The Republican Candidates

Given that this blog is now fiction based in reality, I am going to rely on coverage from real news sources' coverage of the person I pick to be president. The decision on January 6th will basically be a referendum on how well the news media covers a candidate. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, please read the first post in this new chapter.

Next week, the Republican-led congress will pick the president and vice president of the United States. As we discussed last week, the Electoral College was not able to pick a winner, because the woman who won the plurality of the votes, Hillary Clinton, was an unpopular candidate. Now, despite the fact that the Republican Party did not field a legitimate candidate, they get to pick a president from their own party.

The candidates who appear most likely to win are:

• House Speaker Paul Ryan
• Senator John McCain
• Ohio Governor John Kasich
and
• Indiana Governor Mike Pence.

Let's look at the way they have responded to various international incidents in the past few weeks. The three issues I will be addressing are the Russian hacking, the recent UN vote condemning Israel's settlements in Palestinian territory, and the Chinese confiscation of an American science drone.

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan

Speaker Ryan has been very concise in his criticism of the current administration's responses to world crises. He simply said that the current administration has lost credibility in terms of Israel. His response to Russian Hacking is the patriotically correct response, that interfering in our elections is completely unacceptable. Paul Ryan didn't respond to China and the drone.

Senator John McCain

Senator McCain is a strong candidate with strong opinions on most subjects. As a war hero and as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, he is frequently asked his opinion on matters of foreign policy. He believes that we should investigate the Russian hackers thoroughly, that our refusal to stand up for Israel is "dangerous", and that China is attempting to destabilize the Pacific region with a series of actions including the confiscation of our science drone.

Indiana Governor Mike Pence

Mike Pence is a Christian ideologue who wants to destroy the country. He has passed laws requiring funerals for miscarriages, and has spoken and written in favor of "conversion therapy" for homosexuals. Pence came out against the Russian hackers who influenced our election, saying that there should be harsh consequences. Pence made no specific comment on the Obama administration's failure to block the UN vote in Israel, but he has said in the past that Israel has no better friend, because support for Israel is an extension of his Christian faith. Pence also did not respond to China's confiscation of an American scientific drone.

Ohio Governor John Kasich

During the Republican primary race, Kasich was one of the last two candidates to drop out of the race, and the last who actually got along with the Republican establishment. He is a popular two-term governor of a purple state, who somehow thinks that women do not have the right to control their own bodies. Kasich did not respond to the Russian hackers, because there was a chance that he could benefit from the investigations. Though Kasich did not respond to the Chinese confiscation of the American science drone, he has both bragged about his success at bringing Chinese investments to Ohio, and has supported the TPP which was designed to antagonize China. This makes Kasich's China doctrine hard to predict. He also didn't directly respond to the recent UN actions on Israel, but has in the past defended Israel's settlement policy.

I think I know who will be president now, and if you read this post, you can probably figure it out. Whom the Senate will chose as vice president still needs to be worked out, and is actually important, just in case the president dies while in office.

What just happened?

I am not actually having a psychotic break. I have made the decision, in the spirit of this blog, that I will write as if it is not true that nearly half the country voted for a neo-Nazi who doesn't care whom he hurts while enriching his own children.

This is unprecedented. The electoral college was unable to elect a single winner, after roughly three quarters of the country refused to vote or voted for a TV show character. Although Clinton won the plurality of electoral votes (and the majority of the popular vote), this three-party race split four ways. A candidate who was never discussed in this blog, Evan McMullen, won Utah, and the rest of the states divided roughly evenly among Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson.

For the first time in United States History, the Electoral College has failed to pick a winner, and the decision will be put to the House of Representatives. In two weeks, on January 6, congress will meet in a special session to officially count the Electoral College's votes, and then THEY will select the president and vice president by majority vote.

This blog has primarily been about the political perspectives of candidates for president, so I haven't really talked about Congress much. Next week, I will bring you the likely candidates for president, given that congress is controlled by the Republican Party, which did not nominate a candidate for president this year.

Economics #3: Poverty and the Social Safety Net

This month, we are discussing economics. We have already discussed unemployment and compensation, as well as deficits and debt. This week, we will discuss poverty and the social safety net.

Hillary Clinton wants to double the Child Tax Credit and expand it to 1.7 million more families. Despite that, and her important input into the creation of the Earned Income Tax Credit, Clinton and her husband did a lot of damage to the social safety net in the 90s by attacking the Welfare program.

Gary Johnson thinks that we should get rid of the social safety net. He believes that having less government means that markets can work better.

Jill Stein wants to increase access to food stamps, housing assistance, and clean water. Despite the fact that this sounds like something right up Stein's alley, this is all I could find on the social safety net. She simply doesn't talk about it.

I am not sure if I will be continuing to update this blog. Grad school is eating my brain, and this is just one more thing which requires brainpower. If you want more information on the three candidates, please watch John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight", on the same subject as this blog.

Economics #2: Deficits and Debt

In October, we are talking about Economics. Last week, we talked about Unemployment and Compensation. This week, we will talk about Deficits and Debt.

Our country has a schizophrenic relationship with money: we have one party which wants to spend lavishly in order to improve peoples' lives, and we have another party which wants to let Americans keep as much of their paycheck as possible after taxes. The party which likes to spend has been unsuccessful at raising taxes, and the party which likes to keep taxes low has been unsuccessful at reining in spending. This has led to some major debt issues in the past ten years.

Because Clinton wants to increase spending, she has a tax plan to counter-balance it. The Wall Street Journal says that Hillary Clinton's economic policies would increase deficits in the short term, but lead to economic growth which would eliminate those deficits within her first term. Clinton has said that our current debt levels pose a "national security threat". The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget says that Clinton did a good job paying for her proposals.

When Gary Johnson was governor of New Mexico, he followed through with a campaign pledge to veto any bill which did not pay for itself, eventually vetoing almost 750 bills in 8 years. Though the budget of New Mexico grew under Johnson, he slowed the growth from 10% per year to 5% per year. A large portion of the increased spending in New Mexico was due to federal mandates, over which Johnson had no control. Johnson believes in small government, and wants to eliminate the income tax.

Jill Stein wants to reduce spending by ending the expensive "wars for oil" in the Middle East, which are major drivers of our debt. Even if we were to end all spending in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria right now, though, that would only save about $130 billion per year. Our current deficit is almost $600 billion per year, and Stein has proposed raising taxes to compensate for this. The Green Party proposes a wealth tax of 50 basis points (half a percent) per year, and also raise income taxes on the wealthy.

I apologize on the delay in publishing this week's discussion of the candidates' views on the economy. Next week, I really hope to be on time in publishing a discussion of Poverty and the Social Safety Net.

Late this week

This week's post will be posted late, due to the amount of homework I had this weekend.

Economics #1: Unemployment and Compensation

In August, we discussed American health policy. In September, it was crime in America.

For October, I would like to discuss economics. As with the previous three months, I would like to break this into three topics: This week we will discuss Unemployment and Compensation, next week will be Deficits and Debt, and the third week we will discuss Poverty and the Social Safety Net. After these three, there will still be two Mondays in October to talk about Foreign Policy, and I will spend the first week of November on another silly post about TV characters. I will probably change up which characters I talk about, though one or two will likely be the same.

Hillary Clinton believes that the minimum wage should be raised to $12 per hour. She has said that she would not veto a move to raise it further to $15 per hour. Clinton also wants to lower taxes for middle-income families and small businesses. Raising the minimum wage does have its detractors, but most current research implies that it will have a positive impact. Even if it doesn't, Clinton supports expanding the EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit), which she helped to create back in the 90s.

Clinton also has plans to directly address unemployment, such as providing parental leave for childcare, being paid 2/3 of your income for 12 weeks. This would create two three-month openings, so that firms will need to replace both parents. Clinton backs a plan to fix our infrastructure, employing mostly Millennials.

Gary Johnson wants to eliminate minimum wag, claiming that if you show up on time and wear clean clothes, then you will make more than minimum wage.

Johnson wants to give the economy a little stimulus in the form of eliminating all payroll and income taxes, in exchange for a Fair Tax, a 23% consumption tax on all newly produced goods and services. Johnson believes that if government can get out of the way of the common person and the market, then jobs will be created.

Jill Stein favors raising the minimum wage to at least $15 per hour, if not more. She also wants to eliminate student loan debt, which would effectively give most people under 35 a $300 per month raise.

Stein wants to break up the big banks, which would create new white collar jobs by increasing redundancy in our banking system, and also create big profits for investors.

Next week, we will talk about deficits and debt.

Television Characters Talk about Politics

So far, this blog has only talked about legitimate candidates for the presidency. This week, I would like to talk about the political views of television show characters on the various issues we have covered so far. I will frame each topic below as a debate among three of the following characters: Cookie Monster, Donald Trump, Mickey Mouse, Stannis Baratheon, and Pop-Eye.

On Healthcare

Mental Health

Stannis Baratheon has suffered crippling depression himself, especially after the Battle of Blackwater. He believes that faith is a cure for mental illness.

Donald Trump doesn't much care for faith or the mentally ill.

Pop-Eye believes that the cure for all illnesses is spinach.

Coverage and Affordability

Donald Trump wants to eliminate the individual mandate, but otherwise keep ObamaCare. This would raise the cost of healthcare to an unaffordable level for most Americans, but he has a plan to deal with this: import drugs from Canada.

Pop-Eye says that spinach is inexpensive enough already, and solves all medical problems.

Mickey Mouse's name is synonymous with health plans which do not cover enough, but his corporation actually provides high quality health care for its workers. It is unclear whether he would extend this quality to the rest of the country.

Preventative Care

Cookie Monster is a hypocrite. When it comes to himself, "C is for COOKIE and that's good enough for me", but when it comes to anyone else, "Cookies are a sometimes food."

Pop-Eye appears to believe that preventive care is unnecessary if you have access to spinach.

Stannis Baratheon doesn't really believe in prevention, risking everything on a brutal war and sacrificing his own daughter to an evil god in exchange for victory which never comes.

Crime

Prisons and Sentencing

Stannis Baratheon believes in capital punishment for people who question his religion.

Donald Trump believes that reporters should be punished for reporting the truth about him, verifiable by videos of his own statements.

Woe be to anyone who gets between Cookie Monster and a cookie.

Corruption and White Collar Crime

Stannis Baratheon believes that anyone who has committed any act of corruption should be removed from power. He is the only candidate in the War of Five Kings who took his responsibility as king seriously, and defended the Northern Wall against the external threat from the North.

Mickey Mouse doesn't approve of the "soul-less" management of some of the CEOs who have taken over his company.

Donald Trump has committed so many white collar crimes that they can't figure out which ones to prosecute. He bragged about attempting to commit election fraud in a televised debate in the spring.

Guns and Violent Crime

Pop-Eye doesn't think we need guns, unless you include the guns between his incredible muscles.

Donald Trump thinks that all violent crime is due to Muslims, a group which includes more doctors and nurses per capita than any group other than Jews.

Crime 3: Guns and Violent Crime

The month of September has been spent talking about the politicians stance on crime. So far, we have discussed prisons and sentencing, as well as corruption and white collar crime. This wee, we will discuss guns and violent crime.

For this discussion, I will not be making a distinction between terrorism, hate crimes, and other violent crimes, unless the candidates themselves do so. American citizens losing their lives or being injured due to violent crime is a bad thing, and each candidate responds to this in a different way.

Hillary Clinton wants to violate the fourth amendment further by taking guns away from anyone on the terrorism watch list. She is in favor of expanded background checks, and wants to patch the gun show loophole. The Gun Show Loophole actually has nothing to do with gunshows, other than that people sometimes meet outside of gun shows as convenient places to sell guns to other private citizens. She also wants to increase accountability and liability for people who facilitate violent gun crime.

Clinton has worked to protect people from domestic abuse (including protecting pets). She considers sexual assault against women to be a top priority.

Gary Johnson believe[s] in the bumper sticker: If you outlaw guns, then only outlaws will have guns." He and his running mate, Bill Weld, have both commented that, had someone at the Orlando shooting had a gun, there would have been less loss of life.

Johnson's plan to reduce violent crime is to legalize drugs. In an interview with Playboy, he said that violence is caused by making drug users act outside of the law. Other than saying that more people should be armed and that drugs should be legal, he has made no public statements in regards to violent crime.

Jill Stein wants to reinstate the assault weapons ban, and pass laws in violation of the Heller decision which said that local municipalities cannot make laws banning particular kinds of guns.

Stein refers to gun violence as a public health emergency. She wants to expand background checks, demilitarize the police, and address the deeper issues that cause gun violence.

There are so many articles (followed by Snopes, FactCheck, or Politifact articles declaring them false) about Clinton and either rape or sexual abuse that it is really hard to find information on her policies in these regards. I apologize for the quality of the links regarding her this week.

This is my last post on the subject of crime. Jill Stein the clear winner on crime, as the only candidate who is moving in the right direction on sentencing, non-violent crime, and violent crime. Gary Johnson struggled with the facts this month, but he did better than on healthcare. Hillary Clinton comes in a close second behind Stein; though she has a lot of policy proposals in regards to crime, they are very bland and moderate.

Next month, I will discuss the economy, followed by two posts on foreign policy. My last post to this blog will be on the day before the election.

Sad News

For those who haven't heard, there will not be a debate including the three legitimate presidential candidates this year. The commission on presidential debates set the bar so high to qualify to participate that only Hillary Clinton met the standards they set.

Strangely, in addition to the moderators, the TV networks have decided that a reality TV star will be allowed on stage with Secretary Clinton. I hope they change it up from debate to debate, so that we will get Simon Cowell in one debate, and Donald Trump in another. (I can't actually name any other reality TV stars. They should probably get a third one, too.)

In the last post that I make this month, I will discuss the political views of television personalities like Simon Cowell, Cookie Monster, and Super-Man. That post will go live on the same day as Clinton debates... herself, I guess.

Crime #2: Corruption and White Collar Crime

In September, this blog will be focusing on crime. Last week, we talked about prisons and sentencing, and we are saving guns and violent crime for next week. This week, we will discuss corruption and white collar crime.

Discussion of corruption became more complicated with the Citizens United Decision in 2010. This decision by the Supreme Court said that money is speech, and is therefore protected by the first amendment unless quid pro quo corruption is proven. Given that this is nearly impossible to prove, it is effectively impossible to legally constrain spending on politics. The McCutcheon decision exacerbated the problem.

This post will explore what the candidates propose to do to combat these issues, and other white collar crimes.

Hillary Clinton has pledged to pursue a constitutional amendment to overturn the Citizens United decision. Constitutional amendments are extremely difficult to pass, meaning that this pledge is effectively saying "There's nothing I can do."

In Clinton's defense, she does have a plan to rein in the largest banks. The Risk Fee and Tax on High-Frequency Trading are both interesting proposals, with the potential to really change the financial world.

Gary Johnson believes that the Citizens United Decision was a good decision, and that money is speech. If you want a government, then buy your own.

Johnson also wants to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act, which was put in place to protect another financial collapse like the 2008 mortgage crisis. He has said that he wishes that the crisis had been allowed to get worse, and that the banking system should have been allowed to collapse.

Jill Stein is opposed to Citizens United, and, in addition to a constitutional amendment, wants to pursue other avenues to overturn that ruling. She doesn't accept donations from corporations, and thinks all candidates should refuse money from defense contractors.

Jill Stein believes that there are too many earmarks in politics, which are how congress tells the executive how much and where to spend money; she claims that earmarks lead to corruption. She also speaks out against super-PACs and lobbyists.

Finally, we have found an issue on which Stein is a reasonable candidate. The United States is the sixteenth least corrupt country on Earth, largely because of the moneyed interests Stein is railing against. If this is your big issue, Stein is your candidate.

Crime #1: Prisons and Sentencing

In August, we discussed healthcare. This month, the discussion will focus on crime. This week, we will discuss prisons and sentencing. Over the next two weeks, I will discuss corruption and white collar crime, followed by guns and violent crime.

The statistic that The United States contains 5% of the world's population and 20% of the world's incarcerated population is cited regularly. In fact, despite our reputation as "The Land of the Free", the United States incarcerates more people per capita than Russia, China, or North Korea. Our prison population has gotten so high that we have begun using private prisons to cut costs and reduce overcrowding.

And it doesn't work, either. Per year, The United States has about four murders per hundred thousand people, while countries like the UK, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain each only have one. Once prisoners are released, they have a 50% chance of being back in jail within 3 years. This isn't working.

Hillary Clinton has a lot to answer for on this topic. In the 90s, she described members of gangs as Super-predators. She then advocated for the 1994 crime bill, which was eventually signed by her husband, former president Bill Clinton. She is now attempting to reverse the damage that she did, but Tens of thousands of Americans have been sentenced to life in prison during that time, with no visible effect on crime.

She has since spoken out about reform of drug laws, but it is clear that this is only because it affects her personally. Clinton does want to move Marajuana off of the schedule 1 list, where it sits with heroine and LSD. Unfortunately, this will have only a small effect, given that only 3.6% of the prison population is there for possession-only.

Clinton also supports ending the use of private prisons.

Gary Johnson wants to legalize marijuana, and "end the war on drugs". He has not said that he wants to legalize any other drug, so it is unclear what he means to do to end the war on drugs.

Johnson also supports private prisons. He claims that the issues raised by private prisons, of lobbying for an increase in prison population, are equally prevalent in the unions of prison workers in public prisons.

Interestingly, Gary Johnson is the only presidential candidate in the race who has a position on hate crimes. Hate crimes are normal crimes committed for specific reasons, and if a crime is deemed a hate crime then the sentence is altered. Johnson compares these to thought crimes, saying that penalizing someone for what was going through their head when they committed the crime is wrong.

Jill Stein believes that the primary reform needs to be a reduction of racism. This includes an end to the drug war, doing away with mandatory minimum sentences, and making jail a place focused on rehabilitation rather than vengeance.

Stein wants to decriminalize illicit drugs, replacing our current law-enforcement approach with a "treatment model". She calls the war on drugs "completely baseless, foundless, immoral, racist, and it needs to be transformed into a public health agenda."

Jill Stein would like to reduce the school-to-prison pipeline. She wants to increase community interactions with schools, but opposes charter schools.

Next week, we will discuss corruption and white collar crime.

Healthcare Post 3: Preventative Care

Healthcare is a huge topic, and one which is heavily politically charged. This is the third of three posts in which I have examined each candidate's positions on three parts of healthcare: mental healthcare, healthcare cost and coverage, and preventative care. This post will be about preventative care.

An illness is like a crime: it can take things from you which you value, it can prevent you from doing things you want to do, it can even kill you. It is obviously better to prevent illness than to attempt to treat it after the fact. This is doubly true when you look at the cost savings in preventing illness rather than treating it when it occurs.

When I decided to write this article, I expected it to be far more interesting than it turned out to be. All three candidates support universal vaccinations. Because of this, most of the analysis for this post will be about preventive care in ObamaCare versus nothing versus medicare.

Hillary Clinton supports ObamaCare, also known as The Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare has numerous preventive care provisions, including vaccinations for adults and children, constraception for women, and fluoride supplements for children.

Clinton famously challenged vaccines on the thimerosal issue in the 2008 election, but now that the science is even more settled, has backed down from that stance. As is typically a reasonable criticism of Clinton, she was very slow to accept the science after it was settled, but she has accepted it now.

Gary Johnson thinks that people should not see doctors if they are not sick, because the insurance model of healthcare is crazy. He likens it to grocery insurance, where they don't bother to put price tags on things, and you can just grab whatever food you want. Only catastrophic care should be covered by health insurance, and people should not seek preventative care.

Unfortunately, Americans are notoriously bad at saving, and medical costs are already the leading cause of bankruptcy in the USA.

Jill Stein refers to our current healthcare system as "really sick care", and she wants healthcare to focus more on prevention. As a doctor, Stein has actually written a paper on the subject.

Unfortunately, Stein goes a bit off the rails after this. She bashes GMOs, claiming that they are unsafe despite centuries of lack of evidence. Though she supports vaccines, she attacks the FDA and CDC as being too corrupt. She says that wifi is bad for children.

This is the last post about the presidential candidates' policies and positions on healthcare. Going into this, I expected Doctor Jill Stein to have a major advantage over the other candidates, being a doctor and all, but it didn't turn out that way. Gary Johnson is unlikely to have a section in which he does as poorly going forward. Hillary Clinton appears to be the winner in the healthcare debate.

The topic for September will be crime. I intend to look at the three candidates' positions on prisons and sentencing, corruption and white-collar crime, and violent crime and guns. I will round out September with a whimsical discussion of the political views of TV characters, like Mickey Mouse, Donald Trump, and Elmo.

Healthcare Post 2: Coverage and Affordability.

Healthcare is a huge topic, and one which is heavily politically charged.  This is the second of three posts in which I intend to examine each candidate's positions on three parts of healthcare: mental healthcare, healthcare cost and coverage, and preventative care. This post will be about healthcare cost and coverage.

Healthcare in the United States is expensive, and doesn't provide good results compared to other industrialized nations.

Hillary Clinton supports defending and expanding ObamaCare, also known as The Affordable Care Act. She is also in favor of allowing people to buy into medicare as their insurance, instead of private insurance.

Clinton does not appear to have a plan to rein in spending on healthcare, only costs for the individual. This will need to be offset by increased taxes, likely increasing the overall cost to the average individual.

Gary Johnson is opposed to "government-mandated health insurance", including the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare). He believes that "we need a new supreme court", after it upheld ObamaCare twice as constitutional. He would also like to repeal the drug subsidies, passed by George W. Bush.

Under Johnson's plan, people will be spending less on healthcare, due to lack of access, and classical economics claims that this will reduce the prices of healthcare.

Jill Stein supports medicare for all. If medicare's minimum age were reduced from 65 years old to one year before birth, everyone would be covered by the most efficient health insurance in the country.

Medicare has built-in price controls, but those price controls are weakened annually by a series of laws called "The Doc Fix". Despite the Doc Fix, Medicare continues to spend less for similar or better quality of care compared to other health insurers.

Next week, we will discuss preventative care.

Healthcare Post 1: Mental Health

Healthcare is a huge topic, and one which is heavily politically charged. For this and the next two posts, I intend to examine each candidate's positions on three parts of healthcare: mental healthcare, healthcare cost and coverage, and preventative care. This post will be about mental healthcare.


Mental healthcare is in a sad state in this country. Services for adults are next-to non-existent, and services for children under the age of 18 are severely limited. If you haven't read the essay, "I am Adam Lanza's Mother", only nominally about the Connecticut man who murdered a classroom of first graders with his mother's AR-15, you really should.

Let's take a look at what the candidates have to say on the subject.

Hillary Clinton has long been an advocate for mental health parity, meaning that health insurance plans would need to pay for mental health issues in much the same way as they pay for physical health issues. This led to the 1996 Mental Health Parity Act and to the 2008 Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equality Act. Clinton's current work includes championing the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act, which was written by Pennsylvania Republican Tim Murphy and Texas Democrat Eddie Johnson.

Clinton has also said that drug offenders should receive treatment for their mental illness.  

Gary Johnson wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare, which has expanded mental health care to millions of Americans who would not have had access prior.  In a Reddit AMA, he told a man suffering from mental illness to start a new company, in order to earn enough to treat his mental illness.

Johnson believes that we should not lock up people suffering from drug addiction for their mental illness, and that needle exchange programs save lives,  

Jill Stein wants mental health care to be covered universally for every one from the moment of conception, by reducing the minimum age for medicare from 65 years old to to 0.

 Dr. Stein has also spoken about reducing the "culture of violence" by legalizing recreational drugs.

Now that we have looked at each candidate's position on mental health, next week, we will talk about affordability and coverage.

As an addendum, writing this blog in the style I described has been very difficult. The major networks are really only covering one candidate, between their reality shows and talk shows, and so I have to really dig to find any information on the other two candidates. I will continue to do my best to cover the candidates equally, but my source material doesn't make it easy.

The Three-Party Race

I want a blog that talks about the issues, as the candidates see them. Well, when I was a kid, whenever I asked my father why "they" didn't do something, he just asked me, "Why don't you?" So here I am, writing a blog.

In this blog, I intend to research each candidate's position on policies which are important to me, and discuss what their presidency will look like in light of these things. I will do my best to devote equal time to the policy positions of all three candidates, and I will endeavor not to devote greater than 50% more words to any candidate, no matter how much more they have to say on any one topic. With this goal in mind, I will do my best to remain positive in my descriptions of each candidate.

I will begin with a discussion of the three candidates' histories. In this post I will highlight the experience each candidate brings to the table. Spoiler alert: two candidates have political experience, and the third does not.

Let's start with the current front-runner, Democrat Hillary Clinton. Clinton has only held one elected office (Senator of New York state from 2001-2009), but has held a federally appointed office (Secretary of State 2009-2013), nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, and has been in the public eye for decades as first lady, first to a governor (1983-1992), and then to a president (1993-2001).

She learned some hard lessons as the First Lady of the United States, including how to work with congress, and compromise when needed. These were demonstrated during her tenure as a senator from New York, and led to a surprising 241 bipartisan bills out of 355 bills passed in eight years. When fortified with the foreign policy experience she gained as Secretary of State, Clinton is a formidable candidate.

Next, let's look at Gary Johnson, of the Libertarian Party. Johnson is currently behind in the polls, but his goal for this time in the election cycle, given the status of the Libertarian party, is only 15%. He is very close to this goal. Johnson was governor of New Mexico from 1994-2002, and, since reaching his two-term limit there, has worked with youth to build their problem-solving and rhetorical skills.

Although Johnson was a popular governor who left the state fiscally solid (as the rest of the country suffered a minor recession), his strongest selling point is probably his choice of running mate, "Bill" Weld. William Weld was governor of Massachusetts through most the 90s, a booming time for the state. If he hadn't been figuratively shot in the foot by his own party for not being evil, he would have been the ambassador to Mexico. This means that, while neither candidate on the ticket has foreign policy experience, former president Bill Clinton (husband of the current candidate Hillary Clinton) trusted him enough on foreign policy to try to send him to one of our biggest trading partners.

The third and final candidate, Jill Stein of the Green Party, has significantly less political experience. She was elected, by the second district of the town of Lexington, MA, as a Town Meeting Representative. She has run for the governorship of Massachusetts twice, as well as other Massachusetts state offices, but has not won.

Stein is a medical doctor with a history of activism. She has written songs and organized protests on numerous progressive issues, but has lacked the focus on any one issue to effect any real change.

Her running mate, Ajamu Baraka doesn't bring anything new to the Green party ticket. He is an academic, similar to his running mate, but has less political experience. He is a leader of two organizations: the US Human Rights Network (an activist group opposed to American Exceptionalism), and the Institute for Policy Studies (a progressive think tank).

Next time, I intend to discuss healthcare issues.