Pat Allen: The View from Right Field

Break

I'll be taking a break for Labor Day and maybe a couple of Cubs games.  I should be back about September 10.

Liberals Celebrate Success in Libya – But Will They Like the Precedent They Have Created?

E. J. Dionne says this, in light of the Libyan rebels’ successes:

“It's remarkable how reluctant Obama's opponents are to acknowledge that despite all the predictions that his policy of limited engagement could never work, it actually did. …

Yet no good Obama deed goes unpunished. In the midst of the bracing news, Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham issued a statement saying, well, too bad that Obama got it wrong. …

Less than six months and no American casualties were obviously not good enough. Should we have done this the way we did things in Iraq? …

Obama used the greater freedom he has in foreign policy to define the middle ground in the Libyan case on his own terms. ‘It's true that America cannot use our military wherever repression occurs,’ Obama said in March. ‘But that cannot be an argument for never acting on behalf of what's right.’

That made a lot of sense.”

Of course, Mr. Dionne does not mention that President Obama originally said that what we were doing in Libya would take days, not weeks.  Also, he doesn’t mention that NATO almost didn’t get the job done, and that then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates felt obligated to give NATO a tongue lashing for how poorly they were performing just before he left office in July.*  Nor does Mr. Dionne explain how what NATO was doing at the end of its operations:

“NATO and its allies helped Libya’s rebels mount an aggressive ‘pincer’ strategy in recent weeks, providing intelligence, advice and stepped-up airstrikes that helped push Moammar Gaddafi’s forces toward collapse in Tripoli …”

fits with the original mandate from the United Nations, which was to protect Libyan civilians.

But Colonel Gaddafi is gone, which is a success.  Still, I think Mr. Dionne may want to be careful about celebrating the success of President Obama’s policy too much, especially given the way the President and his legal advisers handled the question of his compliance with the War Powers Resolution.  Before President Obama, presidents would claim that the War Powers Resolution was an unconstitutional limitation on presidential power, but they would basically comply with it.

President Obama’s legal advisers (or, rather, some of President Obama’s legal advisers**) came up with a different approach.  They said that the War Powers Resolution was constitutional, but President Obama didn’t have to comply with it because what we were doing in Libya did not rise to the level of “hostilities”.  And if you are not involved in hostilities, the War Powers Resolution doesn’t apply.

Harold H. Koh, Legal Adviser of the State Department, gave four reasons why the U.S. was not involved in “hostilities” in Libya:

“‘ground troops and significant non-air forces have not been involved, the lack of American casualties or a significant threat of them, a limited risk of escalation, and the limited use of military means’”***

Here is where Mr. Dionne needs to be careful with his celebrating.  Because with this theory, President Obama has created a loophole in the War Powers Resolution that is big enough to drive a truck through.  And with the increased use and capabilities of things like drones and unmanned smart weapons (and all the other things that we don’t even know about yet), it won’t be long until the loophole is big enough for a four-lane highway.

Once that has happened, I wonder how Mr. Dionne will feel when the President using that loophole and driving on that highway is less of a Barack Obama and more of a George W. Bush or – worse yet, in Mr. Dionne’s view – a Dick Cheney.

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* “On target: Robert Gates’s parting shot exposes Europe’s military failings,” The Economist, June 16, 2011.

** Lawyers at both the Pentagon and the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel disagreed with Mr. Koh’s interpretation.

*** Jennifer Steinhauer, “Obama Adviser Defends Libya Policy to Senate,” The New York Times, June 28, 2011.

The Race For the GOP Presidential Nomination

As Rick Perry surges in the polls as the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, let me mention one name:  Fred Thompson.  I am not saying Governor Perry’s candidacy will collapse the way Fred Thompson’s did in 2008, but it is fair to say that the election is a long way off and a lot could happen. 

In any case, the most important thing for Republicans is not who gets the nomination, but making sure that whoever does get the nomination wins.  And that somebody who can win is the one who gets the nomination.

Why Go to Berlin? Here’s Why – Two Last Reasons

I am sure many of you may wonder “Why?” about all my articles about Berlin.  I had thought my post about going to Berlin would be my last.  But, in looking over some notes, I realized, in my rush to get that post finished, I had left out two points I really wanted to make about going to Berlin.  So, here they are.  And I promise this will be the end – for a while.

Point one.  While I would never say to go somewhere because it is cheap,* Berlin is inexpensive.  It is much cheaper than London or Paris – or even big cities in western Germany (according to Germans we talked to in Berlin in 2009).  In fact, Berlin is the only capital in Europe that is poorer than its country (i.e., the average income in Berlin is lower than the average income in Germany as a whole).  A former mayor of Berlin famously said that Berlin was “poor, but sexy.”  While the fact that Berlin is cheap is not a reason to go, it is a reason to stay longer.

Point two.  Even if you have been to Berlin recently, you should go again.  Because Berlin is constantly changing.  I realize that every city changes, but Berlin changes more.  It’s been only a little over 20 years since the Wall came down.  The re-uniting and rebuilding process is not done yet, and it won’t be for a while.  As one article said, Berlin is “unfinished”.  Watching Berlin grow and change and yet still be unfinished makes it an exciting place.  And it makes Berlin a place that is constantly new.  Every time you come.

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* You should, instead, go where you want and travel cheaply.

Cubs “Fans” Almost Lose What Tony Campana Stole

Let me explain.  I was at the Cubs game again last night.  It was my third in a row, and they finally won.  Barely.

The Cubs got all three of their runs in the second inning.  Tyler Colvin led off with a walk.  Alfonso Soriano followed with a monster home run to center field.  425 feet.  Next up was Tony Campana, and he just flat out stole a run with his speed and the threat of his speed.  First, Tony hit a routine grounder to the second baseman.  The second baseman couldn’t get the ball out of his glove, and Tony was safe on the error.  I think the second baseman was so worried about Tony’s speed and the need to throw the ball to first quickly, that he never got a good grip on the ball. 

Tony then stole second on the first pitch to Geovany Soto.  It wasn’t close.  Soto struck out, and Randy Wells came to the plate.  At this point Tony was bouncing so much at second base, threatening to steal third, that the Braves pitcher balked and Campana did go to third.  The Braves brought their infield in, but Campana was still able to score on a ground ball to a drawn-in second baseman.  So the Cubs had a third run, stolen for them by Tony Campana.

Meanwhile. Randy Wells was pitching great.  Through six innings he gave up only one hit.  After Chipper Jones hit a long home run of his own in the seventh inning with two out, Wells came out, and Sean Marshall came in to get Jason Heyward.  (Quade could have brought Marshall in the turn Chipper Jones around, since Chipper has more power from the left side than the right side, but we won, so I won’t go into that.)

Now, how a bunch of Cubs “fans” almost lost what Tony Campana stole:  Kerry Wood came in to pitch the eighth inning.  The score was 3 to 1.  As Kerry came in, some idiots in the bleachers started to do the wave, which is just pathetic.  First, Cubs fans don’t do the wave.  (Also, here.)  Second, even idiots shouldn’t’ be doing the wave in the eighth inning of a 3 to 1 ballgame.  (Carrie Muskat said:  “Must be tourists.”  Bruce Miles said: “Very bad.  Not Chicago.”)  So what happened as these “fans” were trying to do the wave?  The Braves lead-off hitter hit a home run to make the score, 3 to 2.  As Wayne Buckner of The Wrigley Blog tweeted: “That's the kind of sh_t that happens when you Do. The. Wave!”  Fortunately, it stopped, and Kerry got out of the inning with no more runs scoring

Carlos Marmol was himself in the ninth.  He hit the lead-off batter.  But, with the help of a very nice play by Darwin Barney, he got the next three batters, striking out two of them.  The Cubs won 3 to 2.  Go Cubs Go.  (And here.)  But it was close, and, as the title of this post says, a bunch of idiot “fans” almost lost what Tony Campana stole.  Dummies.

Mike Quade Messed Up Big Time Last Night

The Cubs lost 5 to 4 to the Braves last night, and in my opinion, Mike Quade played a big part in that loss.  Let me explain.

In the top of the fourth, the game was tied, 0 to 0.  With two outs Dan Uggla got an infield single on a ball Aramis Ramirez couldn’t quite handle.  Chipper Jones then singled to right and Uggla went to third.  Still there were two outs.  But then Eric Hinske walked on four straight pitches, loading the bases.  I was expecting Mark Riggins, the pitching coach, to go out and talk to Casey Coleman at that point.  It’s what you do, especially with a young guy on the mound.  But he didn’t go.

When Coleman walked the next guy on a 3-2 pitch that seemed pretty close, to force in a run, I was absolutely sure somebody was going to go out to the mound to talk to Casey.  Especially since Jason Heyward, who can really hit the ball, was up next.  But nobody went.  I was shocked.  I was not shocked when Heyward hit a grand slam home run to straight-away center.  Of course, Mark Riggins then went out to the mound, but the horse was out of the barn at that point.

I realize Casey Coleman threw the pitch, but Mike Quade made the bigger mistake when neither he nor Riggins went out to talk to Casey after one of those two walks.  They say managers cannot win games, but they can lose them.  Last night might be one that Mike Quade lost.

Warren Buffett Wants His Taxes (and Probably Yours) To Go Up

Last week Warren Buffett took to the Op-Ed page of The New York Times to ask Congress to stop coddling him and his friends.  He wants his taxes to go up.  And, more importantly, he wants taxes on lots of other people to go up, too.  In his article, Mr. Buffett talked about the “mega-rich,” so I am not sure if he is talking about the “millionaires and billionaires” whose taxes President Obama wants to raise (i.e., couples jointly earning over $250,000 a year) or a more limited group.  But it really doesn’t matter, because if you want to raise any significant money (given the deficits we’ve got), taxes are going to have to go up on more than even President Obama’s “millionaires and billionaires,” let alone Mr. Buffett’s mega-rich friends.

Obviously, lots of people have been commenting on Mr. Buffett’s article, both pro and con.  I don’t want to repeat those comments, so let limit myself to three comments that I don’t think I have seen.  (If you have seen them, I apologize.)

First, if Mr. Buffett thinks his mega-rich friends aren’t paying enough taxes on their income, because their income comes from things like capital gains, instead of ordinary income, then why don’t we tax their wealth instead of their income?  Maybe Mr. Buffett would be willing to endorse a wealth tax that required people with wealth of more than a billion dollars, to pay 2% of their wealth to the government each year.  (We could deduct the wealth taxes people pay from any estate tax they owe when they die.)  Mr. Buffett is supposedly worth $47 billion, so a 2% tax would be $940 million in taxes.  Even 1% would be $470 million.  That would end the coddling.

Second, if Mr. Buffett wants to be obligated to pay more income taxes (instead of just voluntarily paying extra, which some critics have suggested he do), it’s simple.  He should pay himself a bigger salary.  In 2010, Mr. Buffett earned a $100,000 salary as President of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.  (His compensation also included $344,490 of personal and home security services that were paid for by Berkshire Hathaway.)  If he raised his salary to $5,000,000, which he is clearly worth, his taxes would go up a lot, as would his effective tax rate, because he’d get to pay up to 35% and more federal income tax on that money, as well as Nebraska income tax. 

Which brings me to my third comment.  Mr. Buffett says he wants to be obligated to pay more taxes.  Okay, we can agree to change the tax laws so people in Mr. Buffett’s position pay more taxes.  But I need Mr. Buffett to agree to something, too.  I need him to agree that, once the tax laws are changed to make him pay more taxes, he won’t then turn around and change what he does to minimize his taxes under the new laws.  He needs to promise that he won’t let his tax advisers, and I am sure he has them, go out and find new loopholes and new provisions to keep his taxes down in spite of the changes in the tax law.  The problem is, Mr. Buffett’s tax advisers are a lot smarter than the people in Washington, both in Congress and the bureaucracy, who write the tax laws.   Therefore, unless Mr. Buffett promises to tell his tax people to not look, they’ll just figure out a way to keep Mr. Buffett’s taxes down even if the tax laws are changed to try to raise his taxes.

The 2012 Presidential Election Is the Republicans to Lose

– and they could do it.

Here is what Charlie Cook of “The Cook Report” says about 2012:

“On one hand, we have an incumbent president with dismally low job-approval ratings; his signature legislative accomplishment of health care reform remains very unpopular, and he is presiding over an enormously weak and worsening economy. This is a combination sufficiently bad to prevent any president's reelection.

On the other hand, we have an opposing party whose center of gravity and energy levels have swung so far to one side of the ideological spectrum as to have been designed to alienate the independent and swing voters, the people who will effectively decide this presidential election. To put it more simply, this election is the Republican Party’s to lose, and yet, they may pull it off, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

And to show that the Republicans could actually accomplish this, just look at what the Illinois Republicans did in 2010.  There was a huge swing to Republicans all over the country.  In fact, even in Illinois, in the more nationally-focused races, like for Congress, Republicans picked up five seats.  The eighth congressional district even elected Joe Walsh.

The Republican swing was so strong that we even elected a guy to the Senate who had made huge misrepresentations about his service in the Navy Reserves, not a good thing to do when the military is respected again.  But Mark Kirk was a moderate.

The 2010 race for governor of Illinois is a blueprint for how Republicans can lose the presidency in 2012.  Consider the advantages the Republicans had in Illinois in 2010.  The state was in terrible financial shape.  We had one of worst credit ratings of any state in the nation.  The state’s bills weren’t getting paid for months.  And the prior Democratic governor had been convicted of lying.

The Democratic candidate for governor was “a nice guy,” but he seemed to change positions based on who he had talked to last.  He wasn’t represented by a Jell-O® mold in political cartoons for nothing.  He was so bad as interim governor (after his predecessor was impeached) that he almost lost in the Democratic primary to Tom Hynes, who himself is such an ineffective campaigner* that he could lose an uncontested election.

So, in this situation, what did the Illinois Republicans do, especially when they had a great candidate in Kirk Dillard, who would have won the election in walk?  Simple.  They nominated a really conservative candidate** who so scared middle-of-the-road, independent voters, especially suburban women, that he lost.  And not only are we now stuck with relying on Speaker of the House Mike Madigan to keep some kind of limit on state spending (we still haven’t figured out how to pay all those delinquent bills even with an increase in the state income tax from 3% to 5%), but the Democrats also got to do the redistricting for Congress and the state legislature all by themselves.

If you want to see how Barack Obama can get re-elected in 2012, come to Illinois.  Our Republicans can show you how it can be done.

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* Mr. Hynes was, however, a fine state Comptroller, which goes to show that being good at campaigning and being good at governing do not always go together.

** But I couldn’t vote for Dillard in the primary, conservatives said.  He would have raised the state income tax.  Yes, he would have.  But he wouldn’t have raised it by 66-2/3%, and Brady didn’t win.

Jim Hendry’s Gone

I think I owe Tom Ricketts an apology.  Last Saturday I said (twice - here and here) that I didn’t think the new owners realized the problem with the Cubs.  It looks like I was wrong.  Let me count the reasons.

First, Jim Hendry is gone.  We need a new start at the top.  Now we can have one.

Second, while we need a new start, we have good people that we need to keep.  In my opinion, Tim Wilken, the Cubs’ scouting director, is the most important.  According to a tweet from Paul Sullivan, Tom Ricketts wants him to stay.  I really hope he does.

Third, according to Phil Rogers’ article in Thursday’s Tribune, the Cubs spent big money on this year’s amateur draft:  “Throughout the history of the draft, the Cubs have been reluctant to be big spenders. That has been one of their consistent failings. But Ricketts changed that, and in one night the Cubs went from the bottom quarter of draft spending to the top quarter ….”  Also, the Cubs are spending big money on international players.

Fourth, the new GM, who will be from outside the organization, will report to Tom Ricketts, not Crane Kenney.  Crane Kenney is only responsible for the business side of things, not baseball.  Good.

Since the Cubs Convention in 2010, Tom Ricketts has said he wasn’t going to rush into things and that he wants to build from within.  The increased spending on the amateur draft and for international players and the decision to get a new GM fit with what Tom Ricketts said.  Maybe there’s hope after all.

Baseball: An International Game, Almost

I was at a Kane County Cougars game last week, and I noticed something a little unusual.  Every time the catcher for the Peoria Chiefs (the visiting team) came to the mound to talk to the pitcher, the shortstop came, too.  You often see infielders come to the mound when the pitching coach or manager comes out to talk to the pitcher, but not when it’s just the catcher.  And not every time.

So I looked at the roster sheet they gave me along with the scorecard, and I figured it out.  The pitcher and shortstop were from the Dominican Republic.  The catcher was from Texas.  That was why the shortstop always came to the mound.  He was translating.