Category: Politics

Ted Cruz likes to think of himself as some sort of outsider.

When did he become the insurgent taking on the establishment?

Was it when he went to Princeton?

Was it when he went to Harvard Law School?

Was it when he clerked for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court?

Was it when he worked for the George W. Bush campaign?

Or maybe it was actually working for the Bush Administration that made him an outsider.

Or perhaps when he married a woman who works for the firm that has supplied more elected and appointed officials in more countries than any other in history.

Or perhaps it was when he was the Solicitor General for the State of Texas.

Or perhaps it was when he worked for high-end corporate clients at a high-end Houston law firm.

Or perhaps it was when he became a United States Senator.

When has this guy been on the outside looking in?

So maybe nobody in the Senate likes him. But there are only 100 US Senators in a nation of 300 million.

The liberals in Texas, the atheists, the LGBT, the poor, the people who are not white, the people that Ted Cruz chooses to ignore as Senator and that he has promised he would ignore as President: They are the outsiders.

If Ted Cruz was really as smart as he thinks he is, he would realize that you will never ever ever be an outsider, you will never be standing up to the man, you will never be speaking truth to power when you have spent your whole life either working for the man or being the man, or serving those in power, or being someone with power.

If you can go around and say that atheists and gay people will one day have no place in America and have a chance of making that happen, if you can promise people that millions of other people will have fewer rights and you have a good chance of being able to one day carry out that promise, then you are not an outsider. You are the very thing you claim to be running against.

Image from Dr. Rex’s blog, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

Many people are confounded by the candidacy of Donald Trump.

Given his multiple marriages, lack of military experience, business bankruptcies, lack of religiosity, and much, much, more, a lot of people are confounded about why he is so popular with many conservatives. Yes, he showed up in Iowa carrying a Bible, but that seemed like transparent pandering to me. A few of his companies have declared bankruptcy, which left others holding the bag, so there goes personal responsibility. And he has a few other business practices that seem a bit shady.

Sometimes he would push his bankers to the wall, saying if he went under they would have problems. (This is an example of Keynes’ quote that if you have a small loan, you have a problem, but if you have a big loan, the bank has a problem.) He used the financial crisis as a way to get some breathing room from his bankers, but he would not give tenants any breathing room because of the financial crisis.

And a some of his projects went under in the financial crisis. He and his family would say that those were not properties they ran, they just licensed the Trump name to other people. But I think that still shows a lack of business acumen. Perhaps they should have been more careful who they licensed the name to.

But, as Krugman, Robin and Isquith state, conservatism is not about freedom, or business, or religion. It is about the people in charge trying to stay in charge.

I am a bit surprised that Trump actually ran. I thought he would not because for years he refused to state for the record how wealthy he was. He loved to throw out numbers, but he never backed them up. A reporter for the New York Times wrote a book about Trump, and stated that Trump’s net worth is less than $1 billion. Trump said it hurt his business, and sued the reporter, the publisher and the Times. He never produced any documents or statements to prove his wealth. I am not a lawyer, but my understanding is that the burden of proof was on Trump, and he did not meet it.

I am not clear why he did not produce documents and statements before. He wrote books and gave seminars telling people how to make money in real estate. If you claim you are going to show people how to increase their wealth, and implicitly or explicitly point to your wealth as proof your techniques work, then I think asking you to produce some hard numbers is a fair question.

I was surprised he released some information. But according to lawyer Doug Litowitz, the disclosure forms were so convoluted they really did not tell people what Trump’s net worth is. Many writers and journalists looked them over, and they all came away with different numbers. Litowitz states he thinks Trump might be broke, or at least not a billionaire, based on his investments and behavior.

Maybe like Herman Cain, this is all performance art. Or, again like Herman Cain, this guy is really not all that bright. Or like Mike Huckabee, it’s a way to get publicity and more TV deals. Someone pointed out that Trump has attacked just about every GOP nominee except Ted Cruz. Could this be an elaborate conspiracy to elevate Cruz to the nomination? I don’t think those two are that smart, but that could be the unintentional result.

But I think there might be a question that I think nobody has addressed: If he is elected, what happens with his assets? Elected officials usually sell holdings or put them in a blind trust. From what I can gather, his holdings are vast and complex. Liquidating and moving his assets will probably take more time than any other candidates. Does he have a plan in place to do this?

Politicians do this to remove or reduce potential conflicts of interest. If Trump thinks those standards do not apply to him, then is he any different from the sort of politician he claims to be better than?

Image from Cleveland.com, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

Ben Carson recently said he wants to get rid of the income tax, and replace it with a flat tax. He did not use the term, but that is what he was talking about.

He said that poor people can pay the same percentage as rich people, and then he said it is “very condescending” to say otherwise.

Do not tell me what is condescending, Mr. Carson. I will tell you what is condescending. At the top of the list is: Mister Ben Carson.

Followed by just about every other Republican.

First off, you trot out the flat tax. And then you tell us it’s just one of your new, fresh, common sense ideas. And that your policies will not favor the wealthy, but instead will be better for everyone. And you think that people will not notice that your new ideas are really the same old ideas, and that you are just another fool carrying water for people who want to bring back feudalism.

Conservative politicians have proposed the flat tax. Many times. They tell us their experts have told them that all we have to do is close the loopholes, and we can make it 10 to 15%, and we can bring in just as much revenue as we do today. And every time, just about every economist who is not advising the latest doofus to push the flat tax tells us that none of it is true. All the other economists say that in order to maintain revenue, the flat tax would have to be closer to 30%, and that low income people would wind up paying a LOT more under a flat tax. And the wealthy would pay a lot less.

And then what happens is the politician pushing the flat tax will exempt people below a minimum income from paying. Which is a concession that the flat tax was regressive even though they said it was not. And makes it less flat and less simple. This happens just about every single time. I think we should pass a law that suggesting a flat tax disqualifies you from elected office.

And a note to Mike Huckabee: You can call the flat tax a “fair tax”, but it is basically the same thing.

What is also condescending, Mister Carson, is you go on about self-reliance and we should get rid of programs that help poor people, when you yourself have admitted that you got government help growing up and would not be where you are today without it. But now that you are successful, you want to pull the ladder up after you and lecture everybody else. Like Paul Ryan and Social Security. Or Marco Rubio with Medicare and student loans. It’s always Republicans who do this. And they seem to think we would not notice. Or that we should change the rules for them. And yet it’s everybody else who is “condescending.”

It seems Mister Carson thinks he is better than all the poor people in this country. That HE can make use of a handout and that they are all too stupid. Yet somehow it’s everybody else who is “condescending.”

One thing I found strange about Mister Carson talking about the flat tax is that he said low income people would pay less under his scheme. Yet Mitt Romney told us that a lot of people pay no taxes at all. So I am not clear how low income people will pay less under a flat tax than they do now.

I don’t think the GOP really wants to change the tax code. They need the IRS to kick around. Granted, if they hate how the IRS operates, they could pass changes to the tax code, since they have the House. During part of Bush 43’s time in office, they had both houses of Congress, yet there was no simplification of the tax code. I think it is because if we had a flat tax, they can’t promise goodies to people.

Plus, how would a flat tax work in reality? I think the government has the power to levy income tax because of the 16th Amendment. If you wanted to get rid of income taxes, wouldn’t you have to overturn the 16th Amendment? What would stop a future president and Congress from going back to an income tax?

 

---

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/05/chris-wallace-schools-ben-carson-flat-tax
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/11/1384065/-Ben-Carson-says-he-d-install-a-flat-tax-and-ignore-the-Supreme-Court
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/05/ben-carson-outlines-flat-tax-proposal-117785.html#ixzz3ZrLyatpA
http://crooksandliars.com/2014/05/welfare-recipent-ben-carson-deserved-his
http://wonkette.com/550031/ben-carson-so-glad-his-welfare-mom-wasnt-dependent-on-government
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/03/26/186905/commentary-dr-ben-carsons-baffling.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ben-carsons-flat-tax-poor-175214945.html

Image from Democratic Underground, assumed allowed under Fair Use.

I saw an article recently stating the new governor in Illinois has a very low approval rating.

I wonder why this guy was elected in the first place.

Part of me thinks I know why: Most people do not vote. So I guess the real question is: Why don’t more people vote? Why do they let snakes like Rauner into office? I know people would rather vote for someone they like than vote against someone they do not like, but some people deserve being voted against.

He seems like a typical conservative: It seems the answer to the world’s problems is to give the wealthy free reign, and trust me, the crumbs for the rest of you will be wonderful.

From what I could tell, his campaign’s main message was that Illinois is not very friendly to business. He made about $50 million in 2013, and his net worth is about $900 million. He owns serveral homes. In one year he paid more in property tax on one home than most people in Illinois earn. He spent about $24 million on his own campaign. If Illinois is so bad for business, how did he get so rich? And why did people fall for it?

He is engaging in some short-sighted job poaching targeting Indiana. As Richard C. Longworth writes, American states need to realize that their competition is not each other, but Europe, Asia and Latin America.

Now he wants to decrease the minimum wage, and pay highway construction workers less money. Why is it that rich people think that a prosperous society requires everybody else to be poor? And why do people fall for it? I paid some attention to the campaign from here in Texas. I wonder if he tried to paint himself as a different kind of conservative, or saying that he has new, fresh ideas. It sounds like the same old conservative feudalism to me.

According to Wikipedia, 3,627,690 people in Illinois voted in the 2014 election. According to the US census, in 2014 the population of Illinois was 12,880,580. 23.5% were under the age of 18. So there are about 9,853,643 eligible voters in Illinois. So only about 36% of the eligible voters took part in this last election. What the heckflame and darnation is wrong with people?

In all seriousness, why don’t people vote? Non-voters that I talk to seem think they are too smart to vote, they are not fooled by the system, that the two parties are the same. It is hard to take these people seriously. They think they are beyond the two party system, they are smarter than the general electorate, yet I think they are the ones being taken for a ride. If you are not willing to press a button once a year, is it rational to expect society to be something that you approve of?

If voting did not matter, why is the GOP trying to limit people’s access to voting? If voting did not matter, why are the Koch brothers planning on spending almost $1 billion to influence the 2016 election? A few hedge fund billionaires in Chicago gave a LOT of money to Bruce Rauner. I am guessing they voted.

Over time, as turnout decreases, distrust in government increases (I know this shows the numbers for federal government, but I think the point is valid).  So many people are cynical about government and think that government will try to restrict our freedoms. Perhaps people need to realize that the real threat is some parts of the private sector encroaching on other parts of the private sector.

What we are stuck with is more bitterness, and more people souring on “both sides”. I was happy to see some pushback on Little Green Footballs against the “both sides” fallacy: “Both parties not measuring up to desired standards doesn’t mean that both parties are the same.” Another commenter pushed back on some “both sides” nonsense to tell someone that if they REALLY did not like the two main parties, then look into third parties.

Every election, turnout decreases, people are more unhappy with government, and nobody makes the connection.

Someone on Little Green Footballs wrote We get the government we deserve.

I am NOT getting the government I deserve. I am stuck with the government other people deserve.

Image from Wikimedia,  assumed allowed under Fair Use.