I'm Back!

I have been fulfilling my need to blog with posts and comments on Facebook for some time now. That was a mistake. So now I'm back at wiscorant and starting a new chapter. To start things off, I'm responding to a column by Pulitzer Prize winning (Really?) columnist, Cynthia Tucker. Here is the link: http://cynthiatucker.com/2018/06/all-hail-the-trump-court.html

And here is my response.

 Dear Ms. Tucker,

I would like to address your column placing the blame for Donald Trump and his pending Supreme Court choice on those progressives who refused to support Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

To begin with, you base a great deal of your anger on what you see as the obvious character short comings of Donald Trump. I do not necessarily disagree with the notion that Mr. Trump is short in the character department. In fact, that is why I voted for Gary Johnson. I am a conservative #NeverTrumper who could not bring myself to pull the lever for him. You indignantly point to Susan Sarandon as a prominent NeverHillary saboteur. Can you name another? Because to be honest, I don't really see her as that big of an  influence on the national political scene. 

On the other hand, I am proud to stand with people such as Senators Mike Lee, Jeff Flake, John McCain, Governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Kasich, former Presidents G.W. Bush and his father, influential pundits Charles Kruathammer, George Will, Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, Glen Beck and David Brooks who openly opposed, and did not vote for Trump. Can I just say, my list is a lot more impressive than yours. Now I'm sure you attribute this to the vastly inferior character of The Donald. But does that mean you had NO problems with Hillary? None? Nor the Clinton Foundation Influence Retail Store? From "flat broke" to a net worth of $215 million in 15 years; Wow! As the old saying goes, profits don't happen until something gets sold. What were they selling?  

But what you are really saying is that Democrats were better able to hold their noses with one hand while voting for crooked Hillary with the other. In other words, progressives were far less principled. Congratulations. Why not blame Hillary and the sycophants on the DNC? They rigged the system for one of the most unlikable candidates in the history of presidential politics. Also, she was a terrible politician, who gave wooden speeches to small crowds of sycophants. Unlike her husband, when she lied, it was obvious. Remember when Obama said that Hillary was "likable enough?" He was not being entirely truthful. Misogyny? I don't think so. How condescending was it to hear that women didn't vote for the Hildebeast because their husbands and boyfriends told them not to?

Then there is your contention that Trump's pick will be some radical right winger. Using your words, this is somebody who will be ultra-right, hostile, hard core conservative, starving unions, eviscerating rights, coddling violent police officers, abusing defendants, kowtowing to corporations, hateful, abbets homophobes, ultraconservative, and being far-right hypocrites. Gosh, hyperbole much? You don't even know who is being selected. Your column could be reduced to "The Supreme Court will now pick the wrong winners and losers." (Judicial tip: That's not their job.)

And surely you realized the perilous path of declaring that votes for Jill Stein rightfully "belonged" to Hillary. Gary Johnson got more than 3 times the votes that Jill Stein got, while Evan McMullin got half as many. If Stein's votes rightfully belonged to the Democrats, Republicans should just as easily claim Johnson's and McMullin's as their own. (And let's not even revisit the votes that Ross Perot drained off in 1992 (18%) and 1996 (8%). I hope Bill Clinton sends him a Christmas card every year.) Like I said, it's a perilous path.   

No, you should just blame Hillary, rather than the principled Democrats who refused to support her.

Where to start?

The fact is, the rise of Bernie Sanders inspired me to begin teaching economics. I had always thought that too many people do not understand even the basic laws of economics. But when Bernie Sanders found a young audience who just loved the whole idea of socialism, I knew I had to do something. I just didn't realize how bad the problem really is.

There are lots of analogies that describe a difficult situation. Herding cats comes to mind. Being a one-armed wallpaper hanger is another. But in those cases, at least you sort of have an idea about where to start.

I find myself trying to explain the Laffer Curve and the reason why marginal tax rate cuts can produce higher government revenues, to people who think that profits are basically evil, and that you can only make a profit if somebody else loses.This makes it much more difficult.

Teaching Economics

It's amazing to me that economics is not taught to our children as a matter of course. It's been that way forever, but a couple of things happening these days, demonstrate just how desperate the situation has become. One of those things is the "popularity" of a feature on healthcare insurance that does not allow insurers to discriminate against people with pre-existing medical conditions.

The pre-existing medical exclusion was of course a key feature of Obamacare. And it turned out to be so "popular," that even Republicans are trying to include it in their version of a health care law. I keep putting popular in quotation marks because that has been the justification for keeping the feature. Some polls I have seen, have a majority of people favoring this aspect of health insurance. But all that really tells me is that a majority of people don't really understand how insurance works.

If a lawmaker was to propose legislation that would allow you to accumulate traffic tickets and go without car insurance, yet allow you to acquire insurance after you had a wreck, (and at the same premium price as a driver with no tickets or crashes,) I have no doubt whatsoever that it would be extremely popular. Another popular product would be homeowners insurance that you could buy after your house is set ablaze, destroyed or burglarized. It would sure save me a lot of money. I mean don't you feel like you've just wasted all that money paying premiums when you never get to collect? It would be "popular," right?

Are you starting to get the feeling that popularity may not be the key metric here?

The idea of insurance is to spread the risk. A group of people pool their resources and commit to helping those in the group who are visited by misfortune, be it an illness or natural disaster, but not knowing in advance who that will be. That's how the risk is "spread." They all pay the same price because they all have the same risk of experiencing misfortune. Now if facts become known that change one's level of risk, then they need to be in a different pool with people who are at similar levels of risk. So if you get a lot of speeding tickets, or have a number of crashes that are your fault, you are bumped up to a higher risk pool, with the attendant higher premiums.

If you insist that the risk be removed from buying health insurance by excluding pre-existing conditions, it ceases to be insurance. It is now pre-paid health care, and it is a LOT more expensive for everybody. The premium you pay now for homeowner's insurance is relatively cheap. You can insure a $300,000 home for less than $1,000/year. But if you could buy it after the fire, it would cost roughly $300,000. It would have to be.

" I can do math in my head."

"I can do math in my head."

And with that comment, the guy sitting next to me made the point better than I could ever have hoped to do.

I was sitting at the bar when he came in. I had run into this same guy about four times in 3 days. First I was in a waiting room at the gas station with him where we were both getting our tires serviced. Then ran into him at the bar, about an hour later, and then at the bar the next two days. So it wasn't all that odd that he sat down next to me and started talking. But it was different that he started talking politics. Most people don't dare go there. But everybody who knows me, knows that I relish talking politics, particularly if you disagree with me. That may strike you as odd, but I determined a long time ago that arguing politics is a good thing, as Martha Stewart would say. There are two reasons for that. First, I have always felt that if I'm going to state my support for a policy or candidate, then I better be able to back that up. I had better be able to argue my position at the drop of a hat. (My mother always said that I would argue at the drop of a hat anyway, so I'm just making her proud.) And secondly, it's the only way I change my mind.  And that happens when my BS detector goes off on myself. Like most people, I want to win the argument. So when the back and forth starts, I'm just trying to out maneuver the other guy and win. But it's at the point where I hear BS coming out of my own mouth that I realize something is wrong with my argument. And that's when I change my mind. Anyway, the point is, I think arguing is good for us.

So Tommy sits down next to me and starts in about how unhappy he is with the economy and Trump's election. He explains that he works in a lab. He performs tests that determine whether or not you have certain types of cancer. He then disparages financial managers, and points out that there are some companies that NEVER make a profit, losing millions quarter after quarter, and year after year. So I'm thinking this may be the guy to prove my point about economic education.

I say, "You're probably very well educated, do you have an advanced degree?"

"Yes, I have a Masters."

"So you've gone to school for what, 18, 19 years?"

"Yeah, that's a lot of money isn't it?

"But it's also a lot of years, a lot of education right?"

"Yes"

"So how many classes in economics did you take during those 19 years?"

"Oh I can do math in my head."

"So the answer is none."

"I learned all that stuff on my own."

"What stuff?"

"Profit and losses. I can do math in my head."

"That's not economics, and you're proving my point."

Deplorable Voters

Many liberal voters were shocked, to say the least, when Donald Trump won the election. And they seem to have very hard feeling for those deplorable voters who took what was rightfully theirs, the presidency.

Their logic in directing their anger at the Trump voters, goes something like this:

     Trump is a racist, sexist, ignorant bully.
     I can't imagine anybody voting for him who is not also a stupid, racist, misogynist.
     Therefore, all Trump voters are stupid racist and sexist.  

And I have to admit, at first blush, this seems to make perfect sense. But then I put the shoe on the other foot, and viola! It doesn't fit.

I firmly believe, in my heart of hearts, that Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt, vile and dishonest person to ever seek the presidency. Really. Liberals tend to let their jaw hit the floor when I say that, but that's only because they refuse to pay attention. She has lined her pockets selling influence, and pocketing bribes since the 1980's. And at the crux of every one of her scandals has been HRC herself, lying and then lying about her lies. Don't believe me?


Whitewater - insider real estate deal while Bill was governor. It was a bust, but not before Hillary lied repeatedly about it.

Travlegate - fired the White House travel office and accused them of embezzlement so that she could steer the business to cronies she had promised the business. And then lied about it.

Cattle futures - A thinly disguised bribe from Tyson Chicken of $100,000. Set up a phony futures account so that the crooked broker could assign her one of the winning bets from the multiple trades he handled each day. Real investors got the losers, and never knew what hit them She claimed to have turned $1,000 into $100,000 in nine months by reading the Wall Street Journal.

Rose Law Firm billing records. During the Whitewater investigation, the billing records became a point of contention. But when they looked for them, they were nowhere to be found. A few years later, after the statute of limitations passed, they miraculously showed up in the White House living quarters. Nobody knows how they got there. (You know, it's the White House, people are coming and going all the time. Anybody could have dropped them off there.)

Benghazi, The Video - Forget the details about security, this whole thing started with her lie that the riot was caused by a Youtube video. The she had to once again, lie many more times in order to srevice the first lie.

Private Server - Better question here is when didn't she lie?

The Foundation? It's a crime syndicate that serves as their personal jet charter service.

She took her net worth from zero to a quarter of a BILLION in 15 years, while working as a public servant.

You can disagree with me, but that doesn't matter. This is what I truly believe about Hillary Rodham Clinton. And yet, I understand that you don't have to be a corrupt liar yourself, in order to vote for one. For some reason, liberals can't make that calculation.

Career Politicians

For a good number of election cycles, the term "career politician" has indicated somebody who is on the bottom rung of life's ladder. A career politician never held a "real job." never produced anything of value, and never gained any experience in the real world. It was the biggest, by far, knock on Barack Obama. He was mocked as the community organizer who had never had a real job. He'd never been a manager. He'd never been an executive. Worst of all, he'd never run a business. He'd never met a payroll and he never lost sleep worrying about not meeting one. He was a career politician. And he won.

I think the first time this notion struck our collective fancy, was 1992. A billionaire Texan spent an hour or so talking to Larry King on CNN, and suddenly everybody was enthralled with the idea of letting a non-politician take a swipe at it. "Let's a businessman run it like a business!" became the cry, and a permanent lane was created for the non-politician. Ever since then, there has been one lurking around the edges of every primary. Their main appeal is that  they are NOT a politician. The idea of an outsider coming in to clean house sounded so good. In fact, it sounded so good that people forgot why we even had professional politicians. I mean, what good were they? What skills did they have, other than skillfully lying  to us?

The answer is so obvious that is makes me feel stupid now. Their skill is getting elected.

And make no mistake, it is a skill. It is a skill to be able to debate a point without loosing your cool. It's a skill to deflect criticism, without seeming to dodge the question. And yes, it's a skill to lie the right way, and to an acceptable degree. It's a skill to charm those with whom you disagree slightly, and to not appear to be mean when you disagree wholly. It is a skill to be gracious, either in victory or defeat. It is a skill to win the support of opponents you have defeated.

Oddly these are the skills that people say they despise in career politicians. They are also the skills that win elections. If you were to make a list of those people who best exemplified these skills, it would have Obama, Bill Clinton, G.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, JFK, LBJ, FDR and Richard Nixon topping the list. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump would be nowhere to be found on that list.

Following Trump's epic defeat this November, I predict a new found appreciation for the skills of career politicians.

Exactly Who are the Cowards Here?

      This morning CBS did a lengthy segment on the Democrat’s sit-in to force a vote on two gun control measures that have been on the administration’s agenda for years now. Background checks at gun shows, and barring anybody on the no-fly list from buying a gun. The latter measure is usually expressed as “keeping guns out of terrorist’s hands.” Trying to portray Republican’s as puppets of the NRA, the Democrats are calling them cowards for not even allowing a vote.

CBS showed the story mostly from the Democrat’s side, which is hardly surprising. They had quotes from John Lewis, Gabby Gifford, and others decrying the lack of action by Republicans to keep guns away from terrorists. But they did allow a very short clip of Paul Ryan saying that he was not going bring up anything for a vote that would deny somebody their constitutional right without due process.  It was the first and last time in the entire broadcast that anybody used that term. It went back to cowards-who-won’t-protect-us immediately.

I’m not a lawyer. I don’t even play one on TV. But I do know what Ryan was talking about. It’s really a shame that the Democrats don’t have any top notch legal minds available to answer the Speaker’s concern. You’d think that somewhere over there they would have some Ivy League lawyer, maybe even a Constitutional expert and scholar, maybe even graduated magna cum laude from Harvard (Obama) or Yale (Clinton.) Hell, I’d settle for the law schools at Syracuse (Biden), Boston College (Kerry), George Washington (Reid), and UW (Tammy Baldwin.) But apparently they don’t have anybody like that to explain it.  No, the only thing they seem capable of is making a statement that sounds ridiculous on its face. Who doesn’t want to keep guns out or terrorists hands? It’s that simple right?

Well, except for that 2^nd amendment anyway. And that’s where we find out who the real political cowards are. The very definition of a coward is somebody who does not have the courage of their convictions. The dilemma for Democrats is that the 2^nd amendment prohibits any infringement on the citizen’s right to bear arms.

 And if there is one thing that gun control advocates most definitely want to do, it is infringe on that right by any means necessary. So the path to that end would seem obvious: Repeal the 2^nd amendment. Except that that requires political suicide. In my assessment, the only honest player so far has been, ironically, Rolling Stone magazine. They are the only ones I know of who have endorsed repeal. Of course they are not a politician, and after discrediting the entire profession of journalism with a fake rape story, they may be just trying to regain relevance. So what’s Tammy’s excuse?

Do you know how one gets placed on the vaunted no-fly list? Me neither. In fact, Tammy Baldwin can’t tell you how. So I think it’s safe to say that getting on to the list does not constitute due process. You see, your constitutional rights can be taken away after due process. If you get convicted of a felony, you lose some of your rights, including the right to own a gun. The conviction in court was the due process. You may also lose your right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness due to a conviction. But there is no process to getting on the list and therefore no legal way to deny a citizen their rights. Now, do you think that any of the numerous Democrat lawyers in congress understand this? Well they certainly pretend they don’t.