Location: Perched on the precipice of the cauldron of truth
Posted:
May 6, 2016 - 10:47am
rotekz wrote:
Absolutely. Trump's tweets are highly engineered. Genius level.
Let's not get carried way — it's a taco bowl.
We shall see if a photo of him eating from a taco bowl while seated at his desk in the Trump Tower will have Hispanics (including Mexicans, some of whom, one can assume are good people) rushing to the polls to vote for him in November.
#Tacogate - The tweet went viral, it was engineered to. Massive publicity for Trump saying "I love Hispanics!" He is a master at playing the media for free coverage.
#Tacogate - The tweet went viral, it was engineered to. Massive publicity for Trump saying "I love Hispanics!" He is a master at playing the media for free coverage.
Happy #CincoDeMayo! The best taco bowls are made in Trump Tower Grill. I love Hispanics!
There's a very entertaining Mashable article on the 19 most offensive things about this horribly tone-deaf picture of the man folks think should ruin run the nation.
16. As the Washington Post's Karen Tumulty points out. A taco bowl is in fact a meal with a wall around it.
I caught the taco bowl/bowl/plate (I called it a charger) and Our Mr. Rotex noted the Marla Maples gag. Sometimes I think he's making fun of himself deliberately.
Good luck on figuring out how he's going to generate all the jobs he's promised, because Trump hasn't said anything that's provided clarity. Trump as POTUS would not have the authority to force US firms like Carrier to bring jobs back to the US or the authority to build the wall along the Mexican border.
Kurtster wrote:
The jobs. There is an estimated 2 trillion dollars of US corporate capital sitting offshore. One of Trump's primary plans is to create a one time tax break to bring it back home. That will be reinfused into our domestic economy. How could that not help create jobs ? No Trump could not force Carrier to return jobs to the US if they left before he became POTUS, but he could impose taxes on their foreign made products coming in. He could do much to stop corporate inversion dead in its tracks. He was / is the only one even talking about it the entire campaign season. He also understands currency manipulation, no other candidate has a clue about it. In the 30's during the real depression, we all know that trade wars and tariffs were an underlying reason things got worse instead of better. Most do not understand how currency manipulation today is the same thing. Its about making your county's product cheaper than the other country's and effectively functions the same as a tariff amplifying trade imbalances. Regardless of any trade treaties. Currency manipulation nullifies any treaty.
Lastly, the Wall was authorized by Congress under Reagan, but largely stifled by the Democratic Congress and the EPA, (eff you Nixon). Being authorized, he can get it done even if he orders the ACE to build it as CIC. =================================================================================================================
Trump is not alone in trying to get corporate capital back home, but I suspect it's a lot harder than Trump promises. Also check out this take from Fortune Magazine in August '15—the boldface words are my emphasis: http://fortune.com/2015/08/21/trump-goes-easy-on-tax-dodgers/
"Trump is arguing that a tax holiday that lets those companies bring home their overseas hauls and pay no taxes on them at all would provide an economic boon simply by injecting the repatriated funds back into the domestic economy. That claim is highly suspect, considering recent history. Congress approved a one-year tax holiday on foreign profits back in 2004, subjecting repatriated funds to a 5% tax rate and a requirement that they be reinvested in activities like worker training and research and development, rather than stock buybacks and executive compensation. But a study of the policy (coauthored by a member of then-President George W. Bush’s council of economic advisers) found that for every dollar companies brought home, they jacked up shareholder payouts between 60 and 92 cents. Money, after all, is fungible. And Pfizer—the single largest beneficiary of that experiment, using it to bring back $35.5 billion in foreign earnings—went on to cut 11,748 U.S. jobs over the next three years.
Nobody else in the Republican field is suggesting it would be wise to bring those profits home without returning any of those dollars to the U.S. Treasury. Even Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, arguably the most aggressive anti-tax crusader in the bunch, is flogging a plan for a tax holiday that would impose a 6.5% rate on the profits and dedicate the resulting revenue to fund highway projects. Whether such a plan would actually generate a positive return for taxpayers is questionable:the Joint Committee on Taxation, the nonpartisan scorekeeper for tax bills, has said such holidays are long-term revenue losers, because they encourage companies to stash even more of their profits abroad with the expectation they could secure another low-tax holiday down the road. Given that, there is growing bipartisan momentum on Capitol Hill to abandon a voluntary holiday. Instead, lawmakers are circling a plan to force the entire stash home, subject it to a discounted tax rate, and then transition to a system that lightly taxes future overseas profits annually, no matter where those funds end up."
Even if US companies had to stop these corporate inversions and had to bring their money back home, there is NO guarantee that they would invest in job-creating ventures here in the US. If the firms could have made more money by creating jobs here than by gaining interest in overseas banks and investments, they would have already done so. I've gotta go for a walk, so I'll touch only briefly on your post about leadership.
You wrote "Its someone who understands their job, its responsibilities, how to articulate it and build a consensus towards a worthy goal or vision."
I think that's a pretty good nutshell definition. My take is that Trump doesn't understand the job and its responsibilities. Mitt Romney got a nasty surprise when he went from being a successful CEO to being the Governor of MA. You cannot order and threaten leaders in other branches of government. You do have to build consensus and alliances and negotiate your way through rules and procedures of government. Trump isn't capable of those things. He's already alienated most of the GOP leaders in Congress. Paul Ryan won't endorse him. Mitch McConnell did but only in the most lukewarm manner.
From all I've read of Trump's words on the campaign trail, he's mostly winging it. His policy statements are bare sketches without detail. If he has a goal or vision beyond "making America great again" and not taking crap from the rest of the world, I don't think he's articulated it.
The Economist, a pro-business and right-leaning magazine, thinks Trump would be a disaster. Check out the cover of their latest issue and this editorial piece from the staff:
Donald Trump’s victory is a disaster for Republicans and for America
"It is possible that, with the nomination secured, Mr Trump will now change his tone....What he will almost certainly not do is change political course. For it is increasingly clear that Mr Trump has elements of a world view from which he does not waver (see article). These beliefs lack coherence or much attachment to reality. They are woven together by a peculiarly 21st-century mastery of political communication, with a delight in conflict and disregard for facts, which his career in reality television has honed. But they are firm beliefs and long-held.
On foreign policy Mr Trump mixes a frustration at the costs of America’s global role, something that has become common after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with a desire to make the country feared and respected...it is a Roman vision of foreign policy, in which the rest of the world’s role is to send tribute to the capital and be grateful for the garrisons.
For those, such as this newspaper, who believe in the gains from globalisation and the American-led liberal order, this is a truly terrifying world-view...That is why Mr Trump’s triumph has the makings of a tragedy for Republicans, for America and for the rest of the world."
Trump has run a brilliant campaign on a shoestring, exploiting an eruption of frustration among a segment of white America that feels its place in American economy and society is slipping away. He's excelled at voicing their frustrations and fears. But while he's provided great spectacle and sound-bite moments that have energized some voters, Trump has provided very, VERY little in terms of substantive proposed policies.
The primary season can be great fun, but if Trump wins he has to actually get things done. We do not live in a monarchy, but rather in a federal republic and a constitutionalrepresentative democracy. There are real limits on the power of a President, both practical and legal. Presidents don't have nearly as much control over the economy as most people believe. I think Trump would absolutely flounder when faced with the limits of his power and opposition from Congress and the Supreme Court.
As for past Presidents: I think you need to read more about Eisenhower's administration. He was far more than a grandfatherly steward. His warning against the military-industrial complex gaining excessive power was prescient and is relevant to our current debate over the surveillance powers of the federal government.
Johnson and Nixon faced problems that were deep-rooted and resistant to solutions available to any one President. Johnson made the bad decision to escalate the American presence in Vietnam with a draft—that was his fault, since he and Sec. of Defense McNamara both doubted America could win in Vietnam. The 1968 Tet Offensive really damaged Americans' belief in the war. But Johnson also had to deal with race riots and the backlash against civil rights:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-unmaking-of-the-president-31577203/?no-ist "...Johnson began 1968 hoping he could push through his ambitious domestic agenda while running for re-election: among other items, a 10 percent income tax surcharge, a ban on housing discrimination and more money for the Head Start school-readiness program, housing and jobs. "In January he was still willing to spend whatever capital he had left—and it was dwindling fast—to get his work done without waiting for the war to be over," Califano wrote in his memoirs. "Often we put so many complex proposals out in a day that reporters were unable to write clearly about them." But the disastrous Tet Offensive in January and February and antiwar Senator Eugene McCarthy's striking second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary in March convinced Johnson that he had to do something drastic. "Abdication," historian Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote in her biography of Johnson, "was thus the last remaining way to restore control, to turn rout into dignity, collapse into order." ...(those hopes were dashed with Martin Luther King's assassination):
Back in the White House, even as the riots were beginning, Johnson knew his hopes for a legislative victory lap were finished. Just hours after King's death, he told his domestic policy adviser, Joseph A. Califano Jr.: "Everything we've gained in the last few days we're going to lose tonight."
Johnson had weathered riots before—the first of the "long, hot summers" was in 1964, only months into his presidency. But by 1968 he knew that another spasm of urban disorder would ruin his standing with the public. Far more than Vietnam, a combination of civil rights activism and racial riots had eroded LBJ's support among white, middle-class Americans. "The level of vitriol in the mail and the calls over all the race issues dwarfed anything we had on Vietnam," Califano told me recently in the Manhattan office where he chairs the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. "He was very conscious that he'd become an incredibly divisive figure because of his strong stand on the race issue." "
As for Nixon: yes I remember wage and price freezes and Whip Inflation Now buttons (that may have more been under Ford). Nixon had to deal with a major oil shock when OPEC introduced its oil embargo in 73, leading to a quadrupling of the price of oil by '74. America was also going through a transition from a manufacturing to service economy and the beginning of strong overseas competition in steel and automotive sectors. American monetary policy, starting long before Nixon had encouraged inflation in the economy in the mistaken belief that fighting inflation aggressively would hamper long-term employment trends. These trends and events led to the beginning of stagflation that peaked during Carter's term. From what I can tell, economists and policymakers floundered through much of the 70s.
Again, I loathe Nixon. Our worst President outside of GW Bush. Even Carter was better. But it's important to understand which problems each President faced and the limits of power that President endured when trying to address those problems.
Sorry you hate the EPA but I'm not clear as to why. It's not the job-killer that the GOP makes it out to be. Given all the species and habitats under threat in the US today, I wish the EPA had more power.
If you have a problem with China, I have to ask you: who do you think is funding our deficit spending? Who do you think our largest creditor nation is? China didn't take on the debt of the US by stealth: America was quite willing to let China lend it money.
Check out the picture of his ex Marla Marples in the mag! Top level trolling.
I love his messy office. Shows he's a real person. Beware of people with clean desks and offices. My office doesn't get perfect maybe two times per year.
