His Tuesday address was long on making America safe for Wall Street, war profiteers and other corporate predators, short on what’s most needed to serve all Americans equitably and promote world peace.
He focused on increased military spending at a time major cuts are needed, combating terrorism without explaining ISIS and likeminded groups are US creations, used as imperial foot soldiers.
He called for repealing and replacing Obamacare, omitting what he and GOP lawmakers want is something worse, maybe devastating for the nation’s most vulnerable.
We will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border,” he said. He lied claiming it’ll deter illicit drugs and crime.
He covered his notion of immigration reform, falsely claiming “it will save countless dollars, raise workers’ wages, and help struggling families, including immigrant families, enter the middle class.
Middle America has been disappearing for years. Neoliberal harshness since the 1990s wrecked it. Nothing in prospect suggests resurrection.
He wants America more militarized than ever, intending greater funding for police – to protect the nation’s privileged class from beneficial social change.
Changes he’ll propose in America’s tax code are unrelated to letting “our companies…compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone.” He lied claiming otherwise.
Corporate tax cuts don’t create jobs. Economic growth does. GW Bush and Obama gave business trillions of dollars in tax breaks. Their balance sheets and bottom line performance benefitted.
Enormous amounts of corporate wealth went to tax havens, were used for stock buybacks, along with higher executive pay and bonuses, nothing helping workers, nothing creating jobs.
Job reductions accompanied foreign investments. Offshoring was rewarded. Rotten part-time jobs replaced good full-time ones.
Corporate America and high-net worth households never had things better. Unprecedented wealth amounts shifted from ordinary people to them.
The great wealth transfer heist continues, America thirdworldized in the process, nothing being done to change things. Trump’s economic plan may make conditions worse with Goldman Sachs in charge of administration policy.
His address said nothing about Russia, little about foreign policy. America remains the world’s leading pariah state on his watch, its leading bully, waging endless wars of aggression.
He lied claiming the “United States respects the right of all nations to chart their own path.” Humanity profoundly disagrees.
Candidate Trump called NATO “obsolete.” Before Congress he expressed strong support for “an alliance forged through the bonds of two World Wars that dethroned fascism, and a Cold War that defeated communism.”
NATO is a killing machine, used for offense, not defense. World peace, stability and security are impossible as long as the alliance exists.
Saying he “want(s) harmony and stability, not war and conflict,” imperial wars rage on his watch in multiple theaters – nothing said about ending US aggression against nations threatening no one, nothing about the grand deception of America’s war on terrorism.
His address was long on hyperbole and bluster, short on a compelling need for a new direction.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected].
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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