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Making News: New Article on Why I Voted for Trump

01 Sunday Nov 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, censorship, China, Conservative Populism, conservatives, Democrats, economic nationalism, election 2020, entertainment, environment, freedom of expression, freedom of speech, George Floyd, Hollywood, Hunter Biden, Immigration, industrial policy, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, journalism, Mainstream Media, Making News, Marco Rubio, police killings, regulation, Republicans, Robert Reich, Russia-Gate, sanctions, Silicon Valley, social media, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, technology, The National Interest, Trade, trade war, Trump, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ukraine, Wall Street, wokeness

I’m pleased to announce that The National Interest journal has just published a modified version of my recent RealityChek post explaining my support for President Trump’s reelection. Here’s the link.

The main differences? The new item is somewhat shorter, it abandons the first-person voice and, perhaps most important, adds some points to the conclusion.

Of course, keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Im-Politic: Why I Voted for Trump

28 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, censorship, China, Conservative Populism, conservatives, Democrats, economic nationalism, election 2020, entertainment, environment, free expression, freedom of speech, George Floyd, Hollywood, Hunter Biden, Immigration, impeachment, industrial policy, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, journalism, Mainstream Media, Marco Rubio, police killings, Populism, progressives, regulations, Republicans, Robert Reich, Russia-Gate, sanctions, Silicon Valley, social media, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, technology, Trade, trade war, Trump, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ukraine Scandal, Wall Street, wokeness

Given what 2020 has been like for most of the world (although I personally have little cause for complaint), and especially Washington Post coverage of endless early voting lines throughout the Maryland surburbs of the District of Columbia, I was expecting to wait for hours in bad weather to cast my ballot for President Trump. Still, I was certain that Election Day circumstances would be a complete mess, so hitting the polling place this week seemed the least bad option.

Hence my amazement that the worst case didn’t pan out – and that in fact, I was able to kill two birds with one stone. My plan was to check out the situation, including parking, at the University of Maryland site closest to my home on my way to the supermarket. But the scene was so quiet that I seized the day, masked up, and was able to feed my paper ballot into the recording machine within about ten minutes.

My Trump vote won’t be surprising to any RealityChek regulars or others who have been in touch with on or off social media in recent years. Still, it seems appropriate to explain why, especially since I haven’t yet spelled out some of the most important reasons.

Of course, the President’s positions on trade (including a China challenge that extends to technology and national security) and immigration have loomed large in my thinking, as has Mr. Trump’s America First-oriented (however unevenly) approach to foreign policy. (For newbies, see all the posts here under “[What’s Left of] Our Economy,” and “Our So-Called Foreign Policy,” and various freelance articles that are easily found on-line.). The Biden nomination has only strengthened my convictions on all these fronts, and not solely or mainly because of charges that the former Vice President has been on Beijing’s payroll, via his family, for years.

As I’ve reported, for decades he’s been a strong supporter of bipartisan policies that have greatly enriched and therefore strengthened this increasingly aggressive thug-ocracy. It’s true that he’s proposed to bring back stateside supply chains for critical products, like healthcare and defense-related goods, and has danced around the issue of lifting the Trump tariffs. But the Silicon Valley and Wall Street tycoons who have opened their wallets so wide for him are staunchly opposed to anything remotely resembling a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies and especially technology bases

Therefore, I can easily imagine Biden soon starting to ease up on sanctions against Chinese tech companies – largely in response to tech industry executives who are happy to clamor for subsidies to bolster national competitiveness, but who fear losing markets and the huge sunk costs of their investments in China. I can just as easily imagine a Biden administration freeing up bilateral trade again for numerous reasons: in exchange for an empty promise by Beijing to get serious about fighting climate change; for a deal that would help keep progressive Democrats in line; or for an equally empty pledge to dial back its aggression in East Asia; or as an incentive to China to launch a new round of comprehensive negotiations aimed at reductions or elimination of Chinese trade barriers that can’t possibly be adequately verified. And a major reversion to dangerous pre-Trump China-coddling can by no means be ruled out.

Today, however, I’d like to focus on three subjects I haven’t dealt with as much that have reinforced my political choice.

First, and related to my views on trade and immigration, it’s occurred to me for several years now that between the Trump measures in these fields, and his tax and regulatory cuts, that the President has hit upon a combination of policies that could both ensure improved national economic and technological competitiveness, and build the bipartisan political support needed to achieve these goals.

No one has been more surprised than me about this possibility – which may be why I’ve-hesitated to write about it. For years before the Trump Era, I viewed more realistic trade policies in particular as the key to ensuring that U.S.-based businesses – and manufacturers in particular – could contribute the needed growth and jobs to the economy overall even under stringent (but necessary) regulatory regimes for the environment, workplace safety, and the like by removing the need for these companies to compete with imports from countries that ignored all these concerns (including imports coming from U.S.-owned factories in cheap labor pollution havens like China and Mexico).

I still think that this approach would work. Moreover, it contains lots for folks on the Left to like. But the Trump administration has chosen a different economic policy mix – high tariffs, tax and regulatory relief for business, and immigration restrictions that have tightened the labor market. And the strength of the pre-CCP Virus economy – including low unemployment and wage growth for lower-income workers and minorities – attests to its success.

A Trump victory, as I see it, would result in a continuation of this approach. Even better, the President’s renewed political strength, buoyed by support from more economically forward-looking Republicans and conservatives like Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, could bring needed additions to this approach – notably, more family-friendly tax and regulatory policies (including childcare expense breaks and more generous mandatory family leave), and more ambitious industrial policies that would work in tandem with tariffs and sanctions to beat back the China technology and national security threat.

Moreover, a big obstacle to this type of right-of-center (or centrist) conservative populism and economic nationalism would be removed – the President’s need throughout the last four years to support the stances of the conventional conservatives that are still numerous in Congress in order to ensure their support against impeachment efforts.

My second generally undisclosed (here) reason for voting Trump has to do with Democrats and other Trump opponents (although I’ve made this point repeatedly on Facebook to Never Trumper friends and others). Since Mr. Trump first announced his candidacy for the White House back in 2015, I’ve argued that Americans seeking to defeat him for whatever reason needed to come up with viable responses to the economic and social grievances that gave him a platform and a huge political base. Once he won the presidency, it became even more important for his adversaries to learn the right lessons.

Nothing could be clearer, however, than their refusal to get with a fundamentally new substantive program with nationally unifying appeal. As just indicated, conventional Republicans and conservatives capitalized on their role in impeachment politics to push their longstanding but ever more obsolete (given the President’s overwhelming popularity among Republican voters) quasi-libertarian agenda, at least on domestic policy.

As for Democrats and liberals, in conjunction with the outgoing Obama administration, the countless haters in the intelligence community and elsewhere in the permanent bureaucracy, and the establishment conservatives Mr. Trump needed to staff much of his administration, they concentrated on ousting an elected President they considered illegitimate, and wasted more than three precious years of the nation’s time. And when they weren’t pushing a series of charges that deserve the titles “Russia Hoax” and “Ukraine Hoax,” the Democrats and liberals were embracing ever more extreme Left stances as scornful of working class priorities as their defeated 2016 candidate’s description of many Trump voters as “deplorables.”

I see no reason to expect any of these factions to change if they defeat the President this time around. And this forecast leads me to my third and perhaps most important reason for voting Trump. As has been painfully obvious especially since George Floyd’s unacceptable death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, the type of arrogance, sanctimony and – more crucially – intolerance that has come to permeate Democratic, liberal, and progressive ranks has now spread widely into Wall Street and the Big Business Sector.

To all Americans genuinely devoted to representative and accountable government, and to the individual liberties and vigorous competition of ideas and that’s their fundamental foundation, the results have been (or should be) nothing less than terrifying. Along with higher education, the Mainstream Media, Big Tech, and the entertainment and sports industries, the nation’s corporate establishment now lines up squarely behind the idea that pushing particular political, economic, social, and cultural ideas and suppressing others has become so paramount that schooling should turn into propaganda, that news reporting should abandon even the goal of objectivity, that companies should enforce party lines in the workplace and agitate for them in advertising and sponsorship practices, and that free expression itself needed a major rethink.

And oh yes: Bring on a government-run “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to investigate – and maybe prosecute – crimes and other instances of “wrongdoing” by the President, by (any?) officials in his administration. For good measure, add every “politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled” the Trump “catastrophe,” as former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich has demanded. Along with a Scarlet Letter, or worse, for everyone who’s expressed any contrary opinion in the conventional or new media? Or in conversation with vigilant friends or family?

That Truth Commission idea is still pretty fringe-y. So far. But not too long ago, many of the developments described above were, too. And my chief worry is that if Mr. Trump loses, there will be no major national institution with any inclination or power to resist this authoritarian tide.

It’s reasonable to suppose that more traditional beliefs about free expression are so deeply ingrained in the national character that eventually they’ll reassert themselves. Pure self-interest will probably help, too. In this vein, it was interesting to note that Walmart, which has not only proclaimed its belief that “Black Lives Matter,” but promised to spend $100 million on a “center for racial equality” just saw one of its Philadelphia stores ransacked by looters during the unrest that has followed a controversial police shooting.

But at best, tremendous damage can be done between now and “eventually.” At worst, the active backing of or acquiescence in this Woke agenda by America’s wealthiest, most influential forces for any significant timespan could produce lasting harm to the nation’s life.

As I’ve often said, if you asked me in 2015, “Of all the 300-plus million Americans, who would you like to become President?” my first answer wouldn’t have been “Donald J. Trump.” But no other national politician at that point displayed the gut-level awareness that nothing less than policy disruption was needed on many fronts, combined with the willingness to enter the arena and the ability to inspire mass support.

Nowadays, and possibly more important, he’s the only national leader willing and able to generate the kind of countervailing force needed not only to push back against Woke-ism, but to provide some semblance of the political pluralism – indeed, diversity – required by representative, accountable government. And so although much about the President’s personality led me to mentally held my nose at the polling place, I darkened the little circle next to his name on the ballot with no hesitation. And the case for Mr. Trump I just made of course means that I hope many of you either have done or will do the same.

Im-Politic: VP Debate Questions That Should be Asked

07 Wednesday Oct 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

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Tags

1619 Project, African Americans, Barack Obama, Biden, budget deficits, CCP Virus, censorship, China, Confederate monuments, Constitution, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, election 2020, Electoral College, filibuster, Founding Fathers, free speech, healthcare, history, history wars, Im-Politic, inequality, investment, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, national security, Obamacare, police killings, propaganda, protests, racism, riots, semiconductors, slavery, spending, Supreme Court, systemic racism, Taiwan, tariffs, tax cuts, taxes, Trade, trade war, Trump, Vice Presidential debate, Wuhan virus

Since I don’t want to set a record for longest RealityChek post ever, I’ll do my best to limit this list of questions I’d like to see asked at tonight’s Vice Presidential debate to some subjects that I believe deserve the very highest priority, and/or that have been thoroughly neglected so far during this campaign.

>For Vice President Mike Pence: If for whatever reason, President Trump couldn’t keep the CCP Virus under control within his own White House, why should Americans have any faith that any of his policies will bring it under control in the nation as a whole?

>For Democratic candidate Senator Kamala Harris: What exactly should be the near-term goal of U.S. virus policy? Eliminate it almost completely (as was done with polio)? Stop its spread? Slow its spread? Reduce deaths? Reduce hospitalizations? And for goals short of complete elimination, define “slow” and “reduce” in terms of numerical targets.

>For Pence: Given that the administration’s tax cuts and spending levels were greatly ballooning the federal budget deficit even before the virus struck, isn’t it ridiculous for Congressional Republicans to insist that total spending in the stimulus package remain below certain levels?

For Harris: Last month, the bipartisan Congressional Problem Solvers Caucus unveiled a compromise stimulus framework. President Trump has spoken favorably about it, while stopping short of a full endorsement. Does Vice President Biden endorse it? If so, has he asked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to sign on? If he doesn’t endorse it, why not?

For Pence: The nation is in the middle of a major pandemic. Whatever faults the administration sees in Obamacare, is this really the time to be asking the Supreme Court to rule it un-Constitutional, and throw the entire national health care system into mass confusion?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration offer free taxpayer-financed healthcare to illegal aliens? Wouldn’t this move strongly encourage unmanageable numbers of migrants to swamp U.S. borders?

For Pence: President Trump has imposed tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese exports headed to U.S. markets. But U.S. investors – including government workers’ pension funds – still keep sending equally large sums into Chinese government coffers. When is the Trump administration finally going to plug this enormous hole?

For Harris: Will a Biden administration lift or reduce any of the Trump China or metals tariffs. Will it do so unconditionally? If not, what will it be seeking in return?

For both: Taiwan now manufactures the world’s most advanced semiconductors, and seems sure to maintain the lead for the foreseeable future. Does the United States now need to promise to protect Taiwan militarily in order to keep this vital defense and economic knowhow out of China’s hands?

For Pence: Since the administration has complained so loudly about activist judges over-ruling elected legislators and making laws themselves, will Mr. Trump support checking this power by proposing term limits or mandatory retirement ages for Supreme Court Justices? If not, why not?

For Harris: Don’t voters deserve to know the Biden Supreme Court-packing position before Election Day? Ditto for his position on abolishing the filibuster in the Senate.

>For Pence: The Electoral College seems to violate the maxim that each votes should count equally. Does the Trump administration favor reform? If not, why not?

>For Harris: Many Democrats argue that the Electoral College gives lightly populated, conservative and Republican-leaning states outsized political power. But why, then, was Barack Obama able to win the White House not once but twice?

>For Pence: Charges that America’s police are killing unarmed African Americans at the drop of a hat are clearly wild exaggerations. But don’t you agree that police stop African-American pedestrians and drivers much more often than whites without probable cause – a problem that has victimized even South Carolina Republican Senator Tim Scott?

For Harris: Will Biden insist that mayors and governors in cities and states like Oregon and Washington, which have been victimized by chronic antifa violence, investigate, arrest and prosecute its members and leaders immediately? And if they don’t, will he either withhold federal law enforcement aid, or launch such investigations at the federal level?

For Pence: Why should any public places in America honor Confederate figures – who were traitors to the United States? Can’t we easily avoid the “erasing history” danger by putting these monuments in museums with appropriate background material?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration support even peacefully removing from public places statues and monuments to historic figures like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson because their backgrounds included slave-holding?

For both: Shouldn’t voters know much more about the Durham Justice Department investigation of official surveillance of the Trump campaign in 2015 and 2016 before Election Day?

For both: Should the Big Tech companies be broken up on antitrust grounds?

For both: Should internet and social media platforms be permitted to censor any form of Constitutionally permitted speech?

For Pence: Doesn’t the current system of using property taxes to fund most primary and secondary public education guarantee that low-income school children will lack adequate resources?

For Harris: Aren’t such low-income students often held back educationally by non-economic factors like generations of broken families and counter-productive student behavior, as well as by inadequate school funding – as leading figures like Jesse Jackson (at least for one period) and former President Obama have claimed?

For Pence: What’s the difference between the kind of “patriotic education” the President says he supports and official propaganda?

For Harris: Would a Biden administration oppose local school districts using propagandistic material like The New York Times‘ U.S. history-focused 1619 Project for their curricula? Should federal aid to districts that keep using such materials be cut off or reduced?

Now it’s your turn, RealityChek readers! What questions would you add? And which of mine would you deep six?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why Microsoft Can’t Be Trusted to Run TikTok

10 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

censorship, China, Microsoft, national security, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, privacy, social media, tech, TikTok

When I read that President Trump’s recent decision to ban TikTok from the U.S. market gave the popular Chinese social media app’s services one chance to survive intact – a purchase of its U.S. business by an American-owned company (most likely, it seems, Microsoft) – my “Uh oh” antennae started buzzing. I knew that there’s no reason for confidence that a U.S.-owned tech multinational would adequately safeguard American national security and individual privacy interests versus the kinds of threats that have already been posed by TikTok’s obligations to an increasingly hostile Chinese government, much less uphold values in the freedom of expression family.

I knew this because research for a 2013 article I published on Bloomberg.com revealed that Microsoft was one of the many big U.S. tech companies whose drive for access to China’s potentially huge customer base involved extensive activities aimed at strengthening the technological prowess that has helped make the People’s Republic such a danger to America as well as the world at large.

As I wrote – based on the companies’ own financial reports – these efforts have included the establishment of state-of-the-art factories and laboratories, along with training programs that have taught literally hundreds of thousands of Chinese students state-of-the-art tech skills not only at facilities run by these businesses, but through partnerships with Chinese universities.

Worse, as made clear by a Financial Times report last week Microsoft, whose operations in China “have included collaborations with researchers at China’s military-controlled National University of Defense Technology,” has done nothing important since this piece came out to scale back such cooperation with China’s dictatorial regime.

For example, in 2015, Chinese leader Xi Jinping “visited Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington, where he praised the company for “driving forward the development of China’s ICT [information and communications technology] industry”. Moreover, last month, “Microsoft was the sole US company invited to a televised entrepreneurs’ summit with Mr Xi.”

Perhaps most troubling, the Financial Times reported that “The company’s management of its research staff is very light.” According to a former executive at Microsoft China, limiting research collaborations is “a really tough question — research is a very liberal environment in itself. People might question [research collaborations] but from the point of view of our researchers, they want to work with the best partners they can find in their field.”

And what did Microsoft get for itself and its shareholders for all this assistance? Almost nothing. Even though its Windows operating system enjoys an estimated 90 percent market share, piracy of its products is so widespread that China accounts for less than two percent of its global revenues, according to its president. So I’m glad I don’t have to make the case that Microsoft can be relied on vigilantly to resist Beijing’s pressures to remain privy to important U.S. data – by hook or by crook.

Indeed, another recent Financial Times article claimed that Microsoft is mulling a takeover agreement that would give it “one year to separate TikTok from its Chinese parent and address US government concerns over the security of the data generated by the app.” Yet even if Microsoft’s U.S.-based executives do their darnest to shut the Chinese government out, that could leave plenty of time for TikTok’s Chinese employees to work with the regime to create new or keep open existing backdoors to Beijing.  Alternatively, once the deal is done, Microsoft might simply manage ongoing cybersecurity issues as “lightly” as the U.S. parent has managed its research team-ups with China’s regime.

Moreover, requiring Microsoft to conclude the separation much sooner would still leave the company – which would still be anxious for more China business – free to  wind up emulating TikTok’s practice of taking down content deemed offensive by China. Such subjects include praise for the Tiananmen Square protests of 1990, or the Tibetan independence movement. And Microsoft certainly wouldn’t be the first U.S. tech company to regulate speech with political aims in mind.

For all I know, effective safeguards against all these contingencies might be developed. But at very best, preventing China from continuing to exploit TikTok – and other tech products and services it’s currently offering to U.S. customers or could offer – will be a never-ending struggle. Best to remove as many uncertainties as possible, and make defense as easy as possible, by simply kicking TikTok and other Chinese products like it out, and keeping them out.   

Making News: Breitbart Radio Interview on Twitter Suspension Now On-Line!

21 Thursday Nov 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Breitbart News Tonight, censorship, free expression, free speech, freedom of speech, Making News, social media, Twitter

I’m pleased to announce that a podcast is now on-line of a short-notice interview last night with me on “Breitbart News Tonight.”  The subjects:  my brief but strange and kind of fishy recent suspension by Twitter, along with the issue of the free speech and censorship policies of such influential social media platforms.

To access this lively conversation with co-hosts Rebecca Mansour and Lee Smith, click on this link, and scroll down till you see my name on a November 21 entry.  (For some reason, the podcasts aren’t listed chronologically.)

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of new media appearances and other events.

Following Up: Back on Twitter – & its Troubling Explanation

20 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Following Up

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

censorship, Following Up, free speech, freedom of speech, hashtags, social media, Twitter

As I posted yesterday, I was suspended on Twitter late in the morning even though I couldn’t imagine having violated any of the platform’s rules – or at least the best known ones, which seek to bar bullying and hate speech and other such noxious practices. (Not that I’m saying I agree with this Twitter policy, largely because of related free speech and definitional concerns, but that’s a separate issue.)

Late in the afternoon, I was pleased to learn that I had been reinstated. I was also pleased that Twitter responded in detail to my request for an explanation for its decision – though I must confess to being puzzled by its rationale, and by its belief (or by the parameters used by the algorithms that apparently make most of these calls) responsible for the suspension.

According to Twitter, I had been:

>”using a trending or popular hashtag with an intent to subvert or manipulate a conversation or to drive traffic or attention to accounts, websites, products, services, or initiatives”; and

>”tweeting with excessive, unrelated hashtags in a single Tweet or across multiple tweets.”

For those of you unfamiliar with the hashtag thing, it involves putting the symbol that looks like a tic-tac-toe puzzle in front of a term in order to capitalize on that term’s popularity in Twitter-verse in order to call attention to a Tweet. So for example, in Tweets I send out naming the President, I  use #Trump. In Tweets I send out about the monthly U.S. jobs reports, I use #jobs. And typically, since individual Tweets usually included several such terms, these Tweets would include multiple hashtags. (E.g., #jobs and #economy.)

Since one of my main purposes in Tweeting is reaching the largest possible audience with my material, I thought the practice completely natural. And P.S. – I’m far from the only Tweeter who uses it (although I have acquired something of a reputation for using them frequently).

As a result, I’m completely mystified by the claim that I’ve used hashtags “excessively.” And I’m totally baffled at also being accused of using “unrelated hashtags” – since all those I included would be bearing on the Tweet’s main subject.

Have I been using “trending or popular hashtags” to “subvert or manipulate a conversation”? What on earth does that mean? And as for “driving traffic to accounts”? Of course, as mentioned above, I’ve been hoping to attract attention to my own. But that’s the whole point of using hashtags – and of Twitter offering the feature in the first place!

Finally, the only “website, product, service, or initiative” I’ve ever used hashtags, excessively or not, to promote have been RealityChek, outside freelance articles and media appearances of mine, and work by others (including articles and posts and other material) that I believe merit attention. If that’s my crime, I’m guilty as charged. But what could possibly be wrong with any of the above objectives?

Of course I’m glad that all worked out for the best, and that Twitter evidently judged my transgressions mild enough to warrant quick reinstatement. But contrary to my speculation yesterday, it wasn’t an entirely innocent mistake, or accident on the platform’s part. And it should be clear that if Twitter’s stated rules and parameters caught me, they’re way to broad and vague, and need serious rethinking.

House-Keeping: I Just Got Suspended by Twitter??!?!!?

19 Tuesday Nov 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Im-Politic

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

censorship, free expression, free speech, Im-Politic, social media, Twitter

Many of you who know me either in person or through my writings know that I adore Twitter.  I’ve repeatedly stated that by light years it’s the most effective medium I’ve ever used from the standpoint of reaching individuals and organizations I very much want to reach.  It’s also great for challenging users to express themselves pithily.

So imagine my surprise early this afternoon to have found out that my Twitter account has been “suspended”!

This action could be a simple mistake.  (After all, like all the major social media platforms, Twitter deals with huge numbers of users.)  But the timing (the day of some major Trump impeachment hearings) does look a little fishy.

Of course, one of the more frustrating aspects of this incident is that there’s no way for me to find out Twitter’s reasoning yet – assuming I was suspended “for cause.”  Nor is it possible for me to identify any accusers, either who work for Twitter or not.  And I may never find out.  It’s also noteworthy that the suspension wasn’t preceded by a warning of any kind.  One minute, I was a tweeter in good standing, and the next, sentenced as a bad actor and silenced.

The platform does permit users to appeal suspensions, and the process includes an opportunity for me to plead my case.  (I’ve done both.)  But apparently it’s up to me to prove my innocence – not the other way around, as is the case with virtually the entire American legal system (the IRS appeals process being a notable exception).

Thanks to the telephone and email, I’ve been able to spread the word to some friends, colleagues, and other contacts, who have begun to question the decision on Twitter and via other media.  If anyone reading this would like to do the same, I’d be very grateful.

Nothing I’ve ever tweeted has been any more profane, ad hominem, knowingly false, or otherwise offensive than anything I’ve written here – or anywhere else.  And like I said, maybe the software just messed up.  But if not, my suspension (however brief or long) would raise some serious questions about how much longer Twitter and other platforms should be permitted, without any regulation or even simple accountability,  to play such an increasingly dominant role in the national and global public squares.  And yes, I’ll pass on word of any new developments as soon as I get them.  (Unless I’m subjected to a gag order???)

 

 

 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: What the Mini-Deal Says About Trump’s China Policy

11 Friday Oct 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in (What's Left of) Our Economy

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

agriculture, business investment, censorship, China, decoupling, democracy, Democrats, election 2020, Elizabeth Warren, Hong Kong, Hong Kong protests, human rights, impeachment, Populism, Republicans, tariffs, Trade, trade talks, trade war, Trump, Uighurs, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The “Phase One” min-deal reached by the United States and China tamping down bilateral trade tensions for the moment, speaks volumes about the three major forces that are now driving President Trump’s China policy, and that will keep shaping it through the next U.S. election – though not always in consistent ways. They are:

>the President’s evident belief that his reelection hopes are being threatened mainly by revived impeachment threats but also by an economic slowdown that has unmistakably been influenced by the so-called trade war with China;

>his consequently increased need for political support from the establishment Republicans so numerous in Congress who have never boarded the Trump Tariff Train and who are worried about their own reelection chances next year; and

>Mr. Trump’s consistent (though generally unstated) belief that no matter how the formal trade talks proceed, America’s national security as well as economic interests require the U.S. economy to continue steadily decoupling from China’s.

The strength of the impeachment drive faced by the president is now indisputable. Some polls are even showing growing Republican support for not only impeachment by the House but removal by the Senate. Moreover, this political challenge comes at a time when the President’s strongest suit by far (at least according to polls) – his economic policy record – is looking somewhat weaker.

Few signs point to a recession breaking out by Election Day, much less during the preceding weeks or months. But growth has been slowing to levels that Mr. Trump himself has deemed unacceptable – in no small measure because they were the rates that prevailed for most of the Obama administration.

The tariff-heavy Trump trade policies hardly deserve all the blame. (See, e.g., this recent post.) But the failure of business investment to stay elevated following passage of major tax cuts for business is especially telling. It buttresses claims that both the President’s various sets of tariffs and the inconsistency with which they’ve been both threatened and applied have inhibited companies from approving big new expenditures on new factories and other facilities.

As a result, nothing that can reasonably be expected from Washington (in other words, ruling out a big infrastructure spending bill) is likelier to boost the economy more than a nerve-calming trade truce with China mainly featuring some Chinese market opening or re-opening (especially for agricultural products) in return for some U.S. tariff cuts, promises to refrain from new levies, or some some combination of such moves. At the least, such an agreement would in theory help growth maintain the momentum it has remaining.

A mini-deal along these lines would also please the Senate Republicans who might ultimately judge the President’s fate, and who generally have lagged far behind the GOP base in turning against pre-Trump China and broader trade policies. Moreover, as I’ve written, impeachment politics have greatly magnified their sway over Mr. Trump before. Despite his sky-high popularity with Republican voters, the President was heavily dependent on their political backing until this spring in order to neutralize any impeachment chances while his Russia ties were being investigated. That’s surely why his early policy initiatives were dominated by traditional Republican priorities, like tax cuts and repeal of former President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, rather than by populist priorities like an infrastructure bill and the prompt imposition to tariffs.

Once the Special Counsel and other investigations flopped for various reasons, Mr. Trump had a much freer hand. But because of the emergence of “UkraineGate,” for now, those days are over. Probes growing out of those events are certain to last for months. Therefore, continued, much less higher, tariffs on China that could further drag on the economy and further frustrate the rural constituencies so crucial to the President and many other Republicans seem out of the question.

The President is so hamstrung that he’s been unable to marshal greater public support for staying the tariff course even though China is antagonizing American public opinion with its harsh suppression of the Hong Kong protests and the Muslim Uighur minority, and with its heavy handed efforts to extend its censorship practices to the National Basketball Association and other U.S. businesses. And don’t forget: These developments have placed China in a much weaker position, too.  

One reason that the President hasn’t been able to capitalize could well be his reluctance to declare publicly the functional equivalent of economic war, or his intent to decouple – presumably because any such statements would prompt the Chinese to crack down even further on American companies even doing business in the PRC that have nothing to do with job and production offshoring aimed at serving the U.S. market from super-cheap and highly subsidized Chinese facilities, as opposed to serving Chinese customers. And that reasoning has been entirely understandable.

Much less understandable – the President’s insistence that a trade war with China would be easy to win and inflict no economic harm on Americans, rather than choosing to challenge his compatriots to endure some sacrifices in order to beat back a mortal threat to their national security as well as prosperity. No wonder public support for so-called hard-line policies remotely strong enough to offset the opposition and reservations of the Congressional Republicans and most Democratic politicians is nowhere to be seen.

And don’t doubt that the Chinese fully understand. Whatever problems they initially experienced in figuring Mr. Trump out, they surely have concluded that they’re best advised to play the waiting game on the broader and deeper so-called structural issues dividing the two countries (e.g., intellectual property theft, technology extortion, massive subsidies) until the President is replaced by a Democrat who’s much easier to deal with.

Indeed, the evidence for this conclusion is abundant. China issues have played a small role in the Democratic primary campaign so far – even when it comes to long-time critics of pre-Trump trade policies like Democratic Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. One likely explanation: In recent years, Democratic voters and leaners have markedly flipped on those pre-Trump approaches, from deep dislike to general approval. This shift in public opinion (matched in part by a trade flip in the other direction among Republicans and leaners) may also warrant some Chinese confidence that even a President Warren might prove a more acceptable interlocutor than Mr. Trump.

Nonetheless, the formal talks are not the only track on which the Trump administration’s China trade policies are running. And the other track – featuring unilateral U.S. moves to restrict Chinese involvement in the American economy, and thereby foster decoupling – is much less controversial than the trade talks and especially the tariffs and tariff threats clearly required to spur any meaningful progress.

Highly revealing on this score (in terms of the importance attached in Washington to decoupling): Even as a high level Chinese delegation was jetting to Washington, the President approved actions against Chinese tech companies and Chinese officials that were justified by human rights concerns, but that in the first case clearly advanced decoupling. Just as revealing (in terms of possible Chinese acceptance of a more skeptical new bipartisan U.S. consensus on China policy): Despite the provocative timing, the Chinese didn’t turn around and head back home once they heard the announcement.

Reinforcing the new American consensus on decoupling has unmistakably been the growing realization by the U.S. corporate sector that its heavy bets on China have dangerously increased its vulnerability not only to the whims of American politics, but to a Chinese regime that’s turned out to be much less hospitable than expected. As a result, “Phase One” is not only a suspiciously convenient-looking term being used by the President to describe his new deal. It also looks suitable for describing where his administration’s overall China policy stands right now.     

Making News: Two China Trade War (& NBA?) National Radio Interviews Coming Up Today

09 Wednesday Oct 2019

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Making News

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censorship, China, Hong Kong, Making News, Market Wrap with Moe Ansari, National Basketball Association, NBA, The John Batchelor Show, Trade, trade talks, trade war

I’m pleased to announce that I’m scheduled to be interviewed on two nationally syndicated radio programs today on the current, possibly crucial phase of the U.S.-China trade talks.  I also suspect that both segments will at some point turn to the uproar over China’s efforts to censor a National Basketball Association executive for tweeting his support for the Hong Kong protesters, and Beijing’s follow-on efforts to intimidate the league.

The first, slated to air at 3 PM EST, is with Moe Ansari on his popular “Market Wrap” program.  You can listen on-line here.

The second, which will start at 9:15 PM EST, is on “The John Batchelor Show,” and here’s the listen live on-line link.

As always, if you can’t tune in, I’ll post links to the podcasts as soon as they’re available.

And keep checking in with RealityChek for news of upcoming media appearances and other developments.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: How Hollywood’s Been Brown-Nosing China

10 Saturday Oct 2015

Posted by Alan Tonelson in Our So-Called Foreign Policy

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censorship, China, entertainment, Hollywood, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Washington Post

One of my great fears about the breakneck, corporate-driven expansion and deepening of U.S.-China relations at all levels has always been that it would steadily infect American society with Beijing’s autocratic and corrupt official values. In fact, I’ve always considered this a far likelier to happen, and likelier to happen sooner, than the conventional wisdom (generated largely by this offshoring lobby and their witting and unwitting dupes in the political and media classes) that greater integration between the two economies and societies would foster greater freedom and implant similar Western values in China. Sadly, a new Washington Post report on China’s growing, dangerous, and hitherto neglected influence over Hollywood supports my pessimism.

Post reporter Ana Swanson tells a powerful and depressing story of how the lure of more access to China’s still strictly controlled market for foreign films has given “the Chinese government and its support of censorship” a “surprisingly big hand in shaping the movies that Americans make and watch.” As Swanson explains:

“For Hollywood movies trying to get on [the] select list [of movies approved for showing in the PRC], portraying China in a positive light is key. Any foreign film that is shown in theaters in China must be approved by the Film Bureau, part of the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, which reports to the highest levels of the Chinese government.”

Swanson notes that some of the changes made to curry favor with Beijing seem harmless, and that others arguably provide “ helpful dose of cultural exposure for isolated American audiences.” But in their eagerness to expand the global box office for specific movies, and to cement their reputations as “friends of China,” Hollywood studios have also engaged in much more flagrant and troubling brown-nosing.

In my view, the worst example described by Swanson entails the 2012 remake of the 1984 Cold War action feature Red Dawn. The original depicted Chinese invaders as the villains. But three years ago, America was portrayed as being under attack by North Korea.

But this award might also be deserved by 2014’s Transformers: Age of Extinction. Not only was the film made with an assist from Chinese media companies – which are all firmly under the government’s thumb. But it also contains what seems to be a completely gratuitous scene of a Chinese defense minister gallantly vowing to protect Hong Kong.

There’s not much the U.S. government can legally do to supply Hollywood with a backbone. And the American entertainment industry can’t reasonably be expected to ignore the potential of China revenues. So maybe the best U.S. response is one suggested by a China specialist Swanson interviewed: Require that all such films explicitly contain the notification, “This content has been modified by Beijing.” Such truth in labeling would underscore that, although Americans are confident enough in their own system’s openness to allow Beijing-influenced content into the U.S. market, they also take seriously another important value: the consumer’s right to know.

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Protecting U.S. Workers

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