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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsKrugman: Build He Won't
Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps chief strategist, is a white supremacist and purveyor of fake news. But the other day, in an interview with, um, The Hollywood Reporter, he sounded for a minute like a progressive economist. Im the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, he declared. With negative interest rates throughout the world, its the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything.
So is public investment an area in which progressives and the incoming Trump administration can find common ground? Some people, including Bernie Sanders, seem to think so.
But remember that were dealing with a president-elect whose business career is one long trail of broken promises and outright scams someone who just paid $25 million to settle fraud charges against his university. Given that history, you always have to ask whether hes offering something real or simply engaged in another con job. In fact, you should probably assume that its a scam until proven otherwise.
And we already know enough about his infrastructure plan to suggest, strongly, that its basically fraudulent, that it would enrich a few well-connected people at taxpayers expense while doing very little to cure our investment shortfall. Progressives should not associate themselves with this exercise in crony capitalism.
more
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/opinion/build-he-wont.html?ref=opinion&_r=0
pnwmom
(108,925 posts)wryter2000
(46,016 posts)I wouldn't put it past this bastard to spend huge amounts of the taxpayer's money to give people jobs and make them love him. Then when the Dems are back in charge, they'd scream "national debt! Austerity!"
Blanks
(4,835 posts)Isn't reason enough to believe that's what they're gonna do this time.
uponit7771
(90,225 posts)... its the rural ex-rural areas that went hard DPutin.
He supposed to get them to move so they don't have a 100 mile communte every day?
Also, what are they trained for?
Looking at people funny?!
We're at 4.9% nationwide UE rate and in 4 of the 5 states he won the UE rate is under that.
The "we don't have fair payin jobs" meme is M$M group think... that's about it
n2doc
(47,953 posts)He won't/can't change his stripes. His plan will be a scam, count on it.
lindysalsagal
(20,433 posts)Even though it's an opinion column, I was afraid no one would call his cards. He's allways attacking and suing everyone.
Hearing this kind of honesty is a huge relief: No one was doing this with Shrub. Shrub was annointed until his fake war was exposed.
pbmus
(12,418 posts)Wounded Bear
(58,436 posts)Trump's "plan" is more about Wall Street investors and big corporate giveaways than any real investment in actual infrastructure.
Bernie has a counter-proposal out that involves people actually going to work fixing and building shit. Getting a Repub congress to do it will be a challenge, TBS.
bucolic_frolic
(42,651 posts)It's all a boondoggle, we'll never dig out from under the unnecessary
projects they approve
I'm ok with fixing what we've got and what needs attention
but we can't even fix that and they want to build more?
They are LOONIES!
philosslayer
(3,076 posts)Between this plan, and the nearly $1 Trillion stimulus program that was enacted in 2009.