Obama & Prince Harry Perform Trans-Atlantic Hypocrisy
The View from the Middle
Sometimes I wonder if the media is paying attention to what politicians around the world are actually saying. Are they just stupid, incompetent or totally bias? I think these are the only choices, especially when you listen to the pile of rubbish that was recently spewed by President Obama and Prince Harry in their interview back in September. I’ll let you be the judge.
Here’s a quote from the President as he discusses the concerns he has about the use of social media. He said:
“One of the dangers of the Internet is that people…can be “cocooned” in information that reinforces their current biases.”
What is amazing is that he has shown no concern about the “safe spaces” on our college campuses today that allow the very same thing to happen. Is this selective outrage? Is this intentional blindness or is it equivocation, which is the deliberate deception of people through the use of ambiguous language or the withholding of crucial information? He SHOULD be outraged at both.
He then went on to say that we should:
“Harness this technology in a way that allows a multiplicity of voices (and) allows a diversity of views”
Is anyone actually “hearing” what he is saying instead of just listening to the sound waves that he is creating with his vocal chords? How can he make a statement like this without also condemning the “one view fits all” approach that is infecting our college campuses today? When brilliant, accomplished conservative speakers like Condoleezza Rice (Secretary of State under George W. Bush), Ray Kelly (former NY Police Commissioner) and Ann Coulter are either disinvited or shouted off stage (the heckler’s veto) their free speech is prevented and their viewpoints are lost to the students. THIS is what the President should be enraged about.
Finally he said that it is “hard to be as obnoxious and cruel in person as people can be anonymously on the Internet.” I guess he forgot how obnoxious, cruel and even violent the Antifa clansmen and women have been around the country as they wore their black masks and hoods to hide their identities.
My problem is not what the President condemned. It is that he did it selectively. He should be condemning “cocooning” everywhere. He should be espousing free and diverse speech everywhere, and he should be condemning crude, cruel and violent behavior everywhere, even when it occurs in his own back yard. Alas, he does not! And the lame stream media is complicit in this hypocrisy.
Thursday, December 28, 2017
Thursday, December 21, 2017
The Death of the Middle
The Death of the Middle
The View from the Middle
As I sat and watched the vote come in for the tax reform bill yesterday I was actually a little disheartened. While I am in favor of nearly every aspect of this bill, especially the major elements, I was disappointed that not a single Democrat was able to break ranks with their ideologically extreme leadership and support a decrease in taxes.
This is particularly disappointing when you consider that almost every Democrat has endorsed the major elements of this plan. Barack Obama favored a reduction in the corporate tax rate. I can’t think of a Democrat who wouldn’t advocate the doubling of the standard deduction and the child tax credit as these provisions have their highest impact on middle and lower income families. And who could object to lowering every tax bracket. These were also the most expensive elements of this tax bill, which every one has supported in one-way shape or form in the past, yet not a single Democrat could muster the slightest support for this bill.
And it’s not about taxes. It’s about how our citizens are being divided and lured to the extreme edges of the ideological spectrum. The moderate, centrist, middle component of our country is being squeezed out of existence.
The Pew Research Center shows that the extreme elements of our liberal and conservative factions have doubled from a total of 10% in 1994 to 21% in 2014. Liberal extremism has quadrupled in that same period from 3% of the population in 1994 to 12% in 2014. They also showed that in 1994, 64% of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat. That number rose to 92% in 2014, and the numbers are similar on the Democratic side. In 1994, 70% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican. In 2014 that number had exploded to 94%. This would suggest that the old blue dog Democrats and moderate Republicans are almost extinct.
And our love / hate relationship with our Presidents have become very ideologically extreme. In the 1950’s, 88% of Republicans supported Eisenhower, as you might expect, but 49% of Democrats did also. That’s a difference of 39 percentage points. This ratio held steady until Ronald Reagan took office when the split hit 52%, and with Obama, the difference was 67% (81% favorable amongst Democrats and only 14% amongst Republicans). The polarization is clearly getting worse, but why?
First, our rhetoric is appalling. Whether it is Hillary Clinton calling everyone she disagrees with “the enemy” or “deplorable”, or Donald Trump’s demeaning labels for everyone in his way, we need to clean up our speech. Also, our politicians plug billions of dollars into negative advertising against their opponents every campaign year. Democrats suggest that Paul Ryan actually wanted to throw his grandmother off a cliff and imply that Republicans want people to die. This hyperbole is intended to inflame the political bases, which is does, but it also angers the other side which tends to drive both moderate liberals and conservatives to the extreme edges of their ideologies.
What is even scarier is that while this Pew research confirms my suspicion that our country has become more polarized, it doesn’t even include Trump’s first year in office which I am convinced has divided us even more deeply. So, how do we get back to a place where we can disagree on policy without impugning each other’s motives and questioning the other side’s humanity?
The solution is simple. Don’t vote for the manipulative, narcissistic egomaniacs in Washington. If you hear someone demean and condemn millions of people because of their party affiliation, recognize it for what it is – prejudice. When you hear people use hyperbolic rhetoric, like an entire party “wants people to die” or suggesting that passing a bill will result in “Armageddon”, see it for what it is – manipulation.
Next, since our politicians won’t do this, I’m asking you to reach across the aisle and discuss the issues with someone of the opposing party. If you are a conservative, you may just find that your liberal friend isn’t an acid dropping communist sympathizer, but just a patriotic citizen who wants the very best for America. If you are a liberal, you may find that your friend is not a knuckle-dragging, uncaring moron, but a pretty decent person. I’ve done it, and I can attest to the fact that you will find good, caring intelligent people on both sides of the political divide.
The View from the Middle
As I sat and watched the vote come in for the tax reform bill yesterday I was actually a little disheartened. While I am in favor of nearly every aspect of this bill, especially the major elements, I was disappointed that not a single Democrat was able to break ranks with their ideologically extreme leadership and support a decrease in taxes.
This is particularly disappointing when you consider that almost every Democrat has endorsed the major elements of this plan. Barack Obama favored a reduction in the corporate tax rate. I can’t think of a Democrat who wouldn’t advocate the doubling of the standard deduction and the child tax credit as these provisions have their highest impact on middle and lower income families. And who could object to lowering every tax bracket. These were also the most expensive elements of this tax bill, which every one has supported in one-way shape or form in the past, yet not a single Democrat could muster the slightest support for this bill.
And it’s not about taxes. It’s about how our citizens are being divided and lured to the extreme edges of the ideological spectrum. The moderate, centrist, middle component of our country is being squeezed out of existence.
The Pew Research Center shows that the extreme elements of our liberal and conservative factions have doubled from a total of 10% in 1994 to 21% in 2014. Liberal extremism has quadrupled in that same period from 3% of the population in 1994 to 12% in 2014. They also showed that in 1994, 64% of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat. That number rose to 92% in 2014, and the numbers are similar on the Democratic side. In 1994, 70% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican. In 2014 that number had exploded to 94%. This would suggest that the old blue dog Democrats and moderate Republicans are almost extinct.
And our love / hate relationship with our Presidents have become very ideologically extreme. In the 1950’s, 88% of Republicans supported Eisenhower, as you might expect, but 49% of Democrats did also. That’s a difference of 39 percentage points. This ratio held steady until Ronald Reagan took office when the split hit 52%, and with Obama, the difference was 67% (81% favorable amongst Democrats and only 14% amongst Republicans). The polarization is clearly getting worse, but why?
First, our rhetoric is appalling. Whether it is Hillary Clinton calling everyone she disagrees with “the enemy” or “deplorable”, or Donald Trump’s demeaning labels for everyone in his way, we need to clean up our speech. Also, our politicians plug billions of dollars into negative advertising against their opponents every campaign year. Democrats suggest that Paul Ryan actually wanted to throw his grandmother off a cliff and imply that Republicans want people to die. This hyperbole is intended to inflame the political bases, which is does, but it also angers the other side which tends to drive both moderate liberals and conservatives to the extreme edges of their ideologies.
What is even scarier is that while this Pew research confirms my suspicion that our country has become more polarized, it doesn’t even include Trump’s first year in office which I am convinced has divided us even more deeply. So, how do we get back to a place where we can disagree on policy without impugning each other’s motives and questioning the other side’s humanity?
The solution is simple. Don’t vote for the manipulative, narcissistic egomaniacs in Washington. If you hear someone demean and condemn millions of people because of their party affiliation, recognize it for what it is – prejudice. When you hear people use hyperbolic rhetoric, like an entire party “wants people to die” or suggesting that passing a bill will result in “Armageddon”, see it for what it is – manipulation.
Next, since our politicians won’t do this, I’m asking you to reach across the aisle and discuss the issues with someone of the opposing party. If you are a conservative, you may just find that your liberal friend isn’t an acid dropping communist sympathizer, but just a patriotic citizen who wants the very best for America. If you are a liberal, you may find that your friend is not a knuckle-dragging, uncaring moron, but a pretty decent person. I’ve done it, and I can attest to the fact that you will find good, caring intelligent people on both sides of the political divide.
Thursday, December 14, 2017
No Moore, no more
No Moore in Alabama, Thanks to Deplorables
The View from the Middle
Let’s face facts. Alabama hasn’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1980, and only one since 1964, and that was their neighbor and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter. You couldn’t get a Democrat elected dog catcher in Alabama without crossover vote from those despicable, deplorable, irredeemable Republicans. In fact, Alabama is clearly one of Hillary’s most despicable, deplorable and irredeemable states in the union since she was thrashed there by Trump by 28 points (63% to 35%). Arkansans are nearly as despicable since Trump won here by 27 points and our neighbors in Oklahoma must qualify for the deplorable hall of fame since Trump won there by a 36-point margin. According to Hillary Clinton and anyone who believes her, I’m surrounded by pretty awful people. Is it OK if I disagree with that?
So, my question is, since it was the deplorables who got Doug Jones elected to the Senate in Alabama on Tuesday, are they no longer deplorable? Are they allowed to be considered full, patriotic, decent American citizens again, or is this just a temporary pass to rub elbows with the truly noble Americans like Al Franken, Harry Reid and Anthony Weiner. Wow, what a privilege!
Also, before the lame stream media tries to convince you that this election signifies some sort of seismic shift in the hearts and minds of the voting public, let’s visit the world of reality for just a minute. Doug Jones is a big government, abortion on demand, tax and spend liberal in a small government, pro-life, low tax state. If this election had been about policy proposals and had even run a mystery, un-named Republican candidate, that Republican candidate would have won. Luther Strange would have won. Mo Brooks would have won, but they were defeated in the primaries before the accusations against Roy Moore were made public.
In fact, it will be interesting to see how Doug Jones performs in Washington DC. He will need to run again in 2020 and if he pushes an agenda that totally aligns with the Democrat party, he will alienate his constituency and will likely be replaced in 2020. If he tries to be a moderate force in his party he will be shunned by Democratic leadership and accomplish nothing. Larry Sabato, political analyst from the University of Virginia, suggests that when Doug Jones moves to Washington, he should “rent, not buy”.
And, here’s a warning to Republicans. While I believe that the policies they are pursuing will deliver positive results, that doesn’t necessarily translate to victories in November. Even if the economy grows, which I think it will, and congress passes a DACA bill that secures the border and resolves the “dreamer” issue, Republicans still have to field good candidates. Roy Moore was not a good candidate and that’s why he lost. He could even write a book entitled “What Happened”, but the bottom line is that he lost because of him.
Donald Trump too is at risk. He could deliver a growing economy, a path to a balanced budget and real immigration reform including a DACA fix, and still lose. He could deliver on all his promises and replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg with… well, with about anyone, and he could still lose. If the people of The United States get tired of his 3rd grade playground antics and if he continues to reduce the prestige of the Presidency, he could deliver all the results he promised and still lose. Mr. President, please take the high road, if you can even find it at this point.
The View from the Middle
Let’s face facts. Alabama hasn’t supported a Democratic presidential candidate since 1980, and only one since 1964, and that was their neighbor and peanut farmer Jimmy Carter. You couldn’t get a Democrat elected dog catcher in Alabama without crossover vote from those despicable, deplorable, irredeemable Republicans. In fact, Alabama is clearly one of Hillary’s most despicable, deplorable and irredeemable states in the union since she was thrashed there by Trump by 28 points (63% to 35%). Arkansans are nearly as despicable since Trump won here by 27 points and our neighbors in Oklahoma must qualify for the deplorable hall of fame since Trump won there by a 36-point margin. According to Hillary Clinton and anyone who believes her, I’m surrounded by pretty awful people. Is it OK if I disagree with that?
So, my question is, since it was the deplorables who got Doug Jones elected to the Senate in Alabama on Tuesday, are they no longer deplorable? Are they allowed to be considered full, patriotic, decent American citizens again, or is this just a temporary pass to rub elbows with the truly noble Americans like Al Franken, Harry Reid and Anthony Weiner. Wow, what a privilege!
Also, before the lame stream media tries to convince you that this election signifies some sort of seismic shift in the hearts and minds of the voting public, let’s visit the world of reality for just a minute. Doug Jones is a big government, abortion on demand, tax and spend liberal in a small government, pro-life, low tax state. If this election had been about policy proposals and had even run a mystery, un-named Republican candidate, that Republican candidate would have won. Luther Strange would have won. Mo Brooks would have won, but they were defeated in the primaries before the accusations against Roy Moore were made public.
In fact, it will be interesting to see how Doug Jones performs in Washington DC. He will need to run again in 2020 and if he pushes an agenda that totally aligns with the Democrat party, he will alienate his constituency and will likely be replaced in 2020. If he tries to be a moderate force in his party he will be shunned by Democratic leadership and accomplish nothing. Larry Sabato, political analyst from the University of Virginia, suggests that when Doug Jones moves to Washington, he should “rent, not buy”.
And, here’s a warning to Republicans. While I believe that the policies they are pursuing will deliver positive results, that doesn’t necessarily translate to victories in November. Even if the economy grows, which I think it will, and congress passes a DACA bill that secures the border and resolves the “dreamer” issue, Republicans still have to field good candidates. Roy Moore was not a good candidate and that’s why he lost. He could even write a book entitled “What Happened”, but the bottom line is that he lost because of him.
Donald Trump too is at risk. He could deliver a growing economy, a path to a balanced budget and real immigration reform including a DACA fix, and still lose. He could deliver on all his promises and replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg with… well, with about anyone, and he could still lose. If the people of The United States get tired of his 3rd grade playground antics and if he continues to reduce the prestige of the Presidency, he could deliver all the results he promised and still lose. Mr. President, please take the high road, if you can even find it at this point.
Wednesday, December 6, 2017
Donna Brazile and her book "Hacks"
To Donna Brazile on Her New Book - Hacks
The View from the Middle
If you’re not a political junky like me, your first question may be, “Who is Donna Brazile, and why do I even care about her?” Donna Brazile is the now disgraced former Chairperson for the DNC (Democratic National Committee) during Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She admitted to sharing debate questions with the Clinton campaign while withholding them from the Sanders’ campaign and now she has written a book entitled Hacks.
A hack can be a person who works solely for mercenary reasons with mediocre professional standards, like the commonly used term “party hacks”. I thought for sure that was what her book would be about; the party hacks who botched the Hillary Clinton campaign for presidency. Instead it was an excuse filled, opinion stated as fact, pity party in which she couldn’t even admit or deny her horrendous mistake of sharing debate questions with Hillary Clinton. Now, it seems, her position is that she can’t remember. Isn’t that the amnesiatic explanation that Hillary Clinton invoked 41 times in her interview with the FBI about her computer server? Donna, you’ve learned from the best, or worst depending on a person’s perspective.
Obviously, I do NOT recommend her book for a number of reasons and in fact I’ll be sending my copy back asking for a refund. First, her opinion (which she constantly positions as fact) is that the Russians (if they were behind the hacking) only went after the Democratic Party, actually thought Donald Trump could win the election AND preferred Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. Let me suggest another set of possibilities.
Whoever hacked into the DNC server, and it may well have been the Russians, was trying to hack into everyone’s emails trying to compromise our entire system so that our citizens would lose confidence in our Democratic process. It just so happens that the Democrats were grossly negligent (sorry, extremely careless) with their handling of sensitive data. John Podesta, Hillary’s campaign manager, responded to a phishing expedition and changed his password to “password”. What an idiot. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in a party that put servers in closets, bashed phones with sledgehammers and stored emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer.
Donna also theorizes that Vladimir Putin actually thought Donald Trump could with this election and preferred him to become president. This is opinion piled upon opinion. Let me offer you another notion. I would suggest that Vladimir Putin believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election like 99% of Americans, according to the Princeton Election Consortium. I don’t even think Donald Trump thought he was going to win the election on the morning of November 8th. Putin was sure that Hillary would be President, and he wanted to deal with a damaged President once the election was over.
Donna even defended Hillary’s famous “basket of deplorables” statement, which I believe actually cost her the election. Remember, this is where Hillary called half of Donald Trump’s voters “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic”. She suggested that Hillary should “own” this despicable statement. She even supported Hillary’s stance that she had to say this because “her opponent’s campaign had been built on prejudice, hateful views and cruel voices”. Isn’t calling tens of millions of Americans racists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes and Islamophobes prejudicial, hateful and cruel? Donna, this is what Americans hate about our politicians. They are hypocrites, constantly talking out of both sides of their mouths and this definitely includes Hillary.
Donna, if you ever get around to taking your ideological blinders off, you’ll realize that it wasn’t the Russians who caused Hillary to loose the election. It was just Hillary. When the first three words that people use to describe your candidate are “Liar, Dishonest and Untrustworthy”, according to Quinnipiac, you have a problem. I have stated before that we had two terrible candidates representing our two parties in this election, and Hillary ended up being the worse of those two.
She insulted even more people than Donald Trump did, and that isn’t easy to do. She took the wrong states for granted and was not able to energize her base, which was evident in her pitiful campaign rally attendance and lack of enthusiasm. Her platform was “I’m a woman” and “It’s my turn” which didn’t resonate with the public. If you keep blaming the Russians, you’ll never learn the real lesson.
By the way, I do agree with you about one thing, Donna. The average American (Democrat and Republican) is honest, hard working and patriotic. Americans will put the good of the country ahead of themselves. That is what they are looking for in our politicians, but people like that are a rare commodity in Washington DC. THAT is the biggest issue we have right now, and we should be working together to fix it. How many times can I suggest Term Limits!!!
The View from the Middle
If you’re not a political junky like me, your first question may be, “Who is Donna Brazile, and why do I even care about her?” Donna Brazile is the now disgraced former Chairperson for the DNC (Democratic National Committee) during Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. She admitted to sharing debate questions with the Clinton campaign while withholding them from the Sanders’ campaign and now she has written a book entitled Hacks.
A hack can be a person who works solely for mercenary reasons with mediocre professional standards, like the commonly used term “party hacks”. I thought for sure that was what her book would be about; the party hacks who botched the Hillary Clinton campaign for presidency. Instead it was an excuse filled, opinion stated as fact, pity party in which she couldn’t even admit or deny her horrendous mistake of sharing debate questions with Hillary Clinton. Now, it seems, her position is that she can’t remember. Isn’t that the amnesiatic explanation that Hillary Clinton invoked 41 times in her interview with the FBI about her computer server? Donna, you’ve learned from the best, or worst depending on a person’s perspective.
Obviously, I do NOT recommend her book for a number of reasons and in fact I’ll be sending my copy back asking for a refund. First, her opinion (which she constantly positions as fact) is that the Russians (if they were behind the hacking) only went after the Democratic Party, actually thought Donald Trump could win the election AND preferred Donald Trump to Hillary Clinton. Let me suggest another set of possibilities.
Whoever hacked into the DNC server, and it may well have been the Russians, was trying to hack into everyone’s emails trying to compromise our entire system so that our citizens would lose confidence in our Democratic process. It just so happens that the Democrats were grossly negligent (sorry, extremely careless) with their handling of sensitive data. John Podesta, Hillary’s campaign manager, responded to a phishing expedition and changed his password to “password”. What an idiot. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in a party that put servers in closets, bashed phones with sledgehammers and stored emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer.
Donna also theorizes that Vladimir Putin actually thought Donald Trump could with this election and preferred him to become president. This is opinion piled upon opinion. Let me offer you another notion. I would suggest that Vladimir Putin believed that Hillary Clinton was going to win the election like 99% of Americans, according to the Princeton Election Consortium. I don’t even think Donald Trump thought he was going to win the election on the morning of November 8th. Putin was sure that Hillary would be President, and he wanted to deal with a damaged President once the election was over.
Donna even defended Hillary’s famous “basket of deplorables” statement, which I believe actually cost her the election. Remember, this is where Hillary called half of Donald Trump’s voters “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic and Islamophobic”. She suggested that Hillary should “own” this despicable statement. She even supported Hillary’s stance that she had to say this because “her opponent’s campaign had been built on prejudice, hateful views and cruel voices”. Isn’t calling tens of millions of Americans racists, misogynists, homophobes, xenophobes and Islamophobes prejudicial, hateful and cruel? Donna, this is what Americans hate about our politicians. They are hypocrites, constantly talking out of both sides of their mouths and this definitely includes Hillary.
Donna, if you ever get around to taking your ideological blinders off, you’ll realize that it wasn’t the Russians who caused Hillary to loose the election. It was just Hillary. When the first three words that people use to describe your candidate are “Liar, Dishonest and Untrustworthy”, according to Quinnipiac, you have a problem. I have stated before that we had two terrible candidates representing our two parties in this election, and Hillary ended up being the worse of those two.
She insulted even more people than Donald Trump did, and that isn’t easy to do. She took the wrong states for granted and was not able to energize her base, which was evident in her pitiful campaign rally attendance and lack of enthusiasm. Her platform was “I’m a woman” and “It’s my turn” which didn’t resonate with the public. If you keep blaming the Russians, you’ll never learn the real lesson.
By the way, I do agree with you about one thing, Donna. The average American (Democrat and Republican) is honest, hard working and patriotic. Americans will put the good of the country ahead of themselves. That is what they are looking for in our politicians, but people like that are a rare commodity in Washington DC. THAT is the biggest issue we have right now, and we should be working together to fix it. How many times can I suggest Term Limits!!!
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Why Tax Reform Terrifies Democrats
Democrats’ Strategy of Resist, Persist & Throw Hissy Fits
The View from the Middle
Just when I think that the Hypocrisy can’t get any worse in Washington, just when I think that the actions of our politicians can’t get any more ridiculous, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi show me that they know no limits. I had to actually laugh out loud when Ms. Pelosi said that Donald Trump was only interested in “stunts” (referring to the empty seat picture of the debt ceiling meeting) especially when she had just executed a marvelous stunt of her own by refusing to meet with the President in the first place. Are these people listening to themselves?
But what’s more ridiculous is the lack of any real strategy by Democrats to make our country better. If anyone out there has any evidence of what that is, let me know. And don’t show me some dusty platform document that hasn’t been touched by Democrat leadership for more than a year now. Show me what Democrats are talking about on a daily basis other than resist, persist, insist, enlist, desist (and anything else that rhymes with resist). This may be a strategy to get people elected (or not, I’m not sure) but it certainly is not a strategy that will help the country.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is actually following through on his campaign promises. His administration has significantly reduced regulations, put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and at least tried to repeal and replace Obamacare. This kind of promise keeping is unheard of in politics and may be one reason why Trump maintains support despite his childish and often abrasive personal style. And now, as if all those “promises kept” were not enough, he is inches away from delivering on his pledge to reduce and reform America’s taxes.
Are the bills that have been passed by the House and will be passed by the Senate perfect? Of course not, but no tax bill would, whether it was initiated by Democrats or Republicans. There are too many factions to appease. In our Congress and in our country we find everything from the ultra conservative TEA Partiers to Libertarians to moderate conservatives and liberals to the big government liberals to the ultra-liberal socialist democrats represented by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. A bill that would please all of these people does not exist.
But the bills that currently exist contain some very encouraging elements. First of all, the actual tax rate will go down for virtually every tax bracket with an emphasis on the lower brackets that impact average and lower income households. Next, the standard deduction will likely double even in the compromise bill and so will the child tax credit which has a huge affect on middle to lower income tax brackets.
Corporate rates will be dramatically decreased from the current 35% rate to somewhere in the low 20’s and both versions include an incentive to repatriate profits back to America where they can be invested to expand markets, increase incomes and create more jobs.
All of this will stimulate the economy from both the supply side (trickle down) and the demand side (bubble up). My honest assessment of this bill is that all Americans will benefit through higher wages, lower unemployment and higher job participation levels as well as just having more of their own money to spend. In the end, I predict that all of this will happen while also reducing our deficits as our economy will grow in the 3 and 4 and even 5% levels. This will drive higher revenues into the treasury which happened under Coolidge, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan and Clinton. With a little discipline on the spending side we could even balance the budget and actually reduce the debt we are currently planning to pass on to our children and grandchildren.
With all of the positive aspects of this tax bill, you ask yourself, “How can Democrats be against it?” There is a simple twofold answer. First, their whole strategy is to resist and obstruct. That’s all they have, so they must focus on the small pieces that make it “not perfect” and ignore all of the benefits. But the real answer is that they are terrified that this will actually work.
Imagine if the Republicans pass this bill in December and our economy starts growing at 3 or 4% by the midterms in 2018? Republican majorities could actually increase in both the House and the Senate. What if people do their taxes for the 2018 tax year and 90%+ notice that they are paying less taxes than they did the year before? What if 90%+ of Americans find that they can now use the short form (maybe even a postcard) to file their taxes? What if the labor force participation rate gets back to 64 or 65% (it is currently under 63%) and income levels begin to rise again? What if, because of increased revenues and lower spending, we can decrease our deficits and see a path to a balanced budget by November of 2020?
This is the nightmare that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi dream every night, and they are willing to keep all of these positive things from happening as long as they can keep their jobs and cushy lifestyles. I say, bring on the tax cuts, and I may even consider voting for Trump again if he delivers the results!!
The View from the Middle
Just when I think that the Hypocrisy can’t get any worse in Washington, just when I think that the actions of our politicians can’t get any more ridiculous, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi show me that they know no limits. I had to actually laugh out loud when Ms. Pelosi said that Donald Trump was only interested in “stunts” (referring to the empty seat picture of the debt ceiling meeting) especially when she had just executed a marvelous stunt of her own by refusing to meet with the President in the first place. Are these people listening to themselves?
But what’s more ridiculous is the lack of any real strategy by Democrats to make our country better. If anyone out there has any evidence of what that is, let me know. And don’t show me some dusty platform document that hasn’t been touched by Democrat leadership for more than a year now. Show me what Democrats are talking about on a daily basis other than resist, persist, insist, enlist, desist (and anything else that rhymes with resist). This may be a strategy to get people elected (or not, I’m not sure) but it certainly is not a strategy that will help the country.
Love him or hate him, Donald Trump is actually following through on his campaign promises. His administration has significantly reduced regulations, put Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court and at least tried to repeal and replace Obamacare. This kind of promise keeping is unheard of in politics and may be one reason why Trump maintains support despite his childish and often abrasive personal style. And now, as if all those “promises kept” were not enough, he is inches away from delivering on his pledge to reduce and reform America’s taxes.
Are the bills that have been passed by the House and will be passed by the Senate perfect? Of course not, but no tax bill would, whether it was initiated by Democrats or Republicans. There are too many factions to appease. In our Congress and in our country we find everything from the ultra conservative TEA Partiers to Libertarians to moderate conservatives and liberals to the big government liberals to the ultra-liberal socialist democrats represented by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. A bill that would please all of these people does not exist.
But the bills that currently exist contain some very encouraging elements. First of all, the actual tax rate will go down for virtually every tax bracket with an emphasis on the lower brackets that impact average and lower income households. Next, the standard deduction will likely double even in the compromise bill and so will the child tax credit which has a huge affect on middle to lower income tax brackets.
Corporate rates will be dramatically decreased from the current 35% rate to somewhere in the low 20’s and both versions include an incentive to repatriate profits back to America where they can be invested to expand markets, increase incomes and create more jobs.
All of this will stimulate the economy from both the supply side (trickle down) and the demand side (bubble up). My honest assessment of this bill is that all Americans will benefit through higher wages, lower unemployment and higher job participation levels as well as just having more of their own money to spend. In the end, I predict that all of this will happen while also reducing our deficits as our economy will grow in the 3 and 4 and even 5% levels. This will drive higher revenues into the treasury which happened under Coolidge, Kennedy, Johnson, Reagan and Clinton. With a little discipline on the spending side we could even balance the budget and actually reduce the debt we are currently planning to pass on to our children and grandchildren.
With all of the positive aspects of this tax bill, you ask yourself, “How can Democrats be against it?” There is a simple twofold answer. First, their whole strategy is to resist and obstruct. That’s all they have, so they must focus on the small pieces that make it “not perfect” and ignore all of the benefits. But the real answer is that they are terrified that this will actually work.
Imagine if the Republicans pass this bill in December and our economy starts growing at 3 or 4% by the midterms in 2018? Republican majorities could actually increase in both the House and the Senate. What if people do their taxes for the 2018 tax year and 90%+ notice that they are paying less taxes than they did the year before? What if 90%+ of Americans find that they can now use the short form (maybe even a postcard) to file their taxes? What if the labor force participation rate gets back to 64 or 65% (it is currently under 63%) and income levels begin to rise again? What if, because of increased revenues and lower spending, we can decrease our deficits and see a path to a balanced budget by November of 2020?
This is the nightmare that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi dream every night, and they are willing to keep all of these positive things from happening as long as they can keep their jobs and cushy lifestyles. I say, bring on the tax cuts, and I may even consider voting for Trump again if he delivers the results!!
Sunday, November 12, 2017
Hillary Clinton, Criminal or Rascal? You Decide.
Hillary Clinton, Criminal or Just Rascal?
The View from the Middle
Have you heard the defenders / excusers of Hillary Clinton’s skullduggery? They point out that all of her misdeeds occurred in the past, and they want to focus on the future. While that may sound clever and even profound, just a small amount of thoughtful consideration reveals this rationale to be laughable.
Of course, they would like to forget all this and move on. So does every lawbreaker being tried for his or her crimes. What they don’t want you to realize is that all transgressions being investigated have occurred in the past. Duh! And, if every criminal were allowed to use this defense, we would have no need for a judicial system at all. Just forget all of these past offenses and focus on the future! Someone should call Paul Manafort quick. I’m pretty sure he’s being investigated for crimes of the past.
So, let’s get past this ridiculous argument and look at Hillary’s questionable behavior and decide whether it is criminal or just inappropriate. Let’s start with the most recently uncovered reality that Hillary and the DNC (arguably the same thing) paid for the now famous dossier. Hillary, of course, denies knowing anything about it, even though her campaign spent some 10 to 12 million dollars for this work of fiction. Even if she did know, she would suggest it was just “opposition research”.
Asking us to believe that she didn’t know about the dossier stretches believability to the point of its breaking point. The Clinton’s are very smart people. Bill is supposedly the fourth smartest President ever with a reported IQ of just under 150, and Hillary’s 140 IQ puts her in the top one quarter of one percent of all humans. They would have to be stupid or devious not to know about this 12 million dollar expenditure. I’ll let you make your own decision on which is most likely for the Clinton’s.
Next, was the dossier a piece of opposition research or an intentional smear job designed to cast doubt on the character of Donald Trump (like that was needed). Even though there is plenty of hanky-panky here, I have to agree with Alan Dershowitz, (an unlikely ally for me) even if intent was proven, I doubt that there is anything criminal in the dossier scandal. Sleazy? Yes! Criminal? No!
Now, let’s talk about her takeover of the DNC. Her supporters describe her as a “white knight” that came to the rescue of a bankrupt DNC. So I guess Bernie Sanders should be sending her a thank you note. I’ve read the agreement that the leadership of the DNC signed to give her control of hiring, strategy and spending when the primaries were just beginning, and it is my opinion that there is no way they could have offered Bernie the same deal. The two deals would have been in complete conflict.
But while this may have been underhanded, I again have to agree with my friend Alan Dershowitz again. This was probably not illegal. The DNC may decide to create some internal controls that would prohibit this in the future, but as of now, it is probably not illegal. Questionable behavior? For sure. Illegal? Probably not.
How about the Uranium One deal? Why would the United States allow the Russians to purchase 20% of our uranium reserves in the first place? And, was it appropriate for the Clinton Foundation to receive over $145 million from Russian entities connected with the deal while Hillary was the Secretary of State and one of the nine parties who had to approve the transaction? Don’t forget that Bill Clinton also received a measly $500,000 fee from a Russian bank invested in Uranium One for a 20-minute speech. I’m sure he’s spellbinding, but $25,000 a minute? Really?
Again, there may not be any actual laws in place that would prohibit a sitting Secretary of State from taking hundreds of million of dollars from foreign countries, but there may be some laws put in place for the future given the conflict of interest that this escapade suggested. Even President Obama asked Hillary not to do this because he knew the kind of optics it would create. Was this totally inappropriate? You bet! Criminal? Maybe not, - Yet!
Actually, the scandal that is most likely to end up in criminality is the oldest, and that is Hillary’s use of a private server. Actually, the use of a private server may not be illegal, although no other Secretary of State or President or Cabinet Secretary ever had their own private server, no matter how often her supporters try to tell you they did. Again, Congress may create a law to prohibit this in the future, and probably should, but Hillary may not have broken the law in setting up this private server.
There are two aspects of this particular scandal, however, that could get Hillary in legal trouble. First, as James Comey wrote in one of his early versions of Hillary’s exoneration, she was “grossly negligent” in her handling of classified and top secret information. He changed that language to “extremely careless” when he realized that that the terminology of gross negligence was actually used in the statute that Hillary was accused of violating. However, as legal pundit Judge Napolitano suggests, there is no real difference between “extremely careless” and “grossly negligent”. This could end up being a problem for Hillary.
Finally, Hillary deleted 30,000 emails that were under subpoena from the Justice Department. And she didn’t just delete them as you and I would. She used BleachBit to obliterate them to the point of being irretrievable. If she just wanted them out of her way, why wouldn’t she just delete them, as you and I would? Whether she likes it or not, the way she eliminated these messages reveals an attempt to conceal. This could also be a real problem for Mrs. Clinton.
It is not my desire for anyone to go to jail. What I want is for our politicians to have character so that they are repulsed by the temptation for subterfuge. But if we don’t hold people of power accountable, we will continue to have a double standard of justice. People like you and me will be punished to the full extent of the law while the rich and well connected get off scot-free. Is that the America any of us want?
The View from the Middle
Have you heard the defenders / excusers of Hillary Clinton’s skullduggery? They point out that all of her misdeeds occurred in the past, and they want to focus on the future. While that may sound clever and even profound, just a small amount of thoughtful consideration reveals this rationale to be laughable.
Of course, they would like to forget all this and move on. So does every lawbreaker being tried for his or her crimes. What they don’t want you to realize is that all transgressions being investigated have occurred in the past. Duh! And, if every criminal were allowed to use this defense, we would have no need for a judicial system at all. Just forget all of these past offenses and focus on the future! Someone should call Paul Manafort quick. I’m pretty sure he’s being investigated for crimes of the past.
So, let’s get past this ridiculous argument and look at Hillary’s questionable behavior and decide whether it is criminal or just inappropriate. Let’s start with the most recently uncovered reality that Hillary and the DNC (arguably the same thing) paid for the now famous dossier. Hillary, of course, denies knowing anything about it, even though her campaign spent some 10 to 12 million dollars for this work of fiction. Even if she did know, she would suggest it was just “opposition research”.
Asking us to believe that she didn’t know about the dossier stretches believability to the point of its breaking point. The Clinton’s are very smart people. Bill is supposedly the fourth smartest President ever with a reported IQ of just under 150, and Hillary’s 140 IQ puts her in the top one quarter of one percent of all humans. They would have to be stupid or devious not to know about this 12 million dollar expenditure. I’ll let you make your own decision on which is most likely for the Clinton’s.
Next, was the dossier a piece of opposition research or an intentional smear job designed to cast doubt on the character of Donald Trump (like that was needed). Even though there is plenty of hanky-panky here, I have to agree with Alan Dershowitz, (an unlikely ally for me) even if intent was proven, I doubt that there is anything criminal in the dossier scandal. Sleazy? Yes! Criminal? No!
Now, let’s talk about her takeover of the DNC. Her supporters describe her as a “white knight” that came to the rescue of a bankrupt DNC. So I guess Bernie Sanders should be sending her a thank you note. I’ve read the agreement that the leadership of the DNC signed to give her control of hiring, strategy and spending when the primaries were just beginning, and it is my opinion that there is no way they could have offered Bernie the same deal. The two deals would have been in complete conflict.
But while this may have been underhanded, I again have to agree with my friend Alan Dershowitz again. This was probably not illegal. The DNC may decide to create some internal controls that would prohibit this in the future, but as of now, it is probably not illegal. Questionable behavior? For sure. Illegal? Probably not.
How about the Uranium One deal? Why would the United States allow the Russians to purchase 20% of our uranium reserves in the first place? And, was it appropriate for the Clinton Foundation to receive over $145 million from Russian entities connected with the deal while Hillary was the Secretary of State and one of the nine parties who had to approve the transaction? Don’t forget that Bill Clinton also received a measly $500,000 fee from a Russian bank invested in Uranium One for a 20-minute speech. I’m sure he’s spellbinding, but $25,000 a minute? Really?
Again, there may not be any actual laws in place that would prohibit a sitting Secretary of State from taking hundreds of million of dollars from foreign countries, but there may be some laws put in place for the future given the conflict of interest that this escapade suggested. Even President Obama asked Hillary not to do this because he knew the kind of optics it would create. Was this totally inappropriate? You bet! Criminal? Maybe not, - Yet!
Actually, the scandal that is most likely to end up in criminality is the oldest, and that is Hillary’s use of a private server. Actually, the use of a private server may not be illegal, although no other Secretary of State or President or Cabinet Secretary ever had their own private server, no matter how often her supporters try to tell you they did. Again, Congress may create a law to prohibit this in the future, and probably should, but Hillary may not have broken the law in setting up this private server.
There are two aspects of this particular scandal, however, that could get Hillary in legal trouble. First, as James Comey wrote in one of his early versions of Hillary’s exoneration, she was “grossly negligent” in her handling of classified and top secret information. He changed that language to “extremely careless” when he realized that that the terminology of gross negligence was actually used in the statute that Hillary was accused of violating. However, as legal pundit Judge Napolitano suggests, there is no real difference between “extremely careless” and “grossly negligent”. This could end up being a problem for Hillary.
Finally, Hillary deleted 30,000 emails that were under subpoena from the Justice Department. And she didn’t just delete them as you and I would. She used BleachBit to obliterate them to the point of being irretrievable. If she just wanted them out of her way, why wouldn’t she just delete them, as you and I would? Whether she likes it or not, the way she eliminated these messages reveals an attempt to conceal. This could also be a real problem for Mrs. Clinton.
It is not my desire for anyone to go to jail. What I want is for our politicians to have character so that they are repulsed by the temptation for subterfuge. But if we don’t hold people of power accountable, we will continue to have a double standard of justice. People like you and me will be punished to the full extent of the law while the rich and well connected get off scot-free. Is that the America any of us want?
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Russia vs Trump, Sessions, Hillary and Wasserman-Shultz
Who is Winning in the Russian Collusion Scandal?
The View from the Middle
Oh, what a tangled web someone is weaving. It seems that there is another shoe to drop every day on the Russian collusion scandal here in America. I think it started with the Wikileaks release of the DNC emails. We may never know for sure if the Russians were involved, but it certainly wouldn’t shock me if they were. And the big losers in this piece of the scandal were Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Then there was the Russian dossier. This dossier was so salacious and uncorroborated that most of the media passed over this story until BuzzFeed released it in its entirety in January. Even though most, if not all, of this file was pure fiction, the big loser was Donald Trump.
And let’s not forget the outreach by Russian Ambassador Kislyak to Jeff Sessions. These were hardly shocking meetings. One was a handshake in front of hundreds of witnesses, but this forced Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the Russian investigation after he was appointed Trump’s Attorney General.
We certainly can’t leave out Donald Trump Jr.’s 20 minute meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with supposed connections to the Kremlin. Donald Jr. left this meeting early and no action was ever taken as a result of this little powwow, but real damage was done to Don Jr. and Paul Manafort.
And now we have the boomerang effect of the Russian dossier story that doesn’t focus on the contents of the dossier itself, but on who paid for it. The big losers in this saga are Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Podesta brothers.
So let’s list the losers in the Russian collusion scandal – Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, Hillary Clinton, John and Tony Podesta, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and might I add the American people and our entire democratic system. Neither party nor gender has been able to avoid the stigma of this narrative. So is anyone winning the Russian corruption story? Yes, Vladimir Putin!
I have heard the talking heads claim that they could read Putin’s mind and are absolutely sure that he preferred Donald Trump to win the Presidency. Let me give you an alternative theory. Putin, like 99% of Americans (according to the Princeton Election Consortium), thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 election. And given her policy positions, he probably would have preferred her to win. What Putin really wanted was a damaged American President and a weakened confidence in our Democratic system. And we are giving it to him on a silver platter.
There are at least two visible Russian strategies that support my theory. First, virtually all of these contacts, from Kislyak to Veselnitskaya to the Russian officials who approached Christopher Steele (of the Russian dossier), were initiated by the Russians. Does this sound like a coincidence or a plan? Second, the major aspects of the scandal, the Wikileaks email acquisition and release and the Russian dossier, were both two sided swords. They could be used to incriminate operatives on both sides of the political spectrum. This is not just a plan; it’s a sinister plot.
In my opinion, both of our political parties and our boneheaded lame stream media have been and continue to be “played”. Putin was counting on their lesser angels (greed, thirst for power, hypocrisy and hate) and bated them with the most tempting morsels of depraved innuendo he could find. And when he couldn’t “find” anything, he just made it up. He has worked both sides of our political fence, pitting each against the other, while he sat back and enjoyed the chaos he has created.
Why would he do this? First, he just hates America and what it stands for. Second, he needed to distract his people from the ravages of an anemic Russia economy and his stalled promise to reunite the old Soviet Union. Despite all his failures, his approval rating in Russia is still over 80%. And part of that popularity just might be that his people know exactly what he is doing to us, and they love it!
When are we going to learn? When we abandon all respect for each other (and I accuse both sides of this) we stop listening to each other and begin to demonize real and rational concerns of good, patriotic Americans who love this country. There are real and meaningful compromises that can be made on Healthcare, Immigration, Taxes and even abortion if we start listening to each other. Our parties must give up their strategies of “I can’t hear you” and “Resist everything” and look for the areas on which we agree. Freedom, equality of opportunity and individual responsibility are good places to start, or else we will continue to play checkers while Putin plays chess with our heads!!
The View from the Middle
Oh, what a tangled web someone is weaving. It seems that there is another shoe to drop every day on the Russian collusion scandal here in America. I think it started with the Wikileaks release of the DNC emails. We may never know for sure if the Russians were involved, but it certainly wouldn’t shock me if they were. And the big losers in this piece of the scandal were Hillary Clinton, John Podesta and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Then there was the Russian dossier. This dossier was so salacious and uncorroborated that most of the media passed over this story until BuzzFeed released it in its entirety in January. Even though most, if not all, of this file was pure fiction, the big loser was Donald Trump.
And let’s not forget the outreach by Russian Ambassador Kislyak to Jeff Sessions. These were hardly shocking meetings. One was a handshake in front of hundreds of witnesses, but this forced Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the Russian investigation after he was appointed Trump’s Attorney General.
We certainly can’t leave out Donald Trump Jr.’s 20 minute meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Russian lawyer with supposed connections to the Kremlin. Donald Jr. left this meeting early and no action was ever taken as a result of this little powwow, but real damage was done to Don Jr. and Paul Manafort.
And now we have the boomerang effect of the Russian dossier story that doesn’t focus on the contents of the dossier itself, but on who paid for it. The big losers in this saga are Hillary Clinton, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and the Podesta brothers.
So let’s list the losers in the Russian collusion scandal – Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort, Hillary Clinton, John and Tony Podesta, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and might I add the American people and our entire democratic system. Neither party nor gender has been able to avoid the stigma of this narrative. So is anyone winning the Russian corruption story? Yes, Vladimir Putin!
I have heard the talking heads claim that they could read Putin’s mind and are absolutely sure that he preferred Donald Trump to win the Presidency. Let me give you an alternative theory. Putin, like 99% of Americans (according to the Princeton Election Consortium), thought that Hillary Clinton was going to win the 2016 election. And given her policy positions, he probably would have preferred her to win. What Putin really wanted was a damaged American President and a weakened confidence in our Democratic system. And we are giving it to him on a silver platter.
There are at least two visible Russian strategies that support my theory. First, virtually all of these contacts, from Kislyak to Veselnitskaya to the Russian officials who approached Christopher Steele (of the Russian dossier), were initiated by the Russians. Does this sound like a coincidence or a plan? Second, the major aspects of the scandal, the Wikileaks email acquisition and release and the Russian dossier, were both two sided swords. They could be used to incriminate operatives on both sides of the political spectrum. This is not just a plan; it’s a sinister plot.
In my opinion, both of our political parties and our boneheaded lame stream media have been and continue to be “played”. Putin was counting on their lesser angels (greed, thirst for power, hypocrisy and hate) and bated them with the most tempting morsels of depraved innuendo he could find. And when he couldn’t “find” anything, he just made it up. He has worked both sides of our political fence, pitting each against the other, while he sat back and enjoyed the chaos he has created.
Why would he do this? First, he just hates America and what it stands for. Second, he needed to distract his people from the ravages of an anemic Russia economy and his stalled promise to reunite the old Soviet Union. Despite all his failures, his approval rating in Russia is still over 80%. And part of that popularity just might be that his people know exactly what he is doing to us, and they love it!
When are we going to learn? When we abandon all respect for each other (and I accuse both sides of this) we stop listening to each other and begin to demonize real and rational concerns of good, patriotic Americans who love this country. There are real and meaningful compromises that can be made on Healthcare, Immigration, Taxes and even abortion if we start listening to each other. Our parties must give up their strategies of “I can’t hear you” and “Resist everything” and look for the areas on which we agree. Freedom, equality of opportunity and individual responsibility are good places to start, or else we will continue to play checkers while Putin plays chess with our heads!!
Friday, October 27, 2017
Of Trump, Clinton, Flake and others...
Washington Produces Narcissistic, Selfish, Back Stabbing, Lying, Hypocritical Bigots
The View from the Middle
In Romans 3:10, the Bible says that, “There is no one who is good, not even one!” As if to put an exclamation point on that thought, this week Washington D.C. put on a display of the most childish, crude, disgusting, dishonest and downright despicable behavior I have ever witnessed. To be clear, our politicians proved last week that no person or party holds the moral high ground in our nation's capital. In fact, I doubt they can even see the moral high ground from the sewer system they all occupy.
First, our President continued his 3rd grade, name-calling tweets that most of the country wishes he would stop. Even for those people who agree with his policies, it makes it difficult to defend him. But for those of you who believe Washington was ever an oasis of camaraderie and harmony, wake up! Before Trump, people in Washington would smile in your face and shake your hand and then try to destroy you behind your back. Some people say Trump is the most transparent President in our history and they applaud his blunt honesty. I personally don’t like the name-calling or the backstabbing but prefer that people actually show respect for each other and work together to solve problems.
Then you have Frederica Wilson’s hit job on the President. Even when the President has the best of intentions, there are some who will try to politicize it for their own benefit. Frederica said she was invited on this call. By whom? Did Trump invite you, Frederica? I doubt it. Did Trump even know you were listening? Even if what she did were not illegal, speakerphone etiquette would suggest that you should identify yourself if you are listening. Frederica, your 15 minutes are up. Go howl at the moon.
Then you had two Republican Senators, who didn’t have a prayer of re-election, stoop even below the President’s low bar for decorum and throw public verbal tantrums as they left. They kind of reminded me of Hillary Clinton. Which brings me to Hillary. Where should I start?
After denying any connection to Fusion GPS for months, it has been proven that Hillary and her campaign and the DNC not only knew about these slime balls, but they funded their work. And let’s stop calling this “opposition research”. Every politician does research on their opponents to find out what they have supported in the past or if there is any hypocrisy with their positions today. The word “research” implies a search for actual FACTS. What Hillary and the DNC did was to create a dossier of total BS that they could peddle to the media hoping to get someone to dip so low as to publish it. Their hope, I’m sure, was that by the time the actual truth came out, the election would be over and she would have won. This was a “smear job’ not opposition research.
And now we have the Uranium One deal, where we (that is Hillary, Eric Holder and others) decided to sell 20% of America’s Uranium supply to the Russians. Go back and read that sentence again. Does that even make sense? Now let’s add to this story the fact that the Clinton Foundation received $145 million from Russian companies connected with the Uranium One deal and Bill Clinton received a half million dollars for a twenty minute speech from a Russian bank with ties to Uranium One.
Of course, Hillary will claim that there is no connection between these payments and her decision to approve the deal. The Russians were giving money to the Clinton Foundation because of all the good work they do. Yah! And Bill’s inspiring words are worth $25,000 a minute (plus expenses of course). There are a few people who will fall for that line of bull, but the fact is even President Obama asked Hillary not to accept funds from these sources because of the optics it created. I have to agree with our former President on that.
Hillary has used the “I misremembered” and “I don’t recall” defense to keep her out of jail up to now. James Comey let her off the hook for her improper server because he couldn’t prove “intent” to break the law, but at some point in time we all have to admit that some facts speak for themselves. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton should not have been taking money from foreign entities while making decisions that impacted those same countries. Would you want Trump to sell Alaska to the Russians and then build a hotel in Moscow for free the next week? No connection of course.
Yes, this week has simply validated in my mind that Washington is full of narcissistic, selfish, backstabbing, lying hypocritical bigots on both sides of the political spectrum. The only question is – do they come there with that disposition or does the atmosphere of absolute power in Washington produce them over time. I believe it is the latter, so term limits will slowly weed out the converted, while not creating new ones and allow our government to work for “we the people” as our founders intended.
The View from the Middle
In Romans 3:10, the Bible says that, “There is no one who is good, not even one!” As if to put an exclamation point on that thought, this week Washington D.C. put on a display of the most childish, crude, disgusting, dishonest and downright despicable behavior I have ever witnessed. To be clear, our politicians proved last week that no person or party holds the moral high ground in our nation's capital. In fact, I doubt they can even see the moral high ground from the sewer system they all occupy.
First, our President continued his 3rd grade, name-calling tweets that most of the country wishes he would stop. Even for those people who agree with his policies, it makes it difficult to defend him. But for those of you who believe Washington was ever an oasis of camaraderie and harmony, wake up! Before Trump, people in Washington would smile in your face and shake your hand and then try to destroy you behind your back. Some people say Trump is the most transparent President in our history and they applaud his blunt honesty. I personally don’t like the name-calling or the backstabbing but prefer that people actually show respect for each other and work together to solve problems.
Then you have Frederica Wilson’s hit job on the President. Even when the President has the best of intentions, there are some who will try to politicize it for their own benefit. Frederica said she was invited on this call. By whom? Did Trump invite you, Frederica? I doubt it. Did Trump even know you were listening? Even if what she did were not illegal, speakerphone etiquette would suggest that you should identify yourself if you are listening. Frederica, your 15 minutes are up. Go howl at the moon.
Then you had two Republican Senators, who didn’t have a prayer of re-election, stoop even below the President’s low bar for decorum and throw public verbal tantrums as they left. They kind of reminded me of Hillary Clinton. Which brings me to Hillary. Where should I start?
After denying any connection to Fusion GPS for months, it has been proven that Hillary and her campaign and the DNC not only knew about these slime balls, but they funded their work. And let’s stop calling this “opposition research”. Every politician does research on their opponents to find out what they have supported in the past or if there is any hypocrisy with their positions today. The word “research” implies a search for actual FACTS. What Hillary and the DNC did was to create a dossier of total BS that they could peddle to the media hoping to get someone to dip so low as to publish it. Their hope, I’m sure, was that by the time the actual truth came out, the election would be over and she would have won. This was a “smear job’ not opposition research.
And now we have the Uranium One deal, where we (that is Hillary, Eric Holder and others) decided to sell 20% of America’s Uranium supply to the Russians. Go back and read that sentence again. Does that even make sense? Now let’s add to this story the fact that the Clinton Foundation received $145 million from Russian companies connected with the Uranium One deal and Bill Clinton received a half million dollars for a twenty minute speech from a Russian bank with ties to Uranium One.
Of course, Hillary will claim that there is no connection between these payments and her decision to approve the deal. The Russians were giving money to the Clinton Foundation because of all the good work they do. Yah! And Bill’s inspiring words are worth $25,000 a minute (plus expenses of course). There are a few people who will fall for that line of bull, but the fact is even President Obama asked Hillary not to accept funds from these sources because of the optics it created. I have to agree with our former President on that.
Hillary has used the “I misremembered” and “I don’t recall” defense to keep her out of jail up to now. James Comey let her off the hook for her improper server because he couldn’t prove “intent” to break the law, but at some point in time we all have to admit that some facts speak for themselves. As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton should not have been taking money from foreign entities while making decisions that impacted those same countries. Would you want Trump to sell Alaska to the Russians and then build a hotel in Moscow for free the next week? No connection of course.
Yes, this week has simply validated in my mind that Washington is full of narcissistic, selfish, backstabbing, lying hypocritical bigots on both sides of the political spectrum. The only question is – do they come there with that disposition or does the atmosphere of absolute power in Washington produce them over time. I believe it is the latter, so term limits will slowly weed out the converted, while not creating new ones and allow our government to work for “we the people” as our founders intended.
Monday, October 16, 2017
The Real Disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein Case
The Real Disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein Case
The View from the Middle
The levels of disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein scandal are as numerous and disturbing as the circles in Dante’s inferno. First, there is Harvey himself. His actions, over decades, are as disgusting and disturbing and deranged as they can be. Harvey has been a serial rapist, a chronic abuser and a regular insulter of women. And when I say “insulter” I’m trying to describe how a woman might feel as Harvey masturbated in front of her. I’m insulted that I even have to write that sentence.
The second layer of disgrace comes compliments of the slime ball, scumbag politicians that took Mr. Weinstein’s money in the name of social justice and women’s rights. This would be the equivalent of B’nai B’rith taking money from Hitler. It would be like the NAACP taking money from David Duke. It would be like the International Union of Chickens taking money from Colonel Sanders.
And the people who took millions of dollars from Harvey Weinstein read like a “who’s who” from the Democrat party. Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Richard Blumenthal, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are just a few of the hypocrites that gladly took Harvey’s contributions while knowing FULL WELL what he was doing. And if there is a Republican who took money from this jerk, I condemn you too!!
Most of these politically correct narcissists are now saying that they will give his money back. Might I just suggest that the press should keep an eye on these people and make sure that they actually return these funds. I think that these people are no more likely to return Harvey’s money than those Hollywood stars who promised to leave the country if Trump got elected made good on those vows.
But I have to give it to Hillary Clinton who basically said that she’s going to keep the money. Now, we all have to read between her muddy and murky lines to get to that truth, but that’s what she said. When asked what she was going to do with his money, her actually words were, “There’s nowhere to give it back to!” Besides being a very poor example of the English language, that is factually incorrect. She CAN give it back to Harvey himself, or she could give it to his company. There are no laws that prevent her from doing that. So basically she is either lying or terribly misinformed.
Then, when reporters suggested that she could give it to charity, she said, “I give 10% of my income every year, so this will be part of that.” In other words, she is going to deduct Mr. Weinstein’s contributions from her normal giving and thus reduce the amount of her own money that she gives to charity. Wow, how cheap can she be?
The acceptance of Mr. Weinstein’s money also serves as a soft endorsement of his activities. This gives a green light to his minions, like Ben Affleck, that his kind of behavior will be tolerated, as long as they support the right people financially.
But the final and deepest and darkest disgrace in this whole story is that these people knew what Harvey Weinstein was doing for decades. He has been publicly outed multiple times by the likes of Seth MacFarlane. He even had a clause in his contract with his company that allowed this behavior as long as Harvey paid off litigants to keep the stench down to an acceptable level.
Yes, they all knew what Harvey was doing for decades, but here’s the big sin. They did nothing about it. This allowed him to rape and abuse women for years and blackmail women with threats to their careers to gain their silence. How many of these women could have been saved the humiliation if Mr. Weinstein’s practices had been exposed at the very beginning. At least Jane Fonda (and believe me, I’m not a fan) had the decency to admit that she was “ashamed” of her silence.
The saddest note of all is that this simply exposes the absolute depth of hypocrisy that exists in Washington and Hollywood. When will we learn that these people do not serve the public that pays their salaries through their taxes and box office support? They serve only themselves and their unquenchable thirst for power, money and an unlimited need for self-adulation.
There are two small things we can do. We can create a constitutional amendment that will limit the terms of our congressmen and women and we can stay home and play charades instead of going to the movies. We might actually get to know each other better.
The View from the Middle
The levels of disgrace in the Harvey Weinstein scandal are as numerous and disturbing as the circles in Dante’s inferno. First, there is Harvey himself. His actions, over decades, are as disgusting and disturbing and deranged as they can be. Harvey has been a serial rapist, a chronic abuser and a regular insulter of women. And when I say “insulter” I’m trying to describe how a woman might feel as Harvey masturbated in front of her. I’m insulted that I even have to write that sentence.
The second layer of disgrace comes compliments of the slime ball, scumbag politicians that took Mr. Weinstein’s money in the name of social justice and women’s rights. This would be the equivalent of B’nai B’rith taking money from Hitler. It would be like the NAACP taking money from David Duke. It would be like the International Union of Chickens taking money from Colonel Sanders.
And the people who took millions of dollars from Harvey Weinstein read like a “who’s who” from the Democrat party. Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Cory Booker, Chuck Schumer, Richard Blumenthal, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are just a few of the hypocrites that gladly took Harvey’s contributions while knowing FULL WELL what he was doing. And if there is a Republican who took money from this jerk, I condemn you too!!
Most of these politically correct narcissists are now saying that they will give his money back. Might I just suggest that the press should keep an eye on these people and make sure that they actually return these funds. I think that these people are no more likely to return Harvey’s money than those Hollywood stars who promised to leave the country if Trump got elected made good on those vows.
But I have to give it to Hillary Clinton who basically said that she’s going to keep the money. Now, we all have to read between her muddy and murky lines to get to that truth, but that’s what she said. When asked what she was going to do with his money, her actually words were, “There’s nowhere to give it back to!” Besides being a very poor example of the English language, that is factually incorrect. She CAN give it back to Harvey himself, or she could give it to his company. There are no laws that prevent her from doing that. So basically she is either lying or terribly misinformed.
Then, when reporters suggested that she could give it to charity, she said, “I give 10% of my income every year, so this will be part of that.” In other words, she is going to deduct Mr. Weinstein’s contributions from her normal giving and thus reduce the amount of her own money that she gives to charity. Wow, how cheap can she be?
The acceptance of Mr. Weinstein’s money also serves as a soft endorsement of his activities. This gives a green light to his minions, like Ben Affleck, that his kind of behavior will be tolerated, as long as they support the right people financially.
But the final and deepest and darkest disgrace in this whole story is that these people knew what Harvey Weinstein was doing for decades. He has been publicly outed multiple times by the likes of Seth MacFarlane. He even had a clause in his contract with his company that allowed this behavior as long as Harvey paid off litigants to keep the stench down to an acceptable level.
Yes, they all knew what Harvey was doing for decades, but here’s the big sin. They did nothing about it. This allowed him to rape and abuse women for years and blackmail women with threats to their careers to gain their silence. How many of these women could have been saved the humiliation if Mr. Weinstein’s practices had been exposed at the very beginning. At least Jane Fonda (and believe me, I’m not a fan) had the decency to admit that she was “ashamed” of her silence.
The saddest note of all is that this simply exposes the absolute depth of hypocrisy that exists in Washington and Hollywood. When will we learn that these people do not serve the public that pays their salaries through their taxes and box office support? They serve only themselves and their unquenchable thirst for power, money and an unlimited need for self-adulation.
There are two small things we can do. We can create a constitutional amendment that will limit the terms of our congressmen and women and we can stay home and play charades instead of going to the movies. We might actually get to know each other better.
Monday, October 2, 2017
NFL - Look to Vegas
NFL – Look to Vegas for Answers
The View from the Middle
Yesterday, I didn’t watch any NFL games, but I did hear some news reports about what was happening around the league. At the New Orleans Saints vs. Miami Dolphins game, the players knelt before the national anthem and stood with looked arms during it, taking a hint from the Dallas Cowboys. They announced that the players were standing because they love our country and had respect for out veterans and current armed forces personnel. While that was a step in the right direction, they left off a couple of other groups that they should honor - our police and first responders.
This morning, I woke up to the horror that occurred in Las Vegas last night. A mad man took an elevated position and sprayed bullets on an audience of over 20,000 people attending a country music festival, killing 58 and wounding over 500 innocents. It was chaos. People were running for their lives, but one concert attendee pointed out that there was one group that was running towards the gunfire, shielding civilians and giving badly needed direction to those who were fleeing. Who was that group – The POLICE, on and off duty.
It is easy to forget (at least for the NFL) the millions of heroic, compassionate and unselfish actions our police take for us all when we close our eyes to all of the good and focus only on the sliver of bad. Let me quote Abraham Lincoln again who said, “If you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely will.” The NFL can kneel in protest of the police, protected by whom? The Police! Black Lives Matter can march and chant, “What do we need? Dead cops! When do we need them? Now” protect by, guess who? The Police. Colin Kaepernick can wear socks with policemen depicted as pigs, and who protects him? The police. Marshawn Lynch can even wear an anti-Trump t-shirt (which totally misses the point of this protest) and he is protected by the police.
And while our police are getting verbally abused and literally spit on, they continue to protect us from ourselves. Last year 135 policemen and women were killed in the line of duty. 21 of those officers were ambushed or assassinated, which demonstrates planning and intent. These were no accidents. Note that this is five more than the number of unarmed black men who were killed by police in the same year.
The NFL is condemning an entire group of people for the sins and or mistakes of a tiny few. What do you call that? Oh yah, PREJUDICE! So the NFL is crying prejudice as they perform prejudice against all of our men and women in blue. Is that ironic, paradoxical or just plain stupid? You tell me.
The players in the NFL have driven the league down a dead end alley and now it is trying to scratch and claw its way out. Until they figure out how to express their love for this country and support for our soldiers and veterans and law enforcement officers and first responders, the players and the league will not win over the country to support their cause.
Let me give the NFL a solution. The players can kneel, lie down or stand on their heads before the national anthem, but they must tell the crowds that they are doing it to unite the country in the support of equal justice for all. Then they must stand for the anthem and announce that they are doing that to show love for our country and appreciation for our soldiers, veterans, policemen and women and first responders. THIS will shine a light on the issue and win the hearts of the fans, supporters and ticketholders.
The View from the Middle
Yesterday, I didn’t watch any NFL games, but I did hear some news reports about what was happening around the league. At the New Orleans Saints vs. Miami Dolphins game, the players knelt before the national anthem and stood with looked arms during it, taking a hint from the Dallas Cowboys. They announced that the players were standing because they love our country and had respect for out veterans and current armed forces personnel. While that was a step in the right direction, they left off a couple of other groups that they should honor - our police and first responders.
This morning, I woke up to the horror that occurred in Las Vegas last night. A mad man took an elevated position and sprayed bullets on an audience of over 20,000 people attending a country music festival, killing 58 and wounding over 500 innocents. It was chaos. People were running for their lives, but one concert attendee pointed out that there was one group that was running towards the gunfire, shielding civilians and giving badly needed direction to those who were fleeing. Who was that group – The POLICE, on and off duty.
It is easy to forget (at least for the NFL) the millions of heroic, compassionate and unselfish actions our police take for us all when we close our eyes to all of the good and focus only on the sliver of bad. Let me quote Abraham Lincoln again who said, “If you look for the bad in people, expecting to find it, you surely will.” The NFL can kneel in protest of the police, protected by whom? The Police! Black Lives Matter can march and chant, “What do we need? Dead cops! When do we need them? Now” protect by, guess who? The Police. Colin Kaepernick can wear socks with policemen depicted as pigs, and who protects him? The police. Marshawn Lynch can even wear an anti-Trump t-shirt (which totally misses the point of this protest) and he is protected by the police.
And while our police are getting verbally abused and literally spit on, they continue to protect us from ourselves. Last year 135 policemen and women were killed in the line of duty. 21 of those officers were ambushed or assassinated, which demonstrates planning and intent. These were no accidents. Note that this is five more than the number of unarmed black men who were killed by police in the same year.
The NFL is condemning an entire group of people for the sins and or mistakes of a tiny few. What do you call that? Oh yah, PREJUDICE! So the NFL is crying prejudice as they perform prejudice against all of our men and women in blue. Is that ironic, paradoxical or just plain stupid? You tell me.
The players in the NFL have driven the league down a dead end alley and now it is trying to scratch and claw its way out. Until they figure out how to express their love for this country and support for our soldiers and veterans and law enforcement officers and first responders, the players and the league will not win over the country to support their cause.
Let me give the NFL a solution. The players can kneel, lie down or stand on their heads before the national anthem, but they must tell the crowds that they are doing it to unite the country in the support of equal justice for all. Then they must stand for the anthem and announce that they are doing that to show love for our country and appreciation for our soldiers, veterans, policemen and women and first responders. THIS will shine a light on the issue and win the hearts of the fans, supporters and ticketholders.
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
Is the NFL right?
America, Built to Last
The View from the Middle
Let me give some badly needed factual counter evidence to the fatalistic, extremist stories that are being passed around on college campuses, the Democrat party and even the NFL these days. If you just listened to them, you would think that America is a horrible place to live that hasn’t made any progress since 1776 and needs fundamental change for us to survive. According to critics and Hillary Clinton, anyone who doesn’t agree with the Democrat Party’s agenda is a bunch of racist bigots who are deplorable and irredeemable. I take offense to those charges.
While we are not perfect, I believe that The United States of America is the greatest place in the world to live and we will only get better because of the foundation that our founding fathers put together for our country. I don’t think, for example, that the words “all men are created equal” were thoughtlessly plugged into our Declaration of Independence because they just sounded good. In 1776 those words were not true in America and I believe the founders knew it. It was their hope, however, that over time we could live up to that vision.
And we have made fantastic progress toward that end since then. We fought a civil war at least in part over the issue of equal rights for all and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed The Emancipation Proclamation to legally make that wish become a reality. But, with difficult issues like this, it takes time for legality to become reality.
In 1870 the first two Black Americans, Hiram Revels and Joseph Rainey, were elected to Congress. After some set backs and a complete dry period from 1901 to 1929, Black America truly began it’s journey. By 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act was signed, there were six African Americans in Congress. Today there are 51, which is almost 10% of the 535 members of the House and Senate. We’ve come a long way, and I expect that we will continue to make progress in the future.
Under Jim Crow, Blacks saw little justice in America as they were regularly harassed, and over 4,000 were brutally lynched. Today, while our policemen and women are accused systemic racism, the actual facts tell a different story. In 2015, law enforcement made over 11 million arrests and only 965 of those arrests, .0086% or one in every 11,674, ended in a fatality. Only 90 of those deadly shootings were of unarmed people (one out of every 125,166) and 36 of those were black males. 36 of 90 is 40% of the total while black men represent only 13% of the male population in America, so there is a discrepancy. While prejudice is a factor in that discrepancy, it is not the only factor, so solutions need to address more that just racism in our law enforcement.
I will bet that these numbers shocked most people, in a positive way. With all the emotion over this issue most people would guess that there were 900 fatal unarmed shootings, not 90, and 360 Black males killed, not 36. And 2016 brought us even better news. In 2016 the number of unarmed black males killed by police was down to just 16. I don’t want to be insensitive by calling this “better news” and saying “just” 16 unarmed Black males were killed by police. Every life is precious. Each of these deaths is tragic, but this also represents progress, not an epidemic. BTW – most of all unarmed shooting victims were resisting arrest or fleeing police, which is another lesson.
Finally, the NFL needs some fact checkers on their staffs. They not only should check out the real figures as I have outlined them above, but they need to realize that 72% of Americans think that kneeling for the National Anthem is unpatriotic. These are the people who fill the stands each week or watch games on TV. It is a big industry, but no business can alienate its customer base with impunity and survive. Ratings are down and will continue to decline until the NFL figures out how to address the issue and celebrate the country at the same time.
Maybe the Cowboys are on to something. The team knelt BEFORE the anthem and then stood for it. They still got booed when they knelt, but got applauded when they stood. Bottom line, the NFL needs to become about football again and maybe the Cowboys can be America’s team again by leading the way through this issue.
I didn’t write this article because I think that America is perfect or that we have experienced total harmony of the races. I write this to bring some balance to this discussion. I believe that America today is the best place to live in this world and even at any time in its history. Because of our foundation, we have made great progress over the years and I have no doubt that we will make more in the future. I have great confidence in the vast majority of the American people who are united behind the concepts of equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all people.
We all need to ignore the emotionally charged, vitriolic rhetoric of the extremists who are trying to tear this country apart for their own selfish purposes, and listen to the good hearts of the average American. We need to stop the finger pointing and focus on solutions, and for that just watch my video entitled – Race in America, Solutions. Here is a link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kVsN7TO-XU.
The View from the Middle
Let me give some badly needed factual counter evidence to the fatalistic, extremist stories that are being passed around on college campuses, the Democrat party and even the NFL these days. If you just listened to them, you would think that America is a horrible place to live that hasn’t made any progress since 1776 and needs fundamental change for us to survive. According to critics and Hillary Clinton, anyone who doesn’t agree with the Democrat Party’s agenda is a bunch of racist bigots who are deplorable and irredeemable. I take offense to those charges.
While we are not perfect, I believe that The United States of America is the greatest place in the world to live and we will only get better because of the foundation that our founding fathers put together for our country. I don’t think, for example, that the words “all men are created equal” were thoughtlessly plugged into our Declaration of Independence because they just sounded good. In 1776 those words were not true in America and I believe the founders knew it. It was their hope, however, that over time we could live up to that vision.
And we have made fantastic progress toward that end since then. We fought a civil war at least in part over the issue of equal rights for all and in 1863 Abraham Lincoln signed The Emancipation Proclamation to legally make that wish become a reality. But, with difficult issues like this, it takes time for legality to become reality.
In 1870 the first two Black Americans, Hiram Revels and Joseph Rainey, were elected to Congress. After some set backs and a complete dry period from 1901 to 1929, Black America truly began it’s journey. By 1965, a year after the Civil Rights Act was signed, there were six African Americans in Congress. Today there are 51, which is almost 10% of the 535 members of the House and Senate. We’ve come a long way, and I expect that we will continue to make progress in the future.
Under Jim Crow, Blacks saw little justice in America as they were regularly harassed, and over 4,000 were brutally lynched. Today, while our policemen and women are accused systemic racism, the actual facts tell a different story. In 2015, law enforcement made over 11 million arrests and only 965 of those arrests, .0086% or one in every 11,674, ended in a fatality. Only 90 of those deadly shootings were of unarmed people (one out of every 125,166) and 36 of those were black males. 36 of 90 is 40% of the total while black men represent only 13% of the male population in America, so there is a discrepancy. While prejudice is a factor in that discrepancy, it is not the only factor, so solutions need to address more that just racism in our law enforcement.
I will bet that these numbers shocked most people, in a positive way. With all the emotion over this issue most people would guess that there were 900 fatal unarmed shootings, not 90, and 360 Black males killed, not 36. And 2016 brought us even better news. In 2016 the number of unarmed black males killed by police was down to just 16. I don’t want to be insensitive by calling this “better news” and saying “just” 16 unarmed Black males were killed by police. Every life is precious. Each of these deaths is tragic, but this also represents progress, not an epidemic. BTW – most of all unarmed shooting victims were resisting arrest or fleeing police, which is another lesson.
Finally, the NFL needs some fact checkers on their staffs. They not only should check out the real figures as I have outlined them above, but they need to realize that 72% of Americans think that kneeling for the National Anthem is unpatriotic. These are the people who fill the stands each week or watch games on TV. It is a big industry, but no business can alienate its customer base with impunity and survive. Ratings are down and will continue to decline until the NFL figures out how to address the issue and celebrate the country at the same time.
Maybe the Cowboys are on to something. The team knelt BEFORE the anthem and then stood for it. They still got booed when they knelt, but got applauded when they stood. Bottom line, the NFL needs to become about football again and maybe the Cowboys can be America’s team again by leading the way through this issue.
I didn’t write this article because I think that America is perfect or that we have experienced total harmony of the races. I write this to bring some balance to this discussion. I believe that America today is the best place to live in this world and even at any time in its history. Because of our foundation, we have made great progress over the years and I have no doubt that we will make more in the future. I have great confidence in the vast majority of the American people who are united behind the concepts of equal rights, equal justice and equal opportunity for all people.
We all need to ignore the emotionally charged, vitriolic rhetoric of the extremists who are trying to tear this country apart for their own selfish purposes, and listen to the good hearts of the average American. We need to stop the finger pointing and focus on solutions, and for that just watch my video entitled – Race in America, Solutions. Here is a link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kVsN7TO-XU.
Thursday, September 7, 2017
DACA - What Does it Really Mean?
DACA – Don’t Ask Congress to do Anything
The View from the Middle
President Trump has just given our Congress an opportunity to begin to claw its way back to credibility. So far, this Republican Congress has delivered an epic failure in passing any meaningful legislation. Paul Ryan specifically misled President Trump when he suggested that he start his legislative agenda by repealing and replacing Obamacare. He led Trump to believe that this was a slam-dunk and yet he failed to get his initial proposal through the House and ended up barely passing a weak alternative, which Mitch McConnell pronounced DOA in the Senate.
Then Mitch McConnell botched his effort to pass anything on repeal and replace. This was a slap in the face to the President and to every person who voted for a Republican Senate based on Republican promises to fix our healthcare problem. Finally, John McCain made a mockery of his promises to his constituents and to the President with his grandstanding rejection of repeal of Obamacare in the Senate.
I’m not even going to get into the appropriateness of Obamacare. This is impotence, plain and simple, and is exactly what the American people are sick of. Now Trump has served up a soft ball for the Republicans in Congress. 86% of Democrats and even 69% of Republicans (about 80% overall) support this group defined as “dreamers”.
Who are these people anyway? They are young people who were brought into this country when they two, three, four years old and now are productive citizens. This is not MS-13. These are not rapists, murderers or thieves. They know no other country than the US! Even if we were able to round them up, where would we send them? Yes, we must secure the border as we come to grips this group, but there should be no doubt that these are the very people to whom we should show compassion.
This is the biggest favor that the President could have done for Congress. DACA is an unconstitutional executive order, which was about to be challenged, and I’m sure thrown out by our judicial branch. Even President Obama alluded to this before he signed this order when he said, “I’m President, not a king.” Even after he signed it he said that it was not a permanent solution. DACA was a short term measure meant to give these young people some piece of mind while Congress delivered the appropriate, constitutional, legislative answer which would deliver real security and peace of mind for this group. Of course, in classic “swamp” style, Congress has delivered nothing.
Now is your chance, Republicans. Trump has cleared the decks for you by compromising with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (not my favorite people) on the debt ceiling, government funding and Hurricane Harvey relief. There are two messages in this compromise. First, to the Republican Congress - get your s—t together. Here’s an issue with massive public support and you better deal with it now. You’ve got six months you slugs. Get off your dead butts and pass some meaningful legislation.
The second message is also clear. If the Republican majority doesn’t start supporting the Trump agenda, there are things Trump can accomplish with Democratic support. Remember, he was once a Democrat and even ran as President with some very moderate positions on healthcare and even immigration. Trump may turn to the Democrats, be successful and run for a second term…as a Democrat. Not since Teddy Roosevelt has anything like that happened. Now, that would be historic. Is that what this Congress wants to be remembered for?
The View from the Middle
President Trump has just given our Congress an opportunity to begin to claw its way back to credibility. So far, this Republican Congress has delivered an epic failure in passing any meaningful legislation. Paul Ryan specifically misled President Trump when he suggested that he start his legislative agenda by repealing and replacing Obamacare. He led Trump to believe that this was a slam-dunk and yet he failed to get his initial proposal through the House and ended up barely passing a weak alternative, which Mitch McConnell pronounced DOA in the Senate.
Then Mitch McConnell botched his effort to pass anything on repeal and replace. This was a slap in the face to the President and to every person who voted for a Republican Senate based on Republican promises to fix our healthcare problem. Finally, John McCain made a mockery of his promises to his constituents and to the President with his grandstanding rejection of repeal of Obamacare in the Senate.
I’m not even going to get into the appropriateness of Obamacare. This is impotence, plain and simple, and is exactly what the American people are sick of. Now Trump has served up a soft ball for the Republicans in Congress. 86% of Democrats and even 69% of Republicans (about 80% overall) support this group defined as “dreamers”.
Who are these people anyway? They are young people who were brought into this country when they two, three, four years old and now are productive citizens. This is not MS-13. These are not rapists, murderers or thieves. They know no other country than the US! Even if we were able to round them up, where would we send them? Yes, we must secure the border as we come to grips this group, but there should be no doubt that these are the very people to whom we should show compassion.
This is the biggest favor that the President could have done for Congress. DACA is an unconstitutional executive order, which was about to be challenged, and I’m sure thrown out by our judicial branch. Even President Obama alluded to this before he signed this order when he said, “I’m President, not a king.” Even after he signed it he said that it was not a permanent solution. DACA was a short term measure meant to give these young people some piece of mind while Congress delivered the appropriate, constitutional, legislative answer which would deliver real security and peace of mind for this group. Of course, in classic “swamp” style, Congress has delivered nothing.
Now is your chance, Republicans. Trump has cleared the decks for you by compromising with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (not my favorite people) on the debt ceiling, government funding and Hurricane Harvey relief. There are two messages in this compromise. First, to the Republican Congress - get your s—t together. Here’s an issue with massive public support and you better deal with it now. You’ve got six months you slugs. Get off your dead butts and pass some meaningful legislation.
The second message is also clear. If the Republican majority doesn’t start supporting the Trump agenda, there are things Trump can accomplish with Democratic support. Remember, he was once a Democrat and even ran as President with some very moderate positions on healthcare and even immigration. Trump may turn to the Democrats, be successful and run for a second term…as a Democrat. Not since Teddy Roosevelt has anything like that happened. Now, that would be historic. Is that what this Congress wants to be remembered for?
Thursday, August 31, 2017
All's Fair in Love & War & Politics - Not!
All’s Fair is Love and War and Politics, Right?
The View from the Middle
Last night I was sitting on my back porch discussing the issues of the day with two friends who are often opposed to my political positions. Yes, some of my best friends are liberal Democrats. During our discussion, the subject of the condemnation of Melania Trump’s shoes came up. In case you missed this ludicrous story, Melania was resoundingly denounced by the lame stream media for wearing high heel shoes as she boarded Air Force One for her trip to the Hurricane Harvey disaster area. I brought it up to demonstrate the new low to which the media has dipped in their desperate effort to criticize anything Trump.
Believe it or not, one of my friends argued that this was a legitimate story because, “All’s fair in love and war and politics” and if your goal is to destroy our sitting President then even this piece of trivia was worth highlighting. Like most people, he hadn’t heard “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would have said. Melania got off the Air Force One in a pair of tennis shoes. Most people will, in fact, miss the second half of this story because, as usual, the lie or distortion appears on the front page but the correction and or clarification appears on page 15 of section Z.
Two points became clear to me after I heard this “all’s fair” comment. First, while this cliché’ may be very clever, it is not true. People who want to rationalize their own lying, cheating and abusive behavior use it. I’m sure Hitler was a big fan of this saying as is ISIS as they burn people alive in cages. Even in war we have rules and you would think that love would deliver even purer motives. 1st Corinthians says, “Love is patient and kind. It does not boast and is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.” It also says that love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth and it always protects, trusts, hopes and preserves. It says nothing about deception, demonization and ridicule.
People ask me why I defend Trump so much. After all, he’s not a politician (that’s actually a plus for me) and he often says things that make me cringe, and I will criticize him when he does. I defend him because he is under relentless attack from Democrats, the lame stream media and “the swamp” who wake up every morning with the goal to condemn whatever he does, no matter what! These are the kind of people who will resort to denouncing Melania’s shoes. These people will even figure out how to criticize her change into tennis shoes when she got to Corpus Christie.
Trump denounced the violence in Charlottesville, on both sides. How dare he?! Even if it was absolutely true, he should have only criticized the Neo-Nazis, KKK and white supremacists. Then when he actually does condemn all of those parties by name. “Sorry, it’s too late!!” his critics will chant. Antifa has been escalating their violence for eight months and we finally got Nancy Pelosi to condemn their violence. That was eight months after the start and three days after the most recent event in Berkley, but that’s not too late? And that’s just Pelosi. What about Schumer? Clinton? Obama?
It is obvious that the leaders of this “Trump can NEVER do anything right” campaign will do anything to distract, disrupt and hinder this President’s efforts. They would rather see him fail even if that would have devastating consequences for our country, than see him succeed and have the country prosper. Why? Just follow the money, and the power. The American people may suffer tremendously if we handicap our President to these unprecedented levels, but the leaders of the “Hate Trump” thug groups will do just fine.
My other friend, interestingly, suggested that there were selfish, evil, corrupt and narcissistic people on both sides of the political spectrum and that we should come together “in the middle” (his words, not mine) and work to actually find solutions to our problems. I must agree with that wisdom.
So, when you see the unhinged, unbalanced, hyperbolic reports on either side of the political argument, reject them!! Let me even appeal to Obama fans out there who complained that he had obstructionist elements in his path. Is what you condemned before now commendable because the shoe is on the other foot? Is it OK to lie, cheat, distort and demonize to further your side’s argument? If your answer is yes, then you can wrap yourself up in your “All’s fair” blanket, but recognize that we’ll never resolve any of our issues if we play with this divisive, selfish and even inaccurate philosophy.
The View from the Middle
Last night I was sitting on my back porch discussing the issues of the day with two friends who are often opposed to my political positions. Yes, some of my best friends are liberal Democrats. During our discussion, the subject of the condemnation of Melania Trump’s shoes came up. In case you missed this ludicrous story, Melania was resoundingly denounced by the lame stream media for wearing high heel shoes as she boarded Air Force One for her trip to the Hurricane Harvey disaster area. I brought it up to demonstrate the new low to which the media has dipped in their desperate effort to criticize anything Trump.
Believe it or not, one of my friends argued that this was a legitimate story because, “All’s fair in love and war and politics” and if your goal is to destroy our sitting President then even this piece of trivia was worth highlighting. Like most people, he hadn’t heard “the rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would have said. Melania got off the Air Force One in a pair of tennis shoes. Most people will, in fact, miss the second half of this story because, as usual, the lie or distortion appears on the front page but the correction and or clarification appears on page 15 of section Z.
Two points became clear to me after I heard this “all’s fair” comment. First, while this cliché’ may be very clever, it is not true. People who want to rationalize their own lying, cheating and abusive behavior use it. I’m sure Hitler was a big fan of this saying as is ISIS as they burn people alive in cages. Even in war we have rules and you would think that love would deliver even purer motives. 1st Corinthians says, “Love is patient and kind. It does not boast and is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, is not easily angered and keeps no record of wrongs.” It also says that love does not delight in evil but rejoices in truth and it always protects, trusts, hopes and preserves. It says nothing about deception, demonization and ridicule.
People ask me why I defend Trump so much. After all, he’s not a politician (that’s actually a plus for me) and he often says things that make me cringe, and I will criticize him when he does. I defend him because he is under relentless attack from Democrats, the lame stream media and “the swamp” who wake up every morning with the goal to condemn whatever he does, no matter what! These are the kind of people who will resort to denouncing Melania’s shoes. These people will even figure out how to criticize her change into tennis shoes when she got to Corpus Christie.
Trump denounced the violence in Charlottesville, on both sides. How dare he?! Even if it was absolutely true, he should have only criticized the Neo-Nazis, KKK and white supremacists. Then when he actually does condemn all of those parties by name. “Sorry, it’s too late!!” his critics will chant. Antifa has been escalating their violence for eight months and we finally got Nancy Pelosi to condemn their violence. That was eight months after the start and three days after the most recent event in Berkley, but that’s not too late? And that’s just Pelosi. What about Schumer? Clinton? Obama?
It is obvious that the leaders of this “Trump can NEVER do anything right” campaign will do anything to distract, disrupt and hinder this President’s efforts. They would rather see him fail even if that would have devastating consequences for our country, than see him succeed and have the country prosper. Why? Just follow the money, and the power. The American people may suffer tremendously if we handicap our President to these unprecedented levels, but the leaders of the “Hate Trump” thug groups will do just fine.
My other friend, interestingly, suggested that there were selfish, evil, corrupt and narcissistic people on both sides of the political spectrum and that we should come together “in the middle” (his words, not mine) and work to actually find solutions to our problems. I must agree with that wisdom.
So, when you see the unhinged, unbalanced, hyperbolic reports on either side of the political argument, reject them!! Let me even appeal to Obama fans out there who complained that he had obstructionist elements in his path. Is what you condemned before now commendable because the shoe is on the other foot? Is it OK to lie, cheat, distort and demonize to further your side’s argument? If your answer is yes, then you can wrap yourself up in your “All’s fair” blanket, but recognize that we’ll never resolve any of our issues if we play with this divisive, selfish and even inaccurate philosophy.
Wednesday, August 23, 2017
Lincoln - With Him or Against Him?
Abraham Lincoln – Are You With Him or Against Him?
The View from the Middle
Abraham Lincoln once pondered that only about 10% of our country held extreme political views. He suggested that 90% of Americans are ideological moderates who are fundamentally good and fair people who can disagree without resorting to hate and often compromise for the greater good. To be fair, he also implied that the radical 10% was evenly split between the fanatical right and the rabid left. I tend to agree with Mr. Lincoln, which always makes me feel safe.
In an effort to support the 16th President’s position, let me be so bold as to speak for the 90%, to which I think Lincoln not only alluded, but also identified with. I will unequivocally denounce the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo-Nazi’s and all white supremacists groups in this country and around the world. Any group that denies equal justice and opportunity for any other group not only violates the spirit of our country as expressed in The Declaration of Independence, but also the letter of out laws as laid out in our Constitution.
Call them what you will (bigots, racists, supremacist), I condemn them all. But while I castigate the extreme of what some might call the right side of the political spectrum, let me do the same for the other extremists. I denounce any group or individual who encourages the murder of our law enforcement officers. No collection of humans is perfect, but I believe the VAST majority of our police officers are just trying to keep us safe and deserve our respect. When I hear people chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” I must condemn that strenuously. When I hear these chants, I wonder why our police officers would even do that job for the piddling amount of money we pay them, and how our lives with really be without them.
I will also admonish anyone who will deny others the right of free speech. The Supreme Court has defined free speech very broadly and would definitely agree with Patrick Henry (or Evelyn Beatrice Hall) who declared that while, “I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This, fortunately, includes racists and Neo-Nazis. I say “fortunately” purposefully, because I believe that the best rebuke to bigots, or racists or Neo-Nazis is their own words. The 90% will never be convinced by the ugly, malicious, absurd lies of these monsters. In fact, they may even enlighten some of their own extreme followers as they spew their vitriol.
Of course, I also disavow any group or individual who hates white people just because of the color of their skin. While it has become fashionable to demonize Caucasians, especially older white males, I have found no race, gender, creed or age group that has a monopoly on nobility or evil. All people have the capacity for decency and wickedness and have proved that time and again over history. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit to that undeniable truth.
Now, as polar opposite as these groups are, what could they possibly have in common? Prejudice! When you peal back these ugly onions you find that they all need to get their following to hate some other group without real cause. They must convince the 90% to leave the truth and their senses behind and prejudge scores of people according to their preconceived, erroneous and often imaginary notions.
Don’t be persuaded by the malignant dribble spouted by these extreme groups. Denounce all of them. As Americans we want and need more dialogue, not less. We need more understanding, empathy and forgiveness, not less. And certainly we need more real compromise, and not the childish obstructionism we see in Washington. Get on the side of Abraham Lincoln who resolved one of our country’s greatest challenges by listening, even to his rivals, and looked for the good in people, expecting to find it. If we do the same, as with Abe, we will surely find it!
The View from the Middle
Abraham Lincoln once pondered that only about 10% of our country held extreme political views. He suggested that 90% of Americans are ideological moderates who are fundamentally good and fair people who can disagree without resorting to hate and often compromise for the greater good. To be fair, he also implied that the radical 10% was evenly split between the fanatical right and the rabid left. I tend to agree with Mr. Lincoln, which always makes me feel safe.
In an effort to support the 16th President’s position, let me be so bold as to speak for the 90%, to which I think Lincoln not only alluded, but also identified with. I will unequivocally denounce the Ku Klux Klan, the Neo-Nazi’s and all white supremacists groups in this country and around the world. Any group that denies equal justice and opportunity for any other group not only violates the spirit of our country as expressed in The Declaration of Independence, but also the letter of out laws as laid out in our Constitution.
Call them what you will (bigots, racists, supremacist), I condemn them all. But while I castigate the extreme of what some might call the right side of the political spectrum, let me do the same for the other extremists. I denounce any group or individual who encourages the murder of our law enforcement officers. No collection of humans is perfect, but I believe the VAST majority of our police officers are just trying to keep us safe and deserve our respect. When I hear people chanting, “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want it? Now!” I must condemn that strenuously. When I hear these chants, I wonder why our police officers would even do that job for the piddling amount of money we pay them, and how our lives with really be without them.
I will also admonish anyone who will deny others the right of free speech. The Supreme Court has defined free speech very broadly and would definitely agree with Patrick Henry (or Evelyn Beatrice Hall) who declared that while, “I disagree with what you say, I will defend to the death your right to say it.” This, fortunately, includes racists and Neo-Nazis. I say “fortunately” purposefully, because I believe that the best rebuke to bigots, or racists or Neo-Nazis is their own words. The 90% will never be convinced by the ugly, malicious, absurd lies of these monsters. In fact, they may even enlighten some of their own extreme followers as they spew their vitriol.
Of course, I also disavow any group or individual who hates white people just because of the color of their skin. While it has become fashionable to demonize Caucasians, especially older white males, I have found no race, gender, creed or age group that has a monopoly on nobility or evil. All people have the capacity for decency and wickedness and have proved that time and again over history. If we are honest with ourselves we will admit to that undeniable truth.
Now, as polar opposite as these groups are, what could they possibly have in common? Prejudice! When you peal back these ugly onions you find that they all need to get their following to hate some other group without real cause. They must convince the 90% to leave the truth and their senses behind and prejudge scores of people according to their preconceived, erroneous and often imaginary notions.
Don’t be persuaded by the malignant dribble spouted by these extreme groups. Denounce all of them. As Americans we want and need more dialogue, not less. We need more understanding, empathy and forgiveness, not less. And certainly we need more real compromise, and not the childish obstructionism we see in Washington. Get on the side of Abraham Lincoln who resolved one of our country’s greatest challenges by listening, even to his rivals, and looked for the good in people, expecting to find it. If we do the same, as with Abe, we will surely find it!
Monday, August 14, 2017
Charlottesville, Arguing over the Unarguable
Charlottesville, Arguing Over the Unarguable
The View from the Middle
Abraham Lincoln once made a profound statement on the perspective and motives of people. He said, “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you certainly will.” I’m certain that Honest Abe would find himself a frequent defender of Donald Trump against those groups who have already decided that they will oppose, resist and demonize everything that the President says or does.
Let’s take a look at what President Trump actually said about the dreadful violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this last weekend that lead to the tragic death of Heather Heyer. He said, “(he) Condemns in the strongest possible terms “this” egregious display of bigotry and violence on many sides.” There is much to defend in this statement. I also condemn bigotry and violence no matter what its source.
But some people only heard the last three words and took that as some sort of endorsement of the white supremacist groups. Of course, I think that is ludicrous and I applaud Trump taking this opportunity to denounce ALL hate groups who deny equal opportunity and justice for anyone.
According to ABC News, there are over 900 hate groups in America today. They identified 130 different Ku Klux Klan groups (started by the democrats, by the way) and 100 white nationalist groups, but they also identified over 190 black separatist groups as well as anti-Muslim, anti-Zionist and even “general” hate groups (whatever they are). We should rebuke ALL of these hate groups at every opportunity, and Charlottesville is one of those opportunities.
I will come out right now and condemn all of these groups, including the white supremacist group whose name defines prejudice. I will also condemn The New Black Panther Party when it says that they want to, “kill white babies”. I denounce Louis Farrakhan when he spews anti-Jewish swill and any group that would like to deny freedom of religion to peace loving Muslims.
The President just now reinforced his message against bigotry, racism and violence and specifically condemned the Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan. Do I think this will be good enough for the “never Trumpers” or the “I just hate Trump” people? I doubt it.
At this point, if you can’t accept Trump’s overall message of unity, love for each other and the denouncement of hatred, bigotry and racism with specific condemnation of the Charlottesville white supremacist groups, I must refer you to Honest Abe. Check your bias at the door. Pretend that Barack Obama said these exact same words, which is certainly NOT a stretch, and you just might have to agree with this position, as I do!!
The View from the Middle
Abraham Lincoln once made a profound statement on the perspective and motives of people. He said, “If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you certainly will.” I’m certain that Honest Abe would find himself a frequent defender of Donald Trump against those groups who have already decided that they will oppose, resist and demonize everything that the President says or does.
Let’s take a look at what President Trump actually said about the dreadful violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, this last weekend that lead to the tragic death of Heather Heyer. He said, “(he) Condemns in the strongest possible terms “this” egregious display of bigotry and violence on many sides.” There is much to defend in this statement. I also condemn bigotry and violence no matter what its source.
But some people only heard the last three words and took that as some sort of endorsement of the white supremacist groups. Of course, I think that is ludicrous and I applaud Trump taking this opportunity to denounce ALL hate groups who deny equal opportunity and justice for anyone.
According to ABC News, there are over 900 hate groups in America today. They identified 130 different Ku Klux Klan groups (started by the democrats, by the way) and 100 white nationalist groups, but they also identified over 190 black separatist groups as well as anti-Muslim, anti-Zionist and even “general” hate groups (whatever they are). We should rebuke ALL of these hate groups at every opportunity, and Charlottesville is one of those opportunities.
I will come out right now and condemn all of these groups, including the white supremacist group whose name defines prejudice. I will also condemn The New Black Panther Party when it says that they want to, “kill white babies”. I denounce Louis Farrakhan when he spews anti-Jewish swill and any group that would like to deny freedom of religion to peace loving Muslims.
The President just now reinforced his message against bigotry, racism and violence and specifically condemned the Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan. Do I think this will be good enough for the “never Trumpers” or the “I just hate Trump” people? I doubt it.
At this point, if you can’t accept Trump’s overall message of unity, love for each other and the denouncement of hatred, bigotry and racism with specific condemnation of the Charlottesville white supremacist groups, I must refer you to Honest Abe. Check your bias at the door. Pretend that Barack Obama said these exact same words, which is certainly NOT a stretch, and you just might have to agree with this position, as I do!!
Monday, August 7, 2017
Privatization of SS - Part Two
Privatizing SS – The Rest of the Story
The View from the Middle
A couple of weeks ago I told you a story about Jane or John Doe who started working in 1970 at age 21 and retired in 2015 making the US median income for his or her entire life. The fact is that this person would earn $1874 per month is Social Security payments from our generous yet corrupt and inept government. So, if Jane or John would die one month later, they would have paid into Social Security for his or her entire life and had $1,874 to show for it.
This whopping $1,874 monthly payment is a product of Jane or John’s SS taxes paid, AND the matching taxes paid by Jane or John’s employer. Today, that total tax paid per year is 12.4% (6.2% contributed by the employee and 6.2% by the employer).
I then calculated what an investment in an S&P 500 index fund would have produced just for the 6.2% employee paid portion over those same years. That monthly investment would have produced a nest egg of $467,989 with a monthly potential income of $3,159. If Jane would die one day after retirement, she would have almost a half a million dollars to give to her heirs vs nothing from our government.
Today, you will hear “The rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey would have said!! If Jane and John were allowed to also invest the employee portion of their SS payments, the numbers double, as you might expect. Jane and John would retire with a nest egg of almost a MILLION DOLLARS ($935,978) and a monthly income of $6.318. Again, this compares to zero nest egg and a monthly income of $1,874 from our government.
The million-dollar nest egg is NOT a projection, but just a calculation of actual results of the S&P 500 from 1970 to 2015. The $6,318 monthly income simply assumes a similar return for that index fund in the future, which is 8.1%.
So here is the bottom line. If the government had just taken Jane’s contribution and her employer’s payment and invested it in a simple index fund, she would have had almost a MILLION DOLLARS and a monthly income of over $6,000. But our government has managed to reduce these results to ZERO lump sum and a paltry monthly income of $1,874. The government steals the rest from each and every one of us.
The reason I decided to release these numbers in two steps is because they are so wildly disparate that they are almost unbelievable if exposed in one. Can there be any more evidence of the inefficiency, incompetence and corruption of our federal government. When will we learn? We need to make our government smaller, not bigger, and give the money and liberty back to the people. Remember the words of Ronald Reagan who said, “The 10 most frightening words in the English language are - I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
The View from the Middle
A couple of weeks ago I told you a story about Jane or John Doe who started working in 1970 at age 21 and retired in 2015 making the US median income for his or her entire life. The fact is that this person would earn $1874 per month is Social Security payments from our generous yet corrupt and inept government. So, if Jane or John would die one month later, they would have paid into Social Security for his or her entire life and had $1,874 to show for it.
This whopping $1,874 monthly payment is a product of Jane or John’s SS taxes paid, AND the matching taxes paid by Jane or John’s employer. Today, that total tax paid per year is 12.4% (6.2% contributed by the employee and 6.2% by the employer).
I then calculated what an investment in an S&P 500 index fund would have produced just for the 6.2% employee paid portion over those same years. That monthly investment would have produced a nest egg of $467,989 with a monthly potential income of $3,159. If Jane would die one day after retirement, she would have almost a half a million dollars to give to her heirs vs nothing from our government.
Today, you will hear “The rest of the story”, as Paul Harvey would have said!! If Jane and John were allowed to also invest the employee portion of their SS payments, the numbers double, as you might expect. Jane and John would retire with a nest egg of almost a MILLION DOLLARS ($935,978) and a monthly income of $6.318. Again, this compares to zero nest egg and a monthly income of $1,874 from our government.
The million-dollar nest egg is NOT a projection, but just a calculation of actual results of the S&P 500 from 1970 to 2015. The $6,318 monthly income simply assumes a similar return for that index fund in the future, which is 8.1%.
So here is the bottom line. If the government had just taken Jane’s contribution and her employer’s payment and invested it in a simple index fund, she would have had almost a MILLION DOLLARS and a monthly income of over $6,000. But our government has managed to reduce these results to ZERO lump sum and a paltry monthly income of $1,874. The government steals the rest from each and every one of us.
The reason I decided to release these numbers in two steps is because they are so wildly disparate that they are almost unbelievable if exposed in one. Can there be any more evidence of the inefficiency, incompetence and corruption of our federal government. When will we learn? We need to make our government smaller, not bigger, and give the money and liberty back to the people. Remember the words of Ronald Reagan who said, “The 10 most frightening words in the English language are - I’m from the government and I’m here to help you.”
Monday, July 24, 2017
Privatization of Social Security - Insanity or Genius?
Privatizing Social Security - Insanity or Genius?
The View from the Middle
In case there is any confusion about how I feel about our federal government, let me make my position perfectly clear. I believe it is a “waste, fraud and abuse” machine. During her presidential campaign, Carly Fiorina suggested that our government is too big, too costly, too complicated, too corrupt and too inept and that it is crushing the dreams and aspirations of our people. I’m a Carly Fiorina fan.
In the governmental world of $100 hammers, shrimps on treadmills and bridges to nowhere, what makes you think that it would be any more effective at managing your retirement funds? Social Security may have begun with good intentions, but as with anything connected to big government it has been perverted and mismanaged through the years. In the beginning, for example, SS funds were to be put in a “lockbox” and to be protected from the greedy hands of politicians in Washington. But in true government fashion, these funds have been spent leaving nothing but US treasury IOU’s behind.
Today, our government is spending those funds faster than they are coming in and has to admit that the SS trust fund will be insolvent by 2035. At that point, I predict that our federal government will simply raise taxes to cover the difference, not because it is right, but simply because they can.
If we really want the concept of “Social Security” to be recognized, why don’t we take these funds out of the greedy, unscrupulous hands of our government officials and put them in the hands of financially astute managers who can invest that money for the participants? Let me help you with that decision by making a comparison that our government is counting on no one making.
Let’s look at a Jane or John Doe who began working in 1970 at the age of 21, and retired at 66 in 2015 making America's median income every year. The Social Security trust fund will guarantee (not really – remember that this fund will be insolvent in 2035) a monthly income of $1,874. This is certainly not enough to live on unless you plan to live in a tent and eat PB&J sandwiches for the rest of you life. It is intended, however to supplement any personal savings or retirement programs you may have or be eligible for.
There are a number of flaws in this system. First of all, if Jane or John dies a month after their 66th birthday, he or she will have contributed to the trust fund for 44 years and received a whopping $1,874 in return. That kind of sucks! Even if they lived to age 79 (current life expectancy in US) SS would deliver only $292,279 in their lifetime.
Now, if they had made the same payments/investments (personal plus matching employer contributions) into an S&P 500 index fund, Jane or John would have retired with $935,978 given the 8.1% average return of the S&P 500 over their working lives. The benefits to this approach are abundant.
First, if you died the next month, your beneficiaries would inherit almost a million dollars vs. a big goose egg from the current SS plan. Next, that money could generate a monthly income for you. Let’s say that your investments continue to produce the same 8.1% return that it did for Jane and John’s lifetime, this would produce a monthly income of $6,318 or more than three times your Social Security payment PLUS you still have your $935,978!!! These are not projections. This is reality, and given this reality, who would choose less than a third of the monthly income and no nest egg vs. the simple privatized plan described above.
Let’s be honest, the government has totally perverted the idea of Social Security. First, by spending your hard earned money to buy votes instead of putting into the “lockbox” they promised to get the SS bill passed. Then Washington dramatically underperformed the private market and in effect stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from every American that has retired under their plan. If Washington were a person, it would be in jail fighting with Bernie Madoff for the title of “scammer of the century”.
If politicians really cared about the American people they would develop a program that could deliver the results I described above. They could provide the disciplined investing by taking the money out of all our paychecks every month as they already do (this may be the only thing the government is good at). They could also offer a few investment plans (high, low and medium risk) that we the citizens could choose from. Believe me, the financial industry would fiercely compete for the opportunity to manage these funds. Even a tiny fee of .25% (that’s a quarter of 1%) would yield them billions in profits every year.
I’m with Carly. Why would we trust a government that has proven itself to be both corrupt and inept (a deadly combination) when we could invest in America and create a retirement income with real buying power? If we can’t even call Washington on this con, there may be no hope for us until they take all of our dollars and they give us back 30 cents worth of services in return while THEY live in mansions, feast on $300 burgers (yes they do exist) and guzzle $1,000 bottles of wine. Have you seen The Hunger Games?
The View from the Middle
In case there is any confusion about how I feel about our federal government, let me make my position perfectly clear. I believe it is a “waste, fraud and abuse” machine. During her presidential campaign, Carly Fiorina suggested that our government is too big, too costly, too complicated, too corrupt and too inept and that it is crushing the dreams and aspirations of our people. I’m a Carly Fiorina fan.
In the governmental world of $100 hammers, shrimps on treadmills and bridges to nowhere, what makes you think that it would be any more effective at managing your retirement funds? Social Security may have begun with good intentions, but as with anything connected to big government it has been perverted and mismanaged through the years. In the beginning, for example, SS funds were to be put in a “lockbox” and to be protected from the greedy hands of politicians in Washington. But in true government fashion, these funds have been spent leaving nothing but US treasury IOU’s behind.
Today, our government is spending those funds faster than they are coming in and has to admit that the SS trust fund will be insolvent by 2035. At that point, I predict that our federal government will simply raise taxes to cover the difference, not because it is right, but simply because they can.
If we really want the concept of “Social Security” to be recognized, why don’t we take these funds out of the greedy, unscrupulous hands of our government officials and put them in the hands of financially astute managers who can invest that money for the participants? Let me help you with that decision by making a comparison that our government is counting on no one making.
Let’s look at a Jane or John Doe who began working in 1970 at the age of 21, and retired at 66 in 2015 making America's median income every year. The Social Security trust fund will guarantee (not really – remember that this fund will be insolvent in 2035) a monthly income of $1,874. This is certainly not enough to live on unless you plan to live in a tent and eat PB&J sandwiches for the rest of you life. It is intended, however to supplement any personal savings or retirement programs you may have or be eligible for.
There are a number of flaws in this system. First of all, if Jane or John dies a month after their 66th birthday, he or she will have contributed to the trust fund for 44 years and received a whopping $1,874 in return. That kind of sucks! Even if they lived to age 79 (current life expectancy in US) SS would deliver only $292,279 in their lifetime.
Now, if they had made the same payments/investments (personal plus matching employer contributions) into an S&P 500 index fund, Jane or John would have retired with $935,978 given the 8.1% average return of the S&P 500 over their working lives. The benefits to this approach are abundant.
First, if you died the next month, your beneficiaries would inherit almost a million dollars vs. a big goose egg from the current SS plan. Next, that money could generate a monthly income for you. Let’s say that your investments continue to produce the same 8.1% return that it did for Jane and John’s lifetime, this would produce a monthly income of $6,318 or more than three times your Social Security payment PLUS you still have your $935,978!!! These are not projections. This is reality, and given this reality, who would choose less than a third of the monthly income and no nest egg vs. the simple privatized plan described above.
Let’s be honest, the government has totally perverted the idea of Social Security. First, by spending your hard earned money to buy votes instead of putting into the “lockbox” they promised to get the SS bill passed. Then Washington dramatically underperformed the private market and in effect stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from every American that has retired under their plan. If Washington were a person, it would be in jail fighting with Bernie Madoff for the title of “scammer of the century”.
If politicians really cared about the American people they would develop a program that could deliver the results I described above. They could provide the disciplined investing by taking the money out of all our paychecks every month as they already do (this may be the only thing the government is good at). They could also offer a few investment plans (high, low and medium risk) that we the citizens could choose from. Believe me, the financial industry would fiercely compete for the opportunity to manage these funds. Even a tiny fee of .25% (that’s a quarter of 1%) would yield them billions in profits every year.
I’m with Carly. Why would we trust a government that has proven itself to be both corrupt and inept (a deadly combination) when we could invest in America and create a retirement income with real buying power? If we can’t even call Washington on this con, there may be no hope for us until they take all of our dollars and they give us back 30 cents worth of services in return while THEY live in mansions, feast on $300 burgers (yes they do exist) and guzzle $1,000 bottles of wine. Have you seen The Hunger Games?
Friday, July 14, 2017
The Healthcare Debate
Here’s to Your Health
The View from the Middle
What if the government decided to make “free cars” to the list of unalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence? Of course, the government would have to become the sole provider of these cars and control production because they are so much smarter and more honest than we the citizens. The end result, in my opinion, is that everyone in the country would be driving a used Taurus, which our government would happily pay $100,000 for. Why, you ask, am I such a cynic?
The government loves the one thing that it is supposed to protect us from, and that is a monopoly. In a monopoly, there is no need for innovation. The shoppers have no choice. They have to come to the government for their free car. Why should the government offer choices? The cars are free! Take it or leave it. But why would they cost so much? A monopoly, which this would be, eliminates the incentive to be efficient, because there is no competition. Who needs to keep costs down? There’s only one choice, and we give the cars away for free (except for those pesky taxes they would have to take out of your paychecks every month).
And if you think a single payer health care system (which is what the Dems really want) would be any different, you are just kidding yourself. Costs would skyrocket. Patients wouldn’t care what tests are done. They wouldn’t care what those tests cost. After all, it’s free…isn’t it? And services would get worse. Doctors would be flooded with patient visits, because they’re free, right? Doctors would get paid less because they would have to accept whatever the government offers. This would cause these very smart people to choose other professions and eventually lead to a shortage of doctors.
I don’t know what is eventually going to be in the Republican healthcare bill, but I do have common sense and have talked to several doctors, so I have a strong opinion. First of all, it should allow people to choose what they are insured for or if they should even be insured at all. With Obamacare, for example, whether you are gay or 80 you must buy maternity care insurance. Really? Second, the government requires that you buy health insurance. Remember, in year one of Obamacare they made a big deal that the “fine/penalty/tax” for not buying was only $95 or 1% of your gross income, whichever was greater. Today, that fine can be as high as $5,000 for a person and $12,500 for a family. Who wants to bet that the “fine/penalty/tax” will eventually be higher than the insurance itself?
Next, we need to give our citizens the incentive to shop for services and doctors by giving them control of the money. Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) are a great way to accomplish this. Medicaid and Medicare could put money into accounts for their participants that can be spent on health care or even other needs if they have a balance at the year’s end. This will cause people to think about how much a procedure costs or how much a doctor charges and to compare prices. This will drive competition up and prices down as consumers take ownership of their healthcare dollars. It would also stimulate the economy as left over dollars are spent in the open market.
Finally, we must provide coverage for what people want, and the reality is that some people only want catastrophic insurance. Let’s admit it that is what insurance is about anyway. People want to be protected from the impact of a cataclysmic disease or accident that could lead to financial ruin. However, we have perverted the concept of healthcare insurance into something that pays every penny of every procedure and every doctor’s visit. That kind of insurance conceives patients who don’t ask what treatments cost or if they are even necessary. It drives up costs, which someone will eventually have to pay for. Remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch and the government has NO money. The taxpayer eventually pays the piper.
When the details come out for this new bill, look for the presence of HSA’s and catastrophic coverage while eliminating the mandates. Tort reform may have to come later because of the limitations of reconciliation process, but ask any doctor about this aspect of health insurance and the tremendous impact it could have on costs. Doctors want to run tests that will actually help the patient, not just to protect themselves from litigation. In the end, common sense is the answer.
The View from the Middle
What if the government decided to make “free cars” to the list of unalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence? Of course, the government would have to become the sole provider of these cars and control production because they are so much smarter and more honest than we the citizens. The end result, in my opinion, is that everyone in the country would be driving a used Taurus, which our government would happily pay $100,000 for. Why, you ask, am I such a cynic?
The government loves the one thing that it is supposed to protect us from, and that is a monopoly. In a monopoly, there is no need for innovation. The shoppers have no choice. They have to come to the government for their free car. Why should the government offer choices? The cars are free! Take it or leave it. But why would they cost so much? A monopoly, which this would be, eliminates the incentive to be efficient, because there is no competition. Who needs to keep costs down? There’s only one choice, and we give the cars away for free (except for those pesky taxes they would have to take out of your paychecks every month).
And if you think a single payer health care system (which is what the Dems really want) would be any different, you are just kidding yourself. Costs would skyrocket. Patients wouldn’t care what tests are done. They wouldn’t care what those tests cost. After all, it’s free…isn’t it? And services would get worse. Doctors would be flooded with patient visits, because they’re free, right? Doctors would get paid less because they would have to accept whatever the government offers. This would cause these very smart people to choose other professions and eventually lead to a shortage of doctors.
I don’t know what is eventually going to be in the Republican healthcare bill, but I do have common sense and have talked to several doctors, so I have a strong opinion. First of all, it should allow people to choose what they are insured for or if they should even be insured at all. With Obamacare, for example, whether you are gay or 80 you must buy maternity care insurance. Really? Second, the government requires that you buy health insurance. Remember, in year one of Obamacare they made a big deal that the “fine/penalty/tax” for not buying was only $95 or 1% of your gross income, whichever was greater. Today, that fine can be as high as $5,000 for a person and $12,500 for a family. Who wants to bet that the “fine/penalty/tax” will eventually be higher than the insurance itself?
Next, we need to give our citizens the incentive to shop for services and doctors by giving them control of the money. Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) are a great way to accomplish this. Medicaid and Medicare could put money into accounts for their participants that can be spent on health care or even other needs if they have a balance at the year’s end. This will cause people to think about how much a procedure costs or how much a doctor charges and to compare prices. This will drive competition up and prices down as consumers take ownership of their healthcare dollars. It would also stimulate the economy as left over dollars are spent in the open market.
Finally, we must provide coverage for what people want, and the reality is that some people only want catastrophic insurance. Let’s admit it that is what insurance is about anyway. People want to be protected from the impact of a cataclysmic disease or accident that could lead to financial ruin. However, we have perverted the concept of healthcare insurance into something that pays every penny of every procedure and every doctor’s visit. That kind of insurance conceives patients who don’t ask what treatments cost or if they are even necessary. It drives up costs, which someone will eventually have to pay for. Remember, there is no such thing as a free lunch and the government has NO money. The taxpayer eventually pays the piper.
When the details come out for this new bill, look for the presence of HSA’s and catastrophic coverage while eliminating the mandates. Tort reform may have to come later because of the limitations of reconciliation process, but ask any doctor about this aspect of health insurance and the tremendous impact it could have on costs. Doctors want to run tests that will actually help the patient, not just to protect themselves from litigation. In the end, common sense is the answer.
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Trump's First Budget
A Look at Trump’s Budget
The View from the Middle
While the lame stream media and the Democrat Party chase their “Russian collusion” tails and report one conspiracy theory after another that dominates nightly news coverage, I thought I would cover something of real importance, which has received about 15 seconds of collective coverage since it was released. Trump’s budget, which has been all but ignored by the media reveals much about Trump’s intentions, like them or not, for the country. And, I thought the best way to dramatize his new direction is to compare Trump’s budget to Barack Obama’s last budget.
Barack Obama’s budget increased government spending by 55% over 10 years from $4.1 trillion annually to $6.5 trillion. Total government spending over those 10 years was proposed to be $52.6 trillion. And Obama’s budget never balanced. In fact, annual deficits were proposed to increase every year after 2020 climaxing at almost $800 billion in 2026. In total, Barack Obama was planning to add $6.1 trillion to our debt and bring the total to just over $26 trillion in 2026. Remember, we are spending our children’s future as we accumulate this massive debt.
By comparison, Trump’s budget proposed only a 39% increase in annual government spending starting with $4.1 trillion in spending in 2018 and ending with only $5.7 trillion in 2027. That’s still a lot of money, but it is almost four trillion less than Obama’s ten year plan. And Trump’s budget actually does balance in ten years as annual deficits move from $440 billion in 2018 to a surplus of $16 billion in 2027. Again, that is still too much spending for my comfort, but it will reduce the proposed debt burden on our children by almost three trillion dollars compared to the Obama budget.
So, how does Trump propose to do this? First, he proposes to increase mandatory spending on things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by only 55% over those 10 years while Obama’s budget proposed a 66% increase over 10 years. The big question that the lame stream media is not asking is, “how does he plan to do that?” Is he going to “means-test” Social Security? Are reductions in Medicare and Medicaid reasonable? We don’t know because the lame stream media is too busy slurping their Russian vodka as they drool over their next collusion conspiracy theory.
Another component of Trump’s balance budget plan comes from an actual reduction in discretionary spending. Obama’s proposal increased annual discretionary spending by 9% over 10 years. Donald Trump plans to actually reduce that annual expenditure by almost 8%. And that all comes from non-defense spending like training, salaries and foreign aid since he proposes a modest increase in military spending.
Finally, Trump also plans to take in fewer receipts (taxes) over this ten year period and he suggests that our economy will grow slightly faster than the Obama proposal, so the American people seem to be much more well off.
There are legitimate questions that our lame stream media could be asking about Trump’s budget, but they aren’t. Directionally, as you might imagine, I am in favor of Trump’s budget. I prefer a smaller, less invasive, more efficient federal government and Trump’s proposal delivers that. Now if the media could get its collective heads out of its collective orifices we might learn a little more about how Trump plans to deliver this budget. Maybe the media and the Democrats are afraid that the answers might actually make too much sense.
The View from the Middle
While the lame stream media and the Democrat Party chase their “Russian collusion” tails and report one conspiracy theory after another that dominates nightly news coverage, I thought I would cover something of real importance, which has received about 15 seconds of collective coverage since it was released. Trump’s budget, which has been all but ignored by the media reveals much about Trump’s intentions, like them or not, for the country. And, I thought the best way to dramatize his new direction is to compare Trump’s budget to Barack Obama’s last budget.
Barack Obama’s budget increased government spending by 55% over 10 years from $4.1 trillion annually to $6.5 trillion. Total government spending over those 10 years was proposed to be $52.6 trillion. And Obama’s budget never balanced. In fact, annual deficits were proposed to increase every year after 2020 climaxing at almost $800 billion in 2026. In total, Barack Obama was planning to add $6.1 trillion to our debt and bring the total to just over $26 trillion in 2026. Remember, we are spending our children’s future as we accumulate this massive debt.
By comparison, Trump’s budget proposed only a 39% increase in annual government spending starting with $4.1 trillion in spending in 2018 and ending with only $5.7 trillion in 2027. That’s still a lot of money, but it is almost four trillion less than Obama’s ten year plan. And Trump’s budget actually does balance in ten years as annual deficits move from $440 billion in 2018 to a surplus of $16 billion in 2027. Again, that is still too much spending for my comfort, but it will reduce the proposed debt burden on our children by almost three trillion dollars compared to the Obama budget.
So, how does Trump propose to do this? First, he proposes to increase mandatory spending on things like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid by only 55% over those 10 years while Obama’s budget proposed a 66% increase over 10 years. The big question that the lame stream media is not asking is, “how does he plan to do that?” Is he going to “means-test” Social Security? Are reductions in Medicare and Medicaid reasonable? We don’t know because the lame stream media is too busy slurping their Russian vodka as they drool over their next collusion conspiracy theory.
Another component of Trump’s balance budget plan comes from an actual reduction in discretionary spending. Obama’s proposal increased annual discretionary spending by 9% over 10 years. Donald Trump plans to actually reduce that annual expenditure by almost 8%. And that all comes from non-defense spending like training, salaries and foreign aid since he proposes a modest increase in military spending.
Finally, Trump also plans to take in fewer receipts (taxes) over this ten year period and he suggests that our economy will grow slightly faster than the Obama proposal, so the American people seem to be much more well off.
There are legitimate questions that our lame stream media could be asking about Trump’s budget, but they aren’t. Directionally, as you might imagine, I am in favor of Trump’s budget. I prefer a smaller, less invasive, more efficient federal government and Trump’s proposal delivers that. Now if the media could get its collective heads out of its collective orifices we might learn a little more about how Trump plans to deliver this budget. Maybe the media and the Democrats are afraid that the answers might actually make too much sense.
Monday, June 5, 2017
The Paris Agreement - Just the Facts Ma'am
The Paris Agreement – Just the Facts, Ma’am
The View from the Middle
If you haven’t read the Paris Agreement, I recommend you do so. It’s only 25 pages long and the experience will allow you to cut through the hysterical rhetoric you’ve been hearing from the media and help you understand the upside and downside of our participation in it. There are very smart people on both sides of this issue so don’t let either side demonize you for your choice.
The View from the Middle
If you haven’t read the Paris Agreement, I recommend you do so. It’s only 25 pages long and the experience will allow you to cut through the hysterical rhetoric you’ve been hearing from the media and help you understand the upside and downside of our participation in it. There are very smart people on both sides of this issue so don’t let either side demonize you for your choice.
If you agree with Trump’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, “the left” will call you stupid, uncaring and greedy. They will probably accuse you of misogyny, homophobia, Islamaphobia, xenophobia and bigotry too, but I fail to see the connection. If you wanted to continue to participate in this agreement, “the right” (while less vocal) may accuse you of ignorance and blind loyalty. The truth is, as usual, somewhere in the middle. There are good reasons for withdrawal from or to support the agreement and Trump was going to get skewered no matter which way he went. If he decided to continue to support the Paris Accord, the media would have painted it as a broken campaign promise, but now he is just stupid, etc.
Make up your own mind, but let’s all deal with the facts, not apocalyptic projections. I’ve heard that the Marshall Islands will be underwater by 2070. Put that on your calendars for those of you who will still be alive by then. Of course the polar ice caps were supposed to be gone 10 years ago, but they stubbornly hang on, and millions of children are going to die of asthma attacks. Not that I am unsympathetic to asthma (my wife is a sufferer) but that is a claim that is easy to make but impossible to prove. Here is a fact – The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (some pretty smart folks) have projected that if all the provisions of the Paris Agreement are met, it will only result in a lowering of global temperatures by .2 degrees Celsius by 2100. That’s two tenths of one degree by 2100, and there are many assumptions built into that projection.
Let’s just deal with the facts. First fact – the Paris Agreement is non-binding. That means that all 175 countries can submit any grandiose plan they like, and if they don’t deliver on those plans there are NO consequences. In a group that includes Iran, Cuba and North Korea, I don’t have confidence in compliance. The United States, by contrast, does actually try to live up to it’s commitments, so let’s look at what exactly President Obama committed us to (remember, this was an executive action not passed through Congress. I wonder why?)
The first thing that the President committed us to is a 27% reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions by 2025. I don’t know about you, but that sounds like a lot, and how exactly are we going to do that? The short answer to that question is that we will have to convert energy we currently generate through fossil fuels to renewables. That sounds easy enough. Unfortunately, wind and solar combined only generate 3% of America’s energy today. Plus, when you take away government subsidies, they are much more expensive. This uncovers two problems. First, it is not practical to transition to renewables that quickly, AND if we tried, energy costs for the average American would “necessarily skyrocket”. Those are President Obama’s own words.
A side effect of this assault on our energy and manufacturing industries is going to be lost jobs. President Trump said that we could lose as many as 2.7 million jobs by 2025. That’s based on a study by insurance and risk management company NERA. I’m not sure if the job losses will be that great, but common sense should tell us that the disruption of our economy, increases in regulations and increased energy costs will kill jobs here.
The second thing Mr. Obama committed us to was money! By my count, the concept of transferring money from “developed” countries (us) to “developing” countries was mentioned 19 times in the Paris Agreement. Hillary Clinton said the US would coordinate a fund of $100 billion a year for this effort. The director of the Green Climate Fund, who would receive and distribute this money, suggested that the need would quickly rise to about $450 billion a year. BTW - I want the job of distributing that money. No threat of corruption there!! I looked at the leadership of that fund and you know what country is not represented? That’s right, The United States!! We’ll be the sugar daddy, of course, but will not be influential in the distribution of that sugar.
Since we are already running deficits here in the US, every penny of these new climate “goodie bags” will have to be borrowed. So, we will be borrowing money from China and giving it to – guess who? – China!! Another side note – of the 175 countries who signed the Paris Agreement, about 140 are considered “developing” countries that will receive funds from the “developed” countries, which I think means us. No wonder they received support from so many nations. BTW – Russia, India and China are all considered “developing” countries, thus eligible to receive these green funds.
I support Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement. I’m not saying we should trash the environment. We should continue to research global warming to insure we understand the real causes and find solutions. I’m a big believer in solar power. Some day we will figure out how to harness it effectively and efficiently, but that day is not today. We don’t need the Paris Agreement to do that and we certainly don’t need to borrow any more money in the name of the American people. The other 174 countries can go ahead with their plans and America will do just fine, thank you. Or, they could come back and put together an agreement that will be better for the American people and pass it through Congress.
Thursday, June 1, 2017
Muller - This could work out
Mueller? This Could Work Out
The View from the Middle
If you have followed my blog, you could have probably guessed that I was against the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate collusion by any Americans with the Russians in our elections. I took this position not because I feared what he or she would find, but because I felt this was an attempt by Democrats to drag this investigation out and thus thwart the administration’s attempt to pursue their agenda. I don’t believe that Trump himself had any connection with the Russians but I do believe that the primary motivation of Democrats is political. I have very little trust with anyone in Washington and right now the Democrats are at the bottom of my integrity list.
I also opposed a Special Counsel because I have confidence in the FBI. I did not have confidence in its Director, James Comey, but I did and still do support and respect the career law enforcement professionals there. Once Comey was gone, my hope for a thorough but expeditious investigation into this matter actually went up, so I would have been very happy to allow them to continue into their investigation and live with their findings.
Now, we have a Special Counsel and it is Robert Mueller. He is certainly qualified since he is former Director of the FBI and he has a reputation for being a thorough investigator. He is arguably above partisan politics since he was originally appointed to direct the FBI by George W. Bush and had his term extended by Barack Obama.
Personally, I think this is good news for Trump and bad news for Democrats. The Special Counsel’s investigation will take precedence over the House and Senate investigations, to which I say, “Hooray”. Neither party in these investigations is after the truth, but use their hearings to grandstand. Mueller should get to the truth and much faster than Congress would and even faster than a Comey-lead FBI, and that is what most Americans want.
But some Democrats could be caught in the Mueller crossfire. If Mueller is investigating Russian interference, will Bill and Hillary Clinton come under scrutiny? Bill was paid $500.000 for a speech by a Russian bank and millions flowed into the Clinton foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State and 20% of America’s uranium deposits were transferred to Russia.
Will Mueller also look into the murder of Democratic staffer, Seth Rich? Was his death really a robbery gone wrong or was it a political assassination? Was Seth Rich the real source of John Podesta’s emails to Wikileaks and not the Russians? Was Julian Assange actually telling the truth when he said that a “nation state” was not his source?
Most importantly for the country, could Robert Mueller just be an efficient investigator and complete this investigation before the midterms in 2018? While this would be the best thing for the American people, it is clearly not what the Democrat Party would like. Nancy Pelosi has already been quoted as saying, “A Special Prosecutor is the first step, but it cannot be the last” before Mueller has even started his investigation let alone announced any findings. She now wants an “independent outside commission”, whatever the hell that means. It is clear that Nancy Pelosi is not actually interested in truth or justice and certainly not expediency. Her only desire is to drag this investigation out for as long as possible to do political damage to Trump and the Republicans, even if the country has to suffer in the process.
The lesson for all of us is that our government is totally dysfunctional and the last thing we need is to make it bigger and allow more intrusion into our lives. Since we’ll never get a smaller government from the existing establishment politicians who are all part of the swamp, we need term limits for both Houses of Congress!!
The View from the Middle
If you have followed my blog, you could have probably guessed that I was against the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate collusion by any Americans with the Russians in our elections. I took this position not because I feared what he or she would find, but because I felt this was an attempt by Democrats to drag this investigation out and thus thwart the administration’s attempt to pursue their agenda. I don’t believe that Trump himself had any connection with the Russians but I do believe that the primary motivation of Democrats is political. I have very little trust with anyone in Washington and right now the Democrats are at the bottom of my integrity list.
I also opposed a Special Counsel because I have confidence in the FBI. I did not have confidence in its Director, James Comey, but I did and still do support and respect the career law enforcement professionals there. Once Comey was gone, my hope for a thorough but expeditious investigation into this matter actually went up, so I would have been very happy to allow them to continue into their investigation and live with their findings.
Now, we have a Special Counsel and it is Robert Mueller. He is certainly qualified since he is former Director of the FBI and he has a reputation for being a thorough investigator. He is arguably above partisan politics since he was originally appointed to direct the FBI by George W. Bush and had his term extended by Barack Obama.
Personally, I think this is good news for Trump and bad news for Democrats. The Special Counsel’s investigation will take precedence over the House and Senate investigations, to which I say, “Hooray”. Neither party in these investigations is after the truth, but use their hearings to grandstand. Mueller should get to the truth and much faster than Congress would and even faster than a Comey-lead FBI, and that is what most Americans want.
But some Democrats could be caught in the Mueller crossfire. If Mueller is investigating Russian interference, will Bill and Hillary Clinton come under scrutiny? Bill was paid $500.000 for a speech by a Russian bank and millions flowed into the Clinton foundation while Hillary was Secretary of State and 20% of America’s uranium deposits were transferred to Russia.
Will Mueller also look into the murder of Democratic staffer, Seth Rich? Was his death really a robbery gone wrong or was it a political assassination? Was Seth Rich the real source of John Podesta’s emails to Wikileaks and not the Russians? Was Julian Assange actually telling the truth when he said that a “nation state” was not his source?
Most importantly for the country, could Robert Mueller just be an efficient investigator and complete this investigation before the midterms in 2018? While this would be the best thing for the American people, it is clearly not what the Democrat Party would like. Nancy Pelosi has already been quoted as saying, “A Special Prosecutor is the first step, but it cannot be the last” before Mueller has even started his investigation let alone announced any findings. She now wants an “independent outside commission”, whatever the hell that means. It is clear that Nancy Pelosi is not actually interested in truth or justice and certainly not expediency. Her only desire is to drag this investigation out for as long as possible to do political damage to Trump and the Republicans, even if the country has to suffer in the process.
The lesson for all of us is that our government is totally dysfunctional and the last thing we need is to make it bigger and allow more intrusion into our lives. Since we’ll never get a smaller government from the existing establishment politicians who are all part of the swamp, we need term limits for both Houses of Congress!!
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Are There Any Safe Spaces for Trump?
The View from the Middle
It’s not very often that I have a news scoop for my readers, but I have it on good authority that Donald Trump just came out in support of puppies, apple pie, and moms all across this land. You would think that these positions would be relatively safe, but as you might expect, Democrats and the lame stream media were quick to criticize.
Chuck Schumer was the first to attack the President’s endorsement of puppies. He reminded the President, “don’t you know that puppies do tremendous damage to homes all across America. They chew up shoes and furniture and they often leave little fecal reminders of their presence everywhere.” He also suggested that “cat people” should be outraged. “This is a clear bias for dogs and against cats”, he said. When will the cat people stand up against this clear prejudice?”
Nancy Pelosi was quick to question the apple pie affirmation. “Does he have any idea how much sugar is in those things”, she posed. “Besides”, she added, “ why now? Pies have been around since before our founding. Why would the President come out in favor of apple pie now? This should make us all suspicious.” She also suggested that cherry and blue berry growers should be in a furor. “This kind of favoritism cuts against our fundamental values.”
You would think that advocating for mothers would be a pretty safe position, but CNN was quick to produce a two-hour special entitled “It Takes a Village”. They wondered, “what about fathers, neighbors, uncles, aunts, coaches, siblings and even politicians. Are mothers overrated? Isn’t 'mother’s day’ an outdated concept? Even women should be outraged since some women aren’t even mothers and all women should stand together.”
I guess I now understand the “resist, persist, insist, enlist, dismiss, blacklist and throw hissy-fits” strategy that has been laid out by Hillary Clinton. I hope Trump doesn’t try to do anything good for the country. That could get awkward.
The View from the Middle
It’s not very often that I have a news scoop for my readers, but I have it on good authority that Donald Trump just came out in support of puppies, apple pie, and moms all across this land. You would think that these positions would be relatively safe, but as you might expect, Democrats and the lame stream media were quick to criticize.
Chuck Schumer was the first to attack the President’s endorsement of puppies. He reminded the President, “don’t you know that puppies do tremendous damage to homes all across America. They chew up shoes and furniture and they often leave little fecal reminders of their presence everywhere.” He also suggested that “cat people” should be outraged. “This is a clear bias for dogs and against cats”, he said. When will the cat people stand up against this clear prejudice?”
Nancy Pelosi was quick to question the apple pie affirmation. “Does he have any idea how much sugar is in those things”, she posed. “Besides”, she added, “ why now? Pies have been around since before our founding. Why would the President come out in favor of apple pie now? This should make us all suspicious.” She also suggested that cherry and blue berry growers should be in a furor. “This kind of favoritism cuts against our fundamental values.”
You would think that advocating for mothers would be a pretty safe position, but CNN was quick to produce a two-hour special entitled “It Takes a Village”. They wondered, “what about fathers, neighbors, uncles, aunts, coaches, siblings and even politicians. Are mothers overrated? Isn’t 'mother’s day’ an outdated concept? Even women should be outraged since some women aren’t even mothers and all women should stand together.”
I guess I now understand the “resist, persist, insist, enlist, dismiss, blacklist and throw hissy-fits” strategy that has been laid out by Hillary Clinton. I hope Trump doesn’t try to do anything good for the country. That could get awkward.
Friday, May 5, 2017
Comey - Incompetent, Simpleton or Clairvoyant?
Comey, Incompetent, Simpleton or Clairvoyant?
The View from the Middle
There’s nothing like watching our government in action to make you want to ask for a refund on your tax bill. Yesterday the incompetence, corruption and entangled confusion of our government were on full display. Yah, it doesn’t get any better for your viewing pleasure than to watch one branch of our government interview another.
First, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of this oversight committee, may not have gotten a single question answered. Why, because James Comey, the Director of the FBI, refused to answer them in the public forum in which these questions were asked. Did Grassley forget that Comey couldn’t discuss classified information in a public setting? Shouldn’t the cameras have tipped him off? Of course, he’s only been in Washington for 36 years. The only thing that Chuck made clear yesterday was the need for term limits in the Senate and the House.
Next, we had Director Comey to remind us of his bumbled handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. I don’t believe he made a single correct decision during this train wreck of a probe. On July 5th of 2016 he decided he needed to make a public statement about whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling of her e-mails. This, of course, is not even his job, but he threw Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus for her meeting with Bill Clinton just a week before that decision was to be made.
He should have rejected Lynch’s request for him to make the indictment decision and presented his findings to the Justice Department for them to handle. Even after that, he could have simply announced his decision with a brief explanation and moved on. Instead, he went in front of cameras and prosecuted Hillary Clinton for 15 minutes before announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would indict her. This was followed by an army of lawyers and previous Attorneys General who disagreed with him.
The big defense of his decision was that he couldn’t prove “intent”, even though Hillary used “bleach bit” to destroy 33,000 emails after she had received a subpoena for all of them and destroyed her communication devices with hammers. Forgive me, but if that were you or I, we would be in jail today.
To compound this horrendous decision, he reopened the investigation publicly just 11 days before the election because he found 6,000 Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. This had implications for both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin. Then two days before the election, he announced that he was closing this investigation because there was nothing new in these e-mails. He didn’t explain, however, why Miss Abedin shouldn’t be indicted herself for sharing classified material with her husband, Anthony Weiner, who was himself under FBI investigation.
He later replayed his “intent” card and suggested that he couldn’t prove that Huma “intended” to break the law, although she actually did. Personally, it’s hard for me to believe that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, both very intelligent women, didn’t understand that they were breaking the law by destroying 33,000 emails under subpoena and sharing classified information with people, the likes of Anthony Weiner, who didn’t have the clearance to view it.
Yet this same James Comey, who couldn’t understand Hillary and Huma’s intent despite their wanton disregard for the law, turned clairvoyant yesterday and was glad to read Vladimir Putin’s mind in the DNC hacking incident last year. With confidence he posed that Putin favored Trump as President because he hated Hillary and thought he could deal more favorably with Donald Trump. This, of course, is ludicrous and implies that Vladimir Putin knew something that virtually no one else in the world knew. And that was that Donald Trump was actually going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of The United States.
Up until five o’clock on November 8th the political experts in this country were giving Hillary up to a 98% probability of winning. I have suggested that Putin did what he did (assuming he actually sponsored the hacking) for two reasons. First, John Podesta was stupid enough to use the word “password” as his email password. This made the DNC easier to hack than the RNC, which I’m sure he was trying to hack also. Second, he expected Hillary Clinton to win, but he intended to injure her in the process so that he could deal with a weakened American President.
I have presented this explanation before but offered it as speculation, since we will never actually know what Putin was thinking. James Comey should have either not speculated on what Putin thought or stated his theory as a hypothesis, not fact. This was just one more example of Comey’s poor judgment. Comey may be a very knowledgeable person, but knowledge is not the same as wisdom. In my opinion, he should resign tomorrow and save the country from any additional heartburn.
The View from the Middle
There’s nothing like watching our government in action to make you want to ask for a refund on your tax bill. Yesterday the incompetence, corruption and entangled confusion of our government were on full display. Yah, it doesn’t get any better for your viewing pleasure than to watch one branch of our government interview another.
First, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of this oversight committee, may not have gotten a single question answered. Why, because James Comey, the Director of the FBI, refused to answer them in the public forum in which these questions were asked. Did Grassley forget that Comey couldn’t discuss classified information in a public setting? Shouldn’t the cameras have tipped him off? Of course, he’s only been in Washington for 36 years. The only thing that Chuck made clear yesterday was the need for term limits in the Senate and the House.
Next, we had Director Comey to remind us of his bumbled handling of the Hillary Clinton e-mail investigation. I don’t believe he made a single correct decision during this train wreck of a probe. On July 5th of 2016 he decided he needed to make a public statement about whether to indict Hillary Clinton for mishandling of her e-mails. This, of course, is not even his job, but he threw Attorney General Loretta Lynch under the bus for her meeting with Bill Clinton just a week before that decision was to be made.
He should have rejected Lynch’s request for him to make the indictment decision and presented his findings to the Justice Department for them to handle. Even after that, he could have simply announced his decision with a brief explanation and moved on. Instead, he went in front of cameras and prosecuted Hillary Clinton for 15 minutes before announcing that no reasonable prosecutor would indict her. This was followed by an army of lawyers and previous Attorneys General who disagreed with him.
The big defense of his decision was that he couldn’t prove “intent”, even though Hillary used “bleach bit” to destroy 33,000 emails after she had received a subpoena for all of them and destroyed her communication devices with hammers. Forgive me, but if that were you or I, we would be in jail today.
To compound this horrendous decision, he reopened the investigation publicly just 11 days before the election because he found 6,000 Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s computer. This had implications for both Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin. Then two days before the election, he announced that he was closing this investigation because there was nothing new in these e-mails. He didn’t explain, however, why Miss Abedin shouldn’t be indicted herself for sharing classified material with her husband, Anthony Weiner, who was himself under FBI investigation.
He later replayed his “intent” card and suggested that he couldn’t prove that Huma “intended” to break the law, although she actually did. Personally, it’s hard for me to believe that Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin, both very intelligent women, didn’t understand that they were breaking the law by destroying 33,000 emails under subpoena and sharing classified information with people, the likes of Anthony Weiner, who didn’t have the clearance to view it.
Yet this same James Comey, who couldn’t understand Hillary and Huma’s intent despite their wanton disregard for the law, turned clairvoyant yesterday and was glad to read Vladimir Putin’s mind in the DNC hacking incident last year. With confidence he posed that Putin favored Trump as President because he hated Hillary and thought he could deal more favorably with Donald Trump. This, of course, is ludicrous and implies that Vladimir Putin knew something that virtually no one else in the world knew. And that was that Donald Trump was actually going to beat Hillary Clinton for the Presidency of The United States.
Up until five o’clock on November 8th the political experts in this country were giving Hillary up to a 98% probability of winning. I have suggested that Putin did what he did (assuming he actually sponsored the hacking) for two reasons. First, John Podesta was stupid enough to use the word “password” as his email password. This made the DNC easier to hack than the RNC, which I’m sure he was trying to hack also. Second, he expected Hillary Clinton to win, but he intended to injure her in the process so that he could deal with a weakened American President.
I have presented this explanation before but offered it as speculation, since we will never actually know what Putin was thinking. James Comey should have either not speculated on what Putin thought or stated his theory as a hypothesis, not fact. This was just one more example of Comey’s poor judgment. Comey may be a very knowledgeable person, but knowledge is not the same as wisdom. In my opinion, he should resign tomorrow and save the country from any additional heartburn.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
Government Shutdown? Please!!
Government Shutdown? Please!!
The View from the Middle
It is official. Chicken Little has become the spokesperson for the US Government, or at least the Democrat party. And this is no ordinary, confused, hysterical Chicken Little who thought the sky was falling when an acorn dropped on its head. This is an agenda driven, maniacal, duplicitous chicken intent on deceiving the public and creating a panic the original chick was famous for.
There have been 18 government shutdowns since 1976. Some lasting just a day while others lasted a week or so. Bill Clinton still holds the record for shutting the government down for 21 days as he and Republicans fought over whether we should use the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) or the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to project our deficits. In other words, over nothing.
The last government shutdown, under President Obama, was equally unnecessary but particularly messy. Republicans, lead by Ted Cruz, tried to pass a continuing resolution to run the government, which defunded Obamacare. While the cause may have been noble (to me), even I had to admit that the chances of that bill passing was virtually zero. Harry Reid and the Democrats still controlled the Senate and Barack Obama was in the White House. Reid and Obama would have both taken a bullet in the head before agreeing to that continuing resolution.
But then the President decided to make that government shutdown especially painful. First, he shutdown the “open air” World War II Memorial. This memorial is not even regularly staffed, but Barack Obama actually spent extra funds to have it barricaded. That meant that 80 and 90 year old veterans, who had already booked flights, would be denied access.
Obama shut down over 400 national parks even when the act of closing them was greater than leaving them open. He closed Mount Rushmore, The Vietnam Memorial and even tried to close privately owned Mount Vernon because the Park Service maintained the parking lot. And let’s not forget that White House tours were still being canceled due to their tremendous impact on the budget.
A park ranger was quoted as saying, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.” He added, “It’s disgusting” and I heartily agree with him. When will we learn? It is clear that the government has evolved into something our Founders did not intend. Instead of a protector of our freedom, it has become a vehicle through which the masses can be fleeced and manipulated by a privileged few.
But there is good news in all of these government shutdown exercises. The truth is that these shutdowns prove the exact opposite of their advertised predictions. They prove that nothing of real consequence happens as a result of a government shutdown. For those of you who were alive, do you remember any cataclysmic results from the eight (yes 8) shutdowns during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency? Even after all the effort by Barack Obama to disrupt our lives, do you remember any national pestilence as a result of that shutdown? It didn’t even impact our economy. Our GDP, in fact, grew faster in that quarter than the quarters before and after! The people who were furloughed got paid when the shutdown ended, so the American people actually gave them a paid vacation.
So bring on the next shutdown. Let the government prove once more that it is too big, too inefficient, too corrupt and that we can get along quite well without all the “nonessential personnel”. In fact, now that we have identified those nonessential people, what if we actually eliminate those jobs? What a novel idea!!
The View from the Middle
It is official. Chicken Little has become the spokesperson for the US Government, or at least the Democrat party. And this is no ordinary, confused, hysterical Chicken Little who thought the sky was falling when an acorn dropped on its head. This is an agenda driven, maniacal, duplicitous chicken intent on deceiving the public and creating a panic the original chick was famous for.
There have been 18 government shutdowns since 1976. Some lasting just a day while others lasted a week or so. Bill Clinton still holds the record for shutting the government down for 21 days as he and Republicans fought over whether we should use the OMB (Office of Management and Budget) or the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) to project our deficits. In other words, over nothing.
The last government shutdown, under President Obama, was equally unnecessary but particularly messy. Republicans, lead by Ted Cruz, tried to pass a continuing resolution to run the government, which defunded Obamacare. While the cause may have been noble (to me), even I had to admit that the chances of that bill passing was virtually zero. Harry Reid and the Democrats still controlled the Senate and Barack Obama was in the White House. Reid and Obama would have both taken a bullet in the head before agreeing to that continuing resolution.
But then the President decided to make that government shutdown especially painful. First, he shutdown the “open air” World War II Memorial. This memorial is not even regularly staffed, but Barack Obama actually spent extra funds to have it barricaded. That meant that 80 and 90 year old veterans, who had already booked flights, would be denied access.
Obama shut down over 400 national parks even when the act of closing them was greater than leaving them open. He closed Mount Rushmore, The Vietnam Memorial and even tried to close privately owned Mount Vernon because the Park Service maintained the parking lot. And let’s not forget that White House tours were still being canceled due to their tremendous impact on the budget.
A park ranger was quoted as saying, “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can.” He added, “It’s disgusting” and I heartily agree with him. When will we learn? It is clear that the government has evolved into something our Founders did not intend. Instead of a protector of our freedom, it has become a vehicle through which the masses can be fleeced and manipulated by a privileged few.
But there is good news in all of these government shutdown exercises. The truth is that these shutdowns prove the exact opposite of their advertised predictions. They prove that nothing of real consequence happens as a result of a government shutdown. For those of you who were alive, do you remember any cataclysmic results from the eight (yes 8) shutdowns during Ronald Reagan’s Presidency? Even after all the effort by Barack Obama to disrupt our lives, do you remember any national pestilence as a result of that shutdown? It didn’t even impact our economy. Our GDP, in fact, grew faster in that quarter than the quarters before and after! The people who were furloughed got paid when the shutdown ended, so the American people actually gave them a paid vacation.
So bring on the next shutdown. Let the government prove once more that it is too big, too inefficient, too corrupt and that we can get along quite well without all the “nonessential personnel”. In fact, now that we have identified those nonessential people, what if we actually eliminate those jobs? What a novel idea!!
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