Wednesday, July 04, 2018
Tuesday, July 03, 2018
Is The 2018 Election A Referendum On Trump? YES!
Is the 2018 election a referendum on Donald Trump, or is it to be decided on local issues (or some message devised by Democrats)? The cable news media, and the talking heads they interview, would have you believe the latter. They want voters to believe the Democrats can't win unless they find a party leader and a unified message, or that some kind of local issues will decide which party controls the next Congress. I have one word for that view --
BULLSHIT!
There is no Republican Party anymore. It has been replaced by the party of Trump. No Republican running for re-election has spoken out against Trump and his odious policies. They are afraid of his deplorable, and having in effect, kissed his ring -- falling in line with and supporting anything he wants to do. And they have abandoned longstanding Republican beliefs to do so.
Republicans used to be the party wanting small deficits (or no deficits). But they have happily helped Trump ballon the federal deficit, sending the national debt to record highs. They have traditionally supported free trade, but have allowed Trump to impose tariffs and start a trade war with some of our best allies. They have watched him cage children and separate them from their parents, abandoning their "family values". They have been silent as he flaunts morality. They have ignored his enriching himself by being president. In short, there is nothing Trump could do that congressional Republicans would oppose.
And the voters know this. They know if they vote for a Republican running for the House or Senate, they are voting for Donald Trump (and a continuation of his disgraceful policies and actions). And they know if they vote for a Democrat, they are voting against Donald Trump (and his odious policies and actions).
Political pundits (and the tiny number of moderate Republicans still existing) may not know that -- but the voters certainly do. Democrats don't need a unifying message. They already have one -- opposition to Donald Trump!
Don't be fooled. This mid-term election, more than ever before, is a referendum on the person living in the White House. American voters will be giving a thumbs-up or thumbs-down on Donald Trump, and that's bad news for Republicans.
The Top 10% Controls 78% Of All Wealth In The U.S.
The chart above is from The Atlantic magazine (using figures compiled by UC Berkley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman). It shows the wealth distribution in the United States.
The top 0.1% controls about 22% of this nation's wealth, and the next 9.9% controls another 56%. That means the top 10% of the richest Americans controls about 78% of the nation's wealth (or nearly four out of every five dollars). That leaves 22% of the nation's wealth for the bottom 90% of the country's population.
And it's getting worse, not better. While the wealth continues to grow for the top 10% (and especially the top 0.1%), about 14% of the bottom 90% live in poverty and the other 76% are watching inflation eat away at their tiny share of wealth.
The Republicans could have fixed this. They didn't. In fact, they made it worse. Their tax reform lowered taxes for the rich (allowing them to gather even more wealth), while doing nothing for the bottom 90%. The redistribution of wealth from the 90% to the 10% was already growing, but that tax plan will accelerate that growth.
The Republications, through their "trickle-down" policies, are turning the United States into a nation of "haves" and "have-nots" -- a nation with a more unequal division of wealth than most third world countries.
How long are we going to put up with this? Isn't it time to vote the Republicans out of power and return to a saner and fairer economic policy?
Trump's "Charity" Was Just A Slush Fund To Avoid Taxes
The federal government doesn't make charities pay taxes. That's because the funds donated to those charities are supposed to be used for the good of people who need help. But that doesn't seem to have been a goal of the Trump Foundation. It was set up as a "charity" to avoid taxes, but it did not use its funds for charitable purposes. Instead, it operated as a piggy bank for the Trump family -- paying their personal expenses, and in violation of campaign laws, even donating money to Trump's presidential campaign.
Trump may have thought he was being smart in doing that, but it has caught up with him. The New York Attorney General has filed suit, demanding the Trump Foundation be disbanded and pay huge financial penalties for the wrongdoing. The trial is expected to start shortly before the mid-term elections.
Here is part of an article on this by Adam Davidson in The New Yorker:
Barring an unexpected change, the Donald J. Trump Foundation will be defending itself in a New York courtroom shortly before this fall’s midterm elections. The proceedings seem unlikely to go well for the institution and its leadership; President Trump and his elder children, Ivanka, Donald, Jr., and Eric, are being sued by New York’s attorney general, Barbara Underwood, for using the charity to enrich and benefit the Trump family. On Tuesday, the judge in the case, Saliann Scarpulla, made a series of comments and rulings from the bench that hinted—well, all but screamed—that she believes the Trump family has done some very bad things.
The judge seemed frustrated, even confused, that the Trumps were fighting the case at all. At one point, she told a lawyer for the Trump children that they should just settle out of court and voluntarily agree to one of the sanctions: a demand by the Attorney General that they not serve on the boards of any nonprofits for one year. (The case will be tried in civil court, and the Trumps aren’t facing any criminal charges.) That’s far from the worst sort of punishment, but to accede to it would be a public embarrassment and an acknowledgement that the family did, indeed, use the foundation as something of a private slush fund to enrich themselves and reward their cronies. Judge Scarpulla made clear that she felt the children should agree to the sanction now, and that, if they don’t, she will probably impose a similar restriction “with or without your agreement.”
The case against the Trumps appears damning. Charitable foundations are governed by a crucial compromise: they can operate without paying taxes on the condition that their leadership insures that all money spent is spent in pursuit of the public good. The case brought by Attorney General Underwood shows that the Trump Foundation was neither well-managed nor focussed on what would generally be considered the public good. Its operations were shockingly sloppy; at least one of the organization’s official board members said that he had no idea he was on the board and that the board had never met, to his knowledge. No surprise, then, that the other controls that normally govern nonprofits were absent. As David Fahrenthold, of the Washington Post, exposed in a series of stories in 2016, the Foundation did virtually none of the charitable things it claimed to be doing.
In recent years, the only “contributions” to the charity seem to have been payments from business partners, not from the Trumps or the Trump Organization. The charity’s spending appears to have benefitted the Trumps themselves, not the public welfare. The organization had been operating this way for years, but, according to Underwood, in 2016 the Trump Foundation became an arm of the Trump political campaign, cutting checks to Trump’s political allies in key states just before the election. If true, this would mean that the Trump Foundation evolved from a mere tax-avoidance scheme into an instrument for carrying out potential acts of campaign-finance fraud. The Attorney General made clear that her evidence could support criminal cases against the Trumps, but she has no jurisdiction to bring such charges, since tax and campaign fraud are federal matters. She referred the case to federal officials, though it seems unlikely that the I.R.S. or the Federal Election Commission would choose to prosecute a sitting President or his children.
During Tuesday’s hearing, the Trump Foundation’s lawyer, Alan Futerfas, asked that the trial not commence in October, because it was so close to the midterms. Judge Scarpulla laughed in response, did not change the trial date, and hinted that she is likely to require the President to testify. It is not clear, however, that such a trial would dramatically change how people vote; it was clear during the 2016 Presidential election, thanks to Fahrenthold’s reporting, that the Trump Foundation was almost certainly engaged in systematic fraud.
Monday, July 02, 2018
Public Doesn't Believe Trump's Lies About Immigrant Crime
Donald Trump based his campaign on trying to scare the public about immigration. He called undocumented immigrants rapists, murderers, and gang members, and warned of a crime wave if that immigration is not stopped. He has not mellowed. In the last few days, he has repeatedly said that the undocumented immigrants would cause much more crime if allowed to come to this country.
Trump's xenophobic and racist base believe those lies -- and they are lies (since statistics show that undocumented immigrants actually commit far fewer serious crimes than U.S. citizens commit). Fortunately, the U.S. public is not buying the repeated lies of Trump.
It turns out that only 26% (the trumpistas) believe undocumented immigrants commit more serious crimes, while a significant majority of 65% say they don't commit more crimes. That's a huge 39 point gap. And that feeling persists through all racial, age, and education groups. Even Republicans have a plurality of 46% saying undocumented immigrants do not commit more serious crimes, while 42% say they do.
The chart above reflects the results of a new Pew Research Center survey -- done between June 5th and 12th of a national sample of 2,002 adults, with a 2.6 point margin of error.
U.S. Public Doesn't Like Trump Immigration Policies
Does the United States set a good moral example for the rest of the world these days? A significant majority of 58% of the American public says no, while only 40% says yes. That's quite a change from the recent past, when Americans prided themselves on being the example for freedom and human rights.
Why the change? A big part of it comes from the cruel and immoral immigration policies of the Trump administration and the Republican Congress. They want to build a wall on our southern border, deny entry to refugees seeking to escape danger in their home country (including those fleeing from gang violence and dangerously abusive spouses), and have separated parents and children at the border (and those separated families had not been re-united).
These policies have made the United States look like an immoral (and very weak and fearful) country -- and the American people don't like it. About 75% of the public says the U.S. should provide refuge for people escaping from danger in their home country, 71% oppose the separation of parents and children at the border, and 63% oppose building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The Trump/GOP policies are very unpopular with most Americans.
These charts use information from a new Public Religion Research Institute Poll -- done between June 20th and 24th of a national sample of 1,018 adults, with a 3.6 point margin of error.
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