The View from Right Field

What’s More Important: Stormy Daniels or Nuclear Powers Fighting a War?

While official Washington and its media are focused on Michael Cohen’s testimony before Congress yesterday that Donald Trump is a liar and racist and was deeply involved in efforts to pay hush money to Story Daniels, on the other side of the world, two countries that have nuclear weapons are fighting a near-war against each other.  India is bombing Pakistan, and Pakistan is fighting back.

I remember, in 1998, when Pakistan finally developed a nuclear bomb.  India already had one, but now the two of them, countries which had fought each other four times in the prior 50 years, both had nuclear weapons.

Will Trump Reach a Real Agreement With China? More Importantly, Can Pandas Fly?

Donald Trump has delayed the March 1 deadline for increasing tariffs on Chinese imports, saying that he expects the details of a final deal between the U.S. and China will be worked out at a summit meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, to be held at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.  One question, of course, is what any such agreement would provide.  Would it just cover China agreeing to buy more stuff from the United States or would it really change the way the Chinese economy works?

The Economist, in a leader in its current issue (“Can pandas fly?”¹), encourages President Xi to, inter alia, limit the state’s role in allocating capital and temper China’s industrial policy.  The Economist says that “[a] more economically liberal China would end up richer and make fewer enemies.” 

But this misunderstands President Xi’s priorities – and the priorities of his predecessors.  Thirty years ago, Deng Xiaoping crushed the protesters in Tiananmen Square because maintaining control was worth putting his economic reforms on hold for a time.  It is the same with President Xi.  Growth is nice, but political control is more important.
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¹ “Can pandas fly?” was the title of the leader in the print edition of The Economist.

When Donald Meets Kim [Jong Un]

As Donald Trump heads for his second meeting with Kim Jong Un of North Korea, Robert Zoellick, former President of the World Bank and State Department official in both the George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush administrations (as well as serving in the Treasury Department under Ronald Reagan), wrote in The Wall Street Journal on “How to Negotiate With Kim Jong Un.”  Here are the five steps Mr. Zoellick suggests:

“The first step must be to address the danger of warfare on the Korean Peninsula. … The North Korean army is too big.  Negotiators must reduce both its size and its capacity for surprise attack.  The goal should be to equalize the North and South Korean militaries at smaller levels.

The 1992 Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, which helped end the Cold War in Europe, offers examples of terms.

Guns, Laws, and Aurora, Illinois

I have written before about guns and gun control (see here, here, and here).  I don’t need to repeat what I said in those posts.  I just wanted to comment on Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s vow, after the shootings in Aurora, Illinois, to tighten Illinois’s gun laws.  The only problem with the Governor’s promise is that Illinois’s laws already prohibited the alleged shooter from buying or owning a gun.  The problem in the Aurora shootings wasn’t that we didn’t have the right laws; it was that we weren’t enforcing the laws we had.

In my post on Friday about Governor Pritzker’s proposed budget, I said that it’s not how much government spends, it’s how much government accomplishes.  In this case, it’s much the same.  It’s not what laws government passes that counts.  It’s how many laws of those laws government actually enforces.

What’s Going to Happen In Venezuela?

Venezuela is starving.  Literally.  Aid is on its borders, but President Nicholas Maduro is refusing to let it in because the aid has been organized by opposition leader Juan Guaido (and countries supporting him).  Already, at least four people have been killed and hundreds injured, reportedly by Venezuelan security forces, including militia. 

What happens next?  Obviously, nobody knows, but 2019 is the 30th anniversary of two possible outcomes.  The first is Tiananmen Square.  In 1989, people in China were starting to demonstrate for more rights and liberties.  The protests reached a peak in Tiananmen Square in Beijing in early June.  The Army faced off with the protesters.  The Army won because it was willing to shoot the protesters until they disbanded and left.  Deng Xiaoping was willing to put his economic reforms on hold to maintain political power.

Republicans in Illinois: What’s an Irrelevant Minority to Do?

Yesterday I wrote about Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker’s proposed budget for Illinois.  The question for today is: what should the Republicans do in response to Governor Pritzker’s proposal?  It’s an interesting question because there are so few of them.  In the Senate, there are 40 Democrats and 19 Republicans.  Generally, it takes 30 votes to pass a bill in the Senate, so they are irrelevant there.  In order to override a governor’s veto or pass a bill at certain times, you need a “supermajority,” which is 36 votes in the Senate.  Irrelevant again.

The situation is much the same in the House, where there are 74 Democrats and just 44 Republicans.  It takes 60 votes to pass a bill.  Irrelevant.  And 71 votes is a supermajority.  Once again, irrelevant – if House Speaker Michael Madigan really wants to. 

Illinois’s New Governor – Kicking It Down the Road, Just Like Everybody Else

Illinois’s new governor, J.B. Pritzker, presented his proposed budget to the legislature this week.  The budget raises taxes, increases spending, and kicks the pension can down the road, which means he gets one out of three right.  If you’re batting, that’s pretty good.  If you’re fielding, it’s terrible.

Governor Pritzker understands Illinois has to raise taxes.  After years, if not decades, of spending more than we taxed, Illinois has to catch up.  Governor Pritzker, however, focuses his tax increases on smokers, dopers (i.e., legalized marijuana), gamblers, and insurance companies.  Which means he’s not being serious. 

I understand he wants a constitutional amendment to allow a progressive income tax, but that’s not going to happen for three years or more, so while we wait, Governor Pritzker’s only idea is to increase miscellaneous taxes all over the place; as I said, on smokers, dopers, gamblers, and insurance companies.

When Is Baseball Going to Start?

Pitchers and catchers have reported and the other guys are there, too, but it still doesn’t seem like baseball has started.  Instead of baseball, reports from Arizona and comments from Cubs fans here are about Joe Ricketts’s emails, the Cubs's new television network (both that the Cubs won’t be on “free” TV and the politics of their new network partner), Addison Russell’s domestic abuse problems, and more.  I’m getting tired of it.  I read the sports pages to have some small part of my life that isn’t politics and money.  I read the front pages for the rest of life.

Also, I’m getting tired of the complaints people have.  First, the fact the Cubs won’t be on “free TV”.  Unless you consider a cable TV bill of $85 per month (or more) to be “free TV,” more than half of Cubs games haven’t been on free TV for a long time.  Also, if you really think the Cubs having their own network is so bad that you want to switch teams, then you should have switched years ago.  Because the Cubs (especially Crane Kenney) have been talking about this for years.  This is not new news.

Declaring a “National Emergency” to Build a Wall Is a Terrible Idea

President Trump has apparently decided to sign the budget bill and then declare a “national emergency” to build a wall on the border with Mexico.  I’ll be brief: This is an absolutely terrible idea.  Presidential power once stretched never returns to its prior limits.  A national emergency that lets President Trump build a wall, will let his successor do other things.  Even if you approve of the former, you may not approve of the latter.  And even if courts or Congress stop President Trump from doing this,¹ the mere fact that President Trump tried to use emergency powers in this way will be a precedent for future presidents to use their emergency powers in other ways.  This is a really bad idea.
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¹ It could be an interesting question as to who would have “standing” to challenge President Trump’s order in the courts.

Bryce Harper, Salary Caps, and the New @Cubs TV Network

With Spring Training having started and Bryce Harper and Manny Machado both remaining unsigned, players are grumbling and fans are wondering.  A few thoughts:

Bryce Harper is a Scott Boras client, and Scott Boras clients don’t sign early.  Greg Maddux was a Scott Boras client, and when he signed with the Cubs in 2004, he signed the day before pitchers and catchers were to report.  Now that might have been because Maddux was hoping to sign with somebody else, or it might have been Scott Boras.  I don’t know.  Still, the situation with Bryce Harper this year is getting to be ridiculous.

What one needs to understand about baseball free agents is that they are not like free agents in, for example, basketball.  First, the salary structures in basketball and baseball are different, but more on that later.  Second, you can’t be sure one free agent is going to turn a team around in baseball.  There are free agents in basketball that can just about guarantee the team will make the playoffs.  It’s not that way in baseball.