Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.
Benjamin Franklin
Guest post by Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic
Millions of words have been written about Trump’s motivations and psychology, why he does or doesn’t say or do this, that, or the other thing. Some find him playing complex games of four-dimensional chess, some treat him as a case of arrested development—no impulse control, filters, or guard rails, lacking a coherent worldview, making it all up as he goes along.
The correct answer is neither of the above. Surprisingly, little of the speculation refers back to what he’s written. The Art of the Deal casts some light. If you want a rough-and-ready summary, read Chapter 2, “Trump Cards: The Elements of the Deal.” Trump is an entrepreneur, businessman, and promoter to the core, which may be why so many politicians and pundits—most of whom have little or no actual business experience—don’t get him.
His book was published in 1987, after a string of successful real estate projects, and brims with optimism and self-confidence. His aphorisms are common sense essentials for success: control costs; stay focused on both the big picture and the details; don’t negotiate without leverage; buy low; use other people’s money to limit personal risk; persist; work hard; be tough; never stop promoting; jump patiently through government hoops; use the media for leverage, and push back hard against perceived injustices. Trump was enthusiastic about his newest venture, Atlantic City casinos. He liked gambling’s bedrock—the odds in the house’s favor—and he liked the glitz. However, the flush of success and the ebullience at the time (the stock market crashed after publication) probably affected his judgment.
Trump defenestrated much of his own common sense and got his head handed to him in Atlantic City. In 1991 and 1992 three of his casinos filed for bankruptcy. They were competing against themselves and had taken on far more debt, much of it at high interest rates, than they could support. Trump had personally guaranteed $900 million and had to sell a yacht and the Trump shuttle airline to reduce his liability to $500 million. It was the closest Trump has come to personal bankruptcy. He also reduced his stake in the financially restructured casinos and hotels that came out of bankruptcy. There would be two more Atlantic City bankruptcies, in 2004 and 2009. (Trump Plaza Hotel, a Manhattan property for which Trump admits he paid too much, filed in 1992.)
Trump is not a political philosopher. Short of revolution, intellectual or otherwise, we’re not going to get a reversal of the statist tide. However, many of his supporters hoped he would apply his business and entrepreneurial sensibilities and the lessons he had learned to governance. Washington is ripe for fundamental accountability, cost control, competence and performance standards, ground-up reappraisal of myriad programs and payments, fiscal reform, and reduction in the debt that’s threatening national insolvency. If we can’t have a revolution at least maybe Trump the businessman would steer the ship of state away from the Category 5 hurricane into which it’s headed Unfortunately, on current trend the federal government will be an Atlantic City, multiplied bigly, not a Trump Tower or Wollman Skating Rink triumph.
For the Commander in Chief, the nation’s troops and arsenal must cast the same spell as glittering casinos and house odds once did on the real estate developer. The military is on a long losing streak of inconclusive or lost wars that have sparked the terrorism they’re ostensibly meant to squelch, created political instability, wounded and killed hundreds of thousands, and driven millions more from their homes. Between the military, veterans benefits, intelligence, and homeland security the US government spends around $1 trillion a year. Nobody pretends this money is spent cost effectively. The Defense Department has never been audited, but estimates put waste in the multi-trillions since the Reagan defense build-up. The first question any conscientious businessman would ask: Why do we keep pouring money down this rat hole?
That’s not the question Trump has asked. Instead, he wants to increase the military’s budget by $54 billion, spend $1 trillion over thirty years to upgrade the nuclear arsenal, escalate old wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and northern Africa, and perhaps start new ones elsewhere. It’s as if, when his three Atlantic City casinos were failing in the early 1990s, he decided to borrow more money and build more casinos. Bankruptcy indicates there’s something wrong with your business plan. You can’t put the Defense Department into bankruptcy, but its business plan is fundamentally wrong, which makes throwing more money its way improvident waste.
Businesses that are losing money often restructure or jettison unprofitable divisions and operations. When they hit rock bottom, they may have to rethink their entire business to survive. When did “defense” of the United States become defense of “US global interests”? Are those interests anything more than US-based multinationals’ profitability, the care and feeding of defense and intelligence contractors, corrupt skims, and the maintenance of puppet governments in every one of the world’s capitals? Surely many, probably most, of the US’s 800-plus military outposts around the world, including some at home, could be closed with no loss to US security. Trump pushed his supporters’ buttons when he asked why the US was picking up the defense tab for Europe, Japan, and South Korea. Does he still intend to put that cost-saving question to them, or has that fallen by the wayside? They are certainly wealthy enough to pay their own way.
The US spends more on its military than the next seven nations combined. Trump’s $54 billion increase is greater than the military budgets of the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, equals France’s, and is only $12 billion less than the budget of supposed existential threat Russia. Downsize defense, intelligence, and homeland security to the mission of protecting the US proper and you could cut spending by at least half, or half a trillion dollars. That isn’t chump change, even for the world’s biggest and most indebted spender, and the US would still be spending more than China and Russia combined. The US has friendly allies to the north and south, and the world’s two biggest oceans to the east and west. These advantages don’t make the US invulnerable to nuclear attack, but they certainly make any kind of land-based invasion dauntingly difficult, probably impossible. That half a trillion saved, by the way, would offset the half a trillion that the US will pay this year in interest on its debt, the first time we’ve reached that “milestone.”
How long before we hit a trillion? The greatest threat to the security of the United States isn’t Russia, China, North Korea, or Iran; it’s national debt and unfunded pension and medical liabilities. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.” If Trump continues to throw money away on the bloated and ineffective military, he’s learned nothing from Atlantic City. That’s beyond foolish.
MAKING FUN OF THE BEYOND FOOLISH
Trump did not write “The Art of the Deal”, it was written by a ghostwriter who later denounced Trump and said he wished he had never written the book.
Trump was excited about his venture in Atlantic city = Mafia putting legit face on a new venture.
Bancruptcy indicates there is something wrong with your business plan._____Robert Gore
Trump is a repeat offender. Still waiting for his brilliance to shine through.
When Eisenhower left office military spending was 55% of the Federal budget. The US, with a population of 180 million, had more than 3 million MEN under arms. As a percentage of GDP it was around 10% I forget the exact number but it was 2 or 3 times today’s level.
Now if Dwight Eisenhower, who invented the term “military industrial complex” and whose ‘New Look’ strategy resulted in such a colossal military expenditure who are you to say we only need half today’s defense budget? I think I’d trust Ike more than arm chair strategists.
It is true the USSR no longer exists but it is equally true the UK no longer has 400,000 men under arms and the same can be said about our other allies. Germany has 200 tanks. Greece has more. Just as the British in the 19th century were constantly engaged in military conflict it has fallen upon the US to fight the world’s brushfire wars. There is no one else to do it. I wish it were otherwise. I don’t like being in Afghanistan…forever… but unless you want India and Pakistan clashing there, with all that implies, we can’t just leave the place with no government at all.
Umm, there was governance, quite effective governance, until we destroyed it.
As Ron Paul said, “We marched right in and we can march right out.”
Unit.
We are the ones starting those brush fires.
As for Pakistan and India, We and our mother Britain created that mess.
What was the national debt when military spending as a percentage of GDP was 10%? You can trust Ike all you like, but the bottom line is we don’t have the money anymore. And why exactly does the US have to fight the world’s brush-fire wars — because England can’t so it anymore? That is hardly a good reason. In fact it is a good historical reason as to why we should cease and desist -lest we head down the same path to perdition (like all the other elitist empires of the past).
“…Just as the British in the 19th century were constantly engaged in military conflict it has fallen upon the US to fight the world’s brushfire wars…..”
sounds like you need to march down to your local army recruiting center and SIGN UP
“Surprisingly, little of the speculation refers back to what he’s written. The Art of the Deal casts some light.”
Except he didn’t write it, and the person who did says it’s mostly a work of fiction.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all
I bet there are a lot of bricklayers, drywallers and iron worker “ghost builders” regretting that they worked for the Donald also.
Give me a break!
Who gives a shit what the “Ghostwriter” thinks. Its not his book. It’s not about his life or accomplishments. I will give even odds the “Ghostwriter” is a liberal progressive faggot (either married to a man right now or fantasies about it). I am beginning to see a pattern here.
“corrupt skims”
Robert,
The questions you ask are the most pertinent and the
most relevant of any usually asked.
Under the most obvious, lies the world competition
for larger shares of the drug trade. And the edges
are the ungodly practice of slaving others, using children
for bad purposes, and murdering people for their organs.
Humanity is in dire straights.
Israel wants Hegemony in the ME, and more land and
resources. Myriad US contractors want that paycheck
darn it, and they will willingly blackmail their bosses
to keep it. A world of rot, pigs rooting, Africa starving,
and India imploding. Can any of these be corrected?
Preach Suzanna!
Suzanna gets the ((picture))!
Unit- Was that sarc or are you that confused?
Opium production requires troops.
How does Mexico grow its opium crop?
unit- Private army.
Trump also has all that TV experience at NBC .I believe he was on for 12 years.I will be happy if he can manage to build the wall on the Mexican border.I read a report yesterday saying that white women and blacks were the two biggest groups against the wall.The two groups With the most to lose.Anyway Trump is so much better than any Democrat or established Republican .
Beebs- You’re past your nap time……..go back to sleep.
BB, I’ve met people who don’t know anything, but you don’t even SUSPECT anything.
Regards, your old pal ,
Ed
It’s a welfare make-work program Republicans can get behind.
I do believe you are completely missing the elephant in the corner, Robert. Israel. When something makes no sense at all, when all possible explanations look ridiculous, what is left must be true. What is left is that the US military and intelligence establishment is acting only for the benefit of Israel. If you look at almost any action taken by the US military since Vietnam, it is/was to the benefit of Israel. If you include zionism and zionist bankers, then the path goes back as far as WWI.
I know it’s much easier for an unknown like me to say than for a man who is trying to make a living out of what he writes and stands to lose that living if he gets too close to the truth, but we will never overcome the evil that has commandeered this country if we are not prepared to even name it. Trump is looking very much a part of it, witting or unwitting. A cabinet filled with Goldmanites, a son-in-law with what seems to be a huge influence over him and who is pretty clearly acting in the interests of another nation, continuing with the obviously indefensible 9/11 0fficial story/coverup, I initially gave him the benefit of the doubt but his bombing of Syria ended that.
Things aren’t looking too good to me. May I be proven totally wrong.
Testify Socratic Dog!
Socratic Dog,
I written my share of articles critical of Israel, and posted critical articles by other writers. In this article I didn’t go into many specifics of US foreign interventions, because I think virtually all of them are a bad idea. I focused on the overall policy and its costs: it’s ineffective and outrageously expensive. At this point my writing isn’t all that remunerative, but even if it was, I wouldn’t worry about pissing off this or that group with it, including Jews and Zionists. Pissing people off, especially when one tries to use facts and logic, is one of the joys of writing, even if it might impact my income.
OK, fair enough. Keep it up, I enjoy reading your stuff. And the fountain of youth book, funny how stuff like that has become totally believable the last few years. I thought you had an excellent potential plot line for a much longer and more detailed novel there, I was a bit disappointed it ended so soon.
I’ve heard the same thing about Prime Deceit from others. It was kind of an experiment in minimalist writing, but you’re probably right; it could have been profitably (in the literary, not financial sense) expanded.
Mr. Gore what makes you think Trump has any intention nor the permission to even shave a little off of ‘defense’ spending? We have a war based economy that will die when the empire dies in the (hopefully) not too distant future.
As I said in the article, Trump’s definitely not shaving even a little off of defense spending. As for your second sentence, I hope you’re right.
If you stopped all the race, culture, gender, environmental and fashionable spending and stopped mollifying every CONgress toad by keeping open every post, camp and station that is not needed so the bureaucrats can keep their jobs and the CONgress toad can keep getting getting elected to sit on his, her or its a$$ and pontificate……….
Then you could save a bundle of cash and really have a lean department. Other than that forget about it…..
Susanna and Socrates.
You nailed it. Socrates, the Zionist Jews were right in the thick of Vietnam also.
((Their)) wars are ALWAYS about their ((GOD))!
GOLD
OIL
DRUGS
Name the war/conflict and you will find ((them)) trying to get control of ((GOD))!
Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world. – Henry Kissinger
” Many of his supporters hoped he would apply his business and entrepreneurial sensibilities and the lessons he had learned to governance.” I certainly believed that if we were ever going to get cost cutting and saving, Trump would be the one to give it to us. I now believe short of all out collapse we will just keep stumbling along until our creditors (whoever they truly are) say NO MORE!
The other day I was looking through some old books. My crazy uncle gave me when I was a kid. One of them Conservatism in America, written in 1970. By Clinton Rossiter had a very prescient quote from world improver in chief Woodrow Wilson.
“America is now sauntering through her resources and through the mazes of her politics with easy nonchalance but presently there will come a time when she will be surprised to find herself grown old, a country crowded, strained, perplexed,when she will be obliged to fall back on her conservatism, obliged to pull herself together, adopt a new regime of life, husband her resources,sober her views,restrict her vagaries, trust her best not her average members.”
I am starting to believe that we are an occupied/captured nation and we don’t even realize it
That’s an awesome quote. I may have to take another look at him.
And yes, the point of what I said above is that we are most definitely both an occupied and a captured nation. Government, media, education, intellectual movements, all run by and for the benefit of another nation. I’m finding my reading gravitating towards sites like the Daily Stormer and the Occidental Observer. They seem to offer a level of analysis and basic truth missing in all the conventional media/government propaganda, and sadly even in a lot of the alternative media.
Robert, I have great admiration for your body of work. That being said, on first read, I thought this was the dumbest thing by you I’ve yet read. I went back for a second read and noted this quote: “The military is on a long losing streak of inconclusive or lost wars that have sparked the terrorism they’re ostensibly meant to squelch, created political instability, wounded and killed hundreds of thousands, and driven millions more from their homes”. Glad you used the qualifier “ostensibly”. It seems clear that the MIC along with central banking is one of the most successful criminal enterprises ever concocted. Government is nothing but a theft machine and the MIC is an unqualified success in this regard. All the perceived military failures from Korea and Vietnam to the Middle East have met their true objectives. Death is the premier wealth building business of the United States of America. Cutting government spending is the last thing the political, banking and military class wants to see.
Dimitry Orlov calls the US the “Empire of Chaos”. A very apt name, we bring chaos (and death) wherever we go. Obviously intentionally, as you say.
Well, in any body of work there has to be a dumbest. However, I must note that I have said, repeatedly, what you said in your last few sentences, most recently in The Phoenix Template, Parts One and Two. Glad you picked up on the “ostensibly,” because I did indeed mean to say that while the war on terrorism is supposedly about terrorism, it’s a racket, totally corrupt.
no war profits without war
I think Trump feels insecure about rebuffing the interests and plans of his generals, so he listens to their arguments and then goes along despite his initial resistance to the stupid ME wars. We will see if he can regain his objectivity and insist on a sane foreign policy without getting himself killed. It will depend, it appears (and who really knows?) how much Jared and Ivanka whisper in his ear.
One reason I voted for Trump is that he knows how to run a very large multifaceted organization. He is learning on the job that any large organizations has its own culture, and he has a devil of a one to manage. I hope he is learning from at least some of his missteps.
I voted for Trump because I expected him to be the best choice to avoid WWIII, and also because of his bankruptcy experience. A twenty plus trillion dollar bankruptcy was what I was looking forward to. At this point I’ll say I was mistaken. By the way Mr. Gore, I do look forward to all your posts and usually agree with you. Thank you.
Points well written. Let’s be honest, he got the memo, do this or you’re dead. He’s a figurehead in a game of bullshit. Nothing changes, just like the referendum on the NJ ballot in 1976 promised an Atlantic City would be saved by gambling revenue. It’s for education and senior citizens. Right. More money in the same pockets of the same assholes. Atlantic City is a bigger shithole than 1976. The elite are running this ship into the iceberg and they’re gonna screw you out of your last dime before it sinks. Fuck em, do the small things right, none of these assholes are gonna help you or me, we’re on our own.
Make America Great Again ! I agree totally BUT , with what and by who ? I asked that question on day one of president Trumps bid for the excutive office and still no real answers . Your article speaks of jettisoning unprofitable or unproductive parts of a company and enhancing and concentrating capitol and efforts on what will pay off long term . To bad the majority that enjoy the circle jerk between Wall Street , K-Street , Capitol , Street and The Pentagon all with back relvolving doors jettisoned productive industries and all the men and women that kept things rolling . In 40 years now there has not been nationwide efforts to train welders , metal fabricators , millrights , industrial mechanics , machinists and tool & die makers . The senior people that did that were tossed out like Dixie cups and most had their retirement and health benefits stripped while sweatshops in China geared up with deplorable conditions for working people but hey the stock market is up . While here in America the widow of a shipyard worker scraps by after her husband benefits were wiped out as he suffocated from asbestosios . But there was a settlement , yes the law firm owner bought a baseball team with his cut while the widow collects food stamps . Now look who got bailed out , everybody that fucked over the system and Washington DC river rats put the bill in the widows children and grandchildrens names .
Trump was very good at getting in so deep that the creditors had to play ball or get nothing . When you as a middle class person owes the bank $100,000 and cannot pay you are in trouble and lose it all . But when Trump owes the bank $100 MILLON , the banks in trouble so he makes an offer than goes up to the penthouse office props his feet up and waits for the phone to ring and it will .
I believe President Trump is what our country needs now but I also believe he was completely overwhelmed when he saw the real figures and just how fucked up the previously mentioned circle jerk has made things !
If you owe the bank $100 that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem. J. Paul Getty
Mexican finance minister Silva-Herzog further modified this quote to the effect that if you owe enough to the bank, you become partners with the bank.
Donald Trump, Howard Beale and Arthur Jensen: What a 40 year old movie can tell us about today
My morning routine consists of the mundane. We all basically do the same things in the morning I think. Eventually, time permitting, I am able to browse some news sites to hear the latest claptrap. This morning I stumbled apon an article about Angela Davis, the 60’s radical black nationalist communist socialist Marxist/Leninist militant feminist (I could add more but I digress). She was in the news again proposing some lunacy about abolishing prisons. I’m not sure where she wants to keep all the murderers and rapists, I would assume not at her house, but that’s beside the point. I had never seen a picture of her before and what she looked like back in the heyday of her pathetic career somehow resonated with me. I swore I had seen her before. I was wrong. What I had seen was a CHARACTER based on her who looked essentially the same. Then I remembered a movie I had seen a long time ago and bingo, Angela Davis was satirically portrayed in the movie NETWORK. Great movie for those who are not familiar, I would recommend watching.
The movie is based around a fictional TV network and its Dan Rather like news anchor, Howard Beale, who becomes totally unhinged and starts spewing the truth as he sees it after professing to blow his brains out live on a broadcast. I’m not going to summarize the entire film, this is not meant to be a movie review. Beale eventually gets his own show which basically prefigures what The Jerry Springer Show would become circa 1996. The parallels are so spot on I could almost imagine TV producers seeing the film and seeking to imitate it. Watch and judge for yourself. Anyway, Beale gets his own show and preaches the truth to 60 million viewers every night. One night he makes comments about how America is being sold out to the Arabs and the people need to put a stop to it. Until now Beale had been seen as a useful idiot and a ratings machine but this particular rant infuriates his corporate masters who are in merger talks and need the Arab money. Beale sours the deal and is severely admonished by the big boss, Arthur Jensen. In a scene that I think is one of the best, most honest things that has ever come out of Hollywood Jensen takes Beale into a boardroom, closes the curtains, arranges the lighting to be just perfect, and then launches into his own tirade about how Beale has altered the fundamental forces of nature with his populist drivel. I can’t do it justice, it simply has to be seen to be appreciated. Jensen, being the head of a large conglomerate, is the quintessential businessman and realist. It reminded me a little of Donald Trump pre-2016. Ironically, the Beale character spewing his populist rhetoric reminded me of Trump 2016 on, the guy standing up for America, the idealist. The juxtaposition of these two roles, as depicted by two characters, and now essentially embodied by one REAL man in power is remarkable. Trump is both Beale and Jensen at the same time. A total contradiction who seems to have no problem handling his cognitive dissonance. Neuroscientists should examine that man’s brain under an MRI when he is speaking! Enough, back to the movie.
I’ve got to rewatch that movie. It’s been decades since I’ve seen it. So prescient.