Finally!!

Finally we are beginning to see some hard-headed and realistic analysis of why the Democratic Party has been losing so badly and so steadily for the past decade or so. William Greider summarizes the new report in The Nation in his current article What Killed the Democratic Party, and it is well worth reading.  The full 34-page report is available online at this link: Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis.

The authors are certainly correct that Democrats have to go back to appealing to their working class core constituents, but I’m not sure they are going to manage that by following Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren yet further left. That strategy might possibly win them the presidency next election if Trump’s administration continues to be so chaotic, but I don‘t think it is a viable long-term strategy because I don’t think the far-left proposals are either economically or politically viable either nationally or at the state and local level, and I think a continued swing to the far left will ultimately doom the party. America as a whole is more centrist.

Recommended: The Primal Scream of Identity Politics

I highly recommend today's article in the Weekly Standard by Marty Eberstadt, The Primal Scream of Identity Politics.  It is an unusually thoughtful and well-researched piece, and an interesting follow-on to Mark Lilla's recent book (recommended earlier, see book list in sidebar), The Once and Future Liberal.

Three recommendations

I have been arguing for months now that liberals need to stop their childish tantrums and outrage and get their act together if they are to have any chance of regaining political power. I see Op Ed writers are beginning to say the same thing. I am not especially a fan of Piers Morgan, but his piece in the (UK) Daily Mail, Snowflakes Are Screaming, But Trump's Likely to Win Again seems to me right on the money.  Eugene Robinson’s piece in today’s Washington Post The Democrats Are in Crisis Too is also worth reading. And finally let me also recommend Roger Altman’s piece today, also in the Washington Post, Trump Was an Election Surprise. Expect More.

It is clear that neither political party has any idea how to solve the nation’s current problems, and indeed one can make a convincing argument that neither party, as currently constituted, has any hope of even understanding the nation’s problems, let alone finding workable solutions to them. That is a pretty strong claim, but I offer the current comments and reactions of Washington politicians of both parties as evidence. Is there any indication yet from their public statements  that either the Republican or the Democratic politicians are even aware that they are out of touch with their voters?  Unpredictable and eccentric as Trump seems, he is certainly more in touch with the feelings and fears of his supporters then the professionals in either party.

I find it interesting that a recent poll by the Pew Research Center suggests that the increasing gap between the political left and the right in this country since 2011 has come almost entirely from the liberal wing moving further left, rather than from any further rightward movement of conservatives. That doesn’t bode well for Democratic prospects in upcoming elections, because the nation as a whole simply isn’t that far left (in fact the nation as a whole is pretty much in the middle), and will probably never be.

Political Spin

The Senate this week voted down a new rule that would have expanded the range of class action lawsuits allowed. Democrats were (predictably) outraged, claiming that it was a giveaway to Wall Street and big corporations. No one of course mentioned how this system really works.

I have been part of several class action lawsuits – not that I entered them voluntarily, but I got notices in the mail advising me that since I had purchased this or that item in the past I was now automatically part of a class action lawsuit against the manufacturer unless I actively withdrew.  And I eventually actually got settlement payments, the largest of which, if I recall correctly, was under $5.  The lawyers who filed these cases, if I recall correctly, got fees ranging from about $1.5 million to $2.5 million.

The scam runs like this: find a manufacturer who has committed some sort of error, initiate a class action lawsuit in one of the jurisdictions that is especially friendly to such suits, get a settlement and then petition the court for extravagant legal fees, which are usually approved. I’d like to have a job where I could charge $500/hour for my time! Some law firms make a steady and highly profitable business of this.  Manufacturers of course pass on their costs to their customers in higher prices.

So who really got hurt by rejecting this proposed rule were the few highly profitable law firms who make their living by milking companies with class action lawsuits (just under 70% of US companies get one or more class action lawsuits each year – it’s big business for the lawyers). Of course no one wants to openly admit this, so Democrats spin the story by claiming Wall Street and corporations are the real winners. Yet more Washington political spin.

Taxation craziness

There is no doubt that America very badly needs an overhaul of its system of federal taxation. The IRS tax code currently runs to an unbelievable 74,608 pages and includes tens of thousands of loopholes and special deals for various special interests, so that any large corporation or wealthy individual who can afford to hire clever tax accountants and attorneys can manage to pay almost no tax at all.

The nominal federal corporate tax rate is 35%, but the 30 largest corporations in America paid an effective tax rate of 26.7%.  General Electric even managed to pay no taxes at all and get a $400 million rebate, for an effective negative tax rate of -4.5%.

So certainly the tax code needs to be massively simplified and cleaned out of all the special interest deductions and loopholes. But total taxes don’t need to be reduced – they actually need to be increased. Democrats ignore the fact that their programs are debt financed.  Republicans make a big deal about reducing the debt, but when in power they only increase it. Voters seem to ignore the debt – they want more from the government but they certainly don’t want to pay for it.

In fact the federal debt exploded 101% under the second (Republican) President Bush who added $5.8 trillion to the debt. Then it exploded another 68% under (Democratic) President Obama, who added another $7.917 trillion during his administration. Currently we are running an annual deficit of about $660 trillion, yet the current Trump administration is talking about reducing taxes, which is clearly the wrong direction to go, and Democrats like Bernie Sanders want to add yet more wildly expensive debt-financed programs like federally financed medical care for all.

Of course voters don’t want to give up their government benefits like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid, and certainly they want things like National Parks and support of the arts, but in fact when push comes to shove they don’t want to pay for these things.

So in fact whatever the Trump administration is proposing for tax reform is thoroughly inadequate, and whatever Democrats are proposing is just plain crazy.

Mainstream news cover up?

Is there some significance to the fact that while several conservative news sites today are reporting evidence that the FBI knew about and covered up bribes and pay-for-play payments (including an hour speech that the Russians paid Bill Clinton $500,000 to give, and several million dollars donated by the Russians to the Clinton Foundation) while Hillary was Secretary of State (and which she never reported, despite having promised in writing to report all foreign donations to the foundation while she was Secretary of State) and while she was approving the sale of a 20% stake to the Russians of a critical uranium mine, the mainstream news is ignoring this story in favor of a complaint that Trump didn’t call fast enough the family of a soldier who died?

Is there some significance to the fact that several of the key players in the current special prosecutor investigation into alleged Russian-Trump ties, including the special prosecutor himself, were apparently aware of the FBI evidence, yet neither notified Congress nor opposed the sale, yet none of this – so far – is being reported in the mainstream press?

Strange how the liberal mainstream press is trying still to link Trump to Russia (with no hard evidence yet appearing), yet is ignoring the Clinton-Russia story.

Another perspective

I have liberal friends who are upset that President Trump canceled the Dreamers plan (which gave semi-legal status to illegal immigrants who were brought here as children), that  he withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement, that he refused to recertify the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and that he cancelled the ObamaCare subsidy payments to insurance companies.

Irrespective of whether one agrees with these steps or not, one needs to look at these actions in perspective. The fact is that all Trump has done is put these issues back on a more legal footing.

Immigration laws are supposed to be established by Congress, and only by Congress. The administration is by law only supposed to enforce the laws Congress has passed. So Obama’s executive action to exempt a certain class of illegal immigrants from deportation was a constitutionally questionable action from the beginning, however much people may have approved of the result. All Trump has done is put the issue back to Congress, where it belongs in the first place.  Congress of course may bungle it – in fact given how dysfunctional the Republicans seem to be the odds are pretty good they will fail to act. But that is Congress’s fault, not the presidents’.

The Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Nuclear Agreement are treaties, and by law treaties must be approved by Congress. The fact that President Obama bypassed Congress for both of these agreements by some legal shenanigans (because in fact Congress would likely not have approved them) doesn’t change the fact that by law they were supposed to be approved by Congress. All Trump has done is put the issues back to Congress, where they should have been in the first place. Again, Congress may or may not drop the ball, but either way by law Congress is supposed to be involved.

President Obama managed to arrange for the ObamaCare insurance company subsidies to be paid even though Congress never appropriated funds for them. Again, by law Congress has the power of the purse, and by law the government isn’t supposed to spend money that Congress hasn’t appropriated. So all Trump has done again is put the issue back to Congress, where it should have been resolved in the first place.

Once again, people may not like Trump’s actions in these cases, but in perspective all he has really done is undo some executive actions that by law Obama  should never have been allowed to put in place in the first place. Obama did it, of course, out of frustration with a Congress that wouldn't agree with him - but in fact our government is deliberately set up so that on serious issues like treaties and spending, the administration is supposed to need the support of a majority of Congress. If the president can't get enough support from Congress, than, so the framers of the Constitution reasoned (correctly, I think),  he/she shouldn't be allowed to proceed.

Recommended: The G.O.P. Is a Mess. It’s Not All Trump’s Fault.

I have been harshly critical of liberals in general and Democrats in particular over the past few months because I actually believe in many, perhaps even in most, liberal goals. But I think the current Democratic Party is doing a terrible job of promoting those goals. Hence my critical comments.

But that doesn’t mean I think the Republicans are, by contrast, in good shape. The Republican Party is in just as bad a mess, or perhaps even a worse mess. Their electoral successes in the past decade, both at the national level and the local level, certainly show that they are more in touch with voters, and have a better game plan. But their current inability to get anything done in Congress is a clear symptom of their problems.

In that regard, I highly recommend Peter Suderman’s Oct 13 Op Ed in the New York Times: The G.O.P. Is a Mess. It’s Not All Trump’s Fault.  I have been arguing that Trump is not the problem; he is a symptom of the problem. And if he hadn’t come on the scene someone very like him would have. Perhaps without quite the same chaotic personality, but certainly responding to the same working-class anger.  I think Suderman has a pretty good analysis of what ails the GOP.

Liberals – Get Real!

Liberals have been trounced over the past decade in both national and local elections. As a party, Democrats haven’t been in such bad shape since the 1920s. So what have they proposed recently to reverse this trend?

There is the movement to abolish the electoral college, so that the winner of the popular vote would become the president. First of all, that does nothing to address the Congressional elections or the state and local elections, which are far more important in the long run. Second, you have a majority of fly-over country already pissed off at the big city coastal elites – do you really think proposing to disenfranchise all those states by arranging that presidential elections are essentially settled by a few big liberal states – primarily New York and California – will fly?    Do you really think a majority of states will vote for a constitutional change that reduces their influence? Do you think pushing for it is going to win you elections? Get real!

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are pushing far left soft-socialist ideas like free college for everyone. Just what does free college do for a 50 year old machinist outside of Detroit who has been laid off, or for an unemployed 20 year old who had trouble getting through high school? What is this liberal fascination with getting everyone through college? Much, perhaps even most, of the nation has no interest in spending four years studying English literature or academic economics or batting their brains trying to understand calculus. Get real!

Then there is the Sanders/Warren proposal for free medical care for everyone. Notice the word “free”. Didn’t anyone ever teach liberals that there is no free lunch?  In fact their proposal would require either incurring a massive additional federal debt, which would soon sink the economy, or just about doubling income tax rates. Think that will fly? Do you think that will win you elections?  Get real!

Hillary lost the last election partly because of immigration. She (and Obama) essentially wanted to give the country open boarders, where anyone could come in. Oh, they didn’t phrase it that way, but if you aren’t going to prosecute and deport illegal immigrants, that is essentially what you have – open borders. So you have a large segment of the middle of the country already uneasy and unhappy about the number of new immigrants moving into their cities and neighborhoods. Do you think proposing to increase this problem is going to win you elections? Do you think lecturing those people - telling them, from your holier-than-thou elite liberal ivory tower - that they shouldn’t feel that way, is going to win you elections?  Get real!

Finally there is the liberal outrage over any accommodation to religious voter’s concerns about issues like contraceptives and abortions and gay marriage. As it happens I agree with the liberals on these issues, but the reality is that most of the country has religious beliefs of one sort or another, and liberals, whatever their own personal views on religion, are never going to win elections by ignoring those beliefs, or even worse, by disrespecting those who hold strong religious beliefs. Get real!

The theory is that the liberal elite is better educated than the rest of the country. Apparently that better education didn’t include enough psychology to teach them that looking down your nose at a group, or calling them names doesn’t win their votes. Apparently that better education didn’t include enough history to teach them that ignoring the economic desperation of a large segment of the population doesn’t win them votes, and breeds revolutions. Apparently that better education didn’t teach them enough political science to understand that candidates have to offer voters something they care about to win their votes. Apparently that better education didn’t include enough sociology to teach them that they need to get out of their own isolation bubble if they want to see the world the way it really is, instead of the way all their peers see it.

What I see is a bunch of proposals that appeal ideologically to the existing liberal base – that will get votes from the liberal elites who already vote for Democrats.  I don’t see anything that will bring in new voters, especially new working class voters. I don’t see anything that shows the slightest understanding of why Democrats have been losing so badly all across the nation over the past decade or two. I don’t see anything that addresses the very real angst and worries of the working class voters who used to be a reliable Democratic base. I don’t see any evidence that liberals are getting real!

Recommended: Dems Are Playing Checkers While Trump Is Playing Chess

Thomas Edsall had a very good Op Ed piece in the New York Times yesterday: Dems Are Playing Checkers While Trump Is Playing Chess.  There is an old saying that if you are stuck in a hole, the first thing to do is to stop digging. It does seem to me that the Democrats, having found themselves in a hole in this last election, are still madly digging the same hole.  Hillary said once during the campaign that it was dangerous to elect a president who can be set off by a Twitter posting. Well, it seems it is in fact the Democrats who seem to overreact predictably on every Trump Twitter, and Trump knows that and uses it.

We are most of the first year through Trump's presidency, and I still don't see any evidence that Democrats have learned anything, or developed any thoughtful strategy for getting back into power.  It is beginning to look like they are simply incapable of getting out of their bubble, of abandoning their perpetual childish outrage and getting real about their problems. On the contrary, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren seem to be moving the party even further left. And I certainly don't see any evidence that the party is working to recover those working class voters that used to be their base - on either economic issues or cultural issues.

Well, Darwin's "survival of the fittest" law applies in politics as well - if they can't shape up they will disappear as a party, which is a real disaster because then who will represent the liberal point of view?

Hypocrisy

I suppose hypocrisy is always around us, but recent events have certainly brought it to the fore:

Hollywood stars are forever pontificating about the behavior of others, but now it turns out that movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual harassment has been an open secret in Hollywood for decades, but only now are stars who knew about it willing to be “shocked” in public!  Of course jokes about the “Hollywood casting couch” go back to the 1920s, so really I don’t suppose this is new behavior in Tinsel City.

And then there is the New York Times, that bastion of investigative reporting, always ready to expose wrongdoing (especially by Republicans) who apparently suppressed a story about this in 2004 after getting pressure from Weinstein. The Times of course denies that it did this, but the evidence is pretty clear. To their credit, they were the ones who – finally – broke the story this year.

Then there are the NFL football players demonstrating against the killing of unarmed blacks by police (16 last year, according to the FBI), but conveniently ignoring the epidemic of blacks killed by other blacks (over 7000 last year, but 61% of black homicides are never solved, so it is probably actually much higher).  And of course they aren’t going to protest the high rate of spousal abuse among NFL players either.

It does seem to me that hypocrisy is more in fashion this year.

Thoughts on upgrading our naval power

I have been thinking a great deal and reading a great deal about the current state of our navy, particularly in light of the book recommended in the preceding post. Clearly the proliferation of very quiet diesel-electric submarines around the world, the evolution of increasingly effective ship-killer cruise missiles and medium-range ballistic missiles, and the advances in space-based sensor systems has dramatically changed the naval battlespace. Looking at the current and planned future developments in the US navy has led me to the following observations:

The current trend to decrease the manpower on warships is short-sighted. Yes it cuts the operating costs – fewer sailors to train and maintain. But in real combat ships get damaged, and what keeps them afloat and fighting are the damage control teams. Cut the manning down too far and there aren’t enough sailors for effective damage control teams. Lightly-manned ships are fine in peacetime, but I fear in actual combat we will lose ships and sailors we could have saved if there had been enough manpower aboard to do effective damage control.

The recent focus on shorter range air-superiority fighters on carriers is short-sighted. Because of the new developments, carrier groups will likely have to operate further from the battlefront, and their air wings will need a longer reach. Mid-air refueling can help the problem a bit, but the relatively slow and unprotected refueling planes are an obvious early target for any opponent. We need to develop longer-range naval aviation planes.

The new “distributed lethality” concept is a good one – equip more smaller ships with effective anti-ship missiles, so that every navy ship, whatever its size, is a serious combatant, instead of just a few of the major battlewagons. Of course anti-ship missiles are only as good as their guidance and targeting information, so even the smallest of these ships will need to be connecting to the evolving combat networks.

A clear weak point in the US military as a whole is the increasing dependence on space-based sensors and communications assets, which any serious opponent will probably try to knock out at the very beginning of hostilities, either with a high-altitude nuclear EMP (electro-magnetic pulse) burst and/or anti-satellite missiles.  China in particular has invested heavily in developing and testing anti-satellite weapons.  We ought to take that into account.

We ought to push hard the evolution of unmanned stand-off weapons like cruise missiles with intelligent guidance systems that are not wholly dependent on GPS for their accuracy.  We are likely to need to launch initial attacks from further away, given the increasingly effective anti-access weapons systems around the world (like the new Russian S-400 missile system, arguably better than anything the US currently has).’

We ought to push hard the evolution of long-endurance unmanned submarine systems, for intelligence, sub hunting, missile launching and mine laying/detecting.  Underwater vehicles will likely be much safer in a future war than surface vessels, and much likelier to be able to get close to enemy shores.  The current limit on such vehicles is the power source – batteries just aren’t high enough capacity yet. But this will change.

We ought to be paying attention to our industrial base. The US is down to only seven major domestic shipyards capable of building, maintaining or repairing large navy ships. In World War II we had 29. As it is we are seeing delays in replacing our end-of-life carriers and submarines because of shipyard capacity. For example, on our current building schedule we will have a shortfall of attack submarines for over a decade, between 2025 and 2041, partly because of funding issues but also because of shipbuilding capacity. (The current requirement to keep 10 attack submarines deployed around the world every day requires 48 total attack submarines in the inventory)   If I were an opponent, I would seek early on to put a few of these shipyards out of action.

Will any of this happen? It depends on whether Congress and the administrators in power over the next decade or so get real about the threats, or continue to dither and hold unrealistic expectations about a peaceful world.

Recommended: Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies

People may resent the amount we spend on our military, but in fact it is American power that keeps free access to the seas around the world, and it is the sea that carries the vast majority of the trade that keeps our economy, and the economies of our trading partners going, so like it or not it is very much in our own self-interest to act as the policeman of the high seas.  Retreat from that obligation would be very foolish and short-sighted indeed, much as it might please the pacifists among us.

There is no nation that currently threatens us on the high seas, but there are several that have spent a great deal on their military to deny us access to their local waters, the Peoples Republic of China being the most worrisome. Not only would the PRC like to deny us the ability to protect Taiwan if/when they decide to take it back (an eventuality for which they have been planning and arming for decades now), but they claim almost the entire South China Sea (the so-called nine dash line), an area that carries one-third of the entire world’s shipping. And of course Iran can always threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz, shutting off 20% of the world’s oil supply. Both have invested heavily in anti-access weapons. Clearly there are issues here we ought to be thinking about.

Sam Tangredi’s 2013 book Anti-Access Warfare: Countering A2/AD Strategies is worth reading for anyone who wants to be better informed about the challenges our military may face in the future, and the weapon developments and investments we ought to be making to meet that possible future. This is not a causal read – but it is worth it.

Now that we know more....

Now that we know more about the shooter in Las Vegas, one important thing is pretty clear: none of the steps currently proposed by gun-control advocates would have been effective in stopping this tragedy.   The shooter appeared perfectly normal to his family and  those who knew him. He had no known political agenda, or even interest. He had no criminal record. He had no known history of mental illness. He bought at least one shotgun at a gun store and passed the background check.

He seems to have amassed a sizeable collection of guns (42 at last count), and modified some of them to fire automatically. And apparently even his brother didn't know he had done this. I suppose a national register of all gun purchases might have raised a flag, but even then there are perfectly normal collectors who might own that many guns. He was wealthy, so it would not have been unreasonable for him to have been (or posed as) a collector.

But certainly the usual steps proposed by gun-control advocates, such as universal background checks, would have been ineffective in this case. That doesn't mean they aren't still good ideas, and worth doing. They will stop some shooters. Burt let's be clear - none of the proposed steps would have stopped this shooter.  Only eliminating all guns in the civilian population might have been effective, and that is clearly a political non-starter in America, and probably unenforceable in any case.

The Las Vegas shootings

According to first reports, the shooting in Las Vegas Nevada last night is by far the worst mass shooting in recent American history, with at least 50 dead and hundreds more wounded. The shooter was a white man, apparently not a recent immigrant, and most likely not Muslim. So this is not a terrorism incident – this is likely another mentally unstable lone wolf attacker. And according to police he had a huge arsenal in his hotel room.

What does this say about American gun laws? Clearly no one is going to take guns away from Americans, but surely we need tighter controls on who can purchase and own guns and ammunition. It won’t stop all incidents like this, but it will surely cut down on the number. There is no reason why people who have a history of mental problems, people who are very young, and people who have been convicted of an armed crime should be able to purchase guns and ammunition legally, and without a thorough background check. Nor is there any reason why gun owners shouldn’t be held legally and financially liable for damages their guns cause, whether fired by them or stolen/loaned and fired by someone else.

The NRA will of course fight such steps tooth and nail, but isn’t it time we got real about this problem. We place restrictions like this on drivers of cars; why not on gun owners as well? This is not a second amendment issue – this is common sense.