The Rise of the Freak: Slander Populism

"What goes around comes around", goes the saying. President Trump is justifiably outraged by the vicious, unproved accusations of being a Russian agent or even a Benedict Arnold spread during the last weeks by anti-Trump media.  He is right on that, for sure. Now he can appreciate how  it feels being at the receiving end of what he usually launches at his rivals.

Donald J. Trump made outrageous accusations a key component of his campaigning tactics. Now Democrats and their "friendly media" (CNN, MSNBC) returned him the favor, spreading accusations of being a Russian agent or some kind of Benedict Arnold.

For normal people -still a sizable portion of the US electorate- the kind of slander politics that populist candidates use for lack of ideas and policies becomes tiring and off-putting.

There is an extra benefit in slander politics: voter suppression. 

For Far Left and Far Right fringe extremists, slander contests help keep the moderate majority away. And favor extremist and fringe candidates that live from the politics of hatred and confrontation.

• On the Right:  Birthers, (still looking for Obama's closet-Muslim, resented Kenian nationalist past) , Tea Partiers, White Nationalists (formerly Supremacists)  and those listening to the likes of Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh. Add Ann Coulter and Newt Gingrich for better articulated English.
• On the Left: Black Lives Matter (still looking for white policemen to blame for abuse while deflecting or rejecting attention to black-on-black crime) , Antifa (looking for White Supremacists) , La Raza (waving Mexican flags to demand US citizenship) and a myriad of identity politics causes.

Since the election of the first black president, the politics of slander became more belligerent on both extremes of the spectrum. 

Unfortunately, fringe politics are spectacular and eye-catching, like reality shows or Jerry Springer's catfigthing spectacles. They have been that way since P.T. Barnum and Ripley discovered and popularized freak shows.

Democrats -the party of no ideas- have decided to compete for the party of bad ideas championship with a series of their own:

1. Matching  Trump's slander and personal aggression with theirs.
2. Voting and shouting down those that are not extreme enough.
3. Embracing fringe politics such as "Green Taxes" to the "rich", open-ended liability for speech, identity politics, "cultural appropriation" bans and barriers and taking campus politics mainstream. 

Will these policies help Democrats get elected? Maybe. It's a matter of time to see how they do at the polls. 

But even it they work to help them win: what kind of policies will "win"? 

Who are "they", the winners?

"Engagement" in slander politics is perhaps worse than indifference.

US Debt Bomb I: Populism Fuels Partisan Spending out of control

When Senator Daniel P. Moinyhan famously said that "everybody is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts" nobody imagined that 40 years later someone will come back with "alternative facts".

I plan to post regularly facts that may or may not please those on one or another partisan position -there are many parties to each set of facts- but I hope will help keep discussions honest and conclusions closer to reality.

It's a tall order for a time in which we as a society live in almost parallel universes divided by invisible gerrymandered lines, that keep voters homogeneous and congresspeople glued to their seats. That old practice has been refined and compounded since the inception of cable TV newscasts and later, partisan websites, which create "echo chambers" that repeat party lines at a set of 3 or 4 daily "news cycles" brainwashing, rinsing and repeating willing viewers with the partisan talking points decided by partisan campaign managers and their press agents. All of this, financed by billions of dollars of media moguls turned into kingmakers.

Such activity requires as well a constant dissing of expertise as "elitism" and replace facts with conspiracy theories and urban legends. 

Partisanship has infected all areas of public life to an almost comic level: universities create "safe zones" to protect college students from the "microagressions" of unacceptable opinions and facts.

Both "Left" and "Right" partisans pick or drop friends, family, clubs, associations, careers, colleges and even jobs based increasingly on partisan politics.

The 2016 election and its aftermath -the first year of Trump's unexpected and dysfunctional presidency- brought the war on facts to a new level of virulence.

First fact-check: "Obama grew the national debt more than all previous presidents together"

Well, although Math can be used creatively, this is too much even for that. Thanks to the useless "debt ceilings" we have a long time-series of national debt from 1981 to 2014:

As we can see, it's awful and dangerous -we are in the 19 trillion level with a new round of tax cuts- and ignores the Bowles-Simpson bipartisan commission recommendations almost to detail -as senator Simpson forecasted-

Obama received a 11 trillion debt from George W Bush in 2008 (together with the Great Recession 2008-2011) and left a 19 trillion -a 68 percent increase) to Donald Trump.

Obama didn't increase the debt more than all his predecessors together, but did increase the debt in dollar terms more than his immediate predecessor: 7. 9 trillion against 5.8 trillion generated by George W Bush -who had the title of "biggest spender" in dollar terms before him. (more details)

In relative terms, however, George W Bush rose the remaining debt he received from Clinton (who made a surplus in his last years) more than 100 % against 68 % for Obama. 

Second Fact-check: Clinton left a surplus to Bush and he turned into debt

Here the facts also resolve the dispute. CBO's chart shows how the surplus generated  during Clinton's second term thanks to the bipartisan welfare reform and the new economy boom turned into debt later:

Clinton's surplus expected for 2001 never materialized because they were mostly used to finance new spending -tax cuts and wars-. 

There was a huge overestimation of the surplus (estimates of the surplus 27 % were over what it turned to be) but what came in went out in those two ways almost immediately:

Wars and tax cuts combined with Fanny and Freddie real estate debt amounted to almost 70 percent of new public debt by 2019.

So, that second fact is correct, but omits the real estate bubble (Fannie, Freddie and TARP) that remains a bipartisan responsibility.