“That block was already messed up.”
Just a few items to discuss on America’s last day as a respectable nation:
- President-Elect Says Nation Was Divided Long Before Election — You ever see “Rush Hour?” My favorite line is when the captain, chewing out Chris Tucker, yells, “You destroyed half a city block!” Tucker shrugs it off: “That block was already messed up.”
- Mexican drug lord ‘El Chapo’ is being extradited to the United States — What!?! I thought that at the very least, Trump would keep out a guy like that! So what did we elect him for? No, seriously: What did we elect him for?
- At least this time we don’t have to pretend the president is good — I’m sharing this Washington Post opinion piece because it’s written by Columbia’s own Barton Swaim, the former speechwriter to Mark Sanford. Most provocative line, which he attributes to a left-of-center friend: “the rhetoric of consensus is always coercive.” As a big believer in consensus, I’d like to discuss that with Barton.
- Steven Mnuchin, Treasury Nominee, Failed to Disclose $100 Million in Assets — As I said on Twitter this morning, if this guy’s so loaded, why doesn’t he go out and buy himself another vowel?
Related Posts
Ethics discussion:
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_584059d9e4b0c68e047f625a
Did he serve the papers personally? Or was it a computer generated letter and mailed out?
My grandfather has a collection letter he saved from back in the 1960’s. He owed a company 4 cents.
That story can’t be accurate. No creditor forecloses over $.27. It doesn’t make sense.
I handle foreclosures and collection actions from time to time. Banks don’t want to foreclose. It’s simply forced upon them by the facts that the borrowers don’t pay. It’s not something they want to do, it’s the very last option. There’s got to be more to that story.
Second, no court would allow a foreclosure under that fact pattern. Somewhere, there’s a public record court file. I want to see that court file on this foreclosure. It’s probably more Fake News. You’re 0/1, already Burl.
You sure you think this story is true?
Inaugural celebration draws thousands. Hall of Fame rock band cut from inaugural ball after Trump finds out they wanted $1 million to perform, money to go to charity instead.
Hey. It was only 100 million or so. Chump change to several in this cabinet-to-be.
It will be interesting to see how long it takes before the Obama streak of positive job creation ends. Currently we are looking at 81 months, an all time record. I’m guessing by some time in the fall we’ll see clear signs of recession as the budget cutting mania of the GOP kicks into full swing. The promise of economic growth unleashed by cutting regulations and tax cuts on the wealthy will come up empty again as it did during the W years. Free market capitalism can be a useful tool in producing jobs and prosperity but when it is left unregulated it just leads to astonishing wealth by a few, grinding poverty for many and environmental destruction that affects us all. That will be the legacy of the Trump years.
Not to mention burgeoning deficits which Republicans decry while piling them up and leaving them for Democrats to clean up (see Reagan/Bush, George W Bush).
Bud appears to be hoping for this event.
History is lost on most and lessons are never learned. We keep ignoring the “Wet Paint” sign on the proverbial park bench and “Hot Stove” warnings and charge ahead like a bull in a china shop, “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”, and all of the other apropos sayings that describe how we handle things in our government. Politics, especially identity politics is the rule of the day, both left, right, Democrat, and Republican.
The NYT article about the Trump administration and the choices to head up the different departments will be adhering to an old style conservatism to run the country for the next four years. This is in principle no different than the direction Obama and his choices moved the direction of the country when he took office with control of the White House and Congress.
The problem is that neither one is the guaranteed right way and the solution lies somewhere in the middle and at times, going right or left is what is best for the country.
Blaming Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama for budget problems is a fools errand because the deficit has been building for decades and is not a recent phenomenon that can be attributed to any one president. The reasons are myriad but only a rabid partisan has the audacity to try to lay blame on one party.
For decades, one side was doing everything it could to ease banking regulations so access to loans and borrowing money would be made easier. The other side resisted and finally in 1999, both sides come to an agreement and Glass-Steagal was repealed and replaced with Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Aha! We have found the magic bullet both sides wanted but once both sides got what they wanted, they didn’t understand the ramifications of easing borrowing and credit restrictions if left unchecked. Speculators and unqualified borrowers abused the eased restrictions and the result, crash of 2007-2008 and BOTH sides are equally responsible.
No one expected that on 9-11, the United States would be changed forever when the Twin Towers, Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania took 3,000 lives by a well organized terrorist attack on US soil. Blame Bush, Blame Bush, Blame Bush the Democrat and liberal villagers shouted as they charged up the hill with pitchforks and torches. In turn, Republican and conservative villagers on the other side of the hill charged up it with their pitchforks and torches yelling Blame Clinton, Blame Clinton, Blame Clinton. When in fact, neither one was responsible, Muslim/Islamic terrorists are to blame and are responsible. Please, go back and check your history and how the events leading up to 9-11 didn’t happen under one president’s watch, they have been building up for decades and the first manifestation of the unrest was when Iran took hostages when Carter was president. 9-11 and the subsequent actions in the ME are the continuation of hostilities that have been building not years but centuries.
As for the current economy and all of the praise for how well it is doing, consider the fact that if not for the FED pumping billions and billions into the stock market each day, it would not be at the current levels. And it is again a fool’s errand to not understand that economies run on cycles of expansion and contraction.
Some expansions are better than others and some contractions are worse than others. The contraction or recession, your choice, we experienced when the house of cards came tumbling down in 2007-2008 was not one we would recover from in a few months or even a couple of years. In many ways, we are still recovering when we consider the number of once employed who have been taken off the rolls and are not included in employment figures issued by the government. Some are recovering very nicely and others are still feeling the impact of the seismic change caused by the recession. Another point is that since the recession, those at the top of the economic pyramid have accumulated more wealth during the recession and now, 8 individuals, most living in this country, possess more wealth than the bottom 50% of the world’s population combined.
Governments will always operate on deficit budgets because they do not have a guaranteed income and rely on taxes to support programs for the people/citizens that provide the necessary essentials, i.e., roads, schools, and other provisions necessary for a society to operate successfully. Unlike a business, a government, especially a republic cannot simply shut the doors, declare bankruptcy and go home. It must continue operating to serve the public. Any government will have programs neither side agrees with but that is the nature of humanity, we are never going to agree on everything. We must have an eye to helping those who cannot help themselves and at the same time, try to exercise some fiscal responsibility so the burden doesn’t fall on the shoulders of a few to provide help and essential services.
Our problem is that both sides believe their side is right and the other is wrong. No, the answer lies in the middle and the message that has been lost is now coming back to bite us. I.E., a swing from Barack Obama to Donald Trump in one day. Both examples of extremes and neither one will work for the betterment of the citizens of this country. The divide will grow wider and wider until hopefully someone will come along who can appeal to both sides and at least get us back on the right track.
Just one small quibble Bart:
Actually, for a brief moment there, Clinton worked with the GOP in Congress to get it almost down to nothing…
Note that while the GOP played a significant role, they were AWOL on one important part of the deficit reduction: Not one of them voted for the package in 1993 that was a big part of nearly erasing the deficit.
Some Democrats voted against it, too. But good for the serious people who voted for it..
True enough on the surface but the Clinton administration used “accounting” techniques that made it appear the deficit was almost down to nothing by transferring SS funds on paper to the general fund and entering what was basically and “IOU” from the government into the SS reserve fund account which in reality was not there to begin with. Consider the fact that the Cold War was basically over, military spending was down significantly, the dot.com bubble was expanding the economy, and other favorable variables were at work for a short period of time during Clinton’s administration. The Utopian atmosphere didn’t hang around very long and I don’t believe any sensible economist or anyone with any historical understanding of how economies actually work believed the short period would last and be sustained indefinitely.
But, to be fair, Clinton didn’t do anything other administrations before him had already done. He just happened to be in office when it happened.
No, not at all. That was a departure. What he did, what the Congress did and what the dot.com boom did actually greatly reduced the deficit.
Speak of accounting tricks if you like, but at other times in recent decades NO amount of trickery would have made it look like the deficit had disappeared.
Progress is progress. And it’s a great shame that that progress disappeared in the following years.
Brad, with all due respect, we will have to agree to disagree. Even Bill Clinton stated either in 1996 or 1998 that he went too far on some provisions and reduced the tax increases implemented in 1993. But by then, the recession had already started and the “balanced budget” was becoming unbalanced rapidly.
I will give credit where it is due and Clinton did try to accomplish something no other president could and he did come close but whether one wants to admit it or not, he did have to use accounting “tricks” to accomplish the reduction in the deficit. But, when you borrow money from your savings account and deposit it in your checking account and write yourself an IOU for the money taken out of your savings account, you may spend the money but you have an IOU but in reality, it is worthless unless you actually do replace the money. The money taken from SS was not repaid. The IOU is still unpaid.
Just saying.