Robert Campbell

Egypt had already been under Assyrian rule once and Persian rule twice before Alexander the Great ended its autonomy. The Romans were Julius-come-latelies. Robert

Robin, No, Presidential candidates should not complain about sacrifice. (Even though it's become routine for candidates of all parties, running for any office, who are 15 points up in the polls to put their hands out and send emails suggesting that without your donation they're toast.) Normal people don't want to run for President. We already know what the gig is, and so do the people who take it. But it's not like Warren wouldn't make the same complaints, and more, were she to run. She hates big corporations—and has pulled down huge fees for being their lawyer. She purports to represent low-paid workers when she falsely claimed Native American ancestry to get her highly-paid job at Harvard Law made permanent (female, minority, Affirmative Action, cha ching!). She's most likely not running this cycle—she burns with ambition, lots of Dems begged her to—because of the Native American issue. She could get the media to give her sufficient cover when she was running for Senator in Massachusetts, but running for President would put her in a harsher media environment, for much longer. Would she campaign in Oklahoma, where she was born? The Cherokee Nation (consulting a complete list of their members that dates from the 1890s) has said that she is not one of them. I know Melissa Harris-Perry said, while Warren was running for the Senate, that only "indigenous people" are allowed to ask whether she is really Cherokee—anyone else who does it is a racist and a monster of privilege—the implication being that the Cherokee Nation is no longer indigenous, and has turned into a racist monster of privilege. But she's off the air, and her defense won't suffice in a national election. Robert

Egypt. Under foreign rule, nearly all the time since 330 BC. How's that God-king thing been workin' out for ya?

Peter, Here is one thing about the Trump campaign that is perfectly rational. They purposely book spaces they anticipate will be too small, so it will be harder for protesters to get in. Robert

Brant, Obviously not. Are you sure anyone has broken that news to Donald Trump? No need, anyhow, for a saint in the Oval Office. But it would be good to get someone in there who has a reason for seeking that residency that makes sense to persons other than him- or herself—and that, when it does begin making sense to them, won't then send them running, as far away as they can get. It would also be good to get someone in there who operates on a principle other than "There's a sucker born every minute." Robert

Korben, Labor will be talked about, all right. The more important question is whether it will be talked about by Donald Trump. What, again, is he waiting for? Robert

Korben, Well, Trump is making a decision about corn-based ethanol, in any event. Why not make the push you are talking about right now? What is Trump waiting for? Did he declare in favor of corn-based ethanol simply because Ted Cruz was against it? Robert PS. In light of the efficiency of American agriculture in 2016, or the percentage of the population that works in it, I don't see how you can be serious about diverting corn into ethanol production, damaging car engines for no discernible environmental benefit, in order to save the small number of jobs that would be affected. Let's hope Trump holds no stake in any Iowa ethanol plants.

Korben, OK, nice and succinct. The entire Positions section of the Trump for President website (including the items on tax reform, healthcare reform, and trade reform) doesn't say one word about how Social Security and Medicare will be funded if Trump gets his way. In 2015, Social Security cost $888 billion (24% of Federal expenditures), and Medicare cost $546 bil (15%). What does he plan to do with Social Security (and Medicare) taxes? His tax reform plan is about personal and corporate income taxes, and the death tax. And his income tax plan is designed the percentage of the population that doesn't pay income taxes... How does he plan to deal with the future unfunded liabilities of both programs? It's interesting how Big Pharma is the one sector he's emphatically not interested in protecting... But, OK, if he gets legal imports of prescription drugs still under patent from other countries (whose regulatory approval processes for drugs and medical devices aren't as lengthy or expensive as the FDA's), that would save the Medicare program something (no estimate provided on his site, however). It's what WSS said about Trump's plan to replace Obamacare: Show us the pig, sir! Except that his plan to replace Obamacare is much more detailed. No one in his or her right mind would entrust matters of such importance to a guy who is basically saying: all is An Undertaking to Be Named Later, but you need merely trust to my unbounded beneficence and sagacity. Robert

Korben, If you want to use such a pretentious term as the "corn industry," feel free. The farmers will still be laughing at the media and their trade associations. I was able to follow most of what you said, but stopped short at this one statement. Do you really mean to imply that the price of corn is not a function of supply and demand? Or that demand for corn to produce ethanol does not increase the total amount demanded, when added to all the demand for corn for food? Robert

Yup, good question. Robert

Michael, It's amazing how Donald Trump moves his lips all the time and makes what sound like English words come out... in torrents... most of them in front of video cameras... 5 or 6 days a week... and to you it's not talking. I guess only persons other than Donald Trump would ever descend to something so useless or so low-tech. Perhaps there is a new species of totally nonverbal waveform—for which Trump ought to get off his duff and file a patent application—that emanates uniquely from him to bathe all illuminated spirits in its glow, obviating the need for them to consider the meaning of anything he says, or to consider any words he appears to be uttering. Meanwhile, those unilluminated spirits will forever fail to pierce through the apparent meaning of his apparent words to the true substance beneath. The question is not even what Donald Trump needs to say in order to win his home state primary (he won big on the Republican side; now read the totals and check Adam's thread: 950,000 more Democrats voted in the NY primaries than Republicans, at a time of somewhat diminished enthusiasm among Democrats). The question is what he needs to say to have adequate credibility everywhere in the US (you know, because he is campaigning for Federal office). The days are over when, say, FDR could tell white Southerners how horrible Reconstruction was, and black Northerners how much he sympathized with their struggle for equal rights, and not worry that either group would get wind of what he'd said to the other. You know, "bitterly cling"? You know, "47%"? You know, "a farmer like Chuck Grassley"? Do you think the only people who ever pay attention to what Trump says in a particular place are the people who attend Trump rallies, see his advertising, hear him do one radio interview, all right there? Sorry, but if that were the case, you would have stopped listening to anything he said after he finished campaigning in the Illinois primary, and wouldn't be planning to tune back in until he campaigns in Illinois for the general (contingent on his being the nominee, and his considering Illinois worth campaigning in). Unless you've been volunteering for him in another state... have you? If the guy talks in Wisconsin as though he doesn't care one way or another about public employee unions, then he talks the same way in New York, and then, let's say, he does the same in a day or two in New Jersey, and he does the same across the river in Pennsylvania, you know, maybe folks in the states that haven't held their primaries will become concerned that he doesn't consider public employee unions a threat and won't support any measures to limit their power. AFSCME is in every state. The NEA and the AFT are in most. Cause if that's the kind of candidate they want, they can always vote for a Democrat. (Interestingly, I see from a WSJ article that he did promise, while campaigning in southwestern Virginia, to abolish the EPA and "bring back coal." Will he bring it back out in West Virginia, at least?) And, you know, anyone in American politics who talks about landslides is bullshitting. What our media and pundits call a "landslide" in a US election is winning with 60% (what Trump just did in New York). It's not winning with 70 or 80 or 90. Chances are, even if Trump is nominated and Evita "blows him out," she won't win by nearly the margin that LBJ managed against Barry Goldwater, or Ronald Reagan managed against Fritz Mondale. And if he "blows her out," likewise. So talk of landslides is good old-fashioned media crap. Trump just performed above the polls, in his home state, where he was already expected to do very well. Did Ted Cruz score a landslide in Utah, getting 69%? Whoop tee doo! I liked it when Cruz won Utah, but I didn't consider it a landslide and no one else should either. Trump looked bad in Iowa, Cruz looked bad in New Hampshire... then up and down and up and down and... we have 50 states plus an assortment of territorial dependencies that get their say, in one fashion or another. If Trump were actually winning regularly in what Americans call a landslide—not even that, not 60%—not even 55%—just breaking 50% regularly—he'd have sewed the nomination up by now. He could have put in a victory lap in New York and taken the rest of the 2 weeks off. Not what's been happening, is it? One does need votes to beat Hillary. Maybe averaging 50% overall from Republican primary participants would be a positive indicator. Cause if you can't get more Republicans on board, it's going to be hard to win a general election against a Democrat. Hard to carry your home state, even. Particularly when 66% of the public claims to hate you. It could be that Trump's new special form of communication doesn't have enough wattage behind its signal. Robert

Michael, Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton is shaping up to be a a battle of a candidate with 66% negatives against a candidate with 61%. Neither should be able to win, but under our two-party system, one of them is effectively guaranteed to. And here I thought Dubya vs. Al was a contest between two who both deserved to lose. Once Hillary becomes the nominee, she will have to deliver a truly unforgivable insult to Barack Obama before he will drop the hammer on her. Robert

Ah, once again the imperative, not to stump, but to stomp. And to re-stomp. And... you get the pattern. No one expects you to praise any of Trump's opponents to the skies. A lot of their supporters don't actually praise them to the skies. In any event, only Trump is magnificent enough to deserve such praise. We've been getting that, loud and clear. The fact remains that if Donald Trump's people had made every last one of the moves that, when practiced by Ted Cruz's people, you've excoriated as a dirty trick, you would have nothing to say, except how brilliant a strategist Donald Trump is, and how brilliantly he hires beings of slightly lesser brilliance to carry out his brilliant agenda. Whether Donald Trump gets the nomination or not, he will hate Ted Cruz and Ted Cruz, I suspect, will hate him. Cruz will then be far lower in your eyes, and in the eyes of other Trump supporters, than George H. W. Bush after he violated his promise. I'm sure that if Scott Walker doesn't beg Trump's indulgence—he has said that he won't—he'll be about as low in your eyes as Cruz is already. If Trump is the nominee, it will actually be very interesting to see who he will actually want for Vice-President—and who will actually be willing to run with him. JFK and LBJ had a much higher opinion of each other than Trump and his running mate are likely to. Robert

Michael, Heard it before, from a bunch of sources. Beck has maybe embroidered a little bit on point number 3. I don't believe a word of it. Robert

Michael, Really, where is Donald Trump's critique of the current power structure in New York (city and state)? He just finished nearly two weeks of campaigning in a primary there. How much attention did he give any of it in his speeches? Where is his critique of the public employee unions, who bear considerable responsibility for the present condition of New York? Does he ever talk about them at all? The incompetent politicians he was referring to in that speech, invariably in the grip of special interests, are 100% at the Federal level. Which you'd have to expect, because foreign trade is a Federal responsibility under our constitution. I have noticed that one of Trump's, umm, unusual patterns is to slam Republican governors for the actual or supposed effects of improper foreign competition in their states. He did that in Wisconsin with Walker. Suppose Trump is right and only through wimpy concessions to the Chinese or the Japanese or the Mexicans did it come to pass that this factory closed in Stevens Point, or a whole industry along the Michigan border began to dwindle. Let's further suppose that the governor (Walker) has the wrong views about foreign trade, and if elected President would most likely oversee more wimpy concessions. It is nonetheless the case that the governor of Wisconsin has no say about foreign trade—as he has no say in immigration policy. No governor, in any state, Democrat, Republican, or Independent, has any such say. "Our government" is not one solid undifferentiated mass. I hope Donald Trump knows that, and that he is not pursuing political gain by pretending not to know it. Robert

Michael, What does the impending collision permit (require?) Captain Trump to ignore? For instance, if the media don't get with his program, does the impending collision permit (require?) him to go full Erdogan? Robert

Trump exceeded expectations in his home state. He deserves credit for that. He now needs to exceed expectations in a bunch more states, or he will be short of 1237 at the convention. Robert

Michael, Why exult in the sliminess of Roger Stone? You know, Donald Trump has still not released his tax returns. His excuse, that he is audited every year and is being audited this year, has been exposed as bogus. Besides perhaps revealing that Trump is worth less money than he claims to be, or is in more debt than he admits being in, or gives less to charity than he says he does, would the returns inform us about continuing employment (not by his campaign) for Roger Stone? I learned a couple of interesting things about Paul Manafort, who seems to have taken over control of Trump's campaign. One, Manafort helped Jerry Ford get more delegates than Ronald Reagan in 1976, before he changed sides and recruited delegates for Reagan in 1980. (He also worked later on for Bush Sr., Bob Dole, Dubya, and John McCain, when not cleaning up on K Street.) Two, Manafort worked, on and off, between 2004 and at lest 2010, for Victor Yanukovych, the kleptocratic Putinian puppet in Ukraine. Claimed credit for engineering Yanukovych's comeback victory in 2010 (though, as we know, that didn't end well for Yanukovych). Apparently was taking money from McCain and Yanukovych at the same time in 2008. Robert

Michael, I am no expert on persuasion strategies. Nor have I studied the literature as you have. I did not renew my participation on OL, and see that most of the action was on the political threads, with any expectation of persuading you to reject Donald Trump in favor of another candidate. It's been obvious since I made my recent return that you are personally committed to Trump's magnificence and are proud to reject out of hand much of what is normally considered relevant when evaluating the qualities of candidates for public office. I would actually turn the question around. You probably figured right away that I was not going to be susceptible to the Trumpian appeals with which you are familiar. So not persuading me doesn't count. My question is: given your command of evidence-based persuasion techniques, how many people who previously did not support Trump are now supporting him, on account of the persuasive appeals that you personally made? Robert

Korben, Did a little looking around, and in fact I don't see how we can hold a discussion of Trump's plans for Social Security and Medicare, unless you can provide his account of how he plans to handle them. He's been all over the place, in his public utterances, about Social Security and Medicare. MUST BE PRESERVED didn't use to be his position. Meanwhile, MUST BE PRESERVED has for some time been the position of every Democrat running for office (except when they add MUST BE EXTENDED). His campaign website does not treat these programs as priorities and gives no position on either that I could find. I do gather that for a while he claimed he could keep Social Security afloat by cutting off foreign aid to countries that are actually hostile to us (such as Pakistan). Seems like a good idea in its own right, but the redirected funds are a thimbleful by Federal entitlement standards. I also gather that he thinks food stamps can and should be cut way back. Again, glad he's saying so, but the price tag is puny compared to the two big entitlements. Robert

I take no credit for blaming Trump's insistence on re-stomping Scott Walker for his loss to Ted Cruz in Wisconsin. Here is Walker's own explanation: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/04/19/exclusive-walker-sidesteps-open-convention-ultimatum-says-hell-likely-run-for-reelection-n2151080?utm_source=thdailypm&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad= No doubt he now deserves some re-re-stomping... Robert

Korben, Can you put that explanation right here, in your own words? It shouldn't take more than a paragraph. Then we can evaluate it. Robert

Korben, Umm, corn is grown by actual dirt farmers. You can speak of an ethanol industry, but the people who grow it would be the first to laugh about a "corn industry." There's plenty of demand for corn under nearly any circumstance. People eat it, it goes into all kinds of processed food that they also eat, and under normal conditions, the rest is fed to cows and hogs that people eventually end up eating. Farming in Iowa has become extremely efficient, so hardly any jobs would be at stake. And the reason unemployment is low in Iowa is that you either know what you're doing there or you move somewhere else. (I'm an Iowa export, so I should know.) On top of which, corn is one of a handful of agricultural products that have been heavily subsidized by the Feds since the Depression. (The exact form of the subsides keeps changing, but Congress keeps passing "farm bills" so they'll keep flowing.) There is no evidence that mandating the inclusion of ethanol (mostly derived from corn) in all of the gasoline sold at the pump does the slightest thing to either promote energy independence or to protect the environment. You might want to consider, just for step 1, what goes into producing the fertilizer that gets applied to all the extra acres... Subsidizing corn growing (well, super-subsidizing it, on top of the subsidies previously provided) encourages cultivation on marginal land (and even Iowa has some marginal land). The enviros all gave up on corn-based ethanol years ago. Meanwhile, most of our food gets more expensive. Maybe Donald Trump doesn't care, but why should we be perpetuating policies that screw American consumers, while leading, in bad years for the worldwide crop, to tortilla riots in Honduras? Oh, and any auto mechanic will tell you that 10% ethanol corrodes your engine over time. An increased ethanol mandate would be for 15%, which I don't believe any car engine in the US is presently rated to handle. If Donald Trump wants to end the current rotten system, here is one of its prize products. So what does he want to do about it? He rips Ted Cruz for wanting to end the boondoggle and sucks up to the (very Establishment) Governor of Iowa, Terry Branstad. If Trump actually wants to push for energy independence, he could start with intoning "Cuomo" the way he currently intones "China." Rip politicians who suppress fracking at least once every speech. He could actually pay attention to Sarah Palin, for a change, by picking up her chant of "Drill, baby, drill." Talk about how his big plan to shut down most of the Environmental Protection Agency (so it can't constantly expand its powers regardless of what Federal laws actually say). Maybe point out that suppressing nuclear power plants (two good examples, practically in his back yard, are Shoreham, which got built but was forbidden to ever start running, and Indian Point, which New York's political power structure is now ringing down the curtain on) is not a way to achieve energy independence or to protect the environment. Corn ethanol ain't about any of that. It's all about the payoffs. Either Donald Trump doesn't know any of this, or he's all about the payoffs. Robert

Korben, Thank you for engaging on some actual issues. This is what I had been hoping for, and seeing so little of. The two articles you linked both focus on the rust-belt private sector unions (such as those that band together under the AFL-CIO). They have been a force for the Democrats, and their leaders are worried about members voting for Trump—especially when their leadership has become staunchly protectionist and Trump's line on foreign trade scarcely differs from their own. Even though the United Auto Workers got a special deal in the auto bailouts, and unions still benefit from the Davis-Bacon Act regarding government construction work, these guys are nearly a spent force, politically. The private-sector labor force is down to 7% unionized. Do you realize that Indiana, Wisconsin, and Michigan have all become right to work states—since Obama was first elected? My concern is with the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, the National Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers—those whose members are in the public sector, which is 36% unionized. They're the ones who hit their members for mandatory dues, then spend a large chunk of the proceeds on electing Democrats, who give their leaders the contract terms they want, and what they don't pay them off with, in current salary and perks, they commit their taxpayers to as delayed payoffs, in the form of totally unsustainable future pensions. If they're teachers' unions, they also campaign endlessly against any alternative to the public K-12 monopoly, suppressing charter schools wherever they can, tying up any kind of voucher plan in court (they keep losing most of these cases, but they keep filing them), protecting their senior members against being fired, even for gross incompetence or blatant malfeasance. In some states, like Illinois, no change will ever be allowed to the future pensions of present employees unless the state constitution is amended. Future state and local pension obligations are threatening to bankrupt jurisdictions in Illinois (the City of Chicago and the entire state), California (countless municipalities and the whole state), Michigan (where Detroit has gone bankrupt)... Among those not doing a whole lot better are New York and New Jersey, so you might expect Donald Trump (who now counts Chris Christie as one of his humble servants) to be sounding the alarm. Nope. There are problems with government employee unions at the Federal level, too, though they have less power because they lack general collective bargaining privileges. For instance, most employees of the IRS belong to the National Treasury Employees Union, which has 200 officials masquerading as regular Treasury employees: they get full-time Federal pay and benefits, for doing full-time Union work. Would you be surprised to learn that the NTEU gives to political candidates, and nearly all of its money goes to Democrats? Neither the Pufflington piece nor the Reuters refers to public-sector unions as such. The Puffington does quote from a former official of the Service Employees International Union, which straddles the public and private sectors (both public and private hospitals, for example) and has provided the Obami with many a foot soldier. All I can figure is that Donald Trump is completely ignorant of the dangers posed by unions of government employees, or he doesn't care about them. Robert

From a Donald Trump rally on Staten Island: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/04/17/trump_im_so_happy_china_is_upset_with_me.html This explains to me some things that I didn't previously understand. Trump is operating in what for any Republican would be a target-rich environment. The City, from which Staten Island tried to secede in 1993, is one-party Democratic. The present mayor loved the Sandinistas, hates charter schools, is all-in for Hillary Clinton, and appears to be the target of a brand-new Federal corruption investigation. The governor imposed a ban on fracking throughout the state through executive fiat and badly wants more gun control. Legislators of both parties are infamously corrupt. Taxes are high, insurance rates are high, land-use controls are everywhere. Public employee unions, who almost exclusively direct their payoffs to Democrats, effectively run the City and the State. Trump refers to familiar woes: Whoever transcribed it left out his colorful imitation of how slowly the LIRR trains go, and his reference to how a train recently ran into the next train ahead of it. He could have mentioned plenty of other things, such as the dire condition of La Guardia Airport. The important thing is, he wants to blame it all on the Chinese. No one in America is to blame, except Presidents and Senators who make improper concessions to the Chinese, and unnamed special interests that pay off Presidents and Senators to make improper concessions to the Chinese. State mismanagement? Local mismanagement? Bad laws in New York? Terrible taxes? Stifling regulations? Unless they hamper police work, it's as though none of them exist. A President Trump could get as tough on Mainland China as he wishes. Even if he is right about the economic consequences of starting a trade war with China, none of that will put people back in empty buildings on Staten Island, or fix one damn thing that needs fixing in New York. It's not as though either the City or the State is starved of revenue. It's all about how those in power choose to spend it, and who they're paying off with it. I no longer think that Trump is being tactically indifferent to these issues, in order to stick it to rivals. That might have explained his attacks on Scott Walker in Wisconsin, which sounded as though they were coming from a Left-wing Democrat. But Andrew Cuomo isn't a Republican; neither is Bill de Blasio; neither is running against Trump for the nomination. He needn't worry about a single New York Democrat ever endorsing Lyin' Ted. He has nothing to lose, in a Republican primary, from constantly ripping Cuomo or de Blasio or 500 others he all knows by name. Yet he isn't doing it. I think Trump is actually OK with high taxes, land-use regulations that make housing insanely expensive, massively overbuilt state and local government, and public employee unions that have their tentacles in everything, work to insure the election of politicians who will give them more of what they want, and guarantee that whatever they control (commuter railroads, schools, streets) will be screwed up. Maybe it isn't even that he's noticed these things and then decided they're OK. It could be that as a politically connected New York real estate developer and the son of a politically connected New York real estate developer, he just takes it for granted that this is how things have always worked, and how they'll continue to work. You cut a few deals, you pay some people off, you get your project built, and all the other stuff keeps being crappy. Why, then, stir up all kinds of unpleasantness by striking at the power of state and municipal employee unions? Why would anyone think of challenging teachers' unions? It must have occurred to Trump that if anyone ever tried to get an Act 10 passed in New York State, things would get far nastier in Albany than anything Walker and Republican legislators ever encountered in Madison. There's a lot of the present rotten system that Donald Trump isn't just uninterested in opposing. I really think that, given the choice, he would act to preserve it. The entire clip is worth a careful listen, by the way. The transcriber cut a reference to Lyin' Ted, thinking it was off-topic. It wasn't, really. Trump gives his usual pitch about how he's self-funded, and that means he won't be doing the bidding of any special interests. Whereas Lyin' Ted, just to pick one Senator at random, is owned by the oil industry. You know, when Trump came out for increased ethanol mandates in Iowa, he charged Ted Cruz with opposing them because he was in the pocket of the oil industry. Gee, I guess anyone who objects to Andrew Cuomo's edict against fracking must also be in the pocket of the oil industry... This man will be a massive disappointment to anyone who cannot reasonably expect to be on his payroll come January 2017.