The Presidential Debate
The first Presidential Debate took place a little over a week ago. My first reaction was that from a debate basis, Hillary was so organized and in control that she probably won the debate. The questions were designed to be favorable to Hillary. There were no “Gotcha” questions that would embarrass or be a problem to Hillary. Donald Trump brought up the 33,000 emails she deleted and the moderator came back to her so that she could give her “I made a mistake” speech, and when she finished, the moderator tried to move on without giving Donald Trump a chance to refute what she had said.
Trumps response was that it was not a mistake; it was deliberate. No questions came up about the Clinton Foundation or Benghazi and Hillary kept Donald Trump defending himself against questions that she had brought about him. The moderator had several questions that were “Gotcha” questions against Donald. His tax returns were one question that was brought up. The moderator also criticized Trump about the question of whether Obama was born in America. The moderator called time on Donald Trump on some of his answers but he let Hillary talk until she was finished. According to the record, the moderator interrupted Donald Trump and tried to stop him from speaking 41 times in the 90-minute debate. He softly told Hillary that her time was up seven times. He challenged the accuracy of Donald Trump a number of times but he never challenged the accuracy of Hillary’s statements.
The experts and pundits called the debate a draw or said that Hillary won by a small margin. The surprise came when all across the country, there were online polls by local media pollsters that allowed viewers to express their opinion on who won the debate. Time, Inc. had a poll that showed Trump 55, Clinton 45. CNBC had a poll that showed Trump 68, Clinton 32. VARIETY had a poll that showed Trump 58, Clinton 42. The Las Vegas Sun Poll showed Trump 82, Clinton 18. Fox5 San Diego Poll showed Trump 61, Clinton 39.
The news website DailyMail.com showed results from 19 polls. Donald Trump won 18 of them and the only poll that had Hillary ahead was a poll by CNN. It would be possible for an organization to advise all of its followers to vote in these polls, but I get emails from most of the organizations relating to Trump and nothing came to me with these suggestions. Trump supporters are excited and motivated, while Hillary supports are more than a little cold during this election cycle.
Hillary surprised all of us with some of her proposals if she becomes President. We knew that she is in favor of raising the national minimum wage to above $15.00 per hour. Since labor pay rates are on a scale that gives increases with job difficulty and with length of service, this would require raising all wages proportionally to the increase in the minimum wage. This would force the price of all the products in the United States to be increased substantially at retail. It would curb the hiring for starter position jobs. It would force places like fast food retailers to reduce the labor force, which will reduce the service that they provide. She threw out a new rub when she said that companies should be required to pay profit sharing to all employees. Apparently, she thinks that this can be done by a national law. Many companies give performance bonuses now, but this cannot be required by law. As president, Trump claims he will reduce taxes on businesses and reduce their energy costs, which will cause them to make more profit where they can increase wages and provide more jobs.
Hillary proposed that we could create 10 million new jobs by having the government invest in producing solar panels. Obama has already wasted over a billion dollars in investments to make solar panels and none of the investments are producing solar panels today. There is no basis for the numbers she quotes. She will continue crippling the coal mines by requiring the EPA to tighten requirements on coal fired electric generation facilities. She will continue to try to hold back the use of natural gas and oil as energy sources. Trump will promote all energy production systems to make us energy independent.
According to Hillary, the answer to an overcrowded prison problem is to release all of the prisoners who are not imprisoned because of violent crimes. She suggests that we stop sending prisoners to private prisons in the United States. Private prisons often house prisoners at a lower cost than the government-run prisons and save money for our country. She says that the private prisons operate on a profit motive and try to fill their prisons with young Americans. Prison sentences are totally under the control of our justice system and the owners of the private prisons have no influence on the sentences. Private prisons have a stated capacity and cannot take prisoners above this level. Government owned prisons are often overcrowded and understaffed.
The purpose of the Iran Deal was to slow their ability to produce nuclear material for bombs. Hillary is very proud of the part that she played in starting and negotiating this deal. This has been a very bad agreement and has opened the economy of Iran so that the government of Iran can do whatever it wishes. She did not respond to comments concerning how the payment of 1.6 billion dollars in cash for the release of prisoners was done. Donald Trump has stated that if he were president, and an Iranian ship tried to send their sailors to board an American ship, we would blow the Iranian ship out of the water. Hillary said that we couldn’t do this because it would start a war.
It appears that if Hillary gets to be president, anybody can do anything they wish to us and we will not respond because it might start a war.