Trump Administration Meltdown Thread...

[brian]

Democrats aren't averse to tax abatements and the like so I don't think that's necessarily black and white (personally I think it's corporate welfare, but no one gives a shit what I think).

The real issue is if the president can afford to get involved every time a company is threatening to move or shut down 1,000 jobs. Do you realize how inconsequential that is to the national economy? Sure, it's a big deal in Indianapolis or next time in to Shitstain, GA or wherever but the economy has been adding an AVERAGE of 150,000 new jobs a month (and that might be on the low side -- I didn't look up the specific number).

And like bsf said in most cases they're probably just kicking the can down the road a few years anyway.

[mister d]

Do you realize how inconsequential that is to the national economy?

Does it matter? If he claims to save two jobs and the media covers it as such, it's a huge deal to so many idiots.

[A_B]

The adding of jobs only recently got us back to the level where we were six months into the Obama administration. So that looks good on a press release, but doesn't tell the whole story.

[Joe K]

I agree that steps like this are just a drop in the bucket and are largely corporate welfare. But at the same time, the GOP campaign ads for 2018 and 2020 write themselves. Trump can show clips from the debates where he said he'd keep Carrier jobs from going to Mexico then have some workers thank him for saving their job. Apparently Fox News is already doing that. The ads Obama ran against Romney for closing factories were powerful because of the basic, easy to understand message -- not because voters were running a full cost-benefit analysis of the impact of private equity firms on the US economy. Actions like the Carrier deal are far more valuable to the political fortunes of Trumpism than they are to the economy of Indiana or the country as a whole.

[brian]

The adding of jobs only recently got us back to the level where we were six months into the Obama administration. So that looks good on a press release, but doesn't tell the whole story.

...for dominos that were set in motion having nothing to do with Obama or his election, you forgot to add.

[A_B]

The adding of jobs only recently got us back to the level where we were six months into the Obama administration. So that looks good on a press release, but doesn't tell the whole story.

...for dominos that were set in motion having nothing to do with Obama or his election, you forgot to add.

# of people employed grows, almost no matter what. They are growing slower now than in a long long time, per the BLS.

[brian]

That chart seems weird because there hasn't been a month with any net job losses in almost seven years.

[P.D.X.]

The real issue is if the president can afford to get involved every time a company is threatening to move or shut down 1,000 jobs.

Carrier was the example he used in his stump speeches — he's getting involved just to say "I told you so." Any other company in the same position is going to be SOL.

[Johnnie]

Democrats aren't averse to tax abatements and the like so I don't think that's necessarily black and white (personally I think it's corporate welfare, but no one gives a shit what I think).

The real issue is if the president can afford to get involved every time a company is threatening to move or shut down 1,000 jobs. Do you realize how inconsequential that is to the national economy? Sure, it's a big deal in Indianapolis or next time in to Shitstain, GA or wherever but the economy has been adding an AVERAGE of 150,000 new jobs a month (and that might be on the low side -- I didn't look up the specific number).

And like bsf said in most cases they're probably just kicking the can down the road a few years anyway.

Of course. But haven't we learned yet? This is an optics proxy war reliant on post truth experience. And as long as non mainstream sources "tell it like it is" that's all there is to it. This has nothing to do with number crunching and critical thinking anymore. The people who would gain to learn about the world by asking why and how are instead in a position where they feel left behind in a rapidly changing world and thus don't trust actual facts.

And these are the types of people that Trump was able to persuade in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. He won those 3 states by a combined total (according to my math based off of Balletopedia vote totals) of 112,979 votes. Clinton has demolished him nationally by 2.3 million votes (and counting.) Basically, for the Democrats to win this shit for real next time, a large exodus of people from say, California, need to move to red states and dilute the voting pool. She won California by 3.2 million votes (and counting). That, or we need to end the electoral college.

[Joe K]

The real issue is if the president can afford to get involved every time a company is threatening to move or shut down 1,000 jobs.

Carrier was the example he used in his stump speeches — he's getting involved just to say "I told you so." Any other company in the same position is going to be SOL.

Or, given the Electoral College, he'll just cherry pick a handful of companies in strategically important states. Let's put it his way, I'd be a lot more optimistic about such intervention if I were a factory worker in Ohio or Michigan than if I were one in New York or Illinois.

[brian]

Oh, I know he's not going to lift a finger to do anything for jobs in New York or Illinois or California, but I figured that would just be out of spite.

[degenerasian]

why does California vote overwhelmingly Democrat? Aren't they hurt by job loss?

[sancarlos]

why does California vote overwhelmingly Democrat? Aren't they hurt by job loss?

In San Francisco anyway, there is great pride in tolerance. That translates to liberalism on social issues. Lots of people came here to flee restrictive social mores elsewhere, so the Republicans aren't winning anything in the Bay Area. The countryside is actually conservative, but the votes are in the cities of course.

ETA: Regarding job loss - the Tech economy is booming. The economy is good around here. There hasn't been an appreciable amount of industrial manufacturing in California for many years.

[degenerasian]

why does California vote overwhelmingly Democrat? Aren't they hurt by job loss?

In San Francisco anyway, there is great pride in tolerance. That translates to liberalism on social issues. Lots of people came here to flee restrictive social mores elsewhere, so the Republicans aren't winning anything in the Bay Area. The countryside is actually conservative, but the votes are in the cities of course.

ETA: Regarding job loss - the Tech economy is booming. The economy is good around here. There hasn't been an appreciable amount of industrial manufacturing in California for many years.

True... I was thinking industrial, farming and fruits

[P.D.X.]

True... I was thinking industrial, farming and fruits

Which would lead to a high number of (minority) migrant and seasonal workers. Not the same as the rust belt.

[Steve of phpBB]

# of people employed grows, almost no matter what. They are growing slower now than in a long long time, per the BLS.

That chart is misleading because it is measuring from the high before the 2008 crash to today.

If you measure from 2009, then the rate of job growth is much higher. (And the rate of job growth for the Bush era becomes much lower.)

[Steve of phpBB]

For the people saying that Hillary fucked up by not running more ads targeting the working class, I wonder about a few things.

First, what was Hillary supposed to say in these ads? Trump promised to bring back coal, to create 25 million jobs, and to have so much winning that we would get sick of winning. What is Hillary supposed to say in a thirty-second ad that would compete with that?

Second, why would anyone believe what Hillary had to say? It is known that Hillary favors the upper class. And she is strikingly dishonest. In fact, I think that if Hillary did make any kind of promises like that, it be portrayed in the media as "Lying Hillary pandering again," regardless of the fact that any promises she made would be a hundred times more believable than Trump's promises.

(Remember when Hillary said she was a Yankees fan growing up, and everyone "knew" that it was pure bullshit, pandering to New Yorkers? Apparently she wasn't lying, because there are articles going back to the early 1990s mentioning that she followed the Yankees in addition to the Cubs so she would have an American League team, and it wasn't kosher to root for the White Sox.)

It's always easy to second-guess strategies or tactics after the fact, but I can see the predicament she was in opposing a candidate who was both (i) horrendously unqualified and unfit, and (ii) willing to say anything, no matter how transparently false. I have been in similar situations in litigation, where the other side makes arguments that are completely off the wall. You have to choose between simply presenting your alternative arguments, which runs the risk of normalizing the other side's arguments and letting the judge think he has a choice between two valid and competing arguments, or basically arguing "Are you fucking kidding me?" Hillary chose "Are you fucking kidding me." Maybe the other approach would have gotten her the additional 112,000 votes in those three states, or maybe not. We will never know. But I can't say it was an unreasonable strategy for her to stress exactly how horrible Trump is, especially given what the polling was saying.

At any rate, if Trump's support was primarily based on economic reasons, surely his supporters will leave him now that he is staffing his administration with Goldman Sachs executives and other billionaires who donated to his campaign and whose main goals are to privatize Medicare and cut the safety net.

[Giff]

At any rate, if Trump's support was primarily based on economic reasons, surely his supporters will leave him now that he is staffing his administration with Goldman Sachs executives and other billionaires who donated to his campaign and whose main goals are to privatize Medicare and cut the safety net.

Exactly.

[Joe K]

At any rate, if Trump's support was primarily based on economic reasons, surely his supporters will leave him now that he is staffing his administration with Goldman Sachs executives and other billionaires who donated to his campaign and whose main goals are to privatize Medicare and cut the safety net.

Exactly.

I don't think anyone is saying that Trump's support was or is "primarily based on economic reasons." What they are saying is that the Democratic Party has been getting crushed, nationwide, for years now due in part to its abandonment of its traditional base of the labor movement and working class people in favor of neoliberal policies that favor the wealthy. And if it really was impossible for Clinton to craft an effective economic appeal to working class people, as Steve suggested, isn't that an awfully damning indictment of the DNC and party elite's decision to clear the decks for her? My point was that the Democratic Party better find candidates who can make that appeal or else they'll be in the wilderness for a long time.

[Steve of phpBB]

At any rate, if Trump's support was primarily based on economic reasons, surely his supporters will leave him now that he is staffing his administration with Goldman Sachs executives and other billionaires who donated to his campaign and whose main goals are to privatize Medicare and cut the safety net.

Exactly.

I don't think anyone is saying that Trump's support was or is "primarily based on economic reasons." What they are saying is that the Democratic Party has been getting crushed, nationwide, for years now due in part to its abandonment of its traditional base of the labor movement and working class people in favor of neoliberal policies that favor the wealthy. And if it really was impossible for Clinton to craft an effective economic appeal to working class people, as Steve suggested, isn't that an awfully damning indictment of the DNC and party elite's decision to clear the decks for her? My point was that the Democratic Party better find candidates who can make that appeal or else they'll be in the wilderness for a long time.

By crushed, you mean consistently getting more votes than the other party?

[mister d]

And 90% of those people aren't going to do anything but keep supporting him. They're going to act like they were in on this plan the entire time, even if they swore to you two months ago that DRAINING THE SWAMP was a massive priority. About the only thing I could see hardcore Trump supporters turning on him over would be some kind of explicit, unmistakable and tangible denouncing of racism / Islamophobia. All the rest of the stances were half-assed platitudes and adopted core beliefs.

[Shirley]

The adding of jobs only recently got us back to the level where we were six months into the Obama administration. So that looks good on a press release, but doesn't tell the whole story.

...for dominos that were set in motion having nothing to do with Obama or his election, you forgot to add.

# of people employed grows, almost no matter what. They are growing slower now than in a long long time, per the BLS.

That's kind of a bullshit way to look at that. Another way to interpret it is that the slope has been essentially constant for the entire timeline of that graph, minus a handful of recessions. When it isn't a recession, it seems to grow at a constant rate.

[Joe K]

At any rate, if Trump's support was primarily based on economic reasons, surely his supporters will leave him now that he is staffing his administration with Goldman Sachs executives and other billionaires who donated to his campaign and whose main goals are to privatize Medicare and cut the safety net.

Exactly.

I don't think anyone is saying that Trump's support was or is "primarily based on economic reasons." What they are saying is that the Democratic Party has been getting crushed, nationwide, for years now due in part to its abandonment of its traditional base of the labor movement and working class people in favor of neoliberal policies that favor the wealthy. And if it really was impossible for Clinton to craft an effective economic appeal to working class people, as Steve suggested, isn't that an awfully damning indictment of the DNC and party elite's decision to clear the decks for her? My point was that the Democratic Party better find candidates who can make that appeal or else they'll be in the wilderness for a long time.

By crushed, you mean consistently getting more votes than the other party?

Take a look at the number of Governorships and State Legislature seats the Democratic Party has lost nationwide over the past several years and let me know if you still think everything is fine. Running up huge margins in NY and CA is all well and good, but the GOP is pretty damn close to controlling enough State legislatures to call for Constitutional amendments along strict party lines. That's prettying damn scary.

[A_B]

The adding of jobs only recently got us back to the level where we were six months into the Obama administration. So that looks good on a press release, but doesn't tell the whole story.

...for dominos that were set in motion having nothing to do with Obama or his election, you forgot to add.

# of people employed grows, almost no matter what. They are growing slower now than in a long long time, per the BLS.

That's kind of a bullshit way to look at that. Another way to interpret it is that the slope has been essentially constant for the entire timeline of that graph, minus a handful of recessions. When it isn't a recession, it seems to grow at a constant rate.

that's a decent point. which kinda also means Obama touting it like he's some kind of economic savant is bullshit. You could probably put a population graph up against that and it'd be growing at a consistent rate too - more people available to work means more people need services which creates the jobs. So it boils down to, you can blame presidents for recessions (Which I'm totally on board with..no big Dubya fan here) but giving them credit for bounce backs is probably not a good way to look at it either.

[Steve of phpBB]

Which is the party that favors the upper class again?

[Steve of phpBB]

that's a decent point. which kinda also means Obama touting it like he's some kind of economic savant is bullshit. You could probably put a population graph up against that and it'd be growing at a consistent rate too - more people available to work means more people need services which creates the jobs. So it boils down to, you can blame presidents for recessions (Which I'm totally on board with..no big Dubya fan here) but giving them credit for bounce backs is probably not a good way to look at it either.

I don't know that Obama is claiming to be an economic savant. However, I do think it's appropriate for Obama and Democrats to cite the job growth and point out that the Republicans are full of shit on a few issues.

For example, the Republicans consistently claim that tax increases cost jobs and tax cuts grow them. But the last two tax increases, both pushed by Democrats to address largely Republican-created deficits, have been followed by years of job increases.

The Republicans have also claimed since 2009 that Obamacare would cost and has cost millions of jobs. But the passage of Obamacare has been followed by one of the longest periods of consistent job growth in recent history.

So no, Obama did not single-handedly create the job growth since mid-2009. But that job growth does provide empirical evidence to support Democratic policies on some of these economic issues.

[The Sybian]

For the people saying that Hillary fucked up by not running more ads targeting the working class, I wonder about a few things.

First, what was Hillary supposed to say in these ads? Trump promised to bring back coal, to create 25 million jobs, and to have so much winning that we would get sick of winning. What is Hillary supposed to say in a thirty-second ad that would compete with that?

Second, why would anyone believe what Hillary had to say? It is known that Hillary favors the upper class. And she is strikingly dishonest. In fact, I think that if Hillary did make any kind of promises like that, it be portrayed in the media as "Lying Hillary pandering again," regardless of the fact that any promises she made would be a hundred times more believable than Trump's promises.

(Remember when Hillary said she was a Yankees fan growing up, and everyone "knew" that it was pure bullshit, pandering to New Yorkers? Apparently she wasn't lying, because there are articles going back to the early 1990s mentioning that she followed the Yankees in addition to the Cubs so she would have an American League team, and it wasn't kosher to root for the White Sox.)

It's always easy to second-guess strategies or tactics after the fact, but I can see the predicament she was in opposing a candidate who was both (i) horrendously unqualified and unfit, and (ii) willing to say anything, no matter how transparently false. I have been in similar situations in litigation, where the other side makes arguments that are completely off the wall. You have to choose between simply presenting your alternative arguments, which runs the risk of normalizing the other side's arguments and letting the judge think he has a choice between two valid and competing arguments, or basically arguing "Are you fucking kidding me?" Hillary chose "Are you fucking kidding me." Maybe the other approach would have gotten her the additional 112,000 votes in those three states, or maybe not. We will never know. But I can't say it was an unreasonable strategy for her to stress exactly how horrible Trump is, especially given what the polling was saying.

At any rate, if Trump's support was primarily based on economic reasons, surely his supporters will leave him now that he is staffing his administration with Goldman Sachs executives and other billionaires who donated to his campaign and whose main goals are to privatize Medicare and cut the safety net.

Good point on the Hillary ads, very good chance it wouldn't have worked. I still think it was overkill on attacking Trump's personality and despicable comments, as the shock value wore off, and we came to expect this shit from Trump. But, I'll heed your advice and not second guess what she should have done, because who the fuck knows if anything would have worked.

I disagree on the last paragraph, as working class people supporting Trump for economic reasons mostly view safety nets as lazy people stealing their hard earned money. They also tend to favor tax cuts for the wealthy, as the wealthy pay more actual dollars in taxes than the poor.

As for the jobs chart, it stops in the middle of a consistent pattern. If you stopped the chart in 1986, in the middle of the recovery trend, it would look the same. Another factor, with the Baby Boomers retiring, this has to cause a hit in the number of employed people. Birth rates are going down, too, so that should cause a decreased number in new people joining the workforce. OTOH, an increasing percentage of 2 income families may balance that out.

I don't quite understand how the unemployment rate is calculated, but is the Obama admin using a different equation than previous admins? I keep hearing that Obama is cooking the books on unemployment rate, but then it's usually followed up with 93 million (or whatever) Americans are unemployed, so the 4% (or whatever) rate has to be a lie. I've never heard anyone in the media point out that the 93 million includes infants, elderly who retired by choice, etc...

[Steve of phpBB]

I don't quite understand how the unemployment rate is calculated, but is the Obama admin using a different equation than previous admins? I keep hearing that Obama is cooking the books on unemployment rate, but then it's usually followed up with 93 million (or whatever) Americans are unemployed, so the 4% (or whatever) rate has to be a lie. I've never heard anyone in the media point out that the 93 million includes infants, elderly who retired by choice, etc...

As far as I know, the BLS has not changed the way it measures unemployment. When you hear people say there are 93 million Americans unemployed, that means people are engaged in a fraudulent attempt to deceive the American public. But hey, Hillary used a private email server, so both sides, you know?

[A_B]

Unemployment rate is not supposed to include anyone not "in the workforce." In the workforce basically means of job having age and either employed or actively looking to become employed. I think the main criticism of Obama's numbers was that it overestimated the amount of people not "actively" looking, which would drive down the percentages, but I can't say for sure if that's true. But that has been a constant criticism.

[brian]

The irony of electing an isolationist, anti-immigration president is that the only thing in a country with a stable, low birthrate like ours that can keep the economy growing is immigration in some form or fashion (as well as increased productivity as well it should be said, though that usually requires advances in technology these days as opposed to working more hours).

And generally speaking in a nation of 315M people, allowing in only a couple hundred thousands Indians who are computer programmers isn't really going to move the needle. Deporting 10M people definitely ain't gonna help that.

[brian]

Unemployment rate is not supposed to include anyone not "in the workforce." In the workforce basically means of job having age and either employed or actively looking to become employed. I think the main criticism of Obama's numbers was that it overestimated the amount of people not "actively" looking, which would drive down the percentages, but I can't say for sure if that's true. But that has been a constant criticism.

This is true, though there's a lot of debate on how many of the "underemployed" or those not counted in the BLS statistics are actually just retired. Obviously it goes without saying that a lot of Baby Boomers who got let go in their early or mid-60s just decided to not bother going back to work when their unemployment and/or benefits ran out. So the true "underemployment" rate which a lot of right-wingers harp on is almost impossible to measure. It's fair to say there are probably a lot of people who are employed part-time or even full-time who aren't included in the unemployment rate that aren't happy with their lot. If it would add an additional 1 percent or 5 percent to the unemployment rate, who can say?

[P.D.X.]

Not to mention the gig economy blurs everything. Pretty sure like Uber drivers aren't even considered employed.

[Shirley]

I'd argue that given how complicated and poorly understood macroeconomics really is, ascribing blame and/or credit to a president for changes during his term is pretty much a fool's errand. We tend to not really understand why things changed until many years later, if even then. Hell, economic professors still don't universally agree about the causes of the Great Depression or its recovery.

That said, I agree that if a president really fucked things up, that would probably be noticeable.

[Johnnie]

Mattis for SecDef. (Pending congressional approval)

Now let's hope he can get in Trump's ear and make sure he doesn't appoint Sarah fucking Palin to head the VA.

[brian]

Mattis for SecDef. (Pending congressional approval)

Now let's hope he can get in Trump's ear and make sure he doesn't appoint Sarah fucking Palin to head the VA.

Good luck in Iran, Johnnie.

[Pruitt]

Trumplomacy in action

Oh fuck.

[Johnnie]

Looks like I'll be going to more places than Iran.

I thought at some point some person within the realm of realism would pull this guy into a room, sit him down, and bigly handle the way this guy would act on the world stage.

Whether it be from the Intel community, State Department, a three letter agency, some deep recess we don't know about, somewhere.

Because at this rate, somebody may quietly be conspiring to remove this guy from office one way or another. Maybe via his conflict of interest situation with business, maybe in some other way. Because this type of shit is dangerous.

[Johnnie]

I have zero sympathy for the Teena Colebrooks of the world. In fact, it's kinda funny. People like this need to be dealt the most gut wrenching dose of reality.

[Pruitt]

I could not possibly agree more with Johnnie on this.

What did she (and many others like her) think was going to happen?

Heard an interesting theory last night (from a non-conspiracy minded Yale grad)... Romney is abasing himself now in order to get himself into the cabinet so that when the Trumpopalypse happens, he will be in position to be put in control.

Far fetched for sure, but why else is Romney paying homage to King Donald?

[Joe K]

I could not possibly agree more with Johnnie on this.

What did she (and many others like her) think was going to happen?

Given Trump's unprecedented ignorance of governing politics, it's not surprising to me that he's largely falling back on the usual GOP suspects for his Cabinet. Other than Bannon, I don't think any of his picks are outside the realm of what you'd expect from a "mainstream" candidate like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. But most people have no idea just how many important a President's appointments are to shaping his presidency, and probably never even thought about this issue when they voted. If they did consider it, I'm really not sure what "outsiders" they were expecting to fill these posts.