Letter from Neil Winton in America – batten down the hatches, lockup your daughters, Trump is going to win

Letter from Neil Winton in America – batten down the hatches, lockup your daughters, Trump is going to win.

    KENNEBUNKPORT, ME – The FBI’s explosive decision to reopen the Hillary Clinton email investigation is a fatal blow to her campaign, and means Donald Trump will be taking up residence in the White House in January.

    Before you start wringing your hands and dusting down the nuclear war refuge, it is a good time to find out exactly what The Donald will do as President, and what we can dismiss as hyperbole and bluster.

    His main policy claim on the stump is to cut taxes on regular citizens, and on corporation tax to 15% from the current penal 35%. This would make it much easier for the likes of Google and Apple to bring back huge profits to the U.S. which had been left abroad to avoid unfair tax. No argument that this on its own would provide a huge boost to the U.S. economy. He wants to stop the so-called Common Core educational straitjacket and allow charter schools, which are a bit like Michael Gove’s free schools. He wants more vigorous security checks on Muslim immigrants from dodgy areas, and to restore the traditional U.S. immigration policy which restricted incomers to those with qualifications wanted by American industry. At the moment it is an open door to anyone and particularly those with little education likely to vote for the party of free stuff, the Democrats. He would spend more on the military.

    So far, not much not to like I’d say.

    Dubious
    Then there are his more dubious claims like building the wall and making Mexico pay, plus clamping down on free trade agreements like the NAFTA one with Mexico and Canada. I would suggest these are more to please the crowds than serious policy suggestions. It is impossible to deny that many lower income Americans have suffered severe income depletion because of the influx of unskilled immigrants, and it is easy to show that many jobs in the automotive industry have gone to foreign countries, so Trump is leaning on an open door here. But would a highly successful business man seriously be against free trade, which everyone with half a brain (that excludes leftists and unionists and not Hillary Clinton in a previous life) knows provides huge benefits to all involved? I have my doubts that Trump is seriously against free trade, but that is more of hunch than a fact.

    So what would voting for Hillary Clinton give us? Higher taxes for all, more regulation to strangle economic development, tinkering with Obamacare which Trump has pledged to dump, the death of coal, hugely higher energy bills. More unfunded spending; no stop to the burgeoning national debt. Her foreign policy would be more of the same which gave us Libya, Syria, Iraq, Iran nukes and ISIS. Hillary is talking about “free” college education and “free” health care, but with the national debt at around $20 trillion and rising, this is just fantasy. She has been recorded saying she wants an open door immigration policy.

    Nothing much to like there.

    FBI torpedo
    You might wonder why I’m so sure Trump will win. The answer is, I’m not sure enough to bet the house, but I believe he can do it. Before the FBI set off that torpedo to the heart of the Hillary campaign, the polls were closing, and the Trump campaign was always relying on the idea that he would be propelled to the White House by the poor and oppressed who don’t usually vote, but who see this unpolitician as someone who listens to them. The FBI action means this trickle will become an avalanche of voters for Trump, not least because it makes real his off repeated claim that she is “crooked Hillary”. His bluster has become gospel, thanks to the FBI and to the chagrin of Obama appointee and Clintonista Loretta Lynch, Attorney General.

    Hillary whines that the FBI action is unprecedented and unfair, but without knowing all the facts it is likely that its operatives did pick up incriminating information and they had this choice. Release it now and suffer Clinton ire. Or wait until after the election and be accused of being corrupt Clintonistas and keeping crucial information from the electorate which could sway an election. Hobson’s choice really. After the way it handled this investigation previously, letting Hillary off the hook when anyone else would be in jail, if the FBI was to retain anything of its reputation it had to bite the bullet now. Time will tell if I’m right or not.

    Stop early voting
    Another massive issue to come out of this campaign is early voting. To me early voting, like postal voting, is a huge blight on democracy. How can a sensible citizen vote in a campaign until they have listened to all of it? How would you feel if you’d voted for Hillary last Thursday, then listened to FBI reopening its probe the next day? It is an affront to democracy and the sooner it stops the better.

    But the bottom line in this election campaign is this (and I don’t have a vote). In the next 4 years there will be important additions to the Supreme Court. If the Democrats and Hillary get in, this most crucial of U.S. institutions will get a Liberal lefty majority, and that will mean the end of the U.S. as we have known it – a bastion of freedom and an example to the world that improving living standards for all its citizens, free speech and the open society are best served by adhering to the principles set down by the Founding Fathers.   

    I’m not actually in Kennebunkport, Maine now, but I was there about 3 weeks ago and it is such an irresistible dateline, isn’t it?    

    Tune into my tweets on @neilwinton1 for a clear view of what’s going on with Trump versus Clinton.