Wednesday, February 17, 2016

Revolution 2016: What New Hampshire Shows, And Doesn't (The Donald and Sanders Agree on the Problem, But Not on the Solution)

UPDATE IV:  I went to the movies this week and saw The Big Short.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) described the film as "a movie masquerading as an educational event, or an educational event masquerading as a movie."  It is"a half-caper, half-explanatory-journalism account of" the years leading up to housing bubble of 2008 and resulting financial crisis.
  If you forgot, here is a preview:

It was an entertaining look at a topic that most people find confusing and difficult to follow. But the basic story is that the Banksters got greedy and created a system to profit from unsuspecting borrowers and investors, then turned around and got even richer during the government bailouts.

The movie is based on a book by the same name, The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, a non-fiction book by Michael Lewis about the build-up of the housing and credit bubble during the 2000s.  It explains "the creation of the credit default swap market that sought to bet against the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) bubble and thus ended up profiting from the financial crisis of 2007–10."

"Most financial writers and movie critics agree that the movie nails the run-up to the crisis, and engagingly so. (Who else would use a blackjack-playing Selena Gomez to explain complex financial products?)"  There is some criciism about how the movie describes "what happens on screen after the crisis hits."

I discussed the bailouts in some detail, here and on the radio.

Nothing better proves the the problem of corrupt crony capitalism and the need for fundamental and systemic change in D.C. (and elsewhere)) than the financial crisis.

I urge you to watch the movie and/or read the book.

It will further explain the reason you must VOTE for The Donald.
 
UPDATE III:  As I've said before, you have to recognize and acknowledge a problem before change can occur. But some people can't even admit a mistake.

Jeb! can't, and although The Donald lies like any politician running for office, his wisdom sometimes shines through.

On Iraq, when The Donald "called the war in Iraq 'a big, fat mistake,' he was exactly right.  Jeb Bush, the very good brother of a very bad president," [should admit his brother made a horrible mistake and that] . . . the Republican Party has been a vast incubator of foreign policy conspiracy theories."

Trump is not afraid to tell truth to power: Bush ignored 'intelligence warnings in advance of the 911 attacks' and  "lied" [The Donald's word] about Iraq WMD's, the cost of the war, the happy outcome, etc.

That innate wisdom, and his ability to leverage the weaknesses of others, make him the first choice for reformers.


UPDATE II: Want to better understand what millions of American workers have learned through personal experience, that the rigged economy is cheating the American middle class out of good paying American job, then watch 1,400 US workers learn their jobs are moving to Mexico.

UPDATE:  Here is a thought, since they recognize and understand the nature of the problem, which would require a multifaceted solution, after being nominated to represent their parties, they should form an alliance to clean up D.C.

The Donald should be the front man (President), and Sanders, if capable, should be the VP working the legislative changes required to beak the system.

They might even bring in Palin, who as I've noted before and despite her many faults,  also recognizes and understands the problem with the status quo.

What New Hampshire shows is that only Franken-Trump/Trumpenstein (© NoBullU.com) and that Socialist Guy understand and recognize the problem many voters have learned through personal experience.

"On Morning Joe Wednesday morning, Donald Trump explained his — and Bernie Sanders’s — big wins in New Hampshire this way:

“We’re being ripped off by everybody. And I guess that’s the thing that Bernie Sanders and myself have in common. We know about the trade. But unfortunately he can’t do anything to fix it, whereas I will. I have the best people in the world. We’re losing hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year. And we will fix it. And we’ll make it good. And we’ll bring our jobs back. Bernie Sanders can’t even think in terms of that. The only thing he does know, and he’s right about, is that we’re being ripped off; he says that constantly; and I guess he and I are the only two that really say that.”

We’re being ripped off, and Trump and Sanders are the only two candidates who are really saying that. They are speaking to people’s sense that our economic and political systems are cheating them, that they are being failed because the underlying rules of those systems have themselves been rigged. . .

Here’s what Sanders said in his victory speech Tuesday night:

    “Tonight, we served notice to the political and economic establishment of this country that the American people will not continue to accept a corrupt campaign finance system that is undermining American democracy, and we will not accept a rigged economy in which ordinary Americans work longer hours for lower wages, while almost all new income and wealth goes to the top one percent.”

In one sentence, Sanders blamed flat wages and soaring inequality on an economy whose rules have been written to benefit a tiny elite at the expense of everyone else, and tied this directly to a political system whose rules have been written to dis-empower the American people from doing anything about it.

There are crucial differences between Trump’s and Sanders’s solutions to the problems they’ve identified, of course. Trump says our elites are weak, stupid, and corrupt. Sanders says our elites are being corrupted. The difference between those two things is subtle, but important. Trump says the elites are cheating ordinary Americans by helping illegals, major corporations, and China, and vows to break this corrupt system over his knee and get it working again, because he’s not one of those elites. This is what Trump really means when he says he 'can’t be bought'; Trump is not making a sustained argument for political and campaign finance reform; he’s just saying he’s not a member of the class that is cheating you, and he will come in and bust up that class’s party.

Sanders, by contrast, is making a sustained argument for political and campaign finance reform. For him, the culprit is not an elite that is actively trying to help illegals and China and allowing the country to slide into ruin out of national security weakness and ineffectiveness. Rather, it’s an oligarchy that has enriched itself by rigging the economy to effect a massive transfer of wealth upwards and to paralyze our political system from doing anything about it, thus corrupting our political classes. Sanders’s whole policy agenda is framed around this idea. While Clinton tends to focus on incremental solutions aimed at boosting wages and opportunity, and mitigating people’s economic difficulties on the margins, Sanders wants to rid the system entirely of its dependence on big money in order to actively reverse the upward redistribution of wealth that, he says, poses an existential threat to our economy and middle class.

Read the Washington Post, Donald Trump explains American politics in a single sentence.