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Thursday, December 8, 2016

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trump's charade

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trump's charade:

Trump's charade


No, it's not the companies he's after. It's their workers' standard of living. It's a political bait-and-switch. On the campaign trail, the billionaire populist rails against against corporations on behalf of the "little people". But it's all done with a wink and a nod.

Trump's staged fight with Carrier was never about exporting jobs to Mexico. Carrier is still doing that and will continue to do that, or threaten to do it with impunity under the Trump regime. The very threat sparks a Trumpian sweetheart deal including fat government contracts for giant parent company United Technologies and a whopping tax break in exchange for a promise to retain a relative tiny number of those jobs here.

In the case of Carrier, many of the "saved" jobs were never going away in the first place. To put it another way, I'll quote USW Local 1999 Pres. Chuck Jones, whose union was never even consulted in the negotiations between Trump and Carrier.:


“But he got up there,” Jones said Tuesday, “and, for whatever reason, lied his ass off.”
Turns out, there were never any 1,100 jobs on the line. But those whose jobs were "saved" are grateful for Trump and Carrier's benevolence. It's as if having a job that pays a living wage is some sort of gift to workers from the almighty "job creators". The media buys the narrative, without even looking at the real numbers. The phony war ends up being a win-win for Trump and the company.

The same hold's true with his phony spat with Boeing over the $4B price tag on the new Air Force 1. There was never a $4B price tag. Trump made that up. In fact, the plane they were Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Trump's charade: