casinos would have made it in on the Strip in Vegas and weren’t even in the same league as the neighborhood casinos in Las Vegas.  

So when last Thursday, Trump announced that he was freezing pay raises for Federal employees due in January, it was no big surprise. Donald Trump in his secret slimy heart of hearts has no respect for what used to be called the working class; to him they are just the suckers and chumps he can con into believing his delusional promises and plans.

The 2.1 percent raise for Federal employees would cost about $25 billion and Trump justified the freeze by referring to Title 5 of the U.S. Code of Laws, which okays such a move for “national emergencies or serious economic conditions” that would affect “the general welfare.”

Hey, Trump, I thought your economy was cooking right along, setting records every day? So what’s with the “serious economic conditions”?

This is the same guy who is going to build a wall for countless billions of dollars and wanted to have a big military parade for more bucks and, on top of that, a Space Force that might run into trillions.

This is the same guy whose 2017 military budget was $590 billion and whose proposed defense budget for FYI 2019 is proposed at $681.1 billion.

The thing is that his pals are making money hand over fist with the military and other non-worker budgets. After his bogus tax bill was passed, Trump went around the dining room at Mar A Lago telling his moneyed cronies, “I just made you guys a lot richer.”

Not so much for the Federal working stiffs who actually keep what is left of this government functioning. 

Trump defended this wage freeze like this: “These alternate pay plan decisions will not materially affect our ability to attract and maintain a well-qualified Federal workforce.”

Yeah, sure, Don. Then how come no decent criminal lawyer will work for you no matter how much you offer them, budget constraints be hanged?

Can’t wait for the mid-terms with the vets he offended with his McCain flag fiasco and the stiffed Federal workers step into the voting booth.