When Trump Grew Up, Al Capone Was One Of His Role Models; For Ro Khanna It Was Mahatma Gandhi

Trump's And Khanna's Approach To Public Service Clearly Reflect That Difference

Trump was in Reno yesterday. Did you know that only California, New Jersey, New York and Florida have a greater proportion of their populations born in other countries? 18% of Nevadans were born abroad, primarily from Mexico, Philippines, China, Vietnam and South Korea. The state’s booming, diverse economy, relatively low cost of living and welcoming attitude have attracted thousands of immigrants. Spanish is widely spoken and the state has a long history of cultural diversity. Although most immigrants are attracted to Las Vegas and Reno, who do you think is doing all the work on the farms in the rural areas? None of that prevented Trump at his MAGA rally from calling immigrants at the southern border “a military invasion” and vowing to initiate “the largest deportation operation in American history.”

Let’s leave the morally repulsive nature of forced deportation aside and just look at the economic impact. Generally, immigrants contribute immensely to various sectors of the U.S. economy, such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and services. The kind of wholesale deportation Trump is promising his xenophobic fans would lead to severe labor shortages in these industries, affecting productivity and causing increased costs for businesses, which will be passed on the consumers. On top of that, immigrants contribute to consumer spending so deporting large numbers of them would reduce overall consumer demand, affecting businesses in retail, housing, and other sectors. Immigrants, including those without legal status, contribute to state and federal tax revenues through income, sales and property taxes. Again, the kind of mass deportation Trump is promising would lead to a reduction in tax contributions, impacting government budgets and making it easier for Republicans to demand changes in public spending— including Social Security and Medicare. It’s also important to remember that immigrants contribute inordinately to entrepreneurship and innovation, major drivers of economic growth. Let me name a few contemporaries (so not immigrants who helped build the American economy like Andrew Carnegie, Alexander Graham Bell, Marcus Goldman, Walt Disney, Albert Einstein, Igor Sikorsky, Max Factor, A.P. Giannini):

• Elon Musk (South Africa): Co-founder of PayPal, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX.

• Sergey Brin (Russia): Co-founder of Google.

• Andrew Grove (Hungary): Co-founder and former CEO of Intel Corporation.

• Satya Nadella (India): CEO of Microsoft.

• Steve Chen (Taiwan): Co-founder of YouTube.

• Pierre Omidyar (France): Founder of eBay.

• Max Levchin (Ukraine): Co-founder of PayPal

• Roberto Goizueta (Cuba): Former CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, credited with leading the company's global expansion.

• Vinod Dham (India): Known as the "Father of the Pentium chip," a key contributor to the development of Intel's Pentium microprocessor

• Cristina Junqueira (Brazil): Co-founder of Nubank, a leading financial technology compan.

• Salman Khan (Bangladesh): Founder of Khan Academy, an online education platform.

• Jan Koum (Ukraine): Co-founder of WhatsApp.

• Jerry Yang (Taiwan): Co-founder of Yahoo!.

• Arash Ferdowsi (Iran): Co-founder of Dropbox.

• Nina Vaca (Ecuador): Founder and CEO of Pinnacle Group, a workforce solutions provider.

Some industries, like agriculture, heavily rely on immigrants. You think even lowlife MAGAts are going to go work in the fields? Mass deportations would disrupt supply chains, leading to shortages and increased prices. And remember, the demand for housing, both rental and owned, is influenced by immigrants. Deportations would affect the demand for housing, severely impacting property values and the construction industry.

I’ll come back to Señor Trumpanzee in a moment. But first I’d like to offer some smart words from Ro Khanna who was interviewed by David Marchese in Sunday’s NY Times. Marchese noted that Khanna “has managed to position himself squarely at the intersection of competing, if not outright contradictory, interests and ideas that could shape his party’s future… trying to cast progressivism in a more economically focused light. He calls his approach ‘progressive capitalism’ and ‘new economic patriotism,’ and he believes it is the key to broadening the progressive coalition to include the struggling middle of the country and those who might otherwise associate progressivism with economic redistribution rather than growth. That shift in emphasis is also what he thinks is crucial to President Biden’s re-election chances. ‘We can’t just have a triumphant Look at all the great things we’ve done message,’ says Khanna, who is often mentioned as a possible 2028 presidential candidate. ‘Meet people where they are. They don’t think we’re in a great place.’” Khanna:

I’m for taxing the rich more, but there has to be a focus on economic production— on how do we grow the pie? Not just redistribution, but giving more people the opportunity to create wealth. That has to be part of the progressive vision, and that has to involve the private sector. You can’t build new steel factories in this country in Ashtabula, Ohio, or Johnstown, Pennsylvania, if you don’t work with the private sector. So on challenging the progressive side: Have a focus on production, and be open to a partnership with the private sector. On the capitalism side: You have to care about place. You can’t just say let’s have all this macroeconomic growth and not focus on every district in America. Make sure that you understand that it is a bad thing for America that my district has $10 trillion of company value and other districts are totally in despair.

…We have to start by acknowledging people’s anger, a sense that the system is not working for them. The president can say: “Look, for years we’ve had this offshoring globalization debacle. We’ve had working-class wages decline. We’ve had communities hollowed out.” Don’t try to tell them that they should think that we’re in a great place. The second thing is: Let’s ask people in these communities what they want. I’m proud of having co-authored the CHIPS Act, but if you go to Johnstown or Warren, Ohio, they’re not saying, “We want semiconductor factories.” They’re open to it, but they want steel. Can you imagine if Joe Biden was in Warren, Ohio, saying, ‘I’m the president who’s bringing back steel to America?’ So the two things are: recognizing people’s anger, and doing it on a bigger scale in every district.

… My aspiration is to inspire not just progressives but a majority of this country. My argument is that the central concern people have, including progressives, is that the American dream has slipped away, that people don’t think that their lives or their kids’ lives are going to be as good as the lives of their parents. So how do we capture the economic imagination of the country to believe that their prospects are going to be better? Having a perpetual economic-development council at the White House— which we don’t have— is important. Then doing things in communities that have lost steel; say, look, we’re going to put up new steel plants in these communities. That would go a huge way in capturing the imagination and getting the working class that has been left out to say, “We’re going to be part of this economy.” The downside is, OK, this is not necessarily going to speak right away to maybe the emotional sense of the traditional progressive, the progressive slogans. But it is a way of framing the goals that we all share in a way that can attract majoritarian support.

…I have become increasingly aware of the challenges of wealth disparity, income inequality, the sense that we need much stronger progressive policies. We need higher taxes on the very wealthy. We need Medicare for All and free public college. These are ideas that are much more progressive than where President Obama was. I believe that we now have a mobilized constituency in this country that makes those things much more plausible to achieve than when Obama was president. So I’d say my politics are probably in between Obama’s and Bernie Sanders’.

OK, so back to the would-be dictator from Jamaica Estates, Queens, grandson of Bavarian immigrant and brothel owner Friedrich Trump. Trump has every intention of continuing to demand that his congressional MAGAts block any immigration/aid to Ukraine deal. Let me interject here that I think if the MAGAts continue to block aide to Ukraine, Biden and European leaders should turn the frozen Russian assets in their countries— close to half a trillion dollars— over to Ukraine. Back to Senor Trumpanzee, who likened himself to the “great Al Capone” over the weekend: aside from demanding immigrant and Ukraine related chaos and dysfunction from his congressional supporters, he’s also demanding a government shutdown; let’s not forget that as January and February draw closer. And a baseless impeachment that is sure to backfire on dozens of House Republicans in non-MAGA districts.

Still trying to keep MAGA looking populist, Trump attacked Big Pharmaceutical over the weekend, albeit for the wrong reasons. Stoking QAnon anti-science/anti-public health conspiracy theories, Trump claimed pharmaceutical products are harming children. One of his campaign videos states that “Too often, our public health establishment is too close to Big Pharma— they make a lot of money, Big Pharma— big corporations, and other special interests, and does not want to ask the tough questions about what is happening to our children's health.” Often, he sounds almost as crazy as RFK, Jr and he’s not really going after the companies because of monopolistic practices and patent protection that's too long and too harmful to the public; inordinately high prices; dangerously aggressive marketing practices, including direct-to-consumer advertising; and the deadly focus on profits over public health.