wxman91

AG Barr has no credibility. He works at the behest of Trump and will do anything and everything to protect the President. His biased pre-report on the Mueller report (which in no way vindicated Trump) as exhibit 1A. The FBI had serious concerns about the Trump campaign’s connections to foreign countries. They were not wrong to think so. It appears from the IG report that they should have gone about getting approval in a better manner and there were screwups. But, they (and Obama) kept the investigation under wraps, which is the exact opposite of using it for a political ploy. In the end, Comey’s report on Hillary’s emails prior to the election did more to swing anything politically. And LOL at thinking that Hillary’s emails were a scandal after this presidency. And this “deep state” !@#$ about Obama still trying to take down Trump? What kind of delusional Qanon crap is that? You people have lost your damn minds in the cult of Trump.

You’ve said a lot of words, but what is your plan? Go back to pre-ACA days? You want to subsidize rural hospitals more? Why? The fundamental question that came up while reading your posts was this - do you think access to healthcare should be related to wealth?

LOL. Step away from OANN.

If he doesn’t do anything about it as president? Yes.

Challenge accepted. However, it is folly to ignore the current status of the country's leadership in relation to making a better world. So, here's a more straightforward critique of Trump's presidency, staying clear of issues that the two sides are never going to agree upon (e.g. judicial appointments), followed by some ideas to make things better. Foreign Policy: Trump's foreign policy is a scattered mess. He ran as a non-interventionist, which is a good thing to drag the R side away from the neocons. He finished what Obama's Pentagon had started with ISIS. However, Afghanistan continues and the military budget is as big and bloated as ever. The efforts to stop Iran and NK from their nuclear aspirations have both been failures. He kisses up to dictators and antagonizes friends. The flirtation with NK's Kim was embarrassing. The defense of Saudi Arabia was disgusting. We have a lessened world standing because nobody can trust us to follow through on agreements. Then the kicker is Russia. Trump's personality is that of a strongman leader, so he admires Putin. There are two foreign policy scandals that should have brought down his administration. The Russian interference scandal. No, not exactly what you are thinking of (Flynn, Hillary's emails, etc). There is copious evidence that Russia interfered in the 2016 election process. They wanted to sow discord in the country and most experts agree that the end result they were going for was a Trump presidency. Maybe it worked, maybe Trump would have been elected anyway. It doesn't matter. Russia tried to influence our election and Trump hasn't done a thing about it because it would potentially lessen his "grand win" in some people's eyes. He has abdicated the responsibility of the president to defend the country from foreign enemies. The Ukraine scandal. Not much more to say about this one. Trump has been impeached for abuse of power, and correctly so. The majority in the Senate didn't think that he was innocent, just that it didn't rise to "high crimes and misdemeanors" that would necessitate removal. Race Relations: Trump's background on this was already sketchy with the problems with his housing project, the Central Park Five, and the incredible pushing of the "Birther" theory. Nothing he has done during his presidency has dispelled the notion that he has little interest in bridging the gaps between the races. He would rather use the tensions to rile up his base. Economy: This is supposedly Trump's strong point and it is certainly the topic where he polls best. However, as I've detailed in my other posts, his standing on this topic is significantly due to his manipulation of the media. By objective measures set out before his economic moves, he has fallen short. The economy, up until COVID, operated nearly exactly as it had prior to his election. The main impact of his tax cuts has been an acceleration of the rich-get-richer world in which we live. For fiscally-conservative types who care about the debt, his term has been nothing short of catastrophic as he reversed any improvements in the deficit that Obama and the Rs had made. And all of this has been prior to the botched response to COVID, which will place Trump in a low tier of presidents on the economy. COVID-19: What can I say? The utter lack of leadership on this has been breathtaking (literally). Someone in this thread, un-ironically, posted a fake quote attributed to AOC about the Election being the motivation for the Ds to keep things shut down. Of course, this doesn't make any sense because it is the states in charge of shutting down, and they have to deal with the lowered tax receipts. Conversely, Trump has every incentive in the world to downplay the virus, and has from the start. If he had shown a modicum of responsibility on this maybe we wouldn't be the joke of the world. Health Care: A bad bill was not passed by a single vote in the senate. Instead of working on a better bill, the administration gave up and has petitioned the Supreme Court to strike down the ACA with no backup plan. So, I hope this comes across as a more reasoned argument than "orange man bad". It is easy to criticize, so what would I do instead? I feel like most of the choices are obvious. Partner with our allies, encourage people to follow medical guidance, don't stoke racial tensions. So, to my economic plan: Job growth traditionally comes from new businesses. Right now there are a handful of major obstacles to new business formation that have nothing to do with government regulations. - Health Care: This is the elephant in the room. We have to get away from employer-sponsored care. It limits employee movement and complicates business development. I think that in the long run single-payer is the way to go, but I propose a different solution for now. The federal gov't is the nation's largest employer and has negotiated good rates and benefits for its employees because of its buying clout. In my plan, everyone would be able to buy into this system. Cost would be on a sliding scale with income. The gov't would make up the difference. No convoluted tax incentives, no vouchers. If people still wanted to use other insurance providers, they would be free to do so. - Student Loans: The fact that we allow 17 year-olds, who can't even serve in the military, to sign up for hundreds of thousands of dollars of loans is insanity. However, I am not currently on board with wiping out student debt or free college like some on the Bernie side are. What I do recommend is that the government steps in, buys all loans, and resets the period at the borrower's choice up to 30 years at the federal funds rate. So, if you managed to get $200k in the hole on a 6%, 15 year loan, you could lower your payment from ~$1700 to ~$560/month. You want an economic jolt - get money into the hands of younger folks who can spend it! - Corporate Taxes: Get rid of them. I'm serious. I'm a lefty lib, but the best tax rates for businesses is 0%. Less than 10% of tax receipts are from businesses as it is, and the accounting/lawyer/lobbyist overhead that goes into gaming the system is insane. The best part - a limit on buying politicians. How do I pay for this? - Tax capital gains at the personal tax rate. The double-taxation penalty no longer applies in my world. If Jeff Bezos cashes out on a billion dollars worth of stock, he is paying 35% rather than 15%. I do not plan to increase any tax rates because of the next item. - Remove the cap on entitlement tax rates. Right now every dollar above $130k or so is not subject to FICA taxes. Remove it. These dollars can be used for the health care assistance and shoring up Social Security.

It isn’t hard to find data out there that shows that half of Americans don’t have retirement accounts and a majority couldn’t cover $1000 from savings. I don’t know where you are getting this “large percentage” of young people from, but it doesn’t align with the data. By the way, go check out the data on Household Wealth by race and let me know what you think about that.

I purposely didn’t start from 2009 to not be intellectually dishonest. This argument doesn’t really hold for GDP. It could potentially be used for E/P ratio if we were closer to the long term average peak, but we weren’t. Putting it a different way, the projections from the current administration about GDP growth was that it would bring sustained growth in the 3-4% level and Trump and his surrogates often hinted at 5%+. By this metric, the tax cuts have certainly failed.

GDP growth for Trump in calendar 2018 and 2019 (before COVID) was 2.4%. If you go back to the start of his term, it averages 2.5% GDP growth in Obama's 2nd term averaged 2.4%. The Employment-Population Ratio for those aged 25-54 (one of the better indicators) under the last three years of Obama increased from 76.1% to 78.1% (up 2.0%). The same ratio under three years of Trump has gone up from 78.1% to 80.4% (up 2.3%). So, a massive tax cut resulted in almost no extra GDP growth and minimal additional job growth. 50% of American households don't have stock holdings. Household income growth was up from 2.7% in Obama's final year to 3.1% last year. That is good. But it is also to be expected in a continued tightening labor market. You won't want to hear this, but the same thing would have happened under Hillary. The fact is that the economy under Obama matches up well against the economy under Trump, but Trump's bravado was able to shift the conversation to a "booming" economy. The real "fake news" is that it is his efforts that have resulted in a better economy (at least until COVID), rather than the natural economic cycle after a debt-induced near-depression.

What did the tax cuts get us except sending us further in debt to juice the stock market? The Trump economy pre-COVID was eerily similar to the 2nd term Obama economy.

You have no idea what their circumstances are. Maybe they are making a short trip and don’t find the mask uncomfortable. Maybe they are being extra cautious because they have a severe underlying condition and they don’t want to touch their face more than they have to. Are you mad at Pence now for telling people to wear masks? This goes beyond “judgey”. Criticizing people for taking precautions to keep themselves healthy is truly pathetic.

Polls don't slant to the left. What are you talking about? If you are referring to 2016, the national polls were within 1% of the correct total. The state polls in a few states were off because they weren't conducted as often and missed the late movement to Trump. The polls were correct in 2018 in seeing a blue wave. Trump could still win since there is a ton of time between now and November and the electoral college favors the Rs, but if the election were to be held today it would be a bloodbath in favor of Biden. Nobody is telling you to wear a mask in your car or at home. Where is that coming from?

Anyone who doesn't wear a mask indoors in public is a good start. The fact that the President made that a political statement is mind-boggling.

And I would hope that citizens would listen to the experts, but here we are.

The experts did better than the man in charge. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/timeline-president-donald-trump-changing-statements-on-coronavirus/ Feb. 26: 58 confirmed cases in U.S. The 15 cases in U.S. "within a couple days is going to be down close to zero" "I want you to understand something that shocked me when I saw it that — and I spoke with Dr. Fauci on this, and I was really amazed, and I think most people are amazed to hear it: The flu, in our country, kills from 25,000 people to 69,000 people a year. That was shocking to me. And, so far, if you look at what we have with the 15 people and their recovery, one is — one is pretty sick but hopefully will recover, but the others are in great shape. But think of that: 25,000 to 69,000. ... "And again, when you have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done," the president said during a Coronavirus Task Force Press briefing at the White House. March 10: 1,300 confirmed cases in U.S. "Just stay calm. It will go away" "Well, this was unexpected. This was something that came out of China, and it hit us and many other countries. You look at the numbers; I see the numbers with just by watching you folks. I see it — it's over 100 different countries. And it hit the world. And we're prepared, and we're doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away," the president said on Capitol Hill after meeting with Republican senators.

Better than what came out of the White House.

Sweden has 5200 deaths and cases are still climbing. Norway has 249 deaths and new cases are in the teens. Denmark has 604 deaths. Sweden's GDP was flat in Q1, while Norway and Denmark were around -2%. Q2 estimates for Sweden are -6%.

What price is too large? Mayo Clinic: Even if infection with the COVID-19 virus creates long-lasting immunity, a large number of people would have to become infected to reach the herd immunity threshold. Experts estimate that in the U.S., 70% of the population — more than 200 million people — would have to recover from COVID-19 to halt the epidemic. If many people become sick with COVID-19 at once, the health care system could quickly become overwhelmed. This amount of infection could also lead to serious complications and millions of deaths, especially among older people and those who have chronic conditions.

I trust nothing out of China/Russia. Brazil is in a league of their own. How about Germany/UK/Canada?

Why isn't it winning in other countries?

People are dead. Why is the distinction important when both can be fought?

We wasted trillions of dollars and thousands of lives because some radical assholes managed to pull off a once-in-a-generation attack on the country that killed 3,000 people. Not doing something because people die each year anyway is a hollow argument.

If you are implying that the protests are the cause, that doesn't make much sense based on the states that are jumping. The better correlation is with states that reopened early. The virus transmission appears to be high for indoor, close-proximity locations (e.g. bars) not outdoor gatherings with face masks. edit - NBER working paper https://www.nber.org/papers/w27408.pdf The take-home message: Likewise, while it is possible that the protests caused an increase in the spread of COVID-19 among those who attended the protests, we demonstrate that the protests had little effect on the spread of COVID19 for the entire population of the counties with protests during the more than three weeks following protest onset. In most cases, the estimated longer-run effect (post-21 days) was negative, though not statistically distinguishable from zero.

We’ve gained a decent understanding of COVID. We don’t have a vaccine so the best avoidance methods are masks and restricting close contact indoors. Pay extra attention to the elderly and those with preexisting conditions, especially lung-related. Make sure that workers in densely-populated industries have proper PPE. Transmission outdoors seems minimal, so open up the parks, beaches, etc. The impact on school-aged children is minimal, so let the schools open with some modifications allowed for teachers. I am in a district where parents will be given a choice for distance-learning. I will be sending my daughter in. North Dakota seems to be doing fine. A few dozen positive tests a day. Low population density certainly seems to help. ND has, seemingly appropriately, moved to a low level of restrictions. So, my question is, who exactly are you referring to when you talk about removing all restrictions? North Dakota, or the US in general? Why should the rules in a low COVID-impacted state apply to other places that aren’t doing well? Moving to the political side, this board certainly leans to the Conservative/Libertarian side. The calls for “opening up the country”, however, are pretty much opposite of the federalism system you seem to defend so heavily. Maybe someone from the R/L side can tell me why Greg Abbott and the Rs in Texas at the state level eliminated the ability of the large cities in TX to put on additional restrictions. Isn’t a core tenet of conservatism local control? It seems like conservatives have ceded their response to COVID to their leader, who’s only care in the world is re-election.

So, to be clear, after 120,000 US deaths (and counting) the headlines should be, “whew, that wasn’t very deadly”? That is some tortured logic there.

Well, it has killed a lot of people, so it is either deadly or transmits very easily. That makes it dangerous either way.