The Zen of Pie Graphs and Governing

Whenever I hear Republicans working themselves up into a major snit about government spending, about foreign aide, about welfare spending, about how hard working taxpayers have to hand over their hard earned wages to lazy welfare queens, I imagine what a pie graph of government spending would look like.

When Donald Trump screams about how corporate taxes have driven away patriotic, well meaning American corporations from our shores to seek tax havens overseas, about how he wants to lower corporate taxes to bring these corporations back home so they can open factories here and create jobs here, I try to imagine how heavy the burden on these corporations must be.

So I looked on line and found some pie graphs, but there are still questions to be answered. 
This graph suggests the amount of income we get from corporations is dwarfed by the burden we ask our individual taxpayers to bear.  Of course, Mr. Trump claims in other countries the corporate tax rate is so low, all our corporate leaders would be remiss if they decided to bring these corporations back to the USA. But what does that mean? If you are Fred's Tire Company, and you move your corporate headquarters to Dublin or some Caribbean island but leave your factory in Akron, does that mean you pay Irish or island tax rates? I don't get how that works.

Double click to enlarge

Now, here's an interesting pie graph. Double click on this one to enlarge it, but even at a distance you can see the biggest slices of the pie belong to Social Security and "Medicare and Health" spending. I would argue this is just how it should be. Social Security and Medicare are the two best and most popular programs the government has; they do the most good and they do what government ought to do for its people.

 I'm not sure, though, what that "Health" thing means. 
I don't know how much of that slice is for "health" as opposed to Medicare. And what is "health?" Is that Medicaid? Is that "Indian Health Services" and stuff like the CDC (Center for Disease Control), the National Institutes of Health (where medical research is funded), the FDA, where drugs are kept safe?

As for Social Security, if your parents didn't have that, they might be moving in with you and then you have shoulder the burden of that expense, so even though the cost of Social Security looks like a big bite out of your tax dollar, if it weren't for that bite, the bite out of your own personal budget would make that tax look like a peck on the neck. Same for Medicare. Imagine if your father winds up in the hospital getting his cardiac bypass and there were no Medicare. Are you ready to foot that $500,000 bill for the surgery and aftercare? 

I'm assuming the slice that has "Veterans" including the VA hospitals where all those high tech arms and legs prostheses are fitted and the war wounded are rehabilitated.  I'm assuming Walter Reed and Bethesda Naval and military hospitals are in the "Military" costs. 

The other big slice is "military."  Now that's a breakdown I'd like to see. Is Homeland Security in that one? How about the CIA and the NSA?Where is the FBI?

Then there is the interest payments on the debt. That's a hefty slice, and likely to get hefty-er if income tax rates are cut for the wealthy and the government, finding itself with less income, has to borrow more.

And where does "welfare" fit in here? Is that in that tiny slice with "community" spending? 
And what about foreign aide, the Republicans are always fuming about--how we spend on Africans when our own people in Ohio are hurting? Is that in that sliver of the pie called "international?" If so, neither welfare nor foreign aid seem like much to worry about, it's chump change. 

Double Click to Enlarge. Use your microscope to find "welfare"

When you look at the spending which is not locked in as Social Security and Medicare and interest debt payments, the Military spending is huge. If we pulled out of Korea, Japan, Germany and all those military bases we've got spread around the world, and if we stopped spending on new fighter planes and aircraft carrier groups and if we pulled out of Iraq and Afghanistan, then we'd probably still have to spend on the next new war in our trajectory of eternal war. 
How much of this slice is devoted to all the expense of caring for wounded soldiers who have survived head wounds, brain trauma, loss of limbs, blindness or PTSD?  Or is that cost lumped into "Veterans" expenses?

Look at that slice for "Food and Agriculture."  Is this for subsidies for farmers to not plant corn or to plant corn or for whatever we pay farmers rather than letting the market determine prices? With big industrial agriculture and with companies like Archer Daniels Midland claiming to own not just the crops but the genes of plants which blow into neighbors' fields, why exactly is that slice for "Agriculture" so big? Whenever politicians start talking about money paid out by the Department of Agriculture, they get a deer in the headlights look. And that's not even the scandal we all avoid about requiring every tank of gasoline to have corn (alcohol) in it. Talk about a boondogle. We all know it takes more gas to plant that corn and fuel the tractors to harvest it than we save by adding alcohol filler to each gallon of gas at the pump, but we keep that law in place to pay the farm mega corporations. Talk about rigged. Talk about corrupt. Haven't heard Mr. Trump say anything about that. Crooked Hillary can't compare to crooked corn. 

Here's a graph which is pretty cool, because it shows most of what we spend is already baked in.  Most people have baked in expenses in their own family budgets: Got to pay the mortgage, pay the car payments, pay for food, pay for health insurance, pay the taxes, pay the day care.  After that, you got discretionary spending for vacations, hunting, sports, the things you actually enjoy doing.   But, for most families, if they had about 30-40% of their incomes to spend as they pleased, they would be very happy.

But here's the real pie graph which gets my utmost attention: 

See that red slice? That is where you likely live.  That's the amount of wealth you control compared to all the rest of the wealth which is controlled by the top 20%, the lucky one out of five. But look at it another way--the top 5% control about 2/3 of that pie. I do not know the demographics of my readership, beyond knowing their countries of origin, but among the American readers, I suspect a hefty slice may be in that slice "Next 4%," which control about 1/3 of the nation's wealth. Even so, the upper 1% control more than your group. 
I'm not exactly sure what "financial wealth" is. Does this mean all the income from wages and from stocks and is that combined with an estimated wealth of properties owned?  Where does that term "financial wealth" come from? 

No matter, it's a pretty impressive pie graph, no matter what it means.  Whatever it means, it can't be good. Makes Marie Antoinette look like a Salvation Army patron. 

Where do you think Rush Limbaugh, Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Tom Price, the Koch brothers, and Sean Hannity fall in this graph?

As Bernie Sanders has noted, it's not so much Democrats against Republicans, it's the billionaire class against everyone else. Compared to that struggle, the trouble the average Amercian has with any Muslim, even the radical Islamists, is pretty minimal. 

Republicans Replace Obamacare with Disastercare

And the winner is: "Disastercare!" 
Of all the scores of entries into the naming contest, Disastercare wins the prize.
Oh, there were many contenders: Chumpcare, Delusioncare, Vaporcare, Disappearingcare, Foolcare, Abrcadabracare, Trumpedyoucare.

Now, you will say, it's premature to name the thing before it's been hatched, but, hey, the Republicans are so far ahead of the Dems on naming, cut us some slack.


Susan Collins presented a plan which would, somehow, allow some states to elect to keep Obamacare.
That could cause problems for Kentucky, whose Senator Mitch McConnell decried Obamacare as the worse thing since The Black Death.  Kynect, the Obamacare program for Kentucky, was wildly popular. Folks there had never had health insurance and then they got their health insurance and they loved it. When asked how they felt about Obamacare, they said they hated it. Now, hopefully, those good citizens of Kentucky will lose their Obamacare and we'll see how they like that.


Personally, I like Disastercare because it comes, more of less, right from the mouth of The Donald hisownself.


Alternative fact News:
1/ Donald Trump informs us of the 63 million votes cast for Hillary Clinton all but three were fraudulent! (Mr. and Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea voted non fraudulently.)
2/ Donald Trump ended "catch and release" for Mexican immigrants. We will now put all those caught on the grill and sell them in fajitas as high protein alternatives for the inner city poor caught in the carnage. In Chicago it won't be fajitas but polish sausage.
3/ Water boarding will be reinstituted for all terrorist subjects.  If you are accused of fraudulent voting, that will be punishable by waterboarding, or, if you have registered in two states you may be subjected to snow boarding, unless your last name ends in Trump or Bannon.
4/ Mexico will definitely pay for the wall. China will be sent a bill as well, just as soon as we can get some of those Chinese engineers and construction workers who built the Great Wall in place to help us build our wall. While the American taxpayer will pay upfront costs for the Wall, Mexico will ultimately pay "one way or another" which might include a tax on dishwashers, construction workers, and lawn care workers living here in the USA, documented or not.
5/ The American Embassy will be moved to Jerusalem today. Actually, no physical stuff with be moved, but we consider Tel Aviv, the current site of the Embassy, to be Jerusalem, which in alternative fact, it is.


That's all for now: Stay tuned for Daily Headlines from HNHMDD or HobbitMadd, for short. You may say that is actually 4 letters longer than HNHMDD, but in altfact, it's not.

Cynicism and Gullibility: Hanah Arendt and the American Mind

Hannah Arendt

"In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The mixture in itself was remarkable enough, because it spelled the end of the illusion that gullibility was a weakness of unsuspecting primitive souls and cynicism the vice of superior and refined minds.
Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.
The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness."
--Hannah Arendt
[They took Trump seriously, but not literally.]

Mary Astor: Not really an Astor

Consider the cynic:
1 Global trade is, overall good for the economy, moving goods and services from where they are most efficiently produced at lowest cost to markets which desire them.
--Bah, humbug! All that happens is the Chinese steal our jobs!
2. Unemployment in the United States has fallen and the economy is rebounding from the great recession of 2009.
--Ridiculous! I know a guy who's out of work.
3. Medicare is in good shape and Social Security could be secure until 2032 if we simply raised the cap on income taxes from $118,000 to $250,000.
--What rot! Neither will be there for me when I need it.
4. Global Warming is real and caused by human beings.
--Poppycock. It's all junk science. I know because I read it on the internet and President Trump says so.

Consider the gullible:
1. Obama was born on Mars.
2. A wall can keep out those Mexican rapists.
3. Obamacare is a disaster.
4. Those 3 million voters who they say voted for Hillary were all a fraud.

The Problem of Intolerant Immigrants: Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders is a creepy Dutchman who makes no bones about the Netherlands being at war with Islam.

But, the strange thing is, he is for protections for gay rights, Jews, and a whole host of things we generally speaking associate with liberal, tolerant societies.

He calls Islamic refugees a great Trojan Horse.  Sound familiar?

The problem is he has a point.  The episodes in Germany when "Middle Eastern" men groped German women in public squares during Christmas and New Year's celebrations may have been examples of making the exception the rule, of claiming that the action of a few deviants reflect the character of an entire group.

But there is reason to believe Islamic, or Middle Eastern Islamic men view women differently than liberal Western men.  Women, unaccompanied by men in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, elsewhere report groping, rape, sexual aggression, and at what point to do you believe this attitude is a cultural norm which helps define what Islamic men believe?
There is no question that in England and France some Islamic groups, at Mosques, have said they know the word of God and they will not tolerate beliefs which contradict that word. It is a sort of "graph versus host" reaction. 

What do you do with an immigrant group which does not simply refuse to assimilate but which actively strikes out against the society they have moved into? That is, in fact, the Trojan horse, and invasion from a group which has been taken into the city, past the gates, and then explodes, once inside, to destroy the city.

If Islamic immigrants/refugees refuse to accept the basic values of tolerance for opposing points of view, what do we do?

You can say, well, we prosecute each individual case; we do not assume everyone with an Islamic name is guilty. But can you, practically speaking, control the problem if you have to arrest each solider, as he emerges from the belly of the Trojan horse, and only after he has attacked?
The fact is, we have had to deal with the Ku Klux Klan in America. We did not attempt to round up all the Klan members and imprison them because we thought they were, as a group, a threat to security. We had to prosecute them, one by one.

On the other hand, we have Donald Trump engaging in the most racist of all behavior, pointing to the one Mexican rapist and saying, "See? I told you they were all rapists?"

In that case, at least, most of us have experience with the undocumented Mexican bus boy, gardener, construction worker, laborer, who have shown great willingness to work hard, stay out of conflict and we would not harm those who would not harm us.

The fact is, there may in fact be a war of cultures, and the Islamic men who have stirred such passions in France, the Netherlands, Germany and England may share some of the responsibility for this.

Labor in Trump's Pocket

Sean McGarvey and Terry O'Sullivan met with President Trump at the White House today.  They head unions which represent sheet metal workers and laborers. They were delighted with Mr. Trump, who wants to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure projects which their workers can build with "American steel." They don't care much if that trillion dollars comes from taxpayers or private companies who will then own the roads and bridges and airports. All they care about is their members will get jobs and wages for the next few years. 

They were also moved by Mr. Trump who asked them to round up a working sheet metal worker, a plumber and a pipe fitter after they got off shift and to bring them to the White House so he could meet them and tell them how much he loves them.

The labor union leaders were delighted to hear Mr. Trump nixed the Pacific trade deal and will soon kill NAFTA.  Trade deals make corporations money, increase stock prices, lower prices for goods here in the USA, improve the overall economy, but trade deals send jobs (of some sort, likely manufacturing) overseas, the union leaders believe.

Now, exactly how a car plant in Mexico or a cell phone factory in China costs the sheet metal worker in Washington, DC his job, or costs the pipe fitter in Wilkes Barre his job, is not yet clear, but the unions have clearly drunk the Kool Aide. 

If Mr. Trump can get his Republican Congress to spend a trillion dollars on a stimulus package like this, he will certainly have accomplished something Barack Obama could never do.  He will likely also insure his own re election.

It may not matter he throws 30 million people to the wolves without health insurance if he can put 5 million people to work on roads, bridges and railroads and airport construction. 

I'm not actually sure the numbers add up that way. But, I supposed, it's conceivable, if all those construction workers get jobs, they may get health insurance with those jobs and so the loss of Obamacare may matter less to them.

It took Nixon to go to China. Maybe it takes Trump to get the government spending money again. 

Of course, while he's promising to protect Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid,  his appointed officials are busy killing those programs, but we are building things again, so who cares?

Of course, Mussolini made the trains run on time, Mayor Daley plowed the snow off the Chicago streets and Hitler built the Autobahn and the Volkswagen, so sometimes these guys show a flare for knowing what matters to the masses.

As long as people are happy by 2018, President Trump will be well on his way.

The Popular Vote Vs The People's Will

Sick of all the whining about Hillary Clinton having "won the popular vote." The implication is that the "people" really wanted Hillary, not Trump.


Of course, this presumes we know the mind of the people by counting the votes of those who went to the polls.

The fact is, as we are all aware, voters in "safe states" may not go to the polls because they know how their state is going to go, so voters in South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana who were all for Trump will say, "I'll go hunting" that day, rather than vote. Or a Trump voter in Massachusetts may say, "What's the use?" and go fishing rather than cast a meaningless vote for Trump in a state he's got no hope of winning.


This is all about psychology, not simple counting.  If you throw open the bank vault on Main Street and wait for a day and not a single dollar has been taken from the vault, that doesn't mean people don't want the money. It may have something to do with those two big guards holding their big guns which discouraged people from taking the action and expressing their desire.


When you have the electoral college standing there, it affects the behavior of people, and they may not act on their desire.


Knowing this we have to agree there is no way to know what the majority of our countrymen really wanted.

What Is a Country?

Thinking about the marches in all the cities this past weekend, I began to ask myself: Are they marching in all those rural counties that flipped for Trump and put him in the White House?

Counties that flipped for Trump (from Obama)

The answer, of course is: No, they love him in the rural parts of America, in Idaho, rural Pennsylvania, the empty places where few people live. When David Brooks roamed about Idaho, all the people he met were sure Trump would win because everywhere they looked were Trump signs and Trump voters. When Mark Shields drove across the open spaces from Maine to Georgia, all he saw along the highways through the open spaces were Trump signs. But Brooks and Shields thought: Well, but in the densely populated cities, in the large metropolitan area, they cannot abide Trump. 

Turned out, those ragged people now are in control. All those cities where the marches occurred over the weekend--those masses don't control their own destiny. The crazy people in those counties where people don't read newspapers, they are in the driver's seat. 

But are they the nation, those dimwits out there?  If Hillary Clinton got 3 million more votes than Trump--is that the nation which chose its leader, or something else?

So if the masses of people, who live in or around the cities are marching against Trump, who voted to put him in in the first place?

And why should a state, which is, after all nothing but land defined by borders, get two Senators?  Do grassy prairies need health insurance?  Do the deserts of Arizona need free trade?  Do the Great Lakes need to be protected against sexual harassment?  

I've lived in rural parts. I spent a year on a potato farm, after leaving New York City and I looked around at my neighbors and thought, "Wow, these people are here for a reason."  

There are plenty of people living in those empty places who simply could not make it in New York. They had that strange blend Hannah Arendt talked about, a blend of cynicism and gullibility which characterizes certain populations: so there are people who  would not believe in evolution, or global warming or science or in data which shows that the crime rate has fallen, that employment has risen to high levels, but they will believe that most Mexicans living in America are rapists and that Muslims want to behead every American and all the non believers. 

So my question is this: What is America, if it is not its people? 

Well, you will say, it's a people living in a geographic area defined by agreed upon borders. But if geography is part of the definition of a nation, then you can say the land itself is part of what constitutes a nation. And if you agree to that then you agree that that vast chunk of land called Montana is entitled to two Senators. And those two Senators should be able to tell people living in Baltimore they cannot limit gun ownership, because in Montana, people love their guns, even if in Baltimore, guns are destroying neighborhoods.  And Congressmen from the wide open spaces of Texas can tell women living in inner city Philadelphia they cannot have abortions because in Texas life begins at conception and Praise the Lord, we don't like abortions none in Texas. 

But then those two Senators from Idaho can tell all those millions of people living in Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, DC, New York San Francisco, Los Angeles, that they cannot have national health insurance.

But why should a small minority of people living in states where the Aryan nation has its roots, or where people believe in living off the grid, or where people don't believe in vaccination or public schools,  why should those deranged souls living out there in the wind swept plains of Kansas be able to tell the mass of people living along the coasts what is possible for them?

If people living in rural parts of Pennsylvania believe in home schooling, should they be able to tell the citizens of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh they have to home school their kids?

Look at that election map: Those great stretches of "the country" are empty, occupied by half wits, and those half wits rule.

There is something amiss here, and whatever that is, it's what explains President Trump.