Welcome to Saturday. For the rest of the year, we are going to rely heavily on music and cartoons to help get us through to the inauguration of El Jefe, our Orange Overlord. This is how Wrongo expects it will go on January 20th:
Our collective futures have been placed on hold by electing Donald Trump. His big idea is that America should return to doing what grandma and grandpa did, because fifty years ago those policies were just so darn successful.
Generals will be in charge of foreign policy, while banksters will run our domestic policy.
The lesser agencies will be re-designed to make America great again. They will be run by people specifically picked to destroy them from within. The white shoe classes are about to get free rein, knowing America will soon be willing to work for food.
And all it took to achieve this brilliant result was fooling the usual suspects, those who started following Trump when he yelled about the birth certificate, and who stayed for the yelling about the emails.
America is finally getting the government it deserves.
Today’s musical soother is no soother. It’s a Christmas partying song that pokes fun at the issues we all see when we get together with family on the holidays. Here are Dropkick Murphys with “The Season’s Upon Us”. Play this early and often:
This is for Wrongo’s Irish family, and all families everywhere!
Sample Lyrics:
The season’s upon us, it’s that time of year
Brandy and eggnog, there’s plenty of cheer
There’s lights on the trees
And there’s wreaths to be hung
There’s mischief and mayhem
And songs to be sung
There’s bells and there’s holly, the kids are gung-ho
True love finds a kiss beneath fresh mistletoe
Some families are messed up while others are fine
If you think yours is crazy
Well you should see mine
My sisters are whack-jobs, I wish I had none
Their husbands are losers and so are their sons
My nephew’s a horrible, wise little twit
He once gave me a gift wrapped box full of shit
My mom likes to cook, push our buttons and prod
My brother just brought home another big broad
The eyes roll and whispers come loud
From the kitchen I’d come home more often
If they’d only quit bitching
The table’s set, we raise a toast
The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
I’m so glad this day only comes once a year
You can keep your opinions, your presents, your “Happy New Year”
They call this Christmas where I’m from
They call this Christmas where I’m from
Trump is now Team Trump. The two most influential people in his court appear to be his son-in-law, [Jared] Kushner, a fellow real-estate developer and the guy who made the key strategic decisions which led to Trump’s victory; and {Steve] Bannon. Bannon is an economic nationalist with white nationalist leanings, who identifies with the working class and wants to bring manufacturing back to America. He’s quite willing to have a trade war to do it.
And while we are at it, Wrongo is sure that all of the Goldman Sachs alligators Trump is dumping into DC’s undrained swamp have lots of winning in mind for America. Welsh adds:
Trump’s children are influential, and it appears that Ivanka, his daughter, is the most influential of the three. She’s probably the most liberal person in the administration (even if she, strictly speaking, isn’t in the administration.)
Despite Welsh saying Ivanka won’t be in the administration, US News reported that she will set up shop in the White House space usually set aside for the first lady, which is in the East Wing. That sounds like influence!
With almost five weeks remaining until the inauguration, attempting to understand what Trump’s administration will do to you (or for you, if you are a fan), is America’s favorite holiday party game.
Trump has loaded up on oligarchs and generals to help steer his thinking on policy. More from Welsh: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
So, for example, his shift on China policy [to confrontation] is in alignment with what a lot of generals think (China is the real threat) and with what Bannon thinks (manufacturing jobs, economic nationalism.)
In some ways, Trump’s China policy is a continuation and extension of existing policy, but his style is confrontational, and more focused. All of Trump’s complaints about Chinese actions are long-standing US complaints that had not been addressed by previous administrations.
When we look at Trump’s team, they are anti-labor, pro-corporatist, pro-Wall Street, pro-MIC, Big Oil, Big Coal, climate changing denialists. With Pruitt @ EPA, Perry @ Energy, and Ryan Zinke @ Interior, all the news looks bad for those of us who want to see more alternative energy and a radically improved global environment. And Price @ HHS will have the largest and quickest negative impact on Americans.
These proposed cabinet appointments are not the source of any Christmas cheer if you favor our current domestic policies.
And it will get worse: Congressional Republicans told BuzzFeed News that the GOP plans to re-introduce the First Amendment Defense Act. The act prohibits the federal government from taking action against private businesses and individuals that discriminate against LGBT people (or others) due to their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Trump has already stated his support for the First Amendment Defense Act:
If I am elected president and Congress passes the First Amendment Defense Act, I will sign it to protect the deeply held religious beliefs of Catholics and the beliefs of Americans of all faiths…
We got to this precipitous place after a very close election. Paul Campos tells us that the US has recorded the popular vote in 34 US presidential elections (despite having had 57 of them), and Trump received the smallest share of the popular vote of any winning candidate in US presidential election history, if we exclude elections which featured a significant third-party vote.
Jacob Levy points out that Trump eked out victories in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, and therefore the presidency, by a combined 80,000 votes across those three states.
That is a .05% vote margin in a 137 million vote election.
This is why vast numbers of people head into the holidays scared for their families and future.
So you need an Xmas soother. It’s not bad enough to be late in buying presents for people who you know will be disappointed when they open them. Now you gotta deal with Team Trump, and all of the winning we will see in the next four years.
Here are the Piano Guys with O come, O come, Emmanuel. It was filmed at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Jerusalem Movie Set in Goshen Utah:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
A senior House Republican is circulating a proposal that would make major cuts and changes to the Social Security system.
Insiders think this is a move to contravene President-elect Trump’s vow to leave the retirement program for 61 million retirees and their families untouched.
The proposal was drafted by Rep. Sam Johnson (R-TX), chair of the subcommittee on Social Security of the House Ways and Means Committee. It was formally introduced as a bill last Thursday. It includes two measures that might attract some interest from Democrats. One would increase retirement benefits for lower-income workers, and another would increase the minimum benefit for low-income earners who worked full careers.
OTOH, other provisions put in place a series of highly controversial measures long debated by both parties. Those measures include:
Gradually raising the retirement age for receiving full benefits from 67 to 69.
Adopting a less generous cost of living index than the current one.
Inaugurating means testing by changing the benefits formula to reduce payments to wealthier retirees.
Eliminating the annual COLA adjustments for wealthier individuals and their families.
Democrats think that Johnson’s plan, if adopted, would cut current benefits. From Nancy Pelosi:
Slashing Social Security and ending Medicare are absolutely not what the American people voted for in November…Democrats will not stand by while Republicans dismantle the promise of a healthy and dignified retirement for working people in America.
Rep. Johnson is 86 and has both a military pension and a congressional pension, so Social Security is far less important to him than it is to you.
For Republicans, Johnson’s bill is the opening salvo in a much larger conversation about Medicare and Medicaid in the coming year. Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and House Budget Committee Chair Tom Price (R-GA), who will be the next secretary of health and human services, are both on record as wanting major changes to Medicare and Medicaid.
Democrats see the 2017 GOP plans as a frontal assault on the nation’s social safety net.
The argument has been that the Social Security trust fund will run out of money, but it is not in imminent danger. The Trustees Report in March warned that the fund will begin running out of money in 2034 when beneficiaries will have to face a 21% benefit cut.
Last week, Rep. Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a House Republican, and Rep. John Delaney of Maryland, a Democrat, renewed their support for a plan to create a bipartisan, 13-member panel to recommend to Congress ways to prevent the massive trust fund from running out of money while extending its solvency for another 75 years.
They envision that the new commission would operate along the lines of one created 35 years ago, in the Reagan administration. That commission helped pave the way for legislation that extended the life of Social Security by 50 years. Some possible proposals, such as raising the retirement age, increasing federal payroll tax revenues or altering the cost of living adjustments to save money will trigger strong opposition from the AARP, progressive activists and Democrats.
It’s long been a GOP theme that since Social Security needs a fix by 2033, we need to cut benefits now. Never mind that a minor upward adjustment to the income limit for the Social Security tax would resolve the problem with no cuts to benefits.
We’ll see if President Donald J. Trump supports this bill, after saying very loudly during the campaign that he was against touching Social Security.
Maybe the J stands for “just kidding.”
Since we’re on the verge of becoming “great” again, or, at the very least, having the trains run on time, maybe El Jefe can get the GOP to leave Social Security alone?
If you’re someone who requires the aid that social security brings and are having trouble making a claim, you may wish to contact someone like a Social Security disability lawyer in KY. This way you’ll have some expertise on side so that you can put forward a case that could have a better chance of succeeding than if you go it alone.
“The American Dream: You have to be asleep to believe it.” – George Carlin
According to the College and University Food Bank Alliance, there are now 400 food banks in colleges and universities in the US. Four years ago, when the organization began, it only had 15 members.
Many students experience hunger. While the economy has rebounded, the cost of college continues to rise faster than median family income. The average total costs rose 10% over the past five years at public colleges and by 12% at private institutions, while median family income rose 7% over the same time period.
A new report shows that the college campus hunger problem is bigger than we thought. It surveyed more than 3,000 students at a mix of 34 community and four-year colleges, finding that 48% experienced food insecurity in the past 30 days. The data suggest that hunger is more common among college students than the US population as a whole. The study found that:
 56% of food insecure students were currently employed, more than half received a federal grant, and 18% had received a private scholarship. These are kids who are doing the right thing, but they continue to fall behind.
One reason that colleges and universities have felt the need to take student hunger upon themselves is that the US Congress has been feckless in providing solutions to college student hunger.
Legislation on Pell Grants are the responsibility of the Education and Workforce Committee, but when it comes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), those bills go through the Committee on Agriculture. That makes it more difficult to get a comprehensive policy enacted.
One example: Representative Bobby Scott, (D-VA), added an amendment to the Child Nutrition Act that would have expanded the National School Lunch Program to help college students. Students who qualified for financial aid would also qualify for subsidized lunches, according to the legislation. But when the amendment was considered by the House Education and Workforce Committee, it failed to pass.
This is part of a wider problem of food insecurity. The economy may be improving, but many Americans who were hit the hardest have yet to see any improvement. In fact, in 2015, 42.2 million Americans lived in food insecure households, including 29.1 million adults and 13.1 million children. Households with children reported food insecurity at a significantly higher rate than those without children, 17% compared to 11%.
It is doubtful that this problem will be solved by the new Congress and the Trump administration.
The idea that people should work hard, pull themselves up by the bootstraps while going into debt to attend college, and then not be able to eat, despite holding down a job while they study, shouldn’t be acceptable just because our Tea Party overlords would like to watch a Darwinian test.
Virtually everything said about poverty in America is essentially about moral failure. For liberals, it’s society’s failure. For conservatives it is the moral failure of the poor. Centrists say it is the failure of institutions and individuals together in a complex combination.
Poverty violates core American values. It challenges the American dream of a promise of prosperity for anyone who works hard, something that is a central tenet of our national ethic. Here we have kids working hard and needing support to eat.
Time to wake up Congress! This is the kind of problem that shouldn’t have any opposition, but it does. To help our well-fed Congress critters wake up, here is “American Tune”, by Paul Simon from his 1973 album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon”. In this video Paul rocks a Freddy Mercury-esque mustache as was the style in the early 1970s:
For those who read the Wrongologist in email, you can view the video here.
Simon sings about the American Dream, from the Mayflower to “the ship that sailed the moon” (the Apollo moon landing) and says “you can’t be forever blessed”. His point was that America had reached the height of human achievement, but then, we squandered our gifts.
How prescient for 1973!
Sample Lyrics:
Many’s the time I’ve been mistaken, and many times confused
And I’ve often felt forsaken, and certainly misused.
But it’s all right, it’s all right, I’m just weary to my bones
Still, you don’t expect to be bright and Bon Vivant
So far away from home, so far away from home.
I don’t know a soul who’s not been battered
Don’t have a friend who feels at ease
Don’t know a dream that’s not been shattered
Or driven to its knees.
But it’s all right, all right, We’ve lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we’re traveling on,
I wonder what went wrong, I can’t help it
I wonder what went wrong.
We come on a ship we call the Mayflower,
We come on a ship that sailed the moon
We come at the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing the American tune
But it’s all right, it’s all right
You can’t be forever blessed
Still, tomorrow’s gonna be another working day
And I’m trying to get some rest,
That’s all, I’m trying to get some rest.
Quite the week. Trump makes Cabinet appointments, he tweets about taking citizenship away from US flag burners exercising freedom of speech, he takes a call from the president of Taiwan, and gets a formal protest from China.
That wasn’t all. You missed it, but Congress passed HR 5732, the “Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act”. The bill sets the stage for the implementation of a no-fly zone (NFZ) over Syria. It requires the administration to submit to the appropriate congressional committees a report:
That assesses the potential effectiveness, risks and operational requirements of the establishment and maintenance of a no-fly zone over part of all of Syria.
These Congressional chicken hawks may not realize that NFZs are a form of limited war. Politicians are usually the first to forget that limited wars only stay limited by mutual agreement. The military will tell you to never declare an NFZ unless you are entirely willing to fight a real air and ground war to enforce it. In the case of Syria, a No-Fly Zone would require the destruction of Syrian aircraft and missile systems from Day 1, probably leading to the death of Russians shortly thereafter. We could have a shooting war with Russia by the end of the first week.
Syria has over 130 air defense systems. A dozen or so are in the Aleppo area. Syria also has over 4,000 air defense artillery pieces and a few thousand portable infrared-guided missile systems. Russia has also located its advanced S-400 anti-aircraft missiles into Syria to protect their bases in Latakia Province. Those missile systems effectively give Russia control over Syria’s airspace, and for the US to impose a no-fly zone would require an air battle with Russia, which would all but guarantee the loss of a large number of US warplanes.
Over the last 25 years, there has been an evolving political infatuation with two pillars of “political airpower”: airstrikes and no-fly zones. Did we get the results our politicians promised?
Onward to cartoons. Trump goes to Indiana, gives Carrier tax breaks:
It was great political theater, but it is a standard “socialize the losses” GOP play: tax breaks for jobs. The taxes earned from keeping the jobs never pay the cost of the tax credits.
Paul Krugman had a good observation:
Fidel Castro dies:
Free speech isn’t well understood by the Orange Overlord:
Nancy Pelosi is reelected as Minority Leader. Many are pleased:
Mitt wants work, will say anything:
Trump still has lots of posts to fill. Word is that former vice presidential candidate and Tina Fey impersonator Sarah Palin is on the list of possible Cabinet appointments.
Do you trust the banks and brokerage houses to govern themselves? Do you think that reducing banking regulations will help the economy, or your personal financial situation? Before you answer:
Remember that the economic meltdown of 2008 was caused by overreach by the financial industry.
Remember that it took the next eight years to climb out of the Great Recession and return to pre-2008 employment levels.
Dave Dayen in the Fiscal Times points out that there will be a vote this week in the Congress that will say a lot about how willing the Democrats in Congress will be to fight the deregulation avalanche that’s about to come crashing down on We the People. From Dayen: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)
As early as Wednesday, the House will take up H.R. 6392, the Systemic Risk Designation Improvement Act. This bill would lift mandatory Dodd-Frank regulatory supervision for all banks with more than $50 billion in assets, meaning those financial giants would no longer be subject to blanket requirements regarding capital and leverage, public disclosures and the production of “living wills” to map out how to unwind [the bank] during a crisis.
The intent of the new regulation authored by Blaine Leutkemeyer (R-MO), isn’t about helping the biggest banks, but the relatively smaller regional players, firms like PNC Bank, Capital One and SunTrust. An estimated 28 institutions would be affected. The eight “global systemically important banks” would remain subject to the standards: Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, Bank of New York Mellon, Morgan Stanley and State Street Bank.
But the so-called regional banks are not small operations. These 28 regionals have combined assets of about $4.5 trillion. It is useful to remember that in the 2008 crisis, regional banks like Washington Mutual and Wachovia also came crashing down.
The American Banker says that the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), the new super-regulator charged with monitoring systemic risk, will be gutted by the Trump administration: (brackets and emphasis by the Wrongologist)
Because the FSOC is headed by the Treasury secretary…[a cabinet post selected]…by the White House, a Trump administration is unlikely to continue any of the council’s…priorities, including the designation of nonbanks or continued regulation of those firms already designated.
It is obvious that if this bill passes and is signed by President Trump, financial regulation will be relaxed, not by repeal, but through atrophy. Republicans want to replace any mandatory rules for regulation with discretionary ones. That way they can claim that they’re merely improving the system by putting the decisions in the hands of the experts instead of members of Congress.
A next step will be to hire regulators dedicated to turning a blind eye to what the financial industry does. The chair of FSOC is the Treasury Secretary. Trump’s candidates for Treasury Secretary include Steven Mnuchin, Trump’s national finance chair and the most likely choice for Treasury, who sits on the board of directors of CIT, a financial services company with more than $50 billion in assets. The Treasury Secretary will ensure that the rest of the FSOC board is made up of regulators and presidential appointees who share Trump’s laissez-faire philosophy.
President Obama will veto this bill if it passes the Senate before January 20th. But the Republicans plan to roll it out this week, instead of waiting for Trump to enter the Oval Office. They want to gauge just how much backbone Democrats have after their thumping in the election. More from Dayen:
This is really a moment of truth for those Democrats. If Republicans put up a big bipartisan vote in the House for this, the Senate will be more inclined to try to pass it down the road. And it will serve as a test case for Democratic resolve more generally.
Wall Street-friendly Dems have already endorsed tailoring Dodd-Frank rules to eliminate smaller regionals from the rules. This bill is a big change, and the question is whether Democrats play ball with Trump’s deregulation agenda, or will they recognize the harm it will cause?
This is an early test for those Dems whose seats are at-risk in 2018 and 2020.
Financial deregulation has rarely been a partisan political matter. Democrats and Republicans have typically worked together to roll back rules and loosen up the Wall Street casino.
HR 6392 could represent a return to those times, or it could be the moment when Democrats join together and say “no”, forcing Republicans to support the banking industry agenda on their own.
Party line resistance by Democrats could be in their longer-term best interest.
Someone once said that if the Republican Party was a refrigerator, it would say its job was to let ice melt.
Apparently Ben Carson was offered the job as head of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This is a cabinet-level appointment. Carson had initially turned down a cabinet appointment at Health & Human Services (HHS) because, (according to his staff) he was unqualified. But he’s changed his mind: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
Ben Carson has demonstrated the ability to do two things at a world-class level: perform surgical operations, and run [several] lucrative scams. By his own admission, he is patently unqualified to run a federal agency. Nonetheless, he is apparently on the verge of accepting a job as secretary of Housing and Urban Development…
History tells us that HUD has had just one use in Republican administrations. The agency’s program structure lends itself to profiteering. HUD works closely with private developers to build affordable housing. Without careful oversight, the agency can easily become a slush fund to distribute sweetheart contracts to the administration’s buddies.
Samuel Pierce, Ronald Reagan’s HUD secretary, did just that. Reagan’s HUD regularly handed out loans and grants on the basis of political contacts. Ultimately, some Reagan-era HUD officials were convicted, including three assistant secretaries, for such crimes as accepting illegal loans, obstructing justice, and illegal gratuities.
George W. Bush’s housing secretary, Alphonso Jackson, resigned in 2008 after a series of scandals, including sweetheart deals and inflated salaries for his friends. He instructed his staff to steer contracts to Bush supporters. Jackson was investigated by HUD’s inspector general, the Department of Justice and the FBI, none of which resulted in a conviction.
Since Trump says that he will continue running his real estate empire in office, a loyalist like Carson, someone with no experience in government, but who has relevant experience in bilking, will oversee an agency whose mission lends itself to corruption.
One of the reasons to appoint Carson is because HUD will likely cease its anti-segregation and anti-discrimination activities as soon as the Trumpets assume control. He is on record supporting ending that mission. This from the WSJ:
Under the Obama administration, the department has beefed up enforcement of fair-housing regulations to combat zoning policies that result in segregation, threatening the loss of millions of dollars in federal funding to municipalities that don’t comply. Mr. Carson sharply criticized those policies as “mandated social-engineering schemes” that repeated a pattern of “failed socialist experiments in this country,” in a 2015 op-ed published in The Washington Times.
If there is a bright side to Ben Carson running HUD, it is that he’s not running HHS with the second largest share of the federal budget. Imagine him saying: “I’m a physician. Med school taught me everything there is to know about health care.”
Remember, HUD spelled backward is DUH…
It’s time to wake up America! The writing is on the wall, Trump’s cabinet hires are terrible, and we have to pressure him to do better than Ben Carson.
You can go to social media and complain directly to your Orange Overlord at: #therealDonaldTrump.
To help you wake up, listen to the Crystals from 1962 singing “Uptown”. Phil Spector originally recorded the song with Little Eva, the 19 year-old babysitter to Carole King and Gerry Goffin. The end result didn’t meet Spector’s standards, so he produced it a second time with the Crystals. Here is “Uptown”:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Sample Lyrics:
He gets up each morning
And he goes downtown
Where everyone’s his boss
And he’s lost in an angry land
He’s a little man
But then he comes uptown
Each evenin’ to my tenement
Uptown where folks don’t have
To pay much rent
And when he’s there with me
He can see that he’s everything
Then he’s tall, he don’t crawl
He’s a king
Downtown he’s just one of a million guys
He don’t get no breaks
And he takes all they got to give
‘Cause he’s got to live
“My dream is of a place and a time where America will once again be seen as the last best hope of earth” –Abraham Lincoln
Lincoln believed that America should be a model for the world. He felt that the best way to achieve that was to end the divisiveness, to make America a land of hope and freedom for all. He had the courage to confront the political and cultural divisions caused by slavery, and he forced America to choose between allowing statutory inequality for some, and freedom for all.
If that was what Donald Trump meant by making America great again, he might have gotten Wrongo’s vote. Sadly, his flurry of recent cabinet appointments seem to indicate his idea of a great America leads him in a completely different direction. He’s announced Mike Flynn as his National Security Advisor, Jeff Sessions as his Attorney General and Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas as his director of Central Intelligence.
You will see millions of words written about their qualifications, so no need to guild those lilies here.
All three will be seen by those who gave Clinton 1.3 million more votes than Trump as mind-bogglingly disastrous choices. You be the judge of whether this is the type of swamp-draining Trump voters expected.
Nobody enters the White House well-prepared, but this is what’s coming:
Not all promises will be kept in a Trump administration:
Promises are made to be broken, particularly when Paul Ryan wants to be helpful:
Ryan and Trump met to talk things out. Trump was happy with the meeting:
DJT won’t stop tweeting. That could lead to mercifully short State of the Union addresses:
The Dems appear to be re-electing their loser team. Who thinks that leads to anything good?
Chuck Schumer has been re-elected Senate Minority Leader. Nancy Pelosi will most likely be re-elected Minority Leader in the House. Yet, she totally missed the reality of what happened in the 2016 election. Here is her analysis of the election results: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
We cannot be taking the full responsibility for what happened in the election…As far as we are concerned, the problem was more with the communication than it was with our policy…I believe the Comey letter was a foul deed…It was the wrong thing to do.
Not her fault? We hear all the time that elections have consequences. It’s time for the consequences to rain down on Pelosi, among other Democrats.
Democrats gained only six House seats in the 2016 elections, meaning that they will remain in the minority for the fourth consecutive Congress under Pelosi’s leadership. And the 30 or so Democratic Congresspersons who are now fighting Pelosi want to break the party’s seniority rule, which guarantees senior leadership posts go to the longest-serving members.
This election proved that the Democrats have no bench of young politicos who can carry the party in 2018 and beyond. The question is: Who will be the face of Democratic opposition? Shouldn’t it be someone most of America can relate to?
You know, someone who isn’t an elderly rich San Franciscan.
Unlike the House GOP, where committee leadership depends on the Party’s decisions, House Democrats assign committee leadership by seniority. The result is that the ranking committee Democrats stay in the jobs long enough to get very old. For example, Pelosi is 76. The Judiciary Committee’s John Conyers is 87. Sandy Levin, on the Ways and Means Committee, is 85.
Nobody is saying that these are bad people, but the average age for ranking Democratic members is 68, compared to 60 for House Republicans.
It’s time for new ideas and younger blood to run the Democratic leadership.
“I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.”– John F. Kennedy
JFK said that at Amherst College less than a month before he died. He wasn’t running for reelection yet, but that quote shows how he towers over the two presidential candidates in front of us today.
We could ask: “What does wisdom have to do with being president?” And our answer should be “everything”!
Some Americans are angry. Some are mainly angry with Washington. Many are impatient, unable to keep a long complicated idea in their heads to a conclusion, saying things like: “bottom line this for me” after less than a couple of minutes of talk. People are overwhelmed with information, much of which is patently false, so they do not know what to believe. The simply angry people will not help us solve anything, and they may not even accept a solution designed to help with some of their problems.
This is the context for today’s election.
The best case for Hillary Clinton is that she represents a continuation of Obama’s policies, with a few slightly more progressive ideas forced into the mix by Bernie. If Clinton is president, she will continue to have the same fights with Republicans in Congress that Obama had, but since Trump wants to enact policies that are destructive, some of which will be enthusiastically supported by Republicans in Congress, wisdom indicates Hillary is our best option this year.
Over the next four years Clinton is unlikely to do anything domestically that makes the lives of most Americans worse, and any Supreme Court justices she picks are likely to be reliably liberal on social issues, assuming Republicans are willing to confirm any nominee offered by a Democrat.
Her foreign policy is hawkish. This is the one place where Trump seems to be to the left of Clinton. How we handle Russia, China and the Middle East will be a huge challenge to the next president, but the leader of the free world cannot be an impulsive know-it-all.
What about the arguments against Clinton?
Emails are Hillary’s quicksand. Win or lose, Congress will keep worrying on that bone for a long, long time.
What about the paid speeches, the relationships with Wall Street and foreign governments? None of that is unique to Clinton. Her neoliberal positions and affiliations are common in both Parties. Obama, both Bushes, Bill Clinton, and Reagan have all taken money from most of these same groups through the campaign finance system.
Money and influence are the business plan for all American politicians. There’s nothing particularly revelatory about that, and it doesn’t make her any more corrupt than most other Democrats and Republicans who have run for president.
Arguments for Donald Trump:
The best argument for Donald Trump doesn’t rely on any of his policy positions, some of which are unclear and many of which are completely detached from evidence-based reality. Instead, the argument for him is that he will shake things up, and possibly, change some things.
Arguments against Trump:
A Trump presidency would be risky, since his ideas and temperament could easily make things worse than the current situation. He’s been called many names, his own ghostwriter for the book “The Art of the Deal” called him a sociopath. Many words describe Donald Trump, but here are a few that do not: Thoughtful. Serious. Presidential. So, wisdom argues that we not elect Trump.
People are looking for change. For them, it’s disheartening to settle for someone like Clinton who seeks gradual improvement, but is not a change agent.
America needs change, but it has to be a positive kind of change. That means it’s better to stick with the lower risk candidate unless there is a political alternative who really might make things better.
There will be better messengers for left-driven and right-driven populism down the road. When that happens, we will have more chances to pick a workable political alternative to the neoliberalism of both establishment parties.
Be patient, while we wait for a better alternative.
From Bob Lefsetz, who all of you should read: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
…tonight’s game was an epic finish that not only rekindled your belief in the game, but America too….The most valuable player was a Jewish egghead who never took the field. Theo Epstein reversed the [World Series] curse in Boston and then brought a championship to Chicago.
Maybe Theo should be a candidate for president. After all, he has fixed two underperforming organizations, and the US certainly underperforms. Sadly, Epstein’s success is based on using analytics and a plan to achieve a goal.
Facts and a plan. How could THAT possibly work for the country? Where would Trump and/or his boy, Mitch McConnell, fit within that concept? Trump speaks in broad generalities and platitudes, inflaming the passions of his followers, and obliterating any possibility of reasoned discourse or debate. He’s done nothing to inform America of the details of how he plans to make America a better and stronger place.
More from Bob:
And the teams are a rainbow coalition of ethnicities. It’s a white supremacist’s nightmare, not only are there various colors, but immigrants too! And somehow they all get along, they come together as a team, they’ve got a common goal, victory!
Ain’t that America?
But, one candidate thinks that he can win by scapegoating many of the kinds of people that were on the field last night. How can so many Americans support a candidate steeped in racism, religious bigotry, Islamophobia, homophobia, sexism, and misogyny, when we just saw such a great example of winning by working together?
And Lefsetz makes a final great point:
What is the common goal in America today? The telecast was riddled with political ads that made one wince. Duplicitous candidates utilizing subterfuge to try and win. Whereas the baseball players had shaggy haircuts, some tattoos, and had to play by their wits, there was little time for thinking, you had to make decisions.
The metaphor can be extended further. The Series went to the full seven games, and then into extra innings before a narrow one-run victory. The 2016 presidential election will go down to the wire, and who will win isn’t very clear. Both candidates have flaws, and yet, both are able to score points against the opposition.
We hope the election doesn’t go into overtime, but we need to understand that regardless of which candidate wins, it is just the restart of a protracted contest.
Unlike baseball, where the season ended last night.
A final word on Trump and his supporters. The Pant Load talks a good game, but his policies will not help his supporters. He promises to bring their jobs back. But, as Tom Friedman says: most of their jobs didn’t go to a Mexican. They went to a microchip: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
The idea that large numbers of factory jobs can be returned to America if we put up a wall with Mexico or renegotiate our trade deals is a fantasy. Trump ignores the fact that manufacturing is still by far the largest sector of the US economy. That our factories now produce twice what they did in 1984 — but with one-third fewer workers.
This trend in robotics and intelligent machines is well under way worldwide since the 1990’s, and no world leader, including Donald Trump is going to stop it. More from Friedman:
I understand why many Trump supporters have lost faith in Washington and want to just “shake things up.” When you shake things up with a studied plan and a clear idea of where you want to get to, you can open new futures. But when you shake things up, guided by one-liners and no moral compass, you can cause enormous instability and systemic vertigo.
Baseball is over for this year, but America’s need for leadership and teamwork based on a vision and a plan continues.
How can so many Americans willingly settle for a candidate who is more caricature than qualified or capable in a world where only talent and vision matter?
