The Sky Is Not Falling (The "Debate")

90 minutes. That's how many minutes of Thursday night's debate I watched. In other words, all of it. I didn't watch the post debate discussion about the debate, although I read a few news articles, tweets and Facebook posts about it this morning.

The sky is falling!

I guess I'm one of those rare individuals who doesn't expect my elected officials to entertain me. I don't expect them to be exciting, or witty, or even play a mean round of golf. I also don't expect the president to single-handedly support the weight of the entire country, let alone the world, on his or her shoulders. I was a manager for most of my adult life, and the way I understand the role of a manager, a leader, is that they are not responsible for doing things, on the contrary, they are tasked with getting things done. Of course the leadership positions that I held were pretty puny compared to the job of President of the United States, but the principle is the same. The president is the head of a huge bureaucracy, which includes hundreds of thousands of federal workers and the world's largest military. His responsibility, as George W. Bush once said, is to be "the decider" - to delegate the details to subordinates and make the big decisions. As long as those big decisions are ones that I feel are best for the country I don't care if he sounds like one of the hillbillies from Deliverance.

President Biden is an inconsistent public speaker, especially if he's speaking without a script (i.e. a teleprompter) At times he sounds bold and dynamic, at other times rambling and off on tangents. He stutters, which requires him at times to stop, take a breath and allow his brain and mouth to coordinate. I don't think people fully grasp how difficult it is to answers questions and give long detailed answers on the fly like that, even when you don't have a speech impediment. I don't stutter, but I would never officiate a wedding without a script. Even in meetings at work, I always come prepared with notes that I can refer to. I even stammer a little when I get an unanticipated question. The fact that Biden is, and always has been, a meandering and uninspiring speaker with a penchant for embroidering his stories shouldn't have been news for anyone. The fact that an 80+ year old man is not that steady on his feet and walks with a stiff gait shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone either. 

I watched all 90 minutes. In reviewing my Facebook comments about it I didn't once make any reference to Biden's demeanor or presentation as problematic, nor indicative of his inability to continue as president. Not because I'm brainwashed into thinking Biden can do no wrong, but I just didn't see it that way. I thought he started off somewhat uninspiring, but that he picked up steam as he went along (although he let himself get sucked into an argument about golf handicaps towards the end). I concentrated on the substance of what he was saying, not the optics. I thought we had progressed past the days when Nixon's o'clock shadow was a deciding factor in a presidential election. I was wrong - we have not. I had expected the mocking and attacks by the adherents of Losin' Don, but the panic and calls for Biden to end his candidacy by Democrats and by Democratic-leaning news organizations was quite surprising. (Although I shouldn't have been surprised by the complaining by Sanders supporters that Sanders got screwed out of the nomination [twice] and we can blame the DNC cabal for bringing us to this point)

I've always thought that determining who "won" a debate was mostly subjective and can be spun by both sides by spotlighting what  each wants to emphasize. So, who "won" the debate on Thursday night? Who did a better job of presenting their own accomplishments and policies? Who did a better job of pointing out the other's weaknesses? We should ignore comments like "my opponent is the worst president in history" - or "my administration was the most successful in history", They're subjective statements and are basically meaningless. So what did each do right to present themselves as the better choice? Biden answered the questions put to him by citing specific policies. He muffed some details (he initially referred to insulin co-pay as $15, but corrected himself with the right number - $35; he incorrectly said the Border Patrol endorsed him - they did not - perhaps he was talking about the BP Union's support for his border bill that the Republicans would not support - he corrected himself there too). A subject that he should have stayed away from was the "very fine people on both sides" quote. A lot of people think this was debunked by Snopes, when it is more nuanced than that, as this article lays out. It made him look uninformed. 

At the risk of engaging in whataboutism - what about Trump? Trump didn't bring his usual debate style of interrupting and yelling to this event. He was restrained and very un-Trump-like. (maybe he was the one on drugs?) He didn't interrupt (likely due to the muted microphone), he stood up straight and looked calm and, dare I say it, presidential. This was a smart move by Trump, as I'm guessing that Biden's debate preparation involved a Trump stand-in who was yelling and interrupting, throwing him off. So the optics looked better for Trump than for Biden, what about the substance? Here's some fact-checking by CNN's Daniel Dale. Trump, whether he was just lying or just uninformed ,was largely fact-free for most of the debate. He didn't answer at least half the questions that were put to him, circling back to his favorite misrepresentations. Most concerning was an actual answer and a response to Biden. Biden had brought up Trump's promise to engage in retribution if re-elected. If you paid any attention to Trump's public statements, he's very clear that what he means by retribution is going after his political opponents with the legal system. In the debate he first claimed that it meant that his success as president would be his retribution, but quickly pivoted to a rant where he called Biden a criminal and was very clear that he thought Biden should be prosecuted for his (according to Trump) mishandling of the border and the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Trump was asked by one of the moderators whether he would accept the results of the election, no matter who won (he was given the wiggle room of "after all legal challenges are exhausted"). His answer was "if it's free and fair"...and we all know he didn't think the last election was "free and fair". Related to this was his insistence that he had nothing to do with encouraging what happened on January 6th, and blamed it all on Speaker Pelosi. 

President Biden was shaky and inarticulate at times during the debate, had a facial expression that a friend of mine described as "slack-jawed", and presented some inaccurate information. Trump on the other hand refused to answer questions, rambled on with lies and misrepresentations, and once again confirmed that he had no respect for our elections and would not accept any election results where he was not the winner. If you think Trump won anything on Thursday night, I question your standards.

Do I wish that our president was younger, stronger and a better communicator? Absolutely. But you go to elections with the candidate you have, not the one you wish you had. The calls for Biden to step aside are not helpful, and would, in my opinion, cause chaos, division and possibly hand the election to Trump. 

The sky is not falling.

Orange Is The New Extra Long Red Tie

No, Losin' Don will not spend one day in prison. 

Maybe I'm wrong, but even if he loses the election in November, even if he's convicted in one or more of his criminal trials, it ain't happening. 

Unlike ordinary people who can't afford bail, who can't afford to pay lawyers' fees for months and years on end, Trump has the means to drag these proceedings on and on and on. How many delaying tactics can he and his attorneys throw against the wall, hoping something will stick? He's trying to get at least one trial thrown out because he claims presidents are have absolute immunity; another because the chief prosecutor hired an old boyfriend. Even if he's convicted he'll appeal. If he loses his appeals he'll take it all the way to the Supreme Court. Look at the situation: we're six months away from the general election and only one of the criminal trials has started, and that one, based on what I read from the legal experts, is pretty weak. 

Trump and his cultish supporters want you to believe that it is a politically motivated "witch hunt". That it's "election interference". That President Biden is directing all the prosecutions. On one hand Losin Don claims that "they" are attempting to "rig" the election, on the other he is bragging that every indictment helps him in the polls. So why is he being charged with all these crimes? (not to mention the civil suits)

The simplistic answer is that he's a criminal. He acted criminally with impunity his whole life and his time as president did nothing to make him more law-abiding. He thumbed his nose at the legal system and virtually dared it to do something about it. I think that the various prosecutors said "Fuck this guy, I'm tired of his shit" and decided that he'd gotten away with too much for too long and something had to be done about it. Did politics enter into it? Insomuch that Republican prosecutors probably wouldn't have sought indictments, it was, but the motivation of the prosecutors is irrelevant if there was probable cause to indict. 

Grand juries are different than petit, or trial, juries. The purpose is not to decide guilt or innocence, but to determine whether there is sufficient cause for a trial. In Nebraska, the prosecutor has no role in grand jury selection and I assume the same is true in other jurisdictions. But if the prosecutor is seeking an indictment, they have to convince 12 out of 16 grand jurors that there is sufficient cause to proceed with a trial. They have done so. Multiple times. It's obvious that there is at least enough evidence to suggest that criminal activity probably happened and that a trial is needed to determine if there is enough to convict. It remains to be seen whether or not there will be convictions, but prosecutors rarely seek indictments if they don't think they can secure a conviction. There's no upside to a loss in a high profile trial. 

The Trumpists cry that if someone like their hero can be dragged into court, then it can happen to any of us. As if ordinary citizens aren't already subject to prosecution for crimes that they are alleged to have committed.  As if they and their hero haven't been advocating for the last eight years to "lock up" and even execute their political opponents.

The horrifying part of it all is that even if Losin' Don was incarcerated, it would not prevent him from being elected president.

Free Press

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but they are not similarly entitled to their own facts. Two things have contributed in recent years to the belief that everyone is entitled to their own facts. One is the proliferation of easy-to-use platforms such as blogs and podcasts. The ubiquity of cell phone cameras make everyone an on-the-spot reporter. These platforms are also easy to access. We have at our fingertips more information than previous generations could have imagined possible. The other contributing factor is the attacks that have sought to undermine any trust that we had in corporate, mainstream news sources. Do the "big dogs" get it right all the time? Do they sometimes rush to get a story out and get the facts wrong? Do they often have agendas, biases? Of course they do. They're run by human beings! But the belief that there's some kind of media conspiracy among multiple information outlets that are in competition with each other is not supported by facts. 

While there have always been people who were skeptical of what "the media" was telling them, it's only been since Donald Trump entered politics that previously respected news organizations were routinely labeled, without evidence, as "fake news". Most of us don't remember that the term fake news briefly referred to web sites that purposely "flooded the zone" with intentionally false information. The goal of these sites was to start rumors that would spawn and multiply throughout the information ecosystem until ordinary people would just assume that they were true. Trump quickly appropriated the label and applied it to any news that reported on his shortcomings. 

A big difference between news organizations like The New York Times, Fox News or CNN and the typical blogger or podcaster is one of access to information and experts to explain that information. Another is the time to sift through the multitude of events and tie to together multiple threads of information into a coherent narrative. This is their full-time job. This is what they do! Not a week goes by that I don't encounter someone who is skeptical of some news story...based on nothing more than their feelings. None are ever able to support their skepticism with facts. 

What confuses many people is the difference between the news and opinion sides of any news organization. "News" is what happened. "Opinion" (or editorial) is why it happened (according to the columnist). Yes, sometimes they get the facts wrong or jump the gun before all the facts are in, but you would be hard-pressed to find an actual lies, or even major errors in the reporting of  mainstream media. Editorial or opinion pieces are different since they are presenting...opinion.  "Senator 'A' hates children" is opinion. It's subjective and you could argue that Senator 'A'  doesn't hate children. "Senator 'A' voted for XYZ legislation which will decrease the funding for free school lunches for impoverished children" would be an example of a fact. Various conclusions can be drawn from that fact, and those conclusions are...opinion. An argument can be made that a news outlet shows bias by spending time identifying problems with one politician while ignoring issues with another. It very well might be bias. Or it might just be that one of them has a lot more problems than the other. Showing bias doesn't mean that the information being presented is wrong, just that the choice of what to publish is a function of what the outlet believes is important. 

We hear a lot about the "media narrative". Whether it's the recent speech by football player Harrison Butker or coverage of Losin' Don's various legal woes or Ron DeSantis' weird laugh, media skeptics insist that there's a "narrative", a story about how "they" want you to think and act that pervades everything that you hear, see and read in "the media". For this to be true there would have to be some shadowy cabal behind every newspaper and television network - puppet masters pulling all our strings. Somehow the media skeptics find this easier to believe than the possibility that they're simply reporting the facts. I've also noticed that when people complain about some unflattering information about them being disseminated they blame "the media", when often what's keeping the information alive is social media chatter. Are social media participants brainlessly parroting what "they" want them to believe, or is it just opinionated people latching on to something that confirms what they already think? 

Personally I try to keep informed with various sources of information. I trust that the news professionals are doing their jobs, but know that I'm not always hearing the whole story. 

Running Government Like a Business

It never seems to go away - an election is coming up and the challenger, who runs a business of some sort, claims to be "not a politician" and promises to run government like a business. This is usually in the context of budget balancing, but can also be in reference to perceived competence in something. My position is that the last thing that you want an elected official to do is run government like you would run a business. 

What is the purpose of a business? It's primary purpose is to make money for its owners. There may be ancillary benefits, such as job creation, or providing a product of benefit to the community, but first and last, a business exists to benefit its owners. I used to work for a company that was (mostly) locally owned. In the 70's it instituted an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP). ESOP's, using various formulas, award employees with company stock from profits which they can receive as cash when the retire or otherwise leave the company. The company president, who at the time was the son of the company founder, liked to promote this ESOP as an example of how the company cared about its employees  (euphemistically called "associates"), treating them like family. In an unguarded moment at a shareholders' meeting, the company founder admitted that he instituted the ESOP because it allowed the company to legally avoid  taxes on that portion of the profits while still having access to the cash. (The percentage of profits that were the ESOP allocation existed as cash. Since the employees did not receive cash, but shares of stock, the cash still existed in the company's bank account and could be used for other priorities) So, the existence of the ESOP, even though employees benefitted as a side effect, had as the main beneficiaries  the primary owners, the founder's family. (In the wake of the 2017 corporate tax reductions, this company bought back all the ESOP stock and converted the shares to 401(k)  balances)

One wouldn't have to search for long to come up with examples of companies that laid off long serving employees in order to increase profits, or whole subsidiaries being shut down completely because they weren't generating enough revenue. Even pay increases are structured to benefit the owners. The legend of Henry Ford altruistically doubling pay rates so that his employees could afford to buy his cars is mostly myth. Anyone who knows anything about Ford knows that he wasn't the warm and fuzzy fatherly type. Ford was a control freak who attempted to control every aspect of his employees lives. But he also realized that his turnover rate was unacceptable. He was hiring 52,000 men a year to maintain a 14,000 man work force. The pay increase was his solution to the high turnover. Even so, his investors balked at this move, seeing it as counter to their interests. Maximizing profit for the owners is the primary, if not the only, goal of running a business. 

In contrast, the purpose of a government is to serve the people. In this country's founding document, the reason a government is being established is to (1) establish justice, (2) insure domestic tranquility, (3) provide for the common defense, (4) promote the general welfare and (5) secure the blessings of liberty. One can debate the specific meaning and application of these things, but it's pretty evident that "turn a profit" isn't on the list. "Run it like a business" advocates point out that government services cost money, and that it is irresponsible to spend more than is being taken in. Or spend so much in some areas that there are no funds available for other needed programs. This is a fair point, in many jurisdictions deficit spending is not an option, and it is good stewardship to not spend the public's money frivolously or wastefully. But the criteria by which it is determined what is and isn't waste is necessarily different in a service organization, i.e. a government, than it is in a for profit entity. 

A current example is the unilateral decision to eliminate state government positions that have been unfilled for more than 90 days. In a typical private business labor budgets are set in part by looking at the payroll expenditures for the previous year. The assumption is that the business was able to operate at the lower staffing level so it should be able to do it again. This outlook does not take into account the effect lower staffing levels had on anything other than the bottom line. I was a grocery store manager ten years ago when the unemployment rate locally was starting to consistently dip below 3%. Some of our departments were always understaffed. The Deli in particular was hard hit - it was a high sales volume, labor intensive department. Being even one person short negatively effected productivity, customer service and even basic sanitation. As it dragged on, it effected morale and turnover increased. When it was time to write the budget for the new year, the payroll expenditure for the short staffed year was the baseline. We were doomed to continue being overworked, providing bad customer service, unsanitary conditions and eventually losing sales. That's the business mindset. Until it could be demonstrated unambiguously that the decrease in sales exceeded the labor savings did the company's owners take any action - it wasn't a problem until it affected the bottom line. The executive order eliminating close to one thousand state jobs assumes the profit mindset and not the service mindset. All that is being scrutinized is the potential money savings, rather than attempting to find out why these positions haven't been filled. 

In addition to the differing views of finances, the role of a leader is necessarily different in government and business. In most businesses the owner is a virtual dictator. This is especially true in a privately held company, but can also be true in a publicly traded firm. Boards of Directors can fire a CEO, but in practice a company's management team acts virtually independently and with little oversight. A smart CEO will have a team of accountants, lawyers and other advisors, but in practice there's nothing to reign in a CEO from taking unilateral action. Government is structured differently. Executives, i.e. governors, mayors, presidents, are constrained by a web of rules limiting their power. Legislatures constitutionally have co-equal authority, as does the judiciary. A newly elected government executive whose "qualifications" were running a business is often surprised that they cannot do whatever they like once in office. They certainly don't want to hear "You can't do that". I even heard our current governor, in a meeting at my workplace, say "I'm the governor, I can do what I want". 

Related to the fallacy that a businessman will bring skills to the table that will make them a good elected official is the "outsider" myth. While there is some validity to the premise that we sometimes need fresh ideas, new faces and "change", you still have to know what the rules are before you can decide to break them. There is a very noticeable difference in approach between a president or governor who spent time in Congress, or even as a local executive, from one who was elected with no government experience. In the sports world, teams will often bring in new coaches to shake things up. But what doesn't happen is an NFL team bringing in a hockey coach, even if his team won the Stanley Cup. Sure, he was successful. Very successful! But the success was in an entirely different field, even if both were "sports", both involved "teams" and the goal in both was "winning". 

Someone wants you to vote for them because of success in the business world? Vote for someone else.

No Bad Things Happened Under Trump

One of the articles of faith among the Church of Trump is that no arguably bad thing that is happening now would happen if Trump was president. Of course this "what if" thinking can never be proven. The world is a complicated enough place that you can be sure that the same exact set of circumstances are rarely duplicated in different time periods. Presidents of both parties are famous for taking credit for all the positives that occur during their administration, but not the blame for the negatives. Certainly a president's policies, both foreign and domestic, will affect how the business community and foreign leaders conduct themselves. Room must be given, however, for the simple fact that leaders will make decisions that are best for them, notwithstanding a United States president's policies or rhetoric. Trump, the narcissist that he is, gave outsize credit to his own abilities to influence events, both nationally and internationally. As I have said before, he was fortunate to have inherited an economy that had been on the upswing, following the same trends as his predecessor, President Obama, had during his second term. He likes to emphasize that he started no new wars during his term, but falsely states that he is the only one in decades to have done this and also falsely states that he "had no wars" during that time. What are the facts?

If you go back to World War II Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Obama also started no new wars, although most of them, like Trump, had wars taking place during their time in office that they inherited from previous administrations. During Trump's time, while no new wars were begun, the war in Afghanistan was still going on. We had troops in Iraq and Syria fighting ISIS.  He had the heads of a branch of Iran's military assassinated. Trump claims that the world was at peace while he was president, specifically pointing to the Russian war in Ukraine and the Israeli war in Gaza as something that wouldn't happen if he were around. But is this evidence of Trump's preventative powers? While the main invasion of Ukraine did not take place until after Trump left office, Russia had been fighting to annex Ukraine's eastern provinces for several years. Are we really supposed to believe that Putin would delay his own revanchist plans in order to please his pal Donnie? Or that Putin was afraid of what Trump's reaction might be? A response "like the world has never seen" might make for a popular tweet, but was there any substance? Doubtful. His "fire and fury" tweets directed at the dictator he first mocked as "little rocket man" and later exchanged love letters with, didn't appear to have much affect, since the rockets continued as did the nuclear tests. 

The expanding conflict in the Middle East is also supposed to be happening now because Biden is allegedly "weak" while Trump's "strength" would have meant that Hamas would never have initiated the October 7th attacks. Thinking this way ignores the deliberate moves by Netanyahu and his allies to make a Palestinian state impossible, including propping up Hamas itself; the deliberate moves by Hamas to use their own civilians as pawns in their ideology; the constant chipping away at Palestinian land in the West bank by Jewish settlers; the provocation by Hamas of recurring rocket attacks and the decades-long buildup of hatred between elements of both Israel and the Palestinians who each have their no-overlap view of the 1947 U.N. Partition Plan and the creation of Israel. These moves aren't happening because they give a shit who the U.S. president is. They're all fanatical idealogues and make their decisions based on what works for them. You can be sure that not only is the United States not part of Hamas' calculations, but would likely see direct American involvement as confirmation of their them-against-the-infidels mindset. 

Things happen in the world that don't revolve around who is sitting in the Oval Office.

But since these things are happening, not in a campaign speech imaginary world, but here and now, I'm satisfied that the person who is sitting in the Oval Office is able to handle them. 

 

Electoral College - Again

In light of the attempt by Nebraska Republicans to change the way we allocate our electoral votes, it's time to revisit the Electoral College (EC).

Every state is allocated electoral votes based on the number of members of Congress representing each state. Since every state is guaranteed at least one representative in the House of Representatives and all states have two members in the Senate, the minimum number of electoral votes a state can have is three. 48 states award their votes to the winner of a plurality of votes in the presidential election. (A plurality refers to whoever gets the most votes, which is not necessarily a majority. Since third party candidates can and do run, the winner in a state often garners less than 50% of the vote.) Nebraska and Maine do it differently. They allocate one vote to the winner in each congressional district (Nebraska has 3, Maine, 2) and two votes to the state's overall winner. They regularly split their votes, with one EC vote going to the state's second place candidate. This practice recognizes to some extent the voice of the minority party's voters in both states. 

Nebraska Republicans, who have a large majority in the supposedly nonpartisan one-house legislature as well as the governorship, are pushing to eliminate this setup in favor of the winner-take-all arrangement in most states. They are supported in this by former president Trump and other national Republicans. Since District 2 in Nebraska has voted Democratic in several recent elections, awarding one of five EC votes to the Democrat, Republicans are attempting to give themselves any advantage that they can. (Funny how they're not pushing Maine to do the same - since majority Democratic Maine sometimes allocates one EC vote to Republicans). Nebraska Governor Pillen describes this effort as one to unify Nebraskans. News flash: unity comes from people agreeing on issues, or deciding to set their disagreements aside, it does not come from erasing the voice of dissent from the majority view. 

Despite being in a small minority (2 out of 50) of states who don't allocate EC votes according to winner-take-all, I'm of the opinion that all states should adopt a similar method of allocation. I've always thought that getting away from winner-take-all awarding of EC votes would get the EC vote closer to the actual votes (otherwise known as the popular vote) and eliminate the oddity that we have seen twice in the last 6 elections of the winner receiving fewer votes than the loser  - recently I did the math to see if my intuition was right. 

The assumption that I made was that the ideal situation was slightly different than the Nebraska-Maine method, mainly due to the difficulty of locating congressional district totals in any of the other 48 states. My projections assume that states would allocate electoral votes proportionally based on the percentage of total votes cast that each candidate receives, rounded to the nearest whole number. In a few cases the rounded allocations did not match the total electoral votes, so in each case the odd EC vote was awarded to the overall winner. In no case had the majority candidate received so many popular votes that the minority candidate received no EC votes. 

In the 2020 presidential election the EC results were 306 (Biden) to 232 (Trump). This was exactly the same margin by which Trump won in 2016, with fewer actual votes than Clinton. By using my formula for allocating EC votes the totals would have been 272 - 262, with 4 EC votes awarded to 3rd party candidates. (In reality, since there were generally more than one 3rd party candidate on the ballot, it's possible that their EC votes would round down to zero). In the real world Biden's EC totals deviated from the popular vote by over 5%; in my imaginary world his EC vote total would be within a half percent of the actual percentage of votes. More importantly, the votes of the minority party would actually count in states that are effectively run by one party. In California, for example, whose 55 EC votes always go to the Democrat, despite around 35% of the voters supporting Republicans, those Republicans would represent 18-20 EC votes. In Texas, instead of all 38 electors voting Republican, it would likely be 21-17. Similar scenarios in Florida and New York. 

One of the arguments that Electoral College advocates make is that the big cities would dominate in a poplar vote system. To a certain extent that's true since there's a lot of people in them. But one way to look at it is in a popular vote scenario, or a setup as I've described they would have less influence in places like California and New York since the rural, conservative-leaning voters in those states would now have their votes counted. In our current system New York City dominates the whole state where almost 40% of the voters cast their ballot for Trump...and saw their votes evaporate in the winner-take-all system. In Nebraska and Maine, with their allocation system, the urban voters in Nebraska and the rural voters in Maine haven't been disenfranchised. 

If I had my way I would go even further and change the makeup of the House of Representatives, which would in turn affect the Electoral College. When the Constitution was enacted each House district was of equal size, with every state guaranteed at least one representative. As the population grew the number of representatives increased as well. Until 1929, when the total number was frozen at 435. Since the population has not stopped growing, the average population of a House district has not only increased, but has become very uneven. Wyoming, the smallest state is guaranteed one representative for their population of around 500,000 while in California the average district has close to 800,000 people in it. This gives disproportionate weight to the votes in small states.  Put another way, each of Wyoming's EC votes is weighted at 3.69 times one California vote. (Based on EC votes divided by total population).

If we take Wyoming's population as the size of a Congressional district and divide each state's total population by that number and round to the nearest whole number The House of Representatives will increase in size from 435 to 671. There are still some small state biases due to the fact that EC votes take into account the 2 senators each state is entitled to. A way around that might be to calculate the electoral votes proportionally first, then subtract the two senators to get the House representation. That's unconstitutional though. Projecting what the EC totals would have been if this framework had been in place in 2020 gives Biden the win 347-323, plus four 3rd party votes. This is around 0.2% off from the actual popular vote totals. 

This idea has the benefit of not requiring a Constitutional amendment to eliminate the Electoral College and brings the EC votes in line with the national popular vote. A drawback is that since elections are governed locally it could not be imposed federally - everyone would have to simultaneously have to do it, which is unlikely. I cannot see any of the states that are safely in one party's column to want to dilute their power unilaterally. 

The Electoral College is in the Constitution - I can't see that changing, but there is nothing in the Constitution that mandates how the EC votes are split. 

The Myth of "Them" Borrowing (or Stealing) From Social Security

You hear it all the time, even if the villains change depending on who's telling the story. The myth that the Social Security Trust Fund will soon be insolvent because "they" borrowed (or stole) from it without ever paying it back. 

I've addressed this before by trying to explain how Social Security Benefits are financed, but this time I'll start with how the government itself is financed. 

In virtually any year the United States Government functions by way of deficit spending. This means that the amount that the government plans to spend in any given year exceeds what is being taken in by way of taxes. The difference is made up by borrowing. This doesn't mean that the Treasury goes to the bank and applies for a loan - on the contrary the United States Treasury issues bonds and other securities which are purchased by individuals, financial institutions and even foreign nationals and governments. These instruments have a term at the end of which the holder redeems it for the purchase price plus interest. Once a budget is approved by Congress and signed by the president, the additional debt is approved. Politicians often argue about how this or that program is going to be paid for, and negotiate over cuts in other areas to counter increases, but for all the arguing they still end up having to borrow in order to pay the bills. If Congress or the president wants to start another war, or forgive student loans, or any other expensive proposition they don't really have to borrow or steal from anywhere, especially not the Social Security Trust Fund, they simply authorize a larger deficit for that year, triggering more debt. 

Conservatives blame Democrats for this mythical theft from Social Security, Democrats typically blame George W. Bush for doing it to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But not only did they not need to take any money from the Social Security Trust Fund, but it's not as if the Trust Fund is a vault full of cash or even a bank account. The money that individuals are taxed to fund Social Security are not sequestered away for each worker's future use. It's not "our" money any more. That money that comes out of our paychecks goes to pay for current retirees. When we retire our benefits will be paid for by money taken out of future workers' paychecks. In addition, any surpluses are required by law to be invested in nonmarketable government securities - so there's not even any cash in the Trust Fund for anyone to steal. 

To be fair, in some sense, Congress and/or various presidents have borrowed money from the Trust Fund, but only because that's how it's legally structured. Going back to the concept of deficit spending - if the government has to borrow, i.e. issue Treasury bonds, to cover the deficit each year, wouldn't it make sense for the amount that has to be borrowed from outside sources be reduced by the amount of Social Security surplus that is required to be invested? And the Social Security Trust Fund receives interest from the general fund when those bonds are redeemed by the Trust Fund. The 2.9 trillion dollar Trust Fund balance is the result of decades of surpluses and consists entirely of Treasury bonds. 

Several years ago the amount of benefits being paid out each year exceeded the amount taken in by payroll taxes, so the Trust Fund stopped running surpluses. The Trust Fund balance will be reduced each year by that deficit. The potential insolvency next decade isn't due to the piggy bank getting raided, but because there aren't any more surpluses. Even then, revenue from payroll taxes will be able to cover around 70% of projected benefits each year unless Congress makes other arrangements. 

There aren't any missing funds pilfered by previous presidents or congresses, it's simply a result of the ratio of retirees to workers increasing over the years.