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.