🇳🇱
I know I talk alot of shit about trump, and I really dont like him much. But I must admit, he has done an amazing job handling the coronavirus so far.
Here are some of the things he has done that I am fairly pleased with:
1) Every year he has been in office he signed into law year-after-year budget increases for the CDC
2) He quickly barred incoming flights from both china and europe once cases became significant
3) he quickly issued a state of emergency and orderer the deployment of a US navy quarantine ship to help
4) His administration approved covering all costs for mandatory medical testing and quarinting for COVID-19 patients...
5) He issued a 1,000$ UBI to all american citizens to help alleviate financial problems.
He definitely did a better job than the last few presidents did when handling H1N1 and SARS.
Supporters and apologists of Trump can't be attacked at a moral, human level. And, yes, give credit where credit is due. However, the obvious shortcomings of Trump and his administration HAVE to be accepted, not sugar-coated, and scrutinized by ALL. This includes many Trump supporters whom he screwed over by installing nothing but lobbyists and billionaires who promote nothing more than *crony capitalism*. I say this as a captialist, the system can't continue to be rigged -- no matter if you're left, right, or center.
Your main point about installing lobbyists and billionairs for cronyism is valid, and certainly something Trump is guilty for. But to be fair so were the clintons, hillary, Bush, all the presidents.
Hell even sanders lived on welfare his whole life, destitute and poor, then became a career politician and is now a multi-millionaire...
Not that it makes it right but your literally describing every politician and president with very few exaceptions.
No thats a cop out.. you can run a campaign, get billions in donations, and not actually cash it out for **yourself**. If those costs go directly to your campaign then it has no effect on your personal net worth.
He owns 3 homes and is a multi-millionaire, no he doesn't need that to run a campaign.
As for his wealth, he didn't steal campaign contributions - he wrote a book and people bought it.
I didnt mean to imply he stole campaign funds. The point is, you dont need to be personally rich to run for president. Campaign funds arent you rmoney so you can have plenty of money for a campaign and not need to be rich.
The idea that he was only poor because hw was working full time to get elected is a weak excuse. A highly skilled and educated individual has more than enough opportunity to make money and pursue a career in politics. The fact is, sanders isnt a very intelligent person nor is he very skilled.
Literally sanders only skill is pandering to the public for popularity while he hemorrhages money.
Instead of buying multiple houses for himself he could have paid off peoples student loans, or bought a house for a poor family or any number of other things that would be in line with what he preaches, if he was legit that is.
Instead he spent the money making his lavish live even more lavish.
The irony is that actual billionaires do this all the time. In general they spend a huge percentage of their income helping others (far more than people of lower classes).
But bernie, not so much.
To quote actual figures, the rich whom he wishes to tax out of existence give ~6% of their net income to charity each year on average. Warren Buffet the most generous gave 85% of his **net worth**... how about Bernie.. about half that at only 3% of his income from a multi-million dollar book deal
Sorry but the man is a disgrace when you look at his actual actions and compare it to what he preaches (which changes every week)
I dunno, int he Netherlands he seems to be a joke to most people that I talk to, and they are pretty socialist minded here.
Despite what he may say or not they seem to all agree he makes a mockery of what healthy socialism should be and his policies would tax millionaires and other wealth-producing members of society out of existance.
Thats really the best way to destroy an economy. Even countries liek the NL recognize socialism is bad, but good strong welfare programs are good... They see him as mostly effectively taxing millionaires out of existence.
I'd say what he did was very exploitive. He lied, pandered, flipped and tricked us every step along the way by promising whatever would get him attention then not delivering... Then he wrote a book about it that was more of the same... I'd say thats pretty exploitive IMO.
Nothing wrong with being rich.. but it has to do with how.. He panders to the lowest human instinct, the uneducated masses.
He pretty much just echos back the mob mentality, no matter how destructive it may be, for his personal gain, lying about whatever he needs to that week to get the attention.
He started as a NRA endorsed new politician, obviously never followed through and completely changed his promises on guns.
He promised to significantly slash military spending, then when he releases his proposed budget as president, surprise surprise, the slash to the military is less than 0.1% meanwhile all the money he wants to fund comes from the most reckless sources (vilifying the wealth producing centers of the economy and wanting to tax them out of existence instead). He claimed to be an independent (and one of few reasons i supported him early on) and then wound up actually endorsing botht he DNC and Hillary of all people..
No sorry its hard to see him as even remotely deserving of a vote from me.
He held jobs, but was so unskilled or poor at doing them he lived off welfare. I didnt mean to imply he was never hired for anything, only that he was a failure at those ventures for most of his life.
When I compare Obama and Trump all I keep coming back to in my mind is Obama murdered US citizens (incluing a 16 year old child) without any due process or checks of any kind. Even Trump hasnt reached that level of evil yet (though he has done some bad stuff too).
Bush 2 was undeniably worse than Trump. Bush 1 is only equivalent to Trump if you don't think being the director of the CIA in one of its objectively most harmful eras pushes him down on the list.
untagged everyone from for some reason.
@mewmew @freemo @lnxw37a2 @mobius There’s a bit of background required before this (let’s be honest, controversial) idea can even make sense within the current Overton Window. Portions will be omitted from said background because no state I inhabit (nor any United State for that matter) has legalized the substance in question. However, because tax evasion is de-facto legal in the United States, I’ll substitute it in-place.
I was enjoying a relaxing night of conversation and tax evasion with one of my closest friends, someone I think of as almost a sister to me. Incredibly brilliant person.
We get into politics; she’s got a very strange political stance on almost everything. It’d be funny, if it didn’t make sense every time it was explained.
She slights Jefferson at some point during the conversation. I don’t really process it for the first minute or so, and I continue talking. Eventually, I’m caught up to just about where I need to be, and say something along the lines of, “Wait, what now about Jefferson?”
She then spends—I’m not joking—two hours solely giving me an explanation as to why she despises Jefferson. During this, she weaves multiple Supreme Court cases with the Constitution along with outcomes in the present into a coherent narrative as to why a single action that Jefferson made can be directly tied to almost every modern Constitutional violation, on top of almost everything wrong in America.
Now, you may think, “Wait, that sounds silly; there’s no way!”
But as it turns out…yeah, that’s basically how it was? The Louisiana Purchase can be directly tied to all of those things, and Jefferson was responsible for it. It was a single bad decision that’s butterflied into most of the problems facing America today.
at the tax evasionanyway I didn't think of the Louisiana purchase that way before
I am curious now
If Jefferson, someone essential to the document's finished state, used it in a way that signified that the people in power were the only ones protected by it, alongside getting to break it at will, why *wouldn't* anyone else do the same?
If you're not familiar, the Tenth Amendment prevents the federal government from taking powers not authorized within the Constitution itself (or Amendments thereof).
If any American can look me dead in the eyes and, hand to God, say that Jefferson hasn't caused more human suffering than almost any other man alive as a result, I'd be willing to never let a word escape my lips again.
@kick @mewmew @lnxw37a2 @freemo @mobius
I'm guessing she was talking about the "necessary and proper" clause, which is cited in most Supreme Court rulings upholding some expansion of federal government power not laid out in the constitution.
Also, she may have been talking about Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton may have been the primary author of the Federalist Papers, but he was also one of the biggest proponents of the inclusion of that clause, and even assured people at the time it would only apply to powers given by the constitution. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he himself used this clause to justify the creation of the First Bank, a power not given to the federal government anywhere in the constitution.
this isn't really true. he didn't live off of welfare, he held many jobs - and "career politician" is very different from being a crony capitalist.
just because other people are bad doesn't mean Trump isn't far far worse. I don't like Clintons or Bushes or Gores (Nader 2000!) or even Obamas that much because of their crony capitalism... but each of them are far far better than Trump.