Why protest the inauguration of the weakest GOP president in modern times?
21 Jan 2017 2 Comments
in politics - USA, Public Choice Tags: 2016 presidential election, Leftover Left, Twitter left
Those denouncing Trump forget he is the weakest newly elected GOP president in modern times. Trump’s polarising nature rules out his popularity going up that much.
His erratic nature means that his administration will perform poorly because those he appoints to make up his administration, all 4000 of them, do not know what Trump wants because that changes every day. Trump will have to arbitrate all disputes within his administration.
Congress will desert him as soon as it hurts their re-election chances in 2018 where a great many Republican Senate seats are up because they won back the Senate in 2012.
/cdn0.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/7797279/Screen_Shot_2017_01_12_at_11.31.33_AM.png)
Trump is even weaker than average because a good part of his base do not otherwise vote in elections or they are registered Democrats. This makes his disgruntled base less of a threat in the 2018 Republican primaries.
Trump can only afford to lose 2 Republican senators. The Democratic Senate caucus will be united because opportunities if they can only pick up two Republican votes in the current Senate.
Trump will be an inept President but more socially liberal than any recent GOP president. Protest that.
Before you start on the fact that Trump won the electoral college but not the popular vote, remember the John Kerry to this day believes election fraud in Ohio deprived him of the presidency in 2004 despite losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes. Winning Ohio would have flipped that election.
Police shootings by threat level 2016
15 Jan 2017 1 Comment
in economics of crime, law and economics, politics - USA Tags: law and order, police shootings
Source: Police shootings 2016 database – Washington Post.
Does your opinion change if you know the level of threat by those who are at said to be not attacking police such as whether they had a gun, knife or other weapon or were charging police with more than a few mentally ill people do with or without a toy weapons.
Source: Police shootings 2016 database – Washington Post.
It was a lot easier to analyse this database before the Washington Post removed the data filter that easily told you whether there was an attack in progress or not. That filter was inexplicably removed about a year ago.
The retention of that filter would have helped illustrate the point that the Washington Post conceded when it compiled this database. That was less than 5% of all police shootings are in any way suspicious.
Would the rhetoric be any different if it was a President Cruz
27 Dec 2016 Leave a comment
in politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election
It is important to differentiate between those shortcomings of Donald Trump that will result in him being ineffective as opposed to dangerous.
In domestic affairs, he will be a rather ineffective Republican president. His administration will have little idea of what he wants, and he will be the only one able to arbitrate disputes. In foreign affairs, this thin-skinned tough guy who is proudly ignorant will be dangerous and impulsive.
A President Cruz would be much more effective and far more conservative in domestic affairs. Cruz is a social conservative, Trump is not. In foreign affairs, Cruz is likely to intervene more but be less petulant and would certainly be a master of his brief and the risks of what he is doing.
Practically all the shots being fired at Trump would be fired at Cruz and were at Romney and McCain. That is why they were so ineffective during the campaign.
The same old extreme rhetoric about every Republican candidate is the bogeyman. This time the Republican presidential nominee was an ignorant man. People had heard it all before so they did not believe it. That applied to Bernie Sanders too – I had to slip that in. The left must not cry wolf too often.
As Bill Maher was honest enough to admit, Romney and McCain were men of honour with whom he had honest disagreements. Cruz is the same but he would be a far more effective president than Trump. Remember that.
Frank Easterbrook: Discussion of Robert Bork’s “Saving Justice” from Nixon
26 Dec 2016 Leave a comment
in constitutional political economy, economic history, labour economics, politics - USA Tags: economics of constitutional law, Frank Easterbrook, Richard Nixon, Robert Bork, Watergate scandal
Kellyanne Conway Discusses The 2016 Presidential Election
23 Dec 2016 Leave a comment
in income redistribution, politics - USA, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: 2016 presidential election
Diffusion of consumer durables to poor American households since 1984
13 Dec 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, economic history, politics - USA Tags: child poverty, creative destruction, family poverty, technology diffusion, The Great Enrichment
We do not have air-conditioning. Do not know many people who do but New Zealand does have a temperate climate. But if you are down and out in America you still have air-conditioning.
Sources: The Economic Condition of Poor Americans (and the rest of us) Continues to Improve – Coordination Problem and Well-Being – Extended Measures of Well-being: Living Conditions in the United States, 2011 – People and Households – U.S. Census Bureau.
In the 2000s, dishwashers, air conditioning and microwaves were still diffusing rapidly in poor households in addition to the usual digital goods.
To make it even worse, despite the ravages of the 1996 US federal welfare reforms and a top 1% who apparently kept for themselves 90% of all income gains since the 1970s, air-conditioning in poor houses increased by 50% or so between 1994 and 2004.
Imagine how many more poor households would have dishwashers, air-conditioning, microwaves and digital goods but for the top 1%. Not that many actually because most of them already have those consumer durables despite their income not increasing for several decades.
I always puzzle over these who claim that incomes of ordinary families have not increased since the 1970s because that implies you can only buy the same basket of goods and same quality of goods as in the 1970s. That is what no real income growth means. You cannot buy more than before.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
Recent Comments