Democrat Admits Issues with Trump Driven by Economic Policy Difference

Megan Rapinoe is not the first world-class athlete to indicate or refuse an invitation to the White House because of its current occupant, but she is the most revealing. Up to now, the refusers have claimed that they could not meet with a man who is so hateful, bigoted, and who pursues racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-trans policies. Rapinoe, however, has just exposed that these excuses are merely to conceal their true reason: that they are liberals first and don’t believe they have to or should associate with people who have different opinions on policy.



In an interview with Chuck Todd, after buttering her up by comparing her to Muhammad Ali, he asked her a terrific question. It wasn’t a gotcha question, it was a legitimate, thoughtful question.



Todd: What do you tell a Trump supporter who loves watching you? And is like, “I wish she’d go to the White House.”



This is a terrific question at odds with what the media has become. First, it is grounded her own statements: “We have to be better. We have to love more, hate less, We got to listen more and talk less.” The person who believes that should not be refusing a meeting at the White House. She should be going there and making her case. She should be using the opportunity to bring attention to her cause. Secondly, this question is a “moderating” question, in that it forces the ideological extremists to consider the opinions of the people on the other side, the opposite of what the media normally do.



Instead of answering Todd’s question directly, doubling down on her own statements about listening more, she says she would ask the person who wants her to go to the White House “Do you believe that all people are created equal? Do you believe that equal pay should be mandated? Do you believe that everyone should have healthcare? Do you believe we that we should treat everyone with respect?” Perhaps because this is the first time she was being asked a tough question about her hypocrisy she was flummoxed and was actually answering the question of why she wouldn’t go to the White House, but her answer reveals that a big part of the reason is because she has policy differences with Trump. Assuming she’s being honest, this would suggest that she would never go to the White House for any Republican president since they don’t believe “equal pay should be mandated.”



Rapinoe’s answer to Todd’s question demonstrates that this is based on economic policy and has nothing to do with “Trump’s message.” Todd asked what would have to happen for Rapinoe to visit the White House. Rapinoe responded, “There’s like, 50 policy issues.” So, then she’d go if Trump simply changed his policies? I would really like to know which policies she’s thinking about. Tax rates? Single Payer? She might as well have said she’ll visit the White House when and only when its occupant has a (D) by his or her name.

Devising a Terrible Poll to Cover for Socialists

Business Insider wanted to get to the bottom of the public stance on the Amazon HQ2/NYC issue. If you don't know, Amazon chose NYC to host half of their second headquarters. They were set to receive approximately $3 billion dollars in tax incentives to locate there and add 25,000 jobs to Queens. City and state Democrats approved the deal, including the mayor and the governor, but after the announcement, some local Democrats, including the representative of the 14th District in New York, strongly objected.

One of their arguments was that the $3 billion dollars could be better spent elsewhere. "It's fair to ask why we don't invest the capital for public use, + why we don't give working people a tax break." Many jumped on these comments as illustrating ignorance of the mechanism involved. The statement is vague enough that it could be interpreted either way, but she could easily augment it to make it not sound idiotic.

So to determine whether people agreed with the Governor or Mayor or the local socialists, Business Insider conducted a poll. The poll found that a plurality of respondents thought $3 billion dollars would be better spent on tax breaks for residents.

This poll is completely divorced from the situation though, and ironically, it shows that still no one agrees with the socialists, because its result indicates most people want lower taxes. Even so, the poll does not make clear that the $3 billion dollars "given" to Amazon should be compared to the $27 billion dollar increase in tax receipts from Amazon's entry. So NYC made a deal to increase their tax revenues by $24 billion on net. What if the poll asked "Should NYC lower Amazon's tax bill over ten years to guarantee $27 billion dollars in new tax revenue or offer no tax break and receive no new tax revenues?" What if he poll asked "How much should NYC be willing to give up to guarantee $27 billion dollars in new tax revenue?"

The option chosen by the plurality, though I doubt the respondents considered the implication, might arrest the exodus of New Yorkers from the state or incentivize more work, but Democrats and Socialists don't believe that tax cuts improve the economy or that workers respond by increasing their labor, nor do they decry the loss of the people who are fleeing for lower tax states.

Also, it's pretty hard to believe that either of those would offer the nearly 900% return that the tax incentives were offering, which would only grow as time went on.

Fact-Checking an Entertainer's Exaggerations

On Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Rush Limbaugh made some points regarding climate change that he often makes on his radio show and are not far off from arguments other climate skeptics make. Politifact took a look at them and rated them "False."

Given his role as a radio commentator, one should expect exaggeration, and Politifact should have investigated his claims not as whether they were true or false, but rather if there was a grain of truth that he was exaggerating and how much exaggeration there is.

I have zero confidence in the prominent newspapers when it comes to climate change coverage. Despite the fact that the climate is complex and there is variation, their coverage is fifty times stronger of the "up" variations than the "down" variations and they clearly exaggerate climate change.

For example, any time the average temperature increases even the tiniest amount, they provide the same 'sky is falling' coverage as when it goes up substantially. Recently, all the surface measurement entities said the same thing--the average global temperature for 2018 was lower than 2017, however, not a single press story mentioned that. Instead all coverage was that 2018 was one of the hottest years on record. And they would not say there was a two-year downward trend since 2016. 

I'm not arguing that the trend will continue, and I'm not arguing that there hasn't been a trend upward, according to that data, since 2000. A reasonable person can admit both. I don't understand why the media, though, can't acknowledge that the temperature has declined since 2016. They could easily quote a scientist saying it's likely a temporary decline because of El Nino in 2016, but they'd rather just omit the inconvenient truth from their stories because they can't handle or they believe their readers can't handle any amount of nuance or complexity.

Turning back to Rush Limbaugh's comments, he said 

"Climate change is nothing but a bunch of computer models that attempt to tell us what's going to happen in 50 years or 30. Notice the predictions are never for next year or the next 10 years. They're always for way, way, way, way out there, when none of us are going to be around or alive to know whether or not they were true."

 Politifact's rebuttal is three-fold--climate change is happening now, predictions from the past have been borne out, and near-term projections have usually been correct.

Climate Change is Happening Now

Most data bears out that it's hotter now than it was ten or twenty years ago or more. However, the statement by climate scientist Kevin Trenberth that "The Earth is now hotter than it has ever been." Is factually inaccurate. As it was hotter two years ago than it is now. His point was probably the point that I made, not the narrow inference I made, but good science and good journalism (and good  fact checking) should distinguish in the interest of clarity and accuracy. There is really no reason to let a general and technically incorrect statement like that stand on it's own. (As an aside, I doubt that the fact-checker even understands that the statement is not 100% accurate).

Predictions from the Past have Been Borne out

This is where Rush is on his firmest footing. The Politifact article uses one expert who conducted an analysis for a website, then cites a single model which overpredicted the temperature increase by 20%. They also refer to this analysis which shows that the models have been off by varying degrees but claim that they're basically right. After reviewing the models and evidence, the models do not consistently over-estimate like I originally believed, but they also don't seem especially accurate. The difference here might be the reporting, an interesting investigation may be to look at how these are reported. I suspect that the media tend to emphasize the highest estimates and that's what gives the impression that the models are always over-estimating.

Near-Term Projections Are Usually Correct

What terrible evidence. I should hope that they're usually correct. I can get pretty close to a good prediction just by saying the temperature will be exactly the same. There is no difficulty in guessing small changes, and furthermore they are pointless. What is important is the long-term projections. This defense should not be included.

Doubling Down on Bad Programs

Democrats want to fix Social Security. Unfortunately, the way they want to go about it is to double-down on a poorly designed program. To summarize their plan, they want to raise the payroll taxes by almost 20% (from 12.4 to 14.8), increase benefits by 2%, and expand the program to income 400k and up (excluding income between 132.9k - 400k)

Social Security was designed over 75 years ago for a society much different from todays. It redistributes wealth from low income earners with low life expectancy to the affluent. It redistributise wealth from dual-earner couples to single-earner couples. Why do we want a system that does this?

Furthermore, as has been shown, Social Security is a terrible pension plan. Their own research shows that almost everyone would be better off investing their money in an index fund. The only people whose returns might rival an index fund are couples, with only one earner in the lowest income group. Every other income group, every other combination of earners performs relatively poorly.

Let's take an example to show how much better off most would be with an index fund.

A two-earner couple, born in 1985 is in their 30s now. They can expect a return of 2.45% on their Social Security "contributions." The S&P500's average annual return is 9.8% over the past 90 years. If each starts working at 25 with a salary of $30,000 and gets a 3% raise every year until they retire, at retirement, they'd have more than five times the savings from an index fund as from Social Security. (You can play with assumptions by copying this workbook)

This demonstrates how lousy a program Social Security is. I understand that one of the benefits of Social Security is that it can provide some security in case the market crashes. It would be  intolerable to have saved your whole life, and then the market crashes. However, this is an extremely high price to pay to guarantee retirement security. Imagine there was no payroll tax as you worked, but Social Security was funded by taxing your retirement savings right as you turn 65. This example shows that it's an 80% tax of your potential savings.

Surely we can design a system that can guarantee retirement savings (even for single-earner couples) and not mal-distribute so much wealth for a fraction of the price.

Questions for All - Medicare for All Primer for Journalists

Now that Kamala Harris, a top-tier Democratic candidate for President has announced her support for Sanders's Medicare for All plan, it's time for journalists to start asking tough, informed question. Because we all know how hard that is for them, here is a primer to get them started. Hopefully, they might use this to actually inform the public unlike what happened with Obamacare, where I defy you to identify a single story in the New York Times or on cable news that included the fact that about 1/3 of the uninsured at the time were illegal immigrants and 1/3 were eligible for Medicaid but had not enrolled. Of the latter group, it is almost certainly the case (but we will never know since the media didn't report on it), that these uninsured were healthy individuals who were reasonably waiting until they needed healthcare before enrolling. If Americans had known this ahead of time, then they wouldn't be surprised to find out that Obamacare has reduced the uninsurance rate by only 40-50%. But of course, that fact is barely mentioned these days either, and if so, it is assuredly blamed on the states that did not expand Medicaid.

Which leads into the first set of questions. First, "What problem(s) is Medicare for All supposed to solve?" For this, I have a suspected answer: to reduce the uninsured rate to zero and lower the costs. Any knowledgeable journalist or citizen should immediately remember that Obamacare was advertised as a solution to both problems. In the run-up to Obamacare's passage, not a single news story caveated that Obamacare would only reduce the uninsurance rate to 5-10%, not a single news story (from traditional sources) warned that Obamacare would not reduce costs, they instead repeated the administration's claims that it would lower costs. Remember, "bend the cost curve down"? The fact that the Democrats now want to fix both of these problems should be a constant reminder that Obamacare failed to solve these problems and not a single serious journalist warned Americans about these predictable shortcomings.

For specific questions, first, I want to congratulate Jake Tapper for asking a terrific question of Harris--is she in favor of completely eliminating private insurance. This is a clear outcome of the Sanders Medicare for All plan, but then, he is an avowed socialist. To which, at the risk of an over-abundance of praise, we should laud Senator Harris for replying that yes, she does want to eliminate private insurance. Her team tried to backtrack, and then later stood by her original statement. It's currently a little unclear as to what she thinks about private insurance, but we can be confident that this issue will come up again. This is the first question that should be asked of every candidate, "Do you want to, as the Sanders plan does, completely eliminate private insurance?"

Some follow up questions:

"Do you know how many people are employed directly or indirectly through the private insurance marketplace? What will happen to them? Does your plan include paying their unemployment and helping them find new jobs?"

"Will your plan do anything to make investors in these companies whole? How much money will investors, pension plans, and retirees lose from your nationalization of insurance?"

The second set of questions involves Medicare Advantage. President Obama and the Democrats tried to mortally wound Medicare Advantage by reducing payments to MA plans through the ACA, but it, to the surprise of everyone, grew after the passage of the ACA. For those who don't know, Medicare Advantage offers Medicare recipients a private option to compete with traditional Medicare. Approximately one third of eligible seniors choose an MA plan in lieu of traditional Medicare. As far as I know, the Medicare for All plans do not mention Medicare Advantage, but I would assume they want to do away with it. 

Questions:

"Will your plan, in addition to eliminating the current plans of the majority of working Americans also eliminate the plans of approximately 1/3 of seniors? If Medicare for All does not pass, do you still favor eliminating Medicare Advantage? Do you believe choice is good for consumers in general? What about the healthcare market makes choice a negative factor?"

These questions should be asked of the candidates, not because they're "gotcha" questions, because they aren't. They are serious and important questions that will matter to people. They impact a lot of people's lives and they show that the candidate has done her homework and is not just promising the moon. If journalists start doing their job and actually providing the public information, Americans can replace the epithets they currently hurl at each other with facts.

Questions the Media should have asked about Buzzfeed Bombshell

For those who don't read or watch the news continuously, there was a 24-hour explosion in the Impeach Trump saga, that started with a bang on Thursday and ended with a whimper on Friday.

It began when BuzzFeed, the vaunted news source that brought us the as yet unverified Trump dossier, published a story, from anonymous sources no less, that Trump directed his lawyer to lie to Congress.

It ended when the Office of the Special Counsel disputed, in general terms, the thrust of the BuzzFeed story.

But this was not before it was reported by everyone CNN,

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/trump-russia-cohen-moscow-tower-mueller-investigation

The core of the story can be summarized by three paragraphs:

"Now the two sources have told BuzzFeed News that Cohen also told the special counsel that after the election, the president personally instructed him to lie — by claiming that negotiations ended months earlier than they actually did — in order to obscure Trump’s involvement.

The special counsel’s office learned about Trump’s directive for Cohen to lie to Congress through interviews with multiple witnesses from the Trump Organization and internal company emails, text messages, and a cache of other documents. Cohen then acknowledged those instructions during his interviews with that office."

On Friday evening, before Mueller's team shot back, I started to ask some questions that I realized that the media should have been asking. Namely, 1) What was the motivation for leaking this story and 2) Why BuzzFeed and not the NY Times.

On Question 1, suppose you are on Mueller's team investigating this. You believe that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress and you believe you have the proof to back it up. Since the investigation already has what it needs, and it's still going through the normal investigative process to be followed up by the prosecutorial process, what reason do you have to tell the media? It will be given to the media in due course, as soon as Mueller finishes his report.

The most likely reason I could think of was that the sources must NOT have believed it was going to see the light of day for whatever reason. Most likely because the evidence was too weak. (This turns out to be even more likely considering the Mueller dispute).

The second question I asked was why these sources would talk to BuzzFeed instead of the New York Times or Washington Post, for example. Why not go to a much more credible and established news outlet. This information was absolutely enormous and consequential. If I thought it was important enough to get into the news, I'd go straight to the top, why didn't these sources? Again, the likely answer is that they did not want the scrutiny from those sources or they knew it would be called into question and did not want to sully either of those companies.

I admit that maybe there are good reasons I didn't think of, but my point is that these are important questions that the media should have asked, but they did not. Probably because they prefer to breathlessly report bad news for Trump than to actually do their jobs.

Update: I heard a viable reason to leak the news. The timing of the presidential election and the investigation will make it difficult to complete impeachment proceedings before election day if they wait until the investigation is complete. Leaking gives Congress a reason to begin immediately. This was suggested in the 18 hours between the initial story and the Mueller rebuttal, and so is now moot. Even if true, this shows that the leakers were trying to short-circuit the investigative process and does not explain why Buzzfeed.