Donald Trump: the ‘politician’ from hell

Donald Trump: the ‘politician’ from hell

Donald Trump thinks he has a shot at winning the upcoming election. He’s wrong. How about Hillary Clinton? Well, I’m not trying to give her a pass. To some voters, she and Trump are as bad as each other, just like Coke and Pepsi, both of which are not good for the body. But in any case, I don’t believe Americans want a leader like Mr. Trump yet. They would rather hold their noses and vote for the lesser evil.

 

“I’m really rich,” said Donald Trump, when he made the announcement that he will run for the White House at the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, New York.¹ It is very understandable why the billionaire real estate mogul chose the Trump Tower as the venue for the announcement: the skyscraper has been central to his business life.  Mr. Trump built the Tower between 1979 and 1984. At the time, it was one of a remarkable achievements to the young Trump whose father rented out mere apartments in Brooklyn. Standing close to the Tower is the Plaza Hotel, which was also owned by Mr. Trump. He, however, sold it in 1995 after his casino business folded. Today, half of his fortune is still tied up in real estate holdings, majority of which are located within a four-mile radius of the Tower and the Plaza Hotel. The Tower indeed has great significance in Trump’s business life: its bar exemplifies his late-life pivot to the business of celebrity in which he starred in the NBC reality series The Apprentice, which was also filmed at the Tower. The Apprentice quickly became a hit, with things like cocktails and aftershaves named after the show.²

As the headquarter of Mr. Trump’s organization, the Tower is among a few clear and consistent features of Mr. Trump’s grand vision as well as his empire. Much else, including some of his claims regarding his business interests and investments is opaque, volatile and contested. Obviously, for someone who wants to be the next president of America, Mr. Trump is an ambitious man. To him, self-made billionaires like himself would make a better president since they can sponsor their own campaign and hence will not be easily influenced by donors and lobbyists. His critics say he is not really a self-made billionaire as he claim. They are convinced that he inherited his money – that all of his successes is due to his father, who was a real estate tycoon.

 So, is Mr. Trump as rich as he claims? Let us start by reviewing his career, third party estimates of his wealth, and his filings with the regulators. Four conclusions stands out. First, Donald Trump is indeed very wealthy, and his fortune is in billions of dollars. Second, many years ago, he made many attempts to move away from debt-heavy property business and to build a global brand. However, his efforts in that regard produced limited success. Most of his investments (as much as 93 percent) are in America. When we take a look at his investments, we will discover that almost 80 percent of them, including his gulf courses, are in real estate. Third, when compared to the stock market and the property market in New York, Trump’s performance as an investor has been mediocre. Lastly, Trump is known to be ‘clannish’ when it comes to management and leadership. This suggests that he might not do so well if he is to manage a larger organization.

Like anyone who have been doing business for decades, Trump had has his share of the ups and downs of the business cycles. Generally speaking, his entire business career went through three stages. The first stage ran through 1975 to 1990. For Trump’s empire, this is the era of debt-fuelled expansion. Trump had his big break during this time after renovating a site at the Grand Central Station – a site that is now occupied by the Hyatt Hotel. He completed this complex job by raising cash, finding a tenant and securing the necessary permits. His success in this project seemed to boost his confidence and he went on a long investment spree. He bought buildings in a depressed Manhattan (including the site of Trump Tower), picked up a small airline, and expanded into casino business in Atlantic City. During this time, the value of his investment is about $5 billion in today’s money. And as much as four-fifth of this investment was financed with debt.

In the 1990s, which is the second stage of his business career, the casinos business started having problems and two of Trump’s gambling entities defaulted. Thus the 1990s was an era of humiliation for him. Two of his casino enterprises also defaulted in 2004 and in 2009. During these period, his empire had about $6 billion of debt in today’s dollar. Hence, these wave of defaults basically destabilized almost all his business operations. In spite of this, he clung on and did not choose to go the way of personal bankruptcy. Some of his assets was sold off by his creditors. Some of the creditors even offered him a form of forbearance. He recovered his poise when property prices in Manhattan rose and started doing small deals again. For instance, in 2001, he bought the Hotel Delmonico for $115 million.⁶

The last stage was the era of celebrity. This started with his starring role in The Apprentice in 2004. The Apprentice was a very successful TV show: at its peak it had 28 million viewers. So it is not surprising that it ran until 2015. It also made Donald Trump to become even more popular and, as an astute businessman, he took advantage of his new fame to create a flurry of ventures. Today, he is involved with 487 companies, which includes hotel licensing in Azerbaijan and energy drink in Israel. This represents a significant increase: in 2004, he was only involved with 136 companies.⁷ Thus his name became a global brand that attracts lots of cash.

By the numbers

There’s very little information about Mr. Trump’s business because he doesn’t run a publicly listed firm. Not only that, he does not really have a holding company into which his assets are grouped. After declaring his intention to run for president, Mr. Trump did release a one-page, unaudited, estimates of his wealth to the public. He also filed the required documents that showed his finances with the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Such filings, however, do not specify the value of assets worth over $50 million. And in most cases, they do not even include all categories of income. Thus the estimates of his wealth made here are based on the information from The Economist and Forbes magazines, and from Bloomberg, a financial data provider.

According to the available published evidence from The Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg,⁸ and from Mr. Trump himself, he is worth, on average, about $4.93 billion (see table 1). Whether

 

Table 1: Estimates of Donald Trump’s Wealth, 2015, $Billions

Trump	8.3
Forbes	4.4
The Economist	4.1
Bloomberg	2.9

Source: FEC, The Economist, Bloomberg, Forbes

 

Mr. Trump has excelled in the property business is debatable. But some of his other business interests have definitely became global brands. For instance, his appeal is strong in Gulf. This is an area Trump-flagged resorts are well-regarded. But his name carries less weight in hotels or consumer goods, and does not travel well beyond America.

Of his wealth, about 66 percent is made in New York, and only an estimated 7 percent is outside America. The assets Mr. Trump actively created in 2004, the time he became a reality TV star, generated about 22 percent of his current wealth. Of this, some 64 percent comes from his investments in conventional property and another 17 percent came from his investments in resorts and gulf clubs. Of his recent deals, his biggest one has been in real estate: in 2012, he bought Doral hotel out of bankruptcy. The licensing and branding companies he created since 2004 does not make much money for him: only about 11 of them make more than $1 million of income.⁹ Even though Mr. Trump claimed that he has 38 more deals in the pipeline, it is not easy to find out how much they are really worth.

It is really tricky to gauge Mr. Trump’s business performance. One reason for this is that early estimates of his wealth may have been overstated. Going by Forbes’ data it can be inferred that, by the standards of America’s oligarchy, he is a small potato: his ranking among America’s billionaires fell from a peak of 26 to 113. Also, in terms of size, his property empire is about a seventh of  that of the biggest real estate firm in America(as reported in The Economist)¹⁰.

Mr. Trump made a smart move when he dumped his investments in casinos in Atlantic City. But he wasn’t smart enough to be a stakeholder in the casino industry boom in Macau. Some of his rivals like Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands benefitted tremendously from the boom – a boom that propelled them into a different league. According to Forbes, Mr. Adelson is currently worth $26 billion.¹¹

It is worth bearing in mind that when considering Mr. Trump’s performance, it is only fair to say that lots of outside investors in his projects had made money too. However, many has lost money as well. His forays into professional football, airlines, casinos and other industries did not end well. Simply put, Trump’s investments that went bust contain roughly $5 billion of equity and debt belonging to outside investors.¹²

The next thing to look at is Mr. Trump’s management style. Broadly speaking, Mr. Trump do have charisma. His other attributes include spontaneity, quick decision-making and frequent communication. He is also a well-skilled negotiator: he is certainly not a pushover when negotiating deals. People who knew him well say he is assertive and is not afraid to ask for what he wants, an attribute that often put him in the good position to get deals done in his terms.¹³

The other side of Mr. Trump’s personality is not very exciting. He is very volatile and has a nuclear temper. And at most times, his behavior can be very unpredictable. In his lifetime, he have pursued energy-sapping feuds.¹⁴

Just like his campaign machine, which has surprisingly improved with time, Trump runs his business empire in a nonconventional way. His organization is composed of his three eldest children (Eric, Ivanka and Donald) and a dozen other key executives. Based on the FEC documents, the best word that would appropriately describe Mr. Trump’s organization is ‘crude’.  Rather than being grouped together, most of the organization’s legal vehicles are owned directly by Mr. Trump.¹⁵

Mr. Trump hates bureaucracy, which is good. But then, he really have no experience of how to run a big, complex, organization. Thus he is an expert when it comes to publicity but inept in running large, complex organization where bureaucracy is inevitable. For instance, in 1995 – 2004 he was in charge of a publicly listed company, and the company defaulted.¹⁶

According to Mr. Trump, if he becomes president, he will move his attention from his business to governance. Specifically, he will put his business interests in a trust and focus all his energy in running America. Past presidential candidates, including Ross Perot (who ran in 1992 and 1996) and Mitt Romney (who ran in 2012) did the same thing.¹⁷ Mr. Trump can also let his children run the show in terms of managing his businesses when he moved into the White House. The business community are convinced his children can do so effectively, even though they might struggle to make a leap forward.

If Trump did not win the election, he can simply go back to his business. But for Trump, that is not a good option. Thus, it is not a surprise to hear Mr. Trump saying that doing so will be less exciting than politics. His political campaigns has indeed made him more popular. Perhaps he can leverage this popularity to build the ultimate marketing campaign to launch another flurry of branding efforts (like he did after 2004) if he fails to become the president.

Yet even though Mr. Trump is claiming that his candidacy is boosting his brand, the truth is that he had recently lost some businesses. For instance, Univision, a media firm, cancelled the deal they had with Trump – a deal whose goal was to broadcast the Miss USA pageant, which Mr. Trump owned.¹⁸  Also, as was reported in The Economist, Trump’s hotels charges room rates that are on average 10 percent below other luxury hotels.¹⁹

Without putting it in so many words, Donald Trump is definitely wealthy. But he made most of his money from the buildings and other properties he has in New York. As far as I know (and I had provided some data here to prove it), he has not really built a great company or raised permanent capital on public markets. He has not even diversified very successfully. These are some of the things Americans need to think about when voting in the coming election, especially given Mr. Trump’s frequent claims about his business prowess.

Trump, thou art crude

One thing is certain: Donald Trump is popular among his supporters because of his fame as a successful businessman. Broadly speaking, his supporters sees him as a great chief executive and as someone who will get things done. Mr. Trump himself is convinced that his prowess in the commercial world has prepared him to be the most qualified president America needs at this period of her history. Fine, except that his business skills are irrelevant because commerce is different from government.

Three past U.S. presidents – Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, and Ronald Reagan – had virtually no commercial background. Yet they achieved a lot for America. In contrast, George W. Bush and Herbert Hoover fared worse in the White House, even though they have business experience.²⁰ Thus, Mr. Trump and his supporters need to understand that, from a practical standpoint,  a big difference exist between the public and the private sectors. For instance, every business has a single goal, which is to make profit. Government, on the other hand, have a large number of legitimate and often competing goals. Thus for the government, the goal of achieving energy sufficiency may conflict with that of environmental protection; or the goal of implementing a stringent but good safety regulations may impact on productivity, and so on. This complexity of goals means that governance requires an approach that goes beyond commercial experience.

One other big difference between business and government can be summarized in one single word: authority. Broadly speaking, no political leader, including the president, has the kind of authority every corporate boss does. In the business realm, CEOs can hire and fire based on their employees’ performance. In order to motivate their subordinates, they can pay bonuses or promote them aggressively. By contrast, the boss of a government agency does not have such unlimited powers or authority when it comes to hiring, firing, and pay bonuses. Most of the time, what the boss of a government agency does is to persuade and warn, rather than command.

This difference between the two realms actually showed how American democracy works. In America, political power is checked, balanced and counter-balanced for one important reason: to help individual liberty flourish and to ensure that no one branch of government is too powerful. So one can now see why Donald Trump admires Vladimir Putin. President Putin don’t have to deal with the complications of balancing powers among the different organs of his government, and can simply get things done.

In various interviews with media houses, Mr. Trump made it clear that he is going to compel government departments and even nations do his bidding if he becomes the president. He has also stated that he is prepared to work with people who care about winning. For his view on the role of UN, he noted that the agency is doing less to end the big conflicts in the world. So its ineffectiveness in that regard can be resolved by appointing a strong ambassador who would win by really shaking things up at the UN.

Mr. Trump’s model described above shows that he indeed lacks an understanding of how our modern world works. First, the UN has no power and hence cannot end conflicts. The solutions for ending conflicts around the world rests with sovereign governments. So Mr. Trump’s argument that all it takes to have a better America or to make America great again is a strong U.S. ambassador to shake up the UN, end conflicts and win shows that he is utterly removed from reality. I mean, the strategy might work for business, where one can use uncompromising and hardline negotiation to make great deals. It just can’t be apply to politics and governance.

One cannot dispute the fact that business success is both important and deeply admirable. But the skills for succeeding in business is a far cry from the set of skills that produce success in government.

Hilary is a lesser evil

If you ask me, I would say that the best way to allow someone like Donald Trump into the White House should be as a guest or if he is on a tour. I am not a fan of Hillary Clinton. Now don’t get me wrong. I know her name and her status: she is from a political dynasty. But sometimes I find it hard to understand where she stands on various issues. She seems to change her position at every election: if America is sick of war, she is sick of war. If America is pro-vaccine, she is pro-vaccine. If America questions the efficacy and safety of vaccine, she questions their safety. If America is angry at Wall Street, she is angry at Wall Street. The list is very long. Perhaps this explain why a lot of voters call her ‘phony’. Also, her use of private email server when she was the Secretary of State indicates bad judgment.

Nevertheless, I do know one thing: the nomination of Donald Trump is the single most irresponsible act by the Republican Party, at least in the last 150 years. And as someone who believes in individual liberty and small government, I consider Hillary to be a lesser evil than Trump, for many reasons.

First, unlike Trump, Hillary is more lenient with the immigrants. Trump’s policy is to deport millions of immigrants, including the hundreds of thousands of children who have never known any other home. He is also hatching the plan of building a wall on the Mexican border – a wall which, when completed, can threaten the freedom of migrants and the property rights of large number of Americans. Hillary is not interested in any of that. Instead, she said she with hatch out a plan to make life easier for both documented and undocumented immigrants in America.

Second, unlike Trump, she has political experience. When she was the Secretary of State, she visited 112 countries.²¹ So, as the president, she will know how to deal with a foreign crisis because there’s a good chance she will have already been there, had tea with the local power brokers and read the briefing book. As far as I’m concerned, Donald Trump cannot boast as much.

Third, unlike Trump, Clinton understands Washington DC very well. When Bill Clinton (her husband) was the president, she was his closest adviser for eight years. It is important to note here that during his presidency, Bill Clinton not only balanced the budget but also secured bipartisan agreements to reform welfare and open up trade in north America.²² Also as a senator, Hillary Clinton was known to co-operate and interact well with the senators on both sides of the aisle. The implication of these is clear: if Hillary Clinton becomes the president of America, she could be better at hammering out deals with the lawmakers of both parties than Donald Trump will be.

Free trade is another area where Hillary will do better than Trump. But my only concern is that her record in this area is very inconsistent. While on the campaign trail, she usually support protectionism.  But when she was in power as the First Lady and Secretary of State, she tilted toward free trade. So my assumption here would be that the latter is probably a better guide to her intentions and agenda than the former. It is worth remembering that Barack Obama did the same thing: he supported protectionism during the 2008 campaign but advocated free trade when he became the president. Hillary may end up doing the same thing if she becomes the president.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is a firm believer in protectionism and has made it a central theme of his campaign. As a result, I do not believe he can change direction or his mind in that regard overnight. Given the proposed policies of these two politicians on trade, there’s no doubt that Trump is more likely than Hillary to seriously damage the economy by starting a huge trade war with America’s trading partners. As a matter of fact, Trump had made it very clear in his campaign rhetoric that he will do just that.

On issues of freedom of speech, Hillary is also preferable to Trump. For instance, Trump is known for using bogus libel suits and FCC harassment to suppress his critics. In fact, the only person that have not been sued by Mr. Trump is his hairdresser!²³ Hillary Clinton, by contrast, do not believe so much in harassing or suing people, places or things just for criticizing her, unless it is the last resort. And unlike Trump, she discourages her supporters from beating up protestors. This, however, does not mean that she is a paragon of free speech virtue. After all, she wants to overrule the Citizen’s United decision within her first 30 days in office if she becomes the president.²⁴ She also has a plan that would impose harsh new campaign finance regulations - a regulation that threaten political speech by people who use the corporate form.²⁵ This is an area where Trump and Hillary shares a similar ideology: Trump had made it clear that he loves the idea of reforming the campaign finance.  

A lot of people, both the libertarians and conservatives, believe that Trump would appoint judges who would enforce the original meaning of the Constitution and hence protect important constitutional rights. Others hold out hope that he will repeal Obamacare. Unfortunately, these are merely wishful thinking because Trump has a longstanding hostility to freedom of speech and constitutional property rights. Also, if he has a healthcare policy at all, it will end up becoming Obamacare by another name.²⁶

Broadly speaking, Mr. Trump is not averse to reckless military interventions and this simple fact will makes him more dangerous as a president. For example, he had noted in one of his speeches that he will seize the oil fields of Iraq and Libya if he becomes the president.²⁷ This also presents the key difference between Mr. Trump and Hillary: unlike Hillary, Trump is more willing to use force to achieve his goals and policies, and it does not border him if his actions in the process violates the basic codes of morality or humanitarian values. What concerns me most about Mr. Trump, which I believe should concern every American, is his impulsiveness, authoritarian instincts, and his manifest ignorance. This means that as a president he might try to demonstrate the macho strength he is constantly boasting about and, in the process, stumble into a dangerous conflict or take America to another war. I don’t believe Americans are ready to trust such a man, a con artist, with the control of their military, including their nuclear weapons, regardless of what the media is saying. 

So, can Trump win the presidency?

The best way to know if Trump can win, or if this is Hillary’s call, is to take a close look at the available data. So, what I will do here is to present as well as explain the implications of the available data as they relate to the coming election and then allow my readers to make the predictions or conclusions themselves.

To be fair, let me start by giving Donald Trump some credit for what he has achieved so far in the presidential race. The billionaire has avoided all political norms, as per the Republican Party; and, so far in his campaign, he has not spent as much money as the experts say is needed. He had campaigned in states that are not traditional battlegrounds. His position in trade run counter to the standard Republican line. He had continued to say inflammatory and controversial statements – statements that can be a total turnoff to record numbers of nonwhite voters. He had done all these and yet he won the Republican nomination. That is indeed astonishing!

Well, it is true that Donald Trump is very popular in the media, in his rallies and among avowed bigots who see him as a fellow traveler. However there’s one factor that hasn’t grabbed much headlines but has the potential to topple him in this coming election: demography.  America’s demography has changed significantly. Simply put, the U.S. is now less white and more diverse (see tables 1 and 2). And demography says a lot about a country’s voting pattern, simply because how we identify ourselves is among the best predictors of how we will vote.

According to the available data from the Pew Research Center and others, the U.S. electorate this year will be very diverse. Nearly 31 percent of the eligible voters will be Hispanic, Asian, black or another racial minority. The value for the same groups was 29 percent in 2012. This increment was caused by the strong growth among Hispanic eligible voters, especially the

Table 1: Eligible Voters in United Sates, 2008, 2012 & 2016

Percent (%) Among Eligible Voters

Race/Ethnic Group	2008	2012	2016 (Projected)
Asian	3	4	4
Hispanic	9	11	12
Black	12	12	12
White	73	71	69

Source: Pew Research Center²⁸

 

increase in U.S.-born youth. Researchers at the Pew Research Center, a think tank, analyzed numerous data showing the changes in the U.S.’s eligible voting population. The results of their analysis offers a preview of profound U.S.  demographic shift – a shift that is projected to continue in the coming decades. In 2016, according to their analysis, the nation’s 156 million non-Hispanic white eligible voters far outnumber the 70 million eligible voters that are ethnic or racial minorities. Nevertheless, the growth rate of non-Hispanic white eligible voters lags that of minority groups. This caused the non-Hispanic share of the electorate to fall from 71 percent to 69 percent (see table 1).

Pew Research Center’s data also showed that America has 10.7 million more voters today than had in 2012. Also, from 2012 to 2016, more than 75 percent of the net growth in America’s electorate has come from racial and ethnic minorities, which includes blacks, Hispanics, Asians and other minorities. In quantitative terms, during this time frame the minorities had a net increase of 7.5 million eligible voters while the non-Hispanic whites experienced only a 3.2 million net increase in eligible voters.³⁰

The reason for the non-Hispanic whites’ slower growth in eligible voters when compared to that of the racial or ethnic minorities are many. One of them is that the non-Hispanic whites are overrepresented in the death statistics due to an aging population. Simply put, even though the non-Hispanic whites make up 69 percent of America’s eligible voters, they accounted for as much as 76 percent of all eligible voters who died between 2012 and 2016. And, going by

Table 2: Projected Change of the Voting-Eligible Population by Race/Hispanic Origin

All figures in thousands

	Nov. 2012 Eligible Voters	Nov. 2016 Eligible Voters	Change in Eligible Voters 2012-2016(%)
Total	215,081	225,778	5
White	152,862	156,084	2
Black	25,753	27,402	6
Hispanic	23,329	27,302	17
Asian	8,032	9,286	16

Source: Culled from Pew Research Center²⁹

 

the data from the Pew Research Center, they accounted for 6.6 million of 8.7 million of all eligible voters who died during the period.³¹

Another reason for the slow growth of eligible voters among non-Hispanic whites’ has to do with their low birth rate. According to the available published evidence, the non-Hispanic whites are underrepresented among young people born in America who turn 18 – an age group that is very important because they are most responsible for the nation’s growth in eligible voters. Broadly speaking, about 57 percent of the 16 million new eligible voters who turned 18 between 2012 and 2016 are non-Hispanic whites. By comparison, 43 percent of new eligible voters born in America are the racial ethnic minorities. When we consider the fact that the ethnic minorities constitute only about 31 percent of the electorate, that value will begin to make some sense. ³²

Unlike the other groups, the Asian electorate in America grows through the process of naturalization whereby their immigrants become America’s citizens. About 60 percent of new Asians became eligible voters by this means in 2012. By comparison, during the same time frame, about 26 percent of new Hispanic eligible voters came from naturalization.³³

These results speaks for themselves: To win this election, Donald Trump must  figure out a way to corner at least 70 percent votes of the working class non-Hispanic whites  with his dystopian vision, racially-loaded language and the promise to reverse globalization. He is already doing this. But alas! Only about half of the eligible voters in this category will vote for Trump in this election. This is because all of them will not vote for the Republicans. As a matter of fact, there are many non-Hispanic white  Republicans  who do not like Trump’s ugly rhetoric about minorities, or his policy proposal which sounds more like making America great again by preserving white dominance. Add this number to the non-Hispanic white Democrats who definitely will not vote for him and the idea of Trump winning may prove to be wishful thinking. How about the minorities votes? Don’t even ask: convincing them to vote for Trump will be like selling pork pies at a vegetarians’ convention.

The implications of this is clear: in this election, demography appears to give Hillary Clinton a clear advantage over Trump. The bottom line is also that the white working class voters alone, whom Trump is appealing to, cannot make him win this election. The reason for this is simple: Trump’s rhetoric is partly racial and tends to turn off at least as many lower-income, less educated, white voters as it attracts. This will make his route to the White House difficult in this election.

 When we look at the voters who support Trump (mainly the poor white working class whites who felt that they were battered by free trade and globalization), we will observe that they are the anxious voters – the voters with more fears than facts. These voters found Trump’s words awfully reassuring, without realizing that he is merely promoting a false but satisfying optimism about the future with his words. They are the type of voters who refuse to understand that America’s economy has been transformed by the forces of globalization over which the president (including Donald Trump, assuming that he wins) has little control; that many of the lost jobs they are being promised will never come back. These voters do not want to hear that America will not solve its terror problems with more bombs and fighter jets; that Trump is exploiting their petty hatreds for his political gain; and that the Mexicans they hate so much came to America because business owners need their skills and want them to be here.

Instead, Trump’s voters wants to hear something different; and they don’t care if it is bullshit or not.  For instance, they want to hear that America is the best country in the world. They are delighted to hear him say that America stopped winning in trade because its leaders are weak and its borders are porous. They love to hear the message that the type of country they dream of is only one president away; that without paying taxes or funding governments they can still have their social security, healthcare, and their roads and public education. They love these soothing words coming from Trump, and they are excited about the way he has reduced all their desires and dreams into four words: “Make America great again.”³⁴

How about Hillary Clinton? Well, I’m not trying to give her a pass. To some voters, she and Trump are as bad as each other, just like Coke and Pepsi, both of which are not good for the body. Nobody asked me but I think her struggle in this election was made worse by her wretched trust ratings, and she should be blamed for that. As the secretary of state, her irregular email arrangements was outrageous. Also, the manner in which she handled the outcry the situation caused has trashed her standing with millions of voters. According to The Economist, only about 30 percent of the voters consider her honest. For Donald Trump, whose speeches are packed with untruths, the value is 43 percent.³⁵

In the meantime, if Trump wins this election, a lot of bad things can happen in America. The consensus that trade makes the world richer and better; the tolerance that lets millions of people to move to other countries in search of opportunities; and the ideal that people of different colors and religions can get along – all will be under threat if he wins. He might even take America to an unnecessary war. I don’t believe Americans want a leader like that yet. They would rather hold their noses and vote for the lesser evil.

 

 

References

¹Rushe, D. (2015, June 16). 'I'm really rich': Donald Trump Claims $9bn Fortune During Campaign Launch. The Guardian. Retrieved May 17, 2016 from http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jun/16/donald-trump-reveals-net-worth-presidential-campaign-launch

²Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House. (2016, February 20). The Economist.  Retrieved May 18, 2016 from http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21693230-enigma-presidential-candidates-business-affairs-tower-white

 

⁶Bagli, C. (2001, November 30). Trump Buys Hotel Delmonico for $115 Million. New York Times. Retrieved June 16, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/30/nyregion/trump-buys-hotel-delmonico-for-115-million.html

⁷Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 6-13

 

⁸Melby C. & Rubin. R. (2015, July 28). Here's Our Tally of Donald Trump's Wealth. Bloomberg. Retrieved May 18, 2016 from http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-07-28/here-s-our-tally-of-donald-trump-s-wealth

 

⁹Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 6-13

¹⁰Ibid

¹¹Sheldon Adelson. (2016, July 12). Forbes. Retrieved July 12, 2016 from http://www.forbes.com/profile/sheldon-adelson/

¹²Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 12-13

¹³Ibid

¹⁴Ibid

¹⁵Ibid

¹⁶Ibid

¹⁷Ibid

¹⁸Stelter, B. (2015, June 25). Univision dumps Trump, cancels Miss USA over his comments about Mexicans. CNN Money. Retrieved July 14, 2016 from http://money.cnn.com/2015/06/25/media/univision-donald-trump-mexicans/

¹⁹Analyzing Trump Inc: From the Tower to the White House, op. cit, para. 12-13

²⁰Zakaria, F. (2016, May 5). The Problem With Trump as CEO of America: Government Is Not a Business. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 15, 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-problem-with-trump-as-ceo-of-america-government-is-not-a-business/2016/05/05/146cc1a0-12f5-11e6-8967-7ac733c56f12_story.html

²¹Garber, M. (2013, January 29). Hillary Clinton Traveled 956,733 Miles During Her Time as Secretary of State. The Atlantic. Retrieved July 22, 2016 from http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/01/hillary-clinton-traveled-956-733-miles-during-her-time-as-secretary-of-state/272656/

²²Center for American Progress(2011). Power of Progressive Economics: The Clinton Years.

Retrieved July 22, 2016 from https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/economy/report/2011/10/28/10405/power-of-progressive-economics-the-clinton-years/

 

²³Nuzzi, O. (2015, July 6). Donald Trump Sued Everyone but His Hairdresser. The Daily Beast. Retrieved July 26, 2016 from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/07/06/trump-sued-everyone-but-his-hairdresser.html

²⁴Oreskes, B. (2016, July 16). Clinton Pledges Constitutional Amendment to Overturn Citizens United Ruling. Politico. Retrieved July 26, 2016 from http://www.politico.com/story/2016/07/hillary-clinton-citizens-united-225658

²⁵Somin, I. (2016, May 5). Why Hillary Clinton Is A Lesser Evil Than Donald Trump. The Washington Post. Retrieved July 26, 2016 from https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2016/05/05/why-hillary-clinton-is-a-lesser-evil-than-donald-trump/

²⁶Ibid

²⁷Geraghty, J. (2015, July 30). Donald Trump’s Odd Fixation on Seizing Middle Eastern Oil Fields. National Review. Retrieved July 29, 2016 from http://www.nationalreview.com/article/421825/donald-trumps-odd-fixation-seizing-middle-eastern-oil-fields-jim-geraghty

²⁸2016 Electorate Will Be The Most Diverse in U.S. History. (2016a, February 2). Retrieved from Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/ft_16-01-26_eligiblevoterchange_diverse/

²⁹2016 Electorate Will Be The Most Diverse in U.S. History. (2016b, February 2). Retrieved from Pew Research Center: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/02/03/2016-electorate-will-be-the-most-diverse-in-u-s-history/

³⁰Ibid

³¹Ibid

³²Ibid

³³Ibid

³⁴Illing, S. (2016, March 15). Here Lies the Secret to Trump’s Rise: Political Science Can Explain the Appeal of Donald Trump’s Bullshit. Salon, pp. Retrieved August 8, 2016 from http://www.salon.com/2016/03/15/here_lies_the_secret_to_trumps_rise_political_science_can_explain_the_appeal_of_donald_trumps_bullshit/

 

 

 

 

Black victimology: divided we fall

Last Saturday, Baltimore celebrated the 2016 African-American festival. As the celebration continued, I began to reminisce on the conditions of the black family in America. My conclusion was that while we may claim that discrimination still exists in America, the blacks contribute a lot to their current problems. Hence, it is not always smart to blame the whites or the police each time a black person trips over a banana peel. For instance, if Freddie Gray had stayed away from crime, he will still be alive today.

Each time people talk about the situation of the black Americans(or African-Americans), words like ‘poverty’, ‘single mothers’, ‘drugs’, ‘crime’ ‘racism’, ‘white supremacy’ and ‘discrimination’ pop up. After celebrating the 2016 African-American festival last weekend, it is time for blacks (for your information, I am black too) to realize that they have a big problem, which is that their ‘entitlement’ mindset (I have the right to this or the right to that, and so on), their dependency culture and the breakdown of the black family is at the heart of the terrible conditions they face in America. As soon as they start to realize that their destiny lies entirely in their own hands, their situation will begin to change.

This does not mean that blacks in America do not encounter institutional challenges in their lives. Far from it! For instance, the Baltimore riots of 2015 were sparked by the death of Freddie Gray, a black man in police custody.¹ However, the underlying cause of the riots was more complex than that: it is a built-up hostility against the establishment who, the blacks believed, have betrayed them.

Broadly speaking, many Americans feel a confused sense of guilt each time media reports and activists make public the problems of poor black neighborhoods in America. This is because they are unsure whether the persistence of crime and poverty in these black neighborhoods is in some way their fault or the fault of the residents of the affected neighborhoods. For instance, it is true that the police are sometimes racist. On the other hand, there are cases of tensions between blacks and cops even in cities with black mayors, black police chiefs, and a mostly non-white police force, such as Baltimore City. This proved that the police and government functionaries are not always racists.  As a matter of fact, shortly after last year’s Baltimore riots, six police officers were indicted for abusing Freddie Gray and on charges that include second-degree murder. Of these, three were black officers.²

About fifty-one years ago, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former bureaucrat in the U.S. Department of Labor, made a bold and controversial attempt to explain what has gone wrong in America’s inner cities, which are mainly occupied by the black Americans. In his report at the time, popularly known as “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action”, Moynihan argued that the lingering effects of two centuries of slavery had significantly weakened and destabilized the black family in America. At the time of the release of the Moynihan report, about 25 percent of black babies were born to unmarried mothers. According to him, family instability was the main cause of many other problems faced by black families, from crime to poverty.³

Fifty-one years after the publication of the report, there is still little improvement in the situations faced by black Americans. When viewed in the light of the predictors of success in America(such as education, employment, life expectancy, the general standard of living, and so on), black Americans still fares badly. Basically, if African-American’s black community and neighborhoods were a separate country, it would have a higher proportion of its citizens behind bars than anywhere on earth, a worse life expectancy than Mexico, and a worse homicide rate than Ivory Coast.⁴ In spite of this overall America still has the richest and the most successful populations of blacks of African descent in the world.

Not only that: today, America is not as racist as it was during Moynihan’s day, when interracial marriage was illegal in 19 states of the country. America also has as a black president – Barack Obama. And it is a known fact that President Obama won the largest share of white support of any Democrat in any two-man race since 1976.⁵ The type of census forms we have in America today allows people to identify themselves as white and black too. About 2 million people did so in 2010, which is a significant improvement compared to what we have in the segregation era.

Yet an updated Moynihan report will definitely acknowledge the fact that the conditions of white Americans is still better than that of the blacks. More than four decades after the publication of his report in 1965, the proportion of African-American babies born outside marriage has exceeded 72 percent.⁶ According to the FBI, while the crime rate in America has fallen in the past two decades(a situation that cast some doubt on Moynihan’s claim on the link between single-parenting and disorder), black Americans are still eight times more likely to be murdered than whites. Also, black Americans are seven times more likely to commit murder than whites.⁷ A large number of black men in their 30s (about one-third of them) have been in prison. In addition, blacks are less socially mobile than whites, and they are also less likely to graduate from college.⁸

In the past, historians disagreed with Moynihan’s claim that linked slavery with the fragility of the black family; but many of them now believe in this theory. There is documentary evidence that every black population in Americas today has low rates of two-parent families.⁹ Certainly, we do not expect a race or  a group  that have many generations in which they are not permitted to have a relationship, in which they have no custodial rights to their children or spouse and their family members can be sold away, not to disintegrate? Yet what happened in the 19^th century alone cannot provide the most reliable explanation of why the modern-day black families have become so fragmented since the 1960s; nor why the proportion of white children born out of wedlock has grown as high as the black ones. This means that in as much as slavery may have started the dissolution of the black family, something else must have worsened the problem.

Some argue that welfare should be blamed for the disintegration of the black family, simply because the nationwide decline in marriage in America began at around the same time as Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs.  Social conservatives lament that for many American families, the welfare check(cheque) has replaced the male breadwinners, making them unneeded and irrelevant members of the family. To make things worse, even those single mothers who chose to tie the knot with their men are often penalized by the welfare department, since the addition of a father’s income to the household total income may cause their welfare benefits to be withdrawn.  Some studies, however, had looked at how marriage varies between states with different rules on eligibility for Medicaid – one of the largest welfare programs in America. These studies failed to find a link between welfare and the disintegration of black families in America.¹⁰ This does not mean that welfare played no role in dissolving America’s black families. Indeed, welfare does have some effects, but it’s not the main thing.

Fragmentation nation

Some experts argue that the collapse of the black family is largely caused by the slumping wages earned by unskilled black men. Since the wages of the unskilled black men are low, they are less attractive as mates to the ladies. The problem with this argument is that, like the previous one, it can only be a partial explanation. Generally speaking, Americans of all stripes are more likely to get married if their incomes rise.  But, even among the high income and middle-class Americans, in terms of marriage and staying married, black families look different from white ones. The percentage of black women with advanced degrees that are single mothers is higher than the percentage of single white women with advanced degrees.  To put this in perspective, the percentage of single black women with advanced degrees is approximately equivalent to that of single white women with a high school diploma. According to the available published evidence,  when black families income rises above $200,000 per year, the gap between them and the white families disappears.¹¹ However, only a tiny minority of the black population reaches that income level.

Low marriage rate among African-Americans can also be explained by another important factor: the black men are basically ‘missing in action.’ By this, I mean that many of them have either died early(almost every night, our news media carry breaking news of shootouts involving mainly black men and or black gangs) or are in prison. According to the New York Times, for every 100 non-incarcerated African-American women aged 25-54, there are only about 83 black men. This is a sharp contrast of what we have for the white population, which hardly has any gap at all: for every 100 non-incarcerated white women, there are 99 white men.¹²

A study of inner-city single mothers by Kathy Edin, a sociologist at John Hopkins University revealed some astonishing results. Many of the single mothers she interviewed during the study told her that having a baby helped them to hold on to a boyfriend and to have a purpose in life. The men he spoke to during the study told her that fatherhood can be a source of pride.¹³ That may be scant comfort for the children of such unions.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that growing up in a single-parent family is not a good experience for most children. Researchers at Princeton and Columbia universities run a program known as the ‘Fragile Families’ study.¹⁴ Under this program, they examined how children born to single mothers fare. According to their recent analysis, about 30 percent of the children born to single mothers have had two or more father figures in their homes by the time they are five years old. At a 40 percent poverty rate, the households headed by single mothers are poorer than that headed by two-parent, where the poverty rate is only 9 percent. If we consider the type of neighborhoods where most black families live, it is only natural to assume that the percentages will be higher for the black population.

It is worth bearing in mind that most of the black Americans who live below the poverty line are the left-behinds of two great internal migrations. The first internal migration, in which a large number of blacks moved from the south to the north occurred in the early 20^th century. The migrating black population left behind people in the Mississippi Delta, and to this day, that part of America has remained the poorest region in the country. More recently, a second migration is going on. Lots of people are moving from the northern cities to the southern ones. Georgia, for instance, has attracted more black migrants than any other state in the past two decades. With this small exodus of blacks, many blacks are left behind in highly segregated northern cities. A good example of the areas with a significant population of the left-behinds is West Baltimore, where 96 percent of blacks live.¹⁵ The surprising thing is that of all the ethnic groups in America, the African-Americans are the least likely to move even though a large number of them live in the most benighted places in the country.

Other left-behind neighborhoods can be found in New York, Milwaukee, Chicago, Washington DC, Philadelphia, and Detroit, among others. These places have an interesting history: black migrants were funneled into them in the mid-20^th century under racist housing policies. The first city to formalize residential segregation by race was Baltimore. After Baltimore, the other cities soon followed.

In 1942, about 84 percent of white Americans told pollsters the Negros should be placed in separate sections of major cities. The fact that that was a period when black GIS are preparing to go to war did not change their opinion in that regard. De jure racial segregation is now old news in America, and since 1970 de facto segregation has declined. However, the rate of decline varies from city to city. For instance, on a scale where "0" means blacks are evenly distributed and "100" means they live completely separately(and anything above 60 is high), Chicago scores 76, New York 78 and Milwaukee 82.¹⁶

A Baltimore native(an African-American) who asked not to be named in this article grew up in one of the affected neighborhoods. He basically grew up in a house passed down by his grandmother to his mother. According to him, his neighborhood is one of those localities where gunfire began as soon as the sunset. His was the type of neighborhood in Baltimore City where people throw big parties when someone gets out of jail, but do nothing when a resident graduates from college. He recalls one particular night of terror: that night he started hearing shots in the street outside but did not bother to look outside, only to discover the next morning that his best friend’s cousin had been killed. Another friend of his was also shot to death in a nearby basketball court for no clear reason. Fortunately, he was among the lucky ones: he graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree in education and is now one of the best teachers in Baltimore city.

Life stories such as his are not common. As was reported in The Economist, Karl Alexander and his colleagues at John Hopkins University conducted a study in which they followed 790 six-year-olds who entered Baltimore public schools in 1982 for 22 years. The results of their study were lamentable: only about 4 percent of the kids in low-income families where the parents had a combined total of ten years’ schooling graduated from college.¹⁷

The house which the Baltimore native I mentioned earlier inherited from his mother now has more than ten boarded-up properties for neighbors. In some areas such as West Baltimore, whole blocks have gone. Not only that, a large number of houses is worth nothing, particularly those which the owners owe property taxes. Overall, the crime rate in Baltimore City, where the blacks comprised of 62.9 percent of the population,²⁰ is high. According to the Baltimore Sun, by the end of 2015, the homicide rate in Baltimore City topped 30-40 per month.²¹ Most of the homicides occurred in West Baltimore, where the majority of the residents(about 44,000) were black.²²

The gap between the incomes of black and white families is large enough. However, the wealth gap is even larger. I will use the median income of these two groups as an illustration: According to the data published by the Pew Research Center, a think tank,  the median white families has net assets of about $141,900 in 2013; while the median black family has a paltry $11,000.²³ It should be noted here that wealth gaps are nearly always bigger than income gaps, for obvious reasons: people who earn more can save more. For the black families, this problem is often worsened by the absence of fathers. Generally speaking, a one-parent family with the same income as a two-parent family often spends more of its extra income on child care.

Under such circumstances, saving money is extremely hard. This explains why it is harder for black families to buy a house than white families of the same income. It also explains why black university students rack up larger debts than their white counterparts. Only about 40 percent of black students who enrolled in colleges complete a four-year degree in six years. For whites, the proportion is 63 percent.²⁴ In some cases, some black students need to look after a sibling or work to support their families. In others, they cannot afford the books or the bus fare to attend classes. One black lady I know said it all: she started off wanting to be a nurse. But now all she’s concerned about is how to eat the next day.

Make a new plan, Shawntae

This highlights a deeper question: suppose the black Americans in the worst neighborhoods were given a chance to move out? How about if they are provided with more opportunities to better their lives? The answer is that these have already been done in many places. In my life, I have never seen a country that has as many generous social programs for helping the poor as America. Just think of food stamps, cash assistance, grants for college education, housing programs for the poor, and so on, and you will begin to see my point. For instance, after they were taken to court in 1966 for building all its public housing in areas that were wholly black, the Chicago city government decided to do something to compensate the affected population: it provided vouchers for about 7,500 families to move to nicer (and whiter) neighborhoods of the city and its suburbs. The state of the beneficiary families was studied 15-20 years later, with good results: the families affected still live in their new neighborhoods. Not only that, their children were attending better schools and doing much  better when compared to the children of those families who stayed behind.²⁵

The federal government tried to copy this scheme in other cities after the Los Angeles riots of 1992. The results were mixed: those who moved out of public housing in crime-infested neighborhoods showed lower rates of diabetes than those who remained. In addition, the mothers who moved showed an increase in happiness that can be compared to the effects of the antidepressant called Prozac. However, after moving, their children’s performance was not better than that of those whose mothers stayed behind, and the mothers did not get better jobs.²⁶

I do not believe that it is the duty of the government to put broken black families together. Of course, the families need government support to stay together, but the bulk of the work must be done by the families themselves. To be frank, the white folk did not make the black people to have babies when they were still teenagers and could barely wash their school uniforms; they also did not force the black folks to drop out of school or to engage in criminal activities. This means that a lot of the problems the blacks are facing today are the results of the decision-making they are responsible for. In my view, black families are stronger and made a lot more progress during the segregation era than they have in this age of modern liberalism. Just think of it: it is during that time that strong and well-respected black people like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Booker T. Washington, and Jesse Jackson, among many others, emerged. Also, the black culture of that time was nowhere near as self-destructive as it is today. This simple fact alone belies the claims being made by many black people I spoke to that white supremacy, the government or even discrimination is the root cause of their current problems.

It is true: the whites may bear the burden of oppressing the blacks over the years through slavery and institutionalized racism(and shame to them for doing that) but the whites deserves some credits for ending such practices as well. I said this because many whites also fought, editorialized, protested, organized, and even voted to end these practices in America. Thus, fairness compels me to admit that the whites or the government did not cause the decline of the good black culture, and hence the whites or the government cannot fix it. In other words, it is the duty of the black people to decide where they want to be, decide the steps they need to take to get there, and then get to work. Blaming all their problems and ills on the whites or the government, to me, is nothing more than a way to avoid accepting responsibility for their own actions and decisions. One thing is for certain: they can change their collective fate if they take those three simple steps. In contrast, their current circumstances will not change if they don’t take those simple steps. It is as simple as that. All the wailing and blaming of the white people or the government, or even the police won’t make any difference in their lives.

References

¹Black America: The Fire and the Fuel. (2015, May 9). The Economist.  Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21650533-what-dead-white-man-can-teach-america-about-inner-city-decay-fire-and-fuel

²Ibid, p.23

³Moynihan, D. P. (1997). The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (1965). African American Male Research.

⁴Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.23

⁵Kuhn, D.P.(2008). Exit Polls: How Obama Won. Politico. Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.politico.com/story/2008/11/exit-polls-how-obama-won-015297

⁶Jacobson L.(2013). CNN’s Don Lemon Says More Than 72 Percent of African-American Births Are Out of Wedluck. Politifact. Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2013/jul/29/don-lemon/cnns-don-lemon-says-more-72-percent-african-americ/

⁷Saxena V. (2015). Fact: Blacks Murder More Whites Than Whites Murder Blacks. Downtrend. Retrieved June 29, 2016 from http://downtrend.com/vsaxena/blacks-murder-more-whites-than-whites-murder-blacks

⁸Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24

⁹Williams, W.E. (2015). The True Black Tragedy: Illegitimacy Rate of Nearly 75%. CNS News. Retrieved June 30, 2016 from http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/true-black-tragedy-illegitimacy-rate-nearly-75

¹⁰Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24-26

¹¹Ibid

¹²Wolfers J., Leonhardt D., & Quealy K.  (2015, April 20). The Upshort: 1.5 Million Missing Black Men. New York Times. Retrieved July 7, 2016 from http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/04/20/upshot/missing-black-men.html?_r=0

¹³Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24-26

¹⁴Ibid

¹⁵Ibid

¹⁶Ibid

¹⁷Ibid

²⁰Baltimore City, Maryland (2015). Quick Facts. U.S. Census Bureau. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/table/PST045215/24510

²¹Rector, K. (2016, January 1). Deadliest Year in Baltimore History Ends With 344 Homicides. Baltimore Sun. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-ci-deadliest-year-20160101-story.html

²²City Data (2016). West Baltimore Neighborhood in Baltimore, Maryland: 21223, 21216 and 21217 Detailed Profile. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from http://www.city-data.com/neighborhood/West-Baltimore-Baltimore-MD.html

²³Kochhar R. & Fry R. (2014). Fact Tank: News in the Numbers. Pew Research Center. Retrieved July 4, 2016 from http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/12/12/racial-wealth-gaps-great-recession/

²⁴Black America: The Fire and the Fuel, op. cit., p.24-26

²⁵Ibid

²⁶Ibid