Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

https://twitter.com/surlyurbanist/status/799414446959435776 (via jamelle bouie)

this seems like the sort of nuanced take on the intersection of race and class

I read the stratification economics piece. The fact that Trump wants to eliminate the estate tax is now something else that can be added to the list of racist things.

iatee made a post years back about the estate tax that has stuck with me. paraphrasing: "basically the most defensible tax ever. money doesn't come out of the economy and you didn't do anything to deserve it other than being born. should be 100%."

anybody here in/near Louisiana?

http://theslot.jezebel.com/a-runoff-election-in-louisiana-could-help-democrats-in-1788959475

Yes, in contact with Campbell's cousin via reddit. Expect to phone bank in N.O.

*high five*

money doesn't come out of the economy and you didn't do anything to deserve it other than being born. should be 100%

the 100% part is either trolling and/or stupid, unless you prefer "government" to "people," but I think the estate tax is important to keep and the current rate is good. It applies to so few as it is.

this fuckin guy

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/steve-bannon-trump-tower-interview-trumps-strategist-plots-new-political-movement-948747

“The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years.

o rly

From THR:

He absolutely — mockingly — rejects the idea that this is a racial line. “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” he tells me. “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get f—ed over. If we deliver—” by "we" he means the Trump White House "—we’ll get 60 percent of the white vote, and 40 percent of the black and Hispanic vote and we’ll govern for 50 years. That’s what the Democrats missed, they were talking to these people with companies with a $9 billion market cap employing nine people. It’s not reality. They lost sight of what the world is about.”

“Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks. It will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”

It is clear when we return to our conversation that it is not just the liberal establishment that Bannon feels he has triumphed over, but the conservative one too — not least of all Fox News and its owners, the Murdochs. “They got it more wrong than anybody,” he says. “Rupert is a globalist and never understood Trump. To him, Trump is a radical. Now they’ll go centrist and build the network around Megyn Kelly.”

The estate tax could be used as a tool to effectively redistribute wealth, but any change to the estate tax that upset the current class structure would never be passed, because the current class structure would never allow itself to be disturbed.

I'm all for Bannon's aggressive gov't spending on infrastructure plan, what a weird thing to try and get the GOP to do tho

“He gets it, he gets it intuitively,” says Bannon, perhaps still surprised he has found such an ideal vessel. “You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan, coupled with an economic populist message and two political parties that are so owned by the donors that they don’t speak to their audience. But he speaks in a non-political vernacular, he communicates with these people in a very visceral way. Nobody in the Democratic party listened to his speeches, so they had no idea he was delivering such a compelling and powerful economic message. He shows up 3.5 hours late in Michigan at 1 in the morning and has 35,000 people waiting in the cold. When they got [Clinton] off the donor circuit she went to Temple University and they drew 300 or 400 kids.”

Indeed, during the worst days of the campaign, even down to the last day when most in Trumpland thought only a miracle would save them, “I knew that she couldn’t close. They out-spent us ten to one, had ten times more people and had all the media with them, but I kept saying it doesn’t matter, they got it all wrong, we’ve got this locked.”

...

“I am,” he says, with relish, “Thomas Cromwell in the court of the Tudors.”

I can't read it, did the THR reporter at least have the guts to ask how massive tax cuts for the .01% favor the little guy he's going to use to dominate politics forevermore?

The estate tax could be used as a tool to effectively redistribute wealth, but any change to the estate tax that upset the current class structure would never be passed, because the current class structure would never allow itself to be disturbed.

― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Friday, November 18, 2016 11:53 AM (fifty-seven seconds ago)

what are you even saying here?

Let's be clear: "infrastructure spending" in Trumpspeak is "tax breaks for private companies investing in highways near rich suburbs, and I believe Democrats are stupid enough to fall for it.

Ship yards, iron works, get them all jacked up.

yeah good luck passing your trillion dollar infrastructure bill through dems and gop senators you fucking despise

what an arrogant asshole

"asshole" is too kind because you can do pleasurable things to assholes

bannon is clearly v v smart

im sure this prick is part of the 'FUCK YOU CUCKS WE WON' attitude coming out of trump tower

but assholes largely do only two rather unpleasurable things to their surroundings xxp

cultivate assholes, Will

Does he think this (rebuild heavy industry whilst cutting taxes everywhere) is going to work or is it all a front

define "work" ?

I mean does he sincerely believe in rebuilding these industries and creating jobs, and that this is possible even though they're obviously going to cut taxes and privatise everything they can?

that is def not clear

Thomas Cromwell got his head chopped off...

xp - he definitely believes in Reagan's trickle down economics, or at least that is the theory being tested here.

trying to guess his motivations is basically a coin flip of "stupid or evil" but that's same as it ever was with the GOP

https://68.media.tumblr.com/c2f484e6982423dc1af61f67bfaa24ae/tumblr_ogjkq5y3Sy1vxk1jpo1_1280.jpg

it's that kind of binary thinking that's destroying this country and this thread. We need to accept "Yes And" ... it can be stupid AND evil.

omg http://www.clickhole.com/article/finding-common-ground-white-man-and-muslim-woman-b-5165

Thomas Cromwell got his head chopped off...

shhh don't spoil it for him

I chuckled at that an hour ago, thanks for reminding me. I will chortle now.

"It will be as exciting as the 1930s"

It will be as exciting as the 1930s

what no

NO

I'm sure he was thinking of AMERICA in the 1930s and not GERMANY

well I wouldn't say the 30s were boring!

xps

Yeah. Reading about Trump's various horrifying appointments, it seems pretty clear that they're all anti-union, anti-regulation. Without unions and regulations you can't stop the global market dictating whether a steel mill in a given town stays open or shuts down? So I'm trying to parse what this new infrastructure build (with none of these protections in place) would actually look like.

I mean, I suppose it could be that they bring back regulation but just not the good kind - no to worker's rights, yes to selectively rewarding companies if they keep a plant open somewhere so that Trump can claim credit for it?

they have no fucking idea what they're doing, it's a frankenstein monster of mismatched policy ideas that will not achieve their purported goals. they *will* make Bannon's "donor class" phenomenally richer though.

Trump fiscal policy is going to be the most costly, distortionary and regressive shit imaginable

xps Those TVA projects were far-out man

what isn't clear to me is if it's a scam or if Trump really is dumb enough to think massive tax cuts for the wealthy create jobs/benefit Bannon's "working class"

he probably is that dumb now that I think about it

Or he thinks his fans are that dumb.

Trump is a real-estate dude so instead of fixing roads or building schools his stimulus is gonna be a tax-cut to developers

That, and the Autobahns + draining of Italian marshes comes to mind.

i don't think bannon is pushing for tax cuts?

“You have probably the greatest orator since William Jennings Bryan"

surely he meant a noun other than "orator". Maybe "patio chair."