Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Globalists are Pushing for Anti-Jihadist Endless Wars in Africa

Tags

Africa, America First, Blob, border security, globalism, Immigration, ISIS, jihadism, Middle East, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Serenity Prayer, The Washington Post, travel ban

I started off my new article for The National Interest on America’s lost global lead in semiconductor manufacturing with the observation that “One of the leading features, and weakness[es], of globalist U.S. foreign policy has been the tendency to look mainly to foreign policy to solve problems that domestic policy could likely handle better. That’s because all else equal, conditions at home are much easier to change and control than conditions overseas.”

And one of my examples was “To eradicate, or at least reduce, jihadist terrorism, administrations from both parties mired the nation in costly and protracted foreign wars rather than secure the homeland.”

Little did I expect that the very same day this piece appeared, a front page article in the Washington Post would make clear that although the America First-oriented Trump administration has at least partly learned this lesson, the bipartisan, globalist U.S. foreign policy Blob, (which will return to power if Democratic candidate Joe Biden becomes President, and which contains many Mainstream Media journalists who faithfully serve as its mouthpieces) remains clueless.

The headline alone clinches both these cases: “ISIS attacks surge in Africa even as Trump boasts of a ‘100-percent’ defeated caliphate.”

It’s clear purposes – to spotlight a major broken Trump promise, and to whip up fears that the same kinds of jihadists who have attacked the United States are alive and kicking despite the President’s boasts, and that his ego and blockheaded isolationist foreign policy impulses will only ensure that this threat will keep metastasizing if he remains in office.

After all, “The rise in violence comes as the Trump administration moves to slash U.S. troop deployments and threatens to curtail support for local governments on the front lines of the battle against Islamist militants. The White House is considering steeper cutbacks in U.S. military forces in Africa, despite warnings from some analysts that the reductions could further hamper efforts to check the extremists’ advance.”

Worse, readers are told, the President has been repeating this mistake elsewhere: Despite performing well in killing jihadist leaders, and tightening “the noose on [ISIS] followers in Iraq and Syria, other White House policies undermined the effort to defeat violent Islamist militant ideology globally, according to …counterterrorism experts.”

Specifically, “Trump surprised his own security advisers by twice announcing — and then reversing — a decision to unilaterally withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, signaling an abandonment of U.S.-allied Kurdish fighters who were still battling thousands of Islamic State militants who fled as the caliphate was crumbling.”

And the icing on this cake of failures: Mr. Trump’s “anti-Islam rhetoric and ban on Muslim immigrants handed the militants a propaganda win, reinforcing a ‘fundamental al-Qaeda message, which is that America is against Islam’” as one of these experts contended.

Leaving aside the fact that the immigrants ban wasn’t on Muslims, but on individuals from terror-prone countries, these establishment authorities have it completely backward and the President’s generally America First-y approach is the commonsensical and strategically sound route to follow.

Unless you, like they, think that U.S. advisers or forces or whatever should spend the indefinite future running around failed regions of the world trying to stamp out the extremist factions that keep popping up precisely because of their homelands’ chronically dysfunctional conditions? And that since this strategy has worked so well in the Middle East, it’s now time to reenact it in Africa, where circumstances may be even worse? Because the continent is “already beset by poverty, corruption and the novel coronavirus”?

In fact, as America First-ers recognize, it’s precisely because Africa’s countries are (to quote the Post article) “ill-equipped to fight insurgencies that are well-armed and geographically dispersed” – or to perform as effective governments in just about any way – that Trump travel ban-like and other border security measures represent America’s best hopes by far for ensuring that Africa’s jihadist problems don’t become U.S. jihadist problems. This America First approach, by contrast, can only mire the nation in a new series of futile Endless Wars in one of the world’s least promising theaters.

And to complete this portrait of foreign policy Upside Down World, the biggest mistake in this regard that Mr. Trump has made has been his eager adoption of the globalist goal of defeating ISIS “100 percent” – and presumably eliminating jihadist threats for good with military shock and awe.

Instead, as I’ve written, he should have focused on U.S. borders all along – or at least portrayed continuing anti-terrorist military involvement in the Middle East and elsewhere as a bridge to the time when they become secur enough to keep out jihadists et al however active they are abroad.

The oft-quoted Serenity Prayer begins this way:

“God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change; 
courage to change the things I can; 
and wisdom to know the difference.”

That’s logic that’s hard to argue with – and evidence that whoever wrote it would have been an America First-er today.

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: A Spot-On, if Belated, Warning About Experts

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conflicts of interest, economists, experts, Immigration, Mainstream Media, MSM, Robert Samuelson, The Washington Post, Trade, {What's Left of) Our Economy

If you’re a normal person – meaning someone who doesn’t follow the U.S. economy especially closely – you have no reason to care much about the news that long-time economics columnist Robert J. Samuelson announced his retirement this week. In fact, even though I follow the economy really closely, I don’t much care either about his departure as such, either.

Nonetheless, one point Samuelson made in his farewell piece in the Washington Post does deserve everyone’s attention, and that was the (reluctant) swipe he took at the character of economists. And this indictment presumably includes many of the discipline’s leading lights, because the observation was made in the context of his claim that they’ve taught him a lot, and because his position gave him regular access to so many of them.

But first, some full disclosure. I’ve dealt with Samuelson on a steady basis literally for decades, mainly because pundits like him have a powerful megaphone, and therefore convincing him that some finding made by me or one of my various colleagues was worth covering boosted the odds that policy makers would pay attention.

He’s been refreshingly respectful and reasonably open-minded, and occasionally took the bait. So I was grateful for that. Otherwise, he’s been a decidedly faithful transmitter of the national, and especially academic and think tank version of, economic policy conventional wisdom, including on trade policy. In that respect, I found him less impressive. The only exception that come to mind – he’s repeatedly, and quite emphatically, challenged the notion that the more immigrants the United States admits, legally or otherwise, the more prosperous the nation as a whole will be. (See, e.g.. here.)

As a result, although in his swan song Samuelson presented some major lessons he says he’s learned about the economy and life in general, they’re hardly gold mines of insight. But what he said about economists was a true shocker, and something to which everyone should pay attention – his fellow journalists first and foremost.

As implied above, Samuelson didn’t exactly relish being critical. For he began by insisting that “With some exceptions, most [of the economists in his Rolodex] are intelligent, informed, engaged and decent. In my experience, this truth spans the political spectrum.”

But in the very next sentences, he maintained that

“But it’s not the only truth. Another is this:  Economists consistently overstate how much they know about the economy and how easily they can influence it.  [Samuelson’s emphasis.] They maintain their political and corporate relevance by postulating pleasant policies.”

And a few column inches down, he added that “the quest for economic status and power pushes economists and their political sponsors toward exaggerated promises that lead to widespread public disappointment.”

In other words, according to Samuelson, the economists with whom he’s continually consulted (and who are mainstays for pretty much every other leading economic journalist and pundit you can think of) are generally nice people personally, but “consistently” they succumb to temptations to cast aside intellectual honesty. And the references to “political and corporate relevance” and “political sponsors” aren’t far from charges of outright corruption.

The 75-year old Samuelson closed this final column with an observation that hit particularly close to home for this 66-year old: “I am a man of the 20th century, but we are now facing the problems of the 21st century, which demand new policies and norms.”

I’m trying to keep up – how well I’m succeeding of course ultimately is up to you. But when it comes to identifying the need for new policies and norms, one area in which I think I’ve done a pretty good job has been pointing out that the economics and business press should do a much better job revealing the actual and potential conflicts of interests of the experts it repeatedly treats as dispassionate truth-seekers. (See, e.g., here.)

So it was gratifying to see someone as established as Samuelson reinforcing this case, however implicitly – even if he waited till he was walking out the door.

Im-Politic: More Evidence That Trump Should Really be Trump

Tags

2018 elections, African Americans, Democrats, election 2020, establishment Republicans, Im-Politic, Immigration, impeachment, Jacob Blake, Joe Biden, Joseph Simonson, Kamala Harris, Kenosha, law enforcement, Mickey Kaus, Obamacare, Open Borders, police shooting, race relations, regulations, Republican National Committee, Republicans, riots, RNC, Rust Belt, tax cuts, trade policy, Trump, Washington Examiner, white working class

Since the early months of Donald Trump’s presidency, I and many of those who backed his election have been frustrated by his frequent support for and even prioritizing of issues and positions championed by orthodox Republicans and conseratives. After all, there was little reason to believe that he won the Republican nomination, much less the White House, because he was focused laser-like on cutting taxes and regulations or eliminating Obamacare. If that’s what either Republican or overall voters wanted, then you’d think that an orthodox Republican would have wound up running against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton – and triumphing.

One reason I came up with to explain the early burst of conservative traditionalism from Mr Trump (highlighted by a failed effort at healthcare reform and a successful full court press waged to pass the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017) was his need to make sure that the establishment wing of his party stayed with him if he faced an impeachment.

His gambit worked, but even though the impeachment threat is gone, I still hear the President talking up the tax cuts and regulation thing way too much for my tastes. So it’s more than a little interesting to have just learned that, at least according to a report last week in the Washington [D.C.] Examiner, I haven’t been alone. (Or, more accurately, I and a handful of nationalist-populist analysts like Mickey Kaus haven’t been alone.) In this article, Examiner correspondent Joseph Simonson contends that some folks connected with the Republican National Committee (RNC) came to the same conclusion in the late summer and early fall of 2018. And just as important – their analysis came just before the GOP suffered major setbacks in that year’s Congressional elections after doubling down on conventional Republicanism.

Among the highlights of the report (whose existence the RNC denies):

>”Voter data from areas such as Kenosha County, Wisconsin, [we’ll return to this astonishing coincidence below] and other exurban communities, the individual said, showed a troubling trend. Although voters there very narrowly backed Trump in 2016, President Barack Obama’s margins were in the double digits in 2008 and 2012.”

>”Unlike members of Trump’s base, who can be trusted to vote for just about any Republican candidate, these voters feel no strong affinity toward the GOP. Moreover, the interests of those who live in communities such as Kenosha differ greatly from those who live in the Philadelphia suburbs in Pennsylvania.

“These Rust Belt voters favor stronger social safety nets and hawkishness on trade, rather than typical GOP orthodoxies such as lower tax rates and an easier regulatory environment for businesses. That is not to say these voters oppose those things, but the rhetorical obsession from GOP donors and members of the party do little to excite one-time Trump voters.”

>“Back in 2018 the general response to the report from others who worked at the RNC, said one individual, was, ‘well, we have socialism’ as an attack against Democrats and boasts about their new digital voter turnout apparatus.’”

>”Steve Bannon, the former aide to the president who was indicted last week on fraud charges, had viewed the same report a year ago and concluded that the upcoming election against Biden looked like a “blow out” in the former vice president’s favor.”

But let’s get back to the Kenosha point – which of course is unusually interesting and important given the race- and police-shooting-related violence that just convulsed the small city recently. It’s also interesting and important because the alleged report’s treatment of racial issues indicates that the authors weren’t completely prescient.

Specifically, they faulted the RNC for wasting time and resources on a  “coalition building” effort aimed at “enlisting the support from black, Hispanic, and Asian voters who make only a marginal difference in the Midwest and [that] can prove potentially damaging if more likely Republicans are neglected.”

Explained one person quoted by Simonson (and possibly one of the authors): “Lots of these people at the RNC are in a state of denial. The base of the GOP are white people, and that gives the party an advantage in national elections. You could not have a voter operation in California whatsoever, and it wouldn’t make any difference, but the RNC does because they don’t want to admit those states are lost forever.” .

Yet even before the eruption of violence in Kenosha (and too many other communities), this analysis overlooked a crucial reality: There was never any reason to assume that, in the Midwest Rust Belt states so crucial to the President’s 2016 victory and yet won so narrowly, that significant portions of the African American vote couldn’t be attracted without alienating the white working class. For both blacks and whites alike in industrial communities have been harmed by the same pre-Trump trade policies strongly supported by his chief November rival Joe Biden and many other Democrats. (For one example of the impact on African Americans, see this post.) Moreover, among the biggest losers from the Open Borders-friendly immigration policies now openly championed, instead of stealthily fostered, by the Democratic Party mainstream, have been African Americans.

It’s not that the President and Republicans had to convince massive numbers of African Americans with these arguments. A few dozen thousand could be more than enough to make a big difference this fall. And there’s some polling data indicating that the strategy was working even before the opening of a Republican convention that featured numerous African American speakers.

Now of course we’re post-the Jacob Blake shooting by Kenosha police and the subsequent rioting and vigilantism. We’re also post-the Biden choice of woman-of-color Kamala Harris as his running mate. Will those developments sink the Trump outreach effort to African Americans and validate the 2018 memo’s arguments?

Certainly the Harris choice doesn’t look like a game-changer. The California Senator, you’ll remember, was decisively rejected by African American voters during the Democratic primaries. I’m less certain about the Kenosha Effect. On the one hand, Mr. Trump has expressed precious little empathy for black victims of police shootings. On the other hand, he has villified the rioting and looting that are destroying the businesses – including African-American-owned – relied on by many urban black neighborhoods in cities that have long stagnated, at best, under Democratic Mayors. And this poll I highlighted a few weeks ago presents significant evidence that most African Americans have no interest in fewer police on the streets where they live.

It’s not hard to imagine a Trump campaign message developing over the next two months that strikes a much better balance. And an early test case looks set for tomorrow with the President’s planned visit to Kenosha. Somewhat harder to imagine is Mr. Trump significantly downplaying issues like tax and regulatory cuts, and ending Obamacare. As for his priorities if he wins reelection? At this point, the evidence is so mixed that I feel clueless. So stay tuned!

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: The Democrats Embrace (Disastrously Failed) Nation-Building

Tags

Afghanistan, America First, Democratic Party, Democratic platform, Democrats, forever wars, globalism, Immigration, Iraq, Middle East, nation-building, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, p, terrorism, Vietnam War

Longstanding conventional wisdom holds that political party platforms are usually either meaningless, just for show, or exercises in pandering various constituencies. And when I finished reading the Democrats’ latest version, I thought to myself, “Let’s hope so!”

My main concerns don’t revolve around those planks that have received the most attention – notably surrounding the treatment of Medicare for All and healthcare for illegal aliens and violent crime/police defunding) and climate change and the Green New Deal. (Actually, as I read it, the document generally was less far Left on these issues than presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, were during the primary campaign.) To be sure, they’re still concerns. My main concern, though, has to do with a lower profile, but still crucial issue, and one that was widely ignored both during the primaries and at last week’s convention: foreign policy.

Specifically, in contrast to the tightrope walking evident when it came to the hot button topics, the platform went all-in on nation-building.

To some extent, this was no surprise. For whether they belong to the party’s center or its progressive wing, nearly all Democrats are globalists. They have, and will continue, to disagree strongly about specific ways to conduct globalist foreign policies – e.g., whether to intervene militarily or not in certain foreign conflicts or crises, or the related issue of whether generally to rely more on the military or on diplomacy or on foreign aid as the tool of first resort. But nearly all accept the central tenet of globalism, which is the belief that the United States can never be acceptably free, secure and prosperous unless the rest of the world is acceptably free, secure, and prosperous. And this approach inevitably involves nation-building – trying to turn unsuccessful countries and even entire regions into something they have never been, or have not been for centuries: successful countries and regions..

So what, you might ask? Here’s what. As logical as nation-building sounds, it’s been responsible for three of the most damaging foreign policy disasters in recent American history – the Vietnam War, the second Iraq War, and an Afghanistan operation that began as a needed anti-terrorism campaign and steadily expanded into a sweeping effort not only to build a nation but to create one where none had ever existed. And let’s not forget minor blunders like ill-starred peace-keeping efforts in Haiti and Somalia.

In fact, nation-building has been so discredited that even many globalists have been pouring cold water on it lately. (See, e.g., here and here.) 

But not the Democrats this year – at least judging from their platform. The phrase isn’t used – a sign that the term has become toxic. But it’s there, all the same – and in spades. For example:

p. 64: “Democrats will address the root causes of [international] migration—violence and insecurity, poverty, pervasive corruption, lack of educational and economic opportunity, and the impacts of climate change. Disciplined American leadership and well-designed assistance programs can help prevent and mitigate the effects of migration crises around the world, from Southeast Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa to Central America.”

p. 76: “Rather than occupy countries and overthrow regimes to prevent terrorist attacks, Democrats will prioritize more effective and less costly diplomatic, intelligence, and law enforcement tools….And we will mobilize our partners to make sustained investments that can prevent conflict and help extinguish the flames on which extremists feed.”

p. 82: “Democrats will sustain the global effort to defeat ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates. We will ensure that the world is equally committed to the difficult task that follows military success: dealing with the underlying conditions that allowed violent extremism to flourish in the first place.”

p. 87: “Rather than coerce our neighbors into supporting cruel migration policies, we will work with our regional and international partners to address the root causes of migration—violence and insecurity, weak rule of law, lack of educational and economic opportunity, pervasive corruption, and environmental degradation.”

p. 90: “Turning the page on two decades of large-scale military deployments and open-ended wars in the Middle East does not mean the United States will abandon a region where we and our partners still have enduring interests. Democrats believe it’s past time, however, to rebalance our tools, engagement, and relationships in the Middle East away from military intervention—leading with pragmatic diplomacy to lay the groundwork for a more peaceful, stable, and free region.”

p. 90: “Democrats…believe we need to reset our relations with our Gulf partners to better advance our interests and values. The United States has an interest in helping our partners contend with legitimate security threats; we will support their political and economic modernization and encourage efforts to reduce regional tensions.”

Especially striking about this Democratic faith in nation-building is its strength as a viable strategy for the Middle East, and the confidence that it can substitute effectively for the “forever wars” they have pledged to end (p. 72).  As has usually been the case with believers that ploughshares always work better than swords in protecting national security, they have focused on means rather than the overarching matter of ends, and defined out of existence the challenge of promoting or defending interests that they, too, view as vital when their preferred tactics prove inadequate.   

There’s really only one way out of this dilemma – adopting the kind of priority-setting America First foreign policies that not even President Trump has fully embraced (as I described at length in the National Interest piece linked above).  What a tragedy that the Democrats’ party-wide case of Trump Derangement Syndrome will surely prevent them from even considering this recipe for pragmatism, either.         

Im-Politic: When It’s Open Borders for U.S. Stimulus Funds

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CCP Virus, Central America, coronavirus, COVID 19, El Salvador, Financial Times, Guatemala, Honduras, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, Mexico, Nicaragua, Open Borders, remittances, stimulus, The Washington Post, Wuhan virus, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Ever since the CCP Virus began devastating the U.S. economy, I’ve been calling for the U.S. government to “go big” on stimulus. That means I’ve been especially frustrated with the large number of Congressional Republicans who seem determined to keep down the amount of unemployment and other aid to be provided by the new round of proposed relief legislation that’s still being debated – even after the last supplemental jobless benefits have run out.

Here’s a development, though, that justifies some skepticism about shoveling money out the door as fast as possible: As reported in both The Washington Post and the Financial Times, it’s clear that a pretty sizable share of the income support funds being sent to immigrants in the United States have been forwarded on to their home countries, especially Mexico and the Central American states of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Honduras. And it’s surely the same story for whatever Paycheck Protection Program monies have been sent to businesses owned by newcomers from these countries. 

In addition, these articles add to the evidence undercutting the common claim (debunked already in RealityChek posts like this one) that even illegal residents greatly benefit the U.S. economy on net because these border crossers wind up spending so much on domestic goods and services, thereby boosting America’s growth and overall employment, and contributing to the national tax base.

Compared with the total size of the U.S. economy and all the stimulus funding provided to date, the sums sent overseas (called remittances) are piddling. Mexico, for example, received $36 billion worth of these payments last year, and are running 10.6 percent higher this year so far. And this source tells us that nearly all came from the United States. Yet the federal government has provided literally trillions of dollars worth of virus-related aid to individuals and businesses.

At the same time, compared with the U.S. population (currently some 330 million), the share born in these countries and living in the United States both legally and illegally remains pretty modest itself – about 14.8 million in 2016 (the latest data available). That’s less than five percent. Further, illegals from Mexico and the Central American countries represented an estimated 46 percent of the total foreign born population in the United States as of 2017, and they’re not eligible for federal relief.  This means that it’s a relatively small number of Americans sending those tens of billions of dollars overseas, and a significant amount of resources transferred abroad per immigrant. (The number of actual senders is even smaller if you just count workers and business owners, and not their non-working family members.) 

Still, at a time of great privation in the United States, why are any government resources going right out the door (other than spending on imports – which of course takes place among these immigrants, too)? Clearly there are currently many millions of Americans for whom collectively about $35 billion would make a real difference nowadays.

By the way, remittances aren’t sent home only by immigrants in the United States from Mexico and Central America. Immigrants from everywhere transfer these funds (including to China, reported to be second biggest recipient country).  But Mexico is Number One by far and the Central American countries rank high as well.  ` 

The remittances information in the Post and Financial Times articles is also difficult at best to square in particular with the claim that illegal aliens are major engines of U.S. growth and prosperity. It’s already well-established that most work in low-wage jobs – so their spending power is pretty modest to start with. Now, both the Post and Financial Times articles report that it’s common for them to send abroad hundreds and even thousands of dollars each month.

These funds are overwhelmingly going to help hard-pressed family members in sending countries, which clearly stems from admirable values. Nevertheless, this is all money that does little, if anything, to enrich the U.S. economy, or create more employment for Americans. Unless you think that families in Mexico or Central America that depending heavily on funds from the United States are spending like gangbusters on imports of U.S.-made goods and services?

Because I’m a “go big” stimulus supporter, I’m in a lousy position logically speaking to insist that legislation going forward contain lots of strings to prevent waste and even fraud.  Those can’t be neglected, but they can’t be top priorities for anyone like me who believes that this is still a full-blown economic emergency. But I’m also wondering how hard it would be for Washington at least to tax funds like remittances that simply leave the country. 

What I’m even less optimistic about, though:  that even when confronted with this new information about remittances from illegals, the bipartisan Open Borders Lobby will stop making transparently absurd claims that that ever more of these newcomers are essential for ensuring continued American well-being, or rebuilding it.

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

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: When Industries Disappear

Tags

apparel, big government, Breitbart.com, conservatves, embroidery, Frances Martel, Immigration, labor unions, manufacturing, New Jersey, skills, textiles, Union City, unions, {What's Left of) Our Economy

Until I read Frances Martel’s “Hanging by a Thread,” I used to think of Union City as little more than one of those bleak-looking smallish northern New Jersey municipalities the Amtrak trains pass through on their way between New York City and points south.  How wrong I was!  And for such wide-ranging policy and political reasons!  

Not that you can’t simply enjoy her long feature for Breitbart.com for the fascinating descriptions of what makes her hometown special geologically (e.g., it sits on lots of Manhattan bedrock-like granite, good for supporting factories with heavy machines and multistory housing) and demographically (because it developed fairly late in the 19^th century, its population was always dominated by immigrants).

Clearly important as well is Martel’s main theme – how manufacturing built solid prosperity for Union City from the get-go, and how its demise, due to developments like (but not restricted to) offshoring-obsessed U.S. trade policies helped bring punishingly hard times. (Full disclosure: Martel interviewed me for the article, and quoted me quite generously.)

But if you’re thinking this is only an article for trade and/or manufacturing mavens, or for New Jersey history aficionadoes, you’re sorely mistaken. For along the way, “Hanging by a Thread” offers important insights into how these closely related subjects profoundly affect many of the nation’s other major issues and challenges.

For example, Martel offers a novel twist on the notion that the United States welcomed so many immigrants so consistently (though not always) from the mid-19^th century onwards in particular because of its urgent need for unskilled labor. No doubt most of the newcomers were poorly educated. But as “Hanging” makes clear, industry during this period used lots of complicated machinery, including the embroidery sector that became concentrated in Union City.

As Union City’s official historian told Martel, many of its first immigrants came from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and other parts of Europe with major textile industries, and brought with them extensive experience working with such devices that employers clearly found valuable.

Since skills (of different kinds, of course) remain so crucial to economic success today, Union City’s past raises the question of whether – as Open Borders advocates seem to believe – the United States today should indiscriminately welcome immigrants regardless of skill levels and gainful employability.

Two other messages coming through loud and clear from Martel’s research and analysis are especially important for conservatives to heed. The first has to do with unions. Martel’s parents were hard-line anti-communists who fled Castro’s Cuba, and her mother worked in apparel. The author explains that these arrangements were seen as “a critical part of the factory ecosystem.” The following exchange, with her mother speaking first, makes the point vividly:

“‘I have always had a good union. It works, I think. It works to have a union because without a union, in a private place, you’re screwed,’ she told me.

“‘You don’t feel that there is a conflict between that and being a capitalist?’” I asked…..

“‘No. What? Being a capitalist? No,’ she replied, with confusion. ‘No, that has nothing to do with socialism, it’s just so that the worker has someone to defend them. If you don’t have a job, they can fire you whenever. That’s not fair. To throw you out for no reason, it’s unfair ifyou are working well.’”

Martel’s second message for conservatives actually echoes a point I’ve made before (e.g., here): The more enthusiastically traditional free trade policies are pursued by American leaders, the bigger government’s going to get. But as Martel makes clear, these approaches to the global economy are bound to generate needs that far exceed the kinds of welfare state benefits (ranging from income support to heavily subsidized healthcare) used to keep living standards above third world levels (or at least try to do so).

As the Union City example shows, relentless globalization can also turbocharge government’s role in economic development itself. The author explains that, since 2000, Union City Mayor Bob Stack (a big-city machine politician if ever there was one)

“took the reins on the eve of the guillotine falling on embroidery and has taken to meticulously rebuilding the identity of the city. He tore down Roosevelt Stadium, the sports venue at the heart of the city, to build a new Union City High School – with a stadium on the roof. Union City previously boasted two high schools, one for Union Hill and one for West Hoboken, that Stack turned into middle schools. He built parks in honor of the city’s Cuban, Colombian, and Dominican populations, and an ‘International Park.’ Seemingly every other street has a water park open in the summer for children to play in – the biggest, Firefighters’ Memorial Park, boasts an Olympic-sized swimming pool. His administration also refurbished the downtown library into the Musto Cultural Center and built its replacement, the library at José Martí Middle School (which his administration also built), in the shadow of what was once St. Michael’s monastery, an imposing Catholic historic site that now houses a Korean Presbyterian congregation.”

In other words, Union City realistically recognized the choices before it, and rejected “the option much of the Rust Belt took: do nothing, abandon ship, hope the invisible hand swoops in before you hit the concrete.” As a result (and also because of its proximity to New York City), it’s more than avoided the ghost town fates of counterparts like Gary, Indiana, Youngstown, Ohio, and Detroit, Michigan.

Im-Politic: Have Americans Got Family Policy All Wrong?

Tags

David Brooks, education, extended family, families, globalization, Im-Politic, Immigration, nuclear family, social policy, The Atlantic, women

David Brooks has scored a four-bagger with his new Atlantic article on whether the recent American focus on maintaining and fortifying the nuclear family has been such a hot idea. He’s powerfully challenged the conventional wisdom about a long-time social and cultural institution and public policy goal. He’s taught readers fascinating and important lessons about American social history. He’s spotlighted a host of recent developments and trends on this crucial front. And (I guess this is just my own personal bag) in the process, he’s reminded me of what a clueless snob I can be in jumping to conclusions.

To continue momentarily on a personal note, I was staring in disbelief as I wrote most of the above, for Brooks, a New York Times columnist, has never struck me as much more than the kind of establishment conservative who long dominated the Republican Party and the right half of the mainstream media, and who’s spent the last three years bitterly inveighing against the rise of Trump-ian populism – without offering any useful suggestions as to what might replace it.

It’s true that Brooks had also made quite a name for himself as a social and cultural commentator, but I never paid much attention to these writings. If his new Atlantic article is any indication, that was a major mistake.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with Brooks’ main policy argument – that it’s no longer possible to restore the nuclear family’s primacy in American society, because that prominence only emerged because of overall national conditions in the post-World War II United States that simply can’t be replicated. In particular, I still strongly doubt that the developments that have weakened the nuclear family were inevitable, or were all inevitable, and are therefore irreversible.

I’m thinking of indiscriminate economic globalization and Open Borders-friendly mass immigration policies that have destroyed generations of middle class jobs and the incomes and economic opportunity they create; welfare policies that surely discouraged to some degree the maintenance, especially in the African-American community, of traditional two-parent families; the ever-mounting incompetence of the nation’s public primary and secondary schools; and a values transition that (thankfully) fostered greater social and cultural freedom and diversity, but that also unmistakably encouraged individualism, pointless exhibitionism, and the insistence on instant gratification to run riot, and all but scorned the idea of commonly accepted norms, self-restraint, and short-term sacrifice for long-term gain.

In other words, maybe the dominance of the nuclear family nurtured much of the economic progress and prosperity in particular that characterized the 1950s and 1960s, rather than the other way around.

But what I’m thinking mainly about today aren’t those big policy and (inevitably politicized) questions, but about some of the forms of extended families that Brooks mentioned prominently, and that I had completely forgotten about. Not that I’m the only one. But this blind spot recently led me in particular to ridicule someone and his outlook on life (not to his face, but to friends and relatives) who deserved much better.

It came at a wedding during which at one point, the father of the groom stood up to give his toast to the happy couple, and began waxing nostalgic (as parents at these moments understandably do) about the good old days of his son’s youth. He was anything but silver-tongued, but one point he made struck me at the time as especially absurd and revealingly parochial. Back then, he pointed out, so many of the aunts and uncles and cousins lived on the same block, and we saw each other all the time. But now, most of the family has spread out as far as – and he named a town a whole two towns, and only a few miles, away.

I found this hilariously small-minded, and missed few opportunities to bring up his remarks and what the volumes they allegedly and unflatteringly spoke about this kind of crimped perspective (which also characterized many attendees at the affair).

But as Brooks’ article pointed out, these types of extended families have been the norm for much of American history, and boasted and nurtured many virtues that sadly are in short supply today – like community and mutual support and the spread of constructive social and personal norms and values.

So as I was reading his piece, I began to think that yes, there’s a big difference between being able to spontaneously run into relatives just by stepping out the front door and seeing them on the front porch across the street, or at the supermarket, and needing to take a short drive two towns over in order to visit.

And I began thinking about the history of both sides of my own childhood nuclear family. My father’s father came to America from Lithuania and was aided almost as soon as he stepped off the boat not only by various Jewish-American charities, but by relatives that preceded him and by an organization comprised of other immigrants from the same town. He remained active in their affairs for the next five or six decades.

My mother’s parents lived in a small apartment building in the south-ish Bronx that was full of related families. I spent the first nine years of my own life in a small apartment building in Flushing, Queens (New York City) that was dominated by two or three closely-related families. They not only socialized constantly; they took summer vacations with each other at the same bungalow colony a little ways upstate.

So most of my playmates were each other’s cousins. Moreover, I also went to grade school with and hung out with a bunch of Irish-American kids from across the street who were related as well. Meanwhile, when we were very young, the various mothers took their turns walking us the six blocks to and from P.S. 20. And at about the same time, when my brother was born, we moved upstairs to a larger apartment in the same building and my mother’s mother moved into our old place. I.e., instant babysitter!

These networks, by the way, didn’t vanish even in the suburban north shore of Long Island to which my family moved in the early 1960s. Even though single family houses had replaced apartment buildings, lots of our neighbors in our community were very chummy, and have remained so. Ditto for their kids. (My father was kind of standoffish for various reasons, but the sheer number of chuldren for my brother and I to play with and the advantages of car-pooling kept us at least in the outer reaches of these circles.)

Nor, apparently, was this community unique. I was very moved about a year ago to read a Facebook post from an alum of my high school (who I didn’t know but have connected with since) to another alum (who I didn’t know either and haven’t connected with) fondly remembering the days when all the families on their block held cookouts and other backyard parties together and went on outings and looked after each other’s kids.

And according to Brooks, these patterns and structures were common during the 1950s and 1960s:

“[N]uclear families in this era were much more connected to other nuclear families than they are today—constituting a “modified extended family,” as the sociologist Eugene Litwak calls it, ‘a coalition of nuclear families in a state of mutual dependence.’ Even as late as the 1950s, before television and air-conditioning had fully caught on, people continued to live on one another’s front porches and were part of one another’s lives. Friends felt free to discipline one another’s children.”

Brooks isn’t indiscriminately nostalgic for extended families, and rightly notes major drawbacks:

“[T]hey can…be exhausting and stifling. They allow little privacy; you are forced to be in daily intimate contact with people you didn’t choose. There’s more stability but less mobility. Family bonds are thicker, but individual choice is diminished. You have less space to make your own way in life.”

And no small matter: “[M]ost women were relegated to the home. Many corporations, well into the mid-20th century, barred married women from employment: Companies would hire single women, but if those women got married, they would have to quit. Demeaning and disempowering treatment of women was rampant. Women spent enormous numbers of hours trapped inside the home under the headship of their husband, raising children.”

Further, these extended families do tend to encourage parochialism that can too easily degenerate into outright ignorance of, indifference to, and even hostility toward the outside world, or certain major portions of it.

Is some kind of middle ground possible? Brooks insists that that train has left the station:

“Today, only a minority of American households are traditional two-parent nuclear families and only one-third of American individuals live in this kind of family. That 1950–65 window was not normal.”

Again, I’m skeptical about abject pessimism – just as I am about Brooks’ (cautious) optimism about the possibility of building a healthy society with many more non-nuclear families and many fewer nuclear families than even exist today. More important for now, though, is recognizing Brooks’ stunning achievement – which will force any but the completely closed-minded to start thinking.

Im-Politic: How Mexico’s Paying for the Border Wall After All

Tags

AMLO, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, asylum seekers, border security, border wall, caravans, Central America, illegal immigration, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, international law, Jorge Ramos, Mexico, Migrant Protection Protocols, migrants, The New York Times, Trump

Here’s quite the spectacular new entry in the “Life is Strange” category: President Trump has turned out to be right in predicting that Mexico would pay for a border wall to curb illegal immigration. Only this victory has taken a form that neither Mr. Trump nor anyone else could have possibly expected. It didn’t even totally entail developments at the border envisioned!

It’s a major win nonetheless, and if you doubt me, then take the word of Jorge Ramos, the well known anchor for Spanish language TV network Univision, a major champion of de facto Open Borders policies, and of course no fan of the President’s. 

For as Ramos has pointed out in a New York Times op-ed piece yesterday, Mexico has created at least the functional equivalent of a wall. He’s referring to the decision (forced by a very effective – though of course widely condemned – tariffs and border-closing threat by Mr. Trump, as Ramos ruefully observed) of Mexico’s new President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (nicknamed “AMLO”) to use Mexican forces to prevent Central American migrants and various other supposed asylum seekers from entering the United States en masse. Nor has Ramos been the only mass immigration advocate to point out this specific Trump success.

Some of these Mexican National Guards personnel are helping the United States enforce its new policy that permits requiring many asylum seekers to stay in Mexico while their cases are judged. This Migrant Protection Protocols program replaces the obligation created by international law that until now has been interpreted to rquire Washington to admit  U.S.-bound asylum seekers’ entry even before evaluation. Although motivated by entirely understandable humanitarian concerns, this measure never anticipated the type of mass migration and related asylum fraud situation faced by the United States nowadays.

Other Mexican National Guards have been deployed to the country’s southern border with Guatemala, where they’ve been unmistakably effective in preventing huge caravans of Central American migrants from traveling through Mexico to reach the U.S.-Mexico border.

The United States has been indirectly financing a small portion of these efforts (through training programs to help for Central American officials better control their own borders). But the vast majority of spending on these efforts is coming from Mexico.

The President is entirely correct in continuing to emphasize the need for more effective physical barriers at the U.S.-Mexico border. But the essence of his famous campaign wall-building promise was to improve America’s own border security greatly, and to make Mexico pay the costs. And that’s exactly what’s now happening to a major extent. Even better – this approach is working. Illegal crossings at the U.S. border are down, and Mexico’s Lopez Obrador says that the migrants groups seeking to enter his country are shrinking.

President Trump has been supplied with abundant material for reelection campaign ads this week (notably, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s ripping up of her ceremonial State of the Union transcript). Jorge Ramos’ op-ed has just given him some more.

Im-Politic: The Mainstream Media Keep Coddling Illegal Alien Crime

Tags

Central America, crime, gang violence, gangs, illegal aliens, Im-Politic, Immigration, Long Island, Mainstream Media, MS-13, Open Borders, Rupert Murdoch, The New York Post, The New York Times, Trump

Ah, the best laid plans of mice and bloggers.

I’m in the middle of a planned little RealityChek break but sometimes you can be sitting around reading the papers lazily and an item (or two) just jolts you into action. In this case, it was the radically different coverage by The New York Post and The New York Times of Friday’s announcement of mass arrests on Long Island, New York, of alleged members of the Central America-based gang MS-13.

MS-13 is held responsible for any number of horrific murders and other crimes in the area (and around the nation), and the news made the front pages of both papers. The Post‘s initial display was more prominent, but then again, it’s a more regionally focused publication, so no one can have any legitimate beef with The Times somewhat lower key approach. Indeed, let’s not forget that The Times is a more than somewhat lower-keyed paper to start with.

But here’s what should be the subject of a big beef. Even though immigration policy was by no means the Post article’s main angle, the print edition article did quote “a federal source” (federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities worked together on the investigations leading to the arrests) as saying that an estimated half of the defendants are non-citizens in the United States illegally. (This claim was left out of the on-line version.) Both versions of the article quoted (presumably other) officials as stating that the newly indicted, in the reporters’ words, “include illegal immigrants, US citizens, and non-citizens who are in the country legally.”

And at the very end, the article noted that “President Donald Trump has often cited the dangers of the MS-13 “infestation” to push for tougher immigration laws.”

All in all, then, this tabloid, owned by Australian conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, and which often covers and comments on the President favorably, looks to have provided an account of the arrests with an appropriate degree of balance and context.

You’d think that The New York Times, which long has proudly boasted that it presents “All the News That’s Fit to Print” would have performed at least as well. But do you know how many times The Times coverage, in print or on-line, mentioned the legal status of any of those arrested? Exactly none.

The paper did manage, though, to report – quite prominently in the piece – that “The gang’s notoriety and bloody tactics have caught the attention of President Trump, who has often invoked its name and reputation as a way to justify his immigration policy. He has referred to the group as an ‘infestation’ and to its members as ‘animals.’ In 2018, he invited the mother of one MS-13 murder victim to be his guest at the State of the Union address.

“And on Friday, the president went on Twitter to use the arrests as an argument for his immigration policy, saying that the gang takedown was an example of how ‘we are getting MS-13 gang members, and many other people that shouldn’t be here, out of our country.’”

In other words, any’one relying solely on The Times coverage could easily have gotten the impression that Mr. Trump is simply using MS-13 as a baseless – or at least suspicious – way to fan immigration-related fears. 

Since it’s a free country, The Times is perfectly within its rights to pretend or to suggest that the spread of Central American-based gangs like MS-13 has absolutely nothing to do with American immigration policy — except in the minds of xenophobes like President Trump.  But this kind of treatment belongs in its commentary pages, not in hard news reporting where facts and accurate context are supposed to matter.

Sadly, though, the paper’s coverage is only the latest instance of Mainstream Media news organizations — and other Open Borders supporters — coddling a vicious criminal ring which would have only a minor presence in America had the nation’s previous Presidents and Congresses taken seriously their responsibility to enforce border security.  As a result, it’s legitimate to wonder how many more innocent residents of this country, legal and illegal, need to be victimized by illegal alien crime for its enablers to wake up.