Saturday, February 27, 2016

Insulting People is now Standard Operating Procedure and a Danger to our Democracy


David Brooks wrote an outstanding column yesterday on what the design of democracy creates and how the current political atmosphere created by Grover Norquist, the NRA, the Tea Party, and personified by Donald Trump's authoritarian philosophic tendencies is poisoning our Democratic traditions and despite these people wrapping themselves up in the Constitution, the process they are employing to try and implement/enforce their positions has little basis in a well functioning Democracy.  So this election is evolving into a referendum on how a American Democracy should function and it is the GOP that is offering something very radical.

Link to David Brooks Column


I know RedStateVT hates the Kardashianing of America, yet he can be prone to copying Donald Trump's pattern of using partisan characture to slam individuals without showing respect for those individuals, and the acceptance of this behavior as appropriate is closely related to the popularity of the Kardashian's.  It is a focus on celebrity fandom as a cultural phenomenon, and the use of it as a political tool to trash political opponents.

So it is no surprise that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have a mutual admiration society for each other as they both use this technique to advance their political fortunes.  And that is only one reason I detest Donald Trump.

I have detested Donald Trump for many years as a High Yield Bond Analyst.  I never had his bonds in my portfolio because I found him untrustworthy and he actively use bankruptcy remote corporate structures to rake in money for himself and then let the company go bankrupt as was his legal right.

He also trades in his name, selling it to others so he can get paid and they can attract uninformed people who think that by associating themselves with Trump, they will achieve personal benefit.  That was the business model of Trump University which failed to educate its students.  So it is no wonder that Trump says he loves the uneducated, they paid tuition to him with student loans they cannot pay back.  As President, would he forgive those loans?

And today we read in the Sports Section, that the members of a golf resort in Florida that Trump bought before it went bankrupt have a Class Action lawsuit against Donald Trump.  The Class had refundable deposits that when Trump bought the gold course assumed as part of the deal, meaning he owed the money.  Trump then proceeded to try and strong arm people into giving up their rights to a refund for pennies on a dollar by threatening them with other possible economic paths that would harm them.  Doesn't Donald Trump love golfers too?

So Chris Christie in an effort to find a job for himself after he fails to win reelection as Governor of New Jersey endorses Donald Trump and we have one bully fawning over another bully.  In the process Governor Christie called Donald Trump an honorable man.

An honorable man does not conduct business like Donald Trump conducts business.  An honorable man does not insult entire classes of people.  People deserve respect.  That is above all else what our Judaic Christian history as a democratic country is founded upon.  Respect for individual rights and a democratic process which involves negotiation to maintain a stake in government for all.

And meanwhile, there is a news article that one reason for Japan's economic malaise is the fact that the population has declined by 1 mm people over the last 5 years.  This supports my position that if Trump deports 11 mm people from the U.S., the U.S. economy will go into a recession that will last for years which will expand the fiscal deficit and ruin fixed income as an asset class for another decade, at least.  That is hardly making America Great Again.  America is great when our economy is great.

RedStateVT claims that the passage of ObamaCare violated this tradition of respect.  But ObamaCare was designed by the Heritage Foundation and implemented by a GOP Presidential Candidate in his state first, where it was successful.  So Mitch McConnell in his desire to make Obama a one term president, tries to foil Obamacare and demonizes GOP ideas on how to improve the populations health and then the GOP punditry blames Obama for poisoning the atmosphere. I have no idea what else the President could have done to make the GOP happy beyond taking the blueprint of a right wing market based Think Tank and making it happen.  My memory has faded on the political machinations of 2009/2010.

This is what GOP punditry has become;  using Falsehoods to belittle people:  the President is not an American, he is a Muslim Socialist,  an all powerful political manipulator.  He is anti-Democratic.  I could go on but if you read this far, I know I am trying your patience by trying to express my disgust for lying.

As a manager, I fired anyone who lied to me and it happened 3 times in my 15 years as a manager.  Lying is a fireable offense and I acted upon it.  I would not like to say that I will not vote for a lier, but since all politicians shade the truth, we are left trying to pick out the least offensive individual in that regard.  But the GOP has become so anti-Democratic, that none of them can be trusted with anything. 7 debates and I don't know what any of them would do to reform health care except return us to the hell that was health insurance before ObamaCare.  And they want to balance the budget; how will that happen?  They want to create a War budget for the Middle East and the Ukraine, and sub-Saharan Africa, and Libya and the South China Sea and ......, but cut taxes, not raise taxes to pay for it.  And will all this conflict play out in the valuation of global wealth?

If you read this far, thank you for reading.  This election is trying my soul and I get so agitated that I need to vent.  I hope other Democratic voters exist in sufficient number to protect our Democracy.

The GOP is truly insane now from a policy standpoint.





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