Counts We Should Care About

So with President Trump (still interesting to be saying that) working his 18-hour days already breaking down regulations that choke USA business, even meeting with private-sector union leaders, the press is desperately trying to delegitimize his presidency before he gets anything done.

Accordingly, they are picking at pimples while Trump is out there trying to make America great again.  I refer you, of course, to the flap about the number of people who physically attended the inauguration on Friday.

Now, I admit that I don't actually know how many people attended; I just know that from the shots seen from cameras behind the president as he spoke, the National Mall was crowded with people.  I know that from my comfortable couch here at home, hundreds of miles away from downtown DC, I was glad I was not there.  In fact, had I lived closer, I still wouldn't have gone.  The Obama presidency has left us fearful to be in public, at risk of our lives with ISIS terrorists all over the place.

And that's before he surreptitiously sent $221 million of taxpayer money to the Palestinians a few hours before leaving office.  You probably missed that.

But I digress.

I was "there" at the inauguration even though I was not "there."  I was there metaphorically, gladly watching the reins of power being handed peacefully (except for the leftist thugs in the streets) from a socialist to someone who actually gets it.  So add me and my Best Girl to the list of those who might as well have been on the Mall.

But the press insists on comparing the crowds of Donald Trump 2016 to Barack Obama 2008, as if it is a measure of Trump's legitimacy.  Hmmm.  Donald Trump's electoral victory was historic, but only in the sense of a "return to power" to the people, as represented by a man who never had taken a government paycheck; taken back from the far left, taken back from the establishment of both parties.  We cheer, but it doesn't mean that we're going to risk our lives by going to DC, even protected by bikers.

Barack Obama, though, well, his "historic" election was different.  He was elected for two reasons -- first, because he was not George W. Bush, and second, because he was biracial.  Neither was valid as a rationale, of course.  Now, you had to expect that the Democrats had a really good chance of winning the presidency in 2008 (see reason #1) with anyone, but let's face it -- Barack Obama doesn't get to sniff the nomination if his father weren't black.

Obama had zero track record; he had been a state legislator (mostly voting "present") for a little while, then a senator from Illinois (mostly voting "present" when he was around to vote) who spent most of his time representing the good people of Illinois by running for president.  In other words, he had accomplished nothing, but was able to wrest the nomination from the even-then-entitled Hillary Clinton.

On no track record whatsoever.

So when you saw however many people attended his inaugural, you realize that a man who got elected solely because he was biracial was appealing to the kind of people, of all races, the kind who too-quickly judge you on the color of your skin, not the content of your, in this case "socialistic", character.  And those people will jam a rally even if they're not paid to be there.

Oh yeah, plus, a lot of those folks live in Washington, DC, who regularly elect incompetent or corrupt leadership.  They'll show up, all right.

So ... I guess as the foo-foo about the crowd count heated up, I started mind-wandering over to some crowds I'm looking forward to seeing now.  Crowds, I think, that are far more important and relevant to measuring the success of the USA.  Crowds such as:

- Crowds in lines for jobs outside the factories that are being built, expanded or returned to the USA as President Trump makes it more and more profitable to build products here as opposed to Mexico or China

- Crowds of radical Islamist terrorists repopulating the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as they're yanked off the battlefield by our brave men and women in uniform, and removed from killing innocent civilians

- Crowds of illegal immigrant criminals being unceremoniously returned through the border whence they came, hopefully through a special gate in The Wall, the wall that the president is able to get built as soon as possible

- Crowds of moms and pops in line on their state websites to open up new businesses, finally able to get funding for their enterprises from banks as the shackles of the onerous Dodd-Frank law are pulled off and the equally onerous, business-killing CFPB is dissolved.

And there's one other crowd, though it will take a couple years, maybe.  That's the pile of checks for tax revenues coming into the government from new businesses and newly-employed Americans, as the dissolution of so many regulations and regulatory barriers allows business to start, to create jobs and to hire.  This could resemble the 50% increase in tax revenues that occurred in the few years after the Reagan tax cuts of 1981-82, or it could, given the increase in business starts, higher.

Now, those are the crowds that actually are worth monitoring.

Copyright 2017 by Robert Sutton
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