Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
slatten49 wrote:
Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
Rick Newman br Columnist br Yahoo Finance...Februa... (
show quote)
Fantasy football has been an economic boon for the creators of the enterprise and a very small handful of players. The Hope of becoming one of those very few, is what makes the owners so fabulously rich and why 100's of millions of lottery tickets are sold. Working to make a fantasy come true is fine, if you can afford to lose money, but for the vast bulk of Americans, it's a struggle just to not starve to death.
Trump has created a fantasy, similar to fantasy football and the lottery, and this fantasy has attracted millions of people to it. The creators of fantasy football don't care if the fantasy comes true or not, because they get rich off of those seeking to do so, so it's a win-win for them, a lose-lose for most. Trump is more concerned about his popularity, polls, and the optics of his new job and cares nothing for the realities of it. I even found out today, that when Trump spoke to Putin, he mentioned the New START treaty - without knowing what the treaty was, and claimed it was a "bad deal". How could he assess it as a bad deal, when he had absolutely no knowledge of what the deal WAS, or what it said? He simply didn't care, his only focus was in making Putin think he was a more superior negotiator than Obama. Putin wasn't fooled BTW, but that's another subject.
Welcome to the new online game "Fantasy Government"!
buffalo wrote:
Moonbat drivel!!!
Given your history of "moon-bat drivel," I guess you would know.
lpnmajor wrote:
Fantasy football has been an economic boon for the creators of the enterprise and a very small handful of players. The Hope of becoming one of those very few, is what makes the owners so fabulously rich and why 100's of millions of lottery tickets are sold. Working to make a fantasy come true is fine, if you can afford to lose money, but for the vast bulk of Americans, it's a struggle just to not starve to death.
Trump has created a fantasy, similar to fantasy football and the lottery, and this fantasy has attracted millions of people to it. The creators of fantasy football don't care if the fantasy comes true or not, because they get rich off of those seeking to do so, so it's a win-win for them, a lose-lose for most. Trump is more concerned about his popularity, polls, and the optics of his new job and cares nothing for the realities of it. I even found out today, that when Trump spoke to Putin, he mentioned the New START treaty - without knowing what the treaty was, and claimed it was a "bad deal". How could he assess it as a bad deal, when he had absolutely no knowledge of what the deal WAS, or what it said? He simply didn't care, his only focus was in making Putin think he was a more superior negotiator than Obama. Putin wasn't fooled BTW, but that's another subject.
Welcome to the new online game "Fantasy Government"!
img src="https://static.onepoliticalplaza.com/ima... (
show quote)
Blah blah blah blah....that's all we ever hear from you. It gets old!!!
slatten49 wrote:
Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
Rick Newman br Columnist br Yahoo Finance...Februa... (
show quote)
And by this time after Inauguration, in 2008, 49, BHO had almost ALL of his secular liberal progressive Marx/Alinsky" picks, "nominated," by Congress. Now the Marx/Alinsky (D) portions of Congress are putting America in (D)anger by holding-up President Trump's picks; to say nothing of the 24/7/365, (D) attempts to get a "DO-OVER." Scheming, planning, sketching, conceiving methods to (D)eligitimize President Trump (R), and r**ting, l**ting, vandalizing, "PIG" k*****g, burning, protesting and violently and obnoxiously (D)emonstrating to (D)isrupt and (D)estroy our "Shining Light on the Hill." Hummmmmmmm. All the while calling President Trump (R), a N**i. What's wrong with THAT picture?? And what's that "crushing" noise I keep hearing??? GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PRESIDENT "45" DONALD J. TRUMP (R)!!!
robmull wrote:
And by this time after Inauguration, in 2008, 49, BHO had almost ALL of his secular liberal progressive Marx/Alinsky" picks, "nominated," by Congress. Now the Marx/Alinsky (D) portions of Congress are putting America in (D)anger by holding-up President Trump's picks; to say nothing of the 24/7/365, (D) attempts to get a "DO-OVER." Scheming, planning, sketching, conceiving methods to (D)eligitimize President Trump (R), and r**ting, l**ting, vandalizing, "PIG" k*****g, burning, protesting and violently and obnoxiously (D)emonstrating to (D)isrupt and (D)estroy our "Shining Light on the Hill." Hummmmmmmm. All the while calling President Trump (R), a N**i. What's wrong with THAT picture?? And what's that "crushing" noise I keep hearing??? GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PRESIDENT "45" DONALD J. TRUMP (R)!!!
And by this time after Inauguration, in 2008, 49, ... (
show quote)
I still don't get for the the life of me how u can rebuke a p**********l executive order. This is only putting us at a greater security risk. Hopefully we'll be finding out later today.
robmull wrote:
And by this time after Inauguration, in 2008, 49, BHO had almost ALL of his secular liberal progressive Marx/Alinsky" picks, "nominated," by Congress. Now the Marx/Alinsky (D) portions of Congress are putting America in (D)anger by holding-up President Trump's picks; to say nothing of the 24/7/365, (D) attempts to get a "DO-OVER." Scheming, planning, sketching, conceiving methods to (D)eligitimize President Trump (R), and r**ting, l**ting, vandalizing, "PIG" k*****g, burning, protesting and violently and obnoxiously (D)emonstrating to (D)isrupt and (D)estroy our "Shining Light on the Hill." Hummmmmmmm. All the while calling President Trump (R), a N**i. What's wrong with THAT picture?? And what's that "crushing" noise I keep hearing??? GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO PRESIDENT "45" DONALD J. TRUMP (R)!!!
And by this time after Inauguration, in 2008, 49, ... (
show quote)
Mull,
You need to have another look at your source....
permafrost wrote:
Mull,
You need to have another look at your source....
Who really cares, Perm. We didn't have any where near the radical Islamic terrorists in our country as we do now!!!
slatten49 wrote:
Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
Rick Newman br Columnist br Yahoo Finance...Februa... (
show quote)
to me this is just more blabber of demorats talking points.now what does he have to say about the 9 th circut going against law .law that they are sworn to uphold.
buffalo wrote:
Moonbat drivel!!!
Buff buddy... that's a solid gold head... but I'm sure he's thinking about the poor working man... he said he would...
Someone's fired my seat is cold
slatten49 wrote:
Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
Rick Newman br Columnist br Yahoo Finance...Februa... (
show quote)
Yes U're critisized and justly so. U see all U want, as do the Prog Libs is more of Obammy's failed policies. Regardless of what arena it deals with, i.e., economy, foreign policy (or lack thereof), wh**ever Obammy put his hands on, failed and U want more of it along with his incessant d******eness, be it between g****r, race, religion, economic status, he attempted to divide rather than unify. He was a joke, a failed person and a failed statesmen. He will in all probability go down as the worst POTUS ever, bar none.
Yet U and UR pathetic prog lib wanna-be's want our nation to have more of it. One can only assume to bring our nation to it's knees. Well, pay close attention, the American people have spoken. They've had it with the failed prog lib policies. They've had it with the prog lib ideology. PERIOD!
smithdw55 wrote:
Yes U're critisized and justly so. U see all U want, as do the Prog Libs is more of Obammy's failed policies. Regardless of what arena it deals with, i.e., economy, foreign policy (or lack thereof), wh**ever Obammy put his hands on, failed and U want more of it along with his incessant d******eness, be it between g****r, race, religion, economic status, he attempted to divide rather than unify. He was a joke, a failed person and a failed statesmen. He will in all probability go down as the worst POTUS ever, bar none.
Yet U and UR pathetic prog lib wanna-be's want our nation to have more of it. One can only assume to bring our nation to it's knees. Well, pay close attention, the American people have spoken. They've had it with the failed prog lib policies. They've had it with the prog lib ideology. PERIOD!
Yes U're critisized and justly so. U see all U wa... (
show quote)
Great post Smith....very well said!
slatten49 wrote:
Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
Rick Newman br Columnist br Yahoo Finance...Februa... (
show quote)
and Mr Newman claims that he is not a liberal hack?
all he did was shoot down conservatives.
Its obvious he is pro left in everything he says
Garbage,just l*****t garbage
slatten49 wrote:
Rick Newman
Columnist
Yahoo Finance...February 9, 2017
With President Trump now in the White House, I’ve written several pieces criticizing his economic plan, predicting key proposals such as a huge infrastructure plan may never materialize, and asking skeptically when Trump will get around to helping the “forgotten men and women” he championed while campaigning.
Many Trump supporters have attacked those articles, deriding me as a liberal hack criticizing their man in Washington prematurely, for purely ideological reasons. “Did you really expect immediate progress, especially with the pouting Democrats not yet over the e******n?” one reader emailed. “Your article is the exact reason there is so much hysteria in today’s America. Too many ignorant ‘journalists’ writing BS articles.”
I ended up having a civil exchange with that reader, and also decided it would be worth writing a detailed explanation of why I’m applying extreme scrutiny to Trump’s economic agenda, which is the part of his presidency that I cover. I don’t speak for other journalists, but it’s a safe bet many of my colleagues feel the way I do.
T***p w*n the p**********l e******n fair and square, although it might be more accurate to say his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, lost the e******n fair and square. For all of the unsavory controversy Trump ignited, he also found a way to communicate with disenfranchised Americans who feel nobody is looking out for them. Clinton was an inauthentic, unrelatable candidate who squandered gigantic inherited advantages, such as a robust fundraising network and an army of political operatives. She lost because of her own flaws, not because of Vladimir Putin or James Comey or Anthony Weiner.
Trump, however, has a demonstrated contempt for facts and an aversion to rational analysis, which is a big problem that will only get bigger. Candidates often get away with shading the t***h while campaigning, because they don’t actually have to enact policies. But once elected, bogus facts and biased analysis can be ruinous, because you end up focusing on the wrong problem, and don’t address the problem that actually exists.
Trump has already done this with his executive order banning immigrants from 7 predominantly Muslim countries, which became a big business story when prominent companies including Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB), Microsoft (MSFT) and Intel (INTC) publicly objected to it. The White House has produced no evidence showing there’s even a problem with immigration from those countries, other than Trump and his aides insisting there is. Yet that didn’t stop him from issuing an order on his eighth day in office that caused real harm to real people, and is now keeping an army of lawyers and judges busy on litigation.
For what it’s worth, if Trump’s priority were really to protect Americans and save lives, he might want to focus first on gun violence, which accounts for roughly 34,000 deaths in the United States each year—many of them preventable. Since the 9-11 terrorist attacks in 2001, foreign terrorists have k**led a grand total of 24 people in the United States, according to a recent analysis by the libertarian Cato Institute. That makes the ratio of gun deaths to terrorist deaths in the United States each year about 23,000:1. Firearm violence causes far more physical harm and economic damage than terrorism, yet Trump is focusing on the 1, not the 23,000.
So why does Trump care so much about the minuscule risk of foreign terrorism? Here’s a guess: Because it’s hard to get v**ers riled up about Americans harming Americans. It’s a lot easier to trigger an emotional response about foreigners harming Americans—even if that harm is largely theoretical. Creating villains people can blame their problems on has been the modus operandi of demagogues for centuries.
Extend this to Trump’s economic agenda. Trump has largely blamed China and Mexico for taking the jobs of hard-working Americans. Many economists and business leaders say that’s vastly overstated, because the long-term decline in US manufacturing employment is largely due to robots and automation doing more and more of the work humans used to do. But Trump has said nothing about automation. Robots and algorithms aren’t very satisfying villains. Chinese and Mexican workers, by contrast, fulfill the us-versus-them narrative that lets Trump play the hero, beating back the invaders.
If Trump really wants to boost hiring and economic growth, he’ll need to aggressively address automation, the need for much better worker retraining, an education system that leaves millions of young Americans unprepared for the 21st-century economy, and other complex issues. If all he wants is a few theoretical villains to lash out on Twitter, well, the Mexicans and Chinese will do. But American workers won’t end up better off.
The same goes for Trump’s tax plan. He’s promising to improve the lot of working-class Americans through tax cuts that will mostly benefit the wealthy—even though such “trickle-down plans” have never worked as advertised in the past. Trump also wants to ease restrictions on banks, because this, too, will somehow help the forgotten men and women. And he’s going to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that will be better and cheaper, even though the best minds studying the matter have never been able to devise such a plan. There might be sound reasons to attempt such things, but Trump hasn’t connected the dots and explained how policy changes aimed at people who are already prospering will help people who aren’t.
Meanwhile, Trump’s dogged defense of fabricated story-lines (huge inauguration crowd, unreported terrorist attacks, highest murder rate in 45 years, etc.) makes everything he says suspect. Reporters are supposed to be skeptical, but I will confess to going well beyond that. I am more inclined to doubt what Trump says unless proven true, than to believe what he says unless proven false. Trump is doing this to himself, and doing it deliberately, to at least some extent. He knows or thinks he knows that he will win with ordinary Americans if he seems to be constantly persecuted by the press. But he’s also inviting unrelenting media scrutiny, and gambling that media criticism will never stick.
I agree with people who think the media nitpicks too often, conflating what matters with what doesn’t and obsessing over minor mistakes or misstatements by public officials. But on the big economic issues I cover, the stakes are high: Millions of American workers do, in fact, need help, and if Trump uses their cause to advance his own interests, the country will end up worse off and even more disgusted with its leaders than it has been for the last decade or so.
I actually hope Trump does boost economic growth to 4%, as he promises, and create millions of new jobs, with no negative consequences. I’d benefit the same as most other Americans. My 401(k) plan would grow. My college-age kids would graduate into a robust job market. People I know might fight less over politics. But unless Trump overcomes some basic laws of economics, he’s making promises no president can deliver. The time to say so is now.
Rick Newman br Columnist br Yahoo Finance...Februa... (
show quote)
What this writer and all the Marxist progressives fail to understand is that Trump began to win this e******n back in 2008. And the minute this writer brought in gun control I needed to read no further. Trump and conservatives will win this battle because they have been winning it since 2008. And in the words of the Black Mamba, he really was a poisonous snake, "if they bring a knife we'll bring a gun." And we have plenty of them and we also have the Commander-In-Chief and the Attorney General. Indeed, the worm has turned!
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