California ... big surprise.

http://www.breitbart.com/california/2017/01/27/voter-fraud/

The Brietbart link is an interesting read... long on innuendo and potentials, short on any factual evidence.  Their best reference is a report "Perfect Storm Report" on the Election Integrity Project website which does have lots of data on how voter fraud could occur, but again, zero evidence that it has actually occurred.  In your quest to look deeply at all sides of the issue, do you have any other references that provide the evidence?

How would you characterize this report?

http://www.brennancenter.org/publication/truth-about-voter-fraud

The President has proposed an investigation on the issue.  So, let's get that in gear and get all the information out there for all to see.  I have no doubt voter fraud occurs, any system devised by man can be gamed.  The question is whether this a big problem, a medium problem, a small problem, or, not a problem at all.  Would seem to me that if voter fraud was anything above not a problem, the losers of these elections would be in court the next day with their evidence in hand to overturn the results - yet this rarely happens.  Quite a bit of voting is indeed on the honor system, and Americans are amazingly honest about it.

I'm not surprised you think that scholarships is a good model.

But at least not all scholarship funds come from taxpayers.

Well.. the GI Bill following WWII (and the continuing program) was very successful.  Seems to me that government scholarships do have many more benefits than drawbacks.

Who makes up Government?  People that largely can't get jobs in the real world.

  Really Anthony... you shouldn't be dissin President Trumps supporters like that!

Do we really want to trust these people for our future?

You might be right about that!!

Sure, that has been going on forever.  But as Neil Bortz used to say:
"The rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer,
because the rich keep doing the things that make them rich,
and the poor keep doing the things that make them poor".

There is a fair amount of truth to that!!

Except in an oligarchy like Russia, where the rich really are made richer by a corrupt government.  But here, all the government can do is help establish the conditions that allow the people to succeed or fail on their own.

I think we agree that a useful and necessary role of government is to "level the playing field" to allow individuals and business to thrive.

The reason I blamed Obama is that his administration set an unprecedented environment for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.

Hmmm... thought Obama was evil to the rich, all that wealth distribution stuff.  If he was so good the the rich, why didn't that trickle down?

High taxes forces companies to look for ways to cut expenses.  Offshoring is one.  Leverage is another.  Borrowing at near zero interest rates is a fantastic expense reduction for the rich.  And "quantitative easing" assured that anyone wealthy enough to own stock would get wealthier.  (I personally thank Obama for that).

And at the same time as more and more middle class jobs are being outsourced, the Obama administration's policies made it preferable to go on government assistance than to work.  A welfare based economy is a model that is doomed to spiral into more and more poverty and more and more government dependence.

Can't argue that taxes are part of the process if a business wants to off-shore.  That being said, the cost of labor, availability of raw materials and logistics to markets are far more important.  The top corporate tax rate hasn't changed much since 1990 and off-shoring (or foreign competion) has been eroding manufacturing jobs since the 1970's. If anything, automation has done more to eliminate jobs than any other factor (IMHO!!) "Re-shoring" of jobs is also an event had has started a while ago:

https://secure.marketwatch.com/story/us-flips-the-script-on-jobs-reshoring-finally-outpaced-offshoring-in-2014-2015-05-01

Can't argue that a welfare based economy is doomed to failure.  Don't believe we are anywhere close to that.

As for Trump, I agree with you.  We will see.  But I believe he is creating an environment that will allow everyone to succeed without fostering more poverty and government dependence.  Ask the people of Michigan what they think!

Let's hope so.

This is good! 2016 was a pretty good year for the Dow, up 4000-some points.  Trading volume in December/January very healthy.  Confidence and perception can be wonderful things.

If he had ever met AP, he would have known that was not her.

Ahh.... missed that one entirely..

Didn't Trump actually say it was the highest attendance ever? I think that's where the scrutiny originated.


Sent from my iPad . Squirrel!!

Don't think it was the Presidents comments that caused the ruckus, but Spicers comments in the press briefing.