GEORGE W. BUSH IN RETROSPECT

I really can't be mad at George W. Bush because he never should have been president in the first place.  He was an unsuccessful business man who was repeatedly financially bailed out by someone, presumably a Saudi Prince.  The fault lies with us the electorate for electing him.  Wait, he wasn't elected by us, the Supreme Court chose him.  His opponent actually got more votes, but was done in by "hanging chads" and aggressiveness by Gays when Ohio was not ready for equality for them.

Granted there are lots of" landmines" in the way of a president becoming great.*  For example, in retrospect, Eisenhower looks pretty good.  He had positive cash flow twice in his presidential terms.  Only Clinton (Bill) has had more.  He made some fledgling moves on racial equality.   He got the interstate highway system.  Perhaps most important of all is that he showed us that sometimes the proper reaction to something is no action.

But then the Eisenhower negatives.  He overthrew a duly elected prime minister in Iran for wanting the same oil deal from BP (actually the forerunner of BP)  as Egypt got (half the profits).  Things have been downhill with Iran ever since.  And then there was the Hungarian uprising where we fomented them to revolt and then abandoned them.

But George W. Bush (Bush-43) had two absolute disasters that he plunged us into.  One was going to war in the Middle East, something we have been mired in ever since.  The other was the Great Recession  (It is not PC to use the word depression any more) because he believed that the financial industry is "self correcting" and didn't need regulation.  All of a sudden banks, as a result of the lack of regulation, stopped being staid conservative institutions and became go-go organizations.   It didn't help that he also got a tax cut during the war that was performed on the cuff. We are still mired in both disasters but have done much, much better on the recovering economy that should be called The Great Recovery.

Many pretend to see no difference between a recession and a depression.  Recessions are usually due to large buildup of inventories and recover when inventories work their way down whereas depressions are a collapse of a financial system and are self perpetuating unless something drastic is done.

There are those who say that the Great Depression was not overcome until WW-II with its enforced savings through rationing and lack of goods and a continued low birthrate.  In the Great Recession, there is no all consuming distraction such as a World War, which is a great tragedy and certainly not to be recommended.  Industry has to work its way out of the Great Recession with minor help by a congress (other than a small "stimulus program") that refused to have a major infrastructure program to help things along.

In fairness to Bush, once he recognized what he had done, he did start some action to save our financial system through the TARP Program, that Obama continued.   But a lot of damage had already been done.   Though saving the banks has been controversial, it was a key to the Great Recovery we have witnessed by President Obama.

Bush, of course did have some positives, perhaps the most important being Medicare-D (prescription drug coverage), though he left it up to the insurance industry to find a way to pay for it.  He did recognize the importance of Hispanics to our culture.  "Leave No child Behind" was well intended if much hated by the teaching community.

I will also give Bush credit for going to war in Afghanistan because we had to do something after the 9/11 (2001) attacks, even if it ended badly.  President Reagan on the other had "cut and run" from Lebanon after the Marine Barracks massacre and embassy bombings in Lebanon and Kuwait, emboldening the terrorists into believing that, if we were hit hard, we would just withdraw.

George W. Bush's two disasters, unfortunately, greatly outweigh everything else and make him a candidate for the worst president ever, certainly a big step worse than President Hoover.

* http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/05/land-mines-in-way-of-becoming-great.html

JOBS BY PRESIDENT - JULY 2016 REPORT

The preliminary July jobs report looks very good with 255,000 new jobs after June with 292,000 new jobs.  In the figure below, it is seen that most of the previous presidents have increased employ with the same slope.  The slope in increasing employment in the Obama administration was the same as Clinton, Reagan, and Carter, but his presidency started from a lower level.  The difference is in the base from which employment started to rise.  Thus Clinton added the most jobs because he uniquely never had a recession!

The exceptions are George Bush (Bush-43),who had employment tail off near the end of his term as we headed into the financial Armageddon (Great Recession) and his father G. H. W. Bush (Bush 41) who never got traction in increasing jobs.

(click on figure to enlarge)

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/05/charts-whats-the-real-unemployment-rate.html

INDIVIDUALS VS GROUPS

For a long time I think I have seen a difference between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party.  Republicans tend to like the "self made man" whereas Democrats think of "groups."  It used to be that Republicans nominated the "self made man" for President .  Think of Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, and Reagan.  All of these came from humble beginnings.  Although the Republican Party is considered the party of the wealthy, Democrats used to favor wealthy people to nominate for President.  Think of Roosevelt and Kennedy.  True there were Truman and Johnson who came from humble beginnings but both were accidental presidents with Truman acceding to the Presidency with the death of Roosevelt and Johnson with the assassination of Kennedy.

More recently, things have changed with the Republican Party nominating wealthy men such a George H.W. Bush and George Bush as well as Mitt Romney with Donald Trump probably the most wealthy of all, whereas the Democrats have gone with men of more modest beginnings like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.  While Hillary Clinton may be wealthy now, she did come from modest beginnings.  (I'm not sure how to classify Michael Dukakis whose father was a physician but as of Greek heritage, they were certainly looked down on by the Boston Brahmins) The sampling size is small so maybe it is just a coincidence.

But look at the two candidates for president now.  You have the individual Donald Trump who says, "believe me, I am the only person that can save you "and Hillary Clinton who wrote a book called
It Takes A Community To Raise A Child and has the current motto of Stronger Together as she runs for president.  People say she is stealing the Stronger Together from Reagan although she has long preached this concept in her book.

Who will win?  Will it be the women, African Americans, Hispanics, and the LGBT or the angry American white males?  We'll know in November, probably.

THE FOUR POLITICAL DISASTERS

As I look back over my long life, I notice four major disastrous actions since WW-II.

The first happened under President Eisenhower when the CIA helped overthrew a duly elected democratic government in Iran* and our relations with Iran have gone downhill ever since.  At the behest of the forerunner of BP (Anglo-Persian Oil Company), the British government requested that the U.S. overthrow the government of Mohammod Mosaddegh   Defenders of Eisenhower say that the CIA went rogue in doing so and Eisenhower didn't know about it.

The second was when President Reagan failed to react militarily to the embassy attacks in Lebanon and Kuwait plus the Beirut Marine base bombing.**  Instead he cut and ran which emboldened terrorists who concluded that the U.S. wouldn't react to their machinations which eventually led to the U.S. getting involved militarily in the quagmire of the Middle Eastern politics.

The third involved President George W. Bush (Bush-43) who got us involved militarily in the middle eastern quagmire in Iraq.***  I think that it was appropriate for the U.S. to get involved militarily in Afghanistan after the World Trade Center airplane attacks killing nearly 3,000 people.

The fourth also involved President Bush (Bush-43).  His opposition to regulation of the financial industry**** resulted in a financial collapse of the economy from which we are still digging out although the stock markets and corporate profits have been very good

You might ask what about Vietnam and President Johnson?  At the time of the Vietnam war, I would have included it as a major disaster and in terms of lives lost it is.  Today, however, we have friendly relations with Vietnam, and they are an important trading partner with which we have diplomatic ties.  President Bush (Bush-43) went to Vietnam twice and wanted to sign a trade agreement with them, but the Senate disagreed.  We may have to wait for my generation to die out before full economic relations are achieved with them.  Korea was another major problem at the time, but, since the Korean War, South Korea has developed into an economic power, and, in spite of the hostile nature of North Korea, the area seems stable with South Korea being an ally of ours.  President Eisenhower did us a favor by ending the Korean War.  In contrast, I don't see the Middle East countries becoming important U.S. allies within say the next 30 yrs, but I won't be around to see if I am right.

Even WW-II resulted in Japan and Germany curiously becoming important allies of the U.S. and major economic powers.  Because of problems involving religions and former colonization, I don't see that happening with the Middle East.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'état
** http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror; http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/176699.pdf
*** http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/870845/Iraq-War
****http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007–08; http://www.umsl.edu/~dibooglus/personal/financial%20crisis_revised.pdf

I'M SITTING OUT THIS ONE

I've decided I'll sit out the ISIS (ISIL if you prefer) War.  I usually record news programs like Morning Joe so I fast forward through the ISIS parts.  I may miss something else, but so be it.  If the news program is not recorded, I toggle between Soundscapes and the news program to avoid the ISIS War.

I went along with al Qaeda being very bad.  After all they actually killed nearly 3,000 people in this country.  Maybe more if you count those who are delayed in dying from smoke inhalation.  I felt we had to do something and invading Afghanistan to get al Qaeda was fine (remember Afghanistan tribes provided the first "boots on the ground.").  Now we are told that ISIS is even worse.  And the other day I heard of yet another organization that is considered even worse than ISIS in that their aim is to destroy the U.S.(Khorasan).*  And there are also those who say that Hamas is just as bad as ISIS.**

Now during most of my life (and I'm 83) the standard was to say that a group or individual was"worse than the Nazi's."  It is interesting that this analogy is no longer used.  After all, the Nazi's were defeated almost 70 yrs ago.  We've had two or three generations grow up since then.  I guess there is a feeling that ISIS is worse than the Russians.  Remember when it was Assad that had to go?  For the minute we'll ignore him, but I'm sure we'll get back to him some year.

To begin with, we won't put "boots on the ground" though special forces or the CIA don't count.  President Obama wants other Arabs or Muslims to do this.  I have to wonder why they haven't already done this?  They don't seem to worry about ISIS being a threat to them.  We always seem to align ourselves with a group of people that don't want to fight for their land.  Remember Vietnam and the Iraqi military divisions that collapsed when they were first threatened and armed ISIS by abandoning all their equipment?  How many years did we train Iraqi troops - 8 yrs at least, I think.  Who trained the North Koreans (well maybe the Soviets), North Vietnamese, Taliban and ISIS forces?   They seem to be self trained and better than all our training of their opponents    Hey the Americans will do it for us, calm down!

I don't remember the Korean War very well (though I was of age to be called up with the draft), but before we entered the Korean War, it seemed like the North had almost pushed the Southern forces into the sea.**  It used to be that the first thing we would do was send in 5,000 Marines and then regretfully build up from there.  It is interesting, however, that since we were kicked out of Vietnam, they want to be our trading partners, and we have no residual forces there.  Can you imagine that?  And Indonesia is still a non-Communist country.  Remember the Domino Theory where if South Vietnam would fall to the communist North, then the other SE Asian countries would fall, including Indonesia.

Of course the big focus on the Middle East concerns oil.  I had supported oil exploration of ANWR on the north slopes of Alaska and fracking, and the Keystone XL Pipeline to make us independent of  Middle East oil  and allow us to withdraw from there, but it hasn't worked.  Importing some oil from Canada, Mexico, and Valenzuela would be OK.

I yearn for the good old days of Carter and Reagan and Clinton when all we had to worry about were Embassy kidnappings, war with the island nation of Grenada, and fly by shooting of Iraqi radar posts.****  I'm going to sit out this latest war.

* http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-the-khorasan-group-airstrikes-isis-islamic-state-2014-9
**  http://mondoweiss.net/2014/09/israeli-government-propaganda
***  http://www.history.com/topics/korean-war
**** http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2014/09/good-old-days.html

"GOOD OLD DAYS"

I sort of miss the "good old days" of Presidents Ford who ended U.S. occupation of Vietnam, Carter with only the American embassy hostages.  Called by Democrats a "Warmonger," President Reagan stubbornly refused to go to war over three major Embassy attacks (twice in Beirut and one in Kuwait) plus the Marine barracks disaster, and at least when he went to war, he at least picked someone we could beat - Granada. President Bush (41), of course, did have Desert Storm (Iraq I) and his "invasion" of Panama to capture Noriega, but the things calmed down again with President Clinton with his drive by shooting in Iraq from American military airplanes.  Clinton, who had several terrorist attacks, also is distinguished by winning the only war won without "boots on the ground" - Kosovo - won by air power alone.  Those are about the years closest to peace I have seen in my 83 years since Japan invaded China in 1937.

This comparatively "sleepy" period from 1974 through the 1990s was preceded by WW-II of President Roosevelt, Korea of President Truman, and Vietnam of Presidents Kennedy,Johnson, and Nixon and succeeded by the Afghanistan and Iraq II wars of President Bush (43).  Now we can add the Iraq III/Syria war of our "peace" President Obama.

I ALREADY MISS THE GOOD OLD DAYS

I already miss those good old days, not that long ago actually, when all we had to worry about was important things, people like Paula Broadwell, Jill Kelley, a couple of middle aged 4-star generals and a topless FBI agent (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).  Don't you?

Now it is ugly as an "over-the-hill" Senator, who once was a rational force in the Senate but now is after one last hurrah, pursues something known as Benghazi that everyone has lost interest in except for him and a few of his colleagues.  You know, that violent demonstration/terrorist attack in which an ambassador was killed along with three of his "troops" in some backwater consulate in Lybia where violent acts in the vicinity are almost an every day occurrence (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/09/you-can-rationalize-anything.html).  Senator Feinstein has commented, "My biggest concern is, there are literally hundreds of threat warnings in the material that has been accumulated," Feinstein said. "There were five attacks during the year, one prior attack on the consulate itself. The question I have is ... why wasn't something done about it?"  But this doesn't seem to be the serious question which our dear "over-the-hill" Senator says is why did our ambassador to the U./N. - Susan Rice - say, five days after the event, that the violence was a demonstration that got out of hand?

Personally, I never thought this issue could last until the late-elections, but some - including the news media - want to keep it going and are demanding a "Whitewater" type investigation.  And apparently Susan Rice was only parroting the declassified information on the topic.  This misinformation, if it matters, was seemingly done because the FBI or someone thought they were hot on the trail of the organizing perpetrators and didn't want them to know.  Instead what they did was what is known as "hanging Susan Rice out to dry."

So far as I am concerned, if the American Benghazi Consulate attack was the best Al Qaeda could do to "celebrate" 9/11, they are weak indeed, hardly even a shadow of the real 9/11.  It was even far away from the embassy in Tripoli.  Somehow, forgotten in all this is that an estimated 30,000 Libyans demonstrated against the attack and the militias involved in the attack (http://stopcontinentaldrift.blogspot.com/2012/11/laffaire-petraeus-today.html).

The fuss being made over Benghazi is interesting when one considers that the diefied Ronald Reagan had BOTH a couple of embassy attacks, including the big one in Beirut, Lebanon, where 17 Americans died (among 63 total) on April 18, 1983 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing) plus another in Kuwait where five people were killed on December 12, 1983 (which by-the-way Reagan refused to call an act of terror) (http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/10/19/1147106/-Breaking-Ronald-Reagan-refuses-to-call-embassy-attack-an-act-of-terror) AND the marine barracks attack where 241 of our troops died on October 23, 1983.  For good measure there was the Korean airliner 007 shot down by the Soviets September 1, 1983 where 269 passengers were killed including a U.S. congressman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007).  Somehow Reagan's admirers forgave him for all of this.  Furthermore, Democrats did not make political hay out of any of this.  But today, everything seems to be on the table for political gain.

SOME THOUGHTS ON THE RECENT ELECTIONS

First of all, I am thankful that we had two such fine families running for president.

Then I regret that the American electorate demands such negative campaigning.  Unfortunately if one side does it, the other must also.  The electorate says they don't like it, but they do pay attention to it.  In this regard, the Democrats seemed to be more effective in their negative campaigning than the Republicans.

After all the money spent by outside groups such as Super PACS in the campaign, we ended up having the same Democratic president, an increase in Democratic Senators by two (but not enough to break filibusters) and  an increase of Democratic Representatives by seven (but not enough to take over the House).  The electorate seems to say to our politicians "Make it work!"

Mitch McConnell's first priority of defeating the President didn't work.  Will we face another four years of total obstruction?

Somehow Republicans are going to have to learn how to love Hispanics and quit kicking them in the teeth.  It is going to be very hard for them, but Hispanics tend to be conservative and can be a natural component of a conservative movement.

There are no precedents in our politics anymore.  It used to be that politics was said to stop at the borders, but no longer. The immediate politicalization of the Benghazi attack on September 11 shows that.  I really thought that Benghazi couldn't be made to last until the election proved to be unfounded as the media was more than willing to keep this issue going.  Ronald Reagan suffered both the Lebanese Embassy bombing* in 1983 in which  63 people died was never politicized by the Democrats nor was the Beirut (Lebanon) base bombing in which 299 American and French forces were killed.*  These two disasters have not stopped Ronald Reagan from becoming deified by many Republicans, no doubt by some of those who want to keep the Benghazi issue alive even after the election.

Romney's demonizaton of the 47% who pay no Federal income tax as being lazy dependents may be unfortunate but is a widely held view of many Republicans.  I know this both from Republicans I know and from boards on Motley Fool.  But it also does insult many of the white working class people who vote Republican.  Please remember that 47% of the Households earn less than $47,000/yr which undoubtedly includes many of white workers.  One cause of this lack of Federal income tax payments is the child tax credit where there is a $1000 per child deduction from their taxes, and this deduction was raised under the Bush-43 administration from $500/child to $1,000/child.**

The Romney claim that he knows how to generate jobs is both right and wrong.  Private equity, at least in the short term, eliminates jobs and does not create them.  That is the first thing they do, fire people.  Labor is the elastic component of our system.  However in the beginning of Bain Capital, they emphasized Start Ups which do create new jobs.  Romney switched to private equity because it was a quicker way to make money and that is what Bain Capital is all about.  There is nothing wrong with that.  Whether in the long term private equity creates jobs, I don't know , but suspect that it doesn't.

But weren't start ups what Obama was doing in promoting alternative energy?  In spite of the Solyndra failure, the amount of losses in the Federal government Start Ups program is small.  Even Solyndra, however, served a good purpose because the Solyndra system didn't use the special glass used to solar energy.  Their approach caused the price of the special glass to plummet to make Solyndra uneconomic.  I have not seen any article examining whether the price of glass plummeting has saved more money in solar energy panels than the losses on Solyndra, but over time it might.  Personally I wish the government would have taken Solyndra to production before closing it down.  If you are going to be involved in start ups, there are going to be failures and the emphasis needs to be on the net.

There is a point in saying that the Federal government shouldn't be choosing winners and losers of course; however, the government does this sort of thing all the time.  Think how important the government emphasis by NASA and the DoD on miniaturization of electronics has been not only to producing inexpensive desk top computers but now the tablets and smart phones.  Consider the World Wide Web (WWW) and Geographic Positions Systems (GPS) for just two.  These were developed for military purposes.  The important thing was really permitting these two innovations to be released into the public sector where private industry could promote them for Civilian uses.

*  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_United_States_embassy_bombing; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1983_Beirut_barracks_bombing

** http://www.irs.gov/uac/Ten-Facts-about-the-Child-Tax-Credit

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT EMPLOYMENT

It is true that Bush-41 and Clinton cut the Federal work force by around 1,160,000 (me amongst them) without disrupting the economy, but those were good times and jobs were relatively easy to get. That is not so true now, I believe.

The peak post WW-II year for Federal employees was 1968 6,639,000 (the Vietnam peak) after which Federal employment gradually fell. Since 1968 the peak was 1987 5,301,000 under Reagan. Bush-41 started his term in 1989 at 5,292,000 and finished in 1992 at 4,931,000. Clinton finished at 4,129,000 in 2002. (http://www.opm.gov/feddata/historicaltables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp)

The peak Federal government civilian work force  (including those in the DoD) peaked at 3,067,000 in 1990 (beating the previous peak at 3,040,000 in 1969) and bottomed in 2002 (Clinton's last year) at 2,630,000. Civilian employees rose slightly under Bush-43 to 2,692,000 and rose slightly again under Obama to 2,776,000 in 2010 the last year for which I have records.