Tag: politics

The State of Play

There are plenty of things to rue about the Biden Administration. There is, for instance, old fashioned incompetence, an equal opportunity employer.  But the Administration’s slipping-on-a-banana-peel habit has become so routine that even its most enthusiastic defenders (AKA the press) is having a difficult time maintaining the fiction that the adults are back in charge. It wouldn’t matter all that much if we didn’t live in a tinder box, primed for a match. Be that’s where we are. 

Consider the state of foreign policy. The Trump administration was rightly castigated for its inflammatory and ignominious rhetoric about longstanding U.S. allies and institutions, including NATO. The Biden Administration has done him one better. Not only was the retreat from Afghanistan shambolic; the U.S. left plenty of U.S. citizens and green card holders behind to the tender mercies of the Taliban. Not to mention leaving our allies in a lurch with virtually no warning.

While the Biden Administration frets about the number of women in the new Afghan Government (none) and the dismantling of its gender programs, a founder of the Taliban has announced that they plan to bring back executions and amputations. Nooruddin Turabi, a founder of the Taliban told the Associated Press that “Cutting off of hands is very necessary for security”. In that regard the Taliban is now considering whether to resume the practice at a Kabul sports stadium. 

Then there is the way the Biden Administration presented the new trilateral security partnership among Australia, the UK and the United States (AUKUS). The deal itself is one that makes a lot of sense. But, like the precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was announced without sufficient (if any) consultation with NATO allies. 

The fecklessness with which it has attempted to implement its as yet unarticulated foreign policy goals has opened up a significant chasm between America and Europe and left other American allies unsure of America’s will and its word. 

On the domestic front, things are no better. This week the leadership of the Democratic Party is working mightily to get its members to unanimously agree to spend $4.5 trillion—$1 trillion for infrastructure and $3.5 trillion to expand on Lyndon Johnson’s utopian vision of the Great Society. In this regard it should be acknowledged that the programs that the Great Society spawned represent one of the most spectacular failures in domestic public policy in the history of the republic.  

Unfortunately, that is not the worst of it. 

The Biden Administration like the progressive movement in general, has jettisoned the individualism of classical Liberalism in favor of collectivist, illiberal, group-based intersectionality. That has led to the poisonous race-based rhetoric the Administration routinely employs as it tries to advance its agenda. 

The damage this does to the polity is on full display in the video below that, as they say, has gone viral. Perhaps eventually, there will be enough adults in the room to put a stop to the now pervasive insanity that dominates every crevice of American public life. If not, the road ahead is going to get a lot rockier. 

JFB

Magical Thinking

Republicans complain that Democrats are hypocrites. Democrats reply that Republicans are hypocrites. They are, of course, both correct in a generic sense. All politicians routinely say things they know or suspect to be false, especially if they think it affords tactical advantage. In that sense, both parties are drenched in hypocrisy.

When all is said and done, it is reasonably clear that the Republicans don’t believe a word they are saying. So with respect to hypocrisy, they are guilty as charged; egregiously so. On the other hand, the Democrats appear to actually believe their talking points. If so, they are not the hypocrites that Republicans make them out to be. They are simply guilty of magical thinking. Unfortunately, magical thinking can be very expensive.

Consider for instance the Democratic outrage on display over the prospect that the Republican engineered tax cuts of 2017 would add $1.5 trillion to the national debt over 10 years. The proposed budget that the allegedly centrist President Joe Biden just released projects a deficit of $1.8 trillion this year and after that about $1.3 trillion every year for the next decade. This, by the way, from a President who vowed that he would not increase the deficit “by one penny”.  

This amounts to a proposed $15 trillion in deficit spending over the next 10 years. But now we suddenly discover this is not deficit spending at all—it is investment. And all this “investment” will drive publicly held debt from 79% of GDP in (pre-pandemic) 2019 to 110% in 2021 to 117% by 2031. By the end of the decade, debt service will more than double to 11% of GDP and that assumes that interest rates remain fairly stable. 

The Administration projects that revenues will average 19.3% of GDP even though historically revenues have averaged about 17.3% since the 1970s. Spending, which averaged 19.4% in the post-War pre-Covid era is projected to increase and remain just under an astounding 25% of GDP. Which begs the question: How can the Administration claim that it will collect revenues of 19% of GDP and spend 25% of same and not increase deficit spending? 

Even if the Biden Administration believed its own propaganda about tax collections it still wouldn’t bring revenues into line with expenditure—not by a long shot. There still remains a 6 percentage point gap between revenue and expenditure. 

To call this reckless would be an understatement. The Biden Administration is attempting a huge increase in entitlement spending; a large expansion of the regulatory regime, and political subservience of the Fed, both as regulator and as Central Bank, so that the Biden political agenda can be financed and enforced. 

We have seen this movie before and it never ends well. The longer it takes this one to come to an end, the messier it will be. 

JFB

The Nanny State is Here to Help You

It was the Clinton operation in 1992 that brought us the permanent campaign. Then the financial crisis of 2008 provided the all-purpose excuse for more expansion of federal power. It was during this time that Rahm Emmanuel famously said never allow a crisis go to waste. Now the sentiment among the nation’s control freaks, otherwise known as progressives, seems to be never let a pandemic go to waste. For instance, Bloomberg Magazine, a kind of bible for Nanny Staters,  recently published an article by Andreas Kluth entitled “We Must Start Planning For a Permanent Pandemic”. It is a reaction more than vaguely reminiscent of HL Mencken’s observation that Puritans were haunted by the fear that somebody, somewhere, might be happy.

And so the rise the Dead Enders proceeds apace. Consider, a little over a year ago in January of 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci was busy reassuring Americans that there was no need to wear masks. Now he recommends wearing double masks for what seems to be the foreseeable future, vaccination progress notwithstanding. And speaking of vaccinations, back in April of 2020 Dr. Fauci said the earliest the U.S. would get a vaccine would be 12 to 18 months. Other “experts” noted that it typically would take up to 10 years to get the FDA to approve a vaccine. 

As of today, 11 months later, about 90 million U.S. citizens have received vaccination shots. The U.S. is third in line behind Israel and the U.K. for shots-in-arms per capita. As a result, we could be on the cusp of herd immunity. We will almost certainly achieve herd immunity over the summer months. 

Europe, on the other hand, is a mess. Its vaccination programs are stalled; Italy is locked down once again, and Germany and Spain, along with Italy, are facing another wave of infections. In the meantime, Sweden, which faced intense mainstream criticism for its relatively laissez-faire policy for dealing with the virus, has fared relatively well. More about later. 

There has been considerable controversy among scholars about the effectiveness of lockdowns for protecting public health. You could be forgiven for being unaware of this by relying exclusively on the mainstream press. They have proceeded under the assumption that lockdowns are not only effective, but crucial to public health, irrespective of circumstances and implementation. 

Empirical questions remain however. For example, how has Sweden fared relative to other countries? Data collected by the EU statistics agency Eurostat suggests that, comparatively speaking,  Sweden has done rather well. In an article published by the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), John Miltimore uses these data to take a hard look at the costs benefits at lockdowns. 

He writes: 

“Preliminary data from EU statistics agency Eurostat compiled by Reuters showed Sweden had 7.7% more deaths in 2020 than its average for the preceding four years. Countries that opted for several periods of strict lockdowns, such as Spain and Belgium, had so-called excess mortality of 18.1% and 16.2% respectively.

Twenty-one of the 30 countries with available statistics had higher excess mortality than Sweden. However, Sweden did much worse than its Nordic neighbours, with Denmark registering just 1.5% excess mortality and Finland 1.0%. Norway had no excess mortality at all in 2020.”

However, in a separate article published by FEE, Miltimore demonstrates that, for most of the pandemic, Finland and Norway adopted policies that were even less restrictive than Sweden’s. 

 John Carlson, Director of Sweden’s Public Health Agency sums up. “Some believed that it was possible to eliminate disease transmission by shutting down society. We did not believe that and we have been proven right.” (See the entire article here.)

It is true that U.S. cases have recently experienced an uptick after almost 3 months of rapid decline. Whether the uptick is lasting, or the result of loosening restrictions remains to be seen. So far, a causal link between restrictions and infections has been difficult to pin down. 

For example, New York and New Jersey have had some of the most stringent restrictions while Florida has been far less so, earning it lots of Bronx cheers from…New York. But look at the outcomes. New Jersey has had 274 deaths per 100K. Excluding New York City, New York State has had 169 per 100K. New York City, the epicenter of infection for a good part of 2020, had a staggering 369 deaths per 100K. The wide variation between New York City and the rest of the state strongly suggests that statewide mandates are not particularly useful.

Then there is Florida. Statewide, Florida had 154 deaths per 100K. That’s 44% less than NJ and 58% less than New York City. 

At the very least these data suggest that the severely restrictive policies many governments have adopted have not been very effective if the goal is to protect public health. Add to that the policy induced economic crash, the shutdown of schools, the rise in suicides and the deepening sense of isolation felt by many, and the policy response is now starting to look catastrophic. 

So why, given their obvious and material harms, have general lockdowns persisted as a prime policy tool despite a lack of evidence proving their efficacy?

Control. 

In fact, the entire progressive project is about control. The goal is control over the everyday lives of citizens through the centralization of power and the tools of command-and-control. Hence the assault on free speech, the hysteria over school choice and the rules, regulations and guidelines about masking, business hours, family gatherings, having people over for dinner and all the rest of it. 

The idea of a virtuous and educated citizenry is tossed out the window like so many campaign promises.  So shut up and eat you spinach.  Your betters are here to take control. 

Never let a pandemic go to waste. 

JFB

GameStop: Please Stop the Nonsense

The recent surge in the stock price of GameStop has all the usual suspects commenting on “The Greater Meaning of it All”.  As usual, very few of these recently minted experts know what they are talking about. Among the more mindless analyses being tossed about is a populist “narrative” that claims that Everyman has risen up to squeeze short selling Wall Street hedge funds. These hedge funds, it is alleged, have been stealing from the common man in a rigged game for years. 

Among those making variations of this charge are: Ted Cruz, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), Elizabeth Warren and Bob Frank. That these four are in rough agreement ought to be the first sign that something is seriously amiss. Consider for a moment the backgrounds of those who are busy defending Everyman against wicked elites. For instance Ted Cruz is a product of Princeton (BA in public policy 1992) and Harvard Law (magna cum laude 1995). Elizabeth Warren worked as a Law Professor both at the University of Pennsylvania and at Harvard Law School before becoming a Senator from Massachusetts. Hardly downtrodden. 

AOC, who does not have the same pedigree, made a point of noting that the “solution” to the non-problem of GameStop is to tax the rich. Her reasoning being that taxing the rich is pretty much the solution every problem, real and imagined. Then there is the commentary of Robert Frank, a journalist at CNBC. His contention is that the Reddit inspired run up in GameStop is “calling attention to” the vast inequality of stock ownership in the United States. It has to be seen to be believed.

The interesting thing is that Frank has spent an awful lot of time writing books and columns about the horrors of inequality of outcomes, but apparently sees no relationship between savings, investment, risk-taking and financial reward. 

Frank seems to be bothered by the fact that the upper 1% owns the lion’s share of financial assets. Well of course they do. That same 1% is the cohort that is an important source for risk-taking, innovation, investment and, not to put too fine a point on it, bearing an outsized share of the tax burden. The upper 1%, for instance, pays about 45% of all income taxes. 

The population up and down the (ever changing) income scale makes choices about how to allocate its funds between consumption now, investment and deferred consumption. Nobody needs Bob Frank shouting audibles from the sidelines. 

But let’s look a little further. Why would anyone who has the slightest clue of how the stock market works lament the fact that most retail investors are not involved in the GameStop fiasco? The undeniable fact is that a bunch of amateurs bought the stock not because it is a fundamentally good investment; they bought it because they thought they would profit from an old fashioned short squeeze. And a small minority will profit. But the vast majority of retail traders are now in the process of getting their clocks cleaned. And rightly so. They are in way over their heads.  

As of this writing, GameStop is down 113 points or 50% from yesterday’s close, after yesterday’s 40% drop. All of which means that the stock market is doing what it’s supposed to do. 

Despite all the anguished cries from the ignorati, the stock market is not broken. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. In the process it is separating fools from their cash. That is hardly a novel occurrence. 

JFB

Joe Biden’s Choice

Within hours of President Biden’s call for civility, protesters went on a violent rampage in the Pacific Northwest, mostly in Portland Oregon. The protesters, according to the New York Times, marched through the streets, burned an American flag and smashed windows at Democratic Party Headquarters.  

Violence in Portland, The New York Times

The protesters were not supporters of the now departed Donald J Trump.  Nor were they from QAnon, the Proud Boys or other white supremacist groups.  They were self-identified antifascist and racial-justice warriors, which is to say, fascists who like to call themselves  antifascists. Their complaint was that Joe Biden’s promised reforms “won’t save us”. 

Of course they won’t, primarily because they are not interested in being “saved”.  They are simply nihilists who seek to smash and destroy. They could care less about the back and forth of democratic politics and the making of public policy. They seek to engender distrust and destroy democratic institutions, not to build on them. 

If he means what he says, Joe Biden has a golden opportunity to take a large step toward restoring civility to the Republic and strengthening our democratic institutions. He can condemn the violence in Oregon without reservation just as strongly as he rightly condemned the violence fomented by Donald Trump at the Capitol on January 6. And he can seek to have the perpetrators brought to justice for their crimes,  just as the perpetrators of the January 6 riots should be prosecuted for their crimes to the full extent of the law. 

The choice is clear. It is a choice between violence and liberal government. Tolerating violence based on what “side” it favors is no justice at all. It is a fundamental attack on equality before the law and our democratic institutions. Vigorous prosecution of those who use violence to achieve political ends is a defense of the rule of law and democratic institutions. 

President Joe Biden has a choice to make. He can defend the rule of law and democratic institutions. Or he can be just like Donald J. Trump and be politically selective about how the law is enforced. 

That choice will tell us a lot about what Joe Biden is really made of. 

JFB

Joe Biden’s “American Recovery Plan”

“Drink coffee and do stupid things even faster” — Sign in a coffee shop. 

Apropos the sign, an avalanche of stupidity is coming our way.  Just 5 days away from his inauguration, President-elect Joe Biden has outlined the first part of his “American Recovery Plan”. It is virtually indistinguishable from the progressive wish list Nancy Pelosi has been going on about for the last 20 years or so. The only difference is that now progressives actually have a shot of getting what they have always wished for. 

Consider just some of the proposals being put forward in the spectacularly misnamed American Recovery plan. To begin with, the price tag for this monstrosity is $1.9 trillion. That comes right after the $900 billion relief package Congress passed just last month. Not to mention the $2.2 trillion CARES act Congress passed in March of 2020. And this is only phase 1 of the Biden proposal. He promises more, fully backed by Bernie Sanders as the upcoming chair of the Senate Budget Committee. 

If Congress approves the Biden phase 1 package it would amount to $5 trillion in additional spending thus far for Covid and Covid marketed relief efforts. That spending is over and above the normal appropriations for running the government, all passed in a 10 month period. And it’s all done with borrowed money.

So let’s look at some specific proposals. Among other things that have absolutely nothing to do with Covid, Biden plans to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour. If enacted, this is guaranteed to make things worse for the people who are the supposed beneficiaries. 

The unemployment rate is highest for people with low incomes and relatively little formal training. Plenty of these people work in the hospitality industry, specifically restaurants, which are among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Recent survey data suggest that about 110,000 restaurants, about 17% of the total, have closed their doors permanently because of Covid. 

The Biden solution is to raise the cost of labor for an industry in free fall. Very clever. Not only that, the restaurants that survive will simply switch their compensation systems to a European style one in which customer costs associated with tipping are built into menu prices (service compris) and tips are eliminated. The effect will be lost jobs and reduced employee compensation for those who keep their jobs.  Oh, and the survivors’ tax bills will rise because, let’s face it, virtually nobody reports all their tips to the IRS. 

Other goodies in the package include checks for $1,400 to round it up to $2,000. Schumer and Pelosi  have indicated that they are enthusiastically on board.  What this is supposed to accomplish beyond the buying of votes is left unspecified. And of course, this is to be financed, by more borrowing, because we are assured “there is plenty of money available”.

Another $350 billion or so is slated for “emergency” relief for state and local government finances. Translated into English, this means that the states that manage their finances well will be required to bail out predominantly blue state public pension plans that are underfunded to the point where in some cases, like Illinois, they are approaching insolvency. And not to put too fine a point on it, the sorry state of pension finance has nothing whatsoever to do with Covid. Bailing them out will just put off the day of reckoning until it gets  worse. 

Another $170 billion will be forked out “so that schools can re-open”. But of course, the schools didn’t need to close and stay closed in the first place. This is just a gift to the politically powerful teachers unions who have argued for closing the schools and keeping them closed. 

Private schools have opened independent of the state. And not just the elite ones. The K- 12 Catholic schools in Massachusetts opened successfully and have had almost no Covid infections. In other places, relatively affluent parents (like here in Fairfax County) have hired private tutors to run learning pods for groups of children. 

Needless to say, the teachers unions have opposed these efforts while fighting to keep the schools shut down for in-person learning. This is in spite of the fact that already the data clearly show a catastrophic fall-off in the academic performance of disadvantaged children. Let’s face it, the public schools are run for the benefit of the staff, not the kids. That’s why the kids are being sacrificed.

As more details of the Biden plan seep out, it will become clear to all with eyes to see that the Biden trajectory is simply Obama redux on steroids (or perhaps coffee).  It will be all about centralization, command and control. The crushing hand of the state will weigh in on every decision. Fantasies aside; there is nothing moderate about it. 

JFB

Mainstream Madness

A little over 50 years ago James Burnham authored a book titled “Suicide of the West”. It was his thesis that the West had lost faith in its institutions and culture. As a result, the West, especially its intellectuals and culture shapers (with certain notable exceptions) were no longer willing to defend Western civilization and its culture. More than that, Wester civilization became the enemy. Well, here we are again. 

Fortunately, the stupidity of that era didn’t last for long. But it didn’t disappear entirely, it merely went into hiding. Now it has come back with a vengeance. 

Douglas Murray, author of several books including the recently published  “Madness of Crowds” sat down with Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution to discuss the current state of affairs, particularly the intellectual, political and cultural environments in which we now reside. It’s a long interview, about 1 hour and 15 minutes. It’s worth every minute. Please see the video of the interview below.

JFB

Douglas Murray–Author of the “Madness of Crowds”


The Most Important Election…is a Victory for Gridlock

Every four years, right on schedule, we are told that “This election is the most important of your life.”  And of course, it isn’t. Just like the one we are in the process of finishing wasn’t. Not by a long shot. The probable result is best described as a much needed victory for gridlock. 

As of this writing it appears that the Republicans will keep their Senate majority, the Democrats will lose a few House seats and Vice President Biden may prevail with a small edge in the race for 270 Electoral College votes. But none of this is certain, and the final result will probably leave the losing side firmly convinced that “We wuz robbed.” 

Whether that sentiment is justified remains to be seen. But it is important to note that the distrust is both widespread and long standing. Part of the problem is extreme polarization. That polarization has been stoked by the major parties which increasingly resort to emotional appeals rather than facts or logic.  

Moreover, in addition to being an affront to the first amendment, campaign finance “reform” has left the major parties and their candidates  dependent on large outside donors who increasingly influence Party agendas. Think Tom Steyer, Michael Bloomberg and Sheldon Addison.  That hasn’t helped any either. 

More importantly, the problem of distrust can be laid squarely at the feet of progressives who have spent the last 50 years or so attacking our governing institutions. In this they have been aided and abetted by (1) the mainstream press which is increasingly populated by woke “reporters” and (2) the public education system which has produced indoctrination factories but little learning.

When we are told on a daily basis that the U.S. is “systemically racist”; that the U.S. is “structurally racist”; that the police are in the business of hunting down black men to shoot; that the real founding of the U.S. was 1619 when African slaves were first brought to Jamestown, and that school curricula are being introduced based on that lie,  why would anyone be surprised by public distrust of our governing and culture shaping institutions? 

Why would anyone take the NY Times, MSNBC or CNN seriously when  their reporters insist on discussing peaceful demonstrations while anyone can see the buildings behind them are on fire? Why would anyone trust the Washington Post with its slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on its front page while it refuses to cover the Hunter Biden scandal, without doubt an important story. 

Why would anyone believe the rhetoric of big city mayors and civil rights organizations when it is clear that they are bought and paid for by the Teachers Unions. Those big city public schools have failed minority children for generations and yet big city Mayors and civil rights organizations like the NAACP have long fought school choice and charter schools even though the evidence is crystal clear that they produce superior outcomes. 

It is clear to anyone with eyes to see that what we have is a massive failure of government and governance. The failure is long standing and reaches into almost every area of American life. The affluent can afford this because it doesn’t affect them. But the average citizen can’t afford to pay $25,000 — to $50,000 a year to send their kids to private prep schools. Nor can the average citizen afford to pay for private security guards while activists insist on “defunding the police.” 

Elites can afford to move to their summer houses in the Hamptons while calling for lock-downs while they work from home and ride out the Covid-19 virus. But the people who work in grocery stores, drive trucks and deliver their packages can’t afford to be locked-down. Nor can minority children afford to fall further back by being forced to resort to Zoom classes for grammar school.  

When all is said and done, the election results represent a repudiation of the progressive elite. There will be no Green New Deal, Court Packing, defunding of police, elimination of the Senate’s legislative filibuster, Medicare for all, guaranteed outcomes, or dismantling of capitalism. That is all to the good. 

Now the two political parties will have a few years to re-think where they are and where they would like to go. If the Democrats get the joke (always a doubtful prospect) they will head back toward their roots, put identity politics to rest where it belongs and begin to develop a framework for policy based on equality of opportunity rather than outcome. Don’t hold your breath. 

The Republicans on the other hand are still going to be saddled with Trump partisans, with or without Trump. They are going to have to adapt conservatism (actually classical liberalism) to reform and strengthen, not eliminate, critical public institutions.  They could start by ending the bureaucratic command-and-control mentality of federal agencies. Voluntary action and devolution of power to local institutions should be the preferred route. Whether they will head in this direction is anybody’s guess. 

All in all the election results can be seen as gift allowing us to step back from the brink. If the two parties have any sense at all, they will develop sensible policy frameworks, engage in spirited substantive debate, defend free speech  against cancel culture, rein in the bureaucracy, go back to enacting laws and policies and stop the virtue signaling. 

That’s a tall order. We don’t have a lot of time to waste. 

JFB