Donald Trump’s litany of failure, achieved in only six months, bodes ill for the rest of his term in office. But forget six months. Just look at Trump’s failures in the last 36 hours! He started out by blaming the three Republican “no” votes for the failure of a bill that was a disaster waiting to happen to the American people. He was unable to keep his party unified and so, hopefully, we have reached the end, hopefully, of this futile attempt to drop the ACA.
Trump tried to bully his Attorney General into quitting but Sessions held firm and Trump failed again. In his treatment of Sessions he managed to unify all of Washington against him. Then he failed in his Twitter attempt, to kick transgender servers out of the military when the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to move on it until he “clarifies” his position. That’s code for; do it the right way and we’ll consider it. Then he appointed a new Director of Communications who went on a profanity-laced tirade that couldn’t be published in most of the papers in the country. Finally he failed in his address to the Boy Scouts of America. An address which forced the leader of the Boy Scouts to issue an apology to the scouts and their parents, saying that Trump had promised not to make a political speech, which he very much did. Of course he couldn’t let that one go, so he them tweeted that he had gotten a phone call from the boy scouts leader saying that he was sorry about his statement to the pres and he really loved the President’s speech. Of course that phone call was proved to have never happened so Trump told us all about his standing ovation from that group. Sure, it was a standing ovation because there were no seats at the venue and everyone stood throughout the speech. That’s how Trump gets most of his standing ovations. All that in only 36 hours! How much will the man who spoke to winning so much we’d get tired of it, lose in 3 1/2 years?
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At the end of the worst week in the Trump Presidency, the-would-be king fired his chief of staff, Reince Priebus and replaced him with his Head of Homeland Security, John Kelly. Kelly is a tough ex-Marine, which probably impressed Trump and probably gave Trump the idea he will be able to whip the lackeys into some kind of functional group but that’s a serious long shot. More probably, the inmates who are now running the asylum will drive Kelly to drink. Kelly, a former general, is used to a world of military discipline. In the White House he will be trying to herd cats, and to make matters worse he will be doing it for a madman who is the biggest offender of the concept of self-discipline Kelly ever encountered.
One break that Kelly gets is he will no longer have Anthony Scaramoucci running around the building acting like a mad baboon. I guess Trump figured out that he couldn’t expect a life long marine to put up with the little gutter rat he had dragged out of the garbage.
Trump has always told us what a great businessman he was. But successful businessmen get that way by hiring the right people and letting them do their jobs. Let’s take a look at Trump’s history of firing during the first six months of his Presidency.
He started with campaign head Corey Lewendowski and almost immediately replaced him with Paul Manafort who he also fired even before he was elected. Hequickly progressed to Deputy AG Sally Yates, Mike Flynn and Page Carter. None of then lasted a month into the Presidency and Flynn and Carter are in danger of going to jail because of the Russian investigation. They were followed by; Katie Walsh, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, Mike Dubke, White House Communications Director, KT McFarland, Deputy National Security Advisor, FBI Director James Comey and seemingly by Kellyanne Conway. No one knows exactly what happened to Kellyanne. She doesn’t seem to have been fired but she has definitely slipped off the White House scene.. Then there were Derek Harvey, National Security Counsel Advisor and Walter Shaud Director of OGE.
The next wave was led by Sean Spicer whose demise was evident from the first time he faced a press conference and lied about the size of a crowd. Then it was Jeff Sessions, a man who tied his banner to Trump’s ass and was rewarded by being stabbed in the back. But Jeff manned up and with the support of ranking Republicans in congress seemed to have held onto his job, at least for now. Now it’s Reince Pribus who everybody figured would be gone long ago, mainly because he couldn’t control his environment. It’s a situation in which the entire White House softball team with pinch hitters and relief pitching and cheerleaders has been traded or sent back to the minors. A consummate record of failure for a guy who tells us what a great judge of character he is.
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The Republicans finally struck out on the healthcare situation but they are still showing up on the tube, spewing out false concepts of what healthcare should be. Every concept is complicated, full of allusions to bank account’s for healthcare, state controlled funds, insurance bailouts and other nonsense that has no real place in healthcare. There is a very good reason for all this phony terminology. It didn’t get there by accident. It’s all there so that those who write it into the various bills have a way to get perks out of the final system.
In fact the simplest, most functional, fairest way to cover healthcare on a universal basic is single payer. Everybody knows this; it just doesn’t suit the needs or wants of certain players in the healthcare game to accept it. Insurance companies hate it because it takes away a huge market that they are currently participating in, a market that not only makes them billions in profit but also has bought and paid for congressmen pushing for them to get additional subsidies. Single payer doesn’t work for the drug companies, the medical manufacturers or the hospital corporations because it will create one source of payments which also means one powerful office that will be able to cut back on the egregious overcharging that is currently going on for drugs, supplies and services. It doesn’t work for the very rich because it will eliminate the tax break they are currently pushing for, the one that will be financed by the poor and sick. And lastly it doesn’t work for the crooked legislators who are currently cashing in on lobbyist payouts from all the previously named players who want to stop single payer healthcare at all costs.
Don’t believe me? Just look at Rob Portman, ® Ohio. How can he vote to repeal Obamacare when seven of the top ten employers in the state are insurers or hospitals? The insurance companies scream that if they lose the health market all those people working for them will be out in the street. So Portman votes for the skinny repeal knowing that it won’t ever be put into effect. It’s a cynical move because he knows full well that all those people who will lose their jobs with insurance companies will be immediately put to work at Medicare doing the same job they are doing now.
Portman’s governor, John Kasich is dead set against screwing with Obamacare because he recognizes that it is better than any of the Republican plans but Portman is busy protecting his ass and plays the game. There are far too many Portman’s in our congress and not nearly enough Collins, Murkowsky’s and McCain’s.
The only people who will benefit from single payer healthcare are – wait for it – the people. The plain everyday suckers who have been voting for years, hoping to finally hit on a set of politicians who are at least as interested in their constituents as they are in their own bottom line. It looks very much like it took a dying man and two very tough women to call bullshit on the whole of congress.
Single payer is comparatively simple and considerably more equitable. Everyone gets the same or similar healthcare and it’s all paid for by taxes. Everyone is taxed to make the payment, some more than others. Those who are at the bottom of the economic pool will be taxed but what they save on insurance will more than make up for that. Those at the top of the economic pool will also be taxed more but because they make so much money it will hurt less. That’s called fair. It’s obvious that some don’t care about fair, but they are just scum.
Obama created healthcare for millions in this country but Obama’s gone. He served his two terms and he’s retired. Trump is President so the health of the American people is now his responsibility. The best possible health plan is single payer. The next best is the ACA, Will Trump take care of the health of the American people or will he kill them because of his desire to get Obama’s name off a law? Everything he’s done so far says he’s stupid or egomaniacal enough to kick the American people to the curb simply because of the name of the functioning law.
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Watching Tom Price, Secretary of HHS talk about the problems of Obamacare makes one want to strangle the stupidity out of him. We already know the problems of what we have. Intelligent people want to fix those problems and the best fix, if you are only interested in helping people get good care, is single payer. There is no logical argument for anything else. Price bases his whole lie on another lie; that the current system is failing. Its not, but it can still be a hell of a lot better. Price speaks to the problems of the individual mandate but there would be no mandate if we had single payer. Everyone would be covered equally but idiots like Price don’t want to know that. They can’t see past the idea of increasing taxes even though that will ultimately, through the financing of single payer, save money for most of the people and the system. They can’t abide increasing the size of government despite the fact that the job of government is not to keep itself small but to help and serve the people.
Watched Diane Feinstein weighing in on the problem and she immediately named the insurance industry as the biggest problem but she did it without even suggesting that we take the insurance industry out of the formula which, after all, is the only sensible solution. The biggest problem with our government’s treatment of healthcare is that not enough of the people involved in the solution have the guts to push for a system that has worked for 33 of the richest 34 countries in the world, simply because they are too influenced by the insurance and drug lobbies and the dreaded fear that some ignorant asshole is going to point to them and call them socialists.
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Senator Jeff Flake, ® Arizona has written a new book entitled The Conscience of a Conservative. This seems to be a good man with some bad ideas. That’s acceptable. Would that this described all the people in congress. Flake has a moral instinct. We need that. He has a sense of civility and an understanding of the difference between right and wrong that most politicians’ today lack. He may be too much of an optimist but better that than what we see infecting this administration.
Like old school conservatives, Flake favors small government in the biggest country in the world, a really silly concept. This is the USA not Lichtenstein. He is in favor of big trade, which can work well for this country but he is also in favor of low taxes, which has never worked for anyone. The most functional countries in the world all have very high tax rates. This was especially true here right after WWII. We had a war debt to pay off and Eisenhower instituted enormous infrastructure plans that sucked up money by the barrel. Top tax rates ran s high as 90% but still the country prospered, a middle class was born and lasted until Reagan started its destruction with trickle down economics. We are now entering a period that demands creative thinking about such things as healthcare, taxes and immigration. It may be too much to ask of the current congress but we have an election coming up in a little over a year and it behooves us to make the proper choices in that election if this country is to continue as a beacon of excellence.
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Anthony Salvato a pollster who goes the extra yard has once again come up with a very interesting breakdown of how America feels about Donald Trump and his administration. He breaks it down into four groups. It looks like this:
- The true believers. He can shoot someone in the street and they will still buy his bullshit -18%
- Those who wanted him to succeed. They still do but they can’t abide the chaos that he breeds in the political scene. 24%
- They were kind of neutral. Some voted for him and some did not but they now see him as a destructive force who is hurting rather than helping our country – 18%
- The resistance. They never believed in Trump and are now sure he will destroy our democracy. They are dead set against him – 40%
Not surprisingly the most change in these groups since the election has been away from Trump. The A group which now number 18% was 22% six months ago. The B group, which numbered 26% six months ago has now shrunk to 24%. Those numbers have gone over to the anti-Trump groups, which is an indication of the shrinking Trump demographics, brought about by the failure of this administration to do anything constructive during its six months in office. The only legislation passed so far by a government that is controlled in both houses of congress and the Presidency is for sanctions against Russia, one that Trump didn’t want and threatened to veto until it was passed by such an overwhelming majority that he had to sign it.
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No question that Trump had a bad week. The worst part is that he was constantly rebuked for things that could have been avoided if he had just done the work and prepped what he was going to say. This is just another indication that Trump gets an idea and is then too lazy to think it through before he runs his mouth.
Just this week, he was rebuked by the Republicans in congress over his treatment of Jeff Sessions. He was rebuked by the Boy Scouts of America for giving a political speech to the kids. Police chiefs, all across America rebuked him for encouraging police brutality in the ranks and he was rebuked by the military for tweeting that he was going to remove all transgender troops from our armed services. All these rebukes could have been avoided if he had any sense of channels. The problem is that Trump thinks he is the King, not the President and he thinks that just because he says it, it’s written in stone. As long as our dumbest President feels this way, he will never be successful. Six months of self-induced failure would have made this apparent to a more intelligent man but has so far failed to impress the dullard Trump. Do we have to look forward to 3 ½ more years of presidential failure or will the dummy smarten up?