17 February 2017
President Trump’s New Clothes
President Trump’s February
16, 2017, impromptu press conference was notable for a great number of
things, including his statement, on being called out for exaggerating the size
of his 2016 Electoral College victory--“I was given that information .” Of course, he expected everybody to believe
his claim just because he said it.
“But he has no clothes on!” shouted the little boy in Hans
Christian Andersen’s fable. Donald
Trump has surrounded himself with sycophants (or Svengalis) in his “fine-tuned
machine” of an administration.
This country will not be able to look to its new President
for leadership. Rather he will smoothly
translate into convincing policy goals the schemes of friendly manipulators who
represent special interests. That’s his
expertise; that’s his art of a deal.
16 February 2017
Insurance Company
Pull-outs
The announcement on 15 February 2017 that Humana will pull
out of Obamacare’s insurance exchanges is only confirmation that insurance
companies think that under Trump the ACA will inevitably be ended. They are happy that there will be a return to
a free market for medical insurance, and higher profitability for their
business.
Many people will lose their newly –won medical coverage, the
economic cost of American health care will go up, and the country’s short
flirtation with something approaching universal medical insurance will fade
away. It was probably a pipe dream that
the vaunted U.S. ideal of private enterprise could be successfully rolled into
a government-subsidized healthcare system , anyway. Now we will know another consequence of the
2016 presidential election.
11 February 2017
Reality Elections
The recent decision by the D.C. U.S. District Court in Level the Playing
Field et al v Federal Election Commmission ordered the FEC to reconsider the
evidence presented by the plaintiffs that by keeping all presidential
candidates but the Democratic and Republican Party nominees out of the
Presidential Debates is discriminatory and vitiates the supposedly non-
partisan role of the Commission on Presidential Debates in the U.S. election
process. The plaintiffs state that this allows our Presidential Elections to
be dominated by two private organizations in violation of the objective of
the U.S. Constitution to establsh a free and neutral process of democratic
government.
Why wouldn’t a non-party-organized political system be any more immune to
manipulation than a two-party system? As shown by Donald Trump in 2016, it
is possible to manipulate the traditionally inactive electorate by mobilizing
unsophisticated voters who respond to the type of publicity techniques that
sell reality TV shows. Freeing the presidential election debates of control
by the two parties risks making them vehicles for demagogues.
The election of Donald Trump (or for that matter the Democratic nomination of
Hillary Clinton) was a failure of the Republican party adequately to vet its
candidates. The parties were supposed to be the screening tools for our
elections. Instead, they have become captives of the career ambitions of
their members. The money that buys the outcome of their nomination process
would also determine the outcome of a non-vetted competition. If we cannot
improve the evaluation procedures of the two parties and somehow remove the
monetary advantages of political careers then we have no choice but to
abdicate control of the political system to dome benevolent dictator—Big
Brother here we come.
The recent decision by the D.C. U.S. District Court in Level the Playing
Field et al v Federal Election Commmission ordered the FEC to reconsider the
evidence presented by the plaintiffs that by keeping all presidential
candidates but the Democratic and Republican Party nominees out of the
Presidential Debates is discriminatory and vitiates the supposedly non-
partisan role of the Commission on Presidential Debates in the U.S. election
process. The plaintiffs state that this allows our Presidential Elections to
be dominated by two private organizations in violation of the objective of
the U.S. Constitution to establsh a free and neutral process of democratic
government.
Why wouldn’t a non-party-organized political system be any more immune to
manipulation than a two-party system? As shown by Donald Trump in 2016, it
is possible to manipulate the traditionally inactive electorate by mobilizing
unsophisticated voters who respond to the type of publicity techniques that
sell reality TV shows. Freeing the presidential election debates of control
by the two parties risks making them vehicles for demagogues.
The election of Donald Trump (or for that matter the Democratic nomination of
Hillary Clinton) was a failure of the Republican party adequately to vet its
candidates. The parties were supposed to be the screening tools for our
elections. Instead, they have become captives of the career ambitions of
their members. The money that buys the outcome of their nomination process
would also determine the outcome of a non-vetted competition. If we cannot
improve the evaluation procedures of the two parties and somehow remove the
monetary advantages of political careers then we have no choice but to
abdicate control of the political system to dome benevolent dictator—Big
Brother here we come.
