Im-Politic: Some History Lessons for Virus Policymakers

Tags

CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, Hong Kong flu, Im-Politic, lockdowns, schools, shutdowns, Wuhan virus

Once the CCP Virus began taking a major toll on American lives and the nation’s economy, I became aware of an historical comparison that I found as astounding and revealing as it’s been widely ignored. Today, months later, I’m still astounded by it, and it remains widely ignored. It’s the mind-boggling-by-any-measure contrast between the way that the current pandemic has been generally viewed and handled, and the way an even deadlier pandemic was handled between late 1968 and the winter of 1970.

That earlier disease outbreak was called the Hong Kong flu (after its supposed origin point), and according to U.S government health agencies, it killed about 100,000 Americans. And the reason I’ve found this fact astounding and revealing is that although this fatality number is just under half that currently attributed to the CCP Virus (218,000), as a share of the U.S. population then, it was only slightly lower. The actual numbers? In 1968, the fatality rate was 0.050 percent (in a population of 200.71 million). Today, it’s 0.066 percent (in a population of 330.47 million).

And even so, the economy and major institutions like schools were left almost completely open. I was in my mid-teens, and I don’t even remember any mention of it – and I was the kind of kid of read newspapers and watched the evening news. And my memory seems pretty accurate, as here’s the historical account that I’ve found whose descriptions of curbs and impacts that were put in place are the most extensive:

“All 50 states experienced increased school absenteeism during the pandemic; 23 faced school and college closures and 31 saw elevated worker absenteeism….

“Newspaper articles chronicled the widespread college closures, slowdowns in business and industry, and threats to Christmas mail deliveries. In December, the Apollo 8 astronauts were vaccinated to protect them from pandemic influenza in advance of their December 21 moon-orbiting flight, and President [Lyndon B.] Johnson was hospitalized with a respiratory infection that his aides said ‘could be called the flu.’ National concerns were reflected in a December 19 New York Times editorial describing the pandemic as ‘one of the worst in the nation’s history,’ bemoaning the ‘amount of discomfort and distress suffered by the millions who have already been hit,’ and the potential for ‘billions of dollars’ associated with treatment and lost productivity.”

Moreover, because the widespread shutdown and lockdown and stay-at-home route wasn’t taken, it’s more than reasonable to assume that collateral public health damage was minimized as well. That’s especially important because treatments for serious physical and mental health problems were so much less advanced back then. And of course, for all the New York Times‘ understandable economic concerns, growth and employment and overall living standards were barely affected.

These diseases are by no means identical. For example, the Hong Kong flu was particularly likely to hit school-age children – roughly the opposite of the CCP Virus pattern, in which seniors have been by far the most vulnerable.

But it seems fair to express the difference between the anti-pandemic strategies of today and yesteryear in this way: During the late-1960s, the federal and state and local governments let life proceed pretty much as normal, and although about 100,000 died, both non-virus public health damage (including deaths) and economic distress were minimized. Nowadays, much of the economy and other institutions (including schools) have been closed for varying periods and many remain closed today, and although the recorded death rate is virtually identical, the non-virus public health damage has been extensive, and the nation is struggling to climb out of its worse economic downturn since the Great Depression.

Without dismissing the need for precautionary and preventive measures (focusing on those most vulnerable,, to be sure), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that viewed holistically – as is essential – the U.S. CCP Virus approach, as ragged as it’s been, has enabled the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

Im-Politic: New Signs that Biden Will Lift the China Tariffs – & That Beijing is Counting on It

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China, China tariffs, currency, election 2020, exchange rates, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mike Pence, Susan Page, tariffs, Trade, trade war, Vice Presidential debate, Xi JInPing, yuan

Between wall-to-wall coverage of the fly and the smirks, it was easy to lose sight of one of the most important reveals of Wednesday’s vice presidential debate: There’s now more reason than ever to believe that if Joe Biden becomes President, he’ll lift President Trump’s tariffs on China. And just as important, there’s now more reason than ever to believe that this is exactly what China is expecting.

Whether you believe that Trump-type China trade policies have been needed and/or have worked (two closely related but not identical matters), the likelihood that the tariffs would be toast is incredibly important because it begs the questions of whether the Democratic nominee has a coherent alternative China trade poicy in mind that can adequately serve U.S. interests (along with alternative investment and tech policies) and whether he’s capable of developing one.

As known by RealityChek regulars, I believe that on both scores, the answer is an emphatic “No.” But what’s more important right now is making clear that Biden running mate Kamala Harris’ debate performance strongly indicated that a major course change is coming.

First, though, a deserved swipe at moderator Susan Page’s China question. Page, the Washington Bureau Chief of USA Today, inadvertently reminded viewers (and should have reminded the Commission on Presidential Debates that organizes such events) why veteran campaign and White House reporters are almost uniquely unqualified to serve in these roles – at least if you’re looking for some minimally satisfactory discussion of issues.

For these journalists tend to be preoccupied with politics, not policy – and with the most superficial horse race or gossipy dimensions of politics at that. As a result, their substantive background is even less impressive than that usually boasted by colleagues who are supposed to know something about the issues they cover (a low bar).

So although Page deserves some credit for even bringing up the topic of China policy, no one should have been surprised by the Happy Talk nature of her question. I mean, here’s a country that’s been blamed across the American political spectrum for destroying huge numbers of American jobs with its wide-ranging trade predation, whose tech companies have been just as widely deemed as dangers to U.S. national security and American’s privacy rights, which increasingly is threatening U.S. allies and other countries in the “Indo-Pacific” region (foreign policy mavens’ latest name for the Asia-Pacific region, due to India’s, and which is treating its own population ever more brutally.

And Page’s question was dominated by claims that China is “a huge market for American agricultural goods” and “a potential partner in dealing with climate change and North Korea”? Not to mention suggesting that its role in bringing the coronavirus to the nation and world is nothing more than a charge leveled by President Trump?

All the same, Harris’ answer was what counted:

“Susan, the Trump administration’s perspective, and approach to China has resulted in the loss of American lives, American jobs and America’s standing. There is a weird obsession that President Trump has had with getting rid of whatever accomplishment was achieved by President Obama and Vice President Biden. For example, they created, within the White House, and office that basically was just responsible for monitoring pandemics. They got away, they got rid of it.”

Previously that evening, she argued that:

“You, [Vice President Mike Pence] earlier referred to, as part of what he thinks is an accomplishment, the President’s trade war with China. You lost that trade war. You lost it. What ended up happening is, because of a so called trade war with China, America lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Farmers have experienced bankruptcy, because of it. We are in a manufacturing recession, because of it. And when we look at this administration has been, there are estimates that by the end of the term of this administration, they will have lost more jobs than almost any other presidential administration.”

Let’s leave aside the accuracy or relevance of any of these points – like the 300,000 manufacturing jobs claim loss claim that apparently comes from an economist who admits his 2016 predictions about economy’s performance during the Trump era were completely off-base; or the plainly nutty insistence that the Trump China policy cost American lives.

If Harris believes any of this, and especially that the trade war has been “lost,” then clearly the only important question about the China tariffs isn’t whether they’ll be lifted by a President Biden, but how fast.

Moreover, there’s abundant evidence that Biden fully agrees that these Trump measures have been seriously counter-productive. When asked in August if he’d “keep the tariffs,” he responded, “No. Hey, look, who said Trump’s idea’s a good one?” said Biden. “Manufacturing has gone into a recession. Agriculture lost billions of dollars that taxpayers had to pay.” In other words, most of the main anti-tariff arguments in two pithy sentences.

An aide to the former vice president tried to walk back these remarks, shortly afterwards, but Biden’s words perfectly fit journalist Michael Kinsley’s epic definition of what’s usually mischaracterized in American politics as a “gaffe”: an instance “when a politician tells the truth—some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.”

Equally interesting and important with regard to the Biden-Harris China policies – one clear and one possible new sign that Beijing is actively rooting for their success, and assuming the tariffs’ removal. The first came during the vice presidential debate, when Chinese authorities censored some of Pence’s critical comments on China just as Chinese audiences were about to hear them, and then restored the signal in time for Harris’ rejoinder.

The second came last night, when in its first announcement since the end of its Golden Week holiday of a new exchange rate for China’s currency, the yuan, versus the U.S. dollar, Beijing revalued (i.e., made it more expensive compared with the greenback) by the greatest amount in four and a half years. The main reason – at least as I see it: China believes that Biden will win, and is permitting its currency to strengthen because any competitiveness loss by its exports resulting from this and even significant further revaluation will be more than offset by the removal of U.S. levies that have typically hit 25 percent.

Of course, I could be wrong about Biden. So could China. But keep in mind that the former Vice President boasts that he knows Chinese dictator Xi Jinping well because of all the time he’s spent with him. Does anyone seriously think that, by the same token, Xi hasn’t learned a thing or two about Biden as well?

Im-Politic: VP Debate Questions That Should be Asked

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?

Im-Politic: The Debate and the Current Danger

Tags

Blob, Democrats, election 2016, election 2020, globalism, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Mainstream Media, Never Trumper, Populism, presidential debate, progressives, Trump

As difficult as it might be to believe that the verbal knife fight of a presidential debate held Tuesday night changed absolutely nothing about the election campaign, it’s increasingly clear to me that it changed absolutely nothing about the election campaign.

Politically speaking, that’s bad news for President Trump. After all, however flawed the national and, more important, the state polls might be, they’re virtually all saying that Democratic challenger Joe Biden is in the lead. Yes, there may be a significant hidden Trump vote out there, comprised of folks who either are too embarrassed to tell canvassers their real preferences, or too mistrustful of strangers, period. Yes, an enthusiasm gap does seem to favor the President. Yes, both nationally and in some key swing states, the results are tightening. But the hidden vote hypothesis remains a mere hypothesis. Anti-Trump sentiment could well overcome the lukewarm feelings about Biden. And the narrowing hasn’t been major or uniform as best as I can tell.

Therefore, for the debate to have helped the President, he needed to throw the former Vice President considerably off his game, or Biden needed to stumble into major trouble on his own. Neither happened. And since Mr. Trump and many of his backers set the expectations bar for Biden so low with their constant “Sleepy Joe” refrain and insistence that the 77-year old Democrat was losing his marbles along with too much of his physical energy and stamina, Biden’s at-least-perfectly fine coherence and energy level earned him a solid passing grade, and for now surely reeassured many voters worried about his capacities.

Interestingly, in this vein, the Trump performance displayed almost no interest in overtures of the President’s own aimed at enhancing his appeal beyond his base. One possible exception: For the first 20 minutes or so, the President was actually even-toned and on-message. But for whatever reason (some successful early baiting by Biden, frustration with moderator Chris Wallace, surprise at Biden’s performance, an inability to maintain self-control, or some combination of these), Mr. Trump eventually reverted to quasi-rally mode.

So it’s evident that, unless he decides to become more “presidential” (for lack of a better word) – a tactic that may well be way too late to convince any late deciders in any case – the President will continue to bank mainly on achieving two goals: first, amping up the (considerable) base to ensure astronomical turnout; and second, convincing some in key Democratic voting blocs that Biden can’t be trusted – as with his Tuesday night dig that Biden’s rejection of the Green New Deal proper means that hes “lost the Left,” and his Kamala Harris-like attacks on the former Vice President’s record on racial issues. Not that the first claim in particular can possibly be reconciled with other Trump allegations that his opponent will let “Socialism” run wild. But in American politics, consistency doesn’t necessarily equal effectiveness. At the same time, if the aforementioned polls are generally accurate, this Trump tack hasn’t paid off sufficiently yet.

But pure politics and the debate’s impact on the election aside, it’s also important to deal with fears that the event’s rancor once more revealed an American political system that can no longer produce leaders with both the competence and the personal qualities needed by any society to remain reasonably united – and therefore adequately successful by any measure. Of course, Mr. Trump and his supporters seem to have generated the greatest concerns along these lines, but there’s no shortage of worries that Biden is simply (as per the Trump statements above) a pawn of equally angry and reckless groups on the Left.

What, however, is new to say on these scores? The country was deeply and angrily divided before Mr. Trump was elected. It’s been deeply and angrily divided now and obviously will remain so after November 3. America’s most successful Presidents – the ones to whom the nation is most indebted – have been unifiers and motivators across the political spectrum. Mr. Trump has failed abjectly here – and revealingly, he’s failed despite a solid pre-CCP Virus record on that supposedly supremely important political issue, the economy.

Whether you believe he’s fanned these flames or not (and his regular use of violent words and phrases to describe what he’d like to do, or see happen, to some opponents clearly qualifies in my view), his interest in mollifying any critic’s legitimate concerns is nowhere to be found. He appears to have no clue how many women and for how long (a) have been victims of sexual assault and harmful, derogatory physical and verbal treatment of all kinds and (b) how they and others are genuinely pained and outraged by the (unpunished) behavior revealed on the “Access Hollywood” tape and alleged in several other cases, and by appearance-based insults of women (whose vulnerability to such verbal abuse has mattered so much more than that aimed at men simply because society and culture have been so thoroughly sexist for so long).

Moreover, although it may technically be true that the United States has cured itself of most truly systemic racism, he’s equally insensitive to the impact of cursory denials of these claims, and of how African Americans could validly point out that, contrary to the Trump MAGA campaign slogan, the nation wasn’t remotely “Great” for them for most of its pre-Trump (or pre-Obama) history. (I’m aware that former President Bill Clinton invoked the same idea, but Trump hard-liners need to do better here than such “What About-ism.”)

Nevertheless, lots of What About-ism is justified when it comes to the reactions – and previous records – of so many Trump critics. Unless they should be absolved of all blame for the nation’s current hot mess? As I’ve urged so many Never Trumpers since the President began his first run for the White House in 2015, it’s not enough to decry his various offenses. The best way to defeat him and insure against any Trumpist revivals (whether led by Mr. Trump or not) is to address seriously the genuine grievances that created so much of his base in the first place. To this day, however, the Never Trumpers have not only failed miserably or shown no signs of learning curves whatever. They’ve bent over backwards and turned cartwheels – often in some of the most deluded and/or dangerously unethical ways imaginable – to justify remaining in deep denial.

How do I count the examples? They include:

>the glaringly obvious effort to politicize intelligence and law enforcement agencies to sabotage his presidency with Russia collusion charges that turned out to be not only phony but look to have been planted or spread by the camps of both his 2016 Democratic rival Hillary Clinton and of the late globalist neoconservative Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona — among others;

>the literally hysterical drive to impeach Trump based on an almost completely routine instance of diplomacy and foreign policymaking;

>the utterly shameless leaking and fabrications – by career bureaucrats and establishment Republicans with whom Trump needed to staff much of his administration for lack of a large enough cadre of talented and experienced populists and America Firsters – that helped foster and sustain these anti-Trump campaigns;

>the eagerness of the Mainstream Media to swallow the leakers’ claims on these and other subjects, and propagate them without any meaningful, on-the-record corroboration;

>the adamant refusal of McCain and other card-carrying members of the globalist bipartisan foreign policy Blob to admit to the disasters their strategies produced (the Iraq nation-building effort, their gushing and often bought-and-paid-for support of the rise of China), and to acknowledge the possibility of viable alternatives;

>the mind-bogglingly hypocritical attacks on the Trump China and other tariffs by Congressional Democrats and labor leaders who spent literally decades calling for the exact same policies in order to improve working- and middle-class economic fortunes;

>the transformation of support for more lenient but still sane immigration policies into thinly-disguised support for an Open Borders approach (epitomized by the backing of every Democratic candidate at this primary debate for providing free government healthcare to illegal aliens);

>the full-throated endorsement by growing numbers of progressives and other Democrats of dangerously divisive identity politics, education as outright propaganda, and authoritarian curbs on free expression;

>and perhaps most tragically ironic of all, the now common calls for anti-Trump and other forms of violence by Democrats – including Biden.  

All of which leaves much of the country with a dispiritingly Hobson’s Choice. I continue making it as I have since it became apparent that Mr. Trump was in the 2016 race to stay: If I could have chosen anyone in the U.S. population to stand for a critical mass of the public policies I’ve long supported, Mr. Trump wouldn’t have been in the first 95 percent of my choices – for all the inexperience and personality-related reasons that were on everyone’s mind.

But against virtually all expectations (including my own) he prevailed against a large, experienced Republican field. And for the reasons described above, his Democratic opponent struck me as being both unacceptable on most issues and dwnright scary on the intangibles.

Four years later, I see the same situation – though my fears about Trump’s opponents now go way beyond Biden himself. So I’ll make the same choice. I’m also left with these observations and (unanswered) questions, which first appeared in a 2018 article in connection with U.S. foreign policy, but which apply to all other major issues as well:

“….American elections have brought to power any number of mainstream politicians, and through them any number of policy operatives, skilled, experienced, and knowledgeable enough to maintain the status quo competently and even effect important reforms. And as shown by Trump’s election, the White House can be won by an outsider with avowedly disruptive ambitions who is largely unfamiliar with Washington’s formal and informal levers of power (and lacking an advisory corps large and savvy enough to at least partly tame the federal bureaucracy).

“But what is still unknown is whether a leader unconventional enough to develop or support truly innovative foreign policy ideas can rise to the top through the current political system and all of its stay-the-course influences and incentives. Equally uncertain—can the world outside mainstream political and policy circles produce a leader both willing to think and act outside establishment boxes, yet versed enough in its ways to achieve transformational goals? And perhaps most important of all: can the nation produce such a leader before war or depression make overhaul unavoidable.”

Im-Politic: Trump’s Decidedly Non-Racist Economic Record

Tags

African Americans, Barack Obama, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, election 2020, families, family income, Federal Reserve, Hispanics, Im-Politic, inquality, Joe Biden, median income, racism, Survey of Consumer Finances, Trump, wealth gap, whites, Wuhan virus, xenophobia

Some pre-debate advice for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden: Don’t rush to trot out your charge that Donald Trump is the first racist President in American history. Because if Mr. Trump has been briefed with any competence, two recent official economic reports have just come out making clear that when it comes to African Americans and Hispanic Americans, – at least before the outbreak of the CCP Virus that has hit minorities especially hard for longstanding structural reasons – the incumbent’s economic record compares quite favorably to that of the Obama administration for which Biden rode shotgun.

The evidence we’ll look at today drawn from the latest edition of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, contains arguably the most important finding of all: The wealth gap separating African Americans and Hispanic Americans on the one hand from white Americans on the other narrowed more during Mr. Trump’s first three years in office than during the final three years of the Obama administration. (RealityChek regulars know that such time frames provide the best apples-to-apples data needed for comparisons, since they came right next to each other in the same economic cycle – in this case, the post-2009 expansion.)

This racial wealth gap is often described as the most damning indictment of the nation’s longstanding failure to generate equal economic opportunity, since the wealth created by one generation can be passed down to future generations, and thereby boost the odds that beneficiaries are cushioned against major economic and financial stress, and foster all the self-reinforcing social as well as economic advantages flowing from such achievement of the American Dream.

The numbers come both from the Fed’s new survey, which covers the 2016-2019 period, and its previous survey, which covered the 2013-2016 period, and here they are, starting with the growth in median family net worth (the Fed’s preferred measure of wealth) for all American families, for non-Hispanic white families, for non-Hispanic black families, and for Hispanic families.

During the final three Obama years, in pre-inflation dollars, this net worth increased as follows for the aforementioned three groups pre-tax

for all U.S. families: +16.25 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +16.80 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +29.41 percent

for Hispanics: +45.77 percent

As a result, median wealth for black non-Hispanic and Hispanic families as a share of median family wealth for their white counterparts rose as follows:

                                                                   2013                    2016

black non-Hispanic families:              9.29 percent        10.29 percent

Hispanic families:                               9.70 percent        12.11 percent

Alternatively put, black non-Hispanic families closed the wealth gap with white non-Hispanic families by 10.76 percent, and Hispanic families by 24.85 percent. No denying that’s progress.

And the Trump record through 2019 in comparison? We’ll start again with the increases in pre-tax median family net worth from 2016 until then:

for all U.S. families: +17.58 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +3.46 percent

for black non-Hispanics : +32.42 percent

for Hispanics: +65.30 percent

So during the first three Trump years, median family wealth overall grew faster than during the final three Obama years, and minority families far outgained white families in this regard. Moreover, this was especially true for Hispanic families, who belong to an ethnic group Mr. Trump is often accused of despising.

That this minority family outperformance bettered that achieved during the most analogous Obama period comes through even more clearly from the following table, which shows how minority families’ net worth grew as a share of white family net worth between 2016 and 2019:

                                                                    2016                    2019

black non-Hispanic families:              10.01 percent       12.81 percent

Hispanic families:                               12.04 percent       19.23 percent

Again, alternatively put, during the Trump years, these results mean that black non-Hispanic families closed the wealth gap with white families by 27.97 percent, and Hispanic families by 59.72 percent. So both groups made much more relative progress during the Trump supposedly racist and xenophobic Trump administration (pre-CCP Virus) than during the supposedly racially enlightened Obama administration.

The Trump record isn’t as good when it comes to another measure of economic peformance – pre-tax family incomes and their growth. But any fair-minded observer would have to agree that it’s more than respectable, especially considering the President’s reputation among so many of his opponents.

Once more, let’s start with the Obama record on this score between 2013 and 2016. (These results aren’t adjusted for inflation, either. During these years, median family income grew as follows for the groups in question:

for all U.S. families: +9.56 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +6.44 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +9.94 percent

for Hispanics: +14.93 percent

As a result, median incomes for black non-Hispanic and Hispanic families as a share of median income for their white counterparts rose as follows:

                                                                    2013                    2016

black non-Hispanic families:               56.00 percent       57.84 percent

Hispanic families:                                58.26 percent       62.91 percent

So the income gap with white non-Hispanic families shrank by 1.13 percent for black families and by 7.98 percent for Hispanic families. These relative gains generally were far smaller than those registered for wealth, but they were gains all the same

At first glance, it’s clear that the Trump record between 2016 and 2019 lagged the Obama era progress. Here’s how family incomes rose then for the groups concerned:

for all U.S. families: +4.64 percent

for white non-Hispanics: +6.00 percent

for black non-Hispanics: +7.00 percent

for Hispanics: -0.49 percent

The same conclusion flows from examining the changes in minority groups’ family income as a share of non-white Hispanic families’ income:

                                                                    2016                    2019

black non-Hispanic families:               57.76 percent      58.41 percent

Hispanic families:                                62.83 percent      58.99 percent

In fact, Hispanic families actually lost ground on this front.

And not surprisingly, the income gap between Hispanic families and white non-Hispanic families widened by 6.11 percent during these Trump years, while that between black and white non-Hispanic families narrowed by much less than during the final three Obama years (1.13 percent versus 3.29 percent).

These Fed figures hardly show that President Trump, as he likes to claim, has done more for African Americans than any President in history Lincoln aside, or that Hispanic Americans have been special beneficiaries of his policies. But they do show impressive progress for minority groups and, perhaps more important, progress that compares well with such achievements under the nation’s first African American President.

Therefore, Biden (and other Trump opponents) could well be right about the President’s racism and xenophobia when all considerations are taken into account. But if so, he’s clearly the strangest racist and xenophobe in U.S. history – a conclusion that will be supported when RealityChek turns next to the new poverty statistics and another set of income figures just issued by the Census Bureau. .

Im-Politic: Close Encounters with Virus Authoritarianism

Tags

authoritarianism, CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, facemasks, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, masks, progressives, Riverdale Park, social distancing, virtue-signalling, wokeness, Wuhan virus

As RealityChek regulars know, I’ve resisted the temptation to make this blog about me personally, or about my family and friends, except when personal experiences shed light on some broader subject or controversy. Last Thursday alone, though, produced two of those exceptional situations, at least as I interpret them. And both have to do with the problems and pressures created by the sweeping anti-CCP Virus regulations still in force in so many states and localities.

In the interests of fairness, I need to point out that (just in case many of you don’t already realize) that for some time I’ve viewed the lockdowns and shutdowns imposed throughout the country way too all-encompassing. As I’ve written, although excessive caution was understandable and even necessary early during the pandemic, since then, governments should have had enough learning ability to recognize (a) that restrictions were best focused on the most vulnerable segments of the population, and (b) that the comprehensive nature of the lockdowns and shutdowns were becoming a cure whose economic costs were comparably serious to the disease, and were creating their own major public health dangers to boot. (See, e.g., here.)

Even so, I wasn’t exactly loaded for bear Thursday when I left my house in the D.C.-area Maryland suburb where live to walk the three blocks to the local weekly farmer’s market. My town, Riverdale Park, is getting way too woke for my tastes – including a decision to let illegal aliens vote in local elections if they’re all of 16 years old and can present some kind of evidence that they’ve resided in the area for a grand total of 45 days. But filled with woke characters and illegals as the market tends to be, I especially look forward to going because the produce and specialty items offered tend to be excellent values, and because most of the vendors (who don’t seem to be locals) are easy, informative, and sometimes even fun to deal with. Moreover during this Virus Era, the market is a badly needed opportunity for in-person human contact, and an equally cherished reminder of pre-Virus normality.

Because of state and county social distancing requirements, entry onto the market grounds is regulated (by volunteer staff who deserve admiration for their civic-mindedess), so customers need to stand in line six feet apart until the proper density is achieved. I’m fine with that, as well as with the obligatory mask-wearing. What I was not the least bit fine with was what happened once I began shopping for some vegetables, and specifically began inspecting the tomatoes for bruising and other problems.

Behind me, from the line of customers still waiting to get in, came the demand “Hey! Stop touching all those tomatoes!” For a moment, I could scarcely imagine that I was the object of this fellow’s ire, but upon realizing I was the sole tomato shopper at the moment, turned around and saw him again shout something like, “Keep your hands off the tomatoes!”

Still in partial disbelief, rather than respond with something like “Mind your own business” or something more emphatic, I simply asked him “How else am I going to see if they’re OK or not?” To which he replied, (seriously) “I’m sure the fine people who run this stand wouldn’t offer us bad produce.” I agree, by the way, that the vendors are fine people. But frankly, it’s bad enough that the masks greatly complicate the essential task of sniffing fruit (including tomatoes) to make sure that they’re ripe. Now it’s verboten to turn them upside down to make sure they’ve survived their trip from the fields in reasonable shape?

With my bewilderment not entirely having faded, but recognizing that this late-40s-something white male wearing a roughly color coordinated baby blue baseball cap, mask, and T-shirt wasn’t going to do anything to stop my tomato inspection, I decided to create a teachable moment of the incident. So when I was finished (and had chosen some genuine beauties that were not as banged up, like some of their counterparts), turned around and advised him, “It’s called the eye test. Think about it.” (Of course, it’s also the “feel test.”) 

As is often the case, I spent the next half hour or so going coming up in my mind with better, and even genuinely devastating, rejoinders. (E.g., “Ever heard of washing produce?” “Ever think that I might have tested positive?” “Can I see your badge?”) But as routine as these “if only” exercises have become for me, I actually do regret not telling him to buzz off.

That’s partly because there were no “Don’t touch the merchandise” signs posted and I was obeying all the other rules. It’s mainly, however, because even the best such detailed, substance-specific points obscure how his behavior perfectly epitomized the kind of arrogant, self-righteous busy-body impulses that so many self-styled progressives are flaunting now that the pandemic has ostensibly validated their longstanding determination to impose sweeping controls over all realms of human behavior – especially for the good of those less enlightened of course.

While I was steaming and reenacting on my walk home, I quickly found myself in another possible encounter with this kind of progressive Virus Authoritarianism. At least that’s how I interpreted it. The normally busier of the two streets on my way home (not that it’s usually very busy) was absolutely devoid of people. Until a block ahead of me another pedestrian appeared. Because he was wearing a back-pack I assumed he was a student of some kind, and once he came close enough, I also saw he was masked. I wasn’t – once I left the crowded market area, I removed mine, and I was out-of-doors with no one near me, so why endure the discomfort?

In any event, this other pedestrian wore the covering even though there was no one in sight from where he was coming, and there was no one behind me, either. That’s his right, of course, and to maintain social distancing, I conspicuously swerved to my right as he approached. He moved a little to his right, and although I didn’t recognize him, I was all set to say “Hi” by way of nodding my head or giving a little wave of my hand because that’s what social-butterfly-me does in these situations. But when I saw how resolutely he was staring straight ahead, seemingly set on avoiding eye contact, I concluded that a friendly gesture wouldn’t be reciprocated. And it seemed reasonable to assume that he was very upset that I wasn’t masked – despite the fact that, as I just mentioned, the street was otherwise empty.

Even if he wasn’t, I couldn’t help but wonder why on earth he was masked in the first place. No supposedly settled or any other kind of science has deemed masks necessary in these kind of state-of-nature circumstances, where distancing couldn’t be easier. Was he aggressively virtue-signaling, like Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden seems to have in comparable situations? But to a non-existent (except for me) audience?

But as I implied, his attitude could have been just my imagination.  Maybe virus irritableness is getting to me.  More evidence may come my way when I visit the market this coming Thursday. And when my hands will be all over the produce again.

Im-Politic: The Supreme Court Mess II

Tags

Antonin Scalia, Constitution, diversity, Federal Reserve, identity politics, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Robert Bork, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate, Supreme Court, term limits, Trump

Since the Supreme Court Mess that I analyzed yesterday really is a Supreme Court Mess and not simply a Ruth Bader Ginsburg Mess, today let’s dive right into problems with how Americans deal with the top of the federal government’s judiciary branch other than the means of picking the late Justice’s replacement.

First and maybe most obvious comes an inconsistency in the position of the Democrats and especially of their presidential nominee this year, former Vice President Joe Biden. From that party and candidate comes the insistence that it’s wrong for President Trump to choose a new Justice so close to the November election because it could strap the country with a new Justice and Court line-up that flout the popular will that would be revealed by a Biden win on major policy issues (like abortion or the future of Obamacare).

Leaving aside the (clear un-) Constitutionality of this position, it’s not entirely unreasonable. But it would become much stronger substantively, and much less vulnerable to charges of hypocrisy and pure partisanship, if Biden enabled voters to assess their actual Supreme Court-related choices at least as clearly as Mr. Trump has with the list of Ginsburg replacement possibilities he’s released. Biden has promised that he’d put forward an African American woman (though maybe not this time?). But which ones is he considering (if it is this time)? He hasn’t told us. So the criterion of fairness should oblige him to release his own list ASAP, to permit voters to weigh the alternatives fully. After all, even if they don’t like any of the Trump candidates (which the President has subsequently announced will be restricted to women), Americans might like Biden’s choices even less.

The second problem, though, has precisely to do with the identity politics of Supreme Court nominations that both Biden and the President are practicing. Not that I have any inherent objection to another female Justice or the first African American female Justice. But these announcements raise any number of divisive questions that Americans could do without in these divisive times. Just a few examples:

>During the Obama years, there was much talk that the Court needed an Asian-American Justice. (Full disclosure: Denny Chin, the federal appeals court judge mentioned here, is a college friend.) So many valid reasons were cited (e.g., they’re “the fastest growing population of color in the country, with a voting electorate expected to double in the next 25 years”). Exactly when, therefore, did this proposal become obsolete? And why?

>Regarding the Biden pledge to nominate an African American woman, that would move the Court’s makeup closer to the gender composition of the entire U.S. population, so this promise can be justified by the goal of making the Court “look like America.” (So would the President’s promise to choose a woman whose race or ethnic background he hasn’t specified.) But an African American woman would bring the number of African Americans on the Court to two (along with Clarence Thomas). Since they amount to only some 13 percent of all Americans, they’d be way over-represented.

>The same outcome would result from if Mr. Trump picks Cuban-American federal appeals court judge Barbara Lagoa from Florida. She’d be the second Latino woman on the Court (along with Sonia Sotomayor). But that decision would create another over-representation situation (though not one as sizable as those for African Americans, at least in the early part of a Biden administration). And what about Latino men? They’d remain completely shut out. How come?

Again, I agree broadly with the idea that the leadership ranks of major American institutions, especially public, but also private, should be diverse enough in terms of all the major population categories to make sure that the widely varying experiences of these groups contribute to decision-making. In my view, that’s a major plus, since the idea of objectively optimal policies or practices is impossibly naive, and because the choices made by public institutions are bound to affect different groups differently.

But although all these stakeholders deserve a say, when diversity – and especially specific diversity formulas – become explicit, you unfortunately enter a world in which the kinds of potentially ugly identity politics-related questions just mentioned tend to come to the fore, and vital issues of merit tend to move to the rear.

As a result, though doing so is somewhat hypocritical, certain kinds of fictions do serve important purposes. So I hope that from now on, diversity promises for public appointments at least become less explicit, and the results become the product of informal political pressures and other considerations. (Privately owned institutions should be able to do whatever they want within the bounds of anti-discrimination laws. Even so, diversity can benefit them, too, since especially in the case of businesses, they’re trying to win and keep customers, and diverse leadership ranks are likely to provide important insights into appealing to various population groups.)

The third big part of the Supreme Court Mess: The American political system clearly has moved way too far away from the crucial idea that, since elections matter, Presidents have the right to appoint whoever they wish to fill positions the Constitution entitles them to fill unless their choices are flagrantly incompetent, or utterly dismissive of Constitutional and ther legal standards, or ethically or criminally compromised. If Senators simply don’t agree with nominees on legitimate Constitutional and legal controversies – too bad.

Thankfully, this idea isn’t completely dead. For example, three Democrats did vote to approve Trump Supreme Court nominee Neil M. Gorsuch in April, 2017. At the same time, three isn’t much. Vastly more encouraging: In August, 1993, Ginsburg was confirmed by a 96 to 3 vote (one Senator abstained), which means that plenty of Republicans supported here even though she surely wasn’t their legal and Constitutional cup of tea.

At the same time, Republicans controlled the Senate when Gorsuch was considered, and Democrats enjoyed a majority when Ginsburg came up. So a better example of this ideal would be the 1990 vote in favor of David H. Souter. He was a George H.W. Bush nominee, yet won the nod of a Democratic Senate – in a 90-9 landslide. (This time, one Senator didn’t vote.) 

Or was it? After all, Souter arguably received this margin precisely because his views on major subjects were so unknown – largely because his lower court opinions and other legal writings were so plain vanilla or so scarce or both. As widely (and convincingly) supposed, Souter (and his supporters) had learned the big lesson of the failed nomination of Robert Bork: Don’t leave a conspicuous “paper trail.”

Bork, whose bid for the Court failed in 1987, was rejected by a Democratic-controlled Senate largely because his prodigious writings were so controversial. His reputation as a Watergate-era villain surely didn’t help, either.

But were Bork’s views so out of the mainstream, as his opponents charged? Just a year earlier, another doctrinaire judicial conservative nominated by President Ronald Reagan – Antonin Scalia – was elevated to the Court. And he won unanimously. (Two Senators didn’t vote.)  But that year, Republicans ran the upper chamber.

As a result, it’s easy to conclude that the tradition of “Borking” is very much alive, and that overly political Supreme Court nomination fights will continue for the time being.

The final big aspect of the Supreme Court mess: This drift away from the respect for legitimate presidential prerogatives no doubt results from both the prominent role the Court has played in deciding issues (like Obamacare) that elected politicians should be figuring out, and this prominence, and the towering stakes thereby created, in turn stem from the lifetime nature of Court terms. In other words, once a Justice is confirmed, he or she can serve literally for decades, and for just as long decisively influence policy decisions that shouldn’t be legalized.

Therefore, although I’m super-hesitant to support Constitutional changes in response to developments that are probably transient, I fear that the too often vicious and hyper-partisan nature of American politics is here to stay for the foreseeable future.  Therefore, I’d support at least considering an amendment that would limit the Justices’ terms.  One possible model: the Federal Reserve, another government body that’s supposed to be shielded from politics, and whose seven Board members serve for fourteen years, and whose Chair and Vice Chair are limited to four (although this curb doesn’t count against their Board service).

Not that I love the Fed’s degree of autonomy.  But the temperature of national politics clearly needs to be lowered to safer levels, and term limits on the increasingly supremely powerful Supreme Court are the best place to start I can think of.     

Im-Politic: The Supreme Court Mess I

Tags

Antonin Scalia, Barack Obama, Biden Rule, conservatives, Constitution, Democrats, election 2020, elections, Ginsburg, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, lame duck Congress, liberals, Merrick Garland, Mitch McConnell, Republicans, rule of law, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Senate, Supreme Court, Trump

I call this piece “The Supreme Court Mess I” rather than “The Ginsburg Mess I” because the fix in which the nation finds itself regarding the replacement of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg reflects a number of much deeper problems America is suffering. These stem from the firestorm-like nature of some recent battles over the roster of this nearly (but not quite paramount) arbiter of the Constitution, which makes it a the nearly last word regarding the entire U.S. legal system and its often decisive, lasting effects on every dimension of American life. (The Roman numeral tells you that there will be another post on this subject coming real soon, probably tomorrow.)

Today we’ll focus on the immediate question at hand: whether the Senate should vote on President Trump’s nominee for a new Justice. To me, the only answer with any merit: Absolutely. Indeed, nothing could be stronger, and more important to affirm, than the conclusion that any President has every right to nominate a new Justice at any time during any of his or her terms in office (i.e, through Inauguration Day, January 20), and that the Senate has every right to vote on his choice during this time. Why? Because it’s what the Constitution says, and neither the Framers nor any American leaders have ever formally tried to change the system since 1789. That is, there are no exceptions made – including for presidential election years, as many Democrats are calling for now.

If you think about it non-hysterically, you can see why. Abandoning this standard opens the door to the kind of bizarrely and indeed laughably convoluted and self-serving case being made now by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky to explain why (a) he’s decided to allow a vote on a Supreme Court nominee this presidential election year, but (b) refused to allow former former President Obama’s appointment of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland be considered during the previous presidential election year.

According to McConnell, the governing principle for Court nominations is the result of the latest Senate election. As he wrote right after Ginsburg’s passing:

“In the last midterm election before Justice [Antonin] Scalia’s death in 2016, Americans elected a Republican Senate majority because we pledged to check and balance the last days of a lame-duck president’s second term. We kept our promise. Since the 1880s, no Senate has confirmed an opposite-party president’s Supreme Court nominee in a presidential election year.

“By contrast, Americans reelected our majority in 2016 and expanded it in 2018 because we pledged to work with President Trump and support his agenda, To

To which the only serious reaction has to be “Seriously”? Not only is this position even further from the Constitutional standard than the presidential carve-out position. If it’s followed, it’s easy to see how other unscrupulous politicians could use even more arbitrary maxims like this to completely paralyze the Supreme Court nomination process.

After all, if it’s the Senate’s makeup that counts most of all, then why not bar nominations during the run-up to such elections – which of course take place every two years (when a third of the Senate faces reelection). For by McConnell’s logic, it wouldn’t be possible to know the people’s will on such matters for certain until those Senate results are in. And how would anyone define “run-up”? A month? Two? Six? A full year? On what objective basis could anyone distinguish among these possibilities? The only reasonable answer? None.

Lest you want to blame Republicans alone for this kind of sophistry, keep in mind that its origins lie in the so-called “Biden Rule” – when in 1992, the former Vice President and current Democratic presidential nominee argued that “once the political season is under way, and it is, action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over.” And in an example of poetic justice, McConnell and many other Republicans and conservatives cited this reasoning to justify their own Supreme Court positions when former President Barack Obama in March, 2016 nominated senior federal judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat left by Scalia’s death in February.

Three final observations: First, any number of politicians and pundits are citing various supposed historical traditions for justifying their stances on election year Supreme Court votes. (See here for Republicans and conservatives, and here for Democrats and liberals.) To which I can only say, “Tradition, shmadition.” As indicated above, although interpretation is possible and often needed for all laws and many Constitutional provisions, when the latter set out clearcut procedures – as for the nomination and approval of Supreme Court Justices (but not so much for impeachment) – Americans drift away from them at their peril. If you don’t like these procedures, then use the amendment process of the Constitution to change them, rather than pretending that traditions and non-legal precedents and other practices are adequate substitutes.

Second, equally ludicrous and even more dangerous is the claim that the nation’s current divided circumstances justify waiting until after the presidential election to fill the Ginsburg seat. That’s essentially warning that violence may erupt if the President and Senate exercise their Constitutional prerogatives, and in effect supporting a surrender to the threat of mob rule.

It’s absolutely true that practically all decisions made by political leaders – elected and unelected alike – are at least partly political in nature, and can profoundly affect the national interest short term and long term. It’s entirely legitimate, therefore, and even important for President Trump to take into account in his Ginsburg approach non-Constitutional considerations.

But it’s something else entirely, and far more dangerous, to contend that such judgment calls are or should in any way be legally binding. As with federal government personnel choices, Constitutional procedures can be used to protest and overturn presidential or other decisions that are entirely legal but unpopular for whatever reason. They’re called elections, and Americans would do far better to focus on taking all (legal) steps to ensure that their candidates and viewpoints prevail, rather than dreaming up spur-of-the-moment rationalizations for ignoring settled law that may create momentary advantages, but that contain equal backfire potential, and that can only erode the rule of the law to everyone’s ultimate detriment.

Third, my only strong preference in this matter is that a Senate Supreme Court vote not take place during a lame duck session – which would be convened after the presidential election. That’s because a possibly decisive number of Senators who would be considering the nomination would be Senators who have been voted out of office. What an offense to the idea of representative government that would be! At the same time, it’s only my preference. These sessions themselves are entirely legal, and I’m not about to claim that my views should substitute for Constitutional procedures.

Im-Politic: A Chinese Link to Black Lives Matters?

Tags

Alicia Garza, Black Futures Lab, Black Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter Too, BLM, China, Chinese Progressive Association, election interference, Heritage Foundation, Im-Politic, race relations, racism, reparations, structural racism, systemic racism, The Federalist, wealth gap, white fragility

Our times are so racially fraught that even I (someone who rarely feels defensive about my views) feel the need to start out this post by specifying that I am not a systemic or structural racist or even an unwitting example of white fragility. Indeed, I’m so woke on the issue of continuing racial discrimination in America that I’ve come out for reparations to remedy what I see as one recent example of open-and-shut racial injustice whose victims would be relatively easy to identify and compensate. And I’ve called attention to the still yawning racial wealth gap. 

I don’t even have significant problems with the phrase “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) – although I like “Black Lives Matter, Too” because it avoids the possibility of either-or interpretations while making clear that there’s a still a racial gap that must be eliminated.

But the various organizations and coalitions invoking this phrase that have sprung up lately? I’m not so sure about many of them, especially since their proclaimed agendas often go far beyond securing racial justice. (See, e.g., here.) And just yesterday I found out about another potential problem with these groups that seems to support a point I made in a recent article about the massive and under-reported scale of Chinese interference in American public life – signs of close connections between a key BLM organization the Chinese government.

As reported in The Federalist, a conservative publication, based on research by the equally conservative Heritage Foundation, an outfit called Black Futures Lab (BFL) is funded mainly by an organization called the Chinese Progressive Association (CPA). The Lab’s own website, moreover, confirms this finding.

It’s true that BFL is only one group in the BLM constellation. But it’s no ordinary group. Its “Principal” is Alicia Garza, who describes herself, and is credited in news reports, as a founder of the BLM movement.

It’s also true that the CPA isn’t officially affiliated with the Chinese government. But Beijing is certainly a fan of what’s been described as its Boston chapter, as this article (cited in the Heritage Foundation report) from its official mouthpiece demonstrates. One charge I could not independently corroborate – the claim that the Chinese flag-raising event the article mentions was “hosted by the Consulate General of China in New York.”

Consulate officials clearly attended the other event – a flag-raiser – and spoke. But unike the aforementioned Boston passport-focused event, I was unable to find evidence that they played any organizing role.

So maybe the cooperation doesn’t go any further than attending (and sometimes organizing) the kinds of celebrations that might simply be ethnic solidarity events. But according to this study (an undergraduate thesis, but one from Stanford University by a student with clearly progressive sympathies), the admiration between CPA and the Chinese government is decidedly mutual:

“The CPA began as a Leftist, pro-People’s Republic of China [PRC] organization, promoting awareness of mainland China’s revolutionary thought and workers rights, and dedicated to self-determination, community control, and ‘serving the people’.

Further, although “Its activities were independent of the Communist Party of China or the US,” it “worked with other pro-PRC groups within the US and San Francisco Bay Area.”

Again, the prospect can’t be ruled out that Beijing is content simply to admire CPA’s efforts to improve social services for Chinese Americans or even help organize Chinese American events with the group. But given the influence I thoroughly documented in the aforementioned magazine article that China has gained over major American institutions; and given the unusual interest displayed by a group like CPA, which is exclusively focused on Chinese Americans (as it makes clear) in an organization that says it’s exclusively focused on African Americans (especially since serious problem of poverty and discrimination still clearly dog Chinese Americans, according to CPA), grounds for further investigation don’t exactly seem to be lacking.

Indeed, as known by anyone with legal or law enforcement experience, or most fans of detective stories, showing that defendants have had “motive, opportunity and means” is a venerable framework for investigating and determining wrongdoing. When it comes to fomenting racial tensions in the United States, the Chinese government surely has all three. So let’s hope that the federal government (both the Exective and Congress), as well as the supposed watchdogs of our democracy, the news media, look into China’s involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement as aggressively as it’s looked into other charges of improper foreign interference in America’s politics.

Im-Politic: The Globalist Never Trump Blob Shows its True Colors

Tags

America First, Biden, Blob, Byron York, democracy, election interference, globalism, globalists, Im-Politic, Michael McFaul, Never Trumper, Russia, Senate Intelligence Committee, social media, The American Conservative, The Atlantic, Trump, Twitter, Washington Examiner

If you believed that you’d been wronged on social media because someone had erroneously described your tweet on purpose, wouldn’t you stand by that tweet or post? Apparently not if you’re Michael McFaul. At least not for a while.

And his activity on Twitter in the last few days is worth highlighting because even though you haven’t heard of him, McFaul is a card-carrying member of the bipartisan globalist U.S. foreign policy Blob. A recent tweet of his, moreover, epitomized the views of this group of current bureaucrats, former officials, Mainstream Media journalists, and think tankers that even President Trump’s partial implementation of a fundamentally different foreign policy strategy he calls “America First” poses such a mortal danger to both national and international security that any means justify the end of defeating it.

In addition, McFaul’s reaction to criticism also adds to the thoroughly Orwellian spectacle that’s been staged this last week by these and Never Trumpers in politics in (a) charging (based entirely on anonymous sources) that Mr. Trump has privately expressed contempt for Americans servicemen and women who have risked their lives for their country; (b) claiming that this unsubstantiated report, published Thursday in The Atlantic, proves the President’s contemptible character; and (c) insisting that some or all of the Atlantic piece’s allegations have been confirmed because they’ve been repeated by other anonymous sources to other journalists. (BTW, for all anyone knows – and for all these other journalists know – the sources they’re using may be the same accusers.)

As indicated above, McFaul is not your every day, garden variety tweeter. He’s considered a leading academic authority on Russia who served in the Obama administration for five years, including two as ambassador to Moscow. He’s got nearly 517,000 followers. He also tweets a lot: 85,000 to date! (Almost as much as yours truly!) And if you spend more than thirty seconds on his feed, you’ll see that he really doesn’t like the President or his policies.

Which is his right. It’s also his right to have tweeted the day the Atlantic article came out that “Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief?”

But Washington Examiner political correspondent Byron York was just as entitled to respond on Twitter the following morning (Friday) that “This tweet has disturbing undertones in our democratic system. Trump is commander-in-chief because he was elected president, and he will remain commander-in-chief as long as he is president, for a second term if re-elected.” 

McFaul, not surprisingly was outraged. He tweeted back to York that evening : “Byron, you know DAMN well that I was not advocating a coup! You know damn well that I support democracy 100%, at home and abroad. Of course Americans voters, including 2 million federal workers, determine who the CiC is. I tolerate such nonsense from trolls. But from you? Wow.”

But here’s an even bigger “Wow.” When you clicked on the York cite of the original tweet, Twitter told you it was no longer available. McFaul had deleted it.

The plot sickened yesterday afternoon when McFaul himself evidently recognized how feckless his actions looked. He sent out the following Tweet, which added a sentence to the original: “Trump has lost the Intelligence Community. He has lost the State Department. He has lost the military. How can he continue to serve as our Commander in Chief? Our soldiers, diplomats, and agents deserve better. We deserve better. #Vote.”

Which returns us – and him – to Legitimate Opinion-Land. But McFaul needed prompting, as several of his followers and others had previously asked him why he deleted the original if was so indignant over York’s comments. Moreover, McFaul is hardly inarticulate. Why didn’t he include this qualifier in the original?

Even stranger: In a follow up tweet, McFaul stated “I retweeted with a clarifying sentence. 50,000 + people understood exactly what I meant. But trying to be more precise to the handful who I confused or deliberately distorted my views. But I know @ByronYork personally. There’s NO WAY he could believe that I’d support a coup.” In other words, lots of furious backtracking for a confused or mendacious handful.

Or was it a handful? Shortly before that tweet, McFaul had told his followers “Im deleting this tweet below. It has been misunderstood –whether deliberately or unintentionally — too much. Here is what I meant to say: If you believe Trump has not served our country well as Commander in Chief, vote him out of the job in November. https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1302071499914842112”

At the same time, McFaul’s clear and ongoing belief in the fundamental illegitimacy of Mr. Trump’s presidency can’t legitimately be questioned. Just late last month, in an on-line op-ed , he wrote that a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report had shown that:

“Far from a hoax, as the president so often claimed, the report reveals how the Trump campaign willingly engaged with Russian operatives implementing the influence effort.”

Even worse, in his eyes,

“[S]ome of the most egregious practices from the 2016 presidential campaign documented by the Senate investigation are repeating themselves in the 2020 presidential campaign. Once again, Putin wants Trump to win and appears to be seeking to undermine the legitimacy of our election. Just like in 2016, Putin has deployed his conventional media, his social media operations and his intelligence assets to pursue these objectives.

“Most shockingly, Trump and his allies have decided to — again — play right along.”

To McFaul’s credit, he at least acknowledged that “China, Iran and Venezuela now in the disinformation game” as well. (For details on China’s massive efforts, see my recent American Conservative article.)

He added that “it will be up to American voters to decide when and how cooperation with foreign actors during a presidential election crosses the line,” but indicated that the main reason was “Because waiting for criminal investigations or more congressional hearings will be too late….”

Most ominously, McFaul continues to maintain that the President has remained loyal to Putin, not once criticizing him in public and often undermining policies from his own administration to contain and deter Putin’s belligerent behavior abroad.”

In contrast, Democratic nominee Joe Biden “has affirmed that his campaign will not use information or accept assistance provided by foreign actors….In addition, Biden has assured Americans that he would retaliate in response to any foreign interference.”

So when McFaul declares that “Trump and Biden’s contrasting positions on Russian interference in American elections are clear. Whether voters care about these differences, however, is not as obvious,” it sounds to me that if the President is reelected, the de-legitimization campaign by McFaul and the rest of the Blob will continue. You don’t have to call that a coup to recognize it’s not democratic politics-as-usual, either.