Donald Trump 2016 – Page 9 – The Wrongologist

The Pant Load Party

Happy Friday! You are busy, and don’t need a long-form note from Wrongo. But, here are a few items you may have missed that accurately describe the Republican Party today:

First, The GOP didn’t follow its own rules during a vote on Thursday. The subject was a measure to ensure protections for the LGBT community in federal contracts, and it failed to pass after “initially passing” during the time allotted for members to vote. Then, the Republican leadership urged their members to change their votes. The leadership kept the vote open as they pressured members to change sides, allowing lawmakers switch their votes without following the “Regular Order” process of walking to the well at the front of the chamber.

By changing their votes, the House GOP inserted a poison pill that overrides Obama’s executive order banning LGBTQ discrimination in federal defense contracts. From The Hill:

Initially, it appeared Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s (D-NY) amendment had passed, as 217 “yes” votes piled up over 206 “no” votes when the clock ran out. The measure needed 213 votes to pass. But it eventually failed, 212-213, after a number of Republican lawmakers changed their votes from “yes” to “no” after the clock had expired.

The Pant Suit vs The Pant Load© Part II – Funding Infrastructure

Here is an issue on which the presidential candidates of the two parties seem to agree: Funding infrastructure, or at least, funding roads.

Over the past 50 years, US investment in transportation infrastructure as a share of GDP has shrunk by half. China is outspending us four to one and Europe two to one on transportation infrastructure. We have over 100,000 bridges in this country old enough to qualify for Medicare.

The Economist reported that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) thinks that additional spending of $1.6 trillion is needed by 2020 to bring the quality of the country’s infrastructure up from “poor” to “good”. The Economist indicated that over the past decade, America’s roads have fallen from seventh to fourteenth in the World Economic Forum’s rankings of the quality of infrastructure.

Part of the problem is that the federal tax on gasoline, which provides most of the funding for federal spending on roads, has been 18.4 cents per gallon since 1993, yet over that period, the price of construction materials and the wages of construction workers have both risen by more than 75%.

And Congress hasn’t helped. They have passed 35 stop-gap funding bills to extend transportation funding. However, most transportation projects are not built in just one year, they are complex, multi-year projects.

Last December, Congress passed the “Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act”, or the FAST Act – which authorized $305 billion over fiscal years 2016 through 2020 for roads, bridges, public transit, and rail. Of that amount only $70 billion represents a new cash infusion for road repairs. Since the total highway need is $740 billion, there is a big funding gap.

Bizarrely, most of the funding for FAST was paid for by raiding the capital of the Federal Reserve. The Congressional Budget Office recently projected that the money in the Highway Trust Fund will run out in six years, and the fund faces a shortfall of $100 billion by 2026.

The funding gap hasn’t escaped the attention of the two presidential candidates. In a rare show of agreement, they are both for infrastructure spending. So, what do they want to do? Unsurprisingly, Trump hasn’t proposed a specific funding level. In his book, “Crippled America: How to Make America Great Again“, Trump says he’s in favor of major public investment in infrastructure repair and expansion.

“If we do what we have to do correctly…we can create the biggest economic boom in this country since the New Deal when our vast infrastructure was first put into place. It’s a no-brainer.”

It’s a “no-brainer” but, with “no amount”.

Hillary Clinton wants to commit $275 billion in public funds over five years, including $25 billion in capital for a new national infrastructure bank to generate another $225 billion in direct loans, loan guarantees and other forms of credit.

Neither candidate is proposing anything that meets the total financing need.

Today, the federal government is responsible only for about 25% of spending on highways and the FAST alternative will be an unreliable future funding source. Federal net investment has been negative since 2011, meaning that Congress is not spending enough to maintain the roads and bridges we have.

By contrast, many states have raised local taxes on gasoline: 12 states have raised gas taxes in the last 18 months. Most states tax by the gallon, and have benefited from the falling oil price, which has boosted sales of gasoline by 3% nationally. In fact, states are beginning to spend more than the federal government as a percentage of GDP:

State Spending to GDP Growth

But, state gas taxes have the same problem as the federal gas tax: They are fixed per gallon, so inflation erodes their value over time. And state budgets can’t grow to the sky. In many cases, states are under pressure to balance their budgets.

As a result, state politicians are burning political capital just standing still. That means the presidential candidates and Congress must find a way to finance more federal infrastructure investment.

Perhaps the gas tax is the wrong way to go. Rising vehicle fuel economy means more miles driven on fewer gallons of gas. With the move to electric cars, Highway Trust Fund revenue will be even lower. And fewer people own cars, but everyone benefits from good roads. People buy food trucked on our roads. They buy clothes, furniture, etc. trucked on our roads. They are carried to hospitals in ambulances on those roads.

The solution is a general road tax that everyone pays.

So, be on the lookout for Trump or Clinton’s rhetoric on infrastructure solutions. This is a yuuge problem that is not going away.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 15, 2016

The week’s news was dominated by the summit meeting between Paul Ryan and Donald Trump. Going in to the big meeting, Ryan’s staff had an office pool:

COW Office Pool

The GOP feels that the boys will paper over their differences:

COW Paper Over

After the meeting, the Very Reverend Elephant abandoned his scruples:

COW GOP Marriage

Trump now says that the GOP is behind him:

COW GOP Behind Me

Donald’s General Election strategy is to promise only what fits on a ball cap:

COW Promises

Has Trump Changed Over The Years?

During his flu-mandated confinement last week, Wrongo read a 1990 Vanity Fair profile of Donald and Ivana Trump. 1990 wasn’t the best year for The Donald, he was up to his armpits in debt. Some of his real estate ventures were under water and his marriage was coming apart. He was involved in a very public extramarital affair with Marla Maples, whom he later married and still later, divorced.

The Vanity Fair article by Marie Brenner, was written in the midst of all of that:

Trump isolated himself in a small apartment on a lower floor of Trump Tower. He would lie on his bed, staring at the ceiling, talking into the night on the telephone. The Trumps had separated. Ivana remained upstairs in the family triplex with its beige onyx floors and low-ceilinged living room painted with murals in the style of Michelangelo. The murals had occasioned one of their frequent fights: Ivana wanted cherubs, Donald preferred warriors. The warriors won.

Brenner continued:

For days, Trump rarely left his building. Hamburgers and French fries were sent up to him from the nearby New York Delicatessen. His body ballooned, his hair curled down his neck. “You remind me of Howard Hughes,” a friend told him. “Thanks,” Trump replied, “I admire him.”

It is a very long piece, and provides insight and important history. In a follow-up article in 2015, Brenner gave us bullet points about the Trump character and elements that have remained true through the years:

Trump’s views on women are still repugnant
He is still loves slinging bullshit.
He is still convinced that the public loves him, even if you find him repulsive.
When pressed on awkward topics—such as whether or not he regularly read Adolf Hitler’s speeches—he gets vague and inventive.
He has a long history exploiting undocumented immigrants on construction projects.
Loyalty has never been his strong suit.

In 2011, WaPo’s Richard Cohen recalled Brenner’s original Vanity Fair article: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

American political life [today] is [about] doing away with the back story. Increasingly, politicians are becoming religious types, Eagle Scouts who mastered all the knots, a monasticism leavened only by the occasional martini. They do not stray. They avoid midlife crises. They came out of the womb with certainty, avoided acne, married the first girl they dated and went on to make a fortune in something or other.

With Trump, it’s all back story. We know his flops. We know he curses. We know he fools around, that he isn’t religious. We know he lies. We know he has bad taste — in buildings, in ties, in associates (the late Roy Cohn, for instance, and now, Roger Stone). We know about his support for Birtherism.

He’s all these things, and he knows there’s no bad publicity.

He even exaggerates his exaggerations, which is what all people in real estate do. After all, every condo in the building is sold, and the apartment you want already has a ton of offers.

How will that style work with Putin? With President Xi of China? Does The Donald’s experience with borrowing money and then letting his projects go bankrupt animate his thought about welshing on our National Debt?

This from David Remnick:

Trump is no longer hustling golf courses, fake “universities,” or reality TV. He means to command the United States armed forces and control its nuclear codes. He intends to propose legislation, conduct America’s global affairs, preside over its national-intelligence apparatus, and make the innumerable moral and political decisions required of a President.

No, we are not in a Seth Rogen movie. That was North Korea. The movie we are in includes televised assurances of adequate genital dimensions. This is our political moment, a fact-free time where insults and bigotry are acceptable. Remnick reminds us of a story: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

When Howard Kaminsky of Random House called on the real-estate developer and self-marketing master Donald Trump at his office on Fifth Avenue. Kaminsky brought along a cover design for “Trump: The Art of the Deal”. Trump seemed reasonably happy. Just one thing, he said. ‘Please make my name much bigger.’

The Republican Party, having spent years courting the basest impulses in American political culture, now sees the writing on the wall. It reads “Donald Trump,” in very big letters.

Wrongo spoke today with a blog reader. His view was that the end game is set up for Trump, and that he can’t lose. If he wins in the General Election, he wins. If he loses in the General, he still wins.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump wins, but, apparently, we the people will lose.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 8, 2016

Wrongo came back from Europe with the flu, and he is still playing hurt. Maybe this week will bring a cure. There were good cartoons this week, however.

The GOP spent millions over the past 30 years building their Get Conservatives Elected machine, only to have a gifted amateur seize the controls and eviscerate their strategy. Take a look at the GOP’s monster love child:

COW Merger

This week, Trump had his way with the GOP:

COW Morning After

Trump repeats story about Ted Cruz’s father from the “National Enquirer”:

COW Gassy Troll

Bernie plans to wait till the, well you know. Hillary’s dismaying weakness with Democrats is something to worry about. Bernie is likely to win at least 20 state primaries:

$COW Bernie Math$

State of the art in today’s electronic voting:

COW Voting Machines

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 24, 2016

(Mr. Wrong and Ms. Right are in Bordeaux. Next, we visit the Normandy Beaches)

RIP Prince. “When Doves Cry” was a personal favorite:

COW Doves Cry

Wrongo didn’t appreciate when Prince was so popular, how gloriously filthy some of his mainstream songs were when you watched MTV, or heard them on the radio. The web has few Prince live performances because of his tenacious control over his artistic product. Check out this video from his 2004 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame:

Those who read the Wrongologist in email can view the video here.

Apparently, the guitar that Prince used in the video was a cheap Telecaster knock-off. The Diminutive One tosses it into the audience as he finishes. Rolling Stone reports that it almost didn’t happen: George Harrison’s widow, Olivia, wanted the performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” to be limited to people who knew George — unlike Prince, who later claimed he had never even heard the song before it was sent to him to learn for the performance.

Obama of Arabia meets up with his homies:

COW Whats New

Tubman on the $20 bill gives new meaning to new money:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Irony anybody? A 2-term President who was a soldier, a lawyer and served in Congress both in the House and Senate, and a Democrat, is replaced by a pro-Lincoln freed slave who worked for the US Army and was a Republican? And the guy responsible for it is a Democrat!

Trump and the GOP get ready to play delegate football:

COW Lucy

Trump told the GOP he was gonna be a new man in the General Election:

COW New Trump

“Hey GOP: Stop Being So Mean”

Trump thinks the GOP is trying to keep him from scoring The Deal of the Decade, or as the rest of us know it, the GOP nomination. Here is the predictable reaction in TrumpWorld from today’s New Yorker:

COW So Mean (2)

Wrongo got to spend time with the owner of his local PC repair company today. During the work on the PC, the talk turned to politics. The owner said quite a few things that everyone in America seems to feel, that politicians can’t be trusted, that they do nothing to solve America’s problems, and are just there to line their pockets.

He is a two-time voter for Obama, but is leaning this year towards Donald Trump. Two issues are fueling his thinking: First, that illegal immigration is a real issue, and that our economy, and to some extent our society, are being harmed by a large flow of immigrants. We live in Connecticut. Our county has the lowest population density of any county in Connecticut and is geographically, the state’s largest county. We are the whitest county: The 2010 census shows our county to be 94% white, and 1.3% black or African American. People of Hispanic or Latino origin made up 4.5% of the population. So, we enjoy little diversity, although many of our lawn and construction workers are Hispanic.

My computer guy points to a neighboring city in another county which has had large increases in black and Hispanic populations since 2000, now with 25% of its population Hispanic, and 8% black, both up dramatically.

Second, he thinks that Obamacare hurts his business. Never mind that his healthcare comes through his wife’s job, and that he has less than 5 employees, so his business isn’t paying for health insurance.

He also gives Obama no credit for America’s recovery from the Great Recession, saying that it took a really long time to recover, and the economy probably would have recovered on its own.

He is concerned that Trump would be an inappropriate president, a guy who can’t speak civilly to foreign leaders. He isn’t sold on Trump’s foreign policy either.

It is a sample of one. A two-time Obama voter who doesn’t think he has anywhere to go in November. He doesn’t think Hillary is the one; he thinks Sanders is a fringe player, right along with Trump.

He’s looking for a leader, and wonders why nobody who is truly great wants the job.

But that’s easy to understand. Too many people pin their hopes on getting “the right person” in the presidency, not realizing that it takes much more than just the leader to get the wheels of change moving.

Without courage and support from both houses of Congress, government won’t move an inch. Trump or Sanders could win, and be completely unable to steer the ship of state anywhere but where the oligarchs choose for to go.

Connecticut will be a reliable state for the Democrats in the fall, but they need to think again if they plan to use the same old interest group song and dance that worked to elect Obama in 2008 and 2012.

My PC guy isn’t gonna buy it.

It’s doubtful that he’s alone.

The Pant Suit vs. The Pant Load©

Over the next few months, Wrongo will be writing an extended series of columns about the 2016 presidential election, called “The Pant Suit vs. The Pant Load”.©

The starting premise is that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee, and whoever gets the Republican nomination will be the designated Pant Load.

Pant Load #1 is of course, The Donald. Pant Load #2 is Ted “Canada” Cruz.

That leaves Pant Load #3, House Speaker Paul Ryan, who today’s NYT tells us, is running very fast, all the while saying he is not interested. It says a lot about the leadership of the GOP when their leading candidates for the Presidency make Paul Ryan look like a good idea.

Some Republicans who are hoping for a more “moderate” answer to Pant Loads #1 and #2, think that Ryan, possibly with Rubio as his VP candidate, will turn 2016 into a GOP presidential win. However, anyone who thinks that Paul Ryan is a moderate, needs to take the time to read what his plans are for programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and tax reform. He would rip up the social contract and shred the safety net, leaving us in a societal Hobbesian nightmare.

Anyway, the GOP is very nervous, and possibly for good reason. Pollster Stan Greenberg has evidence that groups that were core to the Obama wins are now becoming much more engaged than they were in 2015. A few of Greenberg’s findings:

The GOP civil war is producing an eye-opening number of Republicans ready to punish down-ballot candidates for not making the right choice with respect to how to run in relation to the front-runner. Moderate Republicans are already peeling off
The focus groups with white unmarried women, millennials and African Americans showed a new consciousness about the stakes in November. In this poll, the percentage of Democrats giving the highest level of engagement has increased 10 points
The result is that the country might be heading for an earthquake election in November.

An “earthquake election.” Take all that with a grain of salt, since his firm (which includes James Carvelle) is very partisan. The survey took place March 17-24, 2016. Margin of error is +/-3.27 percentage points at 95% confidence. 65% of respondents were reached by cell phone.

So, the desperation is rising. Nancy Letourneau writes today about Grover Norquist’s plan to turn this around for the GOP:

Into this breach comes Grover Norquist with…what can I say…a “creative” solution. He has identified six new voting blocs that have developed over the last 30 years that won’t want Hillary Clinton in the White House. Between the lines, his contention is that she is just so out of touch with what is happening in the world that she’s missed them.

Here are Norquist’s six voting blocks that will challenge the Rising American Electorate:

Home schoolers
Charter school supporters
Concealed-carry permit holders
Fracking workers
Users of e-cigarettes and vapor products
Uber drivers

Norquist thinks the Republicans can tap these groups in order to stop Clinton in November. Wrongo isn’t sure, but Norquist’s ideas seemed to make more sense when we were at Burning Man on peyote. But now that our clothes are back on, it all seems dubious. This is micro targeting for no apparent gain.

For example, would a vaping Uber driver (with a concealed carry permit) who home-schools his/her children be Grover’s (and the GOP’s) ideal target? The size of that demographic approximates the number of American unicorns.

And who out there thinks that the home schooling bloc are not already voting Republican? Something like 95% of school-age kids are in traditional public schools, despite all the press that charter schools and homeschooling get, so we are not speaking of a huge demographic.

And how many fracking workers can there be? Aren’t most of them in Texas, and Oklahoma, not exactly swing states?

Those who have a concealed carry permit are most likely also already voting for the GOP.

Ya gotta love the smell of conservative desperation in the springtime.

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – April 10, 2016

This week, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) tore her Republican colleagues a new one in the pages of the Boston Globe:

For seven years, through artificial debt ceiling crises, deliberate government shutdowns, and intentional confirmation blockades, Senate Republicans have acted as though the election and reelection of Obama relieved them of any responsibility to do their jobs. Senate Republicans embraced the idea that government shouldn’t work at all unless it works only for themselves and their friends. The campaigns of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the next logical outgrowth of the same attitude — if you can’t get what you want, just ignore the obligations of governing, then divert attention and responsibility by wallowing in a toxic stew of attacks on Muslims, women, Latinos, and each other.

If Senate Republicans don’t like being forced to pick between a bullet and poison, then here’s some advice: Stand up to extremists in the Senate bent on sabotaging our government whenever things don’t go their way.

Warren’s anger is righteous anger, it is well directed and well-spoken. But, politicians who make it in our political system are those who hide most of their anger (righteous or not) under a veneer of unctuous civility. She chooses to give as good as she gets from the frat boys in the GOP. Maybe, after another 4 or 8 years of federal failure, that kind of anger will resonate with the American electorate.

Cartoons this week reflected the general coarsening of our society and politics. The bathroom habits of certain minorities made news in North Carolina. Apparently, they should pee in Virginia:

COW NC Bathrooms

Mississippi made similar news:

COW Miss Church

The NY Dem primary will be fought out on the sidewalks of NY:

COW Sidewalks of NY

The NY primaries have both parties looking for some room:

COW NY Primary

The Panama Papers tell us once again that we live in two Americas:

COW Panama Papers

Of course, Tax Day this week is mostly for the little people:

COW Tax Day2

The Revolution WILL Be Televised

There is a lot of talk that the 2016 election is the start of a political rebellion in the US. We see the large, enthusiastic Sanders/Trump crowds, and the candidates’ relative success with winning primary elections, and have to ask:

Will it remain a political rebellion, one that expresses itself through the electoral process?
Will it continue beyond the 2016 election, assuming an Establishment candidate wins?

It began with the failure of the US economy to add permanent jobs for the middle class, and the lower classes after the Great Recession. Our column outlining that all jobs created since 2005 were temporary or contractor jobs showed that people are living paycheck to paycheck, but fewer have benefits, and all are afraid that they could be out of work with any personal or economic hiccup.

And wages are not rising the way corporate profits are, as this chart shows:

Corp Profits to HH income

So, fewer jobs as an employee, and no change in household income. More risk, no more money. Life for the average person in the US is harder and more frightening for a large group of people. Maybe they are not yet a critical mass of voters, but there are enough angry people that the Establishment political machines may be disrupted.

Since many see the worsening of the life of the middle class to be permanent, there is little reason for hope if you are on the fringe of our society. So, we’re watching that play out in the 2016 electoral race. People are finally getting tired of one or the other of these two campaign pitches:

We are the greatest nation on earth, but only if we elect candidate X, because candidate Y will ruin us
Or, you can’t have a good job with dignity, or good schools, or ask us to address any other of our serious problems, because we can’t afford it and people won’t pay more taxes

And as Gaius Publius says, there’s no other way to see the Sanders and Trump insurgencies except as a popular rebellion, a rebellion of the people against their “leaders.” On the Sanders side, the rebellion is clearer. Sanders has energized voters across the Democratic-Independent spectrum with his call for a “political revolution,” and that message is especially resonant with the young. From The Guardian:

Analyzing social survey data spanning 34 years reveals that only about a third of adults aged 18-35 think they are part of the US middle class. Meanwhile 56.5% of this age group describe themselves as working class.

Fewer Millennials (who number about 80 million in the US) are describing themselves as middle class. The number has fallen from 45.6% in 2002 to a record low of 34.8% in 2014. Ms. Clinton will need to rely on Sanders supporters falling in behind her – and faced with the prospect of a Trump presidency, many may do so. She also intends to try to win over “moderate” Republicans, assuming that the Bernie voters have nowhere to go.

That might work, since as Benjamin Studebaker says, Clinton is arguably closer to the Republican establishment than are Trump or Cruz. In fact, the Democratic and Republican establishments are both closer to each other than either is to its own anti-establishment wing. Consider that Clinton and the Republican Establishment both:

Support the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP)
Support immigration reform
Support foreign aid
Oppose Medicare for all
Oppose tuition free college
Oppose a $15 minimum wage

It would not be unreasonable for moderate Republicans to conclude that Clinton is closer to their ideological needs than are Trump or Cruz. Clinton may play for the other team, but at least she’s in their league.

The Establishments of both parties have no vision when it comes to solving income stagnation for the 99%, or solving our crippling health care cost increases, the trade treaty fiasco, and the military establishment’s continued sucking of more and more money from our budget.

These cumulative burdens will break people’s belief in a better, more secure future. Either policy changes are enacted by the next Establishment president and Congress, or things could start to come unglued.

Which means that for almost every one of us, this could be the most consequential electoral year of our lives.

So, the Establishment wings of both parties need a Monday wake-up call. Here to rouse them from slumber is Iris DeMent with “Livin’ in the Waste Land of the Free”: