The Trump Administration’s war on expertise continues to expand.
Jeff Sessions (memorably identified by a Facebook friend as one of those Confederate monuments that should be removed) ignores 40+ years of criminal justice research and intensifies the drug war. Betsy DeVos gives a feminine finger to the mountains of data rebutting her insistence that vouchers improve educational outcomes. Scott Pruitt spits on the 98% of climate scientists who agree that climate change is (a) real; (b) accelerating and (c) caused by human activity, especially fossil fuel use.
There is a reason that terms like “Know Nothings,” “Keystone Kops,” and “Gang that Can’t Shoot Straight” are being retrieved from past usage and applied to this sorry band of incompetents and theocrats.
When it comes to economic policy, Trump’s alternate reality isn’t limited to his belief that he invented the term “priming the pump.” As a column from the Washington Post recently reported,
President Trump’s administration says his tax cut will pay for itself. It turns out it’s really hard to find an economist who agrees.
The University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business regularly polls economists on controversial questions. In a survey the school published last week on Trump’s tax plans, only two out of the 37 economists that responded said that the cuts would stimulate the economy enough to cancel out the effect on total tax revenue.
Those two economists now both say they made a mistake, and that they misunderstood the question.
So there is not a single economist in the Chicago poll who agrees with the President that his proposed tax cuts would pay for themselves.
Not that the opinion of 39 out of 39 experts has a chance in hell of influencing a Commander-in-Chief whose residence in a very bizarre alternate universe becomes more apparent every day.
In Trump World–a world shared to varying degrees by the members of his spectacularly ignorant and incompetent cabinet–Trump knows more than those elitists who actually studied their subject matter. Sissies read books and conduct empirical research; superior beings (i.e. rich guys) surround themselves with lackeys and listen to their guts.
What did Stephen Colbert call it? Oh yes–Truthiness.
To use a term dear to the heart of our linguistically-challenged President, SAD.
Paul Krugman commented on the Chicago Poll once, saying that although the Economics Department there is loaded with conservatives, the poll samples economists with a wide range of politico-economic opinions. So it is reliable.
Deficits only count under Democrats.
If we all would just join the evangelicals and pray, it should all be fine. And, if we suffer some type of punishment it will be because we have sinned and deserve to suffer. All of our troubles will go away if we follow Pence and his Fox tv friends. Yep, let’s go along to get along and all will be well.
By the same token, the House refused to send the new ACHA to the Congressional Budget Office for its review. This should be mandatory. What they don’t know, can’t hurt us, right?
At a time when every high school kid is being pushed into the college mill, I find it ironic that “ignorance is bliss” has been reinserted into the national conversation. The message to high school graduates is as clear as mud–be proud to go into debt for the next 20 years (paying interest to the DeVos profit-generating network). But hey now, don’t go around puffing up those smarty-pants feathers and thinking you know more than anyone else.
Become educated enough to get a job, but not knowledgeable enough to think for yourself (or have thoughts and ideas opposite of your ruling party).
Betsy DeVos is speaking here tomorrow; what better place to push her “God’s Kingdom”, attempt to end public education system, than in Indiana with the highest number of voucher students in this country. Further support for Daniels’ and Pence’s push for using our public education tax dollars to aid religious school systems which are tax exempt and push their pseudo religious laws on the state.
I especially like Carrie’s last paragraph; voucher students are required to take the religious classes in their chosen school so there are parents who are of that religion who are getting tuition assistance from the state. Those students who are not of that religion are being brainwashed into it.
“What Do THEY Know?” is a question I am asking myself regarding a strange situation with one of my neighbors who had a “Trump For President” sign in his front yard. He wants to cut down MY crabapple tree in MY back yard because raccoons are getting on HIS roof. He has no trees around his house; but this is an older neighborhood with many trees an we back up on heavily wooded Pleasant Run Creek so we have many raccoons, possums, rabbits and squirrels. Does he really believe the raccoons steal my crabapples and get on his roof to eat them? Sigh, sometimes I get so tired.
The architecture of the Republican Party is a pyramid. Trump at the top as shiny beacon vote getter, and to keep the Trump voters in the camp. Pence, Ryan and McConnell is the Unholy Trinity, along with the Trump cabinet are the next layer on the pyramid. It is this layer where the ideology of steroid capitalism, links up with extreme bible thumping theology and small government except for the Pentagon and Police State.
It was all laid out in the Republican Platform: http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/steven-rosenfeld/72952/50-terrible-ideas-that-could-become-law-if-trump-is-impeached-and-pence-becomes-president
With or without Trump at the top, the Republicans will continue to work on implementing their platform.
Addendum; I should mention that there is a city owned vacant lot between that neighbor’s property and mine on the west side, my crabapple tree is on the far east side of my back yard.
JoAnn, it sounds like you are being held responsible for the behavior of the wildlife in your neighborhood. That is a lot of power. Now, if you could harness that power and use it to educate your local trump voters wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Nancy; a big LOL. He has lived there for two years and last Friday was the first time he came to introduce himself and it was to complain about my crabapple tree. I have tried to meet him but by the time I came out with my paper and pen for him to write to me, he was gone. After he took down his Trump sign he put up another one telling people to follow to masses at a local Catholic church. The city requires us to maintain “our half” of that full-size lot; he refuses so another neighbor mows with his rider mower and I give him gas money. The man has a huge asphalted area with a two-car carport, half of which is illegally built on the city lot. He is aware of this and mows only one mower-width around the edge of the illegal area. More reason to ask “What Do THEY Know?”.
All I know is that I can’t watch this buffoon in the white make a fool of us here in America. I wished he’d never come back. He’s an embarrassment to all of us and we are the laughing stock of world because of this election. I will never believe the outcome of this election or 2000, or 2004. We were robbed.
JoAnn, you have just described a typical uneducated/ ignorant trump voter/supporter. He sees no reason to obey the law and most likely thinks that any law that tells him what he can and cannot do is just plain overkill and abuse. If the tables were turned and you were refusing to obey the law he would most likely see things from a different perspective.
Like I said in my early post today – if you would just do as he says and go to church he would consider you to be a better person. Never mind that he is refusing to do his part in maintaining a city lot. Just go along to get along and all will be good. Problem solved. No?
It is not just ignorance that is taking its toll on America and its people; it is also letting the purveyors of ignorance get by with their plans to make America dumb again. How? Well, let’s muzzle the press, give public money away to religious schools, deny real facts and cozy up to those manufactured by the Orange One in his delusional state of perceived truth etc. We have to call attention to every such assertion and point out that it isn’t so and hope that those who are listening finally get the message – that Trump truth is a product of delusion where (in true Orwellian tradition) lies are truth and truth are lies and where the Department of War is renamed the Department of Love, etc. Winston Smith would be right at home in today’s propaganda world, but many, including me, are not.
Imagine a showboat and nut job calling anyone by those names. But I guess it’s totally expected, isn’t it? This showboat nut job is taking up space in the People’s House, and we have every right to be angry. It’s time to move past simply tossing around the notion of impeachment.
Come to Austin and hang around the Capitol. You’ll be glad to get back to Indiana.
What Peggy Hannon said.
I stand corrected. The Budget Office releases its review if the ACHAEMENID tomorrow. This will be interesting.
The only thing Fake President Donald Trump has done for Indiana is persuade Mike Pence to give up his reelection bid for governor. And then Trump screwed that up by winning the Presidential election, thereby slingshotting Pence into the Vice Presidential office. So now we have two top dogs who neither know nor care what the truth is, and are willing to share their wisdom with anyone who drinks tea on a regular basis. What more can we ask for?