The marker of the first 100 days of a presidency was set during the first administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR started office with plans, advisors, and legislation.
He called Congress into session and passed monumental legislation. Like Trump, Roosevelt had a Congress controlled by his own party.
The circumstances that Roosevelt faced were unique. Banks were shutting down. Depositors were losing their life’s savings. Businesses were running out of enough cash to keep going. At least 25 percent of American workers were unemployed. Many Americans felt it was a national emergency.
“When Roosevelt took power on March 4, 1933, many influential Americans doubted the capacity of a democratic government to act decisively enough to save the country,” writes historian Anthony Badger in “FDR: The First Hundred Days.” “Machine guns guarded government buildings. The newspapers and his audience responded most enthusiastically to Roosevelt’s promises in his inaugural to assume wartime powers if necessary. That sense of emergency certainly made Congress willing to give FDR unprecedented power.” Adds political scientist William Leuchtenburg in “The FDR Years”: “Roosevelt came to office at a desperate time, in the fourth year of a worldwide depression that raised the gravest doubts about the future of Western civilization.”
Roosevelt immediately called Congress into special session and kept it there for three months. He found that the Democrats who were in control were eager to do his bidding, and even some Republicans were cooperative. Raymond Moley, a member of FDR’s inner circle, said many legislators “had forgotten to be Republicans or Democrats” as they worked together to relieve the crisis.
FDR quickly won congressional passage for a series of social, economic, and job-creating bills that greatly increased the authority of the federal government—the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, which supplied states and localities with federal money to help the jobless; the Civil Works Administration to create jobs during the first winter of his administration; and the Works Progress Administration, which replaced FERA, pumped money into circulation, and concentrated on longer-term projects. The Public Works Administration focused on creating jobs through heavy construction in such areas as water systems, power plants, and hospitals. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. protected bank accounts. The Civilian Conservation Corps provided jobs for unemployed young men. The Tennessee Valley Authority boosted regional development. Also approved were the Emergency Banking Act, the Farm Credit Act, and the National Industrial Recovery Act.
In all, Roosevelt got 15 major bills through Congress in his first 100 days. “Congress doesn’t pass legislation anymore—they just wave at the bills as they go by,” said humorist Will Rogers.
Trump’s party controls both houses of Congress. Not a single piece of legislation has passed. Here is an insightful summary of Trump’s first 100 days.
Some pundit was on t.v. last night saying that jobs creation will be laying cable for the t.v., phone, computer infrastructure needed to do business. Now, I don’t know about you, but I know plenty of college educated folks who can’t find jobs in their fields. I know when the government puts people to work, its usually fixing roads, creating roads along side roads, building/repairing bridges. The unemployment office likes to send the unemployed to medical/coding/billing training, where there also are no jobs. I don’t get it. We’re not going to fix unemployment by creating jobs for the cable companies.
You may have been listening to the head of the FCC who, on C-span Wednesday, was claiming that net neutrality was stifling innovation, costing jobs, suppressing free speech, entrenching socialism in our culture and the usual spiel about government is the problem, deregulation is the panacea. If you want an alternative view, go to public knowledge.org
When will we be free of neolberal dogma? It’s profiteering & greed that’s stifling innovation. Boardroom greed is the cause of stagnate job growth, part-time, at-will employment, & stomping out any innovation that won’t raise stock prices in 3 months.
Roosevelt funded millions of jobs directly through the federal government. There was no third-party between the federal dollars & the employer. One example of a highly successful public project was TVA . TVA was a federally funded utility that employed thousands of workers & kept the south’s electricity affordable & accessible.
Roosevelt’s vision ended in the 1980’s as the Reagan administration privatized parts of TVA costing thousands of jobs. Instead of making TVA a national model for alternative energy sources, Reagan appointed a CEO to restructure & sell off parts of the utility. In a shameless gesture to GE, he removed the solar panels from the White House put there by Jimmy Carter to encourage the US to turn to renewable energy sources.TVA was slowly dismantled over time
Innovating our energy infrastructure needs an initiative like The Manhattan Project. Instead of leading the world in alternative energy & fully funding innovation the US built bigger cars & drilled for more oil. Catastrophic climate change is the legacy our selfish generation leaves our children.
After 100 days we know that Trump can write his name in big letters and hold it up to the camera for all to see.
He is looting the US Treasury to enrich his family & cronies.
A HUNDRED DAYS OF TRUMP
With his nativist and purely transactional view of politics, he threatens to be democracy’s most reckless caretaker.
By David Remnick
On April 29th, Donald Trump will have occupied the Oval Office for a hundred days. For most people, the luxury of living in a relatively stable democracy is the luxury of not following politics with a nerve-racked constancy. Trump does not afford this. His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite. The hundred-day marker is never an entirely reliable indicator of a four-year term, but it’s worth remembering that Franklin Roosevelt and Barack Obama were among those who came to office at a moment of national crisis and had the discipline, the preparation, and the rigor to set an entirely new course. Impulsive, egocentric, and mendacious, Trump has, in the same span, set fire to the integrity of his office.
Trump has never gone out of his way to conceal the essence of his relationship to the truth and how he chooses to navigate the world. In 1980, when he was about to announce plans to build Trump Tower, a fifty-eight-story edifice on Fifth Avenue and Fifty-sixth Street, he coached his architect before meeting with a group of reporters. “Give them the old Trump bullshit,” he said. “Tell them it’s going to be a million square feet, sixty-eight stories.”
This is the brand that Trump has created for himself—that of an unprincipled, cocky, value-free con who will insult, stiff, or betray anyone to achieve his gaudiest purposes…
Trump appears to strut through the world forever studying his own image. He thinks out loud, and is incapable of reflection. He is unserious, unfocussed, and, at times, it seems, unhinged….
Insofar as he had political opinions, they were inconsistent and mainly another form of performance art, part of his talk-show patter. His contributions to political campaigns were unrelated to conviction; he gave solely to curry favor with those who could do his business some good. He believed in nothing….The way that Trump has established his family members in positions of power and profit is redolent of tin-pot dictatorships….
One Hundred Days
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/a-hundred-days-of-trump
And here are the official Orange Buffoon’s comments, coming strait from the White House. (You are not allowed to barf while reading.)
………
President Trump’s 100 Days of Historic Accomplishments
GETTING GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE WAY: President Donald J. Trump has done more to stop the Government from interfering in the lives of Americans in his first 100 days than any other President in history.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/04/25/president-trumps-100-days-historic-accomplishments
This is a different topic but one that is relevant to current politics. Here is a fantastic documentary telling about the dictatorship that is occurring in North Korea. Currently one third of the people are suffering from malnutrition. 200,000 have tried to escape to South Korea but only 25,000 were successful. This is a terrifying picture of what a totalitarian regime can do to its people.
Never before seen real life footage inside of North Korea (Documentary)
Published on Dec 29, 2016
in this documentary you get to see how North Korean people really live in one of the rarest documentaries ever recorded by 2 French journalists exclusively given a visa for that purpose.
Diane,
I want to update you on your above comment – ” Not a single piece of legislation has passed.” — misleading – sorry to poke the bubble ….not all the bills signed were of high significance. Yes, ACA not completed to date…The most notable bills Trump has signed are a set of 13 that reverse Obama-era regulations on a range of issues including on internet privacy and gun control. While that was a goal for Republican lawmakers, it’s important to note these bills made it to Trump’s desk through a process made possible by the Congressional Review Act, which became law in 1996.
Generally speaking, it’s rare for a president to sign major legislation in his first 100 days, Frendreis said. “Outsider” presidents like Trump, in particular, need time to learn how to navigate the lawmaking process in Washington, and major legislation doesn’t move through Congress quickly. Roosevelt had the highest number – then Truman.
Trump has passed 28 pieces of legislation:
Signed on April 19, 2017
S.J.Res. 36 – Joint Resolution providing for the appointment of Roger W. Ferguson as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
Signed on April 19, 2017
S.J.Res. 35 – Joint Resolution providing for the appointment of Michael Govan as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
Signed on April 19, 2017
S.J.Res. 30 – Joint Resolution providing for the reappointment of Steve Case as a citizen regent of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution.
Signed on April 19, 2017
S. 544 – An Act to amend the Veterans Access, Choice, and Accountability Act of 2014 to modify the termination date for the Veterans Choice Program, and for other purposes.
Signed on April 18, 2017
H.R. 353 – Weather Research and Forecasting Innovation Act of 2017
Signed on April 13, 2017
H.J.Res. 67 – Joint Resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by qualified State political subdivisions for non-governmental employees.
Signed on April 13, 2017
H.J.Res. 43 – Joint Resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule submitted by Secretary of Health and Human Services relating to compliance with title X requirements by project…
Signed on April 3, 2017
S.J.Res. 34 – Joint Resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband…
Signed on April 3, 2017
H.R. 1228 – An Act to provide for the appointment of members of the Board of Directors of the Office of Compliance to replace members whose terms expire during 2017, and for other purposes.
Signed on April 3, 2017
H.J.Res. 83, which nullifies the Department of Labor’s rule titled Clarification of Employer’s Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness; and
Signed on April 3, 2017
H.J.Res. 69, which nullifies the Department of the Interior’s Fish and Wildlife Service’s final rule relating to non-subsistence takings of wildlife on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska
Signed on March 31, 2017
S.J.Res.1 – Joint Resolution approving the location of a memorial to commemorate and honor the members of the Armed Forces who served on active duty in support of Operation Desert Storm or Operation Desert Shield.
Signed on March 31, 2017
H.R.1362 – An Act to name the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Pago Pago, American Samoa, the Faleomavaega Eni Fa’aua’a Hunkin VA Clinic.
Signed on March 31, 2017
H.J.Res.42 – Joint Resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to drug testing of unemployment compensation applicants.
Signed on March 28, 2017
S. 305 – Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act of 2017
Signed on March 27, 2017
H.J.Res.57 – Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to accountability and State plans under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965.
Signed on March 27, 2017
H.J. Res. 58 – Joint Resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of Education relating to teacher preparation issues.
Signed on March 27, 2017
H.J. Res. 44 – Joint Resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior relating to Bureau of Land Management regulations that establish the procedures used to prepare, revise, or amend land use plans pursuant to the Federal Land
Signed on March 27, 2017
H.J. Res. 37 – Joint Resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Defense, the General Services Administration, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration relating to the Federal Acquisition Regulation.
Signed on March 21, 2017
S.442 – National Aeronautics and Space Administration Transition Authorization Act of 2017
Signed on March 13, 2017
H.R.609 – To designate the Department of Veterans Affairs health care center in Center Township, Butler County, Pennsylvania, as the “Abie Abraham VA Clinic”.
Signed on February 28, 2017
H.R. 321 – Inspiring the Next Space Pioneers, Innovators, Researchers, and Explorers (INSPIRE) Women Act
Signed on February 28, 2017
H.R. 255 – Promoting Women in Entrepreneurship Act
Signed on February 28, 2017
H.J.Res. 40 – Joint Resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Social Security Administration relating to Implementation of the NICS Improvement Amendments Act of 2007.
Signed on February 16, 2017
H.J.Res.38 – Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of the Interior known as the Stream Protection Rule.
Signed on February 14, 2017
H.J.Res.41 – Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of a rule submitted by the Securities and Exchange Commission relating to “Disclosure of Payments by Resource Extraction Issuers”.
Signed on January 31, 2017
H.R.72 – GAO Access and Oversight Act of 2017
Signed on January 20, 2017
S.84 – A bill to provide for an exception to a limitation against appointment of persons as Secretary of Defense within seven years of relief from active duty as a regular commissioned officer of the Armed Forces.
And PEMDING legislation
Pending & posted on April 28, 2017
H.J.Res. 99 – Joint Resolution making further continuing appropriations for fiscal year 2017, and for other purposes.
Not all promises have been kept, but in a hundred days a major learning curve has been learned….
“Not all promises have been kept, but in a hundred days a major learning curve has been learned….”
Wonder what female that curve was on??
Duane,
It is the same female curve every President deals with – and be careful when we do get a female prez – it might be a non PC comment to use your “…female that curve was on”
Jscheidell,
Those resolutions are not exactly major pieces of legislation. Most were no more than rolling back regulations adopted by the Obama administration to protect the environment or protect people. We certainly don’t want our government to protect us from financial predators or mentally ill people with guns, do we? I do, but that’s just me.
Diane,
I think I said they were not major
..”not all the bills signed were of high significance. Yes, ACA not completed to date…The most notable bills Trump has signed are a set of 13 that reverse Obama-era regulations on a range of issues including on internet privacy and gun control.
The issue at hand was your statement that “nothing” was passed as legislation…
Jscheidell,
That list of resolutions is nothing.
Roosevelt’s New Deal, was derailed by the Supreme Court, in the case of A.L.A. Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States, 295 U.S. 495 (1935). You can learn more about it at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.L.A._Schechter_Poultry_Corp._v._United_States
A good read, is “New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America” by Burton W. Folsom Jr. FDR’s economic policies actually exacerbated the depression, and retarded economic growth.
FDR was not a “messiah”, taking the USA to the Promised Land. It took Hitler and Hirohito, and WW2, to end the Depression of the 1930’s.
FDR created many programs to lift people out of poverty. He may have been our greatest president.
Diane,
I find FDR, although elected 4 times, wish he had taken Washington’s lead at the end of his 2nd term, surrounded in a myth.
I agree with Charles.
The most enduring myth is that FDR’s avalanche of alphabet-soup government programs ended the Great Depression.
I will say that FDR cared about the working man and “gave the country hope,” Roosevelt exuded empathy, as did Clinton – remember Bill Clinton’s memorable line “I feel your pain”? —
but caring doesn’t create jobs or lift gross domestic product.
Nor does spending government money revive growth, despite the theories put into practice by the then-dean of all economists, John Maynard Keynes. Any objective analysis of these facts can lead to no other conclusion. U.S. unemployment averaged a rate of 18 percent during Roosevelt’s first eight years in office. In the decade of the 1930s, U.S. industrial production and national income fell by about almost one-third. In 1940, after year eight years of the New Deal, unemployment was still averaged a god-awful 14 percent.
Almost everything FDR did to jump-start growth retarded it. The rise in the minimum wage kept unemployment intolerably high. Roosevelt’s work programs like the Works Progress Administration, National Recovery Administration and the Agricultural Adjustment Administration were so bureaucratic as to have minimal impact on jobs. Raising tax rates to nearly 80 percent on the rich stalled the economy. Social Security is and always was from the start a Madoff-style Ponzi scheme that will eventually sink into bankruptcy unless reformed.
I wonder why the Dems today still drop the line that Trump’s tax plan will only benefit the rich – when you cut the numbers the middle class get the biggest break – but any cuts would jump start the lagging economy from Obama’s years 0f the meager 1 to 1.5 % and 8 additional trillion, And Schumer Pelosi et al worry about the deficit and debt now – a joke.
The most alarming story of economic ignorance surrounding this New Deal era was the tax increases while the economy was faltering. According to economist Burt Folsom, FDR signed one of the most financially devastating taxes: “On April 27, 1942, he signed an executive order taxing all personal income above $25,000 [rich back then] at 100 percent. Congress balked at that idea and later lowered it to 90 percent at the top level.” The New Dealers completely ignored the lessons of the 1920s tax cuts, which just a decade before had unfurled an age of super-growth.
Then there was the spending and debt barrage. Federal spending catapulted from $4.65 billion in 1933 to nearly $13.7 billion in 1941. This tripling of the federal budget in just eight years came at a time of almost no inflation (just 13.1 percent cumulative during that period). Budget surpluses during the prosperous Coolidge years became ever-larger deficits under FDR’s fiscal reign. During his first term, more than half the federal budget on average came from borrowed money.
The cruel irony of the New Deal is that the liberals’ honorable intentions to help the poor and the unemployed caused more human suffering than any other set of ideas in the past century.
I think he sold a lot of people down the drain to the Russians at the end of the war as well…
The entire rationale for the Obama economic plan in 2009 was to re-create new New Deal.
I guess the truth lies with who writes the history books and snooker the population into believing it…
I think the greatest President would be Lincoln – anybody but FDR.
I completely agree with Diane. As a senior with health issues who does not get disability income and is semi-retired, I don’t know what I would do without Social Security. Though it’s not enough to survive on alone, because I’ve been a low paid educator at non-unionized schools for most of my career, and it looks like I’ll have to work until I die, I feel indebted to FDR for Social Security. Without that I would be back on the street right now, instead of being put up in transitional housing for the homeless, because one must have some kind of regular income to qualify for assistance and the little unpredictable money I make from my job would not cover basic survival expenses.
TR was great for the working class, too. I wish we had more Roosevelts who genuinely care about those who are less fortunate, are not owned by big business and who are willing to slam the breaks on greedy business people who exploit and defraud the common man and rape the planet when there are no regulations to stop them and protect the vulnerable.
Think Trump’s Stupid? Get A Load Of This Interview…(Don’t you love Donald Muck?)
The Young Turks
Published on Apr 24, 2017
Trump’s recent AP interview was… wow.
Charles
So you agree that Roosevelt had it right . If the Government spends a lot of money putting people to work the economy grows. You probably do not realize that you are a big supporter of Roosevelt .
Your last line is the greatest endorsement of Roosevelt and Keynesian
economics there is . So lets raise taxes on the wealthy and have the government put people to work .
By the way unemployment was down a full 15% before the first bomb hit Honolulu
Thanks Joel for pointing out that FDR significantly lowered the unemployment rate well before our entrance into WWII, his policies were working and were alleviating the pain and suffering of the American people. The FDR haters always glide over that important fact. FDR raised taxes during the depression and a time of war. Bush #2 lowered taxes during a time of war. That despicable phony religious hack and DDT lover, Tom Delay, said that the most important thing was to LOWER taxes during a time of war. WWII was a huge spending program, very Keynesian.
I do not agree that Roosevelt had it right (in the economic realm). Do not put words into my mouth.
Bullhockey. The rt wing has been denigrating Roosevelt’s accomplishments for decades.
It was US private industry & finance that did business with Hitler before, during & after the war. IBM financed the data processing for concentration camps & Wall St helped finance Hitler’s war-building factories.
The business elite would have sold the US to Germany if they could have gotten away with it. Roosevelt begged US businesses to re-tool & re-build our military so the US could defend Europe & the US from Hitler’s machine. Many businessmen refused, so Roosevelt nationalized those businesses, retooled factories, & employed millions. The rest is history.
FDR had the courage to call out the oligarchs as selfish, power hungry forces. “Government by organized money is just as dangerous as government organized mob. They are unanimous in their hate for me & I welcome their hatred.” We need more bold elected officials like Roosevelt.
“It was US private industry & finance that did business with Hitler before, during & after the war.”
I’m sure that is not quite exactly what you meant to say.
Grim,
I do not accept that my reply to Diane regarding Roosevelt was “Bullhockey. The rt wing has been denigrating Roosevelt’s accomplishments for decades.
It was to note, I guess in an awkward manner, that there should be a balance and the truth is only good if both sides of the facts on the issues give the whole truth.
It is like the history books I used in class which only gave the accepted ideology of those who wrote it. Same exists today in those texts
Philadelphia has created a museum of the American Revolution. – It tells the story, which includes voices not heard. The Oneida Nation sided with Washington whereas the Iroquois sided with the British. Oneidas were our first ally. Oriskanny battle in 1777 was never in any books in school.
So I feel IMHO , the whole story of facts should be given, not just Twinkly stories which are filled only by the cream of their ideology.
So please don’t succumb to being a snowflake when someone presents a difference of view – safe spaces, aroma therapies, therapy dogs, etc are the beginnings of the erosion of free speech…Civics and history needs more focus in our schools – HS and colleges alike.
Diane,
I understand your dislike for our President
But in the realm of legislation, 100 days is a short period of time. Significant bills take a long time to complete, often measured in years rather than days.
President George W. Bush’s first tax cut and No Child Left Behind initiative didn’t pass in the first 100 days. The Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank financial industry regulations didn’t become law in President Barack Obama’s first 100 days either, though he and Congress did pass a nearly $800 billion stimulus bill. Other than that, Obama signed several program re-authorizations, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (that had been in the works in the previous Congress) and a bill naming a post office.
The first 100 days? Better consider the next 1000 plus days left of the first term and at the end then come back and lets compare….
IF he does get the major tax cut thru will you be happy to send the extra cash back to the feds because Trump got it done…?
Jscheidell,
The GOP controls both houses of Congress and the Presidency and the Supreme Court. Yet all they have “accomplished” is to roll back Obama regulations, like allowing the mentally ill to buy guns and allowing coal companies to dump waste into streams.
He put the economy in the hands of Goldman Sachs and they proposed massive tax cuts for the 1%. No surprise.
Now Trump whines that his old life was easier and he never knew this would so “hard.”
He seems to have lots of free time to tweet and brag. He even invited Sarah Plain and two slackers to the White House and spent four hours with them!
Meanwhile, no ambassadors have been appointed, no deputy secretaries or assistant secretaries have been appointed. Every department is operating unstaffed.
This level of incompetence is unprecedented.
Diane,
Obama owned the house and senate for first 2 years and how many days did it take to get Obamacare – ACA thru? I know you know the number. He must have been on the same female curve Duane noted above….
Betsy DeVos Says Media Shouldn’t Emphasize First Hundred Days Because “It’s So Hard to Count to a Hundred”
By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
29 April 17
(The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, “The Borowitz Report.” )
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos criticized the media on Friday for placing so much emphasis on Donald Trump’s first hundred days, because “it’s so darn hard to count to a hundred.”
“I’m watching the news and they’re going on about a hundred days this and a hundred days that, and all I want to say is, ‘Who the heck can count all the way to a hundred?’ ” she said. “They’re acting like we’re a bunch of math geniuses.”
DeVos added that, if the media wanted to establish a benchmark for Trump’s achievement, “they should have picked a number of days that people can actually count to, like five or ten.”
The Education Secretary then demonstrated how it was possible to count to ten using one’s hands.
Despite the media’s obsession with “ridiculously big numbers,” DeVos said she has no intention of trying to count to a hundred.
“I have an important job and the last thing I need is to do something that makes my head hurt,” she said.
Related- At its homepage, AFT mentions a day of action, in the 3rd box, of a row of entries. If a viewer clicks on the box, the page expands with May 1, “Reclaim our schools” event info..
Why isn’t it a banner headline on the page???????
The UFT homepage doesn’t even mention May 1. WHY???
FDR took on the economic royalists, he defied them and earned their hatred, he did not embrace them. Trump has done the exact opposite, he has given a free pass to the economic royalists, he has hired them and wants to cut their taxes to an all time low. The top marginal tax rate during the FDR administration was 91%. FDR gave us Social Security, a savior for millions of Americans. The current GOP has been chomping at the bit to kill off SS for years. Bush the destroyer tried to privatize SS but failed. Clinton tried to work some SS “compromise” with Gingrich but was side-lined by the Lewinsky scandal. Obama was a bit squishy on SS but that Cat Food Commission flopped because there were enough pro-SS proponents on the panel.
From politifact: “In 1944-45, during World War II, couples making more than $200,000 faced an all-time high of 94 percent.
“http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/15/bernie-s/income-tax-rates-were-90-percent-under-eisenhower-/
My 91% for FDR may be off for the initial years of his administration. The top marginal tax rate was 91% during Ike’s administration.
mark fiore’s the best 100 days ever: http://www.markfiore.com/april-june-2017/2017/4/26/the-best-first-100-days-ever-1
The New Yorker: His Presidency has become the demoralizing daily obsession of anyone concerned with global security, the vitality of the natural world, the national health, constitutionalism, civil rights, criminal justice, a free press, science, public education, and the distinction between fact and its opposite.For those whose task it has been to report on, probe, or just make sense of the most unorthodox Presidency in American history, it has been a manic hundred days.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/01/a-hundred-days-of-trump?mbid=nl_100%20Days%20(1)&CNDID=45272181&spMailingID=10916958&spUserID=MTgwNzgwOTcyMzEyS0&spJobID=1142301829&spReportId=MTE0MjMwMTgyOQS2
And from By Anthony Barnes https://www.opednews.com/articles/TRAPPED-IN-THE-CUCKOO-S-NE-by-Anthony-Barnes-Barack-Obama_Carter-Page_Christopher-Steele_Deep-State-170424-924.html It seems remarkable that America has somehow managed to make it through the first 100 days of donald trump’s hair-raising “presidency.” But now, all layers of speculation about trump’s character have been removed. It’s fairly well established that expedient mendacity — lying out of convenience — is the prevailing focus of any donald trump strategy for handling personal and personal and presidential responsibilities.
I posted your wonderful essay as a comment when I posted the Frank Bruni piece.
https://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/Donald-Trump-s-One-Awful-A-in-Best_Web_OpEds-Frank-Bruni_Mockery_Trump-Idiot-in-chief_Trump-Insults-170430-854.html#comment656503
Here is the summary of that piece which I use as the introduction. It nils Trumps only accomplishment!
“Trump’s accomplishment is his complete and consistent rejection of the conventional etiquette of the office — of public comportment that speaks to the best in us. Other presidents have at least done a pantomime of the qualities that we try to instill in children: humility, honesty, magnanimity, generosity. Even Nixon took his stabs at these. Trump makes a proud and almost ceaseless mockery of them. It’s one thing to fall short of them, as so many presidents have. It’s quite another to step onto the inaugural stage, put your hand on the Bible and then go out of your way to belittle the past presidents who are sitting just a few feet away. He wasn’t just assaulting propriety. He was fashioning a new model of leadership which could strut and seethe and whine like this. He was consigning an entire roster of virtues to the junkyard of the quaint.”
I wonder how many Americans will remember what Trump did accomplish in the first 100 days in the next year. All I can come up with is the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.
Ken,
The first 100 days has been a marker created during FDR – Since then very few, if any one, can remember what any Prez does during those days – the learning “female” curve?
Even Obama noted the following – quote: Obama stated that he should not be judged by his first hundred days: “The first hundred days is going to be important, but it’s probably going to be the first thousand days that makes the difference.”
If he is still able to stay in the office that long. He’s walking the landmines in the swamp he refilled.
All that Trump really did was follow the party line. He happily complied with GOP commands to take revenge on Democrats and slap Obama in the face by rescinding Obama’s Executive Orders, and by completing the underhanded ploy of Republicans to deny an Obama pick for the Supreme Court, and so they could select a right wing judge to roll back human rights, including women’s rights to choose what happens with their own bodies and gay marriage, most likely.
That’s because Trump mistakenly thought he was becoming an unaccountable ruler, like he was in the family business, and he knows nothing about sharing governance with the branches that assure checks and balances to prevent a tyrant like him from becoming dictator of the land. But other than barking orders, Trump really had no polices of his own.
Trump is dependent on party leaders and advisors to govern for him, but that’s probably not news to him because, as head of the family business, most likely he often delegated, so that he could take off and play golf, etc. No doubt, he has assigned hid team the task of figuring out how he could possibly meet his campaign promises, which is pretty impossible since many of them clash with Libertarian/Tea Party values, such as the promise of affordable healthcare for all after repealing ObamaCare.
So, what did Trump do? In a nutshell, not one damn thing of his own. That is, unless you count how he got people to keep up the charade of lies for him and how he mistreated some of our key allies, as well as the millions of dollars on the tax payer’s dime he spent on travel and protection for him and his family at their various abodes. Not a very good record at all.
“Will We Survive 1,361 More Days? : On Trump’s First 100 Days” from the Guardian, UK.
…Believe it or not, it’s been a productive 100 days. Most observers will tell you that since assuming office Donald Trump has accomplished nothing significant except for Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court appointment. But they’re wrong. Through his competence-challenged presidency, Trump has achieved a great deal: he has allowed us to rediscover the joys of taking to the streets for a better future.
He has compelled us to educate ourselves about previously arcane topics like the emoluments clause. He’s made us commit to the importance of sanctuary cities. And he has shaken the press out of a damaging stupor that often saw access to the powerful as more important than checking the powerful.
I mean, even the scientists are marching in the streets now.
But it’s not all bread and roses, neither of which may survive under Trump’s environmental policy. Besides his near complete reliance on unworkable executive orders to govern, and his astonishingly immature tendency to take credit for things he clearly hasn’t done, Trump has also shown that he is an easily distracted man who levies threats and wages war to divert attention.
His administration threatens Muslims and Dreamers, Mexicans and Canadians, artists and Meals on Wheels recipients. And in his first 100 days, the US has dropped more bombs and expanded the wars in Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, while releasing the largest non-nuclear weapon ever used in combat in Afghanistan. Now they are rattling sabers at North Korea.
Will we survive 1,361 more days of this? Who knows, but if we do, maybe we’ll even become a more caring society because of it. We’re already learning the importance of uniting in our opposition to Trump. That which doesn’t kill us, could one day make us stronger. And if it does, Trump will want to take credit for that….
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/29/will-survive-1361-days-panel-verdict-trumps-100-days?CMP=share_btn_link
Ivanka & Jared: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
LastWeekTonight
Published on Apr 23, 2017
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner hold an incredible amount of political power. That’s troubling considering their incredibly small amount of political experience.