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.