Big Government

Does the Establishment GOP Want to Win This Election ?

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I’m starting to wonder if the Republican Party, that is the institutional party not the voters, really wants to win the election if it means accepting Trump as the nominee.

I was skeptical at first when it looked like Trump was not collapsing of his own weight.

About December, he began to look like there was a real chance of winning.

Now, after months of whistling past the graveyard of Trump’s seemingly inexorable rise and assuring themselves that his candidacy will collapse as voters come to their senses, a CNN poll released Wednesday showing Trump now lapping the field has the GOP establishment in full meltdown mode. The survey shows Trump with nearly 40% of the primary vote, trailed by Ted Cruz at 18%, Ben Carson and Marco Rubio tied at 10%, and the also-rans (including great GOP hope Jeb Bush) limping along far behind.

I am not a Trump supporter but I am intrigued at the steady progress he is making toward success.

I am still not that enthusiastic but it seems that he has attracted a large following of people who might be motivated enough to elect him president. The Republican Party seems horrified by the prospect.

This talk of ousting Trump as the nominee seems more likely to be a big flashing public signal to Trump to get his act together right away. (The smart lefty writer John Judis thinks Trump’s scripted speech Tuesday night is a sign he got this message.) If you were really going to depose Trump from being the GOP nominee in Cleveland, I’m not sure you’d go big with lots of public chatter about it as you’re seeing right now.

For example, Michael Mukasey a former Attorney General, has written a pearl clutching op-ed in the Wall Street Journal about Trump’s feud with the judge in the Trump U case.

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Lest We Forget: “Reasons Why Dodd-Frank Was a Horrible Law”

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Jeff Carter:

One thing I have noticed over the years is when there is a crisis, it’s a really bad time to pass sweeping legislation. The momentum and justification for legislation comes from fear. “We don’t want that to happen again”, supporters say. For example, 9/11 happens and we get the Department of Homeland Security which is mostly a waste of money and allows the government to pry into all kinds of places it shouldn’t.
 
Dodd-Frank is a result of the financial crisis. There are so many bad actors in this crisis that it’s hard to list them all, but the root cause was the implicit backing government gave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-along with legislation and regulation that encouraged bad behavior. Sure, the ratings agencies were paid by the big banks and slanted the playing field. The big banks knew exactly what they were doing with the mortgages. But, without the implicit backing of government, the game never gets played.

and

Here are some data points:
 

  • Before Dodd-Frank 75% of banks offered free checking

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  • After Dodd-Frank 25% of banks offered free checking

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  • Small business costs are up 15% to comply with new regulation

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  • 15% less credit card accounts, and a 200 basis points more in cost

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    Remember, many small businesses get started by using credit cards. You might think they are stupid. But why should you import your financial/moral compass on them. Maybe they see the annual percentage rate credit card companies charge as cheap compared to the opportunity that lies ahead of them.
     
    In the state of Missouri, there were 44 banks with less than $50M in assets. Prior to Dodd-Frank they were profitable. Post Dodd-Frank, 26/44 are losing money and will either go out of business or be consolidated. Your local community bank which is often the lifeblood of local capital is dead. How many other states are like Missouri? It’s no wonder small town rural America is having a tough go in the Obama epoch.
     
    Dodd-Frank tried to make central party clearing mandatory for all transactions in the OTC market. Professor Craig Pirrong has blogged brilliantly about this and other aspects of Dodd-Frank. It works for a few, but not for all. This makes it more expensive to hedge risks. Businesses pass along the cost to consumers. In many cases, clearinghouses have to become the actual counterparty to the hedge. This stops commerce and more importantly has created more too big to fail institutions. Those too big to fail clearinghouses are now backed by the full faith and credit of the American taxpayer, you.

    These are great points and Jeff’s post is worth reading in full.

    An Eye Witness Report from the 6-2-2016 Trump Rally in San Jose

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    This is from Trump event attendee Karen Powers:

    As a Trump supporter, I was there, in San Jose, attending the Trump event on June 2.
     
    The Trump event attendees were forced to walk past the protesters afterward, after the event was over, to get to their cars. Broad areas of sidewalks and streets, that were not blockaded before the event started, were blockaded by barriers after the event ended, and standing in front of those barriers were lines of individual police officers telling Trump event attendees what route to follow to get to their vehicles.
     
    I had parked in a parking garage right next door to the event. Before the event, an easy walk to the event, after event over, had to square 4 blocks of sidewalk lined with protesters who somehow knew the exact route that Trump supporters/event attendees had to walk, and were waiting for them.
     
    Frankly, it was pretty obvious that either law enforcement personnel or the mayors office, someone in the know, had told the protesters where the Trump supporters would be forced to walk after the event. Attendees only went where law enforcement officers told them to go in order to get to our cars. We followed their instructions. The protesters knew, seemed well informed, of the direction where Trump supporters were going to be heading even before we exited the event, and protesters lined that walking route as a result, literally laying in wait where no law enforcement was present.
     
    There was an intent to force the supporters and protesters together. There was no intent to keep them apart.
     
    Trump supporters exiting the event were literally set up like rats in a maze, forced to follow a prescribed set of boundaries, which led directly to the protesters and not away from them.
     
    The press got their story but the clash was completely avoidable. It was created by intention and by design.

    Let’s be really clear about the implications of this report. These rioters were acting as an official arm of the Democratic Party controlled San Jose city government in suppressing the civil rights of Americans. The presidential election in November 2016 is no longer about “Trump” or “Hillary”.

    It is about whether we will retain American political freedom.

    The Administrative State to Citizens: You Have No Rights

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    The Pacific Legal Foundation, who last year at the Supreme Court won the right of citizens to challenge EPA rulings, has now won the right of citizens to challenge the determinations of the US Army Corps of Engineers.

    It is not enough that agencies pass rulings and regulations that amount to law without their ever going through Congress or  being voted on. Increasingly, the Administrative State takes the approach that you will do whatever they say without recourse, under penalty of egregious fines or imprisonment.  Your tax dollars at work.

    PLF is donation supported.

     

    What has happened to Venezuela?

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    Venezuela is in the news as the country cannot even buy paper to print money.

    This all goes back to 1998 when Chavez was elected by the people.

    He was an army officer and had previously attempted to overthrow the government, a coup that failed.

    in the early 1980s. Chávez led the MBR-200 in an unsuccessful coup d’état against the Democratic Action government of President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992, for which he was imprisoned. Released from prison after two years, he founded a political party known as the Fifth Republic Movement and was elected president of Venezuela in 1998.

    Venezuela is an example of The Curse of Natural Resources.

    The idea that resources might be more of an economic curse than a blessing began to emerge in debates in the 1950s and 1960s about the economic problems of low and middle-income countries.[3] The term resource curse was first used by Richard Auty in 1993 to describe how countries rich in mineral resources were unable to use that wealth to boost their economies and how, counter-intuitively, these countries had lower economic growth than countries without an abundance of natural resources. An influential study by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found a strong correlation between natural resource abundance and poor economic growth.

    Venezuela is only the latest and worst example. The history is depressingly familiar.

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