The Iowa Caucuses and the New Hampshire Primaries, and what is a Washington Insider?

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Haha.  Ted Cruz has evidently come out slightly ahead of Trump and Rubio, and is basking in his slight victory.  (It is hard to imagine how the more sophisticated and socially aware within the GOP can bear the boorishness and hypocrisy of Ted Cruz; but he comes off looking good compared to --well, others of their candidates.)  You just know that the better-educated within the GOP do not believe in Creationism, or in banning abortion.  But it suits their purposes to encourage Presidential hopefuls to spout this extreme propaganda.

Hillary Clinton seem to be slightly ahead in Iowa, and there are rumors that she and Bernie Sanders were in a dead heat in a number of New Hampshire caucuses, and the ties had to be broken with coin tosses.  And she won every single toss, I'm hearing.  I sincerely hope that the Secretary of State did not flood the state with fake coins, though I think she would make a good president.

The problem with Hillary Clinton is that she is viewed by (and heavily painted by) the GOP propaganda machine as a Washington Insider.

What does that mean?  (See the article in Wikipedia about what a Washington Insider is, and "Inside the Beltway," and "Beltway Bandits".  You can Google it.)

Hillary Clinton was in the White House as Bill Clinton's wife for eight years, and as Secretary of State for another eight years.  She has lots of friends and acquaintances in Washington, D.C., but I doubt whether that gives her access to the halls of Congress, or the Supreme Court, or the White House (if it happens not to be occupied by a Democrat), or the Treasury.

Once Obama leaves, he would not be much of an insider either; though one can imagine that his emails could get in to certain influential people.  The political actors in Washington are not the insiders.  The insiders are those in the Washington Think Tanks, and the Lobbyists.  To the extent that anyone has friends among this crowd, they are Washington Insiders.

That would make Hillary Clinton a Washington Insider.  This is the single factor that worries me.  To the extent that Hillary Clinton believes that American Business is the Strength of America, we are in trouble.

I do think that Obama pays lip-service to this idea, and he may even believe it to a certain extent.  But I think Obama is fundamentally a Washington atheist, and doesn't truly subscribe to any of the sacred superstitions about How Things Are Done that political addicts spout.

One doesn't really know what Hillary Clinton believes, any more than one knows what Bill Clinton believes.  They both have a certain level of openness that they let the world see; but there is a deeper level that is kept hidden.  That's fine by me; I'm probably the same way.  Obama is probably the same way, but it seems that there is greater overlap between Obama's professed principles and his real principles.

My wife seems to think that Bernie Sanders's big problem is that he wants to butt heads with Business.  "Every State has some big businesses," says my wife, "and it's difficult to go up against them, because they spread a certain degree of wealth around the cities and states in which they're located."

Hah.  Tell that to Seattle.  There was news recently that Microsoft and Starbucks had negotiated such huge tax concessions with the State Government that they paid practically nothing in taxes.  It was the same with Boeing, apparently.  I wonder how it is with Exxon-Mobil?  No.  The big businesses no longer believe in trickle-down.  They do not believe in dividends, either, which is one reason Wall Street has such a bad time.  Prices of stocks go up and down, but the dividends stay low.

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Economics

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Economics is getting too important to be left to the Econogeeks.  It is just one of several things that people simply tinker with: dysfunctional families, ecology, unmotivated kids, etc.  In those instances, I suppose, it is justified; after all, nobody likes to prescribe to a family exactly what they ought to be doing, because you get to take on the entire responsibility for everything that will go wrong with them in the future.

But the Economy needs to be handled a lot better.  Sure, some of the same problems are there: if you take it on directly, head on, a lot of people are going to expect you to do a perfect job of it.  But it is becoming clear that "Economics" simply cannot be left to itself.

In the last week I have seen several things that have been adversely affected by the current economic climate.  Two of them are

Lilith Fair: a touring sequence of concerts by women performers.  Tickets are not selling, which is causing some of the artists to drop out of the lineup, which results in even more performers dropping out.  Obviously, when money is tight, there is still less tolerance of Mom when she wants to blow $25 on some women-only concert.  (Men do attend the concerts, evidently some very sweet guys; and we're told that there is hardly any crowding in the Men's Rooms.)

Female Imams in China: it appears that women are taking on leadership roles in the Islamic parts of China.  But again, we're told that they're being impacted by the poor economy.

I guess the more naive among us (including me) don't realize that certain things cannot be controlled too much: for instance, you can't force a performer to perform even if you cannot pay them as much as they want to be paid.  How are these things done?  Perhaps they get a flat fee, and maybe a transportation allowance, and a portion of the "gate receipts", which seems only fair.

Economics becomes this fluffy, woozy thing when a country becomes globalized to an extreme degree.  Until recently, for instance, the USA could feed itself with crops grown mainly within its borders, with inexpensive immigrant labor.  But part of the way of life here is that commodities must cost very little: cheap gasoline, cheap furniture, cheap food, cheap clothing.  The only way to do it is to get it from the third world.

Very soon, all the gasoline, furniture, food and clothing is coming from the Third World.  To begin with, the Third World is happy to provide all this, not knowing exactly how much this stuff is enjoyed over here.  But then, they would like to get computers and big cars and movies from here.  This is all very fine; they produce their stuff for cheap, we produce our stuff for not so cheap, since we're a lot more civilized, but it creates a very tight connection between their economy, and ours.

Now, there are a lot of guys who don't actually do the producing.  They actually make money on the business connections.  Every time money travels in or out, they make money.  These guys are called Wall Street.  For years they have claimed that if you mess with them, the conduit for cheap this and that will get screwed.

Well.  Leaving them to their own devices is clearly just as dangerous.  I have no suggestions as to what parts of the Economy must be controlled, or how to control it.  But consider the following:

Farmers are growing food, which they cannot sell even at prices lower than the prices charged in supermarkets.

What's wrong with this picture?  The Economy is in the hands of middle-men, who are most certainly not easy to satisfy.

Our lives become very uncomfortable if we think about this kind of problem, so we don't; the Econogeeks are only too happy to do the thinking for us, and the Wall Street Boyes are only too happy to scare the Econogeeks into gibbering idiots.

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