Pity the Poor Teens Trying to Sell People on the Monstrous Republican Tax Bill

Most people don’t like either version of the Republican tax plan, because both will accelerate the upward distribution of wealth and serve as a pretext to decimate our already inadequate and straining social insurance and welfare programs.

The fact that the bill will be catastrophic for all but the very wealthiest also means that the teens canvassing to promote top-down class war on behalf of the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity have a very hard job indeed.

A slice of life from The New York Times:

A dozen high school students working for Americans for Prosperity, the conservative political network funded by Charles G. and David H. Koch, fanned out across the Little Havana neighborhood one day last week to make the case that the Republican tax bill was something to get excited about.

“We believe it’s time to fix our broken tax code and let families keep more of what they earn,” Barbara D’Ambrosio, a sophomore, dutifully told an elderly woman who answered the door in her slippers. After she finished her script, Barbara glanced up from the iPad she was carrying and asked if the woman would kindly call her senators to urge them to support the tax bill, which was hours away from being approved by the Senate.

The woman stared at her silently for a moment. Then she nodded, politely but unconvincingly.

Barbara!

Starla Brown, a grassroots director for the Florida chapter of Americans for Prosperity, believes teens actually love to have no future. She was met with “resounding applause” when discussing tax reform with a group of students at Florida State University, she told the Times.

In exchange for having people politely close doors in their faces, these teens will receive credit toward their community service requirements for graduation. Then the tax plan they have been conscripted into promoting will stop them from deducting interest on their student loans and could end student debt forgiveness for any of them who go into public service.