How did an imbecile like Trump become President?
Featured image courtesy of The Daily Beast.
Reaganomics
You will find a lot of trickle-down and voodoo definitions of this floating around on the Internet. Basically it was let “the haves” become “have mores” and out of the goodness in their hearts they would buy more yachts and other high end things which would create jobs and higher wages for the “have nots.”
Trickle-down never works because the government never enforces it. I have written many times about “The Ethics in Income Act” also known as the 100-fold rule also known as Trickle Down With a Chainsaw. If the government actually enforced trickle-down it would work. There has to be a flow control valve at the top spraying the money out to the unwashed masses so they can become the washed masses.
It always starts out with a “good feeling” smoke screen. A few companies announce a big hiring push or wage increases. A pile of money is set aside for some job retraining. Once the news cameras are turned off the rich keep holding onto the money.
There was a big speech by Reagan that we would allow our “low end” manufacturing to move out of country, mostly to Mexico, because if we created jobs there fewer Mexicans would cross the border illegally. These low skill products would cost less here and Americans would have more money to spend on other things.
Yes, Reaganomics is intertwined with that “Made in U.S.A.” conversation we had earlier.
Here’s what I saw.
I was attending Junior College when the pile of money was allocated for job retraining. That’s roughly the time that Roper, A.O. Smith, and a few other major manufacturers left the Kankakee area. I guess lawn mowers, microwave ovens, and hot water heaters were considered socks and underwear?
Forty-plus year old guys sitting beside me in Intro to Business class. They were sitting in the same classroom as the kids who babysat their own kids. Some were attending this same school with their kids. Most couldn’t make the jump from line worker to accountant or computer programmer. One did. Of all who started there my first year one managed to make it through to the end. I don’t know if he took a programming job as I want on to further my education. There were very few programming jobs locally. You had to relocated to the Chicago area or other large cities around the country. Most couldn’t move.
If you could make it through to obtain a degree in computer programming and were half way decent at the job, a degree in programming was a license to print money. It requires a completely different mind than working an assembly line or in the trades. None of those high end manufacturing jobs ever came to Kankakee. At least not prior to 2000.
GM, like most of the large manufacturing companies, seemed to be using any and all means to off-shore good paying factory jobs to low wage countries. Keeping America strong was always “the other companies responsibility.”
Michael Moore got laid off by GM when it closed the Flint Michigan plant. He was also a shareholder and tried to speak with the head of GM numerous times. Eventually he obtained some kind of video recorder and other equipment. He and a band of friends documented the plight of Flint and their hopeless attempts to interview Roger.
This was an Indy film in the truest sense of the word. It developed a cult following. I cannot find a link for it now, but at one of the major auto shows, they pooled together enough money to rent/purchase the “booth” directly across from GM where on a large display Roger & Me played on continuous loop. Customers and reporters looking at GM’s shiny new things only had to turn their head to see it.
Reaganomics encouraged very bad behavior in corporate America. It wasn’t implemented with any safeguards to keep America strong. There were no mandates of keeping X factory jobs in every part of the country so Y high school students that didn’t want or couldn’t afford to go to college could have a decent life.
Under Reaganomics, and it took quite a few years to realize this, the bottom got pushed farther down while the tip of the top accumulated and hoarded unprecedented amounts of wealth.
Clintocrats
At the end of Bush 41’s term, Americans were crying out for someone they could like. The Republican party was just too damned loyal. They should have put someone besides Pat Buchanan up against Bush in the Republican primary. Basically they should have thrown Bush 41 under the bus and tried someone else. That would have shown real character and leadership. The party, by that time, lacked both.
I never understood how a nothing governor from Arkansas managed to vault onto the national stage. Normally when someone has a chance at the Presidency they are already known for something good outside of their state.
Okay, Carter was just an unbelievably nice guy when we wanted one. He was a farmer and farmers were 4% of the population back then. Americans trusted farmers back then because the honesty and work ethic of the family farm was still a very Normal Rockwell image in the minds of most Americans. They must have ignored the fact Nixon’s Secretary of Agriculture told farmers to “Get big or get out” kicking off the drive to large corporate and industrial farming so we could feed the world with cheap, unhealthy, pre-processed food.
Before you start dissing me about that last statement, yes, I eat my cheesy peanut butter crackers and other junk food. You really need to read up on the very first edition of The Can Opener Cookbook and what it kicked off if you want to understand the American Obesity problem. A recent issue of AARP magazine or the bulletin, I forget which, had some good articles about that time and how we got where we are on the obesity chart.
You really need to watch American Made at this point. Pay special attention to the phone call that gets Tom Cruise’s character released after a federal bust. Who was calling, and the date. I never understood how the Juanita Broaddrick rape story could be tamped down by a not famous governor during a presidential election.
This especially made no sense in a Post-Gary Hart world. Rent the movie if you don’t want to read up on it. For years Presidents and presidential candidates had been shagging women on the side and the press never bothered to report on it. When Gary Hart was running against George H. W. Bush (who had been the 11th Director of Central Intelligence) this one affair became a national story, not only ending a political career but sticking America with Bush 41.
Speaking as a life long Republican, Gary Hart was going to sale through to the White House. Loyalty wasn’t enough to inspire a vote for Bush 41. You had to live through it to understand just how unexciting a candidate he was. It kind of made a Republican want to flip to a channel showing paint drying just for the rush.
What I didn’t understand until the phone call in the Tom Cruise movie mentioned earlier is how this not famous governor leapt onto the national stage and the same sex scandal trick would not work again. There was certainly no shortage of stories!
That phone call got Tom Cruise’s character released and allowed Iran-Contra to continue running. If you don’t want to read the article in that link you have your choice of documentaries to watch.
There is a related story you need to watch. One that might be best watched first.
When Pablo Escobar was taken down by this guy it exposed the massive money laundering being performed by Bank of Credit and Commerce International (nicknamed the Bank of Crooks and Criminals). The CIA was using this same bank. My memory is admittedly a bit fuzzy on this, but I believe we all found out about Iran-Contra because of the BCCI investigation.
It appears the dirty tricks team could not be used against someone who had helped with a dirty trick?
It was an open secret that JFK was shagging Marilyn Monroe on the side. Everybody knew it and most everybody ignored it. The media certainly didn’t bother broadcasting it until well after his death.
Gary Hart had a “kept woman” on the side. Suddenly the media is all over that. Voting public chooses to destroy his career.
When it came to Bill Clinton he seemed to get a pass. The list was kinda long. That list doesn’t include Monica Lewinsky or Jennifer Flowers.
The lesson the Clintocrats learned from the Republican Party is that poor people didn’t matter. If you tried to do something for the unwashed masses in the fly-over states you got thrown out of office. Only rich people from the foreign countries of California and New York were to be listened to because they wrote the biggest checks.
In 1992 Eddie Murphy put out a movie that mostly predicted Clintocrats (when viewed in retrospect.) When you were a national nobody governor from any state you generally had to have a really good gimmick or you had to run for President multiple times. The first time was to get your name out there so people could hear a bit about you. The second time you could really run. If you didn’t clinch it by the end of your third campaign it was time to hang it up. You couldn’t win until you were “a name people know.”
Eddie Murphy played a two-bit crook who found out lobbyists wrote checks hand over fist to politicians in Washington. It just so happened that a Washington politician with the same last name as Eddie’s character died or something like that. Eddie’s character runs for that office using the campaign slogan “The name you know.”
You really need to watch the movie to understand how politics really works in Washington. Eddie meets with the party lobbyist interface so the person can find out Eddie’s position on various issues. The position would then be shared with the PACs and SuperPACs supporting that position. What he learned was it didn’t matter what side you were on, there was money to be had. Nowhere near the money you could get if you were undecided because both sides would pay you to sway your opinion.
Seemingly endless scandal and criminal investigations. An impeachment that should have removed Clinton from office proves to the American public the Clintocrats no longer have ethics or integrity in their dictionary, let along person. Perjury is Perjury no matter how you try to spin-doctor or lawyer it.
In a bid for re-election and to obtain even more hideous amounts of money from the foreign country of California the plank of “Information Super Highway” is added. The Internet will create a global village. Because Bill Clinton and his backers were all chasing the fast buck, he didn’t bother to create the Global Village Council first. The Internet became the primary recruitment tool of terrorist groups, primary communications method for drug dealers, and a host of other nasty things. Google now records more information about the average citizen in a day than the NSA is allowed to collect on you over your lifetime.
Hillarycare
Yet another scandal. At least this time it wasn’t about her husband. It was also called Clintoncare. Admittedly there were some big dollar healthcare companies against any significant change to a system they had rigged for profit. As long as only a few people had chronic diseases insurance companies could get away with denying coverage and rejecting all claims as part of “prior condition.”
The bulk of the scandal came from closed door meetings. It was a very fine needle to thread. If Hillary had been a licensed medical practitioner or had been translating to politician from a friend/relative that was a licensed medical practitioner Republicans would have been standing on quicksand when they raised a challenge. As I recall the challenge was made on the following grounds:
- She wasn’t an official member of government
- She wasn’t a constituent of the senators she was meeting with
- She wasn’t a registered lobbyist
All of this was simply to stop the closed door meetings because there was no way you would ever get the horse trading done for something that controversial having open meetings televised on C-SPAN.
Despite lots of claims during her election campaign, Obamacare was more Romneycare than Hillarycare.
Continued in Pt. 4
