Everything going according to plan

We Democrats sometimes have a hard time grasping just what Trump supporters wanted to achieve. There may not be a wall, but he certainly took a swipe at everything global. We apparently do not need the world, even if they make all our socks shoes and underwear. But to summarize the big picture: disrupt everything as much as possible if the federal government or UN or even NATO is involved.

So now that the government is shut down, he takes this opportunity to freeze federal wages for all of 2019 once they come back. This is because (Fox News, Trumpists) "the government does not do anything." Only the functions of border security, immigration and a few infrastructure jobs are needed. Oh, there might be a few other things, but they do not affect Trump's main activity.

So people that work for NIH, Center For Disease Control, all government funded medical research, climate change and all them nasty things that are too difficult for the Trump voter to understand, they are not needed. Maybe in their old age, but that is too far to plan ahead.

Stocks going down? No problem, Trump base does not own any and Trump's own wealth is tied up in real estate, which survives recessions.

Money

There is no gold standard anymore, so money is basically a way to exchange goods and services and to plan for the future on personal and public levels. I got trained in science, so materials are more real than money for me. We will eventually come to a point where wealth per person can only go down or stay at a level if population stays steady.

Money only has meaning if we think there is a future and the money is still worth something. For this reason people want the near future to be very much like the present. If there is a drastic change in the future, the cash you stashed away is not worth as much as you thought. Both right and left wingers resist huge change. This is why many Democrats are centrists. They get lobbied and the lobbyists want things to stay the same or improve for their issue.

When you go to the bank for a loan or you save for retirement the money is most closely related to material. Only people with huge amounts of "collateral" (things: real estate, factories, hotels, airlines etc) are trusted with this imaginary money to spend, build etc etc. Your investments are most likely in stocks or CD accounts, so these also relate to actual property. The bank holds your money, but it can lend it to reliable customers who then convert  the borrowed money to real things. Shops, stores, trucks, retail goods etc. Your money is tied to physical objects.

The future is the tricky part. You have to try to imagine the future. So does your government. They have to plan for social security payments, Medicare etc. All this is based on the calculated work force and the GDP and the GDP per person. You think your money is worth something in the future. If the entire population or earth were to disappear in say 20 years, the value of your money would quickly go down to almost nothing. The cash (with ongoing inflation) would exist for a short while, as we would all disappear sooner or later, but would still need to eat and function for 20 years. It could be something like an asteroid that we knew was going to wipe us out. Or drought from climate change etc. etc.

Back to the present, the working class person that gets by, just, understands quite well that money is not wealth, and work no longer is worth much. Getting a paycheck and spending it by the next paycheck is a very real state. Work is simply converted to goods and to pay the rent. These people are unlikely to own anything more than the furniture etc. as well as a car. With maybe a car loan.

Economics is an odd field that seems to be too big for its pants. It thinks it can overrule material things. Libertarians have an undying faith in free market. This book is otherwise OK but since it is so optimistic it has no Plan B.

I've read a few bits, not spending my dollars on it. It will have no bearing on my decisions even if i read it.

 Individual situations, the opposite end compared to  GDP or national levels is the focus of Freakanomics. Famous quotes deal with items like "why do drug dealers still live with their mom and dad?"

This Michael Lewis book is my favorite. It tells how individuals calculate value on personal issues and decide. It also describes some bigger things where we have decision makers make decisions, but based on too small a sample population or other group. We try to do statistics in our head. We are very conservative when faced with a situation where we could lose. We go out of our way to prevent loss. The two Israeli psychologists who worked on this economics issue are profiled in the book. The economics outlined relates to consumers, marketing, insurance etc.

Trump the failed President

Trump gave a speech at his inauguration. It was well written, by someone, and outlined his "America first" policy well. After that he has failed as a communicator. Sure, he tweets:

The tweets worked fine during the campaign. The job of the president is somewhat different. He needs to convey an understanding of whatever topic he is commenting on. He only tweets to get some "likes" from his voters of 2016. And to see his text. He loves to see it.

He has attacked caravans of immigrants and refugees. He attacks daily some target. Attack is his only defense. The Senate is also stalling. Interrogating Comey, they centered on Hillary emails. Hillary is not president and she is not going to jail. There is not a jury in the country that could give her a fair trial.  And the Senate tactic is merely stalling.

Trump can speak, but most what he says is captured from Fox pundits or experts from the White House feeding him whatever he is able to read in a half a page of text. He reads what "sounds good." Like many Republicans he attempts to change "climate change" into air quality. We have good air quality because we scrub exhaust from power plants. Soot does not float over the landscape. Mercury does, as it is vaporized at that temperature. The air is "clean" and carbon dioxide is good for plants. In fact, it is not harmful yet, but current plants have evolved to deal with current levels. Many other factors affect plant growth, and plants grown too fast are low on nutrients from the ground that we need in out diet.

In any case, the point is that it is the CO2 that is bad, no matter how clean our emissions. There is no clean coal. Nearly all politicians know this. I am not sure about Trump. The explanation is too long for him to bother following for five minutes. He knows he won't support taxes for coal or tax credit support for alternative energy. Trump made up his mind about most issues long ago. When he tweeted from his office or couch to Obama years ago, and before that. He has never changed his mind about anything. Most of the items relate to Trump and his wealth in some manner, and he has never taken the initiative to run any of his businesses in any other manner.

So, yes he is dumb, but not too dumb to grasp quickly what is good for Trump in any issue. Trump, not the Trump presidency or the USA. He does not even care at this point that he will lose a 2020 election. The rare conditions that gave him several rust belt states in 2016 no longer exist.

Country dragging through 2 more years of Trump

The red states are going to pretty much stick to Trump, though there is less support for his tariffs and a few more policies, since about six months ago. The jobs are not going to come back and Trump is ruining some of the jobs here with the expensive steel. Ford is struggling, GM fearing the same fate.

But can we put up with the antics of this man in the media for two more years? Not to mention the Russia thing. Resignation would be a relief for his party.

You could just read your favorite news and watch only Netflix and Hulu, but some Trump news and stunts would trickle through. As he claims, it is all about him now. He tears up NAFTA and signs another NAFTA etc etc.

The other concern is the dirty campaign he will run against a Democrat. It will be ugly. He has shown that he has given up any hope of being a president for all. He is a president for the white Republicans and especially the white working class that voted for him. Long ago he decided he will play to them. He may not even want a second term, but he has to show his fans at his rallies he is not giving up on any of his promised goals. They really did think he was going to Make America Great Again. If you gave him support and he pushed all his agendas through, we would go back to the 1950s. Those post war years were a growth economy. There is no similar situation now. The populist will rise and fall with this agenda. He may feel better falling down fighting for his causes.

The bigger question is how to make America even as good as it was through the end of 2016. The temporary economic bump of Trump tax cuts will only go for a short while longer. The economic outlook is not good by 2020. Stocks are stagnant in the Trump era all through 2018. We will quit making a lot of the smaller cars here.

9-11 and the US Presidency

George Bush was stumbling along as president when 9-11 happened. He managed to ruin the economy with Obama and him putting in bailouts at the end. But right after 9-11 he was very popular. We gave the president great powers in national security and started the Homeland Security agency.

Then Trump happened. He is using "national security" to put troops on borders to stop sandal footed migrants with kids. He tears up trade agreements. He blocks muslims from many countries from spending money here as even tourists. Soy beans suffer as he puts in tariffs.

We need to read the Constitution again and then apply restrictions on the president.

Global Warming

Rather than label global warming fake, why not just read a short summary? It does not really help thinking science is a conspiracy. Sets of thermometers in various parts of the world are managed and reported by national or regional agencies. These numbers come from a permanent set of thermometers that give a number for each day at its location. As they are the same meters, the near term (20-30 years) numbers are as reliable as we can get. Some numbers are routinely corrected. This is not tampering. As each set is corrected the same way, the numbers obtained for temperature rise give a reliable trend. The method starts with an average temperature of 13.9°C (57.0°F) for the 1900s. The rise ("anomaly") reported is just added to that. On any day the planet has areas that are in summer and areas that are in winter. The average over the planet gives that 13.9°C. For example +0.94°C gives 14.8C.

 

NOAA/NCEI annual global analysis for 2017: 

The 2017 average global temperature across land and ocean surface areas was 0.84°C (1.51°F) above the 20th century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F), behind the record year 2016 (+0.94°C / +1.69°F) and 2015 (+0.90°C / +1.62°F; second warmest year on record) both influenced by a strong El Niño episode. The year 2017 is also the warmest year without an El Niño present in the tropical Pacific Ocean.

2017 also marks the 41st consecutive year (since 1977) with global land and ocean temperatures at least nominally above the 20th century average, with the six warmest years on record occurring since 2010. Since the start of the 21st century, the global temperature has been broken five times, three of those being set back to back (2014–2016). The yearly global land and ocean temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C (0.13°F) per decade since 1880; however, the average rate of increase is twice as great since 1980. From 1900 to 1980 a new temperature record was set on average every 13.5 years; however, since 1981 it has increased to every 3 years.

Overall, the global annual temperature has increased at an average rate of 0.07°C (0.13°F) per decade since 1880 and at an average rate of 0.17°C (0.31°F) per decade since 1970."  [NOAA global analysis for 2017 accessed September 18, 2018].

 https://www.co2.earth/global-warming-update

A video demonstration of CO2 and IR light experiment. The tablets used release CO2 which dissolves in the water until it is saturated and after that some goes into the air above the liquid. This is a large amount of CO2 just to demonstrate the effect. It does have a control with no added CO2.

The water does play some part. Some people claimed all kinds of faults with the demo, but all it shows is IR absorption by the gas above the water.

Here is a more sophisticated video that simply shows the gas absorbing the light from the candle. The gas absorbs the IR light and re-emits it but it is not going to just the camera but in all directions. Air in the tube did not do that.

As far as conspiracies, there are always people willing to believe them. Especially if "government" did something to them. If you are curious how the theories form and spread, see this book, which is not a debunking book, but focuses on the mind.

Burning the prairie

With our President out in California getting confused about wildfires, we can bring up something we Do know how to do. Forest fires are somewhat difficult to control. In Finland, which Trump brought up, there is a lot of rainfall and many parts have a lake a few miles away. There are fires there, mostly a few acres, as forest is managed and there is little dead wood standing in commercial forests.

There is room for discussion in forest management. Trump badly mangled the message. We may indeed need to burn some dead stuff in order to keep old forests standing. You burn some in order to keep a bigger part growing. Dry and dead wood burns easily. Lumbering puts in logging roads, as in Finland, and these provide breaks that the fire does not cross.

I was in the Rockies last summer. There was a lot of dead wood in national forest. It seems to relate to global warming in a way. The snow needs to melt later innthe spring than it does now, to provide water for growing trees. Water falling on mountains irrigates the West side well enough, but the East sides are now getting drier.

Burning is managed in grassland, which is part of the California situation, and a crew can easily burn some areas as needed to keep native prairie species there (a small overall area of unconnected prairies, Google for a map of national grasslands) by preparing the land beforehand. Ranchland in the plains can be native prairie or managed to grow other grasses. The ranchers that were in jail in Oregon for a while mismanaged their burn on public land (they never got a permit). The edges of the planned area have to be cut or plowed so as to give an area where there is nothing to burn.

Here is a description of prairie burns.

Burning prairie

Iowa burns pdf at
http://www.iowadnr.gov/

Borrowed picture

Common sense and science

The voting public comes into play on science issue when things like tar sands pipelines and global warming are involved. The voter is suspicious of the motives of the BIG THING, whether it is a Canadian company of your own government. And in both cases they have limited data to go on.

Common sense comes up with conclusions and generalizations with little evidence. In psychology it is called heuristics. We do not always have the data, but we have to come to decision on the spot. We base our generalization on too few examples. Many of our political decisions are based on experience with humans and previous generations. We use experience with wars to predict future wars, even if the technology has changed. We can play computer generated war games to gain some confidence. But even that is bound to fail as the computer cannot cover all variables of the physical world.

Does conservation benefit us? Are we going to suffer from lack of diversity in the natural world? Probably, but the proof is hard to present to the voter. Biologists who study ecology have pointed to keystone species, species that define a habitat. Also, they tend to chart the food web. But the variables are still too many for definite proof to Joe Sixpack, the voter. We have thankfully explained populations and bag limits well to duck hunters.

Years ago an anti-nausea medicine came on the market and was given to pregnant women. Eventually some women started suing the company for birth defects in the babies. “I had two normal kids and then this third one was a Bendectin baby! It’s the drug’s fault!” It turns out nearly all the babies were from older women giving birth. The chances of defects go up with age.  And there was no Bendectin on the market with their earlier two kids.

Many social sciences do this kind of soft research where proper control groups are not available. The studies to do with prisoners are an example. Length of prison term, death penalty etc. etc. have not correlated to success. I suspect a good portion of prisoners returning to society were forced back to crime due to lack of jobs. But you cannot force the private sector to take criminals as employees. You could pay part of their salary from public funds. That probably is happening.

The point is, when people are involved, it is difficult to do scientific studies on their behavior. In lab settings, decision making has been studied. We use heuristics, short cuts. We rarely have solid reasons to make all our decisions. Even those of us who study the physical world that we can measure more accurately fall into the normal patters and decide by gut feel in our personal lives.

We need to educate Trump voters

Yes, we have some influence. Granted, they follow Trump closely, so his failures to them will have the biggest effect on Trump voters.

But we try. It's a big job. Many hate all government (Libertarians), they are beyond help. Well, technically you could get them on small issues such as eminent domain.

But we need to concentrate on Trump voters of the regular kind, working class Americans. We need to show them there are just as many jobs building alternate energy as there is mining coal. They may need to move West, but that is how things are going. Nothing is going to be the same 20 years from now.

What struck me yesterday was that we had all home made signs protesting Trump's Sessions firings.

When you compare that to a Trump rally, the people inside have pre-printed signs. We have those too, but only for those that were not prepared for the protest and just showed up.

MAGA is one sign and the other one Women for Trump. They are responding to Trump telling then that they are a forgotten people. Nobody is representing them. This is true as far as anti-abortion, guns and other traditional right wing causes. But you have to CAPTURE them as far as their views on jobs, taxes, trade etc. You have to explain that most manufacture jobs are not going to come back. This is due to cheap shipping of consumer goods and low wages in Asia. We do in fact make things here, bigger things. Homes. cars, things we use a long time around our homes. Doors, windows, all outside structures.

One aspect of Trumpism will only disappear when Trump gets toxic enough. The economy is OK now, though healthcare takes a big cut. Trump is charismatic enough with his voters that when he repeatedly tells them they are better off, they believe it. When he tells them they are ”safer from foreigners” they believe him. But they still believe The Wall would also be built.

Trump angered the people to show up to vote and spoke in simple terms. The famous picture shows the "he speaks how I feel" phenomenon. Some of that includes patriotism, respect for law and order, military and all that. An implied white Christian world.

What we need is to educate the working classes about the realities of our problems (climate, energy, infrastructure) and that those problems actually mean jobs. Perhaps they are not well educated and cannot express their feelings well (Trump speaks for them, the signs they hold are ready made), but we can fix that with a charismatic leader that explains it and then hands them different signs. They will realize by 2020 that Trump is not going to give them healthcare, for example. Beto or someone like him in 2020 will need to explain both jobs and healthcare and explain that Mexicans are NOT taking their jobs unless they are willing to be roofers and landscapers at minimum wage.

Populist movements run 2-4 years. One task is to explain job wages and all. The other task may work out by itself: Trump is going to be rather toxic by then. Trump has no political views of his own. He is a rather superficial person who wants those around him to "like" him, even though he has the power so those whose jobs depend on it will pretend to like him. They only have some one personal issue (small government, low taxes) that keeps them attached to Trump. The Trump brand has taken over all other viable candidates with right wing views. No other candidate will rise out of the GOP mess in two years. Possibly Nikki Haley if Trump is impeached. Others like Cruz are equally toxic and disliked enough to fail as presidential candidate.

Not quite the vote of No Confidence I expected

It’s s good start to drum out Trump in 2020, but it’s only a start.

Locally, I think we got a Medicaid expansion, snubbing our governor. And we nearly got some people in control of public utilities to oppose Transcanada and its pipeline. We will continue that fight most likely by public referendum in 2020. And several county level Democrats.

Not really a good start for the overhaul of healthcare for all. Not much will happen there for two years. Republicans in our state do not seem to understand they are losing rural healthcare.

Our Senate candidate ran as a good a race as you can in a Republican state.

Our only district that flips from time to time went 51.5% Republican 48.5% Democrat, reflecting possibly a 2020 race going to the Trump challenger. My district is a solid 60% Republican, so I can only ever hope to get a senator or governor elected. We have equal rural and city voter numbers, so if the rural area is 80% Republican, this 60% is what we get overall.

Life goes on. Democrats will not leave the state. An election in 2020 offers hope. We have only a congressman to deal with then. He is kind of dumb and votes the partyline in DC.

Looking more widely, Kansas has some gains by Democrats. This might be more a long term effect than Trump. The Republicans drove the state to banktrupcy by lowering taxes.

A Big Challenge

President Trump has raised over 30 million for his re-election. The supporters donate on line every time the presidency is challenged.

The problem with the election in 2020 is that Trump already has a message and it is working in a large part of the right wing and independent voters: America First!

Such a simple message is absolutely what works in today's Twitter world. The tweet length messages are easy to respond to and force a gut feel response in voters. A feeling of support for those threatened by "foreigners" or whatever Trump has come up with. And  a feel of hate for those that are the target (blacks, minorities) or those voters who support groups Trump and his folk absolutely hate.

I would not be too focused on what the voters can be given (healthcare, education, jobs etc) but go full force in some kind of  TRUMP IS EVIL message. Never mind that Republicans are offended by coarse  language. They will never vote for a Democrat anyway. Convey in simple terms that he is a hateful asshole.

If the Democrats are running a woman, I have to say that Hillary will be the one best equipped to challenge his every act and word. It will be easy for Trump to just label her "Loser Hillary." But she could just go full force on Trump supporters this time. Something like Trump weekly attacking "the Democrats":

But let’s focus more on Trump, less on his voters. The basket of deplorables. We Democrats may have some quite close by. If the candidate is another woman, I would get a male VP partner. The woman candidate can focus on the working classes that were ignored last time. They want simple things: jobs and healthcare. Do not offer them community college as a solution. You only have four years to help them. A raised minimum wage will work well. Their children can be offered the education. Then, with the caring candidate, you add a man VP candidate whose job is to go after Trump daily in the most clever and quick witted response and basically to be the attack dog.

I'll just offer a simple slogan: Vote for (Democrat), we care! Trump does not care about you.

Foreigners

We foreigners have been coming to America for decades. We don't go on welfare for the most part. Immigrants tend to be slightly better at whatever job or career they have than the corresponding American applicants. This is because there is a hurdle to get in, other than for refugees.

Rural people and towns in the middle of the country have mostly Latino immigrants. They do the low wage jobs related to crops and the food industry.

These are all the (red) counties that went for Trump in the election. Many people before the election had no particular view of immigrants. Muslims had been singled out for 9-11, other than that, most rural people had little idea of immigrants in California or New York.

Immigrants are not on welfare. If they take your jobs, then most often they were in fact qualified for the job. We train foreign born scientists and engineers here, as Americans just want "nice" jobs or very high paying jobs. But jobs that are not in say the chemical industry.

Taking welfare now disqualifies you from moving on to citizenship. Getting arrested gets you deported. There is absolutely no basis for the Trump claim that foreigners are a danger and are second class citizens. Are they in gangs? Yes, but so are Americans in those low income areas where gangs operate. Often it takes a generation for the poorest least educated refugees to move up in society.

Reagan famously launched a libertarian era by saying that government (other than the military) is mostly bad. The military was needed, to fight communism of course

Trump has expanded on that, as well as made foreigners scapegoats. It started with:


"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best; they're not sending you," Trump said. "They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

November election is coming. If you are an immigrant and can vote, it is your duty to vote the racist GOP out of office.

Healthcare and Trump

Mr Trump has not delivered on healthcare. Insurance plans are run through Medica (middle and North  US only), Bluecross, United Healthcare etc. The plans in healthcare.gov are run according to the Obamacare requirements. No pre-existing conditions rules etc.

Trump's op-ed seems to be just throwing confusion at seniors (likely to vote Republican anyway), scaring them with any change to Medicare, death panels etc etc. The death panels never killed anyone, they (or the people making decisions) were there to prevent spending needlessly on patients that were beyond help. if you are going to die, the system should make it as easy as possible to die at home, not in a hospital bed hooked up to monitors.

Trump seems to offer choice. The choice is cheap plans, essentially the same plans Medica, Bluecross, United Healtcare etc. offer in Obamacare but now with strings attached. Do you want to cover pregnancy? Contraceptives? Normal things are excluded. It is called Short Term insurance. The only plus they offer is cheaper premiums. But the legal fine print in those plans is so complicated that you may not get any healthcare at all. Most of them deny anyone with any "condition" any plan at all. You had surgery once years ago? No plan for you.

The reason any of this is brought up at all is there is a mid term election. THERE IS NO PLAN. It is all pure Trump team propaganda. The system IS rigged. It is rigged against you the consumer.

Why They Hate Government

The Trump era brought in the first president that represents the libertarian voters. (Though Reagan certainly started it.) All the talk of ”too much regulation” is aimed at these haters of the ”nanny state.”

The so called white working class has come to respect authority, people you meet face to face. Government leaders to them are just doing ”useless unproductive work.”

We have not come that far from our hunter gatherer days. In those times there were small tribes. There was a pecking order among the males, whereas experience probably ranked the women from leader to follower and novice. The elders were needed in things like childbirth. The men had to adjust to their role in the tribe. There may have been a leader you had to submit to, but the rest of the men of your generation were of equal standing. Some took roles as specialist: tool maker, shaman. If you had no special skills, strength mattered.

In today’s world all that breaks down. You take orders from your boss. Your community has leaders you may know somewhat. You vote based on how you want local taxes spent. Above that level things become less meaningful for the average person.

The concept of a national government in a country of 300 million leads to distrust of this government far away. All interactions with no personal touch are alien to our tribal heritage.

The libertarian is angered by dealing with faceless bureaucrats at any level. He starts thinking everything can be handled by the private sector, supply and demand!

In today’s high tech world the private sector gets doctors, engineers and scientists trained by partly tax money. There is no going back. even the science and technology is pushed ahead by government involvement. Either as basic research of funding. 

There are of course people that know full well how all this works, but in public express the same views as Trump voters. They are able to personally profit from things the government does. (An example of this is weather forecasting, Accuweather as a business).

Me too election

Nebraska has a woman, Jane Raybould, running for the US SENATE against another woman, a would be rancher who is actually a previous resident of the same city, Lincoln. Omaha, Kansas City and other urban areas throughout the great plains have a record number of women running for state and city level offices.

There was a lot of activity in 2017 already, but this has lead to more concrete involvement in 2018, an election year. Trump will lose a lot of support. Kavanaugh and Trump himself have drawn enough attention to themselves, so this will also be a #metoo election. Women's rights, including reproductive rights (at stake with Kavanaugh appointment) will be more strongly supported than the traditional GOP "Jesus guns and babies" that we hear from the prairie.

Trump himself is in a bit of trouble, as there is no judicial candidate after Kavanaugh that he can pick who is going to be the same level of supporter of presidential autocratic rule. "You can't charge a sitting president with a crime" is what Kavaunaugh thinking amounts to.

Draining the swamp and Trump followers

The 2016 election was about many things. The majority of the country were satisfied with more things, and even with Hillary as the establishment, Obama part 2. But the very vocal white working class thought things should change. In their minds they simply wanted jobs by whatever means. Unskilled labor was the part of the economy that was dragging and we got these guys.

The problem is that the actions Trump came up with are not helping the economy as a whole. There may be more jobs in coal mining areas (though most of it is not in mines, the Wyoming coal is just mostly scooped up). Steel jobs may have improved with Trump tariffs, but not the industries using that steel.

The problem we are facing is that these Trump voters are unwilling to change their lives in any way. The voters who voted Trump are going to be a key in elections in 2018 and 2020 no matter what happens to Trump. They will feel cheated if Trump is put aside and the party just continues some of his themes. The party never gave a damn about the white working class, they simply went along with all this just to get tax cuts for the wealthy class. Lobbyists also got something with the EPA essentially put on hold till Trump is gone.

The other part of draining the swamp, in the minds of the white working class, was to get rid of all the politicians established in DC for decades, the special interest groups guarding minorities. These things such as race and sexual minorities were not any part of Trump backers.

At this point we must point out that they are a minority. Working classes from 1900-1960 had a hard time moving up the ladder. They might move up to the middle class by becoming business owners. Education was not yet for the masses. For a while (1970s) even kids from working classes went to college and had a bit of success. The new white working class is a bit more of a failure. There is no interest, or perhaps the funds, to get a college education. Many just do not have the smarts for a college degree. But we cannot use this in politics, we cannot address them as losers.

Populism tends to run its course when the populace have had time to vent their frustrations and when things come to a halt as the result of presidential actions failing to meet everyday government tasks.

The Wall will not bring jobs for long, and it does not even solve the problem of illegals. There are millions already here. The tariffs Trump introduced will take a year or two to go to full effect. The rural voters will still not admit they made a mistake and that the Trump plan was a failure. "At least he tried, he was working for us!" they will claim.

There will maybe be one permanent effect: two more conservative judges. Draining the swamp will give Evangelicals something. Nobody else got anything. Well, corporations did. The Trump voter will have a hard time facing up to the fact that Trump stood with corporations every time against citizens. He in fact is mainly a corporation. Very little humanity in this man who is failing to connect with most of the country in a leader role. To but it bluntly, he is daily an asshole to most of us.

Recent book on Great Plains politics

The book by Peter J Longo is fair enough in covering the individuals that were selected. There is some criticism of Virginia Smith involving Reagan. She was a bit too gung ho about building dams. This worked in the Calamus reservoir, but when the people along the Niobrara were presented this idea, the power and irrigation produced was just too little compared to the loss of land. Instead, they went for federal protection and got a national scenic river. It took some convincing to push for some tourism on the river but soon enough all people in the are were on board. Virginia was not listening to the people well enough. On the matter of missiles in the extreme West end of Nebraska she did. Reagan had to put the missile silos on the Wyoming side.

There is even a mention of Nebraska pipeline protests in the conclusions. All in all it focuses on the positive aspects of politics here. I think that Senator Deb Fischer would not fit in the framework of the book. She has voted 100% with Trump, this just is not the way Nebraska people see things, such as the pipeline. Protecting land takes priority over right wing issues.

To generalize, republicans sought to bring food to those in need and other help to needy individuals in the state, as well as farm loans. Churches were employed in the Virginia Smith efforts to pass along food. All this was brought about with minimal government bureaucracy. That is, they want the money and they even want to help with surplus crops from time to time. But it all has to fit in with the "small government" thinking currently in vogue. Also, there is a self reliance at work, solving things entirely without the federal government, if possible.

Somewhat refreshing in the current hate filled Trump world.

The careers of Bob Dole and South Dakota's McGovern are discussed pretty much in terms of local politics. The presidential campaigns are not discussed.

White rural Trump voters and "small government"

The people voting for Trump wanted something. It was maybe jobs now, not community college. Or maybe it was the "somebody is getting something I'm not" feel of middle class and poor middle class. The poor folks in cities were maybe getting something.

They got Trump:

That winning was going to be something. They wanted to cut down government, cut down regulation etc etc. They were suspicious of government spying on us.

Guess what? They got a little. A few dollars in the paycheck. Trump himself saved millions in taxes, if he pays any. They got an impression of EPA held back and coal jobs coming back a bit. It's not doing much for jobs.

But the whole thing is pretty much a front. Trump is running a public relations campaign, mostly about him as the tough guy, savior of capitalism and the white folks old world, where gay wedding cakes do not make the press.

But the BIG government is still there. The military is big government, we spend a lot on that and they spy for "homeland security" as needed. No domestic terrorism goes undetected for long.

Corporations own government. Monsanto still writes the farm bill. In fact almost nothing has changed in the way things are done. Corporations do not care about Mexico walls, Trump war with press, abortions etc etc. They run strictly on profits. Oil rigs still are as unsafe as before Deepwater Horizon. National parks are open for drilling. Despite some friction with Trump, the Koch Brothers still dictate energy policy.

Big Government is run by corporations and Trump cut their tax. You've been had. Your hourly wages went down as far as buying power. They have gone down for decades.

I’ve neglected a small group of Trump voters who actually do know where the money goes. These people do not mind the money going to corporations. ”As long as it does not go to the poor people in the city. They should get a job!” Most of them have a job. At minimum wage, some of them have to have two. No such problem in Denmark. See the video.

Meanwhile in Denmark, with 56% tax:

All those decisions were made by voters and politicians. Not corporations. But the corporations adjust.

Finally, a small anecdote from a bike tour on the prairie:

A rancher allowed us to set up a rest stop across his ranch entrance. He told us about his 200 bison and thousands of acres. And he sounded very involved in county level matters.

People in these counties are 90% Republican. They support county spending. You need three things: roads, water supply and storm water/creek management. Healthcare? You just die and hand over the farm or ranch to kids.

If a rancher were able to control his tax money better, he would pay. Lets say he pays 5% state and 30% federal, he would be happier taking that 30% and sending 20% to the state and 10% to feds. He gets farm insurance, flood insurance, subsidies back. But why route that money through the feds at all? Just keep it here.

Trump's false message

I don't know who I am writing this for, but here goes.

President Trump goes to give rallies and makes bold generalizations and follows that by "believe me!" It's not like any of the people there are to go home to check on these claims. They already believed them before he said them. There is a tendency of people in a country such as ours that has two major parties to believe that people supporting the other party, not yours, do all the bad things.

Trump claims Democrats are unpatriotic. False. They don't spend enough on defense. False, there was never a reduction on spending. Welfare ended in the Clinton era and is no longer the safety net it once was, though some is left. Trump is financing all his grandiose things, military and tax cuts, by borrowing. when the bill comes, he is no longer president.

Some of his claims are ridiculous. Foreigners do not commit all the crimes, in fact it makes no sense to commit crimes. If you are working illegally, you are more likely to be caught after a crime, then deported. Just do your job and lay low. If you have a green card and commit a serious crime, the card is taken away and you are jailed or deported.

Trump claims are also stereotypes. Blacks are lazy, Mexicans are rapists. There is no truth to any of it, though poor people do end up in desperate situations where a wealthier person would not. The stereotypes only exist for his followers to nod to and think "yeah, I though so. Tell them, Trump!"

Democrats are soft on crime. Really? And where it happens, it is not a bad thing. The liberal judges we support give shorter sentences. But maybe that is because we do not want to support the private prison industry. That industry is also making good profit on the illegals arrested, instead of being deported with no time in prison. You are paying for that. You are paying for the detained children too, more than they  would cost if they were with their parents. Other than that, drug possession and small time use (legal in many states) is not really treated well by locking up the accused for years.

These things Trump brings up are certainly there, and we even have gangs he mentions. But most of this is never going to affect life in suburbia where most of the white voters for Trump live. Even less in rural areas. The prescription opiate epidemic hit all of the middle of the country because they were legal. All you had to do was go to the nearest drug store.

Trump also likes to reward evangelicals. And his claims are not wong: Democrats support abortion rights. That may be some of the small long term effect he will have. The supreme court does not change often. The right wing judges are on Trump’s side. They want small government and side with corporations over citizens.

Perhaps the white working class voter thought it was a package deal? Guns babies and Jesus, check. American dream, check. Foreigners out, check.  Not so fast. The American dream is just a trick. You have not improved your standard of living for 50 years. Trickle down economics does not work. You are worse off than your parents, as healthcare is more expensive past the age of 50. It may cure your cancer, but you will die penniless if you make it to age 90.

Environmental damage can be undone more quickly after Trump is gone. It is all EPA and executive order, the law has not changed. There is no "clean coal". Trump simply repeats stuff he hears. Some directly from Fox and Friends. If your world is Fox News and Trump, you can be safe in your make believe world for a couple of years, but it cannot last.

Trump on shaky ground near treason

As we all know, president Trump went to Helsinki to prop up his shaky claim to the presidency. He called his first witness: Vladimir Putin.

He claims the FBI is unreliable. There is no evidence of this, as testified by the FBI agent whose phone texts had been examined for months. He said "we must stop him", referring to us voters (not the FBI). That is the task now, in the 2018 election. Unfortunately Trump supporters are still 100% behind him. Because they voted for him. They can’t admit that their abortion/tax/immigrant/etc stance put a dangerous man in the White House. It is in fact hard for anyone to come to terms that they supported the wrong guy. Losing a job might finally do it.

Trump's actions will come out within his four years, and whatever he did will be in the press before the 2020 election. It is not appropriate for a president to be a conspiracy theorist and certainly not to commit treason. My belief is that Russia owns him by immense loans channeled to him over the years. Russia has his mortgage, by several intermediaries.

People who voted for Trump and went to the rallies are pretending nothing happened. These people are still holding on to the birther era Obama conspiracies, so we know the change is slow. Plus they voted Trump so they will never admit they were wrong, that the man is an actual danger to the US. Out here there is a chance to think that all that stuff is "out in Europe" or "out in Russia" and does not affect us. But the world affairs are not that simple that you can just order China for example. The tariffs will be felt by every American by 2020.

But we will see. I'll just post a campaign ad to explain that. Good luck to all brave candidates challenging the increasingly ridiculous GOP candidates standing behind Trump. The entire Trump experience has shaken the principles of Democracy here on the prairie as well, but apparently other things are more important to Trump voters.

What was it about Obama the right hated?

The Trump voters hated him as both black and "foreigner."

The times were mostly stable in the Obama years after the bail out of the Bush catastrophe. Obama inherited most foreign touchy spots from Bush, but Libya may have been new.

Yet the talk radio guys and the far right absolutely hated his liberal policy and foreign policy. On the one hand insurance was labeled BIG government. The foreign policy was the confusing part to me.

Only now with Trump in charge do I understand what they wanted. They did not want a diplomat or negotiator with Europe or with war torn countries. They wanted an autocrat. A leader of the "free world" who does not negotiate. He announces policy and "others must follow." This goes for trade, NATO, everything.

I'm glad we got that cleared up then. For them an asshole is a perfect leader. He is in Europe trying to break up the EU now.

2018 elections

The 2018 elections are turning out to be a for Trump or against Trump run, even though the people running are congress members. The rural people strongly supported Trump, and even the most reluctant Republican in the middle is running as a Trump supporter. Many voters in the rural areas believed in the "draining the swamp" and "he's just getting started" goals. farmers in the plains have for generations thought of themselves as businessmen. In addition corporations own many farms. Rural people go with supporting the independent spirit of farming and somehow associate Republicans as support for farming. The farm bill is actually dictated by corporations so I don't know what is left of this independence.

There were in fact some libertarians voting in 2016. These people might be excused for voting Trump in that they have somehow gotten in their heads that all government is bad. Cut down government? Count me in! These people are not necessarily racist, and often disagree with the large group of Evangelicals here on the the prairie on social issues, mainly abortion. Their views on immigrants vary.

The news have run some editorials on Trump giving him more credit for his second year. It seems he is getting a few more things done, despite botching the immigrant children issue. One thing that makes the editorial writers more confident is Trump naming the new justice. However, it does not really change the voters any, in fact liberals are even more opposed to Trump and any GOP senator or congressman in the November election. Voter turnout will be good due to this divisiveness in the country.

The opposite is true of Colorado on the left as well as New Mexico below it. There are areas with Indian reservations such as in South Dakota, and the Democrats carry those. Nebraska has just two big cities and the Democrats carry those in presidential elections. The congresspeople are now all Republicans with one "sleeper" Democratic candidate running for the senate seat. Senator Fischer is a one term senator who has gone to Washington and supported Trump 100%. She has not gotten involved in farm state issues and a was a key player getting the education secretary approved. She has angered more Democrats in her state than recent Tea Party leaning senators or congressmen.

Ben Sasse has turned out to be a talker. He criticizes Trump, then:

U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., has written some witty tweets and interesting Facebook posts critical of the Trump administration. However, he has voted consistently with the administration: yes on the tax bill, yes on Obamacare repeals, yes on every executive branch nomination save one, yes on federal judge nominations and no on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller.

Kansas has no senate seat in the race and the recent past does not suggest a Democrat would have much chance in a national election. They do have a congressional Democratic candidate with some hope, Brent Welder, who worked on Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.  Oklahoma is entirely red.

Trade Wars

Trump's claims about foreigners and jobs have all turned out to be false. The jobs and the products will go abroad no matter what he does. Tariffs caused just that: Harley Davidson will make motorcycles for Europe abroad, due to Trump.

How long will it take for Trump followers to realize that just Trump repeating a statement over and over does not make it true? This authority is incompetent, he does not need respect.

Trump has told his followers that trade with Mexico is unfair, trade with Canada is unfair. No explanation is needed for the followers, as they know the world is unfair to the US! The countries don’t let us sell cheaper GMO products, or maybe cheese. The problem with farm goods is that most countries exclude certain farm products from international agreements. This is for the purpose of keeping some food production at home. It is not a good idea to import 90% of your food, there could be some event that leaves you without food.

But we trade fancy finished goods. Let’s take an example. Two factories make 1000 cars in a month. In Mexico they make 1000 red Malibus. In Alabama they make 1000 blue Malibus. No red Malibus are made in USA. US buyers want some red Malibus. With cheaper labor, 150 red Malibus are sent to US at Mexican bulk price. Mexicans want some blue Malibus. In exchange for the same money, 100 American blue Malibus are sent over.

Mexicans end up 50 Malibus less.  They sell all the 850 remaining Malibus to Brazil, who were willing to pay more than Americans.

Can this sort of unbalanced trade with a low wage country be fixed with tariffs? Not really. If the Mexicans end up selling the Malibus to the US with a price that is the price we pay, the tariff just ends up with our government. We then sell Malibus with to Mexico with 0% tariff. The Mexicans still lose.

Trump has convinced his followers that tariffs somehow allow us to control trade. If we put tariffs on products coming in, the selling country will do the same to us. Both governments collect tariffs but consumers lose.

Initial reports of the war with China claim Trump is winning and the stocks will not suffer. But there are always people paid to write optimistic articles and columns in financial papers and major newspapers. These are there for the purpose of making people "trust" stocks. You can look at stocks yourself and see which ones depend the most on trade.

Conservative business minded peopled have looked at tariffs. They analyze jobs, income, consumption of goods. From the internet:

Let’s look at an example of how that happens. The U.S. government decides to implement a tariff that will “saves” 1,200 full-time jobs at a tire plant.

Each of the saved jobs pays an average wage of $40,070 a year ($20.69 per hour). Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s a policy we should support.

But what if I told you that those 1,200 jobs cost the American consumer $900,000 each? Oh, and while 1,200 jobs were created, it came at a cost to the American economy of 2,531 jobs. That might make us reconsider whether the policy was all that beneficial.

Unfortunately, this is not a hypothetical situation: it’s the real-world effect of a tariff on Chinese tires.

In his 2012 State of the Union address, President Obama claimed that, “over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires.” What he failed to mention is that for every tire job that was “saved” two other jobs were lost or not created and that each job “saved” cost Americans an additional $900,000 a year.

If the workers only got $40,070, what happened to the other $859,930? It went into the pockets of the tire companies, many of which are not even located in the U.S. When the companies pushed for the tariffs to “save American jobs” what they were really doing was increase their own profits by preying on the economic ignorance of the American public about the effects of tariffs. (Crony capitalists are gifted in finding ways to get the public to support policies that make them richer while making other citizens poorer.)

 (From ACTON INSTITUTE POWERBLOG: Why tariffs and protectionism make Americans poorer)

We will still buy the goods we need and spend the same amount of money. We will just get a smaller TV, or a product with less features for the same money as before.

This sort of analysis is too complicated for the Trump voter to get. They, including the pig farmer in Iowa still coming to grips with export tariffs, refuse to believe Trump is wrong, simply a clever bullshitter who knows his audience.

Corn..is it safe to eat GMO corn?

(Thanks to a few shares, I now have 76 views by June 3 of this entry)
Corn and soybeans are the main products grown with GE (genetically engineered) seeds. If you are afraid of GE/GMO crops, you could just stop eating corn. Soybean product may end up in some processed foods, but it is a lesser amount. Possibly Chinese food, if that is your daily meal. Golden rice is a modified rice, read the package. White rice is not.

Both soybean oil and corn oil end up in a lot of food products. I would judge them to be the least harmful, potentially, as they contain very little protein, starch etc. from the corn. I doubt corn oil from GMO corn and non-GMO corn could be easily identified as different. The amount of pesticide or herbicide in the oil is defined by the FDA but is generally low. If you insist on "organic" corn oil, it is available by a simpler pressing process. The industrial process of the big giants is very much a man made process and is aimed at getting all the components out of the corn. Industrial corn oil has additives to prevent it from going rancid (air oxidized).

Wheat has never been sold as a GE product, mainly because Canada want to export its wheat to Europe.

You still want to eat corn, you say. Well, your restaurant is unlikely to serve non-gmo tortillas and corn chips. You have those in the food aisles of most stores in the health food section.

But you want to know more details? I can direct you to two books. One is in its 4th edition soon. It argues that the GMO foods may be unsafe. In particular Bt toxin in the food, a protein, is a possible food allergen to some.

GMO Myths book

Another book is a rather militant attack on Monsanto. It clearly outlines the somewhat roundabout process by which food safety is established. And it is a different task. Foods are processes in the same way that drugs are, but the FDA job is often to ban processes or recall contaminated lots after the fact.
Marie Monique Robin book on Monsanto:
https://www.amazon.com/World-According-Monsanto-Marie-Monique-Robin/dp/1595587098/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527886214&sr=1-1&keywords=Monsanto

 Monsanto itself prefers review articles which state invariably that "the weight of the evidence is that GM corn is safe." But they do have long lists of articles to follow up on. The NSA just published a book about 680 pages long, free a s pdf. It promotes GE foods without a shame. "Science is our solution." These sort of team efforts never allow for rebuttals.


I tracked down just using google scholar an article on Roundup, which is used to grow the GMO corn in high yield. In my opinion it is toxic, and does end up somewhere in the environment. Most of it decomposes, unlike herbicides of the old days. Here we find that Roundup, as does its active ingredient, affects the mammalian aromatase enzyme:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257596/

Aromatase is an enzyme in the chain that leads to synthesis of estrogen.

The sweeping generalizations of the review articles never point out such obvious effects. Here I would say that the farmer spraying Roundup is more in danger than we are.

While we are on the topic of Roundup, many books and articles mention that "chemical" farming relies on "petrochemicals." This is wrong. The chemical industry is vast, and the majority of chemicals (in numbers, not tons) are not made from oil derived starting materials. They may use heptane or toluene to run chemistry as the solvent, but here is the synthesis of glyphosate (main ingredient of Roundup):

The phosphorus derivative is inorganic, derived from phosphoric acid, the second piece is formaldehyde. Look it up in Wikipedia for fun. The third piece is glycine, the most common amino acid. It is an industrial chemical, though the amino acid supplement comes from protein as a food item. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glycine#Production

Glyphosate has now been found at 100 PPB or more in oat based snacks. See https://www.ewg.org/childrenshealth/glyphosateincereal/#.W3WqTeNOmEe

But back to corn. Sometimes you just need your corn and you think, what can one bag of popcorn hurt? There we also note that some of these food effects may not be seen for decades, as diet and health are very difficult things to study. Healthy subjects do not volunteer to eat GMO food under controlled studies for ten years.

But you are in luck. Pop corn is not yet GMO:

My objections to GMO crops are that the farmer is sort of forced into them. The seeds are expensive and the treatments then guarantee a crop, unless you are unable to water the crop. Nothing else would ruin it. But we have survived for hundreds of years on a variety of crops. Monoculture in general is not a good way to go. In fact it could even be a trap, where all the "engineering" fails in a short time and nature catches up with our tricks.

Populism

The politics in the US have become sort of entertainment rather than actual policy. Trump became president by various means and the public certainly was manipulated with simple messages that were easy to grasp. Perhaps he even intended to Make America great again. But Puerto Rico is still without a working electrical grid and many Puerto Ricans are living in motels in Florida paid by some funds. A strong president would have got the funds and a clean contract to fix it by now. Even the first contractor was awarded the job by party loyalty and donations to the party.

Trump's unifying theme of "foreigners" allows him to mess with anything that deals with jobs and goods from abroad, such as tariffs.

But there really is no plan. Republicans are using Trump to achieve tax cuts and are just laying low to get through the November elections. After that they may want to go ahead with cutting more Big Government, funds to healthcare and so on.

Frank Thomas has scolded Democrats of elitism. We do not represent the working classes anymore. They share much of the "guns babies and Jesus" principles with Republicans. That includes patriotism, respect for the law and military. The white evangelicals will stand up for the national anthem and will even block Netflix for making a deal with Obama. Recently there was a book by Yascha Mounk where the author seems to have neglected the hundred year old history of populism. But indeed, the current trend of nationalism and populism does seem to have only right wing ideology. Brexit and Trump are cut from the same cloth.

Frank: By “populism” Yascha Mounk means the species of nasty rightwing politics associated with Trump and various European bad guys such as the leaders of Hungary and Poland. He uses the word as a kind of synonym for racist tyranny, and in his account populist politicians are villainous in ways that go beyond the profession’s conventions. Populists, he informs us, tell lies.

The populists of the 1800s and early 1900s were much more leftist once upon a time, but still white Christians and were involved with religion and even the Scopes "monkey trial."

Looking at this from the outside, my friend from Australia sums it up:

To me, it is completely about the loss of any serious, thought-out ideology (whether left or right) or policies which have a rational goal of improving people's lives, and a reliance on purely following (and sometimes creating) uninformed public opinion to capture the democratic vote. It is the cynical politics of the advertising executive...

Things like healthcare are simply not an issue to people that have jobs and insurance. Why should they want to give Obamacare to those "liberals in the cities" who do not want to work? Never mind that most small employers, such as a hair cutting franchise of a fast food franchise, do not provide insurance to full time employees.