Category Archives: American Politics

Internal Migration.

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If you go, well, Donald Trump scored big in the areas hollowed out by Chinese competition against “old industry,” Hillary Clinton did OKish in the areas marked by “new industry,” then the problem facing Democrats is how to expand the ranks of those employed in those new industries.

In theory, the internet and high-tech industry should allow people to work from anywhere in the country.  Omaha, Nebraska should be as good—if not a better— place to live as Seattle, Washington.  This should reduce the need to migrate.  In fact, it hasn’t worked out that way.

In zee old days, earlier old industries got replaced by new industries.  Moreover, American workers moved in pursuit of job opportunities.  Before the Second World War, about 15 percent of Americans lived outside the census division in which they were born.  By 1970, 25 percent of Americans lived outside the census division in which they were born.  Thus, under-paid Southern farmworkers could get better-paying assembly-line jobs.  All you had to do was move from Fordyce, Arkansas to River Rouge, Michigan.  So, lots of geographic displacement.[1]  Then this trend began to slow down during the 1980s.

Instead, for decades now, workers with more education have been streaming toward the great cities on the coasts, while less educated workers have been left behind.  During the first decade of the 21st century (2001-2010), the migration rates for the college-educated were about 2 percent per year; the migration rates for those with only a high-school education were 1.2 percent per year; and the migration rates for those with less than a high-school diploma were 1 percent per year.

Regionally, the “Rust Belt” states (Iowa, Michigan, Ohio) and the Plains States have shown the greatest out-migration of college-educated people.  In contrast, California, Maryland, Texas, South Carolina, New York, and Massachusetts have witnessed the greatest in-migration.  So, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Baltimore, Washington, New York City, and Boston offer a certain cachet.  One puzzle here is that Michigan and Michigan State, Ohio State, and Iowa are all major research universities surrounded by “blue townships.”  The same goes for Stanford and Washington, but less so for Oregon. Brigham Young, .

Why do younger, better-educated people move?  One Michigan State economist suggested that “lots of talented young people all over the country are eager to see new sights…”  So, give them interesting cities, with lots of youth culture.  Whatever “youth culture” means.  It appears to mean talking to non-company people over coffee; lots of chances to co=operate.

[1] See: “The Grapes of Wrath” (dir. John Ford, 1940).  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M9fJMqhlZY

The illegals.

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Much in life and government is refined guess-work[1].  Thus, huge numbers of illegals entered the United States in the years before the financial crisis and “Great Recession” slammed the brakes on the economy.  Thus, in 2000, Border Patrol agents arrested 1.6 million people trying to cross the Mexican-American border.  An estimated 12 million entered in 2007.  Then the economic slow-down greatly reduced job opportunities in the United States, so illegal immigration slowed precipitously.  Only an estimated 188,000 entered in 2015.

Since the economic slow-down, illegal immigration has slowed.  Generally, estimates on the number of illegal immigrants currently in the United States converge around the figure of 11 million.  Of these, an estimated 8.1 million are working or looking for work.  Another estimate holds that two-thirds have been in the United States for at least 10 years.  Yet another estimate holds that 60 percent of the illegals are to be found in California, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, and New York.  Basically, where there is work for lots of industrious, low-skill people.[2]  Farms, construction sites, and the hospitality-industrial complex provided a lot of work.

About 5.5 million are Mexicans; about 40 percent over-stayed a legally-obtained visa.

In 1992 the US had about 4,000 Border Patrol agents along the frontier with Mexico.  The rest made the dangerous crossing of the border.  A fence now blocks about one-third of the 1.954 miles-long border.  In 2010 the US had about 21,000 Border Patrol agents along the frontier with Mexico.

Proof of citizenship is required for Medicaid, food stamps, and welfare, so the illegals don’t qualify for these taxpayer-funded benefits.  On the other hand, the children of illegals do attend the public schools, and—if they themselves were born in the United States—as American citizens, they qualify for some medical care and welfare benefits.   The Heritage Foundation calculates that the illegals cost American taxpayers almost $15,000 a year.

The illegals have become a political football.  Democrats want them to be granted a “path to citizenship” without any further hindrance.  Oh, sure, there are the “criminal immigrants” who should not be granted citizenship.  About 7.5 (NOT 75 percent) percent of the illegals are criminals.  Virtually all of these—91 percent—were deported.  However, under the Obama administration, “your chances of getting deported are close to zero” if you have not committed a serious crime.  In contrast, Republicans demand a “securing of the border: before any legalization occurs.

[1] “The illegal immigrant population,” The Week, 30 September 2016, p.11.

[2] Personally, I think that trying to run this broke-ass country without illegals is just like trying to run it without fat black ladies.  It can’t be done.  As the witchy thug girl says to Marcus in “About a Boy,”  “Are you taking a piss?  ‘Cause if you are, your gunna get a slap.”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lssgt-nJ2sY

The e-mails.

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When she agreed to accept the Secretary of State job as consolation prize from Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton pledged that she would separate the Department of State from the Clinton Foundation.  How well did she keep that pledge?  Law suits by the conservative Judicial Watch group and hacking of computers by Russian intelligence groups have cast some light on the question.[1]

In August 2016, the Associated Press reported that 154 non-governmental individuals had either spoken face-to-face or by phone with Hillary Clinton during the time she served as Secretary of State (2009-2013).  Of those 154 people, 85 had either made donations to or had promised to give money to the Clinton Foundation.[2]  For example, Bono requested an up-link to the International Space Station for a concert.  Initially, the Clinton campaign/foundation claimed that the “quid” rarely received a “pro quo.”  All the same, Clinton Foundation officials brought the concerns of the donors to the attention of the State Department.

Thus, in 2009, Bahrain sought State Department approval for the purchase of $630 million in American-made weapons.  This marked a 187 percent increase over purchases made in previous years.  Bahrain’s Crown Prince and Deputy Supreme Commander of the Defense Forces, sought an interview with Secretary of State Clinton.  Doug Band, at the Clinton Foundation, e-mailed Huma Abedin to ask for the meeting.  The Crown Prince, he wrote, was a “good friend of ours” and had contributed $32 million to a Foundation program.  He got the meeting and Bahrain got the arms purchase approval.[3]  It has been argued that the Crown Prince would have received a meeting with Clinton as a matter of course, so no impropriety occurred.  If the Crown Prince would have received a meeting anyway, why did he contact Band about a meeting and why did Band contact Abedin?

Between 2001 and 2015, while his wife was Secretary of State and then the heir-presumptive to the Democratic presidential nomination, Bill Clinton earned $132 million in speaking and consulting fees.[4]  Did companies and institutions set that much value on his wisdom?  New York is not a community property state, so Hillary Clinton cannot be accused of having enriched herself.  Still, the optics are bad.

She did enrich herself with a series of post-State Department/pre-presidential campaign speeches to private groups.  These groups included Goldman, Sachs.  In one speech, she had told bankers that in politics, “you need both a public and a private position.”  Her private position was that “my dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders.”  Later, locked in a surprising primary battle with democratic socialist challenger Bernie Sanders, Clinton refused to release the texts of these speeches.  So, in October 2016, the Russians did it for her.[5]  Her statements were pretty much in the mainstream when given, but conditions had changed by the time the texts were released.  Again, the optics were bad.

[1] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy

[2] “Clinton faces ethics questions over foundation,” The Week, 2 September 2016, p. 5.

[3] “Clinton Foundation: Was there a quid for the pro quo?”  The Week, 9 September 2016, p. 16.

[4] “Clinton Foundation: Was there a quid for the pro quo?”  The Week, 9 September 2016, p. 16.

[5] “Clinton: What the WikiLeaks emails reveal,” The Week, 28 October 2016, p. 8.

Rigged.

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Foaming at the mouth before the election, Donald Trump asserted that if he didn’t win it was because the election was “rigged.”  He did not specify how the election might be “rigged”; he just asserted that it was rigged.  Then Trump won Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan by a total of 100,000 votes.  These narrow victories gave him a majority in the Electoral College.  If he had not won them, then Hillary Clinton would have been elected president.

“What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”  Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate for president in 2016, called for a re-count of the votes in the three states.  If all three states could be “flipped,” then Trump would lose the vote in the Electoral College just as he had lost it (by better than 2 million votes) in the popular vote.  She argued that Russian hackers might have messed-with the voting machines and that there had been voting irregularities.  She did not identify any specific irregularities; she just asserted that there had been voting irregularities.  Stein, who had raised $3.5 million for her presidential race[1], suddenly received $6.6 million in donations.  Then the Clinton campaign, after having conceded the election, joined the Stein campaign.[2]

“What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.”  Once Hillary Clinton joined the effort to overturn the results of the election, Trump responded.  Trump tweeted that “serious voter fraud” had taken place in California, New Hampshire, and Virginia.  “Millions of people who voted illegally” had pushed Clinton to a nominal victory in the popular vote.  Trump’s claims were widely denounced  as ridiculous, but they’re not more ridiculous than the Clinton-supporter financed allegations that the Russians might have hacked voting machines or that un-specified “irregularities” had occurred.

[1] See: https://www.opensecrets.org/pres16/candidate?id=N00033776

[2] “[Trump] rages as recounts advance in three states,” The Week, 9 December 2016, p. 5.

Emergency.

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Faced with a Republican Congress created by a majority of Republican voters, President Obama resorted to executive orders and administrative regulations to act on climate, immigration, and wages.  None of these initiatives have fared well with the courts.

For example, in February 2016, the Supreme Court issued a stay on President Obama’s regulations on the coal industry as part of his effort to respond to climate change.[1]  For example, in June 2016 the Supreme Court (4-4) upheld a lower court’s rejection of President Obama’s 2014 executive order that would have allowed almost half (5 million) illegal immigrants to escape deportation.[2]

For example, in May 2016, the Obama Administration’s Labor Department issued a regulation on over-time.  Previously, only workers making less than $23,660 a year were eligible for time-and-a-half over 40 hours/week.  Under the Labor Department regulation, anyone making less than $47,500 a week would qualify for overtime.  Businesses assumed that the new regulation would be sustained by the courts, so they began raising pay to the new minimum and by turning full-time workers into hourly workers.  Then, just before Thanksgiving, a federal judge in Texas (of course) blocked a Labor Department regulation on overtime pay.[3]  The Trump Administration is likely to withdraw the regulation.

So, who is in the right here?  Hard to say because a lot of jobs pay very little and require an awful lot.  Anyone who has worked in a restaurant knows that long hours involve constant toil and bullying by idiot supervisors for lousy money.  For that matter, the idiot supervisors themselves put in 60 hours a week or more trying to get to the next level.

On the other hand, one can easily get the feeling that Democrats believe that every business is Microsoft: immense profits from immense profit margins.  In fact, retailers, restaurants, and grocery stores all run in thin profit-margins.  Thus, when Washington, DC, mandated a raise in the minimum wage, Walmart cancelled plans to build two new stores in the district, and Washington restaurants cut employment by 1,400 workers in the first half of 2016.[4]

It seems likely that one part of President Obama’s “legacy” will be a judicial restriction of executive authority.  That isn’t necessarily a bad thing from a non-partisan perspective.  American voters often have chosen a divided government.  This is annoying for politicians (Republican as much as Democrats) with agendas they want to push.  The resort to executive orders and regulatory changes does offer a way around this dead-lock.  However, it establishes a pattern of circumventing the Constitution’s division of powers.  Any president can portray anything s/he wants to do as the solution to some “emergency.”

[1] See: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/us/politics/supreme-court-blocks-obama-epa-coal-emissions-regulations.html?_r=0

[2] See: http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/23/politics/immigration-supreme-court/

[3] “Issue of the week: Judge halts new overtime rule,” The Week, 9 December 2016, p. 38.

[4] “Proof that wage laws backfire,” The Week, 11 November 2016, p. 12.

I wish I had posted this.

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Back in summer and early Fall 2016, I began assembling reading notes for a piece on the election.  Then work-blind-sided me.  See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpNzlh5ALRA  So, here’s what the evidence showed then.  Could have made me look like a prophet.

 

“Well behaved women seldom make history.”—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  Does the same thing go for men?  Perhaps this is one way on understanding Donald Trump’s candidacy.

While fellow Republican primary candidates and Democrats are gleefully beating the stuffing out of “the Donald” for his comments on the “Department of Environmental,” it’s worth reflecting on a comment by Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

 

While, in the 2008 Democratic primary, the white working class generally supported Hillary Clinton, in late July 2016, this group overwhelmingly favored Donald Trump.[1]  Six different public opinion polls in July 2016 showed Trump holding a 58 to 30 percent lead over Clinton among whites without a BA.  This average is on the low end of some polls.  It’s difficult to tell which polls are the most accurate.

For at least the last decade, the general line among Democratic strategists has been that the country is changing in ways that mean the white working class can be disregarded.  It should be possible to build a majority coalition from highly-educated whites, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Hispanic-Mexicans.[2]  However, whatever America may be in the future, the American future doesn’t get to vote in November 2016.  Today gets to vote and today, almost half of voters are whites without a college BA.

President Obama and Democratic leaders opted not to seek an adequate stimulus bill in the first two years of his administration.  Those were years when the Democrats controlled the House and Senate as well as the White House.  They pushed through Congress both the Affordable Care Act and a modest stimulus bill.  They could have fought for more stimulus than they did.  All of the president’s subsequent “job-creation” proposals were “revenue neutral.”  That is, he rejected Keynesian deficit spending in favor of trying to favor Democratic constituencies.  Democratic indifference to the interests of the white working class isn’t new.  Democrats lost both the South and the working class to Republicans over cultural issues (rather than race).  Gun control, government administrative regulation of the economy, secular sharia’s opposition to public religion, and—most recently—gay rights have all estranged many traditionally Democratic voters from the Democratic Party.

 

Of people who are known to have committed journalism and who also have donated to presidential campaigns this year, 96 percent donated to the campaign of Hillary Clinton.[3]  As a result, the sustained and bitter campaign by mainstream newspapers like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal (my chief sources of information in addition to the British Broadcasting Corporation) against Trump can heat up hostility to him among people who already have decided to vote against him.  However, the people most inclined to vote for Trump probably don’t read either the NYT or the WSJ.  Editorial lightning bolts launched against the Orange-American candidate aren’t likely to make much of a dent.  Similarly, between June and late October 2016, about 80 percent of the television ads in support of a presidential candidate supported Hilary Clinton.  A mere 18 percent supported Trump.[4]

 

The American middle class is much reduced in recent years.[5]  Today (2016) the middle class accounts for almost a third (32 percent) of the population and just over a quarter (25.8 percent) of the national income.  Why is that?  Partly because a lot of Americans climbed out of the “middle” middle class into the “upper middle class.”  What is “upper middle class”?  Today, the middle class accounts for almost one-third (32 percent) of the population and 25.8 percent of the nation’s income.  Well, part of it got richer over the last 40 years.  In 1979, 13 percent of the population earned between $100K and $350K; in 2014, 30 percent of the population earned between $100K and $350K.[6]

What about those who did not climb?  According to a now-popular narrative, the white elite—Republican and Democrat alike–have abandoned the white working class.[7]  They have done so by embracing free trade abroad and tariffs (affirmative action) at home.  Five million American manufacturing jobs have gone down the drain in the last fifteen years, and the growth of GDP has averaged 3 percent for the last ten years.[8]  Republican leaders, says NobelPrize-winning economist Krugman, just don’t want to admit that their simplified view of free-market capitalism doesn’t match with reality.  So, the white working class isn’t the only one engaged in self-destructive behavior.  The resentment of the white working class is what is driving the rise of Donald Trump.  (One might almost see “Trumpism” as AA barging into politics.)  This is an interpretation that is widely accepted.

However, commentators weren’t willing to leave well enough alone.  Substance abuse (what used to be called boozing and baking your head) and suicide have contributed to a falling life expectancy for the white working class.  What has happened to black Americans for decades is now happening to the white working class, according to Paul Krugman in the New York Times.  Moreover, these voters have provided much of the electoral support for the Republican Party in recent decades.  Kevin Williamson wrote a scalding “pull up your socks” piece in The National Review.  Economic change is normal; you need to adapt to it; when the white working class got tossed on the scrap heap of the “Rust Belt,” they should have both moved and re-tooled; but they settled for self-destruction through drugs and self-pity.  There’s something to be said for this view.  It’s not like we’ve been watching scenes from “The Grapes of Wrath” (dir. John Ford, 1939) on the devil-box for the last few decades.

 

Then there’s immigration.  Better than one in eight (13 percent) of the people living in the United States is an immigrant.  Almost one in six (16 percent) of the people in the work force is an immigrant.  That should be good for the /democrats, right?  However, more than one in four (28 percent) of the small business owners are immigrants.[9]  Immigrants started over half of the U.S. “start-ups” that are now valued at a billion dollars or more.  The top 44 immigrant “start-ups” created more than 750 jobs per company.[10]  Lots of those immigrants are not Hispanic-Mexicans.  That’s probably bad news for the Democratic Party, with its anti-business, pro-regulation stance.  Back in 2013, almost two-thirds (63 percent) of Americans favored giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.  Only 15 percent favored deporting all illegal immigrants.[11]  Something changed.

[1] So, does that mean that HRC was the Donald Trump of 2008?

[2] If only the approximately 12 million of the latter can be provided with a way to vote.  Aye, there’s the rub.

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 28 October 2016, p. 18.

[4] “Noted,” The Week, 4 November 2016, p. 16.

[5] “The bottom line,” The Week, 1-8 July 2016, p.36.

[6] “The bottom line,” The Week, 1-8 July 2016, p. 36.

[7] “The white working class: who’s to blame for its misery?” The Week, 1 April 2016, p. 16.

[8] One definition for a recession is growth of 3 percent.

[9] “The bottom line,” The Week, 30 January 2015, p. 34.

[10] “Noted,” The Week, 1 April 2016, p. 16.

[11] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 6 December 2013, 17.

Guns Again.

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Americans buy a bunch of firearms.[1]  In 1994, 25 percent of American households owned at least one firearm; and 44 million people owned 192 million firearms.  That is an average of 4.36 firearms per firearm-owning household.  In 2015, 22 percent of households owned at least one firearm; and 55 million people owned 265 million firearms.  That is an average of 4.81 firearms per firearm-owning household.  However, this apparent increase in firearms per owner may be deceptive.  About half of all firearms are in the hands—well the extensive gun-safes—of only 3 percent of owners.  That means—I think that 19 percent of the population owns the other 50 percent.  Roughly—watch my math, never my best thing—3/22 of Americans own 50 percent of 262 million guns.  So, 3 percent own 131 million firearms.  On the other hand, 19/22 own 50 percent of the firearms.  So, 19 percent own 131 million guns.  So, of 55 million owners, 1/7 or 7.8 million owned 131 million firearms for an average of about 16 weapons each.  Therefore, of 55 million owners, 6/7 or 46.8 million, owned 131 million firearms, for an average of about 2.8 weapons each.  If, 42 percent of these are hand-guns, 33 percent are rifles, and 20 percent are shot guns, then that suggests that the typical forearm-owner has a rifle, and either a couple of hand-guns or a hand-gun and a shot gun.

Americans started buying guns in increasing numbers during the 1960s, with the numbers rising from about 75 million total firearms in private hands in 1965 to almost 200 million by 1995.  Soaring rates of violent crime and civil disorder appear to have driven the boom in firearms sales.  Violent crime and homicide rates have been dropping for almost a quarter century.  All the same, some Americans felt safer in 1994 than they do today.  In 1994, 46 percent of gun-owners who responded to a national survey cited self-defense as a major reason for owning a firearm; in 2015 63 percent cited self-defense.  While total homicides are down, highly-publicized mass shootings are up.  The expansive definition of mass shootings used by the EffaBeeEye and gun control groups have helped overstate the danger to ordinary citizens.[2]

This shift in motivation is reflected in the composition of the stock of firearms in private hands.  In 1994, 34 percent of firearms were hand-guns (revolvers and semi-automatic pistols); in 2015 42 percent of firearms are hand-guns.

The composition of ownership also is interesting.  Women firearms owners are almost twice (42 percent) as likely as men (22 percent) to own a hand-gun.  African-American firearms owners are almost three times as likely (57 percent) to own a hand-gun as are white firearms owners (20 percent).

Media coverage adds more heat than light.  While the New York Times article cited above conjectured that a “24-hour news cycle has made the world feel more dangerous,” the only human being in their article is a woman who bought her first pistol after a man with a gun invaded her daughter’s middle school and took five girls hostage.  Recently, some members of the media reported the discovery of a previously unsuspected “gun culture” of people who like shooting, know something about it, and talk about target shooting and hunting the way golfers talk about golf.  Now their attention has shifted to a “concealed carry culture.”

These numbers suggest that the contentious debate over firearms and gun-control is likely to continue for some time.  Worse, Americans are talking past one another on this issue.

[1] Julie Turkewitz and Troy Griggs, “Looking for Security, More in U.S. Pick Up a Handgun,” NYT, 15 October 2016.

[2] As best I recall, the current standard has become four or more people shot in a single event.  However, this allows many crime-related gang shootings to be assimilated to events like Newtown and Orlando.

“It Must Be a Peach of a Hand.”

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In spite of the confident assertions on the right and the left, violence in America is full of puzzles and contradictions.  First, murder rates have fluctuated.  In 1980, America had a murder rate of 10.2 per 100,000 people.  The rate drifted downward for the next ten years, then began to fall sharply from about 1990.  By 2014 it had fallen to 4.5 murders per 100,000 people.[1]  Then, in 2015, the national murder rate increased to 10.8 percent.  However, the sharp increase can be attributed to selected cities (Baltimore, Houston, and especially Chicago).  There murder rates jumped to highs not seen in half a decade.  For example, by about 22 November 2015, Baltimore’s homicide tally hit 300 deaths.  This is 42 percent higher than the total for 2014 and we still had the holidays to go.  Most of the rise seems to have come since the rioting that followed the arresting-to-death of Freddy Gray.[2]  That’s scary because the last time the US had an increase like this came in 1971, at the dawn of several violent decades.[3]

One question to ask is if these changes reflected government action or some other influences.  A second question to ask is, if it did reflect government action, then did it reflect federal, state, or local action?  A third question to ask is, if it reflected some other influences, what were those influences?

Second, superficially at least, declining murder rates were tracked by declining support for the death penalty.  In 1994, fully 80 percent of Americans supported the death penalty for murder, while 16 percent opposed it and 4 percent were unsure.  By March 2015, 56 percent supported it.  By October 2016, 49 percent supported the death penalty.[4]  Similarly, the use of capital punishment continues to decline in the United States.  It fell from 98 in 1999 to 35 in 2014 to 20 in the first two-thirds of 2015.  Extrapolating from that latter figure, there would be 30 in all of 2015.  Even in Texas, the state most prone to impose the death sentence, no one has been sentenced to death so far in 2015.[5]

Third, just over half (55 percent) of Americans think that gun ownership can be restricted without violating the constitution (and the Second Amendment be Damned!) and slightly more (57 percent) want a ban on assault weapons.  Conversely, 43 percent of Americans believe that gun ownership cannot be restricted without violating the constitution and 25 percent oppose banning even assault weapons.  All the same, almost three-quarters (73 percent) of Americans support universal background checks.[6]

Fourth gun control is bad for gun control.  After the liberal characterization of the San Bernardino terrorist attack as a “mass shooting,” gun sales zoomed upward.  In December 2015, Americans bought 3.3 million guns.  All of these sales have been from licensed gun-dealers because the government background check system has been swamped.  Attorney General Loretta Lynch has asked for the hiring of 430 additional people just to process the background checks of Americans complying with the existing gun laws.[7]

In spite of the obvious violation of individual civil rights, most (80 percent) of Americans favor banning people on terrorist watch-lists from buying guns.  A small minority (17 percent) suspect that the ban would not be very effective.[8]  There are 25,000 to 40,000 Americans on terror watch-lists.  Of these people, 244 of them tried to buy firearms in 2015.[9]  That is, about one tenth of one percent sought to buy weapons.  People on terrorist watch lists buy guns at lower rates than do “ordinary” Americans.

Fifth, what is a “mass shooting?”  Orlando or Newtown, right?  Actually, the EffaBeeEye’s definition is a little more expansive: a single event in which four or more people get shot.[10]  So, criminals probably commit the bulk of the mass-shootings as a by-product of their business or personal lives.  By the EffaBeeEye’s standard, there have been 133 mass shootings in 2016.  Florida has suffered 15 (or 11.2 percent) of them.

Americans are sharply divided over how to interpret Omar Mateen’s massacre in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, FL.  Most (60 percent) Democrats see it as an example of “domestic gun violence,” while most (79 percent) Republicans see it as an example of “Islamic terrorism.”[11]  The trouble is that the partisan filter on the vision of observers inhibits both understanding and civil discourse.  The further trouble is that both are right.

America is becoming a less violent place in comparison to the past, if not in comparison to Denmark.  Murder rates are generally trending downward; support for the death penalty is trending downward; and support for gun-control seems to be rising.  However, the politics of gun-control may well be hampering further progress.  It is common to blame the National Rifle Association for this problem.  It is common to use “terrorism” and “mass shootings” as labels that justify pushing ahead rapidly with strict gun-controls.  All that this does is to put the backs up on gun-owners.

Instead of shaming campaigns (satisfying though they are to many liberals), perhaps the best answer to a violent America is education campaigns.  Between 1964 and 2004, the number of Americans who smoked fell every year.  But in 2004, the decline bottomed out at 20.8 percent.  It stayed there through the end of 2007.[12]

Still, in these regards, America is a better, safer place to live than when I was a child.  Unless, of course, you are living in one of the broken cities where the War on Drugs spawns the “war for corners”; and where the “war for corners” spawns a confrontational style among young men with no better future.

This doesn’t end up exactly where I wanted to go when I began writing.  It just ends up where some random facts led me.

[1] “Noted,” The Week, 29 July 2016, p. 16.

[2] “Noted,” The Week, 27 November 2015, p. 16.

[3] “Noted,” The Week, 7 October 2016, p. 16.

[4] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 14 October 2016, p. 17.

[5] “Noted,” The Week, 25 September 2015, p. 16.

[6] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 5 August 2016, p. 17.

[7] “Noted,” The Week, 5 February 2016, p.8.

[8] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 1 July 2016, p.7

[9] “Noted,” The Week, 1 July 2016, p. 16.

[10] “Noted,” The Week, 24 June 2016, p. 20.  By this standard, the “Gunfight at the OK Corral” was a mass-shooting.  Especially if you were one of the Earp brothers.  If you were a Clanton or a McLaury, then it was a mass getting-shot.

[11] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 1 July 2016, p.7.

[12] “Noted,” The Week, 23 November 2007, p. 16.  Why did the decline stop?  What has it done since then?  Who are the remaining smokers?    I don’t know.  Perhaps they constitute a libertarian revolt against the intrusive nanny-state of liberal fascism.  Perhaps the people who rush to buy guns and ammo (as opposed to buying Guns and Ammo) are operating under the same star.

Clinton versus Putin.

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While a majority of Republicans once believed that fair-play meant that the Republican convention should nominate the candidate who had won the most votes in the primaries, a majority (54 percent) of Republicans now wish that the party had not chosen Donald Trump as the candidate.  About a third (35 percent) believes that Trump was the best choice available.  Obviously, the latter figure doesn’t mean Trump alone.  It may be more of a statement about the Republican candidates who ran against Trump.  The Democrats aren’t in much better shape about Hillary Clinton.  Almost half (47 percent) of those who plan to vote for her will do so chiefly to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.  Scarcely a third (32 percent) are actually pro-Clinton.  More broadly, two thirds (66 percent) of all voters believe that HRC is dishonest, while less than a third (29 percent) believe that she is not dishonest.  Again obviously, the “Hillary is dishonest” camp includes every single Republican and a bunch of Independents.  Amidst the Viking funeral of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, people should attend to the recent poll reporting that 74 percent of Trump’s supporters think that Hillary Clinton should be in prison.[1]  How deeply that view has penetrated the minds of ordinary Democrats is unknown.[2]

This could have consequences for the 2016 presidential election.  A lot of people will vote for Hillary Clinton in order to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

Unless, perhaps, they think that she is crooked.  “Crooked Hillary” has become a standard phrase in the speeches of Donald Trump.  This charge arises from Trump’s abrasive discourse and datcourse.  However, it gains traction from the perception that Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation engaged in unseemly practices during her time as Secretary of State.  The release of several documents from the investigation of Clinton by the EffaBeeEye has poured gasoline on this particular fire.

Earlier reports indicated that HRC’s e-mail had probably been compromised.  Trump invited the Russians to reveal what they had learned from the 30,000-plus “personal” e-mails that Clinton had ordered deleted from her private server.  Some people misconstrued this as an invitation to “hack” her private server.  The server seems to have been shut-down long ago, so it cannot now be hacked.  Trump’s hope seems to be that the Russians will reveal damaging information about Clinton’s private dealings with donors to the Clinton Foundation while she served as Secretary of State.

It seems reasonable to expect such “revelations.”  There is a lot of bad blood between Clinton and the Russian soon-to-be-tsar Vladimir Putin.  While serving as Secretary of State, Clinton challenged Putin’s authority in a country where being on the wrong side of the government can get you killed.  In early 2011, she, among others, deceived the Russians about American intentions in Libya.[3]  In December 2011, she described Russian elections as plagued by “electoral fraud.”[4]    If the Russkies have incriminating evidence, they may dump it.

Now the New York Times seems to be lighting “back-fires” in preparation for an “October surprise.”[5]

[1] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 12 August 2016, p. 18.

[2] “Poll Watch,” The Week, 9 September 2016, p.17.

[3] See: https://waroftheworldblog.com/2014/09/28/obama-versus-putin/

[4] See: http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/25/dec-2011-hillary-clinton-angers-putin-demands-investigation-into-russian-electoral-fraud/

[5] Neil MacFarquhar, “A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories,” NYT, 28 August 2016; Jo Becker, Steven Erlanger, and Eric Schmitt, “How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets,” NYT, 31 August 2016.

The ACA in September 2016.

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There seem to be several major challenges facing the Affordable Care Act (ACA).[1]

First of all, the ACA sought to provide health insurance to low-income people.  On the one hand, the problem the Obama administration did not want to address directly is that American doctors make about 50 percent more than European or Japanese doctors with comparable skills.  The same goes for hospitals.  Cutting the incomes of doctors and of hospitals to reduce health care costs to manageable levels would set off a storm of opposition from the American Medical Association and whoever fronts for the hospitals.  On the other hand, there are a bunch of insurance companies—notably Blue Cross plans–that are used to dealing with low-income populations.  However, these insurers keep prices down by offering a narrow range of service providers who agree to accept low payments in return for a steady stream of customers.  Most doctors would refuse to participate in such arrangements.  Assuming that poor consumers were like richer consumers, the authors of the ACA sought to provide a greater range of choice.  The government mandate on the health services provided cuts across the desires of some consumers.  Then, the government lured a bunch of major insurers into the market in the belief that that competition would hold down costs for a broader range of services.  However, the major insurers lost a lot of money and they have begun to bail.  Basically, markets are often more rational than any government “ukase.”  Perhaps 17 percent of people who use the insurance “marketplace” will find that there is only one seller.

Second, the ACA rests on the belief that healthy, young, poor people can be compelled to buy insurance to subsidize sick, old, richer people.  In fact, less than half the 24 million people who were expected to buy insurance through the marketplace have signed up.  A lot of younger people just don’t want to join.  A lot of sick people do want to join only for  long enough to get their illnesses treated,  As a result, the insurance premiums are already so much higher than the government subsides that many people are opting out.  One solution would be to follow the path of the low cost insurers by narrowing networks and forcing down remuneration to doctors and hospitals.  Democrats favor either raising taxes on Republicans to pay for more generous subsidies to health care providers or coercing the un-insured to get insurance.

Third, apparently believing that much of the high cost of American health care came from profiteering by the insurance companies, the ACA included limits on profits and inadequate guarantees against losses.  Faced with large and mounting losses, the major insurance companies have begun to abandon the market place.

So, what are the policy options?  First, President Obama and President-in-Waiting Clinton have floated the idea of going back to the “public option” that Obama once cavalierly abandoned.  The public option would—undoubtedly with the aid of subsidies from the tax payers—“compete” with the private companies in order to drive down prices.  (See: TVA.)  Second, Blue Cross plans—low cost insurers with a lot of experience—argue for further reforms like blocking customers from signing up for short-term coverage in order to deal with accumulated health problems, the drooping coverage; higher premiums for older patients who cost more; and enhancing government subsidies for th care of very sick patients.  “Experts” and “advocates” are in some disagreement about what course to pursue.  Apparently, the Obama Administration is reluctant to consult or listen to business people.

[1] Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz, “ObamaCare Obstacles, and Some Possible Solutions,” NYT, 30 August 2016.