Tidbits
Political Quotations
To Accompany the November 15, 2016 edition of Tidbits
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2016/tidbits111516.htm
Bob Jensen at
Trinity University
It's hard to beat a person who never gives up.
Babe Ruth,
Historic Home Run Hitter
What's sad is to witness what Syria has become because nobody will give up.
And "because they're nonstate actors, it's
hard for us to get the satisfaction of [Gen.] MacArthur and the [Japanese]
Emperor [Hirohito] meeting and the war officially being over," Obama observed,
referencing the end of World War II.
President Barack Obama when asked if the USA of
the future will be perpetually engaged in war.
http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-on-americans-being-resigned-to-live-in-a-perpetual-war-2016-7
Only those who
will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T.S. Eliot
There
is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley
Even conversations
that are not politically correct.
We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life
that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton
Why were nearly all
poll statisticians thinking alike in 2016?
If you don't know
where you're going, you might not get there.
Yogi Berra
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude
you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly
on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau
Wildlife populations plunge almost 60 percent since
1970: WWF ---
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wildlife-populations-plunge-almost-60-percent-since-1970-000904325.html
Tax Rate Of S&P 100 Companies ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/11/tax-rate-of-sp-100-companies.html
There are some surprises here
List of United States presidential elections by popular vote margin ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin
Voter Turnout Percentages ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_presidential_elections_by_popular_vote_margin
Also see
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/10/why-did-trump-win-in-part-because-voter-turnout-plunged/
7 charts show who propelled Trump to victory
---
http://www.businessinsider.com/exit-polls-who-voted-for-trump-clinton-2016-11/#more-women-voted-for-clinton-as-expected-but-trump-still-got-42-of-female-votes-1
Nate Silver's blog is pointing out that Clinton also failed to win over white
females who did not graduate from college ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/
In other words, a serious number of women prevented a woman from winning this
election.
What’s also important here is how poorly Hillary
Clinton did. She got 6 million fewer votes than Barack Obama did in 2012, and
nearly 10 million fewer than he did in 2008 ---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/10/why-did-trump-win-in-part-because-voter-turnout-plunged/
Hillary spent nearly twice as much per vote as
her opponent ---
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-11-09/trump-redefined-us-politics-after-hillary-spent-nearly-twice-much-vote-nothing
Yes, You’re Right, Colleges Are Liberal Bubbles. Here’s
the Data ---
http://www.chronicle.com/article/Yes-You-re-Right-Colleges/238400?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=1840151c4b3646e68047b29f70980c2b&elq=2bfba3fc23fc436c98ef17a557a522aa&elqaid=11467&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=4485
The relevance of gerrymandering to the U.S.
presidential election, however, is tenuous at best. Only two U.S. states use
congressional districts to decide on electoral college votes (State X
and State Y), and it’s not clear whether the
impression of closeness in a congressional race impacts voter psychology in the
presidential race
Why Are US Presidential Elections So Close? ---
http://nautil.us/issue/42/fakes/why-are-us-presidential-elections-so-close
Jensen Question
What states are State X and State Y above?
Hint: They are known for corn husking and lobsters.
Trump Becomes the Richest President: The Net
Worth of All the American Presidents ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/11/10/trump-becomes-the-richest-president-the-net-worth-of-the-american-presidents/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NOV102016A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
This 2010 article estimates Trump's wealth to be in the $2.9 - $10 billion
range. However, others later put a much lower estimate on his wealth.
The Forbes' estimate places his wealth at about $4 billion.
There are nearly 2,000 billionaires in the world with about 400 being Americans
and nearly 200 of those being in the Democratic Party such that people who
claim almost all billionaires are Republicans have not done the research.---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billionaire
Also see
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jenniferwang/2016/09/28/the-definitive-look-at-donald-trumps-wealth-new/?ss=forbes400#7fe6e60b7e2d
Trump probably had less campaign support from wealthy people than any viable
presidential candidate in recent years, Democrat or Republican. The very wealthy
Koch Brothers purportedly froze Trump out although they generously gave to other
candidates for public office. Purportedly the Koch Brothers also donated $900
million to the Clinton Foundation (do you wonder why?) ---
http://www.metrowestdailynews.com/opinion/20150612/maddocks-disclosure-of-koch-donation-to-clinton-foundation-puts-2016-race-at-risk
Francine: President-elect Trump does not have to
relinquish control of his business empire but he does have to disclose ...
---
https://twitter.com/retheauditors/status/796781746914291713?t=1&cn=ZmxleGlibGVfcmVjcw%3D%3D&refsrc=email&iid=6bf489ea03cb416f93ed595f758e282f&uid=104534227&nid=244+272699393
The Article Provides An Asset By Asset Breakdown Of Donald Trump’s Major Assets
The Bottomless Ignorance of Donald Trump ---
http://reason.com/archives/2016/10/27/the-bottomless-ignorance-of-donald-trump
Whoopi: 16 Celebrities leaving America
upon Trump becoming President ---
http://www.naijapr.com/16-celebrities-leaving-america-upon-trump-becoming-president/
Clinton Lies About Lying
About Her Lies The newly revived email controversy shows how she manages to be
less trusted than Trump ---
http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/02/clinton-lies-about-lying-about-her-lies
The Democratic National
Committee is Completely Corrupt
Liberal Activist Susan Sarandon
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/304218-susan-sarandon-the-dnc-is-completely-corrupt
CNN Fires Donna Brazile
for Rigging Debates --- Giving Hillary Questions in Advance ---
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/24525-about-time-cnn-fires-donna-brazile-for-rigging-debates-giving-hillary-questions-in-advance
Jensen Comment
The sad part that comes as no surprise is that Hillary Clinton willingly
cheated. Under the pay-to-play policy Donna may even get a high level
appointment in the incoming White House.
Bob Jensen's threads on celebrities who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Celebrities
Bad News From CBS News
Hillary Clinton’s campaign is returning thousands of
dollars in donations linked to what may be one of the largest straw-donor
schemes ever uncovered. A small law firm that has given money to Sen. Elizabeth
Warren, Sen. Harry Reid, President Obama and many others is accused of
improperly funneling millions of dollars into Democratic Party coffers. The
program was exposed by the Center for Responsive Politics and the same team of
Boston Globe investigative reporters featured in the movie “Spotlight.” The
Thornton Law Firm has just 10 partners, but dollar for dollar, it’s one of the
nation’s biggest political donors, reports...
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/thornton-law-firm-straw-donor-scheme-bonuses-boston-globe-spotlight/
CNN: FBI Agents Tell Us DOJ Put Up Politically
Motivated Roadblocks During Clinton Foundation Probe ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/11/03/cnn-fbi-agents-tell-us-doj-put-up-politically-motivated-roadblocks-during-our-clinton-foundation-probe-n2240973?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
Should the new name be the Department of Injustice?
A list of Hillary Clinton's and Donald Trump's
'sins' shows why they are both unpopular ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/hillary-clinton-donald-trump-sins-unpopular-2016-10
Scott Adams (Dilbert) Does a Risk Analysis of
Both Clinton and Trump ---
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/152573895011/candidate-risk-assessmen
Canada is overjoyed by the Trump
victory. Now the USA will send them more of our workers and Canada will send us
more oil (maybe through the Keystone pipeline)
Bob Jensen
From California to Maine, voters are being asked to raise taxes
in a rash of state
ballot initiatives. “State government revenues have swelled 30% in the last five
years. That’s a bigger raise than most workers have received, but public unions
and their friends are asking voters for more at the ballot box on
Nov. 8,”
explains a Journal editorial.
...Joel
Fox has more
on the multiple tax-hike
proposals
before voters in California.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-terms-of-surrender-in-californias-tax-revolt-1477524053?mod=djemMER
Socialism's Bad Year in South America
In less than one year Brazil, Argentina and Peru have all sworn in new
center-right presidents, replacing leaders who had been allies of Venezuelan
strongman Hugo Chávez. Last week the South American backlash against chavismo
continued its continental sweep when Chile held nationwide municipal elections
---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/chiles-socialists-take-a-beating-1477864540?mod=djemMER
Out Of 199 Quotes, 40 That Reveal Donald
Trump’s Ethics --- |
https://ethicsalarms.com/2015/08/16/out-of-199-quotes-40-that-reveal-donald-trumps-ethics/
The Atlantic: A (WikiLeak) Memo Serves as a
Roadmap to the Clinton's Tangled Finances ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-man-at-the-center-of-bill-clinton-inc/505661/
WikiLeaks: Chelsea's Husband Used Clinton Foundation to Advance His Hedge Fund
---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/jasonhopkins/2016/11/07/chleaseas-husband-may-have-used-clinton-foundation-to-advance-his-hedge-fund-n2242478?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
The Atlantic: The Problem With How
Higher Education Treats Diversity ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/10/trading-identity-for-acceptance/505619/
The Most Expensive Yachts in the World With Michael
Jordan's Yacht Being the Most Disgusting ---
http://detonate.com/the-most-expensive-yachts-in-the-world-2/?utm_source=b32&utm_campaign=b32_US_desktop_Yachts_12_562a_20161001_mm_3678&utm_medium=cpc
Yeah Right!
Huma Abedin Swore Under Oath She Gave Up 'All the
Devices' With State Dept. Emails ---
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/29/huma-abedin-swore-under-oath-she-gave-up-all-the-devices-containing-state-department-emails.html
Elizabeth Warren, the Prisoner of
‘Powerful Interests’ The Massachusetts liberal rails against money in
politics—so she should pay back union help.---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/elizabeth-warren-the-prisoner-of-powerful-interests-1478126566?mod=djemMER
The Atlantic: When a President
Banishes Science from the Whitehouse
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/when-a-president-banishes-science-from-the-white-house/505937/
The Department of Justice is Rigged to Circumvent the
Freedom of Information Act
One piece of evidence comes from WikiLeaks, in a hacked
email between the chairman of the Clinton campaign, John Podesta, and Assistant
Attorney General Peter Kadzik. It was sent in May of 2015 via a private Gmail
account, which has become the favored way for Obama employees to hide
communications from the public. “Heads up,” Mr. Kadzik warned, informing the
campaign about a coming hearing and a recent legal filing about Mrs. Clinton’s
emails.
by Kimberley A. Strassel
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-clinton-campaign-at-obama-justice-1478216727?mod=djemMER
Detroit Pistons head coach Stan
Van Gundy blasted US President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday in a nearly
six-minute rant. Speaking to media before the Pistons' Wednesday night game
against the Phoenix Suns, Van Gundy said he was stunned and "ashamed" of the US
for electing Trump.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pistons-coach-stan-van-gundy-205855721.html
Jensen Comment
I wonder if Detroit city officials shuddered at this rant given that they are
asking for hundreds of millions in new Federal aid for their schools and
infrastructure while emerging from bankruptcy as a city.
Not at all smart Stan Van the Stupid Man
Seattle Socialist councilwoman
Kshama Sawant told protesters to shut down Donald Trump’s inauguration in
Washington DC. ---
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/seattle-socialist-councilwoman-calls-protesters-shut-trumps-inauguration-video/
Another great happening in support of Trump's re-election in 2020"=
Doesn't this Ms Sawant know why white workers in America voted for Trump in
anger at leaders like her
Time Magazine:
Iowa Police Shooting Renews Calls for ‘Blue Lives Matter’ Legislation ---
http://time.com/4413732/iowa-police-shooting-blue-lives-matter/?xid=newsletter-brief
Taxing the Rich in Four
Charts ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/11/wsjtaxing-the-rich-in-four-charts.html
Currently the Top 50% pay nearly all of the USA personal income tax collected
and a lion's share of the property taxes
Lower income folks pay sales taxes, payroll taxes for Social Security and
Medicare (if they have jobs), fuel taxes, etc.
I write a book about the left
shuttering down the right, and YouTube is restricting my video about it; Talk
about proving a point ---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/10/the-irs-scandal-day-1269-the-dark-art-of-political-intimidation.html
Kimberly A. Strassel ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberley_Strassel
Jensen Comment
Kimberly will wait forever to get an invitation to speak about her book on a USA
college campus.
Hi Elliot,
I suspect you're correct on this sensible reply
except that after Kimberley went public on YouTube censorship YouTube
censors went whole-hog on admitting videos about her book. It would seem
that it does not take much to lower the censorship bars on YouTube.
Actually, given the amount of nudity and worse porn carried on YouTube these
days it does not appear that the censorship bars are very high on YouTube.
I suspect there are not really many (any?) bars to
videos on YouTube.
Exhibit A There are even YouTube videos on how to
make pipe bombs and pressure cooker bombs.
Exhibit B
There are explicit videos on YouTube about how to
improve masturbation technique.
Political Correctness on Campus The problem I have
with political correctness is that activists on the left became so physical
that universities like Harvard, DePaul, Syracuse, and others are banning
conservative speakers not for academic reasons but for security reasons.
Activists have learned that universities are cowardly (prudent?) and will
not take security risks in the name of free speech. The greater the loudness
and intimidation the greater the chance of administrative banning a
conservative speaker like Ben Shapiro from campus. Ben Shapiro? Get serious!
Maybe he should be banned for ignorance.
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
Boston Globe: Elizabeth Warren
prime recipient of questionable law firm donations ---
http://legalinsurrection.com/2016/10/elizabeth-warren-prime-recipient-of-questionable-law-firm-donations/#more-189601
Animated map shows the most dangerous
countries in the world for tourists ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/animated-map-dangerous-countries-world-tourists-terrorism-2016-7
Well, the
rifleman’s stalking the sick and the lame
Preacherman seeks the same, who’ll get there first is uncertain
Nightsticks and water cannons, tear gas, padlocks
Molotov cocktails and rocks behind every curtain
False-hearted judges dying in the webs that they spin
Only a matter of time ’til night comes steppin’ in
Bob Dylan
Jensen Lament
It will be
interesting to see if a win for Trump is a shot in the arm for Bernie
Sanders. He may be too old to run again, but millennials may dig down to
find his replacement in the socialist movement.
Personally I don't
think Trump's win was a repudiation of gender. Many voters really do want
to drain the swamp of Republicans and Democrats in power. It was also a vote
against power lobbies (Wall Street,
Labor Unions, CEOs,
etc. ) that funded Clinton's campaign.
Let's hope Trump finds some good assistants to guide the USA through the
coming years of domestic and global turmoil.
The
Bottomless Ignorance of Donald Trump
---
http://reason.com/archives/2016/10/27/the-bottomless-ignorance-of-donald-trump
I've never been a
fan of Susan Sarandon's politics. But she pretty much says it all in one
sentence.
The Democratic
National Committee is Completely Corrupt
Liberal Activist Susan Sarandon
http://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/304218-susan-sarandon-the-dnc-is-completely-corrupt
Clinton Lies
About Lying About Her Lies The newly revived email controversy shows how she
manages to be less trusted than Trump ---
http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/02/clinton-lies-about-lying-about-her-lies
CNN Fires Donna
Brazile for Rigging Debates --- Giving Hillary Questions in Advance ---
http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/24525-about-time-cnn-fires-donna-brazile-for-rigging-debates-giving-hillary-questions-in-advance
Jensen Comment
The sad part that comes as no surprise is that Hillary Clinton willingly
cheated. Under the pay-to-play policy Donna may even get a high level
appointment in the incoming White House.
Bob Jensen's threads on celebrities who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Celebrities
It will be interesting to see if a win for trump
is a shot in the arm for Bernie Sanders. He may be too old to run again, but
millennials may dig down to find his replacement in the socialist movement.
A Loser in the Election Outcomes is a Leading Statistician Named Nate Silver (he should be having crow for breakfast)
This was His Final Forecast On the
Morning of Election Day
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/final-election-update-theres-a-wide-range-of-outcomes-and-most-of-them-come-up-clinton/
Throughout the election, our
forecast models have consistently come to two
conclusions. First, that Hillary Clinton was more likely
than not to become the next president. And second, that
the range of possible Electoral College outcomes —
including the chance of a Donald Trump victory, but also
a Clinton landslide that could see her winning states
such as Arizona — was comparatively wide.
That remains our outlook today in
our final forecast of the year. Clinton is a 71 percent
favorite to win the election according to our
polls-only model and a 72 percent favorite according
to our
polls-plus
model. (The models
are
essentially the same
at this point, so they show about the same forecast.)
This reflects a
meaningful improvement for Clinton in the past 48 hours
as the news cycle has taken a
final half-twist in her favor.
Her chances have increased from about 65 percent.
More Politics
Our forecast has Clinton
favored in states and congressional districts totaling
323 electoral votes, including all the states President
Obama won in 2012 except Ohio and Iowa, but adding North
Carolina. However, because our forecasts are
probabilistic, and because Clinton’s leads in North
Carolina and Florida especially are tenuous, the average
number of electoral votes we forecast for Clinton is
302, which would be equivalent to her winning either
Florida or North Carolina but not both.
Jensen Comment
I'm a great admirer of Nate Silver. In fairness he gave much lower probability
to a Clinton win than most other poll forecasters.
Interestingly, Nate Silver also admitted some years ago that he made a
mistake predicting Scott Brown would lose in the election for Ted Kennedy's
senate seat. That one he blamed on non-stationary states. He contended that he
was wrong because so many voters changed their mind in favor of Brown on
election day.
The main technical conclusion is that statistics as a discipline does
poorly in in non-stationary worlds.
November 9, 2016 reply from Paul Williams
Not sure this makes Nate Silver the loser; it makes
statistical
modeling the loser. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels have a book
titled Democracy for Realists, which takes aim at the accountics style
of research that now dominates political science. Models may do okay
in "stable" times, but fail miserably to account for the inherent
instabilities that bedevil politics (and economics). For too long the
social sciences have been anchored to rational decision theoretic
models and Achen and Bartels argue that for political science it is
bunk. People vote as herds; they don't calculate. In other words
they are occasionally "irrational" and, thus, unpredictable.
Bob Jensen's threads on what went wrong in statistical science
and accountics science ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The president-elect’s analysts picked up disturbances others
weren’t seeing—the beginning of the (angry) storm that would deliver Trump to
the White House ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/trump-s-data-team-saw-a-different-america-and-they-were-right?cmpid=BBD111116_BIZ
Nobody saw it coming. Not the media.
Certainly not Hillary Clinton. Not even Donald Trump’s team of data
scientists, holed up in their
San Antonio headquarters
1,800 miles from Trump Tower, were predicting
this outcome. But the scientists picked up disturbances—like falling
pressure before a hurricane—that others weren’t seeing. It was the beginning
of the storm that would deliver Trump to the White House.
Flash back three weeks, to Oct. 18. The Trump
campaign’s internal election simulator, the “Battleground Optimizer Path to
Victory,” showed Trump with a 7.8 percent chance of winning. That’s because
his own model had him trailing in most of the states that would decide the
election, including the pivotal state of Florida—but only by a small margin.
And in some states, such as Virginia, he was winning, even though no public
poll agreed.
Trump’s numbers were different, because his analysts, like Trump himself,
were forecasting a fundamentally different electorate than other pollsters
and almost all of the media: older, whiter, more rural, more populist. And
much angrier at what they perceive to be an overclass of entitled elites. In
the next three weeks, Trump channeled this anger on the stump, at times
seeming almost unhinged.
“A vote for Hillary is a vote to surrender our government to public
corruption, graft, and cronyism that threatens the survival of our
constitutional system itself,” Trump told an Arizona crowd on Oct. 29. “What
makes us exceptional is that we are a nation of laws and that we are all
equal under those laws. Hillary’s corruption shreds the principle on which
our nation was founded.”
His hyperbole and crassness drew broad condemnation from the media and
political elite, who interpreted his anger as an acknowledgment that he was
about to lose. But rather than alienate his gathering army, Trump’s
antipathy fed their resolve.
He had an unwitting ally. “Hillary Clinton was the perfect foil for Trump’s
message,” says Steve Bannon, his campaign chief executive officer. “From her
e-mail server, to her lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, to her
FBI problems, she represented everything that middle-class Americans had had
enough of.”
Trump’s analysts had detected this upsurge in the electorate even before FBI
Director James Comey delivered his Oct. 28 letter to Congress announcing
that he was reopening his investigation into Clinton’s e-mails. But the news
of the investigation accelerated the shift of a largely hidden rural mass of
voters toward Trump.
Inside his campaign, Trump’s analysts became convinced that even their own
models didn’t sufficiently account for the strength of these voters. “In the
last week before the election, we undertook a big exercise to reweight all
of our polling, because we thought that who [pollsters] were sampling from
was the wrong idea of who the electorate was going to turn out to be this
cycle,” says Matt Oczkowski, the head of product at London firm Cambridge
Analytica and team leader on Trump’s campaign. “If he was going to win this
election, it was going to be because of a Brexit-style mentality and a
different demographic trend than other people were seeing.”
Trump’s team chose to focus on this electorate, partly because it was the
only possible path for them. But after Comey, that movement of older, whiter
voters became newly evident. It’s what led Trump’s campaign to broaden the
electoral map in the final two weeks and send the candidate into states such
as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that no one else believed he could
win (with the exception of liberal filmmaker Michael Moore, who deemed them
“Brexit states”). Even on the eve of the election Trump’s models predicted
only a 30 percent likelihood of victory.
The message Trump delivered to those voters was radically different from
anything they would hear from an ordinary Republican: a bracing screed that
implicated the entire global power structure—the banks, the government, the
media, the guardians of secular culture—in a dark web of moral and
intellectual corruption. And Trump insisted that he alone could fix it.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Trump did not create all this anger in working Americans. He exploited the anger
that was discovered.
After posting the above a Trinity University faculty member sent
the following message about Trump's San Antonio Data Center:
Bob, FYI, the guy running Trump's data center
here in SA was run by a Trinity grad....Brad Parscale '99.
Seattle Socialist councilwoman Kshama Sawant
told protesters to shut down Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington DC.
---
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2016/11/seattle-socialist-councilwoman-calls-protesters-shut-trumps-inauguration-video/
Another great happening in support of Trump's re-election in 2020"
Doesn't this Ms Sawant know why white workers in America voted for Trump in
anger at leaders like her
Hillary Clinton Blames FBI Director James Comey for Election Loss ---
http://fortune.com/2016/11/12/hillary-clinton-james-comey-blame/?xid=newsletter-brief
How naive can you get? This is like blaming the teacher for your
ignorance.
I would say to Hillary that her emails are not among the major angers of Trump's
supporters.
She did not suitably address their major
angers ---
riots,
immigration hordes, home invasions, budget deficits, and unfunded entitlements
(think Social Security benefits and unsustainable Medicare/Medicaid).
A
Politically Incorrect Message from Bob Jensen
Just to let you know at the start of this message I voted for Clinton and worry
much about the intelligence and temperament of President Elect Trump.
Bob
Jensen
There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.
Leonard Cohen
Be
brave enough to start a conversation that matters.
Margaret Wheatley
Even conversations that are not politically correct.
We
must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life
that is waiting for us.
Joseph Campbell
If
everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
George S. Patton
Why were nearly all poll statisticians thinking alike in 2016 except
for Trump's hired data center in San Antonio?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-10/trump-s-data-team-saw-a-different-america-and-they-were-right?cmpid=BBD111116_BIZ
The drop in turnout was uneven. On average, turnout was unchanged in states that
voted for Trump, while it fell by an average of 2.3 percentage points in states
that voted for Clinton. Relatedly, turnout was higher in competitive states —
most of which Trump won ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/voter-turnout-fell-especially-in-states-that-clinton-won/
Bernie Sanders Blames the Democratic Party for the Trump Victory
---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2016/11/11/bernie-sanders-slams-democratic-party-over-trump-victory-n2244319?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
Jensen Comment
It's more complicated than Bernie and leading progressives are admitting when
turning a blind eye to the deepest angers among Trump's constituency,
angers that are not politically correct.
Nate Silver's blog is pointing out that Clinton also failed to win over white
females who did not graduate from college
---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/
tion
In
other words, a serious number of women prevented a woman from winning this
Presidential election
The Atlantic: Racism Went Viral and Trump's Supporters Really are Deplorable
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/how-white-power-went-viral/507473/
This article essentially says virtually anybody who voted for Trump is an
ignorant lemming and/or a deplorable racist.
The conclusion not mentioned is that police are deplorable since the police
unions supported Trump.
Jensen Illustration of Two Types of Anger in the USA
Illustration of Anger Type 1 as portrayed by the media (such as The
Atlantic) and
politically correct college professors and students
"A Ferguson cop shot and killed an unarmed black teenager."
Illustration of Anger Type 2 dominant among Trump's "deplorable" voters and
police unions supporting him
"Rioters attempted to loot and burn down the town of Ferguson after a
huge and bullying black teenager high on marijuana tried to take the gun
away from a wimpy cop."
Angers
illustrated above do not fully divide according to race.
Many whites, especially all those who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, have
more Anger Type 1 than Type 2.
Many non-whites including blacks, Asians, and Hispanics have more Anger Type 2
even though the Anger Type 2 is proportionately more dominant among male and
female white voters without college diplomas.
Trump's voters are more inclined to be angry when athletes and others make a
constitutionally-correct spectacle of disrespect for the National Anthem and the
USA Flag over Anger Type 1
Racial angers, especially anger at police, surfaced more in the 2016 election
than in the 2008 and 2012 elections where a progressive African American was
elected two times to be President of the USA
President Obama is
very proud of his appointments of Supreme Court Justices Kagan and Sotomayor.
But these appointments became Hillary Clinton's worst nightmares. An increased
number of her opponent's supporters feared that her future appointments to the
Supreme Court would team up with Kagan and Sotomayor to take away the first line
of (2nd Amendment) defense against home invasions and nut cases.
Seven of the 10 Most
Dangerous Crime States Where People Feel Unsafe Went to Trump ---
http://247wallst.com/special-report/2016/11/14/the-most-dangerous-states-in-america-3/?utm_source=247WallStDailyNewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=NOV142016A&utm_campaign=DailyNewsletter
Of course there are many other angers among Trump's "deplorable" voters other
than racial issues. I personally think many of Trump's voters are furious over
the Democratic Party's "perceived" drive to put some penises into the locker
rooms of the YWCA.
Many of Trump's voters are angry about his morality history, his disrespect for
women, and his ignorance about government and business (where he failed a lot),
but these angers remained less important to Trump's supporters than their other
angers.
Perhaps unjustly too many of Trump's supporters think the Democratic Party wants
open borders and amnesty for anybody who enters the country illegally.
Liberal economists smarter than me tend to place most of the blame on economic
angers among Trump's voters. Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz places the blame
for Trump's win on the following ---
http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/articles/chazen-global-insights/why-trump
Personally I think Professor Stiglitz is talking over the heads of most of
Trump's supporters worried about riots, immigration hordes, home invasions,
budget deficits, and unfunded entitlements (think Social Security benefits and
unsustainable Medicare/Medicaid).
The sad thing about the 2016 election is that anger seemed to be the dominant
sentiment among voters for Clinton and voters for Trump. The USA became an angry
and divided nation. Of course it was this way before November 8, 2016.
The USA seethed in anger from the very beginning of the 21st Century. The angers
are growing worse and worse --- angers that a Trump victory will probably not
defuse.
Even if President Trump's a skilled magician, there are no magical solutions
anywhere in the hat.
At this point we just do not know what to do with skilled and unskilled workers
who will increasingly be displaced by technology. Exhibit A includes the workers
in Wal-Mart's warehouses --- workers now being displaced by automation. Exhibit
B contains the Wal-Mart store employees that will eventually be on the streets
due to online shopping at Wal-Mart, Amazon, etc. Exhibit C will eventually be
driverless 18-wheel trucks barreling down their own lanes on freeways and
turnpikes. Exhibit D will be robots screening patients at medical clinics.
Exhibit E will be teacher robots on campus and online. ETC ETC ETC
Where will the jobs be when angry students graduate or get their competency
badges?
MIT Newsletter on November 12, 2116
These stories all help explain why the election of Donald Trump is partially
a technology story. Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania flipped from
Democratic to Republican for many reasons, but one of them was the sense
among many blue-collar workers that they are being left out of today’s
economy. Whether automation is primarily to blame for that—rather than, say,
trade or tax policy—is far from clear. But as editor David Rotman wrote this
summer: “While the high-tech industry creates impressive wealth for itself,
much of the country is mired in a sluggish economy. It might be that
driverless cars and other uses of advanced AI will eventually change that,
but for now these technologies are not radically transforming the economy.”
MIT:
How Technology Is Destroying Jobs
MIT:
Technology and Inequality
Jensen Comment
My conservative hero Milton Friedman proposed that a relatively generous
negative income tax replace all forms of welfare, food stamps, disability
support, etc. Even if a negative income tax becomes economically feasible to a
point where people have a choice not to have paying jobs in the economy
(and live much like unemployed Cubans in front of their tiny houses clutching
their ration books) most unemployed and educated people living minimally with
ration books or income tax support checks will be angry and depressed.
A
huge problem is psychological.
People get most of their feeling of worth from their labors. Hobbies can and
often do suffice as replacements for paying jobs, but in many instances people
judge the worth of their hobbies by size of payments for their produce. A
cellist more likely than not is an unhappy cellist if the symphony pays zero for
his/her labor. An author is more fulfilled when readers buy the books. What
canvas painter wants a house full of pictures that cannot even be given away?
Volunteer work often does not relieve boredom for retirees seeking paying
hobbies such as writing books or selling antiques.
If
you don't know where you're going, you might not get there.
Yogi Berra
Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will elude
you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly
on your shoulder.
Henry David Thoreau
Joan C.
Williams ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_C._Williams
University
of California Hastings School of Law ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_California,_Hastings_College_of_the_Law
Question
Would Harvard have published this on or before November 7, 2016?
"What So
Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class," by Joan C. Williams,
Harvard Business Review, November 10, 2016 ---
https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class?referral=00202&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-weekly_hotlist-_-hotlist_date&utm_source=newsletter_weekly_hotlist&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hotlist_date&spMailingID=15892371&spUserID=MTkyODM0MDg0MAS2&spJobID=903305802&spReportId=OTAzMzA1ODAyS0
. . .
Hillary Clinton, by contrast,
epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The
dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the
basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women
from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she
condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and
dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.
. . .
Avoid the Temptation to Write
Off Blue-Collar Resentment as Racism
Economic
resentment has fueled racial anxiety that, in some Trump supporters (and
Trump himself), bleeds into open racism. But to write off WWC anger as
nothing more than racism is intellectual comfort food, and it is dangerous.
National
debates about policing are fueling class tensions today in
precisely the same way they did in the 1970s,
when college
kids (and professional athletes) derided policemen as “pigs.”
This is a recipe for class conflict. Being in the police is one of the few
good jobs open to Americans without a college education. Police get solid
wages, great benefits, and a respected place in their communities. For
elites to write them off as racists is a telling example of how, although
race- and sex-based insults are no longer acceptable in polite society,
class-based insults still are.
I do not defend
police who kill citizens for selling cigarettes. But the current
demonization of the police underestimates the difficulty of ending police
violence against communities of color. Police need to make split-second
decisions in life-threatening situations. I don’t. If I had to, I might make
some poor decisions too.
Saying this is so
unpopular that I risk making myself a pariah among my friends on the left
coast. But the biggest risk today for me and other Americans is continued
class cluelessness. If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap,
when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio, the
consequences could turn dangerous.
In 2010, while on a book tour for
Reshaping the Work-Family Debate,
I gave a talk about
all of this at the Harvard Kennedy School. The woman who ran the speaker
series, a major Democratic operative, liked my talk. “You are saying exactly
what the Democrats need to hear,” she mused, “and they’ll never listen.” I
hope now they will.
Jensen
Comment
Note that the election results were reported on November 9, 2016
Not what I
think of as politically correct and definitively not what I expected a
University of California woman professor to write in the HBR before or
after the election results were reported.
Joan C. Williams is Distinguished
Professor of Law and Founding Director of the Center of WorkLife Law at the
University of California, Hastings College of the Law.
The Legacy of Harry Reid That the Media is Avoiding
From the WSJ Newsletter on November 11, 2016
A separate editorial notes that Sen. Harry
Reid “will be gone with the current Congress but Republicans may miss him
considering all he has done to help them. By killing the filibuster for
nominees, he has made it easier for Mr. Trump to get his nominees confirmed
and fill Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court. By stretching the rules
for budget reconciliation, he has set a precedent for Republicans to repeal
much of ObamaCare by ducking a filibuster.”
More at
http://www.wsj.com/articles/harry-reid-and-the-horse-he-rode-in-on-1479081783?mod=djemMER
Jensen Comment
Of Trump does not have the necessary Senate votes to make for smooth sailing
on controversial issues. There's a cloud of anger hanging over Washington
DC.
Henry Kissinger ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Kissinger
Jensen Comment
Perhaps Henry is too old and out of touch the world as we know it today, but
then again I'm no expert on the global world today. Read that as meaning I'm too
ignorant to judge him or The Obama Doctrine ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/
It is a dangerous time with renewed Cold War tensions with Russia and Iran
complicated by rising naval power of China in Asia added to decades of troubled
times with terrorists throughout most of the world. All this is too troubling
for my old bookkeeper's brain in retirement.
The Obama Doctrine ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine
The Lessons of Henry Kissinger: The legendary and controversial statesman
criticizes the Obama Doctrine, talks about the main challenges for the next
president, and explains how to avoid war with China ---
Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic, December 2016 ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/the-lessons-of-henry-kissinger/505868/
. . .
This past spring, shortly after The Atlantic
published my article “The
Obama Doctrine,” about the president’s foreign
policy, I got word that Henry Kissinger, the former secretary of state, and
the most consequential and controversial American foreign-policy maker of
the past several decades (or maybe ever), had been expressing to a number of
mutual acquaintances his critical thoughts about the article, and about
Obama’s management of world affairs. I called Kissinger, because I was eager
to hear those thoughts. He was, at that moment, making a series of cameo
appearances in the presidential campaign—Senator Bernie Sanders had recently
castigated Hillary Clinton during a Democratic debate for the sin of seeking
Kissinger’s approval—and I also wanted to hear his thoughts on the bizarre
election season.
Kissinger did indeed have many thoughts. I
suggested that we have an on-the-record conversation about them. Even at 93,
his desire to convince people of his essential rightness still burns, and he
agreed to an interview almost immediately. But, being Kissinger, he outlined
a set of immoderate demands and conditions that would govern the public
presentation of our conversation. He also asked me whether the article that
resulted from our interview would be published at the same length—more than
19,000 words—as my original article about President Obama. “Dr. Kissinger,”
I said, “that was an article featuring several interviews with the sitting
president of the United States.”
He paused. “Please write the following down, and
print it in your story as a first-person observation,” he said. “ ‘Though
Kissinger has been out of government service for several decades, I found
his egomania to be undiminished by time.’ ”
At another point, sensing my frustration with his
demands, he said, “I must give you some grounds to write about my paranoia.”
Finally we came to an agreement. I would record our conversation, and
transcribe it, and then show it to him, and he would, he promised, make
changes only in order to clarify points or expand upon his arguments. (He
kept his promise.)
Continued in article
Criticisms of The Obama Doctrine ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obama_Doctrine#Criticism
11 OECD countries with the best quality of life in the world ---
http://www.businessinsider.com/happiest-countries-best-quality-life-2016-11/#11-netherlands-this-country-boasts-one-of-the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world-the-oecd-found-that-students-in-the-netherlands-score-above-average-in-math-science-and-reading-comprehension-tests-1
Jensen Comment
Most of these top-ranked nations have relatively low populations. An exception
is the USA
Most of these countries have non-diverse immigrant populations
and are openly resisting immigration. Exceptions are the USA, Sweden, and
Canada. Canada is somewhat unique in that it unabashedly sells immigration
rights.
Car ownership is not easily affordable in most of the top-ranked
nations, thereby making car ownership more of a luxury than a necessity.
Exceptions are the larger nations of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and
the USA.
Aside from the USA the small spaces of living quarters and
private yards does not seem to matter as much in the other nations (including
Canada) ranked above. I'm not certain about Australia on this criterion, but I
did think living quarters were smaller in New Zealand when I visited that lovely
nation. Except for urban centers in the USA Americans love large houses and big
yards. I'm sure our love of large houses is enabled heavily by cheap energy
prices relative to most other parts of the world. When I had leaves in Canada I
was told that climate affected housing and yard sizes. Small houses take less
energy to heat. Tightly-packed houses serve as wind breaks and have fewer miles
of streets to plow.
Most of these 11 nations do not have any mega cities with the
exception of the USA ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_proper_by_population
The dominant race in each of these 11 countries is white.
However, quality of life is relatively high in some non-white nations like
Japan. Now that Germany and many of nations having the "best quality of life"
are turning their backs on Syrian and other Islamic refugees we have to worry
where they will go for a new life. Prospering Islamic nations like Saudi Arabia,
Qatar, and Iran don't want them. Germany, France, Sweden, the USA, and Canada
will eventually offer the best life to some of these suffering families, but
there are so many more refugees than places willing to welcome them in great
numbers. The USA, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand will have to make
more room for these people who for the most part want no more terrorism in life.
If only they could overcome ancient differences and work peacefully be given the
resources to rebuild their homelands, but this is probably just wishful thinking
at this point. I have no answers other than compassion just surface for wartime
refugees.
Question for Hugely Biased Late Night Television Comedians
Who's having the last laugh?
This is something for them to think about for future
elections.
A majority of voters may not be laughing (or even watching) because of this
bias.
Related Question
Although some students are attracted by bias in courses does such bias also turn
off students?
At some universities, particularly private universities with high tuition, the
students are often more conservative than the faculty.
The AAUP suggests leaving politics entirely out of courses unless designed in a
curriculum plan for selected courses.
And We Gave a Paul Krugman Nobel Prize for a
Lousy Forecast Like This
Paul Krugman has already had to walk back his
prediction of a global recession following Donald Trump’s presidential victory
last night. His initial post on the New York Times’ website was confidently
apocalyptic about the prospects of Donald Trump plunging the world into a
depression: “If the question is when markets will recover, a first-pass answer
is never.” He concluded by saying, “So we are very probably looking at a global
recession, with no end in sight. I suppose we could get lucky somehow. But on
economics, as on everything else, a terrible thing has just happened.” Markets
rebounded in the morning after . . .
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/442044/paul-krugmans-economic-forecast-global-recession-because-donald-trump-won
A comprehensive Accounting of U.S Spending ---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-07/steve-ballmer-s-plan-to-make-america-great-involves-excel-spreadsheets?cmpid=BBD110716_BIZ
Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Ballmer
Steve Ballmer’s new project involves lots and lots of Excel
spreadsheets.
When not
on the sidelines
of Los Angeles Clippers games, the former Microsoft CEO—along with a team of
about 25 data geeks— has been
poring over decades of
government documents to create a comprehensive accounting of U.S.
spending. Ballmer describes it as a “10-K for the government.
The scary part is the $100+ trillion as
yet unbooked obligation for entitlements such as the unsustainable Medicare and
Medicaid ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/entitlements.htm
The FBI versus the DOJ: A House Divided
Secret Recordings Fueled FBI Feud in Clinton Probe Agents
thought they had enough material to merit aggressively pursuing investigation
into Clinton Foundation
---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/secret-recordings-fueled-fbi-feud-in-clinton-probe-1478135518
Secret recordings of a suspect talking about the
Clinton Foundation fueled an internal battle between FBI agents who wanted
to pursue the case and corruption prosecutors who viewed the statements as
worthless hearsay, people familiar with the matter said. Agents, using
informants and recordings from unrelated corruption investigations, thought
they had found enough material to merit aggressively pursuing the
investigation into the foundation that started in summer 2015 based on
claims made in a book by a conservative author called “Clinton Cash: The
Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make
Bill and Hillary Rich,” these people said. The account of the case and
resulting dispute comes from interviews with officials at multiple agencies.
Starting in February and continuing today,
investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and public-corruption
prosecutors became increasingly frustrated with each other, as often happens
within and between departments. At the center of the tension stood the U.S.
attorney for Brooklyn, Robert Capers, who some at the FBI came to view as
exacerbating the problems by telling each side what it wanted to hear, these
people said. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Capers declined to comment. The
roots of the dispute lie in a disagreement over the strength of the case,
these people said, which broadly centered on whether Clinton Foundation
contributors received favorable treatment from the State Department under
Hillary Clinton. Senior officials in the Justice Department and the FBI
didn’t think much of the evidence, while investigators believed they had
promising leads their bosses wouldn’t let them pursue, they said.
These details on the probe are emerging amid the
continuing furor surrounding FBI Director James Comey’s disclosure to
Congress that new emails had emerged that could be relevant to a separate,
previously closed FBI investigation of Mrs. Clinton’s email arrangement
while she was secretary of state. On Wednesday, President Barack Obama took
the unusual step of criticizing the FBI when asked about Mr. Comey’s
disclosure of the emails. Amid the internal finger-pointing on the Clinton
Foundation matter, some have blamed the FBI’s No. 2 official, deputy
director Andrew McCabe, claiming he sought to stop agents from pursuing the
case this summer. His defenders deny that, and say it was the Justice
Department that kept pushing back on the investigation. At times, people on
both sides of the dispute thought Mr. Capers agreed with them. Defenders of
Mr. Capers said he was straightforward and always told people he thought the
case wasn’t strong.
Continued in article
CNN: FBI Agents Tell Us DOJ Put Up Politically Motivated Roadblocks During
Clinton Foundation Probe ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2016/11/03/cnn-fbi-agents-tell-us-doj-put-up-politically-motivated-roadblocks-during-our-clinton-foundation-probe-n2240973?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
Should the new name be the Department of Injustice?
"Social Security's IOU Trust Fund: Trump won't solve the problem.
Clinton will make it worse," by Veronique de Rugy, Reason Magazine, October
27, 2016 ---
http://reason.com/archives/2016/10/27/social-securitys-iou-trust-fund
. . .
That the Social Security Program is insolvent isn't
debatable. Social Security faces a $10
trillion funding shortfall. Since 2010,
Social Security has been running a constant cash flow deficit, meaning that
the taxes collected for the program aren't enough to cover the benefits paid
to beneficiaries. To fill the gap and keep the checks going out, the program
has been drawing from federal trust funds. However, the
government's trust funds aren't like trust funds in the real world.
Trust funds in the real world contain assets; the government's trust funds
basically contain IOUs. What that means in simple terms is that the
government already has to go further into debt to pay Social Security's
bills—and it's only going to get worse.
Even if one believes in the sanctity of the
government's combined trust funds in general, Social Security's will be
exhausted by 2034, thus triggering a benefit cut of roughly 25 percent.
However, since President George W. Bush tried and failed to reform the
program in 2005, Congress has abdicated its responsibility by simply
avoiding the issue.
On the campaign trail, things are arguably worse.
The two main candidates,
Hillary Clinton and
Donald Trump, have promised to leave Social Security untouched.
When asked about what they would do about it during the debate, Trump
responded: "I'm cutting taxes. We're going to grow the economy. It's going
to grow at a record rate." That's all well and good, but we can't grow our
way out of this mess. That's largely nonsensical. Clinton doesn't want to
cut benefits, either, but she'd actually exacerbate the problem by raising
taxes on the rich while increasing benefits for lower-income Americans.
Though the tax increase part of her plan might extend the life of the
program, it wouldn't fix much. The Committee for a Responsible Federal
Budget looked at the issue and found that some increase in revenue would
occur in the short term, but a cash deficit would return within 10 years and
grow over time. It concluded: "This change would close just over one-third
of Social Security's structural gap by 2090. In other words, a substantial
portion of the fix defers the problem, but does not fix it." And that's
calculated even before she starts to spend more on Social Security. But even
that's probably too optimistic, says the American Enterprise Institute's
Andrew Biggs in a recent Forbes column, because her "tax increases on the
rich would boost revenues by far less than she imagines because of
rarely-discussed interactions with other parts of the tax code."
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Even more disastrous are the unsustainable Medicare and Medicaid entitlements.
Why? Because we can print money to meet our more--or-less fixed social security
obligations even though that would be highly inflationary (can you loan me $100
for a cup of coffee?)
Medicare and Medicaid entitlements cannot be solved
by printing money because government is obligated to pay medical bills that will
go up and up when inflation goes up and up. This of course can be changed to
make these entitlements more sustainable, but neither the White House nor
Congress is willing to take political risks of messing with Medicare and
Medicaid entitlements that will eventually drive the USA economy to ruin along
with other pending entitlements like free college education and more free
Medicaid entitlements.
Bob Jensen's threads on the pending entitlements
disaster ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Entitlements.htm
Greenspan: Worried About Inflation, Says “Entitlements Crowding Out
Investment, Productivity Is Dead,” by Mike Shedlock,
Townhall, March
22, 2016 ---
http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/mikeshedlock/2016/03/22/greenspan-worried-about-inflation-says-entitlements-crowding-out-investment-productivity-is-dead-n2137333?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl
. . .
Greenspan was critical of
negative interest rates but refused to comment
directly on the recent decision of the ECB. He
is also worried about interest rates and the
level of debts.
-
Entitlements now
probably require a three to four percent
growth rate in the United States.
-
Rate cuts,
negative interest rates, buying corporate
debt is no part of the solution.
-
Gross domestic
savings as a percent of GDP has been
declining over the years largely because
entitlements have dug into them.
-
You just can’t
print money and buy the infrastructure.
Productivity will only increase if there is
savings behind the investment.
-
We should be more
concerned about inflation than we appear to
be.
-
The issue is how
long can we maintain long-term interest
rates by continuously pushing money into the
system, at rates which I would say, human
psychology doesn’t continence.
Interview
Transcript Courtesy of Bloomberg
DAVID WESTIN: Thanks
very much, Stephanie. So we are here sitting
with Dr. Alan Greenspan, who led the Fed for
eighteen and a half years. I ask him, he’s very
precise about this. So welcome to Bloomberg GO.
It’s great to have you here. Beyond that, he’s
really one of the major economic thinkers of our
era.
So we had the Bank of
England just hold their rates. We had the Fed
yesterday, we’ve had the Bank of Japan. It’s all
about central banks right now. Everyone one of
those central banks, whatever their approach, is
focused on growth and the problem of getting
growth going. …..
Continued
The IRS Scandal, Day 1275:
The Impact Of The IRS Scandal On The Investigation Of The Clinton Foundation
---
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2016/11/the-irs-scandal-day-1275-the-clinton-foundation.html
. . .
This IRS review has not generated similar waves as Department of Justice
probes into the foundation, and has largely been forgotten in the campaign's
melee. It's just not as sexy as private email servers, FBI infighting and
charges of political pressure applied to law enforcement.
But even though this examination is less scrutinized and is harder to
conceptualize, it's impact may be important. The report won't likely be done
in time to influence the presidential campaign — even though the review
started more than four months ago — but it could certainly influence the
first term of a Hillary Clinton presidency.
As with anything tax related, the status of the foundation may be determined
using rules few understand. And that makes understanding the work at 1100
Commerce St. in Dallas that much more important.
In Washington, D.C., many things start with words printed on congressional
letterhead.
Earlier this year, 64 GOP members of Congress asked the IRS to investigate
why the foundation can keep its nonprofit status. The letter includes “media
reports” claiming pay-to-play relationships between former President Bill
Clinton, who received large speaking fees, and decisions made by Hillary
Clinton to approve choices that benefited foundation donors. The sources of
these reports range from The New York Times to hit-piece
investigative books.
In July, the IRS sent letters back to the Congress informing members the
review had begun. The letter also noted that the Tax Exempt and Government
Entities Division (TE/GE) office in Dallas would be conducting the review.
IRS spokespeople in Dallas and Washington won’t say why the review is being
conducted in Dallas. Spokespeople claim even this information would violate
rules — Code 6103, staff make sure to cite — that stop them from discussing
ongoing examinations. IRS officials declined to provide details about the
Dallas office, including its size, or comment on the TE/GE work in general.
...
The TE/GE focuses on nonprofit groups, which is specialty work that requires
experience. “They are pretty much career people,” says Ben Stoltz, an
attorney with Perliski Law Group, a Dallas boutique firm with half of its
business representing nonprofit groups. “It’s a different side of the IRS
than people are used to seeing. ... They're generally very cooperative, but
they're also the watchdogs."
The mix of awareness and enforcement dovetails with cases that get
publicity. "They have a limited budget, which is a problem, so they have to
pick their targets wisely," Stoltz says. "Because this is a high profile
case, they can make an example and show that no one is above the law.” ...
Instead of money changing hands, the IRS is looking to see if the Clintons
traded money for preferential treatment. The IRS rules lay out what
qualifies as inurement:
Any transaction between an organization and a private individual in which
the individual appears to receive a disproportionate share of the benefits
of the exchange relative to the charity served presents an inurement issue.
Such transactions may include assignments of income, compensation
arrangements, sales or exchanges of property, commissions, rental
arrangements, gifts with retained interests, and contracts to provide goods
or services to the organization.
Given this language, citing “gifts” and “quid pro quo benefits” in emails is
a pretty bad move for anyone involved in a nonprofit group. Another bad
move: When senior Clinton advisers like Doug Bland call the intersection of
the foundation fundraising and the former president’s personal activities
“Bill Clinton Inc.” ...
This all leaves the IRS investigation in Dallas as a sideshow to the main
Clinton Foundation events playing out in the offices of other federal
agencies. However, if other investigations expose pay-to-play schemes, the
IRS could take that into consideration, strip the foundation of its
nonprofit status and seek payment of back taxes.
Continued in article
Out Of 199 Quotes, 40 That Reveal Donald Trump’s Ethics
--- |
https://ethicsalarms.com/2015/08/16/out-of-199-quotes-40-that-reveal-donald-trumps-ethics/
The Clintons don’t draw lines between their
‘charity’ and personal enrichment
---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/grifters-in-chief-1477610771?mod=djemMER
Time Magazine
Wikileaks:
A 2011
memo
made public Wednesday by Wikileaks revealed
new details of how former President Bill Clinton made tens of millions of
dollars for himself and his wife, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
through an opaque, ethically messy amalgam of philanthropic, business and
personal activities. The memo was written by Bill Clinton’s longtime aide, Doug
Band, and is among tens of thousands of emails apparently stolen from Hillary
Clinton’s campaign chief, John Podesta, in what U.S. officials believe is part
of a massive Russian-backed attempt to disrupt the U.S. election.
http://time.com/4546768/bill-clinton-inc-memo-reveals-tangled-business-charitable-ties/?xid=newsletter-brief
The
Atlantic: A (WikiLeak) Memo Serves as a Roadmap to the Clinton's
Tangled Finances ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/the-man-at-the-center-of-bill-clinton-inc/505661/
All of that became clear in the latest batch of
hacked emails released by WikiLeaks, which include messages from Band
and
a 12-page memo that he wrote both explaining
and defending his and his company’s work on Clinton’s behalf. For
Hillary Clinton’s campaign, the publication of the Band memo is yet
another WikiLeaks-induced headache, as it provides even more detail into
the unsavory-if-not-illegal intersection of interests at the heart of
her family’s philanthropic work.
Band, now 44, was to Bill Clinton what Huma
Abedin has been to Hillary. He started as a junior staffer in the White
House straight out of college in the 1990s, and once the Clintons left
office in 2001, he never left Bill’s side.
Continued in article
Read the memo at
http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/documents/politics/memo-from-bill-clinton-aide-on-how-teneo-holdings-raised-money-for-clintons-interests/2203/
The Atlantic: Clinton's Believability Problem ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/clintons-believability-problem/505775/
Jensen Comment
We will probably have to ignore ethics criteria on election day. Donald Trump
appears unprepared to lead even his own party. Hillary Clinton is an
entitlements spending disaster, but like Obama she will probably be held back by
a reluctant Congress and poor leadership skills in the White House, Congress,
and the Supreme Court.
In my opinion these are the two worst choices in decades in what became the
tabloid election year in USA history. A Clinton victory will be less divisive in
what's become a dysfunctionally divided USA. I plan to hold my nose, vote for
Clinton, and be thankful I'm no longer young.
The Atlantic: The First Broken Promise of the Hillary Clinton Presidency ---
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/hillary-clinton-national-debt-presidency/504905/
Washington Post: Jury finds reporter,
Rolling Stone
responsible (for fabricated rape article)---
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/jury-finds-reporter-rolling-stone-responsible-for-defaming-u-va-dean-with-gang-rape-story/2016/11/04/aaf407fa-a1e8-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html
. . .
The jurors reached a verdict Friday after
deliberating across three days. Eramo has asked for $7.5 million in damages,
but can now argue for a different sum following the verdict. The argument
for damages is scheduled to begin Monday.
Regardless of potential damages, the verdict showed
the jury’s willingness to slam a major media outlet for the impacts of
getting a story wrong. Originally hailed as a brave triumph of reporting for
its raw accounts of rape and attempts at bringing accountability to a
storied public university, the article led to protests of the U-Va.
administration, vandalism of a campus fraternity, and outrage among sexual
assault prevention activists. Once its flaws were exposed, the article’s
deeper message of the effects of campus rape — a pervasive national problem
— was lost amid the allegations of shoddy reporting.
Continued in article
Harvard Business Review: Are CEOs Overhyped and Overpaid? ---
https://hbr.org/2016/11/are-ceos-overhyped-and-overpaid?referral=00563&cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-daily_alert-_-alert_date&utm_source=newsletter_daily_alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alert_date&spMailingID=15790876&spUserID=MTkyODM0MDg0MAS2&spJobID=900369182&spReportId=OTAwMzY5MTgyS0
Jensen Comment
I think the answer is yes on both counts. Of course CEOs often matter to the
success of the firm, but more often than not their compensation is outrageous.
Even when linked to performance like stock prices their role is only part of the
reason for stock price changes.
Bob Jensen's threads on the outrageous compensation of corporate executives
are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#OutrageousCompensation
I'm especially upset about golden parachutes that outrageously reward failure.
Stanford researchers weigh in on a contentious debate
around changes to an important renewable energy incentive (net metering)---
http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/insights/saving-future-residential-solar-installations?utm_source=Stanford+Business&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Stanford-Business-Issue-99-10-30-2016&utm_content=alumni
More
American homeowners are investing in residential solar power systems, thanks
in part to regulations that enable such installations to sell surplus
electricity back to utility companies at retail rates.
Solar
Soundcloud
Listen to
This Story
But that
regulation, called net energy metering, is a victim of its own success.
Electric utilities are required to buy this rooftop-generated electricity at
rates far higher than the wholesale rates that they would have otherwise
paid for the same energy. These additional costs, in turn, are passed down
to all ratepayers, effectively acting as a cross-subsidy.
Now
regulators and lawmakers in dozens of states are reevaluating their policies
— and their decisions will have a major impact. “There’s a lot of fighting
in state capitols,” says Stanford Graduate School of Business professor
Stefan
Reichelstein,
“and it’s going to shape how quickly the whole residential and commercial
segment of the industry will grow.”
New research
from Reichelstein and coauthor
Stephen Comello,
director of the
Sustainable
Energy Initiative,
examines three states that have already enacted changes and calculates the
threshold to keep the solar industry humming without undue economic support.
Beware
the Death Spiral
When net
metering policies were first introduced in the 1980s, they were an important
mechanism to help jumpstart the solar industry. While the details vary by
state, these policies typically call for owners of solar systems to be
compensated for the surplus electricity they feed back into the grid at the
going retail rate. Utilities are required to buy this power, even though
they could procure the electricity at a much lower rate on the wholesale
market. In California, for example, rooftop solar customers can sell back
electricity at around 17 cents per kilowatt hour, whereas the utility could
buy it on the wholesale market for around 4 cents per kWh.
The
utilities opposed the agreement initially, Reichelstein says, but “at the
time the solar industry was so tiny that the utilities shrugged it off.”
Now,
solar costs are dropping and demand is spiking, changing the economics of
residential solar installations and the need for net metering.
Some even
speculate
solar incentives will lead utility companies into a “death spiral.”
This
threat unfolds like this: As more customers install solar panels, a utility
will sell less electricity in total. Since the utility also incurs fixed
costs in order to maintain the overall grid infrastructure, the rate it
charges for electricity goes up even as it sells less of it. This makes
installing solar panels even more attractive to more people, which means the
utility sells even less and charges even more. And so on down the spiral.
Even if
encouraging more solar deployment is desirable, this is not a happy scenario
for the overall health of the industry. For one thing, while solar customers
add to the overall infrastructure burden by requiring two-way flow of
electricity, those costs tend to get shifted onto the remaining non-solar
customers while solar developers reap tidy profits.
“With
retail rates going up and the cost of solar going down,” Reichelstein says,
“the margins are getting fatter for the solar companies. But those margins
are based on the support mechanism of net metering.”
For
customers, Comello says, net metering can amount to a subsidy for the rich.
“Those who own their home and are more traditionally well off are the ones
who have the advantage. Whereas if you live in an apartment or don’t have
the means to install solar panels, you’re cut off from all the benefit while
paying more for your electricity.”
The
Happy Middle
As
regulators and lawmakers across the country look to revise net energy
metering policies, the open question is what they will look like in their
next incarnation.
Continued in article
Elon Musk's solar shingles are a lot like the forever-lasting slates of
the 19th Century---
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-31/no-one-saw-tesla-s-solar-roof-coming?cmpid=BBD103116_BIZ
Also see
http://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2016/10/31/13469846/tesla-solar-roof-solpad-solarwindow
Jensen Comment
In my opinion this sounds like a great advance in solar energy and roofing in
warmer climates. I continue to be concerned about selling our souls (read that
economic freedoms) to China (and maybe Chile) for lithium in backup batteries.
Melting snow on a roof at below-zero temperatures is not always a great idea
in these parts since our cottage sometimes has several feet of snow on the roof.
Here's what happened in our cottage before we added more rim insulation to stop
roof melting in cold weather. Sides of our cottage became coated with thick ice
that could have been damaging year after year until we added the roof insulation
to prevent roof melting in very cold weather. It was almost like living in an
ice-covered igloo.
There also is an issue roof leaks. Leaks in a solar-shingle roof may be much
more difficult to repair. I guess time will tell.
Solar shingles are not a new idea. I'm not sure why they've not caught on
before now. Perhaps Musk's shingles will be better.
The Past and Future of Higher Education
The Chronicle’s 50th anniversary is an occasion to take stock of the world we
cover. What ideas and arguments might shape the next 50 years?
http://www.chronicle.com/article/The-PastFuture-of-Higher/238302?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=a8364b81235747849abe1b652bdcc766&elq=e2988fd76626460eb128c7b2912e6efe&elqaid=11364&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=4421
The fact that this article in the Chronicle of Higher Education is
closed to comments pretty much says it all.
Jensen Comment
I can't believe it! All these so-called experts ignored some of the biggest
disgraces that descended on Higher Education in the past 50 years.
The biggest disgrace in the past 50 years of higher education not mentioned
in the above report is grade inflation where the median grade in the USA moved
from C+ to A-. The main reason for this disgrace is that colleges made student
evaluations influential in faculty tenure and performance decisions. Now it's
truly disgraceful here on our Lake Wobegon campuses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
In fairness Brian D. Caplan did mention the "credential inflation" that
accompanies the greatly increased share of the population going to college. But
the other experts largely ignored "credential inflation."
The second and somewhat more varied disgrace is the struggle for freedom of
speech on campus the wave of political correctness, another topic that the
Chronicle apparently feared to raise in this report ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies2.htm#PoliticalCorrectness
The report finds all sorts of excuses to defend political correctness.
A third disgrace in the hiring bias of faculty in higher education. It's not
at all uncommon for over 90+% of the faculty on campus to be members of the
Democratic Party. Harvard's conservative political scientist Harvey Mansfield
once warned a non-tenured Harvard professor who whispered to Harvey that he too
was conservative. Harvey advised that non-tenured professor against "raising the
jolly Roger" until after attaining tenure. Harvey was serious in this instance.
Fifty years ago college campuses had conservative thought in the curriculum and
focused on the writings of such conservative theorists as Friedrich Hayek and
Milton Friedman. Now such writings are not politically correct. Bravo to the
University of Colorado for creating a professorship for a conservative thinker
so there could be at least one on campus.
A fourth and even more controversial topic avoided is the main difference
between higher (tertiary) education in Europe versus the USA. In many parts of
Europe like Finland and Germany college education and other forms of Tier 3
tertiary education is funded by taxpayers.
But to make high-quality education affordable admissions to college are
restricted to less than 40% of the Tier 2 graduates
---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tertiary_education_attainment
The larger proportion of Europe's Tier 2 graduates get training in the skilled
trades, but this training is funded by the private sector in apprenticeships and
other forms of on-the-job training. In the USA some form of taxpayer-funded
low-cost education is available in or very near every small community where
community colleges and other college branches cover the nation.
Now a movement is underfoot to provide free college to virtually all Tier 2
graduates as if all these graduates are ready, willing, and able to master
higher education after graduating from our deteriorating high schools in terms
of academic quality. The main failing in the USA is the failure to provide
sufficient incentives for the private sector to hire and train those Tier 2
graduates who are are desperately in need of hiring and job training
alternatives. The model of trade school or college degree
to skilled jobs is just not working very well. Business firms need more
European-type incentives to hire and train Tier 2 graduates.
"What Can the U.S. Learn From Switzerland, a
World Leader in Apprenticeships? by Kelly Field,
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 02, 2016
---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Can-the-US-Learn-From/236323?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=ed4c1ab9aec74f92be12624885801484&elq=0ce71537bc894cb8a3f7ee33b218ead9&elqaid=8888&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3032
I have gripes in other parts of the Past and Future of Higher
Education report that mostly overlooks the progress that has been made in
minority education. Much attention is given to racial issues and minority
education. However, the responders overlook many of the positive things that
have taken place. For example, more than 30% of the graduates from some of our
most prestigious universities are minorities, and many of these attended those
universities with free tuition, room and board.
Search for Stanford (37%), MIT (32.7%), Harvard (31.6%), Princeton (32.5%),
Cornell (32.4%), Texas A&M (30.1%). etc.
http://www.chronicle.com/interactives/student-diversity-2016?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=0232a6c335f14a75a6c9c8de066dd14a&elq=600a2190e4de4e46bb287bb898fdf710&elqaid=10747&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=4072
Perhaps it's still not enough, but some credit should be given where credit is
due. Need I mention that over 50% of the graduates in USA higher education are
female. In my field well over 50% of the new hires by CPA firms are female, and
there are award-winning affirmative action initiatives to make it easier for
women to become partners in CPA firms. The professionals in CPA firms 50 years
ago were virtually all males.
I could go on, but in my opinion this The Past and Future of Higher
Education report would not get a C grade in any of my courses.
Tertiary education ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tertiary_education
Tertiary education, also referred to
as third stage, third level, and
post-secondary education, is the
educational level following the completion of a school providing a
secondary education. The
World Bank, for example, defines tertiary education as including
universities as well as institutions that teach specific capacities of
higher learning such as colleges, technical training institutes, community
colleges, nursing schools, research laboratories, centers of excellence, and
distance learning centers.[1]
Higher education is taken to include
undergraduate and
postgraduate education, while
vocational education and training beyond secondary education is known as
further education in the
United Kingdom, or
continuing education in the
United States.
Tertiary education generally culminates in the receipt of
certificates,
diplomas, or
academic degrees.
The USA already ranks high in
terms of college graduates
Countries with the highest proportions of college graduates ---
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/22/countries-with-the-most-c_n_655393.html#s117378&title=Russian_Federation_54
|
- Russian Federation 54.0% (quality varies due
to rampant cheating and corruption where students can buy course grades and
admission)
- Canada 48.3% (shares grade inflation
problems with the USA)
- Israel 43.6%
- Japan 41.0%
- New Zealand 41.0%
- United States
40.3% (colleges vary greatly in terms of admissions standards and rigor for
graduation)
- Finland 36.4%
- South Korea 34.3%
- Norway 34.2%
- Australia 33.7%
Germany college education is free by Germany is still under the OECD average
in terms of proportions of college graduates at
23.9% ---
http://andrewhammel.typepad.com/german_joys/2010/09/education-governments-should-expand-tertiary-studies-to-boost-jobs-and-tax-revenues.html
.
One of the major reasons admission to German schools is elitist is that free
education is expensive to taxpayers. In 2009 the Berlin Senate decided that
Berlin's universities should no longer be allowed to pick all of their students.
It was ruled that while they would be able to pick approximately 70% of their
students with the remaining 30% allocated by lottery. Every child is able to
enter the lottery, no matter how he or she performed in primary school. It is
hoped that this policy will increase the number of working class students
attending a university.
A common myth is that nations that tightly restrict free college to the
intellectual elite provide other forms (learning vocational trades) of free
tertiary education.
OECD Study Published in 2014: List of countries
by 25- to 34-year-olds having a tertiary education degree ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_25-_to_34-year-olds_having_a_tertiary_education_degree
No nation provides more than
Israel's 49% of free tertiary (trade training or college education) to more than
Israel's 49% funded by taxpayers.
The USA, in my opinion, offers the most opportunity to the highest proportion
of Tier 2 graduates to go to college. Even small towns across the USA have
community college campuses and branch campuses with almost no admission
standards for people who want to work toward a college degree or training
certificate. Sadly, ACT testing results show that less than half of the USA's
high school graduates are prepared to go to colllege. Compounding the felony is
the fact that college degrees in the USA vary widely in terms of learning
quality. Many of the USA's graduates are no better or worse than Tier 2 (high
school) graduates in Europe. In some cases the diplomas aren't worth the paper
their written on let alone the thousands of dollars borrowed to get these
useless diplomas.
Across the board from the worst to our most prestigious universities grade
inflation is rampant to where the median grade across the USA is an A-
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#RateMyProfessor
I fear that when college is free for all in the USA the median grade across the
USA will climb to A+ and admission standards will fall to zero as colleges of
poor quality compete to suck up the taxpayer subsidies that make college free
for everybody.
What the USA lacks relative to
Europe are networks of apprentice programs in the skilled trades where companies
rather than taxpayers foot the bill for the training.
"What Can the U.S. Learn From Switzerland, a
World Leader in Apprenticeships? by Kelly Field,
Chronicle of Higher Education, May 02, 2016
---
http://chronicle.com/article/What-Can-the-US-Learn-From/236323?cid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en&elqTrackId=ed4c1ab9aec74f92be12624885801484&elq=0ce71537bc894cb8a3f7ee33b218ead9&elqaid=8888&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=3032
More Americans Leave Expensive Metro Areas for Affordable Ones ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/more-americans-leave-expensive-metro-areas-for-affordable-ones-1478088003
Jensen Comment
The article fails to point out that efficient public transportation differences
make some metro area loss of middle and lower income people worse than others.
For example, lower-income workers like school teachers forced out of San
Francisco have the wonderful BART system for commuting in from east of the San
Francisco Bay. New York, Boston, and Chicago have good metro systems to lower
cost living areas. Palo Alto, San Jose, San Diego and Honolulu have lousy
commuting alternatives other than by congested freeways. For example, Palo Alto
now provides subsidized housing for public service workers who would not
otherwise apply for those jobs. Sadly, installing new and better subway systems
is now enormously expensive, especially for cities having vast urban sprawl like
San Diego and Los Angeles where the subway tunnels would have to run for miles
and miles and miles
Aaron Schock ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Schock
Former Republican Congressman from Illinois Will Be
Indicted ---
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/jasonhopkins/2016/11/10/aaron-schock-will-be-indicted-n2244048?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=
November 11 Message from Bob Jensen
Hi Arnie,
Certainly we would not be having some conversations
if Trump had lost. We would not be laughing at the statisticians and the
poll data collectors.
We would not be puzzled about why a large number of
white women who did not graduate from college probably prevented a woman
from becoming President of the USA ---
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-couldnt-win-over-white-women/
I would probably not have brought up the Trump
Hotel 2002 Pro Forma SEC investigation. That would've remained old news if
Trump lost the Presidential election.
There were not as many serious complaints about the
Electoral College system when Obama won in 2008 and 2012, although I suspect
that the losing side always tries to whip that puppy somewhat.
If Clinton won I would certainly be expressing my
concerns about the expense of free college education for everybody who
wants one and a free ride for those students who don't really want to shed
blood, sweat, and tears earning a diploma.
If Clinton won we probably would be lamenting that
she bought the election since she spent twice as much for every vote as her
opponent with Wall Street funding, union funding, etc.
Some would probably lament that Hillary Clinton
possibly beat out Bernie Sanders when she and the DNC cheated him in a
number of ways --- only one of which was cheating on the debates. That will
remain a fight within the Democratic Party, but I don't think it's as
relevant as it might have been if Clinton became President.
We would probably be taking a more serious look at
the WikiLeaked email messages of Hillary Clinton. Now all will probably be
forgiven and swept under the FBI's carpet.
If Clinton had won there would be a lot
less moaning and weeping and sobbing on academic blogs like that of the
Chronicle of Higher Education where the doomsday laments are getting
nauseating. If we survived Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush we can probably
survive Trump. He'll be too busy managing his resorts and copping feels to
worry about to a point of moving to Canada.
And (seriously) ocean temperatures will probably be
cooler over the next four years with more ice forming at the poles.
California will probably have drier years than 2016 --- which is a good
reason for California not to secede from the Union just yet.
My point is that we would be having conversations
on the AECM if Hillary Clinton had won, but those conversations most
certainly would be different.
Thanks,
Bob
Book Review of
Imagining a Good Islamic State
While the idea of a caliphate is used and twisted by Islamists for sinister and
brutal ends, the concept is not in itself threatening or dangerous.---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/imagining-a-good-islamic-state-1479076308?mod=djemMER
Jensen Comment
When ISIS finally surrenders its arms (not necessarily its terrorism) President
Trump or his successors face the very difficult task of getting all the
religious and cultural factions of Iraq, Suria, etc. to live peacefully with one
another. President Obama failed miserably in helping Iraq recover from the
downfall of Saddam. It seems he simply ignored the takeover of Iraq's government
by the Shiites.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could allow the
Middle East to resolve its own troubles now that we're becoming less dependent
upon oil? That of course is a pipe dream given the powder keg of nuclear-armed
Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan and the never-ending hatred of Israel.
And there's the enormous cost of rebuilding Syria to a point where refugees who
want to can return to their homelands.
Why would anybody want to be President of
the USA?
My guess is that President Obama is counting the days before the load is taken
from his shoulders.
Finding and Using Health Statistics
---
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/usestats/index.htm
Best Medical Schools in the World (2013) ---
http://studychacha.com/discuss/139694-best-medical-school-world.html
More of the Top 50 are in the USA relative to any other nation.
World Health Organization ranking of health systems in 2000 ---
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization_ranking_of_health_systems_in_2000
Bob Jensen's threads on economic statistics and databases ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#EconStatistics
Medicare Fraud is Rampant ---
http://townhall.com/columnists/stevesherman/2016/02/05/medicare-fraud-is-rampant-n2115375?utm_source=thdaily&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl&newsletterad=
Jensen Comment
Colorado voters overwhelmingly rejected a statewide universal health insurance
program that would've more than doubled taxes in the state ---
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/11/colorado-voters-reject-statewide-universal-health-insurance-program/
I'm
in favor of a government-funded basic health care plan, but I don't think any
state can afford to go it alone. Someday there will have to be some type of
national plan. Unfortunately, any such plan will probably be put on hold during
the Trump era that will most likely add more subsidies for big insurance
companies and ambulance-chasing lawyers.
The
good news is that the many hospitals and doctors that previously closed their
doors to people insured by Obamacare will probably soon open their doors once
again to patients left out in the cold.
At the moment, however, nobody knows just what will replace Obamacare.
News
Item Prior to November 8 Election of President Trump
Major Chicago Hospitals Not In 2017 Obamacare Marketplace Plans ---
https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/major-chicago-hospitals-not-in-2017-obamacare-marketplace-plans/f55d6c23-d9b1-452f-8c75-73635bd83d07
Some of Chicago’s largest hospitals said they will not be part of any Cook
County Affordable Care Act marketplace plans in 2017.
University of Chicago Medical Center and Rush University Medical Center both
said they don’t plan to be in network for any Obamacare marketplace plans
next year.
The change means patients with doctors at those hospitals will either need
to find a plan off the marketplace, and lose Obamacare subsides, or find a
new doctor.
Northwestern Memorial Hospital said it will also be out of the marketplace,
but will have exceptions for some of its partner hospitals.
Continued in article
According to emergency room physicians Obamacare made it much worse for
emergency rooms.
American College of Emergency Room Physicians
The Uninsured: Access to Medical Care Fact Sheet
---
http://newsroom.acep.org/fact_sheets?item=30032
Jensen Conclusion
At the moment nobody knows just what will replace Obamacare. Hopefully that
replacement will not dump more uninsured on emergency rooms.
"Accountability for ObamaCare: Democrats should pay a
political price for this historic failure," The Wall Street Journal, October
25, 2016 --- |
http://www.wsj.com/articles/accountability-for-obamacare-1477435661?mod=djemMER
ObamaCare has suddenly been injected back into the
2016 election debate, on the news of the law’s 25%-plus average premium
increase for 2017. Even Donald Trump is talking about it. With only two
weeks to go, this is a moment for voters to hold accountable the Democrats
who imposed this debacle on the country over voter objections.
Next year’s enormous price increases are merely the
latest expression of ObamaCare’s underlying problems, and the dysfunction is
undermining the health security of Americans who lack employer coverage. A
wave of major insurers have quit the exchanges, and those that are left have
raised deductibles and copays and restricted choices of doctors and
hospitals. The public is witnessing—and the unlucky are experiencing—the
collapse of one progressive promise after another.
At every stage of the ObamaCare saga, liberals said
not to worry. Sure, the law was unpopular when Democrats rammed it through
Congress on a partisan vote in 2009-10, but voters would learn to love it
once the subsidies started rolling. That didn’t happen, and in 2014
President Obama tried to buck up Democrats by saying that “five years from
now” people will look back on the law as “a monumental achievement.” Two
years later it’s worse.
Nothing
could shake the liberal faith in their supposed landmark: Not the
Healthcare.gov website fiasco of 2013, or the millions of individual health
plans that were cancelled despite President Obama’s promise about keeping
them. The left kept the faith as the entitlement subtracted from economic
growth, hurt incomes and killed jobs. MIT economist Jonathan Gruber called
the critics stupid, and Mr. Obama denigrates anyone who disagrees with him
as illegitimate or politically motivated.
Now
reality is confirming what the critics predicted. ObamaCare’s regulatory
mix—benefit mandates, requiring insurers to sell coverage to all comers, and
narrow ratings bands that limit how much premiums can vary by health
status—was tried by several states in the 1980s and ’90s. Every one saw the
same results that are now unspooling nationally: high and rising costs, low
and declining enrollment, and less insurer and provider competition.
The
Affordable Care Act was supposed to solve these predictable disruptions with
subsidies and a mandate to buy insurance or pay a penalty. But most people
don’t think ObamaCare plans provide value for the money, especially if they
are non-subsidized.
So
now the liberal line is that ObamaCare has a few problems, but don’t worry:
The same geniuses who wrote the law know how to fix it. The Bernie
Sanders-Elizabeth Warren left wants a new “public option,” higher subsidies,
more price controls and even more intrusive regulatory control.
Hillary Clinton
has endorsed all of this.
“The
Affordable Care Act has done what it was designed to do,” Mr. Obama declared
last week in Miami, apparently meaning that the law has reduced the number
of uninsured. But most of the coverage gains have come from dumping patients
into Medicaid, a failing program that provides substandard care. Nominally
private exchange plans increasingly resemble Medicaid too.
Mrs.
Clinton may be horse-whispering Ms. Warren now, but ObamaCare’s failures
aren’t likely to bring the U.S. closer to their single-payer nirvana any
time soon. ObamaCare was the best Democrats could do when they had a 60-vote
Senate supermajority and bought off interest groups like the insurers,
hospitals, drug makers and American Medical Association.
The only
way to break the ObamaCare status quo is if the public returns a Republican
Congress to Washington. If Republicans can hold the Senate amid a Clinton
victory, they’d be in a better position to negotiate solutions along the
lines of the House GOP “Better Way” blueprint that would start to repair the
individual market and create incentives for more choice and competition.
Take
Wisconsin, where Democrat Russ Feingold cast the deciding 60th vote for
ObamaCare and voters fired him for it in 2010. He’s back hoping voters
forget. Evan Bayh, who also cast the deciding vote before retiring to become
a superlobbyist, is back facing Indiana voters and Hoosiers can deliver a
verdict.
In
Arizona, premiums will rise a mind-boggling 116%, only two insurers are
still selling plans, and
John McCain
has made ObamaCare a major theme. His opponent, Congresswoman Ann
Kirkpatrick, calls ObamaCare her “proudest vote.” Katie McGinty likes to say
Pennsylvanians should be “proud of ObamaCare,” though the commonwealth is
slated for a 53% increase. A memo about ObamaCare pride month must have gone
out from Democratic HQ.
Mr. Trump
has missed a chance by not prosecuting a consistent case against ObamaCare,
despite Mrs. Clinton’s past as the chief architect of its HillaryCare
prototype in the 1990s. As that episode shows, the longstanding progressive
goal has been to centralize political control over American health care.
Now
voters are finally seeing what happens when the planners try to design a
single health-care solution for a large and diverse country. Mr. Obama
called ObamaCare “a starter home” in Miami. Republicans ought to campaign as
the bulldozer.
October 29, 2016 message from Zafar Khan
Making a killing under Obamacare: The ACA gets
blamed for rising premiums, while insurance companies are reaping massive
profits.
October 29, 2016 reply from Bob Jensen
Hi Zafar,
It would seem that if the insurance companies were making a "killing on
Obamacare" they would not be dropping out of Obamacare like flies at the
start of winter. Even the biggest insurance companies are dropping out of
Obamacare exchanges. For example, Blue Cross stopped covering Obamacare
plans in Tennessee after purportedly losing $500 million on ACA coverage.
The big insurance companies are "making a killing" on traditional medical
insurance coverage such as the employer plans they carry and their
overpriced supplemental Medicare plans. The biggest fraud of all, in my
opinion, is AARP that makes a killing brokering an overpriced supplemental
Medicare plan.
Then last week BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee announced it would leave
three of the state’s largest exchange markets—Nashville, Memphis and
Knoxville. “We have experienced losses approaching $500 million over the
course of three years on ACA plans,” the company said, “which is
unsustainable.” As a result, more than 100,000 Tennesseans will be forced to
seek out new coverage for 2017.
ObamaCare’s Meltdown Has Arrived ---
http://www.wsj.com/articles/obamacares-meltdown-has-arrived-1475709560
Bob Jensen
Bob
Jensen's universal health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen's health care messaging ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/