October 31, 2018

In the early nineties, President George H. W. Bush reneged on his campaign promise of “Read my lips, no new taxes.” It arguably cost him reelection for a second term, but it also set the seeds for an economic recovery. President Clinton worked out a grand compromise with a Gingrich-led Congress, and put through a package of spending cuts and tax increases, which led to a booming economy, a roaring stock market, and budget surpluses as he left office.

President George W. Bush used the surpluses to push through a major tax cut, which ultimately led to massive budget deficits, an overheated economy, and financial collapse. President Obama rescued the economy, and set it on its current trajectory through a combination of tax cuts, stimulus, and bond buy backs. So what do the Republicans do? At exactly the point in the recovery where we should have been “removing the punch bowl,” they put through a $1T tax cut. Some people have likened it to throwing gasoline on a fire. All I can say is that if you gave me $1T, I could give the economy a boost also. It is easy when you don’t have to pay for it. Do we have any reason to believe that this story is going to end any differently. The rise in market volatility should concern everyone. It is telling you something.

Now Donald Trump and his followers are talking about a 10% middle class tax cut with no details, an impossible time table, and no thought about how to pay for it. It is obviously pure campaign rhetoric, but really? Vote for candidates who understand economics, and who are not proposing balancing the budget on the backs of people who need it the most.

To: All of my former Republican friends and anyone who voted for Trump

From: Paul Chiampa

Re: You won (follow up)

Here is my assessment on the progress that the Trump administration is making on fulfilling its campaign promises. While you can’t always count on the hare taking a nap, Trump is already running out of things to do.

1. Build a wall between the US and Mexico, and have the Mexicans pay for it. NO

2. Deport 11,000,000 illegal Mexicans. NO

3. Ban all Muslims. NO

4. Bring back water boarding. NO

5. Allow Japan, South Korea, and Saudi Arabia to have nuclear weapons. NO

6. Cut off any NATO countries that don’t pay their bills. NO

7. Punish women, who somehow are able to have an abortion, to the full extent of the law. NO

8. Allow states to institute restrictive voter ID laws. NO

9. Appoint a special advisor from a news organization, which is the mouth piece for white supremicists. (Done)

10. Protect the right to the unrestricted access to guns. YES

11. Sue the media elite for libel. NO

12. Lock Hillary Clinton up. NO

13. Institute major tax cuts for the rich. DONS

14. Generate trillion dollar deficits DONE

15. Make decisions on the economy and taxes without revealing how he may may personally benefit. YES

16. Allow women to be paid whatever the market will bear. YES

17. Let people work a full-time job, and still live below the official poverty level. YES

18. Make tax deductible medical care available for everyone who makes money, and no medical care for everyone else. NO

19. Allow every city in America to choke on it’s own emissions, and every coastal city to drown YES

20. Fill the Supreme Court openings with strict Constitutionalists, and anti-abortionists YES

21. Allow students to drown in their own debt. YES

22. Rip up NAFTA. NO

23. Impose a 45% tariff on imports from China. NO

24. Unrig a rigged election system. NO

25. Not hire any lobbyists in the administration, or billionaire political supporters NO

26. Have the United States and Russia work together for world peace. NO

May 25, 2018

Imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning and realized I was a conservative. I thought I was a progressive I figured I had a better chance of waking up, and beating Tiger Woods.

I believe in balanced budgets…sometimes. I am opposed to deficit spending at a time when the economy is in its 10th consecutive year of expansion, and we are at virtually full employment. We should be saving for a rainy day, which we know is coming.

I believe in free trade. I believe that we are fully capable of competing on the world stage.

I believe in entitlement reform, and tax reform. This is different from entitlement cuts and tax cuts.

I believe in the rule of law, and that it applies all citizens, including the President of the United States.

I believe that conservation and conservatism share the same etymological root.

I believe that the government should stay out of my bedroom.

I believe the government has no business legislating my personal habits.

I believe that an essential role of government is to protect its citizens.

I believe that the government should encourage investment over consumption.

I believe in the first amendment. I believe in honest public discourse.

I believe that all men are created equal no matter where they come from.

Maybe we have something to talk about?

January 15, 2017

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

In November, my mother was admitted to a rehabilitation facility in Boca Raton, FL after an extended stay in the hospital following a fall at home. She was in a very weak condition, which required 24, round-the-clock care in addition to the care provided by the facility itself. We contracted through a local agency, and the agency assigned several patient assistants to her on a twelve hour, rotating basis.

They were comforting, caring, and professional. They did the jobs that family members were reluctant to do, either because of training or temperament. I did not see any picketers outside of the facility demanding that these jobs be given to American workers.

You can imagine the tedium for these workers having to sit there twelve hours a day. However, they kept themselves busy. What were they doing? While my mother watched TV, they kept themselves busy studying for advanced medical care credentials. They were trying to better themselves. Some of them were working to make money to put their children through college. They were tri-lingual, being fluent in their native French, Creole, and English.

What do you call these guardian angels? You call them Haitians.

May 9, 2017

On June 20, 1972, 18 minutes of recordings from the White House tapes went missing during the Watergate investigation, eventually leading to the resignation of Richard Nixon in 1974. Today, we have 18 days of missing action between when Sally Yates warned the White House about Michael Flynn and his ties to Russia, and when he was fired by Donald Trump after an article in the Washington Post revealed the meeting. On October 20, 1973, we had the Saturday Night Massacre when Richard Nixon dismissed Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Today, we have the firing of Attorney General Sally Yates, presumably for not enforcing Trump’s illegal travel ban, and FBI Director, James Comey, for any one of a number of things. Then, John Dean warned that there was a cancer of the presidency. Today, Sally Yates warned that Flynn was compromised and could be blackmailed by the Russians.

No one knows where this going, but history has a habit of repeating itself, especially for those who refuse to study it. Again, we are asking “what did he know, and when did he know it?”

November 10, 2018

In her upcoming memoir, Michelle Obama says she will never forgive Donald Trump for putting her family in danger as a result of the disgraceful birther controversy. I am not sure how that was not an immediately disqualifying event, but here we are with the Conspiracy Theory in Chief in the White House. And, as you might expect, Donald Trump could not let it go. His life’s operating principal is when they hit you, you hit them back harder, especially if they are black women. At least he did not call her stupid, racist, low IQ, or totally unqualified as he has with other African-American women.

What he did Tweet, though, was that he would not forgive Barack Obama for depleting the military. Actually, what he is not forgiving the former president for is humiliating him at an annual White House Correspondents dinner, but I digress. To set the record straight, the military was actually depleted during the Bush administration in much the same way that the economy was devastated. Estimates of the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan range as high as $3 trillion dollars. This does not include the 4,424 dead and 31,952 injured in Iraq, and the 2,372 dead and 20,320 injured in Afghanistan. President Obama’s main priority was appropriately rescuing the country from economic disaster, and unwinding these two tragic wars. We were running massive deficits to get the economy jump started. Spending more money on the military was not the prudent thing to do, and he was reelected by the America people on that platform.

If the president wants to build up the military and waste money on sending troops to Camp Trump to protect us from a caravan that has already disappeared from our consciousness, and he has the support of Congress and the voters to do so, that is his prerogative. However, Mr. President, you don’t have make other people look bad just to make yourself look good. You only make one person look bad.

February 28, 2018

“Look, up in the sky. It’s absurd; it’s so lame; it’s stupor man.” Tuesday was always the best day of the summer growing up because that was the day when the new issues of the superhero comic books came out. Superman, Batman, The Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman led the list for DC Comics. Marvel was just getting started. I would spend the day reading them all from cover to cover. My favorite was The Flash, but don’t ask me why. Now we have our own DC Comic in the White House.

We have a 71 year old president, surrounded by Secret Service, who never exercises, is clinically obese, and suffers from debilitating bone spurs, yet now claims that he would have entered the Parkland school building unarmed to confront the shooter with an AR-15 rifle. The utter vulgarity of this claim is mind-boggling. I guess the only thing that will stop a bad guy with a gun is a moron without a gun. What super power does he have! Only Superman is impermeable to bullets. Batman has gadgets to protect him. The Flash can out run them. Wonder Woman has a rope. Is his hair so plastered down that it provides protection? Does he have a magic golf club! Can he confuse the shooter with an unending stream of BS? Maybe he really is the Teflon Don?

Today is my birthday. I have been fortunate to have had 67 others, and, god willing, I will have many more. The victims in Florida have had their last. We do not need superheroes. We need ordinary, everyday, mundane heroes like the kids we have all been seeing on TV. Gun safety and control are serious issues. They need to be discussed seriously by serious people. They are not the stuff of comic book heroes.

My 24, 2018

Everyone agrees that Donald Trump is the Liar in Chief. His supporters may excuse it, but even they know he his a liar. However, I don’t think that is the worst thing about Trump. Worse than being the Liar in Chief, I think you can make a credible argument that he is the Coward in Chief.

Trump parlayed bone spurs in his feet into multiple deferments during the Vietnam Nam War. He is not exactly General Dwight D. Eisenhower, PT Boat Captain John F. Kennedy, or Fighter Pilot George H. W. Bush. Military service is not a Trump family tradition. Just ask John McCain.

Trump was visibly cowed by Vladimir Putin at the Helsinki Summit. The leader of the free word took Putin’s side versus his own intelligence agencies. It was sickening. He is free to criticize almost everyone except Vladimir Putin. It was so bad that the Coward in Chief had to revert to being the Liar in Chief to explain why he didn’t say what he did say. And, as the coward that he is, he is afraid to share with the American people what he actually talked about.

Trump brags about being able to take physical advantage of women. What kind of man takes advantage of women and then brags about it? That is not locker room talk. Only a coward takes advantage of those weaker than him.

Trump picks on children. He separates children from their families. I don’t care what the supposed immigration issues are. We don’t pick on kids. Period. Kids cannot protect themselves. This is not exactly a profile in courage.

Trump is a coward when it comes to defending school children against the NRA. No one claims to have the answer to fixing the plague of mass shootings that affects us, but to see the leader of the most powerful country in the world act powerless in the face of the NRA is breathtaking.

Trump does not have the guts to testify in the Mueller investigation.

Trump did not have the courage to take on Nazis and White Supremicists in Charlottesville. That was an extremely low bar, which he tripped over.

December 15, 2017

Climate change deniers, the two most famous ones being the President of the United States and the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, will often cite random events as evidence that the climate is not changing. Or they may select certain, short-term subset of data that makes their case. Even if the climate were changing, they would say, there is no evidence that man has been the root cause of such change. Devastating hurricanes and historic forest fires are just random occurrences. A few cold days like we are now experiencing is all the proof they need that global warming is a hoax. However, these anecdotal occurrences will not be enough to overcome the mountains of scientific data available.

What does this have to do with Trump and Alabama? Trump, in my opinion, is a few cold days that will inevitably get swamped by the tide of history. Before Trump, the Democratic coalition of the 21st century was made up of women (black and white,) suburbanites, the better-educated, young people, the LGBT community, and people of color. All of these demographic groups are growing, and turning against radical, right-wing, politics. This was the story of Alabama. This was the story of the Democratic Party before Trump. The real Republican Party can see what is happening, and is scared to death. After four years of Trump, American history will recover from its aberration, and continue on its trajectory. As it is with climate change, some things just can’t be stopped.

January 19, 2018

In his book, “The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power=Silvio Berlusconi,” Alexander Still details the disgraced Italian Prime Minister’s rise and fall culminating in the now infamous bunga bunga parties. I was struck by the similarities between Berlusconi and another world leader, which raises a lot of concerns for me especially in light of a new book titled “How Democracies Die” and recent revelations about the president’s escapades with a porn star. Here are some of the similarities that I see between these two leaders.

• Both started their careers in real estate

• Both perfected the art of lying

• Both used lawsuits as weapons

• Both came to national prominence via TV, and demonized the media.

• Both were very aggressive versus women

• Both surrounded themselves with friends and loyalists rather than experts

• Both believed in their own versions of reality

• Both were master salesmen

• Both lived in garish surroundings

• Both were deal makers

• Both were plagued by scandals

• Both surrounded themselves with unsavory characters, who would become beholding to them

• It was said of both “he is too rich too steal.”

• Both would accuse their opponents of the very same things they were guilty of.

• Both were rife with conflicts of interest

• Both have had their “bunga bunga” moments.

We know what happened to Berlusconi.