As a California Democrat, you must praise the $15 minimum wage and ignore the evil of Apple - it's all very confusing and very wrong

“No one who works full time should live in poverty,” said California Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León, a Democrat expressing his pride in the new $15.00 minimum wage bill.

I'm a California Democrat and I've always thought the minimum wage should be tied to the consumer price index, but I have a problem with Kevin de León's statement

The "California" part of being a "California Democrat" is important. California is a state that - because of the size of its economy, population, and geographic area - could easily be a nation-state:

• Out of the 200± nations in the world, we would have the world's eighth largest economy. 
• We would be the 38th largest country in population, about the same as Poland and larger than Canada.  
• We would be the 60th largest country in area, about the same as Paraguay and larger than Germany. 

In theory California is a politically liberal state. We Californians live in a "Trifecta" state, meaning that Democrats control both houses of the state legislature and the Governor. A 65% Democratic majority controls the State Assembly and the State Senate.

Our Congressional delegation has a total of 53 members, with 39 Democrats (including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi) and 14 Republicans.

In addition to the Governor, all other statewide elected offices - two U.S. Senators, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, State Controller, State Treasurer, Insurance Commissioner, and State Superintendent of Public Instruction - are Democrats.

Being large in area has even resulted in a California Red-Blue divide with a "Left Coast" and "Inland Right" - here's the map of the last Governor's election by county which is fairly consistent with most statewide elections:

(One piece of trivia is only two Republican members of the House of Representatives have coastal districts, Darrell Issa and Dana Rohrabacher, both of whom a number of times have been panel members on "Real Time with Bill Maher.")
 
Anyway....

As noted in the beginning, the Democratic leader of the State Senate told us “No one who works full time should live in poverty.” Notice that he didn't say "No one should live in poverty." This statement didn't seem to bother anyone in the press but it bothered me.

Because of his phrasing, he seems to imply that someone should live in poverty - specifically all those who don't work full time. And that gets me to my point about the apparent shallowness of our political leadership.

Is a higher minimum wage a Democrat's idea of shifting wealth from the notorious 1% to the working poor???  Did resetting the minimum wage  really deserve all that self-congratulations??? Not in my mind.

Where exactly do these Democrats think most of the minimum wage workers work??? And where do these Democrats think these minimum wage workers shop??? Whole Foods or WalMart??? Do these Democrats really believe prices on things the working poor buy won't go up???

Then there's the problem of who is going to get that minimum wage raise? More than half of those in poverty are in a household where no one has a job, so raising the minimum wage is of no help to them. Many of the working poor are already earning over the minimum wage but are stuck in poverty because they are not employed full time.

All the available statistical data indicates that just 12 percent of the benefit from raising the minimum to $15 will go to poor families, but 38 percent will go to people in families with incomes at least three times the poverty level.

Is raising the minimum wage a bad thing? Of course not. It needed to be done. And much to my surprise it was adopted with a built in future cost of living increase so it won't continue to be stuck at some historical level.

But let's keep in mind that a person working full time for minimum wage will see an increase of $4 a day - less taxes, which start with 30¢ deducted for Social Security and Medicare. Good grief! A minimum wage increase will increase the amount the minimum wage working poor contribute towards the care and feeding of middle income old people like me.

Let's be clear. Even though it needed to be done, an increased minimum wage isn't a solution to what's wrong with our economy. For instance, it certainly doesn't even distribute to shareholders some of that Apple offshore money we all know about.

In fact California's Apple Inc. and its legion of fans are part of what's wrong with our economy.

Apple is California's preeminent company. Democrats by the millions buy and swear by Apple products. And as reported by the New York Times:

Not long ago, Apple boasted that its products were made in America. Today, few are. Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.

Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked.

Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said, according to another dinner guest.

The president’s question touched upon a central conviction at Apple. It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

When an upper middle class Democrat smugly embraces his or her very expensive Apple product, that ultimately confirms there is no personal thought of commitment to make retail spending choices that support the American worker.

Further, as noted recently in many news stories, in its SEC filings Apple reported holding $181 billion offshore, making it among the top American companies doing so. In If Apple didn’t hold $181B overseas, it would owe $59B in US taxes it is noted:

"Losing ... potential tax revenues every year is a very big deal," Neil Buchanan, a professor at George Washington University, said by e-mail. "That money could be used to reverse recent cuts in Head Start, and/or assistance to state governments to fund education at all levels, or increase the Earned Income Tax Credit, and on and on. Politicians who respond to proposals to fund these programs by saying that ‘we can't afford it’ are simply saying, ‘I'd rather cut Apple's tax bill than educate our children.’"

That also is a loss of about $15-20 billion in California tax revenue, money that could have been used to assist the poor.

Which brings me to Bernie Sanders, a Democratic politician who would fit right in the shallow California Democratic political scene. Bernie recently attacked G.E., a company that for a myriad of reasons has completely restructured itself, spinning off or selling its banking, insurance and finance arms and its retail appliance subsidiary. The process hasn't been kind to American workers who were employed in those subsidiaries, angering unions.

There are no angry union voters associated with Apple. Plus a vast number of Bernie supporters have spent a lot of their disposable income on Apple products. So Bernie would have to tread lightly about Apple.

Let's rage against G.E., which last year "repatriated" about $36 billion in foreign earnings from the sale of GE Capital, paying about $6 billion to the Internal Revenue Service. Let's rage against G.E. because it is politically safe. No Bernie supporter is going to be offended because he/she recently bought a GE railroad locomotive or aircraft engine. Bernie just has to avoid pointing out how hypocritical his supporters are if they own anything made by Apple.

His supporters would be, of course, democratic socialists so long as they didn't have to give up their expensive shiny iProducts. But they can't be American socialists and buy Apple products. Apple finds American workers undesirable, studiously avoids paying American taxes, and pays its retail employees less than $15 an hour.

At least the new California and New York $15 minimum wage laws will increase wages paid to many Apple store employees as discussed in Apple’s Retail Army, Long on Loyalty but Short on Pay and Apple Retail Workers Sue Over Unpaid Wages, Overtime. Yep. The Apple Store employee who sold you that expensive shiny iProduct was paid the same as employees at WalMart, another company Democratic politicians feel comfortable criticizing.

Here's a new catchphrase: When you think of Apple think of WalMart.


For our Democrat-led, Democratically-controlled California government, a number of political choices existed to supplement the income of people who live in poverty. One of those specifically would transfer money mostly from the  poor and middle classes to some members of the working poor - raising the minimum wage

Governor Jerry Brown signed California's first-ever earned income tax credit into law in June 2015. Flying under the news radar was an actual new-to-California program to help the poor adopted by California Democrats - and a miserly program it is, estimated to cost $380 million out of a total budget of $122 billion, hardly reminiscent of the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

Let's put this into perspective. In this state run by Democrats, poverty statistics are grim. The state has the highest child poverty rate in the nation. In adopting that EIC law, California joined twenty-five other states and the District of Columbia that have earned income tax credits. You know, left right wing states like Kansas which has had an EIC law since 1998 and Oklahoma which has had an EIC law since 2002.

Since we can't get that tax money from Apple, one way of using the tools of government effectively this year, in 2016, would have been to raise the state income tax rates 4% generating the extra $2 billion and then increasing the state's expenditure on the earned income tax credit by a factor of 5.

Of course, there would be instant opposition from middle class Democrats and, because it's an election year, their elected representatives even though the impact would not be significant for most Californians.With a 4% increase here's what the tax impact would be:

Funding a tax credit increase with a 4% increase in income tax rates would disproportionately take income from the notorious 1%. But it would require a family making about $65,000 a year before deductions to pay about $60 as their share to help the poor, a tax increase which many of these California Democrats would object to even though a family pulling down about $1 million year after deductions would pay $4,100 a year as their share.

Instead of one that is truly miserly, California could have implemented an EIC that broadly supplements the income of low and moderate income families, even better than the federal system. But that would have required our politicians to take risks.

This election year they bravely raised the minimum wage which costs the taxpayers nothing and will cost the 20% of  upper income earners little. Basically shuffling some money around within the ranks of the low-to-moderate income households, this allowed Democratic rank-and-file to feel really good about themselves so that they could reward themselves by buying the latest shiny Apple iProduct.

Maybe both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have exposed the one problem making American government unworkable - the two existing political parties. The 19th and 20th Century populist and socialist ideas being bandied about this election year by Trump and Sanders - protectionist trade policies for example - will not improve the human condition in 2050.

Whether led by Jerry Brown in California or Bernie Sanders in Vermont, I don't see evidence of a Democratic Party that is willing to transform our economic system into something that will work for everyone in the 21st Century. It may be it is time for new ideas from a political party willing to take risks.

In the meantime, I cannot be comforted knowing my state's Democratic party believes the justification for the long-overdue increase in the minimum wage is that "no one who works full time should live in poverty.

The American oligarchy myth reappears as frequently as Bigfoot

Myths are created to explain or mystify. The existance of an oligarchy that controls government in the United States is one such myth that appears more frequently than Sasquatch.

Politicians running for office describe this oligarchy as secretly running government in the United States. This is, of course, utterly silly. But using this myth appeals to voters who apparently don't know anything about how our country is governed. Then again, I have to admit that sometimes I find myself drawn in when I find some public policy offensive, until I think about our government.

We have 50 state governments which are run by 18,749 elected officials most of whom aren't members of anything resembling an oligarchy. (There are another 500,000+ elected local officials but that's another topic.)

Because of the "Tea Party Effect" of the past decade, the majority of these state governments are implementing populist right wing policies.

In fact, 23 of the States are Republican trifectas where both legislative houses are Republican controlled and the Governor is a Republican.

It is important to acknowledge that 34 states have Republican Governors, Republicans control 33 of the state lower chambers and 35 of the state senates (and the Nebraska unicameral legislature).  Those Republican legislatures and governors disable programs like Obamacare and try to implement extremely conservative social legislation.

Because populist right wing activist voters aren't easily distracted by shiny iStuff or the latest organic carrot petfood like lefties, they earned that control by working diligently every week rather than briefly every four years.

Despite the fact that many of my fellow lefties think the populist right is uninformed, the populist right wing clearly understands that the way to take control of government is from the bottom up, not the top down.

The populist right wing took control the House of Representatives, members of which are elected from Districts which districts are designed (gerrymandered) by Republican legislatures.

The fact is that in terms of direct revenue, the federal government collects about $3.3 trillion which is Constitutionally controlled by the House of Representatives, while states and their local governments collect about $3.3 trillion Constitutionally controlled by those Republican State officials.

Presidents don't have the ability to determine how all that money is spent. They can recommend, but per the Constitution federal appropriation measures are initiated in the House of Representatives and state expenditures aren't even in the President's field of vision.

With or without the President's input, the federal government spends about $0.6 trillion of that on military costs, $0.7 trillion on Medicare costs, $0.6 trillion on Medicaid costs, $1.2 trillion in Social Security/retirement payments, etc. State expenditures on education is about $1.0 trillion. Together they spend $0.3 trillion on transportation, $0.4 trillion on low-income programs (welfare, unemployment, etc.), and more than we can imagine.

We lefties every four years see some shiny iCandidate that we just must have as President so that he/she can experience the frustration resulting from our irresponsible neglect of the real, complex American government.

How did your state lower house representative and your state senator vote on your state's participation in the expansion of Medicare or implementation of Obamacare? Do you know?

It's both silly and convenient to blame whatever is wrong with our government policies on some oligarchy. Most of us need only look in the mirror to see what's wrong with our government.

Clinton's email issue and the recent history of the federal government's Swiss Cheese information systems

I was recently asked if the email issue facing Hillary Clinton represents a serious threat to her becoming President.

Since I began working with computers in 1970 and have been using email since the mid-1990's, I had to take some time thinking about this controversy. The problem as it has been described is Hillary regularly, but not always, used a personal email server for State Department business email.

One has to look at the reality that, outside of the military, the federal government's IT systems are generally out-of-date and, based on stories about them being hacked, look more like swiss cheese than bricks. If you are unaware of the long list of U.S. government servers that have been hacked (even interdepartmentally such as when CIA improperly hacked into Senate intelligence committee computers), you really are disconnected from the news.

Anyway, knowing that since the 1980's I have personally owned more sophisticated computer systems than those available at work to almost all federal employees other than those in the military, I felt I needed to take a quick look back at the "big picture" view of the problem rather than from some kind of black and white judgemental view.

Email. According to Wikipedia:

Electronic mail, most commonly called email or e-mail since around 1993, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Email operates across the Internet or other computer networks.

U.S. Secretaries of State:

• January 23, 1997-January 20, 2001 - Madeleine Albright, and her predecessors, didn't use email.
• January 20, 2001-January 26, 2005 - Colin Powell, whose career was in the military where not only was IT funded but employees were expected to understand and use it, received classified information through personal email accounts; stated: "And, in fact, a lot of the e-mails that came out of my personal account went into the State Department system."; stated: "I wish they would release them," Powell said, "so that a normal, air-breathing mammal would look at them and say, 'What's the issue?'"; stated about his complete overhaul of the State Department computer systems:  "What I did when I entered the State Department, I found an antiquated system that had to be modernized and modernized quickly. So we put in place new systems, bought 44,000 computers and put a new Internet capable computer on every single desk in every embassy, every office in the State Department. And then I connected it with software. But in order to change the culture, to change the brainware, as I call it, I started using it in order to get everybody to use it, so we could be a 21st century institution and not a 19th century."
• January 26, 2005-January 20, 2009 - Condoleezza Rice, didn't use email though some staffers did send or classified information through personal email.
• January 21, 2009-February 1, 2013 - Hillary Clinton, used a personal email server which has been criticized; when she became Secretary of State the WikiLeaks problem was just coming to light - you may recall that was when secret official military, State Department, and other security information had been compromised because the federal government computer/records systems were/are inadequately secured and woefully out of date.

As someone who has worked with confidential law enforcement information and with computers for over four decades, in 2009 I would have preferred to use a system I designed over the State Department system. The fact that Clinton could use a non-public personal server was better than what many, many government officials were doing.

Which leads us to this 2016 story FBI Quietly Admits to Multi-Year APT Attack, Sensitive Data Stolen:

The FBI issued a rare bulletin admitting that a group named Advanced Persistent Threat 6 (APT6) hacked into US government computer systems as far back as 2011 and for years stole sensitive data.

The FBI alert was issued in February and went largely unnoticed. Nearly a month later, security experts are now shining a bright light on the alert and the mysterious group behind the attack.

“This is a rare alert and a little late, but one that is welcomed by all security vendors as it offers a chance to mitigate their customers and also collaborate further in what appears to be an ongoing FBI investigation,” said Deepen Desai, director of security research at the security firm Zscaler in an email to Threatpost.

Details regarding the actual attack and what government systems were infected are scant. Government officials said they knew the initial attack occurred in 2011, but are unaware of who specifically is behind the attacks.

“Given the nature of malware payload involved and the duration of this compromise being unnoticed – the scope of lateral movement inside the compromised network is very high possibly exposing all the critical systems,” Deepen said.

In June 2011 an "interesting" email problem developed as described in this article:

The targeted phishing scheme that struck hundreds of top U.S. government officials' personal Gmail accounts was neither difficult to perform nor incredibly sophisticated.

The attackers were able to pose as legitimate, trusted senders from the State Department, Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Defense Intelligence Agency by sending e-mails from what appeared -- even on close inspection -- to be real e-mail addresses ending in familiar domains like state.gov, osd.mil and dia.mil.

To accomplish that, the attackers told their mail server to send e-mails from the spoofed addresses rather than their own. Though most e-mail clients like Gmail or Microsoft Outlook don't allow users to do that, that's one of the fields an administrator of an e-mail server can easily change.

When that's done, it's incredibly difficult or sometimes impossible for a user to know that the sender is really an impostor.

I want to believe things are better now, that when John Kerry became Secretary of State on February 1, 2013, the IT used by the State Department was brought up to current standards by the end of Clinton's term and are constantly being upgraded, that things are at least as reliable and secure as that iPhone the FBI struggled to hack. I want to believe that but one has to wonder about the federal government security systems since the CIA improperly hacked into Senate Intelligence Committee computers but the federal government could not hack an iPhone.

And that 2016 Advanced Persistent Threat 6 story seems to squash my wishes that they are doing better.

One could make an argument the primary legal obligation of officials like the Secretary of State is to protect certain classes of information which could become classified at some future date (no known information that was classified at the time an email was sent is contained in the Clinton email disclosed to date). Public records laws notwithstanding, to have used the government's systems in 2009 through 2013 would seem almost a dereliction of that duty because those government systems were so inadequately secured.

Is this whole controversy just politically motivated or a legal threat to Clinton becoming President? Any good attorney would know that the first hurdle to make a legal case is to prove that Hillary, an attorney herself, plotted to have her email set up on a personal server for a nefarious purpose which is illegal. If real evidence of that intent on the part of Hillary exists, then she has more than one problem.

Absent that evidence, I think a pretty good choice was made to use a private server over the swiss cheese technology used by the government in that period.

Bernie's Wisconsin supporters, House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, job descriptions, and that hopey, changey thing

As Bernie's supporters in Wisconsin beam with delight at their non-accomplishment, I can't help but wonder why two years ago they didn't do something that mattered and unseat the five Wisconsin Republican House members, including House Speaker Paul Ryan. Now that would have mattered!

I start getting confused when I listened to Bernie Sanders and his supporters because they seem so confused about the idea of "job descriptions." They all need to review what the actual scope of work is that is assigned in the Constitution to the President versus that assigned to the Congress and the Courts.

Stop and take a look at this (click here to view a full size readable version):

This helps me to remember a few important things.

For instance, it appears that "We the People" have given Congress the perfect right to determine if the federal government can spend or cannot spend money, or can borrow or cannot borrow money. In fact, if the mood strikes Congress, they can refuse to allow the federal government to spend money.

"We the People" have given the President the legal obligation to "take care that the laws" as adopted by Congress "be faithfully executed.

Further, "We the People" have given the President the right to tell Congress he thinks it is acting incorrectly and he can hope they will heed his advice.

Heck. Even though the President is Commander in Chief of the military, only Congress can provide for the funding and organization of, and rules for, the military.

So pretty much the next President has to depend on Congress to make any significant changes in anything the federal government is doing now and Congress pretty much can, by changing the law, undo almost anything a President attempts to do pursuant to existing laws.

Lastly, almost anything related to education and social policy apparently has been left up to the States. States can ignore anything Congress does if they don't mind missing out on "free federal money", as we have learned from the implementation of the the Affordable Care Act.

That's why it's foolish to vote for Presidential candidates that give you expectations of "hope" and "change" particularly in areas of domestic policy. The President can't do anything without the support of more than half of the members of Congress.

You will be disappointed and have to listen to somebody like Sarah Palin say:

"A year later I gotta ask the supporters of all that, 'How's that hopey, changey thing working out for ya?' "

On the other hand, if all the Bernie activists were to start working on changing the 7,383 state legislators and the 535 members of Congress....

Of course it's easier for a few weeks every four years during the primary/caucus season to campaign for, and donate to, your favorite Presidential candidate than to campaign constantly for, and donate to, 7,918 legislative/Congressional candidates.

In the case of Bernie Sanders supporters in Wisconsin, they couldn't find the time two years ago to unseat the five Republican House members including House Speaker Paul Ryan. Oh, and did I mention that Wisconsin is what Ballotpedia calls a "Trifecta", in this case where the Republicans control both houses of the legislature and the Governor is a Republican.

Yep, good work there in Wisconsin, Bernie. Are you going to be there two years from now and have you pushed your supporters to campaign this year for Democrats in those five Wisconsin Congressional Districts controlled by Republicans?

Oh, right. You and your supporters aren't really committed to helping liberals win Congress or State legislatures. Maybe you all ought to check out the job descriptions. Because what you are doing now, win or lose, is a waste of time. And if you don't think this matters, there is this Wisconsin story:

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) appointed Rebecca Bradley, a far-right jurist, to the state Supreme Court, and it was up to voters to decide whether to give her a full term. Despite her record of extremist views and rhetoric, Bradley prevailed over her rival, JoAnne Kloppenburg, who was supported by Democrats and Wisconsin unions in a race that was technically non-partisan.

So what went wrong for the left? The Washington Post’s Dave Weigel published an interesting report today on an important analysis of the election results.

Bradley won the election, a surprise to Democrats. This morning, some progressives picked a culprit: voters who cast ballots for Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and left the rest of their ballots blank. According to exit polling conducted by the independent group DecisionDesk and BenchMark Politics, perhaps 15 percent of Sanders voters skipped the Bradley-Kloppenburg race; just 4 percent of Hillary Clinton voters did the same.
    
“There was an enormous drop-off,” said Brandon Finnigin of DecisionDesk. “There was a substantial number of voters in that voted for Sanders, then for nothing else.”

It’s important to emphasize that while Sanders has been criticized for raising money for himself, and not for other candidates, Democratic campaign committees, or state parties, he did endorse Kloppenburg over Bradley. Hillary Clinton also focused attention on the state Supreme Court fight, telling a Milwaukee audience over the weekend, “There is no place on any Supreme Court or any court in this country, no place at all for Rebecca Bradley’s decades-long track record of dangerous rhetoric against women, survivors of sexual assault and the LGBT community.”

But in the larger context, the fact that so many Sanders supporters showed up to vote for him, but not other like-minded candidates, reinforces Democratic concerns about the senator’s electoral role. As Weigel’s report added, many Dems are now arguing that Clinton “is investing in the Democratic Party’s success,” while “Sanders, far from a revolution, has built a personal following but little else.”

Despite arguments to the contrary by well-meaning political neophytes, evidence is building that the Bernie Sanders campaign is doing serious damage to the Progressive cause.

Who is this Bernie Sanders you really know so little about? This is the guy you think is so great???

It is unlikely you know much about Bernie Sanders. It is an odd situation as you really know everything you need to know, and a lot you don't need to know, about Hillary Clinton.

If you are, or think you might want to be, a Bernie Sanders supporter be careful of embracing Bernie Sanders' rigid socialist heritage. In 1981 the New York Times became aware of then small town Mayor Bernie Sanders.

"I don't believe in charities," said Mayor Sanders, bringing a shocked silence to a packed hotel banquet room. The Mayor, who is a Socialist, went on to question the "fundamental concepts on which charities are based" and contended that government, rather than charity organizations, should take over responsibility for social programs.

The advantage Bernie has is the lack of vetting regarding his personal life and the source of his ethical and moral beliefs, along with the frequent spin of his real record.

You know a lot about Hillary Clinton's personal life.

But the press has not given you much information on Bernie. As I've remarked previously, on the personal level he is a white grumpy old Jewish man.

You may know he has been married twice but probably don't know much about his first wife.

You probably don't know he did not marry the mother of his only child.

Partly because his campaign hid his history, his personal history did attract attention with the tabloids briefly in 2015 resulting in headlines like this above a story indicating that some Sanders public bios even said his son was with his first wife:

Truthfully, I don't care a lot about Bernie's personal life just like I don't care a lot about Hillary's.

(Apparently many, including a lot of women, care about Hillary's personal life without give a single thought to Bernie's, a fact I find appallingly discriminatory against a woman.)

But I do care about what experiences created the core of his belief structure which leads to his decisions as a policy maker.
 
Consider the article Jail for Stem Cell Researchers? How Bernie Sanders Lost My Vote. Note that the writer acknowledged that after the damage was done, Bernie changed his mind. But I have to wonder what made him vote the way he did initially.

Consider further his votes on the gun control issue as shown here. Start at the bottom and move up through the years until we see the new Bernie.

He is free, of course, to change his mind just as is Hillary. But apparently Hillary doing so is not acceptable to most "Feel the Bern" supporters.

The fact is Bernie's record is not straightforward. What is the source of Bernie's ethical and moral beliefs? That is as hard to determine as the content of Hillary's speeches to the banks. Consider the article My Quixotic Hunt for Bernie Sanders' Kibbutz. At first you might wonder why someone would bother to puzzle over Bernie's kibbutzim experience. The writer explains something that might or might not be of concern (emphasis added):

The name of Sanders’s kibbutz might seem like a minor detail, but it’s important. Among other things, it could build on our understanding of his formative years before he became a populist firebrand filling stadiums across America as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s main challenger in the Democratic primary race. Was it one of the hard-left kibbutzim of that era affiliated with the Marxist political party Mapam? Or was it one of the more moderate socialist communities affiliated with the ruling Mapai party?

A few months after that article was published, the writer published this article Inside the Kibbutz Where Bernie Sanders Lived and Learned Socialism explaining (emphasis added):

Founded in 1935 by Romanian and Yugoslavian Jewish immigrants, Shaar HaAmakim was part of Hashomer Hatzair, a socialist youth movement. The kibbutz was affiliated with Mapam, a political party to the left of Labor.

The kibbutz founders had a strong admiration for the Communist system in the Soviet Union.

“Today we know how many were killed there in the gulags, but when the kibbutz was founded, they believed that from Russia will come the truth,” she said. “They called Stalin the ‘Sun of the Nations.’”

This informs me that Bernie had to have reacted over the years to this heavy ideological experience. But because he doesn't talk about, I don't know how his embrace of democratic socialism was informed by his awareness of Mapam. And I don't know what "take away" he got regarding that political land mine "family values" because:

“The kibbutz was a full commune,” said Irit Drori, a 72-year-old former secretary of the kibbutz. Typical of the time, children were raised in a dormitory apart from their parents, who lived in small apartments.

How did this model affect Bernie's choices about his relationship with the mother of his only son?

Today Sanders disclaims organized religion despite the fact that his Jewish upbringing was traditional for a family of immigrant and first generation Eastern European Jews. As the Washington Post article on his religious leanings indicated "rejecting the formal trappings of religion adds to the unconventional nature of a candidacy that has energized many liberals but could prove problematic in a general election."

Sure, it's a good way to interface with many liberals, but one has to wonder to what degree that background informed his 2003 attitude on Somatic Cell Nuclear Transfer (SCNT), sometimes called therapeutic cloning. From the previously referenced article Jail for Stem Cell Researchers? How Bernie Sanders Lost My Vote:

Do only scientists care about this?

Listen to the late President Gerald Ford:

“Therapeutic cloning ...holds limitless potential to improve or extend life for ...Americans suffering from some chronic or debilitating condition. ...a ban on all cloning...(would mean) slamming the door to lifesaving cures and treatments...

And former President Jimmy Carter ...
“One of the great scientific accomplishments of our time, therapeutic cloning, ... presents promising new opportunities for the treatment of many serious illnesses and injuries... heart disease, Parkinson’s, and spinal cord injury, to name a few.
“I ... oppose restrictions on therapeutic cloning...”

And First Lady Nancy Reagan:
“...Ronnie (President Ronald Reagan, then suffering Alzheimer’s) struggles in a world unknown to me... I am determined to do what I can to save other families from this pain. I’m...in favor of new legislation to allow the ethical use of therapeutic cloning...”

What does this have to do with Bernie Sanders?

He voted to imprison SCNT researchers—and fine them one million dollars.

Hard to believe? Here is his vote.

Bernie Sanders voted YES on “forbidding human cloning for...medical research. Voted to pass a bill that would... punish violators with up to 10 years in prison and fines of at least $1 million.”

The specific bill is H.R.234— the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2003 (Introduced in House) January 8, 2003, by Dave Weldon (R) of Florida.

Not only did Bernie Sanders give his support to this anti-science bill, but he is officially listed as a co-sponsor.

Again, Bernie did subsequently change his position on the matter after the damage was done. But you have to ask yourself what was Bernie's initial gut reaction to the cloning/stem cell research issue and what did the "Feel the Bern" man himself feel .

What it does tell me is that I know less about Bernie than I do about Hillary ...or for that matter, about Donald Trump.

So forgive me for being puzzled about how anyone can "Feel the Bern" because I don't have any idea how Bernie "feels" about most complex social issues, much less about the things for which the President is primarily responsible, such as the use of the military.

What I do know is that Bernie's kibbutz experience was in a communist affiliated kibbutz which will be a fun piece of information for whomever he would run against on the Republican side - it simply is a fact that will not sell well in Ohio in November.

More and more, I fear liberals are about to get Trump or Cruz elected.

The political reality show - how trendsetting California leads the way in irresponsible citizens

For nearly 15 years, California has been a state that has no racial/ethnic majority. In other words, non-Hispanic Caucasian residents ceased to be the majority a long time ago. It is a trend that is slowly becoming a national reality and we're leading the trend.

But there is a disconnect as described in the key findings of a report released Tuesday evening by the Public Policy Institute of California - California’s Exclusive Electorate, Who Votes and Why it Matters.

According to the report:

As California's population continues to expand and change, its voting rolls are not keeping pace and its voters have become unrepresentative of its population.

Voters in California tend to be older, white, college educated, affluent, and homeowners. They also tend to identify themselves as “haves”—rather than “have nots”—when asked to choose between these two economic categories. Nonvoters tend to be younger, Latino, renters, less affluent, and less likely to be college educated than likely voters—and they generally identify themselves as have nots.

The economic differences between voters and nonvoters reflect the growing economic divide that has surfaced as one of the most important policy issues in the 2016 election year—and they have important implications for policymaking. Voters and nonvoters vary noticeably in their attitudes toward the role of government, government spending, ballot choices, and elected officials—all of which come into play during an election year and influence governing choices in the long term.

More significantly in this writer's opinion, voter participation in non-Presidential election years has dropped substantially:

Even in California - a state that is basically a state of voters who vote Democratic - voters did participate in substantially greater numbers to elect and re-elect Barack Obama. It was good fun. Then...

In the non-Presidential election years, those same voters abandoned Barack Obama in droves by failing to insure he had a Democratic majority in Congress. In 2014 California voters led the way in abandoning the Obama Administration.

Presidents, of course, have no real power over domestic policy. They depend upon Congress to adopt policy that  the President's Administration subsequently can implement.

When those voters choose this "feel good" pattern and then get upset because "their" President can't achieve policy changes, they are indicating their absolute ignorance about how their government works.

Unfortunately, this year's primary participation pattern indicates that the enthusiastic Presidential-election-only voters are driving the Bernie Sanders movement. If Bernie were to win, these would end up being the most disappointed voters in decades as they would puzzle four years from now why Bernie couldn't operate as a dictator creating the new domestic policy he promised by Presidential fiat. It would never occur to them that they were the source of their own disappointment. And Donald Trump's supporters would face the same problem.

According to the Institute's report voters who are older, white, college educated, affluent, and homeowners - the "haves" - will determine who sets domestic policy because they register to vote and actually vote in much greater numbers. They won't be happy with Presidential election results - this year particularly, there are no likely nominees representing this group - but they can take solace in the fact that in terms of their interests it won't matter much who is elected President.

So, hey America, let's have a fun Presidential "contest" between Bernie-the-Commie and Donald-the-Fascist. Every four years, The Politics Show will rise up to become the greatest American reality show, one where the viewers decide, providing television networks with great ratings.

And then the viewers can quit watching The Politics Show for four years, again.

The pernicious impact of Gadfly Politicians like Bernie Sanders

Gadfly Politicians are politicians who persistently challenge the political status quo and people in positions of power.

We need these people, particularly in Congress and state legislatures where they can affect domestic policy. Senator Elizabeth Warren is an outstanding example.

But Gadfly Politicians usually have really big egos. Given any significant attention, they run for President. They shouldn't run for President. History tells us that a Gadfly Politician makes a pernicious choice when choosing to run for President because they always take advantage of the weakest elements within our political system.

We Democrats this year have Gadfly Politician Senator Bernie Sanders taking advantage of the weakest elements of the Democratic Party nomination process.
 
The fact is that to date in the Democratic Party Convention delegate selection process:

• The average caucus-selected delegate was selected by 1,285 voters; Sanders has won in 10 of the 13 caucus states.
• The average primary-selected delegate was selected by 8,315 voters; Clinton has won in 17 of the 20 primary states.

I'll explain more about this later.

But first let's look at the history of Gadfly Politicians running for President. I'll do this knowing that history, even recent history, is a despised subject for liberal voters, especially young liberal voters. In recent history Ross Perot and Ralph Nader were Gadfly Politicians who ran for President. Let me begin with Ross Perot.

In the November 1992 Presidential Election Bill Clinton received 43.0% (47,401,185) of the popular vote compared to George H. W. Bush's 37.4%  (39,104,550)  and Ross Perot's 18.9% (19,743,821).

Having won 43.0% of the popular vote Clinton received 68.77% (370) of the Electoral College votes compared to Bush's 31.23% (168) and Perot's 0% (0).

No one knows how the election would have turned out if Ross Perot had chosen not to run. It's likely most of his supporters would have voted Republican.

Democrats don't really remember this election, nor see Perot's choice as pernicious, because we won. (Did we, really?)

On the other hand, a lot of Democrats remember the November 2000 Presidential Election.

Practically every Democrat blames the Supreme Court for stealing the 2000 Presidential Election from Al Gore. America's "news" media focused on the Florida hanging-chad ballot fiasco which was the core of that court decision, thereby diverting attention away from the real reason Gore lost.

No one looks back at the pernicious disruptive impact of the 22,198 New Hampshire voters who, for reasons that defied all logic, cast their ballots not for Al Gore but for Ralph Nader.

Had even half of them come to their senses in the voting booth and voted for Al Gore, he not George Bush would have been elected President in 2000, Florida results notwithstanding.

That is because Bush won 271 Electoral Votes to Gore's 266. New Hampshire's four Electoral Votes went to Bush. Had they gone to Gore, Gore would have had 270 Electoral Votes to Bush's 267. (Without Nadar there is no question Gore would have won Florida, hanging chads and all.)

The likes of Bill Maher and Michael Moore assured the election of George W. Bush by backing Ralph Nader. This was because it never occurred to them that the President of the United States is not elected by ideas nor voters but by Electoral College members. It never occurred to them that Nader-the-Gadfly-Politician's choice to run was a pernicious choice.

And so in 2016 we have Bernie Sanders.

In the political party nomination process, delegates are the party equivalent to Electoral College members. It isn't the popular vote that selects a candidate at the Party Convention, but the vote of the delegates.

Bernie, in a typical Gadfly Politician manner, just "claimed victory" in three states in the Democratic Party nomination process - he won 53 delegates to Hillary Clinton's 19 in those three states.And here's what is wrong with what happened in those states yesterday.

Unlike in states where a primary election is held, the three states involved held "caucuses" where voters who didn't have any real life obligations yesterday went to the Party's parties and cast their votes for the nominee of their choice.

In Alaska 539 people were able to attend the parties. That represented ½ of 1% of the votes cast for Barack Obama in 2012. Sanders was able to get 81% of the delegates from Alaska by winning the approval of 0.4% of the Alaskan voters likely to vote for the Democratic nominee in the November Presidential election.

That's a quirk you might want to say. Bernie also won in Washington State where thousands participated. Yeah....

There were 26,299 participants in the Washington caucuses which sounds like a lot until you learn that 1,620,432 Washington voters voted for Barack Obama in 2012.  Bernie Sanders got 74% of the Washington State delegates by getting 1.18% of the votes cast for Barack Obama in 2012.

In Hawaii it was a little better.  Sanders did win 17 delegates by getting 7.76% of the votes cast for Barack Obama in 2012.

In contrast, in the Alabama primary Clinton won 83% of the delegates by getting 39% of the votes cast for Barack Obama in 2012. This is typical for primary results.

It is ironic that Bernie Sanders today complained about the Democratic Party having Superdelegates, the vast majority of whom are committed to Clinton.

It is ironic because Sanders is taking advantage of the least democratic method of delegate selection process within the Democratic Party system to disrupt things in order to communicate a message challenging the political status quo and people in positions of power.

As I said in my first paragraph, Gadfly Politicians are politicians who persistently challenge the political status quo and people in positions of power. So Bernie Sanders is a Gadfly Politician.

History tells us that when Gadfly Politicians choose to run for President there are always unforeseen pernicious impacts on the best interests of their supporters.

I wonder what those impacts will be and what elements of our population beginning in 2017 will lose significantly in the policy arena because of Bernie's choice to run in 2016?

The poor? Blue collar workers? Blacks? Hispanics? Women?

Are Sanders supporters foolish enough to think it will be billionaires and international corporations?

What do you really know about Benito Mussolini or Donald Trump?

Some liberal alarmists seem to be comparing Donald Trump to Adolph Hitler. This is utter rubbish. No reasonable person can see any resemblance between the two. But consider this resemblance...

Benito Mussolini, remember him? In 1922, while Hitler was giving beer hall speeches and getting arrested, Benito Mussolini became Prime Minister of Italy. Americans seem so fixated on Adolf Hitler that they forget Benito Mussolini. So that we can all be on the same page, let me quote from Wikipedia:

"German-American historian Konrad Jarausch has argued that Mussolini was responsible for an integrated suite of political innovations that made fascism a powerful force in Europe. First, he went beyond the vague promise of future national renewal, and proved the movement could actually seize power and operate a comprehensive government in a major country along fascist lines. Second, the movement claimed to represent the entire national community, not a fragment such as the working class or the aristocracy. He made a significant effort to include the previously alienated Catholic element. He defined public roles for the main sectors of the business community rather than allowing it to operate backstage. Third, he developed a cult of one-man leadership that focused media attention and national debate on his own personality. As a former journalist, Mussolini proved highly adept at exploiting all forms of mass media, including such new forms as motion pictures and radio. Fourth, he created a mass membership party, with free programs for young men, young women, and various other groups who could therefore be more readily mobilized and monitored. He shut down all alternative political formations and parties (but this step was not an innovation by any means). Like all dictators he made liberal use of the threat of extrajudicial violence, as well as actual violence by his Blackshirts, to frighten his opposition."

Anything about that seem vaguely familiar. The man wasn't broadly hated in Italy prior to WWII and in fact was loved by many. He did create a lavish cult of personality. The government crushed fundamental class conflicts in favor of corporatism.

And the trains ran on time.... (That's humor for those of you who don't remember this which sounds "Donald-like.)

Trump in many ways behaves like Mussolini. Consider "QUIZ: Who Said It—Donald Trump or Benito Mussolini?"

Yes, the American oligarchy is a current and immediate problem and billionaire Trump is an outsider who wants to crush that oligarchy.

With that said, I wouldn't put Benito Mussolini nor Trump in office. Not even if I knew Trump would crush that oligarchy with a Mussolini-type Fascist dictatorship adapted to the United States. There are worse problems.

In contrast to those liberal alarmists using the Hitler comparison, some complacent types say that with Hillary or Trump America would end up the same. No, if Hillary wins we won't find America is roughly in the same position we would if Trump wins.

The undemocratic Democratic Party caucus system - outdated and unfair

When I was preparing this update...

       ... I discovered something I really did not understand.

The Democratic Party Caucus system used in some states is fundamentally undemocratic.

Take the upcoming Washington State Democratic Party Caucus system to select 101 delegates to nominate the Democratic Presidential candidate as an example.

Fact 1. This coming Saturday, March 26, for 2± hours beginning at 10:00 am at a designated location for each precinct, Washington residents can gather at the caucuses, they can caucus and then they can vote. There is a caucus for each of the state’s roughly 7,000 voting precincts, which have an average of 564 registered voters apiece. Many precincts join together for caucuses, held in local schools, libraries and community centers. Problem. If you are a 30-something single mother required to be at her retail store job on Saturday to wait on caucus attendees going to and from the caucuses, you cannot participate. If you are a 17-year-old high school student who has never worked a day in your life, you can participate and vote. This system doesn't even pretend to be fairly accessible to everyone.

Fact 2. Anyone can attend, but to vote for presidential delegates you must be a registered voter and publicly attest that you feel like you are a Democrat. If you are not registered to vote, voter registration forms will be available so you can participate. Anyone who will be 17 years five months old or older by the March 26 can register and can vote in the caucuses. Problem. You do not need to be a Democrat, you need only say you are. The State of Washington does not include a party designation in voter registrations, so there are no laws involved.  It doesn't matter. If you have not bothered to register to vote because you don't usually vote, no problem. You can come with friends to the Party's party and they'll register you. They'll let you help pick the Democratic candidate. It's a cool event, so take selfies and don't bother to vote in November or in 2018 when such fun parties aren't held.

The rules are somewhat different in each state that holds caucuses. But don't believe any news stories describing large turnouts in caucus states. Last night one news story reported Long lines, big crowds at Idaho Democratic caucuses. And indeed, for a caucus night in Idaho the turnout was large, a whopping 11.2% of the Idaho voters who likely will vote Democratic in November participated. However, the participation rate in the Democratic primary in Missouri was 51.0%, Alabama 48.7% ... in fact, the lowest participation rate in a primary state was Louisiana with 36.3%.

The fact is that to date the 2016 voter participation rate in the caucuses has averaged 8.8% (using the likely November Democratic voter count for those states). To date the average number of voters selecting each pledged convention delegate in caucus states is 1,372.

In contrast, the likely November Democratic voter participation rate in the primaries held to date has averaged 47.7%. The average number of voters selecting each pledged convention delegate in primary states is 8,315.

Since the caucuses already held have awarded to Bernie Sanders 222 delegates and to Hillary Clinton 145, it is safe to say that the caucus system favors Sanders. After combining the caucus results with the primary results, to date Clinton has had to win 6.9% more voters per delegate than Sanders.

After yesterday, there will be five more states holding caucuses and 18 more states holding primaries. Hopefully because there are Superdelegates at the Democratic Convention some kind of fairness can be achieved despite various state Democratic Party bad decisions.

After August, the national Democratic Party organization needs to assure that the remaining state caucuses are replaced with primaries.

How the exciting Trump - Sanders phenomenon could kill the unicorns

The research and analysis division of The Economist Group, the EIU, a sister company of The Economist British newspaper, actually felt the need to put the number "12" on the risk associated with Trump being elected President.

The number is a function of probability of an event - in this case Trump becoming President, still "moderate" - and the impact - a qualitative judgement of the likely damage to companies' capacity to operate at target profitability. Trump's risk number is a 12 out of 20, That is same as "The rising threat of jihadi terrorism destabilises the global economy", higher than "Chinese expansionism prompts a clash of arms in the South China Sea" which is an 8, and lower than "Beset by external and internal pressures, the EU begins to fracture" which is a 15.

Per the EIU website:

"We are outspoken in our views. Unlike our sister company, The Economist newspaper, much of our work is bespoke for clients and remains confidential. But we share the same fierce passion for independence and integrity. Clients work with us because we are not afraid to tell them what we really think. We never pander to internal agendas or work to buttress some preconceived strategy. We have no vested interest in any specific recommendation—we do not undertake follow-on work to help clients to implement strategies or plan M&A. We just analyse the facts and present our conclusions. We believe that our clients execute better strategies as a result."

The important thing to understand is that their "clients" are major international corporations, financial institutions, and individual investors among the 1%. In other words, everyone the average American loves to hate but on whom the American economy depends.

Donald Trump being the Republican nominee is something American workers and retirees depending on those 401(k)'s and IRA's should worry about. From August to November the economic risk will be considered...risky(?)... by the international investment community. American's don't care, of course. We should, but we don't.

During that same upcoming period problems in the tech economy in Silicon Valley have been forecast in the Silicon Valley Mercury News "Silicon Beat" page with one statement being " if we’re in a bubble, watch for it to burst in the second half of this year" and another statement being "some economists believe Santa Clara County and San Francisco have already seen their best days in the current economic cycle". 

Even this is reported without mentioning the context of the housing bubble in the same area because no one thinks "big picture" in America. We have become the distracted culture - think "squirrel".

Like it or not, the only portion of our economy - the tech sector's "unicorns" - will need investors to think it's a good time to assume greater risk this summer and fall. It's explained like this:

"More than 60 percent of “unicorns” — private companies valued at more than $1 billion — likely will need to raise more capital in the next three quarters. Nearly four in 10 unicorns will need more funds in the final two quarters of this year."

Trump the Erratic, and to a lessor degree, Sanders the Socialist, represent red flags to investors who otherwise would not care about the election. Our economy this summer and fall will need venture capitalist and other investors to pull money out of their secure "mattresses" and gamble it on a stable American economy. Otherwise a meaningful number of tech companies in Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area will fail, while others will make significant layoffs.

The other domino that likely would be pushed over is the inflated housing market in this region. That would hit not only property owners but banks and mortgage companies - underwater anyone?

Americans are foolish, waking up every fourth year to participate in elections after three years of just sitting around fuming while other, more important elections go by. This time that foolishness could trigger a serious economic downturn in 2016-17. It won't be Trump's fault, nor Sanders'.

Not that the "undemocratic" Chinese system seems to do any better at keeping a stable economy. But if you must want us to have a democracy, fellow Americans, you must participate more regularly than you tweet. Otherwise you may kill the unicorns.

How we could accomplish Bernie's goals by giving Finland back to the Russians and drop out of NATO

I've gotten used to many Americans seeing Bernie Sanders' economic proposals through rose colored glasses. But I must admit I was stunned to read a simplistic, uninformed article on The Atlantic's website What Americans Don’t Get About Nordic Countries written by Finnish author Anu Partanen.

It was a defense of Bernie Sanders "socialist" policy proposals. It was an attack on the gentle arguments of Hilary Clinton attempting to lead others to the truth of why "it couldn't happen here."

I feel like someone needs to explain to Ms. Partanen directly, in a less gentle way, why her article represents so much ignorance. So I will make an attempt.

If you examine military expenditures as a percent of government expenditure as has the World Bank,what you discover is that the U.S. spends about 16% on the military, Finland and all Nordic countries less than 4%. If the U.S. were to reduce its military spending to 4%, that would be a simple 75% reduction in military spending. There would be billions available for Bernie's programs.

Why does this matter? Ms. Partanen explains: "When I lived in Finland, as a middle-class citizen I paid income tax at a rate not much higher than what I now pay in New York City." She is correct and like the teenagers and 20-somethings supporting Bernie, she basically thinks we Americans ought to be able to afford key socialist programs such as those offered in the "Nordic" countries.

Ms. Partanen simply ignores recent events this year such as U.S. Air Force to send F-15 jets to Finland and American F-15s to join 1st Finland drill over ‘increased Russian activity' which aren't in her relatively narrow-minded frame of reference. History, after all, should never get in the way of a good argument, as Donald Trump has successfully proved.

Ms. Partanen has written a lot about the Finnish education system but apparently she missed Finnish history going through that system. Russia has invaded Finland numerous times when it was part of Swedish Empire (see Wikipedia entry) and the Russian Empire eventually overpowered Sweden to make Finland a part of its empire in 1809. Currently many civilian Finns are delusional believing either Russia's Putin has no reason to annex it today or, worse, that by themselves they could repel a Russian invasion.

Finland is not the Ukraine, but Russians in Finland constitute a linguistic and ethnic minority in Finland. About 30,000 people have citizenship of the Russian Federation, and Russian is the mother language of about 70,000 people in Finland. And there is the Karelian issue.

Perhaps the U.S. could follow Ron Paul's suggestion and withdraw from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). We would save a bundle in military spending so that we Americans can enjoy the benefits the Nordic folks have. The Nordic folks could decide to pungle up an additional 20% of their GDP to pay us to share our military power. They could do that by doubling their taxes and/or sacrificing those neat benefits they seemingly can easily pay for.

In another blindness to history, Ms. Partanen dismisses Hillary Clinton's argument that folks in the Nordic countries adopted socialist programs in part because of the homogeneity of the population. She points to current problems in Sweden as evidence the Nordic countries are heterogeneous. Is it ignorance or deliberate dissembling that she neatly ignores the fact that the Nordic countries adopted socialistic programs over a half a century ago when, in fact, the populations were homogeneous?

Yes, today homogeneity is not the situation as indicated in headlines such as

• Torn apart by an open door for migrants: Sweden is seen as Europe's most liberal nation, but violent crime is soaring and the Far Right is on the march and
• Migrant crisis: Finland's case against immigration.

And guess what. This month this headline appeared: Decade of struggle puts Finnish tradition of consensus at risk. Maybe Ms. Partanen should take a trip back to do extensive research on what's going on in Finland.

Ms. Partanen was correct in challenging the idea that the Nordic countries don't produce innovation in their private sector. They do.

She didn't mention that the collapse of the Finnish company Nokia had a significant impact on the nation's very small economy, though.

She does mention Sweden's Volvo, but not as another indicator that things are not all perfect. Volvo Cars was purchased by Ford in 1999 and sold again in 2010 becoming wholly owned subsidiary of Zhejiang Geely Holding Group of China. Volvo Aero in 2012 was sold to Britain's GKN Aerospace Engine Systems.

Finally, I'm reluctant to mention this, but Ms. Partanen has left me no choice.

"Nordic."

Is she talking about the Nordic countries? Or perhaps all the members of the Nordic Council? I'm assuming all this Nordic brilliance has nothing to do with the concept of the Nordic race and certainly nothing to do with Nordicism.

Ms. Partanen is pretty clear on the "Nordic countries" repeating the term several times. She's not including the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania who have "observer" status on the Nordic Council.

One of her key points is "Nordic people have made their decisions out of self-interest" and she uses the term "Nordics" a number of times. I think we need some language clarity here. Perhaps some quick research could help.

Do the thousands of Somalis who immigrated to Finland 20 years ago, many Finnish citizens who have children born in Finland, think of themselves as "Nordic" people?

According to the article A New book about Finnish Somalis launched in Finland about a 2015 book titled Suomen somalit – Finnish Somalis - tells us that "young people born in Finland have difficulties in finding their true identity. Even though they are born in Finland and have lived in the country all their lives, they do not feel that the society accepts them as Finns in the true meaning. At the same time they do not feel as Somalis either, as they might have never even visited the Somalia."

Perhaps Ms. Partanen should find a way to co-write a book with Nura Farah, the the first author of Somali background to publish a novel in Finland. As noted in one article about Farah "Her new home was in the grip of a deep recession, and according to Farah there was a fair amount of racism. At school she was bullied because of her skin colour, and her classmates called her ’Neekeri’ (a racial slur that can be translated as ’nigger’ or ’negro’), rather than her first name, Nura."

I have a feeling that these Somalis do not think of themselves a "Nordic." Are the thousands of asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan who arrived in Finland in 2015 intent on becoming "Nordic"?

In other words, the Nordic people are just now discovering what a country of people of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds is. And it is doubtful they live in countries that today would for the first time embrace broad socialist proposals. They are having a hard enough time keeping right wing parties from gaining control.

Ms. Partanen's article which obviously "Feels the Bern" and criticizes Hilary Clinton has much in common with most articles of that type written by Americans. Her special point is that the Nordics are a great example for Americans.

She lacks just one thing - an understanding of the truth of her own history, culture, politics, and economics. She shares that with most American writers of similar articles, and with Donald Trump.

Hillary's Michigan Loss: Ignore the exit polls and start worrying, Democratic Party officials

The press today is citing exit polls on what happened in the Democratic Primary in Michigan. When Democratic voters in Michigan were queried about their votes with pollsters giving a set of rational issue-based reasons to choose from, those voters appear to have voted after thoughtful consideration.

Sure, let's all be foolish about this. When voters are queried by the press about why they have voted for a candidate, the one thing they will not be discussing is the gnawing prejudices that exist deep in the back of their minds.

The demographic background of each Michigan County is far more enlightening.The numbers are only just beginning to be released and the detailed, precinct-by-precinct, analysis statewide isn't going to be available for probably a week. But here's what I do know about the Michigan vote.

Bernie Sanders won big in Western Michigan. A good example is Kent County, the County Seat being Grand Rapids. The makeup of the population is 80% White, 10% Black, 2% Asian, 8% other race. The turnout overall was 39% of registered voters. Of the total votes cast in Kent County, 58% were in the Republican Primary, 40% were in the Democratic Primary. Bernie received 62% of the Democratic vote, Hillary 37%. Look at the population breakdown. Look at the fact that the majority folks in this County did vote Republican.

The only county in Michigan Hillary won by a meaningful margin is Wayne County, the County Seat being Detroit. The makeup of the population is 52% White, 41% Black, 3% Asian, 4% other race. The turnout overall was 31% of registered voters with an alarmingly low turnout in Detroit of 25%. Of the total votes cast, 33% were in the Republican Primary, 67% were in the Democratic Primary. Hillary received 60% of the Democratic vote, Bernie 38%.

The pundits are now saying Hillary is only winning in the South as last night she won Mississippi with 83% of the vote while Sanders got only 17%. However, of the votes cast in Mississippi 64% were in the Republican Primary.

No Electoral College votes from Mississippi will be cast for a Democratic Presidential candidate in November.

Michigan is a state that frequently votes Democratic in Presidential elections. It is a critical state for the Democrats to win in November. The problem to overcome is represented by the fact that 1.32 million Republicans voted last night, compared to 1.12 million Democrats. If the Democrats lose Michigan in the November Presidential Election they will have lost the Electoral College Vote.

It's time for Democratic Party leaders, and perhaps the few members of the press who aren't morons, to focus on the truth. Whether in the North or the South, Black Democrats are voting overwhelming for Hillary. Suburban White Democrats are voting for Bernie. Like it or not, the Democratic Party also has been split by the 2016 Primaries and the split is racial.

In November Sanders' suburban White Democrats will not carry Michigan if Black Democrats are demoralized and don't vote. I don't see how a grumpy old white guy socialist candidate who would be a President with a House of Representatives dominated by racist Republicans could give Black Democrats any hope that progress can be made. The same should be true for women Democrats.

If the Democratic primary results in Illinois and Ohio follow similar demographic lines, President Donald Trump, anyone???

No, folks, that's not what Super Tuesday's election results mean

According to the press, Donald Trump may have the Republican nomination wrapped up after his big victories on Super Tuesday. After all, he now has pledged to vote for him in the Republican Convention 27.3% of the delegates needed to become the Republican candidate.

Yeah, that's right, the guy many are proclaiming has already won only has 27.3% or 338 of the 1,237 delegates needed to nominate someone. Meanwhile the other candidates have between them 31.5% or 390 of the 1,237 delegates needed to nominate someone.

Essentially, after the first ballot the other candidates could release their delegates to vote for anyone whose name is put forward in nomination - like Mitt Romney, for instance. Perhaps that may explain why he suddenly has become the spokesman for the anti-Trump wing of the party.


Now on to the Democratic candidates. A total of 2,382 delegates are need to nominate someone. Right now the indication is that Hillary Clinton has 609 pledged delegates or 25.6% while Bernie Sanders has 412 delegates or 17.3%.

But one has to keep in mind that the Democratic Party has designated 712 delegate seats out of the 4,763 as "unpledged", sometimes called "Superdelegates." These delegates decide on their own who to vote for in the Convention. They are prominent Democratic Party members:

• 20 distinguished party leaders (current and former presidents, vice-presidents, congressional leaders, and DNC chairs) (DPLs)
• 21 Democratic governors (including territorial governors and the Mayor of the District of Columbia)
• 46 Democratic members of the United States Senate (including Washington, DC shadow senators)
• 193 Democratic members of the United States House of Representatives (including non-voting delegates)
• 437 elected members of the Democratic National Committee (including the chairs and vice-chairs of each state's Democratic Party)

Of these, 453 have committed to vote for Hillary Clinton, 19 for Bernie Sanders, with 239 still expressing no opinion at this time.

Perhaps correctly, the press adds those committed Superdelegates to the candidates' totals. With those added, Hillary Clinton has 1,062 or 44.6% of the 2,382 delegates needed while Bernie Sanders has 431 or 17.3% of the delegates needed. Still, Clinton isn't even halfway to having the delegates she needs and getting the rest will require a long steady campaign perhaps all the way to the June California primary.

But as I wrote three days ago, for the Democrats that isn't the most important information coming from Super Tuesday.

As I indicated the outcome in four states would provide some idea of the problems facing the Democratic candidate in getting enough Electoral College votes to be elected President. Those four states which are unpredictable in November Presidential elections - Arkansas, Colorado, Tennessee, and Virginia - did vote on March 2 pursuant to each state's rules.

I'll start with Colorado. The Republicans have a tightly controlled system for selecting delegates in April that has nothing to do with their 948,658 registered voters. The state had 918,259 registered Democrats. They held caucuses. A total of 121,198 or 13.2% participated in the caucuses. Bernie Sanders did get more people to the caucuses than Clinton. But we have no relevant information from the Democratic caucuses turnout regarding who the 9 Electoral College votes will go to from Colorado.

In Tennessee Clinton won the Democratic vote with 223,577 votes of the 336,012 Democratic votes cast. But Trump won the Republican vote with 309,948 votes of the 794,012 Republican votes cast. Cruz go 195,587 of the Republican votes. The Democrats are very unlikely to pick up Tennessee's 11 Electoral College votes.

In Arkansas, Bill Clinton's home state, Hillary Clinton won the Democratic vote with 142,798 votes of the 206,756 Democratic votes cast. Trump won the Republican vote with 129,245 votes of the 347,377 Republican votes cast. Ted Cruz got 119,707 Republican votes. Whether the Clinton's could get the 6 Arkansas Electoral College votes is very doubtful, though possible, if Bill and Hillary spent a lot of time there. But that would be pretty risky.

This leaves us with Virginia. Hillary Clinton won the Democratic vote with 503,991 votes of the 779,934 Democratic votes cast. Trump won the Republican vote with 355,961 votes of the 1,024,933 Republican votes cast. Marco Rubio got 327,045 Republican votes, coming close to Trump. This indicates that there is at least a chance Clinton could get the 13 Virginia Electoral College votes if Trump is the Republican candidate.