LyrArc Article Gist
The US is facing a new pattern of demographic changes and their impact on Medicare and Social Security programs. The number of people on Medicare will grow in 2 decades, 2010- 2030, from 47 million to 80 million for Medicare, and from 44 million to 73 million for Social Security, according to this estimate. The workforce will grow more slowly and the tax base wiill shrink accordingly during this period. This pending worker-pensioner imbalance and the jump in the cost of the bill for Medicare and Medicaid, as well as the federal health benefit for poor people, create a major problem for the US. At the same time the group of people over 65 will rise in these 2 decades from 17% of the voting age population to 26%. This group and the people who expect to soon join this group will resist any changes to Medicare or Social Security programs, making it that much harder for the political process to tackle these issues to make the programs sustainable in the long run.

LyrArc Article Gist
The Biden Infrastructure plan aims to put $400 billion into home healthcare for seniors shifting away from hospitals and institutions. By 2030 one in every five people will be at retirement age in the US, as the aging population surges. Studies show seniors can - if supported by services and the resources allocated by the government - live better quality lives at home for an extended period in retirement. This is an important issue for seniors and the Biden administration after the pandemic.

LyrArc Article Gist
Efforts to bring better wages and conditions to fast food business  through a law passed by Governor Newsom in California, to bring upward mobility and integration into the mainstream of society for millions of American families and children being opposed by McDonald's and Starbucks. Current wages are $15 a week which would bring a typical fast food worker $30,000 a year for a 40 hour week for 50 weeks. The poverty level for a family of five is $32,470 on the Healthcare.gov site for the USA. Are fast food business corporations saying that children of these families should be kept forever at below the poverty level set by the American government? Why? Are they saying that labor is subordinate to capital? Are they then going to go further to say that upward mobility shall forever be denied to millions of children in these families? On what grounds? Republicans say they are the party of Lincoln. Something more- What did Lincoln fight the Civil war for? The plantation economy of the South also denied labour and children of labour the rights of upward mobility. How did Lincoln win the civil war? By speaking up for the rights of free men everywhere in a land of abundant land and new future. "This is essentially a People's contest. On the side of the Union it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form and substance and government, whose leading object is to elevate the condition of men- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders- to clear the path of laudable pursuit for all- to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance in the race of life. Yielding to partial, and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existence we contend." July 4, 1861, Special Message to a special session of the US Congress. "Our adversaries have adopted some Declarations of Independence; in which unlike the old one, penned by Jefferson, they omit the words " all men are created equal."  Why? They have adopted a temporary national constitution, in the preamble of which unlike our  good old one signed by Washington, they omit "We, the People" and substitute "We, the deputies of the sovereign and independent States." Why? Why this deliberate pressing out of view, the rights of men and the authority of the people?"   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
 This message from Pope Francis is especially relevant today during coronavirus. Francis says of the mistaken priorities of today away from healthcare, education, infrastructure and "coherence" in society and the pain and hardship this is causing in society, there is much that can give people thought to reflect on. Francis  new book, "Let us Dream: The Path To a Better Future" will be out December 1. "If we are to come out of this crisis less selfish than when we went in, we have to let ourselves be touched by others’ pain." He cites a line in Friedrich Hölderlin’s “Hyperion” that speaks to him, about how the danger that threatens in a crisis is never total; there’s always a way out, that where the danger is, also God plants the saving power, a way out. And not simply a way out, God also gives human beings a chance to grasp for and hold onto renewal if only one makes the endeavour. As it says in the Bhagavad Gita God gives man a chance to warm himself near the fire, only those who make the effort to go to the fire can feel the warmth, it is a choice man has to make. And again God says in the Bhagavad Gita that he is not partial to any man. Ever since the global financial crisis hurt working families in the middle and lower classes hard in 2009 because of banks misbehaviour and greed, Pope Francis has called for countries in the western world to heed his warnings about the dangers of greed and corruption to us all. Even George Washington warned of this in his inaugural address, so the warnings are not new. Reminding people once again he says "we cannot return to the false securities of the political and economic systems we had before the pandemic. We need economies that give to all access to the fruits of creation, to the basic needs of life: to land, lodging and labor. We need a politics that can integrate and dialogue with the poor, the excluded and the vulnerable, that gives people a say in the decisions that affect their lives. We need to slow down, take stock and design better ways of living together on this earth." The pandemic has exposed the paradox that while we are more connected, we are also more divided. Francis is never tired of warning that the present political and economic structures and people who staff them have not felt others pain, so he reminds us it is hard to build a culture of encounter in which we meet as people with a shared dignity, within a throwaway culture that regards the well-being of the elderly, the unemployed, the disabled and the unborn as peripheral to our own well-being. Where only self preservation counts. Francis reminds us of the Christian concept that no one is saved alone. This is not just an abstract concept. When Francis was only 18 years and a second year student he was admitted to a Buenos Aires hospital for a severe respiratory disease, so severe that he lost a part of his lungs. He remembers the day August 13, 1957. He understands this pandemic from personal experience. He knows what it is like to be on a ventilator. Surgeons removed the upper right lobe of his lung. Francis struggled to breathe. He was  saved Francis says not even by the doctors, but by a Dominican sister, a senior ward matron, who had been a teacher in Athens before being sent to Buenos Aires. She understood that Francis was dying and after the doctors left asked the nurse to double the prescription dose of penicillin and streptomycin. Sister Cornelia Caraglio, knew better than the doctors from her regular contacts with sick people what they needed, and she had the courage to act on that knowledge.      ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Southport killings in the UK where a delinquent 17 year old youth attacked children leading to riots in the UK in 2024 has led to a public inquiry. 

Terrorism was previously dominated by terrorist groups, yet the new threat Starmer says was of “acts of extreme violence perpetrated by loners, misfits, young men in their bedroom, accessing all manner of material online, desperate for notoriety. Sometimes inspired by traditional terrorist groups. But fixated on that extreme violence, seemingly for its own sake.” 

Experts say there have been a number of such attacks before in Reading in 2022, and in the killing of a Tory MP. Neil Basu, former head of Counter Terrorism UK says when he retired in 2021, the “mixed, unclear or unstable” suspect category — someone who did not align with a particular ideology but was set on violent activity was about 40 per cent of casework.

LyrArc Article Gist
There is only one way to interpret this. Putin and Russian influence have calmed down the Israel Iran war. DJT opening up discussions and talking to both Russia and China has created a sense in both countries that their vital interests are with the US, China on a trade agreement with the US, and Russia for a settlement of the Ukraine war on terms that it sees as fair. There is the issue of nuclear non-proliferation on which US, Russia, China, India, Germany and the EU, and the rest of the world are in agreement which meant action to end Iran's nuclear program. Putin met with Iranian Foreign Minister and looked for a way to end the war. Putin said: “This gives us a chance to…think together about how it would be possible to get out of this situation,” said Putin. From the point of view of a safer planet Biden's period of not talking to China during the balloon incident, and not talking to Russia with a single minded focus on Ukraine conflict, can be seen as not the way a responsible world power should act. DJT's emphasis to end the wars in the Middle East yet standing firm on Israel's right to exist and the non proliferation of nuclear weapons, and working to end the war on Ukraine by puting pressure on all countries, is proving to be an approach that gives all world powers a chance to reflect truly on their obligations to their peoples and the people of the world. To keep their and the world's sanity and composure while pursuing national aspirations. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
 WSJ interviews Burton Malkiel 50 years after Malkiel published "A Random Walk on Wall Street," putting forward the efficient market hypothesis. That hypothesis he says is till more true than ever, that the market senses information and reflects what that information says in the stock price. This means one would do better than active investors by investing in an index that reflected the broader stock market with a wide ranging basket of stocks that reflected it. By 1974 Vanguard's Bogle started the first index fund for passive investing. It did not gain support till 2 decades later, yet today half of all US investing is in index funds. Malkiel supports the index fund investment and says equities play an important role even in retirement, and says the next decade will give returns closer to 5-6% for equities. He says the important thing is not fancy shots just hitting the ball back, not making mistakes. 

LyrArc Article Gist
Make no mistake president Biden is saying it is America's, and India's turn to reinvent the semiconductor industry with government capital support, and with the zeal and inventive capabilities of the US and India. This interview by Ben Cohen gives a glimpse of how Morris Chang now 92 years sees the founding of Taiwan Semiconductor in 1985 in retrospect in 2024. He talks about his early life in the US as an immigrant from China after 1949 and his work at Texas Instruments learning about the semiconductor industry. In the 1980's Japan was the rising industrial nation in semiconductors. By 1985 Intel which dominated memory chips faced challenges in quality and cost and cheap capital from Japanese capital markets encouraging exports. By 1988 Japan took over the market. What Morris Chang is not telling is that Chang already had the Japanese example in 1985. If Japan could do it on all three fronts quality, cheap capital with government assistance, and ten year effort Chang and Taiwan could do this and accomplished this which it has done. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Fed announced that it will review compensation policies of 28 of the large complex banking organizations in the USA. The review will be an horizontal one that compares them to each other. The other significant move is that the Fed wants to see employees who take greater risks and use large amounts of borrowed money, to receive negative points in evaluating how well they have done, and consequently to be compensated less than other employees who earn money for banking firms while controlling the risks associated with transactions. This ties in with the discussions at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, where the Europeans pushed for tighter regulation on bonuses and pay, to control the excessive risktaking of banking firms. This is because the prevailing culture in global financial institutions is a high risk high return culture, which ignores the social consequences of bad decisions. There is no cost to individuals taking the risks on other people's money, and regulations discouraging risk are not in place. The question remains, is this an adequate response to prevent future crises, or too little too late? If the banking community does not see it this way, and financial regulation is watered down in Congress- see the links to this- then it will much like Don Quixote swinging at windmills. In this sense the title of this piece is a misnomer, as the Fed has not hit banks with sweeping pay limits. It only said it would review pay practices. It is jawboning of the mild kind to show the public something is done. See Paul Volcker's point that pay practices would adjust and desirable goal of less risktaking and reasonable salaries would be achieved by separating deposit taking banks from banks engaged in trading activities. Similiarly, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, made the point recently that the biggest banks should be broken up. That is supported by the intuitive sense of experts that banks engaged with depositors should be engaged in the social functions of society, lending and supporting economic activity, and the trading desks of investment banks should operate entirely separately from this. One should be insulated from the other. In this sense there is a bit of evasion in these actions. A Wall Street capture of regulatory activity continues, of regulators and senior economic advisors in the administration, as the coziness between the two lingers on from a previous era of deregulation. This has the potential to cost the country and the global economy dearly in another crisis, and the jobless and young jobless people especially. In this economy both in Europe and the USA, the jobless young have been left with the least hope. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Shiller points out that statistical models used by economists can't quantify the risk of a double-dip recession. Confidence indexes show gradual trends so they too are poor at picking up the dangers inherent in the increasing levels of uncertainty and the increasing vulnerability of confidence in the economy. The potential of sudden events in derailing confidence is great. He cites the 10 percent drop in the U.S. stock market on May 6, as one example. And the potential of the BP oil spill creating havoc for the Gulf economy is another such event. Shiller says his definition of a douple dip recession looks at the long term, and doesn't see the short term as a way to correctly read the economic situation. He sees a douple dip recession as a rise in unemployment to high levels, and becomes sticky after that, only nudged down insignificantly. Before unemployment can be brought down a second recession occurs, and there could be years in between. Shiller's Buy-on-Dips stock Market Confidence Index prepared since 1989 shows a steady decline in individual investor confidence since 2009....

LyrArc Article Gist
French president Macron is seen as aloof from voter concerns about the rising cost of living. Visiting a farmer in the Burgundy region Marie Le Pen said prices of food and vegetables have gone up 25% over 5 years since Macron became president.  To win over supporters from working class communities in north and northeast who have voted for Jean Luc-Melenchon, a former Socialist candidate, Macron visited Denian, a town in the north of France.  Melenchon's France Unbowed party got about 21.95 % of the vote compared to Le Pen's 23.15%. Getting working class voters to support Macron who had 27.84% of the vote is now crucial for Macron. Denian has an unemployment rate of 36%. Macron told voters the best way to tackle poverty is to bring down the unemployment rate which is now 7.4%.  Many of these communities in the north, northeast, and in the southeast have suffered from the two decade shift of manufacturing to China, creating a situation similar to that in the midwest of the US and posing a challenge for established parties. The Republicains of De Gaulle and the Socialists of Mitterand, the established parties did badly in the election, each getting less than 5%of the vote. It is this problem that Macron has to address to get the votes of working class voters in France. Challenging the notion that he has been aloof from this problem and the problem of cost of living for young and for pensioners Macron says he will listen, learn and act, and he is "not afraid to go into battle in the most difficult areas." On this first day of campaigning for the second round he spent 2 hours talking to people in Denian. Angry voters told him he did not care for pensioners. In his response Macron said he will increase the minimum pension from 10500 euros to 13200 euros a year. A pension reform plan for increasing the retirement age for pensions to 65 from 62 will now be put to a referendum so that voters could reject it if they chose to. Macron also responded to the sentiment that his administration was more concerned about the rich by proposing that firms paying dividends to shareholders will be required to give one off bonuses of 6000 euros to all employees earning less than 46,000 euros a year.  On his opponent Marie Le Pen's plan to cut VAT tax on gasoline to 5% from 20%, Macron told voters that this was counterfeit money, asking "can anyone really say there will be no VAT for gasoline imported from the rest of the world?" ...

LyrArc Article Gist
It is not commonly realized how much of an economic collapse Russia suffered as a result of Mr. Gorbachev's failure to plan a smooth transition out of communism- a 40% drop in  drop in GDP, a peak of 2000% increase in inflation, and drop in life expectancy from 69 years to 65. With lack of safeguards in place for vulnerable sectors such as the elderly and displaced workers, no setup for securing the rule of law, no periods of experimentation with market economy in parts of the country as China had done. Krugman says it was worse than the Great Depression in the US in the 1930's, a particularly traumatic period Americans remember, because the collapse was deeper, and the rogue elements took over parts of the economy leading to a breakdown of the rule of law. One hears too much about the fall of the Berlin Wall, great for West Germany and less about the trauma this was for elderly and vulnerable workers in  East Germany, and for Russia as a whole. Here Paul Krugman describes what happened and how this brought to power another group under Putin. For Putin and many Russians these are the memories that lead them to say it was the "greatest catastrophe" of the twentieth century. Krugman has put this in graphs showing the economic data from multiple sources, including the World Bank and US Bureau of Economic Analysis. The graphs show the Great Depression in the US was about loss of 27% of GDP, inflation was not severe and FDR ensured both rule of law and hope with his election to tackle the problems, including America's vast resources. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The Obama first family and its many mulicultural faces from Kenyan, Indonesian, Chinese to African American and White abolitionists from Missouri. Truly a new face of the American continent. About 25% of white Americans have interracial marraiges and nearly half of all black Americans belong to a multiracial family, according to estimates made by Joshua Goldstein of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. What it does is wake one up to the reality, the changes that have already ocurred in the country which most people had not realized. With Blacks, Hispanics, Jewish people, Asian Americans, the 25% of whites in interracial marraiges, recent immigrants, white women, and white males making up this mosaic of cultures and communities that makeup America. And the geographical mix is also just as varied, with the west and the northwest and the midwest and east having a bigger share of this mosaic than the south and the mountain states. Whites in interracial marraiges tends to breakup the traditional white protestant insular demographic. On the religious side there is a breakup of the traditional white demographic with Irish Americans especially those in the east tending to move away from the traditional white protestant insular demographic because of their own particular historical and cultural narrative. The Obama story is one of tapping into these different demographics and changing faces of America at the right time, when the conservative southern demographic, represented by the Bush family, combined with related demographic groups in counties and neighborhoods around the country had lost popular support from two wars and a failing economy....

LyrArc Article Gist
Helen Gao provides this exceptional story of how 544,000 Chinese students studying abroad far from being success stories are facing stress, anxiety, depression to an unusual degree. About 329,000 of them are in the U.S. where the $50,000 to $60,000 college tuition cost is ten times the disposable income of a Chinese family. For working class families study abroad means using up savings. Researchers at Yale in a 2013 survey found 45 percent of Chinese students on campus had symptoms of depression, 29% had anxiety. This is similar to other universities in the U.S., Australia and Britain with large Chinese student populations. Language barriers and cultural barriers pose a problem particularly in student interactions with advisers and professors. Liberal arts studies emphasize critical thinking and other skills that are not found in a results oriented, memorization from note cards oriented system in China, creating academic stress. Worse what awaits students who return is not enough recognition for years spent studying in a different environment- about 80% of Chinese students from abroad earn a mere $1500 a month, according to a Beijing think tank Center for China and Globalization report done with a recruitment agency Zhilian Zhaopin. As she talks about the experience of other students from China, Gao describes her own anxiety attacks during 8 years of study in the U.S. Her father sent pictures after his first visit to the U.S. in 1995 says Gao, with words about how he wanted his daughter to see the U.S. with her own eyes, the beauty of the country and its spirit. Years later Helen Gao of Beijing sees a different America as she walks from one Harvard campus building to another in 2015 during her last year of graduate study, one that brings anxiety, financial insecurity, and uncertainty about the future.   ...

LyrArc Article Gist
The US Senate filibuster rule that requires 60 votes for the budget to pass is a relic of the civil rights days, today it prevents Republicans from ending the shutdown by majority vote. Republicans used it when Democrats controlled the House and Senate and Senate Majority Leader Thune does not want to drop the filibuster as it acts to ensure no hasty legislation or budget is passed without some form of overall consensus. It also means that situations such as a government shutdown can happen when the opposition party in the Senate uses it to make it demands be met. In this case Democrats Schumer and Jeffries are asking Republicans to include money for subsidies for the Obama Affordable Care Act enrollees- about 22 million people signed up for this part of the ACA to receive generous subsidies for healthcare. These subsidies are not part of the Big Beautiful Bill of DJT that passed Congress and was signed into law. Unions and airline executives are calling on Democrats to end the shutdown as it disrupts air traffic at airports, and leads to cuts in SNAP and other benefits, and to lack of pay checks for government employees. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Donald Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee raises $64 million in July 2016 through a digital and mailing effort that helps to bring in a large number of small donations- about two thirds of it. The fund raising effort for Trump brings a total of $82 million in July, just short of the $90 million raised by Hillary Clinton that month. Much of the digital fund raising effort was made possible by efforts made by the RNC to improve its mailing lists since the last presidential campaign. Many of the Trump donations are made from the Trump website buttons of $10, $25, $50, and by an offer to match this with Trump's own personal finances. Hillary Clinton is also ramping up her fund raising. Trump now has $74 million on hand, up from $1.5 million at one point, and Hillary Clinton has $102 million. For the Trump campaign that was far less organized than the Clinton campaign, this is an effort to catch up, though this comes quite late in the campaign with only 3 months left; with advertising rates higher, and not enough time to invest in digital and campaign infrastructure.  ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Meditation HRV and the parasympathetic nervous system. Meditation helps calm the system and build resilience. Health conditions, fatigue, worry, illness, exercise, travel, and also cold, political disruption, deadlines, perception of loss of some sort, annoyances, disruptions,  accidents, other events cause the heart rate variations and the two systems to react in different ways, the sympathetic nervous system and parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic system calms us down and meditation is one of the effective ways to get this process to work smoothly.

 

LyrArc Article Gist
DW.com's Becker looks at how much an iPhone would cost if made in the USA. Jason Dedrick of Syracuse University says it would add $20-$30 if final assembly was done in the U.S.. If components and parts were also made in the U.S. this would go up to $80-$90. Other factors are that the production clusters set up by Foxconn have taken three decades to set up and would take time to replicate. President Trump has said Apple should make the iPhones in the U.S. to create jobs. As Foxconn is rapidly adding robots and automation the number of jobs are shrinking in the production process.

LyrArc Article Gist
US Trade Agreement with Japan $550 billion in investment in US and 15% tariff. The 15% tariff is lower than the 24%-25% tariff DJT had imposed on Japan.

LyrArc Article Gist
The title is misplaced- does India have an edge with development in Uttar Pradesh after many administrations since Jawaharlal Nehru's time in his home city of Allahabad. Can water and electricity, Jal Jeevan and Swacch Bharat (Clean India) make a difference in India's largest state. Is development for all impartially given, funds impartially allocated indifference shown to caste and religious lines for delivery of services by the state and federal governments? India and China were at about the same place in 1990 as both countries opened up- can India close the gap. Can Indians stretch the imagination to set stretch goals like China has done. Most of the Indians who fail to stretch the imagination fail to remember that Beijing was mostly filled with bicycles for transport during 1990. China remained undaunted in 1990, she persevered against all the odds. So must India. In the US and European Union competition with China it looks to India for restructuring the supply chain. Is Uttar Pradesh a good place for domestic and foreign investment? Water and electricity goals are being achieved in Uttar Pradesh. Fundamental to development is the rule of law, as this sets the basis for development. Adequate infrastructure, a clean India, is what creates a good climate for investment from outside the state and from other countries such as Japan, the US and Germany. Uttar Pradesh now has the potential to lead the way.    ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Over 50 countries have asked for negotiations with the US over reciprocal tariffs imposed by the US on April 2, 2025. US president DJT says- “There will be fair deals.” DJT says a number of foreign leaders have contacted the White House since April 2nd.  Israel, Japan, Taiwan are beginning negotiations with the US over tariffs. Britain, South Korea and India will follow. The European Union is waiting for an opportunity to do the same. “They’re offering things to us that we would have never even thought of asking them for, Nobody but me would do this.” With China the situation is different and China is unlikely to negotiate. "We have stressed more than once that pressuring or threatening China is not a right way to engage with us,” says the Chinese embassy in Washington DC. After DJT said he would impose a 50% tariff on China over and above the 34% of April 2nd if China does not take back its retaliatory tariffs. This would happen on Wednesday April 9. China says it would f"ight this to the end." A sign that the USTR will try to get other nations to come up with deals and tackle China separately. ...

LyrArc Article Gist
Three young labor activists outside the UAW union helped UAW leader Shawn Fain orchestrate the strategy of selective walkouts, putting the worker demands in the public consciousness, and influencing public opinion. one has helped organize workers at VW plants, another is a lawyer who has put questions to Mr. Trump, and and the third is a journalist who has covered the strike and advised the UAW. These strategies presented the facts that labor was suffering low wages during a cost of living crisis. Today about 146,000 workers in the US are covered by UAW out of one million employed in automobile plants, a small fraction.

LyrArc Article Gist
37 tornadoes hit 6 US states in a weird weather pattern. One tornado stretched for 250 miles sweeping through and flattening whole towns such as the 10,000 people working class town of Mayfield, Kentucky. Kentucky was hardest hit, other states were Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Mississippi and Tennessee. The last time a tornado stretched out this far was in 1925 for 219 miles. The number and range of tornadoes suggests a change in weather patterns. Some debris hurled into the air as high as 30,000 feet is a sign of the changes in severity of weather patterns. List of people unaccounted for was 8 pages long in one town.

LyrArc Article Gist
Inflation in China and rising wages are pushing up costs for American manufacturers. The pressure on China, most recently in Congress, is helping to push up the value of the yuan. This combined trend is making it attractive for some manufacturers to bring factories home to the U.S. A trend in the U.S. towards non-unionized labor and the new trend to a two-tier wage level- with lower wages for entry level workers- and the shedding of legacy health care costs, is creating a more cost competitive labor force in the U.S. This extends from older industries such as furniture and auto components to newer industries and technology. The new factories setup in the U.S. use technologies that require a smaller number of workers, in most cases less than half the number of workers that were employed earlier. This adds another element in cost efficiency, though it means fewer jobs are created with new plants.

LyrArc Article Gist
About 25 percent more Hispanics would be eligible to vote in 2016. Hillary Clinton planned early to mobilize the 27 million Hispanic voters in 2016. She had as the person leading her Latino Outreach effort an undocumented woman worker from Peru, who with other women built the organization from the ground up. Often women and their daughters would go from door to door to talk to Hispanic people and could see the anger among Hispanics in states such as Florida about Mr. Trump's statements. Only 48% of Hispanics voted in 2012 compared to 64% for whites, and the campaign was determined to change this and galvanize the Hispanic vote for Hillary in the way this had been done for black people during the Obama campaigns in 2008 and 2012. Hillary Clinton also changed her campaign theme to support immigration and a path to citizenship in a way that even president Obama had not done. Hillary was critical of Mr. Obama's deportation policy and the breaking up of families. She promised to act on immigration in the first 100 days. By building up a grassroots effort for the Hispanic community,  and also talking to Puerto Ricans who now makeup a large part of the changing demographics in Florida, Clinton was able to energize Latinos to vote in large numbers in 2016. In Florida about 1 million votes had been cast by Hispanics by Nov 6, 2016, out of 6.2 million votes, a 75% increase from 2012. Nevada saw a similar pattern of voting. ...