December 19th
On Monday, December 19, the Electoral College
will cast its votes. The electors, with
few exceptions, are not legally bound to vote the way the people in the states
they represent voted.
It is conceivable that some of them, primarily life-long “establishment”
Republicans whose role in government and the Party had earned them the role of
electors, are not overly thrilled with Donald Trump, particularly in view of
some of his appointments, his unthinking and inappropriate thrusts into foreign
policy and his continuing to “campaign” over a month after Election Day. Some, lifelong anti-Communists, are appalled
by the direction Trump seems to be taking in regard to Russia.
Donald Trump won 306 electoral votes on November 8. One of those electors has already declared
that he will not vote for Trump. If 36
more make that choice, Donald Trump will not be elected by the Electoral
College. The chances of this happening
are remote, but not inconceivable. Minds can change over the next few days.
If Trump’s 306 electoral votes are diminished
by just 37 independently-minded electors, the choice of our President will fall
upon the House of Representatives, where each State will have one vote,
with a simple majority needed to name a President. Republicans dominate enough State delegations
to guarantee that the House would name a Republican, and in all likelihood,
they would name Donald Trump, but the door would
actually be opened for other Republican to receive consideration.
Jack Lippman
Kathleen Parker Speaks Sense
In a recent column, traditional Republican Kathleen Parker pointed out that “the Founding Fathers didn’t fully trust democracy, fearing mob rule, and so created a republic.” She went on to say that “most important among the criteria for a president was that he (or now she) be qualified … and that the Electoral College was created as a braking system that would, if necessary, save the country from an individual such as Trump.” Alexander Hamilton, she goes on to quote, wrote that the Electoral College “affords a moral certainty that the office of the President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.”
I recommend that you read the entire column. And see what surprising
conclusion this respected Republican columnist reaches. Find it by clicking right here.
JL
Gasoline Prices
Over the past few days, gasoline prices have gone up resulting in my
glancing more often at the prices posted at gas stations which I drive
past. Friday morning, the Valero station
at Jog and Clint Moore Roads in Boca Raton listed a price of $2.78 per gallon
for regular gas, if purchased with cash.
Their credit card price was obviously higher. I have always been aware that gas was more
expensive in Boca, but when I drove a bit north and got to Boynton Beach, I saw
that the prices were 40 cents a gallon less expensive, for either cash or
credit purchases. $2.38 per gallon for regular.
Wow!
This reminded me of when, a few years back, I commented on the prices
at the Sunoco station in Palm Beach, the only station on the island. They were running about $1.50 more than
prices a five minute drive over the bridges to West Palm Beach.
Initially, I thought that there must be a local tax on gasoline in Boca
Raton and Palm Beach. That is not the
case, however. Businessmen charge as
much as the traffic will bear. If the
customers are comfortable enough not to care about that extra six or seven
dollars when they fill up their tanks, why not charge it?
Or could it be that people who live in these places actually like to
spend more than they have to for things which are less expensive elsewhere,
just because they can easily afford it?
Does it make them feel good to be able to unnecessarily shell out extra money
with a smile, gaining the respect of those receiving it, who then dutifully
recognize them as being among the “very rich people” who have retired to
Florida rather than the rest of us?
I would prefer it if gas prices in Boca Raton and in Palm Beach were
not kept artificially high for the purpose of allowing residents there to take
pride in their supposed wealth, if that is indeed the case. It would be easier
just to put a sticker on their cars, or print a message on a tee shirt, saying
“I am very rich, so respect me for it!”
$2.38 a gallon is just fine for me, as it probably would be for Warren
Buffett if he lived in South Florida.
But a word of caution: Don’t run
out of gas in Boca nor in Palm Beach.
It’ll cost you.
JL
Election Post-Postscript
Okay, it’s all becoming clear.
Super-salesman Donald Trump, totally unqualified for the position
regardless of what he says, got himself elected President with the votes of the
gullible and frightened voters out there, some of whose jobs were disappearing,
and many others who were hoodwinked into believing a lot of meaningless
malarkey about Hillary Clinton regarding emails and her family’s foundation. One
must give the Trump campaign credit for knowing precisely where these voters
were concentrated.
And with a conservative Republican Congress and ultimately a more
conservative Supreme Court, the right wing is ready to roll, with or without
the acquiescence of the White House! (Or
the majority of voters in the Presidential election for that matter.)
It is slowly dawning on Americans, at least
those that are exposed to “real” newspapers and other reliable sources of
information, that however desirable it might be to try to present balanced
viewpoints on current issues, “truth is on one side or the other and that’s not
partisanship.” (Arianna Huffington -
2009) So let’s remember that elections
have consequences, easily visible to those whose eyes are open.
Just look at some of the President-elect’s proposed appointees named thus far: Steven
Mnuchin (the great “forecloser”), Tom Price (the great health care privatizer),
Betsy DeVos (the charter school fan of Amway fame), Nickki Haley (nice governor
but no foreign affairs experience), Ben Carson (a brain surgeon to fix our urban
housing?), Jeff Sessions (watch yo’ self, boy!), Scott Pruitt (the climate
change denier), Andrew Pudzer (of light porn ad fame and job elimination), Rex
Tillerson (Russian-decorated oil man likely to head State?), Mike Flynn (bringing
insecurity to national security) and Steve Bannon (need I say more?). And there are more appointments on the way!
Likely Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson with a friend, whose government, incidentally, had presented Rex with their "Order of Friendship" in 2013.
This gang’s agenda shapes up as reduced taxes for businesses and the
wealthy, demolition of government regulations by those who they were intended
to regulate, foreign relations geared to making it easier to make money rather
than to make peace, reduced social services for those who fall through a shredded
safety net, greater reliance on the profit-oriented private sector for
education, prisons, health care and infrastructure renewal and finally, a
cozier than ever relationship between the Treasury and the investment banking
industry.
To make this rip-off of America palatable to the gullible, it will be
dressed up in the cloak of our supposedly historic values consisting of
opposition to abortion, enshrinement of the Second Amendment, subtle racial
discrimination, traditional marriage, Christianity, conspicuous support of
local police and putting women back where they belong in the kitchen with Betty
Crocker and Aunt Jemima. The gullible will
initially eat this stuff up, just like they whooped it up at Trump rallies.
But the nation’s wealth, soon to be even
more clustered at the top of the economy in private and corporate hands than it
now is, will not “trickle down” to the middle and working classes, as the
supply-side economics people say it should.
It never has and it won’t this time either. That’s an even phonier argument than
Hillary’s email servers ever were. But
the gullible believed it, and very well may continue to believe things that
just aren’t so.
Perhaps it is time to stop calling
certain Americans “gullible” and state what they really may be: “stupid.” Call it what you may, but it was a quality in the 2016
electorate that the Democrats badly underestimated. It
resulted in millions of voters casting ballots for a candidate whose
appointments clearly indicate that they
voted against their own interests!
And such voters were not what the Founding
Fathers meant when they talked about “a
well-informed electorate” being crucial to
democracy. Our “electorate” is far from
“well-informed” and that applies to
elections on levels ranging from “Presidential” down to “Town Councilmanic.” That’s why
those Founding Fathers restricted the electorate back in 1789. They knew what would happen if they didn’t. (One
doesn’t have to know where Aleppo is or what “the nuclear triad” is, but one
should at least be able to distinguish real news from “fake news.”)
Sooner or later, when the millions who were conned by Donald Trump
finally wise up, primarily because the jobs he promised didn’t come back, the Republicans will be chased from office in
the same manner as they were in 1932 after they last tried to keep the wealth
of the nation in the hands of a very, very few.
At that time, the Presidency and both Houses of Congress turned
Democratic.
It will happen again, but here’s the big caveat: IT WILL
HAPPEN AGAIN ONLY IF THE NOW-THREATENED FREE PRESS MANAGES TO REMAINS ABLE TO ALERT
AMERICANS TO WHAT WILL BE HAPPENING TO OUR COUNTRY. (And that free press, besides facing tremendous economic challenges today, is now under less-than-subtle attack, aimed at its ability to nourish a "well-informed electorate"!)
Otherwise, the United States of America will slowly turn into the
largest banana republic in the Western hemisphere. And we don’t even grow bananas here.
JL
HOW TO BE ALERTED TO FUTURE BLOG POSTINGS.
Many readers of this blog are alerted by Email
every time a new posting appears. If you wish to be added to that
Email list, just let me know by clicking on Riart1@aol.com and sending me an
Email.
HOW TO CONTACT ME or CONTRIBUTE MATERIAL TO JACK'S
POTPOURRI.
BY CLICKING ON THAT SAME ADDRESS, Riart1@aol.com YOU ALSO
CAN SEND ME YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS TO BE PUBLISHED IN THIS BLOG AS WELL AS YOUR
COMMENTS. (Comments can also be made by clicking on the "Post a
Comment" link at the blog's end.)
MOBILE DEVICE ACCESS.
DID YOU KNOW THAT www.jackspotpourri.com IS ALSO
AVAILABLE ON YOUR MOBILE DEVICES IN A MODIFIED, EASY-TO-READ, FORMAT?
HOW TO VIEW OLDER POSTINGS.
To view older postings on this blog, just click on the
appropriate date in the “Blog Archive” midway down the column off to the right,
or scroll down until you see the “Older Posts” notation at the very
bottom of this posting. The “Search Box” in the
right side of the posting also may be helpful in locating a posting topic for
which you are looking.
HOW TO FORWARD
POSTINGS.
To send this posting to a friend, or enemy for
that matter, whom you think might be interested in it, just click on the
envelope with the arrow on the "Comments" line directly below,
enabling you to send them an Email providing a link directly to this posting.
You might also want to let me know their Email
address so that they may be alerted to future postings.
Jack Lippman
No comments:
Post a Comment