This was a "no-brainer"... There simply isn't any law that says a baker HAS to bake a cake for a gay couple, so the decision was already made before the case was even heard. I'm surprised there was even two dissenting votes. The whole story was an incredible waste of time and money. The gay couple could have easily dismissed the baker, his bigotry and his pathetic little cake shop and taken their business elsewhere and that would have been the end of the story. But they didn't because of an obsession with revenge backed up by a false sense of constitutional privilege.

It's the same idiot mistake people make when they think the 2nd Amendment gives them the right to carry guns where ever they like. But the U.S. Constitution only applies to the government, not to private business, so a private business has the right to disarm you and the 2nd Amendment can't do shit about it. Likewise, a private business like that bakery in Colorado can refuse to bake a cake for anyone they don't like and there's nothing the Constitution can do about that either.

This has nothing to do with Trump OR God. Trump wasn't making the decision on the bench and God isn't waging war on gay people. This was just a case of people getting upset and not understanding the law.

But if you're a deplorable... then I suppose it makes sense to call anything you can a victory. What a sad little club.

Oh... when you said "From where I stood, as the CEO of sweetFrog Frozen Yogurt, I was delighted that the new tax was signed into law." I was under the impression you were talking about yourself. So are you not the CEO of sweetFrog?


I dunno about "brilliant"... this is just how business works... when old companies fail, new companies take over. You don't need tax cuts to encourage business jack, you just need real entrepreneurs, the kind that can run a business in any climate. When the climate is less friendly to business, the weaker ones die off and the stronger, more innovative ones survive and often flourish. You seem to think a government can kill business but business never actually dies. For example, the government's war on drugs did everything possible to impede the cannabis business and yet in that time cannabis still became the #1 cash crop in America. I would even say that many times pro-business motions are just another way of saying let's make business easy enough for incompetence.


i'm not sure what plans for a mental health agency has to do with the tax cuts, but I agree the tax cuts are not chump change... The $178 billion transfer into the pockets of Wall Street tells us this much.


Yeah, I'm not understanding these connections you seem to be drawing up... What does vacancy rate have to do with the tax cuts and how can our model be based on something that doesn't exist? I won't comment any further in this jack because it honestly isn't making any sense to me.


Yes, it did, but you supported the bill anyway.


Well, those "largest corporations" are the who people like me are talking about when we refer to "the wealthy"... We aren't talking about small business owners, most of which are just middle class workers with nice cars and season tickets... we're talking about a group of people in the top 1% that have so much wealth that they don't even need an income. These people pay the least amount of tax because our complex tax system is based on the income they don't need and often avoid. It's quite common for billionaires to get paid $1 a year from their companies just for that reason.


That's because I don't subscribe the the suggestion that they are separate theories. Crony capitalism *IS* capitalism... the difference is just in the way people play the game. Crony capitalism is the label people give to capitalists that leverage unfair advantages in relationships with lawmakers so as to separate these forms of corruption from the idea of perfect capitalism. That makes as much sense to me as coming up with a different name for football every time someone fouls.

Still, what you call "crony capitalism" is basically how the plutocracy operates and I mention plutocracy a lot.


What if the company lost money through their own incompetence? Should the government be bailing them out for that?


I think you can relax a little bit jack... I've never assumed that the actions of 15-20 companies reflect the actions of ALL companies and I really don't think that's what mainstream liberals think either.


How do you know those are the most honest claims?


I'm sure you can go for pages on this... I could too. Blaming regulations is a weak, pathetic excuse. Regulations are applied across an entire industry... When your competitors are hit with the same regulation, you aren't disadvantaged. The ONLY reason to fight regulation is to lower standards so any yahoo can make a buck with crappy products.

Very true... in most cases, but I proof read my stuff so many times it makes up for it. LOL


As much as you want this to be simple it just isn't. Yes, there are moral differences but to find them you have to dig deeper than the national level. Otherwise, you're stereotyping because moral corruption occurs on a personal level. How one country appears to be less moral than another is often the result of key individuals in the wrong place at the wrong time. A lot of how people were treated by the Imperial Japanese was a result of decisions made by commanders and governors. Likewise, anyone can pick our specific individuals and events that make us look evil as a nation... we did after all drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities AFTER the Japanese surrendered. And if you can't let go of the fiction that we no choice about Hiroshima, then explain to me how firing nuclear warheads at the populated Bikini Atoll isn't the most immoral thing humans have ever done.

Look, any time someone tries to make a case that "my country is more moral than your country", they are cherry picking through history.

I was going to respond to this yesterday but I decided to wait and see if you got an answer. I see now that you really didn't. So I'll just emphasize your point that we do indeed have scales of economy that beg the question, which one?

I think the plutocracy has an interest in blurring the distinction between economic classes so that "one for you and ten for me" sounds more like "eleven for all of us".

The naivety of your view on world history is this "good vs evil" thing you got going. You portray the U.S. as a superhero that stands in the way of the evil ambitions from Japan and China. All of the world powers are playing the same damned game, witless. Japan was trying to control the Pacific for it's resources... So were we. China is trying to influence the world to get as much from the global market as it can... So are we.


We can start with the Iran Nuclear Deal. I'm sure your mind is saturated with all the bullshit about what a bad deal it is, but the fact remains that Obama was able to rally the six most powerful countries and the EU into a deal with Iran, something no president before him has ever done (to borrow one of Trumps favorite sayings) and even the Republicans in Congress officially had to admit the deal is doing everything it was supposed to do. I can stop right there because Trump has so far not signed ANY deal with ANY country regarding ANY point of contention. He's even stated a preference for bilateral agreements, which we all know is because he doesn't have what it takes to build multilateral agreements, which is not surprising, multilateral agreements are almost non-existent in business, but they are paramount to international politics.

Trump is quite simply out of his league and I almost feel sorry for him when I look at leaders like Kim Jong Un who I think is just toying with him. I'm sure all those "evil" countries, especially Russia and China are looking at Trump as an opportunity to gain ground that neither Obama not Clinton would have surrendered.


Yes, I do and I have. But those repeating patterns that you are noticing are contained in larger patterns that have changed. Pre-WW1 military-political reality occurred at the end of the 19th century, only a few decades into the second Industrial Revolution when Imperialism was still the prevalent context. So you might find similar effects, but the causes are different.


Your laugh tells me you aren't getting it... The Republic *IS* is the government and it's people. It's called a republic because it's not controlled by a private party such as a monarchy... Instead, it's controlled by it's people through a representative democracy and in our case it's based on on a written constitution. Now I'm not saying privatization is always a bad thing but when you privatize something, you ARE effectively removing it from this structure to where it is no longer subject to the discretions of the people or the rules of the Constitution. For instance, government workers have the right to speak against their employer because the Constitution guarantees that right. But private sector jobs have no right to speak against their employer because the Constitution doesn't apply to private companies.

And before you argue this point with me, I encourage you to save us both some time and look it up first.

I already have "Trump's Attack on the Working Class Part 3 in the barrel... and it involves the forced arbitration decision that Trump is so happy about. I'll probably fire post this in the next few days when I have a little more time to handle the responses. But a peek preview... I'll be highlighting the fact that forced arbitration allows companies to violate labor laws while blocking any attempts for the workers to take the case to court. Arbitration is essentially the privatization of American justice.

Bottom line... privatization may or may not in some cases improve economic efficiency but it ALL cases without exception, it DOES remove an asset or a liability from the democratic control of the Republic and it's people.


You might have been *saying* the same thing but I've read enough dissent during the Obama years to know, that when you folks were accusing Obama of destroying the country, you weren't so much referring to the republic as much as you were to our "way-of-life" and it was always THAT vague.


No... that's correct.

...and here's the long one.


No offense jack but your lemonade stand...

http://sweetfrog.com/images/uploads/graphics/store-team-member.jpg

...is a limited liability company... It's not even a corporation. You have no public offering (no shareholders).

Most of us can understand asking the government to give small businesses a break. As an owner of a limited liability company myself, I know small business is a struggle, but you have to understand the difference between a LLC and a publicly held corporation like Harley-Davidson (NYSE: HOG). The most significant issue here is Wall Street. When a company goes public, which is often necessary for operations that require more funding than can be gathered from a handful of rich friends, they open themselves up to a whole new level of politics. It's that board-level of politics that creates the problem with these tax-cuts, because the interest shifts from investing in a business to investing in a portfolio. I'm willing to bet there were managers at Harley-Davidson that wanted to invest more of that $700 million from tax savings into the business and I'm willing to bet the shareholders overruled.

Maybe it's because your company serves frozen yogurt to mall shoppers with a sweet tooth that you don't really have to think much about the mammoth corporations that my company provides engineering services for such as Verizon, Bank of America and Time-Warner. As a small business dealing with these types of corporations it's easy to see two completely different worlds. As a proprietor, when I negotiate with these big companies, I am very much a small helpless critter at the feet of giants - it can be very humbling. Obama made that distinction very clear as he and the Democrats passed measures specifically to help small business while pulling back the reins on large corporations. Republicans have been trying to blur that line because they are serving the interests of investors on Wall Street who know that small business owners are more likely to support their "pro-business" proposals if they think "business" means them.

It's great that you published your opinion in a local paper but I doubt it made the slightest difference in the decision to cut taxes. That decision was made by congressional representatives that were probably serving the interests of Wall Street investors, as indicated by the record-breaking buybacks.

Note: please don't take "lemonade stand" the wrong way... I am not trying to belittle your enterprise as a business, I'm just trying to emphasize the difference between a small business like yours and a large corporation like Harley-Davidson.


jack... That fantastic momentum started in 2010 and 2017 (the year you are praising) was the last year affected directly by Obama's policy. Also, if you really are the CEO of sweetFrog, I'm sure you know that you franchise is reported to have opened 276 stores during those Obama years. That seems pretty successful to me; was that not enough? Are you trying to take over the ice cream and candy world or are you just trying to run a business? Honestly, it's a bit dense to be trying to up-shift the economy when it's already in 5th gear.


I know, I've been there, that's why you have so many deductions. But again, you're talking about small businesses, sole proprietorships and limited liability companies... NOT corporations. And just to be clear, Trump's tax cut doesn't change the tax structure of a small business... income will still pass through to the proprietor. But yes, the 20% tax savings will be a nice boon to small business, I agree. I don't have a problem with giving small business a 20% break because it puts that money in the hands of the business. If your business is anything like mine, that money will be reinvested IN the business, which includes the workers. But in case you haven't noticed yet, my issue with this tax-cut is the CORPORATE WELFARE that many of of us see it for. Small businesses like ours are just the flotsam on the wake of much bigger ships. We appreciate the lift, but it's highly doubtful that we had anything to do with the direction of the policy, even with your op-ed. ;)

Something else that I have already mentioned and no one ever has anything to say about it... that 20% savings you're so excited for is tax on INCOME. That part of the law expires. You only get that for a few years. So plan accordingly.

In the meantime, lets talk about corporate welfare, since that's the problem I have with Trumps' idiot tax-cut.

1. Unlike lemonade stands across America, most Fortune 500 corporations are controlled by Wall Street investors.
2. Unlike the lemonade stands where the proprietor decides how to spend the savings, it's the Wall Street investors that decide how to spend the savings afforded to publicly held corporations.
3. So far, it's looking like the most significant measurable impact the tax cuts have had are on stock buybacks.
4. Unlike, regular dividends, which are taxed as income, stock buy backs give investors capital gains.
5. Unlike the tax cut on INCOME, the tax cut on CAPITAL GAINS is permanent.

Are you connecting dots yet?

I won't *say* it was intentional but if there was ever a call to mastermind a way for private investors to siphon money from the government, this would be a genius way to do it. Use business as the excuse, it's become an icon of American culture like freedom and patriotism. Small business owners will think it's all about them. So you get the political "OK" and you cut corporate tax, then you take the savings on corporate income and buyback your stocks, increasing the value per share, so not only are you taking control of money that used to go to the government but your manipulating the stock market with it and multiplying the value of that money. Then you sell for a tremendous capital gain, but wait... being the genius you made sure the tax on capital gains is cut too. In fact, to sell the bill, you agreed to make the cuts on income temporary, but you make the cuts on capital gains permanent so you can ride out the bull market before you sell.

And since Wall Street is open to anyone in the world with enough money to invest, there's no reason to assume that these investors are even American!

It's interesting that Russians are playing such a staring role in the circus around Trump because Russia has over the past 20 years undergone a privatization movement the world has never seen before. I know some of you think Russia is still a backward communist state, but the central control is only extended to energy and defense. Everything else in Russia has been privatized and as a result there is a new ruling class. We often hear journalists refer to them as oligarchs. These are billionaires that have made a fortune literally from cannibalizing the old Soviet system.

Are you connecting the dots yet?

I won't *say* that Russian oligarchs have been looking for ways to cannibalize the United States of America, but if that was ever the case and they had this genius plan in mind, I'm sure the oligarchs would start by contacting American businessmen with a weak sense of morals and the potential to affect tax policies.


I would agree that it's one of the engines...

http://www.economonitor.com/dolanecon/files/2013/09/P130925-2.png

...but again, I don't have a problem with cutting income tax on small business. I'm hoping that by this point you are understanding that we are talking about completely different stories here.


Tell that to all the yahoo's out there crediting Trump's tax cuts for the 2017 economy LOL.


...or just give it to Wall Street, which has so far been the case.


Maybe it was the first time in history that business scams weren't able to thrive as easily. It doesn't appear that legitimate businesses with sensible plans like sweetFrog had much of a problem since they opened 276 stores in that time.


You really think home construction will increase just because contractors get tax savings? The only reason why home construction would increase is if other people have money to BUY houses. It's demand that drives the economy jack. And before you come back with that circular argument that tax savings = wage increase = consumer demand increase, let me point out that this wonderful tax cut expires in 2025. That makes it kind of hard for a proprietor to pass the savings in terms of wages without the risk of making payroll too heavy to support when the taxes come back in seven years. So unless, those contractors are building homes for themselves, I don't see how this tax cut is going to fuel the economy the way you seem to think it will.

My bottom line on your perspective on the tax cuts is that I agree with most of what you are saying about small business, but I think that's also the smaller part of the picture compared to the corporate welfare that I think motivated the tax cuts. I would be the first one to support a 20% tax cut on small business income and unlike Trump, I would even push to make that permanent, but the moment you attach that to massive corporate welfare, the deal is off.

My responses to your previous points are too long to fit into a single post, so I had to break it into two parts LOL. But since you're extending some courtesy toward the end of your post, I want to send you my response to that first.

I can understand your initial reaction. As I told joy, "My self-assessment here is that while I got the point across to the liberals, I failed to get it across to conservatives and I'm pretty sure it's because of my stated hostility toward Trump."

Just so you know, I've read some of your anti-Obama statements and it's not always easy to tell if your are attacking his policies or the man himself. Sometimes, the distinction gets lost in heat. Please understand that my hostility is toward the role Trump is playing in American politics... his policies AND his methods. Actually, I really have no respect for him as a person either... I've just seen too much to continue offering him the benefit of the doubt. I think he's a egomaniac who is willing to hawk our republic for personal gain, but that's just my opinion... My "attacks" are on specific polices that he is endorsing. Policies that I study because I'm not just venting, I'm looking for ways to show people what he and his allies are doing. As a president, Trump has become a symbol for all these things that are in my careful opinion, direct assaults of the welfare of the working family.


I agree, which is why I always look for the documents themselves, the bills, the laws, the orders, they are all public records and available to read. This is how I know your 20% tax savings will expire in 2025. But yes, there is a LOT of misinformation out there it's an art form.


Thank you jack. I'll try to do better too.


NOW you tell me. LOL
I don't know how you do it. I like to use my phone for phone calls, simple text messages and checking the time. Anything more complicated than that and I need a laptop.


I will be in about 2 hours from now :)

It was good to see this response from you linda and yes, I did notice your comment about the tax cut being perhaps not the best answer. At some point, I'd like to learn more about your opinions on tax alternatives. It's been a little frustrating that you (and others) had assumed I was blaming Trump for the decisions Harley-Davidson made though because that wasn't what I said at all.

But this is why I post on OPP... to test my communication skills anonymously. When I write under my real name, I'm far more careful about what I say. My self-assessment here is that while I got the point across to the liberals I failed to get it across to conservatives and I'm pretty sure it's because of my stated hostility toward Trump. Had I left that out, I'm sure more of you would have read through the Harley-Davidson lead-up and arrived at the main point of my argument about the tax cuts like the "liberals" did. But that's the challenge of my exercise; This is part of a series I'm working on that ultimately *IS* an attack on Trump. Not just because I hate him, but because I honestly think he is making things worse for the American working class.

There are two ways to look at the tax cut, there is the hard reality in which government revenue will be cut and then there is all the speculation about how it will encourage economic growth. There's good reason to be concerned about the hard reality because cutting revenue to the government, especially when it's already suffering from a budget deficit, forces it to either defund programs or borrow. That translates to hurting Americans now (defunding) or hurting them later (debt). Everyone knows this, including conservative leadership which is why they turn to speculation to assure Americans that harm won't come to them because the corporations will pass their economic advantages to the American people. So what they are essentially doing is saying "Trust the corporations... Everything will be fine."

Hmm... "trust the corporations."

Hence the point of bringing Harley-Davidson into the picture. Did they get an economic advantage from the tax cuts? Spending $700 million on stock buybacks in the first fiscal period following the tax cut says they did. Did they pass that economic advantage to their workers? Closing a plant and laying off 800 workers says they didn't. There maybe other factors involved, I don't want to rest my conclusion on an over-simplified assessment of one company. So I brought in the big picture, the one I've been highlighting in red like this... corporate stock buybacks hit a record $178 billion in the first three months of 2018; average hourly earnings for American workers are up 67 cents over the past year..

The pattern seems pretty obvious to me and it tells me that trusting the corporations might be a little naive at best. Now before we launch into a conservative "pro-business" vs liberal "anti-business" spat, let me just say that I find no fault in what Harley-Davidson did. In the simplest terms I can find... corporations are not responsible for the well-being of the American family; that responsibility falls squarely on the government. So in my opinion, the transgression is the tax-cut itself that shifts the means of insuring the welfare of the American family from the government responsible for it, to the corporations that aren't.

LOL... there's no winning in this game, you know that. I've made my point... some people got it, some people didn't.


I wouldn't say that... I think there are some pretty smart liberals on this site. But I appreciate your gesture.


so... you're spelling has deteriorated... but it's intentional?


It's really not my wish to go into unimportant things like spelling... When I said "at least I can SPELL judgment" it was more of a passing remark in response to your "behind-my-back" insult when you told jack... "He knows just enough to be dangerous, which is far less than what he needs to know to make sound judgements on economics and politics." See the context now? As for your information on the spelling of judgment vs judgement, I will concede, I didn't know "judgement" was acceptable. I learn something every day and you finally scored a point on an "unimportant" issue ;)


That's an awful lot of conjecture there witless. I mean if any of that is true Mueller really needs to call you in for an interview because no one else seems to have that much insight into Russian motives. LOL

Aside from pointing out that Trump was the weaker candidate none of the rest of what you said makes any logical sense. You're essentially saying that Russia wanted to even things out to keep America divided. First of all, America has always been divided politically and it never mattered if an election was a landslide or a nail-biter. Secondly, none of that has any impact on Russian interests anyway. It makes more sense to assume that our foreign policy is more of a concern to Moscow than the nature of domestic squabbling in America and to that end the choices were between a President with previous experience as a Secretary of State with direct experience in Syria and an egotistical TV celebrity with no military experience, no diplomatic experience and an already proven weakness for temptation.


It's different because Obama's State Department gave $233,500 to OneVoice a non-profit organization based in New York that represents Jewish AND Palestinian interests in a two-state solution. There was nothing secret about it, the funding was reported appropriately and explained as an effort to help OneVoice raise awareness of the two-state solution that NuttyYahoo is trying to silence. There was no computer hacking, there was no secret meetings with campaign managers... The similarities are pretty much non-existent.


Actually, it does matter. We have actual laws that say it matters. But you're right about there being no evidence (yet) of direct collusion, but keep in mind, YOU were the one that brought up the Russians not me.


You making a huge assumption here that impeaching Trump would weaken America. A more prevalent perspective is that keeping Trump in office is the best way to weaken America, in which case Putin's job is done and there's no need to reveal any evidence of anything.


Yes, about 24% and it's been pretty consistent. No one else is joining you.


Gee, I couldn't tell.


Don't get ahead of yourself... No one thought the deplorables were disappearing just because they were being outvoted by a larger majority of Americans.


That's not the reason... Seriously, what sense would it make for her to spend precious time and money on appealing to a crowd that makes it very clear how much they hate her? When crowds a chanting "Lock Her Up" that's sufficient reason to spend efforts elsewhere.


You weren't strong enough to win... You lost the popular vote by 3 million. In case you didn't know, the popular vote is the one you actually participate in. Trump won because of the way the Electoral College voted, which has nothing to do with your vote. The only politicians that are actually elected by the people are the representatives in Congress. The president is not elected by the people, the president is elected by Congress, using special electors, one for each congressional district. The general expectation is that the electors will vote for the candidates chosen by the popular votes in their respective district, but depending on the state that may not be a rule. Electors in some states can vote for whoever they want and sometimes they vote for the candidate that the people in the district did NOT vote for, these are called "faithless electors" and there were a number of them in 2016, mostly from districts that voted for Clinton who went ahead and voted for third party candidates anyway.

So, as far as I'm concerned, if the Russians had any pro-Trump influence on the 2016 elections it was only to to minimize what may have been a far greater loss than 3 million on the popular vote. As for the official election, you should be thanking the Electoral College.


I said Russians, not Vlad.


It's not just that you're wrong, it's that your blatantly wrong about something that is so easily verifiable. Russia is almost entirely capitalist now, the ONLY sectors still under central control is energy and defense. Industry and agriculture has been privatized since the 90's. Maybe you should look a few things up every now and then instead of making up stories about the private motivations of world leaders.


LOL - I catch 'em every time.


We don't live in history witless. We MAKE history. It's important to understand this because sometimes patterns change and you're not going to see that if you're constantly expecting history to repeat itself verbatim. These changes are why history get's divided into eras. If you go back far enough, humans were nomadic and there WERE no countries, but politics, being a function of human behavior, existed anyway with power being a matter or merit. Countries didn't happen until humans shifted to an agrarian existence where power was granted through land titles. From the Renaissance onward power has been shifting from land to capital.

Today, capital accounts for almost all the power in the world. Unlike land titles, capital is fluid. This makes your assessment that countries are the functional units of politics antiquated at best. The problem we are increasingly running into is that while capital is flowing all over the world at light speeds, humans are for the most part trapped in their locations because of human things like family, friends, jobs, schools etc... It this contrast that underlies the problems we see today such as off-shoring... which is where capital is free to find cheaper labor elsewhere in the world leaving the American worker searching for jobs in the location he is fixed in. Countries are loosing their significance as political units. We see this more and more now on the battlefields as we find conflict with an increasing array of stateless organizations. The list of transnational corporations is also increasing then there is of course the NWO that some of you folks are constantly ranting about.

Even now I'm watching you folks cheering the slow the death of our own Republic as you push for smaller government and more privatization. You folks get so caught up in ideologies and your assumptions that private business is more efficient than government that you don't realize that between the two, it's the private company that can be owned by foreign nationals and that our constitution only applies to our government. These are facts that may never be realized by someone who assumes all politics are conducted by each country looking out for it's own interests.


Competition for what?


You can say what you want about Obama vs Trump, but the evidence so far indicates that Obama got results, so far all Trump has given us is entertainment.


THAT statement proves my point yet again, that you are delusional.

You mean the ocean right off their own coast? Have you looked at the military bases WE have in their vicinity?

http://media.economist.com/sites/default/files/cf_images/GA/2005w47/Map.gif

And you're calling THEM diabolical? Do you see any Chinese bases in Canada or Mexico? On your trip, did you see any Chinese fleets off the beautiful Oregon coast? It just seems a little hypocritical to be calling China's placement of a military base less than a few hundred miles from their own coast "diabolical" when we literally have them surrounded with military bases. If you remember, we fought two wars to influence their immediate neighbors, Korea and Vietnam. I think it's far more likely that their base in the South China sea is a defensive position.


Well, culturally speaking, Taiwan *IS* Chinese. They even call themselves the Republic of China and it's very, very close to mainland China AND (surprise, surprise) the U.S. has an airbase there. Think about our own struggles with Cuba being a Soviet satellite... Taiwan is no further away from China than Cuba is to Florida. So again it seems hypocritical to slam China for being possessive toward Taiwan, when we're just as possessive toward Cuba.


I'm not sure what your "educated speculation" is based on but I would agree that neither country wants a direct conflict. Besides, China has been far more interested in conquering world markets through free trade than through warfare and this is where I think it's such a shame that we insist on these militant assessments. We have every opportunity to work with them peacefully but we keep resorting to the old ways of imperial ambition and fear-mongering.


Well, things have changed since 1974 jack, you should update. According to the Office of the United States Trade Representative under the Trump Administration, China is our #1 trade partner and that's just based on tangibles. Our #1 export, sadly, is debt. And guess who's buying almost all of our debt? That's right, China is. This is why economists have said that if China decided to stop buying our T-bills our economy would immediately crash, suggesting it would be just as devastating as a nuclear weapon, if not more. If that's not bad enough, the Congressional Budget Office has stated that the only two laws Trump has so far signed, the tax cut and the spending bill, together will drive our deficit to $1 trillion by 2019, which as I'm sure you know will drive out national debt even higher, which makes us even more vulnerable to a Chinese decision to pull the plug.

(Never ceases to amaze me how the same people that were screaming about spending and debt two years ago, have nothing to say about it now.)


Steel went up by 71% SINCE Trump took office. So are you saying that before Trump there were more American steel companies in competition? If so, what happened to them?


OK... well, when that happens let me know. Until then, I'm dealing with facts not speculation.


What are you basing that on? Or is this just a gut feeling?


Don't blame me, I was quoting The American Institute for International Steel. They're the ones that said 6.5 million workers are employed by industries that consume steel. So do they disagree with jack's gut feeling too?


One word... "Globalization". You should read about it so you can ditch your 1950's mindset and see the world they way it really is today.


All the more reason to consider the possibility that things are still changing. The difference between us is that I'm looking toward the future where we have adapt and reinvent ourselves to stay relevant. You on the other hand seem to want to revert to the way we used to do things. If history tells you anything at all, it should tell you that nations never revert to their former selves because global conditions are always changing the rules. America can NEVER go back to 1950.

Linda, did you understand what Buffalo was saying? He's basically saying the same thing I am saying with regard to the tax cuts. Buffalo mentioned that research is suggesting only a small portion of these corporate tax cuts will be shifted to workers. You said "thanks for the informative post" then went on to say "The tax cut’s stated goal is to boost the economy, leading to higher incomes and better job opportunities for millions of American workers...."

You also mentioned that the Tax Foundation believes the bill will create 339,000 more jobs and boost GDP growth to by 0.29 percentage points a year, to 2.13% from 1.84% over the next decade. I'm not sure why anyone would believe that. There's no basis for it. 339,000 more jobs... (not 340,000 but 339,000)... Obviously, they are using an algorithm for the estimate and as someone who spent 15 years designing business intelligence systems that use algorithms to make predictions I can tell you how far removed that science is from being perfect. I can also tell you how easy it is for interested parties to make slight adjustments and generate any kind of prediction they want. The Tax Foundation is an interested party. You yourself described them as "right-leaning" and really, all you have to do is visit their site and read their blog to see their "independent and unbiased" veneer wearing off like a cheap paint job.

Paul Krugman in his NYT Blog described the Tax Foundations approach... "So while they’re peddling an analysis that implicitly predicts huge trade deficits and a large jump in income payments to foreigners, they’re using a model that has no way to assess these effects or take them into account. Maybe they’ll eventually do this stuff. But what they appear to be doing now is fundamentally incapable of addressing key issues in the tax policy debate."

And then there's the stats I mentioned in my original post, citing record breaking buybacks in contrast to a minimal rise in wages. These stats tell us that so far, things are not going the way the Tax Foundation had predicted.

Which may have made more sense ten years ago when we were in the worst economic recession since 1929. But the economy has been improving since 2010. The very next paragraph in the article you link to following what you quoted is... "This has been two consecutive years of very strong income growth," said Trudy Renwick, assistant division chief at Census." As you know, Trump wasn't in office two years ago. So why would a president who takes over when the economy is doing so well insist on a tax cut to "help the economy"? the old adage "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" comes to mind.

Unless... this is another example of preparing the U.S. for another dunking. If we think about the last dunking, ten years ago we might remember that none of the bankers that caused the problem actually served any time for what they did and if we look closer at those involved we can see that they actually made a LOT of money off the economic crash. They, cut their liabilities and got bailed out by the taxpayers. It actually worked out really well for them. So why wouldn't they do it again?

The Trump administration has so far done everything they would need to do to repeat the fun, including the repeal of almost all the regulations designed to prevent it from happening again. If THAT isn't at least a little bit obvious... Also, the fact that in the first quarter since the tax cuts there have been $178 billion in stock buybacks strongly suggests a cannibalization of our industries as Wall Street grabs everything it can before kicking the companies into the gutter.

I've been saying since 1990 that China is on it's way to being a global economic power. That much we can easily confirm by looking at simple facts like their GDP. What you're saying about their diabolical plans to control the world is simply not provable AND it provokes that irrational fear that conservatives are so famous for. What's with that?


There are indications that they doubt our ability to even fight on one front effectively, given our recent track record. We're known in Asia as a "paper tiger". Fortunately, there are no indications that China is even slightly interested in direct military conflict with the U.S. Their chest beating in the South China Sea is the same thing as our chest beating off the coast of North Korea... It's all... chest beating.


Why?


It would also cut their sales, which I think is more important to them.


Aw... sunshine and butterflies... Never mind the fact that these "new steel plants" are in reality just one retired blasting plant being reopened in Illinois. I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I think it's great that the plant will open up 500 new jobs, but is it worth all the jobs now at risk because of the tariff?

The American Institute for International Steel, a pro-trade advocacy group, says about 142,000 Americans work in the steel industry. Those workers would stand to benefit from the tariffs. But the institute says about 6.5 million Americans are employed by steel-consuming companies. Some of those jobs would be at risk. How many is hard to say.

The point of the tariffs is to add enough cost to imports that consumers will switch to domestic sources. When you consider the fact reported by S&P that the price of US-made steel is up 71% since Trump's election victory in 2016 you get the a sense of how drastic the impact will be on steel-consuming companies and their 6.5 million workers.

So, your basically cheering Trump for threatening the jobs of 6.5 million workers for the sake of 500.

I don't "get" that at all linda... Why would I need to spin facts to justify my disdain when my disdain is based on fact as they are?



So? Do you see me blaming the slump in sales on the tax cuts? Or is this you spinning the facts about what I am saying to justify your disdain for me?


So? Do you see me arguing about the state of the economy? Or is this you spinning the facts about what I am saying to justify your disdain for me?


Very informative... your link says...
403 - Forbidden: Access is denied.
You do not have permission to view this directory or page using the credentials that you supplied.


I don't get my news from FB.


Is there ANY source that provides ANY hint that Trump may not be the hero you think he is that you don't discredit?


Well, I can't read the facebook post because of that 403 error, so I'll have to imagine what you're talking about. It sounds like your saying there were plans to close the plant before Trump made his tariff decision. Well, this topic is about the tax cuts, not tariff decisions and it's about what the company did with the savings from the tax cuts, not about what caused the plants to close.


Wait... is this about the tangent I got into with witless regarding the "trade wars"? (Maybe if you quote what you're responding to...) Anyway, thanks for acknowledging that some American companies do have a concern about how the tariffs can hurt them. The point I was making with that, is that a lot of American business depends on global supply chains, so nationalist/protectionist measures will inherently run the risk of hurting American business as much as protecting it.


Yeah, I know all this. Again, I'm not blaming Trump or the tax cuts for the lost jobs... You won't find ANYWHERE in this thread where I made any such claim. In fact, I never claimed ANY reason for the plant closing in Missouri. I got plenty of theories about that in responses to my post because that's what Trump supporters rushed to focus on, but that was never part the issue I am posting about.

So once more (and if you're going to respond please at least have the decency to pay attention to what I'm saying)...

corporate stock buybacks hit a record $178 billion in the first three months of 2018; average hourly earnings for American workers are up 67 cents over the past year.

So two facts in juxtaposition... By themselves there is nothing to complain about... 67 cents is better than nothing, right? And there's really nothing wrong with massive stock buybacks either. But in juxtaposition we can see the disproportion. With record breaking buybacks reaching $178 billion, all of a sudden 67 cents seems kind of like a $1 tip on a $400 table. The point being made is that these tax cuts are forcing our Republic to offer less assistance to working families and the promise of trickle-down that's supposed to compensate for that is looking like bullshit, which would mean the American working family is being scammed.

Again Harley-Davidson was a mere example because despite their preexisting struggles, they were still able to spend $700 million on stock buybacks in the very first quarter AFTER the tax cuts, so it's pretty obvious where that money came from and where it's going.

I don't draw these points because I have disdain for Trump linda... I have disdain for Trump BECAUSE of these points.

that would be good.


No problem... I was getting the feeling this was the case, and I understand... I often make the same mistake. It's easy to typecast when reading familiar arguments.


Before we loose context; by "it" we are referring to what you were calling the "basic problem" that Harley-Davidson is having. The reason why it has no bearing on my argument is that my argument has nothing to do with the performance of the company. My argument sits on the fact that a company was able to spend $700 million on stock buybacks, despite their performance. Look, I would have to be an idiot to actually blame the layoffs on Trump - I KNOW this, so it's a little frustrating when that's all you people think I am saying, especially when that isn't what I said!


It's not hard for me to fathom that slumping sales leads to closing plants. The reason why I haven't said as much isn't because I'm ignoring obvious business patterns but that I think it goes without saying. Again, your entire argument with me has been over things that you think I'm saying but I haven't. You have yet to even notice what I'm saying, which is this...

While Trump and the Republicans were suggesting that corporate savings from the tax cuts would trickle down to the workers, statistics are showing that a disproportionate cut of those savings are going to investors on Wall Street instead.

I've been highlighting those statistics in red since my first response on this topic to try and get people to read it (apparently, that doesn't work). A tiny bit of math is all it takes to notice that $178 billion in stock buybacks in the first three months of 2018 can't possibly be about JUST Harley-Davidson. Obviously, I am looking at a bigger picture and Harley-Davidson is only an example.