10. Dissidents in American Politics: Beliefs, Facts, and Future Shock

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"Dissidents" are people who actively challenge established doctrine, policy, or institutions. This post is the tenth and final in a series of 10 posts regarding the confusing "revolutions" of the 2016 Presidential Election.

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That there is a chance the United States could experience an authoritarian revolution shouldn't be a surprise, as was recently pointed out in in The New York Times article Why We Need to Pick Up Alvin Toffler's Torch:

More than 40 years ago, Alvin Toffler, a writer who had fashioned himself into one of the first futurists, warned that the accelerating pace of technological change would soon make us all sick. He called the sickness “future shock”....

...Future shock wasn’t simply a metaphor for our difficulties in dealing with new things. It was a real psychological malady, the “dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future...“unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it...millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments.”

...It seems clear that his diagnosis has largely panned out, with local and global crises arising daily from our collective inability to deal with ever-faster change.

But even though these and bigger changes are just getting started...futurism has fallen out of favor.

The article was written by author Farhad Manjoo who wrote the book True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society in which he explains that the advent of the popular internet "when we dissolved the mainstream media into prickly niches, and when each of us began to create and transmit our own pictures and sounds, we eased the path through which propaganda infects the culture."

He points out instead of becoming better researchers because of access to more sources, we choose from the confusing milieu a few sources that reinforce our view of the world. We have ceased to seek objective knowledge in favor of virtual worlds supported by propaganda.

And so we have an early 21st Century Voter Revolution against the American Academic Oligarchists. It is dependent upon and stimulated by propaganda selectively gathered using technology created by American Shareholder Capitalists to create and reinforce beliefs.

Manjoo in another article explains why in much of the rest of the world the American Shareholder Capitalists have created a potential revolution against themselves:

There is Facebook co-opting your news media. Amazon is dominating book sales, while YouTube and Netflix are taking over television and movies. And the smartphone, arguably the most important platform for entertainment in this era, is controlled almost entirely by Apple and Google.

This backdrop of social anxiety explains why Europe is on the march against American tech giants. European governments have been at the forefront of an effort to limit the reach of tech companies, most often through privacy regulations and antitrust investigations....

The European efforts are just a taste of a coming global freak-out over the power of the American tech industry. Over the next few years, we are bound to see increasing friction between the tiny group of tech companies that rule much of the industry and the governments that rule the lands those companies are trying to invade. What is happening in Europe is playing out in China, India and Brazil and across much of the rest of the globe, as well.

...Over the last decade, we have witnessed the rise of what I like to call the Frightful Five. These companies — Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent — have created a set of inescapable tech platforms that govern much of the business world. ...These companies thoroughly dominate the news and entertainment industries, they rule advertising and retail sales, and they are pushing into health care, energy and automobiles.

“What’s happening right now is the nation-state is losing its grip,” said Jane K. Winn, also a professor at the University of Washington School of Law, who studies international business transactions. “One of the hallmarks of modernity is that you have a nation-state that claims they are the exclusive source of a universal legal system that addresses all legal issues. But now people in one jurisdiction are subject to rules that come from outside the government — and often it’s companies that run these huge networks that are pushing their own rules.”

The rest of the world through their nation-states are beginning to respond to the threat. "The Ugly American" now has the face of an iPhone, the threat of a privacy-stealing Google, and the depth and brains of a Tweet. Unlike the average American, the rest of the world factually experiences the impact in its full context.

Whether it's the Koch Brothers or Apple and Google using Congress, it is a fact that American Shareholder Capitalists have successfully bypassed the natural response of the American Academic Oligarchists to limit or tax excess corporate retained profits and regulate the operations of and limit the size of international corporations.

The political result in 2016 America has been the demagoguery of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

What we needed were 21st Century anti-trust laws and tax laws that heavily penalize Shareholder Capitalist bad behavior not reward good behavior. Those laws can only come when the revolution is also against members of Congress and state legislators.

That is not the revolution of the Romantic Populists.

It was the revolution of the Mythical Reactionaries. But they were confused by the belief, the mythology, that every American through diligence, hard work, and an adherence to "Christian" values can live a secure rewarding life - they believed the fictional "Horatio Alger story" despite all the factual evidence to the contrary that has existed since the Pilgrims landed.

In the middle of it all, Trump’s politics of aggrieved white nationalism - labeling black people criminals, Latinos rapists, and Muslims terrorists - succeeded because the party’s voting base was made up of the people who themselves or their parents in 1964 opposed civil rights and who left the Democratic Party for the Republican Party of Barry Goldwater.

Capitalizing on the frustration that belief inherently creates, the conservative Shareholder Capitalists have hijacked the Mythical Reactionary revolution to achieve their own ends eliminating two centuries of balance between the Shareholder Capitalists and the Academic Oligarchists.

An authoritarian revolution establishing a President who uses force to bring things into alignment with that Horatio Alger mythology seems the easy way, another untruth seen as fact by 21st Century Americans who have all learned through electronic media - movies, TV, and games.

It is simply fact that the only way Shareholder Capitalist Donald Trump, who knows next to nothing about government, could somehow restrain his fellow Shareholder Capitalists is through the authoritarian revolution he has promised his dissident Mythical Reactionary followers.

If, as demanded by Bernie Sanders' Romantic Populist followers, Hillary Clinton is going to significantly rein in American Shareholder Capitalists she will need new Congressional majorities, and new state legislators and new governors, all put in place by Bernie's Romantic Populists working diligently over the next four years.

The only alternative would be if events force Hillary Clinton to take even a limited authoritarian stance similar to that of Franklin Roosevelt who had to threaten the Supreme Court with a court packing plan.

The real question is: How do we undo the negative impacts of the Information Age?

We have to understand that the Information Age has effectively traded the pre-20th Century anonymity for the constant gathering of information on our daily activities which is being used by

• Shareholder Capitalists to make greater profits creating greater economic disparity between the "Stinking Rich" and the rest of us and is now about to extend the effects of automation into the Information Age workforce, eliminating jobs for tech workers; and 
• the Academic Oligarchists to find potential threats to public safety creating greater risks of misuse to restrict basic freedoms. 

Can these negative impacts be undone without eliminating the benefits of the Information Age? That is the question to be answered by Americans who will be living in the second quarter of the 21st Century. But there are questions to be answered in 2016.

Does the iPhone generation really want authoritarian Presidential intervention in American society? Will a majority of  voters really want to risk having President-for-Life Donald Trump find the answers for them?

We'll find out in November. But if you didn't see it, you should watch Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech in its entirety:

9. Dissidents in American Politics: The Prospect of Revolution and Tyranny In the United States

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"Dissidents" are people who actively challenge established doctrine, policy, or institutions. This post is the ninth in a series of 10 posts regarding the confusing "revolutions" of the 2016 Presidential Election.

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Historically when either a populist or a reactionary movement actually becomes a disruptive, forceful revolution, tyranny results.

In the case of a tyranny by revolutionary Romantic Populists, effectively you have a true socialist revolution where private property is confiscated by the government - taken from Shareholder Capitalists and everyone else.

This occurred in Russia and China in the 20th Century. The United States under The New Deal effectively avoided this by heavily taxing Shareholder Capitalists at a time when such a revolution was feared in the United States.

Ultimately the Russian Revolution was abandoned (the Wall was torn down) though an authoritarian regime replaced the Communist government. The Chinese Revolution has continued though in terms of economics it has evolved.

In the case of a tyranny by revolutionary Mythical Reactionaries, the government establishes laws making illegal any behavior or activity that deviates from an acceptable norm including making it illegal to use private wealth to further deviation from the acceptable activity norms.

This occurred in Italy and Germany in the 20th Century, and has been in put into effect in many countries by religious movements controlling the government. These tyrannies frequently end in warfare, either in an international war or civil war.

Somehow, the American Revolution in the 18th Century avoided the negative results of the French Revolution. That may have been because forerunners of modern Shareholder Capitalists and Academic Oligarchists managed to maintain control.

A careful reading of the American Constitution, without any of its amendments, pretty much tells us that it was written to extensively protect private property ownership (including patents as United States patent law is authorized by the U.S. Constitution, Article One, section 8, clause 8) and trade (the Commerce Clause), while assuring the propertied, educated elite control of the Presidency, the Senate, and the Supreme Court,  none of which were to be directly elected by the people.

The Brexit vote offers a warning to both the Academic Oligarchists and Shareholder Capitalists everywhere. That vote was not necessary nor normal in the United Kingdom. The Academic Oligarchists found themselves in a dispute even among themselves because of European Union policies. Prime Minister David Cameron and others decided to hold that vote in order to protect their positions in government.

As a first reaction to that vote, Cameron resigned and many Shareholder Capitalists are contemplating having some of their business operations leave the United Kingdom. Apparently the "Leave" campaign worked.

Which brings us to Donald Trump, ostensibly a Shareholder Capitalist, but one who clearly has maintained his position using, as explained by Wikipedia, the talents of an effective con man:

Confidence tricks exploit characteristics of the human psyche such as dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, credulity, irresponsibility, naïveté and greed.

This year some have already noted that there is a fine line, if one exists at all, between being an effective con man and being effective at seeking an elective office in our government in the 21st Century.  It's a problem that could not have existed prior to the 1970's, after which the voters managed to get control of selecting the Presidential nominees.

The problem for the electorate is if Trump becomes President, can he be trusted to act on behalf of the "common good" as we would expect an Academic Oligarchist to do? Do we even know beyond the words used in his "con" what he thinks is the "common good."

We do know that as a Shareholder Capitalist using confidence tricks he has had no problem not delivering promised goods and benefits while taking people's money and services for purposes of corporate profit.

What we do know is that many American Mythical Reactionaries and Romantic Populists intend to vote for Trump to express their frustration with the failure during the last 30 years of Academic Oligarchists to secure what is broadly believed in the United States is the "common good."

The difficulty for Hillary Clinton as the representative of the Academic Oligarchists is those Mythical Reactionaries and Romantic Populists are correct. They are correct simply because the Oligarchists have succumbed to the arguments by the dominant Shareholder Capitalists that the internationalization of the economy has improved the world in terms of the "common good" as defined by The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Objectively this is true as envisioned by Eleanor Roosevelt - the first chairwoman of the Commission on Human Rights that drafted the Declaration. She stated that it "may well become the international Magna Carta of all men everywhere." In a very real sense, this means that over a period of time the goal of mankind is to eliminate this...

...by replacing it with this...

...as explained in this blog post The New Middle Class of Mexico.

In the case of the blogger who at the time was an American working in Mexico, the company he was working for was Bombardier Inc., a Canadian company that began as a maker of snow machines/snowmobiles.

Over the years it has grown into a large manufacturer of regional airliners, business jets, mass transportation equipment, recreational equipment and a provider of financial services. Bombardier is a Fortune Global 500 conglomerate company. As they describe themselves on their own website:

As the world’s leading manufacturer of both planes and trains, we’ve built an extensive and diverse portfolio of winning mobility solutions. ...From category-defining business jets and commercial aircraft designed for the challenges of today, to sleek high speed trains and public transit that’s smarter than ever.

...The most important success factor is our employees, all 70,900 of them.

...Bombardier is headquartered in Montréal, Canada. ...In the fiscal year ended December 31, 2015, we posted revenues of $18.2 billion.

The company has operations not only in the Americas, but Europe, Asia, the  Middle East, and Africa. But it is Canadian. Among its products it does manufacture and sell LearJets. So when a headline like this appeared in the Canadian press Bombardier to cut 1,000 aerospace jobs in Mexico, Kansas because of the negativity of the political debate this year about he North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) it gives us a sense of the absolute ignorance of the American electorate when it comes to the economy over the past 30 years:

Bombardier says it's going to cut about 1,000 employees from its Learjet business in 2015, affecting sites in Mexico and the United States.

The Montreal-based aerospace company says the cuts are due to weak demand for the Learjet 85 business jet.

Bombardier says its operations in Wichita, Kansas and Queretaro, Mexico remain important to the company for both the Learjet and other types of aircraft that it makes.

The Wichita operation does final assembly for Learjet 70 and Learjet 75 aircraft and has a flight test centre and service centre.

The Queretaro operation makes a major component for the Global 7000 and 8000 business jets.

Bombardier is also doing final tests on the CSeries jets, a new generation of Bombardier aircraft for commercial airlines.

In 1990 Bombardier Aerospace purchased the Learjet Corporation. It's an international corporation important to Wichita, Kansas, aka Middle America. In June 2016 The Wichita Eagle offered this story of interest Despite Learjet woes, lots of activity at Bombardier Wichita and in July 2016 The Wichita Business Journal offered an article Bombardier’s C Series reaches the finish line which told us "Swiss International Air Lines on Friday took the first batch of paying customers on the C Series as the jet entered service on flight between Zurich and Paris."

Bombardier employs about 1,625 people in Wichita. But it's also big in the Mexican state of Querétero which has become a hub for aerospace innovation, a sector which contributed 47% of foreign direct investment into Mexico, and that is led by companies like Airbus, the European multinational aerospace and defense corporation, and Canada's Bombardier.

Ok. Bombadier. Why Querétaro, located far from Mexico’s tourist-packed beaches?

In 2005, while the U.S. Congress at the behest of the ignorant American electorate was cutting taxes and Kansas, in terms of fiscal policy, was on its way to becoming the most backward state in the nation at the behest of its ignorant electorate, in Querétaro Mexico’s first and only aerospace university, the Universidad Aeronáutica en Querétaro (UNAQ), was created as the biggest attraction the Mexican national and state government taxpayers used to lure Bombardier Aerospace to Mexico. They did it by providing funds to educate and train young workers.

Mexico, despite its faults, was a nation working to improve the lot of its people. It was seeking the "common good" as defined by The Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The "take away" here is that the term "common" does not mean Americans only, but includes everyone in the world. That must involve a standardization of what it means for most people in the world, including Americans, to be "not poor" in the face of limited resources, a population rapidly expanding to 7 billion, and an environment that is becoming less favorable to modern humans.

The American 2016 revolt says:  "Whoa, American Academic Oligarchists, you're moving way to fast on this internationalization of the term 'common' as used in 'common good' and you need to establish governmental policies that mitigate the impacts on average Americans."  Or maybe they are literally saying "build a big wall" and cancel NAFTA.

What the dissidents don't want is to read about Bombadier and puzzle about the complexities of 21st Century trade. They want free tuition and to make American great again.

In reality, the prospect of Donald Trump bringing a revolution as leader of the Mythical Reactionary dissidents seems real. And as we've seen, Presidents have no trouble becoming authoritarian.

Did we see this coming? In the final post on this subject, let's take a look back at the warnings.

The goal of terrorists is to heighten your fears - don't succumb, Donald!

When we see what happened in Nice, France, and Dallas, Texas, we have to remember that each was a criminal terrorist act of one person. We need to be aware of what terrorism is:

From Wikipedia: Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is defined as the use or threatened use of violence (terror) in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological aim. The symbolism of terrorism can exploit human fear to help achieve these goals. 

As Americans we know that we must not facilitate terrorist goals by succumbing to  "fear" as we were reminded by Franklin D. Roosevelt in his First Inaugural Address:

"This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days."

Nader El Shafei, an Egyptian man vacationing in Nice commented:

“I’m used to all of these actions in the Middle East, but I was never this close to it. Now we can’t go to Europe to escape the Middle East. Now the Middle East can happen anywhere."

The reality is terrorism is not limited to the Middle East nor to terrorists acting for the ISIS cause. We American's know that.

We remember the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Because we are terrible at history, we don't remember the 1886 Haymarket affair and other tragedies. Many think terrorism is some potential danger new to the 21st Century.  It's not.

Here is the current "risk map"...

Click on image to see a larger version!

...which if Mr. El Shafei had reviewed on the internet, perhaps he would have chosen a different country to visit, perhaps Italy, Poland, or Canada. Or maybe he would have stayed home in Egypt which which offers about the same risk as the U.S., a lessor risk than France.

Donald Trump wants to declare war on somebody. Frankly, we are all in more danger in a car, but we do not irrationally fear the car and I don't want someone to declare war on my Chevy. Let's don't amplify terrorist acts by overreacting, Donald!

The innane bigotry of the educated is the reason why Trump's “I love the poorly educated!” is a winner

When Trump said “I love the poorly educated!” we were deluged with both critical news articles and bemused talking heads on TV making jokes - unfortunately in doing so many emphasized their looking down at the "poorly educated" dumb Trump supporters.The critics don't get what Trump does get.

The Democrats don't need to go after the well-educated populations of New York and California because they already have them just like they already have the black and hispanic vote.

On the other hand, without the vote of white "College Have-Not" voters in states like Pennsylvania, Clinton may not win. Or to restate it, "the poorly educated" vote may elect Trump

What their education should tell the bemused anti-Trump crowd is that by themselves they don't provide enough electoral votes to win the Presidency. And Trump seems to know that better than they do.

When in February when Donald Trump said “I love the poorly educated!” he was referring to his core supporters - workers who lost 5.6 million jobs in The Great Recession and since 2010 lost another 181,000 high-skill jobs and 951,000 middle-skill jobs, workers who are increasingly settling for low-skill, low-wage (minimum wage?) jobs or, because of age, settling for partial retirement in near poverty as not only did they lose their 401(k)'s but their "government insured" pensions (see How the Teamsters pension disappeared more quickly under Wall Street than the mob).


The Divide Between College Haves and College Have-Nots

Are the people who lined up to support Trump and Sanders correct when they say America let them down? Even now, what radical changes to the job market - changes not involving costly colleges and universities - are we Democrats proposing to alter the situation?  And what exactly is the situation?

Fortunately, The Center on Education and the Workforce of the McCourt School of Public Policy of Georgetown University (CEW) in a timely manner this week released a study America's Divided Recovery: College Haves and Have-Nots 2016.

Click on image to download the 44 page study!

Here is the key graphic from the study:

Click on image to see a larger version!

What the study explains is: "Nearly all the jobs created in the Recovery time period, 11.5 million out of 11.6 million, have gone to workers with at least some postsecondary education."

To put the matter into stark numbers, its data is summarized in this table:

What the table and graph indicate is that the economic divide between Americans is not the 1% versus everyone else as lefty college graduates like to discuss. Instead the new divide accelerated by The Great Recession is the "College Haves" versus the "College Have-Nots" - the divide Trump is capitalizing on.

And the study explains one more factor that increases the division:

...In America since the early 1980s...the wage premium for college graduates began its meteoric rise. Since that time, access to college programs with labor market value has accounted for as much as 80 percent of increase in economic inequality.

The Economy and the Millennials

Along with the effects of a “College Haves” versus “College Have-Nots” there is the truth about the Millennials who we have seen supporting

• Bernie Sanders' "socialism" tinged with foreign policy isolationism or 
• Trump's call for economic isolationism along with foreign policy isolationism or
• both. 

Saddled with college loan debt and full of promises about the benefits of a college degree, the adult lives of the Millennials are clouded by one key fact which the CEW report makes clear: "The economy is still missing 6 million jobs that would have been created had the recession not occurred."

That truth is contained in this article NOT SO FAST: The myth of millennial entitlement was created to hide their parents’ mistakes which explains:

...The shared experience of Americans who struggled as young adults in the aftermath of the Great Recession is played down in favor of trend pieces on the affectations of privileged youth or the phenomenon of “side hustles.” Analysts puzzle over why young Americans forgo things like banks and marriage and houses, and come up with answers like “preference for urban locations with lots of entertainment and lifestyle choices.”

...But if anything holds this tenuously defined generation together, it is a lack of options. Americans who have lived much of their adult lives in the aftermath of the Great Recession have lower incomes, less mobility, and greater financial dependence on older relatives than any other generation in modern history.

...The inability of older generations to see how the economy has been fundamentally restructured since the Great Recession leads to short-sighted policies that young people, not boomers, will have to live with in the long run.

...The remedy lies not in judging their lifestyle choices—or worse yet, perpetuating the illusion that they have money to burn—but by acknowledging the new economy for what it is: a structural crisis, one that future generations will share.

Who Should They Be Angry At?

So, guess what groups of people are angry. That's right, the College Have-Nots and the Millennials. They are The Angry Voters. But given their current situation, who should the angry people be really angry at?

1. The Banking Industry.

Sure, people are angry that at the beginning of The Great Recession the government in 2009 didn't take a random selection of 100 mortgage bankers out, line them against the wall and shoot them in order to make it clear that their behavior will not be tolerated. That federal regulators and prosecutors put just one poor lower level banker in jail while politicians gave the rest of the banking industry money is mind-boggling to many American people, more than you know. And the American people know that the banking industry has gone right back to business as usual. So anger at the banking industry and government officials can be justified.

2. Employers amd Bill Gates.

Let's examine two facts that are new to our economic and business system since 1980 - college debt and extremely high levels of college-only hiring. Let's begin by looking the phenomenon of extremely high levels of college-only hiring reflected by this chart from the CEW report...

The problem is "poorly educated" in the context of college attendance does not mean ignorant nor incompetent. Nor does "well educated" in the context of college attendance mean competent and well informed.

But the choice was made by someone to hire applicants with at least a bachelor's degree for 72% of the jobs gained since 2010 and with at least some college for another 27%, leaving just 1% for those with only a high school  diploma (or less).

Can this discrimination be justified, given the high increases in college tuition and fees over the past 30 years resulting in young people carrying high student debt?

Can employers like those in Silicon Valley defend this situation against the option of an apprenticeship system such as that used by plumbers and electricians unions where employers paid the apprentice while he/she learned the craft? Where were the well educated Democrats when the concept of trade unions was not developed for coders and others in the technology expansion beginning in 1980?

What is really startling is something in the Acknowledgements of the CEW report (links added):

We are grateful for the individuals and organizations whose generous support has made this report possible: ... the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation .... We are honored to be partners in their shared mission of promoting postsecondary access and completion for all Americans.

Bill Gates??? He dropped out of Harvard. And Paul Allen, his partner in founding Microsoft, dropped out of Washington State. And yet the Gates Foundation has a division devoted to getting kids ready for, and making them successful in, college.

Those of us who were alive adults before 1980 should have noticed the development of this problem of discrimination in hiring that may not be justified. Again, can employers like Microsoft defend hiring debt-funded college degrees against the option of an employer funded apprenticeship system such as that used by plumbers and electricians unions, where wages are paid to the apprentice while he/she learned the craft? And again, where were the well educated Democrats when the concept of trade unions was not developed for coders and others in the technology expansion beginning in 1980?

Included in the CEW report is a statistical observation about key changes were in our economy:

• Two of the industries that blue-collar workers with lower education levels historically depended upon for jobs — construction and manufacturing — were especially hard hit in the Great Recession and have not yet fully recovered all the job losses they sustained. Construction employment is still 1.6 million jobs short of its 2007 level. Manufacturing has 1 million fewer jobs than it did before the recession.
• Office and administrative support is the largest major occupational group overall. These are quintessential middle-skill, white-collar jobs for workers without a college degree. However, in the Great Recession, 1.7 million of these jobs were lost. Only 300,000 of those jobs have been recovered. So, compared to pre-recession employment levels, office and administrative support occupations have experienced the second-highest decline in jobs (1.4 million).

Not included in the report are explanations of why these changes have happened.

3. The Construction Jobs - Mortgage Lenders, The Government and Real Estate Investment Giants.

This is probably the sorest point of the many sore points irritating The Angry Voter.

To simply say that construction jobs have not recovered to pre-2008 levels is to completely ignore the root cause of The Great Recession reflected in this graph of monthly housing construction starts:

Housing construction climbed in the period of the 1990's to mid-2000's because of the loosening of governmental banking rules and lender malfeasance. It created a disproportionate growth in construction jobs followed by a disproportionate crash in construction jobs.

Nonetheless, people bought and lived in those houses, until they lost them. And one could predict what happened next.

Looking around at cheap foreclosure homes on the market and a new expanded tenant base looking for a place to live - all a result of economic policies under Clinton and Bush - another segment of the financial industry expanded as an expansion in publicly traded single family rental corporations, including American Residential Properties, American Homes 4 Rent, Silver Bay Realty Trust, Colony American Homes and Starwood Waypoint Residential Trust.

Having made solid profits directly off of the failed dreams of Americans attempting to obtain or sustain middle class status in an ownership society, as home values rise again and the tenants are leaving to buy homes these companies are now merging and changing strategies by marketing the homes to tenants as explained in Blackstone Tenants Get a Shot at Buying Their Rental Houses:

Selling rental homes to tenants is a way for investors to make more money than they would selling in bulk, and saves them the costs of renovating and carrying the properties until they sell on the open market.

Renters may have better luck buying a home from their landlords than venturing into the open market. Inventory is tight, and home prices nationally are up 32 percent since the 2012 low -- and have risen even more in areas hit hard by the housing crash, with increases of greater than 50 percent in Phoenix and Miami from their troughs. And soaring rents are causing some tenants to view homeownership as more economical.

When "the poorly educated" look at what happened, they see a story.

A scam was developed and marketed to the public by the banking and investment industry - a bunch of con men - with the encouragement of the government during the Clinton and Bush Presidencies.

Home prices were inflated. Mortgages were made available to ordinary people who in other times would have been denied financing because they had only a marginal chance of making their payments. Marginal mortgages were then packaged with other mortgages into marketable securities that received high ratings from the finance industry and were included in ordinary people's 401(k) investment packages.

When the con fell apart, "the poorly educated" and others lost their homes, their jobs, and portions of their retirement investments. The investment industry (the con men), working with the bankers, then bought the homes as an income producing investment at 30 cents on the dollar, profitably renting them out to the newly homeless and the next generation of adults. Now the investment industry, working with the bankers, is reselling the homes for a sizable profit.

Donald Trump, a recognized experienced con man, just points out what "the poorly educated" and others already know. The government, which should be protecting people from confidence scams, facilitated and encouraged this one. And by "the government" we really mean leading members of the Democratic and Republican Parties.

From the point of view of ordinary people, the current economic situation is the result of establishment politicians being complicit in a con. Of course, it is the result of complicity of establishment politicians in the Clinton and Bush Administrations. That's 16 years of Democrats and Republicans in the White House.

So here we are, a serious long-time Democratic politician and an admitted con man (who tore down the Republican Party with a grin) are running against each other for President. The Angry Voters are seriously considering voting for the con man.

4. Imports, Steve Jobs, and Apple.

Regarding manufacturing jobs, the following chart reflects a truth - that there is an apparent correlation between manufacturing jobs lost and increases in imports:

It is not a direct correlation, but The Angry Voter knows that there is a correlation between his or her manufacturing job loss and the increase in U.S. imports between the mid-1990's and now. Yes, there are benefits from that trade, but the benefits have been accruing to corporate interests and stand out like sore thumbs - Apple's offshore cash assets for instance.

In February 2011 President Barack Obama, concerned about the loss of manufacturing jobs, asked Apple CEO Steve Jobs what would it take to make iPhones in the United States?  Job's reply was that those jobs are never coming back.

After that exchange number of financial journals wrote popular stories explaining how Apple couldn't afford to manufacture the phones in the U.S., that it would destroy Apple's economic viability. Except two months before, in December 2010, the Asian Development Bank published a study How the iPhone Widens the United States Trade Deficit with the People's Republic of China which offered this insight:

As shown in Table 3, the gross profit margin of iPhone was 62% when the phone was launched in 2007, before rising to 64% in 2009 due to reductions in manufacturing costs....

An interesting hypothetical scenario is one where Apple had all iPhones assembled in the US. Assuming that the wages of US workers are ten times as high as those of their PRC counterparts and their productivity would be equal in 2009, if iPhones were assembled in the US the total assembly cost would rise to US$65 and total manufacturing cost would be pushed to approximately US$240. Selling iPhones assembled by US workers at US$500 per unit would still leave a 50% profit margin for Apple. As iPhone sales increase globally, that profit margin would also increase. In this hypothetical scenario, iPhones, the high-tech product invented by the US company, would contribute to US exports and the reduction of the US trade deficit, not only with the PRC, but also with the rest of world. More importantly, Apple created jobs for US low skilled workers; those who could not be the software engineers needed by Apple. Giving up a small portion of profits and sharing them with low skilled US workers by Apple would be a more effective way to reduce the US trade deficit and create jobs in the US.

Summarizing, the report says that in 2009 Apple would have had to accept a 50% profit margin instead of a 64% profit margin on iPhones if they had manufactured the iPhone in the United States. What the report doesn't say is that Apple would have paid more taxes inside the U.S. further stimulating the economy and would have had far less cash to store offshore.

(As an aside, if you Google the title of that 2010 Asian Development Bank study you will not find any American newspaper, magazine, TV news website, or blogger website reference to it. On the other hand, Google "Steve Jobs outsourcing" and you will find all those popular fallacious articles explaining why manufacturing iPhones in the U.S. would bankrupt Apple.)

Regarding the issue of imports, the Democrats have a problem. In this election union leaders are struggling. They won't support Trump. But within their rank-and-file many members are supporting Trump. The reasons are obvious according to the Washington Post article Trump’s anti-trade rhetoric rattles the campaign message of Clinton and unions which begins:

Three dozen union workers gathered outside city hall here on Thursday to rally against the global free-trade deals they believe have harmed Americans like them. Their candidate was Katie McGinty, the Democrats’ nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania. But their spiritual leader was Republican Donald Trump.

“He recognized there’s some problems we need to solve,” said McGinty, who is challenging Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R), a free-trade advocate. “One, we have to stop bad trade agreements.... And two, we have to take the Chinese on when they manipulate their currency and dump goods in our markets.”

Just two days earlier, Trump had delivered a blistering speech at an aluminum recycling plant near Pittsburgh in which he called U.S. trade policies a “politician-made disaster” that has betrayed the working class. McGinty, surrounded by electricians, pipe fitters and steelworkers, declared that while Trump usually spouts “nonsense,” he had, in this case, “recognized a couple of truths.”

Of the many ways Trump, the GOP’s presumptive presidential nominee, has scrambled the 2016 campaign, it is his position on trade that has presented one of the most unexpected challenges for his rival, Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee. In an election season animated by economic anxiety, Trump, a New York business mogul, bucked Republican orthodoxy and powerful business interests such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in an appeal to blue-collar Republicans that helped propel him to victory in the GOP primaries.

When you look at this map...

Click on image to see a larger version!

...the states with the two darkest shades and highest union membership rates (i.e. New York and Illinois) are "Blue States" in a Presidential Election.

States with the middle shade, however, cannot be counted on to go Democratic without the support of private sector union membership - mostly older white "College Have-Nots."

5. Abusive Employers.

Regarding the 1.4 million lost support jobs, you may have read in press reports by reporters who have since lost their jobs that this reduction is due to automation. No it is not.

No one writes about the curious convergence of the advent of the large reduction in support employees with the the long hours worked by most middle management, professional, and semi-professional workers and even their managers.

If you are an old retired worker familiar with those workers and recently you've spent any time around these people you will notice them doing things on computers that used to be done by competent support people - support people who in the 1970's and 1980's cost employers roughly $10 an hour which adjusted for the CPI would be about $30 an hour.

Those 1.4 million lost support jobs represent around $87 billion a year in lost wages and benefits. Where did that money go? Is it being paid to those middle management, professional, and semi-professional workers for their extra 10-20 hours a week worked? Or did it get shunted off into profit lines and CEO pay? Many of The Angry Voters believe they know where it went.


It's the Economy, Stupid

In the end it appears that Donald Trump believes "it's the economy, stupid," a phrase which ironically came from Bill Clinton's campaign strategist James Carville. Trump may understand the political impact better than the Clinton campaign which seems to generate long, boring policy documents fine tuned for educated policy wonks mostly located in New York and California.

Why has the Clinton Campaign focused on long, boring policy statements. Do they do it because they have an innate, inane bigotry against the Trump's "poorly educated?"Maybe at some point the College Have class ought to take a hard look at itself. Have they permitted themselves "educational bigotry" to such an extent that they may inadvertently cause the election of Donald Trump?

The Trump campaign will target the educated Millennials who have experienced no economy other than the recession’s false recovery and college debt, young Americans who believe they have no choice but to live in their parent's basement.

For the most part, as is true for the College Have-Nots, the Millennials don't really understand complex issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) which does not include China - in fact deliberately excludes China - despite what Trump says. The press jumped all over Trumps mistake about China. But just because it doesn't include China that doesn't mean we all shouldn't be wary of Asian imports and the TPP.

Just so you know, historically the TPP is an expansion of the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPSEP or P4) signed by Brunei, Chile, New Zealand, and Singapore in 2005. Beginning in 2008, additional countries joined the discussion for a broader agreement: Australia, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, the United States, and Vietnam, bringing the total number of countries participating in the negotiations to twelve.

As can be seen here, the growth rate of Asian imports in the first decade of the 21st Century were significant without the TPP and even if you ignore China this deserves some consideration:

Click on image to see a larger version!

In approving Brexit some Brits have argued that they would be better off to have individual trade agreements with nations rather than a broad open trade agreement with a number of nations.

In the case of the U.S. and Asia, we should be considering issues related to the U.S. Trade Balance which for that same decade looks like this:

Click on image to see a larger version!

Apparently during that period we consistently had a Trade Surplus with Singapore, Hong Kong, and Australia. That seems good. And maybe it's ok to have a trade deficit with some of the others for reasons of international politics, such as South Korea and Taiwan. But maybe we need to look hard at China plus Japan.

In other words, perhaps we should have individual trade agreements. Oh, wait. We've been told that pro-Brexit voters who thought that were "the poorly educated" who just didn't understand.

Maybe both we as consumers need to take a serious look at China and Apple for lessons on how not to be screwed by imports.Maybe we voters need to do more than just get excited about the likes of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.

Maybe as consumers we need to make sure we're not causing unemployment by buying iPhones for no good reason, because even if we are not among "the poorly educated" we may be among the truly ignorant education bigots.

And maybe those middle management, professional, and semi-professional workers should quit working those extra 10-20 hours a week and taking phone calls during vacations, thereby forcing employers to consider hiring adequate support staff. At the least, we ought to ask ourselves why we're the only first world nation that believes our economy can't afford mandatory vacations.

Maybe there is something to be learned from this revolt of "the poorly educated" and the young. What should concern, if not downright scare, the well-educated "College-Have" over-40 lefty is a  46-year-old Pennsylvania white woman who does not have a college degree and who, along with her husband, 20 years ago worked for a company that paid her $20 an hour ($31.06 in 2016 dollars). As I explained in May in The effect of the white white-collar Democrats' class war against white blue-collar American women:

In Pennsylvania 81% of the voting age population is white, 57% are age 45+, 71% do not have bachelor's degrees. These numbers are not significantly different from Ohio or Michigan.

In other words, the voter who may determine who will be President in 2016 will be a 46-year-old Pennsylvania white woman who does not have a college degree and who, along with her husband, 20 years ago worked for a company that paid her $20 an hour ($31.06 in 2016 dollars) actually producing a tangible commodity.

Today she is working in some service work producing nothing tangible making $15 an hour which Bernie Sanders types say should be the minimum wage, saying it without thinking about her. The fact that it's less than half the value of her pay 20 years ago which she thinks is the major problem in her life escapes the Democrats who vocally worry about minimum wage workers.

If you are a well-educated "College-Have" over-40 American who owns Apple products, your decision screwed Americans in manufacturing states whose lives are like that 46-year-old Pennsylvania white woman - because of your ignorance.

If you are a well-educated "College-Have" over-40 urbanite who decided it was better to eat quinoa imported from Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru instead of grains grown in the U.S., your decision screwed Americans in agricultural regions whose lives are like that 46-year-old Pennsylvania white woman - because of your ignorance.

If you are a well-educated "College-Have" over-40 management or professional worker who has for years worked 60 hours a week, because of your ignorance your choices may have screwed Americans like that Pennsylvania woman who should have been employed as an office and administrative support worker, one who would have been working in those 1.4 million "quintessential middle-skill, white-collar jobs."

If you are a well-educated "College-Have" over-40 California or New York voter who doesn't understand that in Pennsylvania - where voting will matter in November - about 3/4ths of the voting age humans are white "College Have-Nots" then you are ignorant. If for the past 20 years you focused your political chit-chat disproportionately on the plight of inner-city Philadelphia blacks, you may have elected Donald Trump with your ignorance.

 "College-Have" over-40 Americans need to remember all these individual choices when in ignorance they deride Trump's “I love the poorly educated!” remark. It is likely that for the past 20 years they may have regularly reminded people like that Pennsylvania woman that they think "poorly educated" equates to ignorance and irrelevance. That woman may vote (when and where it matters to the country) as a person who unconsciously or consciously is very angry at the "College-Haves."

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, states like Wisconsin have always been supportive of the Democratic Presidential candidate. Likely Wisconsin will be again. But when you read The Uncertain Future of a Middle-Class Stronghold published last month you have to understand that four years from now Wisconsin could be a swing state full of angry white voters.

It could begin to feel lonely to be a a well-educated "College-Have" over-40 voter. And it could feel even lonelier if Clinton is elected and in four years things haven't gotten better for that Pennsylvania woman but they've gotten better for you.

Government server security is a joke - why the attack on Hillary Clinton?

It's time to quit pretending that Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server is a bigger scandal than the sorry state of government computer systems including the State Department's.

I keep getting asked about the Clinton email investigation. So let me answer all your questions.

The issue of Hillary Clinton's private email server. Her explanation is that she wanted to use her Blackberry cell phone.

The thing is, I have a close friend who is about her age who loves the Blackberry and despises the smart phones like the iPhone and Samsung Galaxy phones. I'm actually older than both of them, so I understand why they feel that way. For the Millennials let me show you why:

For you iPhone Millennials, that's a Blackberry. While it is a phone first, it also can do texts and email. But unlike the "smart" phones you love, it has a real keyboard. And it is a QWERTY keyboard for those of us who spent decades typing, first on typewriters and then on computer keyboards. We make far fewer mistakes and we don't want the phone using some kind of auto-correct to change the words we type.

Like it or not, the Secretary of State should be able to use a Blackberry if she wants to, without some tech security wonk insisting she fumble with the latest hot smartphone. In making this statement I have credentials as a tech wonk.

I began working with a computer in 1970 - an IBM 360 - and was operating a computer services business in 1980 with Tandy Model II's. I maintained a sustained level of expertise with computers and the internet since. A decade ago I quit assembling computers and I don't run my own server because in both cases the complexities have compounded and maintenance is a nightmare for one old man. With that said, let's take a look at the truth about that whole government email/server security issue.

It is not unreasonable to assert that some of, if not most of, the worst computer operations in large organizations in the United States can be found in federal and state government.

And based on hacks during the first 15 years of the 21st Century, some of the world's least effective security measures could be found being used in the federal government's computer operations at:

•  The White House
• The Department of Energy
• The Internal Revenue Service
• The Office of Personnel Management
• The Army Corps of Engineers
• NOAA
• US Postal Service
• The Department of Education
• The FBI
• The Department of Homeland Security
• Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and
• The State Department

The State Department is one of the worst. And it's simply because, unlike you or me or even the Clinton's, in order to update their equipment and software federal government agencies must use a 19th Century acquisition process that looks something like this:

1. prepare a description of a need which must be integrated into the department's budget request (a one year process);
2. get an appropriation from Congress (typically a two year process);
3. get the General Services Administration (GSA) to prepare a complete request for bids (typically at least a six month process);
4. get the GSA to receive and review the bids, issue a contract to the lowest bidder, and then issue a notice to proceed (another six months);
5. monitor the work of the lowest bidder and sometime around 18 months into the work, fire them and hire someone else - not the lowest bidder - to actually finish the job at 400% of budget (another two years);
6. teach everyone to use the system (another six months);
7. discover that the "new" system is completely out of date and was out of date by the time Congress appropriated the money because this is 21st Century  and to be even moderately secure technology must be substantially upgraded in an ongoing 18 month cycle.

It appears that when he was Secretary of State Colin Powell used AOL email. He correctly felt that the State Department system was too primitive. He was used to the military where Congress provided blanket funding for updating state-of-the-art computer systems frequently using the military's own personnel. (Still it must be noted that The Joint Chiefs of Staff took its email system off line because of some suspicious probes over the weekend of July 25, 2015 - but that system provided warnings.) To his credit, Powell did initiate the process described above to assure that the next Secretary of State would have a system only two or three generations behind current standards.

Just to make it clear that I'm not creating a picture of a problem that doesn't exist, consider the following recent stories:

• US State Department Hack Has Major Security Implications from the Security Intelligence website of IBM
• Twin Brothers Sentenced for Wire Fraud, Conspiring to Hack into U.S. Department of State and Private Company from the U.S. Department of Justice website
• State Department email attack 'fits pattern' of Russian hackers, says expert
• Justice, Homeland Security Probe Hack of DHS, FBI Employee Data

And, consider this 2006 story Hackers attack State Department computers which is an indicator of what was going on prior to 2012 after which we started getting more transparency about this matter from the federal government.

Finally, we can't ignore these November 2015 stories Iranian Hackers Attack State Dept. via Social Media Accounts and Facebook Notifies State Department Employees of Iran Hacks nor can we ignore this 2016 story ISIS-aligned hackers leak confidential info on 43 US State Dept employees.

For a more thorough review of 21st Century federal government computer security failures you can download and read Security Matters (1.8Mb PDF file).

So when Hillary reluctantly said her using a  private server "was bad judgment", as someone who can lay claim to at least some computer/device expertise I wholeheartedly disagreed with her. She did not use bad judgement.

First, there was no security reason to not use her own server as the State Department's servers offer almost no viable security.

Second there is no reason, indeed no excuse, to make the Secretary of State use a device that is awkward to use for her.

Finally, if it is so important to the American people to have the State Department retain control of the emails for all time, Congress should have funded any and all equipment and systems needed for the Secretary of State to function.

A nice negligible annual lump sum of $330 million ($1 a year per American citizen as an additional cell phone service tax because they think this is really important) to be spent as needed by nerds hired from those funds by the Secretary of State to do nothing but provide computer services and devices that are secure and also convenient solely for the Secretary of State and her/his staff. Most importantly, the spending of those funds must be exempt from all General Services Administration purchasing procedures.

The ultimate point here is that yes, there were rules put in place under the guise of security requirements. As with typical government bureaucracy, the rules focused not on the needs of employees nor were they realistically related to security. They just looked good on paper so that those who should be concerned didn't have to be - the rules looked good because they implied there was sufficient security in place when, in fact, frustrated tech employees knew better and knew the government environment will never allow for sufficient security because the mostly-tech-ignorant public elects mostly-tech-ignorant politicians to Congress.

And by the way, the FBI needs to divert from the Clinton investigation resources needed to do something properly computer security related so that we don't keep reading stories like Hacker Claims Breaching FBI Server, Exposes Details of 80 Miami Police Officers.

Let's quit pretending that Clinton's private server is a bigger scandal than the sorry state of our government computer technology. When Congress has funded for our government agencies proper computer technology by levying an excise tax on smartphones and tablets, then we can worry about whose email is stored where.

Finally, don't pretend that this is some reason not to vote for Hillary Clinton. It is only some reason to not vote for Republican candidates for Congress who have not addressed the subject of security for federal computers systems nor provided adequate funds for that security.

Will Queen Elizabeth II reign over the breakup of the United Kingdom?

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To many Londoners the "Brexit" vote results, 52% voted to get out of the European Union while 48% voted to remain in, are a shock. But what's already being proposed will be an even greater shock.

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland includes England, Wales (annexed in 1532 and 1549) , Scotland (1707), and Northern Ireland (after the split of Ireland in 1922).

In 2014 the Scottish Government held a referendum on Scottish independence, with 55% of voters rejecting the independence proposal and opting to remain within the United Kingdom. But since then the pro-independence Scottish National Party (SNP) has surged, winning several elections.

EU membership was one of the key issues in 2014, with those campaigning for Scotland to stick with the United Kingdom arguing that an independent Scotland would not be able to remain a member of the bloc.

Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said today many Scots who had voted against independence for that reason were now re-assessing their decision. In the Brexit vote, 62% of the voters in Scotland voted to remain in the European Union.

Sturgeon said she will seek powers to hold a new independence vote because of her desire to keep Scotland in the European bloc. The popular leader said she was keeping a promise made by the Scottish National Party to consider a second independence vote "if there was a significant and material change in circumstance" from that which prevailed in 2014, such as Scotland being taken out of the EU against its will.

Sturgeon stated,"I think an independence referendum is now highly likely, but I also think it's important that we take time to consider all steps, and to have the discussions, not least to assess the response of the European Union to the vote that Scotland expressed yesterday. I am absolutely determined in my responsibility to give effect to how Scotland voted yesterday."

"The Scottish government should immediately begin talks with the EU for Scotland to remain a member, even though the rest of the UK may exit, and to clarify that an independent Scotland would be the continuing member state, inheriting the UK's EU membership in the event of a 'Yes' vote in a Scottish independence referendum," said Gordon MacIntyre-Kemp, chief executive of Business for Scotland, a business network and business and economic policy think tank which seeks to give a voice to business people who support Scottish independence.

Thursday's referendum vote in Northern Ireland had 56 percent of Northern Irish voters choosing to remain in the EU.

In Northern Ireland, Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, an Irish republican political party dedicated to the reunification of Ireland and an end to British jurisdiction in the north of Ireland, called for a vote to leave the U.K. and unite with Ireland, an EU member.

"The British government now has no democratic mandate to represent the views of the North in any future negotiations with the European Union, and I do believe that there is a democratic imperative for a 'border poll' to be held," McGuinness said today.

The problem is Northern Ireland's present devolved system of government is based on the Good Friday Agreement. The Agreement acknowledged:

• that the majority of the people of Northern Ireland wished to remain a part of the United Kingdom;
•  that a substantial section of the people of Northern Ireland, and the majority of the people of the island of Ireland, wished to bring about a united Ireland.

Both of these views were acknowledged as being legitimate.

The agreement reached was that Northern Ireland would remain part of the United Kingdom until a majority of the people of Northern Ireland and of the Republic of Ireland wished otherwise. Should that happen, then the British and Irish governments are under "a binding obligation" to implement that choice.

Despite the statements of the Deputy First Minister, Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster, First Minister Arlene Foster, Leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, rejected Sinn Fein's call for a unification vote. The DUP was the only major party in Northern Ireland that backed the Leave campaign.

"Our nation has made a clear definition as to where they want to go. They backed hope, they backed aspiration, they backed the future potential of the United Kingdom and I am very pleased with the result." Foster said.

"We always knew that it was going to be difficult to get a Leave vote in Northern Ireland given that four out of five main parties were advocating a Remain vote and actually it was only my own party that was advocating a Leave vote."

Foster's father was a Royal Ulster Constabulary reservist during "The Troubles" and she was involved in  Ulster Unionist Party since college. She may very well be unable to prevent an Irish unification vote, particularly with her making reference to "our nation" wanting to leave the EU.

Sinn Fein already has their website set up for advocating for a vote offering this headline on its front page: Now is the time for a United Ireland, pledge your support, become an online supporter.

The United Kingdom is a constitutional monarchy.  Its capital city is London, an important global city and financial center with an urban population of 10,310,000, the second-largest in the European Union. London voted to remain in the EU while the rest of England voted to leave.

The current monarch — since February 6, 1952 — is Queen Elizabeth II. It is ironic that in the 65th year of her reign - the longest reign in British history - the breakup of the United Kingdom could occur.

It's not the Democratic Party of 1964: be careful of the grumpy old white man's proposals

But this is more than about the ideas of a grumpy old white man, far more.

In 1964 the Democratic Party became the party of those groups of Americans who regularly find themselves economically and socially the target of systematic discrimination based on prejudice.

Newsflash - white old, middle-aged, or young middle-class or richer liberal activists and college students are not among those groups. And most certainly when they choose not to be a part of the Democratic Party membership but do chose to be uncommitted kibbitzers, they are not relevant to that Democratic Party goal to create inclusiveness

It must have come as a surprise to Bernie Sanders and his supporters when they received a June 18, 2016 letter from the the Congressional Black Caucus expressing its resolute opposition to two key reforms demanded by Sanders. The letter states:

The Democratic Members of the Congressional Black Caucus recently voted unanimously to oppose any suggestion or idea to eliminate the category of Unpledged Delegate to the Democratic National Convention (aka Super Delegates) and the creation of uniform open primaries in all states.

"The black caucus is immovable on this subject because our number one concern is going to be an always be the highest level of minority participation as possible at the convention," said Congressman Emanuel Cleaver who currently represents Missouri's 5th congressional district which has a population larger than that of Bernie Sander's State of Vermont. "You're going to see the same thing with the Hispanic Congressional Caucus. Mr. Sanders, if he had met with either or what's called the tri-caucus, he would have found out there is no flexibility." (Note: the Congressional Tri-Caucus iscomprised of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC), the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC).)

The thing is, a political party is a private organization created to achieve specific political, social, and economic goals desired by its members. It's not there for outsiders who wake up once every four years to start restructuring to make sure that when they come back four years later they can undercut the goals of its members. You want to change the goals, join, attend meetings, work in off-year and non-Presidential election years to elect party candidates to state offices and Congress. Or form your own party.

And let's get one thing straight.  Missouri's 5th congressional district not only has more people than Vermont, Congressman Emanuel Cleaver is a registered Democrat while Senator Bernie Sanders is not. Here's what you probably don't know....

In his home state of Vermont, there is no party registration allowing Sanders to accurately claim to be unaffiliated with a political party while still running for the Democratic nomination and sometimes calling himself a Democrat. In 2008, TIME told us about Vermont:

There are swing states. There are bellwether states. And then there is Vermont.

That makes sense. Vermont has only 625,000 residents, and they aren't wrestling with most of the problems that are dominating the campaign. Vermont doesn't have many immigrants; it ranks last in the nation in foreclosures; it's consistently rated the healthiest state. But if the politics of Vermont doesn't tell us much about the politics of America, it is still quirky and intriguing.

There is no party registration in Vermont, but it was once the most staunchly Republican state in the Union, supporting the G.O.P. in 28 straight presidential elections and enjoying a 108-year gap between Democratic governors...

Now Vermont is blue heaven, home of Ben and Jerry and Phish, the first state with civil unions for gays, the last state with a Wal-Mart and the only state that President Bush has somehow neglected to visit....

Nowadays, Vermont once again has a Republican governor, Massachusetts-born Jim Douglas, who's favored to win his fourth term in November. And it is a rural state, so its politicians tend to support guns and farms. It's even got some black-helicopter types in its rugged Northeast Kingdom. But thinking of Vermont as a northeastern version of Idaho or Nebraska because it's got rifles and cows is sort of like thinking of the Village People as tough guys because they had a cop and a construction worker. It's a land of teddy bears, organic cheese, planning charrettes, Buddhist converts and the Vermont Progressive Party, whose members include six state legislators, Burlington's mayor, and the only announced challenger to Governor Douglas. Most telling is the fact that it's the only state where self-identified liberals outnumber self-identified Democrats.

Which brings us to March 4. Vermont has the nation's second-whitest and second-oldest electorate....

"Sanders did a lot of things right in this campaign, he did a lot better than expected. At the same time he seemed to have a lack of understanding or lack of relationships with black leaders that you saw ultimately hurt him in South Carolina and other states with big black electorates,"  Doug Thornell, formerly the group’s communications director, said. "And this is something that the CBC is going to be very passionate and push back against. This is a way that African-American officials can represent their district and have a say in the process. They're not going to go along with this at all."

If I seem less than enamored with the Sanders movement and their foolish ideas for the Democratic Party, it is because Bernie was reelected to the U.S. Senate by 207,848 voters in 2012 while in that same year California's Dianne Feinstein was reelected to the U.S. Senate by 7,864,624 voters. In fact, Feinstein received more votes in 11 California counties than Sanders did in the whole state of Vermont.

There are no communities of people in Vermont that depend on the Democratic Party to fight for their residents like residents of Compton, Oakland, or East Los Angeles. Bernie and most of his supporters have no real sense what it's like to have extensive political involvement with a diverse population as does Dianne Feinstein. Let's look at an enlightening parallel in their experience holding public office.

Bernie Sanders in 1981 was first elected mayor of the largest city in Vermont, Burlington, then with a population of 37,712 with 218 black persons and 285 persons who identified as Hispanic.

Diane Feinstein was thrust into the position of Mayor of San Francisco, California, in 1978 following the assassinations of Mayor George Moscone and City Supervisor and Gay Activist Harvey Milk. After identifying both bodies at the scene, Feinstein was shaking so badly she required support from the police chief.  It was she who announced to the press, "Today San Francisco has experienced a double tragedy of immense proportions. As President of the Board of Supervisors, it is my duty to inform you that both Mayor Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk have been shot and killed."

At the time, San Francisco had a population of 678,974 with 149,269 identified as Asian, 86,190 as Black, and 84,194 as Hispanic and with an estimated LGBT population of 105,000±.

In 1994,  Feinstein introduced the Federal Assault Weapons Ban which became law but expired in 2004. Bernie Sanders defended his pro-NRA record  stating with regard to his support for the 2005 federal  Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act  in an October 2015 debate that “if somebody has a gun and it falls into the hands of a murderer and that murderer kills somebody with the gun, do you hold the gun manufacturer responsible? Not any more than you would hold a hammer company responsible if somebody beats somebody over the head with a hammer.”

Diane Feinstein is well aware that Harvey Milk and George Moscone likely would not have been killed if the weapon had been a hammer.

The difference between Sanders and Feinstein is personal and professional experience with things like shootings and dealing with the criminal justice system in a diverse, complex City; and providing financial aid to the poor in a diverse, complex City; and educating people in a diverse, complex City; and creating a positive environment for economic growth in a diverse, complex City....

The fact is, while Feinstein was serving on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, between 1972 and 1976 Sanders was the nominee of the anti-capitalist, anti-war Liberty Union Party of Vermont in two Senate and two gubernatorial elections in Vermont. He lost all four races and resigned from the party in 1977.

Bernie supporters seem to want to have Feinstein, a long-time Democrat who was elected to her position by 7,864,624 diverse voters, to be subject to the same requirements to be a delegate as a 20-year-old college student from Washington state who decided to register to vote as a Democrat for the first time while entering the door of a March 2016 Precinct Caucus. Sorry, but no. That's not the way political parties work.

Curiously Bernie supporters seem to have no performance standards. Bernie has lived in Vermont since 1968 - 48 years. Bernie spouts buzz words about the issues but what has he done about them in his tiny state where his influence should be great since he leads a state full of "independent" voters? Here are a few examples compared to California where Democrats lead:

• Free college - Vermont state colleges have higher tuition than California state colleges including fees in California;
• Minimum wage - if you work in Burlington, Vermont, for minimum wage you earn $9.60 per hour, in San Francisco $12.25, 28% more;
• Health insurance - through Vermont Health Connect for a 35 year old single person making $45,000 a year in Burlington, Vermont, the least premium cost after any rebates $8,576 a year, while through Covered California for the same person in San Francisco, California, the cost would be $2,952 a year. 66% less.

Bernie has no credibility on any of these issues. But it is the age of the internet, as Donald Trump has demonstrated. There are just millions of uninformed Americans who think anything can be explained in 140 character tweets, as opposed to learning from extensive reading and studying, and from years of direct involvement.

Thanks for your recommendations on Democratic Party procedures and policy Bernie supporters, but as a lifelong Democrat who first attended a California Democratic Council Convention in 1964, I don't want independents deciding policy for Californian's.

If it means you want to elect Donald Trump President in November, well that's the way it is. And if you think not voting, or voting for some third party candidate, is not the same as voting for Donald, you don't understand the American political system which you probably don't.

In a swing state, if Trump gets 34% of the vote, Clinton gets 33.9% of the vote, and the Green Party candidate you voted for gets 8% of the vote, you and all your ilk elected Trump President - live with it for four years and see what you can accomplish by being truly uninformed about your government and politics.

As California's other U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer tweeted in February:  "Bernie is a Democrat ‘some days'." The fact that he has not conceded the nomination to Clinton is indicative that "some days" aren't these days.

Regarding the sexist nature of a grumpy old white man loser making demands on America's first woman major party presumption nominee, I agree with Barbra Streisand, the California resident who tweeted the facts at the beginning of this post.

Of course I too am a grumpy old white man but one whose state has two Democratic women United States Senators and includes in its overwhelmingly Democratic Congressional Delegation, House Minority Leader and former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.

Hey Donald! George W. Bush defined "Presidential" in cases like Orlando

How to be Presidential: President George W. Bush speaking at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C on September 17, 2001.

Following the Orlando shooting incident, Donald Trump is attacking President Obama and Hillery Clinton because they don't call such terror attacks "radical Islamic terrorism." In doing so, Donald Trump is attempting to redefine what was established by President George W. Bush as "Presidential" behavior.

By clearly insisting that we identify a criminal with a religion, Donald Trump and his blustery, dangerous supporters have apparently rejected the very strong position taken by former President George W. Bush after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. President Bush understood that fanning the flames of religious discrimination isn't Presidential, it is purely ignorant bigotry.

During remarks given at the Islamic Center of Washington, D.C on September 17, 2001, Bush assured Americans that attacks committed by Al Qaeda were not representative of the Islamic faith: "The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace, they represent evil and war."

In his September 20, 2001, address to a joint session of Congress, Bush again made clear that the terrorists who attacked the United States "practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics -- a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam." Bush spoke directly to the difference between extremist terrorists and Muslims: "I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. (Applause.) The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them."

On November 6 2001 President Bush delivered remarks to the Warsaw Conference on Combating Terrorism during which he stated: "All of us here today understand this: We do not fight Islam, we fight against evil."

Today in a news conference, the FBI Director James Comey offered information that indicates the Orlando shooter

1. was ignorant because he was pledging support to two organizations locked in a deadly war with each other in Syria; and
2. was likely mentally ill.

Ignorant and crazy.

What's worrying is that would describe Trump's attempt to redefine how to be Presidential in responding to incidents like this. George W. Bush got it right, Barack Obama embraced Bush's approach, and Clinton intends to continue that approach. It's how to be "Presidential."

What we know is that Donald Trump is ignorant and crazy, not Presidential material. And his bigotry is as dangerous as the anti-gay bigotry of the Orlando shooter.