Maybe Hillary Should Run

Day after day, I watch the Democrat candidates for president implode.  My favorite loser, Beto, is gone.  Kamala Harris is now literally dancing in Iowa to try to gain support.  How come no one one CNN denounces her high kick routine as non-presidential?  It certainly won't win votes, though.  Bernie is still an angry old socialist with a bad heart who seems more likely to collapse at some future event than to make it through to the convention.  Biden has become the symbol of political corruption.  There may be impeachment hearings for Trump, but there's nothing to find out about Biden -- we already know that he actually did what the Democrats falsely accuse Trump of doing.  Biden told the Ukrainians that he was cutting off all aid from the USA to their country unless they fired the state prosecutor who was investigating his son's company.  No one thinks that protecting Hunter Biden's cushy payoff job is a valid reason to use the full force of the US government.  Warren has managed to put forth a plan for Medicare for All which will be the death knell for her campaign.  It is very complicated, but it does have some very simple take-aways for the voters:  1. It will destroy about 3-5 million jobs; 2. it will raise taxes on business so high as to cause a depression; 3. It will force hundreds of millions of Americans who are happy with their health insurance to switch to a government run plan; 4. It will put the healthcare of all Americans in the hands of Washington bureaucrats who have never been able to run anything well with the resulting mess being nearly impossible to repair.  As more voters realize this, Cherokee Liz will be history.  America watched Mayor Peter being unable to even resolve a race confrontation in his city of South Bend Indiana.  If he can't handle that, how will he ever handle a confrontation with Putin, or Kim Jung Un or the Iranians?  And, is it just me, or does looking at Mayor Pete make you wonder if he is actually old enough to meet the age requirement for the presidency?  Indeed, has this guy gone completely through puberty?  Then there's Booker, the joke from New Jersey.  He's the man who has never said anything coherent through an entire campaign.  And let's not forget the also-rans like Amy Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard.  Their campaigns are so dead that their staff is booking a room for the eulogy already.  There's just no feasible present candidate.  So what does that mean?

I think it is actually time for Hillary Clinton to run again.  (Ok, I know using run and Hillary in the same sentence is silly, but she wouldn't actually have to move quickly.  She's just running in the figurative sense.)  Sure, Clinton is the ultimate sleaze who cares so much more for herself than for the country that she could be the greediest person on the national stage.  And it is true that she lost last time, but, as the Dems like to remind us, Hillary did win the popular vote.  It's unlikely that new scandals will come out, and if they did, who would notice.  She's already so scandal-ridden that what's one more or less?  And Hillary doesn't want to "transform" America into a socialist cesspool.  She's wants the position for the power and the cash for herself.  She doesn't give a hoot about the people of this country.  Hey, she already decided that half of them are irredeemably despicable.  She thinks the same of the other half but just hasn't said it yet.  Still, Hillary may be the Democrats; best bet.

I think it's time to start a draft Hillary movement.  Let the Dems have a candidate that they deserve.

Destroying Upward Mobility The Democrat Way

For a long time, the Democrats have denounced "income inequality" in America.  All we heard for years was that only the rich get richer while the middle class and poor are stuck with stagnant or declining incomes.  And the Democrats always blame the Republicans for this condition, even though that is not true.  For the Democrats, the rich don't pay their "fair share" of taxes, and that is due to GOP tax cuts.  The reality, though is that the wealthier 50% of households pay 97% of all federal taxes while the poorer 50% pay just 3% of the taxes.  Indeed, the top 10% of households pay over 70% of all federal taxes and the top 1% of households pay over 27% of all federal taxes.  These facts don't matter to the Democrats, however, the wealthy just don't pay their fair share.

Under Obama and the Democrats, though, the policies that were followed did actually result in stagnant middle class and working class incomes.  In general, only the rich got richer.  Indeed, if you look at the election results, you quickly see that the Democrats are actually the party of the wealthy.  Super wealthy districts like Manhattan's east side, Beverly Hills, and wealthy sections of San Francisco are all strongly supportive of Democrats.  The super-rich understand that while the Democrats denounce the wealthy, they actually follow policies designed to aid the wealthy and hurt the middle and lower income groups.  For example, think about unrestrained illegal immigration, a main tenet of the Democrat party these days.  If an extra 100,000 poor, uneducated immigrants arrive in a city like Los Angeles, it doesn't affect the salaries of the highly paid wealthy residents.  These new illegal residents offer them no competition.  These illegals, however, do compete with the poor Americans and keep wages from rising.  The poor take it on the chin because their incomes are held down through more competition from new low skilled workers.  The wealthy, however, get to hire illegals in their businesses at very low wages.

What has happened, though, in the three years since Trump was elected is that the problems of the poor and middle income groups have finally been addressed.  The tax cuts were designed to give additional after tax income to those in the middle income groups and they have worked.  Removal of unnecessary regulations and lowering of corporate taxes have brought manufacturing jobs back to the USA.  Remember when Obama told us that only a magic wand could bring manufacturing back to the USA?  In less than three years, the Trump policies have returned over 500,000 new well-paying manufacturing jobs to the USA.  That's half a million more middle income or poor families where someone has gotten a job that provides enough income to live a comfortable middle class life.  And it didn't take a magic wand, just good policies.

The incomes of the middle class have risen faster than inflation for the first time since before Obama was president.  That's right, middle class incomes are RISING under Trump unlike FALLING or STAGNANT under Obama.  Many millions of people are no longer on food stamps.  That's not because of any change in the requirements to get food stamps, but because millions now have higher incomes.  Minorities who seem always to vote Democrat are also getting the benefit of the Trump/GOP policies.  The Democrats always talked a good game about "helping" minorities, but the GOP is actually doing that.  Black, Hispanic and Asian unemployment is at the lowest level ever, EVER.  Just think how many millions more blacks and Hispanics have jobs now than was the case under Obama and the Democrats.  Even better, the creation of new businesses by minorities is soaring.  New minority owned businesses are being started at a rate close to three times higher than was the case under Obama and the Democrats.  Just think what that means.  A minority man or woman who starts a new business has a chance to actually become wealthy.  Sure, many of these businesses will not succeed, but many will prosper.  And each prosperous new minority owned business will provide jobs for many other people.  This business creation is the bast way to establish a larger and more prosperous minority middle class and to bring more minorities into the wealthiest Americans.

So what is it that the 2020 Democrat candidates want to do with the economy?  They want to go back to the old Obama policies on steroids.  They want to have major increases in taxes and regulations.  The current front runner Elizabeth Warren wants to destroy certain industries like oil and gas drill, health insurance, health care (doctors, hospitals, nurses), and mining.  She has no answers as to how the tens of millions of people who are supported by jobs in these industries will live.  She actually has said nonsensical things like that the 2 million people who work in health insurance should transition to selling life insurance.  But wait....aren't there already enough life insurance salesmen?  Where do the new jobs come from?  Will the government now mandate that we all buy life insurance a la Obamacare?  Warren also wants to tax capital gains each year by making stocks to market and taxing the "profits".  Understand what that means; if you have an IRA or a 401K where you have retirement savings and the investments go up in a year, Warren wants to tax that increase.  There won't be anyone saving for retirement anymore.  Remember over 50% of all Americans own stock either directly or through their retirement plans.  Much higher taxes of the sort Warren wants to impose will also soak up a great deal of cash that is now getting invested into new businesses.  All those new businesses started by minorities that I mentioned above need cash in order to survive.  You can't open a store without inventory, and that takes money.  You can't run a service business without and office, phones, computers, and supplies and that takes cash.  If you open a business and it take three or four months before people start using your services in substantial numbers, you can't survive for those months if you don't have the cash to tide you over until you start earning a profit.  Your business fails.  Warren, however, wants to raise taxes that will sop up nearly all the cash that is needed to start new businesses.

Remember something over 50% of all new jobs in this country are created by small businesses, and a big percentage of those are new businesses.  Warren not only wants to throw millions out of work by destroying their industries, but she also wants to destroy the ability of new businesses to provide the means to create new jobs that can take these unemployed people back into the economy.  It's a plan for a major DEPRESSION.  But it won't just be a depression.  It will also mean the end of the American dream.  No longer will someone be able to succeed through hard work and luck to move up into the wealthy.  That has always been the hallmark of America.  We don't have an aristocracy, a privileged class that stays in place.  Sure, there are super rich people across the country, but unlike nearly every other country on earth, the wealthy in America change.  On average, every ten years something in the area of 40% of the top fifth of American households by income change.  People move into wealth and out of wealth on a regular basis.  There's upward mobility in our country.  Someone born poor may one day become super-rich.  It's not just the Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, types who create a mega-company from nothing who take advantage of that mobility.  The army vet who leaves the service and starts a security company that quickly provides him and his family with an income of $300,000 per year is suddenly wealthy.  The minority family that opens a dry cleaning business which succeeds and provides a similar income is also quickly wealthy.  The Democrats, and Warren especially, would destroy that possibility.  Their idea of income equality is that everyone would be poor, equally poor!

The Socialist plans of the Democrats actually hark back to a famous remark made by former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher who said that Socialism doesn't work because sooner or later you run out of someone else's money.  Look at Warren's 6% wealth tax.  Warren says it's no big deal; she says that the super wealthy can make more than that in to stock market where average returns over the last ten years have been 8%.  Sounds nice, doesn't it?  But then you have to remember that gains in the stock market will all be taxed at 50% each year so even were that 8% growth to continue, it would only amount to 4% after tax.  But those 8% returns wouldn't continue; stock prices would fall big time.  Corporate earnings would collapse due to the depression and what earnings there were would be eaten up by high federal taxes that the Democrats want.  Stocks might lose half of their value or more.  So think what that means:  all those tax revenues that Warren is already spending won't be there.  There won't be any taxes on rising stock prices cause the prices won't rise.  There won't be high incomes to tax, because they will fall in a major way due to the depression.  All those new minority businesses that are still in shaky start up mode will fail, so much for upward mobility for minorities.  But what would Warren and the Democrats do?  They would tell us all that this is the fault of the rich not paying their fair share and raise taxes further.  Remember, the Democrats raised taxes to 90% at the end of the depression in the 1930s, and people like Bernie Sanders still thinks that is a good rate to shoot for.  The wealthy who can flee will leave the country, but those who stay will see their wealth eaten up quickly by the government.  The wealth that is the seeds for future economic growth in the USA will be destroyed.  We will indeed run out of other people's money.  We will become an economic basket case like Venezuela.

This Is Sad

It just keeps coming for Joe Biden.  Old Joe has long been suspect because he can't seem to remember what the actual facts are about anything.  He's either lying or senile -- you pick.  On top of that, his support is falling away because his corruption in relation to Ukraine has been emphasized in the public mind.  Today, there's a new one of these "misremembering" events came to light, and it's one that truly sad.  Old Joe claimed to have met with every one of the families of the people killed in Newtown Connecticut after the Sandy Hook mass shooting at a local elementary school.  It was a terrible tragedy that still looms large in Connecticut.  The problem is that it was Obama who came and met with the families, not Biden.  Biden, however, claims to remember the whole event vividly because it reminded him of when he lost his own child.  This is emotional stuff.  The idea that Biden is either lying about this or can't remember the facts well enough to recognize reality is either disgusting or truly sad.  Once again, you pick.

Now Kamala Goes Too

Kamala Harris just fired all her campaign staff in New Hampshire and "concentrated" her campaign in Iowa where she is in 5th or 6th place in most polls.  That's a nice way of saying her campaign has been a failure.  Harris is just postponing the inevitable.

The failure of Harris is no surprise.  After all, she has not once enunciated a clear vision for where she wants to take America or even come out with any actual policies she supports.  Basically, her campaign has been one long Trump hate-fest combined with a batch of mindless cliches and publicity stunts.  In the second debate, Tulsi Gabbard managed to destroy Harris by simply stating the truth about part of Harris' past.  Harris had no coherent response.

The reality is that since Harris represents the people's republic of California, she may manage to get re-elected to the Senate in her next election.  If she gets faced with real opposition, however, she could easily fail in that effort.  Sleeping with Willie Brown may have gotten Harris her big start in politics in CA, but running for president and showing the world just how vapid she truly is may be the end of that career.

Let's hope so, at least.

Beto is Gone

The flapping airhead from El Paso, Beto O'Rourke has dropped out of the Democrat race for president.  It should come as no surprise.  In the average of polls in Iowa, O'Rourke was at 0.6% support. In New Hampshire, Beto was doing slightly better; his average was just under 1% support.  With those numbers in the first two contests, Beto had no chance of recovery.

The funny thing is that O'Rourke had no credentials to support his bid.  He lost a race to Ted Cruz for senate in 2018.  That's right, HE LOST.  He never held statewide office.  He could ride a skate board and liked to jump up on tables or the bar at rallies, though.  And Vanity Fair ran a major puff piece on him once he decided to run.  Ultimately, though, people got to hear Beto's views.  They heard he intended to seize guns across the country by using the armed forces.  They heard his other crazy positions.  Nobody supported that.  Well, okay, less than 1% supported that.  Most likely, though, that group included mostly people who never actually heard what Beto wanted to do.

I'm going to miss Beto.  He was the perfect example of a total air head who the media sought to prop up as a viable Democrat candidate.  He was always a moron.  He still is.  It's just that now he can go back to obscurity == where he deserves to be.

What Would You Do?

Two news items today come together in a major way to bring up the question:  what would you do?  The two items are the release by Elizabeth Warren of her plan to enact Medicare For All and to finance the resulting huge cost, and the disclosure that President Trump has changed his legal place of residence from New York City to Florida.

Let's start with Warren's fantasy plan.  She actually contends that not only will her plan reduce total costs for healthcare, but that the plan more than covers the costs of the federal government to pay for Medicare for All.  Simply put, this is a lie, but I digress.  Let's get back to "what would you do?"

The first piece of Warren's plan I want to cover consists of her proposal to return the rate of corporate taxes on American firms to 35% from the current 21% rate and also to tax American firms on profits made overseas by 35% less a credit for taxes paid in other countries.  In other words, an American company that made 100 million dollars in profits in France would pay 28% to the French government and then 7% to the US government (to bring it up to 35%).  Let's look at this by itself.  We need to remember that during the Obama years when we had the 35% tax rate (which is the highest among developed countries in the world) and no worldwide taxes unless cash was brought back to the USA, we had a major problem of companies leaving the USA.  For example, Seagate Technology moved from Cupertino California to Dublin Ireland when Obama was president.  That move didn't change Seagate's taxes on operations in the USA, but it meant that profits worldwide were only taxed at Irish rates of, at most, 12.5%.  For a multinational like Seagate, that was a huge tax savings. 

Just imagine a company that has profits of $3 billion per year with one half coming in the USA and the other half coming abroad.  Suppose you were the CEO and you could save around 20% in taxes on that half of your profit by moving your firm from the USA to Ireland (and it could be less elsewhere) once Warren's plan was passed.  What would you do?  Would you keep the company in Dallas, or would you move to Dublin?  Would you keep your company in Atlanta or would you move to Bermuda?  Remember, the main office wouldn't need to move, just the legal domicile.  Remember also, that you would have at least two months after the election to make a move before Warren would be in office.  So I say again, what would you do if you were the CEO?

The answer is easy.  You would move your company.  So imagine that just half of the large multinational firms moved out of the USA.  Imagine how many jobs would be lost.  Imagine how many tax dollars would be lost.  Warren's plan assumes that no one reacts to her huge hike in corporate taxes and their imposition worldwide.  Only a fool would believe that.

And how about a second question on this point.  Imagine that you are the head of a large multinational corporation like Toyota.  You have billions of dollars of sales in the USA, and Warren's new higher 35% tax hits your profits on those sales.  Now you have a choice whether to build a new plant in Memphis or in Juarez, Mexico.  By putting the plant in Mexico, you can avoid US taxes on, let's say, $2 billion per year.  That saves taxes of $100 million each year.  If you were the head of Toyota what would you do?  Would you put the plant in Mexico or Tennessee? 

Here too, the answer is obvious.  Many new plants would go to other countries rather than the USA.  No sane company would choose to pay much higher taxes in the USA if it could pay lower taxes elsewhere.

Put all this together, and Warren's plan would mean a resumption of companies and JOBS leaving the USA.  It would mean much slower growth of the US economy.  It would be an economic disaster.  We've seen the faster growth achieved under Trump.  Would anyone choose to go back to stagnation or recession like we had under Obama -- except Warren's plans would be worse than anything Obama did.

There's a second piece of Warren's plan, though that has to be considered.  Warren wants a wealth tax of 6% on the assets of those who are worth more than a billion dollars.  She also want capital gains on stocks and bonds to be taxed annually by being marked to market.  Now consider that you are one of the few people who are worth more than a billion dollars and that you saw Elizabeth Warren becoming president.  What would you do?  President Trump just moved to Florida from New York to avoid the 13% or so in state and local taxes in New York City, and those taxes are just on income, not wealth.  Imagine you had a net worth of six billion dollars and that Warren's new law would tax you at $300 million per year.  What would you do?

That answer is also simple.  Many of the billionaires would move out of the USA.  Others would try to put their money into assets that could be valued a lower prices so as to avoid taxes.  Wouldn't it make sense to move to London or Toronto or Sydney or elsewhere if you could avoid $300 million in taxes each year? 

In addition, wouldn't you sell your stocks and bonds in order to avoid the mark to market provision and the resulting capital gains and wealth taxes?  Sure you would.  It would be a tax reduction of hundreds of more millions of dollars per year.  The net effect would be two-fold.  First, all those dollars that Warren claims she would realize from her high taxes would not materialize, thus leaving a major shortfall.  Second, the huge amount of stock being sold by billionaires would crush the stock market.  Middle class people across America who are counting on their 401Ks and pension plans for savings would see the value of their holdings collapse.  It could be again like the 1929 stock market crash (and we know what followed that:  the Great Depression).

These are not difficult questions.  Just ask yourself what would you do in these situations.  The answer is one that Warren and her fantasy plan won't like.  Warren says that "experts" support her plan.  Maybe these people think in the faculty lounge at some college that this stuff works, but in the real world, it would be a disaster, and it would be one that would crush the American economy.

There are many more problems with Warren's plan.  She is going to reimburse doctors at current Medicare rates even though those rates won't support the doctors' practices.  She is also going to reimburse hospitals at something that even Warren puts at current costs.  That would mean no profits for the hospitals, no cash to be used for future investments, no improvements for future treatment requirements, and basically no way for the hospitals to survive.  And there's more.  I'll leave those for another article.  Just keep asking yourself, though, what would you do?

Understanding The Law

With the Impeachment investigation finally authorized by the House, it seems an appropriate time to take a look at the actual (not the imaginary) law that deals with the subject.  So much has been said and written that is just plain WRONG that we need to look at the basics.  Two areas are where we will start:
1.  When is an investigation by federal law enforcement appropriate?
2.  Is there evidence of any criminal action by President Trump?

Investigation -- the rules are rather clear as to when it is appropriate to investigate a claim.  There needs to be some evidence of wrongdoing before a full investigation is done.  That evidence can consist of physical items or it can be a witness statement, but an investigation only continues for so long as there is clear evidence of wrongdoing.

If there is an explosion in which a car blows up outside a school, there needs to be an investigation.  Cars don't normally explode, so there's clear physical evidence that there could have been a bomb planted in the car.  If the forensic review finds traces of some sort of bomb materials, then that is enough to continue with the review.  On the other hand, if the forensic review finds that the gas tank of the car was punctured by some accidental means, then a criminal investigation need not continue as there is no longer any evidence of a crime.

If a man is found shot to death in the park, then there needs to be a criminal investigation due to the evidence (the body).  If a man runs up to a cop in the park and says someone just shot at him, then there needs to be an investigation due to the evidence (the statement).  On the other hand, if the same man runs up to the same cop and says that a passerby just shot him and killed him, then there's no need for an investigation because the evidence (the statement) is obviously false.

The point is that a mere charge is not enough for there to be an investigation if there is no evidence or if there is obviously erroneous evidence only to support that charge.  It doesn't matter how serious the charge, the basic rules are the same:  there has to be valid evidence of some sort to conduct an investigation.

Evidence -- Given that the House has authorized an investigation for possible impeachment, is there any evidence of criminal action by President Trump?  Initially, there was the complaint filed by the so called whistle blower.  There are all sorts of issues about the sufficiency of what is in that complaint (like political bias of the whistle blower, or his coordination/collaboration with Adam Schiff and the Democrats in compiling the complaint), but that complaint did include a claim that President Trump repeatedly threatened the Ukrainian president with a cut off of US aid unless Ukraine dug up dirt on Joe Biden.  That's enough of a basis to start an investigation since the complaint says that the President was asking Ukraine to find a particular result that would hurt Biden.  Within a few days of the whole mess surfacing in the media, however, the White House released the transcript of the actual conversation between Trump and the Ukrainian president.  The transcript then becomes the best evidence of what was said in the call.  Indeed, since the whistle blower never heard the phone call, his testimony cannot contradict the actual official transcript.  The transcript shows that Trump did not threaten to cut of US aid to Ukraine.  In fact, Trump never mentioned US aid to Ukraine.  Also, Trump never asked Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden.  He asked Ukraine to help the US investgate the Ukrainian connection, if any, to the hacking of the Democrats computers in 2016 and mentioned Biden in that context.  At most, the transcript could be twisted to say that Trump asked Ukraine to investigate Biden, but not that Trump asked Ukraine to come to any particular result (i.e., to dig up dirt on Biden.)

The transcript has been supplemented by statements from the Ukrainian president himself in which he says that he was never threatened, pressured or blackmailed by Trump with regard to Biden or anything else.

At this point, there is no longer any valid evidence of any wrongdoing by Trump in the phone call with the Ukrainian.  The transcript disproves the claims made by the whistle blower.  The investigation should have ended (or not started).

But some of the proponents of impeachment say that there was a plan at the White House to hold military aid to Ukraine until such time that the Ukrainians announce an investigation of Biden that would help Trump.    Even if Trump didn't say anything to the Ukrainians on that phone call, it didn't matter because the Ukrainians understood from the context that this was what Trump wanted.  It's what the Democrats called the "mob boss" behavior" by Trump.  This thesis also has no valid evidence since there is no evidence of the Ukrainians being told that military aid was being delayed for any reason connected to investigating Biden.  We know Trump didn't say that.  Even the witnesses called by the Democrats in their secret (and improper) sessions until now haven't said that anyone told the Ukrainians that they had to investigate Biden to get military aid released.  On top of this, we know that the aid was released to Ukraine before word of the whistle blower's complaint ever was leaked by the Democrats.  It's pretty obvious that there was no plan to hold aid to wait for Ukraine to announce an investigation since it just wasn't done.  There's no evidence.

This still leaves one more part to the question.  Suppose there was some evidence.  Is there anything wrong with the President of the United States asking Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?  The simple answer here too is NO.  Remember the context.  Joe Biden was the vice president and was put in charge of dealing with Ukraine by then president Obama.  Biden is on video proudly announcing how he threatened the then president of Ukraine with withholding all American military aid to Ukraine unless Ukraine fired the State Prosecutor.  That's the prosecutor who just happened to be investigating Burisma, the Ukrainian natural gas company on which Joe's son Hunter Biden sat on the board of directors.  Think about that for a moment and savor the irony.  Biden announces that he has actually threatened the Ukrainians with the withholding of aid unless they fire a prosecutor and the Democrats and media see nothing wrong with that.  Trump is shown by the transcript NOT to have threatened the Ukrainians with the withholding of aid (or even told them that aid had been held up) and the Democrats call it a threat to the Constitution.  Biden did it; Trump did not, but only Trump is bad according to the Democrats.

But let's go back to the basic question.  Would it be wrong for Trump to ask the Ukrainians to investigate what Biden did in threatening to withhold aid in order to get the Burisma prosecutor fired?  The answer is clearly no.  There are conflicting claims about exactly what the fired prosecutor was doing.  He may have been in the middle of investigating Burisma.  He may only have told Burisma that an investigation was about to start.  Some claim that the prosecutor had already finished his investigation and cleared Burisma.  The Ukrainians are the ones who would know that for certain.  If Biden used the full force of the US government to force Ukraine to protect his son's company, that is classic and illegal self dealing.  On the other hand, if Biden was actually trying to promote fighting corruption in Ukraine, then that is fine.  If Biden had a valid governmental purpose for what he did (fighting corruption) then he's in the clear.  We have Biden's own words as evidence of what he did; we now need more to know if it was a valid action by the Veep.  But this very test insulates Trump from the claims of the Democrats.  Trump clearly had a valid purpose even if he had asked Ukraine to investigate Biden.  Remember, there is ample evidence (Biden's own statement) that Biden may have engaged in illegal self dealing.  The President, as the chief law enforcement officer of the USA has a valid governmental purpose in asking Ukraine to help in that investigation.  Note that the transcript makes clear that Trump did not ask for a particular outcome from the investigation.  Had Trump asked Ukraine to "dig up dirt" on Biden by finding him guilty of wrongdoing, that would be an improper act by Trump -- but we know that didn't happen. 

Given that Trump had a valid governmental purpose for even the actions that the Democrats claim happened, he cannot have committed a crime.  That means no basis for impeachment and no reason for an investigation.

A few of the more imaginative Dems are yelling that Trump intended to investigate Biden so that it would help him in 2020's election.  That, however, doesn't matter.  Trump's actions were either illegal or they weren't.  His reasoning is irrelevant.  Trump had a valid basis to ask Ukraine to investigate.  That's all that matters.  Think of it this way:  suppose the president nominates someone as ambassador to the UK because that nominee is very important in some state that the president wants to carry in the next election.  The president is nominating an ambassador; that's fine, and the fact that the nomination will help him politically doesn't matter.

Simply put, there is no crime by Trump even if all that the Democrats claim actually happened.  On top of this, there is controlling evidence that what they claim is wrong; it actually never happened. 

Keep this in mind as the impeachment games continue.