2017 June 15: Why Hillary Lost or Why Did Trump Win?
For starters, she ran a lousy campaign and deserved to lose. Despite this, she would have still won if it wasn't for WikiLeaks. And if the Russians were behind the theft of the Podesta's emails then the Russians were able to swing the election in favor of Donald Trump. Were the Russians reponsible for any fake news that was unfavorable to Hillary? Were any of the Trump campaigners (eg. Paul Manafort and Roger Stone) communicating with the Russians? These are some of the questions that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will try to answer. President Donald Trump may be innocent of having colluded with the Russians, but now he has a problem with obstruction of justice.
Dec 4: Why the Democrats Lost?
You need look no further than the Democratic 2016 Election Priorities that we posted in July. Here they are:
It was the jobs, stupid. The Democratic Party is the party of minorities and dependency. Maybe it should be called the Dependent Party.
Shortly after the election, we attended the annual conference of the National Tax Association in Baltimore.
There was consensous on the need for changing the way we tax corporations that operate internationally. There was also some concern about real estate investors who never pay taxes. It is summed up with the phrase - Buy, Borrow and Die. And now that Trump will be president, he intends to repeal the estate tax.
Before the conference and after learning of Trump's non-payment of taxes we wondered why real estate investors should be able to depreciate buildings that appreciate in value. While we recognize that depreciation only applies to the building and not the land, we still think that we need to rethink the way we tax commercial real estate. When we expressed this idea to an individual from the conservative Tax Foundation, he pointed out that depreciation on buildings is not allowed in England. Another way of taxing commercial real estate investors may be to compute the tax on the Free Cash Flow (FCF). We will explore this and ways to tax corporations on one of our tax reform web sites.
Nov 11: Expected final vote is Trump 306 and Clinton 232
Official Vote is Trump 290 and Clinton 228. Michigan (16) leans Trump and New Hampshire (4) leans Clinton.
Nov 10: Trump wins the electoral college and Clinton wins the popular vote
The total vote is way down from 2008 and 2012. Compared to the 2012 election, Donald Trump got 900,000 fewer votes than Romney and Hillary Clinton got 5,500,000 fewer votes than Obama.
This is the second time in the last five elections and the fifth time in our history that the winner in the electoral college failed to win the popular vote.
In the Senate, Democrats definitely pick up one seat in Illinois and lead in New Hampshire.
The Election as it went
- 11/9/16 @ 00:50 EST Trump 244 Clinton 215 toss-up: AZ(11) ME(4) MI(16) MN(10) NH(4) PA(20) WI(10) Trump leads in all
- @11:46 Clinton 209 Trump 244 Dow futures down 840
- @11:20 Clinton 197 Trump 193, Republicans keep control of the Senate
Trump wins Ohio and North Carolina. and likely to win Florida and the election.
- @10:44 Clinton 131 Trump 168 Dow Futures down over 600 points
- @10:04 Clinton 109 Trump 140
- @8:40 Trump leads in FL and VA and Clinton leads in NC
Waiting for final votes from Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties which normally vote for Democrats.
- @8:00pm = Trump wins: IN KY SC WV; Clinton wins DE DC MA MD VT
11/7/16: Final pre-election Electoral Vote Counter has Clinton with 268 votes.
Trump has 220 votes with 50 toss-up state votes in Florida (29), North Carolina and Nevada (6).
Clinton's prospects improve in Pennsylvania as transit workers head back to work.
11/6/16: Comey throws Hillary a Lifeline. FBI decides not to prosecute.
The Trump momentum may be stopped. This should help Clinton win. What will Donald and FoxNews say now? If Clinton loses Pennsylvania, it could be because the dumb transit union in Philadelphia is on strike. Not only may many minority voters fail to get to vote, some voters may be motivated to get to the polls to vote against Democrats.
11/6/16: Clinton leads Trump 268 to 264 with one toss-up - Nevada with 6 votes.
The final outcome may hinge on Nevada whose polls close at 10 pm EST. The lastest poll in Nebraska's Second Congressioanal District shows Trump with a solid lead.
If Clinton wins, expect her to tilt to the middle by appointing Republicans to some cabinet posts. She will work with moderate Republicans to improve Obamacare. She will have to abandon comprehensive immigration reform that includes amnesty. She has a year to do this because 23 Democrat Senators and 2 Democrat-leaning Independent Senators have to defend their seats in 2018.
Who knows what will happen if Trump wins? If necessary, he will pardon Hillary.
11/4/16: The race is a tie! Both the Electoral College and Senate Election counters were updated at 2 pm.
Based on recent polls and the momentum with Trump, we project that Trump is now likely to win New Hampshire (4), North Carolina (15) and Utah (6). As a result of these changes, our counter shows both Clinton and Trump with 269 votes. If Trump's momentum continues, he may win some other states (MI, PA and VA) and Nebraska's Second Congressioanal District. Clinton is fighting strong headwinds.
10/29/16: Trump may be right. This election may be rigged.
And the riggers may be FBI Director James Comey and WikiLeak's Julian Assange. Comey must have known that his announcement yesterday could defeat Hillary Clinton and elect Donald Trump.
If you read the July 5, 2016 Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey on the Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton2019s Use of a Personal E-Mail System it is highly likely that Hillary's actions were a threat to national security. If he let her off the hook then, what type of information is on the Oma Abedin/Anthony Weiner PC that could really be new? One must ask why the FBI did not review the PC before? If the FBI did not review the PC before, they were negligent.
There are two pertainent paragraphs from his July 5 statement. The first paragraph mentions 8 Top Secret and 36 e-mail chains.
"From the group of 30,000 e-mails returned to the State Department, 110 e-mails in 52 e-mail chains have been determined by the owning agency to contain classified information at the time they were sent or received. Eight of those chains contained information that was Top Secret at the time they were sent; 36 chains contained Secret information at the time; and eight contained Confidential information, which is the lowest level of classification. Separate from those, about 2,000 additional e-mails were “up-classified” to make them Confidential; the information in those had not been classified at the time the e-mails were sent".
This second paragraph leads one to be concerned that Wikileaks might have many of Clinton's emails.
"With respect to potential computer intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked. But, given the nature of the system and of the actors potentially involved, we assess that we would be unlikely to see such direct evidence. We do assess that hostile actors gained access to the private commercial e-mail accounts of people with whom Secretary Clinton was in regular contact from her personal account. We also assess that Secretary Clinton’s use of a personal e-mail domain was both known by a large number of people and readily apparent. She also used her personal e-mail extensively while outside the United States, including sending and receiving work-related e-mails in the territory of sophisticated adversaries. Given that combination of factors, we assess it is possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Clinton’s personal e-mail account".
10/28/16: The 2016 Electoral and Senate Election counters have been updated.
Clinton (288) is still leading, but Trump (244) has the momentum. He now leads in Florida (29) and Nevada (6). Click on the link in the left panel to access the Electoral Vote Counter at http://www.electoralcollege.org/2016ECvote.html. According to the latest polls, the Democrats are expected to pick up two seats in Illinois and Wisconsin. They need a net gain of two more seats if Clinton wins and three more seats if Trump wins to capture control of the Senate. The Senate Election Counter is at http://www.electoralcollege.org/2016ECsenate.html.
Even before the breaking news today that the FBI has discovered some new Clinton-related emails, Trump was closing both the popular and electoral vote gap. Why hasn't Hillary fired her closest staffer Huma Abedin, the recently separated wife of the perverted Anthony Weiner. You have to question her judgement. If she loses the election, she has no one to blame but herself.
We believed that many undecided voters were likely to vote for Trump because of the recent announcement of the premium increases in Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) and possible more damaging Wikileaks. We wondered if and when the hackers would have hacked Hillary's email account. Could they have the thousands of Hillary's missing emails? If they do, will they publish them?
10/16/16: The 2016 Senate Election Counter is now available.
10/7/16: The 2016 Presidential and Congressional Election Just Changed for the Worst for the Republicans
With the video release of Trump's obscene remarks about women that he made to Bush cousin, Billy Bush. It is now hard to see Trump winning the election. Will Trump think that the Bush family had a hand in leaking this video? This will not help Republicans win the toss-up Senatorial elections and retain complete control of Congress. While most Republicans will condemn Trump, the Republicans in tight races risk losing the votes of Trump loyalists. Will Trump drop out in favor of Governor Mike Pence?
8/28/16: Three Important Issues - Immigration, Taxes and the Supreme Court
We will offer some ideas to consider on each of these issues. Frankly, we favor reducing immigration, raising taxes on everyone to fund reduced government spending and nominating Supreme Court Justices who want to both limit campaign contributions and restrict the use of assault weapons.
For example on Immigration, we would favor a limited amnesty in return for eliminating automatic birthright citizenship. Border control currently can deny pregnant women from entering the country.
We would severely restrict family reunification to only spouses and children of U.S. citizens. Penalties would be substantially increased for individuals who overstay their visas. Currently, there is essentially no penalty. We would enforce the requirement that all documented and undocumented immigrant males who are between 18 through 25 register with Selective Service. The U.S. tax law requires that all individuals who are physcially present in the U.S. for more than 183 days file a tax return if they have taxable income. The use of a false Social Security number is illegal. We also believe in a unique national id that includes the birthdate for U.S. citizens and the date of formal immigrant status fon non-US citizens. A legal immigrant or legal foreign worker who hires or shelters an illegal alien would forfeit their legal status.
We would also provide a monetary incentive for illegal aliens to leave the United States by a certain date. The incentive would be at least $10,000. This amount is a fraction of what it actually costs our society.
7/25/16: Democratic 2016 Election Priorities
We received in the mail in early July the Official 2016 Democratic Election Survey from the Democratic National Committee. We were disappointed by no mention of jobs, the economy and taxes.
One reason why taxes my not be an important issue for Democrats is because many of their voters care a lot more about the benefits they receive from government than the taxes they pay. According to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center 45.3% of households pay no Federal income tax. We presume that this includes many Democrats, Donald J. Trump and other wealthy owners of commercial real estate in New York City. The Treasury Department needs to publish a study of wealthy individuals who pay no taxes. Their 1967 study led to a minimum tax that primarily increased the taxes on capital gains. Trump supports a tax reform plan that would eliminate his estate tax. We believe that almost everyone should pay Federal income taxes and that income taxes should be related to wealth. For businesses, the definition of taxable income should be more closely related to Free Cash Flow (FCF).
3/7/16: Issues - Immigration, Jobs for U.S. Citizens and Standard of Living
NumbersUSA - Educating Americans on the need for policies of controlled immigration for the national interest.
Record 61 million immigrants in U.S., 15.7 million illegally
11/7/14: The Next Off-Year Election - 2018 and the Importance of 2016
The Democrats really have a serious problem if they continue to appeal only to their base of minorities, younger Americans and single women who don't vote in off-year elections. In 2018 they have to defend 23 seats and the Republicans only 8 seats. See
Class I - Senators Whose Term of Service Expire in 2019.
Based on the 2014 election results, these seats could be particularly vulnerable: Joe Donnelly (D-IN), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Manchin III (D-WV), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Bill Nelson (D-FL), and Jon Tester (D-MT).
If in 2016 the Republicans win the presidential election and re-elect all of their senators, it is likely that some of these vulnerable Democrats will shift right.
The Democrats have to win the presidency in 2016 and find new and younger appealing leaders with a strong economic message and managerial experience. Hillary appears to be passe' and a loser. She and Bill are not the future of the Democratic Party.
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