Don's Tuesday Column

           THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   12/19/2017

                       Trump’s first year triumphs

Consider President Donald J. Trump’s first year accomplishments. As what Trump calls “a big, beautiful Christmas gift” of tax cuts, tax reform and business- and economy-boosting tax incentives finds its way to his desk, Americans will have a compare-and-contrast moment. The tax cuts giving more pay compares favorably to premium spikes from Obamacare. It was passed with no Democrat support as Obamacare was without Republican support; the process differs greatly. Democrats wanted no Republican input or amendments for the misnamed “Affordable Care Act” as procedural shenanigans were required to cobble together the final health bill.

Democratic support was, on the other hand, completely withheld for the tax bill which went through regular order that allowed for Democrat amendments if they thought they could improve the bill and lend a bipartisan veneer to letting Americans keep more of their own money. “Keeping more of their own money” is not in the lexicon, nor in speeches, talking points, or any platform written by Democrats. Government is only supposed, and destined, to grow larger as the economic, even the personal, activities of our nation’s citizens are to be overseen, micromanaged and regulated, “for your own good” they would say.

Withholding tables will be automatically adjusted to show larger paychecks; that extra money will improve lives like no high-sounding, big-promising, bureaucracy-supported government initiative could do. Though limited to a 10-year window—again because no Democrats would support them—individual tax rates will hopefully never be raised. The more permanent business and corporate tax cuts will allow what has happened any time the business community senses a friendly and profitable tax and regulatory environment: they hire, grow, improve their services and products and compete more favorably with foreign entities.

One can only hope that the newest generation, the “millenials,” that seem so sympathetic to Bernie Sanders’ siren call of socialism (even as the latest iteration crashes and burns in Venezuela), will begin to see that the low/no growth Obama years were an aberration, not an example of the best that they can expect in a free-market, capitalist system. They and the Democrat boosters-of-socialism don’t really want full government ownership of “the means of production”; it does, however, make it easier to sell quasi-socialistic schemes of “free” health care, housing, higher education, etc. ad nauseam, needing only a few more tax “contributions.”

The Trump triumphs, setting aside the noise, drum-banging and shrieking of the Democrat/media left, have piled up: 22 regulations removed for each new one, the individual mandate tax of Obamacare is gone, the NDAA (military budget) passed, WOTUS (Waters of the United States) micromanagement of our creeks and ponds is reversed; Trump cut us free of the wrong-headed and American-economy-killing global warming scheme (the Paris Accord), likewise the onerous Obama Clean Power Plan; the reversal of the “Net Neutrality” rule that imposed heavy handed utility regulation on the thriving, evolving digital economy (there remains plenty of oversight through other agencies and laws); reform of the Veterans Administration will deliver better health care to our precious wounded vets. A solid conservative, Neil Gorsuch, is on the Supreme Court, as well as over a dozen conservatives on the Appellate Courts, with many more openings to come allowing for the federal courts to be remolded in an originalist direction.

With the defeat of ISIS in Syria and Iraq—after the ignominious and precipitous withdrawal of American military forces under Obama gave ISIS a big opening to establish their fanatical, Islamic “caliphate”—Trump has an accomplishment under his belt that Obama told us couldn’t be done. The unshackling of our military “rules of engagement” was all it took; plus, a leader that effectively told them “The only good jihadist is a dead jihadist.” Our intelligence provided Russian security a tip on a suicide plot that would have killed many of their citizens.

Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel was a courageous, bold proclamation of reality, thousands of years of reality. The important players in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia have not, and will not, take to launching military attacks on Israel—even the Palestinians have settled for weak responses from protesting, rock-throwing mini-mobs. It has been a duplicitous and futile fool’s errand to expect to negotiate with Islamic fanatics, until they recognize the state of Israel and its right to exist with its own chosen capitol. Maybe this will help Muslim nations and adherents to leave behind the Dark Ages of puritanical, rigid lifestyles—and blind hatred of Israel, America and the West.

On a related note, Politico—not right wing Infowars or Brietbart—broke a monumental story over the weekend that you will hear about on talk radio, Fox News but probably not CNN, MSNBC or the networks, because it makes Barack Obama look pretty bad. Written by Josh Meyer, the title sums up the 14,000-word, exhaustively sourced, bombshell: “The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook—An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah’s billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House’s desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.” We are grateful that President Trump, in this and many ways, is the anti-Obama; he sees the Iran deal as a sellout of American national interests and Hezbollah as evil.

Finally, behold the anti-Trump witch hunt, via supposed “collusion” (not a citable crime under law), falling into tatters with the revelations over real collusion between the Hillary Clinton campaign, which paid left wing dirt-digging scandal-monger Fusion GPS, which hired former British spy Christopher Steele who assembled a host of false, unverified accusations into a dossier which was spoon fed to the FBI which then launched phone taps, and Robert Mueller.