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Javier E

The Wall Street Journal is giving Paul Ryan and the Republican Party terrible advice. - 1 views

www.slate.com/...republican_party_terrible.html

conservatism wsj gop politics Policy economic ideology

shared by Javier E on 11 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • If the Journal really wants to understand the rise of Trump, they’d do well to look closer to home. For years, congressional Republicans, Ryan foremost among them, have championed a Wall Street Journal–approved policy agenda that grass-roots Republicans have found doesn’t address their concerns.
  • for decades, the Journal has insisted the GOP make tax cuts for high earners a centerpiece of its economic agenda, despite the fact that support for this position is neither broad nor deep.
  • In the Journal’s ideal world, the GOP would largely abandon social conservatism and instead offer tax cuts for the rich, open borders, and deep cuts in programs like Social Security and Medicare. There is no longer any doubt that this generation of Republican voters has thoroughly repudiated the newspaper’s worldview.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • the Journal doesn’t support these policies because they are popular among Republicans or the public at large. Anyone with even a casual familiarity with American politics would know that simply isn’t so. Rather, the Journal takes these positions because they believe them to be intellectually and morally compelling.
  • hat’s fair enough. What the Journal should do, then, is give up on offering political advice and get on with making the intellectual and moral case for welcoming more poor immigrants to America while denying them food stamps and subsidized medical care.
Javier E

The Unity Illusion - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...the-unity-illusion.html

narcissism trump conservatism temperament morality culture psychology character

shared by Javier E on 10 Jun 16 - No Cached
  • Paul Ryan says it’s time for Republicans to unite with the presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
  • this line of thinking is deeply anticonservative. Conservatives believe that politics is a limited activity. Culture, psychology and morality come first. What happens in the family, neighborhood, house of worship and the heart is more fundamental and important than what happens in a legislature
  • Ryan’s argument inverts all this. It puts political positions first and character and morality second.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Sure Trump’s a scoundrel, but he might agree with our tax proposal. Sure, he is a racist, but he might like our position on the defense budget. Policy agreement can paper over a moral chasm. Nobody calling themselves a conservative can agree to this hierarchy of values.
  • The classic conservative belief, by contrast, is that character is destiny. Temperament is foundational. Each candidate has to cross some basic threshold of dependability as a human being before it’s even relevant to judge his or her policy agenda. Trump doesn’t cross that threshold.
  • Second, it just won’t work. The Republican Party can’t unify around Donald Trump for the same reason it can’t unify around a tornado. Trump, by his very essence, undermines cooperation, reciprocity, solidarity, stability or any other component of unity. He is a lone operator, a disloyal diva, who is incapable of horizontal relationships.
  • Some conservatives believe they can educate, convert or civilize Trump. This belief is a sign both of intellectual arrogance and psychological naïveté.
  • there is a well-developed literature on narcissism that tracks with what we have seen of Trump. By one theory narcissism flows from a developmental disorder called alexithymia, the inability to identify and describe emotions in the self. Sufferers have no inner voice to understand their own feelings and reflect honestly on their own actions.
  • Unable to know themselves, or truly love themselves, they hunger for a never-ending supply of admiration from outside
  • these narcissists create a rigid set of external standards, often based around admiration and contempt. Their valuing criteria are based on simple division — winners and losers, victory or humiliation. They are preoccupied with luxury, appearance or anything that signals wealth, beauty, power and success
  • Incapable of understanding themselves, they are also incapable of having empathy for others. They simply don’t know what it feels like to put themselves in another’s shoes.
  • Paul Ryan and the Republicans can try to be loyal to Trump, but he won’t be loyal to them. There’s really no choice. Congressional Republicans have to run their own separate campaign. Donald Trump does not share.
Javier E

What is really motivating the runaway train of Donald Trump? - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...6-831d-0324760ca856_story.html

trump narcissism gop psychology

shared by Javier E on 05 Aug 16 - No Cached
  • In Trump’s case, we are not dealing with criminality but with temperament, which is not less important. To quote myself from a January column: “We are witnessing what happens when a narcissist who thinks he is at the center of the universe is actually placed at the center of the universe.”
  • Trump’s political judgments seem mostly based on how others view him, making Vladimir Putin a friend and Paul Ryan an enemy. On policy, Trump claims to know more than experts while displaying stunning ignorance. He lies with disturbing ease. He seems to lack the gene for empathy.
  • Trump, however, is not the only one being tested. We have seen that Trump is a sadist; now we determine whether Republicans are masochists. On the current course, Reince Priebus will be judged the worst GOP party chairman in history. On the current course, Ryan will be discredited as a political and moral leader. On the current course, our children will look back in confusion and contempt, asking: How did you allow such a man to get so close to such an office?
redavistinnell

Republicans have a massive electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Donald Tru... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...othing-to-do-with-donald-trump

republicans map problem nothing to do

shared by redavistinnell on 04 May 16 - No Cached
  • x Republicans have a massive electoral map problem that has nothing to do with Donald Trump
  • Politico reported today on a Florida poll conducted for a business group in the state that shows Hillary Clinton beating Donald Trump by 13 points and Ted Cruz by nine.
  • Here's what that map would look like:
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • If Clinton wins the 19 states (and D.C.) that every Democratic nominee has won from 1992 to 2012, she has 242 electoral votes. Add Florida's 29 and you get 271. Game over.
  • There are 13 states that have gone for the GOP presidential nominee in each of the last six elections. But they only total 102 electorate votes
  • Many Republicans — particularly in Washington — are already preparing to blame a loss this fall, which many of them view as inevitable, on the divisiveness of Trump. That's not entirely fair to Trump, though.
  • Instead they are, largely, demographic problems centered on the GOP's inability to win any large swath of nonwhite voters. New Mexico, a state in which almost half the population is Latino, is the ur-example here.
  • What has become increasingly clear is that any state with a large or growing nonwhite population has become more and more difficult for Republicans to win. Virginia and North Carolina, long Republican strongholds, have moved closer and closer to Democrats of late.
  • At the same time as these states have grown friendlier to Democrats, there are very few states that are growing increasingly Republican. Wisconsin and Minnesota are two, but neither is moving rapidly in Republicans' favor just yet.
  • Yes, Trump as the nominee is more problematic than Ryan as the nominee, but the idea that Ryan would start the general election with a coin-flip chance of being elected president is just wrong.
  • The Republican map problem goes deeper than Trump — or any one candidate. Blaming Trump for a loss this November not only misses the point but could ensure that Republicans are doomed to repeat history in 2020.
daltonramsey12

Paul Ryan Tours Texas Border Area Where Trump Wants a Wall - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...border-mexico-immigration.html

shared by daltonramsey12 on 23 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • daltonramsey12 on 23 Feb 17
     
    The furtive visit came as the Trump administration set off this week to reshape the nation's immigration policy, authorizing the expulsion of undocumented immigrants who have committed even minor offenses and making it easier to deport people immediately.
Javier E

How Donald Trump Could Build an Autocracy in the U.S. - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...513872

autocracy trump politics

shared by Javier E on 09 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • Everything imagined above—and everything described below—is possible only if many people other than Donald Trump agree to permit it. It can all be stopped, if individual citizens and public officials make the right choices. The story told here, like that told by Charles Dickens’s Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, is a story not of things that will be, but of things that may be. Other paths remain open. It is up to Americans to decide which one the country will follow.
  • What is spreading today is repressive kleptocracy, led by rulers motivated by greed rather than by the deranged idealism of Hitler or Stalin or Mao. Such rulers rely less on terror and more on rule-twisting, the manipulation of information, and the co-optation of elites.
  • the American system is also perforated by vulnerabilities no less dangerous for being so familiar. Supreme among those vulnerabilities is reliance on the personal qualities of the man or woman who wields the awesome powers of the presidency.
  • ...51 more annotations...
  • The president of the United States, on the other hand, is restrained first and foremost by his own ethics and public spirit. What happens if somebody comes to the high office lacking those qualities?
  • Donald Trump, however, represents something much more radical. A president who plausibly owes his office at least in part to a clandestine intervention by a hostile foreign intelligence service? Who uses the bully pulpit to target individual critics? Who creates blind trusts that are not blind, invites his children to commingle private and public business, and somehow gets the unhappy members of his own political party either to endorse his choices or shrug them off? If this were happening in Honduras, we’d know what to call it. It’s happening here instead, and so we are baffled.
  • As politics has become polarized, Congress has increasingly become a check only on presidents of the opposite party. Recent presidents enjoying a same-party majority in Congress—Barack Obama in 2009 and 2010, George W. Bush from 2003 through 2006—usually got their way.
  • Trump has scant interest in congressional Republicans’ ideas, does not share their ideology, and cares little for their fate. He can—and would—break faith with them in an instant to further his own interests. Yet here they are, on the verge of achieving everything they have hoped to achieve for years, if not decades. They owe this chance solely to Trump’s ability to deliver a crucial margin of votes in a handful of states—Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania—which has provided a party that cannot win the national popular vote a fleeting opportunity to act as a decisive national majority.
  • What excites Trump is his approval rating, his wealth, his power. The day could come when those ends would be better served by jettisoning the institutional Republican Party in favor of an ad hoc populist coalition, joining nationalism to generous social spending—a mix that’s worked well for authoritarians in places like Poland.
  • A scandal involving the president could likewise wreck everything that Republican congressional leaders have waited years to accomplish. However deftly they manage everything else, they cannot prevent such a scandal. But there is one thing they can do: their utmost not to find out about it.
  • Ryan has learned his prudence the hard way. Following the airing of Trump’s past comments, caught on tape, about his forceful sexual advances on women, Ryan said he’d no longer campaign for Trump. Ryan’s net favorability rating among Republicans dropped by 28 points in less than 10 days. Once unassailable in the party, he suddenly found himself disliked by 45 percent of Republicans.
  • Ambition will counteract ambition only until ambition discovers that conformity serves its goals better. At that time, Congress, the body expected to check presidential power, may become the president’s most potent enabler.
  • Discipline within the congressional ranks will be strictly enforced not only by the party leadership and party donors, but also by the overwhelming influence of Fox News.
  • Fox learned its lesson: Trump sells; critical coverage does not. Since the election, the network has awarded Kelly’s former 9 p.m. time slot to Tucker Carlson, who is positioning himself as a Trump enthusiast in the Hannity mold.
  • Gingrich said: The president “has, frankly, the power of the pardon. It is a totally open power, and he could simply say, ‘Look, I want them to be my advisers. I pardon them if anybody finds them to have behaved against the rules. Period.’ And technically, under the Constitution, he has that level of authority.”
  • In 2009, in the run-up to the Tea Party insurgency, South Carolina’s Bob Inglis crossed Fox, criticizing Glenn Beck and telling people at a town-hall meeting that they should turn his show off. He was drowned out by booing, and the following year, he lost his primary with only 29 percent of the vote, a crushing repudiation for an incumbent untouched by any scandal.
  • Fox is reinforced by a carrier fleet of supplementary institutions: super pacs, think tanks, and conservative web and social-media presences, which now include such former pariahs as Breitbart and Alex Jones. So long as the carrier fleet coheres—and unless public opinion turns sharply against the president—oversight of Trump by the Republican congressional majority will very likely be cautious, conditional, and limited.
  • His immediate priority seems likely to be to use the presidency to enrich himself. But as he does so, he will need to protect himself from legal risk. Being Trump, he will also inevitably wish to inflict payback on his critics. Construction of an apparatus of impunity and revenge will begin haphazardly and opportunistically. But it will accelerate. It will have to.
  • By filling the media space with bizarre inventions and brazen denials, purveyors of fake news hope to mobilize potential supporters with righteous wrath—and to demoralize potential opponents by nurturing the idea that everybody lies and nothing matters
  • The United States may be a nation of laws, but the proper functioning of the law depends upon the competence and integrity of those charged with executing it. A president determined to thwart the law in order to protect himself and those in his circle has many means to do so.
  • The powers of appointment and removal are another. The president appoints and can remove the commissioner of the IRS. He appoints and can remove the inspectors general who oversee the internal workings of the Cabinet departments and major agencies. He appoints and can remove the 93 U.S. attorneys, who have the power to initiate and to end federal prosecutions. He appoints and can remove the attorney general, the deputy attorney general, and the head of the criminal division at the Department of Justice.
  • Republicans in Congress have long advocated reforms to expedite the firing of underperforming civil servants. In the abstract, there’s much to recommend this idea. If reform is dramatic and happens in the next two years, however, the balance of power between the political and the professional elements of the federal government will shift, decisively, at precisely the moment when the political elements are most aggressive. The intelligence agencies in particular would likely find themselves exposed to retribution from a president enraged at them for reporting on Russia’s aid to his election campaign.
  • The McDonnells had been convicted on a combined 20 counts.
  • The Supreme Court objected, however, that the lower courts had interpreted federal anticorruption law too broadly. The relevant statute applied only to “official acts.” The Court defined such acts very strictly, and held that “setting up a meeting, talking to another official, or organizing an event—without more—does not fit that definition of an ‘official act.’ ”
  • Trump is poised to mingle business and government with an audacity and on a scale more reminiscent of a leader in a post-Soviet republic than anything ever before seen in the United States.
  • Trump will try hard during his presidency to create an atmosphere of personal munificence, in which graft does not matter, because rules and institutions do not matter. He will want to associate economic benefit with personal favor. He will create personal constituencies, and implicate other people in his corruption.
  • You would never know from Trump’s words that the average number of felonious killings of police during the Obama administration’s tenure was almost one-third lower than it was in the early 1990s, a decline that tracked with the general fall in violent crime that has so blessed American society. There had been a rise in killings of police in 2014 and 2015 from the all-time low in 2013—but only back to the 2012 level. Not every year will be the best on record.
  • A mistaken belief that crime is spiraling out of control—that terrorists roam at large in America and that police are regularly gunned down—represents a considerable political asset for Donald Trump. Seventy-eight percent of Trump voters believed that crime had worsened during the Obama years.
  • From the point of view of the typical Republican member of Congress, Fox remains all-powerful: the single most important source of visibility and affirmation with the voters whom a Republican politician cares about
  • Civil unrest will not be a problem for the Trump presidency. It will be a resource. Trump will likely want not to repress it, but to publicize it—and the conservative entertainment-outrage complex will eagerly assist him
  • Immigration protesters marching with Mexican flags; Black Lives Matter demonstrators bearing antipolice slogans—these are the images of the opposition that Trump will wish his supporters to see. The more offensively the protesters behave, the more pleased Trump will be.
  • If there is harsh law enforcement by the Trump administration, it will benefit the president not to the extent that it quashes unrest, but to the extent that it enflames more of it, ratifying the apocalyptic vision that haunted his speech at the convention.
  • In the early days of the Trump transition, Nic Dawes, a journalist who has worked in South Africa, delivered an ominous warning to the American media about what to expect. “Get used to being stigmatized as ‘opposition,’ ” he wrote. “The basic idea is simple: to delegitimize accountability journalism by framing it as partisan.”
  • Mostly, however, modern strongmen seek merely to discredit journalism as an institution, by denying that such a thing as independent judgment can exist. All reporting serves an agenda. There is no truth, only competing attempts to grab power.
  • In true police states, surveillance and repression sustain the power of the authorities. But that’s not how power is gained and sustained in backsliding democracies. Polarization, not persecution, enables the modern illiberal regime.
  • A would-be kleptocrat is actually better served by spreading cynicism than by deceiving followers with false beliefs: Believers can be disillusioned; people who expect to hear only lies can hardly complain when a lie is exposed.
  • The inculcation of cynicism breaks down the distinction between those forms of media that try their imperfect best to report the truth, and those that purvey falsehoods for reasons of profit or ideology. The New York Times becomes the equivalent of Russia’s RT; The Washington Post of Breitbart; NPR of Infowars.
  • Trump had not a smidgen of evidence beyond his own bruised feelings and internet flotsam from flagrantly unreliable sources. Yet once the president-elect lent his prestige to the crazy claim, it became fact for many people. A survey by YouGov found that by December 1, 43 percent of Republicans accepted the claim that millions of people had voted illegally in 2016.
  • A clear untruth had suddenly become a contested possibility. When CNN’s Jeff Zeleny correctly reported on November 28 that Trump’s tweet was baseless, Fox’s Sean Hannity accused Zeleny of media bias—and then proceeded to urge the incoming Trump administration to take a new tack with the White House press corps, and to punish reporters like Zeleny.
  • the whipping-up of potentially violent Twitter mobs against media critics is already a standard method of Trump’s governance.
  • I’ve talked with well-funded Trump supporters who speak of recruiting a troll army explicitly modeled on those used by Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Russia’s Putin to take control of the social-media space, intimidating some critics and overwhelming others through a blizzard of doubt-casting and misinformation.
  • he and his team are serving notice that a new era in government-media relations is coming, an era in which all criticism is by definition oppositional—and all critics are to be treated as enemies.
  • “Lying is the message,” she wrote. “It’s not just that both Putin and Trump lie, it is that they lie in the same way and for the same purpose: blatantly, to assert power over truth itself.”
  • lurid mass movements of the 20th century—communist, fascist, and other—have bequeathed to our imaginations an outdated image of what 21st-century authoritarianism might look like.
  • In a society where few people walk to work, why mobilize young men in matching shirts to command the streets? If you’re seeking to domineer and bully, you want your storm troopers to go online, where the more important traffic is. Demagogues need no longer stand erect for hours orating into a radio microphone. Tweet lies from a smartphone instead.
  • “Populist-fueled democratic backsliding is difficult to counter,” wrote the political scientists Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Erica Frantz late last year. “Because it is subtle and incremental, there is no single moment that triggers widespread resistance or creates a focal point around which an opposition can coalesce … Piecemeal democratic erosion, therefore, typically provokes only fragmented resistance.”
  • If people retreat into private life, if critics grow quieter, if cynicism becomes endemic, the corruption will slowly become more brazen, the intimidation of opponents stronger. Laws intended to ensure accountability or prevent graft or protect civil liberties will be weakened.
  • If the president uses his office to grab billions for himself and his family, his supporters will feel empowered to take millions. If he successfully exerts power to punish enemies, his successors will emulate his methods.
  • If citizens learn that success in business or in public service depends on the favor of the president and his ruling clique, then it’s not only American politics that will change. The economy will be corrupted too, and with it the larger cultur
  • A culture that has accepted that graft is the norm, that rules don’t matter as much as relationships with those in power, and that people can be punished for speech and acts that remain theoretically legal—such a culture is not easily reoriented back to constitutionalism, freedom, and public integrity.
  • The oft-debated question “Is Donald Trump a fascist?” is not easy to answer. There are certainly fascistic elements to him: the subdivision of society into categories of friend and foe; the boastful virility and the delight in violence; the vision of life as a struggle for dominance that only some can win, and that others must lose.
  • He is so pathetically needy, so shamelessly self-interested, so fitful and distracted. Fascism fetishizes hardihood, sacrifice, and struggle—concepts not often associated with Trump.
  • Perhaps the better question about Trump is not “What is he?” but “What will he do to us?”
  • By all early indications, the Trump presidency will corrode public integrity and the rule of law—and also do untold damage to American global leadership, the Western alliance, and democratic norms around the world
  • The damage has already begun, and it will not be soon or easily undone. Yet exactly how much damage is allowed to be done is an open question—the most important near-term question in American politics. It is also an intensely personal one, for its answer will be determined by the answer to another question: What will you do?
malonema1

Libertarians' Pro-Immigration Agenda Is Bad for America and Horrible for Immigrants - 0 views

www.slate.com/..._america_and_horrible_for.html

us politics trump

shared by malonema1 on 02 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • Paul Ryan Could Kill Donald Trump’s Political Future
  • realize that this sounds like a reach. It’s worth noting, though, that nationalist politicians in Europe and in Japan have achieved great success by marrying patriotic rhetoric with support for the safety net. That’s a formula that can work for Trump, too, provided he’s willing to push back against more zealously ideological Republicans like Ryan and McConnell.
Javier E

Russell Brand on revolution: "We no longer have the luxury of tradition" - 0 views

www.newstatesman.com/...russell-brand-on-revolution

revolution activism conservativism crisis politics spiritual

shared by Javier E on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
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  • The right has all the advantages, just as the devil has all the best tunes. Conservatism appeals to our selfishness and fear, our desire and self-interest; they neatly nurture and then harvest the inherent and incubating individualism. I imagine that neurologically the pathway travelled by a fearful or selfish impulse is more expedient and well travelled than the route of the altruistic pang. In simple terms of circuitry I suspect it is easier to connect these selfish inclinations.
  • This natural, neurological tendency has been overstimulated and acculturated. Materialism and individualism do in moderation make sense.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Biomechanically we are individuals, clearly. On the most obvious frequency of our known sensorial reality we are independent anatomical units. So we must take care of ourselves. But with our individual survival ensured there is little satisfaction to be gained by enthroning and enshrining ourselves as individuals.
  • For me the solution has to be primarily spiritual and secondarily political.
  • By spiritual I mean the acknowledgement that our connection to one another and the planet must be prioritised. Buckminster Fuller outlines what ought be our collective objectives succinctly: “to make the world work for 100 per cent of humanity in the shortest possible time through spontaneous co-operation without ecological offence or the disadvantage of anyone”. This maxim is the very essence of “easier said than done” as it implies the dismantling of our entire socio-economic machinery. By teatime.
  • The price of privilege is poverty. David Cameron said in his conference speech that profit is “not a dirty word”. Profit is the most profane word we have. In its pursuit we have forgotten that while individual interests are being met, we as a whole are being annihilated. The reality, when not fragmented through the corrupting lens of elitism, is we are all on one planet.
  • Suffering of this magnitude affects us all. We have become prisoners of comfort in the absence of meaning. A people without a unifying myth. Joseph Campbell, the comparative mythologist, says our global problems are all due to the lack of relevant myths.
Javier E

The Bipartisan March to Fiscal Madness - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...24stockman.html

US economic fiscal crisis analysis class

shared by Javier E on 24 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • for decades now, the central banks of the world have been giving policymakers a false signal that sovereign debt is cheap and limitless. Functioning like monetary roach motels, central banks have become a place where Treasury bonds go in but never come out — thereby causing bond prices to be far higher and interest yields much lower than would obtain in a market that wasn’t rigged.
  • Indeed, the Fed and currency-pegging central banks in East Asia and the Persian Gulf have absorbed nearly all of Uncle Sam’s multitrillion-dollar spree of debt issuance. Moreover, about $4.6 trillion, or more than half of all debt held by the public, is now sequestered in central banks — paid for with printing-press money.
  • With the central banks no longer ready to buy, the Treasury market will once again be driven by real investors — many of them likely to demand higher interest rates owing to the heightened fiscal risks recently highlighted by Standard & Poor’s.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • the Ryan plan worsens our trillion-dollar structural deficit and the Obama plan amounts to small potatoes, at best. Worse, we are about to descend into class war because the Obama plan picks on the rich when it should be pushing tax increases for all, while the Ryan plan attacks the poor when it should be addressing middle-class entitlements and defense.
Grace Gannon

Amber Alerts Come to Facebook's News Feed - 0 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...ts-come-to-facebooks-news-feed

Amber Alerts security safety abduction Facebook

shared by Grace Gannon on 13 Jan 15 - No Cached
  • Grace Gannon on 13 Jan 15
     
    A revolutionary way of approaching child abduction cases, all thanks to social media: "We are really mobilizing an army of eyes and ears to be on the search," Mr. Ryan said. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children worked closely with Facebook on expanding the alerts, and Mr. Ryan said that the social network's involvement would enhance the scope of Amber Alerts and was a "potential game-changer."
Javier E

It Takes a Party - NYTimes.com - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...it-takes-a-party.html

election 2016 parties position policies partisan polarization GOP Democratic party

shared by Javier E on 14 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • there has never been a time in American history when the alleged personal traits of candidates mattered less. As we head into 2016, each party is quite unified on major policy issues — and these unified positions are very far from each other. The huge, substantive gulf between the parties will be reflected in the policy positions of whomever they nominate, and will almost surely be reflected in the actual policies adopted by whoever wins.
  • any Democrat would, if elected, seek to maintain the basic U.S. social insurance programs — Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid — in essentially their current form, while also preserving and extending the Affordable Care Act. Any Republican would seek to destroy Obamacare, make deep cuts in Medicaid, and probably try to convert Medicare into a voucher system.
  • Any Democrat would retain the tax hikes on high-income Americans that went into effect in 2013, and possibly seek more. Any Republican would try to cut taxes on the wealthy — House Republicans plan to vote next week to repeal the estate tax — while slashing programs that aid low-income families.
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  • Any Democrat would try to preserve the 2010 financial reform, which has recently been looking much more effective than critics suggested. Any Republican would seek to roll it back, eliminating both consumer protection and the extra regulation applied to large, “systemically important” financial institutions.
  • And any Democrat would try to move forward on climate policy, through executive action if necessary, while any Republican — whether or not he is an outright climate-science denialist — would block efforts to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
  • How did the parties get this far apart? Political scientists suggest that it has a lot to do with income inequality. As the wealthy grow richer compared with everyone else, their policy preferences have moved to the right — and they have pulled the Republican Party ever further in their direction. Meanwhile, the influence of big money on Democrats has at least eroded a bit, now that Wall Street, furious over regulations and modest tax hikes, has deserted the party en masse. The result is a level of political polarization not seen since the Civil War.
Javier E

Clash of Republican Con Artists - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...of-republican-con-artists.html

gop demagogue campaign politics crisis 2016 candidates

shared by Javier E on 04 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • Republicans are going to nominate a candidate who talks complete nonsense on domestic policy; who believes that foreign policy can be conducted via bullying and belligerence; who cynically exploits racial and ethnic hatred for political gain.
  • But that was always going to happen, however the primary season turned out. The only news is that the candidate in question is probably going to be Donald Trump
  • is he more fraudulent than the establishment trying to stop him? Not really.
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  • Donald Trump is a “con artist,” says Marco Rubio — who has promised to enact giant tax cuts, undertake a huge military buildup and balance the budget without any cuts in benefits to Americans over 55.
  • “There can be no evasion and no games,” thunders Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House — whose much-hyped budgets are completely reliant on “mystery meat,” that is, it claims trillions of dollars in revenue can be collected by closing unspecified tax loopholes and trillions more saved through unspecified spending cuts.
  • Oh, and it’s Ted Cruz, not Mr. Trump, who seems eager to “carpet bomb” people, without appearing to know what that means
  • Yes, he’s a con man, but they all are. So why is this con job different from any other? The answer, I’d suggest, is that the establishment’s problem with Mr. Trump isn’t the con he brings; it’s the cons he disrupts.
  • First, there’s the con Republicans usually manage to pull off in national elections — the one where they pose as a serious, grown-up party honestly trying to grapple with America’s problems. The truth is that that party died a long time ago, that these days it’s voodoo economics and neocon fantasies all the way down.
  • Equally important, the Trump phenomenon threatens the con the G.O.P. establishment has been playing on its own base. I’m talking about the bait and switch in which white voters are induced to hate big government by dog whistles about Those People, but actual policies are all about rewarding the donor class.
  • I find the prospect of a Trump administration terrifying, and so should you. But you should also be terrified by the prospect of a President Rubio, sitting in the White House with his circle of warmongers, or a President Cruz, whom one suspects would love to bring back the Spanish Inquisition.
  • we should actually welcome Mr. Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con man, but he is also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.
katyshannon

House Reaches Accord on Spending and Tax Cuts - The New York Times - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...gency-workers-zadroga-act.html

house accord spending tax cuts new york times politics US

shared by katyshannon on 18 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • Republican and Democratic negotiators in the House clinched a deal late Tuesday on a $1.1 trillion spending bill and a huge package of tax breaks.
  • Legislative drafters, racing a midnight deadline, met the time limit for issuing the tax package but apparently missed it for the spending bill. That could push back a vote on the House floor by one day, until Friday.
  • The late-hour tension emphasized the deep disagreements over an array of policy provisions that have left weeks of negotiations tinged with acrimony. Since the Republicans took back control of the House in 2011, a majority in the party has routinely opposed compromise budget and spending measures, forcing party leaders to rely on Democrats for votes to clear the bills. All signs indicate that the same dynamic is playing out now.
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  • But the House Democratic leader, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, has voiced angry opposition to the huge package of tax breaks, saying it would unfairly benefit big business.
  • And even Tuesday night, some Democrats in the House leadership said Ms. Pelosi was on the verge of turning against the omnibus spending measure because of her opposition to a Republican provision that would lift the 40-year ban on exports of crude oil from the United States.
  • Republican congressional leaders and the White House reached a budget accord in late October that set top-line spending levels for 2016 and 2017.
  • Throughout Tuesday, major components of the spending legislation appeared to be falling into place, including a tentative agreement to alter major provisions of the Affordable Care Act, delaying a planned tax on high-cost health insurance plans and suspending a tax on medical devices for two years.
  • Paul D. Ryan has gained momentum in his early weeks as speaker, clearing a major highway bill and an important education measure. But the omnibus spending bill, needed to keep the government functioning, presented a particular challenge given the Obama administration’s opposition to numerous policy prescriptions that Republicans wanted to attach to the must-pass bill.
  • And while Mr. Ryan has won plaudits from his rank and file for running a more inclusive House, the late rush to finish the spending deal seemed likely to test him on that front.
  • The question of delaying important provisions of the Affordable Care Act provided a surprising area of common ground — among Republicans who have sought to dismantle President Obama’s signature health care law, and Democrats who had reservations about a tax on generous health plans. The White House and many economists have defended the “Cadillac tax” on high-cost employer-sponsored health plans as a way to reduce health costs and make the health care system more efficient.
  • But lawmakers said they had tentatively agreed to delay the tax, originally scheduled to take effect in 2018, by two years. Labor unions strenuously opposed the tax, saying it could lead to reductions in health benefits prized by their members.
malonema1

How Trump Is Endangering His Prized Tax Cuts - The Atlantic - 0 views

www.theatlantic.com/...543894

trump economics US

shared by malonema1 on 12 Mar 18 - No Cached
  • “If there’s anything that unifies Republicans, it’s tax reform,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell assured reporters on Tuesday who were wondering if President Trump’s latest feud with a GOP senator would threaten his top legislative priority.McConnell is undeniably correct. Tax reform, even more than repealing and replacing Obamacare, is the GOP lodestar. But the reason Republicans haven’t unveiled a tax bill, much less held a vote on one, is that they haven’t figured out how to pay for their ambitious economic plan. And on that score, the president isn’t making their jobs any easier.
  • In each case, the president was probably playing good politics, as none of these proposals would be broadly popular. The BAT would have hit retailers who might have passed the cost onto consumers with higher prices. Millions of Americans in states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California benefit from deducting their high local taxes off their federal bill. And tens of millions more take advantage of 401(k) plans, which allow employees to accrue investment earnings that won’t be taxed for decades to come.
  • There have been plenty of indications over the last few months that Trump and Republican leaders in Congress would have different answers to that question. For years, Ryan and his allies in the House have talked up the idea of a “once-in-a-generation” reform that would simplify the code, cut rates both for businesses and individuals, and pay for it by eliminating exemptions, deductions, and other loopholes that taxpayers use to their advantage. Implicit in that goal is the need to make difficult political choices; every loophole is someone’s prized and essential tax break, with a team of highly-paid lobbyists fighting to keep it. “We will not wait for a path free of obstacles because it does not exist,” Ryan said in a speech in June. “And we will not cast about for quick fixes and half-measures.”
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  • It’s up for debate whether Trump’s interjections on tax policy will ultimately harm the party or save Republicans from politically dangerous choices they would later come to regret. But the more fundamental question is whether Trump actually shares the party’s desire for a bold and comprehensive tax overhaul, as opposed to a quicker and easier tax cut. If he does, the president may have to start helping Republicans make the case for some tax tradeoffs, instead of just nipping them in the bud.
Javier E

How the GOP became indifferent to lies - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...ters-trust-he-is-on-their-side

truth lies politics gop conservatism honesty

shared by Javier E on 27 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • The irony is not lost on some of us that the loudest right-wing voices are the worst examples of post-modernist thinking: Facts are fungible; it’s all what you want to believe.
  • It is however disturbing that many certainly know he is lying — or out of touch with reality — and still support him.
  • Part of this is attributable to the false moral equivalence game. Sure, Clinton is no model truth teller, but — come on! — she’s a Little Leaguer up against the 1927 Yankees (Trump) when it comes to lying. Clinton lies mainly when she gets caught; Trump lies about himself, the world, his own statements, other people’s statements, his positions, his change in positions, etc.
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  • Even more disturbing is the moral nihilism: Everyone lies, the argument goes, but at least we have our liar. That’s a recipe for moral chaos but also hopelessly naive. How do Trumpkins know he is on their side — because he told them?!
  • Amid all Trump’s lies do his fans imagine that the man who is loyal to no one will honor campaign promises? Self-delusion is a powerful force and the necessary ingredient for every successful scam.
  • Much of the blame for a lying-tolerant GOP rests with the people who should know better — the gatekeepers, or former gatekeepers, who used to feel obligated to stay in the vicinity of the truth.
  • When Paul Ryan cannot bring himself to uphold a minimal standard of honesty, one has to wonder what his credibility will look like after the election.
  • Ryan and other might want to consider that if you campaign on a pack of lies, the democratic process is destroyed, any “mandate” is phony and the essential trust needed for government to function is eviscerated.
  • As for the demise of the Republican Party, that was only possible once its members, elected officials and commentators decided there was no obligation to speak the truth — or even try.
millerco

Reality is catching up with Trump - everywhere - The Washington Post - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...8-8b0d-891602206fb7_story.html

US politics trump history

shared by millerco on 06 Feb 18 - No Cached
  • President Trump, in his State of the Union address last week, boasted to the nation about stock market gains: “The stock market has smashed one record after another, gaining $8 trillion and more in value in just this short period of time.”
  • He has boasted about the booming market in tweets no fewer than 54 times since taking office.
  • The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 1,175 points Monday, its biggest one-day point drop in history, following Friday’s beastly 666-point slide. The S&P 500 has lost more than $1 trillion in market value in just three trading days, and the Dow’s 8 percent drop in six trading days wiped out the year’s gains.
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  • Stocks rise and fall, but the recent sell-off shows the ultimate folly of the president’s fact-free existence. For a year, he took credit for stock market gains that were the continuation of a nine-year bull market
  • Now, the market is, arguably, beginning to react to Trump’s actual policies — a tax cut that added fuel to an already strong economy, raising fears it will overheat, causing inflation, higher interest rates and recession.
  • In ways large and small, reality is catching up with Trump.
  • In the same State of the Union address, Trump boasted that “African American unemployment stands at the lowest rate ever recorded.” (Never mind that this continued an eight-year trend.) Barely 60 hours later, Trump’s Labor Department reported that this boast was no longer true: Black unemployment swelled to 7.7 percent in January from 6.8 percent in December.
  • Republicans had mocked Nancy Pelosi for saying the cut amounted to “crumbs” for ordinary workers. But on Saturday, House Speaker Paul Ryan tweeted out a message pulled from an Associated Press story: “A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up $1.50 a week . . . she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year.” Amid the social media ridicule that followed — Rep. Joe Kennedy noted that the wealthiest Americans get an extra $3,000 per week — Ryan took down the truth-telling tweet.
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