Donald Trump's evil support for Russian Vladimir Putin risks undermining NATO's alliance

Mississippi Free Press Editor and CEO Donna Ladd said that the newspaper should report on Donald Trump saying he would encourage Russia to attack certain American allies. She was right.

Doanld Trump and Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland on July 16, 2018.

Several major national media outlets were fumbling the ball and either ignoring those remarks or giving them less weight than they deserve. Mississippi Free Press editor said we should set an example for how national media ought to cover such extreme policy declarations. So we did.

"Trump Encourages Russia to Attack American Allies: ‘Do Whatever the Hell They Want’", Mississippi Free Press.

"We may be a local Mississippi outlet, but this is important. It should be leading every newspaper in the country."

North AtlanticTreaty Organization

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he encourages Russia to attack U.S. allies who he believes does not contribute enough money toward NATO defense costs. 

I can’t express how gratifying it has been to see people around the country, frustrated with many national publications’ treatment of stories like this, embracing our decision.

Although we are a Mississippi publication; local reporting in the Magnolia State is and always will be our primary focus. But, we  believe there is value in ensuring that we’re telling readers about important national stories, too—and drawing attention to news that we believe deserves more attention. 

National stories affect Mississippi, too. “Hell, if a paper called NEW YORK Times 😊can report urgent national news, then a site called MISSISSIPPI Free Press can too,” said our editor.

Donald Trump would encourage Russia to attack U.S. allies whom he claims do not contribute enough to the NATO defense costs, he told a crowd of supporters to (wrongminded❗) cheers at a South Carolina rally.

“One of the presidents of a big country (big country❓) stood up and said, ‘Well sir 😧⍰ 😕, if we don’t pay and we’re attacked by Russia, will you protect us?’ I said, ‘You didn’t pay❓ You’re delinquent❓’ He said, ‘Yes, let’s say that happened.’ No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want,” the Republican frontrunner for his party’s 2024, presidential nomination said.

Dismantling the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been a goal of the evil 😈Russian President Vladimir Putin, who orchestrated efforts in 2016, to help Trump and hurt Clinton’s electoral prospects. Members of NATO—which includes the U.S., Canada and 29 European countries—pledge to defend any other nation that gets attacked. (Dismantling NATO is dangerous.)

Mississipi Free Press plans to report more stories about national and state interest in the future, which may even involve a Washington, D.C.-based reporter or collaboration to help better cover Mississippi’s congressional delegation and the policy decisions that affect Mississippians.

#TrumpIsPutinPuppet

Trump-Putin duo lie leaders - echo opinion from Kansas

Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shake hand at the beginning of a meeting at the Presidential Palace in Helsinki, Finland, Monday, July 16, 2018. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

Echo letter from Leavenworth Kansas published in the Leavenworth Times newspaper, from Pat Davidson in Leavenworth.

Two liars in Helsinki

(At the Helsinki news conference) two of the most powerful liars on planet Earth each complemented one another.

One lies because he can. Any disagrees with Russia's Vladimir Putin and you will have an accident or die of some type of bizarre exposure to chemicals or radiation.

The other is our President Donald J. Trump. I don’t know why he lies. He is very successful, very wealthy, has a beautiful wife and is the president of the United States.

That being said, they are both liars, and you have to be some kind of ignorant to continue to believe what a known liar says.

Donald Trump was born wealthy, never had to worry about a roof over his head or where his next meal came from, yet those who work paycheck to paycheck seem to think that he knows what they need.

Donald Trump managed to avoid the draft with college deferments and “bone spurs” yet he is now the commander in chief of our military. Donald Trump has done very little in his life that did not benefit him. When he says that the new tax system will cost him money, he’s lying.

I should get a bigger refund on my taxes, but if I want to buy a car or another product that uses overseas materials, it’ll cost me more due to his trade policies.

He has already attacked my paycheck as a federal retiree by expressing a desire to stop my cost of living raises. He lies so much, I don’t know what I can believe.

Some point to the campaign promises he’s made, and the attempts to fulfill them. Some are being completed to some degree, but there are some that are not.

He appears to need attention to an extent that borders on mania, doing anything or saying anything to get time on television or in newspapers.

I just hope whoever has the football keeps a tight grip on it. As I’m typing this, the news is carrying a story that he is saying that he misspoke yesterday.

Somebody must have broken through his ego shield and convinced him that he made a big mistake with his comments, but again, I’m sorry, I can’t believe this statement either.

Switzerland's social experiment in income equality

Under the Switzerland's plan, each citizen would receive an equal monthly payment, regardless of their circumstances.

Income equality social experiment

(My question isn't about how much money people receive with this proposal but, rather, the extent of influence government would have in our lives, health care and deaths when tax payers are footing all of our living expenses.)

A referendum on this humanitarian experiment will raise the bar on the government's role in people's lives.  It doesn't matter if this initiative passes in referendum, or if it doesn't pass, because the effort alone puts the concept of egalitarian universal human rights into the forefront of public policy discussion.

BBCNews reports:

Switzerland is voting on whether to introduce a guaranteed basic income for every citizen, becoming the first country to hold such a vote.

The proposal calls for adults to be paid an unconditional monthly income, whether they work or not.

Supporters of the idea say 21st Century work is increasingly automated, with fewer jobs available for workers.

But polls suggest that only about one quarter of Swiss voters back the idea. (IMO, this is still an important vote regardless of the outcome because it brings up many ethical and public policy issues worthy of discussion.)

No figure has been set, but those behind the proposal have suggested a monthly income of 2,500 Swiss francs (£1,755; $2,555) for adults and SFr625 for each child, reflecting the high cost of living in Switzerland. 

It is not clear how it would affect people on higher salaries.

The Guardian Reports
Switzerland is poised to hold a referendum on introducing the concept, and Finnish and Dutch pilots are set for 2017

To its acolytes, it is the revolutionary policy idea whose arrival is as urgently needed as it is inevitable. 

In a future in which robots decimate the jobs but not necessarily the wealth of nations, they argue, states should be able to afford to pay all their citizens a basic income unconditional of needs or requirements.

Universal basic income has a rare appeal across the political spectrum. For those on the left, it promises to eliminate poverty and liberate people stuck in dead-end workfare jobs. Small-state libertarians believe it could slash bureaucracy and create a leaner, more self-sufficient welfare system.

Pay everybody regardless of their circumstances

Should we scrap benefits and pay everyone £100 a week?

In an increasingly digital economy, it would also provide a necessary injection of cash so people can afford to buy the apps and gadgets produced by the new robot workforce.

Crucially, it is also an idea that seems to resonate across the wider public. A recent poll by Dalia Research found that 68% of people across all 28 EU member states said they would definitely or probably vote for a universal basic income initiative. Finland and the Netherlands have pilot projects in the pipeline.

This weekend the concept faces its first proper test of public opinion, as Switzerland votes on a proposal to introduce a national basic income.

The model on which Swiss citizens will vote on 5 June sits at the left-liberal end of the spectrum. The wording on the ballot paper is vague – it calls for the country’s constitution to be changed to “guarantee the introduction of an unconditional basic income” that guarantees “a humane existence and participation in public life for the whole population” – but the proposed scale is ambitious.

The referendum’s initiators suggest a basic monthly income of 2,500 Swiss francs (£1,750) for adults and 625 Swiss francs for children as a “working example”. Given the high cost of living in Switzerland, the initiative’s co-founder Daniel Straub says this would be the rough equivalent of giving people living in centralEurope between €1,000 and €1,500 a month, or between £900 and £1,300 in the UK.

In a book published ahead of the Swiss referendum, Straub and his co-authors argue that a basic income pegged at such a level would not only free people up to do important work that is currently not incentivised by markets, such as care and climate change research, but also lead to higher wages for unloved and low-paid “dirty work”.

“If these jobs are really indispensable, then they have a social value and should be appreciated more,” he says. “If no one else wants to do them, they should be more highly paid. Work conditions would have to be improved so that people do these jobs.”

Set at such a level, a universal basic income would require an increase in Switzerland’s current social welfare budget. Even if it were to replace some benefit payments altogether, the country’s federal assembly has calculated an annual funding shortfall of 25bn Swiss francs, which it suggests would have to be bridged by tax increases. Some basic income activists have proposed a financial transaction tax.

Straub rejects some of the federal assembly’s calculations, but acknowledges that introducing a unconditional basic income would cost around a third of the country’s GDP. Switzerland currently spends 19.4% of its GDP on welfare, less than the OECD average.

Latest polls suggest that more than 60% of Swiss voters are likely to reject the proposal, but Straub is optimistic that the initiative has already achieved some of its aims. “Five years ago, only about a hundred people in Switzerland had heard the term ‘universal basic income’. 

Now, everyone is debating it, and acceptance levels are rising,” he says.

Unlike the Swiss initiative, Finland’s basic income experiment enjoys the political support of the government, a coalition of conservatives, liberals and the populist rightwing Finns party.

The framing of the Finnish initiative is also markedly different. The prime minister, Juha Sipilä, formerly a successful IT businessman, has commissioned the country’s social insurance body, Kela, to carry out experiments to establish whether a basic income could “make the system more participatory and strengthen work incentives, reduce bureaucracy, and simplify the now complicated benefit system in a way that ensures the sustainability of public finances”.

A preliminary report published at the end of March suggests the government is already scaling the initiative back from a full basic income model, which its authors note would be “quite expensive”, to a partial one. 

According to Roope Mokka, the founder of the Nordic thinktank Demos Helsinki, the Finnish experiment, which will take place in 2017, is likely to involve a maximum of 180,000 Finns being paid a basic income of €500 to €700 a month – considerably less than the average Finnish income of €2,700.

Even in Finland, universal basic income is too good to be true

Given that Finland’s welfare state is comparable to that of other Scandinavian economies, introducing a universal basic income model similar to that used in Kela’s experiment would involve shrinking the country’s social security spending, which currently stands at about 31% of GDP.

Basic income experiments also scheduled to start in the Netherlands in 2017, and lie somewhere between the Swiss and Finnish models. 

According to Rutger Bregman, the author of Utopia for Realist: The Case for a Universal Basic Income, the appetite for such initiatives in cities such as Utrecht has grown mainly out of frustration with workfare programmes that turned out to be “hugely expensive and humiliating for those involved”.

In the Utrecht experiment, which will start on 1 January 2017, one group of benefit recipients will remain on the old workfare regime, under which people who live alone get €972.70 and couples €1,389.57. Another group will receive the same benefits unconditionally, without sanctions or obligations.

A third group will also receive the same benefits unconditionally, plus an extra monthly bonus of €125 if they choose to do volunteering work. A fourth group will be obliged to do volunteering work. If they fail to do so, they will lose their €125 bonus. A fifth group will receive unconditional benefits without the bonus, while being allowed earn additional income from other jobs.

Similar experiments will be conducted in other Dutch cities such as Wageningen, Tilburg, Groningen and Nijmegen, most of them with the aim of finding ways to get rid of the sanctions and the obligation to apply for jobs.

The fact that political intentions behind Europe’s basic income movements vary so wildly should not discredit the basic idea, Mokka says. He likens the idea to the space race during the cold war. “Moonshot was never about getting to the moon. There was nothing in the moon. Kennedy and his administration knew that. The point is that each generation must have their mission, something that encapsulates their vision.

“Unconditional basic income is best seen as a platform on which several different political views can come together to deliberate beyond tweaking of old systems and to create something entirely new.”