Wednesday, November 09, 2016

President-Elect Trump's Plan For The First Hundred Days


Is ambitious!  Just on the first day Trumpmas:

Laying out the aims of his administration, Trump said he will “repeal and replace ‘Obamacare,’” “immediately suspend the admission of Syrian refugees,” “order a review of every single regulation issued over the last eight years,” “begin lifting all regulations that are hurting our workers and our businesses,” “terminate every single unconstitutional executive order signed by President Obama,” “restore the rule of law to our land,” “begin implementing plans for construction of a wall along our southern border” and “get rid of” international gangs of thugs and drug cartels — all on his first day.

Repealing Obamacare means that Trump will bring back what existed before Obamacare, albeit in a more stringent version.  There will be Health Savings Accounts!  They are subsidized in the direct proportion of the tax-payer's actual tax rate, so the rich get larger subsidies than the poor.  And of course the rich can afford to save much more for later ICU expenses.  But very few of us can save enough for even a week in the intensive care ward, sigh.

That will really really help those voters who chose Trump because of their dire financial status.

Immediately suspending the admission of Syrian refugees is good for international relations.  Other countries will admire the United States for its generosity and kindness toward those who lost everything.

I adore the idea of lifting all regulations that hurt workers and businesses, because what hurts workers and businesses is not necessarily the same thing (so how does one choose?) and because it would be easy to insert almost all regulations, whatever their benefits,  into that basket, to be tossed out.

The last three points (about restoring law-and-order, the wall against Mexico and the one-day-operation of getting rid of all international gangs of thugs and drug cartels) are just so much hot air coming out of the President-Elect's mouth, and law-and-order is conservative code for a societal pyramid where some perch on top and others silently obey.

But clearly Donald is going to work very hard.  After the first day he will start fixing the country's place in the world and the climate crisis:

Trump has said he will renegotiate the Iran nuclear deal, call a NATO summit to update the organization’s mission and rebalance members’ “financial commitments,” cancel payments to the United Nations’ climate-change programs and divert that money to domestic infrastructure improvement.
At least we will have nice new streets when we gag to death from air pollution.

Fascinating, though, to see what the Trump voters will get on the first days of Trumpmas:  Health Savings Accounts and no more "Mexicans."  Now consider that 33% of Latinos and 26% of Latinas voted for Trump.  Granted, that's considerably less than the equivalent white (Anglo, I believe?) percentages of 63% and 53%, but at least the latter group isn't directly attacking itself.

The rest of the first-day-presents go mostly to firms who will be allowed to rampage freely on those nice new streets.