George Will is another conservative columnist for the Washington Post who wishes we had a different president. His column is nationally syndicated and he regularly provides the conservative view on TV news shows. Donald Trump can't stop discussing issues which he does not understand. George Will prides himself on his understand of US history. Therefore, Will was very provoked when Trump exposed his ignorance about the causes of the Civil War. Trump argued that he could have put a deal together which would have prevented the Civil War. The great deal maker would have come to our rescue. That was hard for Will to stomach.
Trump's ignorance about the nuclear triad also worries Will. The triad was designed to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. One of Trump's spokespersons told a TV audience that the triad was put in place for another reason. She argued that the triad was there so that we could use nuclear weapons. That is consistent with Trumps America First agenda which holds that our military power is there for a good reason. That is, to destroy our enemies and to protect our citizens. (Especially those who voted for Trump?}
Will concludes his column by asking Americans to use the electoral system to neuter the Trump Administration. That is a very strange comment coming from a conservative Republican.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
Why Is It So Hard To Replace Obamacare?
This article hits the nail on the head. The basic structure of Obamacare was put together by the conservative Heritage "think tank". Mitt Romney passed a bill based on that structure when he was the governor of Massachusetts. Its been hard for Republicans to find an alternative to a conservative health care plan that has enabled millions of low income Americans to purchase health insurance in a market subsidized by the government. The next question that a thinking person might ask is why do Republicans want to repeal Obamacare? The answer is not difficult to find by those who understand Obamacare. In the first place, Republicans can't support any plan called Obamacare. It was OK when it when was called Romney Care but Republicans did not want Democrats to get credit for extending healthcare to millions of Americans. They decided to turn it into a weapon against Democrats by naming it after a president that millions of Republicans were taught to dislike for a variety of reasons. After all, Obama was not really an American.
The next major reason why Republican's want to repeal Obamacare is that it contains a very progressive tax that provides funding for subsidies and other incentives that make it affordable for low income Americans. Each of the replacement plans proposed by Republicans eliminate the tax on Americans with very high incomes. Consequently, any replacement plan must reduce the benefits for low income Americans because of the lost tax revenues. Republicans in competitive districts don't want to run for reelection after voting for a plan the Democrats will use against them. The Freedom Caucus Republicans are another matter. They represent conservative districts that would rather shrink government in the cause of liberty.
The next major reason why Republican's want to repeal Obamacare is that it contains a very progressive tax that provides funding for subsidies and other incentives that make it affordable for low income Americans. Each of the replacement plans proposed by Republicans eliminate the tax on Americans with very high incomes. Consequently, any replacement plan must reduce the benefits for low income Americans because of the lost tax revenues. Republicans in competitive districts don't want to run for reelection after voting for a plan the Democrats will use against them. The Freedom Caucus Republicans are another matter. They represent conservative districts that would rather shrink government in the cause of liberty.
Is California Our Best Defense Against Trump?
Tom Friedman can't decide whether Trump is crazy or whether he is crazy like a fox. He avoids making a decision because he is not a doctor. In either case, he worries about the damage that Trump might cause while he holds the power of the presidency. The Democratic Party is too weak to stop Trump but states have powers that they can use against many of his policies. California is at the head of the class. Friedman describes several things that California is doing, often with other states, that thwart many of Trump's efforts to increase carbon emissions in order to win votes from coal miners and contributions from fossil fuel businesses. Trump is a slow learner but he is finding out that running the federal government is very different from running a family business. He does not understand that America is not an oligarchy. Deal making is much more complex in a democracy because politicians have to face elections and because most Americans like it that way. Signing executives orders is not the way to get things done in a democracy. Bills have to be passed by Congress. That seems to be too much of burden for Trump.
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Does Trump Have A Narcicisstic Personality Disorder?
Trump has many characteristics that are consistent with the narcissistic personality disorder. Many individuals with that disorder are able to use some of the symptoms of narcissism to their advantage. It can motivate them to achieve and it encourages them to seek fame. I thought it would be informative to read a description of the disorder as it is defined by psychologists in the article below. You can check off the common behavioral traits, and see how many are consistent with Trump's behavior. There is also a section on how childhood experiences lead to the disorder as well some guidance on how to prevent its development in children. Narcissists are difficult to deal with especially if they are put in positions of power. They can behave in ways that are self destructive and they don't respond well to criticism and/or advice.
Congress Blocks Key Aspects Of Trump Agenda
The checks and balance system seems to be working just like our founders intended. The House controls the federal budget. During the Obama Administration the Freedom Caucus was willing to shut down funding for the government in order to shrink the federal government. They are doing the same thing today. However, this time the Republican Party will be blamed if the House does not approve a spending bill that will keep the government in operation. Therefore, the Republicans in the House need votes from Democrats in order to get agreement on a spending bill. The House just passed a budget agreement that will fund the government for the remainder of this fiscal year which ends next September. Trump did not get funding for his Mexican border wall and he did not get funding to increase the budget for the border patrol. The Democrats were able to get funding for several important programs:
* Funding for Planned Parenthood will continue
* Funding for the National Institution of Health was increased
* Federal funding to sanctuary cities will not be cut
* Federal subsidies will not be eliminated for a critical aspect of Obamacare
As long as the GOP House remains divided it will very difficult for Trump to get bills through the House without support from Democrats. Even if some Trump priorities do get passed in the House, Democrats can block most bills by using the filibuster just like the GOP did during the Obama Administration.
Trump seems to be primarily interested in being worshiped by his base. He held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania instead of attending a dinner with the White House press corp that usually pokes fun at the president. We might be better off if we encouraged Trump to hold worship services and let others in the White House set the presidential agenda. He vented a lot of steam about his campaign promises and how he would make America Great Again. That does little harm to our nation.
* Funding for Planned Parenthood will continue
* Funding for the National Institution of Health was increased
* Federal funding to sanctuary cities will not be cut
* Federal subsidies will not be eliminated for a critical aspect of Obamacare
As long as the GOP House remains divided it will very difficult for Trump to get bills through the House without support from Democrats. Even if some Trump priorities do get passed in the House, Democrats can block most bills by using the filibuster just like the GOP did during the Obama Administration.
Trump seems to be primarily interested in being worshiped by his base. He held a campaign rally in Pennsylvania instead of attending a dinner with the White House press corp that usually pokes fun at the president. We might be better off if we encouraged Trump to hold worship services and let others in the White House set the presidential agenda. He vented a lot of steam about his campaign promises and how he would make America Great Again. That does little harm to our nation.
Monday, May 1, 2017
It Looks As If The House Will Vote To Replace The ACA With New Bill
Reports indicate that the replacement bill has been weakened in ways that will get the members of the conservative Freedom Caucus to vote for the new bill. The White House is pushing for a vote but Trump is not even familiar with the details of the new bill. He just wants to declare victory. House members in moderate districts may have to defend a bill that cuts benefits for those with preexisting illnesses in the 2018 election. Insurance companies will have the option of raising premiums for applicants with preexisting conditions. That would price many of them out of the market.
Has Trump Redefined Conservatism and Republicanism?
This article makes an effort to describe the conservative ideal that has prevailed over the last 60 years and argues that Trump has responded to new realities and shifted it in a positive direction. Conservatism under William Buckley and Ronald Reagan had common enemies. They opposed big government for a variety of reasons. They did not like the welfare state; they opposed government regulations; and they argued that progressive tax policies reduced the incentive to work hard and to create new businesses. They were also engaged in a cold war against communism and/or socialism. They believed in free trade and in the use of American leadership to inspire other nations to follow our lead.
This article argues that Donald Trump has redefined conservatism and Republicanism for a variety of reasons. The cold war is now a domestic war. It is between globalism and Americanism. His "America First" slogan is part of an effort to promote a national solidarity that binds the government to its citizens. The new enemies are immigrants that compete for American jobs and nations that have used unfair practices to build trade surpluses that led to the loss of millions of jobs in America.
Trump's "America first" slogan helped him to win the election because both of our political parties promote a utopian idea of globalism that is a threat to democracy. It disenfranchises the vast majority of Americans it empowers technocratic elites who are resented because many Americans believe that they look down at them. We should reject much of Trump's harshest rhetoric but we should lean in the direction of nationalism instead of utopian form of globalism which assumes that everyone benefits from globalization.
I have many problems with this article. In the first place Trump's policy proposals are very similar to those that have defined the Republican Party for ages. Like Reagan, he claims that government is a big part of our problem. He has issued executive orders that reduce government regulations and limit the activities of many government agencies. He claims that he will "drain the swamp" in Washington and turn more power over to state governments. He has also proposed tax reforms that primarily benefit high income citizens. Like Reagan, he favors a less progressive tax system. Republicans have promised to repeal Obamacare for the last eight years and Trump supported their failed effort to replace Obamacare with a plan that reduced federal funding for our most needy citizens. It also eliminated a tax on high income Americans that was put into Obamacare to fund an increase in Medicare spending. Like Ronald Reagan, Trump has also proposed a large increase in military spending. Islamic terrorism has replaced communism as the justification for the large increase in the military budget.
Trump won the election because he won 50,000 votes out 13,000,000 votes cast in three rust belt states that would have given Clinton the election if she had won them. He did that by doing what Reagan did in the 1980's. He got blue collar workers to vote for him by attacking NAFTA and other trade agreements that many union leaders, and union members, blame for their loss of jobs. His attack on free trade differentiated him from his fellow Republicans and from Democrats enough to win an extra 50,000 votes that would have typically gone to Democrats. Trump is not really against international trade. He has real estate assets in many parts of the world; his daughter Ivanka has trademarked her products that sell across the globe; her husband Jared Kushner also has international real estate assets. My bet is that he will retreat substantially from many of the promises that he made about reducing US imports. He was just smart enough to understand what he needed to say to win the election.
Trump also differentiated himself from Republicans like Paul Ryan who has been promoting cuts in popular social welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare for years. Trump beat Marco Rubio in his home state of Florida in the GOP primary because he won the majority of votes from
the huge numbers of retired voters in Florida who depend upon those programs. Those votes also helped him to beat Clinton in Florida by a small margin.
My position on Trump is that he is not bound by any ideology. He understood what he needed to do in order to win the Republican primaries and to beat a Democrat in the general election. The conservative Heritage Foundation recommended many of Trump's cabinet nominees as well his Supreme Court nominee. Many of his economic ideas were also influenced by conservative economists from Heritage. Trump is smart enough to understand that he won the election as a Republican and that he needs its support to get anything done in Washington. Most of his policies smell like other Republican policies. On the other hand, he will ditch any of them if they get in the way of his real goal which is to win another term as president four years from now.
While I am critical of many points made in this article, I do not want to minimize the effect that globalization has had on national politics. It has been even stronger in the European Union than it has in the US. The common currency in the eurozone made it impossible for nations that went into recession following the financial crisis to devalue their currencies in order to expand exports. Moreover, the cultural differences between the nation states in the European Union are much stronger than the many differences that exist between states and regions in the US. There is a deeper sense of lost national identity in Europe than there is in the US. On the other hand, businesses have aggressively marketed their products globally and they have taken advantage of lower cost resources, including labor, in order to expand and remain competitive. That combined with the effect of automation on the demand for labor has created major problems in most countries. Governments will have to be more active rather than less active in order to deal with the economic and social consequences of globalization. Unfortunately, many governments will face political opposition to the expansion of social welfare programs and nations with slow growth, or shrinking economies, will not have the funds that will be needed. We will need more enlightened leaders in government to make this happen. Party politics have also become a big problem. Party leadership is not the same thing as national leadership. None of the major political parties in France made it to the run off election to select its next president. Voters in US tend to identify with their political party but neither of them has responded to the degree necessary to deal with the problems which we face. Trump and his political party will take us backwards when we should be going forward. The Democratic Party seems too dependent on marketing itself to its various constituents than it is to figuring out how to address the forces of globalization and technological changes that have been disruptive and which will not go away.
This article argues that Donald Trump has redefined conservatism and Republicanism for a variety of reasons. The cold war is now a domestic war. It is between globalism and Americanism. His "America First" slogan is part of an effort to promote a national solidarity that binds the government to its citizens. The new enemies are immigrants that compete for American jobs and nations that have used unfair practices to build trade surpluses that led to the loss of millions of jobs in America.
Trump's "America first" slogan helped him to win the election because both of our political parties promote a utopian idea of globalism that is a threat to democracy. It disenfranchises the vast majority of Americans it empowers technocratic elites who are resented because many Americans believe that they look down at them. We should reject much of Trump's harshest rhetoric but we should lean in the direction of nationalism instead of utopian form of globalism which assumes that everyone benefits from globalization.
I have many problems with this article. In the first place Trump's policy proposals are very similar to those that have defined the Republican Party for ages. Like Reagan, he claims that government is a big part of our problem. He has issued executive orders that reduce government regulations and limit the activities of many government agencies. He claims that he will "drain the swamp" in Washington and turn more power over to state governments. He has also proposed tax reforms that primarily benefit high income citizens. Like Reagan, he favors a less progressive tax system. Republicans have promised to repeal Obamacare for the last eight years and Trump supported their failed effort to replace Obamacare with a plan that reduced federal funding for our most needy citizens. It also eliminated a tax on high income Americans that was put into Obamacare to fund an increase in Medicare spending. Like Ronald Reagan, Trump has also proposed a large increase in military spending. Islamic terrorism has replaced communism as the justification for the large increase in the military budget.
Trump won the election because he won 50,000 votes out 13,000,000 votes cast in three rust belt states that would have given Clinton the election if she had won them. He did that by doing what Reagan did in the 1980's. He got blue collar workers to vote for him by attacking NAFTA and other trade agreements that many union leaders, and union members, blame for their loss of jobs. His attack on free trade differentiated him from his fellow Republicans and from Democrats enough to win an extra 50,000 votes that would have typically gone to Democrats. Trump is not really against international trade. He has real estate assets in many parts of the world; his daughter Ivanka has trademarked her products that sell across the globe; her husband Jared Kushner also has international real estate assets. My bet is that he will retreat substantially from many of the promises that he made about reducing US imports. He was just smart enough to understand what he needed to say to win the election.
Trump also differentiated himself from Republicans like Paul Ryan who has been promoting cuts in popular social welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare for years. Trump beat Marco Rubio in his home state of Florida in the GOP primary because he won the majority of votes from
the huge numbers of retired voters in Florida who depend upon those programs. Those votes also helped him to beat Clinton in Florida by a small margin.
My position on Trump is that he is not bound by any ideology. He understood what he needed to do in order to win the Republican primaries and to beat a Democrat in the general election. The conservative Heritage Foundation recommended many of Trump's cabinet nominees as well his Supreme Court nominee. Many of his economic ideas were also influenced by conservative economists from Heritage. Trump is smart enough to understand that he won the election as a Republican and that he needs its support to get anything done in Washington. Most of his policies smell like other Republican policies. On the other hand, he will ditch any of them if they get in the way of his real goal which is to win another term as president four years from now.
While I am critical of many points made in this article, I do not want to minimize the effect that globalization has had on national politics. It has been even stronger in the European Union than it has in the US. The common currency in the eurozone made it impossible for nations that went into recession following the financial crisis to devalue their currencies in order to expand exports. Moreover, the cultural differences between the nation states in the European Union are much stronger than the many differences that exist between states and regions in the US. There is a deeper sense of lost national identity in Europe than there is in the US. On the other hand, businesses have aggressively marketed their products globally and they have taken advantage of lower cost resources, including labor, in order to expand and remain competitive. That combined with the effect of automation on the demand for labor has created major problems in most countries. Governments will have to be more active rather than less active in order to deal with the economic and social consequences of globalization. Unfortunately, many governments will face political opposition to the expansion of social welfare programs and nations with slow growth, or shrinking economies, will not have the funds that will be needed. We will need more enlightened leaders in government to make this happen. Party politics have also become a big problem. Party leadership is not the same thing as national leadership. None of the major political parties in France made it to the run off election to select its next president. Voters in US tend to identify with their political party but neither of them has responded to the degree necessary to deal with the problems which we face. Trump and his political party will take us backwards when we should be going forward. The Democratic Party seems too dependent on marketing itself to its various constituents than it is to figuring out how to address the forces of globalization and technological changes that have been disruptive and which will not go away.
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