Sound The TRUMPets! A Thread for Presidential Pondering 2016-2020(?)

[zamyrabyrd]

Right, unless people on welfare happen to use that money to buy goods and services, putting the dollars right back in the economy. Crazy idea, I know.

That argument can be used for anything that money is spent on.  The $21 billion dollars of the US debt was used for something. The point is where the money is coming from and not how it is changing hands. Those who collect welfare are not contributing to the economy by spending someone else's money.

[drogulus]

That's a pleasant daydream. He will play good cop, like McMaster, Mattis, and Kelly...

     They are all gone, Barr is coming in. Of course Trump could fire Barr. But if he did that would confirm my view that Barr dangled bait in front of him and then Trump found to his horror that in spite of the crankish bait Barr is a normal person. He does have outdated views on drug wars and his itty bitty wall. It doesn't matter to me that some of the bait is reality based, it makes it good bait.

[drogulus]

Creating dollars out of thin air become not even worth the paper they are printed on.
Money spent on welfare may as well be burned for kindling since it disappears in a black hole anyway.

     Dollars don't disappear until they are taxed back into the thin air they came from. Spent money exists, tax dollars are what we used to call redemptions, and you can't redeem notes that were never issued. It's redemptions that are burned, at one time literally burned as in colonial America. Notes that are not redeemed are what we call savings, the total of savings is also called the national debt. If the savings didn't exist, how the hell could we have a debt?

     About the welfare dollars, they are dollars. Just because your dollars are not called "welfare" doesn't mean there's no welfare in them. I fare well with mine. I know my taxes don't pay welfare, I know welfare to people who need it pays me because all dollars used to lift the economy do.

[drogulus]

Right, unless people on welfare happen to use that money to buy goods and services, putting the dollars right back in the economy. Crazy idea, I know.

     It works differently on a right wing planet, I know.....an evil planet, a bug planet.

[drogulus]

That argument can be used for anything that money is spent on.  The $21 billion dollars of the US debt was used for something. The point is where the money is coming from and not how it is changing hands. Those who collect welfare are not contributing to the economy by spending someone else's money.

     How can money come from somewhere if it isn't spent into existence? Money is not a traffic circle with no on and off ramps. The power to get money in and remove it is what government has used ever since states and state credits were invented. Do not confuse money with what money is for. If we don't run out of the stuff money moves there's no good reason to run out of the money.

     There is no such thing as a money system running out of its money! That's why we have to fake it with debt ceilings. Why would we have to fake "running out of dollars" if we really could?

[BasilValentine]

So, has anyone thought of an explanation for Trump's behavior in taking five private meetings with Putin, and destroying all evidence of their content, that doesn't involve criminal self-dealing and conspiracy against the interests of the U.S.? I haven't either. What should be obvious therefore, and as several talking heads have pointed out: Trump is lethally compromised and must be removed from office. Why? Because Putin surely has recordings and other documentation of those conversations and Trump considers such evidence dangerous enough to his interests to destroy. Putin therefore has him by the balls, although this has undoubtedly been true for a decade or more based on records of Trump's numerous financial crimes overseas.

And why is the Trump administration so keen to lift sanctions on oligarch Oleg Derapaska? Derapaska is the man to whom Paul Manifort owed 11 million dollars and for which he was being sued while he was Trump's campaign manager. The suit was dropped around the time Manafort both offered Derapaska an inside track on the Trump campaign and gave internal Republican polling data to operatives of the GRU. Mysterious, no? — unless Derapaska has information or evidence damaging to the Trump campaign. 

[drogulus]

   

So, has anyone thought of an explanation for Trump's behavior in taking five private meetings with Putin, and destroying all evidence of their content, that doesn't involve criminal self-dealing and conspiracy against the interests of the U.S.? I haven't either. What should be obvious therefore, and as several talking heads have pointed out: Trump is lethally compromised and must be removed from office. Why? Because Putin surely has recordings and other documentation of those conversations and Trump considers such evidence dangerous enough to his interests to destroy. Putin therefore has him by the balls, although this has undoubtedly been true for a decade or more based on records of Trump's numerous financial crimes overseas.

And why is the Trump administration so keen to lift sanctions on oligarch Oleg Derapaska? Derapaska is the man to whom Paul Manifort owed 11 million dollars and for which he was being sued while he was Trump's campaign manager. The suit was dropped around the time Manafort both offered Derapaska an inside track on the Trump campaign and gave internal Republican polling data to operatives of the GRU. Mysterious, no? — unless Derapaska has information or evidence damaging to the Trump campaign. 

     The willingness of Senate Repubs to break with Trump will be indicated by a series of trial votes. The votes will use policy opposition to test the waters for something beyond that, though the fact that the opposition has merit on its own means Senators can avoid being characterized as traitors to the Party. Trumpists have to tread carefully here as an all out assault on erstwhile allies could backfire.

     Watch Clark Graham...and watch him close, you hear me? The straddle he's performing is one for the record books.

[71 dB]

That argument can be used for anything that money is spent on.  The $21 billion dollars of the US debt was used for something. The point is where the money is coming from and not how it is changing hands. Those who collect welfare are not contributing to the economy by spending someone else's money.

Salaries are not an 1 to 1 indicator of contributions to the economy. It's not so simple to calculate how much someone working in say Walmart contributes to the economy. Millionaires and billionaires are overcompensated for their contributions because they are in the position of power and can do so. Just another justification for high taxes for the rich.

[71 dB]

     How can money come from somewhere if it isn't spent into existence? Money is not a traffic circle with no on and off ramps. The power to get money in and remove it is what government has used ever since states and state credits were invented. Do not confuse money with what money is for. If we don't run out of the stuff money moves there's no good reason to run out of the money.

     There is no such thing as a money system running out of its money! That's why we have to fake it with debt ceilings. Why would we have to fake "running out of dollars" if we really could?

Macroeconomics is one of the most misunderstood things in the World imo and politicians exploit this fact. People can "save money" (which actually means you use the money later. You can postpone your spendings for 10 years without harm to the economy, because somebody else postponed their spendings 10 years ago and is spending their money today), but the whole macroeconomic system can't save all at once, because it would halt everything. You HAVE TO spend money to keep the "wheels turning" and the only thing you can and should do is to spend the money wisely. Macroeconomy is not only the amount of money in circulation, but also the speed it circulates. Welfare in general is a very good way to keep money circulating (plus it helps people increasing their quality of life which should be the main target of a society). Giving tax cuts to the richest people is a bad way to increase circulation, because billionaires have too much money to be ever spend and their money becomes efectively removed from the the circulation making it harder to keep the economy running well. Also, increased taxes don't really hurt the rich. It's not like 10 yachts don't make you happy, but 11 yachts do.

[SimonNZ]

T-Mobile announced a merger needing Trump administration approval. The next day, 9 executives had reservations at Trump's hotel.


elsewhere someone suggested that Trump thinks  Emoluments Clause is Santa Claus' brother.

[drogulus]

     Can I get a tax refund if I stay there?

     If you could see my face you'd know I'm not serious. I don't want a refund, it would add to national savings which we all know is a huge problem.

[Rinaldo]

https://twitter.com/theseantcollins/status/1085238456744316929

[SimonNZ]

I was just coming to link to an article on that:

As Poll Shows Majority Back 70% Tax Rate for Ultra-Rich, Ocasio-Cortez's "Radical" Proposal Proves Extremely Mainstream. "I don't think it's surprising," said the New York congresswoman. "What we see, overall, is that the vast majority of Americans know that income inequality is one of the biggest issues of our time."

[SimonNZ]

quoting in full:

If TSA Workers Go on Strike, Trump Might Relish the Chance to Play Reagan

"As Trump's partial government shutdown drags on with no end in sight, attention is beginning to shift from furloughed federal workers and unperformed tasks to "essential" federal employees who are being forced to work without pay. Their ranks swelled this week as the administration "recalled" an estimated 46,000 furloughed workers, the majority of them at the IRS, where the GOP's precious tax cuts are being doled out via endangered refunds.

Many of the "essential" employees are at work on chores remote from the public eye, such as processing oil-drilling paperwork for the nation's extremely vital fossil-fuel industry, already reeling from years of Democratic persecution. Even IRS staff are invisible to most taxpayers lucky enough to avoid audits or other enforcement actions. And so the most visible symbol of involuntary servitude during the shutdown has become the 51,000 employees of the Transportation Security Administration. For anyone who flies, they are essential employees indeed, and the rising number who are calling in sick to protest the situation have already caused serious airport delays.

The union representing TSA employees has gone to court to challenge the work-without-pay system, but a parallel petition by the union representing IRS employees was rejected earlier this week by a federal judge who warned of chaos if unpaid workers were allowed to go home until pay is appropriated. So each day that passes without progress toward a resolution of the stalemate in Washington increases the possibility of the previously unimaginable: a TSA strike.

This specter was raised publicly in a New York Times op-ed by Barbara Ehrenreich and Gary Stevenson, who noted the relatively low pay (a starting wage of $23,000) and high visibility of TSA agents, plus the possibility that they could build on last year's wave of public-sector labor activism:

T. S.A. workers should use last year's teachers' strikes as a model. They were called not by the leadership of the teachers' unions but by the rank and file. It was a new kind of labor activism, starting at the bottom and depending heavily on community support. By sticking together and creating their own communication system, the teachers succeeded in sending a powerful message of solidarity and strength.

But Ehrenreich and Stevenson also acknowledge a specter haunting the potential TSA strike that could shut down the nation's airports:

In 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization struck over wages and working conditions, prompting President Ronald Reagan to fire 11,000 highly skilled workers, replacing them with military personnel. Patco was destroyed and unions in general retreated into a defensive crouch. Who wants to risk something like that again?

That's a good question. Reagan's decision to fight the illegal strike was risky and curtailed air travel for quite some time. But it worked wonders for him politically, as Joseph McCartin observed years later:

He showed federal workers and Soviet leaders alike how tough he could be. Although there were 39 illegal work stoppages against the federal government between 1962 and 1981, no significant federal job actions followed Reagan's firing of the Patco strikers. His forceful handling of the walkout, meanwhile, impressed the Soviets, strengthening his hand in the talks he later pursued with Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Whatever it did or didn't accomplish in concrete terms, the PATCO strike and its aftermath became a key part of the Reagan mythos and the enduring adulation he earned from conservatives. You could see how that example might be appealing to his current successor, who views himself as a world-historical figure fighting resolutely for America against a host of subversive forces.

So just to play this out, if TSA workers did go on strike, could Trump respond the way Reagan did? That's unclear. On the one hand, there is no military equivalent to the armies of TSA screeners deployed at U.S. airports. On the other, screening is a vastly less complex process than air traffic control functions; presumably military personnel could be trained to take on screening responsibilities with reasonable dispatch.

The politics of breaking a TSA strike are not entirely clear, either. PATCO members struck over standard collective-bargaining issues like pay, benefits, and working conditions. The federal government has clearly breached its contract with TSA employees, and nobody supports the travesty of extended involuntary work without pay, even if pay is guaranteed (as it has been in legislation passed by Congress and signed by Trump) when the shutdown is finally resolved. In addition, Trump has the alternative remedy of simply letting the federal government reopen and continuing his fight with Democrats over his border-wall fetish without the hostages he's chosen to take. And in the final analysis, Trump, the border wall, and the shutdown are all significantly less popular than Ronald Reagan was in 1981.

Still, one can imagine malevolent aides whispering in Trump's ear that breaking a public employee strike could be a legacy-making "accomplishment," much like it was for Reagan, and long before that, for Calvin Coolidge, whose successful battle against a Boston police strike in 1919 led to his vice-presidential nomination in 1920 and his ascension to the presidency on the death of Warren Harding.

Axios reported today that Trump is fond of citing boxer Mike Tyson's dictum that "[e]verybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." He is contemptuous of the very idea of having a plan for the end of the government shutdown. A TSA strike might push him to an impulsive action a more prudent executive would avoid like the plague. But for unpaid workers and those spoiling for a definitive fight with Trump, it might be worth the risk to defy him.

[drogulus]

I was just coming to link to an article on that:

As Poll Shows Majority Back 70% Tax Rate for Ultra-Rich, Ocasio-Cortez's "Radical" Proposal Proves Extremely Mainstream. "I don't think it's surprising," said the New York congresswoman. "What we see, overall, is that the vast majority of Americans know that income inequality is one of the biggest issues of our time."

     This is an excerpt from TAXES FOR REVENUE ARE OBSOLETE by Beardsley Ruml, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York published in 1946:


     The public purpose which is served should never be obscured in a tax program under the mask of raising revenue.

    What Taxes Are Really For

Federal taxes can be made to serve four principal purposes of a social and economic character. These purposes are:

    1. As an instrument of fiscal policy to help stabilize the purchasing power of the dollar;

    2. To express public policy in the distribution of wealth and of income, as in the case of the progressive income and estate taxes;

    3. To express public policy in subsidizing or in penalizing various industries and economic groups;

    4. To isolate and assess directly the costs of certain national benefits, such as highways and social security.


      I would not use the word "obsolete" today. The presence of "revenue thoughts" in the minds of policy makers bears no relation to what taxes do. Certainly the currency issuer doesn't need tax dollars to spend. It does need to spend dollars to tax. The tax on unspent dollars is zero.

     

[SimonNZ]

[SimonNZ]

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez vs. Wall Street: Lawmaker wins spot on powerful House committee

"With a seat on the House Financial Services Committee, Ocasio-Cortez could find herself questioning Wells Fargo's CEO, Tim Sloan, about years of allegations that the bank has abused customers, or Ben Carson, director of Housing and Urban Development, about affordable housing. "I am very grateful for the opportunity to sit on this committee as a freshman," Ocasio-Cortez said on Twitter late Tuesday.

The committee will be led by another progressive hero, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the first woman and first African American to lead the committee."

[Karl Henning]

Rudy Giuliani: 'I never said there was no collusion' between Trump campaign and Russia
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/01/17/rudy-giuliani-says-i-never-said-there-was-no-collusion-between-trump-campaign-russia/

[Karl Henning]

It was foreseeable that Trump, a Kremlin toady during the campaign, would turn out to be a Russian stooge in office. The only question is what kind he is. "Is it malice? Or stupidity? Is his fawning appeasement a sign that he is a Russian asset or a credulous dupe? Is the story of Russiagate more James Bond or, as David French suggests, more Austin Powers?"

[drogulus]

It was foreseeable that Trump, a Kremlin toady during the campaign, would turn out to be a Russian stooge in office. The only question is what kind he is. "Is it malice? Or stupidity? Is his fawning appeasement a sign that he is a Russian asset or a credulous dupe? Is the story of Russiagate more James Bond or, as David French suggests, more Austin Powers?"

     The thing about real spy stories is that they have elements of both. Traitors are often clownish figures, and in retrospect it's incredible that they get away with their treachery as long as they do. Often it involves a willingness of gatekeepers to look away. That is often the most interesting part of the story.

    Why did Trump get away with so much for so long? Why are so many people still covering for him?