Political Irony

The UK Brexit vote has politicians and pundits theorizing about how that vote, and the ensuing economic turmoil, could have any parallels in Donald Trump’s campaign for the US presidency. After all, both Trump and Brexit are fueled by anti-immigrant sentiment and isolationist reactions to increasing globalism.

For a minute, let’s ignore the irony of Trump promoting his golf courses in Scotland while condemning globalism (you know, pretend that he really does believe the things he is saying). Do the arguments about Brexit also apply to America?

My answer is that it doesn’t matter. We have a much better analogy right here in the US of A. And that analogy is Kansas (home of the Koch brothers).

In 2011, Republican Sam Brownback was elected governor of Kansas, along with such a strong majority in the legislature that they ran out of Democrats to hate and started getting rid of the moderate Republicans. And then they implemented the GOP dream agenda. They passed massive tax cuts for the rich, repealed corporate taxes, slashed business regulations, cut spending on education and welfare, rejected federal Medicaid money, and even privatized Medicaid services.

One of the architects of the Kansas “revolution in a cornfield” was the father of trickle-down economics, Arthur Laffer, who promoted the (repeatedly debunked) theory that cutting taxes would increase government revenue. Brownback also hired as his budget director the guy who created the budget model for the Koch Brothers’ Americans for Prosperity.

Brownback’s goal was to take the conservative dream nationwide, saying “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.'”

Well it didn’t. Job growth in Kansas sucked, even compared to neighboring states. Tax cuts caused huge state deficits. Infrastructure crumbled. Personal income growth slowed dramatically and income inequality increased. Schools ran out of money and closed. The state’s bond rating was downgraded. Kansas started 2016 by entering a recession; their current GDP is still less than it was at the end of 2011.

Things are so bad that companies are actually moving to other states, taking their jobs and revenues with them.

But isn’t that just Kansas? Could the same thing happen in other states? Yes, it could. Louisiana did almost exactly the same thing under Bobby Jindal with even worse results. And Wisconsin famously elected union-buster Scott Walker and their economy suffered, especially compared to neighboring states.

So conservative economics didn’t work, but that doesn’t necessarily imply that liberals could do better. Except that we have an example of a state that did just that, California. And it had another parallel with Trump, as California had previously elected a celebrity with no political experience, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger, who as governor promised to lead California back to greatness without raising taxes, but ended up a disaster for the state. Things in California were so bad that Republicans used it as the butt of economic jokes.

In 2011, the same year that Kansas elected Brownback, California elected Democrat Jerry Brown as governor and gave the legislature a strong majority. The Democrats raised taxes on millionaires to the highest in the nation. Conservative economists (like the ones who predicted an economic boom in Kansas) predicted this would cause a huge slowdown in growth and other economic problems.

Wrong again. California turned their deficits into budget surpluses, and their economic growth tied for best in the nation. In fact, the economy of California has grown so much that it surpassed the entire country of France, becoming the sixth largest economy in the world.

But that’s just California, right? No, we have another example. At the same time that Wisconsin was trying to become a conservative paradise, neighbor Minnesota switched to a Democratic governor. Bottom line is that when you compare states that swung Republican (like Kansas, Louisiana, and Wisconsin) against states that became Democratic (like California and Minnesota), the Democratic-run states all did far better at job creation and overall economic performance.

These are real results, and this needs to be the message of the Democratic party. And not just for the presidential election (although it is easy to do the same comparison of the economy and jobs under Obama compared to Dubya). This needs to be the message at the congressional and state level. If we let the Republicans get away with destroying our economy with false promises, then we deserve what we get.

© Lee Judge

Who’s in charge of our gun laws? Right now we are seeing fights in both houses of Congress over common-sense changes to gun laws. We already require background checks when someone buys a gun from a gun dealer, but that is easy to get around by buying a gun online or from an individual seller (who is probably hanging out in the parking lot of a gun show or other gun-related event). And public support for closing these loopholes is phenomenally high. In a recent poll, 92% supported supported expanded background checks.

A related change is preventing people who are suspected of being terrorists from getting guns. In the same poll, 85% supported that. Ironically, Republicans are even more in favor — 90% of them want to prevent people on the terrorism watch list from buying a gun.

This is nothing new. The same results have been shown in poll after poll.

And yet, the Republicans continue to block any gun safety measures, no matter how sensible or popular they are. In fact, they will do almost anything to keep these bills from even coming up for a vote. They just adjourned the House two days early to keep from voting on any gun safety measures.

The GOP is also in denial about public support for sensible gun safety. They even claim that the widely reported 90% number has been “debunked”.

It almost seems like politicians are being paid off in order to vote against any gun safety measures. Samantha Bee has a theory about this:

Even Saint Ronnie supported gun control. Especially after he got shot.

Note that (as I have often said) I support the second amendment. People do have a right to own guns, but no right is absolute. The right to own guns is not more important than our nation’s fundamental rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”, just like free speech doesn’t mean I can yell fire in a crowded theater or slander someone.

I think we should treat gun ownership like driving. If you want to own a gun, you should be able to demonstrate that you know how to use one (by passing a test, taking a class or other means), and that you know basic gun safety. I would think that gun owners would like that too. Rights imply responsibilities.

I do have one suggestion, however. We should stop calling it “gun control” and start calling it “gun safety”. Gun control sounds like taking people’s guns away, and I’m against that. But if people want to own guns, they should be responsible for using them safely.

© Jim Morin

The British pound has already lost more than 25 cents against the dollar, the worst drop in the history of the UK. Similar drops in various stock markets are expected. It is estimated that the British economy will shrink by 3.8 to 7.5 percent.

This is what happens when xenophobia and rampant nationalism win. Brexit won because of fear of immigrants, but the cure might be far worse than the disease.

Sound familiar?

The Republican establishment finally got Trump to read a speech from a teleprompter rather than winging it like he has been doing since he became the presumptive nominee. What I want to know is who wrote that speech?

I also wonder how long Trump will be able to avoid going off script again. It must be awfully annoying and painful for him.

Luckily, Seth Meyers has a deal for Donald Trump that might make everybody happy:

I have a new theory about Donald Trump. It is something I’ve been noticing about him for more than a few weeks now. We all know that Donald Trump likes to attack people, but what I’m observing is that the things that Trump accuses other people of are pretty much all things that he himself is guilty of.

For example, yesterday at a private meeting of evangelical leaders, Trump attacked Hillary Clinton over her religious faith, saying “we don’t know anything about Hillary in terms of religion. Now, she’s been in the public eye for years and years, and yet there’s no — there’s nothing out there. There’s like nothing out there. It’s going to be an extension of Obama but it’s going to be worse, because with Obama you had your guard up. With Hillary you don’t, and it’s going to be worse.”

It didn’t take more than a few minutes for Gawker to point out that if you simply type “Hillary Clinton religion” into any search engine, there is plenty of there there. Clinton is a life-long Methodist who has taught Sunday school, attends church regularly, and belongs to a prayer group. And there is an abundance of documentation online.

But it gets even more interesting if you turn the tables and search for “Donald Trump religion“. The results tell you that Trump has a long history of attacking people over their religion. That he now claims to be a Presbyterian, but rarely attends church. He’s also been reported to have been a Catholic, and a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, and he married his third wife in an Episcopalian church. That in his campaign speeches Trump mentions the late minister Norman Vincent Peale so frequently that Peale’s son has said that his father would not have been pleased (ironically, Peale grew up a Methodist). And all the other stuff we already know about Trump: that he has been married three times and has bragged about his cheating, is unapologetically crude, racist, and bigoted, and can’t even get the name of some of the chapters in the Bible correct.

See what I mean?

So the next time Trump attacks someone (he probably already has, before you even got around to reading this), see if the things he is saying about that other person don’t actually apply more to Trump himself. It’s kinda spooky!