Forget Beer, It's Time for a Fender Bender

Presidential Elections are the most famous popularity contests in the world.

 

Famously, we like to think we are voting for an Angel, rather than settling for a Devil by the thought exercise, “which candidate would you rather have a beer with?”  (Yes, like a good American grammarian I ended the survey question a preposition with.)

 

Except, we are in extraordinary circumstances:

 

Hundred Year Pandemic

Chronic Systemic Deferred Maintenance

Climate Change Proven beyond a Doubt

Reconciliation of Civil Rights a precipitous necessity

Worst Economic statistics since measurements began from The Great Depression

 

You can see how people might be willing to choose the best devil in such terrible circumstances, rather than the nicest angel.  Whose Executive Administration will be able to handle the massive macroeconomic issues?

 

Almost makes you not even care if you even like the person, so long as you think they may help?

 

So, which Candidate would you rather get into a low speed fender bender with?

 

 

Thought Exercise

 

You are driving your crap auto called US, and the timing belt needs adjustment, tires are worn, and the brakes have been squealing for months, but like most Americans you don’t have an extra $400 to fix them.

 

As you approach an intersection at the speed limit, you anticipate a yellow light ahead and begin your squeaking brakes.  As the light turns, you are a quarter mile from the stop line, and of the two cars ahead of you the car directly in front of you, a new silver Mercedes-Ferrari Electric Hybrid, has stopped about 500 feet away.

 

Your brakes engage, squeak as loud as you have ever heard, and for one reason or another you hit the $456,000 four door sedan that tops off at 155 MPH in 12 seconds.  The bumper, replacement cost your annual salary, after installation, is broken.  Don’t ask for details, it just needs $45,000 worth of work from a 15 MPH fender bender.

 

Out comes (A) either driver, Presidential Candidate (take the test again, and replace with either Major Political Party), and from the shotgun position (B) a Secret Service agent who will witness and back whatever Mr. A says, no matter how awful.

 

Two more facts: 1. They are self-insured, so they have no Insurance, if it is their fault; and 2. Mr. B pressed the emergency oil slick button as they drew to a halt at seven miles per hour—thus it is 100% their fault.  Oil is everywhere, and the Intersection Camera clearly can show the before and after.

 

Which one of these two gentlemen would you then like to encounter in what, without the super tip-top-secret auto, (a) wouldn’t have been an accident, nor (b) be considered potentially your fault and liability? 

 

That is a more accurate measure for where we are today.

 

 

Lest we should consider this the Junior High School election, remember that the Executive of the USA typically administers directly to a force of hundreds of thousands of people, lest the millions directly commanded.  So, which group do you pick... go ahead take the thought exercise a third time, and remember to Vote!

Job's, Jobs, jobs

The Book of Job in the Bible famously demonstrates the bet between Satan and God as to whether a true devotee can be made to foreswear the Lord.

 

Of course, after brutal trials, Job, eventually, liberated from false attachments finally receives the full blessing from Life having turned away from Temptations.

 

Sad, that the eponymous word for Livelihood, is slang for Faustian Test.  So, every day in employment is a challenge from Hell, under that thinking?

 

Too bad.

 

 

We need to rethink entirely the nature of Livelihood.  What is your pre-occupation, your occupation and animus where you are of highest and best use to Society, with the least cost to your health, wealth and soul.

 

Many people facing this Pandemic Crisis in the economy, like me, are reassessing what arethe actual Jobs and Job descriptions of the future going to become?

 

That said, before we earnestly discuss the Green New Deal, or any other Major Effort, let’s re-enshrine the Bill of Rights with a little history tour of how we come to the arrangement of being totally dependent upon a $14/hr. worker for distribution of goods and services that may have become so urgent, important and valuable, because of the exaggerated and impacted resource availability problems.

 

 

In 1215, The Lord descended from Heaven, signed a piece of paper with the Dukes and Barons of England, and admitted He was a human King.  Every squire, knave, groom and peasant within a Mile of Runnymede was promptly murdered for having witnessed the event.

 

From there, democracy in the modern American sense was born.  Flash cut to 250 years later, or there about, and we have the fundamental flaw in our Agrarian-style macro-economic theory.  A Serf is born, and he will be raised, live, then die as an attached beast of the land.  Probably not leaving to the capital London if once, they remained within about a 20-mile radius from where they were born.

 

They were often classed into task groups, and seasonally or during crisis tasks would be completely reassigned... all with little to no say by the Serf.  They were beasts to be manipulated, resources to be controlled and conquered, and base value of the farmlands, as pheasants improve the value of the Royal Forests.

 

It is only in this 21^stCentury where people have been born in ignorant bliss of Freedom and Liberty, and now are surprised by the hard and cruel facts of geopolitical macroeconomics.

 

The contrasts in this era are probably as about as stark as they may have ever been, only because they have never been more observable, simultaneously and worldwide.

 

So, the replay of the signing of the Magna Carta would have been videoed, and upon further review a human who was dressed as King signed a piece of paper.

 

 

Myths are being destroyed every day, and life can be very grim.

 

So, in redesigning and repurposing your livelihood, consider that your good work for other, hopefully helps to build a better future, a nicer present and a more pleasant understanding of the hard choices that came from the past.

 

We will get past all of this, because we process the economy individually and collectively, daily.

 

But, next time you get some fast food, now that the fragilities, weaknesses and errors of our macroeconomy are on display, maybe consider leaning on the tip.  Tip a nurse or care worker; or bring them some flowers; or a soda.  We humans are all in this together!

 

Not random acts of kindness, rather design your livelihood for purposeful kindnesses that you like to make and are good at doing.

 

Then maybe your jobwill just be a fair bargain with other people, without need for tests from outside powers?

 

Vision: Steady, safe and sane livelihoods; Multiple training pathways, nimble enough for lateral transfer, and ideally all correlated; and each employee with long-term prospects and full benefits.

 

What will you become in this trial?

DONKEYS UNITE: BRAY

No deal Brexit = Trump deal

For those of you not Anglophile, not Macroeconomic, non-International Foreign Relations types, too frustrated with the current governing political party, or exasperated by all the endless anti-human drama, let me carefully and simply explain what we have just seen in the United Kingdom:

Russia, international power elites and domestic corrupt forces all decided and colluded to accept Moscow’s offer of weaponizing our democracies against the interest of the proletariat majority for which they were best designed.  

The British political scene, after Trump’s false election, left to a hardworking female Minister, Teresa May, a need to attempt to lead the shambolic powers that forced Trump and Brexit on our democracies.

The hamstring that these non-native forces created have deadlocked both nations in socio-political turmoil ever since.  Be clear: Russia loves it!

This left May unable to effectively deal with an impossible situation of panic negotiating a deal for which there was no true mandate or very real will politically.

Rather than Tory’s or Republican’s recognizing a national threat, and responsibly handing power back to the People for further instructions; the selfish principle of absolute power corrupting absolutely has then shown the elected powers the rest of the way, probably just as the Communists designed this anti-democratic process.

May’s dithering, premised upon missing actual national zeitgeist, brought a bad deal that UK government roundly rejected.  If your facts or hypothesis is wrong, then you don’t have a viable theory.  Russia has planted billions if not trillions of misinformations seeds to sprout confusion everywhere.

BREXIT, the British Exit from the very complicated and carefully constructed EU, was a rush job. Logically, if the British people voted on a majority referendum to undue five generations of hard work, blood, sweat, tears and literally world war(s), then it would be logical that their government returns to the people with a full recommendation to implement that directive.  So, in democracy, throwing it to the people, there would have automatically been another vote once Brexit won, and May had a complete process defined, and accepted by Parliament.

But that’s not what happened at all, and that is why Russia loves it.  They tasked a government   with no initiative, without natural logic or rhetoric, to wreck a process that one could argue has been ongoing in Europe since Charlemagne (9^thcentury CE). 

BREXIT is an impossible task, with unreasonable expectations, and sponsored by oligarchic ideas coming from foreign influence about what is best for our domestic citizenry.  It is time to BRAY:

            BRitish stAY

That is also the sound a Donkey makes, and so by now Americans, who would prefer a Democrat, even if they themselves are not a registered Democrat, also are probably ready by now to bray a “Hee-Haw.”

‘Take that Napoleon,’ the Russian counter intelligence officer most possibly said probably hoping we elect even more incompetents.  It’s understandable.

It isn’t that citizens were not expressing themselves, or voting their minds, three years ago, rather that at the margins, an old Soviet program designed to destroy any enemy socio-political system during warfare, was redesigned and implemented in the New Russia against adversaries, if not enemies.

Russia has shown: You only needed to trick about 2% of the populous from democratic nations, in this case either USA or UK population in 2016, and opposite to what Lincoln observed, “you can then fool most of the people.”

And the Communist weaponized democracy plan (from the earnest Cold War around the 60’s & 70’s probably) worked!

Right to Work

So why are our citizens (and the power elites) accepting this Faustian bargain?

One thought is that the “1%” are setting up systemized and semi-permanent destruction of labor, working poor, and the disenfranchised. 

In 2013, I worked in the Bakaan in ND as a back-office manager for a construction company. North Dakota and the state I moved to and have now lived in for five years non-stop, Colorado, have “right to work” laws.

Let’s be clear: This is an Orwellian title.

I eventually sorted out the accounts (receivable / payable) for this company with ~$50MM annual payroll. Right as things began to line up, I was terminated from my department (I was 43 then) by the twenty-something, who had been running the department, my Supervisor, and for no reason given was dismissed.

Without any further information, these last years, I deduced that ‘right to work,’ actually means the right to be fired by the inefficient, corrupt or reckless Supervisor, who you may discover their poor work that will fire them from company, against whom you may actually have more experience, skill, and right to be retained over as the good worker in the Company.  However, under this arrangement, your company has the right to be played by a corrupt actor, and you as a worker have the right to be kept in the dark, permanently, so as to be even further played.

So, really, it’s the right to be randomly fired for no reason without any documentation.  This helps cronyism, corruption, dishonesty, illegality, and general poor management.

Not what you want in the Annual Report of your publicly traded company, is it?  But for mid-sized non-publics this improves their profits, even if it disimproves their quality and business model.

This feature of NO-DEAL BREXIT, preferred by PM Johnson, et. al., and situation in our “Red State” America, is really the right for employers to destroy the labor market in any state where such a priority supposedly exists.  Hence paying lower overall wages in exchange for poorer quality work.

WWII Triumvirate and the Naughty piece of paper

At the Yalta Conference, 1945, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt had the situation at hand, and had to agree to work together to put an end to full-fledged international warfare. For what?Y

So, what you don’t like Hitler, or Nazis, or whatever…. What do we get for helping?

Churchill referred to a ‘naughty small piece of paper’ the three had secretly negotiated, wasn’t declassified until the 80’s.  It gave Russia everything in Europe East of West Germany.  

Roosevelt was satisfied with USA mandatory financial opportunism and participation in rebuilding (Marshall Plan), Spanish claims from victory in 1915 Spanish-American war, and general control of Atlantic/Pacific dominance provided by ‘our’ Panama Canal.

Churchill and UK were given command of everything in Europe West of East Germany.

1960’s – 80’s European Common Market harmonization (also last time wages grew in USA)

As a youth studying WWII, it was amazing to behold the European Common Market, which took decades to coordinate.  

And yet with a simple majority, of less than a majority of the entirety of the UK voters, deciding to trash seventy pus years of careful multilateral coordination, put all that effort in the rubbish bin of history?

In the USA, wages in terms of real inflation have not moved significantly since Regan.

90’s post Communism Unilateralism

The Berlin Wall fell, precisely because the Soviet Union had absolutely lost its mandate from the people (that Communism aspires to represent the People better than any other).

Yet, Berlin, Beijing, and now even North Korea, want the spoils from modern economies of scale, international finance, and mass distribution of the economy and world resources.  That indicates an era that would be inclusive, International, and premised upon capitalistic free trade with reasonable regulatory apparatuses.

We have been the only unilateral power for under three decades and have failed in the USA to truly enshrine our role as liberator of the free world.  Instead, we ran a smash and grab job.  It was so “easy,” we are still in those conflicts 18 years later, and unfortunately like Korea, Germany, and Japan we will have servicemembers of our nation stationed there probably for generations.  That is not peace.

00’s Republican False War

When we were attacked 18 years ago by a dusty bunch of misogynist terrorists, because, well, we were the Unilateral Power.  We had a huge target on our back.

Had Bush the younger only focused upon Afghanistan, left us out from full warfare with Iraq, and instead prosecuted a straight forward conflict with clear goals and objectives, the war ought to be well over.

Except, even Obama had to remain for two terms in both Iraq and Afghanistan, because resources were not brought to bear judiciously by his predecessor, goals and objectives too ambitious, diffuse and unrealistic, and no full consensus for war.

In the 90’s, before Colin-Powell nonnerated (-90%) his reputation by selling the war to the UN with fake evidence, he had a military policy that won us the Gulf War— 1. Only go in with an exit strategy! & 2. If you break it fix it!!

Maybe, USA ought to think about being less adventurous, interventionist, and manipulative in matters of the military?

10’s Aftermath

So, now we are trying, very ex-post-facto, to finally fix it?

With no real strategy to exit, then we have yet to exit—it still is the original SNAFU FUGASI.  Had Bush treated Al-Qaeda and the Taliban like Obama did ISIS, then we would be much less involved by now.

Yet, Bush the Younger insisted that we must take Iraq (sigh, yes, for the oil).  This is a hangover from 1948, and the British claims from Empire. There was no real stated cause, justifying further access to those specific Natural Resources.

So, it is no wonder that by now more than half of veteran personnel who had fought in these conflicts consider them foreign adventures, not defensive wars.

2016 Russia

What would you say if Churchill, Roosevelt, or Stalin decided to not punish Germany for Annexing the Sudetenland or invading Poland?

Putin’s Russia has Annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine, exactly like Hitler (not an ad hominem)!

So, why would they want to disrupt geopolitics? Just to get a pipeline from Crimea to Paris??

Regardless of their endless motives, Russia attacked the US, UK, and lord knows who else by 2016.  We must stop denying this attack has happened.

There is nothing that suggests anything has been cleared up, or that it isn’t still an ongoing situation to be mitigated.

What is a Socialist?

A socialist is someone who believes that although government is formed by people for common defense often with rights of citizenry abrogated, but in exchange additional or improved rights inure to every citizen, without expectation of quid pro quo.

Every government that has had a ‘society’ to be designed, run and supported by the resources of that entity, then by definition is ‘socialist.’  Genghis Khan, Hitler and Stalin employed social-ism when they redirected resources away from normative distribution based on laws of supply and demand--- ONLY!

So, “Socialist,” is more a derogatory term referring in American ‘dog-whistle’ to what would have been McCarthy Communists, not ‘socialists.’

There has been no pure Capitalist system in the world—ever.  And “free-trade” is a myth, because now we know we need to peg price to carbon dioxide production with some taxation, tariff and/or trading system that accounts for industrial pollution rapidly consuming the Earth we know and understand. Therefore, there will never be a rational or logical escape by Society from small “s” socialism.

Gandhi, FDR, and Reagan were also all Socialists.  

It is pretty hard without socialism to defend and/or operate a society without people, or a system to enhance people away from ‘the law of the jungle.’  All societies have always been socialist by definition of the word social.

What is a Communist?

A Communist on the other hand is someone who believes in magic thinking about the world.  Were we developmentally stunted by ages four years old, then Communism might sort of work.  We would be psychologically stuck in the Dependency Phase of our lives.

But by the time we are nine or ten years old our comparative minds deduce that, ‘society is not always in my favor.’  So, we learn discretion, and that pinky promises are rarely kept eternally.

This is the perfect parent theory.  A top down elite fully control production and distribution of resources.  Thanks mommy.

But nanny-state, what color dress should I wear today to my Communist Party?

(Hopefully, I won’t be arbitrarily or capriciously punished or detained for guessing the wrong outfit, today.)

If you ever meet a Communist here is their rhetorical dismissal in favor of liberal democracy:

“So, as a Communist you believe in full faith for the State to determine everything and anything about your life no matter how orderly, arbitrarily or capriciously?”

‘Yes.’

“Ok, so today were giving you a choice, when do you want to schedule your execution?”

The Communist in total faith leaves all sense of responsibility to the state, until such time as the command and control distribute to you your responsibilities.  You said you love pure top down love, so that includes arbitrary and capricious executions of the (potentially very compliant yet vital) citizens.  In this example, it would become that Communist’s responsibility distributed by the state as a citizen to die!

Why “liberal” democracy is worth saving from the 10^thlargest economy?

So, what is a liberal?

A liberal means that you do not believe only the elite have a right to resources, power and access to capital.  Everyone who can take and pay a business loan, ought to be not only allowed to ‘fair consideration,’ but with equanimity to all citizens that they may be better able to deploy capital from the reasonable distribution of such funds.

Everyone who does not believe that a King, Queen or Emperor should make all their housing, employment and/or clothing decisions is then a sort of liberal.  Everyone who also believes that people should be allowed to vote instead of complying with “mandates from heaven,” is then a ‘liberal democrat.’

Show me the American who wished King George’s great grandchildren were running the USA to their whim and fetish, and I will say that citizen may not be a liberal democrat, otherwise…. Now tell that person they cannot vote to have a say, and then they are only a liberal without a vote.

How many Americans do you think want to make that trade with Putin and his people??

Why “Free Trade,’ is preferable to Trade War

Ideally, free trade makes a certain load of sense, but again then you turn twelve years old.  You recognize that people say things that don’t always match their deeds.  So, anyone who is a pure free-trader has a simplistic fantasy of distribution of resources, and is a poor business-person, because of no working knowledge of capitalist competition.

Good, competitive and open markets will always need impartial regulation and neutral enforcement mechanisms, until such time as all people agree to never cheat, steal or swindle one another, ever again.  And then without compunction still choose in perpetuity not to take advantage of the situation, even after the agreement was made.

That is almost the opposite definition of capitalism and sounds suspiciously like the justifications for the Trade War.  Beggar thy neighbor.

Capitalism thrives on opportunitism, I get 90% of resources because I tricked 98% of the people, is not a reasonable long-term method of managing International Macro-economies.

The ideal of Free Trade amongst international partners, rather, is that the starting premise that the negotiation is of mutual respect and fair cooperative distribution of resources between the macroeconomies, simultaneously, to better manage resources including competition.  

No part of that statement seems like there would then follow a righteous recommendation for no rules, regulations nor enforcement mechanisms.

A free-trader is someone who respects wholeset economies of scale and chooses to improve their efficiencies and distribution.  That in practice is the opposite of lawbreaking.

Why Democracy Works

When the zeitgeist of the UK citizenry was reminded of their diminished status, compared to USA and Russia, there was a logical rhetoric, “hey, what about Malta?”

Churchill probably left the meeting and this life imagining that the UK would be at the permanent head of the EU, or other such arrangement.  But 75 years of cooperation and compromise will inevitably stir such fundamental statist greed. Britain as an equal amongst European States created some resentment, probably unconsciously.  

This may only be one of the many spices from the flavor of BREXIT, but it bears out as one potential valid historical avenue of public discontent.

It is an ongoing question to the EU governors to demonstrate the great and general value of an united Europe, as opposed to having Europe dispositioned to become, yet again, subject to another Cesar, Napoleon or Hitler.

VOTE

Tell me, what is it called when a Corporation gets a tax break or other government incentive?

That is called ‘socialist redistribution of national resources.’  Otherwise, why does Amazon.com pay low to no tax every year as one of the largest operations?

So, every major and most minor American companies are socialist.  They freely petition, ask and receive resources distributed by the government.  That is capital “S” Socialist!

So, the big game in the USA (less able to say much further about UK) is blame individuals, workers, poor, disenfranchised, and others for state failure, and consider a huge government handout to corporation a capitalist event.  No part of that is not Socialist.

Since, 2008, The Great Recession, we have seen policy set by the elite for their own purposes and end games for the market.  The Economy does good, but how about the workers, downtrodden and disabled who already poured their troth to the nation, their state, city and company on behalf of growth of national GDP?

In 2009, TARP outright saved businesses but was also a greater (a) hand over of National Wealth to private parties, and (b) public transfer of private wealth than that 1917 Russia—very Commie. We nationalized Wall Street failure, and Bank of America is a benefactor from Communist allocation of resources.

We ignore at our very real risk as a (USA) nation the threats deployed and operated to this day against our society.  Enough is really enough!

No matter who you are, no matter what you believe, the most important thing for you to do is to consider all problems in your nation, see what solutions may exist, and vote, every time, for the person who most and best represents your actual interests. The perverse Wisdom of Crowds (corollary, The Masses are Asses).

At the very least, this democracy promises to end these foolish self-inflicted wounds by eventual operation of the vote.  But let’s be clear, everyone who wants you to be able to be fired at will, total worker disempowerment, also doesn’t want you to ever vote in your nation again so that we may still have Russian Troll Farms screwing with national cronyism, nepotism and corruption.

I hope and “BRAY” for our deliverance.

Time for the California Oranjebüm?

ATTENTION: What if I could show you a way to fundamentally repair the credit markets, fiat currency, trade deficits and inter-state deficit precipitated by the Wall-Street Bailout?

Assumptions:

CA Received Federal Tax Dollars per Dollar Collected by the Federal Government as a Factor of 0.78 (http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/ftsbs-timeseries-20071016-.pdf)

All Taxpayers as a class are owed interest, back fees, and other endured hardships by and from (and in some cases continue to receive) those selfsame Corporations received of that Expenditure.

CA has low bond-ratings by agencies with suspect objectives and motives that limit our ability to represent the true greatness of our burgeoning sciences in CA.


Answer:

In my open letter, disguised as a book, there is the principle of the "Second Level Market," where a State in the Union, without disrespect for any other State or the Federal Powers that be, can issue a Fiat based on some principled value or ordinary credit.

What if we estimated the value of some percentage of the next five years of Orange Crop; Issued a spend-able state run currency, which could be honored and legal tender within the borders of CA, and peggable to a state trust held Option in one of the Mid-West AG markets; and retire the Bond in fifteen years.

A modest proposal, but when The Governator was holding the gun to the State employees and the IOUs were issued! That was when I had this expanded thought upon my "book."

I conclude by suggesting that this simple device be retired at the Federal Bank in Manhattan—it could be in exchange for any deficit between the two states. Or we could use it to buy the Seed Crops from Holland once Hemp becomes Legal (in 2012)!

How's that for 'easier said than done?'

I will leave it to someone who understands these things to figure if I am right, wrong, or just a misguided semi-autodidact.

The Case for and Probability of a Sanders Presidency

Before we address the reasons Mr. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who has been in Congress for years as an Independent and caucused with Democrats, could win The Electoral College (as well as maybe even over 53% of the popular vote) in a General Election, let us start by comparing him to his very real rival for nomination; it is sort of hers to lose, as she has sort of begun to do; Hilary Clinton.

Foreign Policy is considered a big part of how the former Lawyer, Senator and Secretary of State via Pennsylvania, Little Rock, and New York could beat the former Mayor, Congressman, and current Senator from Vermont with a proven track record of say what you mean, and do what you say.

Further, some of the ideas about Sec. Clinton (her actual highest rank in service to the American people) revolve around that she’s the ‘realist.’ 

Except, this supposed argument of foreign policy realism, hinges upon 20^th century political dialogues about communism and the USSR?

I argue, as an Economist, that any Federal Economic Policy is the foundation upon which both Foreign and Domestic Policy rest.

And we have been a mixed capitalist system (meaning a socialist-capitalist democracy) since The Great Depression (1932). 

Sanders freely works with these truths:  Plus, progressive, underserved, and younger voters sense or know these operational truths of economics; therefore, as we enter four score years, since we began guaranteeing our citizens as a national government, Bernie is the actual realist in the race from strictly economic principles, but I digress.

I am unsure that 99%-ers, Millennials, Social Liberals, Progressives, or Economic realists will agree with my reasoning, in part or whole, yet I guess we may all agree on the bottom line... a better future for our grandchildren and their grandchildren— thinking Seven Generations.

So, here’s my case for what will differentiate Sen. Sanders from his rivals through to November:

WARFARE

On this point, almost anyone who doesn’t respond “bomb them (whoever the enemy is) back to the stone age,” as the best answer to any question of foreign threat to our beloved, misunderstood, and often misguided United States of America; the rest of us need to seriously take a moment to review the clarity and undaunted-ness the Senior Senator has had when it actually counted most to committing American blood, treasure, and resources, especially once we became the unilateral superpower.

On the disastrous move by G. W. Bush, The Younger, to go to War in Iraq on false and manufactured intelligence in 2004, Sanders was one of very few, and even fewer of those still serving in Congress, to have seen through the folly in the moment with foresight, and voted ‘No.’ Clinton voted with the establishment in that same vote.

Besides this, he is the Chair of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, so Sanders knows the true ongoing costs of making a disastrous decision to go to war.

Clinton voted for endless Emergency Powers, for adventurous wars, and has a record from her time as head of the State Department that isn’t universally admired, if not respected— Sec. Kerry has gone much further to accomplish more substantive results by comparison within and on behalf of the same Administration. 

Thus, even if you disagree with this one of the three points, finding yourself more of a hawkish-dove, than a dovish-hawk, continue reading as to why Sanders can and should prevail against all his rivals in both contests.

WELFARE

Republicans call this “Entitlement Reform,” but what they typically mean is ‘controlling’ entitlements, but most importantly to the actual conservative constituency, in order to manage (or cut) associated costs. 

Republicans continue calls for a re-run straight from the 1980’s of tax-cuts for the 1%, who are already enjoying the best tax benefits, ever, that only translate to eventually pissing off poor, minority, and elderly groups, by capping or eliminating benefits they rely upon to live in exchange for having helped build our nation, but also should be a wholesale alarm to our Veterans and retired civil servicepersons. 

Sanders proposes to afford these programs reinstating what is called Progressive Taxation (lower taxation rates for the poor, and greater taxation rates for the rich), and for the most part was the tradition in our nation, until Ronald Reagan began spending recklessly on the US credit card and playing with Trickle Down Economics, permanent national treasury deficits, and no real wage (adjusted for inflation) increases for the bottom two-thirds of the nation ever since. 

George H. W. Bush, The Elder, observed correctly, before he lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980 to become elevated to Vice President (after having run the CIA for years), that this solutions set was “Voodoo Economics.”  Ad naseum argumentum (arguments that repeat over and over insistently) do not prove right this miserable failure.

Bush the Elder, eventually lost his re-election, since everything he had learned in life, told him he needed to raise taxes on the wealthy, like Reagan did too, because the safety netting for Americans had begun it’s own demolition once Reagan Administration and Republican lawmaking efforts got rolling (and then rolled from the S&L Scandal before ending up into the ditch with the Bank Bailouts— see Neil Bush).

Whatever you call this Economic Policy, it is now a proven failed economic, governing, and fiscal model, in ointments and puddings found around the world since 2008, and we have begun reinstating those safety nets— the enthusiasm across ‘voting blocks,’ indicate Sanders tracks with this trend.

Voters of all stripes, ranks and files must think to not only vote for the children yet to be born, but those who have lost their way in this life, yet still live.  Back when PTSD was called shell shock, this was termed Welfare of the State by the people for the people.

We all want good fiscal policy, and budgetary prudence... the difference— Bernie Sanders also promises to expand Social Security and Veteran Benefits; create Universal Education and National Health Insurance; but also continue the request, to keep the promise written at the foot of The Statue of Liberty, that asks for those “tired, poor, and masses yearning to be free.”   

There is no request or shown preference at Lady Liberty’s feet for only those people with advanced degrees on Work Visas, exclusion of opportunities for the lower or middle classes, nor does it say “No Mexicans, or Muslims.” 

Aside from that, anyone concerned with Native American Rights, let alone the poor (or the 99%), serious about casting a vote this year for any establishment candidate could only seriously consider the Democratic Party. 

Otherwise, there will be made available third-party protest (each only able to garner under 1%) votes that, once again, won’t be noticed by The Establishment— trust me, like Mr. Sanders, I am not a Democrat, either.

Although his Democratic Establishment rival may again be somewhat analogous to this Democratic Socialist, my truth: Sanders, I feel is someone who would probably agree with my more libertarian advocacy for a simple methodology of expansion for the ACA to ‘not discriminate upon age.’ Unlike the Republicans who seem proud to have earned their mantle of “Do-Nothing-Republicans” by voting to repeal ACA 62 times, WITHOUT COUNTER-OFFER, here is at least my idea:

This could happen any day of the week should any relevant class in California decide to sue the State exchange and Medicaid under the Unruh Act, that bans discrimination by age.  This amendment this would most probably open the door to reform critical health insurance coverage (Medicaid and Medicare) to include any citizen who needed health care, nationally.

This “available model” is favorable to a mandatory model, or even Single-payor, because it is still allowing for self-insurers, and those who prefer an esoteric insurance device to act as a market tamp on pricing by offering capital efficiencies in terms of (much lesser degree direct and) indirect competition. 

But the idea of sending in any candidate, who may be willing to take another thirty years dancing with the powers-that-be to get the citizens some version of National Healthcare whilst the nation suffers; let alone those (Republicans) not willing to admit to a Health Crisis, Poverty Issues, nor Climate Change; simply beggars belief.

I think I will chance it with the guy, Sanders, who once again seems to be facing the actual reality of our geo-political and economic situations:

My macroeconomic fiscal conservative recap in favor of Universal Healthcare;

Without some version of universal coverage in health insurance, it is an unfair competitive advantage to almost every one of our foreign trading partners (who mostly have some form of national state health insurance) that acts as an inverse tariff against our national exports and imports, because our manufacturers and business owners do not have comparable benefit(s). 

Meaning that any good, product or service (imported or exported) includes in its measured value in currency terms the subsidized healthcare costs of our competitors’ workers and citizens, thus allowing our trading partners to attract and retain higher quality labor, as well as creating a “reverse hidden taxation to trade,” or inverse tariff. 

In other words, when we don’t have a comparable benefit to any national competitor, then this acts in favor of foreign competition as hidden cost of goods per export, simultaneous to hidden subsidy (in favor of exporting nation) per import. 

This is economically true of most state social netting programs that reduce costs and burdens to business.  Ending this incongruity, and any other social disadvantages to workforce, manufacturers, exporters, and importers, will benefit Corporate America for generations to come.

When any Republican and any Democrat are held up to be chosen by our vet, disabled, and/or elderly voters around the nation as to which candidate for the POTUS will really be backstopping and improving Healthcare, Social Security, and VA Benefits— The retired citizen with a prospect of living to past age one-hundred with advances in modern medicine, the infirm citizen with a permanent disability, disease, ailment and/or deformity, but also anyone who has served this nation— voters should rightly recoil in horror at the massive cuts to benefits being proposed by that Republican field writ large. 

Winning Republican will have to at best modify Entitlement Reform plans, or at least hedge their speech (i.e. lie) on the stump, if they have even made any policy notes known, to then bestill this vast constituencyship, which seems particularly ebullient this year.  Again any Democrat will probably win.

WEEDFAIR

It is not ‘marijuana,’ it is not ‘weed,’ rather it is the cannabis species in all its forms: industrial, commercial, and medicinal. 

Every Republican has espoused doubling down on Ronald Reagan’s failed, outmoded, and unpopular “war” seeking to repeal these State initiatives by the people and their representative governments!

This is the key distinction for the Democratic nominees.  Although, with hedging language, Mrs. Clinton somehow shows up as a 1990’s Republican talking about ‘states rights,’ on this issue; Sanders can make, and often shows, if not alludes to, the connection; that the ill-conceived adventure called “War on Drugs,” Libertarian and Reganite Ron Paul would agree, has been an escapade, which the taxpaying citizenry has answered back these thirty years later with, ‘black lives matter,’ as the number one civil rights issue facing our nation today.

Assuming we also include any people of color within that sentiment, and add any citizen in any disadvantaged class: that insane effort by the US Government against it’s own people must finally come to a complete end.  

It didn’t work with alcohol: without identifying and addressing the real and underlying social issues belying the symptomologies and behaviors (let alone citizen violations against arbitrary and capricious lawmaking, policy, and now case-precedent that must be overturned or outlawed, itself) sought to be modified, or contained, on such complex social issues; it then fails the actual cause of government to protect and defend its citizens in a reasonable free state of liberty, as ratified and identified by our founders, who all used industrial hemp, at a minimum. 

Further, when incarceration is the primary remedy provided by the opposite party (again, the proven poor solution set since the Drug War began last century under the Reagan Administration), there will be continued disenfranchisement of those felons, disadvantaged, and forgotten citizens who have given up on our cynical system— non-voters.  Ending the failed Drug War will end disenfranchisement of citizens from their system.

Voters have Thanksgiving Dinners with those non-voting folks.  And anyone not thinking of being a voter this time, please plan to vote, if you still have the right, and see what happens!

Repealing the now-proven inefficient prohibition of cannabis will save trillions of dollars across the board!!

It will redirect vital policing mechanisms back to the borders, counter-terror, and actual crimes against policy of State— where they belong.  And, by the way, it will pay for itself, generate billions in taxes annually, and create new jobs.

However, Free Hemp is more importantly the number one Law and Order issue for 2016, in part because by redirecting the resources of state to enforce policy, as we have begun to do in Colorado, then, besides fiscal prudence, it should also expedite the removing of those Federal Emergency Powers (yes, we are still under a State of Emergency) to ideally reinstate the concepts of law derived from the Magna Carta and it’s associated democratic principalia connected to habeas corpus.

WHY SANDERS CAN WIN

Weed States aka The Fab Four: CO, WA, AK, OR, and sort of the District of Colombia, which isn’t actually a State, but does vote.  No one in these states is going to consciously ratify any politician explaining why their States Rights will be invalidated and revoked by the Federal Government, should we choose to vote for them to administer the Executive Offices of the USA. 

23 Medicinal States; 15 CBD Only States; 2 pending Medicinal States. 

This represents 44 States (All Native Nations are free to grow, manufacture and sell cannabis products; probably most of our Commonwealth Members will agree; and our Fab Four, and [again] DC) accepting, honoring and commercializing Hemp in 2016! 

(I added Florida, because last year an Initiative to become the fifth state to fully legalize cannabis was passed by the voters at a phenomenal 58%, but didn’t meet the sixty percent ‘super-majority’ threshold to become amended into the State Constitution.  They are going for it again this year!)

44/50!!

Consistently, our US Population supports legalization of cannabis by a majority since 2002, because it is so very common sense— those who don’t, mostly because they were indoctrinated to believe cannabis to be worse than opium, if you can imagine, are getting older and passing away. 

Support really only continues to grow, as the most important plant in the human pantheon comes back online, and myths become demystified.

And States citizens sincerely voting in 2016 to become #5 (and beyond) to legalize it: Nevada, California, Maine, Arizona, Connecticut, Michigan, Ohio, Rhode Island, Vermont, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, and Missouri; all have activated their grass-root bases to follow the Weed States into the actual future— just like climate change, it also does exist!

So, this sea change favors a Progressive crowd to be mobilized at the base in 2016.

Then, the ACA States where a successful state health insurance exchange system has begun to heal millions of Americans, including myself, is set up: CO, HI, WA, OR, CA, NV, NM, MN, IA, MS, KY, MD, NY, VT, MA, RI, and CT. 

I would tell 538.com and any other prognosticators, just put these states into Any Democrat’s column, because the countless stories of relief, respite, and hospice cannot be told considering the millions of improvements we are seeing every day to the actual health of our country.  This will begin to show up as lagging economic statistics, as more of our people continue get the help they need.

If any of those states didn’t break Democratic, then I wouldn’t consider that any final verdict upon the ACA— itself mostly the 1990’s Republican solution set, their counter-offers, after the failed Hilary-care effort, which she cashed-in for the CHP (more or less the current national children’s health insurance program, to her credit), currently referred to as Obamacare.

Because this is so massive and complex of an issue, results are so preliminary, then it is no wonder the Do-nothing Republicans voted to repeal this important social netting— their own ‘90’s policy counter-offers— now 62 times, offering no real new solutions, as of February 2, 2016— THEY JUST DON’T GET IT!

Even if the ACA goes unchanged, only managed, it will realize trillions of dollars in long-term savings to the Federal Government, as is, while continuing to heal America. 

Every Republican wants to end available health care solutions without any real counter-offer, thus no true Republican will be preferred by those citizens experiencing positive ACA results— Americans are just not buying it, even though there do exist also many stories about frustration with implementation.

To guess, there is political inefficiency, disagreement, and/or disorganization that could account for the 18 exchanges that have defaulted to the Federal Program, as they are mostly “red states.” 

Thus, this may indicate a potential anti-Obama trend in some of the Federal Exchange states.

(I did not weight those states in the neither/nor zone still developing their exchange solutions.)

However, Wisconsin, Maine, New Hampshire, and maybe Louisiana and Arizona are the only of these eighteen that could be mitigated by other (weed, jobs, etc.) factors, issues and turnouts to prefer Any Democrat.


Therefore, assuming that voters find Mr. Sanders the more trusted, experienced, pragmatic choices for the Democratic primary; assuming my hypotheses about ACA and Free Hemp are more or less correct; then I expect a final General Election map (Sanders-v-Any Republican) to appear something like this:

I am endorsing Bernard Sanders of Vermont for President in 2016. 

Finally: Please, let us not act like we are the oldest modern democracy by having the most anemic voter turnouts.  Even if you do not agree in part or whole with this argument, as citizens let us demonstrate our vigor of old age; please, make sure to vote in November!

Happy President’s Day!