"A number of my good friends and family have been surprised about my decision to support for president. They have been surprised because my political giving history has been mostly to Democrats, my voting registration has typically been Democrat (in NY, you must be registered to the party in order to vote in the primary, and usually the Republican candidate has no chance to win), and many of our philanthropic initiatives have supported issues that are consistent with Democratic priorities.
All of the above said, I have always considered myself to be a centrist and/or moderate, and I have voted for the candidate and supported the issues and policies that I believe are in the best interest of the country. Some have accused me of supporting Trump because doing so will somehow benefit me financially. Fortunately, I do not need any financial benefits as I and my family have well more than we need. I have also committed to give away the substantial majority of my resources at or by the time I am no longer, so I don't consider personal financial benefits in the determination of whom I support for office.
Some have suggested that I am supporting Trump because I am seeking a position in his administration. To be clear, I haven't been offered one and I wouldn't take a job in the administration (I love my job and it is the wrong time in my life to work in an administration). I will, however, do everything else I can to help the president succeed in helping our country and its citizens.
All of the above said, I am an investor who manages funds that own some of the best, principally American, businesses in the world. In a better governed and managed America, these business will do better and increase in value faster. One might therefore argue that being 'long' America is somehow a conflict, so I thought to disclose this potential 'conflict' here.
Some of my friends and family who support are ok with my supporting Trump, but don't want me to attempt to convince others to support him. Because I strongly believe that a Trump administration will be better for the country and the world than a Harris administration, I think it is important to share my thinking to the extent it helps others come to the right conclusion.
Three months ago, when I endorsed Trump on the day of the first assassination attempt, I promised to share my thinking about why I came to this conclusion in a future more detailed post. I intend to do so in possibly more than one post, with the first, this one, explaining the actions and policies of the Biden/Harris administration and Democratic Party that were the catalysts for my losing total confidence in the administration and the Party.
To be clear, my decision to vote for Trump is not an endorsement of everything he has done or will do because he is an imperfect man. Unlike a marriage or a business partnership where there are effectively unlimited alternatives, in this election, we have only two viable choices. Of the two, I believe that Trump is by far the superior candidate despite his flaws and mistakes he has made in the past.
As always, I welcome your feedback on how I could be wrong and on how the below actions and policies I outline below might actually have been good for America. I have always believed that the best way to get to the truth is to hear the best arguments on all sides of an issue.
While the 33 actions I describe below are those of the Democratic Party and the Biden/Harris administration, they are also the actions and policies that unfortunately our most aggressive adversaries would likely implement if they wanted to destroy America from within, and had the ability to take control of our leadership.
These are the 33:
(1) open the borders to millions of immigrants who were not screened for their risk to the country, dumping them into communities where the new immigrants overwhelm existing communities and the infrastructure to support the new entrants, at the expense of the historic residents,
(2) introduce economic policies and massively increase spending without regard to their impact on inflation and the consequences for low-income Americans and the increase in our deficit and national debt,
(3) withdraw from Afghanistan, abandoning our local partners and the civilians who worked alongside us in an unprepared, overnight withdrawal that led to American casualties and destroyed the lives of Afghani women and girls for generations, against the strong advice of our military leadership, and thereafter not showing appropriate respect for their loss at a memorial ceremony in their honor,
(4) introduce thousands of new and unnecessary regulations in light of the existing regulatory regime that interfere with our businesses’ ability to compete, restraining the development of desperately needed housing, infrastructure, and energy production with the associated inflationary effects,
(5) modify the bail system so that violent criminals are released without bail,
(6) destroy our street retailers and communities and promote lawlessness by making shoplifting (except above large thresholds) no longer a criminal offense,
(7) limit and/or attempt to limit or ban fracking and LNG so that U.S. energy costs increase substantially and the U.S. loses its energy independence,
(8) promote DEI ideologies that award jobs, awards, and university admissions on the basis of race, sexual identity and gender criteria, and teach our students and citizens that the world can only be understood as an unfair battle between oppressors and the oppressed, where the oppressors are only successful due to structural racism or a rigged system and the oppressed are simply victims of an unfair system and world,
(9) educate our elementary children that gender is fluid, something to be chosen by a child, and promote hormone blockers and gender reassignment surgeries to our youth without regard to the longer-term consequences to their mental and physical health, and allow biological boys and men to compete in girls and women's sports, depriving girls and women of scholarships, awards, and other opportunities that they would have rightly earned otherwise,
(10) encourage and celebrate massive protests and riots that lead to the burning and destruction of local retail and business establishments while at the same time requiring schools to be shuttered because of the risk of Covid-19 spreading during large gatherings,
(11) encourage and celebrate anti-American and anti-Israel protests and flag burning on campuses around the country with no consequences for the protesters who violate laws or university codes and policies,
(12) allow antisemitism to explode with no serious efforts from the administration to quell this hatred,
(13) mandate vaccines that have not been adequately tested nor have their risks been properly considered compared with the potential benefits adjusted for the age and health of the individual, censoring the contrary advice of top scientists around the world,
(14) shut down free speech in media and on social media platforms that is inconsistent with government policies and objectives,
(15) use the U.S., state, and local legal systems to attack and attempt to jail, take off the campaign trail, and/or massively fine candidates for the presidency without regard to the merits or precedential issues of the case,
(16) seek to defund the police and promote anti-police rhetoric causing a loss of confidence in those who are charged with protecting us,
(17) use government funds to subsidize auto companies and internet providers with vastly more expensive, dated and/or lower-quality technology when greatly superior and cheaper alternatives are available from companies that are owned and/or managed by individuals not favored by the current administration,
(18) mandate in legislation and otherwise government solutions to problems when the private sector can do a vastly better, faster, and cheaper job,
(19) seek to ban gas-powered cars and stoves without regard to the economic and practical consequences of doing so,
(20) take no serious actions when 45 American citizens are killed by terrorists and 12 are taken hostage,
(21) hold back armaments and weaponry from our most important ally in the Middle East in the midst of their hostage negotiations, hostages who include American citizens who have now been held for more than one year,
(22) eliminate sanctions on one of our most dangerous enemies enabling them to generate $150 billion+ of cash reserves from oil sales, which they can then use to fund terrorist proxy organizations who attack us and our allies. Exchange five American hostages held by Iran for five Iranians plus $6 billion of cash in the worst hostage negotiation in history setting a disastrous and dangerous precedent,
(23) remove known terrorist organizations from the terrorist list so we can provide aid to their people, and allow them to shoot rockets at U.S. assets and military bases with little if any military response from us,
(24) lie to the American people about the cognitive health of the president and accuse those who provide video evidence of his decline of sharing doctored videos and being right wing conspirators,
(25) do nothing about the deteriorating health of our citizens driven by the food industrial complex, the fraudulent USDA food pyramid, and the inclusion of ingredients in our food that are banned by other countries around the world which are more protective of their citizens,
(26) do nothing about the proliferation of new vaccines that are not properly analyzed for their risk versus the potential benefit for healthy children who are mandated to receive them,
(27) do nothing about the continued exemption from liability for the pharma industry that has led to a proliferation of mandatory vaccines for children without considering the potential cumulative effects of the now mandated 72-shot regime,
(28) convince our minority youth that they are victims of a rigged system and that the American dream is not available to them,
(29) fail to provide adequate Secret Service protection for alternative presidential candidates,
(30) litigate to prevent alternative candidates from getting on the ballot, and take other anti-competitive steps including threatening political consultants who wish to work for alternative candidates for the presidency, and limit the potential media access for other candidates by threatening the networks' future access to the administration and access to 'scoops' if they platform an alternative candidate,
(31) select the Democratic nominee for president in a backroom process by undisclosed party leaders without allowing Americans to choose between candidates in an open primary,
(32) choose an inferior candidate for the presidency when other much more qualified candidates are available and interested to serve,
(33) litigate to make it illegal for states to require proof of citizenship, voter ID, and/or residence in order to vote at a time when many Americans have lost confidence in the accuracy and trustworthiness of our voting system.
I welcome your thoughts."
Bill Ackman
14 comments:
22 should be broken into two separate points, as the part about the prisoner exchange with the $6 billion attached is its own political failure.
But I have to ask...is this post YOU speaking or someone else? I ask for two reasons. It begins with quotation marks at the beginning (though I can't see where an ending set is) and mentions New York without actually saying the author actually lives there (thus I regard it as potentially just an example to make a point).
No, it's not me. It's Bill Ackman who's been a long time DFL supporter/voter. Since he wrote it, he came up with and numbered the points, and it's his piece, I fail to see where I or anyone else can tell him that his numbering system is wrong. I'd suggest that he sees the two as linked bad examples of Biden/Harris foreign policy.
I just saw his name at the bottom, and don't know why I didn't notice it there originally.
"Since he wrote it, he came up with and numbered the points, and it's his piece, I fail to see where I or anyone else can tell him that his numbering system is wrong."
Uh...because we're free to have our own opinions about the work of others? That would be my first guess. They are linked, but they're distinct from each other. That's another.
No problem.
I'm not suggesting that you can't have an opinion. I'm suggesting that it's his piece, he organized it the way he wanted, and there doesn't seem to be any way to reasonably suggest that he "should" have done it differently. You obviously would have done it differently, but that's personal preference not "should".
Kinda seems a "Captain Obvious" point to make, but...whatever..
Maybe, yet I'm not the one who's commenting on how the author should have organized his points. But I understand that you would have done it differently, unfortunately he didn't.
Not a big deal. It just stood out to me as more of a separate point. Would have made his list bigger in a legitimate way, not like some people who pad their lists with redundancies. I know someone like that!
I saw them as two sides of the same coin. Both are examples of the Biden/Harris administration funding (directly or indirectly) those who wish to harm us or our allies.
Either way, it's not my place to criticize how he organized his list.
You shouldn't do it then.
I didn't, wouldn't, and would discourage others from doing likewise. Although, I guess you liked it enough to use it in your post.
Well, sure Craig! It's a good piece and would've been even if he didn't put those concerns in a list.
And by the way, I don't understand why you're getting so bent about this, as if I have no right to criticize what's been written or said. Where does that come from and how does it square with your many criticisms of all manner of things in your blog and elsewhere? What authority is required to criticize, especially since my comment about his list was more of a suggestion than a criticism. In the long run, I don't give a rat's ass about how he chose to list his concerns. But how is it your place to criticize my critique of his list?
I get the desire to nit pick, I occasionally do it myself. But, in this case, your insistence that the author "should" have written it the way you think seems a bit presumptuous. Had you merely criticized, as opposed to announced what he "should" have done, it probably wouldn't have been a thing. How it squares is that I don't often tell people what the "should" do, or how the "should" express their thoughts on things that are subjective. Obviously, when pointing out factual problems and criticizing those, it's a different situation. This was just you subjectively complaining about style and that your stylistic choice was the one that "should" have been used. It mostly comes down to using the word "should", had you not gone there I probably wouldn't have mentioned it, but you did. If you didn't give a "rat's ass" about how he organized his list, you wouldn't have wasted time with the nitpick complaint and assertion of how he "should" have done it.
It's my blog, and I guess I've concluded that I get to decide what I write about and what I don't. Its' strange that you seem to think that your "right" to criticize should be absolute, yet you're pissed that I criticized you. Seems like if you're going to criticize, that you should expect criticism.
What's really strange is that you won't just let this drop and keep pushing.
Clearly you're just messing with me because the notion that one "has no place" to suggest an alteration in a case like this is nonsensical in every way. Aside from the fact that one can't predict the response of a lefty, do you really think the author would be put out by the suggestion I made which serves him, rather than detracts from his efforts? Hard to imagine...again, setting aside his lefty leanings. But, you really had me going there, so kudos to you.
"to suggest an alteration"
he you merely suggested "an alteration", no problem.
"22 should be broken into two separate points"
The use of the word "should" moves your criticism away from a mere suggestion, and into the realm of making an objective claim. Had you used the word "could", there would be no problem.
And yes, I'm kind of screwing with you because of how you react when offered an alteration to your initial claim. Hell, had you not started with he "should" have done, it'd probably have helped.
But the dead horse is here, I don't delete comments, so keep beating if you want.
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