by David R. Wells and Lawrence H. Wells
17
Oct 2016
We're long overdue for another in our series of election year commentaries.
As usual, the political season (which seems to get longer every cycle) is rather depressing. The candidates rant and bluster, and pander to their favorite special interest groups. They tell lies, and expect us to believe them. We are not at all impressed.
Quite frankly, this is the worst presidential campaign that we've seen in our voting lives, by a large margin. We've never seen two major party candidates as appalling as the ones on offer this year. We often disagree with Charles Koch, but we agree completely with his comment that choosing between Clinton and Trump is like choosing between cancer and a heart attack.
We not only cannot endorse either major party candidate; we believe they are both unfit for office.
To make matters worse, even the two minor party candidates aren't looking too good.
CHARLATAN (char'la tan) – A quack; a pretender to knowledge or ability.
FRAUD (frốd) – (3rd definition) A cheat; impostor
- Webster's New International Dictionary, (second edition)
"There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong."
- H. L. Mencken
The neat, plausible, and wrong solution to the problems of 2016 is Donald Trump. We believe he is unfit to be President. An important reason is that he clearly has given no thought to... pretty much anything except himself.
Trump clearly has given little if any thought to important national security issues. Here is an example: When asked about his priorities for modernizing the nuclear triad during a December debate, his answer indicated that he had no idea what the nuclear triad was, let alone how (or whether) it should be modernized. Do not take our word for this; watch his response for yourself. In these times when our main nuclear bombers are well over 50 years old, our land-based ballistic missiles are over 45 years old, and our ballistic missile submarines are approaching the end of their 40-year design lifespan, this is a critical topic. It is clear that Mr. Trump has absolutely no understanding of the topic.
Trump further claims that he is the most qualified to defeat the Islamic State. (also known as ISIS, ISIL, DAESH) He seems to think that they can be defeated through strategic bombing. Strategic bombing seldom works, and when it does, it only does so in a limited fashion. Somebody's “boots” have to be “on the ground” to take the territory from them. He has certainly not specified any plans.
It is also notable that he has no military experience beyond the New York Military Academy.
Trump clearly hasn't given much thought to non-defense issues either. When asked for his views on the controversial abortion issue, his answer accomplished something we have never seen before: It got the pro- and anti- abortion sides to agree on something. They both were in complete agreement that his position was wrong. As we see it the biggest problem with his answer is that it indicated that he had not even thought about one of the most contentious issues in American politics.
Some of Trump's positions are immoral, un-American, or both.
Trump's advocacy of the use of torture is a good example. As we've said in the past, we condemn the use of torture in all cases. It is both immoral and illegal (explicitly forbidden by the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a party). If the United States wishes to be seen by the world as the "Good Guys", we must behave accordingly . If we stoop to the methods of our adversaries, how can we credibly claim moral superiority? And if we abandon our principles, what are we fighting for?
In addition to being illegal and immoral, torture is ineffective. Prisoners being tortured will say almost anything, true or false, to get the torture to stop.
We believe that Trump's proposal to ban all Muslim immigrants from the US is similarly un-American.
Donald Trump is a Political Chameleon who doesn't stand for anything except his own personal gain.
He has changed party affiliations at least five times, and has been on at least two sides of almost every issue. He was a Democrat from 2001 until 2009. In the 1970s his family made quite a bit of money from housing subsidies from a political ally, then New York City Mayor Abe Beame. (Trump's father, Fred Trump Sr., was a good friend of Mayor Beame through the Brooklyn Democratic Club.)
Dubious Accomplishments
Trump likes to paint himself as a good businessman, but this is certainly open to question. At least four of his businesses have gone bankrupt. Four of his New Jersey casinos went bankrupt when the casino business was the next best thing to a license to print money. Even Trump's defining success - the redevelopment of the New York's old Commodore Hotel into the Grand Hyatt - rested at least as much on his father's political and business connections as Donald Trump's business skills.
Trump likes to paint himself as a champion of the little guy, but when his businesses have gone bankrupt it's usually the small businesses who supplied it who are left holding the bag
Trump's main business skill is weaseling out of his debts. If you don't believe us, ask some of the contractors who built his casinos.
Here are two examples:
Trump didn't pay for the pianos at the Trump Taj Mahal, and effectively stiffed the piano store owner out of $30,000
Trump didn't pay for the installation of telecom equipment in the early 1980s. Note that this claim is coming from a Republican strategist!
There are undoubtedly many other examples.
Trump's temperament makes him unfit to be President.
Ignore what the press says about Donald Trump. Watch what he says and does. When we see this, what we see has the appearance of a thin-skinned bully. Trump is unwilling or unable to tolerate even the slightest criticism. His consistent response to criticism is to publicly hurl personal insults at his critics. This could also be seen during many Republican primary debates, where his main "debating" tactic was to shout personal insults at his opponents as loudly and frequently as possible. (We suspect that he uses this tactic because his campaign is entirely devoid of actual ideas.) His performances in the Presidential debates have not been any better.
Giving the Devil his Due
Even a broken clock is right twice per day. If Trump hadn't raised some important issues that other politicians ignored, he never would have been nominated, and certainly wouldn't be within striking distance of victory in the polls. Nevertheless, we don't think that he would be able to solve even the problems he has correctly identified.
Bad Trade Deals: The United States has negotiated a number of bad trade deals over the last several decades. The clear evidence of this is the gigantic and persistent trade deficit that the United States runs overall, and individually with key trading partners. Trump usually cites the NAFTA agreement, but others, such as permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) for China and the South Korean free trade agreement may have actually been worse. For example, the South Korean agreement allows them to tariff our goods at 11%, while we tariff theirs at 4%. This is especially bad because South Korea tends to be a much lower cost producer. This is not free trade.
That said, it will undoubtedly prove harder to escape these agreements than it was to get into them. These agreements resulted in the export of entire industries, and it will be difficult and time-consuming to reconstruct them on our own shores. In the meantime, we will be economically vulnerable to the inevitable trade war.
Immigration Reform: Our current “nearly open” border policy, combined with virtual amnesty for illegal immigrants is clearly a bad idea. We must have a meaningful border, or the nation becomes meaningless. Indeed, Hillary Clinton has (in her secret speeches to Wall Streeters) advocated open borders. This is unacceptable.
While Trump may have identified a legitimate problem, everything else he's said on this issue is wrong. It is certainly wrong to characterize entire nationalities as murders or rapists. There is also good evidence that Trump's vaunted border wall will not work. The fact that smugglers routinely dig tunnels under our existing border fences suggests that any “big beautiful wall” will simply lead to bigger, more elaborate tunnels.
We believe that immigration reform is necessary and desirable, just not the varieties of "reform" that are currently on offer. The existing system makes it difficult to immigrate legally, and comparatively easy to immigrate illegally. We need the reverse. We are even willing to consider some specialized temporary work visas if the obvious problems with the present system can be corrected. Our agricultural system is dependent on seasonal immigrant labor, whether we like it or not. Any reformed system will have to accommodate this reality.
Conclusion:
Donald Trump's business competence is tremendously exaggerated. His government experience is non-existent. He is a political chameleon, who regularly changes his positions, and even his political affiliation to suit whatever his present needs are. He has clearly given no thought to anything other than himself. He is spectacularly unqualified to be president, and we will not vote for him under any circumstance.
If you watched the recent Frontline documentary "The Choice", you may have noticed something odd in the section about Hillary Clinton: Very, very little time was devoted to her 8 years in the Senate and her 4 years as Secretary of State. Of her time in the Senate they said only "Unlike her failed effort at heath care reform, as a senator, she worked the back rooms and the corridors of power. ... With presidential ambitions in mind, she kept her head down and focused on the practical. ... And for six years, she courted the Democratic Party establishment and big donors, laying the groundwork for her next move." (If you're wondering what we've omitted, we encourage you to watch the program or read its transcript.)
And as Secretary of State, the only noteworthy accomplishment was convincing President Obama to join an international coalition to unseat Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi. Frontline goes on to note that the US failure to plan for the aftermath of Gaddafi's overthrow soon led to chaos. (Did Secretary Clinton learn nothing from our mistakes in Iraq?) The deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other State Department personnel in Benghazi was one consequence of this lack of planning. Libya is far from unique. The entire "Arab Spring" was mishandled. Egypt has fallen back into military dictatorship; Syria has descended into a chaotic civil war that is likely to kill half a million people, and to produce an even more hostile government.
Other notable foreign policy failures on Secretary Clinton's watch include the "Russia Reset", and the "Asia Pivot". Relations with Russia and China have only deteriorated, and both are increasingly aggressive.
We've long noted that Clinton never pushed a significant piece of legislation through the Senate; there is no "Clinton Act". As Secretary of State, at best she somewhat competently implemented a flawed foreign policy over which she had little influence; at worst she was the architect of the flawed foreign policy. This does not indicate that she deserves a promotion.
a) Connections with the People's Republic of China
In the mid 1990s Loral planned to launch a US satellite on a Chinese military rocket. The rocket crashed, destroying the satellite. American investigators were finally allowed to access the crash site, they found that the satellite's encryption chips had been removed from the wreckage. If that were not bad enough, Loral and several other US companies subsequently transferred US technology to the Chinese which greatly improved the reliability of their rockets, including their nuclear armed ballistic missiles. The companies were later charged with violations of US export laws and eventually paid fines.
Loral is significant because its then CEO, Bernard Schwartz, was a friend of the Clintons and a major donor to the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton Administration continued to grant waivers permitting Loral to launch satellites on Chinese rockets, even while the Justice Department was investigating Loral in the aftermath of the failed 1996 launch.
ii) The 1996 US campaign finance scandal (Johnny Chung, John Huang, James Riady, et al)
In September 1996 the Washington Post reported that a US Justice Department investigation of the Democratic Party's fund raising found evidence that agents of the Chinese government were attempting to make illegal campaign contributions with foreign money. Johnny Chung, John Huang, and James Riady were key figures in the scandal. It was revealed that all had ties to the Clintons and to the Chinese government (in some cases to Chinese intelligence agencies), and that the donations were intended to help the Chinese government influence the 1996 US election. All were later convicted of violating US campaign finance laws that forbid donations from foreign sources. The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee returned the questionable donations.
Despite the return of the money it appears that the Chinese government did gain some influence. We observe that the Clinton Administration made several controversial decisions in favor of China, most notably granting permanent normal trade relations (which until then was called "most favored nation" status) to China in 2000. Other examples include the US satellite launch waivers involved in the previously mentioned Loral scandal, and the 1997 attempt to convert the former Long Beach Naval Shipyard into a shipping terminal for the Chinese government owned company COSCO.
b) Pay to Play: The Clinton Foundation and foreign donors
It's been widely reported that while Clinton was Secretary of State, the Clinton Foundation accepted large donations that at least indirectly came from foreign governments - Russia, for one. By staggering coincidence the State Department made decisions that were favorable to Russia. The US approval of the sale of uranium mining firm Uranium One to Russia's state controlled Rosatom is one example; the US State Department's support of US investment in Russia's Skolkovo Foundation, and investment in US technology companies by Russia's state controlled Rusnano. Despite Russian assurances Skolkovo is active in Russian weapons-related projects, and in 2014 the the FBI wrote this op-ed warning that Russian firms seeking to invest in American technology companies were actually trying to "gain access to classified, sensitive and emerging technology from the companies".
We saw an example of Clinton's penchant for secrecy when she was recently diagnosed with pneumonia Her first reaction was to cover it up. That she felt is was necessary to hide a relatively minor matter like this speaks volumes.
A more significant example is her exclusive use of private servers for her official government e-mail while Secretary of State, including classified e-mails. We note that using private servers is not at all the same as simply using a private e-mail account. The latter is comparable to receiving job related mail at your home address; the former is analogous to setting up your own post office branch to handle your job related mail. In our opinion Clinton's claim that she did this because it was the only way she could use one mobile device for all of her e-mail isn't even remotely credible. We've been doing it for many years without any need for private e-mail servers. At a minimum this creates the appearance that she was trying to circumvent government record keeping requirements because her e-mail contained things she wanted to hide.
If this were not enough, despite Clinton's claims to the contrary the FBI found that classified messages did go through Clinton's e-mail server. This certainly left them vulnerable to "hacking" by less than friendly governments. Clinton likes to say that the FBI found no evidence that such hacking occurred, but it's also true that they found no evidence that it didn't occur. If Clinton's I.T. people were incapable of configuring her mobile devices to receive government e-mail from official government servers, we have little confidence that they could secure her servers against undetected intrusion by sophisticated foreign intelligence agencies.
We also must note that Clinton's statement that she did not use her private server to send or receive e-mail marked "classified" would be a smoke screen even if it were true (which it isn't). The job of Secretary of State inherently involves creating documents (including e-mail) that contain highly sensitive information, and these are not normally marked "Classified" at the moment they're created. In this situation all documents must be considered classified until it's determined that they are not. This is what other government employees and even outside contractors are expected to do. We expect no less from the Secretary of State.
You can find a redacted version of the FBI's report on Clinton's use of private e-mail servers here. If you don't want to wade though the rather lengthy report, you'll find a Washington Post article on the subject here.
We could easily conclude that Clinton is untrustworthy simply by connecting the dots between the constant appearance/reality of corruption and her penchant for secrecy. We also have a bit of firsthand experience. We had just enough dealings with the previous Clinton Administration to know with certainty that they cannot be trusted.
The leaked transcript of her Wall Street speeches suggests that she prefers to keep public and private positions on all issues. This indicates to us that even she admits that she can't be trusted.
Thus, we cannot endorse Hillary Clinton. We believe she is unfit to be President.
Libertarian Party Candidate Gary Johnson
We must give at least some serious discussion to the Libertarian party candidates Gary Johnson and William Weld. They are on the ballot in all 50 states.
In the past, we always considered the Libertarian Party a good protest vote. They're seldom boring. Sadly, Gary Johnson is probably the wrong man, and some of the Party's positions are untenable.
Up until recently, we thought his worst moment (“What is Aleppo?”) might have been an exception. He seems to have blanked out again when asked what world leaders he admired. We liked Sen. Lindsey Graham's quip about this. "He set back the cause of legalizing marijuana by 50 years". And we thought “burnouts” disappeared after the 1970s!
Seriously, in these days of the opioid/heroin addiction epidemic, we must seriously question his advocacy of putting anything you want into your body.
Green Party Candidate Jill Stein
Jill Stein is on the ballot in at least 42 states, so she at least has a mathematical chance of winning. She offers the usual list of liberal "solutions" that end up costing taxpayers a lot, and never quite seem to solve the problems they're meant to address. No, thanks.
And if you want to see a really scary Vice Presidential candidate......
Independent Candidate Evan McMullin
Last we knew Evan McMullin was only on the ballot in 9 states, so mathematically he has no chance of winning. Since he is not on the ballot where we live, we have not done much research on him. He does however appear to be a principled conservative, so conservative leaning voters in the states where he is on the ballot might find him a good protest vote.
First of all, make sure that you do vote. Not voting is effectively a vote for the status quo. The eventual winner will regard it as an endorsement. Not voting is the worst possible thing you can do.
Second, vote your conscience. That's what democracy is all about. Even if you disagree with us, you must vote your conscience.
So if you do agree with us, and the major parties are unacceptable, what should you do? The answer is simple: Vote for someone else. Vote for one of the minor parties, despite their faults. If you can't support a minor party candidate, write someone in. You can write in anybody you happen to believe would make a good president. Write in John McCain. Write in Bernie Sanders. Write in Ted Cruz. Write in your best friend. Write in your neighbor. Write in Gracie Allen of the Surprise Party, even though she's long dead. Write in 2004 Loony party candidates David C. "Hollywood Dave" Wright and Sir Andrew "Edd Banger" Shaw, even though Wright died back in 2005 and the US branch of the Loony party is no longer active. Write in Larry's cats, Gizmo and Gadget. Write in Mickey Mouse. You could hardly do any worse than the two major parties.
Our Own Protest Vote: Dale L. Borchert
We invite all to join the Wells family protest by writing in our brother-in-law Dale L. Borchert. We can personally vouch for him. He's sane, principled and reliable. He even knows how to negotiate reasonable compromises with his opponents. While this is clearly a protest vote, (we're expecting maybe dozens of votes) Dale is vastly superior to the major party candidates. He's got our support.
You are not "throwing your vote away". You are only throwing your vote away if you vote for someone you don't believe in. The lesser of two evils is still evil.
If enough people start voting against the two major parties, it's going to start to show up in the media. It will take time and consistent effort, but the major parties will not change until we stop voting for them. They'll do their best to ignore us. Remember 1992, and Bill Clinton's 43% "mandate"? He spent the next two years running things as if he had a majority, ignoring the nearly 20% who voted independent. The media will also try to ignore us, partisan hacks that they are, but if enough of us do it for long enough, we will force change. The parties will not change until we stop voting for them.
Besides, if you vote for for the major party candidates, it will only encourage them. You'll just get major party candidates that are as bad (or worse) next time.
Apparently the lying is never so bad that it can't get worse. We've seen a truly staggering number of lies from both of the major party's campaigns. It probably would take less space to list the things they've said that are not lies.
US Presidential campaign web sites
Set your B.S. Detectors to double strength!
The Donald Trump for President site. (You might need to set the B.S. Detector to triple strength.)
The Hillary Clinton for President site. (Or maybe quadruple strength...)
US government links
The 9/11 Commission site. The full text of The 9/11 Commission Report is available here. Do not rely on the news media, read it for yourself.
PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) An American non-profit television network.
PBS Links:
The NewsHour Forget ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC; this is the best television news program in the USA. Their great strength is their in-depth interviews with important people. This is not soundbite journalism with the celebrity of the moment.
Frontline: PBS' documentary series Their quadrennial program “The Choice” is always well work watching.
National Public Radio A non-profit US news source. They're a bunch of flaming liberals, (they swooned for Bernie, but they're now “in the tank” for Clinton) but they provide in-depth coverage that commercial radio news can't match.
BBC World Service Despite the richly earned criticism of the Hutton Report, the BBC is still among the best news organizations in the world.
Canadian Broadcasting Corp, and Radio Canada International are also good non-US news sources.
United States Naval Institute General information about naval affairs. Some news about the war in Iraq, and also some technical information. Their monthly magazine Proceedings provides excellent coverage of the US Navy and Marine Corps, along with history and opinion. The latest in US Navy news is available at http://news.usni.org .