Category: Uncategorized

Guanxi–the cultivation, maintenance, and use of connections for economic gain–is a feature of all societies. The Chinese, however, take it to a completely different level. It is an integral part of their culture, which, of course, elevated the collective over the individual and celebrated bureaucracy long, long before 1949.

When you combine the widespread use of guanxi with a one-party system, a complete lack of government transparency, and politicized law enforcement and judicial systems, you have a recipe for corruption. It essentially means that wars on corruption, in the Chinese context, are nothing more than bureaucratic winners trampling on webs of hapless losers.

Keep that in mind the next time you read that Xi has uncovered evidence of corruption at the highest levels of Chinese government.

The left-leaning pundits are divided: some think Biden should withdraw from the race; while others believe he needs to make himself more available to the public and the press to reassure the voters on the age issue. Who is right here?

Actually, neither. He isn’t going to withdraw, and his public appearances rarely make me feel better about his acuity. His campaign strategy is to let his record speak for itself–the economy is roaring, after all– and to let Trump alienate swing voters in front of the cameras, as he always does. Becoming more of a public figure isn’t consistent with that approach.

Hard work and determination had made his country great. The welfare state, in addition to being a drag on growth, only created incentives for laziness and mediocrity. It was, therefore, essential to keep the people from falling into the hammock of dependency. The welfare state would not be expanded, even if doing so would encourage consumption, reduce inequality, and revive growth.

Is this neo-Victorian Xi or Paul Ryan? Spoiler alert–it’s both.

A large percentage of Taylor Swift’s most devoted followers consists of teenage girls who can’t vote. Much of what remains after that cohort would never vote for Trump under any circumstances. It is reasonable to conclude, therefore, that a Biden endorsement from Swift would make little practical difference in the election.

But Trump was a celebrity long before he was a politician. He still thinks like one. One of his favorite insults revolves around the television ratings of his opponents. As a result, it makes perfect sense for him to feel threatened by someone who is an even bigger celebrity than he is.

The leader wanted to transform his country’s economy in two ways. First, he wanted to reduce inequality, partly by reducing the power of the nation’s tech giants. Second, he thought it was essential to national security to maintain an advantage in some tech fields, including AI and the manufacturing of chips. To that end, he used large amounts of public money to fund these industries, to mixed reviews.

Is it Biden or Xi? Spoiler alert–it’s both.

The opinion of the special counsel will not matter in the long run. The American people will make a decision on that issue based on their observations of the president over his entire term of office. What that decision will be, I do not know.

One thing is for sure–the opinion on that subject of a man who told us to eat bleach is of no value whatsoever.

Imagine, if you will, that the January 6 trial goes forward prior to the Republican Convention, and that Trump is found guilty of numerous felonies. How does the party respond?

A fairly large segment of the electorate will care, and Haley may raise some concerns, but the delegates and the base will remain unimpressed. They have already made it clear that they won’t even accept a decision from a jury that is selected in part by Trump’s attorneys. The man is innocent, and a victim of the deep state, and that is that, no matter what anyone says.

And so, Trump will run as the nominee even with a felony conviction on his record.

To the surprise of precisely no one, the Supremes were clearly determined to find an off ramp to permit Trump to remain on the ballot in all fifty states during yesterday’s oral argument. Which rationale will they choose?

The three apparent contenders, based on the questions, are as follows:

1. PRIMARIES ARE RUN BY THE PARTIES, NOT THE GOVERNMENT, SO THE DISQUALIFICATION ISSUE IS PREMATURE: This line of reasoning is both legally sound and wildly impractical. Pulling Trump off the ballot months after he becomes the GOP nominee would be a complete nightmare.
2. THE PRESIDENT IS NOT INCLUDED IN THE LIST OF OFFICERS SUBJECT TO DISQUALIFICATION: This approach is inconsistent with logic and the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, has little support in the legislative history, and would give a green light to any future president who wants to use the armed forces to stay in office.
3. DISQUALIFICATION REQUIRES ADDITIONAL CONGRESSIONAL ACTION: The intent here is to provide a federal remedy for an essentially federal issue. No one state has the right to dictate a result to the others; no record in any state proceeding should be binding on the rest; and having a jumble of inconsistent state decisions would be a disaster. Of course, the Court could address most of these problems by providing one definitive ruling that is binding on all of the states, but it didn’t appear to want to do that, possibly for procedural reasons.

The bottom line here is that the last of the three lines of reasoning will do the least amount of harm to the system. There is reason to believe it will prevail. Let’s hope that it does, and that the quid pro quo for the three liberals is a decision not to hear Trump’s appeal on the immunity issue.

The last thing Mitch McConnell wants to see is Russian tanks rumbling into Kyiv. The penultimate thing Mitch doesn’t want to see is the American people blaming his party for it. And yet, he and his colleagues effectively voted for this outcome yesterday afternoon. They were sent home to try and figure out what they should demand in exchange for something they want to do anyway, which represents a level of dysfunction that would make the House proud.

Why is this happening? Because Donald Trump, who loves Putin and hates Ukraine, is going to be the GOP nominee for president. Why is that? Because McConnell made no effort to round up votes to convict him at his second impeachment trial. And why did that happen? Because McConnell thought Trump was finished, and he wanted to keep the base happy.

As a result of this atrocious miscalculation, the viability of the McConnell Project is highly questionable, and Mitch himself is a spent force. He can no longer keep his troops in line; Trump rules the GOP, even in the Senate. He’s definitely gone if Trump wins in November, and probably gone even if Biden prevails.

Here’s where the factions stand on the illegal immigration issue:

1. CDs: Asylum seekers are God’s children. They are seeking refuge from terrible conditions at home. They should be treated with compassion.
2. CLs: The last thing we need is some sort of massive government presence at the border.
3. PBPs: Immigrants fill jobs that Americans won’t take and generate economic growth. It would be insanity to stop them at a time of inflation and labor shortages.
4. Reactionaries: Immigrants poison the blood of America. They have to go! All of them.

What does this tell you? That the Reactionaries run the show within the GOP, and the rest of the party just has to shut up, even when their bottom line and their most cherished beliefs are at stake.

I’m torn about this. On the one hand, the failure of the leadership to deliver enough votes is a total embarrassment for House Republicans, which is always a good thing. On the other hand, having to put on a completely legally frivolous case in front of the Senate and the American people might have been even worse.

What do you think?

UPDATE: Apparently, the leadership plans to try the impeachment vote again tomorrow. Maybe we won’t have to choose.

The Supreme Court has already put a finger–perhaps not a thumb–on the scale in favor of Trump by refusing Jack Smith’s request for an expedited review of the immunity defense. Today, the D.C. Circuit decided, to nobody’s surprise, that the defense lacks merit. The opinion, which I have read, is comprehensive and well-written. What should the Supremes do now?

There is no need to give this issue further review. To do so will only provide further assistance to Trump’s stall ball defense. The entire world will understand that, and the Court’s credibility will be further undermined.

The Court, for its own sake and the sake of the country, should reject Trump’s forthcoming petition and let the trial move forward.

Driven by warmer weather and relatively low housing prices, there has been a perceptible shift of population from blue to red states. Should we expect that to continue?

Possibly not, for two reasons. First, housing prices in cities such as Austin and Charlotte have gone up significantly over the last several years. Rising prices and housing shortages are not limited to New York and San Francisco. Second, liberals tend to migrate to blue cities in red states, but red state governments are increasingly preempting the right of liberal municipal governments to regulate on social issues. As a result, red states may look less welcoming to blue people in the future.

Climate change may become a factor in the foreseeable future, too. It isn’t helping California, but it may help New York.

Nikki Haley wants the Reagan vision for America–the current condition, but with a larger military and a smaller welfare state. DeSantis supported the status quo, with wokeness ripped from our institutions. What is Trump’s vision?

Trump has the entire reactionary dream. In his America, industry and resource extraction drive the economy, not tech and services. Big burly men do jobs requiring lots of physical strength and make lots of money; women stay at home and take care of the children. White Christians have a monopoly on political power. Questions of sex, gender, and race go underground. Environmentalists and members of the woke left simply don’t exist.

The problem with the dream, of course, is that Trump has to uninvent the wheel. The social and economic changes of the last 50 years have to disappear. He can’t accomplish that even with huge tariffs and autocratic rule.

He’s King Lear for the 21st century.

Ross Douthat has argued for years that America is a decadent society; his Exhibit A is our, to him, unacceptably low birthrate. More recently, however, he has finally looked around the world and ascertained that other, more socially conservative countries have even lower birthrates than we do. His new conclusion is that only America can save the world from the declining population bomb. What is going on here?

The reasons for, and solutions to, a declining birth rate are perfectly obvious. If you have a society that gives women lots of opportunities for economic advancement–in all likelihood, requires them to work–but also puts virtually all of the demands of bearing and raising children on them, you’re not going to have many children. There aren’t enough hours in a day.

The reactionary “solution” to this is to envision a country in which men do all of the paying work and women can afford to stay at home and have children–America in the 1950s, in other words. Of course, the reactionaries have no idea how to get there from here except through tariffs. The more plausible approach is to encourage men to play a much bigger role in taking care of children. If you’ve seen the new Amazon commercial that uses the Chicago song “25 or 6 to 4” as a background, you have seen the ideal type for this more feminist society; the stay-at-home dad does a great job with the baby and is rewarded with sex by the mother for his hard work.