Im-Politic: Why the Cancel Culture Can Be Really Useful These Days

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1619 Project, Adam Silver, Adrian Wojnarowski, arts, Ben & Jerry's, Black Lives Matter, cancel culture, celebrities, China, Dan Snyder, entertainment, ESPN, free speech, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, history, human rights, Im-Politic, Jefferson Starship, Josh Hawley, National Basketball Association, NBA, Nike, police brutality, racism, Roger Waters, sports, Starbuck's, The New York Times, Washington Redskins, wokeness

Of course, what sports reporter Adrian Wojnarowski thinks about Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley, or the Black Lives Matter movement, or racial justice and police brutality issues generally, or even the proper role of politics in sports, has no intrinsic importance.

I mean, he’s a…sports reporter. As a human being, he’s entitled to his views, and in principle he’s entitled to express them in public. But although he’s great at scooping the competition on the latest roster moves by the Minnesota Timberwolves or whoever, he brings no special qualifications to these matters, and based on what we know, has no distinctive, much less especially valuable, insights to offer. Indeed, he does’t even apparently have any interest in offering them (unless you’re the kind of person impressed with the eloquence of an F-bomb).

Nonetheless, Wojnarowski’s outburst, and suspension by his employer, ESPN, represents a particularly informative opportunity for explaining why the industries like sports and entertainment should stay away from politics not necessarily for the good of the country (a subject that’s unexpectedly beside the point for this discussion), but for their own good. Just as important, his moments of fame outside the professional basketball world make clear that the so-called Cancel Culture that’s emerged with special force recently in the United States has some genuinely constructive uses in these current fraught times.

To recap, Wojnarowski covers pro basketball for sports cable network and website ESPN, and clearly has strong feelings about racial justice/policing etc issues. We know this from his reaction last Friday to message sent by Hawley to the National Basketball Association (NBA) protesting its decision for allowing players to wear “messages that promote social justice on its jerseys this summer but not allow messages that support law enforcement or are critical of China’s Communist Party.” He responded by emailing his F-bomb to Hawley, who proceeded to send out a tweet containing the communication’s image. (See this account for the details.)

To his credit, Wojnarowski has apologized completely, and with apparent sincerity for showing disrespect. But regardless of what you think about the issues above, the NBA’s decision under Commissioner Adam Silver, to “uphold” and even “stand for” values that no one of good will could object to in the abstract is bound to be a recipe for continuing trouble and a hornet’s nest it would do well to avoid for two main and overlapping reasons.

First, what non-arbitrary yardsticks, if any, does the NBA, or a similar organization, use to decide which views it endorses. As widely noted, the NBA is a strongly majority African American league, and Silver has explained that he therefore has tried to be sensitive to the concerns of black players, many of whom have experienced firsthand the varied socioeconomic problems and forms of prejudice that have plagued the black community for so long. That’s perfectly fine, and in my opinion laudible, when it comes to supporting these players expressing their views off the court, as individuals. But as representatives of a team or entire league? And when the league itself takes stances?

This is when a raft of thorny issues rears its head, especially if the league’s policy isn’t “anything goes.” For example, what if – as Hawley suggested – a player wants to wear on his jersey a pro-police or pro-military slogan, or perhaps “All Lives Matter”? Would the league allow that? And if not, on what grounds? Does the NBA really want to permit some forms of Constitutionally protected expression but not others? Would it be willing to establish an issue-oriented inspired litmus test for permission to be drafted or otherwise sign a contract? Would non-playing employees be subjected to the same requirements, too? Or would the league impose a “shut up and dribble”-type rule on players who dissent from its orthodoxy?

These questions may seem academic. But what if the day comes when most NBA players aren’t African Americans? As the league keeps proudly observing, athletes from abroad keep pouring in even now. Maybe they’ll care a lot about police brutality in America’s inner cities, either because they’ve been following the issue closely or because their consciousness has been raised by their African American teammates. But what if, some day, Bosnian-born players wanted to wear jerseys decrying what they see as Serbia’s ar crimes during the Balkans wars that broke out in the 1990s? (Intra-ethnic tensions in the region remain high to this day.) What if Lithuanian-born players wanted to use their uniforms to protest Russian President Vladimir Putin’s apparent designs on their homeland? If enough European players filled NBA rosters, would the league relish the thought of taking institutional stands on these matters? And if it did, how would it decide which positions to take? Majority vote of the players? The owners? Both? The fans?

Or take an international issue on which (as Hawley noted) on which the league has already made clear it prefers not to speak out – human rights in China. What if a player wanted to wear a slogan that slammed Chinese dictator Xi Jinping? What if a player of Chinese descent sought to protest Beijing’s crackdown on Hong Kong? What if one of the NBA’s Muslim players wanted to publicize atrocities committed by China against his co-religionists in the Xinjiang region? Would such players be censored? That option certainly can’t be ruled out, because the league’s lucrative China business has unmistakably led it to tread warily on this ground – even though its influence in the People’s Republic is considerable precisely because of the huge numbers of ardent Chinese NBA fans. But could the league proscribe this or any other kind of selective censorship on the basis of principle? Good luck with that. In fact, as with the other international issues mentioned above, it’s hard to imagine a better formula for sowing bitter divisions up and down league rosters and throughout the fan base. What intelligently led business would want to stir up that hornet’s nest?

Which brings us to the second major reason to de-politicize the NBA – and the related entertainment industry: They’re businesses. Any efforts to impose official orthodoxies will antagonize significant shares of their customer bases as sure as it’s bound to please others. And the league would expose itself to the Cancel Culture – which would have every right to rear its head, and which in these circumstances arguably would serve useful social, political, and economic purposes. After all, if it’s OK for the NBA as a business to take a stand I don’t like, it’s just as OK for me to register my dislike, and/or try to change its mind through the most effective legal means available to me and other individual customers – our pocketbooks.

These actions would by no means amount to calls to censor the NBA, or deny it or any of its franchises a right to free speech. If business owners want to use their assets to push certain agendas, that’s their prerogative. (I’m much less comfortable with permitting businesses to use unlimited amounts of money to fund campaigns for political office – but let’s leave that subject for another time.) It’s anyone’s prerogative, however, to object by not purchasing the product – just as it’s anyone’s prerogative to turn the channel if they decide they don’t like a TV or radio program. If these consumer actions endanger a business’ profits – too bad for them, and no great loss for the nation. If these organizations aren’t willing to pay a commercial price for their principles, chances are they’re not that deeply held to begin with.

The same rule of thumb, by the way, should apply to organizations as such that are resisting becoming politicized – like the Washington Redskins football team, which just yesterday announced that it will be changing its name because many (though no one knows exactly how many) view that monicker as a racial slur. As I see it, owner Dan Snyder has the God-given right to name the team anything he wants. And fans have the right to object by avoiding games in person or on TV, shunning team merchandise etc.

At this point, it’s crucial to note that skepticism about the wisdom of sports leagues and their teams (and other businesses) taking institutional stands on public issues doesn’t automatically translate into opposition to individual athletes or owners or other employees of sports leagues and other businesses taking such positions as individuals, without identifying themselves with their employers. That freedom needs to be respected – or at least that’s how I see it.

But how I see it, it turns out, isn’t the law. Private businesses generally can fire employees for any reason they like, including speaking out politically outside the workplace, as long as the reason has nothing to do with race, religion, gender and, now, sexual orientation. One reason surely is that such actions can reflect poorly on a business, reduce its earnings, and wreak non-trivial collateral damage – e.g., via a revenue drop big enough to endanger salary and wage levels, and even jobs. In other words, in most cases, you as an individual worker can legally be canceled.

Another reason evidently is that this kind of firing doesn’t inherently prevent you from expressing yourself. It simply prevents you from expressing yourself and holding a particular job. Given how important jobs are, that can easily look like a distinction without a difference. But again, if a principle is held strongly enough, it should be worth an economic price.

Speaking of reflecting poorly on business, that’s apparently what the Washington, D.C. pro football team’s sponsors decided when they started threatening Snyder recently with withdrawing sponsorships if he didn’t relent and drop “Redskins.” In effect, they told him they’d fire his business, as they had every right to do And Snyder quite understandably decided that his profits were more important than preserving his memories of his boyhood sports idols. (He’s a native Washingtonian and lifelong-fan,)

Celebrity status, as in sports, of course, creates interesting wrinkles – mainly, a team could in theory fire an athlete for expressing a view that owners consider objectionable, but enough fans might disagree strongly enough to retaliate commercially against the team. In these cases, the only reasonable conclusions to draw are that (1) life is sometimes unavoidably unfair and (2) some decisions are risky, and businesses that employ and even foster outspoken stars, like sports franchises, need to hope they have the judgment to come out on top. The same goes for keeping or dumping controversial names and mascots.

Generally speaking, Cancel Culture-type entertainment issues play out like Cancel Culture-type sports issues, but some crucial differences should be taken into account. Principally, whereas sports as such have absolutely nothing to do with public issues, literature, music, theater, the movies, and the like have always been closely connected with these matters. How could they not? Of course, the arts have created any amount of pure fluff. Much so-called serious art plays purely to our pure emotions, too.

But from their beginnings, the arts have represented expressions of ideas as well, and any healthy society that wants to stay healthy should hope that individual artists and organizations keep sounding off vigorously on “politics.” Moreover, logically speaking, there’s no built-in problem with entertainment companies and those institutions that organize the industry (and administer awards) championing and condemning specific positions as well.

By the same token, however, whether you denigrate the practice as intolerant Cancel Culture or not, it’s any art or entertainment consumer’s right to choose not to patronize any individual entertainer or artist or entertainment business or organization they disagree with about anything, and even to encourage others to join in. The market and the consciences of individuals and companies and organizations in the arts and entertainment fields will decide what kind of arts and entertainment products will be produced, with whose sponsorship (if any) and how influential and commercially successful they’ll be.

The real dilemmas for consumers come in when, say, your favorite singer makes terrific music but expresses offputting ideas on public affairs. In those cases, there’s no reasonable alternative to each individual figuring out which he or she values more – the instrumentals and vocals, or the lyrics – and there’s no ready formula for doint so. For me, it’s how I justify continuing to play Jefferson Starship’s musically magnificent but politically infantile (putting it mildly) 1970 album “Blows Against the Empire,” but also how I’ve decided that I’ll probably keep ignoring Roger Waters’ new material because I find the Pink Floyd co-founder’s anti-Israel invective so despicable.

Of course, Cancel Culture-type issues have arisen in connection with other industries as well. For me, because they generally have nothing to do with ideas and values, the sports rules of thumb seem to be appropriate for them, too. So I’ll keep passing up Ben & Jerry’s – and not simply because they always put in too many fill-ins and too little ice cream. Ditto for Nike’s various social justice kicks (which the athletic shoe company apparently views as being perfectly compatible with its massive job and production offshoring). And since I can now get a good cup of joe, find a comfortable place to sit, take a load off, and use free WiFi at any number of coffee bars around the country, so long to Starbuck’s and its insufferable in-my-face “commitment to racial justice and social equity.”

Whatever you think of the above arguments, they still leave unresolved three big aspects of the intertwined rise-of-institutional “wokeness/“Cancel Culture debate still unresolved.

The first, concerning historical monuments, markers, and names etc. I’ve already dealt with extensively, and you can examine my views by entering terms like “Confederacy” or “history” in RealityChek‘s search engine.

The second concerns the view that the kind of voting with your pocketbook that I’m recommending clashes with the idea that vigorous debate is a cornerstone of any sound democracy. I strongly agree with that notion. But it strikes me as naive to believe that at present, or in the foreseeable future, the conditions exist or will exist for any kind of helpful debate about the emergence of woke corporate culture.

For decisions like the NBA’s to take up certain causes (but not others) didn’t result from any engagement with the fan base. I’m sure some polls have been taken, but those were undoubtedly market research exercises to try to see whether such moves would pass muster with its customers – or whether they mattered at all. But to my knowledge, neither the league nor any of its corporate counterparts offered the general public the option of commenting substantively, much less indicated that these comments would be taken into account. The decisions were made by fiat. And given the vast disparity between the power and influence of a huge, well-financed business on the one hand, and individual customers or fans on the other, who can reasonably doubt that these debates won’t even happen until it’s clear that fan objections are impacting bottom lines?

If anything, these points are even stronger when it comes to institutions that are widely supposed to be in the debate-fostering business themselves, at least in part. It’s true, I’ve argued, that at least when we’re talking about the news media, or the broader information industries, these suppositions are largely misconceptions. It’s also true that I wouldn’t advise anyone to stop reading, say, The New York Times, because it’s chosen to enter the field of education and create the (in my view recklessly slanted) “1619 Project” to rewrite American history, or because its news coverage too often seems to be shaped by a widely held staff view that the sins of President Trump are great enough to warrant abandoning traditional journalistic ideals like objectivity.

But these Times decisions also were made by fiat, with no substantive input sought from readers. So if at some point I or anyone else concludes that the Times‘ reporting and analysis has become so unreliable as to be useless, I’ll cancel my subscription with a perfectly good conscience, and hope others do likewise.

The third dimension of the wokeness/Cancel Culture debate concerns wrongs committed or controversial remarks made by high profile individuals, and the proper responses both of the general public and of whatever employers or constituencies to which they’re responsible. Simply put, should such words and deeds be forgiven or punished, and if the latter, is there a statute of limitations?

Clearly, some of the deeds (like sex crimes) bring into the picture the criminal justice system, which I assume everyone views as the way society should deal with these actions. More difficult to decide, at least in principle, is how to treat those convicted once they’ve paid their debt (assuming they get released). At this point, I don’t see any viable alternative to engaging in or avoiding Cancel Culture-type responses, since the offenses cover such a wide range of actions, and since the subsequent behavior of the guilty is certain to vary greatly as well. Therefore it seems impossible to figure out a cookie-cutter blueprint for forgiveness or lack thereof. Case-by-case seems to be the best strategy for their employers, too.

Nor do I see any viable alternative to dealing with case-by-case to speech that’s legal but that offends for all sorts of valid reasons. In other words, there’s no escaping judgment calls.

So let’s give the Cancel Culture one or two cheers (as opposed to the full three). I just wish I was more confident that America’s national supply of judgment was adequate or increasing strongly.  

Im-Politic: An Immigration and Racism Link Deserving Much More Attention

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African Americans, Chicago, CNBC, H-1B visa, Hispanics, Im-Politic, Immigration, inequality, Jim Reynolds, minorities, Norman Matloff, race relations, racism, STEM workers, tech jobs, unemployment

“H-1B” and “racial injustice” probably aren’t terms most people would believe have much to do with each other. That’s why a recent CNBC interview with a leading African American financier deserves your attention even if it is two weeks old. Because he shows not only that they’re intimately connected, but that even someone who is focusing on the link needs to think much more about how exactly it works, and what needs to be done about it.

For those who don’t follow immigration issues closely, “H-1B” is the name of the category of visa that the federal government allots business for foreigners they supposedly need to employ because their “specialty” skills can’t be found in the domestic workforce. The skills cover a wide range, but according to this organization (which loves the program) most of the visas requested by U.S. companies are for science and technology occupations, and indeed their prevalence in these fields is responsible for most of the controversy they’ve generated.

For evidence abounds that, contrary to their claims, the tech companies that seek these foreign workers so ardently aren’t using them because they’re geniuses, but because they’re cheap – and because they need to remain tied to the company that sponsored them if they have any hope of getting permanent legal residence in the United States. (My go-to source on this issue is University of California-Davis computer scientist and immigration authority Norman Matloff, whose work can be found at this terrific blog.)

As a result, H-1B opponents argue that their use undercuts American pay levels in science and technology fields, and severely undercuts the argument that gaining these skills is one of the best guarantees available to young Americans of prospering in the turbulent economy of recent decades. But the program damages the economy in a way less often noted by opponents: It guts the incentives American business might develop to invest in American workers’ skills generally, or to press government to get the country’s education act together so as to make sure that the skills they need are available domestically.

And this is where the racial injustice and related economic inequality issues come into play – along with that CNBC interview. The subject, Jim Reynolds, is an inspiring African American success story who’s long been active in civic affairs in a city with one of the nation’s biggest African American populations – his native Chicago. (See this profile.) CNBC brought him on the air on July 2 to talk about racial diversity on Wall Street.

The conversation proceeded along these lines till it was about two thirds of the way through, when Reynolds made this totally unprompted and stunning pivot. Its worth quoting in full, and came in response to a question on whether he thinks Wall Street is genuinely committed to hiring more minorities in the wake of the George Floyd killing and ensuing tsunami of nationwide calls to end racism and related economic injustices.  (I also need to present it because this point didn’t make it into the CNBC news story accompanying the interview video that’s linked above.)   

“You ask if I think this is real…. I was at an Economics Club dinner a couple of years ago…and one of the top CEOs in the city [Chicago], actually, one of the top CEOS in the country – a Fortune 100 company – spoke to the group, and what he said to the group that one of his most frustrating experiences is working with H-1B programs, and why they won’t let his company recruit more of the talent that they need in the tech space….[H]e said that in the middle of downtown Chicago, where we have African American and Hispanic youth in the city, ten minutes from where he was standing, that have…let’s call it 40, 50, 60 percent unemployment, that go to schools that don’t really…teach them this sort of thing, and I wondered why he didn’t even think about this. Sure, you can go to China, and you can go to India, and recruit that talent. And that talent – and I’ve spent a lot of time in China – that talent started getting developed in middle school When they come here, and they go to the quants on Wall Street and the quants in Silicon Valley – and they do dominate that space – they started studying this stuff like when they were eight years old, nine years old. And I’ve started thinking about and talking about and I’m working with our wonderful Mayor Lori Lightfoot about, let’s get these corporations thinking about – and this time is great – investing in these black and Hispanic schools. Now. Let’s grab our young black and Hispanic kids in middle school. Let’s have a Facebook program in the school, Microsoft program, Alphabet program, Apple program in these schools. I think that’s an opportunity.”

I couldn’t have done a better job of making the H-1B-racial injustice connection. But as I suggested above, Reynold is still missing a piece of the puzzle: The CEO he mentions, and others like him, simply aren’t going to make those investments because they don’t have to. And they don’t have to precisely because they have a cheaper alternative – and one that doesn’t require them to deal with the kinds of workforce training challenges they’ve never faced: the H-1B program.

So if Reynolds really wants to expand opportunity for disadvantaged minority youth (and other young Americans) all over the country, he’ll start pressing for the elimination of the H-1B program, and for broader immigration policies that deny businesses in all sectors the easy option of hiring low-cost foreigners – and in the process, creating even more power over workers and thereby intensifying the downward pressure they can keep exerting on their wages and benefits.

Reynolds, moreover, is in a particularly good position to lobby for these changes effectively because, as made clear in the profile linked above, his close friends include a fellow named Barack Obama – who has more than a little influence on the liberals and progressives who have emerged (along with Corporate America) as among the stubbornest opponents of immigration policies that put American workers – including of course minority workers – first.

Im-Politic: On Biden’s New Plan for Medical & Other Supply Chain Security

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alliances, Biden, CCP Virus, China, coronavirus, COVID 19, Defense Department, Defense Production Act, DPA, election 2020, health security, healthcare goods, Im-Politic, manufacturing, offshoring, Pentagon, pharmaceuticals, PPE, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, Trade, Wuhan virus

Joe Biden’s plan for rebuilding U.S. supply chains to ensure American access to critical products like healthcare goods came out yesterday, and any fair reading would have to conclude that these proposals are about as serious as the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee’s proposals in related areas – like China policy. That is to say, they’re not terribly serious at present.

As with China policy, the first concern entails credibility. In 2011, when Biden was Barack Obama’s Vice President, the Commerce Department issued a report detailing all sorts of dangerous vulnerabilities in U.S. supplies of all manner of vital healthcare goods. The “Obama-Biden administration” did absolutely nothing in response – unless you count avidly pursuing offshoring-friendly trade deals, like the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that were bound to worsen these vulnerabilities. You could also throw in a record of continually coddling the trade and broader economic predation practiced by China, which surely fostered similar results.

As a result, it’s legit to ask whether any of these proposals will survive Day One of a Biden presidency.

In this vein, it’s more than a little disturbing that Biden proposes to use the Defense Department’s policies to minimize supply chain vulnerabilities as his model for addressing such problems for a wide variety of products –not just healthcare-related goods. These include “energy and grid resilience technologies, semiconductors, key electronics and related technologies, telecommunications infrastructure, and key raw materials.”

Unfortunately, the principal lessons taught by the Defense Department’s record on supply chains are how to duck the problem or define it out of existence, and the administration in which Biden served was no exception. Some of the biggest specific problems (as made clear in this Obama administration report):

>The Pentagon’s overall assessments prioritized financial metrics, not specific domestic production capabilities, as measures of the defense manufacturing base’s health.

>Its treatment of globalization’s challenges placed major emphasis on taking “advantage of emerging capabilities, regardless of where they originate,” not maximizing domestic production capabilities.

>Although specific vulnerabilities – and the related need to maintain or rebuild adequate domestic capabilities – were acknowledged, this vulnerabilities were consistently portrayed as isolated holes that could somehow be plugged without taking into account the dependence of these narrowly defined products on their own supply chains. Indeed, Biden’s new plan seems to reveal a similar flaw when it describes itself as “a set of targeted proposals to ensure the United States has the domestic manufacturing capacity necessary for critical supply chains.”

>Moreover, the Department has long supported objectives such as interoperability with allies’ armed forces and maintaining traditional – pre-Trump – global systems of what it defined as free trade, both of which often clashed with the goal of incentivizing domestic production. These goals were explicitly stated in this George W. Bush administration report, and here’s no evidence that the Obama-Biden Pentagon ever disagreed.

Indeed, the new Biden blueprint indicates that the former Vice President’s definition of supply chain security is pretty global, instead of national, as well:

“Instead of insulting our allies and undermining American global leadership, Biden will engage with our closest partners so that together we can build stronger, more resilient supply chains and economies in the face of 21st century risks. Just like the United States itself, no U.S. ally should be dependent on critical supplies from countries like China and Russia. That means developing new approaches on supply chain security — both individually and collectively — and updating trade rules to ensure we have strong understandings with our allies on how to best ensure supply chain security for all of us.”

If America’s allies were proven reliable suppliers of these products themselves, Biden’s perspective would make sense. But the list of countries that have recently hoarded medical goods for themselves as soon as the CCP Virus pandemic’s full dangers became apparent included most of these allies – meaning that the U.S. vulnerability problem far exceeds “China and Russia.”

Nor is it entirely evident how clearly Biden has thought though the tax policy provisions of his plan. Tax policy’s role is clearly viewed as crucial, as the plan emphasizes that

“Pharmaceutical offshoring has been heavily driven by tax code provisions that have encouraged companies to locate pharmaceutical production in low-tax countries even where those countries have labor and other costs comparable to the U.S.”

Consequently, Biden says he will “eliminate Trump Administration tax incentives for offshoring and pursue other tax code changes that will encourage pharmaceutical production in the U.S.”

At the same time, Biden favors raising the overall U.S. corporate tax rate from the 21 percent to which it has recently been lowered to 28 percent, along with a 15 percent “minimum tax” on large corporations. So good luck to drug companies – or any other companies making goods deemed critical by Biden – gleaning clear reshoring or domestic production ramping signals from this combination.

Perhaps any confusion will be cleared up by other alleged Biden measures to boost U.S.-based production – like “new targeted financial incentives, including tax credits, investments, matching funds for state and local incentives, R&D support, and other incentives to encourage the production of designated critical materials such as semiconductors in the United States”? At best, business will surely need to see many more details along these lines before committing the needed capital.

Unless maybe as President, Biden will simply mandate that the needed new facilities will be built when all else fails (as well as in tandem with those other policies)? That’s obviously the implication of his promise to use the Defense Production Act (DPA) “to its fullest extent to rebuild domestic manufacturing capacity in critical supply chains, using the lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and applying them to our national needs.”

Or does Biden actually view the DPA as his primary tool for “generating the domestic mobilization we need”? That seems like a reasonable conclusion, especially given that it’s the first specific measure he mentions. Maybe instead he’s really talking about using the Act simply “to direct U.S. companies to ramp up production of critical products that will be needed over the near-term.”

Regardless of Biden’s real intentions, though, it’s anything but clear how Biden believes the DPA can be used to increase U.S. production in many of the industries he mentions as vital where such output has largely migrated overseas That’s especially true for the “semiconductors, key electronics and related technologies, [and] telecommunications infrastructure” he specifies. It’s sure going to be far more difficult than, say, ordering auto companies, to make ventilators.

It’s just as unclear how these Biden’s ideas can succeed without a much stronger trade policy dimension – and specifically, continued and even expanded tariffs. And it shouldn’t be limited to straightening out the muddled views mentioned above. 

Specifically, maintaining levies on chronically subsidized and dumped products like metals, along with sweeping tariffs on systemically protectionist China (and on other similar countries) would send the all the companies and sectors concerned an invaluable message. Bipartisan endorsement of these protections would demonstrates that they really can have confidence that new investments won’t be decimated by trade and broader economic predation. Just as important, an enduring commitment to tariffs would help convince overseas competitors (domestic and foreign owned) that if they want to sell the products in which they have big edges to Americans, they’ll need to make these products in America.

The good news is that at least some of these mysteries may be cleared up “soon,” when this Biden plan promises the former Vice President will release his “comprehensive strategy to create American jobs through modern American manufacturing.” The bad news is that if he what he’s said and written so far is any indication, he’ll have a lot of rewriting to do.

Im-Politic: Biden’s CCP Virus Fairytales

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Angela Merkel, CCP Virus, contact tracing, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, Germany, Im-Politic, Jobs, Joe Biden, lockdown, reopening, shutdown, testing, unemployment, Wuhan virus

I totally get that Joe Biden would want to throw cold water all over this past Thursday’s U.S. jobs report (for June), whose reported massive gains smashed expectations for the second straight month. He’s virtually certain to be formally named the Democrats’ presidential nominee this year. Therefore, he naturally has a strong interest in portraying the state of the nation, including its economy, in the worst possible terms.

I also totally get that the nation’s media would report Biden’s gloom-mongering. He’s a major political candidate, and what he says is by definition news.

What I totally don’t get is how none of the country’s pundits and other political analysts have caught the glaring weakness and equally glaring internal contradiction in Biden’s core claim that a million more Americans “would still have their job if Donald Trump had done his job.”

The weakness: Biden apparently is charging that the President should have shut down the economy and strongly recommended mask-wearing and social distancing measures (which of course inevitably have their own, independent economy-depressing effects) much earlier than he did (the first such Trump action – a stay-at-home guidance – came on March 16). As a result, he suggests, the U.S. jobs market would be in much better shape. 

But as reported in this Washington Post examination of Biden’s CCP Virus record, nothing of the kind had issued from the former Vice President or his camp by that time. So much, therefore, for any contention that he’s been especially prescient when it comes to the virus’ impact on the economy and on employment in particular.

The contradiction: Let’s say that Biden had indeed recommended a much earlier shutdown – and that the Trump administration had taken his advice immediately. And let’s suppose that the President’s record had been much better in terms of testing and contact-tracing – which Biden has called “the key to restoring enough confidence for businesses to reopen safely and consumers to reengage with the economy” (as opposed to what he has described as the President’s reopening plan: “just open”). Would the massive job losses suffered by the U.S. economy have been avoided, as Biden has suggested? Would even “a million more Americans” be employed – and presumably safely employed (a number whose source I haven’t found, and that represents a small fraction of the 15 million jobs that remain lost since the CCP Virus’ full effects began to be felt)?

Biden and many Americans clearly would like these claims to be true. But good luck finding any supporting evidence. Indeed, everything we know about the anti-virus efforts even of countries that allegedly have dealt much better with the pandemic reveals those expectations to be wholly unrealistic.

Germany is probably the best example – since it’s not a totalitarian dictatorship like China that can lock down massively while truly trampling on the few individual liberties it ever allowed the slightest breathing room. Even so, it’s been widely depicted as the gold standard for anti-virus success.

To summarize, on March 22, Chancellor Angela Merkel imposed on the country one of Europe’s strictest lockdowns. A cautious easing began on May 6. And how have the country’s workers fared? Take a look at the chart below (from Bloomberg.com). That joblessness spike looks an awful lot like America’s. P.S. These figures don’t include millions of German workers not officially counted as unemployed only because of Bonn’s work-sharing programs, which has kept them nominally at work via wage subsidies.

Moreover, practically no sooner did Germany’s reopening begin, than significant virus case flareups began.

In other words, even Germany’s experience makes clear that if you favor maximum anti-virus efforts, like pervasive lockdowns, there’s no avoiding massive unemployment. And given the disease’s transmission rates – which may have worsened, possibly due more to mutation than to any reopenings, even as its never extreme lethality may be weakening – anyone insisting on the contrary deserves to be seen as just another cynical politician peddling fairytales.

 

Im-Politic: The Case for Shutdowns Remains Far from Open and Shut

Tags

Arizona, California, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Doug Ducey, Gavin Newsome, hospitalizations, Im-Politic, infections, reopening, shutdown, Wuhan virus

OK, enough with the History Wars/Cancel Culture stuff (for now)! Let’s turn to something relatively uncontroversial (!) – like the resurgence of CCP Virus cases in the United States. And in particular, let’s focus on the common argument that these increases, along with higher hospitalization rates, show conclusively that the states that closed late or reopened early or never closed or never closed much (you get the picture), were tragically and even recklessly mistaken, and that the states that closed early or stayed closed for the longest and have reopened only very gradually were the truly responsible actors.

There’s one set of actions that certainly seems to clinch the case for the “closers” – the decisions of many of the late closing/early opening states to pause or slow their reopenings, or even roll back many. According to this report, the number of states and cities taking such steps now totals 15.

But this loudly nagging question remains: What’s the actual evidence that supposedly irresponsible reopening measures have caused either the growing case or even hospitalization numbers? Pretty flimsy, as it turns out.

Let’s begin with Arizona – widely described as a quintessential reopening disaster. It’s true that confirmed virus cases have shot up since very late May, with new daily cases per hundred thousand residents soaring from 248.5 on May 27 to 1,063.9 on June 28. That’s about a four-fold increase. (All such infection figures and change come from the Washington Post‘s continually updated virus tracker feature.) 

But figuring out the impact of shutdown-type policies involves not only identifying how many new cases and other indicators have worsened recently. It much more importantly involves comparing rates of worsening during the shutdown periods and afterwards.

In Arizona’s case, Republican Governor Doug Ducey began imposing limits in mid-March, and canceled school for the remainder of the current academic year and issued a stay-at-home order on the 30^th. (My Arizona dates come from this timeline.) On that day, new case numbers stood at 16.7 per hundred thousand. On May 11, he decided to reopen restaurants. On that day, new cases hit 163.8 per hundred thousand – meaning that they.rose a little less than ten-fold during the shutdown.

As described above, the latest Arizona numbers show 1,063.9 new daily cases. So during reopening phase, the state’s new daily case numbers rose about 6.5-fold. In other words, cases rose much more slowly during the reopening phase (which Ducey paused as of yesterday) as it did during the shutdown phase. So that’s supposed to be evidence that its shutdown policies have been reckless?

Even taking into account the laws of large and small numbers (which teach that the lower the absolute number baseline you begin with, the easier it is to produce big percentage gains), I’m glad I don’t have to use them to strengthen the case for stricter reopenings – if only because the virus seems to spread so rapidly. As a result, independent of improving testing rates (which themselves should be revealing more cases), the rate of infections should be speeding up the more infections are recorded, not slowing down.

Even harder to explain from the standpoint of shutdown enthusiasts: On March 30, when the state’s major shutdown phase began, Arizona CCP Virus-related daily hospitalizations stood at 51 (total). By May 11, when major reopening began, it had fallen to 41. Since hospitalization rates are often called the most important measure of progress or backsliding against the virus, that’s a big sign that shutdowns work, right?

Not exactly. For yesterday’s new hospitalization number (the latest available) was only two. In all fairness, between the start of major reopening and June 8, this number doubled – from 41 to 82. But since then, the daily hospitalization rate has sunk like a stone. Even granted the reality of lags between new case identifications and hospitalizations, these figures make clear that the state of Arizona’s economy and the regulations governing activity have had no discernible impact on its new case numbers or its hospitalization numbers.

Of course, Arizona’s only one state. So let’s look at another – and the biggest in terms of population. That’s of course, California. Even better, California was a state praised for shutting down early and aggressively, and has reopened cautiously – till very recently, when it mandated some rollbacks. And its experience strengthens the case for sweeping shutdowns not one iota.

California’s new case numbers have been rising, too – though without the recent spike seen in Arizona. Even so, they’re now at an all-time daily high as well: with 553.1 new cases per hundred thousand residents. This total is only a little over half of Arizona’s latest, which would seem to reenforce the case for stricter shutdown policies. But again, that’s not the new case statistic that deserves the most attention. It’s imperative to look at California’s new daily cases and how they’ve changed during both the state’s shutdown phase and its reopening phase.

The Golden State’s Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, issued a state-wide stay-at-home order on that went into effect March 19 — actually, not so very different from when Arizona’s shutdowns began in earnest, though they were narrower. That day, the state’s reported cases per 100,000 residents stood at 2.6.  

On May 8, California began a gradual reopening. That day, its reported cases per 100,000 residents was 159.7, meaning that during the shutdown, they skyrocketed by 61 times. Because the latest such figure is 553.1 per thousand, the rate of increase during the reopening was 2.46 times. Again, not results that speak well for the spread-inhibiting record of shutdowns.

The California hospitalization story is more complicated than Arizona’s – but anything but a slam dunk for shutdown supporters. The state tracks hospitalization differently from that of its neighbor, recording daily changes in net hospitalizations (i.e., admissions minus discharges). What the numbers show, according to this chart, is that is that shortly after the stay-at-home order went into effect (March 20), they fell pretty steadily through very early June,stayed roughly level until the middle of the month, and soared thereafter.

What’s especially interesting about these figures is that they seem completely unrelated to the shutdown phase and the reopening. After all, net hospitalizations kept falling for nearly a full month after the gradual reopening began (though at a somewhat slower rate). And the big increase in net hospitalization that began in mid-June didn’t start until some five weeks after the reopening. As a result, I don’t see much of a shutdown/reopening connection there, either.

It’s certainly possible that reopening decisions helped increase infection rates by encouraging Americans in those states to believe that all was clear, and that life could go back to normal, without any mask-wearing or social distancing and the like. But which state governors have made those claims? It’s more likely that many residents of those states decided to throw caution to the wind regardless of what officials said – which doesn’t speak well for them, although it also doesn’t say much about the enforceability of shutdowns. What’s the alternative, however? Handing state and local officials China-like powers? Raise your hand if you’d be happy with that outcome.

Moreover, these shutdown/reopening figures tell us nothing about another, and too often neglected, crucial dimension of the virus policy debate – what are the public health costs of prolonged continuation of shutdowns? Heart Disease Patients’ and Victims of Depression’s Lives Matter, too, after all.

So far, it seems clear that, like crises and other difficult situations in general, the keys to dealing with the CCP Virus pandemic won’t be hyping clearcut formulas,  false either-or-choices, and declarations of certainty as ringing as they are unjustified and blame-casting. There’s still no substitute for good judgment, common sense (and yes, that includes mask-wearing when in crowded indoor spaces, steering clear of them and outdoor crowds as much as possible, and washing your hands fanatically), and an ability to learn.  What a shame that the national stockpiles of those qualities seem so meager.  

Im-Politic: Ivy League Princeton Turns Bush League in the History Wars

Tags

cancel culture, Christopher L. Eisgruber, Founding Fathers, history wars, Im-Politic, Ivy League, James Madison, Princeton University, race relations, racism, slavery, Washington Post, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs

Full disclosure: Although I graduated from Princeton University and believe that I got a great education there (for a princely sum, to be sure), for various reasons, I never felt much affinity to the place (except for the basketball and other athletics teams – long story). As a result, I’ve never given it a dime . Even so, it’s depressing to learn that for the last seven years, the school as been run by a leadership team that’s full either of guilt-driven liberals, ignoramuses, utter ditzes, or some combination of the two.

I know this because the university’s president, Christopher L Eisgruber, has just explained in an op-ed in today’s Washington Post why he persuaded Princeton’s Board of Trustee to remove Woodrow Wilson’s name from the university’s School of Public and International Affairs.

My scorn for this move and those responsible for it has nothing to do with any doubt concerning the racist views and policies of a figure who was not only President of the United States, but president of Princeton. I’ve fully recognized Wilson as a racist here and here. Nor do I hold the former Woodrow Wilson School in any special regard. In fact, I’ve long considered “public and international affairs” as being about as legitimate a university course of study as sports communications.

Instead, I view the Wilson name removal as (to quote Eisgruber) “an excess of political correctness” precisely because he’s also expressed strong agreement with one of the few sensible notions that have emerged from America’s recent history wars – that there’s a crucial distinction between figures who are known only or mainly for supporting treasonous and racist and other odious views and policies, and those whose role in U.S. history entailed much much more. More.

In this vein, Eisgruber acknowledges explicitly that Wilson “is a far different figure than John C. Calhoun or Robert E. Lee, people whose pro-slavery commitments defined their careers and who were sometimes honored for the purpose of supporting segregation or racism.” He recognizes that many of Wilson’s achievements both at the university and in the White House can legitimately be called “genuine” and even “grand.” And he goes on to admit that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate his life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

Weirder still: As Eisgruber explains, responding in 2015 to student demands that the university “de-Wilson-ize” itself Eisgruber asked the Board to study how Princeton was presenting Wilson’s record and legacy, and the school ultimately decided to “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.”

In my view, that’s exactly the right way to handle the matter, and I’ve since urged that participants in the national debate to think harder about similarly thoughtful ways to deal with other historical figures who also deserve to be remembered as more than racists whatever flaws on the issue they demonstrated or embodied.

But Eisgruber and the Princeton board have taken the easy, and simplistic way out. Although nowadays the concept of “slippery slope” is abused way too often (because it too conveniently defines out of existence any need and ability to make intelligent choices or draw important distinctions), Princeton’s decision raises the question of why Abraham Lincoln or the Founding Fathers, with their own problematic racial records and actual slave-owning, shouldn’t be expunged from the nation’s public places as well (or from whatever private places honor them).

According to Eisgruber, he changed his mind because even with the 2015 changes, Princeton was still honoring Wilson

“without regard to, and perhaps even in ignorance of, his racism.

“And that, I now believe, is precisely the problem. Princeton is part of an America that has too often disregarded, ignored and turned a blind eye to racism, allowing the persistence of systems that discriminate against black people.”

But of course, the university had taken specific steps to (as Eisgruber told us) “recount its history, including Wilson’s racism, more honestly.” So what’s changed between then and now?

Similar questions arise from Eisgruber’s associated contention that “When a university names its public policy school for a political leader, it inevitably offers the honoree as a role model for its students. However grand some of Wilson’s achievements may have been, his racism disqualifies him from that role.”

If so, however, why keep Wilson’s name on one of its residential colleges and on it’s “highest award for undergraduate alumni”? (As Eisgruber calls the Woodrow Wilson Prize. Unless that, too, has changed? Eisgruber didn’t specify.)

Finally, why have Eisgruber and the Board stopped with Wilson? The university also still honors the slave-owning (and pretty consistent slavery supporter) Founding Father and former President of the United States James Madison in at least two ways: a scholarly program called the James Madison Society, and a dining option called “Madison Society”. What the heck is so special about him? Why not kick this racist SOB’s name off the campus, too? 

Nothing could be clearer than that Eisgruber has no rational answers to these questions – and may not have even asked them. In fact, the only intellectually honest or competent sentence in his entire article is his confession that “I do not pretend to know how to evaluate [Wilson’s] life or his staggering combination of achievement and failure.”

In other words, Princeton’s decision stands as a monument – to ignorance. And you can probably throw in intellectual cowardice and faddism as well.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media Keeps Abetting Think Tank Fraud

Tags

AICGS, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, idea laundering, Im-Politic, lobbying, Mainstream Media, national security, NATO, Swamp, The Johns Hopkins University, think tanks, Trade, Trump

The following item didn’t even merit a full article in the eyes of Politico editors. But it speaks volumes on how the nation’s journalists continue to do a terrible job of reporting on the vested interests behind much of the opinion and analysis on which they rely to flesh out their coverage of any number of issues.

Here it is in full, beneath the headline “Hopkins Pushes U-Turn on German Trade Policy:

“A new report from Johns Hopkins University advises the winner of the U.S. presidential election to reverse many of the trade and defense policies the Trump administration has pursued with Germany.

“The paper from the the school’s American Institute for Contemporary German Studies [AICGS] recommends redoubling the U.S. commitment to NATO, which Trump has de-emphasized over his term, and pursuing a “safe trade” strategy that would aim for a new U.S.-EU trade agreement to lower tariffs across the Atlantic. It also argues the countries should commit to reform the WTO to counter China’s rise.”

To begin on a personal note, I first encountered the Institute in the mid-1980s, when I was an editor at FOREIGN POLICY magazine. It was newly created, and my reaction to its appearance was probably much the same as your reaction to its mention in this press item: It’s a think tank, it’s connected with a major university, so its work must top some kind of quality threshhold.

Revealingly, this period came before private sector and other special interest donors became so dominant in the think tank world and, more important, began actively and indeed strategically using these institutes to further highly self-interested, specific agendas. (See this history for an excellent account of how and why it changed.)

In other words, many and probably most of them weren’t chiefly engaged in what I’ve called “idea laundering” – seeking to advance these agendas by using think tanks to garb them in the raiment of traditional, truth-seeking scholarlship. So I didn’t ask myself who was funding the Institute. (Full disclosure: The think tank that then published FOREIGN POLICY magazine, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was at that time financed by big bucks provided for its creation by Gilded Age industrial magnate Andrew Carnegie. To my knowledge, that endowment to that point was so big, and managed and invested so smartly, that no outside fund-raising was necessary.)

But precisely because times have changed so dramatically, I not only wondered who pays for the Institute – I investigated the subject. And what I found is that not only is the AICGS financed significantly by large banks and corporations who have had a strong vested stake in restoring what was for them a very lucrative pre-Trump U.S.-Germany economic status quo (one of whose main beneficiaries was China). It’s also financed significantly by the German government – which has at least as strong a vested stake in restoring a pre-Trump status quo that was not only economically profitable, but strategically advantageous. For under President Trump’s predecessors, the United States was willing to subsidize heavily  Germany’s defense because numerous German governments (including today’s) have preferred to free ride militarily and spend public monies elsewhere – or let German taxpayers keep them.

Specifically, the Institute’s donors include the “Transatlantic Program of the Federal Republic of Germany with funds from the European Recovery Program (ERP) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Energy” the Landesbank Baden- Wurttemberg (a regional-level German central bank), and the German Academic Exchange Service – which sounds non-governmental, but whose budget, its own website tells us:

“is derived mainly from the federal funding for various ministries, primarily the German Federal Foreign Office, but also from the European Union and a number of enterprises, organisations and foreign governments.”

Nor are these government funds trivial. According to the latest information AICGS has provided to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (as required), in 2016, the organization raised just under $2.61 million in total revenue. Roughly half of this amount came from “contributions and grants” (a category that, oddly, doesn’t include “fund-raising events” income). And of the $1.34 million taken in through contributions and grants, the German economic affairs and energy ministry donated $206,434, and the German Academic Exchange Service gave $113,590. (No Landesbank contributions were recorded, presumably because they fell below the $1,000 level mandated by the Internal Revenue Service for reporting – although there’s no way to know how much this official German financial agency, or the other German government agencies, contributed to one of AICGS’ fund-raising events.),

And there can be no doubt that both the businesses and the German government consider it much more effective and convincing to have a scholarly sounding American Institute for Contemporary German Studies carrying their water than spreading their messages themselves. In fact, Politico fell for this ruse hook, line, and sinker, and indeed reinforced the deception – with a headline describing the study’s results as coming not even from a think tank, but from a leading U.S. university. 

As I’ve argued often before (e.g., the Congressional testimony linked above), there’s nothing inherently wrong with any special interest using a think tank to push its priorities. Nor is there anything wrong with a foreign government engaging in the same practice.

But there’s a great deal wrong with these donors using think tanks on the sly. And when it comes to foreign governments, a legal issue comes up: whether these think tanks should be required to register a foreign lobbyists, as required by law.

As suggested above, AICGS is hardly the only idea launderer in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere in the country, and if you look hard enough – as I did – you can find the information on-line. But why should anyone have to make any significant effort? Why shouldn’t sponsorship information be displayed prominently on all the publicly released products of AICGS and think tanks generally? And since it’s not, why do Politico and other media outlets not report this information routinely?

Oncc the Trump era began, the Mainstream Media began ostentatiously adopting official slogans like “Democracy Dies in Darkness.”  I’m not aware of any references to “Draining the Swamp.”  And these news organizations’ continuing failure to expose idea laundering and similar strategies can’t help but keep feeding suspicions that they’re part of this morass.   

Im-Politic: A Case for Reparations

Tags

African Americans, education, GI Bill, higher education, housing, Im-Politic, immigrants, inequalty, mortgages, race relations, racism, reparations, wealth gap, white privilege, World War II

Here’s a RealityChek post I never thought I’d write, leading off with two ideas I never thought I’d consider: First, I’m warming a lot toward the idea of the U.S. government paying some kind of taxpayer-funded reparations to African Americans in compensation for at least one cut-and-dried historical episode of economically costly racism. Second, a main reason is that I and my family – and millions and millions of others like us – have benefited economically, and considerably, from the white privilege reinforced by this episode.

I’m still somewhat wary of a main possible result of reparations – that payment will generate an ever growing list of demands for more payments. I also remain concerned that reparations will ease much of the moral pressure felt by white and others who oppose reparations to eliminate sources of racial economic inequality ranging from lousy and inequitably funded public schools to discriminatory mortgage practices.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that these worries reflect overly simplistic “slippery slope”-type arguments to which I’ve objected in the context of other issues. Specifically, they too easily become excuses for avoiding many necessary actions. For they imply that citizens and political leaders are devoid of the judgment needed to make the kinds of distinctions any complex community or society needs to be able to identify in order to remain even minimally functional.

More important, a little research I conducted the other day brought to my attention an instance of massive, systemic racism that took place many decades after emancipation. It came in the form of the discriminatory implementation of the GI Bill of 1944, which denied more than a million black World War II veterans vital most of the opportunities created by the law to establish a foothold in the nation’s middle class, and beyond.

If you’ll remember, opening unprecedented economic opportunity to the men and women that risked their lives to save their country and indeed the world was the whole point of the legislation. The means chosen were low-interest mortgages and equally generous loans for buying businesses and farms, and stipends to finance higher education expenses. Given the importance of homes and other assets in amassing significant amounts of wealth, and of college and many vocational degrees in generating middle-class-and-beyond income levels, the strategy made perfect sense. And it worked like a charm for most of the white veterans who used it.

Inexcusably, however, as this account makes clear, most black World War II veterans were excluded from these programs by a combination of state-level official and informal barriers to participation. Just as important, the effects of this discrimination also hobbled the economic prospects of the descendents of these African American servicemen and women. One major piece of evidence – the decades-old yawning racial wealth gap, which results largely from the long limited home-owning opportunities available to African Americans.

And here’s where the story gets personal – for me and others whose ancestors only came to the United States in the late-19^th and early 20^th centuries. It’s absolutely true that our grandparents or parents never owned slaves, overwhelmingly had no hand in maintaining systemic American racism, and largely arrived from their homelands with little more than the clothes on their backs. It’s also true that many and even most worked like the dickens to achieve their share of the American Dream, and that many were the victims of at least informal discrimination at some point in their lives.

This history was long the principal basis for my own insistence that, if any reparations were to be paid, I sure didn’t owe any.

Getting down to my case, my father, and his peers in the ranks of my relatives and friends, also came from economically modest backgrounds and generally worked like the dickens. My own father was blessed with the most powerful mind I’ve ever encountered, and owed much of his success to this brainpower as well (as did so many others of course).

He didn’t buy his first home until 1963, and so just missed the chance for GI Bill mortgage assistance. But there’s an excellent chance that, despite his intellect and other talents, he’d have never gone to college without the financial aid provided by the legislation – which enabled him to attend full-time and not have to worry about helping to pay the family bills. Certainly, my grandparents never encouraged him to continue his education beyond high school. Without college, of course, there would have been no law school (at night, on top of working full-time), and without his law degree, my own upbringing mightn’t have been so comfortable, and my own higher education opportunities might have been very different.

Again, my father was so brilliant, and so driven, that I’m sure he would have achieved considerable professional success without the GI Bill. I’m similarly confident that the same applies to any number of his peers. But it’s entirely possible that they wouldn’t overall have achieved as much success. And on the whole nowhere near as quickly. More important, their GI Bill benefits relieved or at least partly relieved my father and millions of other white veterans of having to make the kinds of often difficult choices and accept the kinds of often family-straining tradeoffs that confronted black veterans denied these benefits.

As a result, some amount of reparations based on the economic impact of GI Bill discrimination seems justified to me, along with including GI Bill beneficiaries like me as payers.

Obviously, critical details would need to be worked out, along with the question of what other kinds of reparations should be considered and paid. But the GI Bill’s history amounts to a clear instance of the federal government, and many sub-federal governments, systematically awarding to one group of Americans benefits whose effects have lasted many generations, and just as systematically excluding another class of Americans with equally valid claims. And even though subsequent veterans aid programs have been put into effect much more admirably, this clearcut discrimination, moreover, has had lasting, damaging effects.

What could be more fair and ethical than openly acknowledging this inequity, and providing compensation to the victims? And seriously discussing other cmparaable wrongs that might be at least partly righted in this way?  

Im-Politic: Bolton’s the Champion Note-Taker with No Notes

Tags

Bolton, Bolton book, China, election 2020, Im-Politic, impeachment, John Bolton, note-taking, Trump

One of the many reasons I love the English language so much is its great number of words. In fact, no less than the United Kingdom’s august Oxford University judges that it’s “quite probable” that English is the wordiest language of all. (Full disclosure:  It’s also the only tongue in which I’m fluent.) 

And America’s chattering classes have recently provided wonderful examples of English’s “wordiness” in their descriptions of the note-taking qualities of former Trump administration national security adviser John Bolton, whose newly released White House memoir portrays the President as such an utter, and indeed impeachable, cur on foreign policy issues.

Over the last few months, we’ve been told that Bolton’s note-taking is;

>“prolific”

>“voracious”

>“fastidious”

>“religious”

>“avid”

>“meticulous”

>“legendary”  and 

>“copious”

These words aren’t all synonyms, but you get the idea. And these terms were used to buttress the narrative that Bolton’s note-taking was world-class, and that because of his diligence, (and apparently sterling integrity), President Trump had ample reason to worry about any of his allegations becoming public, because.voluminous, contemporaneous – and thus presumably indisputable – documentation would be available.

But here’s something pertinent that’s barely been reported: However painstakingly and thoroughly and carefully and comprehensively and completely and conscientiously and precisely and rigorously and exactingly and extensively and commitedly and energetically and devotedly and determinedly and faithfully and accurately (yes, I’ve used a thesaurus) Bolton took his notes, it turns out that by far the best word to describe them now is fundamentally different.

That word is “non-existent.”

Because buried in the latest Bolton coverage is this not exactly trivial tidbit: the former Trump aide’s statement that “All of the notes that I took were destroyed before I left the government.”

And they weren’t destroyed by Trump loyalists hoping to stage a cover-up. They were destroyed by Bolton himself. And the icing on the cake: Bolton attributed his decision to a common U.S. officials’ desire to make sure that “anything I said” in various government meetings wouldn’t “be in the papers the next morning.”

So as Bolton acknowledged (in the National Public Radio interview transcript linked just above) “Well, look, this, the book is my best recollection.”     

I’d be the last person to rule out with absolute certainty the possibility that Bolton’s memory is so…elephantine…that he was able to reconstruct with perfect accuracy every one of the …multitudinous…incidents and Trump outrages he describes. But assuming the best of intentions from Bolton (an assumption that seems shaky at best even leaving aside oft-voiced suspicions that the author has trashed Mr. Trump mainly for the money), that would be the only a priori basis for believing his allegations. That and the apparently widespread eagerness of the President’s critics to accept whatever claims are made about him, whether there’s the slightest shred of evidence for them or not.

Not that none of Bolton’s indictment has been confirmed – although in the case of his description as a “drug deal” the President’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate political rivals Hillary Clinton and now presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, the confirmer has been a former colleague on the National Security Council staff who harbors globalist policy prejudices as strong as his own.

But it’s also important to note that at least some of Bolton’s more sensational allegations – concerning Mr. Trump’s supposedly selfish and politically inspired curry-favoring of Chinese dictator Xi Jinping, including to the point of approving the set up of concentration camps for China’s Muslim minority Uighur population – have been explicitly denied by someone else “in the room” (to use a piece of Bolton’s book title). That was U.S. Trade Representative Robert E. Lighthizer, who’s never been accused of being a simple Trump toady even by those who disagree with this Trump-ian views on trade policy. 

Many Never Trumpers no doubt will respond to the absence of any documentation by parroting Bolton’s claim that “I’m blessed with a pretty good memory” in order to defend the book’s credibility. Much more reasonable would be to wonder (if you haven’t already) what led the President to appoint this classic Swamp creature and over-the-top neoconservative hawk in the first place.   

Im-Politic: Are Democrats Groping Toward Race Relations Straight Talk?

Tags

ABC News, African American women, African Americans, Amy Klobuchar, Democrats, election 2020, gender, George Floyd, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Leah Wright Riguer, police brutality, race relations, racism, This Week, vice president

I’m sure that Harvard University political scientist Leah Wright Riguer didn’t mean to voice her own bizarre elaboration of Joe Biden’s recent claim that “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

All the same, that’s awfully close to what she did in her appearance yesterday on ABC News‘ “This Week” news talk show as she struggled to explain why Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, didn’t really have to select an African American woman as his running mate in order to avoid charges of racism or racial insensitivity. In the process, she also inadvertantly revealed how confused – and how worrisomely confused – much Democratic (and by extension, much liberal and progressive) – thinking on race relations is. Strangely, however, they also can be seen as cause for some optimism.

Biden, you’ll recall, has promised to name a woman as his vice presidential choice, and due to the national furor over race relations and police brutality that’s followed the George Floyd killing in Minneapolis, it’s widely assumed that he now has no choice but to choose an African American woman. The case for making such a selection, as Riguer pointed out, is also reinforced by the importance of these women to the Democratic voting base.

But then Riguer, an African American ABC News Contributor, then revealingly expressed her own befuddling take on the issue. She was asked by moderator Jonathan Karl whether “Biden should choose an African-American woman as his running mate,” and whether (white) former vice presidential (and before that, presidential) candidate Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is correct in claiming that a black female running mate is “pretty much” locked in.

Here’s how Riguer answered:

“So, it’s not necessarily a lock, although I think what we have to consider is that the base of the Democratic Party is black women.

“And black women are really pushing for their agenda and for their issues and for their needs to be front and center on the ticket, but also have somebody in the White House, whether it be vice president, whether it be president, that is going to fight for these issues and make them tangible. And so what we are seeing is that a lot of black women and a lot of the broader party is actually saying, yes, this is a black woman’s time.

“But I think it’s also important to actually listen to what these people are saying. And what they’re saying is that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a black woman. It has to be somebody who listens to black women’s issues.

“So, if there are candidates out there who happen to be black, who happen to be black women, but they’re not — they don’t have our best interests in mind, then perhaps we should be looking in a different direction.”

That final point is the key here. On the one hand, it was good to see that Riguer was clearly uncomfortable with a purist Identity Politics, African-American-Woman-Or-Bust stand. Let’s hope that all Americans can agree that when selecting a running mate a presidential candidate should be thinking first and foremost about who’s best qualified to be “a heartbeat away” from the world’s most powerful and important job. (Not that Riguer necessarily made that point.)

On the other hand, she also argued that black women who don’t “listen to black women’s issues” and “don’t have our best interests in mind” should be ruled out by the Democrats.

This argument isn’t exactly the same as Biden’s stated belief that identity can’t be defined correctly unless it’s defined in a way that’s useful for certain politicians and parties. But it’s close, and raises many more questions than it answers, especially when it’s taken down from the abstract level and used as guidance for Biden today.

It’s entirely understandable, after all, for African-American women to insist that Biden not select for the ticket an African-American Republican woman, or even a non-partisan female African American conservative. But even assuming that’s what Riguer was talking about, what have ever been the odds of that kind of decision being made? Practically zero. And that’s precisely because it’s hard to identify any African-American Democratic female politician, or other figure who’s prominently associated with Democrats (Oprah Winfrey? Former Obama administration national security adviser Susan Rice?) who’s not on board with how Riguer believes African American Democratic women (and she?) define “their best interests.”

At the same time, if Riguer is serious in maintaining that it’s not black female-ness as such that should determine Biden’s vice presidential pick, then why should race play any official, or even public, role at all? Those last two qualifiers are crucial, because there’s absolutely nothing new about presidential candidates choosing running mates mainly because they checked some demographic or geographical box deemed likely to help secure victory. So let’s not suddenly start standing on our high horses and insist that seeking an African American woman actively, or that naming one, would be anything close to unprecedented or is in any way improper.

But if Riguer is right in describing African-American women (and presumably many other Democrats) as prioritizing a pro-African-American woman agenda (whose definition wasn’t specified but isn’t important for our purposes here), over racial identity per se, then it’s legitimate to ask why racial (or gender or ethnic) identity should matter at all.

In fact, nothing could have been easier for intelligent, articulate people like Riguer (and Biden – or at least his handlers nowadays) to say than something on the order of “I’d like nothing better than to see (or pick) an African-American female (or any female) as a Democratic vice presidential candidate, and believe there are plenty of great choices out there. But I also believe that designating race and gender as the overriding priority would be wrong because so many other considerations are at least as important.”

But they didn’t. And I strongly suspect that the reason is that a purist Identify Politics position actually is the dominant Democratic dogma, and that in Riguer’s case specifically yesterday, she feared being read the riot act if she deviated explicitly from that party line. So she resorted to creating fantasies about plausible African-American female Democratic vice presidential hopefuls who aren’t all-in with the views of the party’s leading black female politicians.

One hopeful possibility: As suggested above, much as “hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue,” Riguer’s logical somersaults are an implicit admission that these views don’t pass the intellectual honesty test.

Another hopeful possibility – Biden’s apology for his “you ain’t black” remark. He acknowledged that “No one should have to vote for any party, based on their race or religion or background.” But as with Riguer, if this is true, and if he really believes it, and if he includes gender in his definition of “background,” then why promise to choose any kind of female as his running mate? Doesn’t the same principle apply? Shouldn’t it?

Straight talk (and thinking) on a subject as painful and important as race relations has rarely been more important in American history. These remarks by Riguer and Biden justify some optimism that Democrats are at least groping this goal. But they also make clear how far they have to go.