The View from Right Field

Break

I'm off until the middle of March.  See you then.

Cutting Taxes and Raising Spending Is Amazing – Until It Isn’t

What the United States is doing is amazing.  We are both cutting taxes and raising spending while the economy is growing and the federal deficit is already $500 billion.  This will raise the deficit to more than $1 trillion a year (did I say, “while the economy is growing”?).  And it looks like we might get away with it.  It’s amazing.

Other countries couldn’t do this.¹  But when you are big enough and you can print your own money,² you can get away with things little countries can’t.  If other countries tried to do what we are doing, they would soon find that nobody would lend them money and that, if they tried to just print more money, people would refuse to accept their money to pay for things (see, for example, Zimbabwe and, now, Venezuela).

Parkland, Florida: The Craziness of Today – and of 60 Years Ago

At church on Sunday, our minister told of walking around the church’s school last week and finding all of the classrooms dark, with their doors closed.  For a second he was confused, and then he remembered they were having a lockdown practice.  He said the kids were even told to sit with their legs up, so somebody wouldn’t see anybody in the room if they looked under the door.

Kids having to prepare like that is horrible.  What kind of a world is this becoming?  And yet, as I thought of hat, I thought back more years than I like to think, to when I was in second or third grade.  We didn’t have crazy shooters back then, but we had practices, too, for other crazy things.  I don’t have a clear recollection of it myself, but what school children were doing back then, and I am sure I was, too, was practicing for what to do in case of a nuclear attack.  Hide in the hall; hide under the desk.  It all seems sort of silly now.  But it didn’t at the time.  And looking back at it, it wasn’t silly to worry, even if hiding under our desks was.

Russian Interference With Our Elections and President Trump’s Tweets

The big story over the weekend was, obviously, the indictment on Friday of 13 Russians and three Russian groups on charges of conspiring

“to defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016.”

The indictment was part of special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation in Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.  In addition, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who supervises Mr. Mueller, said the indictment contained no claim that any U.S. citizen knowingly participated in the alleged crimes or that the alleged activities changed the results of the 2016 election. 

Which brings me to the point of this post.  While National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster was in Munich for the annual global security conference on Saturday, he said that the evidence of Russia’s attempted interference in the 2016 election was “incontrovertible.”  When one of the Russians at the conference suggested Russian and American cybersecurity experts meet, General McMaster responded:

How to Get Donald Trump to Act on Russian Meddling in Our Elections

If people really want Donald Trump to take Russian meddling with our elections seriously (which would be a good thing), maybe it would help if they stopped saying President Trump’s election was illegitimate because Russian interference got him elected.  Just a suggestion.

Shale-Oil: A Win-Win

An article in Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal was headlined “Warning Is Sounded on Shale” (print edition).  The first sentence explained: “U.S. shale companies are churning out crude oil at a record pace that could overwhelm global demand and reverse the oil market’s fragile recovery, a top energy-market observer said Tuesday.” 

After reading this, I thought to myself, how is this a problem?  I understand companies in the energy business might prefer prices to be higher (and life easier), but shale-oil companies increasing the supply of oil sounds great for customers and consumers.

According to the article, the  flexibility of U.S. shale companies to increase production reduces the likelihood of price spikes like we had in 2011 to 2014, when oil was over $100 a barrel.  This helps consumers.  It especially helps those consumers who have to pay a relatively high percentage of their income for heat and electricity.  If your energy costs are only 1% or 2% of your budget, a 50% increase is eminently manageable.  But if energy costs are 10% of your budget, as they are for poorer people in much of the United States, a 50% increase, or even a 25% increase, in energy costs is a problem.

On Valentine’s Day, Do Owe We Mike Pence an Apology?

Wow, how things change.  A little less than a year ago, Mike Pence was criticized, and mocked by some, for having a personal policy, while in Congress, of not dining with women alone (or going to events where alcohol was served unless his wife went, too).  People, most of whom already didn’t like Vice President Pence, were aghast.  It’s discrimination, they said.  It’s unfair to women; it’s another example of the glass ceiling.

And we now read about Google and Facebook having company policies that employees can only ask out co-workers once.  If they are turned down, they can’t ask again.¹  Doug Smith, a lawyer at Jackson Lewis in Pittsburgh, recommends that companies have strict rules against managers dating anyone further down in the company.  And he says companies are doing it.

“An American Appreciation of Bill English”

This is the title of a new post in my other blog, “A Different New Zealand.”  I have written about Bill English and his “social investment” approach before (see, inter alia, here and here).  This post is about his retiring from the New Zealand Parliament.

Happy Birthday, Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln was 209 years ago today.  As I said recently, when I think of the “Greatest Generation,” I think of other generations of equal greatness.  Certainly, the generation of the Founders is one of those.  As is the generation of Abraham Lincoln, who was, by himself, one of our greatest generations.

In honor and memory of President Lincoln, let me reprint his greatest speech, his Second Inaugural, which is on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, along with the Gettysburg Address (I have added paragraph breaks to what was Lincoln’s third paragraph, turning it into four paragraphs, to make it easier to read):

“Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first.  Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper.  Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented.  The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all.  With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

Is Afghanistan Ever Going to “Get Better”?

In December, I wrote a post, “Afghanistan: It Seems to be Getting Better,” which now looks as ill-timed as a January prediction that the stock market wouldn’t go down.  Since my post, the Taliban has launched attacks all over Afghanistan.  In the last ten days of January, three attacks in Kabul killed more than 130 people.  “Getting Better”?  “Back into the Quagmire” some would say.

Donald Trump has reversed Barack Obama’s reduction in our forces in Afghanistan, yet things seem to be getting worse.  We had over 100,000 troops in Afghanistan under President Obama.  Why do we think the 15,000 troops we have there now (with 1,000 more going), up from 8,400 when President Obama left office, will succeed when so many more didn’t before?

Several reasons, maybe.  First, of course, is that 2018 is not 2009.  Things are different now than they were then, and maybe the number of troops we need is different.  Second, Afghanistan is not the country it was in 2009.  Maybe it can do more for itself as long as we know better how to help them.  Third, this time we haven’t pre-set a date for when we are going to leave.  The date we leave is the date the job gets done.