The View from Right Field

Helping Each Other, Not Blaming Each Other

For the next few weeks or months (as long as necessary), I am going to pin this post at the top of my blog to remind me of something I tweeted yesterday:

“As we get thru this, we must all remember that mistakes will be made. Things will be done that shouldn’t have been. Things will be left undone that should have been done. But helping each other is more important than blaming each other.”

Where Did All This Partisanship Come From?

I will assume most people will not say that it started with Donald Trump.  He certainly is bad, partisanship-wise,¹ but it didn’t start with him.  Some people might go back to Joe McCarthy or Richard Nixon,² but I’m thinking of something more recent.  Republicans might point to Ted Kennedy’s attacks on Robert Bork in 1986, when President Reagan nominated him to the Supreme Court.³  Democrats might point to attacks on Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s (the “vast right-wing conspiracy”).  And so on.  But I am going to suggest something else.

Sometimes it is hard to remember how you felt about a particular event at the time because things that happened afterwards color your recollection of how you felt then.  Even reading contemporaneous news articles about something in the past will sometimes surprise you because you know what has happened since and the article doesn’t. 

52 Years Ago I Met a Future President

Actually, it was 52 years ago yesterday, July 10, 1968.  Here is a picture of me, a lot of other people, and Richard Nixon. 

I was one of a group of Young Republicans helping at a Nixon fundraiser.  After the picture, I shook President Nixon’s hand and said, “Thank you.”  He said, “No, thank you (for helping).”  A great man.  I am so happy I got to meet him.

Little Sisters of the Poor and Free Birth Control

There was considerable outcry earlier this week when the Supreme Court upheld Trump administration regulations under Obamacare that provided the Little Sisters of the Poor, and other religious groups, did not have to provide free contraceptive services under their health plan.  Well, actually, it was more complicated than that.  The Obama administration had not required the Little Sisters to provide free contraceptive services; it required the Little Sisters’ health plan to provide free contraceptive services, without charging the Little Sisters for the services.¹  The problem for the Little Sisters was, as I understand it, that they did not feel comfortable with what they had to do in order to opt-out of providing free birth control.² 

Apparently, 70,000 or more women could be left without free birth control under the Trump administration regulation, which bothers (outrages) a lot of people.  But the point is, which a lot of people seem to miss, is there is a simple way to make sure free contraceptive services are provided to all women without forcing groups like the Little Sisters to violate their religious principles: Have the federal government pay for it.  If free birth control is that important, just pass a law and provide for it.  Nobody’s religious principles are violated,³ and women get free birth control. 

Flying the Flag on the Fourth

The first thing I did when I got up on the Fourth was to get out the ladder and put up the flag.  We aren’t home on the Fourth of July very often, but this year we were.  (Surprise!)  And I figured it would be an important year to make sure the flag was up.  I was right.

There didn’t seem to be as many flags as I remembered in years when we have been home (or on Memorial Days, etc.), which I sort of expected.  A couple of people on my wife’s high school class Facebook group said they weren’t flying the flag this year because, well, you know.  Which was a viewpoint I expected and which was the reason I put ours up first thing Saturday morning.

The Biggest Danger In a Dangerous World

I think almost everybody would agree that these are dangerous times, perhaps the most dangerous times most of us have faced.  But where we may disagree is as to what the biggest problem is.  Some will say it is COVID-19.  Others will say it is climate change or systemic racism.  Figuring out how to restart the economy is the biggest for some.  And still others will argue it is polarization and the inability of our political leaders in Washington to do almost anything.  Legitimate arguments can be made on behalf of any of these (and others), but I see it as something else: the world.

In a talk to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs on June 26, Robert Gates, former Secretary of Defense under both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama,¹ compared the situation in the world today not to the 1930s, which was suggested by the question he was asked, but to the early 1900s, the time before World War I.  As before World War I, there are a number of competitors for power today, some world and some regional.  There are no effective international organizations.  There is a rising world power (then Germany, now China).  And there are tensions around the world, with forces deployed around the world, too.

I Guess I Have Been Missing Baseball More Than I Thought

People have asked how I am doing with no baseball.  I thought I was doing pretty well – until recently.  Recently, I have noticed feeling a little down, now and then.  I thought it was because politics is horrible.  We have a terrible president, but the people running to replace him aren’t much better, if any.  I don’t want the current person to be reelected, but the alternative could easily be just as bad. 

And then there are the riots accompanying the peaceful protests that we have had.  I’m not really sure how tearing down a statue of George Washington does any good.  Sure, he had slaves, but he was also, in the title of James Thomas Flexner’s book, The Indispensable Man.  Without George Washington, there is no United States.  Maybe the people pulling down his statue think that would be good.

What's Better? Something or Nothing? Police Reform In an Age of Polarization.

I’ve been writing a lot about baseball lately, mostly because baseball, even with people like Rob Manfred and Tony Clark unable to negotiate anything, is better than politics today, which says something.  But it’s back to the real world.

A big issue in Washington is police reform.  Your first thought about Washington and police reform might be like mine: Huh?  Police, like schools, seems like the epitome of a state and local issue.   We need police reforms (for one of my ideas, see here), but what’s the federal government got to do with it?  State governments, local governments.  Police reform is their issue.  Congress can’t pass laws telling state and local governments how to run their police forces.  About all the federal government can do (with one exception I will get to below) is cut back on the money it gives to state and local police departments if they do things the federal government doesn’t like.  It’s not much, but it’s something.  So the people in Washington are talking about a police reform bill which would increase or decrease the amount of money Washington gives to state and local police departments.

Five Years Ago Today: My First World Series Win

As people who know me know, it was a BIG deal when the Cubs won the World Series in 2016. (There is a reason I have a bumper sticker on my car that reads “11-2-2016 11:47”.)  It was, obviously, the first World Series the Cubs won in my lifetime – and in the lifetimes of almost everybody alive in 2016 (except maybe people in Georgia).

But 2016 it wasn’t my first World Series win.  My first World Series win was in Omaha in June of 2015, when Jennie and I saw the University of Virginia win the College World Series.  It was great.  I blogged about it here.  At the time I thought it might be my only World Series victory.  (I was, after all, a Chicago Cubs fan.)  It wound up not be my only World Series win, but it will always be my first.  #GoHoos!

Here we are in Omaha, with the championship dogpile in the background:

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UPDATE (6/24/20 7:30 am): Added picture. 

“Manfred-Ball” Is (Or May Be) Coming to a Park (or TV Screen) Near You Soon

As part of their continuing effort to screw up baseball, which Commissioner Rob Manfred and player union head Tony Clark are doing a good job at, the owners and players have given up trying to reach an agreement.  After all, they only had three months to talk about one since their “mini agreement” in March, so how could you expect them to agree to anything.  Of course, the fact that Messrs. Manfred and Clark apparently only met in person once during that time may have had something to do with it, though if you really don’t want to agree, because it’s more fun to argue, then not meeting in person is a good idea.  Who knows, if you’re talking in the same room, you might actually reach an agreement by accident.  And it looks like nobody wanted that.  So, Rob Manfred got to decide.

Well, what's "Manfred-Ball" going to look like?  First, there will be 60 games, the fewest since 1878, when they also played 60.  They will not have the “all-in” playoffs the owners wanted.  I think the owners wanted sixteen teams in the playoffs, instead of ten, but the main thing was, I would imagine, that ESPN, et al, wanted to set the bar low enough so they could be sure both the Red Sox and Yankees made it.  (It’s the “Sunday Night Baseball Rule.”)

The @Royals Are Attracting Undrafted Players by Being Nice to Their Minor Leaguers. Not Something the @Cubs Are Doing.

The Kansas City Royals have come up with a unique way to attract quality, undrafted players this year.  A “market inefficiency,” as people like to call it. 

In order to save money, MLB shortened the draft this year from 40 rounds to five and put a limit on how big of a bonus could be paid to undrafted players.¹  Which means there are a lot of good quality undrafted players out there.  Jared Diamond wrote in The Wall Street Journal on how the Royals made themselves attractive to those undrafted players: They didn’t treat their current minor league players like crap, releasing dozens of them to save the $400 a week they would have otherwise had to pay them.²

Two Bad Supreme Court Decisions – From a Process Point of View

It’s been a bad week for people who see the job of the Supreme Court as applying the law, as opposed to coming up with ways to do what Congress should do but hasn’t.

First, it was the LGBT workers decision on Monday in Bostock v. Clayton County.  I think that people shouldn’t be fired from jobs for being gay, lesbian, etc.¹  And I think Congress should pass a law to that effect (as should states).  But Congress hasn’t.  I do not believe that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, when it prohibits discrimination in employment because of an individual’s sex, covers discrimination because of sexual preference, gender identity, etc.  “Sex” did not include those things in 1964, and it shouldn’t be interpreted as including them today.  There is a proper way to do it: Pass a law.

Now Is the Time to Get Ready for the Election in November

Last weekend The Wall Street Journal had an article by Nicholas Persily, “It’s Not Too Late to Save the 2020 Election,” on things we need to do to avoid (minimize-?) problems next November.  Professor Persily listed nine things:

1. Provide more federal funding and support.
2. Ensure that schools remain open as polling places.
3. Keep voters from having to wait in line.
4. Bolster confidence in voting by mail.
5. Encourage election and postal officials to coordinate their efforts as soon as possible.
6. Insist that the big tech companies do their part.
7. Deploy tools to help predict voter turnout.
8. Anticipate problems with disinformation and cybersecurity.
9. Refrain from declaring a winner on election night.

Here are the key things I got from the article, with an Illinois perspective.

“To Be or Not To Be”: The Baseball Version

The question is not when baseball is going to start, but if – and whether I’m going to care whether it does or doesn’t.  I understand the players and the owners both think they are standing on principle.  The players think they agreed to a pro rata payment based on the number of games played, and the owners think they can’t pay the players full pro rata salary if there aren’t fans in the stands.  

Jeff Passan at ESPN.com goes into great detail on the two sides’ positions and the reasons and principles behind them.  And each side has lots of reasons for their positions, reasons that they think are legitimate.  But ultimately, you know what.  I don’t care.

#Cubs Convention Photos of Baseball Greats: Bob Feller

Pictures in this series of posts have been of Cubs players (or other people connected with the Cubs).  Bob Feller is neither, but he was at the Convention several times, promoting his museum in his hometown of Van Meter, Iowa (just off I-80 at exit 113),¹ and you can’t not include a picture of him (even if it isn’t the best picture in the world).

I’m not sure how much most baseball fans know about Bob Feller today, but I am pretty sure it’s not enough.  I’m not going to go into a long story.  Let me just mention a few things:

.@Cubs Convention Photos of #Cubs Greats: Jody Davis

Next up on the list of pictures of Cubs greats from the Conventions is Jody Davis.  Cubs fans from the 1980s, and those of later years who know about the 1980s, still want to cheer, when the name of Jady Davis comes up, “Jo-dee, Jo-dee, Jo-dee”.

I was lucky enough to be there for the first two games of the three-game series between the Cubs and Cardinals, June 10-12, 1983 (that is 37 years ago today!), when Jody hit three home runs (one in each game) and drove in ten runs, and the fans started chanting “Jo-dee, Jo-dee”.  We haven’t stopped since.

Let’s Talk Baseball. Or, Rather, Let’s Play Baseball.

The question is how are we going to get there.  MLB owners and MLB players are both, in made-up words of Paul Sullivan’s fictional Tom Hanks trying to negotiate a deal¹ between the owners and players: “bat[bleep] crazy.”  So how are they going to agree?  Let me make one small suggestion, which probably isn’t going to happen but could work (it would have a better chance than what is going on now).

Get a couple of people from each side together in a room, a large room, so they can socially distance.  Socially distancing shouldn’t be a problem since they don’t like each other all that much.  Take away their phones and their computers.  Make them talk to each other, face-to-face instead of via press releases and fancy statements.²  It’s easy to say “no” in an email.  It’s harder to say no to somebody in person.

A “V”-Shaped Recovery – Or a Gentle Upward Slope?

So where is the economy going?  The stock market would have you believe it is coming back – and quickly.¹  That would be a so-called “V” recession.  Quickly down and just as quickly back up.  Given it was a government-ordered shutdown that caused the sudden down, maybe a removal of the shutdown will allow things to rebound suddenly.  And that could be the way things go – as long as the confidence we had before the pandemic comes back, too.  If the confidence is back, maybe the economy will be back.

That is the question, isn’t it?  Because even if the government discontinues its shutdown, are we going to discontinue our shutdown?  If there was a vaccine, it might happen – subject to the effect of all those businesses and jobs that got lost during the shutdown.

Here’s an Idea: Let’s Get Rid of Police Unions

This is an idea I’ve had for a long time, one that popped up again with the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.  Other people have written about this in more detail recently (among others, see here), but it’s not just those who could be written off as anti-union right wingers anymore.  The Financial Times had a front-page story on the problem of police unions yesterday.¹

Among the purposes of unions are to protect the jobs of their members and to get them as much money as possible.  Part of the former is to make it hard to fire union members.  Which in the case of police unions means making it hard to fire police officers.  I’m all for police officers not being fired unfairly, but the way it seems to be working in too many cases these days, is that it is just too hard to fire police officers at all.  There are police officers that need to be fired, and police unions are making it too hard to do so. 

George Marshall on Character

In a speech on “Marshall and His Generals” at the George Marshall Foundation on July 20, 2017, Dr. Stephen Taaffe talked about the four criteria that Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall used to pick the high-ranking officers¹ for the U.S. Army during World War II.²  Let me mention them, in reverse order:

1. General Marshall wanted to know them personally or know somebody who knew them personally.

2. Age.  (Sorry.  I realize it is politically incorrect today, but General Marshall didn’t want older generals.)

Coronavirus Emergency Legislation: Fixing “Bugs” and Keeping “Features”

I said in my post of March 23, which is currently pinned to the top of this blog:

“As we get thru this, we must all remember that mistakes will be made. Things will be done that shouldn’t have been. Things will be left undone that should have been done. But helping each other is more important than blaming each other.”

Which means, among other things, that we shouldn’t blame Congress for mistakes or the unintended consequences in the bills that were passed in March and April to deal with the economic fallout of COVID-19.  However, the fact that we shouldn’t blame Congress for provisions that have not turned out as we expected, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t change or fix provisions that aren’t working as we thought they would or that have consequences we didn’t intend.