| Why we must resist Trumpism. |
| Economy
Donald Trump . . . has kept one policy goal steadily before him: tax cuts for the wealthy. A case in point is his recent proposal to find $54 billion more for military spending by slashing Head Start, food aid for low-income pregnant women, environmental protection and other programs. By calling for cuts that would average about 15 percent in almost every category . . ., Mr. Trump would undermine his promises to make sure “every child in America has access to a good education,” to help the “poorest and most vulnerable” and to rebuild infrastructure. Other categories at risk of being cut include scientific and medical research, job training, national parks, air traffic control and maintenance of dams. The approach of Mr. Trump and congressional Republicans would deeply cut taxes even as spending is slashed. Mr. Trump has essentially called for three tax cuts: a personal income tax cut, a corporate income tax cut and a cut achieved by repealing the Affordable Care Act. All three would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans. A campaign draft of the income tax plan indicated that at least half of the proposed multitrillion-dollar tax cut would flow to the top 1 percent of earners in 2025, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Repealing the A.C.A. would end the additional 0.9 percent Medicare Hospital Tax on incomes above $200,000 ($250,000 for married couples). This sort of thinking will only weaken the economy and betray the people who put their hopes in Mr. Trump. Giving the wealthy never-ending tax cuts while gutting programs for the middle class would create more of the resentment and inequality Mr. Trump has promised to address. Source: "President Trump’s Blinkered Fiscal Vision" By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - NY Times - MARCH 7, 2017 The policy objective is to steeply cut tax rates for businesses and wealthy individuals. The political aim, and the point of President Trump’s speech {8/30/17}, is to persuade the men and women in the Trump working-class base that a tax cut for the wealthy would be good for them, too. It would not be, and to pretend otherwise, as Mr. Trump did, is to substitute propaganda for discourse. Mr. Trump’s claim that tax cuts will propel economic growth and lift wages ignores the consensus view of economists, which is that multitrillion-dollar tax cuts, as envisioned by Mr. Trump, are not a stable or reliable way to do either. The president’s claim also defies history. Wages have long stagnated, despite tax cuts in the 1980s and 2000s, while profits, shareholder returns and executive pay have soared. Profits, whether lifted by favorable economic conditions, by tax cuts or by both, have not translated into employee raises and have instead been used for other purposes. One is to buy back stock, which lifts share prices and, by extension, executive compensation. Following a huge one-off corporate tax cut in 2004, big piles of corporate cash were also used to pay dividends to shareholders, settle legal issues and finance severance packages for layoffs. Of all the ways that corporations have spent their profits recently, business investment has generally been low on the list. Higher wages have been even lower, if they make the list at all. It would be foolish to expect anything different if a new set of tax cuts increased corporations’ already healthy profits. Any advantages for middle-class Americans would amount to crumbs from the banquet table. Proposed tax breaks for working people, in contrast, include relatively modest reductions in tax rates, a more generous standard deduction and tax relief for child care expenses. A recent analysis of Mr. Trump’s proposals by the nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center generously assumed that policy makers would end popular write-offs, including the deduction for state taxes, to offset the cost of the cuts. Even then, the analysis showed that the proposed Trump tax cuts would lift after-tax income for the top 1 percent of taxpayers by at least 11.5 percent (or an average annual tax cut of $175,000), compared with a barely perceptible 1.3 percent for taxpayers in the middle (or $760 in average tax savings). Source: "The False Promises in President Trump’s Tax Plan" - NY Times - 9/3/2017 Health Care Two of the biggest tax cuts in Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act would deliver roughly $157 billion over the coming decade to those with incomes of $1 million or more, according to a congressional analysis. The analysis found that by 2020, the repeal of the two tax provisions would save about $15.9 billion a year for those with incomes of $1 million or more. By 2026, the final year of the analysis, they would combine to save that group a little more than $20 billion a year. People making $200,000 to $999,999 a year would also get sizable tax cuts. In total, the two provisions would cut taxes by about $274 billion during the coming decade, virtually all of it for people making at least $200,000, according to a separate assessment by the ... Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan panel that provides research on tax issues. “Repeal-and-replace is a gigantic transfer of wealth from the lowest-income Americans to the highest-income Americas,” said Edward D. Kleinbard, a professor at the University of Southern California law school and former chief of staff for the Joint Committee on Taxation. Source: "Wealthy Would Get Billions in Tax Cuts Under Obamacare Repeal Plan" By JESSE DRUCKER - NY Times - MARCH 10, 2017 “If you ask someone to give up something, there will be resentment,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas and chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. But, he added, “If that claims my congressional career, so be it. It will be worth it to me to have effected this change.” Source: "The G.O.P.’s High-Risk Strategy for Health Law Repeal" By ROBERT PEAR and THOMAS KAPLAN - NY Times - MARCH 11, 2017 The Congressional Budget Office said on Monday that next year 14 million fewer Americans will have insurance if the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, is repealed and replaced on the terms the president is seeking. That tally would rise to 21 million in 2020 and 24 million in 2026. By then, the total number of uninsured Americans would reach 52 million. And for what? To give a gigantic tax cut to wealthy Americans. Trumpcare would throw millions of Americans off their health coverage. And no amount of spin or scorn for the C.B.O. can alter that reality. Source: "Trading Health Care for the Poor for Tax Cuts for the Rich" By THE EDITORIAL BOARD - NY Times - MARCH 13, 2017 The Trump administration is pushing to scrap a rule that would have made it easier for nursing home residents to sue nursing homes for injuries caused by substandard care, abuse or neglect, bringing its campaign to relax federal regulations to the delicate business of care for older Americans. The push would undo a rule issued by the Obama administration that would have prevented nursing homes from requiring that consumers agree to resolve any disputes through arbitration rather than litigation. Nursing homes routinely require consumers to sign an arbitration agreement as a condition of admission to the home. The ban on arbitration agreements was issued by the Obama administration in September 2016. The proposed rule brings together a broader private-sector effort to slip binding-arbitration clauses into the fine print of consumer contracts with the Trump administration’s expansive efforts to roll back regulations and reduce the costs to businesses. President Trump, in an executive order, had directed agencies to roll back rules and reduce “regulatory costs.” The attorneys general of 16 states, led by Brian E. Frosh of Maryland and Xavier Becerra of California, strongly opposed the Trump administration proposal. Binding arbitration agreements “may be neither voluntary nor readily understandable,” and “this is especially true when consumers are making the difficult decisions regarding the long-term care of loved ones,” the attorneys general said in a recent letter to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Nursing home inspectors have documented many cases in which patients were injured as a result of infected bedsores, medication errors, malnutrition, dehydration or sexual assault. Source: "Trump Moves to Impede Consumer Lawsuits Against Nursing Homes" By ROBERT PEAR - NY Times - AUG. 18, 2017 Environment In the weeks before the Environmental Protection Agency decided to reject its own scientists’ advice to ban a potentially harmful pesticide, Scott Pruitt, the agency’s head, promised farming industry executives who wanted to keep using the pesticide that it is “a new day, and a new future,” and that he was listening to their pleas. {I}nternal memos show how the E.P.A.’s new staff, appointed by President Trump, pushed the agency’s career staff to draft a ruling that would deny the decade-old petition by environmentalists to ban the pesticide, chlorpyrifos. The E.P.A.’s scientists have recommended it be banned from use on farms and produce because it has been linked to lower I.Q.s and developmental delays among agricultural workers and their children. According to the documents, Mr. Pruitt “stressed that this is a new day, a new future, for a common-sense approach to environmental protection.” Three days before Donald J. Trump’s inauguration, Dow Chemical had separately submitted a request to the agency to reject the petition to ban chlorpyrifos Ryan Jackson, Mr. Pruitt’s chief of staff, wrote to {a} political appointee that he had “scared” the agency’s career staff, suggesting that he had made clear the direction that the political staff wanted to go — and given the career staff explicit verbal orders to prepare documents explaining why the agency had shifted its position. “I think I did scare them or surprise them,” Mr. Jackson wrote to Samantha Dravis, Mr. Pruitt’s political appointee to oversee E.P.A. policy. Environmental groups said the emails demonstrate that the E.P.A. under Mr. Pruitt is doing favors for the industry, even if it means compromising public health. “What is clear from these documents is that Administrator Pruitt’s abrupt action to vacate the ban on chlorpyrifos was an ideological — not a health-based decision,” said Melanie Benesh, a legislative attorney at the Environmental Working Group. “In fact, the Pruitt E.P.A. has shown time and time again that it seems to only be willing to act quickly when it comes to dismantling health-protective rules like the proposed ban on chlorpyrifos at the behest of industry.” Source: "E.P.A. Promised ‘a New Day’ for the Agriculture Industry, Documents Reveal" By ERIC LIPTON and RONI CARYN RABIN - NY Times - AUG. 18, 2017 Education {A} wave of new research has emerged suggesting that private school vouchers may harm students who receive them. The results are startling — the worst in the history of the field, researchers say. Republicans took control of more governor’s mansions and state legislatures in the 2000s, they expanded vouchers to an unprecedented degree. Three of the largest programs sprang up in Indiana, Louisiana and Ohio, which collectively enroll more than a third of the 178,000 voucher students nationwide. {Indiana} The first results came in late 2015. Researchers examined an Indiana voucher program that had quickly grown to serve tens of thousands of students under Mike Pence, then the state’s governor. “In mathematics,” they found, “voucher students who transfer to private schools experienced significant losses in achievement.” They also saw no improvement in reading. {Louisiana} The next results came a few months later, in February {2015}, when researchers published a major study of Louisiana’s voucher program. They found large negative results in both reading and math. Public elementary school students who started at the 50th percentile in math and then used a voucher to transfer to a private school dropped to the 26th percentile in a single year. It’s rare to see efforts to improve test scores having the opposite result. Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, calls the negative effects in Louisiana “as large as any I’ve seen in the literature” — not just compared with other voucher studies, but in the history of American education research. {Ohio} In June, a third voucher study was released by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank and proponent of school choice. The study, which was financed by the pro-voucher Walton Family Foundation, focused on a large voucher program in Ohio. “Students who use vouchers to attend private schools have fared worse academically compared to their closely matched peers attending public schools,” the researchers found. Once again, results were worse in math. Three consecutive reports, each studying one of the largest new state voucher programs, found that vouchers hurt student learning. The free market often does a terrible job of providing basic services to the poor — see, for instance, the lack of grocery stores and banks in many low-income neighborhoods. This may also hold for education. The new evidence on vouchers does not seem to have deterred the Trump administration, which has proposed a new $20 billion voucher program. Source: "Dismal Voucher Results Surprise Researchers as DeVos Era Begins" by Kevin Carey - NY Times - FEB. 23, 2017 Privacy and Internet Security Republican lawmakers moved to dismantle landmark internet privacy protections for individuals on Thursday, the first decisive strike against telecommunications and technology regulations created during the Obama administration and a harbinger for more deregulation to come. In a 50-to-48 vote largely along party lines, the Senate Republican majority on Thursday voted to overturn the privacy rules, which had been created in October by the Federal Communications Commission. The move means a company like Verizon or Comcast can continue tracking and sharing people’s browsing and app activity without asking their permission. An individual’s data collected by these companies also does not need to be secured with “reasonable measures” against hackers. The privacy rules, which had sought to address these issues, were scheduled to go into effect at the end of this year. Democrats had taken to the Senate floor on Wednesday and Thursday to warn that without the rules, broadband providers will now have free range to peer into their customers’ lives. A company like AT&T or Sprint can tell when someone wakes up by when they check the clock on their phone. The carriers can also see where users go to lunch, whom they visit and if they might be sick by tracking browsing history of medical websites. “Subscribers have little or no competitive choice as to which provider to use,” said Terrell McSweeny, a Democratic commissioner of the F.T.C. Yet broadband providers “know our identities, and their position gives them the technical capacity to surveil users in ways that others cannot.” “These were the strongest online privacy rules to date, and this vote is a huge step backwards in consumer protection writ large,” said Dallas Harris, a policy fellow for the consumer group Public Knowledge. “The rules asked that when things were sensitive, an internet service provider asked permission first before collecting. That’s not a lot to ask.” “Senate Republicans just made it easier for Americans’ sensitive information about their health, finances and families to be used, shared and sold to the highest bidder without their permission,” said Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts. Source: "Congress Moves to Strike Internet Privacy Rules From Obama Era" By CECILIA KANG - NY Times - MARCH 23, 2017 The Federal Communications Commission on Wednesday {Mar. 1, 2017} ... halted new government rules {which} ...required high-speed internet providers like AT&T and Comcast to secure their customers’ data against hacking and other unauthorized uses. {Ajit Pai, the chairman} ... also said the commission should not be engaged in any policing of broadband providers over online privacy. During Mr. Wheeler’s tenure, the F.C.C. created numerous regulations meant to protect users of broadband internet, including the privacy rules passed in October that required strong data-security measures and allowed internet service providers to collect data on web browsing and app usage only with the permission of customers. The commission has moved swiftly to dismantle those regulations since Mr. Pai’s appointment as chairman in January {2017} ... and has pledged to revoke the regulatory classification of broadband service under which it is treated like a telephone-style utility. Mignon Clyburn, the F.C.C.’s lone Democratic commissioner, voted against Mr. Pai’s order “We urge the F.C.C. to focus on acting in the public’s interest — rather than the industry’s — and to maintain these critical rules.” said Laura MacCleery, a vice president at Consumers Union. Source: "F.C.C., in Potential Sign of the Future, Halts New Data Security Rules" -- By CECILIA KANG - NY Times -ARCH 1, 2017 Consumer Protections In votes split down party lines on Thursday {4/20/17}, {Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission} pushed forward a plan that will ease standards to allow telecom carriers like AT&T and CenturyLink to raise fees for small businesses, wireless carriers, hospitals and libraries to connect to the main arteries of their broadband networks. AT&T and other telecom giants had heavily lobbied for the new rule. In a dramatic reversal from the Obama administration, which was pushing for caps on pricing, Mr. Pai said telecom companies should have more freedom to set their own rates. Source: "F.C.C. Leader Seeks Tech Companies’ Views on Net Neutrality" By CECILIA KANG - NY Times - APRIL 20, 2017 Military Spending The United States already has the best-funded military in the world, accounting for roughly 40 percent of all money spent globally on defense. It devotes more dollars to defense than the next 12 largest military spenders combined, and most of those big spenders are allies. It is true that China and Russia are engaged in military modernization, but both countries’ annual estimated combined military spending amounts to about a third of what the United States spends. Source: "Trump’s Military Budget Minus a Plan" By CAITLIN TALMADGE - NY Times - MARCH 6, 2017 Mr. Trump suggested that the military does not have adequate resources. “Our military will be given the resources its brave warriors so richly deserve.” --Trump - State of the Union - Feb 28,2017 {T}he United States spends more money on the military than the next seven countries combined do. {T}he United States has more aircraft carriers than any other nation in the world. Mr. Trump said NATO partners were not paying their fair share.“We strongly support NATO, an alliance forged through the bonds of two world wars, that dethroned fascism and a Cold War and defeated communism. But our partners must meet their financial obligations.” --Trump - State of the Union - Feb 28,2017 Under NATO guidelines, members agreed to commit a minimum of 2 percent of G.D.P. on the alliance’s defense efforts, but few nations actually do so. The United States does fund a disproportionate amount of indirect spending, 72 percent, characterized by NATO as an “overreliance.” Source: NY Times - MAR 3, 2017 {It could also be said that the U.S. spends a far disproportionate amount on defense (sometimes characterized as "offense") while our NATO counterparts have opted to instead provide their citizens with a host of social programs such as free health care, free child care, free college, etc. Trump's advocacy for larger contributions from NATO partners could be countered with a plea from American taxpayers that instead, the U.S. should emulate our NATO partners and redirect some of the resources we devote to defense to social programs. -- Spinshield} Women's Health Care {H}ealth care at its best, preventing diseases and averting teenage pregnancies, all while saving public money. Yet clinics like these across America are in peril because of myopic Washington politics. Vice President Mike Pence and congressional Republicans have long tried to cut off federal funds for clinics that have ties to abortion, even tangential ones, and this year, with President Trump’s help, they may succeed. Let’s be clear: This isn’t about the government paying for abortions. That’s already mostly banned. This is about paying for birth control and cancer screenings when the provider has some connection, even a remote one, to abortions. {T}hese clinics do more to reduce abortion rates than any army of anti-abortion demonstrators. Although the arguments in Washington about these women’s health clinics mostly involve abortion, what I saw in the three Maine Family Planning clinics I visited was that a vast majority of the care provided is pretty uncontroversial. It’s about ensuring women’s health, treating sexually transmitted diseases, testing for pregnancy or providing cancer screenings. Meredith Batley says she has been coming to the clinic in Rockland for a dozen years, and for most of that time didn’t have health insurance or a primary care provider. In one routine screening, a cervical irregularity was found that could have led to cancer, but it was removed and she has had no problems since. She has also received birth control pills. “If I hadn’t had that access, I’m not saying I would have had an abortion, but my life would have been different,” she muses. When Batley was ready for a baby, she came in for a consultation and received prenatal vitamins to avoid birth defects. Five months ago, she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. The Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, estimates that without Title X funding for family planning clinics, there would be, in a year, an additional 900,000 unplanned pregnancies — and 325,000 more abortions. Source: "She’s 17 and Needs Birth Control. Do We Turn Our Backs?" by Nicholas Kristof - NY Times - MARCH 4, 2017 Regulations that protect the public from Corporate Exploitation These are just a few of the more than 90 regulations that federal agencies and the Republican-controlled Congress have delayed, suspended or reversed in the month and a half since President Trump took office, according to a tally by The New York Times. In many cases, records show that the changes came after appeals by corporate lobbyists and trade association executives, who see a potentially historic opportunity to lower compliance costs and drive up profits.
Source: "Leashes Come Off Wall Street, Gun Sellers, Miners and More" By ERIC LIPTON and BINYAMIN APPELBAUM - NY Times - MARCH 5, 2017 ...Trump, with his absurd edict to eliminate two regulations for every new one proposed, is making things more dangerous… Tomato farmers stopped applying chlorpyrifos 17 years ago, and most citrus growers did the same, though it is still widely used on everything from brussels sprouts to berries. In 2015, alarmed by new studies linking chlorpyrifos to lower I.Q. in children, the government moved to ban it altogether. One of the first things this administration did was to rescind a government proposal to ban a pesticide used on much of the fresh food we eat — a chemical compound, chlorpyrifos, found to be harmful to the brain and nervous system of children. His administration is also giving asbestos a second look. This carcinogen is banned by 58 nations and linked to the cancer deaths of nearly 63,000 Americans between 1999 and 2014. That’s a stadium full of fellow citizens. The Obama administration moved to ban asbestos. But Scott Pruitt, in his written testimony to the Senate, indicated he wasn’t ready to follow suit. Clean water is another Trump target. With his proposal to gut the E.P.A., Trump would make it much more difficult for the Great Lakes to be great again. His budget would eliminate restoration projects in the iconic waterways of America, from Chesapeake Bay to Puget Sound. Plus, he would decrease grants to monitor unsafe tap water, creating future Flints. He also wants to cut research into harmful chemicals — some linked to breast cancer and birth defects — found in things most Americans keep in their cupboards. {W}hat Trump is doing is a wholesale reordering of society to get rid of consumer and health protections. There’s a reason to constantly vet workplace toxins when chemical exposure kills about 50,000 American workers a year “We’re doing an amazing job on regulations,” Trump said this week. “We’ve freed it up. We’ve freed up this country so much.” This is a crock. While President Barack Obama was moving to lessen exposure to life-killing chemicals, he posted 75 straight months of job growth — the longest streak on record — and cut the unemployment rate in half. Source: "Poisons Are Us" by Timothy Egan - NY Times - APRIL 14, 2017 |
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| Comments | Contributor | Date Submitted |
| There are no words to describe how much I despise tRump. | linda Denton |
8/3/2017 |
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