With much of the alt-right freaking out over the Syria strikes, I wonder if we're going to see an evolution of the Trump movement into a state where they become the new McCains, so to speak -- not on policies, obviously, but on the jumping off the bandwagon and broadcasting their displeasure to an audience made up of the other side, every time their side does something they don't like.
The other side being the Sanders supporters, in this new alignment of parties.
Strangely, the alt-right will be seen as the "moderate" or "sensible" Trump supporters, who do not fall in lockstep with their movement on every issue, who are eager to "reach across the aisle" -- to the Bernie people.
True, on ideology they are more extreme than the unshakable Trump supporters, just like McCain is way more out-there on ideology than McConnell or Ryan.
But in terms of emphatically and dramatically showing their non-partisanship, the analogy looks fitting.
Also, the "sensible" Republicans of the past cycle were more concerned about finding a mate from the other side, rather than someone from their own party and social-cultural background.
Likewise we see the alt-right pining after secular / leftist exotics, rather than an American girl whose uncle wears a camo Trump hat out in public.
I attribute this greater desire to please the other side to a greater rootlessness. If you're a nomad, there is no "your people," and you have to rely on connections with unfamiliar groups. If you're deeply rooted, you've got that social-emotional sustenance already, and what the out-group members think of you is irrelevant.
April 7, 2017
April 6, 2017
War was green-lit before Trump took office, NOT a betrayal
Tonight sees the beginning of yet another pointless war in the Middle East -- a "limited strike" in a place with all sorts of foreign entanglements, which will provoke escalation, and which was followed by a call by the President on all civilized nations to join in the effort to stop the monster dictator who at any moment is bound to gas more babies.
There's good news and bad news for the Trump movement.
First, the good: it's obvious from Trump's history of shouting down military adventurists, specifically about Syria / Assad / false flag chemical attacks, that he did not undertake this action willingly.
If he could have done it his way, we'd be at least waiting for an investigation to figure out what the hell actually happened in the attack, and even if Assad were guilty, still weigh the utility of slapping him on the wrist against the risk that it could provoke nuclear WWIII. Small probabilities multiplied by enormously negative magnitudes of the outcome are too much to risk, especially when they're only counterbalanced by slapping a dictator on the wrist.
So, we cannot blame Trump for this. Some might call on him to stand up to the military-industrial complex, but Trump is only so powerful, no matter if he got elected by a populist revolt or not. He still has our nation's and our people's best interests at heart, but is constrained by certain political realities -- like an interest group that literally runs the armed forces.
We should not fundamentally alter our view of what Trump wants to accomplish -- only how able he will be to achieve the results, depending on who the enemy is.
Some enemies are weak, and we will make great progress -- those whose only power is money, for instance. They threw all the money in the world at us, and didn't put a dent in the Trump train. So expect all sorts of victories on economic matters -- trade deals (TPP killed within first week, to zero resistance), jobs and manufacturing returning to our country (all the companies he's been twisting the arms of before even taking office), and so on.
The open borders crowd has also proven weak, only able to obstruct with district court judges who will get overruled by the Supreme Court, or at worst can be ignored while Trump gives the go-ahead to the men with guns to get the foreigners out of here, and block others from entering. Expect major progress on immigration, including reductions in legal immigration.
The bad news: the one area where Trump cannot just tell the other side what to do is where his own authority lies, namely the monopoly on the legitimate use of force -- the armed forces. That's what lets him ignore lawless judges, if he so chose. That's who would enforce the border with guns, if he so assigned them.
The military has goals of its own, and given its hierarchical nature, the big pushes will come from the brass, who are more like corporate managers than battlefield leaders of the old days. Grabbing highly sought-after foreign territory is their mergers and acquisitions.
If they're going to go along with Trump being the leader of the nation, he's going to have to give them something they want as well. And considering that they could stage a coup against him, they have considerable leverage over him. He would have to rely on his popular support against the military's plans -- however, the military is the one institution that most Americans still trust. So a major showdown against the military, relying on popular revolt to back him up (the military will not wipe out the citizens), seems highly unlikely.
It seems clear that the military had planned the regime change and military intervention against Assad for awhile before Trump took office, given that it's been executed well within "the first 100 days" and is totally opposite of what Trump wanted to occur at any time in his term, let alone so early. They informed him that it would take place, and some pretext would be given, and he would have to go along with it, or else they would weaken or withdraw their support for him in his role as leader of the nation. And what is a President without the full backing of the military?
During any anti-war conversations or activities, it is crucial to emphasize that we are against the adventurists within the military brass who have been gunning for this for awhile, and not against our duly elected leader who has always expressed disgust for that kind of policy. Don't let the war machine's efforts succeed in pulling you away from your champion. Get angry instead at those who have driven a wedge between you and Trump. That would be anybody celebrating now -- warmongers, neocons, media, etc.
For some final perspective, consider our war in Yemen on behalf of the jihadists backed by the Arabians. That had been going on before we took office, and many of the maneuvers must have been planned back then as well. Trump could not just call them off without spending precious capital with the military. When the American soldier was killed in that raid in Yemen, you can tell Trump was disturbed by it, and didn't want him to be there for no greater purpose than advancing an Arabian jihad.
He tried to make it up to the soldier's wife, and to the American people, by building up the raid as crucial to collect information that would deter future attacks. Maybe, maybe not. The point was not a factual one, but a social-emotional one -- to help the American people not feel despair as yet another pointless Middle Eastern war wages on. We can expect him to do likewise with the new Syrian War, although perhaps also with some involuntary propaganda against the other side.
Let's be clear about the stakes here: it's been exactly one century since the last once-a-century war defined by pointlessness and disastrousness, WWI. The foreign entanglements throughout the Middle East, including two nuclear superpowers who are now on opposite sides of a hot conflict, make it possible that some kind of world war will ignite.
And again, it isn't the exact degree of probability that such a disaster occurs -- it is the probability multiplied by the magnitude of the outcome, that determines the expectation. A 1/1000 chance of 1 million people dying is, on expectation, a loss of 1000 people. Unlike the probability, though, the magnitude of the outcome is more or less unbounded -- it could be 1 million, 10 million, or 100 million dead if the nuclear shit hits the fan.
Those numbers make it impossible to support the war, and we need to make that clear to the rest of the American people, by protesting if necessary -- while reminding everyone that we're against the military-industrial complex, not against Trump himself or his broader agenda.
There's good news and bad news for the Trump movement.
First, the good: it's obvious from Trump's history of shouting down military adventurists, specifically about Syria / Assad / false flag chemical attacks, that he did not undertake this action willingly.
If he could have done it his way, we'd be at least waiting for an investigation to figure out what the hell actually happened in the attack, and even if Assad were guilty, still weigh the utility of slapping him on the wrist against the risk that it could provoke nuclear WWIII. Small probabilities multiplied by enormously negative magnitudes of the outcome are too much to risk, especially when they're only counterbalanced by slapping a dictator on the wrist.
So, we cannot blame Trump for this. Some might call on him to stand up to the military-industrial complex, but Trump is only so powerful, no matter if he got elected by a populist revolt or not. He still has our nation's and our people's best interests at heart, but is constrained by certain political realities -- like an interest group that literally runs the armed forces.
We should not fundamentally alter our view of what Trump wants to accomplish -- only how able he will be to achieve the results, depending on who the enemy is.
Some enemies are weak, and we will make great progress -- those whose only power is money, for instance. They threw all the money in the world at us, and didn't put a dent in the Trump train. So expect all sorts of victories on economic matters -- trade deals (TPP killed within first week, to zero resistance), jobs and manufacturing returning to our country (all the companies he's been twisting the arms of before even taking office), and so on.
The open borders crowd has also proven weak, only able to obstruct with district court judges who will get overruled by the Supreme Court, or at worst can be ignored while Trump gives the go-ahead to the men with guns to get the foreigners out of here, and block others from entering. Expect major progress on immigration, including reductions in legal immigration.
The bad news: the one area where Trump cannot just tell the other side what to do is where his own authority lies, namely the monopoly on the legitimate use of force -- the armed forces. That's what lets him ignore lawless judges, if he so chose. That's who would enforce the border with guns, if he so assigned them.
The military has goals of its own, and given its hierarchical nature, the big pushes will come from the brass, who are more like corporate managers than battlefield leaders of the old days. Grabbing highly sought-after foreign territory is their mergers and acquisitions.
If they're going to go along with Trump being the leader of the nation, he's going to have to give them something they want as well. And considering that they could stage a coup against him, they have considerable leverage over him. He would have to rely on his popular support against the military's plans -- however, the military is the one institution that most Americans still trust. So a major showdown against the military, relying on popular revolt to back him up (the military will not wipe out the citizens), seems highly unlikely.
It seems clear that the military had planned the regime change and military intervention against Assad for awhile before Trump took office, given that it's been executed well within "the first 100 days" and is totally opposite of what Trump wanted to occur at any time in his term, let alone so early. They informed him that it would take place, and some pretext would be given, and he would have to go along with it, or else they would weaken or withdraw their support for him in his role as leader of the nation. And what is a President without the full backing of the military?
During any anti-war conversations or activities, it is crucial to emphasize that we are against the adventurists within the military brass who have been gunning for this for awhile, and not against our duly elected leader who has always expressed disgust for that kind of policy. Don't let the war machine's efforts succeed in pulling you away from your champion. Get angry instead at those who have driven a wedge between you and Trump. That would be anybody celebrating now -- warmongers, neocons, media, etc.
For some final perspective, consider our war in Yemen on behalf of the jihadists backed by the Arabians. That had been going on before we took office, and many of the maneuvers must have been planned back then as well. Trump could not just call them off without spending precious capital with the military. When the American soldier was killed in that raid in Yemen, you can tell Trump was disturbed by it, and didn't want him to be there for no greater purpose than advancing an Arabian jihad.
He tried to make it up to the soldier's wife, and to the American people, by building up the raid as crucial to collect information that would deter future attacks. Maybe, maybe not. The point was not a factual one, but a social-emotional one -- to help the American people not feel despair as yet another pointless Middle Eastern war wages on. We can expect him to do likewise with the new Syrian War, although perhaps also with some involuntary propaganda against the other side.
Let's be clear about the stakes here: it's been exactly one century since the last once-a-century war defined by pointlessness and disastrousness, WWI. The foreign entanglements throughout the Middle East, including two nuclear superpowers who are now on opposite sides of a hot conflict, make it possible that some kind of world war will ignite.
And again, it isn't the exact degree of probability that such a disaster occurs -- it is the probability multiplied by the magnitude of the outcome, that determines the expectation. A 1/1000 chance of 1 million people dying is, on expectation, a loss of 1000 people. Unlike the probability, though, the magnitude of the outcome is more or less unbounded -- it could be 1 million, 10 million, or 100 million dead if the nuclear shit hits the fan.
Those numbers make it impossible to support the war, and we need to make that clear to the rest of the American people, by protesting if necessary -- while reminding everyone that we're against the military-industrial complex, not against Trump himself or his broader agenda.
April 5, 2017
Trump is not cucking on regime change: Another boomerang operation
After the false flag chemical attack in Syria, the neocons and oppositional Dems are crying for regime change.
Trump ran his campaign on preferring a "bad guy" like Assad, if the only alternative is jihadist whackjobs who will spread chaos and violence all around the Middle East and the wider world. He defended that as a general principle, from Assad to Saddam to Qaddafi. "But they hurt their own people!" I know, it's terrible, really hahribble stuff -- but look at who the replacement would be, and the situation for people would be far worse.
Here are all the times Trump mentioned Syria on Twitter, from the most recent. Most are about the potential invasion or regime change in 2013 after another false flag chemical attack. Trump was forceful about not getting suckered into invading -- and that if Obama did get suckered into that, at least don't get suckered into picking up the tab as well, but make the Arab League pay us handsomely.
Now, he pins the blame on Assad and says it's changed his mind. He says he's famously flexible and not a rigid ideologue, so his plans are subject to change.
But when you listen to interviews from 10, 20, and 30 years ago, it's clear that he is the least flexible or mutable person who has ever taken high office. At least on the very important matters like trade, re-industrialization, immigration, healthcare, and foreign policy, all fitting into the broad theme of nationalism and populism. He even uses the same phrases and intonation (1999: "Saudi Arabia is ripping us off big-league").
The only thing he's really "evolved" on is abortion, going from pro-choice to pro-life after his wife got pregnant while he was fairly old to be a new father, but they took the risk and were rewarded with a son who's the apple of his eye. Even that issue is part of the culture war, which does not interest Trump at all -- the big picture is about the economy and the government, not social-cultural matters.
What does change from Trump is his moment-to-moment messaging, image, and presentation -- meant to throw his enemies onto the wrong track, keep them guessing, and lure them into letting their guard down.
There are four main groups who are pushing for regime change, so let's look at how Trump's policy of dissembling about his goals in Syria neutralizes the threat from each of them.
1. Jihadists on the ground (ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, etc.)
This is the group he is most worried about, since they're the ones doing the raping. By appearing to flip-flop overnight, he lulls them into complacency. Maybe Uncle Sam will be helping us topple Assad after all!
This will not only give the pro-Assad coalition the all-important element of surprise against the jihadists, it will also convince al-Nusra etc. not to take such desperate last-ditch measures like another false flag chemical attack. Their days are numbered, and Trump doesn't want them to go out with a great big desperate bang.
2. State enablers of jihadists (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey)
These countries favor jihadists over an ally of Iran, which is expanding its sphere of influence in the region.
But they are also lazy and stingy, relying as always on Uncle Sam to do the fighting, supply the arms, and otherwise pay up for the operation.
If they thought that the US was against regime change in Syria, then they might grudgingly take up the task themselves, risking a war against Russia.
If they're lulled into complacency about Uncle Sam stepping in yet again, they won't mobilize their militaries for invasion. Regime change will be a "possibility" that never materializes, and by the time the jihadists are defeated, their state enablers will have no cover story for why they're invading to topple Assad.
3. Warmongers in the American military, deep state, and elected office
They want to expand their sphere of influence as broadly as possible, whether or not it benefits the American people.
By appearing to have changed his mind, Trump fends off a rising chorus of war cries, and lulls them into complacency. They no longer cook up plan A, B, and C, figuring that Trump and his team are already on it.
4. Media and oppositional Democrats
They tow the Establishment line, so appearing to acknowledge their concerns gets them to stop beating the war drums so incessantly.
They are even more easily lulled into complacency because they have the self-aggrandizing delusion that they're powerful enough to push Trump one way or another on major policies. They will be the first to declare victory and pat themselves on the back, while Trump prepares his true plan.
The "tell" that Trump is playing his enemies yet again is how over-the-top his denunciations have been about the inhuman barbarity against little beautiful babies. This is the same guy who responded to Bill O'Reilly's attempt to provoke him into denouncing Putin as a "killer" with, "Yeah, well, there's a lot of killers out there -- you think we're so innocent?"
He knows which side is likely behind the attack, if not the specific jihadi group / state enabler / deep state operatives. Those specifics will take some time to figure out, and he needs to be left alone by his enemies in the meantime.
Rather than dismissing the attack on Twitter as "another obvious false flag trying to lure our stupid leaders into wasting lives and money in the Middle East," he's going to turn it back around on the real perpetrators.
In order for that boomerang to inflict maximum damage, he's going to have to get people's emotions on fire about how intolerable the act was. Then when we read a tweet about how he "just found out" that it was really, say, al-Nusra, helped along by Turkey, with CIA support -- he can call for greater severity against the jihadists (torture to get information), a clean break with the wrong-side-of-history nations like Turkey / Saudi Arabia, and heads to roll among deep state warmongers.
Then he can call for reprisals not just for how horrific the initial act was, but for the deceptive propaganda that could have lured us into another Iraq War -- this time against a nuclear superpower like Russia!
It will be hard to pull off a full discrediting of the jihadi warmongers without indulging them a little bit first. If he wants the warmongers to hang for it, first he has to fan the flames of calling for the perps to hang for it. The ultimate sneak attack will be revealing who the perps actually are.
Trump ran his campaign on preferring a "bad guy" like Assad, if the only alternative is jihadist whackjobs who will spread chaos and violence all around the Middle East and the wider world. He defended that as a general principle, from Assad to Saddam to Qaddafi. "But they hurt their own people!" I know, it's terrible, really hahribble stuff -- but look at who the replacement would be, and the situation for people would be far worse.
Here are all the times Trump mentioned Syria on Twitter, from the most recent. Most are about the potential invasion or regime change in 2013 after another false flag chemical attack. Trump was forceful about not getting suckered into invading -- and that if Obama did get suckered into that, at least don't get suckered into picking up the tab as well, but make the Arab League pay us handsomely.
We should stay the hell out of Syria, the "rebels" are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS?ZERO— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2013
Now, he pins the blame on Assad and says it's changed his mind. He says he's famously flexible and not a rigid ideologue, so his plans are subject to change.
But when you listen to interviews from 10, 20, and 30 years ago, it's clear that he is the least flexible or mutable person who has ever taken high office. At least on the very important matters like trade, re-industrialization, immigration, healthcare, and foreign policy, all fitting into the broad theme of nationalism and populism. He even uses the same phrases and intonation (1999: "Saudi Arabia is ripping us off big-league").
The only thing he's really "evolved" on is abortion, going from pro-choice to pro-life after his wife got pregnant while he was fairly old to be a new father, but they took the risk and were rewarded with a son who's the apple of his eye. Even that issue is part of the culture war, which does not interest Trump at all -- the big picture is about the economy and the government, not social-cultural matters.
What does change from Trump is his moment-to-moment messaging, image, and presentation -- meant to throw his enemies onto the wrong track, keep them guessing, and lure them into letting their guard down.
There are four main groups who are pushing for regime change, so let's look at how Trump's policy of dissembling about his goals in Syria neutralizes the threat from each of them.
1. Jihadists on the ground (ISIS, al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, etc.)
This is the group he is most worried about, since they're the ones doing the raping. By appearing to flip-flop overnight, he lulls them into complacency. Maybe Uncle Sam will be helping us topple Assad after all!
This will not only give the pro-Assad coalition the all-important element of surprise against the jihadists, it will also convince al-Nusra etc. not to take such desperate last-ditch measures like another false flag chemical attack. Their days are numbered, and Trump doesn't want them to go out with a great big desperate bang.
2. State enablers of jihadists (Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey)
These countries favor jihadists over an ally of Iran, which is expanding its sphere of influence in the region.
But they are also lazy and stingy, relying as always on Uncle Sam to do the fighting, supply the arms, and otherwise pay up for the operation.
If they thought that the US was against regime change in Syria, then they might grudgingly take up the task themselves, risking a war against Russia.
If they're lulled into complacency about Uncle Sam stepping in yet again, they won't mobilize their militaries for invasion. Regime change will be a "possibility" that never materializes, and by the time the jihadists are defeated, their state enablers will have no cover story for why they're invading to topple Assad.
3. Warmongers in the American military, deep state, and elected office
They want to expand their sphere of influence as broadly as possible, whether or not it benefits the American people.
By appearing to have changed his mind, Trump fends off a rising chorus of war cries, and lulls them into complacency. They no longer cook up plan A, B, and C, figuring that Trump and his team are already on it.
4. Media and oppositional Democrats
They tow the Establishment line, so appearing to acknowledge their concerns gets them to stop beating the war drums so incessantly.
They are even more easily lulled into complacency because they have the self-aggrandizing delusion that they're powerful enough to push Trump one way or another on major policies. They will be the first to declare victory and pat themselves on the back, while Trump prepares his true plan.
The "tell" that Trump is playing his enemies yet again is how over-the-top his denunciations have been about the inhuman barbarity against little beautiful babies. This is the same guy who responded to Bill O'Reilly's attempt to provoke him into denouncing Putin as a "killer" with, "Yeah, well, there's a lot of killers out there -- you think we're so innocent?"
He knows which side is likely behind the attack, if not the specific jihadi group / state enabler / deep state operatives. Those specifics will take some time to figure out, and he needs to be left alone by his enemies in the meantime.
Rather than dismissing the attack on Twitter as "another obvious false flag trying to lure our stupid leaders into wasting lives and money in the Middle East," he's going to turn it back around on the real perpetrators.
In order for that boomerang to inflict maximum damage, he's going to have to get people's emotions on fire about how intolerable the act was. Then when we read a tweet about how he "just found out" that it was really, say, al-Nusra, helped along by Turkey, with CIA support -- he can call for greater severity against the jihadists (torture to get information), a clean break with the wrong-side-of-history nations like Turkey / Saudi Arabia, and heads to roll among deep state warmongers.
Then he can call for reprisals not just for how horrific the initial act was, but for the deceptive propaganda that could have lured us into another Iraq War -- this time against a nuclear superpower like Russia!
It will be hard to pull off a full discrediting of the jihadi warmongers without indulging them a little bit first. If he wants the warmongers to hang for it, first he has to fan the flames of calling for the perps to hang for it. The ultimate sneak attack will be revealing who the perps actually are.
April 1, 2017
Super-rich to get soaked in Trump's tax reform, a la his 2000 presidential plan?
In another interesting twist, complementing his preference for single-payer healthcare, Trump proposed to pay off the national debt through a one-time tax on the super-rich, back when he was considering a Reform Party campaign for President in 2000.
I was watching some old videos of that exploratory committee, and they referred to his "Robin Hood tax" idea: tax the whole wealth (not just annual income) of individuals and trusts that were valued at over $10 million, at 14.25%, one-time only, and that would deliver roughly $6 trillion in revenues, which was the size of the debt at the time.
He offered to end the estate tax to put a little something in it for the rich. But mostly the goal was tax cuts for the middle and working classes, saving Social Security, and paying off the debt.
That overall picture doesn't sound too different from the way he pitched his tax plan during the campaign, and he went to great lengths to emphasize that it was only an initial position during a negotiation with Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, etc. If the rates for the very rich went up from his initial proposal, meh, whaddaya gonna do?
But that was only tax rates on a person's annual income. The Robin Hood plan was a one-time tax on their entire net worth. There's a lot more money sitting around out there than there is being earned in a given year.
Does Trump still believe in a one-time clawing back of 15% of the largely ill-gotten wealth made over the past 30-40 years? He said he no longer believed in it when asked in 2011 by George Stephanopoulos, but he also said that about single-payer during the 2015 Fox debate, and we know how much he's been pushing for negotiating drug prices and praising universal healthcare right up through 2015. Maybe he's quibbling over the exact rate -- now he only supports a 10% tax on the wealth of the super-rich, and maybe that threshold has been raised to $20 million.
He did go public with a plan to levy a one-time tax of 10% on corporate profits sitting overseas, to bring the remaining 90% of that wealth back into the country and hopefully put it to good use. So the basic idea has still been bouncing around his head. He didn't say he wasn't also thinking of levying a similar 10% tax on wealth already sitting here in America...
One thing seems unlikely to have changed -- his underlying worldview or tone. Here he is in a '90s internet article from CNN:
It's hard to ignore his playing off of one class against another, aiming to draw support from "the other 99 percent" even if it cost him votes, reputation, or whatever, from the "1 percent of Americans who control 90 percent of the wealth". Whatever specifics may have changed in his mind, something as fundamental as a worldview has not.
From another ancient internet article:
Nobody seems to have noticed just how forcefully Trump was willing to push the idea the first time he considered running for office. The counter-campaign was just throwing everything at the wall and seeing if it would stick. Reporters have minimal research skills (they cannot be bothered to google, let alone search Lexis-Nexis), and would not have pursued the story anyway because they're lazy. Plus Trump was hitting his enemies from so many angles, constantly changing them up, that they couldn't drill too hard even if he did have a weak spot within the GOP primary.
The only one to look in depth was the Politifact article linked at the top of this post, and it must have gotten buried under the avalanche of the 99% of their stuff that is BS propaganda hit pieces. Crying "wolf!"
In their research, Politifact turned up some quotes about how ridiculous some thought Trump's soak-the-super-rich plan was, including Stephen Moore -- a Reaganite supply-sider who would go on to become an economic advisor to Trump and a campaign surrogate (the really spastic one). I think Trump hired people like that in 2016 to fly under the radar while running as a Republican, in order to not disorient GOP loyalist voters too much too quickly.
I sense folks in the Trump movement opening up to the idea of "who cares about tax cuts for the rich?" ahead of the tax reform legislation that is sure to be a bigger shit-show than the healthcare circus. Ann Coulter was on Hannity the other night pointing out that W. Bush gave the very rich a yuge tax cut, and what did they turn around and do with the money other than bring in guest workers? (Or off-shore their business, or put it into the casino of the stock market hoping for their money to make more money without having to hire anyone.)
The idea that the super-rich are aching to hire Americans at decent wages is a total farce by this point, and even Hannity (caught off-guard) couldn't argue with those facts.
Trump himself blasted the carrot rather than stick approach during multiple rallies, such as in Erie and Wilkes-Barre PA. Politicians have been offering zero-interest loans to companies if they stay here, then they take the money and run overseas anyway, where they sell their product back into the US with no tariff. "There's going to be consequences" tax-wise, has been his mantra, not "tax cuts to the top will boost hiring and incomes".
Bernie whipped up so much of the Democrat and independent voters about his own "Robin Hood tax," which would have gone to pay for free college for all (Craaazy Bernie, kids need real jobs and real training). Trump would use the revenues to pay down the debt instead. Still, there may be enough support among the public that Trump and/or Crazy Bernie can turn up the heat on Congress to get something like this into the tax reform code.
I was watching some old videos of that exploratory committee, and they referred to his "Robin Hood tax" idea: tax the whole wealth (not just annual income) of individuals and trusts that were valued at over $10 million, at 14.25%, one-time only, and that would deliver roughly $6 trillion in revenues, which was the size of the debt at the time.
He offered to end the estate tax to put a little something in it for the rich. But mostly the goal was tax cuts for the middle and working classes, saving Social Security, and paying off the debt.
That overall picture doesn't sound too different from the way he pitched his tax plan during the campaign, and he went to great lengths to emphasize that it was only an initial position during a negotiation with Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate, etc. If the rates for the very rich went up from his initial proposal, meh, whaddaya gonna do?
But that was only tax rates on a person's annual income. The Robin Hood plan was a one-time tax on their entire net worth. There's a lot more money sitting around out there than there is being earned in a given year.
Does Trump still believe in a one-time clawing back of 15% of the largely ill-gotten wealth made over the past 30-40 years? He said he no longer believed in it when asked in 2011 by George Stephanopoulos, but he also said that about single-payer during the 2015 Fox debate, and we know how much he's been pushing for negotiating drug prices and praising universal healthcare right up through 2015. Maybe he's quibbling over the exact rate -- now he only supports a 10% tax on the wealth of the super-rich, and maybe that threshold has been raised to $20 million.
He did go public with a plan to levy a one-time tax of 10% on corporate profits sitting overseas, to bring the remaining 90% of that wealth back into the country and hopefully put it to good use. So the basic idea has still been bouncing around his head. He didn't say he wasn't also thinking of levying a similar 10% tax on wealth already sitting here in America...
One thing seems unlikely to have changed -- his underlying worldview or tone. Here he is in a '90s internet article from CNN:
"By my calculations, 1 percent of Americans, who control 90 percent of the wealth in this country, would be affected by my plan," Trump said.
"The other 99 percent of the people would get deep reductions in their federal income taxes," he said.
It's hard to ignore his playing off of one class against another, aiming to draw support from "the other 99 percent" even if it cost him votes, reputation, or whatever, from the "1 percent of Americans who control 90 percent of the wealth". Whatever specifics may have changed in his mind, something as fundamental as a worldview has not.
From another ancient internet article:
[Advisor Roger] Stone said Trump's polling shows that 65 percent of the public supports the "Robin Hood" tax concept.
"The tax issue solves a lot of other things -- the Social Security trust fund shortfall, plus it gets rid of the inheritance tax, and everything starts to fall into place," Trump said
Stone said Trump will soon release a plan for universal health care akin to the Canadian system.
"We'll put out a health care plan that will make Ted Kennedy blush," Stone said.
Nobody seems to have noticed just how forcefully Trump was willing to push the idea the first time he considered running for office. The counter-campaign was just throwing everything at the wall and seeing if it would stick. Reporters have minimal research skills (they cannot be bothered to google, let alone search Lexis-Nexis), and would not have pursued the story anyway because they're lazy. Plus Trump was hitting his enemies from so many angles, constantly changing them up, that they couldn't drill too hard even if he did have a weak spot within the GOP primary.
The only one to look in depth was the Politifact article linked at the top of this post, and it must have gotten buried under the avalanche of the 99% of their stuff that is BS propaganda hit pieces. Crying "wolf!"
In their research, Politifact turned up some quotes about how ridiculous some thought Trump's soak-the-super-rich plan was, including Stephen Moore -- a Reaganite supply-sider who would go on to become an economic advisor to Trump and a campaign surrogate (the really spastic one). I think Trump hired people like that in 2016 to fly under the radar while running as a Republican, in order to not disorient GOP loyalist voters too much too quickly.
I sense folks in the Trump movement opening up to the idea of "who cares about tax cuts for the rich?" ahead of the tax reform legislation that is sure to be a bigger shit-show than the healthcare circus. Ann Coulter was on Hannity the other night pointing out that W. Bush gave the very rich a yuge tax cut, and what did they turn around and do with the money other than bring in guest workers? (Or off-shore their business, or put it into the casino of the stock market hoping for their money to make more money without having to hire anyone.)
The idea that the super-rich are aching to hire Americans at decent wages is a total farce by this point, and even Hannity (caught off-guard) couldn't argue with those facts.
Trump himself blasted the carrot rather than stick approach during multiple rallies, such as in Erie and Wilkes-Barre PA. Politicians have been offering zero-interest loans to companies if they stay here, then they take the money and run overseas anyway, where they sell their product back into the US with no tariff. "There's going to be consequences" tax-wise, has been his mantra, not "tax cuts to the top will boost hiring and incomes".
Bernie whipped up so much of the Democrat and independent voters about his own "Robin Hood tax," which would have gone to pay for free college for all (Craaazy Bernie, kids need real jobs and real training). Trump would use the revenues to pay down the debt instead. Still, there may be enough support among the public that Trump and/or Crazy Bernie can turn up the heat on Congress to get something like this into the tax reform code.
March 30, 2017
r/K theory: Conservatives = r, liberals = K (reminder to the ignorant)
A recent comment blithely asserts that liberals show the hallmarks of a group adapted to an environment that is abundant in resources relative to the number of individuals competing for them, where life is cheap and time horizons are short, and where thoughtless rapaciousness is the norm. That contrasts with conservatives, who are alleged to show the hallmarks of the opposite end, where resources are stretched thin, where time horizons are long, and where stewardship is deliberate.
This way of thinking goes under the name r/K selection theory in evolutionary ecology. It is sometimes applied usefully to human beings, but usually not. Not because human beings transcend ecology, but because the people doing the thinking aren't very good thinkers.
I left a bunch of comments in response, but the topic deserves a post of its own because I can't stand when people bastardize SCIENCE! to prop up their half-baked ideas. Those comments are below, which also cover the moral dimension to this half-baked evolutionary thinking (shades of latter-day Social Darwinism in our neo-Gilded Age).
I'll add a few more things about sex, violence, and impulsivity:
Frontier Mormons began as a polygamous cult and only gave up polygamy, reluctantly, in order for Utah to join the Union of states. Saloons, brothels, and red light districts were more common per capita out in the libertarian / individualist / conservative utopia of the Frontier, than in a sleepy town back East. Conservatives get married earlier, have kids earlier, including higher rates of teenage pregnancy.
Whites are locked up at far higher rates in Arizona than in Alabama, showing higher violence and impulsivity in Conservative (TM) bastions.
Time horizons are so short in conservative strongholds like Texas that the state has given its name to a form of card gambling, not to mention Las Vegas being in Frontier land. And the tendency toward making a living by shiftless get-rich-quick schemes (cattle, gold, oil, etc.), shows how short-term-oriented the Frontier people were compared to the settled, more liberal folk back East.
So if anything, conservatism as a political movement is a reaction to the kinds of behaviors that pop up in a r-selecting environment.
* * * * *
Who has larger families, lives in low-density areas, where land has not been over-developed, with abundant resources, lower threats to their security, etc.? Not liberals.
Only a retarded and ignorant idea, i.e. that conservatives are K-selected, can lead to the prediction that conservatives would be pushing a "one child policy" rather than being the most fervently natalist.
Getting back to healthcare, or any welfare policy, and r/K:
Dull minds look at the black clamor for welfare goodies as a sign that the welfare state is an r-selected outcome, as blacks are more r-selected than whites. They conclude that conservatives must be K-selected, and therefore eliminating welfare would be the K-selected outcome.
It's totally backwards.
Urban blacks shoving their open hands in the white man's face is as r-selected as it gets -- abundant resources (white people's money), squeaky wheel gets the grease, intense competition amongst each other and against other non-white groups to get the biggest piece of the white money pie.
They have no fear of over-grazing the white cash commons, or killing the honky goose that laid the golden egg. See post-colonial southern Africa.
But that's just the demand for welfare from blacks.
The actual provision of welfare comes from whites, and it's K-selected -- part of a stewardship strategy to take care of one another, now that in an industrial urbanized ecology, resources are no longer so abundant that anyone can sustain themselves and their family.
For that matter, "liberal" regulations against unlimited resource extraction (say by oil companies) are also K-selected stewardship strategies. It's the r-selected conservatives of the less-developed Great Plains or Alaska whose answer is always "drill baby drill".
The demand for welfare by whites is of course not r-selected -- they don't shove their hands in the man's face, trying to suck up as much as possible, more and more over time, with no mind toward whether there will be enough money for everybody.
Whites are ashamed to receive welfare, are loathe to use it because "it's there for those who desperately need it," and do not want to over-burden the system into collapse.
Those are all signs of K-selection.
BTW, which non-white societies have a functioning welfare system -- K-selected Chinese or r-selected Nigerians?
Only whites in r-selected areas view welfare as unnecessary and in need of elimination. Land is abundant and cheap, resources are plentiful, crime and war are mild or even gentle -- who needs welfare?
You can split hairs and refer to "individualist" conservatives (r-selected) vs. "collectivist / communitarian" conservatives (K-selected), but that's on top of the liberal vs. conservative distinction. Too many spectrums.
The Trump "conservatives" (especially in the new ground zero of the GOP, Appalachia -- not the Plains and Mountains) are K-selected and see welfare state policies as necessary so that our industrial urbanized ecology doesn't allow people to slip through the cracks.
The heyday of individualist Frontier conservatism was the Reagan years. Anyone pretending that it's still a pre-NAFTA, pre-HMO environment is going to be wildly out of touch, and acting on the wrong side of history.
To summarize, the anti-welfare fanatics on the Right are guilty of anti-white demonization, whereby they portray poor whites as having the same characteristics of poor blacks.
Namely, demand for welfare is r-selected greed that will over-burden the system until the whole thing collapses, and the individuals extracting the resources don't give a damn about causing such a collapse.
That is the black behavior regarding the welfare system, not the white behavior.
Casting white recipients of welfare as a bunch of parasites hell-bent on sucking the most sustenance out of their captive host, is why community-minded white people don't just write off the wacko part of the Right, but are disgusted by it.
How dare someone portray the less fortunate among our in-group as though they were a parasitic out-group like the Gypsies?
This way of thinking goes under the name r/K selection theory in evolutionary ecology. It is sometimes applied usefully to human beings, but usually not. Not because human beings transcend ecology, but because the people doing the thinking aren't very good thinkers.
I left a bunch of comments in response, but the topic deserves a post of its own because I can't stand when people bastardize SCIENCE! to prop up their half-baked ideas. Those comments are below, which also cover the moral dimension to this half-baked evolutionary thinking (shades of latter-day Social Darwinism in our neo-Gilded Age).
I'll add a few more things about sex, violence, and impulsivity:
Frontier Mormons began as a polygamous cult and only gave up polygamy, reluctantly, in order for Utah to join the Union of states. Saloons, brothels, and red light districts were more common per capita out in the libertarian / individualist / conservative utopia of the Frontier, than in a sleepy town back East. Conservatives get married earlier, have kids earlier, including higher rates of teenage pregnancy.
Whites are locked up at far higher rates in Arizona than in Alabama, showing higher violence and impulsivity in Conservative (TM) bastions.
Time horizons are so short in conservative strongholds like Texas that the state has given its name to a form of card gambling, not to mention Las Vegas being in Frontier land. And the tendency toward making a living by shiftless get-rich-quick schemes (cattle, gold, oil, etc.), shows how short-term-oriented the Frontier people were compared to the settled, more liberal folk back East.
So if anything, conservatism as a political movement is a reaction to the kinds of behaviors that pop up in a r-selecting environment.
* * * * *
Who has larger families, lives in low-density areas, where land has not been over-developed, with abundant resources, lower threats to their security, etc.? Not liberals.
Only a retarded and ignorant idea, i.e. that conservatives are K-selected, can lead to the prediction that conservatives would be pushing a "one child policy" rather than being the most fervently natalist.
Getting back to healthcare, or any welfare policy, and r/K:
Dull minds look at the black clamor for welfare goodies as a sign that the welfare state is an r-selected outcome, as blacks are more r-selected than whites. They conclude that conservatives must be K-selected, and therefore eliminating welfare would be the K-selected outcome.
It's totally backwards.
Urban blacks shoving their open hands in the white man's face is as r-selected as it gets -- abundant resources (white people's money), squeaky wheel gets the grease, intense competition amongst each other and against other non-white groups to get the biggest piece of the white money pie.
They have no fear of over-grazing the white cash commons, or killing the honky goose that laid the golden egg. See post-colonial southern Africa.
But that's just the demand for welfare from blacks.
The actual provision of welfare comes from whites, and it's K-selected -- part of a stewardship strategy to take care of one another, now that in an industrial urbanized ecology, resources are no longer so abundant that anyone can sustain themselves and their family.
For that matter, "liberal" regulations against unlimited resource extraction (say by oil companies) are also K-selected stewardship strategies. It's the r-selected conservatives of the less-developed Great Plains or Alaska whose answer is always "drill baby drill".
The demand for welfare by whites is of course not r-selected -- they don't shove their hands in the man's face, trying to suck up as much as possible, more and more over time, with no mind toward whether there will be enough money for everybody.
Whites are ashamed to receive welfare, are loathe to use it because "it's there for those who desperately need it," and do not want to over-burden the system into collapse.
Those are all signs of K-selection.
BTW, which non-white societies have a functioning welfare system -- K-selected Chinese or r-selected Nigerians?
Only whites in r-selected areas view welfare as unnecessary and in need of elimination. Land is abundant and cheap, resources are plentiful, crime and war are mild or even gentle -- who needs welfare?
You can split hairs and refer to "individualist" conservatives (r-selected) vs. "collectivist / communitarian" conservatives (K-selected), but that's on top of the liberal vs. conservative distinction. Too many spectrums.
The Trump "conservatives" (especially in the new ground zero of the GOP, Appalachia -- not the Plains and Mountains) are K-selected and see welfare state policies as necessary so that our industrial urbanized ecology doesn't allow people to slip through the cracks.
The heyday of individualist Frontier conservatism was the Reagan years. Anyone pretending that it's still a pre-NAFTA, pre-HMO environment is going to be wildly out of touch, and acting on the wrong side of history.
To summarize, the anti-welfare fanatics on the Right are guilty of anti-white demonization, whereby they portray poor whites as having the same characteristics of poor blacks.
Namely, demand for welfare is r-selected greed that will over-burden the system until the whole thing collapses, and the individuals extracting the resources don't give a damn about causing such a collapse.
That is the black behavior regarding the welfare system, not the white behavior.
Casting white recipients of welfare as a bunch of parasites hell-bent on sucking the most sustenance out of their captive host, is why community-minded white people don't just write off the wacko part of the Right, but are disgusted by it.
How dare someone portray the less fortunate among our in-group as though they were a parasitic out-group like the Gypsies?
Categories:
Dudes and dudettes,
Economics,
Evolution,
Geography,
Health,
Human Biodiversity,
Morality,
Politics,
Psychology,
Violence
March 28, 2017
The cracking of corporate solidarity in the nationalist era
The elites try to demoralize their enemy, the people, about the futility of banding together and using collective strength to get their way. On their side of the battle lines, though, they circle the wagons for each other. This corporate class solidarity is manifested in the Chamber of Commerce, the largest shadow legislature group ("lobbying"), which pursues all manner of big business interests against the general public.
But it would be wrong to think of the Chamber as a monolithic group: it is a coalition of member groups, such as pharmaceuticals, insurance, banking and finance, oil, and so on. Each of them has their own specific goals that they rely on the Chamber to bring about, and they do not always harmonize perfectly with the goals of the other groups. Some other group's agenda may impose costs on your own industry.
A manufacturer would prefer not to have his workers addicted to tobacco, lowering their productivity (sicker, taking frequent breaks) and adding to the employer's health care coverage of them. So the tobacco industry getting its way will impose those costs on the manufacturing industry.
It's just a relatively small cost to pay in order to get your own main goal, and that can only be achieved by having all the major industries band together and push for corporate control over all aspects of society. Otherwise each industry could be fought against one by one, making their victory far more doubtful.
Although these costs that each industry imposes on the others are usually rumblings under the surface, they can erupt into quakes that split the industries apart from each other. Simply put: if one industry no longer has anything to gain from being part of the coalition, they will cut their losses and defect.
This could be because their goal has become guaranteed to succeed, or guaranteed to fail. In either case, the outcome is certain, and there's no point in wasting millions of dollars lobbying against the inevitable. Only when the outcome is in doubt, and their dominance is not totally secured, does it make sense to spend all those resources recruiting others to help your side out.
When that defecting group gets out of the coalition, it may even be shunned and targeted by the remaining member groups -- both to punish the defection as well as to distance themselves in the public eye from a former member that has gotten so much of a stigma that they could never achieve their goals through the coalition.
The only major case like this recently as been big tobacco, who went from being a dominant member of the Chamber, and one of the most successful lobbying groups, to an utter pariah among the general public, the government, and even the other big business groups.
Generational trends away from smoking made it possible for the anti-smoking groups to convince larger and larger swaths of the population that the tobacco companies are evil and need to be stopped. With their doom becoming more and more certain, there was no longer any point in the tobacco companies trying to lobby for deregulation, and therefore no point either in staying in the Chamber of Commerce coalition.
In fact, with the tobacco industry out, the remaining Chamber industries could now openly attack and distance themselves from an industry that would only impose costs on them and provide no greater benefit. One corporate group against another.
The tobacco case was an isolated example due to a generational trend in one domain of life. But now that there are populist rebellions firing off across the political spectrum, from Trump supporters to Sanders supporters, it will be easier to hammer away at the underlying cracks in the corporate coalition, dividing them and then conquering them.
Two of the biggest players in the Chamber are the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, who impose massive costs on all other industries by adding the skyrocketing costs of healthcare onto corporate balance sheets.
America is the only rich country without a national health plan of some kind (typically it is single-payer), which drives up costs as the healthcare providers can easily swat down small enemies like individual workers or their employers. It's impossible to swat down the entire nation, which is why the single-payer countries pay far lower prices for their healthcare (per capita, as a share of GDP, for a given drug, etc.). The national purchaser buys in the largest wholesale quantities, so they can easily negotiate the prices far below the retail level.
Even worse for employers, healthcare costs are highly variable from one year to the next, and in ways that are not merely canceled out across the risk pool of employees. If there's a nasty epidemic one year, one employee's higher healthcare costs will be correlated with other employees' higher costs. It's not like random accidents like falling and breaking a wrist, which are not correlated. Higher variance means more risk, and employers don't like that. It makes it harder to work healthcare costs neatly into their overall compensation packages.
And unlike simply giving their employees more cash instead of healthcare benefits, the healthcare package adds all sorts of administrative costs from being tied to the adversarial and stingy for-profit healthcare providers.
All in all, it's a great big headache that employers in all industries would be happy to just cut loose and let the taxpayers worry about it instead. That's how it's done in the single-payer systems. For example, Australians pay a 2% income tax (a further 1% if you're rich), and those tax revenues go into a national fund that pays out to private or public hospitals when citizens use their services. Obviously that's a gain for citizens, too, since 2% of your income is a lot less than all the premiums you pay over the course of a year (unless you're rich).
However, the insurance and drug companies want those prices to stay sky-high, and that's their non-negotiable agenda in the Chamber of Commerce coalition. The other industries accept the headache of having to pay for their workers' healthcare, as long as the circle-the-wagons behavior gives them something of their own in return.
But what if those other industries' goals are now appearing doomed to failure?
The single greatest focus of the Chamber in recent years has been passing the TPP corporate globalist trade deal, which like NAFTA would benefit the industries that off-shore their labor into the cheap third-world countries and pocket the savings in massive profits. That includes manufacturers but also tech industries that move call-in centers, customer support, etc., into the third world.
Within the first week of Trump's presidency, he killed the TPP and made it clear that no such similar trade deal will ever be signed again. He's even going to go back to NAFTA and tear that one up too. Suddenly the political climate is so bitterly opposed to these corporate trade deals that there's no point in trying to write them and have them passed through Congress anymore. They're dead, and they're not coming back to life within our lifetimes.
Any industry for whom corporate trade deals were the raison d'etre for belonging to the Chamber of Commerce are going to ruthlessly reconsider just what they're going to be getting out of their membership, and how much they're spending to be part of the club.
Likewise, one of their most fought-after goals has been amnesty for illegals and open borders to all immigrants. This drives down labor costs by expanding the supply of labor to effectively include the billions around the entire world. You want more than ten bucks an hour? It's a shame that there's some foreigner willing to do it for five.
And yet just like the globalist trade deals, the globalist immigration plan has gone up in a puff of smoke with the election of Trump. Any industry that was pouring money into the Chamber in pursuit of open borders has suddenly lost their motivation to renew their membership.
The main industry that has seen its dreams vanish into thin air is manufacturing. They relied on globalist trade deals to off-shore labor to cheap countries, and to bring in hordes of immigrants to undercut wages at home. If you haven't noticed, they've also been the most compliant with the Trump agenda -- re-investing jobs and plants back here in America. They are not happy or eager to lose those labor savings from third-world workers, but they know that they are now in the same position as big tobacco trying to push for deregulation to a generation that has never smoked.
And now that manufacturers are drawing minimal benefits from the Chamber coalition, the massive healthcare costs imposed on them by the drug and insurance industries are going to really sting. They are no longer off-set by larger gains from mutual aid among big industries. Sky-high healthcare costs also make manufacturers less competitive than their rival companies from countries where healthcare is paid by taxpayers, not employers.
I would not be surprised if the manufacturing sector became a lot more supportive of single-payer or similar healthcare reforms.
The retail sector is another big player who has seen its big dreams evaporate due to "hire American" and "buy American" becoming national policy. Cheap Chinese crap allows a higher profit margin than well-made and more costly American products. Illegals can no longer be used as cheap labor for brick-and-mortar stores. Home Depot and Walmart are in desperate need of a boost to their reputations, and supporting universal healthcare is big enough to do it.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are industries who appear to be getting their way so easily with the Trump administration that they don't even need to bother lobbying Congress. The oil and energy industry is the big winner here, with Trump approving the pipelines that had been held up forever, promising to put coal back into play, slashing all sorts of regulations, and dismissing climate change as a reason to put the brakes on the energy industry.
At the same time, it's not as though deregulated energy was a central plank in the Trump platform, and it could go away under a different populist Republican, let alone a populist Democrat like Bernie.
At least for the time being, the big oil companies do not need to waste tons of dollars, political capital, and public reputation, defending the corporate rape of the healthcare sector by the drug and insurance industries. They'd be happy to be rid of healthcare costs on their balance sheets. That doesn't mean they have as much motivation as manufacturers to support single-payer, but it may mean they just stay out of the fight.
There aren't too many other big players in the Chamber to come to the aid of the drug and insurance companies -- banking / finance, really. And Trump saw to it that reinstatement of Glass-Steagall was put into the Republican platform last year, so their days of laissez-faire pillage may be coming to an end, too, and therefore have less of a reason to be top-tier members of the Chamber.
Even with the two healthcare industries, Trump could split them apart by pushing first for the negotiation of prescription drug prices. When Medicare Part D was signed into law by Republicans in Congress and W. Bush, there was an explicit carve-out that the prices would not be negotiable -- corporate rape would be the rule. When the Democrats in Congress (insincerely) tried to pass this as a separate piece of legislation in 2007, Republicans stopped it and re-iterated their pledge to corporate rape in healthcare.
Trump, however, has been pushing for this policy single-mindedly on the campaign trail and in office. It's the only specific issue he ever addresses regarding healthcare. If the populist movement manages to kill off that big goal of the drug companies, they will have lost a major stake in their Chamber of Commerce membership, if not all of it.
Then they could be played off against the insurance companies. The high premiums that insurance companies charge make it harder for the insured to consider drugs a worthwhile investment -- and that's lost business for the drug companies. But if the drug companies were muscled into lowering their prices, they could argue for the insurance companies to lower their premiums and include the now-cheaper drugs, expanding their market. The drug companies would be compensating, somewhat, for lower prices by selling in larger volume (i.e. by being included on more insurance plans).
It's not inaccurate to talk about "big business" or "corporate interests" as a monolithic thing, since they all do want the same abstract thing -- elite control over society. But they are distinct industries with specific concerns and agendas. The Chamber of Commerce is a coalition of disparate factions, sometimes cohesive and sometimes fragile.
As they became stronger, they got overly ambitious and self-assured of their invincibility, leading them to champion the most offensive policies -- banning the negotiation of prices for healthcare bought in wholesale quantities, the right to make teenagers addicted to poison, national citizens being replaced by fungible global labor-units, and so on and so forth. This sparked a populist and nationalist revolt, which will pick apart the factions one at a time, playing each conquered group off against the surviving groups until all are brought under control.
The Trump movement has proven that you can "fight City Hall," and it will prove you can bend corporations to the popular will. Chamber schmaymber!
But it would be wrong to think of the Chamber as a monolithic group: it is a coalition of member groups, such as pharmaceuticals, insurance, banking and finance, oil, and so on. Each of them has their own specific goals that they rely on the Chamber to bring about, and they do not always harmonize perfectly with the goals of the other groups. Some other group's agenda may impose costs on your own industry.
A manufacturer would prefer not to have his workers addicted to tobacco, lowering their productivity (sicker, taking frequent breaks) and adding to the employer's health care coverage of them. So the tobacco industry getting its way will impose those costs on the manufacturing industry.
It's just a relatively small cost to pay in order to get your own main goal, and that can only be achieved by having all the major industries band together and push for corporate control over all aspects of society. Otherwise each industry could be fought against one by one, making their victory far more doubtful.
Although these costs that each industry imposes on the others are usually rumblings under the surface, they can erupt into quakes that split the industries apart from each other. Simply put: if one industry no longer has anything to gain from being part of the coalition, they will cut their losses and defect.
This could be because their goal has become guaranteed to succeed, or guaranteed to fail. In either case, the outcome is certain, and there's no point in wasting millions of dollars lobbying against the inevitable. Only when the outcome is in doubt, and their dominance is not totally secured, does it make sense to spend all those resources recruiting others to help your side out.
When that defecting group gets out of the coalition, it may even be shunned and targeted by the remaining member groups -- both to punish the defection as well as to distance themselves in the public eye from a former member that has gotten so much of a stigma that they could never achieve their goals through the coalition.
The only major case like this recently as been big tobacco, who went from being a dominant member of the Chamber, and one of the most successful lobbying groups, to an utter pariah among the general public, the government, and even the other big business groups.
Generational trends away from smoking made it possible for the anti-smoking groups to convince larger and larger swaths of the population that the tobacco companies are evil and need to be stopped. With their doom becoming more and more certain, there was no longer any point in the tobacco companies trying to lobby for deregulation, and therefore no point either in staying in the Chamber of Commerce coalition.
In fact, with the tobacco industry out, the remaining Chamber industries could now openly attack and distance themselves from an industry that would only impose costs on them and provide no greater benefit. One corporate group against another.
The tobacco case was an isolated example due to a generational trend in one domain of life. But now that there are populist rebellions firing off across the political spectrum, from Trump supporters to Sanders supporters, it will be easier to hammer away at the underlying cracks in the corporate coalition, dividing them and then conquering them.
Two of the biggest players in the Chamber are the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, who impose massive costs on all other industries by adding the skyrocketing costs of healthcare onto corporate balance sheets.
America is the only rich country without a national health plan of some kind (typically it is single-payer), which drives up costs as the healthcare providers can easily swat down small enemies like individual workers or their employers. It's impossible to swat down the entire nation, which is why the single-payer countries pay far lower prices for their healthcare (per capita, as a share of GDP, for a given drug, etc.). The national purchaser buys in the largest wholesale quantities, so they can easily negotiate the prices far below the retail level.
Even worse for employers, healthcare costs are highly variable from one year to the next, and in ways that are not merely canceled out across the risk pool of employees. If there's a nasty epidemic one year, one employee's higher healthcare costs will be correlated with other employees' higher costs. It's not like random accidents like falling and breaking a wrist, which are not correlated. Higher variance means more risk, and employers don't like that. It makes it harder to work healthcare costs neatly into their overall compensation packages.
And unlike simply giving their employees more cash instead of healthcare benefits, the healthcare package adds all sorts of administrative costs from being tied to the adversarial and stingy for-profit healthcare providers.
All in all, it's a great big headache that employers in all industries would be happy to just cut loose and let the taxpayers worry about it instead. That's how it's done in the single-payer systems. For example, Australians pay a 2% income tax (a further 1% if you're rich), and those tax revenues go into a national fund that pays out to private or public hospitals when citizens use their services. Obviously that's a gain for citizens, too, since 2% of your income is a lot less than all the premiums you pay over the course of a year (unless you're rich).
However, the insurance and drug companies want those prices to stay sky-high, and that's their non-negotiable agenda in the Chamber of Commerce coalition. The other industries accept the headache of having to pay for their workers' healthcare, as long as the circle-the-wagons behavior gives them something of their own in return.
But what if those other industries' goals are now appearing doomed to failure?
The single greatest focus of the Chamber in recent years has been passing the TPP corporate globalist trade deal, which like NAFTA would benefit the industries that off-shore their labor into the cheap third-world countries and pocket the savings in massive profits. That includes manufacturers but also tech industries that move call-in centers, customer support, etc., into the third world.
Within the first week of Trump's presidency, he killed the TPP and made it clear that no such similar trade deal will ever be signed again. He's even going to go back to NAFTA and tear that one up too. Suddenly the political climate is so bitterly opposed to these corporate trade deals that there's no point in trying to write them and have them passed through Congress anymore. They're dead, and they're not coming back to life within our lifetimes.
Any industry for whom corporate trade deals were the raison d'etre for belonging to the Chamber of Commerce are going to ruthlessly reconsider just what they're going to be getting out of their membership, and how much they're spending to be part of the club.
Likewise, one of their most fought-after goals has been amnesty for illegals and open borders to all immigrants. This drives down labor costs by expanding the supply of labor to effectively include the billions around the entire world. You want more than ten bucks an hour? It's a shame that there's some foreigner willing to do it for five.
And yet just like the globalist trade deals, the globalist immigration plan has gone up in a puff of smoke with the election of Trump. Any industry that was pouring money into the Chamber in pursuit of open borders has suddenly lost their motivation to renew their membership.
The main industry that has seen its dreams vanish into thin air is manufacturing. They relied on globalist trade deals to off-shore labor to cheap countries, and to bring in hordes of immigrants to undercut wages at home. If you haven't noticed, they've also been the most compliant with the Trump agenda -- re-investing jobs and plants back here in America. They are not happy or eager to lose those labor savings from third-world workers, but they know that they are now in the same position as big tobacco trying to push for deregulation to a generation that has never smoked.
And now that manufacturers are drawing minimal benefits from the Chamber coalition, the massive healthcare costs imposed on them by the drug and insurance industries are going to really sting. They are no longer off-set by larger gains from mutual aid among big industries. Sky-high healthcare costs also make manufacturers less competitive than their rival companies from countries where healthcare is paid by taxpayers, not employers.
I would not be surprised if the manufacturing sector became a lot more supportive of single-payer or similar healthcare reforms.
The retail sector is another big player who has seen its big dreams evaporate due to "hire American" and "buy American" becoming national policy. Cheap Chinese crap allows a higher profit margin than well-made and more costly American products. Illegals can no longer be used as cheap labor for brick-and-mortar stores. Home Depot and Walmart are in desperate need of a boost to their reputations, and supporting universal healthcare is big enough to do it.
At the other end of the spectrum, there are industries who appear to be getting their way so easily with the Trump administration that they don't even need to bother lobbying Congress. The oil and energy industry is the big winner here, with Trump approving the pipelines that had been held up forever, promising to put coal back into play, slashing all sorts of regulations, and dismissing climate change as a reason to put the brakes on the energy industry.
At the same time, it's not as though deregulated energy was a central plank in the Trump platform, and it could go away under a different populist Republican, let alone a populist Democrat like Bernie.
At least for the time being, the big oil companies do not need to waste tons of dollars, political capital, and public reputation, defending the corporate rape of the healthcare sector by the drug and insurance industries. They'd be happy to be rid of healthcare costs on their balance sheets. That doesn't mean they have as much motivation as manufacturers to support single-payer, but it may mean they just stay out of the fight.
There aren't too many other big players in the Chamber to come to the aid of the drug and insurance companies -- banking / finance, really. And Trump saw to it that reinstatement of Glass-Steagall was put into the Republican platform last year, so their days of laissez-faire pillage may be coming to an end, too, and therefore have less of a reason to be top-tier members of the Chamber.
Even with the two healthcare industries, Trump could split them apart by pushing first for the negotiation of prescription drug prices. When Medicare Part D was signed into law by Republicans in Congress and W. Bush, there was an explicit carve-out that the prices would not be negotiable -- corporate rape would be the rule. When the Democrats in Congress (insincerely) tried to pass this as a separate piece of legislation in 2007, Republicans stopped it and re-iterated their pledge to corporate rape in healthcare.
Trump, however, has been pushing for this policy single-mindedly on the campaign trail and in office. It's the only specific issue he ever addresses regarding healthcare. If the populist movement manages to kill off that big goal of the drug companies, they will have lost a major stake in their Chamber of Commerce membership, if not all of it.
Then they could be played off against the insurance companies. The high premiums that insurance companies charge make it harder for the insured to consider drugs a worthwhile investment -- and that's lost business for the drug companies. But if the drug companies were muscled into lowering their prices, they could argue for the insurance companies to lower their premiums and include the now-cheaper drugs, expanding their market. The drug companies would be compensating, somewhat, for lower prices by selling in larger volume (i.e. by being included on more insurance plans).
It's not inaccurate to talk about "big business" or "corporate interests" as a monolithic thing, since they all do want the same abstract thing -- elite control over society. But they are distinct industries with specific concerns and agendas. The Chamber of Commerce is a coalition of disparate factions, sometimes cohesive and sometimes fragile.
As they became stronger, they got overly ambitious and self-assured of their invincibility, leading them to champion the most offensive policies -- banning the negotiation of prices for healthcare bought in wholesale quantities, the right to make teenagers addicted to poison, national citizens being replaced by fungible global labor-units, and so on and so forth. This sparked a populist and nationalist revolt, which will pick apart the factions one at a time, playing each conquered group off against the surviving groups until all are brought under control.
The Trump movement has proven that you can "fight City Hall," and it will prove you can bend corporations to the popular will. Chamber schmaymber!
March 26, 2017
Tax foreigners to pay for American welfare
Now that "tax reform" is next on the legislative agenda, the first major overhaul since Reagan, it is necessary to remember that Trump did not campaign on being another "tax cuts for the rich" Republican. So while there may or may not be a tax cut for the rich, which would be nothing new, there will be some kind of tax on foreigners and foreign stuff.
The foreign tax could be on the goods and services in off-shored industries (a tariff), beefed up fees for applying for visas, taxing remittance payments made from within the US, a rise in income tax rates on legal immigrants, setting up an explicit tax to levy on foreign nations whose military defense we provide, and so on and so forth.
We hold the cards here because we are not an export economy, meaning retaliatory tariffs have few targets of ours to hit. Americans are less inclined to live and work in foreign countries, compared to vice versa. No Americans send remittances back here. Hardly any of us work abroad where our incomes could be taxed even higher than now. And nobody but Uncle Sam provides our military defense.
If the rest of the world is so much more dependent on us than the other way around, we can easily tax the hell out of them and they'll still profit by interacting with us.
Trump has mentioned this logic here and there, but never really spelled it out. In short, we do not need to raise taxes on ourselves in order to pay down the debt or spend on ourselves, such as welfare and other entitlement programs. It would be far more palatable to the American people if we paid for government goodies by levying charges of all kinds on non-Americans who need us far more than we need them.
This is how Trump plans to cut the Gordian knot of not-taxing and spending. We'll cut taxes on ourselves, and spend more on ourselves / pay down the debt, by charging foreigners out the ass to be a part of the American network.
An earlier post warned not to expect too much populism unless it also intersected with nationalism. It's still true that those are the most promising areas for change. The new system of "tax foreigners to pay for American welfare" is not a conceptual intersection between nationalism and populism, but at least a procedural one.
"But how are we going to afford President Trump's lifelong dream of a single-payer healthcare system?" Easy -- tax foreigners some more! Foreigners are not the root cause of our disastrous healthcare system, so it is not naturally an Us vs. Them issue. However if we can fix our healthcare mess by making Them pay up big-league for interacting with us, then that's enough of an intersection between nationalism and populism.
Seriously: expect that to be the answer to any furrowed-brow reporter asking Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon, or the God Emperor himself, "But how are we going to PAY for that?" Higher taxes on foreigners!
The foreign tax could be on the goods and services in off-shored industries (a tariff), beefed up fees for applying for visas, taxing remittance payments made from within the US, a rise in income tax rates on legal immigrants, setting up an explicit tax to levy on foreign nations whose military defense we provide, and so on and so forth.
We hold the cards here because we are not an export economy, meaning retaliatory tariffs have few targets of ours to hit. Americans are less inclined to live and work in foreign countries, compared to vice versa. No Americans send remittances back here. Hardly any of us work abroad where our incomes could be taxed even higher than now. And nobody but Uncle Sam provides our military defense.
If the rest of the world is so much more dependent on us than the other way around, we can easily tax the hell out of them and they'll still profit by interacting with us.
Trump has mentioned this logic here and there, but never really spelled it out. In short, we do not need to raise taxes on ourselves in order to pay down the debt or spend on ourselves, such as welfare and other entitlement programs. It would be far more palatable to the American people if we paid for government goodies by levying charges of all kinds on non-Americans who need us far more than we need them.
This is how Trump plans to cut the Gordian knot of not-taxing and spending. We'll cut taxes on ourselves, and spend more on ourselves / pay down the debt, by charging foreigners out the ass to be a part of the American network.
An earlier post warned not to expect too much populism unless it also intersected with nationalism. It's still true that those are the most promising areas for change. The new system of "tax foreigners to pay for American welfare" is not a conceptual intersection between nationalism and populism, but at least a procedural one.
"But how are we going to afford President Trump's lifelong dream of a single-payer healthcare system?" Easy -- tax foreigners some more! Foreigners are not the root cause of our disastrous healthcare system, so it is not naturally an Us vs. Them issue. However if we can fix our healthcare mess by making Them pay up big-league for interacting with us, then that's enough of an intersection between nationalism and populism.
Seriously: expect that to be the answer to any furrowed-brow reporter asking Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon, or the God Emperor himself, "But how are we going to PAY for that?" Higher taxes on foreigners!
Categories:
Economics,
Politics,
Psychology
March 25, 2017
Trump, 1999: "I'm quite liberal, and getting much more liberal, on healthcare"
For the past week here we've seen that Trump's big-picture vision for healthcare has always been single-payer. To appreciate just how deeply committed he is to this form of healthcare, watch this interview with Larry King from 1999, when he was forming an exploratory committee about running for President under the Reform Party that Ross Perot founded earlier in the decade.
The entire interview shows how little he has changed, so we can be sure what he's expressing right before potentially running for President is what he has totally committed himself to. Although most of it will sound uncannily familiar, listen to this exchange on healthcare:
He goes on to say that if we negotiate fair trade deals, we'll have more than enough money pouring into our economy that we can lower taxes and still provide goodies like universal healthcare.
If everything else he says has stayed the same, we have to conclude that he still feels this way on healthcare. Trump the impulsive flip-flopper is just a media fabrication (a projection of their own temperament). From these ancient interviews, we know he is strategic, cautious (won't run unless he could win), and committed to where he stands on what he thinks are the most important issues facing the nation.
Populists will breathe a sigh of relief that Trump has always had his sights set on single-payer, while conservatives will have to "trust Trump" as he pitches the system that every other rich country enjoys, with far better health outcomes at far lower prices.
Corporate propaganda has so thoroughly brainwashed conservatives about healthcare, where single-payer is the apocalypse, so admittedly the Trump team has their work cut out for them. On the other hand, he will easily draw in moderates and liberals who have been crying for single-payer for decades.
With the Congressional Republicans forever torn between moderate vs. high levels of sociopathy on entitlements, this provides Trump with the first real opportunity to "pivot" toward the center.
Hopefully Pelosi and Schumer vote against single-payer, putting them on the record as phony sell-outs, and allowing Trump to rake in even more former Obama voters during his re-election. Although perhaps they will vote for, and try to spin it as having won over even a Republican President on healthcare, and from a minority party position.
The entire interview shows how little he has changed, so we can be sure what he's expressing right before potentially running for President is what he has totally committed himself to. Although most of it will sound uncannily familiar, listen to this exchange on healthcare:
Larry King: Patient's Bill of Rights. You mention healthcare as one of the social issues. You for it?
Donald Trump: I think you have to have -- and again, I said I'm conservative, generally speaking I'm conservative, and even very conservative. But I'm quite liberal and getting much more liberal on healthcare and other things. I really say, What's the purpose of a country if you're not going to have defense and healthcare? If you can't take care of your sick in the country, forget it, it's all over, I mean it's no good. So I'm very liberal when it comes to healthcare. I believe in universal healthcare. I believe in whatever it takes to make people well and better.
LK: So you believe, then, it's an entitlement of birth.
DT: I think it is. It's an entitlement to this country, and too bad the world can't be, y'know, in this country. But the fact is it's an entitlement to this country if we're going to have a great country.
LT: So you are for this measure?
DT: I am for whatever it takes. We have the money, the fact is that the world is ripping off this country. Germany is ripping us off big-league, Saudi Arabia is ripping us off big-league, France -- I mean, they're the worst team player I've ever seen in my life. You look at what's happened -- Japan for years, I mean we're like a whipping post for Japan.
He goes on to say that if we negotiate fair trade deals, we'll have more than enough money pouring into our economy that we can lower taxes and still provide goodies like universal healthcare.
If everything else he says has stayed the same, we have to conclude that he still feels this way on healthcare. Trump the impulsive flip-flopper is just a media fabrication (a projection of their own temperament). From these ancient interviews, we know he is strategic, cautious (won't run unless he could win), and committed to where he stands on what he thinks are the most important issues facing the nation.
Populists will breathe a sigh of relief that Trump has always had his sights set on single-payer, while conservatives will have to "trust Trump" as he pitches the system that every other rich country enjoys, with far better health outcomes at far lower prices.
Corporate propaganda has so thoroughly brainwashed conservatives about healthcare, where single-payer is the apocalypse, so admittedly the Trump team has their work cut out for them. On the other hand, he will easily draw in moderates and liberals who have been crying for single-payer for decades.
With the Congressional Republicans forever torn between moderate vs. high levels of sociopathy on entitlements, this provides Trump with the first real opportunity to "pivot" toward the center.
Hopefully Pelosi and Schumer vote against single-payer, putting them on the record as phony sell-outs, and allowing Trump to rake in even more former Obama voters during his re-election. Although perhaps they will vote for, and try to spin it as having won over even a Republican President on healthcare, and from a minority party position.
March 23, 2017
Trump never forgets: R's blocked negotiating drug prices under W. Bush
The only position on healthcare that Trump has consistently taken is an overall lean toward single-payer.
However there is one specific thing that he keeps hammering home, and that is the absence of negotiation on the prices of prescription drugs, despite the US government being the largest single buyer (Medicare Part D).
"Who da hell would buy wholesale and pay retail?"
He knows it's because the drug companies and insurance companies have bought off the politicians, and has said so often on the campaign trail. Some politicians are "incompetent," but probably they're "taken care of" by the lobbyists.
If the federal government threatened to walk away from a certain supplier for charging too much, that company would lose access to nearly half of all dollars spent on healthcare in the US (i.e., what the government covers) -- a sector that accounts for nearly 20% of our GDP. We have their balls in a vice, and all we have to do is squeeze.
Trump knows that when Medicare Part D was signed into law by W. Bush in 2003, there was an explicit provision in it that there would be no negotiation of prices on prescription drugs. This was back when the Republicans still thought that championing corporate rape was a long-term winning strategy.
That law went into effect in 2006, and by 2007 the Democrats who barely controlled the House decided to push back in a follow-up bill that would have required the Secretary of HHS to negotiate drug prices.
It passed the House without a single Democrat defection, along with a couple dozen moderate Republicans. But most House Republicans decided that corporate rape was still the winning strategy, and voted against. When it reached the Senate, the only Dem defector was Harry Reid -- a harbinger of how disastrous Obamacare would turn out. And although 6 Republicans voted in favor, 41 of them did not, and it was killed by filibuster 55-42.
Of course, even if it did barely pass, Bush would have vetoed it and withstood an override challenge. So the Democrats were just posturing, trying to score populist points with voters, while assuring donors and lobbyists that there was ultimately nothing to worry about. That's how Obamacare played out, when they actually had the chance to make their wishes come true with a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate and one of their own in the White House.
Still, why did Congressional Republicans allow themselves to be branded as the party of corporate rape in healthcare? Out of sheer partisan polarization? Well congratulations, geniuses: if the other party knows that you're going to reflexively naysay any of their policies whatsoever, all they have to do is make an insincere gesture of populism, and without thinking you'll make yourselves the proud sworn enemies of the American people. Gee, how do we explain your abject pathetic failure in the next year's elections?
(Thankfully that shoe is now on the other foot. "Wouldn't it be great if we got along with Russia to fight Islamic terrorism?" IMPEACH THE KREMLIN-PUPPET TRAITOR!)
The utter failure -- indeed the fanatic insistence on not negotiating prices for something that you are by far the largest purchaser of, is so offensive to the common sense of a businessman like Trump, that he must have been howling for all of them to have been fired. The vote was reported by the media, so it's possible he heard about it ("I never forget").
Rather than be rewarded for populist gestures, the moderate Republicans have been slowly voted out, and only one of the Republican Senators who voted to negotiate drug prices is still there -- Susan Collins of Maine -- while many of the naysayers have easily held onto their seats. Same story in the House.
Fun fact: hardcore libertarian Ron Paul was one of the few Republicans in favor of negotiating prices. There may be a fault-line there to hammer on, where libertarian-leaning Republicans will have to prove their basic business sense.
Unfortunately, the list of "Republicans for corporate rape in healthcare" included those who would become major figures of the Trump era, other than the man himself -- Leader McConnell and AG Sessions from the Senate, and from the House, VP Pence, Speaker Ryan, Leader McCarthy, and worst of all HHS Secretary Price.
Since Trump has single-mindedly focused on negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare, he has to know his point-man in the Cabinet has the wrong voting record on the issue. It's one of the first things he would've looked into.
It makes me think Trump is planning on digging up this corpse of a voting record and shaming the Congressional Republicans if they don't fall in line behind negotiating drug prices, if not yet full-on single-payer.
"What da hell kind of business sense do they teach you guys when you show up first day on Capitol Hill? ... Or maybe you were being taken care of by the drug companies' lobbyists? I dunno, folks, you think maybe that happened? Oh nooo, nooo, that never happens, especially not with the principled people in this room..."
If the majority of Congressional Republicans from 10 years ago were merely going against the idea out of partisan polarization, they can now safely go along with it since Trump is pushing it.
And since Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, et al. already voted for it then, they'll have to either go along with it again, or face a bloody revolution from their constituents, who want nothing more than universal healthcare. They would have to worry about far more than a tweetstorm from Trump -- he would camp out on their home turf, inflaming the rage of local liberals about how he's promising cheap drug prices and Pelosi and Schumer are getting in the way and going back on their voted promises from just 10 years ago.
He's got enough leverage over both sides to make it happen, although it would be easier to pass with a bare majority in the Senate. Ideally some other topic would force the nuclear option first -- no way McConnell would use it first for a populist cause.
Once he gets citizens used to the idea that we're going to use our collective bargaining potential to get killer deals and enjoy a higher standard of living, it'll soften them up to a gradual move toward single-payer. That could be his major issue for re-election -- "better than ever before" because we've never had a first-rate healthcare system like the other rich countries have for decades now.
However there is one specific thing that he keeps hammering home, and that is the absence of negotiation on the prices of prescription drugs, despite the US government being the largest single buyer (Medicare Part D).
"Who da hell would buy wholesale and pay retail?"
He knows it's because the drug companies and insurance companies have bought off the politicians, and has said so often on the campaign trail. Some politicians are "incompetent," but probably they're "taken care of" by the lobbyists.
If the federal government threatened to walk away from a certain supplier for charging too much, that company would lose access to nearly half of all dollars spent on healthcare in the US (i.e., what the government covers) -- a sector that accounts for nearly 20% of our GDP. We have their balls in a vice, and all we have to do is squeeze.
Trump knows that when Medicare Part D was signed into law by W. Bush in 2003, there was an explicit provision in it that there would be no negotiation of prices on prescription drugs. This was back when the Republicans still thought that championing corporate rape was a long-term winning strategy.
That law went into effect in 2006, and by 2007 the Democrats who barely controlled the House decided to push back in a follow-up bill that would have required the Secretary of HHS to negotiate drug prices.
It passed the House without a single Democrat defection, along with a couple dozen moderate Republicans. But most House Republicans decided that corporate rape was still the winning strategy, and voted against. When it reached the Senate, the only Dem defector was Harry Reid -- a harbinger of how disastrous Obamacare would turn out. And although 6 Republicans voted in favor, 41 of them did not, and it was killed by filibuster 55-42.
Of course, even if it did barely pass, Bush would have vetoed it and withstood an override challenge. So the Democrats were just posturing, trying to score populist points with voters, while assuring donors and lobbyists that there was ultimately nothing to worry about. That's how Obamacare played out, when they actually had the chance to make their wishes come true with a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate and one of their own in the White House.
Still, why did Congressional Republicans allow themselves to be branded as the party of corporate rape in healthcare? Out of sheer partisan polarization? Well congratulations, geniuses: if the other party knows that you're going to reflexively naysay any of their policies whatsoever, all they have to do is make an insincere gesture of populism, and without thinking you'll make yourselves the proud sworn enemies of the American people. Gee, how do we explain your abject pathetic failure in the next year's elections?
(Thankfully that shoe is now on the other foot. "Wouldn't it be great if we got along with Russia to fight Islamic terrorism?" IMPEACH THE KREMLIN-PUPPET TRAITOR!)
The utter failure -- indeed the fanatic insistence on not negotiating prices for something that you are by far the largest purchaser of, is so offensive to the common sense of a businessman like Trump, that he must have been howling for all of them to have been fired. The vote was reported by the media, so it's possible he heard about it ("I never forget").
Rather than be rewarded for populist gestures, the moderate Republicans have been slowly voted out, and only one of the Republican Senators who voted to negotiate drug prices is still there -- Susan Collins of Maine -- while many of the naysayers have easily held onto their seats. Same story in the House.
Fun fact: hardcore libertarian Ron Paul was one of the few Republicans in favor of negotiating prices. There may be a fault-line there to hammer on, where libertarian-leaning Republicans will have to prove their basic business sense.
Unfortunately, the list of "Republicans for corporate rape in healthcare" included those who would become major figures of the Trump era, other than the man himself -- Leader McConnell and AG Sessions from the Senate, and from the House, VP Pence, Speaker Ryan, Leader McCarthy, and worst of all HHS Secretary Price.
Since Trump has single-mindedly focused on negotiating prescription drug prices for Medicare, he has to know his point-man in the Cabinet has the wrong voting record on the issue. It's one of the first things he would've looked into.
It makes me think Trump is planning on digging up this corpse of a voting record and shaming the Congressional Republicans if they don't fall in line behind negotiating drug prices, if not yet full-on single-payer.
"What da hell kind of business sense do they teach you guys when you show up first day on Capitol Hill? ... Or maybe you were being taken care of by the drug companies' lobbyists? I dunno, folks, you think maybe that happened? Oh nooo, nooo, that never happens, especially not with the principled people in this room..."
If the majority of Congressional Republicans from 10 years ago were merely going against the idea out of partisan polarization, they can now safely go along with it since Trump is pushing it.
And since Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, et al. already voted for it then, they'll have to either go along with it again, or face a bloody revolution from their constituents, who want nothing more than universal healthcare. They would have to worry about far more than a tweetstorm from Trump -- he would camp out on their home turf, inflaming the rage of local liberals about how he's promising cheap drug prices and Pelosi and Schumer are getting in the way and going back on their voted promises from just 10 years ago.
He's got enough leverage over both sides to make it happen, although it would be easier to pass with a bare majority in the Senate. Ideally some other topic would force the nuclear option first -- no way McConnell would use it first for a populist cause.
Once he gets citizens used to the idea that we're going to use our collective bargaining potential to get killer deals and enjoy a higher standard of living, it'll soften them up to a gradual move toward single-payer. That could be his major issue for re-election -- "better than ever before" because we've never had a first-rate healthcare system like the other rich countries have for decades now.
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