sadmanbarty

Well-known member
But longtime watchers of money in politics cannot recall any president in recent history who has filled a Cabinet with so many major donors

“In the past, they were a little hidden — they were sent overseas to be ambassadors,” said David Donnelly, president of Every Voice, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce the influence of wealthy donors on politics. “In this administration, they are going to be front and center making policy.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ampaign-and-the-party/?utm_term=.31bc04b12814
 

firefinga

Well-known member
But longtime watchers of money in politics cannot recall any president in recent history who has filled a Cabinet with so many major donors

This is basically institutioned corruption. The Trump presidency is shaping up to be first and foremost a Kleptocracy.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member

Krugman talks about the implications for trade and manufacturing:

"This won't do much for growth, because Fed will raise rates and crowd out other spending. It will also strengthen dollar which will be bad for manufacturing. It's Reaganomics redux -- not the recovery of 1982-4 (which was the Fed) but the second term which was when people first started talking about manufacturing decline. Use of term "Rust Belt":

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzfXu7zXEAEvUxe.jpg

What Reaganomics did to trade:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Czfjeg8XAAEZ79t.jpg:large

https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/1987/01/1987a_bpea_krugman_baldwin_bosworth_hooper.pdf

Trade deficits in manufactured goods began under Reagan, due to loose fiscal/tight money"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CzfxMDXWgAEySH1.jpg "
 

Leo

Well-known member
Trump Is Using Cabinet Picks to Wage War on the Executive Branch

There are a number of ways to describe the characteristics of the cabinet President-elect Donald Trump seems to be putting together. He’s got a lot of CEOs (four including Rex Tillerson at State) and former generals (three at last count). He seems to be for the most part choosing appointees who please — or at least do not displease — conventionally conservative Republicans. And there’s remarkably little government experience in the group as a whole, unless military experience is considered fully relevant.

But perhaps the most disturbing feature of the Trump cabinet so far is the number of appointees who do not believe in the core missions of the agencies they are being asked to run. Indeed, they seem designed to sabotage any effort to fulfill those missions.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...-the-executive-branch-with-cabinet-picks.html

you gotta love it when he picks rick perry to run the agency perry couldn't even name in the 2012 GOP primary debate.

for ol' times' sake:

 

IdleRich

IdleRich
There have been a lot of people explaining why people voted as they did and how everyone should have seen it coming. It amuses me that if the election was rigged and votes actually changed then the event they're all so knowledgeable about and so qualified to explain may not actually be what happened at all. No-one ever has to apologise or admit that they are wrong for that sort of thing though do they?
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Sad interview of an Obamacare-dependant Trump supporter.
That is sad. It is also kinda hard to understand. I mean, she watched the debates, it's not like she's one of those guys who go "Who is David Cameron? Oh yeah, he's the boring guy who is on telly sometimes before the footie results, I think I'll vote for the other guy" - she just didn't register what she saw/heard. I suppose it just shows the extent that politics in the US has become a partisan sport where you just shout for the side you've always supported, rather than working out which one might be best for you.
I remember once when I worked at London Underground this guy told me that it was utterly against his principles to vote for the Tories - I said, how about if tomorrow Labour and the Conservatives utterly switched all their policies and effectively Labour became Conservative (and vice versa) in all but name? He said, it's against my principles to vote Tory so I'd still vote Labour. Thing is, he was working in the post room doing a very simple job because he had learning difficulties and was kinda like a child, I didn't realise that so many fully developed adults thought in the same way...
 

comelately

Wild Horses
Apologies if this has been posted before: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all

When Schwartz began writing “The Art of the Deal,” he realized that he needed to put an acceptable face on Trump’s loose relationship with the truth. So he concocted an artful euphemism. Writing in Trump’s voice, he explained to the reader, “I play to people’s fantasies. . . . People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and it’s a very effective form of promotion.” Schwartz now disavows the passage. “Deceit,” he told me, is never “innocent.” He added, “ ‘Truthful hyperbole’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s a way of saying, ‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ ” Trump, he said, loved the phrase.
 

Leo

Well-known member
"In one of their first moves of the new Congress, House Republicans have voted to gut their own independent ethics watchdog — a huge blow to cheerleaders of congressional oversight"

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/house-republicans-gut-their-own-oversight-233111

best part: a number of the GOP reps who pushed this are or were recently under investigation by said ethics office. welcome to republican world, where the swamp is bottomless.

also, "‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ ” so perfectly sums up the trump campaign and way of life. it may have been time for an outsider in washington, but this one is at best just a con man.
 

vimothy

yurp
[W]hen the host [at a Heritage event] asked whether Trump might be “more sensitive and self-restrained” than Obama in the use of executive power, the room erupted in laughter.... Goldberg... insisted that, despite Trump’s declarations of partisan fealty, he was at heart “a lifelong Democrat from New York who likes to cut deals.” He argued that conservatives should make it their mission to keep President Trump in line—to insure that “he has to deal with us and get our approval on the important things.”

But why should Trump now heed a political movement that was unable to stop him? In May, he told George Stephanopoulos, “Don’t forget, this is called the Republican Party. It’s not called the Conservative Party.” During the campaign, Trump declared himself a convert to some conservative causes, like the pro-life movement, while unapologetically spurning others: he excoriated the “Republican Establishment,” took a skeptical view of free trade and free markets, and shrugged at gay marriage and transgender bathroom guidelines. Trump’s popularity was undimmed by these transgressions, which led Rush Limbaugh to suggest, in one memorable broadcast, that “the Republican conservative base is not monolithically conservative.” If liberals were shocked, on Election Night, to realize that they were outnumbered (in the swing states, at least), then many leading conservatives must have been even more shocked to discover, throughout the year, that their movement was no longer theirs—if it ever had been. We have grown accustomed to hearing stories about the liberal bubble, but the real story of this year’s election was about the conservative bubble: the results showed how sharply the priorities of the movement’s leaders differed from those of their putative followers.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/09/intellectuals-for-trump
 

comelately

Wild Horses
also, "‘It’s a lie, but who cares?’ ” so perfectly sums up the trump campaign and way of life.

Is it really such a paradigm shift though? It's not like we really believe that every other politician tells the truth? It's his disdain for keeping up the pretence that's the problem right?

Echoing vimothy's recent thoughts, isn't he just disrespecting institutions that aren't really considered worthy of respect by many liberals anyway?

I recently read (well scanned) a thesis about Derrida and Plato which emphasises that their texts to be participated with rather than to be "understood literally". Sure by playing a similar game Trump might be considered to be unaccountable for what he says/does, but unaccountable compared to whom exactly?

http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/doc/1733679911.html?FMT=ABS

The NLP Community have long held that "The meaning of a communication is the response it elicits". None of this stuff is new or unique to the political right (the thesis writer is also an Esalen weenie, albeit a bright one).
 
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comelately

Wild Horses
Back on my former ethics tutor Glen Newey

Glen Newey's main research interests are in political philosophy. His work focuses on toleration, the nature of politics, political morality, including the ethics of deception in public life, security, freedom of speech, and the political theory of Thomas Hobbes. He argues that modern liberalism, as defended by John Rawls and his followers, sidelines politics in favour of a moralised account of public life.

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

'Politics should be regarded as less like an exercise in producing truthful statements and more like a poker game,' said author Glen Newey, reader in politics at the University of Strathclyde. 'And there is an expectation by a poker player that you try to deceive them as part of the game.'

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2003/may/18/research.highereducation
 
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