Two parties contain all four major primary contenders

[MorkandMindy]

Democrat and Republican Parties are failing abysmally to keep the Primaries game to themselves. The biggest split is between the independents and the establishment supplied candidates.

The Independents
Bernie Sanders is funded by his supporters and Donald Trump is mainly his own man because he can fund his own campaign himself. Neither has to follow the edicts of the parties they have some level of affiliation with and both may be rejected by the main parties.

The Established Parties
Candidates are funded by superPACs and pick between two parties the one most likely to get them into the White House and the party which is a publicity machine picks the one with the best chance of winning under the assumption that will bring the party prestige and lots of other politicians of the same party will be handed seats in government.

At this point the table is:

Independents
Donald Trump
Bernie Sanders

Established Parties
Marco Rubio
Ted Cruz
Hillary Clinton

(in reverse alphabetical order for a change)

 

[MorkandMindy]

Lacking the support of the establishment the independents have needed to take up some real issues,

Bernie Sanders - the future of the country through altering the failed economic policies of the last few decades and improving the skill level of the American public from the pretty bad level it is presently at.

Donald Trump - stemming the tide of immigration which neither party will take action on and is expected to double the population of the country in a few decades.


A wild guess on immigration
Both established parties are happy with fairly high levels of immigration, the Republicans to bring down wages and the Democrats a lower level I guess for 'humanitarian' reasons, but neither means anything because they won't take effective action on illegal immigration.

The stand of Bernie on present immigrants is defensible on the fairly obvious humanitarian ground that people should be allowed to stay where they are. If previous administrations did not make it illegal to enter the USA undocumented then that is an error of the past. That may be a naive opinion but my feeling is we have to take some responsibility for starting wars in Central America (Iran contra affair et al) forcing some of the population to immigrate to safer countries despite the upheaval it involves. I don't think anyone chooses to become a refugee (well maybe a few do) because people like their relatives and where they grew up and don't usually want to move somewhere into a foreign environment.


But the future is where the focus should be and although Donald may have got it a bit wrong, he appreciates there is a problem and that something needs to be done about it. The really important issue is not about existing immigrants but those who may arrive in the decades to come.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Bernie Sanders - the future of the country through altering the failed economic policies of the last few decades and improving the skill level of the American public from the pretty bad level it is presently at.

Bernie's point is a broad one and equally important

As I attempted to explain the the thread 'The Profit Motive' which sank like a stone and is now on page three, the US economy is based on huge rewards for top executives of big companies and huge profits for successful companies.

The reality is the big innovation driving the economy comes from two sources: government projects and volunteers.

volunteers
Bill Gates rewrote BASIC for the Altaire when he was supposed to be doing his school work at Harvard. A few years later the tiny company Microsoft had taken the PC market from the giant IBM. Microsoft became one of those giants but Linus Torvalds wrote a better operating system and Microsoft needed government backing to fight off the newcomer. Yes an enthusiast can write a better OS with the help of other enthusiasts working for nothing. The profit reward system doesn't work.

An economic system based on handing huge amounts of assets as rewards for top CEOs contributing questionable amounts to the nation's economy is unsupportable and is doing great harm to the failing US economy. Yes I know it is doing a lot better under B.O.B. than it was under G.W.B. but the underlying statistics show the recovery is not guaranteed to continue and the country remains one with a rubbish education system and an appallingly bad very expensive health care system and high levels of violence.

What happens when the very wealthy 0.1% decide to move their money out of the country and live somewhere else?

 

[MorkandMindy]

Government projects

The success of the US in large civil aircraft is directly due to government projects, the 707 is the immediate descendent of the Stratotanker whose design and production was paid for through the Air Force. Ditto the 747, the hump being to allow the front to be hinged away to facilitate loading tanks, both the 747 and Galaxy designs were paid for by the government through the Air Force.

Much of the high tech in industry was developed under government projects.


Basically I would suggest private industry is usually too short sighted to make big breakthroughs, always wanting an immediate payback. Motives outside private corporate funds such as the government and just plain volunteers are the ones making real progress.


But also the education needs to be there, and although there are a lot of committed people working in schools, the basic format needs to be changed and most likely in the way those involved know would be best. The schools are too much like huge factories where teachers and students alike are treated like units.

 

[MorkandMindy]

How would we choose between Hillary Clinton and G W Bush?

Both are wealthy, privileged with several Ivy League degrees.


Which is the brighter? Probably G W Bush, but Hillary has been in the establishment longer before going for the top spot.


Which is more appealing? G W Bush was wealthy highly educated and bright but did a great job of hiding it so his red-neck supporters would feel no jealousy. He was strumming the same heart strings as won Bill Clinton sympathy votes through his alleged alcoholic relatives.


Hillary can't do that. I think she is trapped. Those who know a lot will also know that she was in agreement with the worst decisions made by the G W Bush administration, and the red-necks will never take her unless they see her at a NASCAR race. Sometimes it's not good to be a Republican pretending to be a Democrat.
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