Hedge funds

People often say that the purpose of business is to make a profit, so if a business invests in something it is because they expect a return. Thus when a business makes a campaign contribution is follows that they expect something from the candidate. The last election Romney was excoriated because he was a hedge fund manager. To many, these money types are part of the system that is rigged against the working people. Owners and employees of hedge funds have made $122.7 million in campaign contributions this election cycle, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. The data show seven financial firms alone have generated nearly $48.5 million for groups working on Clinton’s behalf. The total for Donald Trump: About $19,000. Either these firms are not very bright or they believe that Hilary will be better for them than Trump. This is the same Hilary who says she will take on Wall Street and fight for the little guy and there will be a whole lot of little guys vote for Hilary.

Government vs Private

Now that the conventions are over and the time for serious campaigning begins, it is time to take a look at the parties and for the moment leave out the personalities of the candidates. This is not easy to do since both are very well known and many have strong opinions of each. The Democrats see themselves as people interested in helping various groups like children, disabled, uneducated and poor by offering programs that left them up. This was illustrated by the speakers who talked about Hilary’s history of belonging to the Children’s Defense League and her interest in women’s groups. Her plan to help people will be to use government agencies to reach out and distribute funds in order to improve the lives of many who have been left out. This will be an extension of what President Obama has done and in the bigger picture what the Great Society has done. The war on poverty will continue and be reinforced. The Republicans will not target specific groups but will take steps to improve the job situation. The Trump promises to tax imports of those who tax American imports will even the playing field of the free trade position. His plan to lower taxes will encourage business to bring home some of the trillions of dollars now stored overseas. He will reduce and remove many of the requirements issued by the EPA and if the congress remains in republican hands he will start a program to rebuild the infrastructure. In short, one will look to government for answers and the other to the private sector.

Yahoo

In 2012 Marissa Mayer, a 40 year old business wiz, was brought in to save Yahoo from collapse. The company’s value had slipped from a high of 120 billion down to 5 billion and it was her job to turn things around. Over the next 4 years she collected 100 million in salary and bonus and now the company is being sold for 4.4 billion. As a reward for her services she will receive a 55 million dollar golden parachute. This is just one more example of the myth of pay for performance. Imagine what she would have received if she had been successful. This type of business practice is one of the many ways that the free market system can be corrupted and while the system is the best there is, the one thing that can destroy it, is corruption New subject: On Friday WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails that were hacked from the Democratic National Committee and many of these show that the DNC deliberately pushed for Hilary to beat Sanders. This was a big news story and Hilary appeared on 60 Minutes Sunday night and said she was not aware of the emails and had no comment on the story. At that point the questioner went on to a new subject. I knew about the emails and I am not running for the presidency. Either she was not being truthful or someone on her staff failed to keep her informed. New subject: One of my favorite phrases when it comes to government is the unintended consequences of good intentions. Two years ago Minnesota passed a law saying people who served prison time no longer had to put that on their job applications. This was meant to help young black men get passed the real or perceived prejudice against felons. Since that time it has become more difficult for young black men to get jobs. So what happened? Employers know that young black men are disproportionally likely to have served time and since they can’t be sure they just avoid interviewing young black men. It is obvious that I have time on my hands since I don’t sub in the summer.

Big big big

Over the years many liberals have quoted the Eisenhower warning of, beware of the military-industrial complex and since, this has morphed into beware of big business-big government deals. These people are now facing a dilemma has Hilary’s relationship with the big banks has morphed into a relationship with big business. Recent reports show a long list of CEO’s who are switching their long time allegiance to the Republican candidate over to Hilary. These people are not ideologues but only interested in their companies. While most consider Trump’s call to break up the status quo of business and government getting together to maintain their power structure, as just political babble and it may be, these business people are worried. Many of the Trump and Sanders supporters are keenly aware of how the business-government arrangement has kept them from moving up the economic ladder and are paying attention to Trump’s call to challenge those in power. In the 50’s the saying was, what is good for General Motors is good for America and those were the years that set the stage for the great business-government takeover of the country and the slow steady decline of the middle and lower income groups. These people have now awakened and are demanding change. These people feel they have a voice in Trump and are willing to abandon the old ways and try something new. It is not that they are enamored with Trump but they are willing to take a risk and try something new. Hilary will likely win the election and we will continue down the path of big business, big government and throw in big labor to round out the group in charge, the same group that has stagnated the middle and lowing income people for many years.

Turkey coup

As I watch the attempted coup in Turkey unfold, I find myself being drawn into a conspiracy theory and that is something I try to avoid. It is causing me to impute motives and that is usually a mistake. The conspiracy is that Obama is a Muslim at heart and the motive is that he wants to help Muslims. When the Muslim Brotherhood was elected in a free and open election and later overthrown by the military, Obama sided with the Brotherhood stating that they represent the elected government and the US should stick by them. Now in Turkey, Obama is once again siding with the Islamist Erdogan against the military. If Obama is truly against these military people for the reasons he states then that is perfectly legitimate but I find seeds of doubt entering my thoughts and therein is the concern I have about my thinking. When Hamas gained power in Gaza by way of free and open elections the US not only did not back the new government but tried to remove Hamas. At that time the US pushed for secular governments and worked to prevent Islamic governments regardless of election results. The US concern over the shortcomings of Shari Law was strong enough to fight openly against governments that might want to install Shari Law. The question arises, is it ever OK to disregard the will of the people if what the people want is harmful to part of the population, in these cases the female part?

Powel doctrine

Last December Trump said we should kill the families of ISIS members and this was met with a gasp of horror and many pointed out that this was against the Geneva Convention rules. I bring this up because it is illustrative of our view of war and how this has changed over the years. The last formally declared war was WW 2 and during that war the US deliberately targeted civilians by fire-bombing cities in Germany and Japan. The idea was to kill as many women and children as possible to demoralize the enemy and win the war. Since WW 2 military engagements have been conducted on a limited bases avoiding all-out war. Korea ended in a stalemate at the 38th parallel as Truman stopped Macarthur from going into North Korea. In Viet Nam Johnson waited for ten years before he allowed the bombing of Hanoi. In Afghanistan and Iraq the military has been limited in the kind of action allowed. A good example happened with ISIS and Iraqi oil. ISIS has been transporting oil by truck for over a year and finally the US decided to start bombing these trucks that were easy targets moving across the open desert. When asked about the delay the administration said they were fearful of killing the drivers. The first gulf war where Kuwait asked the US for help followed the Powell doctrine which states that you go in with overwhelming force, defeat the enemy quickly and get out. The US bombed Iraqi forces for 100 days during which time they neutralized the Iraqi air force. Then a force of 500,000 US military fully equipped invaded and it was all over in 100 hours. The US then left following the UN dictate that they not attack Saddam. If the next president follows the Powel doctrine, ISIS in Iraq and Syria can be destroyed in short order but there will be civilian casualties. That happens in war.

Socialism

When Bernie Sanders was in the middle of his 15 minutes of fame, his critics often pointed to Venezuela as an example of a failed socialist state but there is another state that is also failing and that is the country of France. Hollande was elected in 2012 with a promise reminiscent of Obama’s pledge to Joe the Plumber saying he would redistribute the wealth. Hollande made similar promises and they didn’t work. Since President François Hollande entered the Elysée in 2012, France hasn’t managed two successive quarters of economic growth. The former Socialist Party leader’s programme of more regulation, higher spending and punitive taxation – not least his 75 per cent top rate of income tax, which has seen a flood of wealthy French professionals move to London – is being widely blamed for this dismal French growth performance. Throughout history political leaders have won office by promising to take money from the rich and give it to the poor but when the dust settles the poor are worse off and a few people walk away with the money. Hollande just made headlines when it was revealed that he pays his barber $11,000 per month. This is paid by the taxpayers and the irony is that he is half bald. Just like the members of the communist party in the Soviet Union got the best of everything and Chavez family in Venezuela became rich as the country went broke, the people of France are now feeling the effects of socialism. The greatness of America is founded on the premise that an individual can succeed with hard work and that work ethic has been lost in the flood of government programs designed to make people less dependent on their own initiative and more dependent on government largesse. The old concept of welfare as a helping hand has turned into a way life. When a young mother with a dead beat dad needs assistance that is a helping hand but when a 16 year old has a baby because her mother had her at 16 and the grandmother had the mother at 16 this has become a way of life. Are these people really being helped?A

Jobs and jobs

Polls show that the number one concern is jobs and a close second is terrorism. Clinton and Trump have both said that they will create jobs. Trump plans to use the private sector by lowering taxes on business and getting rid of the regulation that have been installed during the Obama administration. Clinton will use government money. She said in her speech today that she would offer the largest government investment in jobs in history. This likely means another stimulus program using the fed to increase the money supply. The policies that the government has used in the past 15 years have helped the rich but not the poor. The government measures income by quintile that is five groups with 20% in each group. Since 2000 the wages of the lowest quintile has increased 1% per year, the next lowest 1.4%, the next two at 2%. Meanwhile the top 1% saw their income increase 10% per year or ten times higher. Since inflation during these years averaged 2% per those not in the top 1% actually lost ground. Wages for all but the one percent have declined in real dollars. This is after politicians constantly preached that they were going to help the lower and middle income groups. When I was growing up my mother would say the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Seems like not much has changed!

CO2

When President Obama took office the democrats controlled the senate and the house and for a four month period they had a filibuster proof 60 senators. The President could have passed any bill he wanted and he chose to spend his time pushing Obamacare which was subsequently passed with no republican votes. The President could have chosen this opportune time to pass legislation regarding climate change but did not. Here are some comments Obama made about climate change. “Today, there is no greater threat to our planet than climate change.” “No challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” “It is indeed one of the biggest threats facing our planet today.” If Obama had started the transition to natural gas in the transportation industry and power plants the change would be almost complete today. Since natural gas produces 25% less carbon dioxide than oil and 45% less than coal the country could have achieved a significant reduction by now. The cost of making these changes would have been less than the money that was wasted on failed solar projects. IF the President felt that climate change was an existential threat to the country might it have been more important than Obamacare?

Intent

One of the more critical parts of Obamacare is the state exchange agency. The program said that states must set up exchanges in order to receive federal subsidies for low income recipients. This was designed to encourage all states to participate and set up exchanges. Much to the surprise of the government 36 states declined to set up state exchanges. These states realized that the federal subsidies would stop in 2015 and the state would be responsible for the cost but would have no say in how the program was run. This would be the end of Obamacare so it went to the Supreme Court where Justice Roberts said that the plan did say that only states with exchanges would receive subsidies but that was not the intent. He said the plan fully intended to subsidies low income people in all states regardless of whether they had state run agencies or not. In other words what was written in the plan was overridden by what was intended. CNSNews.com first published this article on Jan. 5, 2015. Today, the Supreme Court ruled in King v. Burwell that the federal government could pay subsidies to people who did not buy their health insurance in an exchange set up by their state. In the Clinton email investigation FBI Directly Comey said that Mrs. Clinton was exceedingly careless but there was no intent to do anything illegal. In both of these cases the word “intent” was the determining factor. In the Obamacare case it involved what was intended and in the Clinton case what was not intended. In both decision the purpose was to allow the public to determine the outcome instead of some bureaucrat or some court and I have always felt that in cases that do not involve constitutional issues the public can better decide.

Better red

For many people the cold war stated in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested their first hydrogen bomb. I was 12 years old and this war continued for the next 42 years until the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. During those years many people were Soviet sympathizers not that they so much admired communism but rather they disliked capitalism. They often closed their eyes to the benefits of the free market and concentrated on the downside which they viewed as greed run amok. As the years passed these people became more disillusioned with capitalism and as a result became uncomfortable with the American way of life based on the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. This led to the belief that many of these people were anti-American. It all culminated with the election of Gorbachev whom these anti-American types saw as a hero especially when compared to Reagan who they viewed as a war monger. When Reagan called the Soviet Union the evil empire that was the last straw and they became convinced that our economic system was the cause of many of the problems in the world. Then like a bolt out of the blue the Soviet system collapsed and these people were lost and without a place to hang their hat. They quickly found a new home in the environmental area and better red than dead changed into watermelons, red on the outside and green on the inside. The move toward the greens was slow but steady and exploded with the war on fossil fuels. In the name of climate change these folks declared war on one of the foundations of capitalism call big oil. It is a natural fit for them to close down coal in the name of clean air and to do so quickly. When gasoline went over $4 they had a head of steam and pushed hard for electric cars but when fracking brought gasoline prices down their momentum was interrupted. They then started writing papers declaring the problems with fracking and that is where we are today.

Clinton email resutls

In his announcement on Tuesday, FBI Director James Comey said he could not find a previous case involving the mishandling of classified information that would support bringing criminal charges against Hillary Clinton. Former CIA Director John Deutch working in the Clinton administration was just such a case. "This is a person who plugged the computer into the Internet -- the Department of Justice was going to prosecute him and then it was President Clinton that offered that person a pardon. And so this has been prosecuted, or at least attempted to be prosecuted, in the past. As the Associated Press reported on Jan. 24, 2001: "Former CIA Director John M. Deutch agreed last Friday to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for mishandling government secrets, but President Clinton pardoned him before the Justice Department could file the case against him." Another interesting point of contention in this case is the difference between “extreme carelessness”, and negligence. The law says that a person can be prosecuted for negligence and Comey says there was no negligence but there was extreme carelessness. This is reminiscent of the “depends on what the definition of is, is?

Hilary emails

There is an old adage saying that something will happen when hell freezes over meaning that it will not happen. This is appropriate for the Clinton email situation. A couple of weeks ago President Obama came out and endorsed Clinton for President. This week Attorney General Lynch said that she would follow the FBI recommendation on the case. This means that Clinton will be indicted when hell freezes over. If there is any impropriety involved the only way it will be uncovered is if some rouge FBI agents break ranks and go public with secret deals. Even then they better have more than their word. They better have tapes or documents otherwise they will be ripped to shreds by the Clintons. It will be the male version of nuts or sluts all over again. If the agents are female they will end up in the same ash heap as Paula Jones and Jennifer Flowers.