Trump Is Gaslighting Soybean Farmers

Many rural areas, especially in the Mid-West voted for Donald Trump.  Now, thanks to Trump wholly self-created trade war these same rural areas are likely to take an economic beating, particularly as China retaliates for Trump's tariffs and looks to other markets to replace agricultural products previously  purchased from American farmers. Trump is trying to deceive these - in my view fools and/or bigots - who fell for his appeals to racism and xenophobia by trying to pretend that China and other nations commenced the trade war that Trump himself started.  A piece in Slate looks at this gaslighting of what Trump hopes will prove to be the gullible.   Here are excerpts:

American soybean farmers are fretting about becoming a casualty of Donald Trump’s brewing trade war with China, which happens to be their most important export market. Prices for the crop took a dive after tensions between the U.S. and Beijing began to flare up earlier this year, and in June, the People’s Republic finally placed a 25 percent tariff on U.S. soybeans and other agricultural products in retaliation for the White House’s duties on Chinese goods.

[Trump] The president, of course, is trying to absolve himself of all responsibility:  “I am in Brussels, but always thinking about our farmers. Soy beans fell 50% from 2012 to my election. Farmers have done poorly for 15 years. Other countries’ trade barriers and tariffs have been destroying their businesses. I will open...”

I don’t usually like to use the phrase gaslighting, because it’s kind of a cliche at this point, but I’m pretty sure this is gaslighting. Trump is right on the narrow point that prices for soybeans have fallen by around half since 2012. But that really has nothing to do with trade barriers by other countries, as he suggests. Crop prices have plunged because of a worldwide boom in farming production that’s led to a giant commodity glut. Meanwhile, exports have actually been a crucial bright spot for American farmers: Measured by tonnage, the U.S. sells a little under half of its total soybean production overseas, with almost 60 percent of those exports headed to China alone last year.

U.S. soybean exports to China* were already down 22 percent through the first five months of this year, and the great fear among growers is that they could end up permanently losing market share there as buyers there shift to other suppliers, particularly Brazil, while Trump’s trade conflict wears on.

[Trump] The president wants the farm belt to believe he’s coming to its rescue. Somehow, I doubt farmers are going to buy it.

Trump played these voters for fools and karma may be about to catch up with them. 

Fox News Analyst Quits Network With Nuclear Email Slamming Network

I have long viewed Fox News as little more than a right wing propaganda outlet that disseminates lies and untruths.  Its viewers, which past studies have found to be the least informed, seemingly only too willing and motivated to embrace ignorance and watch the network to satiate their own racial, religious and ethnic bigotries.   If one is looking for serious and reliable news, Fox News is about as far from that goal as one can get.  Now, long time Fox News analyst Lt. Col. Ralph Peters has resigned from Fox News via an email that excoriates the network as a propaganda machine that disregards objective facts and the truth.  Here are highlights from Mediaite on the stunning email:

Fox News Strategic Analyst Ralph Peters — a longtime contributor to the network who frequently appeared across various programs to discuss matters of national security — sent an email announcing his departure from the network.

And in it, he absolutely scorched the earth.

As reported by Buzzfeed, Peters railed against the network — calling it a “propaganda machine” for President Donald Trump‘s “ethically ruinous” administration.

“I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers,” Peters wrote. “Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.”

He added, “In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration.”

Peters, who before the Trump administration was known for his harsh criticisms of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, proceeded to unload on Fox News’s primetime hosts — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham — for “scaremongering” and “wittingly harming our system of government”:

When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.

He does make a point of saying, “I do not apply the above criticisms in full to Fox Business, where numerous hosts retain a respect for facts and maintain a measure of integrity.”

The complete email is truly stunning to read and can be found at Buzzfeed News.

Part of that email aptly describes what the Republican Party is doing as well:

I feel compelled to explain why I have to leave. Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to "support and defend the Constitution," and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.

How Racism Carried Trump to Victory

Trump supporters at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan

In some ways the ongoing Virginia 2017 statewide campaigns are a mirror of what happened in the 2016 presidential election with Republicans pandering to racists, religious extremists and aging, reactionary rural white populations, especially in Southwest Virginia and the southern tier of the state exclusive of the Hampton Roads region.  Meanwhile the Democrats are running inclusive forward looking campaigns.  Hopefully, Virginia's demographics will prevent GOP victories and hopefully Democrats will recognize the fact that ultimately the outcome of the 2016 presidential contest ultimately hinged on rural white racism and animosity toward non-whites.  It is far past time that the false meme that "economic uncertainty" is what flipped prior Obama voters to Trump in key states like Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.  True, many in the mainstream media do not want to call these voters out for what they are: racist bigots who are outraged over their declining white privilege and by extension the fact that their backwardness is increasingly causing younger generations to migrate to liberal urban areas where employment opportunities exist and accepting communities abound.  But reluctance to speak the truth does not change the facts.  A column in the New York Times looks at the data that confirms racism and hatred towards immigrants were the key motivation for these Trump voters.  Here are excerpts:

What Democrats missed was the profound political impact recent immigration trends were having on the more rural parts of the once homogeneous Midwest — that the region had unexpectedly become a flash point in the nation’s partisan immigration wars.

In a Brookings essay published last month, John C. Austin, director of the Michigan Economic Center, a local think tank, writes that the region is experiencing a “steady stream of immigrants from Mexico, Central America, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.”
As a result, Austin continues,

Immigration has become an unambiguous factor in this racially charged Midwestern landscape. While immigrant-rich states like Arizona, California, and Florida are often at the center of immigration policy discussions, the political debate about the role of immigrants burns hottest in the heartland.

Austin went on, in an email, to provide more detail about the power of immigration to move white voters into the Trump column:

The "rural” voters here are some farmers, but more likely, as in the hinterlands outside Flint, Monroe, Toledo, Erie, or Janesville, Wisconsin, they are mostly white, working class blue collar workers or retirees, many, sadly, who fled their small cities to escape blacks. They are anxious about the economic prospects for their future, their aging communities (the kids have fled), making folks mad. And now all these immigrants come and are changing the society!! Just as Macomb County, where working class white voters fled Detroit in advance of blacks, now sees nearby communities like Hamtramck becoming (in their view) a Bangladeshi bazaar — and they don’t like that. And they are easily fanned to blame those folks.

In February 2017, Stanley Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist, conducted four postelection focus groups with white voters who had cast ballots for Trump in Macomb County, Michigan, an area he has been studying since 1985. The participants were not Republicans. They were whites without college degrees who identified themselves as independents, as Democratic-leaning independents, or as Democrats who voted for Obama in 2008, 2012 or both.

Three developments are taking place in the rust belt simultaneously.

First, as recently as 2000, many of the key Midwestern counties that moved from blue to red in 2016 had very few minority residents. Since then, their immigrant populations began to increase at a rapid rate well above the national average. Second, at the same time that immigrants are moving in, younger native-born residents are leaving in droves to seek employment elsewhere, while the remaining white population is aging and is often hostile to change. It is the perfect formula for cultural conflict, and Trump proved to be the perfect candidate to exploit it. Finally, these changes are taking place in a region that Austin points out is home to “15 of the nation’s 25 major metro areas with the sharpest black-white segregation,” making it even more unreceptive to nonwhites than other sections of the country.

Arrayed on a diversity index, Michigan with an index of 42, Wisconsin at 35, Ohio at 36, and Pennsylvania at 41, all rank in the bottom twenty — i.e., the least diverse — of the fifty states. The diversity index for the entire country is substantially higher at 63. Examples of states with very high diversity indexes include California at 79; Nevada at 73; Texas at 70; and New York at 70.

A rapid rate of growth in the percentage of immigrants in communities that have in the past experienced little diversity is particularly explosive.

In other words, communities that are close to 100 percent white will react intensely to a modest increase in foreign-born residents, while highly diverse communities will shrug it off.

Exit poll data from 2016 shows how critical opposition to immigration in the Midwest was to Trump’s victory.

In Michigan, for instance, exit poll data showed that those who believe immigrants to the United States “hurt the county” voted three to one for Trump. Those who said illegal immigrants should be deported voted for Trump by better than five to one. The same pattern can be seen in exit poll data from Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania, which, while not part of the Midwest geographically, resembles it politically.

At the same time, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio and, to a lesser extent, Pennsylvania, have each experienced a net out-migration of native-born residents. The effect of this exodus is twofold.

First, the people leaving tend to be younger and more open-minded, willing to risk moving to a faster growing section of the country. Second, those left behind tend to be older, more closed-minded and more set in their ways.

William Frey, a demographer at Brookings, emailed me:

These “left-behind” populations tend to be older and more backward rather than future oriented — less likely to embrace the nation’s new diversity and the emerging global economy. This was surely the case among 2016 voters in rural parts of swing states that helped to elect Trump as president.

Further compounding the rightward movement of these white voters is their animosity to nonwhites. . . . The task for Democrats is how to come up with a non-xenophobic, non-racist answer to this problem.

Many of these Trump voters pack the pews of their churches every Sunday and regularly feign piety and give lip service to "family values."  But do not be fooled.  They are not nice or moral people and their most certainly do not follow the Gospel of Christ.   Structuring a means to reach out to foul and morally deficient voters will not be an easy task for the Democrats.  One obvious effort that is needed is to educate minority voters that they MUST turn out and vote every Election Day because those who hate them will be turning out.

P.S., yes, I may be biased since many of these same voters hold animus towards LGBT citizens. 

Are the British Rethinking BREXIT?

Before Donald Trump won the presidency through a flaw in America's Electoral College system that ignored Trump's significant loss of the popular vote, we witnessed a campaign similar to that of Trump which emphasized xenophobia and bigotry in the United Kingdom for that nation's exit from the European Union.  As in America, many British were shocked that the forces of hatred and isolation won the day in the BREXIT vote.  Based on the results of yesterdays elections in the UK, perhaps many voters are having second thoughts.  Prime Minister Theresa May’s had called elections in what some see as remarkable gamble on a snap election to increase her party's power.  It backfired and now Conservatives no longer hold a majority of seats in the House of Commons.  As in America where urban areas oppose the Trump/GOP agenda, in the UK urban areas rejected the policies of the Conservatives and, by extension, Brexit.  A piece in the New York Times looks at how the election results may put Brexit in danger.  Here are highlights:

In a global economy amply stocked with anxiety-provoking variables, Britain just added another.

An election designed to bolster the government’s mandate instead yielded fundamental confusion over who is in charge as the nation prepares for fraught negotiations in its pending divorce from the European Union.

Prime Minister Theresa May had called the election on the assumption that her Conservative Party would emerge stronger, solidifying her negotiating position. Instead, the electorate’s stunning rebuke of her leadership all but guarantees a period of unpredictable political jockeying, intensifying uncertainty about future commercial dealings across the English Channel.

Investors took the latest turmoil in Britain as a prompt to unload the British pound. As European markets began trading on Friday, the currency slipped about 2 percent against the dollar.

And yet the shocking electoral outcome also has the potential to diminish the looming economic costs of Britain’s exit from the European Union, commonly known as Brexit.

It enhanced the possibility that a chastened government led by Mrs. May, or perhaps an administration led by someone else, would now strike a less confrontational approach with Europe while seeking a way to keep Britain within the bloc’s large single marketplace.

As Britain prepared for its face-off with Europe, the prime minister had been adamant that her country would impose strict limits on immigration, a posture seemingly enhanced by recent terrorist attacks. Yet limiting immigration appeared certain to cost Britain inclusion in the European single market, a swath of the globe stretching from Ireland to Greece and holding some 500 million relatively affluent consumers.

The European authorities have consistently emphasized that Britain’s continued inclusion in the single market requires that it abide by the bloc’s rules — not least, a provision that people be allowed to move freely within its confines.

This redrawing of the basic geography of European commerce was playing out just as President Trump was disavowing regional trade deals across the Atlantic and Pacific, while variously threatening trade hostilities with Canada, China, Germany and Mexico.
This election could change that trajectory.

Whoever will be in charge — a government led by a weakened Mrs. May, another member of her Conservative Party, or a coalition spearheaded by the Labour Party — might well construe a mandate to pursue a softer Brexit. The unexpected new political configuration might compel Britain to relinquish its pursuit of immigration limits in an effort to keep itself within the single market.

In short, the election has complicated the assumption that Britain is headed irretrievably toward the exits, producing a moment in which seemingly everything may be up for reconsideration.

Those who have favored Britain remaining within Europe, or at least softening the terms of its exit, now have “an expectation, or at least a hope, that cooler heads will prevail,” said Jeremy Cook, chief economist at World First, a company based in London that manages foreign exchange transactions. “It may be that hard Brexit has been rejected by the electorate.”

Worries about the economic impact of Brexit have been weighing heavily on the pound, which plunged after the referendum last June that unleashed Brexit. With Britain at risk of suffering barriers to trade, it has lost some of its considerable luster as a place for companies to invest, making its money a less desirable currency to hold.

A weakened pound has, in turn, translated into rising prices in Britain — on food, gasoline and imported components used by domestic factories. All of this has reinforced concerns about the fate of the economy. 

Would that America could hold a snap election.  With Trumps approval levels at new lows, perhaps Americans could rid themselves of the foul and dangerous occupant of the White House.  Meanwhile the Trump/GOP border tax could similarly impact prices in the USA and make goods more expensive for Trump's knuckle dragging supporters. 

New Trump Budget Hits His Own Voters and the Poor Hardest

The proposed Trump/Pence regime budget released today follows through on past GOP priorities: massive cuts to social safety net programs such as food stamps, aid for the disabled, and the working poor while granting huge (obscene might be the more appropriate word) tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans.   Stated another way, Trump wants the wealthy to enjoy an even more self-centered and opulent life style while the poor and poorly paid working class citizens are literally left to die.   It is the antithesis of the Gospel message that Republicans and the pathological liar who goes by the name of Donald Trump falsely claim to honor.  And it is critical to remember that this is the agenda that 81% of evangelical Christians voted for.  The lies, hypocrisy and moral bankruptcy are all off the charts.  I cannot help but ask: where are the supposedly "good Christians"?  Why don't we see them loudly opposing, protesting and denouncing these budget cuts?   Lastly, why don't we see Trump voters opening their eyes and realizing that they have been played for fools and been betrayed?  They feel like lemmings to Trumps call to racism and white supremacy.  A piece in Politico looks at this reprehensible proposed budget.  Here are article highlights:

Donald Trump, whose populist message and promises to help American workers propelled him to the White House, issued a budget proposal on Tuesday that instead takes aim at the social safety net on which many of his supporters rely.

Rather than breaking with Washington precedent, Trump’s spending blueprint follows established conservative orthodoxy, cutting taxes on the wealthy, boosting defense spending and taking a hatchet to programs for the poor and disabled – potentially hurting many of the rural and low-income Americans who voted him into office.

The president’s budget plan calls for more than $1 trillion in cuts to a wide range of social programs with millions of beneficiaries, from farm subsidies to federal student aid. That includes a $600 billion cut to Medicaid over 10 years, despite Trump’s repeated promises on the campaign trail not to cut the program. The budget also takes an ax to the federal food stamp program and Social Security Disability Insurance.

Trump also proposes some of the deepest cuts to agriculture subsidies since Ronald Reagan, squeezing out nearly $50 billion over 10 years.

Trump’s budget would drastically cut domestic programs controlled by Congress, slashing $1.7 trillion over 10 years. At the end of the decade, the U.S. would spend nearly twice as much on defense as on other domestic programs. Domestic discretionary spending would be capped at $429 billion per year, below 2004 levels, while military spending soars to $722 billion.

There’s a certain philosophy wrapped up in the budget and that is — we are no longer going to measure compassion by the number of programs or the number of people on those programs,” White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney, one of the budget’s chief architects, told reporters on Monday.

Mulvaney rejected accusations that Trump’s budget unfairly targets the poor, arguing instead that it amounts to a broad rethink of the country’s welfare system.  “We need folks to work. We need people to go to work. If you’re on food stamps, and you're able-bodied, we need you to go to work. If you’re on disability insurance and you're not supposed to be, we need you to work,” he added.  . . . . Mulvaney said the budget does not touch “mainline” or “core” Social Security, but it does cut Social Security’s disability insurance.

Trump’s budget would tighten the belt on programs for low-income families ranging from cash assistance to the child tax credit. Nearly $200 billion in cuts will come directly from the federal food stamp program, which helps feed 44 million people each year.

Trump would also slash $72 billion by tightening the rules for programs for people with disabilities — programs that Trump’s advisers have described as riddled with fraud and abuse.
Democrats vowed on Tuesday to ensure that the GOP pays a political price for the massive social safety-net cuts in Trump's budget, regardless of whether Congress follows through on enacting them.
“If I’m a Republican member of the House, do you really think I’m looking forward to going home to whatever state I came from to say, ‘Yeah, I just voted for incredibly large tax breaks for billionaires. Oh, by the way, we’re going to cut Head Start and child care and after-school programs and health care and education’?" Bernie Sanders, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, asked reporters.
“I’m deeply concerned about the severity of the domestic cuts,” Rep. Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), a long-time member of the powerful House Appropriations Committee, told POLITICO on Friday.
Rogers has been an outspoken critic of Trump’s proposed cuts to programs that benefit rural regions like his home state, like the Appalachian Regional Commission.
“I think we do need healthcare reform. I think we do need welfare reform. But the kinds of reductions that he’s talking about go exactly against the states that brought [Trump] to the dance, so to speak,” said G. William Hoagland, a former long-time Republican Senate budget aide.

100 Days: Trump Fails Even Low Expectations

100 days into the misrule of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, thankfully little has been accomplished.  I say thankfully, because so much of the Trump/Pence and GOP agenda is bad and threatens to harm average Americans, including those who were stupid enough to fall for Trump's racist and xenophobic campaign rhetoric.  Thankfully, the renewed GOP to destroy health care for millions is as of this morning once again on the back burner.  As for the Trump "tax plan" a New York Times headline describes the one page exercise in irresponsible behavior this way:  "Plan Redistributes America’s Wealth to Its Richest Families." Among those families, of course is Trump's own.  The atmosphere that is net result of this incompetent and deranged presidency is aptly described in a New York Times op-ed this way:  

"Fans of old TV series may remember a classic “Twilight Zone” episode titled “It’s a Good Life.” It featured a small town terrorized by a 6-year-old who for some reason had monstrous superpowers, coupled with complete emotional immaturity. Everyone lived in constant fear, made worse by the need to pretend that everything was fine. After all, any hint of discontent could bring terrible retribution. . . . . Actually, it feels a bit like that just living in Trump’s America."

What is most baffling - until one looks at and understands to white rage that powered Trump to office and his legitimizing of the same - is that surveys show that 96% of voters are happy with Trump's performance even though he has delivered little or nothing to date.  A column in the Washington Post by a conservative columnist looks at Trump's inability to meet even exceedingly low expectations.  Here are highlights:

As we cross the finish line of President Trump’s first 100 days, no leader in recent memory has benefited more from low expectations. A more typical president who tumbled from an approval rating in the high 60s to one in the low 40s would be in a political crisis. Trump’s current performance is only a slight dip from his divisive norm.

A president with pretensions of rhetorical coherence would be embarrassed by gaffes and mediocre speeches. For Trump, gaffes and inarticulateness are part of the package. A president with high standards of integrity would be mortified by a brewing scandal that seems to involve smarmy aides and a foreign government. For Trump, well, what would you expect?

The president is particularly proud of the consequential elevation of Neil M. Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. But this action invites a comparison. Trump’s one unquestioned achievement consists of appointing another man who actually has thoughtful convictions.

Much of Trump’s 100-days defense could have been employed by the pharaoh who ruled after the one in the book of Exodus. The cattle haven’t all died. We’ve seen less fiery hail. And pestilence has been kept to an acceptable minimum.

[A]t least, in polling language, he is a “strong and decisive leader.” This is a conceit that becomes harder and harder to maintain. . . .  Consider Trump’s interaction with China. On the campaign trail, the Chinese were currency manipulators who were too weak on North Korean nukes. In his first meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the American president got his first glimpse of the Chinese perspective and was transformed.
It seems the case that one of America’s main strategic rivals was, quite literally, schooling the American president on economics and foreign policy.

A similar picture has emerged in Trump’s dealings with Congress. When the Freedom Caucus defied him on health care, the administration’s blustery threats against the dissenters came to nothing. House Republicans ignored his tantrum and continued their work. 

Ultimately, Trump is failing because he has little knowledge of the world and no guiding star of moral principle. The best of our leaders — think Abraham Lincoln — have been sure about the truth and uncertain about themselves. Trump is the opposite. His mind is uncluttered by creeds. He knows what he wants at any given moment, but it can bear little relation to the moment following. Who really believes that he would be sleepless if the wall were not built or if NAFTA ultimately survived? Who believes he would not be sleepless because of a nasty joke at his expense during a dinner party?

Trump clearly wants to be judged by a frenetic level of activity. But the issue at hand is direction, not momentum. It is useful to undo some past liberal excesses, as Trump has done. But negation can’t be confused with inspiration. There can be no measure of political progress without a measuring stick of political conviction. Instead, we are treated to hysterical self-praise. Appalling — but, hey, what did we expect?

Donald Trump's Fantasy Economics

Other than his use of executive orders to reverse Obama era regulations that will make the nation a more polluted, less safe and more discriminatory place for Americans and their children, Donald Trump has accomplished little during his almost 100 days in office.   Of, yes, he claims that he has done much, but would one seriously expect anything less from a man who suffers from narcissistic personality disorder?  Objective facts mean nothing to the man.  And in terms of the economic miracle that he promised to angry white voters in the rust belt and the backwaters of the Bible Belt, little or nothing has happened and likely never will.  At least for the non-wealthy.  As a column in the New York Times lays out, Trump's economic plans will bear a striking resemblance to that of Republican presidents from Reagan on forward: tax cuts for the wealthy and trickle down economics - voodoo economics, if you will, that have not worked once during the last 37 years.  Here are column highlights:

It’s important to note just how little the tweeter-in-chief has managed to achieve; but we also need to focus on what, exactly, it is that he hasn’t achieved.

For Mr. Trump sold himself to voters as unorthodox as well as effective. He was going to be a different kind of president, a consummate deal-maker who would transcend the usual ideological divide. His supporters should therefore be dismayed, not just by his failure to actually close any deals, but by the fact that he evidently has no new ideas to offer, just the same old snake oil the right has been peddling for decades.

We saw that on Trumpcare, where the administration outsourced its policy to Paul Ryan, who produced exactly the kind of plan you might have expected: take insurance away from millions, make it worse for the rest, and use the money to cut taxes on the wealthy. Populism!

And now we’re seeing it on taxes. Mr. Trump has promised to unveil a “massive” tax cut plan next week. This announcement apparently came as a surprise to his own Treasury officials, who obviously don’t have a plan ready. Still, one thing is clear: Whatever the details, Trumptax will be a big exercise in fantasy economics.

Last week Stephen Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, told a financial industry audience that “the plan will pay for itself with growth.” And we all know what that means.

Back in 1980 George H. W. Bush famously described supply-side economics — the claim that cutting taxes on rich people will conjure up an economic miracle, so much so that revenues will actually rise — as “voodoo economic policy.” Yet it soon became the official doctrine of the Republican Party, and still is. That shows an impressive level of commitment. But what makes this commitment even more impressive is that it’s a doctrine that has been tested again and again — and has failed every time.

Bill Clinton provided a clear test, by raising taxes on the rich. Republicans predicted disaster, but instead the economy boomed, creating more jobs than under Reagan.

Then George W. Bush cut taxes again, with the usual suspects predicting a “Bush boom”; what we actually got was lackluster growth followed by a severe financial crisis. Barack Obama reversed many of the Bush tax cuts and added new taxes to pay for Obamacare — and oversaw a far better jobs record, at least in the private sector, than his predecessor.

[A]nd let’s not forget recent experiences at the state level. Sam Brownback, governor of Kansas, slashed taxes in what he called a “real live experiment” in conservative fiscal policy. But the growth he promised never came, while a fiscal crisis did. At the same time, Jerry Brown’s California raised taxes, leading to proclamations from the right that the state was committing “economic suicide”; in fact, the state has experienced impressive employment and economic growth.

Donald Trump was supposed to be different. Guess what: he isn’t. . . . . We might also note that a man who insists that he won the popular vote he lost, who insists that crime is at a record high when it’s at a record low, doesn’t need a fancy doctrine to claim that his budget adds up when it doesn’t.

Still, the fact is that the Trump agenda so far is absolutely indistinguishable from what one might have expected from, say, Ted Cruz. It’s just voodoo with extra bad math. Was that what his supporters expected?

The self-satisfaction derived from being emboldened to discriminate others and indulge in open racism will not pay the bills or put money in the bank.  Once again, Trump and the GOP have pandered to baser instincts to get  people to vote against their own economic interests.  Those who fall for this time and time again deserve the economic calamity that will and has over take them. 

The Ugly Societal Antecedents That Gave Rise to Trump

Much as is occurring in France under the toxic candidacy of Marine Le Pen, Donald Trump rose to power from a combination of factors, including some of the long standing undercurrents in American society and the failure of America's political process to unmask an amoral, narcissistic, charlatan/ carnival barker  for what he is in fact.  The media with its misdirected desire for "balance" and false equivalency mindset bears much of the blame for the latter element of Trump's rise.  Of course, so too do the countless Republican "leaders" who put opportunism ahead of principle, morality and decency. As for the former element, it in many ways relates back to currents long present in America's history: racism and hatred toward those who are different be it in terms of skin color, sexual orientation, religion or national origin.  Sadly, "traditional American values" carry many elements that are dangerous and repellent to anyone who truly believes in the Gospel message.   Many do not want to face this truth - e.g., I was lambasted on Facebook for calling out the ugliness and hypocrisy of Christian Fundamentalists - due to either (i) their own prejudices or (ii) their lack of knowledge of accurate history.  A column in The Atlantic looks at both the historic antecedents of Trump and the need to correctly identify the elements of his rise to protect against it going forward.  Here are excerpts;

Perlstein’s three books—about Barry Goldwater, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan—depicted an American right that was morally and intellectually repellent: reactionary, racist, and rapacious. The election of Donald Trump, however, forced Perlstein to rethink and to realize that he had dangerously understated the case, and that the truth was even more appalling than anything he had yet dared to think or write.

I quote intermittently and in some cases a little out of context, but the cumulative effect gives an idea:

·        "America’s anti-liberal traditions were far more deeply rooted in the past, and far angrier, than most historians would acknowledge.”
·        "By reaching back to the reactionary traditions of the 1920s, we might better understand the alliance between the “alt-right” figures that emerged as fervent Trump supporters during last year’s election and the ascendant far-right nativist political parties in Europe.”
·        “Far-right vigilantism and outright fascism routinely infiltrated the mainstream of American life.”
·        “'Fascism had a very real presence in the U.S.A., comparable to that on continental Europe.”

Perlstein does himself one injustice in his essay. It’s not quite right that the rise of Donald Trump jolted him into a new appreciation of the Republican Party’s underlying fascism. He has been edging toward that accusation for years, to the increasing consternation of those who praised his first book.

It’s certainly true that the United States has noteworthy traditions of illiberalism and political violence. The 1920s suffered terrorist violence not only at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, but also those of anarchist bombers who maimed and killed hundreds of people from 1919 to 1921. From the Civil War to World War II, American labor relations were more violent than those of most other industrialized countries. Four presidents have been assassinated; four others—Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan—only narrowly survived or escaped a bullet. Race riots have ripped apart American cities for almost as long as there have been American cities.

Donald Trump’s campaign for president certainly drew much energy from this long tradition of political violence. . . . . So Perlstein is talking about something real. 

When conservatives want to rebut accusations of racism, they often deploy the talking point: The Ku Klux Klan—meaning the Klan of the 1860s and 1870s—was founded by Democrats. Rand Paul built a speech at Howard University on the claim; Dinesh D’Souza produced an entire documentary to illustrate it.

The “Democrats founded the Klan” talking point is, of course, literally true. But it’s not deployed in the service of truth. It’s designed as an excuse and an attack, not an explanation.

It’s an important question whether the success of Donald Trump—and the rise of similar authoritarian populists in France and elsewhere in Europe—is the recrudescence of something old or the appearance of something new. The more worried you are about Trump and Trumpism, the more urgent this question should be to you—because only the correct answer will lead to a wise response. . . . There’s little question that inter-ethnic animosity explains much about the 2016 vote. But it seems simply blind to pretend that these animosities straightforwardly carry over into 2016 the attitudes and patterns of almost a century ago.

The Second Klan of the 1920s originated in the Deep South, then rapidly spread after 1919 into the then most dynamic regions of the country: New York and Long Island; Detroit and Pittsburgh: Philadelphia and the anthracite Belt; the Pacific Northwest and Los Angeles. The Trump vote, by contrast, is concentrated in the least dynamic areas of the country. The 2,600 counties won by Trump produce only about one-third of America’s wealth. Trump did well where people suffer most from diabetes, and where opiate overdoses take most lives. The Second Klan offered a defiant cultural counter-revolution; the Trump vote could be seen as the despair of defeated people—something more like the William Jennings Bryan candidacies.

If this analysis is correct, then the appropriate source of concern for the American future is not Trump’s duped voters, but the politician who did the duping—and the story to tell is not that of the remorseless rise of fascism in the people, but the failure of popular institutions to resist and contain the ambitions and impulses of a charismatic authoritarian without a popular mandate.

No Sympathy for Working Class Trump Voters

Some Democrats and liberals are whining and contemplating their navels as they seek ways to "understand" poor and working class whites who voted for Donald Trump so as to win them back over to supporting Democrat/liberal policies.  I am decidedly not a member of that group.  Perhaps it's because in many ways I remain a conservative and support the concepts of personal responsibility and that actions - or in this case votes - have consequences.  In my view, poor whites and working class whites fell prey to their racism, religious extremism and desire to blame others for their failed state in life while never facing the reality that their own bad choices, embrace of ignorance and bigotry were in fact the root cause of many of their current ills. To these folks, sexual orientation is a "choice" but somehow abusing drugs and alcohol and dropping out of school are not a choice. In short, I find it difficult to have zero sympathy for such folks (although I do worry about their children) and hope they suffer greatly for the consequences of their misguided votes.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case that rather than trying to be "understanding" Democrats and liberals need to see these people for what they are: deplorables who cannot be reached. .  Here are  excerpts:

On the morning after, traumatized liberals set out hunting for answers as if Election Day were 9/11 all over again. The ubiquitous question of 15 years earlier — “Why do they hate us?” — was repurposed for Donald Trump’s demolition of the political order. Why did white working-class voters reject Hillary Clinton and the Democrats? Why did they fall for a billionaire con man? Why do they hate us?

There were, of course, many other culprits in the election’s outcome. Comey, the Kremlin, the cable-news networks that beamed Trump 24/7, Jill Stein, a Clinton campaign that (among other blunders) ignored frantic on-the-ground pleas for help in Wisconsin and Michigan, and the candidate herself have all come in for deserved public flogging. But the attitude among some liberals toward the actual voters who pulled the trigger on Election Day has been more indulgent, equivocal, and forgiving. Perhaps those white voters without a college degree who preferred Trump by 39 percentage points — the most lopsided margin in the sector pollsters define as “white working class” since the 1980 Ronald Reagan landslide — are not “deplorables” who “cling to guns and religion” after all.

While many, if not most, of those in #TheResistance of the Democratic base remain furious at these voters, the party’s political class and the liberal media Establishment are making a concerted effort to convert that rage into empathy. 

But for those of us who want to bring down the curtain on the Trump era as quickly as possible, this pandering to his voters raises a more immediate and practical concern: Is it a worthwhile political tactic that will actually help reverse Republican rule? Or is it another counterproductive detour into liberal guilt, self-flagellation, and political correctness of the sort that helped blind Democrats to the gravity of the Trump threat in the first place? 

After the debacle of 2016, might the time have at last come for Democrats to weaponize their anger instead of swallowing it? Instead of studying how to talk to “real people,” might they start talking like real people? No more reading from wimpy scripts concocted by consultants and focus groups. . . . . Say in public what you say in private, even at the risk of pissing people off, including those in your own party. Better late than never to learn the lessons of Trump’s triumphant primary campaign that the Clinton campaign foolishly ignored.

This is a separate matter from the substantive question of whether the party is overdue in addressing the needs of the 21st-century middle class, or what remains of it. The answer to that is yes, as a matter of morality, policy, and politics.  . . . . But it’s one thing for the Democratic Party to drain its own swamp of special interests and another for it to waste time and energy chasing unreachable voters in the base of Trump’s electorate. For all her failings, Clinton received 3 million more votes than Trump and lost the Electoral College by the mere 77,744 votes that cost her the previously blue states of Michigan (which she lost by .2 of a percentage point), Wisconsin (.8 point), and Pennsylvania (.7 point).

[T]he Trump vote is overwhelmingly synonymous with the Republican Party as a whole. . . . That makes it all the more a fool’s errand for Democrats to fudge or abandon their own values to cater to the white-identity politics of the hard-core, often self-sabotaging Trump voters who helped drive the country into a ditch on Election Day. They will stick with him even though the numbers say that they will take a bigger financial hit than Clinton voters under the Republican health-care plan. 

While you can’t blame our new president for loving “the poorly educated” who gave him that blank check, the rest of us are entitled to abstain. If we are free to loathe Trump, we are free to loathe his most loyal voters, who have put the rest of us at risk.

 The toughest critics of white blue-collar Trump voters are conservatives. Witness Kevin D. Williamson, who skewered “the white working class’s descent into dysfunction” in National Review as Trump was piling up his victories in the GOP primaries last March. Raised in working-class West Texas, Williamson had no interest in emulating the efforts of coastal liberals to scale empathy walls. Instead, he condemns Trump voters for being “in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.” He chastises them for embracing victimhood by blaming their plight on “outside forces” like globalization, the Establishment, China, Washington, immigrants — and “the Man” who “closed the factories down.” He concludes: “Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin.”

The conservative contempt for Trump voters — omnipresent among the party’s Establishment until the Election Day results persuaded all but the most adamant NeverTrumpers to fall into line — would seem to give the Democrats a big opening to win them over.

 There’s zero evidence that they will. The dug-in Trump base shows no signs of varying its exclusive diet of right-wing media telling it that anyone who contradicts Trump, Rush, or Breitbart is peddling “fake news.” 

There’s no way liberals can counter these voters’ blind faith in a huckster who’s sold them this snake oil. The notion that they can be won over by some sort of new New Deal — “domestic programs that would benefit everyone (like national health insurance),” as Mark Lilla puts it — is wishful thinking. These voters are so adamantly opposed to government programs that in some cases they refuse to accept the fact that aid they already receive comes from Washington — witness the “Keep Government Out of My Medicare!” placards at the early tea-party protests.

Perhaps it’s a smarter idea to just let the GOP own these intractable voters. Liberals looking for a way to empathize with conservatives should endorse the core conservative belief in the importance of personal responsibility. Let Trump’s white working-class base take responsibility for its own votes — or in some cases failure to vote — and live with the election’s consequences.

So hold the empathy and hold on to the anger. 

Trump Coal Country Voters Worry about losing Obamacare

In my view, a column in the Washington Post takes a far too sympathetic view of coal country voters who backed Donald Trump by large margins who now worry that they will lose Obamacare benefits and health care coverage in general.  Pleas that they did not believe Trump would really follow through on his promise to repeal Obamacare defy belief.  All these low information - and seemingly low intelligence - voters needed to do is (i) look a Trump's history of lies and dishonest business practices to know he could not be trusted, and (ii) look at the GOP platform and Paul Ryan's agenda as revealed numerous times over the last four or more years.  Truth be told, these voters and whether or not they live or die means nothing to Ryan and Trump. They allowed themselves to be scammed, eagerly believed lies, and, of course, fell for appeals to their bigotry and/or religious extremism. I for one have zero sympathy for these people.  If they suffer now, they need to take a long look in the mirror to see the root cause of their problem. Here are column highlights:

Last night, CNN aired a terrific segment on people from coal country who voted for Donald Trump — but are now worried that his vow to repeal Obamacare will deprive them of crucial protections that enable them to stay afloat financially. This dovetails with other reporting that suggests a lot of Trump voters may be harmed by repeal of the law.

Which raises a question: Did voters such as these know they were voting for this? After all, Trump promised countless times throughout the campaign to repeal the Affordable Care Act, didn’t he? If they are complaining about this now, don’t they have only themselves to blame?

No. I’m going to argue that, while Trump did repeatedly vow repeal, these voters were absolutely right to conclude that he would not leave them without the sort of federal protections they enjoy under Obamacare. That’s because Trump did, in fact, clearly signal to them that this would not happen.

The CNN segment features people who live in Eastern Kentucky coal country and backed Trump because he promised to bring back coal jobs. Now, however, they worry that a provision in the ACA that makes it easier for longtime coal miners with black lung disease to get disability benefits could get eliminated along with the law. That provision shifted the burden of proving that the disability was directly caused by work in the mines away from the victim. Those benefits include financial and medical benefits. Some benefits now also extend to the widows of miners who had black lung disease — or pneumoconiosis, a lung illness associated with inhalation of coal dust — after their husbands die. Other reporting has also confirmed widespread coal country worries about losing these protections.

One man who worked in the mines for 35 years told CNN’s Miguel Marquez:

“When they eliminate the Obamacare, they may just eliminate all of the black lung program. It may all be gone. Don’t matter how many years you got.”

The widow of a deceased miner, who is now trying to get the benefits, said she doesn’t want to see Obamacare repealed, and even suggested Trump may be on the verge of betraying her and others in the region:

“If he don’t come across like he promised, he’s not gonna be there next time. Not if I can help it.”

These coal country residents are not quite in the same situation as many of the law’s other beneficiaries, who are currently gaining access to health coverage due to increased federal spending and regulation. But they are all benefiting from increased governmental intervention under the law designed to expand health care and support to lower-income or sick people who were unable to secure it for themselves under the old system. Many of them would lose these benefits if the law is repealed.

There is some evidence that many of those people voted for Trump. The Wall Street Journal recently demonstrated that rural, aging, and working class counties that went overwhelmingly for Trump also showed large drops in the uninsured rate. Similarly, Gallup-Healthways data shows that among non-college, lower income whites — a Trump demographic — the uninsured rate has dropped 10 percentage points.

 [T]hese coal country voters in the CNN segment were very clear: They don’t want to lose the protections Obamacare grants them. Other reporting has found similar worries in Trump country. Still other reporting has turned up examples of Trump voters who don’t actually believe he’ll take away their Obamacare.

So what did Trump really tell these voters?

Yes, Trump said endlessly that he’d do away with the ACA instantly. Yes, his own replacement plan would leave millions without coverage. But here’s the rub: Trump also went to great lengths to portray himself as ideologically different from most other Republicans on fundamental questions about the proper role of governmental intervention to help poor and sick people without sufficient access to medical care.

Now, Trump and congressional Republicans may indeed end up rolling back protections for millions who voted for him. But if that happens, and these voters do end up feeling betrayed by Trump, they will be right to feel that way — they will, in fact, have been scammed by Trump.

Perhaps, like other scam victims, they should have looked more closely at the fine print. 

 If you choose to believe a documented con-man and liar - who is also a demagogue - you really have no one to blame but yourself.  These voters deserve to suffer the consequences of their own stupidity and bigotry.  Cruel of me?  Maybe.  But given the damage these voters have done to the nation and its future, they need to pay a truly severe penalty.