Refocus

        I Wasn't gonna do this, I swear I wasn't, but the continual spam bombing of my e-mail has pushed me over the edge. I'm talking about the continued "sign this petition, etc", crap from every Democratic organization imaginable. I get it. We lost the election, and trust me,  it would be difficult for anyone to be more unhappy about that than I am.

        Believing that some sort of frantic writing campaign or public disturbances will make Republican electors change their votes is ludicrous. State party operatives choose electors for loyalty, not conscience. Publically demonstrating and carrying signs is just the less violent version of what pre-election Democrats were predicting Trumpists would do if he lost. Well, he didn't.

        I am about to do something I rarely, if ever, do in an op-ed, and that is to use a sports metaphor, but it is apt in this instance. Following an unexpected loss, no coach worth the name will dwell on it for more than an hour or so, because there will be another contest, for which preparation, not carping and "what might have been,"  is essential. This means analyzing what wasn't done right, or what could have been done better, but only in the light of correcting the mistakes in order to do better at the next opportunity. Every calorie of energy expended in rage against the machine in this instance is wasted.

         If Trump had lost and his adherent deplorables had taken to the streets, we would be  criticizing them and calling them whiners. Look in the mirror. Then ask what can be done in an organized civil and legal fashion to at some point change direction. Trump will be inaugurated, as bitter as that is to even write, but no amount of public shirt rending and hair tearing will alter that.

       So what would be appropriate?  First, unlike the third parties who ran national candidates without much local organization, realize that state level races such as Senator and Congressional seats are "just" another two years away. While it may seem less glamorous to work hard for a representative than for President, the chance comes every two years to unseat every sitting Representative and 1/3 of the Senate. It wouldn't take 1/3 of the Senate, only three changes of seat!

        Second, find good candidates. If this election showed us one thing it was that even among members of her own party, there was a lot of "buyer's remorse" in choosing Mrs. Clinton. This manifested itself in grudgingly voting for her as the less objectionable candidate or in defections to Jill Stein or Gary Johnson. In fact every voter who defected to either "other" candidate hurts one party or the other, but in this case if half of the Johnson voters in just three states had voted Clinton, this screed would be irrelevant.

        At the State level, in Florida we had a lousy candidate opposing an even lousier incumbent. Not once did I see Big Sugar named as Rubio's banker nor did I see the Indian river lagoon cesspit tied to them. Instead I saw a poor Representative  with a bad strategy running against an absentee Senator. Again, lousy choice for the Democrats.  

       In fact, I believe it is likely that Tim Kaine, heading the ticket , would have had a better chance of winning.  In the final analysis, it almost looked  like, ....no strike that, it was true, that the Trump machine ran a  more efficient campaign. Clinton's brain trust, originally headed by the vapid and foul mouthed Debbie Wasserman Schultz,  failed to reckon with rust belt discontent and job statistics, ergo she  failed to campaign  in person in Wisconsin . Not one stop. Not one. She lost Wisconsin due to neglect. In addition,  someone tell everyone on the DNC that anything you put in an e-mail should be something you wouldn't be ashamed to see in print! 

       Finally, during the next Congressional session, bombard your representatives' offices  with letters and phone calls. Send petitions to them.  Let them know you're watching and they need votes in two years. Remember, they'll start campaigning in about 18 months!  Look carefully at their votes on things you hold dear, such as Social security, Medicare, The Affordable care Act. Do something many on the Alt.right can't - apply reasoned judgment, but as a dear friend used to remind me, "pick the hill you want to die on"

       This next four years (or less if he gets impeached) will almost surely have a suck factor of infinity. We can only hope that Trump is not the animal that some of his supporters are. Meeting frothing at the mouth and tooth gnashing with calm, reasoned and  measured response is a far better way to combat whatever ills beset us.   

Cognitive Disconnect

        "We all know that many of the (anti-Trump protests) are promoted and funded by George Soros",  begins a letter in Tuesday's local "news" paper.  If it were true, it would be his (Soros') right to do so, however, other than his long standing involvement with Moveon.org, no one, let alone "we all," knows any such thing.

       The letter is among  the most singularly self contradictory I've ever read. The writer claims the Republican platform is based on, among other things, Biblical principles. On the other hand, it continues, the cursed Democratic platform "denies God, ( and among other claims)  "Makes government a God and supports many special interests groups".....ad nauseum. My readers are well aware of my feelings re: organized religion, but, sometimes lunacy such as this demands response, not in support of religion, but of facts.  

         The USA is a  secular state where all are free to worship as they choose to (or not). A Governmental role in religion is specifically proscribed  and, as the founders made clear, the inverse is also true. If the author desires to live  in a state where political doctrine  is dictated by scripture, allow me to suggest Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, or the Vatican. And, coincidentally,  the Republican platform shatters what Jesus referred to as the Second Great Commandment - "love thy neighbor as thyself."  It is probably worth mentioning that Jesus omitted the words "Only if they are white, straight, male supremacist, and believe exactly as you do."       

        Regarding piety, allow me to remind us all that the current president elect has avoided essentially all involvement with any religious activity  since his teens, with the exception of his three  publically stage managed, grandiose, trophy wife "trade ups."  Wife number two,  meanwhile, has acknowledged  that the marriage was the alternative to her having an abortion, proposed by him, refused by Ms. Maples.  This disaffection with religion, and plasticity re: abortion,  ignored by his sycophant fan base, was of course accompanied by incessant  slandering of his opponent, herself a  lifelong, devout United Methodist congregant.

        Regarding "special interests"  The writer has it backward (again).  Special interests support the government. An examination of the lobbying efforts of Big Pharma, the Energy Lobby. Insurance,   and the Banking industry make this pretty clear.   As a matter of curiosity I did a bit of research (remember "facts"?) re: lobbying expenditures and who gets what from whom.  The most sobering statistic was that if one adds all the (declared, as some is almost certainly under the table) lobbying expenditures for 2015 and divides by 535 Senators and Representatives the math will amaze you.

        Total lobbying expenditures for the year were over $4.4 BILLION , which, doing the math,  works out to $8.25 + MILLION for every member of the Congress. Of course none of these special interest groups (poor, immigrants, non-white) accounted for any of this money.

        Of the ten top industries which lobby Congress, in 2015, seven  of them gave the most to just 3 members of Congress. Retirees, Oil/Gas - Cruz (R) , Investment banking, Real Estate - Rubio (R) , Insurance, Big Pharma, Commercial banking - Ryan (R). Of the top 20 lobbying  interests, the only ones which did not give the large majority of its funds to Republicans was specific Democrat PACS and Education.     

        While we were being encouraged by those incessant ads on TV to be "Energy Voters" and assured that it was "a non-partisan issue", Ted Cruz was getting much of his $107 million campaign funding from the 90% of gas/oil lobbying which went to Republicans. 

          Now tell me again about those damned Democrats and the special interests?  

Pros Prose

          It's been a while since I felt like writing after the disaster of November 9th. Sometimes witnessing or being exposed to blatant  stupidity will shock one from a temporary doldrum and a letter in the local rag did it for me this morning. 

                 In an op-ed  letter of this past Sunday, the writer, probably unintentionally, laid bare an essential difference between the  two ends of the American political spectrum. The writer unleashed a modest diatribe regarding "ardent pro-abortion supporters," followed  by the mind numbing sophistry that, "If they had been aborted they probably wouldn't be alive to .......", well,  you get the picture.

        In my years as a social liberal I have never actually met an "ardent pro-abortionist."  The term "Pro-abortion" like "Obamaphone" is a meaningless term intended to convey a blatant falsehood. I know many "Pro-choice" persons who abhor abortion  and would probably be loathe to choose such an option. No one is pro-abortion, but there the   prefix "pro" takes divergent paths. Pro-choice means the belief that a woman should be free to make her own reproductive choices no matter what they be. A corollary to that is that no one without a uterus really has a stake in the matter. Period.

       Pro-life, on the other hand, means to its adherents that they should have the ability to prohibit that choice and punish those who make the choice to terminate a pregnancy. Many of those who are the most vocal also claim to be the most religiously driven! How odd, as well, that the only reference of any kind to abortion in the Bible is related to how to obtain one in the event of rape or adultery! The critical point here is forcing one's belief upon another.

        Most Progressives feel about abortion as I do about boiled okra. I would never choose to consume it, but if you feel driven to do so, it is your right. And, oh by the way,  Safelink Wireless offered the first free government cell phone in Tennessee in 2008,  during the Bush administration.   

That Damned Electoral College!

        The Electoral College actually derives from several concepts. Primarily, in the days when many traveled no more than 10 or 12 miles from their home, in any given year, there was some sentiment that most would never see or (being marginally literate in many areas) read the positions or opinions of a candidate for the Presidency. This led persons like Alexander Hamilton and, at the time James Madison to originate the concept with the purpose of insuring that  only "fit" persons were elected by insuring that responsible, and presumably informed  persons were chosen as electors.  The choosing of the electors, oddly enough,   is not specified.

        In justifying the use of the Electoral College (in Federalist 68)  Hamilton focuses on a few arguments dealing with why the college is used, as opposed to direct election. First, in explaining the role of the general populace in the election of the president, Hamilton argues that the "sense of the people", through the election of the electors to the college, should have a part of the process, but that those who actually choose should be, (and Hamilton absolutely viewed himself thus):    "Men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice."   In other words the elite among us. It is also critical to recall that in 1789 there was really no party system in place and the  sense was far different than what it has become.

        In what has evolved into a two party system, with the odds stacked against third or even fourth party efforts, the states have led the way by making it extremely difficult to get on the ballot if you aren't  Republican or Democrat. It hasn't always been so, and 1824 demonstrates the flaws in the system.

        There were actually four candidates for the presidency: Andrew Jackson, William Crawford, Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams. All four actually called themselves Democratic - Republicans, which today sounds a bit strange in its own right. Then, as now, a majority (more than 50%) of the electoral votes was needed to win the White House. At 151,271 popular votes, Jackson still only had 41% of the electoral vote,   Adams with 113,122 popular had 31% electoral, Clay - with 47,531 popular, had 13% electoral, and Crawford with 40,856 popular had 10% electoral .

         In such a case, the Constitution requires that the winner be decided by the House of Representatives with each state getting one vote, casting  ballots until a majority of states for one candidate is reached. This is critical, and a reason why there will likely continue being an Electoral College for some time. This is the one and only time in the House where tiny Rhode Island or Delaware  carry  as much political clout as New York, Pennsylvania,  or Virginia. Any attempt to change this would require an Amendment, (which in the usual manner starts in the Senate with  a  2/3 approval vote). It is unlikely that Senators would vote to take from the smaller states the "equal power" their House delegations have  under that one (and rare) set of conditions.

          In 1824, per the Twelfth Amendment, only the top three vote getters  entered this new and very different election. Clay, actually third highest vote getter, was speaker of the House and as such was left out, but he publicly and strenuously declared his support for J.Q.Adams. On the first ballot, the results were Adams 13, Jackson 7, Crawford 4. Every single New England state and New York supported Adams, who won the Presidency with the votes of 54% of the states. It was later alleged that Clay was offered the Secretary of State gig by Adams, which he accepted,  in exchange for his support in the House. Jacksonians screamed that it was a "corrupt bargain." In any case it was also a situation where Jackson had 11% more of the popular vote than the eventual winner! This was the first such instance; there would be three more before 2016, the fifth time it has happened.

        I find it interesting that after the 1824 election, all of the remaining 4 minority popular vote winners (Hayes, Harrison, Bush43 and Trump) were Republicans.  In each case, as in the current one, critics decried the Electoral College and the process.  Since 1864, 6 third party candidates have actually received more than 20 electoral votes, with Roosevelt's Progressives getting 88 in 1912. In all those cases, however, the winner still had a majority of the electoral vote, thus avoiding an 1824 replay.

         What could be done without an Amendment? It's actually a simple fix, since the apportioning of votes to electors is delineated by each state, and the Constitution is mute on the issue. 48 of 50 states at present are "all or nothing" as far as electoral votes. In those states if a candidate wins the popular election by 3 votes, they still get all the electoral votes! Maine and Nebraska, however,  allow for splitting electoral votes. Although it is possible for an Elector to cast his or her vote for someone other than for the popular vote winner in their state, this is quite rare in modern times. 

        Maine and Nebraska, as mentioned,  take  a slightly different approach. Both states allocate two electoral votes to the popular vote winner, and then one each to the popular vote winner in each Congressional district (2 in Maine, 3 in Nebraska) in their state. This creates multiple popular vote contests in these states, which could lead to a split electoral vote. This , if adopted by each state would much more closely approximate a popular vote without touching the Constitution. In fact, most Americans don't realize how little election law is really federal! Other than the Electoral College, the remaining Federal laws related to voting are the specification for the day of election (first Tuesday after the first Monday of every other even numbered year), and the  26th Amendment which lowered the voting age to 18. That's it!

Adam Smith, Say Whaaat?

        Yesterday, as the election results were solidified, there was a momentary dip in the US financial markets, followed later in the day by a rally to a new high. The dip triggered a slew of panic warnings, which of course when the rebound occuerred seemed odd. What is interesting is that there was absolutely no "supply/demand/price....whatever" driver of this. It was based on sheer speculation and imaginary forces of the political winds. 

       Adam Smith would stand mute before the "Big Board" of  the DOW, FTSE, or Nikkei (also up 7% +!), in a daze of "What the f**k am I seeing here?"  In "...Wealth of Nations" generally considered the first scientific analysis of economics, Smith dealt with concrete concepts such as surplus/shortage, supply and demand, and how they affect markets , prices and even national priorities.

        Looking at the internet in the present, we have seen prognostications of everything from a booming market to  worldwide panic, not based on the recent election , but on "experts" (persons  with a briefcase who make money on your money)  simply giving best guess advice for free, usually followed by the offering that they, and only they, have the secret that will keep your money safe. Trust them!

        While many of us know of Michael Lewis' book "The Big Short" and have seen the movie, it is his first book on finance, "Liar's Poker," which lays out in print some sobering  reality about who handles your investments and how and why. Follow this with a reading of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" by John Perkins. After doing these two chores you will, or should,  have  a better understanding of how much modern markets have left the realm of  "I have it, you need it, how much will you pay?" and entered into an alternate universe plastered with "what if?"

        It is this sort of what if/maybe so economics which led to the housing bubble collapse of 2008. What should not be forgotten in all the uproar is that in most cases of this nature, someone may lose, but others are positioned to win. Unfortunately, the losers are far more likely to represent institutional investors managing either private individuals savings or pension funds and similar instruments.  

        I write this because it appalls me that personal finances can be ruined by innuendo and fear, rather than real world economic shifts. From today's DOW and Nikkei, both up big and the very slight dip in London's FTSE,  apparently the Chicken Littles who play God with world financial markets have yet to be struck by a piece of the sky. 

Everything Old is New Again

           Still hearing a lot of commentary on the election, some ludicrous, some Chicken Little"ish", much of it bitter. For many young first time voters this has been a bitter lesson in what Dr. Henry Kissinger called Realpolitik. Many seem to think this is new. It isn't. Some think Mr. Trump is not bright, which has a germ of truth, but he is by no means the worst we've ever elected (Warren Harding, John  Tyler, James Buchanan to name several as bad or worse). He is not the most moneyed in the sense of entitled classism (George H.W. Bush, heir to an opium fortune, is in that seat). many are actively mourning the events of yesterday through a short and foggy lens without the perspective of history, so here goes!  

          Let's cut to the chase here, the beginnings of much of what we see now as race/class friction trace back to the post Civil War Jim Crow South. It also manifested itself in the North after the Great migration of the WWI period. It is, and has been, racist in many ways. Believing Adam Smith was right led to the unregulated free market greed of the Robber barons. Believing "white was right" was stated overtly in hate speech by the KKK and behind boardroom doors for decades afterward by the Morgans, Rockefellers and others.

           There was modest reset of sorts in the first progressive era, but post WWII, the balance of distribution of resources started to shift away from us having what we needed to us having to buy from other nations what we needed. Coincident with this was the renewed zeal of labor unions which began demanding not only fair, but exorbitant wages and moreover concessions, to make the products now being made with other people's raw materials. The blatant corruption in some major unions led to a sense of general public willingness to reverse the gains of the late 30s in favor of "right to work" legislation. It became more and more apparent that as pensions and medical coverage became the highest percentage of the manufacturer's cost for a new car, that something was awry. In fact it was simply the balance of the earth's resources and our high labor cost on one hand balanced against our desire to buy things cheaply. We bitch because no one manufactures TVs in the USA anymore when in fact if they did, it would double the price of them. We complain about the lack of manufacturing jobs here, but we buy import cars and shop Walmart for Chinese bargains, sold under a smiley face sign!

           The parents of those dissatisfied Detroit inner city kids used to work at Ford, GM and Chrysler, but those jobs are elsewhere in most cases. In the absence of tariffs, imports will always undersell domestic products. With tariffs, costs will go up, living standards down. This is partly due to one of the great American industries - advertising, whose job is to make us (all of us) believe that we need things we just really want. The other Drugs, makes health care grossly expensive, Meanwhile the large commercial banks keep the rich, rich but not by investing in American manufactures for the previously stated reasons. That in a nutshell (ok, a nutshell and a half) is the chronology, the rest is confetti. In truth, the Clinton and Trump economic outlook isn't really much different. The real irony is that if the election had gone differently the other side would most likely be singing the same litany with different names attached. The pronunciation might be better, but.......!

          There were those with vision who hoped for better in the late 1800s. The following is from an 1892 campaign speech  by Tom Watson, white Georgia congressman:

"The crushing burdens which now oppress both races in the South will cause each to make an effort to cast them off. They will see a similarity of cause and a similarity of remedy. They will recognize that each should help the other in the work of repealing bad laws and enacting good ones. They will become political allies, and neither can injure the other without weakening both. It will be to the interest of both that each should have justice. And on these broad lines of mutual interest, mutual forbearance, and mutual support the present will be made the stepping-stone to future peace and prosperity."

 Some of us, me included,  hoped the 60s civil rights  movement might herald that occurrence, but alas it was sidetracked after 1968 by the Republicans and the Lee Atwater/Richard Nixon "Southern Strategy"

          A more strident call for not only racial, but  for gender and economic fairness as well, was sounded by Mary C. Lease, Kansas populist, in an 1890  speech called "Wallstreet Owns the Country":

"This is a nation of inconsistencies. The Puritans fleeing from oppression became oppressors. We fought England for our liberty and put chains on four million of blacks. We wiped out slavery and our tariff laws and national banks began a system of white wage slavery worse than the first. Wall Street owns the country. It is no longer a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, but a government of Wall Street, by Wall Street, and for Wall Street. The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. The West and South are bound and prostrate before the manufacturing East. Money rules, and our Vice-President is a London banker. Our laws are the output of a system which clothes rascals in robes and honesty in rags.

           The political parties lie to us and the political speakers mislead us. We were told two years ago to go to work and raise a big crop, that was all we needed. We went to work and plowed and planted; the rains fell, the sun shone, nature smiled, and we raised the big crop that they told us to; and what came of it? Eight-cent corn, ten-cent oats, two-cent beef and no price at all for butter and eggs-that's what came of it. The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States, and over 100,000 shopgirls in New York are forced to sell their virtue for the bread their niggardly wages deny them... We want money, land and transportation. We want the abolition of the National Banks, and we want the power to make loans direct from the government. We want the foreclosure system wiped out... We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. The people are at bay; let the bloodhounds of money who dogged us thus far beware."

Everything old is new again.

Another Bizarre statement

               In yet one more  bizarre pronouncement, a letter in Thursday's local paper proclaims that Vladimir Putin would "prefer Hillary to Trump as President."  Apparently this writer has an  insight into the mind of the Russian President greater than  essentially every other single actual foreign policy expert in both parties and around the free world! A Russian professor at the University of Michigan, Ekaterina Mishina, has another, more informed point of view:  "Trump “is saying things which sound very appealing to the Russian president.” Mishina declared, “I’m absolutely positive that  Putin wants Donald Trump to be the President of The United States.”

        Consider Trump's 7/27/2016 statement that he thinks the US should "consider acknowledging Russian sovereignty in Ukraine" - a move opposed by virtually every member of Congress.  Apparently lacking any true  grasp  of NATO's importance, he  has also demanded that other NATO members compensate the US,  making many of our  eastern European allies, nervous about his (our) commitment to defend them. Trump's disparagement of  our allies in Asia, also creates  new opportunities for Russian influence. Trump’s promises to disrupt our trade agreements also fuel Putin’s agenda. How better (for Putin)  to start the New Year than with a trade war between the United States and China or Mexico? Trump’s threats to stop paying our debts also would radically undermine our credibility as a lender, another desirable outcome for Putin.

        As a general position, Mr.  Trump advocates isolationism  and virtual abandonment  U.S. leadership in the world.  A U.S. retreat from leadership in global matters fits precisely with Putin’s international interests.  Implementation of  Trump's  Draconian  ideas regarding immigration or walling off our southern border would certainly stimulate major  push-back from both  Congress and in the country as a whole. A US convulsed by infighting over Trump’s deeply divisive policy proposals also cedes Putin more freedom to act around the world. This from a man who doesn't know  that China and Brazil have  60% of the rare earths so critical to modern technology while the US has less than 1.5%! I think old buddy, Vlad, is fine with Donald!

         Trump's campaign slogan re: "making America great again" resonates with many of the boomers and Cold War generations, who apparently have short memories. What "made America Great" in their younger years was precisely the sort of thing Trump deplores. We (the UA) were world leaders because we demonstrated commitment to freedom and global community with such efforts as the Marshall Plan, NATO and SEATO. Much of this was also, of course, stimulated by our aversion to Communism, and we made mistakes because of it. While Putin is no Communist, that difference is largely invisible when considering Russia's recent foreign adventures.

          A dictator is a dictator, and Putin is one. Media sources and political opponents sometimes mysteriously  die. He has pronounced the collapse of the Soviet Union to be "the greatest geopolitical disaster of the last century" - a relatively harsh assessment  considering that the time span delineated includes both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam.  To fail to understand that Putin, unfettered, would love to re-create the Union under another name is naive.  So who gives every indication of preferring a relatively isolationist foreign policy?  It certainly isn't Mrs. Clinton.

        Finally, and perhaps saddest of all, is the fact that many of Trump's supporters are simply not sufficiently educated in the recent history of the planet to understand that it is impossible to be an isolationist state in the modern world. Likewise, most of them, and, to be fair,  a lot of Progressives as well, have no idea and no grasp of the implication  of  how much  the US access to domestically owned raw materials has changed since the end of WWII and the glory years of American industrial production. It's as if they permanently reside in the 1950s, hang around Al's Drive in with  Richie, Potsie, Ralph,  and the Fonz, insensitive to the changing world we live in.

          As John  Steinbeck once wrote, "You can't go home again, because home has ceased to exist, except in the mothballs of memory."  This is essential to understanding global Economic/Political/Industrial  realities. Mr. Trump should, considering that he manufactures everything he sells offshore, with the unfortunate exception of his trademarked Trump wines, which, Virginia grown and vinted, are now selling at up to 70% below  the original retail price because ....what's the word I'm seeking here..... oh yeah - they suck! Like many of Trump's exploits, he believes if he marks it with his imprimatur that it must succeed. Defaulted casinos, hotels and his atrocious wine are proof that he is delusional. Let's not subject our nation to his narcissistic delusions.