Month: December 2015

1/1/16

New Year

Have good cheer

Lose your fears

Love what’s dear

 

Milestone

Time has flown

Chances blown

Great unknown

 

With that mixture of hope and foreboding, I wish everyone who reads this blog a happy and prosperous 2016.

When you compare our year with the troubles experienced by the people in other nations around the world, it doesn’t look bad at all.  Consider this:

1. GDP growth was tepid, but steady.
2. The unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent.
3. Some progress was made in rolling back the IS pseudo-state.
4. Important international agreements were reached on climate change, trade, and Iran’s nuclear capability.
5. The federal government didn’t shut down or default on its debts.  Not even once.
6. The DJIA is almost exactly where it was on 1/1/15.
7. Gas prices were more or less cut in half, which was great news for everyone who doesn’t own or work for an oil company.

OK, so the weather was weird and we had some mass shootings–those have become the new normal.  All in all, we can consider ourselves pretty lucky.

The major event to look forward to in 2016 obviously is the election.  Will we continue our slow movement forward or try to return to a right-wing Brigadoon? We’ll know at this time next year.

Matthew Yglesias has an analysis of two articles in The Atlantic regarding the 2016 election  on Vox.com today.  I discussed one of the articles in a post yesterday. The bottom line is that I tend to side with Yglesias, but I think the subject requires some additional comment.

Here are the facts, as I perceive them:

1. It is true, as Yglesias says, that the GOP is the predominant party in state governments.  That will not change in 2016.
2. It is also true, due to gerrymandering and natural forms of segregation, that the Democrats have no realistic chance of regaining the House in 2016.
3. The Senate is up for grabs.  A resounding Clinton victory could make it possible for the Democrats to regain its majority.
4. Clinton’s chances of victory in 2016, under current conditions (which will certainly change in ways we can’t predict) are about 60 percent.
5. Numerous polls have shown that the GOP electorate holds opinions on issues like tax and entitlement cuts that are inconsistent with those of the establishment, and most of the Republican presidential candidates.

I think the big questions here are as follows:

1. What relative weight do you put on winning the presidency, as opposed to Congress and state governments?  In other words, which level/branch of government is likely to have a bigger impact on your life in the next four years?
2.  Would the apparent hostility of the GOP electorate to large tax cuts for the wealthy and entitlement “reform” stop a federal government headed by a President Rubio or Cruz from adopting them?

My reactions are as follows:

1. This is a difficult call; it depends to a large extent on what the big issues of the day are and how they affect you.  If foreign policy is the biggest issue, then you would rather have the presidency than state governments;  otherwise, you might attach more importance to state government.
2. I agree with Yglesias on this one.  There might be a backlash after the fact, but I don’t see the hostility of the electorate stopping a Republican Party in control of the government at all levels from adopting, at a minimum, huge regressive tax cuts.  Entitlement cuts would be tougher, but I think you would see them, too.  I absolutely concur with Yglesias that Beinart’s conclusion that a President Rubio would govern to the left of Bush 43 is wrong, because GOP orthodoxy has drifted a long way to the right regardless of the opinions of its voters on discrete issues.

I am happy to report that most of my predictions regarding the GOP race have been shown to be accurate.  In particular, I have always given Ted Cruz a much better chance than most of the pundits, and I identified Rubio as the leading Romney Coalition candidate several months ago.  I must admit, however, that I did not believe that Trump would survive as the frontrunner as long as he has.

A fairly large number of pundits and pollsters still flatly assert in the face of all of the evidence that Trump has no chance to win the nomination because his campaign does not have the support of the GOP establishment.  I don’t think the people who make those statements fully understand how the GOP has changed over the last several years.  I still believe that Trump will be beaten in the long run, but only if the establishment is willing to finance a shock and awe negative ad campaign about his numerous deviations from the party line.  So far, that hasn’t happened; Jeb Bush calling Trump a jerk isn’t going to cut it.

Koch, where is thy sting?

With one very notable exception, 2015 was a year of adjusting to the new normal in Nigeria-with-nukes.  The principal story lines were as follows:

1.  The price of oil continued to fall, and austerity bit:  However, the ruble stabilized, and Putin managed to find enough money in reserves to keep his political allies happy.  Never underestimate the stoicism of the Russian people.

2.  Military action in Ukraine diminished substantially:  Having accomplished his military objectives, Putin has decided to wait and see if Ukraine will implode and fall into Russian hands.  He is playing a long game here;  control of the eastern part of Ukraine is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

3.  Putin doubled down on his support for Assad by intervening directly in the war.  He has made very little progress, and lost both a civilian and a military plane for his pains.

4.  There was a splashy new opening to China, but results on the ground were meager, and are likely to remain so for years to come.

The big questions for 2016 are:

1.  Will there be an upsurge in terrorism as a result of the Syrian intervention?

2.  Is Putin willing and able to move towards a genuine political solution in Syria?  It does not appear at this point that the combination of Russian air power and Hezbollah ground forces are sufficient to win the war for Assad.  If Putin really wants to put an end to the war and retain Russian influence in Syria, he will have to show some real flexibility over regime change.

The Iraqi Army has more men and better equipment than IS.  The question has always been whether it had the will to fight.  Ramadi suggests that the answer is yes, under the right circumstances.

There is reason to hope that this could be the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq.  Syria, of course, is another story.

David Brooks wrote a column in the NYT about two weeks ago in which he argued that Cruz is not an insurgent, but rather a representative of an opposition establishment within the GOP.  Given the amount of money that Cruz has been able to raise from large donors even in the face of intense hostility from the GOP leadership, his position makes a lot of sense.

There is good reason to believe at this point that the support of the opposition establishment could be sufficient, if things break his way, to win Cruz the nomination.  Would it be adequate support for a victory in the general election? Could he actually govern without surrounding himself with figures from the traditional establishment?  I don’t think this group has sufficient assets and expertise to win and exercise power by itself, which means that Cruz will have to make his peace with the leadership ASAP if he gets the nomination.

2015 wasn’t a great year for the Chinese, either.  These were some of the main storylines:

1.  Declining growth rates as the government attempts the difficult task of rebalancing the economy.

2.  A major market correction which damaged the prestige of the government and raised questions about its acceptance of a market economy and its ability to manage one.

3.  Large industrial accidents also raised questions about the honesty and competence of the government, particularly at local levels.

4.  An opening to Russia didn’t accomplish much, at least in the short run.

5.  Aggressive actions in the South China Sea prompted a push back by the affected parties:  Japan improved its relations with South Korea and India; the TPP was signed; and the US continued to assert the right of free navigation in the area.

6.  Xi consolidated his power, while the anti-corruption campaign expanded.

7.  Cooperation with the US and other countries on climate change improved, and resulted in the Paris Agreement.

The main issues for 2016 are whether the government can successfully balance the needs of a dynamic market economy (regulatory neutrality; respect for property rights; the free flow of information) with the Communist Party’s desire to exercise arbitrary power, and what consequences will flow from the ongoing dredge and fill projects in the South China Sea.

There is an interesting article in the latest Atlantic in which David Frum, among other things, sets out four alternative courses for the GOP in 2016.  Option 1 is the Romney Coalition with a more persuasive standard bearer than Bush (i.e., Rubio); Option 2 is the Reagan Coalition (that would be Cruz); and Option 4 is the Reactionary agenda with regulatory changes to limit voting participation among prospective Democrats (not happening).  Option 3 is clearly his preference, and I would identify it as the Christian Democrat agenda, which is not really espoused by any of the candidates (Kasich has his CD moments, but his tax and spending plans are clearly PBP). The question for today is, why is this agenda currently off the table?

I would suggest three reasons:

1.  “Compassionate conservatism” was discredited by Bush 43:  George W. Bush was unique in that he had strong ties to the Reactionaries (his evangelical religion), the PBPs (tax cuts, deregulation, bailouts), and the CDs.  Of these, only the “compassionate conservatism” element has been repudiated by the mainstream of the party, partially because it was connected to his pro-democracy activism in the Middle East.  As a result, the GOP has lurched to the right, and the CD faction has diminished substantially.

2.  The CDs don’t have any enforcers:  The Reactionaries have a host of right-wing talk show hosts and evangelical ministers to maintain discipline.  The PBPs have the WSJ.  The CDs have. . .David Brooks, Ross Douthat, and Michael Gerson. That’s it.  They don’t scare anyone, and Douthat is so eager to make deals with any faction that will oppose abortion that he can barely remember he is a CD.

3.  The Reactionary faction has been substantially strengthened in numbers by former “Reagan Democrats”:  Current polling makes it clear just how far to the right the party has moved over the last few years, and, demographically speaking, that is the reason.  Angry white male blue collar workers do not become CDs.

 

 

I have seen several articles recently which question why the GOP establishment hasn’t done more to embrace Rubio in light of the clear and present danger from Trump and Cruz.  The more urgent issue for the establishment is why the insurgents in the race are outpolling the insiders by 2:1, but, leaving that aside, here are some answers to the question:

1.  The Bush shock and awe campaign worked:  While Jeb! did not succeed in running off his competitors with his fundraising, he established relationships that his donors clearly consider to be binding unless and until his campaign completely runs aground, which probably won’t be until the Florida primary.

2.  Young men in a hurry shouldn’t be Republicans:  The GOP establishment has traditionally picked old white guys who have paid their dues.  Rubio doesn’t fit the bill.

3.  Rubio lacks swagger:  He has been more forceful in the debates than I expected, but he’s no Ronald Reagan.

The bottom line is that I expect the embrace to come eventually, but by that time, it may be too late.

If you lived in Ireland, things probably weren’t too bad.  Otherwise, you were faced with this unhappy list:  terrorism; the rise of right-wing populism; the Greek debacle; the refugee crisis; and pitifully slow growth.  In short, it was a year to forget.

2016 should be about dealing with the new normal.  The next crisis figures to be in 2017, with the Brexit referendum and the French election, which, in some ways, will be about Frexit.

The person whose career reminds me most of Hillary’s is the longstanding Queen of Pop.  How do they stack up?

                   Hillary     v.     Madonna

Ageism/Sexism      Prevailed        Prevailed

Marital Issues        Monica            Divorces

Reinventions         Each Campaign    Countless

Right-Wing Critics      Vast Conspiracy    Cultural Conservatives

Successful Impressions     SNL Sketches     “Born This Way”

 

And the winner is. . . Hillary.  She is the clear favorite in 2016.

As we know, Bernie advocates replacing Obamacare with a single-payer system that is based on Medicare and similar to systems throughout the rest of the world.  From a purely political perspective, his proposal is wildly impractical; it wasn’t even possible to include the public option in Obamacare when the Democrats had substantial majorities in both the House and the Senate.  It would also result in the elimination of countless thousands of jobs in the health care insurance business.  Let’s put those facts aside, however, and look at the merits of the proposal in a vacuum.

There are enormous advantages to single-payer if it is done properly.  Single-payer systems have much lower administrative costs (the other side of the coin is the elimination of all of those private sector jobs) and, by creating a national consumer cartel, do a far better job of keeping costs down on a service-by-service basis than our system does.  The problem is that someone has to pay for this;  the fact that Vermont tried and failed to institute a single-payer system is, or should be, a cautionary tale.

Sanders is vague on this subject, but it would appear that he believes he can pluck enough feathers from employers and the wealthy to pay for the new system.  I have two concerns about this:

1. Logically speaking, universal benefits should be paid for by all of society, not just a relative handful of people; and
2. The last thing we need to do in an era of globalization and technological change is to drive up the cost of labor.  A new employer payroll tax, therefore, would be a huge mistake, in my opinion.

    Christians and Pagans at Christmas

Can’t say I buy into the whole Christmas story.

But minus the details, the story rings true.

How would our lives change if we had stayed pagan?

What would it mean for me and for you?

 

The people of Rome had their reasons to think

The sun only shone on their city.

No value they placed on life outside their walls.

To others they showed little pity.

 

We’re all stuck together in this little boat.

A man’s just as good as his brother.

If there were no Christmas, I doubt we’d believe

We’re all bound to love one another.

 

Merry Christmas!

     The Two-Front War on Christmas

Secular humanist

Season must leave you pissed

Can’t tell you what you’ve missed

Must be off Santa’s list.

 

Stalwart of Christian right

You’re spoiling for a fight

Why are you so uptight?

Turn on the Christmas lights.

 

The War on Christmas is sort of like the War on Coal, except Christmas is winning.