SOTU

A few musings

Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

Last night was the SOTU, Trump’s State Of The Unbalanced address to the US Congress. He did confirm that he was still unbalanced. I watched all 1 hour and 47 minutes worth of the circus, but off and on. I was also cooking, doing dishes, and driving my train in Railroader, so the evening wasn’t a complete waste.

The official requirements for this address are only that the President report to Congress from time to time—not necessarily annually, or in person. Plus, entry has to be granted by Congress. Since the advent of TV, though, it’s become more performative, with Trump excelling in this aspect, as he often does. It’s the biggly-est spectacle ever, but where does this all end? David Frum of The Atlantic questions whether this form of the address should continue, or at least that it be called for what it is.

Donald Trump misused the annual presidential tradition in ways so radical as to call the ritual itself into question.

President Trump’s State of the Union address last night was very like the man who delivered it: divisive, abusive, and childish.

It was a night full of shameless bragging about how great he is, how great America is, how terrible it was when he swooped in to save it all. Many bendings of the truth, many out-and-out misstatements/lies.

He railed against the Supreme Court’s disgraceful rejection of his tariffs, but said there were still many other methods he could use for the same end result, all without even having to go to Congress for approval. True, he can use any existing tariff laws Congress have already approved in past years, but he still can’t create new tariffs without their approval. I assume he’ll misuse these other avenues and wait for the courts to challenge him.

As for his repeated assertions that other countries pay the tariffs—sort of true. Many of them pay the US money in response to tariff threats, paying in the form of billions in investment. Or a promise of investment, as actually building or even expanding manufacturing plants is a multi-year commitment, not something decided on the current whims of an unbalanced President.

He did speculate that tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, might eventually replace income tax, to great applause from Republicans. In reality, income taxes provide trillions, tariffs a tenth of that. Plus, when tariffs encourage domestic production and purchasing, imports decrease, and tariff revenue decreases. He may have been thinking of the olden days, as in pre-1913, pre-income tax. Back then, revenues were raised through public land sales, tariffs, and excise taxes on alcohol and tobacco. There were few government programs to support at the time, so this was sufficient. However, demands for funds increased, and there were also concerns that these taxes and tariffs unfairly impacted the lower classes. Hence, following ratification of the 16th Amendment, income taxes were introduced, with the initial high threshold targeting just the top 1% of the population. The same top 1% that is now likely to pay very little income tax, relative to their incomes.

There was also a lot of trash-talking of the Democrats, of pretty well all non-supporters, although it took Trump longer than expected to let loose. A bar in DC started pouring free suds at 9 pm, vowing to keep going until the first insult. The bartender assumed that it would take 5-10 minutes. Nope, not until forty-five minutes in did Trump let loose on “Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress.” And then he kept going. By then, most of the patrons were too drunk to care.

The SOTU is seen as a rallying cry for the midterms for the president’s supporters. This one certainly gave them a lot of rah-rah to quote back home, lots of alternate-fact talking points about how great everything is now. Missing was talk of new, exciting programs to justify another two years.