Thursday, November 17, 2016
If Republicans want to force through massive tax cuts, we will fight them tooth and nail.
Senator Elizabeth Warren
If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.
Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983
Immigration without assimilation is invasion.
Suggestion of the day.
SUGGESTIONS for our new president:
1. Put a list of the 100 things Trump hopes to accomplish on a site labeled “Trump’s 100 goals” and update it regularly to show what he has accomplished.
2. Put a list of what Obama promised to do when he was elected and describe what he did for each item.
Emma L. Cate
It is very likely the first item has been done and is waiting for inauguration; the second may not have been thought of, and coupling them is a good idea. Thanks.
On another thought would be to tax money that is held off shore by American corporations at 10% and use the money for funding for infrastructure or debt reduction. See what happens when you retire, you have soo much time just to think of stuff. ;^)
Tim Bolgeo
Coupling the two might make the tax cut more palatable to Democrats (although presumably not to Ms. Warren); we do have infrastructure problems. Alas, the Trillion spent on stimulus since the 2008 collapse didn’t go to infrastructure improvements; indeed, from here at least, it’s hard to tell who did get all that money. It’s gone and I don’t know where. I make no doubt the incoming administration could keep better track of it; but writing into law some allocations of the new taxes would make sense.
Suggestions for incoming government
I think ADA is here to stay. I expect you have experienced the more beneficial aspects of ADA because of your reduced mobility. ADA works very well when dealing with new construction; we adjusted and now it is ingrained in the design. Where it drains us is when dealing with existing structures. Places that can be retrofitted economically have been completed. So exempt existing structures from ADA compliance.
Greg Brewer
I like that. ADA has its good points but a federal rule protecting the rights of drunks against being fired for being drunk on duty seems a bit extreme; but altering ADA is not simple and will not happen quickly. This could be implemented quickly, and would have an immediate economic effect without being a drastic change in ADA.
I have often pointed out that free trade does promote economic growth: we have the numbers. We also have the remains of our industrial centers, and the rust belt, where once we had thriving industries; we have people who have left the work force and are not officially unemployed – yet they are unemployable and unwillingly on welfare, absorbing tax money paid by those who are employed.
I asked my friend Dr. David Friedman if he had any suggestions for the incoming President. As always, he was forthcoming:
Unfortunately, the best advice I could give he can’t follow, politically speaking. That’s to declare unilateral free trade, the policy of Britain in the 19th century and Hong Kong in the 20th. That would not only be good for the country and set a good example for the world, it would eliminate the current practice of using free trade negotiations to pressure other countries to adopt policies popular with American voters in exchange for the agreement.
Beyond that, most of it is obvious. Support vouchers in D.C.. Get the education bureaucracy to stop pressuring universities to use a civil standard of proof in sexual accusation cases. Permit interstate health insurance sales.
One piece of advice which he might or might not listen to … . A brain drain is a problem when you are the country it is draining out of. It’s a good thing when you are the country it is draining into. If a hundred thousand or so of the smartest people in India and China migrate to the U.S. that is a good thing both in the short run and the long run. In the short run it means we have more smart computer people, more competent physicians. In the long run it means that the average intelligence of the population goes up, even if not by very much.
David
We also have:
Free Trade
I wouldn’t be surprised if all these free trade deals did lead to more rapid economic growth, when measured on a global scale. But the benefits were not so evenly distributed, both among competing countries, and among the workers in our country. Clearly, the damage to blue collar factory workers was considerable. The changes produced by globalization happened too rapidly, relative to the ability of many people to make adjustments to their careers.
Unfortunately, history does not allow do-overs. Even if renewed tariffs or renegotiated trade agreements does shift the balance back toward the US, you know perfectly well that only a fraction of the jobs that left will be coming back, due to automation. And part of the cost of leveling the field for US workers could well be overall slower growth globally. Whether or not the US could escape the impact of a further global slowdown isn’t clear to me.
I will also point to recent article in the New York Times which discusses a little mentioned trend, namely that global trade has been flat, or declining recently:
Craig
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/31/upshot/a-little-noticed-fact-about-trade-its-no-longer-rising.html
I do remind you: increased productivity leads to a higher paid work force, but a more productive work force produces more goods with fewer workers: that is, increased productivity per worker makes your nation more competitive as compared to other nations, but increased productivity does not automatically lead to new jobs: without economic growth it has the opposite effect. Increased productivity – robots – can lead to new jobs, but generally that is in new firms. Regulations that discourage startups mean fewer new firms, and in a time of growing capability of robots – increased productivity per human worker – those regulations generally guarantee first unemployment, then what Mrs. Clinton called the deplorables.
Free trade and automobiles and the Iron Law
Jerry,
I’m currently a retired union member, and I was one for most of my working life since I got my first job at GM in 1968, right out of High School.
Speaking from my personal experience of five years (68-73) working at GM, the union (UAW) killed the American auto industry. No one in the entire factory ever worked more than about 70% or 80% of the day. The final hour & a half or two hours of every shift were spent hanging around, reading, BSing, playing cards, drinking coffee and complaining about Japanese cars. When I first started, I tried to work all day. My co-workers sabotaged my equipment, put parts into bins instead of onto the conveyor lines to slow me down and physically threatened me. The UAW supported and defended these actions.
I gave up – I knew I wasn’t going to work there long — I was going to college at the same time — so I just did my quota each day and spent the rest of the shift studying.
My brother is 15 years younger than I. He also worked for GM and the same dysfunction was also apparent to him.
Management might have been out of touch too, but the unions played their role as well.
Praying for Roberta,
Best,
Tom Locker
Bottom-up view of US auto industry
Dr. Pournelle:
Having a two-generation intimacy with the auto industry, I can vouch for the effectiveness of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy in Detroit, although my second-hand experience was in Cleveland.
My father worked at the Ford engine assembly plant for 30 years and my brother for two while he saved money for college. There was an inverse relationship between the ascendency of the United Auto Workers union and the quality of US automobiles.
When my father started at Ford in the early ’50s, the balance of power between Ford management and the UAW favored management. As the US became richer and more cars sold, Ford’s goal transitioned from producing quality cars at a profit to producing a profit for the least investment.
Along with this, the UAW’s goal changed from protecting its members to enriching and protecting itself. Union feather-bedding grew to nearly unsustainable proportions, both in union management and on the factory floor. Union management was populated by people who’d never set foot on a factory floor, while nearly illiterate line workers filled the ranks of the hourly workers, workers with an entitlement attitude.
My father, who worked in maintenance, told stories of equipment going offline because of parts pilferage and workers finding out-of-the-way places to drink, gamble, or sleep.
My brother’s job was to break down engines that were inoperative and send the parts back through the assembly line; about one in five from his experience in the ’70s. He told stories of missing valves, pistons installed incorrectly, and hamburger wrappers and other trash found inside cylinders.
All the while, wages and benefits skyrocketed as the UAW became de facto management. He told stories of engines with missing parts because female line workers were put into positions where they did not have the strength to install parts, so they just didn’t. Incompetent employees were unfire-able, instead reassigned to less-and-less demanding positions.
Lay-offs were obsolete. Unneeded employees were put in “employee banks” where they were supposed to show up for “work” and sit in employee lounges on the off chance they might be again be needed. Guess how many actually showed up. Those actually laid off were paid 75-percent of their base pay not to work.
My family did benefit from the rising wage and benefits tide, moving from the lower middle class to the upper middle class, but the joke was that when my father died and his retirement benefits ceased the average cost of a Ford dropped $3.
It’s little wonder that better, less expensive, higher-mileage offshore cars brought an end to Detroit.
Pete Nofel
Electoral College
In the aftermath of Mr. Trump winning the Presidential election despite having lost the popular vote, there has been a lot written and said lately about States Rights, Federalism, and the structure of the electoral college. While not a deep student of history, I have at least a basic understanding of how the system we have in place came to be. I have an appreciation of how the system was intended to provide protection for the interests of smaller states, and thus gives them some advantages, such as equal representation in the Senate, and extra weight in the electoral college. (The extra weight they have in the House of Representatives seems an aberration of changes made in the early 20th century, and not the handiwork of the founding fathers.)
What occurs to me as I watch this debate play out is that just because something was once historically relevant and important, doesn’t mean it is always remains relevant or important. This was driven home to me recently, reading an essay in National Review in which the author suggested that the popular vote shouldn’t be as relevant as the electoral college, and offered this observation:
Do we want a president who wins by running up the score in one or two states, or do we want a president who wins by garnering narrower victories in a wide array of states?
This was jarring and somewhat bizarre question, because, in terms of my political identity, I have never ever thought of myself primarily as a Resident of the The State of XX, where XX is the code that terminates my address. I have always thought of myself of as an American. The state that I live in just happened to be a side effect of other more important decisions that I have made in my life, or that my parent made. I was born in Wisconsin, and since have lived in Ohio, Missouri, Michigan, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Minnesota, and then again Ohio. At no point have I ever felt a strong political affiliation or association to any one of those states. Thinking about my news viewing habits, I am far more knowledgeable about what is happening nationally, than I am about local and state developments. I watch mostly national news, read mostly national newspapers. Perhaps this is because the longest I’ve ever lived in any one state was 14 years, and many times my periods of residence have been much shorter.
Perhaps if I had been born in 1750, in the one of the original states, spent my whole life that state, fought in their militia as part of the Revolutionary War, and paid attention mostly to Local and State politics, I would have a different feeling about the importance of States Rights. But that hasn’t been my life. Nor has it been the life of most of my family or colleagues.
So the idea that it should matter to me that a candidate was “running up the score†in another state just seems foreign and bizarre. At a visceral level, I find it hard to accept that a vote cast in California, or New York, or Texas should matter less than a vote cast in Wyoming, or Montana, or the District of Columbia, just because it might have mattered in 1776.
It seems an inevitable consequence of a highly mobile society that people will come to expect that basic rights, and the value of their vote, should remain constant as they move around the country. In particular, as mobility homogenizes the nature of the country, as every state become ethnically and politically more diverse, organizing the electoral college around state geography seems to be more and more antiquated. The big divides these days are not so much defined by state geography as by the divide between rural and urban. So, despite the historical usefulness of the electoral college, it does seem that outcomes like this will eventually have a negative effect on public perception of the legitimacy of the outcome.
Craig
the Electoral College
Dear Dr. Pournelle:
I have encountered people saying that the Electoral College ought to be abolished. Obviously the votes to do it aren’t there. But practicalities aside, the usual argument for doing so seems to be that the Electoral College sometimes produces results different from the outcome of a nationwide popular vote; and this seems to be taken as self-evidently unacceptable.
Really? The United States is a federal state, not a unitary one. In a unitary state, the population votes as a whole (if voting is allowed, of course). But a federal state is made up of subunits, and those subunits have to have some separate influence on political decisions, or they’re no more than a facade. So the claim that not following the nationwide popular vote seems to be equivalent to the claim that federal states are always unacceptable, and only unitary states are legitimate. Do the people saying this really want to claim that every federal state on Earth is illegitimate? It seems a bit arrogant to prescribe that every state must have the same structure, no matter what its founders proposed or its people consented to.William H. Stoddard
Precisely.
I was born in the Depression (1933) in Louisiana ad we moved to Tennessee when I was a very early age. My Tennessee grade schools had a year of state history as well as a year of national history, and I certainly thought of myself as a Tennesseean as well as American.
There would have been no United States save for the Connecticut Compromise that gave the smaller states some means of resisting the majority votes; just as debate on the electoral college is moot since ¾ of the states will never voluntarily ratify any such amendment. We’ll amplify this subject later, but does it not occur to you that the big problem is we have given the Congress too much to do? Too much power over our personal lives? Made us in our personal lives subject to one (national) rule to fit all, when there are many different and defensible opinions about what are good laws and what are mere opportunities for bureaucrats to mess about in our affairs?
Mr. Trump has often pointed out that Roe v Wade imposed a national rule on abortion, but if that ruling were overturned, the subject would be the responsibility of the States; meaning that local majorities would govern a matter on which there seems to no overwhelming agreement? The result would be different laws in different states; precisely as intended by the Convention of 1787 which did not grant Congress any power over abortion whatever. (Or over a very great many subjects which are now controlled by the Federal Government, making it easier for lobbyists: they only have to give money to 100 Senators and 435 Representatives, not importune 50 different state legislatures. I invite you to contemplate this.)
The War of Northern Aggression
(To distinguish from current calls for repetition of the late unpleasantness…)
Jerry,
As you know, the Civil War was fought for many reasons. Slavery was one, but states rights, and protests of tariffs and taxes on southern agriculture that benefited the industrializing north were among the reasons. The latter part gets forgotten.
I’ve grown up with the Stars and Bars all of my life, and have seen it as a symbol of states rights and defiance against federal overreach, not of racism. Of course, other people will differ in their interpretation of any symbol (just as the swastika started as an Indian subcontinent peace symbol – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swastika).
Coming from southern Kentucky, I also had relatives who fought on both sides of the “late unpleasantness” (my great-great-grandfather apparently crossed into Tennessee and fought as a Confederate, and one of his brothers died in a Union prisoner of war camp; at least one of their uncles supported the Union); as appropriate, I tend to decorate their grave markers with the Confederate battle flag.
Jim
Tariff very much so. A tropic we will discuss another time.
Dear Jerry Pournelle:
Anthropologists distinguish between ‘honor culture’ and ‘dignity culture’. In honor culture, there are superior persons with honor, and inferior persons without; one must earn the privilege of being treated with respect. In dignity culture, respect is a right, had equally by all; it denies that there are superior or inferior persons. Honor cultures tend to exist in places without prosperity or reliable rule of law; dignity cultures tend to exist in places with those blessings.
Therefore dignity culture denies that there are superior and inferior persons; yet considered as a culture, it is manifestly superior to honor culture! And conversely, honor culture demands that all under it must earn the privilege of being treated with respect, but when compared to dignity culture, and if you go by results, then it has clearly not earned that respect!
There is a chicken-and-egg problem here; are honor cultures that way because they’re too poor to afford a working rule of law, or do they lack effective rule of law because they’re that way? Does dignity come from prosperity, or does prosperity come from dignity? I suspect that the flow of causation is to some extent circular.
This also involves a fallacy of composition. Characteristics of the individual are not necessarily characteristics of the society.
– paradoctor
I will publish this with comments, but I do not concede your “therefore” that the second paragraph is proven by the first.
Query: is an army company an honor or a dignity community?
The Dignity/Honor Paradox
I’m not sure. Ask an anthropologist. Within the company, it’s all for one and one for all; that’s dignity. But rank does have its privileges; and the company’s purpose is to rudely defend the honor of the nation. So equality and inequality intertwine; the altruism of individuals supports the egotism of the collective.
Maybe I was too judgmental about entire ways of life. But where would you rather live: Sweden or Pakistan?I grant that the ‘therefore’ between paragraphs 1 and 2 is incomplete; the causation probably also flows in the reverse direction. Folk in lands without law or wealth must defend their honor; and honor culture in turn ensures that the land acquires neither law nor wealth. (This is a memetic/cultural variant of the Iron Law of Bureaucracy: cultural memes have a vested interest in the evils that make them necessary.)
And conversely: does innovation and prosperity support a culture of inherent worth, or does a culture of inherent worth support innovation and prosperity?
Like many paradoxes, the Dignity/Honor Paradox can be darkly comic. Consider the spectacle of the Limousine Liberal, who preaches equality and thus attains superiority. Now consider his dark shadow, the Deplorable, who preaches the existence of inferior persons, and proves it by his example.
I will do this as a dialog, but I do not accept that dignity and honor are mutually exclusive or collectively exhaustive. Of course I would rather live in Sweden, and would have even in the days of Gustav Adolphus. Of course my ancestors left to go defend Normandy for the French.
Perhaps ‘dignity’ is not the exact term. “Principle” may be closer, or “self-worth”. “Sticks and stones can break my bones but names can never hurt me”; not an honor-culture concept. And just as honor culture sins by pride, self-worth culture sins by vanity.
I agree that opposite concepts can coexist in societies and even individuals. Honor is emotional, dignity is intellectual; and emotion and intellect often coexist at cross-purposes in individuals – and even societies.
Mexico’s Diplomatic Network
You have this quotation you like to use, “immigration without assimilation is invasion”. Through that lens:
<.>
Mexico has 50 consulates in the United States, the largest diplomatic network deployed by any single country in any other worldwide.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, there were 11.6 million Mexican immigrants in the United States in 2014. Of those, 5.8 million were undocumented, according to the Pew Research Center.
There are also more than 23 million U.S.-born people of Mexican origin, most of whom could be eligible for dual citizenship under Mexican law.
</>
A diplomatic network of 50 locations that services 11.6 million of its citizens and potentially 23 million more dual citizens? This is significant.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,
Joshua Jordan, KSC
Percussa Resurgo
The current immediate policy is to deport all the illegal aliens convicted of felonies, and to do so as soon as possible. Since there are up to two million of these this will be complex and expensive. It will also cause a fair amount of internal stress and disaffection, but there is an overwhelming popular agreement that it should be done – extending well into the American-Latino communities who are the victims of many of the crimes that got these people convicted in the first place. What will be done with “status offenders” – those whose only known crime is being here without papers – particularly those who were brought here well before age of consent – will be subject to considerable discussion and I suspect negotiation, and won’t happen immediately anyway.
I repeat, voting without citizenship is a federal crime, and how much of that actually happened will influence the debate on status offenders.
The Media’s Mea Culpa
The NYT’s soul searching would be rather more believable if they had a soul.
Cordially,
John
NYT “rededication”
The thing about the NYT “rededication” is that after going powder puff easy on Obama for eight years and pushing Hillary and trashing Trump, they will “rededicate” and trash Trump for four or eight years. They’re not apologizing, they’re laying groundwork in the guise of being almost an “apology”.
J
Porkypine’s Analysis:
(MK 2 revised version) (long) Porkypine on Brexit Effect & Vote-Manufacturing
(Rewritten, as I noticed a pattern in the iffy states after sending the
original.)
Jerry,
Indulge me while I start this off with a bit of bragging on election predictions I made privately to you the night before. They’re also useful background for what follows, but yes, I’m enjoying myself for a moment here.
“If the current RCP state-by-state poll averages are dead-on, Clinton wins tomorrow, 272-266. In the national polls, her lead has crept back up to 3%. I’m deeply suspicious of that number, as it includes a whole bunch of recent-days 4, 5, 6, 7% leads from polls that had her up by double digits two weeks ago. But, it doesn’t matter if it’s 3% or (my
guesstimate) 1-2%, other than for her odds of winning the popular vote while (one hopes) losing the election.” (I was too conservative – Clinton’s latest popular vote lead is 0.6%.)
I went on to describe the amount of “Brexit Effect” (under-polled Trump
voters) needed for him to win as being around 1% if there were no surprises whatsoever, but multiple points if any losses in the nominally closest states caused him to need some of the less close ones – Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan, etc.
Yeah, I wimped out and put his overall odds of getting enough Brexit Effect at 60:40 against. But I called the course the win actually took pretty closely – there was 0.9% Brexit Effect in RCP’s “Battleground States” overall, with 3.1% in Pennsylvania and 3.7% in Michigan enough to overcome the anti-Brexit surprise losses in New Hampshire and Nevada.
(I’ll freely admit that Wisconsin also coming in at Brexit 7.5% just gobsmacked me. Do NOT mess with Scott Walker.)
Cheating!
All that said, let me bring up one earlier prediction I also made to
you: That the election would hinge on how much Trump’s Brexit Effect might exceed the Dem “margin of cheating” – that typical 1-2% edge in close elections they hold in states where they have major vote-manufacturing operations. Places where it can look close, till the late tallies from Chicago or Philadelphia come in with just enough graveyard votes for a D win.
My view, FWIW, is that this goes on in a LOT more places than Chicago and Philadelphia these days. Any place local law enforcement turns a blind eye (IE Dem-controlled urban enclaves) there are dead people voting, illegals voting, busloads of people from the next state over voting, collected loads of mail-in ballots marked straight D, voting machines mysteriously tallying D votes for R button pushes… There’s a reason DOJ has been rabidly anti-citizenship proof for registering and anti-ID requirement for voting for the last eight years. (Try that on Customs or the TSA.)
Ah, but can I prove it? Well, I was watching the numbers pretty closely this year for other reasons, but I had that in mind too.
Clue #1: The final RCP national average showed 2.7% Brexit Effect. The ten best-polled battleground states (nobody really expected Minnesota or Missouri to flip) averaged 0.9% Brexit effect, only one-third as much.
Say WHAT?!
Now, states vary. (That’s a major reason for having them.) But you’d think that a sample of ten states out of the fifty, as “battlegrounds”
by definition right across the middle of the political spectrum, polled intensively by most of the same national pollsters, really ought to come in reasonably close to the overall national poll average.
But we see almost two points less Brexit Effect in the core battlegrounds than nationally. Both sides were campaigning all-out there, which should roughly even out. Even with the huge effective sample sizes, I’d not be surprised by a point of slop. But two points?
What else might account for near two points of pro-Dem difference in the most closely-contested states? Hmmmmm.
Not proof yet, no. But indicative.
Diving deeper into the numbers, there’s more.
A given number for Brexit Effect is actually the difference between two
numbers: How much Trump exceeded his final RCP poll average, minus how much Clinton exceeded hers. Tabulating those numbers separately, by state, gets interesting.
Nationally, Trump’s final RCP poll average was 42.2%, his (latest) national vote total 47.1%, so he beat his final polls by 4.9%.
Clinton’s final national poll average was 45.5% (a 3.3% poll lead) and her latest vote total 47.7% (an 0.6% popular vote lead) so she beat her final polls by 2.2%.
Keep that national ratio in mind: Trump beat his final polls by 4.9%, while Clinton beat hers by 2.2%. (The difference is our 2.7% national Brexit Effect.) Call it a ratio of a bit over 2:1, magnitude roughly 5% to 2%. Again, you’d expect the closely-polled middle 20% of contested states to at least be close to this, with some individual state variations. You’d expect.
What you actually get is this:
(TBPb is % Trump Beat his Polls by, CBPb is % Clinton Beat her Polls by, states are listed in Brexit-Total order,and a fixed-width font makes it all come out readable.)
Brxt TBPb CBPb
MI 3.7 5.6 1.9
PA 3.1 4.5 1.4
NC 2.8 4.0 1.2
FL 1.1 2.5 1.4
GA 0.9 2.1 1.2
NH 0.4 4.6 4.2
AZ 0.1 3.2 3.1
VA 0.1 2.7 2.6
CO 0.0 4.0 4.0
NV -3.2 -0.3 2.9
Again assuming about a point of slop, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina all look reasonable in light of the national numbers. Brexit totals are all close to the average, Beat-Polls ratios all somewhat over 2:1, Beat-Polls magnitudes all within a point or so of 5% to 2%.
(Regarding PA, turnout in Philly was not outrageous – looks like the Philly machine may have assumed it wasn’t really needed. Ditto Detroit.)
Florida and Georgia both come in at Beat-Polls ratio a bit under 2:1, with magnitudes also a little low, and Brexit totals quite low – I’d guess some possible Broward County/Fulton County effect.
Arizona, New Hampshire, Colorado, and Virginia, now, there’s something quite odd going on. All show roughly equal Trump and Clinton Beat-Polls-by totals. Where’d the extra point or two of Clinton votes come from? Maybe peculiar local demographics. Maybe not.
Some thoughts:
– Clintonista Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe restored voting rights to
60,000 felons right before the election, over 1.5% of the total voting.
– Colorado has universal vote-by-mail, lax controls over who can collect and return ballots, and a largely Dem-ruled metro area around Denver. CO looked to be in play late, so local Dems had reason to make sure it wasn’t.
– Half of Arizona – Maricopa County – has on-request mail-in ballots, a now-Dem controlled city (Phoenix) at its core, a one-day judge-imposed window when bulk collection of mailings wasn’t a felony, and an all-levels Dem effort to beat Sheriff Arpaio (successful.) Arizona as a whole still went for Trump, but don’t count on that lasting on current trend. There was also (premature) talk of AZ being in play, and optimistic local Dems were apparently trying hard to tip it this time.
– New Hampshire has easy absentee ballots, was a crucial state in the
270-268 Trump narrow-win scenario (his only obviously plausible path to winning as of Tuesday morning) and also hosted a close Senate race.
Given those, I wouldn’t rule out a significant Dem vote-manufacturing project in NH even if it does seem out of character.
As for Nevada’s results, all I can say is it looks as if something deeply wrong happened in metro Las Vegas last Tuesday. Harry Reid may be soon finally gone, but his legacy lives. Nevada was, FWIW, also a crucial state in the Trump 270-268 narrow-win scenario, and also had a close Senate race.
Conclusion
Widespread fraud proven? No. But far too probable, by the numbers and the circumstances, to be ignored.
I’d say that merely stopping DOJ’s current war against states trying to ensure their elections are kosher – this DOJ notoriously opposes proof of citizenship to register and proof of identity to vote – isn’t enough.
I’d really like to see a post-cleanup DOJ protecting the rest of our voting rights by actively going after local vote-fraud operations in Federal elections. (This may take a thorough purge of the pro-fraud ideologues currently running that part of DOJ.)
Given that some of these probable fraud efforts may have been done in a last-second rush, I’d think New Hampshire and Colorado – both states only became close late – might be fruitful grounds for investigation.
And given the sheer egregiousness of the results, Nevada might also.
Porkypine
Afterthought: No campaign has unlimited resources. OH and NC Clinton’s campaign apparently just conceded. Organized cheating in FL, NV, and NH makes sense as attacks on the most vulnerable parts of Trump’s narrow path to 270. CO and VA would have been insurance against his taking the most obvious alternatives. And GA and AZ were just an attempt (delusional, it turns out) at spiking the ball, running up her totals.
Trump meanwhile punched deep into their rear and took PA, MI, WI, and almost MN. Looks like they never really believed any of those places were actually at risk. If they’d gone all-out in PA and MI instead of digressing to AZ and GA… Hmm. WI gives Trump the 270 win anyway, 10 EV countering loss of NH’s 4 and NV’s 6. They’d have had to have the imagination to go all-out in WI as well.
No surprise – it looks like Clinton was done in by complacency and lack of imagination.
Thank you. This warrants study.
It is important to investigate voter fraud involving illegal – undocumented – aliens because that really is an act of invasion and it is a federal crime. I suspect some of the places where it was widespread (if it happened) would not affect the electoral college vote, but will affect the narrative about “we won the popular vote” – whish is about the only consolation Democrats have from the train-wrecks for them that were the last two elections. Governorships, statehouse, mayors, even dogcatcher elections…
Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.
