Well not really. Mechanization has destroyed far more manufacturing jobs than free trade has. And quite a few of those jobs (not all) were shitty anyway. China’s economic threat to the US is way overweighted. Sure they assemble a lot of iPads. But the bulk of the value added in those devices happens in the US. Back in 2007 James Fallows costed out a made in China $1000 laptop. Intel and Microsoft get about $300 of that. Other parts make up the bulk of it. The retailer gets something under $50. Chinese factory owners and workers collect… about $30-$40. This isn’t a bad deal for the US.
The protectionist Gephart lost back in the early 1990s. So the Dems went on a free trade+ compensation for workers track. The Republicans vetoed that last part. But some of it survived anyway, in the form of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which was supported by conservatives in the early 1990s, and opposed by them in 2012.
Short story: the Dems engage with issues. The Republicans play shell games, claiming they support one policy or another as a rear guard action. The only constant is tax breaks for their fatcat friends.
See, this is what I’m talking about, although I doubt BigT is a neocon.
What makes you say he’s a movie villain? Does he live in a high-tech fortress bored into the side of a granite mountain? Psychopath? Do you think his combover is to hide a lobotomy scar? What particular mental illness do you claim he suffers from? The urge to repeatedly build enormous buildings? What is that called? Macroedificiosis?
Trump isn’t an insane asshole, he’s just a garden-variety bigshot, personality-wise. I had an uncle who ran a company with about 200 employees, and he acted just like Trump does. He was abrasive, but people cut him slack because he was really energetic and productive, and a lot of people were riding on his coattails.
Ask the investors in Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico who were defrauded of hundreds of thousands of dollars each in a scam fronted by Trump, or the residents of Rancho Palos Verdes whom Trump sued, arguing the “relentless anti-growth municipal ideology” in halting development plans for which his development company never applied for permits. His repeated lawsuits or threats of lawsuits against anyone who offends or satirizes him, his pattern of shrugging off the financial damages done to others by his bankruptcies and fraudulent business practices (e.g. “Trump University”), his compulsive need to put his name on any and all properties he is associated with, outright lies about his wealth and business practices, and his general uncouth and intentionally insulting behavior certainly serve to support the description of “thin-skinned narcissistic psychopath”, though I personally prefer “sociopathic self-aggrandizing troll”, although from a purely belletristic viewpoint nothing beats Graydon Carter’s description of Trump in the annals of Spy magazine as a “short-fingered vulgarian”.
However, from the standpoint of the hubris of errant fear mongering, I have to say that I quite enjoy Trump using the xenophobia and extreme right wing Tea Party-prattled fear of the regulatory authority of “big government” against the neocon arm of the Republican Party directly against them by doing nothing more than ratcheting up the hyperbole. He’s like a Terry Gilliam Monty Python animated monster come to life and killing the animator before running around destroying the scenery.
So, the British Army is trapped in Malaysia by the Japanese, WWII. Surrounded, cut off, starving and out of everything. That’s how the commander described the situation in his officers meeting, announcing his intention to surrender.
“Cheer up, sir, couid be worse…”
“Could be worse? We’re sick, starving and surrendering to the bloody Japanese, how could it be worse!”
I get the impression a good deal of Trump’s appeal is because he is already wealthy, so he (claims) he won’t need lobbyist money. He speaks out against the corruption of the lobbyist system all the time.
Cruz is the Greater Satan who actually hates America and may very well be a ‘Manchurian Candidate’ secretly trained and sent by Canada to make fools of us all. Trump fancies himself as the Archangel Michael but is actually America’s creepy uncle who won’t shut up about how filthy immigrants took his job while trying to get you to sign up to his Amway franchise.
[ol]
[li]Trump is not nearly as wealthy as he claims,[/li][li]He’s certainly shown a willingness to take other people’s money at the slightest provocation,[/li][li]Just because Trump “can’t be bought” doesn’t mean he can’t be influenced by anyone who could offer him favorable conditions for his various investments, leading to[/li][li]Massive conflicts of interest in his real estate investments that he’d have to divest himself of if he actually won the presidency. [/li][/ol]
Ah, thank you for introducing me to a lovely word.
Anyway, the argument that Trump can’t be bought strikes me as silly. Trump’s primary claim to fame is his alleged skill in financial deal making. He is motivated entirely by the acquisition of money. His fame is built entirely on how much money he has accumulated. Of all the candidates, he seems to me to be the most likely to be bought.
“When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost… All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day 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.”
Right, Trump’s wealth is what gives him his power, in his followers’ eyes. He’s been buying politicians left and right all along. He even admitted it recently, because it’s business. He slams Romney for asking him for money four years ago, but he gave it to him, and not just out of the kindness of his heart. If money is a problem in Washington, Trump has been a willing participant in it.
His minions don’t care about that. What they want to hear is someone in a position of power stating unequivocally that he’ll keep foreigners out of the country.
And it isn’t it excruciatingly ironic to hear conservatives whine about the evils of money in politics?
Only the “liberal” lobbies that allow Mexicans and Muslims into the country, as Trump’s followers see it. They wouldn’t have a problem with a KKK lobby that keeps them out.
They’re tired for wildly different reasons, as I said, which is why it’s wrong to lump the two groups together. If either Sanders or Trump became president and enacted all his promises, the other group would still be dissatisfied.