Demand The Hatemonger's Resignation

The Birther crap. The Mexican drug-bringing criminal rapists slander. The “thousands and thousands” of 9/11 celebrating Muslims slander. The re-tweets of hateful anti-nonwhite, anti-Semitic ‘fake news’ falsehoods. The disparagement of military service persons who were captured. His attacks on Hispanic judges, Gold Star families and the Pope. His stupid, lying, vicious personal attacks on just about anyone who isn’t in his basket of deplorables. The incitement of violence at his rallies. His disgusting boast that he could get away with sexually molesting women because he was famous. The 22 women who alleged that he did exactly what he bragged about. His suggestion that gun rights people should take matters into their own hands because the election was rigged. His penchant for making outrageous, incendiary accusations without a shred of evidence. His stupefying ignorance and moronic comments. 

The sheer pace and volume of his blatantly false statements and repetition of right-wing fake news. His nauseating narcissism. His insulting treatment of our allies and praise of murderous dictators. His despicable reaction to the Charlottesville riots.
(He went on and on about the “very violent” anti-racist protesters while ignoring the heinous car attack by a neo-Nazi/white supremacist who brutally murdered a beautiful soul named Heather Heyer and injured 35 including 5 critically [these people were peacefully protesting the racist rally]).
He also failed to mention the brutal beat down — by several men with clubs —  of a solitary black man or any specific act of violence by any of the alt-righters — even though he was full of animated details of anti-racist attacks which he continued to bring up at his rallies)

His attacks on our institutions, our Constitution and the investigations and investigators of his probable wrongdoing. His tax related crimes. Campaign finance crimes. His anti-Christian treatment of refugees seeking asylum.
(The defender of ‘the family values party’ prying children and infants from their mother’s arms)
His fomenting of racial animus. His open and continued aid and comfort to white racists. His long, ongoing and relentless attacks on the press.
He calls them “Fake News” while almost never giving a single example of such “Fake News”. (The few examples I’ve heard him give were relatively trivial and offered no proof other than his say so.) He called them “The Enemy of the People” and described them in such a menacing tone that it made many of us think that one of his deranged supporters might one day attempt an act of extreme violence against them. He did the same thing with non-white people trying to immigrate into the country.

At a rally, he praised a Republicon congressman for body slamming a journalist. He then mimicked the violent act as the crowd of deplorables cheered and laughed in approval. Similarly, before a cheering, laughing crowd, he mocked the woman who alleged a sexual assault by the Justice nominee. He added injury to insult as he made a series of false statements attributed to her.
There seems to be nothing that this low life — and his basket of deplorables — love more than punching down on the weakest and most vulnerable and reveling in the cruelty of it. He has mocked and mimicked and blatantly lied about a physically disabled reporter. He has ordered troops to the border to confront a “caravan” of impoverished migrants walking the entire length of Mexico, seeking asylum, and conjured up an image of dangerous criminals eager to infiltrate your neighborhood in order to rape and murder you. He has given orders for the troops to use maximum (lethal) force against any rock throwers.
What a demagogic scumbag.  

The above, exhausting reminder of Trump’s insults, outrages and offenses are just the ones that came off the top of my head. I’m sure there are at least as many that I’ve forgotten. Like, for instance, his habit of sizing up very young girls then imagining himself “dating” them in a few years. Or the extremely disturbing way he has talked about his own daughter. Yuk. This pussy grabber is a moral degenerate of the first order. Oh, yeah, then there’s the numerous reports of people in his own administration calling him an “idiot,” “moron,” “dope,” “child-like” or “fucking moron,” proving that appearing like an imbecile in public isn’t just an act.

‘Idiot,’ ‘Dope,’ ‘Moron’: How Trump’s aides have insulted the boss - POLITICO

Woodward Book: Trump Staff Thinks Trump is an Idiot

Somewhere early along this timeline of disgusting acts, Trump came to the conclusion that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.”  

Even though he has progressively stooped to one new low after another, he has yet to “shoot somebody”. But now, after years of increasingly more vicious and relentless rhetoric, he has gotten other people to do it for him. We have the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting. The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting. And, although a gun wasn’t used, the recent mail bombing attempts.

Trump and his deplorables deny any connection whatsoever between these acts of violence and Trump’s daily doses of incendiary rhetoric, which he has been poisoning the country with for years. When confronted with the possibility of a connection, Trump did what he does best and most often: he falsely accused someone else of something he is precisely guilty of.
The son-of-a-bitch blamed the press. I wrote about this tactic — one of his favorites — in a blog post last year:

Fair and Balanced: Trump: "I Would Be A Total Unity President"

So, the press is to blame. How does this logic work? You see, as Trump tells the country on a near daily basis, the media is “fake news,” “absolute scum,” “disgusting,” “very dishonest,” and of course “the enemy of the people.” Listen to the montage in this video clip for some more choice words from the Hatemonger-in-Chief: 

CNN plays montage of Trump attacking media after he praised reporters | TheHill

You see, these “lying, disgusting people” make up “fake news” stories about him and this angers people. And what else is a Trump supporter supposed to do when he gets angry, other than commit acts of violence? Trump has used this logic before when he tried to defend his supporters’ violent behavior at his rallies during the campaign, only that time he blamed Obama.

Fair and Balanced: Trump Warns Of Riots If Not Nominated, Calls MoveOn "Thugs"

Interestingly, this logic actually works if you apply it to the 2017 Congressional baseball shooting. That’s when a Bernie Sanders supporter targeted Republicans at a baseball game and injured four people. Now, we all know that Bernie rails against the wealthy who don’t pay their “fair share of taxes”, but if you want to argue that that rhetoric is what triggered the gunman, then you’d only be damning Trump even more for his rhetoric because it’s much, much, much, much, much, much worse than Bernie’s (see the litany above).

And, indeed, it was Trump’s rhetoric that set this guy off. He wrote angry letters to newspapers and made angry calls to his Congressman complaining about Trump. And as the above partial litany of Trump’s offenses shows, any decent person would be outraged by them. But no decent person would resort to violence. Unfortunately, the shooter was not a decent person and he used violence to deal with his anger. By Trump's own logic, Trump is to blame. He's the one who incited the shooter’s violence.

What about the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the recent mail bombing attempts? Who’s to blame? Trump says it’s the “enemy of the people”, the “fake news” media. Others say it’s the angry Democrat mob. It’s “low IQ” Maxine Waters.  “Lock her up” Hillary. The Antifa funding globalist George Soros. Eric “kick ‘em” Holder (they leave out this part: “I don’t mean we do anything inappropriate. We don’t do anything illegal”)                                             
It’s the shooters and the shooters alone. Anyone but Trump.

I say society’s to blame. Anyone who engages in attacks or criticisms that are unfair, untrue or hyperbolic deserves some of the blame because these promote responses that usually escalate the anger, exaggerations and falsehoods. We all do this.

But there is nothing wrong with strong, harsh criticism — as long as it’s honest, accurate, based on a fair assessment of the facts and commensurate with the offense. When warranted, harsh criticism is “a good thing not a bad thing.” (As Trump has said in regard to better relations with Russia [one of the few things I’m in agreement with Trump]).

Mischaracterization, demonization, misstating the facts, purposeful lying — this stuff is poison. It is uncivilized. Uncivilized behavior is destructive, dangerous and may lead to our doom. It is what people like Abraham Lincoln and Albert Einstein warned against.

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” Lincoln

“We shall require a substantially new way of thinking if mankind is to survive.” Einstein

I said we all deserve some blame because we all engage in this uncivilized behavior. But some of us are worse than others. They deserve more of the blame. Others are much worse. They deserve much more of the blame. Others are much, much worse. They deserve even more of the blame.

I have a question. Is there someone you can think of that is much, much, much worse?  Is there someone who mischaracterizes, demonizes, misstates facts and lies purposely on a level that is much, much, much worse than anyone else? Someone who has a platform like no one else in the world and who commits these atrocious acts on a daily basis?

Answer: The Hatemonger-in-Chief. He deserves the most blame — by far — for the hate crimes mentioned in this post. He is toxic and he is tearing this country apart. If things get worse he could be leading us into a civil war. The most extreme of his supporters — heavily armed extremists — have been dreaming and talking about this moment for years.

Trump doesn’t just add more, by far, than any other person or persons to the toxic atmosphere in the country. He has specifically vilified the victims that were the targets in the three incidents mentioned above (the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting, the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the recent mail bombing attempts [Trump doesn’t vilify Jews directly but I will explain his role in the synagogue shooting in my next post])

This is why there needs to be a demand that the Hatemonger-in-Chief resign. Trump knows how to harness anger and hatred better than anyone since Adolph Hitler (my opinion).

I am against hatred. It is a dangerous, toxic, uncivilized emotion. But anger, when justified, is something I believe should be harnessed to do good.

As we can see, Trump is getting away with his responsibility in these recent murders. He didn’t even miss a beat in continuing to attack the very same victims who were attacked!

Don’t let him get away with murder! If there is a demand for him to resign we can use it to motivate our side the way he uses “lock her up” or “build the wall” or “CNN sucks”. We should hold rallies where we recite his offenses and chant “Trump — resign! Trump — resign! Trump — resign!”

If I get a response to this post, I will start a petition demanding the resignation of the Hatemonger-in-Chief.

In my next post I will present the evidence to make the case that Trump is largely responsible for the recent atrocities. 

Trump Derangement Syndrome

The term “derangement syndrome” was first used by the late Charles Krauthammer in conjunction with President George W Bush’s name to describe an extremely hyperbolic and irrational negative reaction by many liberals to almost anything Bush said or did. For example, some of these liberals believed that Bush was so malevolent — and reckless (imagine the harm to him, his family and his party if he had been found out) — that he knowingly allowed the 9/11 terrorist attacks to occur because he and his corporate benefactors needed a pretext for going to war against Iraq.

(I remember seeing tears well up in Bush’s eyes after the attack — a stark contrast to the ghoulish Rudy Giuliani whom I never saw show any sorrow despite the carnage happening right in his own city)

The term was later applied to those who, as Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune put it, “advanced some combination of the ideas that Barack Obama was a Kenyan-born, Muslim Antichrist who was plotting to seize everyone’s guns, take over the state of Texas, impose Sharia and cancel elections.”

Now Trump and his supporters think it’s their turn to use this neologism against their detractors. Unfortunately for Trump and his basket of deplorables, this expression cannot be used with the same meaning as when used against the detractors of Bush and Obama. As described above, Derangement Syndrome is an “extremely hyperbolic and irrational negative reaction to almost anything” the object says or does. In the case of both Bush and Obama (thanks to the way we do politics in this country) the negative emotional feelings towards those presidents reached a level that was not justified by anything those presidents did (Bush’s Iraq war debacle and economic bankruptcy disaster notwithstanding — he’s still not Hitler).

People use exaggeration and demonization precisely to raise the object’s perceived offenses to a level that justifies their anger and/or hatred.

But Trump is a whole other story. In Trump’s case, his offenses are so obnoxious, so nasty, so stupid, so outrageous -- that hyperbole is unnecessary. His baseness and character are so lacking in moral principles that exaggeration becomes difficult. I mean, we have actually heard this guy on tape bragging about sexually molesting women and being able to get away with it. We also have heard him — on tape, twice! — size up young (in one case a ten year old, in another 14 year olds) girls and then tell them he’ll be dating them in ten years (the ten year old) or “a couple of years” (14 year olds).

Donald Trump has been making disturbing comments about young girls for years - Vox

He has mocked a disabled reporter by imitating him in the way a nasty 12 year old would mock a classmate. He did this right after he slandered the Muslim community of New Jersey by making the outrageously false accusation that “thousands and thousands” celebrated the attacks of 9/11. Trump was pathetically trying to mischaracterize the reporter’s response to questions about an article he wrote back then that Trump and his deplorables were using in a ridiculous attempt to “prove” Trump’s slander to be true.

Donald Trump Criticized for Mocking Disabled Reporter

Then we have Trump’s rowdy rallies.
The first time violence broke out at one of his rallies, he condoned it. He defended his supporters who punched and kicked a black protester because “what he did was disgusting”. The protester was shouting “Black lives matter.” The next day he retweeted outrageously false black on white murder statistics that he got from some white racist web site in an obvious effort to supply more racist justification for the beating.
The second time violence broke out, he encouraged it. “Part of the problem is no one wants to hurt each other anymore.” “I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will.”
The next time he incited violence. “Knock the crap out of him, would you? I promise you I will pay your legal fees.” As violence became routine at his rallies he blamed MoveOn and George Soros.

As the voting time neared and thinking he would lose, he made unfounded claims of the election being rigged. As always, after making claims like this, he offered absolutely no proof or explanation. Against this backdrop he went before a crowd and raised the possibility that gun rights supporters could take matters into their own hands if Hillary got elected because, of course, she was going to abolish the right to bear arms. Trump suggested that the Secret Service protecting her should be disarmed to “see what happens to her”. Some of his supporters openly talked about violent rebellion and assassination if Trump didn’t win.

Trump’s supporters talk rebellion, assassination at his rallies - The Boston Globe

I could go on and on and on and on with literally “thousands and thousands” of such examples.
I’m just kidding. I'm using ‘Trumperbole’ (I think I just coined a new word. A neologism, like ‘derangement syndrome’) But I could easily say that there are a hundred such examples — and that would be an understatement.

So, the above five paragraphs illustrate my point perfectly. I just gave several examples of Trump’s disgraceful and disgusting behavior without using any hyperbole whatsoever. Even if you remove the three adjectives I used (outrageously, pathetically and ridiculous) the matter of fact description of Trump’s offenses are as damning — if not more so — than any hyperbolic screed I could conjure up.

As a matter of fact, the description I gave barely scratches the surface as to the depth and profoundness of Trump’s idiotic insults, his nasty mean spiritedness, his moronic commentary and his despicable lies. A full appreciation of this would require thoughtful contemplation and reflection — a cogency that would not be possible if one were deranged.

So let us engage in an exercise of just such an examination.
Take the example of Trump mocking the disabled reporter which I linked to above. The whole thing started with Trump promoting, as the Snopes article put it, an easily debunked “urban legend” about, as Trump put it, “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the attacks of 9/11. The “urban legend” is really an example of right-wing “fake news” -- of which there are many -- that Trump has promoted like it had his name on it. Yeah, that’s right, the guy who has become famous for accusing the media of fake news was promoting fake right-wing news. Most of the false things he says are fake news that he gets from the right wing media. I wrote about it in previous posts.

Fair and Balanced: Trump is the King of Fake News
Fair and Balanced: Trump On ISIS Founder: "I Really Like Him as a Person"

But this Muslim celebration news wasn’t just fake, it was a monstrous and harmful slander against the Muslim communities of New Jersey.

Rather than renouncing the false fake news claim, in the face of common sense (how could something like that, if true, not have become a major controversy that no one would have forgotten?) and the complete lack of evidence (of course no television footage was found of a single person celebrating, much less "thousands and thousands") and issuing a strong apology to New Jersey Muslims, Trump doubles down and attempts to use an interview of a reporter who wrote an article back in September ‘01 as proof that his “thousands and thousands” claim was true.

Trump quotes the article in a tweet and demands an apology because “many people tweeted that I am right!”

Trump's Revised 9/11 Claim - FactCheck.org

But the article doesn’t even come close to supporting Trump’s claim. It mentions unattributed and unverified allegations of “a number of people” celebrating on rooftops and says nothing about TV broadcasts of “thousands and thousands of people” celebrating, as Trump had claimed. Police investigated but filed no report. Now do you think that, on the very day those buildings came down and the days following, with the pile still smoldering and bodies being pulled out of the rubble, that the New York City police would have ignored those allegations if there was anything to them?

As if this pathetic attempt to claim proof wasn’t ridiculous enough, what he said about and did to the reporter, and his denial that he mocked his disability, makes you shake your head in disbelief and wonder how anyone can be such a yuuge asshole.*

Trump’s deplorables were working furiously, around the clock, to find any kind of evidence to support one of their favorite fake news stories and rescue their hero from looking like the stupid asshole that he is. So they found this article written by the disabled reporter, Serge Kovaleski. Like I said, it doesn’t even come within a moon orbit of supporting The Donald’s fake news story. But that’s not the way Trump and the deplorables want to see it. So Daring Don goes on the offense(ive).

Kovaleski, along with another reporter, went to the Jersey City building where the celebrations were purported to have happened. The other reporter, Kunkle, said he was never able to verify the report.  Kovaleski, who was interviewed about the article, said “I certainly don’t remember anyone saying that thousands or even hundreds of people were celebrating… that was not the case, as best as I can remember.” (Kovaleski was being way too cautious. He could have said “definitely”.)

​​​​​​​In what has to be the most pitiful display of dishonesty by a presidential candidate representing a major political party, Trump falsely accused the reporter of “trying to change his story” (as if the article was an exoneration rather than a damnation), then engaged in a shameful imitation of the reporter's disability. The reporter actually confirmed what he wrote in the article.

Normal and decent people were outraged by Trump’s despicable behavior and criticized him harshly. Trump responded by claiming that he was merely imitating a grovelling Kovaleski who was caught “trying to change his story”, and that he didn’t even know what Kovaleski looked like.
These were all obvious lies. Kovaleski was in no way “grovelling”, he didn’t change his story, his story contradicted Trump and there is plenty of evidence that Trump knew him well. (He had interviewed Trump on multiple occasions, including, in Trump's office. Kovaleski said they were on a first name basis.)

In any case, Trump’s own words before he mocked Kovaleski gave him away: “Written by a nice reporter...” How would he know? Sounds like he knows him, and “now the poor guy you gotta see this guy” (then he goes into his juvenile imitation.)
"Poor guy”? He's obviously referring to his disability. “You gotta see this guy”? Why would Trump say that if he hadn’t seen him, himself? Trump has obviously seen him and thinks his disability deserves to be mocked.

Hold on, because it actually gets worse. After the reporter makes some mild statements correcting Trump’s lies, Trump adds injury to insult: “...Kovaleski must think a lot of himself if he thinks I remember him from decades ago — if I ever met him at all, which I doubt I did” (coming from the man who claims to have one of the greatest memories of all time) “He should stop using his disability to grandstand and get back to reporting for a paper that is rapidly going down the tubes”

Jesus H Christ, what a shithead! What a fucking shithead!

By the way, the paper Trump was referring to (of course) -- the rapidly failing New York Times -- is still in business over three years later:
Trump Says the New York Times Is ‘Failing.’ Its Stock Is Soaring - Barron's )


You might be asking yourself, how can Trump possibly bullshit his way out of all the incontrovertible evidence proving his fake news story to be nothing but a pile of horseshit. How does he do it?
Well, you must remember the audience that he is playing to. His basket of deplorables. They will believe just about anything coming from the bullshit artist formerly known as citizen Trump.

I think I’ve made my case that the term “derangement syndrome” cannot  be used with the same meaning as when used against the detractors of Bush and Obama. Hyperbole is unnecessary (and relatively close to impossible) when criticizing Trump -- and his behavior is so malign, that it is only rational to have a strong negative reaction to the things he says and does. It can actually be argued that reaction to his behavior has been understated.

However, there’s plenty of derangement associated with Trump. And it’s coming from his basket of deplorables. They are the ones who have exalted this “sad, embarrassing wreck of a man” (George Will) to cult hero status. They are completely blind to his gigantic flaws and will believe anything that comes out of his tiny, puckered little mouth.

In my next post I will make the case for the correct definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome as being a disorder afflicting Trump’s basket of deplorables.

* I have considered this question before. Back in 2011, during Trump’s Birther heyday, after careful thought, I nominated Trump as “Dickhole of the Decade”. Subsequent events have put Trump in the limelight and given him many more opportunities to show us just how much of a dickhole he is. I therefore, here and now nominate Donald J Trump as “Shithead of the Century.”
Fair and Balanced: Donald Trump: YUGE Asshole, YUGE

The Return of Starve The Beast Economics

Back in 2009, while browsing the New Arrivals section at my local library, I spotted a book by Bruce Bartlett with this sub-title: The Failure of Reaganomics and a New Way Forward.

Written by someone who was both a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and one of the originators of Reaganomics, I couldn’t resist the act of subverting the Free Market system by using the collective taxes of city, state and federal payees (of which I was one) to finance my ability to read this tome. So I took the book off the shelf, walked to the check-out line and whipped out my trusty Queens Library card. Ah, yes, one of the beautiful yet underappreciated aspects of socialism — the Public Library system.

In this book Bartlett defended the policies of supply-side economics during the 1980’s but argued that those policies are not a panacea for all times and economic conditions. He criticized, in particular, the way Republicans grossly exaggerated the benefits of tax cuts when they claimed, among other things, that reducing taxes actually increased revenue. He stated that no one involved in the making of Reaganomics made that claim. He went even further to make it clear that no one even claimed that the taxes would pay for themselves. Only some of the loss in revenue would be recouped by increased economic activity, according to Bartlett.

I don’t recall if he gave a precise number as to the percent of the loss that would be regained but from the reports that I’ve paid attention to, the most trustworthy seem to be around 30%. But even that number seems to be too generous, in my opinion, especially when you consider the spectacular failures in tax cutting experiments that occurred during George W Bush’s eight years or after Kansas Gov. Brownback’s cuts — one of the largest in Kansas’ history — which was based on model legislation published by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

I’ve gained a lot of respect for Bartlett as one of those not too rare Republicans/conservatives who do not resort to bullshit and will call it when his fellow R/c’s do. David Stockman, one of the other Reaganomics creators, has also echoed Bartlett’s charges of right-wing bullshit.

Speaking of right-wing bullshit, nothing can surpass radio blowhards such as Rush Limbag and Sean Hannity who made ridiculous claims by constantly telling their audiences that “the more you cut taxes, the more revenue you get” (Limbag) and “every time you cut taxes, you double revenue” (Hannity). Let me stress that I am not using hyperbole — these are the precise words that those dick heads used. I know for sure because I heard them say it a million times. OK, that’s hyperbole.

During Bush Jr’s administration, when the magic failed to appear after his Super-Duper Star Spangled supply-side tax cuts, even his own economists, such as Greg Mankiw and Alan Greenspan   were forced to admit that claims of tax cuts paying for themselves, much less increasing revenue, were just like Limbag, himself — a giant heaping load of horseshit. OK, they didn’t use those exact words, I’m  paraphrasing.

---

Bartlett also wrote at length about the strategy of “Starving the Beast.” He explained how a group of hard-core conservatives, who hated the idea of having their wealth taxed, hatched a plan to trick the country’s citizens into accepting drastic cuts in and the eventual elimination of all government programs that redistribute some of that phenomenal wealth (which concentrates at the very top) to those citizens who largely helped to create it but whose income had been leveraged down by the forces of the Free Market -- thus concentrating that wealth at the very top. (That’s my commentary, not his. Get ready for some more.)

As Bartlett explained, conservatives used to value balanced budgets and little debt. They would rather raise taxes than increase the deficit/debt. Then some scoundrels, like Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney and Stephen Moore realized that they couldn’t convince the majority of voters that the government programs that benefited them were actually an infringement on their liberty. So they concocted a pernicious plan that would do what honest politicking couldn’t. They decided to cut taxes every time they were in power while increasing spending on all the things they liked (the military, wars) or would help them politically (Medicare part D). The inevitable huge increase in the deficit/debt would then be used as the excuse to get rid of all the programs they hated.

This plot worked like a charm under the Reagan and Bush Jr administrations. These were the only post WWII administrations where the national debt rose as a percentage of GDP.*

These hard core hard-ons believed that the wealthy — and the wealthy alone — are responsible for the creation of wealth, and the rest of society has nothing to do with it. They say the wealthy are the job creators and the rest of us are only ungrateful beneficiaries of their benevolence. But, of course, jobs are created by society (which is all of us) because society creates the economy, which gives the wealthy the opportunities to acquire wealth. See? Society makes the opportunities and the wealthy takes the profits.

In order for a job to be “created” there must be someone ready, willing and able to perform it. The person who performs the job is just as responsible for creating it as the person who hired him/her.

But business owners don’t really create jobs. They consume labor. 

And it is not benevolence that motivates businesses to hire workers. It’s the profit motive. They need workers to do the work so they can make a profit. A more accurate description of the so-called “job creators” would be “job eliminators.”  Because jobs are an expense. They cost money. Which cuts into profits. That’s why most businesses would lay you off in a heartbeat if it could save them a dime. That’s why they ship jobs overseas and hire workers in dirt poor countries that don’t provide any protection for their workers. That’s why they are developing automation that can eventually eliminate all manual labor, thus increasing their profits greatly.

The wealthy would not have been in a position to do this if the rest of us didn’t create a stable society by policing our streets, raising and educating our children, providing a workforce, building and maintaining our infrastructure, creating and maintaining a Government and court system that protects the wealthy’s riches, defending our country against foreign enemies, and all of the other countless things that people do for the benefit of the wealthy (including many things that people don’t get paid for). These things are absolutely necessary in providing those opportunities for the wealthy to become rich.

The economy, and those opportunities that it provides, were built — in the largest part — from the blood, sweat and toil of labor.

Now, at a time of unprecedented wealth disparity and a humongous national debt — caused in most part by the policy of “Starve the Beast” economics under the Reagan and Bush Jr administrations, the only administrations when the debt ROSE as a percentage of GDP* — what is the Republiconservalibertarian prescription? Even more concentration of wealth at the top and even more debt by returning to the policies of Starve the Beast economics.

It turns out, it’s the wealthy Republiconservalibertarians who are the ungrateful beneficiaries of society’s benevolence. They will sink to any level, do anything, in order to avoid paying taxes, as Trump’s “greatest tax cuts in history” proves.
Now that phase one of Starve the Beast economics is in place, Trump and the Republicons will institute phase two: massive spending in Republicon favorites like the military.
Phase three, cuts in the programs that benefit everyone else, comes later when they turn their attention to how much the debt has increased.

*It also rose under Obama, but don’t forget, Bush’s supply-side tax cuts were still in effect. When Obama finally raised taxes on the  very top in 2013, job creation started to rise significantly — even though the Republiconservalibertarians called it a jobs killer.