Im-Politic: Trump-ism Without Trump for America as a Whole?

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"Defund the Police", allies, CCP Virus, China, climate change, coronavirus, court packing, COVID 19, Democrats, election 2020, enforcement, Executive Orders, filibuster, Green New Deal, Huawei, human rights, Im-Politic, Immigration, Joe Biden, judiciary, lockdowns, mask mandate, masks, metals, multilateralism, Muslim ban, Phase One, progressives, Republicans, sanctions, Senate, shutdowns, stimulus, Supreme Court, tariffs, taxes, Trade, trade wars, Trump, unions, Wuhan virus

Since election day, I’ve spent some time and space here and on the air speculating about the future of what I called Trump-ism without Donald Trump in conservative and Republican Party political ranks. Just this weekend, my attention turned to another subject and possibility: Trump-ism without Mr. Trump more broadly speaking, as a shaper – and indeed a decisive shaper – of national public policy during a Joe Biden presidency. Maybe surprisingly, the chances look pretty good.

That is, it’s entirely possible that a Biden administration won’t be able to undo many of President Trump’s signature domestic and foreign policies, at least for years, and it even looks likely if the Senate remains Republican. Think about it issue-by-issue.

With the Senate in Republican hands, there’s simply no prospect at least during the first two Biden years for Democratic progressives’ proposals to pack the Supreme Court, to eliminate the Senate filibuster, or to recast the economy along the lines of the Green New Deal, or grant statehood Democratic strongholds Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. A big tax increase on corporations and on the Biden definition of the super-rich looks off the table as well.

If the Senate does flip, the filibuster might be history. But big Democratic losses in the House, and the claims by many veterans of and newcomers to their caucus that those other progressive ambitions, along with Defunding the Police, were to blame, could also gut or greatly water down much of the rest of the far Left’s agenda, too.

CCP Virus policy could be substantially unchanged, too. For all the Biden talk of a national mask mandate, ordering one is almost surely beyond a President’s constitutional powers. Moreover, his pandemic advisors are making clear that, at least for the time being, a sweeping national economic lockdown isn’t what they have in mind. I suspect that some virus economic relief measures willl be signed into law sometime this spring or even earlier, but they won’t carry the total $2 trillion price tag on which Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seems to have insisted for months. In fact, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of relief being provided a la carte, as Congressional Republicans have suggested – e.g., including popular provisions like some form of unemployment payment bonus extension and stimulus checks, and excluding less popular measures like stimulus aid for illegal aliens.

My strong sense is that Biden is itching to declare an end to President Trump’s trade wars, and as noted previously, here he could well find common cause with the many Senate Republicans from the party’s establishment wing who have never been comfortable bucking the wishes of an Offshoring Lobby whose campaign contributions it’s long raked in.

Yet the former Vice President has promised his labor union supporters that until the trade problems caused by China’s massive steel overproduction were (somehow) solved, he wouldn’t lift the Trump metals tariffs on allies (which help prevent transshipment and block these third countries from exporting their own China steel trade problems to the United States) – even though they’re the levies that have drawn the most fire from foreign policy globalists and other trade and globalization zealots.

As for the China tariffs themselves, the latest from the Biden team is that they’ll be reviewed. So even though he’s slammed them as wildly counterproductive, they’re obviously not going anywhere soon. (See here for the specifics.) 

Later? Biden’s going to be hard-pressed to lift the levies unless one or both of the following developments take place: first, the allied support he’s touted as the key to combating Beijing’s trade and other economic abuses actually materializes in very convincing ways; second, the Biden administration receives major Chinese concessions in return. Since even if such concessions (e.g., China’s agreement to eliminate or scale back various mercantile practices) were enforceable (they won’t be unless Biden follows the Trump Phase One deal’s approach), they’ll surely require lengthy negotiations. Ditto for Trump administration sanctions on China tech entities like the telecommunications giant Huawei. So expect the Trump-ian China status quo to long outlast Mr. Trump.

Two scenarios that could see at least some of the tariffs or tech sanctions lifted? First, the Chinese make some promises to improve their climate change policies that will be completely phony, but will appeal greatly to the Green New Deal-pushing progressives who will wield much more power if the Senate changes hands, and who have demonstrated virtually no interest in China economic issues. Second, Beijing pledges to ease up on its human rights crackdowns on Hong Kong and the Muslims of Xinjiang province. These promises would be easier to monitor and enforce, but the Chinese regime views such issues as utterly non-negotiable because they’re matters of sovereignty. So China’s repressive practices won’t even be on the official agenda of any talks. Unofficial understandings might be reached under which Beijing would take modest positive steps or suspend further contemplated repression. But I wouldn’t count on such an outcome.

Two areas where Biden supposedly could make big decisions unilaterally whatever happens in the Senate, are immigration and climate change. Executive orders would be the tools, and apparently that’s indeed the game plan. But as Mr. Trump discovered, what Executive Orders and even more routine adminstrative actions can do, a single federal judge responding to a special interest group’s request can delay for months. And these judicial decisions can interfere with presidential authority even on subjects that for decades has been recognized as wide-ranging – notably making immigration enforcement decisions when border crossings impact national security, as with the so-called Trump “Muslim ban.”

I know much less about climate change, but a recently retired attorney friend with long experience litigating on these issues told me that even before Trump appointee Amy Coney Barrett joined the Supreme Court, the Justices collectively looked askance on efforts to create new policy initiatives without legislating. Another “originalist” on the Court should leave even less scope for ignoring Congress.

The bottom line is especially curious given the almost universal expectations that this presidential election would be the most important in recent U.S. history: A deeply divided electorate could well have produced a mandate for more of the same – at least until the 2022 midterms.

Making News: Podcast On-Line of National Radio Interview on Police Reform

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"Defund the Police", "Disband the Police", Breitbart News Tonight, Camden, George Floyd, Making News, New Jersey, police brutality, police reform, race relations, racism, surveillance

I’m pleased to announce that the podcast of my latest national radio interview is now on-line.  Broadcast last night on “Breitbart News Tonight,” it dealt with the subject of yesterday’s post on what lessons are really being taught by Camden, New Jersey’s recent experiment in police “defunding” and “disbanding” and even “reform.”  To listen, head to this link and scroll down till you see my name.

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

Im-Politic: About that Camden Model for “Defunding” or “Replacing” Police

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"Defund the Police", "Disband the Police", Camden, community policing, crime, George Floyd, Im-Politic, New Jersey, police brutality, police reform, surveillance, violent crime

It was as predictable as the sun rising: No sooner did many participants in the recent George Floyd-killing protests and their supporters adopt “Defund the police” as a position, than all manner of Mainstream Media journalists and other sympathizers began piping in that not only is that stance not the slightest bit extreme, but that there’s a shining example of how this program could work: Camden, New Jersey.

Which sounds incredibly promising – especially considering that Camden has long been an especially dismal example of urban decay. Until you look at the Camden policing record since its police policy transformation began in 2014.

Throwing cold water on the Camden experiment is certainly not the same as dismissing the idea that many police reforms are urgently needed and long overdue. Let’s also acknowledge that many and possibly most “defunders” apparently don’t literally back abolishing police forces or even drastically reducing their budgets – or imagining that cops on the beat can literally be replaced person-for-person with social workers and community activists, or that “investing in communities” and law enforcement are either-or choices.

Most encouragingly, there does seem to be a strong case that for too long police forces have been given responsibilities that really aren’t policing matters, and that they shouldn’t be assigned to tasks like dealing with folks who suffer serious mental illness problems but aren’t institutionalized. No one should blanketly oppose all efforts to reshuffle municipal resources.

But the idea that Camden has adopted a radically new model of policing and that the results have been miraculous is at best way too simplistic, and indeed largely misleading. And no claims are more common, and more irresponsible, than contentions like “Camden Sees Crime Drop Over Past Decade.” (For other typical examples, see here and here.)

If, for example, you look at the crime statistics superficially (presented in the Tap into Camden article linked above), you do indeed see a falloff in crime in Camden over the last decade – from 5,559 in 2010 to 3,267 last year. (Of course, the full-year 2020 data aren’t in yet.) That’s an impressive 41.23 percent.

The problem is that Camden’s experiment in new police techniques isn’t a decade old. Its first full year didn’t come until 2014. The good news is that crime is off significantly since then, too – by 25.67 percent. In fact, it decreased more than during the pre-reform years – when crime fell by 20.94 percent.

The bad news is that crime changes over a specific period of time don’t clinch the case for effective or ineffective policing. That’s because these ups and downs often take place during periods of population change. And it’s not only clear that crime in Camden has been down at least in part because the city simply has been losing population. It’s also the case that, adjusted for population decline, crime declined more slowly in Camden before the police overhaul than it has since.

Specifically, during the four years between 2010 and 2014, when crime tumbled by 20.94 percent, the city’s population shrank by 1.45 percent. Between 2014 and 2018, the next four-year-period, Camden lost 2.60 percent of its residents – a difference of just over 79 percent. But the falloff in crime of 22.61 percent was only about eight percent greater than that seen during the previous four years.

Nor does the picture change much when you add in the 2019 totals – a fifth year – which brings the overall post-2014 crime decrease to the 25.67 percent figure mentioned above.

It’s also crucial to note that “Defund the police” doesn’t come close to describing accurately the changes the city actually made. First, to be technically accurate, Camden didn’t make these changes. In a desperation move (precisely because crime was deemed out of control) the surrounding county took charge in May, 2013. Moreover, although the new strategy undoubtedly emphasized “rebuilding trust between the community and their officers,” and “changing the culture” (as reported in the New York Times article linked above), other crucial elements were  more policing and, it’s arguable, more intrusive policing. According to Times correspondent Kate Zernike, the county:

“added officers [and] put 120 civilian clerks and analysts in a new operations and intelligence center, monitoring 121 surveillance cameras and the gunshot-mapping microphones. When shots are fired or a 911 call comes in, the system automatically dispatches the two nearest police units.

“Car-mounted cameras read license plates, which are checked against law-enforcement databases. A disembodied voice announcing ‘medium alert’ signals a car whose owner has bought drugs in Camden before. ‘High alert’ flags a stolen car.”

Something else to keep in mind: As Zernike wrote, during the years leading up to 2013, the old city police force “was so overwhelmed, it stopped responding to property crimes or car accidents without injuries.” And even so, the data that take into account the vital demographic context show that crime at the time was dropping faster than it has during the post-reform period.

Moreover, focusing solely on “violent crime” reveals a better post-reform performance – but with one terrible exception. Adjusted for population change, murders and assaults have decreased faster after the reforms than before them. But whereas during the four years before the reform, rapes were off just over thirty percent, during the four years after, they rose by 25.49 percent.

The journalistic accounts have contained enough encouraging impressionistic observations to indicate that Camden is a better place to live now than it was pre-police reform. But as these reports also show, that’s an awfully – indeed, unacceptably – low bar. And it’s hard to imagine that many of the Defund supporters know that much of this progress results from a “thin blue line” that’s not only gotten considerably thicker, but that’s been equipped with many more eyes and ears.