Presidential Count

    TV networks are saying that if Donald Trump wins today, he will be the only president to serve two non-consecutive terms.
   Not so.
   Grover Cleveland served as both the 22d and the 24th president (1885-89, 1893-97), having been elected in 1884 but defeated four years later by Benjamin Harrison, even though his popular vote was larger. (Source: The World Almanac, 2011 edition.)
   So winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote is not new. The key to taking a White House post is winning the electoral vote, which is a total of the number of House and Senate representatives from each state. That combined number totals 535.
   This is how George Walker Bush took the presidency in 2001, through a court challenge of a single state's vote so he could gather its electoral vote despite having lost the popular vote.
   That's also why Donald Trump put so much effort into persuading a single state to change its electoral count. The reality is that he lost the popular vote but succeeded isn manipulating the electoral vote in order to take offce. Four years later, he lost both counts. Nevertheless, he remains in denial that he lost re-election.
   So who will be the next president of the United States? We will not really know for several weeks, while the votes are being counted and gathered. And officially, we won't know until Congress accepts the vote of the electoral college in January.

Trim Government

"That government is best that governs least."

                               -- Henry David Thoreau

"All men are created equal." -- Declaration of Independence

"Some are more equal than others." 

                            -- Animal Farm, by George Orwell

   It's time to trim government, say Republicans, as they have insisted for many decades. It's time to cut back on government aid, they add, especially to those who don't deserve it, because this only takes away from families who have earned their wealth over many generations, and prevents them from passing it on to their own friends and family.
   Some in this legion say the best government is no government. Barring that extreme, they would settle for minimal government, with only a few representatives to control the larger population.
   Been there, done that.
   In other nations, it's called a dictatorship. In America, it was called government by a few to represent the many. In the beginning of the republic, voting was limited to the few white men. Enslaved Blacks and women were not included, as were those who could not pass the designated literacy test. But in many parts of the nation, the reading test was used mainly against former slaves. Others were often not tested, and were free to vote even as their literate friends helped them with their ballots.
   In his time, Henry David Thoreau referred to ordinary citizens. But in more modern times, business executives used the same theory to support their demand that government leave them alone so they can deal with workers as they chose.
   They often paid workers as little as they chose, and demanded high prices for groceries at company-owned stores. Result: Workers wound up in debt to their employer, with the danger of losing their jobs and being unable to find another as executives passed the word of any protest.
   In defense of their own interests, workers united.
   Now we are engaged in great civil unrest, testing whether this nation can long endure the treatment of the many by the few who put their own interests above that of the nation as an independent whole.
   Will the nation endure?
   Stay tuned.