The Electoral College - A good idea or a bad idea?

Ever since Donald J. Trump was declared the victor in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election. He won it not because he won more popular votes. As of Wednesday, Nov 16th, 61.8 million votes had been cast for Hillary Rodham Clinton, 60.8 for Donald Trump, a difference of 1 million votes. That is 50.4% to 49.6% respectively.  This is also the second time in 20 years that this has happened.  Both times, the GOP candidate was the victor.

Just as happened in Bush v. Gore, many liberal voices are clamoring for the elimination of the Electoral College.  Is that a good idea?

History

Let's briefly look at the history of the Electoral College. First of all, the Electoral College is not a place, it is a process.  The drafters of the U.S. Constitution had a mighty debate about how the U.S. President would be selected.  Some wanted Congress to pick the president. Others wanted a direct election. However, the Framers recognized that a direct election would favor the heavy population of the nascent industrial states of the north. Note that this is exactly what those who lived in the north wanted, because they saw the President as the future foil to abolish slavery.  This was not missed by the Southern Constitutional Convention delegates.  It's unsurprising that the both the beneficiaries of this particular system (George W. Bush in 2000, Donald J. Trump in 2016) ran the table of what is today called "flyover country", or rural America.  This is what the final design of the Constitution desired. This is defined in Article II Section and modified by the Twelfth amendment of the Constitution.

The Electoral College is made of up of electors chosen by each state according to their own laws. The number of electors allocated to each state is based on the number of representatives they have in the House of Representatives plus their two Senators.  The allocation of representatives is based on population density, which is why states that have large metropolitan areas, like California, New York and Texas have large numbers of electors, while the smallest states may have only 3 electors. Washington DC, which has no representation in Congress, is given 3 electors, the minimum number of electors of any other state.

Net Effect of the Electoral College

I built a little spreadsheet to try and determine the effect of the electoral college on the Presidential election and what I found was very interesting. I will cite two extreme examples: California, which has 2 Senators and 53 representatives for 55 electors, and Montana, which has 2 Senators and 1 representative or 3 electors.

There are a total of 538 electors, represented by 435 represntatives, 100 senators, and the 3 allocated to Washington DC which has no congressional representation.
If one were to divide the total Representatives of California (53) by the total number of U.S. Representatives (435), California represents 12.1839% of the total vote.

However, if one divides the total electors for the same state(55) by the total number of electors (538), they have 10.2230% of the Electoral College.

Using the same formulas for Montana, they have .2299% of the total representation (1 divided by 435), but they have .5576% of the electors (3 divided by 538). This practically doubles their "representation" in the Electoral College.

Looking at the total effect, the 17 highest states effectively donate 7.1038% of their representation in the Electoral College to the 33 remaining states and Washington DC.

And that's how Trump won the election. Although he still had to win "key" states like Florida, North Carolina, he also won states like Michigan and Wisconsin and even Pennsylvania. He paid more attention to the rural states than Clinton did.

Can it be dismantled?

With regards to dismantling the Electoral College. Since the College is part of the U.S. Consitution, any amendment to permit the election of the President by a direct vote of the people (known as the "popular vote") would require two-thirds of Congress to propose such an amendment, and if signed by the President, would then require three-quarters of the states to ratify it.  As I mentioned before, 33 states are net recipients of "representation" in the Electoral College, and I do not see how states such as Montana, Wyoming, Utah, Alaska and the Dakotas would ever vote to ratify it.

American Demographics

An excellent article was published on July 27, 2015 in the Business Insider. Written by Matthew Speiser, it summarized the findings in "American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures in North America" by award-winning author Colin Woodward.  I have purchased the book but I have not yet read it, so I'm hoping that Mr. Speiser's article accurately sums up Mr. Woodward's findings.  Here they are:

Graphic from Business Insider

Yankeedom: Northeast US, spreading through Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. They value education, intellectual achievement and citizen participation in government and they are comfortable with government regulations being used to "improve society."
New Netherland: New York City and north New Jersey. Settled by the Dutch. Comfortable with capitalism, materialistic but also tolerant of religious and ethnic diversity. Committed to freedom of inquiry and conscience. Tends to ally with Yankeedom.
The Midlands: Southern New Jersey, the "Rust Belt", Missouri, Iowa, Kansas and Nebraska. They are predominantly middle-class, welcoming and spawned the culture of the "American Heartland". Moderation is the word of the day in political discourse, and government regulation is frowned upon.
Tidewater: Eastern Virginia and North Carolina. Founded by young English gentry, started as a feudal society that embraced slavery. They respect authority and tradition. Woodward notes that Tidewater is in decline as it is consumed by the Federal halos around D.C. and Norfolk.
Greater Appalachia: Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and western Virginia, western North Carolina, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and rural Indiana, Illinois. Settled by refugees or peasant farmers exiled from war-ravaged Ireland, northern England and Scotland. They value personal sovereignty, individual liberty and they are intensely suspicious of lowland aristocrats and Yankee social engineers. They are characterized as "hillbillies" by those that live outside this region and they resent it. They tend to align with the Deep South.
Deep South: Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, rural Texas, Georgia and South Carolina. Principally settled by Englishmen seeking to establish land holdings who depended upon slaves for cheap labor. Rigid social structure and intense distrust in any government regulations that limit individual liberty or state sovereignty.
El Norte: West Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California. "A place apart" per Woodward. Hispanic culture dominates the region, which values independence, self-sufficiency and hard work.
The Left Coast: Coastal California, Oregon and Washington. Colonized by New Englanders and Appalachian Midwesterners. A hybrid system value has developed that embraces Yankee utopianism and Appalachian exploration and self-expression.
The Far West: "Flyover Country". Pretty much the United States from the Left Coast to The Midlands, between Canada and Mexico. Very conservative. There was an initial large investment in industry yet these people resent Eastern controlling-interest in the region. An example is the extensive management of lands by the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which represents a greater percentage of these states than all others.
New France: New Orleans and the U.S. bordering Quebec. Very liberal, these people seek consensus, are tolerant and comfortable with government intrusion in the economy and society. Woodward posits that New France may be the most liberal place in North America.
First Nation: Scattered throughout, but concentrated in The Far West. Native Americans. Their territory is huge, especially in Canada, but only 300,000 live there.

Graphic from 270towin.com

Trump won the Midlands, Greater Appalachia, the Deep South, 1/2 of El Norte, New France (shock) and the Far West. These are mostly rural or "rust belt" areas that resent government intrusion. These areas also include nearly every state that benefits from the Electoral College. These regions are traditional, distrust change and resent intrusion.  Clinton won Yankeedom, New Netherland, 1/2 of El Norte, the Left Coast and Tidewater. These areas are heavily urbanized, embrace change, are culturally very diverse (which has it's own problems).

From the 1940's into the 21st century, America moved with increasing speed towards liberalism, which culminated in huge changes in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations.  However, the "new" conservative counter-movement that began in the 1980's, peaked again in 1994 and since 2006 has been gaining a lot of traction due to the speed at which social change has been occurring, with the religious segment of the conservative movement becoming a louder voice and more visible component. And they have learned a lot about how to influence elections from the other side.

Is It Fair?

Our Constitutional Framers were very much aware of the possibility of large areas of the country being dominated by much smaller areas. Although they had no democracies or republics to look at as working examples, they saw the tyranny of London in Britain, where a small aristocracy was able to impose their will upon the remainder of the nation. In the nascent United States, they (especially the Southern States) were very much concerned about more populous North creating policy that would actually change their way of life and traditions. I will not debate on slavery here other than to say I'm glad it's gone. But the South also looked at the North as being libertine and unfriendly towards the more gentrified and class oriented south.

Today, the players are different but the effect is similar.  The "heartland" believes that the government does not have their best interests at heart and that their futures are being directed by the intellectual elite of the coastal regions, and the "heartland" is the new bastion of tradition-loving, resistant to sweeping change and they see the coasts as hotbeds of licentious behavior that they find morally repugnant.  

All of this is said in the context that the Electoral College is unique only to the Presidential election. It has no affect whatsoever on elections for U.S Congress or at the state levels. And yet we also see that the conservatives control more statehouses and governor's mansions than practically anytime in U.S. History. Therefore, it can be said that the Electoral College has managed to reflect what is happening in the States.  

Only time will tell if this is still the way to go, but as I said before, it's very, very unlikely to change.

2016 U.S. Federal Spending vs. Revenues

2017 is just around the corner.

We have Donald J. Trump for President-elect.

How will he fix this problem?

I've harped on this many times in this blog, and I've been very inactive on this blog for the last several years for many reasons, not the least of which is that because with a GOP-controlled Congress and a Democratic President, and with the particularly acrimonious environment in Washington D.C. these days, I didn't think it was even worth my time to discuss this.

But elections have consequences, and now it will be the GOP in charge of both the Executive and Legislative branches of the U.S. Federal government to figure out what to do with the mess we've gotten ourselves into. They have run the good run, but as many people on CNN, MSNBC and all the alphabet broadcast news outlets have stated, they are now the metaphorical dog that has caught the car.

For your consideration, I'd like you to look at this graphic, taken straight from the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan department of the Federal government whose job it is to monitor how much money the U.S. government collects in revenues, and how much it spends.



There was a meme going around the internet last year that showed that military spending was 57% of the Federal Budget.  You can find it for yourself. This chart was very deceiving, because it only showed the discretionary spending. In the statistical world, this is known as "cherry picking" your data.

Any analysis of the U.S. Federal budget must consider the whole pie, not just one-third of it.

The first thing that you should notice is that the pie for revenues is smaller than the pie for spending. This is done on purpose, because the actual shortfall is about $445 billion dollars. If we divide the shortfall by the total spending, we get about 12.066%. Compared to my blog posts in 2010, this is a huge improvement. It also reflects that as the 2009 financial crisis moves further in the past, the revenues are slowly catching up with spending. Go team!

But as you can see, this is still a pretty big shortfall.  Imagine that you earn $50,000 a year. But you spent $56,000 and ended up being $6,000 in the hole.  That's exactly where the federal government is as of this year.

The favorite budget target of progressives is military and defense spending. This is a huge chunk of the budget, representing about 16% of the total amount spent.  Now, I will not get into a debate as to whether the United States needs a Navy that's bigger than the next 8 navies combined, but I will say that 2016 finds the United States dealing with foreign ascendancy that we only had glimmers of in 2010.  Russia has taken the Crimea from the Ukraine and is making considerable trouble in that country still.  Russia is also spending a lot more on tanks, airplanes and warships and they are now fielding new equipment that may be a match against the best the West has to offer. Consider this. The U.S. M1 Abrams tank, a mighty engine of destruction, was developed in the 1970's and has been our main battle tank since the early 1980's. The Russians have now put into production the "Armata", and it doesn't look good for our side. China is pushing hard to claim the South China Sea as it's own backyard even though Japan, the Phillipines and Vietnam also have equally good claims in that territory, and much merchant sea traffic moves through that area.

The only reason I bring this up is to illustrate a point. The world is competitive and an ascendant China and a resurgent Russia are going to complicate our lives greatly whether we wish it or not.  And yet, the Navy is down from 600 ships in the Reagan era, to 271 ships in 2016.

So, with that stage set, let's consider the following:
Between discretionary nondefense spending (transportation, education, veteran's benefits, health, housing assistance and the like) and mandatory government programs (unemployment, federal retirement programs, supplemental nutrition programs, we are spending just slightly over 30% of the Federal budget.

The three big categories in mandatory spending are Medicare/Medicaid and Social Security. Everybody says that we cannot recalculate the formulas for those programs, and yet they account for nearly half of all Federal spending.

And then there's the debt servicing, which accounts for 6% of all spending.  Ouch. By debt servicing, we mean the money the federal government has to write out to those who have purchased the Federal debt, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Kingdom, China and others just to pay the INTEREST owed on the debt.  I repeat, that does not go against paying on the principal owed, just the interest.

It is completely silly for anybody to argue that we can balance the budget by simply reducing the defense budget.  To do so would completely emasculate the military and at the same time put millions of people out of work.  Can we do better in the military-industrial complex? Sure we can. And since Trump has a lot of say over how the money is spent on the discretionary spending side, I hope that he focuses on the rampant waste and corruption in that segment of the budget. Lawsuits and prison time should be the order of the day.  But let's say that we reduced the DISCRETIONARY side of spending only in order to balance the budget.  Well, goodbye military. And also say goodbye to any hope of rebuilding our decaying infrastructure, or assistance for health, housing and education.  Those programs plus the military would have to be cut by 50%, at a time when more Americans are collecting some form of assistance and at a time when the world seems like a more dangerous place than ever.

President-elect Trump says he will immediately begin funneling money into both the military and the infrastructure projects. With what? Where's the money, sir?

President-elect Trump says that he will not touch Social Security or Medicaid. So the money ain't coming from there. That means the only place he can pull money from would be the "Other" category. About $200 billion from that "Other" category. Read the balloon under that category and tell me if that isn't going to hurt a lot of people.

President-elect Trump says that he will lower taxes across the board. Asinine. Cannot be (prudently) done without grossly inflating the deficit to levels seen back in 2010 and 2011. And that will also dramatically increase the net interest payments our country will owe to our debtees buying that deficit, assuming there are any debtees to be found. For they will become skeptical that the U.S. has the political will to get their financial house in order.

So how will he fix the problem? Well, that was a trick question. For those of you who understand U.S. civics, you already know that the budget originates from the House of Representatives. The President has a hand in that budget, but is can only be approved by the House and then sent to the Senate for reconciliation. If both sides of Congress can then agree (and they eventually will, after they've added a couple of tens of billions in earmarks to be sent back home to their consituencies), then they send it to the President for approval.  Ha ha ha.

There is one group of people, mightier than the President and Congress that can fix this problem and they are the electorate. That's right. That's YOU. Every American currently receiving assistance from the Federal government should be looking at what they NEED vs. what they WANT. This is literally the moment that John Kennedy was talking about when he said "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

How GlaxoSmithKline Helped the Big Government Supporters Today

In a report from USA Today on July 2, 2012, we learned that prescription drug giant GlaxoSmithKline pled guilty and will pay $3 billion to resolve federal criminal and civil inquiries arising from the company's illegal promotion of some of the drugs it produces. About $1 billion will go towards the federal fine, the remaining $2 billion to resolve civil claims that were made under the US federal government's "Falls Claims Act".

Image courtesy of Wikipedia

This is a staggering announcement, not to mention one of the largest if not the largest penalty ever levied against a drug company by the US federal government. The article quoted the federal government as saying “GSK's salesforce bribed physicians to prescribe GSK products using every imaginable form of high-priced entertainment, from Hawaiian vacations to pay doctors millions of dollars to go on speaking tours to a European pheasant hunt to tickets to Madonna concerts, and this is just to name a few”, which was a statement reportedly made by Carmin M. Ortiz, a US attorney in Massachusetts.

The civil claims also presented evidence that GSK was inappropriately and illegally engaging in "off-label marketing” in which a drug that has been approved to treat one kind of illness might also have other beneficial uses. However, the US FDA still requires that those alternative uses be documented and proved prior to marketing. Two examples cited were: The promotion of the drug Paxil for treating children suffering from depression from April of 1998 to August 2, 2003; and the promotion of the use of Wellbutrin for weight loss, sexual dysfunction, substance addiction and ADHD from January of 1999 to December of 2003 even though it was only approved by the FDA for major depressive disorders.

Such a large penalty cannot have been an easy thing for GSK's executive management to swallow. I can imagine what the stockholders will say at the next annual meeting. But the only reason I can think of that would prompt GSK's senior management to accept such a staggering penalty is that the government had them dead to rights. And this is the issue that bothers me the most. I usually argue that most companies will do the right thing for their customers because loyal customers result in repeat business and repeat business results in long-term business growth and stability. Something is very wrong when the leadership of a company in the business of providing medicines would consider, much less execute any strategy that intentionally results in a doctor prescribing, or a patient taking a medication that has no proven benefit to fight their illness. Shame on GSK's sales force and incidentally, shame on any doctor that in so doing has contradicted the oath of "Do no harm." How can I, as a strong fiscal conservative who constantly argues for smaller government, in part by reducing the hundreds of thousands of pages of regulations and thereby reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy, when companies like GSK clearly show quality of products and services to their customers takes a back seat to profit? Where's the morality?

GlaxoSmithKline has created many products which have been of enormous benefit to our society. For that I applaud them. But when it is proven that they show no hesitation to incorrectly market their products in pursuit of greater and greater profits, then they have lost my trust and I would like to think that they have lost the trust of the general buying public. I would also like to think that what I was taught about basic economics is true, which is that the free market will reward companies that provide a good service or product and will force companies that provide inferior products and services or which have questionable business practices to fail. But with GSK being so big and being serviced by exceptionally bright and skillful lawyers, I am being forced to reevaluate my position.

Any person that calls themselves a true conservative should not be doing business with a company that knowingly puts you in jeopardy by misleading you to think that the medicine that you are taking, sometimes at great expense to either yourself or your insurance company, is effectively treating your illness when in fact it may be doing nothing or worse.

"I Like to Fire People" -- A non-controversy by the MSM

As is usually the case, if the media can take a comment, cut it out of it's context and then regurgitate it as pablum to the masses who lean the same direction as the media outlet, they can definitely make it run.

The BostonHerald.com today reported the following. I will provide the text verbatim so that you can see what they claim the former Masschussetts governer said at a Nashua, Hew Hampshire meet and greet.

“GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney – who has based his campaign on his sometimes controversial record as a corporate czar – sparked a furor today with the remark that he likes 'being able to fire people.'

The former Bay State governor was discussing health insurance when he said that insurers give fairer prices if they know they will be held accountable.

'It also means that if you don't like what they do, you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me, ' Romney said.”

There was more in that article, about 600 words more... but nothing else from Mitt Romney's actual statement. With only that chunk of the statement, it would be pretty easy and quite reasonable to think that Mitt Romney is a ruthless man who enjoys firing people for no real reason other than he can.

Fortunately, we have YouTube.com and you can find the entire clip of what he actually said.

“It also means that if you don't like what they do you can fire them. I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. If, if, you know, if someone doesn't give me the good service I need, I want to say 'you know, that if... I'm gonna go get somebody else to provide that service to me.' And so that's one thing I'd change.”

See the difference? In the entire context, what Mitt Romney said is; if you can find somebody that provides a service and does a better job at it than your current provider, you should have the right to terminate the relationship with your current provider. Further, he says that you should be unapologetic about it.

In my opinion this is a contrived controversy. There is nothing radical or controversial about a successful businessman stating that in the course of his business dealings he would have no hesitation to fire a service provider if he can find somebody else to provide the same service for less cost, more service for the same cost, or more service for less cost.

What we really should be looking at in a free-market economy is at what point do we as consumers insist that providers continue to cut costs to the point that the labor to provide the service or good cannot live on the wages. But this isn't Mitt's problem, this is America's problem.

If 41 cents of every dollar you made was going on your credit card, would you keep doing it?

According to the Department of the Treasury, 41 cents of every dollar spent by the federal government of the United States was borrowed. 

Think about that. Think about that long and hard. Can you imagine that any sane person can possibly think that this kind of reckless spending can be sustained?  This is the equivalent of a private person making about $25,500 spending $50,000 dollars every year. That means that they had to put $20,500 on the credit card in a single year to hit the same ridiculous deficit spending percentage our government has.

The Bi-partisan Debt Commission report has come out. It's harsh. It's going to ask Americans to accept deep cuts in many of the entitlements that we hold dear. It holds nothing back. Deep cuts are found in health and human services, Social Security, the Department of Defense, all of which been "untouchable" and "third rail issues" until now.

So its surprise to me that the commission itself was only able to get 11 of 17 to support the conclusions of the commission. 

Two examples:
Max Baucus of Montana refused to support it because of the proposed gasoline tax hike that would damage the agriculture industry.  That's nothing. If it were me I would end farm subsidies and let farmers grow whatever the heck they want in quantities they want.

Andy Stern, the president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) also refused to support it, because it would have deep consequences for federal government employee union pension plans.

As long as people continue to think "Think not what I can do for my country, think what my country can do for me" we are going to head down the road of national insolvency.  When will We, the People, wake up and realize that we've allowed our politicians to walk us down a path paved with the false glitter of lies and promises right to the very trapdoor of financial hell?  When will we stop demanding that our government take money from some and give it to others, when in fact there just isn't any more money to take?  Yeah, the rich are rich, but there aren't enough of them nor do they make enough that by themselves they could pull us out of this mess we are in.  We have to reduce spending. All across the board.

Because unlike you or I who have our mortgage company or credit card company to send us into bankrupty, the federal government instead gets to answer to China and Qatar and the United Kingdom.  And they aren't likely to be any more understanding than your local debt collector. What kind of a debt collector would China use, anyway? Do we really want to find out?

8 Stood in the Way

Eight GOP senators voted against the 2-year earmark moratorium.  They are:

1. James Inhofe (OK)
2. Bob Bennet (UT)
3. Susan Collins (ME)
4. Thad Cochran (MS)
5. Richard Shelby (AL)
6. Lisa Murkowski (AK)
7. George Voinovich (OH)
8. Dick Lugar (IN)

With their votes, the resolution failed 56-39.

I hate earmarks. I hate them because they are a backdoor currency to buy votes. And they are hard to find because they are not in the budget package. They can be attached to anything the house or senate passes.  I note that only one of these senators is actually up for re-election next year. That's Mr. Lugar of Indiana.

There are also 7 Democratic senators that voted for the moratorium. They are:

1. Evan Bayh (IN)
2. Michael Bennet (WI)
3. Russ Feingold (WI)
4. Clair McCaskill (MO)
5. Bill Nelson (CO)
6. Mark Udall (CO)
7. Mark Warner (VA)

Which just goes to show that doing the right thing isn't necessarily being done by just the right wing.

Earmarks are a symptom of the problem.

In 2005, the Congressional Research Service found that earmark projects accounted for 1.92% of all federal outlays (spending). Now... that doesn't sound like a lot of money.  Well, OK, in the jaundiced and stratosphere-high world of federal spending, that doesn't sound like a lot of money.  In fact, it would work out to about $47.7 billion dollars, which compared to the $1300 billion that we overspent in 2010, doesn't really seem like much.

However, earmarks are a symptom of a Washington problem that John McCain and a few others have been warning us against for years.  Earmarks are used to buy votes in both houses of Congress.  It's a form of political currency that is used to influence members of both the House and the Senate to vote in a manner that they might otherwise have done.  Here's an example:

House Leader: This reform legislation is very important and we really need your vote in order to guarantee it's passage.
Representative: I realize that this is important to you, but you have to understand that my constituency isn't effected that much by the problem your legislation addresses. And they will object to its cost.
House Leader: Well, what is your constituency interested in?
Representative: We've been trying for years to build that new county library, but the economy has made it difficult to get it done.
House Leader: Well, what if we were to attach, let's say, $600,000 in earmarked funding for that library to the proposed legislation?  
Representative. My constituency will be grateful.  You have my support.

See the problem?  So even though earmarks themselves only represent a small amount of the total federal funds spent, they contribute to a bloated federal budget by making it more palatable to some members of Congress by sending some funding back home where it will do some good.

In the above example, would a new public library be of benefit to the community? Almost assuredly so. But because it's earmarked legislation, it never gets debated as part of the budget.  Therefore, this funding is hard to find and hard to track.

If you get rid of these "pork-barrel" projects and hidden earmarked funding riders, then bills tend to be voted on based only on their relative merit and not because votes have been bought and paid for.  For example, without the sweetheart deals that were made to certain members of Congress in states like Kansas and Louisiana, the United States National Health Care legislation (aka "Obamacare") would probably never have gotten enough votes to pass.

And that's why the Tea Party wants earmarks eliminated.