Where is/can Donald Trump take US (sic)?

[moXJO]

Good take.

I think the massive changes in technology, employment, climate, media etc has given people a scare. People want change but they don't know exactly what the want. The illusion of safety has gone now that media has changed.

 

[sptrawler]

I read that whole article and found it an excellent analysis of the American situation. Totally spot on.
The facts are there. The very large majority of the population is struggling to stay afloat while a very small sector are making out like bandits.

I may have posted this previously but there is an excellent analysis of income distribution in the US which shows that from 1945 till roughly 1975 incomes across the broad population rose steadily and in fact created a large relatively secure working class and middle class.

However since the mid eighties all the increase in wealth have gone to the rich and super rich. The working class and middle class have been squeezed till the pips squeak. That is the problem Maudlin recognises and says needs to be addressed.

https://equitablegrowth.org/the-dis...-states-and-implications-for-a-net-worth-tax/

View attachment 100672

That graph finishes at 2016, you don't have a graph that includes anything more recent?

 

[basilio]

What has happened to wealth distribution in the US under the Trump administration ?
There is an analysis on the web. It is presented as a table but doesn't copy well.

Using Federal Reserve data, the Washington Center for Equitable Growth reported in August 2019 that: "Looking at the cumulative growth of wealth disaggregated by group, we see that the bottom 50 percent of wealth owners experienced no net wealth growth since 1989. At the other end of the spectrum, the top 1 percent have seen their wealth grow by almost 300 percent since 1989. Although cumulative wealth growth was relatively similar among all wealth groups through the 1990s, the top 1 percent and bottom 50 percent diverged around 2000."[42]

Changes during Trump Administration
The Federal Reserve publishes information on the distribution of household wealth by quarter going back to 1989. From Q4 2016 (the end of the Obama Administration) to Q3 2019, nominal household net worth in total increased by $15.84 trillion or about 17%, driven primarily by stock market gains.

Since the bottom 50% of U.S. households measured by net worth have little if any stock market exposure (neither directly nor indirectly through 401k plans[44]), that group received $0.59 trillion of that gain, about 4% (i.e., 0.59/15.84). The 90-99th percentile received 35% of the gain, the top 1% received 34% and the 50th-90th percentile received 28%. The following table summarizes the Fed data:[6]

Household Net Worth 90th to 99th Top 1% 50th to 90th Bottom 50% Total
Q4 2016 ($ trillions) 34.59 29.18 26.53 1.08 91.38
Q3 2019 ($ trillions) 40.12 34.53 30.90 1.67 107.22
Increase ($ trillions) 5.53 5.35 4.37 0.59 15.84
% Increase 16% 18% 17% 55% 17%
Share of Increase (Increase/Total Increase) 35% 34% 28% 4% 100%
(Intentionally left blank)

Share of Net Worth Q4 2016 37.9% 31.9% 29.0% 1.2% 100%
Share of Net Worth Q3 2019 37.4% 32.2% 28.8% 1.6% 100%
Change in Share -0.43% +0.27% -0.21% +0.38% 0.0%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_inequality_in_the_United_States

 

[basilio]

Came across a clip from Magician Penn (from Penna and Teller) discussing Donald Trump as possible President in Aug 2016. He was on The Apprentice - and he liked Donald more than anyone else in the show..

Nothing we havn't seen in spades but illuminating.

 

[basilio]

What would a second Trump term as President look like ?

Rick Wilson was a Republician strategist who is now trying to save America from Trump. The first 6 minutes of this interview makes it clear how dangerous a totally unrestrained Donald Trump will be to the US. And he doesn't mince his words.

Learn something new.

 

[Knobby22]

In twenty years there will be books and movies about this....especially if Trump catches the virus. It could be like the story of Julius Ceaser.
I copied this from another thread.

As per of his war on science. Trump had cut the US Centre for Disease Control by 9% and just this month proposed slashing it by a further 16%.
He shut down the US Complex Crisis fund.

There only three test kits in all of America to test for the virus. They have only tested 426 people! They have no idea how many Americans have the virus!!! It could be thousands already.

 

[sptrawler]

GM may have shut down its RHD manufacturing, but it is ramping up its LHD manufacturing, at home.

https://www.businessinsider.com/gen...ers-at-2-michigan-factories-2020-2/?r=AU&IR=T

 

[basilio]

I don't think anyone has taken the appointment of Mike Pence seriously as spokesperson for the current administrations views on the Corona virus. But its still worth understanding just how determinedly anti science this admin is. If one isn't concerned about the picture of Mike Pence leading a meeting in prayer as a response to the crisis maybe this story will add more weight to teh question.

Mike Pence shouldn't lead the coronavirus taskforce. He can't be trusted
Lucky Tran
Putting Mike Pence in charge is proof that the White House wants to protect its political line, not protect Americans

... But letting officials speak freely isn’t the root cause of their problems; it’s that the Trump administration is elevating the wrong representatives, who don’t understand what they’re talking about.

This isn’t the first time the White House has restricted the speech of public health experts. In 2017, the administration prohibited CDC officials from using a list of seven words – including “evidence-based” and “science-based” – in official documents. Under these conditions, it’s impossible for scientists to do their work serving the public to the best of their abilities. During a public health crisis, any censorship could be catastrophic.

Pence’s appointment follows a track record of the administration prioritizing politics over scientific expertise. Trump has appointed fossil fuel lobbyists to lead the EPA, climate deniers to head up Nasa and the Council on Environmental Quality, Dow executives to USDA leadership, and a chemical industry insider to run the EPA’s toxic chemicals program. These appointments have eroded public trust and shifted the priorities of these agencies from saving lives to special interests.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/trump-coronavirus-plan-pence-politics

___________________________

Comments are more fun

Mikes view is its Gods will. No need for science or prevention. Same with climate change. It also doesnt cost much until your economy collapses.

On the contrary, I think that Mike Pence is one of the best people to tackle this. Simple actions like ensuring that men and women aren't in the same room together could greatly reduce the spread of the virus,

..............................................
“[Trump] made the choice of putting someone absolutely not up to the task to this crucial position

“It endangers us all. This isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue – we have the potential for [a coronavirus] outbreak in the US, and we needed to rise above the partisan fray.

”It’s like putting an arsonist in charge of the fire department, a bank robber in charge of the US Mint.”

Gregg Gonsalves, assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University.

 

[bellenuit]

From the NY Times. This is from a Republican Appointed Judge

Judge Calls Barr’s Handling of Mueller Report ‘Distorted’ and ‘Misleading’


The judge said the attorney general lacked credibility on the matter and said he would review the report to decide whether to make its redacted portions public.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Thursday sharply criticized Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of the report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, saying that Mr. Barr put forward a “distorted” and “misleading” account of its findings and lacked credibility on the topic.

Mr. Barr could not be trusted, Judge Reggie B. Walton said, citing “inconsistencies” between the attorney general’s statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned out to be more damaging to President Trump. Mr. Barr’s “lack of candor” called into question his “credibility and, in turn, the department’s” assurances to the court, Judge Walton said.

The judge ordered the Justice Department to privately show him the portions of the report that were censored in the publicly released version so he could independently verify the justifications for those redactions. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a full-text version of the report.

Read Judge Walton’s ruling.

The differences between the report and Mr. Barr’s description of it “cause the court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary,” wrote Judge Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

widely criticized. Still, it was striking to see a Republican-appointed federal judge scathingly dissect Mr. Barr’s conduct in a formal judicial ruling and declare that the sitting attorney general had so deceived the American people that he could not trust assertions made by a Justice Department under Mr. Barr’s control.

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A department spokeswoman had no immediate comment. The lawsuit centers on Freedom of Information requests by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and by Jason Leopold, a BuzzFeed News reporter.


Judge Walton’s decision focuses on the period last spring between the delivery of the Mueller report to the attorney general, his publicly issued summary of it two days later that drew widespread condemnation and the release of the report itself a month later that revealed several discrepancies between the documents.

Among those Judge Walton cited: Mr. Barr’s obfuscation about the scope of the links that investigators found between the Trump campaign and Russia, and how the report documented numerous episodes that appear to meet the criteria for obstruction of justice, echoing the complaints of many critics of Mr. Barr’s summary of the report.


Life Isn’t Like the Movies (Even if You Write the Movies)

Jewish Women Move Into a Male Domain: Ritual Circumcision

This Was Molly Seidel’s First Marathon. Her Next Will Be at the Olympics.

The attorney general issued an initial four-page letter in March 2019 — two days after receiving the 381-page Mueller report — that purported to summarize its principal conclusions. But within days, Mr. Mueller sent letters to Mr. Barr protesting that he had distorted its findings and asking him to swiftly release the report’s own summaries. Instead, Mr. Barr made the report public only weeks later, after a fuller review to black out sensitive material.

Among the issues Judge Walton flagged: Mr. Barr declared that the special counsel had not found that the Trump campaign had conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election, and left it at that.

But while Mr. Mueller did conclude that he found insufficient evidence to charge any Trump associates with conspiring with the Russians, Mr. Barr omitted that the special counsel had identified multiple contacts between Trump campaign officials and people with ties to the Russian government and that the campaign expected to benefit from Moscow’s interference.

Judge Walton also wrote that the special counsel “only concluded” that the investigation did not establish that the contacts rose to “coordination” because Mr. Mueller interpreted that term narrowly requiring, in the report’s words, agreement that is “more than the two parties taking actions that were informed by or responsive to the other’s actions or interests.”

In addition, Mr. Barr told the public in March that Mr. Mueller had made no decision about whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice, then pronounced Mr. Trump cleared of those suspicions.

But Mr. Barr “failed to disclose to the American public,” Judge Walton wrote, that Mr. Mueller had explained that it would be inappropriate to make a judgment while the president was still in office about whether he committed obstruction crimes. The report also said that if the evidence had cleared Mr. Trump, Mr. Mueller would have said so, but he was unable to exonerate him.

“The speed by which Attorney General Barr released to the public the summary of Special Counsel Mueller’s principal conclusions, coupled with the fact that Attorney General Barr failed to provide a thorough representation of the findings set forth in the Mueller report, causes the court to question whether Attorney General Barr’s intent was to create a one-sided narrative about the Mueller report — a narrative that is clearly in some respects substantively at odds with the redacted version of the Mueller report,” Judge Walton wrote.

in public comments made by Mr. Barr hours before he released the redacted version of the report in April.

Because of that pattern, Judge Walton wrote, he could not look away from the fact that the portions of the Mueller report that the Justice Department was withholding in the Freedom of Information Act case mirrored the deletions made under Mr. Barr’s guidance in the version of the report released in April.

That echoing, he wrote, causes “the court to question whether the redactions are self-serving and were made to support, or at the very least to not undermine, Attorney General Barr’s public statements and whether the department engaged in post-hoc rationalization to justify Attorney General Barr’s positions.”

Appointed to the Federal District Court bench in Washington in 2001, Judge Walton has presided over a variety of high-profile cases, including the perjury trial of the former baseball pitcher Roger Clemens and the trial of I. Lewis Libby Jr., the onetime chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney who was convicted of lying in connection with the leak of the identity of a C.I.A. operative. Mr. Trump pardoned Mr. Libby in 2018.

A former prosecutor who handled drug and street crime cases, Judge Walton is known for handing down tough sentences and for being careful and methodical. He also once broke up a street brawlnear the courthouse.

The Mueller ruling was not the first time that Judge Walton had criticized the actions of the Barr Justice Department. Last month, he unsealed the transcript of a September closed-door meeting with prosecutors about whether and when the department was going to charge Andrew G. McCabe, the former acting F.B.I. director whom Mr. Trump has vilified for his role in the Russia case, in connection with a leak investigation.

Noting in that September hearing that prosecutors had said to him weeks earlier that a decision about charging Mr. McCabe could come “literally within days,” Judge Walton chastised them for stringing along Mr. McCabe and noted the president’s comments about Mr. McCabe with disapproval, saying they created the appearance of a “banana republic.”

announcing last month that he would not be charged. Hours later, Judge Walton unsealed the transcript of the closed September hearing, which was part of a FOIA lawsuit filed by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

 

[basilio]

Could Republicians elect a Democrat President ?
Perhaps yes - if he's they right guy.. In fact these are the people who turned up to vote for Biden in the Super Tuesday Primaries.
Check it out

‘Never Trump’ Republicans Will Support Biden, not Sanders
Right-of-center voters are open to voting for a moderate Democrat. They have been helping one in the primaries.

... many of Mr. Biden’s college-educated, suburban supporters are right-leaning independents or moderate Republicans who supported candidates like John McCain and Mitt Romney. They don’t want to re-elect Donald Trump. And they’re willing to cross over to vote for a Democrat — a moderate and mainstream Democrat.

These voters might not identify with the “Never Trump” group of conservatives who vociferously oppose the president. But in practice, that’s who they are. They often voted for Republicans in the past and are now firmly anti-Trump. These voters can create winning margins for Democrats in swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and North Carolina in the general election.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/09/opinion/joe-biden-never-trump.html

 

[sptrawler]

Earlier Mr Trump said his administration would ask Congress to pass payroll tax relief in response to the public health and economic turmoil.

He also said he was seeking help for hourly-wage workers to ensure they are "not going to miss a paycheque" and "don't get penalised for something that's not their fault".

 

[basilio]

I don't think many people are impressed with Donald Trumps approach to tackling the Corona Virus.
Some telling points in this analysis.

Donald Trump is the very worst person to handle the coronavirus crisis
The president responded to the pandemic with denial and blaming foreigners. His incompetence and selfishness will be lethal

... The CDC director, Robert Redfield, an evangelical conservative with no previous experience in managing a large state agency, revealed how out of touch the administration was with the reality on the ground on Wednesday.

When asked by the House oversight committee why the US was not providing drive-through tests, as have been introduced elsewhere – he replied: “We’re trying to maintain the relationship between individuals and their healthcare providers.”

Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat pointed out to him that most Americans do not have a regular doctor, and certainly do not see a physician often enough to have a “relationship”. When they get seriously ill, most head for the emergency room of the country’s overstrained hospitals.

The lack of tests means that the country is stumbling blindfolded into the worst health crisis in decades. Despite warnings from his own experts, the president reportedly clings to the relatively low number of confirmed cases as a sign that the US might be spared the worst.

When the country is struck by the inevitable wave of sickness and deaths, sweeping aside Trump’s reassurances, it is hard to predict how he will react.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/12/donald-trump-coronavirus-crisis

 

[bellenuit]

Oh that it were true.....

The Trump Presidency Is Over

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...pNeyYaLmv3ddSaqUGGy9wG2QXOMbOe4xWc2ogAg2J7ZZQ

 

[IFocus]

Oh that it were true.....

The Trump Presidency Is Over

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...pNeyYaLmv3ddSaqUGGy9wG2QXOMbOe4xWc2ogAg2J7ZZQ

Hell that's daming

 

[Knobby22]

I stated about a year ago that I expected the Republicans to remove Trump given the chance with the impeachment.
Wayne said no way. He was right.

I never thought the Republicans would betray their principles to such an extent for power and it looks like they will lose anyway.

 

[moXJO]

The only thing getting rid of trump is if the Bernie bros vote Biden. That's it.

 

[IFocus]

Biden .........swapping one criminal for another, he has said he would extend health care.

 

[bellenuit]

We need to quarantine Donald Trump: He's confused, ignorant and afraid

https://www.salon.com/2020/03/14/we...rVYo7uJYx_DpsgpXUu81Kwfl5hEePKL95ULrzdOC14cf4

 

[basilio]

What is happening with the Trump administration today . Note the increase in people from Mars a Logo infected with the COVID 19 virus.
Also The Trump administration blocked states from using Medicaid to expand medical services as part the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

https://whatthefuckjusthappenedtoday.com/2020/03/13/day-1149/

Also worth noting the international outrage at the reported efforts of Donald Trump to buy a German companies promising corona vaccine as long as they had exclusive US rights.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...-working-on-coronavirus-vaccine-idUSKBN2120IV
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/...entists-for-coronavirus-cure-2020-3?r=US&IR=T
https://7news.com.au/lifestyle/heal...ve-access-to-german-covid-19-vaccine-c-747312

 

[wayneL]

The narrative still seems to be about the incompetence of Trump. I don't think the competency of anyone else in the frame for the presidency is any better to be honest.

I honestly believe that we as a society will have to move past this sort of politics.

It is truly unfortunate that we have an election this year, because the requisite politicking will necessarily obfuscate what is actually going on.

Realise that we are in this together