Why do some people hate Barack Obama? Is it because he’s black?

Why do people try to climb Mt. Everest? Because they can.

There are literally over 7 billion people on this planet. If you asked (even just the English-speakers) what the answer to 2+2 is, you would get probably get multiple percentage points worth of people not saying 4.

If you ever get a job calling people on the phone and asking them about their opinions (which I did for about a year in college), I can virtually guarantee that you will be shocked at the number of people who say things that are completely ridiculous, dumb, and/or based on obvious factual inaccuracies.

I worked for a summer in a congressional office, and I didn’t answer the phones (luckily), but there was this one guy who just kept calling and asking ridiculous questions about President Obama’s positions, and the weird thing is that we were pretty sure he actually believed what he was saying.

So, yeah, there are a shockingly large number of people that are just unimaginably dumb, or downright crazy. But, there are a few more answers to your question:

1) Yes, some people hate Obama because he is black. Probably something like 5% of the population would actually admit that they hate him because of his race. Another 5%-10% of the country is likely influenced by a more subtle, but still substantial racist element. Perhaps they feel threatened in general or they are afraid of what he represents. Perhaps they are afraid that their kids or grandkids might someday NOT be on top of the world, and their natural instinct is to try to make sure that “someone” from some other demographic stays down.

a) NOTE: People’s satisfaction with their lives is largely relative, not absolute.If you ask people whether they are happy with their standard of living, people in first world countries who have running water, televisions, computers, cars, and savings will say “no” because they are comparing themselves to those around them. In that sense, then, being part of the “in” crowd, or the group that is on top is by definition a zero-sum game.

2) There is this psychological effect called “lens vision.” People CRAVE stability in their lives, and especially in their perspective of the world. Partisan identification starts to develop in childhood before most people are capable of seriously vetting issues. Then, later, when they are confronted with a statistic or an argument that undermines the supremacy of their choice, they subconsciously look for a way to justify retention of their partisan ideology. The result is that in a world where sociopolitical issues are complex, it is very difficult to change someone’s partisan identity. When people’s partisan identity DOES change, it is usually because it didn’t mesh well with that of the people around them.

In other words, partisan ideology is as at least as much about identity and social relationships as it is about actual issues.

In that context, it should not be hard to see how the story unfolds: In the information age, as it becomes increasingly possible for people to segregate into communities where they only live near people that are like them, where it is possible to only get news from news sources that don’t piss you off (news sources that match your ideology), people begin to experience an amplified “echo chamber” effect: The people around you, the news, and your own gut all tell you the same thing, and they all reflect and amplify eachother, reinforcing your partisan identity and your lens vision, and generating increasingly strong sentiments about political issues.

Due to your partisan tunnel vision, you don’t realize that you haven’t actually thoroughly vetted a lot of the things that you say. You aren’t particularly careful about how you say what you say, since you are already pretty sure that you are right.

HERE’S THE KICKER: People in the other party are going through the same process. They are certain that they are right. They are overly certain about the things that they say, and don’t adequately vet themselves.

Then, people from opposing partisan ideologies get into a conversation, and it quickly escalates. Over multiple conversations, dormant emotional memories arise irrationally to the surface and cause increasingly quick emotional escalation. The more emotions rise, the less the parties bother to vet themselves, and the less credence they give to the other party’s opinions and perceptions. In other words, they trust themselves MORE and the other party LESS. Since this process is occurring on both sides, it becomesincreasingly difficult to find compromise, because you are both demanding an extraordinary burden of proof from eachother both to prove one’s own point, AND to dissuade the other from his/her irrational position. You both rightly feel that the other party is being unfair, and you eventually give up and go back to your echo chamber to complain.

CONCLUSION

To a greater or lesser extent, this cycle of doom is responsible for the increasing partisan rancor in the United States. There are a lot of factors, but they all seem to feed on eachother. In the end, it is hardly surprising that you end up with a shockingly large percentage of Republicans who believe the most asinine things about President Obama, and have actual hatred for a man that they have never even met.

If nothing else, they hear infuriating things about him on a near-daily basis from their colleagues, friends, news sources, and (Republican) elected representatives. They can’t understand how he can believe such infuriating liberal nonsense, or they see him as the face of hypocrisy and greed (redistribution). Perhaps they see him as a threat (or a representation of a threat) to their lifestyle. Perhaps they believe that HE hates THEM.

I fancy myself as a fairly intelligent, even-tempered person, and an experienced debater. But even I have difficulty sometimes with keeping political discussions cool and focused. For people who are not experienced, or who are less intent on keeping the discussion under control, it is hardly surprising that emotions accelerate and leave ordinary americans spitting bile at one another.

President Obama SHOULD Make Death a Taxable Event

I recently stumbled across a Forbes article complaining that President Obama would like to make death a taxable event. The article was referencing a January 17th, 2015 press release that called for, among other things, a new realization event when appreciated property is received by gift or bequest.

Vocabulary

In tax law terminology, if you own property that increases in value (or “appreciates”), you have “income” because your net wealth has increased. But, the tax code doesn’t usually make you “realize” that income (and pay taxes on it) until you actually sell the property and “realize” the income.

Why? We are concerned that you won’t have money to pay the tax, or the value of the property might go back down before you sell it, or we didn’t have an easy way of accurately measuring its value in the first place. It just wouldn’t be feasible or enforceable.

The tax law has both “realization” events and “recognition” events. You have to both realize income and have the tax law recognize that you realized the income, otherwise you don’t have to pay tax — yet.

The amount of money you pay for a property is its “basis.” Basis gets adjusted by certain things, and so your “adjusted basis” is supposed to represent your investment in a property. The actual fair market value of the property minus the basis equals the amount of income/gain that is built into the property, and which can be realized/recognized at an appropriate event.

So what is the problem? 

Americans decided long ago that 1) people shouldn’t pay taxes at death; and 2) the heirs shouldn’t have to pay taxes on appreciation that occurred when they didn’t have control of the appreciated property. Hence, the “stepped-up basis” rule. When you die, the basis in the property is automatically “stepped up” to fair market value at the time of death.

Ordinarily, realization and recognition rules only ever delay taxation on income. But, the stepped-up basis rule means that if you can hold off on selling those stocks of Apple that you bought back in the 1980’s long enough, then neither you, nor anyone you know or love will EVER have to pay taxes on your gains.

Take, for example, a hypothetical guy named Larry. Larry decides to found a massive corporation and call it Moracal. Since he built it from the ground up, his basis in his personal Moracal shares is approximately $0. Decades later, Larry’s net worth is around $50 billion. But Larry is getting old. He knows that if he can just hold out for a few more decades, he will have built a massive empire to last his family through the next, say, 20 generations+, all without ever paying any income tax whatsoever.

Suppose Larry wants to buy an island. He locates one that costs about $1 billion. Larry would have to sell over $1.2 billion worth of shares in order to generate $1 billion in after-(capital gains) tax return. Then, he would have to fork over about $250 million to the government. Larry would rather have his kids inherit that $250 million. So, Larry decides to take out a loan from his friend, Bill, instead. Larry agrees to pay 5% interest (capitalized into the loan), with the full principle and any accumulated debt payable one year after Larry’s death. Larry puts up $1 billion of Oracle stock as security for the loan. Larry has successfully purchased his island and avoided paying any income taxes ever. In fact, if Larry wants to, Larry can set up shop and run a tourism business on his personal island to help defray the interest expense from his $1 billion loan.

So what is the solution?

There are a number of possible solutions.

1. We could put a cap on the amount of time that an asset could appreciate without being taxed (say ten years or five years).
2. We could simply tax all gain every year, and do away with these rules.
3. When we DO finally collect taxes, we could charge interest on any tax that might have been levied, but was instead deferred (this is actually the best solution, in my book, for reasons that I will explain in a later post; in particular, it would seriously undermine the current incentives to waste billions of dollars on clever tax-planning).
4. Or, we could get rid of the stepped-up basis rule and make billionaires who have deferred taxes their entire lives finally pay a tax on their estate when they die.

So what is wrong with this last solution, which Obama has proposed? 

Nothing. There’s not a damn thing wrong with it, unless you happen to be a billionaire looking for ways to avoid ever paying a fair tax on your income.

As previously mentioned, I have plenty of other ideas about how the tax code could be improved. But that simply isn’t and can never be a criticism of a completely rational, non-partisan, sensible, and obvious solution to a single, discrete problem in the tax code.

A Better Primary System

1. Let Iowa and New Hampshire continue holding nominating contests in early February.
2. Then, sort all remaining states (and voting territories, like Guam) by size, and classify them into three tiers, with an approximately equal number of delegates at stake in each tier.
3. All states in the first tier (the smallest states) vote on the second Tuesday in February.
4. Tier two votes on the second Tuesday in March.
5. Tier three votes on the second Tuesday in April. And then you can hold the conventions in May.
6. Tiers 1 and 3 rotate places every four years.

WHY SHOULD WE ADOPT THIS SYSTEM?

The current primary system is a mess.

Almost every state is faced with a dilemma: 1) leave the primary where it is and resign oneself to a state of irrelevance, or 2) move the primary inexorably earlier, wasting millions, or even hundreds of millions of dollars (as in the case of California in 2008) just in the transaction costs of hosting Presidential primaries separately from local primaries. The alternative (moving all of the local primaries earlier and earlier every year) is likewise sub-optimally palatable.

The public are forced to coexist with an inexorably lengthening election cycle, in which national elections have become a near-constant phenomenon.

Those few states that take a moral stand and refuse to move their primary to gain influence are punished for it.

Finally, the primary system is lumpy. Some states’ primaries are all alone amidst a sea of media coverage. Others’ are all clogged into Super Tuesday.

It is, quite simply, a senseless mess. And, everyone knows it.

If everyone knows and agrees that it is a mess, then why hasn’t anyone changed it? 

That’s a great question. One might similarly ask why Congress never seems to get around to passing budget bills until the government is brought to the brink of collapse. The simple answer is that a complex system with many stakeholders contains a lot of obstacles to doing things. Few states have a strong interest in reforming the primary system. But, the traditional first few states have a very large interest in retaining their primacy.

Plus, not everyone has coalesced around the same solution yet. A lot of people would like the states to all be equal. Iowa and New Hampshire want to retain their primacy. Some people think that the race fundamentally changes once the first couple of actual votes are cast and recorded, and so it is a good idea to put a couple of states without a ton of delegates a bit ahead of everyone else, so that the system has a chance to adjust to whatever happens and really vet the candidates. Some people want a drawn out primary, so that the candidates are more thoroughly vetted. Other people advocate a shorter primary, so that the eventual winner is less damaged by the time they go up against the opposition.

This system gets around those concerns. 

By retaining Iowa and New Hampshire as the first states, this plan simultaneously avoids pissing off those states and retains the advantages of having a couple of states out front for early vetting. The inhabitants of both states are actually quite used to performing this job, and take cultural pride in it. Anyways, they really only have a few delegates between them, so it doesn’t make that much difference to everyone else.

Then, this system puts all of the other states on equal footing with eachother. Under this system, there are no states that are truly irrelevant, as there is a substantial possibility that any given competitive election will still be undecided by the time it gets to the third wave.

In the current system, campaign events are heavily concentrated in the first 4 states, and almost non-existent for states whose contests occur after Super Tuesday. This system would allow candidates to focus their efforts in states that are conducive to their message. All states would see campaign events.

By the same token, we should do away with the electoral college, and enter an era of true representative democracy.

Just saying.

 

Suspension of Political Coverage; Adam Lambert Earns New Peak on the Hot 100

I will be suspending coverage of politics and political issues on this blog effective immediately in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety. I have recently been appointed and sworn in to the high post of Intern for a Federal Judge. Literally, I was sworn in. So now, I have an oath to uphold the Constitution and a duty to keep my lips sealed. I pretty much have no opinions on anything in writing until December.

For now, everyone enjoy the Wednesday Republican debate, where Carly Fiorina is scheduled to attempt a take-down of Donald Trump after he said something unkind about her face. If nothing else, it should at least be better than most other reality television shows.

In other news, in its lucky thirteenth week, Adam Lambert’s new single “Ghost Town” gains eight slots and reaches a new peak on the Billboard Hot 100. Do you think it’s a fluke, or is this song a hit? Have a listen here and share your thoughts in the comments below.

Rick Perry Drops out of the Presidential Race

Per the Washington Post, Texas Governor Rick Perry has suspended his campaign, effectively ending his second run at the Whitehouse. Realclearpolitics.com’s polling average has Perry in 13th place, with an average of 0.8% of the vote. In the most recent poll, from CNN/ORC, Perry came in last with only 0% of the vote after rounding.

Rick Perry enjoyed a brief moment in the sun as the Republican frontrunner during the month of September the year before the 2012 Presidential election.

The #1 Way Donald Trump is Helping Hillary Clinton

There are a lot of ways that The Donald is helping The Hillary in her quest to become the first female POTUS. For starters, he makes the GOP look pretty gawdawful to low information moderate and democratic voters who see only “current Republican frontrunner” coupled with “lots of crazy positions and offensive comments.” But, the thing about low information voters is that they don’t pay very much attention to politics, or the news in general. Consequently, they tend to have short memories, and they are ultimately unlikely to punish Jeb Bush or Scott Walker on election day for what Donald Trump said more than a year earlier. No, The Donald does something far worse for the GOP’s electoral prospects than to be a Republican saying all the wrong things — he gets other people to say them too.

Donald Trump is Making Republican Candidates Take Hardline Stances on Immigration That Will Haunt Them in the General Election

1) Deport the undocumented en masse. 2) Seize the money they try to send home. 3) Deny citizenship to their U.S.-born children. These are some of the policy positions that Donald Trump has now embraced in his new policy paper. Jeb Bush has thus far resisted Trump’s ideas, calling them impractical and unrealistic. But in Iowa, Scott Walker has now started to call for a wall along the southern border. He has also started to question the wisdom of the Constitutional provision for “birthright citizenship.”

In order to win the primary, you have to appeal to the base of the party. The base of the Republican party currently disagrees vehemently with mainstream America on a handful of issues, most saliently for present purposes, immigration. Donald Trump, in riding a wave of anti-immigrant fervor in the base of the Republican party, has brought the issue into the spotlight of the Republican primary issue sphere, and now all of the candidates are being forced to talk about it, and to take hardline conservative stances on the issue — that is, if they want to have a shot at getting the nomination. For someone who wants to see Barack Obama replaced by a Republican, this is a nightmare scenario.

Recall early 2012, when Mitt Romney took hardline stances on immigration, and started talking about self-deportation in order to pull in stubborn conservative voters. This year, the Republican establishment wanted desperately to avoid the topic. When it comes up, Republican primary candidates are forced to take hardline stances that please primary voters, knowing that those stances will make it difficult to win the general election.

Mitt Romney performed worse amongst latino voters than any other Republican candidate since 1980 not named Bob Dole. 

 Conclusion

The biggest present Trump has ever handed to Hillary Clinton has been this: sucking up all of the media coverage with an all-out assault on immigration, an thereby forcing mainstream and establishment Republican candidates to talk about the issue and take stances that will come back to haunt them.

Winners and Losers from the First Republican Presidential Debate

We can now compare Republican candidate’s performance in the four most recent pre-debate polls with their performance in Rasmussen’s first post-debate poll and thereby see who the big winners — and losers — really were.

Quick note: Rasmussen has occasionally been implicitly or explicitly accused of being an untrustworthy pollster with right-leaning political motivations by, stats guru Nate Silver, electoral-vote.com, and by me.

Winners

1) Carly Fiorina

Pre-debate polling average: 1.25%

Post-debate: 9%

Gain: 7.75%

2) Rubio

Pre-debate polling average: 5.25%

Post-debate: 10%

Gain: 4.75%

3) Carson

Pre-debate polling average: 5.75%

Post-debate: 8%

Gain: 2.25%

Cruz

Pre-debate polling average: 5.5%

Post-debate: 7%

Gain: 1.5%

Kasich

Pre-debate polling average: 2.75%

Post-debate: 4%

Gain: 1.25%

Losers

1) Trump

Pre-debate polling average: 24.25%

Post-debate: 17%

Gain: -7.25%

2) Huckabee

Pre-debate polling average: 6.75%

Post-debate: 3%

Gain: -3.75%

3) Bush

Pre-debate polling average: 12.5%

Post-debate: 10%

Gain: -2.5%

Everyone Else

Walker

Pre-debate polling average: 9.5%

Post-debate: 9%

Gain: -0.5%

Paul

Pre-debate polling average: 4.5%

Post-debate: 4%

Gain: -0.5%

Christie

Pre-debate polling average: 3.5%

Post-debate: 4%

Gain: 0.5%

Perry

Pre-debate polling average: 1.75%

Post-debate: 1%

Gain: 0.75%

Santorum

Pre-debate polling average: 1.5%

Post-debate: 1%

Gain: -0.5%

Jindal

Pre-debate polling average: 1.25%

Post-debate: 1%

Gain: -0.25%

Graham

Pre-debate polling average: 0.5%

Post-debate: 1%

Gain: 0.5%

Keep in mind that Trump still came in with a 7% polling lead. Fox News may be kindof affiliated with Rasmussen. Both may be kindof extensions of the Republican party, or at least the establishment wing of the Republican party. Both may be biased towards getting a Republican president elected. Both may realize that Trump wouldn’t have a shot in hell against Hillary, and both may therefore have an interest in portraying Trump as a loser and in biasing polling data and presidential debates to turn Republican primary voters away from him.

Early in the debate, Fox displayed the number of golf courses Trump owns on the screen briefly while he was answering one of the many tough questions the moderators threw at him. They asked tough questions of every candidate, but none more so than of Trump. To be fair, Trump has said a LOT of things that would ordinarily be expected to end a campaign. Additionally, Fox was likely able to boost its ratings by focusing on the many crazy things Trump has said or done in the past.

In the end, take everything with a grain of salt.

Conclusion

In the end, the big winner is Carly Fiorina, who went from almost 0% of the vote to being tied with the likes of Bush, Walker, and Rubio, for second place behind Trump. Fiorina is now likely to be considered a serious candidate for the nomination. It remains to be seen how her debate bump in popularity will continue through the coming weeks, but one thing is for sure: she is no longer a candidate to ignore. Rubio has also risen back to the top tier of candidates following his brief hiatus. Trump’s bubble may finally have popped, and he could now be facing the same fate as other bubble candidates before him, like Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain. I am particularly inclined to think Trump’s bubble has been popped because he is facing legitimate fallout over his Megyn Kelly feud and over the fact that he essentially used to be a democrat (primary voters who previously supported him may not have been fully aware of the extent of his democratic allegiance before Fox News so carefully pointed it out during the debate).

Other than that, though, the overall race remains virtually unchanged, with Bush remaining the best bet.

Hillary Clinton Released her First Television Ad Today, Watch

The ad opens with Clinton talking about her mother, Dorothy, who was not wanted by her parents or her grandparents (who ended up raising her). But Dorothy learned strong family values, and that is why Hillary was able to grow up in such a wonderful, loving family. Hillary Clinton is running for President for all of the Dorothies out there.

This is a textbook example of a first ad.

It is vague.

She vaguely talks about how she wants to run for President for all the Dorothies in the world, without giving away a single policy position. She talks about her mother, family values, and America. She says absolutely nothing that anyone could possibly disagree with.

It contains no negativity towards any living human beings.

Hillary doesn’t even mention Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, or any of the 15-or-so Republican Presidential candidates (who are tearing each other apart in a media frenzy driven partly by the need to make it onto the first debate stage).

Details like hair, makeup, pantsuit color, facial expression, tone, music, and subject matter are carefully crafted to subtly modify voters’ perception of Clinton as cold and calculating.

The ad features Clinton wearing soft, bright, cheery colors, in decent sunlight, with a smile on her face. The background music is calming and simple. Clinton’s hair and makeup are carefully crafted to make her look soft, inviting, caring, and genuine. Clinton is a grandmother now. Grandmothers aren’t cold, dishonest, or calculating.

 

You can view the full ad for yourself on hillaryclinton.com, where you can also donate to the noble cause of producing more ads. 

There is HOW much money in the 2016 campaign? Where? Who? What? Why?

“Never before has so much money been donated by such a small number of people so early.” – Washington Post

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama each raised about $1 billion total during the 2012 race, including Super Pacs, the RNC, and the DNC. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s Super Pacs raised a total of $225.4 million, while Barack Obama’s raised $91.5 million. 

The Money

Last Updated: 8/1/2015

Total 2016: $418.2 million

Super Pac Total: $288.4 million

Super Pac %: 68.96%

Republican Super Pacs Total: $272.5 million

Republican Super Pac Percent: 94.49%

Democratic Super Pacs Total: $15.9 million

Democratic Super Pac Percent: 5.51%

Campaign Total: $129.8 million

Campaign Percent: 31.04%

Republican Campaigns Total: $67 million

Republican Campaigns Percent: 51.62%

Democratic Campaigns Total: $62.8 million

Democratic Campaigns Percent: 48.38%

Number of donors who have shelled out more than $1 million dollars apiece: 58

Total amount contributed by million-dollar-plus donors: $120 million

Percentage of total contributed to super pacs by million-dollar-plus donors: 28.69%

Top 3 Donors

1) Robert Mercer, New York hedge-fund manager

Total donated: $11 m

Candidate: Ted Cruz (R)

2) Toby Neugebauer, Houston private equity investor

Total donated: $10 m

Candidate: Ted Cruz (R)

3) Kelcy Warren, Dallas energy executive; national finance chairman for Rick Perry’s campaign

Total donated: $6 m

Candidate: Rick Perry (R)

Top 10 Candidates

1) Jeb Bush (R) 

Total: $119.9 m

Super Pac: $108.5 m

Super Pac %: 90.49%

2) Hillary Clinton (D) 

Total: $62.7 m

Super Pac: $15.6 m

Super Pac %: 24.88%

3) Ted Cruz (R)

Total: $52.1 m

Super Pac: $37.8 m

Super Pac %: 72.55%

4) Marco Rubio (R) 

Total: $45.2 m

Super Pac: $33.1 m

Super Pac %: 73.23%

5) Scott Walker (R) 

Total: $26.2 m

Super Pac: $26.2 m

Super Pac %: 100%

6) Bernie Sanders (D) 

Total: $15.1 m

Super Pac: $0

Super Pac %: 0%

7) Chris Christie (R) 

Total: $14.4 m

Super Pac: $14.4 m

Super Pac %: 100%

8) Rick Perry (R) 

Total: $13.9 m

Super Pac: $12.8 m

Super Pac %: 92.09%

9) Rand Paul (R) 

Total: $13.1 m

Super Pac: $6.2 m

Super Pac %: 47.33%

10) John Kasich (R) 

Total: $11.5 m

Super Pac: $11.5 m

Super Pac %: 100%

Source

Trump’s poll numbers haven’t dipped yet post-McCain scuffle

A sixth national poll in a row just showed Trump in the lead, this one from Quinnipiac. It is also the fourth (out of five) recent polls to show Walker ahead of Bush.

The same poll also contained troubling news for Hillary Clinton.