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Thinkwing Radio with Mike Honig (@ThinkwingRadio), a listener call-in show  airing live every Monday night from 9-10 PM (CT) on KPFT-FM 90.1 (Houston). My engineer is Bob Gartner.

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For the purposes of this show, I operate on two mottoes:

• You’re entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts;
  

  Houston Mayor Annise Parker [L] with Mike, just before the show. (Dec. 7, 2015)

• An educated electorate is a prerequisite for a democracy.

SIGNOFF QUOTE[s]: “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., an American jurist and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1902 to 1932 (Reportedly first said by Holmes in a speech in 1904, alternately phrased as “Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, including the chance to insure“, Compania General De Tabacos De Filipinas v. Collector of Internal Revenue, 275 U.S. 87, 100, dissenting; opinion (21 November 1927). The first variation is quoted by the IRS above the entrance to their headquarters at 1111 Constitution Avenue.)

 

 

 

1. ACA (aka OBAMACARE): Healthcare.gov

   1. 2018 Open Enrollment runs from Nov 1 – Dec 15. Are you ready?

      1. NEXT WEEK (11/20) TENTATIVE: My good friend, writer, author, political and military commentator, etc – David W. Brown. This will be unusual in that even though I’ll have a guest, it will be open forum.
      2. TWO WEEKS 11/27 (TENTATIVE): We may be talking about what is involved in getting your loved one into assisted living, as distinct from either retirement living or a nursing home.
2. ACA (aka OBAMACARE): Healthcare.gov
   1. 1-800-318-2596 Available 24/7 days a week (except holidays)
   2. 2018 Open Enrollment runs from Nov 1 – Dec 15. Are you ready?
3. Tax “Reform”:
   1. What is “Middle Class vs. Middle Income vs. Median Income
      1. What ‘middle class’ means in every US state – Business Insider – www.businessinsider.com/middle-class-in-every-us-state-2015-4, Apr 2, 2015 – “Middle class” is a tricky concept. Depending on where you live, you can feel middle class earning as much as $250,000 a year — about five times the US median income of $52,250 from the same time period. In this analysis, Pew defined middle class households as those earning 67%-200% of a state’s median income.
      2. Which Income Class Are You?, By Joao Alhanati [INVESTOPEDIA.COM] Updated September 17, 2017 — 1:46 PM EDT
   2. The median household income in the U.S. is $59,039 according to the most recent government data. Approximately half of all Americans will fall below this household income amount, and the other half will fall above.
   3. At the top of the income classes is the upper class. There is no single definition of whom this includes. Many think of the upper class in terms of the 1%. To be in the richest 1% nationally, a household needs to have the annual income of at least $389,436, according to the Economic Policy Institute
   4. According to census data from 2015, 6.1% of households bring in $200,000 and higher every year and 14.1% bring in between $100,000 and $150,000. This is the upper middle class.
   5. An Urban Institute paper argued that what they referred to as upper middle class, or those with a three-person household income between $100,000 and $350,000, has grown from 12.9% of the population in 1979 to 29.4% in 2014.
   6. The Census Bureau says that 41.5% of American households brought in between $35,000 and $100,000 in 2015. Twenty-six percent of American households earn more than that and 32% earn less.
   7. there’s one more group in the middle class. Those belonging to the lower middle class do not live in poverty, but they are often one misfortune away from being hurtled below the poverty line. Brookings Institution defined this group as including those with income between 100 and 250% of the federal poverty level, or between $18,871 and $47,177 for a family of three,
   8. The Census Bureau estimates that about 14% of the U.S. population (approximately 43 million people) live below the poverty line and fall into this class today.
   9. The current official poverty threshold is an income of $24,257 per year for a family of four and $18,871 for a family of three.
4. A refresher for all of us that words matter: “Choose Your Words – mean/ median/ average
   1. Let’s say we have a set of numbers: 11, 23, 30, 47. 56
      33. The mean, sometimes called the arithmetic mean, of this set is 33. The mean is the sum of all the numbers in the set (167) divided by the amount of numbers in the set (5).
   2. The median is the middle point of a number set, in which half the numbers are above the median and half are below. In our set above, the median is 30.
   3. But what if your number set has an even number of, er, numbers:11, 23, 30, 47, 52, 56
   4. To calculate the median here, add the two middle numbers (30 + 47) and divide by 2. The median for our new list is 38.5.
   5. So far, so good. But what about average? The average of a set of numbers is the same as its mean; they’re synonyms.
   6. So the terms we need to worry about are Mean/Average on one hand and Median on the other.
5. An American Journalist Is Facing A Felony Trial This Week — In The United States – A photojournalist facing a criminal trial on several felony charges sounds like something that would happen in another country. So this article is written in the style that would be used if it did, By Ryan J. Reilly and Christopher Mathias [huffingtonpost.com] 11/19/2017 09:29 pm ET, Updated 6 minutes ago
   1. Editor’s note: Taking a cue from Slate, this article describes an American news story — the virtually unprecedented prosecution of nearly 200 protesters on felony charges — using language the American media typically reserves for news stories written about more repressive countries. Felony charges against American journalists are jarring. Our approach to this story is meant to be as well.
   2. WASHINGTON — An American photojournalist swept up in a mass arrest of hundreds of demonstrators conducted by security forces in the nation’s capital earlier this year during a protest of a regime change ceremony will face a criminal trial here Monday.
   3. Alexei Wood, a 37-year-old freelance photojournalist based in the American southwest, has been charged with multiple felonies. If found guilty, he could face decades inside a mammoth prison system in the world’s most incarcerated nation.
   4. Wood was one of more than 200 citizens captured en masse by police forces quelling demonstrations held at the same time as President Donald Trump’s inauguration. Just weeks before, the tough-talking real estate magnate and reality television star shocked the nation’s political class when his rightward, populist campaign beat out that of a candidate from America’s predominant center-left political dynasty.
6. Sex and Politics: Where’s the boundary between innocent and inappropriate?
   1. DAVID W. BROWN: “…Roy Moore [is] the future of GOP. I’ve long said that whoever comes after Trump will take all of the lessons learned and go hard, because unlike trump they won’t have a big tv platform. Roy Moore is the apotheosis of that. All of trump’s negatives, and doing EVERYTHING trump did in campaign. Media war, outrageous statements, overt racism etc. And it’s working!!! Despite evidence of pedophilia!! The next republican candidate for president will follow that model exactly.”
   2. If Roy Moore shot someone to death in the middle of 5^th Ave, would La Gov. Kaye Ivey still vote for him.
   3. Donald Trump, Louie CK, Al Franken, Charlie Rose, Kevin Spacey, Jeffrey Tambor,
      1. Charlie Rose suspended by CBS, PBS, Bloomberg after sexual misconduct allegations, EW.com Nov. 20, 2017
         1. Related Coverage: Eight women say Charlie Rose sexually harassed them — with nudity, groping and lewd calls
7. Pedo-Groping-gate
   1. The list is growing
   2. Roy Moore (R-Sen Candidate, AL)
      1. New woman accuses Moore of sexual misconduct when she was a minor, By Jenna Johnson and Robert Costa By Jenna Johnson and Robert Costa [WASHINGTON POST] November 13, 2017 at 4:41 PM
         1. Beverly Young Nelson, now 55, said Monday that she got to know Moore, now 70, in the late 1970s when she was a waitress at the Old Hickory House restaurant in the northeastern Alabama town of Gadsden
         2. On a cold night about a week or two after that, Nelson alleges that Moore offered to give her a ride home from work after her shift ended at 10 p.m. Instead of taking her home, Nelson said that Moore pulled the two-door car into a dark and deserted area between a dumpster and the back of the restaurant.
         3. When she asked what he was doing, Nelson alleges that Moore put his hands on her breasts and began groping her. When she tried to open the car door and leave, Nelson said he reached over and locked the door. When she yelled at him to stop and tried to fight him off, she alleges that he tightly squeezed the back of her neck and tried to force her head toward his lap. He also tried to pull her shirt off, she said.
8. How Japan’s youth see the kamikaze pilots of WW2, By Mariko Oi (BBC.COM) 3-November 2017
   1. During World War Two, thousands of Japanese pilots volunteered to be kamikaze, suicidally crashing their planes in the name of their emperor. More than 70 years on, the BBC’s Mariko Oi asks what these once revered men mean to Japan’s youth.
   2. Irrational, heroic and stupid: this was what three young people in Tokyo said when I asked them about their views on the kamikaze….
   3. It is difficult to verify the figures, but it is believed that 3-4,000 Japanese pilots crashed their planes into an enemy target on purpose.
   4. Only 10% of missions were believed to be successful but they sank some 50 Allied vessels.
9. Would you fight for your country? A survey of several countries in 2015 by Win/Gallup found that 11% of Japanese people would be prepared to fight for their country.

1. • Pakistan: 89%
   • India: 75%
   • Turkey: 73%
   • China: 71%
   • Russia: 59%
   • US: 44%
   • UK: 27%
   • Japan: 11%

   What do belts around Proxima Centauri mean for exoplanet research?, By John Wenz  |  Published: Friday, November 03, 2017 [http://www.astronomy.com]

2. TV Talk:
   1. “The Good Place”
   2. “The Orville”
   3. “Adam Ruins Everything”

TOPICS FROM PREVIOUS WEEKS:

 

LINKS:

• Emoluments Clause of the Constitution (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia):
  1. The Ineligibility Clause, one of the two clauses often called the Emoluments Clause,^[1][2] and sometimes also referred to as the Incompatibility Clause^[3] or the Sinecure Clause,^[4] is found in Article 1, Section 6, Clause 2 of the United States Constitution. It places limitations upon the employment of members of Congress and prohibits employees of the Executive Branch from serving in Congress during their terms in office. The name “Ineligibility Clause” is only used by a minority of writers, as compared to the name “Emoluments Clause”.^[1][2][5]
  2. The clause states: “No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States, which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time; and no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office.”
• Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The Twenty-fifth Amendment (Amendment XXV) to the United States Constitution deals with succession to the Presidency and establishes procedures both for filling a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, as well as responding to Presidential disabilities. It supersedes the ambiguous wording of Article II, Section 1, Clause 6 of the Constitution, which does not expressly state whether the Vice President becomes the President or Acting President if the President dies, resigns, is removed from office or is otherwise unable to discharge the powers of the presidency.^[1] The Twenty-fifth Amendment was adopted on February 10, 1967.^[2]

• 1. Section 1. In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.
  2. Section 2. Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.
  3. Section 3. Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.
  4. Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
  5. Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.^[3]

 SOURCES WHICH MAY BE RELEVANT TO OTHER DISCUSSION:

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1. Four Freedoms, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Four Freedoms were goals articulated by United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt on January 6, 1941. In an address known as the Four Freedoms speech (technically the 1941 State of the Union address), he proposed four fundamental freedoms that people “everywhere in the world” ought to enjoy:
   1. Freedom of speech
   2. Freedom of worship
   3. Freedom from want
   4. Freedom from fear
   5. Roosevelt delivered his speech 11 months before the United States declared war on Japan, December 8, 1941. The State of the Union speech before Congress was largely about the national security of the United States and the threat to other democracies from world war that was being waged across the continents in the eastern hemisphere. In the speech, he made a break with the tradition of United States non-interventionism that had long been held in the United States. He outlined the U.S. role in helping allies already engaged in warfare.

• Differences between Liberals, Conservatives, Libertarians and neo-Conservatives
  • Left–right politics, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    • History of the terms: The terms “left” and “right” appeared during the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution to his left. One deputy, the Baron de Gauville, explained, “We began to recognize each other: those who were loyal to religion and the king took up positions to the right of the chair so as to avoid the shouts, oaths, and indecencies that enjoyed free rein in the opposing camp.” However the Right opposed the seating arrangement because they believed that deputies should support private or general interests but should not form factions or political parties. The contemporary press occasionally used the terms “left” and “right” to refer to the opposing sides.^[9]
  • Greens and Libertarians: The yin and yang of our political future, by Dan Sullivan (originally appearing in Green Revolution, Volume 49, No. 2, summer, 1992)
    • … Libertarians tend to be logical and analytical. They are confident that their principles will create an ideal society, even though they have no consensus of what that society would be like. Greens, on the other hand, tend to be more intuitive and imaginative. They have clear images of what kind of society they want, but are fuzzy about the principles on which that society would be based.
    • Ironically, Libertarians tend to be more utopian and uncompromising about their political positions, and are often unable to focus on politically winnable proposals to make the system more consistent with their overall goals. Greens on the other hand, embrace immediate proposals with ease, but are often unable to show how those proposals fit in to their ultimate goals.
    • The most difficult differences to reconcile, however, stem from baggage that members of each party have brought with them from their former political affiliations. Most Libertarians are overly hostile to government and cling to the fiction that virtually all private fortunes are legitimately earned. Most Greens are overly hostile to free enterprise and cling to the fiction that harmony and balance can be achieved through increased government intervention.
    • Amongst published researchers, there is agreement that the Left includes anarchists, communists, socialists, progressives, anti-capitalists, anti-imperialists, anti-racists, democratic socialists, greens, left-libertarians, social democrats, and social liberals.^[5][6][7]
    • Researchers have also said that the Right includes capitalists, conservatives, monarchists, nationalists, neoconservatives, neoliberals, reactionaries, imperialists, right-libertarians, social authoritarians, religious fundamentalists, and traditionalists.^[8]

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