I’m going to predict Hillary Clinton will not be elected. I believe the majority of Americans are fed up with the lack of economic growth, high unemployment, increasingly bad race relations, politically driven riots, politically driven campus unrest, and an increasingly chaotic international situation. They’re going to vote for a change of government.
The real question is what to do when the GOP controls all three branches of the federal government. What should it do, in what order? Ted Cruz, for example, will immediately repeal what he considers all of Obama’s illegal executive orders. Nice. But of limited impact in the great scheme of things. What I’m concerned about are the fundamentals.
My list of fundamentals:
1. Replace the tax code with a lower, flat tax. Everyone pays at the same percentage.
2. Pass a balanced budget amendment. Include debt repayment in the budget.
3. Require all rules and regulations from any federal agency be approved by Congress. Require a cost-benefit analysis be included for each. Each regulatory agency and its existing rule set should be reviewed and scrubbed.
4. Pass welfare reform. Only the old and infirm should be on social benefits long term. Everyone else should be working and contributing to society. I would be open to CCC and WPA type programs to make the long term unemployed productive.
5. Repeal ObamaCare. Go to a market based healthcare and insurance system. Vastly reduce the legal hurdles and risks to providers. Include tort reform.
6. Repeal Common Core.
7. Review the costs and goals of every federal agency. Close every unnecessary agency. Start with the Dept of Education.
At the state level, I would like to see every Republican controlled governor-legislature team perform a full scale review of its school system: its administrative burden, its curriculum, its goals and its metrics. Consider voucher and competition systems to give parents a choice of schools and make schools compete for students.
People are ready for change. The future of the nation requires it. What good is attaining political power if it is not used?
Hillary will be elected if the other candidate is any threat to survival as a majority of voters see it: Entitlements.
Their definition of survival and security is the next check.
Socialism is the price of Nationalism getting into power, Nationalism is the price of actual survival – therefore PAY IT.
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As an exemplary aside about the rest of the GOP field….
Ted Cruz is a Harvard Lawyer, of Hispanic ancestry who is married to a VP of Goldman Sachs. His Christianity is Israel Focused and doesn’t go any farther than Christian Zionism.
His money comes from Wall St and he’s going to give them whatever they want.
He’s also-subjectively oily-and a snake.
He gives good speech. He’s accomplished nothing but to advance his fortunes.
But enough about Cruz.
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There’s one Candidate who’s for real because he’s not owned and he’s a Nationalist. Our most acute issue now are our borders and after that bankruptcy. None of the rest GOP or Democrat can do anything about either one because they’re owned by the faction that wants open borders and mass migration as a weapon against Americans and need unlimited money creation from the Fed to continue to exist.
I’m a Christian Zionist so I guess you aren’t interested in my opinion.
I am wary of Cruz because he is a one term Senator.
I am very wary of Trump who I consider an egomaniac and unreliable.
I am referring to Cruz’s antics at the In Defense of Christians meeting in DC.
Which blew back on him.
I’m not against Christian Zionists although it would be nice if 1] they put America first and 2] they acknowledged other Christians are in fact Christians. Those are minor points.
Cruz being a snake and Trump being his own man are not.
I put America first and acknowledge the Christians are Christian. What else would I have to do to meet with your approval ?
You are alienating me pretty quickly. I don’t like anti-Semitism and I am not Jewish and have no Jewish relatives closer than my dental hygienist.
We will not accomplish much with our two years in power and will be punished for a lack of results. We will have a lack of results because we haven’t done the prep work necessary to get good results. This isn’t big, sexy things that earn major grants from rich conservative benefactors but the meat and potato data sets necessary to identify all the grit the progressive, socialist, and liberal movements have poured into the workings of our governments. We haven’t identified all these things because sprinkled in among them is the fruit of the right’s crony capitalism, our own grit we’ve poured into the system. It’s far outweighed by the left’s but it’s there.
Only Trump can prove you wrong.
“His Christianity is Israel Focused”: poor show; it ought to be Galilee focused.
See my comment at random thoughts thread about Hillary.
Trump will be a third party candidate in order to split the Republican vote, as has always been the plan.
It is doubtful any Republican nominee will be able to run the gauntlet of media treachery, violent demonstrations, and the utter corruption of the party establishment and the electoral process itself.
The 2016 electoral cycle is not the critical one in many significant respects. That will come later, and the very nature and existence of the Republic will be very much at stake.
One of the developments signaling the approach of the crossroads will be a strong movement to eliminate the electoral college. Several other “significant reforms” will also be proposed, or simply decreed.
Every generation faces some form of test. Mine has failed most of ours. I can only hope the succeeding ones will do better.
It is very late in the day.
Ted Cruz at the Defense of Christians summit:
“today, Christians have no greater ally than the Jewish state.”
This caused the outrage. For the love of God, no truer words have ever been spoken.
Somebody had to tell those poor idiots, and it may as well have been Cruz.
One item. The flat tax. It is a canard.
We have a flat tax. It is called the Alternative Minimum Tax. It is an alternative, but you are required to pay it when it is greater than the the amount required by form 1040, and if it would save you money you can’t use it.
The rate is 26% The AMT has a standard minimum exemption of 78.5K$ for married couples and 50K$ for singles. The exemption is phased out above certain thresholds. Of the big four deductions — the ones on the face of Form 1040 Schedule A — medical, state taxes, mortgage interest, and charitable contributions — only state taxes are disallowed for the calculation of AMT.
Once again the rate is 26%.
I doubt that imposing a flat tax like the AMT on everyone, would do much to change the actual bottom line number collected by the government. Especially, if it is set so that it does not substantially increase anyone’s taxes in the lower 60% of the income distribution. Most of the the top quintile pays AMT now. The medical deduction has been neutered by the adoption of a high floor (10% of AGI). The home mortgage deduction is much reduced by low interest rates. So they do not much affect the big picture.
With you 100% on tax reform. It is completely broken and is actually my #1 issue for voting. I will vote for Trump if he shows me he can do it and I am not really a fan of his.
As for every agency needing Congressional approval for changes, it simply won’t and can’t happen. And frankly, I wouldn’t trust the congress critters anyway. There are a LOT of regulations in the HVAC field that the Dept. of Energy is considering changing right now and it is literally impossible for me to create any sort of realistic business plan right now. As broken as this process is, it would be even more broken (if that is possible) if Congress had to all of a sudden get educated on everything from rockets to baseball to HVAC systems to high tech medical procedures and everything in between.
Grurray,
I suspect I’m arguing against either Faith or ethnicity* alone here…however if you’re open to facts Cruz was not booed for saying that but applauded politely. At first.
However as Cruz had come there to pick a fight he kept on talking only about Israel until the participants realized he was grandstanding [on their neighbors slaughtered corpses] and wasn’t going to mention anything but Israel. This produced over time some scattered boos-what Cruz wanted-he leapt at the chance he created to denounce them with “If you will not stand with Israel I will not stand with you” and then storm out.
He invited himself at the last minute BTW after a morning prep at the Washington Examiner, which immediately ran with the Story.
Cruz set the Conference up. Their only idiocy was admitting him.
IDC is an organization primarily of Ancient Middle Eastern Churches and Western Catholics. These are the people bearing the brunt of suffering . However As their not evangelical and evangelicals don’t regard them as True Christians Cruz was playing to his bigoted choir. Evangelicals got their Virtue Signaling in and Cruz got a headline. He’s still a snake.
*but not both Faith and Ethnicity, eh?
Finally please offer any justification of fact for this statement: “today, Christians have no greater ally than the Jewish state.”
Really.
Offer any substance at all.
Israel knows what it cares about and that’s fine, we should all do the same.
I think this conversation is silly. Even if the Republicans keep the Senate, they will have razor thin majorities. Will they eliminate the filibuster in order to get stuff passed? Will the liberal Republicans actually join in to vote for these initiatives?
What about the ideological civil servants that can’t be fired but will continue to work to undermine every law that manages to get passed?
There’s not much opportunity for real improvement. Just the sort of window dressing that happens every time there is a budget deal, where they claim massive savings, but the savings actually only happens in year 5 or year 10 of the plan, and then subsequent plans just push it out again another few years.
The only chance for real change would be some metaphorical bombs thrown into the system to sabotage leviathan.
Maybe getting tax day moved to election day could plant the seeds for real change in the future. Or altering the tax forms to include welfare queen anecdotes, or Vegas vacation anecdotes, or VA death waiting list anecdotes.
Or an audit of the Fed.
Or, since the office of personnel management was hacked anyway, releasing public lists of ideological employees and contractors that treat the government as if it were a left-wing pack.
Take a wrecking ball to it all.
@Mike K,
I should mention up front that all race, gender, anti-semitic, homophobe et al cards don’t work on me.
However–You really have to reach to get Anti-Semitism from my remarks.
“I’m not against Christian Zionists although it would be nice if 1] they put America first and 2] they acknowledged other Christians are in fact Christians. Those are minor points. ”
That’s not remotely anti-Semitic.
Unless you’re going to claim Christian Zionists are Semites..which you make clear they’re not.
It is a mild rebuke for Christians of the Ted Cruz sort – who regardless of where they place America in the list of priorities are quite clear they don’t regard Churches founded by the very Apostles as “Truly Christian.” Some those Churches are attended of course by actual Semites.
Or they were until recently.
Really it’s a hit on Cruz and a warning about him.
“You really have to reach to get Anti-Semitism from my remarks.”
I did, though, and there is quite a bit of that in some circles on the right.
I am not a fan of Cruz but think he might go all the way and be preferable to many of the others. In 2000 I was not a fan of Bush but think he did a fair job.
“The only chance for real change would be some metaphorical bombs thrown into the system to sabotage leviathan.”
No, I think the Administrative State can be dismantled by a conservative administration and the removal of dubious requirements on states would do a lot.
I don’t have a great deal of confidence in Congress but Congress has dine very little the past four years. That’s OK with me.
I think Obamacare will collapse on its own and have said so for some time. Repeal would be nice but is unnecessary. A few new proposals, like renew HSAs and allow high deductible underwritten health insurance would be enough. The market has already begun to function as older doctors have been driven out of the Obamacare industrial models.
The “Flat Tax” without serious reduction in spending will not work.
Name Name – Everybody has bottom priorities but nobody focuses on them even though they are the key to getting out of our fiscal jam. Conservatives could be writing constituent letters, asking questions at town halls to nail down their Senators and Representative as to items they think are bottom priority items. Assemble all those bottom priority answers and we might find a few percent of actual spending that has a majority willing to cut it. I don’t think we get the 46% we need to balance the budget but we might get 10% and that buys us a significant amount of time to get better answers.
Sources:
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/FGEXPND
https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/W006RC1Q027SBEA
But few seem interested in doing the work.
“But few seem interested in doing the work.”
I agree. I have to say that a considerable effort in local politics a few years ago was discouraging as we managed to oust a corrupt city council only to see the new council members we elected make new friends and adopt the policies of the old group.
Lord Acton was right.
Or as Howard Jarvis, a profound political philosopher, once said, “You can’t ask the pigs to step away from the trough. You have to kick it away from them.
vxxc2014,
“However As their not evangelical and evangelicals don’t regard them as True Christians Cruz was playing to his bigoted choir.”
Evangelicals have the same regard for Eastern Christians as they do for all Catholics. It may have been the case in the distant past that evangelicals believed Catholicism had more cultural validation than spiritual, but I don’t see any evidence of that now from anyone of any consequence, let alone Ted Cruz. Evangelical missionaries have been active in the Levant for over a 150 years, and they continue to operate several schools and churches in and around Beirut, particularly Baptists. The past decade of persecution has only strengthened those ties with many outreach and relief efforts. I’m not sure what it’s like where you are, but we have several large Evangelical churches and colleges in our area that are working hard to save Middle Eastern Christians. It’s simply false and wrong to make these accusations.
“Finally please offer any justification of fact for this statement: “today, Christians have no greater ally than the Jewish state.””
I can’t believe I have to do this with so much news and information about it at our disposal, but it seems I must briefly explain the painfully obvious.
Middle Eastern Christians have been “bearing the brunt of suffering” for over a thousand years since they were conquered by Islam. Every several years brings genocidal massacres like clockwork. It’s happening now in Syria just as it happened in Egypt, just as it happened in Lebanon, just like it happened in Assyria, Armenia, just like it happened everywhere in the Middle East and will continue to happen. Ted Cruz was merely pointing out this obvious fact to people who don’t want to listen for one reason or another – Israel is the only place where they don’t get killed, where they aren’t on the run, where they live prosperous lives not in fear. A strong Israel is the best hope for some peace and stability somewhere in the Middle East. It’s the only hope as the rest of the region is falling apart.
” Israel is the only place where they don’t get killed, ”
I think Netanyahu has recently said there are more Christians in Israel than in Syria now.
I believe it and they are less likely to stab Jews in the back than the legal Arab residents of Israel.
Remember there are millions of Muslims in India who live peaceful lives. I think India is the second largest Muslim population. Third, according to Wikipedia. </a.
Well that is substantive in it’s modest way; Christians aren’t being persecuted in Israel.
Point agreed.
If we’ve spent enough time on Israel and anti-anti-antisemitism for today…the problems Americans need concern themselves with are in the USA. If elected President [unlikely] Cruz will not alleviate those problems. My point on Cruz was and is he’s a snake. Cruz will profit from those problems exactly as he does now.
And no he wasn’t trying to help, he came to throw bombs at a seemingly safe target to get headlines. It turned out to not be all that safe but it was revealing of his character.
He’s also not important. He’s a member of the Legislative Branch which has capitulated utterly to the Executive Branch. The Executive Branch is the only power we the voters can still pick. We can elect Senators but they have no Power – they surrendered it. It will not be reclaimed.
There’s one guy running at present who’s his own man. We have a chance to pick a Chief Executive who isn’t owned by anyone but himself and seems to like his own people.
The rest of them including Hillary aren’t and don’t.
We will not escape a Trial that’s already begun but a President or any leader actually on our side could mitigate it.
Happy Monday.
I don’t believe Cruz went there specifically to antagonize the audience. I didn’t see anything or read about him saying anything different than what he has said elsewhere. The audience, reportedly heavily comprised of Lebanese Christians, didn’t appreciate his comments because many still cling to the belief that they still have a viable nation. Historically, their small enclave was a semi-designated, occasionally protected homeland for Christians, but it’s not that anymore because of the destabilizing influence of Islam and Islamists.
Hillary scares me more than any other American but there is no one in the GOP that America will elect. It’s clown show now.
Crush Title IX. Destroy Title IX. Exorcise the demon that is Title IX, and cast it into the fires. Eviscerate Title IX. With a rusty knife. Feed Title IX to various fauna of particularly voracious nature. Draw and Quarter Title IX. Take the quarters remaining of Title IX and burn them to ash. Take the ash for the quarters of Title IX to Hawaii’s Big Island, and cast them into the open furnace, that they may be delivered unto the mantle of the earth, never to be spoken of again. Scour any records that Title IX ever existed from the pillars and tablets of the land.
That can be step one.
I also have some ideas about getting rid of Title IX that you might be interested in.
Like reading a scripture…
I would be very happy if the next Republican president simply upon taking the oath of office signed a presidential order that commands all executive branch agencies to cease promulgation new regulations indefinitely and revokes everyone regulation issued by the Obama Administration. If a regulation is truly needed then he can authorize it to proceed through the administrative procedures rules unchanged as per his authorization. After signing the order he can then take a well deserved vacation for four years. If he was truly bold and ambitious he would instead of going on vacation start pruning back on regulations that aren’t needed or obsolete all the way back to 1789. If he was a Stakhanovite he would veto everything Congress passed that didn’t meet the following conditions: single subject, statement of purpose, limiting principle, citation of authority, expiration date of not more than twenty years and that it applies to all branches of all governments in the US and on all of their respective officials, officers and agents. Which means nothing gets passed. The country would boom. And his face would be carved on Mt. Rushmore. If he was a real glutton for punishing work loads for his second term he would hand Congress a list of every statute that he deems worthy of repeal simply because of repetitiveness, or no longer enforced, no longer needed or too vague and ill-focused or harmful as written and refuse to pay all federal employees until the great repeal is done. Statues to him would be erected everywhere as tokens of admiration and respect. One can dream.
As for Hillary Clinton, unless the Republicans nominate Satan (and he isn’t in the Republican lineup) I see no great public demand for a third Obama Administration. I don’t know who then next president will be but I do know who it won’t be: Hillary Clinton.
Mike K: “The ‘Flat Tax’ without serious reduction in spending will not work.”
There cannot be a serious reduction in spending.
Let us suppose that I ran the circus (the US Government). Clearly, getting the financial house of cards in order would be my first order of business. The only way to do that is to shut down the unconstitutional departments (Education, HHS, HUD, CPB, Interior) and brutally cut back the rest. Even if we did that The Federal Government would still need to raise enough money to run the Defense Department, the State Department, DoJ, and some of the other miscellany that are within the constitutional scope of its activities.
Those functions would need about 5% of current GDP (4% for defense and 1% for everything else including the pensions of the hundreds of thousands of federal employees we just laid off). That 4% for defense might be too low and might have to go up to 6%.
Further, we would need to deal with at least two types of debt overhang. The first is the conventional bonded indebtedness of the federal government (not including the amount owed to Social Security that is a different and bigger problem) including, however, the outstanding bonds and guarantees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been improperly excluded from the Federal Budget and the debt limit. The net is about 100% of GDP.
Amortizing that debt over 30 years would require about 5.1% of GDP. We could be honest and pay it. Or we could expressly default on it, or implicitly default on it by paying it off in hyper-inflated dollars. I believe that Hamilton was right and the best thing to do is to pay our debts in honest currency. But, do not for a second believe the Administration’s bu11$#;+ that the US has never defaulted. FDR paid off the WWI debt in debased non convertible money that represented a 43% haircut for creditors.
So far just these two items would require the Federal Government to collect about 10% of the GDP in tax revenues. That is more than it collects from the individual income tax now!.
The second debt is is not legally a debt, but there would be millions of pissed-off voters if it were not paid in full, and that is social security and medicare benefits. It is not a debt because the courts have held that Congress can change or remove benefits at any time. None the less, there is no way that current vested benefits could be eliminated without serious upset. Paying them takes about 8% of GDP. Most of that is raised by the payroll tax, but as the boomers retire and start to collect their benefits, the payroll tax, as a percentage of expenditures will drop, and the benefits will have to be paid from general revenue*.
We are therefore at 18% of GDP even after we have eliminated a huge chunk of the monster. We will have ended the perpetual accumulation of deficits, but we cannot reduce the Federal Governments tax receipts under their current level.
*This is another way of saying that the bonds that the SS Trust Fund holds will have to be paid off.