The House Republicansâ passage of the Trumpcare Bill dominated the news last week. Sometime later today we will learn the results of the French presidential election, but the hacking of Mr. Macroâs servers and emails sounds depressingly familiar.
Americaâs âunsolvable problemâ with health insurance led us to Obamacare, and now, to the botched GOP effort to replace it. We should remember that this unsolvable problem has already been solved in dozens of countries.
Trumpcare is an event of domestic terrorism:
GOP will need a different pitch to the public:
How the GOP defines âpre-existingâ:
Preexisting conditions also include political health:
GOP thinks health insurance is only for people who make good choices – like being born rich:
Tulips, Lisse Netherlands, April 2017 – photo by Peter Dejong
We ended the week with Republicans in the House passing the latest version of Trumpcare by a vote of 217-213. All Democrats voted against it, with 20 Republican members defecting to join them. The changes Republicans made to get this version of bill through the House will not be what passes in the Senate. Itâs up to Mitch McConnell to craft a bill that can get through the Senate using the budget reconciliation process, which will require 51 votes to pass.
That will most likely be the “real” bill, and then the negotiations between the House and Senate versions will begin.
The problem for America is that the Senate has to pass something awful enough that the House will still vote for it. We are a long way from replacing Obamacare, but Republicans now own the process whereby tens of millions of Americans losing health insurance.
If that isnât enough to worry about, Buzzfeed has a long read about tiny drones that can be used in a swarm to kill people:
A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can carry a one- or two-gram shaped charge. You can order them from a drone manufacturer in China…A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel…You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They donât have to be very effective, only 5 or 10% of them have to find the target.
The concept is achievable, while the potential consequences are unthinkable:
There will be manufacturers producing millions of these weapons that people will be able to buy just like you can buy guns now, except millions of guns donât matter unless you have a million soldiers. You need only three guys to write the program and launch them. So you can just imagine that in many parts of the world humans will be hunted…This is the ever-present cloud of lethal autonomous weapons.
They could be here in two to three years.
â Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at the University of California Berkeley
They are called lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS); weapons that have the ability to independently select and engage targets once a human releases the machine to perform: no supervision, no recall, and no stop function.
Can we prevent them? Nope, they already exist. Many countries including the US already have (much larger) systems with autonomous modes that can select and attack targets without human intervention: Israelâs Harpy and second-generation Harop, can enter an area, hunt for enemy radar, and kamikaze into it, regardless of where they are set up, as long as the radars are operating.
The Pentagon now is testing drone swarm technology: Weapons moving in large formations with one controller somewhere far away on the ground clicking computer keys. Think hundreds of small drones moving as one, like a lethal flock of bees. You can see a YouTube video of a US drone swarm test here. 103 mini drones were released from two US fighter jets during the test. The drones operate autonomously and share a distributed brain. These drones will make it economical to target people (troops?) in other countries, en masse, without having to send in our own soldiers, or declare war.
Why are we wasting even more human potential devising even more ways to kill each another?
Sorry, this story adds to your stress levels after a tough week, but Wrongo thought you should know. OTOH, with all that is going on, you really need soothing. Wrongo is going for some Stumptown Colombia El Admirador coffee and a listen to âSpringâ, from Vivaldiâs Four Seasons, arranged for four pianos.
Cinco de Mayo parade in Puebla Mexico, where Mexico defeated France in 1862
Happy Cinco de Mayo! At the Mansion of Wrong, its ahi ceviche with mango, jalapeno, cilantro, ancho chili, lime juice and tequila in toasted won-ton wrappers. And Don Julio Anejo to wash it down. Not bad.
But among yesterdayâs depressing news regarding the House passage of the Obamacare Repeal and (not) Replace, was the Orange Overlord signing yet another Executive Order (EO) touted by the Trump administration to protect âReligious Libertyâ:
The EO directs the IRS not to enforce the Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment is a part of the tax code that forbids 501(c)(3) organizations (including churches) from participating âdirectly or indirectlyâ in political campaigns.
Churches have historically been free to discuss and promote any issue or idea. So, they can address things like civil rights, reproductive rights, police violence, or the sanctity of law and order. They can also urge people to get out and vote on Election Day.
In other words, they can push and prod about all kinds of civic issues and engagement, in order to get their members to cast their votes.
The red line for the Johnson Amendment is actually endorsing a candidate. Churches can give a sermon about the evils of abortion, and let the attendees connect the dots to a candidate, but it’s a violation of the Johnson Amendment for the church to connect the dots directly, and tell the members to vote for a specific candidate or party.
Trumpâs EO removes that red line. It will let churches give full endorsements so they can tell their congregants that God wants them to vote for Candidate X, and if they fail to do so, He will be angry and the baby Jesus will cry.
Trumpâs EO leaves the decision whether to enforce the Johnson Amendment in the hands of the IRS. That means the IRS could pick and choose which institutions to penalize, and it might be your church, and not your neighborâs.
In February, Trump promised to âdestroyâ the Johnson Amendment. But, presidents canât âdestroyâ laws with EOs; that takes an act of Congress. Republicans may try repealing the Johnson amendment as part of their tax reform package.
The executive order the president will sign today isnât really so much about âreligious freedom,â as it is being framed by Trump and the religious right. This is actually designed to further erode one of the remaining restrictions on campaign finance.
LeTourneau points to the âindirectâ efforts by Franklin Graham to elect Trump last fall, and offers him as an example: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
To the extent that the IRS ignores this statute, Graham will be able to accept tax-free donations to Samaritanâs Purse [Franklin Graham is president] (or another non-profit he might set up) that will go towards endorsing and advocating for the political candidates of their choice. That will likely make Franklin Graham a major player on par with the Super PACs in American politics.
LeTourneau thinks the EO has little to do with âReligious Freedomâ, but instead opens a path for professional evangelists like Franklin Graham to become king-makers in our politics.
This turns âno taxation without representationâ into ârepresentation without taxationâ, a Republican wet dream that could undermine whatever remains of our campaign finance regulations. Where is the lack of religious freedom here? Churches don’t have to apply for tax-exempt status, and they could then say (or do) anything they want.
They just would have to pay taxes like everyone else.
OK, here’s some music for Cinco: Here is âOye Como Vaâ by Santana. It was written by Tito Puente in 1963, and popularized by Santana in 1970 on his album Abraxas:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
On Saturday, Wrongo scoffed at David Brooks, who said that Donald Trumpâs foreign policy moves:
…have been, if anything, kind of normal…
Another part of US foreign policy that is FAR from normal is our effort to square the circle between our NATO ally Turkey, and our Kurdish allies in Syria and Iraq, who are fighting with us to eliminate ISIS as a force in Syria.
Last Tuesday, Turkey triggered a crisis when it launched airstrikes on US-backed YPG Kurdish fighters. The YPG is a Syrian sister organization of the Kurdish PKK Party in Turkey. Turkey believes the YPG and the PKK are terrorist groups whose goal is to destabilize Turkey.
Within Syria, US Special Forces are embedded with the YPG and are coordinating YPGâs moves against ISIS around Raqqa. The Turkish airstrikes killed at least 18 people, destroying the groupâs headquarters. The airstrikes triggered heavy artillery and mortar exchanges between Turkish troops and Kurdish forces along the border, raising concerns that Turkey might send its forces into Syria, something the US opposes.
The YPG wants to divert forces from the attack on Raqqa to protect against further Turkish adventures, something the US doesnât want. Now we learn that the US has placed some of its very limited military resources in Syria between the Turks and the Kurds in an effort to calm the hostilities. From the WSJ:
American forces have started patrolling the Turkey-Syria border to prevent further clashes between Turkish troops and Kurdish fighters, which could undermine the fight against Islamic State, U.S. officials said Friday.
This is the second time we had to break up the fight between the Turks and the Kurds in Syria. We made a similar move last month in Manbij, a northern Syrian town at the epicenter of a fight between Kurdish forces, Syrian government troops and Turkish-backed militants.
We have become our own UN-style peacekeeping force between Turkey and our Kurdish allies in the midst of our very real effort to take Raqqa from ISIS.
So, where are we going with Turkey, the Kurds and Syria? In the ME, the Kurds are one of the few groups the US can trust to perform militarily. They have fought alongside our troops in this region for years. In the past, we have sold them out in favor of Iraqi and Turkish geopolitical desires more than once.
OTOH, Turkey is a NATO ally, one who is the enemy of our Kurdish allies. We have several Airbases in Turkey which help with the fight against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. If the Turks asked us to leave, our military effectiveness in the ME would be seriously weakened.
More than 25 million Kurds live in the region straddling the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. They are the fourth-largest ethnic group in the ME, but they do not have a permanent nation-state. The Kurds can see that a state could be created from the NE portion of Syria, and the region they already control in Iraq, if the Turks, along with Syria and its allies would allow it to happen.
Where does the US stand on this? Would we back the Turkish aspiration to control a Syrian buffer area between the Kurds to the East in Syria and in Iraq, and the Kurds in the West in Syria?
Would Russia, Syria, and Iran allow Turkey to succeed at that? What would happen if Russia and Iran moved against Turkey, if the Turks established a foothold in Northern Syria? Would the US come to Turkeyâs defense?
Turkish President Erdogan is visiting Trump in DC in mid-May. Last Friday, Mr. Erdogan said he would personally urge Mr. Trump to stop working with the YPG, but Trump plans to directly arm them. What will the US response be to Erdogan, who looks more like a dictator controlling our only Islamic NATO ally?
Time for Trump and the State Department to wake up and solve the complex issues in Syria. Who knew being president would be so hard? This is not a time for shooting from the hip, or for deal-making, but for establishing principles for the end game in Syria with our most difficult NATO partner.
To help Trump and Tillerson wake up, here is the progressive rock band Yes, Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees. The ceremony was broadcast Saturday night on HBO. The bandâs co-founder, Jon Anderson, reunited for a performance of âRoundaboutâ from 1971. Heâs here with bassist Geddy Lee, guitarist Steve Howe, keyboardist Rick Wakeman, guitarist Trevor Rabin and drummer Alan White:
Those who view the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
It only took 100 days for Donald Trump to reduce the office of the presidency to the point of near-zero credibility. Unfortunately, it appears as though his base and Republicans in Congress remain very accepting of him as president. In Twitter speak, #So Sad.
Back to the administrationâs one page tax plan: The plan works if we assume 6% annual GDP growth for the full 8 years of a Trump presidency. Since the end of the Great Recession, annual GDP growth has been about 2%. More to the point, we now have a 3.5% (of GDP) budget deficit, and we are at the top of the current business cycle, with a 75% debt-to-GDP ratio.
Republicans used to refer to that as being broke.
Mostly, what has been accomplished in the last 100 days are a blizzard of executive orders and proclamations. We all remember when executive orders like Trumpâs were considered tyranny by Fox News. On to cartoons. The GOP walks out on its long-term companion, the deficit hawks:
Trumpâs first 100 days did NOT include tons of winning:
The clown show about trickle-down economics continues:
Trump explains his new tax brackets:
Arkansas needs help after botching another execution:
Welcome to spring, which has brought a dandelion horror show to the fields of Wrong. Apparently, these are mutant dandelions, completely immune to the weed killer we put down three weeks ago.
But that is far from the only horror show underway in the lives of average Americans. The Trump 100-day roasting or celebration, depending on your viewpoint, is underway today. The NYTâsDavid Brooks has a perceptive look at the Trump presidency so far: (emphasis by Wrongo)
I wish we had a president who had actual convictions and knowledge, and who was interested in delivering real good to real Americans. But itâs hard to maintain outrage at a man who is a political pond skater â one of those little creatures that flit across the surface, sort of fascinating to watch, but have little effect as they go.
Hard to maintain outrage? Brooks, (not a Wrongo fave) elsewhere minimizes the real and potential damage that the country will face with our Orange Overlord. He still is commander-in-chief and, as such, has his (figurative) finger propped on the (figurative) nuclear button, and can order military action at a moment’s notice. Yesterday, Trump said that
There is a chance that we could end up having a major, major conflict with North Korea. Absolutely…
That should have made David Brooks cringe, but it didnât, Brooks opined that:
His foreign policy moves have been, if anything, kind of normal…
Really? Trump says whatever is on top of his mind, words that North Koreaâs Kim Jong-un just might take as a pre-invasion threat. That could lead to war with millions of South Koreans, Japanese, or American citizens paying the price for Trump’s bellicosity.
Think about how the Trumpets created a nuclear scare in mid-April: NBC News reported that they were considering a pre-emptive nuclear strike:
EXCLUSIVE: US may launch preemptive strike if North Korea reaches for nuclear trigger, intelligence officials say http://nbcnews.to/2owFmep
After some hysteria, including the false (inaccurate?) reporting of the location of our Aircraft Carrier Carl Vinson, which wasnât steaming toward a North Korea confrontation, cooler heads have prevailed, and we are now talking about direct talks with the NKâs. Not much of this is new. Consider this from 2010 by Mark Landler of the NYT:
President Obamaâs patience with China had been fraying for months, and by November 2010 he was fed up. Meeting with President Hu Jintao in Seoul, South Korea, Mr. Obama warned that if China did not do more to curb North Koreaâs bellicose behavior, he would have to take steps to shield the United States from the threat of a nuclear missile attack from the North.
Sounds like where we are today, although the GOP likes Trumpâs mas macho ways better than it liked Obama’s.
Once we are done insisting that China will fix this problem for us, and it turns out thereâs no real Plan B, Trump will have to consider what it takes to strike a bargain with the North Koreans, or weâll learn to live in the same dangerous situation that Japan and South Korea already face.
Onward to something that both calms and soothes. Wrongo is going for Chai Latte this morning, along with his Saturday music. Your mileage may vary.
Edward Elgar composed the Enigma Variations between October 1898 and February 1899. It is an orchestral work comprising fourteen variations on a theme. The âNimrodâ is variation IX. This variation is sometimes used at British funerals, memorial services, and other solemn occasions, like your review of Trumpâs first 100 days in office. Here is Daniel Barenboim conducting the Chicago Symphony at Carnegie Hall in 1997 in Elgarâs âNimrodâ variation:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
African Elephants clearly are not deficit hawks. But, neither are most Republicans in Congress, despite all their complaining about spending that adds to the deficit. Trumpâs tax proposal is out. It’s interesting that the administration decided it was a good idea to put a vague blueprint laying out big tax cuts on a single sheet of paper.
As President Trumpâs top economic advisers faced a barrage of questions on Wednesday about the tax plan they had just unfurled, there was one that they struggled most to answer: how to keep the âmassive tax cutsâ they proposed from ballooning the federal deficit…Republican budget hawks will need to decide whether they want to stick to the arguments of fiscal responsibility that they used to bludgeon Democrats during the Obama era.
More from the NYT: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)
Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who was a fierce critic of deficits when he was a member of Congress, offered a glimpse of the rationale his former colleagues might embrace. âAs a conservative, that bothers me a little bit,â he said Tuesday on CNN of the possibility that Mr. Trumpâs tax plan would increase the deficit. âBut we also look at deficits through sort of a different lens.â
While we havenât yet seen definitive estimates of the cost of Trumpâs one-pager, it will certainly add to the deficit, and the negative numbers range up to an additional $6 Trillion over the next 10 years.
And when Treasury Secretary Mnuchin says that Trumpâs tax plan âwill pay for itself,â he isnât credible. He also told ABC News that he couldnât guarantee that middle-class families wouldn’t pay more under the proposal:
I can’t make any guarantees until this thing is done and itâs on the president’s desk. But I can tell you, thatâs our number one objective in this…
Word salad. Helping the middle class is the furthest thing from their minds. Trump, Mnuchin, Ryan and the rest want to give a targeted stimulus to the rich and corporations.
They disguise tax cuts by calling them âtax reformâ. Whatever they call it, they want the biggest tax cut for rich people that they can push through the House and Senate. Calling it âtax reformâ is useful because âyuuge tax cuts for the richâ wonât be all that popular politically.
Itâs inevitable that “middle class families” will end up paying more. Somebody’s got to pay for that massive military buildup. And the GOP cries of deficit piety are a shell game. Here is Kevin Drum:
When does this nonsense stop? Republicans arenât deficit hawks. They havenât been since the Reagan era. Republicans used to be deficit hawks, but the whole point of the Reagan Revolution was that tax cuts were more important than deficits. Their only concern about the deficit these days is as a handy excuse for opposing any increase to social welfare programs.
Trumpâs tax plan is the same old Republican orthodoxy that has been around for decades.
Wrongo recommends this article from Fortune Magazine in 1955: âHow Top Executives Liveâ. The GOP constantly says that if the 1% are forced to pay high taxes, they wonât work as hard to innovate and create jobs. This article, from the time when personal tax rates went from 40%-75%, shows they didnât need low taxes back then to work hard:
The successful American executive, for example, gets up early–about 7:00 A.M.–eats a large breakfast, and rushes to his office by train or auto. It is not unusual for him, after spending from 9:00 A.M. until 6:00 P.M. in his office, to hurry home, eat dinner, and crawl into bed with a briefcase full of homework. He is constantly pressed for time…
Wrongo is cranky about the GOPâs desire to always shift the tax burden downward, and about their success in doing it. What Trump will get passed is another round of debt-financed upper-class tax cuts.
That will suit Trump and Ryan just fine.
Letâs go out with some music that references the life and times of Jonathan Demme, director of âSilence of the Lambsâ and âPhiladelphiaâ, who died on Wednesday. Demme also directed the best Rock movie ever made, âStop Making Senseâ featuring the Talking Heads. Here is âLife in Wartimeâ live, and thatâs Parliament – Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell on keyboards. This isnât the first time Wrongo has posted this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obAtn6I5rbY
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Cougar with Radio Collar â Griffith Park, Los Angeles, via Nature Photography
Retailers are closing thousands of stores and going bankrupt at a rate not seen since the Great Recession, and tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs as a result. Although thanks to insolvency experts like Bankruptcy Calgary operated by Hudson & Company, solutions are available to help individuals struggling with debt, the atmosphere for retailers seems far more bleak.
Retailers blame Amazon and other online vendors for the lack of physical sales nowadays. This could be true as more and more people do seem to find it easier to order online than physically enter a store to purchase a product. With e-commerce sales booming, more businesses seem to be offering online products. These e-commerce sites can use recurring billing, if they please, to increase their sales. This works by turning customers who would only purchase something once into customers who are regularly making a payment. However, one reason that many businesses seem to succeed is due to software, like samcart, offering their customers a hassle-free checkout. This means that the whole process of ordering online is becoming so much easier for the consumer that it’s not surprising that retail stores are beginning to feel the effects.
While some brick-and-mortar retailers are doing well, many are losing money. The Atlantic reports that:
Overall retail employment has fallen every month this year. Department stores, including Macy’s and JC Penney, have shed nearly 100,000 jobs since October-more than the total number of coal miners or steel workers currently employed in the US.
But the e-commerce industry won’t rescue out-of-work retail employees. Most warehouses are regional, and located far from residential areas, which means they might not be within a reasonable commuting distance for displaced workers. By contrast, retail stores are typically located near residential centers. E-commerce warehouses also employ fewer people than retail stores, since the warehouses are increasingly automated, and no longer need to buy roll cages from PHS Teacrate or other companies due to not needing stock delivered to smaller stores.
One of the reason so many real world retailers are hitting the wall so hard is that private equity leverage and asset stripping made them particularly vulnerable. While the losses to online retailers would have forced some downsizing regardless, the fact that so many are making desperate moves in parallel is in large measure due to the fact that…their private equity (PE) overlords have made them fragile.
That’s a new angle for evaluating Amazon’s performance: it’s not that retailers are closing because Amazon is expanding, but Amazon is expanding because retailers are closing. Jeff Bezos should be thanking the PE firms for looting the retail industry.
The Federal Reserve’s low interest rates also made it easier for Private Equity funds to load these retailers up with debt. Management could borrow more money than necessary, pay themselves cash bonuses, and claim “interest rates are low; making payments will be easy“.
They would even show you the math. Of course, that math assumed that store sales would continue climbing in the future. If sales fell, high debt payments could quickly become an outsized burden.
The Private Equity all-stars often follow a particular deal model. After purchasing the retail company, the PE firm sells the real estate owned by the retail company to another entity (owned by the PE fund). Then the retail company makes lease payments to its new landlord. This splitting of the assets into an operating company and a property company allows the PE fund manager to make a cash distribution to its investors early on, producing a quick return on the deal. Later, the property company will be sold.
The problem with this approach is that businesses that choose to own their real estate are typically seasonal businesses, as all retailers are. Or they are low margin businesses particularly vulnerable to the business cycle, like restaurants. Owning their property reduced their fixed costs, making them better able to ride out bad times.
To make this picture worse, the PE firms often “sell” the real estate to itself at an inflated price, which justifies saddling the operating business with high lease payments, making the financial risk in the operating company even higher. Of course, those high rents make the property company look more valuable to prospective investors, who may fail to look close enough at the retailer who is paying the rents.
Companies with little debt generally can survive lower sales. They can engage in cost-cutting, maybe encourage some employees to retire early, etc. It’s easier to survive if they own their own property. But when you’ve got a lot of debt, and servicing that debt requires that sales continue to rise quarter after quarter without fail, then things become a LOT more fragile.
Trump claims he’s created 500,000 new jobs in his first 100 days. Notice that he doesn’t say what these jobs are, or where they were created. Certainly they weren’t in Retail. Or Coal. Or Steel. Those jobs aren’t coming back.
Here is Jonathan Richman with his 1990 song “Corner Store” which laments what towns have lost to the malls:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
Takeaway Lyric:
Well, I walked past just yesterday
And I couldn’t bear that new mall no more
I can’t expect you all to see it my way
But you may not know what was there before
And I want them to put back my old corner store.
By June 1975, New York faced default on $4.5 billion in outstanding short-term debt owed to a few big banks and to thousands of unidentifiable small investors. Not only did the city have no way to repay $4.5 billion, it could not meet its routine, daily operating expenses, including payroll.
The WSJ says that between 1970 and 1980, more than 823,000 city dwellers left for (literally) greener pastures.
Ultimately the city did not go bankrupt. The banks and the cityâs unions were willing to buy enough of the cityâs (otherwise unsalable) debt to avoid bankruptcy. Important to the mix was the creation of the Municipal Assistance Corporation (MAC) run by Felix Rohatyn, who became chief negotiator between the city, its labor unions and its creditors. A new type of agency, The New York State Financial Control Board, that controlled the cityâs budget, became the model for the type of emergency city managers that we saw last year in Flint and Detroit Michigan.
The NYC financial crisis helped Donald Trump emerge as a New York deal-maker. Trump convinced New York to let him take over the Commodore Hotel, which we now call the Grand Hyatt, just east of Grand Central station. Trump modernized and renovated it, it was his first construction project in Manhattan. Phillips-Fein picks up the story:
…the Commodore Hotel was a previously very fancy hotel from the early 20th century. I think it opens in 1919 at 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. And itâs owned by the Penn Central Railroad. And the hotel kind of falls into disrepair and near collapse after Penn Central itself goes bankrupt in 1970.
The Commodore had stopped paying city property taxes and was for sale. The city was terrified that if the Commodore Hotel closed, the blight in Times Square would spread east, into the area around Grand Central Terminal. Trump saw an opportunity, while the city government saw a potential disaster. Together they hatched a plan for Trump to purchase the Commodore Hotel: (parenthesis by the Wrongologist)
What he actually wants to do is buy it and sell it to a state agency, the Urban Development Corporation (UDC)…And then the UDC will lease it back to Trump, [who was] working with the Hyatt organization.
The UDC leased it back to Trump and Hyatt. And this arrangement enabled them to pay substantially lower property taxes than usual. Phillips-Fein:
The New York Times reported that as of 2016, this tax arrangement with the Hyatt had cost New York City about $360 million in uncollected taxes in the years since the development.
Naomi Klein:
So I just want to pause there, because what youâre saying is…Trump and the Hyatt put down $9.5 million…They come up with this…sweetheart deal, a tax dodge. And that $9.5 million outlay translates back into roughly $360 million in tax savings…
The Trump/Hyatt tax deal set the stage for a wholesale change in the city. The fear of bankruptcy was central to understanding NYC politics at that moment: They feared an apocalyptic future. That fear created a need for a savior, and it found two in Donald Trump and Felix Rohatyn.
The NYC government decided that working with the business community was the bail-out it needed. It set the stage for the cityâs luxury developments, for using different kinds of tax breaks that stimulated the development of properties primarily dedicated to the needs of corporations and the rich. It set the stage for a wholesale change in city politics from New Dealism to Neoliberalism. And it set the stage for Trumpâs political career. Phillips-Fein: (brackets by the Wrongologist)
…you can see the straight line, really, from the Commodore to this skating rink [Wollman Rink in Central Park] to the presidential bid…âIâm not a politician. Washington is corrupt. I know how to do this better…â
Fear makes things that should be impossible suddenly feel as though theyâre the only answer. Klein concludes by saying we should be very wary of the political exploitation of our fears, of political exploitation of an atmosphere of crisis.
It is clear that Donald Trumpâs career and his fortune were really forged by doing just that.
Bald Eagle with Great Blue Heron – photo by Bonnie Block
(The Wrongologist site was hit by a Denial of Service attack on Sunday, April 23. If you had difficulty accessing the site, Wrongo apologizes. We are working with the hosting company to sort it out, but the problem may continue until the end of day today.)
Congress returns today. They will try to pass an increase to the Debt Ceiling before the April 28th funding deadline. After that, at least a partial government shut-down looms.
The Republicans are not in agreement about their stance on the extension. The Orange Overlord complicated the negotiations by saying that he wouldnât sign a Debt Ceiling increase unless it contained funding for the Wall that Mexico was supposed to pay for.
Consider the exchange between Chris Wallace of Fox News Sunday and Trump Budget Director Mick Mulvaney. Mulvaney said that it was the Democrats who are guilty of “stunning” obstructionism because they will not negotiate on a bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Wallace noted that President Trump had offered Democrats a deal: If you fund the border wall, payments to Obamacare would not be cut. Wallace:
You are holding hostage health insurance for millions of lower-income Americans.
Mulvaney replied:
Actually, what I would say is they’re holding hostage national security…
Then he brought up obstructionism by Democrats:
The Democrats will oppose everything that this president wants to do, which is stunning to us, especially when we are offering them something they want in return.
Wallace countered:
You’re saying, âgive us what we want. And if you don’t, we’re going to cut off funding that would provide health insurance for millions of lower income Americansâ.
The laugher was that Mulvaneyâs logic is that Trump is trying to build a border wall to protect millions of low income Americans who may lose their health care benefits in the trade-off.
So Mexico wonât pay for the wall, and Republicans donât want to pay for the wall either. They would prefer that Democrats agree to pay for Trumpâs wall to give the GOP cover for those Republicans who wonât fund Trumpâs ghastly promise of a wall.
On the obstructionist claim, everyone knows that the Republicans made obstructionism an eight-year strategy when Obama was president. Now, Mulvaneyâs pearl-clutching about obstructionism canât possibly sound legitimate to anyone other than people who watch Fox News. We need to remember that it was the Republicans who picked the 100th day of the (now Trump) administration for last yearâs Continuing Resolution that funded the government, to expire. The idea was to make Hillary Clinton look bad after she won, and then couldnât get a Debt Ceiling increase passed without Republican help.
It never occurred to them that if the Republican nominee won, that he wouldn’t be able to get much done without support of Democrats.
So itâs time for Republicans to wake up, and pass a Debt Ceiling increase. After all, they control the House, Senate and White House. It is their job to avoid a government shutdown.
To help them wake up, here is the UK group Stone Foundation, a modern UK soul band with a tune from their new album, âStreet Ritualsâ. The song is âYour Balloon is Risingâ, featuring Paul Weller formerly of the punk rock group The Jam, and later, Style Council.
Here is âYour Balloon is Risingâ, a blue-eyed soul tune that allows Weller to show all of us that he still has it:
Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.
