Photos are from the Navarre Beach Mardi Gras parade, Feb. 15. Navarre Beach is a barrier island beach community across from the town of Navarre.

The town's population is about 42,000, which is approximately the same as the number of people who come to watch.

The parade steps off at 1 pm, features about 50 floats, runs for about two miles and lasts about two hours. The Sherriff's Dept. closes off the causeway bridge sometime before noon. No more room.

Lee Benoit Cajun Band on "Louisiana Jukebox" television program in New Orleans, 1995.

• In 1831 the Anti-Masonic Party convened in Baltimore, MD to select a single presidential candidate agreeable to the whole party leadership in the 1832 presidential election.
• The term "dark horse candidate" was coined at the 1844 Democratic National Convention, when a little-known Tennessee politician, James K. Polk, emerged as the choice after the failure of the leading candidates—former President Martin Van Buren and Michigan Senator Lewis Cass—to secure the then-necessary two-thirds majority.
• Florida enacted the first presidential primary in 1901.
• In 1910, Oregon became the first state to establish a presidential preference primary, which requires delegated to the National Convention to support the winner of the primary at the convention.
• By 1912, twelve states either selected delegates in primaries, used a preferential primary, or both. By 1920 there were 20 states with primaries, but some later reversed course.
• The primary got its first major test in the 1912 Republican Convention with President William Howard Taft up against Theodore Roosevelt and Robert La Follette. Roosevelt proved most popular in primary voting, but those were non-binding and held in only fourteen states. At the convention, the nomination went to Taft.
• The 1924 Democratic National Convention required a record 103 ballots to nominate John W. Davis.
• In 1952, Senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee beat sitting President Harry S. Truman in the New Hampshire primary, leading the latter to drop out of the race. Kefauver went on to win 12 of 15 primaries but in the end lost out to Adlai Stevenson, governor of Illinois. Stevenson was first choice of the Democratic Party political bosses. He had resisted calls to enter the race but was nominated anyway by a "Draft Stevenson" movement following his eloquent keynote speech on the opening night of the convention.
• In 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey got the Democratic nomination despite not winning a single primary. After that the National Democratic Party adopted rules that called for more delegates to be selected by primaries.
• Primaries were adopted as the principal nominating tool by the Democratic National Committee in 1968. Republicans adopted the primary as their preferred method in 1972. By 1992 Democrats had primaries in 40 states, Republicans in 39.

What's more, a closed-door selection process allows for a level of discussion, frankness and horse-trading that disappears when the process is conducted in public. Out of sight, party elites can hash out contentious issues, account for vulnerabilities and make the necessary compromises with opposite forces without having to worry about staying on message.

Consider this. Sanders may have complained that superdelegates were putting the fix in for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But the truth is, both parties invented superdelegates for the express purpose of reversing potentially bad decisions by their rank and file.

The voting process needs to be democratic and in the open, but that doesn't mean every aspect of the nominating process has to be rooted in the democratic process. There could be a role for professional judgment and experience to play. (For some quick insight into our Framers' democratic state of mind, click here.)

Unquestionably, there were some structural flaws in the "smoke-filled rooms" of yesteryear, but that routine evolved with a purpose. America may never come up with a political process that some politicians won't try to game. But the first goal of reform should be, like the doctors say: "First, do no harm." Separate baby and bathwater.

Just for the sake of argument, what if Bernie Sanders winds up with the Democratic nomination because the more moderately inclined candidates, and there are more of them, cancel each other out? So he beats all of them not collectively but head to head, getting a 40% plurality. And then goes on to lose to Trump, marginally unpopular himself, 48% to 46%.

In 2016 the primary system gave American voters arguably two of the least popular presidential candidates in American political history.

2/9/20 -- Same as It Ever Was

The Tax Reform Scorecard (top link on right) was launched in 2017 to gauge whether the Trump administration's Tax Reform package of that year would live up to the hype.

The betting among those who derided it as a needless give-away to large corporations and wealthy taxpayers was, naturally, that it could not. But they may not have just been cranky curmudgeons.

Now, two years out, it is instructive to note that Administration spokespeople, while continuing to hail the 2017 GOP tax plan as a signal accomplishment, tend to speak only in benign and vaguely generalized terms. Nobody tries to bring up any numbers anymore to support their case.

It probably never really had a chance to be the muscular game-changer Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin envisioned. In September 2017, he boldly predicted that not only would the plan “pay for itself, but it will pay for the debt” and “cut down the deficits by a trillion dollars."

A bridge too far, a height too lofty. Nobody outside a small circle of fanatical supply-side economists believes that tax cuts even pay for themselves. Where Mnuchen was headed was way past the second star to the right and straight on til morning.

The stated ambitions behind that legislation as enumerated by Secretary Mnuchen and other supporters were these:

• Improved GDP growth (Gross Domestic Product, basically economic output)
• Growth in jobs, earnings and corporate investment
• Revenue growth sufficient to control and even reduce the federal deficit.

In 2018, besotted by an upward lurch in GDP the President was moved to proclaim, "So we're at 3.3 percent GDP. I see no reason why we don't go to 4 percent, 5 percent, and even 6 percent.”

For the record, 4th quarter GDP is 2019 was 2.1%. Second quarter in a row. "A long time forgotten, the dreams that just fell by the way .... "

Tax revenues never got near anything like the infusion Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchen was looking for. The boost in personal income? Not bigly either except for top-end earners, but for them income indeed grew. And why would it not? The government handed them a lot of money. The bottom 70% of wage earners didn't see much of that action though, and what they did see was in many cases cancelled out by the new cap on state and local income, sales, and property tax deductions.

Employment growth is still strong, but that seems more like the continuation of a longer-term pattern. The job market was already doing quite well. Job growth is actually showing some signs of slowing recently, as might be expected this late in such a long period of expansion. But jobs and consumer spending remain the two bright lights shimmering through the midst of this economy.

In any event, those heady original projections could very likely have been little more than a convenient cover story masking the real motivation pushing the Tax Reform Act forward. Republican leaders may have just been making good on a campaign promise rich supporters had extorted from them during the 2016 election cycle. Well-quoted sources on both sides of the Congressional aisle have suggested as much.

The Congressional Leadership Fund, a Republican super PAC blatantly warned lawmakers who might stand in the way of the tax cuts in the House not to expect any share of the $100 million it expected to spend on the upcoming midterm elections.

Current presidential candidate Bernie Sanders fervently believes this narrative. He called the 2017 tax cuts at the time "a thinly disguised reward to billionaire extreme right-wing donors."

Chris Collins, a Republican Congressman from New York echoed that view, albeit more softly but admitting to reporters that pressure from donors made the reform essential. "My donors are basically saying, ‘Get it done or don’t ever call me again,’” he said.

President Trump boasted the bill would be like rocket fuel for the economy. But all that really took off was the federal deficit, the one thing that wasn't supposed to happen. It's now on track to pass a trillion dollars, a figure broached only in the dark days of the Great Recession. Not what one would expect in a healthy, growing economy.

The original intent with the Scorecard was to track six salient metrics for three years to see how close the White House's flights of fancy might come to realization. But there's no need to go further. The Trump tax reform hasn't done much to move any of those metrics, certainly not to an extent that matches expectations. And now, presumably, the time has pretty much passed.

But all that said, the Scorecard charts turned out to be a useful graphical way of tracking economic progress over time. Unfortunately, casual feedback from readers makes clear many could not make heads or tails out of all those numbers.

Part of this was self-inflicted, the result of trying to report a range of numbers that resist apples-to-apples quarterly comparisons.

For instance, GDP quarterly displays are in line with how that benchmark is tracked. But the revenue and deficit presentations are not so informative. First, the disparity from quarter to quarter is both too arbitrary and too large—due to uneven revenue inflows (e.g., the April 15th revenue bulge). Second, those numbers get published not quarterly but monthly and not on a calendar- but a fiscal-year basis. (The federal government keeps its books from October to the following September 30.)

So here's a slightly revised design, much much better than new, separating revenue and deficit numbers annually and on a fiscal-year basis. GDP and related investment growth figures as well as employment and earnings figures are still displayed quarterly on a calendar-year basis.

Confusing? Not really. Just look at the tables. Look often enough and you won't even have to check out how the stock market is doing. You'll already know where it's going.

Of course, the guys who do this for a living well know too. And will probably still find out sooner than you will. That's why they do this for a living. But really, it's no harder than Fantasy Football.

Or don't you do that either?

America has been a staunchly protectionist country for most of its history. Not just Lincoln, but before him Hamilton, Jefferson, the Adamses, both father and son: all championed protective tariffs.

Not to mention the Father of our Country. One of the very first bills Washington signed as President was a tariff: the Tariff Act of 1789.

Predictably, its stated purpose was to raise money for the new federal government, reduce Revolutionary War debt and protect the fledging country's fledgling industries from from foreign imports. And tea.

Most goods entering the U.S. were subjected to a 5% tariff (although there were cases where the rate would go as high as 50%). But on the whole, pretty modest stuff actually.

Still, tariffs generated the bulk of federal receipts up until 1913 when Congress passed its first federal income tax. In some years tariffs funded as much as 95% of the federal budget.

Tariff sentiments were not exactly homogeneous across the land. The (relatively) industrialized Northeast favored protective tariffs to bolster its competitive position versus Old World industrial importers. Southerners generally opposed tariffs because they were primarily consumers of European goods for their homes, farms and business.

Plus, the South, with an economy predominately agriculture-focused, didn't want anything to complicate its access to Europe's markets, which protectionism would surely do. Boiled down to its essence, Southerners were often inclined to see a tariff as a transfer mechanism that moved wealth geographically from south to north. And it rankled them. Can you sense where this is going?

In 1832 the so-called Tariff of Abominations created a constitutional crisis starring Andrew Jackson and South Carolina. Jackson's Vice President John C. Calhoun (S.C., Dem. - but Calhoun often served as a virtual party-independent who variously aligned as needed with Democrats and Whigs). Calhoun resigned his office and ran successfully for the Senate where he became a champion of Nullification, the contention that a state has the right to declare any federal law it considers unconstitutional to be null and void within its boundaries.

It became a crisis in that it gave rise to a powerful movement towards secession in the South—very nearly a civil war before the Civil War. Jackson dispatched federal troops to Charleston, and South Carolina in turn prepared to muster troops of its own.

Tensions were reduced at length through a Congressional compromise (Remember Henry Clay?), but residual hard feelings from this long-simmering dispute are generally considered to have contributed to the start of the real Civil War thirty years later. "Forget, Hell!"

Tariffs began to decline in importance after 1914 and the income tax, but ideological positions didn't change much until the Great Depression.

The Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 gave rise to tit-for-tat global trade barriers that deepened the depression, and by the middle of the decade the Roosevelt White House was working to undo the damage.

By the end of World War II, tariffs had lost favor in Washington. Republicans morphed into free marketers and joined Democrats in a commitment to low tariffs. Why? American companies had come to dominate the global economy. Ronald Reagan particularly reviled them

Protectionism lost favor as a useful tool for boosting growth, and things stayed that way until foreign competition once again started to creep into U.S. markets in the mid '70s. Remember the foreign car invasion? Remember when "made in Japan" evolved from a slur into a stamp of quality?

But tariffs have returned to Washington in fine style and high fashion under the Trump administration. Only this time to protect against fledgling industries (China's) and in response to that country's perceived abusive and predatory trade practices, many of which fall outside of international trade rules and contribute to America's trade deficit. These include stealing intellectual property, publicly subsidizing private enterprises and forcing trading partners to transfer proprietary technology to China as a price of doing business.

President Trump is fond of claiming that punitive tariffs have generated billions of dollars in new revenues for the U.S. Treasury, paid by China, but tariffs don't exactly work that way. Tariffs are taxes paid by U.S.-registered firms to U.S. customs when goods they order from outside the United States enter the country.

Customs duties have indeed been a windfall for Washington. According to the Congressional Budget Office, they grew by $29 billion (or 71%) in the last fiscal year primarily because of the new tariffs imposed on China. That income has helped counter revenue losses resulting from the 2017 tax cut (which triggered a $92 billion drop in corporate tax receipts in FY 2018).

U.S. Importers employ a mix of ways to spread tariff costs among suppliers and buyers, including accepting lower profit margins for themselves, cutting costs, wages and jobs, and, of course, raising prices to end-consumers.

Chinese suppliers may also choose to absorb some of the cost increase, for instance by giving discounts to U.S. importers in order to maintain contracts and market share. U.S. importers can also look for suppliers in other countries with more favorable US tariff rates, and growing numbers of companies are doing so. But in the end guess who pays the lion's share?

The scarier headlines project future costs to the consumer based on both actual and proposed tariff increases, and most of the latter will never actually be imposed. However, according to a report by JP Morgan Chase last August, Tariffs already imposed on China are estimated to be costing the average American household $600 per year. Other estimates broadly match up with this.

Still other estimates calculate the trade wars are trimming U.S. GDP growth by about quarter of a point. (E.g., The Tax Foundation estimates they reduce long-run GDP by 0.26%, wages by 0.16%, and employment by 198,700 full-time equivalent jobs.)

Is it all worth it? Time will tell. But The Washington Post point out that compared to every other advanced economy, the United States is actually fairly well insulated from trade. We import 15% of our GDP and export 12%. Good numbers for a rich country.

The final story will be told more likely by historians than economists. Certainly not by politicians. You could start here with a column penned a little while back by James Stewart on the mother of all trade wars. "What History Has to Say About the 'Winners' in Trade Wars" appeared in Stewart's "Common Sense" column in The New York Times in March 2018.

Stewart is a highly seasoned journalist and author of a barrel of acclaimed books on the American business and political scene including "Den of Thieves," on the 1987 stock market crash and "Blood Sport: The President and His Adversaries," on the Clintons and Whitewater.

It's a column you should read. It's not too long, it's a very thorough survey, and it could make you a better person. One better prepared for the times that may be coming. Click here.

Fortune magazine in its January issue points out that U.S. tariff rates, for all the headlines they're generating these days, are actually near all-time lows (as they calculate: weighted mean for all products). Even China comes in at 3.8%, notably lower than South Korea. Evidently we're not too interested in sub-Sahara Africa. Fortune estimates that with Canada and Mexico running a close second and third to China as trade partners aggregate tariffs are likely to remain near historic lows. So what's all the fuss about?