Frog Hospital's Fred Owens Says "Mueller Report Was A Bust." I Say...

Fred Owens

2 hrs · 

The Mueller report was a bust. Democrats expected indictments at the highest level in the White House. But Democrats got no indictments at all. Trump and his people are braying like donkeys. They won. We lost. But there is no need to analyze this failure. It was a good bet, just not a sure thing. The right thing to do no is to gather the troops together and have a sit-down discussion with the fifteen major candidates, asking What Now?

Is it worth it for the House to pass legislation that we know will not get past the Senate? Is there even a tiny bit of common ground with Republican leaders?

The 2020 race is the time to make proposals -- the Green New Deal is a valuable beginning. You float out these ideas and you build an image, then a working program of what American life will be like after Trump loses and goes home.

Right now, I give Trump a 50-50 chance of winning a second term.

And right now I'm listening to that young mayor from South Bend, Indiana.

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  CR: But let us look at the problem. I never for a second thought we would get Trump or his cronies on collusion. They are corrupt, not stupid. What we have forgotten is that in fact Russia hacked our elections in various ways. What are those ways, how can we prevent this from happening again

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  Alan Archibald As long as Republicans control the Senate, I will remain opposed to impeachment. “Thank God Mueller‘s report did not tempt Democrats to go down this road.”
  
  More importantly, the big news today is Trump’s initiative to declare Obamacare unconstitutional and to replace it with Trumpcare.
  
  Here’s “the deal...” American conservatives are enamored of zero sum economics.
  
  This simple-minded belief that every tax dollar spent is a tax dollar wasted contradicts (to cite just one example) the actual history of Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway System which contributed mightily to the YUGE economic expansion of the 1950s.
  
  Similarly, it is as clear to economists across the political spectrum as it is to children that “candy tastes good” that EVERY dollar spent on infrastructure improvement generates at least two dollars in overall economic return - and frequently three dollars.
  
  This return on investment is such a foundational rubric that those who wish to dispute the stone-cold facts have, in effect, taken leave of their senses.
  
  Here’s how real economics works:
  https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/state-us-infrastructure
  
  The economic boom of infrastructural investment also applies to green technologies.
  
  Already the cost of solar energy is significantly below the cost of coal fired energy. Ponder that...
  
  Furthermore, the cost of solar energy will continue to descend just as the cost of coal production will continue to rise - and that’s without taking into account the catastrophic effects of global warming on economics and demographics, not to mention interlocking elements of social and political turmoil.
  
  For over 10 years U.S. military brass has accepted as central dogma that global warming will be a central threat ( if not the central threat ) to global stability and American security.
  
  Blessedly, Trump knows more than the generals... even though his dazzling dimwittedness — aided and abetted by his ignore-ant Base — forces him to make the completely incredible claim that coal will make a comeback.
  
  And pigs fly.
  
  At the moment, the “green new deal” is a policy orientation - not a set of specific legislative initiatives that Democrats will bring to the floor of Congress.
  
  As a policy orientation, a “green new deal” will be as beneficial to America as Roosevelt‘s New Deal - no matter how energetically American “conservatives” try to oppose both.
  
  It also bears mention that expanded investment in American healthcare will redound to America’s cross-the-board benefit, including economic benefit.
  
  Lest we forget, Trump promised during his 2016 presidential campaign that he would provide better health care for every single American, and that government would be “payer of last resort.”
  
  Of course, Trump “says everything” enabling his dimwitted followers to choose whatever @menu items” they like, then America’s intellectually indolent dimwits blithely forget everything else their messiah says.
  
  So, it is time for Democrats to emphasize the fact that Obamacare’s deficiencies are attributable to Obama’s unrelenting determination to use the conservative Heritage Foundation‘s template for Romneycare (in Massachusetts) as the point of departure for trying to enlist bipartisan support for universal healthcare.
  
  Not surprisingly, in pursuit of this goal Obama had to make concessions to conservative lawmakers which, in turn, lead to the Affordable Care Act being riddled with crappy policy components.
  
  Now is the time for Democrats to remind Trump of his 2016 healthcare campaign promises, simultaneously taking the legislative lead in building on the ACA template even if it means scrapping Obamacare altogether in order to get a healthcare system in which everyone is covered. Furthermore, those who cannot afford coverage will be recipients of full payment government subsidies as Trump advocated — repeatedly — in 2016.
  
  As a final reminder to my fellow American “zero sum game players,” every dollar spent on American healthcare is a dollar spent inside the United States, not only resulting in 2 to 3 additional dollars redounding directly to American workers but to the domestic economy as well.
  
  Although the right wing’s secular religion prevents heretical belief in any of this, it is a matter of fact that Americans would be healthier, wealthier and wiser if we followed the lead of western Europe, Australia, Israel, Japan, and Canada, creating a healthcare system in which the government’s decisive-and-final role as guarantor of healthcare for every single citizen is the cornerstone of new healthcare policy.
  
  But don’t take my word for it. Listen to what Trump himself said during his presidential campaign: https://youtu.be/6inQmf96SYQ
  
  As always, I await conservative readers’ critique of Trump’s own words - along with criticism of the arguments I make by way of embedding his verbatim statement on universal healthcare with the federal government as payer of last resort.
  
  And if no critique is forthcoming, I will mention the age old legal principle that “silence is consent.“ Go ahead. Speak up.

  

  CFR.ORG

  The State of U.S. Infrastructure

  The State of U.S. Infrastructure

  
  

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