political stupidity

Pretending Not To Know


Reading time – 1:31; Viewing time – 2:19  .  .  .

Do you remember when Republicans held themselves out as the solid bulwark against the Russians? When Republicans represented that they were the true defenders and stiff backbone of our country? When Republicans made it clear that anything remotely less than hostile to the Russians was unpatriotic? I do, too.

I remember Richard Nixon, the “commie-baiter,” and Ronald “Tear down this wall!” Reagan. Those were the days when Republicans had spine. They were all about tough talk and standing up to the Russians.

Now, though, we have an enemy of our country, those same Russians, attacking us with cyber warfare and undermining our most cherished values and rights. Our president steadfastly refuses to stop them and most Congressional Republicans are silent about that.

Trump continues to attack and embarrass our allies. He imposes tariffs on our best friends to no economic benefit to us and, in fact, to our detriment. He attacks NATO, the alliance that has kept the west strong for seven decades.

He receives ongoing, concrete proof that Vladimir Putin has directed his henchmen to undermine America. They’ve gone about it with electronic guns blazing and Trump sits on his hands. Trump continues to treat Putin like his Godfather, as in: Corleone. He meets with Putin when there are no other Americans present, leaving us to wonder about the harm he allows to be done to our country. Who are the Republicans speaking out against that? What are they doing to protect us? What happened to their spine?

Buy this book and read it.

Yeah, Republicans, I get that Trump will tweet mean, untrue things about you if you don’t support him. We all know that you’ll get primaried from the right if you don’t suck up to Trump or at least keep quiet. But this isn’t about Trump’s constant lying or his disgracing of the Presidency. This is about confronting and stopping threats to our very democracy. This is the time to stand up and be counted. If we don’t stop this now, there may not be a second chance.

So, tell me, Republicans in Congress, what is it that you’re pretending not to know?

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Cold, Dead Hands


  • Reading time – 1:32; Viewing time – 2:17  .  .  .

Every Fourth of July I stick a flag on a pole and insert it into the back of my convertible. I commonly remove it on the 5th and this year it sat in the back of the car until this morning, when I picked it up to put it away. That’s when my neighbor called out something about showing it proudly.

He said that he had been in Denver for the Fourth and asked his son there why he didn’t display a flag on his house that day. His son said that waving a flag in that part of the country meant just one thing: supporting the far-right wingnut agenda, which he did not want to do. Hence, no flag.

Perhaps he isn’t alone in refusing to display a flag. Many of us are ashamed now about things being done in our name: things like kidnapping children and abandoning habeas corpus; things like slapping our friends in the face while embracing tyrannical world leaders; things like pardoning public lands arsonists in order to suck up to “the base.”

The problem with abandoning the red, white and blue because of the extreme wrongdoing of some is to abandon our country and cede it to the crazies.

And yes, I mean crazies. I DO NOT mean those who have other notions about how to achieve what nearly all of us believe in. This is about refusing to give our country to those who would wipe their dirty boots on those things we hold dear as Americans. So, here’s what I have for the crazies.

Perhaps you remember Charleton Heston’s defiance at an NRA convention 18 years ago. He declared that they (apparently government – he specifically named Al Gore) could have his gun when they could pry it from his cold, dead hands. While there isn’t much that I had in common with Heston, I’ll borrow his phrasing:

You can have my flag when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. And you better know that even then you’ll have to get past my kids.

I will not allow you to take the flag, ruin my country and claim it exclusively yours. My flag is on display at the front of my house every day. Deal with it.

  • ————————————

    Ed. note: I don’t want money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Bad For America


Reading time – 1:53 seconds; Viewing time – 2:47  .  .  .

In yet another 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has allowed Trump’s Muslim travel ban to stand. And by the same margin the Court allowed Ohio to continue to purge its voter roles of poor people and people of color. 5-4 is the same margin by which the Court allowed Texas and North Carolina Republican gerrymandering to suppress minority voting to stand.

Click for the Snopes fact check

It’s highly unlikely that any of those decisions would have gone this way had Merrick Garland been on the bench instead of Neil Gorsuch. That is exactly why Mitch McConnell sees his lie-filled theft of choice from President Obama to fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Court as his proudest moment.

This is yet another example of the dishonesty that undermines our values and drives Americans to distrust government. It’s another lie that is easily exposed, like what @edelweisspirat showed us last week in what is perhaps the greatest tweet ever to expose Trumpian dishonesty:

Well, yeah, Melania, we really do care. Why don’t you?

He’s captured in just a few words the insanity of what Trump and the far right use in place of integrity and good sense. Just get that the lies and dishonesty have consequences, like those 5-4 decisions that incrementally steal freedoms from Americans.

Things are about to get worse now that Justice Anthony Kennedy has announced that he will retire from the Supreme Court on July 31. McConnell has announced that he plans to jam through Trump’s nominee quickly, this in the face of his logic in 2016 that there should be no new Supreme Court pick in an election year in order to, “let the people speak.” Somehow, his disingenuousness that prevented Obama’s pick doesn’t apply now that there’s a Republican in the White House.

There is no Senate filibuster to keep another Trump nominated far righty from the bench, and that will almost certainly lead to accelerated loss of our rights. And that pick will be a stepping stone to authoritarianism: there will be no way to stop Donald Trump’s wrongdoing and our accelerated spiraling into fascism.

What a proud day this must be for those who favor bullying, dishonesty and disorder over democracy; who favor party loyalty and their own position over patriotism. It appears that the righty extremist ends justify their means. Good for them. Bad for America.

Click me

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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Equivalents, Civility and Fire


Reading time – 4:12; Viewing time – 5:47  .  .  .

There are a bunch of links in this post. None is long. All are worthwhile (that’s why they are included). Check ’em out. JA

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It’s been a continuous flow in the open sewer that is the law breaking, ethics spurning, morals smashing of Donald Trump and his mob of democracy destroyers. So, when I came across the picture at the top-right corner of this post, I knew it had to be included here. But am I making a mistake? Read on.

The assaults on the institutions we revere, the attacks on whole races of people, the calls for violence against protesters, the dissing of our allies, the refusal to stop a foreign power from attacking us and now the kidnapping and abuse of thousands of children have left millions of us enraged. And that’s a problem.

Human Being 101: When attacked, we either fight or flee. It’s the kind of fight that is going on now that’s the problem and it’s my contention that we may be shooting ourselves in the foot by the way we’re fighting.

For a long time people on the left have felt attacked, and rightly so, as far right thugs have spewed hatred and lies. My notion is that the modern day onslaught of this started with President Reagan’s run for the presidency in 1980, when he was famously bashing all welfare and he called out a “welfare queen” on the south side of Chicago. When challenged repeatedly, he finally had to concede that neither he nor anyone in his campaign could name a single example of a welfare queen in Chicago or anywhere else. Nevertheless, his lie demonized powerfully and nobody missed that dog whistle to racism that made lefties furious.

Since then there have been the lies and vitriol spewed by Fox News, Newt Gingrich, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Alex Jones and the Birther-In-Chief and likely you’re continuously angry about all of that. That’s the stuff that fires us into a fit of Human Being 101 attack mode, like Maxine Waters making herself the national cheerleader for public shaming.

Joe Wilson official congressional photo.jpg

“You lie!”

“Not true.”

Oddly enough, that’s the same kind of anger response that drove Tea Partier Joe Wilson to inappropriately yell, “You lie!” during President Obama’s address to Congress in September, 2009. It’s what drives all of Trump’s 27- 38%. The direction is polar opposite to that of lefties, but the shaming anger response is identical.

I abhor false equivalencies and other frauds, but this one, in principle, is no sham. Public shaming, humiliating, demonizing and hate spewing are wrong. It doesn’t matter who’s doing it. I get that we feel justified and powerful when we do that, but that’s just the hormones of rage in our veins. What’s really happening is that we are making things worse. That’s “worse” as in: counter-productive. We give righty hate mongers the justification to hate even more and we generate new recruits to their side as well.

Read Jonathan Martin’s article about this and be sure to see Michelle Goldberg’s brilliant piece to understand this better. Want to see how counter-productive this public shaming of righties really is for Democrats? Read this piece from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, because they’re spot-on. These essays make clear what being a slave to adrenaline and testosterone will do to us.

Just in case you don’t find the gun-to-foot picture above persuasive of the counter-productive nature of public shaming, read Frank Bruni’s piece, Public Shaming Feels Good. That’s No Reason to Do It.

if you want to honor your frustration and passion, read John Pavlovitz’s essay. Note that his anger is right there for all to see and feel; humiliation and shaming are not. Translation: Bring your anger, your frustration and your passion. But leave your hate and the need to hurt others far behind you. Maybe we can start to make things better.

So, maybe – no, for sure – I shouldn’t have included the White House picture above because all it does is to make things worse.

Public shaming is not only wrong; it’s politically stupid. Wise up, Democrats.

On the other hand  .  .  .

I’m every bit as incensed as you and not only won’t I allow bullies to beat me up and steal from me, I won’t allow them to do that to anyone else, either. That includes mothers with nursing infants in McAllen, Texas and poor people in North Carolina who want to vote. I still believe public shaming will likely be counter-productive, but maybe the real issue isn’t civility.

It’s all too easy to go too far on the high ground of civility, like this 1934 admonition to Jews to be civil with the Nazis. Get this: thugs only understand one thing: a harder punch in the nose.

So, let’s not be stupid about this. It’s not about civility. It’s about stopping the thugs who are destroying our country. It’s about setting things right again. It’s time to stop bringing spitballs to a gun fight. It’s time to fight back with equivalents plus one so that we hit back harder.

To Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of our tired septuagenarian leadership: Your sell-by date is long past. Give it up to someone with fire in their belly.

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

If Only Someone Could Name One


Reading time – 2:15  .  .  .

It’s time to focus on Trump’s policies and policy actions and what they mean to us.

“America First” is more a campaign bumper sticker than a strategy, so that’s not a helpful guide. All I’ve been able to find are Trump’s various tactics to accomplish  .  .  .  something. Here are some examples.

I can’t name Trump’s foreign affairs policy. I do know that:

He moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, thereby shoving a big U.S. thumb in the eye of all Palestinians and most Arabs and further undermining the possibility of lasting peace in the region. And he pissed off a lot of Muslims, creating a new recruiting poster for ISIS and al Qaeda. Not helpful to us.

He fired off a bunch of missiles at Syria, killing many people while avoiding hitting many of Assad’s chemical weapon stockpiles and production facilities, so the multi-million dollar fireworks show was essentially no help in stopping Assad from gassing his people. We did make some more fervent enemies.

He continues to play softball with Putin and his oligarchs, even after all the plain, visible evidence that Russia, an avowed enemy of the United States, cyber-attacked America. You fill in the blanks as to what that means to our democracy.

I can’t name Trump’s economic policy. I do know that:

He has imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum coming from some of our closest allies and trading partners (the EU, Canada, Mexico), incentivizing them to retaliate. That is to say, he’s started a trade war. It is forecast to raise prices in the U.S. and cost many thousands of American jobs. And that makes Putin smile.

During the 2016 election campaign Trump promised to bring jobs back from China. He recently visited with President Xi and oddly declared that ZTE, manufacturer of cheap cell phones that China uses to spy on America, had a problem and we had to support them and save 70,000 jobs – in China. Immediately thereafter China made a $500 million cash infusion to Trump’s private resort project in Indonesia. The results are fewer American jobs and unlawful emoluments for the president, which further erodes our system of justice.

Trump enthusiastically promoted and signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which decreases federal taxes for most people for a short while and lowers taxes for corporations in perpetuity. 83% of the personal tax savings go to the super-wealthy and the Act will create $1.5 trillion of national debt. Do the math for your kids.

I don’t know what Trump’s civil and voting rights policy is. I do know that:

One of his first acts as President was to create the Presidential Advisory Committee on Election Integrity and make former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach its lead. Both the charter of the committee and Kobach’s personal purpose are to end the non-existent scourge of voter fraud by preventing lawful but poor or non-white U.S. citizens from voting.

Trump has tried three times to prevent Muslims from entering the U.S. That’s a subversion of the First Amendment protection of freedom of religion.

Trump’s immigration practices are designed to prevent anyone but white, European Christians from entering the U.S. To enforce this, he has instituted the practice of ripping thousands of children from their parents when they show up at our southern border to apply for entry. Are you okay with that, Mom?

And of course there is Trump’s tweeted temper tantrum against Samantha Bee for her crude statement about Ivanka, matched with his complete absence of criticism of Roseanne Barr for her most recent racial slur. Apparently, bad mouthing Ivanka is inexcusable, but racial hate speech is okay anytime.

I can’t name Trump’s policy regarding preserving and protecting our democracy. I do know that:

He has carried on an unrelenting demonizing of our system of justice and the agencies that ensure that we are safe, like the Justice Department and the FBI, this for his stated purpose of undermining public confidence in those agencies.

He has attacked our press with his stated purpose of undermining pubic confidence in our Fourth Estate so that the American people won’t believe negative reporting about Trump.

There’s just a snapshot in understated terms of Trump’s policies. My promise to you is that I’ll henceforth do my level best to avoid reactions to Trump’s temper tantrum tweets and his constant stream of lies. Instead, I will focus exclusively on preserving our democracy and on his policies. Now, if only someone could name one of those policies  .  .  .

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Keeping Score On Just One Week


Reading time – 2:55; Viewing time – 4:20  .  .  .

Kim Jong-un, the murderous dictator of North Korea, has played Donald Trump like he’s a marionette. Kim freed 3 American prisoners for whom he had no further use. He already had the nuclear bomb technology he wanted, so it was a freebie to promise no further nuclear testing, and he smiled for the cameras, promising talks with South Korea. All of that came at absolutely no cost to North Korea. What Kim got was exactly what he wanted: high level talks with America so he would be seen as an equal on the world stage. Kim has no further need for Trump, so the summit may never happen and the talks with South Korea are already threatened. Score: Kim Jong-un 1, America 0.

The new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem opened this week to great fanfare and violent, deadly protests in Gaza. Every president before Trump recognized the self-defeating nature of placing our embassy in Jerusalem and refrained from making that move because it was sure to be an incitement to violence and an impediment to lasting peace. Trump hasn’t the sense or mental sophistication to see beyond just making a deal – any deal – regardless of the cost to others. He bears responsibility for those deaths in Gaza. Score: Everyone 0.

It isn’t proven yet, but there is a most suspicious intersection of Trump saving 70,000 jobs for telecom company ZTE in China and the new Chinese infusion of half a billion dollars into Trump’s private resort project in Indonesia. Note that the Chinese government uses ZTE’s cheap cell phones to spy on America. Trump just gave them a green flag and an open lane to do just that. This looks a lot like emoluments and bribery while selling out America. Score: China 2, Trump 1, America 0.

All of these issues are substantive and they weaken American security and influence around the world.

As of the time of this writing on Friday, at least 9 students and one teacher have been killed and about 10 others were wounded by a student with 3 firearms at Santa Fe High School in the Houston, TX area.

Brace yourself now, as Wayne LaPierre and Dana Loesch of the NRA crank up their lunacy and once again invoke good guys with guns and insist on teachers being armed so we can have shootouts in school hallways.

There will be much wringing of hands and thoughts and prayers will be offered by spineless leaders all across the country. See the attached picture taken at the March For Our Lives demonstration in Chicago for a proper response to our jellyfish politicians.

Do you think Friday’s event will trigger a thought among our legislators that easy access to firearms might not be a good idea? Any chance politicians will be willing to invest in mental health services or require trigger locks and universal background checks, the very things that 92% of us want?

We – through our politicians – continue to allow our children to be killed every week, so I don’t have any confidence that this latest mass murder will result in legislative actions to deter future shootings of our kids. Score: NRA 2, politicians 1, American kids 0.

Do not send your thoughts and prayers to the Santa Fe, TX victims and their loved ones. Instead,

DEMAND THAT YOUR STATE AND FEDERAL LEGISLATORS PUT ON THEIR BIG BOY AND BIG GIRL PANTS AND ENACT SENSIBLE GUN SAFETY LAWS.

Use these links: www.Senate.Gov  www.House.Gov

I’ll say it again:

A vote for an NRA backed candidate is a vote for dead children.

Remember that when you vote on November 6.

And remember, too, that all of this, the international betrayals, the murders of our kids and a resulting score for America of 0 happened in just one week. This level of craziness plays out every week in the ongoing drama that is the Trump administration and our pay-to-play, spineless Congress that lets it all happen.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Still Looking For the Up-Side


Reading time – 1:41; Viewing time – 2:38  .  .  .

President Trump has made good on yet another brain dead campaign promise, this time by moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. There was a formal ceremony to recognize the change and it included words from a pastor who has publicly announced that all Jews are going to hell, comments from know-nothing, double-dealing Jared Kushner and self-satisfied chest thumping from hard line Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Donald Trump on video.

After decades of U.S. Presidents having the good sense to avoid a declaration of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel (check out this post), Donald Trump has once again trashed well thought out policy in favor of smashing and breaking everything in sight and in the process has managed to jump into a smoldering pile of terrible.

Even as the lovely embassy ceremonies were proceeding, Gazans were conducting a massive protest just a few miles away, where dozens of Gazans were killed and thousands wounded by Israeli forces. It won’t stop – there will be more violence triggered by the U.S. embassy move, because it is seen in the Palestinian and entire Arab world as the full embracing of Israel by the U.S. and the total abandonment of Palestinians. Indeed, Turkey has recalled its ambassador to the U.S. in protest. The obvious dissing of Palestinians is exactly why Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama exercised the escape clause of the Oslo Accords and did not move our embassy.

Once again, though, Donald Trump has made clear that all he cares about is making transactional deals and that he has no concept of strategy or consequences. He’s actually ignorant enough to believe that he’s just achieved something worthwhile.

Instead, Trump has told the Palestinians that the U.S. is no longer an honest broker for peace, leaving them without hope, so they have nothing to lose by being violent. It is what all people without hope eventually do.

When Trump first announced in December, 2017 his intention to move the U.S. embassy, I asked for help to understand the up-side to the U.S. of such a move, because I couldn’t see a thing of value. Nobody offered anything. Crickets.

So, once again I invite you to offer the up-side of this for the United States. Please put your notions in the Comments section below.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

D’oh!


Reading time – 3:09; Viewing time – 4:28  .  .  .

Trump’s temper tantrum list – and this is just a short, partial list – came to me in a true Homer Simpson moment. Here’s what he’s done:

  • – Backed the U.S. out of the Paris Climate Accords, a plan for global climate protection that was agreed to by 195 nations
  • – Eliminated the 2012 CAFE standards that would dramatically reduce the use of fossil fuels that contribute to global warming
  • – Backed the U.S. out of the TPP, thus giving enormous leverage on international trade to China, yet another step toward the U.S. becoming Number 2
  • – Cancelled DACA, putting nearly a million kids and young adults at risk by betraying them
  • – Opened our national parks and other protected lands and oceans to fossil fuel exploration
  • – Backed the U.S. out of the JCPOA, a successful, single focus agreement that prevents Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, leaving us a future choice between accepting Iran as a nuclear state or starting a war
  • – Promoted and signed a tax plan that overwhelmingly (85%) benefits already very wealthy people and corporations and blows off the rest of us in just a few years

This started when President Obama committed the greatest of sins, the most heinous of indictable crimes when he mocked Donald Trump at White House Correspondents Dinners (here at about 20 minutes).

Trump, a whining, sniveling little victim always, was infuriated and we know that whenever he thinks he’s been wronged (which is pretty much every day) he goes into full court press attack mode. And that’s what he’s been doing since he got his hands on the reins.

Trump has stupidly, childishly, clumsily done everything possible to erase the legacy of Barack Obama. The sole exception occurs whenever he can blame anything, whether real and imagined, on his predecessor. It doesn’t matter a whit to Trump if what he does harms our people or our country or the entire planet. He doesn’t care if he puts us at risk of civilization destroying nuclear war or any other consequence as long as he can diminish Barack Obama. That is the tyrant child we have as a president.

And another thing  .  .  .

Many Republicans in Congress and our nominally Republican president hate the very notion of helping poor people. “It’s your fault,” and “Help yourself,” intoned the pizza king presidential candidate, Herman Cain. Conservatives hate welfare, like the food stamps that make it so that poor children have something to eat.

Making that cruelty to our most at-risk people even worse are the slimy  reforms proposed by conservatives. People like Paul Ryan call for welfare changes that they brand with chest thumping, patriotic sounding names and then they lie about their programs and the adverse effect they’ll have on poor people. That’s the slime.

Repealing all welfare is likely politically impossible, but there must be a solution somewhere to this anathema to the conservative soul. Well, I just happen to have a solution that should satisfy everyone.

A kid in a family with an out of work coal miner dad in West Virginia doesn’t have the same resources for building an economically successful life as, say, little Donald Trump did. He began life with huge wealth in his lap, and just look at what he claims to have built from that. It’s obvious from that comparison – the poor kid in West Virginia and the rich Donald in New York – that the solution to our welfare mess is for everyone to start with a fortune.

That is why I propose that we give every current and future poor person a one-time $1 million stake to use to create their own life of wealth. Just imagine the millions of Americans with enormous wealth that this insightful program will produce. We’ll do away with all other welfare programs and that will make conservatives happy.

Best of all, the rest of us won’t have to listen to any more disingenuous and slimy conservative welfare reform schemes.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money (DON’T donate) or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

YOUR ACTION STEPS:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

The Republican Juggernaut Against Government


Reading time – 2:10  .  .  .

In a recent conversation, a friend wondered why working-class voters vote for politicians and support policies that are at odds with their own interests. It’s my belief that these voters don’t think through the situation. All they recognize is that a program of small government and low taxes sounds good. That’s the promise that has been lied to them. But the promised decrease in taxes means that there is less money to pay for the services that taxpayers want. That’s the part they don’t see and nobody tells them it’s coming.

George Will has said for years that Americans want about $300 billion more in services than they’re willing to pay for. That, of course, leads to politicians telling otherwise sensible Americans that they can have those services without paying for them – just, “Vote for me!”

And we do. We all like something for nothing. And that’s what it looks like we’re getting as we vote for small government and lower taxes. It’s only later that we learn that our child’s school room has 37 kids, the books are 36 years old, the roof leaks and the walls are water damaged and the boys bathroom is out of service and the teacher has to buy the paper and markers for the kids, as well as the Band-aids for bruised knees. Then the teachers reach the point where their personally funding the education of everybody’s kids is unsustainable and they wind up in the rotunda of the West Virginia or Oklahoma state house carrying signs. That is when, in a stunning admission of failure, the governor says he doesn’t have money to pay them more or to upgrade schools.

This is what the people voted for, perhaps without recognizing those inevitable consequences. But the citizens of Kansas, the land of Gov. Brownbeck’s miserably failed experiment in state strangulation, could have told them this was coming.

We can be fooled very easily. George W. Bush sold his tax reduction plan by sending a check for $300 (or $600 if you made more money) to every taxpayer. That cash in hand – seemingly something for nothing – sold his  plan to give away billions of dollars to rich people. Slick politics, indeed. That blunder was magnified as he lied us into two wars at the same time, which meant that we not only had a bigger cost to run the country, but we had hamstrung ourselves with less revenue for the fundamental services Americans want.

Oh, wait – I forgot that the reduction of taxes on rich people would pay for itself because of the stimulus to the economy that Bush’s tax reduction would create. We’re still waiting for that windfall to reach the rest of us. Worse, our 115th Congress and President Trump just fooled us into this very same tax deceit once again with a tax plan that ensures that 83% of the tax reduction benefit goes to our ultra-wealthy citizens.

That false promise of small government and low taxes has brought us trillions of dollars of debt, a grotesque equity imbalance and our kids still aren’t getting a good education, except in high income neighborhoods.

The Republican juggernaut against government has consequences. Failing our children is one of them.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
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Blustering for Bupkis*


  • * Bupkis – Absolutely nothing; nothing of value, significance, or substance.

Reading time 1:17  .  .  .

Who doesn’t want the nuclear capabilities of homicidal, fratricidal uncle-cidal Kim Jong-un eliminated? So, the upcoming summit between Kim and Trump has everyone’s interest and hopes for success, with success defined as ending North Korea’s nuclear threat. Sadly, critically, that doesn’t even rise to the level of remote possibility.

Kim has offered that he is ending his demands that U.S. troops be removed from South Korea, as well as ending nuclear testing. That sounds good, but it’s unlikely that he needs to do any further nuclear testing to have full, civilization ending capability, so his offer is not only without cost to North Korea, it is an entirely empty bag for the rest of us. That’s especially important to North Korea’s eastern neighbor, Japan, which Kim’s short- and medium-range ICBMs can reach right now.

Trump has responded by calling Kim’s gestures “big progress.” Therein lies the key pitfall.

Kim wants an end to sanctions against his country and, more than anything, to gain the respect and honor he thinks will be his, as the world recognizes his great power and puts him on a level playing field with the world’s most powerful nation. He wants global cred and Trump is handing it to him just by agreeing to meet in a summit with no preconditions. In return, Trump and the United States are getting nothing. It’s a huge win for the North Korean dictator which comes to him without cost, and that is true regardless of the outcome of the talks. And if no agreement is reached at all, the door is open for John “nuke ’em first” Bolton to walk in and have the ear of an impetuous, self-image focused president. Thank you Mr. Art of the Deal.

We’ve tried before to negotiate with North Korea and it has failed every time. Talk is cheap and we’ve seen no action other than deceit.* It looks like Trump is blustering his way to the same outcome once again – or worse. Bupkis.

“I would rather believe a woman who has given birth to a baby and still insists that she is a virgin than Kim Jong-un.”
— Kim Chang-guk, 73, who joined other older citizens in the South Korean capital one recent weekend to protest the inter-Korean summit meeting.

From NY Times Morning Briefing, April 25, 2018.

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Ed. note: I don’t want your money or your signature on a petition. I want you to spread the word so that we make a critical difference. That’s the reason for these posts. To accomplish the goal requires reaching many thousands of people, so:

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Copyright 2024 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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