The View from Right Field

A Few Thoughts on Impeachment – And Process

It’s hard to come up with things to write about with impeachment sucking all of the oxygen out of the news.  So, let me make a few comments on impeachment and the impeachment process.  Before I start, though, let me note, as readers of this blog know, I did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 (I actually decided that in 2015), and I will not vote for him in 2020.  To my comments:

1. So far, President Trump has not done anything that has surprised me all that much.  Appalled me, yes.  Surprised me, no.

Scaredy-Cat Protestors – And the Role of the Press

With the Donald Trump impeachment hearings on the TV and all over the news, there is plenty of time to do other things.  But let me talk about something possibly related to the news on the impeachment of President Trump: the media and who to believe.  There was a brouhaha over the weekend at the student-run Daily Northwestern, in Evanston, Illinois.  The editorial staff at the paper ran an editorial apologizing for the harm they supposedly caused when the paper ran/tweeted photos of people protesting a speech by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.  Apparently, some of the people in these photos felt they were harmed by the publication of the photos.  On Sunday, the paper apologized, saying in part:

“We recognize that we contributed to the harm students experienced, and we wanted to apologize for and address the mistakes that we made that night – along with how we plan to move forward.”

The Fall of the Berlin Wall: 30 Years On. #BerlinWall30

This Saturday is the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Readers of this blog will know that I have written about the Wall a lot.  You can find what I wrote on the 20th and 25th anniversaries of the fall of the Wall by clicking on “Berlin” in the list of Categories in the right margin.  The 25th anniversary, which we were lucky enough to be in Berlin for, was especially great.  But things seem to have changed since then.

Events are going the wrong direction in parts of eastern Europe and eastern Germany.  Viktor Orban is solidifying control in Hungary.  Law and Justice recently won re-election in Poland.  And in eastern Germany, the AfD increased its vote in state elections.  The populism that has come to the West is also increasing in eastern Europe.  

Illinois Politics: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

As you may know, Chicago’s teachers’ strike ended last week.  (The teachers were only doing it for the children, of course.)  One of their demands was an elected school board.  (The mayor presently appoints the board.)  The union wants a 21-person elected board; all the better, I suppose, to ensure that the union will be able to help elect a majority of the board.  Which would mean that during the next contract negotiation, the teachers’ union would be on both sides of the table, negotiating with itself.  Which should make the negotiation easier – and increase business for one-way U-Haul rentals out of town.

Michael Madigan, Speaker-for-Life¹  of the Illinois House (sort of like Xi Jinping in China), has said he would support legislation creating an elected school board in Chicago.  However, given that the feds and the FBI seem to be investigating Springfield, as well as the Chicago City Council (wow, they must be busy), the possible problem for such legislation is whether Speaker Madigan will have a quorum by the time the legislative session starts in January.  On Friday, State Rep. Luis Arroyo, an assistant majority leader in Speaker Madigan’s House of Representatives, resigned after being charged with bribery last week.

The “Silent Majority” Speech: Fifty Years On

Fifty years ago today, Richard Nixon gave his “Silent Majority” speech, one of his most famous speeches and source of his, almost certainly, most famous phrase.  Unlike presidents today, and before, President Nixon wrote the “Silent Majority” speech himself and came up with the phrase, “the silent majority,” himself.

For the speech itself, see here:

Evan Thomas, former Newsweek editor and best-selling author, notes that President Nixon’s approval rating went up from 52% to 68% after the speech.  For Mr. Thomas’s comments on the speech and more about President Nixon, listen to this podcast from the Richard Nixon Foundation.

For more on the Silent Majority speech, see Pat Buchanan, Nixon aide and speechwriter, here and this article/video from the Nixon Library and Museum. 

Three Years Ago: A Day and Night to Remember

Trump, Kurds, and Political Principles: Another Question

While I think the U.S. effort in Syria is/was¹ a really good idea, I have wondered what the legal basis for it is.  My best guess is that, if people who understand that kind of question in the Trump administration were asked, they would point to the resolution adopted by Congress right after 9/11.  In other words, the resolution adopted eighteen years ago to go after Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.  While the resolution was obviously not worded that narrowly, the question still arises whether it really covers what the U.S. troops are/were doing in Syria.

Which got me to thinking.  Given the resounding vote in House of Representatives last week in favor of the resolution criticizing President Trump for withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria, maybe now is an appropriate time for Congress to pass a resolution authorizing and approving what we are/were doing in Syria.  And given the unanimous support among House Democrats for the resolution criticizing President Trump last week, I would expect no problem passing such a resolution this week or next.
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¹ I’m not really sure if it is over or not.  See here.
PS  I assume my sarcasm was obvious, but, in case it wasn’t, I wanted to make it clear.

General Electric and Illinois

General Electric has had problems over the last few years.  Management mistakes, etc., have been so bad that last year GE cut its quarterly dividend to one cent a share.  Then, earlier this month, Larry Culp, GE’s new CEO announced that, in an effort to cut debt and reduce liabilities, GE would freeze all of its remaining defined benefit pension plans.  The plans had already been closed to new participants in 2012, but now the participants would no longer accrue new benefits under the plan. 

According to the Wall Street Journal article on GE’s action, as of 2017, only sixteen Fortune 500 companies provided traditional defined-benefit plans to new hires, and 42% of Fortune 500 companies with defined benefit plans, whether open or closed, had frozen them in some way.

Is Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Going to Turn Out Good?

No, I don’t really think that President Trump’s foreign policy is going to work – or that it will turn out well.  Janan Ganesh, in the Financial Times, however, comes up with one way President Trump’s foreign policy may work out:

“The world resented American omnipresence before it complained about American dereliction.  Inadvertently, Donald Trump is forcing the end of this ambivalence.  The more the US president unwinds his country’s external commitments, the more other nations see the resultant damage to the global commons. … Countries with historic qualms about US power are going through a chastening education in life without it.

The perverse result: an America First president could bequeath his successor a world that is keener on US leadership than it was before. …

Trump, Kurds, and Political Principles

The House of Representatives voted 354 to 60 on Wednesday to oppose President Trump’s withdrawal from Syria and to call on the Administration to, I don’t know, do something about it (whatever that would involve).  The Democrats voted 225 to 0 to support the resolution, not surprisingly.  More interesting, perhaps, was the 129 to 60 vote among House Republicans in favor of the resolution.  (At least on this, Democrats will find it hard to complain that Republicans are not standing up to President Trump, though I am sure some will try.)

The most interesting question, however, is what would have happened in a reverse situation.  What if a President Warren (or Obama) abandoned allies in Syria (or elsewhere)?  Republicans would, I am sure, vote near-unanimously to criticize a Democratic president.  But how many Democrats would do the same?  Would they vote unanimously in favor of our abandoned allies, as they did with Donald Trump as president?  Would even 68% of the Democrats vote against a Democratic president, as House Republicans did here against a Republican president?

Principle is always easy to stand up for when you get to rip on your political opponents at the same time.  It is harder when it’s the other way around.

LeBron James and China. Whose Financial Harm Is He Worried About?

At this point, to mix sports references, piling on Lebron James about his China comments probably deserves an unsportsmanlike penalty.  In any case, perhaps the most hurtful comment, at least from the viewpoint of LeBron’s normal constituency, was in today’s Wall Street Journal, when they noted how similar LeBron’s comments were to Donald Trump’s.  Ouch. 

The only comment I wanted to make was on LeBron’s concern that “so many people could have been harmed not only financially [but] physically, emotionally, spiritually” by Daryl Morey’s tweet.  Hmmm, “financially”.  Do you think LeBron was talking about little people, people who might lose their jobs in Hong Kong or China, or the U.S., if there is a big dispute between China and the NBA?

Government Subsidies – Programs That Never End

There is a saying that the only things certain in life are death and taxes.  And the only thing permanent is a government program.  The inability of the federal government, and state and local governments, to terminate programs that don’t work is proof of the latter.  Instead of getting rid of the old programs that don’t work, governments just set up a new program – again and again.  Which results in four or five (or more) programs all trying to solve the same problem, and none of them doing it well (if at all).

Overseas, the forever programs are often subsidies: for food, fuel, etc.  In theory, the subsidies are set up for good purposes: to help the poor.  (Of course, they are also set up to help politicians – get votes.)  The problem is that, over time, the subsidies become more and more expensive, as costs go up and prices don’t.  And corruption seeps in: subsidized fuel, for example, is sold to neighboring countries where prices are subsidized.

“Russia Might Decide Aggression Is Worth Risking”

Gideon Rachman wrote in Tuesday’s Financial Times about the future of the EU as a superpower, “a geopolitical force.”¹  He concluded: “The EU used to be called a peace project.  In the modern world, it is more of a power project – and rightly so.”  However, in arguing for the EU as a superpower, I thought Mr. Rachman understated the risk of Russia, as I wrote in this letter to the editor that was published in today’s Financial Times²:

“In his argument for the EU as a superpower (‘Europe rightly aspires to be a power project,’ October 8), Gideon Rachman admits that it ‘lacks the military muscle to back up its geopolitical ambitions’.  However, he says that, ‘even if the US pulled all its troops out of Europe, which is unlikely, it would still be a huge gamble for Russia (or anyone else) to risk military aggression against a collective with the size and wealth of the EU’.

@Cubs 2020 – Hiring A Manager to Follow a “Hall of Fame” Manager

Last week, at the Joe Maddon goodbye fest, Theo Epstein said, as he was firing Joe,¹ that Joe was a Hall of Fame manager.   But apparently a Hall of Fame manager wasn’t what Theo thought the Cubs needed in 2020, so it was “Goodbye Joe.  Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”  Which brings us to the question of “Who’s next?”

According to press reports, David Ross is being interviewed, as are one or more “internal” candidates; i.e., guys who were with the Cubs in 2019.  It seems to me, given the problems/concerns that Theo Epstein identified in his post-season press conference,² that Theo is saying the Cubs need a kick in the rear.  Can an internal candidate do that?  Can David Ross (who sounds more like a “lets-get-the-2016-gang-back-together-again” guy) do that?  Or do we need somebody from the outside to shake things up?

Why Should Anybody Trust Us? – Again

Donald Trump has announced, again, that the U.S. troops will leaving northeastern Syria (or at least parts of it) – and, in effect, we will basically give Turkey a free hand to do whatever they want to the Kurdish forces there.  And this time he may actually mean it.  He previously announced such a withdrawal in December of last year.  Then-Secretary of Defense James Mattis resigned because of the decision, as did Brett McGurk, who was Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIS.  Last December/January, President Trump was apparently talked out of a complete withdrawal, and approximately 1,000 U.S. troops stayed.  But he now is saying, once again, that he is going to do it, so maybe we will.  Several comments (out of the many that could be made).

The Kurds helped have been a key ally in the fight against ISIS in Syria.  They lost thousands killed.  I realize it was to their benefit to do so, but it was to our benefit, too.  We were fighting together.  We were allies.  And now we have left them in the lurch.  That’s just wrong.  Nikki Haley, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said it well: “We must always have the backs of our allies, if we expect them to have our back.”

Sanders’s and Warren’s Wealth Taxes Aren’t Going to Just Cost the Super-Rich

I had been planning on writing about Elizabeth Warren’s tax-a-mega-millionaire program (actually, an annual 2% tax on net worths above $50 million and an additional 1% on amounts above $1 billion), but Bernie Sanders has come along with a bigger (and better-?) tax of his own.  Senator Sanders’s plan needs a chart (as with Senator Warren’s tax, Senator Sanders’s tax is assessed annually):

1% tax on wealth above $32 million;
2% tax on wealth between $50 to $250 million;
3% tax from $250 to $500 million;
4% tax from $500 million to $1 billion;
5% tax from $1 to $2.5 billion;
6% tax from $2.5 to $5 billion;
7% tax from $5 to $10 billion; and
8% tax above $10 billion.

Bidens in Ukraine – and Grifting in Illinois

In an article Peggy Noonan wrote last weekend about the President Trump/Ukraine story, she made a comment that seemed relevant to Illinois:

“In the end, in purely practical political terms, the one person who will be hurt by this story will be Joe Biden.  Every telling of this story necessitates pointing out that Mr. Biden’s son Hunter had cozy financial relationships with other countries, including Ukraine.  It’s real swamp stuff.  It looks bad, say the former vice president’s friends.  No, it is bad.

We Said Goodbye to Joe Maddon on Sunday. Now It’s Goodbye to Cleveland, 2016.

At the beginning of the 2019 season, the Cubs still had fourteen players on their roster from the 2016 World Series team.  Carl Edwards, Jr. and Mike Montgomery, the guys who pitched the bottom of the tenth inning of Game 7, left during the year, but even in September we could field a whole team, including DH, from the guys left from the World Series roster,¹ plus have two starters and a reliever.²  But with Ben Zobrist and Pedro Strop both being free agents and probably not coming back, and Albert Almora, Jr. and Addison Russell not playing all that regularly in 2019, the number of people from the World Series champs could be down a lot in 2020.³  And that doesn’t even include the possibility of one or more guys being traded (see below).

The problem the Cubs have, in addition to not being able to draft and develop their own pitchers, is that their payroll is high.  While MLB’s salary cap is not a hard one, the penalties increase every year if you keep going over it.  When Tom Ricketts said last winter there wasn’t any money for a closer, what he really meant was that the Cubs didn’t want to go over the salary cap, or at least not go over it too far.  (It’s too bad he could not have been a little more honest about it.)

“There Is No Planet B”. But What If You’re Poor on Planet A?

When I was having dinner at a local seafood restaurant recently, there was a little sign on the napkin holder that said “There is no Planet B.”  I don’t know if the restaurant was just trying to get me to use fewer paper napkins or if they were making a general comment on climate change, but I assume that it was mostly the latter and that the point of “There is no Planet B” is to get us to do more, and to push our government to do more, on climate change.

Which raises one of the conundrums with climate change.  It is easy for people who can afford to eat at an upscale restaurant in suburban Chicago to say the world needs to do more, and spend more, to fight climate change.  The problem is, however, if we are really going to do enough to stop climate change, it can’t be done just by rich people in rich countries.  Middle income and poorer countries have to do their part, too.  And that’s where it gets tricky.

Donald Trump and Impeachment. When – and How – Is It Going to End?

A few thoughts:

1. It shouldn’t be too big of a problem for the pro-impeachment forces to get the House of Representatives to impeach Donald Trump.  It only takes a majority, and there are 235 Democrats in the House compared to 197 Republicans.  (There are two vacancies and one independent.)  The Democrats can almost certainly pass an impeachment resolution if the House leadership wants to.

2. The Senate is a different story.  Because it takes a 2/3 vote to convict in the Senate, the pro-impeachment forces need to get 20 Republicans senators to vote to convict President Trump (assuming all 47 Democrats vote to convict).  In this regard, I think it is safe to say that President Trump has not built up much personal loyalty among Republican senators.  The key for them, instead, will be (i) the facts and (ii) how their pro-Trump constituents feel about impeachment.  If President Trump loses any significant portion of his base and/or those who  voted for him in 2016 because the alternative was worse, he could be in trouble.