DYIING AMERICA

The Clinton voters should take heart that they are the new majority of the country. Her popular lead just grows as California's last two or three million votes are counted.

What will take office this coming January is a dead America. Sometimes I think literally. I received a list of Trump's proposed cabinet and it read like the list of the dying and demented. Few of the names have been relevant in this country since the 1990s. It is inconceivable to me these men--they are all men--have a clue about the challenges the country faces in the 21st Century. Some are in their early 70s, many have had multiple wives, all are rich,only one made it legitimately. The person who shared this with me thought it was impressive. It would have been the C team on the Obama Administration if that.

The Trump transition team doesn't have a real national security team yet. Those that have been named were fired from the military for staff abuse and mismanagement. Except for Treasury none of these people have ever shown any management skills. Oh, and Chris Christie made the list as Secretary of Commerce, if he isn't in jail before then. 

The Trump team is thinking about renewing the Keystone Pipeline. I guess to get back at Obama and pay off the Koch Brothers who have huge investments in the tar sands. But time has run out on that project both in terms of feasibility and profitability, No one needs tar sands oil. Justin Trudeau already ended it in Canada.

With our first wind farm offshore in New England already operative, The Trump Administration plans to end all subsidies or tax benefits to wind energy or solar energy. With the progress made so far in lowering the cost of producing solar panels does anyone really believe this technology can be halted?

Hillary Clinton had an ambitious plan to make us the alternative energy power in then world. That may be over for now but I can't believe we will go backwards.

On coal,Trump personally loves coal but out power plants now like natural gas,which is cheaper. Coal itself is cheaper and more abundant in South America,Europe and India. How is coal coming back?

This is Republican thinking from before George W. Bush when they wanted to create an energy empire in the Middle East. We don't need it.

The Obama Administration actually facilitated the first comeback in our manufacturing area since the 1990s. The Trump and the new Republican government is totally ignorant of this. It is advanced manufacturing pioneered by M.I.T. and others.

If the left behinds were going to get jobs,they would have had them by now or shortly will when the rest comes on line. But none will come from Trump's initiatives.

The Trump administration seems to be in a wayback machine. We are all acutely aware of their cultural primitivism ,which terrifies us, but their view of our own economy is even more frightening. 

I don't know whether this is ideology seeping through or rather the dense ness of their leader, who was not a captain of industry in any cutting edge enterprise. 

I said at the beginning of my website that Obama would only lead the transition away from the FIRE economy--Finance,Insurance Real Estate. Well, Mr. real estate is President and doesn't know he is an anachronism already. This isn't age-ism but a 70 year old fat man who hasn't built anything from the 1990s isn't "with it".

You may com pain about Clinton's wonkiness and President Obama's science days but they at least knew where the world was going.

Our election was in part a reaction to the speed of that change but it is happening anyway and can't be stopped. Or at least no more than 2 years. 

The Hispanic population is not going to get less. African-Americans are not going to be docile even while you have national stop and frisk. The millennials will not cease to be the digital mavens they are. Gays are not going back into the closet.

So you are watching the Dying America being inaugurated. I actually know some of these people. There is no future there. 

You might see a second stimulus package to build infrastructure. But that is to pay off Trump's campaign promises. Remember the GOP's treatment of Obama's second stimulus package. This is it as a brand new initiative. But what it will lack is John Kerry's vision of a private-public infrastructure bank. Instead it will increase the deficit. And,yes,pay off construction firms Trump is allied with.

This team will do mortal damage to the Paris Climate Change Accords. Why millennials voted for Jill Stein on climnate change issues when the crowing achievement of diplomacy will be destroyed is a mystery to me. But consider this amazing fact,the side agreements between the governments and companies provided over $7 trillion of investment in alternative energy sources. This will disappear.

And yes we will not be the global leader in this change. West Germany will continue to pursue its competitive edge.

Trump and all the republicans are committed to destroying the Affordable Care Act. I don't think they can this year. But next they will. What do you repeal? Mitch McConnell says a replacement will take time. How do you throw 20 million people off health insurance without killing a Vietnam War number of them and without stimulating massive lawsuits. And who can afford health insurance without it in place? Medicare also would be affected . All my preventive visits which now are free will cost me money. Am I going to get them? No. What society takes back a benefit?

I already explained in my posts on the ACA at the time of the debate--will there even be a debate this time?--that insurance companies already planted a gloomy forecast for their industry if no ACA were passed. Most said they would have to raise rates sky-high and insure less--not more people.

Remember President Obama printed a lost of promises he aimed to keep during his administration. Basically he kept 80% of them. That was how he measured the success of his presidency. Do you know what Trump would consider a success? I don't.

If he doesn't produce for the disenchanted--and he won't,they will just be even more bitter. I don't even want to get intone his tax plan which would be ruinous to the middle class. Even my son is already complaining about it. 

President Obama wanted to have us more systemically connected to the global community. This incoming administration feels like they want to go back to America First, which doomed the Republicans to a generation in the political wilderness. This is even Big State nationalism of Dick Cheney. 

I know they think they have a mandate to dismantle President Obama's legacy and go back to something they think existed in the 1990s. That is how backward the GOP has become. You can tear up all his executive orders you want, the man will inspire Americans for centuries. He is just such a person and his vision was so badly needed. They are stuck with him as a ghost.

And we are blessed with his vision for the real majority which lives in the future. I have no idea how these clowns will operate. It is better you set your sights on the North Star of your progressive values and not grow weary because unlike the past you know you have the majority of Americans behind you.