Author: Don Doumakes

The Central Committee of the Harrison County Democratic Party meets the first Thursday of each month.  The May meeting will be at the 4th Avenue Grill in Logan.  Come at 6 p.m. for dinner; business meeting starts at 6:30.

• Deficit spending:  If you weren’t convinced by Dick Cheney explicitly saying out loud and on the record that “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” if you weren’t convinced by George W. Bush putting two wars on the national credit card, then surely adding more than $1.5 trillion to the debt to cut taxes for the rich has removed any remaining doubt.
• National security: giving intelligence secrets to the Russians?  No problem.  Outing an undercover CIA agent?  No problem.  Overwhelming evidence of Russian interference in American elections?  No problem.
• Crime: No fewer than four Republicans with criminal convictions are running for office this year, and that’s not counting Roy Moore, the sexual predator who got more than 90% of Republican votes in a special election for U.S. Senate, and the full-throated support of the President and the silent assent of Iowa Senator Joni Ernst.
• What Jesus would do: White evangelicals simply no longer care about the personal morality of their political leaders.  Not my opinion, it’s what evangelicals say for themselves.

On Friday I saw two examples of a man faced with a moral decision.

Bill Maher hosted Billy Bush, forever infamous for laughing along with Donald Trump on the Access Hollywood tape, as Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women.  Bush explained why he didn’t stand up to Donald Trump at the time, which basically amounted to fear of losing his job.

Friday was also the 50th anniversary of the My Lai massacre, a war crime committed by the United States in which at least 347 civilians were murdered by U.S. troops.  Many who know of that crime are unaware that an American helicopter pilot, Hugh Thompson, caught the perpetrators in the act and put a stop to it, literally threatening to open fire on U.S. troops if they continued to fire on civilians.

Thompson literally saved the lives of people who were about to be murdered.  And he did so at great cost to himself: he was condemned and harrassed by his fellow soldiers.  But in the moment, he chose to do the right thing.

Bush kept quiet, and kept his comfortable job, by keeping silent when he should have spoken up.  He regrets it now, which is not worth nothing, to be sure, but it’s not really worth much, either.

When a future generations asks what we did to stop the rise of fascism in the U.S., are we going to say we wish we had done more when it counted?

 

We knew this, but it’s still shocking when he just admits it right out loud, and more shocking when Republicans go along with it.

The president spoke at a fundraiser about a conversation he had with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in which the two leaders discussed which country had a trade deficit with the other. As the Washington Post  reported, Trump bragged last night that he made the private comments without having a clue as to whether or not he was correct.

“Trudeau came to see me. He’s a good guy, Justin. He said, ‘No, no, we have no trade deficit with you, we have none. Donald, please,’ ” Trump said, mimicking Trudeau, according to audio obtained by The Washington Post. “Nice guy, good-looking guy, comes in – ‘Donald, we have no trade deficit.’ He’s very proud because everybody else, you know, we’re getting killed.

“… So, he’s proud. I said, ‘Wrong, Justin, you do.’ I didn’t even know…. I had no idea. I just said, ‘You’re wrong.’ You know why? Because we’re so stupid. … And I thought they were smart. I said, ‘You’re wrong, Justin.’ He said, ‘Nope, we have no trade deficit.’ I said, ‘Well, in that case, I feel differently,’ I said, ‘but I don’t believe it.’ I sent one of our guys out, his guy, my guy, they went out, I said, ‘Check, because I can’t believe it.’”

So, Trump started with the premise that the United States is “stupid” – a curious assumption for an American president – and then based his assumptions on that dubious foundation. It then led him to assume, without having any facts or having done any homework ahead of his meeting with the Canadian prime minister, that we have a trade deficit with our neighbors to the north.

According to last night’s story, Trump’s aide then came back to him to assure the president that he was, in fact, correct about the trade imbalance – which is bizarre, since, according to the Trump administration’s own data, the United States has a trade surplus with Canada.

What’s amazing about this story, however, isn’t just the American president being wrong about a simple issue he’s talked about for years.

Rather, what we have here is a president bragging about making stuff up, then assuring his audience that his evidence-free claims are accidentally true, without realizing that he’s still wrong.

Please make a small contribution to these primary challengers.  It’s time the Democratic Party stopped electing Senators who represent banks.

• Bennet – not up for reelection until 2022
• Carper – primary opponent is Kerri Evelyn Harris
• Coons – retiring
• Donnelly – as of now, unopposed in the primary
• Hassan – not up for reelection until 2022
• Heitkamp – primary opponent is Dustin David Peyer
• Jones – not up for reelection until 2020
• Kaine – as of now, unopposed in the primary
• King – actually independent, caucuses with Democrats.  Democratic opponent is Zak Ringelstein
• Manchin – primary opponent is Paula Jean Swearengin
• McCaskill – primary opponent is Angelica Earl
• Nelson – primary opponent is Tamika Lyles
• Peters – not up for reelection until 2020
• Shaheen – not up for reelection until 2020
• Stabenow – as of now, unopposed in the primary
• Tester – primary opponent is Greg Strandberg
• Warner – not up for relection until 2020

Republicans love them some bank deregulation.  And they’re getting help from some Democrats in the Senate.  Elizabeth Warren tweeted out the names of the Democrats who voted to advance a bill that would dismantle Dodd-Frank.  Shame on them.  I’ll post links to their primary opponents as soon as possible.

From The Reality-Based Community, a gun control proposal that I’ve never heard before:  nationalize the gun industry.

The ownership strategy would not be profit-maximising. It would include:

1. Maintaining current sales to the military and (with less marketing effort) law enforcement;
2. Dropping all sales to civilians of semi-automatic weapons, keeping only two-shot shotguns, one-shot bolt-action hunting rifles, and revolvers;
3. Selling only through retailers committing to an enforceable code of practice including full background checks;
4. Setting up an attack-dog legal department to protect patent and trademark IP very aggressively, to discourage new entrants;
5. Dropping all connection with the NRA or other gun advocacy organisations.

For a few years, the gunmakers would lose money. So you have to add maybe another $1bn for restructuring costs. These would never be recovered, and represent the permanent net cost of the operation.

Notice what isn’t here: repeal of the Second Amendment.  A Democratic Congress could, and should, pass this program with a simple majority vote.  It would slow the spread of weapons of mass shooting, and give us time to deal with the huge inventory of dangerous weapons (perhaps by a voluntary buy-back program).