Donald Trump: Democrat

Near the end of 2015, during a conversation with my extremely staunch republican cousin, the topic of Donald Trump came up.  

"Oh, Trump.  Fuck that guy.  What a joke.  He's a fucking Democrat, did you know that?"  I shook my head.  "Yeah, he's not gonna go anywhere.  We're gonna have another Bush in the White House."

Just so all of my readers are aware, my cousin now sings mostly praises to our sitting Commander-in-Chief, even if it's preceded by "I can't stand the guy."  But it does raise a lot of interesting ideas about our President, and our political atmosphere.  

The title may be a little misleading.  I don't necessarily consider Mr. Trump to be full on Democrat, but he's definitely no Republican either.  I spent a lot of time in 2016 researching Candidate Trump and mostly what I see him to be is a down the middle centrist that's spent nearly 60 years playing jump rope with that center line.  Even now, as he sits in the highest office of the country with an R next to his name, he is still on one side of it just as often as he's on the other.  One day it's defeat Obamacare, eliminate regulations, lower taxes, and the next day it's grow the government, replace Obamacare with another big government program, and move more power to the executive branch.  In spite of the fact that he holds views of both sides of the aisle, The Donald remains to be one of the most hated human beings in Washington DC.  Additionally, if we listen to the mainstream media and the activists, Trump is the most hated man in the world, in spite of the fact that he swiftly won the Electoral College not even a year ago.

Trump's feud with Former Secretary of State Clinton is a very new event, which is part of the reason that most people considered him to be a Democrat from the start.  Donald and the Clintons are known to be long time friends prior to the events of in November this past year.  Trump, himself, referred to himself as a Dem in the 80s and 90s, but again, it seemed nearly every year he changed sides.  While no one can know what's in the real estate mogul's head except for him, I can say that it seems like he officially aligned himself fully with the Republican Party at the beginning of the Obama years.  While I didn't know it until deep into the 2016 election cycle, Trump was apparently one of the leading voices in the birther movement against Barack Obama.  Some of the videos and articles that I have seen suggest that there was a deep, mutual rift between our Former President and the present.  Many people will remember the 2011 White House Correspondent's dinner which appeared to be an excuse for Former President Obama and SNL star Seth Meyers to roast Trump on a very public platform. According to many, this was the event that put Trump's eventual Presidency in motion.  It may not be the perfect explanation as to why Mr. Trump chose to enter government with an R next to his name

Mrs. Clinton is releasing a book shortly laying out what happened  that made her lose the 2016 Presidential race.  While most of the subject matter seems to continue to revolve around racism and Russia, but I think the real reasoning why she lost aligns with the reason that a lifelong big government Democrat was able to run and win as a Republican.  You see, back in 2007, Mrs. Clinton was the favorite to win in the primaries against a little known Illinois Senator named Barack Obama.  Hillary espoused classic Democrat views that appealed to blue collar union workers, and she was likely to keep a balanced budget, and curb spending enough to give us a surplus, just like her husband did.  However, as the primaries continued on, Clinton continued to lose popularity to a smooth talker with a socialist agenda.  In the 8 years that followed, Mr. Obama and his followers forced the ideology of the Democrats into a Socialist progressive movement that went further to the left every day.  In 2016, the former Secretary of State again started a campaign on traditional Democrat Values, but quickly began to lose her steam to another far-left, progressive socialist.  Then Hillary herself suddenly began to espouse highly socialist ideas.  The Donald, however, never wavered on his centrist views.  These views, when held up against the views of Barack Obama, and especially against the wildly radical ideas of Senator Sanders, move from center to an almost radical level of right.  But, Mrs. Clinton completely changed her agenda to pander to a voting base that would have considered her to be a right wing extremist, and Trump unapologetically held onto these beliefs, and they aligned with blue-collar workers, small-business owners, as well as big-business guys.  And everyone knew exactly what Trump wanted to do, even if they didn't all agree with it.  With such a major flip-flop halfway through the primaries, no one really knew what agenda Hillary was going to bring to the table.  So the people voted what they knew they were going to get.

There is one last item about Trump that may have sealed his place in the Presidency even if no one really knew which side he was on.  There is a contingency of people who have sworn up and down that they voted down ticket, but left the top spot blank.  I'm no stranger to this.  I've mentioned in a previous article that I completely abstained from the 2008 election because I, myself, could not get behind either Presidential candidate.  It was initially how I felt as I saw The Donald gaining ground across the country.  But I was very proud to fill in the blank for Trump, and he's already fulfilled the only election "promise" that I cared about.  Donald Trump broke a glass ceiling that's needed to be broken for several decades.  A complete political outsider was able to not only get elected late in life, but he went straight to the top, having never held so much as a school board office prior.  While Mr. Trump hardly represents the common American person, he does represent the idea that a person doesn't have to be primped and preened his entire life in order to hold a government office.  We were promised a government by the people for the people in the late 18th century.  Yet over my entire lifetime, the vast majority of people that I've seen in government have been people who started in government in their early 20s and stayed in government positions for 60 years.  We've managed to re-create a feudal system of Lords and Ladies, even though we rebelled away from such a system to form this country.  While Trump is a belligerent, boisterous man and no one really knows who's side he's on, he represents an uprising by people like you and like me to start trying to primary some of these career lawmakers out of the government, paving the way for people like you or me to take their places.  2018 may see a few primary runs and some no names across the ticket from lawmakers, but I think a successful Trump economic growth sees every single congressional seat that's up get challenged, and that's why so many career politicians on both sides are so eager to see Trump fail.  If he does fail, we go back to the old status quo of employing career politicians to make all of our decisions for us.

If you have something to say about Donald Trump or where you think his loyalties lie, make sure you leave it in the comments, and if you want to get other people involved in the discussion, feel free to share this article on any and all social media.  I love discussions and I'd love to hear what you think.

Tax Reform and the National Debt

Under the 8 years of the Obama Administration, there was an unprecedented increase in the national debt in the United States.  Conservative commentator Sean Hannity likes to remind his listeners over and over again that Barack accumulated more debt over his two terms than all US Presidents combined, which is true.  However, since the beginning of the 2016 election cycle, the second biggest talking point for Republican and RINO candidates for President and Congress has been lowering taxes for everyone.  Given the fact that we are currently just shy of $20 trillion dollars in debt, this seems to not make any sense.  It seems almost impossible to get rid of our debt if we reduce our taxes, which are our government's main source of income.  However, there are simple, as well as more complex factors that play a part in how our promised tax reform can put us back into the place that we need to be.

Let's start with what the National Debt actually is.  The term "National Debt" is a scary word that gets thrown around political discussions both on and off of election years, and is often associated with the terms "Surplus" and "Deficit".  Everyone in the US has heard the words "National Debt", but most laymen couldn't really tell you what it actually is, outside of saying "it means that China owns us." Surprisingly, most highly politically active people don't really even know what the debt is.  I'll admit, I had to go do some research to find out for myself.

The National Debt is the total amount of debts owed out in exchange for working capital that the government uses as a supplement to taxes for operational costs.  The Debt is sold as Treasury Bonds on an open marketplace that anyone can buy that lose value for a few years, before beginning to gain value, reaching their maximum value at 30 years.  It also includes unpaid trade deficits to other countries that tax us to sell goods within their borders.  This is a confusing concept to many people, as most points in conversation, people make it seem like Bill Clinton just flew to China one day and said "Hey, man.  Can I borrow 50 bucks?"

Anyone in the world is free to buy a bond at any time.  In fact, many investors and private citizens use them in wealth portfolios and savings accounts.  I had an Aunt and Uncle growing up that bought a $50 bond in my name, along with all their other nieces and nephews, every year, for the first 18 years of our lives.  I understand that in the peak of the 80s and 90s economies, that was a pretty common practice all across America.  All of those Bonds are counted in the National Debt.  While people are free and willing to buy bonds at any time, at times when the total amount of bonds and taxes just isn't enough; such as in war time, or when there is more going out in entitlements than what is coming in; the government starts to advertise and push the purchase of bonds, first at home, and then abroad.  A semi-contemporary example of this was the scene in Captain America: The First Avenger where Captain Rogers and the chorus line was on a national tour proclaiming that every war bond you buy is a bullet in your best guy's gun.

One of the magic of Bonds is that it's on the Bond owner to cash it in.  The government doesn't have to come out and pay it off when it reaches maturity.  This is important because many people claim that all China has to do is demand payment on the debt and they would destroy us.  That may be true, and it may not.  It would all depend on the age of the bonds.  I can say for certain that if anyone cashed in a Bond (or millions of them) from the Obama or Bush administrations, he would lose money.  Most of the simplest bonds out there stay below face value for the majority of their 30 year life spans.  And as far as China goes, it's interesting to note that according to the US National Debt Clock, only $6.14 Trillion of our debt is currently held by other countries at the time I'm typing this.  While that's not good, I personally feel a little better knowing that less than a third of our total debt is foreign, in spite of what I've been told for the last 20 years.

The other major pillar to the Government's economy, and a much larger share, is taxes.  People pay a portion of their income to the government in exchange for a series of services from the government.  The major difference between this and bonds is that bonds are completely voluntary, and taxes are required by law.  There are those who would go as far to say that all taxation is theft based on it's compelled nature.  Most people do understand the concept that the federal government requires operating capital to run from day to day, and that the salaries of congressmen and the president do need to be paid.  Along with this, we have a military that does need to be funded, and a myriad of other services that the government provides on a federal level.  The main source of dissidence comes with the amount of taxes that get paid by the people, and what it is getting spent on.

An important point to note is that a lot of people blame welfare for the high level of federal taxes.  While this is not directly true, there are two factors to welfare that do bring it into the federal budget.  State governments determine eligibility and pay welfare.  However, an ailing state that can't keep up with it's budget requirement can get a loan or a grant from Washington DC to help better serve it's people.  The other point of this is that taxes are a numbers game.  The bottom 51% of households in the US owe no Federal income tax, and the rest of us have to pick up the slack, but I will touch on that later.

The big argument on taxes from the left is that we need to be taxing the top 1% of earners in this country nearly every penny they make.  We did so in the 50s, and had a period of 4% growth of the US economy as we did.  The problem with that is that the global economy is not what it was immediately after World War II.  For the United States in 1950, the entire world was a seller's market.  Prior to the World Wars, many European countries, along with Japan, exported and imported equally across the world.  Years of war devastated these countries and their manufacturing capabilities.  But the wars touched very little US soil, and because of this, the day to day needs and the rebuilding materials could be easily and quickly purchased from United States manufacturers for whatever price they want to charge.  At that point, even getting taxed at 99% would become profitable for business leaders, and would put a lot of people to work.  As the world rebuilt, prices had to come down, and business leaders couldn't make a profit, or pay their workers on such a high tax rate.  In today's world, almost every country in the world exports at least one item that it's known for, and many other items that it can either undercut price on, or are of a higher quality, over other countries, and our tax rates need to reflect that.

With all this in mind, one can conclude that lowering taxes is essential for economic growth, and an across the board tax cut is the best way to do it.  Sure, in the beginning, there will be a deficit on the federal budget.  But as I mentioned before, it's a numbers game.  With regulations falling off of employment like snow from a March rooftop, any money that the business leaders of America is worth more invested in a good or service, than it is parked offshore somewhere.  If I have 100 bucks, I can either put it in a bank at their low interest rates, or I can hire you to perform a service in my name for ten bucks an hour, and charge someone 30 bucks an hour to do it.  In 10 hours I've doubled my money, and you have 100 bucks in your pocket.  A lot of millennials don't understand this, but that's really how business leaders think.  It's more profitable to provide a service than to park your money.  Therefore, the more money that people who lead business are allowed to keep, the more they are likely to hire.  On the other side of the board, bringing the tax rate down for the people in the middle to the point that the republicans are suggesting puts a bunch of money into people's pockets that they are going to spend.  At $40k a year, 15% in taxes is 100 bucks a week extra in a single person's pocket.  With moderate credit and a good driving record, that's a car payment on a modest, brand new mid-size car, plus full coverage, and enough leftover for a trip to the sushi bar once a month.  With all that extra spending, even small business leaders will have no choice but to keep hiring.  Once everyone who is willing to be in the workforce is in the workforce, wages are going to start driving up across the board.  Even half of the 13 million actual unemployed people paying income taxes will more than make up for the 20% drop in tax rate for the lower middle class, and everyone along the way.

If our current Congress can pass the tax reform that they plan, I have no doubts that we can put a surplus back onto our economy.  The interesting turn of events after that started happening would be a vote to see what we do with the surplus money.  I'm sure there would be a vote to see whether we put it into a coffer to be ready when the Bonds that our debt is tied into start to mature, or to return it to the taxpayers.  There are strong arguments to both, but first we need to get there.

Confederate Statues

On a sunny Saturday morning, August 12th 2017, a group of hate-filled Klansmen, Neo-Nazis, and other forms of white supremacists that have been scorned and disavowed by every political figure and 90% of US citizens gathered in an obscure Virginia city to protest the removal of of a statue of Robert E. Lee that was legally petitioned for removal.  After a violent clash with a group later identified to be Antifa, the entire nation became wrapped up in a single argument about whether or not we should allow these statues to exist anymore, and to a lesser extent, what to do with them once they're torn down.  And all of this must be decided on a Federal level.

One of the things that interests me is that while the Confederacy was formed almost entirely of Southern Democrats, it seems to be fringe groups of the same party that are pushing the hardest to make a Federal case of what to do with the statues.  I remember as soon as 15 years ago, living in small town Northern Wisconsin, seeing pickup trucks all over the place proudly waving the Stars and Bars.  I know this because I was one of them, and I continued to do so until I was in my early 20s, living in Massachusetts.  What most people don't know is that up until 2008 I was a down the ticket Democrat Voter, with very little to no questioning.  I abstained from the vote in 2008 because there was no Presidential Candidate that I could align with, and I had been living outside of Wisconsin for so long that I couldn't make an educated vote on any of the down ticket offices.  It was only in the cycle between 2008 and 2010 that I started to recognize a hard move toward Imperial Socialism coming from the people on the left, and began to vote Republican.  I can quickly remember, and recognize this cycle, as well as explain individual points that I used in my decision.  What I didn't pick up on; until this new story in the news came to national attention; was that as I moved further to the right, I passively stopped displaying the Confederate Battle Flag.  It wasn't a conscious decision, it just stopped being important to me.

It's important to note, on the subject of rebel flags, that I don't really believe that the majority of people who fly them actually display them in racism.  I know that growing up in the north, it was generally seen as a symbol of country pride or being a redneck.  Now, I can't sit here and pretend that we had a lot of experience with minorities in the farming region of Wisconsin, because we really didn't. But I can tell you that moving to the city and beginning to experience other races with my rural, rebel flag upbringing, I never had any trouble interacting with the black and Hispanic people immediately from the get-go.  In spite of the fact that I had been waving the stars and bars from age 15 on, I never saw a person of a different race as anything other than a person.  I was 19 before I had ever heard anyone refer to the rebel flag as "Racist".  Don't get me wrong, after the glass ceiling was broken, no one had to explain to me why the connotation was there.  But it took someone outrightly telling me that there was racism associated with that flag before I had ever begun to conflate the two concepts.

Going back to the monuments, I can honestly say that I bear a level of indifference to the monuments.  I can see both sides of the argument, and both are rightly valid.  There is a lot of history that goes along with these statues, and having them around leads conversations to start as people are touring and visiting places.  Relegating these statues to a museum restricts access to them to people who are actively and deliberately looking for Civil War history, and the lay person may never have the opportunity to have a discussion and learn from them.  Destroying them takes the entire concept of education away from anyone.  It's also a stab at the artists who created them.  They are beautiful and well detailed works of art that are worth a lot of money and have a lot of man hours tied up in their creation.  On the other side of the coin, while I'm against people who swear that the crime of being white makes you guilty of the sins of slave owners past, I can see; especially with the events of these past weeks; how seeing statues of men who unapologetically fought to keep slavery in force can stir some powerful emotions.  Even though no one who is alive today has ever been held in slavery, I understand that people like Lee would have insisted on seeing all of the people of color today in bondage just as he did back in his time.

One of the major points of this entire argument is the fact that it's all or nothing.  The people who want the statues removed want them all removed by the will of the federal government.  This is not a Federal issue, though.  At best, this is a State level issue.  However, in most instances, the statues are in municipal parks, so they are governed by local law.  If there are problems with the statues, they should be handled the way that the Lee statue in Charlottesville was handled.  The removal was petitioned by a concerned citizen, added to a referendum, voted on, and passed.  After the vote, the opposition exercised it's right to assemble, and was given the proper permits to do so, and the removal was delayed while another referendum began.  Statue removal by any other means by governing bodies is tyranny, and removal by activist groups is vandalism, punishable by fine and imprisonment.  As much of a controversy as Charlottesville was, they issue was handled correctly and went through all of the proper avenues.

Even though the news cycle has made this all about statues, there is still a sneaking feeling inside of me that says that there was something else going on with the protest and counterprotest.  Everything seemed to happen too conveniently, and as I learn more and more about the protest, there is a feeling deep down inside of me that there was a slide of hand in play, and something was either intended to happen and come out of this, or something else was happening elsewhere while the news cycle was focused on a small southern city.  I will close this article at that, and I intend to expand on the slide of hand as I research more.  Like, comment, and share this article with your friends, and feel free to link it in your social media.  Let's get a good comment discussion going and try to get our ideas out without name calling.

Charlottesville Virginia

At about 11 AM Eastern Standard Time, in a relatively obscure city in Virginia, violence erupted as two factions of protesters on opposing sides of an issue clashed in a small park.  A few hours later, onlookers were aghast as a car driven by a member of one faction plowed into a small crowd of members of the opposing faction, killing one.  Shortly after this, a three car crash injured several more people.  After scouring the media, I've found that this is all the information that everyone can agree on over a day that will live on in history, until the next Antifa demonstration.

I was on my way to the bank to get some cash this morning for utility payments when I heard the news.  I had intended to catch up on some podcasts while I was making the drive, but forgot my iPod at home, so after grabbing some breakfast, I just put Fox News on to catch up on some headlines.  All that I could make out initially was that the reporter sounded like he was in the middle of a war zone, and my first thought was that the DPRK had made landfall on Guam or Los Angeles.  I did finally determine that there was a massive demonstration going on in Charlottesville with no inkling or idea of what had caused it.  It was a full 20 minutes before I was informed that the riots had broken out over a statue of General Lee, and another 10 beyond that before I found out that there were two factions of protesters at war with each other.

As my trip went on, and my banking business was finished, I continued listening.  Fox quickly devolved into the hardline right talking points of bussing in protestors and Antifa and Black Lives Matter.  There were reports, as well, of the original faction being alt-right white nationalists shouting about "Unite the Right" (alone, in my truck, I literally said out loud, to nobody, "get the name of my political party the hell out of your mouth" to the sound of one of these racists calling himself "right-wing".).

After I got home, I had another project I had to finish, so my attention was  drawn away from this for a while, but I did attempt to do some web searching to try and find something non biased.  30 minutes of searching netted me nothing except for a lot of professional news anchors crying that the evil white men wanted to preserve a statue from the Civil War, and how swift justice was served by the brave counterprotesters.  After I closed the New York Times's webpage, I went on to find other editorials about how our sitting president orchestrated this from a golf resort and how his twitter silence meant that he was nodding in approval.  When I was done with NBC, I realized that mainstream media was going to get me nowhere.

As bad as all the bias is, Social Media is even worse.  While I have discontinued my use of Facebook for personal reasons, I couldn't help but try and get some answers from people's 140 character analyses on Twitter.  I was very surprised to find that every person who has a Twitter account has a very confident Ph. D. level understanding of what happened in Charlottesville, and the 500 year history of what led up to it.  The only problem I had was that none of the stories seemed to line up with each other in any sort of comprehensive fashion.

So here I am, with no real knowledge of what happened in Charlottesville, who took the first strike, and what it means for the country.  All that I do know is that, after a petition to remove a statue of General Robert Lee, and an injunction to block it, there was a big fight to decide whether to keep it there or not.  One side says that it's important to history, and the other side says that the history is evil.  Personally, I think it's important to keep some knowledge about the Civil War.  You remember that war, right?  It's the one that Black Lives Matter and the Democrats desperately want you to remember happened, but don't want you to remember anything about.

I have a couple of takeaways from this event.  The most obvious one is the one that I mentioned before.  These White Nationalist/Supremacists need to stop calling themselves Republican, because they are absolutely not.  They are the descendants of Southern Dixiecrats that got betrayed by the Democrat Party when they managed to get the scary black man out of the projects where they think he belongs and put him through the Primaries.  Trust me, if Dr. Carson had made it through the primaries, all those ignorant Southern Neo-Nazis would be card carrying Democrats again, or would have broken off and found a third party to worship.  Don't get me wrong, Republicans will gladly take their votes.  It would be political suicide to stand behind a Neo Nazi in the voting booth and say "you better not vote for me." But these guys can't go around telling people that they espouse the same views as the rest of us when that's simply not the case.  When David Duke goes around tweeting that Trump should do well to remember who got him into office, Duke must remember that it was centrist Americans taking a stand against extremism and socialism that got him elected.

Extremism leads me into my other big takeaway from all of today's mess.  Our President, and many other members of our government took to Twitter today to either support BLM, or condemn both sides for their violence.  As I was trying to get to the bottom of all of this mess, I had a very George Carlin-esque thought about it.  The buzz about the violence being deplorable on Twitter really cements the idea that at the very, very least; 75% of US residents fall in between the ideologies of White Supremacy and Antifa/BLM.  Only the most extreme on either side of this situation want the war, and had I been the Charlottesville Mayor, or the Virginia Governor, I can  honestly say I'd have had a really hard time making the decision to stop them.  As long all of the innocent bystanders were out of harm's way, and they took the fight out into a field somewhere to minimize property damage, I can hear old George's voice saying "what's the problem with letting the two groups beat the shit out of each other for a while."  The only real reason I can come up with as to why to stop the battle is because press coverage would cause the fight to escalate all over the country, and the people in the middle would quickly get drawn to one extreme or the other.  In short, it seems like a good idea to let the zealots take care of each other; but there's no way, in today's polarized society, that it doesn't become the spark that ignites the powder keg of Civil War II.

About five years ago, I wrote an article that chilled me to the bone about a looming Second Civil War.  Two years of violent protests had made me think about the deadly repercussions of extremism fueled by echo chambers and social media as I watched the supporters of Romney and those of Obama hurl insults at each other and wish each other dead.  I've considered reposting that article numerous times because as bad as things were in 2012, more Social Media and bigger protests chill me even more.  And 4G internet assures everyone that the first thought gets posted in 140 characters more than ever now, while in 2012 that technology was just beginning to become accessible to everyone.  The grade on the slippery slope is getting steeper, and more and more people every day whisper about how a Civil War wouldn't be a bad thing.  Extremism has an enticing way of making you feel like you're always right, but it's time for the citizenry of this country to start working together and make sure that we don't destroy each other, and ourselves in the process.