Pacific Island Times April 2019 Vol 3 No. 4 | Page 6

Insights
I
The Bible tells us so
f you’re looking ahead to the U.S.
election of 2020, you could do
worse than to heed the biblical ad-
monition in Ecclesiastes 1:9: Translat-
ed from the Hebrew, “What has been
is what will be, and what has been
done is what will be done, and there is
nothing new under the sun.”
If you doubt the truth of that, con-
sider the re-election strategy laid out
by one of President Trump’s advisors
in the Washington Post: “Nothing’s
really changed for us. It’s still going
to be the same binary choice between
a Republican set of prin-
ciples as opposed to a
socialist Democratic set
of principles. And we’ll
gladly take that choice.”
The way the Post fig-
ures it, the GOP thinks
proposals to expand
Medicare and invest in
green energy projects
will be enough to fright-
en the voters with the
most venerable bogey-
man/issue in American
politics: socialism.
“Scareword” is how
President Harry Truman
put it back in 1952.
“Socialism is what they called
public power. Socialism is what they
called social security. Socialism is
what they called farm price supports.
Socialism is what they called bank de-
posit insurance. Socialism is what they
called the growth of free and indepen-
dent labor organizations. Socialism
is their name for almost anything that
helps all the people.”
Back in Truman’s day, not too many
Americans benefited more from the
truly mixed economy that was well
established post-World War II, than
Donald Trump’s dad, Fred, who
milked the federal government for
millions of dollars to build subsidized
housing in New York. That created
the vast fortune that allowed his son
to survive a variety of failed business
ventures, including bankrupt casinos
during his private sector career.
6
Donald may indicate that skill in
business, as opposed to b.s. is not
inherited, yet in other ways, the apple
did not fall very far from the family
tree. Fred, a frequenter of Ku Klux
Klan rallies back in the day, didn’t
want “colored people” living in his
federally funded developments. He
apparently passed this on to Donald,
who was fairly new to the family busi-
ness, but the continued discriminatory
conduct by the firm was so severe that
the company was repeatedly prosecut-
ed by—wait for it—the Nixon admin-
istration.
Of course, Truman’s
alleged socialism that’s
being invoked in the 21st
century goes back to his
mentor and predeces-
sor President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt or, as
an old anti-semitic trope
went back then, “Frank-
lin Deficit Rosenfeld.”
If you want to really
understand how old and
stale this present-day
strategy is, you almost
have to have known
some genuine Roosevelt
haters back in the day. I did, though
FDR had been dead for many years by
then.
They did not have Hillary Clinton to
kick around for decades, but they sure
had Eleanor Roosevelt. I can remem-
ber the bad imitations of the former
first lady who was a regular presence
on the radio in the 1950s. El-ah-
nooooor is how it went.
As Chuck Collins of the Institute for
Policy Studies reminds us, Roosevelt
and Truman were followed by a really
serious socialist president and he
happened to be both a republican and
a general.
“What would today’s hysterical
Republicans say about the “socialist”
presidency of Dwight Eisenhower?
Most likely they would call him ‘Red
Ike.’ After all, during Eisenhower’s
two terms between 1953 and 1960,
the wealthy paid a top tax rate of 91
percent on incomes over the equiva-
lent of $1.7 million for an individual
and $3.4 million for a couple. That
crafty pinko Eisenhower also presided
over government-subsidized mortgag-
es that helped millions of Americans
purchase their first home and attend
college for free. He presided over the
construction of public housing and
state-owned infrastructure (the Inter-
state Highway System).”
The worst was yet to come though,
as closet socialists were pushing
for—gasp—a national health insur-
ance program to cover senior citizens.
President-to-be George H.W. Walker
called it “socialized medicine” and
President-to-be Ronald Reagan was all
over the air waves and print with the
same message.
We call it Medicare these days, but
true to his roots, President Trump
wants to yank funding for Medicare
(and Medicaid) to the tune of about a
trillion dollars according to his cur-
rent, but clearly dead on arrival budget
proposal.
A funny thing is happening on the
way to the 2020 election that makes
me wonder if Trump’s campaign
people are paying proper attention
to their polling data. It seems the
reliable old socialist bogeyman isn’t
scaring the youngsters as much as he
used to. As one instance, it seems that
the majority of the young favor the
wealthy paying their fair share to run
the country, rather than stuffing more
tax cut money in their bank accounts.
According to the polling, over 70 per-
cent of these voters support tax hikes
on households with over $10 million
in income — including 54 percent of
Republicans. The source for that intel-
ligence? Fox News.
So who’s going to be the mocked
Eleanor Roosevelt this time around?
It seemed at first it was going to be
New York freshman Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, but after checking
out the hyper online comments from
the usual suspects and watching
Ocasio-Cortez in action on TV, I am
starting to think the Trump campaign
should look for a softer target.
rom the
comment box
The Day of
Reckoning
As long as we have a solid
waste mismanagement program
that fails to understand people
and trash and actually encourages
illegal dumping, the problem
will continue. Forget trying to
catch those who illegally dump.
This has been advocated for 30
years and is a complete failure.
We need to make it simple and
effective for waste pickup. Make
it free and free transfer stations.
Simply pay for this by an excise
tax on containers at the port.
—Dave Lotz
I have been advocating for a fee
program that charges at the point
of entry. By making it convenient
and free at the point of disposal,
there will be no roadside litter.
For trash pickup at residences,
fees should be added to real
estate taxes. Fees will be PUC
regulated.
—Eddie Cruz
In Arizona, they include waste
bins in water bill. if you have
water, you have a waste bins.
— Sofia Oropesa
Quit selling plastic bags at all
stores and make it mandatory to
use reusable bags. The littering
will never stop. We have people
who work hard to keep Guam
clean and some who don’t take
into consideration our hard work
and dedication into keeping our
island clean. It starts with the
people of Guam to keep Guam
clean not just for our sake but for
the tourist and the people visiting
our island.
— Dereckjohn Lizama