You can save $6 billion today and spend $1 trillion down the road.

Conservatives always do that. Look at disaster funding, climate change, fossil fuels, etc. They always default to paying through the nose later if they can pinch a penny today. They are the most fiscally irresponsible people on the planet. Always have been.

As for hating the poor, that's another hallmark of conservatives. They'll gladly pay extra for things in exchange for being able to openly mock and ridicule others. Don't fund sex ed, instead pay much more for health care and housing for bankrupt mothers later, as long as they can call them sluts. They don't want tax money to help the needy, they prefer private charities, where they can pick and choose who to help and who to let die.

Conservatives are very often horrid creatures.

"Fuck the poor!" RepubliKKKan Jeezus shrieked as he mounted his solid gold chariot. "Murder every last one of them to give tax cuts to the rich," the one true Messiah Twittered as He ascended into His heavenly, vulgar, garish, Calacatta marble and gemstone covered palace.

one needs to distinguish between the rural working poor who are just above the poverty line, and the rural poor who are on the dole (for whatever reason).

the latter look down with disdain upon the former, regardless of whether they once occupied the same economic position. "yes, i got TANF and SNAP, but I got myself off govmint assistance (by using govmint assistance). i just needed help temporarily. THEY are lazy".

the latter vote. the former don't.

@3: wait. switch all that. former for latter. need espresso.

If one insists on attempting to run the federal government like a business—which I don't agree with—how can they miss such an obvious source of revenue as the ultra wealthy? Trump has no business acumen. Every dollar in his budget is being spent to ensure his personal assets are protected.

It's a perfect storm for the rural white poor - the Republicans hate them because they are poor, the Democrats hate them because they are white.

Which way should they vote?

It's a dead-ender budget. As if economic elites had lost all pretense at making things better.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/0…

@6- They should vote for the Democrats, because the Democrats don't hate white people.

Such a broad generalization to assume that those with an ideology have an emotional response to a socioeconomic group.

With all this focus on the rural white poor, one could almost forget that most of them don't vote or that Trump won the 50-100 k/yr income brackets.

Time to stop paying taxes, and arm the unemployed, I guess. :>(

7, Agreed. The 'Social Contract' has been torn up and burnt. If this government isn't going to work for the people, time to build a new government that will.

@10: Your commentary would be more interesting if you felt secure enough to provide your opinions rather than firing off insults. You have to admit that people have been telling you that for years.

@1 Urgutha Forka, @2 Original Andrew, @5 Dougsf, @7 anon1256, and @13 treacle: Agreed. You're all spot on.
Trumpzilla knew he already had the terminally stupid active voters as well as non-voters blind-sided. All RepubliKKKans have to do is wave a hypnotic carrot, most often by introducing a dirty, imposing, shamelessly unhealthy and environmentally unfriendly fossil fuel industry (oil rigs and refineries, coal mines and plants, etc.) under the thinly veiled disguise of allegedly being a "boon" to the rural or coastal region, and yell, "Jobs! Jobs!" Then, when that part of the Divided States is destroyed and all resources depleted for "record profits", the RepubliKKKans move on, leaving the cleanup and infrastructural fixit bills to those hurt by over-industrialization.
The dopehead miners in West Virginia pictured cheering [in a story in The Seattle Times] after the disastrous November 8 election, believing Trumpzilla's going to save their economically dead coal mining towns with "union wage jobs by bringing coal back" (HAH!) are going to be very disappointed when Trumpzilla fails to deliver. 300,000 of them can't even safely use their own tap water.

Did you guys not do a March Madness bracket? Who cares about this remedial garbage?

@13, we don't "build" governments. We vote them in. That's how we got Trump. As far as social contracts, he seems to be doing (or trying to do) just what he promised during his campaign. That's the problem, since everything he promised his supporters was just awful. All we can hope for during the next 4 years is that he's as incompetent a President as he was in his business. But unfortunately the Republicans in Congress are not incompetent -- bastards, but very competent.

"Finding the cancer-killing properties of trees, or sea sponges, and developing them into compounds that are then licensed to pharmaceutical companies to develop."

The "develop" actually turns out to be the giant money pit in all this. It's expensive, and it's risky: after the expensive huge clinical trials lots of drugs are scrapped. May seem weird, but empirically this is how things go.

You might figure pharmaceutical companies are just incompetent bozos, but why don't universities develop the drug, have it made by a chemical supplier, and make bank?

Lets ask the folk in the camps, like "The Jungle" and "The Field" of Seattle how well loved they have felt over the last eight years of development prosperity here.

@13 - Au contraire, ma chere! He's distinctly not doing everything he promised during the campaign, sure some things, but critically not: "Drain the swamp"?, now filled back up with über-corporate Wall Street types; "Lock her up"?, ignored; "Make America Great Again"?, privatize everything possible, remove channels to personal improvement through widespread, free, good education, & ensure a permanent underclass of desperately poor (ideally black) people.

As for "build" vs. "vote" a government -- How do you think the US Government/Constitution was created in the first place? People didn't simply "vote" it in. A bunch of property-owning white dudes constructed it, and then foisted it on everyone else saying it was for their own good.

As to the "social contract", perhaps you misunderstand my meaning:

so·cial con·tract
noun
(aka social compact; social compacts)

an implicit agreement among the members of a society to cooperate for social benefits, for example by sacrificing some individual freedom for state protection. Theories of a social contract became popular in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries among theorists such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a means of explaining the origin and obligations of government and the rights and obligations of subjects.

It's over, man. Game over.

@18, "make bank"?
Uhm, big phara corp.s aren't "making bank" by doing risky and unprofitable experimental research...Government labs take on that expense for them. So having universities do the fundamental research, develop a drug, and then market it isn't going to result in mad profits for the university. Sure, some of the original research costs will be recouped, but they won't "make bank". Doing virtually anything for the benefit of citizens and the public is generally not a money-making venture.

Which is why capitalism/for-profit enterprise is a terrible way to allocate resources in society. Things for the Public Good cost money: roads, electrical infrastructure, water distribution, transit, education, drug research, defense, fire stations, police, libraries, art... all cost money and don't "turn a profit". But they are indisputably good for society and the majority of citizens.

The state does these things because it's wildly cheaper and more effective to centralize these tasks than having, say, a dozen private police agencies in a city, or 12 private road companies all building roads to the same places, or private priso--

This is also why, after 2 centuries, capitalism still has not solved poverty and homelessness: Because there's no profit in it.

Confusing people and selling them plastic trinkets is profitable, so that's what we have.

@20 -- I actually meant to direct that to sarah91 @17 :>)