Month: May 2019

Booker’s baby bonds. The Harris LIFT Act and teacher raise programs. Warren’s student debt relief and opioid plans. Free public college. Medicare-for-all. The list goes on and on.

The Democrats intend to roll back the Trump tax cut, probably impose new taxes, and use the money for new programs; the problem is that they can’t afford all of them. Warren in particular has probably spent the projected proceeds of her wealth tax five times over. In the real world, what should be the priority here?

In my view, the first objective should be to shore up the programs we already have. I would spend the money on infrastructure (particularly green infrastructure), filling the deficits in Social Security and Medicare, and improving Obamacare. If anything is left over, use it for a program similar to the Harris LIFT Act to increase the wages of struggling workers.

The revolution will have to wait.

After the 2016 election, I laid out three possible scenarios for a Trump economy. “Funhouse Reagan” assumed a large, regressive tax cut and an explosion in the deficit; “Reverse Robin Hood” assumed the tax cut would be offset, at least in part, by cuts in social spending; and “Trade Warrior,” which speaks for itself, could be attached to either of the other two. So how has it turned out?

I said that “Funhouse Reagan” was the most likely alternative, and I was right. I assumed, however, that the unnecessary stimulus would result in significant interest rate hikes, and ultimately, a recession. There were indications of that earlier this year, but the rate hikes have stopped, because: (a) Trump engaged in inappropriate jawboning of the Fed; (b) growth in the rest of the world has been tepid; and (c) above all, most of the tax cut just went into the pockets of the wealthy, and did not cause a consumer spending boom, so demand-driven inflation has not been a problem. In a sense, therefore, the ineffectiveness of the tax cut can be credited for the absence of an interest rate backlash; all Trump has done, in essence, is take our inequality problem and make it worse.

“Reverse Robin Hood” is periodically advocated by the CLs within the administration, but cuts in social programs have mostly been averted. The effects of “Trade Warrior,” on the other hand, have yet to be determined. They have been muted thus far, but that could change in the near future, particularly since Trump appears to be concerned that the Democrats could attack him from the protectionist left for being a wimp on Chinese trade issues.

The psychological damage caused by “Trade Warrior” on the markets, if tariffs get larger, could well exceed its actual practical impacts. We’ll see.

I was right: time was on Maduro’s side, not ours. The Trump/Rubio effort to topple the government has failed. Maduro has yet to do much in retaliation, because he very reasonably fears that a big blast of repression will result in a provocation and an American military response. The repression will probably take place slowly, and invisibly, but it will happen.

And so, the question is, what’s next for Trump and Rubio? As I said from the beginning, the only real solution here is a military intervention–most likely, from Brazil and Colombia, with substantial support from us. The only way that happens at this point is if we have a suitable pretext AND Trump/Rubio essentially pay the Brazilians and Colombians billions of dollars to do their dirty work. That could happen, but it is more likely that Trump will simply engage in his usual efforts to spin his failure as a success, and the poor Venezuelan people will suffer as a result.

The most likely outcome is that the Roberts Court will turn Roe into an empty shell instead of overturning it. As I have explained before, the distinction is meaningful, because, as long as Roe is still alive on paper, there is no possibility of federal legislation banning abortion in blue as well as red states. The possibility certainly exists, however, that the Court will take the more extreme step and overturn Roe altogether. The question for today is, how could that be done?

There are two possible rationales, with different legal and political consequences. The most direct, in-your-face approach would be to find that there is no textual or historical basis in the Constitution for a right to privacy. That approach would be welcomed by the far right, but it would also throw the continuing validity of the decision on birth control in the Griswold case into question, which would be a disaster for the GOP. Even women who have moral issues with abortion typically support the use of birth control, which could easily be banned in some of our redder states. The gender gap would consequently turn into a chasm.

The other, more moderate approach would be to assert (largely falsely, but the Court has plenty of recent history of cherry-picking facts) that scientific advances since the 1970’s have made the trimester-based balancing approach in Roe obsolete. That rationale would leave Griswold and birth control untouched, at least for the immediate future.

The anti-abortion forces smell blood with Kavanaugh and Gorsuch on the Court. Questions about what happens after Roe is overturned are no longer purely abstractions. We need to start thinking seriously about them, and preparing for their consequences.

Barack Obama’s decision not to intervene militarily in Syria led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Syrians and the exodus of millions more. You could argue–and I would–that the alternative was even worse, based on the outcome in Iraq, the Russian interest in the status quo, and the lack of a unified opposition to Assad. You can’t reasonably deny, however, that refusing to intervene came with heavy costs.

Warren and Sanders are even more hostile to the notion of military interventions than Obama was. They should be asked about Syria during the debates, because if you’re not willing to be the world’s policeman, you have to be openly prepared to tolerate a lot of damage that will be done by some pretty thuggish characters. That’s the tradeoff. It can’t be avoided.

Roger Cohen thinks China will inherit our role as the world’s hegemon around the middle of the century, because we’re sick and tired of making the sacrifices necessary to keep everyone in line. It’s a natural progression, as students of other empires could tell you. He’s probably right.

It occurred to me while I was reading the Cohen column that what he was describing as a geopolitical phenomenon was consistent with the aesthetic passage from classical to baroque. Anyone who has examined our culture critically can see how that could be the case.

Hey, it’s not so bad. “Game of Thrones” is great TV. It sure beats watching film of American soldiers dying in Iraq.

Joe Biden is naïve for saying that Republicans are the opposition, not the enemy, says Paul Krugman. Mitch McConnell will just play him for a sap, and nothing will get done. Is Krugman right?

The argument sounds plausible, but he’s wrong. Here are the possible outcomes after a Democratic victory in 2020:

1. Using the filibuster, the GOP successfully obstructs the progressive agenda, other than tax reform. The new president cleans up the federal government and removes the stain of Trumpism, but does little else.
2. Some bipartisan legislation turns out to be possible.
3. The “revolution” prevails. The filibuster is swept aside, and the Supreme Court is packed.

The bottom line is that Biden has no interest in the “revolution,” and he and his supporters would be OK with the first two options, which are actually the most plausible outcomes. It is the proponents of the “revolution” who have no idea how to bring it about who are being naïve here.

Joe Biden clearly thinks he would have beaten Trump if he had run and received the nomination in 2016. He is quite possibly right. The question for the day is, how would his candidacy have impacted the 2016 primaries? Did he have a realistic path to the nomination?

Your initial reaction probably is to think that he would have split the realo vote with Clinton and thus helped Sanders win the nomination. Surveys taken around the primaries, however, indicated that a large percentage of Sanders voters were actually well to the right of their preferred candidate, who was chosen for reasons of identity, not ideology. As a result, it is much more likely that Biden would have taken votes from Sanders than Clinton.

My counterfactual? Clinton had the establishment vote locked up, and had strong support from women and minorities. The final outcome would have been Clinton at 50 percent and Biden and Sanders at 25 percent. This would have destroyed anyone’s illusions about the “revolution” for all time. But, of course, it didn’t happen, and the illusion persists.

I make no secret of my disdain for Netanyahu, for several reasons: his complete identification with the hard American right; his treatment of the Palestinians; and above all, his clear desire to force my country into a war with Iran that does not serve our interests–only Israel’s. That said, I would acknowledge that Israelis have reason to believe that their nation is more secure today than it was, say, ten years ago. And so, the question is, from the perspective of an Israeli voter, has Bibi been more lucky or good?

Some of both, but the luck predominates. On the one hand, he has avoided reoccupying Gaza, he has not completely capitulated to the Israeli far right, and his public relations efforts with the GOP has made him a hero to a certain kind of American. On the other hand, he isn’t responsible for electing Trump, the Arab Spring, which was a danger to him, fizzled without any action on his part, and Hezbollah arguably is a greater danger now than it was a decade ago.

The real issue with Bibi is that his luck could run out. There could be another, more serious, revolution, in Egypt. America could elect a Democrat in 2020. The Palestinian issue could take center stage as the result of some sort of atrocity in the Old City. Then what? Conflict management is not a long term solution to anything.

Lord knows, the information that was already in the public domain about the Trump campaign and the Russians was damning enough. The real question about Mueller was whether he had some additional evidence of wrongdoing that was so compelling that even GOP senators would vote to remove him from office. The answer, as it turns out, was no.

It was necessary and appropriate for the Democrats to demand as much of the report as possible, given Barr’s efforts to spin it in the interests of his boss, not the nation. Now, however, there is no blood left in that stone. It’s time to move on.

The Fed wannabe they call Moore

Had plenty of views to deplore.

Some GOP friends

Crushed his dreams in the end.

So the battle was won–not the war.