So Celeste Katz of Newsweek decided to write a piece the other day, entitled, "Trump Had Many Genuine Successes This Year, Despite Low Approval Rating," and I felt the need to comment on it.
First off, let's look at the definition of the term accomplishment. According to the dictionary, accomplishment is defined as "something that has been achieved successfully."
Based off that, let's now look at Ms. Katz's list of President Trump's supposed accomplishments:
1) "He got a new justice on the Supreme Court"
"Trump promised on the campaign trail to appoint a conservative jurist to the highest court in the land as a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He selected Neil Gorsuch, a Colorado federal appeals court judge who, at 49, was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since then-President George H. W. Bush nominated 43-year-old Clarence Thomas in 1991."
So, in other words, Donald Trump's accomplishment here was predicated on an individual dying and him being in the right place at the right time following said person's death. Way to go!
2) "He got tax reform through Congress"
"Without the help of a single Democrat, Team Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress pushed through a massive plan that slashes rates for corporations and provides some benefits to individuals, albeit more benefits to the wealthy. The reforms are sweeping enough to have drawn comparisons to the 1986 Reagan-era revamp of the tax code.
Whether you like a law that cuts the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent or eliminates state and local tax deductibility, getting such a massive tax cut—$1.5 trillion (and counting)—through Congress is objectively a major achievement."
Really? Further exacerbating the trickle-down platform which helped instigate the largest pay gap since the Great Depression, leading to the Great Recession, is some grand achievement? We'll see if Ms. Katz feels similarly if it helps lead to another recession...
3) "He helped public causes by donating his salary"
"Trump hasn’t been forthcoming with his tax returns, so it’s hard to pin down his exact financial situation, but by the vast majority of accounts, he’s a rich man—and he’s sharing some of the wealth.
The president has chosen to forgo his annual federal salary of $400,000 and donate it quarterly to various public causes.
National Park Service Superintendent Tyrone Brandyburg (C) and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke hold a check donated by President Donald Trump salary to the National Park Service, April 3, 2017.
Trump, whose net worth Forbes pegged at more than $3 billion this fall, donated his third quarter pay to opioid-addiction fighting efforts administrated by the Department of Health and Human Services.
His previous installment went to the Department of Education, and the first beneficiary of the commander-in-chief's largesse was the National Park Service."
Is this some kind of a joke? Am I being punked here? Doesn't this "accomplishment" run in direct conflict with the previous one? Who are the biggest winners from the Trump tax plan? People like him - the uber-wealthy. So on one hand, Trump is losing money he didn't need in the first place, and on the other, is handing himself an even greater sum. Also, let's look at the causes to which he's donated.
The National Park Service. The Trump administration has attempted to downsize national parks in this country and is more anti-environment than a pyromaniac coal CEO named Billy-Bob Fuktheplanet.
The opioid epidemic. Fantastic. What has Trump arguably spent more time on than anything else, well, besides Twitter? Repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with something which would help fight the opioid epidemic only if it were opposite day.
Education. Yeah, about that... According to Trump, facts are fake news; debunked conspiracy theories are facts; global warming is a Chinese hoax; Obama was born in Kenya. The man is to education what garlic is to first dates - he kills it. ...but yeah, thanks for the $100,000...
4) "He did away with a slew of federal regulations"
"By September, as The Week put it, he had 'killed or delayed more than 860 federal rules and regulations affecting almost all facets of everyday life,' from guidelines on meat processing to coal mining to pesticide use to lobbying. Activists may not be happy, but it is nonetheless an achievement."
Why are regulations so frowned upon by some people? Is there such a thing as too much regulation? Sure. Let's be serious, though. Humans are flawed. We often need direction. There's a reason why there are warning labels on torches which say, "Do not take the words 'fire in your eyes' literally by placing this item in your eyes." Yes, some people are THAT stupid. So isn't it better to be safe than sorry? According to Trump and many of his Republican brethren, the opposite appears to be true: "Hey, it's better to be sorry than safe." Yes, this is the supposed party of family values, folks...
5) "His anti-immigrant rhetoric led to changes in reality"
"In April, border apprehensions hit a 17-year low, reflecting the fact that fewer undocumented immigrants were trying to get here, according to McClatchy. Between December 2016 and March 2017, Department of Homeland Security statistics showed an eye-popping 93 percent drop in apprehensions of parents and children trying to get across the border illegally from Mexico.
Many attribute that directly to Trump saying they wouldn't be welcome in the U.S. if they got here."
Ms. Katz is really going out on a limb here. Notice the dates. Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20th. So just by his mere presence in the Oval Office (well, likely Mar-a-Lago), undocumented immigrants trying to reach the U.S. hit a 17-year low just two months later? Then, in December 2016, when Trump wasn't even president, he helped drop the apprehensions of parents and children trying to reach the U.S. illegally from Mexico? Either the guy is a magician or Celeste Katz keeps in touch with the same invisible friends Donald Trump does ("I know many many people, without names, who agree with me on this." Yeah, sure...).
6) "He revolutionized how a president interacts with the public"
"Plenty of people—some of them perhaps within the White House itself—might wish a little birdie would tell Trump to knock it off with the tweeting.
But whether you consider the president’s Twitter use the modern-day version of a fireside chat or just a plain Dumpster fire, it is impossible to deny that Trump has aggressively used social platforms to dodge the filter of the mainstream media (and often to denigrate it for his own benefit)."
Hmm, so the President of the United States regularly passing along false information, retweeting white supremacists, bullying, redirecting blame, projecting, and doing anything but actually work is an accomplishment? Man, I wish I could get paid $400,000 for "accomplishing" such grand feats...
In summation, Celeste Katz appears to be saying that anything Trump does is essentially an accomplishment. If he picks his nose while in a limousine, she'll likely say, "Well, that is something he successfully achieved, so technically, it's an accomplishment." I'm sorry, but when a president's supposed "accomplishments" do nothing but help the richest 1% and harm the bottom 99%, not to mention the environment, our country's ideals and principles, as well as our future, these achievements aren't accomplishments at all; they're legislative and moral failures through and through. Period.
http://www.newsweek.com/here-are-six-successes-donald-trumps-first-year-president-765107
First off, let's look at the definition of the term accomplishment. According to the dictionary, accomplishment is defined as "something that has been achieved successfully."
Based off that, let's now look at Ms. Katz's list of President Trump's supposed accomplishments:
1) "He got a new justice on the Supreme Court"
"Trump promised on the campaign trail to appoint a conservative jurist to the highest court in the land as a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. He selected Neil Gorsuch, a Colorado federal appeals court judge who, at 49, was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since then-President George H. W. Bush nominated 43-year-old Clarence Thomas in 1991."
So, in other words, Donald Trump's accomplishment here was predicated on an individual dying and him being in the right place at the right time following said person's death. Way to go!
2) "He got tax reform through Congress"
"Without the help of a single Democrat, Team Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress pushed through a massive plan that slashes rates for corporations and provides some benefits to individuals, albeit more benefits to the wealthy. The reforms are sweeping enough to have drawn comparisons to the 1986 Reagan-era revamp of the tax code.
Whether you like a law that cuts the corporate rate from 35 to 21 percent or eliminates state and local tax deductibility, getting such a massive tax cut—$1.5 trillion (and counting)—through Congress is objectively a major achievement."
Really? Further exacerbating the trickle-down platform which helped instigate the largest pay gap since the Great Depression, leading to the Great Recession, is some grand achievement? We'll see if Ms. Katz feels similarly if it helps lead to another recession...
3) "He helped public causes by donating his salary"
"Trump hasn’t been forthcoming with his tax returns, so it’s hard to pin down his exact financial situation, but by the vast majority of accounts, he’s a rich man—and he’s sharing some of the wealth.
The president has chosen to forgo his annual federal salary of $400,000 and donate it quarterly to various public causes.
National Park Service Superintendent Tyrone Brandyburg (C) and Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke hold a check donated by President Donald Trump salary to the National Park Service, April 3, 2017.
Trump, whose net worth Forbes pegged at more than $3 billion this fall, donated his third quarter pay to opioid-addiction fighting efforts administrated by the Department of Health and Human Services.
His previous installment went to the Department of Education, and the first beneficiary of the commander-in-chief's largesse was the National Park Service."
Is this some kind of a joke? Am I being punked here? Doesn't this "accomplishment" run in direct conflict with the previous one? Who are the biggest winners from the Trump tax plan? People like him - the uber-wealthy. So on one hand, Trump is losing money he didn't need in the first place, and on the other, is handing himself an even greater sum. Also, let's look at the causes to which he's donated.
The National Park Service. The Trump administration has attempted to downsize national parks in this country and is more anti-environment than a pyromaniac coal CEO named Billy-Bob Fuktheplanet.
The opioid epidemic. Fantastic. What has Trump arguably spent more time on than anything else, well, besides Twitter? Repealing the Affordable Care Act and replacing it with something which would help fight the opioid epidemic only if it were opposite day.
Education. Yeah, about that... According to Trump, facts are fake news; debunked conspiracy theories are facts; global warming is a Chinese hoax; Obama was born in Kenya. The man is to education what garlic is to first dates - he kills it. ...but yeah, thanks for the $100,000...
4) "He did away with a slew of federal regulations"
"By September, as The Week put it, he had 'killed or delayed more than 860 federal rules and regulations affecting almost all facets of everyday life,' from guidelines on meat processing to coal mining to pesticide use to lobbying. Activists may not be happy, but it is nonetheless an achievement."
Why are regulations so frowned upon by some people? Is there such a thing as too much regulation? Sure. Let's be serious, though. Humans are flawed. We often need direction. There's a reason why there are warning labels on torches which say, "Do not take the words 'fire in your eyes' literally by placing this item in your eyes." Yes, some people are THAT stupid. So isn't it better to be safe than sorry? According to Trump and many of his Republican brethren, the opposite appears to be true: "Hey, it's better to be sorry than safe." Yes, this is the supposed party of family values, folks...
5) "His anti-immigrant rhetoric led to changes in reality"
"In April, border apprehensions hit a 17-year low, reflecting the fact that fewer undocumented immigrants were trying to get here, according to McClatchy. Between December 2016 and March 2017, Department of Homeland Security statistics showed an eye-popping 93 percent drop in apprehensions of parents and children trying to get across the border illegally from Mexico.
Many attribute that directly to Trump saying they wouldn't be welcome in the U.S. if they got here."
Ms. Katz is really going out on a limb here. Notice the dates. Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20th. So just by his mere presence in the Oval Office (well, likely Mar-a-Lago), undocumented immigrants trying to reach the U.S. hit a 17-year low just two months later? Then, in December 2016, when Trump wasn't even president, he helped drop the apprehensions of parents and children trying to reach the U.S. illegally from Mexico? Either the guy is a magician or Celeste Katz keeps in touch with the same invisible friends Donald Trump does ("I know many many people, without names, who agree with me on this." Yeah, sure...).
6) "He revolutionized how a president interacts with the public"
"Plenty of people—some of them perhaps within the White House itself—might wish a little birdie would tell Trump to knock it off with the tweeting.
But whether you consider the president’s Twitter use the modern-day version of a fireside chat or just a plain Dumpster fire, it is impossible to deny that Trump has aggressively used social platforms to dodge the filter of the mainstream media (and often to denigrate it for his own benefit)."
Hmm, so the President of the United States regularly passing along false information, retweeting white supremacists, bullying, redirecting blame, projecting, and doing anything but actually work is an accomplishment? Man, I wish I could get paid $400,000 for "accomplishing" such grand feats...
In summation, Celeste Katz appears to be saying that anything Trump does is essentially an accomplishment. If he picks his nose while in a limousine, she'll likely say, "Well, that is something he successfully achieved, so technically, it's an accomplishment." I'm sorry, but when a president's supposed "accomplishments" do nothing but help the richest 1% and harm the bottom 99%, not to mention the environment, our country's ideals and principles, as well as our future, these achievements aren't accomplishments at all; they're legislative and moral failures through and through. Period.
http://www.newsweek.com/here-are-six-successes-donald-trumps-first-year-president-765107
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