Donald Trump choas and lunacy must end! Echo opinion

https://www.lubbockonline.com/news/20190826/gerson-trump-presidency-not-just-unfolding-but-unraveling

Michael Gerson: Trump presidency is not just unfolding, but unraveling- echo published in the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal.

WASHINGTON, DC -- Historians studying the Trump presidency will have a prodigious amount of digital material that demands examination, but defies explanation. 

For example, the president’s Aug. 21, half-hour, South Lawn press availability deserves to be at the top of that list.

Michael Gerson opinion published in the Lubbock Texas newspaper

With the whir of a helicopter engine in the background, Donald Trump veered from topic to topic with utter confidence, alarming ignorance, minimal coherence and relentless duplicity.

President Vladimir Putin, he said, “made a living on outsmarting President Obama” -- even though it is Trump who now urges a Russian return to the G-7 summit without any concessions on Putin’s part.

On pursuing the trade war with China, Trump called himself the “chosen one.” (!) This came within hours of retweeting the claim he is loved like “the second coming of God.” At some point, arrogance is so extreme and delusional that it can only be expressed in blasphemy.

Trump accused the Danish prime minister of “blowing off the United States” because she scorned his own balmy, offensive musings on the future of Greenland (!). “We treat countries with respect,” he said -- except, presumably, the ”----hole” ones.

Trump’s new immigration rule, he claimed, would “do even more” to bring migrant families together -- though this togetherness, he failed to mention, would come by allowing the indefinite detention of migrant families.

“I am the least racist person ever to serve in office,” said the man who is increasingly bold in his use of racist tropes.

He joked again about being in office 10 or 14 years from now -- appealing to people who find overturning the constitutional order a laugh riot.

“Mental health,” Trump went on. “Very important.” Hard to argue with that one.

“Our 2nd Amendment will remain strong,” Trump promised, while previewing an effort to overturn that portion of the 14th Amendment guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Some parts of the Constitution, clearly, are more constitutional than others.

Trump pledged the return of thousands of captured Islamic State fighters to Europe, one way or another. “If Europe doesn’t take them, I’ll have no choice but to release them in the countries from which they came, which is Germany, France and other places.” 

Did the president of the United States just threaten to release dangerous terrorists on the streets of our closest allies? Evidently.

Of the wounded and grieving families Trump visited following recent mass shootings: “The love for me,” he boasted, “and my love for them was unparalleled.” And this was demonstrated by “hundreds and hundreds of people all over the floor.” No one draws a bigger crowd in an intensive care unit.

After repeating an anti-Semitic trope about the disloyalty of Jews who vote Democratic, Trump insisted to a reporter, “It’s only anti-Semitic in your head.” But control over the plain meaning of English words is not a presidential power. And the charge of disloyalty is the essence of anti-Semitism.

Seldom in presidential history has more nonsense been expressed with greater concision. Never would the interests of America have been better served by a louder helicopter.

What to make of this? First, the Trump presidency is not just unfolding, it is unraveling. All narcissists believe they are at the center of the universe. But what happens when a narcissist is actually placed at the center of the universe? The chosen one happens. Trump is not just arguing for an alternative set of policies; he is asserting an alternative version of reality, in which resistance to his will is disloyalty to the country.

Second, the president has systemically removed from his circle anyone who finds this appalling. Every president has the right to advisers who share his basic worldview. But Trump appears, on many topics, to have stopped taking advice altogether. His counselors are now flunkies. The proof of their loyalty is not found in the honesty of their opinions but in the regurgitation of his insanity.

Third, the president is increasingly prone to the equation of the national interest with his personal manias. He is perfectly willing to threaten relations with Denmark -- or to force the Israeli government into a difficult choice -- if it serves his tweeted whims. This approach is more characteristic of personal rule than democratic leadership. Self-worship is inconsistent with true patriotism.

Trump’s promotion of moral and political chaos puts other members of his party in a difficult position. Difficult, but not complicated. It is their public duty to say that foolish things are foolish, that insane things are insane, that bigoted things are bigoted. On growing evidence, their failure to do so is abetting the country’s decline into farce.

Michael Gerson’s column is distributed by the Washington Post Writers Group.

Donald Trump adds farmers to the the exit door line up

Paul Krugman echo opinion published in East Oregonian newspaper:

Economists, reports Politico, are fleeing the Agriculture Department’s Economic Research Service. 

Six of them resigned on a single day last month. The reason? They are feeling persecuted for publishing reports that shed an unflattering light on Trump policies.

But these reports are just reflecting reality (which has a well-known anti-Trump bias). Rural America is a key part of Donald Trump’s base. In fact, rural areas are the only parts of the country in which Trump has a net positive approval rating. But they’re also the biggest losers under his policies.

What, after all, is Trumpism? In 2016 Trump pretended to be a different kind of Republican, but in practice almost all of his economic agenda has been GOP standard: big tax cuts for corporations and the rich while hacking away at the social safety net. The one big break from orthodoxy has been his protectionism, his eagerness to start trade wars.

And all of these policies hurt farm country.

The Trump tax cut largely passes farmers by, because they aren’t corporations and few of them are rich. One of the studies by Agriculture Department economists that raised Trumpian ire showed that to the extent that farmers saw tax reductions, most of the benefits went to the richest 10%, while poor farmers actually saw a slight tax increase.

At the same time, the assault on the safety net is especially harmful to rural America, which relies heavily on safety-net programs. Of the 100 counties with the highest percentage of their population receiving food stamps, 85 are rural, and most of the rest are in small metropolitan areas. The expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, which Trump keeps trying to kill, had its biggest positive impact on rural areas.

And these programs are crucial to rural Americans even if they don’t personally receive government aid. Safety-net programs bring purchasing power, which helps create rural jobs. Medicaid is also a key factor keeping rural hospitals alive; without it, access to health care would be severely curtailed for rural Americans in general.

What about protectionism? 

In fact, the U.S. farm sector is hugely dependent on access to world markets, much more so than the economy as a whole. American soybean growers export half of what they produce; wheat farmers export 46% of their crop. China, in particular, has become a key market for U.S. farm products. That’s why Trump’s recent rage-tweeting over trade, which raised the prospect of an expanded trade war, sent grain markets to a 42-year low.

It’s important to realize, by the way, that the threat to farmers isn’t just about possible foreign retaliation to Trump’s tariffs. 

One fundamental principle in international economics is that in the long run, taxes on imports end up being taxes on exports as well, usually because they lead to a higher dollar. If the world descends into trade war, U.S. imports and exports will both shrink — and farmers, among our most important exporters, will be the biggest losers.

Why, then, do rural areas support Trump? A lot of it has to do with cultural factors. In particular, rural voters are far more hostile to immigrants than urban voters — especially in communities where there are few immigrants to be found. Lack of familiarity apparently breeds contempt.

Rural voters also feel disrespected by coastal elites, and Trump has managed to channel their anger. No doubt many rural voters, if they happened to read this column, would react with rage, not at Trump, but at me: “So you think we’re stupid!”

But support for Trump might nonetheless start to crack if rural voters realized how much they are being hurt by his policies. 

What’s a Trumpist to do?

Trumpzism might be cracking, especially with farmers who are not wealthy and the trade war is harming their ability to trade.

Trump repeats zombie lies. A few weeks ago Trump told a cheering rally that his cuts in the estate tax have helped farmers. This claim is, however, totally false; PolitiFact rated it “pants on fire.” The reality is that in 2017 only about 80 farms and closely held businesses — that’s right, 80 — paid any estate tax at all. Tales of family farms broken up to pay estate tax are pure fiction.

Another answer is to try to suppress the truth. Hence the persecution of Agriculture Department economists who were just trying to do their jobs.

The thing is, the assault on truth will have consequences that go beyond politics. Agriculture’s Economic Research Service isn’t supposed to be a cheering section for whoever is in power. As its mission statement says, its role is to conduct “high-quality, objective economic research to inform and enhance public and private decision making.” And that’s not an idle boast: Along with the Federal Reserve, the research service is a prime example of how good economics can serve practical purposes.

Now, however, the service’s ability to do its job is being rapidly degraded, because the Trump administration doesn’t believe in fact-based policy. Basically, it doesn’t believe in facts, period. Everything is political.

And who will pay the price for this degradation? Rural Americans. Trump’s biggest supporters are his biggest victims.

Paul Krugman is a columnist for the New York Times.

Poppies and economics - Bill Bonner's Diary

Kilkenny Ireland St. Canice's Cathedral - Dubay photo

This interesting perspective is from Ireland, linking creative correlations between "real wars" and economic "trade wars". There's intelligent thoughts brought together in Bill Bonner's Diary.  Very well written....

I'll have to follow some of the other blogs by Bill Bonner, Chairman, Bonner & Partners

YOUGHAL, IRELAND – The muffled bells began tolling at precisely 11 o’clock on the 11th day of the 11th month of the year. And then, the poppies began to fall.

St. Canice’s Cathedral in Kilkenny was marking the end of the Great War by dropping red, paper poppy flowers, inscribed with the names of local soldiers, from the bell tower down into the nave.

For the next two hours, the poppies fell, one for every one of Ireland’s young men who died in the war… 35,000 in all.

They were shot, gassed, or blown to bits. Brothers, husbands, and sons – and fathers, too. About 25,000 Irish children never saw their fathers again.

Kilkenomics Festival - Irish economist David McWilliams invited participants to the “Kilkenomics Festival.” 

We wrote much about “Trump’s Trade War,” David must have thought we knew something about it. So we were asked to join a panel discussion.

“We’re talking about two different things here,” we clarified, for the sake of the audience.

“There’s a trade war, which is largely fake. And there’s the threat of a real war, which a trade war might cause.”

We explained our point of view. Donald Trump has the most to lose from a trade war with China. His reputation for creating a strong economy… his reputation for forceful and successful deal-making… the fortunes of his major backers, as well as his own personal fortune – all depend on cutting a deal with the Chinese.

He could bring China to its knees, we explained, by blocking Chinese imports to the U.S. But he would enjoy his triumph for only about 10 seconds – the time it would take to notice that the U.S. stock market was crashing.

Trump may be a blowhard and a dumbbell about a lot of things, but not about which side his bread is buttered on. He will want to come back from his meeting with China’s Mr. Xi at the G20 summit in Argentina at the end of this month with a victory announcement… not with a double obituary – one for “his” economy and the other for his career. But wait… It’s not that simple.

Thucydides Trap- When one great power threatens to displace another, war is almost always the result -- but it doesn’t have to be. “Trump is, above all, a showman. But shows sometimes veer off in unexpected and unwelcome directions", we said.

“And while POTUS may only be posturing for his admirers, China may see its future and its livelihood being threatened. Indeed, China,may not have gotten the memo: that this is just showbiz. It may be unwilling to read from the script or play its role for the Trump fanbase. Something could go very wrong.”

The other panelists were ahead of us. They thought things had already gone wrong.

“This trade war has already gone way beyond trade,” said Neil Howe, who developed the theory of a generational cycle in American politics. “It’s now about intellectual property theft and technology transfers. It’s now about geopolitics and China’s rise as a great power. America feels threatened. It feels like it is losing its place in the world.”

Howe cited Graham Allison’s “Thucydides Trap.” The idea is that as great powers are challenged by rising powers, it leads to war.

According to Greek historian Thucydides, it was the Spartans’ desire to keep Athens from getting too big for its britches that caused the Peloponnesian war.

And many think it was Germany’s rise as a great power in the early 20th century that caused France and England to rush into World War I… and to punish Germany so harshly after the war.

Yesterday marked the hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I. For 100 years, historians have been trying to find a plausible explanation for the deaths of 37 million people. Thucydides was probably not far off.

Two Impulses

Germany never surrendered. She only signed onto an Armistice.

But then, with her ports blockaded, her people starving, and her resources exhausted, she was forced to accept the “war guilt,” though Germany was arguably no more guilty than any of the other participants of the war.

Germany was also saddled with “reparations,” which crippled her economy. And in 1921, when she was unable to make a reparations payment – in gold, of course – the French and Belgian troops invaded and occupied the Ruhr Valley.

As we have been exploring, there are two main impulses in human transactions: win-win and win-lose. You either do voluntary deals, in the hope of both parties coming out ahead. Or you force someone else to lose so that you can “win.”

Most of private life is win-win (though there are always some people trying to get ahead by making others lose).

Public life, on the other hand, is dominated by government, which is an us-versus-them, win-lose enterprise.

And in war, win-lose finds its most dramatic expression. You can’t win a war without making someone else lose. And in the case of World War I, the above-referenced 37 million corpses were the big losers.

Win-win deals often lead participants to want to win again… that is, to do more deals (business, consumption, sex… whatever).

But win-lose deals leave participants looking for revenge. So the 37 million losers from World War I ended up as simply the downpayment on the total win-lose tally for the 20th century.

Adolf Hitler was on the case. By 1921, he was the chief of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party – or Nazi Party – and he was already peddling his us-versus-them, win-lose claptrap. “We were stabbed in the back,” he claimed. By 1945, another 60 million people had been added to the losers’ list.

The church service in Kilkenny ended with a bugler performing “The Last Post”… which was played at the end of the killing…

Then, the last poppy drifted down and came to rest on the floor… like the last soldier falling into the mud of the trenches.

The church grew quiet.

And after a minute or two of silence, a baby began to cry.

Regards,

Bill

Trump farm tariffs tank in Iowa ~ echo opinion

Trump's farm (unwanted!) bailout is not what Iowa farmers want: Editorial published in the newspaper, the Des Moines Register

See if this makes sense to you: Donald Trump starts a trade war with China. When American farmers complain, he decides to pay them off with $12 billion. Meanwhile, he continues to borrow money from China to keep the government running.

It’s just one of the absurdities sprinkled like soy nuts on top of the half-baked corn muffin of Trump’s scheme to reverse trade deficits while driving up the federal deficit and debt.

Here’s what we’re talking about at the Des Moines Register:

Trump thinks China is ripping off the United States by using protectionist trade practices that put American businesses at a disadvantage. So he unilaterally imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum and other foreign goods, launching a trade war of retaliatory tariffs, including on soybeans, pork and other agricultural goods, produced in Iowa.

Farmers, who stand to lose billions of dollars in exports, complain, so Trump proposes up to $12 billion in direct payments and other aid for agriculture. This isn’t tax money — it comes from fees paid on imports from places like, well, China. But it’s money going out while the federal budget is projected to run up a trillion-dollar deficit by 2020.
China remains the United States’ largest foreign lender, with about $1.2 trillion of our debt as of October 2017, according to Bloomberg News.

Japan and Brazil are next in line. Brazil, by the way, is a major competitor in the soybean export business, and it stands to gobble up market share from Iowa and other major exporters.

It isn’t any wonder that some prominent conservatives, including the Koch brothers, and budget hawks like Sen. Rand Paul are lambasting the move as “welfare” for farmers.

"Tariffs are taxes that punish American consumers and producers," Paul wrote on Twitter. "If tariffs punish farmers, the answer is not welfare for farmers — the answer is remove the tariffs."

Most of Iowa’s Republican congressional delegation seems to agree that the farm aid package is a Band-Aid that wouldn’t be necessary if Trump would just agree to refrain from the unnecessary limb amputation. But they are still willing to take the Band-Aid.

Sen. Joni Ernst put it this way: “In Iowa alone, more than 456,000 jobs are supported by global trade, and these new tariffs are threatening $977 million in state exports. While a trade mitigation package could boost farmer morale in the short term, this is ultimately a short-term fix. We need a longer-term strategy to ensure that farmers are able to sell their goods around the globe.”

Rep. David Young was more skeptical of the aid package, however. "What this really is, though, is the administration — the president — admitting that his trade policies are hurting Iowa farmers and producers, and all across the heartland for that matter," Young said in an interview with WHO-TV. "Farmers want markets, they want trade, and not necessarily this aid."

The timing of Trump’s aid package is highly suspicious. 

As the Register, the Washington Post and other media have reported, most soybean farmers are doing fine right now because most of their crop was sold in advance at higher prices than today’s market rate. That may not be the case with all other producers and manufacturers, but the real concern seems to be about what might happen if this trade war drags into next year.

The apparent goal of Trump’s farm giveaway and the way it is most likely to be effective is as a $12 billion mute button for the legitimate concerns of farmers, agribusinesses and officials in rural, GOP-friendly states. And right before the midterm elections, too. Does this plan make sense now?

This editorial is the opinion of the Des Moines Register’s editorial board: Carol Hunter, executive editor; Kathie Obradovich, opinion editor; Andie Dominick, editorial writer, and Richard Doak and Rox Laird, editorial board members.