Nothing is Ever as Simple as a Politician Desires

There are so many examples of this in today's news, I'm not sure where to start, so I shall see where we go.

Donald Trump Claims the Convention Delegate appointment process is rigged against him.  Sorry Donald, you use shell companies and the legal code to isolate your properties from each other so that lenders can only look to each property for repayment.  You were able to figure that out, why can't you figure out how to get your people appointed as convention delegates?  You have only yourself to blame because you didn't bother to figure out the process and if you can't do that, how are you going to manage the country well?  I don't think you have the intelligence or sufficient ability to grasp the complexity that managing the country requires.  And you are an unworthy human being who uses their name to take advantage of other people to enrich yourself.  That may be marketing genius, but when you don't pay your debts, you are unworthy of admiration.

But Trump is only gathering the anger that a substantial percentage of white America reflects.  Steven Rattner follows up one of my earlier posts that Congressional opposition to all things Obama created this anger at the GOP establishment.  Helping people who lose their job to globalization and technology is complicated and not every possible path will be a good expenditure of public funds.  But President Obama proposed various things and the GOP Congress shot them down.  Now they are paying the price in the form of Donald Trump.

Link to Rattner Column

 Meanwhile, drought in Africa, war like conditions in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, the NE corner of Nigeria have created a complex source of migration by people who want to live somewhere safe.  One example of that is described by Thomas Friedman who was in Niger.

"Says the U.N.’s Barbut, “Desertification acts as the trigger, and climate change acts as an amplifier of the political challenges we are witnessing today: economic migrants, interethnic conflicts and extremism.” She shows me three maps of Africa with an oblong outline around a bunch of dots clustered in the middle of the continent. Map No. 1: the most vulnerable regions of desertification in Africa in 2008. Map No. 2: conflicts and food riots in Africa 2007-2008. Map No. 3: terrorist attacks in Africa in 2012."  

Bombing them to smithereens is not going to solve desertification, conflicts and food riots which cause the desperation that leads to migration and radicalization.  Solving this problem is very complex.

Link to Friedman column


And I cannot let John Kasich off the hook today.  While he is the most reasonable GOP candidate left, I saw an interview of him yesterday.  When asked about Health Insurance, he said of course we need to repeal Obamacare, but he added, we will protect people with pre-existing conditions.  

How do you make such insurance affordable if the healthy people are not required to buy health insurance?  

How do you make the health insurance companies profitable if people with pre-existing conditions can just buy health insurance when they need to?  

And how do you keep the hospitals and clinics financially viable if the uninsured, who cannot afford health insurance, are showing up there when they are sick?  

And what about the economic costs of people not maintaining their health because they don't have heath insurance.  

Health care is complex and his simple answer was loaded with followup questions which were not asked.

I almost forgot Bernie.  He is running ad's here in NY saying he will break up the banks, make college free and end income inequality by ending the rigging of the system.  Yet, when asked for details on how he would accomplish any of that. he says that has to be worked out in the future.  Well, none of that is simple, any paths have complex side effects and little of it is politically practical.  That is not the basis for running the government effectively and I will not vote for him this time, just as I never voted for him when I lived in Vermont.  I don't disagree with his policy goals, but I believe in effective and well managed government.