Conrad Theodore Seitz

From an opinion piece in the Guardian, a liberal website and newspaper based in the United Kingdom:

So pervasive has neoliberalism become that we seldom even recognise it as an ideology. We appear to accept the proposition that this utopian, millenarian faith describes a neutral force; a kind of biological law, like Darwin’s theory of evolution. But the philosophy arose as a conscious attempt to reshape human life and shift the locus of power.

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that “the market” delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Neoliberalism appears to be a repudiation of much of traditional liberalism and an excuse for a beggar-thy-neighbor attitude.

This quote is from a New York Times article about Don the Con’s attempts to prevent anyone from another country (darker than him) even visiting the United States:

Those who know Mr. Trump say that his attitude toward immigrants long predates his entry into politics.

“He’s always been fearful where other cultures are concerned and always had anxiety about food and safety when he travels,” said Michael D’Antonio, who interviewed him for the biography “The Truth About Trump.” “His objectification and demonization of people who are different has festered for decades.”

…

In 2014, well before becoming a candidate, he tweeted: “Our government now imports illegal immigrants and deadly diseases. Our leaders are inept.”

His comments were not so much an expression of hatred of immigrants as of hatred of people of color: Mexicans, Haitians, Africans, Afro-Americans, even Native Americans, the ultimate natives.  The only people he likes are white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestants… but he’s happy to import people of any color to work service jobs for him, as long as they go home when they’re done.

This comment, from someone who usually leaves right-wing comments, struck me as interesting and actually quite accurate:

If Trump has six people close enough to hear or be briefed on confidential and sensitive conversations who are willing to spill them to the Times anonymously, then he has a bigger problem than uncontrolled immigration. Unless they’re using burner phones or public phones (if you can still find any), then an FBI he also doesn’t trust should be dumping phones and finding these people. Oh, and I believe the Times that six people came forward, and not Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

This guy still hasn’t learned that he’s not working out of his Trump Tower offices, and that his is one of the most politicized jobs in the world. I might disagree with his extreme position on immigration and be personally offended by the “AIDS” and “huts” comments, but I’m far more concerned by what appears to be monumental naiveté in a U.S. president. And by his apparent inability to inspire enough loyalty among his advisors and staff that SIX (!) people ratted him out.

If he has a policy that the bureaucracy must obey and that policy lies within his powers to impose, then he has a problem managing the bureaucracy. That suggests that he needs to dedicate more attention to the management aspects of his job, and that he should get more of the open positions in his administration filled to help him out. And that he’s surprised at numbers he should already know intimately is astonishing.

Wise the hell up, Mr. President. You’re 71, not 7.

This is quoted from a piece in CNBC, which was also quoted by Paul Krugman, who naturally hates the tax bill just passed:

Dozens of lawmakers stand to reap a tax windfall thanks to a loophole inserted in the sweeping GOP tax overhaul bill, according to a review of federal financial disclosures.

The provision, which gives favorable tax treatment to a common form of real estate income, would also create generous tax saving for President Donald Trump, who derives much of his personal fortune from real estate.

The measure — added late Friday to the $1.5 trillion package of tax cuts — reduces the tax rate on “pass-through” income derived from real estate. Owners of such businesses are allowed to “pass through” the profits from these enterprises to their individual tax returns, which lowers the amount of tax they owe.

Those benefits will now go to roughly four dozen Republican House and Senate members who voted for the bill, according to an analysis of personal financial disclosures for CNBC by the Center for Responsive Politics. They include Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Bob Corker of Tennessee and James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Reps. Diane Black of Tennessee and Vern Buchanan of Florida.

Under federal financial disclosure rules, members of Congress are only required to report their assets in a range of dollar amounts, so a full accounting of lawmakers’ holdings isn’t available. But GOP lawmakers who voted for the bill had combined real estate assets eligible for pass-through treatment of as much as $390 million in 2015, according to the center’s analysis.

This quote is the last two paragraphs of a New Yorker story which describes the tax bill, over a thousand pages long and produced without any public hearings as a “corrupt, budget-busting, cruel hairball”: