September 26, 2018
Page 13
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O PINION
Over Confident Men in Power Often Can’t Count
A growing resistance
to Trump’s tenure
l ew C hurCh
Our embattled but still legal occupant
of the White House is notoriously bad at
math. Donald Trump couldn’t guestimate
the crowd size of an inaugural parade
for all the tea in China. As a beleaguered
president, he is also having problems even
counting the extent of the growing oppo-
sition to his tenure at 1600 Pennsylvania
Ave.
Over-confident men in power often can’t
count. At the end of the 19th century, it ap-
peared that Army Gen. George Armstrong
Custer made the same mistake during a
confrontation between Sioux Indians in
Montana and desperate white men. At a
certain point, however, it becomes strategi-
cally useful to get an accurate count of the
forces gathering around you.
One tactic that has worked for Trump in
the past has been spending money from his
mountains of financial wealth to target or
silence his enemies. In the midst of the bat-
tle of the Little Big Horn, General Custer
didn’t have that option. Custer simply ran
out of bullets. Trump asserted he would
“never settle” a lawsuit, for example, only
to then agree to pay students at his so-
called real estate college, Trump Universi-
by
ty, a $25 million settlement -- albeit with-
out no admission of fraudulent practices.
More famously, Trump’s stash of cash
has proven useful to buy the silence of
women who have had personal encounters
with him. This has been true, up to a point,
with both the adult film actress Stormy
Daniels and with former Playboy center-
fold Karen McDougal. But even in those
two cases, payments of up to $130,000 to
try to buy silence had unintended conse-
Having a stash of cash at the ready also
comes in handy when, for the first time in
U.S. history, the president refuses to dis-
close personal and business tax records.
The implication is that people in power
don’t have to disclose such records, even
when other presidents have done so in the
past. Having such cash resources, without
an accounting of tax payments, allows for
greater flexibility for improper use of such
resources once a candidate takes office.
In terms of the Mueller probe, the 16 felonies
committed or pleaded already, including Trump
campaign chair Paul Manafort and Trump
personal attorney Michael Cohen -- don’t
appear to be ‘adding up’ in Trump’s mind.
quences. This is especially true after the
president’s personal lawyer of 10 years,
Michael Cohen, who pled guilty to a felony
regarding campaign finance violations “at
the direction” of the president in order to
influence the outcome of the election.
Denying knowledge of, and then admit-
ting knowledge of, such hush money pay-
ments raises the question of obstruction of
justice at the highest level.
What we do know is Trump can’t count!
In terms of the Mueller probe, the 16 felo-
nies committed or pleaded already, includ-
ing Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort
and Trump personal attorney Michael Co-
hen -- don’t appear to be ‘adding up’ in
Trump’s mind. Whether the Stormy Dan-
iels situation gets ‘added’ to this math, or
rises to the level of ‘high crimes and mis-
demeanors’ -- has yet to be decided.
There is an old German film, directed by
the great Werner Herzog, about a conquis-
tador under Juan Pizzaro in South America
in the 1500s, called “Aquirre, the Wrath of
God.” Klause Kinski portrays this charac-
ter, a megalomaniac searching for El Do-
rado, “the lost city of gold” in the Amazon
rainforest.
Unfortunately for the two Spanish wom-
en and a troop of 20 men under his com-
mand, this protagonist does not fare well.
At the end of this epic film, Kinski’s crazed
character finds himself alone and adrift on
a raft in the middle of the Amazon River.
The women, together with his men, have
been killed by the natives, or fallen ill in
the Amazon rainforest. In the end, Aquirre
goes round in circles alone, with only a
crew of 30 monkeys to keep him company
on his makeshift raft.
The lesson of the film seems to be: The
Indians are coming, and they are com-
ing for you! It helps to know your math,
whether you are a general at the Little Big
Horn, a fictional conquistador, or the pres-
ident in a turbulent White House. General
Custer suffered from this malady, and it did
not end well.
Lew Church is coordinator of the Port-
land Gray Panthers and is founding pub-
lisher and editor of two Portland State
University papers, the PSU Rearguard and
PSU Agitator.
Has Nation Lost All Sense of Decency and Justice?
Congress keeps
throwing money to
the wealthy
m arian w right e Delman
“The test of our progress is
not whether we add more to
the abundance of those who
have much; it is whether we
provide enough for those who
have too little.”
These words are from President Frank-
lin Roosevelt’s second inaugural address
given Jan. 20, 1937. The President was
speaking to a nation crawling out of the
Great Depression. Progress had been made
but President Roosevelt knew a great na-
tion was still capable of so much more.
We are facing another test of our moral
progress today – and we are failing.
U.S. Census Bureau figures for 2017
released this month show nearly 1 in 5
children in America still lives in poverty
making them the poorest age group in our
country. Almost one-third of the 39.7 mil-
lion poor people in the United States are
children. While the data show a slight re-
duction in child poverty in 2017 compared
to 2016, the number of poor children – 12.8
million, 17.5 percent of all children – re-
mains indecently high. And though unem-
ployment numbers continue to fall, these
gains have not kept families and children
by
out of poverty. More than 70 percent of
poor children come from working families
who often face low and stagnant wages.
The fact that nearly 1 in 5 children in
America lives in poverty is mor-
ally and practically unacceptable
and economically costly. That our
youngest children are the poorest
group of children during their years
of greatest brain development is a
shameful indictment of our values
and our common sense given our
very wealthy nation’s failure to invest in
our vulnerable young.
More than 1 in 5 children under six are
poor in 20 states and the District of Colum-
bia. More than two-thirds of poor children
are children of color who will soon be a
majority of our child population responsible
for supporting our increasingly aging popu-
lation into the future. Only five states have
black child poverty rates under 20 percent.
How shockingly wrong-headed, immor-
al and costly it is that as 12.8 million chil-
dren are struggle to learn while growing
up in poverty, the Trump Administration
and Republican-controlled Congress pro-
pose to throw money at non-needy mil-
lionaires and billionaires. In 2017 the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act gave massive tax cuts
to billionaires, millionaires and powerful
corporations at the expense of the major-
ity of taxpayers and children at a cost of
$1.9 trillion over the next 11 years. To fill
this huge deficit hole, the Trump Adminis-
tration and Republican leaders in Congress
have threatened cuts to critical investments
in child health, nutrition, housing and ed-
ucation.
Over the past few days, House Repub-
licans introduced their Tax Plan 2.0 that
would again reward the wealthy and con-
tinue to increase already indefensible in-
equality. If enacted it would permanently
extend the 2017 tax law’s individual provi-
sions slated to expire after 2025 that bene-
fit the top one percent of households twice
as much as those in the bottom 60 percent.
Initial estimates indicate Tax Plan 2.0
would add around $3 trillion more to the
originally projected $1.9 trillion deficit in
the first 10 years the individual provisions
become permanent.
And with significantly higher projected
deficits, the threat remains that the Trump
White House will continue to propose de-
bilitating cuts and starve programs poor
children and their families desperately
need to buy groceries, see a doctor and
find a safe affordable place to live. All of
this in order to pay for huge tax breaks for
wealthy corporations and individuals. Has
our nation completely lost all sense of de-
cency and justice?
Our babies’ survival needs should trump
billionaires’ and millionaires’ greed. Our
children’s present and future lives are too
valuable to let these profoundly unjust prac-
tices continue. This new Tax Plan 2.0 and
any additional cuts to key survival programs
must be rejected. And every single person
in America needs to speak out and mount a
campaign to end child poverty now.
The recent Census Bureau report shows
how key investments can help end child
and family poverty. We must provide jobs
and decent wages and support investments
in child and family basic needs.
In 2017, millions of children were lifted
above the poverty line by the Earned In-
come Tax Credit (EITC) and other refund-
able credits (4.5 million), the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) (1.5
million), the National School Lunch Pro-
gram (722,000), the Special Supplemental
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and
Children (WIC) (156,000), housing subsi-
dies (897,000), the Supplemental Securi-
ty Income (SSI) Program (472,000), and
Temporary Assistance for Needy Families
(TANF) and general assistance (296,000).
We can and must provide enough for
our young who have too little instead of
padding the pockets of millionaires and
billionaires who have far more than their
fair share of public welfare. No child in
our nation should live in poverty. Shielding
children from the lifelong consequences of
poverty will improve child lives now and
reduce future child poverty. We have all the
resources and know how to end child pov-
erty and cannot wait. Our children’s and
nation’s future depend on acting right now.
Marian Wright Edelman is president of
the Children’s Defense Fund.