The Donald Trump Score Card

Looks like Trump has struck a deal with Carrier to keep about 2,000 jobs in Indiana. It looks like the quid pro quo was a major tax overhaul favoring big business. is that a plus or a minus?

 

I couldn’t disagree more. It made an enormous difference whether G.W. Bush or Al Gore became our President in the 2000 election. I can’t imagine anybody screwing up more than Bush and his Neocon cronies without actually trying: two major wars, torture and a major recession that we’re still recovering from. I think it made a big difference that Nixon, the very prototype of a sociopath, became our President instead of Hubert Humphrey. Nixon did accomplish some impressive things: the thaw in our relations with China, creation of EPA, and impressive support for the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (despite the fact that we know from the Watergate tapes that he thought environmentalism was a joke). But Watergate, the enemies list, and other abuses of power did him in. I’m sure it made a difference that LBJ (another world class sociopath) won instead of Barry Goldwater. We owe much of our early Civil Rights legislation to LBJ, but also the deaths of so many young Americans who came back from Vietnam in body bags or wheel chairs.

As for protecting the petrodollars, Trump’s energy plan calls for drilling more, regulating less, and relying more heavily on fossil fuels. He hates wind energy, because the turbines impact his golf course. His financial disclosure forms show he has investments in Energy Transfer Partners, operators of the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline, whose CEO donated to his campaign. The Bahrain Embassy has decided to hold its annual National Day celebration at Trump International Hotel in D.C.. Apparently they got smart. Way to drain that swamp!

 

I agree with Obie.
Maybe I wouldn't be forced to buy insurance I don't want and can't afford if Obama lost.

 

Obie? No, we'd have McCain or Mitt instead.McCain offered up the usual Republcian borrow and spend, tax cuts formula that would have added $260 billion to the deficit without really working to stimulate the economy because businesses hoarded any extra cash in case the credit markets froze up again. He proposed personal savings accounts to replace Social Security, and stated point blank that he wouldn't keep the U.S. promises to retirees. And he was gung how on escalating our military involvement in Iraq, which would have risked American lives and further added to the budget deficit. As for Romney, you must not be part of the 47% who allegedly pay no income tax. That would include Donald Trump, but Romney was thinking of the free loaders on the government dole. If you can't afford medical insurance, I don't think you'd have fared well under the Romney Administration.

 

Trump's idea of draining the swamp is introducing non-native predators into a swamp already full of indigenous predators

 

I'm not bothered about Trump, but I really hate Clinton.
She can't even keep her husband satisfied!

 

I don't think you understand what the petrodollar is about.

 

[SIZE=11pt]Frightened by Donald Trump? You don’t know the half of it [/SIZE]

George Monbiot

[SIZE=11pt]Many of his staffers are from an opaque corporate misinformation network. We must understand this if we are to have any hope of fighting back against them[/SIZE]

Yes, Donald Trump’s politics are incoherent. But those who surround him know just what they want, and his lack of clarity enhances their power. To understand what is coming, we need to understand who they are. I know all too well, because I have spent the past 15 years fighting them.

[SIZE=11pt]Over this time, I have watched as tobacco, coal, oil, chemicals and biotech companies have poured billions of dollars into an international misinformation machine composed of thinktanks, bloggers and fake citizens’ groups. Its purpose is to portray the interests of billionaires as the interests of the common people, to wage war against trade unions and beat down attempts to regulate business and tax the very rich. Now the people who helped run this machine are shaping the government.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I first encountered the machine when writing about climate change. The fury and loathing directed at climate scientists and campaigners seemed incomprehensible until I realised they were fake: the hatred had been paid for. The bloggers and institutes whipping up this anger were funded by oil and coal companies.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Among those I clashed with was Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI). The CEI calls itself a thinktank, but looks to me like a corporate lobbying group. It is not transparent about its funding, but we now know it has received $2m from ExxonMobil, more than $4m from a group called the Donors Trust (which represents various corporations and billionaires), $800,000 from groups set up by the tycoons Charles and David Koch, and substantial sums from coal, tobacco and pharmaceutical companies.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]For years, Ebell and the CEI have attacked efforts to limit climate change, through lobbying, lawsuits and campaigns. An advertisement released by the institute had the punchline “Carbon dioxide: they call it pollution. We call it life.”[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]It has sought to eliminate funding for environmental education, lobbied against the Endangered Species Act, harried climate scientists and campaigned in favour of mountaintop removal by coal companies. In 2004, Ebell sent a memo to one of George W Bush’s staffers calling for the head of the Environmental Protection Agency to be sacked. Where is Ebell now? Oh – leading Trump’s transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]Charles and David Koch – who for years have funded extreme pro-corporate politics – might not have been enthusiasts for Trump’s candidacy, but their people were all over his campaign. Until June, Trump’s campaign manager was Corey Lewandowski, who like other members of Trump’s team came from a group called Americans for Prosperity (AFP).[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]his purports to be a grassroots campaign, but it was founded and funded by the Koch brothers. It set up the first Tea Party Facebook page and organised the first Tea Party events. With a budget of hundreds of millions of dollars, AFP has campaigned ferociously on issues that coincide with the Koch brothers’ commercial interests in oil, gas, minerals, timber and chemicals.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]In Michigan, it helped force through the “right to work bill”, in pursuit of what AFP’s local director called “taking the unions out at the knees”. It has campaigned nationwide against action on climate change. It has poured hundreds of millions of dollars into unseating the politicians who won’t do its bidding and replacing them with those who will.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=11pt]I could fill this newspaper with the names of Trump staffers who have emerged from such groups: people such as Doug Domenech, from the Texas Public Policy Foundation, funded among others by the Koch brothers, Exxon and the Donors Trust; Barry Bennett, whose Alliance for America’s Future (now called One Nation) refused to disclose its donors when challenged; and Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, funded by Exxon and others. This is to say nothing of Trump’s own crashing conflicts of interest. Trump promised to “drain the swamp” of the lobbyists and corporate stooges working in Washington. But it looks as if the only swamps he’ll drain will be real ones, as his team launches its war on the natural world.[/SIZE]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/30/donald-trump-george-monbiot-misinformation

 

Some musings

It seems to me that there is a certain infantilization of politics in certain quarters of the US it was always there but with mass media and the internet I fear it has become much worse.

I seems to expresses itself in a dislike or at least wariness of education and the educated, a desire for the simplistic answer and rejection of ‘facts’ that don’t fit in with what it wants to believe. And for some a kind of gleeful destructiveness ‘I’ll break it rather than let you have it’ mentality.

I’ve read and heard quite a few Americans kind of say that they voted a known liar and con artist to the highest office in their land to basically give the educated elites a good kicking.

So they are not really surprised that some things Trump promised are not happening and they don’t really know about what crap is going down because that is a bit to complex to go into and some find amusing the discomfort of those who have study them and are worried.

*

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education - Franklin D. Roosevelt

*

 

The word means petroleum money earned from the sale of oil. Are you using it in a more technical sense? The funds that are controlled by oil-exporting countries and have been used to pay for imports? Money from oil lobbyists? Or are you confining it to overseas, Middle East oil? Saudi oil money for arms? The United States has made amazing progress in achieving independence from Middle East oil--partly through increased reliance on natural gas through fracking. Of course there's a price. Oklahoma didn't have earthquakes before, but now we're ahead of California and up to some volcanic islands. I go to bed wondering if I'll wake up covered with rubble. The USGS says it's the fracking. The Oklahoma Geological Survey says its the fracking. The university geologists say its the fracking The oil and gas companies say oh,no, it couldn't possibly be the fracking. Guess who wins. So we don't have quite the same pressures to chase petrodollars overseas, but domestic petrodollars are still a major force to reckon with.

As for overseas oil, Trump has promised to take Iraqi oil. It's not stealing, he says, just reimbursement.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/21/donald-trump-iraq-war-oil-strategy-seizure-isis

So tell us--what do you mean by chasing those petrodollars?

 

I don't recall saying anything about chasing petrodollars. I'm talking about the fact that virtually all oil from OPEC members are sold for dollars only.

 

Ah. Sorry for the misunderstanding. But so what?

 

Correction: it was 1,000 jobs.

 

What happens if the oil exporting nations decide to accept a different currency for their oil, no longer requiring U.S. dollars?

 

This is already happening, and its not just oil exporting nations but China, Russia, as well, reflecting the diminished role of the U.S. as the world's superpower. The agreement that Nixon concluded with Saudi Arabia in 1973 to trade oil only for U.S. dollars was in exchange for a U.S. commitment to protect Saudi oilfields from the Ruskies. The Saudis are increasingly pissed at our relations with Iran. So what will happen? Possibly inflation, high interest rates, recession, and the sky will fall down. But don't worry. You can enlist the services of financial advisors who say they will help you get through it for a modest fee (I'd be cautious there). Or you can vote for a President who understands what is going on and knows what to do about it and/or has advisers who do. Despite his vaunted business background, I don't think that's Trump.

 

When all of those dollars floating around the rest of the world are no longer needed to purchase oil, all of those dollars will come back home, and there will be hard times. And there is nothing that any president or any financial advisors can do to stop it.

Oil for dollars has basically been an oil tax imposed on the rest of the world by the U.S.

 

Well, as the Native Americans say in such circumstances "it's a good day to die." The United States currently has the strongest economy in the world and is still the most powerful nation militarily. Countries that decide to abandon the dollar for Euros, yuans, yens, or rubles will be making important decisions.

 

Not after oil exporters decide to accept other currencies for their oil. Then the dollar loses much of its value. Iraq decided to accept another currency, and it was invaded. And now its back to selling oil for dollars. I think everyone got the message.

 

Yes,actions have consequences, and not just for the United States. But I don't think the invasion of Iraq was just the result of a currency situation. The Neocons were riding high, and this was their golden opportunity to vindicate their position. Look on the bright side. The consequences of a ruined U.S. economy would not just affect us. It would be something for all our trading partners to think about, including the nations that sell us oil. BTW, on a brighter note, OPEC just reached an agreement to cut production in order to boost oil prices. Don't be so gloomy. The collapse of the internet and the zombie apocalypse might get us before OPEC does.