From: Richard Gold
Columbus
It’s time to declare the winner of the 2016 election: Vladimir Putin.
The losers? The American people and our children who inherit a more troubled world with fewer friends of America and a more damaged planet.
Before assigning labels and decrying this a rant, let’s scan the landscape.
Post-Civil War, it’s possible America has never been more divided. The level of national discourse has reached a low. Casualties include civility, respecting the truth and any sense of compromise. The race to the bottom is accelerated by hateful talk that unleashes the worst of us in racist taunts, fear mongering and emboldens white nationalism. Yet it’s our unity — among all citizens — that provides our strength as a nation.
Our president has embraced strong men and despots — from likes of a Saudi prince who allegedly ordered a murder to a North Korean dictator. He’s thrown our national intelligence community under the bus while giving credence to Putin’s lies.
He’s alienated our best friends in NATO and on our immediate borders — and to what end? Trust is broken, confidence lost. Will our friends be there in crisis? Would you?
Underneath our hearty economy is a ticking time bomb. Only 17-20% of the American taxpayers think they got a tax cut. But as a result of the Tax Reform Act of 2018 we are now running the largest deficit ever in a time of full employment and robust economic activity. It’s a harbinger of the tidal wave of debt when our economy cools.
Tariffs tax every U.S. household. Consumers foot the bill. Besides the tax of higher prices, we’re paying our farmers tax dollars for lost customers because of reciprocal tariffs. There are only losers in a trade war. Our labor force of tomorrow? Boomers are retiring at an accelerated rate. Our birth rate doesn’t sustain our labor force. Absent a managed immigration policy, our economy will implode from lack of workers. Retirees can kiss their Medicare and Social Security goodbye if we cannot sustain economic activity with adequate labor.
The economy of the future is further submarined by an administration embracing irretrievable industries of the past — coal, steel and aluminum — while bullying companies trying to position for future success. Innovation is starved at the front door by randomly choking the talent pipeline of H1B visas for the best and brightest from around the world who want to come here. They will power tomorrow, but not from our shores.
The president has declared current science wrong and irrelevant when scientists say it’s a pivotal time to save the planet from catastrophic climate change. Water is rising; firestorms, hurricanes and tornados are growing with more to come. The EPA is under siege.
Meanwhile, pressing domestic issues of life and death go unresolved. The right to affordable health care is undercut with no alternative solution. Children are shot and killed in schools with no end in sight.
What shall we tell our kids? Sorry? My bad? It’s time to change.
