ND I would like to respond to your lengthy message. I will be responding point by point, so the message may get a little lengthy on its own. I may actually break it into multiple messages if it gets unwieldy. ND I believe that you have confused a number of facts and have jumped to a number of erroneous conclusions, and I would like to correct that.
"Sure, Bush gets part of the blame. He was president when the crash happened. However, the efforts to nationalize 1/6th of the U.S.”
Are you referring to the effort to salvage health care as the effort to nationalize 1/6th of the US? If you are I can point to a number of resources that show how poorly organized the previous health insurance setup was. The Affordable Care Act, is obviously deeply flawed, and needs to be fixed, but it is a dramatic improvement on what came before. If you are referring to some other segment of the economy, I apologize for the confusion, but I would like to know what it is that you were talking about.
"The efforts to bailout the economy by earmarking funding for turtle pathways and solar companies (that almost all went bankrupt) was just a way for the Democrats to reward their backers.”
What are turtle pathways? That I am really curious about. And complaining about government funds for solar companies is a little silly when one considers the number of subsidies that fossil fuel companies have received. Or ethanol companies. As anthropogenic global warming is a real threat to quality of life on this planet (both for humans and other life forms), spending money to move away from dependence on fossil fuels seems a prudent use of tax payer dollars. Beyond that stimulating the economy was not simply a democratic position, both sides of the aisle knew that drastic steps had to be taken. Most reputable economists also were of the opinion that drastic measures had to be taken to salvage the tanking US and world economy.
"Most of that money was phantom money and did nothing to bring jobs back or improve the economy.”
That is a bold claim. To clarify are you saying most of the money spent in the various facets of the bailouts did not help the economy. Or are you saying most of the money spent of turtle pathways did not improve the economy. If you are saying the more narrow second thing, then I can get behind it. But if you are implying the dramatic steps to get us out of the recession did not help with reducing unemployment or improve the economy, you are going to have to source that. Because the evidence suggests otherwise.
"So his response to the crisis, in a lot of respects did not help.”
In a number of respects it did not help. Not everything thrown at the wall stuck. But for the most part it did. I would ask you to compare the economies between 2009 and 2017.
"For the rest of Obama’s presidency the economy never, seriously, got back to Bush or Clinton era heights.”
This depends on which metric you are using, but I will readily concede that President Clinton was fantastic for the economy.
"This is partially true. Hillary did represent mega-corporate interests, special interest groups, Wall Street.”
I would argue that Hillary Clinton represents those interests to a lesser extent than any elected official from the other side of the aisle. Obviously she does represent those interests more than the further left Senators and Congressmen, but she is more politician than ideologue.
"She was a neo-liberal like Bush was a neo-conservative. Trump on the other hand is not a neo-conservative or neoliberal.”
Perhaps the reason that President Trump does not fit into a category like the other politicians that you listed is that he has no ideology. Trump is selfish, obviously, and is trying to govern to further his interests, but that is not a category on the political spectrum.
"It is true that he is a billionaire,”
It is true that he claims to be a billionaire. We still have not seen his tax returns and do not know all of the debt he is carrying on his assets. Is it likely that he is a billionaire? Sure. And he sure has been enriching himself as president. But you shouldn’t make claims like this and present them as fact. It diminishes your argument.
"but you forget that Trump favored protectionist policies, ‘Made in the USA’ policies (things that appeal to union men and women), he claimed to represent all Americans born in the United States.”
Trump claims to favor protectionist policies. And it certainly has bolstered his support. But his actions suggest that he does not truly care that things are made in America. Clothes from the Trump line are not manufactured in the United States. Neither are clothes from his daughter’s line but that is another argument. When he hires seasonal workers for his resorts he frequently hires immigrant laborers as opposed to American citizens. Steel to build his buildings has been international, not American steel. So Trump appears to care a more about lining his pockets than made in the USA.
"He funded his campaign in the primary (something Clinton or Jeb didn’t do).”
He did partially fund his campaign in the primary. And I do not know if Clinton or Bush used any of their own money in the campaign. But when you phrase it, ‘he funded his campaign’ you might lead people to believe that he alone funded it. And that is simply untrue. Like every other candidate his campaign was supplemented by donations.
"So, there was alot of things about his campaign that appealed to a lot of people who were sick of being screwed over by neocons and neoliberal.”
This is absolutely true. He said a lot of things while running for office that appealed to people upset by the status quo.
"Yes, half the country did not vote. That is their right. They can choose to do it or choose not to do it. This is not a new thing. It’s been this way for a long time.
A better electoral system would be preferable. I like the electoral system that we have, but I have nothing against a system that opens it up to multi-party candidates and truly gets away from the two party system.”
I hope you, like me, hope that elections for the office of the presidency become true democracies. Where every adult citizen gets a vote. And every vote counts the same.
Seeking Full-Press Players
would be ideal, but that is also open for change.
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