Presidential News & Notes

I'm not doing this much on Friday, so here:



This is why Kasich and especially Rubio are still running.  I have my doubts that Republicans would actually ignore the express will of their voters, but nevertheless, there are a substantial number of folks out there who seem to be banking on this kind of play.



Heh.



The papers keep saying that Bernie can't win, but Sanders himself certainly doesn't seem to have realized it.  Still, even if you take out the super-delegate totals, he's not as close as his supporters might like you to believe.  Most Democrats, I think, really want Clinton.



What I noticed this week is that Sanders and Trump have the same key issue at the core of their campaigns, and it's Free Trade.  Bottom line, they are both massive protectionists.  If there's one thing that's animating this presidential contest, it's that folks are tired of losing their jobs to companies overseas, they're tired of competing with under priced workers coming in on H1B visas, and they don't think that cheap textiles and consumer electronics is adequate compensation all on its own.

I'm of two minds about this issue.  On one hand, I agree with Warren Buffet.  Standards of living have never been higher in an absolute sense.  However, we only get there by exploiting overseas labor markets, forcing others to do what we could do for ourselves in exchange for wages that we would never accept here at home.

Outsourcing also allows companies to ignore pesky environmental laws and other kinds of things that, in America, we would think were very important.  Or, to put it another way, outsourcing works because we're exporting our worst bad habits.  This is ultimately counter-productive on a global scale.  However, there are folks making a shitload of money from it, and here we are.



"Unsurmountable" is a new term of art in electoral politics, I guess.  It's not to be confused with "insurmountable", which describes a thing that you cannot climb over or otherwise overcome.

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