Need help deciding who to vote for in 2016? Imperfect America's Election Decision Engine

I for one am dismayed beyond imagination about the political situation the United States finds itself in today. We may be seeing the worst pair of candidates to grace the top of the main party tickets in the history of the country. Both are morally corrupt. Both are arrogant, self centered and greedy. Both are incompetent when it comes to foreign affairs.

We can't really blame the Democrats' fault for nominating Hillary Clinton. Modern Democrats are hybrid socialists / Communists / fascists by nature and they simply want more of what they’ve gotten for eight years with their strongman, Barack Obama. To expect them to want something else is simply foolish. It’s really the Republicans who have caused this angst as they wasted the opportunity to make this an historic election in terms of salvaging the country. But alas, they failed to do so because they were (willingly) led astray by Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, two men who have spent decades lying to the American people as they posed as conservatives. Their embrace of Donald Trump belies their base opportunism, but it’s the country that will pay the price for their guile as they sit back and laugh. Good riddance to the careers of both.

Of course blowing off steam about the current mess doesn’t really help decide what is the best, or more accurately, the less bad decision to make in November. As such, I’ve created a decision engine to help make that decision.

The reality is, none of us will ever likely encounter a candidate we agree with 100% of the time. As such, the choice always comes down to; "Of the candidates on the ballot – among those with an actual opportunity to win – who do you agree with most?" Of course most doesn’t mean always, or even 50% of the time… but rather, of the two candidates, who do you agree with more. Agreeing with a candidate only 25% doesn’t seem like a strong reason to vote for them, until you realize that you agree with their opponent only 2% of the time.

Below is a screenshot of the decision engine intended to allow you to evaluate the two candidates on 10 different issues. You can click here for an online version or click here to download an Excel version.

The decision engine gives you the opportunity to weigh the importance of 10 different issues from 1-5. (There's a dropdown arrow to the right of each cell) You can change the issues based on what is important to you.  The order does not matter for the scores or the recommendation, only the weighting and which candidate you choose.  As for the weighting, you could keep all issues at the same number, meaning you value each equally, or you could adjust any or all to reflect your level of importance, with the most important rated 5 and the least important at 1.

Then you choose which candidate is closest to your views on each issue.  Again, a dropdown arrow is to the right of each cell... and Neither is also an option. If you select Trump for any given issue, you probably will want to remember that while you might agree with him today, you have no idea what his policies will be next week never-mind next year.  With Clinton there's no such concern as her views don't change, they're consistently red and usually wrong.

The engine will multiply your choice of candidate by the weighting of each issue and then give a total score for each candidate. Once you have made your choices for all of the issues the engine will recommend the candidate you should vote for based on your choices. In actuality the engine tells you throughout the entire process, giving you the recommendation based on the choices made thus far, but it is the final score that you should consider as your recommendation. When all is said and done, if the candidates are tied, the engine simply suggests you write in your own name…

At the end of the day, there will likely be many people writing in their own name or that of Mickey Mouse. Frankly were Mickey on the ballot this year I might actually be inclined to vote for him…

I hope this helps clarify what to do in this horrible, sad, frustrating situation...

America's Game of Russian Roulette: Clinton vs. Trump or Revolution vs. War

I remember in 2008 I told my wife that that presidential election was the most important in a generation. I told her in 2012 that that election was the most important in my lifetime. Both of those statements were completely true. In putting Barack Obama in the White House, for the first time Americans elected a race bating closet Muslim socialist / fascist as the leader of the free world. That is of course unfortunate in many ways for many people around the world. Not only has the American economy been stuck in the worst recession in 65 years, race relations are the worst they’ve been in 50 years, our borders are practically nonexistent, freedom and the Constitution are under constant attack and the image of the United States as a leader on the world stages is in tatters.

Now it’s possible that the election of 2016 is even more important, but sadly there is no relative superhero like John McCain or Mittens Romney on the ticket. I was against both of those squishy centrist candidates from the start and would have much preferred to have an actual conservative on the ticket… but alas it was not to happen.

It was with great expectations that I looked forward to the 2016 campaign as finally an opportunity for a true conservative to emerge from the mosh pit and lead the nation to a victory over the cancer of today’s Democrat party. Unfortunately however that did not happen. Between the GOP establishment’s incompetence and fear of a real conservative, as well as the media’s love of ratings – and that includes the so called “conservative” media – today we have Donald Trump as the standard bearer for the party of Ronald Reagan.

And so it is that Americans, with a population of over 320 million people have put themselves in a situation where the only two people with a realistic chance of becoming the leader of the free world are a lying big government socialist and an uninformed narcissistic thin skinned crony capitalist with no love for freedom. This is essentially the opposite of winning the lottery. Americans have somehow managed to put themselves in a game of Russian Roulette where all of the chambers have rounds in them!

While the elections of 2008 and 2012 set the nation on the road to ruin in terms of economic stagnation, stultifying regulation, the undermining of the Constitution and eviscerating America’s position as leader of the free world, the election of 2016 will have even more devastating effects.

The election of Hillary Clinton will result in the continuation of the policies of Barack Obama, only on steroids. We will get a Supreme Court that will look to the UN charter rather than the US Constitution. We will get continued and increasing regulation which suffocates prosperity and entrepreneurship but which helps big business. We will get increases in taxes, skyrocketing government spending and more race bating. And perhaps most of all, we will surrender our borders and will transform our nation into a refuge from which immigrants can escape the third world only to then work to turn our country into a mirror reflection of said third world.

The election of Donald Trump will give us a crapshoot of broken promises, protectionism, and isolation. At the same time the 1st Amendment may go by way of the dodo bird while regulation will likely grow for the benefit of big businesses and at the expense of entrepreneurs. More ominously, a Donald Trump presidency will create great divisions between the United States and our NATO allies and others who have helped maintain a relative peace for much of the last half century. As the increasingly bellicose Chinese and Russians seek to expand their spheres of influence, the world will watch a President Trump seek to pull back the American footprint. Osama Bin Laden once said “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse”. In this case the strong horses will be China and Russia, and that does not bode well for freedom or peace for anyone.

So at the end of the day, Americans have a choice to make, and neither is a good one.

The first option will put Hillary Clinton in the White House, and that will lead to a fracturing of the nation, along lines of race, along lines of income, along geographic lines and fundamentally about an understanding of the Constitution and freedom. And that fracturing could very well lead to revolution. And not a theoretical revolution played out in newsrooms and college campuses and on the editorial pages of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. No, this may indeed turn out to be a real revolution where people revolt against the tyranny of an economically and culturally oppressive government and a dearth of opportunity of any kind. It won’t show itself by a fife and drum corps marching down Main Street. No, it will be in the shadows as more police are targeted, more citizens take matters into their own hands and order starts to come apart while an increasingly militarized police force seeks to keep things in check. This revolution will look a lot more like the one that started in France in 1789 than the one that started in the colonies in 1776.

The second option will put Donald Trump in the White House and that will lead to a calcifying of the American economy, estrangement between the US and erstwhile allies, and at some point, war. And this war will not be a guerilla war fought against jihadis seeking to bring about the caliphate. No, this war will be against Russia or China. As Trump and his little hands pull back from the world stage, the Russians and Chinese will seek to expand their empires, taking Ukraine and Taiwan respectively. In both cases Trump will likely acquiesce, which will only lead to further expansion such as with the Baltics in the case of Russia and any one of half a dozen other countries or islands in the case of China. At some point the threat will become sufficiently ominous and American allies so vocal that the United States will have to engage. And unlike Korea or Vietnam or Afghanistan in the 1980s, this will not be a proxy war limited to some theater most Americans couldn’t find on a map if their lives depended on it. No, this will be a real, hot war with sophisticated enemies throwing billions of dollars of weapons at one another. One can only hope that such a conflict stays conventional…

So as we stumble towards the 2016 election Americans should be aware… they have left themselves with not only no good options, but only terrible options, both of which will likely lead to much bloodshed, chaos and possibly the end of the Republic. Good job Rush, Matt Drudge and the GOP establishment. When your country needed you, you decided to whore yourselves out to a populist megalomaniac. The citizens of dystopia in America’s future will no doubt be quite grateful to you.

Freedom & Fortune... The Spoiled American Voters of 2016 Squander Their Inheritance

In the segment of the financial planning industry that caters to the uber wealthy, the rule of thumb is that by the 2nd generation 70% of family fortunes are lost and by the 3rd 90% is gone. Why? “Most of them have no clue as to the value of money or how to handle it.” Financial wealth is not so different than freedom and Thomas Jefferson knew it: Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

The United States has thankfully lasted much longer than 3 generations, but the writing is on the wall and the election of 2016 is proof.

On one side of the debate we have Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. We have two people who have zero experience in doing anything even remotely productive in the private sector in their lives. Bernie Sanders has virtually zero experience in the private sector as most of his many short lived jobs being for public or government institutions of one sort or another. His first steady paycheck not coming until he was 39 when he was elected Mayor of Burlington, VT. He’s never started a for profit company, he’s never ran a business that had to actually make a profit and meet a payroll… He’s never had to compete to attract consumers who are willing to freely exchange their hard earned money for a free market good or service he is providing. And, if it’s possible, Hillary Clinton has even less private sector experience.

Both of the people running for the presidency on the Democrat side have spent essentially their entire lives working in the public sector. As mayor. As congressional aide. As Congressman. As First Lady. As Senator. As Secretary of State. All of these jobs are funded by the taxpayers and in both cases their passions have been fueled by the desire to use the police power of government to bend the public to their will… in the service of good of course.

Donald Trump on the other hand has never had a job in the public sector. He’s been a builder and developer his whole life. He’s also been an operator of casinos, a reality TV show star, the leader of an eponymous university and he’s lent his name and likeness to countless products. While he parlayed his father’s $1 million loan and influence with bureaucrats into becoming a very successful real estate developer and reality TV star, the rest of his repertoire has been… shall we say, less than successful. But at the end of the day he’s a billionaire and that’s largely due to his real estate success. Not surprisingly, in that – real estate – Donald Trump has been in bed with government just as much as Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. From using government tax handouts to finance buildings to using government sanctioned bankruptcy laws to threaten and blackmail erstwhile partners, Trump’s real estate success has been built on a foundation of government intervention… and everything else is built off of that. But at least he knows about meeting payroll and attracting customers who have a choice as to where to spend their money.

The fact that America has selected these three big government candidates as the only viable options for the White House tells you everything you need to know about America in 2016. Like the 2nd and 3rd generations of wealthy families, an overwhelming majority of Americans are more interested in what someone else – the government in this case – can do for them than what they can do for themselves. An overwhelming majority of Americans have no idea of what made America great in the first place. An overwhelming majority of Americans don’t understand exactly how close the nation is to killing the goose that laid our golden egg.

Half the population is prepared to vote for a socialist wannabe Hillary Clinton or the actual socialist Bernie Sanders. Their basic premise for governing is simply more regulation on businesses and individuals, more illegal immigration, higher taxes on the rich and more redistribution programs for the poor. Absolutely nothing in their positions suggests anything about helping businesses be successful. Nothing suggests freeing up capital or entrepreneurs to start the next big revolution. Nothing suggests driving down the cost of business so that companies can innovate, hire more employees and offer yet to be invented goods or services to the public. No, for Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders everything is about what the government can do for you or will do to someone else.

A significant portion of the remainder of the population are prepared to vote for Donald Trump, a crony capitalist of the highest order. The problem with crony capitalism is that it’s not really capitalism at all… it’s coercion of others by the state for the benefit of friends of bureaucrats and politicians. Whether it’s Vegas’s tax breaks for the billion dollar NFL or Georgia’s tax incentives for Hollywood movie production or the Agriculture Department’s subsidies of corn or sugar or peanuts, it’s all crony capitalism. So too is it when banking or broadcasting or healthcare regulation becomes so onerous that they stifle competition and innovation because only the ultra rich friends of government can afford to pay the compliance costs.

One way or another it’s always taxpayers, small businesses and average citizens who are left holding the bag for government decisions where bureaucrats and politicians put their personal or political agendas ahead of individual freedom and free markets. Fundamentally this is because so many Americans simply don’t understand that a government can’t produce prosperity, it can only stand in its way. That a government that can take something from someone else to give to you today can just as easily take from you to give to someone else tomorrow. That a government that can write rules that favor you today can turn around and write rules that handicap you tomorrow. One need look no farther than Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, France or Greece to see what such government strangulation of free markets and free citizens does. Economies that stagger from one crisis to the next. Widespread unemployment. Flatline economic growth or outright decline. Unrest in the streets. Such things are the hallmarks of big government.

And the truth is, supporters of the three contenders for the presidential crown have no clue how prosperity ever came to the United States in the first place. American prosperity dominated the world in the 20th century like perhaps no other nation has in all of human history. While China and India may have had a larger share of world GDP two millennia before, the 20th century saw world GDP grow more, and more broadly ever before, and growth was driven by the United States. More than anything else, that American Century was characterized by freedom where government – mostly – left free markets to solve problems and innovate a wider array of new products and services than the world had had ever seen.

Those times and that leadership are long gone and they may never return. Beginning with the trickle of the New Deal and picking up steam with the Great Society programs, government regulation and redistribution policies began to strangle the American economy by the end of the 1970s. It was on life support when Ronald Reagan was able to revive it with spectacular success. Since then however it’s largely been downhill. From George H.W. Bush to George Bush government regulation continued to grow year after year. Bill Clinton took advantage of the “Peace Dividend” to grow it more in between. Under Barack Obama government regulation and strangulation of the economy has advanced at an unprecedented rate. And the economy has shown it. During Ronald Reagan’s first 7 years the GDP grew at an average of 3.4%, during Clinton’s it was 3.84%, Bush’s 2.46% and under seven years of Barack Obama the American GDP has grown at a stultifying 1.4% a year… and this is during a period when $10 trillion was added to the National Debt and the Fed pumped in an additional $2 trillion! (BEA data in Excel)

And so it goes… like the wastrel children and grandchildren who blossom under fortunes built by someone else and proceed to lose those very fortunes, Americans have lost their way with prosperity and may not find it back. National prosperity demands freedom. Prosperity for the many demands free markets. Widespread prosperity demands limited governments. But rather than look for a president who will roll back the suffocating leviathan of government and unleash free markets and entrepreneurship, Americans are instead choosing to support candidates who offer to use the power of government to tilt the scales towards them and their friends at the expense of everyone else.

The sad thing is, it’s not like that choice doesn’t have a clear outcome. It’s been tried over and over again around the world and it always fails, every time. And it will fail here too. The question is, is a fiery collapse that resembles the likes of Venezuela in our future or is it the slow calcification of France or Greece where the government slowly strangles the citizenry to the point where practically nothing works and eventually the nation begins to simply implode? In either case as the consequences of the disastrous 2016 election begin to play themselves out over the next couple of years Americans should be prepared to find themselves involved in more wars, experiencing more economic failure, buckling under more government regulation and enjoying less freedom of all types, particularly speech. Add to that more racial division, riots, crime and ultimately, much more despair and distrust of the system. Such are the conditions of revolutions, the hot ones, not the ballot box types…

Bankruptcy and Colorado: The rules only count for Donald Trump when they work to his advantage...

Despite what you may have heard or read, Donald Trump has never filed for bankruptcy. His companies have, four times, but Donald Trump never has.  The purpose of corporations is for investors to put a limited amount of capital at risk in exchange for the opportunity to earn money in any one of a myriad of legal ways. Investor use the corporate structure to ensure that if their bets go south, the most they can lose is the capital they invested in the first place.

Corporate bankruptcy laws can give a company an opportunity to restructure its business in a more favorable environment than it would have if it simply continued on whatever path that got it in trouble in the first place… it can give them breathing room. At the same time bankruptcy laws give creditors a legal framework through which they can exercise claims on said company’s assets. At the end of the day, corporate law, particularly as it relates to companies with millions or billions of dollars, can be complex, esoteric, bewildering, yet nonetheless be an effective tool.

It was by understanding the nuances of bankruptcy law that Donald Trump was able to navigate his way through treacherous waters for decades and seemingly emerge each time with a larger fortune than he had when he started. He used the threats of potential bankruptcy (or imminent domain action) to further his interests. He also mastered labor law, tax law and learned to orchestrate the media like a maestro. After all is said and done, the result is that four decades after a $1 million loan from his father – and $10s of millions of dollars in tax benefits from friendly politicians – Donald Trump sits on a fortune that is worth $10 billion – by his own account. That’s the equivalent of taking a $100 loan and growing it into $1,000,000. Not bad. One has to be pretty smart to accomplish something like that, because, whatever you think of the tactics, his fortune is the result of four decades of hard work, not betting it all on some lottery or dropping it into some Atlantic City slot machine.

So it is that backdrop that makes Trump’s current pleas ring so hollow. This morning he was on Fox News complaining that the Colorado delegate selection process was unfair. Had the rules been changed in March and he had no time to react, that might have been a logical argument. But the rules weren’t changed in March. They were changed in August. So it appears that with his $10 billion fortune and eight months to work with, Donald Trump was not able to field a team in Colorado who could have worked within the known system to garner delegates for him. Somehow he could figure out how to play the game in Michigan where he and John Kasich shut Ted Cruz out, but he couldn’t figure out how to do so in Colorado. So somehow there must be some cheating going on. Trump and his team waste no opportunity to suggest that Ted Cruz is somehow using “Gestapo tactics” by understanding the rules and using them to his advantage.

The irony is, that is exactly what Donald Trump has been doing his entire life… using the rules of the game… bankruptcy law, imminent domain, tax law, labor law etc. to win at business and accumulate a vast fortune in the process. But somehow, today, because he throws his towel into a ring where he’s unfamiliar with the rules and unwilling to spend the money necessary to understand them and succeed with them, the game is rigged. Trump claims that this is not how our democracy is supposed to work. That demonstrates in one sentence why Donald Trump should not sit in the White House. The United States is not a democracy and never has been. It is a republic, ruled by the rule of law, not the rule of man or of the mob or of the majority. If he ever bothered to read the Constitution he’d see that it’s all right there.

So, it’s not much of a surprise that we wake up this morning to hear more whining from Donald Trump. He’s very much a spoiled child. Given daddy’s fortune and connections Donald grew up not having to worry about what others said or wanted – at least as it relates to business and his public persona – and used that perch to learn the rules of a game that would serve him well for decades.

The funny thing is, Trump says he wants to change the system and Make America Great Again… he decries the fact that he’s an outsider and can’t within the GOP system. But of course he’s not an outsider. He’s been a crony capitalist his entire life.

The truth is, if Donald Trump really wanted to save the country, if he really wanted to be an outsider who upset the established apple cart, he would have run for president as a third party candidate from the beginning rather than throwing in with the GOP. Two thirds of Americans feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. If that was not a setup for a third party success then there never will be one. Half the Democrats hate Hillary Clinton. Half of the Republicans (and probably 95% of conservatives) hate the GOP establishment. Does one not think that in this environment, had Trump been willing to spend even 10% of his $10 billion fortune, that he could have almost walked into the White House?

But he didn’t run as a 3rd party candidate, instead he joined the GOP and tried to win the nomination in an established system that he didn’t understand. And now we’re supposed feel sorry that he’s feeling cheated? Either he didn’t have the courage to pursue his stated goal of taming Washington from without or he was not smart enough to recognize what it would take to win from within the GOP. Either way, he’s lost. If he wins the GOP nomination he will lose to Hillary – or Bernie if she’s indicted. If he tries to run as a 3rd party candidate now, after everything that has gone on in the primaries, the only thing he’ll accomplish is putting another Democrat in the White House. But of course that may have been his plan all along.

Ted Cruz Has a 15:1 Advantage Over Jeb Bush With Conservatives... And Why the Establishment Should Care

It’s sometimes said that you can tell a lot about a person by the friends they keep. That makes sense. Friendships are generally based on complementary personalities, shared values, and a variety of intangibles that cause people to bond.

Money in politics is a similar barometer. The vast majority of Americans never donate any money to politicians or get involved in politics at all. For all of the kvetching about money in politics, there’s really not that much there. In 2012 a total of $6 billion was spent on politics. That includes spending by campaigns, outside groups, and independent organizations. To put that in perspective, Americans spend almost twice that amount on bottled water each year, five times as much at McDonalds and twelve times that on the lottery.

In addition, it’s only a small minority of Americans who donate to political campaigns at all, about 11% on average. Eleven percent sounds low, but that’s actually enormous when compared to the .05% of donors who provide $2.7 billion of that $6 billion by making contributions of $2,600 or more. Talk about “The 1%”! Campaigns seem to be funded largely from “The .05%”. Here’s the breakdown: 89% of Americans give $0 dollars to campaigns, 10.5% give a total of $3.3 billion, while .05% of the population give the other $2.7 billion. That means that a total of about 15,000 people are responsible for almost half the money spent on our elections… out of 315 million people.

Although the money is relatively evenly distributed between the parties, within the GOP there is an interesting dichotomy. Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz, who raised similar amounts in the June 15 to June 30 period – $11.4 million and $10 million respectively – make for a good illustration. When Bush released his fundraising numbers, they showed that 97% of his money came from donors who gave more than $200. For Cruz that number was 61%. More interesting however are the average numbers. Overall, Bush had a total of 12,334 donors who gave an average of $926. At the same time Cruz had a total of 175,000 donors who gave an average of $81. Cruz had fifteen times as many donors but raised $1.4 million less!

This is not a screed against the rich. Rich people are often successful businessmen and that’s something we could use more of. What we don’t need more of however is crony capitalism. And that’s what makes these reports so compelling. They came out just a week before a report that the Chamber of Commerce, the shill for big corporations, is planning on targeting small government conservatives in the House, many of whom are strong Cruz allies. Their goal is to derail true border control, maintain the Export Import Bank and harness government to shield big businesses from competition whenever possible.

This of course shines an illuminating light on the Bush / Cruz numbers. Cruz is very much a phenomenon of the Tea Party movement. Against crony capitalism, against illegal immigration, against big government, and stridently so, he has animated grassroots conservatives in a way no one has in decades. (Or at least he had until the Trump earthquake came along… even if Trump is not really a conservative.) This is illustrated by the fact that 175,000 people donated to his campaign in its first two weeks. Bush on the other not only supports comprehensive immigration reform (which basically means no wall, no reform plus amnesty to boot) but shows his big government bona fides by seeking to foist the dysfunctional Common Core on the country. Both of those issues are anathema to conservatives and as a result, Bush has attracted very little in the way of grass roots support. He has however gained the support of the K Street mafia, the GOP establishment and their Chamber of Commerce enablers.

Of course there’s a long way to go and there are other candidates in the field, but it’s telling that there is such a stark contrast between what are the left and right wings of the party. While money may make up a big part of politics, success comes from getting people out of their chairs and into the voting booths. The GOP should take notice of the fact that small donor conservatives have broken 15 to 1 for Cruz against Bush. While that might not mean much in terms of money, on November 8th of next year it will be critical. After having been steamrolled by the establishment during the last two elections and seeing the resulting candidates go down in flames, conservatives may just decide to sit 2016 out if the party nominates another milquetoast candidate whose focus is on keeping the Chamber happy rather than working to shrink government and get it out of the big business business. Such as desertion just might be fatal for the GOP as it would likely lead to three consecutive losses, the first time that's happened since FDR.  With two viable parties a third party stands little chance in American politics, however with a feeble party unable to win the big prize, the prospects for one are greatly enhanced.  That's something the GOP establishment just might want to ponder as they seek to hand the nomination to another Bush.