Monday 21 October 2019

Mayor Pete's 'Path'

For Mayor Pete to accelerate and win the nomination....he has two major things that must be accomplished.

1.  He has to move ahead of Biden and Warren....to win the Iowa Caucus, and the Nevada primary.  The NH and SC matches don't really matter.

2.  Then you arrive to Super-Tuesday (14 states).  Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, and Virginia.  He has to win seven of these (my humble opinion), in order for the path remaining (at least ten of the remaining states).

Odds in southern states like Texas, Alabama or Arkansas?  ZERO. 

I think he has pretty good chances in Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado and California.  Maine and Massachusetts are 50-50 shots.  It's hard to say how people would view him in states like North Carolina or Utah. 

In a Trump-Mayor Pete election?  Southern Democrats and blacks in general....will shy away from Mayor Pete, and lessen their showing at the polls in November.  I won't say it's a guaranteed loss for Mayor Pete, but he'd have to work people into a frenzy to show up and vote, and he's just not the Obama-type of candidate to accomplish that. 

A TV Series That I'd Like to See Come Back (In Different Form)

This is what I'd like to see come back:

The Addams 'Couple'.  Instead of bringing the Addams Family back....I'd like to rewind the clock and have this moment in college where Gomez meets Morticia.  Yes, I'd have the younger version of Uncle Fester there, but minus the other characters. 

I'd do the whole thing in black and white, set in some college.  I'd tell the story of the early days of this passionate love affair, and how they were simply love-struck from the first minute of their meeting. 

For background characters, I'd add a British butler for Gomez, a retired Taiwanese General as a neighbor, Morticia's room-mate (a Doris Day type), and a mildly insane professor who has been paid by Gomez's father to pass the kid....no matter what happens. 

Mayor Pete and His 35-Percent Corporate Tax Rate

To help make Medicare-for-all a possibility, and cover the cost impact, Mayor Pete's idea is that you'd raise the corporate tax rate to 35-percent (currently, it's set at 21-percent).  So you'd see a 14-point rise on the corporate world.  The feeling is....they'd just give 14 points of their profit, to make this happen, and everyone would be happy.

Is this a realistic assumption?  No.

Once companies are given the 14-point rise....they merely insert that into cost, and it's passed onto consumers.  If you made a product that went overseas....you'd likely stop production in the US, and quickly move production into Mexico or Brazil. 

So that new US-made truck that you were going to buy?  You can figure that it's going up by $1,000 minimum.  That $900 refrigerator?  It's going up by $50 to $70. 

You, whether you like the idea or not....would be paying for Medicare-for-all....all by yourself.  Corporate would simply hand you the bill, and you'd pay it. Eventually, some idiot with the car industry would figure out that it's cheaper to make cars in Mexico, and they'd shift a lot of production there.....destroying US jobs, and raising the unemployment rate.

But hey.....this is the reality of Mayor Pete and how he promises you such a good deal. 

Explaining This Obama-Trump Jobs Chatter

Over the last month or two, several news groups have been hyping up the jobs situation under President Obama as being better than President Trump.  Oddly, even the NY Times and Washington Post jumped into this with charts and hyped-up enthusiasm for what President Obama did. 

So I spent two hours this weekend look at the past twenty-five years.  Oh, I know....I should just be talking about only the Obama and Trump period, but there's this odd story laying out there.

Back in early 1994, NAFTA came along, with unions telling President Clinton and these Republican and Democratic political figures that hundreds of thousands of jobs were at risk. 

Around a decade after NAFTA came in, the numbers were mostly verified....it just under 1-million US jobs lost.   Those were the direct jobs.....so the secondary group probably was in the 250,000 range. 

No one ever talks much about those jobs which went to Mexico, and the Dominican Republic.  I had a high school friend who had a decent $12 an hour job in that 1995 period, and he watched the company fold up and move off to the Dominican Republic.  Because of zero commerce growth in this period.....it was fairly rough time for him.

But that's not the only crippling action.....a number of new products led back to the manufacturing stage in China.  You can argue that five to ten million jobs that should have been within the US.....were now in China instead.

So then in 2008/2009, we had the banking crisis.  From the first year of Bush, the unemployment rate was 4.2-percent By the last year of Bush (end of 2008), we now had 7.8 percent unemployment.  Hundreds of thousands of people were put at risk with their jobs and stability. 

Based on Team-Obama's effort....at the conclusion of the 2016, they had been able to reduce the unemployment rate to around 4.7 percent. 

Corporate profits during the Obama period....they went sharply up, compared against the Bush period.....almost doubling. 

So what's the difference between the Obama numbers and Trump numbers?  What Trump is carving into....has nothing to do with the banking crisis.  It's more to do with China manufacturing and NAFTA.  Industrial jobs.

These are the jobs that both Bush and Obama said were permanently gone. I highlight that key word because both spoke to this issue on numerous occasions, saying that they could never come back.....mostly because of the global market.  Under Trump, the phrase has never occurred. 

In fact, in every occasion that Trump found unfair trading practices existing....he's put his foot down.  Either it's a level playing field, or we will call it a foul.

In the spring of 2019, the numbers say around 5.2-million jobs created in the US since Trump arrived.  Those jobs dig into Mexico, Europe, and China.  If Trump stays on to 2024?  I would imagine almost 10-million jobs will have been created by that point. 

About a week ago, I noted out of my home state (Alabama), that unemployment had fallen to the lowest level of fifty years...3-percent unemployment.  In fact, in the Huntsville area....in August of this year, it got down to 2.3 percent unemployment.  If you simply wrote a 5th-grade kid-type resume, put on clean clothing, cleaned-up your drug habits, and simply applied yourself....you'd have a job within a week or two within Huntsville.

On occasion, I admire the writings of the Washington Post and NY Times, but on this one single story.....they basically told only half of the entire story.  For both of them to do the same thing?  It has to have a political purpose behind it, and be of a biased nature.