Cromwell

Reactionaries have traditionally supported large regressive GOP tax cuts even though virtually all of the benefits flow to wealthy businessmen, for two reasons. First, they believe in “starving the beast;”  any spending cuts that follow, they assume, will fall mostly on minorities and the undeserving poor.  Second, after all, it’s money that the wealthy people earned that is just being returned to them; it’s not an odious redistribution program.

If, as I suspect, some form of the Trump plan ultimately becomes law, the Reactionaries may be in for a rude surprise this time, because when the deficit explodes, the fiscal hawks are going to be gunning for their treasured entitlement programs:  Social Security and Medicare.  Trump has promised not to cut those programs, but he has plenty of people around him who disagree, and in the face of a soaring debt, where else can he cut?  Discretionary programs other than defense have already been slashed;  there is no other place to go.

In other words, be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.

 

Yeah, being a man on golf cart isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.  It’s just not fair that you have to actually govern instead of doing a victory lap for four years.

Imagine that you are the CEO of a large American manufacturer.  You survived the Great Recession by cutting costs and hoarding cash.  Today, you’re sitting on a cash mountain, your share price is pretty high, and the investors are happy.

The Trump tax cut figures to increase your net profits by about 10%.  What do you do with the extra cash?

Here are your options:

1.  Pay higher wages to your employees.  Are you kidding me?  The workforce has been cowed by threats to cut jobs through automation and offshoring, and you don’t have a union.  The shareholders would be furious.  It won’t happen.

2.  Invest in additional production capacity.   Why?  Where are your new customers?  Overseas, you see stagnant growth, an overpriced dollar, and protectionism;  at home, you see an aging population that is more interested in saving than spending, and a hollowed-out middle class.

3.  Return the money to your shareholders in the form of dividends.  But they like higher share prices better, and they would just use the money to finance the exploding federal deficit, anyway.

4.  Purchase a competitor or buy back shares to increase the value of your stock.  Now we’re getting somewhere.

5.  Just sit on the cash and listen to the applause from your shareholders.  Another viable option.

There are plenty of other problems with the tax cut, but this is the core issue.  It just won’t generate the kind of growth that Trump is predicting.

                   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:

1.  You can’t use them in a civil war, because they would kill too many of your  supporters.
2.  You can’t use them against non-state actors, because the collateral damage to  innocent parties would be too great.
3.  You can’t use them against a country with a second strike capability, due to the  obvious risk of retaliation.
4.  You can’t use them in an imperialist war, because there would be no point in  destroying the land you want to exploit.
5.  You don’t need to use them in a war against a country with a feeble conventional  force.

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.