Month: November 2016

I think Trump’s dyslexia has made him what he is today.   Dyslexics have trouble reading, for some reason.  It has nothing to do with intelligence.  A person I know as well as anyone in this world is dyslexic, and he’s as smart as anybody.  He just doesn’t like to read.  He’s been this way his whole life, and I just realized it’s because he’s dyslexic.  It explains so much.

This is why Trump is so insecure.  When he started school, he couldn’t do as well as was expected of him, because he had trouble reading.  He’s always had difficulty reading, all through school, and all through life.  He was probably teased about being dumb when he was a kid.  When I heard him brag about going to the Wharton School of Business at a rally, I couldn’t believe my ears.  Who brags about something as trivial as that?  And I’m pretty sure he’s talked in general terms about his intelligence, and his good genes.  Who does that?  Someone who is incredibly insecure.  And if you’re insecure you compensate in a variety of ways.  By being a bully, a tough guy, a ruthless competitor, a conqueror of women, a celebrity, a President.

I’m not worried about his insecurity preventing him from being a very successful President.  Nixon was the most insecure man to occupy the Oval Office, and it helped lead to his downfall.  But Trump’s family, along with his inner circle, is our best insurance policy.  No worries.

The inner circle around a President is our last line of defense against a lunatic.  Henry Kissinger tells the story, in one of his books, of one of Nixon’s last nights in the White House.  He was going to resign, and he was losing it.  He got drunk and told Kissinger (who, because he was a Jew, had been frozen out of a role on Israeli policy as National Security Adviser) to immediately cut off all aid to Israel.  He was all pissed off about something, and Kissinger, Haldemann and Ehrlichman all ignored him.  It was never mentioned again.

People think dyslexics aren’t smart because they don’t read books, but that’s not true.  Some dyslexics, like Trump, are geniuses.  It may not show up on an IQ score, because of their difficulty with the written word.  But they can be just as smart as anyone.  A lot of disdain that people like me have had for Trump is based on his ignorance.  A man who doesn’t read books doesn’t have as much knowledge as a man who does, and book lovers like me know more facts, and have more information, than a non-reader.

So we’ve been looking down on him because he has a learning disability.  Well, he’s certainly overcome it, in spades.  He’s learned to compensate.

 

 

 

If Romney gets State, and Cruz is AG, Trump will be acting in the tradition of  Abraham Lincoln.  Most of the country didn’t want Lincoln.  He only won 40% of the vote, but was elected because his opposition was split three ways.  In a sense, that election of the first Republican President was the only instance of a third party achieving its goals in our history.

Rather than appoint loyalists to his cabinet, Lincoln chose from among the men he beat, most prominently Secretary of State Seward (beloved by all Alaskans).  These were the famous “team of rivals” who helped him save the Union.  They were patriots, devoted with Lincoln to winning the Civil War, and freeing the slaves.  All in all, they served Lincoln, and the country, well.

The market’s acting like it did with Reagan, and he started a bull market that lasted from 1982-2001.  It was a period of the greatest wealth accumulation in American history.  A market is made, in part, on the animal spirits of the country.  We’re in an era of rational exuberance.  There is an enormous amount of pent up energy in this country, and we’re going to see an entrepreneurial boom.

In other words, the time is ripe for Article V.  It’s a time for bold action, for fundamental reform.  And the best part is, it’s going to be bipartisan.  Jerry Brown of California is an Article V man, and he’s in a position to lead the Democratic Party in a new direction.  The Sanders Democrats, such as those at Wolf-Pac, are all in on Article V.  Left and right agree on that.  We want to take power away from the center, and Article V is the way to do it.

On a Heartland Institute call today a woman named Vicki Deppe reported on her organizing efforts in the Illinois Legislature.  She’s got 27 sponsors, and almost half of them are Democrats.  She was saying how Illinois only gets 50 cents back on every dollar it ships to Washington, and they’ve had enough.  Here’s the weird part  — the Article V Resolution she’s working on is the most radical, extreme version of Article V, the so-called Convention of States Resolution.  If she can sell that, Article V is really on a roll.  And it’s bipartisan.

Republicans will have total control of the federal purse strings for the next four, six, eight years?   The Democrats would be better off retreating to their coastal enclaves, and leave the rest of America alone.  That’s all we really want, to be left alone.  We’re a big and diverse country, with distinct regional differences.  The secret of federalism is that it’s a way for everybody to get along.  It’s tolerance.

When I think of an inner circle which includes the Trump family, Pence, Conway, Bannon, Priebus, Romney and Cruz, with more to come, this could  be one hell of an administration.

But the Article V movement, or the Reagan Project, as I call it, is not looking for help from Trump, or anybody else in Washington.  We’re going to be bipartisan, and the Democrats can’t stand Trump.  We want to keep our distance from him.  This is not his movement, it’s ours.  And I can feel it growing.  And part of that is because of Trump.  We got the Minnesota Senate because of him, and that was huge.  He disavowed Article V early in his campaign, to gain the support of Phyllis Schlafly.   She’s gone now, and nobody really cares what she thinks.  But that’s still his position.   I hope he keeps to it.  We’re a bottom up movement, and don’t want any help from the top.

The days are pretty short right now, but in a month they’ll start getting longer.  That’s the Alaskan in me thinking.

I’ve been a lawyer for 42 years, but only actively practiced law for the first six.  I’m not cut out to be a lawyer.  I got into politics in 1980, and have tried to do as little law as possible ever since.  Lawyers are quibblers.  I did enjoy getting in front of a jury, but other than that I hated the whole thing.  I like politics, and that’s what I’m good at.

Ted Cruz is the opposite of me.  He’s a born quibbler, and relishes a good fight over some obscure technicality of the law.   He’d be a fabulous law professor, a great Supreme Court Justice, and an excellent Attorney General.  He’s a lousy United States Senator.  When 95% of your colleagues hate you, personally, you’re in the wrong job.  I think Cruz, deep down, realizes that.

The word is that Trump is going to pick a Justice from the list he came up with during the campaign, and Cruz is not on that list.  But who’s going to go into the Justice Department and hose down that stable full of leftists?   Giuliani doesn’t seem to want it, and Jeff Sessions might want to stay in the Senate and keep an eye on Mitch McConnell.

Outside of his family, who does Trump really trust?  His Prime Minister, Mike Pence.  What does Pence think of Cruz?  He supported him for President, even when he could see the Trump tsunami coming.  Another man Trump has absolute confidence in is Jeff Sessions, who’s served in the Senate with Cruz for four years.  He’s no fan of Cruz as a Senator, but Sessions, an outstanding attorney in his own right, knows a brilliant lawyer when he sees one.

The fly in the ointment is lack of trust by Trump himself.  He trusted Christie, and he trusts Sessions.  But I don’t think there’s another candidate for AG out there who Trump does trust.  Ted Cruz is an honorable and decent man, who Trump hurt, personally, by attacking his father.  Appointing Cruz as Attorney General would be an act of grace and magnanimity.

Jared Kushner is handy with a knife.  He’s wanted a piece of Chris Christie’s ass for over ten years, and he just carved out a big piece of it.  An absolutely masterful performance by young Kushner, and a great public service, as well.  This is a man to watch.

I just spoke with David Eastman, a 35 year old Representative-elect from Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley.  A young man of high ideals, and ambition.  I hope to see him at ALEC.  I may have something in mind for him.

 

Is $20 trillion of debt enough, or do we need more?

Most building is done with debt.  You don’t wait to buy a home until you can pay for it.  You borrow, and buy your home over the course of 30 years.  Without debt, things don’t get built.  The Roman Catholic Church was opposed to debt, or usury as they called it.  So it couldn’t borrow the money needed to build the great cathedrals of Europe.  As a consequence, they took hundreds of years to build.

Trump’s a builder, and he’s going to take on debt to do it.  Interest rates will rise, and we’ll have some inflation.  This is not necessarily a bad thing.  It’s basic Keynsianism.  You borrow and spend when the economy is weak, and you stop borrowing once the economy has returned to full strength.  You count on economic growth to provide the revenue to pay the interest on the debt.

The problem with Keynesian economics is that once they start borrowing, the politicians never stop.  Even when the economy is relatively strong, as it was under Bush 2, they keep on borrowing.  The pressure to spend, especially on popular entitlement programs, is too great.  This is why we still need a Balanced Budget Amendment.  Not to stop Trump from two more years of taking on debt.  It’s to stop him, and his successors, from continuing to borrow, when the borrowing is based on political, not economic, considerations.

State legislators understand all this.  The one thing every Speaker of the House, and every President of the Senate, knows is that they are responsible for passing a budget.  It’s the one thing they have to do, and in almost all cases it has to balance.  They know how it’s supposed to work, and they want Congress to work that way.  And with Article V they can make it happen.

Any day now I may hear the news that Project 2017 is a go.  And if that happens, we’re going to get to 34 this year.

When I started this blog three years ago I did it with the hope that the political tide had turned, and great change was coming.  The rising tide of change would be so strong that it would lift even the heaviest of boats — Article V.  If ever the time was right, this was going to be it.  So I called Lew Uhler, who I hadn’t been in touch with for 30 years, and he brought me in to the BBA Task Force.  I had no idea such a group existed.  I was amazed, actually.  They were working under the assumption that there would be support from Democratic State legislators.  They started working on this about seven years ago, in 2009, when Republicans had complete control over 14 State Legislatures.  They did not believe that Republicans would, over the course of the next four election cycles, pick up 19 more States. They thought, instead, that they’d get help from Democrats.

In this, they were completely misguided.  The Task Force has added 12 States to the 16 that were still valid from the Lew Uhler era.  Every one of them was under complete Republican control.  We never got one bit of help from any Democrat in the country, who mattered.  And we’ll get to 34 without one bit of help from any Democrat.  I hope that’s wrong.  The Democrats need a new identity, and offering a balance to the wild spending of Trump may be a part of the way back for them.

For Article V to happen, it took true believers, like Dave and Suzie Biddulph, and Bill Fruth, and Loren Enns to carry the ball when the cause was, in fact, quixotic.

Well, it’s not quixotic any more.

Harry Enten of 538.com just pointed out that this is the first Presidential election since the 17th Amendment in which no Senator was elected in a State which was won by the other party’s Presidential candidate.  Clinton won New Hampshire, the Senate seat went to the Democrat.  It was the same in all 34 States with Senate elections.

As long as we’re polarized like this, the Republicans will control the Senate.  Right now, at a minimum, I can name 30 red States.  There are something like 15 blue ones.  The other 5 are purple.  Over the course of the next two election cycles, 2018 and 2020, the Senate should see 60 Republicans, a filibuster proof majority.  And they could win some of those purple states, as they have done in the past with  moderates.

If Trump is successful, the Democrats are going to be in  big trouble.

Which gets me to Article V, and the Balanced Budget Amendment.  We should get support from moderate Democrats in States like Kentucky, and we will.  But where we really need some help is in the Minnesota Senate, where Birchers live, and we have a one vote majority.

If you’re a reasonable Democrat, why wouldn’t you be for a BBA?  It’s their country that’s going bankrupt, as much as it is ours.  They know something needs to be done.  Trump won’t balance the budget, he won’t even try.  He’s the King of Debt.  He brags about it.  He’s a builder, above all else, and in order to build you need money, and if you have to borrow to build, you borrow.

Democrats need to understand that until 2020, or 2022, or 2024, there’as going to be a whole lot of spending going on, and they won’t have a thing to say about how it’s spent.  The Republicans will be the ones doing all the spending, and the Democrats will be paying the bills.

Maybe the future of the Democratic Party is to be the party of fiscal restraint?  It worked, twice, for Grover Cleveland, who was the 22nd and the 24th President.  Maybe they ought to give it a try.  What else have they got?

Oh, I forgot, they’ve got demographics.  But the very same Harry Enten, in a good piece at 538.com, finally admits I’ve been right all along.  Demographics aren’t destiny.  Political parties change, constantly, and demographics are just one aspect of the shifting coalitions that political parties are.

The Democrats will come back.  They always do, Republicans as well.  Because we’ve got this two party system so ingrained in our institutions, all people who are in opposition to the party in power will coalesce in the party out of power.  As long as the party in power keeps most people happy, it stays in power.  But only for so long, usually for no more than twenty years.

I actually saw crazy old Art Laffer on Fox Business, and he got all jacked up, and talked about staying in power for 1,000 years.  I’ll settle for a hundred.  The Progressive movement began around 100 years ago, and it will take 100 years to get back to the Constitution.

Maybe the future of the Democratic Party is to be the Washington Generals.  The loser party.  Let that be the epitaph of Bill and Hillary Clinton.  Everybody talks about Obama losing his legacy, and he will.  But he’s doing it with class, and grace.  This will be, he is determined, to be the most seamless transition in power we’ve ever had.

The Clintons, both of them, have been personally humiliated, and exposed as the frauds they’ve always been.  The big money days are over, and they’ll have to pay all those legal bills somehow.  Money’s going to be a problem. The Crime Foundation is kaput, and they’ll be lucky to escape indictment.

They lost it all, just like that.  The Lord is just.