One Man’s View: Chaos as a strategy

‘Saturday Night Live,’ famous for its satirical fake news, revealed the true Donald Trump in the opening episode of its new season Sept. 30.

Alec Baldwin as Trump talks with press aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders (Aidy Bryant) after refusing hurricane relief to beleaguered Puerto Rico.

Trump (Baldwin): “It may seem like what’s coming out of my mouth is b-a-n-a-n-a-s, but it’s all part of the plan.  The more chaos I cause, the less people can focus.  They’re all getting so tired, so tired.”

Trump (Baldwin): “…Keep the chaos coming and shake things up.”

Baldwin captured in a sentence what many pundits seem to have missed.

CRAZY LIKE A FOX

Trump, whom I’ve often caricatured as the “Hey, Squirrel” president who intentionally leaps from crisis to crisis – causes them, actually – to distract attention from what’s really going on because it’s so negative to him, perhaps isn’t the “crazy” people want to think he is. He’s crazy like a fox.

Have you tried ever tried concentrating on something when jackhammers were pounding outside your window? Or tried navigating traffic with two kids bickering in the backseat? You can’t concentrate.

Trump talks about repealing the Affordable Care Act. We rush there.

Then, he calls out football players for protesting during the national anthem. Red meat for the masses and distraction galore.

Now he’s goading nuclear-armed Kim Jung Un. Gallop there. 

Mocking hurricane ravaged Puerto Rico. Grab THAT news bite.

Dissing the United Nations. Another headline.

Threaten the future of DACA recipients unless he gets a taxpayer-funded border wall. It’s one crisis after another. The list goes on and on.

DETERMINED STRATEGY

It could be that this chaos-creating is actually a cold, determined strategy.

The media rushes from crisis to outrage, keeping people on edge and wailing about this dreadful man, while Trump’s cabinet and Republicans in Congress are busy pursuing their real agenda to screw working families: kill healthcare, cut taxes for the wealthy on the backs of the poor and middle class, let companies pollute at will and let financial advisors help themselves to your money. Like the President’s manufactured crises, the list goes on and on.

WHAT THE HELL ARE WE DOING?

What the hell are we doing here? Why are we wasting our energy giving so much ink, air-time and personal attention to the man who’s trying to wear us out?

Everything that needs doing in our country is hard and requires our concentration and our best energy. We have to let the intentional distractions go.

If we have a marathon to run – and we do – the sprints will exhaust us.

If we chase every ignorant Trump tweet and action, the same thing will happen to us. We won’t have the fight left to take on education, immigration and health care, or defend the rights of working people. They aren’t as sexy as our collective outrage –  “Can you believe what he did today?” – conversations, but that’s the point. 

Chaos is Trump’s business strategy, and so far, it’s working.

PICK OUR BATTLES

We need to pick our battles, put a laser focus on them and get to work.

So much needs to get done, and we can get it done if we don’t give in to this “distraction/chaos” strategy and focus on what we can change.

We have a lot of work to do to take us from where we are. It’s going to be hard, but as Benjamin Franklin said, “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”

To protect the dark, murky swamp, let’s build a wall!

Let’s see: American citizens in Puerto Rico, where the devastation is complete, are desperate just to have water and electricity and are begging for more help while our president plays golf and mocks them as being lazy and selfish…

Millions of Americans are still without healthcare and millions more are threatened with losing theirs…

Some 800,000 young people brought to the U.S. as children, who know no other home and had been protected under the Differed Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program are now threated with deportation to places they don’t even know…

… and the Republicans yesterday, Wednesday, Oct. 4, were scheduled to hear a bill to spend $10 BILLION on a wall the majority of Americans don’t want built, plus spend another $5 BILLION on 10,000 more border guards and use of the National Guard to further block the border and ports of entry.

SOMETHING IS AMISS

Something is amiss here.

The swamp President Trump promised to drain actually seems to be getting deeper and murkier: His appointees, all millionaires from Wall Street who have never dirtied their hands with “common work,” have spent millions of our taxpayer dollars on unauthorized government junkets for personal purposes:

• Health & Human Services Secretary Tom Price: Publicity over the 24 trips he took on chartered jets at a cost of over $1 million forced him to resign, but the president never said “You’re fired” as he should have;

• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin took a taxpayer-funded trip to Kentucky to watch the eclipse (among many flights) and requested an Air Force plane to take him on his honeymoon;

• EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has spent $58,000 on “non-commercial flights;”

• Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has been using taxpayer-funded private jets to travel from Las Vegas to his hometown in Montana and take private flights between St. Croix and St. Thomas in U.S. Virgin Islands;

• Secretary of Veterans Affairs David Shulkin flew his wife on our dime to meet him in Europe.

• $146 million tax dollars spent in a year for first-class airfare tickets for federal employees.

What’s a billion here or there for the governing class when average Americans can’t do anything about it? The problem isn’t us it’s THEM, that foreign other. Pay no attention, we’re building a wall!

SUCK IT UP!

What does our president have to say about his teams’ outrageous spending, the desperate needs of American citizens in Puerto Rico, children brought here illegally through no fault of their own? “Suck it up!”

To Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz of San Juan, Puerto Rico? “Stop your bitching and suck it up.”

To young people who are here because your parents fled wars, poverty and government abuse in their countries to try to get you a better life? “Time to suck it up.”

When the Lady Liberty, holding the eternal torch of hope in New York Harbor said:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free…”

…she must have had her fingers crossed.

To the American people, a gentle reminder: Elections have consequences.

Save

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Where’s the heart America used to be known for?

In what has to be one the most callous, offensive efforts yet of the Trump administration, a move that will seriously hurt the health of millions of Americans, the president has ordered a massive cut in the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) outreach program to help people get health care.

Willing to let America’s health care “implode” by starvation because he failed to get a total repeal of Obamacare, the president’s Department of Health & Human Services quietly  announced last week it would cut the outreach program from $100 million to $10 million.

Instead of working with Democrats to improve Obamacare’s shortcomings, and yes, there are shortcomings as would be expected in implementing a new nation-wide program of this magnitude, the Republicans in Congress are willing to let millions of Americans suffer the lack of health care simply to score a political victory – let the program fail and then we’ll force everyone to consider an alternative.

The marketing dollars are used to hire staff to educate, encourage and help people understand their state’s health care marketplace with the goal of ensuring Americans looking for affordable coverage know all the options available to them.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hit the nail on the head: “The Trump Administration’s cynical effort to lower enrollment will create chaos in the health marketplaces and increase premiums for millions of American families.” And sure enough, with the uncertainty of health care’s future, insurance companies have raised premiums and, in some cases, have withdrawn from states.

This on top of President Trump’s newest debacle — the threat of deporting 800,000 undocumented youngsters (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – DREAMERS) brought to America as children and who were promised they could stay if they continued their education or joined the military and stayed out of trouble. For most, this is the only home they’ve ever known.

In less than a year of the Trump presidency, the soul of America has already been ripped apart with Trump’s embracing of Nazis and the KKK.

Now our heart is about to go as well?

“SAD.”

Bets willingly taken on Trump’s ‘tax plan’ outlined, briefly, in Springfield last week

Want to take a bet?

In his appearance in Springfield, MO Aug. 30, President Donald Trump outlined some key “principles” about the tax proposals he wants Congress to implement:

• Slashing the corporate tax rate to 15 percent, down from 35 percent, saying that “Lower taxes on American business means higher wages for American workers.” (Want to bet on this too?)

• Eliminating “loopholes and complexity” of the tax code. (Read: primarily benefitting the wealthiest Americans and special interests, a reference to his call to scrap some itemized deductions in the code.)

• “Deliver real tax reform for everyday hard-working Americans.”

Okay, now the reality.

First, his “tax plan” was a one-page bullet pointed summary of a wishy-washy wish list, no specific goals. No charts to explain proposals, no plans for implementation, nothing. But then, would we expect anything less from this president?

THE PROPOSED ‘CONCEPTS’

A quick overview from his advisors of what the plan could look like:

• Cut individual tax rate ceiling from 39.6 percent to 35 percent.

• Corporations would not have to pay taxes on foreign profits, allowing them to bring the billions stashed overseas with no clear-cut guidelines that they would have to invest those funds in America.

• Scrapping itemized deductions such as for state and local taxes.

• Critics worry that lawyers, doctors, consultants and other individuals in partnerships could structure much of their personal income as business income, effectively reducing their tax rate from 39.6 percent to 15 percent.

PROFESSIONAL RESPONSE

And what was the response from financial professionals who have been reviewing what little information is being eked out on what little is known to date?

• Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group: “The bare bones plan we saw unveiled today is already conceptually flawed and unlikely to go far in Congress. The final product will bear no resemblance to the principal points highlighted in today’s meager release. Certainly, the first step in this process was unimpressive.”

• Alan B. Krueger, chairman of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers: “I worry that the Trump proposal would shift a tremendous amount of income abroad.”

• Michael Linden, Roosevelt Institute fellow: “Corporations are sitting on a vast amount of capital. Reducing their tax burden would have absolutely no effect on workers.”

IN SUMMARY

The New York Times summed up his scant “tax reform” speech nicely:

“Many economists … argue that large corporate tax cuts would do relatively little — particularly in the near term — to boost wages or create jobs. Instead, they would boost corporate profits and benefit the wealthiest Americans who own the most corporate stock. There is little evidence that large tax cuts will prompt American corporations to invest more; they are already sitting on nearly $2 trillion in cash.”

‘CRUMBS FOR WORKING PEOPLE’

As expected, the Democrats jumped in:

“This is an unprincipled tax plan that will result in cuts for the 1%, conflicts for the president, crippling debt for America and crumbs for the working people. Instead of providing a real tax reform plan as promised, this administration is offering cakes to the fortunate few.”– Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, the ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee.

In closing his Springfield reality show, the president said:

“This is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver real tax reform for everyday hard-working Americans.”

Anyone want to take my bet that it never happens? At least not for working middle class families.

Two weeks brings wide range of emotions

These past couple weeks were the historic weeks! In a matter of 14 days, we experienced, on a grand scale, Courage, Conviction, Cowardice, Confrontation and Hope.

Let me explain:

• COURAGE: The highlight was the courage of more than 307,000 Missourians who stood up to abusive government power and said “NO WAY” to the phony “right-to-work (for less)” by signing the We Are MO petitions demanding a public vote on this misnamed, deceitful law passed by paid-for Republican legislators.

And these were not just union members – we don’t have that many in Missouri any more. No, these were working Missourians from all walks of life — union, non-union, blue collar, white collar, no collar workers who said passing a law that will hurt all working families, hurt our state’s economy and is a blight on democracy in the workplace has no place in Missouri. And next year they will vote and reject this terrible law.

• CONVICTION: Workers across Missouri – union members, family members and non-union members – provided thousands upon thousands of volunteer hours to hit the bricks with the Citizen Petition demanding a public vote on the so-called “right-to-work (for less).” And that conviction to do what’s right paid handsome dividends when on Aug. 18, thousands of those volunteers showed up in Jefferson City to deliver the results of months of hard work.

CONGRATULATIONS — and THANK YOU — to everyone who took the time to make Democracy work for all. Your efforts will give Missourians a voice on what’s right – and wrong – for this state when they reject the phony RTW next November. WELL DONE FOLKS!!

• COWARDICE: When confronted with the opportunity to stand up for American values and forthrightly denounce neo-Nazis, the Klu Klux Klan and white supremacists, President Donald Trump displayed the ultimate cowardice.

Instead of immediately condemning their actions on the streets of Charlottesville, which resulted in a white supremacist killing an innocent protester, he blamed both sides, or in his words “many sides” as having been at fault for the violence.

Despite his half-hearted reading of a denunciation days later, his intent that first day was clear when the Daily Stormer, the mouthpiece for neo-Nazis and alt-right said, “There was virtually no counter-signaling of us at all. He said he loves us all. Also refused to answer a question about white nationalists supporting him. No condemnation at all. When asked to condemn, he just walked out of the room. Really, really good. God bless him.”

America hung its head in shame that day.

• CONFRONTATION: with the Constitution of the United States as President Trump viciously attacked, yet again, the free press for doing its job: exposing him for the hate-filled fraud he is.

The First Amendment of our Constitution is clear: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….” And yet, he accuses the press of hating America, of being dishonest, of spewing “fake news.” What utter crap!

The cornerstone of Democracy is a free press to be able to expose the misuse of power everywhere, a job it has done with admirable success for decades. But this president wants to destroy the public’s acceptance of, and belief in, the free press because it is exposing him for the fraud he is.

Trump is following the roadmap of what all tinhorn dictators’ actions are when they grab power: kill the free press, kill or imprison their opposition (“Lock her up”), then destroy the unions.

• HOPE: Despite all of this, the sun’s eclipse Aug. 21 was a metaphor of hope for the future. With the sun shining brightly on the America we all love, suddenly a shadow began creeping over it, blotting out the warmth, the light, the “hope” if you will (i.e., the election of President Trump). Then there was total darkness (his first term). Everything stopped. We held our breath at the spectacle.

But then the darkness began to move off, and the sun’s rays took flight and soon the sun was as bright and warm as ever.

The reign of Donald Trump and his minions won’t last forever. The darkness will pass.

I firmly believe that this Labor Day will be a turning point for America and for our Labor Movement.

Not that we won’t have many important fights ahead, we will, but like the sun re-emerging from the moon’s shadow, the light and warmth of Democracy will again shine brightly for America, for the world. Hope springs eternal.

Toyota locates in Texas for some ‘weird’ commonsense reasons

Phony ‘right-to-work’ was not one of them

I recently visited with my daughter and her family and my brother who live in the Dallas suburbs of Plano and Frisco, Texas. An article in the May 14 issue of The Dallas Morning News that proclaimed the opening of Toyota’s new billion-dollar American headquarters in Plano intrigued me.

“Right-to-work” Texas did it again, I thought as I read the headline “An alliance of driving forces: Toyota opens doors to new Plano home.” And so, with trepidation, I read the article.

And then I got the shock of my life.

Of all the company and local leaders who talked about the many reasons Plano was selected over 25 other final sites, not one mentioned ANYTHING about it being a so-called “right-to-work” state!

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

What? After all, the Republicans here have told us over and over again that RTW was the key factor in attracting new plants and thus new jobs.

“Jobs, jobs, jobs” was the Republican mantra as they rushed passing RTW as their first piece of legislation in the last session. And Gov. Eric parroted that: “Today right-to-work sends a very clear message … Missouri is open for business.”

WOW, ARE THEY WRONG

I urge the governor and his Republican cohorts to read the Dallas Morning News article because it has some keen insights:

• North Caroline offered Toyota $100 million in incentives. Texas only $46 million.

Incentives “weren’t make-or-break factors,” said Toyota North American CEO Jim Lentz.

Notes a subhead in the article, “Cost wasn’t clincher.” Really, what then caused Toyota to bring a $1 billion American headquarters here?

• Says the local Chamber of Commerce’s point person for the project: “They wanted to know about schools and demographics. They wanted to tour neighborhoods and know about potential job opportunities for spouses… they needed to convince Toyota employees that North Texas is a place where they could put own roots.”

• The commercial real estate rep who handled the deal: “…companies looking to move are increasingly prioritizing quality-of-life factors over cheaper office space.”

• Plano’s economic development director: Toyota “has said repeatedly, values diversity and inclusivity.”

• Plano’s mayor noted Plano’s equal rights ordinance passed in 2014 that bars discrimination against LGBT people. That diversity, couples with the city’s proximity to Dallas museums and theaters, and… sports teams, made Plano stand out.

• Added the mayor: “Companies want to come here because it’s safe, the schools are great and the third component is quality of life.

WHAT, NO RTW AS A KEY?!

In the article, at least 5,000 words long covering one-and-a-half full newspaper pages, not a single word about the phony “right-to-work” as even a consideration!

And as we’ve pointed out in many articles, in Site Selection Magazine surveys RTW is not even in the top 15 reasons site selection experts cite as reasons for recommending company locations.

RTW is simply a way to reduce the ability of unions to fight for workers’ rights, workers’ wages, and workers’ benefits. Weak unions = larger company bottom lines and fatter CEO salaries and bonuses.

Gov. Eric, the political coward he is, didn’t take Missouri workers into consideration when he signed RTW, he looked to the fat donations his corporate handlers will give him as he tries to move up the political ladder to run for Donald Trump’s job.

And so, Missouri, we’ve been bamboozled yet again!

Eric Greitens: Political COWARD

Governor Eric Greitens is a political coward!

The man who professes to want to change the culture in Jefferson City, and has frankly made no concrete gestures at doing that, has turned his back on more than tens of thousands of Missouri working families, union and non-union alike, without as much as a real conversation about why he might not want to do that.

A few clear-cut examples:

ON PROTECTING YOUR JOB

Despite many efforts of the Missouri top AFL-CIO labor leadership to meet with the new governor to discuss the “workers’ side” of the so-called “right-to-work” issue, Governor Eric simply refused to meet before he signed this terrible anti-worker law! He did send a staffer to meet after the bill was passed, but it was only a perfunctory gesture. The Missouri AFL-CIO represents more than a quarter of a million Missouri workers and the governor wouldn’t meet with its leadership to hear the workers’ view on how RTW will hurt all workers as well as the state’s economy the governor professes to want to move forward.

ON CLEANING THE SWAMP

During his campaign, he pledged to clean up Jefferson City, which he called a “corrupt, do-nothing embarrassment.” And where has that gone?

• Ethics legislation has stalled on the simplest of cleanups: banning lobbyists’ gifts (to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars last year for trips, dinners, gifts, etc.) and preventing departing legislators from becoming lobbyists for at least two years. No action! Gov. Eric has been pretty silent on pushing these issues.

• But wait, legislators are pointing the finger back at the governor telling him to first look in the mirror. His campaign created a new secret dark money nonprofit group — A New Missouri, Inc. run by his senior advisor — that has accepted almost $2 million and refused to disclosure the donors. And it was revealed last week that this nonprofit has been lobbying for legislation, but isn’t registered to lobby as required by law. Want to guess who ponied up? Gov. Eric won’t even talk about it!

ON EARNING A DECENT WAGE

With St. Louis and Kansas City now requiring employers to pay a more reasonable minimum wage (it’s still not a livable wage, but better than before), and the new wages now in paychecks helping pull workers a bit more out of poverty, the Republicans stepped in to ban cities from making that decision. The legislation is sitting on Gov. Eric’s desk waiting for his signature. I’m betting on him signing it, impacting 69,000 workers in St. Louis alone who will see their wages decline. The loss will be staggering. An estimated $29 million additional dollars are expected to flow into workers’ pockets in the city between the May 5 start of the increase and Aug. 28 when the rollback, if the Governor signs it, is slated to take effect.

ON KEEPING THE PUBLIC IN THE DARK

Gov. Eric has not held an open question-and-answer news conference since taking office Jan. 9! He even had a lock installed on his spokesman’s office to limit reporter access. Can’t have those pesky reporters asking “why?”

PARTY ON

Lobbyists and corporations paid for Gov. Eric’s inaugural ball, costing who knows how many millions, but he won’t provide an accounting of who paid how much.

TRAVEL ON

And while he’s saving the state a few shekels by not using the state’s airplane for trips, he is using private corporate airplanes provided by “donors.” Again, no public accounting of whose buying influence with Gov. Eric. Five trips to Washington, D.C. and a visit to a Trump-owned resort have been among his destinations.

LACK OF POLITICAL COURAGE

Why all the secrecy and kowtowing to the corporations and the rich?

Gov. Eric wants to be president of the United States. He’s already locked up his “Greitens for President” campaign committee name.

That means he’ll need lots of money.

It’s clear by his actions Gov. Eric doesn’t have the political courage to turn his back on his multimillionaire, anti-worker dark-money funders who someday will be called on to fund his presidential campaign.

So, despite his campaign rhetoric to work for Missouri’s workers, he’s really working for, and kissing the asses of, the companies and wealthy individuals that will fuel his personal political ambitions.

Tragically, it also means that St. Louis and Kansas City minimum wage workers are going to lose their new-found wages, that real ethics reform will never get passed, that Gov. Eric will never fight for you and I, the families of Missouri who can’t fund his political ego.

POLITICAL COWARD

We thought a Navy SEAL would have the courage to stand up for what’s right. “To serve with Honor and Integrity on and off the battlefield” is part of the Navy SEAL’s code.

Not having the courage to first meet with the top Missouri AFL-CIO leaders on RTW and other pieces of anti-worker legislation and then not vetoing the RTW bill when it came to him, not vetoing the minimum wage destruction bill that will take family-feeding monies from already underpaid workers, and not being honest about who is funding his ambitions, defiles the SEAL’s code of honor.

In the end, by not standing up for workers, a great many of whom supported him and will now be hurt by him, is nothing less than political cowardice.

BUT ERIC, IT’S NOT OVER YET

As sad as Missouri politics is today, the fight’s not over.

A strong Citizens Initiative Petition signature gathering campaign underway hopefully will put the RTW issue to a public vote in 2018. If you haven’t signed yet, check you Labor Tribune for dates and locations (see Page ???)

Getting enough signatures on the petition to force the statewide vote will send a strong message to our opportunistic governor and the Republican-controlled legislature:

“We’re fed up and we’re not going to take it anymore.”