Tuesday, June 27, 2017

The travel ban, Russia story, Seattle & Obama Care




Tags: Russia and Obama, Trump and the travel, Seattle minimum wage, Obama Care & GOP To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Gingrich on Trump by Barry Casselman

We've had Barry Casselman on our show many times.   He is one of our favorite guests and a gentleman as well.   This is Barry's review of Newt Gingrich's "Understanding Trump".   At the moment, the book is a huge best seller:


Occasionally, a book breaks all the rules of what makes a book
important, and it perhaps it should not surprise us when both 
the subject and the author of the book break all the rules, too. 

In order to tell my readers about this book, I have to break some 
rules myself.

Let me explain. The book I am reviewing is by a good and old 
friend.  If I managed a large website with many co-writers, the 
simple solution would be to assign the book to someone else. 
I can’t do that so I will try to be as transparent as I can be, and 
let the reader decide how to evaluate what I say.

I have known Newt Gingrich for more than three decades. When I
first met him he was a backbencher in Congress and a thorn in the
side of the then-Democratic Speaker of the House Jim Wright. 

Newt and his “Conservative  Opportunity Society” colleagues
formed a small band of constant critics of the then Democratic
majority with daily house floor speeches on camera, and 
broadcast on C-SPAN. That camera, incidentally, was fixed and
did not reveal that Newt and his friends were, other than the chair, 
often the only ones in the chamber. (It was a canny and pioneer 
political use of early cable TV.)

From being political nuisances, Newt and his group rose in 
prominence at the Capitol, culminating in his being elected 
Republican minority whip in 1989, and then his becoming 
speaker of the house following the upset Republican victory in 
the “Contract With America” mid-term election of 1994 that
marked a new direction in U.S. politics.

I did not ever work for Newt, but we collaborated on projects and
co-wrote an article on presidential debates for Real Clear Politics. 
We lived in different cities,  but thanks to the internet and frequent 
travel, we have remained in touch for more than 30 years.

I have had political disagreements with him, and he with me, 
but I have made no secret about my admiration for him as one 
of the nation’s few original political minds (in either party), 
and a rare political survivor. He demonstrated this again in
2011-12 by becoming a serious presidential candidate (even
briefly, the frontrunner) in that cycle, partly through his
formidable debate appearances and grasp of the issues.

He has often been controversial in both his public and private
life, but he has demonstrated the knack of being pertinent and
trenchant through all the recent U.S. political cycles. How many
other American political figures can this be said about?

He has written and co-written several books, including ones on 
public policy, American history, and lately, two fictional spy 
thrillers. I’ve read them all. Now he has written something quite 
different. It’s title is self-explanatory --- Understanding Trump. 
It’s based on Newt’s first-hand experience with the new president 
before, during and after the 2016 presidential campaign turned 
American politics upside down. 

There have been, and will be, many books trying to explain
Donald Trump, but this one is so good, in my opinion, that I am 
going to review it for my readers. As I said previously, readers
knowing my full disclosure, and my own decades of commentary 
writing, can decide if my comments are accurate and useful, or not.

In Understanding Trump, Newt makes no secret that his 
realization of who Donald Trump was, and why he succeeded
in 2016, took some time. Newt’s analysis is deferential, frequently
partisan, and in some ways, self-serving. It is also on occasion
critical of his subject, and almost always incisive. 

One point I can personally testify to is that Newt figured out 
Donald Trump’s success and skill well before most others. I was
a skeptic about the man who is now president during all of 2015 
and in early 2016, but in several private conversations with Newt 
in that period and later, he argued forcefully that Mr. Trump would 
succeed and why he would win the election.

Underlying Understanding Trump is the premise that most of the
new president’s opponents, much of the media, and even many of 
his supporters have little or no comprehension of the man, how he 
thinks and acts, and of his extraordinary skills in the public arena.

I have no intention or desire here of trying to persuade those who 
disagree with Donald Trump to change their minds about what he 
is doing or stands for --- or even to like him. What I do want to 
communicate is that this book gives all of us, supporters, 
opponents or critics, and uncommitted observers, a useful and 
original perspective of who Donald Trump really is, and his 
historic role in American politics.

Understanding Trump is now reportedly the number one best seller
on the New York Times list (interestingly, replacing Al Franken’s
new book as number one).

For forty tumultuous years, Newt Gingrich has remained at the
cutting edge of American politics and public policy. Like his
subject in Understanding Trump, he remains controversial, 
criticized, and underestimated, but now in his 70’s, he is still

amazingly at the center of it all.

Thanks to Barry for the great review.  It's time to read it and gain more information about the Trump presidency.

You can get the book HERE.

Tags: Barry Casselman reviews the new Trump book  by Newt Gingrich  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

A ‘minimum wage’ that kills wages


economics
Perry Como once recorded a very popular song called “Seattle“. It went like this:  
The bluest skies you’ve ever seen in Seattle
And the hills the greenest green in Seattle
Like a beautiful child growing up free and wild
Full of hopes and full of fears Full of laughter full of tears
Full of dreams to last the years in Seattle In Seattle
Nobody is talking about blue skies or green hills in Seattle these days. Instead, they are getting a very serious lesson in Economics 101, or what happens when you raise wages to pander for votes and end up hurting the people you were trying to help.  
It goes like this:   
As cities across the country pushed their minimum wages to untested heights in recent years, some economists began to ask: How high is too high?
 
Seattle, with its highest-in-the-country minimum wage, may have hit that limit.
In January 2016, Seattle’s minimum wage jumped from $11 an hour to $13 for large employers, the second big increase in less than a year. 
New research released Monday by a team of economists at the University of Washington suggests the wage hike may have come at a significant cost: 
The increase led to steep declines in employment for low-wage workers, and a drop in hours for those who kept their jobs. 
Crucially, the negative impact of lost jobs and hours more than offset the benefits of higher wages — on average, low-wage workers earned $125 per month less because of the higher wage, a small but significant decline.
Why is anybody shocked? This is so obvious that it makes you wonder about the people who keep voting for these charlatans.
In the real world, reality always has the last word. You can not pay someone $13 an hour just because a city council member wants a talking point.   Wages are a by product of economic reality not political pandering. Politicians are no more qualified to tell employers what they must pay than to force them to provide health care they can’t afford.
As my old economics professor used to say: “the employer does not have to pay you what you want to get paid… he writes the check, you know.”
Indeed he does!  In Seattle, many employers have decided that they can’t write those checks anymore. So they have cut back employee hours or simply stopped hiring or closed the business.
Another great day for socialism but terrible for the workers!
P.S. You can listen to my show (Canto Talk), (YouTube) and follow me on Twitter.

Tags: Seattle and the minimum wage To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

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