{"id":5550,"date":"2016-10-02T14:40:04","date_gmt":"2016-10-02T19:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=5550"},"modified":"2016-10-02T14:40:04","modified_gmt":"2016-10-02T19:40:04","slug":"analyzing-literally","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/10\/02\/analyzing-literally\/","title":{"rendered":"Analyzing Literally"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/10\/01\/politics\/donald-trump-taxes-report-hillary-clinton\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\"><em><strong>CNN<\/strong><\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Saturday&#8217;s developments come less than a week after Trump appeared to indicate that he had not paid federal income tax over an unspecified period during a debate with Clinton. The Democratic nominee accused the billionaire of refusing to release his returns because he wanted to hide how little tax he had paid.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That makes me smart,&#8221; Trump replied, and also said that any tax money he had paid would have been wasted by the federal government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Isn&#8217;t this a cause and effect <em><strong>switcheroo<\/strong><\/em>? Saving money on taxes doesn&#8217;t <em>make<\/em> you smart, it just makes you slightly wealthier, if only momentarily &#8211; if he ran off to a casino and lost it on the slots, the result is insignificant.<\/p>\n<p>But perhaps this is part of a mindset wherein we judge folks based on their actions &#8211; a meritocracy, if you will.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Look at me, I didn&#8217;t pay taxes, that must mean I&#8217;m smarter than the doofus down the street who paid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, he must make the assertion because, at some level, he must be aware there are alternative interpretations; but, as a businessman, through and through, who&#8217;s completely assimilated the ethics &amp; morality of the private sector with, apparently, no regard for the public sector, it never occurs to him that government provides a number of services from which\u00a0the Trump empire benefits: from the fact that we&#8217;re not someone&#8217;s colonial bitch, police services, judicial services (or is it too ironic to mention those in view of his various legal entanglements with those he&#8217;s screwed over?), even the much despised EPA, which helps lead the way in keeping the air breathable &#8211; indeed, at age 70, he should be thankful, since the haze we see over Beijing would have undoubtedly killed him if it were over New York City.<\/p>\n<p>No, none of this occurs to him. He&#8217;s swallowed a right-wing fringe meme hook, line, and sinker.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2016\/09\/28\/seth-meyers-trump-basically-admitted-he-doesn-t-pay-federal-income-tax-in-debate.html\" target=\"_blank\">It would be squandered too, believe me.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That&#8217;s all he can see on his own. He apparently has no clue that government is better than no government. He&#8217;s firmly a creature of the private sector, and without a clue as to why the public sector exists, its responsibilities and processes, he has little qualification for the position. He&#8217;ll just run it like a company, and that will end up <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/sectors-of-society\/\" target=\"_blank\">being a disaster<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From CNN: Saturday&#8217;s developments come less than a week after Trump appeared to indicate that he had not paid federal income tax over an unspecified period during a debate with Clinton. The Democratic nominee accused the billionaire of refusing to release his returns because he wanted to hide how little \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2016\/10\/02\/analyzing-literally\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5551,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550\/revisions\/5551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}