Report Card for Donald Trump

[Eric the Green]

(12-22-2016, 06:05 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: You laid out an opinion, the fact that you rarely distinguish between the two is why I no longer wish to debate with you.  It's quite alright, I've long since stopped believing that there's any real malice behind it.  I wish you the best of luck.

Again, puzzling. You have not debated with me before, at least as "some guy." I admit I'm not good at figuring out who people are behind monikers.

[SomeGuy]

Yes, Eric, I am not a new poster.  

And I am very reasonable.    

I'm also ill-tempered and argumentative, and I don't need to get angry at peoples on the internet while I am at work.

[Eric the Green]

(12-22-2016, 06:10 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Yes, Eric, I am not a new poster.  

And I am very reasonable.    

I'm also ill-tempered and argumentative, and I don't need to get angry at peoples on the internet while I am at work.

And I would be more careful to say that I told the truth, as best that I know it.

Are you Felix? If so, you do sound different. At least until now.

[SomeGuy]

No, I am not.

[Eric the Green]

Maybe that guy born in 95 who ignored me as "too partisan...."

[SomeGuy]

Nope, March 19th, 1986.


[It's not really a secret, but if you want to make it a guessing game I am happy to play along.]

[Eric the Green]

Sorry, my memory is not that good. I give up.

By the way, don't be fooled into thinking that I am any more close-minded or dogmatic than anyone else who posts on this forum. Very few people ever change their minds because of what they read here. Most stick with their opinions.

[Eric the Green]

Yes, Donald Trump is real good for working folks. Yeah, right.

[Eric the Green]

Report card for DrumpFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF! FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

[Eric the Green]

Some guy(s) can ignore me, and George Carlin, and Michael Moore; but they can't ignore the truth forever. If you voted for Trump, you got conned. Here's another voice saying this. Maybe this is why Trump has already banned the Post from covering him; real freedom-loving democrat, isn't he? And nothing makes me cringe more than pundits who say the people voted for Trump because they wanted "change" and were "against The Establishment." As if the "change" needed was only in the White House. Well, they'll get it. Change for much worse!

If you voted for Trump because he’s ‘anti-establishment,’ guess what: You got conned
By Paul Waldman November 11
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plu...5fc3f92e2e

During his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump repeatedly vowed to "drain the swamp" in D.C. and rid the federal government of political elites and lobbyists. But just days into his transition to president, Trump seems to be doing the opposite.

The greatest trick Donald Trump pulled was convincing voters he’d be “anti-establishment.”

Well, maybe not the greatest trick. But in a campaign full of cons, it has to rank close to the top. This was near the heart of Trump’s appeal to the disaffected and disempowered: Send me to Washington, and that “establishment” you’ve been hearing so much about? We’ll blow it up, send it packing, punch it right in the face, and when it’s over the government will finally be working for you again. And the people who voted for Trump bought it. After all, he’s no politician, right? He’s an outsider, a glass-breaker, a guy who can cut out the bull and get things done. Right?

But the idea that he would do this was based on a profound misunderstanding of what the establishment actually is, and who Donald Trump is.

President-elect Donald J. Trump, who campaigned against the corrupt power of special interests, is filling his transition team with some of the very sort of people who he has complained have too much clout in Washington: corporate consultants and lobbyists…

Mr. Trump was swept to power in large part by white working-class voters who responded to his vow to restore the voices of forgotten people, ones drowned out by big business and Wall Street. But in his transition to power, some of the most prominent voices will be those of advisers who come from the same industries for which they are being asked to help set the regulatory groundwork.

An organizational chart of Trump’s transition team shows it to be crawling with corporate lobbyists, representing such clients as Altria, Visa, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Verizon, HSBC, Pfizer, Dow Chemical, and Duke Energy. And K Street is positively salivating over all the new opportunities they’ll have to deliver goodies to their clients in the Trump era. Who could possibly have predicted such a thing?

The answer is, anyone who was paying attention. Look at the people Trump is considering for his Cabinet, and you won’t find any outside-the-box thinkers burning to work for the little guy. It’s a collection of Republican politicians and corporate plutocrats — not much different from who you’d find in any Republican administration.

And it isn’t just personnel. What are the priorities Trump and the Republican Congress will be pursuing right out of the gate? There’s the repeal of the Affordable Care Act, of course. “Take that, establishment!”, 20 million people can say when they lose their health coverage. Next on the list is that eternal Republican priority, cutting taxes. If you’re waiting for your fat rebate from the government once the establishment has been sent packing, you’re in for a shock. It won’t actually be Trump’s plan precisely that will pass Congress and he’ll sign, it will be some combination of what he wanted and what congressional Republicans want. But the two share a driving principle in common, and you may want to sit down while I tell you that helping regular folks is most definitely not it.

No, their commitment is to be of service to that most oppressed and forgotten group of Americans, the wealthy. Trump’s tax plan would give 47 percent of its benefits to the richest one percent of taxpayers. Paul Ryan’s tax plan is even purer — it gives 76 percent of its cuts to the richest one percent in its first year, and by 2025 would feed 99.6 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent.

Once that’s accomplished, Trump and the Republicans plan to either gut or completely repeal the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, the greatest wish of Wall Street bankers. Can you feel the anti-establishment wind blowing?

So what’s going on here? Most plainly, the voters thinking that Trump would vanquish the establishment were just marks for a con, like those who lost their life savings at Trump University. But it was made possible by the vagueness of the idea of the “establishment” — and some related ideas — and the way people could pour all their dissatisfaction into it and elect they guy promising to destroy it when he had no intention of doing anything of the sort.

You see, in Washington we think of the establishment as something specific to this city: the people who hold certain kinds of institutional positions and certain kinds of ideas about what should be done. We tend to think that, say, internal arguments between factions of the Republican Party represent a genuine threat to the establishment.

But for most voters it’s much bigger than that, and this is what Donald Trump recognized. By now we should understand that while Trump is an ignorant buffoon in some ways and an outright moron in others, he’s also a savant of hatred and resentment. He not only identifies the ugliest feelings that portions of the electorate have — that’s the easy part, and all of his primary opponents knew equally well what those feelings were — he finds just the right way to reach in and goose them. And he grasped that people were ready to sign on with an attack on all sectors of established power, in Washington or anywhere else.

That attack was politically potent because to those who heard it, it was about much more than politics. They didn’t really care whether the House Majority Whip is one guy or a different guy. What Trump tapped into was their sense of powerlessness, that unseen forces are pulling the strings and manipulating “the system” for their own benefit. That “system” encompasses everything from politics to the economy to their local schools to culture. The system made that factory leave town. The system lets immigrants come in and speak a language other than English. Everywhere you look you’re being held down by the system.

So when Trump complained that anything that didn’t go his way meant the system was “rigged” against him, they nodded in agreement and said, “Yep, it’s rigged against me, too.” And of course, the horror of the establishment (both Democratic and Republican) at Trump only reinforced the belief that once he was elected he’d change everything.

Now to be clear, the fact that in some ways — hiring lobbyists, cutting taxes for the wealthy, gutting regulations — Trump is going to be little different from any other Republican president doesn’t mean that he isn’t uniquely dangerous. He’s reckless, impulsive, vindictive, hateful, and authoritarian, and his presidency is going to be somewhere between disastrous and cataclysmic, likely in ways we can’t even imagine yet.

But one thing it will not be is a threat to the establishment, or the system, or whatever you want to call it. The wealthy and powerful will have more wealth and power when he’s done, not less. There’s a lot that Trump will upend, but if you’re a little guy who thinks Trump was going to upend things on your behalf or in order to serve your interests, guess what: you got suckered.

[Eric the Green]

Trump is the destroyer of education. Our new "education" secretary:



As George Carlin says, the oligarchs who rule us don't want an educated public. It's not in their interests. That's why their man, Trump, wants to shut it down.
https://youtu.be/rsL6mKxtOlQ

[Warren Dew]

(12-22-2016, 02:43 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(12-21-2016, 07:54 AM)Odin Wrote: I was just reading yesterday that the Smoot-Hartley tariff cut US exports by 40% right when the US economy was going into the ditch. We are due for another recession right now, if Trump wants to own-goal the US economy by starting a trade war with China he's going to be as reviled as Hoover.

I'm a bit of a "protectionist" myself, but for me "protectionism" means negotiating fairer trade agreements rather than the hamfisted nationalist idiocy Trump is promoting that is about as stupid as the Smoot-Hartley tariff.

Tariffs are established to protect American based industries/businesses and the jobs associated with them. What happens to locally based American business that can't compete within the American market or industry that's flooded by cheap foreign competitors that manufacture cheaper goods? The business shuts down and never comes back again like what happened in the small town that my parents grew up in. The exports were down because American industries/business who are unable to compete here aren't going to be able to compete else where.

What we saw in the 1970s was that without the spur of international competition, US industries became inefficient and their products dropped in quality while increasing in price.  That's how the Japanese got a foothold in our auto market, of which they own a substantial fraction now.  In the medium to long run, you need competition to maintain your edge.

[Ragnarök_62]

(12-22-2016, 11:13 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: <snip>

What we saw in the 1970s was that without the spur of international competition, US industries became inefficient and their products dropped in quality while increasing in price.  That's how the Japanese got a foothold in our auto market, of which they own a substantial fraction now.  In the medium to long run, you need competition to maintain your edge.

Trump's border tax won't affect Japanese auto makers or any other foreign entity, with the proviso they site the factories here.  Japanese auto makers have already done this, so it's just as easy for Foxconn to  make their Ishits here. The fact is, since pretty much everyone other country has a VAT, then I see no reason what so ever to keep US workers disadvantaged by the established global trade rules as they currently exist.  I'd also use the proceeds of border tax/VAT to replace the payroll taxes. Now that would enhance the competitive advantage of work done in the US even more!   And, I have an even more awesome tax idea.  Let's tax imported oil to cover the externalities of our stupid wars of choice in the Middle East. The tax needs to be such that it covers the entire costs of bases/ammo/soldier pay/ etc.  I bet if folks had to pay straight up and thus knew the true costs, those wars would end, post haste.


Peace out and lick the toads as they march by.

[Ragnarök_62]

(12-22-2016, 07:11 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Yes, Donald Trump is real good for working folks. Yeah, right.

Yes, I agree entirely.  Putz-ner is an idiot and a joke. "Stature and sense of accomplishment"  are never, ever to be had being an assistant manager of some fast foodie joint. That sort of gig is one straight from hell.

Here's a tip for Putz-ner from my old home town, Houston.

http://smallbusiness.chron.com/disadvant...34814.html

[Warren Dew]

(12-19-2016, 12:33 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-18-2016, 04:54 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(12-17-2016, 01:39 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(12-16-2016, 11:27 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: He also argues that it worked well when it was used.  Do you agree with that?  If not, why are you bothering to bring him up?

Short and sandals work well in the summer when it is hot outside.  Unless you live in the Southern hemisphere (hi, Tara Marie!), they are completely inappropriate now.  Same with tax cuts; perhaps they were needed back in 1980 (during the late Awakening, when it was our saecular summer) but now in our saecular winter, we need other tools.

Certainly the situation now is different; in particular, as Bartlett points out, the situation Reagan was facing was inflationary, and the current situation is not.  Thus he is correct to critique Rubio's strategy of merely duplicating the deflationary supply side stimulus of the 1980s.

My proposal goes well beyond that, however.  For example, to address the wage disparities that have resulted from a supply side easy immigration policy for the past three decades, we need to clamp down on immigration and illegal immigrants.  That will be quite inflationary since it will increase wages, especially at the lower end of the scale.

It will also dampen growth, since it will restrict the labor supply.  To counteract the negative effects on growth, we will need some combination of monetary stimulus and fiscal stimulus.  Since both  the basic wage leveling policies and the monetary stimulus will be inflationary, we will need the fiscal stimulus to be supply side stimulus:  the deflationary effect of supply side stimulus will help counteract the inflationary effect of the immigration policies and monetary stimulus.

I wear a heavy coat and boots in the winter, but that doesn't mean I quit wearing my shirt and pants underneath.

This seems to be an excessively complicated way to achieve your goals.  Three actions can provide the intended results without the need for outside actors to take actions they may elect not to take.  First, raise the minimum wage.  $15 nationally, with a nod to more in high-wage areas, will move low wage earners to actual living wages.  Second, raise taxes on high incomes, and, for heavens sake, eliminate the special benefits that accrue to unearned income and large inheritances.  Third, Start an infrastructure building program that includes old (roads, bridges and the like) and new (smart grid, broadband everywhere, 5G wireless) projects that are truly investments in the economy. 

The rest will take care of itself.  As inflation kicks in, interest rates can be raised.  I'm no fan of the public purse being deprecated to private profits when "crowding out" occurs.  Right now, the public sphere needs far more attention.

My proposal is no more complicated than your proposal:  each has three parts.  I just explained how mine would work in more detail.

That, of course, is because your proposal would not actually work.  Your massive increase in minimum wage, for example, far from helping low wage earners, would simply throw many of them out of work entirely.  Seattle is already seeing negative effects on the job market from the first phase in step of their minimum wage increase to $15, and they've only gone to $10 so far.  By the time they reach $15, half of those jobs will be gone entirely.

[Ragnarök_62]

(12-22-2016, 06:23 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: Nope, March 19th, 1986.


[It's not really a secret, but if you want to make it a guessing game I am happy to play along.]

Sounds like fun.  Cynic Hero?   Besides March 19 is under Pisces , perhaps cusped with Aries.

[SomeGuy]

Wait, you saw that I am NOT looking for WWIII and you thought CynicHero?  Dumb!

[Ragnarök_62]

SomeGuy Wrote:Wait, you saw that I am NOT looking for WWIII and you thought CynicHero?  Dumb!

+

SomeGuy Wrote:And I am very reasonable.    

I'm also ill-tempered and argumentative, and I don't need to get angry at peoples on the internet while I am at work.

Well... I was keying off of the stuff directly above.  So, call me stumped.

[Eric the Green]

(12-23-2016, 10:34 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Wait, you saw that I am NOT looking for WWIII and you thought CynicHero?  Dumb!

I remember now; Jordan Goodspeed.

You did seem more reasonable and thoughful than I remember, as if you actually thought Trump could do some constructive things. Most Trump voters don't want that. Of course, I think you'll be disappointed if you do.

[Eric the Green]

Studies that I have heard of say that higher minimum wages increase jobs, because when people are paid better, they buy more and thus create jobs for the businesses.