Powell's Fed Has NO Business Propping Up Trump Or The Markets - With Interest Rate Cuts

"Cripes, I don't know how to control this stupid asshole! I guess I'll just give in."


Barely 4 days ago, I was unable to believe my eyes as I read:

Web results

Fed Begins Debate on Whether to Cut Rate as Soon as June - WSJ

https://www.wsj.com/.../fed-faces-challenging-rate-decision-at-june-meeting-115598337...

Web resultThis was not a headline designed to inspire confidence among ordinary citizens - especially dedicated savers  not prepared to gamble their money in Maul Street's casinos.  Thus, we were not encouraged on reading (ibid.)Barel"A month ago, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell played down speculation of a rate cut this summer. Now officials at the central bank face a darker economic outlook and heightened trade tensions, making a rate cut possible—if not at their meeting on June 18-19, then in July or later."

"A month ago, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell played down speculation of a rate cut this summer. Now officials at the central bank face a darker economic outlook and heightened trade tensions, making a rate cut possible—if not at their meeting on June 18-19, then in July or later."

This was appalling news especially for dedicated savers. Worse, it portends an ill financial wind for all Americans if it helps to accelerate the economy toward recession rather than improve it. That happens as the Fed seeks to stimulate an economy already over leveraged (deeply in debt) and with employment near full capacity.   But the word is that Powell and others on the Fed Board are "puzzled as to why inflation hasn't risen more".  (Rising inflation would signal a need to raise interest rates.)  Well, there are two reasons: 1)Wages remain stagnant so the usual inflation driver of higher wages in flush times isn't there, and 2) The Fed continues to use an inflation index that's out of date, not factoring in food price increases or medical inflation, especially for meds.

 Barely two weeks earlier, one read ('Investors Expect Rates Cuts By Year's End Despite Data', WSJ, May 16, p. B 10):

"Federal funds futures suggest investors are more convinced than ever that the Federal Reserve will lower interest rates multiple times by the end of the year. Economic data suggest that is too drastic a bet."

Adding:

"Fed future data show the market pricing in a 26 percent chance of the Fed lowering rates twice by the end of 2019 and a 7.5 percent chance of the Fed doing it three times. That is up from 6.7%  and 0.3 % a month ago.

The numbers seems to stand at odds with economic data which overall have shown a strong labor market, inflation expectations that are tame, and modest profit growth well into the economic expansion.  After all, the last time the Fed cut rates was in 2008 - when policy makers were in the midst of grappling with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and financial markets were tumbling..

And more recently (June 10) our memories were refreshed (WSJ, 'Business and Finance', p. B8):  

"Then there was the Fed rate cut in September, 2007, which gave the DOW Jones Industrial Average its biggest one day percentage gain since 2003.  Fast forward one year and the U.S. was in the teeth of the financial crisis."


All of which shows me the Fed may be tempted to hit the 'chicken switch' before it's necessary and trigger what it's trying to avoid. Indeed, digging an unnecessary rate hole that may well be needed  (i.e. to really lower rates) if and when a recession does hit - as something like 70 percent of economists are forecasting now - by next year. 

Indeed, signs we're hurtling toward recession were amplified in the more recent article  ('Sluggish Jobs Data Push Treasury Yields Toward 2 Percent', WSJ,  June 8, p. A2) which ominously reported:

"Worries span the globe. The yield on 10 year German government debt Friday declined to record lows below negative  0.2 %.  Japanese government bonds of the same maturity traded below negative 0.1 %.  About $11 trillion of bonds around the world, concentrated in Europe and Japan, carry negative yields now accounting for about 20 percent of all debt world -wide according of Torsten Slok - chief economist at Deutsche Bank Securities."

This debt bogeyman is for real and people would do well not to minimize it.  Indeed, as far back as two years ago The Financial Times reported on the IMF's growing concern about exploding global debt (April 17, ('IMF Sounds Alarm On Excessive Global Borrowing') :

"The world's $164 trillion debt pile is bigger than at the height of the financial crisis a decade ago, the IMF has warned, sounding the alarm on excessive global borrowing.  The fund said the private and public sectors urgently need to cut debt levels to improve the resilience of the global economy, and provide greater firefighting ability it things go wrong.

Fiscal stimulus to support demand  is no longer the priority the IMF said Wednesday in a report published at its spring meetings in Washington. "


But instead of heeding that warning, the Fed appears hell bent on ignoring it to placate and feed investors' addictions to the already senescent BULL market while appeasing Trump.  This is the swine who's berated the Fed incessantly about lowering rates,  going so far as  to try to tilt the Federal Reserve Board with two unqualified lackeys: Herman Cain and Stephen Moore.  Fortunately, after much media heat centered on their woeful and clown -like backgrounds both backed out. But Dotard never let up on his Fed attacks, and in previous posts I worried about Fed Chairman Jerome Powell bending to the fake Fuhrer's will.  

We also are well aware here - as Trump likely is - the only way we may see the end of this orange fungal infection is if the economy crashes. It's now on the verge of doing that (via a potential recession) but any Fed intervention will try to interfere to halt that.  Will the Fed deliberately be trying to help Trump stay in office? Not likely, because there's no way in hell Powell is eager to take 4 more years of Trump's temper tantrums than the rest of us. No, he'd likely want to try to avert a recession - with the best of intentions - except that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions."

However,  the very act of the Fed interjecting with  lower rates may well preordain two hellish consequences: 1) a Trump re-election,  and 2) Ultimately a much worse recession especially if a re-elected Trump  returns to his tariff terrorism - which has already wrought untold havoc. (See e.g. today's lead WSJ Editorial, 'Paying for  Mexico's Wall', noting: "Trump's use of tariffs as a bludgeon on migrants has economic costs. The threat of 25 % tariffs on Mexican exports is gone for now, but businesses can't be sure it won't come back."  )

Never mind the last minute phony end to the Mexican tariffs.  Which we now know Mexico had agreed to months ago, so Dotard manufactured this latest tariff crisis on his own. As usual,  employing chaos and threats to advance his feral agenda, while keeping businesses and American consumers off balance.  Former Obama CIA official Ned Price has this scum pegged perfectly, noting in a recent (June 9)  NY Times piece:

 "He manufactures a crisis, galvanizes his base around the challenge, leaves the definition of success undefined, pretends to play hardball and, lo and behold, finds a solution that entails little more than window-dressing, if that. For Trump, it’s a win-win. But the loser tends to be the American people, oftentimes Trump’s base first and foremost,” 

Why doesn't Trump's base see they are his tackling dummies, used for sport whenever he feels the urge?  Well, because they believe they are "in on the secret" and hence accept whatever drubbing he delivers so long as they might get to see the 'snowflakes'  cry.   Call it schadenfreude but with a nasty blowback.

As for the stock market, Powell wouldn't be doing it or investors any favors by jazzing it up with a rate cut. While it will temporarily boost share prices, it will he at the expense of a mammoth asset bubble. Also, an asset bubble leveraged into being by massive debt, creating an even more unstable financial system.

To fix ideas, let's note here that "support demand" (see FT  quote) refers to support of  "aggregate demand", i.e. getting citizens to spend more - which was the basis for the Trump-GOP tax cuts. This was an incredibly bad play given how much the tax cuts have already added to the debt, and the deficits going forward.

Economist and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Reich warned on 'All In' Friday:

"With all the ancillary damage from these tariffs, and threatened tariffs (against Mexico) you could find the economy in recession before the election."

Chris Hayes then asked if the threats are large enough to knock us from an expansion into a recession, i.e. what's the case if it could.  To which Reich responded:

"Well, it's the interaction between the tariffs and the slowdown that's almost inevitable given how long this recovery has gone.  I mean recoveries don't go forever, they eventually slow down. Also American companies and American individuals are deep in debt, which is another thing that's not talked about very much.

But that debt is also a problem. Then, you have that tax cut for big corporations and for the very wealthy that did not trickle down. it just added two trillion dollars over the next ten years to our debt.

Now put all of that together and you get an economy that is very, very vulnerable."


Reinforcing this take, as The Denver Post noted (June 9. p. A):

"Recessions typically result when the Federal Reserve tightens monetary policy to cool an overheating economy. ..The past two recessions came on the heels of financial excesses, a massive stock market bubble in the early 2000s and an unprecedented housing bubble that triggered the financial crisis in 2008."

Yet now Jerome Powell's Fed seems intent on producing an even bigger bubble, by juicing stocks using interest rate cuts.  Has he been intimidated by Trump into choosing this unwise route? We don't know but the signs are not good. Following the track of the last eight months - and Trump's numerous eruptions - it really does look like Powell has caved. Both to greedy Maul Street investors pressing for more cheap money crack,  and to Dotard.

The questions then become: a) Is it better to cut rates now and in so doing create an asset and debt bubble with even worse effects later, or b)  allow financial destiny to unfold as it will, which may mean a recession - but it will effectively help get rid of the disease called Trump.  I vote for the latter out of plain common sense.

I mean, as NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg put it on the same 'All In' show, how much more can we take?  Millions of citizens are already tuning out, and despairing that nothing can remove the national disease emanating from the White House.  This is especially after Trump's despicable and dishonorable performance for the D-Day commemoration on Thursday (insulting a real warrior, former Marine Robert Mueller, as well as disparaging Nancy Pelosi - in the shadow of the grave markers at Normandy. This from a coward who used 'bone spurs' to escape from the draft at least 5 times.)

And then we learned in the aftermath that this preening orange, 2-legged maggot wants to insinuate himself into the Independence Day celebrations!  Where does it end? Has Dotard not yet learned Presidents are to be seen and only occasionally heard - generally in their State of the Union spiels?  Four more years of this fuck-turd! Give me a recession anytime!  We need a total disinfection and fumigation of the country. 

So no,  Fed chairman Powell, no rate cuts! Stay your hand and allow the course of history to do what it will. If it means Trump's lone re-election benefit has evaporated, so be it. If it means investors are crying in their beer, we can live with that.  


See also:

P.M. Carpenter

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Donald Trump | Mexico | Trade

Trump's Mexico/Tariff Scam

And:

Economic Policy | Foreign Policy | Trade

Trump’s Mexico Tariffs Are About White Nationalism, Not Trade

Trump's Unhinged CPAC Rhetoric & Why A New American Civil War Has Moved Further From The Realm Of Fantasy

"The United States is premised on an agreement about how to deal with our disagreements. It's called the Constitution. We trust our system of government enough that we abide by its outcomes even though we may disagree with them. Only once in our history -- in 1861 -- did enough of us distrust the system so much we succumbed to civil war . But what happens if a president claims our system is no longer trustworthy? - Robert Reich, The Baltimore Sun, Mar. 3


Paging through a Civil War volume ('War of the Rebellion: Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies Series I,  Vol. 13)  documenting a history of battles and skirmishes in Arkansas, Missouri and Kansas (1861-62), I was able to see how my Southern ancestors might have tried to evict the invading Union Army.  

Most insightful was on pp. 68-69 encountering the annals of the Wisconsin Cavalry and another Missouri Union unit in a skirmish near Searcy Landing, Ark. This was in the vicinity of my dad's ancestral family farm.  It intrigued me that my Northern ancestors could well have been battling my Southern ancestors. In a remarkable way I am a product of both North and South, a southern (Arkansas-born) father and northern (Wisconsin--born) mother.   I daresay you won't find too many like me on that score.

But what pains me now, as I've noted before, is that this nation may well be on the brink of a new civil war. One not brought on by slavery or state's rights, but  by Trump's lawless residency as embodied in his insane, polarizing and unhinged rhetoric - like Saturday at the paranoid CPAC ghoulfest, e.g.

And earlier by the countless outrages of  his militant, racist goons and followers, i.e.



Trump's unhinged performance - bordering on the psychotic - was in the words of MSNBC host Joy Reed, "an unscripted punchdown collection of fan favorites, a rant against the quote fake news, Robert Mueller's investigation, and even Hillary Clinton".   He also decried the coming Dem House hearings, bawlng like a toddler after guzzling a caffeine-loaded energy drink, e.g. "So they don't have anything with Russia there, no collusion. So now they go in and morph into 'Let's inspect every deal he's ever done. We're going to go into his finances. We're going to check his deals. These people are sick!"

 As if astounded that after two years of no accountability under House GOP rule,  that branch of congress is now finally doing its effing job under Jerry Nadler and the Dems.  What we beheld in fact was not so much a "speech" at the CPAC farce, but more like a batshit crazy, bombastic buffoon high on meth, MJ candy and LSD. If an ordinary citizen, he'd have been clapped into straightjacket, taken to a rubber room and given a round of ECT every hour, e.g.

That at least would be less abominable than having this asshole working his base into a lather, getting them prepped for any outcome that they may not like regarding Trump. And hey, perhaps even a fucking civil war.  Don't laugh, the possibility is being seriously discussed in serious circles by pundits, history profs and wonks.

The long and short of his Saturday night CPAC escapade is that he behaved like the psychotic, narcissist tyrant and odious scumball he really is, attacking  everyone who's mounted the slightest opposition to his traitorous occupation. Moreover, this ought not surprise anyone. We knew it was coming after  a tumultuous week in which his own fixer - Michael Cohen - revealed the true nature of this cheat, racist and criminal in a House Oversight public hearing.  Cohen pointed repeatedly to Drumpf's unfitness for office, which was confirmed (again) by his siding with the new tyrannical "love" of his life, Kim Jong -Un. This was in regard to the horrific end of 22 -year old Otto Warmbier, i.e  insisting he "took Kim at his word" that Kim  "told me he knew nothing about it".   In a pig's eye.  This walking turd worships Kim, like he does Putin, because those two embody the lawless dictators he wants to be - but can't (so far) -  because of our constitutional checks.

Trump said he "had no choice" and had to walk "a fine balance" which is an out right lie like the 8,700 others  this POS has spewed thus far.  In fact, as is his wont,  he merely demonstrated how he grovels at the feet of other autocrats (like Putin, Duterte, Saudi Prince Salman bin Saud et al) and chooses to believe these degenerates over his own intel agencies. Meanwhile,  his own zombie followers love it.  They especially relished it Saturday when he told these losers the sane segment of the country wanted to "take them out".  Well, not literally, but more metaphorically - by excising the metastasizing cancer of Trump.

We now know, for example, that Michael Cohen warned in his televised House Oversight Hearing:

“Given my experience working for Mr Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.”

His warning ought to be taken dead seriously.  And as I've written multiple times before, no nation with two segments of the population  who subscribe to radically divergent realities, can ever find comity or civility. I even argued that in many cases the only way out is Civil War, one side subduing the other so a unified nation can emerge again.  Is this hysterical balderdash? Not at all!

Trump in his two hour and two minute CPAC harangue even invited the furies be brought down on his head, and the heads of his followers by declaring we (the sane side) "hate our country".  No we do not, we hate the refuse and cancerous maggot attempting to befoul it and destroy the Constitution and rule of law.   We who behold this wannabe tyrant in action, and haven't yet succumbed to "outrage fatigue", see how every bedrock principle at the heart of our nation is being undermined and contaminated by bigotry, xenophobia, run amuck nationalism and an insane autocrat who has no clue how to be a leader. 

All of this in tandem, and now more than ever after yesterday, has many thinking people - including scholars-  perceiving that a Civil War may well be in our future. Not that any rational person would want such cataclysm, but that it may be the only way to set the ship of state aright from the monstrous infection that invaded from November, 2016.

 Take Barbara Walter, a professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego. Originally she had said her first instinct was to dismiss any talk of civil war in the United States. “But the U.S. is starting to show that it is moving in that direction,” she said in a recent WaPo interview, adding: “Countries with bad governance are the ones that experience these wars.”   
She isn't alone, and let's agree the U.S. has descended into "bad governance" -  really bad - since Trump's ascension.

Robert Reich, a former secretary of labor -  now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley -  wrote in The Baltimore Sun  how  he  imagined a new American civil war, in which demands for Trump’s impeachment lead to reactive calls from Fox News for “every honest patriot to take to the streets.”.   As Reich put it: 

"The way Mr. Trump and his defenders are behaving, it’s not absurd to imagine serious social unrest.   That's how low he's taken us."

Well,  it isn't that hard to imagine given the awful scenes out of Charlottesville  two years ago, when thousands of white nationalists and Nazis marched openly while attacking innocent protesters, e.g.


So merely seeing the photos, images, including knowing one protester-  Heather Heyer- was killed (run down)  by one of these odious madmen, ought to set alarms ringing. A precursor to what may be headed our way? Who knows? But the signs are not auspicious.

Reich's sobering take  got some unlikely support last week from Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who said in an interview on 'Face The Nation':. “I think that 2019 is going to be the most vitriolic year in American politics since the Civil War, and I include Vietnam in that"

Meanwhile, echoing Cohen,  Joshua Geltzer, a former senior Obama administration Justice Department official, wrote a recent editorial for CNN urging the country to prepare for the possibility that Trump "might not leave the Oval Office peacefully” if he loses in 2020.  He wrote:

“If he even hints at contesting the election result in 2020 . . . he’d be doing so not as an outsider but as a leader with the vast resources of the U.S. government potentially at his disposal."

   "These are dire thoughts,” Geltzer wrote, “but we live in uncertain and worrying times.”

He urged both major parties to require their electoral college voters to pledge to respect the outcome of the election, and suggested that it might be necessary to ask the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to reaffirm their loyalty to the Constitution over Trump.  But will Trumpie Republicans, now more a cult like Jim Jones' in Guyana - who all took the purple,  cyanide-laced  kool aid, do that ?  I doubt it.

Another  historian from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution (not exactly my 'go to' source),  when asked last summer in an essay in National Review. prophesied that the United States “was nearing a point comparable to 1860,”  i.e. about a year before the first shots of the Civil War were fired on Fort Sumter, S.C.

 Concerns about a civil war  extend beyond the pundit class to a sizable segment of the population. An October 2017 poll from the company that makes the game Cards Against Humanity found that 31 percent of Americans believed a civil war was “likely” in the next decade.

More than 40 percent of Democrats described such a conflict as “likely,” compared with about 25 percent of Republicans. The company partnered with Survey Sampling International to conduct the nationally representative poll.

The source of these surreal expectations? Look no further than the increase in distrust of our own  democratic institutions.  The Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index, a measure widely cited by political scientists, demoted the United States from “full democracy” to “flawed democracy” in January 2017, citing a big drop in Americans’ trust for their political institutions.

Similarly, Freedom House, which monitors freedom and democracy around the world, warned in 2018 that the past year has “brought further, faster erosion of American’s own democratic standards than at any other time in memory.”

Those warnings about the state of America’s democratic institutions concern political scientists who study civil wars, which usually take root in countries with high levels of corruption, low trust in institutions and poor governance.

Boaz Hameiri, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania sounded an apt cautionary note that violence "is most likely to occur when political leaders use dehumanizing language” to describe their opponents.

Most experts fret that the talk of conflict, armed or otherwise,  serves to raise the prospects of unrest and diminish trust in America’s already beleaguered institutions.   But this has already happened!  The gangrene has already set in, and multiple limbs of the body politic are dead or dying and need to be chopped off. The cancerous lesions have spread since Trump took over (thanks to the Russians' help) and now those tumors, lesions need extreme surgery.  Or maybe high dose "radiation" to "burn"  them out.

Is there some hope we can escape the expected conflagration? Maybe. But that depends on a certain subset of Trump voters coming to their collective senses next year - and finally seeing the error of their choice.  I am not referring here to the zombies, the cult followers and kool -aid drinkers.  I am referring to those named by Peggy Noonan in her piece yesterday (p. A13).  Those who "did not care what he did or said during his campaign or when he became President"  only that he kept his promises, e.g.

"Trump has come through from the courts to the economy and he still 'hates all the right people.'"

Unswerving belief in that codswallop without those voters becoming changelings is what holds greatest peril for the nation.  The abject failure to appreciate that whatever tiny benefit has accrued from the "economy" (incomprehensible given the farm foreclosures and millions no longer getting tax refunds!)  or the "courts" are chicken feed compared to the possibly irreversible damage to the nation's norms, laws, and principles.   

Yes, there is the chance to avert the calamity of a new civil war but that means more citizens coming to the defense of our nation's principles, Constitution and respect for law. Above all, there must be the expectation that a leader is held to account, not given a pass.  This morning that expectation appears to be receding not increasing given Trump's approval rating has now climbed to 46 percent from 43 percent in a new poll. This is sickening and more than ever doesn't bode well for our future,  especially given many coming oversight investigations.  If we are to be on the right side of history - and not the 'good Germans" who enabled Hitler's rise and atrocities - we need to see those Trump approval numbers crash, not rise.

See also:

Donald Trump

Trump May Want to Be President Forever. Take the Threat Seriously.

by William Rivers Pitt |

And:

Matthew Chapman

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Republicans

Here Are the 5 Biggest Right-wing Outrages of the Week: From Cohen to CPAC, Republicans Can’t Turn off the Crazy

Donald Trump

Trump's Worst Week in Office

by Larry Beinhart | March 2, 2019 - 7:27am | permalink

And:

Donald Trump

Once Again, Trump Takes the Word of a Murderous Tyrant

And:

Trump derides Mueller probe, mocks Democrats and Jeff Sessions at CPAC 

Why Starbucks' Howard Schultz Has Zero Chance Of Getting Elected - Only Getting Dotard Re-elected

Amazingly, Americans continue to be enchanted with third party candidates and their chances of reaching the presidency despite the fact our voting system virtually renders it an impossibility. WSJ columnist William Galston, for example, observed in his recent column (Jan. 30, p. A17):

"Last September, I and two other members of the bipartisan Voter Study Group assessed voters' appetite for an alternative to the two established parties.  Though 68 percent said they'd like another option, they didn't agree on what it should be."

In other words, the choices split to the left (of the Dems) and to the right (of the Republicans), as well as the perceived dead center, i.e. between left and right "extremes". Most interesting, Galston adds:

"Support for a candidacy of the center amonnted to about 22 percent of the electorate. not enough to carry a single state."

This is sobering and shows the immense difficulty of  electing a third party candidate - whether of more left, center, or more right, gaining any traction in the U.S. electoral system.  One reason for that is that our system of voting is skewed toward a majority of votes for the winner.  This is in turn skewed by the Electoral College - where a minority popular vote winner can still claim top prize as Trump did in 2016. (Based on snaring 77,000 votes in 3 key states: WI, MI and PA).  

The usual reason offered for the existence of the Electoral College is to give smaller, less populous states some leverage in national elections. The real reason is that the Founders designed it to protect slave -owning states from having their will thwarted by more populous non-slave states.  The issue ought to have been settled in the Civil War, but the Electoral College continued as the anachronism it is today.  (Of course some Founders, like Alexander Hamilton, argued for the Electoral College to be the final barrier against a populist demagogue becoming president. Well, we saw how that worked out.)

Anyway, it is clear or should be that the only way a third party candidate would stand a chance is to adopt a preferential voting system that departs from binary (A or B) choices. Instead,  one has a ranked system such as illustrated below, which we also use in Mensa to elect officers. It is also used in one form or other in other nations.  As my late German friend Kurt Braun explained to me in 1985, "The Greens in Germany would never have stood a chance of seating so many in the Reichstag" i.e. without preference voting.




This ballot example (from Wikipedia)  shows five choices - which could be five  presidential candidates in a primary. The voter - instead of being asked to vote one OR another, is asked to rank 3 in the order of preference.  When all votes are finally tallied - say 100,000 - the candidate registering the highest frequency, highest rank (or 2nd highest in 2nd rank if tied for first) is declared the winner. In such an election scenario it is possible to conceive of a third party candidate (say Mary Hill) at least gaining enough leverage to take an election. (E.g. John Citizen:  25,000 "1's,  33, 000 "2's, 42,000 "3's";   Mary Hill:  25,000 "1's",  45,000 "2's",  30,000 "3's".)  Mary Hill  is awarded the victory because though tied with John Citizen for No. 1 rank, she bested him with 12,000 more 2nd rank votes.

I believe it is fairly easy to also see that such a voting method would also essentially eliminate "tied" election results such as we have seen in assorted national elections and ever since Bush v. Gore in 2000.  Thus, the No. 2 rank higher frequency emerges as an automatic tiebreaker. No need for recounts- hand or machine, hanging chads or screaming mobs outside of voting stations while recounts are performed. Easy peasy.

So why isn't this more rational system employed? Because - the argument goes - it would be too costly and complicated to overhaul the existing binary, winner take all system.

All of this is relevant now as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz has announced his third party candidacy and the Dems are livid, as they should be. As William Galston put it (ibid.):

"Starbucks former CEO has no shot at the presidency and could help Trump win."

Indeed, he could well do that just as Jill Stein did in 2016 when she siphoned just enough votes off from Hillary Clinton in three states (Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania) to enable Trump to grab 77,000 for an electoral college win.    This despite Dan Henninger's codswallop (Jan. 31, p. 17, 'The State of Trump's Union'):

"He (Trump) won in 2016 in part because so many people voted against Hillary Clinton."

Actually, Henny, nearly THREE million more voted for Hillary than Dotard. What really happened is that too many nincompoops decided to toss their franchise away in the three "Brexit" states by voting for Jill Stein.  Not that Jill isn't a proper firebrand and amiable  - but she didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning given our current binary voting system.

Henninger, in his inimitable distorting style, then goes on to bloviate about Democrats and the Left in "hysteria over an outlier like Howard Schultz."   No, not because Schultz is an outlier - like Jill Stein was- but because like Ms. Stein he could siphon just enough moderate Dem votes to get the piece of filth and traitor re-elected. Which would be a national catastrophe.  But, of course, Henninger is such a DOtard suckup it's doubtful this aspect would register. Presumably he'd be just fine with 4 more years of Trump's antic, including" shutdowns if he doesn't get his way, hobnobbing in secret meets with Vlad, and dissing his own intelligence agencies. (Why Sen. Chuck Schumer recently called for an "intervention" by the intel group.)


Worse, as NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg noted three nights ago on 'All In' Schultz doesn't even have a platform, a stance or an agenda. He just wants to be the "third choice" and maybe the "anti- Dem" - so like too many rich guys on the right  with more ego than brains - wants to stir up a shitstorm against Medicare for All and higher taxes. . (The proposed program now facing a propaganda blitz in the reactionary media and also the corporate owned set.)

The best advice for Schultzy?  Don;t event think of carrying through with this farce, and forever being labeled an accessory after the fact if this traitor Trump is re-elected. As Mr. Galston put it in his "open letter" to Schultz:

"Even if you could win, there's no reason to believe you would be an effective president."

But as I wrote, Schultz won't win - there's no universe in which he does-   especially with a binary winner take all system. But he could and very well might be the unknown that get Traitor Trump re-elected, with all that implies.

See also:

Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz Is a Presidential Candidate Only Late Capitalism Could Produce

And:

The Disaster of Howard Schultz

by Robert Reich | January 31, 2019 - 7:31am | permalink

Excerpt:

"His message is without substance (he uses empty catchphrases like “silent majority” and “common sense solutions”) and his policy proposals are zilch. When asked by John Dickerson on CBS This Morning what his “big idea” was, Schultz declared: “The big idea is very simple: to unite the country. For us to come together. To do everything we can to realize that the promise of America is for everyone.” To the extent Schultz has defined his candidacy, it’s focused on what he’s against—for example, Democratic proposals to raise taxes and provide Medicare for All .

Why Does The Right Lie About Medicare For All? Ans.: To Make Medically Bankrupt 'Muricans Feel Better!

Image accompanying latest WSJ propaganda piece ('The False Promise of Medicare for All')

First, let's grasp that the character who got us into the Great Depression was none other than President Herbert Hoover.  It stands to reason then that his latter day acolytes embedded in the Hoover Institution would be front and center in carrying out his regressive economics and continuing to make the lives of millions miserable today as well.  They, e.g.  Dr. Scott W. Atlas -  in his hit on Medicare for All in yesterday's WSJ ('The False Promise of Medicare for All', p. A17)-  keep at it because it serves their  "profit over people" purpose. It also keeps their rich donors (like the Koch brothers) at the center of continuing political power plays, dramas - and the infusion of their money pays for the PR attacks..

The lies reeled off  in Scott Atlas' piece are so prodigious that if I recited them all they'd consume most of this post - apart from giving them further currency-   so that I will not do. I will just present one of his damned lies, because it invokes our Canadian neighbors, i.e.

"In Canada last year the median wait time between seeing a general practitioner and following up with a specialist was 10.2 weeks, while the wait between seeing a doctor and beginning treatment was about five months. According to a Fraser Institute study, the average Canadian waits three months to see an ophthalmologist, four months for an orthopedist, and five months for a neurosurgeon."

All of which are bald faced lies.    Besides, do we trust the offerings of the "Fraser Institute" or any of its "studies"?  I think not, given they are a creature of the Koch brothers, e.g.

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fraser_Institute

Excerpt:

The Fraser Institute is a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia. The Fraser Institute is an associate member of the right-wing State Policy Network (SPN), and was featured in SPN's Associate Member Updates in July/August 2017. ^[1] Additional reports, ranking and index information about the Fraser Institute are featured in SPN's Associate Member Updates.  The Koch brothers -- David and Charles -- are the right-wing billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries. As two of the richest people in the world, they are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN)

So are you really going to believe this bunch, OR anyone who cites them?  I think not, nor should you given THEY are the lot selling the real snake oil.    Indeed, the Canadians we spoke with in our last trip to Alberta (Sept. 25- Oct. 6) unanimously agreed they would not change their single payer  health care  for the world, and certainly not with Americans and their pathetic patchwork system with dozens of insurance companies, continually increasing premiums, and drug prices that are more like continuing extortion.

Our niece Inge, a naturalized Canadian (originally from Trinidad),  has lived in Toronto for over 3 decades. She has also had occasion to use the Canuck single payer system multiple times for back issues. Never has she experienced waiting times cited by this kook, Atlas.  (She did acknowledge in certain provinces, an ingrown toenail - which has lesser priority  - may have you waiting a bit longer to see a specialist than say, a broken big toe.)

While the Right and its Libertarian cohort (including the Kochs) likes to baffle with bullshit concerning Medicare for all, its basis is really quite simple and sensible.  It would basically take the existing successful Medicare system, strengthen it and extend it to all Americans. Thus, we would see:

- From birth everyone, every American citizen, will be insured and have access to any doctor or hospital in the country no matter the size of their bank account. (Unlike today when a private insurance corporations dictates which doctor you can see.)

- Unlike today when a high deductible or lack of coverage prevents it, people will be able to see a doctor when they first become ill. This will save on much larger costs down the road when conditions worsen.

- Prescription drug prices will be cut by as much as 40 percent simply by repealing a federal law that prevents Medicare from competitive bidding for lowest drug prices.

But make no mistake that 'Medicare for all'  would be the for profit  medical industry's biggest nightmare because they'd no longer be able to reap profits by invoking  pre-existing conditions or medical loss ratios - preventing sick people from getting care instead of delivering it. Hence, they and their  political lackeys and extremists will be prepared to fight like junkyard dogs to prevent it, including the perverse use of propaganda.

Some of the myths peddled by the Right and the likes of the denizens of the Hoover Institution as well as CATO Institute, American Enterprise Institute, Manhattan Institute etc. are the following - with their knockdowns:

Myth: Single payer is government run health care.

Fact: No, that would be the Veterans Administration system. Under single payer you get a health ID card and can see any doctor or go to any hospital in the U.S.  Doctors are NOT employees of the government and hospitals remain in private hands.

Myth: Single payer will lead to rationing like in Canada:

Fact: No, because right now in the U.S. it is PRIVATE health insurance which rations care by using medical loss ratio calculations to determine how much care must be disallowed to earn x % profit


Myth: Costs will skyrocket under single payer.

Fact: By eliminating the for profit system we can save $350 b a year or more in administrative costs.

Myth: Drugs will be more costly and difficult to get under single payer.

Fact:  Drugs will be cheaper because single payer will be able to bargain for lowest prices - like the VA does.

 All of these points show that too many Americans have been fed a bill of goods about single payer, and we call such tactics propaganda.  It is time to start rationally responding every time the term "single payer"  or "Medicare for all" surfaces in media attacks or PR hits.

We all need to begin to think rationally about how we can make our system much better by adopting it, and also rigorously arguing against the assorted spurious attacks by media know - nothings, their lackeys and the pro-capitalist exploiters.   As a relatively recent example, both Charles Blahous and  CNN's Jake Tapper were exposed as not completely truthful in a   pair of essays published in the journal Jacobin.

Also not surprising is that Tapper echoed the Neoliberal twaddle of The Washington Post which (Jacobin writer) Matt Bruenig points out has regurgitated the untruths in  a separate fact-check  of Ocasio -Cortex, as well as a video segment accompanying an editorial entitled  “The cosmically huge ‘if’ of Medicare for all."   Interestingly, the editors removed the video soon after the exposure.

This led Bruenig to write:

"In some ways, the undead nature of this falsehood is a perfect microcosm of the problems our society faces in dealing with fake news.  Once a false report is out there, it is devilishly difficult to undo the damage it has caused because, even if it is corrected, few people ever recognize the correction and so many people wind up repeating the false report.”

Sometime later, a medical specialist (John Perryman) wrote in a response letter to the WSJ (Aug.  17th):  

"The U.S. pays more for health care, whether measured on a per capita basis or as a proportion of GDP than every other nation on Earth".



So no wonder so many Americans have to file for medical bankruptcy (i.e. file for bankruptcy because of crushing medical debt.)   Why then all these persistent attacks on single payer systems? Obviously to make overburdened Americans believe they don't have it so bad after all! They have access to the "greatest medical system" in the whole world"... for a price!

See also:

Healthcare Policy

Time For Medicare For All

by Robert Reich | November 14, 2018 - 7:15am |

Excerpt:


"Over 70% of Americans–and even 52% of Republicans–now support Medicare for All, a single-payer plan that builds on Medicare and would cover everyone at far lower cost than the current system."