Month: February 2018

Just back from the market; had to pick up a few essentials.

On the return trip, as I was exiting the parking lot, I had to pause a few moments adjacent to the professional beggar who was manning the usual Panhandler’s Spot next to the left turn lane.

There is quite a competition for this choice spot (I’ll call it “A”), because it is a lot better than the one a few hundred yards down the street at the I-15 northbound off-ramp (the “B” spot). And, that one is probably superior to spot “C”, which is at the top of the southbound I-15 off-ramp just down the street. No shade there, and it’s a long walk over to the restroom at McDonalds.

We’ve lived in Bear Creek for thirty years, and, back in the old days, there was no commercial development up at the freeway interchange (I-15 and Clinton-Keith Road).  In fact, there was nothing but one stop sign half the way to our brand new golf club community.

In the intervening years, the area between our community and the freeway has exploded with retail commercial activity. So, there’s lots of traffic, going in and out, lots of cars slowing down in turn lanes, etc. In other words, its choice real estate for bums to panhandle.

I recognize many of these guys (and, occasional gal); they’ve been plying their trade at locations A, B, and C for years. Some have the same folded cardboard signs that they’ve been using (or, abusing) all along: “Will Work for Food”; “Have Compassion”; “Just Laid Off — Two Kids to Feed” (usually, that’s a woman); “Christian — God Bless You”; “Any Spare Change?”, etc.

That’s the dead giveaway…the folded cardboard sign. It means that they use it often…it’s their “business card”, so to speak.

These pros are tough-looking; many have rotten teeth…like you would expect of a meth tweeker. Sometimes they have a dog sitting next to them for sympathy.

Occasionally, it’s a young child. I hate those shameless creeps, who are teaching their kids how to beg. Saw this one on the Internet: a pregnant lady with kid. The news story said that she drove to the panhandling spot in a Mercedes!

Most of our local beggar dudes look sturdy enough to work. It’s not easy (I’m sure) standing out in the open all day long, holding a sign, and trying to look honest and earnest. One guy has an elaborate routine he goes through (like a Catholic priest), “crossing himself” whenever someone throws him some change.

I’m not a totally unsympathetic guy, and I’ve been known to donate money to charities, help neighbors in need, and do good deeds simply because it feels right and I’m lucky that I’m not in their shoes.

But, these professional beggars get under my skin. They’re just playing on the sympathies of passersby…involved in a criminal conspiracy, if you ask me. There is no doubt that the “crew” that mans our local choice panhandling spots is being run by a facilitator. Like I said, it’s the same guys (probably a dozen), rotating back and forth from a couple of freeway interchanges in the area.

Some years back, when Charlie and I lived in Riverside, there were four choice panhandling spots at the Tyler/91 Freeway interchange, one at each ramp. When I came out of the sporting goods store, I noticed all four of the professional bums walking over to a Cadillac that was parked well back in the large parking lot. I observed them get in and get handed their lunch by the driver. It was Christmastime, and I’ll bet that crew was making some pretty good money for their “pimp”.

 

If I lived up in La Cresta (the hills behind Bear Creek) and had horses, I think I’d take up one of these earnest beggars who advertise their willingness to “work for food”…and have them muck out horse stalls for a couple of hours. Of course, that presumes that the guy would actually get in the car and head off for some real work. I’m pretty sure that “Will Work for Food” is just a ploy, and that the panhandler would rather go hungry than actually get his hands dirty.

There is a homeless guy (?) that has worked this area for many years whom I think is actually legitimate in his need. I believe that he lives in a heavily-treed area just down the street from the freeway. He doesn’t beg like the pros; rather, he has a routine pretty much every day where he collects cans and bottles and takes them to the nearest recycling center. I respect this guy because he’s out there, working his route, pretty much rain or shine…even in the Summer, which can get really hot here. It’s work…and it’s honest…although he might only bring in $15 a day.

I befriended the Recycling Guy a couple of years ago by handing him a couple of bags of cans and plastic bottles that I had collected. He seemed very grateful. I did it a couple of times and felt pretty good about it. Then, one day, I tracked him down and gave him a big bag of aluminum cans…and he kind of turned his nose up at it. I was puzzled, and then…annoyed…when he asked me if I had any “spare change”. I realized afterwards that the recycling center was closed on that day, so the guy was probably miffed that he would have to carry the bag all the way back to his tree house. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t! He’s probably told his buddies what an asshole I am.

There are gas stations at all four corners of the I-15/Clinton Keith intersection, and they are the focus of gas-related scams by the same professionals. They’ll approach you when you’re filling up your tank and break into a sad story about how their car just ran out of gas…and point to it over in the parking lot. “I just need a gallon to get home…I left my wallet there!” It’s a pretty productive scam, if you think about it. At the corner, panhandling the folks coming out of the grocery store parking lot, they might get a dollar handed to them every so often. But, a gallon of gas…well, that’s about three dollars. So, time is money, as they say; these guys have figured out how to make the big bucks.

It would be interesting to know how much money these skunks pull in over an 8-hour shift. They must do OK, for themselves and their handlers, because they keep coming back, day after day.

 

I saw these items on the Internet: dudes who made pretty good money for a day’s begging.

I saw my friend George, who’s pretty tight with his money, hand one of the “regulars” a dollar last week. Go figure.

It must be nice, not having to work like normal stiffs.

 

 

 

Another tax season is upon us. Charlie, who is an IRS-certified tax preparer, will be busy from now until April 15th.

She is passing the day-to-day work and responsibility of her bookkeeping business over to son Jonathan…that’s him on left with Charlie.

With every month, Jonathan is handling more and more of CMB, needing less supervision and hand-holding from Charlie. This allows her to focus on tax preparation, which she will continue to do even after she “retires” from bookkeeping.

My wife, who is a very gregarious and nurturing type, loves doing folks taxes, and finding various ways to minimize their tax burden. her clients are her little children; she takes good care of them.

She’s got at least fifty regular clients, all by referral, and it seems that every year one of them or more refers a friend or relative. So, Charlie will never be without tax clients.

This year everyone is waiting to see what Trump’s “tax reform” did for them (or, to them). So far, it seems that everyone is getting a bit of a return, so there’s some happiness among the clients.

(Unfortunately, Trump’s tax giveaway, which overwhelmingly favors the very-wealthy, was not matched by a reduction in Federal spending. Thus, the $ trillion feel-good gimmick, meant to prop up the Presidency, will be paid for by our children and grandchildren. It’s a totally irresponsible stunt by the GOP, but it enabled them to deliver the goods to the wealthy 1%…the folks who pay for their re-election campaigns. Shame on them!)

BTW, Charlie and I are getting a giant tax refund this year. It has nothing to do with Donald Trump (although he would claim credit if he knew about it!). What’s really happened is that Charlie’s net business income decreased somewhat in 2017, while her quarterly estimated tax payments to the I.R.S. (which were based upon a projected increase in income) ramped up from 2016. So, we overpaid our tax massively, and Uncle Donald owes us a wad. Yeah, Baby!!

The extra money will come in handy because…

…we will be putting our home up for sale after tax season, right about the time we ship out on our 2018 RV Road Trip. Our oldest son, Tim, will be selling the house for us. He’s a Realtor…that’s him on the left.

Tim sold my Mom’s place last year for the family Trust. He’s pretty good at real estate.

(We think it would be a good idea to sell the house before the economy tanks. The Dow Jones index dropped another 1,000 points this morning. Mr. Bragger-in-Chief has been uncharacteristically mute today; up until now, he has chosen to use the Dow Jones index as the measuring stick of his Presidency.)

Charlie, Tim and I did a walk-thru last week to see what, if anything, needed to be done to make it “Open House”-ready. In Tim’s opinion, nothing substantial required…just take down a lot of the personal items, do a little touch-up painting, clean it nice, and…let the fun begin.

We have an unusual property. We sit up high, looking down on other homes nearby. We have a nice wrap-around walk in the back, connecting two patios, both of which get nice shade in the Summer, which is critical here. Most of the properties nearby don’t have such a feature, certainly not as nice as ours. We also have the largest and best floor plan of similar homes in our  neighborhood. Our landscaping is very nice…lots of custom stuff…Charlie keeps it beautiful.  And, we have nicely decorated our house: lots of art, nice doodads, flowers, etc. When a buyer walks in our front door, he/she is looking down into our living room (which has a 20′ ceiling) and out some very large windows to the tree-shaded back patio. Very impressive…it’s what sold us the minute we saw it twenty years ago.

Well, it’s not that impressive, but it’s our “castle”, and we’re pretty proud of it.

Who knows what we can get for our house, but Tim will price it right and it will sell, I’m sure. We’re committed to leaving, so it will be done. Hopefully, we will get a buyer by the end of May. All we need is one “sucker” (HaHa).

By then, we will have scoped-out Las Vegas and will have decided on neighborhoods that would interest us. Hopefully, we will hook up with a local Realtor who can be on the lookout for properties that meet our specs: 1,200 to 1,600 s.f.; single-story; nice backyard surrounded by cinder block walls; no pool; and, no H.O.A. We’re officially done with condo living. Max cost = about $300,000. There are hundreds of these homes in Las Vegas;  we only need one.

Until then, I’ve got my eye on this fixer upper.

We’ll probably set aside $50K for remodeling. That way, Charlie can get it exactly the way she wants it. A happy wife means a happy life…right?

 

 

 

President Trump and his band of merry men have been busy this week undermining America’s law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Nothing new with that; Trump castigated them during his campaign last year, as he did our military leadership.

But, now he’s RESPONSIBLE for these agencies. One can only imagine what the thousands of F.B.I. employees feel about their Boss, and how hard they must want to work to Make America Great Again.

(Or, conversely, how hard they might want to work for Special Counsel Mueller.)

Somehow, the whole Russia-gate “witch hunt” (as the President has called it) has seemingly boiled down to two guys: Mr. Christopher Steele and Mr. Carter Page. Or, at least that’s what President Trump, Congressman Nunes, and the GOP would have us all believe.

One theory, if one could call it such, is that this guy (Page) was inappropriately surveilled by the U.S. government…because he was a foreign policy campaign advisor to Donald Trump…and that would be, well…unfair and maybe illegal. Therefore, goes the argument, the whole Russia-gate collusion investigation is tainted and…who knows what other machinations are going on over in the F.B.I. to bring down our beloved President.

“It’s shameful”, said Mr. Trump today.

Actually, what is shameful is the threadbare allegations that Congressman Nunes has put together and Trump has publicly released (against the advice of the FBI and CIA), conveniently omitting relevant information that would put the entire Carter Page story into perspective.

But, it’s got the Fox News talking heads drooling.

For one, Mr. Carter Page was on America’s intelligence radar screen three years before Donald Trump ran for President. He was an American energy consultant who worked on transactions involving Gazprom and other leading energy companies. Gazprom is owned by the Russian government; i.e. the CEO is Vladimir Putin, the Prez’ BFF.

While Carter Page was doing a lot of work in Moscow, the Russian intelligence service attempted to recruit him. U.S. intelligence agencies found out and apparently assumed that  Mr.  Page’s loyalties might be up for grabs.

Shortly thereafter (2014) a FISA warrant was issued authorizing surveillance of Mr. Page’s electronic communications.  FISA is shorthand for U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. A warrant to eavesdrop must be recommended by several top U.S. agencies and then must be approved by a special court. The FISA warrant request was approved, all the way up the line, implying that something about Carter Page smelled fishy to our intelligence folks.

This FISA surveillance was approved two years before Donald Trump announced his run for President, so politics had nothing to do with the FISA warrant.

Donald Trump brought politics into the Carter Page story when he engaged Mr.  Page as a foreign policy advisor for the 2016 Presidential campaign.

The F.B.I. opened an investigation into Carter Page when he became part of the Trump campaign because of Page’s suspicious contacts with a nation under U.S. economic and political sanctions. This would be standard operating procedure; it’s what our counterintelligence agencies do.

When news of the investigation surfaced, Mr. Page stepped down from the Trump campaign.

At about the same time, ex-General Michael Flynn, who had been Trump’s chief foreign policy advisor during the campaign, came under scrutiny for HIS dealings with the Russians.

(Nominated by Trump to be National Security Advisor, Flynn was found to have lied about his Russian contacts on behalf of the President-elect, was dropped like a hot potato by Mr. Trump, and plead guilty to lying to the F.B.I. He’s now “singing” to the Special Counsel.)

The damage was done, however, because of Page’s and Flynn’s involvement in the campaign, and because of then-candidate Trump’s conciliatory and often laudatory comments about Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin. The whole mess smelled like week-old haddock. As does the Nunes memo.

Not surprisingly, President Trump now denies that Carter Page was an “advisor” during the campaign. (He also denies Global Warming and Evolution; if he could fire them, he would.)

Footnote: The FISA warrant regarding Carter Page has been repeatedly renewed since 2014, indicating that something about the guy is disconcerting, national security-wise. By the way, the four top-echelon FBI guys who have supported the issuance of the FISA warrant are all Republicans. Evidently, they are actually Republicans who care about national security, a sub-species of the GOP which seems to be in short supply lately.

Interestingly, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is also a Republican, was appointed to lead the investigation by Republicans, and is a former FBI Director who was appointed to a ten-year term by President George W.  Bush, also a Republican. The F.B.I., it’s leader at the time, James Comey, the C.I.A., and Robert Mueller, who was retired at the time, we’re all great Republican patriots…until they started looking into Carter Page. Then, they became bad guys.

The other hot-button issue for Trump and the GOP relating to the Russia-gate investigation is the so-called “Steele Dossier”. It contains inflammatory allegations about Mr. Trump and his team, and is pointed at by the GOP as Democratic “dirty tricks” and, therefore, not credible or suitable in this matter.

Some background is necessary…

Christopher Steele is a retired MI6 intelligence officer. MI6 is the British equivalent of our C.I.A. Mr.Steele was head of the “Russia desk” at MI6 when he retired after 22 years of service, meaning he was their expert on Russian intelligence matters. He was obviously held in high esteem to warrant this position. After his retirement, in 2009, Steele formed a private intelligence agency called Orbis Business Intelligence, Inc., providing information to whomever was willing to pay the freight.

The “dossier” was part of opposition research on Donald Trump; in other words, other candidates wanted to find dirt on this political upstart. The research (by research firm Fusion GPS) was initially funded in 2015 during the Republican primary campaign by The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website primarily funded by Republican donor Paul Singer. Mr.  Trump was not a popular candidate among conservative Republicans at the time, so it is altogether normal that Republican opponents would try to dig up some dirt on him.

When Donald Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee, The Free Beacon stopped funding the research.

The research was then picked up and funded by (surprise!) the Democratic National Committee, who was looking to dig up dirt on it’s new opponent, Donald Trump. As part of the new project, Fusion GPS hired Orbis (Christopher Steele) to look into Mr.  Trump’s  dealings with Russia. According to Fusion GPS, Steele was not told that the DNC was the customer paying for the research.

Eventually, Steele uncovered a variety of troubling (to him) connections between the Russian government and Donald Trump.  He found them to serious enough that he shared his findings with the F.B.I. Of course, the F.B.I. was already alerted to suspicious goings on between Trump operative Carter Page and the Russians, and Steele’s research probably sent shivers down the Agency’s spine.

At just about the time that the 2016 Presidential election was concluding, Steele, on his own initiative because he didn’t feel the F.B.I. was moving on his allegations, released most of his “dossier” (16 memos, 33 pages) to the press, unleashing a…shitstorm, to put it mildly.

No one but Donald Trump (and, probably, Special Counsel Robert Mueller) knows whether the allegations contained in the dossier are factual, partly-factual, or non-factual supposition. President Trump has, of course, labeled the entire Steele Dossier as “fake”. On the other hand, Mr. Steele is a well-regarded expert on slimy goings on in Russia, and Mueller is well aware of this.

So, President Trump and the GOP are very unhappy that the Steele Dossier exists, and is apparently being used (to some degree) by the Special Counsel’s investigative team. Since the research project was funded (eventually) by the Democrats, there is an effort by Trump and Associates to brand Steele’s work as fundamentally flawed, contaminated, and totally partisan B.S.

But, then, we have to remember who started this game…a conservative Republican patriot who wanted to examine the mysterious candidate Trump in fine detail. If the research had panned out early enough, it could have derailed the Trump candidacy and resulted in a different GOP opponent for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Now, that’s a disgusting thought!

But, really, who can blame anyone for looking into Donald Trump. He’s a master of hiding what he does, who’s working for him, how much money he makes, how much taxes he pays, etc. His nature is that he incites investigations by his slimy business dealings and the company he keeps. If he were a bit more transparent, and normal, there may not be so much mystery and suspicion regarding the guy.

It seems obvious to most people that, due to the numerous attempts by Trump and his accomplices to obstruct inquiries into his mysterious dealings, there’s got to be a substantial amount of dirt under the proverbial carpet. It feels…Nixonian.

Update: Yesterday, Republican Congressman Trey Gowdy, the Benghazi-obsessed attack dog who spent the past two years distracting Americans from the Trump catastrophe, admitted that Congressman Nunes inflammatory memo “does not in any way discredit the (Mueller) investigation”. Wow! But, we already knew that…as does everyone else in Washington D.C.

Now that Republican Gowdy has announced that he will not seek re-election, it appears that he has grown a set of testicles.

I suspect that more GOP Congressmen (the one’s up for re-election) will similarly start to back peddle on their support of President Trump as the November, 2018 mid-term election nears.

The man will likely be radioactive by then.

By the way, the stock market (Dow Jones Average) dropped like a stone this past week…including the biggest one-day decline in history. President Trump, who was trumpeting the performance of “his” market virtually every other day, has been pretty silent this week.

 

 

All dyed-in-the-wool football fans know what the “Hail Mary” is.

Your team is losing by three points or more, with just a few seconds left on the game clock, and you’re fifty yards or so from the end zone. You’ve pretty much lost the game; the opposing team players have big smiles, and the subs on the sidelines are high-fiving each other and patting butts. Someone is carrying the Gatorade cooler toward the coach.

But, in that last play, as time expires, the opposing quarterback lets fly a 60 yard rainbow “prayer” pass to the opponents end zone…

…where there are about a dozen guys jostling, kicking, biting, and elbowing as the pass drops toward them. And, then, miraculously, in the mad scrum that is taking place, the ball finds its way into the hands of the “good guys”…i.e. your team…who go from losers to winners in a split second.

Prayer answered: thank you, Jesus! (Uh, I mean Mary!)

That’s the Hail Mary Pass play…something concocted out of pure desperation. Nine times out of ten…it doesn’t work. But, when you have no hope, why not give it a shot?

In the tragicomic soap opera that the Trump presidency has become, the principals (the GOP and the President himself) have evidently decided that they need to employ the Hail Mary Pass in order to somehow save the day.

The long-rumored “secret” memo of Congressman Devin Nunes, a theory of political collusion based upon cherry-picked facts meant to smear the F.B.I.  and to fit Special Counsel Robert Mueller with a pair of concrete boots…

was publicly released today on the authority President Trump…who is already being investigated for conspiring to impede the Russia-gate investigation.

Hail Mary Pass prediction: This desperate 2018 chicken-winged wobbler ain’t gonna make the end zone, Mr. Prez.

One wonders how it fell  to Congressman Devin Nunes to carry the water for President Trump. Nunes is a lightweight California Republican who represents agricultural interests in the San Joaquin Valley, and his only claim to fame is his previous attempt to run interference for Mr. Trump on a bogus “unmasking” issue regarding the 2016 campaign.

I’m guessing that Nunes stepped up to the plate because no other GOP official wanted to expose himself to such shame. He’s an opportunist; maybe his loyalty to the Prez will earn him a Cabinet position?

The Hail Mary Pass that he’s throwing on behalf of Donald Trump may, simultaneously, be a desperation ploy for upward mobility. Because, Republicans with power in California are as rare as hen’s teeth.

Anyway, the Nunes memo, approved by Republican-only members of the House Intelligence Committee (there’s an oxymoron!) doesn’t seem to be much of a “smoking gun” for malfeasance or worse by FBI brass. There’s a lot missing, which the Democratic members of the Committee would like to point out, but the Chairman (Nunes) has forbidden the Dem committee members from publicly commenting. This is a sure sign that the memo is a lame, desperate ploy.

That the once-proud party of Lincoln would stoop this low to protect a scumbag like Donald Trump is extremely disappointing. During the primary campaign, many respected candidates and former President Bush actually called him scumbag, or worse. Now, the GOP establishment is colluding to obstruct justice on his behalf. They should be ashamed…but aren’t.

And, so, it will fall on the Press, poring over the memo with former intelligence operatives, to determine if the thing has any credibility whatsoever or is simply the smokescreen that it appears.

Fox News will trumpet the thing as the Holy Grail of unveiled secret proof that the Deep State is alive and well…

…and the professional journalistic world will, eventually, poke holes in it where the facts and logic are thin.

This should take place within the next few days.

Meanwhile, Mueller’s posse is sure to be energized by the Hail Mary futility of the memo…it almost surely tell them that they’re on the right track.

As evidence of the disaster about to unfold in 2018, a record number of Republican Congressmen have decided not to run for re-election come this November. And, scores of Trump Administration appointees have resigned to seek other opportunities.

Meanwhile, now that the President has his perceived “proof” of the conspiracy against him, when can we expect him to start chopping off heads over at the FBI?

Well, for Trump, it’s 4th down, his team is is desperation mode, the Special Counsel’s forces are coming hard, so…in typical Trump fashion, he’ll probably shove all of his chips to the center of the table…and go boom or bust.

Yep, it’s Hail Mary time again. He’s limbering up his arm…

This week is my guess.

And, then, we have another constitutional crisis, just like Watergate.

And we know how that ended.

 

 

 

A good friend of mind sent me a copy of an email from a guy who feels compelled to defend the Electoral College System. I’ve seen the material before…it is from a debunked article that appeared on the Breitbart News site one week after the November 2016 election.

The article (and email, which quoted it) stated that there are 3,141 counties in the United States, Donald Trump won 3,084 of them, and Hillary Clinton won only 57. According to the writer, these “statistics should put an end to the argument as to why the Electoral College makes sense.”

Except for the fact that… Clinton won 487 counties nationwide, compared with 2,626 for Trump (according to the Associated Press), or 489 and 2,623 (according to PolitiFact.com). So, the Breitbart guy has chosen bad facts…which usually happens at Breitbart…to inflame readers. Nothing new here.

Interestingly, the word “county” doesn’t appear in the U.S. Constitution, so it is curious why the writer of this article is focusing on “counties”.

I know a little bit about counties…I was the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Riverside County, California for ten years before retiring in 2003. Riverside County is the 10th most populous and 4th largest (in land area) county of the  3,141 counties in the United States. Also, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is about $150 billion annually, which would make it larger than the economies of all but 57 of the 211 countries in the world.

So, it’s a big county by any measure. Donald Trump won here.

We live in California, which has a higher GDP than Russia. The economy here is exceeded by only 11 countries in the world, and accounts for about one-eighth of the entire U.S. economic output. California has a lot of people, too, about 40 million of them; in fact, 12 percent of the U.S. population lives here.

Due to its population and economy, California should have a major voice in American government. And…it does…although it is under-represented (see below).

Speaking of counties…California has 58 of them. In contrast, Texas has 254, Georgia has 159, Virginia has 133, etc. In fact, more than half of the 50 States have more counties than does California. Why they need all of these counties is a mystery to me.

There is a large variation in size and population of U.S. counties. San Bernardino County (California) encompasses 20,056 square miles, while Kalawao County (Hawaii) is not quite 12 square miles in size. In terms of population, Los Angeles County (California) is home to over 10 million residents, while seven counties in Nebraska and Texas have fewer than 600 residents. I suspect that there are more cattle there than humans.

(Interestingly, over one-third of the counties in the United States are found in States that seceded from the Union (i.e. causing the Civil War, 1861-65). Nowadays, that part of the country is known as the “Bible Belt”. Coincidentally, it is also home to Breitbart’s and Donald Trump’s political base, and probably the target of this goofy article on the Electoral College.)

So…why are we talking about counties in the first place?

I think the author of the Breitbart piece was trying to infer that Donald Trump’s mandate to govern was much broader than some people think. After all, he won the vote in an overwhelming number of counties. Therefore, his support by American voters was broad and strong. And, as the Breitbart author states, the electoral college is a “guard against any small vocal area, with a specific agenda, speaking for the whole of the nation“.

There are several issues here which deserve discussion.

Undeniably, Donald Trump’s mandate to govern is a weak one. He lost the popular vote, not by the 1.5 million votes that Breitbart alleges, but, actually, by almost 2.9 million votes. In addition, approximately 40 percent of registered voters did not vote for President. So, out of the 235 million eligible voters in the U.S., only about 27 percent cast a vote for Donald Trump to be President. (I only voted for Clinton because Trump was so morally repulsive. Many people that I know couldn’t bring themselves to vote at all.)

Trump’s support is strongest in rural areas…i.e. those sparsely-populated areas with a lot of counties and not much else going on…economically. His populist promise to them…he’ll “listen to them”, support their religious goals, generate jobs for them, and “stick it to the city folks”.

Unfortunately, most of the people who live (and vote) in America reside in urban, not rural, areas. That is where the economy is, that is where the jobs are, and that is, in fact, where Donald Trump operates all of his business enterprises. If Trump’s policies are going to grow the U.S. economy, that growth is going to take place in urban, not rural, counties.

So, there is a disconnect between Trump’s populist base of support and the reality that is the United States economy. Hopefully, the economy will grow, but it probably won’t expand much in most of those 1,000 tiny Southern counties. As they say in real estate, location is everything. We will know that President Trump’s motives are sincere when he announces that he is going to build his next luxury skyscraper hotel in Loving County, Texas…population 113.

Let’s call Trump’s political base the “solid-as-a-rock 27 percent” (of eligible voters). That leaves 73 percent who didn’t vote for him. Statistically, most of them reside in major urban areas. The culture there is different from that in the Bible Belt, and many of these city dwellers perceive Donald Trump as a threat because of things he’s said about their race, religion, economic station in life, and their urban values.

(Ironically, Trump is as urban a guy as one can get; there’s nothing rural about him, he’s not religious, and his value system is abnormal, to put it mildly. He’s a New York guy who New Yorkers dislike; he lost the election in New York by 2 million votes, for God’s sake!)

The point is that, in order to govern effectively, President Trump needed to expand his political base right out of the gate, and…he has not even attempted to do that. He’s like the genius trying to pound a square peg into a round hole, and can’t seem to figure out why he’s failing. He keeps preaching to the choir…the rural folk.

Let’s get back to the Electoral College. Donald Trump has a problem governing because he WON the Electoral College. Most Americans didn’t vote for him, and, yet, he (and the Breitbart propagandists) want to pretend that everyone loves him, his ideas, and his manner of governance.

The answer is: they don’t. The President’s approval rating was the worst of any President’s first year…in the past fifty years or so. It’s not that he’s done such a bad job (he has), but he had a lot of people against him from the start and he’s alienated a bunch more since then. He’s working against himself.

Rather than applauding the “infinite wisdom” of the Founding Fathers, it might make more sense for Americans to question the veracity of the Electoral System model: a Rube Goldberg contraption that can put an unpopular man in the White House.

The founders never anticipated the eventual size of this country, the very uneven population distribution, and the astounding economic vitality (of world-wide significance) of States that weren’t even conceived of in 1789. The Nation was primarily rural in the beginning, and the Federal government was a secondary player to States back then.

(The latter is why each State gets two Senators: as a check against urban power. Although…one might argue that a Senator from Wyoming, representing roughly 500,000 residents and a GDP of $38 billion, should not have the political clout of a Senator from California, representing 40 million people and a $2.5 trillion economic engine. It’s politically incorrect to say this, but: if Wyoming ceased to exist tomorrow, it would be like the sound of one hand clapping…no one would notice. If California’s economy collapsed, so would that of the United States.)

Many things have changed since 1789. The Founding Fathers didn’t contemplate the U.S.:

(a) Expanding from 13 mainly Eastern Seaboard colonies to 50 States, to the         Pacific Ocean and beyond (Hawaii and Alaska);

(b) Growing into the strongest economy in the World;

(c) Becoming the dominant military force in the World;

(d) Outlawing the practice of slavery, conducting genocide on the                               Native American people, giving women the right to vote, and allowing             American citizens the right to own automatic weapons that could kill               scores of people in a matter of seconds.

In other words, the wisdom of the Founders wasn’t exactly “infinite”.

The Electoral College system is something that made sense at the time due to the rural nature of the new republic and the importance of the individual States at that time.

As the country grew, the Federal government had to grow to provide for things like: a standing army; the Interstate Highway System; criminal justice system components like Federal courts, prisons and the F.B.I; the air traffic control system; etc. The relationship between the people, the States, and the Federal government changed.

All of the changes required money, therefore taxes, and taxes are generated from economic activity. The country grew because many rural American communities became urban. More people, more workers, more industry, more opportunity for economic growth, etc. The backwaters of the American economy, i.e. rural areas, have been left behind, so to speak, and a populist politician, like Donald Trump, plays to that nostalgia.

What we need to remember is that, first and foremost, we are a democracy. In a democracy, people vote to elect their government representatives. Counties don’t vote; people do. The “will of the people” is supposed to mean that the majority of the population supports the government and the work that it is doing on their behalf.

The Electoral College System doesn’t necessarily make that happen. The guy or gal with the most ballot box votes can, and has, lost the Presidency due to the Electoral College having a slight bias toward rural areas.

This happens because all States, regardless of population, get two votes for their two Senators, and one each for their Congressmen. States with a population of 500,000 (Wyoming) get the same number of Senatorial votes as California, with a population of almost 40 million. This formula over-represents citizens in rural States, and under-represents residents of urban States. In addition, some States have such low population that they wouldn’t normally qualify for a Congressional seat (711,000 people). The Constitution grants them one at-large seat. So, seven rural states are over-represented, statistically speaking.

Probably a bigger issue is the “winner take all” design of the Electoral System. If a candidate wins the popular vote in a hotly-contested State by one single vote, he/she gets ALL of that State’s electoral votes. It would be theoretically possible for two candidates to almost evenly split the popular vote but one candidate who narrowly defeated the other in each state would get all 538 electoral votes.

That sounds crazy. But, consider: Donald Trump got 1% more popular votes in Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan than did Hillary Clinton. A one percent swing in any two of those States, and Hillary Clinton is President. But, that didn’t happen, and Trump won the Electoral College vote easily, with 304 to 227.

This is how it can come to pass that after the “people have spoken”, the popular vote winner for President can actually win second place.

When this happens, and I will paraphrase the Breitbart article here, we can experience a “small vocal area, with a specific agenda, speaking for the whole of the nation.”

Except that, we find rural America (i.e. Trump) driving the train that the urban areas of the country have paid for.

So, I have to disagree with the Breitbart intellectuals: the Electoral College System does NOT make sense.