This is a concept that I’m borrowing from Matthew Berry who is a fantasy football analyst for ESPN.  Prior to the season each year, he unveils a list of facts that he likes to look at and make arguments for why he likes certain players.  I’m using them in a slightly different way.  Hopefully, these will help you as you go through the last month of election season 2016.

1. Barack Obama was inaugurated as President on January 20, 2009.  There were, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),  134,053,000 jobs in January of 2009.  The preliminary numbers for August of 2016, according to the BLS show that there are 144,598,000 jobs currently.  That is an increase of 10.5 million jobs.
2. To put that in perspective, there were 1.34 million jobs under George W. Bush.  There were 16.1 million jobs created when Ronald Reagan was president. I calculated this by looking at the number of jobs in January when a President was inaugurated (exceptions are Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, and Gerald Ford) until January of when they left office.   Here are the numbers for the rest of the presidents since World War II.
   

   President	Number of jobs created
   Truman	8248000
   Eisenhower	4129000
   Kennedy	3572000
   Johnson	12183000
   Nixon	9181000
   Ford	2073000
   Carter	10345000
   Reagan	16131000
   HW Bush	2637000
   Clinton	22900000
   W Bush	1348000

3. The unemployment rate in January of 2009 was 7.8%.  The unemployment rate as of August 2016 is 4.9%.  It has been under 6% since October of 2014.  When Mitt Romney ran for President, he said that he would strive for an unemployment rate of under 6%.  The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) maintained that the unemployment rate would be under 6% by 2017 with the policies enacted prior to the election.
4. The unemployment rate in May of 2016 was 4.7%.
5. In a May 2016 national poll, Public Policy Polling (PPP), 64% of self-identified Republicans stated that they thought that unemployment had increased under Barack Obama.
6. The labor force participation rate, which takes a measure of the entire population age 16 and older that is either employed or currently looking for work, is at 62.8%.  The labor force participation rate hit 66% in October of 1988 and hovered between 66 and 67% essentially until November of 2008 and has declined fairly steadily until now.  Why is that?  According to the BLS, the reasons include the retiring baby boomer population, the stabilization of women in the workforce, and the diversity of the workforce.  They projected in 2006 that the labor force participation rate would be 65.9% in 2010 and 64.5% by 2020.  We are below those numbers but I think that part of that may be because of the ACA which helps people get health insurance in the private market so some do not have to work or look for work.  Even moreso, they may get health insurance through Medicaid expansions in various states.
7. From 1948-1977, the labor force participation rate was lower than it is now.
8. Federal income tax rates are at the lowest percentage of people’s income since the Great Depression.  This is consistent since 2006.  There was a marginal tax increase from 35-39.6% of those who make $220,438 single or $440,876 in 2013.
9. Federal tax revenues as percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is around 18%.   This is slightly higher than the historical average (usually around 17-18% of GDP since World War II).
10. US Government spending as a percentage of the GDP in 2015 was 20.44%  This is relatively high compared to 1994-2007 where federal spending was less than 20% of the GDP.  From 1947-1980, the percentage of federal spending compared to GDP was below 20%.
11. Spending in FY2015, according to the CBO was $3.7 trillion.  Mandatory spending constituted $2.3 trillion of US Government spending.  Discretionary spending was $1.2 trillion.  Revenues for the US Government was $3.2 trillion.
12. Discretionary spending for defense and nondefense spending was essentially the same at about $583 billion.
13. Individual income taxes are $1.5 trillion of US Government revenues.  Payroll taxes are $1.1 trillion.  Corporate income taxes are $344 billion.  Other taxes constitute $299 billion of revenues for the US Government.
14. 96.9% of households received a tax cut under President Barack Obama signing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Tax Act of 2009.  There was an expansion of the Making Work Pay Credit Act (and replaced it) that had a payroll tax cut of 2%.  Neither Romney nor Obama proposed allowing the payroll tax cut to continue and it expired on January 1, 2013.      The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 also extended tax cuts for those  making less than $400,000 ($450,000 for married taxpayers filing jointly).  All in all 90% saw their tax bills saw their taxes stay the same  because of this legislation.
15. 2 out of every 1,000 deaths in the US apply for the estate tax, per the Joint Committee on Taxation.  The Tax Policy Center found that 5,330 estates will owe the estate tax in 2015.
16. Of those 5,3330 estates.  30 small farms and closely held businesses will owe money for the estate tax.  The top 10% of income earners will pay 97% of the total of estate tax liability ($18.4 billion).  The richest 0.1% will pay 35% of the total.
17. The requested budget for the Centers for Disease Control for fiscal year 2017 was $11.8 billion.  The requested budget for the Food and Drug Administration for FY 2016 was $4.9 billion.
18. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found in a nationwide study in 2013 that 84% of white registered voters had a valid driver’s license.  73% of registered Hispanic voters had a valid driver’s license. 63% of registered black voters had a valid driver’s license.
19. Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act established a formula to determine which jurisdictions would have to seek preclearance from the United States Department of Justice in order to make changes to voting rights or election laws.  The first part of the formula was to determine if the state or jurisdiction had a test or device in place to restrict people from voting.  The other part of the formula was if there were less than 50% of voting age persons registered or voting in the presidential election of 1964.  There were changes made in 1970 and 1975.  The Act was extended in 1982 and again in 2006.    In Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court found that the preclearance requirement of Section 4 was unconstitutional because it relied upon an outdated formula and violated the “equal sovereignty of the states.”  A phrase not found in the Constitution.  But one that is found in Dred Scott v. Sanford.
20. 40 counties in North Carolina were subject to preclearance prior to the decision in Shelby County.
21. One day after the decision in Shelby County, North Carolina Senate Rules Committee Chairman, a Republican, announced that they had an “omnibus bill coming out” that would direct attention to election law.  The law would require certain photo id’s, eliminated or reduced same day voting registration, changed how provisional ballots would be cast, and eliminated and reduced early voting days.  Prior to the bill being passed, the North Carolina legislature requested racial data to determine how the law would be written.
22. The data for the legislature included the information that black North Carolina voters disproportionately used early voting.  60.36% and 64.01% of black North Carolina voters voted early in 2008 and 2012 compared to 44.47% and 49.39% of white voters.  It also included that black voters used the first seven days of early voting, in particular.  The early voting days would include 2 “souls-to-the-polls” days where black churches would give rides to prospective voters.
23. Armed with this information, the legislature struck down the first 7 days of early voting, taking early voting from 17 days to 10 days.  This effectively eliminated a “souls-to-the polls” day, as well.
24. The data also included the information that black voters disproportionately used same-day registration when available.  Same-day registration also allows poll workers to help voters.  A disproportionate number of black voter applications were considered incomplete.  Help from poll workers would certainly help them, disproportionately.  The data also included provisional ballots including out-of-precinct voting.  As it turns out, black voters also voted with provisional ballots, disproportionately.  Finally, they looked into pre-registration.  Pre-registration allowed 16 or 17 year olds to announce their intent to vote when they applied for driver’s licenses.  The DMV would then automatically register these 16 or 17 year olds.  Black teenagers used pre-registration disproportionately more than their white counterparts.
25. Absentee voting was exempted from the new voter ID restrictions.  As it turns out, black voters don’t really use absentee voting.
26. The voter law eliminated same day registration.  It prohibited out-of-precinct voting.  It eliminated pre-registration.  It was struck down as unconstitutional because the provisions of the law were passed with discriminatory intent.
27. Zoltan Hajnal, Nazita Lajevardi, and Lindsay Nielson presented a working paper that states with strict voter id laws “tend to emerge in states with larger black populations.”  Latino turnout was 10.3 points lower in states with photo ID laws; black turnout was 4.8 points lower in general elections in states with photo ID laws.
28. The GAO found that turnout declined by between 2-3% in Kansas and Tennessee after they enacted voter id laws.
29. According to a national poll from PPP published on 08/30/2016, 59% of Donald Trump supporters think that more than 10% of votes cast are fraudulent.
30. Loyola Law School professor Justin Levett investigated over 1 billion votes cast to determine how many cases of voter fraud there would be.  He found 31 credible cases.
31.  Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI05) introduced H.R. 885 Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2015 to revise Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act.  It has 110 co-sponsors.  93 of which are Democrats.  17 are Republicans.  Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL07) introduced H.R. 2867 to revise Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act to determine preclearance.  The bill has 178 co-sponsors.  All of the co-sponsors are Democrats.
32. The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a closing value on January 20, 2009 of 7949.09.  The closing value on May 16, 2016 was 17710.71.
33. According to the May 2016 PPP poll, 57% of self-identified Republicans believe the stock market has gone down since Barack Obama became President.
34. According to the CBO, raising the minimum wage to $10.10/hour real incomes  would increase by $5 billion among families at or below the poverty level, essentially moving 900,000 people out of poverty.  Families who have income between one and three times the poverty level would receive $12 billion in additional real income.  Families between three and six times the poverty level would receive an additional $2 billion in real income.
35. The central estimate from the CBO for raising the minimum wage by $10.10/hour finds that there will be a net loss of 500,000 jobs.
36. 50.6% of workers currently making $7.25/hour or less are aged 16-24.  According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 12.5% of workers earning $11.10/hour or less are less than 20 years old.   The CBO found that that for workers earning less than $11.50/hour, only 12% of workers are aged 16-19.
37. According to EPI, 73.7% of workers making less than $11.10/hour are aged 20-54.
38. 54% of workers earning less than $11.10/hour, according to EPI, work full-time at these jobs.  EPI defines full-time as 35 or more hours per week.
39. The CBO estimates that 70% of low-wage workers have a high school diploma and/or some college.  10% of low-wage workers have a Bachelor’s degree.
40. The National Center for Education Statistics houses information about the average cost of higher education.  They provide information about the average cost of in-state public tuition for four year universities.  With that information and the information about the minimum wage, we can determine how many hours it would take to work at exactly minimum wage to afford one year of college.  From 1971-1980, it would take on average, 5.28 hours per week to afford one year.  From 1981-1990, it would take 7.85 hours per week to afford one year.  From 1991-2000, it would take 11.80 hours per week to afford one year.  From 2001-2010, it would take on average 18.08 hours per week to afford one year.  In 2011, the last year I have data available for just tuition, took 20.42 hours per week to afford one year of tuition at a public four year institution.
41. 97% of the benefits paid out by the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) go to families with children.  Almost all of these benefits are given to families in the bottom three quintiles of income distribution.
42. The US Census Bureau found that the EITC lifted 6.2 million people out of poverty including 3.2 million children.
43. The EITC reduced welfare participation by 6.5% relative to its 1993 peak according to Jeffrey Grogger.  V. Joseph Hotz, Charles H. Mullin, and John Karl Scholz wrote that the EITC had the “most significant effects in reducing welfare caseloads during the 1990s.”
44. Between March of 1990 and March of 2000, the employment rates of single mothers rose from 55.2% to 73.9%.  Grogger concluded that the expansions of the EITC in the 1990s are the most important single factor in why there was this large increase in single mothers working.
45. The BLS writes that only 12% of workers have access to paid family leave.  Only 5% of those in the lowest 25% of income threshold have access to paid family leave.
46.  Women who report taking paid leave are more likely to be working 9 to 12 months after a child’s birth than those who report not taking leave at all.  “Many women who would not have otherwise returned to work re-enter the labor force within a year.”  Women who report leaves of 30 or more days are 54% more likely to report wage increases in the year following the child’s birth than are women who take no leave at all.
47. Women who return to work have a 39% lower likelihood of receiving public assistance 40% lower likelihood of food stamp receipt in the year following the child’s birth.  Men are also significantly less likely to receive public assistance and food stamps.
48. Women lose about $275,000 in lifetime wages and social security benefits when they have to leave the labor force early due to caregiving responsibilities.
49. The median cost of replacing an employee is 21% of the employee’s annual salary. Employee absenteeism due to work-family responsibilities cost employers between $500-$2,000 per employee per year.
50. There were 28,647 deaths from opioid drugs in 2014.  This is 61% of all drug overdose deaths in 2014.
51. Most overdose deaths occur within one to three hours after the victim has taken the drugs.  According to the National Institues of Health (NIH) found that 90% of users had reported witnessing an overdose and providing lay remedies to revive the victim.
52. 10-56% of individuals are willing to call 911 in case of an overdose but only after initial efforts to revive a victim have been made.  88% of opioid users in Washington said they were more likely to call 911 in the event of a future overdose after learning about Good Samaritan laws.
53. 32 states plus the District of Columbia have passed Good Samaritan laws.
54. The NIH survey found that 87% of users reported they would be willing to participate in a Naloxone training program and 84% said they would carry naloxone after training.
55. The CDC has provided Naloxone training to over 53,000 people and have been used to reverse over 10,000 drug overdoses.  In San Francisco, there has been 3,6000 prescriptions filled since 2013 and have saved 916 lives.
56. Needle exchange programs are barred from buying syringes.  There are 0.9 to 2 billion injections nationally each year but only about 43 million sterile syringes distributed by needle exchange programs.
57. After taking into account mother-to-child HIV transmission, injection drugs are responsible for 35% of all AIDS infections.
58. The estimated cost of treating an HIV patient from diagnosis to death would cost $120,000.  A needle exchange program costs, on average, of $131,000.
59.  Almost half of the student loan debt in the United States is held by students who attended for-profit universities.  12% of college students attend for-profit universities.  (This statistic was found prior to the closing of Corinthian Colleges and ITT Tech)
60. About 25% of all Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits have been paid to 15 publicly traded universities.
61. Manufacturing output is up about 50% since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect.
62. NAFTA was negotiated by the George H.W. Bush administration.
63.  In January of 1994, the unemployment rate in Michigan was 7.0%.  The unemployment rate for August of 2016 is 4.5%.  The unemployment rate in Ohio in January of 1994 was 6.3%.  The preliminary numbers for August 2016 show the unemployment rate is 4.7%.  The unemployment rate in Pennsylvania for January 1994 was 6.6%.  The unemployment rate in August of 2016 is 5.7%.
64. China is not part of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and is not likely to benefit from the agreement.
65. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced that the Chinese currency was no longer undervalued.  The currency is on the rise.
66. Moody’s Analytics found that Trump’s tax plans would cost about 3.5 million jobs.  What’s more is that it would $9.5 trillion over its first decade.  Both Moody’s and the Tax Policy Center conclude that the very richest would be the best off under Trump’s plan.
67. Hillary Clinton’s tax plan would have little or no impact on 95% of Americans.  Tax increases would fall predominantly on the wealthiest one percent.  Revenues for taxes would be increased by $1.1 trillion over the first decade and $2.1 trillion over the next decade.
68. Trump did say that he would try to negotiate the national debt.  This would be a disaster for the US economy.
69. Stop and frisk was declared unconstitutional.
70. New York City had a massive crime drop in the 1990s.  The number of stop and frisks increased in the 2000s.  Where it succeeded was placing mistrust in police officers in the black population.  52% of stop and frisks were of black people.
71. During the period of 2001-2010, violent crime declined by 59% in Los Angeles, 56% in New Orleans, 49% in Dallas, and 37% in Baltimore without stop and frisk
72. 88% of stops were of innocent New Yorkers.
73. Overall, crime has been falling since 1993.
74. Donald Trump argued in his book, The America We Deserve, that “Iraq remains a threat, and now has more incentive than ever to attack us.”
75. George W. Bush signed the dill to withdraw US troops from Iraqi territory on December 31, 2011.
76. Trump supported Libya intervention.  He also claimed it would be easy to topple Qaddafi.
77.   Ford announced it was moving small car production to Mexico.  They are keeping medium to larger car production in Detroit. This is, in part, due to a contract with the United Autoworkers. Also, Ford was the only one of the Detroit automakers who did not take money for a bailout.
78. Since the end of the Great Recession, more Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the US.
79. Barack Obama announced that they would increase the number of Syrian refugees that the US could take in, to 10,000 refugees.
80. Clinton’s proposed a plan to accept 65,000 refugees.  The Senate assumed that Clinton would want to bring in 155,000 refugees per year for each of her first term to get to 620,000 refugees.
81. According to the State Department, 785,000 refugees have been admitted to the US since 9/11.  About a dozen have been arrested or removed from the US due to terrorism concerns.
82. Canada provides us with more oil than all of OPEC combined.
83. There is capacity left in the current pipelines to bring in more than 1 million more barrels per day.
84. A majority of Republicans find each aspect of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) favorable outside of the individual mandate and an increase on Medicare payroll tax on upper income earners.
85. The individual mandate is the most well-known part of the ACA.
86. The uninsured rate is the lowest on record, in large part, due to the ACA.  It is below 9%.  States that accepted the Medicaid expansion have seen their uninsured rate drop the most.  There are 19 states who have not expanded Medicaid, their uninsured rate is 16.7%.
87. Aetna left the private marketplace as a threat to the Department of Justice blocking the Humana merger.
88. In the six years since the ACA was passed, Republicans have fought to overturn the law and just now managed to put together a proposal to replace the ACA.
89. The proposal includes converting Medicare into a voucher program and raising the retirement age above 65.  It also includes the resumption of discriminating against pre-existing condition.  And according to Jonathan Cohn, the analyst, “some higher-income consumers, by contrast, would apparently get a new tax break.”
90. Deductible plans under this proposal would be much higher.  Older adults would pay much higher premiums to make plans more affordable for younger adults.
91. Despite not saying “radical Islam”, ISIS has lost significant ground in the last year and a half.
92. In December of 2015, the Pentagon noted that over 20,000 ISIS fighters had been killed.  Army Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland said that there has been 45,000 ISIS fighters killed in total.
93. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, there was an article published noting that fetal pain perception does not begin until the beginning of the third trimester (28 weeks).
94. A ban on abortion at 20 weeks is the earliest ban on abortions that is politically popular (either a plurality or majority supporting it).
95.  According to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, in the five year period of 2007-2011, the NCVS found that there were 29,618,300 victims of attempted or completed violent crime.  235,700 of the self-protective behaviors of the victims involved a firearm.
96. In 2010, across the United States there were 230 justified homicides.
97. The Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in 2013, found that of the 10 states with the lowest gun death rates, 7 of them had the strongest gun laws.  The states that did not appear were Minnesota, Iowa, and Maine.  Of those three Maine was the only one with an F grade.  Of the 10 states with the highest gun death rate, the highest grade was given to Alabama with a D-.  All others had F’s.
98. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) found that in 2012, 1 of every 400 cases submitted to E-Verify that resulted in a Tentative Nonconfirmation (TNC) status were reversed under appeal by the worker.  A nationwide system would result in 400,000 people to resolve issues that should not have come up.  The GAO found that 164,000 citizens per year will receive a TNC for issues related to a name change.
99. Going to mandatory E-Verify System would increase spending by $23.4 billion over 10 years according to the CBO and would decrease revenues by $17.3 billion as more people would be paid outside the tax system.
100. Suspicionless drug testing for welfare recipients is unconstitutional.  When Florida enacted a law requiring mandatory drug testing for recipients of Temporary Assistance of Needy Families (TANF), the pass rate by recipients was 96.3%  This policy cost the state more than $100,000.  A previous enactment of the same policy found that 3.8% failed the test.  Enacting the policy cost $2.7 million.  Michigan, who enacted a similar policy, found that about 10% of welfare recipients tested positive.  In an article in the Journal of Health and Social Policy, only 5% of welfare recipients showed evidence of drug abuse.