Good thing Obamacare fixed health care...

... so we never have to think about it again, right? NOTHING TO FIX HERE. Keep that in mind when the GOP -- soon to be NUMBER ONE IN PEDOPHILE SENATORS!! -- threatens to tear down Obamacare, too. What we had before was terrible. Obamacare is terrible. What we will have next is terrible.

Here's what got me started thinking about this. From Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal:

A reminder: George W. Bush was our worst president ever.

Democrats recently decided to become even more Republican than they were already (and than they have been since Bill Clinton first moved the party significantly to the right in the 1990s, helping create our current world, in which two major political parties compete to see who can be more cruel to the middle class and poor.)

That rightwards-and-downwards shift by Democrats is reflected in numerous ways, most recently in reports that Democrats were now more approving than ever of George W. Bush, the worst president in United States' history. It's not true that a majority of Democrats have a favorable opinion of Bush now (only 48% do) and the way the question was asked ("Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Bush?") doesn't demonstrate approval of any specific policy or policies Worst Ever pushed through, but still.

But still.

So some reminding.

Bush is credited with a $1,300,000,000,000 tax cut as one of his first achievements in office. Those tax cuts left unchanged the taxes paid by people earning between $17,000-$68,000 a year. They were a subsidy, at the expense of that lower middle class, to the top earners, who saved a minimum of $25,000 per year on their taxes. That's minimum. A person earning $374,000 per year in 2001 has in his or her pocket an extra $325,000 by 2012 as a result of Bush's tax cuts. A person earning $68,000 per year then has no extra money now.  Those tax cuts repealed the estate tax, allowing the rich to pass on their wealth without any taxation.

The deficits created by the Bush tax cuts (which never produced the surpluses predicted, because: economics) will account for fully 1/3 of the national debt by next year.  Bush and the rich borrowed from the poor in 2018 to finance a spending spree that caused the economy to crash in 2008 and left our current government impoverished. Again: $1 of every $3 the federal government owes today is directly because of the 2001 Bush tax cuts. (The economy began to grow faster after the tax cuts were phased back out in 2012.) (But in exchange for phasing taxes back up in some cases, other things such as the capital gains tax cut were made more permanent.)

Bush started the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the latter without any reason and the former without any reasoning. 20,000+ Americans have been wounded in Afghanistan, 2,800+ killed. The numbers are just under 32,000 wounded and just over 4,000 dead in Iraq.

The Bush administration's response to Hurricane Katrina was more callous and less effective than Trump's response to the three hurricanes this year. Bush refused to agree to the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. US greenhouse gas emissions rose steadily from 2001 to 2007.

Bush's administration engineered bailouts of numerous businesses that caused the financial crisis. They turned Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into guarantors and rescuers of businesses, allowing risky investments and commodifying people's mortgages so that to this day people are foreclosed on by lenders with little risk to the lender and lots of loss of homes to people who did not cause the problem but are suffering the fix. The federal government took over a major insurance company and made low-interest loans to businesses to guide them through the financial crisis, deals that supposedly were anathema to the Republicans but which we know were not, because Republicans use government to benefit the rich while Democrats use government to benefit themselves (and they are also the rich.)

When Richard Nixon died he was given a state funeral and honored by genteel comments from everyone. People forgot that he was a criminal who only avoided prison because the man he gave the job to pardoned him, and people forgot that Nixon ordered peace talks to end in Vietnam so that he could be re-elected. 22,000 more people died before that war ended, all on Nixon's watch. He got a state funeral and honors for killing 22,000 young Americans. But at least it used to take a person dying before we forgave his sins and pretended everything was all right. George W. Bush pushed America into a ditch -- a ditch dug by Bill and Hillary Clinton and one that is being filled in above our heads by the Trumpocalypse, true, but it was Bush that put us here.

There goes 2020, here comes the Dickensian America of Tammany Hall.

California will vote in the 2020 primary on "Super Tuesday,"  Early primaries favor well-known candidates. Having lots of primaries at one time favors candidates with lots of money to compete in multiple states at the same time. Having lots of primaries early on means that well-known candidates with early fundraising advantages can effectively sew up a nomination before any other candidate can gain much traction, which is what happened in 2016.  Then after a number of early wins the leader seems to be a foregone conclusion and the funds -- as well as votes-- start moving towards the leader and away from challengers.

So a candidate like Bernie Sanders, who had broad support in the Democratic Party, had virtually no chance of winning the nomination in 2016 and would have even less in 2020.

Those are things largely beyond the Democratic Party's control. What is not beyond the Dems control is who the delegates are.  The Democratic National Committee is attempting to name as "superdelegates" for 2020 a lobbyist for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. as well as a lobbyist for Venezuela's national petroleum company, among others. The party also ousted some minority members from power positions including the head of the Arab-American Institute, who had backed Sanders. Numerous Clinton backers and friends will now hold positions of power.

Superdelegates are not bound by primaries and can back who they want.

The Democrats' answer to losing to the Republicans in 2016 is to become more like the Republicans. We would not be noticeably better off if Hillary! were president, but we will be noticeably worse off as both parties continue to march steadfastly to the right.

Trumpocalypse: Hurricane Kirstjen has hopefully learned how to read her email.

On the website Above The Law a columnist recently said there should be a website where you could go look up the (lack of) credentials of any Trump Administration appointee. We all know that I will never muster up the efficiency to do that, especially given that most of them leave before their crimes are discovered, as Carl Icahn did after using his post to make a cool half-billion bucks.

But it's Labor Day morning and I'm in the office to do some work after being out all of last week for a trial, and I'm not really ready to look at a hundred zillion emails yet, so I'll at least get a start on it. So I went to the second-to-top post at the Executive Office of the President, as a start. The highest-up post is White House Chief Of Staff; we all know that's that Kelly guy for now until he gets fired. DEPUTY WH Chief of Staff is Kirstjen Nielsen. Do you know her? You don't.

Together with the White House counsel, the press secretary, and a few others, the Chief of Staff and Deputy Chief of Staff set the president's appointments and schedule. They serve an average of 18 months (not by law, by choice; only one has lasted a full term) and frequently use the post as a springboard to other appointments or positions in government. Obama's Jack Lew, for example, went on to become Secretary of the Treasury, back when Treasury was headed by someone other than a criminal billionaire whose wife mocks the poor on Instagram.

Kirstjen Nielsen would like to be known as an expert in "homeland security," and although I've been beating this drum for 16 years I'm going to say again how much the word "homeland" creeps me out. When Worst President Ever created the Department of Homeland Security I thought it sounded Nazi-ish. Turns out I was right. But Nielsen's expertise in securing the homeland does not, apparently, extend to natural disasters. Two Congressional reports said she was one of the Bush Administration's officials who dropped the ball on Katrina. (Ironic that she was named to her post as Harvey hit land.) Nielsen was said to have received a series of warnings via email about Katrina's impending severity, yet the White House never acted on them. Nielsen was fired in April, 2007 by Bush. Imagine being fired by the Worst President Ever (like the NFL Hall of Fame, people currently on the job are not eligible for this award).

What Nielsen really is is a lobbyist for tech and aerospace industries. Her bio also says she is "general counsel" for "Civitas Group LLC," a position that helped her be one of "The Most Influential People in Security 2016".  (Her bio for that award mentions her role in the Bush Administration as being "crisis manager for major events and emergencies." Hey, it didn't say she was a good crisis manager!)

Nielsen also lists herself on Twitter as the "President" of "Sunesis Consulting." Sunesis' specialty is helping companies comply with "Sarbanes-Oxley." That's the law the Bush administration passed in the wake of Enron and other scandals.  I bet with all the attention being given to the economic collapse of 2008, you entirely forgot about its little brother, the collapse of eleven major companies in 2002 due to the fact that they were (to use a technical term) "criminally fraudulent enterprises that cooked the books to ensure profits for the head CEOs."  Bush called the law (which [passed the Senate 99-1)

"the most far-reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The era of low standards and false profits is over; no boardroom in America is above or beyond the law."

What do you want to bet that just as Carl Icahn broke the law in trying to get cap-and-trade changed so he could make more than just $500,000,000, we will see the Trump administration start to roll back boardroom regulations that were put in place by the previous Republican administration?

Don't place that bet yet: In March Trump ordered that the Treasury Secretary review regulations including Sarbanes-Oxley specifically. Now would be a good time to pull your money out of the stock market.

GIT R DONE: Why throwing more money at cops won't help.

Madison journalist wonders why cops dont arrest people before they commit crimes: https://t.co/gSxe0WoFhZ. @ChrisRickertWSJ

— BrianePagel (@BrianePagel) August 26, 2017

There was recently a spate of shootings and related retaliatory violence in Madison, Wisconsin, where that sort of thing isn't supposed to happen.

This morning, Chris Rickert, a columnist for whatever is left of the local media, posted an editorial which has some remarkably backward thinking in it.   The gist of Rickert's editorial (that link leads to the whole thing) appears to be that long-term action is useless and we should devolve to a police state because that GITS THINGS DONE.

Seriously: The piece's title is "Madison do-gooders haggled over shootings police stopped." It begins "provocatively":

Madison’s mayor and City Council spent valuable time this spring and summer feuding among themselves and with local activists over how to respond, ahem, quickly to a rash of shootings.
Madison Police Chief Mike Koval on Aug. 9 announced plans to round up those suspected in the violence and two weeks later announced that the shootings had largely stopped...

Wait for it...

— at least for now.

The best problem solving is always temporary! Rickert went on to ask why the cops hadn't just arrested the bad guys BEFORE they committed the shootings, and when I questioned Rickert's commitment to creating a pre-crimes unit at the MPD he suggested the police already had warrants for the future-shooters and could've just picked them up.

Rickert's piece plays up the notion that all we have to do is GIT THINGS DONE by throwing more money at the cops. He talks about how all the money already thrown at social programs aimed at ending violence haven't stopped ALL THIS VIOLENCE and whether it's worth it to try again.  This is the same fatalist debate that people use to argue guns ought not be outlawed: people will still HAVE guns won't they? Can't turn back the tide might's well just let people do what they want.

The argument that something has not worked at 100% capacity is a false argument. First of all, my computer crashes about 10 times a week. According to Rickert's philosophy, since all previous fixes have not corrected the problem permanently, I should go back to an abacus. Secondly, NO law or social program is 100% effective. Kids fail school. Murders happen even though murder has been illegal since Moses broke the tablets. The internet hasn't yet killed local newspapers. So just because social programs haven't ended all violence is not a reason to simply say "well they failed SADDLE UP BOYS WE'RE FORMIN' A POSSE."

Rickert talks about how the cops don't have the resources to track down the 8000 outstanding warrants MPD has, and finishes his piece with this bon mot:

[The chief] doesn’t think the shootings have stopped for good. But given how much police have been able to accomplish in a few weeks of targeted effort and overtime, it’s hard not to wonder whether violence could become less prevalent if the mayor and City Council were slightly more receptive to Koval’s calls for more resources.

The well-intentioned social progressives who  run Madison don’t like to consider it, but there may just be some hardened criminals who can’t be reformed by anything paid for by government or carried out by Madison do-gooders.

None of which is to say the do-gooders shouldn’t keep trying.
But if all the trying fails, it’s nice to know something as simple as more policing hasn’t.

So piece that out: we need only "slightly" more resources -- in an unknown amount -- thrown at the police to achieve... what? Rickert's piece admits the police DO NOT THINK THE SHOOTINGS HAVE STOPPED. That undermines Rickert's whole thesis: quick action achieved a temporary lull at best and maybe achieved nothing at all.

More importantly, it is not a matter of SLIGHT increases in resources.  Give the police 8,000 more men, say, one for each of those warrants. Those guys go out and arrest EIGHT THOUSAND people in the Madison area.

The Dane County Jail, where MPD keeps criminals awaiting charging who have not been released, has 341 beds and 24 segregation cells. Maybe we could just put 25 guys in each bed.  Or, if we still consider human rights, what would happen is at least 7,659 arrestees would be IMMEDIATELY released back out on the streets on some form of bail or signature bond. At least that would give the 8,000 new cops something to do: they could monitor them! And arrest them and release them again if something new happens!  Catch And Release as law enforcement.

Once those 8000 guys are booked, they will have to be arraigned.  Dane County has 17 judges and about 8 court commissioners who can do initial hearings and other LEGALLY REQUIRED steps in prosecuting cases.  One Dane County judge recently commented -- ON THE RECORD -- about how more and more accused were demanding speedy trials (it's only a constitutional right, after all) and that was placing a burden on the court system.

Those 8000 guys will need lawyers. Most criminal defendants get public defenders. In Wisconsin, the public defender system is so overburdened it led to the Seattle University of Law releasing a study in which it described Wisconsin's system as "Justice Shortchanged."  Public defenders in Wisconsin are paid $40 per hour by the state. Average overhead per hour for a lawyer in Wisconsin is just over $41, so assigned counsel public defenders barely make ends meet. I won't go into what that means because I don't want to demean the GOOD lawyers who do that work. But there simply aren't the resources to dump 8000 new cases onto public defenders and private lawyers willing to do pro bono or extremely cheap work.

But maybe you're one of those people who doesn't think the criminals deserve lawyers and all that liberal do-gooder nonsense. Even for you, there's problems: Wisconsin's prosecutors are overburdened and underpaid. In 2016 a study said Wisconsin needs at least 140 more prosecutors -- about 2 per county. District attorneys described what they do  as "a public safety crisis" and "essentially malpractice."

Hey, guys -- here's 8000 MORE CASES to prosecute.  Have fun!

This "crisis" it should be noted is almost ENTIRELY the fault of the Republican party.  While Wisconsin's criminal justice system and law enforcement was already in trouble in 2008, the GOP has controlled Wisconsin since 2010 and it was in 2016 and 2017 that the nation began to notice just how truly bad Wisconsin's justice system is. So much for law and order, right? Republicans talk a good game but don't back it up.

It's easy to write up six quick paragraphs about how we need to GIT THINGS DONE. It's a lot harder to actually try to understand the systemic problems that lead to an 8000-warrant backlog, and even harder to understand the failure of a nation to even TRY seriously to undo the terrible educational, social welfare, and medical 'systems' we have allowed to develop. We do a terrible job of helping people get educated, find work, take care of their children, get medical care, stay off drugs, and generally be good people. Anyone wanting to fix any of those systems runs into billion-dollar opposition from the Republican party, and gets no help from a Democratic party that has given up and exists solely to promote the good of a few people within it.

All of THOSE problems are worsened by editorials which make no effort to investigate the facts or understand the problems, but instead just blithely suggest that if we were willing to just pay the cops a bit more everything would be all right.  People read those things, and believe them, and it makes it harder to fix things. It is a failure of the media to publish that kind of drivel.

Hey why were all these CEOs willing to back Trump and be in his White House?

"In the months after the election, the stock price of CVR, Icahn’s refiner, nearly doubled—a surge that is difficult to explain without acknowledging the appointment of the company’s lead shareholder to a White House position. The rally meant a personal benefit for Icahn, at least on paper, of half a billion dollars."

-- from The New Yorker, in an article about how billionaire Carl Icahn failed -- their word, not mine -- in his 'raid on Washington.



Although perhaps a better question than the headline would be "Why are publishers and reporters so committed to not actually reporting what is going on?"

Taking down Confederate statues is a move to make white liberals feel better about their own very real racism.

Today the first headline I saw was that some university is now taking down it's Confederate statutes, which makes me wonder just why we have so many freaking statues celebrating people whose sole motivation in life was to rend a country in two simply to preserve their right to own (and treat cruelly) other people.

But the big point here is this: taking down Confederate statues is liberal pandering to other liberals, whites, mostly, to avoid confronting their own inherent racism.

Take Madison mayor Paul Soglin, whose 60s radicalism is mostly expressed these days in trying to make sure the homeless are driven from Madison's business district rather than treated humanely and helped.

Soglin last week received plaudits for ordering the removal of Confederate somethings from somewhere.

Soglin was invisible for most of the Tony Robinson shooting: you could not find him taking a stance, on anything related to the cold-blooded murder of a young, unarmed black man by Madison cops. When those same Madison cops settled by paying $3,350,000 to Robinson's mom, Soglin defended them, and criticized the settlement.

Racism doesn't always dress in white robes, and racism isn't cured by easy fixes like pulling down statues.

American Courts

4 out of every 10 people carries a credit card balance from month to month. That figure is actually down from the year 2000, when 50% of people in America carried credit card debt.

The average credit card debt for houses with zero net worth or a negative net worth is $10,307; that group, the poorest, has the highest average credit card debt of any economic strata.

Most credit card cases used to be litigated in small claims court, where debtors can take advantage of looser procedures, but where many cases are not heard by elected judges.  In the past 2 years, small claims cases have dropped, while the number of cases filed in civil court (generally, seeking $10,000 or more) have climbed.

The "vast majority" of cases in state courts are debt collection, landlord-tenant, foreclosure, and small claims. In as many as 75% of the cases heard in a state court, at least one party appears without representation; this was true even in small claims cases, where an increasing number of collectors are represented by lawyers. That is, 3 out of every 4 cases involves a creditor, represented by a lawyer, suing a debtor, unrepresented, over money, housing or a vehicle.

According to one source, 80% of all collection debt relates to health care, telecommunications, or utilities.

The number of people working as debt collectors has doubled since 1990.

Trumpocalypse 13: Just what is The Trump Presidency (TM) Doing, Anyway?

You may feel like you're totally up on the news and how bad things are getting in America because you know stuff, like you know how Trump ordered government employees to find proof he had big crowds at his inauguration or how Betsy "I Bought This Cabinet Seat Myself" DeVos was barely confirmed as his Secretary of (Killing Off Public) Education, and of course you are completely up on the fact that he nominated someone for the Supreme Court and he banned Muslims from coming into the country, so congrats, you, on being informed.

Except you aren't.

The other day I found myself thinking Who actually has been confirmed on Trump's cabinet? I was surprised to learn we've got a Secretary of State -- Rex Tillerson! -- since I'd heard nothing much about that (seemingly important) Cabinet position.  That, in turn, made me wonder what else I'd been missing as the various real- and fake-media sources went nuts over real news (the Muslim ban) and fake news (the crowds at the inauguration).

There's been a lot going on, it turns out, so much so that I don't know if anyone, including the White House, knows how much has been going on -- like the thing with Steve Bannon slipping in an executive order making himself a member of the National Security Council, something that didn't make the headlines it should because when the ship is sinking it seems like it's less important to also announce the captain has been embezzling money.

The Trump Presidency (TM) has been busy, though, so busy that almost nobody can track it. According to the White House site, Trump has issued seven executive orders (or that's how many are posted there), 12 "Presidential Memoranda," and even two "Proclamations," which you have to imagine are Trump's favorite.

That's 21 Executive Actions according to The Trump Presidency (TM)'s own website. But according to Business Insider, as of February 3, he'd taken 22 such actions, so which one is missing from the official government website?

Or are the White House and Business Insider inflating things? Fox News' list as of February 3 contains what it says are 19 items, but actually the count comes to 14, depending on how you count them.

Wikipedia, meanwhile, lists 23 such actions already, while USA Today has an incomplete list but does note that one form of Trump order is an entirely new creature: the "national security presidential memorandum." And to top things off, there is at least one order signed by his chief of staff that has the force of an executive order from the president.

While some claim it's the most prolific executive action yet, Wikipedia has 23 such actions by Obama as of the first week of February 2009, so it's not clear even whether the media has as much information as, say, a website voluntarily maintained by anonymous people who get their information primarily from other websites.  (If there is an official listing of all executive actions anywhere, I haven't been able to find it.)

Most of the articles that discuss this at all simply list the orders, with no analysis or explanation or context, which means that the media is again not doing very much to help people understand how their government works (or doesn't) and is focusing on the high-profile stories like Betsy DeVos, but that raises the question: are these stories high profile because they are important? Or are they high profile because they are interesting to talk about and easy to understand?

I'm going to look at the specific executive actions going forward, on and off, but in the meantime, ask yourself: whatever the number of executive orders is so far (7, 14, 21, 23?) how many Trump Presidency (TM) actions can you list off the top of your head?

The vast majority of people in this country have little information and less understanding of how government actually works and what government actually does. That's why it's so easy for Republicans to hijack the political process (with at best the complacency of the Democratic Party and at worst the Democrats' own efforts to use 'social issues' to distract from the real issues.)  If even the best-informed and politically motivated people have only a vague clue as to what is going on, how can we hope to have people who aren't as energized about the political process to grasp the realities of the situation.

I have a rule for charitable giving that I think makes a lot of sense: if I spend money frivolously -- by buying something that is a pure luxury, like plants in my Plants Vs. Zombies 2 videogame -- I try to match that with a charitable contribution in the same amount, so that if I use $1.99 selfishly I use another $1.99 unselfishly.

I think that applies to politics and information, as well. So try this: every time you click on a story about Donald Trump's Twitter beefs, ask yourself what you know about what he's done that day that matters, and then go read up on that, too.

Trumpocalypse 12: I can't BEAR it.

Democrats are more afraid of Bernie Sanders than they are of Donald Trump.

Over the past 20 years, the Democrats have routinely ignored local and state and other down-ballot elections to focus on the presidency as their party becomes the GOP only with better Hollywood celebs to back it.  This has resulted in Republican control of most state and local governments, which has made a Republican majority in the House of Representatives an easy thing to maintain through voter suppression laws and gerrymandering.

That alone does not explain why Democrats also lose in elections where the districts cannot be rigged, though, including gubernatorial, Senate, and presidential elections, where popular votes cannot be redistricted every ten years into 'safe seats.' Democrats do not understand that they lose these votes because they are leaving behind (or have left behind) their base voters, a fact that is happening because the Democrats are, economically speaking, identical to the Republicans in all the ways that hurt the lower classes the most.

THAT is why Hillary! lost the election: Hillary! gave her voters no real reason to go vote for her by abandoning the principles most Democrats (say they) believe in.  Trump's voters were told he would build a wall to keep out Muslim Illegal Immigrants who force factory workers in Indiana to have abortions, and so they got to the polls for him.  Hillary!'s voters were told she... wouldn't be Trump.

But despite those cold, hard, easy-to-understand, fairly obvious facts, Democrats persist in shouting as loudly as they can that someone else is responsible for their losing. Now, the reason is Bernie Sanders, or, rather, the reason is the the reasons that Bernie Sanders stood for.

Writing for "The Root" or possibly for his 5th grade essay on the presidential election, writer Michael Arceneaux posted "Shut Up, Bernie Sanders" yesterday afternoon.  According to this bio, Arceneaux is

 a Houston-bred, Howard University-educated writer currently living in Harlem. He often covers issues related to culture, sexuality, religion, race, and Beyoncé.

Covering politics might be slightly more difficult than covering Beyonce, as demonstrated by Arceneuax's keep grasp of nothing in his post.

Arceneaux's thesis is hard to understand, but it appears to be 90% defense of Democrats' intense focus on being Republicans while not appearing to be, and 9% claiming the election was stolen, and 1% race-baiting.  Let's take a look.

If hubris and the successful pursuit of headlines were genuine indicators of political aptitude, perhaps Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) would actually be the Svengali he’s presently being sold as.

According to Wikipedia,

"Svengali" has come to refer to a person who, with evil intent, dominates, manipulates, and controls a creative person such as a singer or an actor.

So: Not a Sanders fan. Got it. Arceneaux says:

Of course, Sanders, like our president-elect, the Marigold Manchurian Candidate, can rightly lay claim to scoring huge, albeit majorly melanin-deficient, crowds that found kinship in campaigns rallying against a corrupt political system. 

"Guilt by Association" is one of the arguments listed in "An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments."  Note the race-baiting has begun in the second paragraph: "Sanders does not appeal to minorities."

In February 2016, Gallup noted that part of Sanders' image problem among black voters was that about 1/3 of them didn't know who he was. In a recent poll discussing who would win the 2020 nomination, 21% of minority respondents picked Sanders; 45% picked Joe Biden. Sanders was 15% ahead of the next closest among minorities (Elizabeth Warren, 6%).

Arceneaux again:

Unfortunately, only one of those men could seize a major political party’s nomination with a mostly white vote. So, while Sanders was successful in pushing political foe Hillary Rodham Clinton to more progressive stances, he was never a real threat to her campaign. Not only that, but he failed to make real inroads with the folks whose backs the Democratic Party stands on. This is the part where you conjure an image of a black auntie.

So much so wrong so quickly. While Hillary! won by a large margin the minority vote, she lost ground to Barack Obama in percentage of that vote. It would be asinine to assume that some minorities only voted for Obama because he was black, so one must assume that the minority voters who went to the polls for Obama in 2008 and 2012 but Stayed Home For Hillary! were doing so for some reason other than the color of her skin. Perhaps Hillary!'s inroads with "black auntie" were temporarily closed.

Did Hillary! take on more progressive stances? Does the Democratic Party stand on the shoulders of the black aunties of America?

Progressive stances really only matter if they are economic progressive stances or concern what is loosely referred to as "social justice."  Hillary! as Secretary of State pushed TPP, which may or may not be a good thing but it's not considered a progressive thing. In her presidential run, Hillary! wouldn't comment one way or the other on whether she'd support the deal. Trump opposed TPP, but so did Sanders.

2008 Hillary! didn't want to lift the current cap on income which is subject to the social security tax. In 2016, Hillary! said she would agree with raising the cap to just under $120,000, which would hurt middle-class voters a bit more, while not affecting the poor or rich at all. Progressive!

Clinton did get more progressive in terms of cops versus incarceration and student debt, but arguably those were responses to the mass shootings of black men by white cops, and the student debt crisis looming large over millenials, not a response to Sanders' campaign.

Arceneaux then starts blaming the system, more or less, for Hillary!'s loss, while faulting Sanders for continuing to believe that Democrats should stand for something more than Republicans With Better PR:

Sadly, Sanders can’t stop, won’t stop, doling out bad advice. 

The advice in question is what Sanders believes Democrats should do if they want to govern, and/or if they want to govern as liberals.  Arceneaux doesn't want Sanders to say this stuff, because he (presumably) doesn't want Democrats to do this stuff.  Arceneaux takes a few more false-equivalency potshots at Sanders:

Moreover, much like the Colby-Jack Führer-in-waiting at his first press conference as president-elect, Sanders can’t stop taking shots at Clinton. Perhaps losing the popular vote is that damaging to one’s ego.

Sanders! What a loser! He's just like Trump!

In any event, speaking to NPR’s Morning Edition, Sanders argued, “Look, you can’t simply go around to wealthy people’s homes raising money and expect to win elections.” The Vermont senator went on to declare, “I happen to believe that the Democratic Party has been not doing a good job in terms of communicating with people in cities, in towns and in rural America, all over this country.”

This is the same man who lamented that having so many Southern primaries in the early months of the Democratic primary “distorts reality.”

Arceneaux provides no argument or evidence for asserting that Sanders is wrong about how the Democrat's inability to communicate with Americans is hurting them. He simply lists it as a thing that Sanders said which Arceneaux thinks is wrong, and then brings up what seems to be a non sequitur: What, one wonders, does Sanders' disapproval of the timing of the primaries have to do with the Democrats' losing elections because they can't get their message ("I'm Not Trump" -- Hillary Clinton, 2016) to Americans?

Well, everything: By front-loading Southern primaries, Democrats make the nominee have to appeal to Southern voters early on, when fundraising is based primarily on name recognition and thus favors 'rock star' candidates like Hillary!.  This in turn helps those 'rock star' candidates seem very successful early on, which then pushes the idea that a Sanders-like candidate simply 'can't win' the nomination, because he's doing poorly in the early primaries.  Put more simply, the more a candidate wins early on, the more likely the public will see that candidate as the one that should be backed. And the more a candidate wins early on in primaries depends heavily on how well-known that candidate is before the primary.

The Democrats, then, ensure that their candidates must be well-known, heavily-backed candidates who have a strong appeal to Southern voters in order to have a shot at being nominated.  Then, when a candidate locks in the nomination (or appears certain to do so) the campaign in other states winds down, so later-primary states get less primary focus. When Wisconsin held its primary, I voted for Sanders, knowing it was all but certain he could not get the nomination by then. (Sanders won Wisconsin, but nearly every story about it noted that Sanders almost certainly could not win the nomination, based on how the Democrats' nomination system works.)

Arceneaux:

Hillary Clinton ran an unsuccessful campaign, but to say she ran a bad campaign is disingenuous. 

Why? "We didn't win the game, but to say we lost is disingenous." Hillary!'s campaign was hacked because her workers had bad cyber security. She didn't campaign nearly enough in many states. She picked as a VP nominee a near-unknown whose only appeal was that he was from the South, it seems. Grassroots supports expressed dismay with nearly everything Hillary! did. And you: name a Hillary! campaign position (other than one I told you about in this post.) You likely can't.

After saying Hillary! didn't run a bad campaign, Arceneaux goes full hypothetical question:

Should she have campaigned more in black neighborhoods? According to the results of Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan, sure. Could she have made greater attempts at reaching out to rural voters, even though they’re not exactly Democratic strongholds? It’s fair to say yes.

"Should Hillary! have campaigned hard in states that were battlegrounds and which could turn the election? Yes. Could she have tried to expand the Democrats' message to new constituencies? Yes."

Did she do those things? No. She ran a bad campaign.

That said, Clinton had nearly 3 million more votes than our president-elect

"That said, if the election had been run in some way other than the way we've run them for 238 years, Hillary! would have won." Was Hillary! unaware of how the electoral college would work in 2016, and therefore unable to try to win the election that would be held, rather than the election she wished we would hold?

and lost by about 80,000 votes in three states heavily affected by voter suppression, an issue that the likes of Sanders and others failed to truly speak on, at their own peril.

Republicans can pass voter-suppression laws because Democrats let Republicans win state elections and control state legislatures. The Republicans openly say they are doing this, and it helps them win elections. Democrats continue to ignore that. Many people disagree on the effects of voter suppression laws vis a vis the 2016 elections. But more to Arceneaux's point: Sanders did attack voter suppression laws. Sanders' attack on Wisconsin's law was called "relentless[]" by The Hill.

Referring to Clinton's loss in the election, Arceneaux says:

Clinton achieved this feat despite a media consumed by a nonissue about her email server as it gleefully reported on stolen material secured through hackers so ordered by the Russian government.

Arceneaux is a part of the media, as is Jezebel (the blog hosting his column, loosely speaking.) Jezebel frequently reported on the Clinton emails.

Political losses should yield a real examination of what went wrong, 

yes they should...

but Sanders is someone who, on par with a robot, just repeats what’s already been programmed. The man is not saying anything new or remotely insightful. Clinton performed far better than he arguably ever could have with a diverse coalition that he never enjoyed or made a real effort to build.

... but not by Arceneaux.  Is his argument really "It's better that Democrats narrowly lose with Clinton than lose by a lot with Sanders?" Seems like it. Arceneaux is the reason why the coach of your favorite NFL team, down 20-0 in the 4th quarter, kicks a field goal.

Sanders’ lil’ media tour, in which he sings another sad love song like he’s Toni Braxton, is good for Bernie Sanders, but what about the party, and what about the rest of us?

First off, Toni Braxton is a hateful person who views her son's autism as a punishment for Toni Braxton. She's said so.  Secondly,

To wit, during a recent town hall with CNN, Sanders was asked if the Democrats, like the Republicans immediately following the swearing-in of President Barack Obama, should obstruct the new commander in chief. “I don’t think that’s what we do,” Sanders answered. “I think where Trump has ideas that make sense that we can work with him on, I think we should.”

Where exactly is that? Trade policy, a grievance shared by both men, came up, and Sanders said that he would be “prepared to sit down and work on a new trade policy which is based on fairness, not just on corporate greed.” One of the great loves of the reality-TV version of Ebenezer Scrooge’s life is greed, so what is the point of saying this?

Secondly, both Trump and Sanders oppose TPP, as I noted. More importantly, Arceneaux's point here is literally this:  If Trump proposes something the Democrats like the Democrats should still oppose it because it comes from Trump. This is the politics of nihilism the Republicans excel at.  What if Trump proposed single-payer universal health care, because he personally would benefit from it? Should the Democrats say no way man? 

Republicans were wrong to obstruct Obama, 

You have just undermined your own last point.

especially when you consider how willing he was to compromise for the sake of the greater good. ...

The Democrats expressly did not compromise on Obamacare, forcing it through using the same Congressional procedure that they now fault the Republicans for using to try to repeal that law.

Now, as we look at a man building an administration very much in line with the demagoguery and exploitation his campaign was known for, Sanders is scolding Democrats based on mythology while pretending that he can get something down with the bigot ruler-in-waiting.

What is even  going on in that sentence? I don't understand this at all, but if you are following the box score, it is:

1. Sanders is wrong to say Dems can compromise with Trump.
2. Republicans were wrong not to compromise with Obama.
3. Sanders is wrong to say Dems can compromise with Trump.

Arceneaux:

Not surprisingly, when asked if he would run for president again in 2020, Sanders wouldn’t offer any definitive response. He likes the attention too much for that. 

Sanders will be 76 this year. So far, I don't know of any candidate that has definitely committed to running in 2020, so it's obvious that not just Sanders, but every single politician enjoys the attention of the media too much to say they will definitely run for the next presidency when the newest one hasn't even been sworn in.

Although Sanders may be sincere in his stances on the evils of classism, 

Yeah, just because he's publicly espoused these beliefs for 3/4 of a century is no reason to think the guy is sincere.  By the way, Bernie Sanders' net worth of $528,000 is roughly 1/100th of Hillary!'s $53,000,000 net worth. Those figures might seem important to you, if you were the type of person who thought possibly someone was not sincere in their public statements about the evils of classism.

for all the admonishment he’s offered Democrats, he’s shown no sign of learning about his own shortcomings. At this point, he very much just enjoys the sound of his own voice and the attention. 

I'm sure that is precisely why Sanders continues to doggedly insist that Democrats pay attention to the problem of income distribution, health care, and political voice. He likes the attention! I'm surprised he hasn't dated one of the Kardashians, the attention hog!

Arceneaux of course does not say what shortcomings Sanders should be aware of, or any support for the notion that Sanders is pushing back solely to get attention.

In recent days, Bernie Sanders has been speaking out about the repeal of Obamacare, helped work to get new blood into the Democratic party to push populist programs, given a town hall speech to promote his agenda, announced he was seeking areas to work with Trump on, and was lined up to speak at a tribute to Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Many nascent political movements die at the first sign of a setback. In recent decades, "Perotistas" never made much of an impact, and the Tea Party's political influence has been pruned down considerably, with establishment Republicans again running the show, albeit from a spot a bit more to the right than they were 8 years ago.  It is heartening, then, to see Sanders continue his own drive, and to not just do so by attempting to seize the brass ring, as Hillary! does, but by actually energizing the grass roots and looking to foment change at all levels of the political hill.

There is reason to think Sanders could be successful in pushing back against 50 years of redistribution of wealth to a smaller and smaller group of people in society while children literally die in our streets for lack of a social safety net. The vast majority of Americans, when polled recently, back Sanders' stances on nearly every single issue. The article that sentence links to points out that the reason Americans don't have the programs they support is because the political elite have consistently diverted voters' attention from those issues that matter to so called 'culture war' issues.  In this, the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans: both desperately want to distract you from the fact that the 1% who make up the power structure in both parties benefit from economic policies that balance megawealth on the backs of the poor and middle class.  Michael Arceneaux is simply another tool in the hands of people like Hillary! and Trump, and it is Michael Arceneaux and the people like him who should shut up.

Trumpocalypse 10: So long, 14th Amendment.

Scott Walker Says He Would Support Article V Convention To Amend Constitution, said the innocuous-seeming headline on Madison.com, written by editors and reporters who bemoan fake news and the fate of newspapers while contributing to their own demise by completely failing to report on real news, by which I mean "did they ask follow-up questions and possibly see what it was Failed Presidential Candidate Scott Walker doesn't like about our US Constitution which is only The GREATEST CONSTITUTION IN THE WORLD?"

They did not.

Instead, the article simply and blandly quotes what appear to be press-release type quotes about how popular the move to amend the US Constitution is among Republican governors, who want to reign in the federal government despite the federal government being entirely controlled by their party.

I'm not a political reporter, of course, which means I have a memory, Google, and the desire to use them instead of just hacking away until I get my paycheck, so I googled "ALEC Article V Amendments."

You may remember "ALEC," which was kind of a big deal before the Democrats decided that they would simply blame 'fake news' for their continuing to lose elections.  "ALEC" is the "American Legislative Exchange Council" and it is essentially a lobbying group for extremely conservative reform.

ALEC has up on their website right  now an application for a Constitutional Convention which it summarizes this way:

The federal government has steadily consolidated its power while eroding state control in ways that are clearly inconsistent with the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Foreseeing this possibility, our constitutional framers created a method for states to introduce amendments to the U.S. Constitution through an Article V Convention. This draft model policy serves as an application to Congress to call an Article V Convention limited to proposing amendments to that will impose fiscal restraints on the federal government; limit the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and limit the terms of office for federal officials and members of Congress.

Now, keep in mind, none of those things are in and of themselves particularly conservative, or bad. Laws which affect both parties equally (like Virginia's stripping of gubernatorial power) can come back to bite you. Remember when the Democrats were mad that GOP senators were stalling things with filibusters? Bernie filibusters all the time, and that Texan legislator won national acclaim for filibustering a Texas abortion law. The "filibuster," by the way, is the ultimate domination of a minority (1 person, or at the most the number of people that 1 person represents) over the majority (us.)

ALEC has also set out, in a 56-page brochure, (available on PDF!) some helpful guidelines for states to call for an run an Article V convention. They include tips like "Don't make applications [for a convention] too general" and "Don't make applications to specific."

It's harder to find out what, exactly, ALEC wants the states to want the US Constitution to say. Back in August 2016 the NY Times published an article about the push for a convention, proving that reporters can report. It noted that the push arose from the fact that the GOP controls most state legislatures. The level of Democratic control of state legislatures is as low as it was at the time of the Civil War, which means the last time the Democrats were this unpopular, it was because they supported slavery.

One big thing ALEC is pushing is a 'balanced budget amendment.' This, too, is not an automatically bad thing. Thomas Jefferson wanted one, but Jefferson also wanted to prohibit the US from printing paper money. (Nor is consistency a hobgoblin in Jefferson's mind: he later busted the budget buying the Louisiana territory.)  Balanced budget amendment talk became big when pushed by a Taxpayers group beginning in the 1980s when Reagan was elected. It should be noted that whenever there is a Republican president, as there has been 20 of the last 36 years, there is nothing that keeps that Republican president from refusing to sign any budget that is not 'balanced.' Same goes for when the GOP controls Congress. The Republican push for a balanced budget amendment is the equivalent of a dieter asking you to lock his refrigerator so he can't raid it.

Then again, under most proposals, you could still raid the 'fridge under a Balanced Budget Amendment, since most proposals would require a budget to be balanced unless 3/5 of Congress -- less than that needed to override a presidential veto -- voted to UNbalance it.

While most articles focus on the Balanced Budget aspect of ALEC's Article V push (which was said to be almost near its goal in 2014, so perhaps even now people, including me, are being alarmist about, but since we were asleep at the switch on the Trumpocalypse, maybe it's time to be a bit alarmist about things again)  ALEC also wants an amendment to limit terms in the federal government. Did the Founders believe in term limits? Maybe, maybe not: Washington stepped down after two terms and every president honored that right up until FDR decided to honor the will of the people, after which the Republicans decided that the will of the people was bunk and proposed the 22nd Amendment. (The GOP controlled Congress at the time.)

But the amendment nobody seems to mention is the "Government Of The People" amendment. In this amendment. ALEC proposes to amend the Constitution to let states nullify federal laws they do not like. Nullification, too, is not a new concept: Jefferson and James Madison argued states had the right to nullify the Alien & Sedition Acts, but in 1809 the US Supreme Court said states can't nullify federal laws, what with the US Constitution saying federal laws are the 'supreme' law of the land.

Nullification was perhaps most famously argued on behalf of the states that would form the Confederacy, arguing that the states could nullify federal attempts to make African-Americans people, not property. Nullifcation has also been used, though, to try to help that cause: Wisconsin argued it could nullify the Fugitive Slave Act: Wisconsin state courts had freed a slave, finding the Act unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court reversed.

The GOP spent most of the last 6 years trying to undo Obamacare, but let's not forget the GOP's state- and federal attacks on equal rights for people, voting rights for minorities, and other fundamental areas of our society. The Amendment would let individual states -- controlled by Republicans and an increasingly-conservative judiciary (Scott Walker in Wisconsin has promoted judges who were or are members of the "Federalist Society," an extremely conservative legal group) -- nullify any laws they found inconvenient or unlikeable. Including, say, Medicare or Social Security? Possibly.  Such a move would make the United States also more balkanized, more like the European Union than like the United States; it would certainly weaken the federal government, which may sound good to some people at some times but should sound terrible to all people at all times, as it is the federal government, not the states, which have secured equal rights to people, extended the vote to women, provided for a base level of care for our elderly and disabled (shamefully low though it is, it's there), modernized commerce with the US highway system, got us to the Moon, and otherwise turned the United States from a backward, agrarian dependency to the only remaining superpower.

For now.

Goddammit Democrats keep this up and I will vote for Trump OUT OF SPITE.

As Democrats continue to flail around wildly trying to prove that they didn't lose the election it was stolen guys honest (behaving exactly the way they pre-emptively chided Trump for during the campaign) the latest excuse is the most ridiculous by far: if it wasn't the Electoral College or Putin stealing the election, it was lack of typing skills.

I'm going to warn you: the person who gave this story to the press is A LIAR.  He is lying. He is lying, and the press believes him. He is lying, and Hillary! & Co. and the press are supporting him because it makes it NOT THEIR FAULT GUYS that Hillary! lost.

Remember: the man who claims this excuse in the following story is lying:

One of the worst and most public email hacks in political history began with a typo, a report in The New York Times revealed on Tuesday.
An aide to Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair, John Podesta, saw a warning email in his inbox back in March, claiming to be from Google. Podesta needed to change his Gmail password immediately, the email said.

The story points out what we all know:

Most adult internet users know by now never to click a link in emails like this ― phishing is fairly common. Even unsophisticated tech types are hip to the scam. 

"We all" not including people working for Hillary!

So, before responding, Podesta’s aide showed the email to another staffer, a computer technician.

That's where the lying starts.

From the Times (bolding is HuffPost’s):

“This is a legitimate email,” Charles Delavan, a Clinton campaign aide, repliedto another of Mr. Podesta’s aides, who had noticed the alert. “John needs to change his password immediately.”

With another click, a decade of emails that Mr. Podesta maintained in his Gmail account — a total of about 60,000 — were unlocked for the Russian hackers. Mr. Delavan, in an interview, said that his bad advice was a result of a typo: He knew this was a phishing attack, as the campaign was getting dozens of them. He said he had meant to type that it was an “illegitimate” email, an error that he said has plagued him ever since.

I was not the only one who immediately realized that the "computer tech" staffer was lying: I (and hopefully you) immediately noticed that the article was wrong: the staffer wrote "a legitimate" rather than "an legitimate." If he'd meant to write "illegitimate" he likely would've put "an" in there, so there are two typos. In addition, telling someone they have an "illegitimate" email is usually not followed by "so change your password."

Further, a computer tech would have known that you don't click in the email if you're at all in doubt: you go to the site yourself, to try to avoid being fished.

In addition, if you Google the phrase "How can I know if a change password request from Google is legitimate" you'll get as a top result a link to this page, which tells you when and how Google will ask you to change your password. 

The Times report that actually discusses this notes that prior to TYPOGATE, the Democratic National Committee was already aware of potential hacking problems, but that (allegedly) nobody had alerted the higher-ups about it.

The Times story then goes on to reveal that the typo did not contribute to the hack at all.  Billy Rinehart, "a former D.N.C. field director" got the email at 4 a.m., clicked on the link, and changed his password. (The Times notes he was "half asleep," because making important decisions about presidential campaigns is okay if you do it "half asleep.")(Evidence of the press coddling Hillary! & Co is shown by the press giving Rinehart that "half asleep" pass as well as HuffPo's cutely noting that the hack wasn't all bad because we got Podesta's risotto recipe. Ha ha politicians: They're just like us!)

The actual "typo" (remember they are lying) was sent by a different computer tech to a different aide who had checked it out when he logged into John Podesta's email; the Times notes that "several" aides had access to Podesta's personal email.

"Several."

So the Times story notes that the Democratic National Committee had at least one fairly high-level person working with the FBI on a potential hack, but that person never alerted higher-ups. The DNC also had such lax cybersecurity that "several" people had access to the personal emails of John Podesta, campaign chairman for Hillary! It notes that at least one higher up, while "half asleep" clicked a spam email that set off alarms in at least one other staffer.

And reporters sum that up as "haha a silly typo screwed up the election." Those reporters did not, in repeating this fake news story, mention that the "typo" had nothing to do with the security compromise, but they do describe people like me (and like reporter/writer Tom Scocca) who see the lies about the typo as yet more BS from the Dems, as 'conspiracy theorists.'

The media, of course, generally tend to be sympathetic to Hillary! & Co. The media also do not want to admit that mainstream media sources are as culpable as 'fake news' sites and Facebook for the lack of real information provided to the public. The Dems want desperately to paint the election as "stolen" because otherwise they would have to admit that their candidate was only an ersatz Democrat in the first place, selling warmed-over policies with no real agenda, one they ran simply because it was her time, rather than because she was a good candidate.

For the last freaking time: Democrats lost the election because they did not vote. Russia, the Electoral College, Jill Stein, typos, email hacks, Wikileaks, whatever hobgoblins the Democrats want to throw out there did not lose the election. Democrats lost the election because they did not vote.

Trumpocalypse 9: Everything you always wanted to know about the Department of Energy (But Were Afraid to Ask "Real" News Sources)

As you keep hearing news about 'fake news' and Russia 'stealing the election' and the like, keep in mind that (a) 'fake news' is only available because so often 'real news' is about superficial stupid stuff and makes no effort to understand the issues, and (b) unless Russia actually somehow forced or bribed people to vote for Trump/stay home for Hillary!, or faked up the votes [there is NO EVIDENCE OF EITHER] it cannot "steal" the election from anyone.

I was thinking about those things as I read this lead into a story on The Concourse headlined "Rick Perry's Glasses Qualify Him For Important Science Post, Building Nukes."

Rick Perry, a swaggering idiot who found a pair of glasses on the street one day, is about to become the head of the Department of Energy, according to CBS News. The Department of Energy’s job right now is to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons.

Is it, though? The blogger who wrote the article, Ashley Feinberg, goes on to compare the current Energy Secretary's qualifications with Rick Perry's, finishing up with:

Now, none of this would be as big of a problem if Obama hadn’t just agreed to a a massive modernization program of our existing stock of nuclear weapons. This program is going to cost somewhere in the range of $350-450 billion and take about ten years. And our big, dumb boy Rick Perry gets to kick the whole thing off, as he’s now responsible for the design, testing, and production of all nuclear weapons.

I'm no fan of Rick Perry's, and I think the country would in fact be worse off with him as President. But this sort of reductive news writing is every bit as pernicious as "fake news," because it essentially falsifies Rick Perry's record, Rick Perry's role as Energy Secretary, and the program Obama agreed to.

Let's start with Rick Perry's record and qualifications. Feinberg sums them up as:

In other words, Rick Perry is a figurehead on a few boards that very tangentially have to do with “energy.”

In reality, Rick Perry has a degree in Animal Science from Texas A&M.  Texas A&M is currently the 74th ranked college in the US News rankings of best colleges.  Perry also served 5 years in the Air Force as a C-130 pilot.

Politically, Perry began his career as a Democrat, first elected to the Texas House of Representatives in 1984, and worked for the Gore campaign in 1988.  He switched parties in 1989. When Perry ran for re-election as governor in 2006, he was endorsed by a prominent Texas Democrat.

Perry ran for Agriculture Commissioner in 1990; he 'narrowly' defeated the Democratic incumbent -- who at the time had his office embroiled in an FBI investigation into corruption that would eventually lead to three aides being convicted. The incumbent wasn't charged, but keep in mind: Democrats supported a man who at best was so out of touch that three of his aides could be taking bribes. He was re-elected to that position, then served as either Lieutenant Governor or Governor.  He has since also worked at the chief strategist MCNA Dental, the nation's largest privately-held dental insurance company.

Again: I am not a fan of Perry's, but falsely presenting his background is fake news of the sort that people like Ashley Feinberg credit with 'stealing the election.' "Fake news" is any news that creates a false premise, and lying can be done by omission as well as by commission. Feinberg lied about Perry's background, to create the impression that Perry was a himbo.

Then there's the Department of Energy.  Again, a few minutes of Googling shows how reductive Feinberg's article was, in a misleading way.  Here is the organizational chart for DoE:

The Department does, in fact, police nuclear weapons, but also nuclear reactor production for the Navy, waste disposal, and a variety of energy-related research projects. It has just over 106,000 employees, only 12,000 of which are actual federal employees; 93,000 people on DoE's payroll are contract employees.

Among the things DoE does that are far more concerning than nuclear weapons stockpiles are the Loan Guarantee Program; enacted in 2005 (under the last Republican president) this law was in part funding for 'green' energy projects, and in part clearing the way for natural gas fracking and in part a change in how public utilities were held. Obama voted for this law; Hillary! criticized him for it. Under Trump's DoE, we should be more concerned about a curtailment of green energy and climate change research than we should that Rick Perry will somehow bumble our nuclear weapons program, but it's not as cool, right Ashley, to write a headline about how Rick Perry's nomination may signal that the Trump administration might take a law Obama voted for and water it down so that funds don't go for greenhouse gas research? I'm pretty confident that we face far greater risks from loosening energy controls and use of coal and fracking than we do from rogue nukes.

By the way, did you remember that Hazel O'Leary was Bill Clinton's first Secretary of Energy? Her qualifications? She'd been a prosecutor, and had been both a consultant and the head of an energy commission. Those credentials are remarkably similar to Perry's.  While Feinberg faults Perry for sitting on the board of a company trying to build the Dakota Access Pipeline, O'Leary prior to her nomination had been an executive VP at Northern States Power Company.  Northern States was in the early 1990s trying to merge with a company that was building the controversial Point Beach Nuclear Plant in Wisconsin.

Hmmm.

As for that "nuclear program" Perry will be in charge of? In July, the Washington Post reported that Obama "wants to cut back" on plans to spend $350,000,000,000 over 10 years modernizing our nuke program. 

By October, though, Obama had authorized a modernization program set to cost $1,000,000,000,000 -- nearly three times as much as the earlier proposal.  The New York Times, hardly a bastion of Tea Party politics, called the plan "unnecessary."

According to Arms Control.org, which Feinberg links to, some of the money will address "ethical lapses and poor morale" under the Obama administration. The overall modernization effort is too complicated to sum up in a brief note, which didn't stop Feinberg from doing just that.

So again: I'm not saying Perry is a good choice. I'm not saying he's a bad choice. What I'm saying at this moment is that the 'news' a lot of people will read about Perry and the Department of Energy will be fake and will omit those facts which are uncomfortable for people like Ashley Feinberg, and will inappropriately summarize facts people like Ashley Feinberg can't bother to get across to their readers as they race for pageviews.  Feinberg's article is no less propaganda than anything you'll read on Breitbart, and liberal media sources are also to blame for Hillary! losing the election.

Sorry Democrats, election victories are for closers.

For years now we have been hearing about the need for campaign finance reform, and how campaign finance laws are distorting elections. Funny how that has stopped being an issue what with Hillary! raising over $1,000,000,000 mostly from megadonorr giving to superPACs (where was Colbert's snarky attack on that?)

No, instead the new Dem talking point is the Electoral College, and how it doesn't reflect the "popular vote." Here are some results to consider:

In eight battleground states, the winner received less than 50% of the vote.  Hillary! got all electoral votes from Colorado, Nevada, New Hampshire, and Virginia despite not winning the majority of the popular vote in those states. In Maine, Hillary! got 3 of the state's 4 electoral votes despite getting only 47.9% of the vote to Trump's 45.2%.  Hillary! is not claiming, surely, that she should not get those electoral votes.

The idea that the 'popular' vote is better than the 'electoral vote' is belied by the fact that Nixon and Warren Harding were both popular vote winners, while neither Lincoln nor Kennedy won the popular vote by a majority.  The idea that the Founding Fathers wanted free electors rather than electors bound by popular vote in their state or district was roundly rejected by those same Founding Fathers just after the Constitution was ratified, as the Founders began passing laws to bind electors to the popular vote.

The Electoral College also had nothing to do with the Dems being unable to pick up more than the 2 seats they gained this election; the Republicans had 10 first-term Senators up for re-election, and held 24 of the 34 seats being elected. The Dems successfully challenged two of those. That's not the fault of the Electoral College. That's the fault of Dems sitting at home rather than voting, and the Dems failing to support down-ballot candidates. A greater focus on the Senate might have helped put a Dem majority in place there to serve as a roadblock for Trump's Supreme Court justices and the dismantling of Medicare. As it is, Dems lost that opportunity, and choose to blame the Electoral College for it.

There are many reasons why Democrats don't vote. But there is only one reason why Democrats lose elections, and that is because Democrats don't vote.

We Have Enough Money, 1: Simply having a HATCHIMAL Xmastime.

To help shake things up, and to avoid the notion that Trump is the only bad thing going on in America right now, I'm going to mix in some We Have Enough Moneys and Bad Republicans and the rest with the ongoing Trumpocalypse.

We Have Enough Money is a protest against those people who say we have to cut the federal budget or restrict social spending or (as Trump and the GOP now appear likely to do) eliminate Medicare.

The federal government in 2016 expects to spend $3,950,000,000,000. We expect to take in $3,340,000,000,000 in tax revenues this year.  As of 8:11 a.m. Central Time today, the US has 325,061,315 people. What that means is that we collect about $10,274.98 per person in tax revenues, and people (not corporations) pay taxes. To make up the difference in revenues, we would need $650,000,000,000 in additional taxes; or, on average, about another $2,000 bucks per person alive in the US -- or $16,000 from a family of 8, like mine (counting the grandkid.) There are 5 taxpayers in my family right now, so if you increased taxes on each of us $3,200, we'd be doing our share to end the budget deficit.  (As I pointed out yesterday, though, there are 268,000 people, roughly, who bring in $1,000,000 or more gross income per year, so if you took, say, $10,000 from each of them and then the rest from us, you'd reduce the burden on middle class people and still make up the deficit, but that's not the point right now.)

The point right now is this: many people will say "it's not fair to take extra money from the rich," because they believe what has been sold as fair, and what has been sold as fair is that everyone should "pay the same amount,"  -- that if you and I and Trump each pay 10% of our income as taxes, that's 'fair,' and even more fair if we all pay just $10,000 -- even though 10% hurts me more than Trump, far more. Take 10% away from someone making $50,000 and year and you leave that person with $45,000 a year to live on. Take 10% away from someone making $1,000,000 per year and you leave that person with $900,000 to live on.

Other people will say they can't afford a tax increase. $3,200 per year in tax increases is $61 per week, so to do my fair share of the deficit I'd have to pay $61 more per week in taxes, and so would every other tax payer in the US.

That's where Hatchimals come in. You may have heard of Hatchimals.  They're the hot toy this year, a sort of pet that hatches from an egg and then has to be cared for, like a Tamagotchi only IRL.  Hatchimals cost about $60 apiece, and are sold out pretty much everywhere you go.



Sales figures for Hatchimals aren't in yet, but going by past toy crazes, we can guess how many were likely sold. In 2009, at the height of the Great Recession, 100,000 "Zhu Zhu Pets" were sold by retailers in the first week of December alone. Those sold for $12 apiece, though. 1,000,000 or so "Tickle Me Elmos" were sold at the height of that craze, retailing for $30.

Let's assume people have a finite amount of money to spend on Xmas, so they would only buy half as many "Hatchimals" as they would "Tickle Me Elmos," spending the same amount of money. That's not how Xmas actually works for most people, but let's play pretend.  After all, we're only pretending that most people would read this far into this post anyway.

If we assume that every year people will spend the same amount on the hot toy, and set Tickle Me Elmo as the index, then every year people will spend $30,000,000 on buying a single toy for their kids. And not even a very good toy at that, but that's how much people spend.

That's only nine cents per person, on average, so we don't save very much money if we just have people stop buying "Tickle Me Elmos" and instead pay slightly higher taxes, and the effect is minimal.

But what if we look at what people spend on Xmas as a whole? Our country spends $465,000,000,000 per year on just extras as Xmas: presents and decorations and parties and the like. That's $1,430 per person on Xmas extras per year.  That's nearly one-half the total amount of extra payments it would take just to make up the deficit.

So if you need $3200 per person, one possibility would be to spend just, say, two hundred dollars less on Xmas per person per year.

When we were younger, and dumber, Sweetie and I would go out Xmas shopping a couple times before we'd bought all our presents. We'd get some ideas and then go bum around a mall and stores and buy a bunch of stuff. We bought things like karate lessons, and calendars for the kids, and a bunch of sort of nonsense like that. What kid wants a calendar for Xmas? That didn't stop us from spending $50 buying a calendar for each kid's room.

One year, we said wait, we're spending a lot of money on Xmas, and started using our heads; we sat down to set up a budget for presents, and determine what kind of presents people really wanted, and the end result was that we spent less money, and people were actually (we think at least) happier with the results.

True, there weren't sprawling piles of presents laid out everywhere, but there also weren't boxes of junk hauled to the trash in February, stuff nobody wanted thrown away.

The point isn't, really, to get people to spend less, though. The point is to note that even though everyone says we have no money whatsoever to do something like care for the homeless or keep our national parks running, we have enough money. Any country that spends $30,000,000 on a stupid hatching egg toy that'll be discarded before the end of the year owes its citizens better than we give now.