While we are obsessing about legitimacy…
From the Times
Mr. Trump’s decision to scrap the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or T.P.P., reversed a free-trade strategy adopted by presidents of both parties dating back to the Cold War, and aligned him more with the political left. When he told a meeting of union leaders at the White House on Monday that he had just terminated the pact, they broke into applause.
“We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it’s going to be reversed,” Mr. Trump told them, saying that from now on, the United States would sign trade deals only with individual allies. “I think you’re going to have a lot of companies come back to our country.”
Tammy Baldwin and Bob Casey tweeted their support for the move.
This is, of course, Trump’s play to solidify support in the Midwest.
As a reminder, collapse in union support in key states was a central cause of his losses:
Clinton’s poor performance among union households appeared to especially damage her in crucial Midwestern states. Obama won Ohio in 2012, besting Romney in those households by 23 percentage points. Clinton actually lost Ohio’s union households to Trump by 9 points, according to exit polls. The state went to Trump.
Michigan would have been an easy victory any other year — Democrats had won the state since 1992 — but it’s currently still too close to call. Exit polls show Clinton holds only a 13 percent advantage among union households there. Obama beat Romney in union households by a whopping 33 percent in 2012. A similar scenario played out in Wisconsin this year, another state that went to Trump.
Simultaneously the idea of a “border adjustment tax” – essentially a tarrif – has gained serious ground.
Trump has also called a meeting to begin re-negotiating portions of NAFTA.
Something that once upon a time another candidate promised to do.
The naked politics here is pretty smart, and should not be taken likely.
Did you see Marie’s link to how Davis-Bacon repeal might play out in rural recovery projects.
Race to the bottom has begun.
I did. Davis Bacon requires paying the prevailing wage, and not a livable wage as Naomi writes.
So the difference is pretty significant. I can see a reasonable case against Davis Bacon – it basically requires the government to pay union scale and in some places that is far above the wage you could get otherwise.
The rest of her article is well taken.
There is no “reasonable case against Davis-Bacon.” The most competent general or prime contractors employ union labor and subcontractors. Without Davis-Bacon the non-union shops would always be the lowest bidder and deliver an inferior product.
The owners/managers of the best general/prime contractors are for the most part Republicans. In part that’s traditional (Herbert Hoover) and in part it’s the political party that lets them keep more of their profits. Politically there’s a degree of tension between them and their work forces. Somewhat silly because traditionally more public works are available for them when Democrats hold the purse strings. So, it’s more like healthy tension.
Why the hell should college-educated pencil pushers/button pushers expect those in physically demanding and mostly very skilled workers to receive sub-par wages? What tangible worth do all those well-paid NoVa and MD Nat-Sec employees produce?
Why should the Government not hire the firm that delivers the best value?
How is the government supposed to make that evaluation?
Construction projects aren’t like building widgets. The government engineers and contracting officers do create the specs, but they aren’t the builders and the specs often enough have errors. Builders have that experience and expertise, including how much each component of the project should cost to build. If the contractor blows the estimate, they eat it.
Setting a wage standard is one tool the government uses to evaluate the bids. Increases the odds that they are comparing apples to apples. It’s one reason why bids from the various bidders come in more alike than different. And those government contracting officers are always on the lookout for bid rigging. If one bid comes in significantly below the others, it’s subjected to a lot of scrutiny. The contractor may pull the bid due to having made an identifiable error, the contracting officer may declare the bid non-responsive, and there are some other checks and balances on this.
Construction trade unions play a major role in supplying qualified workers. That union card means more than simply having a wage and benefit negotiator.
Why would a liberal ever want to advocate for cheaper labor? This is the mindset of not respecting workers that aren’t college educated and socially liberal that has been costing the DP votes for decades.
Do you want to drive across bridges built by imported Mexican construction labor?
This is one area of the US economy where a very good system that protects workers and the public has been in place for decades. And you would have us dismantle it to save a few bucks? On the backs of hardworking and skilled workers; even if liberals don’t respect the intelligence and skills of construction workers, mechanics and farmers, they aren’t dumb and they can see the contempt liberals have for them. It’s bad enough that the manufacture of construction materials have been off-shored and we see hollowed out communities like Bethlehem, PA.
I honestly can’t believe I’m having this argument with a liberal.
You make the determination as part of the bid process.
David Bacon is plain flat a hand-out to unions. It always has been. If a contract with a track record of delivering quality can come in with a lower rate, it is indefensible to not take that bid.
The objective of infrastructure projects should be to maximize public value, period.
Better that we should have a permanent Federal Highway Department with a permanent workforce. In years that the work exceeds the workforce (using reasonable overtime) contracts can be let for the excess work.
The Federal government is not supposed to be a profit center. There is no need to force workers to take a low wage. That would be using the government’s monopoly power and is evil. Just like Microsoft and walmart using permanent temps.
That is done for maintenance work which is more amenable to projecting what needs to be done and the workforce required to do it.
There are too many uncontrollable variables involved in construction for governments to maintain a stable workforce to do this. Funding is one of the major variables. That permanent construction force can’t even be rationalized for unpredictable emergency work. It’s why governments contract with private contractors throughout the area for that work to be performed on an as needed basis.
Usually highway departments are more efficient at the state level. Professional state crews used to do it. Probably all crony bids, now.
That state level efficiency is derived from having a large enough operating territory to employ a skilled permanent workforce.
In small towns, cities, and counties, there may be some crony capitalism for road/infrastructure maintenance work or negotiated very small contracts with the local contractor of which there may be only one or two. Anything of size is put out for competitive bid and the best price (no necessarily the best contractor) wins. But there are some safeguards for the government in that lowest bidder system. It may not get built on time, but it will get built at the original contract price per the original specs.
The gross profit margins on construction projects are very thin. A winner is 5% (and that’s before general overhead). Most are in the 2-3% range, and it’s rare for a contractor to go a full year without at least one loser.
In Illinois it seems that a contractor with a record of being associated with organized crime is always selected. Makes me wonder how competitive those bids are. When I was part of DoD, plenty of bids had only one bidder. One reason was that it costs money to make a bid. If one contractor is perceived, rightly or wrongly, of having an inside track, other companies are reluctant to waste money bidding.
Bids are only required if the dollar value is over a specified amount. Below that they’re handled as purchase orders and the purchasing agent does cost comparisons. That does leave room for kickbacks, but the amounts are small and accounting departments can spot excessive costs in a reasonably short period of time. However, other than on competitive bid projects, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least that corruption exists in the DoD. (Sen Proxmire often highlighted such incompetence in purchases by the DoD.) But even there, on small contracts, a single bidder is rare and then there has to be a really good reason for only one bidder before the contract is awarded to that bidder.
Bunnatine Greenhouse wasn’t the exception but like most government contracting officers, highly competent. Infuriated me that the public was so complacent about the rot and corruption that the Bush/Cheney gang introduced. Really a shame because the CoE contracting officers were some of the best.
I’ve never held a government job or a union job, but professionally interacted with both and overall, they’re at least as competent and hard working as those in the private sector.
On more cutting edge and/or researchy projects, its often the case that the winners of Phase I get to effectively write the request for proposals for future phases. Of course, that isnt the case for purchases of generic commodities. I’m not saying this is always a bad thing.
True, and that is what I’m talking about re DoD, development contracts. McNamara introduced the life cycle contract and that pernicious concept may still have lingering effects.
First, you’re assuming that the experience, expertise, and work force in government is sufficient to make that determine in the bid process. Government would have to spend a lot more money on this to come even close to having the capacity to do this. And assume all the risk for getting it wrong. If you knew anything about construction, you’d appreciate the high cost of that risk.
Second, one could say that government employee benefits are “hand-outs to unions.” But those employees, for the most part, don’t sweat and don’t have to dirty their hands. They’re more like you, and therefore, they’re entitled to their unions, benefits, job security, and that predictable bi-weekly paycheck.
Why are you so hostile to blue collar worker unions? You don’t even seem to appreciate that construction worker unions have to embed down-time due to weather and the erratic/unpredictable funding for construction in their wage negotiations. If these workers don’t get a decent wage (or your claim of excessive wage) when there’s work how would they have the financial means to some set some of it aside in union trust accounts and personal savings for down times? Who else would hire such workers in down times knowing that they’ll leave as soon as new construction work becomes available.
Do you even get it that “prevailing wage” isn’t some higher wage rate for government construction projects? That union labor on private projects earn the same wage? Odd that the private sector also hires contractors that use union labor isn’t it? Does it cost more? Yes. Avoiding union picket lines is one incentive for private sector owners to use a union contractor, but if its not a cookie-cutter type project, the contractors with the best track record are unionized.
Skilled labor and no friction between labor and management is a component in how a contractor builds a track record. It’s one reason why the industry has become much more stable over the past hundred years. It’s built in a “herd immunity.” What you’re arguing for is similar to that of the anti-vaxxers — relying on the herd immunity to protect their children from nasty and preventable diseases while their children don’t bear any of the risk from getting immunized.
Government construction projects don’t require the use of union labor; only that the labor used cannot be cheaper than union labor. Won’t bore you with the details, but once heard a man say, “So, we got this really sweet project in San Francisco.” I groaned knowing full well what came next. He lost his shirt and barely survived as a much smaller contractor.
Construction firms which provide cheap labor also provide lower skilled, lesser trained workers who do inferior work which must be repaired and replaced more quickly. It doesn’t save jurisdictions money in anything other than the short term.
That inferior work also creates greater chance of minor or catastrophic failures of bridges, buildings and other construction projects, which can injure, maim or kill workers during construction and users after construction.
You get what you pay for. Cheap bidders most often deliver bad value.
where is that link
My comment in this diary thread. Or you can skip what I wrote and go directly to Naomi Klein’s piece. Helps enormously if you’ve read “The Shock Doctrine.”
thanks
I wonder how Republicans/corporate Dems plan to finesse Obama’s other two trade deals that are equally bad, if not worse. Esp the intellectual property and pharma one.
They are fast tracked, too, no?
Guess that dumping of industrial labor in favor of the banksters finally came back to bite the Democratic neoliberals in the butt. Would GHWB have won in ’92 if he had dumped NAFTA? Probably. But the Clintonistas figured that the “left” would have no where else to go and a Republican opponent without NAFTA, CAFTA, TPP was unimaginable. Well, it was unimaginable as long as the GOP didn’t nominate a “Pied Piper” that had been a Perot-Republican.
Labor, AFL-CIO and Trumka, put themselves between a rock and a hard place by endorsing Clinton. Their weak criticisms of Obama and TPP did them no favors with their rank-and-file members. And yet, the GOP, including Trump, still have killing off unions on their to-do list.
From the NYT article on the French Election:
Same thing going on. This is a global issue:
And this
Honestly I think liberal pundits right now are completely clueless as to what is going on.
LePen is still trailing badly in the head-to-head polls against the two known candidate (Macron and Fillon) as well as, but far less so, the expected (until Sunday) Socialist nominee Valls.
It’s looking as if Hamon may defeat Valls for the nomination. Then if younger French liberals get their heads out of their asses and recognize that Macron is nothing other than a reconstituted, younger version of what Hollande had turned into, they’ll see that they can avoid a run-off with a choice between Fillon and LePen.
Since Trump won the Presidency, I have no difficulty imagining La Pen winning the Premiership. Then we have to ask what will happen in Germany, Spain, and Italy?
It’s healthy to retain the ability to imagine dreadful outcomes, but reality checks are required. France is a multi-political party state and not a two-party with a couple of tiny fringe parties that effectively hold no seats anywhere. There are also two rounds in the general election. To put the leading French candidates within a two-round general election in the US it would be like:
Cruz = Fallon
Trump = LePen
Sanders = Hamon
Clinton = Macron
That last equivalence is a stretch because Macron is young and set up a new party to get the nomination, but public policywise they are similar. Now imagine who would have been the top two in that US national general election?
I’m not so sure that the multi-party characterization is accurate. There tend to be a lot of leftist or centrist candidates in the first round of the presidential race, representing an assortment of ideological stances, but they’re not necessarily aligned with established political parties.
Actually, Melenchon is ahead of Hamon, though we will see how things shake out once the PS primary is done and the actual campaign starts going. Hamon might take a chunk from both Melenchon and Macron. After all, Fillon got a marked bump in the polls after he won Les Republicans primary.
Since Melenchon is left of the centre-left party I guess that makes him Stein.
Macron is pretty much like Bloomberg (except the age), neoliberal with an independent image. So, a bit like if Sanders and Cruz won the primaries and Trump and Bloomberg ran as independents.
You’re correct — I was too slapdash with my comment. FG (or FDG) is polling better than its 2012 fourth place finish. But so far is capturing less from PS to add to its base than the new kid with no base has captured from PS. Both are still a ways from second place, and until the PS runoff on Sunday, it’s too soon to make even superficial projections.
Le Pen or not Le Pen, the other countries will likely continue on their trajectories.
In Germany far-right AFD will advance, but not gain power. If she’s not to badly wounded, Merkel will lead another coalition.
In Italy, the traditional big parties of the right and left is in collaboration – but not coalition – against the rising Italian populists in the Five Star Movement. The Five Star Movement is officially neither left nor right, but if you look at their voting record in the European parliament they’re closest to the left group. They are opposed to austerity and wants to leave the euro (but not the EU).
In Spain the far right is either in the big party of the right, or hardly existing. The opposition to austerity comes from the new party of the left, Podemos.
So it is a mix, but the austerity center can not hold, and the social democratic big parties of the left is taking most of the losses.
“So it is a mix, but the austerity center can not hold, and the social democratic big parties of the left is taking most of the losses.”
What happened to Hollande is instructive.
Germany is the exception because it benefits from globalization – the export machine makes German politics fundamentally different from other countries.
Around a hundred years ago (OK, 104) Progressives lost control of the Republican Party which left its radical abolitionist roots and became the (R) party we know today. This ushered in a string of Center-Right Presidents and Congresses until the Great Depression.
Will history repeat?
In 1824 the Democratic-Republican Party shattered and the right wing populist Democratic party led by Jackson took power in 1828. Jackson actually had won a plurality of EV’s in 1824. IIRC, this led to right wing governments until the new radical Republican Party took power in 1860. Not so sure about this period. I’m sure TarHeelDem knows more.
Still, I think we are in for a generational right turn.
So, are we doomed until the economy totally collapses or the Second Civil War starts?
Your closing line assumes that the first Civil War ever ended. I’d maintain that it didn’t. Oh, there were no more pitched battles between uniformed armies, but the ideological battles didn’t go away, they just mutated.
True, but there’s difference between ideological battles and Fort Sumter or Gettysburg or the Wilderness.
It is much more soothing for many to believe that social backwardness produced Trump phenomena. You can virtue signal on every bush.
IMO, you’re both simplifying and misreading. Not considering all the cross currents. The same way 1992 was misread.
The under 45 age group is not moving right but left. When people get scared — fear loss of status or economic well-being — they’ll look for something different. Most people have the most superficial knowledge of politics, economics, etc. and given only two viable choices, most vote as they, and often how their family for many generations, have voted.
Fourteen Senate Democrats joined all but one Senate Republican in confirming Rep. Mike Pompeo as the new CIA director on Monday evening, failing a crucial first test of whether Democrats would present a united front to defend human rights and civil liberties in the Trump era.
Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul was the lone member of his party to vote against his confirmation.
Pompeo is a far-right Kansas Republican who has in the past defended CIA officials who engaged in torture, calling them “patriots”. Last week, he left the door open to torture by acknowledging in his written responses to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he would be open to altering a 2015 law prohibiting the government from using techniques not listed in the Army Field Manual.
Notice The Man Who Would Be Vice-President in there, along with your DiFi and everyone’s favorite leader, Chuck Schumer. So tell me how the country is not heading Right. I think they are sprinting Right. How long before your beloved Democrats start giving interviews about building a wall with Mexico? How long before they VOTE for it?
Pardon — I thought we were talking about “the country” and not the national Democratic Party. DiFi has always been a DINO and very pro-CIA/NSA/Pentagon. Her “feminism” is as limited as Clinton’s, but due to being a SF denizen, she’s had to be supportive of gay and lesbian equal rights; so, on that she’s been to Clinton’s left. For the record, she has never been beloved by me.
Weighed in, expressed my disgust, on this vote and these fourteen Democrats in some other thread shortly after the vote. Don’t feel any need to repeat myself in response to your challenge. I was actually more disappointed in Schatz being part of this gang — he seemed to show promise, but guess he’s decided that his bread is buttered better by linking up with Schumer.
Speaking of which, and only because you have been more enamored of her than I have, today Elizabeth Warren endorsed Ben Carson for HUD. With the usual DC Democratic caveat of “serious reservations.” Dr. Ben is as qualified for this job as Brownie was for FEMA. It’s not even as if this is what MA voters want from her.
Why are you listening to DINOs to assess where the country is and is moving? If you were a Labour Brit would be listening to Blair and the other two losers that succeeded him? The Democratic Party elites are trying to hold onto their positions of power and deny that they’ve been losing because they don’t represent what liberal/leftist want and need.
I know.
Agreed, unless MA is turning Right also.
Not listening, looking. (R)s opposed Obama but (D)s yield to Trump. On the front pages, Booman has been assuring us that these are the REAL Democrats and the voters support them, not the DFH’s. And those of us in fly over country are only concerned about manufacturing jobs because we are lower animals unable to see the greatness of Ivy League upper class values.
re: Nikki Haley confirmation:
While not the most important confirmation vote (Haley is after all replacing the horrible Samantha Power) still disappointed that Merkley didn’t make it five no votes. Udall is a good guy and may have talked some sense into Heinrich on this one.
Maybe in CA, not here. I’ve noticed that Trump supporters here are either very old or very young. The middle aged just vote their Party out of habit like they support the Bears against Green Bay, tribalism. The young here see NO future. That also accounts for the depopulation.
Trump can abrogate NAFTA or renegotiate it all he wants. He can bluster about jobs and NAFTA all he wants. NAFTA’s deleterious effect on union employment was small potatoes compared to the effect of the flood of cheap Chinese products that came with entry of China into the WTO. And really, whether one wants to point the finger at NAFTA or at China and the WTO, the lost jobs are not coming back. Steel mills circa 2017 don’t operate the way they did 25 years ago, for example. Those union leaders applauding Trump are SUCKERS.
You write:
You also write:
All his moves are not purely “political,” fladem. Not on that kind of focused level, anyway. He appears to me to believe that these kinds of economic policies will make the U.S. economy stronger, and that in turn will solidify…broaden, really…his support. I am glad that people are beginning to take him seriously…it’s long past time for that to happen…but don’t underestimate his long view.
If they work…and they will have to produce no serious consequences such as loans being called in/retaliatory tariffs/certain foreign-produced sections of the economy substantially raising their prices in order for them to work…then he will have won that battle. Tammy Baldwin and Bob Casey are not particularly powerful Dem senators and I suspect that both of them are trying to shore up their own support. Trump is going to meet heavy opposition from federal legislators of both parties who are in bed with the multinationals, and that includes most of them. The more powerful they are, the more deeply they are in involved in multinational corporate money. Bet on it. He will also take heavy fire from the centrist media.
We shall see how this all shakes out.
Soon.
Trump is presently mounting a kind of blitzkrierg attack on the PermaGov forces, hoping to catch them unprepared for such radical actions only a few days after he was inaugurated.
He may be right.
That’s smart politics, too.
The PermaGov people have gotten soft and lax in their hitherto fix-ensured little DC feifdom. He is kicking ass and taking names in a way that DC has never seen. Ever. They may not be able to get their shit together in time to effectively oppose him.
Watch.
AG
Trump is presently mounting a kind of blitzkrierg attack on the PermaGov forces,
Other than the TPP, it’s more like signing off on the GOP wishlist. Which happens to be a faction of the “perma-gov” which contrary to your rhetoric/opinion is hardly monolithic. What did he say at Langley? I’m “a gonna give you a lot more money and you can take off the gloves.” IOWs, he’s reviving the power in Cheney faction. Kicking to the curb the self-styled more measured and liberal with its different (and not totally less destructive) agenda Obama faction.”
I have never considered the PermaGov to be “monolithic,” Marie. It is a series of shifting alliances between and among different power bases, just as are any sets of gang alliances from local level right on up to international cabals.
The primary goals of all of those power bases are profit and power. They conspire with each other to keep things “fixed” so that they can continue their criminal theft. Right now Trump is heading the new gang in town, and the old gangs got caught with their pants down. Are they too old, too rich and too weak to go to real war with him or are they going to surrender parts of their territory to the Trumpists so they can enjoy their ill-gotten riches undisturbed.
What he said at Langley was an attempt to buy off a faction of enforcers who have been working for the old gangs so long that they have themselves become an independent gang. Like Murder Incorporated.
Intel Inc.
Can they be bought off?
Stay tuned…this is only the first week.
AG
P.S. The Cheney faction? They’re old news. Retired to the suburbs to waste away. Trump is about creating a new faction. Watch. Like him. Quicker. More aggressive. More out front. And even scarier.
Watch.
You seem to be discounting the extent to which institutional cultures get passed down regardless of the number of changes at the top. They, including the factions, live on. New people come in and carry them on without any personal exposure to their genesis.
The Hoover FBI and Dulles CIA are still with us, but in a more fractured form than when those old creeps ruled with an iron hand.
Precisely. This is also similar to crime families, Marie. The beginnings of the end to real Italian gang power in NYC occurred in the persons of two people…Joe Colombo and later John Gotti…who tried to ignore the old ways of secrecy and hiding in favor of going public.
Gotti was the back-breaker. After him the Russians and other Eastern European groups took over a great deal and much of what was left was at the mercy of the various South/Cenbtral American drug cartels.
So it goes.
What goes up must come down.
Every time.
On every level.
Later…
AG
Then you agree that Trump isn’t presently mounting a kind of blitzkrierg attack on the PermaGov forces,…. He’s just elevating and demoting preexisting factions.
In the CIA that would be elevating the Bush/Cheney faction of international war criminals.
Too soon to tell IMHO about the FBI. Which side of the DC v. NYC divide is Comey on? Democrats and Trump believe he’s with NYC. I suspect their both wrong.
AG — Sessions is a big step lower and the bar wasn’t that high.
Pentagon — sheesh what a maze, but like Samantha Power, Ash Carter was no peach.
Here’s what I see — presidential “outsiders” make the worst nominations because they don’t know government and the players, no personal experience to differentiate the good from the bad among the potential candidate pool, and their inner circle is similarly clueless. DC experience reduces the number of totally dreadful nominations (ie Ben Carson and Sessions), but if that experience is short in the number of years and/or the inner circle is too closed and/or rigid, the nominations tend to be mediocre. This doesn’t mean that a more DC experienced POTUS with a broad range of affiliations doesn’t appoint a clunker or two; only that on average the caliber of knowledge, expertise, etc. among the appointments will be higher.
In their first round, Carter, Reagan, and Clinton screwed up. GWB had Cheney, but soon enough had to look to Poppy’s gang for help. Obman/Biden looked to the Senate and House — much too small a pool to draw from — and the old Clinton gang which was the totally wrong move. They didn’t end up with any laughing stocks like “Brownie,” but they could have done and needed to do much better.
Trump is going with a lot of “Brownies” only not as amiable and more corrupt, and Trump doesn’t have a clue that he’s doing this. He’s going to give the Reagan administration a run for the record of most appointee resignations under cloud of corruption and under investigation and indictment. Senate Democrats just aren’t getting why it’s in their and the party’s interest to sign on to these appointments.
You write:
When “preexisting factions” are elevated and demoted in mainstream street criminal gangs, people die and others become casualties. At the (slightly) more refined national political level the deaths and casualties are usually not so physical…except of course in the case of real revolutions.
Fladem writes:
Precisely.
Does this fact…that all presidents “agreed” on such a potentially contentious subject for 60 years or more…not support the idea of a Permanent Government…a Deep State…that maintains its essential power throughout all changes of party, up and down the line?
I think it does.
And Trump’s moves here and in other very visible and important areas, including the nominations of people for his cabinet who are almost total DC/DNC/RNC/PermaGov outsiders…or at least, as in Mattis’s case, known rebels..sounds to me like a declaration of war on the entire Deep State.
It does to its members, too.
Watch.
ASG
I excluded the TPP for which there was indeed strong bipartisan support and it was stronger within the GOP. The GOP Congress and Obama could have enacted it. The GOP didn’t because they didn’t want Obama to get credit for it. If Hillary won — they’d go along with it from her. And if a Republican won he and they would get credit for it.
Trump threw a monkey wrench into the calculation, but there was still a chance that he would pivot on it almost as fast as Hillary would have. But as a long ago Perot-Republican, he understood the value of it with the electorate and that it’s what made him a contender in the general election. Thus, he and the GOP leaders cut a deal. Trump gets to cut up the TPP and they get other stuff they want that he doesn’t have any allegiance to one way or the other.
What else that’s near and dear to elite Republicans that Trump is going to slash and burn? I’m not seeing anything.
For one major thing…cracking down on U.S. companies moving their operations to other countries. The Big Time pols are all in thrall to Big Money, DemRats and RatPubs alike. He’s going to cost Big Corp billions.
AG
Trillion, even.
ASG
That should be “Trillions, even.”
Duh.
AG
And another;
Here is a screenshot from Wikipedia’s list of the largest arms dealers in U.S.
How many RatPublican federal legislators are seriously financed by these companies? Trump’s recent warning shot(s) across Boeing and Lockheed Martin’s ‘s bows…not at all coincidentally ranked #1 + #2 on that list…can’t be making the owner/handlers of these legislators happy.
It’s war, Marie…and still in its early stages.
Watch.
AG
Let’s agree to disagree — you see Trump as extra-special and awesome. I see him as a repulsive mirror of the faces of a minority of Americans.
He’ll fall of that giant pedestal he’s constructed for himself soon enough and hopefully will drag all the other political vermin down with him. He’s a very high price that this country had to pay for “not Clinton again.” But there seemed not to be any other way to make them go away — and they may yet not have gotten the hint.
You write:
No Marie…I see him as extra-specially dangerous. And, so far I see no potentially effective opposition arising. Not even a hint. Just the same RatPublican lames that he beat in the primaries and the same DemRat ones that he beat in the election. There have been some rumblings about a Sanders/Warren alliance, but I think that is as out of the question in terms of actually gaining some real power as were the candidacies of either of those two as Democrats.
The old line still runs things on both sides of the centrist aisle, and Trump appears to think that he can take them both.
I don’t doubt that he will try…they are really weak in terms of energy and imagination. As distasteful as it may be to you and many others…myself included…he is the only national politician left with any amount of charisma.
Baraka, the Musilms call it.
Juju.
Power.
Momentum.
He’s going to be hard to stop.
I am very interested in whether he will back up his threat to militarize Chicago.
If he does and he is successful…even on a fake news level…we are truly in a world of trouble. That precedent would be his Kristallnacht…his excuse for martial law should anything…untoward…happen in the country.
Untoward…like an Arab Spring-type thing, especially in major black or latino neighborhoods.
It’s gonna get rough, one way or another.
That’s how he plays it.
AG
While I’m less offended by the early (lib’rul blogosphere) attempts to portray Der Trumper as a half-crazed loose cannon, you are correct to be watching the coordinated efforts of Gruppenfuhrer Bannon to erect a “Jobs First!” message for Trump’s Hundred Days. Which the useless corporate media is obliged to cover on an extensive scale.
And as we watch our hapless Dems tweet “agreement” on Trumper’s yapping about union jobs, the incompetence of being the party left holding the “free trade” bag of shit is positively enraging.
The question will be which Mega-Message carries the day? As Dems work overtime to normalize the newly installed prez (giving bipartisan support to Crackpot Cabinet, of all idiocy), the jury is definitely out.
Not only is the jury “out,” euzoius…if it doesn’t bring in a verdict that is acceptable to Trump, it will be sent home and overridden.
Watch.
AG
OTOH:
Politico – Trump hit with $2 million suit by contractor on D.C. hotel
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