Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Stochastic terrorism is “the public demonization of a person or group resulting in the incitement of a violent act, which is statistically probable but whose specifics cannot be predicted.”

The word stochastic, in everyday language, means “random.” Terrorism, here, refers to “violence motivated by ideology.”

Here’s the idea behind stochastic terrorism:

1. A leader or organization uses rhetoric in the mass media against a group of people.
2. This rhetoric, while hostile or hateful, doesn’t explicitly tell someone to carry out an act of violence against that group, but a person, feeling threatened, is motivated to do so as a result.
3. That individual act of political violence can’t be predicted as such, but that violence will happen is much more probable thanks to the rhetoric.
4. This rhetoric is thus called stochastic terrorism because of the way it incites random violence.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

"Buried in this story-Trump had executive branch lawyers working on a theory that he could override Congressional funding decisions because he was POTUS. Every Republican lawmaker must be asked if they support this destruction of checks & balances."

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

In 2019, the farm belt felt about as hospitable as the asteroid belt. Record rainfall turned fields to sludge and made it nigh-on impossible to plant corn and soybeans until long after the typical window had passed. President Trump’s long-running trade war cut off farmers’ access to China’s enormous market. Across the farm sector, commodity prices remained in the doldrums.

Yet the Agriculture Department now estimates 2019 was farmers’ most profitable in five years. What happened?

Three words: Market Facilitation Program. Or, as it’s more commonly known, the farm bailout.

Without government assistance, U.S. farm income would have fallen about $5 billion from its already-low 2018 level. So the $14.5 billion in bailout funding announced so far represents a substantial reversal of fortune. About three-quarters of the funding already has been distributed.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The overhaul of the federal tax law in 2017 was the signature legislative achievement of Donald J. Trump’s presidency.

The biggest change to the tax code in three decades, the law slashed taxes for big companies, part of an effort to coax them to invest more in the United States and to discourage them from stashing profits in overseas tax havens.

Corporate executives, major investors and the wealthiest Americans hailed the tax cuts as a once-in-a-generation boon not only to their own fortunes but also to the United States economy.

But big companies wanted more — and, not long after the bill became law in December 2017, the Trump administration began transforming the tax package into a greater windfall for the world’s largest corporations and their shareholders. The tax bills of many big companies have ended up even smaller than what was anticipated when the president signed the bill.

One consequence is that the federal government may collect hundreds of billions of dollars less over the coming decade than previously projected. The budget deficit has jumped more than 50 percent since Mr. Trump took office and is expected to top $1 trillion in 2020, partly as a result of the tax law.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]