A Happy Day

Yesterday was a happy day (as is today).  Joe Biden was "called by" the TV networks as the President-Elect.  That doesn't make anything official of course, but they are rather careful about announcing their expectations.  Even Fox News declared that Biden had won, and Fox is a rather die-hard Trump supporter.

I wasn't entirely sure how the Networks could be so certain in some States where there were 100s of thousands of votes left to count and Biden had a 10,000 vote lead or even was losing, but the political TV show hosts gave some detailed explanations later.    

A lot of it had to do with the difference between how Democrats and Republicans voted this year.  Usually, the vast majority of voters vote on Election Day.  But this year, because of the pandemic, States increased the opportunity to vote by mail or early in person at a few locations.  Democrats voted by mail or early; Republicans waited until election Day.

Mail-in and early votes take longer to process.  And the votes from large cities (which are very heavily Democrat) always take longer by sheer volume.  Between the two, the cites needed days to report votes (and none may be truly complete even now).  Overseas, military, and post-marked-but-not-yet-delivered mail-in ballots still have a few days to arrive.

But professional network vote-counters know what voters were still to be heard from Saturday, the almost-certain voter registration, and typical return rates.  A good example was Pennsylvania.  The low-population rural Counties were mostly Republican and had 99% of their votes reported Wednesday.  The major cities were mostly Democrat (approaching 90% in some) and had reported only half of their votes.  

So when Trump was ahead 30,000 votes and 500,000 were still due from Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with a typical Democratic majority of 70%, there was little doubt about the outcome.   The States will not announce a winner until the last vote is counted in about a week from now, but the Networks could have a confidence factor above 99.9%.  Well, they don't want to make a mistake like "Dewey Beats Truman" again and besides, they have MUCH more information available now.

So, essentially, the voting is over.  Biden will be the next President and Harris his Vice-President.  The Electoral college will confirm that on December 6th.  Biden will have won with 4 million+ total popular votes.  I am relieved.  I've been waiting for this day for 4 years!

A long national aberration is over.  Trump's victory in 2016 was a hiccup.  Painful to be sure, but temporary.  Biden has promised to return the US to international agreements, balance taxes, restore environmental regulations, organize a National response to the Covid-19 pandemic, attend to excessive force by police against minorities, etc.

To quote President Ronald Reagan (something I never thought I would do) "It is Morning in America".

To quote President Gerald Ford (after Nixon's resignation) "Our long national nightmare is over".

To quote the Munchkins from 'The Wizard Of Oz':  

"Ding-dong! The Witch is dead
Which old Witch? The Wicked Witch!
Ding-dong! The Wicked Witch is dead
Wake up you sleepy head, rub your eyes, get out of bed
Wake up, the Wicked Witch is dead..."

And I'll offer a panel from 'Doonesbury' from after Nixon resigned:

Today, I will sleep easier than I have for some months. 

A New Year Indeed!

I won't hide it.  I'm pleased the Democrats got a good grip on the House.  Trump had his 2 years with the Republicans in charge of every part of Govt and got nothing done except corruption and waste by his Secrataries and roolbacks of agency rules designed to protect the environment and consumer protections, etc.

I know some won't agree.  Tough...  I hated most everything Trump and his people did. 

Its not politics, I don't care which party is in power.  I just care what they do.

The tax cut was just a gift to the rich.  The environmental pullbacks were harsh.  We are practically drowning in energy, do we need to kill the last salmon spawning or caribou mating ground to get more? 

We just learned a few months ago that dragonflies migrate in great numbers like birds, just hard to notice.  Who cares?  I do.  You know what eats most mosquitos?  Dragonflies.  So I learned that dragonflies don't just live in local ponds and emerge every year to eat mosquitos.

No, They migrate South for a generation, stay there a 2nd, and then move North again to eat the mosquitoes.  Every one notices butterflies (and they have pollination value) but no one notices drafgonflies.  A trained observer was shocked to see dragonflies coming over a sand dune once, and said it was a half-mile wide and lasted hours. 

So what eats at me is that Trump not only appoints people to jobs to understand about wildlife like dragonflies, he MAY NOT EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY ARE!

He sure doesn't know much about anything.  He knows how to make money by pretending to make money.  He cheats.  He steals.  He dinishes everything he touches.  He is not even good at business. 

If he had just taken the money his dad gave him by the time he was an adult and put it into simple index funds, he would be richer than he is today.

He is a fake and a phony.  He is worse than The Wizard Of Oz.  At least THAT GUY admitted he was a fake.

Madame Speaker Pelosi is going to take Trump by the scruff of his orange neck and shake him flat like a bear rug. 

He corrupt of his administration will be revealed and brought to account for their personal and official greed.  His family will be next like the Bourbons of French infamy who drempt that they deserved titles and great wealth just for being born as they were. 

And we will equally (and quite legally) cast out the new wannabe Trump dynasty in the 2020 election.

We have never been so close to a dictatorship as we are now with the Trump Family.  The family is running the Govt as a profit center unlike anything the 1900 Robber Barons dreamed of doing.  And that is why they must all be removed...

They are a challenge to our whole system of Govt.  They obey no rules or customs.  They will break any law, thinking they are free of them.  The whole family must go, and for once in our nation's history, we need to bring them to the courts for actual punishment.

We need to see that done so that we can be assured that we are NOT a banana republic.  I apologise for the phrase, but it applies.

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...

The Clinton/Trump Debate Tomorrow

I'm worried about the debate.  Clinton has to show great command of all national and international issues (and she will).  She probably has to know the Minister of Finance of Slovakia and the exchange rate of Dollars to Laotion Kips (and she probably does).

All Trump has to do is not pull down his pants and moon the audience...

And then too many people will think him "presidential" for restraining himself. 

If there was ever a difference in expectations between 2 people in a debate, this is it.  And it is not fair.  I grew up taught that knowledge, experience, and nuance matters in life and leadership.  I went through my career that way and I have lived my life that way. 

If Trump becomes our President, my brain will just EXPLODE.  And not because he is, but because enough Americans thought he should be.  It will be a society I no longer want to be part of. 

I live in Maryland.  Maryland is not a contested State.  Maryland will go for Clinton without any doubt.  It is some of the other States I worry about.  Personal opinion of States that go for Trump; they are obviously insane.

I read a very interesting book decades ago (and re-read it sometimes) called 'They Also Ran' by Irving Stone.  It details the losers in presidential elections, why they lost and what kind of presidents the losers would have made.  Stone's general view is that the American voters have generally made good decisions, but sometimes really made bad ones.  His judgements on the elections seem sound.

As he said in his epilogue, the American People have made the better choice rejecting Hayes for Tilden (the election was crooked in Florida and Hayes was chosen badly),  Douglas for Lincoln, Blaine for Cleveland, Landon/Wilkie/Dewey in favor of Franklin Roosevelt, Dewey over Truman,  Nixon over Kennedy,  and Goldwater against Johnson. 

We erred grievously choosing  Taylor over Cass, Grant over Seymour, Coolidge over Davis, Eisenhower over Stevenson,  and Nixon over Humphrey

We made a difficult choice between Smith/Hoover  between equally good candidates.

The rest of the elections seem to have been the better choices.

Let's hope this election doesn't go down in history as the worst decision the voters have even made...

What Are My Politics?

I've never figured that out really.  I usually end up voting for Democrats, but that's not much about party.  I just like ideas that are fact-based and seem like they will work.  Too often, we assign our political views to party ideology.

For example, I think (Conservative) it is worthwhile to protect our borders.  I don't want mass immigrations of one group of people coming in.  But I do want immigration (Liberal).  From all around the world.  Equally.  That is neither Republican nor Democrat; Conservative or Liberal.

We need people to come and help harvest the crops from our farms.  It is seasonal work.  So let'slet it be "guest-worker" status that helps all of us.  They get wages to help their families back home, we get the massive crops to fill our stores and to export to other countries not so farmland-rich.  It helps all.

But why should we need to allow foreign workers to harvest our crops?  That bothers me when we have unemployed citizens.   Why can't they do the same work (Conservative)?

Well, in one sense, they don't have the experience to do it.  If you are a city person, you don't have the experience.  You can't be expected to do what you are not experienced to do (Liberal).  But if you need a job, you should be able to learn basic work skills (Conservative).  But how do you get the skills to harvest farmcrops if the only vegetable you ever see is in a school lunch (Liberal).

See how confusing it can get?

We need The New Deal brought back again.  You can also call it "Workfare"(Conservative).  Why not create new Government Programs to employ the unemployed at working on infrastructure and farms.  Call it on-the-job training where they learn employable skills (Liberal).

We need a lot of building work done here.  We have unemployed people on welfare.  Why not combine the two (Conservative).  Yeah, and give them a livable wage (Liberal). 

Give a family a house for free and they will trash it (Conservative), but help them to afford to buy one and they will cherish it (Liberal).

Get the idea? 

My view is that there are too many superrich people and too many seriously poor ones.  This country had it's best days when there was a large middle class.  A large middle class means both stability and class mobilty.

The possibilty of class mobility is probably the best thing we ever had/have.  The local rich guy's kids should be ABLE to fail.  The poorest kids should be ABLE to succeed.  And Middle class kids Should go in either direction as their skills allow.

The current rules are set up legally and financially to prevent that (Liberal).  And the bias toward massive inherited wealth is getting stronger (Conservative).

I don't want specifically Democrat or Republican, Conservative or Liberal.  I want the recreation of a strong majority Middle Class through some Centrist bi-partisan politics.  Because a majority Middle Class is what makes a democracy work best.