Given my selection of an image to accompany this blog posting, I am compelled to begin my commentary with the following suggestion: "Hats Off Mr. President!"
In suggesting that we should contemplate giving our current president some credit for doing something right (which is the proposition I am here advancing), I emphatically do NOT suggest that Mr. Trump's idea, that "Trump Was Right About Everything," is any kind of a valid judgment on what our current president has been doing while in office.
TAKE OFF THAT HAT, MR. PRESIDENT! Someone might start believing what it says, and my judgment is that our current president is doing a lot of things wrong - most things wrong, in fact - and he has definitely not been "right about everything!"
But maybe he has been right about something? Could that be true?
This question came to mind as I read The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, August 26th. An article by Robbie Whelan, Amrith Ramkumar, Lauren Thomas, and Josh Dawsey discussed the "deal" that our current president reached with Intel, and Intel's decision to give the United States government a ten percent ownership interest in the corporation. In another article in The Journal, published on the same day, there was some positive commentary about this compelled settlement, including a statement by Senator Bernie Sanders, who "praised the government's plan to take a 10% Intel stake."
I am not sure I agree with Sanders about this deal, and how praiseworthy it is, although I supported Sanders when he ran for president, and believe that Sanders is advancing the kind of politics that our nation needs.
Here's the credit I am currently prepared to give to our current president: Mr. Trump has been willing to propose (and then actually achieve) some new ideas about what is possible for our nation. This Intel decision, shamefully extorted from the corporation by our current president, in my view, is, nonetheless, doing something new and different, and something that maybe is a good idea. The economic success of the major corporations that have (like Intel) helped invent productive and successful ventures should not be credited, entirely, to the corporations themselves. Our nation has made these successes possible, and so the benefits from the successful ventures should be shared generally with the American people. That is what Bernie Sanders is getting at, the way I read his comment.
My comment is that we should be willing to give some credit to our current president for being willing to try to achieve some new things. Most of these "new things" are bad ideas (like militarizing local law enforcement, as an example). However, the idea that we can do things never ever thought about, or contemplated before is an idea that we should not forsake.
The reason I particularly like this thought is that we, the people, can now, perhaps, think of some new things that we, collectively, believe would benefit the people, and then seek to achieve them, using our national government in the effort. How about officially assigning our current armed forces to manage nonviolent direct action efforts to achieve world peace? That would be new, alright! But you will have to admit that directing that our government begin taking policy making responsibility (thorough direct ownership) of major corporations is pretty unprecedented.
If the government belongs to "the people," to "us," and it does, let's start getting creative about what we might get it to do. Let's give some credit to our currrent president for showing that this is possible.
But let's look for good ideas about what we should do, which means, I believe, that we need to look elsewhere than into the mind of our current president. Do you have any good ideas about childcare, education, job creation, as a way to combat income inequality? What about efforts to begin reversing the momentum towards global warming and the destruction of the natural environment? And what about those issues of war and peace; what about ways to end the ever-present threat of total nuclear annhilation?
New approaches are, clearly, possible. Let's give some credit to our current president for demonstrating that. Now, let's use that insight to do some things worth doing!
You do realize that it was the idiot Biden/Harris through Chips Act that Intel was GIVEN 5billion and another approx 3 billion. I would have said 10% till we get oour money back.
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