The progressive case for electing Donald Trump - Part 1

In modern US history the script for running for President has never been clearer. The presumptive candidate is usually involved in politics for about a decade, becomes the governor as the opposition party get unpopular. During the end of a two term administration, voters' sentiment gets more pessimistic with economy and foreign policy, thus giving the nominee from the opposition party to exploit these conditions (Obama did the same in 2008.) One of the major exceptions in Obama's raise is that he is the only one of 3 Senators in US history to be directly promoted as the President. Whereas usually other Senators wanting to be commander in chief typically gain more experience after their junior term either by running again or getting appointed. Given these facts, we are at a unique crossroads in this year's Presidential election: We have Clinton who has tremendous amounts of public experience as most previous Presidents' have had and then we have Trump who has loads of experience in accumulating private capital for his family. So wouldn't the obvious choice be Clinton because as she says, we need a steady Commander in Chief during turbulent times, not some untested, capricious mogul! Well, NO that answer is too easy for the intellectually curious; As liberals we are obligated to dig deeper, and see which candidate would create more opportunities for lower and middle classes in America, thus creating a trickle down effect that also enhances the standards of living to all humans around the world.

The federal government passed a $1.8 Trillion dollar in tax and spending bill for the current fiscal year. Breaking down this figure further, we have allocated into 3 major categories: $572B on Defense, $680B on Tax cuts and the remaining $548B on Federal Outlays. In addition the US government usually passes additional war appropriations and emergency spending bills! Despite with all of these spending, the US growth rate is at measly 1.1% which is depriving millions of people from getting jobs or having employed individuals stuck at jobs that doesn't match with their skill set. One way the Obama administration has disguised this economic malaise is by showcasing the famous the rate of job growth graph juxtaposed against Bush's final years. Basically this graph conveys the following sentiment: look the previous president ruined our economy and we are doing our best to fix it! The problem with this graph is that it doesn't convey the full employment picture, specifically, it doesn't show that the labor participation rate, which the lowest it has been in 4 decades nor does it show that some people gave up looking for jobs. People have given up on looking for regular jobs either because their skills were obsolete in face of globalization, automation, recession or simply because the government has created much burdensome regulations. Addressing these factors will not only significantly improve the growth rate, it will also allow people to convey an optimistic sentiment on the state of current affairs.

The best way to jump start our sorry state of economy is to revamp the tax code, abolish non mandatory spending on welfare and institute a basic income for everyone. By spending $543B in FY2016, The federal government is the world's largest buyer of goods and services, sadly that's $543B we are robbing from private capital, denying the next Mark Zukerberg from creating the next Facebook or disincentivizing any other entrepreneur who wants to take risks. But fine, I won't even argue against cutting spending, that topic is for a different day, let's keep the base $543B in annual spending and perhaps spend it wisely? Currently Americans spend annually about $60B for complying with the byzantine tax code and ironically big corporations like to keep this status quo because they have the resources to hire an army of lawyers accountants to keep their taxes zero or close to zero. In addition, big companies and labor unions also have plethora of lobbyists that have directly or indirectly to the Democratic candidates this year. Whereas, Trump was able to garner majority of the delegates before he changed his mind on lobbyists, so he personally doesn't owe any favors to anyone. He will be able to stand up both Republicans and Democrats in creating a fair tax policy. By voting for Hillary, you are perpetuating this cycle of corruption in Washington by awarding business contracts that even SMEs suggests are unwarranted. Think about all the money we can spend on infrastructure instead? If China is able to create the world's largest network of high speed trains in a decade with an average of $17M/ mile, why should it take California 3 times as long with twice the cost? Oh yeah, Trump is for the high speed train but he is against regulations that delay public work projects or unions that place the leisurely work ethic of their workers above the crippling needs to America.

Some polls suggest that the current race relations is at the lowest point it has ever been in America since the Rodney King riots of 1992. When Obama was first elected in 2008, there was so much anticipation and hope in the air because the election conveyed to the public that a black person can achieve the highest levels of office and tackle much problems plaguing their community. But then again unfortunately, the identity politics didn't improve the standard of living of many in the Black community. If you look at the Black poverty level, we see that it has actually risen during Obama's presidency. A Clinton administration will perpetuate this sad trend and will also disappoint women voters by pledging a misguided concept of implementing equal pay into the federal register. As anecdotally proven in the last 8 years, adding more rules to institute a policy of good intentions doesn't ameliorate such issues, The correct way is to create incentives (or mostly to remove punitive measures) for Black students to excel in classrooms and for employers to hire diverse candidates, pay them equally because the consumers and their competition does the same! After flip flopping, Clinton is now offering families earning less than $125K to pay for their kids' college tuition. This is a typical democratic answer to most problems, just throw money onto it and hope that the problem will fix itself! By rubber stamping degrees to every young American, without checking their field of study, this plan is doomed for failure. In fact, this plan is similar to the incentives created in the early 2000s of enabling Americans' to own houses, live the American dream that ultimately lead to the biggest housing crisis in modern times. The right way for kids from impoverished neighborhoods to succeed is if they are given the opportunity to study in a different neighborhood, make diverse friends and expand their thinking as certain charter schools have demonstrated. Furthermore, teachers must get well paid as they do in Finland, but that also means we should break the teachers' unions that is agains performance based incentives! Why on Earth would we put the salary of a teacher to a higher regard than the future of a child? When Trump does come up with an education plan it should involve the trend of lessening the frequency of standardized tests, letting charters schools experiment as Republicans have recently pushed for and letting disparate communities experiment with various methods of teaching. Since Trump has so far infuriated both GOP and the Democrats, it's safe to say that he won't pander to strict education policy of one party as his opponent has and will be a deal maker.

The case of Indian-American Republicans

Dinesh D'Souza has been getting a lot of attention lately in the media for publishing his article in Forbes depicting the thought process of our commander in chief. He starts out supporting his thesis by saying that to most Americans, "anti-colonialism is an unfamiliar idea" and he starts explaining it. First off, if you have gone through high school in America, there are numerous general education requirements and among them in U.S History and World History. I distinctly remember my sophomore year in Tamalpias High School, where I was reading literature and engaging in critical thinking about the 19th century in America when slavery was rampant. When one reads that over 100 years ago, a person of color was much judged by the color of his skin than the content of his character, Americans do realize what colonialism was about. So not only was Dinesh wrong in the fact that Americans are ignorant in this topic, as a matter of fact, at the end of of WWII, one of the contributing factors for Independence in many of the third world countries was coersion from American foreign policy that gained much clout over Europe.

The content of his article is just as misguided as his opening statements. Dinesh argues that Obama's moratorium on off shore drilling while allowing the import-export bank to finance oil exploration in Brazil is another product of his anti-colonial views. Has anyone recently heard of yet another malfunction in a oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico just last week? It's not that the Obama administration is punishing the oil industry, rather taking pro active measures in checking the safety of operations as to prevent another catastrophe from happening. Brazil always had more regulations and required more strenuous back up systems in place for oil rigs than America ever proposed. In addition, none of the directors in this bank is an Obama appointee (they are still waiting to be confirmed by the senate). Lastly, when Dinesh suggests that Obama is carrying his father's dream and running the country based on his father's experiences. Excuse me? Really... now you just want to attack someone's character and their dignity without even ever meeting them? Unfortunately, these are the kinds of attacks that garner lots of cheap publicity for his new book. Columbia Journalism Review puts it best on his article, ""gross piece of innuendo -- a fact-twisting, error-laden piece of paranoia. This is the worst kind of smear journalism -- a singularly disgusting work."

Reading such derogatory nonsense has opened my eyes to even more pressing issue in American politics today. There are many first and second generation Indian Americans who have been running for elected offices lately and all of them have been on the Republican tickets. This fact alone bedazzles me because India is more diverse than Europe, yet I haven't seen any Indian Americans running on a democratic ticket. Nikki Haley running for governor of South Carolina is a descendant of Sikh immigrants and is a Christian, not a Hindu like most Indians. Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana is also Indian by hereditary, but he claims that when he was growing up in the south, he has never experienced racism! These two candidates make me wonder whether if they are wearing the Indian hat just to court voters who value diversity rather than offering solutions based on their actual experiences. As a liberal advocate, I see a huge problem when new immigrants become enfranchised in America and vote against the progressive ideals that is much cherished in their home country. The median household income for Indian American families is the highest in the U.S., $60,093, nearly double the median income of all American families -- $38,885 (source, US Census Bureau). In addition to lower taxes, Indians are more biased towards the Republican party because it was George Bush who initiated the civilian nuclear accord with India that brought the country out of sidelines (although the accord had bi-partisan support in congress). So as a liberal Indian American, I am determined to fight these forces and advocate for the unprivileged, poor and the unrepresented.

America is truly unique

Well let me start of my first blog by declaring my love to the USA! There are many things in this country that doesn't seem right, for instance: how long it took the destitute and orphan adults to get basic health care, nepotism in the business world and etc... But we as Americans fail to recognize our cherished values and other tangible assets we take for granted but are deprived to the majority of humans around the world.
The fact that freedom is actually an idea that Americans talk about and promote is a novel invention and the greatest gifts to progression of human civilization. Teenagers and adults have the right to choose their own sexual partners... something in the nonsecular country would be blasphemous.
Although I am a bleeding heart liberal, I understand and support the republican philosophy of gaining social status by working hard. If I am the president of the United States, I would mandate everyone to study math at least until three dimensional calculus and would require everyone to know software engineering. This way I believe we can rid the society of brain numbing jobs and evolve our workforces faster. I am very optimistic about the future, I think technology would solve mankind's problems, a concept that everyone disagrees whom I talk to so far. You know, I am not surprised, as a matter of fact having such descent is quite natural because no one can even imagine such scenarios until such disruptive lifestyles invade civilization. Not too long ago humans thought that the Earth was flat until Galileo challenged that notion, then people thought that three laws of motion perpetuated by Newton were the fundamental facts of nature until the theory of relativity were discovered by Einstein. So using these analogies, present day imagination cannot phantom a world where AI changes our lives so dramatically that we start on a new stage of evolution.
Working back towards my thesis as to why America is great, I am going to take the example of the BP oil spill disaster and compare it with other calamities in third world countries. Without a question, this disaster is tragic in terms of human lives lost, effects to the environment and the broader economy. But the relentless reports in every media has spurred up dinner table conversation about this very topic in every informed households. Doing so, has intensified pressure on BP and the government to try to stop the spill and mitigate it's impact. In this country, there is a plan to STOP THE SPILL, create a floor compensation of $20 billion for affected victims and also scrutinize every little detail. Whereas, in Niger delta, more oil has been spilled into the waters and no one really gave it as much hype. As a matter of fact, oil is still spilling today and the multinational companies simply shit responsibility to the bandits for stealing piping equipments. India experienced the world's worst industrial catastrophe when methyl isocyanate gas leaked, killed over 2000 people and left nearly half a million people exposed to toxins and poisonous water in Bhopal. The company that was responsible, Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), which is now a subsidiary of Dow Chemical Company walked away by measly compensating less than half a billion dollars to its victims. In addition, there was much evidence of gross negligence and safety violations by the company, but the supreme court of India sided with the culprits and reduced sentences for the company executives similar to that of reckless drivers!