“Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump made headlines this week with a protectionist proposal that included a vow to force Apple ‘to build their damn computers and things in this country’ if he’s elected,” Sam Oliver writes for AppleInsider.
“Trump’s campaign promise is based in part on the imposition of a 35 percent tariff on products manufactured overseas,” Oliver writes. “This would, he believes, give companies a significant economic incentive to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S.”
MacDailyNews Take: Actually, it’s unclear if Trump would impose a 35% tariff. Here’s the transcript of Trump’s comments at Liberty University on January 18th:
Ford has been great and wonderful. So, what are they building in Mexico for? Why do we want the building in Mexico? They’re going to build — remember this, cars, trucks, and parts, they’re going to sell them across the border — no tax. So you say, we’re all smart people. How does that help us? We close plants and we open new plants in Mexico and there’s no tax. So they’re going to say, no, no, no, we’re going for it. I’ll say here’s the story, if you go forward, that’s fine. But for every car, truck, and whatever else you’re building, you are going to pay a 35 percent tax every time it crosses the border. We have to or we’re not going to have a country left — everyone is ripping us. Everyone is ripping us.
Now, I don’t want to do that because I’m a free trader, I want free trade. But we’ve got to be sort of like smart here, folks, because we’ve lost seven, eight and some people say ten million jobs. We’ve lost 50,000 manufacturing plants. We’re getting killed and the quality our jobs is terrible, you saw that in the last report. They have this phony number, 5.2 percent — everybody that quits looking for a job is considered statistically a person that has a job. It’s a phony number. You’ve probably real numbers like 22, 23 percent.
So, does he want a 35% import tariff or is he a “free trader?”
Oliver writes, “Nonetheless, the president does have the power to impose protectionist tariffs, so let’s see how Apple could handle it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Whatever one sows, that will he also reap.
SEE ALSO:
Why Donald Trump is now targeting Apple and their ‘damn computers’ – January 19, 2016
Trump could cost U.S. consumers $6 billion per year by imposing a 35% tariff on Apple iPhone – January 19, 2016
Trump: We’ll get Apple to manufacture ‘their damn computers and things’ in the U.S.A. – January 18, 2016
Robots, not people, led Apple to make new Mac Pro in the U.S.A. – January 21, 2014
Former Reagan staffer: Apple has an obligation to help solve America’s problems – April 3, 2012
Trump, because someone else MIGHT be worse.
I wonder how can anyone be worse? Did you read the transcript? The guy isn’t even understandable.
Cruz.is.worse.
I wonder how can anyone be worse?
Ever heard of a commie rat bastard named Bernie Sanders?
-jcr
You and your brainless labeling again…
You can’t even define commie, let alone democratic socialist (which, by the way, encompasses the mainstream of both major political parties in the USA, placing Sanders squarely in the middle of the political spectrum).
This is the Comments section.
So leave a comment not your opinion.
Not a rant or an attack on others; their views or words, but something partitioning to the article.
Not a short story or a novel either. A comment.
Bashing others here is trolling.
You have a pretty twisted view of a comment little commissar. Free speech is all about opinions, rants, attacks, counterattacks, ridicule, mocking, encouraging, agreeing, despising, being brief and to the point or writing a novel. If you don’t like it leave a 1-star vote or don’t read it. I love how these days every opinion someone doesn’t like is called trolling. FYI “pertaining” not “partitioning”
A communist is one who looks to the writings of Karl Marx to rationalize his desire for power over others, particularly his wish for looting.
Bernie has been a communist for all of his miserable life. He uses the word “socialist” to misdirect idiots like you.
-jcr
Socialist rat bastard to you! Learn the difference please.
Sorry, forgot /s
http://m.dailykos.com/story/2016/1/21/1472974/-It-turns-out-Donald-Trump-s-father-was-the-racist-landlord-Woody-Guthrie-hated
Are you implying this to mean, like father like son?
Great Find. Any other supporting links of the same nature.
Trump doesn’t even marry American… come on!
Well he said he loves Free trade.
Millions marry non-americans – does that make them any less american? And omg have you seen the choices America has?
By the way… the use of the word Damn isn’t always so negative or a severe dislike when used in certain statements. I figure Trump is just jealous of Apples success not that the products are bad… as he also did say that there wasn’t much bad things he could say about them.
I also guess, since Trump actually used the word, “damn” one could stretch the idea that he is Christian?
I was being sarcastic. With the exception almost every other Republican candidate, there is no one worse than Trump. The Republican establishment is starting to be resigned to him winning and being stuck with him. My comment was a riff on that sad state of affairs. They are going to reap what they have been sowing.
Meanwhile, on the other side, DWS is going to turn off the enthusiasm for Sanders by maneuvering Hillary into the nomination and wind up having voters stay home in apathy, thereby giving the win to Trump. Idiocracy wasn’t a movie, it was prophecy.
There is a reason Trump goes for mail order brides. They don’t know how to report abuse and are willing to stay bought.
And this aditude is precisly how we get someone worse.
Someone said, if Trump gets the party nominee, you could see a splinter in the Republican Party and finally a way out of the two party system.
We need another player, someone who isn’t manipulated by the lobbies. So far Mike Bloomberg has been mentioned.
Any other independent names we could consider?
No shmucks.
Bloomberg is a addled gun-grabbing schmuck who’s more concerned with micromanaging your life right down to the size of soda you’re allowed to buy because he, like most Democrats, considers you to be too stupid to fend for yourself. He has no problem taxing the everloving shit out of people because he’s completely out of touch since he’s never had to worry about money ever.
So, got any more bright nominations? How about Jimmy Carter? Rosalynn?
And, it’s “attitude.” I should know. 😉
Look I put up a name that was mention. What we have is Trump and now it looks like Sanders. What do you want? Got a name? Say it.
I’m a fiscal conservative, so Ted Cruz. If I could reanimate William F. Buckley, Jr. and convince him to run, I would. Mike Lee. Richard Shelby. Marco Rubio. Any one of them would be excellent in most respects.
But isn’t Cruz a social conservative as well?
And that’s supposed to be a bad thing?
It depends on who you are. And how you like to be told how to live.
Cruz isn’t financially conservative!!!! The idiot can’t even balance his own checkbook.
There hasn’t been a fiscally conservative republican in Wa-DC since Eisenhower was president.
Wrong, Nixon balanced the budget one year in 1969 (if my memory is correct). And Clinton did it as well in the 1990s.
Um, no.
Balancing the budget one year is not the test of a fiscal conservative.
Eisenhower paid off practically the entire debt from WW2 and had enough money left over to launch the interstate highway system while in office. THAT took serious financial work. He was man enough to implement in the short term a super progressive tax system that forced the rich to reinvest their profits back into America instead of funneling them into offshore vaults. THAT made America great. Nixon was a crook who inherited a stable economy and Clinton, unlike Bush 41 and Reagan before him and GWB after him, was smart enough to blow his wad on an office intern (very inexpensive) rather than iran-Contra affairs, off-the-books Central American wars, invasions of Iraq, and other foreign warmongering that seems to be the primary tradition of recent republican administrations.
FACT: since Eisenhower, every republican administration has spent more taxpayer money and presided over WORSE financial stock market results by moving average than the democratic administrations up to the current date, EXCEPT ONE: the imploding stock market that occurred as GWB stepped out of office was directly translated to federal debt. So while Obama presides over one of the greatest financial recoveries in the history of modern economies, GWB dug so deep a debt that our nation will be paying it off for several generations to come. No president of either party could have done any better, especially when dealing with an completely logger headed congress hellbent on obstructionism, too stubborn even to propose a balanced budget themselves.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. Eisenhower was the last fiscal conservative who held office as a republican. The democrats have done much better with the economy one the last 50 years. Especially from 1992-2000. And that administration gave us a surplus which would’ve paid down the debt by 2010. And then GWB screwed it all up.
Members of my party act like that here happened, they act like Reagan didn’t raise taxes (even though he did on a number of occasions after his initial cuts), they act like all of their economic theories are unassailable when they’re completely wrong.
GHWB called it voodoo economics, and that’s what it is… It doesn’t work.
That’s a very Googley looking emoji you have there…. Was that by chance posted from you Android phone?
WTF? iPhone 6s Plus, of course.
Except Mike Bloomberg is a republican… He was a republican when he was mayor, and he’s an independent now. But leans more to the right of center….I lived in nyc when he was in charge.
Again, as I said before… A reasoned argument you seem incapable of making, and liberal republicans like myself seem to be alien to you.
You should really respond to my other comment on the thread about the encryption issue…. But you won’t… Bc you can’t have a reasoned debate with someone of your own party, who disagrees, and doesn’t subscribe to right or left wing craziness.
And again… Mike Bloomberg, republican 2001-2007 as mayor, and independent after that til 2013, but leaning right of center. Mostly on economics. And in case you bring up the soda thing? That was a public health issue… He was going with recommendation of the cdc and health department. The tax was negligible, and no one in the city actually hated it. We liked it. It was those outside of the city who had a problem… He was responding to a local issue. So don’t even try.
The soda thing was Bloomberg creating something to distract new-critters from talking about what a horrible person he is. Suggesting how much soda should be sold in a cup is the tiniest thing compared to how he used what he actually called his own “military” (NYPD) to abuse New Yorkers.
Oh, and total vacation days?
GWB: 1024 through 8 years.
Obama: 223 through 7
Clinton: 174 through 8
So…… Go ahead, bash away at our Kenyan president for taking too much vacation….
Those are BS lying figures.
They count every day that GWB is not at the White House as “vacation.” GWB spent a lot of time at Camp David, his Crawford ranch and Kennebunkport. Most of these were working vacations where he was meeting with congressman and heads of state. Bush took two vacations a year in August and at Christmastime. That was it.
Obama, on the other hand, has played over 250 rounds of golf and has taken lavish vacations in Hawaii, Martha’s Vineyard and California. These are obviously not working vacations. Furthermore, these Obama vacations have come at a cost of $70 million to taxpayers.
No, those count every day each one of them was out of the White House and at camp David… Even if you take out camp David, GWB had 891… That’s still an insane amount compared to everyone else.
And you don’t think Obama and Clinton worked on their vacations? They’re presidents… I highly doubt they were “cut off” from the world.
And GWB played about 250 rounds of golf too… Again, you people have your blinders on, and it’s frustrating. God forbid a liberal republican says anything against the dogma…. Read some actual figures and stop watching fox, and listening to mark levin and rush. Just accept the fact the our party really screwed up from 2000-2008.
And you support Ted Cruz,
He was born in Canada… To an American mother and Cuban father…. Let’s see who else this applies to? Oh yeah, that’s right! Our current president who was born in Hawaii to an American mother and Kenyan father. At least that’s American soil….
Gee whiz, I wish there was a direct comparison I could make to make you look silly, bc I’m sure you’re a birther too…. Basically by your logic, and the logic of the right wing, Ted Cruz is ok even though he was born of an American mother and a foreign father in a foreign country not on a military base or an embassy…. But barrack Obama isn’t ok because of the same thing? (Even if it was true?) hmmmmmm….. I wonder what’s driving the issue…… Could it be political favoritizm and double standards? Maybe…. Just don’t know, I’m just a liberal republican from the northeast, so apparently I don’t count anymore.
Does it *really* matter where someone was born, or what the colour of their skin is, for that matter?
What should matter to all Americans is having President that has their best interests in mind, at all times. To have that commitment to the best interests of the country and the greater world. Loyalty. Devotion.
Those are qualities worth focusing on. Not where someone popped out of their mother.
Birthplace matters only to three groups:
1. The constitutional literalists who can’t see the forest for the trees,
2. Bigots who use border security as a screen to cover up their hatred for people who aren’t exactly like themselves, and
3. the extreme right wing fringe who have spent the last 8 years attacking Obama for being born to a mixed race, mixed citizenship set of parents.
Of course, these groups are not mutually exclusive. Cruz, Rubio, and Trump sit in each camp depending on who they are talking to.
Other than these demented individuals, the rest of American voters are much more open minded. We really would just like a better system to hire the best person for the job.
Sadly, of all the candidates running, the only sane presidential candidate seems to have been labeled a “socialist” and therefore the Fox News addicts haven’t even taken the opportunity to hear what the sane candidate has to say. Bush will never appeal to voters based on his sullied family name, and the Hilary supporters are, as usual, voting based on sex instead of policy. And of course guys like Kasich and O’Malley — those of moderate tone — are also being ignored by the mainstream press because they just aren’t controversial enough. America picks its presidents like it was a 30 month long episode of the Jerry Springer show.
No, it doesn’t really matter. And I honestly don’t care. But our constitution says you have to be a “natural born citizen” to be president. And by the reading of the phrase over the last 226 years, since the constitution was adopted, it’s always meant someone who was born in the United States or their territories.
And when our current president was running in 2008 and 2012, it was huge deal… So why doesn’t it matter now?
That’s my point about double standards. And I’m a constitutionalist. So I just think the same standard should be applied…. It’s the hypocrisy that drives me insane.
Trump is a lobbyist. He pays people to get what he wants.
Obviously, there are many millions of U.S. citizens who believe that the country’s borders are too open, that the country is too weak on the world stage, that ISIS and Islamic terrorism are more than J.V. threats, that guns don’t kill people, people kill people, that when a U.S President draws a red line and it’s crossed there should be hell to pay, and that jobs are more important than “fixing” so-called global warming, blocking job-producing pipelines for no good reason, unending rounds of golf, and a bevy of $5 million taxpayer financed Hawaiian vacations.
Go figure.
Yeah and they’re mostly reactionary idiots who believe whatever the right wing media tells them… So you mean to tell me if your approved candidate was running Things… Like say GWB, you’d be calling out lots of vacation days and golf trips and stuff like that? Go ahead…. I’ll wait…. Bc you won’t do that. Even though he did all of that… As a republican that administration was an embarrassment to our party and our country. And none of these tools running now would be any better, with the possible exception of Rand Paul and John Kasich, who are not insane, and actually have an interest in governing responsibly, believe in science, and the scientific method, and aren’t reactionary blowhards who’d start World War III.
Obama is a joke. He skips his security briefings. He takes ultra-expensive, lavish vacations at taxpayer expense (over $70 million spent so far on his personal trips). He has golfed over 250 rounds. He has given us the worst recovery since the Civil War. He put us another $10 trillion in debt doing it. His signature program, Obamacare, was all predicated on lies. He lied about Benghazi. He has given Iran the green light to build a nuclear bomb. He is a loser in every single facet of his presidency.
You really need to stop listening to the hate radio dude… That’s the second time you’ve brought those figures up and they’re not right. You do realize that the deficit has decreased every year he’s been in office? And that GWB is the one who made it explode?
Look, like I’ve said a couple times, my family and myself are liberal republicans “northeast republicans” and just because we don’t hate the black guy it seems like we have no place in the party anymore.
Just accept the fact that from 2000-2008 we really screwed up. Honestly, can you seriously defend GWB’s economic record? Or debt record? We had an 800+ billion dollar surplus when he started office… Even by fighting the two wars, we would still have paid the debt off by 2010 if he did absolutely nothing… But? He made an insane tax cut that cut revenue by 2.1 trillion from 2001-2010, or 210billion/year. Then, he passed the preset prescription drug plan (Medicare part d) that wasn’t paid for and cost us another trillion dollars. Then he decided to spend all
Of the surplus of defense, even though we could’ve fought both wars for less than half of what they cost, instead of education. And then after the surplus was exhausted, he doubled the defense budget, and had the 2006 “stimulus” tax cut which cost 200 billion. Plus TARP was passed on his watch and that cost 800 billion. GWB added 5.849 trillion to the debt… More than doubling it. So a 100% increase…After having an 800+ billion dollar annual surplus! So the total loss of cash over 10 years? 13 trillion dollars… Because he made 8 trillion in budget surplus disappear! As a fiscal conservative, that angers me… And any republican who calls themselves a fiscal conservative should be appaled by that. I know I am.
And then When he left office? There was an economic collapse that had to be stemmed. Our current president added 6.167 trillion, mostly due to Medicare part d, continuing the wars and the 2009 stimulus. Percentage wise? It’s a 53% increase. But, the deficit has come down every year he’s been in office. And it will continue to come down through 2020 into surplus of we do nothing with the current tax code.
Clinton balanced the budget, and gave us a surplus. I know that sucks to hear, but he did it. If you’re going to give blame to presidents you don’t like you also have to give them credit.
Look, bottom line: none of the current republican candidates would do an effective job running the country, and they would add much more to the debt. But I don’t think anyone can avoid that unless they raise taxes… Which nobody wants to do. Honestly a simple 1% on every bracket would produce nearly 200 billion in additional revenue, which would halve the deficit without any cuts in spending. And if we cut defense to 300 billion a year, which still keeps all the soldiers employed and paid, and all of our operations running…. We save another 600 billion. That’s 800 billion every year, right there. Simple stuff. That gives us a 250 billion dollar surplus, right away. And by using just half of that to pay down interest on the debt, we pay it off twice as fast, just like a car loan. And we have more than enough money for infrastructure, education, nasa, and advanced medical research projects.
It’s a simple thing, and I’d vote for someone who’d do that.
It’s truly amazing when someone of your own party gives you reasoned arguments and actually facts, how you don’t respond…. It’s almost as if you don’t really do any research or only regurgitate right wing radio opinions….
Again, I’m super shocked. And by the way? Ted Cruz is not a fiscal conservative… Like the guy above said, there hasn’t been a real one since Eisenhower… Even Reagan was very liberal on spending, tripled the national debt. GHWB was somewhat convservative but he carried on the existing policies.
As much as this sucks to say, the only president in the last 60 years who has balanced the budget and had a surplus is Bill Clinton…. All that GWB had to do was nothing, and we pay off the debt by 2010. Even with both wars. All he had to do was not enact a ridiculous tax cut, which nobody needed, and that stupid prescription drug plan that was never paid for.
In the last 7 years the deficit has been reduced quite a bit, even though the debt has grown. But if we continue on the downward curve? We have a surplus by 2020, with no additional adjustments.
And as dick Cheney said in 2002 “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” …. So… A true fiscal conservative in office? We haven’t had one. And as a fiscal conservative, we probably won’t have one again, because it’s too difficult to cut programs that people depend on. The only alternative is to raise taxes to pay for all of this shit. Trickle down economics doesn’t work, and neither does keinsien theory. There has to be a balance.
Reagan did not triple the national debt, dumb ass! He didn’t even double it.
Reagan added almost $2 trillion to the national debt. That is about $3.4 trillion in today’s dollars. Obama, on the other hand, is on track to add about $10 trillion to the national debt.
Reagan’s $3.4 trillion gave us a super-strong recovery from the recession he dealt with.
Obama’s $10 trillion has given us the weakest recovery since the Civil War. Obama gave us a record level of people not in the work force. He has doubled the number on food stamps. He has doubled the number on disability.
No, he did triple it. When he left office it was 3.1 trillion dollars. When he came in it was 900 billion. That’s triple. And if you adjust for inflation? That’s about 5.5 trillion.
Secondly? Your numbers for food stamps are not correct, the CBO says its decreased since 2011.
Again, read my above comment with the numbers, and then go to the CBO website, and useconomy.about.com (which is non partisan), and check my math.
You’re going to find out that I’m right… Look, I studied economics in college and honestly most of what you’ve heard on your ‘news’ or hate radio is completely misleading. It just is. It serves an agenda. If you want to go toe-toe with numbers and facts bring it on because you’ll lose.
Again all of my stuff comes from the CBO or non partisan sources. So no quotes from mark levin, Rush, hannity, fox, the heritage foundation or anything like that. Just like I don’t use anything from the left wing sources…. Non partisan only… Bring it… You’re incorrect.
The problem with all the folks who talk of kicking ass all over the world is then they’re upset when their kids have to go fight and get killed. Everyone said to the President bombing isn’t enough but the other option is sending people.
If you really want that, be ready for soldiers to die.
Exactly… It’s amazing how little people want war when sons of senators and the wealthy have to go. But with an “all volunteer” force that is geared towards people with few options, we can send them all the time without any powerbroker getting invested in their children’s future, or caring about using them as cannon fodder.
This may sound nuts… But reinstate the draft. I think you’d see very quickly how we would stop some of this craziness.
Soldiers are already dying under Obama. 2/3 of the American deaths in Afghanistan occurred during the Obama administration. This is the war that Obama called “the good war.”
Obama doesn’t even plan to win the war. He is sending all those soldiers to their deaths for nothing. Obama is a traitor.
Are you fu**ing serious???? You’re going to nitpick Obama for cleaning up GWB’s messes?
Just because GWB pulled his dick out of Afghanistan before the job was done doesn’t make his war crimes any more palatable.
As with so many things of great scale, the real costs don’t roll in until months, years, even decades AFTER fateful decisions have been made.
Bush wasted thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, and the result is that we now have cheap gasoline. Celebrate while you can, you history-challenged old baffoon.
Thank you for saying it for me. This guys clearly just hates the guy in charge right now, logic doesn’t seem to matter.
Oh, and to add to his point?
Again… Were you sleeping during 2000-2008? Do you just forget that entire 8 year period happened? What the hell man…it’s going to take decades to clean up that mess.
Will not happen. Trump can say anything. It’s campaign posturing.
Wouldn’t such a tariff on Mexico or Canada defy NAFTA – which is an international treaty which was submitted as a treaty and approved as a treaty since we have to define treaties these days? Treaties are constitutionally the law of the land. But since it’s the job of a politician these days to work around the Constitution rather than honor and respect and work within it, he likely can. Executive orders seem to be the new buzzword for defying the will of the people or the structure of the government so I’m sure a Republican can word one as well as. Democrat.
Trump for Apple CEO!
He probably would do a pretty good job. He trusts others who
know more about things than he does and knows how to
let talented people do their work and get them what they
need. Plus… his presentations would be a lot funnier
than what’s going on now.
Let me get this straight.
Donald Trump is a free trader who wants to punish companies for engaging in lawful free trade. Judging by his comments on carmakers in Mexico, he also seems to have never heard of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which was ratified by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1994.
Would someone please give Trump a “Constitutional Law for Dummies” book so he would understand what powers the President of the United States actually wields.
right after you give it to the “constitutional scholar” obama
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/12/nafta-job-loss-trade-deficit-epi_n_859983.html
I read this article yesterday on why Apple building in the US is a pipe dream. http://bit.ly/1Vc2k1v
And Trump has NO WAY to ever make a Apple or any company do it.
The last line in the MDN take is absolutely spot on. Trump is speaking out of both sides of his ass here. Either you’re pro-free-trade or you’re in favor of tariffs and we know what that leads to.
At one point in history, tariffs were imposed on imports as a way to fund the government. No income tax back then. Gee, wouldn’t that be nice.
But I digress, how are the american workers supposed to compete against $1 a day Chinese workers? They can’t. So manufacturing was shipped overseas and those jobs were lost.
But what if the Chinese workers started getting paid similar to US wages? What then?
Move on to the next cheapest country. What do you do when all the countries are being paid the same? I guess manufacturing comes back to each country and they make and sell their unique products.
What we hold in our hand is an amazing marvel of technology. It could cost $2,000 each and they would sell, but not mass quantities.
What is the true answer to fix this labor mess? I don’t know, and I’m sure most others don’t either.
Germany’s economic model proves that manufacturing does not rely on cheap wages to be competitive. It does, however, rely on a very skilled workforce with strong work ethic. The USA is not doing a great job in education, and based on video game sales and the entitlement mentality I see instilled in the past 3 generations of native-born Americans of all political stripes, I seriously worry about America’s competitiveness. Just because America emerged as a military superpower after WW2 doesn’t mean that we can coast along for the next several generations. Modern Rome needs to be properly maintained.
Here’s a hint: let’s invest in American education and infrastructure and slash overseas military adventures and stupid security theatre like the TSA?
While the politicians in DC raise the fears of an aging America, the last 60 years have witnessed congress handing over the economic engines of America to the military-industrial complex. But thanks to corporate maneuvering, the Fortune 500 companies have absolutely no responsibility to maintain the infrastructure of the nation in which they operate, or anywhere. That is why the most “successful” American manufacturers are the ones who support communist regimes and operate the least responsible ecological and unsafe facilities in the world. It saves them money, you see. Interestingly, nations like China and Korea do have huge tariffs against American-manufactured goods. The whole of pacific trade is grossly unfair to the American middle class. The only people it benefits are corporate executives and Wall Street, which profit from the hollowing out of American industry.
Tariffs ARE legal, it’s just that the congressional corporate puppets are happy to turn America into a dust bowl and a rust belt if they can make an addition buck in the short term.
Voters: you have the choice.
You can vote for Sanders, who would change the course of the USA to look more like Germany. You can vote for Hilary, who would make America more like has-been empires like the UK or France. You can vote for Cruz, who would prefer to turn the USA into a theocracy equal and opposite to Iran. You can vote for Rubio, who would like only to roll back the clock 100 years. Or you can vote for Trump, who would like to turn the USA into the Ottoman Empire. Surely you remember the Ottoman Empire….
the saying is true – those who don’t understand history are doomed to repeat it. Trump has all the characteristics of an Ottoman dictator.
Here’s a hint for you: our problem isn’t how much we invest in education. In real dollars, our education spending has doubled in the last few decades and the results are no better.
Any time someone says, “we need to invest more in education,” you can be sure that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
I like Mike’s answer better.
Of course it matters WHAT we teach, and HOW we teach it, but here on MDN, there is an incessant push to sell iPads as if every kid needs one today to learn math and reading.
However, Mike is totally right that Germany has a much better educational model. In Germany, kids don’t just go to college, rack up tens of thousands in debt, and graduate with a useless degree hoping to find a job. First of all, Germany has intentionally maintained a very balanced economy, so they have manufacturing and finance and arts and small businesses. Germany’s schools are not one-size-fits-all affairs. There are paths to trade schools that result in good job opportunities If a kid is willing to put in serious study, then higher education is available and affordable based on merit, not ability to pay. Both businesses and labor councils have direct feedback to schools so that the skills students learn are useful and current when they graduate.
But in the USA, every kid is on his own to find an education, and ultimately to find what job opportunities will exist by the time he graduates with mountains of debt.
Mike you sure have a lot to say (and well said too in fact), yet what’s a smart feller like you wasting so much valuable time doing so much blah blah here? Retired? Trying to convince and change peoples views? or you just type real fast?
So tired of hearing what leader is a fool and who is an idiot and who can better this and that. When 45% of Americans do not even get out and vote. You know, you need to get out and declare a none-vote – just like voting. And the act of voting is the democratic way. So for those who do not – I think you deserve what happens.
So, Please God, please let the US of A elect Donald Trump as its next President. Because that will happen if you let it.
Let’s face it, there is little talent in modern American politics and none at all on the right.
Trump looked absolutely unelectable until this week, but Sarah Palin appeared just in time, squirmishing with herself, to illustrate just how much worse it could have been.
In a civilised country where people don’t shoot five neighbours before breakfast, candidates of the Calibre produced by the GOP would be consigned to the fringes and largely ignored.
The comments in this column provide a clue to the reasons behind the decline of the US: Wild exaggeration, no base in fact, aggressive and insulting.
You all eat far too much sugar.