What do we know about Gov Pence? What is his position on housing and the rental industry in Indiana?

As soon as I heard his credentials I started to wonder what Brad20K would have to say about him.

Umm...what? I'm a woman. Would never vote for him.

My mom was friends with his mom. He grew up in my home town, we went to the same church, same high school, he was a few years behind me.

I have met Mike several times, Listened to him speak many times, and listened to him when he had his radio show before going to Washington.

A few days after 9/11 he came to a special peace prayer gathering at our church and spoke about standing on the steps of the capital building when the security people ask them to move away quickly because suicide planes were headed to Washington. The Pentagon was hit moments later.

Mike is a true statesman and a solid trustworthy man. I would trust him with anything.

I pray for him and his family as his opponents will begin dragging him through the mud. He's a good man and politics doesn't like good men. The media does not understand people who live by integrity and convictions to a higher power.

But if anybody can handle the abuse it's Mike. He's an accomplished speaker and will be able to express himself well.

He would make a great president. We need leaders we can trust.

I will not support him, he is against everything in my life but gun control. I'm sitting this one out. The choice is between a bigoted criminal and a bigoted idiot. I vote none of the above. Do over.

Trump isn't going to make America great again unless he kucks millions of people and their legal citizen offspring out. Hillary is going to finish destroying what obie started.

In the way our executive branch is set up, the VP has no powers. Even his role as tiebreaker in senate is marginalized due to filibuster on everything. The only way

So a Vice President Pence will have no power in a Trump presidency. He will no influence unless Trump is removed from office. Trump's chief of staff will have more influence than Pence. You are voting for Trump. full stop.

Old farmer sat on his $40k tractor one time, smiled at me and said," don't care who makes the rules, as long as I know them, I can play the game" Spit. closed the cab door and went home to his paid off house on his paid off farm.

Thanks, Brad. I respect your opinions, and had thought of posting this question myself.

Brave of you to ask Ray-N-Pa. Posts like this have gotten pretty nasty in the past, but people are being fairly restrained so far.

Remember McCain 2008? Country First

Pence 2016 " I'm a Christian, a conservative and a Republican in that order."

I have to go with Trump. In Taxifornia we are flooded with illegals and need some kind of fence. Moonbean wants to give the state away for the democrat

I appreciate the folks being as civil as they are on this topic.

Government is broken and there just seems to be so much saber rattling going on but not much activity.

The last three remaining candidates are highly divided on various stances and honestly none of the existing platforms stand to be moved too far. I believe I do have a cure for all of that though.

Currently who ever has the wildest, most to the left or right, loudest mouth sales presentation stays in the running........change that approach and ask the following question:

WHO IS MOST ELECTABLE?

Weather you are with the left or if you are with the right doesn't matter really. It should be what is best for all. There will be periods when leaning one way or the other will be beneficial, but the key is keeping the train in motion.

As people talk about how dysfunctional government is and they can't get things through congress. I am very happy with it. More laws and rules and regulations is not necessarily good. Our founders set up a government that has lots of checks and balances and that is the way it should be. Unfortunately it has become 2 sided, liberals democrats or conservatives, republicans. Elected officials can't seem to stand on their own or make their own thoughts. The democrats are the worst at taking their party stance.

Johnson and Weld are both 2-term governors (former Republicans, in Democratic states) and both have solid social freedom and freedom from government values.

They are definitely gaining in the polls and are also gaining support from the political mainstream.

Just as Barack Obama came out of nowhere to win, so can these two. In fact, they have far more governing experience than he did.

He has been in the house and senate and knows how to get legislation through Congress. That is one reason why he was chosen. He was also on a committee for many years that dealt with issues in the Middle East and that is very helpful He also unifies the party for those who wanted someone more like the lawyer/priests they prefer as he was a lawyer. His son is a marine.

Other things are he has a little old mom and it will be nice to follow her in the news. He looks right. He looks solid and unshakable. The fact that he is from the center of the country will help voters feel represented.

He looks like a dad or grand dad. So many people have no male figure in their lives do to divorce, war and disease. I feel that need myself. Trump has his rallies livestreamed and I watch every one. There are also streaming comments with the video. I was struck by many as the young people were saying things like. Here comes Uncle Don, Daddy Don, Here's Daddy. I could see some of that in the followers of Bernie Sanders.

We need these two people to put up a strong face against the middle east terrorists. They watch everything on Facebook. They don't fear women at all and treat them like garbage and so would they laugh and walk all over Hillary. She by the way, wants to bring in a half million refugees because Muslims tend to vote Democrat.

Sometimes good leaders make horrible politicians; and good politicians often have no idea what leadership is. I think the real estate developer and businessman from NY (who doesn't need the fame and has plenty of money and influence) is a good executive leader but a horrible politician.

I think the good politician who thinks she can lie about everything and herself embodies the entitlement attitude that is destroying this country is a panderer with no leadership ability but plenty of political clout.

Trump did worse than index funds. In other words, he did worse than doing next to nothing.

"Trump’s net worth has grown about 300% to an estimated $4 billion since 1987, according to a report by the Associated Press. But the real estate mogul would have made even more money if he had just invested in index funds. The AP says that, if Trump had invested in an index fund in 1988, his net worth would be as much as $13 billion.

nhsailmaker , Index funds are a basket of stocks. You own index funds, you own stocks in companies. I can't believe I have to explain that.

I'm sorry nhsailmaker, I thought freedom let's us put whatever we want into our salad.

While I'm not a big Trump fan, I still don't think those numbers are exactly fair, David. Mainly because it wasn't like he was sitting on $1+ billion LIQUID in 1987 and just decided to dump it all into non-index-fund investments.

For example, I get that same argument from people sometimes about rentals. Ten years ago, I bought a 4-plex for $135,000. People will sometime say to me "If you had just taken that same $135,000 and invested it in the stock market (even index funds), you'd have more money now." The point they seem to miss is that, ten years ago, I didn't have $135,000 in cash lying around. I only had the down payment really. Which changes the numbers significantly.

I think the Trump comparison is similar (although, I agree not a perfect analogy, of course). It wasn't like Trump was sitting on just over a billion dollars in cash and was trying to decide where to put it. Even in 1987, a lot of his "net worth" was already heavily invested in things were it would not have worked to just pull it all out and dump it into index funds. There is simply much more to it than that -- and, therefore, comparisons to what he "could have done if he just put it all into index funds" aren't really fair nor accurate.

- John...

John, your comparison with your duplex is actually the same. Whatever Trump's net worth was back then, it was still his **net** worth, his assets (real estate, like you!) minus his liabilities (mortgages and other loans, like you!).

For your duplex, I'm surprised people make that comment if you bought with a mortgage. Your starting point would be your down payment. Your end point would be (roughly) equity in the house plus the profits from rents. Looking at that way, you should have beaten index funds right? THat comment tells me the person making it doesn't understand the concept of leverage.

Oh and as for Trump surrounding himself with smart people:

John, let me put it a simpler way. How many of us here , as real estate investors, have lost to index funds?

Yes, I get that was his "net worth." My point was that just because he might have a bunch of money in existing investments (including properties) does not necessarily mean that it would make sense (or even be reasonable possible) for him to suddenly liquidate all of those assets and invest in index funds.

In other words, if I've paid off half of a $140,000 4-plex, then my "net worth" there might be around $70,000. But that doesn't really mean that I could immediately sell that 4-plex to get that $70,000 out and invest in index funds. Sure, I could do it if I really tried -- but it would still be a pain and not necessarily the right move. Now convert that to hundred-million-dollar properties and the problem of liquidating gets many times more difficult.

So, I'm just saying that I don't think that, even in 1987, Trump necessarily had a reasonable OPTION to liquidate and invest his net worth in index funds as the example suggests.

I'm done arguing with you about it. It isn't worth it at all. I'm just saying that it is never as simple as just going "He would have $13B today if he had just taken his $1B in 1987 and invested it in index funds."

When people try to simplify things to that point, I simply think it is an unfair comparison.

And, again, this is from a guy that doesn't even like Trump! I'm probably more "on your side" than 95% of the people here and even I don't agree with that over-simplification just to make him look worse.

- John...

Here's an interesting article where a guy did a lot more of the math an concludes that Trump did not "take the wrong path":

dqydj.com/donald-trump-beat-sp-500-index-funds/

Basically, he says a few important things:

1. When people make that comparison, the starting dollar amounts vary widely.

2. When people make that comparison, they seem to use specific years (1987-1988) that make Trump look worse when other years would clearly show him beating the S&P 500.

3. People seem to ignore a lot of tax burden involved. When factored in, Trump generally does a good job beating the S&P 500.

Basically, it is a decently written article -- with as good of actual numbers as he could find -- that concludes with this:

"So, my point remains – the S&P 500 itself might have competed favorably with Trump’s rise in net worth. However, once you throw taxes, management fees, and the sheer impact of Trump’s companies and business dealings (not to mention the springboard to run for President), there is no reasonable argument that Trump picked the wrong path.

Donald Trump beat the S&P 500 once you factor in taxes, or start the math from a more equitable date than the beginning of a massive S&P 500 bull market."

- John...

David: I don't think Trump had to look at the numbers to tell either. Just like we wouldn't have to.

What happened here is simple: Someone that is anti-Trump started a rumor/post about how Trump would have been better off with just doing index funds. They cheated on the numbers and used very specific years to make it "work" they way they wanted. This got passed around by lots of poorly-informed people that did no research to verify it and then posted it all over the place. (Basically, what YOU did here actually.)

Then, someone like the guy I linked to decided to actually do some research to verify if it were true or not. And discovered that it was generally NOT true. It was just a lie that someone created by manipulating the "facts" to make Trump look bad.

It is only "up for debate" because, again, someone made it up to attack him -- and someone else decided to do the research to see if it were true. There is really no "debate" about it. It simply isn't accurate.

- John...