Right in San Francisco

Trump's Half Term: An Assessment

    'Tis the season for looking back and looking forward; for assessing accomplishments and opportunities unfulfilled; for thinking what was, what might have been, and what might yet be. In Trump-world this exercise is best done in two year increments - since the last election and to the next. 

The easy part: What was and what might have been. 

    - Republicans controlled the House, the Senate, and the presidency - all was possible, but never in recent history has a president faced such constant, vitriolic opposition from the opposing party, most of the media, and a significant slice of his own party. In the House, the Freedom Caucus prevented compromise; in the Senate the 60 vote threshold for most matters and the few Never Trumpers among the 51 seat Republican majority proved too liberal for the more conservative House. And that's before Robert Mueller's relentless probes to find anything to bring the president down. 

    - With that setting, Donald Trump delivered peace and prosperity, with the working class and minorities sharing the bounty for the first time in decades. 

        -- Despite the Fed returning monetary policy toward normalcy after 8 years of stimulus, the Obama era "new normal" of 2% GDP growth was bettered by 1 to 2 %, and unemployment of 4.5 % was reduced below the 4% often considered "full employment". Deregulation (deleting two old for every new regulation; freeing smaller banks from Dodd-Frank), tax cuts (benefitting 85% of payers), energy expansion (offshore; Alaska; fracking; pipelines) , and tariffs (particularly on steel and aluminum) all contributed. The results are undeniable, and they belong to Trump.   

         -- The ISIS caliphate was defeated in short order, and the promise to cut back on being the world's policeman is being fulfilled despite a messy world full of fanatics and despots. 

        --  First important steps were taken to force China to conform to World Trade Organization norms - reducing state support for favored exporters, and stopping industrial espionage - and to engage North Korea in denuclearization talks. Leaders with long term contracts in both countries will try to wait out the Americans. 

        --  The Republicans whiffed on "Repeal and Replace" of Obamacare, but the individual mandate was repealed, it was made easier for small businesses to group together to buy health insurance, and stripped down short term plans were made more available. 

        --  An early offer to Democratic Congressional leaders to trade DACA for a wall was rejected and remains an elusive goal as the Democrats prefer to stoke their voter base.   

        --  The more partisan accomplishments were also myraid: cancellation of President Obama's Iranian nuclear giveaway; withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement; moving our embassy to Jerusalem; appointment of two Supreme court justices and 83 lower court judges.   

And the hard part: what the next two years might hold. With Trump's high energy, unconventional style, and broad agenda in the wake of President Obama's globalist, liberal, ineffective legacy, it has been possible to make progress across a broad front. With a Democratic House (and an effective leader), it will be necessary to significantly advance a few key initiatives.   

    - Strategic confrontation of China's trade practices is broadly popular, but will take time and a coalition. When Trump withdrew from the Transpacific Partnership in January 2017, most of the other participants went ahead with a set of trade agreements which do not include China. Whether a formal participant or an interested partner, this coalition is ready-made for a more favorable realignment of East Asia trade relationships. 

    -  North Korea's nuclear program must be dismantled.  Mike Pompeo's performance review in 2020 should be heavily weighted on how well he works with South Korea and Japan to accomplish this goal.

    - We cannot go on with porous borders, millions of largely assimilated young illegal immigrants in the shadows, and a demographic which shows an aging native population in need of young workers to support Social Security, Medicare, and the general economy. Real border secutrity in exchange for DACA is so obvious that only cynical politicians can refuse to find the equation.  Unfortunately we have plenty of them. 

    -  Personality flaws aside, the biggest risk of a President Trump working with a Democratic House is the ballooning budget deficit.  With interest rates rising and current deficits coming out of Paul Ryan's House exceeding $1 trillion, one shudders to think of what Pelosi and Trump might concoct. Someone somewhere in the federal government needs to take notice. 

        One can hope that Mueller will get out of the way, and that the next two years are as productive as the last two. 

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    This week's video is a shocker -  Van Jones on CNN praising Donald Trump and Jared Kushner for their role in assembling a coalition to pass major prison reform which will greatly reduce incarceration for nonviolent offenses, and should be a big plus in the African American community.  

bill bowen - 12/28/18 

 

     

    

 

 

 

 

 

Brexit: An American Perspective

    What Trump and Mueller are to American political discourse, Brexit is to the British. Both provide arcane lessons in the technical structure and operation of government; both provide the generally disinterested public with reason to pick up a newspaper or watch a pundit; both reveal the ugliness of politicians who place personal ambition above the national good; both will still be discussed mid-century.  

    The setting

        - The muddled result of Conservative leader David Cameron's bungling in 2016 is that the British and European Union negotiators have until March 29 to define the terms by which Britain will leave, and the nature of their subsequent relationship. The date could be delayed by mutual agreement, but all parties want the pressure of a deadline to force negotiations. 

        - There are three potential outcomes:

            -- The British Parliament could accept (perhaps with minor modifications or "clarifications") the 528 page withdrawal agreement and the 26 page political declaration of future relationships which Theresa May has negotiated, envisioning a transition period through 2020 in which Britain would remain in a "customs union" (accepting EU rules, specifications, and court judgments), without the ability to independently negotiate trade agreements until both parties agree on how to solve the Ireland problem. (The issue: how to  be totally independent on trade without re-establishing a hard border between Northern Ireland (part of the UK) and the Republic of Ireland.) May would defer this problem for later solution; the EU insists that the UK would be prohibited from agreeing to trade deals with other countries until it is solved by mutual agreement - perhaps forever.          

           -- Lacking agreement with the European Union, there could be a "Hard Brexit", with major disruptions of commerce and personal movement. Free movement of people and goods would end; British payments to the EU would end; trade agreements with Britain's largest trading partner would end without immediate replacement British agreements; Britain's critical financial services sector would suffer a major shock. Prudent government and business officials on both sides of the channel are making contingency plans, but are fearful of making this seem a viable option. 

    -- There could be a second vote on leaving. Prime Minister Theresa May (who originally opposed exit) takes the view that Parliament once asked the voters what they wanted, and she is committed to serving their will. Others among the former "Remainers" claim that the downside of Brexit was not understood, but now is, and that some two million new voters, who will be mostly affected, have come of age in the interim. This seems the least likely outcome - in part because it is hard to determine whether the question would be "remain", leave under the provisions that Theresa May and the EU have negotiated, leave under renegotiated terms, or leave without a negotiated agreement. There is no majority opinion. 

    An American's observations

        - It was naively irresponsible of former Prime Minister David Cameron to call for a snap election to be won by a simple majority to define the status of the country as fully independent or part of a larger polity. Our founders did not so much trust direct democracy, making constitutional amendment difficult, and inserting the Electoral College between the voters and the presidency. On the other hand, the EU procedures which call for agreement among all 27 member countries cry for reform.    

         - For at least a few years a "Hard Brexit" would be bad for the United States as it would disrupt the economies and politics of major trading partners and allies. With Angela Merkel losing power in Germany, Emmanuel Macron's popularity in France approaching 20% , Italy defying Eurozone requirements for budget constraint, and Russia pushing back against decades of eastward encroachment, Europe is in no position to absorb a chaotic, adversarial withdrawal by its second largest member. A united West is needed to engage China. 

        -  Raw political self interest will carry the day, and Theresa May understands nose counting. The 317 Conservative MPs and their 10 allied Democratic Unionist Party MPs from Northern Ireland have as a first objective retaining their thin majority in the 650 member Parliament. Jeremy Corbyn's Labor Party (257 MPs) would try to defeat any Conservative proposal if that would lead to a successful vote of no confidence in the government and new Parliamentary elections which Labor may win. That cannot be allowed to play out. Many Hard Brexit Conservatives (such as Boris Johnson) would be happy for the government to fall to be replaced by one of their own, but do not have a majority within their party and cannot risk new elections. The Democratic Unionist Party cannot allow a Labor victory which would put them out of power or a Hard Brexit which would re-create a hard border within Ireland. Politically, for the decision makers, May's deal is the least bad option. 

    - Theresa May has been heroic in her effort to identify the small sweet spot which meets the initial Brexit objectives of controlling immigration to Britain, limiting regulations from Brussels, and preserving a unified England / Scotland / Northern Ireland / Channel Islands. By putting off the parliamentary vote until mid-January while continuing talks with the EU leaders, she is taking away the space for any alternative. 

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  This week's bonus video is a compelling Tucker Carlson/Praeger U commentary on illegal immigration.

bill bowen - 12/21/2018 

Made in China 2025

    Tariffs are only a weapon. China's "Made in China 2025" policy is the target. This week's announcement from Beijing that they will be revising the policy indicates that the weapon is hitting the target. Let's recap. 

    Chinese Premier Li Kequiang introduced the "Made in China 2025" policy in 2015 as a focused plan to move China up the value chain as a manufacturer, to increase local manufacture of critical technical components of items like cars and cell phones to 70% by 2025, and to challenge American leadership in key future technology areas:

    1) New advanced information technology and artificial intelligence (think Google and Intel);

    2) Automated machine tools & robotics (think Allen Bradley  and Epson);

   3) Aerospace and aeronautical equipment (think Boeing);

   4) Maritime equipment and high-tech shipping (think Korean or German);

   5) Modern rail transport equipment (think General Electric or European);

   6) New-energy vehicles and equipment (think Tesla);

  7) Power equipment (think General Electric and Tesla);

  8) Agricultural equipment (think John Deere or Catepillar);

  9) New materials (think 3M); and

10) Biopharma and advanced medical products (think J&J or Bristol Myers). 

    In prior Five Year Plans China had emphasized domestic innovation in targeted industries. Made in China 2025 changes the dynamic relative to foreign companies wishing to do business in China by seeking to capture and surpass global technologies.  The core reality is that the Chinese economy is comprised of state owned enterprises (often run by the military), domestic privately owned companies, and foreign owned private companies. Despite the incorporation of elements of capitalism, it remains a top-down, state-controlled economy, where nobody prospers without the approval of the Communist Party central authorities, and target industries and companies are subsidized by the government.  Despite Chinese assertions, the level of government subsidies and coercions violates the rules of the World Trade Organization which it was allowed to join in 2001.

     Until Donald Trump took on the growing behemoth with tariffs and the threat to leave the WTO, China was allowed to force companies with targeted technologies to give them up in order to participate in the Chinese market, while China stepped up a global effort to acquire technology through open source and clandestine means. Europe - with Brexit, and lesser problems afflicting France Germany, and Italy - is in no position to lead. With a century-long stigma, Japan is in no position to lead.  The TransPacific Partnership was an effort to assemble an alliance of smaller countries in the effort to reign in China, but at least for now the essential American participation is off the table.

    For clarity, global telecommunications equipment giant Huawei provides a good example. The Trump administration has asked many of our allies to buoycot their equipment because of the intelligence gathering nad potential strategic sabotage capabilities of its network. (The arrest of the company's CFO in Canada for violation of sanctions on trade with Iran is a flashpoint, but not really the driving issue.)  This week's identification of Chinese intelligence services as being behind the hack of Marriott's and several other data bases also provides a public example of Chinese government capabilities and attitudes toward the use of Information Technology to further their development goals. And then there are the 340,000 Chinese students at American colleges and universities. 

    As a very big first step in the agreement between Trump and Xi Jinping to delay the imposition of  increased tariffs, China has announced a change to the China 2025 policy to exclude smaller local companies from its mandates, and perhaps reduce the amount of "local content" required in finished products. More will be needed - doing away with joint venture requirements; a reduction in state-sponsored technical espionage; acceleration of approval of imported products without coopting the technology.

    With apologies to the farmers and oil companies, the trade problem with China will not be solved by increasing their soybean and natural gas imports.  It will require fundamental change to Chinese industrial policies and Trump has gotten their attention. China's leaders think strategically. So does Trump, even if Wall Street runs on quarterly profits. 

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    This week's bonus video covers the highlights of the acrimoneous Trump/Schumer/Pelosi meeting on funding the wall. One cynical perspective - Trump staged this televised meeting to help Pelosi with her base as she was trying to win over the Democratic caucus to again become Speaker of the House. They can count votes and do deals. 

bill bowen - 12/13/2018

     

 

Of Democrats and Star Chambers

    Most of the political and legal underpinning of the United States came about as a response by the Founding Fathers to the injustices which they had seen in the British political system. The division of authority between the federal government and the states and between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches was intended to prevent the consolidation of power by which the monarch could oppress the citizens. Abuses by the British Star Chamber - a superior court originally intended to keep the aristocracy in line, but later used to arbitrarily mete out punishments for the king's enemies - led to protections for defendants such as the fifth amendment to the American constitution, guaranteeing protection against self-incrimination. The Founders were also conscious of the risk of mob rule with democracy run amok as in the French Revolution and the Salem witch trials of the 1690's. The presumption of innocense and the rules of evidence evolved as protections for the individual against both the establishment and the mob. They form the cornerstone of our individual liberty, and for centuries have been a key part of our national concept of justice. 

    Fast forward to 2018 with Trump Derangement Syndrome and the Democrats' obsession with preventing the establishment of a conservative Supreme Court. There are many downsides to the circus which Diane Feinstein unleashed by bypassing the Senate Judiciary Committee's process for investigating nominees and withholding sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Kavanaugh - the damaged reputation of an exemplary person; the emotional stress on the judge's wife and daughters; the emotional stress on Dr. Ford and her family; the further cheapening of civil discourse in the country; the heightening of animosity between men and women of good will; and the public's continuing low esteem for politicians and Congress. 

    The reality of the events described by Dr. Ford are unknowable. She says he did it; he says he didn't. The potential corroborating witnesses - including her female friend who was allegedly at the party - have no memory of the event, and she told nobody until decades later. She seems to have come forward in good faith, but fell afoul of the national political system in which the Democrats, particularly Senator Feinstein, held her story for maximum political effect, leaking it without permission at the last minute in an attempt to delay or derail Judge Kavanaugh's appointment. Seeing an opportunity to drive up their standing with women prior to the November elections, they seized it. Driven by political deadlines the Republicans refused to delay to allow further investigation which would have been marginally helpful, but which would have kept the window open for other unsubstantiated claims to come forward. Little in the handling will encourage other victims of sexual abuse to subject themselves to public inquiry.   

    The real damage to the nation is the abandonment of the presumption of innocence in the absence of credible evidence - at least in the case of conservatives. (Bill Clinton, Ted Kennedy, and Keith Ellison are a different story.) Prior to hearing either side of the case, Senator Chris Coons proudly placed the "burden of proof" on Judge Kavanaugh, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared that there was no "presumption of innocense." In the heat of the political moment that may garner support from the women of the #MeToo movement, but it represents a repudiation of the rule of law as it has been practiced in the United States since our inception. Thoughtful Democrats - as well as Republicans and independents - should reflect on whether that is too high a price to pay for the rejection of a superbly qualified Supreme Court justice. 

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  This week's bonuses are Judge Kavanaugh's lengthy opening statement and Lindsey Graham's emotional response to the Democrats' attacks. 

bill bowen - 9/28/18

 

 

Trump's Dreadful Trip

    Sometimes being right on the substance and wrong on the form isn't good enough. While trying to do too much in one week, the president's proclivity for disruption and the media's proclivity for hysteria - familiar shows in domestic venues - fell flat when translated to the world stage. Some things just don't sound as good in French or Finnish as they do at a rally in Kansas City. A perspective: 

    The Bad

    1.  The United Kingdom is in the midst of an epochal struggle to redefine the nation and it's relationship with the world. Prime Minister Theresa May is trying to thread the needle, adopting a "soft Brexit" stance which retains "free trade" and shared customs procedures with Europe, a posture which has caused some 10 of her ministers to resign. The Donald found it necessary to opine that remaining part of the EU for trading purposes would make it impossible to have a trade agreement with the United States - and that her most problematic Conservative Party rival would be a good prime minister. On the merits, a "hard Brexit" would have reflected a choice to align more closely with the United States and the Anglophile world, but this advice reflected a most unwelcome intrusion into British politics at a most inopportune moment.  

    2. Trump's apparent acceptance of Vladimir Putin's perfunctory denial that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election over the American intelligence community's consensus that they had was a low light of the presidency to date. In truth, no level of Trump berating Putin in public would have satisfied the critics. The Justice Department's decision to indict 12 Russian intelligence officers three days before the meeting was intended to ensure that the issue received prominence in the Putin discussions; cries of treason from Obama's CIA director James Brennan and House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer say much more about them than about Trump's actions; and Trump did see the need to correct the record on the following day. Back in 2016 President Obama told Putin to not meddle again; a similar admonition would have been good. 

    3. Trump's assertion that the United States leaders had acted foolishly relative to Russia in the past deserves domestic discussion, but does little to further our negotiating position with Putin. It is a good thing that Trump was not asked to put some meat on the bone by the collusion-obsessed media. For the big picture from a Russian perspective, the original post-war core NATO was expanded by President Clinton to add Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic; by President Bush to add Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Bulgaria, Rumania, Slovakia, and Slovenia; and by President Obama to add Albania, Croatia, and Montenegro. President Trump is being asked to add Bosnia/Herzogovina, Macedonia, and the former Soviet Union states of Georgia and the Ukraine.  On the substance, one might also ask about American meddling in Russian elections during the Yeltsin and Gorbachev era; President Obama's assertion that Russian ally Assad must go in Syria; or the coup in the Ukraine which overthrew an elected pro-Russian president and (coupled with potential accession to NATO) put the key Russian naval base in the Crimea at risk. When it comes to Russia, we do lack empathy and self-awareness.   

    The Good 

    1. NATO, and particularly Germany, need to be taken out behind the woodshed. Past presidents have politiely tried, but Trump is committed. Most are not making much progress toward their 2014 commitment to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP by 2024, relying instead on the United States to carry the burden of deterring the Russians while the Western alliance has extended eastward into what was once Moscow's sphere of influence. A major re-thinking is needed when Germany, stuck at 1.2%, enables their former Chancellor (Gerhardt Schroeder) to become CEO of a large Kremlin-connected Russian energy company (Rosneft), and to build a natural gas pipeline which will make Germany reliant on Russia while undercutting Ukraine, which sits astride Russia's current major pipeline to Europe.  

    2. The list of things which Trump discussed with Putin is long and appropriate - the North Korean nuclear program; the war in Syria; the need to contain Iran's ambitions in the Muslim world; a follow-up to the 2010 nuclear arms reductions agreements; Israeli security; the conflict in the Ukraine.  In the age of Resist, the Left doesn't think that Trump should be talking to Putin at all and is critical that there was not a memorandum of new groundbreaking agreements. Talking is good - and the press conference comments relative to North Korea and nuclear arms agreements offer some optimism for those so inclined, as is the offer of a second meeting in Washington.  

    3. We have an annual trade deficit in goods of $150 billion with the European Union, partially offset by a $50 billion surplus in services, driven by both tariffs and other barriers such as exclusion of genetically modified agricultural products. While the big goods imbalance is with China ($375 billion) and there are significant problems with Mexico ($70 billion ) and Japan ($70 billion), Trump was right to explain the need to restore a trade balance with the Europeans. They are allies and not "competitive foes" as Trump claimed, but they are certainly competitors. Everyone objects - major trading partners; the industries facing higher tariffs; the Resisters; the anti-Trumpers - but our global $800 billion trade deficit in goods is not sustainable. There was time when most of our markets were internal; we were rich enough to use trade deficits as a major geopolitical tool; and "free trade" did not need to be balanced. That time has passed, and Trump is willing to take the short term heat - particularly at a time when the economy is booming. 

    Bereft of other ideas, the Left has escalated its "Russia is the enemy, Trump wants to get along with Putin, Mueller will find the smoking gun" meme. From a long term geopolitical perspective Trump has it right - as did Obama, if by intent if not action. With their nucler arsenal, energy resources, broad geographic sweep, and United Nations veto power, the Russians are an important player relative to both Europe and China.  Trying to work with them - regardless of what Chuck Schumer and Rachel Maddow think - is a good thing. For that Trump deserves credit. 

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    This week's video is a short, little-reported section of the Trump-Putin press conferendce in Helsinki - in which Putin talks about $400 million which were illegally obtained in Russia and contributed to Hillary Clinton (presumably through the Clinton Foundation.) 

bill bowen - 7/20/2018

Mexico: Risk and Opportunity

    In this age when everything is about Trump, the July 1, elections in Mexico risk passing with little notice in the Norteamericano consciousness.  With the election of hard left President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), a legislative majority for his new National Regeneration Movement (Morena) party, and the rebuke of both the long-governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI)  and the more recent establishment conservative alternative, the National Action Party (PAN), our neighbor's 130,000,000 people have opted to change direction from the past three decades which have brought generally fair elections and an improved economy driven by NAFTA and opening of the energy sector to foreign capital. We stand to be significantly affected. 

    First some stage setting:

        - For the past dozen years Mexico's government has cooperated with the United States in a military approach to defeating the drug cartels, but the problem of corruption and violence has grown progressively worse. Among the milestones in the sad story are the defeat of the Columbian cartels in the late 90's (which shifted management leadership to Mexico), the decline of the PRI (whose local affiliates had "understandings" with drug smugglers), and successful efforts to eliminate major cartel factions (which result in turf wars among the survivors.)  The official murder rate was 27,000 in 2017. Some 120 candidates for local office were killed in the runup to the July elections.  

        -  The rebellion against the political esablishment had several themes:

            -- The global swing toward nationalist candidates who project strength in looking out for their countrymen. AMLO promises a strong leader, capable of standing up to Donald Trump's denigration of Mexico and Mexicans. 

            -- A promise to shift the war against the cartels from a military focus to one of offering poor Mexicans an employment option through free education at all levels and more social programs to narrow the extreme gap between the wealthy and the lower levels of the population which is among the worst in Latin America, and growing.  

            -- A promise to revert to Mexico's socialist past, halting the privatization of the electric grid and stopping private oil contracts - and to renegotiate NAFTA.  

        - From Mexico's perspective, immigration from Mexico to the United States should not be a problem. Since the Great Recession in 2008, the net flow north from Mexico has largely abated. Despite a 2014 initiative which has turned back most migrants from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala at Mexico's southern border, the number of illegals entering the United States through Mexico from these countries exceeds those from Mexico.  

    It is a new day in Mexico, perhaps the most transformational in generations. Pessimists fear a collapse of the society as the PRI infrastructure is disbanded, the application of military force against the cartels is reduced, and government socialist policies blow up the budget and drive away foreign investment. They point to the potential for AMLO, unconstrained by opposition parties, to emerge in the model of Fidel Castro in Cuba or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Should he choose so, he will have a ready rallying cry in resisting Trump's border and trade policies. By design or as a result of economics and lawlessness in Mexico, there could be a return to mass movement to the United States.  

      The optimists would say that the new Mexican leader has learned pragmatic executive skills during his experience as mayor of Mexico City, and political skills from his three presidential campaigns. Trump needs to complete some of the disruptive projects which he has begun, and a renegotiation of our trade relationship with Mexico might serve both men. The wall and how we treat illegal immigrants will be determined in Washington, but expanded joint (largely US-funded) efforts to improve conditions in Central America and to disrupt the human trafficking could benefit both countries. 

    With Trump's foreign policy staff overtaxed - North Korea; Russia; China; trade agreements - Mexico is unlikely to receive the attention needed by our neighbor which is in the Emergency Room. And then there is the reality of the $64 billion trade deficit; and the cynical benefit to DemocratIc and Republican politicians of not solving the immigration problem.  Absent vision, empathy, and and informed self-interest, the traditional benign neglect seems likely. 

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   This week's video is a surprising Washington Post piece on Amy Coney Barrett, who would be wonderful member of the Supreme Court. 

bill bowen - 7/6/18  

Predicting the Predictable

    Upon brief reflection, this week's actions at the Supreme Court were very predictable:

        - The Court heard a case challenging a 1977 precedent which had ruled that public employee unions and government employers could require that employees join the union or pay a "fair share" of dues (about 80%) to cover the non-political activities of the union. Justice Scalia died after the case was heard, but before the 4 to 4 vote was taken in 2016. The new case was brought by a state worker in Illinois who claimed that being forced to join the union forced him to support political advocacy with which he did not agree, in that all public employee  union activity is inherently political.  The unions have been bracing for the defeat - which they estimate will cost them 10 to 30 % of their membership - for two years. 

        - The validation of the president's authority to establish reasonable guidelines for granting visas on national security grounds is a no brainer. To have looked beyond the explicit language of President Trump's directive (version 3.0) to find unacceptable motivation would have established a terrible precedent for future presidents. The legal maxim "difficult cases make bad law" could have applied here if the liberal minority of the Court had prevailed. It is also likely that the "conservative" Supreme Court justices are not pleased that liberal activists have been shopping for sympathetic lower court judges. 

        - Confirming rumors which have abounded for months, 81 year old Justice Kennedy's decision to step down at the end of this year's term was highly predictable. Likewise, the likelihood that President Trump will nominate someone from the mold of Judge Gorsich, from the evolving list initially proposed by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation. Likewise the Republican desire to have the new justice in place before the next term begins in October - and before the November election. Likewise the Democrats' freaking out.  

    It is easy to predict the past; the future is a bit more difficult, but not too much. 

        - The Senate will approve Trump's Supreme Court appointment over furious Democratic efforts to recruit Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska (both of whom will be concerned about abortion and healthcare), and Jeff Flake of Arizona and Bob Corker of Tennessee (both of whom are retiring and might want to take a parting shot at Trump.) Despite Chuck Schumer's pleading, it will be suicide for vulnerable Red State Democrats to follow the directive to preemptively reject anybody on Trump's list of 25 as being unqualified - Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota; Joe Donnelly of Indiana; Joe Manchin of West Virginia; Claire McCaskill of Missouri; Jon Tester of Montana; Sherod Brown of Ohio; Bill Nelson of Florida; and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania who are already on the wrong side on taxes and immigration. The candidate will have no track record on abortion, and will dodge all questions about Roe v Wade. 

        - The old Democratic Party is imploding.

                -- Exhibit One is the New York primary victory of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Democratic Socialists of America over Joe Crowley, the fourth ranking Democrat in the House. In addition to the bolt to the far left, the Democratic theme of victimization of women and people of color by old white males has the progressives eating their own. 

              -- Exhibit Two is Maxine Waters leading the charge for civil disobediance targeted at anyone in the Trump administration. For those with long term memories, this feels like the lawlessness of the 60's which contributed substantially to the election of President Nixon. 

               -- Exhibit Three is the twenty or more Democratic House candidates who have committed that they will not support Nancy Pelosi for party leadership - some because she is not progressively activist enough, some because she represents the old establishment, and some (like moderate Conor Lamb who recently won a special election in western Pennsylvania) because she is too liberal. Prediction - if the Democrats win the House, she stays as leader; if they lose, she goes. 

                -- The Democrats who get the most mention as presidential candidates for 2020 will look a lot more like Kamila Harris and Corey Booker than Joe Biden or Terry Mcauliffe.   Barack Obama's legacy is the demonstration that the country can elect an African American as president; the offset is that it doesn't need to again.   

        - Mitt Romney will be the voice of moderate Republicans in the Senate. To this point they have had only a few shrill voices without the ability to develop a national following - Bob Corker; Jeff Flake; John McCain; Rand Paul. Romney deferred to Jeb Bush in the 2016 primaries, thus avoiding the conflagration that was Trump, and has some credibility as an alternative to the president. And he has the political skills to walk the narrow line.  

        -  As to the November elections - it's the economy stupid, and it is the strongest in decades; for some groups the best ever.  What could go wrong?  Well, trade wars with China, Europe, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and others - but we really do have the advantage in that foreign trade is a smaller part of the US  economy than that of China or Germany, that there are imbalances that can be fairly simply improved, and that we are more important to the German Mercedes manufacturers and the Chinese trinket makers than they are to us. The stock ,market is worried, but only a little - on the assumption that Trump's team has laid down negotiation positions, but major problems will be avoided.  

        In the world of Trump each day brings a new controversy, but as of June 29, 2018, the safer two year predictions are for the continued success of the conservatives.  

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   This week's video is a convincing advertisement used by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as part of her campaign, which was funded in large part by Brand New Congress, a group founded by veterans of the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. 

bill bowen - 6/29/18 

North Korea: Four Considerations

    It is easy to get thrown off track. When President Trump proclaimed that the North Korean nuclear threat was over, he was doing his normal "take him seriously, but not literally" schtick; when the New York Times proclaimed that the Kim-Trump summit was a failure, they were doing their normal "write the headline before the event" anti-Trump journalism. In this most important negotiation of the decade, it is helpful to keep a few major factors in mind. 

    1. Success requires Chinese concurrrence. 

        - The breakthrough with Kim Jong Un occurred in 2017 when Xi Jin Ping began to enforce the economic sanctions against North Korea passed by the United Nations Security Council following missile tests.  With some 90 % of the Hermit Kingdom's foreign trade being with China, maintaining an intolerable level of deprivation requires Chinese concurrence. Kim has gone to the mountain twice in the past six months for consultations; he understands where the power lies. Ditto Mike Pompeo. 

         - Any guarantee of Kim's survival will require Chinese participation. After Kadhafi and Hussein, the word of the West has been devalued.  

        - Our relationship with China is complicated by the $375 billion trade deficit. Xi and Trump have an agreement for a substantial increase in Chinese imports, but there will be much chest thumping by politicians and busineess leaders about tariffs and counter-tariffs. Both leaders know that the current imbalance is not tolerable, and that a true balance is not attainable. As long as there is progress, the deficit should not get in the way of solving the mutual objective of removing the destabilizing nuclear threat in China's back yard. 

        - Congress can be unhelpful. Trump agreed with Xi to find a way to keep Chinese telephone manufacturer ZTE in business after they violated sanctions against trading with Iran and North Korea - firing senior management; changing members of the Board of Directors; paying a billion dollar fine. The Republican Senate is trying to override that agreement. 

    2. Time is a big factor. 

        - Kim, age 34, is dictator for life. Xi has recently had the rules changed to allow him to stay in power for as long as he wishes. Trump may be out of office in 31 months. 

        - The Iran agreement demonstrates to Kim both that Americans might accept a limited agreement with a finite time frame, and that in our system it is a new game with a new president. It is a nuance probably lost on the Koreans, but a treaty approved by Congress would be a much stronger American commitment than an agreement made only by the executive branch - as was President Obama's style on the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris Climate Agreement. 

        - Mike Pompeo's objective of lifting sanctions following verified denuclearization within Trump's first term is the only realistic goal.   

    3. It is imperative to keep focused on the objective. 

        - Trump critics will become obsessed with the fact that the president is not addressing human rights - which is a total non-starter. 

        - Good will gestures are important, but not essential - the return of the remains of Americans killed in the Korean War; the conditional suspension of war games with South Korea. 

        - Other goals can be used as bargaining chips - the removal of American forces from South Korea; a formal treaty ending the Korean War; granting of McDonald's franchises in Pyongyang.  

        -  It is to our advantage to raise expectations on the part of the people of North Korea.  If Kim's internal propaganda falsely claims that we have agreed to remove sanctions, so much the better. He promised economic progress when he succeeded his father; instead he has delivered increased deprivation. 

        - Kim's ego is critical. Witness Trump's rise from the field of 17 in 2016, he understands how to manipulate people. If he chooses flattery, so be it.

    4. The essence of debate is whether sanctions will be phased out as North Korea takes (perhaps reversable) steps, or whether they will remain in place until irreversible critical steps are verified. South Korea would probably accept the prior approach; China may also. Trump cannot. 

    Given the importance of these negotiations, their domestic political significance, Trump's hyperbole, our penchant for immediate gratification, and the amount of anti-Trump bias in the media, it is difficult to judge the likelihood of success.  Talk of a Nobel prize for Trump is way premature, but the foundation of personal relationships has been laid, objectives have been agreed upon, and good will gestures have been abundant. The best indicator of real progress is probably the occasional statement by Secretary of State Pompeo - the perfect point man. 

                                                                                                        -----  

 

This week's bonus video is an interview with Jerry Yellin,  a 91 year old fighter pilot who flew the last mission in World War Two from Okinawa. 

bill bowen - 6/15/18

"Blue Wave" Meets "Economy, Stupid"

       Prognostications about the November House elections fall into three categories: Nancy Pelosi and the liberal media who are measuring the drapes based on the inevitable "blue wave" that will result from everybody hating the usurper, Donald Trump; professional forecasters such as Charlie Cook and Kyle Kondrick who analyze the details and - chastened by their mammoth failures in 2016 - give the probability of Democrats taking over the House  a 50-50; and those of us who are influenced by James Carville's admonition to the 1992 campaign of the first President Clinton, "It's the economy, stupid".  

    Let's deconstruct the "economy" argument. What is there in the economy that might intrude into the back of the voter's minds when they pull the curtain on the voting booth, or complete their tamper-proof mail-in ballots as we do out here on the Left Coast. And let's give the low information voters credit for making some association between the economy and the party in power.   

    First, "Results" measures - Am I better off? How are things going in the areas that directly impact my family? (Confession, this is the Republican phrasing; the Democratic phrasing would include a lot of gender and ethnic oppression stuff.)  

    1. At 3.9%, "official" unemployment is below the theoretical "full employment" level. After a decade of decline, the Work Force Participation Rate (the portion of working age residents working or actively looking for work) has stabilized at around 63% - meaning that the unemployment rate is no longer being  artifically made to look better by having people give up.  Long term unemployment claims are the lowest that they have been in 45 years. The boom is evident across all demographic categories.  

    2. Wages and salaries have been increasing at 2 to 3%, faster than in the Obama years when employers were absorbing more healthcare costs, but still below what "full employment" might call for. Inflation remains slightly lower, but gasoline prices are rising. For most workers, significantly improved income comes from longer hours rather than higher rates. 

    3. The stock market was up 23% in Trump's first year, about half of what it achieved in Obama's eight years. This year it is flat, with increased volatility. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns (or some such language), but personal account balances are up, IRAs are healthy, pension plan funding is less daunting, bank account balances are starting to show some return, and the 2008 recession is firmly in the rear view mirror. 

    4. Interest rates remain historically low, with 30 year mortgages under 5%. In the predictable future, refinancing will be severely curtailed, and housing will become relatively more expensive with higher finance costs, but that is a different election cycle. For now, people are comfortable borrowing for houses, cars, college costs, and credit card purchases. 

    5. Courtesy of our grandchildren, Congress and the president have given the average American family a tax cut in excess of $1000. The amount varies based on many factors, including whether you live in a high tax (e.g. Blue) or low tax (e.g. Red) state, but for most, withholding payments have been reduced and April 15, 2019 will be a "feel good" day for American voters. 

    6. The Conference Board's Index of Leading Economic Indicators (factory orders, interest rate spreads, jobless claims, building permits,and such) projects continued solid expansion well beyond November. 

    And some "Causal" discussion - who deserves credit? Is this all that there is? 

    1. True, economic expansion began under President Obama, but the pace was anemic by historical standards, averaging about 2%, before accelerating to 2.5% in Trump's first year. Through the Obama years the Federal Reserve held interest rates near zero, and maintained "quantitative easing" (purchase of government debt to lubricate markets.)  Rates are now up to 1.7%, and on a projected path to get to a "new normal" of about 3% within a year. Bankers are paid to divine the future economics, but there is consensus that we are enjoying  a healthy, growing economy, capable of withstanding higher interest rates.  

    2. It will take a year for the tax cuts enacted in December to fully make their way into the economy, but many voters are seeing reduced withholding from their paychecks, international corporations are repatriating money previously held overseas, and many have given a portion of their lower tax rates to employees or shareholders. Democrats (none of whom voted for the tax bill in  either house of Congress) can scream about "crumbs going to the workers", but most voters think of $1000 as more than crumbs.  

    3. Trump, Commerce Secretary Ross,  and Foreign Trade Negotiator Lighthizer are making a multidimensional high stakes effort to correct the structural $700 billion imbalance between imports and exports of goods. Half of the deficit is China, but Mexico and Germany are also problems that must be dealt with. Relative to the mid-term elections, voters understand the problem, and that action is being taken. 

    4. From January 2017, Trump has been a zealot in reducing regulations, whether from the Environmental Protection Agencvy, the Department of Labor, bank regulators, or other federal agencies, while operating under Reagan's premise that " government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."  In the long run this may present negative consequences, but in November 2018, the voters know that Trump (and Republicians in Congress) are all in for economic growth. 

    Democrats are starting to realize that they need to stand for something beyond opposition to President Trump, but they face a dilemna.  The energy in the party comes from the progressive left wing who want universal healthcare, free childcare, and guaranteed government jobs, while the state of the economy makes it hard for moderates to gain much traction as an alternative to Republican financial management. A tough spot, in James Carville's terms. 

                                                                                                ------ 

    This week's video is a brief Richter Scales ditty about being a Republican in San Francisco.   

bill bowen -  

    

    

Impeach? Let's Get Serious

    The Democrats have two prominent approaches to impeachment: the Tom Steyer approach of spending tens of millions of dollars to make impeachment the central issue of the 2018 midterm elections, and the Nancy Pelosi approach of refusing to entertain the subject. The Republican approach is generally to ignore the Democratic base's rants, relying on  on the premise that there is no impeachable offense. For Republicans, it is generally not a good idea to accept that Pelosi's goals and logic align with the GOP's. 

    Premise: what Pelosi is really saying to her base is that they should wait until Mueller has given them the club that they need - a finding of collusion, obstruction of justice, or at least lying under oath. There is no way that there will be no charges after a year's wide-ranging investigation by an aggressive group of seasoned prosecutors, and any conclusion will be enough to serve as a centerpiece for the 2018 Congressional elections. After a year of false New York Times headlines claiming that the smoking gun has finally been found, Republicans have largely become inured to the reality that Mueller will eventually do something, anything, giving the Democrats a peg to hang their impeachment promise on. The prospect of President Pence gives some pause, but he is not the politician that Trump is, without a following allowing him to continue the Trump agenda.    

    The Republicans can use a refresher. 

    The House brings charges by a simple majority; the Senate convicts by a two-thirds majority. Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution:  The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors. The latter phrase is not defined, and opinions vary with the politics of the observer, but most would agree that it includes "obstruction of justice", which in the federal code is defined as "Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication influences, obstructs, or impedes or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper administration of the law under which any pending proceeding is being had before any department or agency of the United States, or the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any inquiry or investigation is being had by either House, or any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress". The Democrats would claim that Trump's expression to James Comey that he hoped Michael Flynn would not be prosecuted opens the door. Likewise, Trump's firing of Comey. Tweets don't help. In any case, there is enough rationale for what is essentially a political process.  

    There are three precedents. 

        - President Andrew Johnson was impeached by the House in 1868, but survived a vote in the Senate by one vote. In the immediate aftermath of the Civil War, the issue was who was to oversee Reconstruction in the old Confederacy. Johnson, a native of Tennessee and president by dint of Abraham Lincoln's assasination, wanted the military to report to him through a sympathetic Secretary of War. The northern Republicans wanted a more assertive military governance reporting to Congress. Congress passed a law saying that he could not fire the Secretary; he did anyway. Whatever one's sensibilities, it was a clear case of the president disobeying a direct Congressional law, and surviving the aftermath (until the end of his term in 1869.)  

        - Fast forward 106 years to 1974, when President Nixon resigned after a bipartisan vote in the House Judiciary Committee to bring charges of Obstruction of Justice, Abuse of Power, and Contempt of Congress as the details of the Watergate break-in became known. Public support had collapsed, and there were clear grounds for the charges. 

        - President Bill Clinton was impeached by the House in December of 1998  for perjury to a grand jury and obstruction of justice in the case of Paula Jones who had sued for sexual harassment when Clinton was governor of Arkansas. A few Democrats voted against Clinton; a few Republicans voted for him. In the Democratic Senate one charge received 50 of the 67 votes needed; the other received 45. With a booming economy and his popularity at 70%, Clinton served until 2001.   

    Republicans take faith in that the House brings charges, but the Senate then tries the case, with a two-thirds majority necessary for removal. Under any scenario, Republicans will have about half of the Senate votes, and there are not enough elected NeverTrump Republicans to side with the Democrats. But that is not the game outside of the delusional left wing.  The objective - like the endless Mueller investigation, and the slow-walking of voting on nominees for executive and judicial nominees - is to make it impossible for Trump to govern. At some point things grind down; Trump runs out of energy; reelection in 2020 becomes impossible; there is a revolt within the Republican party. What is required is maximum pressure, through every means, all of the time. 

    With a strong economy and potential international success, Pelosi's ultimate goal is a Nixon scenario. In the apparent absence of prosecutable evidence, the greatest Republican risk lies in a "forced error" by the President. 

                                                                                             -----

This week's video is a brief, mind-numbing presentation on immigration.

www.RightinSanFrancisco.com 

Despicables: A Reflection on Political Insults

        Not long ago I received a group e-mail from a Democratic political consultant who I have known for many years in which all Trump supporters were tarred as stupid, racist, misogynists who lack an interest in the values of the nation. Hillary's rants go by me - they are not posturing; her failure to campaign in vital Midwestern states demonstrates a disrespect for and deep lack of understanding of the American people. Articles by self-satisfied, incredulous liberal authors who have been touring Red states to examine Trump voters go by me - they do a lot of interviews, but generally do not listen to what they are told. But this guy bothers me - he knows my schtick that I am a Republican in San Francisco because I have a genuine interest in liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility, and that I will debate the issues.  What gives? What drives direct confrontational insulting of people with differing political views?

    Two theories:

        1. Bullying of Republicans by Democrats has worked for a long time in Blue states. (And presumably the reverse.) For a decade or so, "racist" was the term of choice. Traditional American values - the Scout oath; Norman Rockwell paintings - reflected a longing for a society of white privilege; any opposition to Barack Obama's liberal policies was based on his race; secure borders were code words for keeping Hispanics in their place. More recently, as the effect of an over-used racist invective has decreased, the gratuitous term  "misogynist" (strongly prejudiced against women, as if a 50 cent word makes the user smarter) has been brought in as a reinforcement. No further discussion; no evidence needed; bad motives supersede any discussion. Presented forcefully and loudly enough, the playground belongs to the bully. 

        2. Personal attack from a (self-perceived) moral high ground is easier than a factual discussion of policy. The latter requires recognition that most subjects have two sides, and a familiarity with both is necessary for an effective debater. One needs The Wall Street Journal as well as the New York Times; Fox News as well as MSNBC; Rasmussen as well as Politico. And maybe a bit of intellect. Most importantly, one needs critical thinking skills which seem to switch off when the name Donald Trump is whispered in San Francisco.   

    A proud Deplorable has to be able to get to the meat of policy discussion. Yes, Trump is a sexual reprobate - as were John Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, and Bill Clinton. Yes, his personnel management is terrible - the quality of some of his early selections; the slow speed of bringing forward quality candidates for senior administration positions; public criticism of subordinates. But it was hard to attract good people when opposed by the Establishment Republicans and under siege by the media and the Mueller investigation. Trump's personal shortcomings offer much grist for the media, and motivate the Democratic base, but they distract from what the country needs - a frank discussion of his disruptive policies.  Every week offers new opportunities.

    Perhaps the top this week is the trade conflict with China. Wall Street (volatile, but not panicked) seems to better understand the dance than do the political pundits. We have a $375 billion annual trade deficit with China which cannot go on; China has a state-sponsored plan to overtake us in numerous technology areas by 2025, in part by demanding that companies wanting to do business in China must form joint ventures and turn over their technology to Chinese partners. Presidents Obama and Bush allowed this unacceptable situation to arise; Trump is committed to restoring a sustainable balance. He has a qualified team in place at the Commerce Department and in the key trade negotiator. They have spent months developing a strategy which calls for a Chinese proposal on how to reduce the imbalance by $100 billion, a change of rules on joint ventures and technology transfer, and discussions of tariffs to address key industries. In the background Trump maintains a cordial relationship with Xi Jinping. It is a negotiation. To the Washington Post it is a reckless president seeking a trade war. To a dispassionate observer it is a careful approach to a necessary disruption of a status quo which cannot be allowed to continue.   

    There are plenty of other opportunities to get beyond personal invective and  argue policy: the expulsion of 60 Russian intelligence agents, while maintaining a personal relation with Putin by calling him to offer congratulations on his (fraudulent) reelection; calling on the National Guard (as Obama and Bush did) to help protect the Mexican border; re-starting the debate on sales taxes for e-commerce now that Amazon clearly no longer needs an advantage over the corner retailer. A large swath of the public understands that these have nothing to do with racism and misogyny no matter how loud my associate and the Washington Post yell. And it would not be a surprise if a majority of voters are coming to appreciate how much of what Trump does is intended to cause debate in Congress and in the public about issues that have drifted in an unsustainable direction for the past couple of decades under Democrats and Republicans alike. Insults only hinder that necessary debate.  

                                                                                        -----

    This week's video reflects PBS's coverage of the Chinese trade dispute - straight from the Chinese Ministry of Truth. Perhaps the next budget deal will question why we need a government-supported left-wing news organization.

bill bowen - 4/6/18 

Trump at Davos Redux

    This writer recently observed a discussion of the Trump administration's foreign policy by Stewart Patrick of the Council on Foreign Relations, a charter member of the Washington foreign policy establishment. The presentation was light on partisan politics and personality attacks and heavy on policy - just what one would want in assessing the opinions which bleed into blather when presented by the Washington Post or MSNBC. The session was disappointing nevertheless. 

    The essence of the argument:

        - Trump supporters do not understand - with a smirk for the unwashed - that the United States is the beneficiary of the world structure (the United Nations; The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade; the World Trade Organization; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; The UN Commission on Human Rights; the precursers to the European Union) that was created by forward looking visionaries after World War II. There are a few flaw in the human rights organizations, but then again too few to mention. 

          - "America First" represents a withdrawal from the position of world leadership, not acknowledging that in order to get the benefit of multinational organizations we need to give up some of our sovereignty.  We do this at our own risk, in that others will fill the void. (The speaker jumps to isolationism, rather than the real essence of Trump's direction - a broad restructuring of international relations to be more in the interest of the United States.) 

        - Foreign engagement in the 21st century must contain a substantial element of support for moral behavior in other countries, and encouragement of self-determination for ethnic groups like the Kurds. It is hard to define when it is appropriate to intervene in the internal affairs of other countries, and it is best done through the United Nations, but there is an obligation to prevent extreme and large scale denial of human rights.   

        - There have been many transgressions by the Trump administration - withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement (which would have transferred millions of heavy industry jobs to China and India, and billions of US dollars into third world "green" projects); scuttling of the Trans Pacific Partnership; a demand to renegotiate NAFTA; escalating global income inequality; and immigration policies based on racism and the desire of white America to keep control which they must inevitably lose. One becomes accustomed to these arguments, living in San Francisco. 

    The interviewer did have one plaintive question. She had heard a woman on TV complain about how the United States had been taken advantage of. How could anyone think that, given our position at the top of the heap? There is no answer from the Washington foreign policy elite. The question is nonsensical, and not worthy of a response. Well, had this been a debate or if the speaker had demonstrated some curiosity as to why some half of all Americans would disagree with his exposition, there would have been three answers. 

    1. The economic answer. Over the past three decades, under Republican presidents and Democratic presidents, we have transferred millions of manufacturing jobs abroad as the trade deficit has grown from some $100 billion per year to $700 billion. Major spurs include China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 and the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994.  Hundreds of millions of people in China and Mexico have moved out of poverty - a good thing - but millions of Americans have slid backward. Boardroom arguments about "free trade" and "fair trade" have nothing to do with "balanced trade" which is necessary for the American workers to feel that the system is working for them. Trump gets it; the foreign policy establishment does not. 

    2. The "world policeman" answer. Since at least the Korean War, the United States has been the country to lead the response when "free world" countries have been under attack. Post 9/11 we have been engaged in endless wars in the Middle East - Afghanistan; Kuwait; Iraq; Syria; Yemen; Somalia. We spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on the military. The NATO countries are committed to spend at least 3% of GDP on defense; most do not. Our national debt has reached $20 trillion. The American people are tired of both the loss of American lives and the money. Trump gets it; the foreign policy establishment does not. 

    3. The decisive businessman answer. Prior presidents, particularly Barack Obama, did not deal with problems. The North Koreans began their nuclear program in earnest in the 90's; presidents Clinton, George W Bush, and Obama kicked the can down the road to the point where it must be dealt with on Trump's watch.  Trump inherited the war against ISIS  and successfully empowered his generals to destroy the enemy, without getting sucked further into Syria.  Trump has resisted any temptation to solve the problems of other countries - Yemen; Libya; Venezuela. Trump gets it; the foreign policy establishment does not.  

    Media coverage of the President's visit to Davos will be largely negative, more so in Europe than in the United States. It is the perfect setting for him to explain his direction to the "swells" who think that they run the world. Hopefully some will be listening. 

                                                                                                        -----

    This week's video is a compilation of White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders' highlights for 2017.  A bit long, but so much fun. 

www.RightinSanFrancisco.com 

Trump's Rehabilitation?

   Finally, a journalist at CNN who is willing to suggest that the president could work out alright! Much to the consternation of Wolf Blitzer, John King, and Gloria Berger, the CNN panel discussion (see the video) about Trump's White House meeting on immigration brought this thunderbolt from Dana Basch: "This is the presidency than many people thought Donald Trump was capable of."  Her epiphany? a televised, open, extended negotiation session with administration staff and Senators and Representatives from both parties; preparatory discussions to ensure that there was a chance for success; an agenda covering the DACA kids, the wall, prioritization of people with needed skills rather than family members, and abolition of the current lottery to ensure that immigrants from all countries get to enter; a looming deadline;  Trump promising to sign what the parties could agree to. While the deal isn't yet sealed, it is worth some optimistic observations. 

    1. Trump began this negotiation during the campaign when he promised to build the wall. Much ink has been wasted by the Left trying to catch Trump backtracking - or at least trying to incite his supporters to revolt if he did backtrack. He committed that the Mexican government would inconceivably pay for it to avoid an argument about the cost. This is Salena Zito's observation at its best: Trump's supporters take him seriously, but not literally; his opponents take him literally, but not seriously. Come the day of reconning, we find that it is a metaphor - we need to protect the southern border before we legitimize any illegal immigrants. It doesn't have to be the whole distance - forget the rivers and mountains. A fence is OK if it works. We'll save money if there are fewer immigrants making payments to their families back in Mexico. The details are negotiable. 

    2. This is what the American people want to see. The Republicans need Democratic votes in the Senate to pass anything on immigration; that implies a bill that will lose some House conservatives, but pick up some moderate Democrats.  In the lead up to the meeting there was little positioning - the Left's dream of legalizing 11 million was not mentioned; the discussion is legal residence, not immediate citizenship.  What is on offer is legal surity which will allow this generation of imigrants to get on with their lives in exchange for stopping the flow.  

    3. The experiences of Obamacare repeal and tax reform have taught the Republicans important lessons. With the firing of Bannon in August, General Kelly has brought adult supervision. When Trump bypassed Republican Congressional leadership to reach a hurricane spending and debt ceiling agreement with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi in September, he served notice that bipartisanship was acceptable if he said it was. Opinions of key staffers like Stephen Miller matter, but only so much.  By committing to sign what Congress delivers, Trump made it easier for Republcans and Democrats alike to compromise without fear of sacrificing themselves for no purpose. 

    4. Trump is also displaying an appreciation - which President Obama lacked - for forcing Congress to make difficult decisions, by giving the Congress a deadline of March 5 for ending the DACA program which Obama's frequently stated exceeded his authority.  Some 200,000 Salvadorans have been here for decades with 18 month temporary authorizations. Ditto 50,000 Hondurans. This president supports the rule of law. He will implement the laws which congress passes, but not endlessly kick the can down the road.  

    5. This cannot be what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer want. They cannot appear to oppose legalization of the children after years of using them as a wedge issue, yet Trump is on the edge of resolving the most contentious aspects of the immigration problem. And he will get the credit. Worse, the claim that the administration is in a chaotic shambles is itself in shambles. First comprehensive tax reform, then immigration reform. And the economy seems to be doing OK. 

    As an extra note,  "eyes wide open" conservatives have learned that there is always a crudely offensive Donald lurking just below the surface, and that the media opponents will be pouncing on his unfiltered commentary in the final negotiations. (See the Washington Post's reporting on Trump's reaction to including immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and Africa.) In separating the desirable policy direction from the flawed person, It helps the objective observer to have spent some time in a high school locker room or a foxhole. 

    Happy 2018! 

                                                                                            -----

    This week's video is an extract of the introductory comments from the January 9, White House immigration meeting. 

bill bowen - 1/12/18

 

 

 

Pondering Pakistan

    On January 1, President Trump's first tweet of the year complained that the United States has received nothing but "lies and deceit" in return for the over $33 billion in aid it has provided to Pakistan over the past 16 years. Lets expand on that. 

    Why do we care about Pakistan? 

        - A brief history: Since largely Hindu India and largely Muslim Pakistan gained independence from Britain after World War II, they have fought wars in 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999, mostly over the divided territory of Kashmir.  During the Cold War, India largely aligned with the Soviet Union and Pakistan aligned with the United States as a member of the Central Treaty Organization (along with Turkey, Iran, and Britain.) Both have been nuclear powers since the 70s.  Pakistani political leadership has been complicated, with US-trained military leaders alternating with the Bhutto clan, punctuated by the assasination of Benazir Bhutto in 2007, and the removal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on corruption charges in 2017. The current prime minister, Shamid Abbasi, has assumed office during a downturn in relations with the United States and has done little to change direction.    

        - The administration's logic, as presented as part of an Afghan-centric policy statement on August 21: Osama bin Laden hid in Abbotobad, Pakistan, raising conjecture that elements of the Pakistani government must have known.  The Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group which killed 164 people in Mumbai, India in 2008 was based in Pakistan. The Pakistani intelligence service has long supported the radical Islamist Haqqani terrorist network which supports the Taliban in Afghanistan.  In August, the Trump administration raised the possibility of supporting Indian involvement in Afghanistan as a prod to the Pakistanis. Little has apparently changed in Pakistani support or overall result as the US military strategy in Afghanistan has modestly expanded. The result - if they won't help, why give them almost $1 billion per year and favorable priorities in acquiring US military equipment? 

        - A broader view: 

            -- Pakistan is also the target of fundamentalist Muslim terrorist attacks, with a dozen in 2017 claiming hundreds of lives. Our greatest strategic objective in South Asia should be the prevention of terrorists acquiring access to Pakistan's nuclear weapons. Afghanistan posesses no strategic significance for the United States, yet we are in the 15th year of that unsuccessful war. The only reason for our maintaining a military presence there - aside from not wanting to admit defeat - is to be "in the neighborhood" if the nuclear stockpiles are threatened. 

            --  Pakistan is in the back yard of Russia and China, and forms a key component of Xi Jin Ping's $900 billion "Belt and Road" infrastructure project which is designed to build roads, power plants, pipelines, and port facilities to connect western China to the Middle East, South Asia, and eastern Europe. (Some $60 billion of China-financed projects have been identified in Pakistan. India is opting out.) Conversely, we are $20 trillion in debt and need to prioritize. Trump has the right instincts, aligning with the Patrick Buchanan wing of the Republican Party.  

        - The broader broad perspective: Southwest Asia is complicated, and a reasonable outcome depends not only on what is done, but how it is done. Can we support some "rational actors" in Pakistan at a minimal cost? Can there be some trust? By whom and how is the message delivered?  Fortunately, unlike many other countries where US ambassadors have not been appointed and senior Washington staff positions remain open, we do have an experienced ambassador in David Hale who apparently has a good relationship with Secretary Tillerson, and some latitude with the President, coupled with an experienced Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asia, Alice G. Wells. They will share the unenviable task of managing the retreat.     

    The punch line. Trump is right (as he often is) in strongly challenging the status quo in the region and in the State Department, but he would have better odds of success if he did not publicly push a potential ally against the wall (as he also often does.) Look for increasing Chinese influence as we retrench.  

                                                                                                    ----- 

    We'll start 2018 with a hilarious clip from Andrew Klavan, who I belatedly discovered in 2017. 

bill bowen - 1/5/17

2018: Some Political Predictions

   'Tis the season for all observers of the global and national scene to gather up shreds of information and stitch them together in a way to reinforce their biases. Here goes.  Rather than rank from "most likely" to "least likely", let's work from "most important" to "least important". 

    1. North Korea. Trump has moved the Chinese and the United Nations to the point of real sanctions, with no apparent impact on Kim Jong Un.  The nuclear missile program is progressing to the point of reaching anywhere in the United States. (At his point of targeting capability, the strategy is "anti city" for deterrence.) Evidence is accumulating for North Korean  biological warfare planning and responsibility for cyberwarfare attacks. The world's peaceful options in 2018 include reliance on missile defense systems, or settling into a Cold War - type Mutual Assured Destruction stand-off. Generals now run the Defense Department and the White House national security structure, while the State Department budget is down 30%. Look for an assasination or a preemptive take out of Kim's offensive capabilities. 

    2. The November elections. 

        - Senate. The Democrats defend 26 seats to the Republicans' 8. Ten Democrats are in states which Trump won; one Republican is in a state carried by Clinton. Look for a small Republican net gain, but not enough for the 60 vote margin needed to pass most legislation without Democrat defections. 

        - House. Good political minds (Charlie Cook; Stu Rothenberg) project that the Democrats will pick up a fews House seats, but less than the 24 needed to hand the gavel back to Nancy Pelosi. The quixotic theme for the rabid Democratic base will be that a majority will allow impeachment by the House, if not conviction by the Senate. But ...the average American enjoys having an extra $1000 in their paycheck; forget it. Paul Ryan will hold on. Pelosi will not retire. 

        - California. The race to succeed Jerry Brown as governor is between liberal former San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom and more pragmatic former Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. There are 850,000 people in San Francisco, and 4,000,000 in Los Angeles, but state-wide 61% of likely voters are white, 18% Hispanic. Newsom, who is calling for free universal healthcare, will likely win, placing a premium on Republicans holding one third of the Assembly or Senate to provide some brake on spending. Calamity is likely.  Of the 14 California Republican House members, only five represent wealthy coastal districts which are affected by the tax reform - expect two or three losses with immense funding of the Pelosi-led effort to flip up to 7 districts.    

    3. The economy. The Democrats got on the wrong political side of "it's the economy, stupid" with uniform opposition to tax reform. With global economies improving, the reduction of corporate tax rates, and the repatriation of $400 billion in corporate assets held overseas, prosperity will last at least another year, and the Republicans can claim credit, even though the recovery began 7 years ago.  (By 2020 there is a risk of inflation and an adverse impact of central banks returning interest rates to normal levels; but not this year.) 

    4. The Trump administration. 

        - Court appointments. 2017 saw Senate approval of Neil Gorsuch, 12 appeals court judges, and a handful of district judges. Anthony Kennedy (82), Ruth Bader Ginsberg (85), or Steven Breyer (80) could provide a second Supreme Court appointment - but not in 2018 year if they can help it. Even with the 51 to 49 majority, Trump and McConnell will get to install a record numbers of judges to fill the 15 appeals court and 128 lower court openings.  

        - Immigration. Can Trump match up the Democrats' desire to legalize Obama's overreach in providing amnesty for young immigrants with the conservative requirement that there not be an amnesty without fixing the porous nature of our southern border? This is as easy as bipartisan things get in Washington. Done by February - perhaps with a few other contentious "must do" subjects (like extending the Children's Health Insurance Program - CHIP) tagging along.  

        - Healthcare. No Donald, eliminatioin of the Individual Mandate does not doom ObamaCare. We will muddle through another year with increasing premiums and shrinking services. Maybe some day both sides will agree that the stalemate doesn't work, but no Democrat dare take even a small step from President Obama's greatest accomplishment as long as Nancy Pelosi is the Democratic leader in the House.  

        - Fiscal Responsibility. Look for fiscal conservatives, who sucked it up for the $1.5 trillion cost of tax reform, to regain their footing. There will not be another $81 billion for hurricane and fire relief in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, and California, much less Puerto Rico (which will be an issue in the November elections.) Mitch McConnell has told Paul Ryan to forget about reforming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Trump wants a huge infrastructure bill, but nobody has any idea how to fund it.  Look for gridlock on anything financial between House Republicans (who believe in balanced budgets) and Senate Republicans (who live in the world of the politically possible.) 

    5. Mueller. 

        - There was no collusion. Obstruction of justice would be laughable on the basis of Comey's note to self about Trump hoping that Flynn would not be prosecuted. (For a definition of the crime of Obstruction of Justice, think of Loretta Lynch meeting on the tarmac with Bill Clinton.)  With some fanfare there will be prosecutions of Manafort, Gates, Flynn, and Papadopoulos, but nobody named Trump.  

        - As long as Mueller is still going, Republicans will not let go of the real conspiracy by Hillary, the Democratic National Committee, the FBI, and Obama''s 
White House to throw the election against Trump. (See Pat Buchanan's simple thesis.)  If Mueller leaves Trump alone, he will leave the corrupt FBI alone. 

    6. The Philadelphia Eagles; the Golden State Warriors; and the New York Yankees. No Kaepernick. Take that to the bank. 

                                                                                            -----

    This week's video is Congressional testimony by former CIA Director John Brennan relative to "collusion" between Russia and the Trump campaign. IMHO, the most significant political event of 2016 and 2017 was the apparent effort by leaders of the CIA, the FBI, and the Obama White House to discredit the campoaign of Donald Trump.  

bill bowen - 12/29/17 

Holiday Conversations: A Suggested Approach

    This holiday season, visiting with relatives and partying with friends, offers an extraordinary opportunity to ruin relationships when the conversation turns from sports and the grand kids to the inevitable "well, what do you think about Trump", or the San Francisco version "How could anybody still be a Republican with Trump as the leader of the party?" Potential responses depend on a quick assessment of the person asking the question, and fall into three categories:

    1. Provocateurs, particularly if they are relatives: 

        - Ask whether James Harden, Steph Curry, Lebron James, Kevin Durant, or Russell Westbrook should be the Most Valuable Player. If it drifts to why Colin Kaepernick isn't employed this year, ask whether James Harden, Steph Curry, Lebron James, Kevin Durant, or Russell Westbrook should be the MVP. Don't like sports? - asking for an explanation of  Bitcoin is always a handy alternative.  Either subject may require an investment of some time to be able to present an informed opinion, but that is a trick which you definitely need to have in your bag if you wish to retain visitation rights.  

    2. People who are really seeking understanding:

        Answer: I am a Republican because I believe in liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility. A few talking points on each: 

            - Liberty. From the beginning, the American ethos has been based on the rights of the individual as opposed to the power of the state. This philosophy derives at least from the Magna Carta when British nobles established rights relative to the crown; it is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence which places primacy on the rights of the individual, and the Constitution which limits the powers of government; these Founding principles have been expanded to the abolition of slavery (mostly by Republicans) and equal rights for women (more by Democrats). One fundamental difference between the parties is that the Democrats are more inclined than the Republicans to give the government power over the individual - mandating activities (purchase of health insurance, for example); prohibiting activities (banning politically incorrect foods, for example); and taking property through taxation.   

            - Opportunity. Most American immigrants came to this country for economic opportunity. In very general terms, Democrats are interested in equality of outcomes, and would use the power of the state to take from the successful and provide for the less successful. Most Republicans believe that society prospers more  when there is equality of opportunity (as in public education), but that there remain incentives for hard work and risk taking.

            - Personal Responsibility. The boundaries of the national discussion are reflected in Wisconsin's successful efforts to require drug testing for welfare recipients and San Francisco's policy of providing "safe space" for drug addicts to inject themselves. Republicans believe that sane adults are responsible for the outcome of their decisions. Both Democrats and Republicans show concern for the needy - the Democrats more through the public sector; the Republicans more through the private sector. (Doubters should read "Who Really Cares" by a Cornell professor who documents greater giving of time and money by conservatives.)    

    3. People who want a fight, and who you can do without if the discussion goes south: 

        - What good things have happened this year?:

            The defeat of ISIS, with the end of wars in Iraq and Syria, and and an effective solution to the flow of refugees to Europe; appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court along with a record dozen conservative appellate court judges; movement of the Chinese, the Russians, and the United Nations to make serious efforts to compel  North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons program; acceleration of the economy from sub 2% to 3% GDP growth; record stock market levels (which help everybody's pension plans and IRAs); tax reform (helping job creators and the middle class - hurting the richest people in the richest states, and increasing the national debt); establishing pragmatic working relationships with the leaders of Russia and China. Each is a discussion, subject to controversy.  

        - What bad things have not happened?:

            Anything from the Mueller probe indicating collusion with Russia in the 2016 election; ineffective responses to the storms and fires (except, perhaps for Puerto Rico); a health catastrophe with the partial rollback of Obamacare; significant engagement of the American military in any new conflicts; riots in the streets.    

        - What is a work in progress?: 

            Regaining control of the borders despite opposition from a few federal judges and Congressional Democrats; renegotiation of trade agreements with Canada, Mexico, and China; repeal and replacement of Obamacare. 

        - And, what else could be on the agenda for 2018:

            Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid reform, if Paul Ryan is to have his way; other spending reductions, now that tax income has been reduced; war with North Korea; an epidemic of nervous breakdowns among the #Resist, the NeverTrumpers, and the Washington press corps.           

   If you are not sure which category fits your guests and dinner companions, it is always safe to revert to Number One. (This writer likes Lebron.) In any case, gloating is to be avoided if you are to have a very Merry Christmas.  

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   This week's bonus video is a set of brief extracts by the British Broadcast Corporation  from President Trump's recent foreign policy speech (full version). This was missed by many during the tax debate, and predictably panned by the American Left, but it is being taken seriously by our allies. 

bill bowen - 12/22/17

The Real Pivot Toward Asia

   Back in 2009, President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made much of their "pivot toward Asia". After all, the country had its first president with Asian roots. Obama was born in Hawaii and spent his adolescent years with his mother and step-father in Indonesia. The Middle East was "so George W Bush", and the 21st Century belonged to a rising China. So, how did that go? 

    One "liberal, internationalist" pro-Clinton observer, Foreign Policy Magazine, summarized the results as follows:

        - One success: the establishment of an enduring framework for engagement with Southeast Asia, particularly Vietnam. Enough time had passed since the Vietnam War, and China's neighbors were looking for a counterweight to the bully next door. 

        - One sub-par performance: Whereas President Bush had handed off strong and trusting relationships with China, India, and Japan, President Obama left a "very tense" relationship with China and and uncertainty in the Japanese government about American reliability. After initially recognizing China's "core interests" in Asia, Obama increased American military presence in Australia and the Philippines, then endorsed Xi Jinping's "New Model of Great Power Relations". The neighbors understood the goal of a China - America duopoly with their interests far secondary.  

        - One lost opportunity: trade. Much effort was put into the Trans Pacific Partnership trade agreement - involving twelve countries, but not China - which would have reduced tariff and other barriers to trade, and established a dispute resolution forum. Opposed by unions and Trump's Make America Great Again supporters, it was disavowed by both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The trade deficit with China grew 53% from $226 billion in 2009 to $347 billion in 2016. 

        - One dangerous incomplete: Per Foreign Policy, relative to North Korea "The Obama administration realized the futility of diplomatic deals early on, though it never came up with a policy to replace the previous approach." 

    Comparable appraisals of the Obama Administration's failed pivot to Asia are shared by the (British) Guardian, the Japan Times, Bloomberg, and The Diplomat. By all accounts, Donald Trump inherited a losing hand. 

    President Trump's current two week trip to Asia should be seen in the context of events over the past 10 months, particularly the decimation of ISIS and the quiet rolling out of a realpolitik strategy in the Middle East. With American advisers playing a stronger role, modified Rules of Engagement, and alignment with effective partners, ISIS has been driven from virtually all of their territory in Iraq and Syria, tens of thousands of ISIS combatants have been killed, and the exodus of refugees to Europe has slowed to a trickle.  With little attention, the administration has sided with the central government in Baghdad over the independence aspirations of the Kurds. Iraq, done. Similarly, the administration has acknowledged that Assad has won the 6 1/2 year civil war in Syria, with just a few details to work out. We'll support Saudi Arabia in their broader contest with Iran, but it is largely their fight. 

    Trump has also done much preparation for the current trip. His first meeting after his election was with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in November. They met again in February, and again, along with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in September. They golf together; they seem to like each other. Along the way he met with Chinese Premier Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago in April and in Hamburg, Germany in July. If personal diplomacy works, Trump has done the groundwork. 

    The issues are straightforward, and Trump articulates the American position clearly. 

        1. North Korea must not be allowed to take the final steps in developing nuclear missiles. A preemptive strike is on the table. A Chinese embargo - or political intervention - would be preferable. 

        2. The United States cannot continue to live with a $350 billion trade deficit with China. Particular focus will be on aviation where China seeks to become a third major international manufacturer alongside Boeing and European Airbus, and Boeing has entered agreements to manufacture aircraft in China and share research and development. Several deals - such as a $1 billion supply agreement for American beef - are being formalized. Unlike with President Obama, the agenda does not include much on climate change and human rights. 

        3. The rest of the trip is about reassuring allies, and developing bargaining chips with China. 

    Despite the distractions of the swamp in Washington, Trump has a clear vision of American objectives in Asia, a willingness to prioritize the region, the personal interaction skills to make his points, and a phenomenal amount of energy. Godspeed. 

                                                                                            -----

This week's video of the ceremony preceding the 2005 Superbowl is a reminder of how much has changed in just 12 years. 

bill bowen - 10/10/17

Puerto Rico Revisited

   In the six weeks since Hurricane Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico, American public attention has moved on to wildfires in California, the Russia collusion saga (was it Trump? Was it Clinton?), a great World Series, the replacement of Janet Yellen as Chair of the Fed, tax reform, and a terrorist attack in New York.  But what about those poor folks in the American territory in the Caribbean? A brief update:

    - In physical terms, Puerto Rico (and the American Virgin Islands) remain a mess with over $20 billion in physical damage.  Some 70% of the Puerto Ricans remain without electric power, amid a contracting scandal and squabbling with the Army Corps of Engineers about whether the grid should be repaired or upgraded.  Some 20% remain without clean water, resulting in widespread illness.  Schools are closed. Many businesses remain closed. The tourism industry is devastated. The majority of crops were lost.  

    - The financial condition is no better, following five years of declining budgets for infrastructure and operations, Puerto Rico declared bankruptcy in May with $123 billion in bond and pension obligations.  The publicly owned electric utility declared bankruptcy in July with $9 billion of debt  and an antiquated grid. Despite years of austerity, the island was not economically viable before the hurricane. 

     - The medical system is on the verge of collapse. Since citizens of the Puerto Rico pay no federal income taxes, the territorial government is responsible for the lions share of Medicaid payments. The fund to manage payments - covering about one quarter of the population - will go bankrupt in February. Hospitals were closing and doctors leaving before the hurricane. 

    And what about the politics?

    - The humanitarian suspension of the Jones Act lasted 10 days,  and ocean shipments to the island from American ports are again restricted to American carriers, increasing the cost of aid deliveries as well as food and energy necessities.  The benign view is that President Trump believes that the executive enforces the laws which Congress passes (as he did by putting DACA and Obamacare payments to insurance companies back to Congress to fix the illegal acts of his predecessor). The less benign interpretation is that Make America Great Again ends at the water's edge. 

    - The Puerto Rico governmental agency which oversees the electric system signed a generous, no-bid $300 million contract with a two person firm based in Whitefish, Montana to manage the repairs to the system, rather than relying on a long standing mutual assistance agreement with the utilities in Florida and New York.  By chance Whitefish is the home town of Ryan Zinke, the Secretary of the Interior whose purview includes Puerto Rico. Too late, the contract has been torn up, Florida Gas and Electric has been called in, and the governor has begun a battle to fend off control by a federal overseer  and potential privatization. 

    - President Trump's personal spat with the mayor of San Juan burbles along with US Congressional delegations conducting "fact finding"  trips to the island to declare solidarity, and the House Homeland Security Committee abruptly cancelling a hearing with the mayor and FEMA officials to discuss the federal response.  Meanwhile, the mayor's claim that people are dying is proving true with death rates above normal with much of the daily activity remaining disrupted, and hospitals operating on emergency generators. 

    - In what is perhaps of most long term political impact on the United States, a diaspora has begun. Between 2010 and 2016 the island had already lost some 300,000 of its population, primarily the most capable migrating to the mainland. At least another 75,000 have left since the hurricane; with FEMA supporting 40,000 in the Orlando area and another 125,000 expected.  Senator Marco Rubio of Florida - understanding that this could easily tip the partisan balance in the key swing state of Florida - is leading a delegation to determine what federal help is needed, and to firm up his bona fides. 

    While the impact of Hurricane Harvey in Houston was larger in economic impact and death toll, there is little to fault in the federal response. Not so Maria in Puerto Rico where a slightly lesser storm found a vulnerable target.  

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    This week's bonus video is a late-arriving lip sync video of what was really said at the Trump inauguration. Hilarious. 

bill bowen - 11/3/17

   

Where the Hell is Tongo Tongo?

    One has to be bemused by the US media of all stripes. Four US soldiers are killed during a reconnaissance mission near the village of Tongo Tongo, Niger, and there are two lines of discussion:

        - Whether Donald Trump was appropriately sensitive when he called the widow of one of those killed, and the subsequent efforts of an "empty barrell" congresswoman to disparage the White House Chief of Staff who happens to be a retired Marine four star general and the father of a soldier killed in Afghanistan. 

        - A detailed critique of military tactics for managing air support with the French in West Africa, as if the reporters were better judges of what is reasonable than the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

   And the question which is hardly asked: What the Hell are we doing in Tongo Tongo in the first place. A sober perspective. 

    Legal Authority. 

    Following extended conflicts in Korea and Vietnam without formal declarations of war, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution over President Nixon's veto in 1973. The War Powers Resolution requires the President to notify Congress within 48 hours of committing armed forces to military action and forbids armed forces from remaining for more than 60 days with a further 30-day withdrawal period, without a Congressional authorization for use of military force (AUMF) or a declaration of war by the United Sates. Some presidents have honored the resolution - the Marines' presence in Lebanon in 1982-83; George HW Bush's legislative approval for the First Gulf War; President Clinton's withdrawal from Somalia in 1992. Some have not - Clinton's bombing in Kosovo in 1999; Barack Obama's aerial war against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya in 2011. 

    More problematic is the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force against the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks which passed through Congress and was signed by President George W. Bush a week after the attacks with only a few hours of debate. Ostensibly aimed at al Queda, and maybe the Taliban government of Afghanistan which provided them sanctuary, the authorization has been used by presidents George W Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump to wage wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya without the approval of a Congress which has not had the courage to exercise it's clear constitutional role. 

    Over the years there have been several Senators and Congress members who have advocated a review of the original War Powers Resolution or, more particularly, the 2001 authorization - Jeff Flake; Bob Corker; Rand Paul; John McCain; Barbara Lee. Thus far, neither chamber has been willing to open the debate, but McCain is back at it following the Niger ambush. 

    Scope of the Problem

    Fundamentally, ISIS (like Saddam Hussein) had nothing to do with 9/11. In fact, there has been a bitter disagreement on strategy  between al Queda (which is committed to attacking the "far enemy" in the West), and ISIS (which is committed to establishing a caliphate in Muslim territories, killing mostly Muslims in the process.) Both have sought the allegiance of Islamic radicals around the world, with ISIS' success in 2014 and 2015 resulting in a flood of foreign recruits, and many claims of allegiance by local leaders who wanted to share the authority conveyed by Abu Bakkar's success in Syria and Iraq. 

    There are big groups. Boko Haram, based in Nigeria has resulted in the displacement of over 2 million people over West Africa in the last 15 years. Somalia-centered Al Shabaab, which has some 8000 fighters, is opposed by an alliance of African Union countries who support the United Nations endorsed government. Jemaah Islamiyah  which envisions a caliphate in Southeast Asia stretching through the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and southern Thailand. Each has splinter groups, and has morphed in title, geography, and ideology as dynamic leaders have risen and been killed.  

    It is a mistake to think of these groups as disconnected or subject to the boundaries of states as defined by the United Nations.  A significant portion of the defenders of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria were not Arabs; while those battlefields wind down, there is little appetite on the part of their home countries for anything but to have them killed in place. Nevertheless, many of the thousands will escape to Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and sub-Sahara Africa as well as to Europe. The ongoing conflict in West Africa is the indirect result of jihadists being pushed south out of Libya into Mali, which had its own conflicts, and then further south.  The recently concluded battle for Marawi City in the southern Philippines cost the lives of some 165 government troops and 1000 mostly local insurgents. The jihadist-inspired problem is global. 

    The Alternatives

    While it is better to fight our enemies "over there" rather than "over here", there has to be a set of reasonable priorities, debated by the Congress and shared with the public. It will be hard to have a balanced discussion with an administration led by retired generals as Secretary of Defense, Chief of Staff, and National Security Adviser, but it is worth a try.   

    One observer's opinion: Anything that directly threatens the homeland or one of our key allies goes to the top of the list.  Ditto any proliferation of nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. Slightly down the list is anything that threatens our fundamental interests, such as free passage, cyber security, or the world financial system. That leaves room to confront North Korea and Iran, Russia's moves in eastern Europe or China's in the South China Sea. It covers piracy on the Horn of Africa, drug operations in Latin America, and any insurgent threats to friendly governments.  

    The corollary question is methods. Intelligence sharing and training are good. Boots on the ground are bad. It is best if the war fighting is left to the military, and the CIA is confined to intelligence gathering. And as for Blackwater founder Erik Prince's suggestion that mercenary armies would be cheaper and less politically difficult, that sounds a lot like the latter days of Rome. 

    The end of the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria is fast approaching.  Assad has effectively won the long Syrian civil war; the Kurds and the Iraqi government will have to sort out their territorial relationship. We seem committed to the never-ending Afghan war. Beyond that, the ambush at Tongo Tongo should serve to ring a bell - how and where should the United States be engaged in a confusing, tumultuous world where armed groups are competing for local power, sometimes under a broader Islamic umbrella?  Without a universal draft, the question is far from the minds of the average American - perhaps the grieving widow of Sergeant LaDavid Johnson has done the country a favor by demanding to know not only what the tactics were, but what the mission was. 

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     This week's bonus - thanks to an alert reader in Connecticut - is the telephone number, (800) 342-5283, for one of the National Football League's largest advertisers, Anheuser Busch, seeking input from the public on the league's policy on political protests. 

bill bowen - 10/27/17

   

   

    

   

    

Grading Trump

     To the core Trump voters and most Democrats, there isn't much point in trying to grade the performance of President Trump. He is the first president to speak for them in a long, long time or he is a tyrannical, corrupt pig.  For the rest of us, who make the difference in elections and who are hoping for solutions to the nations ills, there has been enough time for emotions to calm and for hard evidence to surface. Let's look at three dimensions: is he working on the right things; does he frame solutions well; and can he get things done?

    I. The Right Things: A

    First, there are a few things that afforded little choice: the Mueller investigation of Russian campaign meddling; the rapidly emerging North Korean nuclear threat; an unusual spate of disasters - Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria; the Las Vegas shootings; the California wild fires. 

    Immigration has been a growing national issue for decades, with discontent on both the Left and the Right. He is addressing it directly. 

    Radical Islamic terrorism, and turmoil in the Middle East in general, was a major unsolved feature of the Obama presidency. He is addressing it directly. 

    The economy has been growing at a sub-optimal 1-2% per year since the financial crisis of 2007. He is aggressive on trade policy, regulatory relief, and tax policy, and will soon appoint a new Federal Reserve Board Chair. 

    Reform of the healthcare system remains on the agenda despite the inability of the Republican Congress to pass any legislation. 

    Trump and the Republican Senate have an opportunity to re-shape the federal judiciary for a decade or more.  

    II. Framing of Solutions: B+

        - Although upset about his Attorney General recusing himself from the Russia investigation, Trump has let the system work, ignoring suggestions that he fire Mueller and making the White House staff available for interrogations. What will be will be - and it is unlikely to impact him directly. Excellent. 

        - With Kim Jong Un on the brink of a nuclear missile capability, Trump does not have the luxury of past presidents in adopting varying levels of accommodation. All options are on the table; enforcement of harsh sanctions has been advanced; and China has been pushed into the forefront.  Excellent. 

        - The appropriate local, state, and federal disaster recovery agencies have taken center stage, with the President - in the case of the hurricanes- appearing to provide moral support and asking Congress for billions in reconstruction funding. Good, except for Puerto Rico. 

        - Unlike President Obama, Trump has attempted to address immigration through legislation rather than simply through executive edicts. His proposals are comprehensive - legal status for children; greater resources for border security and the related court system; a shift from "family relationship" priorities to "American needs" priorities; enforcement of e-verify for employers; reduced visas for foreigners displacing American workers. Excellent. 

        - Trump has taken a Realpolitik approach to the Middle East, aligning with Sunni Saudi Arabia against Shia Iran, seeking de facto partition of Syria in concert with the Russians, and allowing the generals to determine tactics and (to a modest extent) troop levels. Excellent.

        - To help the economy, Trump blew up the Trans Pacific Partnership, is renegotiating NAFTA, has the EPA - and to a lesser extent the Department of Labor - significantly reducing regulatory constraints. He has proposed comprehensive tax reform with globally competitive corporate rates, reductions for the middle class (but probably not the upper earners), and significant streamlining - but perhaps fiscal irresponsibility.  Good scope. 

        - Absent legislation, Trump has eliminated the Obamacare provision which required employers with ethical reservations to provide birth control and will allow insurers to sell inexpensive, stripped down policies to the millions who want them. He has not dealt with disparity between states which expanded Medicaid under Obamacare and those that did not. Fair. 

        - Trump's team put forward an excellent, conservative jurist to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. He has put forward some 57 nominees for federal District and Appeals courts. An additional 100 seats are unfilled. Good on quality; fair on numbers. 

    III. Getting Things Done: C

    Two themes dominate the discussion of results. 

        - Given the Democrats scorched earth #Resist reaction to the election of Trump, the Republicans adopted a "Republicans only" approach to legislating without adequate majorities to tolerate many defections or leadership capable of maintaining order.  Much of the administration's energy went into the three failed efforts to Repeal and Replace Obamacare. While the Senate did change the rules to approve Justice Gorsuch with 51 votes, they are still arguing about the right of opposition party home state senators to veto court nominees, and only 7 have been approved to date. House Republicans could not be counted on to pass a budget or raise the debt ceiling, driving Trump to seek help from the Democrats. 

        -  While, unlike President Obama, Trump is good at framing legislation and allowing  Congress to engage in the necessary sausage making, he is terrible - no, worse than terrible - at developing relationships with key allies and persuadable opponents. With a paper thin majority in the Senate he seeks battle with Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski over Planned Parenthood, and with John McCain and Bob Corker over nothing in particular, while not courting Democrats from red States.  Add Attorney General Jeff Sessions; Secretary of State Rex Tillerson; chief economic adviser Gary Cohen; San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz; and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. 

    That said,   

        - ISIS is on the verge of destruction in Iraq and Syria.

        - The S&P 500 US market index is up 21 % since the election, while the GDP growth rate is pushing 3 %.   

        - Illegal immigration has been reduced by double digits.  

        - Every day's Washington Post has howls about some new travesty - withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement; withdrawal from UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, for its history of anti-Israel bias; review of an Obama administration rule which would expand overtime pay to millions of additional workers. 

        - And the ball is clearly in Congress' court on immigration and tax reform. 

                                                                                                    ----- 

   This week's video is The Donald's "First 100 Days" plan in the halcyon days just after the election

bill bowen - 10/13/17    

Helping Puerto Rico

     The 2017 hurricane season has wreaked humanitarian disasters on Texas, Florida, and Puerto Rico. Not to diminish the suffering on the Gulf Coast, the 3.4 million Americans in Puerto Rico are the most isolated, the poorest, the least politically powerful, and the most in need of help. The entire electricity grid has been destroyed, electric power will largely be out for months, and diesel fuel for generators for critical services is in short supply. Ninety-five percent of cell phone towers have been destroyed. A major dam is in danger of collapse, threatening 70,000 people. Clean drinking water is in short supply. Ports are functioning, but internal distribution of aid supplies is badly disrupted. The good news is that the people have low expectations; the bad news is that their expectations are not likely to be met for the next several months. 

    A brief refresher: 

        - Puerto Rico became an American territory in 1898 with the American victory in the Spanish-American War. The Island lies 1000 miles southeast of Miami, near the American Virgin Islands (population 100,000; also devastated.) The Commonwealth has a popularly elected governor and legislature, and a non-voting member of the House of Representatives. While American citizens, residents have no vote in Presidential elections. Some 97% of the voters preferred statehood in a June 2017 advisory referendum; however, a 23% turnout reflected an understanding that there is no way that the national Republicans will allow a new, consistently Democratic state.  

        - It was not always so peaceful. In the early 50's, members of the Puerto Rico Nationalist Party tried to assassinate President Truman, and attacked the US House of Representatives, wounding five members.  In the early 70's and 80's, a group of Puerto Rico nationalists conducted some 130 bombings, killing at least 6 people. At the recommendation of Justice Department attorney General Eric Holder, President Clinton pardoned 16. 

        - The median household income is under $19,000 (while lower than any state, it is the highest in the Caribbean); the poverty rate is 46%; unemployment is over 12%. From 1947 to 2006 Puerto Rico transitioned from a sugar cane-based agricultural economy to a diverse manufacturing economy, benefiting from low wages, free access to the American market, and - until 2006 - substantial tax incentives. Since 2006, economic activity has decreased each year, and a governmental debt burden of over $70 billion resulted in bankruptcy in May. 

        - As American citizens, Puerto Ricans have free right of travel to the United States, and, thus, do not generally share the Democratic Party's support for illegal immigrants. If anything, illegals represent employment competition for the five million Puerto Ricans living on the mainland, who form a meaningful voting bloc in Florida (where they outnumber Cubans), New York, New Jersey, and Chicago. 

    The federal response to Hurricane Maria has been strong, although a bit slower than that to Harvey in Texas and Irma in Florida - due to distance, and it being the third of three.  The one telling bureaucratic delay was the week spent debating a waiver for the Jones Act which prohibits foreign ships from delivering cargo from American ports to other American ports. There are 10,000 federal workers on the island; the governor has expressed satisfaction with the help provided by the Department of Defense and FEMA. Money is available with a $22 billion FEMA aid package having been passed after Hurricane Harvey in Houston; a new total requirement is being calculated. 

    That said, Puerto Rico has severe short term and long term problems. Decade-long financial constraints have resulted in under-investment in basic infrastructure. The population of the island has dropped by about 10% in the last decade, with a debilitating exodus of the young and ambitious. Hurricane Maria stands to hasten the exodus. 

    There are many choices of charities for those who would like to help the people of Puerto Rico in what promises to be a prolonged catastrophe. Presidents Carter, HW Bush, Clinton, George W Bush, and Obama have started One America Appeal to raise funds for the victims of Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria. The wife of the Puerto Rico governor, Beatriz Rossello, has started United for Puerto Rico. Among the major relief organizations, Catholic Relief Services has a strong, well managed (low overhead) operation in Puerto Rico, and there is always the Red Cross.  To help evaluate other potential charitable organizations, visit CharityNavigator.org. 

    For those tired of pampered oppressed athletes, the prospect of a nuclear North Korea, and the failures of a hapless Republican Congress, this is an opportunity to do some real good for real people. 

                                                                                                -----

    This week's video is a most articulate response to the NFL protests by an African American Tuscon cop, Brandon Tatum.  Excellent. 

bill bowen - 9/29/17

    

Trump and Congress: Plan B

    With two simple actions - the decision to rescind President Obama's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the the deal with the Democrats to defer financial deadlines and fund hurricane recovery - President Trump has demonstrated that he will change the game if it is not working. With 85% of the public - Democrats and Republicans alike - thinking that Congress isn't doing its job, businessman Trump has declared that Plan A is not working, and he will not be constrained by the inability of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan to manage their Republican majorities.   

    First, we should not be surprised that Trump isn't wedded to the going-in premise that the president has to work all legislation through the Republican Congressional leaders. Melania is his third wife. He had three presidential campaign managers, two chiefs of staff, two national security advisers, and several press faces.  He has fired James Comey, Steve Bannon, Anthony Scaramucci, Preet Bharara (the lead federal attorney overseeing Wall Street), Walter Shaub (Office of Government Ethics), Sebastian Ghorka, and several other prominent administration leaders. He has come close with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and economic adviser Gary Cohn. Faced with prominent resignations, he has disbanded his business advisory councils. Some of the personnel were odd hires in the first place, in part because Trump did not have access to the "best and brightest" of the political establishment. Some were not adequately enthusiastic in protecting him from the hostile press and potential legal exposure. In any case, Trump does not let problems fester.

    It became clear in the Repeal and Replace Obamacare fiasco that the strategy of dealing with difficult subjects with only Republican votes would not work. The Freedom Caucus in the House denied Ryan the possibility of any legislation which could pass the Senate. Even under rules which allowed Senate Republicans to pass a bill with only 50 votes, there are enough Republican mavericks to deny McConnell and Trump a majority, and he has had little success in prying away Democratic votes. Subsequent discussion on taxes indicates that the Congressional dynamic persists.  

    Enter Plan B, an "across the aisles" strategy. 

    The DACA decision reflects a call on Congress to do its job, rather than enduring a year or more of legal battles with 10 states who threatened to sue the federal government to stop a program which President Obama had called unconstitutional before implementing it in 2012. In 2014, Obama tried to expand the program to parents of the children, but was stopped by a 4-4 Supreme Court decision. Many experts believe that the current Court would agree that the role of defining immigration rules belongs to Congress, not the Executive. Given the task of drafting legislation, Paul Ryan has told the "Dreamers" that they need not worry - but there is little reason to believe that he can deliver a Republicans-only solution. Trump has said that he may reverse the rescinding if the Congress cannot act - putting the kids back in legal limbo. Legislation is needed to address other Obama rules favoring international entrepreneurs, spouses of guest workers, and extensions for STEM students. Trump would like to change the base legal immigration system to favor applicants who have needed skills rather than those with family members in the country. He wants a wall and stronger border security. Trump understands that there is no Republicans-only solution. Plan B - put it all on the table, and work across the aisle.     

    Congressional dysfunction came into full view with jockeying about raising the debt ceiling (necessary by September 29), authorizing the government to spend until a budget is passed (necessary by October 1), and providing a "first installment" for hurricane assistance (necessary immediately.)  Another month was to be consumed with efforts by Congress members of both parties to leverage a created crisis to stoke their base constituencies and angle for the next election.  To the public and to Trump, this has nothing to do with helping the American people. Plan B - cut a deal with the Democrats for a 3 month delay, and spend the Fall working on a bipartisan plan for tax reform and a budget.

    Pundits on the Right are screaming. Pelosi and Shumer were supposed to be buried along with Hillary Clinton. The fiscal conservatives used the debt ceiling and the expiration of annual spending authority to extort some financial discipline from President Obama, and thought that deficits would stop growing with a Republican president. Perhaps they will in time, but the political price for shutting down the government when Republicans control Congress and the Presidency is huge. Perhaps (?) Trump will find that Pelosi and Shumer are worse to work with than Ryan and McConnell. But just maybe, Pelosi and Shumer have demonstrated that #Resist is over and it is OK to work with Trump and - when that reaches its limit - Trump will be able to pry away enough moderate Democrats to offset the conservative Republicans who do not understand that politics is the art of the possible. 

    In the meantime, Trump is trying to reverse the decades long flow of power from the Congress to the Executive, and to break through the hyper-partisan culture of 2017 Washington. To the casual eye of the untrained observer that doesn't seem so bad. 

                                                                                                    -----

    This week's bonus video is a hilarious collage of Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Trump on the hypocrisy of immigration politics. 

   www.RightinSanFrancisco.com 

     

    

    

Antifa: The PC Stormtroopers

   In a recent discussion about President Trump's condemnation of "violence on many sides"  in Charlottesville, a liberal friend attested that he had never heard of Antifa. Perhaps this is a sign of how narrowly informed we have become in our selection of news sources; perhaps the denial was a debating ploy. Let's be optimists and assume that people of good will on the left, center, and right want to understand what is going on in this period of heightened rhetoric and confrontation. 

    A quick reprise of Charlottesville: a protest led by a local white nationalist about a plan to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee became a magnet for a who's who of the fringe right - David Duke and Richard Spencer, the KKK and neo-Nazis, the League of the South, and a gaggle of hitherto unknown groups with Civil War or German and Norse names and insgnia, many who came armed with shields, helmets, truncheons, and a few firearms. There was an equal group of counter-demonstrators led by traditional church activists, anti-capitalists, and anarchists under the banner of Solidarity Cville. Blending with this group were Black Lives Matter, Red Neck Revolt, and Antifa agitators who came armed and motivated similar to the KKK folks. Importantly, the local and state police did nothing to separate the groups, instead allowing hours of small conflicts and beatings before a KKK-type ran a car into a group of counter-demonstrators marching toward the largely-abandoned park which had been the focal point of the demonstration. 

    KKK bad!  Nazi's bad! Racists bad! Slavery bad! Peaceful demonstrations and counterdemonstration good! Got it - at least 98% of the public does. What is new, and is only starting to get proper attention is what the liberal Atlantic magazine calls "The Rise of the Violent Left" and what the American Conservative calls "Antifa: The Other Evil Political Force."  These are the folks who wear black masks, who come to demonstrations prepared for battle, who view offensive speech as equal to violence, and who proudly announce that they will silence opponents "by any means necessary".  In Charlottesville they found a good foil and a sympathetic media which was focused on criticism of President Trump; in Berkeley, Middlebury, and Portland they preemptively destroyed property and shut down conservative speakers. Since Charlottesville, there is a national agenda on both sides.  

   Unlike past eras, in 2017 we have the Internet where 15,000 agitated souls can sign up for the New York Antifa newsletter, and agitators on both sides can easily move their street theater from coast to coast. With disappointment that the election of a Black president did not bring Nirvana, the state and national success of conservatives, the election of Donald Trump, the absence of Democratic leadership, and an overtly partisan media it is perhaps inevitable that we see a shadow of the 60's when the draft, the Vietnam War, and the assasination of John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy,and Dr. Martin Luther King put extreme stress on our politidcal system. 

    We've been in far worse situations and survived. The existence of a small number of overt racists and fascists is not a problem. What is concerning is the failure to acknowledge, identify, and condemn the rising tide of authoritarinism on the Left which conflates conservatives with racists, and advocates violence to silence opposing thought. This is perhaps a natural outgrowth of a failed Democratic strategy of division on ethnic and gender lines, but it has reached the boundaries of America's tradition of tolerance and common sense. Violence on the political Left and Right are to be equally condemned - as was clearly indicated by President Trump. . 

What you can do:

    If you are a city official, do not allow the threat of leftist violence  shut down political demonstrations, as in Berkeley or Portland.

    If you are a college administrator, do not let the threat of leftist violence limit the breadth of opinions offered on campus, as in Berkeley and Middlebury. 

    For the rest of us, read or watch something out of your comfort zone, at least to see an articulate presentation of opposing views on important subjects.  Politics should be more than entertainment. For people on the Left I would recommend Steve Bannon's  Breitbart, which is usuallyfalsely  presented as a racist caricature by other media. For people on the Right, I would recommend the New York Times, which has the liberal bias, but without placing the objective of destroying Trump at the center of every article, as do the Washington Post and CNN. 

                                                                                -----

    This week's video is a short exchange on sanctuary cities between General John Kelly (then Secretary of Homeland Security) and Senator Kamila Harris (a likely 2020 presidential candidate) which offers an insight to the personality of each. 

bill bowen - 8/25/17

Replacing Obamacare - The Necessary Republican Plan

    Few would deny that the passage and ugly implementation of Obamacare was the signature achievement of Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi's time in power. Few would also deny that the failure to repeal and replace Obamacare is, thus far, the signature failure of Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan. But that is not the end of the story - nobody except the pharmaceutical companies likes the current set-up with its soaring costs and spotty insurance coverage. Bernie Sanders has started the call for "Medicare for all"; the left wing loons in California are calling for a $400 billion state run program; conservative states which did not accept Medicaid expansion under Obama are left out from the federal trough under Trump; everybody on the Right agreed with the "Repeal" part of "Repeal and Replace." This is not the end of the national discussion.  How and when it resumes is up to the Republican leadership which has great risk, but also great opportunity. 

    The greatest mind-numbing, political malpractice disappointment of a generatioin is that after seven years of complaining and sloganeering, the Republican Congress did not have a replacement ready for a Republican president's signature. Maybe they didn't believe that they would actually have a Republican president. Maybe getting together would have bruised too many egos. Maybe agreeing on general principles and filling in the tactical details was beyond the capabilities of the leaders. Maybe things are more difficult than in the old days when earmarks could be used to buy votes. Maybe Trump is too big a negative. Whatever, that was then. If the Republicans do not present a conservative alternative before the 2020 election, the lure of a simple alternative from the Left will be unstoppable, and the Republicans will have earned their demise. 

    The premise: 

        - In 2018 the Republicans will marginally increase their majority in the Senate under almost any circumstance, with the Democrats defending 23 seats and the Republicans 10. In the House the marginal likelihood of giving up the 24 seats necessary to give the chamber back to Nancy Pelosi would be much less if there were a Republican healthcare plan. 

        - On the substance, it is good that the efforts to slap together a Senate version did not succeed. There is now time to put together a proposition which works, based on conservative principles. 

    The process:

        - Take a deep breath. 

        - Organize a small team of White House, Senate, and House leaders to devise the plan. Draw on the experience of the past six months to define what is possible. Forget the Democrats - unless Joe Manchin or Angus King will change parties.  

        -  Start discussions in the House and Senate from the same simple blueprint.  

        -  Politics is the art of the possible. Forget ideology. Fire McConnell or Ryan if they cannot design a proposal based on conservative principles that can pass their chamber. 

        -  Ideally, have it done by early 2018. If not, use the outline as a campaign theme, implementing in 2019.

        - Hire a good public relations agency.  

    And the content:

        - First, it is important to recognize what is not on the table: we generally do not have state-run hospitals; doctors do not work for the government; individuals can have supplemental insurance plans; we use co-pays and deductibles to minimize frivilous use of the system; we do not have price controls; the government generally does not cover vision, dental, or long term care. (Progressives would love much of this, and inserted many elements in their bill which recently passed the California senate.) 

        - There are several easily-agreed (at least among conservatives) components: allowing insurance companies to sell "bare bones" catastrophic coverage policies; selling insurance across state lines; subsidized high risk pools; greater transparency in hospital pricing; allowing the states to design elements of their own programs as in Medicaid. 

        - Beyond insurance, there are a number of ways to reduce overall costs: constraints on medical malpractice lawsuits; greater use of clinics and nurse practitioners; faster FDA approval of generics; shortened periods for patent protection.

    Things like stock market bubbles that cannot go on forever frequently end badly. But not always - sometimes there are wise and prudent central bankers, legislative leaders, and executives who understand the levers to pull to safely deflate the bubble. That opportunity is at hand for Obamacare. The need to replace Obamacare is understood. The alternatives are known. The politics have been deeply and painfully plumbed. It is not much of a stretch to say that if the Republican leaders cannot present the plan well before the 2018 election, they deserve to be replaced. 

                                                                                        -----

    This week's video is from President Trump's initial press conference in which he condemned the violence in Charlottsville which erupted when left wing Antifa thugs attacked white nationalists among a crowd protesting the taking down of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee. Despite the president's perfect content and tone, the Left has been able  generate a totally "fake news" narrative. 

bill bowen - 8/18/2017

         

   

 

    

    

Trump's Noteworthy ISIS Victory

      Nearly absent from the pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times - or the Wall Street Journal and Fox News for that matter - is the grinding success against ISIS which has been unfolding across Iraq and Syria. The Never Trumpers will argue that this is just the natural unfolding of the Obama strategy, but this is not the president who announced year-in-advance timelines for withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, who drew a meaningless red line in Syria, who called ISIS the Jayvees, and who refused to acknowledge Islamic terrorism. Substantial differences are responsible for the success: 

       1. Without significantly changing the rules of engagement designed to protect civilians, Trump has empowered the military commanders in the theater to make operational decisions. This has entailed embedding liaison officers with Iraqi and Syrian Kurd forces to coordinate front-line intelligence and call in air strikes. The Americans do not initiatie direct "boots on the ground" combat, but are sometimes engaged. American casualties have been few; the ability to bring air power to bear has been decisive.    

       2. Coalition forces have adopted a "no escape" policy. ISIS-controlled cities have been surrounded and escape routes cut off, leaving ISIS fighters with a choice between surrender and death. (Some admittedly get both.)  The bad effect - resistance is stiff with heavy civilian and coalition casualties. The good effect - ISIS combatants in Iraq are being eliminated in Iraq rather than being allowed to survive to fight in Syria; few are surviving to return home to fight in Europe, Russia, Kazakhstan, or Pakistan.  Claims of 20,000 or more ISIS fighters killed cannot be substantiated, but are reasonable, given the firepower and targeting. 

      3. In the complicated patchwork of Iraq and Syria, the Trump administration has adopted a "my enemy's enemy is my friend" policy on the battlfield. In Iraq, Iran-oriented militias have taken blocking posiitons outside of the major cities while the Iraqis have done the urban fighting; In Syria, we have agreed to "deconfliction zones" where Russian-supported Assad forces have pressured ISIS from the south while (against Turkey's wishes) we have equipped the Kurds who have attacked the ISIS Capital at Raqqa from the north. This is quite unlike the Obama administration which was paralyzed by the conflicting objectives of the Turks, the Iranians, the Russians, and the Sunni Arabs. For Trump's generals it is simple - destroy ISIS.

    The results since Trump's innauguration:

        - After long delays, the liberation of Mosul - the second largest city in Iraq with some 2,000,000 people - was completed in July;

        - The Free Syrian Army (largely the Kurds) has recaptured half of the ISIS capital in Raqqa, Syria, anticipating complete victory in a few months;

        - The Russians and the US have agreed to enforce operational areas and procedures to avoid direct conflict while focusing on the defeat of ISIS. Assad's forces follow the Russian lead; the Free Syrian Army follows ours.        

    And what will follow:

        - Mosul will require $1 billion of rebuilding infrastructure and housing. With the temporary disloction of some 800,000 residents and the death of thousands, a generation has been traumatized. Years of school were missed under ISIS rule; everybody has witnessed public executions and general brutality; and the nine month campaign brought starvation and use of civilians as "human shields". The Shia-dominated government in Baghdad appears to understand that leadership of the rebuilding must be led by local Sunnis, but the task is immense.  

        - The tragic Syrian civil war with its 400,000 civilian deaths, 6 million internally dislaced, and 5 million external refugees has real hope of being over. While the "Assad must go" refrain has occasional resurrection, it is unlikely. Mopping up will require agreement on who bears the brunt of cleaning up ISIS elements who have retreated to the Deir Ezzor region of eastern Syria - and gets the oil there; who will hunt down the remnants of the al Queda affiliate; how much of the territory that they have captured will the Kurds be allowed to keep; and what form of government will the US-organized Arab Free Syrian Army establish. The political aftermath can be worked out if Trump is allowed to deal with Putin. Those seeking justice can keep waiting. 

        - The global ISIS brand has been badly tarnished. The great majority of the thousands of zealots who flocked to fight for the caliphate in 2014, 2015, and 2016 have achieved their martyrdom, but their earthly reward was transitory. Few new recruits are arriving. The affiliates in Africa, Southeast Asia, and South Asia who pledged their allegiance to Caliph Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi (who may have himself been killed in a Russian airstrike) will return to their local grievances. 

        - In all likelihood, the Trump administration will not be concerned about the conservative/authoritarian direction of  government in Turkey or Egypt, the tactics of the Saudi's for restoring order in Yemen or Quatar, or the many other ancient squabbles in the region. Unlike the Bush and Obama years, we will not be there to spread the Enlightenment or foster an Islamic Reformation. 

     Now, about North Korea,,,,,

                                                                        -----

    This week's bonus video is a second version of Trump speechwriter, Stephen Miller, explaining the Trump policy on legal immigration which places the interests of low wage Americans above those of potential immigrants. 

bill bowen - 8/11/17

Pondering North Korea

    The last seven decades have not treated Asia kindly: the India/Pakistan wars of 1947, 1965, 1971, and 1999; Mao's regime (40 million killed); the Korean War (5 million killed); the Vietnam War (3 million killed); Cambodia's nightmare (1.5 million killed); ongoing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. Each lost life is a tragedy, but the scale of anything in Europe or the Americas pales in comparison. It is through the Asian lens that we should view the escalating crisis with North Korea. 

    First, the public really doesn't know what is happening behind the scenes. Kim Jong Un had his uncle, and former regent, killed because his relationship to China posed a potential threat. He had his half brother, who lived in Chinese Macao, killed because he was  a potential dynastic heir. We don't know if there was more to the tragic case of Otto Warmbler - released so that his death could become an international spectacle. In any case, the CIA and its Chinese counterpart are doing all that they can to figure out the fissures within Kim's hierarchy, whether there are any pressure points to be exploited, and who would prevail if the Glorious Leader were removed. The New York Times and CNN are not on the distribution list. 

    For years, the consensus has been that, by virtue of their predominant trading relationship, the reluctant Chinese are in the best position to influence North Korea's behavior. Let's consider things from a Chinese perspective. While we see only risk, they also see opportunity. 

          -Since the end of WW II, the United States has been the preeminent power in the western Pacific, with the 7th Fleet based in Yokosuka Japan; strategic territorial possessions in Guam, the Mariana Islands, and American Samoa; the guarantor of China's arch rival Japan, South Korea, breakaway province Taiwan, and the Philippines; long term military cooperation with Australia, Thailand, and Singapore. It is in China's interest to demonstrate that we are a paper tiger, or to negotiate away some of our military presence and relationships. 

        - This is a time of unusual internal weakness for the United States and its allies. The United States can assemble world leaders to discuss sanctions at the United Nations and at the upcoming G20 meeting, but the Trump administration cannot count on American unity with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer, much less uber-hawk John McCain and the Obama / Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. If the Republicans cannot agree on how to replace Obamacare, how can the various factions agree on what concessions to make to the North Koreans, or what military measures to take?  

        - About 2 million ethnic Koreans live in China, largely near the border.  With populations of 1.4 billion in China, 25 million in North Korea, and 50 million in South Korea, the number is relatively small, but the Chinese make a major talking point of risk of a mass influx of refugees in the event of destabilization in North Korea. More importantly, North Korea serves as a buffer between China and the more prosperous and economically assertive South Korea, and must not be allowed to be absorbed into the larger and more prosperous South.  

        - The real risk to China is indirect - not that North Korea will aim its nuclear missiles at Beijing, but that they will prompt a nuclear arms race which includes Japan. Avoiding that is a modest priority for the United States,and a major requirement for the Chinese. 

        -  With a 23 mile border with North Korea along the Sea of Japan, Russia also has a horse in this race. This week's summit meeting between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jin Ping concluded amid statements about the "best relationship ever between the countries", the "most important strategic partner", the need for North Korea to suspend testing and the US to suspend military exercises. On July 7, Putin will let President Trump know his price for exerting potential leverage on Xi and Kim. 

    After 25 years of failed diplomatic initiatives - direct negotiations; "Group of Six" negotiations; trade offers; economic and personal sanctions - President Trump is left with a short list of bad options. 

        1. More of the same with the likelihood that Kim will develop a significant stockpile of nuclear weapons capable of hitting South Korea and Japan, as well as intercontinental nuclear missiles aimed at Alaska and Hawaii within a year or less. The gate is fast closing. Western sanctions have no effect. 

        2. A Chinese boycott of North Korea severe enough to cause Kim to give up his missile and nuclear programs, or more likely, to precipitate regime change. In exchange for Chinese action, the United States might be expected to support Chinese rights in the South China Sea, or perhaps to abandon Taiwan.  A Russian voice might also need to be bought. 

        3. A "decapitation attack" - perhaps an assassination; perhaps a targeted military strike. This would have to be coupled with a concurrent strong outreach to alternative military leaders. And a prayer. 

        4. A "counter force" attack designed to take out the nuclear and missile sites, as well as most of the 1000 artillery pieces aimed at Seoul. The Pentagon's assessment is probably not much different from that of numerous think tanks - with 10 million living about 35 miles from the North Korean border in Seoul, the first week toll would be in the hundreds of thousands, despite thousands of bomb shelters and decades of preparation.

    For what it is worth, the South Korean stock market - voting for Option 1 -  is up 18% Year to Date, substantiating Karl Marx' claim that "the last capitalist we hang shall be the one who sold us the rope". If Option 2 fails within the next month, some version of Option 3 seems most reasonable. 

                                                                                            -----

    Continuing today's theme of gloom and destruction, this week's video shows the condition of Mosul's Old City after months of fighting to destroy ISIS.  

bill bowen - 7/7/17

 

   

    

    

        

The Limits of #Resist

    Republicans should take heart. The drumbeat of anti-Trump rhetoric has a corrosive effect for a time - particularly upon the many who support the policies and the party more than the person. However, there is a limit. When behavior gets too far outside of society's behavioral norms or when the source of manufactured anti-Trump outrage is repetitively wrong, the average citizen either tunes out or turns against the perpetrator. Some "by any measure" examples:

    1. The recent shooting of Republican whip John Scalise. The perpetrator is a caricature of the anti-Trump activist - active on Facebook with a "Terminate the Republican Party" group; a Rachael Maddow fan; a Bernie Sanders volunteer - who asked a bystander if those he was planning to shoot were Republicans. When some Republicans used the occasion to urge Democrats to turn down the #Resist rhetoric, Nancy Pelosi was outraged.  This shooting is worse than comedienne Kathy Griffin's picture with a severed costume head of the president. It is worse than the much applauded Shakespeare in the Park presentation of the assassinated Julius Caesar made to look like Donald Trump. Egged on, for some unstable reprobates, life eventually imitates art.

    2. The marriage between anonymous leakers, the Washington Post / New York Times, and Democrats on Senate investigating committees. In the most recent round, the insiders knew that James Comey was going to disclose that the FBI was investigating Trump for colluding with the Russians - until he testified that he told Trump three times that there was no such investigation.  The insiders knew that Attorney General Sessions would be destroyed by the revelation that he had a third meeting with the Russian ambassador during the campaign - until he testified that there was no such meeting, and he had no idea why the leakers thought that there was. And now the insiders know that Special Counsel Mueller is expanding his investigation to include the possibility that Trump obstructed justice by telling Comey that he hoped Michael Flynn would not be prosecuted. The damage is intended to be political, but the case has already been litigated in the court of public opinion. Eventually, the public will tire of being fed unsubstantiated leaks, innuendo, and faux outrage without any substance. Except in the minds of the #Resist folks, there is no evidence of any collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians in the run-up to the election. Period.

    3. The decline of decorum.  Middle America expects a degree of public decorum on the part of its leaders. When John Burton, the outgoing Chair of the California Democratic Party led convention chants of "F*** Donald Trump" to the great amusement of Nancy Pelosi and thousands of others, we hit a new low. When New York Senator Kirsten Gillebrand told New York Magazine and repeated it at NYU that "If we're not helping people, we should go the f*** home," she apparently thought that she was helping herself with the energized left wing of her party. When newly elected Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez adopted a stream of anti-Trump profanity for his stump speech in his "Unity Tour", it was obvious that the #Resist zealots were driving the packaging as well as the product. 

    The nightly news hour - Left and Right - needs something to talk about. It is easy to get the camera vans and the interview crew across town in D.C, and there are always anonymous sources and ambitious politicians. But the story can get stale without an occasional "there there", and it is dangerous for the teller if stoking the #Resist fury instigates violence or devolves into the gutter. For those hoping that the Republicans can get on with their Obamacare, tax, and economic growth agenda, one has to hope that Middle America will soon tire of #Resist, as they did Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter.   

                                                                                                             -----

This week's video is a second clip of hilarious conservative commentator Andrew Klavan, explaining liberal terminology.

bill bowen - 6.16.17    

     

The Washington Post: RIP

    For reasons lost in the misty memories of time I am a paid subscriber to the Washington Post. There was a time when it made sense for the informed citizen trying to understand a range of opinions to read The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, The Chicago Tribune and the San Francisco Chronicle, the Huffington Post and Breitbart. No longer. 

    Let's take the headlines of the first seven articles in the on-line version of the WaPo of Tuesday, May 16 (a typical day):

        - Trump's Chaotic White House Once Again Makes a Bad Story Worse; 

        - Trump Revealed Highly Classified Information to Russian Foreign Minister and Ambassador;

        - Trump Doesn't Embody What's Wrong with Washington. Pence Does. 

        - This is Why Trump's Loose Tongue has Compromised US Security. 

        - Trump's Bizarre Russian Tweetstorm Digs His hole Deeper.

        - Trump Just Threw His Top Advisers Under the Bus...Again. 

        - The Experts Were Right... Trump Isn't Fit to be President. 

    Whew!!! It may be unfair to expect much different from the Washington Post - all of their political reporters are longing for the good old Watergate days; none have ever tried to understand a Trump supporter; since the failing newspaper was acquired by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in 2013, there has been a migration to on-line sensationalism. That said, there is still enough public memory of the former brand that they can lead the echo chamber, providing chum with their "anonymous inside sources" for CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC.

    So, what was this week's breathless Russian scandal about? President Trump and his National Security Adviser,  H. R. McMaster - a "good guy" when he replaced Michael Flynn a few months ago - met with the Russian Foreign Minister and his Ambassador to the United States to discuss Syria, the Ukraine, North Korea, and other trouble spots of mutual interest. To the untrained eye of the casual observer this would seem like a good thing, but to the circling sharks any contact with the Russians smacks of impeachable treason. People who were not in the room complain that Trump divulged details of activities in Syria than could be used to identify the source of Israeli intelligence information. McMaster is emphatic that Trump's comments were "totally appropriate". No word from the Israelis. For typical Trump flavor, he invited some Russian press, but not the US press to the photo-op after the meeting- another unpardonable sin. 

    What are the take-aways for the ordinary citizen who would like to be informed:

        - This is Phase Three of the effort by the Left and much of the media to reject the result of the 2016 presidential election. Recounts; subvert the Electoral College; Impeach. Constitutional democracy? - not so important. 

        - One needs to reconsider one's sources of information when the liberals are bonkers and the Establishment conservatives follow along. The Wall Street Journal editorial leadership hate Trump; reliable conservative Fox commentators such as Charles Krautheimer dislike Trump; even a favorite of mine, Red State, is consistently anti-Trump. Much is being done to take down Fox - President Roger Ailes; top-rated personality Bill O'Reilly; key executive Bill Shine. 

        - For those who can get beyond the bomb-throwing entertainment factor, talk radio contains places to hear news and perspective that are absent in the main stream media - Rush Limbaugh;  Mark Levin who wrote "Borders, Language, and Culture".  On the internet, Breitbart contains much important "populist" reporting which cannot be found elsewhere. There are some excellent opinion writers covered on Rasmussen - Michelle Malkin; Ted Rall; libertarian John Stossel. And on Fox, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson still appeal to the core audience.

        - Trump voters remain committed. Economic growth is accelerating.  

        - The appointment of a new FBI Director and a "special counsel" to investigate the the Trump-Russia connection will do little to slake the thirst of the Left. 

    At some point one of three things happens: the constant negativism seeps into the subconscious and the Democrats' strategy works; people recognize that news is fake and abandon the scoundrels; people readjust to the new reality of the information milieu and recognize that the burden of figuring it out rests with them. 

                                                                                                        -----

    This week's video is a clear statement by far-Left Dennis Kucinic about the dangerous and subversive efforts by members of the intelligence community to undercut President Trump. 

bill bowen - 5/19/2017

 

The Limits of Outrage

    Whiplash! One day - according to the Democratic glitterati - New York Times, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Shumer, and Tom Perez - James Comey was a terrible FBI director, engaged the department in partisan politics, exercised terrible judgement, and needed to be fired for throwing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump. The next day - according to the same characters -  he was the pillar of the integrity of the FBI, leading a politically difficult, but necessary investigation of the President, who has subverted democracy.  "Double think" worthy of  George Orwell in 1984, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. Some reflections:

    1. #Resist has nothing but irrational anger.  There is no program. There is no introspection. There is no reasoned argument. There is no modulation to complain about important things and ignore petty things. There is no concern about what Middle America thinks. It is a catharsis for those who cannot believe that Hillary lost and want the Democratic Party to move sharply to the Left. The movement has the Democratic Party leaders afraid of uttering any calls for cooperation and compromise. This will last at least until the 2018 elections. 

    2. Fake news proliferates. The Washington Post publishes that Comey had asked for more funding of the Russia / Trump investigation just before he was fired. The Justice Department denies it. The Deputy Director (a Democrat whose wife received $700,000 from Clinton loyalists to fuel her Virginia Assembly race) denies it.  Funding for investigations comes from general budget appropriations, not appropriations targeted at specific investigations. Nevertheless, the New York times runs the story; the San Francisco Chronicle runs the story; Politico runs the story; The Hill runs the story; the London Times runs the story. To the best they can manage it, the media has provided a rationale that Comey was fired because he was too zealous in pursuing the Russia /Trump connection. 

  3. The Left runs out of incendiary language to describe Trump - a fascist;  parallel to Hitler; or Mussolini. If one were to have a rational discussion about governing style, and respect for the division of powers contained in the American Constitution, Trump would come out far ahead of Barack Obama who bypassed the Senate's role in approving treaties when he cut the nuclear deal with Iran or signed the Paris Climate Accord; or who tried to ease Obamacare in by delaying unpopular provisions (like taxes on rich union healthcare plans) for years or unilaterally paying insurance companies to participate; or who bypassed Congress in exempting young illegal immigrants from deportation; or who used the NSA to spy on the Trump campaign by targeting foreigners who would speak to Trump team members, then "unmasking" the "accidental" Americans involved in the phone calls. No president has done more to threaten the structure of American government than the former constitutional law professor.

  4. Trump has under-estimated the importance of the personnel function. Perhaps it wasn't that important in his smallish real estate company; it is critical in the sprawling federal bureaucracy where there are 4,000 "political appointments", 1200 requiring Senate approval.  He has only this week begun to fill the 120 openings in the federal court system.  He has not really begun to replace the 50 or so federal prosecutors which were fired in January.  His last cabinet Secretary - Henry Acosta at Labor -   was confirmed on April 27.  Too many deputy department leader are vacant or yet to be replaced by Trump team members - State and the FBI for example.

   To the objective observer, things are going OK. Executive orders are being issued - this week on election fraud.  Judicial appointments have been excellent. The foreign policy team is forceful and prudent. The key learning that must happen is how Congress needs to act in the absence of any Democratic votes on significant legislation.  That affects Trump, but the leadership must come from the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. 

                                                                                                           -----

 This week's "bonus" is a concise Mark Levin comment on the lingering Trump / Russian charade.  No votes were directly hacked. They probably were behind the revelations about Hillary and her campaign manager. What else? 

bill bowen - 5/12/17

 

Trump's America as of April, 2017

    Measuring Donald Trump's "first 100 days" is an exercise designed to create stories for reporters and to invigorate the #Resist loonies of the Left and the Establishment. The real evaluation should not be about the 100 days or even Donald Trump. The bigger point is that here has been a sea change toward those who believe in America's greatness and "Norman Rockwell" values, and away from the last several decades of drift toward a domestic politics of grievance and international apologies for American leadership. There is cause for optimism. Some dimensions:

    - The first requirement for being a great country is to be a country, and that requires borders. Border control agents and immigration courts are being increased; the Obama administration "catch and release" policies have been reversed; immigration from Haiti, Cuba, and the Middle East is being reduced; h1b visas for cheap foreign workers are being significantly reduced. Liberal federal judges have temporarily denied the president's ability to restrict entry from countries where background vetting is not possible, and prohibited withholding of funds from cities which refuse to follow federal immigration law, but few doubt that superior courts will uphold the president's ability to exercise reasonable judgement to protect the nation and uphold the law. Illegal immigration at the Mexican border is down 40 %, even without the wall. 

    - The big domestic challenge is to reinvigorate the American economy which has been growing too slowly to support a major portion of the middle class, while putting a dent in government debt in terms of the $20 trillion federal deficit, the soon to be insolvent Social Security and Medicare systems, and government pension plans. Many Republicans in Congress (and state governments) were elected to fix the debt problem, and Nancy Pelosi's  Democrats are united in not helping, requiring the Republicans to balance the two forces by themselves. They have failed on healthcare for now, and face a similar battle on tax reform. Trump has thrown down the proper marker on the size of government, is taking aggressive steps to improve trade agreements, and has a good general contour on taxes, but it will take several years of Republican control to strike the right balance on the scale required.  

    - Global stability requires a working relationship between the United States, Russia, and China; the containment of Islamic terrorism; and enforcement of international agreements preventing the proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction - nuclear; chemical; and biological. 

        -- Trump has made it clear that the Europeans must start paying their share of their own defense, but their proclivity to budget for butter over guns is deeply ingrained and Putin continues to push the envelope in the Ukraine, in Syria, and perhaps now in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, the American Left has responded to Hillary Clinton's loss of the 2016 presidential election by making any cooperation with Russia poisonous, so a working alliance with Putin put off for a year or two. 

        -- At high human cost, and with only a modest step-up from Obama policies, the war against ISIS is being won in the grinding battle for Mosul in Iraq and the emerging de facto partition of Syria between Assad's Allawites in the west, the Kurds in the north, and the Sunni Arabs in the center and east. Anti-West terrorism will remain via ISIS and al Queda, but America's role in resolving centuries-old grievances will be limited. Unlike Obama, Trump will contain radical Islamic terrorism as he focuses elsewhere.   

        -- The big deal is the return of the United States as the world's enforcer of non-proliferation agreements. With Russian and Chines vetoes, the United Nations has proven itself incapable. Trump's response to Assad's use of chemical weapons demonstrated that he is no Barrack Obama. One has to believe his threat that if China will not stop North Korea, we will. In the sweep of history, this will be the most important development of Trump's first term. 

    - Perhaps the most surprising aspect of America in April 2017 is the speed at which excessive political correctness on campus and in the media has morphed into violent intolerance of conservative ideas - at the birthplace of the Free Speech movement in Berkeley, at Middlebury College in Vermont, in Portland, Oregon, and elsewhere. This is due to the rejection of Trump the person, the takeover of a moribund Democratic Party by the socialist Left, and Democratic Party policies of grievance and division. Whatever. The Republic is stronger than a small band of anarchists leading a coddled academia, with an indifferent press. Middle America understands - to the ultimate political benefit of conservatives. 

                                                                                                            ----- 

    This week's video, , "The Prayer" sung by Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli,  seems to be appropriate. 

 

bill bowen - 4/28/2017

The Trump Doctrine, v1.0

    Eventually some Harvard professor or New York Times editorial board member will write the Establishment's definitive book on the unifying principles of the Trump Doctrine for international affairs. They will depart from the current #Resist meme that Trump's foreign policy is just a bunch of impulsive, uninformed decisions born of inexperience and a flawed personality. They most likely will not develop the theme that Barack Obama left a mess after eight years of withdrawing American power. What follows is a first draft - version 1.0.

    Premise: Hobbes had it largely right - the world is filled with inequality, injustice, and immoral leaders who will respond only to force. We cannot fix it all, but it is in our self interest to try to fix those things which will affect us. At the low end, that means preventing attacks on us; at the high end it means supporting international organizations and norms which keep us safe. There is plenty of room for international engagement in an America First philosophy. 

    There are several levels about how international problems should be approached. Each needs to be approached with clear eyes; the accumulating malaise since the current world order was established in the mid- twentieth century needs to be fixed. .

        -  The concept of the United Nations is fine, but the veto power of Russia, China, the UK, France, and the United States makes it ineffective for most important issues. (Obama's acceptance of the condemnation of Israel was an exception, but demonstrates the point.) The bureaucracy has gotten fat. When there is an urgent issue the Security Council should be given a chance, but with a short fuse before looking for other avenues. Witness the strike in Syria after Russia blocked action condemning Assad's use of chemical weapons. 

        - Regional alliances are important for containing our major geopolitical rivals - Russia and China - and for combating Islamic terrorism. We provide the dominant amount of money, intelligence, equipment, and leadership for these alliances. In many cases we provide a large part of the manpower. This needs to change - the Europeans need to fund their own defense at agreed levels; the Japanese and other Asian partners need to do more; Saudi Arabia and other Sunni governments need to take the lead in terms of money and troops in combating ISIS, al Queda, and whatever comes next. We will provide active support, as in the current battles in Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria. 

        - Spheres of influence are important. The major powers need to patrol their neighborhoods. China needs to take care of North Korea. The Europeans need to stand up to Russia. 

        - Where others will not act, and our national interests are threatened, we will act. Our national interests include enforcement of international agreements on development and use of weapons of mass destruction - nuclear, chemical, and biological. (The WMD term has been badly overused - the issue is nuclear, chemical, and biological.) Chemical in Syria; nuclear in North Korea. 

    Within that framework there are a couple of policy adjustments that have not yet received the administration's attention:

        1. Afghanistan. By now we have forgotten why we have sacrificed a generation of soldiers and billions of dollars in this landlocked quagmire on the other side of the world, and still have 8400 troops there as the next "fighting season" approaches and the Taliban are expanding their areas of control.  Bin Laden was there - and he was killed in Pakistan. They were big opium exporters - and they still are. Their girls were not educated - and now some are. For Obama it was a chance to show that Bush was wrong in Iraq, and he was not a wimp. Our real national interest in South Asia is the protection of the nuclear arms in Pakistan, not choosing among the warlords of this graveyard of empires.

        2. Central America. Our illegal immigration problem is partly about economic migrants from Mexico seeking a better life, but it is also about true refugees from decades of civil war, gang warfare, and corruption in Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador. As we deport these immigrants to Mexico, their "country of entry", they really cannot go home.  Europe has a problem with at-risk refugees from the Middle East; our comparison is Central America. The root problem needs to be fixed. 

    Trump has a habit of speaking clearly where our leaders have spoken in muted tones for decades. After the audible gasp, it is useful to note that he is right - Obama did not believe in American world leadership; a huge gap was created; and there will be a time of challenge while Trump reestablishes America's credibility. Fortunately, his actions - from demanding that the Europeans pay their committed share for their defense, to being willing to make trade concessions for Chinese action on North Korea, to punishing Assad for use of chemical weapons - fit a pattern that is part of Making America Great Again.

                                                                    ----- 

    This week's video is Charles Krautheimer's commentary on Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice. To review the bidding: the administration - unsuccessfully except for one occasion - sought wiretapping authority on Trump campaign members to find a Russia connection; they oversaw wiretapping of foreigners who might be talking to Trump campaign members; they exposed the names such as Mike Flynn who turned up; and they changed the rules for distributing intelligence information to ensure that people in 17 agencies had access to the reports which were subsequently leaked to the New York Times and others.

bill bowen - 4/14/17 

Trump: A Sober Assessment

    Let's take a sober assessment of what we know in the wake of the defeat of the American Healthcare Act. Not good; let's hope that Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell are able to be honest with each other about what happened, what is on the table, and the best way forward. The New York Times assessment doesn't matter; Sean Hannity and Mark Levin's assessments don't matter. It is up to the Big Three to figure out how to translate Republican majorities into Republican legislation. 

   First, a couple of benchmarks:

        - The Republican House was a handful of votes short of passing the Ryan / Price bill. The Freedom Caucus and a handful of other conservatives were unwilling to preserve the underlying premise of Obamacare that everybody is entitled to healthcare - whether through exchanges, expanded Medicaid, or tax credits. Any further concessions in their direction would have sunk the moderates in the House and the Senate. Forcing a vote would have been damaging to moderates who would have "taken one for the team".  More time would not have bridged the gap. There is no compromise within the Republican caucus. 

        -  There will be no Democratic compromise on future legislation. Chuck Shumer demonstrated the attitude of the Senate with his commitment to filibuster Neil Gorsuch. Nancy Pelosi remains in the House because she believes that she can re-gain the speakership if the Trump administration falters.

    Second, some reflections on upcoming challenges:

        - In the absence of a budget for the fiscal year ending September 30, the federal government is operating under a Continuing Resolution which continues spending at FY2016 levels with a few changes, and expires on April 28. Since that continues deficit spending, there will need to be an increase in the debt ceiling by the Fall. Both measures will involve a battle between "pragmatic moderates", and "fiscal conservatives" - with little Democratic help, even without "red meat" items like funding the Mexican Wall, and defunding Planned Parenthood.    

        - The real fiscal battle will be around the FY2018 budget, where Trump's framework has proposed adding $54 billion to security categories, with steep offsetting cuts to everything from the State Department, to the EPA, to Health and Human Services and support for the humanities. This would be a donnybrook in the best of times, but with a recalcitrant Republican House it may well be that we keep on with "Continuing Resolutions" rather than transformative budgets.  

        - Some in the administration have been saying that they will move on to the simpler subject of tax reform where there is general agreement on lower rates, fewer deductions, and a simpler code. Right! With a $20 trillion national debt and current deficits of almost $600 billion per year, many will demand that that the changes be "revenue neutral" with only modest belief in lower rates creating greater taxable economic activity. Ideas such as a VAT-like "border adjustment tax" will take a lot of selling; every deduction to be eliminated has a constituency and a bunch of lobbyists; and for every winner there is a loser. Historical tax reform has been bi-partisan. 

        - Trump will be forced to play defense - with the continuing search for any proof that Team Trump collaborated with the Russians to defeat the Inevitable Hillary; and with Democrats' Plan B, the impropriety of his family business. 

    And what can be done without a functional Republican Congress ?: 

        - With the onus on Chuck Schumer for threatening to filibuster Neil Gorsuch, Trump will be able to get Supreme Court justices approved. If there were nothing else, this would be enough to take Trump over Hillary. 

        - Trump can secure the border. The Border Patrol will be strengthened; the "catch and release" program will end; "sanctuary cities" will be held accountable; and the Great Wall, or at least portions of it, will be built.   

        - ISIS will be crushed. Trump has quietly ramped up support for the Iraqis in Mosul, for the Kurds and Arab opposition in Syria, and for the Saudi-led forces in Yemen. Immigrants from countries in chaos will be excluded. 

        - Many of President Obama's executive orders are being rescinded and regulations are being reduced - a review of Dodd-Frank financial regulations; and end to the "war on coal"; approval of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines; a stop in funding for foreign agencies which perform abortions; tightening of restrictions on lobbyists; an effort to reduce regulation in each federal agency.  

    We may have lost some perspective in the euphoria following a surprise victory - we didn't get into this shape in a year, or even in the eight years of Obama. The debt has been building for decades; the acrimony in Washington came long before Trump; the government has been growing since George Washington. Trump has put down some markers on behalf of the American middle class, but it takes a lot of ocean to turn an aircraft carrier.

                                                                     ----- 

    We have three video bonuses this week - the highlights of Gonzaga's victories over Northwestern, West Virginia, and Xavier. Next week we'll cover the wins over South Carolina and North Carolina. 

bill bowen - 3/31/17

President Trump Comes of Age

   Leftists of the #Resist stripe should not be too excited and conservatives of the populist stripe should not be too concerned about the ebb and flow of Washington politics. The change of policy direction from Barack Obama to Donald Trump has been broad and stark; the determination of the Democratic leadership to follow their angry base has denied any vestige of cooperation; the conservative optimism created by the Republican control of the White House, the House, and the Senate has gotten ahead of reality; and Trump's desire to carry every issue directly from the campaign into his yet-to-form government has led to more difficulty than was necessary. It is time for a deep breath. 

    A few realities that he has (hopefully) learned:

        1.  He has to be very careful in delegating in a management structure where there are so many egos fighting for power, and so many power centers looking for ways to attack the administration. The order temporarily halting immigration from war zone countries where vetting is inadequate was poorly handled, apparently with the direction of Steve Bannon - done while a hostile Obama holdover was still running the Justice Department; done with little involvement of the Secretary of Homeland Security; sloppily including "green card" holders; done without a clear implementation plan, a public relations plan, or coordination with Congress. Trump cannot be everywhere, but he quickly needs to figure out who he can trust.

        2. As part of delegating and trusting subordinates, he needs to allow his key advisers to select their own staffs. He is better off without Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser, but - if reports are accurate - he has publicly botched the opportunity to replace Flynn with Vice Admiral Robert Harward, by insisting that Harward keep Flynn's chief deputy KT McFarland. With Mattis at Defense, Kelly at Homeland Security, Tilleson  at State, and Pompeo at the CIA he does have strong, competent, sympatico leaders, but he needs a strong leader in the White House - in part to keep Bannon in check. 

        3. There is an unholy alliance between the Democratic leadership who are incensed by Russia's release of hacked Clinton and Podesta e-mails during the election, rogue Republicans who see Russia as a Cold War adversary, those who are legitimately offended by Vladimir Putin's KGB management style, and much of the media who are looking for a Watergate-type story to take Trump down. He cannot be sucked in. Roosevelt worked with Stalin. Reagan "trusted, but verified". Trump's geopolitical priorities - crushing ISIS, rebalancing our trade relationships with China and others, stopping nuclear proliferation - require a pragmatic working relationship with Russia. An early firing of campaign director Paul Manafort and the recent firing of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn suggest that Trump understands the political poison of an apparent cozy relationship with the Kremlin, but his inclination to develop a good "eyes wide open"  relation with Putin is on target. 

        4. We will be challenged internationally - Iranian missile tests; North Korean missile and nuclear tests; Russian missiles threatening the Baltics and intelligence gathering off of the East Coast; Chinese bases and aggressive patrols in the South China Sea. With nary a supportive word from the Democrats or the media, Trump is showing much patience, not letting words outpace actions. His team needs to provide options to demonstrate that provocations will bring consequences.    

        5. It is very difficult to control information in the digital age - Snowden; Manning; hackers. It is doubly difficult with a large portion of the bureaucracy - Obama appointees and others further down the food chain - opposed to the Trump agenda. The first manifestation has been in the national security arena where laws have clearly been violated, but it will be worse on domestic subjects - EPA; Education; Obamacare; Energy; HUD - where internal deliberations stand to regularly appear in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

        6. The Trump public relations team needs to up its game. It is a tough job with the boss Tweeting, the media viewed as the enemy, and KellyAnne Conway being asked to continue the magic that she brought to the campaign. Strategic messaging is needed. 

    And a sanity check on where we stand after Month 1:

        1. Mitch McConnell is proceeding slower than his predecessors getting Senate approval of Cabinet appointees, and the Democrats are presenting more consistent opposition than is usual, but the one loss to date - Andrew Pudzer at Labor - is about normal, and replacement Alexander Acosta is clearly superior. 

        2. Trump is establishing candid, if not warm, working relationships with world leaders - Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel, Japan, China. He does not have Obama's gift for oratory, but he does have a direct personal style and immense capacity. NATO leaders understand that they must start paying their agreed share. He is digesting longstanding policies, accepting some (One China), and rejecting others (there must be an independent Palestinian state.) 

        3. With the confirmation of Stephen Mnuchin at Treasury and Tom Price at Health and Human Services, discussions with Paul Ryan's House can begin in earnest on tax reform and Obamacare replacement. There are many paper and electronic pages being filled opinions and insights about both, but the players are just now taking the field.

        4. A stellar Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch,  is making his way toward installation about April 1 - with Chuck Schumer to decide whether to force Mitch McConnell to change Senate rules to allow acceptance with 51 votes. 

        5. We have an Attorney General who will support law enforcement.

        6. And a Secretary of Homeland Security who will secure the border. 

      The road is bumpy, but it has been less than a month.

                                                            -----

    This week's video is an interview with crazy Left Dennis Kucinich, in which he expresses a largely accurate and disquieting interpretation of the firing of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. 

bill bowen - 2/17/17 

     

Barack Obama: The End Game

    The next three months are fraught. There are some actions that President Obama is taking with no Congressional support; there are other actions which our adversaries will take, having taken Obama's measure for eight years and fearing what may follow. Some can be rectified by a subsequent President; others cannot. Let's look at a few headlines.

    Done deals. The damage is probably irreversible.

        1. The Iran nuclear deal. The agreement was signed in August 2015, and the $150 billion in impounded funds was released. Subsequently the public has found that $1.7 billion hostage ransom was paid as a side-deal, and that there were secret "exemptions" which were not made known to Congress. Relevant for the ending of Obama's term, Iran's oil exports are returning to pre-sanctions levels; Boeing and Airbus are competing to supply airliners as trade opens up, ballistic missile tests continue unabated, the centrifuges continue to whirl, and Iran is deploying its forces into Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. Game over. 

        2. Syria. The Russians have obviously played President Obama and John Kerry, talking about a cease-fire while they have assembled enough forces to capture the major rebel stronghold of Aleppo. The next president will be faced with a reality in Syria of an Assad regime in control of most of the country, except for a Kurd/Turk buffer along the Turkish border and whatever territory ISIS continues to hold. 

        3. Guantanamo. In August, Obama moved 15 of the "worst of the worst" prisoners from Guantanamo Bay to the United Arab Emirates, reducing the prison population to 61 as compared to the 242 when he took office. Hopefully he will stop there.

       4. ICANN. On October 1, the Commerce Department gave up their contract with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, effectively allowing the management of the Internet's phone book to be supervised by a collection of over 100 countries. This was done despite a lawsuit by several states and warnings by numerous security experts that the structure of our government communication could be disrupted (.gov and .mil, for example), and that authoritarian regimes would gain greater influence over the functioning of the internet.

        5. Pardons. After a slow start in his first term, Obama has accelerated his pace of commuting prison sentences, particularly for prisoners with mandatory drug-related sentences. As of September, he had issued 673 commutations with some 11,000 under consideration. It remains to be seen whether he follows the Bill Clinton practice of pardoning supporters such as Marc Rich - a $1,000,000 Clinton donor and fugitive who was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted List. Maybe Hillary? 

    Ongoing deals. A plan has been put in motion, but the actual outcome will be determined by the actions of the next president.

        1. The Paris climate agreement. With no discussion with Congress (and no structured Congressional opposition), the administration has advocated for and approved the Paris Climate Treaty which has received enough global endorsements to become effective in November - a surprisingly rapid global acceptance, driven by the impending American change of presidents.  The American commitment is to establish targets and release data on emissions; the administration's core approach (supported by Hillary Clinton and opposed by Donald Trump) is elimination of coal-fired utilities and manufacturers who emit carbon dioxide, coupled with major investments in "clean energy".

        2. Iraq. The administration has deployed as many as 6000 US military personnel to Iraq in the hope that the Iraqi government could re-capture the major ISIS-controlled city of Mosul before the US election. The timetable is slipping, and the international aid agencies are bracing for hundreds of thousands of refugees. The hope is that friendly historians will note that he drove ISIS out of Iraq, forgetting that he created the circumstances for its emergence in the first place.  

        3. Refugees. Obama has set a target to accept 110,000 refugees from around the world in FY 2017, (up from 85,000 in 2016) with Congressional funding of $3.1 billion.  Of the 12,000 Syrians, 10,000 Iraqis, and 9,000 Somalis in the 2016 total, Christians were under-represented relative to the local populations; many were not adequately vetted.  Hillary wants to increase the Syrian total to 65,000; Trump not so much.   

        4. The Fed. Throughout Obama's two terms as president, the Federal Reserve has maintained unprecedentedly low interest rates - good for the stock market and borrowers, bad for bond holders, savers, and pension funds.  A return toward normalcy has "surprisingly" been deferred until after the November election; the next president will be left to deal with the bubbles.

    One could add to the list of problems confronting a new president the slow collapse of Obamacare (which Bill Clinton calls "the craziest thing in the world"), the North Korean nuclear program (which cries for a "come to Jesus" discussion with China), and the ongoing influx of illegal immigrants from Latin America. Whether it is Donald or Hillary, the end of the disastrous Obama presidency cannot come too soon. 

                                                                                  -----

    This week's video - for those who can endure it - is a compilation of the 72 times that Tim Kaine interrupted Mike Pence during the Vice Presidential debate. For those with a lower pain tolerance, here is an MSNBC commentator who was offended by Kaine's cacophony of disjointed jabs and talking over the Latina moderator. 

bill bowen - 10/7/16

      

   

The Obama Legacy - Part IV (Race Relations)

    This posting runs the risk of being put into what Hillary Clinton calls "the basket of deplorables. The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”  For the past few decades it has been increasingly difficult to have an objective discussion about any policy which impacts demographic groups differently, in part because Democratic political strategy has been built upon assembling a coalition of aggrieved groups. But let's try.   

    Going into office, Barack Obama's ethnicity was his greatest differentiating factor from prior presidents; when historians look back decades from now, it will remain a major feature of his era. He entered office on a swell of optimism that his election represented an affirmation of American multi-cultural progress, that he would help to put the legacy of slavery behind us, and that his election would lead to an uplifting of the African American community. With 93% of a record turnout for Obama in 2012, this core group certainly liked what they saw in his first term, and wanted more.  So, beyond the historical significance and the personal political benefit of Obama, how'd that work out? 

    Let's divide the answer into two parts: specific policies that impacted a quantifiable number of African-Americans, and the general standing of African-Americans in society. 

    First, specific policies and actions which directly impacted large numbers of African Americans:

         - By the first quarter of 2016, the number of African Americans without health care insurance had dropped from 20.9% to 11.4%, twice the rate of improvement of whites. Rates went up for those who had previously had insurance, many had to find new providers, taxes were increased, and many of the other detriments of Obamacare impacted African Americans, but, disproportionately, Blacks benefited from the increased coverage. 

         - The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has not been increased since 2009, but President Obama increased the minimum for workers under federal contracts to $10.10 by Executive Order in 2014, and has consistently advocated for a broader increase as states and cities have raised local requirements to as much as $15.00. Economists vary in the numbers, but most agree that raising the minimum increases the real unemployment rate among African American youth which currently stands at about 50%. 

          - President Obama's first Education Secretary, Arnie Duncan, made a major effort to address what Michelle Obama and John Boehner called a "major civil rights issue," the disproportionate inadequate education provided to minorities in public K-12 systems, but in the fullness of time the teachers unions have blocked meaningful reforms - parent choice, teacher tenure laws, connecting student performance to teacher evaluations.  As demonstrated in Vergara v California, inadequate schools and teacher protection laws disproportionately impact minority students - and the Democratic political establishment does not care. 

         - Some 18% of the federal judges appointed by Obama have been African American.

        - Voting rights investigations and lawsuits have been a hallmark of the Obama administration, and particularly his first Attorney General, Eric Holder. Good for Democrats; good for African American politicians; for the public at large, not so much.

        - The Pigford Case , which began as a settlement for 91 minority farmers who were allegedly denied loans by the Department of Agriculture, exploded to some 90,000 beneficiaries and $4.4 billion in payments, some in counties where claims exceeded the number of farms, and Eric Holder's Justice Department found it adequate to grant $50,000 payments with nothing more than a a claim that they had thought of applying for a loan, but were deterred by racism.  

        - As disability claims have increased 50% in the past decade to over 10 million, the Social Security Administration has been an equal opportunity enabler. 

   But let's also take a look at the general standing of African Americans in society: 

        - Some statistics - during Obama's first six years, the black poverty rate increased from 25.8% to 27.2%; from 2010 to 2013 median incomes dropped 10% to $33,000, much more severe than for whites; and family net worth dropped 20% to about $18,000 while white family net worth inched up to $142,000. While the headline unemployment rate was down from 12.7% to 8.8% in the six years, the labor force participation rate - the portion of the people of work force age who were working or looking for work - dropped by 2%.

        - African Americans have been victimized by the same forces of globalization and technology that have motivated many of the white Trump voters, but to a greater extent, they have been impacted by the presence of 11 million illegal immigrants, largely with low end skills and a decent work ethic, who have put tremendous pressure on the employment and wage structure of the African American community. In the Democratic political strategy they have been expendable. 

        - There has been no call from the first African American president for the types of family reform that are needed to reverse the accelerating trends: changing cultural attitudes about education; reforming welfare laws to encourage marriage before babies; encouraging self-reliance and entrepreneurship over government support. 

        - What we do have is a predictable deterioration of public safety in Black communities and a growing rift with police and fire departments as the Obama administration has sought out opportunities to vilify police behavior from his very public criticism of Cambridge, Massachusetts Sergeant James Crowley for his by-the-book treatment of a Black Harvard law professor, to the fiction of wrongdoing by a Ferguson, Missouri police officer. The White House and the Department of Justice have lost any ability to lead the necessary national dialogue about policing in the African American community, leaving the stage to the Black Lives Matter protesters and watching the police retreat in cities such as Chicago where homicides - predominantly  Black on Black - have soared to over 500 this year. 

    Net, net. The tactical things that could be done by an appointment or by a hand-out have been done, but the fundamentals of what any community wants - jobs, education, housing, safety, stable families - will have to wait for another administration. 

                                                                                   ----- 

    This week's video is Libertarian Gary Johnson's response to the "Aleppo" question. For better or worse, the brief mental gaffe obscures a reasonable level of understanding and policy prescription. 

bill bowen - 9/16/16

          

Policing in Minority Communities: A Perspective

    It is difficult to be a policeman/policewoman in the best of times. The job requires a fair level of intelligence, education, physical stamina, self-discipline, courage, and inter-personal skills. The pay and social standing are moderate middle class. Military veterans can empathize. In the worst of times the police are the pawns of the political class - and these are the worst of times. 

    When the times are tough, there are two ways to view the police:

        - Black Lives Matter, and to a lesser extent, Barack Obama (dating at least to the beginning of his presidency) view the police as an occupying force. In addressing the recent Baton Rouge and St. Paul shootings Obama said "These are not isolated incidents. They're symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system," and that there "are problems across our criminal justice system; there are biases - some conscious and some unconscious - that have to be rooted out." At the White House convocation after the killing of five policemen inspired by the Black Lives Matter activists, Obama stressed the bad news that progress is hard, and participant Al Sharpton chirped about the cops learning about "our pain of having to tell our children to be careful of policemen" as if cops were from another planet.

        -  Police leaders and the rank and file would prefer to view themselves  as servants of the community. Some fall short, but the vast majority take the responsibility seriously, follow proper procedures, and take pride in the sacrifices they make in protecting society from its worst elements. This is not the message from Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton who immediately called for a federal investigation of the Saint Paul Police Department; it is the message of Dallas Police Chief David Brown who announced to his protesters that he was hiring if they really wanted to help the community.

    While there are legitimate examples of criminal behavior by the police, the advocates for accountability and reform have done a disservice to the police and people of good will. The Black Lives Matter leaders do not distinguish between the 2014 Ferguson, Missouri incident where a 6' 3'', 250 pound teenager who had just robbed a convenience store and tried to take a police officer's gun was shot as he charged the officer, and the 2015 Baltimore, Maryland incident where a handcuffed and defenseless 25 year-old arrested for possessing a knife died of injuries while in a police van, or the 2014 New York incident where a 35 year-old asthmatic was killed in a choke hold during a low-level rousting. The claim of "white racism" was belied by the participation of African-American cops in the latter two incidents. 

    Sometimes data helps defuse emotional confrontations:

        - According to the Washington Post, of the 990 people killed by police in 2015, 50% were white and 26% were Black, while Blacks commit a majority of robberies and murders in most major cities.  

        -  95% of black shooting deaths do not involve the police, and violent crimes are 7 to 10 times higher among blacks than among whites. It is not racial profiling to put the resources where the greatest problems are. 

       - In 2015, 41 officers were killed on duty and 45 died in work-related accidents. 

       - In recent decades violent crime is actually down, racial relations have actually improved, and a disproportionate amount of the police confrontations occur with Blacks because a dis-proportionate amount of violent crime is committed by Blacks;

      - Those who would be open to academic research might read "The War on Cops" by Heather McDonald who cites studies at Washington State and Harvard University which debunk the narrative of racial bias in the use of force by police.  She does, however, tie the recent increase in violent crime in many major cities to a natural reduction in aggressive policing due to fear of physical or political attack. 

   This is not a new subject. Best practices are known. Most urban police forces around the country have substantial training for beat officers and employ a significant number of minority officers and leaders. The Justice Department is available to assist when local investigation would lack credibility. There is value in discussing the use of tasers and body cameras, and the role of civilian oversight, but the rate of progress will not be accelerated by a higher decibel level or by extending the conversation to include gun control or the general plight of the African-American community.    

   This is a legitimate subject being hijacked by both sides of our great political divide. With 90% of African Americans voting Democratic, the Hillary Clinton forces need to prevent a big drop-off in turnout with Barack Obama no longer on the ballot and the Democratic Party advocating for millions of illegal immigrants who compete for low-end jobs; with the inclusion of chants calling for the killing of police among the Black Lives Matter demonstrations there will be a huge opening for Donald Trump as the "law and order" candidate; it makes a marvelous story for the media - left or right.

    It would be nice if the media and political leaders focused primarily on supporting those like the African-American police chief of Dallas who is devoting his life to "walking the talk" on the front line. 

                                                                        -----

  This week's bonus video is an interview with the United Kingdom's new top diplomat, Boris Johnson. (?) 

bill bowen - 7/15/16

Nobility's Low Ebb

 

        Merriam - Webster presents two definitions for the adjective "noble":

1. Belonging to a hereditary class with high social or political status; aristocratic.
2. Having or showing fine personal qualities or high moral principles and ideals.

       The etymology of the word would show the second definition developing from the first - in part because in past eras the "one per cent" were provided with liberal educations and taught manners as a condition for their acceptance in the ruling class, and in part because they controlled the flow of information about their behavior. Leadership rested on power, but also on a bit of carefully managed moral validity.  One might assume that nobles were noble. 

       No more in 21st Century America - at least as reflected in this presidential campaign. The "race to the bottom" is accelerating with the presumptive Democratic nominee being officially recognized as an "extremely careless" liar, and the presumptive Republican nominee careening from one offensive comment to another.  

       If there were any doubt about whether Lady Liberty still was blindfolded it was erased on July 5, when FBI Director James Comey announced that he would not seek an indictment of Hillary for her behavior which appeared to violate espionage statutes on the grounds that she had not demonstrated intent (which is not required in the law) and it would be inappropriate to use the 1917 Espionage Act under which "gross negligence" would be adequate. Most of the House Oversight Committee questions were political, but Trey Gowdy made the compelling point that, even if specific intent were required, prosecutors regularly view pervasive false exculpatory statements as evidence of consciousness of guilt and intent. Comey acknowledged that Hillary had lied when she had claimed that:

          - Classified information had not been sent or received on her e-mail system;

         - No messages marked as classified were sent or received;

         - She had used the private server for the convenience of having just one device; 

         - All work-related materials were returned to the State Department;

         - No work-related e-mails were deleted from her personal account;

         - Her lawyers read every e-mail in the process of ensuring that a liberal interpretation was used     

               in determining what was to be turned over to State.

       By normal legal standards Hillary Clinton demonstrated specific intent, which Comey relied on and which is beyond what is called for in the statute, and the FBI should have sought prosecution for violation of laws protecting classified information. Beyond that one can conjecture what Attorney General Loretta Lynch thought after conversations with President Obama and Bill Clinton, whether she shared her views and intentions with Comey, whether Comey looked to the lesser evil of Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, or if he just thought it would be damaging for the country to have the presidential nominee of one of the major parties be indicted during a run-up to an election.  What is clear is that he held Hillary Clinton to a lower standard than called for in the law and which would be applied to virtually any other citizen.  Ignoble behavior is legally - and probably politically - acceptable from the nobles in 2016.   

      The Republic will survive.  It survived William Henry Harrison, Warren Harding, and Andrew Johnson. It survived the personal corruption of Lyndon Johnson and the progressive incompetence of Barack Obama. It can survive preferential treatment of the political aristocracy - without people being particularly surprised.  It could even survive the increasingly unlikely election of the boorish lout Donald Trump. The real problem is not with the leaders, it is with the potential loss of nobility among the people. 

       The greatest immediate damage  lies in the "little people" who make up the security establishment. What happens to the FBI agents who have spent the last year observing first hand the lawlessness of the Democratic presidential nominee, only to see a different standard applied? What happens to the people of the National Security Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Reconnaissance Office who see their top secret work exposed to foreign hackers with impunity? How do our intelligence and military leaders recruit the foreign nationals who have seen their predecessors abandoned when convenient? What happens to the CIA interrogators who know that Lynch's predecessor wanted to prosecute them, or the members of the military who saw the President and his inner circle abandon an ambassador and his defenders under fire, and then lie about the cause?  These folks need a hug from the American people. 

       The door is open for a generation of cynical nihilists. Maybe this was inevitable after the disappointment of the vacuous promise of “hope and change”. Maybe this runs in cycles and the bottom is being hit. Maybe in the next presidential cycle the public will be ready for a leader with nobility.  A good starting point would be equality before the law.  

                                                                               ----- 

  And continuing on the theme of justifiable cynicism, this week's bonus video is chilling discussion of Google's manipulation of search results in favor of Hillary Clinton. 

bill bowen - 7/8/16

The End of Hope and Change

   

                                “The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
                                         Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
                                   Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
                                         Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.”

                                                        Omar Khayyam (1048-1131) 

     The Republic will apparently survive Barack Obama. We can thank the Founding Fathers for devising a system of checks and balances between the executive, the legislature, and the courts, and between the federal government and the states. We can thank past Republican presidents for appointing judges who respect the Constitution. We can thank the people who have reacted to Obama's excesses by electing a solidly Republican House, a Republican Senate, and strong Republican majorities in the governorships and state legislatures. 

     Nine months before he leaves office, there is ample evidence that Obama will not leave much of a stamp on the country:

        - The Affordable Care Act, his signature legislative achievement, is dissolving despite Herculean efforts to impose it and ongoing propaganda from the Department of Health and Human Services. Of the net 16 million who have gained insurance, about half come from employers with decreasing unemployment, and a quarter come from expansion of Medicaid. Many of the co-ops set up under the Act have gone out of business. United Healthcare, the largest national healthcare insurer, is pulling out of most of the state exchanges amid indications that the high cost of those enrolling will continue to lead to substantially escalating losses and rate increases.   The majority of the public now understands that "you can keep your doctor" was a lie, and favor significant changes to the legislation. 

         - Reality is forcing Obama to reverse what he considered his signature foreign policy objective - ending American involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Troop levels are back up to 5000 in Iraq and 10,000 in Afghanistan, and the role of the "boots on the ground" is looking more and more like combat with Apache helicopters flying close air support for Iraqi troops fighting ISIS. Neither war is going well (not to mention the war in Syria); both have deteriorated during the seven years of Obama's presidency. 

         - The death of Antonin Scalia has saved the Democrats from a set of likely 5 to 4 conservative votes, but the result of a likely 4 to 4 tie will be to let stand a lower court invalidation of Obama's executive order suspending deportation of 4 million illegal immigrants.

        - President Obama's traditional exiting world tour demonstrates how little influence he has internationally.  He is received coldly in Saudi Arabia where he thinks that he can help mediate the Sunni-Shia divide despite his overtures to Iran; he is will be received coldly in Britain where he tries to engage in the upcoming election on membership in the European Union; there will be no reprise of his triumphant 2008 speech in Berlin or his 2009 Cairo speech where he  promised a kinder and gentler American role in the Middle East.    

        - He has called Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen to the White House to discuss the benefit of keeping interest rates near zero through the election. Once this opiate is taken away, a more accurate picture of the Obama economy will emerge. 

        - The country had looked to the first African American president as a healer of ethnic rifts, but the Democratic Party strategy has been the opposite - using the divisions to drive voter registration and turnout - with the result that the relation between police and inner city residents has hit a multi-decade low. 

    Obama's role in electing his successor has been muted while there is a contest within the Democratic Party, but that will change once the conventions are over. While the "wrong track" reading has reached about 69 %, the president's approval rating has been hovering around  50 % - he is, after-all, a likable enough fellow in contrast to Hillary, Donald, and Ted. The president will play a role in unifying the Democratic party while the Republicans have no senior statesman who can appeal to both sides after a divisive convention. Advantage Democrats. 

    For those that are optimists, the institutions created by Jefferson, Madison, et al have been strong enough to withstand the perfect storm of an economic collapse and the ascendancy of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and the legion of those who would look to an increasingly powerful federal government to take care of the needs of a submissive people. The first step of recovery is recognition - Bernie Sanders' followers on the left recognize the corruption of the establishment led by Hillary Clinton; Donald Trump's supporters recognize that the system has been increasingly structured to the detriment of the traditional middle class. Unfortunately, those sounding the alarm have no experience in governing and lack the realistic policy solutions to the problems that they rail against. At least it is a start. 

    Barack Obama will leave a more dangerous world than he inherited: Iran and North Korea on the path to nuclear missile capabilities; the Sunni-Shia divide leaching out into civil wars, an immigration crisis, and an expanded terrorist threat against the West; a national debt of $19 trillion which is manageable with interest rates near zero, but a huge problem when they return to normal levels; an American public which is divided and restive. The country needs to nominate and the country needs to elect the person most qualified to lead the nation and the western world back to security and growth. I am in the John Kasich camp.   

                                                                            -----

   This week's bonus is a detailed analysis of the remaining Republican primaries by Kyle Kondik and Geoffrey Skelley at Rasmussen Reports. Essentially, New York stopped the bleeding for Trump; he will likely need a share of the 200 or so uncommitted delegates to reach 1237, and the remaining states to focus on are Pennsylvania (April 26), Indiana (May 3), and California (June 7.) 

bill bowen - 4/22/16 

The Republican Debates Writ Large

    They may not compare to the Lincoln-Douglas debates - I didn't attend and Fox didn't carry them - but the 2016 Republican presidential debates will certainly be remembered as a classic in American political history. Some thoughts:

    Republicans have completely captured the political discussion. Past televised presidential debates have drawn an audiences of 5 to 8 million viewers; these have drawn an average of 17.4 million for the Republicans; the Democrats have been about half of that. The swing state of Iowa presented good evidence that the interest can translate into votes - the 2008 caucuses drew 220,000 Democratic voters and 119,000 Republican voters; in 2016 the Democrats were down 50,000 and the Republicans were up 65,000. Similarly in New Hampshire, the Republican turnout was up 18% from 2008 while the Democratic turnout was down 12%.  The Democrats, who had originally tried to downplay head-to-head confrontations have decided to add four more of their own.   

    The surfeit of candidates has actually been a blessing, maintaining viewers for the extended process. The Democrats have Hillary and Bernie - first avoiding any controversy, and then throwing well-worn barbs with little "new news" or suspense. With the Republican "undercard" there has been the ongoing question of who would be thrown off of the island; what would the Donald do if he showed up; would those falling behind in the polls attack strategic opponents; would a gaffe knock out a contender as with Rick Perry in 2012? With Trump blowing away political correctness, tough subjects actually get discussed. It is made for the times - a blend of "Survivor" and "The Apprentice" - and only for one season.

    The debates have also been good for serious observers. 

        - Those who began with a generic preference for governors over senators and amateurs are now getting beyond the polish of the orators. In talking about medical care for veterans, some of the candidates talk about having met wounded warriors at town hall meetings; the governors talk about what they have done in their states to establish meaningful programs. Bush and Christie can talk about their experience with natural disasters. The governors can explain why they accepted or rejected Obama's Medicaid expansion. The discussion gets beyond how much taxes have been lowered and how many jobs were created to examples of what governors actually do.

        - After two months the public has become accustomed to seeing two Cubans and an African American doctor argue about things which have little to do with being Cuban or African American. They are just Republicans who have risen to the upper tier of their party. The subtle implication for Mexicans, Guatemalans, Puerto Ricans and African Americans has to change their view of the party. A bit of this happened with Bobby Jindal for awhile; also a bit with Carly Fiorina. On the Republican side young viewers see a range of ages; on the Democratic side they see their grandparents.  At the top level, the Republicans are the party of diversity.

        - The Democratic meme that the Republicans have no ideas is dead. Everything is on the table, and the nuances of differences are argued in detail. Candidates like Bush and Cruz have detailed proposals for just about everything, and several candidates are learning to give brief answers with referrals to their web sites. Admittedly, the Donald is weak on details, but the winner will have heard every argument battle tested and will know the logical and polling strengths and weaknesses of each.  

            --  The immigration debate  begins with "secure the border" and ends with a path to legal status, with flavors of removal and return.

            -- The ISIS argument - one of Hillary's great "experience" exposures - includes a consensus for greater engagement and a stronger military, different views on Saudi Arabia and the Kurds, the limits of air power, and the importance of Sunni allies. 

            -- Positions on abortion range from the purist "life begins at conception"; to exceptions for rape and incest; to protection in the third trimester; to a unilateral decision by the woman. Handled properly, most Americans would not agree with the extremist "partial birth abortion"  position that Planned Parenthood and the  Democratic candidate will espouse. The issue will e used or not as the candidate sees best. 

           -- There is enough discussion of taxes, the Iran nuclear deal, climate change, Obamacare, and any other issue to satisfy the greatest policy wonk.  Most try to draw contrasts with Obama and his third term as Hillary; as Bernie Sanders rises and Hillary tacks left, the contrast gets even better.  

       - Among the most striking results - Ted Cruz was able to win in Iowa after opposing the federal mandate to include ethanol in gasoline.  A political profile in courage - at least with staunch, unyielding conservatives. 

      The Christie - Rubio dust-up about whether President Obama is ideologically misdirected or just incompetent will be remembered for Rubio's robotic repetition of his talking point and it has certainly stopped his path to consolidating the moderate voters. Both are right, but Christie's debating skills are superior and he has the obvious examples of the Veterans Administration, Fast and Furious, the Stimulus Plan, the roll out of Obamacare, Syria, Libya, and on and on. It would have been nice if this had been a theme for more discussions.  Some of us think that we are lucky that the ideological Obama was incompetent.

    The Donald has certainly tapped into a mood of discontent after seven years of the domestic and international failures of the Obama administration. To the extent that his presence has contributed to the unprecedented opportunity to expose the American public to Republican ideas and the diversity of the party's leadership, Reince Priebus owes him a debt of gratitude. On the other hand, he might not have broken upon the scene if not for the free opportunity to speak directly with millions. Whether we can avoid having him as the spokesman remains to be seen.

                                                                                              ------  

   This week we have Chris Christie's last hurrah which ended Marco Rubio's consolidation of the moderate segment of Republican voters. 

bill bowen - 2/10/2016

 

 

 

Obama's American Trajectory

    The holiday season is approaching; let's be optimists. The American glass is much more than half full. We are still the most powerful nation earth. We still have the largest and most dynamic economy on earth. We are the most diverse and inventive nation on earth. Billions of people would choose to live here if they could. By any measure, the United States has been the preeminent country in the world since World War II. 

    That said, a solid majority of Americans believe that we are on the wrong track, and Donald Trump gets a strong response with his campaign slogan "Make America Great Again".  The problem is not where we are, it is the trajectory. Let's look at what Barack Obama's "Hope and Change" presidency has done to the position of the United States in the world. 

    1. The most obvious area of contention is the military. In absolute terms, we spend some $570 billion on our military - over four times second place China, and more than the next seven countries combined. At 3.5% of GDP this is behind Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Russia, but ahead of just about every other significant player. A reasonable percentage of the largest economy gives a dominant military. But there are four issues:  

        - The 2011 Budget Control Act - passed by a combination of Democrats who favored domestic spending and Republican deficit hawks who prioritized fiscal integrity  - reduced projected spending over the following decade by $500 billion, representing a 9% cut across the Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marines. The impact has been softened by paying for operations in the Middle East "off the books", but there is enough pain to bring cries from defense contractors, military leaders, and Republican politicians. Active duty military personnel have declined from about 1,400,000 in 2008 to about 1,350,000 today with the difference largely coming from the Army. (The current budget deal restores half of the FY2016 military and domestic spending cuts, much to the chagrin of the fiscal conservatives. More on this another day.) 

       - Most of our NATO allies fall short of the 2% of GDP minimum required by the alliance. While there was a meaningful NATO participation in Afghanistan and Iraq during the Bush presidency, there has been little enthusiasm to engage militarily in the Middle East during the Obama era. Few want to be in front if we lead from behind. 

       -  As President Obama announced in 2014 and is apparent today, there is no strategy to use the US military to defeat ISIS. At least on the margin, how the military is used is more important than how large it is.

       - The president has agreed that, in the best of cases, Iran will be able to join the nuclear weapons club in 15 years. 

   2.  America's dominant position in the world economy is being diminished. Some of this is inevitable, with China's economy growing at 7+ % per and ours struggling along at under 2%; some is despite the administrations efforts; some just slips by under the radar. 

        - The Trans-Pacific Partnership reached with 11 other Pacific rim countries (excluding China) offers a chance for America to re-assert leadership in alignment with the administration's "pivot to Asia" - if it can pass Congress, and if it is implemented by an administration which understands our position of strength.  Let's give credit where it is due. 

        - But, in the realm of "Oh, I think that I heard something about that":  The International Monetary Fund has accepted the Chinese yuan as an official "reserve currency" along with the euro, the Japanese yen, and the British pound, setting the stage for a less influential greenback; several western allies have signed on with the China-centric Asian Investment Bank - a competitor of the US/Europe-centric World Bank; and it has been necessary for Congress to block the administration's attempt to turn over ICANN, the hub of the internet which assigns domain names among other things, to an international organization for no apparent reason other than to appease critics of NSA spying. (US invention and domination of the Internet has played a major role in its development and open structure.)

    3. When one ponders the Left's enthusiasm for the "global warming" narrative, the answer is summarized in the Paris Conference premise that world leaders have agreed to act as one to fundamentally transform the global economy, destroying companies and countries that have been preeminent in a carbon energy economy - and forcing the evil developed world to pay $100 billion to the poorer countries to subsidize their efforts to develop green energy. With the United States possessing the world's greatest coal and oil deposits, it is not too hard to see where President Obama would like to take us in the interest of global fairness.   

    It really is not too late. (Re-read paragraph 1.) But, it is imperative that the trajectory be reversed. Those pondering the 2016 Republican field should recognize that there are two questions - who would be the  best president?, and who has the greatest probability of being elected? Within the top 10 candidates, the second question is the only one which matters.

                                                                                            ----- 

This week's video is a short politically incorrect discussion of "climate change" by one of the founders of GreenPeace. 

bill bowen - 12/17/2015

Syrian Refugees: Restoring The Proper Focus

       Democrats always seem to be better at Public Relations than are Republicans. When faced with an indefensible position, they change the subject.

     Here we have a totally discredited Middle East strategy in which Hillary Clinton is inextricably complicit, particularly in Libya, but also in its grand design. We have a narcissist president who cannot admit, probably even to himself, that his policies have encouraged, then abandoned a revolution resulting in hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of migrants overwhelming neighboring countries and threatening to overwhelm Europe. We have his Secretary of State running for president, caught between the public's repudiation of the president's foreign policies and her need to demonstrate enough loyalty to retain the support of Obama loyalists. So, what is the focus of discussion? Refugees - a difficult subject which will divide people of good will across the political spectrum and which will likely look different once the emotional reaction to the Paris attacks has had a chance to calm down.  

    Let's restore the proper focus. 

    First on the Obama strategy, something that could only come from somebody with a totally non-American world view. Perhaps the son of a disgruntled Kenyan anti-British imperialism father; perhaps a childhood companion of a proud communist party member; perhaps a twenty-year parishioner of a "God Damn America" preacher; perhaps a colleague of a Weather Underground police killer. Who could possibly have seen this coming?

    The most recent things that should be getting the headlines:

    - Calling ISIS "contained" - just before the Paris attack, but shortly after deadly ISIS attacks in Beirut, Turkey, and the Russian airliner in Egypt indicated a shift in ISIS strategy to attacks beyond their core "caliphate".  A year ago al Queda was focused on attacking the West while ISIS was concentrating on building their proto-state in Iraq and Syria. No more. ISIS now has affiliates in Libya, Afghanistan, Egypt, Yemen, Bengladesh, ... No credibility remains for Obama - the Junior Varsity claim of 2014; the Red Line threat of 2013; and now the "contained" claim of 2015. We all suffer when the president of the United States is delusional. 

    - The refusal to reconsider strategy in the face of obvious failure. ISIS cannot be allowed a sanctuary; air power without ground forces cannot succeed; our NATO allies will not contribute troops if we do not; we cannot out of hand reject French President Hollande's proposal of an alliance with Russia; we must provide a safe haven within Syria for dissidents; perhaps the stability of Assad in much of Syria should be accepted. Instead, we get a promise to stay the course on the existing strategy, including the release of more jihadist leaders held at Guantanamo.  

    - There is a real threat to Judeo-Christian western civilization if the Middle East cannot be stabilized and most of the latest influx of refugees returned home. The president of France declares that we are at war. The leader of the Free World and the Democratic presidential candidates will not utter the phrase "violent Islamic extremism". 

      It has been much too easy for the president to divert attention by ringing the bell on refugees. Obama announces that we will take 10,000; almost all of the Republican governors announce that their states will not take any; presidential candidates run to exclude Syrian Muslims; the House passes legislation to stiffen vetting requirements. The airwaves are filled with stories about the limits of governors' authority, the anti-American nature of religious tests, the commitment of the administration to do thorough vetting; the racial and religious insensitivity of Republicans; and on and on. 

    So, what are some simple refugee proposals that could let attention shift back where it belongs?

        - Nothing is certain, but allowing 10,000 new refugees over a period of two years can be very low risk. There are millions to choose from. Even President Hollande of France has agreed to take 30,000. 

        - The vetting discussion is backwards, assuming that someone shows up on our doorstep and we need to figure out who he is. The better thought is to figure out who we want and to go get them. The criteria?

            1. Those who have known sponsors here;

            2. Those who have been outwardly aligned with us in their home countries - like the translators in Iraq who were subsequently abandoned, or the families of the New Syrian Army fighters who we have recruited; 

            3. Those who face annihilation at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists - Christians; Yazidis.

    There is also the important consideration of what is in our self interest. We are already a country with large numbers of Muslim immigrants from areas of conflict - Bosnia; Yemen; Somalia; Iraq; Afghanistan; Libya. We are also open, without visa requirements, to people with passports from the European Union and other places where Islamic terrorists reside. Our southern border remains open to anyone seriously interested in sneaking in. What is needed is a positive relation between the American Muslim community and law enforcement. As we renew the debate about electronic surveillance, we also need to bolster the FBI's capability to gather intelligence the old fashioned way  - better that it be with friends who we have brought here than with a dissociated immigrant community which has been rejected. 

                                                                        -----

    This week's video is President Obama's post-Paris speech in which he declares "we have the right strategy and we are going to see it through". 

bill bowen - 11/20/15. 

    

The Politics of Religion and Morality

    Conventional wisdom has it that Republicans had best not speak of religion and morality, even when a majority of Americans agree with them. If they do, it is essential to be right on the facts, and it is helpful to be understated. Recent comments by the Dr Carson and the Pope show a huge contrast in political experience in an age of Political Correctness. 

The Constitutional Framework

    Few principles are as important to the success of America as a nation of diverse immigrants as is religious freedom. Coming from the battles of English religious wars and the persecution of minorities by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Founding Fathers used language which Dr Carson forgot and the Pope understood: 

   Article VI, paragraph 3 is explicit: The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. 

   The First Amendment is more frequently at issue: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Dr Carson

  The "rookie mistake" exchange with Chuck Todd which got Carson in trouble: 

      Todd:  "Should a President’s faith matter?"

      Carson: "Well, I guess it depends on what that faith is. If it’s inconsistent with the values and principles of America, then of course it should matter. But if it fits within the realm of America and is consistent with the Constitution, no problem."

     Todd: "So do you believe that Islam is consistent with the Constitution?"

     Carson:  "No, I don’t; I do not. I would not advocate that we put a Muslim in charge of this nation. I absolutely would not agree with that."

    The media obviously loved it. It is not a claim that President Obama is a Muslim; it is not a claim that the Constitution prohibits a Muslim from being president; it is not even a criticism of the President for refusing to acknowledge "fundamentalist Islamic terrorism". It is an opinion held by a majority of voters. 

    Carson's next-day clarification set a standard for getting beyond political correctness and speaking what the majority of people understand: Sharia law is central to Islam, and is fundamentally opposed to American values - it denies free speech, the rights of women, and the rights of religious minorities. Carson's answer was in the context of the Muslim concept that the state's purpose is to serve the religion. In his opinion, if a Muslim disavowed Sharia law they would be a heretic within the religion, and he would have no problem with their candidacy; he would be equally opposed to either a Christian or a Muslim theocrat.     

     This is probably too nuanced for Chuck Todd or the New York Times, but in the post-911 age it is important that the country come to understand Carson's point. Unfortunately, the rationale came a day late.  

Pope Francis

    While the bulk of the coverage of the Pope's visit has focused on left-leaning policies where he is aligned with President Obama - climate change; immigration; anti-capitalism - there is a nugget where he has pointedly stood up to the President's trampling of religious liberty in ObamaCare.

    In his Wednesday speech, the Pope praised US bishops for their efforts in defending religious liberty “from everything that would threaten or compromise it.”  Lest there be any misunderstanding of his meaning, he later made an unscheduled stop at the convent of The Little Sisters of the Poor to show support for their federal lawsuit against the mandate that their insurance policies include contraception. 

    This provision of Obamacare that would seem to violate the Constitutional provision that no law shall abridge the free exercise of religion has been burbling along since pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak of Michigan got rolled by Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama in 2009 with a failed promise that he could amend the language of the Affordable Care Act to include a limitation of funding for abortions. At least the Pope threw one carrot to the traditionalists in the American Catholic church.  

   This election season promises to be full of wedge issues for aspiring politicians to use to gain attention - the Kentucky clerk supported by Mike Huckaby and Ted Cruz; the Planned Parenthood videos described (with a bit of poetic license) by Carly Fiorina; the immigrants condemned by Trump. This is the season where the brand gets damaged, even if the argument is correct. Hopefully the leaders will be fact-based and understated, and the obvious also-ran's will follow Scott Walker's advice and drop out rather than try to out-Trump Trump.

                                            ----- 

    This week's video is a quick summary of Carly Fiorina's top lines from the September 16 debate - the best performance by any candidate at either of the two debates thus far. 

bill bowen - 9/25/15   

   

 

 

 

Obama / Putin / Assad: Act II

    Back in 2012 Vladimir Putin pulled Barack Obama's chestnuts out of the fire in Syria by orchestrating a partial turnover of Syria's chemical weapons to the UN after Obama had declared a "red line" if they were used, Assad's troops deployed chlorine and sarin gas anyway, and Obama was unwilling or unable to respond. Russia's current call for direct US-Russian military talks on Syria represent a Second Act in the play with Putin offering a way out for a cornered Obama.  

    In humanitarian terms, it is none too soon. Since the civil war began in 2011, some 200,000 Syrians have been killed; out of a pre-war population of 23 million, there are now some 1.9 million living in Turkey,  1.1 million in Lebanon, 630,000 in Jordan, 130,000 in Egypt, 250,000 in Iraq, 200,000 in Saudi Arabia, and 100,000 in the Gulf States as well as 7.6 million internally displaced in Syria. Billions of dollars of regional and global humanitarian aid have been spent despite the sharp decline in the region's oil revenues. Nearly half of the million soul immigrant wave overwhelming Europe originates in Syria. Many of the moderates have left or been killed. 

    In June, President Obama admitted to not having a strategy to defeat ISIS, whose ranks are growing despite a year long aerial campaign. Since Obama encouraged the rebellion by declaring "Assad must go" in 2011 and subsequently rejected the proposal of his military advisers to arm the Free Syrian Army, ISIS has established their caliphate capital in northern Syria and the militant Islamists (the al Queda-aligned al Nusra Front as well as ISIS) have emerged as the primary force opposing the Assad regime.  This week the top US commander in the region admitted that the plan to train a secular military force was a complete failure. 

    Unlike the US, the Russians have a plan - and they are implementing it. With the cooperation of Iran and Iraq, they have fortified an air base in the territory of Assad's core Alawite supporters, and are bringing in infantry, armor, artillery, and attack helicopters. The Russian naval supply and maintenance facility at Tartus will be protected. If Damascus falls, Assad's supporters will have a safe-haven. Russian influence in the Middle East will be at its greatest in decades. 

    The offer to Obama from Putin? No more US support for the overthrow of Assad. Free reign for the US to assemble a coalition to attack ISIS. Military coordination to ensure that Russian and American aircraft and other forces do not inadvertently attack each other. Tacit acknowledgement that the US strategy of replacing tyrants with chaos did not work in Iraq or Libya, and should not be pursued in Syria. 

    Sounds like a plan. The Sunni Saudi's and the Turks won't like accommodation with the Shia Alawites and their Shia Iranian and Hezbollah supporters. But, by now - particularly after the Iranian nuclear negotiations - our allies know what they can expect from the Obama administration. In any case, the Saudi priority is the existential threat from ISIS and the Turkish priority is keeping the Kurds in check.

    Elections have consequences. American elections have global consequences.   

                                         -----

     This week's video is my selection for the best by-play in the September 16 presidential debate. 

 

bill bowen - 9/18/15

        

        

    

                                    

        

Iran: A Sober View

     Within hours of last week's Iran nuclear deal the Left-wing Democrats, the Israel lobby, and the Obama-haters had all expressed their studied conclusions. Realistically, it will take a few months to understand whether we should be praising Barack Obama and John Kerry (no matter how much we may dislike their politics) or comparing them to "peace in our time" Neville Chamberlain.

    For better or worse, the deal is done - Mitch McConnell and John Boehner have agreed to let it be an "agreement" rather than a treaty, meaning that two-thirds majorities in both houses would need to vote to override a veto rather than the burden being on the President to get two-thirds of the Senate to approve a treaty.  He took it to the United Nations Security Council where he got a 15 to 0 vote before taking it to Congress. There are two secret side agreements whose status is not yet clear - one dealing with earlier Iranian testing of detonation devices, and the other dealing with international inspectors investigation of military aspects of Iran's program.  

    So, what to make of the deal? There are three categories of considerations.   

    1. The least important - except to the families directly involved. Some felt that we should have insisted on the release of four Americans being held in Iran. Fortunately, President Obama may have learned something from his naive exchange of five Taliban leaders for an Army deserter. Some reporters get emotional interviews, but this was not even a distraction. 

   2. Important, but with indeterminate long term results - the shift of power in the Middle East. 

        - Since the overthrow of the Shah in 1979 the United States has been on the side of the Sunnis in an effort to contain Shiite Iran and their proxies in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and now Yemen. In addition to the Israelis, the Saudis, Turks, Egyptians, and Gulf States have operated under in an environment where they could rely on an American patron to protect them. This is no longer obvious.  

        - With the end of sanctions, Iran will have the capability of releasing some $2 billion of oil in storage and projects an ability to expand oil exports by some $10 billion per year. Some impounded assets have been released during the talks, but now some $120 billion will be available. For perspective, the World Bank pegs the GDP of Iran at $415 billion, with Iraq half that, and Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen in the $45 to 75 billion range. Iran will have ample capacity to help their proxies. The UN embargo against selling military equipment to and from Iran will end in five years, so weapons deliveries may take awhile.   

        - There may be more clarity about the war against the Sunni terrorist organizations, Al Queda and ISIS. With less animosity between the United States and Iran, it may be easier to support the government of Iraq; in Syria we are more likely to prioritize the defeat of ISIS and the al Queda affiliate (the al Nusra Front) over the overthrow of Assad. This would be in our interest, although Turkey and Saudi Arabia would not see it that way.  

        - As important as the relative Sunni / Shia balance in the Middle East is, containment of the Shia was not the purpose of the sanctions. Russia, China, and the United States joined the UK, France, and Germany in 2006 (under President Bush) to stop Iran's nuclear program. Sanctions were a tool agreed to by geopolitical adversaries; impacts on relative power in the region were a byproduct, not the purpose. Isolationists can can argue that we should let the water seek its own level anyway. 

    3. Critically important for long term global security - the strict containment of Iran's nuclear program. 

        - Since 1968, 191 countries have signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. (North Korea subsequently withdrew.) The Treaty recognizes only the five permanent Security Council members - the US, the UK, Russia, China, and France - as nuclear weapons states, although it is widely understood that India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel are in the club. Many states have given up their programs - South Africa; Libya; the Ukraine; Kazakhstan. Aside from North Korea, the nuclear clock has been rolled back. 

        - Iran's development of nuclear power began in the 1950's with the "Atoms for Peace" program under President Eisenhower.  With Russian help, they started a peaceful nuclear power plant at Bushehr in 2011, all perfectly fine with the NPT.  There has been unacknowledged research and development on detonators and the attachment of nuclear weapons to missiles as well refinement of uranium approaching weapons grade levels.  A 2012 US intelligence estimate concluded that Iran was doing research on the production of nuclear weapons, but was not attempting to produce them. An IAEA report on this activity by December 15 will presumably acknowledge that the Iranians have violated their NPT commitments - an interesting, but irrelevant footnote.   

        - On the plus side, the agreement calls for a reduction of two thirds of Iran's centrifuges, a 98% reduction in their inventory of enriched uranium, limitations on their ability to enrich to weapons grade, and an obtrusive inspection regime to oversee 24/7 monitoring of the two major Iranian facilities and the entire nuclear supply chain.  

        - On the minus side, it is only for 10 years (hoping for change in Iranian attitudes), it allows for a delay of 24 days before inspections at any site beyond a few, it assumes a highly unlikely "snap back" of sanctions in the event of Iranian violations, it allows imports and research on intercontinental missiles in eight years, and it has those two pesky secret side deals.  

        - An exhaustive set of expert opinions by the 70-year old Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ranges from praise for the structure and pervasiveness of the monitoring arrangement, to concern about the absence of access to Iranian scientists, and concern about the precedent set for the other Non-Proliferation Treaty signatories by allowing Iran to process fuel. Even without a political agenda, knowledgeable experts can disagree. 

    Healthy skepticism should be exercised for the next 90 day study period, but by all indications, the horse has left the barn and the US congressional vote will be a meaningless side show. 

                                            -----

  This week's bonus is an undercover video of  Planned Parenthood's senior medical director describing the organization's program for selling body parts from aborted fetuses. 

bill bowen - 7/24/15

Immigration: A Global View

    The second decade of the 21st century has seen a surge in controversies about immigration. There are some lessons to be learned. 

    The highlights:

    - At least 25,000 Rohingya - an impoverished and persecuted Muslim minority of about one million in Buddhist Myanmar (formerly Burma) - have fled by sea to Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia, with thousands dying at sea or in smuggler camps. At this point there is a stand-off between their destination countries which do not want them and Myanmar which denies them citizenship.

    - Some 3,000,000 refugees from the Syrian conflict have entered neighboring countries, and 300,000 have sought asylum in the European Union - primarily in Germany and Sweden. 

    - In 2014, some 200,000 refugees from North Africa and the Middle East crossed the Mediterranean, largely from Libya to Italy, with thousands drowning in a growing string of tragedies. The European Union's developing response is military interdiction of the smugglers in the absence of any effective Libyan government, and a contentious quota system to distribute the survivors among the 28 EU members based on the economic capacity of each country. 

    - In the UK, where net immigration runs about 300,000 in a country of 65,000,000, the rise of the United Kingdom Independence Party has forced Prime Minister Cameron to promise a difficult renegotiation of the benefits  available to the half that come from poorer EU countries and to resist the EU quota plan. Elsewhere in Europe the focus of "nativist" parties like UKIP is more toward the deluge of Muslim immigrants.

    A few comments on the macro trends:

    - Contrary to what the global warming alarmists might promulgate, these migrations have nothing to do with rising tides or famine due to changing weather patterns. In fact, over the past two decades world hunger has decreased by a third despite the addition of 1.5 billion people. The causes? Political stability in China, sub-Sahara Africa, India, and South America; containment of major diseases; and the application of technologies such as genetically modified seeds - thank you Monsanto. 

    - The downside is the arc of failed states from Pakistan, to Afghanistan, to Yemen, to Iraq, to Syria, to Somalia, to Libya. All Sunni Muslim. None showing promise of a better future.

    - In the telecommunications era every successful migrant can encourage his friends back home with stories of "the land of milk and honey", and there are reporters to cover every sinking boat or starving family - well, maybe not in central Asia or Africa.

    - The general absence of politically-motivated violence by the immigrants is striking, the al Queda and ISIS calls for jihad notwithstanding.   

    And what does it mean for us?

    -  If the situation is dire enough in Mexico and Central America no wall or border patrol will keep migrants out. 

    - The world has more sympathy for refugees from wars than it does for economic immigrants. Almost all of our immigrants are of the economic variety. 

    - The largest problems involve immigrants who come from markedly different cultures - Muslims in post-Christian Europe; the Rohingya in Buddhist Myanmar. In comparison, Hispanics in the United States are much more able to assimilate. 

    One does have to give thanks for living in the US of A, and perhaps to sing along with the Star Spangled Banner at the next ball game.  

                                            -----

This week's video is a trumpet solo by a young Dutch girl backed by the orchestra of Andre Reiu. The backstory - each year on the anniversary of the liberation of Holland in World War II, there is a celebration honoring those who died in the battle, including the 8,301 Americans who have been "adopted" by Dutch families. This piece, Il Silenzio, was adapted from Taps under a commission by the Dutch government, and has been played as the closing performance since 1965.  

bill bowen - 6/5/15 

Obama / Kerry: Peace In Our Time

    These are dangerous times. Politics and polling aside, we are seeing the end game of the Obama administration's policy of withdrawal from the Middle East. Unlike Obama's domestic legacy, Obamacare, which can be absorbed and corrected over time, the administration's attempt to restructure the balance of power in the Middle East - away from our traditional allies in Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt, and toward our 35-year adversary Iran - will have generational consequences. Israel has had the loudest complaining voice in the American debate, but Saudi Arabia is at the epicenter of the looming conflict.

    The problem has two dimensions:

    1. The potential nuclear arms race.

        - At least on April 2, 2015, it seems that John Kerry, his counterpart from Iran, and negotiators from the UK, Germany, France, Russia, and China have reached the framework of an agreement which, in exchange for eliminating economic sanctions, contains the Iranian nuclear program for at least ten years, provides extensive verification, and assures at least a year's lead time and a "snap back" of sanctions should the Iranians renege on their part. Details are to be filled in by June 30, but if the deal unfolds as it seems it will, the administration deserves credit for keeping the genie in the bottle.

        - Attention should expand to include Saudi Arabia which, by virtue of its oil wealth and as the keeper of the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina, is filling the leadership role of the Sunni Arab world. Among the regimes to have long benefitted from Saudi largesse is nuclear-armed fellow-Sunni state Pakistan. The quid pro quo?  There is broad belief that Pakistan will provide nuclear weapons to Saudi Arabia if asked; the question is now whether the Saudi's will seek the technology to match Iran themselves.  

    2. The expansion of Iranian influence throughout the Middle East.

        -  Whatever its other merits, the removal of Saddam Hussein in 2003 eliminated the major obstacle to Iranian ascendency. With the withdrawal of American troops by President Obama, the Iraqi Shiite majority government has migrated toward a natural alliance with Iran -  clumsily under Maliki; more carefully under Haider al-Abadi. For both the largest source of external military support is from Iran, not the West.  

        - In a fragmented neighborhood with weak central governments, modest financial and military assistance to Shia minorities has allowed Iran to dominate Syria with its Allawite regime, and Lebanon with Hezbiollah. The Iranian-supported Houthi movement in Yemen, brings the specter of an Iranian proxy to Saudi Arabia's southern border. With the removal of sanctions as part of the nuclear deal, much of the economic benefit is needed at home, but more is available for the proxies.

        - ISIS actually brings clarity for the traditional Sunni regimes - Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia, the Gulf states - who are looking for Saudi Arabia to lead where the United States once did. The combination of a generational change in Riyadh, the rise of ISIS, and an emboldened Iran promise to elevate President Obama's most hated ally to a leadership role which the more cautious King Abdullah had long avoided.    

   The underlying question for President Obama - as we leave the Middle East to its own devices, will he, acting without the support of Congress, tilt one way or the other - as the officially-neutral Nixon administration tilted toward Pakistan in the South Asia conflict of 1971?  Much to the chagrin of our long time allies, the real price of a nuclear deal with Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei may well be a tilt toward Iran.

                                                        -----

    This week's video is an interview with rookie Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas who drafted a letter to the Iranian leaders signed by 47 Republican senators explaining that Congressional approval is needed for any meaningful agreement.   

bill bowen - 4/3/15  

 

 

 

 

 

  

2015: A Time to Govern

                                                    Ecclesiastes 3

     To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.     

    Solomon could have added "a time to campaign and a time to govern". If ever there is a time in our political cycle where the crops have been planted and undisturbed growth can occur, it should be year 7 of an eight year presidency. The passion of two presidential campaigns is behind us; the administration's relationship with the opposition party has been firmly established so little posturing is necessary; the president wants to build a real legacy; the party out of power wants to demonstrate that it could govern responsibly; the next generation has not yet arrived on the stage.

    A few observations: 

        - Slowly, painfully, the administration is acknowledging that Islamic terrorism (while Obama will not yet call it that) did not die with Osama bin Laden. Six months after beginning significant, ongoing combat with ISIS in Iraq and Syria the President has belatedly asked for Congressional authorization for the use of force, including the potential limited use of ground forces - which should be easily forthcoming. He will finally retreat from his disastrous ideological obsession to remove all ground troops from Iraq - which won him the Democratic nomination in 2008. With the help of the Kurds and the Iranians, the new government in Baghdad appears capable of eventually re-taking much of the territory lost in 2014. A unified statement of American commitment will be a big help.

        - With the help of six years of cheap money from the Federal Reserve, and a Republican Congress which has slowed the growth of government through the 2013 sequester, the American economy has gradually recovered from the 2008 financial collapse to the point where we are adding 250,000 jobs per month. The discussion is now about inequality and the people left behind, but the world's largest economy is in a position where we - as the loudest voice in the G-20 - can agree that it is good for the rest of the world to add debt and devalue their currencies while we do the heavy lifting with rising rates and a strong dollar. Fortunately, the Republicans are in a position to ignore the President's budget submission.

        - Somewhere in the basement of the palace in Riyadh, a few of King Abdullah's grandsons have run the calculation of the supply/demand balance that will yield an oil price which will blunt the expansion of high cost fracking and deep water drilling. Somewhere between $50 and $80 per barrel the boomtowns in North Dakota will slow down, the social programs in Venezuela will be cut back, the Iranians will have to further tighten their belts, and the Russians will accelerate their long term supply agreements with China.  With 10% of the S&P 500 market capitalization in energy companies there will be prayers (to Allah?) for the $80 figure. With gasoline prices around $2.25 per gallon the politicians are bragging about their economic expertise.  

        - We can get on with a serious approach to cybersecurity, by creating a consolidated center for sharing data on public and private breaches. In this season the voices against new government agencies and intrusion into personal privacy take a back seat to those who worry about what the Russians, the Chinese, or the North Koreans could do to our electric grid - or to Wall Street.

        2015 may not be a good year for Fox and MSNBC. The public is not much interested in the background murmur of which consultants have signed on with Jeb Bush or Scott Walker; the battles over Obamacare and immigration seem "so 2014."  A lot of work is going on behind the scenes, but for now the administration, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell are interested in governing. And that's a good thing.

                                                                      -----

     This week's video is a brief tribute to Jon Stewart who announced this week that he will be leaving "The Daily Show" after 17 years of informing the under 30 crowd with his quirky version of the left-slanted fake news.

bill bowen - 2/13/15 

Defending the Defenders: Let's Start with Truth

    The behavior of the intelligence community post - 9/11 is a serious subject, requiring an honest and sometimes painful discussion. Ditto the relationship between local police forces and minority communities. Unfortunately, there is more upside for provocateurs like Al Sharpton and Sean Hannity in sensationalizing alleged misbehavior than in addressing the difficult realities, while politicians such as Diane Feinstein are so focused on their objectives that they do not understand the damage done to the argument, their credibility, and the country by leading with alleged facts that are easily proven to be false.

    The 6000 page Feinstein report on "enhanced interrogation" contains four key conclusions:

       1. The methods did not lead to the collection of critical intelligence;

        2. The CIA provided extensive inaccurate information about the operation of the program and its effectiveness to both lawmakers and the public;

        3. The management of the program was deeply flawed; and

        4. It was far more brutal than the CIA led lawmakers and the public to believe.

    The concise response by six former CIA directors and Deputy Directors - none of whom were interviewed by the Senator's committee - should be read in its entirety. Please do take a few minutes to read it. There is no denying what was done, and that in the heat of the battle there were mistakes made. What the directors discuss in detail are the results obtained - the start of the trail that led to Osama Bin Laden; the foiling of a Southeast Asia -based plot for a 9/11-type attack on the West Coast; the capture of numerous al Queda leaders, including the leader of the 2002 Bali bombing; much of the information in the instrumental 9/11 Commission Report and the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on al Queda. Likewise, the former Directors document their extensive communication about the program with the Bush White House, the Department of Justice, and leaders of Congress.

    The Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee felt it necessary to release the report in their last week in the majority, and Senator Feinstein is apparently still miffed that the CIA monitored her committee. The report will have a greater impact internationally than domestically as leaders from ISIS to Moscow,Tehran, and Beijing use it to undermine American influence, threaten our diplomats, and recruit jihadists. Domestically, most people will see it as a confirmation of what they already knew as they cheer on Jack Bauer in the TV drama "24".  It will be hard to start the desired discussion since the highly partisan committee led with the obvious lie that 13 years of safety have nothing to do with the CIA's aggressive actions in defense of the country.

    The response to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri bears some similarities to the CIA report, in that it begins with a false premise which has made useful dialogue difficult. On the substance, we know that immediately before the confrontation with Officer Wilson, Brown had threatened a clerk as he robbed a convenience store, that he tried to reach into Officer Wilson's car and grab his gun, that the forensics and credible witnesses show that he was charging the officer when he was shot, and that a properly convened and instructed grand jury - containing three African Americans - interviewed 60 witnesses and reviewed the forensics before deciding that he should not be indicted. If we are to be a nation of laws, the system worked.

    The killing of Eric Garner in Staten Island a week later shows that a conversation about police procedures, community relations, and the grand jury system is needed in some places. Unfortunately, the anti-police Left had already used their ammunition in Ferguson where the story line was false - getting assurances of investigations from Eric Holder and President Obama, instigating riots and looting, pumping stories about racial profiling and police abuses. It was also inconvenient to the national story line that the cop in Missouri was innocent while the crew in ultra-liberal Mayor Bill De Blasio's city, led by an African American squad leader no less, was caught on tape and looked to the world to be totally guilty. Unfortunately, the public's attention span is short and the false narrative had been on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox beyond its shelf life.  

    If we are going to make progress, the conversation needs to be honest. Policing in high crime areas is difficult and dangerous. These areas are disproportionately African American. About 100 of the 400 people killed by local police each year are African American; about 20 of those are under 21 years old. About 150 police officers die each year in the line of duty. The great majority of the 6,000 or so African Americans murdered each year are killed by other African Americans.  Much of the violence is directly due to gangs and drugs, and less directly due to broken families, poor education, and unemployment. Very little is due to police abuse. Ethnic communities need cops who are representative of the community, but qualified recruits are hard to find. These are the issues that need to be addressed.

    Those who defend the public are due a debt of thanks and due process. One has to wonder what in the psychology of their attackers - whether idealistic or cynical - causes them to build their case on a premise that is easily disproven by the facts.   

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    This week's video is a short autobiography by Janet Nguyen, a Vietnamese refugee who is one of the "four flowers", Asian American women Republicans who were elected for the first time in November in Southern California.

bill bowen - 12/13/14         

    

       

 

 

 

Confronting Radical Islam: Key Allies

    President Obama's Middle East policy is imploding, a spasm of activity seems to be disconnected from specific objectives, and we are assured that the deployment of an Army division headquarters to Iraq does not constitute "boots on the ground."  Egypt wants him to expand the fight against ISIS to include Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. Others point to Boko Haram in Nigeria and an al Queda splinter group in Algeria. There is a real and growing concern about the spread of terrorist acts to Europe and the United States. With 1.6 billion Muslims in the world, over 3 million in the United States, and 44 million in Europe, we've got to figure out the immediate battle plan and the broader approach to the Muslim world.

    President Obama's September 23 speech at the United Nations provides a typically eloquent framework. True, it got carried off into the Ukraine, climate change, ebola, and Ferguson Missouri. True, it is naive in claiming that the Golden Rule is a universal aspiration and that Islam is a religion of peace. True, it would be nice if he followed the constitution and sought Congressional approval for his actions against ISIS before touting them to the United Nations. Nevertheless, his writers did a good job of laying out four tasks for the world community:

    1. Degrade and destroy ISIS;

    2. Call for the Muslim communities to explicitly, consistently, and forefully reject the ideology of ISIS and al Queda;  

   3. Address sectarian conflict, particularly between the Sunnis and the Shia; 

   4. Focus on the potential of youth in Muslim countries.

    Good thoughts. Where we were once concerned about a few training camps in Afghanistan and the risk to Pakistan's nuclear weapons, we now have proliferating safe havens, worldwide recruiting, and a greatly escalated risk of home grown terrorism. But who in the Muslim world will really lead the effort? There are a few options, each with some baggage, but that's what vision and diplomacy are about.

    1. Sunni Egypt. The Sunnis do not have a pope, but they do have al Azhar University in Cairo, the preeminent center of study for serious religious scholars, and the badge of authenticity for imams across the Sunni Muslim world. Leadership of al Azhar was comfortably moderate during the Mubarak regime, and is again under the al Sisi regime. Had the brief reign of the Muslim Brotherhood been extended, there would undoubtedly have been a change of management and direction.

   2. Sunni Turkey. The Turks have their problems - anger about rejection for European Union membership because of their Muslim religion; a restive Kurdish minority in the southeast who identify with their brethren in Iraq, Iran, and Syria; and internal politics characterized by a greatly decreased role of the military and a growingly authoritarian president. Nevertheless, Turkey is a democracy, is a member of NATO, and has a long history with most of the countries in the Middle East.

  3. Sunni Saudi Arabia. The Saudis control the holy sites of Mecca and Medina, and the world's largest oil reserves. More than President Obama, they have an existential reason to destroy ISIS, and were responsible for assembling the coalition of threatened monarchies - Jordan, the Emirates, Bahrain; and Qatar - which has joined the United States in air strikes.

  4. Shia Iran. The counterweight for Saudi Arabia carries big problems - support for Assad in Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon; the nuclear program - the dominant US interest. Thankfully, the jihadis are virtually all Sunni, and it would be enough for Iran to sit out the ISIS campaign.

    Hillary did nothing to develop relations with Egypt, Turkey, or Saudi Arabia, and Kerry has done no more. We are holding up arms shipments to Egypt because of the overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood; we badger Turkey about their internal politics; and Saudi Arabia - well, they were Bush's friends. We need a Kissinger rather than a Carter.

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    This week's video - a 2012 visit by Hillary Clinton to meet with the head of the Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, where she was met with a barrage of rocks, tomatoes, and shoes as well as concern by the Coptic Christians and the Israelis about the Obama administration's support for President Morsi.

 bill bowen - 9/26/14

    

     

     

Putin's Poodle

    Back in the 80's Margaret Thatcher's critics in the Labor Party referred to the British Prime Minister as "Reagan's Poodle". The two conservative icons sometimes disagreed during their largely overlapping and transformative times in office (economic sanctions against Russia; "Star Wars"), but generally believed in a "special relationship" between the United States and Britain as well as parallel domestic and foreign policy strategies. Both confronted labor; both favored a robust international presence.  Opponents of Thatcher's policies tried to appeal to British nationalism by picturing her as being subordinate to the American president, but the personal bond remained strong.  

    The parallel today is certainly not the relationship between Barack Obama and David Cameron. The Conservative Party Prime Minister has a large raft of problems - the potential secession of Scotland from the United Kingdom; growth of the right wing United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) which would seceed from the European Union; and the threat of jihadi's returning to stoke England's substantial Muslim population. For his part, Obama has made it clear that there is no "special relationship" - snubbing Thatcher's 2013 funeral and breaking with The UK on Middle East policy. Some of this is understandable, given the Left/Right split of the Democratic president and the Conservative prime minister; some is due to Obama's anti imperial world view as reflected in Dinesh D'Souza's "2016: Obama's America". If not Cameron, who is Obama's sidekick?

    Ironically, the world leader that Barack Obama keeps bumping into is not David Cameron, Angela Merkel of Germany, David Harper of Canada, Li Keqing of China, Shinzo Abe of Japan, Narendra Modi of India, or Ban Ki-moon of the United Nations. It is Vladimir Putin of Russia - and there is little doubt about who the poodle is.

    The beginning of the end of the relationship probably occured in Libya in 2011, when Putin allowed a United Nations resolution to protect civilians from the Kadhafy regime, and the western allies went on to support his overthrow and murder, ultimately resulting in near-total chaos. For Obama, the "leading from behind" euphamism was born; for chess grand master Putin, it was clear that Obama could hardly play checkers.

    The poodle relationship clearly emerged in Syria later in 2011, when Obama declared - without any plan - that Assad must go. Then came the "red line" on use of chemical weapons which was promptly violated by Assad, leaving Obama totally exposed. Putin grabbed the leash by getting Assad to agree to (mostly) give up his chemical stockpiles, Obama slinked off, and after three years of dithering the civil war is approaching 200,000 killed, ISIS has emerged as the greatest threat to world peace in decades, and we have no strategy. If we are lucky, Putin will give one to Obama; he does, afterall, have an interest in eliminating ISIS and he seems to shape events.

    The facts in the Ukraine are different, but the relationship between the leaders is the same. We and the Europeans encourage the Ukrainian leadership to shift their alignment to the west and oust an elected president; Putin takes the Crimea, we do little; Putin supports secessionists in eastern Ukraine, we do little; Putin offers a ceasefire with a likely de facto partition of the country (as he did in Georgia in 2008); Obama visits Estonia to emphasize that what is OK in non-NATO south central Europe should not be attmpted in the northern NATO countries. Putin yanks on the leash.

   Hopefully, Obama's national security team is smart enough to recognize the difference between eastern Europe and the Middle East. In the prior case, there are some messy border circumstances left over from the breakup of the Soviet Union, and it is natural to expect some adjustments when Russia has a strong leader and the American leader is weak. ISIS is quantum more dangerous for its neighbors, and for world security - if we have to accept a Russian solution in Syria, that is better than the Obama administration's emerging "containment" objective. Arf!!!

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     This week's video is from an old West Wing episode - hardly a case of art imitating life in the Obama era.

bill bowen - 9/5/14