Donald Trump’s Dream – The First President for Life

Trump on China’s Xi consolidating power: ‘Maybe we’ll give that a shot some day’

Donald Trump and China's President Xi Jinping

(CNN)President Donald Trump bemoaned a decision not to investigate Hillary Clinton after the 2016 presidential election, decrying a “rigged system” that still doesn’t have the “right people” in place to fix it, during a freewheeling speech to Republican donors in Florida on Saturday.

In the closed-door remarks, a recording of which was obtained by CNN, Trump also praised China’s President Xi Jinping for recently consolidating power and extending his potential tenure, musing he wouldn’t mind making such a maneuver himself.

“He’s now president for life. President for life. No, he’s great,” Trump said. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot some day.”

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, delivered a rebuke of President Trump on the Senate floor Wednesday, in a speech that drew a comparison between Mr. Trump and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and called for greater protections of the truth and members of the press around the world. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/jeff-flake-full-transcript-speech-senate-floor-trump-sustained-attack-on-press/

New York Times commentator just warned us about Trump on February 18, 2018

August 19, 1934 was the date that Adolf Hitler, already chancellor, was also elected president of Germany.

WAKE UP AMERICA! TODAY’S PRESIDENT DREAMS OF BEING OUR FIRST DICTATOR.

This is Code Red!

When I post an opinion to this blog it receives modest response of usually 30 to 40 views. My recent post on gun violence was viewed over 70 times on the first day it appeared. New York Times’ Thomas Friedman most recent post has had 2,700 comments so far. Now that the column received attention from CNN that number will probably explode to a really phenomenal number. Here is the Friedman column.

Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now

Thomas L. Friedman FEB. 18, 2018

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

That is, either Trump’s real estate empire has taken large amounts of money from shady oligarchs linked to the Kremlin — so much that they literally own him; or rumors are true that he engaged in sexual misbehavior while he was in Moscow running the Miss Universe contest, which Russian intelligence has on tape and he doesn’t want released; or Trump actually believes Russian President Vladimir Putin when he says he is innocent of intervening in our elections — over the explicit findings of Trump’s own C.I.A., N.S.A. and F.B.I. chiefs.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

At a time when the special prosecutor Robert Mueller — leveraging several years of intelligence gathering by the F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A. — has brought indictments against 13 Russian nationals and three Russian groups — all linked in some way to the Kremlin — for interfering with the 2016 U.S. elections, America needs a president who will lead our nation’s defense against this attack on the integrity of our electoral democracy.

What would that look like? He would educate the public on the scale of the problem; he would bring together all the stakeholders — state and local election authorities, the federal government, both parties and all the owners of social networks that the Russians used to carry out their interference — to mount an effective defense; and he would bring together our intelligence and military experts to mount an effective offense against Putin — the best defense of all.

What we have instead is a president vulgarly tweeting that the Russians are “laughing their asses off in Moscow” for how we’ve been investigating their interventions — and exploiting the terrible school shooting in Florida — and the failure of the F.B.I. to properly forward to its Miami field office a tip on the killer — to throw the entire F.B.I. under the bus and create a new excuse to shut down the Mueller investigation.

Think for a moment how demented was Trump’s Saturday night tweet: “Very sad that the FBI missed all of the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter. This is not acceptable. They are spending too much time trying to prove Russian collusion with the Trump campaign — there is no collusion. Get back to the basics and make us all proud!”

To the contrary. Our F.B.I., C.I.A. and N.S.A., working with the special counsel, have done us amazingly proud. They’ve uncovered a Russian program to divide Americans and tilt our last election toward Trump — i.e., to undermine the very core of our democracy — and Trump is telling them to get back to important things like tracking would-be school shooters. Yes, the F.B.I. made a mistake in Florida. But it acted heroically on Russia. What is more basic than protecting American democracy?

It is so obvious what Trump is up to: Again, he is either a total sucker for Putin or, more likely, he is hiding something that he knows the Russians have on him, and he knows that the longer Mueller’s investigation goes on, the more likely he will be to find and expose it.

Donald, if you are so innocent, why do you go to such extraordinary lengths to try to shut Mueller down? And if you are really the president — not still head of the Trump Organization, who moonlights as president, which is how you so often behave — why don’t you actually lead — lead not only a proper cyber defense of our elections, but also an offense against Putin.

Putin used cyberwarfare to poison American politics, to spread fake news, to help elect a chaos candidate, all in order to weaken our democracy. We should be using our cyber-capabilities to spread the truth about Putin — just how much money he has stolen, just how many lies he has spread, just how many rivals he has jailed or made disappear — all to weaken his autocracy. That is what a real president would be doing right now.

My guess is what Trump is hiding has to do with money. It’s something about his financial ties to business elites tied to the Kremlin. They may own a big stake in him. Who can forget that quote from his son Donald Trump Jr. from back in 2008: “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets.” They may own our president.

But whatever it is, Trump is either trying so hard to hide it or is so naïve about Russia that he is ready to not only resist mounting a proper defense of our democracy, he’s actually ready to undermine some of our most important institutions, the F.B.I. and Justice Department, to keep his compromised status hidden.

That must not be tolerated. This is code red. The biggest threat to the integrity of our democracy today is in the Oval Office.

Dismantling the U.S. Federal Government

There is no doubt that there is a very large federal bureaucracy. It probably needs some reorganizing and some parts should probably be ended. However, Donald Trump appears to be on a path of near total destruction.

It has been reported that he also wants to curtail many of the government programs from health care to the National Endowment for the Arts. NPR and PBS are also in his cross hairs.

Trump’s cabinet is studded with people who also fought to undermine the missions of the agencies they now lead. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt built his political career suing the agency. Education Secretary Betsy DeVoss has called public education a “dead end.” Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing, has no problem with proposals to slash housing. Rex Tillerson is in the process of laying off hundreds of people in the State Department. Trump has appointed lower level department heads who have fought many departments in the past. These department heads and leaders have dreamed of ending the very departments they are now leading.

David Bernhardt, Deputy Interior Secretary. Former lawyer representing Statoil
Erik Baptist, Senior Deputy General Counsel at the EPA. Former lobbyist for Energy API
Susan Bodine, Head of Enforcement for the EPA. Former lobbyist for American Forest & Paper Products
Nancy Beck, Deputy Assistant for the EPA’s chemical safety Office. Formerly employed by American Chemistry Council
David Zatezalo, Head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Former lobbyist for Rhino Mining a coal mining company
Joseph Otting, Head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Former CEO of OneWest Bank

Whose interests do you suppose they will be thinking about when they perform their jobs?

Fear of Deportation from the United States

Fear of deportation is a real fear that most Americans will never know.

President Obama’s DACA program was a well-meaning effort to protect those people brought into the United States illegally. However Obama did not understand the illegal immigrant’s fear of being arrested and being deported. That fear is most likely prompted by the illegal parents of those children.

When the program was first announced I immediately identified the potential consequence of announcing to the government your name and address. What if the program was ended? I asked. Wouldn’t ICE know exactly where to look for all those children and their families. That same quandary exists in states that have granted driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. Their addresses are now public record. ICE now can obtain those addresses and deport those people.

So when Trump’s Chief of Staff, John Kelly, suggest many DACA eligible people were ‘too afraid’ or ‘too lazy,’ he is half correct. They were ‘too afraid.’ We can see why those concerns are well founded as more illegal aliens, or those suspected of being here illegally, are being arrested.

By the way my family moved legally to the United States when I was six months old. I would not have divulged my name and address to any government office and I would not have applied for a driver’s license if I was an illegal alien. It would be out of fear!

When I renew my passport I have to surrender my citizenship document. After reviewing it they return it along with my new passport. I am always concerned that some bureaucrat will not return that citizenship document.

My sympathies are with the people brought here as children.

Unintended Consequences

The lower income tax rates passed into law this past December seemed like a wonderful idea. Who can object to bonuses and higher take home pay?

The U.S. stock market indexes fell sharply today (Friday, February 2, 2018) as investors digested a stronger-than-expected jobs report that stoked inflation fears. “The details of this jobs report, especially the numbers behind the wage growth suggest that companies are competing for workers and the shortage of skilled workers is pushing up wages. The trend in inflation is ticking higher and the big question is whether the incoming Fed, which is more hawkish, will allow the economy run hotter in the short term or tighten aggressively,” said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist, at Prudential Financial.

Investopedia: A government or economy often defines full employment as any rate of unemployment below a defined number. If, for example, a country sets full employment at a 5% unemployment rate, any level of unemployment below 5% is considered acceptable. Full employment, once attained, often results in an inflationary period. The inflation is a result of workers having more disposable income, which would drive prices upward.

The short term benefit of lower income tax rates are obvious. It results in a bigger paycheck for almost all workers. However, with America’s unemployment rate at 4.1% for the past four months and below 5% since November 2016 the shortage of workers along with lower corporate taxes could easily result in a horrible surge in inflation.

Many of us saw the consequences of high inflation. In 1974 and again 1979 to 1981 we experienced inflation as high as 14.7% in a single month. We spent using a credit card knowing that the repayment would be in cheap dollars. Buying a home meant paying an inflated interest rate on the mortgage. We refinanced when the rate fell.

I have read nothing about economist’s concerns of higher inflation. The Federal Reserve Board did not raise rates at last Wednesday’s meeting. They left its benchmark interest rate unchanged in a range of 1.25 percent to 1.5 percent, a relatively low level that the Fed said would help support continued job growth and stronger inflation.

Wow! Is the Fed correct or are stock market investors correct? When you are working you can demand a pay raise to compensate for inflation but if you are retired inflation can destroy your retirement plans. Roaring inflation will also destroy the party in power in Washington.

A Dream of Absolute Power

Donald Trump is taking the steps necessary to destroy the American democracy. His objective is a government similar to Turkey, Russia, and other nations ruled by despots.

Trump has attacked the most treasured parts of this country.
1. The court system
2. The press and freedom of speech
3. Libel laws
4. The electoral system
5. The Congress

The courts:
Trump has made a series of tweets and public statements attacking the deciding judges personally, questioning the authority of federal courts to review his orders, suggesting the court is biased, and suggesting that the judges and court system would be to blame for future terrorist attacks.

February 4, 2017 Trump tweet: The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!

In response to U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo O. Curiel’s orders in a class action lawsuit against Trump University, then-presidential candidate Trump made a number of statements attacking Judge Curiel as biased because of his “Mexican heritage” and appointment by a Democratic president.

Trump tweet: I should have easily won the Trump University case on summary judgement but have a judge, Gonzalo Curiel, who is totally biased against me.

The Press, freedom of speech and Libel laws:
Senator John McCain (Republican senator from Arizona, writing in the Washington Post
wrote the 45th president’s assault on American media provides cover for oppressive global regimes to “follow suit.”
“He [Trump] has threatened to continue his attempt to discredit the free press by bestowing ‘fake news awards’ upon reporters and news outlets whose coverage he disagrees with,” McCain writes. “Whether Trump knows it or not, these efforts are being closely watched by foreign leaders who are already using his words as cover as they silence and shutter one of the key pillars of democracy.”

John McCain continued, “For decades, dissidents and human rights advocates have relied on independent investigations into government corruption to further their fight for freedom. But constant cries of ‘fake news’ undercut this type of reporting and strip activists of one of their most powerful tools of dissent.”

Reported by ABC News on January 10, 2018: Pres. Donald J. Trump says he plans to “take a strong look” at libel laws: “You can’t say things that are knowingly false, knowingly false, and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account.”

Perhaps Mr. Trump has not read the constitution. The first amendment guarantees a Free Press. That means the press has the right to publish articles or books that criticize the president and anyone else. The book “Fire and Fury” tells stories of people who think Trump is child-like. Trump wants to stop those kinds of stories about him.

The electoral system:
From nytimes.com
Trump Disbands Commission on Voter Fraud
JAN. 3, 2018
WASHINGTON — President Trump on Wednesday abruptly shut down a White House commission he had charged with investigating voter fraud, ending a brief quest for evidence of election theft that generated lawsuits, outrage and some scholarly testimony, but no real evidence that American elections are corrupt.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump called for requiring voter identification in a pair of Twitter posts because the voting system “is rigged.” “Push hard for Voter Identification!” Mr. Trump wrote.

Mr. Trump did not acknowledge the commission’s inability to find evidence of fraud, but cast the closing as a result of continuing legal challenges.

The question of voter fraud and rigged elections is not and has not been an issue ever. Dictators don’t like honest elections. Trump’s dream is to pre-determine the outcome of all elections. His recent motivation is the fact that he won the electoral college vote but lost the popular vote. Vladimir Putin ( president of Russia) and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (president of Turkey) are the two government leaders that Trump admires because they have shut down any opposition to their re-election by putting them in jail.

The Congress:
America’s system of government demands compromise. When there is no compromise poor legislation is passed and government shutdowns can occur.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s calls to end Senate filibusters.

When filibusters of legislation are underway, it takes 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to halt them.
Republicans now control the chamber 51-49. But strong Democratic opposition and some defecting GOP senators have kept Republicans from getting the votes needed to end the shutdown — now in its second day.

McConnell has long defended the filibuster. He says Republicans will welcome it whenever they are returned to the Senate minority.
As the Senate began a rare Sunday session, the Kentucky Republican said: “I support that right from an institutional point of view.” But he also said, “The question is, when do you use it?”

Trump has made repeated calls this year to end that rule, and did it again Sunday in a tweet.

It is my contention that Donald Trump is working at destroying the American democracy that was created in 1789. I believe he dreams of being a president who has absolute power as many presidents of other nations retain. Everyone should be on guard against Trump’s objective. It was German complacency that gave Hitler absolute power. Marches and demonstrations, like the women’s marches, are the antidote to the Trump dream.

The Never Ending Hike to the United States National Debt

Now that the Republicans have control of both houses of Congress and the presidency they have forgotten their “no new debt” crusade. It was just six years ago that Grover Norquist transformed a single issue – preventing tax hikes – into one of the key platforms of the Republican Party. Norquist’s biggest coup was getting more than 270 members of Congress, and nearly all of the 2012 Republican presidential primary candidates, to sign a pledge promising never to vote to raise taxes. Norquist may be happy that there will be a reduction in taxes but the price will be a new higher national debt.

President Barack Obama’s oversight of the deficit was leaving “America’s future in the balance,” the Republican National Committee said in 2011. A year later, Senator Mitch McConnell said the federal debt was “the nation’s most serious long-term problem.” The debt was “killing our economy.”

How can today’s GOP vote for a new tax law that will raise the national debt over the coming decade? The answer is they are more interested in helping the rich get richer. The proof is the rise of the stock market since Donald Trump’s election.

Look at the history of our national debt since 1981.

Ronald Reagan, a member of the Republican Party, took office as the 40th President of the United States on January 20, 1981. After serving two terms the national debt had grown from just short of $998 billion to over $2.6 trillion. That was after his promise that the debt would shrink due to his plan that would encourage more spending that would more than make up for lower taxes.

George Herbert Walker Bush was left to explain the giant tax cuts passed into law under Reagan. Remember his “No new taxes” campaign? He did raised taxes and the debt continued to soar. It was almost $4.4 trillion when Bush left office in just four years. HIs loss for a second term was the result of raising income taxes and a recession.

During the Clinton presidency of eight years the debt had grown to over $5.7 trillion. That was a relatively small expansion of the national debt.

Between 2001 and 2008 the debt climbed from $5.7 trillion to $10 trillion. Those were the years of the George W. Bush administration. That was after a tax cut and the cost of war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Obama did even worse than his predecessor leaving office with a $20.5 trillion debt. For eight years, Republicans warned the American public that we were hurtling toward certain fiscal doom. In 2012 Senator Mitch McConnell said the federal debt was “the nation’s most serious long-term problem.” John Boehner, when he was the House speaker, in 2013: The debt was “killing our economy.”

There is nothing in the current plan to cut taxes that will change the trend of more national debt. The party out of power seems to always cry over the growing debt. Republicans have a history of opposing any thing that will increase the debt as long as they are not in the majority.

Corporate America Must Prove Tax Reform is Good for Average Americans

Lowering the tax rate from the current 35% to the planned 20% will be a dramatic change for corporations. The GOP controlled congress contends that their planned corporate income tax cuts will result in more investment in new business and higher wages for American workers. Will it actually happen? We will have to wait until next year.

Read this report from CNBC.
A meeting of CEOs might seem to be a friendly gathering place for President Donald Trump’s chief economic adviser Gary Cohn, former president of Goldman Sachs. But at a gathering of chief executives hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday November 14, business leaders called into question one of Cohn’s top arguments for slashing the corporate tax rate to 20 percent.

When one of the Journal’s editors asked the crowd if they planned to up their capital expenditure if the GOP’s tax plan went through, only a smattering raised their hands.

There’s little evidence to support the claim that tax breaks boost employment numbers.

A National Bureau of Economic Research study published in 2014 found “little evidence that corporate tax cuts boost economic activity” unless implemented in a recession.

Far from being short on cash, corporations are sitting on record amounts.

The informal poll was not the only disappointment for Cohn on Tuesday. Another non-scientific poll conducted at the gathering found that more than half of the CEOs present didn’t believe that Congress would pass a major tax bill by the end of the year.

Cohn had previously told reporters that tax legislation would be advanced by the end of the year, calling it a “once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Is this an opportunity to improve America’s middle class or an opportunity for higher dividend payments to shareholders?

We will know after the tax cut is put into effect. If the result of this tax cut does not provide higher incomes for the middle class the Republicans will lose in the next election.