As the GOP claims that “process crimes are not criminal”, one needs to remember how grifts and cons operate. Will the Trumps walk away from this WH deal scot-free.
Trump did do his job in getting a tax cut for the ruling class, but the rest will be a Swidden farm of policy cultivation, and the arsonist cronies decided to spread their napkin theories of supply-siderism.
Kleptocracy never had it so good because the shock doctrine’s court jesters have come out with a self-congratulatory screed built on a time-share sales pitch. The Emperor truly has new clothes tailored for a 239 pound frame.
Trumponomics is a damning exposé of the corrupt bargain between Donald Trump and the party’s wealthy insiders. The odd thing is that the book is not intended as an exposé at all, but as an auto-hagiography written by three Republican policy entrepreneurs who helped win Trump over and shape his program, and are so lacking in self-awareness that they earnestly believe they are defending both Trump and his partners.
Their record of being wrong about everything is so incomprehensibly vast it is astonishing they have retained their positions of influence over a major party.
The three authors proudly retell their litany of errors with the satisfaction of conquering heroes taking credit for their triumphs. It’s as if Robert McNamara published a book in 1968 boasting of his successful efforts to persuade Lyndon Johnson that the Vietnam War would be won by 1967.
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Greed is the glue that holds their story together. A large segment of their narrative consists of Trump turning over control of his agenda to various plutocrats.
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The authors seem oblivious to either the contradiction with Trump’s populist rhetoric, or the general idea that an administration outsourcing policy to wealthy people with a personal stake in the outcome is in any way suboptimal.
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The notion that the rich would never engage in corruption is not a throwaway line, but a bedrock principle the authors have articulated before. “Why shouldn’t the president surround himself with successful people?” Kudlow wrote in 2016. “Wealthy folks have no need to steal or engage in corruption.” Trumponomics is an unintentionally persuasive argument for the exact opposite conclusion.
nymag.com/...
...an eight-month investigation by ProPublica and WNYC reveals that the post-millennium Trump business model is different from what has been previously reported. The Trumps were typically way more than mere licensors or bystanders in their often-troubled deals. They were deeply involved in these projects. They helped mislead investors and buyers — and they profited handsomely from it.
Patterns of deceptive practices occurred in a dozen deals across the globe, as the business expanded into international projects, and the Trumps often participated. One common pattern, visible in more than half of those transactions, was a tendency to misstate key sales numbers.
In interviews and press conferences, Ivanka Trump gave false sales figures for projects in Mexico’s Baja California; Panama City, Panama; Toronto and New York’s SoHo neighborhood. These statements weren’t just the legendary Trump hype; they misled potential buyers about the viability of the developments.
Another pattern: Donald Trump repeatedly misled buyers about the amount (or existence) of his ownership in projects in Tampa, Florida; Panama; Baja and elsewhere. For a tower planned in Tampa, for example, Trump told a local paper in 2005 that his ownership would be less than 50 percent: “But it’s a substantial stake. I recently said I’d like to increase my stake but when they’re selling that well they don’t let you do that.” In reality, Trump had no ownership stake in the project.
The Trumps often made money even when projects failed. And when they tanked, the Trumps simply ignored their prior claims of close involvement, denied any responsibility and walked away.
features.propublica.org/...
A critically inexperienced candidate, running on an “America First” platform, who isn’t supposed to be his party’s nominee, goes on to win the presidency. Moving into the White House, he begins immediately upending tradition.
As allegations of cronyism and womanizing swirl about, he sets the nation on an isolationist course while inarticulately advancing confused and often discordant policies which will build his administration’s legacy of scandal and indictment...
Err... sorry. But that’s 1921.
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“On some great and glorious day,” H.L. Mencken wrote in the Baltimore Evening Sun on July 26, 1920, ”the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
www.thedailybeast.com/…
President Warren G. Harding might be Trump's closer political doppelganger. Harding supported immigration restrictions that barred Italians and eastern European Jews, a popular position at the time.
triblive.com/...
As much of the country begins to come to terms with Donald Trump’s upset victory in the 2016 presidential election fear and fatalistic rhetoric have taken root in the public dialogue. Trump’s brand of racism, authoritarianism and unfettered capitalism is something that is, thankfully, without parallel in the current mainstream political dialogue in the United States.
The current political moment, however, is not without precedent.
In 1920 Republican Warren G. Harding was elected the 29th President of the United States. In the years leading up to his election the country had been worked into a nationalist, racist fervor. In the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia and in the face of a growing anti-capitalist movement in the US, Congress passed the Immigration Act, the Espionage Act and the Sedition Act to undermine and outlaw subversive organizing. Attorney General Mitchell Palmer was rounding up radicals in the Palmer Raids aimed at breaking up left wing resistance in the United States. Fueled by the success of the 1915 film “Birth of a Nation” the Ku Klux Klan was growing at a rapid pace and had built a national reach.
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By 1933, just 10 years after Harding died in office, Franklin D. Roosevelt started signing new deal legislation into law, establishing a federal minimum wage, Social Security, federal labor law, and implementing a myriad of other progressive reforms. In the coming years millions of workers would organize into unions and transform the economy turning blue collar jobs into family sustaining occupations.
medium.com/...
President Coolidge, not wishing to be further associated with his predecessor, refused to dedicate the Harding Tomb. Hoover, Coolidge's successor, was similarly reluctant, but with Coolidge in attendance presided over the dedication in 1931. By that time, with the Great Depression in full swing, Hoover was nearly as discredited as Harding.[250][251]
en.wikipedia.org/...