WHAT IS TRUMP?

The dictionary tells us that a trump is “a playing card of the suit chosen to rank above the others, which can win a trick where a card of a different suit has been led.”

As a verb, ‘trump’ means to make a play or take some action which overcomes opposition and determines the result of a dispute or contest.

It is surely a coincidence that the leading candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination bears the name of Trump.

Donald Trump was not my first choice for the GOP nomination. I must confess, however, that I didn’t know very much about him. I thought his idea of building a wall between the United States and Mexico rather far fetched, symbolically unfortunate, and frankly unnecessary if the immigration laws were being enforced.

I have opined that Donald Trump is the quintessential “ugly American:”  Boastful, pushy, tactless and conceited. I have questioned the genuineness of his claim to a self funded campaign.

When this election cycle was an embryo, I was drawn toward Marco Rubio. He is bright, ambitious, articulate and offers a message reminiscent of John F. Kennedy. I voted for him in the Michigan Primary.

But I fully expect that Rubio will be out of the contest after today. I have lost a lot of elections and I know it hurts, but Marco is young and has a great future, good instincts and solid principles. He’ll be fine.

Donald Trump will win the Florida Primary and likely the Ohio Primary as well. It has come late to the fore, but we are beginning to learn that there is more to Mr. Trump than braggadocio. In just the last few days, I have seen a letter written by a high school classmate of the Donald. It is impressive.

Peter David Ticktin is a successful attorney who was a classmate of Trump’s at the New York Military Academy, a prep school for boys. He relates that Trump was an ‘A’ student, a top athlete, and a respected leader of his class. 

Ticktin points out that NYMA has a firm Honor Code, and he makes a point that resonates well with me, asserting that graduates of the Academy  were inculcated with values that became “irreversibly intertwined in the fabric of our personalities, of who we are”

That’s a point I can relate to. The camaraderie developed among teen age boys attending Detroit Catholic Central more than half a century ago, while not military, certainly provided an esprit de corps  that has lasted a lifetime, and I would concede great credibility to the characterization of classmates who shared such an experience.

Then there was the black preacher who introduced Trump to a crowed in Cleveland. His heartfelt endorsement included the rather surprising assertion that Donald Trump is actually a humble man.

Hard to swallow, I suppose, but then how well can any of us know a man from what we see on the television?

Clearly, Donald Trump has made the connection between politics and entertainment. His stream of consciousness diatribes about Washington D.C. mirror the attitudes of average men and women all over America.

Joe Average isn’t running for President. His every statement is not broadcast or run through an approval meter. He says what he thinks and lets the devil take the hindmost. Trump's ramblings often sound like a Saturday Night Live parody of Joe the Plumber spouting off to a bartender.

That’s show business, and for better or worse, it is the most popular form of political discourse in the United States of America in 2016.

The fact that Donald Trump is a multi-faceted person is hardly a disqualification from the Presidency. Richard Nixon had an entirely different vocabulary when he was not on camera. John Kennedy enjoyed a secret life that hardly comported with his public image.

I m not thrilled with the notion that Donald Trump is an aggressive, if not ruthless businessman, nor do I admire his serial marriages. But in my 86 years, I have had occasion to be publicly maligned and I know the value of thick skin.

If the man is to be the President of the United States, he will have to get used to being hated. What really matters is whether he has enough conscience, self confidence and ego to do what is right and necessary even if nobody approves. The White House is a lonely place to live.     

ROMNEY v TRUMP

I watched with profound sadness as Mitt Romney delivered a speech which will be in every history book in the twenty second century. It was a great speech; sincere, thoughtful, courageous. Clearly Romney felt he had to say what he said. And he meant every word of it.

What he did, of course, without realizing it, was to persuade millions of Americans that Donald Trump is the true anti-establishment candidate.

What he did was to confirm Trump’s theme that he is the only candidate who is not a part of the same-old--same-old Washington D.C. oligarchy of career politicians that so many Americans are sick and tired of.

One of the news channels went out on the street and started asking people what they knew about Donald Trump. Many said that he is a businessman. Some said ‘investor.’ Quite a few just said he is rich. The truth is that Donald Trump is a gambler. Maybe that’s the same thing as a businessman.

In the free enterprise system, a businessman invests his time, his money, his reputation, his hopes and his future on a plan – a scheme – if you will, to make a profit.

Plenty do it on Wall Street, leaving the day to day decisions to the managers of the enterprise. Others make big bets on big decisions. An NFL owner who pays a multi million dollar bonus to a 24 year old college quarterback, for example.

Insurance companies make huge gambles every day. And, of course, all the fat cats, the big money boys who hire lobbyists and donate big bucks to politicians, are gamblers, too. Maybe their candidate won’t win. Maybe he or she will turn out to be ungrateful.

Fiorello LaGuardia, the famous Mayor of New York, once said that his only qualification for public office was his monumental ingratitude. We all want public officials who are not beholden to moneyed interests.

Which is why thousands cheer when Donald Trump announces – as he so repeatedly does – that he is funding his own campaign. He insists that he is not beholden to the big money people. He is, as he says, “his own man.”

That’s a powerful argument among voters who are sick and tired of the special interest culture of Washington D. C. Trump admits that he has been part of that culture. He has donated to politicians of both Parties. He says that as a businessman, “you gotta do what you gotta do.”

But wait. Is Donald Trump truly funding his own campaign? Is he paying for the transportation, the hotels, the staff, the advertising, the red baseball caps? That word “funding” is a good clue. When I buy a house, I get the funding from the bank. Funding basically means “Who puts up the money?” It doesn’t mean “Who spends the money?”

Look at the records of the Federal Election Commission, and you will see that Donald Trump is loaning money to his campaign. Does anyone doubt that, if he wins the nomination, the Republican Party will pay off his Primary Election debts?

Of course they will. And Trump has made it perfectly clear that, once he is nominated, he will stop ‘self funding.’ So the campaign contribution flood gates will be open.

Here is a question I am waiting for the press or one of the other candidates to pose to Donald Trump: You have loaned millions of dollars to your campaign fund. You are a good businessman. You would not make a loan without insisting on some evidence of indebtedness. Where is the promissory note? What does it say?

And most importantly, what rate of interest is the borrower obliged to pay? Three percent? Five percent? In the world of free enterprise, interest rates typically reflect the risk of repayment. A long time veteran Congressman seeking reelection for the umpteenth time, may be able to borrow campaign funds at a low interest rate. But an untested outsider?

No sir, I have to believe that Mr. Trump has made a big gamble, and he expects to make a lot of money as the GOP candidate. Even if he loses the election in November.

ARTICLE THE FIRST

Not many people know it, but the Bill of Rights were not, as so often said, the first ten amendments proposed after ratification of the Constitution.

True, they were the first ten amendments adopted by our country. But there were in fact two other amendments proposed by the first Congress. The Bill of Rights were actually the third through the twelfth. Numbers one and two were not ratified.

Those two proposals are interesting. The second one prohibited members of Congress from giving themselves salary increases with immediate effect. Salary increases for Congress would have to wait until after the next election to become effective, giving the voters a chance to veto undeserved increases.

             That proposal sat in the bowels of the Library of Congress from 1789 to 1982 when it was discovered by a Texas college student named Gregory Watson. He re-ignited it and in 1992, it became the 27^th Amendment.

The final inchoate 1789 amendment was known as Article the First. It had to do with proportional representation in the House of Representatives. Here is what it said:

            After the first enumeration, required by the first Article of the Constitution, there shall be one Representative for every thirty thousand, until the number shall amount to one hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than one hundred Representatives, nor less than one Representative for every forty thousand persons, until the number of Representatives shall amount to two hundred, after which the proportion shall be so regulated by Congress, that there shall not be less than two hundred Representatives, nor MORE than one Representative for every fifty thousand persons.

The word “more” was not capitalized. As written, it obviously creates a problem. When the population would reach 8 million, the minimum size of the House would be two hundred, but the maximum size of the House would be 160. Quite impossible.

             Obviously, Article the First was fatally flawed, explaining why it was never adopted. Still, the Founders described a pattern of increasing the minimum size of the House of Representatives in increments of one hundred, and increasing the ratio of constituents to representatives in increments of ten thousand.

             The scheme was very simple. The size of the house was to be based on the population as determined by the decennial census. Whenever, using the current ratio, the size of the House grew by more than 99, the ratio of constituents to Representatives is increased by ten thousand.

             If that formula were to be written into our constitution, each member of Congress, today, would represent 230,000 people, and the House would have 1,338 members.

             It makes sense to have a constitutional formula for representation in the House. If the definition of representative government is left to the political process, the result will be precisely what has happened to our country: those in power will make rules that embed and extend their power.

             Which is why the U.S. House of Representatives has been frozen at 435 members for more than 100 years. Each member now represents over  700,000 people. That makes campaigns expensive and requires continuous fund raising.

             Left to their own devices, members of Congress naturally enshrine the status quo. To them the idea of a representative body two or three times the size of the current House is simply unthinkable, unimaginable.

             But should it be? Surely there is no logical or scientific rationale that supports a 435 seat House. There is nothing more preposterous than the idea that the amount of representation to which the people of the the United States are entitled must be limited by the size of the room or the number of seats and desks it contains.

             This is the twenty first century, for heaven’s sake. We have computers, telephones, television, iPads, iPhones, Facebooks, Youtubes and Twitter. A twenty first century legislature should have the benefit of the latest technology. Science should serve democracy. And the beauty of it all is that by enlisting the most modern forms of communication, we can reestablish the two hundred year old dream of a republican government that really represents the people.

THE UGLY AMERICAN

Donald Trump is everything Europeans deplore and ridicule about visitors from the United States. The British are even debating in Parliament about banning him from their shores.

Rude, crude, brash, loud, uncouth, egotistic, optimistic, loquacious, opinionated, ruthlessly competitive, ostentatiously generous, unapologetically chauvinistic.

And rich. Trump is a businessman and a showman. Born to wealth, he is obsessed with fame and fortune and has proved himself  decisive, conniving,  imaginative and successful.

He is not a politician. He is the very antithesis of a politician. He is the consummate outsider, neither Republican nor Democrat, conservative or liberal, socialist or libertarian. If he has a political philosophy, it would fall somewhere between Ayn Rand and Friedrich Engels.

The only thing Donald Trump really believes in is Donald Trump. That said, why is he running for President of the United States?

I have a theory. Trump created and starred in a television reality show called “The Apprentice” the gist of which was to demonstrate his skill in evaluating job applicants. Later, he introduced another reality show, “The Ultimate Merger” the idea being to bring a group of ambitious people together in a simulated business relationship to test their skill in a kind of cooperative competition.

While Trump was an actual participant in The Apprentice, he was the unseen puppeteer in Ultimate Merger, demonstrating, I suppose, that he is both an effective, ‘hands on’ boss, and a skilled executive who can create an atmosphere in which innate leadership skills are honed and rewarded.

Donald Trump has been intrigued by the political world for a long time. He did an interview with Oprah Winfrey 20 years ago, and told her that he would only run for President if America “gets really bad.”

Why would he want things to be really bad before seeking the White House?

Think about it. Trump is a businessman. Would he ever seek to take over GE or IBM? Only if they “get real bad.” Only if they were poorly managed and losing money. Only if his style of ruthless, dictatorial management can turn them into profitable enterprises.

Trump is an outsider in the business of governance. His campaign for the Presidency has all the earmarks of a hostile take over.  Why would he want to take over a business that is 19 trillion dollars in debt and losing money at the rate of three trillion dollars a year?

Pretty obvious. With Trump, money is king. Life is all about money. Success is all about money. Love, respect, achievement, honor, whether of an individual, a company or a nation, is measured by wealth. The balance sheet is the only shroud that matters.

The Constitution of the United States authorizes the Congress to coin money. It’s a monopoly. The USA is in the business of manufacturing money. It has cornered the market. The American dollar is the reserve currency for the entire world.

Trump sees the United States as a world wide competitor. He brags about his ability to negotiate, says that the U.S. is losing and he will make us winners again. It’s a heady message to the folks who see our political leaders as inept, bungling bureaucrats. Maybe Trump will put the federal government into Chapter 11 bankruptcy, default on the Chinese and all the other foreigners who are sitting on U.S. Treasury bonds, and convince Standard and Poor to give us a  AAA rating again.

Or maybe he will get us into a world wide nuclear war. Adolph Hitler mesmerized the German people promising to make the Reich great again. He succeeded for more than twenty years. That didn’t work out very well.

Trump knows that nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people. A very bright friend of mine thinks that Trump is merely acting the part of a Hughie Long politician, a hustling con artist, because people like it, and that his actual persona and agenda won’t emerge until he is in the White House. 

By then, it will be too late. Alexis de Tocqueville warned us that democracy bears the seed of dictatorship.  Liberty requires vigilance. Every day.

MORE APPLE

My uninformed effort at untangling the dispute over the San Bernardino iPhone problem has spawned a number of comments by readers who know much more than I about technology.

All of which prompts me to hunker down in an area with which I am more familiar.

The dispute between Apple and the government is in court. Courts apply law. Now we are getting into my back yard.

Here’s what the Fourth Amendment says:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.  

The first thing that jumps out from the Fourth Amendment is the word “their.”  We have no constitutional right to be secure in somebody elses’ house.

Suppose I own a home and I have a safe in my home. The government can’t get into my safe without a warrant. If I sell my home to you, the government still needs a warrant, because now it’s your home, and the Fourth Amendment protects you, too.

But suppose that you have no objection to allowing the government to get into the safe in your home. You can get into the safe. It’s yours. There is no constitutional issue.

But wait. You don’t know the password. I am long gone, so you can’t get it from me. How are you going to get into the safe, or how can the government get into it?

Lets suppose there’s a plate on the safe that says the password is a three digit number. Easy enough. There are only 999 of them, so you can enter them one at a time and sooner or later, you’ll hit the right one.

But hold on. There’s another plate the safe that says there is a bomb inside that will explode if ten wrong passwords are entered within 24 hours.

So you call the safe company, and ask them to come out and disable the bomb. They say, “Sorry, we don’t do that.” You tell the government and the government goes to court to get a warrant. The warrant is not to search your safe. You’ve already given them permission to do that.

No, the government gets a warrant to search the safe company and to seize the necessary codes or technology that will let them disable the bomb inside the safe.

They search and search. They ask all the employees. Nobody knows where the code is or even if there is a code. The boss says there isn’t any. We don’t know how to disable the bomb. That was one of the selling points of the safe.

I can visualize myself sitting on the bench while the government lawyers cross examine the owner of the safe company.

“Now, Mr. Safco, isn’t there someone at your place that can figure out how to disable the bomb?”

“No one person, no. But if we put old Charlie, and  Doc Jones and three or four of our young techies on it, we might be able to figure it out in a few months.”

About that time I would be coming to the conclusion that the government was not, in the words of the Fourth Amendment “particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.” Case dismissed.

APPLE V FBI

OK, folks, this will be short and sweet. I’m probably totally uninformed about the technology involved, but I haven’t heard anyone explain it to me.

The FBI wants to get into the iPhone of one of the perpetrators of the San Bernardino massacre. Well, it wasn’t exactly HIS iPhone. The thing belonged to his employer, which was apparently San Bernardino County.

Anyway, it was HIS in the sense that he had it and used it, had access to its secrets, etc.

Apple says, No, you can’t have it, indeed WE can’t have it. Our customer’s information is tucked away in a secret place that only the owner (or user) of the phone can get at. The confidential information is buried behind a password. We, (Apple) don’t know the password. Only our customer knows the password.

And, says Apple, we protect out customers by providing that if someone tries ten wrong passwords, the whole device clams up, the hidden information is permanently deleted and lost forever. To everybody. Including Apple.

I have to ask myself why the FBI doesn’t just ask for a new password? They know the guy’s date of birth. They know his social security number. Why don’t they just click the button that says “FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?”

I’m sure here is some logical explanation, known only to geeks. I can’t be the only person in America who has thought of this.

Having gotten this far into the electronic maze, I decided to bone up on the technology. So I went to a web site called http://arstechnica.com/     There, I found an article by one Peter Bright, who is obviously very bright. He’s the Technology Editor at Ars. He writes about Microsoft, programming and software development, Web technology, browsers and security.

I read his whole article, and danged if I can get anything out of it that disabuses me of the idea that all the FBI needs is a new password.

As someone who solicits new passwords every other day, I have to believe it is not rocket science. Oh, I suppose Apple will want to email the deceased a temporary code, but I should think the FBI has control of the man’s email, too.

Anyway, I am not ready to approve of Donald Trump’s off-the-cuff plea to the American people to boycott Apple until they come around. I should think the more responsible approach would be to let the courts do their work and come to a rational conclusion that protects national security without depriving the citizens of their constitutional protection from unreasonable searches and seizures. 

Funny how the Donald makes everything about him.