Author: John Seiler

  California is a crazy state, a kind of Venezuela attached to the Mainland USA and with the world’s top high-tech companies running things instead of Hugo Chavez’s heirs. Like Venezuela, California has massive shortages of local things, in particular housing, which costs more than $650,000 for buying a shotgun shack along the coast, with rents for one-bedroom garrets at more than $1,850 a month. Even if you can afford a house, or bought one before about 2000 when prices almost were reasonable, chances are your children won’t be able to afford to live here until they inherit your manse,...

  “There ain’t no draft no more.” – Sgt. Hukla in “Stripes” Say, isn’t the U.S. House of Representatives supposed to be controlled by Republican “conservatives,” almost all of whom oppose the non-conservative Donald Trump? Weren’t they elected to a majority in the 2010 Tea Party campaign to repeal Obamacare? Well, the conservatives just voted to impose the draft on girls. H.R. 4478 actually is called the Draft America’s Daughters Act of 2016. Reportedly it was put up as a jest by “Rep. Duncan Hunter, a former Marine who served three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, [but] does not...

Donald Trump’s easy victory in his home state of New York rockets him into the next phase of his campaign: The long march taken by the Okies to California. Albeit in a custom-built 747. Some pundits have criticized Trump for not having a “ground game” and not “knowing the rules” of the nominating process, especially in Colorado. But the process was rigged from the beginning against somebody like him – somebody like Ron Paul, whose 2008 campaign sparked GOP convention rules that prevented his name being put in nomination at the 2012 convention. If the rules are rigged, why play...

A couple of days ago I briefly tuned in to Mark Levin’s radio show. He was talking about Trump and trade, making the “comparative advantage” point you might remember from Econ. 101.  That if each country makes what it can most cheaply, such as America designing iPhones and China assembling them (my examples, not his), then everybody comes off better.  But if we impose tariffs, then prices go up for everybody, most hurting the poor when they go to buy stuff. So Trump’s attacks on Ford for moving a plant to Mexico, which on April 5 he called an “absolute...

I try to find the amusing in politics, and there was a lot of unintentional humor in House Speaker Paul Ryan’s March 23 speech before interns on Capitol Hill on the state of American politics. As commentators have noted, although not mentioning Donald Trump by name, the blathering was directly aimed at the real estate baron. Salon asked, “Can he really endorse Trump after a speech like this?” Of course he can, assuming the rt. hon. gentleman doesn’t join other Establishment pols in swiping the Republican nomination for himself or another hack. This is politics; there’s no honor. Ryan well...