Recommended: Is Hamas Trying to Get Gazans Killed?

Jeffery Goldberg from The Atlantic has an interesting article: Is Hamas Trying to Get Gazans Killed? A few other astute writers have made the same argument that he makes - that Hamas was driven to start this latest exchange because it has become markedly weaker as many of its normal sponsors and sources of funds (like Egypt and Syria) have dropped away.

It is clear (a) that sending rockets into Israel is not going to accomplish any of the stated goals of Palestinians - it won't get them a state, nor eliminate the blockade, nor make the State of Israel go away, nor even kill many Israelies, (b) on the contrary it will make all of these things less likely, but (c) it will increase the standing of Hamas among other terror groups in the short term. For these thugs apparently that is enough to justify getting a lot of Muslim civilians killed - as many as possible in fact.

I am continually amazed at the UN and world leaders who decry Israel's response, though if the same thing happened in their own country their own response would be at least as forceful, if not more so. Is this another example of the latent anti-Semitism still around in the world?

Israel vs Hamas

Now that we have another flareup between Israel and Hamas, I see that that the “bleeding heart” portion of the press is again cranking up a campaign to villify Israel. No matter that this whole issue started with Hamas kidnapping and murdering three Israeli teenagers.

I notice that the Palestinian public wasn’t at all upset about the murder of the three teenagers; just about the Israeli incursion to search for their murderers.  But when a single Palestinian teenage was abducted and murdered in revenge, they were really upset.

I notice that Israel is calling the homes they have targeted 15 minutes before they fire at them, allowing family members (and the militants they are targeting) to leave safely, while Hamas is firing hundreds of rockets indiscriminately and with no warning, without any worry about civilian casualties.

I wonder again how those in the press now castigating Israel would react if, say, Mexico fired 100+ rockets a day into the US.  Or how they would treat an administration that “showed restraint” and did nothing to try to stop the bombardment.  Remember what we did when some terrorists took down just three buildings in the US – we took down two whole nations in response.

Israel has indeed been repressive in Gaza – they have had to be, since they faced and still face fanatics who are happy to use suicide bombers to kill civilians.  And of course there are civilian casualties – Hamas puts its rocket launchers deliberately among civilians to maximize the chances of civilian casualties.

There is no easy resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian problem, as years of fruitless negotiations have proved.  And in fact Israel hasn’t always made the wisest choices in their attempts to deal with the terrorist threats.  But Hamas is a real and continuing threat, as this current mass of rocket attacks shows, and Israel simply has to do something to stop them, unpleasant as the results may be.

Obama and Carter

Some months ago a few conservative bloggers began comparing President Obama’s presidency to the presidency of the thoroughly likeable, but thoroughly ineffectual Jimmy Carter.  At the time I thought that was going a bit too far; now I am not so sure.

To be sure, President Obama faces a perfect storm of problems these days – the new Sunni “caliphate” in Iraq and Syria, Russia’s expansionist moves, China’s increasing assertiveness, the current blow-up between Israel and Hamas, the massive influx of illegal child immigrants across the Texas border, an obstructive Republican block in Congress, continued opposition to ObamaCare and the imminent rise in health insurance premiums this fall.  He could hardly have been expected to anticipate these.

Or could he?

Serious and respected military and foreign policy experts have warned for years that letting the Syrian civil war drag on was just providing a breeding and training ground for extremists.  And sure enough, they were right, as we found out when ISIS (the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) came storming out of the Syrian debacle and took over large portions of Iraq, massively increasing their supply of funds and arms in the process.  It is not comforting that after a closed-door briefing this past Monday with the President, several Senators, both Democrat and Republican, complained publically that the administration seemed unable in the meeting to define any coherent administration policy toward this problem.

Serious and respected military and foreign policy experts have followed for years, and frequently written about, the inevitable Russian moves to expand its influence back into the territories of its old Soviet empire.  Why were the events in the Ukraine such a surprise to the administration? Why did they not have a plan or policy in place, and indeed why do they STILL seem to be simply reacting ad hoc to events there, making it up as they go along?

President Obama’s much hailed “Russian reset” has come to nothing.   Nor did his famous speeches at Cairo University offering an open hand to the Muslim world seem to make the slightest difference in the current Middle East turmoil.  In retrospect it is pretty clear that he misjudged entirely both the motives and the agendas of the Muslim world, as well as of the Russian government.

Republican opposition was to be expected, given the rise of the Tea Party, but frankly I think much of the hard feeling and opposition is due to President Obama himself.  He clearly has no skill in negotiating, nor in building relationships with opponents.  When he invited the Speaker of the House to play golf with him once it was a big news item, because he had done nothing like that before (or since). His general attitude is well summed up in his 2012 comment “We won, you lost. Get over it.”  Hardly the way to work with your opposition.

As to the current influx of largely unaccompanied children across the Texas border, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how that came about.  If the president goes on and on in speech after speech pressing the case for an amnesty for illegal immigrants, especially if they came to America as children, the clear message people in poor South America nations are going to get is this: get yourself, or at least your children, into America as soon as possible, so that they will come under the amnesty.

The world is a difficult and complex place these days, and the problems the president faces are indeed very hard. The liberal press keeps trying (with increasing difficulty) to convey the picture of a thoughtful, measured president considering all the options carefully before moving.  Sorry, that isn’t what it looks like to me: I see more of a deer-in-the-headlights indecision by someone who is out of his depth, and would frankly rather be shot of the whole job.

It’s hard to tell if Hillary Clinton or John McCain or Mitt Romney would have done better in this job, but the odds are pretty good they would not have done any worse.  A new poll from Quinnipiac University made the news last week – it reported that 33% of American voters now rank President Obama as the worst president since World War II, and 45% think in retrospect that we would have been better off with Mitt Romney.  Considering how unappealing Romney was, that is a pretty harsh rating.

So perhaps the comparison with President Carter was not so far off the mark after all.

Recommendation: Confronting Russian Chauvinism

With respect to my previous post, Zbigniew Brzezinski gave a very good analysis in a recent panel discussion, which was printed in the June issue of The National Interest: The Ukrainian Problem: Confronting Russian Chauvinism. It is well worth reading.

How much of a threat is Russia, really?

Americans have a habit of greatly overestimating their major rivals.  Perhaps it goes along with the perennial worry that America’s best days are over, and that we are in terminal decline. Now there is a great deal of public anxiety about the moves Russia, under President Putin, are making in the Ukraine.

There is no doubt that Russia is a major regional power. Nor is there any doubt that Putin can – and probably will - continue to make things troublesome around Russia’s borders and in the UN Security Council.  And of course Russia still has a significant nuclear capability. But is Russia really an existential  threat to us as a super power, or even to Western Europe?  I think not.

The reason is the same as in my last post: “It’s the economy, stupid”.  Russia simply doesn’t have enough of an economic base to sustain a major conflict. In fact, it is quite likely Putin recently pulled his troops back from massing on the Ukrainian border in part because he couldn’t afford to keep them there very long. Russia, in fact, is on the verge of a major recession – they were there before the current sanctions were put in place, and even the very minor sanctions that Europe and America put in place have tipped the Russian economy closer to recession. Serious sanctions would quickly – within weeks or at most months – put the Russian economy into free fall, a fact which Putin certainly knows and which is no doubt restraining his hand in the Ukraine.

Indeed, I suspect Putin also knows his economy really couldn’t sustain a prolonged war in the Ukraine if he did invade.  And it would be a long war. The Ukrainians, at least in the Western two-thirds of the nation, are pretty angry with Russia now, and although the Russian army could certainly capture the territory pretty quickly, I suspect they understand that the guerrilla war that would follow would probably be as bad as their experience in Afghanistan, if not worse.  In fact, there are already signs that Russia is having some trouble, and some public opposition, with the high costs of supporting the moribund Crimean economy, now that they have annexed it.

At the moment, the economies of America and its allies are FIFTEEN times as big as the Russian economy. Nor is there any real prospect of Russian’s economy getting significantly stronger in the foreseeable future, because it is so culturally enmeshed in endemic corruption, from the lowest traffic cop to Putin himself. And because it is currently largely an extractive economy, based on exporting oil and gas – the Russian manufacturing base and infrastructure are still largely the same inefficient and antiquated ones inherited from the old Soviet system, and for the most part Putin has not attempted to update them to make them competitive in the world markets.

Russia can certainly afford to design and build and show off a small fleet of advanced fighter planes, or a few pretty advanced ships for its navy.  But they can’t afford to give them the continuous and intensive training that America gives its fighting men and women. Nor to build and maintain the immense logistics system a modern armed forces needs to project its power beyond its own borders. Which is probably why Russia is depending mostly on its well trained but small cadre of special forces to surreptitiously lead so-called  “popular rebellions” in Eastern Ukraine – it’s all they really can afford to do, though that does seem to be enough to keep the Ukraine in turmoil.

It’s the economy, stupid!

The core theme of Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign was the slogan “It’s the economy, stupid”.   It was true then, and it remains just as true now.  While the administration fusses and fumes about various liberal ideological goals, and fumbles around in our foreign policy, and while Congress dithers, the core thing that matters before all else, and the core thing they all ought to be focused on (but are not), is the state of the American economy.

Why the economy?  Because it is the economy that makes everything else possible. Want a strong military? Only a robust economy can fund it.  Want more social services and health care?  Only a strong economy can fund them. Want more soft power in the world?  It takes a strong economy to produce that.  Want a better standard of living for America workers?  That only comes with a stronger economy.  There is no free lunch – all those things liberals and/or conservatives want cost money, and that money in the end can only come from taxes and payrolls and reinvested profits in a robust economy.  It’s not rocket science!

So what would a rational administration and Congress be focused on if they really wanted to insure a strong America economy in the long run?  Here is my own top 3  list:

Revitalizing the nation’s infrastructure.  A strong economy is built on, and requires, an effective, reliable and efficient infrastructure; roads, bridges, rail lines, airports, seaports, electric grids, communication systems, water systems and the like.   We once had the best in the world, but decades of neglect at the state and federal level have taken their toll. The last major infrastructure investment in this nation was under the Eisenhower administration when the Interstate Highway system was started. Since then our national infrastructure has deteriorated significantly. For example:

·         Engineering societies (who study these things) give our bridges and roads nationwide about a D average, and we have even had a few spectacular failures recently to remind us (eg – the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge collapse in Minneapolis). The Federal Highway Administration estimates that a capital investment of about $170 billion per year would be required to (eventually) bring our roads and bridges back just to an acceptable level of performance and safety. Annual federal, state and local investments are currently running at about half that level.

·         Despite the central importance of electric power to EVERYTHING in this nation, expansion and modernization of our electric grid system has not kept up with demand, and it is now straining at its limits, and moreover is highly vulnerable to failure from natural disasters and/or terrorist attacks. The American Society of Civil Engineers has estimated that an additional investment of at least $107 billion is needed by 2020 just to keep the current electric grid operating relatively reliably, and that doesn’t include any investment in modernization.

·         We invented the internet, yet according to The World Economic Forum the United States ranks 35th out of 148 countries in Internet bandwidth, a measure of available capacity in a country. Other studies rank the United States anywhere from 14th to 31st in average connection speed. And more than that, broadband connectivity costs about twice as much in America as in Europe. Things are pretty bad when broadband speed in Riga, Latvia is two and a half times faster than in San Antonio, Texas, and costs only one-fourth as much.

·         The US has built only two new major airports in the past 40 years, Dallas-Fort Worth and Denver International. (China, by contrast, is adding 56 new airports over the next 5 years.) The World Economic Forum ranks US aviation infrastructure 32nd in the world, behind that of Panama, Chile, and Malaysia. The FAA currently estimates that about $52 billion in investment in airport capacity expansion is needed just to manage the predicted passenger load by 2020, and that investment is not being made.  Beyond that, the US air traffic control system is woefully inadequate to handle even the current load, as frequent flight delays and periodic computer crashes demonstrate, and needs a complete redesign.  The FAA has talked about a Next Generation Air Traffic Control System for a decade now, and had just started to implement minor portions of it, but then Congress cut the funds even for that as part of the budget sequester.

Improving workforce education and training.  The world is increasingly dependent on technology, and that means more and more of the well-paying jobs in this country require technology training.  Whether it is a secretary using a word processor, a machinist running a numerical control milling machine, a medical technician running an EKG, an auto mechanic reading the problem codes from the on-board auto computer, a stock broker entering on-line orders, a webmaster building web pages, a mechanic servicing or programming an assembly-line robot, or a pilot flying a plane, more and more of the good jobs require significant technical training.

A 2013 Oxford University paper entitled The Future of Employment  estimates that up to 47% of current jobs can soon be automated.  These are the jobs that a computer can do, and do faster, more reliably, and at less cost (since a computer doesn’t need health care, sick leave, a pension, or vacations, and doesn’t belong to a union).  The jobs that are left are those that require initiative, creative and flexible thinking, interpersonal skills, complex assessments, and the like.  To maintain a robust economy we need to keep a high proportion of our labor force employed in well-paying jobs, which means we have to invest heavily in training or retraining that workforce and providing them with the skills needed for the best jobs available.

At the college and postgraduate level the US does just fine, though the costs of higher education are excessively high.  But that is even now in the process of correcting itself, as free or inexpensive on-line courses are bringing competitive market pressures to bear to drive costs down again.  But at the elementary and high school level we need to do better, and in particular we need to establish the sort of alternate track hands-on technical or trade school training route that some European countries have for those youngsters who have neither the need nor the interest in traditional academic training. In America we tend to look down at trade schools, because we have this idealized cultural myth that everyone ought to be able to go to college, but that is a mistake we need to change. Lots of youngsters have neither the aptitude nor the interest in traditional academic studies, but are fine, even sometimes brilliant, at hands-on technical work.  We need to capture that talent and put it to good, well-paying work.

Reducing the regulatory burden on small businesses and new start-ups. Here is the problem: bureaucracies tend to produce more regulations than are really needed. There are natural reasons for this. First, bureaucracies tend to make work to justify their existence and budgets. Second, bureaucracies tend to “cover their butt”, meaning they don’t want to be accused of missing something, so they over-regulate.  The public is part of this; if people get sick because of a batch of bad meat, they will promptly blame whatever food safety bureaucracy they think should have prevented the problem, and that bureaucracy will promptly add a mass more layers of regulations to protect itself in the future. Finally, big companies will sometimes press for onerous regulations to be added that help keep competitors at bay.  Big companies can afford teams of lawyers to fill out masses of regulatory paperwork, while small new start-ups can’t.

Now the problem is that despite the publicity that big corporations get, in fact small businesses make up most of the economy.  According to 2011 US Census data, small businesses with less than 500 employees make up 99.7% of all US businesses, and in fact 98% of all US businesses have less than 20 employees. And these small businesses generate about 46% of the Gross National Product, and create about 60% of new jobs.  So any time the government places a regulatory burden on a business sector, they disproportionately disadvantage small businesses and potential new start-ups, who have far less resources than large corporations to comply.  Yet it is these very small businesses and start-up who are the life blood of the economy. Just ask a local small business owner about the regulatory burden they bear. It can be enlightening.

According to a recent report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, at this point in the Obama admiration (which has continued to expand federal regulations at an unprecedented rate) the cost to businesses of federal regulations, at an estimated $1.8 trillion per year, is now bigger than the entire economies of all but nine countries in the world. For small businesses, federal regulations cost almost $11,000 per employee.

And some of these regulations are just ludicrous.  As The Economist recently reported

A Florida law requires vending-machine labels to urge the public to file a report if the label is not there. The Federal Railroad Administration insists that all trains must be painted with an “F” at the front, so you can tell which end is which. Bureaucratic busybodies in Bethesda, Maryland, have shut down children's lemonade stands because the enterprising young moppets did not have trading licenses. The list goes hilariously on.

and

Dodd-Frank is part of a wider trend. Governments of both parties keep adding stacks of rules, few of which are ever rescinded. Republicans write rules to thwart terrorists, which make flying in America an ordeal and prompt legions of brainy migrants to move to Canada instead. Democrats write rules to expand the welfare state. Barack Obama's health-care reform of 2010 had many virtues, especially its attempt to make health insurance universal. But it does little to reduce the system's staggering and increasing complexity. Every hour spent treating a patient in America creates at least 30 minutes of paperwork, and often a whole hour. Next year the number of federally mandated categories of illness and injury for which hospitals may claim reimbursement will rise from 18,000 to 140,000. There are nine codes relating to injuries caused by parrots, and three relating to burns from flaming water-skis.

Certainly we need regulations.  The problem is that we don’t need nearly as many as we now have, and that these excess regulations are a significant drag on the economy and a strong disincentive to start new businesses in America.

Another perspective on Republican obstructionism

There is no question that the Republican party in Congress, and especially in the House, has tried to obstruct President Obama’s legislative initiatives at almost every turn.  Some of this is just hardball politics, some of it is pandering to Republican politician’s voter base, and some may even be driven by racism against our first black president. But there is another perspective to this steadfast opposition one might consider.

In general, a democratic government like ours ought not to implement major social policies, or major policies of any sort, without a national consensus.  Not a complete consensus of course, because there will always be those who oppose any new idea, however rational it is.  But at least a healthy majority of the nation ought to support any proposed new major government initiative before it is implemented.

The establishment of Social Security in 1935, in the depths of the depression, had overwhelming support from both parties at the time.  When President Johnson signed Medicare into law in 1965, there was overwhelming public support for it.  These were expensive programs that had a significant impact on America life, and so it was important that there be widespread support for them.

Look, by contrast, at passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). At its passage less than half the country supported it, and at no time since, up to today, has its public support (measured by periodic polls) risen above the low 40% mark.  It is no wonder it continues to be a source of such political friction. Aside from the fact that almost no one in Congress read the entire 2000+ page bill before they voted on it, and that it contained a poorly-thought out and unrealistic funding plan, it simply didn’t have the public backing that such a disruptive change ought to have had.

Or look at the current stalemate in immigration.  Liberals want to give many illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. Conservatives wonder (a) why we should reward illegal behavior with citizenship, and (b) why illegal immigrants should get citizenship ahead of the millions who have waited patiently for legal citizenship through the quota system.  These are hard questions, and it is by no means clear to anyone yet what the right answer would be, so it makes sense for the government to do nothing if it can’t yet figure out the right thing to do.

So I would propose another perspective to the current Congressional stalemate. President Obama keeps proposing liberal ideas that don’t (yet) have a national consensus behind them. Maybe they should have, but they don’t. So in fact perhaps the government is working exactly the way it should when it blocks such initiatives. Republicans are a majority in the House, and may soon be a majority in the Senate as well. They are a majority because, for better or worse, a lot of the nation’s voters elected them.  That means they more or less represent the will of a large portion of the nation, and perhaps it is right that no major legislative initiative, however rational or “right” it is, ought to be passed over the opposition of a large portion of the nation.

If a right-wing President were in office and a Democratically-controlled Congress blocked his minority right-wing initiatives, liberals would think Congress was just doing its job (and indeed, that is exactly what they thought during much of the last Bush administration).  So perhaps exactly the same logic applies here – the nation as a whole is not yet ready (and may never be) for some of the things President Obama is proposing, and until the nation is ready for them, they ought not to become law.