Thoughts on Impeachment

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Words, Meanings, and Spin

In regard to Trump's recent statement on "Getting Tough with Democrats"....

Recently, Trump mentioned sending Bikers after Democrats. In a nutshell, It all depends on whether the bikers are law abiding or not. But how would you feel if Obama had endorsed a biker group? I know many peaceful biker groups. Yet, the image of bikers leans to modern day outlaws.

Words have meanings and harmonics of meanings. Trump knows this, and ignores the harmonics when acknowledging them doesn't serve his purpose.

As for me, I've learned to recognize when he's speaking to his choir and when he's spouting BS that are blatant lies, but reinforce the falsehoods his followers believe.

For example: Whether or not one believes his wall is needed, one can see the falsehoods in his justifications. In a recent speech, he talked of "thousands, millions" coming to the Mexican border. Even in these caravans, we're talking in the LOW thousands, not the millions. He'll stretch a number without regard to reality, and people eat it up. His followers don't care whether the number implied is true or not. They care that it reinforces their beliefs that we're being invaded by hordes of foreigners.

Trump has violated the social and political norms which normally hold a leader in check. The GOP has been emasculated by the mob, as the primaries gave Trump a legitimacy that he never would have been given in normal times. The gate keeping function of the electoral college hasn't worked from the beginning of our republic. As a result, we were ripe for a corrupt president to be elected by the "unwashed masses" (social term, not a literal term) who speaks the meta language that they want to hear, but doesn't deliver the things the common people really need.

I suggest that one do two things before making your next support of Trump. First, watch the first 15 minutes of "Triumph of the Will" which explains the humiliation of a Central European people in few words, then presents the imagery of a false messiah who promises deliverance from suffering. Then read the first 50 pages of "How Democracies Die". And finally, ask one's self, do you recognize a pattern here? No matter what you believe in regard to Trump, and no matter whether you acknowledge what you really feel to others, if you don't see what is going on, acknowledging the truth to one's self, your opinions are meaningless drivel and part of the overall problem we all face.

Please note that everyone is entitled to his or her view. But if one can't acknowledge that the other side also has its points and discuss them fairly, one's voice is meaningless spin and can easily be ignored as it is only spouting useless propaganda....

Politics will be the death of us yet.

As I write this entry, the partial US Government shutdown is in its second week.  This is an embarrassing shame for this country, as important government functions are not being performed, people are unable to earn a living, and those "essential personnel" which remain on the job are not getting paid for their work.

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Government shutdowns should be rare and short.  In the first 2 years of the Trump presidency, we have already experienced 3 shutdowns.  The first 2 shutdowns were relatively harmless, as they lasted less than a week.  However, this shutdown is going into its 3rd week, and shows no sign of ending.

The nation’s largest union representing federal employees filed a lawsuit Monday afternoon against the government, seeking damages for the roughly 400,000 federal employees forced to work without pay during the partial government shutdown. To me, having the government order me to work without pay is akin to slavery, and is illegal according to the United States Constitution.  But what would happen if a court were to tell these employees that they have the right to NOT work?

In the above case, the 2 plaintiffs work at high-security prisons owned by the government.  Could you imagine if all affected employees were to walk out, leaving prisoners locked up in their cells?  What would happen in a protracted mandated shutdown?  Would we leave the prisoners to starve?  But this gets even more interesting.  The Coast Guard is affected by the shutdown as well.  Could you imagine if they started selling drugs to pay their service members?  Being serious, I could imagine what could happen if the Coast Guard were to stop functioning, and this is not a pretty picture.  And what about TSA employees walking off their jobs? What about Air Traffic Controllers? Could you imagine what would happen to interstate travel and commerce if no one were able able to fly during the shutdown?

As usual, this shutdown hurts poor people the worst.  Many of us live from paycheck to paycheck, and are less than 3 paychecks away from total financial disaster.  The Federal Government has outsourced many of tasks once done by employees.  Unlike Federal employees, most contractor employees will not get back pay when the government is fully open for business.  How will they cope with the loss of 2 (or more) weeks of salary?  What would happen if this shutdown stretches into February?  We will likely see SNAP and WIC benefit funding stop.  What will happen to the affected families?

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I am not in favor of Trump getting any money for his so-called wall.  He is holding many Americans hostage against their will, pawns in the game of politics. He did this with DACA "Dreamers" and screwed them anyway.  What's to say that he will not do the same thing again?  Collateral damage is part of most wars, and this is a political war where government employees are needlessly being hurt.  I am hoping for a radical ruling in the above mentioned lawsuit, allowing ALL unpaid employees to walk off their jobs at will.

Maybe it's time for the people to fight back against a body politic that is out of control....



 

They seem like the Three Stooges. And they make Moe look like a good leader.

This week's entry will be relatively short.

As I write this, the AHCA act has yet to be brought to a vote before the full House. And it doesn't have that great a chance of passing. Then, if it does, it still doesn't have a ghost of a chance in the Senate.  What does this say about the GOP as a political party?

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For the past several years, the GOP has been stirring up its base, saying that the Affordable Care Act (A.K.A. "Obamacare") is bad for the American people and would be repealed on the first day that the GOP had control of government.  So far, it has been a little over 2 months since the GOP got its wish, and they were unprepared to do what they promised.

The key features of Obamacare (I use the word as a compliment to the man) are:

1. A mandated definition of what basic health care coverage is, so that people buying this care on exchanges could make "apples to apples" comparisons.
2. A mandated participation in the health care market (with subsidies, if needed) to insure that both the poor are covered, and that the insurance pool is large enough to absorb the expenses of the old and infirm who were unable to get affordable insurance.
3. A mandate that insurers accept people with pre-existing conditions and cover those conditions in their policies.
4. An establishment of government sponsored (state or federal governments) health care exchanges, so that people could easily buy insurance from a marketplace.

There are more features, such as the expansion of medicaid that could be mentioned here. But they only serve to make the discussion a little more complex than needed.

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The problem with health care is that many things dovetail with each other.  Take away mandatory participation in a health care market, and the insurance pools do not cover enough young and healthy people to absorb the expenses of the old and infirm. Isolate the old and infirm into assigned risk pools, and they will not be able to afford health care without subsidies. Take away coverage of pre-existing conditions, and the people who need coverage will not be able to get it.  Take away the public exchanges and mandated definitions of "coverage", and the public will not be able to make informed choices. In short, one has to address many requirements in order to maximize coverage across as many people as possible in a nation's population.

The GOP attacks the first two elements in the above list in all their proposals to repeal the ACA. They do not care that less people will be covered by insurance.  They do not care that insurance will become unaffordable to the old and infirm.  They only care about restoring a dysfunctional prior status quo.  The GOP has had several years to design a better health care plan than the ACA, and yet had not done so.  Instead they kept making noises about the free market being better than the ACA's "solution" - even when the other major industrialized nations have shown that "socialized medicine" has resulted in more available health care at a lower price to society.  In fact, one staunch GOP loyalist made the claim that if Stephen Hawking had to use Britain's National Health Service (NHS), that Hawking would be dead today.  Well, Hawking uses the NHS and is still alive as I write this.

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The GOP is now in charge of the Executive branch of government, as well as both legislative branches of government. And the three stooges in the above photo have yet do produce a health care reform that would be better than what we now have.  It should be the duty of any opposition party, that when it comes to power, that it has well thought out policies and actions ready to go.  This was not the case when the GOP gained power this year.

I don't need to say much about Trump, except that he is a malignant narcissistic sociopath who has no loyalty to anyone but himself, who has no taste, and who has no empathy with other people. In short, he is a social cancer that can cause damage when left unchecked. Paul Ryan is an idealog who can be very dangerous as he gets more power, as he does not believe that the fortunate in society have any duty to those less well off. And Mitch McConnell may not be an ideolog, as he has no ethics to guide him except a loyalty to his party.

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The public is enraged - and that includes many in the "Red States" who are seeing how the party they voted into power is about to betray them.  The GOP had no Obamacare replacement, so they slapped something together and called it reform. The public knows better, as they can see how they will lose their ACA benefits when what they derisevely called "Obamacare" is repealed. They see that giving away park lands in places like Montana will hurt their local economy. They see that polluting the water with mining waste will take away their clean drinking water. In short, they are willing to the Democrats if the Democrats have leaders who will address the needs of the people in "Fly Over Territory".

Luckily, we're seeing the Democrats get energized, as they are getting ready for the 2018 elections. But do they have enough of the right people in place for the future?  I doubt it. Their leadership is getting long in the tooth, and they don't have enough young leaders who can energize the public. The one person who can lead them, Bernie Sanders, is an older man who has captured the imagination of youth. He is the same man, when in a forum of Trump supporters received the ultimate compliment from a person in mining country. This compliment took the form of being told that Sanders, from the Northeast, is doing more for people in Coal Country than Mitch McConnell next door. 

My question is: Will the Democrats be ready in time to topple "Larry" and "Curly" in 2018, and take care of "Moe" in 2020?

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PS: After I wrote this, the GOP Bill went down in flames.  As expected, Trump had to find someone else to blame the failure on, and he blamed the Democrats for not working with him.  Hmmmm.  The GOP refused to help when Obamacare was passed 7 years ago. So why should the Democrats respond any differently.  Trump claims that Obamacare will implode, and it may yet in some states. But if it fails in 2018, it will be an election year, and I doubt that Trump will be able to stop the upcoming disaster that an honest attempt to repair what was in place could have prevented.

There are 3 kinds of lies about Healthcare

Mark Twain once said that "There are three kinds of lies: Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics." And in the case of Obamacare, Trumpcare and the Healthcare debate, all three kinds of lies are in play.

When the Affordable Care Act was enacted, it had no support from the GOP, even though the design came out of a GOP think tank. The GOP was so focused on making Obama a one term president, that it became an extremely polarized opposition to anything supported by Obama. And this included the beginnings of a national health care system based on free market principles, yet tempered by the realities of unequal wealth distribution and unequal health across subgroups of our nation's population.

I was surprised to find that a president and party would have spent so much political capital oh health care. And in retrospect, I am reminded of LBJ who noted that by standing up for civil rights, he was giving the "Old South" to the GOP. It seems like healthcare reform may symbolize something similar for Democrats, as the GOP has used Obamacare as a tool to rally the base.

Over the past few years, the Democratic party has been losing seats in both the House and the Senate. In 2016, the Democrats finally lost the presidency, which gave the GOP a chance to remake healthcare in ways that may reflect either an ideological purity or a pragmatic recognition of reality. Unfortunately, the first important draft at a reform bill will only serve to double the number of uninsured people, and give excessive tax cuts to the rich.

Designing reforms to a health insurance system is not something that can be done in days. It took the Democrats months to flesh out a plan, and then they had to pull out all stops (including bringing in a sickly Ted Kennedy to help break a filibuster) to get the bill passed. Even then, the bill was far from perfect - and was signed into law with known problems. The Obama administration figured that Healthcare reform was now in play, but repeal would be political suicide once the average citizen started to receive the benefits of this new entitlement.

President Trump promised that he would sign a repeal of Obamacare the day he took office. It's been roughly two months since he took office, and no repeal or replacement bill has been signed into law at the time I'm writing this entry. The GOP never thought that they would be in a position to fulfill its promises to repeal Obamacare, and now they are caught between keeping this promise and doing the right thing.

The GOP is saying lies of varying magnitudes in regard to the ACA. What they are not saying is that their lack of cooperation in congress and in their statehouses helped to cause major problems in the "Red States". Obamacare is in trouble in many of the Red States, as quite a few did not accept federal monies for Medicaid expansion.  As a result, many people who could have gotten medical care were caught in a gap - between Medicaid eligibility and being able to afford healthcare. So they got screwed by their own leaders, just because of a political game that was being played.

In the "Blue States", we see a system that is relatively successful. Yes, there are problems. But people are accessing healthcare who could never have afforded it in the past. So, what's going to happen to them now that the GOP is in charge? Trump and the rest of the GOP do not want to look at the statistics regarding Obamacare. The Congressional Budget Office did predict a $370+ million savings due to the GOP's most recent health care reform bill. But it said that the number of uninsured would more than double. This means that the GOP will need to tell big lies to mollify its base - a base which is finally coming to terms with the Affordable Care Act, not realizing that it is one and the same as the dreaded "Obamacare".

There are Senators warning GOP house members that the current bill will be DOA if it reaches the Senate. Both the President and the Speaker of the House are saying that this bill is the only one that might pass muster in the House. Yet something more may be going on here.  Could a bad bill be written up, making it possible for purists to say they voted for an acceptable bill that will never come to law - and please their constituents?  Could a future bill be designed to "repeal" the ACA, but merely be a set of tweaks to make the existing law more palatable?

What is most telling is that TRUMP, a man who puts his name on everything, boils red when he hears the phrase "Trumpcare". He doesn't want his name associated with a GOP suicide pact. And yet, that's what seems to be happening right now - GOP Congressmen and Senators are avoiding their constituents in order not to address their fears of losing affordable health care.  Does this mean that because of ideological concerns that the GOP may commit political suicide?  Who knows?

The other night, Bernie Sanders held a town hall in "Trump Territory". And it is amazing how he addressed the concerns of West Virginia voters better than that of their own leaders.  In fact, one person there said that he was amazed that Sanders was looking out for retired coal miners more than Mitch McConnell, a Senator from a nearby coal mining state. What does this say about our 2 party system? To me, it says that if a party ignores the concerns of people who are minorities in the party, it will lose the votes to the other party - even if the only things given are lip service and lies, as the GOP has done for years.

Even in a state that bleeds red, the ACA has shown to be useful. It made sure that coal miners suffering from Black Lung disease got the benefit of the doubt when claiming benefits - something that would be lost in an ACA repeal.  People in Trump Country see this, and do not want the ACA repealed - they want it fixed.  Even so, our VP went to Kentucky and talked about all of Obamacare's failures - even when the little guy is starting to see the benefits of the law.  I can only imagine what would happen to the GOP if more people started seeing the lies for what they are - mistaken tribal and ideological opposition to a "lesser of evils" law.

In the major Western nations, there is no country which has free market health care - not even us.  In a free market, people would die if they were taken to the hospital without money or insurance coverage. Out of humanity, we require hospitals to treat all people regardless of ability to pay, and then those hospitals shift their unreimbursed costs to those least able to pay "rack rate" for medical care. And yet, the GOP keeps arguing that a free market can work with health care when there are no examples in the world of a free market working for health care.  What lies will they tell to bamboozle their base to convince them that a return to healthcare's past is what is needed in a "reform" effort?

Luckily, there are a few GOP Congressmen and Senators willing to buck party ideology and demand that a replacement bill actually be better than the system we have now. It's not important that they dress up their verbiage in fantasy talk or pragmatic statements. Instead, it's important that they are realizing that if the GOP breaks Obamacare without having a better Trumpcare ready to roll, then the GOP could lose both houses in the next election, and possibly start losing the statehouses as well.

I predict that we will hear a lot of misinformation spouted over the next few weeks while ACA repeal is being discussed. Luckily, the Democrats still have the ability to filibuster many bills that come through the Senate, and have an effective veto that can be used for most half-assed attempts to repeal the ACA. Hopefully, the Democrats will use what little power they have left in both a wise and effective manner.  And I hope that in the middle of this political game being played, that people lose the ability to purchase healthcare that they once enjoyed under the ACA.

I'm not sure of what to think

Does adding a second bible add any substance, legitimacy or truth to what Trump swore to on Inauguration Day?  I doubt it.  It only serves to create an image of false piety for a man from whose mouth only comes lies - including the words "And" and "The".

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As I write this entry, less than two weeks have expired since Trump took office, and we're already seeing chaos in the land. Previously approved refugees, legal residents/green card holders, and other vetted people are being denied entry to the USA, because of Trump's latest executive order. How does this make us any safer? How does this make us appear to the rest of the world?  To me, it only gives nations such as Iran a propaganda advantage, as they will not reject previously approved holders of American passports from visiting their country. And to make things worse, the 3 Arabic speaking countries which are exempt from Trump's executive order (Egypt, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia) are those in which Trump has business interests.  Two of these countries (Saudi Arabia and the UAE) are countries that supplied the 19 hijackers that commandeered the planes on 9/11/01, killing almost 3,000 Americans.

An op-ed piece in the Huffington Post is already.talking about the inevitability of impeachment. But is that what a Democrat should be looking for?  Each day that Trump is in office, he tarnishes the GOP brand and helps to mobilize more potential Democratic voters - people who could be very useful in 2018 and 2020. When the Women's March gathered 3 times on the National Mall as many people as Trump's inauguration, one has a potential movement.  But when one takes into account the other 1,500,000 people protesting around the world, it's easy to see that a raw nerve has been touched.  We have to make sure that the reaction gets us the results we want.

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It is no accident that ALL of Trump's appointments have been to the extreme political right. His deal with Pence is likely the same he offered to John Kasich: You run both foreign and domestic affairs, while I make America great again.  Kasich has some ethics, Pence does not. He is a religious wingnut, someone more dangerous to us than Trump - something that I found hard to believe at first.  If we are stuck with a President Pence, he will follow the GOP policy with no compromises allowed. This is different from Trump, as he can easily be manipulated with flattery.  

The Huffington Post piece noted that Trump suffers from Malignant Narcissism.  Otto Kernberg characterizes it by an absence of conscience, a pathological grandiosity and quest for power, and a sadistic joy in cruelty. And everything said about Trump indicates a diagnosis of Malignant Narcissism would be one of the things high on the list of possibilities. Can we afford this in a national leader?

It is possible to manipulate someone like Trump.  It has often been said about him, that if you are the last to give him an opinion, he will often lean your way - as long as he feels in charge and feels that he is the strongest alpha male in the room.  However, it is much harder to manipulate someone like Pence, as his currency is power. Pence is smart enough to wait around until someone self destructs. And that's what Trump seems to be doing, seeing how much work and thought goes into being president.

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But I go back to the title of this entry, as it raises an important question: Is it in our best interest to help get Trump out of office, taking an immediate gain? Or, is it better to help Trump stay in office until the 2018 elections, preventing a potential President Pence from serving more than 6 years as President in his own right?  Can we afford the damage that Trump will do to this country in a little under than 720 days?  

I've already accepted that Trump will destroy as many external checks and balances as he can, regarding those we have on large businesses.  I've already accepted that Trump will be a disaster for the environment, given his belief that Global Warming is a Hoax.  And I've already accepted that he will be a disaster for human rights. Do we know ALL the risks of removing him from office either via impeachment or via the 25th amendment to the constitution?  I don't think so.  And that worries me.

Thoughts on the coming change in control.

Like it, hate it, but Obamacare (or, the Affordable Care Act) has been a political hot point for the last 6+ years.  If it had been enacted by a Republican administration, the Democrats would be looking to dismantle it.  But it was enacted by Democrats, and the GOP will soon be in charge of that den of iniquity called Washington, DC.

This year's group of Republicans is worse than most one-party governments.  They have already set their sights on dismantling programs designed to help the poor and needy. And they have decided to eliminate a non-partisan ethics office that helped keep politicians in check. There are very few GOP politicians willing to check and balance the incoming president and his tangled web of conflicted interests. And there are even fewer in congress who want the Office of Congressional Ethics keeping an eye on their affairs. What is surprising to me is that the President Elect has chastised congress for not having its priorities in order - they should be focused on things like healthcare instead of the Ethics Bureau.

The President Elect has been amazingly friendly to Russia, given that both the CIA and FBI have stated that the Russians have hacked the computers of the DNC.  I'd bet that Putin is calling Trump a "Useful Idiot" in private circles. Unlike many loyal Americans, I am not angry at Putin. He is acting in the best interests of Russia as he sees it.  Instead, I am angry at many in the GOP who refuse to stand up and tell the President Elect that he must take the hacking allegations seriously.  

Right now, the entire GOP appears to be like a kid in a candy store.  They can have anything they want, and as much of it as they want.  The big question is: Will they over do it?  Given current behavior, the answer appears to be "Yes".  Only time will tell.

Don't be surprised

This year is one where the public is signaling that it wants a big change.  Both Trump and Sanders were the choices of people disgusted at the two-party duopoly's ability to prevent meaningful change, and allow the middle class to sink into poverty.  The GOP had no choice, except to accept Trump as its nominee. And the Democratic establishment found a way to gyp Sanders of the votes he needed to win the nomination. As a result, we have the two least favorite candidates being in a position to be elected president.

Many Democrats are now saying that a vote for Johnson is a vote for Trump.  This may be true, but only in the states where it's a toss up between Hillary and Trump.  In states such as New York, there there are 3 Democratic party voters for every 2 from the GOP. It is safe for me to vote for the Libertarian choice, since I see no risk that Trump can win in New York.

I am under no illusions that the Libertarians can win.  Johnson's total ignorance of world affairs shows him to be unqualified for the position of president.  His Vice Presidential nominee is better qualified than he is, as Weld knows much more about the world outside the 50 states.  Sadly, the Libertarians have way too many purists, and do not know how to compromise in order to gain power.

Yet, I see signs of hope for the long term.  For the first time ever, I've seen a campaign sign for the Libertarian candidates posted near my house.  They are slowly starting to get traction - after many years of wandering in the wilderness.  People are seeing the Libertarians as a party they can support, if only as a protest against the two-party power duopoly.

Don't be surprised that some time in the next 20 years that the Libertarians become a major power in their own right.  The Democrats have not been developing enough good leaders at the state level, and have ceded control of many states to the GOP.  The GOP has taken ever more extreme positions, and no longer represent mainstream America. Why did it take so long for Trump to repudiate David Duke? The answer is simple - they have courted white supremacists since Richard Nixon's day, and they don't know how to break the deal with this devil.  Please note that most Republicans are not racist.  They only made the mistake of absorbing this blighted voting bloc when the Democrats cast them off by LBJ's signing of civil rights legislation.

The Libertarians are closer to classic GOP values than the current GOP is.  Small government is a hallmark of the Libertarian party.  The GOP promotes an ever bigger government, in the form of our military and its civilian workforce. Contrast this with the Libertarians who want to pull back from international quagmires, and work on domestic problems.  I, for one, am afraid that if the GOP gets in control of the elected branches of government, that they will repeat the mistakes of Bush #43, and pay for military growth with debt - destroying the futures of our children and grandchildren, as they will be the ones who have to pay for our mistakes.

My advice: If you live in a state which is virtually guaranteed to vote Democratic, vote for the Libertarians if you can't stand Trump of Hillary. If you are in a state that is virtually guaranteed to vote Republican, vote for Libertarians if you can't stand Trump or Hillary.  But if you live in a state that's up for grabs, vote for the candidate who is least objectionable.  It's a terrible year in which to cast a vote. But we have a real choice, even though many of us will be holding our noses as we make it.

6 years since Obamacare was signed into law.

It's almost been 6 years since Obamacare was signed into law, and we're now seeing the problems in the law.  Democrats rightfully say that more people are covered by health insurance, while Republicans rightfully say that there are fewer choices in medical care. What is the objective truth?

To look at this law objectively, one has to look through the lens of American politics, and what happens when the political system periodically breaks down in this country. The other day Rachel Maddow talked about an interesting phenomena on her show. It had to do about "Nativism" and when it pops up in our society.  Nativism, as I like to describe it, relates to a frustration held by native born citizens related to their place in society (and in the economy), a tendency to blame their problems on the foreign born, and a remedy to stop (or reverse) immigration by unwanted foreigners. 

When Nativism first became important, it was in the guise of the "no nothing" movement. Our political system was breaking down over the festering issue of slavery, there was political paralysis caused by the Northern and Southern states refusing to work together to govern effectively. In the end, the Whig party died, the GOP was born, and we had a brutal civil war before we had a government that could govern again.

We are again seeing the signs of our political system breaking down.  Donald Trump is only a symptom of a much larger problem. 

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America is again at a crossroads.  Every so often, its politicians tend to become so opposed to each other, that the normal business of government doesn't get done.  We have a Supreme Court nomination that the GOP controlled Senate refuses to act upon, simply because it wants to deny the current Democratic president any ability to make constitutionally mandated decisions that may affect the balance of power for years to come. They falsely claim that a lame duck president has no right nominate a person for a Supreme Court opening, stating that the next president should be the one making the nomination. Tribal loyalty is trumping (no pun intended here) duty to the nation. And we all suffer for it.

As a nation we have serious problems that are not being addressed.  We have refused to act on rationalizing America's immigration policy for years, effectively encouraging a "catch and release" policy for illegal immigrants.  Many people believe that the big problem is Mexican immigration to the USA, when the reality is that Mexicans are going home because of opportunities opening up there.  We have people who want "forever wars", and a Military-Industrial complex which is all too eager to oblige them.  We warehouse many of our poor in prisons, locked away for trumped up charges, all in the name of keeping our nation safe from crime.  (We'd be better off legalizing hard drugs, and taking away the reasons people commit crimes to buy these substances, and imitate Portugal in this area.)  We still have not been able to cover 100% of Americans in a medical insurance program, in part because of political bickering, in part because of big pharma having prevented some of the meaningful reforms that would allow medical insurance to be profitable for both the customer and the corporate entity providing it, and in part because because we do not have a "Public Option" ("Medicare for All", as Bernie Sanders would call it) where private industry can't afford to provide care.  Our political class is paralyzed, and the people are revolting at the polls.

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This situation has happened in other countries, and we've seen the disasters. To me, the most notable disaster was the fall of Weimar Germany and the ascent of Hitler and the "Thousand Year Reich".  We all know what happened there. Europe's economies were destroyed for at least a generation, and many of the continent's scars are visible to this day. Yet, Nativism still flourishes there, with far right parties trying to throw the immigrants out. And I can't blame the Nativists, because many of these immigrants have not assimilated into European society, many still live in cultural ghettos, and many cause problems by trying to bring the failed social values of their old homelands to the new.

The Nativists are just as much of the problem as are the unassimilated immigrants. Neither has adapted to change.  In many ways, both cling to a past which has not served them well, and has left them unprepared for the future.  It's sad, as neither group realizes that the past is the problem and not the solution.  In both the US and in Europe, Nativists resent immigrants who they feel are stealing their jobs. In reality, they are doing the kinds of work that the native born consider beneath themselves to do.  To make things worse, the jobs that many of the Nativists once did are no longer available.  Both Britain and the US have reduced their needs for coal, but no one has provided for the displaced workers. They have good reason to feel angry.  Immigrants are also part of the problem, as they bring ways of life which are incompatible with life in the new countries.  Muslim immigrants are often shocked that Western countries do not, and will not accept Sharia law in their midst.  The native born Christians in these lands rightfully see this as a problem, as it could lead to an all out war between them, and a growing Muslim population.

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The future is not as bleak as one might think. Mexican immigrants have assimilated more easily into American society the further away they are from Mexico.  In the lands which once were part of Mexico, they have tended to maintain a stronger cultural identity, and pose an interesting problem for America.  How do we insure their primary loyalty is to America? Most Muslim immigrants do not want any part of Sharia law, nor do they want the customs of their homelands.  They see the problems in places such as Egypt, where the government has no value to the common person.  They also see that government in the USA has a rightful place in public life, and is much of an asset here, as much as it was a liability in the lands from which they came. And in virtually all cases, it is education that has made the difference.

It's hard to learn to think critically without a good education.  And many of Obamacare's greatest opponents come from the masses who have not been educated well.  They do not see the law as an important first step towards an effective health care system for Americans, as they have not been taught civics in our schools.  They do not know how the government functions, nor do they know how to achieve their goals using the powers reserved for the people.  Instead, they look for a strong leader to deliver them from the mess that they, themselves have made. The masses have caused their own problems, because they, themselves have delegated their thinking to others.

Luckily, we still have a critical mass of Americans who have been well educated, and they still outnumber the "unwashed masses".  Hopefully, these people will stop the "unwashed masses" from electing a bombastic demagogue as a strongman leader, and instead, force the two parties to work together again and govern.  I still have hope for America, as the structure of the government handed to us by the Founding Fathers is still resilient enough to deal with today's problems.  They saw the objective truth, and it wasn't pretty then.  And our objective truth is just as ugly today as it was then.  So I have faith that what was given to us by Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson, Adams and others is strong enough to weather the likes of Trump or Clinton....











https://www.morningstar.com/news/Market-watch/TDJNMW_20160831501/update-how-gilead-broke-obamacare.html


http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obamacare-prescription-drugs-pharma-225444

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottgottlieb/2015/01/08/what-a-drug-price-debate-reveals-about-obamacare/#6eed2d1578c2

Abandon Ship!

And now the rats are fleeing the ship.  We now are hearing the clarion call from some of the most important conservative media that Trump should either play the game according to the rules, or the GOP will find a way to abandon him for its own survival.  Sadly for the GOP, the die was cast a long, long time ago.  And when they could have gotten rid of the cancer called Donald Trump, they dilly dallied until it was too late to do anything meaningful to stop Trump.

The soul of a political party is tested now and then.  The Democrats were tested when Bill Clinton was impeached by the house.  No one abandoned him, when he was guilty of a "petty" felony.  They were addicted to the money he knew how to bring to his party. The Democrats failed their test, but I'm not sure they could have passed it without tearing the party apart.  This season, it's the Republican's turn.  And they are failing with no excuse. When political leaders are saying that Trump is a con artist who has no business being president, but they support him anyway in the same breath - this is an example of the ethical and moral bankruptcy of the party. This is a colossal failure with no mitigating factors - and no excuses for their (expected) eventual loss in November.

This is a year where the GOP should have been able to easily win the presidency.  All they had to do was stop leaning towards the extreme right, and let Hillary's failings do her in.  In a news cycle that just reported that the Clinton Foundation placed a well heeled contributor in an important government security post, Trump kept making an ass out of himself, wasting another good chance to rightfully attack Hillary for "business as usual".

Trump is likely making a bogus claim that his taxes are being audited.  I'll bet that he doesn't release his taxes because he'll be shown to be a less than successful businessman who is engaged in many questionable deals.  Trump's history in making deals show that he knows how to prosper at the expense of others.  I can only imagine if this tendency holds true about a presidential run.  After losing miserably, he can set himself up as the ringmaster of another media circus, having a networked radio/TV show available over the air or on the internet, where he'll make more money than he ever did with NBC.  He'll continue to claim he was cheated, and people will pay to hear his nonsense.

Where does this leave the GOP?  The way I see it, they would be smart to abandon the racist wingnuts in their base, and go back to the honest conservatism of a William Buckley and Barry Goldwater.  If they also abandon the evangelicals, they might be a smaller party which fights for survival at first.  But they will be free to promote a more coherent and more palatable policy - something that could easily hurt the Democrats if presented by a charismatic leader like Ronald Reagan. 

By now, you may be wondering who I'm going to vote for.  And I think it will be the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson.  In New York, the Democrat running for president almost always wins the state. Since I don't like Hillary, and I am disgusted with Trump, I think it's a safe bet for me to give Johnson the vote - and hope that they get more votes than the GOP this year.  If this happens, all political hell will break loose - and maybe, just maybe, the political elite will realize that they have to do something for the rest of us, lest we vote them out....

Disgust!

Yes, we are in danger.  Years ago, the GOP nominated David Duke for governor of Louisiana, because of the fouled up politics of that state.  And then, almost all of the GOP elite (including the sitting president, George Bush #41) rejected Duke, and many encouraged Louisianans to vote for a Democrat (who happened to be a crook).

Sadly, today's GOP will not disavow racists - because it sends a signal that there are democrats who are better qualified for office than anyone nominated by the GOP.  Why is this sad?  Well, it means that tribal loyalty now is valued more than national loyalty, or loyalty to any principle.

What would happen if Hillary Clinton wins in the fall?  Not much. The dysfunctional elite who have been running the this country into ruin for the past 50+ years would stay in power for another 4 years.  But what happens if Donald Trump wins?  Chaos. The financial markets already worry about Trump defaulting on the national debt. Whereas, I worry about things such as ignoring the Geneva Conventions on War, and saying that anything goes.  I wonder what our military thinks of that?

I am totally disgusted by today's GOP, as it no longer stands for true market based economic conservatism, and social restraint. One writer sees the Goldwater nomination as the root of today's GOP insanity - and I can't argue against him.  Today's GOP is willing to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich (it makes sense economically, but creates great social unrest), and radically affecting the freedoms most Americans love - all in the name of security and a "Forever War".

Does the Democratic party have much more to offer?  I doubt it.  As Will Rogers once put it, 

"I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat."

Because they are less organized than the GOP, the Democrats usually cause much less trouble than the GOP does. Sometimes, they can do a lot of good - as in the case of setting up Obamacare. Obamacare with its flaws, is meant to be tinkered with.  So the GOP does have the ability to fix what's broken - but won't do so.  Will the Democrats fix Obamacare? No, because they keep playing defense to preserve it.  It will take a leader beholden to none of today's political factions to repair what's broken without removing access to affordable health care from people who currently have it.  (For this discussion, let's ignore the GOP states NOT accepting Medicaid expansion funds which would have kept health care affordable for the upper tier of the working poor.)  Are we better because of the GOP?  No. It took the Democrats to make it possible to tinker with America's health care system.

So who do I support?  I'm not sure, but I'm thinking that it might be good to see the Libertarians win a few electoral votes to force the presidential election to the House of Representatives, and see if the GOP blinks.  No one I know likes Trump or Hillary, but yet will hold their noses and vote for one or the other (unlike Jeb Bush - a worthless, spineless, gutless Republican who can't keep his promises).  But I do see people liking the Libertarians or the Greens - and I wouldn't mind either forcing the election into the House for the first time in over 200 years....


PS: On the evening this post was published, Donald Trump made a veiled statement regarding the assassination of the democratic nominee (assuming she were elected president) to prevent her from nominating leftist judges.  Many in the GOP still defend Trump, saying he was misunderstood. There is no excuse anymore for anyone in the GOP to support Trump in the general election, or in the House, if this unlikely scenario were to occur. If this threat doesn't turn people away from Trump and all of his apologists, then I feel very afraid for this country - very, very afraid..

A seismic political shift may be underway

With the 2016 election cycle, we may be seeing a seismic change in American politics as we know it.  America saw it happen on the brink of the Civil War, when the Whig party collapsed, and the Republicans took their place.  In 1912, something similar almost happened, where the Reform (better known as "Bull Moose" party) under Teddy Roosevelt had a shot at disrupting the two party system.  And now, we had two major disruptors in the name of Trump and Sanders who almost emasculated the power of the political elites to control elections.

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Over the past 50 years or so, we've seen great cultural change.  Bill Maher commented "If you liked the 50's, you're a Republican. If you liked the 60's, you're a Democrat." In so many ways it is true - the cultural divide we have now comes from the conflict from that era. If you were a white male, the 1950's were the apex of White privilege in America. If you were a white male, you had virtually everything handed to you - as there were no challengers from other backgrounds, nor did any females pose a threat.  People of color (Blacks, Latinos, Asians) had yet to demand political inclusion, and women were expected to be at home. This started to change with the protest movements of the 1960's, and the extension of civil rights to most people upset those who formerly held all the power in our society.

During LBJ's presidency (1963-1969), the Democratic party sowed the seeds that would cause it to lose the American South as a voting bloc.  LBJ was forced to carry out JFK's promises (always meant to be hollow ones) to deliver civil rights to people of color and to women.  This did not go well in the South.  As a result, in the late 1960's / early 1970's, Richard Nixon developed a strategy to wrest the American South from the Democratic party. The "Party of Lincoln" sold its soul to gain these votes by putting every roadblock it could in the way of helping the groups LBJ helped, so urban dwellers who once voted for the GOP started to vote Democratic for the first time.  This tendency continued through the presidency of Ronald Reagan, where the South and rural areas of the country became solidly Republican, while the North and urban areas of the country became solidly Democrat.

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America became a culturally divided country from its beginning.  Rural areas of any country tend to be the most conservative in nature. In the United States, this meant that few people took chances to unionize their work forces in these areas, unless the work had become extremely dangerous (such as mine work).  For the most part, jobs were few, and people took work at whatever terms were offered by their employers.  It was only one step above slavery, save that the mill owner did not have to care for his employees once fired.  Contrast this with what happened in urban areas.  Jobs were plenty, and employees had greater bargaining power.  Unions formed both to provide better working conditions and to provide better pay. Corporate socialism evolved here, and prospered when America was the unchallenged economic power in the world.

With technological change, the globalization of world markets, and a greater concern for the environment, the old orders became threatened by pressures they could not control.  As technology eliminated many jobs, nothing was done for the displaced workers. As competitors from abroad forced American manufacturing to cut costs, many American workers lost good jobs and had nothing to fall back on. And as we slowly learned to stop polluting our local environment, we put local workers out of work as we shipped dirty businesses to places where they didn't care about their people and their land.  In short, the promises made by both business and government to the public at large were broken.  The elites didn't care what happened to the common person, as long as they stayed in power.

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The rise of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders is an indication that the public is tired of an elite that makes promises every election cycle, and that never delivers on its promises. Trump lies in every speech that he is making, and his supporters don't give a damn.  He appeals to these voters on a more primitive level of thought.  The same might be said about Bernie Sanders, except that he is not peppering his speeches with falsehoods.  Instead, Bernie told the truth as he saw it - America hasn't been run for the benefit of "the people" for years, and made both an intellectual and emotional appeal to his base.  Bernie's supporters are young, and see that there is no way the elites can or will do anything for them.  So they gave the system a vote of no confidence by supporting Bernie.  In short, the insurgents from both extremes realized the same truth - it's time to replace the ruling elites.

Trump's nomination and Bernie's failure to be nominated pose a question that America has to answer.  Do we want to overthrow the elites and deal with the risks of the amateurs being in charge?  Or, do we want to allow them to stay in power (with a big warning) as long as they change their tune and start looking out for the people as a whole? This question gets complicated when rumors fly about Jeb Bush looking to support the Libertarian Party's candidate for the presidency.  Could the GOP establishment be looking to flee their old party, clean up its mess, and find a path to becoming a center-right party again?  If so, I see the old GOP becoming a populist party for a generation or two.  And I would also see the Libertarians becoming like the GOP of the 1950's. Could this be a harbinger of a potential three-party system?  Who knows?  But I'm looking forward to the ascendancy of the Libertarians the the collapse of the GOP.

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If the Libertarians become a political force to be reckoned with, the democrats will face attacks on two fronts - one social, and the other, economic.  In a way, this will be good for the Democratic party.  It has been around almost since the founding of the republic, and it has been good at adapting to change.  Will it adapt again?  Who knows? But all I can say is that I think we're seeing a political shift like we haven't seen in 150 years....

Sold American!

Years ago, one tobacco company advertised its wares with the phrase "Sold American!" Well, I am reminded of that phrase today, when major GOP leaders such as Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan are calling Trump's statements totally irresponsible and offensive, and yet will still vote for him in the general election. 

President Obama joked about Trump being a candidate that the Democrats could love (because he is so bad). And then he talked about the dysfunction in the GOP and about the need for a healthy "right-center" political party to give meaningful, loyal opposition to ideas from his "left-center" party. Again, our president surprises me - he's saying something serious and meaningful, and not lowering himself to the level of his opponents.

Sadly, tribal loyalty is trumping (pardon the word) benign self interest.  There were other more reasonable choices throughout recent years, but the GOP has allowed itself to shift to the extreme right. The loyal GOP followers have only themselves to blame for Trump - they voted in liars who never delivered on their promises to the base, and now are voting for Trump because he will upset the elite. If these people had only said - the GOP's policies do not reflect my needs, and then voted in their self interest, none of the clowns who steered the GOP to the hard right would have ever gotten power. And, as a result, moderates would have worked with Democrats and dealt with serious problems.  This has not been the case....

Until the GOP base says - let's elect a truth telling moderate, the party will head towards its own destruction.  We've see what happened the last time a major American political party fell apart - and I'm afraid history will repeat itself.

The race to the general election.

As I write this, it looks like it will be Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump in the general election. This is a shame.  Both are very flawed candidates.  But the alternatives from the Republican party are much worse than these two people.  (I'm in favor of Bernie Sanders, but I also recognize that he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell anymore.)

Most people feel very upset about these candidates.  I do.  But I also have to admit - Trump has been very effective in the use of his celebrity in his successes this year.  Earlier in the morning, Joe Scarborough (of MSNBC's "Morning Joe") noted that Trump has had 15 years of celebrity exposure on TV, and that the working class (not the Beltway class or any of the elites) felt comfortable with someone who speaks their language on their terms.  

Trump has been bringing attention to the issues that the elites have ignored, addressing the concerns of the working class, and being the one person who could force the Republican party to take a hard look at itself.  In a speech he made today (I'm writing this on 4/26), Trump notes that Bernie Sanders is saying a lot of good things, and that he should run as a third party candidate.  (Although I think this would be a disaster for Bernie and the Democratic party, Trump should be careful of what he suggests - he may just get it in ways he never expects....)  

Thinking of Bernie Sanders and a third party run....  I feel that Bernie and the Democratic party made a deal to allow him to run as a Democrat.  Neither Bernie nor Hillary wants to have the progressive voting bloc split. Splitting the bloc would likely result in a GOP victory. This is the likely reason that Michael Bloomberg didn't run this year.  So I am left to wonder - what will happen to the people who supported Bernie?  They have no love for Hillary, and they have no love for the Democratic party elite.  If Bernie doesn't support Hillary with all his might, she will likely lose the election, and we'll see "TRUMP" in bold, flashing letters over the West wing of the White House.

What are we likely to see happen?  As I see it, Bernie will extract one hell of a pound of flesh from Hillary.  He will make sure to control a couple of cabinet positions (indirectly, of course), and make sure that Hillary can't give away the store.  The Democrats desperately need the votes his supporters bring to the party, and Bernie is smart enough to play the long game - even if he only visits the White House on a tour.  If this election plays out as I think it will, Hillary will win by a handful of votes (remember Bush vs. Gore?) and Bernie will likely be able to reshape the Democrats back into a true progressive party - which it hasn't been in years....

In short - Bernie has likely just earned his place in the history books, and people don't yet realize it for what it is....

The races for the Nominations

It now looks like we're likely to see a Clinton vs. Trump general election.  And given the choice between the two, I'd like to be able to say "None of the Above".

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Of all the candidates still running for office, Hillary is the only one with Federal Executive branch experience.  Kasich was a governor of a state, Sanders and Cruz are Senators, and Trump....  He's a great big bag of wind.  Yet, people like that breeze.  No, it's not a breath of fresh air.  Instead, it's a storm which his supporters hope blows the old regime out of office.

As much as I want the old regimes from both parties thrown out of power, I still wonder - will their replacements do any better?  From what I can tell, Trump will likely become much more reasonable in what he says the closer election day comes.  Hillary will likely attack Trump for the stupid things he said in his run up to getting the GOP nomination.

Hillary has a big problem - if she doesn't take care of the needs of the Sanders supporters, she will only be a one term president.  She is not the type to stomach that.  She needs the people that are loyal to Sanders, and he has not extracted his price for his support.  No doubt, he does not trust Hillary to support the things he campaigned for, and he will be a tough negotiator - especially when he got so many delegates in a campaign season in which Hillary was expected to have an easy march to the nomination.  

What happens if Sanders is able to extract his price from Hillary?  Can Trump exploit a leftward turn from the Democrats' presumptive nominee?  I'm not sure.  Trump is already to the left of much of the GOP, and many in the GOP like things he has supported before primary season.  Could we see a Trump run to election day as a person more moderate than Hillary?  

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As they say - Only time will tell....