The View from Right Field

Who Gets to Decides the Chicago Police Department’s “Use of Force” Policy?

Who runs local government?  The voters and their elected officials – or somebody else?  That is the question that came to mind when I saw this article in last Saturday’s Chicago Tribune (here are the first four paragraphs):

“The union that represents rank-and-file Chicago police officers has filed a complaint with the Illinois Labor Relations Board alleging the Police Department violated its collective bargaining agreement by implementing changes to its use-of-force policy without union approval.

In its petition, the Fraternal Order of Police said this marks the latest in a pattern by city officials to make changes to Police Department policies on their own without negotiating them through the collective bargaining process.  The two sides are in the midst of contract negotiations.

The 2017 Minnesota @Twins? I’ll Take the 1967 Chicago @Cubs.

The sports pages are all agog over the fact the Minnesota Twins, who were 59-103 last year, have made the playoffs this year.  It’s the first time it’s ever happened, they say.  Which is technically true, but it’s not because the Minnesota Twins have improved more than any other team from one season to the next.  It’s because so many teams go to the playoffs today. 

Since 2012, ten out of thirty teams make the playoffs every year.  That doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it does mean things are going to happen that have never happened before.  For example, the Twins.  I understand the Twins improved a lot this year, but the only reason they are making the postseason is because five teams in each league make the playoffs now, instead of four teams, which is the way it was from 1995 to 2011.  Because if only four teams from each league made the playoffs, the Twins wouldn’t be going.  So when people say that the Twins are the first team to lose 100 games one year and make the playoffs the next year, they are really just saying the Twins are the only team to have done it in the last six years. 

GOP Tax Bill Could Be the Real Deal: For Tax Accountants and Lawyers

Now that the Republican attempt to repeal/overhaul Obamacare has failed, thanks to, inter alia, Senators John McCain, Rand Paul, and Lisa Murkowski¹, Republicans in Congress are turning to tax reform.  There are lots of comments that can be made on tax reform and the way it should be done, especially with respect to what the purpose of the tax system is and how it should be organized.  But, for this post, let me just make one comment, based on what was in the newspaper this morning.

The Republicans want to lower the top corporate tax rate, to get it in line with corporate tax rates around the world.²  The rate being mentioned is 20%.  (Also, here.)  While the prior thought was to have a top personal tax rate of 35%, Donald Trump is apparently pushing for something closer to the current 39.6%.  Being a populist, he doesn’t want to help the rich (or at least appear to help them).

Is “Free College for All” a Good Idea – Or Just More Welfare for the Rich?

A popular issue on the left these days is free college.  It was a big part of Bernie Sanders’ campaign in 2016.  Jeremy Corbyn pledged to abolish tuition fees in the UK during the campaign there earlier this year.  And in the campaign that just ended in New Zealand, the Labour leader, Jacinda Ardern, promised one year of free college in 2018, increasing to three years in 2024.

The usual reasons for this are college affordability and the high levels of debt so many college students are incurring.  With college costs seeming to be on a forever-upward trend, more and more students are incurring more and more debt.  Others don’t or can’t go at all.  And so, the promise of free college: To end the burden of debt and to make sure everybody can go to college.

Thoughts Upon Germany's Election: Perhaps a Way for Parties to Win Votes Is to Have Good Leaders

As The Wall Street Journal predicted on Saturday, while Angela Merkel has won re-election in the German elections today, the parties on the fringe of German politics have grown.  With the established center-right and center left parties¹ getting a combined total of less than 55% of the total vote², Germany seems to be following the trend in other European countries.  As the Journal noted:

“In swaths of Continental Europe, the established center-right and center-left parties have suffered far more dramatic collapses, while populist movements from the nationalist right to the anticapitalist left have become strong enough to aspire to power.”

The Journal tries to identify the reason(s):

The German Election: The Future of the AfD – and the Tea Party

Germany is voting on Sunday, and with Angela Merkel widely expected to win another term, the one big question is how the right-wing AfD, Alternative for Germany, will do.  Support for the populist, anti-immigrant (and anti-Muslim) AfD took off with the 2015 refugee influx into Germany.  If the AfD does make it into the Bundestag, which basically requires 5% of the vote, it will be the first time a right-wing party has been in the German parliament since the 1950s.

What is most interesting to me about the AfD, however, is where it started and how it changed into the kind of party it is today.  The AfD did not start out because as a nationalist, anti-immigrant party.  Rather, according to The Financial Times:

Is the Iran Nuclear Agreement Bad? If So, What Should We Do Now?

If:

• As U.S. Air Force General John Hyten says, Iran is not violating the terms of the Iran nuclear agreement, officially the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (“JCPOA”); and
• Iran is also, per General Hyten, “rapidly deploying and developing a whole series of ballistic missiles and testing ballistic missiles at all ranges”; and
• The development of these missiles at most violates “the spirit” of several United Nations resolutions, but not the JCPOA,

then, maybe the Iran nuclear agreement really isn’t all that good of an agreement, as Donald Trump likes to say.  But, while that tells us either those who negotiated it did a poor job or they couldn’t get any more and wound up overselling what the agreement actually accomplished, or both, that doesn’t tell us we should terminate the agreement now.

Threatening to “Totally Destroy North Korea” Is Just Dumb

At the United Nations yesterday, Donald Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if the United States “is forced to defend itself or tis allies.”  I am not an expert on international law or the laws of war, but talking about “totally destroy[ing] North Korea” does not sound appropriate to me.  It seems to me to be against the laws of war and against international law.

I realize some people might think the idea of “laws” applying to war sounds silly, but it isn’t.  There are such rules, and they matter.  And among them is that you don’t indiscriminately target civilians, which sounds like what President Trump was threatening yesterday.¹ 

Honoring Chelsea Manning. The Coastal Elite Doesn’t See a Problem

Harvard invited, and then uninvited, Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley Manning) to speak at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University as a Visiting Fellow last week.  I do not want to go into the question of whether it was appropriate to invite Ms. Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison for leaking classified information to WikiLeaks, to be a Visiting Fellow.  I don’t think it was, but that is not the point of this post.  Rather, what is most interesting to me is that Douglas Elmendorf, the dean of the Kennedy School, invited Ms. Manning in the first place.

Mr. Elmendorf’s, and the Kennedy School’s, invitation was incredibly tone deaf.  It was as if they were living in an isolated little community up in the hills somewhere where TV reception was spotty and the Internet didn’t reach.  Except they are in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  Though, perhaps, they are just as isolated, in their own way.

Rule No. 1: Don’t Mock Somebody With Nuclear Weapons

Sunday morning, Donald Trump came up with a new nickname for Kim Jong Un.  As he did during the campaign last year (remember “Little Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted,” and “Crooked Hillary,” etc.), President Trump has decided it is somehow a good idea to give Kim Jong Un a nickname: Rocket Man.  Except this is a little different.

Maybe President Trump thought the nicknames during the campaign were cute or funny.  Maybe he thought they were a way to get under the skin of his opponents and get them to make a mistake.  Maybe he was just trying to get publicity and free media.  I thought it was disrespectful and lowered both him and the office he was seeking.