Right in San Francisco

Reflections Upon Leaving California

    This will be the last blog at Right in San Francisco for a time, as I am consumed by the efforts of selling a home in San Francisco, moving, and buying a home in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The move will leave behind a political understanding of California derived from 20 years of engagement with the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury, the San Francisco GOP, the California GOP, the Sacramento Seminar (a weekly bi-partisan discussion group with knowledgeable members and insightful speakers), the Lincoln Club of Northern California (an impactful Silicon Valley-based Republican support group), the Oakland Military Institute (which has involved many discussions about education with its founder, Mayor and Governor Jerry Brown, as well as an introduction to Oakland politics), the Log Cabin Republicans, the Republican Women of San Francisco Federated, and many others. These are organizations - it is the people who have made it fun. 

    On the plus side:

        - California is welcoming to outsiders. The Bay Area retains something of a Gold Rush mentality, with people coming from all over the world to find riches. Hollywood is similar for Southern California. I have been welcomed to leadership positions with the Civil Grand Jury, the Presidio Golf Club, and OMI - something much less likely to happen in New England. 

        - California is multi-cultural. Neither idealists nor xenophobes can understand the reality of living with others - what works and what doesn't - unless they have swum in the waters. Asia and Latin America are as real to Californians as is Europe to New Englanders. 

        - San Francisco has a Goldilocks climate - never too hot; never too cold; a bit of moisture in the winter, but generally dry. People spend time outdoors and respect the environment. 

        - The University of San Francisco men's basketball team is finally succeeding. After 20 years as disappointed ticket holders, the Dons are now the highest rated Division I team in California at 17-3 on the season and likely on their way to their first NCAA tournament berth in ages.  

    On the minus side - and this is different than it was in 1998, at least in our perception as we have aged: 

        - There are too many people. In an arid climate California is home to 40 million people, and there is not enough water to go around; the politicians rank residents, fish, and agriculture in that order; and the environmentalists can prevent the addition of reservoir capacity. Housing construction is  constrained by environmental laws, building code requirements, and neighborhood opposition. Companies are adding jobs at a multiple of the pace of housing growth - in Bay Area cities, and in the state at large. Commutes lengthen, roads clog, and civility wanes. 

        - No elected politician advocates for people like us. The unchallenged Democratic Party is driven by advocates of aggrieved "minorities", who actually make up the majority. As one in the fray, I have to admire the political skills of San Francisco politicians such as Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, and Kamila Harris, and the Democratic Party which controls the local and state executive and legislative branches, as well as the rules by which the game is played.  

        - Selling a house in San Francisco serves as a good metaphor for the relation between middle class citizens and the government. There are four separate inspectors (pest, conformance to water conservation requirements, construction, and Underground Storage Tanks) who inspect and offer to repair problems which they have found. There is a $20,000 real estate transfer tax. Any capital gain is taxed at ordinary income rates, which are the highest in the nation. One is compelled to admit to any non-permitted property improvements. Lawyers lurk. 

        - The middle class is leaving at a net rate of over 100,000 per year.  The Boy Scout oath and Norman Rockwell are so last century. California is increasingly becoming a state of haves and have nots, with the highest poverty rate in the nation along with the largest number of new billionaires.  

        - The attraction of libertarian ideals becomes overwhelming in a nanny state where plastic bags and straws are outlawed, a charge for paper bags is mandated, trash is examined to ensure conformance to recycling mandates, and arbitrary goals are set for the elimination of fossil fuels.  Unlike the successful "personal responsibility" credo of the Salvation Army or Alcoholics Anonymous, California's approach to drug addiction and homelessness is based on compassion, societal guilt, and and atonement with unlimited services.  

    It's been a good run, but John Galt left on the last flight to the "Live Free or Die" state. 

                                                                                                    -----

  And for a finale, a Beach Boys tribute to the California that was in a diffrent era. 

bill bowen - 1/25/19 

          

Context for Presidential Candidates

    The next 18 months will be filled with discussion about the horse race: which Democrat is visiting Iowa or New Hampshire; who has opened an exploratory committee; who was at Michelle Obama's birthday party; who had lunch with a billionaire. There are several alternative frameworks for considering the probability of a candidate catching the golden ring - gender; ethnicity; geographic "home"; experience in politics or other pursuits; place on the ideological spectrum; "likeability" - but, as Donald Trump demonstrated in 2016, it helps to understand the changes that have transformed the American electrorate over the past few decades. 

    The central premise: For most of our history Republicans were the party of capital and management while Democrats were the party of labor. No longer. The Republicans are now the party of the working class, while the Democrats are the party of an intellectual elite and aggrieved sub-groups - African Americans; Hispanics; the LGBTQ community; what were once known as women's libbers. 

        - The transformation has been ongoing for a half-century - Nixon's "silent majority"; Ross Perot's "great sucking sound" with jobs moving to Mexico; Ronald Reagan's "Reagan Democrats". There has been a growing realization among the working class that they were no longer the target audience for Democratic Party policies. 

        - The transformation was solidified by the election of Barack Obama. Democrats contend that the response was racist, but it is much deeper than that. Obama had no relationship with the white working class base of the Democratic party - a Kenyan father; an expatriate mother; an Indonesian step father; soaring rhetoric which appealed to the coastal liberal elites and the European glitterati. 

        - The eight years of Obama were a disaster for the traditional Democratic Party. Republicans gained 69 House seats, 14 Senate seats, 9 governorships, and control of some two-thirds of the state legislative bodies. The political energy in the country was in the Tea Party, middle class workers who aligned with the Republicans. 

        - Of the 17 Republican candidates on the stage in 2016, only Donald Trump understood what had happened and was willing to be the voice of the World Wrestling Federation crowd. The decorum of a 1930's union hall was OK for the working class then, and it was OK when they moved over to the Republican party. 

        - The presence of Never-Trumpers within the Republican Party partly reflects a revulsion against the person and his style, but it is also a reaction to the elites having lost control of the party to the middle class. His MAGA agenda is not their agenda - curbing of the global institutions through which the United States had dominated world trade and politics for 75 years; restricting immigration which deflated wages; ending the policy of endless war in the Middle East. 

        - The 2018 elections reflected the fact that both parties are not who they were. The MAGA agenda and style of Trump's working class Republican Party has pried loose a swath of the previous coalition - particularly college educated suburban women - who are now free agents. Meanwhile the Democrats have lurched to the left with much youthful energy aligned with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and democratic socialism, advocating for marginalized people rather than the workers.  

   The implications: Trump is the Republican candidate unless he unexpectedly implodes. (John Kasich and Mitt Romney are positioning themselves to be Plan B.)  Democratic options are more interesting. 

        - Elections are won by solidifying the base, and reaching out to the margins. Trump's working class base is solid; the key will be to drive turnout and keep a solid majority of the old GOP Establishment party. 

        - The Democratic calculus is more complicated.

                -- Each aggrieved constituency wants its presidential candidate - and all seems possible after Barack Obama's election. An African-American; an Hispanic; a woman. 

                -- It is not obvious that the average Democrat understands that they are no longer the party of labor.  It does take a bit of critical thinking to acknowledge that Trump's labor-friendly policies on regulations, tariffs, and taxes have led to an acceleration of the economy in the face of "normalization" by the Federal Reserve. And Democrats find it very difficult to support anything Trump supports. 

                -- The socialist left has nowhere else to go. Their energy is needed, but not their candidates. 

                -- The opportunity lies in finding a candidate who appeals to voters who would traditionally vote for an Establishment Republican, but who reject

Trump and labor. Whether or not "the system" allows the Democrats to put forward such a candidate is the quest of the next 18 months. 

                                                                                            ----- 

    This week's video is a brief recap of the plan to withdraw from Syria which resulted in the resignation of Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis. In an embarrasing backtrack, National Security Advisor John Bolton announced from Jerusalem that Turkey needed to commit that they would not attack our Syrian Kurdish allies. The Turkish President refused, leaving American policy in shambles. IMHO, the selection of the undiplomatic uber-hawk John Bolton for the primary national security position ranks up there with the appointments of Paul Manafort and Steve Bannon. And then using him to negotiate sensitive agreements with prickly allies .... 

bill bowen - 1/10/2019  

     

    

Re-Thinking California

    It doesn't feel any better two months after the November 6, California elections. In fact it is worse. Let's recap. 

    How bad is it? 

       - California is number one in poverty (when considering housing costs), number 41 of 50 in K-12 education, near the bottom in business climate, and near the top in income, sales, and gas taxes. 

        - Democrats hold all of the statewide offices. They have supermajorities in the Assembly and the Senate, allowing tax increases and constitutional changes without any Republican influence. The one Republican state legislator from the Bay area was defeated. Democrats took half of the 14 Republican House seats, making the split 46 to 7. 

        - The attitude of the political public is reflected in the legal positions being taken by Attorney General Javier Becerra who has filed some 45 lawsuits against the Trump administration, largely in the areas of immigration, the environment, and healthcare. For flavor, he has threatened to prosecute business owners who allow federal immigration agents onto their property. He won reelection in November with two-thirds of the vote. 

        - The hope that the "top two" primary system would propel moderate Democrats in heavily Democratic districts proved false. Ditto state-wide where a machine hack beat Marshall Tuck, an eminently qualified (and endorsed by Obama Education Secretary Arne Dencan) registered Democrat, for Director of Public Instruction.

    Is it likely to get better? 

        - At the moment the state's finances are in good shape, due largely to the tech boom and recent tax increases - $8 billion annually from income and sales tax increases in 2012 (Proposotopon 30), and $5 billion from the recent gas tax increase. Risks lie in the $1,000,000,000 unfunded pension liabilities and reliance on a state income tax structure which is heavily impacted by bonuses and stock options of high rate payers.  

        - The Democratic agenda is broadly expected to swing to the left after eight years of adult supervision by the parsimonious Jesuit, Jerry Brown. Gavin Newsom's priorities include building 3.5 million homes in 7 years (an audacious goal with no real plan), universal health care (rejected by the prior assembly because it would cost $400 billion per year; twice the current state budget); free pre-school for all; a carbon tax; and continuation of the "sanctuary state" policy for immigrants.  

        - The electorate is changing for the worse. While the population of the state is increasing due to foreign immigration and birth rates, the net annual out-migration of domestic residents has reached 140,000, with most leaving for financial reasons. The state is gentrifying, with working class Californians moving out in droves, to be partially replaced by upper income earners who can afford California housing costs. 

        - The electoral system has been structured by the Democrats to maximize turnout and minimize controls. The state Democratic Party is world-class in funding, organization, and Get Out The Vote procedures. The Republican Party is not. 

    So, what is a principled conservative to do?  

        Option 1. The California GOP will elect new leadership at its February convention. There are a few new faces with new ideas, but the traditional division remains between those who favor a smaller, purer party and those who believe that Republican principles can be applied to the real-world electorate. This delegate likes David Hadley for Party Chair.

        Option 2. Take up a different vocation. 

        Option. 3. Move to a state where people still believe in liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility. Fortunately, there are many east of the Sierras. 

                                                                                                    -----

   This week's bonus is a familiar and pertinent tune by the Eagles. Apparently this dilemna existed a half-century ago. 

bill bowen - 1/4/19

 

 

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. 

                                                                                                        -----

    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. 

                                                                            -----

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

bill bowen - 12/21/2018 

Vote Harvesting, California Style

    Californians like to think that we are "early adopters", the first to create and utilize technology and social norms which an eager country will eventually embrace. Facebook, Twitter, Uber, Airbnb, and Paypal; gay marriage, sanctuary cities, and marijuana. Thus it is with politics. California Republicans are lost for at least a few election cycles due to several factors - public attitudes on immigration and the environment; a great party disparity in financial resources; media and popular opposition to Donald Trump; and a huge gap in the effectiveness of party leadership - but the California political concept of which national Republicans should be the most concerned is the Democrats mastering of Get Out the Vote (GOTV) operations.  

    The eventual loss by Young Kim, an attractive, well qualified Asian-American woman Congressional candidate in formerly staunchly conservative Orange County, who led by 14% after the close of polls on election day but eventually lost by a few thousand votes, provides a good benchmark of how effective the Democrats' GOTV operation was. This is not about fraud or illegality. It is not about a process that is inherently open to one party or the other. (It does raise the philosophical question of what happens to democracy when the productive portion of society comprises a smaller portion of the electorate, but that is a subject for another day.) It should serve as a warning to Republicans across the country about underlying election laws, the effective use of money from large donors, and a bit on the effective use of technology. Let's recap. 

    California's Election Laws 

        Democrats have controlled California's legislature and governorship since 2011, with near two-thirds majorities. They also claim the Secretary of State who interprets election laws and writes the ballot titles for public initiatives. They have aggressively used this dominance to pass every possible law to advantage Democratic candidates. 

        --  Since 2016, Motor Voter registration, by which voting registration is automatic for people acquiring or renewing their license. 

        -- Registration at age 16 or 17, so that young people are prepared to vote when they become 18. 

        -- Same day registration, allowing people to register and file provisional ballots at the same time. 

        -- No identification requirement. 

        -- Voting rights for inmates in county jails and felons on probation.  

        -- Permanent mail-in ballots for all voters requesting that status. (With ten to twenty ballot initiatives and fifteen to twenty candidate choices to make, this becomes a popular option.) 

        -- New automatic mailing of ballots to all registered voters three weeks in advance of the election - by county option in 2018; required for all counties except Los Angeles County by 2020. 

        -- Acceptance of mail in ballots postmarked or turned in by close of the polls on election day. 

        -- New for 2018, authorization of third parties to gather vote-by-mail ballots for turn-in at the department of elections or polling places. (Previously the voter had to mail in, turn in themself, or have a close relative or roommate deliver the ballot.) 

    The 2018 Election

    This was the perfect storm. Anger against President Trump was strong; billionaires such as Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg donated tens of millions of dollars to political action committees to register voters and turn out the vote; public employee unions contributed millions; the Democratic National Committee targeted seven of the 14 Republican Congressional seats in Orange County and the Central Valley. 

            -- Political Data Inc. sells registered voter data to either party, and provides training on its use. This includes voter name, address, history in which elections the voter participated (allowing identification of high and low propensity voters), and status as a property owner or a renter. This can be cross referenced with social media data such as group affiliations (National Rifle Association; Planned Parenthood), and political activities such as volunteering and donating. In California, Republicans do not have the financial resources and volunteer base to make significant use of these tools. Democrats do.

        -- The California Republican Party has not conducted an organized voter registration drive since 2013, largely for financial reasons.  Democrats have made minority and young voter registration a priority. State-wide voter registration is now about 44% Democratic, 24% Republican, and 28% "Decline to State".

        -- Voter turnout was over 64% statewide as compared to an average of 52% in the last three non-presidential elections; Orange County was 70%. For all 2018 California elections (state offices; initiatives; Congress; local) spending exceeded $1 billion  with over two-thirds of the outside spending going to support Democrats and "outside" dollars tracked in targeted Congressional races favoring Democrats by five to one. Much went to negative ads, but much also went to the GOTV effort which is estimated to have cost some $125,000 per day in Orange County districts.   

        -- During the 2018 election the Democrats had over 1000 people on the ground in Orange County, and turned in over 250,000 vote-by-mail ballotss on election day. Voting rallies were held at college campuses and in union halls. Using the PDI data they were able to visit homes of Democratic and Decline to State voters for the three weeks after the ballots were mailed out and help them with their complicated ballots. Baskets of ballots were delivered late on election day, and  took weeks to count. One apparent Republican victor after another fell as the counting stretched on.  

      In what should be taken as a confession, National Committeeman Shawn Steele has reflected on the surprising scope of the Democratic operation, which Republicans neither expected nor made any effort to match.  The lessons for national Republicans are two: continue to pay close attention to election laws, and devote significant resources to data-enabled Get Out The Vote efforts. While imitation is the greatest form of flattery, it is sometimes appropriate. 

                                                                                                        -----  

    This week's bonus video is an interview with former Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, explaining  the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, the CFO of Chinese telecommunications infrastructure company Huawei,  as part of the Trump administration's broad confrontation of China. Combined with the assignment of hardline Trade Negotiator Robert Lighthizer to lead the current three month round of negotiations, Wall Street is nervous. Here's one vote for the administration's approach. 

bill bowen - 12/7/18  

    

Thanksgiving: A Reprise

    Well, that was hard. Like most sentient beings, this student of life knew enough to avoid political discussions at a relative's Thanksgiving weekend get together. No upside - no minds to change; no interested people who hadn't thought about the big issues; little understanding of relatives and guests leanings and hot buttons. As long as everybody understood the groundrules there were enough ballgames to carry the day.

    But there is always one, fortunately not a relative, and fortunately a short conversation with a limited audience. California Democrats approach political discussions knowing that they are right and assuming that everyone that they would be associating with agrees with them. We San Francisco Republicans are inured against the misplaced confidence, and recognize the futility of real engagement. Trump makes any potential discussion even more fraught - support his policies, and you share his real and imagined personality defects.  Thus, the battle was not joined. 

    Question 1: Were you disappointed with the election? 

        - The polite response: Yes. 

        - The real answer: In San Francisco, where compassion always trumps prudent management, the Board of Supervisors moved to a progressive majority and we voted to double the $300 million budget for homeless services. California was a disaster, well beyond expectations. The moderating hopes for the "top two" primary system - quality women Republican candidates; qualified "decline to state" candidates like Steve Poizner for Insurance Commissioner; and qualified non-machine Democrats like Marshall Tuck for the Department of Education - all lost to the Democratic machine. Nationally it was a somewhat negative mixed bag, given the norms for the mid-term elections after a president's first election. Progressive members of the House will try to create all nature of problems for the President; likely speaker Pelosi might try to legislate by finding common ground on a few items like prison reform and infrastructure spending, but mostly it will be a tune up of people and themes for the 2020 presidential election. The expanded Senate majority will facilitate judicial appointments and block any real stupid stuff coming from the House. 

    Question/Assertion 2: How could anyone support Trump, given that he is morally reprehensible, devoid of empathy, and mentally ill? 

        - The polite response: I supported Romney, Rubio, and Kasich, and did not like Trump.  But I have grown in my understanding that the political establishment of both parties has not governed in the interests of the working class. (Pause for the interruption that it is "the white working class", as if that makes Hillary's "deplorables" morally inferior or politically irrevelant.) 

        - The real answer: This is like the school playground where the "cool" kids have been bullying the kids from the other side of the tracks forever. Suddenly a bigger, tougher kid takes the side of those who have been the victim of the bullying - by the media, by Hollywood, by the universities, by the Democratic party. The "flyover states" realize that they should have more Senators than the cool coastal states. Norman Rockwell and the Boy Scout Oath are OK again. We have a president who unapologetically puts the interests of American citizens above the globalists who have governed for decades while the American manufacturing base has eroded, our borders have been badly compromised, our trade policies have helped China and others at our expense, and we have been engaged in foreign wars without end or strategic purpose. Trump's attraction really isn't about any specific policy; the globalist direction has gone too far and the pendulum has swung back. As for analyzing Trump - mammoth books will be written about Trump Derangement Syndrome and the total inability of his enemies to understand or accept what has happened. 

    Question/Assertion 3: You have to agree that Barack Obama was a great president.  

    - The polite response: He was a gentleman and a great orator. He represented American progress, being the first African-American president.  

    - The real answer:

        - From a partisan Republican perspective he was great. During his time in office the Republicans captured two-thirds of the state legislatures, three quarters of the governorships, a majority in the House, a majority in the Senate, and ultimately the presidency and a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Seeing Obama's vision and ineffective leadership, the country turned to the right. 

        - There are two policy perspectives:

            -- He was a globalist, noting that American exceptionalism was no different than the perspectives of other countries. The son of a Kenyan father, an Indonesian stepfather, an expatriate mother, and a communist tutor in Hawaii, he grew up with little understanding of or appreciation for Americana.  To understand who he is, one need only read his autobiography, "Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance." 

           -- With the skills and experience of a community organizer, he was unprepared for the role of president. Domestically, he inherited a financial mess, threw $1 trillion "Stimulus Plan" at it, continued President Bush's budget deficits, oversaw an unusually slow recovery, and allowed the FBI to get involved in the politics of the 2016 presidential election. His healthcare reform - for better or worse - actually belongs to Nancy Pelosi.  Internationally, he was a pushover, empowering ISIS, allowing Putin to seize the Crimean peninsula, dithering over Syria while a humanitarian crisis unfolded, and doing nothing about North Korea or the global trade deficit. 

    Silence is golden. The healing process has begun. The easy answers were provided.  It is unlikely that the longer answers would change any California Democratic minds,  but they encapsulate a lot of thought for a centrist Republican.   

                                                                                                    -----   

    This week's bonus is the real highlight of the Thanksgiving weekend - highlights of #3 Gonzaga's victory over #1 Duke. 

bill bowen - 11/30/18 

      

Contemplating the California Republican Party

    The thousands of Republican Party activists in California have a dilemna. When the party convenes in February, the delegates will replace Chairman Jim Brulte who has long planned to retire. After years of declining fortunes and last week's blowout all manner of opinions are being bandied about, but there are no good answers. (See national committeeman Shawn Steel's assessment if you need to be depressed by the results.)  Let's take a look at the key questions.

    1. Should there be a new party to get away from the problematic brand? 

    Prominent moderates who have largely left the party - former Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger; former Congressman Tom Campbell; former Assembly leader Kristin Olsen - favor a fresh start, perhaps focusing at first on a Congressional district or two where they could advance in a primary election under California's unique "Top Two" system. The premise is that there are now more registered "Decline to State" voters than registered Republicans, and they will ultimately be repelled by a Democratic Party which promises to lurch further to the left with presidential aspirant Gavin Newsom and supermajorities in the state Senate and Assembly. 

    The problems are obvious: much money is needed from a state and national fundraising network; the party provides a stucture for mobilizing activists as volunteers; election laws favor the established parties; it would be confusing to individuals to be part of one party nationally and another locally. Besides, the party does help to elect about half of the local candidates in the state running in nominally nonpartisan elections. 

    The problem is partly the weakness of the Republican party as demographics have changed, business interests have shifted to supporting the dominant party in power, and hundreds of thousands of Republican-leaning voters have left the state.  But the bigger problem is the overwhelming strength of the Democratic Party which enjoys a tailwind from demographics, finances fueled by Hollywood and tech industry billionaires, and public employee unions (teachers; nurses; the SEIU). Process factors are equally troubling - California has the the nation's most relaxed voting standards - no voter ID; same day registration; heavy vote by mail; automatic DMV voter registration - all of which contributed to the tsunami of late Democratic votes. It is hard to see how a nascent new party could compete at all. 

    2. Should the party leadership concentrate on mechanics or ideology? 

    Brulte has taken the "safe" position that it is the job of the party to manage the mechanics - fundraising; recruiting candidates; training; supporting the county comittees; ensuring proper treatment by state and local agencies - and the role of the candidates themselves to to stake out policy positions. This has avoided major confrontations between the (largely Bay area) liberals, and the conservatives, but it has prevented a consistent strong statement about what the party does stand for. In that absence, and without strong charismatic state-wide candidates, the Democrats have been able to paint all Republicans as being out of step with the central beliefs of Californians. By default, the party leader must provide that bullhorn. 

    3. What policy positions should a Republican leader support or oppose? 

    Some are easy and appeal to all shades of Republicans as well as a majority of Californians: fiscal constraint as Governor Newsom and the state legislature spend billions on new initiatives; a focus on common sense policies for water, housing, and roads. Some policy positions appeal to strong Republican groups, but alienate a majority of voters if allowed dominate the conversation: gun control; right to life. Some require the development of a strong, but nuanced position: immigration; healthcare; the environment. 

    The elephant in the room is President Trump whose 39% approval rating in California doesn't adequately capture the energy behind the disapproval number, and who inspired national Democrats like Michael Bloomberg to spend millions against Republican congressional candidates. The trick for a California Republican leader is to establish an independent identity without offending the base, focusing on state issues and occasionally highlighting the benefit of having a president in your party.   

    4. Who should the Chairman be? 

    Above all, the California Republican Party cannot succeed if seen as the party of the "Rich Old White Guys". In a way that should be easy - the rich white guys are mostly Democrats in 2018 California. But in politics perception is reality, and the selection of the new party leader should take this existing perception into account - along with the role of the party chair as a visable spokesperson. That said, support by a billionaire or two willing to fund party operations would be a game changer. This delegate will favor youth, gender, and ethnicity. 

    At least three credible candidates have stepped forward to date: David Hadley, a "NeverTrumper" who was anointed in July by the CRP board as the heir apparent; Travis Allen, the youngish, conservative, energetic former Orange County assembly member who failed in his bid for the party's governor endorsement and lost in the primary; Steve Frank, who writes for the California Political Review and advocates for a "back to basics" approach with a focus on the County organizations. Others will surface in the next month or two - perhaps a displaced Congressperson. (At this point there is at lst one vote for Allen.)  

    From the perspective of the California party activists, the challenge is to retain the "political ebb and flow" mantra rather than accepting the "long arc of history" claim. If the latter prevails, one can leave the field, find a specific person or cause to champion, or join the exodus from the tarnished Golden State. 

                                                                                                        -----

   This week's video is President Trump's pardon of two Thanksgiving turkeys, containing only a few political shots and somehow accomplished without the help of CNN's Jim Acosta. 

bill bowen - 11/22/2018

    

Republican Bomb Damage Assessment

    Let's be honest, the mid-term elections were worse than expected - perhaps a "pink wave" as women activists and voters came out in force in response to President Trump.  Prospects zigged and zagged in the last month: general revulsion of the Democrats for their treatment of Brett Kavanaugh; general revulsion about the pipe bomber who targeted Democratic leaders; concern about the caravans of illegal immigrants making their way through Mexico; targeted enthusiasm from Trump's mass rallies; perhaps just too much Trump fatigue; and a drip-drip counting process that results in another Republican loss or two each day a week after the election. How to think about this as a Republican who was not a Trump supporter three years ago? 

    Reince Priebus was a little acknowledged, and subsequently mistreated, hero of the Republican renaissance in Wisconsin a decade ago, and in the fortification of the national Republican Party following the defeat of Mitt Romney in 2012. He understood that electoral success is a result of a complicated set of factors. He was able to lead a successful autopsy in 2013 to identify strengths/weaknesses/opportunities/threats and devise an action plan which included candidate recruitment, establishment of a database (later used by the Trump campaign) to rival that previously assembled by the Obama campaign, and coordination of major donors. It is probably not possible to do that now, with Donald Trump in charge of the party, Rona Romney McDaniel as the party chair, and the political landscape so dramatically changed from 2016. But it should be done. 

    Did the Democrats win on the merits of policy? Republicans had a robust economy which positively impacted any number of political polling indicators. The Democrats had health care - and particularly "preexisting conditions" - for which the Republicans inexplicably had no coherent message. Credit to Nancy Pelosi and shame on the Republican party leadership. While there was a move to the left, the public was not rallying around Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.  

    Did the Democrats win on the merits of better candidates? They did a good job of matching candidates to their districts - Ocasio-Cortez in New York; Connor Lamb in suburban Pittsburg; no requirement to pledge fealty to Nancy Pelosi - in fact dozens pledged not to.  But the Republicans had qualified incumbents who fit their districts and had the advantage of years of familiarity with their issues and influence leaders. Somehow a Krysten Sinema could beat a female fighter pilot in Arizona, and an unabashed Irish liberal could give Ted Cruz a race in Texas. The Democrats did recruit a slew of women in a year of #MeToo, bringing the total number of women in Congress to over 100, predominantly Democrats. This message that gender matters is obvious, even once the #MeToo furor recedes. 

    Did the Democrats win on the basis of fundraising? According to Open Secrets, 89% of the House elections and 84% of the Senate elections were won by the larger spender, and overall, and total Democrat spending by candidates, political parties, Political Action Committees, and outside groups was about $2.5 billion to Republican $2.2 billion. This is some 20% over prior records, and the first time in a decade that Democrats outspent Republicans in total. The success of Trump's relatively cheap campaign in 2016 may have obscured the fact that coastal elites and energized suburbanites can outraise a working class Republican base. 

    Did the Democrats win on the basis of better campaign mechanics?  First, they got more money to the individual campaigns - where it can be spent on professional managers, training of volunteers, phone banks, precinct walkers, media, and literature - through Act Blue, a web site which enabled small contributors nationally to direct contributions to where they would do the most good.  Technology was equally available to both parties to support precinct walkers with phone apps which identify key factors (party registration; voting propensity; interests) for each address; remote phone banks were available to allow Democrats in San Francisco to make calls for Beto O'Rourke in Texas, or for Republicans in Ohio to make calls on behalf of Scott Walker in Wisconsin.  What was needed was the enthusiasm of volunteers and the money for training. In many cases the Democrats had more of both. 

    Specific to California, Republican National Committeeman Shawn Steele lays out a clear case that the wipeout (including at least six of the 14 Republican House seats and all state-wide offices) had little to do with ideology or candidates, but rather was the result of over $1 billion in campaign spending, supporting youth voter registration, voter analytics, social media, and opposition research as well as traditional media. While Trump didn't help, the outmigration of over 1,000,000 citizens since 2007 was a larger factor. The next few months will witness a battle to replace retiring California GOP Chair Jim Brulte with the typical moderate / conservative division, and an effort to establish a third party to compete without the taint of the Republican brand. The fact that the highly qualified independent Democrat Marshall Tuck (with the endorsement of President Obama's Secretary of Education) lost the Superintendent of Education race to political hack Tony Thurmond suggests that the problem lies not in the candidates, the ideology, the money, or even the Republican brand, but in the overwhelming strength of the Democratic machine.  

    In the age of Trump it is unlikely that the Republican Party will engage in a meaningful autopsy like that in 2013, but if it does not, the last decade's gains in the the states and in the Congress will quickly erode. Trump can bring focused enthusiasm, but much more is needed. 

                                                                                                        -----

   This week's bonus is an early report on Palm Beach's voting problems. The report that they found an extra 5,000 Al Gore votes is apparently false. 

bill bowen - 11/16/18 

The Election: Turning the Page

       In this year of the angry woman - Elizabeth Warren; Maxine Waters; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; Stacey Abrams; suburban housewives - one has to be impressed with the strength and breadth of American democracy. The macro election result has been "about normal" for the first midterms with a new president, with the Democrats picking up some 35 seats in the House, and recovering a bit from the wipe out that they suffered at the state level during the Obama years. Nancy Pelosi is about right in noting the energy of women beginning with the Women's March in Washington after the 2016 election, the recruitment and election of 30 new Congresswomen, and the resonance of healthcare as a successful issue. But the sun came up on Wednesday, college basketball has begun, Veterans Day is Sunday, and the mailman can switch from political flyers to Christmas catalogues. 

     The Bad:

        - The Democrats will have a narrow majority of 30 or so seats in the House. The Republicans had largely exhausted their agenda; the Freedom Caucus had thwarted efforts to replace Obamacare or fix immigration. Former Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan oversaw the institutionalization of trillon dollar deficits, even in the best of times. Maybe (see below) this doesn't belong in the Bad category. 

        - Scott Walker lost in Wisconsin. A decade ago Reince Priebus and Paul Ryan built the Republican Party in Wisconsin, taking the state Assembly and Senate; electing Senator Ron Johnson to replace Russ Feingold; gaining a majority of the state's Congressional delegaton; and winning three gubanatorial elections. Republican victories followed in Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. One hopes that the wave hasn't crested. 

        - Gavin Newsom was elected governor of California. Much will be written about his ambitions and anti-Trump agenda; of major importance is the fact that the Democrats won over two-thirds of the seats in the state Assembly and Senate, allowing tax increases and state constitutional amendments without going to referenda. With the state's environmental agenda already in place, some form of Newsom's promised state-run universal healthcare is the major threat.  

        - San Francisco lurched further to the left. The voters agreed to tax large companies domiciled in the City to double the $300 million budget of the homeless-industrial complex, without a plan or any necessary policy changes. The Board of Supervisors moved from a balance between liberal Democrats and crazy left Democrats to a 7-4 or 8-3 crazy left dominance. (Eight could override any veto by the liberal Democratic mayor.)  

        -  The process contained several non-Trump embarassments. When Fox's Sean Hannity and Judge Jeanine Pirro got on the stage with Donald Trump in Cape Girardeau, they totally obliterated the line between reporting, entertainment, and political advocacy. When Georgia's Brian Kemp refused to recuse himself as Secretary of State during his contentious run for governor against Stacy Abrams, he provided a bullhorn for the Democrats to complain about voter fraud and suppression. 

       - The Democrats enjoyed a massive fundrasing advantage - twice the Republicans in the third quarter - with the Act Blue website which facilitates national small donations, billionaire Tom Steyer's $10 million effort to register young liberal voters, and Nancy Pelosi's usual prodigious impact with the Democratic House Campaign Committee. The better funded House candidate won 91% of the time. With 40 Republican House retirements clearing the field, incumbents in either party won 93% of their races. Some of this is one time, but Republican reliance on poorer voters in poorer states does not bode well. (Wonks or masochists can visit OpenSecrets.org.)  

    The Good:

        - With 53 or 54 Republican senators - several of whom owe their election to Donald Trump - Mitch McConnell doesn't need to worry about a Rand Paul, Barbara Murkowski, or Susan Collins defection as he proceeds to approve the replacement for Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the 70 pending federal judge appointments, and another anticipated 50.  (He has already appointed 84 of the 870 total federal judges.) With most of the 22 Republican senators up for election in 2020 coming from safe states, the likelihood of enjoying a majority until at least 2022 is good. 

        - Assuming that obligatory recounts stand up, the governorship of the perennial critical swing state of Florida stays in Republican hands, and the Senate seat moves to the Republicans despite the infusion of 150,000 Puerto Ricans following Hurricane Maria in September 2017. For many, a loss by Governor Rick Scott in his Senate campaign would have been demoralizing after he gained 2 million jobs in his eight years, handled several hurricanes masterfully, and reached out to support the incoming Puerto Ricans.  

        - In the half full/half empty world of politics, there were plenty of other feel goods - Mimi Walters, David Valadeo, Young Kim, Devin Nunes and Jeff Denham holding contested seats in California; Charlie Baker winning reelection as governor in Massachusetts with 67% of the vote; Beto O'Rourke losing in Texas despite spending $70,000,000.   

      The Future:

        - The ball is in the Democrats' court. Trump is willing to deal with Kim Jong Un or Xi Jinping; Nancy Pelosi is no worse. (There will be a little huffing and puffing by Red State Democrats who promised not to vote for her, but there is no alternative, and that was then.) There are subjects where the changed dynamic in the House could lead to compromise - Pelosi will want healthcare; Trump will want immigration; both will want a large infrastructure bill; neither will want significant fiscal constraint. 

        - Plan B is equally likely. Jeff Sessions was not fired because of the Mueller probe. Trump does not play defense. The White House counsel is defense; the Department of Justice and the FBI can be offense with the right leader. Pelosi and her committee chairs can investigate Trump's taxes and business dealings, but if they do, they can expect investigations of Hillary's e-mails and Uranium One, the illegal involvement of Comey's FBI surrounding the 2016 election, and the circumstances by which politicians such as Diane Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, and Maxine Waters have amassed personal wealth while in public office.

        - As to the Democrats in the Senate - it's all preening for 2020 presidential runs.    

                                                                                                         -----

    This week's video is a Veterans Day testiment by President Reagan - appropriate as this Sunday is the 100th anniversary of the holiday. 

bill bowen - 10/9/18

The Nationalist President - Season Two

    Season One of The Nationalist President is about to end. The allusion is less to Trump's Apprentice than to dramas such as House of Cards, The Goodwife, or Game of Thrones where the central characters grow more powerful from season to season amidst an evolving cast of supporting characters and crises. The degree of cynicism can be left to the reader, but the merger of politics and entertainment is clear, as is Trump's desire to shape his supporting cast. 

    Season One was electifying, playing to exceptional ratings if not universal acclaim. The protagonist burst on the stage defying all odds. The Mueller investigation has served as a backstory, itself having innumerable twists and turns - including the irony that the only proven collaboration with the Russians was in the form of the Clinton campaign's financing of the Steele dossier. Trump quickly dispatched his predecesor's Junior Varsity ISIS opposition which had terrorized the Middle East and flooded Europe with refugees. He confronted friend and foe alike in an effort to rebalance the kingdom's financial in's and out's, finding common ground with our closest partners in the USMCA (nee NAFTA), leaving others to Season Two.  He inflicted a severe wound on the fearful dragon of Obamacare, removing the individual mandate and making cheaper, less extensive plans available. He slew regulations left and right - environmental, financial, and labor. He turned the federal courts away from acting like a legislative body. And despite prosperity returning to the fair chosen land, his enemies remained steadfast. 

    Several sub-plots carry over to Season Two. Chief Investigator Mueller promises to continue his work, extending in whatever direction suggests an opportunity to damage the protagonist. We will see whether the cunning North Korean dictator has changed his ways, and chooses peace and prosperity over isolation and military confrontation. Early in the season we will find whether the evil Saudi prince survives, and whether he is forced to end the humanitarian disaster in Yemen and the isolation of Qatar. Latino caravans will dissipate shortly after the beginning of Season Two, but supporters of our hero and his antagonists will find ways to keep the broader sub-plot alive. Several episodes will relate to wrangling with China which, it becomes clear, is the major threat to Trump's nation; expect more on trade, intellectual property, territorial claims, and growing awareness that one million Muslims in western China are being held in forced indoctrination camps. 

    No good series is sustainable if there is not something new in each season, and The Nationalist President has experienced, creative writers. We are nine years into economic expansion, and a recession is likely before the end of Season Two; that will bring a whole new line of discussion as the auditions begin for Season Three. After a decade of worrying about the Middle East, China, and Central America, Europe will emerge with episodes featuring Brexit and political instability in Germany as Chancellor Merkel leaves the stage, built around the general theme of the shape of the continent and what it means for us. There will be an episode or two on privacy in the age of the Internet, optical surveillance, artificial intelligence, and big data - perhaps with a libertarian hero. 

    Keeping the series fresh also requires some drama around the supporting cast. Mainstays will remain - Mueller; Sean Hannity and CNN; Mitch McConnell; the protagonist's family. Some close supporters will be replaced - Nikki Haley at the United Nations; perhaps Jeff Sessions at Justice; undoubtedly a few unexpected surprises. While there are many domestic sycophants, our protagonist is still looking for a personal foreign ally. 

    The big surprise at the beginning of Season Two will be whether Nancy Pelosi or Kevin McCarthy replaces Paul Ryan. On the one hand Ryan hasn't been able to do much - constrained by the Freedom Caucus, he has not been able to advance legislation on healthcare or immigration, and he is leaving a legacy of trillion dollar budget deficits. With an enlarged Freedom Caucus, it looks as if McCarthy would do no better. On the other hand, Pelosi promises a season of investigations, obstruction, and socialist legislation which will go nowhere. But maybe, just maybe, the Nationalist President writers would be able to provide a plot twist with some common ground on immigration. The next few episodes will tell. 

    In this great drama the audience has an opportunity to participate. Vote. 

                                                                                                        ----- 

    This week's video with Andrew Klavan provides a much-needed moment of levity in the waning moments of Season One. 

bill bowen - 11/2/18

     

Of Congress and Inside Straights

    Ages ago my sainted mother taught me to never draw to an inside straight. Since the odds of success in a game of five card draw poker are 8.5% (4/47), I've long used that as the dividing line beyond which I dare not hope.  Based on that criteria, the Senate is secure, and there is a very real chance that the Republicans can hold the House.  

    The Senate is easy: Democrats are defending 26 of the 35 seats up for election; 10 incumbent Democrats are in states carried by Trump in 2016; Trump is campaigning non-stop in places where he is popular. (This is the polar opposite of President Obama who did nothing to build his party or gain favor with Congressional Democrats.)  The strong likelihood is that Republicans will increase their 51-49 lead by two or three seats.  Beyond being able to approve federal judges, the majority will provide a bulwark against any silliness coming from a potential Democratic House. And, it will set up a 2020 election where Republicans must defend 22 largely-safe seats to 12 for the Democrats, making a Republican senate likely through at least 2022.  

    The discussion is about the House where the Democrats need to gain 23 seats to take control. While there may be last-minute disruptions - pipe bombs; Honduran caravans; stock market volatility - there are a few key items driving momentum away from the purported "blue wave": 

        - Democrats had a strong run-up to the election season, with some 40 Republican members retiring, success in recruiting good candidates, and record-setting fundraising with the majority of small donor contributions coming through Act Blue, a web site designed to facilitate giving to competitive campaigns outside of the donor's district.  Hundreds of millions have come into the field on both sides in the past month, ensuring that every voter will know that every candidate is a scoundrel. 

        - The Kavanaugh hearings on September 26, are generally regarded as a turning point, with their presumption of guilt with no corroboration, abuse of the nominee's character, and Democratic-encouraged mob action in the Senate chamber and at the Supreme Court; 

        -  Both parties have predictable agendas: Nancy Pelosi with expanded health care, legal status for Dreamers, infrastructure spending, and gun control; Republicans with more tax cuts and support for the Trump agenda. Those liberal Democrats who cannot be muzzled promise open borders, investigations, and impeachment. Nobody promises fiscal integrity. 

        - The president's popularity is on the rise - to 44% in the latest Gallup polling, about equal to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton at this point in their presidencies, and above Ronald Reagan. Pessimists should note that Obama's Democrats lost 63 House seats in the 2010 election. 

        - Much as the media would like attention directed elsewhere, the economy is booming with clear credit belonging to deregulation and tax cuts.  Tariffs get the most discussion, but there are a thousand small victories - like this week's successful confrontation with the International Postal Union which sanctions concessionary "developing country" rates for shipment of small packages from China.  

    Data can be overwhelming - particularly polling which is of varying accuracy and is useless in the aggregate where huge Democratic majorities in coastal Democratic enclaves distort the political reality. A better source of insight is the digested district-by-district predictions of "experts".  The following are offered in approximate descending order of objectivity. 

        - Based on the polls which they view as credible, Real Clear Politics has 205 seats "likely or lean" Democratic, 199 "likely or lean" Republican, and 31 "tossups". Of the tossups, 29 are currently Republican. Essentially, Republicans have to take 19 of these 31 seats to get to 218. 

        - The Cook Political Report  has 192 Solid, Likely, or Lean Democrat, 194 Solid, Likely, or Lean Republican, and 49 "Tossup or Worse". They project a majority of the leaners and tossups as going Democratic, with an overall result that they project the Democrats gaining 25 to 35 seats (with 23 needed.) That is down about 10 from the "most likely" scenario of two weeks ago. 

        - The University of Virginia's Sabado's Chrystal Ball has 213 Safe, Likely, or Lean Democrat, 201 Safe, Likely, or Lean Republican and 21 Tossups with many paths for the Democrats to get the five needed. 

        - Rasmussen Reports' polling indicates that American "likely voters" expect by a 56 to 37 percent majority that the Democrats will win the House, and that on a generic ballot 47% prefer a Democratic House to 44% who prefer Republican control. Both are national numbers, and do not reflect the 30 or so districts which will determine he outcome. 

        - Nate Silver, whose Democratic- leaning  538 web site gained prominence for correctly predicting the first Obama election but has been mediocre since, has 215 Democrats, 199 Republicans, and 21 tossups with an 84% chance of getting the three extra seats that they need. 

    Some personal leavening can be added. For example, these national experts predict that the Democrats will gain three to five of their target seats in California where Republicans face a wipe out on state-wide races. Nevertheless,the Public Policy Institute of California, the premier California pollster, gives Republicans a 49 to 44 percent lead in 11 competitive districts, including those which the experts call toss-up or leans Democratic. Trump doesn't campaign out west, but last week he did order the Department of the Interior to adopt policies which would reallocate water from fish to farmers who make up the backbone of Republican strength in the Central Valley. As the Democratic path to 218 narrows nationally, a Califrornia surprise is likely. 

    My mother wouldn't object to me calling a Republican threading of the needle. . 

                                                                                                        -----

   This week's bonus video is an update on the anonymous $1.6 billion lottery winner in South Carolina. Since there is a cluster of RightinSanFrancisco.com readers in South Carolina, I would like to announce that we can keep any contribution to RISF quiet, and apply it to a lifetime subscription. 

bill bowen - 10/26/18

    

Democratic Incivility

    A friend from Florida recently asked for an explanation as to why California politicians (Diane Feinstein; Nancy Pelosi; Kamala Harris; Gavin Newsom; Maxine Waters; Attorney General Xavier Becerra; and a hundred lesser lights) do not feel an obligation to follow the direction of the federal government. The same answer extends to the rash of offensive behavior by Leftist agitators over the past few months. 

    The rationale for Resist.

        - The American democratic system does not work. The president should be elected by national popular vote - unlike the electoral college victories of George W Bush over Al Gore in 2000 and Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton in 2016. It is unfair for each state to have two Senators when California has 39 million people, and Wyoming has 600,000. House district boundaries should be redrawn to compensate for the fact that inner cities are overwhelmingly Democratic while suburban and rural districts tend to be more evenly balanced. The compromises of 1789 should be revisited.

        - A "just" society requires that the benefits of our prosperity be more equally distributed - including to immigrants. That requires satisfying the grievances of women, African Americans, Hispanics, American Indians, the LGBTQ community, Palestinians, victims of gun violence, the homeless - all of whom suffer from wrong-headed Republican policies.  

        - Donald Trump is a schmuck. And everybody who supports his government is complicit in his boorish behavior and misguided policies. 

        - It is fun to rail against the establishment, particularly when it can be done without penalty, and with the encouragement of academia, the media, and the liberal political establishment.    

    The call to incivility. 

        - Maxine Waters, dubbed one of the most corrupt people in Washington a few years ago for banking and campaign finance misdeeds, has become a champion of the Left, calling for liberals to confront Trump administration officials wherever they are found, and vowing impeachment if the Democrats win the House.  

        - Hillary Clinton , reprising her "irredeemable deplorables" comments, declares “You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about.” She added that if Democrats retake a house of Congress, well, then, “that’s when civility can start again.”

        - Eric Holder claims that "When they go low we kick them. That is what this new Democratic Party is about." 

        - Corey Booker seeks favor on the Left by willfully disclosing confidential Senate documents - which had, perchance, been declassified the day before.  

    The Academy Awards of the Democratic Leadership-encouraged Mob Acting Out. 

        - The most serious: Much of this is childish; the 2017 shooting of Republican House Whip Steve Scalise and four others by a left-wing activist provides a warning of what lurks in the shadows.  

        - The most concerning: The left-leaning semi-organized thugs of Antifa, who make it their mission to suppress conservative speakers and demonstrators in the name of battling authoritarianism. 

        - The most gouche: Michelle Wolf's attack on Sarah Huckaby's appearance and integrity at the Washington correspondents dinner. 

        - Runners up
            -- The physical attack by a staffer for the Soros-funded American Bridge 21st Century on the female campaign manager for Nevada GOP gubernatiorial candidate Adam Laxalt. 

            -- The mobs that have chased Ted Cruz, Sarah Huckabee, Florida Governor Rick Scott, and Kellyanne Conway out of restaurants. 

            -- Liberals who physically attacked two candidate for the Minnesota state legislature. 

            -- The seven Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee who insist that they will further investigage Justice Kavanaugh if they take control. 

            -- The chorus to impeach Trump. 

    National polling has been trending Republican since the Kavanaugh hearings to the point that Republican retention of the Senate is highly likely, and the likelihood of the Democrats capturing the House is narrowing as Republican enthusiasm catches up to Democratic enthusiasm. Leaders like Pelosi understand that swing voters don't like open borders, impeachment, and violence against political opponents, but they are having a hard time keeping the lesser lights under control. In 2016, establishment prognosticators did not understand the extent to which average voters were tired of being bullied by political correctness advocates; in 2018 they may be surprised by the extent to which those voters are put off by the incivility of the Resistance. 

                                                                                    -----

    This week's bonus video is the Secretary of State of the Cherokee Nation's criticism of Elizabeth Warren's claim to Indian heritage based on a 1/1024  DNA test.  By re-raising the "Pocahontas" subject in a slick video, she showed that she has not learned the lesson so painfully demonstrated in the 2016 Republican primaries - and provided a humorous diversion from the grind of the mid-term elections.  

bill bowen - 10/19/18

    

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

    One would think that recent highly visible government failures in San Francisco would lead to a period of self-reflection and a political opening for Republicans. Let's recap the sad truth. 

    During the past decade no city in North America has presented such stark failures of basic government functions as has San Francisco. 

        - The Bay bridge.

        - The millenium tower.

        - The Transbay terminal. 

        - Homelessness. 

        - Property crime. 

         - Roads. 

        - Hunters Point. 

      And there may be more to come:

         - Water supply. 

        - Lowell

    What are the common threads? It's all about politics, and San Francisco politicians play it very well. In a state of 38 million, the San Francisco political machine dominates. Pelosi; Feinstein; Harris; Newsom. Chronicle. Burtons; Willie Brown. 

    Wealth - $11 billion; free healthcare; free city college. 

    Transient working population without ties to the community. 

    So, what is on the ballot in the November election?

        - Board of Supervisors - one Republican; acknowledge well qualified, but dismissed for his party. 

        - Prop C

        - Pushing for state initiative on rent control

 

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. 

                                                                                                            -----

  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

 

 

Contemplating a Democratic House

    We are close enough to November 6 (or dates in mid-October when vote-by-mail ballots are distributed) to know that the Republicans will in all likelihood hold the Senate, but that there is a real chance that the Democrats will take the House. Kyle Kondik who writes for right-leaning Rasmussen, has a current rating of 208 likely or leans Democratric, 199 likely or leans Republican, and 28 toss ups with a trend toward the Democrats. While there are uncertainties about the impact of the Kavanaugh appointment or any potential Mueller announcement, that feels about right. It is worth contemplating the implications of a Democratic House with a narrowly Republican Senate.  

    Some general considerations:

        - The 2020 presidential election campaign will begin in full force on November 7. That the Republicans are not able to sail to victory on the strength of the strongest economy in generations reflects the unpopularity of President Trump. Since legislation needs to pass both houses and be signed by the president, there will be low expectations for meaningful output; rather, the Democratric goal would be anti-Trump spectacle. 

       -  There would be a battle for the speaker position. In 2016, moderates such as Tim Ryan of Ohio challenged Nancy Pelosi for party leadership on the premise that new blood was needed and that the path forward for the party was through purple and red districts where the candidates looked like the district. That dynamic has changed with extreme left candidates beating establishment types in Democratic primaries in New York and Boston, and Congressional Black Caucus leader James Clyburn making noise about his time being at hand. The most likely outcome would see Pelosi remaining leader, with the socialists looking quite a bit like the Tea Party Republicans of 2010.

    What would not change:

        - Trillion dollar deficts will continue. In her last stint as Majority Leader Pelosi presided over the 2009 Stimulus Act which launched four years of trillion dollar deficits. Much to their discredit, the Republicans who regained the House in 2010 have given up on reforming entitlements while boosting both defense and domestic spending to the point that this year's projected deficit - despite the booming economy - is some $984 billion. Pelosi would offer proposals to cut military spending to support domestic (particularly healthcare) increases and to raise taxes on the rich, but the total won't change. 

        - Obamacare was Nancy Pelosi's proudest accomplishment. There will be no retreat. 

        - The cry of the extreme left wing to "abolish ICE" will not see the light of day.    

    What may change:  

        - In January Trump sent Congress a proposal to offer up to 1.8 million illegal immigrants who came to the United States as children a path to citizenship, coupled with $25 billion to improve border security, a shift from an extended family-oriented system to a skills-based system, and the elimination of the visa lottery system for under-represented countries. With the Freedom Caucus out of the way, a compromise which would pass the Senate may be possible. 

    What will definitely change:

        - Billionaire Tom Steyer will have his day - there will be impeachment hearings. Representative Al Green's December 2017  House Resolution 646 to impeach Trump for being a schmuck garnered 58 votes. Before 2018 is over, we will all know what constitutes "high crimes and misdemeanors", the process for bringing charges and eliciting testimony, and the history of Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. That there is no chance of conviction by the Senate is not the issue - the administration must be ground down. 

        -  Adam Schiff will replace Devin Nunez as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Forget anything further on the corruption in the FBI during the Clinton - Trump election. Expect a rush for the high visibility seat as Chair of the House Oversight Committee which propelled Darrell Issa and Trey Gowdy to prominence. Corruption will be sought behind every bush.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

       - As far ranging as it has been, the Mueller investigatiion has touched only minimally on Trump's business dealings. (The CFO of the Trump organization has been subpoened to testify about the bimbo payments.) Expect the House to offer hearings on local government support for any property outside of the United States, payments by lobbyists and foreign nationals at the hotel in Washington, and the underside of real estate development in New York. 

    For those who thought the media coverage of all things Trump was bad in his first two years, a Democratic House would provide a relentless two year campaign to deny the president a second term.  

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    This week's video is an introduction to liberal former California Senate leader Kevin de Leon, who  received the California Democratic Party endorsement for the US Senate, helping to push Diane Feinstein off the edge of ethical behavior in the matter of Ford v Kavanaugh. Also weighing on her political calculations - the little-reported discovery of a Chinese spy on her staff for fifteen years.   

bill bowen - 9/21/18

       

 

The Illiberal Democrats

    It is worth a moment's reflection on what people on the Left side of the political spectrum call themselves. 

    At about the time that George McGovern and Ronald Reagan gave "liberals" a bad name in politics, George Lakoff of the University of California at Berkeley published "Metaphors We Live By", in which he argued that Republican ideas are centered on a "strong father" model (inherently attractive to Hispanics) while Democratic ideas are centered on a "nurturing mother" model. The recently retired Distinguished Professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics argues that Democrats need to look beyond facts and issues to the voters' values; that Trump is very smart with language, using tweets to frame issues, divert attention, and float trial balloons; and that Republican politicians are better than Democratic politicians at speaking in metaphors ("right to work" for example). Back in the Reagan era he advocated using  "progressive" rather than "liberal" after McGovern lost 49 states. That change (and the current shift to "socialist") is about more than lingusitics, however. It reflects a departure from the original positive attributes of liberalism. 

    Dictionaries have slightly different definitions of "liberal" when used in a political context. The most common first definition is what the Cambridge Dictionary calls "allowing many diferent types of beliefs or behavior", or what the Oxford Dictionary calls "favourable to or respectful of individual rights and freedoms", or what Mirriam-Webster calls  support for "ideals of individual especially economic freedom, greater individual participation in government, and constitutional, political, and administrative reforms designed to secure these objectives." Most go on to offer definition options which advocate social change, but the central element of classical liberalism is liber - Latin for free. 

    How does that stack up against today's Democratic Party?

        - Allowing many different types of beliefs: Antifa, the shock troops of the Left, are the most aggressive tool for shutting down conservative discussion, but the restrictive tactic is in much broader use - physical attacks on Trump supporters; labelling of conservative discussion as racist, homophobic, or mysogenist; bias in the management of social media to diminish conservative thought; intimidation of conservatives on many campuses.   

        - Respectful of individual rights and freedoms: The Brett Kavanaugh hearings provide a great example, open to full public view.  The principle driving the protesters (paid or not) and the Democratic senators is #Resist. Donald Trump has been elected president within the rules of how the United States selects its leader, and he has nominated an eminently qualified Supreme Court Justice, but the conservatice voters who elected Trump would be denied due process. Democracy - at least as it relates to the 2016 presidential election - is to be delegitimized and nullified.   

        - Support for economic freedom: Democratic orthodoxy is passing from "tax the rich" to calls for "socialism" (government ownership of companies). The advocates may not really know what they are talking about when they use the words, but even if it is the Scandinavian model of a high tax, egalitarian welfare state, it is hardly economic freedom to take money away from the successful (whether by talent, hard work, inheritance, or luck) to give it to the more deserving in the opinion of the government and the party in power. 

    For many who grew up in the 60's "liberal" has a positive ring, attached to the Civil Rights Movement, with a connotation of being open minded and inclusive. There is room to debate which segments of the Republican Party deserve to be identified with the better aspects of the traditional "Liberal" definition, but there should be little disagreement that, in the anti-Trump crescendo, much of the Democratic Party has moved on to less tolerance of differing beliefs, less respect for democracy, and less support for economic freedom. 

                                                                                                      ----- 

   This week's bonus is a comparison of two next generation Democratic presidential aspirants  - Kamala Harris and Corey Booker  - using the Kavanaugh hearings to demonstrate that they are more strident than anyone else in objecting to President Trump's Supreme Court nominee. Lots of material for 2020 advertisements is being created. 

bill bowen - 9/7/18

     

Trump v Mueller: Round 15

   The August 21, conviction of Paul Manafort and the simultaneous guilty plea of Michael Cohen deserve some sorting out as the Mueller investigation grinds endlessly on and, at least for the moment, they seem to represent the beginning of the end. Two questions arise:

   1. What are the new learnings from these two cases, after a year of breathless Washington Post headlines about smoking guns?

       - The Cohen case provides clarity for those in denial that Trump made blackmail payments to two bimbos with whom he had affairs shortly after the time of his son Barron's birth. The Stormy Daniels payment came through Cohen, probably at Trump's request; the McDougal payment came through the the National Enquirer, and apparently originated with the Trump Organization. 

       - Cohen had a problem with taxi licenses going back several years. Manafort had a problem with tax avoidance on fees from lobbying on behalf of pro-Russia Ukranian politicians several years ago. Neither had anything to do with Trump, much less collusion between the Trump campaign and any Russians. Rather, Mueller used their offenses to squeeze out incriminating evidence on Trump - but none (except for the bimbo payments) was presented in either case. 

      - Lanny Davis, Cohen's lawyer who had a long relationship with the Clinton machine, falsely claimed - as an anonymous CNN source, and later directly - that he knew from Cohen that Trump had prior knowledge of the June 9, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower between Donald Trump Junior, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. (E-mails released by Donald Junior shortly after the meeting revealed that Veselnitskaya had promised dirt on Hillary, but none was offered and her real purpose was to lobby on behalf of adoption policies. President Trump had denied knowing of the meeting in advance.) Davis also lied when he claimed that Trump was involved in the Russian theft of Democratic National committee e-mails. Even the Washington Post criticized Davis and CNN for the falsehoods and shoddy reporting, but to the extent that public attitudes were affected, "fake news" placed another brick in the anti-Trump wall. 

   2. What might come next?

    - Mueller's team and the Democratic New York attorney general will examine the mechanics of the bimbo payments, interviewing National Enquirer executives and the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization. Since Cohen pled guilty to making an illegal campaign contribution there will be an attempt to hang Trump on a similar charge; however, Trump's team will argue that he was just spending his own money to protect his wife and son from embarrasment. The option of Trump volunteering to testify under oath is in the rear view mirror, as the possibility of mis-speaking and being charged with perjury is obvious. 

     - Within a week or two Mueller needs to conclude or pause his investigation, lest he be guilty of Comey's sin of appearing to influence elections. All of the apparent avenues of inquiry have been exhausted, except for the role of Hillary's campaign in the Russia-related Steele dossier, and the anti-Trump behavior of the FBI leadership before and after the election - but there is no evidence that Mueller will go there. Mueller can claim vindication in indicting or getting guilty pleas from two batches of Russians for election interference, identity theft, and money laundering; Manafort for unregistered lobbying and tax evasion; Cohen for improper use of taxi medallions and illegal bimbo payments; Michael Flynn and George Papadopoulos for lying to the FBI; and a few assorted lawyers and hangers on for helping Manafort and the Russians. That Mueller hasn't found a whiff of Russian collusion or obstruction of justice on the part of the Trump team will be a disappointment to many. 

     CBS kept As the World Turns on air for 54 years, proving that there is a market for soap operas. Fifteen months is enough for Mueller v Trump. The overhang on the Trump presidency has been significant, but the Energizer bunny has kept on going.                                                                 

                                                                                                 -----

   This week's video is a brief discussion of California gubernatorial candidate Gavin Newsom's commitment to include illegal immigrants in his free healthcare for all plan. For those keepng track, the state Senate passed a similar program this year, but the Assembly refused to consider it because there was no plan to cover the $400 billion cost. (For perspective the current state budget is about $185 billion.) Support Republican John Cox for governor. 

bill bowen - 8/31/2018

 

 

      

In Defense of Trade Skirmishes

     Of all the things that Donald Trump should be good at, negotiation of trade agreements is at the top of the list. This is clearly an Executive Branch function, as the world's largest market the United States posesses immense leverage, and he has lots of experience dealing with unsavory commercial partners. 

     The Issue:

          The United States has a growing unsustainable trade deficit - $810 billion in goods partially offset by a surplus of $244 billion in services in 2017. The big three problems are with China (a net deficit of $375 billion),Mexico (a net deficit of $71 billion, Japan (a net deficit of $69 billion), and Germany (a net deficit of $65 billion.) Over time we lose control of our economy if we import three to four per cent more of our Gross Domestic Product than we export. The question is not really "free trade" or "fair trade", it is "balanced trade". Apologists claim that "comparative advantage" principles make bilateral balances irrelevant, but our decisions as a country are less under our control when foreign governments, companies, and individuals own our real estate and companies, and hold our debt. We cannot significantly diminish the overall problem without addressing the largest national deficits. 

     The MAGA Trade Advocates:

          - The industries such as consumer electronics and apparell which have gone are no longer able to advocate for themselves.  A few industries, like dairy which faces closed Canadian markets, steel which has long faced unequal foreign barriers, and energy companies are openly supportive, but most do not want to be vocal, lest they offend their potential customers and draw the attention of the #Resisters.  

           - Blue collar workers are advocates for strong trade policies, but not the company owners who are looking for the lowest cost option, nor the State Department consular officials who are often more interested in helping foreign companies establish exports to the United States. 

           - The Trump team makes the case domestically and internationally, led by  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who made a fortune restructuring bankrupt manufacturng companies, Trade Representative and Washington lawyer Robert Lighthizer,  and Director of the White House Trade Council Peter Navarro, an academic outlier from the University of California, Irvine, and ardent critic of China, Germany, and NAFTA trade policies. Some ivory tower; some Washington insider; some street fighter.  

     The MAGA Trade Opponents:

           - The Wall Street Journal editors reflect the interests of capital rather than workers or any broader national good. Ditto the rest of the financial press. 

           - Walmart, which began as Sam Walton's heartland America retailer, brought scale to Asian manufacturers and became the largest champion of cheap stuff for American consumers at the expense of American workers. Ditto all of the other peddlers of cheap stuff.  

           - Export industries do not want to offend their customers - Information Technology; aircraft; vehicle components; soybeans.

           - The #Resisters and Never Trumpers from both sides of the aisle see an avenue to attack what is otherwise a successful economic performance.  

     The status:

           - The imbalance spiked in January, and has since returned to the 2017 level of about $45 billion per month. 

           - Ironically, the first major breakthrough will apparently be with Mexico where the incoming leftist president Andres Lopez Manuel Obrador, wants to take NAFTA off of the table so that he can focus on his agenda of fighting corruption and improving internal security after an election in which over 130 politicians were murdered.  Four weeks of bilateral negotiations have reached agreement on automotive wage rates in Mexico and the portion of products that must originate within North America. Canada will object to being brought in late in the discussions, but will not be asked for major concessions. Trump will be able to declare victory (even if partial) before the November 6 election - while demonstrating that he can work with leaders even when there are significant disagreements. 

           - In late July, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and President Trump agreed to withhold US tariff increases on steel, aluminum, and automobiles while the EU would lower tariffs for U.S. industrial goods, provide outlets for U.S. gas and soybeans, and potentially back the US in trade rows with China.The shared goal is trade without any tariffs. A European delegation is working on details in Washington this week. The European politics have to be worked out, but it would seem that German interest in protecting the export of Mercedeses, BMWs, and Volkswagons has overcome the historic French opposition to agricultural imports. Trump also catches a break as Junker would like to avoid a trade war with the United States as he tries to negotiate Brexit terms with Theresa May.  

          - China will be more difficult - and important. Talks between dovish Treasury  Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He broke down in May, followed by mutual 25% tariffs on $50 billion of goods. With the Trump administeration examining 10 to 25% tariffs on another $200 billion, lower lever talks have resumed this week in Washington. (The US side is led by an Undersecretary of the Treasury rather than Lighthizer, Ross, or Navarro, a clear signal that Trump is not ready to deal.)  With a greater dependence on exports, a slowing domestic economy, and a stock market down 20% on the year, Xi Jinping is under greater pressure than Trump, but he has a firm grasp on broad political power, while Trump may appear to be on the ropes. Little real progress is likely before November. 

       The trade deficit with China is a bit like North Korea's nuclear program - an unacceptable problem which has been growing for more than a decade without being confronted by American presidents - Democratic or Republican. Both problems call for bipartisan support - a commodity which is has just moved from rare to virtually impossible before the November elections.  

                                                                                                    -----

  This week's bonus video is an expert legal opinion by Harmeet Dhillon, Republican National Committeewoman from California (and former chair of the San Francisco GOP), explaining that it is not a crime for a candidate to use his own resources to pay hush money, regardless of whether Mueller's team got Michael Cohen to plead guilty to that offense in exchange for leniency on other unrelated charges. 

bill bowen - 8/24/18 

 

The New Republican Senate

    For conservatives concerned about President Trump's latest tweet, the rantings of the socialist Left, and the New York Times latest editorial, there is one secure refuge.  By all accounts, the November election will see the Republican Senate majority expand slightly, but importantly. 

The Setting:

    - The current 51 to 49 majority is apparently adequate to approve routine legislation and Supreme Court justices who pass the screen of the Federalist Society and exhibit no discernable blemishes. Even realistic liberals agree that Brett Kavanaugh will be on the Supreme Court when the next term begins in October.  

    - The Democrats (and their independent allies) will need to defend 26 Senate seats to the Republicns 9.  (This will reverse in the 2020 and 2022 elections, but that is a worry for another day.)  Some 10 Democratic seats are in states carried by Trump in 2016; one Republican seat is in a state carried by Hillary Clinton. 

The Projections:

    - The two most widely followed prognosticators, Charlie Cook and Larry Sabato, project that only six of the Democratic seats and three of the Republican seats are seriously in play (Toss up, or Lean one way.) In approximate order of risk for the Democrats, that is Joe Donnelly of Indiana, Bill Nelson of Florida, Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Clair McCaskill of Missouri, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. On the Republican side it is Dean Heller of Nevada, Jeff Flake's open seat in Arizona, and Tom Corker's open seat in Tennessee. Cook, who leans slightly Left, projects no way that the Democrats gain two net seats, estimating a loss of two or three. Apologies to the believers in an invisible Blue Wave and the tooth fairy. 

    - The "big picture" of the 2018 Senate elections rests in the upper Midwest where the move from Democrat to Republican in recent years - governors; state legislatures; House members - represents the majority of the shift of national political alignment. (The Northeast and the West Coast remain Democrat; the South and the Mountain West remain Republican.)  Democratic Incumbents Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin are projected as "Likely Democrat". The broader erosion of Democratic strength extends to Montana (Jon Tester Leans Democrat), North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp Toss-up), Missouri (Clair McCaskill Tossup).  Most of this is Trump Country,and he is free with his endorsements, but in Democratic positioning every year is "The Year of the Woman." 

    - A few specific contests worth watching:

         -- Some Democrats think that their day has arrived in Texas with Beto O'Rourke  outraising Ted Cruz in a significantly Hispanic state where Democrats haven't held state-wide office for decades. Maybe next cycle when John Cornyn is the Republican incumbent. 

          -- The Trump-endorsed winner of the Michigan Republican primary, John James, is an African American, Iraq War veteran, and small business owner with degrees from West Point, Penn State, and the University of Michigan. Don't expect much liberal media coverage, but he could join Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina as attractive, reliable conservatives who demonstrate the falacy of Democratic efforts to stereotype Republicans. 

 The implications:

     - Mitch McConnell should sleep better without needing to worry about one or two defections - Susan Collins; Lisa Murkowski; Jeff Flake; Bob Corker; Rand Paul; John McCain (who will eventually be replaced by the selection of Arizona's Republican governor, Doug Ducey.)  Under current Senate rules, budget items which originate in the House and are not amended in the Senate can be passed with a simple majority, but other bills require a 60 vote majority, which McConnell will not have. He will have to legislate from the center. 

    - McConnell and Trump will have a clear path to re-make the judiciary. Building on Harry Reid's decision to allow confirmation of lower court and appeals court judges by a simple majority, McConnell has also cut back on the nicety of home state Senator approvals, focused on appeals court judges, and held the Senate in session for most of August to partially offset the Democrats' demand for up to 30 hours of debate on each appointee. With a total of 860 lifetime judiciary positions, McConnell's  Senate has approved over 40 Trump appointees, but has almost 100 in process, and looks to another 50 vacancies beyond that. 

    - Impeachment remains a Left wing dream; even if the Democrats were to win the House, they would need 67 votes in the Senate. 

    - If the Republican Establishment wishes to challenge President Trump in 2020, the Senate would be the most likely perch for a candidate. Mitt Romney sat out the 2016 election cycle in deference to Jeb Bush; on January 4,  he will become the junior Senator from Utah. 

    With so much political noise in the House and presidency, a Republican Senate looks to remain a relative bastion of conservative calm. Jinx!

                                                                                            -----

  This week's bonus video is the first step in the utterly logical revocation of security clearances for former Obama officials who have aggressively attacked the president before and after the election.  In typical disruptive style, Trump asks the common sense question as to why people no longer in the public service retain top secret security clearances. 

bill bowen - 8/17/18

A Socialism Primer

   Rasmusssen's polling tells us that 51% of Democrats, 26% of independents, and even 21 % of Republicans have a favorable impression of socialism. Let's assume that there is something out there beyond the desire for open borders and free stuff; something beyond a charismatic candidate from an anomylous Congressional district; something more than an antipathy for President Trump. After all, surveys of millenials frequently show greater support for socialism than for capitalism. It is worth a primer. 

    Formal definitions don't always catch what is really in people's heads, but they represent a good place to start: 

        Capitalism: An economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit. Characteristics central to capitalism include private property, capital accumulation, voluntary wage labor, voluntary exchange of goods and services, a price system, and competitive markets. Versions include pure free market where supply and demand set prices without government, monopolies, or other interference; welfare capitalism which includes welfare services provided by the government or employers; and state capitalism where some of the economic activity is directly managed by the government, as in China.   

         Socialism: Collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods in which there is no private property and the means of production are owned and controlled by the state. Versions include different scopes of what is owned by the state (factories; farms; small stores) and the amount of central planning. Wages are based on work performed.  

        Communism: The highest form of socialism. A society without class divisions or government, in which the production and distribution of goods would be based upon the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” 

    In the early stages of the 2016 presidential election, Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont brought the far left wing of the Democratic Party to life, ranting against millionaires and billionaires while promising free healthcare, free college, and free child care; he certainly had the crowd energy, and might have won the Democratic nomination had not the party machinery put a heavy thumb (in the form of super delegates and debate management) on the scales for the more mainstream Hillary Clinton.  Over his career Sanders, once a member of the Young People's Socialist League and an admirer of Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs, has advocated for just about every liberal cause possible, but has, in truth, not focused on government takeover of private enterprise. While frequently enjoying being called a socialist by his supporters, he has tried to identify more with welfare capitalist Scandinavia than with communist Russia - with a few forays into praise for Castro's Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.  

    The next iteration of leftist activism is younger and less circumspect about identification as socialists. Brooklyn Congresswoman-in-waiting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the current star of the Democratic Socialists of America, but she is a beneficiary of the organization  rather than its leader. Founded in 1982 as an amalgum of aging socialist and communist organizations, the DSA left the Socialist International in 2017 because it was endorsing mainstream liberal economic policies such as deregulation and free trade. The largest socialist organization in the United States in over a century, membership in the DSA has risen to 47,000 by mid-2017 - sparked largely by the Trump election - with 181 chapters and a median member age of 33 as compared to an age of 68 in 2013. 

    It is worth digesting a few pearls from the  Democratic Socialists of America web site:  

       -  We are socialists because we reject an economic order based on private profit.

        - We are socialists because we are developing a concrete strategy for achieving that vision, for building a majority movement that will make democratic socialism a reality in America. We believe that such a strategy must acknowledge the class structure of American society and that this class structure means that there is a basic conflict of interest between those sectors with enormous economic power and the vast majority of the population.

     - We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few.

    - Like most political organization websites there is also a store selling swag - "Medicare for all" cups; "Abolish ICE" tee shirts; "Karl Marx 200th Birthday" tote bags. 

    In some regards it is good to have Ocasio-Cortez as the poster child of this race to the Left. Despite her degree from Boston University with emphasis in economics and international relations, she cannot get beyond DSA talking points, even when interviewed on sympathetic programs like the Daily Show. Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs; last year we gave the military a $700 billion increase (actually the total military budget); she favors a two state solution for Israel and Palestine - until liberal activists get her to talk about the "massacre" in Gaza and the Israeli occupation.  A couple of generations ago an international relations degree would have implied understanding that tens of millions were killed by Stalin, Mao, and Castro for their opposition to the imposition of socialism; today one would expect students would be taking the same lessons from Venezuela: not everyone is willing to give their posessions to the state, not everyone is willing to let the state determine where they work and live, and few central government bureaucrats are willing to really give "power to the people". 

    Conservatives expect that a clarion call from the Left will fall flat as it did with candidates such as George McGovern (who carried Massachusetts and the District of Columbia against incumbent Richard Nixon in 1972). They should not be so confident. The pendulum swings - Donald Trump reflects to some extent a reaction to the globalism and smooth-talking liberalism of Barack Obama. Ocasio-Cortez will have a platform, and the mob crying "socialism" will have a voice in the Congress in 2019, potentially as an unruly part of the majority. To make it through the primaries and caucuses in 2020 the successful Democratic presidential candidate will need to sound like the Bernie Sanders version of socialism; to be elected they will need to convince the public that they believe in capitalism.  

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    This week's video is a New York Times story designed to promote the recent campaign visit of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to Wichita, Kansas, as evidence that the whole country is turning left.  

bill bowen - 8/3/18

 

Replacing The Republican Establishment

   Once upon a time there was a species called "Rockefeller Republicans" - named after the former Governor of New York, presidential candidate in 1964, 1968, and 1972, and Vice President during Gerald Ford abbreviated presidency from 1974 to 1977 - who  were moderate to left on social issues, center-right on economic issues, and (pro-business) globalist on foreign policy. The definition of "Establishment" has varied over the intervening years, affected by passions surrounding the Vietnam War and the myriad of politicians adhering to or, more frequently, castigating the term. Nevertheless, there remains a core of Republican leaders who align with the Chamber of Commerce, reflect a wealthy donor base, manage much of the party machinery, and look a lot like the old Rockefeller Republicans. 

    Their demise within the party did not begin with Donald Trump. The major socio-economic trend in the United States over the past 40 years has been the growing prosperity of the upper 20%, coupled with decline of real (after inflation) income by the broad middle class. Politically, as the Democrats have moved to the left, focusing their efforts on ethnic minorities and women, they have abandoned their traditional working middle class constituency. Particularly in the Midwest and Appalachia, these voters - having been abandoned by the Democratic Party - changed parties, fueling the Republican take-over of legislatures and governorships in states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania. Nationally, they have demanded a seat at the table in the form of the Tea Party, the Freedom Caucus, and now Donald Trump. 

    It is natural that the Republican Establishment - politicians such as the Bush entourage, former Speaker John Boehner, Senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona, and their intellectual vanguard such as George Will and David Brooks - would take offense. This is not just a traditional liberal / conservative conflict; it reflects culture, geography, and economic status. It reflects the transfer of Republican political power from the elites to the middle class. It affects lobbyists whose connections no longer work. It affects corporate political affairs vice presidents who are no longer connected to those in power. It affects editorial writers who have not kept up with their audience. The Never Trumpers frequently are motivated by what they see as principle (and it is easy to get there with all of Trump's personal foibles), but the underlying factor is the shift of power from Upper Class Republicans to the newly-arrived Middle Class Republicans   

    Beyond egos, personal careers, and Trump's serious personal shortcomings, there are several issues where the new "party of the middle class" receives outspoken criticism for heretical departure from the Republican Establishment:

    1. Foreign Trade. The traditional Republican Establishment thinks in terms of moving capital around the world to wherever it gets the best rate of return; the stockholders don't care whether the workers are in Toledo or Bengladesh; they want some help in opening foreign markets for their products, but they would just as soon make them in other countries and ship them back. When Trump lowers corporate income tax rates the Establishment cheers; when he tries to stop the $800 billion outflow of dollars to pay for trade imbalances, they want the government to let the free market work, never mind that our trading partners play by different rules. There is little difference between the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in criticizing Trump's willingness to disrupt the losing status quo in trade, and Establishment Senate Republicans want to legislate away Trump's negotiating authority. The new Middle Class blue collar Republicans?  They want the jobs here. And thoughtful people of good will ask how long we can sustain $800 billion annual trade deficits anyway.  

    2. American subsidization of Pax Americana. When the United States came out of World War II with a dominant, undamaged manufacturing infrastructure we established a benign world order which fit our economic, military, political and cultural objectives - the United Nations; the World Trade Organization; NATO / CENTO / SEATO; the World Bank; the International Monetary Fund. With 5% of the world's population, 25% of the world's Gross Domestic Product, and 35% of the world's military spending we could afford to pay for the wars and subsidize a major portion of the organizations. Establishment Republicans would say "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."  The new Middle Class blue collar Republicans?  They are tired of their children dying in Afghanistan; want roads, bridges, housing, and reservoirs built in America; and are willing to do their share if our allies do likewise. And thoughtful people of good will ask how long we can sustain trillion dollar budget deficits anyway.  

    3. Promotion of working class America. The preponderant majority of Americans share the belief that all people are created equal in a moral and political sense. Unlike almost all other countries, the common ground connecting Americans is a desire for liberty and opportunity rather than an ethnic commonality. Conceptually, almost all would support the rule of law and the need to take personal responsibility. There are, however, nuances of difference between Establishment Republicans and the new Middle Class blue collar Republicans. After decades of being castigated as racist, homophobic, and mysogenist for any hint of political incorrectness, the Republican Establishment buys the program. The blue collar Republicans, who are more directly affected by illegal immigration and street crime, are less willing to place compassion above the law. 

    In the cacophany that is America's political media it has become easy to understand the hysteria on the Left about everything Trump. It is more difficult to sort the voices on the Right between those reflecting the downgraded Republican Establishment and those reflecting the new blue collar Republican voters. Even on Fox there are some of each; editorial policy of the Wall Street Journal is suspicious of Trump's economic policies and acumen; most of the expeditions sent out by traditional media to interview Trump voters do not listen, and thus do not understand.  The support and composition of the party has changed, and the media has not caught up. For some enterprising entrepreneurs this represents opportunity. 

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    This week's video is a discussion with former Democratic VP Joe Lieberman about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York socialist who has been called the "future of the party" by Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez.   

bill bowen - 7/27/18

 

 

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. 

                                                                                                -----  

    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

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.  

                                                                                                    ----- 

   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: Continued Optimism

    President Trump is playing two simultaneous chess games - one to denuclearize North Korea; the other to make a quantum change in our trade deficit with China. Since Chinese cooperation is critical in controlling North Korea, the two are intertwined. Understanding the likelihood of success in either negotiation is difficult, both because the terrain is complicated, because much of the mainstream media paints everything Trump does as a failure, and because much of the financial media is opposed to any changes to current business arrangements. The Korea negotiation is the harder of the two, because the objective must be completely obtained; "success" in the trade negotiations can be more flexibly defined. This optimist believes that The Donald has a plan which can accomplish both objectives. 

    On the plus side, Trump offers a clear statement of the intended outcome: verifiable total de-nuclearization of North Korea; halving the  trade deficit with China. In a world where many American interests are part of the negotiation, he is unafraid of offending his knee-jerk opponents, and even his allies. A first priority was to establish a personal relationship with the key decision makers - he directly with Xi Jinping in China, and Secretary of State Pompeo with Kim Jong-Un.  Symbolism is important - Kim understands that he is below Jinping and Trump, and how and when he gets to meet with Trump is part of the negotiation. It is fair to assume that Kim's two meetings with Jinping included some direction from Beijing, and some discussion of personal safety guarantees. Trump is a good negotiator - he is keeping all of his powder dry, rather than making concessions just to get negotiations going. 

    On the minus side, Trump hires some terrible advisors. The clear path of the recent backtracking in the Korea negotiations could be summarized as: a period of positive statements and symbolic good will gestures (releasing prisoners; demolishing North Korea's nuclear test site); John Bolton musing that we needed to follow the Libya model (in which Muammar Gadaffi gave up his nuclear program, was deposed, and was assassinated); a series of understandable belligerent comments by Kim; a re-siezing of control by Trump in which he cancelled the planned June 12 meeting; and a new set of positive comments and planning activities with Kim, Trump, China, and the South Koreans. The totally unnecessary problem was precipitated by Bolton acting in his prior commentator / provocateur capacity rather than someone who actually is a central part of the administration. He was hired to project a tough stance during the negotiations, but was not smart enough to know how to play the role. He has apparently been taken to the woodshed, not to be heard again unless Trump needs some bluster at a future sticking point. 

    On the "To Be Demonstrated" level, it is an advantage that Trump can control all of the elements of the American game. He can accept a "strategic direction" of decreasing our current annual trade deficit of $375 billion by $200 billion - the type of thing that heads of state can agree on privately, without giving their domestic opponents a specific number as a rallying point. (Agricultural and oil/natural gas sales to China will be substantially increased to the detriment of Australia and Brazil. Expansion of US sales of technologically sensitive items will be a longer term negotiation.) Trump can agree to "solve" the ZTE problem - in which the Chinese telephone company is near bankruptcy as a result of American sanctions following prohibited activity with Iran. (Congress complains; the media complains; the Democrats complain, but Trump agrees that will be enough for ZTE to fire some key employees and change a few members of the Board of Directors.) It will be enough to have strong momentum on trade through the time that firm comitments are made on North Korea's nukes. 

    This is also multi-player chess. The South Koreans know that they are on the front line of disaster if negotiations fail - and are willing to pay a good piece of the North Korean redevelopment cost. The Russians want a place at the table - and could be a problem if they stop enforcing sanctions. Countries bordering the South China Sea will get nervous if  Trump trades acceptance of Chinese militarization of their newly built islands in exchange for North Korea or trade concessions - actually a recognition of the new reality might be acceptable if it seals a big deal.   

    The "off again-on again" meeting planning should be viewed as a good thing - both because Trump's immediate response showed a full understanding of the need to guarantee (with China's help) Kim's longevity in power, and because Kim's willingness to put Bolton's gaffe aside indicated the extent to which he needs to substantially improve the economic circumstances in North Korea. This is a deal that the two of them need, and can make. The key is for Trump and Pompeo to be able to retain focus for the year it will take to agree on actions, timelines, and guarantees. And to remember the stakes.

                                                                                    -----

   This week's video chronicles the current high-level discussions between North Korean Vice Chair Kim Yong Chol, Secetary of State Pompeo, and others in preparation for the Trump-Kim meeting in Singapore. While "it ain't over til its over", all of the right steps seem to again be in alignment.  

bill bowen - 6/1/18

Deep State 2016: Chasing Shadows

 

    One should be disappointed if the leaders of the CIA and the FBI were not skilled enough in their craft to make investigation of their engagement in the 2016 presidential election look like something from Alice in Wonderland. An illusion here; a feint there; a bureaucratic impasse; a legal conundrum; loud braying from allies on the Democratic side of the aisle; knee-jerk responses from conservative commentators.  And all of this takes place as a counter-story to the Democratic media's obsession of alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians. Lewis Carroll at his peak could not have done better. 

    What do we know (largely due to the courageous persistence of House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes, and over the shrieks of committee minority leader Adam Schiff)?

        Prior to this week:

            - The Trump campaign was full of dodgy characters. Paul Manafort; Steve Bannon; Michael Flynn; Anthony Scaramucci - each had their own agenda and client list. High on the compendium of Trump's management deficiencies is the vetting of senior managers.   

            - The Obama administration politicized government agencies to attack opponents. The lowlight was the use of Lois Lerner's IRS to target conservative tax-exempt organizations as part of a broader pattern of executive overreach. 

            -  Senior Obama administration officials (UN ambassador Stephanie Powers; CIA Director John Brennan; and National Security Advisor Susan Rice), oversaw a program to bypass American privacy laws by wiretapping hundreds of foreign officials, identifying (unmasking) Americans with whom they were talking, and leaking the contents of the discussions to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other friendly outlets. 

            -  The FBI used the "Steele dossier", paid for by the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign, as a justification for a FISA Court warrant to wiretap Trump aide, Carter Paige. 

            - FBI leadership, particularly James Comey,  factored politics into investigatory decison making - the decision to not prosecute Hillary Clinton for her "extreme carelessness" which fell short of "intentional or gross negligence"; the  "last minute" resurection of the Clinton investigation, which might actually have cost her the election. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was totally compromised by her tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton, so Comey filled the gap, rather than deferring to the Deputy Attorney General.  

            - A number of Comey's subordinates - Andy McCabe, Peter Strzock, Lisa Page - were ardent anti-Trumpers, loose in their communications, and (in the case of McCabe) prone to false testimony under oath. 

            - Trump's responses have often been right on the substance, but wrong on the facts, giving the Left ample room for distractions. The FBI did not wiretap Trump Tower, but it did wiretap calls of foreign persons with campaign aides, then unmasked the campaign aides. 

        And the new news - Stefan Halper:

            - Halper, a former American professor at Cambridge University in the UK, has a long history of working between the intelligence community and academia to provide information to political parties about the likely policies and activities of their adversaries. In 1980, he worked for the Reagan/HW Bush campaign to gather information on President Jimmy Carter's foreign policy direction. (HW had been director of the CIA.)  The activity was unearthed in 1983, and after a brief kerfullfe, was forgotten. 

            - He was paid some $1,000,000 through a shadowy Department of Defense account between 2012 and 2017. 

            - In mid-2016, he reached out as part of an FBI investigation to befriend three Trump campaign aides - Papadopolous (who he paid $3000, and introduced to a Turkish woman associate - and who has subsequently been indicted by Mueller's team for lying under oath); Carter Page (who was the subject of the FISA warrant controversy), and campaign co-chair Sam Clovis. 

            - Halper has been mis-characterized as a plant in the Trump campaign. He was actually employed by the FBI to investigate selected campaign members who might have Russian connections. It is not clear that he found anything, but the FBI has refused to disclose to the administration or to the House Intelligence Committee either the circumstances surrounding his hiring, or any results of his investigations. 

            - The next week will dampen emotions, as Trump has appointed Chief of Staff Kelly to oversee a sharing of documents between the FBI, the CIA, and the House Intelligence Committee. The burden of proof lies with the FBI to show that their surveillance of the Trump campaign was not for political purposes, a test which they can most likely pass. In any case,m this should be central to the oversight role of the House Intelligence Committee - making sure that the spooks are not interfering in our elections.  

    The two investigations - Mueller's and that of FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz - should be viewed as a pair: Mueller investigating whether candidate Trump colluded with the Russians to influence the outocome of the election (excluding Stormy Daniels and other tangents); and Horowitz investigating whether the Obama administration used the FBI and the CIA to tilt the election in the favor of Hillary and undermine the incoming Trump administration.  Niether will ever be proven to the satisfaction of both Republicans and Democrats. In the short run, we will be consumed by the Mueller report, but in a 100 year perspective, abuse of the FBI and the CIA by a sitting administration for partisan political purposes is far more important to the health of the Republic. 

                                                                                                                -----

    This week's video is an introduction to John Cox, the candidate for California governor who won the support of 55% of the delegates at the recent GOP state convention, and who has been endorsed by President Trump and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy. The immediate priority is to come in among the "top two" in the June 5, primary. 

bill bowen - 5/25/18

 

    

"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. 

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

bill bowen -  

    

    

Minimalist Hope: The California Republican Party Convention

    California Republican leadership spent the past weekend in San Diego schmoozing, endorsing positions on ballot initiatives, and debating the merits of candidates for statewide office. For the many who ask "So what?", there is an answer that offers at least a bit of hope.  

    A Brief Background

        - While Hillary won California by a 62 to 33% margin (a 3,446,000 margin; more than her national margin), there are still pockets in the Central Valley, Orange County, suburbs east of Los Angeles, and San Diego where Republicans win elections. Republicans hold 14 0f the 53 US House seats, with Democrats targeting 10 in their effort to gain control of the House with a capture of more than 23 seats nationally. 

        - Under a "top two" primary system, the June 5 primaries will propel two candidates to the November 6 election, regardless of party. Absentee voting has already begun. Two of the Republican seats will be vacant with the retirement of Darrell Issa and Ed Royce who were honored by the party.   

        - Democrats hold slim supermajorities (over two-thirds) in the state Assembly and Senate, allowing them to raise taxes without any opposition, or to bring down any number of plagues upon the state which already has the highest tax and poverty rates.  

         - In this election cycle Republicans have several issues which energize the base, particularly in the enclaves where there are House seats to be saved. 

            - In April 2017, Democrats increased the gasoline tax and vehicle registration fees by $5.2 billion annually - an average of $779 per family, which has the greatest impact on the working poor. Nearly 1,000,000 signatures were submitted to put repeal on the ballot for November. Past diversion of highway and "Cap and Trade" funds to other purposes has resulted in California roads being in poor repair; the $5.2 billion buys no new capacity. Folks are angry. 

            - California's declaration as a "Sanctuary State" has met resistance in numerous City Councils in Southern California who have passed resolutions requiring support for cooperation between their law enforcement officials and federal authorities.  

        - With the importance of the House races, the Republican National Committee has - after a many year gap - begun spending money in California to establish campaign headquarters and directly support candidates. 

    The good

        - There is a sense of optimism about the House seats. The liberal Cook Report shows two seats as Lean Democrat, and three as "Republican Toss Up".  In most of these districts so many Democrats are running that two Republicans may qualify for the November election. 

            - The two most at risk districts are east of LA where Ed Royce is retiring from a district where he got 58 % of the 2016 vote, and south of LA where Darrell Issa is retiring from a district where he got 51 % of the 2016 vote. 

            - Cook's "toss up" elections for Republican incumbents include Jeff Denham (Tulare; 52-48 in 2016), Steve Knight (Fullerton; 54-46 in 2016); and Dana Rohrabacker (Coastal Orange County; 58-42 in 2016). All are experienced campaigners and well funded. 

        - The convention, for the first time, endorsed candidates for state wide office in order to unify behind a single Republican in the top two system. This succeeded with Judge Steven Bailey beating a party opponent for the attorney general endorsement. (This could draw national attention as Brown-appointee Xavier Becerra has several lawsuits against the federal government, and George Soros is spending several million dollars to elect local district attorneys who support his objective of reducing prison sentences.)  Endorsements without intraparty opposition were also approved for Mark Meuser as secretary of state and Cole Harris as lieutenant governor.  

    The Bad

        - The big prize got away. John Cox got 55% of the delegate vote for governor against Travis Allen's 40%, 5% short of what he needed. Polls currently show Cox in second place to Gavin Newsom, and he has the support of House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and several other leading Republicans, but it will take a united and supportive party to survive the June 5 primary which includes former LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and mount a real challenge in November, and many of the Allen supporters seem more interested in a good fight than a win.  

        - After a century the California GOP rules were changed to eliminate the practice of rotating the chairmanship between the north and the south. With decidedly more population, the more conservative south will undoubtedly dominate the more moderate north in future party governance - not that the 9 million-person Bay Area deserves a loud voice with only one Republican among the 80 Assembly members and none among the 40 Senate members. 

                                                                                                        -----

    This week's bonus video is a quick 1985 precursor to John Kerry's current rogue negotiation with Iran.

bill bowen - 5/11/18 

 

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. 

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

www.RightinSanFrancisco.com 

The Decline of American Democracy

    It is hard to get an objective assessment of how American democracy is doing. The daily media frenzy contributes to 80% "wrong track" public opinion polling and sub-50% approval ratings for everybody but kindergarten teachers, but it would be good to have an evaluation of our democratic processes trending over time and in comparison to other countries. We can discard any effort by think tanks funded by George Soros or the Koch brothers, but there is one source worth a look - the Democracy Index prepared by the British Economist Intelligence Unit. As to political bias, the Economist editors seek the "extreme center", having supported Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, the Vietnam War, Harold Wilson and Bill Clinton, decolonization, gun control, and gay marriage. Their coverage is truly global.   

    The EIU bi-annually rates about 165 countries on electoral process and pluralism, civil liberties, functioning of government, political participation, and political culture. Much of the input is based on surveys and "panels of experts". Country rankings are divided into four categories:

    - Full democracies where civil liberties and basic political freedoms are not only respected, but also reinforced by a political culture conducive to the thriving of democratic principles. These nations have a valid system of governmental checks and balances, independent judiciary whose decisions are enforced, governments that function adequately, and media that is diverse and independent. These nations have only limited problems in democratic functioning.  Most of the 19 countries in this cohort are North European, with Norway at the pole position.  

    - Flawed democracies where elections are fair and free and basic civil liberties are honored but may have issues (e.g. media freedom infringement). Nonetheless, these nations have significant faults in other democratic aspects, including underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance. South Korea, the United States, and Italy lead this cohort, along with Japan, France, and Israel and another 51 countries. 

    - Hybrid regimes where consequential irregularities exist in elections regularly preventing them from being fair and free. These nations commonly have governments that apply pressure on political opponents, non independent judiciaries, and have widespread corruption, harassment and pressure placed on the media, anemic rule of law, and more pronounced faults than flawed democracies in the realms of underdeveloped political culture, low levels of participation in politics, and issues in the functioning of governance. This cohort of 39 includes Turkey, Ukraine, Thailand, Nigeria, and Iraq. 

     - Authoritarian regimes where political pluralism has vanished or is extremely limited. These nations are often absolute monarchies or dictatorships, may have some conventional institutions of democracy but with meager significance, infringements and abuses of civil liberties are commonplace, elections (if they take place) are not fair and free, the media is often state-owned or controlled by groups associated with the ruling regime, the judiciary is not independent, and the presence of omnipresent censorship and suppression of governmental criticism. This cohort of 52 includes most of the Middle East and Africa, Russia, China, Cuba, and Vietnam, with Syria and North Korea on the bottom. 

    Of particular interest, the ratings released in January 2017, dropped the United States from the "full democracies" category to the "flawed democracies" category. The accompanying explaination stressed the steady decline since the 1950's in Americans' confidence in governmental institutions as reflected in Pew Research, and a level of income inequality significantly higher than most developed economies. Rather than blaming the drop on the election of Donald Trump, Trump's election was attributed in part to a broad disaffection with government institutions - a result rather than a cause.  

    Next year's survey may drop off of the cliff. 

        - Whether or not there is ever a fair accounting for the corruption of the Clinton Foundation, the public can connect the dots between the hundreds of millions of contributions, the access to the state department decision making, the reasons for Hillary's illegal e-mail system, and the meeting of Bill Clinton with the Attorney General on the tarmac in Phoenix.   As exposed in the Nunes memo, the Justice Department and the FBI were engaged to spy on the Trump campaign during an election where the Democratic National Committee gave debate questions to one of their competitors. The use of the IRS to target conservative groups is old news. 

        - The un-ending Mueller search for collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians keeps expanding to include unsubstantiated claims of obstruction, decade-old wrongdoing by Manafort and his colleages, episodes with porn stars, raids to seize client-lawyer communications, and anything else that the full power of the politicized FBI and Justice Department can bring against the President. 

        - Many Democrats have abandoned any pretext of respect for our electoral system, with a Silicon Valley billionaire spending tens of millions on a campaign for impeachment, and some 65 House members signing on. 

        - The public's view of government effectiveness must include some measure of looming trillion dollar annual deficits.  

        - And then there is the much flawed Donald Trump, holding up fairly well under the pressure of a nuclear stand-off with North Korea, a trade dispute with China, and an escalating crisis in Syria while the FBI searches his lawyer's house and office. This is not the conventional poster boy for the leader of the Free World. 

     In assessing the trajectory of America's democracy, it is normal for the presidential election to have the results challenged through the final recount. It is improper, but perhaps understandable that agents of the outgoing administration would try to influence the selection of their successors.  What is wrong, and a sharp divergence from America's democratic principles, is the refusal of the losing party to accept the legitimacy of the president who won the election. 

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    This week's video is an interview with Diamond and Silk, two black women Trump supporters whose Facebook page with 1,200,000 followers was blocked as "unsafe to the community." Most of the discussion on the Zuckerberg testimony has been about protection of users' privacy; this reflects a concern about politically biased censorship. 

bill bowen - 4/13/18 

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 

The State of State

    Rex Tillerson arrived as Secretary of State in 2017 with deep experience in the oil politics of the Middle East and Russia and a successful 42 year career at Exxon Mobil. The hope was that the responsible adult would bring gravitas to the cabinet as well as understanding and personal relationships which could help in the post-Iraq, post-Syria, post-Ukraine world of American foreign policy. The generals could handle the military clean-up work; Tillerson would handle the soft side. What went wrong?

    The complexity of foreign policy is reflected in the core membership of the President's National Security Council - the Vice President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the the Secretary of the Treasury, and the President's Assistant for National Security, advised by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence. The three dimensions of foreign policy - diplomatic, military, and economic - are all represented; each needs a champion who has the confidence of the President and a who can draw upon an experienced and motivated staff which prepares the briefing papers and implements the decisions. This assumes competent staff down several levels, and NSC members who are aligned with the president. Both requirements proved to be missing in the case of Rex Tillerson's State Department. 

    To be fair, the fixation about Russian meddling in the 2016 election has made it very difficult to engage with what Mitt Romney had rightly called our number one national security threat. Tillerson knew Putin, at least peripherally, understood the importance of energy in Russia's economy and foreign policy, and had direct experience dealing with Russian negotiators. Before the Democrats settled on the "Russia cost Hillary the election" meme and Mueller subpoened anyone who had ever talked to a Russian, there was a chance to sort out the interests of Russia and NATO in the former Soviet republics and to agree on a plan to stabilize the Muslim nations lying to Russia's south. Tillerson could have been central, but the Trump administration was denied the opportunity, and Tillerson's resume became less relevant.      

  Tillerson, Trump, and the Senate all deserve blame for the mis-management of the State Department. Trump has had an overall problem nominating people for positions requiring Senate approval, with no nominee yet proposed for one third of the 640 such positions. State, which is facing a 30% budget reduction, is at the forefront with no nominee yet recommended for 54 positions, 61 confirmed and 28 pending before the Senate. As happened to George W Bush, but not Obama, Clinton, or HW Bush, the Senate required resubmission of nominations after the end of the year - a sign that Mitch Mcconnell is as much of a problem as is Chuck Schumer.  At State, a majority of the senior positions remain unfilled, and no ambassadors have been nominated for Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey, Qatar, Yemen, or South Korea - all hot spots requiring expertise and personal contacts.  If Tillerson has been complaining about White House interference, it has not made the media. 

    On broad policy, former Exxon CEO Tillerson would have agreed with the establishment, globalist wing of the Republican party in the Make America Great Again debate about free trade and the ability of American companies to prosper amid global competition. His experienced voice will be missed in the foreign trade debates which will follow the replacement of Gary Cohn by (choke) Larry Kudlow as President Trump's chief economic advisor, and the administration turns away from multinational agreements toward individual country negotiations. Down with the influence of the embassy staffs and the Foggy Bottom experts; up with their counterparts at the Commerce Department and the office of the Trade Representative.  

    The turn from Tillerson to Mike Pompeo - US Military Academy; Harvard Law; House Intelligence Committee; CIA Director - suggests closer alignment than with Tillerson for a hawkish approach to the remaining two members of George W Bush's "Axis of Evil" - North Korea and Iran. Each has a story, but Tillerson was apparently not in the loop with Mike Pence and Ivanka on North Korea, and would have cautioned against scrapping President Obama and John Kerry's Iran nuclear agreement which does not include inspection of Iranian military sites or cover missile development. The first may be an opportunity; the second a risk. 

    Tillerson left Exxon a little better than he found it when he became CEO in 2006 - up about 25%; he won't be able to say that about the State Department, but he will have his XOM stock to cushion the blow, unlike many others who have given up good careers to join the administration and found that they cound not navigate the Senate or the top CEO.  

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      This week's bonus video is for those who couldn't get enough of the curling competition at the recent Olympics. 

  bill bowen - 3/16/2018

Trump: Challenging the Established Order

    Silicon Valley venture capitalists love companies that disrupt industries - Tesla in cars; AirBnB in hotels; Uber in local transportation; Amazon in anything. Information technology is usually a key element, but what they are really looking of is a way of transforming an industry which does not effectively meet customer needs. It is ironic that they hate the great political disrupter, President Donald Trump. Whatever his personal shortcomings and his inability to coalesce a Washington majority around his proposals, he deserves credit for challenging the established order where lesser leaders have lacked vision or feared to tread.  

    The big ones - where he has broken with Republican Party orthodoxy and found a Democratic party thus far totally unwilling to give him the handful of votes which he would need in the Senate to pass common sense legislation favored by a strong majority of Americans. 

        - Immigration. Eleven million illegal immigrants; no effective border control; a predecessor who was clear that he did not have authority to exempt categories of "undocumented immigrants" from enforcement, then did so with millions of children.  Trump had a strategy: apply pressure by terminating President Obama's illegal program with enough lead time to allow Congress to act. He had a balanced proposal which went well beyond the "heels dug in" on either side: a path to citizenship for 1.8 million; enforcement of the border (including a wall); limits on the scope of family members who come as sponsored relatives, and instead focus on immigrants who bring benefit to America; elimination of the lottery designed to allocate immigration slots to people from random countries. We wait for Congress.  

        - Gun control. After years of inaction, we have a president who is willing to take on the NRA and the "Second Amendment" wing of his party. He will eliminate "bump stocks" which make assault rifles out of semi-automatics - by executive order if necessary; he will agree to increasing the purchase age for rifles, expanding background checks, and aggressively using mental health exclusions. We wait for Congress. 

    And the third element of the trifecta which will be a signature success (or failure) of his presidency - foreign trade. The first portion of the problem has been fixed - a disadvantageous tax code which made American companies less competitive and encouraged capital to be kept offshore. As a testament to the #Resist movement, no Democratrs in the House or Senate voted for the tax code changes. On trade, the Democrats in opposition will be joined by most of the Republican establishment which believes in multilateral "free trade" agreements adjudicated by the World Trade Organization, rather than the Trump approach of direct negotiations between the United States and individual other countries. Some themes to watch: 

        - We are losing the current game, have been for decades, and neither party has effectively questioned the status quo since the 1980s when the Japanese car makers were pressured into producing cars in the United States as the price of market access. The 2017 deficit in Goods and Services of $566 billion was up 12% from 2016, and increased from 2.7% to 2.9% of GDP. (The Goods deficit was $810 billion; the Services - travel; education; trade-related; professional and management - surplus was $244 billion.)  Domestically, the winners have been more politically powerful than the losers, particularly as the Democrats have abandoned the white working middle class. 

        -  The primary target is China. China represents almost half of our deficit in goods - $375 billion in 2017. They were invited to join the World Trade Organization in 2001, but have retained their system of state-sponsored industries targeting global markets, demanding transfer of technology in exchange for permission of foreign companies to do business in China, and exclusion of foreign products through tariffs and other barriers. From their perspective the game is working - growth remains above 6%; Xi Jinping is set up as "ruler for life"; basic industries continue to grow (they make half of the world's steel) as they subsidize development in central and southwest Asia. With a detailed Trade Representative  assessment in hand, Trump has asked the Chinese government for a plan to reduce the deficit by $100 billion with the premise that if they do not make real progress, he will find a way. 

        - Trump is playing multi-dimensional chess. He starts with tariffs on steel and aluminum because they are symbolic, but also because a 1972 law and WTO regulations give the President latitude on industries related to national security. This provides leverage for renegotiation of NAFTA, which has primarily benefited Mexico. From there, the theme is that each country is different. He will eventually address the fact that Value Added Taxes - used by most developed countries, but not the United States - are unfavorable to American exports. 

        -   Trump is poor at building coalitions. With former Goldman Sachs president Gary Cohn's exit from the Council of Economic Advisors, Trump loses a strong connection to the top levels of Wall Street as well as to the "free traders" in Congress. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, and  National Trade Council Director Peter Navarro are capable lieutenants, but a broader coalition is needed to turn policy into effective action. Likewise, there are not a lot of foreign leaders signing up to help restore balance to global trade. 

    Some of this will get done; much won't. The Democratic #Resisters and the Republican NeverTrumpers remain hopeful that the Senate's dilatory confirmation process and Mueller's meandering search for Trump malfeasance will prevail over the President's willingness to challenge the established order on the major issues  confronting the country. This writer hopes not.  

                                                                                                -----

        This week's bonus is a sample of the five-minute videos developed by Praeger U to articulate conservative positions. This discussion by Dave Rubin, "Why I Left the Left", has received some 17 million views. 

bill bowen - 3/9/18

        

Curbing Public Employee Unions

   Little noticed among the media's Downton Abbey-like coverage of the Trump White House is the pending Supreme Court decision in the case of Janus v the Association of Federal, State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) to overturn a 1977 precedent, by which public employee unions in the 23 states without "Right to Work Laws" can currently force employees to pay union dues - with a carve out" for dues which go to overt political activities. While the case is argued in terms of the constitutional issue of free speech, the real issues are economic and political, with public employee unions - educators; nurses; public safety workers; office workers - being instrumental in electing friendly (Democratic) politicians who then negotiate contracts with their union supporters for wages, benefits, and conditions of employment. The pending Janus decision promises to significantly change state and local politics in Blue and Purple states. 

    The case: 

    The Janus case mimics a case brought by a group of California teachers and heard by the Supreme Court in 2016, shortly before the death of Antonin Scalia. Without Scalia's vote, the Court deadlocked 4 to 4, and the advocates (including the Koch brothers) went looking for another plaintiff. Enter Mark Janus, an Illinois social worker who objects to paying $45 per month to AFSCME, and who objects to contract negotiations which will exceed the nearly-bankruypt state's ability to pay. The case was heard on Monday; there is a strong presumption that Justice Gorsuch will join the conservative block, allowing the millions of  public employees in the 23 non-Right to Work states to opt out of labor unions if they so choose. 

      Union-friendly observers like Dana Milbanks of the Washington Post argue that removal of the 1977 bargain will unleash pubolic employee strikes, expand the scope of bargaining, and expand to include bar association dues, student association dues, continuing education requirements for doctors and all measures of calamity. Others argue that it will energize public employee unions who will now need to demonstrate to their workers that the union adds value.  

    And a broader perspective

    In the Depression era heyday, union organizing was limited to the private sector. In fact, the progressive Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized that "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations." That said, the American labor market has evolved to the point where in 2017 union membership was 34.4% in the public sector compared to 6.5% in the private sector, with the overall 10.7% rate about half of what it had been 30 years earlier. 

    Laws against compulsory union membership align almost completely with the Red State / Blue State division, with Missouri and Kentucky converting in 2017.  In the Right to Work states union membership declined by a net of 293,000 in 2017.

    Overall, the 50 states have a $6 trillion unfunded pension liability, with the blue states such as California, Illinois, and New Jersey generally at the bottom in absolute terms and on a per capita basis. There are some exceptions - Texas stands out - but in general, strong public employee unions help create Democratic majorities and generous pensions. 

    On the other hand, where Republican majorities have recently eliminated mandatory public employee union membership, workers have abandoned the unions in droves. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels eliminated collective bargaining for government workers when he took office in 2005, and membership plummeted Wisconsin, the first state to negotiate with public employee unions in 1959, eliminated bargaining over pensions, health coverage, safety, hours, sick leave or vacations in 2011; public employee union membership dropped by more than half within a year.  

  While the decision will be popular in places like South Carolina and Kansas, it is really academic. The people who should be the most interested in the success of the case are those deep blue states where public employee unions are strong, pension agreements are generous, and state finances are fragile - Illinois, California, New York, and New Jersey.  

                                                                                            -----

    This week's video - thanks to an alert reader in Delaware - provides an entertaining insight into the millenial generation. 

bill bowen - 3/2/18 

Russia's Co-conspirators

     Each week seems to bring another sign that Russiagate is a loser for the Democrats and the Washington Post / CNN / MSNBC cabal: the Nunes memo (which showed a politicized FBI deliberately misleading the FISA court); the indictment of 13 Russians and three companies (for a plot beginning in 2014 to discredit American democracy); the indictment of another Manafort associate (for lying about lobbying work done in the Ukraine in 2014.)  The breathless headlines of 2017 -  "Trump Preparing to Fire Mueller" - have given way to background stories on "little Adam Schiff", the lead Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, and criticism that Trump is not doing anything to keep the Russians out of the 2018 mid-term elections. For Mueller's part, he is proving that he can do something - even if it has nothing to do with his charter of pursuing collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign. 

    To the untrained eye of the casual observer it looks as if the leaderless Democratic Party has allowed its Trump-hating base to determine the agenda, and has placed a very large bet on the increasingly unlikely premise that Robert Mueller will find collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians, while in fact the only collusion yet to surface was the Clinton/DNC sponsorship of the Russian dossier used to get approval to spy on a Trump campaign associate. Add to that the fact that Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein joined Trump in receiving unbenownst Russian support and activists like Michael Moore were duped into attending Russian-organized protest rallies after the election. One cannot blame the media and the Democrats for believing that campaign leaders like Corey Lewandowski and Paul Manafort would have sought Russian assistance, but despite the most aggressive investigation since the pharoah's search for Moses no evidence has yet been found. 

    So, what can the Democratic line of reasoning be, with so much staked on Mueller, the economy accelerating, and Trump's popularity rising to a level equal to Obama's at a similar point in his presidency?  The Mainstream Media offer several lines, each more desperate: 

    1. It is not over with Mueller. Some new witness or document will come forward. The truth: It ain't over til its over, but there is not even a murmer of evidence that Trump or a close associate had any part in Russian involvement with the election. 

    2. There may not have been collusion, but there was obstruction of justice. This relies on Trump's comment to Comey that he hoped Flynn would not be prosecuted. In the Democrats version, Comey becomes a patriotic saint who was fired for refusing to give Flynn a pass. The truth: Comey allowed political considerations to influence decisions for and against Clinton and Trump, and far overplayed his role.  

    3. Trump may not have been involved, but he would not have won the election without the help of the Russians. The truth: While, unlike Hillary, they understood the need to campaign in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, their 100 person, $2,000,000 effort gets lost in the $6.4 billion spent by the Republicans, Democrats, Political Action Committees, and hundreds of thousands of activists on both sides - and much of the Russian effort was after the election.  

    4. Trump is guilty now for not moving aggressively to protect the Fall elections. The truth: Obama knew of the Russian effort in 2016 and did nothing.  Jeff Sessions has formed a Department of Justice Cybersecurity Task Force to identify threats and actions to be taken.  

    5. Trump will fire Mueller. The truth: This intent was leaked to the New York Times in June, but never corroborated, and there has been no such indication from the White House for the past eight months. Nor is there any apparent reason to give the Democrats a free gift. 

    On the other side of the coin, the Russians caught willing partners in the Democratic Party, the Mainstream Media, and the NeverTrumpers for their effort to discredit American democracy. Recounts gave way to an attempt to subvert the electoral college, which gave way to the Russian conspiracy theory.  We will go through a paroxysm of recrimination about the interaction of politics and social media before the first amendment is rediscovered. Some purging and time will be needed to rebuild faith in the FBI. While there is no evidence of interference with voting machines or tabulations, it will be necessary to upgrade safeguards. Eventually most Democrats will acknowledge that Hillary lost. 

    The best advice for the Washington Post editorial board? Give it up. There is no Watergate here. No Deep Throat. No Pulitzer Prize.  There are more fruitful things to criticize on policy and person.

                                                                                                  -----

 This week's video -, provided by an alert reader in Texas,  uses beer to explain the American tax system. 

bill bowen - 2/23/18 

The David Brooks Syndrome

    Two astute political friends recently sent me a David Brooks opinion piece from the New York Times titled "The End of the Two Party System", whose purpose is to explain the poison that has infected the American political system with Donald Trump and call for the replacement of our two party system with something approximating a parlimentary system. Back in the day I would have imbibed Brooks' expositions as informed wisdom; now either I have drifted away from him, or he from me. 

     In short form, Brooks contends that the world has changed from an attitude of optimistic abundance where everybody could prosper to one of scarcity where we divide into tribes to fight over limited resources. While he traces the change to the ethnic conflicts which accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the pressures following the 2008 financial crisis, he blames Trump for destroying "the pillars of conservatism: rule of law, fiscal discipline, global engagement, moral decency, the (Martin Luther King) idea that people should be judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin."

    This is perhaps a useful construct for Establishment Republicans who have made little effort to understand the Trump phenomenon, and have nowhere to go - as if George W Bush and Barack Obama were paragons of fiscal discipline, Bill Clinton were a moral exemplar, and Barack Obama's use of the IRS and the FBI to subdue his political opponents enhanced the rule of law. Let's examine a few of Brooks' premises more closely. 

        1. The 1990s were a glorious age. Yes, it was a good time for western and central Europe with the (Reagan-induced)  break-up of the Soviet Union, but it was a dark time for the people of Russia.  For those casting politics in global terms, the larger story of the past few decades is the rise from poverty of hundreds of millions of Chinese - aided in significant part by American trade policies. And the shift from optimism about the spread of prosperity with democratic capitalism to the mood of constraints?  Perhaps the greatest constraint of all is the meme of global warming - the American working class needs to bear the brunt for the byproduct of spreading industrial society.  

        2. The shift to "tribalism" on a global scale began with the break-up of Yugoslavia. That Euro-centric perspective ignores the mass genocides between the Tutsis and the Hutus in central Africa during the 90s, and the waves of virulent religious and ethnic violence which have roiled the Muslim world following the optimism of the Arab Spring. Those looking for blame among American presidents need to examine Bill Clinton, George W Bush, and Barack Obama. 

        3. The essence of Make America Great Again is racist. Many Establishment Republicans buy into the liberal Democratic construct that the descendents of the people who built America do not have a right to protect their religious, economic, cultural, and philosophical legacy. The attitude reached a peak under "globalist" President Obama, and is manifested in trade and immigration policies which have played a significant role in hollowing out the American middle class. For the first time in decades, a prominent politician has been willing to speak the politically incorrect and stand up for the working class.   

        4. The two party system isn't working. Actually, it is working just fine. The Democrats adopted a strategy of pandering to minorities on the theory that they had 10% sewed up with African Americans and they could garner a solid 30% with Hispanics. In the process, they lost working class America which has found a home in the Republican Party. Intellectuals like David Brooks speak to a declining segment of the party, have lost influence with what have become the mainstream Republicans, cannot separate Trump the person from the policies which he advocates,  and yet cannot rationalize moving to direct support of an increasingly "progressive" Democratic Party.  Brooks lost his party, but that does not mean that we should give him a new one. 

    The reality of the new American political alignment is that the Republicans have become the party of the middle class while the Democrats have become the party of the coastal elites, ethnic minorities, and the "lumpen proletariat". The transition long preceedes Trump, and is reflected in state legislatures and governorships across the country.  It is easy to understand where traditional conservative values such as liberty, opportunity, and personal responsibility fit in this construct. Unfortunately, fiscal responsibility is an orphan at the national level.  

                                                                                                -----

    This week's summary of highlights of Sarah Huckabee Saunders' 2017 press conferences reminds us how fortunate we are to have her addressing the media as opposed to Sean Spicer, Anthony Scaramucci, or Hope Hicks.  

bill bowen - 2/16/18 

     

 

The Nunes Memo in Perspective

     For 15 months the Democrats - and a fair number of Establishment Republicans - have been attempting to de-legitimize the presidency of Donald Trump by connecting members of his campaign to Russian efforts to influence the election. Thus far they have much less than one would expect with a cast of characters made up of inexperienced family members (Don Junior; Jared Kushner), re-worked international intelligence consultants (Paul Manafort; Carter Page; General Flynn), and naive kids (George Papadopoulos) playing in the major leagues for the first time. There has been a constant drumbeat of new outrages which will secure the case against Trump, until they melt away to be followed by the next outrage. 

    A different perspective, lurking in the background, is that the Democrats and ambitious functionaries in the outgoing administration took it as a certainty that Hillary Clinton would win the election, that they were free to use their positions to boost her prospects, and there would be no consequences (and in fact some likely career benefit) for cutting corners. That attitude persisted from at least the time that her e-mail problems emerged in March of 2015, and included bad actors in the State Department, the Obama White House, the Justice Department, and the FBI. With Trump's surprise election, it was better to play offense, in the anticipation that there really was collusion, rather than to play defense.   

     The Nunes memo is a breakthrough. True, it is only one piece of a much larger mosaic - it does not address whether anybody was colluding with the Russians or whether there was obstruction of justice by the president; it doesn't even address what, if anything, was found by wiretapping Mr. Page. What it does, however, is incontrovertibly demonstrate that people in the senior levels of the Justice Department (Bruce Ohr) and the FBI (Andrew McCabe) knowingly asked the FISA court for approval to wiretap a member of the Trump campaign, relying on highly questionable information, without telling the court that it was developed by agents of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. That the FBI official's wife received a $700,000 campaign contribution from a member of the Clinton machine, and that the Justice Department official's wife worked for the opposition research firm digging up the fake dirt pushes the reality beyond a John Grisham novel. 

    Thanks to the voluminous e-mails and text messages between senior FBI agent Peter Strzok  and his FBI attorney lover,  we have extensive context. The animus extended below the ranks of political appointees. FBI Management assigned the same biased person to lead the Clinton e-mail investigation (where he wrote the language preventing indictment for abuse of secret information), to participate in the interrogation of General Flynn about his Russian contacts, and to manage the Steele dossier investigation. That FBI and Justice Department management allowed such an overtly anti-Trump agent to play a central role in each of these cases speaks volumes about a broader problem. Perhaps some will come out in the ongoing Justice Department Inspector General investigation; perhaps not.   

    What we don't have - at least yet - is an aggressive Justice Department taking a look back at subjects which were not addressed properly by the corrupted FBI of James Comey. One would be a special prosecutor to revisit the Clinton handling of confidential information and all of its surrounding subterfuge. A second would reach back to the corruption of the Clinton State Department in the Clinton Foundation - lubricated sale of Uranium One to a member of Putin's inner circle.  A third would be the White House led scheme to monitor conversations of foreign nationals with members of the Trump campaign,  ask the NSA to "unmask" the American participant in the conversation, and leak insinuating information to the press.   

    And it is worth thinking through the "worst case" outcome of the Mueller investigation - a fulfillment of the dreams of Nancy Pelosi and the Washington Post.  For mechanics, Mueller brings an indictment for some as yet unknown discussion that somebody in the Trump entourage had with someone in the Putin circle; the House (after a surprising Democratic November take-over) votes on articles of impeachment; the Senate (probably still in Republican hands) needs a two-thirds majority to find Trump guilty and remove him from office. No chance. For those hoping to just throw sand into the gears of the Trump presidency, it is worth noting that the Bill Clinton impeachment occurred in December of 1999, he was acquitted two months later, and he served the remaining year of his second term. This is a ultimately political question, not a legal one.  

    At some point the question will be "what is best for the country" - how can we reestablish confidence in our essential governmental institutioins -  not "how can we re-litigate the 2016 election", or "how can we punish people for abuses in the Obama administratioin?"  Absent the vitriol of the #Resist movement and the animosity (and ratings) of much of the media, we would probably be moving on. Hopefully the Nunes memo will be a nudge in that direction - after a brief cleansing. 

                                                                                                                    ------

    There are two video bonuses this week:

        - For the policy wonks, a glaringly clear 30 minute explanation by former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova about the relation between Clinton's e-mail crimes and the effort to fabricate a story about the Trump campaign's Russia collusion. 

       - A striking set of exerpts from speeches on immigration by President Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, which demonstrate how far to the Left the political discussion has lurched. 

bill bowen - 2/9/18

San Francisco: A Political Petri Dish

   The unexpected death of San Francisco mayor Ed Lee on December 12, upset the carefully laid plans of numerous San Francisco politicians. Surprisingly, and cynically enightening, the "Progressives" on the Board of Supervisors were able to stage a coup in which the "up from poverty" Black female interim mayor was deposed in favor of a caretaker white male venture capitalist in order to keep their options open. In the "Queen City of Politics", the home of one US senator (Diane Feinstein), the frontrunner for California governor (Gavin Newsom), and the Speaker of the House (Nancy Pelosi), and the political birthplace of of a second US Senator and  "female Obama" presidential aspirant (Kamala Harris) things do not happen by accident or without consequence.

    The setting:

        - By City charter, the President of the Board of Supervisors, "moderate" London Breed,  became the interim mayor, pending a special election in June to fill the term which runs through 2019. Absent action by the Board, she would lead both the executive and the legislative branches of government, hold the pole position into June, and be eligible for two full subsequent terms ending in 2028. Too many power blocs were at risk. 

        - The field had been anticipating a hotly contested election in November 2019 between former state senator Mark Leno (a gay former legislative leader perhaps better suited to replace Nancy Pelosi if she ever gives up her House seat), Breed (a continuation of the Willie Brown / Gavin Newsom / Ed Lee moderate faction supported by developers and tech titans), younger progressive Jane Kim (a former school board president and current Supervisor), moderate David Chiu (a former Board president now in the state assembly), and a handful of other aspirants. 

        - The deal - orchestrated largely by Aaron Peskin (former Board chair; former City Democratic Party chair; current Supervisor) - coaxed moderate Mark Farrell (who was in his last year on the Board and had unlikely mayoral aspirations himself) to give up his seat in favor of four plus months as "acting mayor" with the agreement that he would not run in June. The five progressives on the eleven member board jumped at the chance to block the moderate Breed; the sixth necessary vote came from moderate Jeff Sheehey who apparently thought it inappropriate for one person to be concurrently President of the Board and acting mayor. Well played. 

    The implications:

        -  The City will have a caretaker until June who promises to focus on quality of life issues - homelessness, dirty streets, and public safety. He will also nudge forward his long held goal of installing high speeed fiberoptic cabling for all residents of San Francisco. Unless the June winner is an overnight success, Farrell would be able to re-enter the fray in 2019. 

        - The candidates for the June election and the November 2019 election will have strong incentives to maximize their anti-Trump credentials. In "the City of Saint Francis" a mayor who was jailed for defying Sanctuary City rules would be a saint. Elections will be fought over more money for the homeless, loose rules for the use of marijuana, and "safe houses" where addicts enjoy supervised use of drugs. Anything which has a tinge of federal rules will be a focal point for #Resist. 

         -  Some flaws of the San Francisco political system have been made clear:

            -- The circumstance where someone could concurrently be President of the Board of Supervisors, interim mayor, and a candidate for mayor will be corrected. 

            -- With term limits there are too many candidates chasing too few offices. The maneuvering for the next position begins early and rewards political posturing over the solving of real problems. Perhaps a caretaker could actually focus on results. 

            -- The election of supervisors from local districts rather than city-wide promotes small thinking rather than addressing City-wide problems. It also elevates grass roots activists who can provide campaign volunteers in exchange for funding for favored programs. 

        - And some epochal change is evident:

           -- With the passing of Mayor Lee (and his patron, Chinatown leader Rose Pak before him), the Chinese lose their first San Francisco mayor. The two state assembly members - Phil Ting and David Chiu - are Chinese and young enough to have a political future, but they are out for this round.  Three of eleven Supervisors are Asian in a city which is 35% Asian.  

            -- Gay leader Mark Leno's time may be cresting. He was the favorite in a November 2019 election with a large lead in fundraising and a longstanding organization of supporters from his days as a supervisor and a state senator. In time he will be caught by his clone Scott Weiner - same gay following; same supervisor district; same senate position. 

            -- Adding some nostalgia, Angela Alioto, the 68 - old daughter of former mayor Joe Alioto, an anti-discrimination lawyer, and a figure in old school politics,  is staging her last hurrah.    

     For those interested in a supporting a longshot, I give you Republican Richie Greenberg - a decent fellow who would really try to do something to decrease homelessness, eliminate open drug use, support the school system, and attack burgeoning street crime. Compassion has failed; it would be a good time for solutions. 

                                                                                               -----

  This week's video is a bit of recent common sense from Andrew Klavan. 

Bill Bowen - 2/2/18 

    

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 

Tax Reform: Three Perspectives

    Caution! This is a political blog, not investment advice. Implications - should the reader choose to accept the premise - are intended relative to the 2018 and subsequent elections, rather than DOW 30,000. There are three somewhat distinct perspectives which occasionally get mingled in political demagoguery. 

1. The Nancy Pelosi / Paul Krugman perspective: The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act  is a give away to the rich, and will be of virtually no benefit for the middle and lower classes. 

    Nobel Winning liberal icon economist Paul Krugman in December: "The economy's pretty good. In fact, it looks like we're close to full employment, although we don't know why wages aren't rising more. Trump gets essentially zero (credit)... First of all, there have been no actual policies. There hasn't really been any policy change." And, relative to the tax reform:  "Realistically we have to imagine there will be some effect, but will it be visible? Will workers see their wages increase in a way that anyone will notice over the next five years? No." 

    House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:  “It’s an all-out looting of America, a wholesale robbery of the middle class. The GOP tax scam will go down, again, as one of the worst, most scandalous acts of plutocracy in our history.”

    The sacrifice of economic analysis and linguistic hyperbole is not news for these two. What is interesting and important is that Pelosi and Chuck Schumer were able to prevent a single Democratic member of either chamber from voting for the measure. Those looking forward to wrangling over immigration and government shutdowns should take note of the extraordinary party discipline. The Left is in a full "Resist" mode, and the Democratic center dare not whisper about compromise. 

    2. The Larry Kudlow / Art Laffer perspective: It is a boon for everybody, and will pay for itself as lower tax rates multiplied by higher rates of economic activity will yield higher net tax revenue. 

    The most realistic projection is from the Congressional Budget Office  and the Joint Committee on Taxation who determined that provisions in the bill as passed would decrease gross receipts over the 2018-2027 period by $1.45 trillion, that economic activity would increase by .7%, resulting in increased taxes of about $450 billion, and that interest expense would rise by $66 billion, resulting in a net deficit of about $1.1 trillion or $110 billion per year. This is understated by some $300 billion because it assumes that individual rates will be increased in 2025 to make the numbers work. 

    Out of the box the results are better than any Republican politician could have hoped for.  Employers from AT&T, to Comcast, to Wells Fargo, to Boeing, to regional banks have announced $1000 bonuses for hundreds of thousands of workers, wage increases, increased job training, and capital spending as the top corporate rate drops from 35% to 21%. Apple, the largest of the companies holding an estimated $2.6 trillion in profits offshore, has announced plans to repatriate $252 billion, pay a $38 billion tax bill, build a third major campus in the United States, and add 20,000 workers over a period of five years.  Announcements continue weekly. 

    It is not possible to separate the causal factors for economic growth accelerating from 2% to 3% since President Trump took office - the global economy is doing universally well; deregulation is rolling through the energy, healthcare, banking, and labor sectors; and the tax reform is impacting 2018 plans for both large corporations and small businesses. Public opinion promises to shift from pre-conditioned Democratic talking points as employee paychecks start to see federal tax withholding rates drop $100 or more in February, and Clinton strategist James Carville's famous 1992 aphorism "It's the economy, stupid" clicks in.  

    3. The Bob Corker / National Review perspective: Deficits and resulting debt as a portion of GDP are on a fatal trajectory. 

    President Trump came into office following the two most profligate presidents ever - George W Bush who ran up $3.3 trillion of debt, and Barack Obama who ran up $6.7 trillion. According to the Office of Management and Budget's most benign-sounding calculations which exclude intra-government debt, the federal government is running at a 3% deficit (about $600 billion per year), and will reach about an 80% debt to GDP ratio this year - about 92% if one includes debt that the government owes itself. We will cross 100% in the 10 year projections supporting the tax reduction. 

    This is real, and there is little hope in sight. Paul Ryan and many House Republicans want to take on Social Security, Medicare, or at lease Medicaid, but Mitch McConnell has announced that there is no way to get the necessary votes in the Senate. Instead, the discussioin is about billions of more spending for a wall, hurricane and fire relief, increased payments for low wage earners with children, new nuclear capabilities, and  a general upgrade to the military. And our real estate developer president is comfortable with debt. Apologies to our grandchildren. 

    The Democrats and the media would keep the focus on the latest Trump outrage as we move into election season, tossing off an occasional reference to the first and third perspectives above. At least for the short term, the Republicans will be able to put a billion dollar marketing campaign behind Perspective 2, hoping to have an election on the economy rather than Russia or Trumps' personal failings.  

                                                                                                    -----

    This week's video celebrates (?) the legalization of recreational pot in California. FWIW, Gavin Newsom the  leading gubernatorial candidate, was an early supporter and is now a leading proponent of state funded universal healthcare - which would triple the state budget. 

bill bowen - 1/19/18

 

 

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

 

 

 

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.  

                                                                                                -----

   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 Obama Administration's Election Interference: The Real Scandal

    Back in the day George Washington was most acclaimed for his leadership of the colonial army which defeated the greatest military force of its time. An argument can be made that Washington deserves to be remembered as the guy who made the governmental ideas of Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, Ben Franklin, and John Adams come to life. Perhaps the best perspective is that he set the example, followed by presidents for the next 215 years, of accepting the election of his successor and graciously returning to his private life. He willingly turned over power to John Adams who reflected the industrial North, returning himself to his agrarian Southern roots. He didn't try to stay; he accepted the electorate's preferred successor. 

      Over the past couple of centuries there were undoubtedly circumstances where an outgoing president believed that his successor would do great harm to the nation. Perhaps the establishment Federalist John Quincy Adams before the populist Andrew Jackson; perhaps the compromising James Buchanan before the great emancipator, Abraham Lincoln; perhaps capitalist Herbert Hoover before the socialist Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They didn't have today's CIA and NSA. They didn't have Facebook or Twitter.  They also didn't - as nearly as we can understand the history books - go to the lengths that Barack Obama did to use federal power to subvert the election of a successor they deemed unworthy.  

    We may never have a full, objective picture of the 2016 presidential election. Unless Robert Mueller does an exceptional job of pulling a rabbit out of the hat, the Republicans will have their version and the Democrats will have theirs. Mueller is giving the "nail Trump" team a full effort - selection of a prosecutorial team who saw Trump as an unacceptable presidential candidate; indictments of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates; plea agreements with Michael Flynn and George Popadopoulos designed for leverage to elicit damaging testimony against Trump; and a willingness to go far beyond the question of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. If they cannot find collusion or real obstruction of justice, there will be little room for the Democrats to complain.  

    The second perspective, the Justice Department's failure to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for the corruption of the Clinton Foundation, or her cavalier exposure of classified information, is important, but in the sweep of history it will be just a failure of the Obama administration to enforce the laws against a powerful member of the president's party. Maybe Trump's Justice Department will go there, but it seems unlikely. 

    A greater transgression, and a higher priority for Mueller or for a separate investigation, is the apparent unprecedented use of the Obama administration's national security apparatus to move the election for Clinton and against Trump. Some of this is still seen through foggy glass, but the questioning of Deputy  Attorney General Rod Rosenstein by Trey Gowdy and Jim Jordan on December 13, and of FBI Director Christopher Wray by Jim Jordan on December 7, is based on the following set of apparent facts: 

        - In April 2016, the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign hired a law firm, Perkins Coie, which hired a political consulting firm, Fusion GPS, which hired a former British intelligence agent, Christopher Steele, to develop opposition research on Donald Trump - a later discredited "dossier" demonstrating that Trump would be subject to Russian blackmail for outlandish conduct. Some of the content was provided to the author by Russian intelligence services. The dossier itself was published in January 2017 by BuzzFeed. 

        - For months House Intelligence Chair Deven Nunes and Paul Ryan have been trying to get Fusion GPS or the FBI to reveal how the dossier got to the FBI, and what the FBI did with it. The assumed backstory is that the FBI made some of the payments to Fusion GPS. Discredited senior FBI agent Peter Strzok was apparently an intermediary.  

        - In December 7 testimony before the House Judiciary Committee,  FBI Director Cristopher Wray seemed to confirm that the line of thinking of Committee member Jim Jordan was correct, and that the FBI used the dossier in their application to the FISA court for warrants to tap the phone of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.  

        -  Concurrently, there was an intense effort, involving National Security adviser Susan Rice and UN Ambassador Samantha Powers before and after the election to monitor the conversations of Trump advisers. Technically, they monitored the conversations of foreign officials who might be talking to the Trump team, then "unmasked" the Americans by asking the NSA for the identity of the Americans. Powers did this several hundred times.    

        - To complete the plan, the Obama administration changed the rules to allow the dissemination of raw intelligence to 17 agencies, rather than the former restriction of the NSA. The conversations of Team Trump were then also confidentially provided to Congress, and from that broad assembly, to the New York Times and the Washington Post, who used the leaked conversations for innumerable articles before and after the election.  

         Thus was born and fostered the story of Trump's collusion with the Russians which rolled through the 2016 election campaign, and has formed the base of the subsequent effort to de-legitimize his presidency. Despite all of the effort to find collusion, none has been reported to date. What is being clearly revealed is a broad effort by senior leadership of the Obama administration to use the national security apparatus to publicize information intended to help the Clinton campaign, and a surprising difficulty of the Republican House, Senate, and President to provide a clear picture of what happened. 

                                                                                            -----

    This week's video is of Congressman Jim Jordan's connecting the above dots. 

bill bowen - 12/15/17  

     

 

Getting Rid of Trump: Plan E

    You've got to give Nancy Pelosi's Democrats (and a few Establishment Republicans) credit for persistence in their efforts to overturn the results of the 2016 Presidential election. 

    Plan A: The Recount. Jill Stein of the Green Party, supported by the Clinton Campaign, sought recounts in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, needing a perfectly placed 100,000 votes to succeed. Amid recognized futility she ran out of money by early December. 

    Plan B: Subvert the Electoral College. Hoping to create some "unfaithful electors", the Clinton Campaign asked that the delegates be briefed on Russian hacking efforts before they cast their votes in December. No briefing; everybody followed the laws of their states to vote for the candidates elected by their voters. Trump 306 - Clinton 232. 

    Plan C: Collusion with the Russians. Embarrassing. No evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians on the election. In fact, the Clinton Campaign, the Democratic National Committee, and even the FBI were responsible for the sleazy Steele dossier which was intended to show Trump's exposure to Russian blackmail. 

    Plan D: Obstruction of Justice. According to Comey, speaking about Michael Flynn, Trump told Comey in private that "I hope that you can let this go."  Not much there for the objective observer to overturn an election for the most powerful position on the planet.   

    The first two efforts were knee jerk reactions, led by amateurs; good for an emotional outlet, but with no chance of success. The third and fourth have been more professional - led by party figures capable of feeding a media frenzy and supporting a Special Counsel. Alas, there has been no there there and Mueller has been forced to stray unsuccessfully from his charge to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” as well as “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation.” It's dribbled down to Manafort's transgressions before he worked for Trump, Flynn's contacts which got him fired by Trump, or Trump's banking relationships. 

    Enter Plan E. (Those who believe that there is no effective coordination of Democratic decision-making and that Nancy Pelosi isn't consistently considering how to use national events to consolidate power need read no further. The following assessment comes from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.) 

    The Democrats did not consciously initiate the current mania about improper sexual behavior in the entertainment industry, in the media, and in politics. In fact, a substantial majority of those entangled in the national purges are liberals and it must be unsettling to the Democratic Party leaders that there is a risk to the Democrats longstanding 7 -10 %  lead among women, with so much abuse by Democrats. But risk can equal opportunity if properly addressed. 

    First, focus on the goal: Get rid of Trump and, in the process retake control of Congress. The hook: Impeachment begins in the House and the threat is moot as long as Republicans are in control. Motivate the Democratic base and get a huge turnout of women. The rookies tried impeachment this week; Pelosi knows that the time isn't right yet. 

    Second, eliminate the countervailing arguments:

        - Take the lead in reforming Congress. Jackie Speier (a Democrat from the district south of Pelosi's, but not a particular ally) has long been an unsuccessful advocate for protecting staff and lobbyists from predators. For years Pelosi, as Democratic leader, approved the hush money and protected her loyal members. Now we have bipartisan House and Senate mandatory training and the likelihood of transparency - at least for awhile. 

        - Get the major offending Democrats out of the way. Kick the Congressional Black Caucus to the curb with John Conyers. Kick the activist liberals to the curb with Al Franken. Throw in the Congressman from Nevada as collateral damage. Have Clinton machine beneficiary Kirsten Gillibrand lead the belated acknowledgement that Bill Clinton should have resigned amid the Monica Lewinsky/ Paula Jones/ Kathleen Willey/Juanita Broaddrick "bimbo eruptions." Purity is reestablished.  

    Third, emphasize Republican indifference in the form of Roy Moore - making the point that there is no statute of limitations or presumption of innocence. 

    Fourth, line up the ducks on Trump.

        -  Begin with the divorces from Ivana in 1992 and Marla Maples in 1997, and the surrounding bachelorhood in privileged upscale New York before he met Melania in 1998.   

        -  Hammer away at Trump's own admissions, like the 2005 Billy Bush "Access Hollywood" tape which Trump dismisses as "locker room chatter". 

        -  Draw out the Tweets, hoping for a stream of Trumpisms. 

    Fifth, hope that a Democratic House and a Senate with a couple dozen anti-Trump Republicans will agree that his terminal boorishness rises to the legal standard of "treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." At least Tom Steyer will pay whatever it takes, and it may yield a Democratic majority in the House if played right.  

                                                                                                               -----

   This week's video is a brief primer on the impeachment process. 

bill bowen - 12/8/17

    

Government Reform: Two Approaches

    Had Mitt Romney been elected in 2011, we would have seen a Bain-style of strategic federal government reform: departmental missions; evaluation of processes; assessment of skills and tools; alignment of internal and external interactions; pursuit of efficiency and effectiveness; institution of performance measures. Alas, we will never know if a professional approach would have been able to overcome the entrenched bureaucracy defending both its ideological ground and its self-interest. What we can observe is the Trump approach. 

    The middle ranks of the executive branch are filled with analysts and managers who believe in what they are doing. For most it is a job - the pay is good; the hours are reasonable; one can be proud telling family and friends what you do for a living. There is an overlay of political appointees who come from the political class - party and campaign organizations, universities, and think tanks. The political appointees come, make policy, and go when the administration changes; the mass of the bureaucracy advise and implement. It was that way when I worked at the Pentagon in the Nixon administration; it is true today. Aside from complaints about "the Deep State", it is not apparent that President Trump and his transition team understood the need to replace the thousands of political appointees if they want to change direction. Perhaps that was because Chris Cristie got fired mid-course as leader of the transition team and his lists of potential appointees went with him; perhaps it was because Team Trump was so far outside of the Establishment that they couldn't trust people from within the system that they didn't personally know; perhaps Trump's business experience did not prepare him for leading such a large organization.  Whatever the reason, the road is unnecessarily bumpy. 

    Exhibit number one is the State Department - perhaps the most difficult transformation because of the large number of well-connected policy makers and ambassadors and the access of senior staff to the media. In the case of the Trump administration, State faces a couple of extra hurdles - the appointment of former generals to the Secretary of Defense, National Security Adviser, and White House Chief of Staff positions normally filled by civilians, and the selection of a Secretary of State who had no government experience or constituency in Congress. To date, the restructuring has included a large element of encouraging Obama appointees and others opposed to the populist "America First" agenda to leave without replacement. The FY2018 budget for State and foreign aid is $37.6 billion, a 31% reduction from FY2017. Full time American department employment of 25,000 will be reduced by 8%. Of the six under secretary positions, only one has been filled.  Of the 24 assistant secretary positions, only three are filled, with four additional names having been sent to the Senate for confirmation. Less than a third of the 190 ambassador-level positions have been filled with noted vacancies in such places as Mexico, Turkey, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the Ukraine, Syria, South Korea, the Philippines, and the European Union. Small wonder that the foreign policy establishment is calling for Rex Tillerson's head. 

    Other agencies are led by people who share a radically different view of the role of the department than do most of the employees who joined during the Obama years: the Environmental Protection Agency (Scott Pruitt); the Department of Education (Betsy Voss) ; the Department of Energy (Rick Perry); and now the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Mick Mulvaney, acting). "Reform" will take the form of different policy direction, key personnel changes, and budget cuts. In the case of the CFPB there may be a Congressional effort to undo the creation of Barack Obama and Pocahontas Warren, folding the function back into other financial industry overseers. In each case the department head position description leads with intestinal fortitude and ideological alignment with the president. 

    Some of the restructuring fight is down in the weeds. The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, with eleven active judges, has the responsibility of directly reviewing the decisions and rule-making of many federal agencies. Jeff Sessions gets it. In the week when a Trump-appointed DC Circuit judge affirmed that the President, rather than the outgoing Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director, gets to appoint the new acting director,  the Senate approved Greg Katsas for the "second most important court in the nation" by a 50-48 margin.   

    The last resort of the resisting bureaucrats is political. While national Democrats have tried to claim that the November 7 election of Ralph Northam as governor of Virginia over Republican Ed Gillespie reflected a national anti-Trump tide, the reality is that the DC suburbs - among the wealthiest zip codes in the country - voted for their own self interest. State-wide Gillespie did as well as the Republican in the prior governor election, but the suburbs (where the Washington Post is the home town newspaper and the locals are denizens of the "swamp") turned out in droves. What played so well in Arlington didn't particularly resonate in Richmond, nor will it in Indianapolis.  

    Romney might have gotten this done without breaking as much furniture, but Trump will get it done. 

                                                                                                        -----

    This week's video reports the firing of Lake Wobegon's Garrison Keillor, allegedly for putting his hand on a friend's bare back. Next: Kermit the Frog.  

bill bowen - 12/1/17

 

 

 

 

 

   

      

Tax Reform: Counting Noses

    American taxpayers can give thanks this holiday for being on the cusp of once-in-a-generation tax reform which will lower taxes for most middle class taxpayers while making American companies more competitive globally. As the Senate prepares to vote on their version this coming week, Republican leaders see the following:

    The shape of the box

        - The large negative of increased budget deficits was largely agreed upon with the FY 2018 budget resolution which set a $1.5 trillion limit for tax reductions over the next ten years. That bill was passed 216 to 212 in the House, and 51 to 49 in the Senate. The potentially disruptive House Freedom Caucus is on board; among Republicans only Rand Paul in the Senate disagreed. 

       - By adding the repeal of the Obamacare individual mandate, the Senate has created a pool of about $338 billion over 10 years- which can be used to offset the cost of other desired changes. 

        - The House passed their version of tax reform on November 16, with a surprising margin of 227 to 205, leaving Paul Ryan some room to protect vulnerable members and accommodate some Senate-demanded changes in the reconciliation process.

        -  The Senate's 52 to 48 majority leaves room for only two defections (with the likely unanimous Democratic opposition). If Democrat Doug Jones beats Republican Roy Moore in the December 12, Alabama election, the margin will shrink to one vote by December 26. Passage before Christmas - including reconciliation with the House - is essential. 

        - The Congressional calendar is full - including renewal of the Continuing Resolution to allow spending without approval of specific authorization bills and an increase in the debt limit by December 8. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer agreed to an extension in September; this time the Republicans may need to navigate alone. 

    The "at risk" Senate votes 

        - In the Obamacare "Repeal and Replace" saga, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and John McCain of Arizona were willing to sink the long term Republican agenda. 

            -- Murkowski is chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, an important position for her to retain for her Alaskan constituents. Inclusion of approval of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has been enough to make her declare her support despite some concern about repealing the individual mandate. A Yes.  

            -- John McCain, whose criticism of the ObamaCare effort was partly about the one-sided process, has praised the Republican leadership for their handling of the bill which passed out of Committee, and earlier tied his vote on the budget together with the need for tax reform. A Yes.  

            -- Susan Collins has several misgivings - the elimination of the Obamacare mandate, the elimination of deductions for state taxes, and the "too low" 20% corporate tax rate. She did support the enabling budget resolution, and is considered a "not yet" rather than a "no". A maybe. 

        - With much media fanfare, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin has declared that he would not vote for the House or Senate version of the current bill since they do not provide enough relief for small business owners who pass through their company's earnings to be taxed as personal income. On Wisconsin media he has expressed confidence that the problem can be fixed, he supports the overall bill, and he considers passage an "imperative" for Republicans. A probable yes. 

        - Conservatives Bob Corker of Tennessee and Jeff Flake of Arizona who are not running for reelection have expressed concern about the deficit and drawn the public scorn of President Trump. Both claim to be unaffected by Trump; moderate ally Rob Portman affirms that both will be "all in" - with the fig leaf that lower taxes will stimulate the economy enough to offset the lower rates. Two probable yeses. 

        - Despite being the only Republican to vote against the budget, Rand Paul  tweeted on October 20, “I’m all in for tax cuts @realDonaldTrump. The biggest, boldest cuts possible - and soon!” A yes. 

    House Reconciliation

      Threading the needle will require some modifications to the bill which the House passed on November 16. 

        - The Senate needs to accept the House's elimination of deductions for state and local taxes - on the surface simple because there are no Republican Senators from the high tax states of California, New York, New Jersey, or Massachusetts. The calculation in the House is less obvious, but most of the Republicans from these states represent rural districts and know that most of their constituents will benefit from the larger standard deduction. (The Democrat dominance really is limited to a few rich coastal enclaves.) 

        - The House needs to accept the Senate's addition of the provision eliminating the Obamacare mandate. Back in May, the House was willing to eliminate Obamacare entirely by a 217 to 213 vote - eliminating the mandate should not be a problem with Republicans.  There is even a potential softener of a bill by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee) and  Patty Murray (D- Washington) which would subsidize insurance companies for two years if the elimination of the mandate drives down their profit margins. Some form may be necessary to assuage Senators like Susan Collins, and perhaps to peel off a few Democrats. 

    Net, net ... the months-long effort by the Congressional leaders and the White House to craft a manageable version is on the cusp of success unless John McCain's brain cancer flares, another Republican gets tackled while mowing his lawn, or President Trump can find more responsive Republican Senators to insult. 

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    This week's video is a favorite, Johnny Cash's "Thanksgiving Prayer". 

bill bowen - 11/24/17

Tax Reform - An Endorsement of Karl Rove's POV

    This week's blog is simply a referral to Karl Rove's article in the Wall Street Journal. There is no point in trying to say it better. It must pass; it will pass. 

 

 https://www.wsj.com/articles/two-tax-reforms-can-be-better-than-one-1510790669?mg=prod/accounts-wsj

 

 

 

  

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. 

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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

   

Steve Bannon's Mental Condition.

      Back in July the American Psychiatric Association encouraged its members to evaluate President Donald Trump's mental condition without the traditional nuisance of a personal examination. It is time for a more credible evaluation of what disorder is afflicting former presidential adviser Steve Bannon who is calling for a Republican "Civil War" which would doom any possibility of Congressional passage of the Trump agenda in the second half of his term.  

    A couple pieces of background:

        - Bannon was apparently influenced by the The Tea Party revolution as it ricocheted through the Senate from 2010 to 2014.  To the objective observer it was a mixed blessing. Led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, using his Senate Conservatives Fund Political Action Committee, the objective was the unseating of  Republican Senators who were insufficiently conservative as well as a few Democrats. Early electoral successes included defeats of Republican incumbents (Mike Lee over Bob Bennett in Utah; Pat Twomey over Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania), defeats of establishment favorites (Marco Rubio over Charlie Crist in Florida; Ted Cruz over David Dewhurst in Texas), and promotion of adequately conservative candidates in primaries for open seats (Rand Paul in Kentucky; Ron Johnson in Wisconsin; Joni Ernst in Iowa; Ben Sasse in Nebraska.)  Snatching defeat from the jaws of victory were the Todd Akins ("legitimate rape") seat in Missouri, the Christine O'Donnell ("not a witch") seat in Delaware, and the Richard Mourdock ("rape is something that God intended") seat in Indiana. After the Republicans took control with 54 seats in 2014, the internecine warfare largely subsided.  

        - Following a stint in the Navy, time as a mid-level manager at Goldman Sachs, and numerous roles in the film and entertainment business, Bannon landed at Breitbart as executive producer after the death of Andrew Breitbart in 2012.  Most importantly, he has been a player since 2009 on the team of "quant-nerd"  billionaire hedge fund manager Robert Mercer, whose network of think tanks, data analytic firms, media outlets, and Political Action Committees promotes the small government, anti-establishment, populist themes central to Bannon and Trump, spending about $40 million in the 2016 election cycle.  (Other Mercer favorites include Ted Cruz, John Bolton, and KellyAnne Conway.) Bannon didn't join the Trump campaign as chief executive until mid-August 2016, and lasted as Trump's "chief strategist and senior counsellor" until mid-August 2017. In his brief stay he fostered the conflict with Reince Priebus' establishment Republicans in the West Wing, leaked freely to the press, and wrote the first legally-flawed immigration directive.  When fired by General Kelly he returned to Breitbart, and reportedly still talks with President Trump.   

     Bannon has obviously not digested Otto von Bismark's observation that "Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable - the art of the next best."  He never made the transition from outside bomb thrower to inside policy maker. He would have preferred Richard Mourdock to the highly popular Richard Lugar in 2012; given the opportunity to govern in 2017, he preferred to destroy establishment Republicans; now back on the outside, he has vowed to start a "civil war" to destroy the Republican Senate majority. Finally the Washington Post loves him. 

    So, what would a normal post-adolescent person do in Bannon's situation? 

        1. Chill out. Hang for awhile with the family - three ex-wives; three daughters. Go back to where he had success - Breitbart.  

        2. Focus energy on the handful of Republicans in the Senate who are opposing the few key things necessary for Trump's success. John McCain; Rand Paul; Susan Collins; Lisa Murkowski. Find intermediaries, common ground, or credible political threats. Support the president and Senate leadership. 

        3. Look to the 2018 elections. Rally support for vulnerable Senate Republicans, or work to replace them with stronger candidates. Jeff Flake of Arizona; Dean Heller of Nevada. Focus on the handful of vulnerable Democrats - Joe Donnelly in Indiana; Clair McCaskill in Missouri; John Tester in Montana; Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota; Sherrod Brown in Ohio; Joe Manchin in West Virginia. 

        4. Lean on the Freedom Caucus in the House to go along with the versions of healthcare, tax, and immigration legislation which can make it through the Senate. 

        5. Hold the replacement of McConnell until the routine organizing vote in 2019. Get commitments now.  

    And Bannon's actual plan: Support primary challengers for all of the Republicans running for reelection to the Senate in 2018, except for Ted Cruz. The problem - all of the incumbents running have supported Trump on healthcare, judicial appointments, administrative appointments, and tax policy. There is no transgression; no upside to replacement.  The first casualty ? Luther Strange of Alabama who was appointed to replace Jeff Sessions, losing the primary to the weaker candidate, Roy Moore. Claim credit whenever a moderate Republican is beaten.  

    That's the downside. There is a much bigger upside - if the Republicans can pass some legislation - with the Democrats defending 23 seats to the Republicans' 9, and the Koch brothers' network planning to spend up to $400 million on the 2018 elections. Even Trump understands the urgency of holding together the slim Senate majority, lunching with the ineffective Mitch McConnell, golfing with Rand Paul, answering McCain with a warning rather than an insult.  If Bannon is going to hang around, he needs to at least rise to the Trump standard of sanity.  

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    Of no particular relevance, but with great humor, this week's video is a brief lecture by Andrew Klavan on the development of western civilization. 

bill bowen - 10/20/17.