New laws

Some people complain that the bible is unclear or ambiguous but in order to satisfy those people the bible would have to be written like a legal document with lots of whereas and party of the first and so on. The same thing is true of government regulations. They are written to try to cover every possibility and thus end up so complicated they mess up what they are trying to help. Back in 2000 a company called Enron worked closely with an outside accounting firm called Arthur Anderson and both conspired to jimmy the books and it ended up with Enron going bankrupt and Anderson going out of business. Two congressmen the Messrs Sarbanes and Oxley came to the rescue with new legislation but as might be expected it is so complicated that companies are at a loss as to how to enforce the new rules. The cost of hiring accountants and lawyers is so overwhelming that small companies are put at a disadvantage and are at risk of unintentionally breaking the law. Laws like this should be reviewed and refined once they are in effect.

Teachers

Teachers tend to shy away from controversial subjects but there are exceptions. It is acceptable and even encouraged when it comes to certain areas. For example explaining how the colonist (usually referred to as white Europeans) mistreated the Native Americans or how the Japanese Americans were interned during WW 2 or that Thomas Jefferson had a child with a black slave or how slavery was allowed for over 200 years. While it is important to cover these issues it is also necessary to explain the context. Slavery has been around since the dawn of civilization and America fought a civil war to rid the country of slavery. This war cost the lives of 600,000 soldiers, 94% of whom were whites European Americans. Some day treatments like chemotherapy and radiation will be looked on as uncivilized although they are acceptable at this time.

Coal

The climate change meetings in Poland are not meeting with much success. While the United States has lowered its CO2 emissions other countries have not. The main offenders are China and India. China is building hundreds of new coal-fired power plants capable of generating a total of 259 gigawatts (GW) of electricity—that’s equal to the entire existing U.S. coal fleet of around 266 GW, findings by advocacy and research group CoalSwarm show. While the US continues to close coal-fired power plants much of the coal is still being mined but shipped overseas.  In 2017, U.S. coal exports surged 61% from 2016 to nearly 90 million tonnes, with 50 million tonnes coming from the more pricey metallurgical variety that is a staple in steel making. "U.S. coal exports could rise 15% in 2018."

Carter Page

In the spring of 2016 a company called Orbis, hired Christopher Steele to research Trumps relationship with Russia. Orbis was a subcontractor of Fusion GPS a private Washington firm. Fusion was contracted by the law firm of Perkins Coie which represented Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. Clinton and the DNC paid Steele $168,000 for his work. A man named George Papadopoulos worked for the Trump campaign for three months in early 2016 as an unpaid foreign policy expert. In March of 2016 he met with some Russians who promised dirt on Hillary in the form of missing emails. Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat of the meeting who in turn passed the info on to the FBI. The FBI then opened an investigation into the Trump/Russia connection in July of 2016. In May of 2016 the Washington Post reported that an FBI informant met with Papadopoulos and Carter Page, another Trump foreign policy advisor and this led to investigating Page. FISA applications to surveil Page used this meeting and the Steele research dossier to get approval. This is the center of the controversy since the dossier was largely discredited as having uncorroborated salacious material on Trump. This surveillance included phone and email and then let to surveillance of other people whom Page had contacted. This is referred to as the two-hop method wherein anyone who had contacted Page was also surveilled and all of this information was passed onto the Mueller investigators and is currently being used.

Medicare vs Obamacare

Back in 1965 the government came to me and said next year we will be taking money out of your check to pay for health care when you retire. I told them never mind that I would take care of my self and they said it is the new law. I asked, how much will you take out and they said $3 per month and I said, sign me up. If we take that $36 per year and increase it by 5% per year for 53 years we get $477 per year. The current cost of Medicare for low income people is $1,308 or more than three times the projected amount allowing for inflation. In March of 2010 the estimated ten year cost of Obamacare was $938 billion. Two years later the cost was $1.76 trillion. The future does not look any better. In January 2015, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said that the cumulative ten- year U.S. budget deficit (2015 to 2025) would total $8.1 trillion. One of the reasons the initial cost was low is that they started paying for it in 2010 but the benefits didn't kick in until 2014. This was to keep the first ten year cost below one trillion which they did but the cost quickly escalated after that. Just like Medicare they knew that once the people get a benefit they would not give it up regardless of the cost.

Move toward fairness

Now when the longing for a more egalitarian society is coming into vogue as more voices hint of the fairness of socialism, it would be interesting to take this to the extreme where instead of the average family earning $56,000 per year, all families earned that amount. There would no longer be any need to redistribute income and the progressives could relax having achieve their ultimate goal. That would mean the end of private enterprise and thus everyone would work for the government. No one would risk their assets to start a business if their income would remain at $56,000. While Americans in general would not like this, many would like to more in this direction. How far remains to be seen.

Compromise

As comments come in regarding Bush 41, I am struck by the number who say that Bush was willing to compromise. He was elected on the promise not to raise taxes. His famous comment, read my lips no new taxes came back, to haunt him. At the end of the first Gulf War his approval ratings hit 90% the highest ever recorded but a few months later he agreed to raise taxes with the promise that the democrats would cuts spending. He raised taxes but no spending cuts followed with the democratic controlled congress. A few months he lost his bid for reelection. Clinton was next to compromise during his second term when the republicans took over the congress. He raised taxes and cut spending. He cut benefits for retirees, veterans and the poor and he froze the pay of federal employees and finally he reformed welfare with the five years and your off plan. Budget planning seems to work best when you have a different party in the White House and congress and this is what we now have. Is the door open to compromise?