As someone recently said Trump will promise you the world then betray you the next day. So he's promised his base a fantastic health care plan on the cheap... and yet we know his REAL agenda by who he's surrounded himself with... far right extremists like Bannon who want to dismantle or weaken parts of the government that work for the bottom 90% while further sabotaging the fiscal health of government with massive tax cuts for the uber wealthy.

Trump KNOWS the current GOP plan shafts people so he lies claiming "don't worry... it will be adjusted". But he also KNOWS Ryan will never go along with any "adjustments" and we'll be stuck with this sh*t plan.

It's only a matter of time that his loyal but braindead base learns they've been conned by an expert.

In libertarian... or far Right land... they might believe there should be nothing but private roads... and drivers have choices which to use. Since there'd have to be tolls... competition would drive down prices... and the company that offered the best roads at the cheapest prices would be the winner in the competitive market.

It's the perfect capitalist morality tale.

BUT CONSUMER CHOICE CAN BE EXPENSIVE AND OFTEN INEFFICIENT. The fable ignores all the time wasted in drivers having to make choices and paying tolls... maybe taking longer routes. The fable ignores the overhead of collecting these tolls... or the other wasteful overhead inherent in corporations... profits to shareholders, high exec pay, advertising etc.

Sometimes the cheapest option is to ELIMINATE NEEDLESS CHOICE: get rid of the parasitical middlemen, find a simple funding mechanism, and just offer good service to all. This might not offer that theoretical "fairness" market fanatics claim consumers deserve... but the lower costs might easily make up for that... AND eliminate bad market choices.

But dysfunctional right wing ideology will never accept the obvious... and True Believers always place their beliefs over all else.

One might think if there's a party that would stand up for true democratic principles... it would be the Democrats. Yet while there is evidence of numerous efforts to abolish that antidemocratic abomination called the EC... THE ENTIRE SYSTEM is riddled with antidemocratic elements from the Senate where Dems now represent 33 million more Americans than do the GOP... to the amendment process which is so bizzare states with 4% of the US population can block any amendment... yet states with as little as 40% can ratify any amendment.

Making things worst is that the system clearly has a GOP bias... and signature Democratic programs may be weakened or abolished by Senators and a President who represent a MINORITY of the People.

From yesterday's Fresh Air on NPR
http://www.npr.org/2017/03/22/521083950/inside-the-wealthy-family-that-has-been-funding-steve-bannon-s-plan-for-years

DAVIES: Robinson also has some interesting views on climate change and nuclear war that the Mercers have shown an interest in, right?

MAYER: Among the theories that Robinson has propounded and that Bob Mercer has accepted is that climate change is not happening. It's not for real, and if it is happening, it's going to be good for the planet. That's one of his theories, and the other theory that I found particularly worrisome was they believe that nuclear war is really not such a big deal. It's survivable, and - they think.

And they've actually argued that outside of the immediate blast zone in Japan during World War II - outside of Hiroshima and Nagasaki - that the radiation was actually good for the Japanese. So they see a kind of a silver lining in nuclear war and nuclear accidents. And he co-authored a book in 1986 that I took a look at that describes ways that Americans can survive nuclear war by basically digging fallout shelters all across the country. And he believes that radiation is potentially good for people's health.

DAVIES: And do the Mercer's seem to have embraced Robinson's views about nuclear war and climate change?

MAYER: Well, Bob Mercer has certainly embraced the view that radiation could be good for human health - low level radiation. And he's been in arguments with people that I interviewed about it, so, yes, very much. He seems extremely influenced by Arthur Robinson's scientific findings.

Dems have been fools to let the Right's anti-Ninth arguments take root the past 40+ years. It seems to have started with Bork who tried a clever argument that we can't know what the Ninth means. Bork was rejected but Scalia used the same arguments from the bench.

The Framers believed rights were secure, at least for free persons, because government powers were DERIVED from the People... and the government wasn't given direct powers over any right not surrendered to create those powers. Madison even believed to enumerate some rights would place unenumerated rights at risk. He included what became the Ninth out of "greater caution"... but it seems even with the Ninth... social conservatives will always attack right they don't want others to have.

The GOP can't have it both ways pretending they actually believe we have a limited government of defined powers... then claim the government DOES have powers not in the Constitution to limit rights they don't want people to have... like privacy beyond the 4th Amendment such as the right to same sex marriage, birth control, the right to choose, whatever.

The Dems should INSIST that if this is what the GOP believes... they must either pass an amendment to give government the power to invade privacy... or repeal the Ninth Amendment. Otherwise, unenumerated or not... THESE RIGHTS MUST BE ASSUMED TO EXIST.

Originalism and textualism SOUND legitimate but what's the real game here?

Scalia, like Bork, was at war with the 9th Amendment... and if they could negate this key rule of construction it would turn the Constitution on its head. Instead of a system that protected rights by limiting government power they'd create a system where government automatically had power and the People fight to create new rights. In this way Reagan... who selected both Bork and Scalia, could reward the social conservatives who joined the GOP coalition. How would this be done? The Ninth says

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

A textualist can simply claim since no rights are mentioned... no one can know what's protected... so new rights must be CREATED legislatively.

The Right NEEDS to find ways to bastardized the Constitution to reward it's constituents... so aside from the Ninth, it bastardized the Second to negate the militia clause... and the 14th to give corporations more rights.

It's rather amazing that they've gotten away with this so long... but then Dems don't seem to think strategically nor do they go for the jugular.

Being Spicer or an Orwellian Right propaganda outfit like Fox fake news can't be easy trying to put a sane face on the pathological Trump Junta. After all, the Right NEEDS Trump to hold the dimwitted right with base together to push through their own extremist agenda. And Fox came through when Andrew Napolitano, a right wing hack... made this claim last night. Obama found a way around FISA law and got the Brits to listen in on Trump's phone calls.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/andrew-napolitano/

EDIT: Oops.... sorry, this is old news that I somehow missed. I just heard the British response on the BBC.

Trump never demonstrated much grasp of any of the issues during the campaign... and it was even more obvious when he finally admitted health care was "complicated".

So I have to wonder when Trump FIRST went after ACA? If it was really early in his campaign... I suspect Trump was motivated by his hatred of Obama.

Still looking for those perfect memes that sum up Trump's ultra Right agenda.

I think Amerika First... Americans Last sums up the Trump budget

Meme Search 1 http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028798182

Here's a Catch 22... gas prices are low... so people feel free to buy gas guzzlers...

But are oil/gas prices low not just because the US is producing more oil... increasing the world supply but BECAUSE we've improved MPG standards to reduce demand? US gas usage in 2015 is LESS than 2007 levels.

FROM: https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=23&t=10

In 2015, about 140.43 billion gallons (or about 3.34 billion barrels1) of gasoline were consumed2 in the United States, a daily average of about 384.74 million gallons (or about 9.16 million barrels per day).3 This was about 1.5% less than the record high of about 390 million gallons per day (or about 9.29 million barrels per day) consumed in 2007.

If oil prices are considered to be inelastic, is undermining progress on efficiency... are we destroying the golden goose? Loose momentum on efficiency... and we return to an inelastic market where any shock can create huge increases in price all out of proportion to supply? Then there's the issue of not transitioning to renewables.