Cromwell

I attribute the events at Cornell to three factors: first, the perennial problem with fraternity culture, which existed long before I was born; second, the impacts of social media, which put the “gang” in gangbang; and third, the permission slip we gave for this kind of behavior when we elected a man found liable for sexual assault as our head of state. Trump has already expressed more concern for the due process rights of the male participants than for the feelings of the victim. Are you surprised?

The criminal law is a blunt instrument, and the facts are murky here, so the new investigation has to be done with great care. It is highly unlikely that all of the participants are equally culpable; some of them may not be guilty of criminal acts at all. What we can say with confidence, however, is that all of the participants treated the victim like a piece of meat. Anyone who was aware of what was going on and did nothing to stop it deserves our condemnation even if the criminal law is not applied.

I was watching the Ohio State-Iowa game yesterday when I noted something I had never seen before; the GOP Senate PAC was running commercials attacking the Democratic candidates in Iowa and Ohio on a national sports broadcast. That meant the PAC was paying inflated advertising rates to reach millions of people who do not live in Iowa or Ohio. It was about the most inefficient use of campaign funds I could imagine, and it suggests that the GOP has more money than it knows how to spend properly.

I have also noticed that a significant and growing number of commercials are peddling AI-related services. Many of them promote companies with names I do not recognize. Can this last, or is this another dotcom bubble? TBD.

Jamieson Greer, the USTR, attempted to persuade his fellow G20 trade representatives to unite against the Chinese export machine earlier this week. He failed, largely because the rest of the world views Trump’s arbitrary tariffs as a threat of similar magnitude, although Greer loyally denied this was the case.

In a related note, Trump went to Iowa and announced that a massive new steel plant would be built there in the near future. If the plant is actually built–as usual with Trump, there are serious doubts about it–it would generate more product than is necessary for the American market. Could the prospect of large American steel exports have influenced the positions of the other trade representatives? I leave it to you to decide whether this is a mixed message.

Trump gives himself an A+ for his first two years. Is that a fair grade?

He started an unsuccessful war, drove up prices, trashed more institutions than I can name, cut taxes for the wealthy, promoted unregulated AI, imposed tariffs on a whim, initiated a grossly unfair and economically unproductive deportation program, did his best to quash dissent, and turned the DOJ into a purely partisan operation. Would you give that record an A+?

Back in the day, US presidents used to refer to the shared experience of fighting Japanese imperialism during World War II to persuade the Chinese government to cooperate with us. This kind of appeal worked with some individual Chinese citizens who had suffered through the war, but not with the regime.

Xi has flipped the script. During last week’s summit, he argued that Japan was becoming militaristic again, and that America and China should work together to prevent a revival of Japanese imperialism.

LOL. The real issue for America is Japanese pacifism, not militarism.

J.D.’s Godly Society is based on an American manufacturing renaissance that creates tens of millions of great jobs for male workers. As a result, women can afford to stay home and have lots of babies.

But the future of manufacturing is robots. Virtually every function in a factory can be mechanized. Even the maintenance of the robots could be assigned to specialist robots. This is already starting to happen in China.

In short, we could have J.D.’s domestic manufacturing renaissance with a massive decrease in factory jobs. Then what? How do we get to the Godly Society under those conditions?

He had better hope that the combination of robots and AI bring about endless abundance, and that the owners of the new economy are willing to redistribute their incredible wealth to the rest of us.

Trump has clearly convinced himself that, like Louis XIV, he is the state. It follows from that premise that the peasants–er, taxpayers–should pay for commercials promoting him and his opinions.

The logic is plausible, but the premise is ludicrous. Even GOP bigwigs admit as much, but they won’t do anything to stop him, because while he may not be the state, he is the personification of the base.

Reactionaries love running against secular liberals. It’s a huge advantage in many rural areas, and it permits them to assume an air of moral superiority, regardless of the merits of the individual candidate.

The midterms, however, have created a new challenge–running against left-wing Christian candidates. This drives the Republicans nuts. Their typical response is to accuse the blue team candidate of being insincere, or even a heretic. After all, isn’t it self-evident that Jesus loves guns, fossil fuels, and capital punishment and hates abortion, trans people, immigrants, and wealth redistribution?

Well, actually, no.

Imagine you are the CEO of an American auto manufacturer. On the one hand, you have Trump driving up your prices with tariffs, screwing up your supply chains, and telling you to build cars that run on gasoline. If you comply with his wishes, you will effectively be giving up all of your overseas markets. On the other hand, the Democrats might win power in 2028, and they want more electric cars. How do you plan for the future?

It’s a difficult task, to be sure. You probably hedge your bets. You reduce the production of electric cars, but not to zero, and wait for the next change in policy.

It seemed to set up perfectly for the GOP senators. They would hurl allegations at Jack Smith, talk over his answers, and get on Fox News. Trump and the base would be pleased. What could go wrong?

As anyone with more brains and less ego than the senators–that is, most Americans–would have predicted, Smith made them look foolish. Too bad, guys. Let’s play two.

The great would-be emperor Xi

Took a plane to the land of the free.

A truce was extended;

The trade war has ended;

And Xi was the winner, you see.

If I’m right–and I’m pretty sure I am–Trump has recognized that he can’t win a trade war with China through the use of tariffs, because the Chinese have too much leverage against him. His new hope to restore American economic predominance is AI. That is why he continues to extend the trade truce with Xi, while he continues to fight at home for AI deregulation.

But Trump is losing the public relations battle on AI. Why is that? Beating the Chinese should be popular on both sides of the aisle.

Because he can’t bring himself to admit to the public that his tariffs were a failure. And, of course, he has no idea how to protect American workers from the potentially catastrophic impacts of advanced AI; in fact, he doesn’t even seem to care.

Trump’s arrogance and blundering have created an unprecedented opening for Xi. He could completely remove India from any part of the American orbit for the foreseeable future simply by relinquishing China’s claim to some fairly worthless territory in the Himalayas. Why doesn’t he do it?

Because the one domestic group Xi appears to fear is the nationalists. He doesn’t want to subject himself to accusations of being a wimp even if, on the whole, it would be in China’s best interests.

David Jolly has a plan to replace private property insurance in Florida with a government plan. It is a bold proposal. Is it a good one?

There is, or should be, a strong presumption against socializing anything. The relevant criteria are as follows:

1. HOW PERVASIVE IS THE PROBLEM? CAN FLORIDA PROPERTY OWNERS AVOID IT? While the degree of risk is obviously much higher along the coasts, all Florida property owners have at least some exposure to serious damage from wind in tropical events.

2. HOW SERIOUS IS THE PROBLEM FOR INDIVIDUAL HOMEOWNERS? Premiums have skyrocketed. Some Florida homeowners can no longer afford to live in the state. By and large, however, the population has adjusted.

3. TO WHAT DEGREE IS THE MARKET ALREADY REGULATED? IS THIS REALLY A BIG CHANGE IN POLICY? Florida has a state-operated property insurance program already, and insurance is highly regulated. This apparently revolutionary change would be akin to moving to “Medicare for All” from the public option.

4. IS THIS A MARKET FAILURE THAT ONLY THE GOVERNMENT CAN REMEDY? Insurance companies are simply responding to the additional risks created by climate change. That is a problem created by the government, not the companies. Government action to improve resilience is probably a better use of public funds than the creation of a socialized insurance program.

The bottom line here is that the argument for a socialized system is reasonable, but not compelling. Even if Jolly wins, however, we’ll never find out; the Florida Legislature is never going to embrace his proposal.

Trump 1.0 is surely entitled to some credit for emphasizing the impacts of the massive Chinese trade surplus on the rest of the world. The surplus is due less to “communism” than to Xi’s preference for producers over consumers and his desire to stifle opposition to China by making the rest of the world dependent on its products. Logically, Trump 2.0 would have responded to the surplus by persuading American consumers to accept a regime of short-term austerity and by uniting the rest of the world against unfair Chinese trade practices. He did neither; he backed down in the face of Chinese retaliation and market unrest and decided to bully the rest of the world for no obviously good reason.

So what’s the new plan, Stan? Trump is putting all of his eggs into the AI basket in the hope that it will restore American economic supremacy. Exactly how the benefits of AI can be confined to American producers and how the negative impacts of Frankenstein’s monster can be kept under control appear to be of no concern to him.