above 4% of GDP is when there has been a recession
Context
Most Americans are probably not aware of the scope and depth of the damage the president and this enablers, including the radical right GOP leadership (collectively,
The Monster), have caused. Once again, The Monster leaves gigantic messes for a democratic president to deal with. Despite their culpability, the GOP leadership will fight tooth and claw to oppose all efforts by Biden to fix the messes.
That strategy leaves open the argument by
The Monster acting as a government breaker that government is broken and should it be eliminated as much as possible. The radical right GOP will howl in outrage over federal spending, but the GOP itself was responsible for massive fed debt increases, including those caused by their December 2017 tax cuts for the rich. They have no basis to complain about federal debt, which skyrocketed over the last four years.
Two articles exemplify the damage The Monster has created and leaves in its wake.
Detaching facts from policy
The New York Times writes on new rules at the EPA that literally detach facts from policy considerations. Both the president and radical right GOP hate the EPA. Either
The Monster falsely believes that climate change is a hoax, unreal or otherwise not something to be concerned about, or it knows climate change is a real problem, but it is too concerned about money and power to care enough to do anything.
The NYT writes:
Nearly a quarter century ago, a team of tobacco industry consultants outlined a plan to create “explicit procedural hurdles” for the Environmental Protection Agency to clear before it could use science to address the health impacts of smoking.
President Trump’s E.P.A. embedded parts of that strategy into federal environmental policy on Monday when it completed a new regulation that favors certain kinds of scientific research over others in the drafting of public health rules.
A copy of the final measure, known as the Strengthening Transparency in Pivotal Science Underlying Significant Regulatory Actions and Influential Scientific Information Rule, says that “pivotal” scientific studies that make public their underlying data and models must be given more weight than studies that keep such data confidential. The agency concluded that the E.P.A. or anyone else should be able to independently validate research that impacts regulations.
Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the E.P.A., is expected to formally announce the rule on Tuesday during an online forum with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market think tank that opposes most environmental regulation.
The new rule, public health experts and medical organizations said, essentially blocks the use of population studies in which subjects offer medical histories, lifestyle information and other personal data only on the condition of privacy. Such studies have served as the scientific underpinnings of some of the most important clean air and water regulations of the past half century.
Environmental groups assailed the rule as the culmination of a decades-long strategy to undermine science that took off in the tobacco wars of the 1990s and continued as a way to raise doubts about the research upholding pollution rules. (emphasis added)
The new rules are deceptively couched in terms of fostering transparency, but in fact they are designed to keep necessary data away from EPA analysts. With the new rules, the carbon energy sector scores a major victory in its endless, ruthless fight against belief in and responding to climate change. Fortunately, this damage to government by The Monster seems to be readily undoable. Environmental activists said Biden could suspend and repeal the new rules.
The profit motive for the carbon energy sector's happiness with this sabotage of the EPA is obvious.
We used to have allies, now we have acquaintances
One major area of damage to America and its interests is the president's constant attacks on our allies, while supporting our enemies as much as he can. In this area, the damage is enormous and not easily fixable. Given the facts, it is reasonable to believe that our president works for Russian president Putin (motive: bribery, blackmail and/or admiration of dictatorship and autocracy). In this regard, Putin's influence has been a major source of damage. Seeing the US president as Russian asset is a minority opinion, but all the circumstantial evidence points to Putin being a major detrimental influence on Trump.
One thing the Trump-Putin monstrosity has done is to convert allied into acquaintances. That represents a major victory for America's enemies, especially Russia. And, one needs to point out that, yet again, The Monster will oppose Biden's efforts to try to re-establish an American presence in the world. America's enemies love the vacuum and will also fight to undermine any American presence or role in world affairs.
President Trump’s extraordinary, wheedling telephone call to state officials in Georgia seeking to overturn the election results there has shaken many Europeans — not so much for what it reveals about Mr. Trump himself, but for what it may portend for the health of American democracy.
“A lot of people will just roll their eyes and wait for the clock to run down,” said Leslie Vinjamuri, director of the U.S. and Americas program at Chatham House, the British research institution. “But by far the most troubling thing is the number of Republicans who are willing to go along with him, and what it’s doing to the Republican Party, playing out in real time.”
With Mr. Trump continuing to have such a hold over the party and winning more than 74 million votes in November, Ms. Vinjamuri said, “It shows us that it will be incredibly difficult to govern the country in the next year or so.”
If so many Americans feel that the election was fraudulent, “it looks like America can’t even secure the most fundamental norms of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power, when losers have to accept that they lost,” she said.
Indeed to distant observers, the corrosive effects of Mr. Trump’s presidency are not isolated to Mr. Trump himself but extend far beyond the president — to the deep coterie of enablers around him, in the White House and his party, and even to an American public where significant numbers themselves believe that their democracy has been compromised and cannot be trusted. (emphasis added)
One can reasonably believe that The Monster will work against Biden and his foreign policy efforts to repair the damage it has caused. Our former allies will see this and take it into account. When I refer to The Monster, it includes the to the deep coterie of enablers around the president, in the White House and his party.
What about The Monster's rank and file supporters?
The question is whether The Monster includes average Americans who support the president and the radical right GOP. Are they enough of the mess to be considered part of The Monster? I like to think not but as time passes, that feeling weakens. Their role cannot just be ignored or denied.
What a sorry mess. America has been seriously crippled. The Monster cannot see it, nor can its supporters.
