Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[nige1]

To me the most distressing and nauseating conclusion that comes out of the Russia-Trump investigation, the investigation of whether or not the Trump campaign worked in concert with Russian intelligence to win the election, is that regardless of whether or not any collusion is ever found or proved, no one - neither supporter nor hater of Trump - can deny that he is so lacking in moral character as to be capable of having done such a thing for no other reason other than self-aggrandizement. And that, in itself, is a tragedy.

The US interferes in foreign elections. The US has successfully funded rebellion against many democracies.

• If Trump tried to establish a constructive dialogue with Russia it wasn't treason. He was simply making a belated but commendable bid for world-peace.
• Countries should not spy on each other. But if Russia hacked emails, showing that the democratic process was being undermined, it was doing the US electorate a favour.

Why is it so important for us to foster paranoia and bolster blatant 1984-type propaganda?

[Winstonm]

The US interferes in foreign elections. The US has successfully funded rebellion against many democracies.

• If Trump tried to establish a constructive dialogue with Russia it wasn't treason. He was simply making a belated but commendable bid for world-peace.
• Countries should not spy on each other. But if Russia hacked emails, showing that the democratic process was being undermined, it was doing the US electorate a favour.

Why is it so important for us to foster paranoia and prop up blatant 1984-type propaganda?

 

Your spin trail leaves a stink in the air. Putting self-interest above good of country is kleptocratic behavior and it is a tragedy the US elected Donald Trump.

 

Edit: There is nothing Orwellian or conspiratorial about pointing out that it is a tragedy that the U.S. elected president a totally incompetent, self-serving blowhard.

[jogs]

And Republican voters are convinced of many things that just aren't true (like the stock market went down under Obama, or he raised taxes, or he's a muslim, etc).

The left loves to mischaracterize the positions of the opposition.

The Obama administration claims all benefited during his 8 years. The truth is easy money from the FED helps the wealthy. The middle 60% was barely standing in place. The Hollywood left prospered obscenely well.

Maybe Obama wasn't a Muslim. He seems to have studied from a Muslim textbook. Obama proclaimed the Christians the villains of the Crusades.

[jogs]

Obama and the democrats play checkers.

 

Putin and Xi Jinping plays chess.

Maybe Xi Jinping plays chinese chess.

Notice a river dividing the board.

 

Trump play simultaneous chess. If there is a stalemate on one board, Trump moves on to the next board.

 

Obama kept appeasing the mini bullies. Neville Chamberlain appeased Hitler. And Hitler always asked for more. Bullies only understand strength and power. Trump will be like Winston Churchill.

[Al_U_Card]

 

Edit: There is nothing Orwellian or conspiratorial about pointing out that it is a tragedy that the U.S. elected president a totally incompetent, self-serving blowhard.

As if it made a difference.... the Russian influence of Mogilevich and all of the "Intelligence" agencies using Trump Towers as a staging ground. The truth would reveal their complicity in crimes that go beyond the pale. Whitey Bulger for president! Just another compliant crook....why not?

[nige1]

Your spin trail leaves a stink in the air.

Putting self-interest above good of country is kleptocratic behavior and it is a tragedy the US elected Donald Trump.

For a short while, Trump patriotically resisted the weapons lobby. His capitulation is dire tragedy.

[Cyberyeti]

Maybe Obama wasn't a Muslim. He seems to have studied from a Muslim textbook. Obama proclaimed the Christians the villains of the Crusades.

 

Most objective people consider the Christians (or more precisely the Catholic church) the villains of the crusades.

 

It wasn't helped by comments like the pope of the time saying effectively that any plunder taken could be kept as an encouragement for the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars. Not just Muslims were on the wrong end of the crusades.

[cherdano]

For a short while, Trump patriotically resisted the weapons lobby.

When was that? When he lied about having opposed the Iraq war?

[nige1]

When was that? When he lied about having opposed the Iraq war?

No. Cherdano, I hope you disapprove of Trump's missile-attack on the Syrian air-base.

[cherdano]

No. Cherdano, I hope you disapprove of Trump's missile-attack on the Syrian air-base.

I do disapprove - seems like a waste of 50 million dollars if it doesn't even make the airport unusable for a day, and I don't understand the strategic objectives the strikes are aiming to achieve. To be fair to Trump, it is a call many other potential president's would have made also.

 

But when did Trump seem resistant to calls for military action? To me, he always seemed to have a fetishism for show of military strength, and he always admired strong-armed dictators for being strong-armed dictators.

[Al_U_Card]

No. Cherdano, I hope you disapprove of Trump's missile-attack on the Syrian air-base.

A logical, if tragic, consequence of false-flag ops. Even the WMD scam was a variant. Operation Gladio continues, just with different antagonists but the same benefactors.

[nige1]

I do disapprove - seems like a waste of 50 million dollars if it doesn't even make the airport unusable for a day, and I don't understand the strategic objectives the strikes are aiming to achieve. To be fair to Trump, it is a call many other potential president's would have made also.

But when did Trump seem resistant to calls for military action? To me, he always seemed to have a fetishism for show of military strength, and he always admired strong-armed dictators for being strong-armed dictators.

I'm not a Trump-fan but, until recently, he seemed less gung-ho than Hilary.

[jogs]

Individual taxes. The 1040 form.

 

There is no way no how any lobbyist group will agree to discontinue their deduction. It is nearly pointless to try.

 

My solution: Leave all deductions intact. Only limit the total deductions to $500,000 per year. Filers will be allowed to carry forward all deductions over $500,000. This rule would only affect those who make millions per year, only they would pay more in taxes.

[jogs]

But when did Trump seem resistant to calls for military action? To me, he always seemed to have a fetishism for show of military strength, and he always admired strong-armed dictators for being strong-armed dictators.

Trump wants to work with Putin and Xi. Trump is not interested in working with any of the small time strong-armed dictators.

[Winstonm]

Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are in government. It is time to focus on those who are and what they are and are not doing.

[y66]

Guest post from Paul Krugman:

 

President Trump is still promising to bring back coal jobs. But the underlying reasons for coal employment’s decline — automation, falling electricity demand, cheap natural gas, technological progress in wind and solar — won’t go away.

 

Meanwhile, last week the Treasury Department officially (and correctly) declined to name China as a currency manipulator, making nonsense of everything Mr. Trump has said about reviving manufacturing.

 

So will the Trump administration ever do anything substantive to bring back mining and manufacturing jobs? Probably not.

 

But let me ask a different question: Why does public discussion of job loss focus so intensely on mining and manufacturing, while virtually ignoring the big declines in some service sectors?

 

Over the weekend The Times Magazine published a photographic essay on the decline of traditional retailers in the face of internet competition. The pictures, contrasting “zombie malls” largely emptied of tenants with giant warehouses holding inventory for online sellers, were striking. The economic reality is pretty striking too.

 

Consider what has happened to department stores. Even as Mr. Trump was boasting about saving a few hundred jobs in manufacturing here and there, Macy’s announced plans to close 68 stores and lay off 10,000 workers. Sears, another iconic institution, has expressed “substantial doubt” about its ability to stay in business.

 

Overall, department stores employ a third fewer people now than they did in 2001. That’s half a million traditional jobs gone — about eighteen times as many jobs as were lost in coal mining over the same period.

 

And retailing isn’t the only service industry that has been hit hard by changing technology. Another prime example is newspaper publishing, where employment has declined by 270,000, almost two-thirds of the work force, since 2000.

 

So why aren’t promises to save service jobs as much a staple of political posturing as promises to save mining and manufacturing jobs?

 

One answer might be that mines and factories sometimes act as anchors of local economies, so that their closing can devastate a community in a way shutting a retail outlet won’t. And there’s something to that argument.

 

But it’s not the whole truth. Closing a factory is just one way to undermine a local community. Competition from superstores and shopping malls also devastated many small-city downtowns; now many small-town malls are failing too. And we shouldn’t minimize the extent to which the long decline of small newspapers has eroded the sense of local identity.

 

A different, less creditable reason mining and manufacturing have become political footballs, while services haven’t, involves the need for villains. Demagogues can tell coal miners that liberals took away their jobs with environmental regulations. They can tell industrial workers that their jobs were taken away by nasty foreigners. And they can promise to bring the jobs back by making America polluted again, by getting tough on trade, and so on. These are false promises, but they play well with some audiences.

 

By contrast, it’s really hard to blame either liberals or foreigners for, say, the decline of Sears. (The chain’s asset-stripping, Ayn Rand-loving owner is another story, but one that probably doesn’t resonate in the heartland.)

 

Finally, it’s hard to escape the sense that manufacturing and especially mining get special consideration because, as Slate’s Jamelle Bouie points out, their workers are a lot more likely to be male and significantly whiter than the work force as a whole.

 

Anyway, whatever the reasons that political narratives tend to privilege some jobs and some industries over others, it’s a tendency we should fight. Laid-off retail workers and local reporters are just as much victims of economic change as laid-off coal miners.

 

But, you ask, what can we do to stop service-sector job cuts? Not much — but that’s also true for mining and manufacturing, as working-class Trump voters will soon learn. In an ever-changing economy, jobs are always being lost: 75,000 Americans are fired or laid off every working day. And sometimes whole sectors go away as tastes or technology change.

 

While we can’t stop job losses from happening, however, we can limit the human damage when they do happen. We can guarantee health care and adequate retirement income for all. We can provide aid to the newly unemployed. And we can act to keep the overall economy strong — which means doing things like investing in infrastructure and education, not cutting taxes on rich people and hoping the benefits trickle down.

 

I don’t want to sound unsympathetic to miners and industrial workers. Yes, their jobs matter. But all jobs matter. And while we can’t ensure that any particular job endures, we can and should ensure that a decent life endures even when a job doesn’t.

[barmar]

Guest post from Paul Krugman:

While we can’t stop job losses from happening, however, we can limit the human damage when they do happen. We can guarantee health care and adequate retirement income for all. We can provide aid to the newly unemployed. And we can act to keep the overall economy strong — which means doing things like investing in infrastructure and education, not cutting taxes on rich people and hoping the benefits trickle down.

The first two will never happen, since these solutions are completely counter to basic Republican ideology of reducing government handouts.

 

And the last is unlikely because Republican legislators are in bed with all the rich people who fund their campaigns. I suspect many of them know in their hearts that trickle-down economics doesn't really work, but they maintain the fiction to appease their donors.

[Winstonm]

Guest post from Paul Krugman:

 

This is why I listen to what Krugman has to say. He can be arrogant, at times, but at his best he is fierce.

[Al_U_Card]

This is why I listen to what Krugman has to say. He can be arrogant, at times, but at his best he is fierce.

His start of falling electricity demand (wha?) and improving renewables (subsidies/sky-rocketing electricity prices) show how a false premise can lead an argument astray. Agenda does that.

[akwoo]

It occurs to me that Trump probably would like it if North Korea nuked South Korea. Even better if they nuked Japan and China too. Those countries take the damage, removing competition to American industries, and North Korea gets the blame, besides getting wiped out in the process.

 

North Korea might have nothing to lose (because they have nothing), but neither, from Trump's POV, does the US (since North Korea is too far away to actually strike places Trump cares about).

 

Imaginary Twitter exchange:

 

NorthKorea: We will nuke Hawaii.

 

Trump: Who cares? Hawaii didn't vote for me anyway.

[Winstonm]

I am shocked, shocked to find out that racism may have propelled Trump to victory.

Finally, the statistical tool of regression can tease apart which had more influence on the 2016 vote: authoritarianism or symbolic racism, after controlling for education, race, ideology, and age. Moving from the 50th to the 75th percentile in the authoritarian scale made someone about 3 percent more likely to vote for Trump. The same jump on the SRS scale made someone 20 percent more likely to vote for Trump.

 

Racial attitudes made a bigger difference in electing Trump than authoritarianism.

[y66]

From Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove by Andrew Ross Sorkin:

 

Guess what Steven A. Ballmer has been up to for the last several years. (No, not just cheering for the basketball team he owns, the Los Angeles Clippers.) It’s a novel project, and he plans to take the wrapping off it Tuesday.

 

But first the back story, which is a valuable prelude to a description of the project itself.

 

When Mr. Ballmer retired as chief executive of Microsoft in 2014, he was only 57 and quickly realized “I don’t, quote, ‘have anything to do.’”

 

As he looked for a new endeavor — before he decided to buy the Clippers — his wife, Connie, encouraged him to help with some of her philanthropic efforts, an idea he initially rejected.

 

“But come on, doesn’t the government take care of the poor, the sick, the old?” Mr. Ballmer recalled telling her. After all, he pointed out, he happily paid a lot of taxes, and he figured that all that tax money should create a sufficient social safety net.

 

Her answer: “A, it won’t, because there are things government doesn’t get to, and B, you’re missing it.”

 

Mr. Ballmer replied, “No, I’m not.”

 

That conversation led Mr. Ballmer to pursue what may be one of the most ambitious private projects undertaken to answer a question that has long vexed the public and politicians alike. He sought to “figure out what the government really does with the money,” Mr. Ballmer said. “What really happens?”

 

On Tuesday, Mr. Ballmer plans to make public a database and a report that he and a small army of economists, professors and other professionals have been assembling as part of a stealth start-up over the last three years called USAFacts. The database is perhaps the first nonpartisan effort to create a fully integrated look at revenue and spending across federal, state and local governments.

To be continued

[PassedOut]

From Steve Ballmer Serves Up a Fascinating Data Trove by Andrew Ross Sorkin:

 

 

To be continued

That will be an excellent public service! It won't stop folks from giving their spin on the numbers, but the actual numbers will be available for those interested.

[barmar]

It occurs to me that Trump probably would like it if North Korea nuked South Korea. Even better if they nuked Japan and China too. Those countries take the damage, removing competition to American industries, and North Korea gets the blame, besides getting wiped out in the process.

 

North Korea might have nothing to lose (because they have nothing), but neither, from Trump's POV, does the US (since North Korea is too far away to actually strike places Trump cares about).

 

Imaginary Twitter exchange:

 

NorthKorea: We will nuke Hawaii.

 

Trump: Who cares? Hawaii didn't vote for me anyway.

Trump has hotels in South Korea, Hawaii, and Manilla. So he might care.

[Winstonm]

Trump has hotels in South Korea, Hawaii, and Manilla. So he might care.

 

I don't think Trump has hotels. He sells his name.