Presidential Fault Lines

A list of just a few of Trump's accomplishments, goals, and

ideas for the first 18 months of his four-year presidency.

• Healthcare that covers everyone with sheets.
• Throwing out the Iran deal without a better one.
• Picking anti-department heads to run departments.
• Withdrawing the U.S from the Paris Climate Accord, joining Syria and Nicaragua as the only countries not signatories to it.
• Claiming that other countries don't pay their share for membership in NATO, confusing NATO required payments with voluntary defense spending by other countries as compared to our massive military defense spending.
• 50% tax breaks for corporations while saying we don't have enough money for social programs.
• Denying Russian interference and denigrating all of our intelligence agencies.
• Claiming the Russia investigation is a Witch Hunt and that there is nothing to find, ignoring that at least 30 people have been charged with crimes.
• Firing FBI Director Comey for not stopping the Russia investigation.
• Nominating unqualified people for seats on SCOTUS, and filling federal judicial offices with unqualified conservative radicals.
• Moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
• Not knowing and understanding the Constitution and the National Anthem and how to spell, while telling us he has the greatest memory and is the smartest person ever.
• Admiring racists and Nazis and despots.
• Threatening to start a war with Venezuela and to nuke North Korea into oblivion.
• Making friends with Kim Jong-un, North Korea's leader.
• Asking for a build-up of our nuclear weapons.
• Advocating a Space Force.
• Asking for military parades with tanks and missiles.
• Initiating a policy to forcefully separate children from parents at the border, often without information and tracking so that families could be reunited, and sometimes deporting parents without returning their children to them first.
• Starting a trade war with Canada and others, with negative impacts on workers, companies, farmers, consumers.
• On the phone insulting and yelling at other heads-of-state.
• Not understanding the Executive Orders that he signs (when he remembers to sign them).
• Giving intelligence information (boasting) to the Russians visiting the White House (unplanned declassifications of secrets).
• Giving himself a 10 for his non-response to Puerto Rico's hurricane catastrophe.
• Nepotism.
• Profiting from his Presidency.
• Campaign rallies up to five days a week and golfing on weekends while telling people he's working hard.
• Calling journalists Enemies of the People and calling any criticism Fake News, except for the state propaganda machine that is Fox News.
• Calling kneeling before the flag treason rather than peaceful protests.
• Calling his opponents crooks and liars and puppets and advocating locking them up.
• Public displays of rudeness and bullying and hostility and indifference, even to Gold Star families.
• Spreading conspiracy theories and fake news on Twitter, with his Twitter rants to be considered as official White House correspondence.
• Thinking that Frederick Douglass is alive.
• Thinking that health insurance works like life insurance; by the time you reach age 70, you have a great plan (for $12 a year).
• Denying events and quotes that are taped or recorded.
• Making up facts and figures.

This is just off the top of my head. I'm sorry it is not more comprehensive.

Capitalism vs. Socialism?

Ever hear of Democratic Socialism? Democrats are not about to support Socialism. Only a combination of capitalism and socialism works. Do you think privatization of Social Security (it's already self-funded, not part of the federal budget, and has a Trust Fund of $2.8 trillion in interest-bearing U.S. Treasury Bonds - those pesky paper IOUs) is feasible? How many people lost their retirements to the crash in 2008? I don't want my retirement subject to stock market crashes, thefts, bankruptcies, high admin fees and churning, and major benefit reductions (selling off pension obligations when taking over a company).

Do you like or want privatized prisons, privatized pollution prevention and clean-up, for-profit courts, privatized borders, for-profit schools without regulations or oversight but still with public funding, privatized police and fire protection, unregulated construction and unfunded infrastructure maintenance, for-profit roads and utilities, privatized coast guard and military, unchecked monopolies, unregulated insurance that is more like a coupon, and companies and hospitals and doctors operating with no regulations or requirements or oversight?

Do you really believe in pure capitalism such as that espoused by Trump and Ryan and McConnell? Are you that naive? BTW, how are those pay raises after the massive tax cuts? What, didn't you know workers are making less?

It's not capitalism vs. socialism or communism. It's capitalism plus socialism.

The GOP and Their Walk With Jesus

 

Oh, yes, the radical republicans have chosen to walk with Jesus, helping the sick, the lame, elderly, children, the poor, the stranger, and the hungry. They are the party of peace, behaving without anger or violence. They...Oh, who am I kidding. The GOP is the party of greed, lies, hypocrisy, religious and behavioral intolerance, and injustice.

They are the nanny state party, regulating our bedrooms, our bodies, and our individual freedoms. We are jailed for indebtedness (debtor's prison), with judges issuing criminal contempt of court sentences for our inability to satisfy payment of court costs and jail costs and collection agency demands.

The GOP is the party of freedom. Freedom to go without health care, the freedom for medical bankruptcies, freedom from dental, vision and hearing care, the freedom to die.

Whenever I hear freedom and flexibility by radical conservatives, I hear the subtext of freedom from accountability, oversight, safety standards, wage minimums, competency, integrity, and legality.

The freedom to do without, as in freedom for us to be without living wages, without health care, without discrimination protections, without a safe retirement income, without clean air and water and soil, without justice and legal rights and legal protections, without protection from disenfranchisement and gerrymandering, without the freedom to join a union or to unionize, without freedom from religious intolerance and religion-based discrimination.

Republicans label us as lazy or undeserving or unworthy or morally corrupt just because of low income or wealth. If people are not paid well enough to go without government assistance, then that is not a person on welfare, it is corporate welfare. It is the reliance of companies on public (taxpayer) assistance for their underpaid workers. Have these radical conservatives heard of the concept of the wealthy paying their fair share? Have they heard of Social Responsibility? Not everyone wants to be or can be a CEO or manager or owner of a business. Some people just want fair wages.

Republicans are the party of laws written by corporations and industries for their own benefit, on both the state and federal level. The GOP is the party of free trade rather than fair trade. They worship profit, striving for returns on investments of at least 15% annually while giving people who do the actual work little or no increase in wages or benefits.

These radicals worship health care for profit, letting health insurance companies cut benefits and raise premiums and deductibles. US companies with more than 20 employees are saddled with health insurance costs (an expense to be minimized, impacting workers) while foreign companies benefit from their government's universal health care. If a worker is part-time or works for a smaller company, there is no insurance benefit.

The GOP cut in half taxes on companies and the wealthy, and now insist on cutting any social programs because of revenue shortfalls, debt and deficits. They lie, cheat, steal, administer draconian and unfair justice. They allow killings with impunity with Stand Your Ground laws, impunity for "peace" officers' slaughter of people of color, and they refuse to enact common-sense restrictions on weapons used in massacres.

The GOP perpetrates lies about Social Security, claiming that it is the biggest federal expense, that it is in the red, and that they must raise retirement ages and cut benefits to save our retirement. No mention is made of raising the cap on payroll taxes (currently $128,400, income over that is not subject to these taxes) so that the wealthy would pay more than a minuscule percentage of their income.

There is no talk about making simple adjustments to the payroll tax rates. No mention is made that Social Security is not even part of the federal budget, that it is separate by law with its own revenue stream. Nothing is said about it being fully funded until 2034 (after which it is 80% funded through 2092) and has a $2.8 trillion Trust Fund consisting of U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Those bonds are the pesky paper IOUs which give rise to arguments that Congress stole our retirement. Bonds earn interest and are how our government funds the $20-plus trillion National Debt; they are not instruments of theft. Social Security benefit cuts or raises in retirement ages do not change the federal budget or the National Debt by one penny.

We are subject to theft of cash and property seized for "evidence" which is rarely returned even if charges are dropped or no charges are filed. We are arrested, jailed, and incarcerated because a "specially trained" police officer determined we were intoxicated even without any physical evidence.

We are denied the ability and the right to institute or join class action lawsuits because of forced inequitable arbitration clauses. We are forced to pay a non-refundable 10% of bail if we cannot afford to come up with the whole amount. If we cannot pay that 10%, we are given pre-trial incarceration. We are then housed in jail or in tent cities with convicted offenders. We are treated the same as those already convicted, and we are treated with little concern for medical needs.

These radical conservatives have a funny idea of what Jesus stood for.