Tax Plan
Let me tell you how it will be.
It’s one for you, nineteen for me.
‘Cause it’s the tax plan.
The Trump tax plan.
If I buy more stock
Big bucks for me.
If I sell my stuff
Big bucks for me.
Buying real estate
Big bucks for me.
If I die tonight
Big bucks for me.
Tax plan.
If five percent appears too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cause it’s the tax plan.
The Trump tax plan.
And it’s working for no one but me.
Parody of “Taxman” by The Beatles.
Trump didn’t really have the support of the majority of Republicans during the primaries, but once he got the nomination, he inherited the tribal loyalty of millions of Americans who would vote for a dead cat over a Democrat. Le Pen doesn’t have that advantage. It matters, a lot.
NATO isn’t really obsolete. The Chinese aren’t currency manipulators. Mexico won’t really pay for the wall. Maybe moving the embassy to Jerusalem isn’t such a good idea. The Export-Import Bank is OK. Assad is a brutal killer of his own people who must be removed from power. And so on.
The list of Trump flip-flops in the last few weeks is fairly breathtaking, particularly when you consider that the GOP has traditionally viewed changes in course as being a sign of weakness and a lack of belief in core values. And yet, Trump’s base support is unwavering. Why?
The answer, of course, is that Trump has no core values other than self-love. For him, being unpredictable is a tactic, and is therefore a sign of strength, not weakness. His followers may be a bit bewildered, but they buy into the strong man theme, so it’s OK with them.
The rest of us are mostly bemused by it all, but if his new positions make more sense than the old ones, we will be grateful for small favors.
Every other tactic having failed, we have apparently decided to try to out nut job North Korea. But will it work? How do the two leaders stack up?
Kim vs. Trump
Age 34 70
Influential Father Communist Emperor Developer
Political Pedigree Red Princeling Billionaire Populist
Favorite Weapon Poison Twitter
Respect for Law None Questionable
Predictability Low Low
And the winner is . . . No one. Everyone’s a loser here.
On the French candidate named Le Pen.
To all Europe a message she’d send.
She’s made the next round
But her fans are all down.
She likely won’t win in the end.
The analogy connecting Trump and Le Pen is obvious and mostly accurate, but there are differences between the two campaigns that probably dictate a different result:
1. Trump got there first: There is nothing about his bumbling administration to date that would inspire confidence in Le Pen, even if she is more competent than he is.
2. Le Pen isn’t running against Hillary Clinton: The insider/outsider dichotomy that was such a big part of the American campaign doesn’t work in the French runoff.
3. Le Pen presents a more obvious threat to the investments of the French voting public: Trump didn’t have to promise to pull out of the euro, with all of the short-term implications that brings.
4. Le Pen doesn’t have an apparently successful business background: Plenty of people voted for Trump based on his record of getting things done in the private sector. Le Pen is a career politician with no record of accomplishing anything.
5. Trump swaggers more convincingly: It’s just harder for a woman to swagger. For once, we should be grateful for sexism.
The only way Le Pen wins in May is if turnout is extremely low. That is unlikely to happen, but the possibility can’t be completely dismissed. She has a puncher’s chance.
To an American, there are clear domestic analogies to the four principal figures in the race: Obama; Sanders; Trump; and Cruz. One is young, charismatic, and inexperienced, and wants to govern above party; one wants to make France a Bolivarian republic (does he have any idea what Venezuela is like these days?); one wants to make France great again by bringing back Vichy; and the last has a hankering for Thatcherite Britain, and holds others to a higher ethical standard than he imposes on himself.
I will readily concede that it is very possible that Macron could be completely ineffective, due to his lack of support in the National Assembly, and that his administration could just be five more years of aimless drift. In light of the alternatives, however, Hollande without the chicks doesn’t look so bad.
Choisissez bien, mes amis.
Kim Jong-Un apparently views Qaddafi as an example of what happens if you’re an eccentric dictator without nuclear weapons. As I’ve noted before, nuclear weapons don’t guarantee your regime’s survival, as Mikhail Gorbachev could tell you. That aside, does the Qaddafi analogy hold water?
No, for the following reasons:
1. The North Korean regime already has a very powerful conventional deterrent. Any attack on the regime runs the risk of an artillery assault on Seoul that could kill millions. Qaddafi didn’t have anything like that.
2. It’s far from clear that nuclear weapons would have saved Qaddafi. They would have been completely useless against the Libyan rebels, and they might not have been much of a deterrent against the limited US, British, and French intervention, given that he didn’t have an obvious way of delivering them to the homes of his enemies.
In reality, North Korean nukes are a source of instability and danger to the regime, not a guarantee of its survival. Their only legitimate function is to serve as a symbol of the regime’s power and success to the North Korean people, but that is likely to backfire in the near future.
According to the NYT, Sarah Palin, Kid Rock, and Ted Nugent met with Trump at the White House yesterday, received the grand tour, and discussed foreign affairs.
Really. With that kind of setup, you don’t even need a punchline.
Do I wish I could have been a fly on the wall? You betcha!
“To be honest, we don’t really care what’s in the bill, as long as we can call it an Obamacare replacement, and it passes. We need to look like strong, competent leaders, and we want to move on to tax cuts for wealthy people. If some people, including our supporters, get hurt, they’ll get over it–where else are they going to go?” (Trump, Reactionaries, and PBPs)
“Obamacare is the spawn of the devil. It is an unjustified intrusion of the federal government into private business and individual choices. It must be eliminated in its entirety. Let markets rule and freedom reign!” (Conservative Libertarians, a/k/a the Freedom Caucus)
“Gee, throwing millions of people off their insurance, or giving them “insurance” that is actually worthless, doesn’t sound like a great idea to us, particularly since Clinton won our districts in 2016. We weren’t elected to make people’s lives worse.” (Christian Democrats)
And so, there is a guaranteed majority of Republicans in favor of any bill that purports to be an Obamacare replacement, but not enough votes to pass the House, let alone the Senate. Both CL and CD votes are necessary to get to 216 and 51. So far, no luck with that.
In spite of their awesome destructive power, nuclear weapons have very limited utility for offensive purposes, because:
And so, you can only imagine launching a nuclear first strike against a hostile country with a strong conventional army, but no second strike capability.
Can you say “North Korea?”
Thus far, a nuclear attack on North Korea has not been suggested in public. In light of the paucity of decent options, and Trump’s desperate need to be seen as a winner, I expect that to change in the near future.
Life in the time of Trump.
Great danger lies ahead.
A kind of war
Not seen before.
Korea filled with dead.
Perhaps we’ll make it through this time.
Perhaps we’ll just luck out.
If not this time, for sure the next.
Of that, I have no doubt.
Four notorious right-wing economics commentators (I’m not sure it’s accurate to call them economists) penned an op-ed in yesterday’s NYT calling for a deferral of tax “reform” and an immediate cut to the corporate tax. In their view, the benefit of the tax cut will be enjoyed primarily by employees, not shareholders, and some of the rest will generate new investments and growth.
I’m not an economist, and I haven’t made a study of this, but I can apply common sense to the facts. Their argument is implausible, for the following reasons:
It is my understanding that the vast majority of studies show that the principal beneficiaries of a corporate tax cut are capitalists. If and when this happens (and I think it will), expect the cash mountains to grow, and for share prices to rise, and not much else, other than an increase in the federal deficit.
Paul Krugman looks at the evolution of retail and, quite reasonably, asks why retail jobs aren’t treated with the same respect by the government and the public as a whole as mining and manufacturing jobs. Here are the reasons:
1. The effect of lost mining and manufacturing jobs is less diffuse, but more intense: When the mine closes, there frequently is no work to be had in the area. The same is less true of the local Walmart. When your community goes down the drain, people complain, and get noticed.
2. Mining and manufacturing jobs have traditionally paid better than retail jobs: No elaboration is necessary.
3. Mining and manufacturing jobs bring in money from outside the community, while retail jobs recycle local resources: In a sense, mining and manufacturing create “exports” that add wealth to the community.
4. Mining, and to a lesser extent, manufacturing jobs require specialized skills that do not necessarily translate to other employment: If you lose your job at a store, you can probably get another retail job requiring similar skills somewhere else in your town. If you’re a miner, and the mine closes, what do you do now?
5. Mining jobs have a mythology attached to them; retail jobs don’t: Being a miner is physically difficult and dangerous work, so miners have been viewed as a sort of heroic band of brothers fighting both capitalists and the elements. There is no retail equivalent of that. As a result, miners have “Matewan,” and retail workers have “Superstore.”
All that aside, retail is a far bigger component of our economy than mining, and you have to be concerned about where all these workers are going to go in the future. Are all of our retail employees going to end up working in ALFs? If not there, where?
The newbie dictator named Kim.
No one knows much about him.
This much is for sure.
If he really wants war,
His chances of winning are slim.