The View from Right Field

Theo Is Doing a Good Job, But I Like It When the Cubs Win As Many Games As Possible

In David Haugh’s column in yesterday’s Tribune, Haugh quotes Theo Epstein on lots of things, most of them really good.  But I do want to disagree, a little bit, on one of them:

"‘What I want to avoid is the middle ground,’ Epstein said. ‘It'd be nice to make the playoffs or get a protected draft pick (awarded the bottom nine teams). We're not hiding that. There's no glory in 78 wins instead of 73. Who cares?’”

I applaud and support the way Epstein, et al, are working to improve the Cubs.  Building from within is the way to do it.  Other general managers have talked about doing it; Epstein seems to actually be doing it.  And setting up a “Cubs way” of teaching fundamentals is something that has been missing for a long time.  (Which is why Tom Ricketts was dumb to give Oneri Flieta a four-year contract extension just before Epstein was hired.  The Cubs’ farm system had not been good at developing talent.  Why give a contract extension to the guy in charge of it?)

But I disagree, a little, when Epstein says “who cares” if the Cubs win 78 games instead of 73.  I do.  Baseball may be better in the daytime (etc., to mimic last year’s ad campaign), but it’s also better when the Cubs win.  And it’s especially better if the Cubs win when you are at the park.

The Cubs don’t always win in the sense of making the playoffs (how is that for understatement), but it’s nice if they win when you’re at the Friendly Confines.  When you go to Wrigley Field, the day is nicer, and the game is more fun, if the Cubs win.  If the game you are at is one of those games between 73 wins and 78 wins, I can assure you that it does make difference whether the Cubs win 73 or 78.  Speaking of which, thank you, Bryan LaHair, for that two-out, walk-off single in the bottom of the ninth in the last game of the season.  That was nice.

“Mass Release of Immigrants Is Tied to Impending Cuts”

This article in yesterday’s New York Times is amazing:

“Federal immigration officials have released hundreds of detainees from detention centers around the country in recent days in a highly unusual effort to save money as automatic budget cuts loom in Washington, officials said Tuesday.”

Did Secretary Napolitano clear this with her boss?  Or is this part of her boss’s strategy of “negotiating” with the Republicans?

It makes you wonder if President Obama really wants a deal – other than exactly what he wants. 

If a good negotiator is one who makes it easy for the other side to give in, then President Obama may not be the best negotiator in the world.  (How is that for understatement?) 

Thoughts on Cuba, Vaclav Havel, and “Der Tunnel”

[Note: This was written before, but posted after, the news that Raul Castro will not run for re-election as president of Cuba in 2018.]

It was a bit of a strange weekend.  My wife is in Cuba on a “person-to-person” trip, and I have been reading Havana Real by Yoani Sanchez.  The book is a collection of entries, from 2007 to 2010, from Ms. Sanchez’s blog, “Generation Y”.  (It is listed in the blogroll to the left.)  Ms. Sanchez was born in Cuba in 1975.  In January of 1990, when she was 14, Fidel Castro talked of coming hardships (the Berlin Wall was down and the Soviet Union’s subsidies to Cuba were threatened) in “a special period in a time of peace.”  When the USSR collapsed the next year, the subsidies ended, and Cuba entered its “Special Period,” which meant actually existing on its own.

In 2002 Ms. Sanchez was able to leave Cuba for Switzerland.  But after two years, she returned, determined, as she said, that she “would live in Cuba as a free person, and accept the consequences.”*  The blog and the book are a diary of day-to-day life in Cuba, describing how it is to live in a country such as Cuba.  They are what she does “as a free person” in Cuba.  What has happened to her are “the consequences.”

The back of her book has quotes from a number of people; probably the best is from Alvaro Vargas Llosa: “What has probably unnerved the regime is not so much her attacks on the Castro brothers as her vivid description of daily life. … Where does this woman get her courage?”

Ms. Sanchez’s determination to “live as a free person” (in a place such as Cuba) brings to mind Vaclav Havel.  Vaclav Havel was a writer, a fighter for freedom, and, most amazingly, President of his country.  In his most famous essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” Mr. Havel called this same idea “living within the truth” – and one wondered where he got his courage, too.  Except, maybe, he got his courage to live within the truth by actually living within the truth.  Just as, maybe, Ms. Sanchez gets the courage to live as a free person by living that way.

Which brings up what else I did this past weekend.  I watched a DVD of a German TV movie called “Der Tunnel”.  (You don't need to know German to know what the  movie was about.)  I had a bit of a problem with the DVD.  It was in German, which I was expecting, but it did not have English subtitles, which I was not expecting.  It did have German subtitles, which helped a little.  In any case, it was wonderful.  It was, I think, the first time I ever watched a movie with a foreign language dictionary right beside me.  But it was definitely worth the effort.

The Germans in the show, obviously, took a different approach than Vaclav Havel and Yoani Sanchez.  They escaped (from East Germany), while Mr. Havel stayed and Ms. Sanchez returned.  But it is not for us to judge – except to determine the best way to help people living under such terrible systems.

I understand the reason and the emotion behind those who would isolate countries like East Germany and Cuba.  These countries had – and have – bad systems with rulers who terribly mistreat their own citizens.  But does this isolation help the citizens of those countries?  What was better for East Germans: Isolation or Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik?  Is the embargo of Cuba helping the little people of Cuba?  What about North Korea or Myanmar of two years ago?

This is a difficult question, and there are arguments by people of good faith on both sides.  I would say, however, as to Cuba, that I doubt the embargo helps at this point.  But even if we end the embargo on Cuba, that does not mean that Cuba, and especially Cuba’s leaders, should be treated the same way as countries and leaders that respect their people and let them live in freedom.

Perhaps Vaclav Havel’s “living within the truth” provides the answer.  Mr. Havel said, “We can talk to every ruler, but first of all it is necessary to tell the truth.”**  In other words, we talk with countries; we interact with them and their leaders.  But we cannot ignore how these leaders treat their own people.  We should not do it obnoxiously or self-righteously, but we must tell the truth about these countries – and to their leaders.  This will not be pleasant.  It may make things uncomfortable for our diplomats.  But whatever difficulty our diplomats may have is nothing compared to the difficulty the people in those countries have every day of their lives.

If we tell the truth about these countries, they will, of course, tell lies about us.  This is happening to Ms. Sanchez now.  Cuba has recently begun allowing its people, with some exceptions, to apply to visas to travel outside of Cuba.  (Isn’t it amazing that it is considered a great advance by the brothers Castro that they are allowing the Cuban people to travel?)  Ms. Sanchez received one of those visas, but as she travels to Brazil and elsewhere, she is being met by protesters telling lies about her.

Any such uncomfortableness for our diplomats and any lies that may be told about us are a small price to pay to support and help people who are living under such evil systems.  Plus, living within the truth is good for us, too.

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* Yoani Sanchez, Havana Real, p. ix.

** Bret Stephens, “Tyranny and Indifference, “The Wall Street Journal,” December 20, 2011,

To Sequester or Not to Sequester – And Crying Wolf

When businesses need to cut back spending, because revenues are down or whatever, they try to make the cuts as painless as possible for their customers.  Things may have to be done in a different way.  Employees may need to figure out which tasks are essential and which aren’t, and then cut those that aren’t.  But the key is to get the job done.

It doesn’t seem to be that way in Washington.  Instead of government trying to figure out how to get the job done with a little less money, and we are talking, at this point, about just a little less money, the Administration is bringing group after group of government employees and cabinet officials to say how horrible things will be if the sequester goes into effect.

It is the “Washington Monument” theory:  If you threaten to give the National Park Service a little less money, they will say they have to close the Washington Monument. 

The Pentagon has a similar tactic.  It’s called the “gold watch”.  In the words of Byron York:  “It means to answer a budget cut proposal by selecting for elimination a program so important and valued – a gold watch – that Pentagon chiefs know political leaders will restore funding rather than go through with the cut.”

How bad will the sequester be?  It’s hard to tell because so far the Administration is only trying to win political points through scare tactics, as opposed to doing the best job possible with the resources at hand.

Failure to Secure Gaddafi’s Weapons in Libya Leads to Al Qaeda Success in Mali

Here is yet another report, this one from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal*, on how NATO’s failure to secure Moammar Gaddafi’s weapon stockpiles has led to war elsewhere in Africa and is supplying al Qaeda affiliates there (and elsewhere?) with weapons:

“Islamist fighters pounded the northern Malian city of Gao for six hours Thursday with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, a display of firepower that compounds worries that the al Qaeda-backed militants in Africa have enough arms to mount an insurgency that could last years.

The attack – beaten back only with the intervention of French troops and helicopters – is the second in 10 days on the mud-brick city.  It appeared to confirm fears that arms from the caches of former Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi have washed across the Sahara to militant groups such as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, which has become a pressing target of U.S. counterterror efforts. …

Diplomats, security experts and others familiar with the militants' arsenal say it includes land mines, automatic weapons with ample ammunition, long-range rifles and missiles, and caches of high-powered plastic explosives such as Semtex.

An examination of such arms reveals the apparent limits of the international effort to secure Gadhafi-regime weapons – a push that focused on securing shoulder-fired missiles that could bring down planes.  Less heed was paid, international experts say, to the more workaday weapons that now appear to be deployed by Sahara militants for guerrilla strikes, desert ambushes and suicide attacks.

But it is those weapons, the experts say, that position the militants to fight a long insurgency against a weak government, much like that waged by the Taliban in Afghanistan or Sunni militants in Iraq. Or, they say, well-armed militants could carve out a haven to plot international attacks, as al Qaeda's Yemen branch has done.

The arms have brought a new level of war to Mali, say soldiers and analysts. …

For African soldiers and diplomats, the specter of a deep rebel arsenal has reignited criticism over what they see as U.S. and European failure to contain small arms from leaving Libya.

When the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and United Nations helped Libyans overthrow Gadhafi, defense chiefs recognized the threat of proliferation to neighboring countries.  [Comment: I thought the stated purpose was to protect Libyan civilians.]  Washington spent millions of dollars on intelligence teams in Libya to track down surface-to-air missile systems they believed Gadhafi possessed.  Officials feared that Islamists across the region would use these weapons to shoot down an airliner.

But neither the Libyan opposition nor their Western advisers devised a strategy to secure conventional weapons depots, said several diplomats familiar with the situation. …

In the political vacuum, Libyans hauled arms from several large depots across the country. Mali-born mercenaries and weapons smugglers operating in Libya brought back weapons to their homeland, said northern Malian leaders and State Department officials. …

Mali militants have been seen with 106 mm recoilless rifles – which are typically truck-mounted and fire armor-piercing shells – that were ‘almost certainly’ the ones the U.S. government sold Libya in the 1950s, said James Bevan, director of London's Conflict Armament Research Ltd.

A U.S. State Department spokesman said that while the U.S. government did initially focus its nonproliferation efforts in Libya on surface-to-air missile systems, it is now ‘actively supporting’ Libyan government efforts to secure all weapons stockpiles. [Comment: A little late.]

By January 2012, Libyan weapons were showing up in Mali. AQIM-backed militants chased Mali's ragtag troops from the country's north.  That retreat prompted junior officers – angry about the Malian army's insufficient firepower – to overthrow what had been one of the Sahara's rare democracies.”

Not one of the finest moments of the Obama administration’s foreign policy.

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* Drew Hinshaw and Margaret Coker, “Defenders Outgunned By Islamists In Desert,” The Wall Street Journal, February 22, 2013.

Good-Bye Afghanistan

While everybody else is talking about the sequester, let me engage in a little counterprogramming.  (Actually, not “everybody” is talking about the sequester – just everybody who is part of the chattering class inside the Beltway.  But they think they are everybody.)

What I want to talk about is Afghanistan.  Remember, the good war, the necessary war.  A month and a half ago I wrote a post which I entitled: “We’re Leaving Afghanistan. Now. All of Us.”  While our official policy is not that we are pulling out of Afghanistan totally, it seemed to me that was what was going to happen.  And it still does – if not more so.

There was a meeting of NATO defense ministers in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.  (Since Chuck Hagel has not been confirmed as Defense Secretary yet, Leon Panetta, who was supposed to be retired by now, had to go to one last meeting.  Does he get overtime pay for that?)

More important than which Defense Secretary went to the meeting for us, though, was what Spiegel Online reported about a confidential briefing given by Douglas Lute, who is President Obama’s special assistant for Pakistan and Afghanistan, to a NATO meeting earlier in February.  Mr. Lute told that meeting that the total number of US forces in Afghanistan, after 2014, would be a maximum of 10,000 troops, but, and this is the key, only half of those 10,000 troops would be available for training Afghan forces, etc., which is NATO is supposed to be doing after 2014.  The other 5,000 US troops will be focusing on counterterrorism operation and not there to train Afghan forces.

Since the total NATO force is supposed to be between 10,000 and 15,000 troops, that means the rest of NATO will have to contribute a lot of troops.  Maybe that seems fair to us, but is it realistic?  The rest of NATO has not been supplying more than 50% of the troops so far.  Why do we think they will provide them now?  And what happens if the necessary forces are contributed?  Would that give the President a reason to justify leaving: our allies won’t contribute their fair share to a balanced approach, so we have no choice but to pull everybody out.

(The other justification for leaving, as I mentioned before, is that we cannot reach a “status of forces” with the government of Afghanistan.*  {See near the end of my January 13 post.}  On February 9, General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that {according to Reuters} “the only circumstance under which a zero option {i.e., zero troops} was likely to come into play was if the two sides failed to negotiate a bilateral security agreement”.  If the President takes the same absolutist approach to negotiating a status of forces agreement with Afghanistan that he did with Iraq, this could easily happen.)

In addition to announcing a low level of troops, Mr. Lute also said the U.S. would not be providing Medevac helicopters  after 2014 (i.e., helicopter evacuation of wounded soldiers) to support the other NATO countries.  Even if you are not involved in combat operations, you have to be able to deal with wounded soldiers.  We have been providing this to other countries in Afghanistan.  Several times, for example, American medics and Medevac helicopters were able to save German soldiers.  But now, at the very time we need our Allies’ support and the commitment of their troops to get the numbers needed to train Afghan forces after 2014, we are ending our Medevac helicopter support for those troops.  That is so small – and embarrassing – and dumb.  Are we really trying to stay in Afghanistan or are we trying to get out totally?  I think it is the latter.

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* FYI, here is Wikipedia’s explanation of what a “status of forces agreement” (“SOFA”) is:

“The SOFA is … concerned with the legal issues associated with military individuals and property.  This may include issues like entry and exit into the country, tax liabilities, postal services, or employment terms for host-country nationals, but the most contentious issues are civil and criminal jurisdiction over bases and personnel.  For civil matters, SOFAs provide for how civil damages caused by the forces will be determined and paid.  Criminal issues vary, but the typical provision in U.S. SOFAs is that U.S. courts will have jurisdiction over crimes committed either by a servicemember against another servicemember or by a servicemember as part of his or her military duty, but the host nation retains jurisdiction over other crimes.”

It was the immunity issue that prevented us from reaching agreement on a status of forces agreement with Iraq.

Instead of Trying to Increase Spending By Keeping Interest Rates Near Zero, Why Not Let People Keep Their Money and Spend It?

One of Ben Bernanke’s theories for keeping short-term interest rates near zero is that this will encourage people to invest in the stock market (because they are earning so little on bonds).  This will make the stock market go up, which will make people feel richer, which will encourage them to spend more, which will get the economy moving, which will cause companies to hire more, etc., etc.

A question:  Instead of going through all these machinations so people will feel richer and spend more, etc., why don’t we just not raise taxes on them (and threaten to raise taxes even more)?  That way they will have more money and will feel richer (or at least less poor) and will spend more, etc., without the Federal Reserve doing things, the long-term consequences of which*, we really don’t know.

Just a thought.

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* In response to my comment about long-term consequences, some people may Lord Keynes:  “In the long run we are all dead.”  That may be true for me, but my children won’t be.

PS I realize real economists could come up with a long list of reasons why this post is wrong, but it was fun to write.  And it may be worth a thought.

Foreign Policy Amateur Hour: Syria Version

One will assume that a New York Times report of February 2, about a proposal by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA Director David Petraeus to provide arms to Syrian rebels, should not be taken too literally:

“Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus presented the proposal to the White House, according to administration officials. But with the White House worried about the risks, and with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, they were rebuffed.”

However, an article by Mike Giglio in Newsweek, “Did the CIA Betray Syria’s Rebels,” causes a lot of concern.  Mr. Giglio details meetings between Syrian rebel leaders and representatives from the CIA, in which the Syrians were told, or were led to believe, that the U.S. would provide them, if not weapons, at least things such as communications equipment, satellite phones, and medical supplies.  But nothing has been delivered (see above, maybe?), and now the Syrians are upset, mad and totally distrusting of the United States.

I am not saying that we should be providing military equipment to the Syrian rebels.  Ten months ago I said I was unsure what to do, and that is still true.  But I do know one thing: you don’t mislead people.  If you aren’t going to do it, don’t say it.  And if you say it, do it.  Anything else is amateur.

One Last Comment on the SOTU – Mali

I’m sorry.  I have to make one last comment on President’s SOTU address.  In the section on foreign affairs, he said:

“It's true, different al Qaeda affiliates and extremist groups have emerged ….  But to meet this threat, we don’t need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad ….  Instead, we'll need to help countries like Yemen, and Libya, and Somalia provide for their own security, and help allies who take the fight to terrorists, as we have in Mali.”

What he didn’t say was that we refused France’s request for tankers to help refuel French fighter planes over Mali – and that initially we even tried to bill France for the cost of the transport planes we provided.* 

In his SOTU address President Obama tries to take credit for helping allies fight al Qaeda.  In January he was trying to bill them.  As I said before, if Barack Obama had been president in 1948, the Berlin Airlift would have been COD.

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* Bret Stephens, “Obama’s You’re-On-Your-Own World,” The Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2013.

How Did I Do on My SOTU Predictions? – Part Two

I have now read all of President Obama’s State of the Union address, and I can see that my prediction regarding the Lincoln references was way off.  There was a JFK reference in the introduction, but that was it.  As I said here, maybe he used up his supply of Lincoln references, temporarily, in his inaugural address.  Maybe he saves his Lincoln references for the “bigger,” more philosophical speeches.  The SOTU was pretty much a laundry list of specific positions (though without specific detail, of course) on this issue and that.  It was mostly a long string of applause lines.

It took me a while to read the whole address because I kept stopping to write comments in the margin of the copy I printed off.  While I had a lot of comments, let me make just two.  First, on Medicare, I thought his phrasing was fascinating:

“On Medicare, I’m prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of health care savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission.” 

Note what he said:  He is prepared to enact reforms to “achieve the same amount of … savings” as the Simpson-Bowles commission proposed.  The Simpson-Bowles commission was, as you remember, the commission that President Obama appointed in 2010 and then used as an excuse throughout the 2010 campaign as to why he could not say how he was going to cut the deficit.  He didn’t want to say anything that would prejudge the commission’s work; he was waiting for their report.  Now, however, it is no longer “his” commission.  It is, rather, a “bipartisan” commission.  And he is not going to follow their recommendations; he is just going to save the same amount of money (supposedly) as they would have.

Second, on tax reform, President Obama said:

“Now is our best chance for bipartisan, comprehensive tax reform that encourages job creation and helps bring down the deficit.  We can get this done.  The American people deserve a tax code that helps small businesses spend less time filling out complicated forms, and more time expanding and hiring – a tax code that ensures billionaires with high-powered accountants can’t work the system and pay a lower rate than their hardworking secretaries ….”

And:

“[W]hy would we choose to make deeper cuts to education and Medicare just to protect special interest tax breaks?”

Of course, after talking about tax reform, complicated forms and special interest tax breaks, later in the speech he proposed a new tax credit for businesses that for hire employees.  And when he talked about “special interest tax breaks,” he failed to mention it was his administration that demanded the continuation of $60+ billion of special tax credits as part of the fiscal cliff deal.  (Here and here.)