The American Spark doesn’t have to tell you that the economy is bad. Everyone knows that the economic stewardship of Trump – a man who, in private life, has filed for business bankruptcy on six different occasions – has lived up to its usual, established form.
One of the biggest issues hitting Americans hard is Trump’s set of draconian tariffs. These are just consumption taxes that are chiefly collected by businesses, and pull money out of local economies.
No one likes taxes, but at least ordinary taxes are chiefly paid by the wealthy, and are used to invest in the country, its infrastructure and its citizens. But Trump’s tariff taxes? They are regressive – that is to say, they greatly effect ordinary household items, which are chiefly bought by non-wealthy citizens. Since the rich spend a much lesser percentage of their money on such items, the tariffs barely touch their checkbooks.
Trump and his minions remind us that conservative economics is a study in the “gold mine and shaft” economy: Their wealthy owners get the gold mine, while everyone else gets the shaft.
Democrats are usually just as wealthy as their G.O.P. comrades – and groups rarely fight hard to end benefits that give them handsome rewards. Maybe that’s why there hasn’t been an effective push by Democratic leaders to end these taxes, and why they only get around to talking seriously about them during an election year.
But Trump and the conservatives following him have created this current plague of tariff taxes, and have defended them at every turn. That makes this oppressive set of taxes their babies, and no one else’s.
Then there is the huge cost of Trump’s unnecessary military action on Iran. Released Pentagon numbers show that the action is nearly into its eighth month, and has cost U.S. taxpayers about $46.6 billion so far.
It’s unnecessary for two obvious reasons: 1.) In June, the outline of a future deal set to provide an extra assurance that Iran stays free of nuclear weapons had already been signed between Trump and Iran, and 2.) The nuclear agreement in that outline was little more than an acceptance of the terms Iran offered Trump on Feb. 27th, a day before he started the war.
Trump broke the pact just days after its signing to punish Iran for its foreign policy actions – which is a completely different matter from curbing any potential nuclear ambitions.
The move can only put U.S. troops and citizens in potential danger. Trump reneged on a signed basis of a nuclear weapons deal, one that ensures Iran stays free of obtaining a nuclear capability.
That’s like parents rejecting a life-saving medicine for their child, simply because the only person handing out the cure just voted for someone who wasn’t the parents’ first choice for the office. They will put their child in danger to serve a misguided principle.
Not only is the principle misguided, it is openly hypocritical. Trump claims he cannot allow Iran to engage in foreign policy decisions he finds might put ‘Americans and their allies in jeopardy’ – yet he remains silent on the genocide being performed on the Palestinian people by a handful of Israeli officials and a gaggle of soldiers. This silence helps no one. It can only jeopardize Palestinians, Israelis – and U.S. citizens, since they currently are saddled with a regime that claims to be speaking for them.
Being tied to the crimes of genocide has only proven ruinous to the reputation and personal well-being of any people affiliated with them. If Trump refuses to even discuss with allies their most heinous and dangerous crimes, he cannot then pretend that he must act to stop lesser actions performed by strangers.
It also further reminds everyone that Trump is motivated only by immediate impulse, rather than a thoughtful, consistent analysis of situations dangerous to the American people and their allies.
He can’t protect others by following impulses that continually jeopardize the lives of U.S. citizens, soldiers, allies and strangers. The Iran debacle reveals Trump to be a full-grown child failing at a job that demands the rigor and abilities of our most perceptive and careful adults.
The lives of millions depend on citizens finally realizing who can handle such a job – and who clearly cannot.
