As I mentioned previously, this fall I put together an adult education course on election issues to help voters assess candidate positions.

I learned a lot from the experience, but the takeaway that surprised me the most was the ready availability of accurate information about election security, the economy, inflation, crime, immigration, and other issues. Lots of credible sources have been reporting accurately about these topics for years.

Social media is never a credible source, many news organizations are unreliable, and the opinion sections of many news organizations are highly partisan. But research organizations, government agencies, and many non-governmental organizations routinely provide accurate information, including current data and the history of these issues.

Here is a somewhat detailed summary of the Voter’s Guide course:

Election Security:

• No evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election has ever been presented.
• The Trump-appointed head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the United States Department of Homeland Security said the 2020 election “…was the most secure election certainly in modern history.”
• Trump’s own Attorney General said, “The Justice Department has found no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.”
• America’s elections are conducted by thousands of County Boards of Election and are overseen by state officials. To rig a federal election would require the criminal participation of hundreds, if not thousands of officials from both parties. “It would be the most extensive conspiracy in the history of planet Earth,” said David Becker, a senior trial attorney in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division during the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
• No evidence of significant non-citizen voting has ever been presented.

Disinformation:

• One of the drivers of decreased confidence in the political system has been the explosion of misinformation deliberately aimed at disrupting the democratic process
• Such disinformation is disseminated by political campaigns, political commentators, bloggers, and foreign governments.
• As it turns out, though, accurate information is not that hard to find.
• You need an open mind, some basic research skills (which you can develop yourself with a little practice), some time, and an active interest in finding out the truth.
• If you want to reduce your own susceptibility to disinformation there are three key things you must do:
  • Be skeptical. Never take the word of a single source as truth.
  • Never believe anything you see on social media.
  • Fact-check everything you read and write.
• Be aware of your own potential cognitive biases (we all have them)
• Identify credible sources of information and rely on them
• Review “Media Bias charts” for information on news organizations
• Above all, remember Correlation is not Causation

The Presidency:

• Americans significantly overestimate the influence a president has on their daily lives
• People think the president is almost like a benevolent despot determining your future. But in reality, the president is more like someone sitting in the co-pilot’s seat while the plane is on autopilot. We need someone there, but mostly the thing is flying itself.
• Areas where the president has the most influence include foreign policy, military deployments, treaties, immigration, and day-to-day operations of the federal government.
• Areas where the president’s power is limited by checks and balances or by the interests of other competing power centers include the economy, the federal budget, health care, climate policy, energy policy, and judicial appointments.
• Areas where the president has little power include local law enforcement, public education, and election security.
• A president’s true power comes from his position as the acknowledged leader of the nation. The president sets the federal government’s agenda, identifies critical problems, and set priorities for government action.
• America’s greatest presidents are remembered for their character, as integrity, honesty, and strong commitment to the nation’s well-being are essential traits for dealing successfully with unexpected events that occur during every presidency.

Immigration:

• For its first 100 years, the United States facilitated immigration, welcoming foreigners to settle a vast country
• Beginning on the mid-late 1800’s immigration restrictions targeting certain racial or nationality groups were enacted
• In 1845 the anti-immigrant American party won control of the Massachusetts state government and deported around 50,000 immigrants, mostly Irish, including many American citizens
• The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1872 and the National Origins Act of 1924 targeted nationality groups for exclusion
• Today, there are approximately 49 million foreign born residents of the United States. They comprise approximately 14 percent of the U.S. population, near the nation’s historic peak reached in the early 1900’s.
• The foreign-born population as a percentage of Americans began to decline around 1920 and continued to decline until the late 1960’s when changes to U.S. immigration law reversed the decline.
• In the mid/late 1960’s the number of foreign-born residents in the U.S. was around 10 million.
• Today, around 49 million Americans are immigrants
• Approximately 25 percent (about 12 million) of the foreign-born residents of the U.S. today are unauthorized or undocumented.
• The number of unauthorized or undocumented immigrants reached an estimated 12 million around 2007, declined slightly, and has now climbed back to that level
• Undocumented immigrants (illegal immigrants) are more likely to be workers, more likely to be part of a married family with children, and are less likely to commit crimes than persons born in the United States
•  Undocumented immigrants pay taxes. Often they contribute to Social Security and Medicare through payroll taxes even though they will never be able to collect benefits. They do not qualify for most forms of government assistance.
• Authorized immigration to the US rebounded in FY 2022 after declining almost 50% in FY 2020.
• Excluding tourism and unauthorized arrivals, most people arriving in the US are temporary workers, students, or coming to be with their families
• Nearly 2.6 million people legally immigrated to the US in 2022. This exceeded the number of new entries in any year from 2018 to 2021, but just below the recent high of 2.7 million in 2016
• From 2021 through 2023, a wave of asylum seekers presenting themselves at the southern border overwhelmed the U.S. immigration system
• Asylum seekers are paroled into the United States pending the outcome of a hearing to evaluate their claim
• Historically, more than half of asylum claims are denied
• There are currently more than two million asylum seekers in the United States awaiting court dates for their asylum hearings. The current waiting time is more than three years.
• In 2023 the Biden administration began refusing entry for asylum seekers when daily numbers exceeded the number that Customs and Border Patrol officials could handle.
• The border is not open. Under President Biden, the Border Patrol has arrested more people for illegally crossing the southern border into the country than in any other period since the government started keeping count in 1960
• There are four main categories of immigrants in the U.S.
  • Legal immigrants
  • Undocumented Immigrants
  • Asylum seekers
  • Refugees
• The United States operates a number of special refugee programs to provide humanitarian relief to people who are unable to remain in their own country
• Currently, Ukrainians, Afghans, Venezuelans, Haitians, Somalis, and Sudanese are among nationalities eligible for entry into U.S. under special refugee programs.
• The Biden administration has admitted over 1 million people to the U.S. through humanitarian parole programs since 2021
• Individuals admitted under these programs are vetted and approved by the U.S. Embassy in their country before traveling to the U.S.
• They are generally admitted for two years, though they may apply to stay longer
• They are not eligible for permanent residence.
• Refugees admitted under these programs may receive government support
• Refugee admissions outside of the special programs are capped at 125,000 per year. In recent years the U.S. has admitted far fewer, including a low of 11,411 in 2019.  In 2023, the U.S. admitted 60,000 refugees. In 2024, the U.S. had admitted 68,000 refugees by the end of June.

Note: Since 2015 Donald Trump has made opposition to immigration the central theme of his presidential campaigns. No other presidential candidate has ever run such immigration-centered campaigns.

In 2015, when Donald Trump began his anti-immigration campaign, the number of illegal immigrants living and working in the U.S. had been about the same for nearly ten years. It is about the same now.  Undocumented immigrants were mostly workers, supporting local economies across the U.S. Other than political expediency, there was no particular reason to focus a presidential campaign on the issue of immigration.

Throughout his campaigns and presidency, Trump has maliciously scapegoated and demonized immigrants and during his term in office he took numerous steps to reduce the number of refugees legally accepted into the United States. At the same time, he did little to remove the millions of illegal immigrants already in the country that he falsely blamed for numerous problems. During each of his two terms, President Obama oversaw the deportation of more illegal immigrants than Donald Trump did in his term. At the same time, Trump did nothing to reform or improve the nation’s dysfunctional immigration system.

Trump’s 2024 campaign has been built on a foundation of lies about immigration. Despite Trump’s lies, it is important to know the truth: immigrants are not causing a rise in crime, they are not smuggling fentanyl into the U.S. No nation has sent mental patients and criminals to the United States. Immigrants are not bringing disease, they are not taking jobs from Americans, they are not the cause of inflation, they are not the cause of high housing costs, they are not taking all the beds in hospitals, they are not poisoning the blood of America, and they are not eating anyone’s pets. Instead, immigrants increase the supply of labor, which increases the supply of goods and services that people need; their consumption, entrepreneurship, and investment also increases the demand for labor, creating better-paying jobs for Americans elsewhere in the economy. Fundamentally, immigrants aren’t competitors. They are collaborators. Unfortunately, America’s immigration system fails to recognize this fact, leading to catastrophic consequences.

U.S. Economy

• The U.S. economy is a mixed economy, meaning that it combines elements of both capitalism and socialism. A mixed economy system protects private property rights and permits a certain level of economic liberty in capital utilization while also permitting government intervention in economic affairs to attain social objectives
• By just about every measure, the U.S. economy is in good shape. Inflation is back down, growth remains strong at 3%, unemployment is low at 4.1% with the U.S. having created almost 7 million more jobs than it had before the pandemic. The stock market is hitting all-time highs and the Federal Reserve has begun to cut interest rates.
• American workers remain the most productive in the world.
• But inflation and the resulting high prices have convinced many Americans that the economy is getting worse
• The U.S. economy is estimated at $26 trillion.
• The U.S. economy is the sum of economic decisions made each day by 330 million Americans and many millions of consumers, suppliers, and other persons in foreign nations.
• A combination of partisan media, political rhetoric, and voter’s lack of information about the economy lead many voters to believe that the president has considerable control of the U.S. economy. In fact, U.S. presidents have limited tools they they can use to make significant shifts in the U.S. economy.
• Business cycle fluctuations, natural disasters, technological changes, demographic changes, labor relations, and other uncontrollable factors determine much of the direction and strength of the U.S. economy.
• Through regulation, tax policy, the federal budget, and focused leadership, presidents can exert some influence on the U.S. economy. But results typically take years to become measurable and accurately identifying the impact of a small number of policy initiatives on an economy that responds to many thousands of variables is difficult.
• Though presidents have little ability to make large changes in the economy, they generally receive (and take) credit for good times and they are frequently blamed for difficult times.
• Donald Trump inherited a growing economy and did little to affect the ongoing economic trends.  If you examine charts of economic indicators including gross domestic product (GDP), unemployment, job creation, wages, manufacturing output, consumer confidence, and household income for the period 2010 through 2020 you will not see a noticeable change in these measures that corresponds to the change in administrations in 2017.
• COVID-19 in 2020 massively disrupted the U.S. economy.
• The U.S. has entered a period of increasing deficits in the federal budget resulting in a growing national debt.
• Total federal spending is about $7 trillion
• Sixty-six percent of federal spending is mandated by law to support various programs, including social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and some veteran’s programs
• Just 26 percent of federal spending is discretionary, and 42 percent of that is defense spending. The rest of the federal government is funded by the remaining 15 percent of federal spending.
• Defense spending is about 3% of GDP.  That’s the lowest it’s been since the data started being published around the Korean War.
• Foreign aid totals less than one percent of the federal budget
• The U.S. devotes 8 percent of all federal spending to interest payments in the debt.
• Money spent on interest payments cannot be spent on other needs

Inflation:

• Inflation has declined to the level that has historically been the nation’s inflation target
• While inflation (the change in prices) has been reduced, prices remain higher than they were several years ago and consumers remain dissatisfied
• Higher prices are unlikely to come down significantly (or we would still be paying 35 cents for a gallon of gasoline, as we did in 1970)
• Inflation from 2021 – 2023 had several main causes:
  • Persistently high federal deficits, including record deficits in 2020 and 2021
  • Trade War initiated in 2017 that reduced manufacturing production resulting in higher prices
  • In 2020 the U.S. and OPEC negotiated an agreement to reduce oil production, raising gasoline and heating oil prices
  • COVID-19 federal stimulus programs (two under President Trump, a third under President Biden)
  • Economic slowdown caused by COVID cut production, reduced trade, and disrupted supply lines. During COVID recovery, delay in return to full production and delay in rebuilding supply lines reduced supply of items while demand grew, boosting inflation
  • Worker shortages in post-COVID period led to higher wages, boosting inflation
• Inflation was a known risk when stimulus payments were being designed, but the risk was considered acceptable as the alternative was a possible economic collapse

Deficits/Debt

• Deficits are the amount the federal government spends above revenues each year
• Debt is the cumulative sum of all of the annual deficits and surpluses
• The last time the U.S. had a budget surplus was 1998-2000
• Deficits are typically helpful during periods of economic downturn
• Deficits should be reduced as much as possible during times of economic expansion
• Donald Trump was the first president in U.S. history to increase the deficit during each year of his presidency

Social Security/Medicare

• Funds collected via payroll tax are deposited into trust funds for Social Security and Medicare
• Neither program currently collects sufficient tax revenue to pay out current benefits
• Shortfalls are made up by drawing down the Trust Funds, which previously had collected more in payroll taxes from workers than was paid out to beneficiaries. Today, the programs are paying more to beneficiaries than they are collecting in payroll taxes
• Social Security Trust Fund will be depleted around 2035
• Medicare Trust Fund will be depleted in 2036
• Social Security will continue to pay benefits out of current revenues, but benefits will likely be decreased by 20 percent
• Medicare will be able to pay 89 percent of expected benefits
• Neither Congress nor any administration has “stolen” money from Social Security Trust Fund
• By law, trust fund surpluses have been invested in U.S. bonds, but those bonds are sold when trust fund monies are needed to pay benefits
• Replenishing the trust funds will require additional revenue, benefit cuts, or a combination of the two.  It should not be difficult to devise an appropriate formula, but so far Congress has lacked the political will.

Tariffs:

• Tariffs are fees paid by the importer
• Costs of tariffs are frequently passed on the customers in form of higher prices
• No foreign nation pays tariffs
• As the cost of imported products rise, domestic producers often raise prices to match
• Foreign nations frequently retaliate with tariffs of their own, reducing U.S. exports and costing U.S. jobs
• Tariffs cannot be relied on as a stable revenue source. If they succeed in reducing imports that reduction will reduce the revenue produced

Crime:

• We have lived through the largest drop in crime in U.S. history (1990-2014)
• No one knows for sure what caused the crime decline
• Crime rose sharply in 2020 but has been declining since
• The actual (root) causes of crime are complex and multi-dimensional
• Crime data is unreliable
  • An unknown percentage of crimes are unreported
  • Police data is not always reported or is misreported
• Crime is highly concentrated (people and place)
  • A very small fraction of people commit a disproportionate amount of crime
  • A very small number of places account for a disproportionate amount of crime
• The idea of a national crime rate is a myth. It implies that every person in the United States has an equal likelihood of becoming a crime victim. Intuitively we know this is not true. Everybody knows the high and low crime areas of their own community
• The federal government and the president have few tools available to influence crime rates
• Law enforcement, the courts, and other elements of the criminal justice system are entirely controlled by local governments. Federal law enforcement agencies have limited jurisdiction and federal courts handle primarily federal crimes. The Department of Justice historically provides limited oversight of local law enforcement agencies, but DOJ’s influence is limited.
• Congress may pass legislation that provides funding to local law enforcement.
• Preventive patrol is ineffective at reducing crime. Foot patrol is no better – though residents reported feeling safer.
• But targeted policing (persons, places, types of crime, victims) can be effective
• Police are not rewarded for reducing crime

November 3, 2024

image: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53558176