Im-Politic: Free the Mercury News H1B Debate Video!

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H1B, H1B visas, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, media bias, Mercury News, Norman Matloff, Ro Khanna, Silicon Valley, technology companies, technology workers, Voice of America, wages

There’s been no shortage of controversy stirred up by the H1B visa program that brings immigrants to the United States to take jobs allegedly requiring special talents – mostly in technology companies. So when what could well have been the first public debate ever that centers on this subject is held that included a researcher on the visas (who has charged that they overwhelmingly go to foreign workers who simply lower wages for companies who want to replace more expensive Americans) and a politician who’s been strongly in favor, you’d think a major newspaper would find that pretty newsworthy.

In the case of the Mercury News, however, you’d be wrong. And much worse, it looks like the San Francisco Bay area daily is keeping a video of the event under wraps because it makes the politician – whose views closely mirror the paper’s pro-H1B editorial stance – look absolutely terrible.

Here’s the skinny on the event. Precisely because there’s no recording available, I’m relying on this account from participant Norman Matloff, a computer science professor at the University of California, Davis, a leading national authority on immigration issues and the H1B program in particular, and a strong critic of the latter. Joining Matloff on a panel convened at the newly opened offices of the Voice of America’s Silicon Valley bureau were freshman Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna and Kamran Elahian, who Matloff describes as “an immigrant tech entrepreneur.”

According to Matloff, most of the H1B exchanges took place between him and Khanna, who has been characterized in the press as “the favorite of the tech industry since he tried to first overtake incumbent Mike Honda in the 2014 election” in large part because of his defense of the domestic tech industry’s H1B practices.

As Matloff describes it, Khanna – who has also been described in the national media as a rising Democratic party star and champion of pragmatic fixes for economically besieged middle class Americans – was stunningly ignorant about recent H1B-related news developments. More troubling: Khanna sunk to thinly disguised personal (and completely unjustified) attacks on Matloff and several times seem to have flown off the handle when presented with evidence that clashed with his preconceived ideas.

I’d say “Don’t take my (or Matloff’s) word for it; see for yourself” – but I can’t. The debate was filmed by the Mercury News, but in response to a query from Matloff about whether the video would be posted, a reporter he knew at the paper told him that

“it looks like the video was essentially scrapped as a standalone report, but there’s apparently a possibility that parts of it will be used in coverage of Rep. Khanna. Not sure the reason(s) for this, but I know videos of such events are often just used in bits and pieces…”

As Matloff noted in an email to me, “Certainly it would have cost the Merc nothing to put the video on the Web, quite easily and simply.” And it’s hard to disagree with his judgment that the paper “would be performing a major public service by placing the video online (in full, of course).”

So it’s necessary to take seriously Matloff when he speculated, in that same email to me: “I can certainly see the Merc wanting to protect Rep. Khanna. They had endorsed Khanna, and generally feel their loyalty is to the tech industry. Their coverage of H-1B has been fair, but their editorial position has always been pro-H-1B.”

Matloff’s views are hardly dispositive – though I have always found him to be scrupulously honest. What could not be clearer, however, is that the Mercury News could reenforce its claims to objectivity by posting the video. With every passing day that it fails, the case for questioning its motives can only grow.

Im-Politic: Russiagate Aside, the Economy Keeps Failing Too Many Americans

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2016 election, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, Trump, weekly wages

On the off chance that the American political and chattering classes ever conclude that they might have responsibilities other than waging the Russiagate wars, some new Labor Department data might usefully remind them of the economic pressures faced by so many of their compatriots that resulted in the 2016 presidential vote producing such a stunning – and anti-establishment – upset. Because there are no signs that the situation has improved meaningfully since election day.

The figures describe trends in weekly wages in the United States county-by-county for the 344 largest American counties and how they changed between 2015 and 2016. They’re awfully revealing when viewed collectively, but they become especially illuminating when overlaid on the election results, and add to the case the fragile and/or falling living standards were major contributors to Donald Trump’s victory.

The headline wage development was that average weekly pay in the United States overall fell 1.5 percent between the fourth quarter of 2015 and the fourth quarter of 2016. As the Department put it:

“This is one of only eight declines in the history of the series, which dates back to 1978. The 1.5 percent decline in average weekly wages was the largest decline since fourth quarter, 2011, when average weekly wages decreased by 1.7 percent. The most recent decline occurred in 2016, when the U.S. average weekly wage decreased 0.6 percent over the year.”

Even worse, this drop-off isn’t adjusted for inflation. Although by conventional measures, the cost of living hasn’t been rising much lately, it’s still been rising. So in real terms, weekly wages decreased still more. And it’s hardly a stretch to suppose that this development had more than a little something to do with so many voters’ willingness to roll the dice and put a political outsider and novice in the world’s most powerful position.

The correlation between economic distress and pro-Trump votes comes through much more clearly when broken down by county. But before examining these statistics, two big context-setting points need to be made.

First, according to the Associated Press, Mr. Trump won an astonishing 2,626 out of 3,113 total U.S. counties. His Democratic Party opponent, Hillary Clinton, won only 487. So candidate Trump triumphed in more than 84 percent of counties.

Second, however, as is not the case with, say, House of Representatives districts, the size of counties varies enormously. Just one example: As of 2006, the population of Los Angeles County (won by Clinton) was larger (10.29 million) than that of 42 states. And indeed, Clinton won the popular vote precisely because she won so many of those gigantic urban counties.

Still, looking at the 20 large counties where weekly wages fell and rose by the greatest percentages from late 2015 to late 2016 shows that the former heavily went for Mr. Trump and the latter for Clinton – a pattern similar to that demonstrated by state-level growth numbers I looked at recently. (The county-by-county vote total can be found on this New York Times interactive graphic.)

The specific numbers? Seven of the ten counties where weekly wages worsened the most went for the president in 2016; only three voted for Clinton. Of the ten second worst wage performers, six were won by Mr. Trump, three opted for Clinton, and election data was unavailable for one county (Anchorage, Alaska).

But in my view, the correlation between economic performance and Trump and Clinton voting shows up most strikingly when examining the winning counties. After all, Clinton won very few counties to begin with. In fact, on a percentage basis, her results in the worst performing large counties were better than her county-by-county results overall.

This was also the case with the large counties where wages rose the fastest on a percentage basis. But what stands out to me is the difference between the share of these counties the Democratic candidate won, and the share of total counties she won.

The Democratic candidate won six of the ten large counties where wages performed best, and eleven of the 17 “next ten” performers (there were several ties). In other words, Clinton captured nearly 63 percent of these winners, versus fewer than 16 percent of total counties large and small.

These data don’t conclusively resolve the debate over whether Mr. Trump’s appeal (and Clinton’s failure) was rooted in economic distress or other issues (racism, sexism, server-gate).  We’d need data going back farther than that. But they do underscore the continuing gap between the apparent priorities of official Washington and its various satellites on the one hand, and much of the public on the other. And they raise the question of whether, in 2018 and 2020, the voters will respond by throwing the rascals in both major parties out once again.

Im-Politic: Deconstructing Obstruction of Justice

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Constitution, Dianne Feinstein, FBI, high crimes and misdemeanors, Hillary Clinton, Im-Politic, impeachment, James Comey, James Lankford, James Risch, Marco Rubio, Michael J. Flynn, obstruction of justice, removal, Russiagate, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Trump

There have been so many important economic and foreign policy stories to write about these days, and certainly RealityChek will be covering lots of them. But this of course is #ComeyDay, as they’ve said on Twitter, and I thought the most useful item I could post today would focus on one of the central questions raised by the Russiagate controversy: Has President Trump committed an impeachable offense?

Before beginning, though, it’s vital to recognize that although the Constitution provides for impeachment (and removal – they’re two separate matters) of government officials, including the president, on the grounds of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” the Framers never defined this term. Not surprisingly, legal specialists have made any number of convincing arguments for infusing these words with some specific content. But at least based on this Congressional Research Service survey, the consensus seems to be that “high crimes etc” mean anything that a majority of the House of Representatives (which impeaches) and two-thirds of the Senate (which conducts the trial, and whose guilty verdict on any specific charges, or “articles” results in removal from office) believe it means.

So legally and Constitutionally speaking, the debate on whether the president is guilty of the specific crime of obstruction of justice is beside the point. Politically speaking, though, finding this kind of actual violation of criminal law would make impeachment and removal votes much easier to justify for lawmakers when they face the electorate.

The main evidence so far in favor of an obstruction charge consists of two claims made by Comey under oath in his opening statement today to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. First, according to the former FBI Director, in a one-on-one February 14 Oval Office meeting, Mr. Trump made the following comments about the bureau’s probe of former White House national security adviser Michael J. Flynn:

“‘He is a good guy and has been through a lot.’” He repeated that Flynn hadn’t done anything wrong on his calls with the Russians, but had misled the Vice President. He then said, ‘I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.’”

Second, in phone calls with the president on March 30 and April 11, Comey said Mr. Trump referred to a “cloud” that was undermining presidency’s agenda that he wanted Comey’s help in lifting. In the first phone call, according to Comey,

“the President called me at the FBI. He described the Russia investigation as ‘a cloud’ that was impairing his ability to act on behalf of the country. He said he had nothing to do with Russia, had not been involved with hookers in Russia, and had always assumed he was being recorded when in Russia. He asked what we could do to ‘lift the cloud.’ I responded that we were investigating the matter as quickly as we could, and that there would be great benefit, if we didn’t find anything, to our having done the work well. He agreed, but then re-emphasized the problems this was causing him.”

Comey added that President Trump “finished by stressing “the cloud” that was interfering with his ability to make deals for the country and said he hoped I could find a way to get out that he wasn’t being investigated.”

In the April 11 call, Comey stated that Mr. Trump

“asked what I had done about his request that I ‘get out’ that he is not personally under investigation. I replied that I had passed his request to the Acting Deputy Attorney General, but I had not heard back. He replied that ‘the cloud’ was getting in the way of his ability to do his job. He said that perhaps he would have his people reach out to the Acting Deputy Attorney General. I said that was the way his request should be handled. I said the White House Counsel should contact the leadership of DOJ to make the request, which was the traditional channel.”

It seems clear, therefore, that the “cloud” references concerned the president’s belief that Comey should have informed the public that he personally was not being investigated by the FBI for anything. That is, it had nothing to do with the Russiagate investigation or the separate Flynn investigation. And responding to separate questions from California Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Florida Republican Marco Rubio, Comey explicitly agreed.

The question still remains, however, of whether Mr. Trump’s Flynn comments constitute obstruction. At this point, definitive answers aren’t possible. For one, the president’s personal attorney has denied Comey’s claim that any such Flynn-related statements were made at all. For another, as all the legal community seems to agree, obstruction of justice is a complicated act consisting of numerous criteria that need to be met. But what’s certainly noteworthy for the time being is what Comey himself has said about the matter – and what he hasn’t said.

It’s important to observe that Comey at one point did indeed tell the Senate panel, that although he found the Flynn remarks “very disturbing, very concerning,” he also said

“I don’t think it’s for me to say whether the conversation I had with the president was an effort to obstruct….that’s a conclusion I’m sure the special counsel will work towards to try and understand what the intention was there, and whether that’s an offense. “

Considering Comey’s willingness to expound at great length last July on Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s innocence of the charge of criminally mishandling classified information on her personal server, that sounds coy at very best.

In addition, Comey was given repeated chances to characterize the Flynn statements as obstruction. For instance, Idaho Republican James Risch asked him whether the president “directed” or “ordered” him to “let it go.” Comey responded, respectively, “Not in his words, no” and “those words were not an order.”

Comey then added that “I took it as a direction” because “this is a president of the United States with me alone saying I hope this. I took it as, this is what he wants me to do. I didn’t obey that, but that’s the way I took it.”

Also pertinent: In response to a question from Rubio, Comey said that President Trump never asked him to “let go” the Flynn investigation after the February 14 meeting. Moreover, Comey told Republican James Lankford of Oklahoma that neither any White House nor Justice Department staffers, nor the heads of any of the intelligence agencies ever mentioned to him dropping the Flynn probe.

As Lankford concluded: “The key aspect here is if this seems to be something the president is trying to get you to drop it, it seems like a light touch to drop it, to bring it up at that point, the day after he had just fired Flynn, to come back here and say, I hope we can let this go, then it never reappears again.”

Keeping in mind that other shoes could always drop, that’s an observation I hope will remain front and center as the Russiagate probes – and press coverage – drag on.

Im-Politic: Why Russiagate Could be a Never-Ending Story

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2016 election, Daniel Coats, Democrats, FBI, Im-Politic, intelligence, intelligence community, James Comey, Mark Warner, Michael S. Rogers, National Security Agency, Russiagate, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Trump

This morning’s Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings on some of the Russiagate scandal charges preoccupying Washington remind Americans once again how determined most Democrats are to continue what looks like a politically inspired, open-ended fishing expedition.

Don’t get me wrong: Russia’s interference with the 2016 presidential election (and apparently others before it) is a national security threat of the first order. Stronger official U.S. responses than we’ve gotten so far are essential. Moreover, since any Russian cooperation offered on common problems such as fighting terrorism isn’t an act of charity, and serves Russian interests, such sanctions need not upend such joint efforts.

At the same time, the intelligence community issued the public version of what it’s discovered months ago. It’s fine for Congress to conduct its own probes, but it’s unclear what Capitol Hill will find out about Moscow’s meddling that the CIA etc don’t already know.

In addition, of course it’s essential to know if President Trump or anyone connected with him or his campaign “colluded” with the Russians in this election interference, or if the chief executive and/or associates has tried to impede the executive branch probe of this subject that are underway. It’s also clear that not all the facts are in – or at least publicly divulged.

But I’m more convinced than ever that Democrats generally, for the foreseeable future, aren’t likely to take any official “No’s” for answers having just seen Virginia Senator Mark Warner query National Security Agency chief Admiral Michael S. Rogers and Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats on reports that Mr. Trump tried to persuade them, respectively, to deny the existence of any collusion, and to intervene with Trump-fired FBI chief James Comey to “back off” an aspect of the agency’s Russiagate work.

After all, as I’ve written, though the Russiagate uproar has now lasted for months. But although President Trump’s opponents in the intelligence community clearly have absolutely no compunction about leaking the most sensitive national security material to cripple his administration, they’ve produced absolutely nothing in the way of a collusion smoking gun.

Today, Warner directly asked Rogers and Coats to confirm or deny those Trump interference charges – which of course raises the question of whether from now on, taxpayer funds are going to be spent running down every anonymously sourced allegation produced by every organ of the Mainstream Media. But whether you think this is a good use of lawmakers’ time or not, bear in mind how Rogers and Coats answered: Although both refused to disclose the details of any specific conversations they’ve had with the president, both also denied ever in their careers (including this year) having been asked or pressured to do anything improper regarding an investigation in progress.

Warner’s response? (And he’s far from one of the Democratic Party’s Maxine Waters-like yahoos.) “[H]e was ‘disappointed’ with the officials’ answers. He told Rogers the committee had ‘facts’ that other individuals were aware of his conversation with Trump and that a memo had been written about it.” But did Warner then go on to reveal those “facts”? No.

On Thursday of course Comey himself will appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee. In fact, the panel has just released his opening statement. My first read – and the reaction of the Twitterverse, for what it’s worth? No smoking gun confirming obstruction of justice charges – though Comey did describe his view of a key conversation with the president as “very concerning.” No matter. Based on his performance today, I expect Mark Warner and most of the rest of his party to make sure that Russiagate remains the (manufactured) political gift that keeps on giving.

Im-Politic: Manchester and the Wages of Multiculturalism

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assimilation, Christopher Hitchens, Democratic Party, homegrown terrorists, Im-Politic, immigrants, Islam, London, Londonistan, Manchester bombing, multiculturalism, Muslims, New Labour, Saudi Arabia, Sharia, terrorism, Tony Blair, United Kingdom

The aftermath of the horrific Manchester bombing is seeing the reappearance of a familiar pattern that keeps dangerously muddling major issues. I’m talking about the tendency to emphasize that the suspect was a “homegrown” terrorist, not an immigrant or a refugee from a majority Muslim country. Therefore, this reasoning goes, responses that emphasize restricting immigration from such countries are at best misguided and at worst bigoted. The latter charge has even become a mainstay of the U.S. judicial system.

The dangers and fallacies of this analysis become clear upon reviewing the emergence of the United Kingdom as a major target of terrorist attacks from Muslim extremists and a major source of foreign fighters and other operatives in the Middle East and worldwide for Al Qaeda and ISIS. If these terrorists aren’t newcomers to the UK, you can be sure they were overwhelmingly homegrown in the country’s Muslim immigrant communities. And their numbers and destructiveness point to shocking British failures both to control the country’s borders adequately and to assimilate Muslims safely. More specifically, they reveal the perils of the British government’s determination starting in the 1980s, and especially in the 1990s, to make the establishment of an identity politics focused on Muslims a top national priority.

Spearheaded by former Prime Minister Tony Blair and his New Labour party, London dealt with the country’s Muslims as a group with official standing, represented in government councils by a national organization created to “represent mainstream Muslim opinion.” It provided safe haven for prominent jihadists wanted for terrorism by countries like Jordan and France. It permitted a network of Islamic religious law (sharia) courts to spread across the country and formally recognized some rulings involving divorce and other domestic issues. Perhaps most damaging in the long term, it offered “state funding for Muslim schools on the same basis as Christian and Jewish schools” and paid no attention to their curricula – many of which were developed by arch-fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia.

Among the results? As the British government reported after 2001 riots involving white and South Asian gangs in several northern industrial towns, these localities contained

“‘separate educational arrangements, community and voluntary bodies, employment, places of worship, language, social and cultural networks,’ producing living arrangements that ‘do not seem to touch at any point.’ As one Pakistani Briton told the report’s authors, ‘When I leave this meeting with you, I will go home and not see another white face until I come back here next week.’ Last year, Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that much of Britain was ‘sleepwalking its way toward segregation.’ And this segregation is especially entrenched among Muslims.”

In addition, “A non-Muslim child who lives in a Muslim-majority area may now find herself attending a school that requires headscarves. The idea of separate schools for separate faiths—the idea that worked so beautifully in Northern Ireland—has meant that children are encouraged to think of themselves as belonging to a distinct religious ‘community’ rather than a nation.”

In fact, by July, 2005 – in the wake of an Islamist bombing of London’s Tube that claimed 52 innocent lives – even Blair had had enough. In major speech, he warned that anyone who did not “share and support the values that sustain the British way of life,” or who incite hatred against Britain and its people, “have no place here.” But the Manchester attack, and numerous smaller predecessors over the previous twelve years, indicate that his turnabout – which by all accounts had been ambivalently implemented – came too late to slow the destructive dynamics he set in motion.

Skeptics will rightly note that the British experience is a far cry from America’s, with the U.S. Muslim community – whether immigrant or homegrown – showing many fewer signs of dangerous radicalization. At the same time, identity politics has now become such a hallmark of one of the country’s two major political parties that even many of its leaders are warning about the consequences (though mainly at the ballot box). And the late British writer Christopher Hitchens wrote of what had by that time come ruefully to be called “Londonistan” by the time of the 2005 bombing, “It‘s impossible to exaggerate how far and how fast this situation has deteriorated.”

Im-Politic: A Moral Quandary Surrounding American Morals?

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abortion, Gallup, gay marriage, Im-Politic, marijuana, moderates, morals, polling, public opinion, social conservatives, social liberals, Trump, values

This’ll be one of those posts where I confess I just don’t know what the heck is going on. But the info seems so compelling – and possibly contradictory – that it can’t be ignored.

The first half of the puzzle comes from Gallup’s new finding that a large (81 percent) of Americans judge the country’s moral values to be “only fair” or “poor,” and that 77 percent believe that this problem is getting worse. Although I know there will be many who are tempted to respond with something to the effect of “Ah, Trump,” keep in mind that these numbers haven’t changed dramatically since the company began asking such questions in 2002. (Somewhat greater shifts – for the worse – are evident since the early 1990s, when Gallup’s questions were somewhat differently worded.)

Another intriguing result: More than a third of respondents rated the state of U.S. morality as “fair” – which isn’t necessarily negative. In fact, combining the 36 percent of Americans taking this view with the (dwindling) share who view it as “excellent/good” (17 percent) sums to a majority that’s arguably pleased with the nation’s ethics. And these sub-categories (called “internals” by polling insiders) have remained broadly stable over the last decade and a half as well.

Less intriguing: Over the last year, self-identified social liberals have become much more concerned about America’s morals, with the share perceiving a worsening spurting from 58 percent to 71 percent. Social moderates became markedly more pessimistic, too, and that definitely looks like a Trump effect. So does the less dramatic drop in the share of those considering themselves as social conservatives telling Gallup that moral decay intensified during that time.

But here’s where the real mystery comes in. Another Gallup survey, taken just a few weeks ago, reported “Americans Hold Record Liberal Views on Most Moral Issues”. Give the company credit: It’s recognized the apparent paradox: “Even liberals, who seemingly should be pleased with the growing number of Americans who agree with their point of view on the morality of prominent social issues, are more likely to say things are getting worse than getting better.”

Gallup offers two possible explanations, but I don’t find them especially convincing. The first, after all, assumes (at least logically) that social liberals believe that many Americans who have swung their way on gay marriage, marijuana legalization, abortion, and the like are still insensitive (at best) toward racism and poverty. Or even have become more so. The second assumes that liberals believe that these same, increasingly tolerant Americans keep displaying “lack of respect or tolerance for others,” or are getting even coarser.

Nor am I persuaded by another possible explanation that could well be proposed by social conservatives: that although they increasingly support more liberal moral positions and views, deep down inside, liberals and moderates recognize them as dangerous and therefore perceive American morals to be declining.

So I’m left in the dark, but certain something important is taking place within the national psyche. What do all of you think?

Im-Politic: When Media Bias Turns Downright Incompetent

Tags

Al Qaeda, Alexi McCammond, Axios.com, Barack Obama, Im-Politic, Islam, King Abdullah, King Salman, Michelle Obama, protocol, Queen Elizabeth II, Saudi Arabia, terrorism, Trump

It’s only the middle of a Saturday afternoon and I’ve already changed my mind twice about what to write about. So it goes in the blog business. I confess it’s not the most important subject on the merits that I’ve read about in the last 24 hours. But it is arguably one of the most emblematic of the era of instinctively anti-Trump media coverage (I refuse to dignify it with the word “journalism”) in which we’re living.

As I’m sure you know by now, President Trump left Washington, D.C. yesterday for his first foreign trip, and the first stop has been Saudi Arabia. And almost on cue, the new-ish media site Axios.com posted an article with the sensational headline “Conservatives ignore Trump’s bow to Saudi leader.” And if you know anything about recent U.S.-Saudi diplomacy and protocol, this does indeed seem like an inexcusable example of American right-wing hypocrisy.

After all, conservatives did blast former President Obama in 2009 for bowing to the Saudi king at a meeting in London. And in my view, they were right to do so. Monarchs insist on such gestures as acknowledgments of their supremacy over all supposedly lesser mortals. Why on earth should any U.S. leader – or any American – feed this deeply un-democratic and profoundly un-American conceit? And by the way, I’d apply the same standard to the Queen of England – who, unlike any kings of Saudi Arabia (in all likelihood a major funder of Al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups), seems like a perfectly nice and in many respects admirable individual.

So indeed – what the heck was Mr. Trump doing emulating his predecessor? And why aren’t conservatives up in arms? Here’s why. As is clear from the two photos in question, Mr. Trump was just bowing slightly to enable King Salman – who is shorter – to give him a medal. Then King Abdullah was also shorter than Mr. Obama. But no act like a medal award was involved that required a lowering of the Obama noggin or a bend at the waist.

Moreover, Axios reporter Alexi McCammond overlooked a genuine opportunity to point out a Trumpian hypocrisy on this score. The president’s wife and daughter, who accompanied him on the trip, and wore no headscarves – something that’s ordinarily a major no-no in Saudi Arabia’s arch-conservative Islamic theocracy. Lately, the Saudis have been making exceptions for visiting foreign dignitaries – hence the bareheaded Trump women. But private citizen Trump didn’t seem to know this in 2015, when he slammed then First Lady Michelle Obama for going headscarf-less on a visit to the Kingdom.

So not only are we living through an era of almost pervasively biased and double standard-ridden “journalism” and social media commentary (coming from all sides, as shown by the Trump comment above). Even by their own debased norms, we’re living through an era of thoroughly incompetent “journalism”:and social media commentary.

Im-Politic: New Evidence that “Hamilton” is (Embarrassingly) Fake History

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"Hamilton", Alexander Hamilton, diversity, Forbes, Founding Fathers, history, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, liberals, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Mike Pence, Ralph Benko, Trump

American elites’ views on immigration issues are just the gift that keeps on giving if you suspect that way too …

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Im-Politic: The Polls Say “Let Trump Be [Campaign-Version] Trump”

Tags

2016 election, ABC News, budget, conservatism, discretionary spending, entitlements, Freedom Caucus, healthcare, Im-Politic, Immigration, independents, NBC News, Paul Ryan, polls, poverty, Republicans, The Wall Street Journal, Trade, Trump, Washington Post

They’re only polls and we all should remember how badly most polls blew their calls in the last presidential election. But two new surveys from the Washington Post and ABC News on the one hand, and the Wall Street Journal and NBC News on the other, are signaling to me anyway that Donald Trump has made a major mistake so far in his young presidency in tilting so markedly toward the keepers of the orthodoxy (especially the most doctrinaire versions) in his own party. Instead, he should have been focusing all along on developing a promising new American political center of gravity that he started defining (in his own imitable way) during his campaign.

As widely observed during the 2016 elections, Mr. Trump was anything but a conventional conservative – at least as the term has been understood for the last quarter century. Yes, he made frequent nods toward cutting taxes and regulations, as well as to balancing budgets (objectives that of course aren’t always consistent). He also expressed some support for social conservative positions like further restricting abortion and appointing “strict constructionists” to the Supreme Court. But as also widely observed, if that mix of views was what voters in the Republican primaries and general elections really wanted, they would have voted for an orthodox conservative.

Instead, Mr. Trump trounced his opponents even though he at least as often promised to protect massive federal entitlement programs heavily relied on by the middle class and senior citizens; to guarantee adequate healthcare for non-seniors who can’t afford it; to preserve government support for Planned Parenthood’s provision of non-abortion-related women’s health services; to uphold the rights of gay, lesbian, and transgender Americans; and of course to ignore free market dictates when they seemed to undermine public safety and prosperity by fostering unrestricted trade and immigration.

Undoubtedly, much of candidate Trump’s appeal also sprang from simple, nonpartisan voter anger at the failures and self-serving priorities of the bipartisan national political establishment. But Mr. Trump did the best job of all last year’s presidential hopefuls of identifying the combination of specific grievances that created this anger: notably, over those jobs and incomes lost to Americans Last trade and immigration policies, over those related dangers posed by terrorism and leaky borders, and over the astronomical costs and risks of fighting seemingly futile foreign wars and defending free-riding allies.

The president’s Inaugural Address – which declared his intention to fix these problems with America- and Americans’- First policies – unabashedly proclaimed that President Trump would govern like candidate Trump.

Yet although the president has by and large kept his immigration promises, and approved some (limited) measures to combat foreign trade predation, his domestic policy proposals look like they’re right out of the Chamber of Commerce and Moral Majority playbooks. Nowhere has this development been more obvious than in his endorsement of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s healthcare plan, and in his release of a budget outline that, outside of defense spending, libertarians should be swooning over.

Late last month, I ventured that the president’s support for the “Ryan Care” proposal was a head fake: He had knowingly backed a measure so draconian that he knew it would fail, in order to establish some orthodox conservative street cred with Congressional Republicans and thus enlist their support for the pivot to greater moderation he had planned all along. Something like this scenario could still unfold; according to press reports, even the hard-core anti-government House Freedom Caucus members are growing more amenable to a compromise proposal that would preserve many of the more popular provisions of President Obama’s healthcare reforms.

But Mr. Trump’s continuing insistence on a federal spending blueprint that either eliminates or greatly slashes funding for medical and other scientific research, Chesapeake Bay cleanup, and food and heating aid for the poor, is not only plain bizarre, especially since the dollars involved are trivially small. It’s also politically inexplicable, because there’s absolutely no evidence that these are viewed as priority savings among any important Trump constituencies.

And that’s where the new polls come in. As per the headline results, Mr. Trump’s popularity at this point in his presidency is much lower than the ratings of most of his predecessors early in their first terms. In fairness, the Post-ABC survey also shows that the president would beat his chief 2016 rival, Hillary Clinton, in the popular vote if a new election was held – showing that he’s even more popular versus the Democratic nominee than on election day.

But the both polls showed the president’s support tightly concentrated among his own core voters and Republicans generally. Even accepting the claim that rapid partisanship by Democratic party leaders is proving effective in limiting Mr. Trump’s appeal to their rank and file, it’s still a sign of trouble for the president that his ratings among self-described political independents is markedly on the wane according to the Journal-NBC findings (falling to 30 percent) and low (38 percent) according to the Post-ABC survey.

One main reason: The Washington Republicans President Trump is apparently still courting are even less popular than he is. The Journal-NBC poll reports that many more Americans are dissatisfied with the Republican-led Congress nowadays than in February, and Ryan’s approval ratings are even lower. Moreover, the Republican-led Congress and the Speaker, in turn, are less popular than the president even among voters identifying as Republicans.

None of these results necessarily bodes ill for the Freedom Caucus. Its members don’t care for Ryan, either – allegedly for being too moderate. But many of the latest measures of Americans’ views of major policy issues do. For example, the Journal-NBC poll found that, since February, the share of respondents agreeing that “Government should do more to solve problems and help meet people’s needs” shot up to 57 percent. Even more independents (59 percent) endorsed this position. The share of total respondents believing that “Government is doing too many things better left to businesses and individuals plummeted to 39 percent.

More pointedly, the Post-ABC poll showed Americans opposing the Trump budget proposals by 50 percent to 37 percent overall, and independents disapproving by an even wider 52 percent to 35 percent margin.

The Journal-NBC survey also found record shares of Americans viewing “free trade” and “immigration” positively – at 57 percent and 60 percent, respectively. But the abstract nature of these questions could well have tilted these answers. One reason for supposing so: The Post-ABC poll reporting that, by a strong 73 percent to 22 percent, Americans favor “Trump pressuring companies to keep jobs in the United States.” Among independents, the results are an even better 75 percent to 19 percent.

So the recipe for Trump political success seems pretty clear: Dump the Freedom Caucus under the Trump Train on the budget and healthcare; preserve (and even boost to some extent) discretionary spending programs that strengthen the economy’s foundations and provide for the needy; keep the campaign promises on entitlements so highly prized by the middle class; and take bolder measures to Buy American and Hire American (as one new set of trade-related Trump jobs programs is called).

Keeping the focus on these priorities, along with a well thought out infrastructure program, should attract and keep enough backing among Republicans and independents to offset any losses in Freedom Caucus ranks, both in Congress and at the grassroots level (where they seem modest in number). Adding new policies to combat predatory foreign trade practices, moreover, should please organized labor enough to bring into the fold many union members and leaders plus the Congressional Democrats they strongly influence. An extra bonus – this program could well give President Trump the political leeway he needs to stay his course on immigration (which of course has seen a softening of his views on the so-called Dreamers).

Often in American history, calls to “Let [name your favorite politician] be [name that same politician]” have reflected core supporters’ naive beliefs that campaign promises can easily be turned into policy by the office-seekers they elect. But as is so often the case with the current president, Letting Trump be Trump, could confound the political conventional wisdom.

Im-Politic: Just What We Need: Another Species of Think Tank

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Brookings Institution, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Daniel Drezner, donors, idea laundering, Im-Politic, John J. Judis, The Pradox of American Democracy, think tanks, Washington Post

I don’t think much of the writings of Washington Post blogger and Tufts University political scientist Daniel Drezner – mainly because he thinks he and other supposed establishment-worshiping experts are God’s gift to humanity and that populist voters and politicians are just too dumb to be grateful. And he doesn’t seem to think much of mine, either. Nonetheless, Drezner performed a genuine public service in the Post on Sunday and deserves considerable credit: He spotlighted a major trend that’s been shaping the national policy community and thoughtfully explained many of the pluses and minuses.

In an article for the paper’s Outlook section, Drezner described how for-profit consultancies – many run out of major global banks and other finance institutions – are starting to move onto the policy analysis and advice-giving turf once dominated by non-profit institutions known as think tanks. And given the prominent role played by think tanks – including Mainstream Media’s widespread and overly credulous use of their staff as policy experts – this is definitely a big deal.

As I’ve repeatedly written, although they turn out a great volume of worthwhile work, as I see it, think tanks’ role on net has been corrupting. The reason: Their main mission has become what I call “idea laundering.” But let’s begin at the beginning.

When they first emerged, many think tanks benefited from endowments created by deceased founders. As a result, their staffs had a legitimate (though not indisputable) claim to be dispassionate, academicky specialists whose only aim was promoting the public interest, and who were determined to seek the truth regardless of how political parties or special interests were affected. The Brookings Institution and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (where I once worked) were prime examples.

More recently, however, growing numbers of think tanks have been established that have depended on ongoing fund-raising, and that, as a result, haven’t enjoyed the financial independence of that previous generation. Further, those less well heeled institutes whose donors had been relatively hands-off often found that their funders were becoming much more hands-on. In fact, the donors’ increasing interest in finding new opportunities to influence politicians and bureaucrats beyond traditional lobbying also convinced a new breed of outright policy entrepreneurs to create new think tanks that all-but-explicitly sought to promote particular ideologies or approaches to policy – and sometimes a specific measure or group of measures.

And as these think-tanks-for-hire sprang up, their more established, less political counterparts seemed to start worrying more and more about their endowments and preserving them, and started to pressure their staffers to become increasingly responsible for funding themselves. (For the definitive history of this entire depressing degeneration, and especially the appearance of “advocacy tanks,” see John J. Judis’ excellent The Paradox of American Democracy.)

The bottom line has been that proliferation of that “idea laundering” I referred to. The nation’s capital in particular is now filled with organizations whose overriding purpose is disguising arguments and material aimed at advancing donors’ agendas in the garb of objective scholarship. That’s why so many of these organizations give themselves names intended to conjure up images of ivory towers (“institution,” “institute,” “foundation,” “studies”). And that’s why they call so many of their specialists “scholars” and “fellows.”

So in one strange way, the rise of for-profit policy research and advising organizations should be healthy for our democracy. For unless they give themselves deceptive names (and Drezner’s piece shows that some have – e.g., “The Legatum Institute”), they’ll be less capable of pulling off the idea-laundering scam. At least if consumers of their output are reasonably vigilant.

Nevertheless, as Drezner points out, the for-profit tanks suffer their own transparency problems. In addition to conscious biases (mainly, shilling for clients whose identities aren’t disclosed), for example, they can bring to their work unwitting biases that aren’t easy to detect, either (e.g., neglecting parts of the world of little interest to big business).

So if you think it’s already been tough enough distinguishing truth from spin and outright falsehoods, make doubly sure your baloney meters are in top form. The advent of for-policy research and analysis organizations means that, going forward, you could need them more than ever.