Angry Voters

I have been hard on Donald Trump (and rightly so).  But I haven't discussed his supporters much.

I sort of understand them.  They are angry.  They are desperate.  They aren't living the life their parents enjoyed.

In a general sense, we all know that some people succeed in life better than others. And the others don't.  The reasons are not my point here.  My point is that they know the world is somehow passing them by, they are not succeeding,  and they are angry.  There are few emotions stronger than anger.

Hate is usually directed, anger is diffuse.

Trump has activated the angry people.  He wouldn't have gotten the Republican nomination for President if anger and fear wasn't a real thing in significant part of the population.

I do not fear Trump.  He will go down into crushing defeat on Election Day.  It is the angry people who concern me.  Their anger is justified.  They used to have decent-paying jobs putting headlights on cars, collecting coins from parking meters, loading luggage on airplanes, etc.  There used to be jobs you could just learn to DO without having to work on a computer, make decisions, or attend meetings and argue with people.  Some people are just not good at those things.  And they have fewer places to do work now.

And I understand because in the 1st 10 years of my adult life, I had cruddy jobs too.  I pushed a lawn mower in the hot sun for 2 Summers on an Army Base.  I spent 2 Summers pumping gas at a full service station where the owner dipped his sticky fingers into the till and charged us workers for the "losses". 

I worked at minimum wage in several department stores while the rent went up faster than my wages.  I even got to where I was in charge of a 1/4 of the department store and my hourly pay was 25 cents above minimum wage.  And the store managers cheated us every chance they could get because every dime they took out of our pocket went into theirs!

But I took a competitive exam for Government work and scored 100% in 5 categories of jobs.  That was because *I* spent my time in high school studying while "other" kids were goofing off.  I learned "stuff".  I practiced general skills.  I did well.  I was promoted regularly.  I retired well.

But not much better than the middle class in the US did in the 50s and 60s.  The high point of the US economy was when unions were strong (but not overly strong), when the percentage of the total wealth held by the top 1% was low, and when a college education for children was withing reach of most middle class families. 

There was a chart in Scientific American magazine a month ago that showed the percentage of national wealth held by the top 1% of Americans. 

In the 1920s, it rose to 20%.  At the end of The Great Depression, it was down to 15%, and the end of WWII, it was down to 10%.

In 1970, it was down to 8%.  After the Republican Tax Reform act of 1986, it rose rather suddenly to 16%, and after the 2000 Bush Administration, it went back up to 18%.  That is wrong.  The trickle down theory of wealth only means every one below the top 1% gets peed on.

The Republicans are doing it very very wrong, in pay to their super-rich supporters.  But the Democrats are doing things a whole lot better.

What we need is a Centrist-Union party dedicated to recreating the middle class.  No industrialized nation can survive without a strong middle class.  That is what makes democracy work.

Democracy works best when the poor have a path up, the middle class has some basic stability in life, and the rich are accepting a lower level than "outrageously fabulous".

I'll give a sports example...

Say you are a farmkid in Kansas and you have a choice between driving a tractor around cornfields for $20K a year vs earning $100K a year catching balls in the outfield.  Of course you would take the $100K.  But is it worth $50M.  No, you would do it for $100K. It is idiodically super-rich people playing their own game, competing with each other.

If they weren't, the seats would cost $10 and they would all still make a fine profit.  THat's what a generally middle-class world would look like...

Trump's Convention Speech, Deconstructed

Donald Trump made his most important speech so far, at the Republican National Convention.  I went to Politifacts (and party-neutral organization) for some analysis.  I really don’t care for political speeches myself on either side, but I do find those who do can provide useful information.  Slight changes to identify Politifacts more clearly...

TRUMP CLAIM: We all remember the images of our sailors being forced to their knees by their Iranian captors at gunpoint. This was just prior to the signing of the Iran deal.
POLITIFACTS: It actually came AFTER the signing of the Iran deal, which happened on July 14, 2015. The sailors were captured in Jan. 2016 — right before President Obama's State of the Union address.

MY THOUGHTS:  Trump’s sense of time is poor.  It might be deliberate or it might be “convenient”.  But it is usually wrong.  Trump arranges facts to suit his goals.  In other words, he lies.
Trump Calls for Suspending Immigration From 'Compromised' Countries 0:27

TRUMP CLAIM: My opponent wants to essentially abolish the 2nd amendment.

POLITIFACTS: Clinton has proposed gun regulations, like background checks to purchase firearms. Yet the 2008 Supreme Court decision protecting and individual's right to possess firearms also stated that the right isn't unlimited — and can be subjected to regulations.

MY THOUGHTS:  Clinton supports some restrictions on gun ownership.  You don’t need military weapons to hunt deer.  Crazy people shouldn’t have them.  More people are killed by personally-owned guns than are saved.  You need military weapons only for their intended purpose - to kill people.   My view of the 2nd amendment is that it is pre-standing army and it is obsolete in the modern age.  We do not have or need functional “militias” today.

TRUMP CLAIM: Homicides last year increased by 17 percent in America's fifty largest cities. That's the largest increase in 25 years.

POLITIFACT: Trump is correct that there has recently been an uptick in crime, including in some (but not all) of America's largest cities. But overall, violent crime is down significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, according to FBI statistics. And the current violent crime rate is lower today per the most recent data (365 incidents of violent crime per 100,000 people) than when President Obama first took office in 2009 (431 incidents per 100,000 people).

MY THOUGHTS:  Crime rates go up and down mostly in accordance to the population of 18-24 years old males in poverty status.  Drug-usage patterns matter too.

TRUMP CLAIM: The number of new illegal immigrant families who have crossed the border so far this year already exceeds the entire total from 2015.

POLITIFACTS: That statistic is true, but it's also a bit of cherry-picking. In Fiscal Year 2014, there were more than 68,000 apprehensions of immigrant families crossing the border. That number declined to 40,000 in Fiscal Year 2015. In Fiscal Year 2016 (which ends in September), the number stands at 51,000 — so higher than in 2015, but lower than 2014.

MY THOUGHTS:  2015 had an unusually low illegal immigration rate.  Compared to 2014, the 2016 rate is lower.  It it always easy to find one year to compare to another and make things look bad.  A serious and thoughtful person would not do that.  But Trump is not a serious and thoughtful person.  If a random asteroid hit the Earth, he would blame Hillary Clinton and all Democrats for the uptick in asteroid strikes.

TRUMP CLAIM: Nearly four in 10 African-American children are living in poverty, while 58 percent of African-American youth are now not employed. Two million more Latinos are in poverty today than when the President took his oath of office less than eight years ago.

POLITIFACT: Yes, 38 percent of African American children are living in poverty, according to Census data. But Trump isn't correct that 58 percent of African American youth are unemployed. The Bureau of Labor Statistics finds that the African American unemployment rate for those ages 16-19 is 28.4 percent (versus 16.9 percent for all youth that age). And Trump is misleading on his claim about Latinos living in poverty. In 2009, 12.3 million Latinos were living in poverty (with a rate of 25.3 percent). In 2014, the number jumped to 13 million — but the rate actually DECLINED to 23.6 percent.

MY THOUGHTS:  Another example of misleading with statistics.  But more importantly, there are 2 possibilities.  Either Trump doesn’t understand the numbers, or he does and is deliberately misleading voters with them.  He says he is smart, so he OUGHT to understand the numbers.  Either way, it doesn’t say much about his honesty.  Or his supporters intelligence...

TRUMP CLAIM: President Obama has almost doubled our national debt to more than 19 trillion dollars, and growing.

POLITIFACT: He's right. When Obama took office on Jan. 20, 2009, the public debt stood at $10.6 trillion. It is now $19.4 trillion, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.

MY THOUGHTS:  In 2009, after the Bush Administration economic collapse $10.6 trillion dollars was a larger percent of the gross national product than $19.4 trillion is now in the recovered economy.  Think of it this way.  If you earned $50,000 and owed $10,000 that would be worse than earning $75,000 and owing $13,000.  Debt has to be compared to income...

TRUMP CLAIM: Where was sanctuary for all the other ... Americans who have been so brutally murdered [by undocumented immigrants], and who have suffered so, so horribly?

POLITIFACTS: Researchers have found that first-generation immigrants (legal or not) commit less crime than native-born Americans or second-generation immigrants.

MY THOUGHTS:  Some groups of US citizens like to assume that immigrants (legal or illegal) commit most of the crimes in the US.  The facts disprove that.  I support LEGAL immigration, controlled by rules.  I do NOT support illegal immigration.  But the argument against all immigrants legal and illegal is not supported by facts.  I am more likely to be a victim of a crime by a legal citizen than by either class of immigrants.

TRUMP CLAIM: [Hillary Clinton] supported NAFTA, and she supported China's entrance into the World Trade Organization — another one of her husband's colossal mistakes and disasters ... She supported the Trans-Pacific Partnership.

POLITIFACTS: Trump is correct that Clinton backed NAFTA and China's entry into the WTO, which took place while her husband was president. Yet although touting the TPP trade agreement while she served as secretary of state, Clinton has since opposed the measure. Notably, Trump's vice-presidential running mate Mike Pence also has praised NAFTA and TPP.

MY THOUGHTS:  Trump is in an outrageously awkward position here.  Globalization is a fact.  Companies logically move to where they can produce a product at the least cost.  Trump does this routinely.  Trump has pages long suppliers from other countries yet rails against outsourcing.   His objections ring hollow.

Aside from that, Trump objects to Clinton’s one-time support of NAFTA and the TPP.  People change their opinions of such things (and note that Trump’s VP candidate supported them too).

But the truth of the matter is that, in a global economy, international trade agreements are important.  The TPP is designed to constrain China’s influence in the Western Pacific.  China doesn’t like it.
NAFTA has reduced tarrifs between the US Canada and Mexico, reducing costs to consumers.  NAFTA has increased real wages for workers in all 3 countries by modest but real amounts.  Trade of goods and services between the U.S., Canada and Mexico has increased from $337 billion in 1993, before NAFTA went into effect, to $1.182 trillion in 2011.

We don’t notice these price changes in goods daily.  After all, when you go to a store, do you really know why the price of a shirt is $12.99 instead of $13.99?  Of course not.  But NAFTA is one reason why it is the lower price.
 
I won’t say the trade agreement benefit everyone.  A shirt buttoneer may have to learn to attach headlights to cars.  Things change,  I had a dozen jobs in my 35 years of work from mowing army base grass to selling automotive parts to managing office space to managing telecommunications.  No one is ever going to retire what they did when they started.

Jobs are where you find them.  But Trump’s world is a fiction of a return to the past, and following him is a road down anger to nowhere.

The way forward in the world is through experience and gradual progress.  If you are out of work, your next job isn’t going to be the CEO of some US company.  It is going to be learning a new skill a US company values.

Trump’s World is the 1950s.  This isn’t the 1950s.  We aren’t going to be the 1950s again.  Its 2016, the future your parents didn’t imagine.    Get moving or get left behind.  It’s up to you to sit and gripe and start learning something new.

Politics 3

About Ted Cruz:

Slick,  Might be the smartest guy in the Republican list but that's not saying much.

But crazy...

Sen Cruz's statements are in Blue here.  Fact-Checkers statements are in black...

"Here’s the simple and undeniable fact: The overwhelming majority of violent criminals are Democrats."  

False. The statement cherry-picks one partisan academic study.

"Under Barack Obama and the big government economy, the median wage for women has dropped $733." 

 The wages for women actually rose.

The "Democratic Party is getting smaller and smaller and smaller." 

False, the percentage of Democrats relative to Republicans is higher than in 2008 and 2012.

The Iran deal "trusts the Iranians to inspect themselves." 

False, there will be 150 international inspectors.

"The Iran Deal will facilitate and accelerate the nation of Iran acquiring nuclear weapons."   

False, inspections will make it harder for Iran to produce nuclear weapons.   Iran can't hide residual radioactivity.

 Says states not directly involved in the gay marriage lawsuits that reached the Supreme Court "are not bound" by the court’s ruling. 

Supreme Court rulings are binding on all States.

"Every year we spend roughly $500 billion on tax compliance. That is roughly the budget of our entire military, entirely wasted on tax compliance." 

No evidence for this claim.

"About half of the presidents have been governors; half of them, senators." 

14 of 44 have been neither.   For a serious US politician not to know such a basic fact suggests a lack of knowledge or deliberate lying.

Says Ted Cruz said, "There is no place for gays or atheists in my America. None. Our Constitution makes that clear." 

The Constitution disagrees.  There is no religious test in the Constitution, nor is there anything about sexual preferences.

 

"Small businesses (are) going out of business in record numbers."  

Small businesses routinely fail.  But they are not failing in record numbers. 

In the 2014 elections, "the American people overwhelmingly said we don't want Obamacare … and we don't want amnesty."

The election results and exit polling results said otherwise.

"Obama, instead of nominating a health professional, he nominated someone who is an anti-gun activist (for surgeon general)." 

The nominee had an MD from Yale.

ISIS is "right now crucifying Christians in Iraq, literally nailing Christians to trees." 

No evidence found.

"Virtually every person across this country has seen premiums going up and up and up" due to Obamacare. 

"Most" people have not.  

"A strong bipartisan majority" in the House of Representatives "voted to defund Obamacare."

 2 Democratic votes out of 190 isn't "bi-partisan".

Says the Democrats told the Catholic Church that they’ll use federal powers to shut down church charities and hospitals if the church doesn’t change its beliefs.

Never happened. 

Says Chuck Hagel’s nomination as defense secretary "has been publicly celebrated by the Iranian government."  

Never happened.

Says "the jurisdictions with the strictest gun control laws, almost without exception … have the highest crime rates and the highest murder rates." 

Statistics find the statement false.  

David Dewhurst "has never once cut one penny from the state budget." 

Frequently false.

"Did you know ObamaCare will cost nearly twice as much as initially expected -- $1.8 TRILLION?"  

9% isn't double.