Category Archives: Government
Big Government
In his 1996 State of the Union speech Bill Clinton signed the death certificate for the era of big government. He went on to challenge Congress to send him a welfare reform bill. Congress did just that and he signed it.
But Big Gov was Rasputin-like. According to the Cato Institute federal spending grew 60% during the George W. Bush years. Then in 2012 Barack Obama killed Clinton’s signature Welfare reform and Rasputin was back.
Hillary Clinton, pushed to the left by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, campaigned to expand the Big Government command and control economy even further. But she lost.
Big Government RIP?
So Rasputin is dead again.
Now what’s this Donald Trump trillion dollar stimulus plan all about?
1980s Are Calling
1980s are calling
In a 2012 presidential debate Romney claimed Russia was the biggest threat to the United States. Obama mocked him saying, “The 1980s are calling and they want their foreign policy back.”
Trump Tweets
Republicans in Congress were frustrating President Obama’s agenda . So, in 2014, he decided to go it alone. He said, “I have a phone and a pen.”
Outlining the strategy, Obama said he plans to use his pen to sign executive actions and his phone to convene outside groups in support of his agenda if Congress proves unable or unwilling to act on his priorities.
Trump Tweets
Speaking of phones, President-elect Trump has been taking phone calls without China’s approval. And if you don’t like it you’ll get Trump tweets about it.
Harry Reid’s Nuclear Winter
During Harry Reid’s tenure as Senate Majority Leader he didn’t get President Obama’s nominees approved at a pace to his liking. Democrats had a simple majority but not the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster. So Harry invoked the “nuclear option”. Which is to say he changed the rules. Now, under the new Senate rules, only a simple majority of 51 votes is required to approve most presidential nominees. Supreme Court appointments not included.
Nuclear Option
Until the November 8 shocker, the Majority Leader had expected Hillary Clinton to win the presidency. In October he bragged that he had set the table for easy approval of future Supreme Court nominees too. And so he had.
But what he didn’t count on was a Republican president and 52 Republican senators.
Now, as Harry Reid retires to his own personal nuclear winter, he leaves his colleagues glowing in the dark.
Trump’s Animal Spirits
James Fallows, in the October Atlantic, says Jane Goodall told him that Donald Trump reminds her of a chimp:
In many ways the performances of Donald Trump remind me of male chimpanzees and their dominance rituals,” Jane Goodall, the anthropologist, told me shortly before Trump won the GOP nomination. “In order to impress rivals, males seeking to rise in the dominance hierarchy perform spectacular displays: stamping, slapping the ground, dragging branches, throwing rocks. The more vigorous and imaginative the display, the faster the individual is likely to rise in the hierarchy, and the longer he is likely to maintain that position.”
Animal Spirits
The elite made a monkey of Trump before the election. But since then he’s released the stock market’s animal spirits. Oil and the dollar dig The Donald too.
Many 401-k investors are bullish because stocks have hit record highs. But Clinton Foundation investors – not so much.
Well, at least one Clinton supporter has done ok. Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is up 8% since the election.
