Update on the blog: I am moving to Medium!

Hi loyal readers!

After four years beginning in the 2012 US presidential election, I am planning to move to Medium, which I believe to be a more effective Medium.

I have enjoyed using Blogger and having it as an outlet for all these political rants, but it has also just not been maintained sufficiently by Google. So many UI issues and all manner of things.

Medium, on the other hand, is very clean, and allows a bunch of other things that make it easy on the eyes when reading essays.

So please check me out on Medium! I will be migrating a bunch of posts first made here over there, and eventually this Blog will just become a museum of what could have been.

Hope you continue reading and toodles!

https://medium.com/@alex.zhang343

Let's talk about consent as an advanced interpersonal communications tool! Consent is sexy.

The concept of consent is critical to a vibrant society (and I hope John Daly updates his class to reflect that). It is often referenced in sexual assault, but it absolutely is not limited to that.

For example, and drawing from personal experiences, when you do not consent to another person’s personal space, the flow of conversation shuts down, and no one is able to learn anything from one another. Also, you are unable to form the bonds of friendship that are critical to your support structure if you fall between the cracks and cannot get back up by yourself (see future post about the epidemic of loneliness and why I viscerally hate neoliberalism as a religion).

And our addiction to public shaming generally intrudes loudly on a person’s personal space without their consent and bludgeons them into silence, even when they have helpful perspectives and ideas to contribute. Public shaming is a cancer in that regard, and it has been unhelpfully amplified by the information age and social media.

Combine that with the fact that you know people personally on Facebook, and something like politics that has high personal and societal stakes. Facebook’s fundamental business model just cannot consent to basic principles of privacy such as the ability to have anonymity, and the pressure is just a time bomb waiting to go off (sidenote: I am seriously displeased the NSA is literally looking for an excuse to snatch a picture of my junk even for well intentioned reasons. And I don’t even have pictures of my junk around, at least any that were taken with my consent. Plus, if the Carlos Dangers of the world are spreading pictures of their junk and intruding on consent, people need to know about it).

And that is why I found the general election on Facebook to be such a cancer to the point where I was team nope the fuck out of here and turn to my own personal coalition of reason: Propublica and John Oliver, people who celebrate long-form investigative journalism that shines a flashlight of justice on the powerful abusing the powerless and getting away with it (and that 1st amendment is under serious assault by Donald Trump, who is grabbing the 1st amendment by the pussy without the consent of just about any American!)

To paraphrase Jon Stewart’s philosophy: we live in an age of bullshit mountain, where the problem is not insurmountable, and some core issues are important, but not urgent right now (i.e. climate change) (tangent we need to talk about procrastination and its relationship to the Eisenhower matrix Tim Urban masterfully covers in his series). However, we live in a society where the amplification is all wrong and needs serious prioritization.

We live in a society where the problems are amplified (which increases the stakes that makes free flow of conversation so difficult), and yet the solutions and ideas are publicly judged to the point that they become an endangered species. Under this environment, the coalition of reason is very weak. In short, right now our core crisis is that we face a deficiency in our problem-solving mechanisms.

And this includes ways organized people are so powerful: the intense public shaming of politicians. If powerful groups of organized people are shouting in megaphones, slut shaming solutions, and making it impossible for politicians to reach across the aisle without electoral backlash, compromise disappears and record polarization is inevitable.

It has literally not been this polarized since the eve of the civil war, where we had to grapple with the fact that literally the most powerful form of labor exploitation, slavery, subjugated an entire group of people and silenced their dissent, their rights, and their ability to consent, and the conditions were in place for the union to channel the sheer moral outrage of this arrangement.

So we need to call it for what it is: bullshit mountain (this ties back to my pilot post on my blog!) Call out bullshit when you see it! Find ways together so that we can aggressively remove bullshit from society. Be very team anti-bullshit.

Because I sincerely believe at least this, on the subject of bullshit: you are either with us, or you are against us. #CGPGreyism

P.S. if you feel so inspired you feel the need to share, feel free. Just please consent to the fact that I want proper attribution, especially if you adapt this and meld it with your own thoughts and perspectives.

All the fucking judgment and public shaming created blindspots for people. So let's talk about the role of public shaming in this election.

Donald Trump, the power-hungry psychopath he is, was a master at public shaming. His supporters are like a cult who are extremely skilled at public shaming. Honestly, the most hardcore Hillary and even Bernie supporters were very skilled at leveraging public shaming.

Here's the thing: the moment you try to ostracize someone, you are setting yourself up for failure in terms of trying to successfully convince someone to change their mind. Causing them to hold their own opinions closer to their chest, to their sense of identity.

This is why once my candidate lost (Bernie), I couldn't stand the cancer that was Facebook during the heat of the general election. I get it. The stakes were unbelievably high for some people (for instance, Muslims and women; I would argue white working class too). It is just so hard to not be judgmental in general: it takes immense emotional intelligence, and it is mentally exhausting to exert the self control and restraint necessary to remove the undercurrent of judgment.

It's just all too often, I found myself in a classic situation: "You're either for us or you're against us."

The moment someone expressed that thought, I was immediately "I'm team noping out of here and not engaging."

Public shaming and judgment are things that make it an unsafe zone of discussion. You cannot contribute without flying off the rail because people are relentlessly attacking you as a person. And productive conversation just completely shut down.

Honestly, the way the Democrats called for "unity" made things worse. The echo chambers where I can be myself, r/SandersForPresident, got shut down even though there were hundreds of thousands still willing to participate in that safe zone for us Bernie or Bust political refugees.

I loved Black Mirror for this reason because public shaming is one of its biggest and most consistent themes. How are you supposed to feel in White Bear when people are publicly shaming someone who aided and abetted a high-profile murder? Can you conclude on your own that you are actually genuinely sorry for them despite the fact that the victim of this public shaming made a huge mistake?

I also loved So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson and its frank discussion on what happens when you get publicly shamed. Honestly, Monica Lewinsky was arguably patient zero of what happens when the information age, social media, the ability for an idea to go viral, is so much faster than before.

The ironic part was that Bill Clinton, despite going through the impeachment hearings, came out of the entire thing extremely liked because the Republicans were behaving like toddlers.

But what happened to Monica Lewinsky was different. As often happens in a misogynistic society especially with slut shaming, the hate piled onto her was visceral and nasty. She had an excellent support system through her family, but even then she experienced thoughts of suicide.

And that is a common thread when people face an intense moment of public shaming: it's not pretty. It is absolutely awful for your emotional health.

But even as Monica Lewinsky became comfortable with her sense of self and felt empowered to talk about her experience, few people actively thought "man, how's Monica Lewinsky doing? I really hope she is alright now, we were incredibly shitty and petty to her."

And I'm glad she has a personal peace, because even though her delivery wasn't perfect, she delivered a powerful TED talk about her experience. And I just saw how even though the YouTube comments were disabled (smart move!), the ratio of likes to dislikes was like 80% to 20%, when just about any other TED video had like 99% likes to 1% dislikes.

Even after all these years, in 2015 no less, it was just like a compulsive addiction to slut shame her and to just judge her. I continue to feel so sorry for her for all that visceral hate.

But my sadness for her experience did wonders for my capacity for empathy. And that's where I urge people to stop engaging in behaviors that publicly shame. It literally is a cancer. Stop judging. Be a little more understanding and non-judgmental.

Because until that happens, we will continue to see increased polarization and just a complete inability to govern like adults.

We all are minorities in some way. I too am a minority in many ways. All the ways society unfairly treats any minority is no less real even if they haven’t suffered nearly as much from their “privileged” position.

Lately, I have seen a very troubling one-upsmanship on which groups of people are having it worse. It usually goes two ways. One group uses the differential in magnitude of the problems to bludgeon the other group into silence. The other group sees the way society has treated them unfriendly and refuses to acknowledge there is a difference in magnitude of suffering, or deny there is suffering altogether for anyone outside their group.

The magnitude of inequality absolutely makes sense to consider for prioritization reasons. But I want to give a warm and friendly reminder that just about everybody has some element where society is unfair to them, even in positions of "privilege" (god I hate how that is thrown around as a buzzword), and each and every one of these inequalities is no less real (classic case is when a male gets sexually assaulted, or men are pressured to act in the norms of this "masculinity" bullshit). And honestly, we don’t owe society a goddamn thing. Society owes us. We were here before society and civilization, and society has caused a lot of people to fall between the cracks, some of whom cannot reemerge.

Today, I want to share some of the ways in which I am a minority, and embrace who I am through the fact that I am a minority.

I am a minority not just in the sense that I am a first generation Asian-American. I am a minority as someone who leans introvert (at least, I assume the ratio of extroverts to introverts is more than 1:1). It is hard to speak up sometimes, to share ideas that I have, and to take credit for good ideas.

I am a minority as someone who is deeply dysfunctional in emotional health. Growing up, and especially ever since I became a teenager, I have had perennial self-esteem, anxiety, and insecurity issues that I have never fully resolved. I have lashed out in ways driven by this lack of self-esteem and comfort with myself that has alienated people who care about me, people who want to be my friends, and people potentially interested in recruiting me professionally.

I am a minority as someone who grew up in a tiger parenting lite household and in a household with a clearly unhappy marriage. I have seen how dysfunctional and toxic my parents are around each other, and I have seen how broken their conflict resolution mechanisms are. I have seen how the threat of divorce is openly and casually thrown around to influence behavior. I have seen so many inflammatory shouting matches when the initial grievance that sparked it was relatively minor. I have seen the way my day uses brain surgery 20 or 30 years ago as a crutch and an excuse to not change his ways. I have seen the tension antiquated gender norms causes to both of my parents because my dad got laid of in the early 2000s and became a stay at home dad, and my mom suddenly became the breadwinner for more than 15 years. My brother and I have been dragged in every once in a while into this toxic relationship as pedestals each parent uses to spew hate at the other. Why else do you think I have anger issues and low self-esteem?

Hell, I am a minority as someone lucky enough to go through an upper-middle class, quality school district, and a quality and very prestigious program in college. I am a minority in that I have met so many driven, sharp, amazing people along the way, even though my social circle is predominantly upper middle class and that creates blindspots in perspectives and life experiences.

I am a minority as someone who has finally been able to admit deep-seated mental health struggles and seek professional help to jumpstart the recovery process.

I am a minority as someone who felt intense loneliness because my support structure wasn’t there and because I had zero close friends during college.

I sure as hell felt like a minority when I energetically supported Bernie Sanders this presidential election, clashing with my predominantly professional and upper middle class friends group who strongly leaned Hillary Clinton. I sure as hell was a minority when I then supported the Bernie or Bust movement and actively resented all the calls for Democrats to have “unity” at the expense of productive dissent. I essentially disagreed with like 99% of the country when I voted Jill Stein in this presidential election not because I liked her, but explicitly to spite Hillary without excessively rewarding Donald Trump, who I hate orders of magnitude more than I hate Hillary.

I most certainly feel like a minority when I want to seriously tackle the post-mortem process and figure out exactly why Democrats didn’t click with Americans even as President Obama enjoys historic high approval ratings, and why so many people voted against their own self interest for the authoritarian strongman who claims to have answers for them and care for them, but frankly doesn’t give a flying fuck about them, only himself and his elite cronies.

I am a minority when I say civility is important (despite multiple streaks of lack of civility), and especially a minority when I say we need to walk in the shoes of even the xenophobes, racists, misogynists, anti-Muslim, and anti multiculturalism segments of society. Who knows? We might be able to convince some of them to reform their ways.

I am a minority when I agree with elements of all sides of debates of all the polarizing and emotionally charged issues of the day, especially in things like abortion, sexual assault, and gender equality. But the moment they say “you’re either with us or you’re against us,” I am also a minority when I say I am team nope the fuck out of here, not getting involved in this.

There are just so many ways I am a minority, and so much of it is tied with but not immediate apparent with the extrinsic factors of who I am: my race, my gender, my life background. I have my own immensely unique life story to tell, and yet none of the experiences I have gone through has not already been explored in some way by someone else.

Please, be tolerant of a multicultural and pluralistic society. Create the conditions for vibrant and productive dissent. Allow for maximum exchange of perspectives where everyone leaves the conversation learning something new.

Rant part 2: In defense of the deplorables, the white working class people who defected in double-digit numbers to Trump

Alright, I wanted to keep the gloves back on, but here we go. The gloves are off.

See, this is why I am so troubled by the whole "this time it REALLY is different, guys" mantra with Trump. And I can totally understand from the viewpoint of a Muslim that what Trump stands for is absolutely terrifying. It's less easy for me to see how it affects me personally because they didn't have a concerted assault and lack of respect for Asian Americans to nearly that same extent.

On the subject of compassion, frankly, it is insulting to me that I get accused of not having that compassion (uh, hello? I voted for Bernie after all!) I have compassion for one group in particular that what I see as the hard-core Hillary crowd as completely dismissing as "deplorable:" the plight of the white working class, the same people who defected (en masse, double digit numbers! They voted for Obama once or even twice, for pete sake) to Trump. And I become honestly baffled when people don't see the struggle between the elites vs. everyone else from a class lens instead of just a race lens.

Those are the people who, 40, 50, 60 years ago, dropped out of the political process; had they turned out, they would have created the coalition necessary for a European social state. Guess what? They happen to have social views that are 30-50+ years outdated. They may be explicitly anti-Muslim, anti-globalization, anti-lgbtq, racist, misogynistic, I don't deny that.

But I don't give a shit about that, I can't tolerate everyone's backwardness of views, and I accept that. What I give a shit about is the unique economic hardship and then drug addiction epidemic this group is facing that neither party frankly gives a shit about.

And these people flock over to the GOP because of the social conservatism. And they flock over to the authoritarian strongman claiming to have answers because absolutely nobody has given a shit what they care about economically, at least care about it enough to make their situation meaningfully better.

Here's what makes their economic hardship especially painful: they have a different set of expectations, than, say, the immigrants who work hard and then can succeed from blood, sweat, and tears. They could afford to, say "coast" in life and reach financial comfort. But now they can't. But their expectations haven't moved. Well, as I found out personally, expectations gaps leads to unhappiness.

Thanks to their life experiences and poverty, you know what, they can't afford / it is much more difficult to access and sustain the resources we had in abundance to think critically about this. So I can forgive them for acting irrationally, especially because (and here's the salt) Bernie would have offered a compelling economic answer for their problems and would have actually competed for this group of people!

At the end of the day, I see a troubling oneupsmanship on racial lines from this kind of argumentation, a kind of "our difficulties as ethnic minorities are so much worse, effectively invalidating your difficulties." Just because the white working class is part of the ethnic majority doesn't mean they aren't part of a DIFFERENT minority, from fucking LIFE: be it poverty, drug addiction, honestly, who cares, they are minorities form those perspectives. Minority isn't limited to ethnicity! At the end of the day, whatever we dislike about these people, they are still people, they are still Americans, and they have been fucking forgotten.

The Democrats have been a great tent for two types of people: the top 10% "professional" class (and those who aspire professionally), of which I am one, and for ethnic minorities who feel welcome within this tent, especially relative to Republicans. They have NOT been welcome to the working class people as a whole because of their brand of meritocracy that implicitly suggests that the reason you're in poverty is because it's YOUR FAULT. They may not say it out loud, but the judgment is there. And Hillary is the type of person the professional class would honestly worship. And my friends group predominantly falls under this professional class, so there you go.

It is honestly sad to me that in the post-mortem more analysis isn't done on the weakness of Hillary the candidate. There are so many ways that she was just an awful candidate for the political environment we are in now. Even if Trump were stopped, if we still pay lip service to the white working class and they still have the numbers, what stops a Trump-like authoritarian strongman (or any Republican nominee authoritarian strongman lite) from effectively pandering to them in 2020, 2024, 2028, even freaking 2032?

To the hardcore Hillary supporters, the ones who supported her from primary to election day, this is for you.

As Trump is getting inaugurated, I can't help but think about this.

Jesus, the Democrats really dropped the ball this presidential election. This one will actually be raw and extremely emotional.

I am still incredibly salty about the decision of the Democrat party to run such an incredibly weak, scandal-ridden candidate for such a consequential presidential election.

I frankly don't give a shit if she's inspirational to you, the political class, or what her accomplishments were, or how much experience she has. Because they were undeniably great, and it frustrated me to no end how often Bernie emphasized that during debates, because doing anything else would immediately result in cries of misogyny.

I have a much simpler criterion based on cost-benefit analysis: do I trust this person to act in the public interest instead of being handcuffed for any number of reasons to concede to a tiny elite and allow the fundamental balance of power between the elite and everyone else to go unchanged? Do I expect this person to do the maximum good aligning to my personal philosophy to do good for the powerless in defense of the powerful, and, even more, empowering the powerless? I found no convincing answer here.

Or regarding her: handcuffed because of all these goddamn scandals that, whether or not they were malicious or determined criminally liable, demonstrate a perpetual lack of good judgment? "FRANKLY, THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT YOUR GODDAMN EMAILS!" And that, even through perception alone, these scandals or the residual effects of them can sink her political capital when she needs it most to push through reform? Even possibly the first 100 days, particularly in a divided Congress? Whatever misgivings I had about Obama, at least he was incredibly clean from an ethical standpoint, and even then, he was subject to relentless ideological and procedural extremism from the Republicans that his hair has turned so white from the stress...

Even after all that, I know that Hillary > Trump. But I voted third party explicitly out of spite of Hillary (whereas still voting and halving the effect that is a vote for Trump instead of a vote for Hillary). Even had she won the presidency, I think a scandal or "scandal" was almost inevitable over the course of her presidency and the absolute shellacking in congressional and state levels the Democrat party has already sustained will just accelerate. Her very visible concessions to the tiny elite would stir backlash both from supporters and opposition. She would be incredibly vulnerable during reelection.

If the Democrat party really wanted a great third way Democrat who will give intelligent judgment and has the personal character necessary for the presidency, the closest thing that would get me to vote is a version of a third term Obama. Obviously, he can't run, and then Hillary crowded out everyone else because #ItsHerTurn and #SuperDelegatesAndElitesWereWithHer. Don't you see it's always about her? What did Bernie say? NOT ME. US. Of the people who ran and were more moderate, Martin O'Malley, in spite of his disastrous tenure as mayor of Baltimore (and believe me, I watched The Wire and read David Simon's analysis of his tenure as mayor, it is like a proto moment for Black Lives Matter and police brutality, a timebomb that would detonate with the death of Freddie Gray), but in spite OF ALL THAT, he was infinitely a significantly more trustworthy character than Hillary was because none of his dark scandals are even remotely RECENT.

Then, any legitimate criticism of Hillary immediately resulted in a kneejerk reaction of misogyny or racism or an accusation that I or whoever is speaking is secretly helping Trump ("And we need 'unity' as Democrats!"), and those effectively silenced out voices that needed to be heard. It is my view that Bernie was a better feminist and more racially progressive than Hillary was! He is not a woman, and that matters from a perspective angle, but you need a holistic analysis! Being a woman does not automatically qualify you to be the best candidate to advance gender equality, and despite her impressive commitment to advancement for professional, middle to upper class women, already comfortable and privileged women, she paid absolute lip service to working class women, those who understand BOTH how fucking messed up economic hardship AND being a woman are!

Okay, rant over. You know, Dr. Prentice places so much emphasis on ethics, and I think the cognitive dissonance with Hillary about ethics from so many of my friends (including and especially those who have gone through BHP) was absurdly maddening. I need to get this out. It's a much easier blindspot to catch in retrospect, but I was seeing this pretty much since January 2016 when I really started paying attention, and to paraphrase Bernie, "it really doesn't please me to see that what I had feared would actually come true." It would please me that I hadn't fallen on deaf ears in the first place...

I really need to sleep, restore my emotional health, but refocus on the intellectual side of politics that so interests me and that I hope would provide the template for reasoned discussion that ACTUALLY CHANGES MINDS. This is a SHOUTING MATCH and POLARIZING post, but I needed to vent.

Donald Trump: The Ineffectual Leader

This was an old paper I wrote during October 2013. The prompt was to identify somebody and assess whether or not they are an effective leader, applying an article or two from Harvard Business Review’s 10 Must Reads in Leadership. I decided to write about Donald Trump because he has pulled some outrageous stunts in business decisions that you can’t even dream of reading on The Onion. 

I suddenly remembered that I wrote about it, and thought it would be relevant given, well, that he actually has a serious shot at the presidency. Seriously, that’s freaking terrifying.

The son of a middle-class real estate developer, Donald Trump has been an enduring media figure and eccentric celebrity infamous for many stunts. He began has real estate career in his father’s company, Elizabeth Trump and Son, while still a student at the Wharton School of Business in the University of Pennsylvania. Trump’s faced existential challenges in the early 1990s to the amount of $3.5 billion in corporate debt.[1] In 1991, he filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the Trump Taj Mahal, accumulating $900 million in personal debt in the process.[2] Another bankruptcy followed the next year with the Trump Plaza Hotel.[3]            

Evidently, Trump’s career had mixed results. Although he was able to substantially reduce these debts by 1994, he declared two additional corporate bankruptcies: once in 2004 with Trump Hotels and Casinos, and again in 2009 with Trump Entertainment.[4] Overall, he’s had a number of business failures in 17 years.[5] Despite this, Trump has a net worth of around $3 billion and has had several successful ventures.[6]

Does Trump display the impressive capabilities showcased by Level 5 Leadership outlined by Jim Collins or the Strategist described by Rooke and Torbert? The answer is no on all counts: Donald Trump, by any definition, is not a particularly effective leader.

Collins identifies Level 5 Leaders as those who incorporate “personal humility” with “professional will.” Even if Donald Trump may have some degree of professional will, his ego is extremely large even when compared to other successful entrepreneurs. Trump often credits himself with his perceived successes. The (auto)biography featured on his website waxes poetic about his achievements, comically calling him “the very definition of the American success story” and “the archetypal businessman.”[7] He has written many books trumpeting his personal achievements. During his potential presidential run in 2011, Trump boasted that he was a superior businessman and possessed higher net worth than Mitt Romney, going as far as calling the former CEO of Bain “basically a small business guy.”[8]  When business soured, Trump did not hesitate to immediately externalize the blame. During the real estate downturn in the 1990s, when he defaulted on loans made to him, he “figured it was the bank’s problem, not mine [that they lost money on him].”[9] In the 2009 collapse of the Trump Ocean Resort Baja Mexico, Trump immediately insulated himself by saying that he was merely a spokesman and declined any financial responsibility. In the bankruptcy of Trump Entertainment Resorts the same year, Trump emphasized that he was a chief executive not involved in day-to-day operations.[10] Consequently, despite several temporary spurts, Trump has not been able to achieve what Level 5 Leaders can: consistently high growth and returns in his businesses.

Rooke and Tobert define a Strategist as one who “exercises the power of mutual inquiry, vigilance, and vulnerability” to “generate organizational and personal transformations.” However, when measuring Donald Trump among the seven types of leaders, he is best classified as an opportunist. He is highly self-oriented and believes most strongly in winning, finding creditors and investors expendable people to be “crushed” and to “take the benefits.”[11]

Innumerous examples abound of Trump throwing others under the bus for selfish personal gain. In 2007, Trump halted the construction of Trump Tower Tampa, a 52-story condo building. No buyer was refunded for the $200,000 to $1.2 million in deposits made. In fact, initial sales went so smoothly that deposits were returned in order to charge even higher prices.[12] In 2008, when Deutsche Bank demanded $40 million of the $640 million used to finance Chicago Trump Tower, Trump decided to sue the bank for $3 billion, essentially demanding a yearly interest of negative 1,250 percent.[13] When the bank noted in court that Trump has had many prior instances of overdue debt, he filed another suit for defamation. Eventually, Deutsche Bank dropped the case, indicating a willingness to lose $40 million rather than remain associated with Trump. In 2009, after collecting $32 million from investors, the Trump Ocean Resort Baja collapsed. It informed the investors that construction will be canceled; however, the contract stipulated that the company was still allowed to use the deposits anyway.[14] Trump even said that the investors were “lucky” because they would have lost more money had the Resort actually been built.[15]  In 2011, while attempting to develop a golf course in Scotland, Trump first applied for planning permission on land he didn’t own, and, when that failed, tried to force a couple out of their 20-year home by fencing off their entire house without their permission and then sending them a $4,000 bill for his work.[16]

Meanwhile, Trump’s leadership style and treatment of subordinates are best exemplified when he issues verdicts at the end of episodes on The Apprentice. Everyone who judges with him always agrees with his decision without fail: his highly self-centered personality inevitably results in groupthink, where even those with differing opinions would not want to be seen as undermining him and subsequently fired.

Although Trump will likely continue making profitable real estate ventures, his deficiencies as a leader are clear. His enormous ego and predatory behaviors sap his potential as a leader and prevents his businesses from achieving inspirational success.

---

[1] Claire O’Connor, 4^th Time’s A Charm: How Donald Trump Made Bankruptcy Work for Him, Forbes, Apr. 21, 2011

[2] Id.

[3] Id.

[4] Id.

[5] Markus Allen, Donald Trump Bankruptcy: The Truth about Trump and His Failures, Marketing-Ideas.org, Apr. 22, 2011

[6] Claire O’Connor, 4^th Time’s A Charm: How Donald Trump Made Bankruptcy Work for Him, Forbes, Apr. 21, 2011

[7] Donald J. Trump Biography, Trump.com

[8] Michael Falcone, Donald Trump Says His Huge Net Worth Makes Him Qualified to Run For President, ABC News, Apr. 18, 2011

[9] Floyd Norris, Trump Sees Act of God in Recession, New York Times, Dec. 4, 2008

[10] Id.

[11] Id.

[12] Alex Frangos, Stalled Condo Projects Tarnish Trump’s Name, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 16, 2007

[13] Floyd Norris, Trump Sees Act of God in Recession, New York Times, Dec. 4, 2008

[14] Howard Kurtz, The Trump Backlash, Newsweek, Apr. 24, 2011

[15] Id.

[16] Victoria Ward, Donald Trump Angers Neighbor After Erecting New Boundary Fence and Then Billing Him, The Telegraph, Jun. 4, 2011

First Past the Post, Two-Party Rule, and the Artificial Support of Republicans and Trump

One aspect of political structural flaws that has not been widely discussed is how unfair our voting system is.

Right now, we follow something called first-past-the-post. Under this system, voters can only pick one choice per ballot, and the candidate with the plurality (not the majority) wins.

In his coverage of a cute animal kingdom, CGP Grey has detailed the flaws of this system in one of an excellent series of videos on different voting systems. Let’s examine the different flaws one by one and apply them in the context of US elections.

Minority Rule and Two-Party System

According to game theory, the inevitable result of first-past-the-post is two-party rule. This is an extremely bad problem in several major aspects.

First, few Americans would consider either the Democrats or the Republicans their first choice. According to the Pew Research Center, in 2014, self-identified Democrats accounted for 32 percent of the voting age population, 23 percent identify as Republicans, and a stunning 39 percent are either unaffiliated or identify as independents (while it’s unclear whether this represents likely voters or all voting age Americans is unclear, but more and more Americans have identified as independents over time). These results are echoed by Gallup data, which estimated that 43 percent of Americans identified as independents in 2014.

Perhaps even more troubling, a different Pew survey found that a record 24 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of both the Democrat and Republican Party in 2015. What’s clear from this data is that a plurality of Americans do not especially identify with either party.

However, thanks to a combination of strategic voting and the spoiler effect, there is an entrenched two-party system in the US. What’s been happening more and more often is that Americans vote for the party they dislike least rather than a party or candidate that truly aligns with their values.

It’s these people who list neither party as their first choice that are most likely to become disillusioned with the democratic process and drop out entirely. It might also help explain why the US has abysmal turnout rates compared to the rest of the developed world: we ranked 4^th to last among OECD countries in turnout when comparing most recent presidential or parliamentary elections.

This two party system also has unsettling implications. It allows Republicans to drift ever farther to the right and Democrats to become increasingly corporatist with relative impunity. The modern Republican congressman must first be worried that he will face a far-right primary challenger if he does not sufficiently tow the line. What’s notable was that the decline in self-identified Republicans was much sharper than the drop in self-Democrats.

Democrats, meanwhile, have increasingly gotten in bed with corporate interests. As Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson note in Winner-Take-All Politics (2010), it has gotten to the point where Democrats’ “populist tradition more and more appeared like a costume—something to be donned from time to time when campaigning—rather than a basis for governing.” Robert McChensey quipped in Dollarocracy (2013) that the difference between Democrat or Republican control is “whether AT&T openly or covertly writes the laws.”

A side effect of a two-party system is that major issues are often portrayed as only having two sides. In 2013, Jon Stewart lambasted CNN for oversimplying nuanced concepts into whether it was a “good thing” or a “bad thing.” There are often multiple viewpoints and even solutions to any issue, and the creation of false dichotomies encourages polarization and close-mindedness towards potentially better alternatives.

On major issues that are popular with Americans of all ideologies – the public option, universal background checks on firearms, increasing the minimum wage, overturning Citizens United, the belief that a small elite has excessive influence in governance – you will find lukewarm support at best from Democrats and staunch opposition from Republicans. If representative governance is designed to the responsive to the will of the people, our current system is not one.

The Spoiler Effect

Because candidates only require pluralities rather than majorities to win a race, first-past-the-post makes it extremely difficult for third parties to gain traction. A third party will almost always draw support from a voter’s second choice, making it more likely that the party they dislike most will end up winning.

The most prominent example is happened in the 2000 presidential election, when Bush won Florida by a margin of only 0.0092 percent and where Ralph Nader won 1.63 percent of the vote in that state, arguably “spoiling” the election (the electoral college itself is extremely unfair, but should be the subject of a different post). Even in that election, Ralph Nader only won 2.74 percent of the popular vote. In order to qualify for federal funding, third parties must win at least 5 percent of the popular vote; that 5 percent can easily swing a close election.

Even in House races, the spoiler effect can lead to unintended results. Witness in 1988, when Bernie Sanders ran as US representative: he split the liberal vote, ultimately losing 41 percent to 38 percent (to be fair, the Democrat with a meager 19 percent of the vote was the spoiler, not Bernie). In a scenario of a runoff or even an instant runoff, there would be no spoiler effect.

Gerrymandering

The final major issue of the first-past-the-post system is its susceptibility to gerrymandering. Every 10 years, when the Census Bureau makes a comprehensive survey to collect demographic information of the American populace, state legislatures will redraw congressional districts. Because Republicans swept state races in 2010 (fueled by low turnout and the rise of the Tea Party), they redrew some bizarre looking lines.

Take a look at congressional districts around Austin, TX:

Source: Govtrack

Seriously, what the hell is that? Despite Austin and the greater Travis County’s reputation as liberal areas, five of the six districts within the Austin area are currently held by Republicans.

In the 2012 election, Democrats actually won the overall popular vote in the House by 1.17 million votes, with 50.59 percent voting for a Democrat congressman. Nonetheless, the Republican Party had 234 seats to 201 for Democrats, a substantial 33 seat advantage and 18 seats above the number needed for a majority. That represents a 4.38 percent error in representation.

To be fair, gerrymandering is not limited to Republicans: where state houses and governorships are under Democrat control, you see gerrymandering favoring Democrats as well. However, current gerrymandering behavior is disproportionately Republican, and it is incredibly unfair regardless of who perpetrates it.

Artificially reinforcing presidential candidates

Here’s where things get scary. In recent presidential elections, a presidential nominee from either major party can expect to get a minimum of 37 percent of the popular vote (even in landslides such as the election of 1964, the election of 1972, the election of 1980, the election of 1984). Since 1980, any Democrat or Republican nominee has gotten a minimum of 40 percent of the popular vote.

So what does that mean for an extremist like Trump? Recall earlier that only about 25 percent of Americans identify as Republicans. Of those, maybe 40 percent support him. That translates to an overall support of just 10 percent who would plausibly support him as the first choice.

Yet that number will be amplified to a minimum of 35-40 percent should Trump get the nomination. Under any remotely inclusive system that embraces independents and uses instant-runoff, the Republican nominee would be far more moderate than the far-right, awful, awful choices we have gotten in recent years.

A hypothetical scenario of Clinton vs. Trump would be extremely unique in that both candidates have an overwhelmingly negative net favorability rating. Right now, Hillary’s net favorability rating is negative 14.4 percent. Trump’s is an astounding negative 31.9 percent. However, the combination of a two-party system, electoral college rules, and spoiler effects discouraging voting third party would mean that there is actually a plausible scenario where Trump’s support among working-class whites would win him the presidency.

That is terrifying. It is something I would not fathom happening in a different voting system.

Solutions

Other Voting Systems

So we have painstakingly shown how first-past-the-post system makes a complete mockery of American politics all by itself. What are some ways to combat this distortion?

CGP Grey outlines two good solutions, each with its distinct pros and cons. The first option is the Single Transferable Vote (STV). The second option is the mixed-member proportional (MMP) system. Either system would make it easier for alternative parties to become real forces by eliminating the spoiler effect and maximizing representation. Both would ensure that both Republicans and Democrats are held accountable to voters. Both systems have inherent defenses against gerrymandering. Meanwhile, instant runoff in presidential elections would reward centrist and charismatic presidential candidates over partisan hacks or dishonest flip-floppers.

Which system is better? Ultimately, I think that is up to preference. MMP would institutionalize parties as part of the electoral process. I think STV is slightly more susceptible to gerrymandering. Nonetheless, if well designed, you really can’t go wrong with either.

Here is a table summarizing the different alternatives.

 Blanket “Non-Partisan” Primaries

Here’s another interesting system that can be implemented regardless of the voting system. Instead of having a different primary for each party, have a single blanket primary with ranked choice voting where liberals, independents, and conservatives alike can cast votes. Candidates can still identify their partisan affiliations, but all candidates regardless of affiliation will be part of this initial primary process. From here, reallocate votes above a certain threshold (say 20 percent), then start eliminating candidates with the weakest support, redistributing their second choices among those remaining. From here, you can choose to have a runoff with the 2-4 candidates who got the biggest share of the initial vote.

One major advantage of a blanket primary is that if a given district is heavily liberal or heavily conservative, they can have multiple liberal or conservative candidates in the subsequent general election. Moreover, in general, centrist-minded incumbents need not worry about being challenged by extremist fringes: rather, they should worry about challenges moderately from the left, moderately from the left, or even from the center.

Generating wholesale political reform

Hopefully this post convinces you that first-past-the-post voting is extremely anti-democratic and produces multiple distortions that harm political discourse. Unfortunately, reform will probably not go anywhere because both Democrats and Republicans benefit tremendously from the current system (Republicans disproportionately so).

To the extent a constitutional convention can be held in the future, hopefully first-past-the-post come to the forefront as a target of institutional reform that would improve representative governance and restore health to our troubled democracy.

Why I will not be settling for Hillary if she gets the nomination

In this election cycle, there is only one major presidential candidate who has meaningful goals towards curbing the immense concentration of economic and political power of billionaires and corporate interests and redistributing it back to the people: Senator Bernie Sanders.

If Bernie doesn’t get the nomination, I will not #SettleWithHillary. Honestly, if she ran a clean campaign as a proud moderate and did not have all the baggage she has, I might have reluctantly voted for her. Instead, having already been effectively disenfranchised by the electoral college in Texas, I will be voting Green instead in the hopes that they can gain 5 percent of the vote and get access to federal funding.

My staunch opposition to Hillary comes from four areas:

First, Hillary has no real plan for addressing the institutional corruption of American governance via the campaign finance system.

As I’ve noted in a previous post, Congress is severely paralyzed and unlikely to pass anything meaningful unless there is comprehensive campaign finance reform. None of the issues we care most deeply about – climate change, health care, progressive taxation, financial reform, decriminalized drug policy, or education reform – can be substantially changed without addressing the immense power special interests groups have on the election of congressmen and the way they govern.

While Hillary has proposed a modest publicly financed campaign system in the form of matching small donations, she hasn’t done much to address the problem of big donors in politics. Here’s her specific proposal:

Hillary will establish a small-donor matching system for presidential and congressional elections to incentivize small donors to participate in elections.

As the costs of running a campaign continue to skyrocket, congressmen will inevitably become more dependent on big donors over time. Campaigns are unlikely to meaningfully track the issues small donors care about; however, for bigger donors who give close to the legal limit of $2,700, their concerns are taken seriously. And this still gives lobbyists a lot of power, for they could multiply their influence by bundling multiple donors who max out, or threatening to raise large sums of money for opponents if a congressman demurs on their concerns.

In addition, this system can potentially support speech we fundamentally oppose. Just imagine your taxpayer money going to fund the campaign of Ted Cruz. Or Donald Trump. Or Mitch McConnell. Yeah.

What’s worse, the way Hillary has campaigned so far inspires little confidence in her willingness to push even her modest proposal. She has raised close to $190 million in Super PAC money. 77 percent of the $130 million she has raised for her campaign committee have come from large donors, those who donated more than $200; close to $60 million came from those who donated the maximum amount. She regularly holds fundraisers with Wall Street and other powerful corporate interest groups. She has taken millions from corporate lobbyists, Super PACs, Wall Street, the health care industry, and even private prisons. While I realize there is some use in using the system to help destroy it, there is serious risk in becoming dependent on the very system you are trying to change.

I think Hillary and the Democratic Party stand to lose far too much to be able to mount a serious commitment to change the way campaigns are financed. When a similar proposal, the Fair Elections Now Act, was proposed in the House in 2010 while Democrats had strong majorities in both houses of Congress, it didn’t even come up for a full vote. And good luck getting anything through a Republican majority.

While Bernie would also face an uphill battle in passing sweeping reform, he is more likely to attract progressive congressional coattails who are committed to reform, and he can more effectively use the bully pulpit to urge people to flood their congressmen with messages and pressure them to follow suit. His initial tenure as mayor of Burlington serves as a useful guide: when the city council shut him out, he governed via alternative means, embracing grassroots activism. I just don’t think Hillary is quite capable of doing the same thing, particularly when large numbers of Americans distrust her (even less than Donald Trump!) and her net favorability rating is negative.

Second, even without the aforementioned institutional barriers, Hillary is far too moderate to effect the magnitude of change we need.

Even assuming all of Hillary’s plans pass overnight, we would still not have done enough (and I have serious doubt she will follow through with her platform given her solicitation of campaign contributions from opposing special interest groups).

Let’s go through some of her core proposals:

Minimum wage. Hillary supports a $12 federal minimum wage. Assuming a 40 hour workweek and 50 weeks of working a year, that translates to an annual rate of $24,000. It’s certainly better than the current level, but a $15 wage would translate to $30,000 a year, a $6,000 or 20 percent increase. Under a $12 wage, if a single person were supporting a family of four, that household would be below the poverty line. Looking elsewhere, Denmark has an effective minimum wage of $18, and the world hasn’t fallen apart. People there could afford a reasonably comfortable lifestyle even with minimum wage work.

Health Care. Hillary has belatedly added the public option back onto the table, albeit with an emphasis on setting it up for individual states. This could provide a path towards universal coverage, and there are estimates that a public option could offer lower premiums by as much as 30 percent.

However, even if the public option is able to gain substantial leverage on pricing, private insurers will still struggle to keep prices down. As Steven Brill notes in A Bitter Pill:

Insurers with the most leverage, because they have the most customers to offer a hospital that needs patients, will try to negotiate prices 30% to 50% above the Medicare rates rather than discounts off the sky-high chargemaster rates. But insurers are increasingly losing leverage because hospitals are consolidating by buying doctors’ practices and even rival hospitals. In that situation — in which the insurer needs the hospital more than the hospital needs the insurer — the pricing negotiation will be over discounts that work down from the chargemaster prices rather than up from what Medicare would pay. Getting a 50% or even 60% discount off the chargemaster price of an item that costs $13 and lists for $199.50 is still no bargain. “We hate to negotiate off of the chargemaster, but we have to do it a lot now,” says Edward Wardell, a lawyer for the giant health-insurance provider Aetna Inc.

So under the public option, health care costs overall can go down, perhaps even by upwards of 15 percent (best case scenario). Even after that, the US will still be spending 15 percent more per capita than the next highest country, and 50 percent more than the OECD average.

On top of that, Americans will still be paying substantial costs in premiums, deductibles, and copays. A major illness may cost considerably less, but it will still cost dearly – and the public option probably won’t make a sizable dent to the prevalence of medical bankruptcy in the US.

By contrast, Bernie’s single payer plan would place immense downward pressure on prices, decreasing current private insurance reimbursement rates to hospitals by as much as 40 percent. It would also only feature premiums in the form of increased payroll taxes; without deductibles or copays, any major illness would no longer devastate a family’s finances.

Higher Education. In addition to lower interest rates, Hillary’s plan involves a $2,500 tuition tax credit every year. Given the average tuition rate at a public university was $9,410 this year and will only go up, this only covers a little more than a quarter of tuition costs at best (and that’s before costs in housing, food, textbooks, etc.) Should a student choose to enroll in an out-of-state public university, this would be even worse. In addition, this tax credit is unlikely to expand access to college for working class families: tuition is paid at the start of the school year and the credit cannot be claimed until April, so it is unlikely to materially influence spending decisions. While this tax credit could be used for private non-profit universities, they can also potentially be used on for-profit colleges, which provide subpar education, saddle students in the highest debt load compared to public or private non-profit universities, and give them few employment prospects after graduation.

More troubling, such tax expenditures only expands the presence of the submerged state. It has the effect of hiding the true role of government, causing Americans to underestimate the role of government in shaping social policy and believe that they want a smaller government than they actually prefer. This makes them deeply hostile to future expansions in government policy, even where they can get the job done far more effectively than the private sector. If Americans also don’t realize the government is benefiting them, it reduces motivation for civic participation as well.

Bernie’s higher education plan would instead provide free tuition at all 4-year public universities, which would cost $62.6 billion a year. It would make college far more affordable and accessible to the working class and even the middle class. And if wealthy parents choose to send their kids to public universities, chances are they will have more than paid for it via the Wall Street speculation tax Bernie proposes to finance his proposal.

Wall Street. It appears Hillary has copied some of Bernie’s platform since the last time I checked (because nothing says leader like following someone else). There are some decent ideas, such as taking on the shadow banking system.

However, Hillary doesn’t really address the fundamental issue that banks are too big to fail. They have actually gotten more consolidated than before the financial crisis: the top 5 banks in the US collectively own nearly 45 percent of the industry’s total assets. If any of these banks were to go under, the result would be so catastrophic that the US would have no choice but to bail them out. Consequently, the underlying moral hazard of excessive risk taking, knowing the government will pick up the tab if things go south, remains.

Bernie, on the other hand, has been unambiguous in his stance on breaking up the big banks. While that alone is not quite enough, Hillary has also taken at least $6 million in donations from Wall Street, translating to about 7.2 percent of all of her funding. I wouldn’t trust her to enact any meaningful reform because she is so beholden to them.

Third, Hillary has a neoconservative foreign policy that will lead to disastrous military adventurism abroad.

While Secretary of State, Hillary consistently expressed more hawkish views than the rest of the Obama administration. She voted for the war in Iraq, which has resulted in close to 150,000 civilian casualties and more than 4,600 US military deaths. It has also been a crucial catalyst for the rise of ISIS and cost the US an estimated $2 trillion.

Hillary played a substantial role in the 2009 coup in Honduras, a move that caused deterioration of diplomatic relations with Latin America. The subsequent weak and corrupt government coincided with an escalation in drug-related violence in the following years as the war on drugs displaced traditional supply lines via the Caribbean and cartels rerouted them through Central America. For better or worse, the coup likely exacerbated the migrant crisis from Central America in mid-2014 – which Hillary responded to by unapologetically stating that they should be sent back to “send a clear message.”

Hillary also supported intervention in Libya, where the diffusion of arms after the fall of Qaddafi triggered severe unrest in neighboring African countries such as Mali and where 20 months of civil war have given ISIS an opportunity to establish a front there.

In Syria, Hillary has pushed for a no-fly zone and advocated arming “moderate” rebels more aggressively than President Obama did. The issue is that there is little real information on the ground, and the so-called “moderates” we are arming may very well be more barbaric than Assad and his Russian allies.

Even if the US succeeds in dislodging Assad, we will probably see a repeat of the scenario in Iraq – in the ensuing power vacuum, we will see heightened sectarian warfare between the majority Sunni population and minorities such as Alawites, massive civilian deaths, continued proxy warfare from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia, and an environment of chaos where ISIS and other militant groups such as al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra can thrive.

Time and time again, Hillary has demonstrated exceptionally poor judgment on foreign policy. It’s striking that Hillary takes cues from Henry Kissinger, who among other things contributed to a genocide in Camodia killing 3 million by bombing the entire country. Hillary has drawn support from other neocons as well, such as Robert Kagan. A Clinton administration will result in disastrous militarist adventurism, damaging America’s reputation abroad and directly feeding international instability.

Fourth, and perhaps most importantly, Hillary has a serious lack of integrity and comes off as dishonest, untrustworthy, and inconsistent.

Like her husband Bill, Hillary is a triangulating politician who has picked up a number of inconsistent views over the years. She has flip-flopped on many issues: Gay marriage, TPP, Wall Street, Keystone, and Iraq, just to name a few examples. In conjunction with taking so much money from special interests, it is hard to tell what Hillary stands for, and what she will actually support if she becomes president.

She and her surrogates have also pulled a number of dirty campaign tactics. They have engaged in the use of push polling, which are essentially character assassinations masquerading as polling. On the day of the Massachusetts primary, Bill Clinton made stops outside and even inside polling locations, which may have broken electoral laws blocking the solicitation of votes within 150 feet of a polling location and, more importantly, effectively stopped voting for several hours as voters could not bypass his phalanx of security.

Hillary and friends have also attempted to swiftboat Bernie’s record on multiple occasions (see here, here, and here), trying to smear him with accusations that are misleading or even downright false. Just recently at the Flint debate and Michigan town hall, Hillary has attempted to equate her moderate plans with Bernie’s far more sweeping ones. When it comes to attacks on transcripts or the 1994 crime bill, her first defense is “Bernie did it too.” Throughout the primaries, Hillary and the DNC have actively worked to effectively depress voter turnout, which will come to hurt Democrats in the general election.

Moreover, there are serious ethical questions with the 91 paid speeches Hillary has made from 2013 to April 2015, making a total of $21.7 million, adding to her already immense wealth. These include $1.6 million to Canadian pro-Keystone groups (which she now “opposes”), and talks to Goldman Sachs, which was reportedly “rah-rah” and where “she sounded more like a Goldman Sachs managing director.” More alarmingly, she continued to make 50 speeches netting more than $10 million even when she seriously considered running for president by 2014. At this point, even The New York Times, which has endorsed Hillary, has called for the release of the transcripts. At best, these speeches represent a serious error in judgment. At worst, they are ethical violations that should make us question whose interests she really serves.

Finally, there’s the trump card: a serious ongoing FBI investigation on Hillary’s use of private servers while she was Secretary of State. 30,000 pages of emails were deleted from the server; there’s been reports that the emails were insecure for 2 months, and multiple foreign groups (such as Russians) have attempted to gain access to the server; former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reckons they may very well have succeeded. Among other things, these emails have revealed that Hillary secretly lobbied for the Columbia free trade deal – at the same time she publicly pledged to oppose it. The investigation may be concluded as early as May, and may or may not lead to an indictment.

As with the transcripts, at best, this entire investigation has demonstrated a serious error of judgment on Hillary’s part. At worst, this may result in an indictment and prison time. No other presidential candidate in history has had an active federal investigation before – and none would have been expected to survive the fallout.

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Despite all this, there is still some reason to respect the policies Hillary supposedly stands for. There is a material difference in her policy positions compared to whoever emerges as the Republican nominee. If you live in a swing state, I encourage voting for her anyway, for Supreme Court nominees and the ability to veto bad legislation or pass good ones are at stake.

However, if you live in an uncompetitive state like I do, should the worst happen and Hillary ends up being the nominee, I strongly urge looking towards a third party option. Jill Stein has very similar positions to Bernie, and in some cases takes even stronger stances. Whoever becomes the Libertarian nominee will probably provide a nice combination of fiscal conservatism and socially liberalism. If a third party gets 5 or more percent of the popular vote, then they will qualify for federal funding, which could substantially improve their outreach and make them a contending force, starting the process of breaking up the two-party duopoly.