Infrastructure – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Promises Broken

David Posnett — Mon, 14 May 2018 19:11:46 +0000

Trump campaign promises (which some liberals supported) remain largely ignored. He ran as an economic populist and bucked the GOP’s economic brand, contributing to his appeal. But he has violated every one of his promises.

Donald Trump promised to negotiate the price of prescription drugs covered through Medicare. “we’d save $300 billion a year,” “We don’t do it. Why? Because of the drug companies.” “We’re going to negotiate like crazy.” On May 11th, Trump announced the federal government would NOT directly negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare. And he chose not to allow American consumers to import low-cost medicines from abroad.
there will be no infrastructure bill this year. Contrast that with promises of hard-hat jobs modernizing roads and airports across the country. Instead we got a regressive tax cut, with a huge increase in the deficit.
Trump promised over and over to pull out of Nafta and renegotiate a much better deal. Nafta was the ultimate culprit for declining blue-collar wages. He promised a better deal: “I don’t mean just a little bit better, I mean a lot better.” But, there is no easy “better” trade deal to be negotiated.
Trump also repeatedly promised universal health care. “Everybody’s gotta be covered. … I am going to take care of everybody, I don’t care if it costs me votes or not” But he never compromised with Democrats and sabotaged the existing program. And now the rate of uninsured is climbing again.
“Draining the swamp” … Trump promised to enact reforms to reduce the power of lobbyists and business. He specifically
promised:

A constitutional amendment imposing term limits on members of Congress
A ban on federal employees lobbying the government for five years
A ban on members of Congress lobbying for five years
Tighter rules about what constitutes a lobbyist, instead of letting people call themselves consultants
Campaign finance reform limiting what foreign companies can raise for American political candidates
A ban on senior government officials lobbying for foreign governments

All empty promises!

In stead Trump embraced Washington sleaze with unprecedented gusto. This includes lobbying for foreign governments: Michael Cohen was a conduit for business interests to buy their way into Trump’s good graces.

Trump also promised, to raise taxes on the rich, including on himself.
“It’s going to cost me a fortune, which is actually true,” he said. Instead, the only promises he has kept are the ones that put money in the pockets of Trump and his cronies.

Broken Promises should represent a guide for the 2018 campaigns across the country to turn Congress blue. Sitting Rep. congress members that have backed Trump, like Lee Zeldin, are all complicit in these lies to their constituents.

Protect Internet Freedom

David Posnett — Sun, 26 Nov 2017 21:25:27 +0000

https://georgelakoff.com/2017/11/26/protect-internet-freedom/

November 26, 2017

By George Lakoff

Donald Trump and the Republicans are trying to restrict American freedom and destroy the Internet as we know it.

They want to hand control of a crucial public resource – the Internet – over to corporations. These corporations will then be able to restrict the flow of information, effectively censor voices of dissent, and charge outrageous prices for access to online services.

This is an attack on American freedom, and it should alarm every citizen who cherishes the free flow of information in the digital age. We can’t allow corporations take control of our Internet. But stopping this nefarious scheme requires urgent action on this issue, most commonly known as Net Neutrality.

I don’t like the term Net Neutrality because it obscures what’s really at stake: FREEDOM. Our freedom to access the information and resources we need to keep our democracy healthy is under threat. Yet, Republicans on the Federal Communications Commission – led by former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai – seek to hand our Internet over to private corporations.

But the Internet is a public resource that belongs to the People. That’s because the Internet was developed by our federal government in the 1960s and 1970s. The idea was to “build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks.” The result was the Internet, which allows me to type these words on my laptop and share them with all of you immediately.

The US government funded the research and technology to create the Internet. This means American taxpayers paid for it. So, if the Internet belongs to anyone, it should belong to Citizens, not corporate fat cats.

According to Scientific American: “In truth, no private company would have been capable of developing a project like the Internet, which required years of R&D efforts spread out over scores of far-flung agencies, and which began to take off only after decades of investment. Visionary infrastructure projects such as this are part of what has allowed our economy to grow so much in the past century.”

The Internet belongs to us. But we have to fight for it right now, or we may lose it. There’s ample evidence that fake bots have flooded the Federal Communications Commission’s inbox with over a million fake comments supporting corporate control of the Internet. The corporations are working hard to take away your Internet freedom. It’s time to make sure the real voices of American citizens are heard on this matter!

Internet freedom is especially important because our entire economy now depends on the Web. Online sales on shopping holidays like Black Friday are overtaking in-store sales. This means the private profit of corporations in this digital age now depend on the use of a public resource we created through our government decades ago. The Internet – like roads, bridges, ports, and telecommunication systems – is a publicly funded resource that makes all private profit possible. The private depends on the public! We must never forget this, and we must make a point of saying it – especially at a time when Republicans are trying to sign away our property to corporations.

It’s time for us to make our voices heard. Please join me in standing up for American freedom and the public’s right to maintain fair control of a crucial public resource, the Internet.

Please click on the link below to make your voice heard – and share this with your friend and family.

Republicans are attacking our freedom and trying to destroy the Internet as we know it. We must stop them from giving control of our public Internet to corporations.
The Internet was developed by the US government and paid for by American taxpayers. This publicly funded resource must remain fair, open and neutral to benefit the American people.
All private profit depends on public resources – roads, bridges, ports, telecommunications, and the Internet. We must never hand public resources over to private corporations.
The Internet is a public resource. Say it!

Please make your voice heard!

Go to this site! Leave a message (written, on the phone, on FB, on Twitter) for Congressman Lee Zeldin.

http://battleforthenet.com

#NetNeutrality

Those Bothersome Facts

David Posnett — Sat, 04 Nov 2017 21:16:04 +0000

In the age of “alternative facts”, Breitbart and Fox faux news,
we can all make an effort to point out BS when we recognize it! Bravo Nigel, an R&R regular, for his Letter to the Editor of the East Hampton Star Nov. 2nd, titled “Their Facts”:

Last week I attended the presentation of 8 of the Republican candidates for the East Hampton Town trustees. Each one spoke against the offshore wind farm, over which their jurisdiction has no control. In conversation after the event, I was told by one of the candidates, a previous member of the trustees, that the turbines only operated at winds from 10 m.p.h. to 30 m.p.h. This is incorrect. If you think about it, there would be little motivation to build a wind farm with such a small opportunity for success. The turbines rated wind tolerances are 3 to 25 milliseconds, which is 6.7 m.p.h. to 56 m.p.h. I really wish candidates would get their facts correct before they speak.

NIGEL NOBILE

The Potemkin Policies of Donald Trump

David Posnett — Fri, 09 Jun 2017 02:49:24 +0000

Published in The Atlantic

DEREK THOMPSON
JUN 7, 2017

The simplest summary of White House economic policy to date is four words long: There is no policy.

John Sommers II / Reuters

It’s “Infrastructure Week” at the White House. Theoretically.

On Monday, the administration announced a plan to spend $200 billion on infrastructure and overhaul U.S. air traffic control. There was a high-profile signing in the East Wing before dozens of cheering lawmakers and industry titans. It was supposed to be the beginning of a weeklong push to fix America’s roads, bridges, and airports.

But in the next two days, Trump spent more energy burning metaphorical bridges than trying to build literal ones. He could have stayed on message for several hours, gathered Democrats and Republicans to discuss a bipartisan agreement, and announced a timeframe. Instead he quickly turned his attention to Twitter to accuse media companies of “Fake News” while undermining an alliance with Qatar based on what may be, fittingly, a fake news story.

It’s a microcosm of this administration’s approach to public policy. A high-profile announcement, coupled with an ambitious promise, subsumed by an unrelated, self-inflicted public-relations crisis, followed by … nothing.

The secret of the Trump infrastructure plan is: There is no infrastructure plan. Just like there is no White House tax plan. Just like there was no White House health care plan. More than 120 days into Trump’s term in a unified Republican government, Trump’s policy accomplishments have been more in the subtraction category (e.g., stripping away environmental regulations) than addition. The president has signed no major legislation and left significant portions of federal agencies unstaffed, as U.S. courts have blocked what would be his most significant policy achievement, the legally dubious immigration ban.

The simplest summary of White House economic policy to date is four words long: There is no policy.

Consider the purported focus of this week. An infrastructure plan ought to include actual proposals, like revenue-and-spending details and timetables. The Trump infrastructure plan has little of that. Even the president’s speech on Monday was devoid of specifics. (An actual line was: “We have studied numerous countries, one in particular, they have a very, very good system; ours is going to top it by a lot.”) The ceremonial signing on Monday was pure theater. The president, flanked by politicians and businesspeople smiling before the twinkling of camera flashes, signed a paper that merely asks Congress to work on a bill. An assistant could have done that via email. Meanwhile, Congress isn’t working on infrastructure at all, according to Politico, and Republicans have shown no interest in a $200 billion spending bill.

In short, this “plan” is not a plan, so much as a Potemkin policy, a presentation devised to show the press and the public that the president has an economic agenda. The show continued on Wednesday, as the president delivered an infrastructure speech in Cincinnati that criticized Obamacare, hailed his Middle East trip, and offered no new details on how his plan would work. Infrastructure Week is a series of scheduled performances to make it look as if the president is hard at work on a domestic agenda that cannot move forward because it does not exist.

Journalists are beginning to catch on. The administration’s policy drought has so far been obscured by a formulaic bait-and-switch strategy one could call the Two-Week Two-Step. Bloomberg has compiled several examples of the president promising major proposals or decisions on everything from climate-change policy to infrastructure “in two weeks.” He has missed the fortnight deadline almost every time.

The starkest false promise has been taxes. “We’re going to be announcing something I would say over the next two or three weeks,” Trump said of tax reform in early February. Eleven weeks later, in late April, the White House finally released a tax proposal. It was hardly one page long.

Arriving nine weeks late, the document was so vague that tax analysts marveledthat they couldn’t even say how it would work. Even its authors are confused: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has repeatedly declined to say whether the plan will cut taxes on the rich, even though cutting taxes on the rich is ostensibly the centerpiece. Perhaps it’s because he needs more help: None of the key positions for making domestic tax policy have been filled. There is no assistant secretary for tax policy, nor deputy assistant secretary for tax analysis, according to the Treasury Department.

Once again, the simplest summary of White House tax policy is: There is no plan. There isn’t even a complete staff to compose one.

The story is slightly different for the White House budget, but no more favorable. The budget suffers, not from a lack of details, but from a failure of numeracy that speaks to the administration’s indifference toward serious public policy. The authors double-counted a projected benefit from higher GDP growth, leading to $2 trillion math error, perhaps the largest ever in a White House proposal. The plan included hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue from the estate tax, which appears to be another mistake, since the White House has separately proposed eliminating it.

Does the president’s budget represent what the president’s policies will be? It should, after all. But asked this very question, Mick Mulvaney, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, made perhaps the strangest claim of all: “I wouldn’t take what’s in the budget as indicative of what our proposals are,” he said.

This haphazard approach extends to the repeal of Obamacare, which may yet pass the Senate, but with little help or guidance from the president. Trump has allowed House Speaker Paul Ryan to steer the Obamacare-replacement bill, even though it violates the president’s campaign promises to expand coverage and protect Medicaid. After its surprising passage in the House, he directly undercut it on Twitter by suggesting he wants to raise federal health spending. Even on the most basic question of health-care policy—should spending go up, or down?—the president’s Twitter account and his favored law are irreconcilable. A law cannot raise and slash health care funding at the same time. The Trump health care plan does not exist.

It would be a mistake to call this a policy-free presidency. Trump has signed several executive orders undoing Obama-era regulations, removing environmental protections, and banning travel from several Muslim-majority countries. He has challenged NATO and pulled out of the Paris Accords. But these accomplishments all have one thing in common: Trump was able to do them alone. Signing executive orders and making a speech don’t require the participation of anybody in government except for the president.

It’s no surprise that a former chief executive of a private company would be more familiar with the presumption of omnipotence than the reality of divided powers. As the head of his own organization, Trump could make unilateral orders that subordinates would have to follow. But passing a law requires tireless persuasion and the cooperation of hundreds of representatives in the House and Senate who cannot be fired for insubordination. Being the president of the United States is nothing like being a CEO, especially not one of an eponymous family company.

Republicans in the House and Senate don’t need the president’s permission to write laws, either. Still, they too have struggled to get anything done. Several GOP senators say they may not repeal Obamacare this year—or ever. It is as if, after seven years of protesting Obamacare, the party lost the muscle memory to publicly defend and enact legislation.

In this respect, Trump and his party are alike—united in their antagonism toward Obama-era policies and united in their inability to articulate what should come next. Republicans are trapped by campaign promises that they cannot fulfill. The White House is trapped inside of the president’s perpetual campaign, a cavalcade of economic promises divorced from any effort to detail, advocate, or enact major economic legislation. With an administration that uses public policy as little more than a photo op, get ready for many sequels to this summer’s Infrastructure Week.