Saturday, November 05, 2016

2016 election and memories of Novembers past


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2016 election and memories of Novembers past 11/05 by Silvio Canto Jr | News Podcasts:

The election is a few days away.........We will make some predictions and check out some of the trends.........Trump is dashing to the finish line........Clinton looks desperate and just talking about Trump..............look back at some elections of the past.........LBJ 1964, Nixon 1968 & 1972....Truman 1948.....FDR 1940 & 1944......



Is it time to revisit the Electoral College?

2016ecmaplarge

Let me be clear. I am not suggesting that we delete the Electoral College. I do not like direct popular vote elections because of the potential for vote fraud.   
At the same time, we should change how the candidates win the “EV” at every state.     
At the moment, you win California and you get 55 votes, even if you win the state with the plurality of the vote as Mr. Clinton did in 1992! Or you get all of Texas’ 38 votes even if you get 41% of the vote as Mr. Bush in Texas in 1992!   
So how about changing the calculation? The winner of the state gets  2 EV’s immediately and the congressional districts that he or she carried. It makes more sense because it is closer to how people actually voted.
A few years ago, Aaron Bycoffe and Andrei Scheinkman reported on such idea brewing in GOP circles:
Republicans have a new strategy for 2016: Change the rules of presidential elections in order to swing the Electoral College in the GOP’s favor.
On Wednesday, Virginia’s Republican-controlled legislature became one of the first to advance a bill that would allocate electoral votes by congressional district. Last week, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus endorsed pushing through similar proposals in other states with Republican legislative majorities.
The strategy would have states alter the way they translate individual votes into electors — thereby giving Republican candidates an advantage. Had the 2012 election been apportioned in every state according to these new Republican plans, Romney would have led Obama by at least 11 electoral votes.
I disagree that it would give the GOP an immediate advantage. Indeed, it would have changed the EV’s in 2012 but not in 2008, 2004, or 2000. In fact, such a method would have made Mr. Bush’s EV victories in 2004 and 2000 much bigger!
It will require a constitutional amendment and good luck with that. Nevertheless, it would reflect much better the wishes of the electorate.
A couple of weeks ago, we had polls projecting 400 EV’s for Mrs. Clinton with less than 50% of the popular vote. Does that really reflect the wishes of the electorate? I don’t think so.    
Maybe someone has a better idea, but the current Electoral College arrangement is not representative of how people vote. The winner take all provision must be changed to a number that reflects congressional districts.
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

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It's the class warfare that makes me sick!




It's another year and another plan on the table.    

We've been talking taxes for a long time.

The Washington Post has a good editorial in 2009 called Who Pays Taxes:

"In 2006, the top 20 percent of earners paid 70 percent of all federal taxes. 
On average, they paid 26 percent of their income to the government.
The very richest -- the top 1 percent of taxpayers, with household incomes of over $332,000 -- paid 28 percent of all taxes, with an effective tax rate of 31 percent.
The middle three quintiles paid rates of 10, 14 and 18 percent.
The lowest 20 percent of households paid only 0.8 percent of all federal taxes -- and the bottom 90 percent of households paid only 4.5 percent.
Based on these numbers, it would be hard to argue that the country doesn't already have a significantly progressive tax system."


That's right! We have a very progressive tax system. The top earners are clearly paying the bulk of taxes in the US.

Don't misunderstand. I'm OK with the rich paying a lot of taxes.

I just detest the ugly class warfare, specially the class warfare that comes from the Obama White House.

Perhaps, we can simplify our tax code.

I have always a favored a national sales tax and the elimination of our federal income tax.

We have a US$ 15 trillion GDP. I think that we can run our federal government with a national sales tax.


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