Why do so many candidates talk about their humble upbringing and sometimes even pretend to be poor? Let’s face it. Most of the presidential candidates this year are quite rich. They pay more in taxes each year than most of us make in a year. Still they tell us a story that sounds like it was taken from a biography of Abraham Lincoln.

Other commentators have noticed this. Victor Davis Hanson refers to them as “Log-Cabin Candidates” and Ian Tuttle says those pretending not to be rich are “Poor-Mouthing.” Sometimes it gets a bit irritating.

Bill and Hillary Clinton are easily worth more than $100 million but you wouldn’t know it from some of the things she has said about their finances in the past. She graduated from Wellesley College and Yale Law School and grew up in the affluent suburb of Chicago.

Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio talk about their impoverished fathers. But Ted Cruz is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School. His wife worked at Goldman Sachs. Marco Rubio’s dad may have been a bartender, but he used some of his $800,000 book advance to buy a 24-foot boat that he always wanted.

John Kasich has served as both governor and U.S representative. He is also a former investment banker and regional director of Lehman Brothers. Yet he nearly always mentions that the father was a mailman.

And let’s not forget Barack Obama who talked about and wrote about his Kenyan father who abandoned his family. He rarely mentioned that his grandparents were well off and that his grandmother was a Bank of Hawaii vice president.

For some reason, politicians think they have to pretend they aren’t rich. But there is one major exception: Donald Trump. He has done quite well this campaign season, and he certainly does not hide the fact that he is rich. If anything he brags about it. Perhaps the other candidates should learn from him and stop pretending what they aren’t.

During this presidential campaign, we have heard references to Sweden and other Scandinavian countries. Senator Bernie Sanders says, “I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden, and Norway and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.” Many European countries have gained the reputation of being very wealthy even though they are highly regulated and have high rates of taxation.

Various studies have attempted to show this is not true. Last year there was a study in the UK Spectator that argued that Britain was poorer than any U.S. state other then Mississippi. Many criticized the article because it used GDP per capita. It is possible that a few very rich people could skew the numbers.

Ryan McMaken (Mises Institute) decided to pull together data using median income in order to avoid the criticisms cited against other studies. Here is what he found.

If Sweden were to join the U.S. as a state, Sweden would be poorer than all but 12 states. Residents in states like Colorado, Massachusetts, Virginia, Washington, and Utah have considerably higher incomes than Sweden. Denmark has a median income below all but 13 U.S. states.

Mississippi has a higher median income than 18 countries. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, and the United Kingdom all have median incomes below every single American state.

When you look at the data and charts, you can only come to one conclusion. We shouldn’t be trying to be like Sweden or other European countries. They should be trying to be like America.

Many people are prevented from getting a job or starting a business because of state requirements for occupational licensing. In Nevada, for example, it takes six years to become a licensed interior designer. The educational and experience requirement for barbers is more than two years.

An unlikely coalition of progressives and conservatives joined forces at a recent Senate Judiciary subcommittee meeting headed by Republican Senator Mike Lee and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar. They heard testimony from the Obama administration officials as well as from conservative think tanks.

Occupational licensing certainly is important when it improves quality and protects safety. Most everyone agrees that professions like medicine, law, engineering, and aviation should be licensed. That is a matter of protecting public safety and assuring professional standards of performance.

However, there is growing evidence that licensing has been used to prevent competition, giving consumers higher prices and fewer choices. One study released from the White House found that the percentage of the U.S. workforce covered by licensing grew from less than 5 percent in the 1950s to 25 percent by 2008.

These licenses erect barriers that prevent low-income job seekers from breaking into a field. The licensing laws also lead to higher prices for goods and services that also affect low-income households more than the general public.

These licensing regulations also put an additional burden on job seekers who move from state to state. This certainly affects military spouses but also affects many other Americans who must move with a company or who move back to be with family.

The increase in the number of occupational licensing regulations creates many barriers to employment and is artificially raising prices for goods and services. It is time to reverse this trend.

Two questions I hear with some regularity are: What is the FBI going to do? And when is the FBI going to do it? The questions surround the current investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails and apparent disregard for national security. As I have mentioned in the previous commentaries, other people have been indicted for much less.

The Democratic debates and primaries are taking place right now. And the Democratic National Convention takes place a few months from now in July. Few Democratic voters seem concerned about the email scandal, but they will be very concerned if the FBI recommends an indictment.

The Democratic Party might want to reconsider whether they would run Hillary Clinton for the presidency if the FBI recommends she be indicted. Waiting until a grand jury actually indicts her would certainly upset the nominating process. The delegates at the convention might want to consider another candidate like Joe Biden or even Bernie Sanders.

Of course, there is the possibility that even if the FBI recommends indictment, Attorney General Loretta Lynch would refuse to do so. She might argue that the evidence was not sufficient. She might argue that an indictment would politicize the presidential campaign.

If the Attorney General did refuse to indict, what would be the response from the FBI Director James Comey? I assumed that he and some of his staff might resign. Those of us who lived through the Watergate scandal might remember that Elliott Richardson and William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than carry out President Nixon’s order.

People who know James Comey say he probably would not resign but instead release the incriminating information surrounding Hillary Clinton’s actions. That would certainly have a negative influence on her campaign.

It’s is time for the FBI and the Attorney General to act so that Democratic primary voters and general election voters can make an intelligent decision on who will serve as president.

The presidential candidacy of Bernie Sanders has created an interesting debate about Democratic socialism. One of the most interesting has been the back and forth on Garry Kasparov’s Facebook page. He is a former Soviet citizen and World Chess Champion. He is now a political activist dedicated to setting the record straight about Russia and communism.

Some of the supporters of the Bernie Sanders argued that socialism would be a good thing for America. Garry Kasparov would have none of it. He said: “I’m enjoying the irony of American Sanders supporters lecturing me, a former Soviet citizen, on the glories of Socialism and what it really means!”

He added that: “Socialism sounds great in speech sound bites and on Facebook, but please keep it there. In practice, it corrodes not only the economy but the human spirit itself, and the ambition and achievement that made modern capitalism possible and brought billions of people out of poverty.”

He also explained: “Talking about Socialism is a huge luxury, a luxury that was paid for by the successes of capitalism. Income inequality is a huge problem, absolutely. But the idea that the solution is more government, more regulation, more debt, and less risk is dangerously absurd.”

In a later post, one of the Bernie Sanders supporters brought up the Scandinavian countries. Kasparov responded that they were successful only because some socialistic elements were implemented after the capitalist economy succeeded and warned that the current system might choke the process that made the country wealthy.

The Bernie Sanders supporters of Democratic socialism will continue to have a tough time with Garry Kasparov because (1) he has lived in a socialist state and (2) has an IQ over 185.

Should the U.S. military revise their current rules of engagement? Some candidates have talked about this by lamenting that lawyers rather than officers are making too many decisions about how to fight terrorists. In a recent column, Colonel Allen West proposes new “Rules of Engagement for the 21st Century Battlefield.”

In the past, we understood what constituted a battlefield and appropriate rules of engagement. Much of this became confused by the time of the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong “infiltrated the civilian population and used adjoining nation-states as a base of operation.”

We find ourselves today in a similar situation with terrorists. As a Battalion Commander in Iraq, Colonel West saw how the insurgent enemy used mosques and burial grounds as assembly points as well as ammunitions and equipment staging points. They did this because they knew the limitations the military places on soldiers because of the rules of engagement.

Our enemy also knows that our troops are told not to fire until fired upon. Colonel West laments that: “it has come to the point where Islamic jihadist enemies can simply drop their weapons and walk away, knowing they will not be engaged by our forces.” Sometimes they disengage from a firefight so they can reposition within civilian areas, raising the possibility of collateral damage. And a request for additional fire support must go through rules of engagement protocols back at military headquarters.

You don’t have to have much experience with military strategy and tactics to know that current system is inefficient and ineffective. Colonel West persuasively argues that we should allow leaders on the ground (rather than lawyers) to develop common sense rules of engagement tailored to the 21st century terrorist environment. Congress and the next president must make this happen.

If Donald Trump becomes the Republican nominee, how difficult would it be for him to be elected president? To understand the challenge, it is worth looking at the electoral map. Any Republican nominee faces some significant challenges.

A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to be elected president. Hillary Clinton starts with a significant advantage since there are 18 states and the District of Columbia that have voted Democratic in every presidential election since 1988. They are New England states (except New Hampshire) and a number of other Eastern states (Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania). They also include states in the upper Midwest (Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin). And they also include the West Coast states (California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington).

These 18 states and D.C. total 242 electoral votes. Hilary Clinton only needs to find 28 more electoral votes in order to achieve the 270 electoral votes. If Donald Trump cannot challenge in any of these blue states, then he must keep all the red states and nearly run the table on most of the toss up states (like Florida, Ohio, and Virginia).

America’s demographic makeup is another significant challenge. President Obama received over 90 percent of the African-American vote and over 70 percent of the Hispanic-American vote. Hillary Clinton may not do quite as well but her vote percentages will certainly be close to those of candidate Barack Obama.

Will Donald Trump receive more than 10 percent of the Black vote? Perhaps, but that is doubtful. Will he receive more than 30 percent of the Latino vote? That is certainly unlikely since Donald Trump’s negatives among Hispanics are the highest of any Republican candidate.

Once you look at the electoral map, you can see why many question whether Donald Trump could win in November.

Columnist Cal Thomas says he was going to write a column about how the Republican presidential campaign has become gutter politics. But given the comments from Donald Trump and others, he felt that the gutter would be a step up. The political campaign has descended into the sewer.

It is possible that the name-calling and character assassination will diminish as Donald Trump gains more delegates and is no longer facing a challenge from the few remaining candidates. But that doesn’t change the damage that has been done by his comments and the responses from Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

First, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party will use all of his comments during the campaign and from past decades. After all, he has attacked women (Rosie O’Donnell, Carly Fiorina), news anchors (Meagan Kelly), talk show hosts (Hugh Hewitt), news operations (CNN, FoxNews), and the president of Mexico. That is just for starters. He is perhaps the most target-rich candidate in the history of American politics.

Second, his attacks obscure his positions on key issues facing the nation. Sure, he says he wants to make America great again. But how does he plan to do it? Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich put it this way. We don’t know what kind of president Donald Trump will be, because he doesn’t know what kind of president he will be.

Third, Donald Trump is losing lots of potential votes in the fall because of his behavior. Senator Ben Sasse and talk show host Eric Erickson already are saying they will not vote for Donald Trump if he is the nominee. John Stemberger writes that there are “Three questions evangelicals should ask about Donald Trump.” Michael Brown explains “Why Evangelical Christians Should Not Support Donald Trump.” Pastor Max Lucado wonders why decency isn’t doing better in the presidential race?

This is what happens when a presidential campaign descends into the sewer.