What has Pres. Trump done wrong so far.

The E wrote:

dscott8 wrote:I suspect Trump told subordinates to refuse to waive the Jones Act so that he could step in, override them and look like a "hero". Similar to a used-car salesman "going to bat for you" with his stereotypically hard-hearted sales manager.

Trump is certainly stupid enough to do this.

He doesn't strike me as Machiavellian enough to actually plan that far ahead. Just plunge ahead heedlessly when something gets in your way, change direction. When all else fails attack it on twitter.

pappilon wrote:He doesn't strike me as Machiavellian enough to actually plan that far ahead. Just plunge ahead heedlessly when something gets in your way, change direction. When all else fails attack it on twitter.

Of course, the extremely paranoid would argue that Trump is so Machiavellian that he carefully chooses apparently-disastrous actions in order to appear to be non-Machiavellian and distract everyone while getting away with whatever he wanted to in the first place.

Then again, Occam's razor may apply.

or does it?

gcomeau wrote:Apparently due to the Trump administration being too incompetent to even staff the positions (because you know, nobody needs "big government" bureaucrats anyway) Mexico has been unable to even find anyone to discuss an extension of sugar import licence restrictions with in the Commerce Department.

So... they just suspended all sugar exports to the United States because their approved quota up until the end of the month has been hit.

(Mexico supplies over 30% of US sugar. Guess how much US food related industry relies on an uninterrupted sugar supply...)

Trump doesn't give a damn about "sugar". He eats salt and thinks it is the same because they both are the same color.

Michael Everett wrote:
Of course, the extremely paranoid would argue that Trump is so Machiavellian that he carefully chooses apparently-disastrous actions in order to appear to be non-Machiavellian and distract everyone while getting away with whatever he wanted to in the first place.

Then again, Occam's razor may apply.

or does it?

Doesn't But Hanlon's razor certainly does: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

The current problem in Puerto Rico isn't the Jones Act. The problem is distribution once the aid arrives. 1000s of shipping containers are sitting on the docks but the local transport can't distribute due to blocked roads and insufficient number of trucks and lack of gas. We currently need to fix the transport problems asap, which would require different prioritization of what arrives. We need to ship in gas, trucks and chainsaws first. Food and water second. Clothing, plywood third etc. shipping needs to be better organized and coordinated. Shipping lots of random aid stuff isn't working.

The jones act is however a chronic problem and that will hinder the recovery long term. The jones act prevents foreign ships from stopping at 2 consecutive US ports. Which in some ways is fine since shipping from US port to US port is domestic shipping and we don't want foreign ships with their lack of minimum wages, lower worker safety standards etc doing domestic shipping. However it means that the big container ships on their way to an east coast port won't stop at Puerto Rico first (Hawaii has the same problem). So import either have to come from a dedicated Puerto Rico shipment or be reshipped back out to Puerto Rico via domestic shipping ( on the mainland once a shipment lands it is distributed throughout the USA by rail). The logical fix is to ammend the jones act to allow an island exemption but this requires congress to act since the Jones act is a law and a president can't unilaterally get rid of it. Temporarily suspending it under his emergency authority powers is all he can legally do.

biochem wrote:The current problem in Puerto Rico isn't the Jones Act. The problem is distribution once the aid arrives. 1000s of shipping containers are sitting on the docks but the local transport can't distribute due to blocked roads and insufficient number of trucks and lack of gas. We currently need to fix the transport problems asap, which would require different prioritization of what arrives. We need to ship in gas, trucks and chainsaws first. Food and water second. Clothing, plywood third etc. shipping needs to be better organized and coordinated. Shipping lots of random aid stuff isn't working.

Agreed. I'm a former Army Quartermaster officer, and I know we have the capability to distribute these supplies over any terrain you can imagine, anywhere in the world. We should have had logistics, medical, MP and other support units staged to go as soon as the hurricane passed, with transport lined up.

When I was in service, there was no explicit mission tasking or training doctrine for disaster relief. It's been a while (1980s) so can anyone tell me if such tasking & training exists now?

dscott8 wrote:

biochem wrote:The current problem in Puerto Rico isn't the Jones Act. The problem is distribution once the aid arrives. 1000s of shipping containers are sitting on the docks but the local transport can't distribute due to blocked roads and insufficient number of trucks and lack of gas. We currently need to fix the transport problems asap, which would require different prioritization of what arrives. We need to ship in gas, trucks and chainsaws first. Food and water second. Clothing, plywood third etc. shipping needs to be better organized and coordinated. Shipping lots of random aid stuff isn't working.

Agreed. I'm a former Army Quartermaster officer, and I know we have the capability to distribute these supplies over any terrain you can imagine, anywhere in the world. We should have had logistics, medical, MP and other support units staged to go as soon as the hurricane passed, with transport lined up.

When I was in service, there was no explicit mission tasking or training doctrine for disaster relief. It's been a while (1980s) so can anyone tell me if such tasking & training exists now?

Can't say for sure, but probably not.It would fall under the purview of the National Guard, and FEMA. And like as not the NG bases are as destroyed and lacking fuel as the rest of the island. A fer Chinooks could alleviate a lot of distribution issues in a week or so, I would think.

Fully agree pappilon.
In the southern hemisphere we had the Indonesian tsunami happen. I was having a quiet beer on my front veranda at dusk on New Year's eve, when my official mobile (cell) phone rang. The question from the Minister was, "Could we send a couple of squadrons of Blackhawks there to help?". My response was "Sure", then I rang the people involved and said "We were right, execute XYZ".
Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. They had more warning than we had to prepare.

Anyone care to try and make any excuses for this shit?

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/unhc ... 60790.html

"India and US were among the 13 countries to vote against the passing of a UNHCR resolution to denounce death penalty for homosexuality."

Actually gcom, yeah.

In general, the US wont bow to any UN policy it doesn't create.
Also, I don't see a conservative WH voting for anything that even sounds of limiting the death penalty.