Harvey has laid waste to South East Texas and now the focus has to be the long, expensive and enervating process of rebuilding the cities and the lives there. If one thing has stood out amid the devastation it is the heroism and compassion that has been demonstrated by those who risked their lives and health to help their fellow humans. Even the President has acted almost humanely, but it turned out to be too much for him. Amid all the problems created by nature Donald Trump decided to sound off about DACA and cause even more misery in the face of ultimate chaos.
Only someone as insensitive and unaware as Trump could inject this problem into what is going on now in Texas, a location that is especially sensitive to the DACA problem.
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Mike Morell, former head of the CIA speaking on Face the Nation about Kim Jung Un, the President of North Korea gave a very cogent description of Kim himself and more importantly, of Kim’s goals in developing a nuclear capability for his nation. What’s really interesting is that in describing Kim’s personality, although he never said so, he was also describing Donald Trump’s.
But it’s in describing the dictator’s goals that I think he came the closest to reality. Kim seems to have a threefold plan. One; To increase his stature at home. This is because he is somewhat paranoid, which has been displayed by his murder of anyone who appears to be a rival. Second; To be able to deter the U.S. He believes that we want to overthrow him and reunite the Korean Peninsula on the South’s terms. He has also seen what happened to Quadaffi and Saddam as soon as we had dismissed their WMD threats. He doesn’t want that to happen to him. Third, To extort us. He wants to be able to bring us to the table and force us to leave the Peninsula. He’s not crazy but he is a paranoid attention seeker with violent overtones. Now who else does that sound like to you?
Morell sees options but qualifies them as all bad. The first is to try to convince Kim to step back from the brink. Obviously not a probability in this situation! Second is the military option, which would lead to another Korean war and conceivably at least hundreds of thousands of casualties and third, acceptance of the situation and letting it settle into the kind of relationship we have with Russia. None of these actually work but because former President’s have let this situation slide this far, it is where we are now; far past anything constructive that can be achieved by a numbnuts like Trump.
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The Republicans are desperately looking for new tax legislation that will probably not happen, at least not in the near future. If the Republicans had their way it would be heavy in corporate tax cuts. Corporate tax cuts do not create jobs. Any statement that is in opposition to that fact is pure unadulterated bullshit! You can check the economic history of this country, going all the way back to the 1800’s and you will find this to be true. Taxing the hell out of the rich and using that money to create infrastructure, thereby creating good paying jobs for the poor and middle class is the only way for government to turn our economic model around and help the nation to flourish. All you have to do is look to the period immediately following WWII where taxes were sky high on the rich. That money was used to build infrastructure and everyone had a good paying job. That was the same period that created the middle class in this country. It’s exactly what we need now.
Historically, if you give industry huge tax breaks they don’t use that money to create jobs. They pass it along to corporate bonuses and shareholders and it goes to buy second yachts for greedy investors, not to create jobs for those who need them or to build much needed infrastructure.
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It’s time we stopped bullshitting ourselves about who are the real criminals and who are just suckers that got caught in small time nonsense. The real criminals live in Rye or the newest high rises on Park Avenue. They went to the best schools; they drive a Mercedes, their wives shop at Barney’s and Bergdorf’s. They spend forty grand a head to keep their third graders in the best private schools and they are able to do this because they have learned to steal on a far grander scale than any of the crooks that I knew of as a kid.
Willie Sutton said he robbed banks because that’s where the money was. But Willie was only a penny-anti crook compared to the white collar thieves that frequent Wall Street and our banking communities and Willie went to jail which is more than ever happens to any of these scumbags.
Wells Fargo has just been indicted for and settled a case in which they opened 3.5 million accounts in the names of customers without those customers knowledge. They then charged those customers fees on the newly opened accounts by including said fees on their regular monthly statements. This went on from 2009 to 2016, seven years and included 165 million retail bank accounts. That means most of those customers were stolen from more than once. You getting some idea of the scale here? You getting some idea of how many Wells Fargo employees were involved in grand larceny? You want to know how many of them will serve time? Zero! These crooks opened fake accounts in the names of real customers and then charged service fees to these customers for the privilege of being defrauded. And none of them went to jail. The big crook, CEO John Stumpf, (Sounds like Drumpf doesn’t it?) the thief who ran this gigantic scam, walked away with a $130 million reward from the company. This piece of shit should be rotting in a dungeon at Riker’s for the next 50 years and Wells Fargo just to show its customers how little regard they have for them, gave this crook $130 million bucks. That’s called giving the justice system the finger.
So why isn’t Stumpf in jail? Why aren’t any of the other crooks at Wells Fargo in jail? Just like why didn’t any of the crooks that cause the crash of 2007 go away? If the crooks of 2007 had done time maybe the crooks who ran Wells Fargo’s scam would have thought twice or spent their spare time running a numbers book instead of defrauding their own customers.
Obama said that he didn’t want to run a witch-hunt so his justice department didn’t pursue the criminals who stole from those who were least able to protect themselves. This is the worst kind if crime. Rob a bank and the bank collects from the insurance company. Both of them make too much money anyway. These rats are stealing from widows and orphans. They should face the guillotine. I know, that sounds really extreme but you cut off just one head and you see how fast the whole thing stops. These aren’t crooks that are stealing loves of bread to feed their starving kids. There are no Jean ValJean’s working for Wells Fargo. Okay, so maybe only a hand. That would work too. Crooks have to be punished or they will steal again and so will all those that see there is no penalty for being a crook.
In the 1980’s 800 bankers went to jail for the big scam that led to that crash. It took nearly a quarter of a century for a new bunch of crooks to cook up the mess that led to 2007. No one went to jail then so in less than a year they were back at it again. The message is clear. Our legal system has to back off small time stuff like bank robberies and drugs and come down hard on white-collar crime. These guys should know better anyhow. They have the education and usually the background. Now they need the morals and the fear.
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It looks like the President has finally decided to try and get something done. So he went to the Democrats and together with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi came up with a solution to the debt ceiling and financing Harvey. No it’s not long term but it had to be done immediuately so instead of putting all his eggs in the GOP basket Trump took a flyer and for the first time since Obama left office, the government,, seems to have solved a problem.
This morning all the pundits were in an uproar over the fact that on this one issue, Trump seems to have discarded Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, but that’s not what happened. These two clowns sat on their butts for seven months, holding all the government strings and didn’t get anything done. Even yesterday they were talking about the government crashing and not getting the financing needed for the people of Texas when they should have been talking about how to accomplish what needed to be done. The big bitch among Republicans seems to be that the debt ceiling deal is only for three months. Yeah, that’s not ideal but it’s better than the big nothing that the GOP had provided so far. The other problem seems to be that the Republicans wanted stuff connected to the debt ceiling and now they won’t get them. That’s typical politics and even though the GOP won’t like it the American people will.
So why did Trump do this? Simple. He wanted a deal done. Any deal! He needed to show that he could finally make a deal that stuck after eight months of pathetic failure. Trump doesn’t care about down the line. He’s a day trader. He can barely see supper. In fact he may change what’s left of his mind by tomorrow.
Talking about the debt ceiling, the Republicans offered an 18-month extension as well as a 6-month extension. It was notable that they didn’t offer a 12-month extension. That’s because they didn’t want this to come to a head again just before the 2018 elections. It’s too bad that no matter what they do, the GOP can’t put the nation ahead of partisan politics. That’s probably why they haven’t gotten spit done as long as they have been in power.
So here’s the deal:
$7.4 billion for FEMA for Harvey
$450 million for Harvey SBA loans
$7.4 Billion Community Development block grants
A continuing resolution to extend government funding to 12-8-17
An extension of the debt limit to 12-8-17
An extension of National Flood Insurance program through 12-8-17
That’s the deal that Trump, the Democrats and even most Republican Senators, no thanks to Mitch McConnell, handed over to the House to fund the government and a couple of disasters until December. Seventeen Republicans voted “NO”, but that didn’t mean much. Those were political votes not American votes. Most people were glad that the government is finally working. Ben Sasse ® Nebraska, who may be the best the GOP has to offer, wasn’t happy but his problems were political and not about the people that live in this country and are sick of the GOP’s lack of function.
The Republican’s who lost big on this issue can blame no one but themselves. They stood mute when they should have spoken out against Trump, when he proved to be a racist after Charlottesville and on so many other occasions. That muteness, born of fear, has kept them from making any kind of strong stand on anything despite their control of all three parts of government.
Trump was desperate for a deal, any deal, and when the GOP couldn’t get their act together and create a solution to the debt ceiling and the natural disasters he turned to the Democrats. This one was easy for the Democrats. This one helped their base. That won’t happen on a lot of other issues where that base hates Trump too much to want to back him. This brief partnership will work for DACA or infrastructure but not for The Wall, not for immigration and certainly not on healthcare.
There is one thing that the Senate Republicans have proved by their failure in this matter. If some alien being in either house of Congress drafts a sensible, non-politically motivated bill, a bill that somehow benefits the American people, there are congressmen who will vote for it and the country will benefit. What politicians don’t seem to compute, is that all those people who were dumb enough to vote for them, do, at times have moments of lucidity and occasionally recognize that someone is trying to do something that will help them through their lives. It’s those moments of lucidity that our elected officials must strive to recognize and follow. There will always be scum who use their seats in congress to benefit only them. That is just the human condition but there are also many who take their positions seriously and try to use them to move the nation forward. This blog believes that there are enough people in congress, men and women, who still recognize the difference between right and wrong and are motivated to do the right thing. Let’s hope we’re right.