Saturday 30th of March 2024

saint ronald inspires mere donald...

trumponomics...

In March 1997, two Washington reporters published a book entitled Mirage: Why Neither Democrats nor Republicans Can Balance the Budget, End the Deficit, and Satisfy the Public. The authors were George Hager, then a reporter for the CQ Weekly Report, and Eric Pianin of the Washington Post. A blurb on Amazon described the book as “a story of wishful thinking compounded by a chronic failure of leadership.” The clear theme: the budget would never be balanced.

But the fiscal year that began just the following October produced a surplus of $21.9 billion. The next three years generated surpluses, respectively, of $126 billion, $236 billion, and $128 billion. When the paperback came out, the title had to be altered to reflect the intervening events that had totally negated the thesis. By then the book was worthless, and it quickly faded. Today Amazon lists it as “unavailable”—not even a tattered used copy to be found.

These were bright and accomplished reporters, and they weren’t alone. The vaunted Office of Management and Budget had projected a 1998 deficit of $339 billion; the touted Congressional Budget Office pegged it at $357 billion.

How did they all get it so wrong? Largely because they fell into the analytical trap of static thinking, a Washington occupational hazard. Under this mindset, there simply didn’t seem to be any way Congress could surmount the political and fiscal barriers standing athwart the necessary revenue generation or expenditure reductions needed for a balanced budget. After all, during President Bill Clinton’s first term, deficits had average $124 billion a year.

This slice of Washington fiscal history is worth noting amidst the squeals and warnings surrounding President Trump’s tax overhaul package, which passed by Congress with nary a Democratic vote. The CBO projects the tax bill’s negative impact on the deficit to be $1.5 trillion over a decade, and maybe it will be. But the experience of Hager and Pianin suggests we really don’t know, and neither do the so-called experts.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/trumps-tax-gambit-hoping...

 

just passing through...

Many of the arguments that Republicans have used to sell their tax bill are completely implausible. There is overwhelming reason to believe, for example, that the tax cut won’t pay for itself. Then there’s President Donald Trump’s claim that the legislation will cost him a “fortune.”

Trump could prove today that he’s telling the truth by releasing his tax returns. He just chooses not to. And everything we know about his finances suggests he will actually save tens of millions of dollars in the years to come.

Trump will benefit from the tax cuts in many ways. First, there’s the reduction in the income tax rates. Instead of paying 39.6 percent on their income, top earners will now pay 37 percent. But for some Americans, including Trump, the real rate will actually be far lower. That’s because the GOP legislation allows many business owners to deduct 20 percent of their income. This new deduction—for so-called “pass-through” businesses whose profits are taxed as individual income—reduces the top rate to below 30 percent. Trump’s most recent financial disclosure form lists ties to more than 500 businesses that collectively make up the Trump Organization. His attorneys said last year that almost all of them are pass-throughs. 

read more:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/12/donald-trumps-tax-cuts-will-...

fake news awards...

President Donald Trump has announced the “winners” of his “Fake News Awards.” While the link failed to open for many amid the high internet traffic, a web archive reveals the New York Times and CNN are among the top three.

Trump also tweeted that there are “great reporters” whom he respects. He did not name any of those journalists, though, unlike the treatment dished out to the “Fake News” awardees.

Despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage, there are many great reporters I respect and lots of GOOD NEWS for the American people to be proud of!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 18, 2018

A blog titled “The Highly-Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards” on the official Republican Party website shows the top winner of Trump’s fake news accolades to be New York Times columinist and economist Paul Krugman, who claimed on Election Day 2016 that the “economy would never recover” from Trump’s “historic, landslide victory,” according to a copy of the GOP blog archived by the nonprofit Internet Archive.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/416233-trump-fake-news-awards/

more fake news in the mediocre mass media de shit...

 

As a slew of fake news – mostly over unsubstantiated claims of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential elections – cast pallor over MSM’s ethics, integrity and professionalism, it appears that is not the full extent of their problems.

Plagiarism now haunts the mainstream media mansion.

In a portentous beginning to 2018, veteran Daily Beast writer Lizzie Crocker was forced to resign over allegations she plagiarized from the Weekly Standard, a conservative publication. In fact, the prose-lifting was so conspicuous it is difficult to see how any major media outfit could have failed to detect the transgression.

Crocker’s Daily Beast piece, which is titled “How Katie Roiphe Became Feminism’s Nemesis-In-Chief,” has now been removed and replaced with an editor’s note that reads, “The story published about author Katie Roiphe violated The Daily Beast’s Code of Ethics and Standards and has been removed.”

Crocker’s very liberal approach to journalism was first noticed by Thomas Chatterton Williams, a writer for the New York Times Magazine, who announced his shocking findings on Twitter, the Daily Caller reported

this whole harpers/roiphe controversy is exposing all kinds of problems in contemporary journalism. i'm reading @nymtwit's @thedailybeast piece jan 12 piece and she just straight up copy and pasted (in red) @aliceblloyd's exact wording in a Jan 11 piece in the@weeklystandardpic.twitter.com/qbYMQ4eKDM

— Thomas Chatterton Williams (@thomaschattwill) January 13, 2018

 

Aside from providing university-style, red-lined proof of Crocker’s indiscretions, Williams proffered the opinion that such unfortunate incidences are helping to “expose all kinds of problems in contemporary journalism.”

More on that in a moment.

First, the Daily Beast was a bit hasty to proclaim that Crocker’s breaking of the most fundamental rule in journalism was an isolated incident.

“A larger investigation of her work at The Beast has revealed no other incidents of plagiarism,” Daily Beast editor in chief John Avlon said in a statement to the Daily Caller. 

That appears to have been fake news, deliberate or otherwise.

In an article published by The Daily Beast on November 19, Crocker once again employed “noticeably similar language” as an NBC News opinion column written by Alexandra Tracy-Ramirez published just days before.

Ramirez began her column with this line: “No one wants to think of someone they love, or anyone they know and respect, as a monster.”

Here is Crocker’s ingenious transformation of that opening line, with just a single word in the sentence altered: “No one wants to think of someone they love, or anyone they ADMIRE and respect, as a monster.”

Now, there will certainly be much more interest in Crocker’s body of literary work, as people begin to wonder exactly how much she borrowed from other writers. Imitation is the highest form of flattery, right?

In any case, there is another problem with contemporary journalism that goes far beyond an isolated act by a misguided reporter, and in many ways, is far worse.

read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-edge/416141-plagiarism-fake-news-mainstream-plot/

 

pay up, cough up, no more freebies, but...

 

President Trump’s announcement that he planned to impose steep tariffs on imported steel and aluminum delighted some blue-collar industries he had championed. “Enthusiastic and gratified are probably understatements,” said Michael A. Bless, the president of Century Aluminum.

Behemoth steel buyers like Boeing and General Motors weren’t as pleased. Their shares fell on the news, and the most obvious aluminum dependents — the brewing giants Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors — warned about the risk of job losses.

We buy as much domestic can sheet aluminum as is available, however, there simply isn’t enough supply to satisfy the demands of American beverage makers like us. American workers and American consumers will suffer as a result of
this misguided tariff. (3/3)

— MillerCoors (@MillerCoors) March 1, 2018

But it is people like H. O. Woltz III who feel most vulnerable.

Mr. Woltz is the chairman and chief executive of Insteel Industries, which operates 10 plants from Arizona to Pennsylvania producing steel wire products for concrete reinforcing. He has about 1,000 workers, most without college degrees.

“The jobs that we have are good jobs,” Mr. Woltz said. “Our guys make a lot of money.”

Now his business calculus is being upended. A tariff on imports also allows domestic steel and aluminum producers to charge higher prices, affecting manufacturers across the United States.

 

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/03/business/economy/tariff-blue-collar.html

 

short livved reaganomics...

When members of Young Americans for Freedom gathered at their convention on September 11, 1964, to hear an address by William F. Buckley Jr., they expected flights of eloquence hailing the looming glorious victory of Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. But Buckley had other ideas. Goldwater’s nomination, he said, “when we permit ourselves to peek up over the euphoria, reminds us chillingly of the great work that has remained undone.” He added that a “great rainfall has deluged a thirsty earth, but before we had time properly to prepare the ground.”

As his quizzical adherents sought to discern his meaning, Buckley dropped his penultimate sentence: “I speak of course of the impending defeat of Barry Goldwater.”

Gasps could be heard in the audience. Then as silence returned Buckley defined the beginning of wisdom as fear of the Lord. “The next and most urgent counsel,” he went on, “is to take stock of reality.” It was wrong to assume they would overcome, he said; “and therefore it is right to reason to the necessity of guarding against the utter disarray that sometimes follows a stunning defeat.” Further, he said, it was right “to take thought, even on the eve of the engagement, about the potential need for regrouping, for gathering together our scattered forces.”

That was more than a half-century ago. Since then the country has seen the defeat of Goldwater, the tragedy of Nixon, the triumph of Reagan, the foreign policy and economic calamity of the second Bush, and the Trump emergence. The question for American conservatives now, at the conclusion of this momentous half-century, is: What is the state of the conservative movement? The answer is that conservatism is in crisis, and that suggests merit in recalling Buckley’s admonition about taking stock of reality. 

I speak of course of the failure of Reaganism.  

To say that Reaganism has failed is not to deny Reagan’s presidential greatness. The Gipper transformed the economic debate in America, particularly on tax policy. More than any other single Western figure, he brought about the demise of Russian Bolshevism. Throughout two generations no one articulated more forcefully or eloquently the dangers of a national government that is too large, too intrusive, and too voracious in absorbing civic resources. He galvanized widespread popular support throughout the country and then held it long enough to maintain effective governance on a host of initiatives. He was the last president to tackle the hazardous issue of entitlement reform in any serious way. He kept the country out of debilitating wars. Once he got America beyond the economic morass he had inherited, he generated a robust economic expansion, including an average annual GDP growth rate of 3.86 percent.

And yet the Reagan legacy was more short-lived than those of other presidential greats who transformed the national debate and directed the nation to a new course. The political eras set in motion by Jefferson, Jackson, Lincoln, and the two Roosevelts proved far more durable. The result is that it isn’t entirely clear what conservatism amounts to these days, with new issues and new troubles roiling the nation and the major parties embroiled in identity crises. Conservatives today need to heed Bill Buckley’s 1964 call for “regrouping” and “gathering together our scattered forces.”

 

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/conservatism-in-crisis/

 

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retweeting fake cute news...

fakefake


While the photo is genuine, the quotation is a fake. As Politifact reported earlier this year, there is no evidence to support the idea that Reagan ever spoke or wrote the words attributed to him in the image.

“He did not ever say that about Donald Trump,” said the chief administrative officer of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, Joanne Drake.

Many online were quick to point out the president’s error, and one person noted that he had retweeted a two-year-old post, apparently from a parody account poking fun at the Reagan Battalion, a conservative media outlet and Twitter handle.

“Why is Trump retweeting a 2 year old tweet from a Reagan Battalion ‘parody’ account with only 5 tweets,”the commenter asked.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/463682-trump-fake-reagan-quote/

 

 

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