Republican Rundown: Top Ten Update

Post Third Debate Edition: Things have changed significantly since my 9/20 Quick Picks post.  Perhaps the biggest development is that Scott Walker dropped out (Hooray!  Is Bush next?).  Jindal, Graham, Santorum, and Pataki remain irrelevant and out of the top ten.  Here are my current thoughts.  Brief two-sentence notes (with ranking I gave them last time noted).  Note: The graphic I've used is once again the 15-day polling average from 2016.republican-candidates.org.

10th (previously 10th), Jeb Bush:  Turns out, it's not just that his last name makes him toxic.  He's actually a terrible candidate who has performed poorly at all three debates and looks completely lost, though he apparently is not lost in the world of Fantasy Football (maybe he should focus on that instead--he needs a better QB anyway).

9th (previously 5th), John Kasich: Bush may have made him look good by comparison, but Kasich had a disastrous (though loud) debate performance.  Also, this is probably an insensitive thing to say, but did anyone else notice that he has some of the mannerisms of Michael J. Fox?

8th (previously 4th), Rand Paul: Paul has continually looked less and less appealing as a candidate and has not performed well in the debates, though he has spouted some memorably questionable lines.  He seems more likely to try to shut down the government that Ted Cruz, and is, at this point, less likeable.

7th (previously 9th), Mike Huckabee: Huckabee has been about average in the debates, and hasn't done anything wildly ridiculous since the Kim Davis incident. But I still don't think he is electable.

6th (previously 6th), Carly Fiorina: I would rate Carly as average in the last debate, though I do agree that seeing her debate Clinton would be spectacular.  But can we do that without having her get the nomination, because our country is already in more trouble than HP under her leadership?

5th (previously 11th), Donald Trump: The prospect of a Trump presidency has become more palatable as many of the other candidates have shown their ineptitude (if you're not top six on my list here, you are one of the remaining eight who needs to drop out of the damn race already).  Trump is still polarizing, questionable morally (though not nearly as much as any of the candidates on the other side) and a loose cannon, but he speaks a lot of truth and conveys his views very clearly.

4th (previously 7th), Ted Cruz: I still think that he sounds like a holier-than-thou preacher much of the time when he talks, but he did well at the last debate.  And for his spectacular smackdown of the CNBC moderator ineptitude alone, I've allowed him a spot in my top four.

3rd (previously 3rd), Chris Christie: Either Cruz or Christie had the moment-of-the-night from the third debate.  Christie did well overall, but saying that the moderator's behavior was considered rude, even in New Jersey, was golden, as was his epic shutdown of the ridiculous Fantasy Football controversy (echoing Cruz's pleas to talk about the real issues!).

2nd (previously 2nd), Marco Rubio: Rubio has looked increasingly seasoned and eloquent as time has gone on.  He's given steadily good performances in the debates and on news programs, while running a positive campaign but still making Jeb Bush look like a complete fool.

1st (previously 1st), Ben Carson: After a less-than-stellar showing in the third debate, I think Rubio has closed the gap a bit in my mind, though having both on the ticket in either position would be fine by me.  The main knock on Carson from Republicans seems to be that he's just too nice, but I still think he could see a lot of success as president, and perhaps help to truly bring the country together again.

When Fantasy Becomes Reality

For those of you who are unaware, Fantasy Sports is when someone drafts a hypothetical team with real players on it and competes against others who do the same thing.  The person whose collection of players performs best in real life wins the Fantasy League they are in with the other competitors.  Prior to the easy-to-manage Fantasy sites online (Yahoo, ESPN, etc), people in Fantasy Leagues actually tracked the statistics using box scores in the newspaper each day.  This was a bit before my time, but I enjoy hearing stories about those good old days.  With the technological advances of the Internet, Fantasy Sports really started to rise to prominence just after the turn of the century, and for many years, groups of friends would create Fantasy Leagues online in which to play against each other.  Sometimes it was just for fun, but usually there would be some amount of money involved.  Congress even passed an exemption for Fantasy Sports to make sure that this sort of thing would not be considered illegal betting.

Fast forward about a decade and suddenly whenever we are watching a sporting event, we are inundated with advertisements for these one-day Fantasy team sites, such as FanDuel and DraftKings.  Huge amounts of money are involved.  New millionaires are made every week.  Hundreds of millions are spent on advertising and endorsements.  And, predictably, there are those who are now calling for the whole operation to be shut down and classified as illegal gambling.  Welcome to America.

Who's trying to shut this down?  It looks to me like the people who aren't getting a slice of the pie.  Government, owners of gambling establishments that view this as competition, people who lost money trying it and are pissed off, and probably some number of people on the far right who believe the Fantasy Sports is immoral, against their religion, and thus should be illegal.

Several states have disallowed these one-day Fantasy Sports sites from operating there.  Not surprisingly, Nevada is one of them.  When people think of Nevada, they think of Las Vegas, and when people think of Vegas, they think of gambling.  I'm sure the gambling lobby is strong there, so why not snuff out any competition they can?  The Nevada Gaming Commission ruled that Daily Fantasy Sports is a form of gambling and would need a license to operate, though these sites have continued to insist that it is not gambling.  It seems to me that this is just the start of a long, large fight on a National level, because it won't surprise me if special interest lobby groups in Washington, D.C. line the pockets of Congressmen in order to get them to outlaw these sites.  Business as usual in the U.S.A.

Here are my problems with this.  Making Daily Fantasy Sports sites illegal would be both hypocritical and government overreaching.  The government is cool with state run lotteries, because they get a ton of money from that, and that is a crystal clear means of pure gambling, where no skill or knowledge is needed whatsoever.  Gambling in casinos is legal in some states if you get a license, and others if you're on an Indian Reservation.  In those cases, some number of influential and already-rich people are continuing to make even more money.  But DraftKings and FanDuel?  It's the startup owners of those sites making moneys, along with some number of regular sports fans every week, and it's become a wildly-popular multi-billion dollar industry.  So clearly, some number of influential and already-rich people want to put a stop to this.

The one thing I agree with in this whole thing is that there needs to be some sort of regulation on it, which would prevent employees of any of these sites from using information not available to the public to their advantage, increasing the chances that they will be able to make money that way.  This is akin to insider trading on the stock market and must not be allowed.  And while I think gambling in general should be legal, and Daily Fantasy Sports is a form of gambling, I DO NOT believe it should be classified as such.  The stock market is gambling too, and it's the closest comparison for Daily Fantasy Sports.  People aren't screaming that, because insider trading can happen, the stock market ought to be shut down.  That's no reason to shut down this industry either.  And the similarities go much deeper than that.  In stocks and Daily Fantasy Sports, you need some specific knowledge to do consistently well.  And that doesn't guarantee that you'll always do well either.  Sometimes someone with little to no knowledge will do better than you, but usually those with more knowledge will do better than those with less knowledge.

If I had my mom pick my Fantasy Football team for me, it probably wouldn't go too well.  If I had my friend's two-year-old pick stocks for me, that probably wouldn't go too well either.  But it might.  You never know.  In the Daily Fantasy Sports world, players ARE the stocks.  And the government needs to leave us, the lay-people, the fans alone.  Seriously, just stay out of it, unless it's to make a law that Daily Fantasy Sports can operate anywhere in this nation.  Because, you know, it's a free country.  At least it used to be.

In the mean time, maybe I'll get lucky and set an amazing lineup, or maybe I'll make some poor choices and lose the entirety of my small deposits, but I'll probably be roughly even.  I started playing several weeks ago and I'm up $13 on FanDuel and down $13 on DraftKings.  That's a difference of $0 to my net worth.  But it's fun.  Play responsibly.

Quick Picks: Democratic Candidates

Well, we've had our first debate for the Democratic candidates, and I actually sat through a solid portion of it (do I get a cookie for that?).  In an effort to fill up the stage rather than just having Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton debate each other, CNN found three random white guys to participate in the debate.  A small percentage of Americans have heard of these other three men before tonight, and they will undoubtedly withdraw from the race soon, leaving the Liberals to choose between Larry David and Doctor Blight.  I mean Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.  My bad there.  But if you fell asleep during the debate and had visions of Curb Your Enthusiasm combined with Captain Planet, that would have been perfectly normal.  As I did with the Republicans earlier, I will rank the candidates, from worst to best, in how good of a choice they would be to represent their party in the general election.  Since there are fewer candidates, I will allow myself a few more sentences for each candidate this time.

6th, Lincoln Chafee: The only thing I can see that qualifies this man to be president, apart from his first name, is that he actually kind of stood up against Hillary at one point during the debate.  He's got to be pretty close to pulling out.  I think the only reason he was in in the first place was because someone asked, "Is anyone here named Washington or Lincoln who wants to be a candidate for President?"

5th, Martin O'Malley: O'Malley actually made some strong statements and had stood up to Hillary at times.  He's also a distant third in the polls, a virtual unknown, and has no chance of getting his party's nomination, let alone beating the Republican nominee.  He also appears to be pretty far to the left and unwilling to compromise.

4th, Jim Webb: Webb sounded intelligent and thoughtful during the debate, and he's not afraid to stray from the mainstream Democratic views on several issues.  On some issues, I agree with Webb, and he appears strong and willing to speak out against what he believes is wrong.  He sounds like the only moderate Democratic candidate, which is why I have him ranked ahead of Chafee and O'Malley, since that may get him some Independent votes in the general election if he had any shot whatsoever of getting there, which he does not.

3rd, Hillary Clinton: Those who are offended that Donald Trump is the leading candidate for Republicans should be offended tenfold that Hillary Clinton is the leading candidate for Democrats.  Hillary is an embarrassment, a criminal, and a nasty person.  I'm not sure which of her many scandals is worse, but she belongs in prison, not in the White House.  Virtually any woman picked at random in America would do a better job than her as Commander-in-Chief, and I would feel more secure too.  The absurd funding from super PACs is sickening, the idea that the type of "change" she would bring would be any better than what Obama has brought does not make sense, and she simply modifies all her views to whatever is best for her politically.  An uneventful moment in the debate perfectly proved that point for me, as she was asked if she was ready to take a stance on whether or not marijuana should be legally nationally, and her response was that she was not yet ready to take a stance and that we need to do more research.  Of course, five minutes of research will paint a pretty clear picture of why marijuana should be legal, if not the results of weed having been legal for well over a year in several states already.  The real reason that Hillary won't take a stand here is the same reason that she opposed gay marriage for so long, and it's not because her views "evolved" like everyone's views evolve on something (heck, even mine have changed over the years on gay marriage).  Once public opinion clearly shows that the issue is trending further toward legalization and that it is no longer a divisive issue for the Left, Hillary's opinion will go the same way.  Oh, and the other candidates all missed a really easy point of attack here when she agreed with Bernie Sanders that people shouldn't be imprisoned for marijuana violations: An obvious solution to that problem is legalization.  I really strongly dislike Hillary, as you may have realized by now, but I also don't think she would do well in the general election, because she is a polarizing figure and a terrible, scandal-ridden candidate.

2nd, Bernie Sanders: I want to like Bernie.  I really do.  Bernie is the one candidate for the Democrats that truly would bring change.  His views on marijuana and super PACs are spot-on, and even a handful of his other economic views make sense.  But the problem is that he is, very literally, a Socialist.  The changes he would bring are Socialist changes.  Many of his views have been consistent though, even when they were unpopular.  Sanders supported gay marriage before I was born, and he's been speaking the same on economic issues for decades.  But there is one important exception here, and that's gun control.  Sanders, once endorsed by the NRA as a candidate for the Senate, pointed out in the debate several times that he now has a D- grade from them.  As he's gained popularity on the far left, Sanders has predictably become less gun-friendly, because pro-gun does not sit well with his far-left base.  But while other candidates are further to the left than Sanders on gun control, nominating him would be a giant lurch to the left, even for the Democratic party.  It would, however, energize the base.  Sanders is likable, and will garner some Independent votes, but he is a Socialist.

1st, Joe Biden: Biden would basically just continue to Obama administration, and is not a particularly strong candidate, or even a candidate at all at this point.  But if he declares his candidacy, it would not be difficult for him to get the nomination and compete in the general election, because, for some reason, people like him.  I don't like him, but I suspect that the reason people do is because he's not Hillary and he's not a Socialist.  The real winner of the debate wasn't even on the stage tonight.  Was it Joe Biden, or was it the Republicans?

Financial Reform Makes Cents

I don't have all the answers on economic policy, and I don't pretend to.  Thus, this is my first post on the subject, and the title even has a lazy pun in it.  But the truth is that something needs to be done about the absurd financial disparity in this country.  And I say that with a stark record of not being a socialist.

Under the Obama administration, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer, to the point of epic and disturbing proportions.  The very rich are richer than ever, while a large portion of Americans struggle to get by paycheck to paycheck.  There's no easy solution, but let's take a look at some of the ideas that are being floated around and think about whether or not they would have positive impact on the nation as a whole.

It doesn't seem right that folks making tens of millions of dollars per year pay less of a percentage to the government than folks making tens of thousands of dollars per year.  I can see a flat tax having positive impact.  We just need to figure out what that percentage number should be.  But I also believe that those below the poverty line should not have to pay this same tax percentage.  If a single mother of two is trying to make ends meet with two low-paying part-time jobs, she needs that little bit of money a lot more than the government does.  And while we're at it, there's a lot of talk about how social security is in trouble.  I know that a pretty high percentage of my check goes toward social security.  I also know that a very low percentage of the checks of the very rich go toward social security.  Take a higher percentage from them and put it in the social security pool.  If this sounds like a socialist idea, I don't care.  It makes sense.

A flat tax would simplify taxes and, quite honestly, I would be perfectly fine if the power of the IRS was diminished or the IRS was abolished altogether.  I don't trust the IRS, and the IRS has proven to be untrustworthy and partisan.  And most government organizations are really just terrible and inefficient anyway, and the thing they are best at is wasting taxpayer money.

The idea of raising minimum wage to $15 per hour across the board though is not a good one.  Perhaps that is an appropriate rate in New York City and San Francisco--that can be left up to local governments--but it is not an appropriate rate in most towns in America.  It would actually cause the number of jobs to decrease, or even more small businesses to close because they can't afford to pay that much.  And most of the folks in minimum wage jobs are young people, unskilled labor, etc.  A minimum wage job should not be a long-term life funding solution.  Not everyone deserves to be making $15 per hour.  Sorry.  And if the push for that sort of dramatic hike in minimum wage continues, I would expect to see even more jobs disappear.  Self checkout has been bad enough.  But when your job can be replaced by a computer, you shouldn't be making $15 per hour.

How does one get out of the rut of a minimum wage job?  College is one way, and there are cheaper college options, though the cost of tuition has continued to go up at obscene rates.  Interest rates are very low.  So should they be on student loans.  Student loans should not be predatory.  But they also should not be simply forgiven by the government in a redistribution of wealth.  If you've had a higher education, you should eventually be able to pay off those loans.  Subsidization programs are also often helpful and appropriate.

Finally, what do we do to help the poor?  The correct answer here is not nothing, or that it's their own fault that they are poor.  Do you honestly think that Jesus would have said that?  Obviously not.  We need to do what we can as a society to help feed, shelter, and clothe the poor.  The very rich have an obligation to help the very poor, from a moral standpoint anyway.  If you are a billionaire, and you give no money to charities, you need to do some real soul-searching...

I guess when it comes to Economics, I don't fall neatly into either end of the conservative versus liberal spectrum, but I realize that something needs to change in this country.  The income disparity in this country is truly not a good thing.  I mean, really, some of these very rich celebrities spend more money on pampering their pets in a week than some families have to spend on food for the whole year.  Something is wrong with that picture.  I am in favor of Capitalism and not in favor of Socialism, but what we are doing now isn't fully working.  The middle class is suffering.  The policies under the Obama administration (as well as the Bush administration) have made this problem worse.  Many people believed that Bush was for the rich, but Obama was touted as a champion of the middle class, and he has proven to be very much the opposite of that.  That's part of the reason why Bernie Sanders, who is literally a Socialist, looks like a legitimate candidate for President of the United States.  Of course, the other part is how terrible of a candidate Hillary Clinton is and the apparent disarray of the Republican Party.  But that's an entirely different kind of flying altogether (it was time for an Airplane! reference).

To end, I realize that statistics can be manipulated to appear to show whatever you want them to show, but these graphs look pretty scary.  Partisan?  Perhaps.  But worthy of thought and discussion nonetheless: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-09-16/obamas-recovery-just-9-charts