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1ClassyLady 68F
3114 posts
3/24/2017 5:27 pm
The Scammers, the Scammed and America’s Fate

by Paul Krugman MARCH 24, 2017

Many people are horrified, and rightly so, by what passes for leadership in today’s Washington. And it’s important to keep the horror of our political situation up front, to keep highlighting the lies, the cruelty, the bad judgment. We must never normalize the state we’re in.

At the same time, however, we should be asking ourselves how the people running our government came to wield such power. How, in particular, did a man whose fraudulence, lack of concern for those he claims to care about and lack of policy coherence should have been obvious to everyone nonetheless manage to win over so many gullible souls?

No, this isn’t a column about whatshisname, the guy on Twitter, who’s getting plenty of attention. It’s about Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House.

I’m writing this column without knowing the legislative fate of the American Health Care Act, Mr. Ryan’s proposed Obamacare replacement. Whatever happens in the House and the Senate, however, there’s no question that the A.H.C.A. is one of the worst bills ever presented to Congress.

It would deprive tens of millions of health insurance — the decline in the number of insured Americans would be larger than what would result from simple repeal of Obamacare! — while sharply raising expenses for many of those who remain. It would be especially punitive for lower-income, older, rural voters.

In return, we would get a small reduction in the budget deficit. Oh, and a tax cut, perhaps as much as $1 trillion, for the wealthy.

This is terrible stuff. It’s made worse by the lies Mr. Ryan has been telling about his plan.

He claims that it would lower premiums; it would actually increase them. He claims that it would end the Obamacare death spiral; there isn’t a death spiral, and his plan would be more, not less, vulnerable to a vicious circle of rising premiums and falling enrollment. He claims that it would lead to “patient-centered care”; whatever that is supposed to mean, it would actually do nothing to increase choice.

Some people seem startled both by the awfulness of Mr. Ryan’s plan and by the raw dishonesty of his sales pitch. But why? Everything we’ve seen from Mr. Ryan amid the health care debacle — everything, that is, except the press coverage — has been completely consistent with his previous career. That is, he’s still the same guy I wrote about back in 2010, in a column titled “The Flimflam Man.”

I wrote that column in response to what turned out to be the first of a series of high-profile Ryan budget proposals. While differing in detail, all of these proposals share a family resemblance: Like his health plan, each involved savage cuts in benefits for the poor and working class, with the money released by these cuts used to offset large tax cuts for the rich. All were, however, sold on false pretenses as plans for deficit reduction.

Worse, the alleged deficit reduction came entirely from “magic asterisks”: claims about huge savings to be achieved by cutting unspecified government spending, huge revenue increases to be achieved by closing unspecified tax loopholes. It was a con job all the way.

So how did Mr. Ryan reach a position where his actions may reshape the lives of so many of his fellow citizens, in most cases very much for the worse? The answer lies in the impenetrable gullibility of his base. No, not his constituents: the news media, who made him what he is.

You see, until very recently both news coverage and political punditry were dominated by the convention of “balance.” This meant, in particular, that when it came to policy debates one was always supposed to present both sides as having equally well-founded arguments. And this in turn meant that it was necessary to point to serious, honest, knowledgeable proponents of conservative positions.

Enter Mr. Ryan, who isn’t actually a serious, honest policy expert, but plays one on TV. He rolls up his sleeves! He uses PowerPoint! He must be the real deal! So that became the media’s narrative. And media adulation, more than anything else, propelled him to his current position.

Now, however, the flimflam has hit a wall. Mr. Ryan used to be able to game the Congressional Budget Office, getting it to produce reports that looked to the unwary like proper scores of his plans, but weren’t. This time, however, he couldn’t pull it off: The C.B.O. told the devastating truth about his plan, and his evasions and lies were too obvious to ignore.

There’s an important lesson here, and it’s not just about health care or Mr. Ryan; it’s about the destructive effects of false symmetry in reporting at a time of vast asymmetry in reality.

This false symmetry — downplaying the awfulness of some candidates, vastly exaggerating the flaws of their opponents — isn’t the only reason America is in the mess it’s in. But it’s an important part of the story. And now we’re all about to pay the price.

Paul Robin Krugman is an American economist, Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for The New York Times.

Mr. Paul Robin's awards: Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences 2008, Princess of Asturias Award for Social Science 2004, H.C. Recktenwald Prize in Economics 2000, John Bates Clark Medal 1991.






Honesty is the best policy.


1ClassyLady 68F
3276 posts
3/25/2017 8:56 am

Although I am NOT a Nobel prize winner on Economy like Mr. Paul Krugman, although I don't know what Political party Mr. Krugman is, but I knew what he said in his article is true and accurate. Although I am NOT a billionaire, but I am a millionaire, I know how the money flow particularly in real estate. I have some concept about money.

Read Mr. Krugman article use your heart and soul, "a tax cut, perhaps as much as $1 trillion, for the wealthy." I knew this during the presidential debates in 2016 when Trump said he wanted a tax cut for rich people to 15% tax bracket, I knew he is a reversal of Robin Hood - rich people don't need tax cut, they can pay 35% like I paid in 2014 income tax.

Mr. Ryan claims that it would lower premiums; it would actually increase them. He claims that it would end the Obamacare death spiral; there isn’t a death spiral, and his plan would be more, not less, vulnerable to a vicious circle of rising premiums and falling enrollment. He claims that it would lead to “patient-centered care”; whatever that is supposed to mean, it would actually do nothing to increase choice.

I am a CA licensed pharmacist since 1987, I know if the health insurance premiums went higher, people won't afford to pay for them. Without health insurance, people's live will be "death spiral".

We have Republican president, Republican House of Representative, Republican Senate, a perfect environment for Trump to do whatever he wants to do. As Trump said "My Way or the Highway." Fortunately, we have some Congressmen have conscience to vote "No," on Trump care. Mr. Ryan withdrew the A.H.C.A. bill on Friday just to save his face.

Some bloggers claimed that I am a Democrat so that i am on Democrat side. I actually just watched Trump's personality, character, behavior, attitude, .... and I knew who is right and who is wrong. A person's inner thoughts, ideas, will be shown through his words, attitude, behavior, ....

I can't use the perfect English language as Mr. Krugman can, but I knew those concepts what he said in his article. Now, you know who is the scammers, who has been scammed. We are a democracy country, don't be a dictator. Don't rob from the poor people to compensate the revenue loss for a tax cut of 15% on rich people. Don't make rich people richer, poor people poorer. Rich people don't need help, poor people do.

If a person doesn't have empathy, he is not a good president.



Honesty is the best policy.


1ClassyLady 68F
3276 posts
3/24/2017 8:18 pm

    Quoting  :

Trump was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He doesn't know how poor people live their lives.

Today "Trump Care" is a big failure. Ryan found out that they don't have enough votes to pass the "Trump Care" (AKA American Healthcare Act), so Ryan pulled out the bill to avoid the fiasco. Trump regret he didn't let "Tax reduction to 15% for rich people" bill go first.

This early morning Trump's ultimatum "My Way or the Highway" and that is the headline of New York Post today.



Honesty is the best policy.


1ClassyLady 68F
3276 posts
3/24/2017 7:12 pm

In the tax year of 2014, I made near $300,000 income, I had to pay near 34% tax bracket. I didn't complain. In the early of 2016, I lost near 1/4 million that I had many "margin calls", I had to bite the bullet.

C'est la Vie. That's life.



Honesty is the best policy.


1ClassyLady 68F
3276 posts
3/24/2017 6:36 pm

Under the Trump administration, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The reverse way of Robin hood - rob the poor from health care benefits and welfare to compensate the revenue from reduction of 15% tax bracket for rich people. Rich people can pay 35% tax, many of rich people said so.



Honesty is the best policy.


1ClassyLady 68F
3276 posts
3/24/2017 5:52 pm

Five takeaways from Trump’s health care crash and burn

1. This is a blow to Trump’s presidency, but let’s not get carried away.
The bill’s defeat is not a mortal wound to Trump. Disregard the Chicken Littles who describe the health care failure as the end-all of everything. Trump has only been president for two months. There is plenty of time for him and for Republicans to learn their lessons, regroup and recover.

But the admission of House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that the United States will be “living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future” means that it’s unlikely Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act any time soon, if at all, during the next two years. They had a limited window of time to do this now, for complex procedural reasons, and because of Trump’s insistence that they do it quickly.

Now, Trump wants to move on to tax reform, which means that they can’t do health care reform this year. And it’s unlikely they’d want to touch such a controversial topic next year, when every member of the House is up for reelection.

As for Trump and Ryan’s relationship, which was rocky at best during the presidential election, Trump gave Ryan a vote of confidence. “I like Speaker Ryan. He worked very, very hard,” he said. A House Republican leadership aide added: “The president and speaker have a solid relationship. He knows Ryan worked his butt off to get these votes.”

2. Trump didn’t lead from the beginning, because he didn’t have a clue what he was doing, and it cost him.
“Nobody knew health care could be so complicated,” Trump famously said five weeks after his inauguration. The new president did not grasp the process of passing a health care bill, the politics or the policy.

Trump is notorious for scorning details. And so he provided no leadership on what the bill should look like at the front end of the process, leaving the entire venture to Ryan, who will also come in for plenty of criticism for drafting a bill that was widely criticized for its incoherence — even by some of the speaker’s close allies.

Vox’s Ezra Klein documented all the ways that Trump repeatedly made statements about what the health bill would do — promises that were completely at odds with what was actually in the legislation. And yet Trump continued to push ahead for a law that contradicted his very goals for health care reform.

Trump’s insistence on rushing ahead also complicated the process. Ryan and others in congressional leadership had preferred to focus on a process that dealt first with repeal, and then with replacement. Trump wasn’t the only impatient one. Many members of Congress wanted to do both at the same time, fearful of political blowback if they passed a bill that would kick millions off Medicaid — even if that would be delayed — without an answer for what would they would do instead.

But there’s no question that Trump pushed Congress to both repeal the ACA and replace it on a timeline that was wildly out of touch with reality. On Jan. 10, Trump told the New York Times that he expected Congress to pass a repeal bill “probably some time next week” and to replace it “very quickly or simultaneously, very shortly thereafter.”

Trump vastly underestimated the challenge involved in passing any major bill, much less one devoted to health care. Because of that, he created expectations that forced Republicans in Congress — who painstakingly built consensus last year around a replacement bill through Ryan’s “Better Way” plan — to try to rush a bill through Congress that quickly attracted opposition.

3. Ryan’s failure to win over conservatives was both inexplicable and unsurprising.
Ryan spent all of 2016 creating consensus about how to replace the ACA, in a widely praised process. Then he rushed the actual legislation through the House, without trying to win over conservative groups and lawmakers beforehand.

In one sense, Ryan had to hurry because Trump was announcing to the American people that repealing Obamacare would be done quickly, and because the process necessary for passing its replacement, known as budget reconciliation, also meant Republicans had to be done with health care before they moved on to tax reform.

But the resistance of the conservative House Freedom Caucus and outside groups like Heritage Action hurt the rollout of the bill from the beginning, and it never recovered. Ryan and GOP leadership probably should have done more to try to win them over ahead of time, but on the other hand, there was never an expectation that they would be able to win them over no matter what they did.

“Given that Heritage Action was going to say, ‘Hell no,’ and the establishment press was going to run to them and cover them, you couldn’t get around that,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told Yahoo News two weeks ago.

Ryan noted Friday that it is going to be a process for Republican hardliners to learn how to compromise. This is a group of people who have done little but oppose things for the last decade and been rewarded for it with fundraising dollars, notoriety and reelection.

4. Tax reform is not going to be any easier.
Trump, after the failure of the health measure, moved immediately to talking about tax reform. That, however, is an even more challenging topic for Congress to address, largely because there are so many interests arrayed against it.

The GOP tax reform bill in its current form raises revenue to offset the cost of tax cuts through a tax on imports. That proposal is opposed by big retailers like Walmart, and by the powerful Koch Brothers’ political organization. A large number of senators have signaled that they are opposed to the border trade adjustment tax.

But if the revenue stream were changed to closing tax loopholes for corporations and individuals, then opponents of the bill would really come out of the woodwork.

“Health care is like a 30-yard chip shot, compared to tax reform,” said Josh Holmes, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

5. Trump, so far, is looking a lot like Jimmy Carter
Several journalists have noted a number of similarities between Trump and Carter, many of which have been on display during the battle over health care. But the comparison goes only so far.

Carter and Trump both ran as Washington outsiders, and against the political establishment. Carter in 1976 said the government was “disorganized, wasteful, has no purpose and its policies — when they exist — are incomprehensible or devised by special interest groups with little regard for the welfare of the average American citizen.”

And both men also entered the presidency with little use for Congress. “I alone can fix it,” Trump boasted during his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention. Carter also assured then-Speaker Tip O’Neill that he would treat Congress as he had treated the Georgia Legislature, and that if they did not go along with his agenda, he would “go over the heads of the representatives by appealing directly to the voters.”

It’s still quite possible that Trump does this very same thing, using his celebrity and his social media bully pulpit to hammer members of Congress for voting against the health bill. He might also campaign in their districts and promote primary challengers.

But if this health fight has taught Trump anything, it is that the challenges of governance are tougher than he had expected, because Congress is a complicated and formidable institution.

Trump did do something in the last week or so that Carter avoided, seeking to win over lawmakers face to face, with both charm and threats. Carter preferred to explain

Honesty is the best policy.