Tag: Donald Trump

Unfair Reform?

Donald Trump, Presidential, Social Security, illustration

I am sure we all think it would be great, other things being equal, to try to make many of life’s unfairnesses less … problematic. But most grown-ups understand (or used to) that “life isn’t fair” is a truism for a reason.

So when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized his competing GOP hopefuls for wanting to reform Social Security and other so-called “entitlements,” I was unimpressed.

“Every Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security,” Trump said last year, referencing Medicare and Medicaid as well. “And we can’t do that. And it’s not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now all of the sudden they want to be cut.”

Not fair.

Well, yeah.

But the unfairness is not in fixing the system by raising retirement ages, etc. The real injustices lie in the past, with previous fixes and … “unfixes” — that put us in the fix we are currently in.

And not fixing it now will lead to further, more obvious “unfairness” in the future.

Trump is just avoiding responsibility. By not addressing the problem honestly, we do not make things or keep things fair. We make things worse.

Peter Suderman notes that Chris Christie’s endorsement of Trump, last week, puts the lie to the New Jersey governor’s much-ballyhooed seriousness about entitlement reform.

Well, yeah.

But no major politician wants to handle it. For the problem shows how deep the unfairness runs in the American system.

That would require real leadership.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, Presidential campaign 2016, Social Security

national politics & policies political challengers

Trump Card Trumped

Trump, popularity, polls, president, 2016, illustration

According to poll after poll, Donald Trump is winning. He’s a winner.

… of a plurality, anyway.

Admittedly, he lost the Iowa caucuses to Sen. Ted Cruz. But he rebounded with a sizeable plurality victory in New Hampshire. Now Trump leads in South Carolina polls.

Among Republican primary voters, that is.

It is a different story in the public and private polls I’ve seen, ones surveying the entire electorate — Republicans, Democrats and independents. Consider the new poll of swing-state Virginia voters by the Judy Ford Wason Center for Public Policy at Christopher Newport University.

Again, Trump garners a plurality of Old Dominion Republicans, leading next closest contender, Sen. Marco Rubio, 28 to 22 percent. On the other hand, among the entire voting population, a disquieting 64 percent — nearly two out of three voters — view The Donald unfavorably.

Put another way, Trump’s winning in un-favorability. Only Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton are seen anywhere near as negatively, at 58 and 59 percent, respectively.

Can Trump turn that around? Not likely. Folks already know him. He has the highest name recognition of any candidate — higher than Hillary Clinton.

“Almost all the voters have an opinion about Donald Trump,” explained the Wason Center’s Dr. Quentin Kidd, “and twice as many see him in an unfavorable light as view him favorably.”

Trump starts at a “disadvantage,” according to Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight, because “Most Americans just really don’t like the guy.”

To appoint future Supreme Court justices, one must win the General Election with all the people voting, not merely the GOP nomination.

According to poll after poll, that candidate is not Donald Trump.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, Presidential campaign 2016

Accountability general freedom ideological culture moral hazard nannyism national politics & policies

Establishment, Always Establishment

Post author By CS Admin
Post date February 10, 2016
2 Comments on Establishment, Always Establishment

Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, primary, election, Common Sense

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders winning in New Hampshire is as good an indicator as any that Americans — or at least Live Free or Die staters — are tired of the bipartisan Establishment. Victories for a billionaire iconoclast and a self-designated socialist.

Both are “players” in their distinct ways: the former a publicity-minded entrepreneur who boasts of having been a briber of politicians, the latter as a long-term senator with a consistently pro-government-growth voting record.

But both are plausibly outsiders, too. Trump speaks off the cuff and in an entertainingly anti-PC manner, and Sanders proclaims a love of government so strong that he willingly embraces a label with a very negative record throughout the last century.

Indeed, Trump’s many words and Sanders’s One Word serve to negate these two candidates’ “establishment feel.”

But if elected, would either rock the Establishment boat?

Based on his voting record, Sanders is liable to continue the bipartisan “War, Always War” strategy abroad, along with the same domestic policy of “Spend, Always Overspend.”

That is Establishment.

Trump is less of a warmonger than Sanders, oddly enough: The Donald has criticized the Iraq War, argued that Russia should take care of its nearby Syria problem, and offered that China should worry about North Korea … in other words, he can conceive of foreign areas being outside of American purview.

But Trump is as protectionist as Sanders, and loves taking property from private individuals (with “just compensation”) and giving it to developers … like himself. You cannot get more Establishment than that.

Still, New Hampshire voters know something, and that something is undoubtedly that something must change.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Presidential campaign 2016

folly general freedom ideological culture insider corruption national politics & policies political challengers

The Anti-Republican Party Establishment

Post author By CS Admin
Post date January 26, 2016
6 Comments on The Anti-Republican Party Establishment

Cruz, Trump, Republican, primary, nomination, president, campaign, Common Sense, Paul Jacob, James Gill, illustration

Yesterday, we decried the rigged superdelegate voting process used by establishment Democrats to Hillary Clinton’s benefit — and party members’ detriment. Today, we switch parties to find the GOP establishment in full panic mode, so terrified at the prospect of a Ted Cruz victory that they’re now rallying around Donald Trump.

Republican Party stalwart Bob Dole, the 92-year-old former Senate Majority Leader and a 35-year Washington insider, called Sen. Cruz an “extremist.” A Cruz victory would lead to “cataclysmic” losses for the party, Dole contends, and by the way … “Nobody likes him.”

“Nobody in Washington,” Dole means.

As for Trump? Dole thinks Trump could “probably work with Congress, because he’s, you know, he’s got the right personality and he’s kind of a deal-maker.”

The right personality?

Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, a fixture in Congress for the last 41 years, introduced Trump recently by clumsily validating Trump’s campaign slogan: “we have an opportunity, once again, to make America great again.”

And again.

According to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, “Trump does not have any particular enemies down here. I don’t think anyone gets up in the morning and is irritated with him. That’s not how it is with Cruz.”

Former GOP congressman turned lobbyist Vin Weber says that the establishment’s hated of Cruz “has forced some people to look past all of Trump’s issues and think about what he could offer.”

Offer?

The Republican establishment really, really, really despises Sen. Ted Cruz. But they can live with Donald Trump.

Hmmmm … advantage Cruz.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, Presidential campaign 2016, Republican, Republican Party, Sen. Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz

Accountability ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies

This is Yellow Journalism

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Washington Post, Bias, video, Common Sense, illustration

Weeks ago, I took Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to task for behaving like rude, dishonest children — she, fibbing about Trump being used in an ISIS recruitment video; he, using a vulgar term to describe her 2008 defeat by President Obama.

The mainstream media is joining the bad behavior, copacetic with “Clinton avoiding the same kind of treatment as Trump,” Callum Borchers informs in his piece headlined: “Does the media have a double standard on Hillary Clinton’s and Donald Trump’s embellishments?”

Short answer: Yes.

When Mrs. Clinton made her false accusation, ISIS was actually using her husband, former Pres. Bill Clinton, in a recruitment video. Even with this man-bites-dog angle — astoundingly underreported — Borcher predicts that Hillary will “emerge from this media brush fire unsinged” in no small part because there are “enough … supportive media outlets.”

Now the Post reports that a new 51-minute “propaganda video released by the Somali-based al-Qaeda affiliate al-Shabab includes a clip of Trump calling on the United States to bar Muslims from entering the country …”

The story’s lede smears Mr. Trump with guilt by association:

Last month, The Washington Post reported that white nationalists have begun using Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump as a recruitment tool. Now, the polarizing Republican presidential front-runner has become the recruitment fodder for another group of marginalized extremists.

The Post’s previous article found white supremacists trying to somehow glom on to, but clearly being rebuffed by, Trump. Repeatedly associating the two is gutter journalism. Should we hold our breaths for stories about members of the Revolutionary Communist Party favoring Clinton or Bernie Sanders?

Spare us.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016, Washington Post

folly ideological culture national politics & policies

This Is Not Politics

Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, politics, children, illustration, Common Sense

First, Hillary lied. She said that ISIS was using Trump in terrorism recruitment videos. The Donald responded with contemptuous ridicule, using a vulgar word for her 2008 defeat by Barack Obama.

Then, the Democratic Party presidential contender got all teary-eyed and said we had to treat each other with more respect, be nicer.

This is presidential politics?

Mrs. Hillary Clinton and Mr. Donald Trump are both addicted to telling whoppers. Their “stretchers” are now the everyday stuff of our nightly news.

Mrs. Clinton’s fact-less charge that Trump was being used in recruitment videos is all the more ridiculous considering that Mr. Clinton does star in such a video. Maybe she meant merely that Mr. Trump’s call for barring Muslim immigration will help ISIS paint America as anti-Muslim, telling the tall tale because, well, it “ seems true.” Even if it isn’t.

In this, she differs not a whit from Mr. Trump, who not too long ago “remembered” “seeing” “thousands” of “Muslims” in “New Jersey” celebrating the fall of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001 — a video he cannot produce, either.

Politicians hyperbolize from bigotry to factoid all the time. What’s new is Trump’s foul calumny, in response, and Clinton’s painting of Trump as a bully for belittling her. That’s not how I remember politics. It seems new to adult debate.

But it isn’t new to our experience. It’s children bickering on the playground, then whining and lying all the way to Teacher. Or even Home.

Responsible adults don’t believe every charge lodged by little boys and little girls.

Like Donny and Hillary.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Presidential campaign 2016

First Amendment rights folly general freedom ideological culture national politics & policies privacy U.S. Constitution

Our Masters’ Malign Agenda

Post author By CS Admin
Post date December 8, 2015
18 Comments on Our Masters’ Malign Agenda

Constitution, Bill of Rights, Politics, Terrorism, populism, Common Sense

Reacting to terrorism, President Obama’s first thought? Scratch out the Second Amendment and the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of “due process” from the Bill of Rights. Why? To advance his mania for gun control.

Now comes Republican front-runner Donald Trump, one-upping the president. He wants to block any Muslim from entering the U.S. — whether immigrant, refugee or even tourist.

That’s after advocating a government database for tracking American citizens who are Muslim.

Terrorism is winning.

Ignore the Constitution? Disregard individual rights? Demonize an entire religion? Thus our leaders play into ISIS’s hands, encouraging Muslims worldwide to see the U. S. as their enemy.

Cooler heads must prevail. Or else. A Republican friend posted on Facebook that he “would gleefully vote for Hillary Clinton over Trump.” I just cannot muster any glee.

In fact, I’m beginning (again) to wonder if John Fund wasn’t on to something last June, when he wrote in National Review that “just maybe Trump is a double agent for the Left.”

Think “Manchurian Candidate.”

“It’s all very un-American,” my friend Suhail Khan, an American Muslim and conservative activist, told the Washington Post. “Our country was based on religious freedom.”

No more?

Surely, our experiment in limited government has not ended.

But we need to get serious.

We must demand a real commitment from any candidate seeking the country’s highest office. To be entrusted to execute our union’s laws, he or she must actually demonstrate allegiance to the rule of law.

That is, a willingness to fit one’s ego within the confines of the Constitution.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags constitution, Donald Trump, Fifth Amendment, first amendment, Hillary Clinton, Islam, terrorism

free trade & free markets general freedom national politics & policies

Why Protectionism

Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, economics, free trade, collage, photomontage, Jim Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

Why do so many people (especially politicians) favor high tariffs, “managed trade,” embargoes and domestic subsidies, all of which — first as “mercantilism” and then as “protectionism” — have been debunked, repeatedly (demonstrated as ineffective economic policy), since Adam Smith’s famous 1776 attack?

Economist Donald Boudreaux, in an excellent defense of economic principles, explains why the Bernie Sanderses and Donald Trumps of this world support anti-free trade nostrums — out of sheer ignorance:

The typical politician opposes free trade because he … doesn’t understand that the purpose of trade — any trade — is to enrich people as consumers and not to enrich people as producers. He doesn’t understand that exports are a cost and that imports are a benefit; he thinks that it’s the other way ’round. He doesn’t understand that the specific jobs lost to imports are not the only employment consequences of trade; he doesn’t understand that trade also “creates” jobs in the domestic economy.… He, in short, doesn’t understand the first damn thing about the economics of trade.

But what protectionists do understand are direct appeals to “good results” (like more and better high-paying jobs). The fact that their proposals throw a monkey wrench into the diverse mechanisms of trade, yielding worse results?

They just don’t see them.

Why? Because real economies are complex, and protectionists lack the science that would help them trace the consequences of their policies.

The fact that they’ve focused their whole attention on the business of “governing,” and making simplistic, direct appeals to people who are also uneducated in economic principles, doesn’t help.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, economics, free trade, Presidential campaign 2016

Common Sense First Amendment rights folly national politics & policies political challengers

Trump Speech

Donald Trump, free speech, law suit, collage, photomontage, James Gill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

What is free speech? Is it what presidential candidate Donald Trump is trying to squelch?

Last week Trump’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to the Club for Growth. The Club, a well-known 501©4 limited government advocacy group, has put out a number of public service messages (“ads” as they witlessly call them in the politics biz — they are in truth anti-advertisements) criticizing Trump for past high-tax/tax-hike stances.

“Rest assured,” the lawyers wrote,

we will not sit idly by and allow special interest groups and political action committees like yours to defame Mr. Trump and cause damage to his reputation and business interests by intentionally disseminating libelous statements you fully know to be untrue and, even worse, continue to purposely mislead the American people for your own financial gain. Toward that end, Mr. Trump has authorized our legal team to take all necessary and appropriate actions to bring an immediate halt to your defamatory Attack Ads.

The lawyers, like Trump himself, must know that the case has zero merit. As Jonathan Adler explained in his coverage, what we have here “is commonly known as a SLAPP suit — a suit that’s designed to shut people up. ‘SLAPP’ stands for Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation and the idea is that well-financed plaintiffs can use lawsuits, and the threat of suits, to discourage speech that they don’t like.”

These days, abridgments of free speech typically come from government coercively stamping out peaceful speech.

Meritless lawsuits, and their threat, are another and quite distinct anti-free-speech affront.

Would you trust anyone who employs such a method?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags 2016 Presidential race, Donald Trump, lawsuit, Presidential campaign 2016, SLAPP suit, speech, threat

Common Sense general freedom ideological culture media and media people national politics & policies political challengers too much government

Trump Blot

I’m almost professionally required to say something nice about Donald Trump — because mainstream media feel professionally required to ridicule him. So here goes: he’s doing us a great service in his presidential run.

Trump’s sort of a bung puller; he’s unstopped the cork of polite political society, and shown the massive voter dissatisfaction by giving more realistic voice to just how stupid government is. “Really stupid!”

But, beyond that, where does he stand? On too many issues, that’s murky. For economist David Henderson, a friend of mine from way back, this shows promise.

Henderson is a free-market economist. He’s not into the whole warfare/big stick bullying that some conservatives channel from the first Progressive president, Teddy Roosevelt. Trump, writes Henderson, stands out, by not having “foreign policy advisers.” Which Henderson regards as “refreshing, given the hawkish views of the vast majority of his Republican competitors.”

Henderson also acknowledges Trump’s downsides, including “Trump’s claim, in 2011, that the U.S. government, having won the war in Iraq, should have taken their oil.” This nationalist plunder idea is evil on its face. And disturbingly retro, harkening back to the days of rapine and pillage.

Understandably, Americans fixate on the man’s “charisma.” Should that make us comfortable? Of Max Weber’s three types of authority (traditional, charismatic, and rational-legal), charismatic is the least predictable, least stable. People will follow too far those they love too much. Or find too entertaining?

Trump serves, for now, as a sort of Rorshach inkblot test. What you see depends on your hopes, fears, or the context of Trump’s candidacy, as you understand it.

For my part, I don’t see an accountable proponent of responsible, limited government.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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