Im-Politic: When Clerics Lose It

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African Americans, arson, curfews, DC protests, DC riots, Episcopalians, George Floyd, Im-Politic, Lafayette Park, law and order, law enforcement, liberals, Marriann Budde, Muriel Bowser, police brutality, racism, riots, Rob Fisher, St. John's Church, Trump, violence, White House

However spirited it’s been, new – and, to me, surprising – odds-on favorites have emerged in the competition for the title of “Most Guilt-Saturated Liberal of 2020.” The pace-setters? Leaders of the Episcopalian Church in the District of Columbia (D.C.). How have they forged ahead? By expressing much more outrage at President Trump for allegedly using the St. John’s Church located just across Lafayette Park from the White House as a photo op – and for his supposed insensitivity to D.C. protestors’ legitimate racial justice and police brutality concerns – than at the torching of the church on Saturday night.

Think I’m kidding? Then just check out this news wire service account. Don’t bother expecting a syllable of condemnation from these clerics at the destruction of a spiritual center of their own diocese. There weren’t any. In fact, the Rev. Mariann Budde, the bishop of the diocese, belittled this act of violence: “We can rebuild the church. We can replace the furnishings of a nursery,” she said, referring to the damaged area. “We can’t bring a man’s life back.”

I guess she doesn’t agree with her colleague from Connecticut, the Rev. Miguelina Howell, who told her congregants in November, 2015, “Our buildings are holy ground, spaces where we find a sense of community, where we are fed and nourished. It is not only a space in which to dwell, but also a space to be formed, prepared and sent out into the world to bear witness of God’s faithfulness and greatness.” Except in a Tuesday radio interview, Budde also referred to the St. John’s grounds as “our sacred space.” Because the President had the temerity to stand on them.  

Nor has Budde evidently thought about the horror that might have been had the church – and especially the nursery, suffered the greatest damage – not been empty. Or maybe she thinks that the arsonists took great care to make sure that no lives were threatened? Or were able to set a fire skillfully enough to ensure that no bystanders in the park or on H or 16th Sts. NW would eventually become victims?

And these weren’t simply Budde’s initial reactions. By this morning, presumably, she’s had time to reflect further. And here’s what she said on National Public Radio:

“Look, I wasn’t happy about the fire. The violence on our streets right now is heartbreaking to me. I want to keep our focus on the precipitating causes of the events of this week and to concentrate my outrage at the wrongful death of George Floyd and the string of African Americans who have preceded him and the history of abuse and violence. I want to acknowledge the loss of property but in no way equate it with the loss of life….”

The most charitable reasonable translation of these words into plain English: “Morally speaking, I can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

Moreover, however valid – indeed, essential – it is to distinguish between property and human life, she – again – shouldn’t be dismissing the grounds of her own church, or any church, as just any property, especially when she’s willing to wave the “sacred space” flag when it suits Never Trumper purposes.

In case you think she’s an atypical voice for her Diocese’s leadership – don’t. Its Facebook page, which it uses actively, contains not a word of condemnation for the church arson, either.

And here’s the reaction of St. John’s rector Rev. Rob Fisher the day after the arson:

“Who knows who set the fire? We have no idea. But I think it’s important to say, we know that one thing for sure is that they weren’t people who were representative of what this is all about..It’s really sad to look in and see the nursery with children’s toys and books and a crib and changing table all just completely torched. But it didn’t get beyond that.”

Not a lot of outrage there, either.

It’s also important to examine critically the references of both Budde and Fisher (and so many others, including DC Mayor Muriel Boswer) to the idea that federal authorities acted “shamefully” when they ordered the St. John’s/Lafayette Park area cleared so that Mr. Trump could walk to the church roughly half an hour before Bowser’s 7 PM widely communicated curfew set in. Their main offense, it seems, was directing federal police to move with dispatch (and, it turns out, in certain instances brusquely) against civilians who were still exercising their pre-curfew legal right to protest peacefully.

What this indictment completely overlooks:

>When you’re protesting peacefully before a curfew begins, if you’re someone with any good will and/or half a brain, you don’t wait until the last minute to leave.

>That goes double when the area is right next door to the official residence of a duly elected head of government.

>That goes triple when the area was the scene of arson and violent attacks on law enforcement just the night before.

>The bomb throwers and the looters and the vandals don’t wear “Trouble-Maker” signs readily readable by the police.

In other words, anyone still hanging around Lafayette Park when the clearing operation began should have known they were asking for trouble.

Finally, I can’t resist noting that before coming to D.C. in 2011, Budde served in…Minneapolis. For eighteen years. Fat lot of good she did there.

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(What’s Left of) Our Economy: White House Fakeonomics on Tariffs and the Poorest Americans

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China, consumer spending, Council of Economic Advisers, incomes, Jobs, Labor Department, NAFTA, North American Free Trade Agreement, Obama, offshoring, poverty, tariffs, Trade, White House, World Trade Organization, WTO, {What's Left of) Our Economy

We’ve heard a lot lately about fake news. But President Obama’s outgoing Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) has just reminded us that at least as great a problem is fake policy analysis. For its new report emphasizing that tariffs are “an arbitrary and regressive tax” that hits low-income Americans especially hard glosses over and ignores completely the biggest trade-related income questions that any intellectually honest researcher would ask.

CEA argues that “tariffs – taxes on imported goods – likely impose a heavier burden on lower-income households, as these households generally spend more on traded goods as a share of expenditure/income and because of the higher level of tariffs placed on some key consumer goods.”

But here’s the main point it glosses over: The vast majority of spending by poorer Americans goes to goods and service that are lightly traded, at best. Indeed, the White House economists provide the first clues themselves. As they show (in the figure below), even though the tariff burden on after-tax income does rise as such income falls, the absolute levels are very low – a little over 1.50 percent of such income for the poorest 10 percent of households.

Figure 2 Tariff burden relative to after-tax income

And as the next figure reveals, when totally untraded mortgage, rent, and utilities are removed, both the tariff burden gap between the richest and poorest Americans, and the absolute tariff burden, shrink dramatically. The latter falls all the way down to less than 0.60 percent of the total income of the lowest 10 percent.

Figure 3 Tariff burden relative to expenditures excluding mortgage, rent, and utilities

Looking at what lower-income households actually spend explains these rock-bottom numbers. According to the same Labor Department consumption data set used by the CEA economists, households in the lowest decile on the American income scale are spending fully 42 percent of their income on housing (which is not at all traded internationally) and another 17 percent on food (which is mainly produced domestically). Another six-plus percent of these households’ economic intake goes to health care, five percent to education, and a bit over four percent to entertainment (also all wholly or largely un-traded).

Interestingly, another 14 percent of the lowest-income group’s expenditures goes to transportation. U.S. oil imports are (lightly) tariffed. But assuming most of the poorest Americans don’t own, lease, or rent their own vehicles, the impact on their finances is surely minimal.

Add these numbers up, and clearly America’s lowest-income consumers spend hardly anything on imported goods that are subject to tariffs.

Moreover, here’s what the CEA economists completely ignore: The last few decades’ worth of trade policies they implicitly endorse here have wreaked havoc on the employment – and therefore incomes – of many of these same lower-income households.

Just look at what’s happened to domestic payrolls in two industries that used to provide jobs for many Americans who have no doubt fallen way down the income ladder: furniture and apparel. According to Labor Department data, since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect in 1994 and ushered in the current era of U.S. trade policy, employment is down by more than a third in the former and by nearly 85 percent in the latter. Moreover, import- and offshoring-related job losses have been especially steep since China entered the World Trade Organization at the end of 2001 – as widely cited scholarship has emphasized.

As NAFTA also triggered a heated debate on trade policy in the United States, critics started printing up and handing out garments reading “My job went overseas and all I got was this lousy T-shirt.” Obviously, these are gifts that someone should have mailed the White House economists who suggest that tariffs have delivered the main trade-related hit to America’s poorest.