Just winging it:
The Trump administration is seriously thinking about not submitting a budget to Congress next year .
Although the Congressional Budget Act requires the president to submit the fiscal 2018 budget to Congress between January 2 and February 6, Trump could easily say that it was the responsibility of the outgoing Obama administration to comply with the law before the new president was sworn in on January 20.
But while the new president not sending a budget to Congress might not be illegal, it would clearly be unprecedented.
***First, it would allow Trump to avoid the complaints that always come from those the budget proposals would harm by denying them a platform to criticize the White House. No proposals on paper would mean nothing to disparage.
Second, it would allow the White House to avoid having to say how much its taxing and spending proposals will increase the federal deficit and national debt.
Given that many estimates put the likely annual deficit from the Trump campaign plans at $1 trillion or more and that the total increase in the national debt before the 2020 election could easily equal the borrowing during the first 4 years of the Obama administration, the likelihood that this is a major consideration should not be downplayed. Just think of the value of not having to publish a table that for the first time shows those very high numbers, and not having to answer to the House Freedom Caucus.
Third, it would also eliminate the need for the administration to publish a table with the very optimistic GDP growth promised during the campaign, the high interest rates many economists think are coming and Trump’s unrealistic assumptions on jobs and unemployment.
Fourth, it would eliminate the need for the House and Senate to hold hearings on the Trump budget. That would expedite Congress’ consideration of its 2018 budget resolution and the reconciliation process that is widely expected to be used to accelerate the passage of many of Trump’s and the House and Senate GOP’s priorities.
Fifth, although there have been a few rumors about possible directors of the Office of Management and Budget, almost a month after Election Day no one has yet been named. That almost certainly will delay the development of the Trump 2018 budget until almost the summer and the GOP congressional leadership might not want to wait that long to begin its work on the all-important 2018 budget resolution and reconciliation.
Finally, because the White House and Congress will be preoccupied until around the end of March with a budget resolution, reconciliation bill and appropriations for 2017 and a new debt ceiling increase, Trump may not have time for the 2018 budget that would have to be developed at that same time. Given that schedule, plus the fact that it will take some time to get the Trump cabinet and subcabinet confirmed, the White House may think that not submitting a 2018 budget and just working with Congress will be its best chance to be successful.
Of course, the lack of transparency and accountability are very desirable and will facilitate the great looting that is about to take place, but I suspect there is another reason why they won’t submit a budget.
They don’t have anyone or any staff that know how to do it. They never thought they would win. They never thought about these things. And Trump Republicans aren’t numbers people. Their reactionary radicals who think a facebook meme is a thinkpiece. They don’t know how government works, they don’t understand budgets, budgeting, and the legislative process. They just want to destroy things they think liberals like, shit on Democrats and the “elites” and the people who don’t look like them, and generally blow shit up.
What we are going to see is an administration completely disengaged from actual governance, while within the Republican House and Senate individual fiefdoms will handle the money grab. In chaos, the criminals find opportunity (see Richard’s post below). In 20 years if we are still around, we may begin to get a full accounting of how Trump drove the country into financial ruin and how we ended up with the top 1% owning 99.99% of everything while we have two trillion annual deficits but are still all starving.
But that’s if the media hasn’t been banned by then.
Mark B
Typo alert. And Obama should just submit a budget to make Trump look bad. As if anybody in the media actually cared.
frosty
Between this and Mayhew’s post below I think I’ll just go back to bed.
Botsplainer
If any of us are still around in 20 years, we’ll be sitting around a guttering campfire in a squalid camp under a ruined overpass, telling stories about how Trump and the GOP made America great again, at least until the conflagrations hit.
In that period, in the absence of law enforcement, I shall endeavor to listen to the excuses of anyone who who admits to being a WWC Trump voter before pounding him to death with a rock, should I continue to have the strength to do so.
yoda854
American exceptionalism at its very best!
SFAW
Sometimes, when I see shit like this, I want to put up a 300-foot-high billboard, addressed to Trump voters — and to people who wouldn’t vote for Hillary because “she’s just a corp-o-Dem” or “Well, I just don’t know, those e-mails/that server/Benghazi!!! concern me” — and which repeats the handwritten sign from Occupy:
JUMP! YOU FUCKERS!
Brachiator
No foreign policy. No domestic policy. No budget. He’s bold! He’s Trump!
Trump may well have killed democracy in America as we enter a new era of right wing populism. Could this be the first of the year with bad presidents?
SFAW
@Botsplainer:
Don’t forget to kick him in the nuts first.
Skippy-san
This is exactly the kind of thing that Republicans railed about with Obama. And was a teabagger myth for so many years. I can’t recall how many times I have heard my conservative friends spout the lie that Obama never submitted a budget-even though he did every year. IOKIYAR I guess.
We are well and truly fucked. And that is why I am not going to try to “understand” Trumpkins. I just will hold them in the contempt they richly deserve.
Downpuppy
OK article, even though they lost all credibility in the first 6 words:
An administration capable of serious thinking would not be thinking of sacrificing all credibility as a functional executive in their first 2 weeks. Certainly not when the Republican budgets for the last few years have been 6 pages of glossy pictures and magic asterisks.
So yeah, I get what Collender means, but he really should be more careful about words. Being a writer and all.
Botsplainer
@SFAW:
Kicked, then then off and fed to him before the rock.
Wouldn’t want him to die on an empty belly.
Iowa Old Lady
@Botsplainer: They will tell you it’s Obama’s fault
Amir Khalid
We knew all along, didn’t we, that Trump only wanted the president’s title, never the job. That’s why he had Donald Jr float that absurd VP offer to John Kasich: you’ll be in charge of domestic and foreign policy, and Donald Sr will be in charge of Making America Great Again.
Chip Daniels
@SFAW:
And make him pay for the rock.
mai naem mobile
Yes,but Tweeting about 110 jobs going to Vagyynnah from Alabama is way more interesting to Anderson Cooper. Or Melanomas outfit to the Taiwan state dinner. Or the tweet about SNL and Uday and Qusay.
delk
Outgoing responsibility of the Obama administration = budget.
Not outgoing responsibility of the Obama administration = SCOTUS pick.
ETA to add “=”
Greenergood
Now I see why Trumplethinskin and Putin adore each other – suspend ordinary rules of procedure and proceed to loot the joint …
Mike R
@Downpuppy: But magic asterisks are what policy wonks use. You can’t possibly mean Paul Ryan is a fraud and a piece of whale shit, oh wait you are right Ryan is so full of shit he stinks, but the media loves that smarmy face so I guess we are fucked.
trnc
If the hope is to eliminate a lot of the pesky work that goes along with the job, wouldn’t the work still have to be done if Obama presents a budget? Bonus: Obama’s team can say they have no time to work on transition anymore because they’re too busy preparing a budget as required by law since DT won’t.
Central Planning
Don’t businesses have budgets? I thought he was going to run the government like a business.
Sad to say this didn’t surprise me, not will the cheers of the WWC.
Who submitted the budget when Obama took office in 2009? Him or Bush?
gene108
@Mike R:
Whale shit is ecologically useful. The nutrients in whale poop help support ocean life.
Link
Baud
@gene108:
Elizabelle
What is the link to? What publication and author?
gene108
@Baud:
Just pointing out whale poop has redeeming value, unlike Trump and the Republicans.
Also, I think keeping the right-wing base constantly angry has one advantage: Anger causes people to act. They may take bad actions, but they are acting.
Self-introspection and despair do not regularly produce bursts of action.
Amir Khalid
@Central Planning:
No no no, you misunderstand. Trump is not going to run government like a business; he’s going to run government like he runs his business.
Be afwaid. Be vewy,,vewy afwaid.
Another Scott
IIRC, Obama submitted at least one budget proposal late. It’s not really that big a deal in normal times, but we’re not in normal times.
Since just about every budget submitted since Carter’s time has been called “dead on arrival” whenever there’s been divided government, Donnie’s people saying they’re thinking about blowing this off can be regarded as a continuation of that trend. But it’s worse now.
It is another indication that Donnie and his minions think that norms don’t apply to them. It’s dangerous. It’s breaking the Presidency, breaking the separation of powers, breaking the rule of law and rules of administration and governance and our traditions of only messing with the framework of national government when there has been careful consideration of the benefits and consequences.
Every day this starts to feel more like a hostile takeover of the US government by someone like Chainsaw Al Dunlap but without his “competence”…
The federal government is the largest employer in the US. It buys more stuff than any other organization anywhere. As bad as the long-standing federal contracting and procurement issues are, they are much, much worse without a budget – especially a budget that isn’t passed and in place in time. You think it’s wasteful in normal times, imagine trying to efficiently plan and spend a year’s worth of funding in 6 months…
Donnie’s incompetence has real consequences beyond breaking of norms.
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
Hunter Gathers
Nothing gets passed. I mean nothing. No budgets. No debt ceiling increase. No nothing.
General Republican incompetence (feature, not bug) combined with the the fact that Trump’s going to have his tiny hands full with daily foreign policy fuck ups as soon as he assumes office, means jack shit gets done.
Welcome to the Age of Incompetence.
Mike R
@gene108: All true, was thinking more in terms of a common drill instructor reference. You’re lower than whale shit and that sinks to the bottom of the sea. What I was trying to say is that Ryan and is enablers who would punish the weakest of our citizens are certainly absolutely reprehensible human beings who are unworthy of respect.
Baud
@Hunter Gathers: They’ll pass the debt ceiling. Failing to will have immediate economic effects they don’t want to deal with.
ChrisGrrr
@Botsplainer: I wish your scenario of the future felt like libtard hyperbole. It’s actually reassuring to hang out on a site where the prospects I fight to overcome aren’t mine alone.
Oh, and what Cole said… except that the national media being banned is irrelevant due to their unmitigated suicide. Except for a handful of reporters with a spine, absolutely nothing has a higher priority than getting more and more money to the 1%.
RepubAnon
@Downpuppy: Nice opportunity for President Obama – think of all the things he could add to a proposed 2018 budget that would annoy Republicans…
BBA
Devil’s advocate: Given how little heed Congress pays to the Presidential budget proposal, would repealing the 1921 Budget Act and eliminating Presidential budgets have any real impact on anything?
RepubAnon
@ChrisGrrr: By then, all media will be run on the North Korean standard… we’re already close.
Hunter Gathers
@Baud: Wanna bet? I got 5 on that shit. Hoping I won’t have to collect.
Baud
@Hunter Gathers: Sure. And don’t worry, you won’t have to collect either way.
PaulWartenberg2016
so, 62 million idiots voted for an administration that will be both lazy and cowardly.
crawdad
A more accurate title for this post would be “Making Up Shit To Be Pissed About”
artem1s
@Baud:
sorry, but are you sure this won’t be the moment when the bathtub government wonks get to try out their genius idea of actually sending the US into default? Newt played with it and Cruz played with it. President Elect Pussy Grabber thinks this is how you make a business successful, by stripping out what little assets are left and then defaulting on your loans and screwing over the rubes who invested in your venture. No one will be in a position of power who understands why this is a really, really bad idea for everyone, including the .001%ers. Like worldwide bad; mass starvation bad; Madame DeFarge bad, not just, ‘I can’t afford to get my Bentley detailed’, bad.
ChrisGrrr
@RepubAnon: Yes.
Unless…
If you see anywhere near enough editors and owners saying or doing a damn thing that indicates they have a higher regard or better comprehension of truth than our President-Elect, there would be hope… and I’ll start writing them some regretful, earnest apologies.
max
I suspect there is another reason why they won’t submit a budget.
For the record, if the incoming Trump administration wants to let the outgoing Obama administration (whom I suspect already have a budget more or less ready to go intending to help out a theoretical Hill administration) make a budget for the next fiscal year, it’s fine by me. Let the R’s in Congress freak out about it.
They don’t know how government works, they don’t understand budgets, budgeting, and the legislative process.
They don’t *care*. Different thing.
They just want to destroy things they think liberals like, shit on Democrats and the “elites” and the people who don’t look like them, and generally blow shit up.
Look, man, I understand Trump freaks some people out but I’m not really seeing how the incoming GWBush administration of late 2000 much differed here. Yeah, maybe dumbasses like, I dunno, JGCole thought GW was a really smart guy and Dick Cheney was some kind of military genius but those assholes were just as fucking dumb as the incoming Trump morons. And I know this because many of the SAME PEOPLE who were morons in the Bush administration are going to be morons for the Trump administration.
In 20 years if we are still around, we may begin to get a full accounting of how Trump drove the country into financial ruin and how we ended up with the top 1% owning 99.99% of everything while we have two trillion annual deficits but are still all starving.
AHEM: ‘Don’t Panic’. Also, always know where your towel is.
At any rate, we have two years to get back to November 2018 and get on with retaking the Senate and maybe a chance at retaking the House. 23 months. You were in the Army, you can endure 23 months. We deal with the damage when we come to it.
One other thing – Mrs. Cracker said: We’re a cheap, tacky joke of a country now, mirroring the character of our soon-to-be leader, so why not make the National Enquirer the “paper of record”? It’s not like The New York Times has been using that role to any good purpose anyway.
I hate to let you guys down but we’ve been a cheap, tacky joke of a country for at least 20 years. (Consider what NatEnq and say the WaPo were talking about in 1996 (and 1994 and 1995 – government shutdowns! default! etc!).) Barry O. is just one guy and he couldn’t fix it all by his lonesome, and the less said about the second B. Clinton administration, the better.
It hasn’t suddenly turned totally bad, although you might think it has, because it’s been bad for a long while now. The rot has been spreading for awhile and we’ve now got another four years to fight through. Same as 2004, actually.
max
[‘Don’t give up the ship.’]
Lurking Canadian
@gene108: That was going to be the plot of Star Trek IV, then some studio suits were afraid all the poop jokes would keep families at home, so they came up with the alien whale song stuff.
debbie
This is why a businessman in the White House is such a bad idea. They never have a problem resorting to bookkeeping trickery.
demz taters
@max: The difference is that the Bush administration was somewhat constrained by norms and by the law. The Trump administration will not be. Where the Bush admin went through a process of checks and balances, weak though they were, Trump’s admin will just act and dare anyone to do something about it.
Brachiator
@max:
Then you are not paying attention. Dubya submitted a budget and had in mind a detailed tax policy which he pushed via town hall meetings and which he ultimately got passed with the support of a few Democrats. The Bush tax cuts were wrong, but Dubya knew what he wanted, and got it done.
There are also big differences in the Bush/Cheney administration and what is shaping up to be the Billionaire Boys Club of the Trump administration.
Mike R
@Brachiator: Exactly, they have one goal to loot the treasury.
Ruckus
@Amir Khalid: \
Exactly.
He’s made out each time he declares bankruptcy, in one way or another. He thinks it’s normal to operate like this. Because the object of any of his businesses is to make him money, not to provide a room or a meal or a service. (Of course that’s the object of most businesses these days, money in, not a product or service. Silly stupid shit that I am, I always though that if I provided a great product or service, I’d make money. The key to success is to make people think it’s a great product or service and screw them merciless in the process.)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Brachiator:
Sounds like theme with the Trump admin will be “all cheifs, no indians”
We will see what happens but it’s been mentioned the Tea Party in the House sacked everyone in the GOP who knew how to write a budget and Trump apparently doesn’t have any idea (what does his bankers do it for him?). So sounds like a huge budget crises next fall.
karen marie
@Baud: But they’ll rename it so they can claim they never did any such thing. Gaslighting at its finest.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
In the navy, each ship had a budget. Normal operating costs, repairs, payroll, food, etc all came out of that. Each year we would never be allowed to purchase tools, spare parts, etc until the end of June. At that time all departments would high tail it over to the stores building with chits allowing us to spend X amt, which funny enough seemed to add up to the amount left in the budget. It was like being 5 and having unlimited grabbing permission at Toys are Us. Of course it made keeping the ship running properly during the year a lot harder.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Another Scott: Well the Teatards in the House has been screwing goverment contractors for a while by refusing to pay the bills. Sounds like The Donald is taking it to the next level.
Ruckus
@PaulWartenberg2016:
Not really. If anyone thinks they are cowardly they will just call out the troops and send them some where to do as much damage as possible while spending as little as possible. It’s called the GWB doctrine.
MomSense
I hate the trump conspirators and every person who voted for him. I just cannot get past his mocking of a disabled person and bragging about sexual assault. I’ve heard a bunch of bullshit reasons why people supported him but the fact is he has offered no specifics or plans, is the least transparent in modern history and to vote for him required looking past racism, sexual predation, discrimination against people with disabilities, extreme ignorance, inciting violence, lying, and cheating people out of their pay. There is no justification for voting for him. None.
I will never get over this.
Ruckus
@max:
It’s actually both. Effectively, it is the same thing.
Not quite. Many of the idiots are the same, but several are far worse. We’ve just been through the worst recession and many of us are just now recovering, still not and probably never to be back to where we were. GWB had policies. They were crap but they existed. This time? How far below crap can you get? That’s where we are now.
Should we panic? Pretty difficult not to, when you have no idea how bad it will be and it has the distinct possibility and probability to be far worse than can be imagined. That doesn’t mean that panic is the only option, but pollyanna isn’t the right course either.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Only one slight disagreement with your conclusion. It should be “billionaire” Not Billionaire.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
We should have a club. What 50 + million members?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
Oh, piffle. If you put a million thousandaires like TEFA together, don’t they, by the Associative principle (or is it Commutative? Or maybe Multiplicative? Or perhaps Bullshit?), become a Billionaire?
SFAW
@MomSense:
E-mails, private (unhacked) servers, and Benghazi were the Worst Things Ever, so no one should have voted for Hitlary, because she would have given more speeches to Goldman Sachs.
MomSense
@Ruckus:
We can be the founding members. Some fool tried to tell me he voted for trump because he is worried about job security and he would have voted for her if she had offered any plans for job growth. I laughed in response. He looked so surprised but I told him that was one of the dumbest reasons among nothing but dumb reasons. He was so taken aback so I told him to tell me what der trump offered for plans. He couldn’t think of one thing. Asshole.
MomSense
@SFAW:
Ironically her server seems to be the only one that wasn’t hacked.
debbie
@MomSense:
It was the mocking of the disabled reporter for me too, though having lived in NYC during Trump’s rise to ignominy had me well on the way long before he even announced.
However, it’s my family that voted for him. I didn’t do Thanksgiving, and I know they missed me more than I missed them. But watching my niece playing varsity basketball yesterday, I realized I missed them too (some of them). This may just end up being a rift between us, but I find I can’t separate totally from them.
SFAW
@MomSense:
Yes. It’s a point I’ve been making for quite a while now, to anyone who doesn’t tell me to STFU. (Well, STFU for stuff like this; I get people telling me to STFU all the time, because that’s just the kind of guy I am.)
And, note: still unhacked, even after TEFA asked his BFF Vladi to hack her server.
SFAW
@MomSense:
You could tell that asshole to move to WV, because TEFA has said he’ll bring all sorts of coal jobs back.
MomSense
@debbie:
For my oldest son it was the sexual assault. He found trump thoroughly deplorable back when trump was making the birther claims but he cannot forgive anyone who voted for a sexual predator.
Maybe just be involved enough with your family to guide your niece in the sane direction.
gene108
@artem1s:
Chinese bonds will be the new risk free rate. Financial markets move on.
And we will be greatful for all those jobs that let us work from 9 pm to 5 am, so we can sync our timings with our Russian and Chinese corporate offices standard hours.
gene108
@SFAW:
TEFA?
debbie
Oh, they’ll come around. Other than their politics, they are decent people (aside from the one sociopath). Trump will do something that will make them realize their mistakes (my guess is that it will be the anti-Semitism that is a step too far). I intend to make sure they acknowledge their error to my face.
My dad was a real Republican. We argued endlessly over Vietnam, but when I watched him watching Nixon’s map and pointer speech, I knew he’d come over to the good side. People do change.
gene108
@Ruckus:
Bush, Jr had people, who understood how the nuts and bolts of government worked.
They used that knowledge for cynical ends and it came back to bite us all, but they knew enough to understand how a bill becomes a law, and when you have to bend logic and legal interpretation into a Mobeus strip to skirt Congressional oversight.
I do not think anyone in Trump’s crew has a clue.
SFAW
@gene108:
That Evil Fucking Asshole.
As with “hovercraft,” I refuse to use its name.
kindness
I said in jest prior to the election that Trump getting elected would create a gun rush by liberals.
Might not be a bad move to some extent. What scared me after this election was reading and hearing some from the right complaining they didn’t get to use their guns to get rid of their filthy opponents. They weren’t kidding. Now for most of us a gun isn’t really an option. I for one don’t want to end up like the Warsaw Ghetto though.
I mean these people have openly stated they have no intention of adhering to conventions. They aren’t going to play by our preferred rules. We have to play by theirs.
SFAW
@debbie:
What, there wasn’t enough in the campaign to convince them? There was a fair amount of anti-Semitism on display, aided and abetted by Bannon, that evil motherfucker.
I realize that you are hoping the rift will be healed, and that you will be sad if it isn’t, but you may need to come to grips with the idea that some of your extended family (outside of the sociopath) are beyond redemption.
Another Scott
@Ruckus: The DoD is weird in many respects. Lots of it operates on working capita funds – meaning they don’t have lines in the federal budget. But they get funding from places that do. So the WCF places often have money that expires on 9/30, but other money that expires on 12/31. Plus there are all kinds of rules about what “color” of money pays for what expense. It’s a nightmare under the best of circumstances. When there’s no budget, it gets substantially harder, more expensive, and much less efficient…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
greennotGreen
@kindness: No guns. Unless your fear of Others is greater than your love for your family. Guns in the house are more likely to be used against someone in the house than any outside intruder. Remember, if your enemy is the government, civilians guns aren’t much of a match against tanks and missiles.
If you’re really worried about an America apocalypse, I suggest you cultivate any foreign friends who might be willing to sponsor you, keep plenty of cash and gas on hand, make sure your passport is up to date, et cetera. Canada is really nice. Brazil and Ecuador have their own problems, but I think you could make a very nice life in either of those if you stay away from the big cities.
Even better, let’s fight these assholes at the voting booths!
Chris
@max:
@Brachiator:
Yeah.
It’s one thing to say that the Trump administration is merely continuing trends that were already evident in the Bush years (the increasingly open looting of the treasury, the utter contempt for any kind of “expertise” in favor of political crony cretins, the appeal to ignorance and bigotry and the right wing media bubble to get public support) and, in fact, for decades before. That’s both true and important to point out. It’s quite another to deny that we’re much further along in these trends under Trump (heck, before he even takes office) than we were sixteen years ago. There’s a difference between heading straight for an iceberg two miles away and heading straight for an iceberg fifty yards away.
narya
my suggestion: Obama creates TWO budgets. One is a sane budget, like he would actually propose. The other is a budget based on all of TEFA’s claims and promises, AND it spells out who exactly gets all the tax breaks, and all of the programs that have to be cut in order to make it happen.
J R in WV
I’m not sure I believe the stats on death by owned guns, particularly if you exclude deaths by suicide. Obviously gun ownership stats are a mess on account of the NRA’s policy on not allowing people to study gun ownership seriously.
And I think most of us are more worried about Trumpkins acting out when Trump fuqs up their world and blaming the Demoncrats for Trump’s failures.
What will you do if your home is attacked by Hitler-worshiping RWNJs carrying their guns menacingly? Because they are already attacking people by beating them – the fact that most haven’t died so far is merely an oversight.
SFAW
@narya:
Great idea. Unfortunately, I don’t think The President would be willing to spend resources on having his Admin do the TEFA-like budget. But it would be good fun if he did.
Gretchen
@J R in WV: Why exclude deaths by suicide? I wouldn’t trust myself or most members of my family with the combination of a gun safe given our struggles with depression. I have a good friend who never thought his gun would be used by his wife to kill herself, until he came home and found her.
I totally agree that it would be wonderful to have some research on the subject. Didn’t California decide to stop waiting for the federal government and is funding the research itself?
Another Scott
@SFAW: This is the FY18 budget we’re talking about – starting in October 2017. Obama has nothing to do with that. People in the various departments are still trying to get a FY17 budget in place. Tasking them to work on a FY18 budget that nobody would pay attention to would be a waste of resources.
Cheers,
Scott.
RaflW
@OP
Kind of amazing to think that, as long as the earth doesn’t end up with life-altering levels of nuclear radiation, we have probably voted in the man who will sweep the US into its post-empire life, while India and China ascend to dominate global geopolitics.
I agree about the coming privations. I think that we’ll likely make Argentina’s difficult decades look like an extended holiday festival of abundance.
In a shitty sort of way, it serves us right (by that I mean that we’ve been tending a decay of our institutions over the past decades that have enabled the coming shitstorm. And by we, I mean the American system, not us BJers in particular). Interesting, too, that our corporate overlords don’t realize this yet. Well, some do, that’s why Trump is threatening a 35% tax for businesses that flee.
Ithink
@MomSense:
I guess I second that notion you stated hut every damn thing about Trump and his campaign and impending administration is beyond the pale for me. As a swlf-described intellectual & ner . As a person of color. As an American citizen and just a decent human being, PERIOD.
The authoritarianism, the know-nothing demagoguery, the white-hot (pun intended) racism, xenophobia and generally nativist sentiment all around; the Islamaphobia, antisemitism, the toxic alpha male masculinity mindlessly masquerading as worldly insight. Its just beyond sickening for nete English words, as big as said language is!
That being said, as a sexual assault survivor that’s an African American male, I can only imagine how women feel after seeing and gearing the Hollywood Access tape and the asshat got elected anyways. Or at least that slim majority of women, particularly of color, who voted against him and Trump persona if nothing else. No less than Nicolle Wallace, a former GWB media communications director, pointed this out the other day on NSNBC how still traumatizing and disturbing that is, and I couldn’t agree more on this matter.
I’ll never understand why anybody ever pulled the lever or checked the ballot for the greatest phony there never has been to ascend to a political or public office possibly ever in human history, but here we are…?
dww44
@Ruckus: I think our club is made up of 65,316,725 Clinton voters.
As of this moment at the National Popular Vote Tracker Clinton’s lead just reached 2 points (48.2 vs 46.2) or 2,597,156. Trump is the REAL MINORITY President-eclect and we should all of us take every opportunity to let the 62 million 719thousand who voted for him know that.
Plus, I don’t care about all those liberal pundits who pooh poo the Comey Effect, I still feel that his finger on the scales in late October turned the tide away from HRC. And, what he did in July didn’t help either.
SFAW
deleted
Chris
@RaflW:
A very left-wing blogger I like had this to say on the topic: “I don’t believe in God, but I do believe in karma. Not in the sense that you get what you deserve, but in the sense that the work you do or don’t put into the system will come out at the other end inevitably.” He was talking about New Orleans and Katrina at the time. Needless to say it applies to a lot more.
I think much of our corporate overlords – half of them inherited their position, and lots of the others didn’t exactly start off poor in the first place – have been programmed by a lifetime of experience to think that they’ll never really pay any consequences for their mistakes. So yeah, they probably don’t care if the U.S. goes tits-up. Sadly, they may be right, even in the event of total societal collapse. How many French or Chinese or Cuban overlords really paid the price for their misrule when society went tits-up – as opposed to jumping ship for the safety of London, Taipei, or Miami and spending the rest of their life bitching that the world wasn’t fair to them?
Jinchi
Raise your hand if you think the House Freedom Caucus gives a damn about deficit spending by Republican presidents.