Hillary, Reverse “Citizens United”

HRC has decided to rail against the recent SCOTUS case noted above as detrimental to our republic. She rails against billionaires, corporations, etc. overpowering the everyday folks.

Trump has done somewhat the same, singling out hedge fund folks for increased taxes.

As an aside, so where, as of now, are hedge fund folks putting their money into this election? AEI recently published an article, noted below, that states HRC has received 2,000 times more money from the hedge fund folks than Trump, $46.5 million. Trump has followed in the footsteps of Bernie by obtaining more small donations than HRC.

What I don’t understand is the total disregard for the facts that money doesn’t win elections, whether from the left or the right. There is tons of data out there on this, look at Tom Steyer in the last cycle, tens of millions of dollars spent and no winners.  So if a corporation wants to spend money, let them, lots of well paying jobs result. You would think Hillary would like that. All that money spent on campaigns without decent results.  That sounds like our public education dilemma.

This is a diversion by HRC so we don’t talk about the fact that most of her policies have long records of not working to solve our problems, or it is a red herring. (A red herring is something that misleads or distracts from a relevant or important issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_herring)

But, politics is about appealing to to basest of our instincts rather than to our highest instincts.  Both candidates today are doing so.  Both are flawed.

A constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United: Really? How?

This is a peculiar claim to make after almost eight years of the Obama presidency, in which the most significant government actions—the Dodd-Frank Act, ObamaCare, and various tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals—could hardly be said to favor corporations or business interests generally. It is also peculiar in light of a recent Wall Street Journal report that hedge fund contributions to Clinton superpacs have outraised those to Trump superpacs by a ratio of more than 2000-to-1 ($46.5 million to $19,000).

The great provincial obstacle course

The Economist, July 23rd, 2016. The Americas section.

This article talks about the barriers to trade within Canadian provinces. Provincial governments act for various reasons to protect jobs in their geography to the point that importing product from the U.S., or from overseas is easier than buying the same product from within Canada.

Our lesson? Fair trade is good for us. We do need to be sure it is fair, but the two candidates for the presidency are both screaming about “protection.”

This is bad for the middle class. This is bad to form businesses to sell overseas. This is bad for wage growth.

Reduce regulation and costs so businesses can be formed and the energy and initiative of people can be released.

Being “provincial” is bad.

Get big money out of politics

George Soros, $25 million to HRC and other candidates and PAC’s who support Democrats.

Tom Steyer, $32 Million to Democratic causes, $74 million in the last election

Haim Saban, $11 million

Fred Eychaner, $11 million

Don Sussman, $13 million

Pritzkers, James Simmons, Herbert Sanders, many millions more

HRC has said she will work to take “big money” out of politics, that is after she takes it to get elected.

The definition of hypocrisy.

 

Tell us who donated to your non-profit so we can attack them

The Daily Signal reported the below today. 8 Democrat Senators wrote letters to non profits who put forth opinions opposing the consensus about climate change, demanding to know where they get their money from.

Well, the Supreme Court has ruled that non profits do not have to disclose their funding sources.

Will that also be in the first ninety days of a HRC administration, that if we oppose some government effort to spend our money, we will be a target for expressing our opinions?  This is a slippery slope.

 

Senate Liberals, Targeting Climate Change ‘Deniers,’ Demand to Know Donors to 22 Think Tanks

School Choice, Charter Schools, et al

I favor “..promoting choice among public schools, much as the Presidents’s Charter schools Initiative encourages.”  “The President believes, as do I, that charter schools are a way of bringing Teachers and parents and communities together.”

Hillary Clinton in 1996 and 1998.

She spoke similar words to the NEA recently and was booed so she “evolved” to saying that “for profit” charter schools were bad. in 2005 Brooklyn started a charter school using union employees to prove it too could free itself from its’ own rules, it failed. The education planks of the Democrat party have been panned by Peter Cunning, an assistant secretary in Obama’s education department, saying, the platform “affirms an education system that denies its shortcomings and is unwilling to address them.” He called it “a step backwards that will hurt low-income blacks and Hispanic children.”

It appears she has evolved, pandering to the organizations that do not want to address the results our K-12 system is not producing. Does Trump have a better plan, I have no clue. But we know what HRC wants, more of the same. Shameful.

This information came from an editorial in the WSJ, August 2, 2016.

 

Economic Growth, the base solution to most problems

When the economy doesn’t grow enough, we can’t absorb new entrants to the workforce, it doesn’t provide a demand on labor greater than supply, we don’t create new small businesses who see customer needs more accurately than larger companies;… all of us are in trouble.

We tend to fight over the pie rather than growing it. Minimum wages that restrict new job holders from finding work, driving automation to eliminate employees (automated hamburger machines are coming, you can already order your food via Kiosk and go pick it up). Unions who demand more jobs than the company can afford and be competitive. Public associations that make firing someone overly difficult, thus reducing hiring and providing less than stellar service from the incompetents who stay.

The solution; reducing enough regulations and processes so that the U.S. returns to the top five of places that are the best to do business in, we have been sliding down that list for over a decade. Look to where public employees and the government have sat down to work out reasonable rules and pay that makes government efficient and a desirable place to work; and implement those solutions (see WSJ July 24, 2016, “Critics of Wisconsin’s Public-Unino Reforms Keep Firing Blanks.” CJ Szafir and Collin Roth). Ensure regulations have a cost benefit analysis completed before execution, Congress should cut off funding if the regulation doesn’t comply.

Both sides of the issues have valid points, stop yelling and calling each other names as though the other is the incarnation of the devil. Compromise, good grief, it is like 3 year old kids fighting over toys.

 

What American Citizenship Makes Possible

WSJ, July 27, 2016, Colin Powell.

The title of Secretary Powell’s article above drew me to read. He talks about his parent coming to America from Jamaica, and said that if they had gone to England he never could have become what he did, too much rigidity in the society. He praises immigration as part of the fuel that fires the American way of life. He praises education availability and quality as another fuel element.

I agree. We must continue to accept immigrants. We must accept those with skills. We must stop illegal immigration. We must encourage assimilation, not Balkanization as the French and Belgians have.

Our education industry has failed the country. Our educational performance continues to slide against our global competitors. We are short changing our kids.

Our polarization and name calling is a disservice to our forefathers and mothers, and especially to those who come after us. We must try new things and evaluate how they work.

Democrats used to like natural gas energy. Not anymore.

WSJ 7/28/16, Karen Alderman Harbert.

The title says it all. HRC quotes, “I’m going to pledge to stop fossil fuels.” “I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”

The platform positions of the recent convention should be a warning, energy costs are going up. No alternative to fossil fuels, except nuclear and hydro, come in competitively.

I guess we need to go collect Bison paddies to burn in our wood stoves, and think of all the jobs we will create taking care of horses and cleaning up after them.

Can we not get real, please! The Germans are dealing with energy costs 40% higher due to no nuclear, and the high cost of solar, wind, burning animal gas, etc.  Let’s transition towards lower emission energy so not to throw people out of jobs and honor honestly deployed capital based on the rules of the day.

Or let’s dam up every river we can.

“Europe’s Terror Storm”

WSJ, July 27, 2016, on the editorial page.

There are lots of theories about why anyone would walk into a church and slit the throat of an 87 year old catholic priest, and what to do about it.

The Catholic church where the murder took place donated the land for the establishment of the mosque where the attackers came from. (The very mosque that nurtured this murderous group of terrorists was built on a plot of land donated as a gesture of good will by the little parish of Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray! Yes, the conciliar Catholics of that little parish donated the land for the mosque that their attackers attended. (source). https://www.returntofatima.org/2016/07/who-killed-father-hamel/). We should reach out to all people in love and not strike out in retaliation blindly.

My view is we are not fighting people, we are fighting an idea. We are not confronting the idea, we are afraid to offend 2 billion Muslims.

Well, the world doesn’t seem to have a problem of offending 13 million Jews, half of which live in the U.S.  The Muslims don’t have a problem criticizing the 2 billion Christians in the world, driving them out of various Muslim majority geographies around the world.

Can you say, as we should, all of us are made by the same creator, and the ultimate goal is for all people to live in harmony and love. Does it matter what each of us calls the creator, or how we worship? Would those Muslims that live in peace with others really object to pronouncing that those who kill to force others to believe the way they do should be denounced and prevented from killing? Well the literature seems to say they won’t be offended.

So, do we with force prevent people from killing us, with regret yes. But more important is we start talking about why it is wrong for people to accept the line that killing for Allah is a good thing.

Our laws allow us to put those in jail who advocate the violent overthrow of our government. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385.

Does imposing Sharia in the U.S. and installing a mullah as the dude in charge qualify?  Seems so to me.

“If You Can Keep It”

Eric Metaxas has written a short, but noteworthy book on the state of our country. He tells the story of our founding fathers and their attempt to create a country governed in a totally new way, by those who live there. This was a startling new concept when compared to the monarchist models found almost everywhere else in the world at that time, and still is when compared to the totalitarian, dictatorships, empires, centralized,…types of governments today that do not deliver wealth and freedom to its’ people.

The qualifier about this system of government is the real risk that the governed may not realize their role in maintaining freedom by taking it for granted. Their role in sacrificing some of what they want to ensure all get something of what they want.  That there is a larger force at play, God, or the supreme force, or whatever you wish to verbalize as your view of them, or it.

He is an apologist for God, as am I, and that God was involved in the creation of this country. He makes the point that even today the U.S. is different, in the midst of all our issues, still a place people want to come to.  Pretty good evidence of the attraction.

But as Dr. Franklin said to Mrs. Powell that morning in Philadelphia, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

An  easy read with regard to length, but a powerful message for all of us who live in the U.S., and elsewhere.