Alternet: Trump Is Selling a Privatization Scam, and Calling It an Infrastructure Plan
Note: By now, we all know we need our infrastructure completely revamped, which is largely a, um, pipe-dream, of course. Because of the nature of entropy in economics, a complete revamp would send us all to the poor house, before it ever managed to catch us up to the newer, "Asian Tigers." But, clearly, there are SOME things that need to be done! - We need about a trillion dollars of repair, improvement and replacement which needs to be done! I have been shouting this battle call seemingly all my life, along with a call to stop throwing money away by sending into wars, war-contractors, weapons, death, and graves - i.e., into one big pointless hole in the ground. Instead, we need to dig in, dig up, and plant seeds of industrial and social health and wealth.
Trump has taken up the movement to re-infrastructure. His perspective comes from big business, big concrete, big money - maybe even big Mafia. As a billionaire-turned-political-leader, (like Rauner, or Koch-Walker, etc.), he can be expected to want to work via PRIVITISATION. That is their mentality, under the category of, "Governments can be better run like BUSINESSES!" - Wrong. When you hear the word, "privatisation," think of the words, "corporatism", "corruption", "boondoggle", "inflated estimates", "subsidies for the too-big-to-fail", "money for the rich", "taxpayer bail-out", or, "end of democracy."
I know that in some ways, business and market competition can do better work in some projects, compared to government, especially when the business is efficient and the competition is free and rational, and not all big-boy-network corruption. It is such corruption that Trump may tend to encourage. We don't know this for sure. But here's how to find out:
If Trump does not garner the support of most Democrats, then the chances are that he is indeed pushing a privatisation plan, which will inevitably become corrupt, instead of a rational, jobs-oriented, community-up re-infrastructure plan. If Trump does garner most Dems, (including Sanders, and such), and lose many GOP, then the plan would probably be much better. If trump garners many Dems, (excluding Sanders, and such), but retains many GOP, then what we are probably looking at the same old status-quo, Clinton-Bush type alliance, full of partisan earmarks, not so many jobs, and perhaps a lot of Chinese steel.
Since Trump is a monster created by the populist movement which included both Right-Wing Nationalists and Sanders supporters, the is still a modicum of potential that Trump can be pushed away from the plan he is most likely to offer, towards something more progressive. I am not saying FULLY progressive. I am saying there is hope for political compromise.
And, here's more anti-Trump reading, for the pro-Trumpers, of course...
The Intercept: Trump Injects Himself Into U.K. Election by Lying Again About London’s Popular Mayor
Zero Hedge: NSA Leaker Called Trump A “Piece Of Shit”, Is A Fan Of Bernie Sanders - (go to link for full/original)
Alternet: Get AlterNet In Your Mailbox
PS - btw - fyi - lol - Some may wonder why I provide so many links to stories found in "right wing" sites. One reason is that some of their stories are worth reading. Another reason is that most LIBERAL sites don't provide RSS feeds! Unfortunately, they are still thinking of themselves as old-style paper magazines. And they want people not to be followers of specific links, but to be followers of their magazine cult.
This I refer to as, "ironic," or, "making stupid business decisions."
(I just checked and Alternet now has an RSS. Slowly but surely, catching up to Progress. I think Mother Jones began one as well).