2016 August 8^th

Donald Trump is addressing the Detroit Economic Club as I write this. I listened to him for a bit and it was instructive; he was not greeted by enthusiastic applause on some of the occasions when he obviously expected it. You could tell he thought the line would get applause because he paused just a tick after he said it, then when he got no response, he moved right along.

This speech will provide a truly fun time for FactCheck.org. In the very few minutes I listened to Trump several bits of misleading nonsense emerged. In his rant about the poor employment picture in this country he said that 20 percent of families have no one in the labor market. Horrors! But then my wife and I are retired and not in the labor market; our neighbor, a widow, is not in the labor market, the folks next to her are retired too and not in the labor market, a friend has had a recurrence of cancer and is not in the labor market, her brother has had a stroke and is not in the labor market. The Detroit Economic Club (DEC) is a sophisticated audience; why would anyone expect them to be influenced by such nonsense.

Moving right along Trump tells us about the terrible trade deals that have decimated the auto industry. He mentions the “yuge” number of jobs lost. Drive your car anywhere and you will be impressed by the “yuge” number of cars out there. They aren’t all imports…and many foreign marks are made right here in the US. The jobs are lost, but they are lost primarily to automation. In 2009, the first year President Obama was in office the US manufactured just 5.7 million cars and trucks. That was the low point thanks to the Bush-Cheney recession. In 2014 that production had risen to 11.6 million cars and trucks. This doubling in automobile production was the result of the “failed Obama administration.”

Trump wants to reduce the federal corporate tax rate, now at 35 percent, which Trump claims is the highest in the world. Almost no company pays that rate; GE on a recent year used various loopholes to pay nothing at all. Lobbyists suggest enlarging the loopholes and our fine representatives oblige them. According to the Government Accounting Office (GAO) the effective tax rate in 2010 for large major corporations was just under 17 percent. That’s less than half the tax rate Trump is using to scare voters You didn’t really expect honesty from this man did you?

He also wants to reduce “regulations.” Regulations, such as those the government requires for the safety of coal miners, save lives. When they are reduced or ignored they cost lives. Massey Energy’s CEO, Don Blankenship figured his Upper Big Branch mine would be more profitable if he relaxed those pesky regulations just a bit. The result was 29 dead miners and a jail term for Blankenship. What regulations do Trump want to reduce or eliminate? He isn’t saying. Neither is he saying what programs will be cut to compensate for all those tax cuts; nor is he saying how much the cuts will add to the national debt. Some things you just don’t need to know about.