The Election: #nevertrump versus #neverhillary

Really, it's very difficult to find anything good to say about this election.  But I'll try.

Somewhere even before the candidates were finally chosen, the hashtags #nevertrump and #neverhillary appeared on social media.  The hashtags are headings to collect in one place the writings of people who refuse to support the candidate in question, and who advocate that others should do the same.  But if you take a look at the discussions aggregated under the two hashtags, you quickly realize that the two represent very different phenomena.

First, the #nevertrump phenomenon.  It very substantially consists of Republicans and conservatives, including prominent ones, who find either Mr. Trump's character, or his positions on certain issues, or both, to be disqualifying from the Presidency.  The Hill back in August published a long list of over one hundred prominent Republicans who had stated a "never Trump" position.  The list included presidential candidates (Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush), numerous Senators and Congressmen, Governors, top-ranking pundits (e.g., columnist George Will, editors Bill Kristol and Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard), major Republican donors (e.g., Paul Singer of Elliott Management), and others.

One might agree or disagree with these people on whether their position constitutes a good political tactic that would lead to a superior outcome for the country.  (After all, the most likely result of many Republicans repudiating Trump will be the election of Hillary.)  But clearly these are serious people who are genuinely concerned about getting the best outcome for the country and its people.

And #neverhillary?  Almost everything you can find about that phenomenon consists of Trump supporters advocating that people should not support the Democratic candidate.  How about the reciprocal of #nevertrump?  Is there such a thing as a group of prominent Democrats -- or even one prominent Democrat -- publicly saying that they just can't support Mrs. Clinton?  If there is, I can't find it.  Back on August 29, Marc Thiessen wrote a column in the Washington Post asking "Where Are The #NeverHillary Democrats?" and noting that he couldn't find any.  The intervening two months haven't caused any to turn up.

Now, that's rather remarkable.  I mean, as bad as Trump's flaws are, are Hillary's any less so?  Compromising national security to that your emails will be inaccessible to FOIA requests -- emails that will then reveal the workings of the pay-to-play Clinton Foundation?  Destroying documents after the Congressional subpoena has been served?  (No client I ever had would have survived in his or her job after doing that.)  Using a "foundation" to support a personal lifestyle of private planes and top hotels, let alone to arrange tens of millions of dollars of supposedly "independent" personal income from donors with a clear interest in influencing a Secretary of State/soon-to-be presidential candidate?  And not one prominent Democrat is sufficiently troubled by any of it to publicly proclaim an inability to support this person?  

It does turn out that there is at least one group of Democrats in the #neverhillary camp.  Of course, this is the unreconstructed Bernie supporters.  Here is a letter from a Harvard freshman to that group of #neverhillary Democrats.  It seems that most of the people in this group are young "millennials," and probably their biggest issue is ballooning college debt and Bernie's promise of free college for all.  Perhaps in their minds they have convinced themselves that in advocating for this issue they are looking out for the good of the country and its people.  A more honest way of looking at it is that they just want to get in on the infinite pile of free government handout money before it all gets handed out to somebody else.

Well, from this we learn something.  After all, Hillary has no particular political vision that anyone can perceive.  What she stands for is continuation and ongoing growth of all government spending and support with taxpayer money of all Democratic lobby groups.  So what we learn is that, for the left-leaning voters in general and all prominent Democrats in particular, far and away the over-riding value is protecting the continuation of the government gravy train for themselves and their crowd.  OK, it's demoralizing.  But if this election has accomplished on useful thing, it is to make that conclusion abundantly clear.  

The Odious Senior Senator From New York Goes National

You are probably not paying much attention to the U.S. Senate races that are not close, so you may not even know that New York's odious senior Senator, Charles "Chuck" Schumer, is up for re-election.  The RealClearPolitics poll average has Schumer up by some 23 points over his Republican rival, Wendy Long.  There's not much chance of getting rid of this guy in the current cycle.  But it's actually much worse than that.  With Harry Reid retiring, Schumer is next in line to be the leader of the Democrats in the Senate -- either Minority Leader or, God forbid, Majority Leader, depending on the outcomes of the various close races.

In one of the earliest posts on this blog, in December 2012, I declared Schumer to be "the worst United States Senator."   In the four years since then, he has only gotten still worse.  Nobody has ever noticed the guy having an actual political philosophy.  He is entirely about using federal taxpayer money to buy votes and entrench the power of the left-wing interest groups that support himself and the Democratic Party.  

Schumer is said to have a campaign "war chest" of some $20 million -- largely extracted as protection money from the local financial industry -- but he doesn't trouble himself to use much of the money on his own safe race.  I have seen almost no advertising for him in this cycle.  However, I did see one ad, which indeed exemplified Schumer's approach to politics.  The theme of the ad was that we should re-elect Schumer because he had gotten lots of money for New York for recovery efforts in the aftermath of non-hurricane Sandy in 2012.  The ad showed several scenes of Schumer touring devastated sites and hugging constituents.

Now, let's analyze that a little.  As I pointed out in this post in 2013, blank-check federal relief from ocean storms is a bad idea for the country, but it's a particularly terrible idea for New Yorkers.  Why?  Because historically New York is not very subject to tropical storm strikes, and gets hit by only about one serious tropical storm for every twenty or so that hit Florida, the Gulf coast and the Carolinas.  That means that, over time, New Yorkers will pay out around twenty dollars in federal taxes for hurricane relief for every dollar they may receive in hurricane relief handouts.  There is no possible way that New York can come out ahead in this game.  But hey, the fundamental qualification for being a "progressive" is inability to do basic arithmetic.  Schumer is the master of using that failing of his voters to entrench the power of himself and his crowd.

And of course, hurricane relief is just one example among many of the same phenomenon.  Even after many decades of having its once-dominant economic position eroded by high taxes and a poor business climate, New York remains one of the wealthier states.  Obviously then, a federal machine that massively redistributes away from the wealthier states is to the disadvantage of New York.  Our one-time senior Senator, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, produced annual reports tallying the net negative suffered by New York each year in this game.  Moynihan was replaced by Hillary Clinton in 2001, whereupon Schumer became the senior Senator.  The reports were discontinued, and I've barely heard the subject mentioned since.  Schumer is of course a leader in regular efforts of Democrats in Congress to increase income tax rates on high earners.  

You won't find out much if anything about what Schumer stands for by going to his campaign website.  But his official Senate website is entirely about just what you would expect:  handing out the free federal money to buy votes.  In just the last few days we have:  $47 million in new federal money for "Sandy-related" repairs in the Rockaways!  (i.e., bailing out oceanfront homeowners; aren't we done with that yet, more than four years after the storm?).  $2.3 million of new Department of Agriculture funds for New York farmers!  $325 million of new federal funds for home energy assistance!  There's a new one of these almost every day.  If Schumer has ever considered that somebody has to pay for this, or if he has ever thought about trade-offs or limits on the federal fisc, I've never seen it.

To find out more of what Schumer stands for, you'll have to go to an independent site, like ontheissues.org.  Admittedly there are enough issues here that even I could find a few things where I agree with him.  But you can be sure that he is on the wrong side of anything big.  Clearly, he is a leader, if not the main leader, of Democratic efforts to repeal the First Amendment to the disadvantage of conservative groups.  He says he wants "money out of politics," even as he is one of the most prodigious fundraisers by reason of his strategic position where he can hobble the financial industry (or selected members of it) if they don't pay him off.  He is a big gun controller, and would gladly see the Second Amendment repealed or limited out of existence by the Supreme Court.  He is in favor of any and all additions to federal spending, and will do everything he can to be sure that the money goes to Democratic party lobby groups.  He couldn't care less whether $700 billion of annual federal anti-poverty spending actually gets anyone out of poverty, so long as the spending creates big budgets and lots of jobs for the Democrat lobby groups.  He has totally bought into the global warming scam, and supports all proposals to subsidize uneconomic energy and to hobble cheaper fossil fuels.  (We're impoverishing the American people?  So what, if my friends and I can stay in power!)  He supports more and yet more federal money for the black hole of healthcare at every opportunity.  His record on free trade is not completely negative -- but then, the idea that a Senator from New York would not be completely pro-free trade really boggles the mind.

Well, America, you are about to be seeing a lot more of this guy.  If you think Hillary Clinton is annoying and grating to watch, wait until you get a good dose of Schumer.  All I can say is, if you are in one of those states with a close race, and you think you might vote for the Democrat, remember that one more Democrat in the Senate could very likely be the difference in making Schumer Majority Leader.  The next few years could be really, really painful.   

Quote Of The Day, Hillary Edition

Way back at the beginning of this endless campaign, in April 2015, I had a post titled "What Does Hillary Stand For?"  My inspiration for the post began when I went to Hillary Clinton's then-new campaign website, looking for specific policy proposals, and found next to nothing -- other than the vaguest of platitudes, like "I want to be your champion."  (Egads!  How can I avoid having this numbskull as my "champion"?)  A further inspiration for the post was that both the Wall Street Journal and the Economist had just run editorials asking the exact same question, with both coming up equally empty handed.

Anyway, my conclusion was, at least on the domestic front, you don't really need specific proposals from Hillary to know what she stands for.  Don't expect any actual vision from her.  She just stands for the absolutely conventional thinking of the unthinking left -- more money out of the infinite taxpayer fountain to fund my friends and cronies to create every new program they can think of and to fix every known human problem.  Of course it will work this time!  Here's how I put it in that post:

We know that she is the very most conventional of left-wing thinkers.  We know that she has no interest whatsoever in rocking the government gravy boat.  We know that she deeply believes in the main project of the Left, which is to bring social justice and equality to the world through government action and crony capitalism.   

Fast forward a year and a half, and Hillary's website has at least a few specifics, very much along the lines that I foresaw.  But she mostly avoids talking about policy specifics, let alone any concept of vision for the country.  When I see parts of her campaign events on the news, in every case she is not engaged in promoting her own policy proposals, but rather is trying to scare her potential supporters about Donald Trump, while avoiding discussion of any actual issues in the election.

Which brings me to the quote of the day.  Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal has a column today, headline "Hillary Becomes the Unsafe Hand," with the theme that various aspects of the email/national security controversy make Hillary far the more risky choice in this election.  And then we come our quote of the day, on Hillary's "vision" for the country:

With Mrs. Clinton, as with Mr. Obama, a voter naturally struggles to understand what the overarching vision is. There isn’t one. They exist to deliver the wish-list of Democratic lobby groups for more power over the people of the United States. Period.

Too bad I wasn't the first to come up with that pithy turn of phrase.  Anyway, if you're wondering why there is near total unanimity among the government-funded and government-cradled sectors of the economy (federal and state government workers, teachers, academia, crony capitalists, unions) in favor of Hillary, that's all you need to know.  

The New York Times Does Poverty

Just a couple of days ago I pointed out that in New York Times-world "all human problems are subject to being "fixed" by spending more government money."  That post was in the specific context of "fixing" the death spiral of Obamacare.  

The Times's treatment of the problem of poverty is not different.  This week it chooses to give the lead article of its Sunday Review section to one of its regular op-ed writers on the subject, Nicholas Kristof.  The headline is "3 TVs and No Food: Growing Up Poor in America."   

This is the New York Times, and one of its signature op-ed writers.  So therefore, do you expect -- or even hope for -- any meaningful insights?  Don't be ridiculous.  It's completely the usual formula:  first, to rouse your sympathies, a few descriptions of the lives of selected people living in bad circumstances; and second, outraged calls for politicians to fix the problem with the universal cure of more government money and more government programs.

Of course, there's a small difference between Obamacare and poverty.  Obamacare has only been around for a few years, and has only recently begun to collapse.  The War on Poverty has been around for over 50 years, and has been subject to dozens of efforts to expand it and fix it to make it work, usually by throwing more, and yet more, and yet still more money at it.  We're up to a trillion dollars a year in round numbers in so-called "anti-poverty" spending, none of which has ever worked to cure poverty, or even reduce it by a little.  Indeed, in the face of vast spending supposedly designed to reduce poverty, the number of people in measured poverty, per the Census Bureau, has gone up from about 27 million when the War on Poverty began in 1965 to about 47 million today.  This distinction between the issues of Obamacare and poverty makes Kristof's article particularly insulting to the reader.  Does he even know about, or will he acknowledge, the trillion or so dollars of current annual spending on so-called "anti-poverty" programs?  Will he acknowledge, or even mention, the vast increases in recent years of spending on things like food stamps, disability, EITC, and Medicaid?  Actually, from all indications, Kristof is completely unaware of the vast existing government efforts to cure poverty, let alone of the total failure of them all.  Certainly, if he is aware, he does not acknowledge their existence.  It's really appalling.

Kristof has recruited an intern to go off traveling with him around the United States to get some first-hand observation of poverty in America.  The first subject up is a 13-year-old kid named Emanuel Laster in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.  Here's the description:

Emanuel has three televisions in his room, two of them gargantuan large-screen models. But there is no food in the house. As for the TVs, at least one doesn’t work, and the electricity was supposed to be cut off for nonpayment on the day I visited his house here in Pine Bluff. . . .  The home, filthy and chaotic with a broken front door, reeks of marijuana. The televisions and Emanuel’s bed add an aspirational middle-class touch, but they were bought on credit and are at risk of being repossessed. The kitchen is stacked with dirty dishes, and not much else.  “I just go hungry,” Emanuel explained.    

Do you read that and immediately wonder if it is really Kristof's intention to suggest that it's the government's responsibility to help a family clean up the filth and put away the dishes?  Or perhaps you are wondering, if American taxpayers spend well over $100 billion per year on food stamps and multiple other nutrition programs for the poor, how is it possible that these people could still have "no food in the house" and a kid who "go[es] hungry"?  Another thought you may be having is, if these people have enough credit to buy three flat-screen TVs and enough cash to buy marijuana to make the place "reek," are they actually "poor" at all within federal definitions?  You will not find out any information in answer to those questions here.  

Rather, we move immediately to the calls for more government spending and programs:

[T]here is . . . an array of policies that [can] make a difference. Early childhood initiatives have a particularly good record, as do efforts to promote work, like the earned-income tax credit. Financial literacy programs help families manage money — and avoid buying large-screen TVs on credit. . . .  In short, what we lack most is not means but political will. The main public response to American poverty has been a great big national shrug — and that is why I wish the candidates were talking more about this, why I wish the public and the media were demanding that politicians address the issue. . . .  Chipping away at these cycles of poverty isn’t easy, and we won’t have perfect success. But we aren’t even trying. We aren’t even paying attention.         

So, a trillion dollars of annual anti-poverty spending on literally hundreds of programs and programs and more programs, and this guy believes that if only we just tried a couple more -- specifically "early childhood initiatives" and "financial literacy programs" -- it would all suddenly start to work?  Aren't Head Start and universal or near-universal pre-K "early childhood initiatives"?  

So which is worse?  Is it the touching naivety -- the idea that, if only these people had been offered a federally-sponsored course in financial management they never would have bought the three flat-screen TVs on credit?  Or, really, is the thing that is worse the total failure to acknowledge the trillion dollars a year that the taxpayers are already spending on so-called "anti-poverty" efforts that never get anyone out of poverty?  I'll go with the latter.  How could this guy have the nerve to suggest that Americans are responding to poverty with a "national shrug," and not "even paying attention," when in fact they commit a fresh trillion dollars every single year to fixing the problem?  A trillion dollars a year -- only to have the bureaucracy make it all disappear, and poverty remain right where it was before we spent a dime, and guys like Kristof accuse you of "not paying attention."

Really, could it get more insulting than that?  Yes!  Kristof finally turns to an effort to guilt and shame the people into yet more spending on yet more programs that can't possibly work.  Try this:

Child poverty is an open sore on the American body politic. It is a moral failing for our nation that one-fifth of our children live in poverty, by one common measure.

Child poverty may be an "open sore" and a "moral failing," but it's sure not on the "American body politic" or on "our nation," which have with spectacular generosity committed vast resources to relieve the suffering and end the problem -- only to be lectured by supercilious fools like Kristof that they are "not paying attention" and have a "moral failing."  The failing is not on the American people, but specifically on the government bureaucracies, who take and spend the annual trillion in a way guaranteed never to end or even reduce poverty, but instead to perpetuate their bureaucracies and to grow their own power.

Here's who has a "moral failing":  Nicholas Kristof, and people like him, who claim to be concerned about people living in poverty, but then advocate for more and more government programs that only foster dependency and the perpetuation of poverty. 

A Couple Of Thoughts On The Latest Clinton Revelations

(1)  Deep in Friday's Wall Street Journal, at page C3, we find that New York State regulators are "intensifying" their investigation of entities related to one Howard Dvorkin.  The headline is "Dvorkin-Related Probes Intensify."  Mr. Dvorkin is known as an advocate for consumer debt relief, and as "founder and former president" of a nonprofit entity called Consolidated Credit Counseling Services.  He also has stakes in various for-profit businesses.  Here's the gist of the nature of the investigation:  

"The New York State Department of Financial Services is investigating whether Consolidated Credit is directing business to for-profit companies owned by Mr. Dvorkin, the agency said in response to an open-records request by the Journal.  'We suspect that personnel at CCCS, a not-for-profit entity, are steering business to for-profit companies' run by people connected to Consolidated, an attorney for the New York state regulator said." 

What -- do you mean there's something wrong with using personnel paid by your not-for-profit entity to steer business to your for-profit activities?  Somebody better tell the Clintons.

Meanwhile, no word on whether the New York DFS or any other regulator is investigating the Clinton Foundation for any such conduct.  Of course, with the latest revelations, you don't really need to do any actual investigating.  You could just read the now-famous 2011 Doug Band memo to lawyers at Simpson Thacher, helpfully available at the Washington Post website here.  In the memo, Band identifies himself as "the primary fundraiser for the Foundation for the past 11 years."  During the same period, Band also worked diligently on behalf of the for-profit activities of what we now refer to as Bill Clinton, Inc.  From the memo:

[W]e have dedicated ourselves to helping the President secure and engage in for-profit activities -- including speeches, books, and advisory service engagements.  In that context, we have in effect served as agents, lawyers, managers, and implementers to secure speaking, business and advisory service deals. . . .   [W]e have personally helped to secure [more than $50 million in for-profit activity] for President Clinton to date.

Band was well-paid for his fundraising for the Foundation during this time period.  And how much was Band paid by Bubba to bring in the $50 mil?  Answer: nada:

Neither Justin nor I are separately compensated for these [for-profit] activities [on behalf of Bill Clinton].

But don't worry, the fundraising on behalf of Bill was completely "[i]ndependent of our fundraising and decision-making activities on behalf of the Foundation."  Sure, Doug.  You worked day and night to bring in $50 mil of paid work for Bill and didn't get a dollar from it for yourself.  Any chance I could get you to work for me on those terms?

(2) On Friday we learned that the FBI has reopened its criminal investigation into matters related to Clinton emails.  Madame Hillary promptly took to the microphones to demand that the Bureau "release all the information it has" about her private email server.  From Fox News on Friday:

"We’ve heard these rumors, we don’t know what to believe," Clinton told reporters during a brief news conference in Iowa Friday evening. "And I’m sure there will be even more rumors. That’s why it is incumbent upon the FBI to tell us what they’re talking about."

Good diversion, Hillary.  But the problem is, we know that the FBI is duty-bound not to disclose what it knows in an ongoing investigation.  So, your demand was fake.  On the other hand, there is someone who works for you and who knows what is on Huma's computer, and on Anthony's, and who is not subject to the FBI's duty to keep its ongoing investigations confidential.  That person is -- Huma!  So, Hillary, when will we see you publicly instructing Huma to tell us everything she knows about what is on her or Anthony's computers?  I'm not holding my breath waiting for this.      

What Passes For Sophisticated Thinking Among Progressives

Somewhere along the line, the Republicans got the nickname of "the stupid party" -- and this election cycle, they've been working overtime to prove the label true.  But how about Democrats and progressives?  In their own minds, they are geniuses -- nuanced and sophisticated thinkers.  Is there anything to their self-image?

Actually, the more you look at the proposals of the progressive "deep thinkers," at least in the arena of domestic policy, the more you realize that all of the proposals amount to the exact same thing:  We just need to spend some more of the infinite free government money and shortly we will have fixed all human problems and eliminated all down side risk of life.  Of course in the programs we have enacted so far there are a few problems and glitches, but Democrats and Republicans just need to work together to "fix" the problems, all of which "fixes" entail no more than the costless expenditure of a bit more of the infinite free money.  Meanwhile the evil Republicans have been blocking the "fixes," undoubtedly out of a twisted desire to see old people and babies die.  Or, to put it slightly differently, just give us one more chance and this time we are going to make socialism work.  Really!  

So, is this actually any less stupid than anything that Donald Trump has come out with?  You be the judge!  

There's a limitless supply of examples to choose from, but let's consider just a couple of very recent ones from major news sources.  In Tuesday's Wall Street Journal we have an op-ed by one Alan Blinder titled "It's Not the Economy, Stupid.  It's the Political Gridlock."    You know who Blinder is -- Senior Professor of Economics at Princeton, member of Clinton administration including member of the CEA, economic advisor to Gore and Kerry campaigns, and, of course, 70s-era economics Ph.D. from MIT.  That last qualification really tells you all you need to know -- he's from the same 70s MIT groupthink as Krugman, Blanchard, Rogoff, et al.  This is a true member of the Democrat/progressive genius elite!  So what's his diagnosis of our current ills?  You guessed it -- the major Obama-period legislation (Obamacare and Dodd-Frank) "could stand improvement," but the evil Republicans "seek repeal more than repair," leading to "partisan gridlock":

ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank Act, two landmark pieces of legislation, are prime examples. The former was passed without a single Republican vote; the latter received only a handful. Even Democrats agree that both laws could stand improvement. But Republicans seek repeal more than repair. Partisan gridlock blocks progress—and makes Americans understandably angry.

Obamacare is not a socialist death spiral; it's just a little short of redistributive perfection and can be quickly fixed with few minor "repairs" (i.e., a few hundreds of billions -- or is it trillions? -- of more dollars of the infinite free money).  Sure, Alan.

The New York Times editorial page from yesterday is even more explicit in its delusions.  The unsigned editorial is titled "Taming Affordable Care Act Premiums,"  or, in the online version, "Affordable Care Act Premium Increases Are a Fixable Problem."   In New York Times-world, all human problems are subject to being "fixed" by spending more government money.  Of course, they would never be so crass as to use such explicit words.  Instead, we deal in euphemisms like "strengthening" the act, "helping" families, and applying a new "reinsurance program" -- but you get the idea:

Congress and the next president could further strengthen the health care law by offering subsidies to middle-income families who currently receive little or no help. Lawmakers should also consider applying to the health care exchanges the kind of reinsurance program Congress has used to encourage insurers to participate in Medicare’s Part D prescription drug benefit program. The Affordable Care Act’s flaws are fixable, but only if politicians from both parties work together in good faith.

And there are those evil Republicans again, who refuse to "work together in good faith."  In New York Times-world, anything short of agreement to write an infinite blank check that will make everything perfect is known as "bad faith."  How could anyone be so sinister?

Needless to say, neither in Blinder nor in the New York Times, nor in dozens of other articles of similar nature in progressive media elsewhere, is there any mention of the potential amounts of money they are talking about, nor the slightest consideration that maybe resources are not infinite, nor of the concept that maybe there are trade-offs to be made.  Equally missing is recognition that a supposed insurance program like Obamacare may be subject to adverse selection and an insurance death spiral, meaning that any attempt to solve the problem with money will then require more and more and accelerating amounts of money as time goes on.  How do we deal with that?  They won't say -- or even address the issue.  And how about mention of what else might need to be cut to make way for the blowout of new spending being proposed?  Also missing.  Hey, we're progressives -- which means we believe that all already-in-place government spending programs are sacred and must be allowed to grow on autopilot forever into the future.

Now, one possibility is that these people really are geniuses, and they have thought of these things, but they don't want to trouble their stupid readers with all the complications.  That would mean that they are willing to see the United States suffer a Venezuela-style collapse a few decades out in order to keep their friends and cronies in power in the interim.  The alternative theory is that they are a lot less smart than they think they are.