The "Lame Duck" Crisis
An exceptionally good piece of analysis from Crooked.Trump is battening down the hatches for winter of 2018.
"He has concluded that he can only escape serious personal and legal consequences—from a number of threats, but particularly from Special Counsel Robert Mueller—with brazen abuses of power, and is laying groundwork to take those steps as soon as he can get away with them, aware that a change in partisan control of the House could stymie him just after the new year.
The most alarming thing about it is there may be no way to stop him."
This IMHO is spot on.
The GOP is desperate to stuff the Judiciary with their hand picked candidates in the hope that these people foil any attempt to hold GOPers accountable. The GOP grand plan remains to brazen out the media pressure and public anger and should the RIS backed attempt to hack the November election fail, then to create enough confusion and delay in the judicial process to escape the country and access all the money they have stashed away in offshore bank accounts.
The analysis is also correct that there are no remedial measures to prevent this.
FWIW this is IMHO what happened in the USSR when it became clear that the debt obligations of the Soviet state were unmanageable. That is why were are seeing this happen here.
The core productivity problem of the US remains that with its aging workforce - its labor costs will remain very high. The Boomers with their culture of entitlement have already created unbearable amounts of debt. And there does not appear to be any change in Boomer perceptions about what to expect by way of state support in the future.
Boomers continue to believe that they are due Social Security and Medicare payments for as long as they live. Currently this is working out to about 30 years given average boomer life-expectancy and there are large numbers of boomers living into their 90s.
This demand seems quite absurd when you take into account that at most - the average boomer has put in about 5% of the their annual income towards Social Security and Medicare for about 40 years (a generous overestimate - most have not done anything like that). That works out to about 2 years worth of living expenses.
Even taking into consideration that any investment fund of this nature would have grown at 5% per year (lets ignore inflation for a moment) - the most a Boomer has put away is sufficient to tide them over for 4 years.
Even accounting for possibly acceptable "penny pinching" or lifestyle changes (very hard to do in real life) - we can maybe stretch that fund out for 8 years. And that is pushing it quite a bit because in reality there are inescapable health costs as one ages.
Even those boomers that have IRAs (a very small fraction of the total population of Boomers) - one might at best be able to squeeze out another 7 years or so of living expenses. So even the most a Boomer with an IRA can expect by way of economic support is 15 years. One without an IRA should expect about 8 years. But everyone of them is convinced they should get at least 30 years of it.
This is not realistic at all.
If one factors in the Boomer lifestyle which is very resource intense (I mean seriously per capita-year of a Boomer life - more CO2 has been emitted than any other generation) - the real cost of living will be much higher and so even those with IRAs will find themselves struggling after 10 years of retirement.
There is simply no way in which expecting this level of support is reasonable. The burden will fall on Gen X,Y and Z. But given the Boomer culture to put everyone down to hide their own imperfections - it is unlikely they will get the support they need from the people they love to hate.
So there we have it - Trump - the most visible manifestation of what is wrong with an entire generation will resort to the most idiotic of ways to dodge accountability for own actions.
This "Lame Duck" stuff seems reasonable enough. IMHO if Prince et al were to stage another security crisis - this would be the time to do it. In the event of a Democratic wave, the GOP would be more than happy to oblige anything Trump wanted in the lame duck session.
The judicial appointments will certainly be passed in this session. But depending on Trump's desperation, there is likely to be a lot more that gets passed.
posted by maverick @ 6:39 AM
15 Comments:
analysis written by hillary and obama acolytes?
globalists, open borders, elitists who sees half of the us as deplorables.......the us is not a nation but a global vehicle for their ideology.....and responsible for a good share of the mideast refugee crisis......
"half of us"? - the real numbers appear to be about 15% of the total population and if one limits it to the QAnon cultists - then that is less than 1%.
Without Russian help in disrupting the upcoming election - it is difficult to see how this minority will be able to maintain their current grip on nation.
If Trump can't keep his own senior staff from writing opeds in the New York Times - I wonder what good he is.
if you are expecting an explanation of trump from me then i am sorry to disappoint you because i have no earthly idea.....he is a man that that lived a life of excess....although raised by a domineering strict father.......treated women like condoms to used and thrown away....and wanted to be president of the us, one of the most difficult exhausting jobs on earth that requires a modicum of respectibilty and dignity which he has none of.....its unexplainable other than his preening narcissim.
otoh. he is right about china trade, nato, immigration, korea and the middle east.
immigration should be by merit not illegally done. we need to stop sparking refugee crisis.
news reports russians have warned the us that they will take action on tanf syria, a us stronghold. cruise missiles will prolly be used......the us is not amused......stay tuned.....
what do you think about COMCASA signed by BJP? Is F-16 a done deal?
there is no chance that india will buy f-16's. period. end of story.
the us has moved a company of marines into tanf, syria to back up us special forces already located there. russian threats have faded into the sunset.........
I am not expecting any explanation - I am looking for an honest acknowledgement of the fact that saying the right thing is not the same as doing the right thing.
I wont get into why his positions on NATO, China Trade, Korea and the Middle East are wrong - because that is foreign policy that has a way of rebounding on people who mess with it. And quite frankly the amount of suffering caused by that is minimal - most of it will accrue to the idiots that voted for him.
On immigration - his "wrongness" exacts a price from innocents.
Trump has locked us into a Nazi style pogrom against "illegal immigrants" - by perverting the DHS he has defiled the last line of our common defense and this fucking Potemkin program of separating families is taking resources away from the real work of protecting our borders.
To see people celebrating the incarceration of children and dismissing their real suffering as a creation of media forces is quite disgusting.
It is amusing to see how people that once complained about "Obama's FEMA" opening up "death camps" to "intern and genocide the White Race" (which FEMA never did) - are celebrating the DOD setting up detention facilities on military bases. The same idiots that worried about Obama locking up white people on charges of hate crimes, are now celebrating a massive expansion in prison facilities.
Do these idiots not realize that these facilities are NOT for minorities? that all of their own kind will go to these jails? - most likely - but I guess that is what happens to the brainwashed people in a cult.
India will buy US platforms, and the money will be routed to Modi's pocket via the usual Reliance channel.
I really doubt Anil Ambani will be happy with the size of Modi+Shah's cut but then it is likely he has not grasped that this whole Modi venture has reached the diminishing returns point as legal exposures are rising faster than financial rewards. So far it was a good run, between him, Adani and Vedanta - they were able to get enough loan write-off courtesy Modi+Shah but that won't happen again without serious issues.
Crap as it sounds I have no issues with Modi or congress making money on deals. Have no issues with airlift platforms either. My worry is If we go for F-16, it will be like HAF marut all over again and end of Tejas.
Yes it will most likely be the end of Tejas.
Ok Indulge me. Why is a supposedly nationalist govt killing Tejas. Had this been done by Congress, these guys would have screamed sellout. What do you think is the reason that GOI is pulling plug on Tejas. Also please explain the need for COMCASA, as we are now for all practical purposes a US/UK ally/vassal.
india no has intention of buying f-16's when pakistan also has them.......just not gonna happen.
india wants military tech so they will but stuff like navy p-8's and specialized attack copters and various other support gear........but it will not buy us jet fighters.
Don't be so sure Ralphy.
At this point, it looks like GOI will "buy" anything as long as Anil Ambani or Gautam Adani gets big offsets.
It used to be that the best way to get a contract in India was to allow HAL or DRDO license manufacturing but now under Modi/Shah - cold cash to crony capitalists who lack a real competence is preferred.
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