Not sure you're interested in Trump's positions but...
DONALD J. TRUMP POSITIONS
TY for the link.
First of all, the thread is about the fact that Mr. Trump largely doesn't talk about and promote his own positions. He largely only criticizes everyone else's or criticizes what others have done. On top of that, when one actually reads through his position statements, one finds glaring omissions of detail.
Gun Control and the Mental Health System:
So I clicked on the link you provided. The very first thing I read was Mr. Trump's remarks headed "Fix Our Broken Mental Health System." And what did I find? Not one word about how to do that. The section ends, "We need real solutions to address real problems. Not grandstanding or political agendas."
Okay, yes we need "real solutions," Mr. Trump. What are your "real solution" proposals to "fix our broken mental health system?"
Gun Control and Background Checks:
"When the system was created, gun owners were promised that it would be instant, accurate and fair. Unfortunately, that isn’t the case today. Too many states are failing to put criminal and mental health records into the system – and it should go without saying that a system’s only going to be as effective as the records that are put into it. What we need to do is fix the system we have and make it work as intended. What we don’t need to do is expand a broken system."
Okay...yes, we need to fix the system. How, Mr. Trump, assuming the fix is to " put criminal and mental health records into 'the system' ," whatever "the system" is, please give me a high level plan for making that happen? Nothing insanely detailed, just the half dozen to ten "must have" milestones in the overall approach you propose. That's no more than you'd ask of someone pitching the rough outline of a project to you....Surely you can do that much, right?
The Trump Tax Plan:
Here Mr. Trump has a bit more detail indicating what he wants to do, and that's not surprising seeing as finance is sort of "his thing." What's missing is anything, much less something credible, that shows or at least strongly suggests the probability of any of its predictions actually materializing.
For example, he states that his proposals are revenue neutral and then he writes, "Simplifying the tax code and cutting every American’s taxes will boost consumer spending, encourage savings and investment, and maximize economic growth....These lower rates will provide a tremendous stimulus for the economy – significant GDP growth, a huge number of new jobs and an increase in after-tax wages for workers."
Okay, based on what models? Being a man of big numbers and financial wheeling and dealing, I expect you have some legit basis for making those assertions. Show me the numbers that form that basis. Surely you didn't come up with the very specific tax rates and claim that your plan is revenue neutral based on a dream, or just outright pulling them outta your ass, did you?
Immigration and ICE
Mr. Trump writes that he would triple the quantity of ICE officers from 5K to 15K. He writes to show how that'll be effective, "Approximately 5,000 officers in ICE cover 50 states, Puerto Rico and Guam, and are attempting to enforce immigration law against 11 million illegal aliens already in the interior of the United States."
Okay, so I have to agree that 15K ICE officers will likely have more impact than will 5K of them. What I want to know is why should I accept that 15K ICE officers are going to have a meaningfully greater impact than 5K officers against the 11 million illegal aliens you mentioned?
My take on Mr. Trump's so-called plans, not from a political perspective, but just as a project/business manager:
Mr. Trump does essentially the same thing senior folks in my industry (consulting) do: conceive, plan and manage very large projects. That's basically what he's going to do as President as well. The questions I've asked above are among the very basic sorts of questions that any partner or client exec would ask of a proposal team. More accurately, however, they are the kinds of questions that a strong proposal team would address up front so they wouldn't need to be directly asked.
What Mr. Trump is doing is presenting what I typically refer to as the "cocktail napkin" proposal. It's the sort of questions that when the lunch meeting or golf round is over, one or both parties reach out to a subordinate and have them pull together a team of people to flush out the details at the level indicated by the questions I've asked above. If after doing so, the ideas still "hold water," you move forward and dig into the real details.
What do I mean by that? Take the idea of tripling the ICE force to 15K. Mr. Trump says he'll pay for it by "by accepting
the recommendation of the Inspector General for Tax Administration and eliminating tax credit payments to illegal immigrants." Well, that recommendation consists of implementing process improvements and internal controls to drastically reduce the sum of unnecessary tax refunds given to foreign nationals. According to the report, written in 2012, the sum is ~$46.5M.
- Have the reforms indicated in the report already been implemented? If so, how much has been gained from implemented them?
- Assuming the revisions haven't been implemented, $46.5M/10K = $4650. I know just like everyone else that nobody is hiring 10K new ICE officers for $4650/year. And that's even before considering the indirect and overhead costs associated with 10K new employees. Even assuming a modest salary of $50K/ICE officer, that's $500M in direct wages.
As you can see from the above, I can suss out some very high level ballpark figures associated with Mr. Trump's proposal and tell there's a huge gap somewhere. I know damn well that Mr. Trump has a campaign staff would could have done at least as much, but they didn't...for whatever reason, but at the end of the day, the reason stops at Mr. Trump's not insisting that they did.
The above is just one illustration of the perfunctory BS that Mr. Trump is tossing our way and expecting us to accept it. That alone may not be the worst thing, but taken in conjunction with other facts...
- Mr. Trump having zero experience legislating for or managing organizations the size of many a government entity -- a federal department, a state or department in one, or even a mid-to-large size state or federal agency -- and thus is not aware of (nor tried to be so) of the challenges of doing so, and
- The fact that I know Mr. Trump would not himself accept the above level of mediocrity and paucity of precision and clarity from his direct reports in his commercial enterprise, yet he's putting less than his "best foot forward" in presenting his ideas to us whom he's asking to make him U.S. President, and
- Mr. Trump's having gone bankrupt multiple times.
So considering those facts, I have to say that as senior business manager who does much the same things he does, I'm just not seeing the gravitas that suggests I should put my one resource -- my vote -- in his box. Were someone on my staff in seeking my OK to go forward with a project, or present the proposal to an existing or potential client, to present to me the quality of proposals that Mr. Trump has presented to the American people as his intended policies, they'd (1) be told "no,"
and (2) if they continued to do so, "out counseled" within a few months. And that's a damn shame because as a senior business manager, I would love to vote for Mr. Trump.
