Guy Page: What I would have said on WDEV this morning, if I had the time

By Guy Page

This morning I was the designated pro-Trumper on the Dave Gram Show on WDEV, discussing Washington’s Impeachment Case Du Jour: our president asking his Ukrainian counterpart to re-investigate the alleged misdeeds of a private citizen who got rich as a board member of the state energy company — a private citizen who by amazing coincidence is the son of the U.S. official driving U.S.-Ukrainian policy at the time, Vice-President Joe Biden.

Guy Page is affiliated with the Vermont Energy Partnership, the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare, and Physicians, Families & Friends for a Better Vermont.

To his credit, host Dave Gram asked me to kick things off at 9:05 by talking about how Sen. Pat Leahy also asked a senior Ukrainian official to re-investigate the alleged misdeeds of a private U.S. citizen, with direct impact on the 2020 election. In response, both host Gram and anti-Trump guest John Walters (formerly of Seven Days) opined that Leahy’s letter was nothing like Trump’s perfidious phone call. Then a couple of pro-Trump Vermonters called, we nattered on for a few more minutes, the 9:30 a.m. commercial break arrived, and that was that.

Had I had the time, after addressing Impeachment Mania, I also would have said Trump’s enemies are missing the big picture. They fail to see — perhaps don’t want to see — the benefits of Trump administration policies for American citizens in general, and for Vermont in particular:

Best-ever employment rate among minority Americans. Unemployment has been a chronic toothache in the minority community since the government started collecting employment data. The longtime backers of the Great Society should be cheering madly that minorities are approaching employment equality. Poverty equals violence. Employment equals opportunity. Most Americans just want good jobs and to be left alone.

Elimination of the need for oil wars. The first Gulf War, 9/11, the second Gulf war and Afghanistan likely would never have happened if the U.S. had not been addicted to foreign oil. Thanks to hydro-fracking technology and Trump’s support for it, Americans can just shrug when Iran or some other bad actor threatens the flow of oil. We mine and refine our own. Attacks on tankers and Saudi refineries have barely budged the cost of gasoline.  Furthermore, President Trump recently fired the hawkish John Bolton as his national security adviser, making ridiculous Rep. Peter Welch’s warning that Trump listens to pro-war advisers. For both economic and ideological reasons, it is unlikely in the extreme that during the presidency of Donald Trump Vermont will ever participate in a new oil war. Thank God! Vermont has lost hundreds of soldiers on the battlefield and to suicide and drug abuse. Good riddance to oil wars.

Lower Vermont state personal income taxes. The 2017 federal reform led by Trump gave big corporations a tax cut but also insisted they pay them to the United States, not to some tax-sheltered island country oasis. As a result, Vermont’s corporate tax receipts have grown considerably, in turn making it easier for Gov. Phil Scott and the Legislature to keep personal income taxes low.

More peace-of-mind for Vermont state, municipal and school pensioners. Simply put, the state’s pension fund has been an underfunded mess for years. The only recent silver lining has been the strong performance of pension fund investments, which increase fund value and are direct result of the ongoing stock market revival that began the day after Trump was elected.

Less actual carbon emissions and smog. New technology and positive government-industry relationships have created hydrofracking and ultra-clean heating oil. As a result, our actual carbon footprint is going down and our air is cleaner.  The Trump administration has rejected the Green New Deal hatred of incremental improvement. The GND would cut low-carbon nuclear and hydrofracking off at the knees, leaving us supposedly reliant on slowly-developing, extremely expensive, intrusive renewable power, but in reality on the last-ditch standbys of oil and coal. No thanks!

More Jobs. No new “Blood for Oil” wars. Lower taxes, both state and federal. Cleaner air. Safer pensions. That’s what Vermonters and all Americans have seen during the Trump administration, and the president deserves at least some of the credit. So why is Washington desperate to impeach him? Why would they even want to?

Guy Page is affiliated with the Vermont Energy Partnership; the Vermont Alliance for Ethical Healthcare; and Physicians, Families and Friends for a Better Vermont.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons/Dennis Hill

5 thoughts on “Guy Page: What I would have said on WDEV this morning, if I had the time

  1. The Hunter Biden getting rich off poor Ukrainians by his clear connections to Joe Biden sounds like a perfect Bernie Sanders talking point … if it were not for their political alliance.

  2. These anti Trump fanatics are so blind with rage their minds are made up regardless of the facts. If, on the other hand, Obama made a similar call to a world leader requesting that he or she look into Trump’s business dealings in that country, these clowns would shout from every roof top “congrats Barack, great to see you upholding your oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States”. As for poor ole Uncle Joe, this entire charade could well come back to haunt him. While he claims he never talked to Hunter about this $50,000 a month gig for being the sitting Vice President’s son, it seems that Hunter has indicated that indeed has talked with Dad. Interesting to see how this whole episode plays out.

    • The point is that the Obama administration did, indeed, request other countries look into Trump’s business dealings…and more. Fusion GPS, the Steele dossier, FBI collusions with same, the Leahy-Menendez-Durbin inquiry, the Mueller investigation and the various leaks of Trumps calls with the heads of state of Australia, Mexico and now Ukraine, are all examples of the Deep State (i.e. Factions operating within government).

      How can we forget the ‘Fast & Furious’ guns-to-Mexico fiasco when Attorney General Holder was held in contempt of congress, The IRS scandal targeting conservative political organizations (with operatives pleading 5th Amendment privilege instead of testifying), the Benghazi excuses, the Uranium One collusion, Russian contributions to the Clinton Foundation and, of course, Hillary Clinton destroying emails under subpoena by congress. And now we find not only that Joe Biden’s son is involved with Ukrainian energy oligarchs, but so to was a top Mitt Romney aide. And we’re learning that significant funding of many of these operatives is provided by none other than George Soros.

      Hello everyone! There is a world order at foot acting precious little different from the alien Kanamits’ cookbook of Twilight zone fame. As much as a may dislike the mannerisms of President Trump, clearly, he is our only option to hold off the deep state. He may not be the hero we’d like, but he is the a—hole we need.

  3. With government empowered welfare, education, healthcare, a massive non-profit sector, and (to be fair) much of the military-industrial complex, when individuals act in their own self-interest and succeed (or, perhaps, fail and learn from their experience and then succeed), these government enabled institutions that thrive on individual dysfunction, find the market for their services decline.

    We are, today in fact, witnessing the current version of Damon Knight’s 1950 short story, later aired on Rod Serling’s ‘The Twilight Zone’ TV episode in 1962, ‘To Serve Man’. Aliens arrive on Earth and appease earthlings with their benevolent intent, as translated from the partially translated alien manual entitled ‘To Serve Man’, describing various technological advances allowing humans to thrive, at least temporarily. Not-so-long story short – the manual, when finally translated in full, proves to be a ‘cookbook’. You get the picture.

    Now consider the Pilgrims at Plymouth Planation in 1620, through to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when our founders penned the benefits of autonomy, self-determination and the precepts of our inalienable rights to individual life, liberty and private property…a unique and innovative convention that created the most prosperous individually based society in the history of humankind.

    But the founders warned us, in Federalist Paper #10 penned by James Madison, that any government is subject to corruption by ‘Factions’ – a prospect inherent in the nature of any government, which is why the U.S. Constitution establishes the balances of power between the legislative, executive and judicial branches of our government, and incorporates The Bill of Rights protecting individuals from the Tyranny of the Majority (i.e. ‘Factions’).

    Benjamin Franklin further warned us, in his closing comments to the Constitutional Convention:

    “In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”

    We have arrived. Political Factions have, indeed, thrived, despite constitutional protections, and created a ‘cookbook’. With eloquent sophistry, government ‘Factions’ are trying to convince us that we are incapable of governing ourselves. But this time, as Franklin warned, the tyranny is of our own making.

Comments are closed.