Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Lending The Donald a hand

British documentary, Why Donald Trump is winning?, explores the Trump phenomenon

Donald Trump was neck to neck on the polls into the Republican National Convention.

After RNC repeatedly raised issue on Hillary's email scandal and labeling her as "Crooked Hillary", there was sufficient damage to Hillary's trust deficit.

Even our apolitical younger brother predicted Trump could pull it off to win. We only cautioned that November is still far away. It may come down to the last two weeks. 

Unfortunately, after the DNC, he is now trailing Hillary in the polls by double digit margin. Among women voters, Hillary widen her lead from 7, 8 points to 23 points. One political analyst see the election is already over.

Trump's thin-skinned and bad replies on Twitter or in person worsen his situation. His polls sink every time he speaks.

In his latest "short-circuit" ad against Hillary, Trump looks desperate to regain ground. At one stage, instead of talking about Hillary's problem, he foolishly relitigated every controversies from the primaries.
 
It is ungentlemanly to continue knocking on someone already dying. Why not a balancing view to lend a hand to The Donald?


Not sure if that video helps.

You see it makes no difference who wins the US election. Both sides openly support Israel and turn a blind eye to the injustice and atrocities towards the Palestinian.

No doubt, the Palestinian problem is partly the problem of Arab and Muslim disunity and perpetually at each others throat.

But the US talks a lot and pride themselves as champion of human right.

US have done much damage to the world. Having someone like Trump as President could be the divine justice for victims of American cruelty in the world.  

The agent of divine justice is being brushed by the Democrats as racist and hawkish. His straight talking is propagandised as war monger, reckless foreign policy doctrine and a dangerous politics of fear at work. 

Though there maybe some basis, we should be aware that there are lots of propaganda and misinformation used in political campaign.

The unfavourable truth could be hidden. If the opponent raised it as issue, it could be turned to spin back against the opponents.

The sensational attempt by Trump to raise issue on Hillary's email controversy was spinned by Democcrat spinmeister as Trump having hidden interest with Putin and Russian.

Americans are great salesman and marketeer. They can tell you anything and appeal to our emotion to buy-in into their propaganda and support them.

Bet many have fallen for Hillary because she is a woman. 

Global Research TV, an NGO dedicated to anti-war agenda, which is closely associated with Tun Dr Mahathir's Perdana Global Peace Organisation, presented Hillary as a different woman.


To balance the view, Freidman TV posted an hour long video to expose the "massive clouds of dust of speculation, misinformaton, half truth, non-truth, false truth and the occasional nuggets of accuracy" on Trump by American mainstream media:


Good effort by supporter Stefan Molyneux to shed light on the strategic thinking of Trump and clearing public misunderstanding for a fair assessment of the man.

After so the many recent bad press for his comments on Khirz Khan's dead soldier son, Warren Buffet challenging him to reveal his tax return, Trump revealed his economic plan.

Just when Trump is trying to focus his campaign on plans, practically all US mainstream and alternative media slamming him for trying to revive Reagan's trickle down economics. So we are left to reproduce UK's Financial Times report to give a view from the other side of the coin:
Last updated: August 8, 2016 9:10 pm

Trump pledges ‘tax revolution’ for US business

Mr Trump says he wants to issue a moratorium on new agency regulations
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump plans to "jump start" the US economy by suspending new regulations and cutting corporate taxes.

Shawn Donnan, Barney Jopson and Sam Fleming in Washington

Donald Trump promised the biggest “tax revolution” since Ronald Reagan on Monday, pledging to cut taxes across the board and sharply reduce the load on businesses to stem a tide of US companies moving headquarters overseas.

In the most detailed account of his economic plans should he become president, the Republican nominee promised no American business would pay more than 15 per cent of their profits in tax, down from the current maximum of 35 per cent. He also pledged to levy a one-off 10 per cent tax on trillions of dollars in US corporate profits now parked overseas in a bid to lure them home.

The cut, he made clear, was aimed at overseas tax competition from countries like Ireland and the UK. The 15 per cent proposal echoed one made by George Osborne, the UK’s former chancellor of the exchequer following Britain’s vote in June to leave the EU.

“We are ready to show the world that America is back — bigger and better and stronger than ever before,” Mr Trump told the Economic Club of Detroit in a speech repeatedly interrupted by protesters.

His speech, which included several pro-business policy initiatives long embraced by market-oriented Republicans, came after a tumultuous week which saw a number of mainstream party members seek to distance themselves from the nominee.

Party leaders have fretted that Mr Trump’s recent mis-steps, including toying with not endorsing Republican luminaries in re-election bids, have put internecine warfare at the forefront of the campaign and distracted attention from the weaknesses of Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Mr Trump attempted to refocus his firepower on Mrs Clinton by insisting her economic policies would lead to higher taxes and stifling regulations.

“If you were a foreign power looking to weaken America you couldn’t do better than Hillary Clinton’s economic agenda,” he said.

“Every policy she has tilts the playing field to other countries at our expense.”

Mrs Clinton, who is due to deliver her own economic address in Michigan on Thursday, has offered an economic plan that would largely continue current policies, though like Mr Trump she has taken a harder line on trade.

She responded to the speech by accusing Mr Trump of wanting to give “super big tax breaks to corporations and the super wealthy” and roll back regulations on Wall Street.

“He wants to basically just repackage trickle-down economics,” she said, making her own nod to Reagan era economic policies.

“Trickle down economics does not help our economy grow. It does not help the vast majority of Americans. But it does really well for people at the top.”

Mr Trump’s move to lower business taxes would end the “job-killing corporate inversions and cause trillions in new dollars and wealth to come pouring into our country,” the New York businessman insisted.

His tax proposals also sought to curry favour with middle class voters. They included a simplification of the US income tax system, reducing the number of income brackets from seven to three and making childcare expenses tax deductible. He also sought to portray a plan to abolish an inheritance tax that now affects only wealthy Americans as benefiting middle class workers.

“American workers have paid taxes their whole lives, and they should not be taxed again at death — it’s just plain wrong,” he said.

But the bulk of his speech was aimed at US business. Sounding an orthodox Republican line, he pledged to “cut regulations massively” and unleash an energy industry — particularly coal — held back by government bureaucracies.

While he repeated his pledge to rip up trade agreements he appeared to moderate his protectionist message somewhat, declaring that “isolation is not an option”.

Mr Trump’s tax proposals drew a cautious welcome from a business community that has often been at odds with him, particularly on trade.

“It clearly is a sweeping proposal that would restore our international competitiveness,” said John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan who now heads the Business Roundtable, which represents US CEOs. “It is a growth proposal and we have been short on those in recent years.”

Reducing US corporate taxes, Mr Engler said, would in “one fell swoop” lead to the repatriation of profits now held overseas and end a pattern of so-called inversions. US companies have stirred huge controversy in recent years by using merger deals known as “inversions” to move their tax addresses to lower-tax jurisdictions including Ireland.

Kyle Pomerleau of the Tax Foundation, a right-leaning think-tank, said Mr Trump’s plan mimicked the approach that helped turn Ireland into a haven for multinationals hungry for tax savings.

“The experience of the Irish is that it encourages a lot of companies to locate their activities there, but it also encourages companies to shift profits there. If the US followed this model, companies would be encouraged to shift profits into the US instead of out of it, and it would encourage more real investment in the US too.”

Inversions have drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. While establishment Republicans have blamed the American tax code for driving companies away, Mr Trump has joined Democrats by condemning company leaders for choosing to abandon the US.

With Congress deadlocked, the Obama administration has sought to use its executive powers to deter the deals. In April it succeeded in scuppering Pfizer’s planned $160bn takeover of Allergan, but last week the US Chamber of Commerce filed a lawsuit to block the administration’s moves.

But Marc Goldwein, senior policy director for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, warned that Mr Trump’s tax-cutting plans could backfire economically by radically driving up government debt. “It is not going to work to promote economic growth,” he warned.

Dorothy Coleman, Vice President of Tax and Domestic Economic Policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, said Mr Trump’s proposal for a 15 per cent corporate tax rate fell within what the NAM was seeking, but called for more detail on how Mr Trump would tackle the fact that American companies are taxed on their global income.

“As with so many things in the tax world the devil is in the details,” she said. “We are pleased with a couple of those items that were in Mr Trump’s speech, but we really have to see the whole plan”.
Yes, it is time for the campaign to focus on substance, particularly on policy matter than politics for a better assessment of the candidates. Trump campaigners regularly complained of the sensationalist nonsense by mainstream media in hiding the real issues raised by Trump campaigns.

Though hard to google for one, there is a debate on Trump's economic plan. Still, there is a problem with factual accuracy as Washington Post here rips apart his speech. Hillary can confidently mock his team of economic advisers as 'six guys named Steve.'

Since announcing the economic plan, Trump plunged himself into another crisis as he hinted of "assassination threat" on Hillary in his use of the Second Amendment to attack proposed policy on gun control.

Business as usual for Trump.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The debate between democrat's interventionist policies vis-a-vis republican's free matket theory have been going on for decades. It is an endless economic ideological debate.

Obama will be leaving office with a high approval rating. The last president able to do that was reagan. By right, Republican should be able to defend that. Will they do so in the light of republican frustration with trump's politically incorrect campaign?

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