Robert Reich: GOP Is A Clueless One Trick Pony

It’s true what Madam Speaker Pelosi said about the GOP to host Jim Cramer, August 6, 2020 on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program:

“That’s the problem. See, the thing is, they don’t believe in governance. They don’t believe in governance, and that requires some acts of government to do that.”

Until such time as the GOP figures out that Donald “DJ” Trump has been BAD for America, and BAD for the Republican party, they’ll drop his sorry carcass like a hot potato. He’ll be anathema, a practical political pariah to them.

But, the damage has already been done.

Time to move along.

Progress.

Something alien to the GOP.

Eliminating agencies, and cutting taxes can only go so far.

Under their plan, soon enough, there’d be no government, and no money to run it.

We’re a nation of 330,000,000 people… and growing daily.

We have SIGNIFICANT, unaddressed needs in this nation that require diligent attention, and bravery to remedy. Cutting taxes won’t cut it. Eliminating laws, policies, and agencies is contrary to the very premise of the increased needs that accompany increased population.

The GOP just doesn’t get it.

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US voters can replace a party that knows how to fight with one that knows how to govern

The division between Republicans and Democrats is no longer between left and right but between different core competences.

by Robert Reich

Sunday 16 Aug 2020 01.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/aug/16/us-election-democrats-republicans-trump

As America heads into its quadrennial circus of nominating conventions (this year’s even more surreal because of the pandemic), it’s important to understand the real difference between America’s two political parties at this point in history.

Instead of “left” versus “right”, think of two different core competences.

Robert Reich served in the administrations of Presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, was Secretary of Labor from 1993 to 1997, and was a member of President Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board.
As well, since 2006, he has been the Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California Berkeley, was formerly Professor at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and Professor of Social and Economic Policy at Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

The Democratic party is basically a governing party, organized around developing and implementing public policies. The Republican party has become an attack party, organized around developing and implementing political vitriol. Democrats legislate. Republicans fulminate.

In theory, politics requires both capacities – to govern, but also to fight to attain and retain power. The dysfunction today is that Republicans can’t govern and Democrats can’t fight.

Donald Trump is the culmination of a half-century of Republican belligerence. Richard Nixon’s “dirty tricks” were followed by Republican operative Lee Atwater’s smear tactics, Newt Gingrich’s take-no-prisoners reign as House speaker, the “Swift-boating” of John Kerry, and the Republicans’ increasingly blatant uses of racism and xenophobia to build an overwhelmingly white, rural base.

Atwater, trained in the southern swamp of the modern Republican party, once noted: “Republicans in the south could not win elections by talking about issues. You had to make the case that the other guy, the other candidate, is a bad guy.” Over time, the GOP’s core competence came to be vilification.

The stars of today’s Republican party, in addition to

The Biggest Economic Challenge of Obama’s Second Term

Investing in economic infrastructure is ALWAYS a sound decision because
1.) Materials and Manpower ALWAYS comes from the private sector (and always will), and;
2.) Economic capacity and economic opportunity expands.

Note also these two remarks:

“Corporations won’t hire more workers just because their tax bill is lower and they spend less on regulations. In case you hadn’t noticed, corporate profits are up. Most companies don’t even know what to do with the profits they’re already making. Not incidentally, much of those profits have come from replacing jobs with computer software or outsourcing them abroad.

“Meanwhile, the wealthy don’t create jobs, and giving them additional tax cuts won’t bring unemployment down. America’s rich are already garnering a bigger share of American income than they have in eighty years. They’re using much of it to speculate in the stock market. All this has done is drive stock prices higher.”

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Monday, September 10, 2012

The question at the core of America’s upcoming election isn’t merely whose story most voting Americans believe to be true – Mitt Romney’s claim that the economy is in a stall and Obama’s policies haven’t worked, or Barack Obama’s that it’s slowly mending and his approach is working.

If that were all there was to it, last Friday’s report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing the economy added only 96,000 jobs in August – below what’s needed merely to keep up with the growth in the number of eligible workers — would seem to bolster Romney’s claim.

But, of course, congressional Republicans have never even given Obama a chance to try his approach. They’ve blocked everything he’s tried to do – including his proposed Jobs Act that would help state and local governments replace many of the teachers, police officers, social workers, and fire fighters they’ve had to let go over the last several years.

The deeper question is what should be done starting in January to boost a recovery that by anyone’s measure is still anemic. In truth, not even the Jobs Act will be enough.

At the Republican convention in Tampa, Florida, Romney produced

Tim Geithner is out as Secretary of Treasury. Who’s in?

Good bye, and good riddance.

Robert Reich would do a good job, and he’s been tested and served in other areas in the present, and previous administrations.

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Guessing game begins over next Treasury chief

1:05am EDT

By Glenn Somerville

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner takes a tour of the Marlin Steel Wire Products factory in Baltimore, Maryland, May 17, 2012. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wanted for the Treasury Department: a new boss who can fix trillion-dollar-plus budget deficits, overhaul the tax system and spur a reluctant Europe into fixing its debt crisis.

It’s a tall order, especially when the new Treasury chief also must deal with a fractious Congress – and all for a salary lower than that paid to many junior Wall Street bankers.

Economists, investors and veterans of past administrations are appraising potential successors to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, either in a new Obama administration, if President Barack Obama is re-elected, or under Mitt Romney.

Geithner has made it clear that he is leaving the post he has held since January 2009 even if Obama, a Democrat, beats Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, in the November 6 election.

Lots of names are making the rounds. Among Democrats, they include finance leaders like Larry Fink of asset management firm BlackRock and politically connected Washington insiders like fiscal expert Erskine Bowles.

If the White House goes to the Republicans,