Kirk's
Politics Blog
Kirk
Marchand has been involved in politics since he marched up 50th St. in
Norfolk Va. in 1964, supporting Republican governor Scranton. He spoke
at Norfolk Catholic High School in 1972 in support of George McGovern,
and worked for Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Since 1985 he has been a middle and high school teacher, and has taught
Government from 8th grade Civics through AP Government. While he is a
staunch Democrat, he has always encouraged people, especially young
people to vote. A general theme of his career is helping people
understand the importance of local and state government.
Please read these blogs and comment!
1/14/2017-
We have six days to go until Donald Trump is inaugurated as
president. He was elected to a small extent by being endorsed by the
"Alt-Right", an anti-neocon anti internationalist movement. Some on the
Alt-Right are more segregationist and anti immigration, read this
interview with Richard
Spencer on NPR. It should be noted that many on the Alt-Right
are disappointed (to say the least) about Trump's cabinet picks .
Before the election they had their hopes
up and a short list . Right after the election they had a lot of
expectations expressed
at a rally in Washington right after the election. Their reaction
now is more muted, considering the number of Wall Street insiders
appointed so far.
Trump has two very big political problems based on who voted for him.
The biggest surprise in the election was the electoral flip of
Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. It's clear that the margin in
those states were former facory workers and their family members who
are expecting a President Trump to "bring back" factories. The
problem is that factories built in the last twenty years rely on
automation, as expressed in this
MIT article. On listening to interviews with company owners
and managers over the last few years it's clear that a factory that
used to need 5000 wokers now needs less than 500. At least a quarter of
the personnel need to be people with engineering degrees. Another large
chunk need to be computer programmers and graphic design professionals.
The assembly line worker doesn't really exist anymore. So high school
graduates who expect to get assembly line jobs in newly constructed
factories will not be able to get them.
Mr. Trump's other political problem is the "wall". He has already made
a lot of his supporters mad by going back on forcing Mexico to pay for
it, although there was never and will never be a way to get Mexco to
pay for it. The idea of not letting people wire money to Mexico is
unconstitutional, that point does not even deserve further
discussion. Establshing a tax on wire transfers will be
agressively lobbied by Westen Union, and no Republican will vote for
anything that can be labelled a tax increase. So there's no way to
force Mexico to pay for it.
Another problem is that the tax cuts and infrastucture expenditures he
has proposed will cause a massive increase in the deficit. This is
according to both conservatives
and liberals.
We will see how far this gets.
The last point is History. Can anyone tell us the last time there were
three presidents in a row who each served two full terms? Give up? It
was Jefferson - Madison - Monroe, numbers 3, 4, and 5. How about 4
presidents in a row? Nope, never. More
later...............................
Got a response? Send It Here Pithiness will be published!
12/28/2015 -
This election season has
been very interesting. The rank and file of the Republican party has
completely rejected all career politicians, and this is the most
interesting point. Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, none of
them have any political experience. And the most popular politicican is
the one with the least experience, Ted Cruz.
The catalog of inconsistancies that
the
Republican voters are not
considering is also interesting. On Donald Trump's checklist, there's
building a wall along the US Mexico border. Mr. Trump has not given us
any practical metod of paying for this wall. In another instance, he
suggested that we stop all Musliims from entering the country. What
standard is he goijg to use to successfully stop entry? Of course there
are Muslims who dress a specific way, but this is not universal.
In a
third instance, Mr. Trump told a New Hampshire Fraternal Order of
Police rally that he would sign an executive order that would impose
the death penalty on people who are convicted of killing a police
officer. In the first place, the president can only enforce an
executive order if it is within the executive branch of the federal
government, or if it is part of executing a law enactted by Congress.
In the second place, unless the officer is a federal officer, killing a
federal officer is a matter of state law, not federal law.
Despite these blatantly
unconstitutional and/ or budget deficit
exploding ideas, Mr. Trump seems headed for the Republican nomination
for president.