Twitter Tales

We now live in a soundbite world and a 280 character universe.

That is a big reason why so many know so little today.

They never get the full story. They are never given the context to understand an issue.

This has become particularly true in politics.

Donald Trump is famous for his Twitter trolls and tirades.

The Democrats running for President are on Twitter as well explaining how they are going to make everything right with the world.

Let's look at a few recent tweets from the Democrat candidates and put what they are selling in a little more context.

Just remember, however, that for millions and millions of voters (many of them young) the tweet or Facebook post is the only story they ever get.

Let's start with Bernie Sanders.

Bernie appears to suggest that the doctors, nurses and the hospitals that provide the care for childbirths are going to work for free in the future.

The cost of childbirth is clearly not going to go away under Medicare for All. It is just a question of who is going to pay for it.

As I have written before, Bernie keeps telling people that Medicare for All will be free. The fact is that current Medicare is anything but free. It takes an enormous amount of taxes to fund the program and it still requires monthly premiums, deductibles, coinsurance and private supplemental insurance to pay the bills. It will not be free.

Another fact that Bernie does not mention is that 43% of all births in the United States are paid for by Medicaid. Medicaid pays for 66% of all African American and 60% of all Hispanic births. I guess the cost of these births is already $0 with his way of thinking. Of course, the American taxpayer is paying the bill.

Here is Andrew Yang promoting his proposal to give every American adult a "Freedom Dividend" of $1,000 per month.

I give Yang credit for being creative but let's consider the math.

Yang speaks of 320 million shareholders but the fact is that less than half of those 320 million shareholders are working. The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics data indicates that there are 157 million people employed (full and part-time) with only 129 million of those being in the private sector.

You also have to consider the fact that there are 141 million taxpayers in the country but 97% of the taxes are coming from the top half.  That means that about 20% of the population produces the revenues that pay for the bills that many of the remaining 80% are enjoying.

As I have also written before, 71% of all current federal spending is comprised of payments to individuals (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, foot stamps, housing subsidies, child care subsidies, etc). That is $3 trillion out of a $4.3 trillion budget.

Is that not already a pretty substantial dividend?

Elizabeth Warren weighs in with a tweet about her plan to increase Social Security benefits by $200 per month for every beneficiary.

Never mind that the Social Security system cannot meets its current obligations as it is.

Of course, Warren has a plan for this. This is Warren's new campaign logo.

What's her plan for most everything she wants to do?

Tax the rich. Give stuff away to others.

Warren not only wants to remove the FICA wage cap, she wants to raise income taxes and institute a wealth tax as well to pay for forgiving student loans, free childcare, increased teacher pay, Medicare for All and a Green New Deal. Along the way she wants to also ban all future oil exploration and natural gas fracking.

My belief is that Warren's Social Security gambit is actually meant to distract and mislead Seniors in order to keep them from focusing on her proposal to eliminate the requirement that corporate executives and fund managers act as fiduciaries for their shareholders and investors.

Large corporation and investment funds would need to be re-chartered and they would need to consider numerous "stakeholders" rather than just those who put their capital at risk for the enterprise.

Who would be most detrimentally affected by Warren's proposal? Older Americans who have worked and saved over a lifetime and who have their life savings invested in stocks.

Former Senator Phil Gramm and Mike Solon took aim at Warren in a Wall Street Journal op-ed right before she came out with her Social Security bonus. Coincidence?

Her “Accountable Capitalism Act” would wipe out the single greatest legal protection retirees currently enjoy—the requirement that corporate executives and fund managers act as fiduciaries on investors’ behalf. To prevent union bosses, money managers or politicians from raiding pension funds, the 1974 Employee Retirement Income Security Act requires that a fiduciary shall manage a plan “solely in the interest of the participants and beneficiaries . . . for the exclusive purpose of providing benefits to participants and their beneficiaries.” The Securities and Exchange Commission imposes similar requirements on investment advisers, and state laws impose fiduciary responsibility on state-chartered corporations.

Sen. Warren would blow up these fiduciary-duty protections by rewriting the charter for every corporation with gross receipts of more than $1 billion. Every corporation, proprietorship, partnership and limited-liability company of that size would be forced to enroll as a federal corporation under a new set of rules. Under this new Warren charter, companies currently dedicated to their shareholders’ interest would be reordered to serve the interests of numerous new “stakeholders,” including “the workforce,” “the community,” “customers,” “the local and global environment” and “community and societal factors.”

If you have ever read Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged this should all sound very familiar.

Rand, a Russian emigre, wrote the book in 1957. The book is set in a future USA whose economy is collapsing as the most productive people in society slowly check out rather than deal with increased taxation, regulation and the general overreach of government. Everyone is told that they must work and produce for the "good of all". Of course, only the government decides what is good and what is fair.
 
Elizabeth Warren sounds like she wants to create a nation that is eerily similar to what Ayn Rand wrote about.

What does that nation look like? It is one where a majority of voters no longer believe in personal initiative, freedom, accountability, creativity, rational self-interest and individual incentive as the foundations of success for either themselves or their country.

It will be a dark place (not only due to the fact that Warren wants to ban coal, fracking and new oil exploration) because, as Gramm and Solon point out, "socialism always destroys wealth; it doesn't redistribute it".

Sen. Warren would roll back the economic Enlightenment that gave us private property and economic freedom, and plunge us back into the communal world of the Dark Ages. Like the village, guild, church and crown of yore, government-empowered special interests would once again be allowed to extort labor and thrift. When capital is no longer protected as private property and is instead redefined as a communal asset, prosperity and freedom will be the greatest casualties.

Note the common theme in the three tweets above. All are offering something for FREE.

Nothing is free, most particularly freedom.  I hope you and all your loved ones understand that.

280 character tweets can never tell the tale. What you are seeing from the Democrats above are nothing but fiction and fables. Americans need to understand the full story about what is being sold to them.

Mind Over Body?

A school needs parental permission in order for a student to go on a field trip.

It needs parental permission to participate on a school sports team.

It needs parental permission to participate in the school band.

A school needs parental permission to allow the school nurse to administer an aspirin to a student.

None of that helped Jay Keck and his wife who recently wrote an opinion piece in USA Today about how his local public school undermined their efforts to help their daughter who at 14 years of age suddenly decided she was a boy.

The story is shocking but is yet another sign about how far off the rails many things have gotten in this country.

In April 2016, my then 14-year-old daughter became convinced that she was my son. In my attempt to help her, her public school undermined me every step of the way.

Throughout my daughter’s childhood, there were no signs that she wanted to be a boy. She loved stuffed animals, Pocahontas and wearing colorful bathing suits. I can’t recall a single interest that seemed unusually masculine, or any evidence that she was uncomfortable as a girl.

The only difficulty she had was forming and maintaining friendships. We later learned why: She was on the autism spectrum. She was very functional and did well in school, helped by her Individualized Education Program (IEP), a common practice for public school students who need special education.

At her high school, my daughter was approached by a girl who had recently come out at school as transgender. Shortly after meeting her, my daughter declared that she, too, was a boy trapped in a girl’s body and picked out a new masculine name.

Their daughter did not tell her parents that she had decided she was a boy. The school knew, affirmed the new identity despite knowing of her mental health challenges, and started calling her by her new name and the new pronoun. They started having her use a gender neutral restroom. The school never reached out to the parents with any of this information.

When the parents found out what their daughter was doing they were shocked and set up a meeting to explore ways to help their daughter.

In an IEP meeting just after she told us about being a boy, I told the school that our wishes are to call her by her legal name at all times. The social worker present at the meeting stated that we have that right to make that request, so I assumed school staff would follow our directive. I followed up that meeting with an email, but later learned that my request was ignored and school staff continued to refer to her by the male name.

We met with the school district’s assistant superintendent, who told us the hands of school personnel are tied and that they had to follow the law. But there was no law, only the Obama administration’s “Dear Colleagues” letter of May 2016 that said schools need to officially affirm transgender students. Just three months later, in August 2016, a federal judge in Texas blocked the guidelines from being enforced. And in February 2017, the Trump administration rescinded the Obama-era guidelines, leaving it to the states to set their own policies.

I also learned that the ACLU has sent threatening letters to schools stating that it is against the law to disclose a student’s gender identity, even to their parents. But this letter appears to misunderstand federal law. The federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act requires that schools allow parents to “inspect and review” their child’s education records as long as the child is under 18.

The Keck's daughter was evaluated by a psychologist approved by the school who agreed with the parents that her sudden transgender identity was driven by her underlying mental health conditions. However, he would only share this opinion "off the record" because he was concerned about the backlash he would receive from the school and others.

In my attempts over the past several years to get help for my daughter, what I have learned has shocked me.

The National Education Association has partnered with the Human Rights Campaign and other groups to produce materials advocating automatic affirmation of identities, name changes and pronouns, regardless of parents’ concerns. In 18 states and the District of Columbia, including in my home state of Illinois, there are “conversion therapy” bans, which prevent therapists from questioning a child’s gender identity. No wonder my daughter’s therapist would only speak to me off the record.

You have to ask what is going on?

Have parents no rights in these situations?

Why are schools pushing a political agenda rather than following the science of biology?

In 1979, Dr. Paul McHugh, the psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins put a stop to all gender reassignment surgeries at the hospital based on his findings that almost all transgender issues involved mental illness. Many elite medical centers followed suit.

However, over the last 10 years much has changed. Science has been ignored because of politics. 45 gender clinics have opened across the country catering solely to children with transgender issues. Are we to believe that this has all resulted from genetic errors? Are we to believe all of these transgender issues just suddenly materialized out of thin air over the last decade?

McHugh still believes transgenderism is a mental disorder 40 years later even though he is now attacked regularly by the LGBT community. His own hospital has reversed course due to the political environment and is once again doing gender reassignment surgeries.

The science has not changed. However, the politics has. We see it in cases like that of the Kecks.

We see it in the statistics that Ryan Anderson of the Heritage Foundation cites in his commentary last year titled "The Sex-Change Revolution Is Based On Ideology, Not Science".

80% to 95% of children with gender dysphoria will come to embrace and affirm their bodily sex.

41% who identify as transgender will attempt suicide at some point in their lives.

People who have sex transition surgery are 19 times more likely than average to die from suicide.

Tied to all of this is an interesting case that will be argued in the U.S. Supreme Court  in the near future over whether "gender identity" is a protected class for purposes of employment discrimination like a person's sex or race is.

The law mentions only a person's sex. However, the EEOC under the Obama administration expanded the definition  to include a person's gender identity.

At issue in the case is a man who wanted to dress as a woman in his position at a funeral home, even though there was an employment policy that required all employees to dress in sex-specific ways.

What I find most interesting about the case is that an amicus (friend of the court) brief has been filed by nine people who were once transgender but have now reverted to affirming their birth sex.

They argue that there is no such thing as gender fluidity or transgenderism. It is a mental, not a physical condition. They ought to know. They have lived it and come to realize it was a fantasy.

Almost every single person in the brief said they stopped being transgender with the help of therapy. It didn’t just help them heal, but also revealed that deeper emotional traumas were often the cause of their gender dysphoria and the reason they chose transgenderism in the first place. All of the people claim that those who proposed or helped them transition often (unknowingly) created more pain.

They conclude their brief by arguing that forcing employers to affirm the denial of nature and requiring them to reinforce the mental illness of a employer cannot be required by the law when it is likely to cause more harm than good.

The same can be said about our schools.

The former transgender people who filed the amicus brief used examples in their filing of other dsyphorias (mental illness dealing with dissatisfaction or unease with one's body) to show just how far off the rails all of this is.

Would we allow a school or employer to encourage someone with anorexia to be on a low-calorie diet or to have their stomach stapled?

Would we allow someone with xenomelia (the feeling that one or more limbs do not belong) to be encouraged to have an amputation?

Like so many liberal and progressive ideas, this is another that one that shows that in our eagerness to do "good" we are doing far more "harm" to the people who need "help".

It is truly sad.

The story of the Jay Keck family shows just how sad it really is.

What Will The Democrats Not Take Away From You?

Everyone should know by now that the Democrats have a particular affinity for taking tax money from you. If Democrats are in power you can almost be assured of a tax increase.

Yes, they always claim that they only want to make the rich pay their "fair" share.

However, there is  no way that the Democrats can fund all of their ambitious spending programs without a lot of taxes. I foresee a large, broad-based tax that everyone would have to pay if the Democrats gain control in 2020.

This is what is done in Europe to fund its welfare state. It would undoubtedly be required in the United States as well. Anyone who tells you differently is simply not telling the truth.

What is remarkable to me about this Presidential election cycle is the openness in which the Democrats are telling everyone all of the other things they want to take from you beyond your money.

All of it was on full display at last week's CNN Townhall on climate change in which almost every candidate endorsed the idea of some form of a Green New Deal.

For starters, the Green New Deal proposed by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would upgrade or replace every building, factory, apartment and home with state of the art energy efficiency. At a minimum, this would require that every furnace, air conditioner and hot water heater would have to be replaced. It is unclear what that state of the art technology would be since I am not sure it exists right now. It is also unclear where all the tradesmen would come from to do all this work. Most of all, it is unclear where the money comes from to pay for all of this.

Keep in mind that this all has to be done within the next ten years because the Democrats state that the world as we know it is going to end in 11 years due to climate change.

The Green New Deal also proposes to repair and upgrade all U.S. infrastructure. This alone is estimated in the original Green New Deal document to cost a minimum of $4.6 trillion. It is the only item in the proposal that had any cost estimate attached.

Of course, merely replacing, repairing or upgrading is not going to be enough according to the Democrats. We have to start eliminating things that make our lives easier and more fulfilling.

We can only survive if we also start taking stuff away from you for the good of the planet.

Never mind that no one has ever done this in the history of mankind. Did we ban horses who were fouling the streets of major cities in the late 1800's because we wanted to replace them with cars? Did we ban whale oil when we wanted electricity to power our lights? These things happened naturally without government coercion. It is called human innovation.

Elizabeth Warren states that she wants to force every American to surrender fossil fuels and nuclear energy in 20 years. For context, this would mean that 89% of current energy sources would be outlawed. Can you remember 9/11/01? That was 18 years ago. Where is all of this new energy that powers our lives and our economy going to come from?

William Jacobson described the town hall this way on LegalInsurrection.com. He has videotape excerpts to document the craziness.

Here is a list that I have compiled based on what one or more of the candidates have suggested must be eliminated in order to stop climate change from occurring.

Plastic straws

Plastic bags

Meat

Incandescent light bulbs

Internal combustion engines

Gasoline-powered cars

Airplanes

Oil

Coal

Natural Gas exploration through fracking

Nuclear power

Children (population control is a necessity especially in third world countries).

Climate change is not the only reason the Democrats have to take away things from you.

A great number of Democrats are also in favor of taking guns away as well as the ammunition that goes in guns.

What I also found interesting is that while CNN put on the climate change town hall in which Democrat candidates were blaming meat, airplanes and big business for climate change it was running commercials for a steak restaurant, two travel-related companies and a large investment management company that invests in large cap stocks.

The Democrats are also not much in favor of school choice or the freedom to choose your own health care plan. They would like to take those choices away from you.

There are even some out there that want to take away all of your red hats.

That could be a problem for me.

I don't know about you but the world the Democrats seem to want us to live in sounds a lot like the world people lived in 200 years ago.

I am sorry. I am not interested.

I wrote this six years ago when Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-FL and DNC Chairman) said that unless climate change was addressed, it would only be a "few short years" before her Miami area congressional district was under water.


Only in a liberal mind does it make sense to...

shut down your most cost-effective energy generating source,

shut-off your most abundant energy resource,

raise electricity costs on all Americans,

and risk losing hundreds of thousand of jobs in the process.

In an attempt to solve a problem...

that we are not even sure we have,

and if we do, we are not sure we can do anything about it,

because of natural or external forces that we cannot control, 

that may overwhelm anything we do anyway,

that ultimately works to the advantage of your biggest trade partner,

that will undoubtedly result in more job losses for Americans over the longer term.

Here we are a few years later. Is Miami under water? Six years later we even have a former President, who continually lectured us about climate change, about to purchase a multi-million dollar home three feet above sea level on an island in the Atlantic Ocean.

Nothing has changed except the liberals have gotten even crazier and we have a President who is actually trying to do something about the advantages we have given away to our biggest trading partner.

What will the Democrats not try to take away from you?

Crazy and Improper

Every day I think that the Democrats must have reached their limit on crazy ideas.

However, another day passes and it just gets crazier.

As I have written before, one of the favorite targets of the Democrats is the electoral college. It just frustrates them to no end that they have to convince voters in states beyond California and New York to support their agenda in order to be elected President.

A majority of the Democrats in the Presidential field are on record as favoring the abolition of the electoral college. This includes Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Beto O'Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and Julian Castro. Predictably, Kamala Harris has straddled the issue as has Amy Klobuchar. No one seems to know where Joe Biden is on the issue. That is also no surprise.

The Left's criticism of the electoral college reached new levels of craziness recently when Chris Hayes argued on MSNBC that the electoral college would be unconstitutional if it was not in the Constitution.

Yes, you would read that right. This is the direct quote from his show.

"The weirdest thing about the Electoral College is the fact that if it wasn't specifically in the Constitution for the presidency, it would be unconstitutional."

No doubt that is the same way the Democrats feel about the right to free speech, religion and the right to bear arms.

Why did those darn Founders have to be so specific? 

Of course, there was one right the Founders were naive about and must have thought they did not have to be so specific about----"the right to life".

They must have assumed that no one would ever question that most basic right. How wrong they were.

Bernie Sanders was also at it last week in declaring that (beyond forgiving all student loan debt) he also wants to abolish all existing medical debt.

Sen. Bernie Sanders announced late Friday that he plans to eliminate billions in medical debt, hinting at a proposal the 2020 presidential Democratic candidate's campaign has yet to release in full. 

The plan, which the Sanders campaign says would cancel $81 billion in existing past-due medical debt and make changes to the 2005 bankruptcy bill, is not expected to be released in its entirety for another month.

You have to ask what is next? What else can we forgive? Mortgages, credit card or auto loan debt?

 Of course, as always, left unsaid is who is going to pay for all of this?

Seeing all of this craziness I could not help but think again about our Founders and what their reaction would be to all of this.

Trust me, they would not be calling it crazy.

They would be calling it "Wicked" and "Improper".

How do I know?

The Federalist Papers were written to explain the theories, rationale and reasoning behind the Constitution.

What is truly amazing in reading the Federalist Papers is how well our Founders understood human nature and the efforts they took to provide safeguards in the Constitution against human fallibilities and foibles.

One of the bedrock principles underlying the drafting of the U.S. Constitution was to do everything possible to safeguard the union against possible domestic division and rebellion.

The Founders understood that opposing political factions were the greatest potential threat to any government and that in many governments the only redress was violence.  They wanted to insure that factions could not wield power that would be dangerous to either the rights of other citizens or the common good.

They also knew that there was little they could do to prevent factions from occurring.  That could only be done by limiting liberties or insuring every citizen has the same opinions, feelings and the same interests. Neither was acceptable to the Founders.

They had no interest in preventing the causes, which is what Communist and Totalitarian governments do. They focused on controlling the effects of factions. Thus, they constructed a republican governmental framework with an ultimate goal of securing both the public good and private rights against the dangers of an oppressive majority faction. Everything in the Constitution was built on this foundational principle.

This is one of the reasons we have an electoral college. It is also why the Constitution originally did not provide for the direct election of Senators. Our Founders were wary of a pure democracy which could trample the rights of minorities.

James Madison in Federalist Paper #10 also enumerated those things that were most likely to result in the development of dangerous factions that government (and the people) should be protected against.

Madison called them "Improper or Wicked Projects". It could not be much clearer what the Founders thought of these potential risks and the need to avoid them at all costs because of the danger they posed to the nation at large.

What were some of these these Improper or Wicked Projects?

1. A rage for paper money (exactly what the Federal Reserve did with Quantitative Easing and is being done again around the world with low (and negative interest rates) engineered by Central Bankers.

Notice that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and many Democrats now are also arguing that we can just print all the money that is needed for the Green New Deal or other proposals they favor.


2. A rage for the abolition of debts (what was done to the detriment of secured creditors of automakers in favor of the unions under the Obama administration)

Notice that Bernie Sanders and many Democrats think student loans should be forgiven. Sanders now wants to do the same with medical debts.


3. A rage for an equal division of property (the foundational principle of socialism that includes redistribution of wealth from rich to poor).

Notice that many Democrats support a 70% top income tax rate and increase in the estate tax. Warren has proposed a wealth tax as well.

These are the actual words in Federalist #10 regarding those improper and wicked projects and why the Founders designed the republican government they did rather than a pure democracy.

The influence of factious leaders may kindle a flame within their particular States, but will be unable to spread a general conflagration through the other States. A religious sect may degenerate into a political faction in a part of the Confederacy; but the variety of sects dispersed over the entire face of it must secure the national councils against any danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an entire State.

There is no mistaking what the Founders would think about these crazy ideas.

In fact, their words are stronger than mine. Consider the words they used.

RAGE.

WICKED.

IMPROPER.

Is that specific enough to know exactly what the people who wrote the Constitution would think about what the Democrats are selling?

Notice as well that the Founders fully understood we could have some factious leaders and crazy ideas in particular states (California? New York?). They also understood that we might see religious sects degenerate into a political faction in some places (Ilhan Omar in Minnesota? Rashida Tlaib in Michigan?). However, the electoral college and the republican form or government was designed to insure that these factions could not control the whole.

Is it any wonder that the Democrats seek to diminish the Founders and denigrate the Constitution every chance they get?

The Founders had their number before they even existed.

Beijing, We Have A Problem

China is being confronted with several big issues right now.

The trade issue with the United States has gotten the most attention over the last few months.

President Trump seems determined to get the Chinese to play a little fairer when it comes to trade.

Thus far, China has been unwilling to do so.

I have stated many times in these pages that it was going to be very difficult to get the Chinese to agree to any trade deal. They have had it good for a long time without anyone calling them out (Republicans and Democrat alike). No one wants to give up an extremely advantageous situation easily. The Chinese are no different.

On the other hand, I am not sure that China ever thought that Donald Trump would be so indefatigable.

A 15% tariff went into effect on September 1 on $125 billion of additional imported goods from China including smartwatches, Bluetooth headphones, flat panel tv's and footwear.

Since the tariffs went into effect the Chinese economy has been slowing. Over the last year, China had its worst GDP growth performance in 17 years. Consumer spending, industrial production and car sales in China are all showing signs of distress.

To compound matters, the price of pork (the primary meat consumed in China) has skyrocketed over the last several weeks. Pork prices surged 18% in just two weeks recently and are up more than 50% over the last year as reported in this article from Zero Hedge.

At the same time fruit and vegetable prices have also increased which is pushing overall consumer prices higher.

Pork prices have been under pressure over the last year as the Chinese have had to deal with a "pig ebola" outbreak that is hurting supply. However, on top of that, China is putting tariffs on American farm goods like pork and soybeans which further increase prices.

This puts the Chinese in a particularly bad place as they are seeing consumer prices rise at the same time that producer prices (squeezed by US tariffs) are falling.

It is not a good combination if you want to keep the citizenry happy.

It is also clear that the citizenry in Hong Kong are not very happy to begin with even before higher food prices are factored in. The Hong Kong protests are another big issue that the Chinese have to deal with.

The protests in Hong Kong also significantly complicate China's negotiations with the United States on trade. China risks global condemnation if they attempt to strong-arm the protestors in Hong Kong like they did in Tiananmen Square three decades ago. Such a move would significantly strengthen Trump's position.

Credit: HotAir.com

At the same time, how can the United States agree to any deal with China on trade if the Hong Kong protests have not been resolved? The Chinese also have to be concerned about what kind of message is sent to those in other provinces of China if the Hong Kong protestors get any type of "win".

As I wrote in "Keep Your Eyes on Hong Kong", China is in a very tough spot in Hong Kong.

I pointed out in that blog post that the protests in Hong Kong were a prime lesson in showing how difficult it is to take something away from the people. Once people have freedom they are not going to easily give it away.

After I wrote that blog post I came across an interesting piece on information from economist.com that should make the Chinese even more nervous about their future hold on Hong Kong.

It seems that as time has gone by the people in Hong Kong are identifying more as Hong Kongers than as Chinese. What is most telling is that the younger the age group, the more that they identify that way. Those who are older (and lived most of their lives when Hong Kong was associated with Great Britain) are least likely to consider themselves a Hong Konger.

In 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to China after 150 years of British colonial rule, the University of Hong Kong surveyed local residents about how they defined themselves. That year the share of respondents identifying as “Chinese”—as opposed to “Hongkonger” or “Mixed identity”—was about one in five; over the next decade this figure rose to more than one in three. Since 2006, however, it has fallen steadily. In June, fewer than one in ten said they were exclusively Chinese, a historic low. A plurality now call themselves Hongkongers (see chart).

You would expect it to be the opposite. Those older remember what Hong Kong was like before China gained control. The young have spent most of their lives under the current "one nation, two systems" policy that applies to Hong Kong.

Why is this such a problem for the Chinese communists?

Old people don't take to the streets and start revolutions.

Young people do.

We are seeing something like that playing out in Hong Kong right now.

Credit: South China Morning Post, 9/3/19

Beijing, we have a problem.

Fire, Wind and Water

As Hurricane Dorian threatens the United States you will probably hear someone try to connect this hurricane activity to climate change.

We are hearing the same thing about the fires in the Amazon.

We heard the same thing when the East Coast of the United States had a few days of temperatures above 90 degreesF earlier this summer.

The climate alarmists always want people to believe that events like these are unprecedented and have to be the result of carbon emissions, global warming and climate change.

The sad fact is that many people, especially Millennials or those in Generation Z, have no perspective of history or are unable to put these current events in the proper context. As I often say in these pages, context is everything when assessing anything.

Let's put some of these claims in context.

What about summer heat?

It is always hot in the summer.

However, we are seeing fewer hot days (over 90 degrees) in recent years compared to what we have historically seen in the United States.

Recent years are nothing compared to what we witnessed in the 1930's when no one blamed carbon emissions or climate change for the heat. They blamed the weather---PERIOD.

Can you imagine the hysteria and call for action on climate change if we saw anything close to the conditions that created the Dust Bowl in the 1930's?

What about the Amazon fires? Last year it was the fires in California that the climate alarmists were pointing to as unprecedented.

The fact is that forest fires have always been with us.

It is also a fact that in recent years (according to NASA data) forest fires around the world have been in decline.

Credit: NASA

Another surprising fact is that there is actually more forested land on earth today than there was 35 years ago according to this article in Forbes.

For the last 35 years, the world has been re-foresting, meaning new tree growth has exceeded deforestation. The area of the Earth covered with forest has increased by an area the size of Texas and Alaska combined.

Less land is being converted into agriculture globally in part because farmers are growing more food on less land.

The fires in the Amazon are real and the number of hotspots are almost double what they were last year. However, we saw many more fires in the Amazon in the early 2000's. Did you hear about those fires?

This chart from Mongobay.com provides the background and context on historical fire hotspots in the Brazilian Amazon.

What about hurricanes?

The trend in major hurricanes making landfall in the United States has also been in decline as this graph by Dr. Roy Spencer illustrates.

Note: This chart was done before Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle in October, 2018 as a Category 5 hurricane bringing 2011-2020 total to 3 hurricanes from the 2 shown above.

Since 1850, on average, 6 major hurricanes make landfall in the United States each decade. That trend has declined to less than 4 since the 1930's. However, in the 1930's and 1940's alone, we saw 18 major hurricanes in the United States.

The United States actually went 13 years (2004-2017) without one Cat 3+ hurricane making landfall before Harvey and Irma (2017) and Michael (2018) broke that streak. That is the longest period in history without a major hurricane striking the United States.

The claims of the climate alarmists simply do not match the actual facts and history of hurricane activity.

That is not to say that these storms are anything to trifle with. They are dangerous and they pose massive risks to the life and property in their path.

I was in Panama City, Florida last February a few months after Michael wreaked havoc to that area. The damage from that hurricane was massive. Here is a photo I took from my car that shows an example of what the wind and water did to a residential area. There were scenes like this for mile after mile. Driving along I-10, 50 miles or more from the coast, there were thousands of trees that had been snapped in two and scores of steel billboards twisted out of shape.

The aftermath of Hurricane Michael 

Let's hope Dorian stays off shore and weakens so it will not pose the type of threat that Michael, Irma and Michael did in recent years.

However, whatever happens with Dorian, do not buy into the hype.

Driving an electric car and boycotting meat is not going to stop the heat, the fires and the hurricanes.

Passing a Green New Deal is not going to make one iota's difference in the climate or the weather.

There are facts and there is fiction and fantasy.

When do you ever see the facts and history I have outlined above when these stories are hyped by politicians or the media establishment who are pushing an agenda?

Context is everything when assessing anything.

Consider the context and it is easier to find the truth about anything.

The Human Gaffe Machine

I am old enough to remember Joe Biden running for the 1988 Democrat nomination for President.

Credit: GoLocalProv.com

Biden struggled in that race amid allegations that he had plagiarized a speech by a British politician compounded by revelations that he had also plagiarized a law review article he wrote while in law school.

Biden waited 20 years to run for President again. He put his hat in the ring for the 2008 Democrat nomination against both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

It was in this time period that Biden made a couple of his more famous verbal gaffes.

Referring to Indian Americans he said the following.

 "I've had a great relationship. In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian-Americans moving from India. You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking."

He also said this about Barack Obama, his competitor for the 2008 nomination.

"I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy, I mean, that's a storybook, man."

Statements like these hurt his fundraising efforts, and after garnering less than 1% of the delegates in the Iowa caucus, he withdrew from the race.

Biden got a renewed political life when Barack Obama selected him as his Vice President candidate but the gaffes continued.

During that 2008 campaign he famously told a Missouri state senator, who was a paraplegic and confined to a wheelchair, to stand up and take a bow.

If anyone thought that Joe Biden would get better with age, they would be profoundly disappointed by now.

Biden at age 76 has become a human gaffe machine on the campaign trail. It seems that a gaffe comes out of his mouth almost every time he opens it.

A few examples over the last month.

He stated that "poor kids are just as bright and talented as white kids." Who are the poor kids if they are not white?

He claimed he met with survivors of the Parkland High School shootings last year when he was Vice President. Biden was not the VP at that time, Mike Pence was.

Biden reminisced how Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy had been shot in the 1970's. They were shot in the 1960's.

He told an audience in New Hampshire that he was happy to be in Vermont. If New Hampshire is famous for its early primary why would Biden think he was in Vermont?

He told a student at Keene State University in New Hampshire that she should be thankful that her parents has sent her to a private college. Doesn't the name of the school tell you it is public?

Biden really got carried away when he said, "We choose unity over division. We choose science over fiction. We choose truth over facts." Truth over facts?

Just this week The Washington Post reported that Biden told a moving war story to an audience in New Hampshire. "This is the God's truth," Biden had said as he told the story. "My word as a Biden."
However, the Post stated that almost every detail in the story was incorrect.

It would be easy to say that Biden is not ready for prime time. However, the fact is that he was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972 when he was 30 years of age---the bare constitutional minimum. He was VP for 8 years. This is his third Presidential race.

Perhaps he is just past his prime. However, he has been famous for his gaffes for years and years. They just seem to be more prolific right now.

Time Magazine did a Biden Top 10 gaffes back in 2008.

Biden has been the odds-on favorite to win the Democrat nomination since he got in the race. However, his poll numbers have lately been trending down.

Will he be the Democrat nominee?

Democrats do not usually nominate the big establishment candidate. They seem to favor outsiders most of the time. They also tend to like younger, less experienced candidates to carry the party banner into the election.

In addition, when they have deviated from this model, the Democrats have lost the general election.

Think about who have represented the Democrats when it was an open primary with no incumbent in recent history.

Jimmy Carter, a little known Georgia Governor, won the nomination in 1976.

In 1984, the Democrats went against type and nominated Carter's VP, Walter Mondale. Reagan won the electoral college 525-13!

In 1988 the Democrats chose Michael Dukakis, the Governor of Massachusetts, another outsider who was also further left than most of the party.

Bill Clinton was the nominee in 1992. A young governor from a small state outside of the Washington establishment.

Al Gore, Clinton's VP, won the nomination in 2000 but the establishment Democrat lost to George W. Bush.

Kerry was the nominee in 2004 but he also got beat in the general election.

The Democrats then turned to a young, unknown Illinois senator over two establishment heavyweights (Hillary and Biden) who beat them both for the nomination and then won two terms against establishment Republicans.

It appears that Bernie Sanders was the real choice of the Democrats in 2016 but the DNC fixed the nomination for Hillary with the use of super delegates. Hillary then lost to a decidedly non-Establishment Donald Trump.

Can the Human Gaffe Machine win the Democrat nomination? I will be shocked if Biden prevails through the primary process. If he does win, it will truly show just how far most Democrat candidates have strayed compared to where most Democrat voters are. Biden might be what they believe is the only reasonable choice. That will say a lot in itself.

Can Biden win the general election against Trump? Who would want to put odds on what might come out of either of these candidates' mouths over the next 14 months? That is an eternity and a half with both of these guys.

However, in a recent column, political commentator Larry Elder sees it this way.

Stay tuned. It will no doubt be interesting to see what comes next.

Almost A Republican

It was reported last week that Barack and Michelle Obama were in the process of purchasing a summer home on Martha's Vineyard that has a listing price of $15 million.

in 2017 Obama purchased a home in the Kalorama neighborhood of Washington, DC for $8.1 million.

The Obamas also apparently still own their house in Chicago which they paid $1.65 million for back in 2005.

That's three homes.

What do you think the taxes, insurance, upkeep, utility and maintenance costs are per year on 3 homes worth $25 million? It has to be at least $1 million per year. Barack Obama must feel pretty confident that the cash is going to continue to flow his way.

For context, here is what Barack Obama said on the subject of wealth inequality a little over a year ago at a speech in South Africa.

“There’s only so much you can eat. There’s only so big a house you can have. There’s only so many nice trips you can take. I mean, it’s enough.”

Enough for who? What about you?

Of course, this is also the same guy who in the past lectured successful people that "they didn't build that."

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business—you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart.  There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something—there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.  

If there is anyone that statement applies to it is Barack Obama.

Would he have anything like this if he had not gotten into politics?

Why does he think that his rules for others do not apply to him?

The media continually excoriates Donald Trump because it thinks he is enriching himself as President.

The Democrats have tried to argue that Trump has violated the "Emoluments Clause" of the Constitution because foreign dignitaries sometimes stay at the Trump Hotel in Washington or other Trump properties.

However, Trump was wealthy before he became President. Forbes magazine actually estimates that Trump's net worth has fallen since he first announced he was running for President. Forbes estimates he was worth $4.5 billion in 2015. It now estimates his net worth at $3.1 billion.

Obama has admitted that he did not pay off his student loans until 4 years before becoming President and he only was able to do that after his book, Dreams of My Father, was published. Presidential politics obviously pays very, very well. We saw a similar pattern with Bill and Hillary Clinton. It also seems to be a big reason that 25 Democrats got in the Presidential race. A politician can burnish their brand and pad their pocketbook when they run. The same for 17 Republicans in 2016.

What I find especially remarkable about the house purchase by Obama is that he will be investing that amount of money for 29 oceanfront acres of land and a luxury house on an island in the Atlantic Ocean.

Future Obama Residence on Martha's Vineyard
Credit:LandVest.com

For context, this is the same Barack Obama who was quoted saying this by the New York Times in 2016.

This is also the same Barack Obama who said this in his 2015 State of the Union address.

"The best scientists in the world are all telling us that our activities are changing the climate, and if we do not act forcefully, we'll continue to see rising oceans, longer, hotter heat waves, dangerous droughts and floods, and massive disruptions that can trigger greater migration, conflict, and hunger around the globe,"

We often told that New York City, Hoboken, NJ or Miami Beach, FL are going to be underwater because of climate change. A handy website (whatismyelevation.com) provides the answer for any location on earth. One Wall Street in New York City is at 33 feet elevation. Hoboken is at 23 feet. The Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami Beach, FL is at 13 feet elevation.

I was curious as to what the elevation was for Obama's potential property is (79 Turkeyland Cove Rd., Edgartown, MA)

It's elevation is 3 feet above sea level! 

Why would someone who truly believes that the trends are "terrifying" and "there is no greater threat to our future than climate change" plunk down nearly $15 million for property on an island 3 feet above sea level?

What must he really think of the claims of his fellow Democrats that the planet is facing ultimate catastrophe in 11 years due to climate change?

Buying that property is not the action of a climate change skeptic. That is the action of an out and out climate change DENIER.

Barack Obama was not much in favor of capitalism, having three homes and oceanfront living three feet above sea level a few years ago.

What changed?

Martha's Vineyard has always had the reputation as a Democrat enclave.

Barack Obama appears well on his way to leaving the Democrat party. Look at all the boxes that are checked that don't quite fit.

Capitalist.

Taxpayer.

Climate Denier.

He looks even more like one when you compare the policies he ran on for President in 2008 and 2012 with the current Democrat candidates.

Almost a Republican.

The Civics Lesson That AOC Missed

It continues to amaze me how misinformed and misguided Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is.

Even more incredible is the extent to which the Democrats have allowed AOC to become the figurehead for the party.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez is the gift that keeps on giving for a blogger like me that likes to deal with facts rather than fictions and fantasies.

I wrote in January in "Belief or Blather" that AOC could not possibly believe that the world was actually going to end in 12 years. She has stated that we need to spend as much in fighting climate change as we did World War II. If that is the case I would think she should be proposing that we go to war with China and India as that is where most of the growth in CO2 emissions in the world are occurring.

Than she released her "Green New Deal" in February where she proposed banning airline travel, cows and replacing or upgrading every building, factory, apartment and home in the United States with state of the art energy efficiency. In order to accomplish our climate goals we also have to provide free college, free healthcare, healthy foods and well-paying jobs to everyone as well. The world might not end in 12 years but that surely would be the end of the United States of America.

She then teamed with Bernie Sanders in May to propose that every post office in America also become a bank for "underserved" Americans as a "public option". She never mentions that there are already 109,000 bank branches and credit unions in the country and that postal banking was tried and disbanded in the early 20th century in the United States when there were far fewer banking options than today.

AOC is now out there railing about the electoral college.

I thought this was especially interesting when you consider that "Middle America" did not even exist when the Founders wrote the U.S. Constitution.

There was no state of Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, Idaho or Wyoming.

There was no state of Texas, Colorado or Nevada. There was no state of California.

If you think about it, Maryland was "Middle America" when you looked at the 13 original states.

The "Far West" was actually Georgia which also was the "Far South" of the original 13 states that ratified the Constitution.

Another interesting fact about those 13 original states at the time of the ratification of the Constitution---New York had almost as many slaves (21,000) as Georgia did (29,000)--- in the first U.S. census in 1790.

How exactly was it a racist scam to benefit Middle America?

AOC and other liberals seem to believe that the electoral college is unfair because it diminishes the power of large states like California and New York and provides advantages to smaller states. However, this was also the case in 1787 as it is today. In fact, small states actually had bigger advantages at the beginning of our nation than they do today.

For example, California and New York (per the 2010 census on which current electoral votes are determined by) have a population of about 57 million. That is 18.4% of the total population and provides 84 electoral votes out of 538 electors (15.6%). However, Wyoming and the District of Columbia barely have 1 million in population between them (3/10 of 1% of total U.S. population) but they each get 3 electoral votes (1.1% of the total for their combined 6 electoral votes out of the 538 total).

However, in the first U.S. census (1790) after the Constitution was ratified, the two largest states in the union, Virginia and Pennsylvania had about 33% of the population and had 36 of 132 electoral votes (27%) in the Presidential election of George Washington in 1792 . On the other hand, Rhode Island and Delaware ( similar to Wyoming and D.C. today) only had 3/10th of 1% of the total U.S population at that time but their electoral votes were equal to about 5% of total electoral votes.

Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have any concept of history or civics or an understanding of the principles underlying the U.S. Constitution?

I guess she did not read what I wrote about the Electoral College back in 2016 on the day it met to elect Donald J. Trump as President of the United States.

This might be a good time to read it again.

Electoral College Elucidation
(originally published December 19, 2016)

The electoral college meets today to cast its votes for President of the United States.

There seem to be many Americans who do not understand the logic behind the electoral college and the genius of our Founders in devising this system of electing our President.

I still recall my son coming home from school some 20 years ago with a homework assignment from his 6th grade teacher asking him to write a letter to Congress asking that body to vote for a constitutional amendment to abolish the electoral college and replace it with a popular election vote . She had taken it upon herself to have the entire class take this project on as a way to "teach" them about the U.S. Constitution.

Needless to say, this was not teaching. It was her attempt to indoctrinate her students with her point of view. I was not pleased and I sent a note back to her telling her that my son would not participate in the assignment. In my view, the electoral college was just fine. After all, our country is called "The United States of America" for a reason.

It might be time for a little electoral college elucidation for those not familiar with all the other reasons why we don't use the popular vote for President/Vice President.

Our founders had very good reasons to adopt the electoral system of electing our President/Vice President instead of by popular vote.

Article 2, Sec.1, Clause 2 of the U.S. Constitution establishes the method of choosing electors.

Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Our founders were very distrustful of a full democracy. That is why they established the constitutional republic that we have.

The reason was simple. A democracy can be very susceptible to the whims and impulses of the general public. A democracy is also likely to run roughshod over minority rights. These concerns were at the heart of almost every decision made in writing our Constitution.

I have written about this previously, including one of my favorite blog posts of all time, "Improper and Wicked Projects". If you have not read it before, you should. It might actually shock you on how well our Founders understood human nature. Power, politics, greed, fallibilities, bias, conflicting interests, oppression. There is nothing going on today that they did not anticipate.

Because of theses concerns it made sense to place an intermediary group of electors between the popular vote and the election of the President in order to protect against these risks. It was also important that this group of electors would be independent of any pre-established body like the legislature.

Alexander Hamilton wrote Federalist Paper #68 that explained the reasoning behind "The Mode of Electing the President".

It seems a little ironic today with all the outpouring of love for Alexander Hamilton by the liberal left (largely based on the popular Broadway play), and its criticism of the electoral college process, that Hamilton was the chief defender of the electoral college in the Federalist Papers.

It is also ironic that Hamilton stated that the electoral college method laid out in the Constitution was probably the least criticized section in the entire document as ratification was being discussed by the various states. This is how he began Federalist Paper #68.

THE mode of appointment of the Chief Magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system, of any consequence, which has escaped without severe censure, or which has received the slightest mark of approbation from its opponents. 

Hamilton went on to explain the key points of the electoral college system.

First, he explained why it was important for the people to have a vote in the process even though that role would only be to delegate the final choice to an independent body free of conflicts. Note also that no elected official may serve as an elector. The electors were also expected to apply discernment and reason to their choice. This is the argument that the anti-Trump people use in trying to get the Trump electors to vote for someone else and be so-called "Faithless Electors".

It was desirable that the sense of the people should operate in the choice of the person to whom so important a trust was to be confided. This end will be answered by committing the right of making it, not to any pre-established body, but to men chosen by the people for the special purpose, and at the particular conjuncture.

The electors would, as is the case in other aspects of our republican government, provide an additional level of discernment and investigation as well as insuring that the vote is not a pure popularity contest but one in which a majority of the union of states is supportive of. They wanted to insure that the President was elected by the United States, not just the people from several states with large populations.

It was equally desirable, that the immediate election should be made by men most capable of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting under circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements which were proper to govern their choice. 

Talents for low intrigue, and the little arts of popularity, may alone suffice to elevate a man to the first honors in a single State; but it will require other talents, and a different kind of merit, to establish him in the esteem and confidence of the whole Union, or of so considerable a portion of it as would be necessary to make him a successful candidate for the distinguished office of President of the United States.

Our founders were particularly concerned about the danger of the legislature being too beholden to one of their own and any possible corruption in the election of the President as well as possible influence in the election by foreign governments. This is another reason for the electoral college and the focus on the decentralization of the vote by each state's electors rather than by popular vote or by a vote in the legislative body as would be the case in a parliamentary system.

Nothing was more to be desired than that every practicable obstacle should be opposed to cabal, intrigue, and corruption. These most deadly adversaries of republican government might naturally have been expected to make their approaches from more than one quarter, but chiefly from the desire in foreign powers to gain an improper ascendant in our councils. How could they better gratify this, than by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union? But the convention have guarded against all danger of this sort, with the most provident and judicious attention. 

The business of corruption, when it is to embrace so considerable a number of men, requires time as well as means. Nor would it be found easy suddenly to embark them, dispersed as they would be over thirteen States, in any combinations founded upon motives, which though they could not properly be denominated corrupt, might yet be of a nature to mislead them from their duty.

The concern was so great about the centralization of power and the risk of pressure being brought to bear on the electoral body that the Constitution even requires that the electors meet in their respective states rather than in one central location. There is little doubt that the Founders would be horrified of the attention and abuse the electors are receiving from anti-Trump liberals leading up to the electoral vote. Everything they did was to prevent something like this as explained below.

Article 2, Sec. 1, Clause 3

The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot...

Again, there was a rationale for this by the Founders as well. They believed that having the electors vote at one time and in one place for the President presented too much risk for turmoil.

And as the electors, chosen in each State, are to assemble and vote in the State in which they are chosen, this detached and divided situation will expose them much less to heats and ferments, which might be communicated from them to the people, than if they were all to be convened at one time, in one place.

It is clear that one of the reasons that the Founders preferred the electoral college was that they were concerned that the people of the 18th century would not have a good sense of the character and qualifications of the candidates for President. Most would never see or hear the candidates in person. They could not truly judge their suitability in an age with no radio, television or internet. That is why it made sense to have the added comfort of electors who might know the candidates better to insure that the President is up to the job.

The process of election affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications. 

Of course, in the media age of today this no longer is the issue it was in the 18th century. Candidates are in the public eye and are subject to constant media scrutiny. Voters do not have the same reason to not know who they are voting for. This is where the argument for the anti-Trump forces that want to cite Hamilton in encouraging "Faithless Electors" falls apart.

If this was the only reason for the electoral college there would be a good argument to disband it and move to a popular vote.

However, the bigger reason for the electoral college involves the issue of decentralization and the importance of state rights in our governance. After all, as I told my son's teacher 20 years ago, we are The United States of America for a reason.

We are hearing a lot today that the electoral college is unfair because it diminishes the large states like California and New York and provides advantages to smaller states. However, this was also the case in 1787 as it is today. In fact, small states actually had bigger advantages at the beginning of our nation than they do today.

For example, California and New York (per the 2010 census on which current electoral votes are determined by) have a population of about 57 million. That is 18.4% of the total population and provides 84 electoral votes out of 538 electors (15.6%). However, Wyoming and the District of Columbia barely have 1 million in population between them (3/10 of 1% of total U.S. population) but they each get 3 electoral votes (1.1% of the total for their combined 6 electoral votes out of the 538 total).

However, in the first U.S. census (1790) after the Constitution was ratified, the two largest states in the union, Virginia and Pennsylvania had about 33% of the population and had 36 of 132 electoral votes (27%) in the Presidential election of George Washington in 1792 . On the other hand, Rhode Island and Delaware similarly only had 3/10th of 1% of the total U.S population at that time but their electoral votes were equal to about 5% of total electoral votes.

It should be noted that one of the reasons that Virginia was hurt in its allocation of electoral votes was because the Founders penalized states that had slaves. States with a slave population (the only state with no slaves counted in the 1790 census was Massachusetts. New York had 21,000 slaves, almost as many as Georgia's 29,000) were only given credit for 3/5 of this population for purposes of seats in the House of Representatives and the electoral college.

You get a real sense of why the Founders designed Constitution the way they did when you see the 2016 election results presented this way.

Or this way in a county by county graphic. Trump won 2,626 counties. Clinton won 487.

They wanted a President of the United States of America. Not of two or three large states. Or a dozen big cities.

The electoral college makes sure that this is what happens.

In 2016 we are seeing what our Founders were thinking in 1787. Again, there was almost nothing they did not anticipate.