Hillary's Poll Numbers Too Low? It's YOUR Fault, Bernie-Bailers!

Not all Bernie supporters went trashing Hillary during this contentious primary season. But a significant minority of them did. These are, by in large, the same minority who are now flocking to Jill Stein, a woman whom they thoroughly ignored or outright rejected in favor of Bernie. And now that Bernie wants them to support Hillary instead of Jill, they flock to Jill anyway, essentially saying to him, by deeds rather than words, "Fuck you, you old, coot! We don't care what you have to say anymore!"

I know democracy dictates such people's vote counts just as much as mine, but damn! Even Tinder dates are less back-stabbing and fickle!

You see, it's people such as these who have deliberately trashed Hillary's character. They claimed to do it out of love for Bernie, but in truth, they did it out of a hatred for anything that got in Bernie's way, and that meant Hillary became Satan incarnate to them. They regurgitated anything from Faux News they could get their hands on, and because the attacks came from the Left, many people bought them as true, in spite of most of them having been debunked long, long ago.

First they destroyed Hillary's poll numbers, then they promoted Bernie by saying, "Bernie is the better candidate because he polls better than Hillary!" Which is a little bit like pissing on someone else's sandwich, and then saying, "My sandwich is better because it has less urine on it!" Well, technically, that's true. But when you're the one responsible for the urine-soaked hoagie, isn't it a little bit unfair that you fault your own urine? In like manner, it's a strange sort of logic that the people who made the argument about Hillary's bad poll numbers were the ones responsible for them in the first place!

Don't believe me? Consider the following graph, provided by Real Clear Politics:

Starting in November of 2014, Hillary polled pretty well, with approval numbers in the 51% to 52% range. The e-mail story broke regarding Hillary back in 2013 when the Romanian hacker "Guccifer" broke into Stanley Blumenthal's email account, and showed that emails were sent to Hillary on an address which was clearly private. The story began to pick up steam in January of 2015, but this did not significantly hurt Hillary's poll numbers. Whitewater, Vincent Foster's suicide, Bill's philandering, they were all just as well known then as now, and still Hillary's positives were at 52%. Then The New York Times broke a new twist on the email story on March 3, 2015.

But no! That's NOT when her poll numbers dipped! The numbers did not really begin to decline until weeks later, proving that it was not the email story dragging her down. It was when she officially declared her candidacy for president that her poll numbers dipped, proving that the real reason for Hillary's disapproval among certain voters was certain people, primarily men, hating "uppity women."

Hillary's positive and negative numbers remained tied at 45% until roughly July of 2015. That's right about when Bernie Sanders began picking up steam. And when the vocal minority of Bernie supporters began trashing Hillary any way they could. At the time, it wasn't that they really hated Hillary. She was just in the way.

Hillary, to her fault, gave them plenty of motivation to begin hating her. When asked about the Keystone Pipeline, Hillary gave a non-committal answer. She was later forced to come out against it through the backlash. When pressed about her past record opposing gay marriage, she again hedged before flip-flopping in favor of it. When asked about the Trans Pacific Partnership, she again gave nuanced answers before coming out against it based on a technicality which satisfied no one.

But those actions of Hillary's did not come anywhere close to justifying the kind of vitriolic hate-filled rhetoric which came at her from the most fervent on the Left - many of whom were political newbies. They got very, VERY fired up, and very VERY anti-Hillary. All out of love for Bernie, or so they said.

And now they've completely abandoned Bernie for Jill. Bernie at least had a legitimate shot, because only two-party candidates can win in our polarized system. But Jill is nothing but a spoiler, and everyone knows it. "Lady Nader" (as I call Jill) is Trump's best shot at victory.

Makes you wonder what the Bernie-Bailers are really committed to, doesn't it?

So now it's over, and it's time for everyone on the Left to go back to loving Hillary at least as much as they did back in February of 2015, when she was approved of by 52%, and hated by only 42% (all Republicans). But it's not happening, in large part due to the continued trashing of Hillary from the Left. In fact, so bad has this trashing been that I've been forced to continue my pro-Hillary investigative posts, just because people keep coming up with more and more bizarre accusations dragged out of imagined slights in Hillary's past - all of them taken from Right-wing news sources.

Well, I can't abide that sort of nonsense anymore, and I hope you can't, either.

You people who trashed Hillary from the Left are the same people who gave her a 52% approval rating to begin with. So now get your asses back up there! You tore her down, so you rebuild her!

If you make a mess, you clean it up! And at the risk of sounding like your mother, I'm sick and damned tired of cleaning up your messes for you!


Eric

*

The Phrase "All Lives Matter" Is Racist, Too.

Well, Rudy Giuliani went and did it. He said that the phrase "black lives matter" is inherently racist, thus sparking a firestorm of controversy from both sides of the political aisle.

This being the place where sacred cows get kicked over, let me begin by acknowledging that he's a little bit right. "Black lives matter" is a phrase that targets a specific ethnicity (I won't use the word "race") for special treatment. But the reason that's necessary is it has to counteract the oppression that black people feel every day. It's literally fighting fire with fire. A phrase clearly supporting Afro-centric racism is used to highlight and counter the severity of contra-Afro racism. Or even Euro-centric racism. That's why when the counter argument, "But all lives matter!" is made, it amounts to white Americans burying their heads in the sand like an ostrich. Of course all lives matter. That goes without saying.

Which is why you don't say it!

We don't need reminding that all lives matter. We need reminding that black lives matter. Because right now, let's be honest, they don't. Actions speak louder than our words, and when a person's words say "all lives matter" while his actions say, "fuck black people if the cops shoot them," then such a person is a racist wearing an egalitarian disguise, whether consciously or unconsciously.

The phrase, "all lives matter" is racist, too.

And cue the soundtrack to "Avenue Q" where the puppets sing, "Everyone's a little bit racist."

Look, I don't have a good solution as to how to keep cops from shooting innocent people (although the iPhone is starting to do one hell of a job with that!). And maybe fighting fire with fire means we all get burned. But I do know that we will never achieve a post-racial America until we stop pretending that "black" or "white" is somehow a racial label.

You want an accurate designation of race? Try human!

Canine (dog) vs. feline (cat), that's a difference in race.
Bovine (cow) vs. Equine (horse), that's a difference in race.
Sus (pig) vs. Gallus (chicken), that's a difference in race.

But a human whose ancestors hailed from Africa is the same race as one whose ancestors hailed from Europe. Or Asia. Or some mixture of any number of geographies. Because we can all interbreed, and often do.

So fuck racism, fuck the phrase "all lives matter," but most importantly, fuck the word "race!" It's time we stopped using that word.

It's lower than the word "nigger."

(Except black people shouldn't use it in rap music, either. See? Even I can be a little bit racist, too!)


Eric

*

The TPP And NAFTA. Trump Says They Are Bad. He's Wrong.

I love economics. It's an obsession of mine. So today, I want to talk about free trade. Specifically, N.A.F.T.A. and the T.P.P., and why Trump is wrong on both.

Okay, trade tariffs and free trade agreements are complex subjects, so I'm going to try to condense Macroeconomics 101 into a nice, compact blog post so that people can at least try to follow how they work. You might be under the impression that N.A.F.T.A. and the T.P.P. are bad deals which cost America jobs, but think again.

Let's say you have two countries, Latveria, and Symkaria (borrowed from the Marvel Universe). Latveria is ruled by Dr. Victor Von Doom, and Symkaria is ruled by Silba Sablinova (a.k.a. Silver Sable). Dr. Doom is concerned that his country is importing more goods from Symkaria than it is exporting to them. Something must be done about this, he reasons. His country is losing money to its Eastern neighbor. So he decides to enact a tariff of 5% on all imported goods from Symkaria.

A tariff, for those who don't know, is a tax on an import. If an import is worth, say, $100, a 5% tariff would mean that any product imported to Latveria would carry an additional cost of $5. That means that consumers in Latveria must pay $105 for Symkarian products, because Symkaria must raise its price to $105 to offset the tariff, which discourages Latverians from buying a more expensive product. But if they do, the government of Latveria pockets the extra $5 from Symkaria, which it can use for roads, bridges, clean water, sewage systems, waste disposal and recycling, etc. etc. This is a win for Latveria, right?

Ah, not so. Because when Silver Sable gets wind of this, she decides to counter Doom's tariff with one of her own. Now, all imports from Latveria will also have a 5% tariff, and this evens the scales.

"No one defies Doom!" cries Victor, who then enacts a 10% tariff on Symkaria.

But Silver Sable knows that two can play at this game. She responds with a 10% tariff of her own.

And now we have a tariff war. Each country will raise its tariffs until trade between the nations has virtually stopped. The tariffs are now essentially worthless, because the tariff only applies to imports, and with the countries not importing each other's goods due to the high disincentives, neither government makes any money. Also, both countries now have a lower G.D.P. because their businesses have fewer customers, their trade volume is lessened, and so their hiring drops. With a smaller customer base, the jobs that remain must be fewer in number because demand for the products is smaller.

One of the key factors that led to the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which caused other nations to raise tariffs of their own. Soon, trade between many nations all but halted, and the Great Depression would continue until World War II forced the Allied nations to drop their tariffs for the sake of importing military goods.

But suppose the two countries take a different approach. Victor Von Doom invites Silver to dine at his castle, and says, "Let's strike a bargain. Both our countries do better with lower tariffs, so let's agree to eliminate them. My country may do a little poorer in the short term, but that will eventually even itself out in the free market."

Silba likes this idea, and says, "Agreed." And so they form the Marvel Universe Fictional Adjunct State Trade Agreement, or M.U.F.A.S.T.A. Tariffs are eliminated, and goods between the two nations increase. Trade expands, and hiring goes up. Everyone wins, right?

Well, no. When you lower trade tariffs, unskilled jobs can more easily flow to the weaker economy because of lower wages. Companies can send low-skilled jobs to Symkaria, have the employees build parts there by hand more cheaply, and then ship them back to Latveria for final assembly. Because of the lack of any tariffs, the parts shipped, even though they are WIP (work in process) count as exports, and are not levied with any tariff penalty (which they would be if a tariff were in place). In some cases, the products might be entirely built in Symkaria outright.

Well some of Doom's constituents aren't happy about this. "Our jobs are going to that other fictional city-state, and we don't like it! The big corporations who are in league with Castle Doom are willing to ship our jobs over there because their wages are lower! And then sell their goods to us at cheaper prices as a result!"

Yes, that would be bad for a little while. But wages in Symkaria would begin to increase until they reached a point of equilibrium with Latveria. The trade imbalance that temporarily exists between Latveria and its neighbor eventually goes away, because Latverians are able to buy cheaper goods, giving them a higher standard of living which results in more entrepreneurs. Eventually, both nations prosper more with free trade than they would have otherwise.

But this is a hard sell for Dr. Doom, politically. He's getting challenged in the next election by M.O.D.A.R.K., who is promising to "Level the playing field" with Symkaria. He's also concerned about illegal immigration from Wakanda. M.O.D.A.R.K. says, "They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some of them, I assume, are good people." He proposes protectionist tariffs be replaced, and that M.U.F.A.S.T.A. be thrown out.

This is essentially the same sort of argument we're hearing from Trump today. But Protectionism doesn't work for an economy. It never has. All it does is shrink an economy and leave businesses with fewer customers. So why does it sound so appealing?

Because it gives the illusion that it will save jobs. After all, N.A.F.T.A. cost Americans many jobs which were shipped off to Mexico, right?

Not really. Yes, N.A.F.T.A. lowered tariffs which made it cheaper for corporations to hire labor abroad than at home. But the "giant sucking sound" predicted by H. Ross Perot during the 1992 presidential elections never took place after N.A.F.T.A. passed. The migration of jobs to Mexico was slow and gradual - even anemic. Why?

Because Mexico lacked certain things that would have made moving jobs to Mexico much easier. It lacked adequate roads to ship raw materials to manufacturing plants and then ship the finished product to market. It lacked adequate rails which could do the same. It lacked sufficient electrical grids, clean water, water towers and sewage systems that would make running any business possible, especially in Mexico's hot climate. It had an unstable political system, and rampant gangs of drug lords which constantly destabilized the regions, making the running of any business much more difficult. (That condition still exists, and is a major problem for Mexico.) And lastly, it lacked basic education-level workers to hire. At least at first.

And this is why India leapfrogged Mexico as the world's new economic power. It was much farther away, but it was willing to build the infrastructure necessary to attract the jobs. It invested in education for its citizens. It built ports, roads, and rail for its businesses. But we had no N.A.F.T.A. treaty with India. The jobs went to India because that country was better suited for business.

Which means N.A.F.T.A. is ruled out as a primary cause of American jobs going abroad.

You see, N.A.F.T.A. and T.P.P. do not really do much to encourage jobs going overseas, and tariffs don't do much to keep them at home, either. If there's some Pacific Rim nation (for example) with cheap labor going for $1 per day, which is a princely sum in that country, you could enact a tariff as high as 80% on that nation, and corporations will still save a ton of money by hiring there. Bark about the T.P.P. all you want, but it won't cost any jobs that weren't already on their way out the door.

So why aren't more jobs fleeing the U.S.?

Because it's not just simple cost of labor! If one country has a much lower cost of labor than another one, then jobs will naturally migrate to the country with lower labor costs, that much is true. But other factors weigh in. Ideal infrastructure is essential. Without adequate roads, bridges, rail, developed harbors and large airports, no nation can build very much, no matter how cheap the labor. Power and water are essential for building anything. You need the electricity to make the machines go, and the water to keep your workers hydrated and your cooling systems working. There are considerations regarding raw materials (steel, textiles, lumber, etc.). If the raw materials have to be shipped a long way, that adds to the cost. There's the presence of supporting industries to consider. If the industries that make items that you need are located too far away (computer chips, for example) then your cheap labor is going to get a lot more expensive. The size of a company's tax burden plays a role. Lower taxes abroad may cause a company to consider uprooting in the U.S. and moving to a country with little or even no taxes. Lax environmental regulations abroad may also make moving moving jobs overseas to another nation more appealing. There are language barriers to consider. Can your company overcome the difficulties in non-English speaking cultures to establish a usable workforce? There's climate and natural disasters to consider. If the foreign nation you are considering relocating jobs to has problems with hurricanes, or typhoons, or earthquakes, then you have a much bigger problem than just building adequate factories to consider. (This is part of why Mexico has enjoyed more prosperity than, say, Haiti.) And finally, there's location, location, location. If your cheap-labor island nation is situated far away from any other country, your shipping costs will be high enough to offset any money you might save by getting those cheap workers. Better to stay at home.

There's a lot to consider.

The real culprit when it comes to jobs going overseas is banking. The ability to send millions to any nation at the click of a mouse has made it possible for money to go into the paycheck of a foreign country much easier, and that means the payrolls can move more easily too. But we can't go back to the days of paper checking, so we're basically painted into a corner on that one. We need to do what we can with the technology we have to save jobs here in the U.S. and build new ones as well.

So how does one keep jobs at home? How does a nation build new jobs?

Some of the ideas I'll present are counter-intuitive, but there are a few things we can do. First, let's recognize that most of the nations in the TPP agreement already have low or no tariffs. Jobs that the U.S. may lose to those nations are already going to be gone. So by expanding our trade base by lowering tariffs even further will help jobs in the U.S. How? By expanding the customer base and lowering prices here. We lose some jobs overseas, but gain others back with business benefiting from lower prices on goods and more profitability overall.

Here's the big one: EDUCATION! In a world economy where jobs could go anywhere, the nation with the most skilled workforce wins. That means we have to give our labor the best skills possible, and that means educating them - NOW. We need the best mathematicians, engineers and scientists. Too often, these skills are imported into the U.S. from other nations, like Germany. Bad show! We need to invest in technical training so that those without the ambition or ability to obtain a four-year degree can at least obtain a good paying job. Right now, America is suffering from a lack of welders and CNC machinists. Talk about jobs going overseas! Manufacturing plants may have no other choice but to go to China if they can't find enough welders and machinists here at home! At the same time, we have lots of unemployed black youth in the inner cities who need jobs. We can kill two birds with one stone! Three, in fact! By investing in the training of black factory workers, we 1) keep jobs at home 2) provide jobs to those that need it most and 3) make even more jobs by building up average income among the inner-city's populations. We also lower crime and, by extension, police violence. It's a win-win-win-win-win!

So why aren't we doing that?

Economies change. Job skills which are needed shift with them. The only things which can allow a nation's workforce to pivot and meet the needs of tomorrow's job requirements is a strong social safety net and an effective education system for all. Without these, jobs go overseas to workers with better skills, usually because those nations, like India and China, were wise enough to invest in its citizens.

We must rebuild crumbling infrastructure! Better roads, bridges and rail will mean less money has to be spent by businesses for transportation of raw materials and finished goods. Better water systems can not only provide fresh water for industry, but farming as well. Better systems for capturing rain water can help industry in uncountable ways. This helps keep jobs here at home.

I mean, if you ran a business, would you really want to build a plant in Flint, Michigan? Where there's lead in the water?

And here's an idea: A transcontinental bullet-train network can move not only passengers but goods at lightning-speed across vast distances at a mere fraction of the fuel costs of a jet airplane. Isn't that worth the megamillion-dollar price tag? For millions of more jobs at home? Other nations have bullet trains. Why not us? Why is our rail system so - third world?

Here's another idea: Upgrade our nations's power grid. Imagine how many jobs we could both save and create if we didn't rely on any fossil fuels for our own energy needs. With all our power coming from solar, wind, hydroelectric power and nuclear sources, we would become the largest exporter of coal, natural gas, and petroleum in the world. Why should we cannibalize our nation's profits by feeding off the natural resources which are one of this nation's primary economic advantages? Yes, those other nations who buy from us would want to become environmentally friendly too, but for a good long while, America would be the world's power-cell!

And those petroleum resources are better spent on things like cheap plastics, chemicals, polymers and resins. Cheaper resources like that also keep jobs at home by lowering the cost of raw materials.

Here's something more controversial: Lower taxes on corporations. I know, it's against every Democratic Party principle, but lower taxes really does prevent a corporation from leaving. Take Puerto Rico, for example. It was once a tax haven, and brought millions in jobs and profitability to a U.S. territory. But when the tax loophole was removed, Puerto Rico began to suffer. Now, it's completely broke, and it doesn't look like that's going to end anytime soon. Yes, lower taxes can have a beneficial effect to an economy. And for all our bitching about corporate welfare, no politician can resist the temptation to provide a tax break to a large corporation which is considering building a new facility in his district. So the correct approach is to grant the corporations their tax breaks. Next time you hear a politician say, "So-and-so gave corporations tax breaks for moving jobs overseas," you might want to consider the possibility that we were trying to lure those jobs back to the U.S. Yes, there are corporations who were unduly rewarded for their job-killing practices, but there are also some corporations, like Masterlock, who were lured back to the U.S. from China, in part, because of those tax breaks.

But after granting the tax breaks, let's make sure the executives pay their fair share on their income taxes and capital gains, shall we?

Want an idea that flies in the face of Republican politics? Allow more immigration!

What?! More immigration?! Aren't immigrants taking our jobs enough already?

Yes, but look at what jobs they are taking. Generally low-skilled non-education-dependent jobs that we who are used to a different standard of living are unwilling to take.

Here's how it works: Say you live in an impoverished nation. You have two paths by which you can climb out of poverty. You can either educate yourself to become a high-paid job holder in your own country, or you can go to America and make nearly as much or even more working a menial job. For many, the second choice is more appealing. And it saves american jobs because every one of those workers is one less person who may become an engineer, accountant, doctor, lawyer, executive or scientist in a foreign country. Companies that move jobs overseas need such people, too. And they would love nothing more than to let an American engineer go in favor of (for example) one living in Mexico. Because a Mexican engineer makes about $36,000 MEX. That's the equivalent of only $2,016 USD! Naturally, we want fewer Mexican engineers and more American ones, and no Mexican is going to want to study engineering for six years when they could simply hop a wall and earn $15,080 USD (which is what a minimum wage earner gets here in the U.S.), which is the equivalent of nearly 27 million in Mexican Pesos!

Relaxing the border guard actually saves american jobs!

And if you build a wall, you force Mexicans to resort to college education as their one avenue out of poverty. Those people then become more highly-skilled laborers, which American corporations will take advantage of. They will fire the $60,000 per year professionals in the U.S. and hire the Mexican ones at five cents on the dollar. Is that really what we want?

Isn't it worth having a browner America tomorrow in exchange for job security today?

And here's where I should point out that the ratio of Mexicans crossing into the U.S. to Mexicans leaving to return back to Mexico is actually negative, meaning more Mexicans are going back to Mexico than are crossing over to live here in the U.S.!

Okay, anybody still blaming N.A.F.T.A. for job losses needs to have his racist head examined.

Here's something else we can do: Protect copyright on intellectual property. One of the biggest money-losers for the American economy is bootlegging. A poor country trying to build its economy can easily bring lots of money in the form of bootlegging movies, music and video games. Americans get cheap knockoffs that are just as good as the originals, and the poor country gets lots of new jobs. In the meantime, movie studios, recording companies and video game programmers get the shaft - or even fired - as a direct result, and the incomes associated with those industries cannot spend as much money on other American service industries, which also suffer. By protecting copyright laws, we bring more money into Hollywood, Silicon Valley, EMI and American Records. They, in turn, have more money for houses, restaurants, and other American goods.

What the T.P.P. does is protect intellectual property. If a poor nation wants to build its economy, it will have to do so by investing in roads, water and education rather than by stealing jobs from rich nations, and that's the way it should be.

Here's something we can do: prevent other nations from engaging in currency manipulation.

What is currency manipulation? Well, it works like this: Supply and demand work with everything else, even money. If a nation prints too much money, the value of each bill or note goes down. That's called inflation, and it usually happens naturally and slowly as a nation's economy grows, but if it does too much of it at once, the value of the currency goes way down and prices start to shoot way up. BUT, your jobs become cheaper for other nations to invest in, and you increase your exports because your prices are lower!

Some nations with nothing to lose will deliberately print too much money in order to bring in jobs and increase exports. I mean, if your citizens are starving anyway, why not? But this isn't playing fair in a free market, because a government is trying to tip the scales. Arguably, that's the same sort of thing a tariff tries to do, but enacting tariffs isn't playing fair, either.

The T.P.P. is trying to enact an anti-currency-manipulation clause into itself. So far, this hasn't been successful. But even if no currency manipulation clause is in the T.P.P., we still need it to stop the practice overall. Why? Because the biggest currency manipulator is China! If all the nations of the T.P.P. are banded together by treaty, and all call upon China to cease and desist its over-printing of the Yuen, China will eventually be forced to the negotiating table. That's a big job-protector right there!

You see, trade agreements like N.A.F.T.A. and T.P.P. can actually save jobs. Yes! Why? Because they can create trading blocs which China and India must reckon with. Two of the world's largest economies, the U.S.A. and Japan, are part of the T.P.P., and with the other nations of the Pacific Rim, can exert huge economic pressure everywhere along China's sea-front - it's only real economic interface. That's why the T.P.P. can help.

Here's yet another job-saver in the T.P.P.: It enacts restrictions upon child labor and eases restrictions upon unionization. For many years, unions have been weakened by jobs going overseas. But if other nations are allowed to unionize, the corporations have fewer and fewer outlets to run to in order to get around labor unions. Global unionizing leads to more money for everyone. Yes, unions can be stupid at times. At some junctures in history, unions have even been usurped by organized crime (such as the mafia). But unions also increase salaries and benefits in a way no other system can. An economy without labor unions is an economy doomed to eventual failure. Opponents to T.P.P. say that these rules will have no teeth. But even if not, it's a start, and teeth will eventually grow in - if not in T.P.P., then in subsequent deals because T.P.P. paved the way.

We can save jobs here in the U.S. by persuading other nations to enact stricter environmental standards. After all, having more lax environmental standards is one of the more appealing lures to corporations who want to relocate jobs overseas, right? The T.P.P. does require nations to enact tougher environmental regulations, particularly about the fishing industry. Our oceans must replenish in order to feed a growing human population!

Opponent of the T.P.P. complain that such environmental standards will not be enforced. Yet in almost the same breath, other opponents (or sometimes even the same ones) complain that a foreign corporation could sue the United States and win for enforcing an environmental regulation on U.S. soil that corporation does not want to have to deal with.

So, it has teeth with us, but not abroad? That's just not logical.

So, to recap, the T.P.P. is, overall, a jobs saver. Ultimately, so was N.A.F.T.A.

Let's be blunt for a moment. Did N.A.F.T.A. cost Americans some jobs? You bet it did! But it took many years for that to happen. Mexico did not have the infrastructure that America did, and so private companies had to invest in their own roads, bridges and power lines in order to build the factories that would be able to hire lower-waged workers. That meant that Mexicans who wanted to find work had to come to the United States. The giant sucking sound predicted by H. Ross Perot back in 1992 ended up happening north of the Mexican border, not south.

But the free trade agreement eventually paid off. Factories and roads were built, Mexicans began getting more jobs, wages began to increase, and now, decades after N.A.F.T.A. was first put into place, more Mexicans are returning to Mexico than are coming across the border into the U.S.

We don't need a wall anymore, thanks to N.A.F.T.A.! Donald Trump is preaching an outdated message to a very old choir.

And N.A.F.T.A. eventually paid off here at home as well. The manufacturing jobs here in the U.S. that we expected to be gone did not disappear entirely. Why? Because skilled laborers were still here in the U.S., but not in Mexico. Small components could be built south of the border, then brought north of the border to be welded and assembled by Americans. Companies like Master Lock came back to Milwaukee. Companies like Cooper Power Systems got bought up by Eaton, but never left Waukesha. General Electric was able to expand its manufacturing base and retain more American engineers.

All those jobs would be gone without N.A.F.T.A. Do they pay less now? Yes. But that's better than gone for good.

Here's an illustration to show how free trade works, and we'll just stick to N.A.F.T.A. since it offers the simplicity of using only two countries, the U.S.A. and Mexico.

As the illustration shows, Mexico benefits more from free trade than the U.S. does. And yes, some of that growth comes because some jobs migrate from the United States to Mexico. But both countries also see greater growth overall. Greater GDP in both countries is a net win, even if some jobs get lost in a move south of the border. And without such free trade, the size of the economy in the U.S.A. would remain the same, or even possibly shrink.

Economies shift and change. After World War II, America enjoyed unprecedented prosperity because it monopolized all the manufacturing. America was literally the world's machine shop, especially in cities like Milwaukee, Pittsburg and Detroit. A system of interstate highways instituted by the Eisenhower administration which were intended to allow cities to be quickly evacuated in the event of a war with the Soviets accidentally became an economic powerhouse for the nation, making commerce far easier and more interconnected. Prices dropped. Babies were born. Home sales went through the roof. But that was unsustainable. Competition eventually came from Germany and Japan. Lots of other nations learned the manufacturing trick.

Eventually, America had to share in its good fortune. And when other nations rise dramatically when your own nation rises only a little bit, it can often feel like you're falling.

But that's an illusion.

And now we're facing T.P.P., the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Will we have a similar fate as that with N.A.F.T.A., with only a little growth for ourselves and Japan but a lot of growth for other nations?

Yes, indeed! And we want this! We want more depressed nations to develop and climb up here to our level to enjoy a better life!

Economists love to disagree about things. But what they all seem to agree on is that if you build cars or airplanes for a living, TPP might not be so good in the short run. But if you do any other sort of business, things will get better. U.S. G.D.P. will go up, but only a little bit. Meanwhile, smaller nations will do much better and receive much higher wages over time. Eventually, that comes back to benefit us.

Here's a list of economists that agree and disagree with the TPP deal. And interestingly, many opposed are superstars in economics from the Left, but many more are in favor and come from both sides of the aisle:

Opposed:
Joseph Stiglitz – TPP is the “worst trade deal ever.”
Paul Krugman – “I’ve described myself as a lukewarm opponent.”
Ha Joon Chang – Argues that TPP would prevent third-world countries from developing by forbidding trade protections. (Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam)
Robert Reich – “It’s a Trojan horse in a global race to the bottom.”
Jeffrey Sachs – Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

In favor:
Charles L. Schultze – Chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers during the President Carter Administration
Martin Feldstein – Professor of Economics, Harvard. President Emeritus of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Michael J. Boskin – Professor of Economics, Stanford University. Chief Executive Officer and President of Boskin & Co., an economic consulting company
Laura D’Andrea Tyson – Former Chair of the US President's Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton Administration.
Martin Neil Baily –  Economist at the Brookings Institution and formerly at the Peterson Institute. Cabinet member on Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton from 1994 to 1996, and chairman of the Council from 1999 to 2001. Currently co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's Financial Regulatory Reform Initiative.
R. Glenn Hubbard –  Deputy Assistant Treasury Secretary, 1991 to 1993. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors to George W. Bush, 2001 to 2003.
N. Gregory Mankiw – Professor of Economics at Harvard University. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush. Former economics advisor to Mitt Romney. “Among economists, the issue is a no-brainer.” (Arguing yes, he’s in favor of TPP.)
Harvey S. Rosen – Professor of Economics and Business Policy, Princeton University. Chairperson of the Council of Economic Advisers, 2005.
Alan Greenspan – Former Federal Reserve Chairman.
Ben S. Bernanke – Former Federal Reserve Chairman.
Edward P. Lazear – Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors from 2006 to 2009.
Christina D. Romer – Chaired President's Council of Economic Advisers, 2009-2013 in succession.
Austan D. Goolsbee – Professor of Economics at The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, 2010 – 2011.
Alan B. Krueger – Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, Princeton. University and Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for economic policy, 2009 – 2010. Chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, 2011.

Paul Krugman describes himself as a "lukewarm opponent" of TPP. I, by contrast am a "lukewarm advocate." But I'm not quite the economist he is. The consensus, politics aside, is that TPP has its problems, but is generally a positive thing. Ultimately, I trust Barack Obama's judgment on this, although I reserve the right to change my mind.

And if Trump wants to campaign against it, calling it a bad deal, just know that the consensus among economists disagrees with him, and so do I.

So what if Hillary flip-flops on it after the election?


Eric

*

Dallas Shooters - The NRA's Heroes

Well, we call this the Sacred Cow Wursthaus for a reason, and that reason will be apparent in this blog post.

One of the primary reasons the NRA is so adamant about protecting 2nd Amendment gun rights is so that citizens can protect themselves against government oppression. Often quoted is this bit from Thomas Jefferson:

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure."

And again, just as frequently, is this quote attributed to George Washington:

"A free people ought not only be armed and disciplined, but they should have sufficient arms and ammunition to maintain a status of independence from any who might attempt to abuse them, which would include their own government."

Except that's not actually what Washington said. Snopes exposed that particular lie. Read about it here. But it is certainly true that this is one of the founding fathers' arguments. There are plenty of other legitimate quotes that prove this. And so, it has become one of the NRA's central themes; that people need to be armed in order to prevent the government from oppressing them.

Well, that's what the NRA argues. And guess what? Some black men got some sniper rifles and acted on exactly that principle last night.

Angered that black men are continually shot and killed by white cops, some black men actively declared a race war and shot at white police officers last night. 12 officers were shot. 5 officers were killed. And those numbers may shift as news reports continue to come in. It is, CNN reports, the deadliest day for police officers since 9/11. And the irony that this took place near the JFK Memorial Plaza is lost on no one.

I'm willing to bet this is not what the NRA had in mind.

And yet who can argue with the fact that the government is oppressing black people, especially young black men? These snipers did exactly what the NRA, and the founding fathers, told them they should do.

Maybe we should re-think this entire 2nd amendment thing.

Let's be honest with ourselves: When the NRA argues that gun ownership is necessary to protect their rights from being infringed upon by the government, what they really mean is the protection of white rights. Black men with legitimate concealed carry permits are not really factored in by most NRA members. And such racism goes beyond wanting to prevent someone named Achmed from getting a weapon. The biggest gun restrictions against assault rifles came when the government saw the Black Panthers arming themselves with such weapons.

And what do white NRA members do with their weapons when gerrymandering robs their votes by the billions? What do they do when Bush's Patriot Act robs their right to privacy and allows the government to wire-tap them at will? What do they do when they get stuck with Donald Trump when 60% of them voted for someone else in the primary? What do they do when their fellow Americans are shut out of the democratic process by the restricting of polling stations and requiring ID's while obtain such ID cards becomes deliberately more difficult?

They sit on their goddamned asses!

Look, I'm not defending what these snipers have done. It was evil, and we all see that. But at least they practiced what the NRA preaches!

What, in Zeus' name, is the excuse of the white privileged NRA crowd?

Let me come back down to earth, here. I believe in defensive weapons. It's a real debate what constitutes 'defensive' vs. 'offensive,' but we have that right. So I'm not going to outright say what I am tempted to say, which is that assault rifle owners who are not willing to march on their state and federal capitals with gun in hand when something like the Patriot Act passes, or gerrymandering robs people's votes, should simply hand their guns back now, because they don't deserve them. But I AM going to say that if the whole point of gun ownership is to protect innocent people from oppression, can't we at least do that much?

I mean, what did these guys think they were doing, shooting a bunch of innocent cops as if that would solve anything? If they were so willing to do a coordinated attack for vigilante justice, couldn't they have gone to Baton Rouge and shot the officers in question there? Or gone to Minnesota and targeted that guy? I'm not saying that's right either, but if you're going to break the law to do vigilante justice, at least do it right! Don't drag more innocent lives down with you!

Who did you think you were, Charles Manson trying to ignite Helter Skelter?

Maybe the famous science fiction author, Robert Heinlein, summed up the opinion best:

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life."

Well, Bob, in a perfect world, that would be the case. But this isn't a perfect world. And maybe the reason we should outlaw certain guns is because society is just too damned immature to be polite about them. And all the politeness in the world won't keep you from getting shot if the other guy is trigger-happy, or just plain crazy.

Let's re-think the 2nd Amendment. Legalize defensive weapons only. Technology has changed the entire warfare landscape. It's time we changed with it.

How much do you want to bet someone is going to suggest the outlawing of sniper rifles?


Eric

*

I Called It! James Comey Lets Clinton Off Hook

I have some thoughts and analysis regarding FBI Director James Comey letting Hillary Clinton go with little more than a harsh scolding as punishment. People have been saying that Comey changed the rules in order to get Clinton off the hook. They're saying that he used a different standard of justice than he would have used on anybody else. Some are even saying that this conservative Republican is somehow in league with Hillary. Boy, do I have a scathing rebuke of that nonsense! But first, I have to take a bow for predicting the outcome correctly, and being the master analyst that only a few fortunate souls who read my blog know myself to be. Fuck modesty, this one's mine! Check this out:

In the end, the official FBI conclusion will likely be that Hillary did not divulge State secrets, but will also give her a severe reprimand. The State department has already effectively done this. She deserves it, and she knows it, which is why she’s issued her apology for it, and not just because she was caught. It stings her, and well it should.

But against Trump, it shouldn’t cost her any votes.

That was me, on this blog, posting on May 31, 2016.

The FBI will most likely exonerate her as well, unless there really was something she leaked which was clearly and unambiguously classified. That's a whole separate issue, but for now, the FBI will say she did not commit any serious breeches of information. I suspect, however, that the FBI will also seriously chastise her. That would be a blow, but if the FBI clears her, she'll gladly endure it.

That was me, again on this blog, on August 31, 2015. Now check out this one.

Emails? Yeah, not so much, either. Unless an off-account email is found which is a clear breach of national security, I don't see much of a problem. 

Me again. Wrote it on April 13, 2015.

Over a year in advance, and I got it exactly right! Who is the master of prediction? THIS guy! Who has clarity of perspective on political issues? ME!

And who should you listen to next time? Yep. That's right.

Okay, so now that I'm the undisputed guru, here's my take on Comey. The best breakdown of what accusers are saying regarding Comey's announcement comes to me from my Bernie-supporting friends on the Left who have been posting an article from National Review.

Let me say that again. My friends on the Left, posting from National Review. National fucking Review!

Yeah, it's gotten that crazy.

You can read the article for yourself here. But the gist of it is this, that the FBI redefined the law in order to allow Hillary to get off scot-free. At the heart of the matter is Title 18, Section 793(f) of the penal code. In fact, in one of my Facebook defenses of Hillary, someone actually pasted that statute into his reply, as if he'd somehow made a point. But for the sake of being thorough, and because I want to be as open as possible, here is the statute itself:

(f) Whoever, being entrusted with or having lawful possession or control of any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, note, or information, relating to the national defense, (1) through gross negligence permits the same to be removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of his trust, or to be lost, stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, or (2) having knowledge that the same has been illegally removed from its proper place of custody or delivered to anyone in violation of its trust, or lost, or stolen, abstracted, or destroyed, and fails to make prompt report of such loss, theft, abstraction, or destruction to his superior officer—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

One can then juxtapose this with the statement delivered by James Comey on July 5th. Now, you can read the whole thing here, but I'll just drop the summary here that's been re-played all over the news media over the last two days:

"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case. Prosecutors necessarily weigh a number of factors before bringing charges. There are obvious considerations, like the strength of the evidence, especially regarding intent. Responsible decisions also consider the context of a person’s actions, and how similar situations have been handled in the past."

Now, critics point out, "intent?" Since when? Intent is not in that section of the law!

No, but he listed first "strength of evidence." Intent was secondary.

For the anti-Hillary crowd, whether they be Republicans of Bernie die-hards, the answer is clear. She broke the law. But did she? Let's break this down.

A person is in violation of the law if such a person:

1) Through gross negligence permits classified data to be removed/delivered:

• from proper place of custody
• to anyone in violation of trust
• to be lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed

Or:

2) Having knowledge of #1 above, fails to make prompt report to the superior officer (in this case, the president).

Let's start with the first one. Through "gross negligence." (For Hillary-haters, all her negligence is gross negligence, no matter what. But let's try not to look through rose-colored lenses and see what the real level of negligence was.) Was there "gross negligence" in this case?

James Comey says no. His exact words:

"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information."

And cue the critics again. "Extremely careless = gross negligence!" 

Clearly, since Comey did not recommend bringing any charges, he disagrees. Is this splitting hairs? Certainly. But maybe not so much. What Comey is saying is that it is negligence, just not gross negligence. Even Hillary called it a mistake. But ultimately, the information stayed within the inner circle of the government. What leaked? Nothing. Again quoting Comey:

"Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information..."

Potential violations. Any actual violations? Nope. None found. And Comey is a smart enough legal mind to know that sort of thing is not enough to bring about a successful prosecution. Does that mean Hillary is innocent? No. But it does mean there isn't enough evidence to go to trial.

"...our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

In other words, to quote the old maxim, "No harm, no foul." Or, in this case, no proven harm, so no provable foul.

So much for that. Next bullet-point item:

"From proper place of custody," is the next requirement. A separate email server was not illegal at the time Hillary set one up. But it was against State department guidelines and regulations. So, that means, as I've said on multiple occasions, that she broke rules, but not laws. Her e-mail server was, at the time, a proper place of custody.

"But that placed government information at higher risk!" a critic might say. "What about that hacker, Guccifer, who allegedly broke in?!"

Guccifer was what hackers call a "muggle." That is, a hacker who isn't really much of a hacker, and brags about stuff he didn't do. James Comey said in his July 5th press conference:

"With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked."

Later, in his deposition to Congress on July 7, Comey was directly asked by Texas Republican Blake Farenthold whether Guccifer successfully hacked into Hillary's email server.

"No, he did not," Comey testified. "He admitted that was a lie." (The FBI had interviewed 'Guccifer' during its investigations.)

"At least that's good to hear," Farenthold replied.

Bullshit. News that Guccifer had actually hacked Hillary's server would have been the best news Republicans have had since Obama won.

By the way, you may have heard a rumor that Guccifer was found dead in his jail cell. Not true. You can read about that, here.

Yes, having a private server puts the information at greater risk than using the government's server. (Remember that every time some conservative hack wants you to believe that all government-run systems are inferior.) But while it's harder for a hacker to break into a government computer system than a private server, they are both pretty tough to crack. It's analogous to locking secured documents in a locked file cabinet instead of a safe. Is the safe harder to crack open than a file cabinet? Sure! But the documents were still locked away. They were not just free for the taking!

"To anyone in violation of trust," is the next bulleted item. Did Hillary send classified documents to any unauthorized personnel? Here the answer is clear - she did not. And this is why her wrongdoing is not nearly as egregious as that of General David Portrayus, who knowingly placed classified documents into the hands of his mistress, a non-government employed journalist. Hillary's messages may have been received at, and then sent from, a private server, but they went from authorized personnel to authorized personnel.

At his testimony before Congress on July 7, Comey did, however testify that Hillary had given access to her classified emails to non-authorized personnel in the form of her lawyers. But due to attorney-client privilege, that is impossible to prosecute. Her lawyers are legally bound not to share confidential information pertaining to their client, and so the information is still secure.

"To be lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed," is the last bulleted point. And here, Comey has something interesting to say:

"I should add...that we found no evidence that any of the additional work-related e-mails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them."

He went on to describe how some emails were deleted and found outside of the 30,000 emails she had handed over to the FBI, but then described how exactly that came about, and demonstrated that such stray emails were not proof of intentional destruction of classified material. It's an interesting read, and I encourage all to read Comey's transcript rather than merely watching the highlights from the 6:00 news.

One further point bears attention. Comey pointed out that Hillary's claim that no documents marked as classified were received from, or sent to, her private server. That claim turned out to be wrong.

"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification."

And yes, they were marked as such. But not clearly. More on that, below.

So did Hillary lie? Perhaps. But it's equally plausible that she just made a mistake. Not all classified documents are marked as classified, as James Comey himself said. And while he also said that government officials should know what is classified whether it is marked or not, it bears consideration just how many emails are dealt with on a daily basis. Think of the emails you have in your place of work alone. Never mind spam, mailing lists and numerous clutter items. Now imagine what a Secretary of State has to deal with.

It's a wonder classified information is kept bottled up at all, private servers or not!

So that's it for the bullet points. The second part of the statute doesn't apply, because Hillary would have to have been knowingly putting classified documents in unauthorized hands in order for her reporting to her superior officer (Barack Obama, in this case) to be necessary.

James Comey pointed all this out in his July 7 testimony before Congress. In fact, much of what I argue here is what he argued there. So, in a way, I am simply re-stating what he did, only better. (Yeah, this is me being not-so-humble again.) No transcript of his testimony yet exists, but there is a YouTube video of nearly the entire testimony. You can watch it here. One of the things he points out is that some information marked as classified was done so in an ambiguous way. For example, items marked with a simple capital letter "C" were classified, but Hillary might not have known about that.

Yes, he's saying the Secretary of State, of all people, might not have known that particular detail. 

Is Comey calling Hillary stupid? Maybe. 

Is he admitting under oath that some classified materials might not be clearly and unambiguously marked as such? Yes!

*Shudder!* That, my friends, may be the most frightening revelation of this entire affair! That classified material may be floating around, unmarked?! Shit!

So, just to recap:

• Was Hillary careless? Yep
• Was she "grossly negligent?" No. Just negligent.
• Did she make classified documents less secure than they should have been? Yes.
• Does that constitute an actual breech of classified information? No.
• Did she destroy classified documents? It appears not.
• Was her server hacked? Not by Guccifer. But by someone else? Unlikely, but can't rule it out.
• Does she deserve to be raked across the goads for all this? Absolutely. And she both is and will be.
• Was she held to a different, lower standard than others because of her position? No. Hell, no! In fact, she is held to a higher standard because of her position, and will continually be punished for it. Rightly so. Even now, Republicans are threatening impeachment proceedings after she's elected (which even they can see is inevitable). That may make Elizabeth Warren our president, however. (Goody!)
• Does she deserve a prosecution? No.
• Did she lie? Maybe. But good luck proving it!
• Did she ultimately break any laws? Close, but no fucking cigar.

So, in short, I was right then, and I daresay I am right now. Hillary made one, little brain-fart because she wanted the convenience (and control, I expect) of having her own private server. She had precedent from Secretaries of State before, and so she felt entitled. But for this one, little misstep, which in retrospect seems so bad, but at the time seemed so innocent, she has been punished, and punished, and punished. Eventually, we'll have to realize that she's been through the meat-grinder enough times to be seasoned and cured.

Why not now, I ask? When it should all be over and Bernie is poised to endorse her?

Even if she's guilty as sin, I argue that she's learned her lesson many, many, many times over. So there.

Repeatedly, I find that when Hillary gets off regarding some charge or other, the reaction is to assume that whomever got her off the hook is to blame, rather than to consider the possibility that maybe Hillary is not as guilty as assumed.

• Hillary beats the Select Committee on Benghazi - the Republican controlled committee must be on Hillary's take.
• Hillary gets endorsed by Elizabeth Warren - obviously Warren is a traitor.
• Hillary gets off the hook with the email scandal from the Director of the FBI - the conservative Republican must be working with Hillary.
• Eric Hildeman defends Hillary on his blog - oh, then he must be a puppet.

In other words, where Hillary is involved, it's guilty until proven innocent, and still guilty even after that!

Maybe, just maybe, the problem is people having the default setting that Hillary is bad? Maybe?

When Obama came under continuous attack, I gave him a nickname: Our Trophy President. Today, it's time I gave Hillary a nickname. And I've sometimes called her "'Ol' Ironsides," but I'd rather give her a nickname that reflects her more cosmopolitan, non-Dixie side.

Today, I label Hillary as "Lady Titanium." She's indestructible!

Eric

*

John Ashe Is Dead. So What?

On June 22nd, 2016, John Ashe (the one on the left in the above photo) died. He was working out in his home in Dobbs Ferry, New York when he over-fatigued himself while doing bench-presses. The barbell fell onto his throat, crushing his trachea. He died of asphyxiation.

Tragic. And a bit freaky. But so what? Well, it turns out that John Ashe was a former diplomat representing the twin-island nation of Antigua/Barbuda and former President of the United Nations General Assembly. The position itself had no real power, but apparently it held enough influence that Ashe used it to accept bribery payments from a Chinese investor named Ng Lap Seng. This same Chinese investor was accused back in 1996 of being part of a conspiracy to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars from China into the DNC as part of a campaign to gain more Chinese influence in American politics, including Bill Clinton's reelection campaign.

And here's where it gets interesting. He was facing charges relating to his bribery scandal, and was reportedly on the verge of giving sworn testimony in trial regarding his relations to Ng, and the Clintons. How strange that he should conveniently die right before doing so! Someone must be trying to protect Hillary from further embarrassment!

Well, no. As has often been the case this election year, the claims regarding Hillary were completely false.

Let's hear it for Snopes! They completely exposed this hoax, and you can read about it here. But Snopes did a cursory job, and I thought I should go into it with more detail.

First, while his death was the freakiest of freak accidents, there is no evidence that Ashe was murdered. Second, he did not die right before he was set to give testimony in trial. The U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of New York told Snopes that Mr. Ashe was only set to attend some preliminary pre-trial proceedings a few days after he died. The actual trial was to be much, much later.

And also, he was not going to testify against Hillary Clinton.

Hillary not only has no connection to the U.N. bribery scancal between Ng and Ashe, she doesn't have any real connection to the 1996 "Chinagate" scandal, either. To remember why, it is necessary to go back and revisit this scandal from the mid-90's and see just how bad it was for Bill.

There was much hemming and hawing regarding the prospect of Chinese money influencing the DNC. FOX News was not yet a political force, but right-wing talk radio was, and it was having a field day in 1997. But for all the complaining of the Republican controlled Congress, no evidence could be found of any link between Chinese money and Bill Clinton's reelection campaign. There were a few instances of donations at the legal limit coming from Chinese sources, such as those funneled through Bill's friend, Arkansas businessman Yah Ling "Charlie" Trie. But in every case, that money was returned, even after being legally donated, just to avoid any appearance of impropriety. There was a Department Of Justice investigation, but it found nothing. There was also a Congressional committee investigation, but it also found nothing solid. On a party-line 8 to 7 vote, Republicans said there was enough evidence to conclude there was criminal activity. The Republicans rallied around former Law and Order actor Fred Thompson, who said that there was "not any one real big thing" but "a lot of things strung together that paint a real ugly picture." The Democrats rallied around former astronaut John Glenn, who said that he was convinced the Chinese money was only used to influence congressional elections. Since the Democrats lost, it seemed reasonable to conclude the Chinese money couldn't have bought much influence, if at all. An independent council to investigate the matter seemed warranted, but Attorney General Janet Reno declined to appoint one. This, more than anything, is the real scandal of the entire affair, because an independent council could have exonerated the DNC once and for all. Instead, the scandal festered, and was a possible factor in the upset election of 2000. If you want a thorough exploration of that event, check out the Wikipedia page here.

What has this got to do with Hillary? Absolutely nothing.

Hillary was First Lady at the time, meaning that she would have been out of the loop regarding any campaign financing issues. Also, what sort of influence could the Chinese possibly buy from a First Lady? The answer is pretty much none. There was no market for bribery, hence there was no bribery. If the Chinese really wanted to pay money to the First Lady hoping to buy her influence, they could certainly try to do so, but they might as well have lit a large pile of money on fire for all the good it would get them.

Years later, a Chinese businessman Hillary has no connection to, but her husband just might have, is implicated in a bribery scandal with a U.N. official she has no ties to, and is about to give sworn testimony that could have no possible connection to her even in the most elastic of stretches. Okay, the guy died. But again I must ask, so what?

Was this dropped barbell supposed to protect Hillary from something?

The original conspiracy theory comes from a blogger who goes by the name of Sorcha Faal, who publishes bullshit tabloid crap on the conspiracy website whatdoesitmean.com. To say that this person is a crackpot is an insult to crackpots. His reputation is so bad that even other conspiracy nuts disrespect him. The official he quotes as calling Mr. Ashe's death "conveniently timed" is, you guessed it, an anonymous source.

So we have a proven fraudster giving out a phony story on a red-flag-ridden website and the official quote comes from an anonymous source on top of that. Fuck, if you want to implicate Hillary in a scandal why don't you just toss some chicken bones onto the ground and have a goddamned witch doctor determine Hillary's guilt or innocence?!

But, this is the age of the Internet, where old liars never die. They just get continuously shared on Facebook and re-tweeted on Twitter.

Why this blog doesn't have that kind of power, I'll never know. Maybe that's the price I pay for reporting responsibly.


Eric

*

Exit Polls Again - Because You Need It, Lee Camp

This one is primarily for you, Lee Camp. Oh, how I hope you can break free of the black hole of conspiracy theory nonsense before you cross the event horizon!

If you simultaneously believe that exit polls show that Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton in the primary, while at the same time citing a fake Stanford paper that says Hillary did better in non-paper-trail states, you are debunking yourself. The states with paper trails have solid proof not only that Hillary won, but that the early exit polls which sore-loser Bern-outs have put so much stock in are verifiably and empirically wrong. Paper trails, you see.

I could end the blog post right there and do a victory dance. But, as usual, I need to spike the ball in the end zone several dozen times before anyone acknowledges I've scored anything. So, here's me spiking the football once more for the sake of you die-hards out there.

Okay, for everyone who missed it the first three times, here it is again. Here's how exit polls actually work:

Say you're an exit poller. You stand outside a polling station, holding your clipboard, waiting for those people who are exiting to come and answer the survey you are pleading with them to fill out.

Now, there are two basic types of potential respondents. There's the younger, more enthusiastic Bernie supporter, who is empowered both with emotion and free time, and who is 180% more likely to answer some fuckwad of a volunteer's survey.

Then there's the other type. That person is older, wiser, and has been through this shit 1000 times before, and who looks at the exit-poller as only one of any number of countless vultures who want to feed upon the five damned minutes of free time he or she has left. So of course he or she is unwilling to sacrifice what little has been left unpicked off the bones of what once had been laughingly called his or her private moments! Because they're too busy raising the idiot kids who will vote for the next charismatic but devoid of substance candidate in the next election!

So, bearing these two basic types in mind, you can imagine that the exit polls would be totally biased in favor of the first type of voter. You know, the type who takes exit poll conspiracy theories far too seriously in the first place?

Adjustments are then made to the exit poll data. How? Why, by the exit poller guesstimating the head counts of different demographics walking out of the poll station. The pollster is mentally noting how many elderly, black, latino, middle-aged and young people are walking out. They will then note their estimates on a separate clipboard and use these to adjust the totals after.

This is an open process. Journalists know damned well exit pollers do this, and this is why the early results are shit, and the later results are more reliable. This is also why they don't pay much attention to conspiracy-nuts like Richard Charnin (or, for now at least, Lee Camp) because they know too much to be fooled by it. The experts aren't fooled.

But, in all things politics, its fun to muddy the water, even for those who worship clarity. And so some people think that this early exit poll process, this utterly qualitative and subjective , somehow represents the truth of election results. They will use it to say that Bernie Sanders actually defeated Hillary Clinton, because the early exit poll results show him leading her in the percentages.

Well, what the fuck did you think such early results would show?! I mean, you have the youth gap, the enthusiasm gap, the racial gap, and any number of smaller factors that have made exit polling so much more biased in favor of the underdog than in 2008 or any other era! In fact, this is the era where exit polling is more unreliable than at any other time period in history, and that's saying something in the history of exit poll data!

But no. That's not enough for many people. They are still obsessed with the conspiracy theory that exit polls show the real thing. The obsessive, young, uber-enthusiastic, overly-hyper, free-time saturated Bernie supporters get to pretend that by stuffing the ballot box of the exit pollers, they have somehow swindled them and achieved victory over the Hillary people.

Really fools? Really?

And in light of the potential disaster of a Trump presidency, I'm entirely justified in asking, "Et tu, Brute?"

Case in point, is one of the latest vlogs of Lee Camp, the comedian who I think has so much potential, and yet is squandering it on this propeller-hat nonsense. I honestly don't want to dignify repeating the entire thing, but I almost have to, because it's a classic tin-foil-hat sort of rant. If you want to see it yourself, you can see it here. But here are the highlights (which, I'm sorry, is about 60% of his whole vlog):

"First off, they're not 'early exit polls.' They're just, 'the exit polls.' After the machine results come in, the exit polls are adjusted to fit with the machine vote. 

No. They are adjusted to fit the observed demographic data recorded by the exit poller. And it's not adjusted right away because exit pollers can't do that kind of complex calculation in the field. The earliest results are therefore crap.

However, at that point, once they've been adjusted, it's no longer an exit poll. It's just a bunch of sh*t done to cover up possible fraud and ruin the validity of the polls. So every time Nate Cohn says, 'early exit polls' in [his] article, he means the un-manipulated polls - the original exit polls.

Yes, the original, and fucked up exit polls. Lee literally has his shit bass-ackwards. He continues:

And you would think an 'amazing New York Times journalist' would want to know why do they alter the exit polls to fit the voting machines? What good does that do other than to cover the one thing that could tell us whether the machines are working properly? The one thing is exit polls! That's the only way! Does that bother Nate Cohn at all? Does he want any proof these voting machines are accurate? If so, where would he, uh, where would like to get that? Where would he like for that to come from? Maybe he could get it from the same place he, uh, he got this article. He could pull it out of his a**! Really the title of his article should be, 'New York Times reporter says there is no way to verify whether voting machines are accurate! Wow! That is - that is some story! 

Oddly, the question does bother Nate Cohn (whom Lee Camp persistently mispronounces as 'Kahn,' instead of 'Cone.'). That's why the article that Lee cites from below, deals exactly with that question! You can verify that by reading it for yourself, here. It would appear (though I desperately wish otherwise) that Lee didn't even bother fully reading the article he cites.

Secondly, he says Bernie Sanders did better in the exit polls that he did in the final result. That is true. Bernie Sanders did a lot better. In fact, it happened in a lot of primaries. And it often happened way outside the margin of error. The odds of the exit polls skewing towards Bernie and then the results skewing towards Hillary that many times in a row, by chance, is one in 76 billion! Mr. Cohn failed to mention that! 

He failed to mention it because it wasn't relevant. Those figures come from a moon-bat named Richard Charnin, a sincere yet totally fucked-in-the-head conspiracy theorist. But Cohn didn't have to. I already debunked his bullshit here.

Nate Cohn fails to mention the drastic poll location cuts in Arizona and Puerto Rico. The idea that the primary was rigged in multiple ways is, is, you know, inconvenient for Nate.

True, Nate didn't cover that. But again, it was irrelevant. The poll location cuts in Arizona and Puerto Rico were indeed troublesome, but both of these affected a plurality of voters. Some who were unable to vote were Bernie supporters, and some were Hillary supporters. And the ratio of Bernie to Hillary votes among the disaffected would have to be so dramatically one-sided to result in a Bernie victory that it would be nearly impossible. Yes, the polling problems are serious. But one was caused by Republicans who wanted to influence the general election in November (buuuusted!), and the other was caused by a financial crisis which has left Puerto Rico virtually insolvent. These were problems that did not explicitly favor Hillary over Bernie. How could they?

Nate Cohn fails to mention the Harvard study that ranks America the worst in the Western World for fair elections. 

Yes he does. That's because the Harvard study cited many problems with the American electoral system, and exit poll data disagreeing with final results was not among them! Instead our problems are things like gerrymandering, long lines, poorly trained pollsters, voting machines breaking down, voter ID laws, money in politics, unfairness to smaller 3rd parties, etc., etc. Read about that, here.

Nate Cohn fails to mention the 120,000 knocked off the rolls in Brooklyn alone! That's one burrough! In one borrough! Again, any sign of election fraud is not good for Nate's point. And as I've said before, the purging of the voter rolls that happened in New York was no accident. 

Yes, about 126,000 registered voters were removed in Brooklyn. This came to light when some, not all, voters removed from that roll showed up to vote. What happened to these suddenly unregistered voters? They were given a ballot anyway, they voted, and their vote counted!

According to Michael J. Ryan of the New York Elections Board, about 12,000 had moved out of the borough, another 44,000 people were moved from active to inactive voters and an additional 70,000 people were taken off  the inactive voter list. These were people who had been sent a mailer and did not respond. You can read all about that particular news story, here.

Yes, this is troubling. Yes, New York has some cleaning up of its act to do. But no, this did not significantly affect the election's outcome. If it did, it again affected a plurality of both Hillary and Bernie voters. Yes, Bernie Sanders hails from Brooklyn, but Hillary was New York's Senator, too.

Nate Cohn fails to mention the Chicago voting machine audit that showed the machines were wrong in favor of Clinton. When the audit witnesses brought this to the, uh, the Chicago board of elections, their response was, 'Here's how many f*ucks we give!' So that either means they know the machines are rigged for Hillary and they want them that way, or they didn't know they were rigged for Hillary, and they just don't care at all! Either one is not a good thing! 

Actually, that wasn't quite their response. Their response was that the machines were wrong during an audit to measure the performance of the machines, but was not an official count or re-count of the actual vote. This audit failed, and 21 Bernie votes were wiped out and 49 Hillary votes were added in. Read about it here. This is deeply disturbing. I don't know which is worse, the fact that 21 votes were removed from one column or that some number other than 21 got added back in. I have heard of suspicious Diebold machines screwing with the vote before, and I don't like it.

But not to worry. We need to be pissed about the machines all right, but we also know that the Illinois totals were legit, even with this particular vote-tally machine malfunctioning. Why? You will see below.

Nate Cohn fails to mention poll workers in California were instructed to give out provisional ballots like they were fake ti*ts in Hollywood. (Here's you, and you, and you...) Basically, these are placebo ballots. They're designed to make you think you think you voted and go home. Get the hell out of our way! 

I could very easily frame my response to this as a bitter resentment about those whose vote never counted because they never fucking voted when it was supposed to count. You know, the people who didn't show up in 2010 and 2014, and who are now unsurprisingly confused by the ballot process because it's the first time they've actually bothered to see a ballot, and they're now in their goddamned 30's! Well, I won't take that approach. Instead I will remind everyone that the story regarding the ballots was out in the press weeks before the California primary ever happened. Bernie stumped about it at every speech. Everyone who was paying attention had their vote count. Everyone who was not paying attention, some of whom were supporters of Hillary, may have had their vote nullified. But even though some voters were disaffected, they would not nearly overcome Hillary's lead in the state. And even if it somehow overcame Hillary's lead in the state, it would not be enough to sway enough delegate votes to win Bernie the nomination. The most wild-eyed and ridiculous vote estimates are claiming that Bernie won California by something like 65% to 35%, even though pre-election polls showed a Hillary lead, and the most optimistic polls for Bernie showed a statistical tie. Even then, Bernie needed a ridiculously-high percentage of 78% or more to overcome Hillary's delegate lead. He would also have needed similar margines in New Jersey, Montana, New Mexico, North and South Dakota and D.C. That obviously wouldn't have happened. Hillary really only needed 25% of what was left to secure herself more pledged delegates than Bernie. But she not only won at the end, she slam-dunked it!

So complain about California all you want. There were several other states whose outcome you can't contest, and it was over long before then, anyway. (Like, April 26th.) I told you so back then.

Nate Cohn also says, 'All of this starts with the basic mis-conception that the exit polls are usually pretty good. I have no idea where this idea comes from because anyone who knows anything about early exit polls knows they are not great.' This is what they call in the biz, 'horsesh**!' Ask New York Times bestselling author Greg Pallast. 

Ask Greg Pallast what? Lee never really clarifies that part.

Let's assume Nate is right, uh, and exit polls are terrible. Just for a second. Let's assume - exit polls are terrible. Then why would CNN or others report on them at all! Man, Nate! You should do a ground-breaking expose about how every media outlet is reporting totally wrong exit polls! Hold the precious! Someone put Wolf Blitzer back in his cage! Now get back in there! The exit polls are all - then stop reporting on it! Oh, wait! The reason no one is saying that is because exit polls are quite good. Pollsters know how to account for things like the youth vote and the non-response rate. They know how to deal with that. But no. Nate Cohn would rather believe expert pollsters are idiots, and nothing they've ever done is correct. In fact he said, 'There's a persistent decades-long bias in the exit polls - even in the final "adjusted" data...' There's a decades-long massive mistake in exit polls? And no one at the exit poll company, Edison Research in this case, has thought to fix this? Oh, my god! Those guys should be - arrested! And no one at CNN or MSNBC or CBS has ever thought to say, 'Hey! Dear viewer, we're going to be telling you about these exit polls. We're going to be talking about them extensively. But they are tremendously wrong. They are nonsense numbers. My two year old makes more sense. They are the ramblings of an insane man on LSD. Don't listen to anything we are about to say, because the exit poll companies, which have been paid millions to do this, are f**king idiots! And for some reason, despite having decades to fix their problem, they just don't know what to do. They just keep pumping out completely wrong exit polls decade after decade after decade. That's what Nate Cohn wants you to believe. 

The funniest thing about this rant is that the article he cites, which again you can read here, is about that very subject! Nate Cohn explores the inaccuracies of exit polling and how the pollsters estimate the demographics of those leaving the polling station, continuously doing a mental and sometimes physical head-count of old/middle-aged/young, white/black/Latino/Asian, male/female.

I want to give Lee the benefit of the doubt, here. I want to see him come around and succeed as a comic. Maybe even be the next Jon Stewart. But objectively I am forced to the conclusion that he didn't even bother to fully read this article. He scanned it, found a couple of sentences that said what he thought he wanted to hear, and ignored the rest!

Come on, man! You can't be The Man if you don't do The Homework!

Nate Cohn also fails to mention Hillary Clinton did best where voting machines flunked hacking tests. This is backed up by a Stanford paper showing that Hillary did statistically significantly better in states with no paper trail. Man! There's a lot that Nate Cohn missed!

Here, Lee Camp is citing this report from Counterpunch that names several states where Hillary did well. When the article finally gets to naming states, it names nine: South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, Ohio, and New York. Two-thirds of these, the article says, are states with machines that are all or mostly ten years old or greater. These six states are South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, Tennessee, Mississippi and Ohio. So clearly, Hillary had an advantage in these states, right?

Ah, no! Remember that argument Lee Camp used above, where Chicago voting machines in one district failed an audit for accuracy? The implication was that this Chicago district was flipped for Hillary and that consequently Hillary stole the Illinois primary. Well, now in virtually the same breath, Lee is arguing that Hillary did better in states with no paper trail. Now, I thoroughly debunked the bogus "Stanford" paper that claimed Hillary did better in non-paper trail states. (One disclaimer I must share is that the bogus Stanford paper used exit poll data to come up with its Bernie victory numbers. If one uses the actual tally, as I did in my re-calculation, one does not get a Bernie victory no matter which way one twists the numbers. But that was my original point, so I stand by it.)

Here's the kicker: Illinois is a state with a paper-trail! And Hillary won!

So, it was said early on in this blog post, and bears repeating here: On the one hand, Mr. Camp wants to say that bad voting machines stole the election for Hillary in Illinois, but at the same time, he is admitting that Illinois has a paper trail which proves she won.

Lee! My brother! Are you capable of hearing yourself?

And of the six states cited by the Counterpunch article as having outdated voting machines (as if somehow outdated and fraudulent were the same thing), two of them, Massachusetts and Ohio, have paper trials which verify Hillary won fair and square.

And again, as said earlier Lee, how can you cite paper-trail states when that very paper trail doesn't match with the early exit poll data you put so much stock in?! You can't simultaneously argue that exit polls show that Bernie won while at the same time citing paper trails that show Hillary won instead! It proves that your exit poll conspiracy theories are full of shit!

Lee, man, I hope you hear me. Plug your ears with wax and tie yourself to the mast like Odyssius before the siren-song of Richard Charnin's bullshit pulls your ship onto the rocks!

(I know, I know, it was only the crew that put wax in their ears, but you get my point.)


Eric

*