Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[y66]

I haven't read the news lately. Does anyone know how infrastructure week went and how this part of our wonderful new journey into a bright and glorious future is going?

[jogs]

I haven't read the news lately. Does anyone know how infrastructure week went and how this part of our wonderful new journey into a bright and glorious future is going?

 

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/trump-caps-infrastructure-week-tossing-binders-ground-n770376

 

Trump wants to reduce the paperwork necessary for infrastructure projects.

[PassedOut]

Lots of folks can't understand why so many Trump supporters like fake news sources like infowars and the other alt-right sites, and take that as a sign of stupidity. Not so, most of the Trump supporters are quite aware that the news there is fake -- it's just the fun of seeing other people get upset: The Great Performance of Our Failing President

 

As a political historian who writes mainly about the Republican Party, Ive often puzzled over why far-right groups during the 1950s and 60s had such an appetite for obvious falsehoods. Robert Welch Jr., a founder of the John Birch Society, famously maintained that President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican, was a dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy. Other extremist groups charged that a committee of University of Chicago eggheads was rewriting the Constitution to deprive Americans of their rights to vote and hold property, and that the United Nations was training barefoot African cannibals in Georgia for an armed takeover of the United States. Did the people who read those made-up stories actually believe them?

 

In the 1960s, Republican Party officials and conservative leaders like William F. Buckley Jr. were able to marginalize the John Birch Society and related groups. Today, its the conservative establishment that has been marginalized by right-wing media and President Trumps populist movement. Birch-style fake news stories once circulated only among small audiences. Today, thanks to the internet, they reach millions of Americans who make up a big chunk of the Republican Partys base.

 

I have quite a few friends who are avid consumers of Trump-supporting alt-right news websites, but I have yet to find one who actually believes in the wilder fantasies they purvey. For example, no one I know thought there was any truth to the Pizzagate conspiracy theory propagated by Infowars.com (among others) that a Washington pizza parlor was the center of a child sex ring linked to members of the Democratic Party. As one Infowars reader I know from high school told me, To take Pizzagate seriously, youd have to be mentally disturbed which may well have been the case for the young man who came to the restaurant armed with an assault rifle to self investigate the false claims.

 

Many Trump supporters engage nonetheless in a willing suspension of disbelief when they partake of right-wing media. They enjoy the ridiculous exaggerations and outright lies for the outrage they provoke in Democrats, liberals, intellectuals and pompous commentators of all political stripes.

 

Populist conservatives also appreciate fake news for conveying what they see as underlying symbolic truths. Barack Obama is not actually a Muslim, but those who called him one were pointing toward what they saw as his cosmopolitanism, racial otherness and seeming discomfort with real America. Democratic officials do not actually run sex rings, but for fake-news readers they are part of the corrupt and all-powerful government that exploits helpless citizens for fun and profit. Climate change science is not actually a hoax concocted by China and the scientific community, but many see it as serving the interests of globalists from both parties who allowed the devastation of American manufacturing and the working class.

Yes. it's just trolling (for the most part). We can see the same thing here in the Water Cooler, in this thread and others.

B-)

[RedSpawn]

The finger of blame here points squarely to Ronald Reagan and the elimination of the Fairness Doctrine, along with relaxation of antitrust laws.

 

Agreed. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC), The Federal Trade Commission, and the Anti-trust Division of the Department of Justice have been asleep at the wheel for way-too-long.

 

http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1880786,00.html ===> In 1987, the FCC panel repealed the Fairness Doctrine altogether with a 4-0 vote. (The language implementing it was NOT removed, however).

http://www.politico.com/story/2011/08/fcc-finally-kills-off-fairness-doctrine-061851 ===> In 2011, the FCC removed any and all language of the Fairness Doctrine and effectively erased it from existence. Really? Why?

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/uncategorized/are-we-better-off-without-the-fairness-doctrine/ ===> Relates to quote below.

 

The Fairness Doctrine has been a controversial policy, and there is debate on whether the American media landscape hasn’t suffered from its elimination.

 

Recently on our program, environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had this to say about the Fairness Doctrine:

 

“The devolution of the American press began in 1986 when Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine.

 

We had a law in this country that we passed in 1928 that said that the air waves belong to the public. The broadcasters can be licensed to use them, but only if they use them to promote the public interest, to inform the public and advance democracy. That’s why we have the 6 o’clock news. They didn’t want it. The broadcasters didn’t want that because the news departments were chronic money losers.

 

But they were forced to put on the news at 6:00 and even today you hear news on the music radio stations and that’s an artifact of the Fairness Doctrine. They said, if you’re using the broadcast air waves, you have to do that…

 

They no longer have an obligation to serve the public interest. Their only obligation is to their shareholders. They serve that obligation not by informing us, telling us the things we need to understand to make rational decisions in a democracy, but rather by entertaining us...

 

We know we’re the best entertained, the least informed, people on the face of the world. They got rid of their investigative reporters. 85 percent of them lost their jobs in the last 15 years.

 

They got rid of their foreign news bureaus so the Bush and Cheney administration can say to the American people, ‘Oh, we’re gonna go into this 800-year-old fist fight in Mesopotamia and they’re gonna meet us with rose petals in the streets’ and the Americans believe them.

The Canadians didn’t believe them because the Canadians still have a Fairness Doctrine…

 

England has the same kind of rules and in Europe, but in our country, we lost those rules and, as a result, we know a lot about Britney Spears’ gradual emotional decline and we know a lot about Charlie Sheen, but we don’t know much about global warming or the fact that the Appalachian Mountains essentially no longer exist.”

We are in some sad times, when profit trumps the public interest. (No pun intended)

[RedSpawn]

What bothers me about media is that i've seen more news lately about kathy griffin and covfefe than about kabul, north korea, philippines and russia. Trump truly managed to turn his presidency into a reality show and now we forget to switch channels.

Agreed.

 

This gets back to the Fairness Doctrine which the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has fully expunged from our laws.

 

This is what happens when a media-industrial-complex lobbies the FCC for laws that do not obligate it to serve the public interest. The lack of coverage of important world news is not Trump's fault, but a result of moneyed corporate interests who want to provide a cheap, irrelevant good [celebrity news] as a substitute for real news which tends to have higher production costs. Once again, it's all about profit and very rarely about serving "we, the people".

[RedSpawn]

LOL, you are joking, right? he came across as such a balanced observer. Surely only conspiracy theorists and those sitting full-square in their bubbles could take him seriously? 4 billion dollars? And Congress could not find any evidence of such a transfer taking place? Yeah right.

 

Honestly Redspawn, you make me laugh sometimes. You believe in things like this without a shred of evidence and yet completely reject it when multiple agencies in multiple countries report suspicions about links between some in the Trump campaign and Russia....on the basis that no evidence is available! Please try to take a look at your world view model one day if you expect anyone here to engage you seriously in debate!

Sorry, I missed all of your response. It seems that you don't believe that a $4.8 billion loan tranche was made to Russia in July 1998. Keep in mind that Former President Clinton vehemently denied the affair allegations on 01/26/98. I have provided a time line of the scandal from CNN if you want to review.

 

• 
   
  
• http://articles.baltimoresun.com/1998-07-21/news/1998202031_1_imf-officials-loans-to-russia-billion-in-loans ===> $4.8 billion loan to Russia in July 1998. Please see 1st quote below.
  
• http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1998-07-14/news/9807140121_1_john-odling-smee-russia-imf ===> Also mentions $4.8 billion loan to Russia and discusses "pressure" from Clinton administration to execute transaction.
  
• http://samvak.tripod.com/pp157.html ====> The $4.8 billion the IMF sent is alleged to have disappeared and didn't prop up the Russian economy as expected.
  
• http://money.cnn.com/1998/09/01/markets/imf/ ===> WOW! The IMF will not release another $4.3 billion loan tranche to Russia in 09/1998 since the initial $4.8 billion disappeared and didn't work as expected. The parliament had not enacted budgetary measures to turn the economy around. Date of article 09/01/98.
  
• http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/resources/lewinsky/timeline/ ===> Overall timeline on Lewinsky affair
  

 

The International Monetary Fund gave formal approval yesterday to $11.2 billion in new loans to Russia but -- in an unusual move -- scaled back the first installment as a warning to the Russian parliament to stop dragging its feet on enacting key financial reforms.

 

In a blunt message to Moscow, the IMF's 24-member board set the first installment of the loan package at $4.8 billion, about $800 million short of what had been expected. IMF officials said the money would be added to later installments if the Russians enacted the reforms.The action by the IMF was welcomed by the Clinton administration, which had pressured the 182-country organization to go ahead with the new loans despite apprehension by top IMF officials over the pace of reform. [bold & italics mine]

The Baltimore Sun discusses the $4.8 billion loan that the International Monetary Fund made to Russia. What is very interesting to note is that the 182-country organization of the IMF is apprehensive about making the $4.8 billion loan to Russia but it "was welcomed by the Clinton administration." And why did the IMF feel pressured by the Clinton administration to make this large loan to Russia? Hmmmm.

 

This doesn't prove outright, but it makes one wonder why did the Clinton Administration pressure the IMF to make this loan package as Former Admiral James “Ace” Lyons suggested? What motivation(s) would Former President Clinton have to pressure the IMF to make this huge loan to Russia while its economy was failing and its ruble currency was imploding? Was Russia financially desperate enough to potentially blackmail him? Does this scenario give any credence to the scenario that Lyons outlined?

 

I'll tell you one other thing. You know the Russians are the best in the world at this. They tapped in to Bill Clinton's phone lines and they knew about Monica long before you did. Now let me tell you the way they used it. Russia was in desperate financial shape. They needed 26 billion dollars out of the IMF. Larry Summers of our National Archives fame was our Treasury Secretary, dead set against it, everybody was set against it, until suddenly -- through Strobe Talbott -- who the Russians let Strobe know that they knew about Monica, Bill Clinton found it within himself to approve the transfer, and what got transferred was 4.6 billion dollars in hard cash that disappeared.

https://broom02.revolvy.com/topic/1998%20Russian%20financial%20crisis ===> Says $5 billion in IMF loans went POOF! gone.

It was later revealed that about $5 billion of the international loans provided by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were stolen upon the funds' arrival in Russia on the eve of the meltdown [on 08/17/98].

[RedSpawn]

I certainly agree with you that making these changes would work against me and against most other Americans. However, changes like these result from the election of representatives committed to acting against the interests of their constituents. Lots of folks didn't like Clinton and voted against her, but she would have stood in the way of those making these proposals.

 

The news sources that I read do present and critique these ill-advised proposals, but I suspect that the folks who don't figure that these proposals work against them don't look for that kind of information.

The Financial CHOICE Act (banking deregulation) passed the House on 06/08/2017 during all of the Comey hearings. I am pretty sure it got lost in the kabuki theater. Very convenient timing. We shall see how the bill fares in the Senate.

 

http://www.westword.com/marijuana/financial-choice-act-passes-without-marijuana-banking-amendment-9140179

[Winstonm]

Lots of folks can't understand why so many Trump supporters like fake news sources like infowars and the other alt-right sites, and take that as a sign of stupidity. Not so, most of the Trump supporters are quite aware that the news there is fake -- it's just the fun of seeing other people get upset: The Great Performance of Our Failing President

 

 

Yes. it's just trolling (for the most part). We can see the same thing here in the Water Cooler, in this thread and others.

B-)

 

Odd, but I've lately been thinking about a potential Saturday Night Live sketch where Trump is in front of the press corps but they ignore him and laugh at Trump-jokes that are being passed around as if they were blonde jokes and finally all simply turn their backs on him as if he were not there.

 

Surely, being irrelevant is Trump's worst nightmare.

[PassedOut]

Trump wants to reduce the paperwork necessary for infrastructure projects.

And that's not all: Scam alert: Trump's $1tn 'infrastructure plan' is a giveaway to the rich

 

To be sure, America is in dire need of vast investments in infrastructure. The country suffers from overflowing sewage drains, crumbling bridges, rusting railroad tracks, outworn roads, and public transportation systems rivaling those of third-world nations.

 

The American Society of Civil Engineers, giving America’s overall infrastructure a grade of D-plus, says we would need to spend $3.6tn by 2020 to bring it up to par.

 

The problem isn’t that we’re being laughed at. It’s that we’re spending hours in traffic jams, disrupted flights, and slow-moving trains. And we’re sacrificing billions in lost productivity, avoidable public health problems, and increased carbon emissions.

 

But what Donald Trump is proposing won’t help. It’s nothing but a huge and unnecessary tax giveaway to the rich.

 

His “$1tn infrastructure plan”, unveiled last week, doesn’t amount to $1tn of new federal investment in infrastructure. It would commit $200bn of federal dollars over ten years, combined with about $800bn of assorted tax breaks to get developers to build things instead of the federal government doing it.

 

And it’s hardly a plan. It’s not much more than a page of talking points.

 

Worse, its underlying principle is deeply flawed. It boils down to a giant public subsidy to developers and investors, who would receive generous tax credits in return for taking on the job.

 

Which means the rest of us would have to pay higher taxes or get fewer services in order to make up for the taxes the developers and investors would no longer pay.

 

For example (in one version of the plan I’ve come across), for every dollar developers put into a project, they’d actually pay only 18 cents – after tax credits – and taxpayers would contribute the other 82 cents through their tax dollars.

 

No one should be surprised at this scheme. It’s what Trump knows best. After all, he was a developer who made billions, often off sweeteners such as generous tax credits and other subsidies.

[Zelandakh]

Sorry, I missed all of your response. It seems that you don't believe that a $4.8 billion loan tranche was made to Russia in July 1998.

So what started with a headline of Bill Clinton personally paying off the Russians turs out to be a loan paid by the IMF. And not even the full amount that they agreed to but rather just an initial payment. Ican think of many reasons why America might be in favour of this, not least because the Russian government at that time was led by Yeltsin, who was widely supported by the West. I doubt anyone can say that the direction Russia has taken since he lost power has been favourable to the USA. This is quite a different situation from back deals being made with the Putin and the current administration. Once again, I find it hard to understand why this is a difficult concept for a supposedly intelligent person to grasp.

[RedSpawn]

So what started with a headline of Bill Clinton personally paying off the Russians turs out to be a loan paid by the IMF. And not even the full amount that they agreed to but rather just an initial payment. Ican think of many reasons why America might be in favour of this, not least because the Russian government at that time was led by Yeltsin, who was widely supported by the West. I doubt anyone can say that the direction Russia has taken since he lost power has been favourable to the USA. This is quite a different situation from back deals being made with the Putin and the current administration. Once again, I find it hard to understand why this is a difficult concept for a supposedly intelligent person to grasp.

First, for you to even think that I was suggesting that Clinton or the U.S. Treasury made a direct $4.8 billion payment is laughable. However, the United States' weight and authority in the IMF is significant especially since we are the major provider of its funds. Thus, the President has the ability to "pressure" and throw his weight around during key IMF decisions.

 

Almost everyone was against the $4.8 billion loan to Russia EXCEPT THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION. Why?

 

Most politicians and world leaders knew the Russian Titanic was already sinking. They knew it was a waste of time to send $4.8 billion to Russia with the ruble imploding and the Russian financial markets in meltdown mode. The top IMF officials had logic, reason, and common sense and were against the loan, especially since Russia had not shown good faith and had failed to enact any budgetary changes. Further, the article states the top IMF officials felt pressured by the Clinton administration to accelerate the rescue plan and make a $4.8 billion loan to Russia. Again, why?

 

I have shown you that the $4.8 billion was embezzled upon receipt in Russia on the eve of 08/17/98. This comes as no surprise since it made no sense to give a sinking ship money when it had already hit the iceberg! It just shows you how financially desperate Russia was a month before the meltdown, even with Yeltsin at the helm. It also shows this payment, which originated from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, was a "loan" with no genuine likelihood of repayment.

 

It also shows how silly the Clinton administration's position was on this matter when that $4.8 billion evaporated in short order and Russia's economy still collapsed. The IMF was worse off for listening to a compromised Former President who can't provide a compelling reason to "go against the majority position" and make this type of "golden parachute loan" to Russia. The accelerated IMF loan with no genuine likelihood of repayment became a nice gift.

 

I don't expect you to agree with Lyons or me. However, Former President Clinton's unpopular position on this $4.8 billion IMF loan to sinking, status quo Russia is VERY suspicious and odd in the midst of his Lewinsky legal troubles. It doesn't take a street degree to figure that out. I guess we shall give him a hall pass since he has that disarming smile, wit, and seductive charisma. Cue the saxophone solo please.

[PassedOut]

Odd, but I've lately been thinking about a potential Saturday Night Live sketch where Trump is in front of the press corps but they ignore him and laugh at Trump-jokes that are being passed around as if they were blonde jokes and finally all simply turn their backs on him as if he were not there.

 

Surely, being irrelevant is Trump's worst nightmare.

He's a laughing stock for sure, but he's in a position to cause serious damage, as we've seen. Evidently, he's a reader of the alt-right fake news sites that offer the praise he needs.

 

A Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theorist, a False Tweet and a Runaway Story

 

A pro-Trump activist notorious for his amateur sleuthing into red herrings like the “Pizzagate” hoax and a conspiracy theory involving the murder of a Democratic aide, Mr. Posobiec wrote on May 17 that Mr. Comey, the recently ousted F.B.I. director, had “said under oath that Trump did not ask him to halt any investigation.”

 

It mattered little that Mr. Comey had said no such thing. [Note: I watched those hearings throughout, and Comey definitely said no such thing.] The tweet quickly ricocheted through the ecosystem of fake news and disinformation on the far right, where Trump partisans like Mr. Posobiec have intensified their efforts to sow doubt about the legitimacy of expanding investigations into Trump associates’ ties to Russia.

 

But as the journey of that one tweet shows, misinformed, distorted and false stories are gaining traction far beyond the fringes of the internet. Just 14 words from Mr. Posobiec’s Twitter account would spread far enough to provide grist for a prime-time Fox News commentary and a Rush Limbaugh monologue that reached millions of listeners, forging an alternative first draft of history in corners of the conservative media where President Trump’s troubles are often explained away as fabrications by his journalist enemies.

 

In this fragmented media environment, the spread of false information is accelerated and amplified by a web of allied activist-journalists with large online followings, a White House that grants them access and, occasionally, a president who validates their work. The right-wing media machine that President Bill Clinton’s aides once referred to as “conspiracy commerce” is now far more mature, extensive and, in the internet age, tough to counter.

 

In an email, Mr. Posobiec described his work as “reality journalism — part investigative, part activist, part commentary.” A day before his tweet, the White House had allowed him into an Oval Office photo op with the president, and he tried to ask a question about Seth Rich, the murdered Democratic National Committee staff member.

 

Once Mr. Posobiec pushed the send button on Twitter, the conservative media machinery kicked into gear. Later that day, Breitbart News published an account of Mr. Comey’s May 3 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee under the headline “Comey Under Oath: ‘Have Not Experienced Any Requests to Stop FBI Investigations.’”

 

GotNews.com, a website that often misrepresents media accounts of the Russia investigation to cast Mr. Trump in a more favorable light, repeated the claim but also raised the possibility of a more serious offense. Mr. Comey, the site said, might have perjured himself if he had claimed in a memo — as outlets including The New York Times have reported — that Mr. Trump pressured him to call off an investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn.

 

The next day, the perjury question was the subject of an article on InfoWars, the home of Alex Jones, a conspiracy theorist who has called the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks an inside job and questioned whether the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., really happened. InfoWars had almost five million visitors in the last month.

 

That afternoon, Mr. Limbaugh was also onto the story, telling his audience, “Comey said, under Senate oath, he had never been pressured to halt any investigation.” As evidence, Mr. Limbaugh read straight from the GotNews.com article. The whole Russia investigation, he declared, is “a political witch hunt.”

 

That account of the Comey testimony has lived on in the weeks since, with Sean Hannity of Fox News citing it as recently as Tuesday night. “And by the way,” he insisted on his program, “James Comey also said it never happened.”

I don't find it surprising that the aforementioned media sources make money by spreading false information. They cater to the folks who buy those tabloid papers displayed by checkout counters in grocery stores, and they'd be gone if there was no market. But it is sad to see that some of those customers now live in the White House.

 

Mr. Trump has been seen reading material from GotNews.com, an outlet founded by Charles C. Johnson, who has also helped start a crowdfunding website that pays for private investigations and legal defenses for fringe conservative causes. Among its current campaigns is one to help a man accused of sending a journalist with epilepsy a Twitter graphic that triggered a seizure.

 

In February, the president was spotted with a printed copy of a GotNews article in the Oval Office. The article, which claimed to pinpoint a source of leaks from within the West Wing, was shown to him by his wife, according to one person with knowledge of the encounter — first reported by Politico — who did not know how the first lady had come across it.

 

The site’s tagline now reads: “President Trump reads us. You should too.”

People who know Trump know to feed him a steady diet of adulation, and they know where to find it. It's not going to be in a real news site.

[RedSpawn]

And that's not all: Scam alert: Trump's $1tn 'infrastructure plan' is a giveaway to the rich

The American Society of Civil Engineers says we would need to spend $3.6 trillion to bring [America's overall infrastructure] up to par.

So what's the problem?

 

If both a Democratic and Republican President increased the federal public debt by $13.8 TRILLION between 2001 and 2016 for unnecessary wars; out of control military spending; increased homeland security and surveillance; INTEREST EXPENSE ON THE PUBLIC DEBT; Wall Street bailouts; and mandatory entitlement spending, then spending $3.6 trillion for infrastructure should be a cake walk.

 

We have money (debt) for wars, bailouts, and expanded government, but don't have money to repair decaying infrastructure? We need to privatize infrastructure to pay for it? That's very interesting accounting logic.

 

How did these Presidents find an extra $13+ trillion to spend on their budget priorities. The only way to increase the federal debt is to spend money we don't even have!

 

There is no permanent place in the world for ugly mathematics.

[PassedOut]

We have money (debt) for wars, bailouts, and expanded government, but don't have money to repair decaying infrastructure?

I agree that it's ridiculous. Spending tax money on infrastructure not only creates jobs, but also facilitates commerce. It's the kind of spending that's truly an investment in the future with continuing returns for years and years. Not so for lots of the other spending.

[Winstonm]

I agree that it's ridiculous. Spending tax money on infrastructure not only creates jobs, but also facilitates commerce. It's the kind of spending that's truly an investment in the future with continuing returns for years and years. Not so for lots of the other spending.

 

However, Trump's plan is not really an infrastructure plan as it is a massive giveaway in the form of tax incentive (which have to be made up by less well-to-do taxpayers) to big developers, the same as the Trumpcare proposal is not about healthcare but about reducing the taxes on the wealthy that pay for portions of the Affordable Care Act.

 

I think everyone supports rebuilding infrastructure - few agree to a massive government giveaway to a few cronies, else we would move to Russia were real oligarchs are sold the country's natural resources for a tiny fraction of its real value.

[PassedOut]

However, Trump's plan is not really an infrastructure plan as it is a massive giveaway in the form of tax incentive (which have to be made up by less well-to-do taxpayers) to big developers, the same as the Trumpcare proposal is not about healthcare but about reducing the taxes on the wealthy that pay for portions of the Affordable Care Act.

 

I think everyone supports rebuilding infrastructure - few agree to a massive government giveaway to a few cronies, else we would move to Russia were real oligarchs are sold the country's natural resources for a tiny fraction of its real value.

Agreed.

[Winstonm]

As for the claims I've heard about James Comey's leak to the press, this clears up whether or not it was legal.

 

The precedents are clear: Disclosures like these are constitutionally protected.

[Winstonm]

I don't agree with all his conservative politics but I do think Lindsey Graham is forthright and I agree with him here:

The senator also called for former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and current Attorney General Jeff Sessions to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, based on Comey’s testimony implying they were “playing politics” with federal investigations.

 

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“That needs to be in our committee,” Graham said. “Let me tell you this, to the American people. If the attorney general's office has become a political office, that's bad for us all. So, I want to get to the bottom of that, and it should be in Judiciary.”

 

I have no problem with Loretta Lynch being investigated for politicizing an investigation.

 

Neither, it seems, does Democrat Dianne Feinstein:

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein on Sunday said Congress should look into former FBI Director James Comey’s revelation that former Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked him to downplay the nature of his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

 

I can't imagine any current Republican calling for an investigation of another Republican. :(

[RedSpawn]

However, Trump's plan is not really an infrastructure plan as it is a massive giveaway in the form of tax incentive (which have to be made up by less well-to-do taxpayers) to big developers, the same as the Trumpcare proposal is not about healthcare but about reducing the taxes on the wealthy that pay for portions of the Affordable Care Act.

 

I think everyone supports rebuilding infrastructure - few agree to a massive government giveaway to a few cronies, else we would move to Russia were real oligarchs are sold the country's natural resources for a tiny fraction of its real value.

I agree, but what I am hinting at is this is not just a Trump problem. This has become a systemic government problem on both sides of the aisle. Trump is offering an infrastructure solution that is rife with cronyism for developers.

 

Bush approved the $700 billion bailouts to the Wall Street cronies and big banks (insurance companies) who were catalysts for the housing bubble. Obama continued the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to Wall Street and expanded entitlement programs inclusive of Obamacare and increased military spending.

 

Bush proposed for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and made government even larger. He also catered to the cronyism of the military industrial complex with the unnecessary and extended war campaign in Iraq.

[Winstonm]

I agree, but what I am hinting at is this is not just a Trump problem. This has become a systemic government problem on both sides of the aisle. Trump is offering an infrastructure solution that is rife with cronyism for developers.

 

Bush approved the $700 billion bailouts to the Wall Street cronies and big banks (insurance companies) who were catalysts for the housing bubble. Obama continued the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to Wall Street and expanded entitlement programs inclusive of Obamacare and increased military spending.

 

Bush proposed for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and made government even larger. He also catered to the cronyism of the military industrial complex with the unnecessary and extended war campaign in Iraq.

 

I could be wrong in my interpretation, but to me it seems like you combine two (or more) areas into a single concern. The right wingers all consider me progressive, but I am neither a fan of big or small government but of just enough government. I have to admit the definition of just enough is a variable, though.

 

The Wall Street bailout was intended to prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression - once Lehman Brothers foundered and the markets plunged in response and the capital markets froze, there was a huge risk for a calamity. I hate to admit it, but Bernanke might well have saved our bacon with his actions.

 

The problem is not now nor was it then the bailout - it was the situation that created the necessity of the bailout, i.e., allowing too big to fail institutions to arise and a dismantling of the protections of laws passed after the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent bank failings.

 

I agree that the military industrial complex has too much influence and too much money goes into it, but the attack on the World Trade Center on 9-11 was real and it is certainly reasonable for government to create an agency with a mission to prevent that type of attack from happening again. So to lump defense spending and the establishment of Homeland Security together and claim that shows an out-of-control government expansion is, I think, disingenuous.

 

The one point on which to me all libertarian arguments fail is that of power. Although in a theoretical world of make believe Reagan's idea that government should not be in the business of welfare and aid to the downtrodden because those were issues that churches and private charities were better suited to address, he neglected the obvious: only governments have the power to compel compliance. If it is in the best interests of society as well as the person affected to have a mentally ill homeless person forced into a psychiatric unit until such time that he can live unaided, no charity or church can compel that person's compliance, so the homeless ill become a problem for police and for jails.

 

At the same time, governments can become bloated and when there is a huge pile of tax money there are going to be people both in and out of the government willing to try to steal it - with crony capitalism or unnecessary wars and defense spending or simply waste and corruption.

 

The answer lies neither in the libertarian idea of ignoring social problems nor in the states' rightists' idea to minimize safety devices against the tyranny of a majority but in the proper and just use of a federal government with civilian oversight.

 

We have indeed met the enemy - and he is indeed us - every one of us who does not stay politically active.

[RedSpawn]

....

The Wall Street bailout was intended to prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression - once Lehman Brothers foundered and the markets plunged in response and the capital markets froze, there was a huge risk for a calamity. I hate to admit it, but Bernanke might well have saved our bacon with his actions.

 

The problem is not now nor was it then the bailout - it was the situation that created the necessity of the bailout, i.e., allowing too big to fail institutions to arise and a dismantling of the protections of laws passed after the 1929 stock market crash and subsequent bank failings.

...

At the same time, governments can become bloated and when there is a huge pile of tax money there are going to be people both in and out of the government willing to try to steal it - with crony capitalism or unnecessary wars and defense spending or simply waste and corruption.

 

The answer lies neither in the libertarian idea of ignoring social problems nor the in the states' rightists' idea to minimize safety devices against the tyranny of a majority but in the proper and just use of a federal government with civilian oversight.

 

We have indeed met the enemy - and he is indeed us - every one of us who does not stay politically active.

 

Excellent high quality response; it should be in a well renowned political magazine!

 

I wanted to add the that the housing bubble crash is the result of a major confluence of factors. As you stated the gradual whittling away and eventual repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999 is part of the problem. In addition, the Clinton administration did not make an earnest attempt to maintain oversight of the big hybrid banks created by the demise of the Glass-Stegall Act. This lack of strong oversight of the hybrid banks continued with the Bush administration up until the collapse in 2008. The hybrid banks became too big to fail and somehow avoided the wrath of the Antitrust division of the Department of Justice.

 

Also, the Clinton administration's firm decision not to regulate other aspects of the financial markets played a meaningful role in the crisis--for example, the absence of regulations regarding over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives which were becoming increasingly prevalent despite internal warnings.

 

Finally, Alan Greenspan and Clinton's Working Group on Financial Markets failed us when they recommended in 2000 that OTC derivatives not be included as financial instruments falling within the scope of the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936. They recommended deregulation of the OTC derivative market since it contained sophisticated parties who understood risk management and had legal remedies available in court should counterparties breach their contractual obligations.

 

https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2000/20000210.htm ===> under OTC derivatives section, Greenspan was woefully incorrect on the destructive impact that OTC derivatives could have on the broader economy. He assumed that sophisticated parties would not fall prey to irrational exuberance. He was wrong; they did because they're human just like everyone else.

 

OTC derivatives include credit default swaps which led to the downfall of AIG Insurance and also included collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) which caused many investment houses like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns to fail. CDO's became the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain for subprime mortgages and are credited with giving lenders greater incentive to make subprime loans leading up to the crisis in 2007-09. OTC's and CDO's needed to be in the purview of federal regulation instead of remaining unregulated.

 

Even Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan miscalculated the human condition and created a climate that contributed to the downfall of our economy!

[Winstonm]

Excellent high quality response; it should be in a well renowned political magazine!

 

I wanted to add the that the housing bubble crash is the result of a major confluence of factors. As you stated the gradual whittling away and eventual repeal of the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999 is part of the problem. In addition, the Clinton administration did not make an earnest attempt to maintain oversight of the big hybrid banks created by the demise of the Glass-Stegall Act. This lack of strong oversight of the hybrid banks continued with the Bush administration up until the collapse in 2008. The hybrid banks became too big to fail and somehow avoided the wrath of the Antitrust division of the Department of Justice.

 

Also, the Clinton administration's firm decision not to regulate other aspects of the financial markets played a meaningful role in the crisis--for example, the absence of regulations regarding over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives which were becoming increasingly prevalent despite internal warnings.

 

Finally, Alan Greenspan and Clinton's Working Group on Financial Markets failed us when they recommended in 2000 that OTC derivatives not be included as financial instruments falling within the scope of the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936. They recommended deregulation of the OTC derivative market since it contained sophisticated parties who understood risk management and had legal remedies available in court should counterparties breach their contractual obligations.

 

https://www.federalreserve.gov/boarddocs/testimony/2000/20000210.htm ===> under OTC derivatives section, Greenspan was woefully incorrect on the destructive impact that OTC derivatives could have on the broader economy. He assumed that sophisticated parties would not fall prey to irrational exuberance. He was wrong; they did because they're human just like everyone else.

 

OTC derivatives include credit default swaps which led to the downfall of AIG Insurance and also included collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) which caused many investment houses like Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns to fail. CDO's became the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain for subprime mortgages and are credited with giving lenders greater incentive to make subprime loans leading up to the crisis in 2007-09. OTC's and CDO's needed to be in the purview of federal regulation instead of remaining unregulated.

 

Even Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan miscalculated the human condition and created a climate that contributed to the downfall of our economy!

 

There is much fault to go around from Reagan and Greenspan ignoring the regulatory role of the Federal Reserve over non-banks to Clinton's allowing of OTC derivatives to have no regulation or required transparency.

 

Or we could simply elect people who understand history and how it will repeat if we do the same things that did not work previously. There is a reason the Great Recession is called Great and it has to do with the mechanisms from 1920's that were reinvented in the 1980s on into the new century, brought about by Democrats and Republicans, that led previously to the Great Depression.

[Winstonm]

A critical read

 

Do we really think Russian-friendly parties, oligarchs and state-owned interests hire U.S. political consultants and pollsters and technology firms merely to run ad campaigns, rather than to learn how to use these things against us?

 

These tools and tactics in the information space work better against America than anywhere else because there are a lot of us, and because English is the language of the internet — and the amplification factor because of these things is staggering, especially when one of our presidential candidates was borrowing and repeating Russian narrative and disinformation. What possible claim could any sensible American politician make that these factors had no impact in the decisionmaking process of the American voter?

 

In fact, you can track the radical changes in the belief of certain narratives during the time period Comey identified as when the most intensive Kremlin-led activities were underway (beginning in summer 2015 through present day). During this time frame, Republican views on free trade agreements dropped 30 points, from roughly the same as Democrats to radically divergent (Democratic views remained relatively steady). Putin’s favorability rating increased, even while unfavorable views remained constant, fueled by a 20-point increase among Republicans and an 11-point increase among Independents. Between early 2016 and now, Republican views of whether media criticism can help keep political leaders in line — which for the previous five years was almost identical to Democratic views — dropped by 35 points.

 

Did it cause undecideds to change votes? Probably.

[RedSpawn]

There is much fault to go around from Reagan and Greenspan ignoring the regulatory role of the Federal Reserve over non-banks to Clinton's allowing of OTC derivatives to have no regulation or required transparency.

 

Or we could simply elect people who understand history and how it will repeat if we do the same things that did not work previously. There is a reason the Great Recession is called Great and it has to do with the mechanisms from 1920's that were reinvented in the 1980s on into the new century, brought about by Democrats and Republicans, that led previously to the Great Depression.

Agreed.

 

If history doesn't repeat itself, it at least rhymes.

 

Both political parties should recognize that the Financial CHOICE Act is another feeble attempt by Wall Street to create the same deregulatory environment that caused the housing collapse. The passing of this Act has the potential to wreck complete havoc in our financial markets again and should be getting highlighted media coverage.

 

We can not afford for Wall Street to blackmail Congress for taxpayer funded bailouts and hold our financial markets and economy hostage when they make highly speculative investments that implode. Wall Street has a bad habit of privatizing its profits but socializing its losses and this expensive form of corporate welfare must stop. We can not reward this kind of irrational exuberance and unbridled risk taking, and if we do, we deserve the monster we create.

[Trinidad]

I agree, but what I am hinting at is this is not just a Trump problem. This has become a systemic government problem on both sides of the aisle. Trump is offering an infrastructure solution that is rife with cronyism for developers.

 

Bush approved the $700 billion bailouts to the Wall Street cronies and big banks (insurance companies) who were catalysts for the housing bubble. Obama continued the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) to Wall Street and expanded entitlement programs inclusive of Obamacare and increased military spending.

 

Bush proposed for the creation of the Department of Homeland Security and made government even larger. He also catered to the cronyism of the military industrial complex with the unnecessary and extended war campaign in Iraq.

Don't you think that there is a difference between spending money to solve a problem (if not a crisis) like Bush and Obama did and spending money simply to favor a couple of rich folks "because you can", like Trump wants to do?

 

Rik