Note: This article was originally posted on 3/8/2016 on the Economic Logic Blog, and then moved here today.
All political articles this year will be at this new address.
The EL blog will focus on finance and economics, as usual.
by "Floyd R.Turbo II"
a favorite Johnny Carson character updated for 2016:
Trump supporters should not read this if they already have high blood pressure!
My community of about 1,000 people seemed to have a lot of Bill Clinton fans. He was here twice in the 1990s for private fundraisers. One resident who held a fundraiser for him suddenly became the US Ambassador to Norway. ... Today, if she were running, I wouldn't vote for Hillary Clinton for dog catcher in my village of Bingham Farms. She'd probably catch stray dogs, but hold them until a donation was made to the Clinton Foundation!
Hillary Clinton is extremely dishonest.
I can trace her dishonesty back to the 1970s. In the late 1970s she claimed to personally trade $1,000 into $100,000 in about one year with commodity futures. The truth was she did none of the trades herself. A crooked broker made discretionary trades, gave Hillary the winners, and gave other customers the losers. As a result of lawsuits by the losers, her broker was suspended from commodity trading for many years. His employer received a (then) record high fine for the fraud. And the Arkansas Attorney General's wife walked away with a fortune!
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Hillary wants us to believe she never sent or received any classified information on e-mails in four years as Secretary of State. That's a blatant lie. No one in the US government had ever been found to be using a private server exclusively, and never once using their assigned dot.gov account. Until Hillary Clinton. No Presidential candidate in American history has ever been the subject of an FBI investigation. Until Hillary Clinton. She has no defense for micro-managing her e-mails in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, but the mainstream media won't go after her like they did with Nixon. Left-wing bias. Nor will Bernie Sanders attack her -- he must want to lose.
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The FBI is investigating Hillary Clinton and her aides for felonies and obstruction of justice. Either Hillary's staff was re-routing e-mails from her secure government 'in-box', to her easy-to-hack home basement 'in-box'. The other possibility was other government agencies sending confidential e-mails directly to Hillary's home e-mail address. It was Clinton's job to mark her own e-mails as classified or secret before sending them or passing them on to others. I'll be surprised if the FBI does not recommend prosecution of several aides and Ms. Clinton.
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I'll be surprised if the Justice Department prosecutes Hillary. They ignored the earlier IRS targeting conservatives scandal. After 40+ years as a "congenital liar", according to Bill Safire, almost no one believes Hillary. Her excuses were lame for exposing all her e-mails to hackers, deleting 32,000 e-mails selected personally without oversight, giving only hard copies of 30,000 remaining e-mails to the State Department (hard copies could include undetectable revisions and don't have meta-data), and then erasing all 62,000 e-mail electronic files from her personal server, all of which were the property of the American people.
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Hillary's unusual secrecy must have been intended to cover up something. At the least, intended to cover up evidence of hours working on Clinton Foundation issues, by Hillary and her top staff members, during normal government working hours. i imagine some e-mails might have involved Clinton Foundation contributors who wanted something from the State Department. Some Clinton Foundation contributors needed State Department approvals, such as approvals of contracts for US companies to sell weapons to foreigners. Bill Clinton also seemed to have a lot of influence over who got contracts to rebuild Haiti.
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Clinton campaign staff people from 2008 were offered jobs at the Clinton Foundation after her 2008 campaign loss, so they'd be available to work full time on her 2016 campaign. Most interesting is how Hillary's top State Department aide Huma collected a government salary, a Clinton Foundation salary, and corporate consulting fees, all at the same time !
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In December 2015, the Wall Street Journal said: "More than two dozen companies and groups and one foreign government paid former President Bill Clinton a total of more than $8 million to give speeches around the time they also had matters before Mrs. Clinton’s State Department," … "fifteen of them also donated a total of between $5 million and $15 million to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation, the family’s charity."
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The Clinton family "charity" looks like the most successful political slush fund in US history, through which people donated money, and/or paid Bill a lot of money for speeches about the Foundation … in return for political favors from the State Dept. … or in return for general goodwill ('insurance' if future government favors were ever needed).
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Another possible reason for Hillary Clinton's secrecy is that the CIA was secretly running arms from Benghazi to "rebels" in Syria fighting Assad. Our now dead Libyan Ambassador must have been involved as a negotiator. Many of those weapons must have ended up in the hands of ISIS -- perhaps the mysterious Syrian "rebels" became ISIS? There was no other logical reason for any State Department personnel to visit Benghazi after the first two attacks on our compound there, and the attempted assassination of the British ambassador nearby. Even the Red Cross had fled Benghazi in fear.
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That said, Donald Trump may be worse. Trump repeatedly threatens high tariffs on imports that no real conservative would want. No one with economic sense would want that. High tariffs would lead to trade wars with China, Japan, Canada, Mexico, etc. High tariffs would especially punish low-income Americans who buy inexpensive imported goods when they shop at dollar stores. Wal-Mart. etc.
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After insulting Mexicans, and other Hispanics, Muslims, and other Arabs, a female FOX News reporter, and most of his Republican opponents, Donald Trump is leading the race for the Republican nomination. There's no reason to think he will start acting "Presidential" if ever running against Hillary. I suppose a no-words-barred verbal battle between Donald and Hillary would be entertaining.
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I noticed Ted Cruz often wins in states where Democrats can not vote in Republican primary. Trump usually wins when Democrats can vote in a Republican primary. I suspect some Democrats are voting for Trump one time -- hoping he will be nominated, because 18 of 19 polls said Hillary would beat Trump in the general election. Rubio and Kasich should drop out and ask their supporters to vote for Cruz … or they risk losing in their home states of Florida and Ohio. Trump is leading in my home state of Michigan -- the primary is tomorrow.
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Trump is getting 'one-time' votes from some Democrats in states where they can vote in Republican primaries. He probably won't get a majority of Republican delegates. I can see the possibility of number two Ted Cruz getting nominated on a second 'open' vote, when only Republican delegates can vote. That would be seen as unfair by Trump supporters, who might refuse to vote for Cruz in the general election. I don't see Trump getting to be our next President unless the FBI turns on Hillary Clinton. A Republican needs 40% or more of the Hispanic vote to win, and Trump won't get that. He can't even get 40% of the vote in most all-Republican voters primaries.
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Trump and Rubio ended February 2016 sounding like two obnoxious boys running for sixth grade class president. Trump always sounds like the original Floyd R. Turbo (see GOOGLE), demonstrating minimal knowledge of all policy issues debated, with no improvement noticeable from one debate to the next. He rudely interrupts others with personal insults. He repeats the same generic platitudes in every campaign speech. A recent speech included more time criticizing Marco Rubio's sweating and make-up, than any policy issue. Until I hear something different from him, Trump sounds too dumb to be a millionaire, much less a billionaire … or a President. I don't believe his $10 billion net worth claim for a second. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not a billionaire -- he exaggerates everything about himself.
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Trump claims to be "self-funding" his campaign, but he's only loaning money to his campaign. That means he could start taking donations from people and corporations at any time, and then repay himself. Presidential campaigns are very expensive after the nominations. If nominated as a Republican, the mainstream press will turn on Trump and stop giving him so much free 'face time'. He'll have to take contributions from others to buy advertising if he wants to win … and repay himself.
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Obama was a smooth Alinsky-style campaigner, especially when reading from a Teleprompter. Donald Trump is a loud, obnoxious Alinsky-style campaigner. From a February 27 Trump speech in Arkansas: “Rubio has the biggest ears I’ve ever seen.” … “Rubio looks like he puts his makeup on with a trowel.” Childish Alinsky-style insults.
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Trump loses his cool quickly in response to criticism, so he's very susceptible to Alinsky-style character attacks. An angry Donald Trump is like a loose cannon. Hillary Clinton's 1969 Wellesley College thesis was about Chicago's Saul Alinsky: "There is Only the Fight: An Analysis of the Alinsky Mode". Clinton, originally from Chicago, interviewed Alinsky three times for her thesis, and he offered her a job, but she declined.
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In a 2014 EL article, I recommended that Republicans campaign using Saul Alinsky-style politics, after too polite Mitt Romney was smeared for being an out of touch, rich white male in 2012, and defeated. I didn't want Republicans to use Alinsky-style ridicule and character attacks on each other! That will backfire -- the Republican nominee will leave too many Republican voters angry about his character attacks on their favorite candidate before the Republican convention. The nominee will be paid back on Election Day
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Going back in time, the following three paragraphs were the SUMMARY of my May-June 2014 ECONOMIC LOGIC newsletter feature article:
"Saul Alinsky: Father of Community Organizing
SUMMARY: Do you wonder why gay rights activists, feminists, and civil rights activists are so quick to call people who disagree with them homophobes, sexists, and racists? Blame Saul Alinsky. I expect the 2014 and 2016 election campaigns to set new records for slander and character attacks. That's already a popular Democrat strategy, so what's new? What's new is I expect Republicans to adopt the same tactics. Aggressive politics. Obnoxious politics. Alinsky tactics have become more common in the past decade. Ridicule. Character attacks. Demonization.
Can people beat Alinsky-style slander by defending themselves? That's possible, but difficult, because the main purpose of a character attack is making the target ‘play defense’, while avoiding calm debates with facts, data, and logic. It's hard to win an election playing defense. Republicans have to attack first, forcing Democrats to defend themselves. In 2008 it was very difficult to character attack Barack Obama because the leftist-biased press allowed him to be a blank slate. People voted for him with no idea of what he had accomplished in prior jobs (not much). But Hillary Clinton is far from a blank slate.
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If you are a Republican, conservative, or libertarian (my personal choice), you may be thinking you prefer to be associated with a party of principles and rational debate. This is especially common among libertarians. You may be thinking you never want to stoop down to the low level of Alinsky-style character attacks. If you told that to Saul Alinsky, here’s what I think he would have advised you, based on reading his two books and the PLAYBOY interview: 'Would you rather be a member of a party with a polite campaign … or the party in power? If Democrats try to win elections by throwing verbal rocks at their opponents' character, then their opponents ought to use the same weapon."
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On March 3, 2016, I heard a surprising speech from a man who left the public stage over three years ago. He was too liberal to win as a Republican in 2012. Mitt Romney was also the owner of RomneyCare, which he would never admit was a failure. His infamous "47%" remark was edited to sound insulting, but it was true the 47% of US households who don't pay income taxes were not likely to care about his plan to cut income taxes! Romney lost by only a few percentage points, but left the public stage with a good reputation.
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I was shocked when Romney gave up his good reputation to help the Republican Party this week. I believe his anti-Trump speech was not intended for personal gain, but that remains to be seen. I agreed with much of what he said. But the speech was too little, too late. And Romney didn't endorse anyone, so the large "not-Trump" vote will continue to be split by three candidates.
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I remember when almost no EL readers renewed their subscriptions in the months after I opposed starting a war with Iraq. I took a very unpopular position. Trump claimed he opposed that war too. My opposition to a war with Iraq was documented in my newsletter, while his opposition to Iraq appears to be a fantasy created in 2016.
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On March 3, 2016, there was a Fox News Republican Debate at the Fox Theater in Detroit on TV. It seemed like our nation has been going downhill since the 1990s when choosing Presidential candidates. Only the Ohio Governor behaved like a pleasant, old-school candidate with significant on-the-job accomplishments in politics.
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Obama took over near the trough of the 2007 Recession. Even with the huge advantage of such a low starting point, a poor 2% economic growth rate is the sad Obama legacy. Franklin Roosevelt took office near the end of the very steep 1929 Recession. Then real GDP grew +40% in the next four years -- +10% a year! The bad news is one of Obama's possible replacements in January 2017 is proposing economic policies that could be worse !
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I expect the four most important economic problems will rarely be discussed this year, if at all:
(1) The slowest rebound from a recession in American history.
(2) Funding Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid for baby boomers without excessive borrowing,
(3) The Fed's low interest rate policy since the mid-1990s is not working -- low rates generated three consecutive debt-funded asset bubbles, peaking every seven to eight years ( 2000, 2007 / 2008, and 2014 / 2015 ), and
(4) An unjustified 'war' on inexpensive fossil fuels through the false demonization of CO2
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Socialist Bernie Sanders is drawing huge crowds blaming billionaires for almost everything. I give him credit for being consistent, avoiding corporate donations, and never trying to line his pockets with a hundred million dollars, like the Clintons' have. But when he talks about America, he finds so many faults that I always wonder why he still lives here. His socialism is not the answer, unless chronic slow economic growth and high unemployment is the goal.
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Democrats can defeat a rich white man in 2016 just like they did in 2012. Trump spent most of his life as a liberal, then endorsed Romney in 2012, and became a populist in mid-2015. He now calls himself conservative, in spite of having few conservative positions except "building a wall" and "the strongest military". I find no fault with people who were liberals when they were young. I was. But Trump stayed liberal for most of his life. He reminds me of former wrestler Jesse Ventura in Minnesota. Ventura won, but after two years as Governor the people couldn't wait to get rid of him!
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Trump "University": 10,000 people attended, and about $40 million of tuition was collected. Contrary to Trump's claims, he had little or nothing to do with instructor selection and course materials. Instructors had little knowledge of real estate investment and development, much less knowing any of Trump's real estate "secrets". The primary job for instructors was getting students to spend more money on more courses. A manager of a fast food restaurant was a typical instructor.
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Approximately 5,000 former students (50%) sued Trump "University" for fraud. A 2010 class-action suit lead plaintiff claimed Trump has been threatening her with financial ruin. California yoga instructor Tarla Makaeff asked to withdraw as lead plaintiff, claiming she has been “put through the wringer” by Trump and his lawyers and forced to “suffer daily with the fear that she could be bankrupted by Trump.” Courses were described as "infomercials" with "no practical advice". Trump's claim of 98% student satisfaction is a lie. The New York State Attorney General filed a fraud lawsuit in 2013. The "university" closed five years ago. It was a fraud promoted by using the Trump brand name. Describing Trump as a "con man" is appropriate, and accurate.
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We know Trump has had more bankruptcies than any other US billionaire, leaving many suppliers and creditors unpaid, but we know little about dishonesty in his past. The mainstream press must be trying to be nice to Trump, because there's plenty of ammunition to attack him with. Almost 90% of mainstream media sources want a Democrat to win. They also want Trump as the Republican nominee -- they see him as a rich white man who is obnoxious, has minimal public policy knowledge, and they think he will lose to Hillary. That's why Trump gets so much free face time on media sources who prefer Democrats. There has been little investigative reporting on Trump … so far … assuming anyone in the mainstream press investigates anything these days.
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The thought that either Donald or Hillary might become the two "best" choices for President, makes me pessimistic about the future of our nation. A vote for Trump is a vote to divide the Republican Party, which reached its all-time peak percentage of state and federal elected offices after the 2014 election. And a vote for Trump is also a vote for more embarrassing statements, such as: "I love the poorly educated." He should speak like an adult, or shut up. Trump needs a speechwriter and a Teleprompter. At least Obama knew that he did.
(Audiophile note: Hillary's normal talking voice is pleasant, but when shouting she has a poorly modulated, narrow dynamic range, voice that's unpleasant sounding when she shouts. She should never try to be loud in a debate. Donald's loud voice is powerful and can dominate a debate … if you can ignore the interruptions and the insults. Both of them shouting at each other in a debate could be like a World Wide Wrestling match. .. Your reporter "Floyd R. Turbo II" would appreciate that).
