Month: January 2023

While the GOP has shown on innumerable occasions that it has no interest in a balanced budget, the party collectively has a strong interest in making the lives of the poor–particularly women, children, and minorities–as miserable as possible. Why is that?

Here is where the factions stand on the matter:

1. CLs believe that taxation is theft, wealth redistribution is a loss of freedom, and the welfare state only encourages lazy people to lounge in the hammock of dependency. Cutting the safety net to the bone is a form of tough love.
2. PBPs want to trim the welfare state for two reasons. First, they resent having to pay their share of the cost, because that reduces profits. Second, PBPs want a motivated, well-trained, docile, and poorly paid workforce. Reducing the strength of the safety net gives the unemployed less leverage with employers and thus helps to accomplish these goals.
3. In the eyes of Reactionaries, “welfare” is only there to assist people who are not “real Americans.” It can and should be cut as far as possible. Social Security and Medicare, on the other hand, are relied upon by millions of “real Americans” and consequently are sacrosanct.
4. The CDs, once again, don’t favor cutting the welfare state, but they are no longer real Republicans, and they don’t count.

The real issue with budget cuts is with Social Security and Medicare. Given the positions of the CLs and PBPs, there will always be a degree of interest among Republicans in cutting these programs, but the power lies with the Reactionaries, and they have every reason not to go along. Will that change over time? Not if they have any sense.

As I’ve noted many times before, the Reactionaries believe in a strong state and a comprehensive safety net, at least for “real Americans.” They don’t care in the least about a balanced budget. Why, then, are they being so militant about the debt ceiling?

Because they can’t do anything about wokeness as long as Biden is president and the Senate is controlled by the Democrats, but they can create chaos by voting against lifting the debt ceiling. It’s a really good step towards burning it down, and, as a practical matter, they may actually have the power to get it done. So why not? Wokeness can wait for a better day.

The stated reason for tax cuts on capital is that they result in increased investment, which increases productivity and ultimately trickles down to workers in the form of slightly higher wages. Experience over the last 40 years has repeatedly told us that this proposition is false, at least under current conditions. Even if it is doubtful that Republicans actually believe it, however, it remains the default GOP position as of today. Why?

Consider the issue from the perspective of the GOP factions:

1. For PBPs, promoting tax cuts on capital is a matter of compelling material self-interest. In addition, it is a gesture of official respect for their invaluable services as job-creating economic supermen. Nothing upsets a PBP more than the suggestion that he didn’t really make that by himself.
2. For CLs, all taxes are a burden on liberty, and should be cut to a bare minimum. CLs also cling to the forlorn hope that tax cuts will force the federal government to starve the beast. It didn’t work for Reagan, and it won’t work now.
3. The Reactionary position is complicated. On the one hand, the typical Reactionary worker is resentful of plutocrats, and gains little from tax cuts on capital, since he doesn’t have much. On the other hand, many Reactionaries are small business owners, who profit to some extent from these tax cuts, and in any event, support for tax cuts has been a critical part of the bargain that keeps the GOP united against the left. Lose the support of big capital, and you lose elections and the existential battle against wokeness–at least, so goes the theory.
4. CDs don’t really support tax cuts for business, but they aren’t really voting for the GOP at this point, anyway, so they don’t count.

The big question for the GOP going forward is whether the Reactionary/PBP bargain will hold in a changed environment in which the Reactionaries numerically dominate the party and increasingly call the shots. Will the Reactionaries embrace New Right economic thought and simply demand that business fall in line? I don’t think that will happen in the next election cycle, but we’ll see.

To reactionaries, MLK was purely a crusader for equal legal rights. Once the battle was won, and de jure segregation was a thing of the past, his job was done. If he had lived, he would have gone home and taken a long, well-deserved nap. To the left, however, MLK was fighting for practical equality. He would have been a strong advocate for affirmative action programs and, ultimately, for reparations.

Which one of these views is historically correct? King was murdered when he was trying to assist with a garbage strike. He fought, mostly unsuccessfully, for fair housing. He opposed the Vietnam War. There is thus no reason to believe he would have stopped with the Civil Rights Acts, or that he would have ended his days siding with the radical right and screaming about socialism and the evils of wokeness.

And yet, I’m quite certain John Roberts will say exactly that when he writes the opinion outlawing affirmative action in admissions later this year.

Balanced budget plans, huge spending cuts, and a looming debt ceiling crisis–it all seems painfully familiar. Does the GOP really want to party like it’s 2011 again, or is something else going on here?

There are a number of significant differences between then and now:

1. You could argue that the GOP had some sort of a mandate to cut spending after the 2010 election, but not today;
2. Obama was sympathetic to the idea of entitlement cuts. There is no talk of a grand bargain today;
3. The GOP has even less credibility on balancing the budget today than it did in 2011;
4. The red base is much more interested in fighting wokeness than in cutting the budget, which was not a consideration in 2011;
5. It is doubtful that the Tea Party really wanted to force a default in 2011. Today, the Chaos Caucus would probably welcome one as a first step in burning it down; and
6. The GOP House leadership was willing to ignore the GOP extremists in 2011, but McCarthy owes his job to them.

What these differences mean in their totality is that a default is more likely today than in 2011, but not for any reasons relating to fiscal prudence. This battle will be all about burning it down.

As I’ve taken great pains to point out over the years, the GOP is badly divided on most of the important issues of the day. In addition, many of its more prominent members are far more interested in becoming social media celebrities than in moving legislation. For those reasons, it is often said that the GOP has few, if any, ideas about policy.

While that observation is true, it is slightly misleading; while the Republicans don’t have much in the way of actual ideas, they do have prejudices and lowest common denominators that unite them against the left. I will be identifying and analyzing these in a series of posts over the next week.

The last round of globalization should have been a win-win-win. Producers reduced their labor costs and increased their profits; consumers enjoyed lower prices; and displaced workers were supposed to be compensated by the producer and consumer groups, using the government as a channel, through direct repayments and effective training programs. The first two parts of the equation functioned as planned, but the third did not, and we are paying for it in the form of right-wing populism today. What went wrong?

A number of things. First of all, business owners who frequently believed they were job-creating supermen saw no reason to pay higher taxes to fund the programs necessary to compensate globalization victims, and they had the political clout to get what they wanted. To some extent, this was accomplished by feeding workers a steady diet of nostalgia and culture wars. For their part, the workers, whose social status depended largely on their previous employment, didn’t want government handouts; they permitted themselves to be convinced by opportunistic right-wing voices that the government had stolen their jobs, and that a vote for Republicans would bring them back. Finally, the displaced workers found it difficult to find jobs that fit their skills. It just isn’t that easy to turn a coal miner into a coder, and government funds for infrastructure and education in unremarkable rural areas don’t guarantee an economic rebirth.

Ron DeSantis’ new tag line is “Florida is the state where woke goes to die.” His intent is to use the power of the state to crush an ideology, however ill-defined. What does history tell us about his ability to accomplish his objective? Could it work in the nation as a whole?

If you’re the leader of a totalitarian state, the job is easy to define, if somewhat difficult to accomplish in practice: you identify the woke people and either shoot them or put them in prison. If you’re the head of state of a liberal democracy, it requires vast amounts of persistence, energy, and patience, probably over a decade or more. If you’re running an illiberal democracy, you will rely on measures that fall between these two poles: censorship; regulatory harassment; the loss of government benefits; and forced unemployment.

DeSantis, as you would expect, is choosing Option 3. Even he would probably shrink from Option 1, and he doesn’t have the time and patience for Option 2. Can it work, particularly in blue states? Probably only well enough to keep the right in power, which would be the actual ultimate objective. Just ask Viktor Orban.

When Republicans control the White House, they cut taxes on capital and watch indifferently as the deficit soars. When a Democrat is president, however, the GOP gets fiscal religion and insists the budget must be balanced. It is happening again. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

But even the deficit scold organizations concede that there is no realistic way to balance the budget in ten years. In the process of creating the now-mandated blueprint, the GOP House will have to propose huge cuts in defense, Social Security, and Medicare, because that’s where the money is. Cutting defense in these times looks like a huge risk; cutting Social Security and Medicare will disproportionately impact old white people who mostly vote Republican. The latter group has historically blown off claims from the Democrats that entitlements are at risk; it will be much harder to do that when the new blueprint is in place.

This is an enormous unforced error in the making. I doubt that any of the GOP presidential candidates, including Trump and DeSantis, will support it; after all, the electorate doesn’t really care about deficits. So what’s the point?

If it’s to get Democrats elected, I’m all for it.

If Clapton was God, Beck was the Holy Spirit.

C: The last time I called you together was before the election. What do you make of the election results and the aftermath?

M: I’m pretty happy about the election, but I’m concerned about the state of the Republican majority in the House.

S: I’m just the opposite. The election was a bust, but I feel really good about the House.

C: Why?

S: I’m obviously unhappy we didn’t get the red wave we expected. It would have been easier to burn it down with a majority in the Senate. But we have the House under control, and that’s probably good enough. McCarthy put the ball in our hands, and we’re going to run with it. Investigations, impeachments, and spending cuts for the undeserving poor–they’re all on the table now.

M: Winning the House means there will be no tax increases for the next two years. Losing the Senate means the nut jobs only have control of one of the legislative chambers. But the state of the House–good grief! Marjorie Taylor Greene is a moderate in this group! Just think about that!

S: That’s what’s so great about it. We’re really going to burn it down this time. Boehner and Ryan aren’t here to stop us this time.

M: So you think blowing up the economy by refusing to lift the debt ceiling is a good idea?

S: Absolutely! I don’t have any stocks or bonds, and I’m not on Social Security. What do I care? We need to send a message that everything should be changed.

M: Well, I do have investments, and I don’t want to lose them. Defaulting is totally unacceptable.

S: That’s why you’re a wimpy RINO.

C: Let’s talk about the debt ceiling. Will the Senate support raising it?

M: Yes. Mitch will make a deal the Democrats can accept. He thinks burning it down is terrible for business.

S: I agree. Mitch is a RINO wimp. He needs to go.

C: A minimum of five Republican House members will be required to raise the debt ceiling. Will they be there?

S: Over my dead body.

M: Probably not.

C: Why not?

S: Two reasons. Peer pressure, and no one wants to be the next Liz Cheney.

M: That’s exactly what worries me.

C: Then what?

M: Biden will find a theory and pay the bills, anyway.

S: We burn it down!

M: I’m out of here.

According to Michelle Goldberg, DeSantis has opened yet another new front in the culture wars by replacing the Board of Trustees of New College with a number of right-wing luminaries for the purpose of turning a famously progressive institution into a bastion of the right, similar to Hillsdale College. Professors and students who don’t like the new direction will be encouraged to leave.

The idea behind this presumably is to create a template for universities all over the country. Can it work?

Just limiting the focus of the discussion to New College itself, possibly, although collective bargaining agreements will make the immediate defenestration of the existing faculty difficult. On a more global scale, no, for the following reasons:

1. As I’ve noted before, academics are predominantly left of center for the same reasons that corporate CEOs are right of center: self-selection. There aren’t enough right-wing professors in this country to fill all of the jobs in academia even if you include thousands of opportunists.
2. The right has already lost Gen Z. How many students are going to flock to New Hillsdale to learn that climate change is a hoax, institutional racism is a myth, and the country needs more tax cuts for the wealthy?

The bottom line is that DeSantis and his ilk don’t really have the ability to transform higher education; they can only wreck it. They may be satisfied with that, but the country needs to resist it.

Let’s go with the Ukraine/World War I analogy for a minute. The abortive dash to Kyiv stands in for the failure of the Schlieffen Plan in 1914. The subsequent indecisive campaign in the Donbas looks a lot like the Race to the Sea and trench warfare in 1915. It’s now 1916. What does history say Putin will do?

1916 was the year the German military essentially took control of the government away from the Kaiser, transformed the economy to support the war, and completely mobilized the population to fight the Allies. Putin has already started down that road with his draft. The analogy breaks down somewhat with the economy, however; on the one hand, in spite of the punishing economic sanctions, Russia isn’t facing the equivalent of the British blockade, while on the other hand, Russia probably doesn’t have the existing industrial capacity to start cranking out all of the war material that it needs. As a result, Putin is trying to buy ammunition and weapons on the world market with his oil profits. That can only go so far; NATO’s productive capacity is far greater than his. Time is not on his side.

If we get to 1917, the analogy tells us Putin will escalate by attacking NATO supply lines; that would be the equivalent of unrestricted submarine warfare. Let’s hope it doesn’t go that far.

It’s easy to look at Biden’s record on immigration and find it, well, inglorious. From the perspective of the left, he has done little to ease the suffering of the deserving would-be immigrants; too much of the Trump machinery is still in place, and there have been no dramatic new programs to solve the ongoing problems. From the perspective of the right, the increase in border crossings is his fault; it wouldn’t have happened under Trump. Not much to cheer about there.

But let’s look at the bigger picture–what is the guy supposed to do? He is required to enforce the law written by Congress with the resources provided to him by Congress. He has no legal authority to create generous new amnesty programs for particularly deserving migrants. Even most of the right admits that the Trump system of deterrence by cruelty (at least in the case of family separations) isn’t appropriate. The criticism from both sides is, therefore, understandable, but it is not justifiable; nobody is proposing a plausible and better alternative.

Everyone knows the solution to the problem is a deal in which the right gets more border protection and the left gets a reasonable path to citizenship, particularly for Dreamers. Everyone also knows that the reactionaries in the GOP won’t accept that deal, and it won’t happen. As a result, the system will just blunder on, with only as much humanity as it can muster under difficult circumstances.

The book tells us that the Windsors are a dysfunctional family. From the historian’s perspective, this is not exactly breaking news. Remember Queen Caroline? Henry VIII? Henry II?

The difference, of course, is that political life in England was unimaginable without the monarchy in those days. Today, not so much, as Charles seems to understand, even if his mother probably didn’t.

But the UK needs some sort of a head of state separate from the PM of the day, and monarchist mumbo-jumbo probably brings in more money than it costs. That means the public dysfunction is not really a big deal in the larger picture.

In their completely different ways, both Charles and Harry are right; the problem with the monarchy is that it encompasses too many people. Focus the attention on the immediate family of the monarch and cut the other royal parasites loose to get real jobs and live unencumbered lives. That’s what Harry did.