The View from Right Field

Here’s a Deal for Illinois Pols: A Progressive Income Tax in Exchange for Real Pension Reform

Illinois Democrats (or at least many of them) say Illinois needs a progressive income tax.  Illinois Republicans (all three of them) say Illinois needs real pension reform.  Both of these ideas require an amendment to the Illinois Constitution to be approved.  So here is my Monty Hall-“Let’s Make a Deal” suggestion.

Instead of just one constitutional amendment, we pass two.  (The Illinois Supreme Court would never let you bundle the ideas together.)  One of them would permit a progressive income tax.  The other would allow the state legislature to adjust future pension accruals of current state employees.  I am not talking about cutting pension benefits already earned.  I am just suggesting that the legislature should have the right to adjust, i.e., reduce, pension benefits that current state employees earn in the future.  (The current state constitution provides that, once a person is hired, their pension scheme can never be reduced in the future, no matter how far they are from retirement.)

The Policies of Donald Trump and the Trump Administration

A commentary in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal bring up a fascinating point: The difference in ideas and policy between Donald Trump and the Trump administration.  In this case, Ukraine.  While President Trump doesn’t seem to care about Ukraine, and has told aides he doesn’t want to get involved in the question of Russia’s support of Ukrainian rebels occupying part of eastern Ukraine,¹ the Trump administration has actually been very supportive of Ukraine.

According to Judith Miller in the Journal:

“Ukrainians say Mr. Trump’s policies are surprisingly supportive of Kiev and hostile toward Moscow. In some ways they believe Mr. Trump has been much better than his predecessor.

Kavanaugh, Clinton, and Kennedy

Let me see if I understand the view that some people have.  It didn’t matter what Bill Clinton was accused of doing when he was Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas.  It didn’t matter what Teddy Kennedy did when he was Senator from Massachusetts.  But it is absolutely critical what Brett Kavanaugh is alleged to have done when he was a teenager in high school and college.

Ten Years After the Big Bust

There actually are things going on other than the Great Brett Kavanaugh Nomination Spectacular.  For example, Donald Trump is playing Tariff-O-Rama with China, and yet the Dow Jones Industrials and the S&P 500 hit record highs on Thursday, and the Dow did it again on Friday.  And the yield on 10-year Treasuries is near a seven-year high.¹ 

Plus it’s the tenth anniversary of the big bust in 2008: the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy and the Great Recession that followed.²  Two of the big questions that have been discussed recently are: (i) did the government respond appropriately, in 2008-09, to what was happening then; and (ii) have we made sure that what happened then can’t happen again?

First, how was our response in 2008-09?  Without going into all of the detailed arguments that have been made, I would simply answer the question this way:  Could things have been done better?  Sure.  Could they have been handled worse?  Absolutely.  Which pretty much answers the question in my mind.  Because it seems fairly clear to me that the mistakes that were made were a lot fewer than the mistakes that could have been made but were not.

Brett Kavanaugh and His Accuser

Several comments on the Brett Kavanaugh controversy:

1.  Almost regardless of what happens after this point, both Judge Kavanaugh and his accuser, whose name does not need to be repeated here, will, for the rest of their lives, be identified with this moment. One of them correctly and one of them, possibly, wrongly. 

2.  The Washington Post says that its article, etc., were not done “at the eleventh hour” because it was only last week that the accuser was willing to have her name mentioned publicly. I wonder whether that means the Post would not have published this accusation if the accuser had not been willing to identified by name.

Syria – Again. And Beyond.

It looks like more hell is coming to one of the places that has had so much of it over the last seven or eight years: Syria.  Bashar al-Assad, along with his Russian and Iranian allies, is ready to attack Idlib, the last major rebel-held enclave in Syria.  With three million civilians and tens of thousands rebel fighters, and nowhere to escape to, the outlook is almost beyond imagination.  While many seem to like to blame Donald Trump for just about everything that goes wrong in the world, this is not one to blame on President Trump.  Also, at this point, unfortunately, I am not sure there is much the United States can, or is at least willing to, do in Syria.

If the United States had wanted to do anything about Syria, we would have had to do it five years ago (or more).  But back then, Barack Obama decided it was better for the United States to not do anything.  After giving the world the impression he was going to do something about Syria’s use of chemical weapons (he had drawn a red-line against it), he did a 180-degree backward somersault, saying he had accomplished all he needed to do by getting Russia to agree that Syria would dispose of its chemical weapons.  Oops.  Oh well, not every decision works.  This one certainly didn’t.  I don’t know if President Obama is still defending this decision, but in 2016, when he was doing farewell interviews, he seemed proud of it.  I guess the decision worked in theory; it just didn’t work in the real world.  Ask the Syrians.  For that matter, ask the countries of Europe, who had to deal with the tide of Syrian and other refugees that started coming in 2015.¹

Masterpiece Cakeshop – Again

On June 4, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the decision of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission that Masterpiece Cakeshop had violated the rights of a customer who asked Masterpiece Cakeshop to bake a special cake for a same-sex marriage.  The Supreme Court’s decision was narrow.  The Court held that the Colorado had violated the rights of Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, under the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, by the way it treated him and his claim of religious belief for what he did.  The Court specifically did not say whether, in a proper case, where the state was not hostile to a business owner’s religious beliefs, it might not hold that a business owner could be forced to bake such a cake.  

Guess what.  That case might be coming to the Supreme Court.  Because on June 28, just three-and-one-half weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found probable cause that Mr. Phillips had unlawfully discriminated in another case, this time by refusing to bake a custom cake (blue on the outside, pink on the inside) to celebrate the seventh anniversary of Autumn Scardina’s transition from a man to a woman.  (Also, here.)  Set-up, anybody?

Brett Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court, and Roe v. Wade

With the hearings on Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court starting,¹ one of the questions will be about women’s right to choose/abortion.  Will a Justice Brett Kavanaugh vote to take away a woman’s right to choose by overturning Roe v. Wade?  While Judge Kavanaugh told Senator Susan Collins that Roe v. Wade was settled law, settled law can be overturned. 

What people are missing, however, in talking about whether the Supreme Court might overturn Roe v. Wade, is that overturning Roe v. Wade is not going to take away a woman’s right to choose.  The Equal Rights Amendment was never adopted, but over the last 30+ years all, or at least almost all, of what the Equal Rights Amendment was supposed to accomplish has happened anyway.  It has been done by laws, regulations, and the general agreement of society.  Women are heads of Fortune 500 companies.  Female soldiers are going into combat as members of our military.  Women are as equal today as they would have been if the Equal Rights Amendment had been adopted 35 years ago.