Now Trump seems bound and determined to start his own war. This time with China. And not just a trade war -- he seems to be aiming for a shooting war.
All through the presidential campaign Trump threatened to impose tariffs on Chinese goods. He blamed the Chinese for stealing American jobs. Though, in fact, American companies like Walmart were responsible for forcing suppliers to move their production to Asia, and companies like Apple were only too happy to do so, and also hide their profits overseas to avoid taxes.
Such tariffs would be against WTO agreements, and would cause Americans to pay much higher prices for the foreseeable future, since so many products are produced in China. It would also invite retaliation from China, closing markets for American exports, such as agricultural goods, which would hurt American farmers and manufacturers -- because we do export a fair amount to China as it is.
Days after the election, Trump called the president of Taiwan, breaking with a decades-long one-China policy. This was a huge insult to the Chinese, who have dogmatically insisted that Taiwan isn't its own country, but a "renegade province." China reacted negatively, of course.
"The U.S. is going to make sure that we protect our interests there," Spicer said when asked if Trump agreed with comments by his secretary of state nominee, Rex Tillerson, on Jan. 11 that China should not be allowed access to islands it has built in the contested South China Sea.
"It's a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we're going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country," he said.
Peter Thiel, a huge Trump supporter, proposed "seasteads" as a way to try out his libertarian ideals: guys would just go out and build islands on the ocean to create free enterprise paradises. The only difference between Thiel's proposal and what China is doing is a matter of a few miles -- the Spratlys are 150 nautical miles from the Philippines, 50 miles short of the 200 required by international law.
I don't think that China should just be able to start creating new territories for itself in the back yard of the Philippines. But Philippines President Duterte just got done telling America to go to hell, saying that he's going to ally himself with the Chinese. He seems to be fine with what China's island building project. In other words, we don't have an ally or other interests to defend there any more. Other than the gas and petroleum deposits that just happen to be there, which is probably the only reason Rex Tillerson cares about it.
Trump also just killed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which would have cemented our relations with the countries most affected by China's expansionary policies. Although Trump characterized the TPP as benefiting China, in reality it would have united the US and Asian nations against Chinese economic hegemony.
So, Trump seems to be willing to go to war with China over a few sand bars on the other side of the world, to defend the territories of a president who soundly rejects America as an ally and trade partners that Trump just rejected.
Compare that with Trump's remarks about NATO, which he claims is obsolete. We have treaties, troops and actual economic interests in Europe, an alliance that has endured for more than 60 years. An alliance that proved strong enough to bring down the Berlin Wall and destroy communism.
An alliance that Trump now wants to abandon to pursue "good deals" with Russia.
Any time Donald Trump says the word "deal" you know that means more money in his pocket: he's willing to sell out our democratic allies to a Russian dictator for a few shekels.
China has the largest army in the world. It has a sophisticated space program. It has advanced military technology such as drones. It has greater industrial capacity than the United States and four times the population. It has nuclear weapons. It has killer satellites. War with China could mean hundreds of thousands or millions dead, the destruction of our entire communications and power infrastructure from EMP attacks, global economic chaos, not to mention the destruction of our GPS and weather forecasting capabilities after the Chinese blow our satellites out of the sky.
Going to war against China absent a direction provocation against US territories (another Gulf of Tonkin deception won't cut it) would be a catastrophically stupid move. It would be make Bush's Iraq blunder look like a bar fight.
And right before threatening war with China Trump is blowing off all our NATO and Asian allies. Smart move. Our new president is such a great negotiator.
Trump appears to be under the delusion that he can team up with Russia to defeat China. But Trump seems to be playing the US and China against each other, the same way he used Syria and ISIS to play the Europeans against each other.
I can just imagine Putin egging Trump on: "Da, Meester Trahmp, I vill khev your beck against Cheenese."
And then Volodya will just sit back and watch China and the US destroy each other while he gobbles up eastern Europe. After all, Russia is north of the fallout zones in China and the US. It wouldn't be any worse than Chernobyl. The Russians are a hardy people, used to radioactive fallout.
Someone asked me recently on Quora the following: What five jobs would best prepare a future President of the United States for the complexity of being the nation's chief executive? Here's my answer.
Teacher. Being a teacher means you are dedicated to critical thinking and supporting such reasoning in the real world. Further, teachers have to manage a large body of people from different backgrounds with different learning styles. Classrooms are excellent examples of the American public.
Neuroscience/Psychology Doctor. Future presidents need to understand how the human brain works in terms of politics. We are wired to allow too much emotion to drive our reasoning process. This scientific fact is covered extensively in Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican Brain. Understanding how to communicate to the general public with this research as a foundation is vital to the presidency.
Governor. Leading a state is great practice for being president. Having the experience in a smaller body of governing first gives a potential candidate many tools with which to work and ultimately aids them in their agenda.
Parent. Thought not a paying job, being a parent gives a person a unique perspective on lifespan development. Future presidents need to also understand that their decisions have an impact on the next generation.
Auto mechanic. This may seem like an odd one but consider what a mechanic has to do all day. They have to work with a wide variety of vehicles that have different ages and designs. Somehow, they have to make them work again. Isn’t that what a president does every day?
I was pleasantly surprised to see all of the marchers around the world on Saturday and Sunday getting out to protect the progress we have made over the last 8 years. I was mildly to moderately irritated that they didn't turn out to vote for Hillary Clinton but we have to deal with the hand that we have been dealt.
I have two action items for the marchers.
1. Getting out the vote in every single election year including the odd years. I want to see above 60% every year. We see that and we will see the end of the Right much faster than already scheduled.
2. Marches and events in rural counties in the Rust Belt started by local people. Bernie can help with this. The electoral college is a reality. Marches in big cities are great but we need that local strategy to win big.
My second action item has already happened with an event in Marcomb County Michigan attended by 5,000 people. Senators Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders were on hand to speak and rally in support of keeping the Affordable Care Act. And take a look at this...
Alaska? Wow!
I say continue to organize in these rural counties all across the US and get out the vote this year in the local elections. Lay the groundwork for 2018 by getting people registered to vote THIS year.
Donald Trump's presidency is not off to a good start. It's been one lie after another. So many lies that his mouthpiece, Kellyanne Conway, had to invent a new euphemism for Trump's falsehoods: "alternative facts."
First off, after a dismal, rainy inauguration day, he got into a fight with the press over the size of the crowd. Barack Obama's inauguration attracted two or three times as many spectators as Trump's, yet Trump and his press secretary insisted that it wasn't so, making up all kinds of stupid excuses.
Trump then lied about his rocky relationship with the CIA and other intelligence agencies, claiming that the media made up the "feud." It was Trump himself who on Twitter compared the CIA to Nazis after their report on Russian meddling in the US election on Trump's behalf.
Trump and press secretary Sean Spicer also lied about the number of riders on the Washington metro, compared to Obama's inauguration.
Then there's the lie that his inauguration had the biggest audience ever, in the whole world, in all of history. Trump's TV audience was only 31 million compared to Obama's 38 million and Reagan's 42 million. Sorry, Donny boy: your TV ratings were lower than the black guy and the Gipper's.
Then, to make it even more embarrassing, the next day women across the United States staged huge protests against him. Crowds in Washington for the protest were estimated to be two or three times than Trump's inauguration audience, spilling into the streets all around the mall. In all, tens of millions of people demonstrated against Trump's presidency the day after he assumed office.
But the most curious lie was this:
Mr. Trump said that though he had been “hit by a couple of drops” of rain as he began his address on Inauguration Day, the sky soon cleared. “And the truth is, it stopped immediately, and then became sunny,” he said. “And I walked off, and it poured after I left. It poured.”
The truth is that it began to rain lightly almost exactly as Mr. Trump began to speak and continued to do so throughout his remarks, which lasted about 18 minutes, and after he finished.
Trump is implying that God smiled upon him and made the sun shine and the rain stop while he was speaking, as if Trump were the messiah come to deliver a sermon to the masses. He's making myths up about himself on the spot.
People have been comparing Trump to Hitler, but Trump is more like North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un: a raging megalomaniac with delusions of godhood.
The real question is this: do Trump and his surrogates actually believe the endless stream of nonsense they spew? Or are they consciously lying in order to inflame more distrust between his confused followers and the media, hoping that can keep his voters bamboozled for four more years? Or are they simply sowing more chaos to distract from more important issues, such as Trump's crooked dealings with foreign governments, the crooked dealings of his cabinet (like the guy who ran a tax avoidance fund in a foreign country), and the fact that Trump hasn't paid any taxes in the last 20 or 30 years?
President Trump spent his first day in office behaving much in the same way he did during the campaign. As AP recently noted...
The day left no doubt that Trump will govern, at least for now, as he campaigned: fixating on seemingly minor issues, letting no perceived slight slip by unchallenged, and, sometimes, creating his own set of facts.
Those own set of facts included questioning how many people attended his inauguration.I noted yesterdaythat his inauguration was sparsely attended compared to Barack Obama's from 8 years ago. Yet Trump and his angry band of followers want us to disregard our lyin' eyes and believe that the turnout was "Yuge."
What was actually huge was the turnout around the world AGAINST Trump and for women's rights. I seem to recall a whole lot of chiding about how sparsely attended anti gun rallies have been over the years. So, if size does matter to the alt right, what must they think of these crowds compared to the one for their guy on Friday?
It looks like we will continue to enjoy Trump's penchant for not being able to do to bed because someone on the internet is wrong. Most adolescent...
Donald Trump's inauguration address was filled with bleak images: "American carnage," "deprived of knowledge," "rusted-out factories," "trapped in poverty," yada yada.
Now, the United States has its problems. But it's a hell of a lot better off than it was eight years ago, when Barack Obama took office. We are so much better off today than we were after the economic carnage wrought by Bush, the Republicans and the very same billionaires, CEOs, Wall Street bankers and hedge fund managers who Trump has put in his cabinet.
Though Republicans did everything they could to sabotage Obama, in the two short years Democrats had control of the presidency and Congress they made enough progress to put the country back on course again.
So now unemployment is low and wages are up. Inflation is still low, the federal budget deficit is down. Abortions are down, mostly due to readily available birth control. Violent crime is still falling, except for a few places like Chicago, where people with ready access to handguns use them for every petty dispute. An armed society, it turns out, is not a polite society.
So why is Trump trashing America, making it seem like a third-world hellhole?
Trump is setting expectations, creating the foundation for the Big Lie. By claiming that America is a vast sewage pit now, he's setting the stage for election campaigns in 2018 and 2020.
Even if Trump does absolutely nothing to improve the economy, and the unemployment rate, wages, abortion rates, crime rates, graduation rates, etc., stay exactly the same or even get worse,Trump will claim credit for turning the "dire situation" that Obama left us into an earthly paradise.
For example, Trump won't bring more jobs to America. Companies like Carrier are making plans to bring manufacturing back, but that's because they're hiring robots, not humans. It turns out that wages are rising in China and Mexico too, and automation is the only way to reduce costs.
And the crazy thing is, Trump supporters will believe him. They don't care at all about the reality of the economic situation, or abortion rates, or murder rates, or any of that.
In their minds the United States was a hellhole under Obama because he was a black liberal, and the only reason things will be better under Trump is because he's a white conservative.
Meanwhile, Republicans will make people sicker by eliminating health care and clean air regulations. They will make people poorer by overturning minimum wage and overtime regulations. They will cause more unplanned pregnancies, abortions, and miscarriages by defunding Planned Parenthood and making birth control harder to obtain.
Somehow conservatives think that prosperity will simply trickle down from Donald Trump. But the only thing trickling down from Donald Trump will be a golden shower.
Yesterday during his inaugural address, President Trump spoke of "American carnage." As someone who exists within reality, I was trying to figure out what he meant. Then I saw this quote in today's Strib.
"This is history. I heard everything from this guy that I wanted. And I got to see Obama fly away"
--Keith McKinzie, a car salesman from Two Harbors, MN, attending the inauguration.
For folks like McKinzie, the last eight years have been dark. They've watched as liberal policies have run rampant, improving just about every sector of American life. They've seen a president (a black Muslim) with approval ratings in the high 50s. They've seen Americans happy, warm, accepting and open to new ideas. They've seen violence at it's lowest point in decades. They've seen people united in the face of anger, hate and fear.
They've seen a deep embrace of progress and it scares the living hell out of them.
This is the carnage of which Trump spoke. Progress. Change. Things that they don't like. People being responsible. Trump supporters like McKinzie want to be able to do whatever they want and not have some PC bitch telling 'em what to do. They want a consequence free environment in which they can steamroll over anyway who gets in their way. How perfect, then, is President Trump.
The media has been obsessing over how Democrats and smug elites need to pay more attention to rural, white voters and their needs. Essentially, what they are saying is that we have to accept their paranoid, fever dreams that America is falling apart (it's not, btw) and "the other" is all to blame. It's like they all believe in some sort of bizarre stereotype from the 1970s of inner cities.
I completely reject this vision of our country and refuse to placate hate filled nonsense. It bears no resemblance to reality. And it's going to be very interesting to see how they govern without recognizing what is actually happening.
The term "banana republic" refers to Caribbean and Latin American dictatorships that were dominated by American business interests. With the blessing of the US government, companies would essentially install puppet governments servile to them.
Now the United States itself has suffered the same fate with the election of Donald Trump. But since we don't export bananas, we'll need a new term. I suggest "borscht republic," in honor of Trump's patron and benefactor, Russian president Vladimir Putin.
The FBI, NSA and the CIA say that Russians created thousands of fake news stories that slammed Hillary Clinton, as well as hacking the Democrats emails, in order to get Trump elected.
Donald Trump and his surrogates deny it. The information the intelligence agencies has is covert, so they don't want to release it for fear of exposing sources, blah blah blah. So far, it's a "they said-he said" argument.
But here's some evidence that the Russians tried to get Trump elected, in full view for all the world to see (from the New York Times):
In Danilovgrad, a town in Montenegro, Serbian supporters made their views known on a billboard in November.
This billboard in Montenegro, Serbia, looks like a Donald Trump campaign sign, except that Vladimir Putin is his vice president instead of Mike Pence. Are they running for co-dictators of the world?
Now, you say, this doesn't mean anything. This sign was put up by some dumb Serbs.
Except it wasn't. The sign is in Russian and English. You can see for yourself if you run "Let's make the world great again together!" through Google Translate:
Russian: Давайте сделаем мир здорово снова вместе! Serbian: Хајде да се свет велики поново заједно!
Google Translate isn't perfect, which you can see by its use of the word здорово (healthy) instead of великим (great). And it got the ending of здорово wrong -- it should end in -ым, not о. The Google Russian translation also uses the exact English word order, while the sign uses a more natural Russian word order -- though it isn't wrong, because word order in Russian is pretty flexible.
I can't comment on the quality of the Serbian translation -- I can tell it's Serbian, and understand the last four words because they're Russian cognates.
But from this you can tell that Serbian and Russian, while they have many words in common (including велики, which it got right in Serbian), are significantly different: Russian doesn't even use the letter j.
The question is, why would Serbians put a Russian sign up in their own country? If this was their heartfelt endorsement of Trump and Putin, why wouldn't the sign be in Serbian?
The only plausible answer is that the sign was produced by the Russians. If Trump had put it up, it would have been in Serbian, because -- one supposes -- he wouldn't want to insult the locals by getting their language wrong. The Russians don't care about such niceties, because they plan on taking eastern Europe back again.
Since the Russians put campaign signs up all over Europe for Trump, they clearly wanted Trump to be president. Wouldn't they engage in a little old-style KGB dezinformat hacking to make that happen, as insurance?
The CIA, the FBI and the NSA got it right on the Russian hacking. Trump can't admit it because it makes him look like Putin's puppet -- or a Russian collaborator.
In the immediate aftermath of Donald Trump's victory last November, one of the first things he said was, "We have to do a good job." As he takes the oath of office today, I'm wondering if he will admit when he's not. I think that's the biggest concern on the mind of most Americans today. How long will his ego hold out in the face of reality? His words and actions up until now, as well as the words and actions of his supporters, say they are going to continue to ignore facts.
But he does have to do a good job, right? More than anything, he wants to be loved by everyone. He seems to have a deep need for affirmation. Being our first right wing blog commenter commander in chief, his insecurity runs as high as his bullying. He can't stand it when someone on the internet is wrong. He can't let things go. Perhaps he can turn that into doing a good job for the country. I'll be the first to admit when he does do a good job and would be happy to be wrong in my predictions for disaster.
Many of my liberal friends are feeling pretty hopeless right now. I share some of their feelings but the one thing I have that they don't right now is some relief. President Trump and his supporters have to be responsible now. They are in charge. Hillary Clinton lost. The Democrats, though gaining seats in both the House and the Senate, are not in charge of Congress. The onus is now on the GOP and their new leader to deliver. No longer can they blame liberals, progressives, Democrats, gun grabbers, the media, Barack Obama and all the other folks they say are destroying the US. It's on them. Are they up to the challenge? Can they govern without whining and blaming others?
Will the fucking own it?
Something tells me the answer is going to be a great salve for current liberal woes:)
NASA, NOAA and the British Met Office report that 2016 was the hottest year on record:
Marking another milestone for a changing planet, scientists reported on Wednesday that the Earth reached its highest temperature on record in 2016, trouncing a record set only a year earlier, which beat one set in 2014. It is the first time in the modern era of global warming data that temperatures have blown past the previous record three years in a row.
The findings come two days before the inauguration of an American president who has called global warming a Chinese plot and vowed to roll back his predecessor’s efforts to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases.
What's particularly worrying is that the poles are heating up much faster than the rest of the world:
The heat extremes were especially pervasive in the Arctic, with temperatures in the fall running 20 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit above normal across large stretches of the Arctic Ocean. Sea ice in that region has been in precipitous decline for years, and Arctic communities are already wrestling with enormous problems, such as rapid coastal erosion, caused by the changing climate.
Because of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, the planet is on track to warm by 1 to 3 degrees Celsius, or 1.8 to 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit. You don't think that sounds bad? How long would you live if you were running a five-degree fever?
A five-degree temperature increase will endanger our food and water supplies, flood coastal and river cities, ravage the countryside with ever more powerful tornadoes, and kill our forests with insect infestation and drought.
Donald Trump famously tweeted that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by China. Yes, the same China that is constantly choking under thick clouds of smog, forcing people to wear face masks whenever they go outside. The same China where hundreds of thousands of people die each year from burning coal.
Consider these factors:
For years oil companies have been trying without success to tap oil reserves in the Arctic. They've abandoned this project because the weather is just too cold and unpredictable.
Russia is the largest country in the world, but most of its land is in Siberia, It's basically unusable because it's just too damn cold. Russia has huge oil and gas reserves in Siberia, but has similar difficulties extracting them.
Shipping between the east coast of America and Asia requires going south through the Panama Canal. The bigger ships can't even fit through the canal, and have to go all the way around Tierra del Fuego, almost to Antarctica. That's almost 10,000 miles out of the way! If the North Pole was free of ice, the Northwest Passage would be open. Shipping would be much faster and cheaper.
If you're into conspiracy theories, isn't it much more likely that the oil companies and Russia are conspiring to make global warming worse, so that Alaska and Siberia can be easily developed, and open the Northwest Passage so they can ship oil quickly and cheaply to China, Korea and Japan?
Trump's nominee for secretary of state is the former CEO of Exxon Mobile, and a pal of Vladimir Putin. Given the trillions of dollars these men stand to gain from a warming planet, can you really believe anything they say about global warming?
When Donald Trump was caught on camera talking about grabbing pussy, many thought it would end his campaign. They thought even solid Republicans would back away.
But I was doubtful. So many Republican men are filled with misogyny, and hearing Trump talk about women like they were merely objects of sexual gratification endeared Trump to them. These men are jealous that women are finally starting some headway in society (think Rush Limbaugh and his endless "feminazi" rants). They are afraid of women.
Dennis Halaszynski, 81, is a retired police captain in McKeesport, Pa., and a registered Democrat who voted for Mr. Trump. “It’s easier being a woman today than it is a man,” he said in an interview. “The white man is a low person on the totem pole. Everybody else is above the white man.”
Women “should be highly respected,” he said, but they are no longer unequal: “Everything in general is in favor of a woman. No matter what happens in life, it seems like the man’s always at fault.”
White men are the low person on the totem pole? What percentage of CEOs are women or minorities? Members of congress? Governors of states? President?
Everything this man says is nonsense: women get paid less than men for doing the same work. Women are not represented equally in management positions, government leadership, and generally in any kind of high-paying profession.
Women are constantly talked down to, belittled, objectified, solicited for sex, grabbed, sexually assaulted and raped. The vast majority of men will never suffer these indignities. When a woman walks to her car in a darkened parking lot it's like Russian roulette, but men never think twice about it.
Most women have to work the same number of hours as men, yet they have to do most of the cooking, cleaning and child care. When there's a divorce, women are stuck with the kids, making them the single head of the household. Republican men think this is because the courts treat men unfairly, but -- putting aside political correctness, which Republicans despise -- most men are simply not competent to raise children alone: they lack the patience, devotion, sense of responsibility and compassion to be primary caregivers.
This has been the case for at least the last 100 years, mostly because women had to enter the work force during the world wars and the Depression. There was a slight lull during the 1950s and 1960s, but as expectations for material things increased starting in the 1970s, a single bread winner could not pay for all the creature comforts that Americans think they need. Thus, most women in America need to work. And with marriage rates down overall, this is only accelerating the need for equal pay.
Over the last 50 years, the position of women has in fact improved: they're getting paid more than they used to (but still less than men). They're actually getting more education than men now. Women and girls are generally more temperamentally suited to class room situations, and that puts men and boys at a disadvantage, because well-paying jobs in the future will all require college degrees.
And that's the crux of the problem: Republican men see that women are making progress, and starting to catch up -- though women are still nowhere close to men in most things -- and it scares Republican men to death. They see everything in life as a zero-sum game: if the lot of women improves, men will lose.
Frankly, Republican men are deathly afraid that when women have equal pay and opportunities, women will no longer need to put up with the abysmal treatment that Republican men heap on them.
They will not be able to find girlfriends and wives who will put up with the sort of treatment that my father has dished out to my mother for the last sixty years, treating her like a servant.
And that really scares them. Because they can't even take care of themselves . . . .
In looking at the year 2017 and what lies ahead, it's painfully obvious that we need: leaders and policies that objectively function in reality. This also calls for a population of voters that allow more cold rational thought to drive reasoning. Easier said than done given the reality of neuroscience. Nonetheless, I think it's important to give the effort anyway.
Choosing solutions requires examining the facts and picking the best path, even if that solution isn't perfect. Emotions shouldn't enter into to it. Most of the time, solutions offer choices of crappy, bad, terrible, or awful. Learning to live with this fact is, well, part of being an adult. It's also why I think people should give the president, of either party, a break. They have to choose what benefits the most people which means a substantial part of the population is going to be pissed off.
The key here is to set party ideology and tribal chest thumping aside. What actually works and what doesn't? As we kick off the new year with a new president, I thought I would compile a brief list of the challenges we face as a nation and a brief description of how to tackle them. This is by no means a complete list and I might add to it later on but I wanted to at least get a foundation started. As the year unfolds and policies are made with the new president and Congress, we can see if they are dealing with reality or not.
The Economy
Despite the promises of Donald Trump, jobs are not coming back to the manufacturing sector. The main reason for this is robotics. Technology has made manufacturing more efficient with less need for workers. Trump supporters in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin need to understand that if they want to be employed again, they have to back to school. They need to retrain in advance uses of manufacturing technology or possibly consider a different field that speaks to 21st century skills. A bachelor's degree is bare minimum essential. A master's degree is preferred.
Globalization is here to say despite Trump's promises of global nationalism (what the heck is that anyway?). Tariffs never work and the corporate world will resist Trump on this every step of the way. Free trade is a good thing, despite the protestations of both Trump supporters and progressives who claim to want inequality eradicated but apparently only want that to apply to United States workers. Don't they care about laborers around the world? The data shows that standard of living around the world has risen massively in the age of globalization. Remember Gapminder?
The freer the trade, the more this continues.
This is also why liberals should take care to rip corporations at every turn. Mitt Romney was right when he said that corporations are people. They are made up of people who have families and contribute to the aggregate demand in the economy which means they improve the lives of our nation and, indeed, our planet.
The constant rag from liberals regarding corporations is almost as tiresome as the rag from conservatives about government. They both come from a place of complete ignorance. Both corporations and government are essential to our economic health. Governments can sometimes improve market efficiency. This is a fact. Further, government projects, like the Grand Coulee Dam or the more recent investments in renewable energy has improved the lives of millions of Americans.
What works in reality with the economy and what does not...it's just that simple. Let's deal with the facts.
Health Care
We essentially have three choices for health care in this nation.
1. Go to a completely free market without insurance.
2. Go to Medicare for all with single payer.
3. Retain an insurance based system.
Let's take a look at the challenges of each one.
Free market-This would be great if demand in most health care markets was elastic like Lasik, for example. It isn't which means that suppliers can charge whatever they want and most people will pay
(remember the Epi-pen thing?) A few might leave but most will go into debt paying for health care otherwise they will be in pain and/or die. Prices won't go down. Demand is too great and too inelastic in most health care markets. This is just fundamental economics. Prices in most health care markets will remain high because people need the services and care.
Medicare for all-Taxes go up significantly. The economy takes a hit from all those unemployed medical insurance folks out of a job. How much of a hit would depend on where we are at in the business cycle so the impact would be unknown.
Retain insurance based system-That's what the ACA essentially is. It's a free market solution for insurance with government regulation. It was never meant to be perfect but to be changed and altered over the years. If our new president wants everyone to be covered and yet still not be compelled to have insurance if folks don't want it, someone is going to have to pay for this.
Rates can only be lowered if everyone has insurance. The pools of risk won't be large enough for insurance companies to stay afloat let alone pay out. This is the problem with the ACA right now. The penalties for not being insured are not significant enough. That'w why rates are going up. That and the bulge of baby boomers requiring more care. The distortion of the market due to people not actually paying what their care costs (insurance) makes things more expensive.
The free market choice isn't an option in reality so we need to look at either shifting to Medicare for all or fixing the issues with the ACA. The GOP is feeling the heat as they try to satisfy their childish urge to vanquish "Obamacare" once and for all. They have no plan to replace the ACA, other than some mentions of block grants and buying insurance across state lines. The latter certainly won't work because you'll get a state that offers just catastrophic coverage and then everyone will flock to that state, leaving their home state with a small risk pool and thus, insoluble.
Either choice #2 or choice #3 will work and function in reality.
Education
With 13,000 school districts and over 100,000 schools in the country, having a one size fits all policy is ludicrous. The federal government and even state level governing bodies should stay out of the way of local districts. Each district knows intimately well exactly the challenges they face. They should be the ones to decide policy and dictate any sort of regulations. The US Department of Education should exist only to dole out money and analyze data. The same goes for state level education departments.
Luckily, such a model for local control exists. It's called "Strive Together" and the data shows that if districts can pool resources and create a foundation for cradle to career support of each student, the achievement gap narrows and graduation rates rise.
In terms of collage, we have to figure out a way, as a nation to make college more affordable if not all together free. Everyone is going to have to pitch in whether it's in the form of higher taxes to make community college tuition free or universities cutting salaries and laying off their latest multi million dollar building project.
If we want to stay competitive in the world, we have to have a better educated people. It's just that simple.
Energy
Climate change is real and it's caused by CO2 emissions. The free market has essentially recognized this and we are now seeing cheaper renewable energy. Conservatives are going to have to give up on this one because that's where the money is going to be. Liberals are going to have to accept that the old energy companies that provided us with oil and coal will be the only ones who can successfully finance a broad, renewable energy push. Look for Exxon Wind or Koch Solar soon. It's honestly the best way to go if we want to address the threat of climate change. Liberals are also going to have to give up their hysteria over nuclear energy. It's clean and it will one day propel us to the stars.
Side note: here's a handy list of every single climate change denier's argument thoroughly blown apart by science.
Guns
If you want to own a gun in this country, you have to demonstrate that you have complied with regular training and mental health checks. This training should be just as intensive as those who dedicate their lives to public safety (armed forces, police, etc). In short, you have to be part of a trained militia.
Gun bans won't work because such a law would merely create a criminal enterprise. Other laws like ammo limits or smart guns are cumbersome and silly. Yet ongoing training and mental health checks would allow gun rights folks to play with their guns more often and actually support public safety.
If such training and mental health checks were required, they would not eliminate gun violence. But they would drastically reduce the amount of suicides, gang violence, spree shootings, and accidents every year. Universal background checks should also be law.
Here are the numbersfrom the past few years. We can no longer afford to continue like this. People are dying every day. Let's face reality. Too many irresponsible people with far too many guns.
Race
When it comes this issue, identifying the challenge is simple. We are still feeling the socio-economic fallout from slavery. Anyone out there want to voluntarily be treated like a black person in this country? Anyone? Go ahead and stand up.
The first step in addressing the problem of race is admit that we even have a problem. We still have a large segment of the population that is racist or, at best, prejudiced. We also have a fairly significant portion of the population that throws tantrums and has hissy fits over attention to cultural diversity and/or calling out racism when it's apparent. These folks (mostly conservatives and right wing bloggers and commenters) are not necessarily racist. They are more adolescent in the sense that they don't want to take responsibility for the problem of racism nor do they want to lose their privilege.
Rather than talk about civil rights or Black Lives Matter with folks like this, try talking to them about Constitutional rights being violated or people's freedom and liberty being under siege by the government (e.g. our criminal justice system). This is much more effective way of getting people to admit that there is a problem.
After we all admit there is a problem with race, the next step is to engage at the community level. The most successful diverse communities in terms of zero issues with law enforcement are in areas where the police engage with community leaders and their people.
This isn't going to go away over night. Having a black president for 8 years doesn't really mean shit compared to 400 years of institutional sedimentation. We have to, at least, be pointed in the right direction, though, and we are not there yet.
Abortion
Abortion rates have fallen to their lowest rates since Roe V Wade passed. That's nice and all but there are still young women getting abortions. Both sides in this argument really piss me off. The pro choice crowd utterly fail to recognize that we have a heartbeat in a fetus after just a few weeks. Brain development occurs shortly thereafter so we are killing living beings. No wonder people are upset. Yet the pro life crowd utterly fails to recognize that this living being is attached to another living being who has rights. If abortion were outlawed, would her womb then become the ward of the state? Why conservatives support this, given their stated beliefs on government out of people's lives, makes no sense to me. In fact, when it comes to the abortion issue, both sides are antithetical to their overall ideologies. Suddenly liberals want the government out of people's lives. WTF?
The solution to abortion lies with the data. Most women who get abortions are single, white women in their 20s. Why? Are they stupid? Do they not know about birth control? Think about this from an economic standpoint. How do we decrease the demand for abortion? If we cut off the supply, then we just create a criminal enterprise when there is such high demand. We need to focus on this larger group of abortion demanders and find out what tools we can put in place to reduce their need for abortions. We mitigate it here first and we can really make a serious dent in abortion demand.
If we want to save the lives of the unborn, this is the best route. Roe V Wade will not be overturned, Abortions are going to continue to happen. Let's get rid of the demand and then suppliers will go away because they won't make any money from it. Drugs
The answer here is simple. We need to legalize all drugs and regulate them through the health care industry. Violence will go down and tax dollars will go up. We also have to be careful about how these drugs are dispensed. Life expectancy for white people has declined over the past few years because of drugs and alcohol. There is a deep malaise in white culture that needs to be addressed.
The best way to deal with this is to destigmatize mental health. People should go to their therapists at least as often as they go to the dentists and treat it with the same level of nonchalance. The brain is the most complex organ in your body. Pretending that stuff is "all in your mind" is pure nonsense. Your brain doesn't float next to your body as some sort of ghostly object. It's a part of you that needs to be treated with great care. Doing so will result in less problems with drugs in our country.
Final Thoughts
I'm only interested in solutions that speak to functionally working in reality. I have zero interest in folks who allow emotion to cloud their judgement. So, let's think about functionalism. What actually works in our society in terms of solutions and what does not? In looking at the challenges we face above, I no longer think of myself as fully embracing liberalism or conservatism. I embrace functionalism and will do so every single day in the future. You should too.
When I was in college in the late 1970s I studied Russian, along with, coincidentally, my future sister- and brother-in-law, who went to work at the CIA, where they monitored Russian nuclear weapons.
Back then, during the cold war, the Russians projected an image of progressivism. They were the vanguard of social justice. They were for the workers, for women, for minorities.
The Russians claimed to be against sexism -- women could do anything men could. In 1963 they launched Valentina Tereshkova into space, where she logged three days in orbit -- more time than all Americans who had flown up till that point.
The Russians were against racism -- after all, they had a university named after an African, Patrice Lamumba!
The Russian department had a subscription to Pravda, the official news organ of the Communist Party. I remember one cartoon from the front page: a man in a Ku Klux Klan robe was decorated like a Christmas tree, carrying a noose, with the caption "ёлка только для чёрных," (Christmas tree only for blacks).
The United States was portrayed as corrupt, backward, racist, sexist and hypocritical.
It was, of course, all just KGB propaganda to sucker liberals in the West. Workers in communist Russia had no rights -- they did what they were told or they were sent to the gulag. Women didn't have equal rights -- women had no political power, they had to work the same hours as men, but then they had to come home, take care of the kids and do all the housework while their husbands drank vodka. People of other ethnicities had no political power: ethnic Russians ran every Soviet republic and non-Russian citizens endured racist harassment by "real" Russians. Russia helped African and Middle Eastern countries only as tools to attack Western interests.
The communist government is long gone, but the Russians are playing the same tricks today. This time they are suckering American conservatives instead of liberals.
The Russians portray themselves as the defenders of Christianity against Islam, while employing Muslim Chechen hitmen against reporters (Anna Politkovskaya) and opposition politicians (Boris Nemtsov). The Russian government actively harasses gays and lesbians, pretending that they are defending children and traditional values. Women have been put back in their place, and when they speak out, as Pussy Riot did, they are imprisoned.
America is portrayed as corrupt, sickeningly liberal, irreligious, and dominated by homosexuals and feminists.
Now, instead of being the cartoon villain on the front page of Pravda, the Ku Klux Klan is celebrating Trump's electoral victory along with Russia.
Russia's new conservative-friendly propaganda campaign is working. Since the election and the hacking revelations 38% of Democrats view Russia as an adversary and 42% as a serious problem, while only 20% of Republicans view Russia as an adversary and 45% as a serious problem. A third of Republicans don't see Russia as a problem at all.
Michael Flynn, Trump's national security advisor, called the Russian ambassador the day sanctions were announced against Russia for the hacking. Since Flynn is still a private citizen, such interference in foreign policy is a violation of the Logan Act. Flynn has been to Russia several times, has been paid by the Russian propaganda network, and has dined with Putin.
Contacts between the Trump campaign surrogate Carter Page and Russia occurred before the election and have continued ever since. What the hell was that guy doing there?
Donald Trump himself has never said a bad word about Vladimir Putin, but constantly trashes American allies. Just yesterday Trump appeared to call for the dissolution of NATO, calling it obsolete and again demanding more money from other NATO members. In the same interview Trump called German Chancellor Angela Merkel's refugee policies catastrophic.
But the reason Germany has a refugee problem is that Russia has been propping up Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad in the Syrian civil war. Russia has been bombing Aleppo and other Syrian cities where legitimate opposition to Assad was concentrated, forcing refugees out of Syria, causing the crisis in Europe.
Meanwhile, Putin has mostly ignored ISIS in Syria, allowing them to keep their supply lines open and prolong the agony in Iraq.
Lest you think this is all President Obama's fault, in 2013 Obama asked Congress for authorization to launch attacks against Assad for using poison gas on his own people. Congress declined to do so. Republicans have blamed Obama for not doing more against Assad, but when they had their chance to do something to stem the tide of refugees out of Syria it was the Republicans who blinked.
Now, Serbia -- a Russian client state -- is moving to annex Kosovo, using Russia's annexation of Crimea as a pretext. You may recall that the United States and NATO bombed Serbia in 1999 for their invasion of Kosovo. This was just after the horrible civil war in Bosnia, where Orthodox Bosnian Serbs backed by Russia murdered thousands of Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosnians. Several Bosnian Serbs were tried for war crimes, including Slobodan Milošević, who died in prison while still on trial.
Donald Trump is still not president, yet he seems to have already destroyed NATO and, by endorsing Russia's invasion of Crimea, planted the seeds for another bloody war in the Balkans. Once inaugurated he is apparently ready to hand over the rest of Ukraine and the Baltic states to Putin so Russia can be restored to its Soviet glory days.
Whether Trump is Putin's chump or actively colluding with the Russian dictator is irrelevant. Trump is sowing chaos and uncertainty. His actions will quickly envelop Europe in war and cause even greater refugee crises.
But chaos and uncertainty are Trump's signature style.
(1963, Strength to Love by Martin Luther King Jr., Sermon: Three Dimensions of a Complete Life, Start Page 67, Quote Page 72, Published by Harper & Row, New York. (Verified on paper))
As I listened to the testimony of Donald Trump's nominees for his cabinet this week, it struck me how opposite they are in terms of policy from the man that is hiring them. Trump tweeted that he likes people that disagree with him and challenge his ideas. Well, Mr. Future President, that's going to be me as well.
There are many liberals out there who are hiding their heads in the sand and pretending this isn't going to be real. Others have started support groups and the like on social media. Hey, whatever folks need. Me? I don't need any of that because, while I think the next four years are going to be a disaster, we still have to figure out a way to work together and here's the main reason why.
Russia has carried out the best propaganda campaign and psi-op in the history of the world. They have installed a man who they have dirt on in the White House. Donald Trump is going to start off, anyway, as their pawn. The Russians have also successfully used conservatives, especially right wing bloggers and commenters, as conduits in their propaganda campaign. They knew full well that these folks hated liberals more than anything and would easily allow their irrational feelings consume them to the point of voting for a man who is immensely unqualified to be president on a myriad of levels.
Yet, the Russians also knew that our country would be pissed about this. They knew that if they were successful, we'd be split and angry at each other. Considering they are already going to erode our power in the world with what they have done so far, why help them anymore?
I'm not saying we have to support everything that Trump does. Nor am I saying we can't be critical. What I am saying is that we can't give up and hide. We have to hold him and the GOP in Congress accountable. There are still many good people on both sides of the aisle that are going to fight hard for our country's place in the world. Let's help them do it!
The Russians are counting on us being fractured. Let's dispel that shit right now. One of the best things about this county is that we evolve out of our disagreements and thrive on our antagonism towards one another. Let's use that positively by, say, getting more people to the ballot box in 2017 as well as 2018. Pissed of at Trump? Go vote. And then get your representatives on a local, state and federal level to offer something better.
All indications are that Trump's presidency may not even last the whole four years. The investigations into Russian hacking and connections to the Trump campaign will continue. If he is booted out, Mike Pence would at least be a more qualified and experienced leader. Pence definitely has a better temperament and I say this disagreeing with him ideologically in just about every way. Until that time, however, we have to figure out a way to be more united. We have to figure out ways to help out our future president.
The Russians may have won this round but we can't let them win the next.
Ah, the free market. All those "liberal" economic believers swear by it...until it bites themon the ass.
The overall shift to clean energy can be more expensive in wealthier nations, where electricity demand is flat or falling and new solar must compete with existing billion-dollar coal and gas plants. But in countries that are adding new electricity capacity as quickly as possible, “renewable energy will beat any other technology in most of the world without subsidies,” said Liebreich.
At this point it doesn't really matter if you "believe" in climate change or not. The free market has accepted the settled science.
