Pressly on The Big Election: Putin’s puppet vs the nasty

The American head to the polls on November 8, and the two leading presidential candidates Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, have finished the Big Debate series. In the third instalment, Democracy was probably the biggest institution attacked when Trump said he will ‘leave you in suspense’ as to whether he will accept the outcome of the American presidential vote. Throughout Trump’s campaign he’s peppered his opponent Hillary Clinton with nasty comments – including that he would put her in jail if he were to be elected president – but in the final debate ahead the poll, he described her as “such a nasty woman”. The one thing Clinton had was experience, said Trump “but it is bad experience”. On the other side of the fence Clinton said Trump would be “(Russian president Vladimir) Putin’s puppet”. She appears to be heading to a landslide election win if one analyses the polling reported on RealClearPolitics.com, with bookies giving Hillary a 20 times more chance than Trump of becoming the next president. Cape Messenger Editor Donwald Pressly says Clinton has a remarkably left-leaning economic plan, at least in the context of United States’ political economy. She believes that poor people who work full time should ‘not be in poverty’ and supports a decent – though she did not use that term but it is similar to the ANC’s notion – national minimum wage. – Stuart Lowman

By Donwald Pressly*

Donwald Pressly, Cape Messenger editor.
Donwald Pressly

The final presidential debate was peppered – or was is littered? – with personal insults from both sides, largely obscuring the dissection of Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s plans for turbo-charging the currently lacklustre American economy.

The polls indicate that Clinton is likely to win in all but three of the 14 battleground states. The Trump campaign is still winning in Georgia, Ohio and Iowa. Most national polls indicate that Hillary Clinton is on the way to the White House.

Trump said Clinton had been in public office for the last 30 years and had achieved nothing. “It is just words,” he said. She said that when she was working for the Children’s Defence Fund in the 1970s to forge racial justice at schools in the US, he was kicking black people out of apartment buildings and being sued by the justice department. When she was in the situation room monitoring the raid bringing Osama bin Laden to justice, Trump was “hosting The Celebrity Apprentice”.

“I am happy to compare my 30 years of experience (with your last 30 years)…. What I have done for this country… trying to help in every way I could, especially kids and families get ahead and stay ahead … I will let the American people take that decision,” said Clinton.

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People who live in poverty and work full-time should not be in poverty

The moderator of the debate asked the candidate how they would grow the economy and create jobs. “I think that when the middle class thrives, America thrives. My plan is based on growing the economy, giving middle class families many more opportunities. I want us to have the biggest jobs programme since World War 2… jobs in infrastructure and advance manufacturing. I believe we can compete with high wage countries… and I believe we should,” said Clinton. “New jobs in clean energy not only to fight climate change which is a serious problem but to create new … businesses… I want us to do more to help small business where two thirds of the new jobs are going to come from. I want us to raise the national minimum wage because… people who live in poverty… who work full time … should not still be in poverty. I sure do want women to be paid equally for the work we do. We have to have an education system that starts from pre-school and goes through college. That is why I want more technical education at high schools and in community colleges.  Real apprenticeships to prepare young people for the jobs of the future.”

Clinton wants to make college debt free and for families making less than 125 000 US dollars (a year) will not get a university bill. “You will not get a tuition bill from a public college or a university,” she said. Cllinton said she had worked on a plan with Senator Bernie Sanders to make this possible.

On where the money is going to come from she said: “We are going to go where the money is. Most of the gains in the last years since the great recession have gone to the very top. We are going to have the wealthy pay their fair share. We are going to have corporations making a great contribution than they are now… that is a plan that has been analysed by independent experts who said that this could produce 10 million new jobs. By contrast Donald’s plan (she did not call him Trump) has been analysed to conclude that it could lose three and a half million jobs. His whole plan is to cut taxes and give the biggest tax breaks ever to the wealthy and to corporations.” It would add 20 trillion dollars to the debt. “The plan he has will cost us (America) jobs and possibly cost us another recession.” She described Trump’s plan as “truly going to be trickle down economics on steroids”.

Trump: Clinton plan could even double American taxes

Trump said “her plan” is going to raise taxes and even double Americans’ taxes. “Her tax plan is a disaster. And she can say all she wants about college tuition… and I am a big proponent… we are going to do a lot of things with college tuition. But the rest of the public is going to be paying for it (the Clinton economic plan). We are going to have massive, massive tax increase under Hillary Clinton’s plan.”

Turning to issues raised in a previous debate, Trump said the United States should not be facing the burden (including costs) of protecting the world’s wealthy states. “I would like to start off where we left …When I said Japan, and Germany and I am not just singling them out. South Korea … these are very rich and powerful countries. Saudi Arabia… nothing but money. We protect Saudi Arabia. Why on earth are (they not) paying? I questioned Nato. Why are they not paying? Because they weren’t paying (the member states were not all paying their contributions to the military alliance’s coffers). Since I did this …This was a year ago. All of a sudden they are paying.  And I have been given a lot of credit for it. They have to pay up. We are protecting people. I am a big fan of Nato but they have to pay up. She comes out and says … we love our allies, we think our allies are great. It is awfully hard to get them to pay up when you have somebody saying: We think how great they are. We have to tell Japan in a very nice way. We have to tell Germany and all of these countries… we have to say: You have to help us out. We have during his regime … during President (Barack) Obama’s regime we’ve doubled our national debt. We are up to 20 trillion dollars. So my plan is … we are going to renegotiate trade deals. We are going to have a lot of free trade.

Thus he returned to the question, which was what he was going to do to turbocharge growth and jobs in the US. “We have horrible deals…Our jobs are being taken out by the (trade deal) deal her husband (President Bill Clinton) signed. One of the worst deals ever. Our Jobs are being sucked out of our economy. You look at all the places I have just left.  You go to Pennsylvania… Ohio. You go to Florida, any of them. Upstate New York. Our jobs have fled to Mexico and other places. We are bringing our jobs back. I am going to renegotiate Nafta. If I can’t make it a great deal, I am going to terminate Nafta. We are going to have trade. We are going to make a great trade deal. And if we can’t we are going to go our separate way because it has been a disaster.”

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Turning to domestic matters, he said that “we are going to cut taxes massively”.  We are going to cut business taxes massively. They are going to start hiring people. We are going to bring the 3 trillion dollars offshore … back into the country. We are going to get the engine rolling again. Right now our country is dying at 1% (growth on) GDP.”

Clinton rebutted this saying that Trump would make the largest tax cuts “we have ever seen… three times more than tax cuts under the (George W) Bush administration. I have said repeatedly during this campaign: I will not raise taxes on anyone earning 250 000 dollars or less (a year). I will also not add a penny to the debt. I have costed out what I am going to do… he (Trump) will through his massive tax cuts… add 20 billion dollars to the debt.” She said the Democrats knew how to control the debt. “When my husband (Bill Clinton) was president, we went from a 300 billion dollar deficit to a 200 billion dollar surplus. We were on the path to eliminating the national debt. When President Obama came into national office, he inherited the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression. He cut the deficit by two-thirds. One of the ways you go after the debt, one of the ways you create jobs … is investing in people. I have investments in new jobs.  Investment in education. And the opportunities for people to get ahead and stay ahead. Cutting taxes on the wealthy… we tried that. It does not work…”

That is the kernel of the policy approach differences between the two campaigns.

  • Donwald Pressly, Cape Messenger editor. 
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