What a miserable field!

So far the upcoming presidential election is shaping up to be a really miserable choice.

On the Democratic side we have Hillary Clinton as the “inevitable” contender, despite a succession of illegal or barely legal activities that stretch back to her husband’s administration.  Does anyone still remember the Rose Law Firm records of her billings that conveniently “disappeared” from the law firm files , only to eventually be found in the White House family quarters (and revealing that she double-billed many of her clients)? And then most recently we find that as Secretary of  State she kept her emails on a private server in her home (despite the security issues) , and conveniently “erased” all  the “personal” (ie- incriminating) emails before she released the rest to the Congressional Committee investigating this issue (shades of Nixon’s 18-minute gap?).  In between is a whole string of questionable actions which the press is conveniently ignoring for the moment.  This is hardly the person I would pick to lead this nation.

Then there is Joe Biden possibly entering the race.  Despite his tendency to repeatedly say the wrong thing at the wrong time, which made him a joke through most of Obama’s terms, compared to Hillary he actually looks better, which is pathetic.

And finally we have Bernie Sanders, a died-in-the-wool old fashion Socialist, eager to turn the US into a European-style centrally-planned, centrally-managed cradle-to-grave nannystate, despite the fact that Europe recently has been showing us just how economically unsustainable such a state is.

On the Republican side we have (currently) 17 contenders, of whom only one (Senator Lindsey Graham, who is no more than a blip in the polls at the moment) accepts the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is real, and largely caused by human activities. So the other 16 are either (a) scientific ignoramuses, (b) dumb as dirt, or (c) simple opportunists who know perfectly well that the evidence is overwhelming, but hold their position simply as matter of getting votes from the far-right base and/or mollifying the energy companies that contribute to their campaigns.  None of these options recommends them as potential presidents of this nation.

Then there is the undeniable fact that Republicans these days seem to have forgotten that this nation was founded on the principle of separation of church and state, and individual freedom, and want to inflict on everyone their own, often quite parochial and  narrow-minded, religious and moral constraints.

And it boggles the mind that Donald Trump, a wildly-narcissistic, ego-driven, publicity-seeking clown if there ever was one, is well ahead in recent polls of Republican voters. It suggests that a lot of Republican voters are also dumb as dirt, or at least that the rest of the field is so thoroughly unappealing that “the Donald” looks reasonable by comparison, which is also pathetic.

Perhaps things will change over the next few months and someone, either among this crowd or a new face entering late, will look more appealing.  But the choice thus far is pretty disappointing. I am no fan of President Obama’s administration, but most of these clowns, Democratic and Republican alike, based on what I have seen thus far, would likely make his administration look good by comparison.

The Iranian Nuclear Deal – the technical aspects

As is usually the case in Washington, there is the actual reality and there is a political reality, and often they are miles apart.  The political reality about the Iranian nuclear agreement is that the right opposes it on principle and the left is trying hard not to get burned by supporting something that may eventually fall apart.

But if one talks to nuclear proliferation experts (I happen to know a couple) the general consensus is that the inspection regime in the agreement, if followed, would make it pretty hard for Iran to hide a significant nuclear program.  IAEA inspectors have 7/24 access to all declared nuclear sites in Iran (sites we already know about) and a process to inspect any suspicious undeclared site with a maximum of 24 days notice.  Now 24 days may seem like a lot of time to clean up any illegal work before an inspection, but it isn’t that easy with nuclear materials – they almost always leave traces that can be detected with today’s technology. And the process to re-impose UN sanctions if Iran violates the agreement is cleverly crafted so that Russia and China can’t block it in the UN Security Council.

So from a technical perspective, the Iranian deal looks acceptable. No system is perfect, and no doubt Iran can find ways to cheat a little around the edges if it wants to, but it looks like it would be very hard (not impossible, but very, very hard) for them to mount the sort of major effort required to build a working nuclear weapon without the inspectors noticing it months ahead of time.

Nevertheless, emotions are high on this issue, both among politicians and among many in the voting public, so the fact that the technical experts are relatively satisfied with the deal probably will have little effect on the raucous public debate that is beginning.

The Iranian nuclear deal

Against all odds we seem to have a proposed deal with Iran to limit their nuclear ambitions. Since any deal would have had to have the (probably grudging) approval of Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, it probably means that Iran’s hard liners won’t be able to kill it. And while Republicans seem to be lining up to oppose the deal, I assume President Obama can corral enough Democrats to (probably reluctantly) uphold any veto.  So no doubt we will end up with this deal.

It certainly isn’t a good deal, because it leaves most of Iran’s nuclear facilities intact, except for disabling their heavy water reactor at Arak that could have been used to produce plutonium for weapons.  But it may be an adequate deal if (and only if):

1. the Iranians allow the IAEA inspection system to work as it should, and

2. the Western powers have the political will to put sanctions back into effect if Iran violates the terms of the agreement.

I doubt that this agreement will lead to any early thaw between Iran and the Western powers.  Indeed, Khameni may feel it necessary to let his hard liners have victories in other areas to sooth their opposition to this deal. And no doubt much of the flood of new money from unfrozen Iranian assets and new Iranian oil sales will be used to stir up more trouble elsewhere in the Middle East. 

On the other hand, the flood of new Iranian oil on the market will probably depress the price of oil yet more, and cause Russia’s President Putin more headaches. 

Only time will tell whether this was a naive effort, or a worthwhile diplomatic victory. It's too early yet to judge.

The Supreme Court rulings

Today’s Supreme Court ruling on gay marriages was more or less what I expected. Federal Appellate Courts had divided on this issue, but clearly one can’t have marriages recognized in one state but not another, so now that gay marriage is legal in a majority of the states the Supreme Court was bound to rule in favor of uniformity across the nation. And in fact I think it was the right thing to do morally, despite the howls of protest from the far right. But the dissents were interesting – Justice Roberts argued the Federalism case; that this was an issue that should be left to the states to decide. Justice Scalia was disturbed that such a large social issue was being decided by a group of unelected judges, rather than by the democratic process. Both are valid worries.

But yesterday’s Obamacare decision worries me. The ruling sets a bad precedent – that an agency can decide for itself what a law “is supposed to mean”, even if that isn’t what the wording of the law says. The Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) was hastily written and not even read in its entirety by most of the Democrats who voted for it, and contains lots of inadvertent errors. By rights these should have been corrected by Congress as they were found, but of course politically this was not possible – not least because in ObamaCare the Democrats very unwisely forced through a major social and economic change with absolutely no bipartisan support – not a single Republican vote. But even so I don’t think it is proper to allow a government agency to unilaterally decide to interpret a law in a way other than the way it is written. This precedent will quite likely be abused in the future.

In the previous ObamaCare ruling I also think Justice Roberts was off base. He saved ObamaCare by ruling that the penalty for not buying insurance (the “individual mandate”) was not really a penalty, but rather a tax legal under the taxing power of Congress. That despite the vigorous arguments by the President during the pre-vote debates that this was not a tax. The Courts have a principle - correct I think - to defer to the wishes and intents of the legislature to the extent they can discern them, but I think this was stretching that principle a bit too far. In both these cases the Justices saved Congress from its own sloppy work, but I don’t think that is what the Supreme Court should be doing.

Recommended: So what if Greece leaves the European Union?

George Will had a good piece yesterday in the Washington Post: So What if Greece leave the European Union?  It is a bit acerbic in tone, but accurate in content. I like the Margaret Thatcher quote: "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.” 

We will see if the fact that Greeks took €4 billion out their banks last week is enough to get the new Greek government to rethink its stubborn position or not. They are rumored to have made new offers this morning, but I would guess they haven't offered anything like enough real reforms to convince the IMF and the EU to pour more more down that black hole.

Hacking government records

What is more appalling than the fact that someone (probably the Chinese) has hacked into US government, military and intelligence files is that fact that the US government’s system security  is so bad that someone COULD hack into them.  It is hard to make current internet-connected systems completely hack-proof, because the commercial software used has many flaws.  But it can be done, and certainly for military and intelligence systems it should have been better.

Cases like Edward Snowden’s are different. Systems are always susceptible to insiders accessing them.  But there is no excuse for remote users in another part of the world, without inside access, to be able to hack into these systems.  I assume it is just another case of government ineffectualness.  They probably don’t pay enough to get the best IT people, they probably don’t fund the security efforts adequately, and no doubt the whole thing is fraught with the usual bureaucratic turf battles and infighting.

UPDATE

A little more research found this information:

The OPM (Office of Personnel Management, one of the groups that was hacked) had no IT security staff until 2013, and it showed. The agency was harshly criticized for its lax security in an inspector general’s report released last November that cited its lack of encryption and the agency’s failure to track its equipment. Investigators found that the OPM failed to maintain an inventory list of all of its servers and databases and didn’t even know all the systems that were connected to its networks. The agency also failed to use multi-factor authentication for workers accessing the systems remotely from home or on the road........

At the time, OPM said the breach was discovered as the agency “has undertaken an aggressive effort to update its cybersecurity posture, adding numerous tools and capabilities to its networks.” But four people familiar with the investigation said the breach was actually discovered during a mid-April sales demonstration at OPM by a Virginia company called CyTech Services, which has a networks forensics platform called CyFIR. CyTech, trying to show OPM how its cybersecurity product worked, ran a diagnostics study on OPM’s network and discovered malware was embedded on the network. Investigators believe the hackers had been in the network for a year or more

Unbelievable!! But will anyone get fired for this????  Probably not.

3 Foreign Policy Options for America

Ian Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, has written an excellent book entitled Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World, in which he argues that American foreign policy for the last several decades has been reactive, not driven by a coherent vision. He proposes that we need desperately to have a rational national debate about which of three possible roles we want America to take in the future.

A recent online article in The World Post, 3 American Foreign Policy Options That 2016 Presidential Candidates Need to Choose Among, does a good job of summarizing the alternatives, and is well worth reading.  In the book, Brenner gives each of the alternatives its best and strongest argument, summarized as follows in the article:

Independent America

Instead of squandering lives and resources on poorly planned foreign policy adventures, it's time for Washington to mind its own business, and let other countries accept greater responsibility for their own security and prosperity. Rebuild this nation's strength from within. Invest the billions we've squandered abroad in American education, innovation and crumbling infrastructure. Take much better care of our veterans, the men and women who have paid the highest price for our post-Cold War superhero foreign policy. Leave more dollars in the taxpayer's pocket to power the American economy forward.

Moneyball America

If the U.S. is to remain secure and prosperous, there are a few foreign challenges that must be met, and it's in America's interests for Americans to meet them. We can't afford to intervene in so many trouble spots at once, but nor can we retreat and expect others to pick up the slack. Focus less on selling American values and more on enhancing America's value. Stop treating the rest of the world as if they are "Americans at an earlier stage of development." Set aside pointless arguments about how "exceptional" we are, and build a foreign policy designed solely to make America more secure and more prosperous. Mind the cost. Set priorities and stick to them.

Indispensable America

In a profoundly interconnected and dangerous world, America can't remain safe unless we work to ensure that governments everywhere answer to their citizens. Americans must fight for democracy, rule of law, human rights and open markets because the world -- and therefore the U.S. -- will never know sustainable security and prosperity without them. Someone must lead the alliances that manage conflict, prevent terrorists from gaining access to the world's most dangerous weapons, contain threats in cyberspace and lead the fight against transnational crime and the worst effects of climate change. Who but America can do these things? Who but America can lead?

Bremmer himself reserves his own opinions until the last chapter of his book, where he argues  for the Independent America approach.

I think he is right, we in America need to decide which of these courses we want our political leaders to follow. And I guess I agree with his own conclusion, spelled out in the last chapter of the book – that we need to tend first and foremost to our own internal difficulties – crumbling infrastructure, decaying inner cities, exorbitant higher education costs, substandard early education, growing income inequality, etc, etc, etc. We have wasted a lot of lives and money in recent decades trying to remake the world in our image, and frankly it hasn’t worked very well.

This is not an argument for American isolationism, but rather for a more realistic assessment of what we can and can’t do in the world, and how much other nations have to take responsibility for their own problems in their own areas of the world.