The gig is up: America’s booming economy is built on hollow promises
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Showing posts with label Promises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Promises. Show all posts
7/26/18
4/24/17
USA: Trump Administration: Trump's 100-days promises: A long way to go on most of them - by J. Colvin and C. Woodward
Sure enough, the big trans-Pacific trade deal is toast, climate
change action is on the ropes and various regulations from the Obama
era have been scrapped. It's also a safe bet President Donald Trump
hasn't raced a bicycle since Jan. 20, keeping that vow.
Add a Supreme Court justice — no small feat — and call these promises kept.
But where's that wall? Or the promised trade punishment against China — will the Chinese get off scot-free from "the greatest theft in the history of the world"? What about that "easy" replacement for Obamacare? How about the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan and huge tax cut that were supposed to be in motion by now?
Trump's road to the White House, paved in big, sometimes impossible pledges, has detoured onto a byway of promises deferred or left behind, an AP analysis found.
Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day "contract" with voters — "This is my pledge to you" — he's accomplished 10, mostly through executive orders that don't require legislation, such as withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
He's abandoned several and failed to deliver quickly on others, stymied at times by a divided Republican Party and resistant federal judges. Of 10 promises that require Congress to act, none has been achieved and most have not been introduced.
"I've done more than any other president in the first 100 days," the president bragged in a recent interview with AP, even as he criticized the marker as an "artificial barrier."
In truth, his 100-day plan remains mostly a to-do list that will spill over well beyond Saturday, his 100th day.
It was not what you call a success story for President Trump these 100 first days.
Read more: Trump's 100-days promises: A long way to go on most of them
Add a Supreme Court justice — no small feat — and call these promises kept.
But where's that wall? Or the promised trade punishment against China — will the Chinese get off scot-free from "the greatest theft in the history of the world"? What about that "easy" replacement for Obamacare? How about the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan and huge tax cut that were supposed to be in motion by now?
Trump's road to the White House, paved in big, sometimes impossible pledges, has detoured onto a byway of promises deferred or left behind, an AP analysis found.
Of 38 specific promises Trump made in his 100-day "contract" with voters — "This is my pledge to you" — he's accomplished 10, mostly through executive orders that don't require legislation, such as withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal.
He's abandoned several and failed to deliver quickly on others, stymied at times by a divided Republican Party and resistant federal judges. Of 10 promises that require Congress to act, none has been achieved and most have not been introduced.
"I've done more than any other president in the first 100 days," the president bragged in a recent interview with AP, even as he criticized the marker as an "artificial barrier."
In truth, his 100-day plan remains mostly a to-do list that will spill over well beyond Saturday, his 100th day.
It was not what you call a success story for President Trump these 100 first days.
Read more: Trump's 100-days promises: A long way to go on most of them
12/4/16
USA - Trump and His Betraying Makeover - by Ralph Nader
Attention workers who voted for Trump, either eagerly or as a vote against the hawkish, Wall Street favorite, Hillary Clinton: Donald Trump, less than a month after the election, has already begun to betray you.
You can often see where a president-elect is going by his nominations to high positions in his forthcoming administration. Across over a dozen crucial posts, Mr. Trump has chosen war hawks, Wall Streeters (with a former Goldman Sachs partner, Steven Mnuchin, as his pick for Treasury Secretary) and clenched teeth corporatists determined to jettison life-saving, injury and disease preventing regulations and leave bigger holes in your consumer pocketbooks.
In addition to lacking a mandate from the people (he lost the popular vote), the president-elect continues to believe that mere showboating will distract from his breathtaking flip-flops in his campaign rhetoric. Remember his last big TV ad where he blasted “a global power structure” responsible “for robbing the working class” with images of Goldman Sachs flashing across the screen?
Fast forward several weeks and he has selected cabinet secretaries who want to dismantle the public school system with your taxes going to private schools, reduce regulation of banks, cut consumer protections and weaken labor laws and job safety standards. Other appointees say they want to privatize Medicare, which has led health insurance company stocks to soar, and some want to transfer Medicaid to even more hostile state manipulations.
Regarding national security, his White House advisors are advocates of imperial intervention and bombing Iran. Trump wants to renege on the Iran nuclear agreements the U.S. made with a dozen leading nations and risk escalation of hostilities. Granted, Trump did talk about the Iran deal, with little knowledge of its careful safeguards and ongoing implementation. He also told voters that he didn’t believe in the U.S. policing the world with costly military might.
Perhaps the best sign of where Trump is heading comes from the major surge in the stock markets, the booming bank stocks anticipating looser regulations so they can speculate more readily with “other peoples’ money” and industries looking forward to more easily emitting pollutants into your air, water, and soil.
As an accomplished sleight-of-hand specialist – a failed gambling czar who always jumped ship with his gold and left his workers, creditors and shareholders stranded – Trump recently traveled to Indiana to brag about the decision by Carrier to keep intact 800 of the 2000 jobs it plans to ship to Mexico. You’ll recall Trump made Carrier, a subsidiary of giant United Technology (UT), his poster-child for showing how the U.S. is losing jobs under NAFTA.
Well Trump’s boast, for starters, will cost Indiana taxpayers $7 million for Carrier to agree, with presumably, additional goodies for United Technologies coming later. Already, UT and Carrier have long been loaded up with tax and other “incentives,” subsidies and all the complex corporate welfare that defense companies receive from the Pentagon.
Being a long-time recipient himself of crony capitalism, Trump hopes that his working class supporters will never catch on to this kind of back room “deal-making” when he is in the White House. Big corporations are drooling at the prospect of further tax cuts, weaker law and order (e.g. deregulation) and the many sub-visible freebies of the corporate welfare state.
Guess who gets left holding the bag? Why, you, of course, the workers and small taxpayers. Stay tuned, for more corporatists, Wall Streeters and militarists are on their way to Trump’s Washington.
A French writer once said, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Then there is Trump’s highly bruiseable and dangerous ego, as he gets up at 3am to tweet his mad impulses and false assertions.
Trump doesn’t like to be accused of disloyalty by workers who supported him. Therein lies some leverage. Laborers, who were crucial to the Boaster’s Electoral College victory, will have many opportunities to laser-focus on Trump’s betrayals in very personal ways. They should take them.
Read more: Trump and His Betraying Makeover
You can often see where a president-elect is going by his nominations to high positions in his forthcoming administration. Across over a dozen crucial posts, Mr. Trump has chosen war hawks, Wall Streeters (with a former Goldman Sachs partner, Steven Mnuchin, as his pick for Treasury Secretary) and clenched teeth corporatists determined to jettison life-saving, injury and disease preventing regulations and leave bigger holes in your consumer pocketbooks.
In addition to lacking a mandate from the people (he lost the popular vote), the president-elect continues to believe that mere showboating will distract from his breathtaking flip-flops in his campaign rhetoric. Remember his last big TV ad where he blasted “a global power structure” responsible “for robbing the working class” with images of Goldman Sachs flashing across the screen?
Fast forward several weeks and he has selected cabinet secretaries who want to dismantle the public school system with your taxes going to private schools, reduce regulation of banks, cut consumer protections and weaken labor laws and job safety standards. Other appointees say they want to privatize Medicare, which has led health insurance company stocks to soar, and some want to transfer Medicaid to even more hostile state manipulations.
Regarding national security, his White House advisors are advocates of imperial intervention and bombing Iran. Trump wants to renege on the Iran nuclear agreements the U.S. made with a dozen leading nations and risk escalation of hostilities. Granted, Trump did talk about the Iran deal, with little knowledge of its careful safeguards and ongoing implementation. He also told voters that he didn’t believe in the U.S. policing the world with costly military might.
Perhaps the best sign of where Trump is heading comes from the major surge in the stock markets, the booming bank stocks anticipating looser regulations so they can speculate more readily with “other peoples’ money” and industries looking forward to more easily emitting pollutants into your air, water, and soil.
As an accomplished sleight-of-hand specialist – a failed gambling czar who always jumped ship with his gold and left his workers, creditors and shareholders stranded – Trump recently traveled to Indiana to brag about the decision by Carrier to keep intact 800 of the 2000 jobs it plans to ship to Mexico. You’ll recall Trump made Carrier, a subsidiary of giant United Technology (UT), his poster-child for showing how the U.S. is losing jobs under NAFTA.
Well Trump’s boast, for starters, will cost Indiana taxpayers $7 million for Carrier to agree, with presumably, additional goodies for United Technologies coming later. Already, UT and Carrier have long been loaded up with tax and other “incentives,” subsidies and all the complex corporate welfare that defense companies receive from the Pentagon.
Being a long-time recipient himself of crony capitalism, Trump hopes that his working class supporters will never catch on to this kind of back room “deal-making” when he is in the White House. Big corporations are drooling at the prospect of further tax cuts, weaker law and order (e.g. deregulation) and the many sub-visible freebies of the corporate welfare state.
Guess who gets left holding the bag? Why, you, of course, the workers and small taxpayers. Stay tuned, for more corporatists, Wall Streeters and militarists are on their way to Trump’s Washington.
A French writer once said, “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” Then there is Trump’s highly bruiseable and dangerous ego, as he gets up at 3am to tweet his mad impulses and false assertions.
Trump doesn’t like to be accused of disloyalty by workers who supported him. Therein lies some leverage. Laborers, who were crucial to the Boaster’s Electoral College victory, will have many opportunities to laser-focus on Trump’s betrayals in very personal ways. They should take them.
Read more: Trump and His Betraying Makeover
11/16/16
USA: President Trump's Fourteen Points - Will he keep them ?
Exit polls indicate that only 37 percent of voters thought
President-elect Donald Trump “qualified to be president.”
Only 34 percent, said he had “the right personality and temperament for the office.”
In many states, voters simply refused to choose between Hillary Clinton and Trump. In Michigan, for example, some 90,000 voted but refused to make any choice at all for President
As was the case for Al Gore in the 2000 election against George W. Bush, Clinton had the support of more voters than her opponent.
Nevertheless, under our constitution, Trump will soon take the oath of office as President of the United States of America.
The citizens of the US will be honor bound to salute the new president’s rank, despite all his failings as a man. Both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have already done so, with grace and style, as was their duty.
That said, saluting Trump’s new rank does not mean one must ignore the man or condone his behavior, either as president or as a private citizen.
What policies or actions promoted by President-elect Trump can we all agree on and support for the greater good of our country?
The following 14 points, all given voice and supported by Trump at some point during his mean-spirited campaign, would seem to form a basis for moving the US forward in a positive and bipartisan spirit.
1. A massive initiative to rebuild/improve/repair our infrastructure. (October 2016)
2. Improve the military but reduce the defense budget. (October 2015)
3. Accept gay marriage. (August 2015)
4. Agree that Stop-&-frisk is unconstitutional. (September 2016)
5. Support paid family leave. (September 2016)
6. Serve as an honest broker and negotiate a lasting treaty of peace between Israel and her enemies. (February 2016)
7. Condemn Russian & any other country’s involvement in our elections. (October 2016)
8. Promote maximum representation and maximum voter participation. (Apr 2016)
9. Educate the public on value of comprehensive vaccinations. (October 2016)
10. Institute some form of universal health care. (July 2000)
11. Fix veteran’s hospitals, and pay private doctors to treat vets in the meantime. (September 2015)
12. Raise minimum wages, nationally and in the states. (May 2016)
13. Get rid of carried interest deduction for brokers (October 2016)
14. Support the exploration of space (October 2016)
Let’s hope, and work hard to make sure, that President Trump’s first 100 days are both productive and bipartisan – on the points that lift us all up. There is at least some ground for agreement.
Read more: President Trump's Fourteen Points - The Globalist
Only 34 percent, said he had “the right personality and temperament for the office.”
In many states, voters simply refused to choose between Hillary Clinton and Trump. In Michigan, for example, some 90,000 voted but refused to make any choice at all for President
As was the case for Al Gore in the 2000 election against George W. Bush, Clinton had the support of more voters than her opponent.
Nevertheless, under our constitution, Trump will soon take the oath of office as President of the United States of America.
The citizens of the US will be honor bound to salute the new president’s rank, despite all his failings as a man. Both President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have already done so, with grace and style, as was their duty.
That said, saluting Trump’s new rank does not mean one must ignore the man or condone his behavior, either as president or as a private citizen.
What policies or actions promoted by President-elect Trump can we all agree on and support for the greater good of our country?
The following 14 points, all given voice and supported by Trump at some point during his mean-spirited campaign, would seem to form a basis for moving the US forward in a positive and bipartisan spirit.
1. A massive initiative to rebuild/improve/repair our infrastructure. (October 2016)
2. Improve the military but reduce the defense budget. (October 2015)
3. Accept gay marriage. (August 2015)
4. Agree that Stop-&-frisk is unconstitutional. (September 2016)
5. Support paid family leave. (September 2016)
6. Serve as an honest broker and negotiate a lasting treaty of peace between Israel and her enemies. (February 2016)
7. Condemn Russian & any other country’s involvement in our elections. (October 2016)
8. Promote maximum representation and maximum voter participation. (Apr 2016)
9. Educate the public on value of comprehensive vaccinations. (October 2016)
10. Institute some form of universal health care. (July 2000)
11. Fix veteran’s hospitals, and pay private doctors to treat vets in the meantime. (September 2015)
12. Raise minimum wages, nationally and in the states. (May 2016)
13. Get rid of carried interest deduction for brokers (October 2016)
14. Support the exploration of space (October 2016)
Let’s hope, and work hard to make sure, that President Trump’s first 100 days are both productive and bipartisan – on the points that lift us all up. There is at least some ground for agreement.
Read more: President Trump's Fourteen Points - The Globalist
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