Miner's Aren't Dumb... But They Have a Blind Spot

Miners deserve all Americans’ appreciation and support almost as much as our Military Vets. Miners almost single handedly gave America the power we needed to grow as much as we did last century and become the financial powerhouse we are. 

Now that we need to reduce our use of coal and move to cleaner sources of energy, we should give miners everything they need to move on, including:

1. Extended unemployment benefits - perhaps a declining amount over 5-10 years.

2. A large number of retraining facilities in their communities. Miners are easily capable to learning how to build and assemble most types of equipment. 

3. The State and Federal Governments should offer sweet deals to attract new manufacturing and assembly into the coal communities. It would be awesome to get the new energy companies to move their manufacturing facilities to the coal areas with its readily available workforce.

4. The State and Federal Governments should make sure there are Community Colleges in every coal community. Either the miners or their spouses could take advantage of them, and perhaps learn accounting, marketing, or whatever they desire.

Sidenote: I was in favor of doing similar things for tobacco farmers in North Carolina when we wanted to reduce the supply of cigarettes. I still think we should stamp out all farming of tobacco and help the farmers transition to other crops that earn them as much money.

So what’s miners' blind spot?

Most miners think electing Republicans is in their best interests. However, they are wrong. When the GOP says they want to reduce taxes and the size of government, the result will be the government will not have enough money, or staff, to do anything. So despite the encouraging words you hear from the GOP, they have no desire to spend money to help anyone. They believe it’s everyone for themselves.

Democrats (like me) are not only willing to pay more taxes to help miners, we think it’s our duty!

Evangelical Christians Are Strong Supporters of Israel... but

Evangelical Christians are strong supporters of Israel… to the point of depicting Palestinians as the enemy. 
(note: GOP officials often echo this support, but all GOP Presidents change their tune when they enter the White House and face the reality that such a policy would create economic and likely armed conflicts with all Arab and Muslim countries around the world. Reality sucks doesn’t it :)

So if they support Israel so strongly, why have they (and their parents, grandparents, etc.) always tried to keep Jews out of their Board Rooms, men’s clubs, country clubs, Universities, etc.? It seems as if they love Israel, but hate Jews. How could this be?

Well, the answer is relatively easy to understand… the Bible.

Evangelical Christians believe Israel must exist for Jesus to come back and save the world:

http://www.differentspirit.org/articles/second_coming.php

When I hear the GOP tout how strongly they support Israel, I cannot ignore the way many of them feel about me personally and all other Jews in the US.

An Easy Way to Understand What America Just Did... and What's to Come

Trump is Contractor #6 in the story below:

You live in Florida where it never gets very cold. In your living room, there is an 8 ft. wall with sliding glass doors that open to your ‘outside’ glassed-in Florida Room. You want to remove the wall so the living room becomes bigger and encompasses the glassed-in Florida Room.

You ask 6 contractors to look at your house and bid on the job.

Five of them come out, spend 1-2 hours looking and measuring and taking many photos. Two weeks later, all of their bids say the wall is ‘load bearing’ and will need a major structural effort to remove it. The bids range in cost from $12,000 - $18,000.

The sixth contractor calls you and says he can’t make it, but he is sending his son. His son shows up, stays about 10 minutes, and leaves. He looks about 19 years old. His father calls you later that day and says it’s a small job, no problem, and will only cost $4,000. You mention what the other contractors said about the ‘load-bearing’ issue, and he dismisses it and says "trust me”.

You decide to go with the 6th contractor to save money. Welcome to President Trump.

Epilog:

The ceiling above where the wall used to be buckles. You call the 6th contractor and he says it must be your fault. Sue me if you want… I have a lot of very good lawyers.” 

It costs $25,000 to make repairs, which the city requires that you do.

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So what will Trump be like as President? In the story below, he is the new football coach:

Your city's football team coach just retired after a good season with a 9-3 record and making the play-offs. A new coach is hired who promises to win the Super Bowl his first year as coach.

Towards the end of the first year, the team's record is 4-6. The new coach says don't worry, this is a building year and he had to undo all the bad stuff the previous coach had done (even though the record was 9-3 last year). He says, trust him... they will win the Super Bowl next year.

The second year is no better with a final record of 5-7. The coach says the owner is to blame because he wouldn't pay enough for good players.

The third year is even worse ending at 3-9. The coach continues to blame the owner but also says many of the players are lazy and not willing to work hard.

By the end of the fourth bad year, the owner and fans have had enough, and they fire the coach. The coach goes on TV and blames everyone who was involved with the team as well as the fans.

Prediction:

Trump will blame anyone he can when he falls short of his poorly thought out claims.

War On Christmas... again

It’s December, so I guess FOX NEWS will be telling us about the War on Christmas… again. 

It doesn’t matter of course that no one in America has ever been inhibited from celebrating Christmas when, where or how they want. It only matters that when they go shopping they hear “Have a happy holiday” sometimes rather than “Merry Christmas”, and that means people want to kill Christmas.

Please follow along this short story —

A family of Christians took a Christmas trip to Egypt to see the pyramids and other wonderful sites there. Everywhere they went whether shopping, touring, eating, etc. people told them “enjoy the birth of the prophet” (which is celebrated by Muslims typically around Christmas). Even though the country is about 10% Christian, no mention of Christmas is ever heard. And the only place they might have seen a Christmas tree was in the lobby of their hotel, but it was so small and out of the way, most people never saw it.

This same family goes back to Egypt for another vacation 10 years later. This time in a few places they hear “Have a happy holiday.” So… should Muslims take this as an attack on Islam? Or is it simply a courtesy to the small minority of non-Muslims who also live there?

You decide!

Electoral College - It Needs to Go...

Trump won the Presidential election following our current rules. But was it fair?

Before 1920, Presidents were elected using the then current rules, but since women were not allowed to vote, were the rules fair? No, of course not.

Are the rules fair now? Given the current makeup of the Electoral College number of votes by State, no, of course not. Small states get a disproportionate greater number of votes than their population would indicate they should. And larger populated states get a disproportionate fewer number of votes than their population would indicate they should. 

The Electoral College was originally created to appease the Slave States. That reason no longer exists, but an unintended consequence has been to favor small states over large states. So if you live in New York or California or Texas, your Presidential vote counts ‘less’ than if you live in Missouri or South Dakota or New Hampshire. This is of course not fair.

How could we fix it? There are two options; #1 goes part of the way, and #2 goes all the way.

Option #1:

Update the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College to the percentage of its population to America’s total population. This would improve the fairness to at least give each state’s voters the same value. Smaller states would lose 1-2 Electoral College votes, and larger states would gain a few. The 2016 Presidential election would have been much closer although Trump may still have won (not sure of the exact numbers).

This option is still not completely fair in my opinion because it keeps the unfairness caused in states who are very Blue or very Red. Republicans voting in New York, and Democrats voting in Texas, might as well go on vacation rather than vote for President since they have no impact on the election.

Option #2:

Eliminate the Electoral College and elect the President based on everyone’s vote. This is the fairest!

This is exactly how each state elects their Senators, counting all votes within the state. They don’t elect their Senator by who wins the most state ‘districts’, which is a direct analogy to how the Electoral College works. If a state tried to change to the ‘district’ approach, there would be an uproar against it. So why do we keep the Electoral College?

So if this makes so much sense, will it happen?

Well, the GOP has an unfair advantage using the current rules, so I guess they will resist it. But America has always moved towards being more fair. It took many, many decades for women to get the vote once they started pushing for it. Let’s start a very active campaign to eliminate the Electoral College… and never let up until it happens! Get your children involved… it may take a generation.