AN INTELLIGENT CONVERSATION ON DONALD J TRUMP

Just ruminating.

Remember the spontaneous uprising that was the Tea Party? And how the New York Times, the Megaphone of the Left, the Alphabet of Propaganda, NBC CBS ABC AP PBS NPR CNN and MSNBC along with the President of the Democrats crushed it through intimidation, lies and obfuscation (along with the Obama government's IRS investigations and crippling of Tea Party non-profits).  It was an optimistic organization wanting smaller government, freedom of religion, and more choices through free enterprise. But, of course, the Left cannot have optimism, it must destroy the belief that the United States of America is good, beneficial and has brought prosperity to the world. No, Obama's America is unequal, unfair, racist, sexist, genderist, and every other ist. It needs a Progressive Authoritarian Dictator to tell us how to think, talk and act. By the way, HE is the enlightened ONE who knows how we should live our lives. (You think Trump is a narcissist!)

The Tea Party was killed.

Along comes Donald Trump who has been a Democrat, a Republican, essentially a political agnostic but a big success in the free markets. Anathema to Progressive Democrats. He has dealt with politicians, bought them, negotiated with them to gain what he wanted and won. Would he engage with Congress, unlike Obama?  Who knows? But Trump seems to love America, unlike Obama. So his goal might well be to make it great again, unlike Obama who wanted to completely restructure it, believing the Founders of the country and Authors of our Constitution were old, out of touch, rich racists needing to be dishonored. He tried and has ended up with a mess, an unorganized mismanaged mess. Rather than Hope and Change, we got a Hopeless, flat economy without banks lending for growth. For Change, we got a monumental explosion of micromanagement of business and finance from zealous, anti-capitalist, anti-business Obamaistas, not only regulations but demands that companies hire thousands or tens of thousands of bean-counters to report to the federal government every time everyone goes to the toilet. Obama second guesses business and sues for inadvertent mistakes. As for promoting competition, innovation and growth, Obama doesn't understand...Trump does.

Now the Far-left and Far-right hate the thought of a non-Progressive or non-conservative taking the reins of the country. But Obama and his flock complain that conservatives block all his progress, "his" being the operative word, not "ours." Trump will negotiate, shouldn't they want that? Conservatives demand litmus tests against abortion, illegal immigration "amnesty" and same-sex marriage. Perhaps Trump is a middle-of-the-road moderate. For growth in the economy first for strength of free enterprise. Apparently social conformity is what they want not a growing economy. So if 20% of America is Far-left and 20% Far-right, 60% will vote for Trump.

The next President of the United States: Donald J. Trump.

BERNIEZUELA

Berniezuela

Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist in the running as Democrat candidate for the presidency of the United States of America.  Stop and take in that sentence. [Pause] One of Socialism’s most stunning current examples these days is Venezuela. What could Berniezuela actually mean for the United States? Interestingly enough, the political system of Venezuela is just like that of the United States – a democratic federal republic with a president, two houses of legislature and a supreme court.

Venezuela was once rich and prosperous; from the 1950s its economy was the strongest and most prosperous in all of South America with the highest standard of living. In 1998 Hugo Chavez was elected president on his own radical hope and change, the "Bolivarian Revolution." It was a mass movement to socialism through popular democracy. Once in office, the democratic socialist Chavez gave the poverty-stricken populace who supported him free stuff: highly subsidized food, housing, and gas for their cars, free healthcare, education, and low interest rate loans. At same time he expropriated whole industries from private hands into government or cooperative ownership; For what Chavez didn’t take, he fixed the prices.

Now let’s review some of the things President Obama has done and Bernie pledges to do in the United States.

Mr. Obama has explicitly expropriated to the government the student loan industry. He has implicitly expropriated the entire financial industry including placing government regulators into bankers’ offices. In a kind of mandated profit sharing against the five largest banks, the federal government has extracted $150 billion of their profits by investigations and threats of indictments forcing settlements. (Banks paid an additional $100 billion in fees.)  Government regulators fix banking prices, product offerings, loan structures and balance sheets. The president’s signature Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) was the virtual takeover of the healthcare industry, now having tens of thousands upon tens of thousands of pages of regulations and thousands upon thousands of regulators. Housing, auto manufacturing, the environmental, energy and high technology industries all are tightly controlled by a convulsion of arbitrary federal rules by the president’s administration. There is virtually no major company in any industry in the United States able to make decisions without first lobbying Washington, D. C. for permission.  

Yet, Bernie will go even further: The democratic socialist will, of course, continue subsidized food, housing and the “social safety net” all of which exploded under Obama’s advocacy. But to them Bernie will add free single-government-paid healthcare, free education including college. His plans include the redistribution of incomes and wealth by punitive taxes on those he deems “rich” or sometimes “the 1%” (whatever suits that day’s fancy) and increasing the minimum wage. He wants to set drug prices by fiat. Today the U. S. is experiencing the slowest recovery from any recession in its history by many measures; banks don’t lend to emerging businesses, workers drop out of the employment pool, and many Americans are rightfully dejected.

Each of these Democratic Party policies are the similar to those imposed on Venezuela by Hugo Chavez.

Another similarity of both countries is spending more than they take in, filling the deficits with massive borrowings. In the case of the United States, its borrowings, nearing $20 trillion, are in excess of its GDP of nearly $18 trillion while Venezuela’s $110 billion is only roughly half of its (slipping) GDP. Its deficits range around 15% to 16% of GDP or around $36 billion a year. Those in the U. S. range from 4% to 5% but deficits have been going on since the first Internet capital gains bonanza in 1998 through 2001 brought a surplus and peaked with Obama’s four trillion-dollar deficit years aggregating an inflation adjusted $5.5 trillion! (Yes, $5,533,840,000,000.)               

Bernie (as well as President Obama) wants the United States to take away the blue ribbon number one in world “mass incarceration” by dropping its 2,300,000 prisoners to less than the number two China’s 1,700,000, a decrease of 600,000 people. (With only 210,000 in federal jurisdiction, the “how” with Bernie seems not to matter). President Hugo Chavez released thousands from prison in his “reform” of criminal justice which rekindled kidnappings up to nearly 17,000. His denigration of the upper classes led some criminals to believe it was a license to kidnap. The result is that about the only growth industry in Venezuela is crime. Venezuelan murders per 100,000 of population were 21 in 1993, 25 in 1999, 44 in 2003,79 in 2013, reaching 90 by 2015, one of the highest in the world. That’s growth!

Other than crime, how is hope and change into socialism working out for Venezuela so far?

Recently three dozen 747s each stuffed with 50 and 100 bolivar bills of currency flew into Caracas’s Simón Bolívar International Airport, the namesake of Chavez’ revolution. Talk about printing money. (Venezuela had to have foreign printers, since it couldn’t purchase the special paper.)And spending it. In order to remain in power, Chavez and his hand-picked successor after he died, Nicolás Maduro, spent more than the country took in. Sound familiar? Even with record oil prices, new sums of dollars flowing in couldn’t keep up. Borrowings from foreign banks has reached $110 billion.

Venezuela recently had the most proven oil reserves in the world at nearly 300 billion barrels but a couple of private investors in the United States invented hydraulic fracturing (“fracking”), and now the U. S. is number one at around 390 billion. Petroleum products represent nearly all of Venezuela’s exports. In the U. S. the number is about 9%. (Venezuela absurdly did not diversify its economy during the spike in oil revenues from the political oil price boost by OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, in retaliation for the Yom Kippur War. And Chavez emotionally fired 20,000 oil industry workers – half – for taking part in a strike, greatly damaging the industry.) The recent 70% crash in oil prices has further devastated Venezuela.

Other than that, Venezuela’s inflation is expected to be 700% from nearly 200% last year the world’s worst. Chavez fixed prices for most every good and service, most of which come from other countries; local companies cannot afford to buy and make things to sell at his prices. So their revenues drop, employees are laid off and Venezuela has less money from lower taxes coming in. However, the black market is thriving. Poverty, too, is up, with over 10% of the population living in extreme poverty being unable to afford basic food and drink. A third of the population is thought to be poor. It at the top of the Global Misery Index for 2013 and 2014.

Recently the socialist revolution has not played well; even though the government dominates most of the media, Mr. Maduro’s approval rating is not much above 20%. The newly elected opposition National Assembly is in a power struggle with Maduro’s administration and Chavez’s Supreme Court. The court decided three opposition legislators cannot be sworn in for “electoral irregularities” depriving the legally-elected legislature of its supermajority ability to clean up the country.

I believe Berniezuala will take the United States on the road to insolvency and, as is occurring in Venezuela, dangerous social upheaval.  

CONFUSED. AND SHE CONTROLS OUR BANKING SYSTEM...

Speaking of confused. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve System, Janet Yellen seems to be clueless. The economy seemed to be doing OK as her hundreds or perhaps thousands of little busy bees had prognosticated. Or perhaps as with the president of the U. S, she distills all this disparate data in her mind, discusses it with her closest advisors (perhaps those who hold the same beliefs about the fuel and infrastructure that energizes the economy. Perhaps those who disagree with her, so she actually has differing disparates. Perhaps she has "wide-ranging" discussions, perhaps she seeks out confirming biases. Who knows? But one thing to be always kept in mind: NO ONE CAN ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN IN THE FUTURE. They guess just like you and I edo. You may well be right as many times as she is. On  thing is pretty certain: The media will celebrate those who guessed right. And those who did not guess correctly, more than likely will mostly be ignored, perhaps identified as wrong.

As she lives and breathes, the markets react. Good economy she says, markets go up; except the artificial stimulus might be reversed. Markets go down; except the economy might be weak, markets go down; except that might mean more money printing and mortgage buying, markets go up; or not, markets go down.

You might ask why our country's economy is so weak -- the weakest "recovery" ever from a recession -- and now you know. Barack and Janet have no clue. And anyway Barry wants the capitalist system dead.

(VOTE TRUMP!)

War on Women Hell, There’s a War on Business

War on Women

Hell,
There’s a War on Business

And business is losing: the American economy suffered a nasty recession from December 2007 through June 2009 and its “recovery” has been the most anemic ever. The first three 2014 quarters of GDP crawled upward at 1.9%, 2/6% and 2.7% versus an average of 4.6% over the 1960s. “[O]ur single most serious economic problem,” according to Jim Clifton, Chairman and CEO of Gallup is the lack of new startup companies, long the leader the U. S. now comes in twelfth. “But even more dangerous there are more failures of American companies than new ones starting for the first time in 35 years…when free enterprise dies, America dies with it.”  An article in the January 2, 2015, “Wall Street Journal”, “Endangered Species: Young U. S. Entrepreneurs” told of the drastic drop in people under the age of 30 who own private businesses, roughly 3.6% of them plummeting from 10.6% in 1989. Productivity, the foundation of U. S. growth has dropped over half since 2011 to 1.1% compared to 2.5% for the decades after 1948. But why is all of this happening now?  While Journal article mentioned several causes including a long hangover from the recession, a dearth of starting jobs, lower bank lending, and fear of these kids of failure, these seem a result. Others have blamed: new burdensome regulations, including from the Affordable Care Act and Dodd-Frank Act (enabled by high “whistleblower” bounties), accelerated federal and tort litigation, higher capital gains and personal income taxes, and massive negative publicity about “business corruption.”

I would add that there has been a relentless war on business by the Obama administration. As President Obama famously said at a campaign stop in Virginia, June 2012:  "If you got a business, you didn't build that – somebody else made that happen." That is a severe misunderstanding of and antipathy toward private sector business. The sole job President Obama ever held in the private sector – the only time in his life he actually touched private enterprise – for a New York international consulting group, in his autobiography “Dreams from My Father” he called himself “a spy behind enemy lines.” In those words he identifies the private sector as the enemy. Mr. Obama left that company to move to Chicago and begin his government work, initially in community organizing.

But even more than words, the president’s actions are the tell.

DOJ. Obama’s former attorney general, Eric Holder, through the United States Department of Justice has engaged in an unprecedented assault on banks, businesses, and individual businesspeople. With virtually unlimited taxpayer money, he has deeply investigated – with extravagant media coverage – the financial services industry about “abuses” which he said led to the so-called 2007 sub-prime mortgage loan meltdown and accompanying Great Recession. Many of the largest and most prosperous financial institutions have been charged with a grocery list of assertions of abusive behavior in issuing mortgages, packaging them into collateralized debt obligations, errors in servicing, even in alleged “abusive behavior toward homeowners” and of banks not adequately disclosing risks to other large, powerful financial institutions and finally, the all-encompassing “predatory lending,” whatever that means. It is exceptional Monday morning quarterbacking by the DOJ attacking businesses including Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Sun Trust, PNC, Sovereign, Ally, U. S. Bank, MetLife Bank, HSBC Holdings, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, BNP Paribas. As Justice clearly understands, most companies, fearing reputational and competitive risk, settle such allegations rather than investing millions of dollars and tens of thousands of executive and employee hours and years of negative media coverage to defend themselves. In settlements, DOJ doesn’t even have to define “abuse,” since the media has already defined it for it. Around $65 billion was paid in fines and settlements in 2014 up 40% from 2013’s previous record $46 billion. In winning settlements, the DOJ’s power and reach increases, with higher settlement demands. And other agencies jump on. All the media publicity from settlements cause average Americans to distrust big business and banking institutions, which seems to be an Obama administration objective. That it isn’t the money is explained by a September 18, 2014, “Wall Street Journal” article entitled “Billions Going Unrecovered” telling that the DOJ has failed to recover $97 billion “won” from these sorts of enforcement actions. 

NLRB. Three of five members of the National Labor Relations Board and its powerful general counsel are progressive Democrats with roots in labor unions.  The NLRB  remade a thirty-year-old rule by redefining “employer” to make one company (McDonald’s, a franchisor) the employer of other companies’ employees (each of its 14,000 franchisees) ruling that it “co-employs” workers together with its franchised local small businesses. More than three dozen unfair labor practice charges have been filed against other franchisors including Taco Bell, Subway, Burger King, Panera Bread, and Jack in the Box. This decision completely alters the business models of the eight million small business franchisees and eight hundred thousand franchisors making them easier to unionize. Other NLRB anti-business initiatives include requiring businesses to post an 11-by-17-inch poster essentially explaining that employees have the right to unionize to improve wages and working conditions; to form, join, and assist a union; and to bargain collectively with their employer. The NLRB  filed a complaint against Boeing for opening a new plant in South Carolina, a right-to-work state. It was acting on its May 10, 2010 internal memorandum that the NLRB wants to grant union bosses power over employers’ investment and management decisions, forcing companies to negotiate their investment plans with union bosses. It later withdrew the complaint and the poster requirement was overturned by the courts, in which the McDonald’s rule presently resides.

DOL. Über-Activist Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez’ department ruled that home-care workers, including family members caring for their loved ones, must be paid, overturning a 1974 amendment to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act and enabling the easy unionizing of tens of thousands of innocent family helpers. At this point, a federal judge said “no,” and DOL has appealed. Perez himself was Ted Kennedy’s special counselor on labor.

EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency halted all oil and gas projects on public lands, delayed (apparently forever) the Keystone XL pipeline, and devoted fifties of billions of dollars to “alternative” energy sources from windmills, solar panels, ethanol and high-end electric vehicles. On January 14, 2015, the EPA proposed regulations to slash methane emissions in the oil and natural gas industry. It crippled mining from West Virginia to Alaska. The Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository was abandoned, thus killing all future nuclear energy. Along with his Department of Transportation, EPA arbitrarily required a presently-impossible 54.5 miles per gallon corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) for cars and light trucks by 2025, adding $5,000 to the price of each vehicle.

DOI. In a video message, December, 2015, President Obama announced that his Department of the Interior was blocking all oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay, Alaska, virtually forever and on Sunday, January 25, 2015, DOI proposed to preserve as wilderness nearly 13 million acres of land in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, including 1.5 million acres of coastal plains that is believed to have rich oil and natural gas resources.  Later in the week, the department also is slated to propose a draft offshore leasing plan that is expected to include more limits on future oil and gas production in Alaska.

EEOC. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has greatly stepped up investigations and lawsuits, including a class-action sexual harassment claim against CRST Van Expedited, a Georgia nursing home, where a judge found EEOC’s FBI-like raid and conduct a “misuse of authority” and “frivolous, unreasonable or groundless,”  ordering it to pay $4,694,442.14 in attorneys’ fees, expenses, and costs in the largest loss ever against the EEOC, illustrating the strong lawless anti-business approach of the agency. It also arbitrarily pregnancy to be a workplace disability.

DOE. Through a provision passed in the health-care reform of 2010, the Department of Education became the originator of roughly ninety percent of U.S. student loans with taxpayer obligations soaring past $1 trillion. The president has coerced indebted students OUT OF working in the private sector by forgiving student loans if they work for non-profits or government for ten years.  If they work in the private sector it takes twice as long. Also, the Department of Education is purposely destroying for-profit educational companies by eliminating government funding for students through new regulations applying only to for-profit school businesses, not non-profits, such as President Obama’s alma mater, Harvard. These regulations took down 81,000-student Corinthian Colleges, one of the country’s largest for-profit companies whose students tended toward minorities, older persons and the poor. All U. S. schools will be closed or sold.

FDIC. In 2011, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation classified gun-selling as a “high risk activity,” along with thirty other industries the Obama government doesn’t like.  In 2012, the Justice Department adopted the FDIC’s “high risk” list into official guidance it provides to banks under Operation Choke Point. While there has been no definition proffered of “high risk” or “high risk activity” by either agency it warns financial institutions and payment systems such as PayPal, Intuit and Square from servicing such companies. Other targeted industries include: ammunition sales, coin dealers, credit repair services, debt consolidation services, fireworks sales, government grants, home-based charities, money transfer networks, pay day loans, telemarketing, tobacco sales and travel clubs. And in conjunction with this, it shut down a company it deemed to be an illegal direct-sales “pyramid scheme.”

In the president’s 2015 State of the Union address he said, “and no challenge – no challenge – poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change.”  Of course, in the first part of December, 2013, the growing income gap “income inequality,” was “the defining challenge of our time” he said.

He is wrong. The greatest threat to future American generations is his war on business, some examples of which are briefly described above. Popular opinion is negative toward business, capitalism, and free enterprise, undermining the foundation of innovation, growth and jobs which has brought unprecedented prosperity and high standards of living to Americans. Unless politicians can clearly spell out with clarity this war, interpret how it will adversely impact most Americans, and broadcast it to convince the American voter, the hope of Barack Obama to change America will come true.

Now that 2016 is underway, will Trump trump the field? Or..............

                                                                     2016


Only Bill and the FBI love Hillary, but her ego is too big to quit. Trump won big. Socialism for ignoramuses won. Trump can do no wrong. Fuck. Pussy. Ugly Carly. Bleeding Megyn. The Tea Party tried and the Megaphone of the Left, The New York Times, killed it. Maybe the Trump Party will do better.  He is striking an obvious nerve and it hurts those in power from both parties. As I have said, Trump will cause chaos and from chaos comes order, Hillary's path is known: more corruption and crazy wealth for that 1% -- the Bill Hill and Chill self-charity, and HBF Huma. The only pinprick in THAT condom is the FBI, though in all probability Obama will tell his Lynch party not to indict her and she will obey. Barry and Hilly might settle with no penalty and no admission of guilt to clear her decks. But since female voters can't stand her no matter what's between her legs, she can't win.

OK, then it will be Trump since even the American Left might develop palsy when trying to pull the lever for a socialist of no achievement.

Or Bloomberg who knows and dislikes Trump in all likelihood. Professional jealousy possibly. Bloomberg knows how to put together an organization to succeed and he has managed New York City successfully for three terms, one near-extralegal but he did win handily. While some of his liberal ideas such as banning human-caused Big Gulps and the religious belief in human-caused climate change are repugnant, his dog would govern better than Hill and Bern Baby Bern the country,

But if Trump engages Christie as his vice president, it might tip my scale toward them,

But it is early.  Very, very early. Very, very, very early.

BERNIE SANDERS GOAL FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Three dozen (36) 747 cargo planes ferried Venezuelan currency from printing companies around the world into Caracas, Venezuela.

Stuffed to the brim 50 and 100 bolivar banknotes (that's their currency, like our "dollars") because it costs more to physically print twenty bolivar bills and tens and ones than they are worth. The country has been under democracy and some years ago "elected" as president Hugo Chavez, who was a Socialist in a "democracy" as Bernie Sanders professes to be. Being a Socialist he took from the rich and gave to the poor (the most numerous of voters). He also financed it by borrowing from the world's banks and selling its sole plentiful resource, oil. For billions of bolivars.  Then a butterfly flew in the United States. (Bing for the "chaos theory.") Two smart oilmen invented the technologies of long-distance, right-angled drilling and pressure fracturing of rock formations to free up access to oil and natural gas imprisoned for millions of years. Presto chango! The United States possessed and could get at more oil and gas than it needed.

Now please stick with me. When there is more "stuff" (whether goods, services, ideas or other) it becomes worth less if demand for it remains static (which rarely happens). This is called the "law of supply and demand" (Bing it.) In the case of energy (for which oil and gas is the most useful of material) at the time those entrepreneurs were to apply "fracking" and get rich(er), the Peoples' Republic of China, managed by people similar in ideology to Chavez, began a slowdown in its economy. (How much, no one knows since it is generally acknowledged that financial figures and released publicly from China are manufactured to the standard President Xi Jinping desires.)

OK then, supply increases and demand, because of the slowdown in China's economy the largest or second largest in the world, decreases. The result, children, is?

Oil and gas prices drop.

Venezuela has more oil than any other country in the world, but he U. S. dollars it brought in by selling oil declined precipitously. (Same output selling for less, yields less.) But Venezuela did not lower its spending since Hugo Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicholas Maduro wanted to maintain his own power through socialist ideology after Hugo died in 2013. Promises are promises after all. Maduro lost the latest election.

Turning the supply and demand equation the other way, now the country of Venezuela had fewer dollars to back its currency (which outside of Venezuela was worthless) and buy necessary stuff to feed its people and keep the country running. If the supply of money drops and the demand for the things money buys stays the same, prices must increase. And increase they are, projected to be up 720% this year. (There is essentially no -- zero, nada -- inflation in the United States now.) A $1.00 bottle of beer in Caracas today will be $7.20 this time next year. A $10,000 car will be $72,000. That takes a lot more physical currency circulating throughout the country to buy things. Like food. And bartering is unwieldy. (This is how "business" began thousands of years ago.) But there is only certain number of physical (paper) bills of money. So it must bring some in since it can't afford to buy the paper and metal to print the bills itself. Just stop and think about that. Stop!

You might Bing the German Weimar Republic's inflation in the 1920s and 1930s that put Germany on its path to Hitler.

THIS IS BERNIE SANDERS' GOAL FOR THE UNITED STATES!!!! And, of course, any politician's consequence when he or she spends more money of the United States than it has or can generate. Today the United States owes nearly $20,000,000,000,000. (Twenty Trillion dollars.) This increased some $12,000,000,000,000 since the day Barack Obama was sworn in as president of the United States of America.