President Trump: Obama's Third Term

I can just see some people's faces. What?! Trump and Obama are nothing alike. But hear me out. I have not "jumped the shark." 

First one needs to remember the Obama campaign. Clearly he was not ready to be president. He had been in the Senate for only two years, and his service there was unimpressive. But he was a fresh face. I had always thought that he was actually running for vice president, and got lucky. He campaigned on Hope and Change. That is exactly what the electorate wants. They want change, and they hope it works. The fact that someone with such a lack of experience was able to sideline Clinton for 8 years tells us that Clinton was out of touch with the people. 

Look at her campaign slogan. "I'm with Her." Yes, she had another slogan as well, "Together something or other." I will not bother to look it up. The fact that I can't remember it says a lot about the Clinton campaign's rhetorical skills. But instead of "I'm with Her," her slogan should have been "She's with US." The rumor is that her husband saw this coming and tried to get her campaign to address these issues with the average working class person. Even though former President Clinton's political instincts are said to be quite good, he was ignored. His existence probably hurt her campaign as his sexual past was actually worse that Trump's. President Clinton's past allowed some to vote for Trump as the other side was worse. While Hillary Clinton naturally had policies, her emphasis was almost entirely, "I am not Trump." 

This was not enough. 

While Trump has considerably more "life experience" than Obama had in 2008, this experience was not all positive. His political experience was even less than Obama's. Trump ultimately was a celebrity from a reality TV show. In some ways he was the "ideal" candidate. 

I see a connection with the Obama slogan, "Hope and Change," with the Trump slogan "Make America Great Again." In fact, Trump's slogan could also have been "Hope and Change." Nostalgia does have it appeal, just look at the popularity of the sitcom, "Happy Days," from which the term "jump the shark" entered our cultural lexicon. Personally I do not want to live in the 50's reincarnated. 

Like Obama, Trump is a master of rhetoric. Both had substance, but in neither case did the substance matter. 

For both Obama and Trump, rhetoric was enough. 

Has American "jumped the shark" with a President Trump? No one knows. I am "guardedly pessimistic." No one can repeal the business cycle, so President Trump will have to deal with a recession, just as a President Clinton would have. At least Trump, having skirted personal bankruptcy in the 90's, understands the risks. 

There is that clichéd Chinese curse that seems to fit the US right now: 

May you live in interesting times. 

The Evils of Two Lessors

As I write this on Monday, I am still not certain what I will do. Since I titled one blog post "Clinton: Dangerous as Hell" and another blog post "Trump: Dangerous as Heck" you might conclude that I was leaning one way. 

To explain my probable vote you need to understand my history of voting in California. 

In 1972 I was not happy with either McGovern or Nixon. Both seemed really bad. It was my first vote and I wanted to vote. I was not sure what I was going to do when I entered the voting booth. I noticed that the American Independent party was on the ballot and my congressman was the candidate for president for that party. So I voted for him. 

After returning to California after many years, I was also not happy with my choices in 2012—Romney or Obama. It just did not seem to matter. I was flirting with voting for the Peace and Freedom Party as their candidate, Roseanne Barr, had suggested bring back the guillotine for bankers. I noticed that the American Independent party still had ballot access. So I voted for their candidate. I actually do not remember his name! It did not matter. 

So as I prepare to vote, I am still uncertain. I may just leave it blank, and vote against all the propositions. I will vote in favor of 53 as Governor Brown is against it. But the most likely outcome is that I vote for the American Independent candidate this year, I would not want to break with tradition. 

Trump: Dangerous as Heck

As you can see I changed the title of this post from Trump: Dangerous as Hell. The reason is quite simple. Trump's dangers do not include the world as a radioactive wasteland; Clinton's do. Trump's dangers are economic. 

No, it is not tariffs or immigration. He is mostly right on these. It is like Trump is stuck in a time warp to the 80's in advocating what the original George Bush called "Voodoo Economics." To a degree this voodoo actually worked. Dropping the federal marginal tax rate from 70% to 35% would tend to increase the economy. This added to the fact that there was a business cycle meant that Reagan's tax cuts mostly paid for themselves in revenue. Reagan dramatically increased military spending and made no cuts in domestic spending, this meant huge deficits. Trump is proposing the same kind of thing. But the situation is different. The US is currently at the height of the business cycle, not its bottom, so revenue will be on a downward trend. The highest US marginal tax rate is about 40%, so cutting it to, lets say 30%, will not have the same stimulus as cutting from 70 to 35 did. 

What makes Trump's proposal dangerous is the high level of debt the US has right now. This is a bipartisan problem. Bush roughly doubled the debt from 5 trillion to 10 trillion. He added at least 1 trillion to the US unfunded liabilities by adding a prescription drug benefit to Medicare—without paying for it. He also added a huge amount, no one knows how much, to future liabilities for the veterans of his wars. He was, fiscally speaking, a demographic train wreck as our population ages. 

I know I am supposed to say that Obama was even worse, but they were both equally bad. Obama continued Bush's wars, but at a reduced level, so that is good. But Obama also added a huge amount to the budget by introducing ObamaCare. Obama also doubled the debt. While the deficits have gone down, oddly enough borrowing continues to grow. This year the deficit will be around 600 billion dollars, at what may very well be the height of the business cycle. But at the same time the debt of the US will increase by 1.4 trillion. I have no explanation of the difference in the size of the increase beyond the fact you can't trust government numbers. 

In this environment, a tax cut is foolhardy in the extreme. Increasing military spending, when the US is already spending more than the rest of the world combined is also foolhardy in the extreme.

So on domestic fiscal policy I would say that Clinton is slightly better. But at this point what difference does it make if Clinton's foreign policy leads to war and possible nuclear holocaust. It would seem that Obama is paving the way for a Clinton War with Russia. 

The old phrase "lessor of two evils" has always been a metaphor since neither candidate was actually evil. In this election cycle it is not a metaphor. 

I will announce my vote tomorrow. 

Comey Baloney

No doubt you are expecting me to say something negative about Comey's decision not to prosecute Clinton. You are right. Not in the way you might expect. I honestly do not know what I would have done is his situation. There are several things going on. 

The first is some variant of the Peter Principle. Infogalactic describes it this way:

The Peter principle is a concept in management theory formulated by Laurence J. Peter in which the selection of a candidate for a position is based on the candidate's performance in their current role, rather than on abilities relevant to the intended role. Thus, employees only stop being promoted once they can no longer perform effectively, and "managers rise to the level of their incompetence."

In other words, Comey has been promoted one too many times. 

But put yourself in Comey's Brooks Brothers' suit. You know how the world works. In a normal case, Clinton would plead guilty to a misdemeanor, would pay a huge fine, modest for her, and that would be the end of it. But the normal procedure won't work as Clinton is running for president. She can't plead guilty to anything, no matter how deserved. So rather than influence the political process, Comey called her reckless, and allowed anyone on the fence to fill in the blanks. 

Apparently this infuriated a large number of his agents. He could just ride that out, but then a new batch of 650,000 emails were found. If he did not release this information, someone would leak it. This would be the worst possible outcome for him as it would then appear he was hiding them. So Comey announced to the world that they existed. 

No doubt there were interesting conversations with his superiors. Again he faced unfortunate choices. If he is still FBI chief under a Clinton presidency, you can guess what those conversations might have been. He is most likely to resign for personal reasons, and then get a nice job somewhere quiet. But in any event he was in "dire straits." He could not expect to receive "money for nothing" in the future. 

So today Comey declared that the emails held nothing new. I actually thought that they wouldn't, and predicted on Facebook that nothing would be released, referring to both this scandal and Anonymous' supposed release of damaging material on Clinton. I was however surprised that that the announcement of the examination was complete took place after only a few days. (edit: I did my math wrong!) I do not see how 650,000 emails could be examined in that time. There probably isn't time for there to be any new leaks, regardless of what is in these emails.

But that is just how the world works. Comey understands it. I understand it. You understand it. 

I can describe Comey in one word.

Incoherent. Incompetent. Incontinent.  

Thiel Speech at the National Press Club

One of the better arguments in favor of a Trump presidency. I will announce my vote tomorrow.