Just What We Need! [Sarcasm]

Great!  Just what we need!  As if it wasn't enough to have white, right-wing paramilitaries and open carry advocates, now we have black, left-wing paramilitaries and open carry advocates.  It appears that the New Black Panther Party will be showing up openly armed at Trump protests.  This after black open carry advocates showed up at the Dallas Black Lives Matter rally and added to the confusion as a sniper fired on the crowd and the police (understandably) got confused and assumed the armed men present were in league with the sniper.  (And, it should be added, these good guys with guns were completely useless against the bad guy with the gun).

I suppose at least this will be a good test of my earlier question: Is the Second Amendment content neutral?  Do people who believe that the Second Amendment authorizes all law-abiding citizens to for private paramilitaries for the possible violent overthrow of government extend this right to everyone, regardless of religion or ideology, so long as they promise not to start shooting until their apocalypse-of-choice actually comes about?  It is true that a few Oath Keepers offered assistance to Black Lives Matter, but BLM turned them down, so the question remained moot.  With the New Black Panther Party, it is fast becoming relevant.

A quick glance at the right-wing press for their reactions showed them to be mostly neutral; they generally stuck to reporting the item without comment.  One did complain:

The news media has wall-to-wall coverage when conservatives carry firearms at protests, yet there has been no media coverage of this armed anti-Trump protest even with the Chicago riot Friday night over Trump and the arrest of a leftist agitator who stormed the stage during Trump’s Dayton rally.

So, mostly complaints about being unfairly singled out, but no opinions expressed on whether open carry by Trump protesters is appropriate.  Well, I trust they will grant the ideological consistency of the New York Times, which has condemned such displays.

I suppose general gun advocates have two possible responses here.  One is to say that when protesters and counter-protesters show up, the more heavily armed they are the better because it assures no violence because of the danger of retaliation.  To this I can only answer that anyone saying such a thing is living in a fantasy world.  Showing up armed at demonstrations is a form of escalation.  For both sides to show up armed is further escalation positively asking for trouble.  So radical an anti-government commentator as Justin Raimondo explained:

The whole point of even attending such a gathering, or, indeed, any sort of rational discussion about anything, is that we leave our guns—embodying the possibility of coercion—outside the door. We forsake force, and rely solely on our persuasive powers to get our point across.*

Two sides gearing up for possible armed showdown makes an actual showdown more likely, not less.

The other is to say that the New Black Panther Party are obvious bad guys (witness the Dallas shooting), and thus the very sort of people good guys have to arm themselves against.  Now while I fully agree that the New Black Panthers are bad guys, it also remains true that Micah Johnson (the Dallas shooter) was not a member of any of their organizations, just as Timothy McVeigh, though he regularly swam in the same ideological waters as the militia movement, did not belong to any of their organizations either.  I still regard both groups as bad guys for promoting paranoia and militarism, but YMMV, I guess.  But is it too much to hope that the New Black Panthers might bring at least an acknowledgement in some circles that the mere act of openly carrying guns and forming a private paramilitary does not automatically qualify you as a good guy?

I was fascinated by David Frum's column saying that the whole idea of  a law-abiding private paramilitary originated in the 1960's with the Black Panthers.  The Black Panthers scared the hell out of white people, led to tougher gun control laws, and eventually degenerated into criminality and were forcibly suppressed, but their ideas of the law-abiding paramilitary formed to resist state tyranny migrated over onto the right and gave rise to the anti-government militia movement.  Thus far, the paramilitary movement has been a white, rural, right-wing phenomenon, made up of general allies, though with the potential for hostile factions never far below the surface.  Well now, it appears, we have come full circle and black, urban, left-wing paramilitaries, calling themselves Black Panthers, no less, are with us again.

God help us all!

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*Admittedly, it is less clear whether he still believes that. 

And Some Criticisms of Brexit Cheer Leaders

Clearly, then, I am more sympathetic to the Brexit than most people on my side of the aisle.  But that does not mean that I am an unqualified cheerleader for it, or that I look with approval on other cheerleaders. Obviously, the anger over immigration and tendency to scapegoat immigrants bothers me.  What bothers me more (speaking as an American, and focusing mostly on my fellow Americans) is the way cheerleaders for the Brexit portray it as an uprising of regular folks against a handful of out-of-touch liberal elitists, almost at the 99% rising up against the 1%.  In particular, there is a sort of glee over the extent to which supporters of "Remain" misjudged the degree of support for "Leave" and how that shows just out out of touch those liberal elitists are.  Comparison is often made to Pauline Kael, who said she never knew foresaw that Nixon would win because everyone she knew was voting for McGovern.

Look, Nixon won by essentially a two-to-one margin, so anyone who didn't see that sort of landslide coming was seriously out of touch.  The Brexit vote, on the other hand, was closer to 52-48 -- decisive, yes, but hardly a landslide let alone an uprising by the 99%.  If only a handful of liberal elitists backed "Remain," then nearly half the British population consists of out-of-touch liberal elitists, which is an odd definition for either "out-of-touch" or "elite."

Yes, I know.  The margin was overwhelming if you count only authentic, real Englishmen.  In the case of the US, authentic real Americans are roughly speaking what might be described as the Greater Appalachian culture, with all other American sub-cultures being less than authentic and not quite really American.  In the case of Britain, it would appear that authentic, real Britons are first and foremost ethnically English, with immigrants not counting at all and Scots, Irish and even Welsh counting for less than Englishmen, and they live outside of London, which is hopelessly cosmopolitan.  So I suppose that if you count only voters who are ethnically English and live outside of London, the "Leave" really did win by a landslide.

But I am a liberal.  I value social breadth more than social depth.  And I am not willing to say, as do so many Brexit cheerleaders, that only authentic real Englishmen morally "count," and that other people's vote carries no moral weight, or at least less moral weight than the authentic voters.  So here, as in other cases, we are seeing a coalition of elites and ethnic minorities (including Scots and Irish) against the non-elite (and predominantly non-urban) dominant ethnic group.

Or, put differently, we may be seeing the clash between electoral democracy and liberal autocracy.  That clash is growing and spreading all across Europe.  With Donald Trump, we are seeing its return in the United States.  To plenty of right wing populists, the choice is an obvious no-brainer.  They prefer electoral democracy to liberal autocracy because ultimately they prefer electoral democracy to liberal democracy.  To those of us who favor liberal democracy, it is looking less and less like a viable option.  And in the end, we may have to choose between the electoral democracy and liberal autocracy.  I do not look forward to it.

A Few (More) Notes on the Brexit

This article annoyed me, mostly because I see it as an abuse of Venn diagrams, although it does say some interesting things about the Brexit.

See, this isn't a proper Venn diagram.  It would better be drawn as a triangle with one side saying "Won't crash UK economy," "Acceptable to EU 27 states" and "Acceptable to Leave voters" on the side and each point of the triangle showing where the two items (but never three) converge.  A proper Venn diagram should have something in the areas that don't overlap, as well as more than one option in areas that do.  And either areas that overlap with all categories or an explicit note that there is no such place.

Now this is a REAL Venn diagram:

Or, if that is too complicated, here is a simpler (and unrelated) example of how a Venn diagram should work.

The basic argument is that the remaining EU members are not going to be willing to negotiate an exit on favorable terms.  They either want Britain to cave and agree to remain, or they want to make leaving intentionally painful.  It was rather the same with Greece, except that Greece was a lot more vulnerable than Britain.  For Britain, as for Greece, the best way out of this dilemma ("trilemma?") is to drag out negotiations until it becomes obvious to all that the EU is trying to make an example of them to show the price for wanting out.  Once that becomes apparent, it should sufficiently fire up British nationalism that the Brits will be willing to accept the hardships that accompany exit.  In other words, what is called for is a top-notch demagogue, something the Brits do not usually excel at, but they are working on it.

In any event, I count myself among people who believe that the near-term consequences of the Brexit won't be all that ruinous.  Anxiety will cause the pound to fall, British exports and tourism will boom, and it will be a case of everyone being pinched but no one being really impoverished.  What concerns me is not whether some demagogue will be able to inflame enough nationalism to persuade people to endure whatever hardships accompany leaving the EU.

It is the kind of demagogue we are most likely to see come forward.  Alexis Tsipras was the sort of demagogue I could approve of, the kind who punches up rather than kicking down.  If Tsipras had had the guts to take the Grexit (and the skill to manage it well, a dubious proposition) he would have appealed to Greek nationalism by denouncing those Eurocrats (specifically German Eurocrats) who wanted to wreck the Greek economy as a lesson to anyone else who might try to stand up to their dictates, and offer Greece as an inspiration to debtors everywhere wanting to stand up to Eurocratic/German imperialism.  It would require a certain delicacy of touch not often seen among demagogues to get the Greeks fired up enough to be able to endure the (genuinely severe) hardships that leaving the euro would have entailed without firing them up to something stupid like trash the German embassy, let alone make mob attacks on German tourists.  But at least I could trust Tsipras not to scapegoat immigrants.

Boris Johnson, Britain's most promising demagogue

The problem in Britain is that anger over immigrants was probably the major factor driving the "Leave" vote.  That means that a really effective demagogue will not just be one who stokes British rage over being made an example of, but one who encourages treating immigrants as scapegoats and is willing to inflame resentment toward them.  In other words, in a land not noted for its demagogues, Britain appears to have one ready in the wings in the person of Boris Johnson, the new foreign minister, described as Donald Trump with his wig on backwards. 

A Few Notes on the Dallas Shooting

I have nothing very original to say about the terrible killing of five Dallas police and wounding of others.  First off, to state the bleeding obvious, this is a horrible, outrageous crime that should be condemned by everyone, everywhere.  Second, to state the only slightly less obvious, it was certainly not the wish of the protesters for a sniper to fire on their demonstration (two of them were wounded; all were terrified), nor did they have any way of preventing a sniper from hiding in the building and firing.

What happens at the street level, though, is a different matter.  I got a bad taste from a You Tube video that showed right-wing blogger Michael Strickland pulling a gun on a Black Lives Matter demonstration.  Supporters of the movement argued that the it showed the restraint of the movement's organizers as they held back the crowd and protected him.  I saw some very ugly rage and the movement's leaders (some of them masked) struggling to keep the angry crowd from degenerating into a mob.  The danger passed only when the riot police (in full paramilitary gear) positioned themselves between the demonstrators and the man with the gun.  Strickland justified his actions saying he felt menaced by the crowd and drew his gun in self-defense.  Demonstrators justified their anger by saying that he was a well-known provocateur and that they were angry that he drew a gun on them.  The whole episode really does credit to no one.

All of which is a rather long way of saying that every time Black Lives Matter holds a rally, they are playing with highly combustible materials and in real danger of an explosion.  Demonstrations have degenerated into riots already in Ferguson and Baltimore.  Demonstrations in Minneapolis and Baton Rouge came within a hair-breadth of riots or, arguably, broke out in very small, localized riots.  This doesn't mean that be are back to the 1960's riots.  Those were incomparably worse.  All riots thus far have been short, low level, and contained.  Large portions of the movement are fighting to keep the lid on it.  Still, as I understand it, the '60's riots also started small and grew over time.  In 1977 we had a blackout in New York City, and a mad orgy of looting broke out.  In 2003 we had a blackout and all was quiet.  Would it still be quiet today?

The sight of heavily militarized police looking like an occupying army disturbs me.  But there is no denying that (with some notable exceptions) they have behaved with model professionalism in handling the demonstrations.  Indeed, this appears to be at least one major change for the better since the 1960's -- the police are much better at crowd control and at maintaining calm in public demonstrations than in the past.  That may end up being what saves us from sinking back into the 1960's.

So a few comments that no one will read.  To the police and their supporters:  Yes, there really is a problem.  Granted, when a black man is shot by police, even in circumstances that seem outrageous, closer investigation almost always reveals that things were more complex, that the victim was a dubious character, and that the shooting was perhaps understandable under the stress of the moment. But just because the use of lethal force by police is rare and usually ambiguous does not mean that all is well.  What is common is countless smaller uses of force, the endless insult of being treated as a criminal or at least criminal suspect.  The psychological toll adds up.  And if you doubt that this is true, consider what it is to be a cop.  Police being killed in the line of duty is rare.  But the endless stress of never knowing when someone might have it out for you is real.  It works both ways.  And there is a difference between saying that police are necessary, important, valuable -- heroes, even -- and saying that they should be unaccountable or above criticism.  Wanting police to be effective and winking at abuse are not the same.  Not all police departments are equal.  Dallas, where the shooting took place, apparently has a model police department -- a black chief, numerous black officers (as the shooting made clear), excellent training in de-escalation, one of the lowest rates of shooting of any major city.  The demonstration was completely peaceful before the shooting began.

To Black Lives Matter and supporters.  All will be lost, and very soon, if you don't learn to curb the mob.  There are people who there who know something about reigning in the mob that you can learn from.  My first impulse would be to offer the Civil Rights Movement, which before sending people into a possible confrontation trained them in self-control.  The problem here is that in the end, it did explode into uncontrollable rioting, so maybe that is not such a good example.  But consider some other unlikely role models:

Louis Farrakhan:  When he staged his Million Man March, he managed to keep well-behaved.  I quote Ta-Nehisi Coates, speaking in the context of the Tea Party, but equally applicable to Black Lives Matter as well:

[L]ike all the other prospective Marchers, I read the papers and was well-versed in notion of not embarrassing your people in front of white folks. The last thing any of us wanted to do was to march down to the Mall and have the next day's headline read, "Niggers Can't Even March Without Fighting." In the months leading up to the March, organizers toured the country speaking to black men in the community and pushing the essential conservative aspects of the March. . . . The concept of violence, or even boisterous anger, was counter to the March's goals, and so while there was much surprise at how solemn the event came off, if you'd been watching from the start, it would have made sense. I think had someone done something to embarrass us, there really would have been hell to pay. We thought that media was looking for trouble, but we also thought it was within our power not to give it to them. . . . When you lead a protest you lead it, you own it, and your opponents, and the media, will hold you responsible for whatever happens in the course of that protest. This isn't left- [or right] wing bias, it's the nature of the threat.

 The Tea Party:  The Tea Party's optics weren't always the greatest when it marched, but before long it moved off the streets and into other forms of activism.  Black Lives Matter has shown some capacity to do this with its Campaign Zero making serious policy proposals.  Granted, there are clear problems with moving from a grass roots movement of the streets into a lobbying group in the corridors of power.  And the Tea Party is a classic example in the problems of attempting both.  The street level Tea Party members and the ones in the corridors of power were pursuing very different agendas. Donald Trump is the outcome.  But if you don't move beyond anger and the streets, eventually the movement will burn itself out.

Crown Heights:  In 1991, the black residents of Crown Heights in New York City broke out in riots against Hassidic Jews.  It was a most alarming spectacle because, while the US has had a wide variety of race riots in our history, anti-Semitic riots in the US were unheard-of until then.  The Hassidic Jews were among the few white people who had not joined the general white flight from urban areas following the 1960's riots.  Black residents perhaps resented their continued presence and certainly resented their growth and the sense that they were encroaching.  They also saw the Hassids as being favored by the authorities.  What finally set off the riots was when a Jewish driver's car ran over two black children and the private ambulances from the local Jewish hospital were seen as privileging the driver over the children.  Al Sharpton made any number of anti-Semitic and inflammatory comments that no doubt contributed much to his reputation as a "race pimp."  Nasty, anti-Semitic riots ensued.  Nothing very edifying.  But what was edifying was the aftermath in which leaders from both communities made a concerted effort to improve community relations.  No doubt many conservatives disapproved, seeing the riots as so much lawlessness that should be met with punishment and not rewarded with outreach.  But what mattered in the end was that it worked.  The Hassidic community was not driven out, and ethnic relations improved over time.

Now the Million Man March was a one-time event and as such easier to control than numerous marches on numerous occasions all across the country.  The Crown Heights reconciliation proved that a concerted effort can improve ethnic relations between two communities on a particular occasion. Once again, it may not scale up.  But these (and, yes, the Civil Rights movement as well) do show that leadership matters, and that a strong message of restraint can pay off.  In other words, hope is not impossible.  But a whole lot more self-policing is called for.

Quick update:  Well, one bit of encouragement.  The New York subway went down on the anniversary of the great blackout with people getting hot, sweaty, impatient and irritable, but without any breakdown in order.

Obama, Trump, and the Debt Ceiling

All of which is just preliminary to my real point, that anyone who really thinks Obama has been acting like a renegade executive, let alone a dictator should consider his behavior during the debt ceiling showdown and consider what an actual dictator would have done.  We'll set aside truly dictatorial behavior like arresting the participants, dissolving Congress, or declaring martial law as something so far outside of acceptable American norms as to be unthinkable and assume that when Republicans accuse Obama of being a "dictator," they mean in relative terms.  And what would be a good point of comparison?  I don't know, how about Donald Trump.  Suppose it had not been Barrack Obama, but Donald Trump who was facing down a Congress that had already shut down the government and was threatening to default on the debt.  I will grant that arresting the participants, dissolving Congress, or declaring martial law would be as unthinkable for Trump as they were for Obama, but what about some of the more relatively dictatorial options Obama was offered?*

Consider some of the semi-dictatorial options that Obama's supporters seriously proposed, and what Trump might have done in his place, from most to least drastic.

Mint the coins:  Some people were actually urging Obama to mint platinum coins valued at $1 trillion to cover the gap.  This was based on some loophole in the law that allowed the President to mint platinum coins -- clearly intended to mean commemorative coins rather than legal tender, and definitely in the trillion dollar denominations, but it never actually said so.  I never much cared for this option because, although maybe Obama could have done it, and maybe it would have been technically legal, but it would have destroyed forever any US credibility as a serious country.  After all, if you mint one trillion dollar coin to prevent a debt ceiling breach, what is to prevent the US from minting more any time it needs the money.  So far as I was concerned, Obama might just as well have called a press conference to announce the US was now a banana republic.  As for Trump -- well, his natural response to any crisis is to escalate, and he is so ignorant of basic public policy that I could actually imagine him doing this.  I like to think, though, that one of his saner advisers would talk him down.  In short, refraining from this option is not proof that the President is not dictatorial; it is merely proof that he is not a crazy dictator.  I don't think even Obama's worst enemies claim that he is a crazy dictator.  Donald Trump might be, but I can still hope he would have at least one sane adviser.

Withhold funding from anyone who won't cooperate:  Other people suggested that Obama tell any member of Congress who refused to raise the debt ceiling that when the cuts hit, their district would be the one to suffer.  Not just pork, but no funding of any kind, quite possibly not even Social Security checks to people who lived there.  The goal, of course, would be to put the squeeze on the people and make them put pressure on their representative.  And I will admit, this approach has some attraction at the visceral level.  But it is the sort of thing that is so flagrant and outrageous an abuse of power that the affect is often to stiffen, rather than undermine, people's resolve.  It is a good general rule that when people see their suffering as random and meaningless, their morale and will to resist does often weaken.  But when they see their suffering as intentionally inflicted, most people respond with anger and a determination not to back down.

Obama offered another reason as well for not taking this approach.  He said the US Treasury was simply not set up to allow this.  Bills came in and had to be paid, with no way of making the distinction what to pay and what not to.  He made clear that bills would be paid on a first-come-first-serve basis with no attempt made to prioritize.  Indeed, he even questioned whether it would be possible to give priority to paying interest on the national debt and averting a worldwide financial crisis.  And presumably even if one could establish some system of priorities, anything so fine-tuned as figuring out which Congressional District each and every Social Security check was going to and paying or  not paying accordingly.  The first-come-first-serve approach, in addition to being the technically easiest for the Treasury to do, had the additional advantage of making any hardships that resulted truly random and meaningless, without any political design.

I suppose Republicans could argue that making the hardship random and meaningless was itself a kind of political ploy, a way of bringing pressure by ensuring that no one was safe, and that what Obama should have done was carefully calculate his cuts so as to cause the least possible damage. Certainly this argument has a strong moral appeal.  But I can also see a few faults with it.  One is the question of whether it was technically feasible the way the Treasury was set up.  But presumably it should have been possible to at least explore that possibility and make some attempt at harm mitigation, however poorly executed.  Another is that Obama's definition of "least possible damage" and Congressional Republicans' might very well have been different.  But the main problem is that there is no way to cut federal spending by a third overnight without inflicting a great deal of pain, and that criticizing how Obama intended to deal with the shortfall was simply a way of attempting to deflect responsibility and blame Obama for how he handled a debt ceiling breach, instead of placing responsibility where it belonged -- on the people who refused to raise the debt ceiling.

And, only a closely related note, if you truly believe that we have an out-of-control executive and a President acting like a dictator, demanding that he cut the federal budget by a third overnight but giving him complete discretion what to cut with no guidance whatever is not the way to reign him in. It is simply an attempt to avoid responsibility for the pain that will inevitably be involved.  And, it should be added, it shows an extraordinary degree of confidence in the man you claim is an out-of-control dictator that he will not abuse his power to make the cuts hurt you and yours.

In short, even if the setup of the Treasury made it impossible to prioritize what did and did not get paid, if Obama had truly had the sort of dictatorial inclinations his enemies claimed, he would have at least threatened to arrange the cuts so as to hurt his opponents the most.  Presumably many of his opponents would not have realized it was an empty bluff.  And he would have at least explored the possibility of finding a way to make it work.

Now imagine Trump in a similar position!  Can anyone doubt that he would have threatened to do just that?  Could anything be more in character?  And even if it had not been technically feasible, Trump is sufficiently ignorant of how our government works that he probably would not realize his threat was just an empty bluff.

Declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional:  This one might actually be defensible.  The reasoning would be as follows.  Congress made three contradictory sets of laws.  One set taxes and determined what national revenues would be.  One set spending levels and commanded the government to spend certain amounts on certain programs.  One set lending levels and limited what the government could borrow to meet its obligations.  Refusal to raise the debt ceiling put these three commandments in inexorable contradiction.  The President, in effect, was commanded to spend a certain amount, but forbidden to either raise taxes or borrow enough to actually spend was he was legally obligated to spend.  The result was to force him to disobey one of three laws. He could either (1) illegally raise taxes to cover mandated spending, (2) illegally fail to spend money the budget ordered him to spend, or (3) illegally borrow to meet mandatory spending goals.

We can rule out (1) right away.  It is a longstanding rule of our government dating back to Medieval England that the legislature alone may tax, and that this gives it the power of the purse strings.  The English Civil War (17th Century) was fought largely over the King's attempts to evade this restriction by seeking "voluntary gifts."  Parliament defeated the King and cut his head off a century before the French made such things fashionable.  The American Revolution was largely fought over whether the colonial legislature or an unaccountable British Parliament would control the purse strings.  To allow the President to unilaterally raise taxes would be manifestly unconstitutional.

But should the President illegally fail to spend what has been ordered, or illegally borrow what has been forbidden? The answer is less clear.  Republicans tended to believe that the President should refuse to spend what was budgeted, presumably because (1) much of the budget is mandatory spending on programs set decades ago by earlier Congresses, while the budget ceiling is immediate and; (2) the budget should be seen as a limitation in spending rather than a command to spend.  But their unwillingness to offer any sort of guidance on what to cut was such an extreme abdication of responsibility that the President might argue that for him to make those decisions was an unconstitutional usurpation of legislative power, and that continuing to borrow despite the prohibition was really the least arrogant and usurping decision he could make.

Can anyone doubt that Donald Trump, in such a position, would have done just that?  Or rather, lacking any real concept that the President is constrained by laws passed by Congress at all, he would probably just have proceeded to borrow, unaware that of the constitutional crisis he was causing.  In any event, Obama declined to do even that.  He made clear that, if his borrowing authority ran out, the Treasury would continue to pay as many bills as it could on a first-come-first-serve basis, falling ever further and further behind until Congress relented.  And, in the end, Congress did relent at the last minute.  (And prove that it can act quickly if it absolutely has to).

By refusing to take dictatorial options many advisers urged, or to assume dictatorial powers (to unilaterally cut spending) that many Republicans desperately wanted him to, Obama showed that he was no dictator.  Admittedly, there was a strong element of political calculation at work.  Obama kept his power constrained to ensure that if we did default on the debt, Congressional Republicans would be blamed.  But can anyone doubt that Trump would have assumed dictatorial powers (probably, the power of threatening to cut spending on specific political rivals) in his place?  One has only to imagine Trump in the debt ceiling showdown to understand just how much not a dictator Obama has been -- and how much of a dictator Trump would be.


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*Here, I should add, many people will object and say such a showdown would never happen.  Republicans would fall in line once one of their own became President and lose all interest in debt and deficits, while Democrats would never do anything that crazy in the first place.  And I will admit, it is a stretch, but not unimaginable.  The Republicans' ability to force concessions by refusing to raise the debt ceiling was thwarted by what might be called the Madman Caucus, who refused to raise the debt ceiling no matter what concessions they might get in return.  We might imagine that caucus still refusing to raise the debt ceiling, even under Trump, and having seized the Speakership and therefore prevent putting it to vote with the support of Democrats.  Or maybe Trump's first two years prove so unpopular as to deliver at least one house back to the Democrats, who have developed their own madman caucus.  Or maybe Trump undertakes some anti-immigrant policy so brutal and inhumane that Democrats are prepared to resort to truly desperate measures to stop him.

Further Comment on Obama as Dictator

So, to bring up an old topic, what am I to say about Republican claims that Obama is an out of control executive behaving in a dictatorial manner?  And how does it compare with Democrats making similar claims about George Bush?

To start with Bush:  The usual opposition claims about Bush being dictatorial were about his theories of national security and the "unitary executive."  His theories amounted to a claim that the President had the power to do whatever he wanted so long as he said the words "national security" first.  This included authority to start wars, to name anyone he wanted as an enemy combatant, to indefinite detention without trial or to create military tribunals to trial, to torture or at least "coercive interrogation," and to wiretap.  Indefinite detention without trial, torture or as near as possible, and unauthorized surveillance are all clearly the stuff of dictators, but at the same time I must admit that our side seriously exaggerated the danger, fearing that Bush would turn these things against his political opponents, when he does not appear to have done so.  A lot of things that seemed alarming under his government were really just the way the system works.  (Which is even more alarming, in some ways).  The indefinite detention and abusive interrogation were limited to overseas use and not applied in a domestic context.  His wiretapping in violation of statute was done after informing party leaders and heads of the relevant committees in both houses of Congress and informing the FISA court, apparently without opposition.  There is nothing to suggest that he used his surveillance powers against political rivals as Nixon did.  None of this excuses Bush, but it does put him in context.

As for Obama, Republicans' claim that he is an out of control executive and quasi-dictator tend to involve bombings without Congressional approval, alleged IRS audits of opposition groups, use of executive power to tweak problematic parts of Obamacare, use of the regulatory apparatus to enact various measures that could not pass Congress, entering into executive agreements with foreign powers instead of treaties subject to Senate approval, and his attempt to selectively not enforce immigration law against certain categories.  Some might add his stretching newly-acquired powers of surveillance beyond all reasonable interpretation.

Unauthorized bombings and extraordinary stretching of surveillance powers have excited by far the least conservative opposition because they fit under the heading of national security.  The most libertarian have objected, but plenty whose libertarianism stops at the water's edge don't mind.  And these types can even claim consistency.  Sure, they supported George Bush's unitary executive for the sake of national security, but they always insisted on the primacy of Congress in domestic policy because they don't really approve of domestic policy and would like to make it as difficult as possible.

So far as domestic policy goes, the whole IRS scandal amounted to nothing, although Republicans to this day do not admit it.  At issue was an IRS regulation known as 501(c)(4), which allows "social welfare organizations" to claim tax exempt status despite doing some political lobbying and advertising, although their income spent on such activities is taxable.  But such groups are not required to disclose their donors.  Things get complicated here since a wide variety of advocacy groups can claim, quite sincerely, that advancing their political agenda promotes social welfare.  So how does the IRS know if a political advocacy group is masquerading as a social welfare group? Confronted with a huge deluge of applicants for 501(c)(4) status, the IRS could not effectively process so many and instead applied special scrutiny to any that had a political-sounding name.  This included conservative names (like "Tea Party") and liberal names (like "Occupy.")  But although the IRS was not singling conservative organizations out for scrutiny beyond liberal organizations, far more conservative than liberal applicants were held up in the process for the simple reason that there were more conservative than liberal applicants in the first place.  But the folk memory of Nixon using IRS audits to harass political opponents remains strong enough that Republicans badly want to apply the same accusation to Obama.

As for the others -- I suppose it is all a question of how far it is appropriate for the President to go when the opposition party controls Congress and has made it clear that there will be no cooperation on anything, and that their goal is to destroy the administration.  The matter of Obamacare is easiest. It was duly passed when Democrats controlled Congress.  Republicans declared all-out war.  Unable to repeal it outright, they did everything in their power to sabotage the law, including refuse to repair the glitches and malfunctions that are inevitable in any major reform.  To quote Norm Ornstein:

When a law is enacted, representatives who opposed it have some choices (which are not mutually exclusive). They can try to repeal it, which is perfectly acceptable -- unless it becomes an effort at grandstanding so overdone that it detracts from other basic responsibilities of governing. They can try to amend it to make it work better -- not just perfectly acceptable but desirable, if the goal is to improve a cumbersome law to work better for the betterment of the society and its people. They can strive to make sure that the law does the most for Americans it is intended to serve, including their own constituents, while doing the least damage to the society and the economy. Or they can step aside and leave the burden of implementation to those who supported the law and got it enacted in the first place. 

But to do everything possible to undercut and destroy its implementation -- which in this case means finding ways to deny coverage to many who lack any health insurance; to keep millions who might be able to get better and cheaper coverage in the dark about their new options; to create disruption for the health providers who are trying to implement the law, including insurers, hospitals, and physicians; to threaten the even greater disruption via a government shutdown or breach of the debt limit in order to blackmail the president into abandoning the law; and to hope to benefit politically from all the resulting turmoil -- is simply unacceptable, even contemptible.

 In other cases, the question is a more difficult one.  To what extent is it reasonable for the President to use the regulatory apparatus to (partially) enact policies opposed by Congress, often for reasons of sincere ideological disagreement?  Likewise, to what extent is it reasonable for the President to make executive agreements instead of treaties, knowing that the proposed treaty would never pass the Senate?  (And keep in mind that to many Republicans, all treaties are suspect, by the libertarian wing because treaties have the force of law and libertarians oppose law unless absolutely necessary; and by the nationalist wing because treaties infringe on US sovereignty).

And at the same time consider to what extent a President may be forced to govern by decree when the opposition party is ready even to default on the national debt with untold economic consequences.  But, as I have said before, the whole showdown over the national debt is the ultimate proof that Obama was not the dictator his opponents alleged.  To recognize this, one need only consider what Trump might have done under similar circumstances.

More on this in the next post.

Wanted: A New Liberal Policy on Immigration and Trade

I don't like blog posts that are mostly just links and cites to other blog posts, but Donald Trump seems to bring out the worst in me as he does in so many others.  So here goes one that is mostly a cite to  this post and this one explaining why Bernie Sanders' trade policy is just a less honest version of Trump's.

Both Trump and Sanders are protectionist.  Both are protectionist for the same reason -- they see cheap imports as harmful to the US working class, eating away at out good-paying blue collar jobs and hollowing out our working class as its livelihood is undermined. And they are essentially right there.  I recall well being warned of this in my college course on international economics.  Complete global free trade has the effect of tending to equalize wages world-wide, to the great detriment of people in high wage countries.

But it benefits people in low wage countries.  And therein lies the unfortunate fact.  Wages that are abysmally low by US standards can still be the best around in Mexico or China.  Cutting off imports from China or Mexico would devastate these countries economically.

To Sanders the answer is simple.  Just insist that these countries pay wages comparable to the US as a precondition to trading with them.  But really, in cases like these calling for wages comparable to US wages is unrealistic.  It simply means calling on all the low-wage industries in these countries to shut down and throw millions out of work.

Many countries have pulled themselves out of poverty by the export of cheap goods made with low wage labor.  Japan led the way, followed the the foursome of Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore.  Other East Asian countries are following in their path, such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and, of course, China.  The pattern all have followed has been essentially the same.  They begin as exporters of cheap, low quality manufactured goods, trading on cheap labor as their advantage.  Over time, these countries move from cheap, low quality manufactured goods and low wages to high quality goods and high wages, and from production for export to production for domestic consumption.  But in all cases, their initial advantage is low wages and higher wages come with time and practice.

This is not to deny or dismiss the importance of very real labor abuses -- unpaid wages, extremely hazardous factories, outright enslavement, death squads killing labor organizers etc.  These should not be written off as inevitable side effects of progress.  These things should be recognized and strongly opposed.  But to insist on protecting our domestic industry by protectionism is to deny millions in poorer countries to opportunity to advance -- or to throw them catastrophically backward by shutting down whole industries overseas.

And here is the difference between Sanders and Trump.  (Or, if you will between a liberal and a conservative or authoritarian, or between favoring breadth and favoring depth).  To Trump and his supporters, the answer is to shrug and say so what.  As President of the US my job is to concern myself with the well-being of American workers.  What happens to the rest of the world is not my concern.  To Sanders and his supporters, such an answer is simply not morally acceptable.

Much the same applies to immigration.  A Trump supporter sees the interests of immigrants as a non-issue. A liberal or Sanders supporter cannot shut immigrants out of the moral calculus, yet the fact remains that we really can't admit everyone the world over who might want to come here.  And even if we would, it is not only the US that would be harmed, but the countries losing so much of their population to us.

Right-wing populists in the US and Europe alike show that a large portion of the population has had enough of immigration and trade and will be heard, whether through respectable voices or otherwise. Liberal principle do not allow us to treat immigrants or the global poor as scapegoats for our problems, and rightly so.  But neither does political or economic reality allow us to shoulder the entire burden of lifting the world up.  What is needed is something new -- a policy that takes the needs of immigrants and global poor into account, but rejects a simple "more is better" approach to immigration and trade.  This is at least a proposal in such a direction for trade.  We need one for immigration as well, preferably one focused on improving conditions in countries with large out-migration and rewarding people who chose to stay.

No plan yet, but something to turn around and think about.