On Being Tall

I often write about pretty serious stuff on this much-neglected blog, but today I am going to tackle a decidedly unimportant topic: being tall.

I was chatting with a somewhat vertically-challenged friend of mine some time ago when she commented, suddenly and seemingly apropos of nothing, "It must be nice being tall." It took me a moment to understand what had prompted her comment. We were walking through a grocery store and I was getting something off a shelf, a shelf I realized she would not have been able to reach herself. I was doing something she would have needed to ask help with...probably from a passing Friendly Neighborhood Tall Person like me.

It got me to thinking about being tall. It's not something I usually think about, any more than I would expend much mental energy thinking about, say, having dimples, hazel eyes, or Greek toes. It's just a feature of my physical existence. But her question sent me down the rabbit hole. Is being tall very different? Is it better? Are there disadvantages?

I started by asking that same friend how she saw the differences between navigating life at 4'11" (150 cm) versus at 6'2" (188 cm). Aside from the obvious things, such as managing shelves, I was surprised to hear her say that she envied how people just seem to make room for tall people versus short people. "When we're out in public together, you just stroll through the world without a care, and everyone is practically diving out of your way. I have to dart and dive my way through crowded places, and nobody moves for me." I am sure she was exaggerating a bit here to make her point, but it made me laugh out loud, this image of myself obliviously coddiwompling my way through the world as people desperately leap out of my path.

It may surprise shorter people to hear this, but I do not usually even feel aware of my height. After all, while 6'2" is tall, it is hardly freakishly tall. I don't really feel tall. I feel like a pretty average human being, physically speaking. Until, that is, I experience The Moment. The Moment is what I call that occasional experience when I am out in public and I see someone from across a room who does indeed look freakishly tall to me, only to find as I approach him or her that we are in fact the same size, or s/he is even shorter than I am. It's rather unsettling, because I suddenly feel extremely self-conscious about my height. I think to myself, "Is that what I look like to everyone? This hulking, lumbering bipedal tower of awkwardness? A Lurch?!" Fortunately, being taller than 99% of my fellow humans means I do not have to experience The Moment all that often.

One of the most challenging parts about being tall is, happily, something that goes away after childhood; but it does make that period of life difficult at times, as I am witnessing second-hand now with my own young children, both of whom are quite tall for their ages (98th percentile in height for their gender). One might think it is nothing but wonderful to be taller than all one's peers, but it comes with problems. Believe it or not, these problems are created almost entirely by the adults in their lives. The fact is that no matter how many times you remind people they're dealing with a four-year-old boy, they simply can't help judging the child by the standards their eyes are telling them they should be applying. When your four-year-old looks like a six- or seven-year-old, people treat him as such, and expect his behavior to reflect that perceived age. It's doubly problematic if you have a child who is also quite articulate and intelligent for his age. When my middle son was that age, for example, we constantly had issues with teachers and caregivers applying an impossible standard to him, because he was the size of a first-grader and had the vocabulary of a fifth-grader. But despite what their eyes and ears were telling them, they were still dealing with a normal four-year-old boy, one who was no more mature than his peers (and acted accordingly). It got to the point where we would write notes to, say, camp counselors, just to remind them. One summer, we were fortunate to get a camp counselor who was extremely sympathetic: she was over six feet (183 cm) herself, and immediately related to our concerns based on her own experiences growing up.

I remember practical issues from my own childhood, too. One summer, when I was 12, my local amusement park ran a promotion where they were giving kids a discount based on their size, up to age 12. The taller you were, the bigger the discount. (As an aside, can you imagine such a promotion these days?! I am a little horrified they thought this was a good idea. But this was 1983. A different time.) My mother sent me with my birth certificate, because she knew they were never going to believe I was 12. She was right. Even with the birth certificate in hand, I sensed they thought I was getting away with something.

As an adult, I continue to reap unfair benefits from being tall, benefits that far outweigh discounted roller coaster rides. Sadly, society prefers its men, and especially its leaders, to be taller, and judges them accordingly. It's an absurd notion, given what really counts in modern civilization, but of course that is just another example of how our physical and psychological evolution has yet to catch up with even the idea of civilization. During the 99.9% of our evolution, being taller/bigger had clear advantages, especially for leaders. Being bigger meant being more imposing, being more able to impose one's will physically, and being perceived as stronger and more prepared to face the challenges of a hunter-gatherer existence.

But being taller does nothing to make me a better leader, or even person, in a post-modern service economy fueled by mechanized agriculture. If anything, it is objectively disadvantageous. I require more fuel but in exchange for not providing more. I take up more space in a world in which space is often at a premium. And in an economy in which longevity is no longer a problem for the tribe (as it allows workers to contribute for longer, as opposed to being a burden to the tribe when people outlived their ability to hunt or gather), I am at a disadvantage, too: shorter people live longer.

Despite all this, though, I am afforded completely undeserved advantages. Taller men earn more. We have an easier time dating. We are more likely to win elections. People even listen to us more. I have witnessed this last phenomenon many times in my career as a businessman. People just seem to want to defer to me more than they do to shorter people, which is just patently absurd. Height gives me no greater insights or wisdom or intelligence or experience. And yet I very often myself leading meetings because apparently everyone just seems to subconsciously decide that Tall Chief Ooga Booga Man must be in charge of this particular hunting party. It often makes me wonder where I would be in life had I stopped growing at, say, 5'7" (170 cm). Had I, as millions of shorter men are forced to do, had to rely strictly on my actual talents and intelligence, would I have achieved as much? I like to think so. After all, there are millions of highly successful short people. But I will never know for sure how big a contribution an accident of genetics has made in my life.

So, all in all, do I like being tall? It's a mixed bag. There are days I wish I could just move unobtrusively through the world. And as a lover of travel, I have often found my height a limiting factor. (I could write a whole blog entry on adventures I have missed out on due to my size, and it's no treat walking through the streets of, say, Beijing, towering over almost every single person by a whole head, banging my noggin into low-hanging signs.) And as someone who dates, I occasionally wonder, "Would this woman be out with me right now if I were short?"

That last point makes me crazy. As someone who has used dating apps, I can tell you that there are far too many women out there who put too much emphasis on a man's height. It's incredible to me how many women simply reject shorter men out of hand. Many put it right there in their profiles: "No one under 6 feet (183 cm), please!" is a very common refrain. I try not to judge them too harshly. After all, physical attraction just is what it is. You can't control your attraction to taller people, any more than another person can stop himself from being attracted to, say, brunettes. The hormones want what the hormones want, I suppose. Still, it's a bit heart-breaking to think about all the wonderful relationships that will never happen just because that charming, intelligent, witty fellow happened to be a few inches too short according to some random cut-off.

Overall, being tall sometimes makes me feel a bit like a lottery-winner or heir at a gathering of self-made millionaires: I have what they have, but came to it more through luck than merit. But that doesn't make me less grateful. The occasional sore forehead aside, it's not a terrible thing to be.

An Unemotional, Amoral Argument Against Capital Punishment

This past week, the state of Texas executed white supremacist John William King for the 1998 hate-crime of murdering an African American truck driver named James Byrd, Jr. While I can't say I personally mourned Mr. King's passing, I do object to the fact that we as a society murdered him in an act of primitive revenge unworthy of a so-called civilized society. And I was disturbed to see how many so-called liberals were cheering his execution. To me, the idea of a pro-capital punishment liberal makes as much sense as a pro-KKK civil rights activist.

But of course, as soon as one begins a debate about capital punishment, emotions immediately flare and the 'arguments' for and against rely very little on facts and logic and very much on appeals to our baser instincts. Inevitably, religion gets brought into the argument. As usual, either side of this moral argument (as with every other moral argument) can equally rely on their favorite holy book to support their position. Just as I could make equally strong arguments for or against rape, incest, slavery, murder, infanticide, and even polytheism using the Bible, for example, I could build a strong case both for and against capital punishment using that maddeningly inconsistent and morally ambiguous text. (Yet another reason I am not a believer.)

So let's just leave morality, emotion, and religion completely out of the debate, shall we? If none of these can give us clarity and each can be used equally easily by both sides, it seems illogical to rely on any of them to settle the argument. Let's just proceed with facts and evidence, and in the process dispel some myths and misunderstandings about capital punishment, to wit:

1) Its value as a deterrent to others. The argument here is based in human psychology. It's very simple: I don't want to die, so I will be less likely to commit a capital offense knowing that doing so could cost me my life. This argument shows a very poor understanding of both 1) the evidence we've accumulated about the deterrent value of capital punishment and 2) basic human psychology. To the first point, the most obvious flaw in the argument that it is a deterrent is the fact that the United States executes more people than all but five other countries (China, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Egypt, Somalia) and yet has the highest violent crime rate of any highly developed industrial country (by quite a wide margin). So if capital punishment is doing such a bang-up job of scaring potential murderers, why don't we have the sixth-lowest violent crime rate after those other countries who execute so many people? (Note that none of those other five countries is exactly a peaceful paradise either.)

But, you may understandably object, is it fair to compare us to other countries, given our other unique qualities, especially the ubiquity of firearms in the U.S.? OK, so let's compare internally. Do the states that execute the most have lower violent crime rates than non-death penalty states? Surely all those potential murderers are too scared to do the deed in bloodthirsty Texas, for example? Well, apparently they aren't. Texas has a homicide rate that is three times higher than Maine, which does not have the death penalty. And the most violent state in America, Louisiana, ranks 13th in total number of executions since 1976.

I believe this failure of capital punishment to act as a deterrent is strongly related to the second weakness of the deterrent argument itself: basic human psychology. First of all, even if a murderer is acting on a premeditated  plan, few criminals count on being caught, so I do not believe there is much mulling over the consequences going on here. In other words, the idea of being executed only impedes one's plot to the extent that one plans on getting caught in the first place.

But secondly and most importantly, most murders are not committed while the perpetrator is in a state of mind to consider the consequences in any rational way.

Let’s say I am an abusive husband intent on permanently silencing my wife and dispatching my children while I’m at it, I am hardly in the frame of mind to stop and carefully consider what this means for my life expectancy. That's the last thing on my mind until after the deed is done, at which point it is too late for the death penalty to weigh on my reasoning. 

But of course, once I have committed these murders, suddenly the death penalty is all I can think about. And what exactly am I now thinking? The police are closing in. A cop has just pulled me over. I have my gun at the ready. I strongly suspect he's pulled me over because the jig is up and there is an APB out on me and my vehicle. So if self-preservation is my goal, what is the logical thing for me to do in a state with the death penalty? Simple: murder the cop, because I know it's them or me. And I should also eliminate anyone else who stands in my way. 

And this is not a hypothetical at all: how many times have you read stories of murderers going on sprees after they kill their first victim(s), only to die in a hail of bullets in a shootout that often takes law-enforcement officers' and other innocent lives? But what's my smart play if I am in a non-death penalty state and the cops are closing in? Simple: try my best to get away, but, if all else fails, turn myself in peacefully, because that guarantees my survival (while violently resisting risks getting me shot).

The third and final issue with the appeal to the psychology of the human survival instinct is that it is by no means a given that a rational person will view life imprisonment as preferable to the death penalty. While some people might desperately seek to avoid it (and thus become even more violent once one crime has been committed, as above), others may find the prospect of execution as preferable to life imprisonment and thus not be deterred at all. Indeed, for people of this mentality, capital punishment may seem like an easy way out compared to the alternatives of either prison or suicide.

So in summary, the deterrent argument is supported neither by the actual evidence we've accumulated nor by what we know about human psychology and basic human nature. 

2) Its cost. Perhaps I should have led with this, given that it is most frequently the first non-emotional argument I hear. It is simple in its chilling calculus: "Why should I, an American taxpayer, have to pay to keep a murdering scumbag alive, fed, clothed, and housed for life?" It's extremely easy to dispense with this argument: lawfully killing people in a country with a strong commitment to rule of law is a very expensive business, and is far, far more expensive than simply imprisoning them for life. This is so well documented and such an easy calculation that I won't bother going into further detail when others have already done all the research.

Of course, the obvious counter to this argument is that we should simply streamline this process and kill our victims more quickly and efficiently. And all we have to do to achieve this goal of emulating countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, and China, is to completely abandon our centuries-long commitment to the rule of law and our tradition of juris prudence. In short, all we have to do shake off is our democracy and everything our country stands for. Easy peasy.

3) Its equality of application. Another argument typically thrown out to support the death penalty is that it serves to reinforce our collective moral beliefs by teaching citizens that actions have consequences. However, objectively evaluated, it teaches no such lesson at all. Quite the contrary: even a casual observer of our penal system would quickly conclude that the true lesson to be drawn is that in our society, at best, some actions have some consequences for some people some of the time. This is not a matter of debate. Simply look at how the death penalty is applied. According to the ACLU, people of color, for example, make up 43% of those executed since 1976, far out of proportion either to their population or to their crimes. And your skin color as an accused criminal isn't the only area in which the system is unfair: your skin color as a victim matters, too. People accused of killing white people are far more likely to be executed than people accused of killing people of other races. So if capital punishment is meant to be an expression of our values, what does it say about our values when it so clearly favors whites? I blush at the thought of answering that damning question.

4) Its reversibility. This takes no time to cover. There are two easily proven statements here: 1) the United States has often executed innocent people and 2) to my knowledge, death remains an irreversible condition. If both of these statements are accepted as true, and in the absence of a methodology to reverse the first fact going forward (quite impossible), then the death penalty cannot be called a workable solution for a society that claims to value justice. If we could magically ensure that all those convicted  of capital crimes are indeed guilty, we would "only" have the three issues above to contend with. But given that University of Michigan professor Samuel Gross estimates that up to 4% of current death row inmates may in fact be innocent of their crimes, I would say we're in no pending danger of having to fall back solely on those other factors.

So in conclusion, the death penalty is not a deterrent, is not cost-effective, is not evenly applied in a way that reflects our aspirational values, and is irreversible and thus cannot be fairly applied, given our imperfect system of determining true guilt. Therefore, the death penalty is, logically, an unacceptable option for any civilized and rational society. 

Quod Erat Demonstrandum. 

BESTism, or how we can save capitalism from hollow consumerism

Before you dive into this piece, you might want to go back and read the original blog piece in which I introduced BESTism. It will save us both some time! 

You back already? That was a suspiciously fast read, but OK!

So as you know from having read that original piece (which you totally read, right?!), my goal is to suggest an alternative to our current system of consumerism in an effort to save capitalism from itself, because my feeling is that if we don't, the ever-widening inequality of our current system and the sense of purposelessness it brings will eventually cause it to collapse, and that would be catastrophic for our society.

Let's start by attacking and destroying a false premise, to wit: that capitalism and consumerism are essentially synonymous and the latter is inevitable in the former. You have only to examine other capitalist countries to see that in fact there is nothing inevitable about it if the people and their leaders choose to avoid it. We have not taken than route here in the US, so our economy is 70% based on consumer demand. And look where it has left us. Most people feel our country is on the wrong track. Millions of Americans feel hopeless and without a sense of purpose, driving addictions and suicide rates to ever-higher peaks. Opioid addiction is skyrocketing. Suicide rates have risen an astonishing 30% in just 17 years. I even think our obesity epidemic is partially due to this sense of hopelessness: we are becoming a nation of nervous, emotional eaters.

I believe these trends are tied to how hollow we collectively feel our pursuits are. There is no unifying sense of purpose. There is no moonshot. No war on poverty. No grand goals and projects to make us feel that we are all contributing to something bigger than we are as individuals. To change that, I propose we refocus our economic activity, not through command-and-control communism, but by a modified form of safety-net capitalism in which we direct more resources towards Building,  Exploration, Science, and Teaching.

Let me go ahead and rip a Band-Aid off for you right now: this absolutely means higher taxes for everyone. But before you balk too loudly at that, I ask you to consider not the COST of your current tax burden but your RETURN on it. Are you happy as a citizen? Are you economically secure and confident that you could stay that way if you encountered any setback? Are you healthy and assured of coverage if that changes? Are you confident in the infrastructure you rely on every day? If you answered no to those questions, or even most of them, then you should consider that perhaps you're getting a poor return on your investment with your taxes.

Before we move on to the BEST, let's start with two dependencies: health and basic economic security. If you don't have those two things, nothing else matters and you can't focus on the 'big picture,' since you are forced to spend all your energy on merely surviving  (which is key to why Republicans' success relies on keeping people poor and unhealthy). And right now, too many Americans don't have those basics. So to me, any successful system in the 21st century is going to have to have two features: universal healthcare and basic guaranteed income. I believe the simplest route to providing those is to expand Medicare to everyone, allow the importation of cheaper drugs from places like Canada, allow Medicare to use its leverage to negotiate better drug prices, and to send every US citizen and legal resident aged 18 and older $1040.83 a month (in 2019 dollars, adjusted by the trailing year CPI minus 0.5% every year, and fully adjusted for inflation every five years). Parents would also receive $368.33 per month per minor dependent. To keep the system simple, to avoid fraud, and to avoid rural voters becoming resentful of urban ones, I do not think we should make regional/urban COL adjustments. If local municipalities want to make up the difference, they can introduce local schemes to do that, funded by local taxes. For example, New York City may wish to introduce a local tax to supplement their UBI (universal basic income), given that one can't even rent a room in that city at that rate. Another advantage of UBI is that it eliminates our complex web of welfare programs. Combined with universal Medicare, we could eliminate dozens of programs, from Medicaid to SNAP to CHIP. And while yes, taxes would be quite high, keep in mind that your income is now supplemented and you never have to worry about healthcare premiums (except for Medicare supplements) and everyone is getting the UBI, so you're getting back a lot of that money. One question many people will want to ask is, does EVERYONE get the UBI? And the answer is yes. The goal is to avoid class resentment. We all get the exact same check every month, and everyone pays in. (And speaking of paying in, this system assumes we lift the cap on Social Security contributions. Retirement should be simplified, too, with Social Security payments simply becoming a threefold increase in your UBI check starting on your 68th birthday.)

A supplementary way to ensure everyone has the basics is to make work worthwhile. That means a minimum wage of $15 per hour for everyone aged 18 and over, to be phased in over four years,  and then to increase to $20 within four years of that. After that, we should permanently solve the minimum wage issue by pegging it to the CPI. It should increase automatically by the CPI minus 0.5% points every year, and have a catch-up with CPI every five years. (This is to avoid sparking inflation.) 

The above measures would be paid for by the appropriate combination of payroll, capital gains, and dividend taxes, and a yearly 4% wealth tax on the value of everyone's non-retirement stock/bond/mutual fund portfolios and bank accounts, with the first $10,000,000 exempt (with that threshold to increase automatically by the CPI every year).

So, now we have healthy citizens who don't live in constant fear of losing their jobs. All but the very least materialistic people are still incentivized to work, because very few people are happy living on such a paltry sum (though at least you won't starve if you're one of those people). Now we can focus on actually accomplishing something as a society, by dedicating more to doing our B.E.S.T.

1) Building. Think about all the ancient civilizations you studied in school. Rome. Egypt. Greece. Tell me the first thing that comes to mind. If you're like most people, I suspect your brain immediately conjured up images of amphitheaters, coliseums, pyramids, and temples. In short, the legacy you associate with these civilizations is most tangibly expressed in the buildings they left behind for us. What will future civilizations think of us based on our own works? Not much, quite frankly. They might be impressed with a few isolated works of architectural genius and a stadium or two. But mostly their archaeologists will just scratch their heads and say, "well, they certainly liked their strip malls and Starbucks, didn't they?"  

Another challenge for our country is our crumbling infrastructure. Thanks to the GOP's "Starve the Beast" philosophy, our investment in infrastructure has been entirely too low for decades now. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives us a D+. And I find that to be generous. Collapsing bridges, crumbling roads, outdated airports, poor public transportation: our country is quite literally falling apart. 

My recommendation is to drive both cultural and non-consumerist economic growth by making massive investments in building and infrastructure, both to leave a better legacy and to increase our current quality of life.

To the first goal, I would love to see every state and all five territories submit plans for a state monument to commemorate each locale's people, history, and culture, to be financed by the states and territories but with each dollar matched 1:1 in federal funds. Each state's legislature would approve the final project and its location, with Congress having a say in approving the matching funds in each individual case. Think St. Louis Arch, Statue of Liberty, etc.

To the second goal, we need to invest, invest, invest. To that end, I would suggest a ten-year, 2.8% tax on every transaction in the United States, including B2B ones and all capital gains and dividends (on top of current taxes). After 10 years, it would drop to a permanent 1.8%. In addition, we would need a permanent $1-a gallon-gas tax, to be increased by the trailing CPI + 0.1% every year. This is only fair: American drivers are not currently paying for the roads and bridges they drive on. Furthermore, this tax helps cover the negative economic, health, and environmental externalities associated with driving, and also offers a strong incentive for people to economize on gas consumption and seek alternative forms of transportation. 

This massive investment in infrastructure wouldn't just be about getting an A+ on our roads, bridges, railroads, ports, and airports. It would also be about expanding our transportation options, with investments in regional high-speed rail and, if the technology pans out, hyperloops.

2) Exploration. Few things gave Americans as much pride as our accomplishments during the Space Race of the 1950s to early 1970s. Putting a human being on the moon was an achievement for the  ages and to this day, half a century later, it stands as an enduring reminder of our former greatness. We can return to that greatness by kicking off a new, ambitious Space Race. But we should not just look to space: our oceans represent another Final Frontier, with so much of them still unexplored. Such exploration could teach us volumes about biodiversity, ocean sustainability, even basic biology and zoology, since we would doubtless discover new species. So aside from investing far more in NASA and getting them on their way to a quick return to the moon and a Mars landing by 2032, we should also establish an Oceanographic Exploration Agency. Finally, while it may sound like outlandish science fiction, we should also invest more in the greatest exploration of all: SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), or at any rate for basic extraterrestrial life. Research in this area in the past decade has shown that, with the right investment, our generation may be the last to think itself alone in the universe. I am not suggesting we have much hope of actually communicating with any alien civilizations. Unfortunately, the physics and the sheer size of the distances between star systems make this is highly unlikely if not impossible. But we are living in an age where we may yet be able to prove the existence of such life, even if it turns out to be simple in nature.

These initiatives would be funded by a 0.2% tax on all transactions in the United States, including B2B ones and including capital gains and dividends (on top of current taxes).

3) Science. Basic science drives technology. Technology drives change. Change drives culture and gives society a sense of direction. I think we need to invest far more in basic scientific research, with the benefits shared with all. I believe this can be done within our existing framework of universities, colleges, and government agencies, so to me this is just a simple question of investing more money through university/college grants and agency budget increases for agencies like DARPA, NIH, NIMH, CDC, etc. We also need to spur innovation in clean energy research, and nothing motivates innovation like necessity. I therefore propose that we phase in a simple mandate that wouldn't even require Congressional action: over the next ten years, every business with more than 50 employees that does government contracting work must be able to demonstrate it is getting 10% of its energy from renewables, increasing 10 percentage points each year. This will drive demand from energy consumers, and that will in turn drive innovation and change among energy providers. Another simple step requiring only executive action would be to declare that effective immediately, the US government will only purchase electric or hybrid vehicles for all its civilian vehicle fleet acquisitions. 

4) Teaching. Education isn't just a goal for its own sake. A better-educated society is a happier, more productive society, not to mention a society better equipped to drive the three goals above. The first thing we have to do is stop failing our poor communities. Since so much of school funding is driven by the local tax base, poor communities are stuck in a vicious cycle: too poor to educate their kids, who then grow up to get lower-paying jobs, which keeps the tax base low, which keeps school funding low. To solve this, I think we need to look at the poorest 40% of school systems in the United States and invest enough in them from federal funds to bring their spending levels up to the national median each year. To keep local government from slashing funds in order to qualify for more funds, we would measure this by the per-capita income of the residents of the school system, not by the amount of funds the locality chooses to dedicate, and funding levels would be judged by where they stood before the program was announced. These funds would be no-strings-attached. Let the local school systems decide how to educate their kids. The only caveat would be that we would need to set maximums for capital investments and minimums for teach salaries, because American school systems have an unfortunate tendency to over-invest in the former and under-invest in the latter compared to other countries.

Higher education. I hate the idea of government price controls. I truly do. Command-and-control economies always fail. But our colleges and universities are drunk with power. They know kids need those diplomas, so they keep jacking up tuition prices, often to spend on the most unnecessary of "investments." As a result, the ratio of tuition to average income gets more unsustainable every year. I propose a 30-year moratorium on real-dollar increases in tuition, with both private and public universities limited to tuition increases equal to the CPI minus one percentage point each year or wage growth minus one percentage point each year, whichever is lower. This needs to last a generation to undo the obscene increases of the past generation, increases that have seen the end of the age when people could work their way through school on their own and the dawn of the age of massive student debt. Tight regulations and oversight would be required in order to avoid the creation and exploitation of loopholes. (Think "Oh, we didn't increase TUITION. We increased USER FEES. See, that's totally different!") I also propose that all college students receive $2000 per month while enrolled in school, with assistance ending for any student whose overall GPA falls below 1.8 on the 4-point system. This assistance would last two years for an Associate's degrees, four years for a Bachelor's degree (five in special cases, e.g. some engineering undergraduate degrees that take five years). Students would be on their own for graduate work. Finally,  we need to reverse the law that made it illegal to include student debt in bankruptcies. There is no rational reason this debt should be excluded. It was a sell-out to the student loan industry, nothing more. 

These goals would be funded by a 5% tax on every transaction in the United States, including B2B ones, and on all capital gains and dividends.

In all cases where we raise money from taxes on transactions, this would include on sales to or from the government. It may sound silly for the government to pay itself taxes, but it's important we capture revenue from the entire economy, so the taxes would be transferred from the purchasing agency to the IRS.

One final word on revenue. To achieve our goals, we are going to have to address the elephant in the room: our out-of-control and irrational military spending. I am not a dove. In a world in which authoritarian regimes like Russia and China are on the rise, we cannot unilaterally disarm or even slightly weaken our military readiness. But our budget long ago stopped being about military readiness and efficiency. It is about delivering pork to Congressional districts and to the defense contractors who pay the lobbyists and contribute to campaign funds. Consider the fields of tanks that have never been and will never be used (and the military knew that when they bought them); the planes that were obsolete before they went into production; the ships that don't even work. These are all billions and billions of wasted dollars that do absolutely nothing to strengthen America. Quite the contrary: they weaken us. Meanwhile, our soldiers are paid disgracefully and often do not have the things they need. And don't even get me started on how shabbily we treat our veterans.

So what needs to happen? We need to establish a non-partisan, Congressionally-appointed commission to do a two-year, program-by-program audit and evaluation of the entire military budget for all branches. We need to evaluate not just programs but bases, both domestic and foreign, as well as all inventory, all with only one question in mind: does this help us face the threats of the 21st century, including the three main threats (terrorism, cyber warfare, and the potential for wars with China and Russia)? If it doesn't, it needs to go. Also, we need to pay our soldiers better, especially the enlisted ones. I think it is very realistic to cut military spending by 15%, increase pay for enlisted by 10% and commissioned officers by 5%, and actually INCREASE our military readiness and strength in the process. This needs to be a standing committee once its work is done, because we need to rely on them, not partisan pork-seekers in Congress, to evaluate what is best for our defense. Congress could agree to pass only legislation that includes commission-approved programs and budgets. This takes the political pressure off of them, as they can say to constituents that they are bound to obey the recommendations of the program. This could easily save us $120 billion a year.

So there it is. That is my model for how capitalism can save itself. No big takeovers of industry by the government. Minimal interference in the capitalist free markets. Just an investment in making us a healthy, happy, educated society with a sense of common purpose and a dedication to leave a livable planet and a vibrant legacy for our children and our descendants.

The Ups and Downs (and Downs and Downs) of Online Dating Apps: Notes & Tips from the Battlefield

When I first asked my ex for a divorce about three years ago, I knew it would inevitably mean a return to the world of dating. I dreaded that moment, and for good reason. Dating is an institution that is itself antithetical to my personality. It's all about superficiality, the quick sell, and even quicker judgments. And yet I tried it, off and on for two grueling years. At the end of all that, I find myself as single as when I started, though with two very close friends whom I initially met on dates. So all in all, I suppose I shouldn't complain. (Yet complain I shall!)

So why write about it now? I am hoping to help you, dear single reader. If you can benefit from any of my experiences, tips, and observations, then perhaps my journey will have been more worthwhile. So here are my thoughts.

The main app I used was OKCupid. It suited my personality best for two reasons: it has no character limit on profiles (and I am nothing if not verbose) and it uses compatibility questions to help you narrow down your choices. It should be noted, however, that there is far more art (and arguably just entertainment) about this matching process than there is science about it. (Google Adam Conover's excellent take-down of the 'science' of dating apps.) Still, scientifically valid or not, it is useful to be able to see that Jane X is a voter who likes Game of Thrones and hates Donald Trump as much as you do. It's far more useful than simply seeing a picture of her elaborate tattoos or her golden retriever Sam.

Unfortunately, OKCupid is a very buggy app. It never works quite as you expect it will, and I would, for example,  often log on to find I had a whole new list of people I had supposedly 'liked' (despite them all being people I most certainly had not even viewed). Their support is awful. And occasionally you get the feeling that any connections you make are pure luck, given that sometimes I would come across profiles with the tag "She messaged you!" despite me never having gotten any messages from the person.

Of course, you have lots of other options. Tinder, Coffee Meets Bagel, Match, Bumble, Zoosk, etc. The list seems to stretch on forever. But the idea is always the same: you have less than one second to grab a person's attention and hope s/he swipes on you, and then you go into a hopper of prospects. If you both swipe on each other or one of you messages, you get to start the 'get to know you' process. After a while, that becomes so repetitive that, despite your best efforts, you start to feel that you are just writing spam emails, constantly repeating the backstory, the same questions, the same repartee. It's mind-numbing.

Anyway, back to my adventures on my primary tool: OKCupid. I answered interminable questions and wrote a profile that was frankly WAY too long. That was by design. I was hoping to weed out the vapid and the lazy by exasperating them with my War-and-Peace sized essay. But I also injected it with a lot of humor, to help the determined ones in their journey through the labyrinth of my Byzantine mind. My reasoning was that anyone who could possibly get through all that would at least be worthy of a dinner.

So how did I do? Well, in the grand scheme of things, perhaps I shouldn't complain. As I said, my two closest friends here in North Carolina are women I met on dates from OKCupid. They are both very dear friends, and that's pretty special. But as far as dates? Ugh. SO many misadventures and SO many evenings of yawns. A couple of highlights:

-The Cyrano de Bergerac episode. One day I got a long and eloquent message from a very intelligent and attractive woman. I was blown away. So articulate. So insightful. She seemed to know me intimately just from my profile. I was so impressed. And each subsequent message only confirmed my attraction to her. So we finally arranged for a date. And it was....awkward. She barely said a word. And when she did speak, I detected none of the charm, intellect, and perspicacity that I had enjoyed in our written exchanges. Finally I said, "You seem sort of nervous. Is everything OK?" She teared up and said, "I have a confession to make. I really enjoyed your profile and wanted to meet you, but I'm just not that good at expressing myself. So my friend wrote my profile and all my messages to you." Cyrano whispering from the bushes! Ah, well! And before you ask, yes, I did inquire (indirectly): her delightful friend was married.

-Living in Tribes! Normally I was always very careful about vetting people before agreeing to meet. I read their profiles carefully, exchanged quite a few messages, and more often than not even had a phone call. But one evening, I threw caution to the wind and agreed to meet up with a woman I had met on the app that same day. She asked me to suggest a place, so we agreed to meet at one of my favorite restaurants here in Charlotte, Basil Thai. I should have paid attention to the warning signs, the first of which was pretty glaring: when I told her the name of the restaurant, her response was, and I quote, "Huh. I've never had Asian food before." "Asian food"?!?!? Dear gods. But I plowed ahead regardless. So here we are, having a drink and looking over the menu. She then asks what I consider to be a somewhat odd initial question: "Do you know anything about your ethnic heritage?" I responded that yes, as a matter of fact, I had done a lot of genealogical research over the years and had had my full genome sequenced and interpreted, so I knew quite a bit about it. She asked where my "people" were from, and I said that my father's side was Ulster Irish and had arrived in the Colonies around 1700, and my mother's side was originally Welsh, but had been residing in London for at least a generation before coming to the Colonies in 1652. Her eyes sort of glazed over, and she then gave me a rather incredulous look. And then said this: "How could they have been living in London in 1652? I didn't even think there were cities back then. Wasn't everyone just sort of, ya know, living in tribes back then?" Yup, folks. Living in tribes. A generation after Shakespeare died. And 16 centuries after the founding of Roman Londinium, which itself was likely on the spot of even earlier settlements stretching back centuries into the pre-Roman era. And that, kids, is why we always VET, VET, VET.

So how can you avoid such misadventures? Well, as it happens, I do have some helpful tips. These apply to any sex and (presumably) any sexuality; but you can judge for yourself and, as with all unsolicited advice, ignore or accept it as you please.

Pictures. Your primary picture will be the main driver of which direction viewers swipe. My advice is to keep it simple. I have to say that personally, I loathe those ridiculous Snapchat filters and effects. If I wanted to date a bunny rabbit with a dog's nose, I would go to one of those Furries kink gatherings, people. And for the love of all that is holy, people, DO NOT make me play "Where's Waldo?" It's fine if subsequent pictures show you with your friends, but your primary picture should be you alone. (And for heaven's sake, make sure you either blur other people or get their consent. And definitely do NOT include unobscured pictures of your kids. That is both creepy and potentially even dangerous.) Also, everyone should consider smiling, or at least not scowling, in their primary picture. When I see an angry-looking profile picture, I just think, "Unhappy, angry person I don't want to meet." And last but not least, do NOT show pictures of you and your ex (or even someone who could be mistaken for him or her). Talk about creepy. That is just bizarre. One woman even used her wedding picture, complete with the original groom! Yet another did the same but cut out his face, which frankly made her seem like a serial killer starting a cork board display of her next victims.

Profiles. The single best piece of advice I can give here is to avoid overwhelming negativity. I often read profiles that listed nothing but what the writer did NOT want. No smokers, no drinkers, no drug users, no separated men, no this, no that, no the other. When people ask you your hobbies, do you say, "Uh, not bowling, not skating, and not surfing."? Of course not. Focus more on what you DO what, not what you DON'T want. It's fine to throw in a couple of deal-breakers (e.g. my warning to Trump supporters and non-voters that they should just keep moving); just don't let the negativity take over the whole tone of your profile. It's a big turn-off. I also recommend avoiding the same hackneyed clichés everyone else uses. They get so dreadfully tiresome. Examples: "Looking for my partner in crime!" (IMMEDIATE left-swipe!) "No games!" "No drama!" (Nothing shouts you're a drama queen quite so loudly as you insisting you aren't into drama, by the way. When I read "no drama," what I hear is, "because I am such a fucking drama queen myself that I will provide more than enough for us both.") Finally, be HONEST. Look, there is no point in lying about your age or your height or your education. Because it will all come out in the end, and no good will come of your lie, I promise. Take the very tall woman I went on two dates with. She was exactly my height (6'2"/188cm). She expressed HUGE relief when we met and I turned out to be my stated height. Apparently, pretty much every guy she had been out with had lied about his height. She'd go out with a guy who claimed to be 6'3", only to find herself being stared in the throat upon meeting. And of course this meant she was immediately turned off, not by the height but by the lie. And the worst part was, she'd have been happy to go out with a shorter man; just not a short liar. So, uh, in "short," be positive, talk more about what you want v don't want, be original, and be HONEST, folks.

Messaging. Welcome to the tedious and repetitive world of dating app messaging! You've survived the Deep Dark Forest of endless pictures, you've braved the perils of the Morass of Despair known as the Swamp of Profiles. You have at last come to what seems like the end of your quest: you are actually communicating with another human being. Well, guess what? Your peril has only just begun. Because messaging itself is a minefield. You don't want to come on too strongly, but of course you don't want to seem too aloof. You want to seem interesting and perhaps show your quirks, but not TOO many of your quirks just yet, because after all, your crazy is something best drip-fed to people in the beginning, right? I usually preferred to keep initial communications simple, direct, and specific. By specific, I mean that the reader should feel that this isn't something you just copy/pasted from your last ten outreaches. I usually commented or asked about some particular thing that stood out in the person's profile. And let's be honest: nobody minds a bit of flattery. So now you're chatting. You're almost home-free. My best advice for this home stretch is: be yourself and keep the chatting phase brief. Too many connections fizzle out because they simply go on too long. Humans are social creatures, and while I am as big a fan of the written word as anyone, nothing can replace meeting face to face. So the best thing you can do is chat long enough to feel confident, and then just rip the bandaid off.

(I have to pause here and interject something serious that is specific to gender. It's easy for me as a man to say, "just rip off the bandaid and dive in!!" But as Margaret Atwood chillingly and all-too-truthfully put it, "[Men] are afraid women will laugh at them; [women] are afraid of being killed." So obviously take my advice with a grain of salt and only proceed when you're truly comfortable. Please stay safe out there!)

Well, I could go on for hours with more examples and more tips, but hopefully this little tidbit helps. Best of luck, folks! May you have better luck than I did!

The State of the Race for the 2020 Democratic Nomination: Candidate Roundup

Let me start out by saying that there is nothing objective about my analysis. I am not a journalist, nor do I have pretensions to become one. I am not here to be objective and to offer only facts; I am here to offer my opinion and analysis, both of which are entirely subjective, but which are supported by facts. Finally, let me point out that I am only looking at declared candidates. So please hold the emails asking me why I left out Joe Biden.

So let's dive right in, taking them alphabetically at first. I will look at each candidate currently in the race, then, at the end, rank them according to my preferences, which are heavily influenced by my overarching priority: seeing Donald Trump removed from office in a humiliating electoral defeat.

1) Cory Booker. 49. Former mayor of Newark, NJ. Current senator from New Jersey. His strengths: his time as a mayor gives him very helpful insights into issues like urban renewal and planning, managing government in a diverse community, and reconciling often conflicting interests. And no one can dispute that his oratory skill is almost at Obama's level. But for me, Booker is a non-starter for several reasons. He has in the past been in bed with the Kushner family, who helped raise money for his campaigns. And we can't excuse that by saying that that was the pre-Trump era: the Kushner family has always been shady. (Google Charles Kushner. You'll want to take a shower when you're done.) Still, that wouldn't be overly problematic if he later repudiated them after Trump's rise and the questionable role Jared has played in that whole saga. But he hasn't really. 2) Speaking of being afraid of repudiating things, my second issue with Booker is his timidity towards Trump. I want a candidate who will call a spade a spade. When asked in February if he thinks Trump is a racist, Booker demurred and mumbled something about not knowing the man's heart. If after Charlottesville you are still too afraid to label Donald Trump a racist, you are not my candidate. We won't beat him by playing nice. 3) Big Pharma. Booker has taken a lot of money from Pharma. To his credit, in 2017, he announced he was "putting a pause" on taking Pharma money. But this doesn't seem to have stopped him from voting in a way that is very much in their interests and against the interests of American consumers and patients. 4) Support for charter schools. My objections to charter schools would require a separate article by itself. Suffice it to say, I am loath to support any candidate who is as pro-charters as he is. Forecast: senator till he dies or retires.

2) Pete Buttigieg. 37. Mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Navy veteran (currently in the reserve). Buttigieg, who would be both the youngest and the first openly gay president in our history, should by all rights be my number one choice. On paper, he has everything. I appreciate intelligence, and who can compete in that category with a multilingual Rhodes scholar who taught himself to read Norwegian just to read an author he liked? I also have a preference for candidates with both executive and military experience, and as a two-term mayor and Navy veteran who served in Afghanistan, he has both. He even has private-sector experience, having worked for McKinsey. But he's said several things that have turned me off to him, not least of which were comments in a January Washington Post interview in which he Monday-morning-quarterbacked Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign strategy and effectively said that Trump was smarter than she in his approach. I don't mind people disagreeing with Clinton. I have. But I had two big issues with his remarks: 1) he delivered them in a very disrespectful way, especially considering that as a gay man, he couldn't even have dreamed of running for president in a world in which a Hillary Clinton hadn't forever shattered the mindset that only straight white men are allowed to be president; 2) since there is no evidence that he delivered his admonitions to her BEFORE the 2016 election, it's obvious that he didn't know any better himself, meaning that he wasn't imparting any wisdom, but just delivering some 20/20 hindsight. As a secular atheist, I am also uncomfortable with how pushy he is about his religion. I suspect he's overcompensating here. I can practically hear the PR executives telling him he has to avoid being tagged with gay stereotypes by being as straight-laced and Jesus-y as possible. It comes across as phony, frankly. Or perhaps he is quite sincere and really is that religious, which concerns me even more. Finally, he just strikes me as a prime example of someone who possesses great intelligence but less wisdom. Intelligence is something with which you are born (to an extent) and can cultivate (to an arguably even greater extent). But wisdom can only come with time, experience, and reflection. Some people are capable of accumulating enough wisdom to be president by age 39; he isn't one of them, in my opinion. Forecast: with more years of experience, perhaps starting with a role as VP or (better yet) as a member of the next president's cabinet, he might eventually be ready. Buttigieg 2028? Consider that even then, he would only be turning 47 the day before his inauguration. That would still make him the fifth-youngest person to become president, after TR, JFK, Clinton, and Grant. If I were Buttigieg, I would be praying for a Harris victory, because that's his only path to a vice-presidency.

3) Julián Castro. 44. Former mayor of San Antonio. Former HUD secretary under Obama. Another perfect candidate on paper. Executive leadership experience. Cabinet experience. Mentored by Obama. But it's frankly hard to see how Castro breaks out of the back of the pack. He simply doesn't have much of a 'hook.' He's not the most progressive, or the youngest, or the most dynamic, or the best orator, or the best fundraiser, or the most....well, anything. He just feels like an also-ran to me. It's also hard for him because he currently has no stage: he's not the current anything of anything. That would be fine if he had the name recognition of, say, Joe Biden. But he doesn't. Having said all this, I can't find anything about him I don't like. He checks all the right progressive boxes and says all the right things. I just doubt his ability to distinguish himself. My forecast: if Kirsten Gillibrand or Amy Klobuchar were to win the nomination, I think he stands an excellent chance of being tapped as VP. Otherwise, I think his best shot is to parlay his run into a more senior cabinet position in the next administration. Between his extensive experience and his Ivy League education (which includes a Harvard law degree), he could succeed in almost any role.

4) John Delaney. 55. Former congressman from Maryland. Businessman. I call him "John Who?" <YAAAAWN> There's absolutely nothing that distinguishes this rather anodyne fellow. That hasn't stopped him from being the determined little-engine-that-could ever since 2017. He's reportedly visited every single county in Iowa already. It's hard to see how he sets himself apart. Forecast: America's next Commerce secretary, where he will perform admirably, if not spectacularly, and will then retire to private life when he realizes that being a cabinet secretary has made him no more viable a candidate in 2028 than he was in 2020.

5) Tulsi Gabbard. 37. Congresswoman from Hawaii. Veteran. Where do I begin? We have two candidates for whom it would be VERY hard for me to vote even in the general election (though I still would because, hey, Trump). I hate everything about this Trump Lite woman. Let's start with her past virulently anti-LGBTQ  positions, including support for gay conversion therapy. When she realized she couldn't maintain these positions and win as a Democrat in blue Hawaii, she modified them. I am convinced that is the only reason why. Now throw in her support of Putin, Assad, and Modi, stir in her sympathy for Trump, and add a dash of support from David Duke, and you've got a toxic recipe for a candidate who clearly would have become a Republican had she been from any less solidly blue a state than Hawaii. Hard pass for me. I honestly question not only her loyalty as a Democrat but her loyalty to our country. Forecast: my hope is that she goes away completely and even loses her House seat to primary challenger Kai Kahele next year. But I have this fear in the pit of my stomach that she is someone who, for reasons either selfish or downright mercenary and treasonous, might try to pull a Jill Stein. If she were to lose both the nomination and her House seat, I could realistically see her dropping her progressive façade and declaring herself a Republican. That and a blonde dye job could land her a lucrative gig on Fox News. Alternative nightmare scenario: Sanders/Gabbard 2020 should Sanders win the nomination.

6) Kirsten Gillibrand. 52. Senator from New York. Former congresswoman. Gillibrand changes her positions based on the situation. She used to represent a conservative district and was thus a conservative Democrat. Now she's running for president in a crowded field dominated by progressives, so bam! presto! she's now a progressive. She seriously damaged herself with many progressives after the role she played in the railroading of Al Franken. (I blame Franken as much as I do her, but that's another story.) On Twitter, every time I mention her name, I am flooded with comments from outraged progressive women who can't stand her solely because of that fiasco. I don't think she can recover from it. There's also the rank hypocrisy: Ms #MeToo got caught shielding a staff member/senior adviser who had been credibly accused of sexual harassment. Forecast: she's made too many enemies even to end up in a cabinet. If a sufficiently popular challenger primaries her in 2024, she could easily lose her seat in the Senate. I'm frankly surprised no one did last year.

7) Kamala Harris. 54. Senator from California. Former AG of California. Harris is currently my number one hope for beating Trump, mainly just because of her personality and tough-as-nails prosecutor image. She is the kind of woman Trump fears the most. And unlike Warren, she doesn't let Trump get under her skin and has exactly no fear of him. She could wipe the floor with him in a debate and humiliate him in a way that might even undermine his base's support. Mind you, I am not entirely without reservations about Harris. There are some questions from her time as AG that I feel need to be addressed, not least of all the pass she gave Steve Mnuchin's bank. And she isn't without her gaffes. Laughing it up about how much she used to love smoking pot in college while discussing marijuana legalization struck me as extremely insensitive and tone-deaf, given how many people went to jail for doing exactly that on her watch as AG. Forecast: I think she has an excellent shot at becoming our first female president. If she loses the nomination but we win the presidency, Attorney General Harris is a very strong possibility. Either way, I don't see her accepting a quiet life in the Senate.

8) John Hickenlooper. 67. Businessman. Former mayor of Denver. Former governor of Colorado. As the moderate former governor of a purple (trending blue) state, his claim to fame is being a bipartisan dealmaker. I am just not convinced the party's base has an appetite for a compromiser right now, especially one with his record of being so cozy with corporate interests. I personally find him too conservative. Forecast: I don't see him gaining much traction. He might gain an opening as a Biden Junior if Biden himself decides not to run, though. 

9) Jay Inslee. 68. Former congressman from and governor of Washington. Inslee's "in" is his insistence that we put climate change front and center. He's the only candidate who's made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Unfortunately, as much as I agree with him that nothing else really matters if you're living on a dying planet, the polls show that voters just don't respond well to making that the main driver behind a campaign. It's not enough to be right; you have to be convincing. I am not confident that he has the oratorical and persuasive ability required to make his case to America. Having said all that, I have no objections to him and I have yet to discover any red flags. Forecast: America's next EPA head or Secretary of the Interior. And a damn fine one he would be in either.

10) Amy Klobuchar. 58. Attorney. Former county attorney in the county that is home to the Twin Cities. Current senator from Minnesota. Overall, I like Klobuchar, for much the same reason that I like Harris: I think she has the right temperament to take on Trump, and of course, also like Harris, she is fully qualified to be president. As with Harris, I am confident she could hold her own against Trump in the debates, and I think she's exactly the kind of woman who terrifies him: strong, smart, and tough. Of course, we've all heard the rumors about her reputation as an overbearing and overly demanding boss. Part of me is concerned about that, because being abusive towards staff is unacceptable and is a sign of poor emotional maturity. But I also question how much of this is real cause for concern and how much of this is just the tired old double standard at work. Male leaders are never challenged in this area. Trump is by all reports a terrible person for whom to work. I have heard that Mike Bloomberg is downright insufferable. But we don't challenge that with men. It's supposedly just a sign of "toughness." Forecast: don't count Klobuchar out. If Harris stumbles or has a scandal, she's got a real shot. She'd also be a great pick for AG under a Harris presidency. 

11) Wayne Messam. 44. Businessman. Former college football star. Current mayor of Miramar, Florida. I'll be honest: I had never even heard of this guy until he announced his run recently. Took me completely by surprise. At this point, it's starting to feel like everyone is throwing their hat in the ring with the attitude of 'hey, why not? everyone else is doing it!" He has an interesting back story, though. The son of Jamaican immigrants, he went to Florida State, where he was a wide receiver on the 1993 national championship team. Later, he started his own construction company and in 2015, he became the first African-American mayor of Miramar after defeating the long-time incumbent. His campaign claim to fame is his desire to cancel all $1.5T in student debt. Someone has to pay for that, though. And that means transferring the burden to everyone. So you transfer wealth from a pool of mostly college-educated people (generally higher earners) to everyone, including those who never went to college and on average earn considerably less. Does that seem smart or fair? Having such a poorly-thought-out campaign centerpiece makes me leery of him. Forecast: maybe he's just angling for some name recognition, something he can parlay into a cabinet position like HUD? I don't know. Let's hear what he has to say.

12) Beto O'Rourke. 46. Former El Paso city councilman. Former congressman from Texas. Challenged and lost to Ted Cruz for the senate seat there last year. All around darling of the Democratic party. Mr. Personality. But how much 'there' is really there? There's no question he has the presence and the personality to charm the voters, but I sometimes question his substance. And the GOP would have lots of fun with his DUI mugshot. (They've already started in fact.) Forecast: I think Harris would be wise to pick him as VP, just due to his campaigning and fundraising chops. He'd be a good party energizer. But if she doesn't get the nomination, I don't see him as being a good fit as VP for any other candidate. That leaves him two routes in politics: challenge Cornyn for the senate seat or take a job in the next administration.

13) Tim Ryan. 45. Congressman from Ohio. Former congressional staffer (for the notoriously corrupt Jim Trafficant, something that could itself raise questions). I won't spend much time on Ryan because he is FAR too conservative for my tastes. Some argue we need a centrist like him who can win in Trump country like his part of Ohio. I am not convinced anyone can win in deep Trump country but Trump, and attempting to lurch right to capture those people will only undermine the enthusiasm of the party base. Forecast: Congressman Ryan will still be Congressman Ryan two years from now, assuming he runs for reelection. 

14) Bernie Sanders. 77. Sanders is not a Democrat. I do not want him running for our nomination and see no reason to allow him to do so under current rules. His misogyny (google things like "Sanders Female Rape Fantasy" and "Sanders Lack of Orgasms Causes Cervical Cancer" and "Sanders Campaign Staff Harassment and Pay Inequality"), his tone-deafness on race, his long-on-rhetoric, short-on-specifics approach to policy, his personal narcissism and irascibility, his MAGA't-like, rabid supporters, his refusal to release his full tax returns. Take your pick. All excellent reasons not to vote for him. I would have to swallow hard and hold my nose even to vote for him in the general election. Forecast: there is a path to victory for him for the nomination, unfortunately. I certainly hope someone else closes it off. If he loses the nomination, expect him to continue in the Senate until he dies. He's far too proud (not to mention too hated) to take (or be offered) any cabinet position. 

15) Eric Swalwell. Congressman from California. It's indicative of this race that at the tender age of 38, Swalwell is still just the third-youngest candidate. Swalwell's main claim to fame seems to be, well, fame. He's a darling of the cable and talk shows. His other attention-grabber is that he is the boldest candidate to date on the issue of gun control. He's taken the rather risky stance of wanting to ban and then buy back all assault-style rifles. That's a hard sell in middle America. And honestly, I just don't see a lot of reason to be excited about his candidacy. In a crowded field full of talent, he doesn't really stand out. His pre-Congress career contains no great highlights. He has no inspiring backstory. It's hard not to see him as just another fratboy-cum-lawyer-cum-congressman. Forecast: I can't imagine him lasting long in this race. He might be able to parlay his fame into a cabinet position. But mainly I see his future as a congressional star of Twitter.

16) Elizabeth Warren. 69. Former Harvard legal professor. Consumer rights advocate. Senator from Massachusetts. All-around brilliant person. It would be tough to find a room in which she isn't the smartest person. But as I alluded to above, I just feel like Trump has her number. He knows how to get under her skin. He's proven he can rile her up and manipulate her. It's hard to imagine a Klobuchar or Harris falling for his DNA test trap, for example. Forecast: once she figures out she's just not gaining the traction she needs to, she will drop out. She'll be a helpful campaigner for our nominee. Personally, I would love her to stay in the Senate. If she fully dedicated her remaining years to that, she could inherit Kennedy's Lion of the Senate mantel. Alternative scenario: SCOTUS Associate Justice Warren.

17) Marianne Williamson. 66. Self-help author. New-age lecturer. And that bio is everything I need to know that she's going nowhere. NEXT! Forecast: see bio.

18) Andrew Yang. 44. Former tech executive and current non-profit founder and executive. The darkest of dark-horse candidates, Yang does actually have some very interesting ideas. Among them is his support of UBI (universal basic income, which he proposes to set at $12,000 a year). He's very geeky and enjoys talking about robotics and artificial intelligence. These aren't academic topics to him, though: they have serious implications for the future of our workforce, and those implications are closely tied to why he believes we need UBI. Google his TED talk on the subject. It's quite fascinating. Forecast: as I said, he is the longest of long shots. I suspect he will quietly drop out at some point and not be well remembered by this time next year. But he's a very creative thinker and obviously highly intelligent. Perhaps a future president could leverage his expertise and fresh thinking in some capacity.

OK, there's the crowd as of today, 12 April 2019. Don't blink or you'll miss future candidates announcing. I fully expect Biden and Bullock to announce eventually, and there could be others. I will publish occasional updates as things change. In the meantime, below is my promised ranking (though it should be fairly obvious based on the above). As many of the middling candidates aren't really distinguishable from each other, I am just going to rank a few, lump the rest into also-rans, and create a special little third group for Gabbard and Sanders.

Group I, ranked:
1) Kamala Harris
2) Amy Klobuchar

3) Inslee

4) Castro

Group II, unranked:

Everyone except the above and Gabbard and Sanders.

Group III, which I call Garbage Island:

Gabbard and Sanders.

Stay tuned for updates!

The Myth of the Hero Businessman

There was a time when society drew a very sharp distinction between government and business. Indeed, in many places, being a 'person of commerce' was looked down upon by the ruling elites. But as we entered the industrial age and more and more of our wealth derived from commerce, and power shifted accordingly, views on these so-called 'businessmen' (a term that didn't even enter our language until the early 19th century) shifted as well. By the 20th century, we had decided that those who prospered in business were not only worthy of our praise, but were to be emulated and followed. This is evident from the flood of self-help books that began to appear in the early 20th century, many of which focused on definitions of success that depended mostly, sometimes entirely, on success in business.

None of this is objectionable. There is nothing wrong with wanting wealth or desiring to be a success in the world of business. (Indeed, your dear writer here is a businessman and has been so his entire career.)  But objectively speaking, do those who succeed in business make for good political leaders? It's a question well worth asking, because to date we have simply assumed the answer ("yes") and  acted accordingly. In the United States, two of our three presidents in the 21st century have been businessmen (George W. Bush and Donald Trump). But given their track records, it's time to question our kneejerk assumption that it's wise to make our business leaders our political leaders.

So let's examine it. Let's look at the track records of business leaders as executive political leaders in the 21st century in every major country. We'll use a simple definition of 'major': every country with a population of at least 50,000,000 inhabitants (as of 2019 estimates). That gives us 29 countries to work with. Of these, since 1 January 2001, only five have had leaders with significant backgrounds as entrepreneurs:

Indonesia
Italy
Pakistan
South Korea
United States.

Our group therefore consists of seven leaders:

Joko Widodo of Indonesia;
Silvio Berlusconi of Italy;
Nawaz Sharif and Shaukat Aziz of Pakistan;
Lee Myung-bak of South Korea;
and of course George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump of the US.

Let's have a look at them.

Joko Widodo of Indonesia had a long and successful career as an entrepreneur in the furniture business before entering politics in 2002. By global standards, he is not exceedingly wealthy, with an estimated net worth of $3.5 million as of 2018. No great scandals have attached themselves to his presidency, and he is running for re-election in 2019.

Silvia Berlusconi of Italy is a media tycoon and billionaire. He served as prime minister several times. To list and detail all the scandals associated with his life would quite literally require a book (or two). Abuse of office, bribery of senators, defamation, sex scandals (including allegations of orgies that included minors), tax fraud, the list goes on and on. He is practically the poster boy for moral and political corruption.

Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan is a wealthy business who made his fortune in steel construction. He was involved in two attempts to seize or maintain power by illegal means. He's been accused of hiding massive amounts of illegal wealth offshore. He was ultimately removed from office after revelations from the Panama Papers, was barred from holding public office for life, and is currently in jail for corruption.

Shaukat Aziz, also a former leader of Pakistan, made his fortune as a successful global executive at CitiBank. His time as leader of Pakistan was marked by large-scale efforts to liberalize the economy and decentralize power. The Paradise Papers revealed that he had hidden and off-shored much of his wealth through the Antarctic Trust.

Lee Myung-bak of South Korea served one term as president of South Korea. Before that, he was CEO of Hyundai Engineering & Construction. As with Berlusconi, his scandals are legion: embezzlement, price-fixing schemes, tax evasion, bribery, etc. It is even alleged he accepted $6 million in exchange for granting a pardon. In October of 2018, he was convicted on multiple charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Which brings us to our two US examples: George W. Bush and Donald Trump, both of whom are associated with presidencies with multiple scandals, arrests, indictments, and prison terms of administration officials. Indeed, it's still to be determined if Trump may not end up in prison himself. Fact-checkers have documented literally thousands of lies he's told both prior to taking office and while in office. Multiple members of his administration have resigned in disgrace.

So, of seven leaders of major countries who have served in this century who have had significant business backgrounds prior to coming to office, all but one have been corrupt, most in the extreme. Several have gone to jail or potentially face jail time for their crimes. That's an 85.7% rate of corruption and scandal among businessmen-cum-political leaders.* And the sole person on the list who has not been implicated in serious corruption is not even very wealthy.

Conclusion: it is time to lay to rest the myth of the heroic businessman coming to the rescue of his country. It simply doesn't work out that way. The absurd idea (often floated by conservatives in the US) that business people are less corruptible because they are already wealthy (and therefore allegedly not tempted by the prospect of more wealth through corruption), just doesn't hold water. Quite the contrary: it is obvious that those who are accustomed to wealth and to getting their way continue to feel they are entitled to do as they please after entering office. Furthermore, their myriad business interests often present conflicts of interest that actually encourage corruption. Indeed, it may be that a person of significant wealth is simply incapable of holding high office without becoming ensnared in scandal. At the very least, this suggests that any wealthy person assuming such an office should be forced to place all of their wealth in an independently-managed blind trust. At the very most, perhaps we should just avoid such candidates altogether.

So let's bury this idea once and for all. Because history shows that our greatest leaders have been (unsurprisingly) those who understand the law and who understand governmental leadership.

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*And I am excluding the Yingluck Shinawatra and Thaksin Shinawatra sibling duo of Thailand, both of whom have led their countries and both of whom have significant business backgrounds. They have both been accused of  corruption, but as the courts and the military strongmen of Thailand routinely use this tactic against elected leaders, it's difficult to sort out the truth, so they've been excluded.