Threat

Everyone seems to have a different view as to what are the greatest threats to the country. At different times the president has expressed different threats. His latest is the threat to democracy by MAGA's. Earlier he talked about climate change and white supremacy. In my mind the two biggest threats are income inequality and education gap. This first can be helped by raising the minimum wage, increasing the tax rate on high earners, promoting private unions, paying social security tax on all wages, decreasing social security benefits with upper income groups, increase the child tax credit, increase the earned income tax credit, increase Medicare surtax and getting rid of capital gains tax. The second can be helped by setting up programs that provide transportation to students who want to move from poor inner city schools to the suburban schools. The schools should specialize in the 3 R's with a minimum of extra curricular activities and a rule that if you misbehave you go back to your old school. The students would be chosen by lottery and teachers would line up to teach at such a school.

NIMBY's

The migrant situation in New York City is an example of not in my back yard. It was magnanimous when they announced the sanctuary city status. A sanctuary city is a city whose municipal laws tend to protect undocumented immigrants from deportation or prosecution, despite federal immigration law. Many even quoted the Stature of Liberty, give me your tired and your poor to show how compassionate they were. This was well and good when the migrants were a thousand miles away but when they got closer to home things changed. The mayors of a number of sanctuary cities began to move migrants into other cities (deportation) without asking the permission of these other places. Then they turned to Washington for financial help something they were quiet about when the migrants were far away. It is a lot like rich people who live in gated communities and say we should have fewer Blacks prison. Many of these people have personal body guards.

War

One more step on the road to war was revealed last March with the leak of some Pentagon papers (sound familiar) One document, dated 23 March, refers to the presence of a small number of Western special forces operating inside Ukraine, without specifying their activities or location. The UK has the largest contingent (50), followed by Latvia (37), France (15), the US (14) and the Netherlands (1). This was not widely reported in the news because the media is aligned with the government to proceed with the plan to aid Ukraine. In 1962 US special forces were sent to Vietnam and this was three years before the first combat troops arrived. We just keep standing by and watching but this time the stakes may be much higher.

Credit cards

Investors are often told to avoid tech stuff because things can change overnight and what was a good investment becomes a looser. One area that is currently undergoing change involves credit card transfers. Most credit card card companies charge a fee, usually two or three percent and because of newer faster technology a company called Fincheck is able to transfer funds at a lower cost say one percent. This will move companies to this new system but not for long because the US government has come up with their own transfer system and it is free. Earlier this federal government announced its new money transfer system called FedNow and it came online in July of this year. Experts say that commercial use of FedNow will grow but consumer use will lag. Most people do not even know the credit card is charging business but in time they will discover that cutting out the middle man can lower prices. It will be interesting to watch this development.

President

When it comes to voting for president I look at the individual and thus over the years have voted for 4 republicans, four democrats and 2 independents but there are many others who vote for the party. They stand for the principals of the party (platform) and always vote the straight party ticket. Today polls show that 69% of democrats do not want Biden to run but that means there are 31% who will vote for Biden. These are the party line people. They vote democrat no matter what. There are an equal number of republicans who follow the same path. If the candidate is bad enough these votes will stay home but they will never vote for the opposing party.

Ukraine

At the end of the cold war the United States promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward. So, on February 9, 1990, at a meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, James Baker stated that the United States was striving for a united Germany that would remain "firmly tied to NATO," promising at the same time "iron guarantees that NATO jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward." By 1992 the US had plans to expand NATO and overtime added 18 new members to the original 12 countries. Ten of these members were admitted after Putin came to power in 1999. In a 2007 speech in Munich, Putin expressed Russia's concern about NATO countries surrounding Russia. In 2008 Bush vowed to press for Ukraine and Georgia to be allowed to join NATO. In 2013 President Yanukovych of Ukraine was overthrown because he was going to accept a trade deal with Russian instead of with the European Union. The next year Russia took over Crimea. To better understand the Russian position how would the United States react if Russia started an alliance with Mexico.

Woke

The phrase woke started in the 1940's among Blacks to mean becoming woken up or sensitive to issues of justice. It was a good word and an easy way to point out injustice. This was all well and good but like so many good things in about 2014 the word became politicized and things started to deteriorate. Instead of thinking of people who were woke as people who were concerned about justice the page was turned. The new woke says that if you think different from me on an issue you are not just un woke but you are a bad person and deserve to be punished. So today if someone thinks you are insensitive to some issue you can be ridiculed on social media and even lose your job. It remains mostly liberals who think that way and that is reminiscent of Charles Krauthammer who said that conservatives think liberals are wrong and liberals think conservatives are evil. If you are evil you can be denigrated in any way. You are Hitler. If you say all lives matter or if you say there are only two sexes you are made out to be some kind of Neanderthal and Ivy league Eastern liberals will come after you. The problem with this is that it ends all conversations about controversial issues. You don't have to justify your position with an evil person. You just call them evil and you win. This happens a lot with the word racist.